Dot cheerily catches the three of them the next Saturday, when the afternoon grinds to a halt and there's no-one around who wants to buy antique furniture. "How did you find it?" she asks.

Tim doesn't know quite what he's meant to say - after waiting for his hearing to return to normal, he and Jay went back to their seats and watched the rest of the auction without a problem. He doesn't even know if he can describe their day, because he was so lost and uncomprehending that the events went straight over his head.

Lorna hands her notebook over, looking smug. "Scoped out our competition... They've got nothing on us. And then we took the tour around the place afterwards, it was pretty awesome. I snapped some photos, too, if you want them."

"The tour? How did that go? It's a big place, huh."

Lorna looks as though she's about to continue, but Jay gets there first. "It was beautiful!" he rushes, positively beaming.

Suddenly, Tim remembers a colossal amount of information. Like the way Jay was wide-eyed with delight, gazing at the intricately detailed ceilings and the marbled corridors. And the way that his smile had spread and didn't seem to stop, like when you knock over a can of soda and the spill rolls over the carpet. Tim doesn't like being poetic, and he's really fucking awful at it, so it was hard to explain why the moment had stuck in his mind.

"It was beautiful!"

Tim flushes a subtle red.

He looks down at his steel capped boots and tries to ignore Lorna, who seems to have suddenly fixed her stare onto him. Shit.

Dot laughs, pulling him out of his reverie. "I'm glad you enjoyed it," she chuckles. "Lorna, love, could you and Jay start to go through the boxes of books that were dropped off yesterday? I'll send Tim down to help you later if you need it, I'm sure he won't mind..."

They disperse... But not before Lorna shoots him a look from the corners of her eyes, which clearly reads 'you can't escape the talk we're going to have, and I'm going to enjoy making you wait, haha'.

Shit. Shitshitshit.

He spends the next hour going through a range of jobs on automatic. He's angry, and something deep in his chest keeps sickeningly every time he considers his situation. Wardrobe to the loading bay; how much had Lorna picked up on? Scrap metal to the back yard for collection; did Jay know - or worse still - would she tell him anything? Go through to the book room to help out; how did he even feel about Jay, really?

The anger dissipated, dissolved in acidic uncertainty. He didn't even know. Tim really wished he did, but somehow, he had absolutely no idea how he felt about Jay.

Quickly, he mentally reviewed all of his existing relationships.

1) Brian. A good friend to Tim, patient, perpetually cheerful, encouraged him to actually do things rather than wallow in self-pity and isolation.

2) Lorna. Coworker. Got on his nerves, a lot, but knew what she was doing when it came to actually getting jobs done. Not really a friend, but she didn't exercise his contempt quite as much as the majority of the world.

3) ...Jay.

Jay was patient with him when he was shitty, which was most of the time, and it was nice to have someone else on Earth that tolerated his consistently terrible demeanor. Whereas Brian actively tried to rescue Tim from himself - and did a damn good job, too - Jay constantly helped him out without even meaning to. Brian had sat with him sometimes because Tim needed him too.

Jay had sat with Tim because he'd wanted to be there.

He's still shaking his head in disbelief when he reaches the door to the book room. A massive metal cage, half-crammed full with cardboard boxes, has been jammed through the doorframe; Tim's just about to complain about the obstruction when he realises that Lorna and Jay are making actual conversation, and decides to listen in, instead. He should probably feel guilty about it, but he really can't bring himself to care.

"I think he wasn't feeling too good... That's all."

"So he doesn't have a deal at all? You don't spill deep dark shit to each other and bond or something?" There's a crash as someone, presumably Lorna, dumps a stack of books onto the sorting table.

Jay never treats books like that. "Does he usually?"

"Nah. He never says nothin' to me. We only talk about work stuff, really..."

"Oh."

"Come on, Jay, he's gotta have told you some stuff, right? Deep dark secrets? A love for '80s disco? Anything?"

"What...? No."

"How are you even friends then? Jesus Christ..."

There's a brief pause. Tim holds his breath, but he can practically feel Jay's reddening face from the other side of the door: "I don't think we are friends," he mumbles. "Sometimes I think he doesn't like me very much."

Lorna snorts. There's another crash. "You're kidding. Ever since you got here, he's been so much less of a miserable bastard... You have no idea how much you're helping, kid."

"All I end up doing is watching every little thing that happens. How does that help anybody?"

The phone begins to ring in the background, and Tim decides that he's heard enough. "Hey," he says, pushing the cage out from the doorway noisily, "need any help, still?"

There's another crash, but it's not Lorna this time; Jay has jumped so hard at Tim's sudden entrance that he's thrown an entire stack of books away from him. Tim glares at Lorna as he helps him pick them up, because she should really help out and not laugh her ass off in the corner. She wipes at her eyes, and wanders off... Evidently, she's gotten bored. Asshole. He considers calling after her, but it's pretty clear that she's not going to come back, because the phone stops ringing.

"Sorry, sorry..." Jay mumbles, not looking up. He sounds distressed.

"Hey, no, that was my fault. I'm the one who should be saying sorry," Tim tells him. "You okay?"

"Fine-" Jay begins, but the word comes out a little more strangled than expected. It may have had something to do with the way they'd simultaneously reached for the same hardback and knocked hands, but Tim's trying very hard not to focus on that.

"Yeah-" Tim agrees in a similarly choked way, setting his pile of books on the table.

After a few more seconds of fumbling, unbalanced, Jay stands up too and slides the books into the space beside the others. The two of them stand together for a couple of brief, uncertain moments, and Tim's about to gather up the courage to make eye contact again when "youdon'thavejudotonightdoyou?" eloquently graces his ears.

"Huh?"

Jay fiddles with the back of his baseball cap. "You, um. You don't have your martial arts thing tonight, do you...? I mean, um. I just, I just thought that maybe you'd be up for coming over. Or something."

Tim's surprised. Jay... wants to hang out with him? "Why?" he asks.

He immediately regrets saying that - Jay deflates a little, obviously taking this to mean that Tim doesn't want to. "I just thought... I don't know. I like films, you like martial arts, and if you weren't going to your club tonight, we could watch an adventure comedy with some... ridiculously complicated fight scenes in it..."

"Yeah," Tim says. "That sounds cool."

Jay looks up - he's suppressing what should be a massive smile, and Tim's seriously going to kill Lorna for interrupting this conversation, because he really wanted to see that same smile from earlier on. She chooses right then to reappear, her head poking out from behind the book cage: "phone call for ya."

"For me?" he asks incredulously, but apparently not. She strides back into the room, taking a handful of paperbacks from the cage with her.

"Nope. For Jay-boy over here. Says he wants to talk to you 'bout something..."

"Who is it?" Jay asks quietly. The pink tinge hasn't quite left his face yet.

"Not sure, but he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Maybe he's been in the shop and had a chat with Dot? He asked for you specifically."

Jay shoots Tim a look. "Lorna, could you keep sorting these? I'll be right back," he says, tone far too level, and makes for the door. Just as he's about to disappear around the side of the book cage again, the look resurfaces. Jay's afraid, and his hands briefly tighten against the metal grille as though he doesn't really want to leave at all.

Tim understands, and follows.

He's seen Jay answer his mobile phone before, and although the guy is pretty unskilled, he always manages to deal with it, and he's definitely never afraid. Not like this. This can't be a normal call... It just can't be.

It seems to go well for the first few seconds, actually. Jay says 'hello?' a couple of times; in fact, it almost seems as though no-one's there. It's not unheard of - it's not like the store has hold music, or even a hold option. The literally have to leave the phone off of the receiver if they want to run and get someone else to take it. It's expected that sometimes customers get bored and just... Well. hang up on them. It's quite rude, actually.

And then Jay drops the handset.

Pieces of splintering plastic fly everywhere as it cracks against the sales desk. It's probably the fastest Tim's ever crossed the store. "Jay?!" he calls out.

The cord is swinging over the edge of the desk, electronics visible. The shell of the handset litters the floor. Jay is frozen. The hand that was pressing the speaker to his ear remains in place, albeit shaking slightly, and Tim reaches out: "Jay?"

Jay jumps. "I'm fine," he mumbles. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine-"

He's not fine. "You need to go home?" Tim asks.

Jay's head jerks up. He looks terrified. "Come back with me," he whispers, grabbing at Tim's outstretched arm. "Please don't leave me by myself-"

"I won't, I'm not going to," Tim promises, and has absolutely no idea what he's getting mixed up with. "C'mon, okay? We'll ask Dot if we can leave, she won't mind. I'll drive you back, it's fine."

And Tim does ask Dot, and he does drive Jay back - mostly in silence, as Jay's knuckles whiten tightly on the underside of the passenger seat, and Tim debates whether or not to switch on the radio. He doesn't.

"Wanna tell me what that's about?"

"..."

"You gotta let me know at some point, Jay."

"I can't," Jay says, obvious guilt written all over his face. "If I talk about it-"

"Then what?" Tim asks pointedly. "It'll come true, or something? Whatever you're worrying about... Seems like it's coming true already, from what I can tell."

They pull up to Jay's apartment building, still as isolated from the rest of campus as it was before, and sit in silence again for a few moments. Jay fiddles with his sleeve and mumbles.

"Huh?"

"Are you," he says, still picking at the fabric of his jacket, "still up for coming over?"

Tim can't help it. He laughs out loud, and he laughs long. It doesn't seem like a fucking stupid thing to do anymore, and it hasn't for a long time - which really, really scares him, but it also doesn't seem to matter much these days. Jay eyes him cautiously from the passenger seat, uncertain as to how he should be reacting.

"Yeah," Tim finally tells him, his chest aching with mirth. "Yeah, you dumbass, I'm still up for that. Jeez."