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“So, like, you’d still love me if it turned out I was a pack of moths operating a huge human suit, right?”
Jay is used to receiving these calls from Alex. They’re commonplace, and amusing to the point that Jay actually looks forward to them.
Sometimes, anyway. When he receives these calls at 3 AM when he’s attempting to finish his overdue homework for a class his mom bullied him into, he isn’t quite as fond of them. He squints past the blue glow of his laptop screen, fighting back the resulting sting within his eyes.
“I think the real question here is how you even came up with such an idea unless you’re about to confess to me that you really are a group of highly intelligent moths,” Jay says, to the point. He taps out a line for his essay and backspaces no less than two seconds later. “In which case, sure, I guess. Sex is off the table, though.”
“What?!”
“What, what?” Jay sighs, closing out of Word and resigning himself to a growly lecture by the professor in the morning. “Does it come as such a surprise that I’m not sexually attracted to bugs?”
“I thought our love was stronger than that but I see where your heart really lies,” Alex snivels on the other side of the line. Jay rolls his eyes, collapsing back against his fluffy blankets. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Alex is joking when he’s stoned. “…I don’t blame you, though. I mean, my ass is rocking. I’d be disappointed if it was actually an insect-controlled ass too.”
Jay chokes on his air and has to cough to knock his lungs into remembering how to breathe again.
“I-- well. At least you’ve got something in your life to be proud of.”
“No really though Jay,” Alex whines, his couch squeaking loudly in the background. Jay can picture him now, rolling on the cushions, glass bong clutched to his bosom as if he were protecting a newborn baby. “Tell me. Seriously. Tell me straight up. If I was like, totally a… secret agent or some shit, like, uh, I’m undercover, I have so many secrets, and if I told you any of them I’d have to kill you. If that was me, would you still love me?”
Blue eyes close, blocking out the neon blue numbers flashing at him on his desk across the room. The clock is telling him to go to bed but he has a blazed idiot hanging onto his ear and he is a pretty good boyfriend, therefore he should probably appease him.
“You know how much I love you?” Jay starts off, biting his lip when a giggle threatens to breach the surface. He knows the answer-- tons, too much, it’s too much when he signs on to work on Alex’s shitty films just to be with him and support him along the way. He feels Brian’s fond judgment, except he can never judge Jay for it when he signed on to please and support Alex as well.
“No, tell me, please.”
The couch squeaks again, as though Alex bolted upright and might be listening to him intently, eyes big behind his glasses, lying askew upon the bridge of his nose. Jay sighs, closing his own eyes. A smile teases at his lips.
“Count the stars. It’s in--”
“Okay!”
Alex’s phone clatters to the floor, his footsteps thudding away in the background. Jay lays still, staring out into nothing. He blinks back to life after a second of stuttered thought, ‘did he-- he just? he? actually went to…?’
In retrospect, he should have known better. Sober Alex is a fan of cheesy romance. High Alex takes shit literally.
It’ll be a while before Alex gets back. Might as well save battery in that case.
He hits the power button and lets the phone slide to the floor, off the side of the mattress and to the rug. In an hour or so, he’s certain he’ll be woken up by the ringtone he has saved for Alex (specifically a song Alex picked himself, ‘I wanted you to get it accurate as possible!’-- some sort of industrial hipster noise Jay can’t understand but appreciates nonetheless). Until then, might as well enjoy these pillows, his blankets, and this warm bed best as he can.
It’s not two seconds into pressing his face against the fresh washed pillow covers and clouding his heavy brain with lavender that his phone rattles again. It begins to screech at him, demanding his full attention. He gives it, begrudgingly, stretching an arm out over the space between his nightstand and the mattress frame.
“You did not count all the stars in the sky in a matter of three minutes,” Jay mumbles into the receiver. Alex pants on the other end, his breath shaky. “…were you running?”
“Y-yeah. Couldn’t count ‘em. Didn’t get far. Someone’s… someone out there.”
How lucky for Alex, he remembered running outside while high isn’t going to get him on the good side of any passing strangers. Jay rolls over onto his belly, closing his eyes and putting the phone on speaker. He hides in the pillows again, pretending that he won’t accidentally fall asleep if Alex stays quiet for too long.
“Listen, Jay, I’m really serious this time.”
He hums aloud, pushing him to go on. Right, right, serious.
“You’d still love me if something weird was going on with me?”
“You’re already pretty weird, I think I’ll live.”
“No, I…”
The line stutters, static cutting past Alex’s voice. He coughs, briefly, before causing the speakers to crackle with his sighing.
“I’m sorry. I think I need to cut back or something. This isn’t fair on you or anyone.”
“Mhm,” Jay murmurs, somewhat in agreement, mostly in ‘I’m half-conscious and will say yes to anything you say’.
“I’ll cut back, and, and I’ll be the best director I can be, and the movie’s gonna be awesome. Everyone’ll love it, especially you. Right?”
“Mm.”
“Right! So I’ll just smoke what I got left tonight, and I’ll write down whatever comes to mind, and that’ll be it! I’ll tell you all about it as it’s happening. Now, uh, where’s my lighter…”
The bed’s comfort overwhelmed Jay within seconds. He hears Alex, feels his presence, but he can’t make out what he’s saying.
He drifts in his dreams, content to be surrounded by the babbling of his-- according to the man himself-- soon to be ex-stoner boyfriend.
--
This is the second time Jay has been in this hotel room. During his first visit, he knew nothing, understood nothing, had nothing but a handful of tapes left to go on. He had a relatively full wallet, and a full belly.
Now, he’s on the bathroom rug of the same room. This rug might be the one he stood on before, washing his face before crashing into the too fluffy pillows for a peaceful night’s sleep. He remembers red, a pattern of crimson stars winking against a white sky.
Can’t trust his memory anymore, though. Can’t trust anything.
Red stars, red streams. Red flowing from the shattered face of a man he does not know or recognize-- or maybe he did know him. How the hell can he know anymore? Was he a friend? A friend of a friend? Perhaps a family member, he can’t recall what his own mother’s face looks like anymore. Who’s to say he hasn’t gone and lost the memory of a cousin or an uncle altogether?
What Jay is sure of is that Alex did not know that man, never met him in his life. His aggressive whispering before, while he was crunching down twigs and autumn leaves and slinking into the tunnel, that was meant for Jay. That was for /him/.
(Did Alex think the stranger was Jay, somehow? Did his vision become warped, and when he looked at that bearded face, he saw the bones of his cheeks, his hollowing face, blue eyes?)
His insides are at battle inside of him, a war that can never be won. When the video cut off in a clip of static and flashed at him, he felt his heart plummet into his stomach, and the high-pitched whine of a scream that issued from the laptop then was left to putter out on its own. He made a run for the bathroom, bowing onto the floor, but there’s nothing left in his stomach to push back out these days.
Blood, blood, blood, broken bones, skull fragments on the floor of the tunnel, cracked and stained red and brown. No face, ripped away by the persistent thud of rock to flesh, no face, like the being of no skin but shadow and something that has a name but could never be uttered by human beings.
The man who once kissed him and held his body in ways he has never allowed anybody else, he spilled that blood. He stole the breath from the lungs of this stranger, pushed it from their body and locked it out with his fingers. Then, he decided he was not finished, and searched for a weapon.
Jay had to watch it not once, not twice, but three times to admit to himself what he was seeing was real. That man held him with gentle hands, long fingers caressing his cheek, and those same fingers went and shattered a man’s windpipe.
The sight itself sits heavy in Jay’s chest, stabbed deep into his lungs. His breath is sapped away, much as the bearded man’s was.
What keeps it pinned in place, ripping the fresh wound open further, is the realization that Jay isn’t scared.
No, he’s scared of himself, and of what Alex could do, but not of Alex himself.
What he saw on that tape? He refuses to believe it’s Alex, though he knows, he /knows/ it is, it’s his body, his voice, his intentions mapped out onto camera.
He lays sprawled on a bathroom floor, wheezing, clutching his throat, because he still loves him.
He still loves somebody that could kill him, /wants/ to kill him.
Living in knowledge of this, that his heart can be this foolish and traitorous, he has to burn away in fear.