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Tim notices things, little details about people. He knows Alex used to have his ears pierced in long rows of three, and room for a small stud where a helix piercing used to be in his right ear. He noticed that Brian used to paint his nails and his toe nails matching colors, usually deep blues or greens. Tim now knows Brian only paints his toenails, usually black or pink, or both.
Jay on the other hand, Tim notices a lot about Jay. Every thread in his cotton t-shirt, the way he ties his shoes, - still using the bunny ear technique - the way he carries a backpack with huge books that Tim knows he's reading in his spare time, they’re not even required reading for any of Jay’s classes.
Tim notices a lot about Jay, his every detail, his every joke. He can list random facts right off the top of his head. He knows Jay’s details better that he knows his own.
He has wide blue eyes and crunched teeth, too small or too big to fit correctly together in his mouth, making it a wild, unfinished puzzle. When he smiles, the gap between his left lateral incisor and his left canine sticks out like a sore thumb, but somehow is adorable and unique and just fully, one-thousand-percent, Jay.
When he laughs, he throws his head back, claps his hands together like a wild seal. If he’s sitting in a chair, he’ll send it tilting back, teetering on two legs, willing itself to go tumbling backwards. It never does, Tim notices. Jay’s got amazing balance.
His limbs are the size of uncooked spaghetti strands, matching his already skinny frame, making him look almost sickly. Jay always shrugs it off, claims he’s always had a pretty good metabolism, food just doesn't stay on his bones very well. Tim nods and smiles when ever he tells the little story, how he was only one-hundred-and-two pounds when he started his junior year of high school. He always laughs and slips in a joke about how he was never really into sports. Tim always laughs.
His baggy clothes cling onto his skin like wet towels. He always buys too big of sizes of everything. His shirts hag of of his neck, revealing the pale muscle connecting his neck to his shoulders. He wears a belt, always locking it to the farthest hole, bunching up his jeans. The jackets he wears hang like drapery, covering his hands easily and allowing the back to hang down over his ass. The only things that actually fit him are his shoes and his hat, the army green cap that has seen better days, being frayed all around the edges of the bill and looking as if it would just explode into dust. It hasn't yet, as far as Tim knows.
Jay is also really smart, but that goofy smart, the smart where Jay can't function correctly in a social setting but can easily list the first one-hundred-and-forty-three digits of Pi. The smart that knows he has never gotten laid but can spit out fire facts about Oscar Wilde and his deep double life. He sometimes makes jokes too intelligent for anyone to even comprehend. Tim laughs extra loud at these ones.
Tim also notices Jay’s nerves. He makes jokes and laughs things off, but there's an underlying nervousness about the other man, something anxietal and undiagnosed. When Alex gets really bad during filming, screaming at the top of his lungs about some silly thing - the lighting being off, Brian not saying his line just right, Amy giggling off the train, Tim taking a smoke break - little, asinine things that set Alex off on one of his tirades. These tirades send Jay into silence mode the rest of filming, keeping his head down and eyes on his supervised script. When they’re all getting into their cars, leaving after a long day, Tim can see Jay coiled in himself, his shoulders and chest heaving as he grabs the sides of his head, keeping it down. Tim feels like he can see tears, and all he wants to do is reach into Jay’s car and put an arm around him, hold him steady, wipe a tear from his face, kiss a tear from his cheek, just kiss Jay in general, make him feel safe, make him feel like it's not his fault, the burden isn't his to carry.
But Tim just notices the tears and files them away, does nothing about them, feels his heart pour as he just drives away, watching Jay’s unmoving car in his rear view mirror.
Tim notices a lot of things, but he's not a mind reader, he's not clairvoyant. He doesn't know how Jay feels, he bottles up everything with a thick joke on top, keeping everything true down and hidden. Tim notices Jay keeps secrets, but he doesn't know what they are.
Tim knows practically everything about everyone. He knows he has only seen about 5% of who Jay actually is, his real details, his hidden truths.
Tim daydreams about sitting in bed with Jay, hearing his secrets whispered against Tim’s chest, small ones like about how his first kiss was with a guy and how he's not exactly a virgin, he's gotten one or two hand jobs from strangers at parties and one magnificent BJ from a girl named Catherine who was in AV club with him. He would whisper the bigger details, like how his dad died when he was twelve and his mom went into a depression that sent him to live with his aunt and uncle in Alabama, how he was bullied in school and how he did actually try out for the wrestling team but was shunned out and called a queer, how he had a gigantic crush on Alex from the time they first met in film theory 101, how Alex manipulated him to get what he wanted, how Alex knew about Jay’s crush from the start and used it to his advantage, how he had finally moved on from Alex but still had panic attacks when Alex would get angry, how he had developed a crush on Tim that just wouldn't die down.
Tim makes all of his details up, the ones he can't see with a naked eye. He creates a world in which the secrets he wants to be true are, but they’re all only true in his head.
Tim feels something reaching and clawing at the base of his spine. He gulps down one of his pills dry and runs a hand through his thick, dirty hair.
Tim knows details, knows secrets nobody else knows. He knows everything about everyone. Except Jay. He knows only 5% of Jay’s secrets, Jay’s details, Jay’s life.
It keeps Tim awake at night.