[Closed Log] Totally-Not-A-Date [BACKDATED]

[tobodlygo]

Date: August 16th
Where: The Coffee Lab on Turner St.
Who: Walter and Jim

The old brick facade of the building is contrasted by the neat, modern graphics that adorn the shop front. The charcoal black and baby-blue colour scheme works around the natural wood of the tables and counters, emphasized by the hulking black espresso machine and the sturdy blue mugs that everything is served in.

Above all else, the Lab is welcoming, an Oasis of air-conditioning, Coffee and Chocolate (Sweet, sweet Cocoa) for everyone to enjoy. The Baristas are a small team that work well together, chatting and bantering behind the bar when they're not serving customers. A few of them belong to the university, but at least two are more mature, one Italian guy with an impressive handlebar mustache being one of the most obvious. 

Jim's sitting on a table near the back in a nook just under the staircase to the store room, a piping hot Americano swirling in front of him as he stirs in the sugar.

He's just waiting for a response to his text to Walter, letting him know he's here.

"At a table in the back, lmk what you want to drink :)"

Comments

[tobodlygo]

Jim is face first into a cushion right now, hanging over the arm of the sofa. It looks like he's going to be pretty out of it until someone tries to wake him.

[iamnotgod]

Walter focuses internally on breathing, trying to think at least a little more on those blueprints, before walking over and touching Jim's shoulder lightly.

"I would not be surprised in the least if you chose right now to wake up," he said, voice seeming surprisingly loud to him.

It must have been how empty the house felt...

[tobodlygo]

Jim doesn't wake up, but something like a wounded noise catches itself in his throat at the touch.

It's loud. Too loud for the quiet, quiet house.

[iamnotgod]

Aaaand all thoughts of exploring the house are now gone, because what was that noise Jim are you okay is this a nightmare???

So Walter just gently moves his hand to Jim's other shoulder.

"Jim?" he asks, volume not matching that of the other man's sound in his mind.

Maybe he should have brought a white noise maker...

[tobodlygo]

Jim doesn't seem to respond to any outside stimulus. Instead, the nightmare only seems to pull him in deeper as the noises he makes become more pained, more like words that sound like 'sorry', 'hurts', 'stop!'.

[iamnotgod]

It's not a simple matter to just wake someone from a nightmare, Walter knows. But the urgency of the situation is growing by the second...

He's kneeling by Jim's face, now - not too close, God knows crowding him would be a bad idea - but he tries to calm his own pulse, and rub Jim's back (what he can reach, anyway) in soothing, regular strokes.

[tobodlygo]

It's the point of contact between him and Walter that startles him awake. There was no soothing counterpoint in his dreams, and in that confusion, he struggles his way back to consciousness.

He starts, falling off the edge of the sofa and locking himself into a defensive position. His heart is racing and all he can hear is the sound of his own laboured breathing and his pulse. It takes a couple of seconds for him to realise where he is, for his breathing to slow, for his muscles to relax. As soon as that happens he feels the familiar taste of bile rise up in his throat, and he belts off to the bathroom.

[iamnotgod]

Walter leans back, edging away while trying to prevent the worst of Jim's fall.

"Jim?" he asks, and his throat suddenly feels blocked - and then his friend is up and moving, and he can gauge enough out of his expression to give him a head start on that run.

Walter hasn't gotten to explore the house yet, after all, and it'd be a real bad idea to not get Jim where he needs to go.

[tobodlygo]

Thankfully there's a small closet bathroom on the ground floor that Jim gets to just in time before he's dry heaving into the loo.

It's not a pretty sight.

[iamnotgod]

Walter spends the time waiting for Jim to finish wincing in sympathy, keeping his hands busy by continuing to rub the man's back and trying to commit every detail of the place to memory.

Not the dry heaving, though.

[tobodlygo]

Jim doesn't recall doing from dry-heaving to full on sobbing, and he hates it. Hates that he's crying in the first place at all, hates that he doesn't know why the fuck this is happening to him, why he's remembering these things.

He loathes it.

[iamnotgod]

At some point, Walter starts humming.

It's not a complex tune, and God knows he hasn't sung anything since long before he came back to Mossgate, but it's slow, melodic, and an attempt at being comforting.

They can loathe what's been happening together, but that doesn't mean they can't make anything good happen, either.

[tobodlygo]

At some point, Jim gasps, coming back to himself all at once. It's fucking painful, is what it is. He lets out a miserable sounding groan, finally lifting his head up to find Walter right there. Oh dicksticks.

"I am... so sorry."

/also noms ALL YOUR TAGS

[iamnotgod]

"'S not your fault."

It's said just as softly as he's been humming, though with a good deal more clarity.

"Wanted to be sure you didn't choke on something."

But apart from that, this is Jim's house; Walter knows he should trust Jim enough to be able to handle his own health.

[tobodlygo]

"I still feel... fucking wretched." He closes his eyes and just breathes for a second. He's shaking from the adrenaline and he can feel bile in his throat and in his mouth. A shower would probably help.

Fuck.

"I'm gonna get in the shower, uh. You're more than welcome to leave if you want, I don't want to be any more of a pain." He says, though he's definately reaching back to touch any part of Walter he can. There's a part of Jim that wants someone to stay, just doesn't want to be alone again, can't bear to be after re-living the memory of just glass separating him from his loved ones.

[iamnotgod]

Walter doesn't stop with the back rubbing until Jim mentions going to get a shower. He reluctantly lets his hand slip away...

"I'll be- back out where we were, okay? I will hear if you call, for anything."

He's definitely going to be seconds away from blushing at any one time, though.

"And you're not a pain." I don't want to be alone either.

[tobodlygo]

"Help yourself to anything in the house," Jim nods from where he is on the floor, still breathing slowly, calmly.

When Walter closes the door, he takes just a minute to himself. God, what an idiot he is. He can't believe he dragged Walter into this. Eventually, he drags himself upstairs into the bathroom, trying as best as he can to avoid the living room for the time being.

Stepping into the warm water feels like a blessing, and he takes a moment just to stand under it. He can't keep doing this. Memory or not, he can't let it hinder his life like this. So what if he can remember his down death, it's not like it was him. Sure, he could feel everything, and what he could see of the reflection in the glass it looked like him; but fuck it. It isn't him. He has no idea where these memories are coming from, but he's going to tell them to fuck off.

Blissfully clean and possibly harder scrubbed than he should be, Jim finally pads himself out of the shower and down the hall into his bedroom for a new change of clothes.

It's nearly 20 minutes later when he comes back downstairs again. Still shattered, but at least clean more awake than he had been.

[iamnotgod]

He lets himself explore a little - every minute of silence gets analyzed, listening for even a hint that something's wrong, but he can't restrain himself to one task like that easily, he needs to be doing something even as he's worrying - but for the most part he sticks to downstairs.

He greets Jim with a broad, relieved smile once the man comes back.

"Shower work better than sleep, then?"

[tobodlygo]

There's plenty to look at, downstairs. The Kitchen Area is open plan and there's a good amount of random tech scattered about. There's the lounge area, with a... surprisingly modest TV but a whole load more books, shelving units line most of the walls here, stuffed from everything from politics to high fantasy.

"I mean, only for the time being," He grunts. He knows he's being rude, and he throws an apologetic look Walter's Way.

[iamnotgod]

If he hadn't come here because Jim needed rest, Walter absolutely would be taking up roost in the lounge area.

But that's not the most important thing here.

Walter shoots back a sympathetic look, getting what Jim means for the most part.

"Temporary measure - we can work on helping you catch up, right?"

Aaand he is wincing internally at how that sounds. Sure, it's what he wants to say, but the implications...

[tobodlygo]

Jim just smirks, not actually looking at Walter for the time being, because he knows exactly how that sounded.

"Yeah, I'll see if I can get a prescription for sleeping aids or something." Hopefully ones he's not allergic to, but what's a little anaphylactic shock to get your life back in order?

[iamnotgod]

Too much, that's what. Just too much.

"Something for later. Come on over here, okay? I'd... like to learn from where you got some of these books."

It's very obviously a topic shift, but it also qualifies as safer, potentially shared ground.

[tobodlygo]

Jim sighs, tapping something on his phone and ambling on over.

"I mean, a lot of these were bought when I was at Uni, uh," He points to the section just left of the TV an orderly set of books and binders; "That's all mechanical and physics and shit; like papers on astro-physics and biology, uh," he waves to the section to the left, which is far more haphazard and odd; "That's all the fiction; I have a real bad habit of going to charity and thrift shops and just... well, I haven't read them all yet, that's for sure."

There's another section just under the TV and this one is stacked with books stuffed full of papers, hardback tomes jammed in and... are those Dice?

There's a ping from the kitchen area, meaning that Jim's coffee is done, he goes over to collect it, leaving Walter for just a second.

[iamnotgod]

"Well, that we can fix," is the first thing out of Walter's mouth, once Jim mentions not having read all of the fiction.

As the man steps out for the coffee, however, Walter goes to inspect those books and papers under the TV.

"Maybe we could find a better display for these?" he mutters, not touching anything but inspecting it carefully as best he can.

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[tobodlygo]

Jim can't help but laugh from the other end of the room as he retrieves his coffee from the machine.

"Man, full time work means I get little to no reading done anymore," he says wistfully, and only just hearing what Walter says next, then catching what he's actually talking about.

"Uh. I mean I haven't touched those in years, so"