I don't think metacognitive and I should be allowed to make jokes about ships ever again, Tim/Pony was just meant to be a few laughs :( Anyway... this is the result... backstories are pretty similar but this is not connected to my verse! Warning up front for drug abuse/addiction, and some pretty heavy emphasis on depression and grief.


Christmas 1972

You're not getting any better. You know it when you wake up every morning and want to roll over again, go back to sleep, avoid the inevitable ache of life. You know it when you've been standing under the shower for ten minutes, fully clothed, and don't realize it until your shoes have overflowed with water. You know it when Darry shows up to holler at you, every couple of months, and his face blurs and distorts in front of your eyes the same way a TV screen goes staticky.

(You really should've known it the first time you spent your daddy's death benefits on pills the pusher said worked better than aspirin, made you feel like you'd swallowed liquid sunlight too, wrapped in a blanket so warm no cold memory could penetrate it. They killed your pain. They just happened to kill everything else inside of you, too.)

"Curly always said you was smart, kid. The more I get to know you, the less convinced I am that he's right."

Tim is wearing a red wool sweater that's a size too big, one Angela knit for him, you register as he shakes your blanket-covered shoulder; he'd probably take a swing if you pointed it out, but he's not that well-built. When he changes his shirt, you can see all of his ribs rippling under his skin—

Not that you're watching as he changes his shirt or anything.

"It's two in the afternoon, and it's Christmas, for fuck's sake," Tim says roughly, and snaps his fingers in front of your face, for emphasis. You got it the first time. "Get up, I made cookies, and I sure as shit ain't about to throw them in the trash."

You chose Tim as a roommate because your other options were throwing yourself upon the mercy of another hippie commune (you already cussed one out for the knockoff dreamcatchers they had hung up), or throwing yourself upon the mercy of Darry (you'd rather throw yourself into the Arkansas with bricks tied to your legs, at that point). He was getting out of Big Mac for the second time and needed a fixed address. Most importantly, if there was one thing he was good at, which you knew from his lengthy criminal past, it was minding his own damn business. You're not so sure you understand, or like, where this is coming from all of a sudden.

He snaps his fingers again when your eyelids start to flicker shut. "Don't make me haul you out of here by the armpits."

He's not so much bigger than you, anymore, that it wouldn't be a struggle, but you still throw off the covers, the cool air of the room raising goosebumps on your upper arms. Maybe even after all this time, you remember that when Tim Shepard says jump, you ask how high.

The living room doesn't have shit in the way of Christmas decorations, but Tim wasn't kidding about the cookies— the smell of vanilla extract and cheap Piggly Wiggly frosting wafts in from your beat-up kitchen, and he's got some on a plate on the coffee table, even, laid out for you. Shaped like lumpy pine trees, complete with sprinkle ornaments. There's two mugs, too, chipped around the rims and steaming. It's the most domestic scene you've been a part of since you ran out of Darry's place, years ago. "Siddown," he says, patting a spot on the possum-eaten couch y'all got off the street, across from his armchair. "Before it gets cold."

He makes hot chocolate the Mexican way, with cinnamon, and you're glad for it— your mama did with marshmallows the size of pillows, and you haven't enjoyed a Christmas since her death, wouldn't need the extra reminder. You drink it so fast it scalds your tongue, and flinch, still more sensitive than you ought to be; Tim's eyes narrow as he notices your grip tighten on the handle. "Maybe I should've started you off with somethin' with less of an alcohol content, huh? Take it easy."

"There's booze in this?" you croak.

He pulls an empty bottle of Baileys out from under the table, smiles sardonically at you. "Merry fuckin' Christmas."

You two don't have a lot to say to each other at the best of times, and he's not exactly the world's most scintillating conversationalist, so you just take smaller sips in silence and examine him from above the rim. Tim's not handsome, or maybe he could've been, if he didn't wear the kind of life he led right on his face. The bridge of his nose is so crooked it's a medical miracle he can breathe through it, and the scar, even years after the fact, stands out stark-white against his skin, a long arch from temple to jaw. But his face still fascinates you, all the same, with how vivid and mobile it is, like he's watching for predators even now. You tell yourself that you're seeing him from an artist's perspective, trying to figure out how to chart him onto a sheet of paper. You're just describing him like a good writer would, getting his essence down in one go. You need the appropriate degree of detachment towards your subject.

(His eyes are a shade you can't manage to paint, no matter how many times you've tried. Dark blue, like ink from a burst pen, rimmed with black, the effect making it difficult to distinguish the boundary between pupil and iris—)

"You have got to quit starin' at me like that," Tim says. "I dunno if anyone's ever told you this, but it's downright creepy. Like you're lookin' right through me."

"If you didn't want me out here," you say with more energy and bite than you've had in months, "you could've just let me sleep in peace, Lord. Am I ruinin' your big holiday plans?"

Tim sighs and rakes his hand through his shaggy hair, a real martyr's sigh. "You're like a ghost haunting this apartment, and that's a whole 'nother thing that's creepin' me out," he says. You'd make fun of him for using the metaphor, but Tim reads, more than you do at this point— the books on the living room shelf are mostly his, a mix of Asimov and fucking Ayn Rand, of all people. Maybe you should make fun of him for that. "You are just sleepwalking through your goddamn life—"

The thought of getting life coaching right now from Tim Shepard, of all people, is almost too terrible to bear, which is why you jump so quickly to interrupt. This sounds like the kind of lecture he used to give his kid brother, while you tried to slip out of the room, and Curly pulled faces and put his dirty sneakers up on the coffee table. "I have a job, I pay my share of the bills, I don't know what you're on about—"

"Excuse me, you wash dishes for eight hours a day, then you come home, get in bed, turn off the lights, and don't shower all weekend. Stayin' in your room with dirty laundry and empty bottles thrown around everywhere. Sure sounds like sleepwalkin' to me, but maybe you wanna enlighten me on the difference. I'm all ears."

You could say something equally cutting about Tim's choice of career after he got out of Big Mac— or rather, the career choices left to him. You take a large gulp instead, almost relish the way it burns down your throat, the sharp, ennervating rush of the pain.

"Soda wouldn't have wanted this for you."

You haven't hit anybody in a long time, years now, since you failed out of OSU. Living in grayscale. You look up at him now, grasping at the once-extinguished fire and fury that made you spit in the face of Socs, then see the way the side of his mouth curves up like that's what he expected all along. Wanted to goad you into, even. And hell, you might just win the fight— Tim's twenty-six, about the point where being older than you is more a liability than a boon. "Like you got anything more than me to write home about?" slithers out instead. "Livin' in this shithole apartment, breakin' your back at the GM factory all day to keep your PO happy—"

(That's not what you even want to say, to hurt him. What pops into your head first, and won't come out, is when's the last time you got laid? Grown ass man, living here with you in some bizarre parody of domesticity. He's stuck in the exact same patch of quicksand, except you can't even begin to figure out his angle, or why he won't grab a vine.)

"Only for two more months, before I quit bein' the property of the state of Oklahoma," he says with a thin, tepid smile. He's not going to be goaded into a fight, he's gained more control over his temper than he ever had as a firecracker kid. "And that's already better than anyone ever expected of me— hell, than you expected of me, you wrote as much in that lil' theme of yours. Don't try to change the fucking subject, by gettin' me mad, it ain't gonna work."

"You reportin' back to Darry now? That what this is all about, lookin' after the only kid brother he's got left?"

He snorts. "Maybe I just like you," is all he says. You're not surprised when he doesn't elaborate— this is already the most emotional expression you think you've ever gotten out of him. "Now eat your goddamn cookie before I shove it down your throat. I seen smack addicts with better color than you."

You take an obliging bite, the too-sweet frosting making your mouth well up with saliva, nausea rising in your throat— not from the sugar, not even from the alcohol. It's because Tim, who finds any vagary of human behavior more difficult to understand than you found your first semester of calculus, has finally managed to hit the nail on the metaphorical head. No matter what he did to himself, towards the end, Soda always wanted something better for you.