One Jaysome Night

1.

There are battles that cannot be won, but sometimes that is why they must be fought. I have spent six hours explaining to Jay that @teacup13 is allowed to like coffee more than tea, that a tumblr use-name doesn’t define anyone. Not even Jay. Which he doesn’t believe, because he is Jay and so very randomly. And trying to explain to Jay that Jay – or even jaysome – don’t define him... no. There are some places I definitely have no desire to venture.

I tell him that teacup13 is a label, and labels are great for clothing but not so much for people. And Jay pokes at his tumblr, then looks up and grins. The grin is huge and proud and innocent.

There are sirens, tires screaming, people shouting outside. I rub the bridge of my nose.

“Did you know that @eclectic-like-furniture isn’t actually eclectic?” Jay says. “Like how @feverfewm isn’t Muffin! I figured it out!”

“Ah. Good. Dare I ask how that involves the traffic?”

“Uh-huh! There are lots of rules for traffic, Charlie, and sometimes people ignore turn signals entirely!”

I stare at Jay. Only innocence stares back. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder if he is trolling me. “So you’re fixing bindings for cars.”

“Yup! Everyone will stop for crosswalks that aren’t cross and let people merge into lanes and everything,” he says proudly.

“But there are people who cross the road while jaywalking. What if a Jay isn’t allowed to cross a road?”

Jay gapes at that in shock. “I did an oops and bound myself?!”

“You might have. It might be safer to undo it all?”

“Oh, okay.” There are even more sirens and screeching tires for a moment. Then Jay says that, since he fixed the oops, he probably should get a second dessert.

I tell him to bring back ice cream, and watch him vanish. I think I gained at least a dozen more grey hairs in the past five minutes, not that Jay would ever notice. What’s scary is never the power Jay has over bindings, nor even that he’s eleven and so innocent in it, but the way he just accepts things literally until told otherwise. Some days I have trouble remembering all the facts I’m hiding from him.

“I got ice cream, and it’s the good kind,” Jay says as he reappears with three tubs.

“The good kind?”

“I asked Honcho, and he said it’s the kind that never has calories!”

“Ah. Of course.” I accept a tub as Jay flicks the TV on and begins scrolling through channels.

I eat food, relax, and keep an eye on Jay.

...only I should have kept both eyes on him. And never fallen asleep.

2.

I wake up to a loud thump. I’ve fallen asleep on the couch, and Jay has turned the TV down. Which would be rather considerate except I can barely see the TV as the small common room in our motel suite is full of boxes. Kitchen gadgets. Knives. Appliances. And Jay is shoving a mattress into my room. Where it barely fits.

“Jay. What are you doing?”

“Hi!” Jay turns and grins. There is no fear, no hint he did an oops or an accident. “Did you know that sometimes the TV wants you to buy things?!”

I stare at Jay, sit up slowly and look at the Home Shopping Network. “You’ve been buying things.”

“The man and woman on the TV were doing bindings and kinda desperate cuz no one was buying things, and this Jay has a very jaysome credit card you know!”

“I do.” I look about the room slowly. There is at least an hours worth of... items, all neatly stacked. “What do you plan to do with twenty food processors?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but I bet they’d like to process a lot of food!”

“And the mattresses?”

“They can give a better sleeping I bet. And I got a lot of knives that are really sharp but not tough as a Jay.”

I close my eyes. Count to ten. “You tested the against your skin, didn’t you?”

“Yup!” Jay being from Outside the universe is sometimes never as worrying as him just being eleven.

“And what do you plan to do with them?”

“I got a book on juggling, so I’m going to learn to juggle,” he offers proudly.

I don’t point out that juggling fifteen sets of knives might be difficult, since to Jay it would just be bindings he’d move. The blue couch that is around when we need it replaces the couch I’m sitting on. Or was there the whole time in disguise. It is a lot larger on the inside than the outside, so I convince Jay to store everything in it and then go to bed.

And call the fae to explain what he has done with their credit card. This time. I don’t entirely know how the card works, but I know there are consequences for spending too much money with it. The fae on the other end of the help line that exists solely for Jay’s credit card isn’t fazed at all. Compared to other things Jay has bought with it, this barely warrants a note. Which the fae makes a point of reminding me of, as if I’d forget the time Jay decided to buy Venus. What was worrying wasn’t that the card had that much currency so much as Jay found a seller.

I make sure everything else is cleared away by the time the wandering magician returns from his trip. He looks about the too-clean hotel room, then at me, and raises a single eyebrow.

“I fell asleep. Jay discovered the Home Shopping Channel. The results are in the couch.”

He opens the side of the couch, lets out a low whistle. “What does Jay plan to do with all of this?”

“Juggle, so far.”

“Of course he does.” The magician chuckles and takes his coat off. “At least it wasn’t that bad, Charlie.”

“Not that bad? He bought several thousand dollars of.... that! I don’t even know how he got it here after buying it, or what kind of shipping arrangement he had.”

“Ah. We’ll need to look into that. But this isn’t bad.” He pauses. “Jay could have watched infomercials.”

“Oh,” I say, very slowly. “He would have – probably bought an entire TV network to fix worried bindings, wouldn’t he?”

“At least one.”

I make a note to talk to the fae about some upper limit on what Jay can spend at once. Again. And we head to sleep, certain that if anything breaks in any hotel we visit in the next two years we’ll be able to replace it without a problem. Because Jay.