Chapter Text
It has been raining.
Ever since the day began, so really only since around 12, it has been raining. Not unusual for December yet still just as unpleasant.
Will was looking out the window, small water droplets running down the pane of glass it was made out of, losing track of time. The day was just off somehow, he thought, although nothing actually seemed to have happened.
The tour was over, he was happy with how everything went, having anticipated the worst case scenarios. Being proven wrong was exactly what he needed.
The sound of his music rushed through him as he thought of those crazy few weeks, people screaming at him, dancing like nobody can see them, filming on 3Ds, handing over weird shit to sign and asking inappropriate questions.
There was a bunch of letters, drawings, little cards and bracelets layed out on his desk. He walked up to it and picked up a small origami flower.
It was made out of paper with words written on it. He didn't want to mess it up but he could make out the words "segment" and "beer"..?
It didn't look all that out of the ordinary aside from those words but what was strange about it was the fact that he didn't remember receiving it and whatever he did remember was a blank space where a person was supposed to be, as if they were cut out.
He placed the little flower back and started getting dressed.
He opened his wardrobe and took out a bright blue sweater and a pair of jeans. He looked at them for a second and, huh, he knew he was tall but these seemed to truly go on forever.
He needed to get some yogurt today, he thought, so he put on his clothes an left the building.
It smelled like something fried outside. As Will walked down the street he came across a market that they sometimes held there and decided to take a look. He didn't really have any plans today so why not take a little detour?
"Would you like some flamed salmon?" The woman behind the register asked him and swiped a card of some kind. The little screen to her left lit up for a second and displayed a number 4. When she turned back around he made a face at her.
"Flamed salmon?" he grinned. "That sounds sick."
"Well try out some, young man, now would ya?" she handed him a long thin wooden stick with a piece of salmon covered in some kind of sauce attached to it. He took a bite.
It hit him suddenly then, a strange foreign feeling. He stuck his tongue out, trying to figure out what just happened.
Everything else filtered out, became background noise as he tried to comprehend the feeling overwhelming him.
It was unlike anything he'd experienced before. The snack wasn't just salty
It had an actual taste?
He looked up at the woman in front of him. She seemed to be confused by his reaction but he really didn't know what to say, he was truly shocked. Nodding at her and trying to ignore her bewildered expression he scurried away.
He walked through the market, chewing on the suddenly very tasty salmon, enjoying the odd feeling in his mouth and scanning the street for something, unsure of what it was. For some reason it looked familiar even though he was sure he's never been here before.
Perhaps he's seen it during a Geoguesser run..?
The sun was shining, making him regret wearing his weird looking green sweater, it was too hot in it so he took it off and quickly tied it around his waist.
He then continued to pay attention to the stalls. There were kids there selling toast and cereal boxes. One of them was eating an orange. The display was silly, he was pretty sure this stall in particular wasn't supposed to be here but it made him smile to himself for no reason in particular.
As he rounded the corner of the last stall in sight he saw the road lead him into an alleyway. Rays of sunshine were breaking through the fabric made of leaves, tree-branch-shaped shadows swaying back and forth, striping the ground like paint would at the crossroads.
He turned left then because he thought he recognized a sign. A supermarket door greeted him then and he shrugged while opening it thinking that, well, it wouldn't really matter where he's going to buy his yogurt now would it?
But when he opened the door instead of shelves with various things on them he saw a long corridor.
"Well this definitely isn't a supermarket..." He turned to walk out the same way he came but the door was now gone.
Nowhere to go but forward.
As he walked through the narrow space he noted that the walls were completely empty - no pictures, no dirt no nothing. He couldn't even discern what material they were made out of but the fact that they were cool to the touch.
The floor of the corridor was carpeted and every few meters the color changed just a bit too look more red. At the end of a corridor a curtain swayed back and forth. He pulled the curtain aside and entered a large cinema of sorts or a hall maybe, there were enough space there for at least a few hundred people. And there were people everywhere, talking about something amongst themselves.
He looked around and saw a stage with a microphone. Is someone going to perform here today?
"Hey" he turned around. A man around his age was standing near the staircase that led to the stage. "You're late by the way. Your performance is immediately after Erickson so you'll have no time for a rehersal."
He blinked at the guy.
"What? I'm not scheduled to perform today." Even if highly unlikely he might've forgotten they've booked a venue. But he was one hundred and four precent sure he wasn't planning on performing anything alone anytime soon.
"What do you mean not scheduled? We had an argument about this a week ago and you said definitely this week because you were busy last time. And now you come here and tell me you ain't performing? Also what is this stick in your hand for?"
Will looked at his own stick in confusion, figuring he somehow finished the whole salmon without noticing. He blinked his eyes at the man he doesn't even know now that he's thinking about it and tried to recall anything related to a solo concert.
"What am I playing at least? Surely not Mammalian Sighing Reflex."
"Mammalian what..?" The guy frowned. "Are you sick, kid?"
"No, I'm not sick but I'm just struggling to remember getting this venue, nevermind the fact that I didn't plan on performing without my bandmates anytime soon. Are you sure you have the right person?"
"If it's even possible to mistake you of all people for anyone else. What, you think you're a part of some sorta indie rock band?" The guy bristled. "Ok, ok. I'll just have someone replace you I guess. You're not getting paid though, sorry not sorry. But I didn't know you were feeling this bad. Go sit in the crowd I suppose." and the guy left.
At a loss for words Will sat on the closest seat to him near a giggling couple, trying to figure out what did just happen. As time went on people came and go and someone entered the stage. People around him occasionally laughed. Lounge music was playing in the background and small white flowers were floating around in the air.
Behind him a child started crying, their mom trying her best to calm them down. Instead their voice went higher and higher untill it turned into something like autotune—
"Nevermind my guy!" The man from before came up to him. "We have to have you today, I was told just now that it's a dire situation.
"Wha- but—"
"Come on, come on" he was ushered upstairs, backstage. One step, two steps, three steps... The air was stuffy and he kinda felt like he needed to use the bathroom... Voices and lights weighted down on him.
"Here's your mic" the guy stuffed a microphone in his hand.
"Where's my guitar at least? Am I supposed to sing just like that with no accompaniment?"
He didn't get an answer and suddenly he was standing underneath the spotlights in front of an almost full crowd. No guitar. Not a single bandmate of his, no familiar faces.
"Oh, hey, that's um. A lot of people we have here tonight."
Silence.
"Anyone here knows what the hell am I supposed to do?" He looked at his mic accusingly, as if it was supposed to be telling him what he's doing here.
Still nothing.
He sighed audibly into the mic and...
Tommyinnit was bad at hiding things.
He was bad at hiding them from random people but he was even worse at hiding them from people who knew him, let alone his friends.
Today was recording day. Jack and him were in the middle of the recording for the Shut Up I'm Talking Patreon segment but all he could think about was this weird dream he had.
It was unlike any other dream he had before not because weird stuff happened in it, in fact it was blurry as hell and he's not sure he remembers half of it but he thought it was unusual because of being some sort of know-it-all in that dream and the amount of random information he knew was absurd but what was even more absurd was the fact that he still remembered it.
"Well Jack since you've decided that powers aren't actually real and we live in a simulation I gotta tell you something" his co-host, trying to quit freaking out. Maybe instead of being all worried he should just talk about it and make it a bit, it'll um. Probably help him "process it" or whatever. " I think I might have stolen your powers or like caught some from you while we were hanging out."
"Oi, don't phrase it like it's a disease of some sort! You did not catch anything from me I'm all clean!" Jack looked at him accusatory.
"...so I had this dream today and I think what happened was it sort of filled my brain with knowledge" Tommy made a hand gesture and wiggled his fingers.
"Like, what, you saying you just learned actually useful stuff in your sleep?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen. I did not know any of it and then I woke up and boom! There!"
"What kind of magic is that? Did you like steal information out of someone else's brain?"
He bit his lip and looked to the side.
"I had, um..."
"Ok, no, wait, what sort of information are we talking?"
Tommy thought about it for a second, his eyes going up. "Like... I donno like names of every US president"
"EVERY single one??" Jack jumped in his seat.
"I mean there's not that many of them, like... Forty or som— oh"
"HOW IS THAT NOT MANY"
"Well I didn't spend any time learning it so it didn't seem so bad when I thought about it" Tommy looked at him a bit sheepishly. "I also remember like the years when they ruled?"
"WHY!?"
"I DONNO-!"
"Ok tell me like the first... Ten."
Tommy then proceeded to recount from memory every president's name and when they ruled.
"What the actual fuck... That's mad. That's like an actual glitch in the matrix mate. Unless you're lying that is."
"I'm not! I'm totally serious!"
Tommy pulled his leg to his chest for a second, only to put it back down because he had shoes on. He looked at the room they were sat in and people nearby, thinking about that dream, sorting through strange bits he remembered from it.
"Anyway um. So back to the. The dream bit for a second. Why— no, what... What did you even dream about exactly? Presidential elections?" Jack screwed his eyes half shut and pursed his lips.
"No, actually, I dreamed about a hotel and, oof, the dream was bloody nasty I'll tell you."
Jack sat up at that.
"I was at this hotel but it was really freaky, people kept shagging and screaming through my walls and then a lift got stuck there once."
"Oof, doesn't sound like a great experience, you should've given them a bad rating"
"That's not the nasty bit though. The lift got stuck because apparently, and that's what the security guy told me in the dream, there was a person a few days ago there who kept pressing random buttons and it broke something. But then y'know what happened?"
"Uh... I donno, the lift magically fixed itself?" Juck shrugged.
"No. I went back into my hotel room to get something while the lift was being fixed but because of dream logic I ended up taking a bath. But the bathroom started smelling like shit it was so gross I wrote an complaint. And then when I went outside I was told it was because there was a bloody dead body in the water supply cistern on the hotel roof."
"Ewww you took a bath in dead body water buuegh" Jack made a face at him, pretending to throw up "Ok well that was hella morbid, can we even leave that in? What the hell are you on, Tom, did you go into the Billzone again or something?
"I'm totally fine! I'm telling you we're experiencing a power outage in the simulation or something, it's running out of energy to sustain the illusion! And, um, that's actually not everything freaky that happened but I'll tell you that part once we're done"
"What on Earth could be more interesting than you suddenly knowing the dates and names of every US president!?"
"...So, it says here you met an old friend at the bar?" Tommy smiled at him innocently.
Jack perked up and snapped his fingers.
"I totally forgot I also had an interesting story to get through! I went to this really old bar on the outskirts of Brighton. The reason being—"
As time went on they got through like two more different stories but soon the recording was over. They were both quite tired, although for different reasons - Jack spent half a day running through different shops for a Jacktivity and Tommy was just tired of speaking so much, he needed some quiet, some time to himself after such a long day.
He felt so tired he could probably fall asleep in the podcast room armchair even though it wasn't all that comfy.
"So" Jack looked at him and took his phone out to start scrolling on Instagram, or maybe it was something else he couldn't tell from where he was sitting. "The interesting bit? You said you'd tell me when we're done"
Tommy made a face and mentally facepalmed himself. The hell did he promise that for!? He looked at Jack nonchalantly then, his face muscles relaxing.
"Changed my mind"
Jack looked at him incredulously "What? Why?"
"I just don't wanna talk about it, it's not that deep or anything"
"Yeah but it is that deep you LOVE talking about yourself. So something's clearly wrong" he put his phone away.
"Donno I'm just tired I guess. I'm going home."
"Huh!?"
"Jack let's just not. The recording's over, I'm done for today. It's like... I initially wanted to tell you but that other dream bit is kinda personal and overwhelming, I got too excited while telling you about it and didn't think it through"
"Ok yeah but are you sure? If it's bothering you you should get it off your chest, you know. At least partially without telling me the details?"
"I don't— no. I really don't feel like it, I think I would just feel worse if I were to tell you. Maybe, uh, maybe I'll tell you next time we meet up"
"...ok, fair enough. I can respect that. But you made me really fucking curious as to what that bit is. I'm afraid I even have guesses."
"Sure, mate. There's a part of me that thinks you are probably right" Tommy took his clothes from the hook and tugged them on."
"I'll see you later this week then?" Jack said, getting dressed in his own clothes. He looked at the studio then, frowning. "Hold on, I'll actually stay to help the guys clean stuff up." And stalked off in a different direction, leaving the coat on the floor. Tommy appreciated him not bothering with trying to get him to stay. He didn't pick up the coat though, instead imagining the guy groaning as he realizes he left it on the floor.
The air outside was cold and wet, as if threatening to start raining any second. It smelled of ozone and old leaves. Tommy walked through the street to where his taxi was supposedly parked because the parking lot near their place was full.
He couldn't stop thinking about that darn dream. Because unlike with Jack the benefit of existing in his own brain was that Tommy knew what Tommy was thinking about and, well, today his thoughts were sort of all over the place because of the weird "knowledge"
He fastened his seatbelt.
In his dream the whole point of him staying at the hotel was to perform a comedy set.
He was roaming around, searching for the exit, bumping into hotel staff and those odd looking big rooms. And what he was really weirded out by was—
"Are you going to sit in here forever?" The taxi driver asked him. Tommy jumped in his seat.
"Oh, uh, sorry, I zoned out. Thanks for the ride"
"Go home already" the man told him. He didn't sound mad or frustrated though, so Tommy took that as a win and slipped out of the car seat.
The car drove away but he didn't move, glued to the concrete near his flat, looking through the things he wrote in his Notes app.
That's why he didn't want to tell Jack about this.
What if it's. And then he'll have to think... but he doesn't. Just—
He closed his Notes app and sprinted up whatever amount of stairs without even looking at the lift buttons.
Keys, keys, keys....
He suddenly realized he wanted to use the bathroom.
Then that he was hungry as hell.
Then that he had ideas for his new comedy set.
All at once his Notes app became irrelevant and he spend the rest of his day busy as hell, going through the process of writing down two new scenarios he came up with on the spot and cleaning his desk first then two!! of his drawers he didn't even think about touching for about a month.
It was nighttime. Tommy was laying on his back, his muscles were buzzing from exertion yet he was nowhere near sleepy. He thought if he were to get tired enough he'll be out like a light by 10 yet it was almost midnight and he was still wide awake.
He looked at his phone sitting there on his nightstand, unwanted thoughts crawling out from underneath piles of scenarios and ideas and happy memories he made with friends, trying to drown him in misery.
He wished he just had a switch to turn himself off.
He shouldn't. He really shouldn't be doing this but...
He takes his phone and opens Spotify.
He clicks through his old playlist he buried beneath his new ones, going through artists. Then he finds it, clicks on it and just stares.
"One Simple Trick by Lovejoy" stares back at him.
At least it's not the new YouTube videos he got notifs for.
He swallows.
"Fuck this shit, man..."
He clicks play.