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He's been quiet all day, moving through the flat like a ghost, and the stillness puts you on edge. You've been conditioned to expect this to end in a mess. When he sinks down beside you on the sofa, you tense out of instinct. Any moment now, an episode is going start. You're coiled and ready to deflect and appease, you remind yourself to stay flexible because his outbursts now aren't the same as his outbursts before, you flick your eyes sideways to catch a glimpse but they stick to stare at his slouch and his pallid skin and his dark, downturned eyes. He looks dead, but he isn't. He isn't, thank fucking God.
Time seems to expand and it's nothing unusual. He's always had a way of fucking up your perception of practically everything. He's moving now. Ever so slowly, he's leaning towards you. Your fingers twitch, as they tend to when he's nearly in reach but you still can't grab him. His fingers are warm as the curl around your wrist and lift your hand up to his face. He's leering with his wide eyes at the scar near the base of your thumb. Paring knife, nearly pressed straight through. It healed up quite nicely (despite the bastard having tried to twist the blade,) leaving just a short sliver of raised scar tissue.
You don't notice him speaking until he gives your hand a squeeze. His voice his hardly audible, his words garbled together, but you've adjusted and you manage to decipher what he's trying to say: "I did that."
No use lying to him. Don't think you'll ever get the hang of it. "You did. You remember?"
Jim nods slowly, the way you've told him to. It's stupid, but when he moves too quickly you think about his brains sloshing around his head. "You let me," he goes on quickly. Talkative mood today.
You shrug. "Didn't want to hurt you."
His lip curls and his brow furrows for a moment (he doesn't understand) then he huffs out a breath and straightens up on the sofa (he's trying.) He doesn't let go of your hand, just holds it in his lap while he thinks. "I hurt you," he starts slowly. "I was angry."
"I know." You want to put your arm around his shoulders but you don't know if it's the sort of day where he'll like it. "But it's not your fault. S'like when you get upset nowadays. Not very different from what you were like on Tuesday."
"Didn't hurt you on Tuesday," Jim presses, his frustration evident.
Be patient. "You were yelling and breaking things," you remind him evenly. After a beat of reluctance, you rearrange your fingers to lace through his. "But it's okay. I can handle anything you throw at me."
His expression shifts into something more annoyed and there's a laugh under your ribs for it because it's so familiar but not quite the same as before. He sighs and settles, resting his head on your shoulder.
You win much more often against him now. He gets tired out, or doesn't understand enough, or just doesn't know how to get his thoughts out properly anymore. Complex sentences are rare out of him (unless he's throwing a fit) because he doesn't like fumbling on his words. He doesn't like struggling to get his point across, and you can't blame him. He used to orchestrate the world and now…
(Well, now he practices writing words down on lined paper every day. The words are chosen by him—he whispers them to you and you type them out for him to copy. They’re always weird as hell.
“Seven, Iris. Three, Juno.” When he speaks at length he tends to let the sounds march out on a tempo. He’s fond of taking breaths in the middle of words. It’s slow and sometimes maddening.
You’d ignored the numbers at first. He still likes numbers, likes to recite them off the top of his head sometimes.
“One, Ceres. Four, eight, Doris. Four, Vesta.”
“Five should be all right for today, right?”
“Eight, eight, Thisbe. Sebastian.”
“Yeah?”
“No, Sebastian. Se-bas-ti-an,” he’d repeated.
You’d quirked your brow, but typed down your name all the same. He’d memorised the lines that represented your name in just one day, written it in pen on your hand when you arrived home that night. He had smiled so wide.)
He's saying something.
"Come again, Jimmy?"
"Won't hurt you anymore," he mumbles, small and earnest.
You haven't got much to say to that.