Author's Note
Word Count: 1728
Trigger Warnings: Mild violence

——⨂——

Tim's mask was back on his face in record timing, and Toby's blood was surely boiling at this point. His gaze burned holes into Tim's jacket for the man couldn't even bear to look him in the eyes. Tears pricked at his eyes and a shaky breath drew in between his lips. "You-" the word caught in his throat and he fought to yank it from its cage. He stalked into the room and noticed Brian stiffen. "-asshole!" He reached out for Tim's jacket, and his hand hooked on the coarse tan fabric. What he wouldn't do in this moment to rip those words out from between Tim's smoke and coffee-stained teeth.

He didn't get very far with that idea. Tim's hand flew up and closed around Toby's wrist sharply. He felt the pressure of his grip and a lump formed in his throat. He held his ground and finally met his sheering gaze with a ferocity unmatched. Tim's eyes, dark and glowering, locked onto his. The two creeps fumed together, at each other, in the middle of the cluttered bedroom. Brian slowly stood from his place on the bed, judging the scene playing out before him, and reaching into his jacket where a pocket knife was always concealed. Toby's gaze flickered towards the movement. A moment of weakness in Tim's eyes, and before the younger man could blink, he was knocked onto the floor by a bullish punch.

This was typical for them. The next few seconds were a flurry of fists and gnashing teeth (purely from Toby) and the occasional shout or grunt. Brian stood. Brian watched. His eyes searched for an opening, but some part of the sadistic killer liked watching this. As much as he wanted to help Toby, or help his best friend, he watched with a morbid curiosity, like a sports commentator in the final few seconds of the finals. A fist impacted Toby's jaw, and he swung and grasped wildly at the man above him. "Snap out of it!" Tim growled, a hand wrapping around Toby's throat tightly. Punches and kicks did nothing to him, but choking was an easy way to subdue this raging beast of manic panic.

Toby wrapped his fingers around Tim's wrist and, for a moment, his eyes flashed with fear. Only for a moment. It was soon replaced with a far away look as his eyes focused on the unmasked face above him. It had been knocked off during their scuffling, and gave Toby a full view of the expression that painted his face. It was in no way as angry as his voice portrayed. He read regret in the deep lines between his brows, and traced a look of deep sorrow in the folds of his mouth. His eyes, wide and pleading, tore at the goodness in Toby's heart. Strangely enough.. quite a bit remained.

He felt the grip on his throat loosen and he drew in a shaky breath now that his airways were reopened. He had grown acutely aware of the way Tim's face depicted his emotions. After all, that's how Toby survived for most of his life: reading people. But, there was something about the sheer pain on his face that Toby could not quite wrap his head around. Where did it come from? They've fought like wild dogs plenty of times before and never once had he witnessed this.

"Masky?" Toby's hand traveled further up his arm and stopped just above his elbow, finding a pocket of fabric to rest his wrist against. The face did not change. "Tim?" Toby tried again, and noted the slight furrow in his brows. It was Brian's turn. "Tim." He said with a concerned sternness, but not even he could shake Tim from this trance. Everything had happened so fast that Toby wondered for a second if Tim just needed time to recuperate his thoughts. He would... rather prefer it not be with his hand around his throat and body pinned to the floor. There wasn't much he could do besides lay there and wait. He peered down between them and noted that he could very easily slam his knee into the place where the sun will never shine, but decided against it, since never once have they ever come to a stand still like this in one of their fights.

It honestly scared him.

He felt a wetness on his face that he could only assume was a mixture of blood and tears. He swallowed thickly, teeth clamped shut to prevent any drool from dripping out of the gaping hole in his cheek. He watched Tim steadily for a moment before turning his gaze to Brian. Brian noted the pleading look on Toby's face, but he shook his head, knowing better than to intervene. Toby turned his attention back to Tim just in time for a drop of liquid to splash onto his cheek. He flinched, shutting his eyes tightly. At first he assumed that Tim was salivating, and he was about to shove him off and shriek out in disgust, but upon a glance he learned quickly that tears were building up on (and dripping from) Tim's eyelashes.

Toby had never seen him cry, and Tim wasn't about to break that streak. "Get out." He said suddenly, sitting him and grabbing onto Toby's arms, yanking him into a sitting position. "Get the fuck out of here." Despite the aggression in his words, his voice did not reflect the same emotion. Toby hesitated when he sat, slowly gathering his legs beneath him to stand, when Tim's sudden shout made him rocket towards the door. "I said MOVE!" He barked, hands propelled to push him, but Toby had moved fast enough to dodge it.

Brian started towards Tim, but stopped abruptly when he was met with a glare he'd only seen once or twice before. His voice lowered, and the hair on the back of Brian's neck prickled. "Both of you."

——⨂——

An uncomfortable silence fell heavy in the bathroom. Blood dripped down the side of the sink, with the occasional plop or splatter as it gushed from Toby's nose. Brian's desperate attempt to clog it up with tissues was unsuccessful, and instead Toby had begun to feel dizzy at the thick smell of iron in the air. Now, Brian was tending to the cut on his forehead, cleansing it with sterile wipes and applying two butterfly band-aids to hold it together. He didn't trust himself with a needle and thread.

Neither man knew just what to say. This wasn't an irregular situation for them to be in, though, as it was safer for someone else to tend to his wounds considering his disregard for what could and couldn't hurt him, but this felt different to Toby. Judging by the stiffness in his expression and the taut state of his muscles, Brian could feel it too. Toby watched him through bloodshot eyes. He had cried just a few minutes before. Brian encouraged him to, because according to him, a good cry can feel like a self-hug if it's for the right reasons. He assumed that it wasn't for the right reasons after all, because his eyes felt sticky and heavy, and he just wanted to go to bed.

"Hey," Brian murmured suddenly. He was running a warm, wet rag over the dried blood over Toby's skin. "I know this is going to sound like the most stupid thing I have ever said, but, he cares about you."

"Oh, I feel so cared for." The sarcasm dropped from Toby's voice like venom.

Brian's eyebrows furrowed and a low sigh left him. "I'm being serious. He just.. fucking sucks sometimes. Most times. He sees himself in you- I can tell, and it scares him." He noticed that the other had grown quiet, and he took it as a sign he was listening. "Just knowing that The Operator has ruined so many lives besides his own, well, it really fuels his.. misplaced guilt. He blamed himself for that thing hurting so many of the people closest to him. Me.." Brian trailed off for a second. "...Jay, Alex.. Jessica.. anyways, he's probably worried that if he gets closer to you, you'll get hurt too."

Toby scoffed. "Slenderman hurt me before I ever met Tim. He's stupid for thinking it's his fault."

"Exactly. But Tim.. Well, he's a guilty person. He's a good person, and because of that, he has a lot of weight on his shoulders that doesn't belong there. He feels the need to protect you- even if that means chasing you as far away from him as possible, while.. still keeping you close enough to watch out for you."

"Didn't realize someone could have such a violent love language."

"When you grow up in violence, it's all you come to know."

Toby felt a pang of familiarity with those words. He listened to Brian's rather invasive explanation of Tim's psyche with a sense that these were things he was not meant to know. This was Tim's best friend, though, so perhaps there was some leeway in what he could and couldn't share. Toby wouldn't know. "Right.." he finally sighed and slipped himself off the counter. Brian hadn't finished wiping the blood away, but Toby was done. "I'll be on the couch."

Brian watched Toby exit the bathroom with a solemn expression. He leaned his back against the wall and closed his eyes. Would he really believe what he just said? If he was Toby, probably not, but Brian knew Tim on a personal level that no one else ever had. No therapist could come close to unlocking the amount of openness that Tim had shared with him on the darkest of nights.

This dark night in particular was dragging on and on. Pitch blackness engulfed Toby while Tim stood in a dimly lit bathroom with his eyes fixated on himself in the mirror. Brian stood outside on the porch, the moon shining down on the forest that lay thick with a blanket of fog.

Brian shook a bottle of pills, watching the label blur with his vision. Timothy Nathanial Wright. He wondered just how long he could keep this medicine away from Tim, and how long it would take for him to realize what was missing.