Neon lights flash and glare from all the buildings in the distance, looking like small multicoloured insect zappers. From the great distance, Alec can’t see what buildings they belong to or what shape they’re in- not the letters and words they form. It’s dark. The dull, obtuse grey colour bleeds all into the black the same way.

Alec pulls his knees in closer to himself and feels the cool breeze blow around him and the trees. It always gets windy up in the hills over looking the city. He’s wearing a scarf and a jacket, but it doesn’t do much against the wind’s strong pull.

--

Jay shows up at Alec’s house at two am, throwing rocks up at the window. It’s open, though, so Alec wakes up to a fist sized rock landing heavily on his stomach, slightly winding him. He’s sleep-slow in the small hours, so it takes him a moment to realise what is happening.

“Alec,” calls Jay from the ground floor, all long and drawn out like he’s a moaning ghost. Alec sits up in bed and thinks about hurling the rock back at Jay’s head for waking him up. He decides not to though, thinking of the quote “a good friend will help you move-(1)“

“What?” hisses Alec, getting out of bed and stepping over to the window and narrowly missing another rock flying upward. Suddenly, Alec is glad the window was open, because Jay would have broken it. Instead though, the rock flies in and lands (almost) harmlessly on the floor by his desk. Alec pokes his head out again and notices Jay standing directly under his window.

“Alec,” Jay says, elongating the vowels, “Alec, can I come up?” He’s only wearing a t-shirt and jeans, Alec notes. It’s probably only five degrees- his bare feet must be freezing.

“Yeah, fine,” Alec starts, and Jay starts climbing the wall before Alec can stop him, “Dude, use the door like a normal person,” Jay continues climbing, gripping onto the window on the ground floor and hoisting himself up. There isn’t much else to hold onto- just small cracks where the bricks are joined together. “Use the door,” hisses Alec again.

Jay ignores him and pulls himself up onto the top of the window. He struggles a little, tittering backward, before he manages to grab a hold of the plant hanger nailed to the window frame. It won’t hold for long, and Jay starts laughing, slightly hysterical.

“Hurry up, idiot,” says Alec, though quietly as he doesn’t want to wake his parents. Jay just laughs harder, and Alec can see even in the darkness as Jay begins to shake from it. “You’re going to wake everyone up.” As he says this, back in this room his phone starts ringing. It’s on loud, and Jay looks up with wide, surprised eyes. They’re frozen in time like that, it seems, with Jay looking up like he’s falling down, and Alec unreasonably afraid of the loud noise in the dark house.

Jay’s eyebrows come together just below his forehead the second Alec makes to turn around to stop the noise. His eyes say, ‘don’t you dare,’ even if his mouth doesn’t open. Alec inches backwards, and as he does so, Jay glares, loosening his grip slightly on the window frame. Alec stops stock still. Jay glares defiantly up at him until he steps closer. The phone keeps on ringing, singing undistinguishable lyrics and continuing to play on in its small, tinny voice.

Alec reaches out his hand to Jay, hoping he’ll grab on instead of letting go. Jay’s eyes move from Alec’s own eyes to his hand, and for a moment, something flashes across his face, just a flicker of something, before it’s gone and he’s releasing himself off the window sill to grasp Alec’s hand, letting himself be pulled up but not helping much.

Alec just has Jay’s arm through the window, rest of his body trailing behind, when Jay decides it’d be a great idea to try out the ragdoll trick and go all limp. Alec topples facefirst into the window, his hips bumping into it- sure to leave a bruise. He almost let’s go of Jay’s hand, but somehow, miraculously, doesn’t, and he grips onto Jay with both hands on his forearms and braces his feet on the bottom of the wall beneath the window, pulling Jay all the way up.

The collapse on the floor, tangled up, and Alec then notices that the phone has stopped ringing. He doesn’t know how long for, though. Jay rolls over onto his back, spread out on the floor and sweating on his forehead. The light in Alec’s room is off- but light creeps in from the door leading to the hallway. Jay’s eyes are impossibly dark, and his nose is bright red.

“What have you been doing?” asks Alec, scrambling to his feet and closing the window halfway from the cold. His arms are freezing, and the tips of Jay’s ears are looking slightly blue- matching the colour tinting his lips.

Jay laughs, and Alec shoots a look at the door- they’re being too loud. His little brother is just down the hall, and there would be hell to pay if he woke him up. Alec walks over to the entrance and closes the door as he turns on the light. Alec squints from the brightness, but even then he can see the way Jay’s pupils reduce in size from the change in light. Jay doesn’t squint at all, and for the first time Alec can see his eyes are shot through with sharp strikes of red, spread out and running like watercolour paint.

“I can’t deal with you right now,” Alec says. Jay grins like a maniac up at him, like this is some big joke Alec is missing out on. He doesn’t say anything though, so Alec says, “Whatever.”

They have a brief stare down in the artificial light and the light reflected off the moon, streaming slowly in through the window. Jay blinks and says, suddenly, “Trippers and askers surround me(2),” Alec stares for a second before turning around, closing the window fully and turning off the light. He gets into bed in the dark, almost tripping on Jay as he steps past him. Jay’s hand shoots out and grips him around the ankle.

“There’s a sleeping bag in the closet. Go to sleep,” Alec tries, and Jay lets go.

  --

When Alec wakes up, it first appears Jay is no where to be seen, but when Alec opens the closet door, Jay is curled up in the sleeping bag, lying over all of Alec’s shoes and fallen clothing. Alec pokes him with his toe, but he doesn’t stir.

So he goes down stairs and makes breakfast, bringing up toast to his bedroom to eat. It’s cold by the time Jay wakes up, but he says, “Thanks dude,” with his eyes their normal brown, a red smear under them instead of shot through them.

They eat their toast in silence, and when Jay is finished, he says with his voice level and calm, “I can’t remember anything.”

Alec frowns and stares out the window, above Jay’s head, the door. Anywhere that isn’t Jay.

“I’m sorry,” Jay says, the ‘it wont happen again’ is implied. Alec sighs. He’s sure Jay doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for anymore, though it sounds so sincere and promising. It always does.

--

The next time Alec falls asleep he dreams he’s walking down a piano staircase in the middle of a blank white space, surrounded by clowns doing jazz hands and animals walking on their hind legs wearing tuxedos. He’s holding on to a floating eye, using the optic nerve as the rope. It has no eyelids, but it winks at him. He reaches the bottom of the piano steps, all eighty-eight of them, and Jay is sitting at the bottom, wearing a furry bear suit just without the head. He’s holding a ventriloquist’s dummy, but throws it off the edge of the world when Alec reaches him.

Alec pulls the eye down and throws it to him. Jay catches it and beams at Alec, who says, “You need it more than I do.”

“Har har, eye do,” says Jay. He starts glowing, and Alec has to close his eyes from the brightness.

--

Alec wakes up with Jay sitting on the bedside table giggling and whispering random nouns and adjectives into Alec’s ear while dipping Alec’s fingers into a glass of lukewarm water. It sounds like he’s playing word association. Alec snatches his hand away and Jay snickers louder. Alec punches him in the stomach with his wet hand but Jay doesn’t stop laughing.

“Dude,” says Jay. He mumbles something that sounds like, “never argue with rivers(3),” but Alec can’t be sure.

“I know,” says Alec, smiling white, bright into the approaching darkness.
--

Footnotes
1 “A good friend will help you move. A best friend will help you move bodies. But if you have to move your best friend’s body, then you’re on your own.”
2 from “Song Of Myself” - Walt Whitman
3 from “Other Live and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem,” – Bob Hicok