Chapter Text
Waves crashed somewhere in the distance, though they sounded slightly off; muffled and indistinct, like a faulty recording. Luckily, they were just soft and consistent enough not to bother him like real waves did. The sand below him appeared gritty, but despite the way he swayed on his bare feet he couldn’t feel a thing. The sky was a dark purple, speckled with stars that shifted constantly despite his inability to catch them moving. Short sandy hills, tufts and patchy swaths of grass dotting them intermittently. They were green, of course, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint what shade, if any. He took a step forward, only to stumble over a rock that he hadn’t recalled seeing a moment ago. Before he could face-plant into the sand, however, someone grabbed his arm and halted his descent. The moment they touched, everything seemed to solidify around them.
The stars still shifted, the grass was still an unidentifiable green, and the waves were still garbled, but the sand and skyline ceased the wavering that he hadn’t noticed until it was gone. The person pulled him upright, with minimal effort on his part, and he was honestly too in awe to be bothered by a stranger touching him.
His savior’s face was rather thin, despite them appearing to be only a couple years older. He guesstimated him to be around five, maybe four, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Hi,” the boy said, grinning crookedly. “I’m Jason and I’m almost five.”
“Hi,” he replied tentatively, studying every inch of his face. “I’m Tim. I’m three and a half.”
Jason nodded sagely. “I re’emba three and a half. It was great. My mama carried me everywhere ‘n made me peppa-ment tea.”
“P–pe– tea?” Tim repeated, giving up on pronouncing “peppermint,” especially since Jason didn’t seem to have mastered it himself. If an almost-five-year-old couldn’t say it, he probably couldn’t either, even though he could do lots of things that even adults couldn’t do, like make a pillow fort all on his own.
“Yup! It’s my favrite. Now I gotta make it all by my own,” Jason explained. Tim understood doing things alone.
“Lotta things all by my own too,” he told him matter-of-factly. “It’s hard some-time, but I do it!” Jason offered a crooked grin once again.
“Wanna be friends?” he asked. Tim smiled back. He had never had a friend before; all the kids at school thought he was weird and didn’t talk to him.
“Yeah!” he agreed. “Friends forever.”
Everything went black.
— — —
Tim jolted to awareness. He was in an unfamiliar apartment, though he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. It was small and rather cramped, but had a homey feel to it that he suddenly realized even his own bedroom lacked. There were books stacked haphazardly on old scratched-up bookcases lining half of one wall, and a small plastic table beside it with crayons and paper scattered across it. There was a fire-engine-red bucket in the corner overflowing with teddy bears and dolls, all battered and bruised and worn and loved just like Tim’s soft old bear, Brown-Bear, had been before Mommy decided he was too old for bears.
Tim missed Brown-Bear.
The other side of the room was pretty bare, besides a cluttered old table adorned with a million photos in photo frames. It was really tall, so Tim couldn’t see many of them, but the ones he could see depicted Jason and a woman, smiling in various locations. He noticed one that also had a man in it, but Jason’s smile looked weird in it so he moved on. On the wall above were a bunch of crayon drawings, taped up with pride. Tim hadn’t ever had crayons, only pens, but they looked like fun, and he suddenly wished he did. There was a scent drifting through the air, unfamiliar but enticing, and Tim navigated through the sagging couches and rickety coffee table to the doorway.
Beyond the threshold was a kitchen, just as inviting and warm as the living room. Tim felt like he was intruding. He should just find someone and ask to leave. He spotted the woman from the photos at the counter directly across from him, stirring something in a pot as she hummed softly to herself. Tim caught himself comparing her to Mommy and scolded himself lightly. Mommy would be disappointed in him if she found out how mean he was to her in his head.
He approached the woman cautiously, taking a deep breath before lightly tugging on her pants leg. Mommy said girls shouldn’t wear pants, but that didn’t really make sense to Tim, and the fabric of the woman’s pants were far softer and more accessible than Mommy’s rough-textured skirts.
“S’cuse me?” he muttered, subconsciously avoiding meeting her eyes when she looked down at him. Surprise painted her rosy cheeks and wrinkled her laugh lines, and Tim couldn’t help but smile shyly. Mommy thought face lines happened because of bad hygiene or something, but Tim wasn’t so sure now. The woman seemed very nice and clean, and he wondered if it was really just because of use. He should ask Mommy later if she had thought of that before.
“Yes, sweetie? What is it? Did you and JayJay get tired of playing?”
“JayJay?” he echoed, furrowing his brow.
“Timmy!” a familiar voice called from across the room. Before he could turn to see who it was, a big warm weight enveloped him from behind as Jason wrapped his big arms around him. Tim leaned into the touch instinctively, his heart beating faster even as he longed for more.
“Jason,” he breathed, finally understanding. Jason “JayJay” and his mom, the woman, lived here. He was over at their apartment. Everything was fine.
“Timmy, it’s my birthday!” Jason announced, squeezing him tightly, but not too tight like Mommy did when she had to pick him up at fancy parties.
“Really?!” Tim yelped in excitement, twisting around in his grasp.
“Yeah! I’m five now,” he emphasized proudly, grinning his crooked grin. Tim threw his arms around Jason’s neck and squeezed back, nuzzling his head into the crook of his neck and breathing in deeply.
Everything went black.
— — —
Tim sat on his bed, which honestly was far too large for him. The plain white cotton sheets extended around him in an endless plain, dwarfing him in comparison. Of course, the doctors had said he was just small in general; they didn’t say that to his face, but he had overheard it. Mommy said that it wasn’t polite when he had asked, but he didn’t quite understand.
He had never liked his sheets, but for some reason he didn’t really feel them the same right now, so it didn’t bother him. Mommy and Daddy had taken him to a party again, but it was bigger than the other parties and everything was too loud and hard and crowded and he hadn’t liked it at all. Someone tried to touch his face, grab his cheeks, and that was the last straw.
He was scared and ran away, and a nice black-haired boy had found him crying and comforted him. Even though he wanted to tell him no, the boy had brought him back to Mommy. She had been very angry even though she pretended not to be. She put him in his room for the night and told him that a new nanny would be there when he woke up. The last one had gotten fired because she bought him a book with nice soft fabric squares and didn’t make him do his lessons on how to talk to people and act good when he was sick with the flu.
He didn’t like talking to people, but they didn’t like him much either.
“Timmy?” a voice asked, and suddenly Jason was there, touching his face much gentler than the mean old lady had and wiping tears away that Tim hadn’t noticed silently slipping down his cheeks. “Tim-tam wha’s wrong?”
Tim hiccupped pathetically and willed himself to stop crying. Mommy said he shouldn’t cry even when he was really really really sad, because boys weren’t supposed to be sad or cry. Tim wondered if that meant he wasn’t really a boy.
“Mommy’s angry at me,” he sobbed, crumpling into Jason’s arms. Jason seemed caught off-guard. Mommy said Tim made people feel like that a lot.
“She loves you though,” Jason offered helplessly. Tim sobbed harder, unable to control himself as waves of emotion pummeled his heart.
“No she doesn’t!” he protested, voice broken and distraught. To his horror, Jason pulled him away from his chest, fixing him with a serious face as he gripped his shoulders with a gentle firmness, like his hugs.
“Timmy, your Mama loves you. I know it. All mamas love their kids,” he told him.
“She isn’t like your mama. She doesn’t like me – she said so! I heard her!” Tim shouted, tears still streaming down his face. “She said she wish I not weird. Some-thin’... wrong with me.” He devolved into sobs again, his head dropping as his chest heaved unevenly, and Jason hugged him again, a warm grounding weight.
“I like you,” he finally offered hesitantly. “Just like you are. Nothin’s wrong with you.”
Tim didn’t know if he really believed him, but he nodded against his chest anyways and Jason held him closer.
Everything went black.