Over the last few days, when tensions and mourning and confusion were at their highest, Jamison had somehow managed to keep himself together. He had gotten out of bed as if half the thing didn't smell like Tatiana, and as if her clothes weren’t strewn about against the flannel sheets or cool hardwood floor of his room. He had eaten out of necessity (not desire), swinging open the fridge for a cold beer to drown his problems and had even ignored the grocery list that hung on the door with a stick charm, penned out in Harper’s cramped handwriting: mac ‘n cheese, eggs, milk. He had stared past every reminder that only a week before, she was invited to come over unannounced, without any indication that he felt anything at all. The bedside table still held a crumpled movie ticket from when the two shared a romantic date. Her spare shower towel was still twisted over a rack in the bathroom. A photograph of the two of them side by side together sat in a frame that she had purchased for him randomly one day because she had simply felt like it, and it lay untouched on his desk by the monitor of his computer... And still, Jamison stared forward through his grief.


It is the painful realization that people are constantly coming and going in and out of his life, and that he comes at an expendable cost to them. And honestly, the entire thing makes him so angry that he eventually falls off the couch in a befuddlement of grunts and hand gestures, and small, nervous ticks that indicate he’s about to have a panic attack any minute now – memories of turbulent relationships and his fear of abandonment on the high-rise yet again. It is something that paralyzes him altogether. He looks up from where he’s positioned on the ground after a few moments and his expressions are veiled by the convenient flickering darkness … fingers clasping over to the front of his pant pockets in hurried desperation as he tries to ease his mind with a cigarette – a bad habit he has instinctively picked up from an early age from the other boys when he was at the orphanage.

"Are you feeling better now?" a familiar voice asks, rattling his bones in unexpected silence. Jamison turns his head from left to right, scouting the area for the source of the sound; until it dawns on him that the reason it doesn’t seem so foreign is because it belongs to himself. He takes another drag of his cigarette and exhales a long line of thick smoke into the shadows. As bad of a habit it is, it does help calm his nerves.

“…I’ll get over it,” his lips part, subsequent puffs of smoke now visible. He feels insane, not understanding what’s going on. How is this even happening right now? Why does this voice belong to him, and how can it seem so foreign and familiar at the same time?

“Good. I don’t know when you became such a pussy, but cut it out,” Jason says with something of a smile in his tone, despite his nose-down expression remaining unwaveringly blank in consideration.

Jamison’s eyes are bloodshot, his hair shaggy and his teeth are bared like an animal under an impassive, uncaring half-moon. It’s “Jason” that throws his head back in reaction, eyes rolling as he fights to seize control of the body he’s inhabiting. “Look, you’re going to just have to accept this. It’s best that you don’t try to fight me off. No one will have to get hurt,” the silky baritone spills. Jamison’s entire body feels as though it’s on fire and his hand drags across the floorboard so that he can scratch his nails into the wood like he’s some dying creature in its final moments.

“Don’t be so fucking dramatic, Jamison,” Jason scoffs finally. Outside, the moon is bright and cruel – casting a light to peak in through the window, as if this is the trigger to his heightened senses and sudden, unexplained transformation. It all seems searing and unforgiving, as if something in him has dredged up from memory of how he used to be in another life.

“Look, bud. You got dumped. And, yeah. It sucks. But that’s why I’m here now. So, let me take over for a bit. All this moping about isn’t going to help us out any. Just accept this. Like I said, you won’t get hurt. I won’t hurt you more than that woman would have anyways.”

Jamison smiles weakly and shuts his eyes, glad that the sudden downward spiral of utter relaxation that had twisted to a frantic worry and had reduced him to tears had finally lightened. He is comforted slightly by Jason’s words, though he isn’t completely reassured. Still, for now… he figures there isn’t any harm in letting ‘Jason’ loose. Little does he know the sort of trouble that’ll get him into later on.