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The first time Alan shows up at Tim’s door, Tim almost shoots him. Already has his hand on the safety of his gun in its holster when the door creaks.
Nothing, no one has ever opened a door to one of his hideouts, so he expects nothing good. No friendly face.
Least of all.
Alan fucking Wake.
He has never seen the man in person. He has listened to Rose’s babbling of course, like everybody does. He knows what Sarah has told him. And he has read the case file. Hell, he spoke to his wife a couple of times when she was in town.
Alan Wake is a dead man walking.
Or a dead man writing judging by the numerous pages Tim has found over the course of his years in Bright Falls. He has assumed they were scattered around by some fans.
Or possibly even by his wife Alice, who shows up once a year, wandering about town like a ghost haunting the premises. Always seemingly looking over her shoulder as if she thinks she is being followed.
This man standing in his doorway looking at Tim in confused surprise looks a little different. Nothing like the magazine photos Rose has shown him and not like the mug shots he's seen him in. Older. More exhausted. A bit like he's sleepwalking.
In his years as a city cop before moving to Bright Falls Tim has had his fair share of missing persons cases. If it's longer than a couple of days or weeks the initial description of the person's clothes and even hair and body type quickly becomes useless. It's no longer what you need to be looking out for. Considering Wake is still Bright Falls’ most famous missing person case, Tim has unwittingly memorized all of the man's distinct facial features.
So despite the longer hair and the unfamiliar sharp but slightly rumpled looking suit and despite this utter improbability, he has very little doubt that this is Alan Wake.
It's funny that Rose of all people was right all along.
He's still out there. She had said with a knowing smile that was somewhere between wisdom and lunacy.
And he's no shadow. And he's not Door. Still, doesn't mean he's real, though. And it doesn’t mean he’s harmless. Especially since he’s carrying a revolver.
Just from looking at Wake he can tell he's trying to figure out what Tim is as well.
And maybe it's dangerous and maybe it's just a little bit selfish, but Tim won't let this chance slip by to talk to someone. He feels like it has been an eternity since he vanished from the morgue and showed up here. Since he has been brought here. Honestly, he has no idea how much time has passed. If time has passed.
Carefully he leaves his gun in its holster and raises his hands. He is relieved to find Wake lowering his firearm as well.
"Mr. Wake?" Tim carefully asks. His voice creaks around the edges from lack of use.
The man blinks a few times.
“You're not from here.” Wake steps closer, eyes scanning the place, stopping on his crazy board. “You shouldn't be here.”
Tim isn’t so sure about that. It feels like he has spent his life waiting for something to happen. For the moment that all of his strange dreams would begin to make sense. Maybe this is it. Or maybe he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.
For a flashing moment Tim feels dizzy. The light, no, the room itself flickers. Just briefly. Last time this happened he had vanished from the morgue only to reappear here.
This time he faintly hears the clacking of a typewriter. Tim frowns, tries to find the source. Then it's gone.
“You wanna sit down for a moment, Mr. Wake?" Tim shifts into sheriff mode automatically.
Wake frowns, but eventually flops down onto a chair that lets out a weird creaking noise under the man’s weight. Tim sits down across from him.
“Can you tell me where here is exactly, Mr. Wake?”
Wake huffs out a snort. Wake has the kind of irritating, abrasive behaviour of someone who clearly has had more than the occasional run-in with the police.
“The Dark Place.” He answers matter-of-factly with an air of condescension like Tim is somehow just a little bit stupid for not knowing that.
“Kind of looks like New York to me.” Not that Tim has ever been. But he has seen it on TV, of course. Those Alex Casey flicks come to his mind, his ex had loved them.
“And you are, Sheriff?”
“Oh, sorry. Tim Breaker. Sheriff of Bright Falls.”
“Bright Falls, huh?” Wake sits up straight. “What happened? You decide to take a swim in the lake or something?”
“Actually, no. I was standing in the morgue, next thing I know, I'm here.” Tim doesn’t know how much he can say without sounding crazy and to risk driving the first person he meets here away immediately. “What are you doing here?”
“I'm trying to find a way out. It's all I've been doing for-” Wake interrupts himself, blinks. “It's all I've been doing.”
“And how exactly did you get here?”
“Gotta say, this feels an awful lot like an interrogation. And I don’t think we’re in your jurisdiction now.”
Tim sighs and throws his sheriff hat on the table. “You're right. I'm sorry. Force of habit. I'm kind of at a loss here.”
“You and me both, Sheriff.”
“Tim. Please.”
A frown, then a careful smile.
“Good. Tim. It's nice to actually meet another real person here.”
Tim can't tell if he's actually that handsome or if it's just his loneliness. Probably both. Definitely both.
“Likewise.”
*
Tim starts humming.
First it’s just to himself. To have another sound that isn’t just the buzzing of the lights and the distorted mumbling of the shadows outside. This strange dreamscape seems to be void of sound. A city that never really sounds like a city. No constant chattering and yelling that would speak of human life. No blaring sirens going off in the distance.
The city that should never sleep is choking on silence.
After Alan shows up at a new hideout out of the blue because he followed his humming, he begins to do it regularly.
Like it's some guiding light, an auditory lighthouse Alan can follow into safety if he passes by one of his hideouts. Maybe this, too, is selfish. Distracting a man on a mission just to have another human being to talk to. Maybe he's less of a lighthouse and more the flame drawing the proverbial moth in.
Alan doesn't seem to mind. The opposite really. Whenever he enters one of the places Tim’s hauled up in, he takes his time. They exchange notes on the Dark Place, work on the map together. He listens to his ramblings about Door with interest. Besides Sarah, Tim has never talked to anyone about Door or the polyhedrons or the red-headed woman. Alan listens, gives his input or his own theories on the matter. It usually simply adds more to the confusion on the whole matter because this place shifts and bends the rules every time they feel like they got a little bit closer to anything resembling an answer on how to get out of here.
And every time Alan leaves, Tim is afraid that it will be the last time the door closes behind him. That he won't return and Tim will be trapped alone in this nightmare forever.
*
Tim has no idea how to measure time in here - the Dark Place as Alan calls it. His nightmare. Clocks and watches aren't working. So he measures it in sleep. That's the only way to capture the end of a day. There's no stars and no sun, so that's all he can do. Because he still gets tired. He can still get hurt. He still feels hunger and thirst.
And he still needs human contact. It means he's real even if nothing else in this world is. Every time he sleeps, he marks it in a little notebook he still has in the inside pocket of his jacket. That works for a while, until one night he falls asleep without his jacket on and wakes at a completely different place, sitting on a park bench as if he has just dozed off for a couple of minutes. It’s like this place is just toying with him. It’s not aggressive though. The murmuring shadowy figures leave him be, aren’t treating him like an intruder for some reason.
Maybe that’s a bad sign, though. That they aren’t trying to get rid of him. Like he belongs here. Because for Alan it's much different. More often than not he stumbles into his hideout looking worse for wear, always in need of supplies to rid himself of those shadows stalking him, hunting him down unprovoked. You don't belong here Alan has said during their first encounter. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe Tim's just where he's supposed to be.
Alan himself is a hint that time passes. Maybe the main hint. Alan has quickly dropped all wariness around him. A quick greeting quickly turns into a longer stay. A shared meal. A short nap even, occasionally.
And Tim drinks it all in. Alan’s company is what keeps him alive and sane. And yeah, maybe he’s everything but immune to being the center of attention of a handsome man, whose face lights up with relief and elation every time he finds him.
It is loneliness. Tim knows it is.
Tim has been lonely long before he even landed here. With Sarah working for the feds and Uncle Frank gone.
Several layers of lonely.
He doesn’t regret coming to Bright Falls (even though sometimes it feels like it hasn’t been his decision at all, like it was bound to happen). After having contended with the initial feeling of being out-of-place once he’d moved into Uncle Frank’s old place, the townsfolk adopted him quickly enough.
But it still was so much different from his old life in Seattle.
It certainly hadn’t helped that his boyfriend had dumped him almost immediately for moving out to the countryside.
Still, he feels like he has to drive into the next biggest town a few hours away until he feels anonymous enough to even sit in a bar with a beer and open Grindr on his phone. Not that he does that on the regular. Even less since he turned 40 and his nightmares seem to have gotten increasingly worse, making him hesitant to spend the night at another guy’s place. Nothing sexier than your one-night-stand sleep-walking or waking up screaming next to you drenched in sweat. It's nothing you’d want a loved one have to bear, much less someone who is basically a stranger.
Here, in the Dark Place, he ironically enough doesn't dream. His sleep is dark. A void he falls into and crawls out of never feeling entirely rested.
So, yeah. Maybe he’s been lonely for a while now.
He can’t help but think maybe Alan is too. That that’s why he drags out those visits longer than strictly necessary and tolerates Tim watching him maybe a bit too closely at times.
“I need to get some chairs in here, sorry.”
Alan waves Tim’s apology away from where he is sitting on a threadbare rug on the floor, leaning against the naked wall behind him. Considering the circumstances, the man seems relaxed. It’s contagious.
“Oh, so the sheriff does exist without a tie. Will you look at that.”
The comment makes Tim a bit self-conscious about getting his tie off and rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. But leaving it on feels too stiff and formal.
“Only on special occasions.” Tim flops down onto a sturdy box just across from Alan. It only occurs to him that it sounds vaguely flirty when it's already too late.
“I’m flattered.” Alan smiles, grins a bit even.
“You ever get drunk in here?” Distracting from his previous slip-up, Tim shows him the bottle of whiskey he has found on one of his expeditions through the city.
“Honestly? I have no idea.”
“Wanna give it a try?”
“The last time I remember being drunk was in Bright Falls. And you know what the fucking irony is?” Alan grabs the bottle from Tim, his long fingers curl around the bottleneck and he takes a big gulp. Tim watches as the man’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down and he’s thankful Alan has gotten rid of his tie and opened the first few buttons of his dress shirt. “One of the main reasons of going to that fucking backwater in the first place was to get sober.”
Suddenly Tim doesn’t feel like drinking anymore. But nonetheless he takes the bottle and takes a swig. It tastes terrible and burns his throat and all the way down to his stomach. Instead of handing it right back to Alan, he puts it on the floor.
“You ever have that Anderson moonshine?” Alan’s eyes are wandering through the room, a bit lost in thought maybe.
“Not yet.”
“Probably the only kind of booze you drink to actually remember something instead of trying to forget.”
“Well, I’ve been in Bright Falls for ten years now and never got around to drinking it. Maybe I ought to change that.”
“What year is it?”
“What?” Tim is taken aback by the sudden out-of-context question.
“When Door brought you here, what year was it?”
“2023.”
“Shit.”
“You’ve been here this whole time? This fucked up New York?”
“No. I mean- I don’t even know. But I don’t think so. Looks like it’s from one of my Casey novels out there.”
“Well, then your novels featured only really shitty booze.” Tim leans forward in Alan’s direction, elbows on his own knees.
Alan snorts half-heartedly yet politely about his poor attempt at a joke.
“Sometimes I can't even tell if I'm real.” Alan states all of a sudden, his expression grim. “Maybe I'll just vanish if you look at me for too long. Like those shadows outside. Maybe I’m just made up. If you touch me, I’ll dissolve into thin air.”
Tim, having already looked far too long and closely at Alan by now, isn't really worried about that. The other thing however -
“Alan.”
“Mh?” Alan looks up at him.
“Gimme your hand.”
Alan looks at him, eyebrows furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line.
Slowly, he offers his hand to Tim.
He takes it. And Alan doesn’t vanish.
He should have just gone for a handshake. That would have been enough to prove his point. But he didn’t. Because maybe Tim is just a little bit selfish and lonely and craves human contact a bit too much. Physical contact.
So it’s not a handshake.
Alan’s hand is cool to the touch, his skin soft, uncalloused. He has long elegant fingers. Tim traces the veins visible through his skin on the back of his hand. It’s all a little bit too gentle. He knows he’s touching like a man yearning, not someone who just wants to make a point. He presses his fingers against the delicate skin of his wrist. He can feel Alan’s pulse. It’s a bit too quick. Or maybe that’s just Tim’s imagination.
This could have been a handshake.
“Feels real to me.” Tim’s own voice sounds husky in his ears. He quickly clears his throat, before he meets Alan’s eyes again.
Alan looks at him like a deer in headlights. His hand is shaking slightly, but he’s not pulling away.
“You sure?” He says after a while.
Maybe it’s the painful loneliness, maybe it’s the booze (it has just been one sip), but in a sudden semblance of bravery or possibly madness Tim reaches out to brush a soft lock behind Alan’s ear. To his credit, Alan doesn’t flinch. If anything his face softens a bit and it’s enough for Tim to take that as encouragement. Gently, he cups his face with both hands. His cheeks are warm, his beard soft against his hands. At first Alan doesn’t move, seems to tense up slightly at the touch, but eventually a small, almost inaudible sigh leaves his lips and he leans into his palms. Tim can feel his warm breath against the inside of his wrist.
“Yeah, pretty sure.” Tim swallows around the lump in his throat. He’s surprised he even gets a single word out.
“Did you just call me pretty?” Alan’s lips twitch into a grin. The knot in Tim’s stomach unfurls.
“I was told you can be kinda full of yourself.”
Tim should probably let go now. But his eyes wander from Alan’s long lashes along his nose to his lips. As he bites down on his own, he carefully brushes Alan’s bottom lip with his thumb. His mouth drops open slightly. His breath escapes him in a warm puff of air against Tim’s thumb.
Tim waits for the inevitable “Sorry, Tim.” but it's not happening. Instead Alan’s eyes fall shut and he reaches for Tim’s leg.
The angle is a bit awkward, with Alan sitting in front of him on the floor. But that’s nothing to stop him now. He leans down, hand wandering along his jaw, to the back of his neck, fingers sneaking under the fabric of his collar. His skin is hot there.
Alan meets him halfway. Not half as shy or reluctant as Tim expects him to be.
It’s real. Very real, when their lips meet. Tim has gone for an innocent closed lips pressing on lips, Alan meets him hungry and open-mouthed, fingers digging into the muscle of his thigh, while pulling him closer by his collar with his other hand.
Tim’s not complaining. Maybe he should have expected as much from a man who has been alone for the last 13 years.
Everything about this feels very much real. Alan opening his shirt, his hands on his chest and stomach. Then, later, Alan’s mouth on dick, hot and wet and perfect.
The way he moans around him when Tim grabs a handful of his hair.
Yup, it’s real. It’s definitely real.
It is only the first first time that this happens.
*
There are different rules for Alan here. Tim learns this the hard way.
There are those mumbling shadow creatures that don't seem to care at all about Tim. There's the fact that while Tim depends on nothing but the clothes on his body, Alan's suit seems to be sometimes worn and sometimes brand new in no particular order.
Maybe it's a sign that somehow Tim made himself too comfortable here in the Dark Place. Almost content between his explorations and theories and Alan spending time with him.
He's not wary enough, he thinks as the door in the subway once again opens and Alan stumbles inside, confusion and surprise on his face.
“Hey, Alan.” He greets him almost automatically, smiling at him. “How's it going?”
Alan stares at him like he just sprouted three heads.
“Do we know each other?”
For a moment Tim is sure Alan is fucking with him. He's just making a very cruel joke. Or the cruelest version of nothing happened between us Tim can imagine.
But the confusion on Alan's face stays.
“Yeah, we -” Tim is fumbling for words. “We’ve met before. Tim Breaker. Sheriff of Bright Falls.” Maybe he'll remember if he just drops enough details.
“Sorry. That doesn’t ring any bells. It feels like it should, but - “ Alan makes a grimace. “I'm at a loss here. Did you just say Bright Falls?”
Tim plays along. He keeps everything that has happened between them to himself, keeps more of a distance without pushing Alan away. And yet it happens again, slightly different the next time but the outcome stays the same. And still Alan doesn't remember. There isn't some great epiphany. Alan has something new to remember, until he once again doesn't and Tim wonders why he naively thought this place would allow them even a modicum of lingering happiness. It's like it's dead-set on wringing Alan out and leaving Tim untouched as if it doesn't care enough or cannot touch him.
He wishes he could forget, too.
*
Whenever Alan takes his face in his hands, Tim can feel his ring cool against his skin. It's never warm somehow. Like it's cursed. Like it’s just there to remind Tim that he’s being nothing but selfish, that this really is just some dream that will inevitably pop like a bubble if they ever get out of here.
And maybe that isn’t so bad. Maybe that’s basically what this is about. A distraction more than anything. A distraction from this place. From being alone. Nothing that would have ever happened out there in the real world. A friends with benefits situation formed by a mere lack of other options.
Until recently, Alice Wake used to show up regularly in Bright Falls. Sometimes when Tim is alone with his thoughts, it feels like she finds her way into his head.
He met her first when she came to the station asking for Sarah.
Sometimes she came alone, sometimes with that Wheeler fellow who was helping the Anderson brothers out. It wasn't until those murders started happening that they actually started to speak for more than a short acknowledgement.
He let her sit in his office and smoke two cigarettes until he started speaking.
Yes, they found a body. Yes, they went missing in 2010. No, it's not your late husband.
She was hard to read. He couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed.
“You know what's weird, Sheriff? I miss him. Everyday I hope he’s still alive, that he will come back one day. But not in the I want him back in my life way. It feels like I haven't been myself since the marriage. He’s gone, and suddenly I'm me again. And I don't know if I'm ready to lose myself again, should he ever come back. Does that make sense?”
She gave him tickets to her exhibition. He didn’t go see it. Maybe he should have.
*
Tim is already drifting off to sleep, when Alan's voice wakes him up again.
“This has happened before.” There’s something in his voice Tim hasn’t heard before. Not like this. Not while lying next to him completely fucked out at least. Horror. It drives his fatigue away in an instant.
Alan stares at the makeshift night stand. At the snow globe sitting there. Tim has three by now. It’s some ugly kitsch thing you could buy at any tourist trap. Apparently it somehow has made its way from the real world to this place. Alan has given him two in previous loops already: One is here, another sits on a shelf at the Ocean View Hotel.
There’s a third one now. Alan has brought it with him today. (Look what I found on my way here./ Alan, that is fuck ugly. / I know, right?The third variety of this conversation. Tim still thinks it’s sweet, even if he’s somehow caught in an iteration of Groundhog Day and even if he knows deep down that he's Alan's coping mechanism more than anything else. He tells himself that it’s the other way around as well.)
“Yes.” There’s no point in lying. There is no point, because next time they’ll see each other might be another first time. And he wonders how many first times he’s still got in him before he’ll have to barricade the door so Alan can’t find him anymore.
“How often?”
“That's not important.”
“Tim, how often.” It sounds less angry, more frantic. Tim briefly considers lying to soften the blow, but sticks to the truth.
“Like seven times, I think.”
Tim can’t even tell who of the two of them gets tortured more. He wonders if someone is watching this from afar, laughing their ass off.
*
He's getting good at spotting it as soon as the door opens. With one glance he can see if Alan remembers.
Or if it's just a lingering feeling of déjà vu.
If it's surprise about a new but friendly face in the Dark Place or relief to see him again. If it's the latter he usually breaks into a smile, tired yet honest and sometimes cracks a joke or settles for a small and soft “Hi, Tim” that after a few times he realizes he likes too much. Too much for what they have. For what this is: A dream, a distraction, just a way not to be lonely.
And yet he falls for it every time. Even when Alan shows up again remembering nothing, it always leads them here. And with every new first meeting, with every new first kiss, Tim falls just a little bit harder. And with it it’s getting increasingly more difficult to tell himself that this is just a distraction. That it means nothing.
He'll never know what kind of goodbye it is, when Alan leaves.
If he will still be there when he wakes up after falling asleep together. He can’t even tell if Alan actually sleeps. If he ever witnesses him dozing off, he eventually starts mumbling, until he startles completely awake again. If he’s still there when Tim wakes, he usually looks exhausted and yet every time he straightens his shoulders and leaves for a new round.
The loops that Alan seems to be trapped in aren't identical, but for some reason Tim seems to be a constant in it, far from the only one he assumes. It's like a screenplay that keeps changing in details, but some key elements remain.
Their first meeting isn't always in the same place. And sometimes Alan's loop begins suddenly anew as if his journey has been cut short by something.
*
Maybe Tim is too distracted by staring at his crazy board, maybe it’s the pouring rain drumming on the corrugated iron roof of the car wash but he only notices Alan when he’s already right behind him. It rings several alarm bells, even if far too late.
The loudest one’s telling him he’s grown careless because the next time it might not be Alan standing behind him.
“Oh, hey, Alan. You snuck up on me.”
“Tell me I'm real.” Alan's voice is frantic. Distraught.
It feels like from loop to loop it’s getting worse. Like Alan's sanity, his whole being gets stretched thinner and thinner with every new loop. Like he’s actually going to vanish at some point.
“Alan, what-”
Alan looks like shit. Drenched in what must be rain, but he smells like he just emerged from a brackish lake.
“Just tell me I'm real.” He sounds desperate, close to a panic attack. His fingers are now clawing at Tim's collar, fumbling to get Tim’s tie off. It lands on the ground moments later.
Tim pushes his hair from his face, holds his head in place, brings their foreheads together. Alan's elevated breath is hot and feverish on his face. Everything else seems cold. Like he's close to hypothermia.
“You're real.”
“Show me.” A mumble against his mouth while Alan's icy, trembling fingers are already working on the button’s of Tim’s shirt.
They fuck on the far too thin mattress on the floor in the backroom of the car wash, Alan on top of him, riding him. Tim's hand is on his throat, fingers pressed against his pulse, Alan's hand holding it there. It's messy and desperate and they are still wearing most of their clothes.
The next time Alan opens the door and finds him, he has forgotten Tim’s name again.
*
Saga Anderson’s smile is warm and honest as she enters Tim’s office at the station. Her eyes dart around the room.
“I heard the director had no luck recruiting you for the bureau.”
“I think I’ve had my fair share of New York, thank you very much.” Tim gets up and shakes her hand. “Even if it wasn’t the real one.”
“That’s fair.”
“Can I offer you a cup of coffee?” He points at the thermos on his desk.
“No thanks. I promised Casey we’d grab one and a piece of Bright Falls’ famous cherry pie at the diner later.”
She doesn't sit down, even when offers.
“I assume you’re not just here for a simple house call.” Tim points out.
“You got me there.”
She points towards the door.
Through the glass of the door Tim can spot Alan lingering at the front desk, making small talk with Lucy. Agent Casey waits there with him like a sour-faced chaperone.
“Can we leave him in your hands for a bit? I was told you two might have some catching up to do. We’re making a quick detour to the Valhalla Nursing Home before we’re heading out to the facility. Is that alright with you?”
“Sure, no problem.”
No problem at all.
He follows her into the hallway.
Tim hesitates, then makes himself known by clearing his throat. Alan's head jerks around.
Tim counts to three. He listens to his heart beating loud in his ears as he watches Alan's reaction like he’s watched it so many times, trying to figure out if this is just another first meeting. Hopefully the weirdness of the situation isn’t too obvious for everyone around them.
“Good to see you, Tim.”
This time they actually do shake hands.
It’s been six months. Six months since they got out.
Six months since he has watched Alan being tackled to the ground and dragged away by a bunch of heavily armed FBC agents. Six months of tabloids discussing where Alan Wake has been the last 13 years. The official answer seemed to ironically be that he had joined a cult. And then he went from cult to rehab which is probably just the official version of FBC custody.
Tim returns to Bright Falls. After lots and lots of FBC interrogations of course and agreeing to remain a contact for the bureau.
Bright Falls still is Bright Falls. It’s lots of trees and people who have always been there. It still means being lonely in his very own way. And he still has his nightmares, the difference being that now they are about stuff that actually happened to him.
The diner isn't packed at this time of the day. The early breakfast crowd has already left, it's mostly some elderly people and some who are evidently recovering from a night shift. Everyone greets him as he enters with Alan in tow.
“You're working for the FBC now?” Tim asks after they sat down at the place next to the jukebox and gave up their order.
Alan scoffs.
“Working would imply that I have a say in it. I think the term is parautilitarian subject. Or something. Saga is working for them. Casey thinks he does, too, but he's probably also more of a case study, like me.” Alan makes a face at the involuntary pun.
Alan looks… better. Better than when he was being trapped in a nightmare. He's proof that better is relative. He doesn't look as haunted. He definitely saw more sun - meaning any sun at all. His hair is a little longer, there’s more grey in his beard. He has exchanged the suit for flannel.
He still looks like someone who doesn't get enough sleep.
It could be worse, Tim assumes.
Rose puts their order on the table between them with a smile. She winks conspiratorially at Alan, who smiles back in a way that's polite and confused at the same time. There's a smiley face drawn on his pancakes. The eyes are strawberries. Tim just has ordinary pancakes.
Alan is fidgeting with the ring on his finger. Tim doesn't really know where to look. It's mesmerising. Or like watching a car accident.
“How's Alice?” Tim asks almost automatically. Smalltalk. How’s the wife? How are the kids? You still in custody of a super secret government agency?
Immediately Alan stops playing around with his ring. “Good.” He answers after a while. “Better since she filed for divorce, I guess.”
“I'm sorry.” Tim doesn't know what else to say. Partially because he’s not. And then he’s sorry for even thinking like that.
“Don't be. She probably should’ve done that way before we even headed here. Would've spared her a lot of trouble.” Alan starts picking at some skin on his thumb, keeps bouncing his leg, a constant movement Tim can just so feel under the table. His eyes keep darting around nervously.
“She can't sleep with me around. No wonder considering I basically haunted her for years.”
“Not you.”
“Still. She's better off like this. The FBC gave her a new photo project. I haven't seen her this happy since before my first book was published. I think her and Estevez are getting along. We love each other, it's just. Too much happened. Even before. ”
Her own words echo in Tim’s mind. How she missed him. And how she felt free without him.
“So -” Alan clears his throat.
“So.” Tim steels himself against what’s to come. The apology. He doesn’t know what Alan actually remembers, but it seems to be enough for him to take the time and let Tim down easy, apparently.
“I got you something.”
That is not what Tim expected.
Alan starts rummaging around in his bag until he gets out a little wrapped package. It's wrapped in newspaper. He pushes it in Tim's direction, pressing his lips together. As if he's - unsure? Nervous?
It's a snow globe. No. It's the snow globe.
“Alan.” His lips are twitching. The next words are spoken very easily. He has said them before. He's now saying them with purpose. “Alan, that's fuck ugly.”
“Well, I figured since you had to leave your entire collection in the dark place. Don't tell the FBC about it though. They’ll definitely think it's an altered item and lock it away someplace.”
Entire collection.
The penny drops. Slowly, but surely it drops.
“You remember.”
“Yeah.” Alan clears his throat, takes a sip of his coffee that's evidently no longer hot and makes a face. “I do. Everything. It all came back, bit by bit after I got out. I'm sorry, Tim.”
“Me, too.”
Tim shakes the snow globe and watches the plastic snowflakes dance.
“I think I forgot how to just. Live. Be. Be real.”
Instinctively Tim reaches over the table, grabs Alan's wrist.
“Feels pretty real to me.”
Alan snorts. “Real smooth, Sheriff.” He reaches for Tim's hand before he can pull away again. His heart skips a beat.
“You're staying at the lodge?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. But it's better than in that Lake House facility, I guess. Beggars can't be choosers.”
“Okay. Let's start with dinner then? I heard that's a thing real people do. I'm not a bad cook if I got actual, real-life ingredients to work with, if you can believe it.”
Alan watches him carefully, then suddenly smiles.
“Sounds like a good real people plan.”