Chapter Text
In the weeks since the former inhabitants of Inanimate Island had begun their exodus, OJ had begun to view the small pen that he and Paper used to communicate as something of a lifeline. Clicking it was originally supposed to be reserved for times of emergency, but, given their circumstances, it wouldn’t exactly be possible to hurry over to the other in times of need if one started going off. Thus, its main purpose was converted from being a distress signal to a mere sign of reassurance that the other was still there.
One of them would click their pen some point in the day, the other would click theirs in response, and both of them would click together for a few minutes to make sure that the first time wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t a foolproof strategy, but it was also better than nothing, and better than nothing would have to do when they were an ocean apart.
There was no real schedule to it on the account of neither of them thinking to come up with one before they separated. And as their days apart stretched into a month and the distance between them grew larger, OJ found their lack of one was only worsening his anxiety over it all.
Especially now that Paper’s clicks and responses were growing more sporadic.
Long hours with no signs from him turned into an increase of OJ’s anxious clicking throughout the afternoons, which sometimes turned into frantic, nonstop clicking until morning when there wasn’t any response that day, which eventually turned into full-blown panic at the prolonged silence.
Reassuring himself that his partner was only busy didn’t exactly work when three days had passed without the pen vibrating a single time.
To say that OJ was freaking out would be an understatement.
As if to make his already high stress levels even higher, Fruit Bowl’s tour bus had broken down earlier in the day, which meant that the group had to stay in a motel for the night. And putting him in a tiny, suboptimal room while he was plagued with the worst anxiety he’d ever felt over Paper’s current whereabouts was quite literally the last thing he needed.
Without any kind of outlet, he was being driven to the pinnacle of stir-crazy, to say the least.
…Unfortunately for Fan, who had come to relay information from Test Tube about the bus’ status, it was apparent that the role of one would be going to him as soon as he arrived at his door.
“Fan, please, listen to me. We- we can’t just sit and do nothing!” OJ pleaded, well aware of how he’d been going on about how worried he was for nearly ten minutes now. “He’s never gone this long without clicking back! Never! What if something happened to him? We need to go back to the island as soon as we can!”
Fan remained unimpressed with his display as he sighed and pinched at the space between his eyes.
“Need I remind you that the last time this happened, he ended up responding to your clicking after a day? Right as we were getting everyone ready to leave?” he said flatly. “You’re overreacting. He’s probably fine.”
“And what if he isn’t? What if they finally kidnapped him, or—”
“I-I don’t mean to get on your case here, OJ, but if you both used the pens the way they were designed, then—”
“Do you seriously think I came to get a lecture on what I’m supposed to be doing?! This is dire!”
His sudden increase in volume managed to startle Fan out of whatever argument he was in the middle of making. With another, somewhat more annoyed sigh, he collected himself and seemed to mentally prepare for what he was going to say next.
Through the haze of his clouded judgment, OJ could already tell that it was going to be the last thing he wanted to hear.
“Being… frank… with you here,” Fan said. “It’d take us days to get back to Boaty. Even if something happened, if we started heading back now, we’d… we’d never make it in time.”
He wrung his hands, promptly taking interest in the carpet.
“I’m… I’m sorry, but he’s—”
Pinpricks of pain lit up the meat of his palm as OJ tightened his grip around the pen in his hand, his nails digging into his skin.
“If it was Test Tube or Bot, you wouldn’t think twice about going back! You wouldn’t leave them to die!” he spat.
Fan visibly recoiled at his words, his eyes wide for a split second before they narrowed in anger. “I- ju- th-that is the furthest thing from what I’m saying and you know it! I’m trying to—”
“Oh, so with Paper it IS somehow different? You make everyone else leave the island over a hunch, but you’re fine with leaving him behind because it proves your game works!”
“Paper knew of the risks, OJ! He chose to stay behind! He’s capable enough to do so, you said it yourself! You- you let him stay behind! A-and who’s to say if he’s still there in the first place?” he said while he gestured wildly. “What if he’s fled by now? Or if the island’s been taken over by that corncob? What if going back means someone gets killed? You’d seriously risk the safety of everyone else here—”
“I don’t need anyone to come with me. I can handle it myself.”
“And waste precious resources on one person’s suicide mission? You’re a pillar of the OSC! Marshmallow and Suitcase want to go back too, yet you’ve never let them! But suddenly you’re changing your mind because Paper’s involved? I mean—”
“This is completely different from—”
“—w-what kind of example does that set? What would Paper think? Is this what he’d want you to do?”
OJ’s breath hitched in his throat and his heart sank to the bottom of his glass. The world blurred around him.
Fan’s expression flashed with surprise at his own words for a split second. Then, as if rethinking his brief display of humanity, his gaze hardened once more and he turned to leave.
“…I don’t like the way things are either, but I’m sorry. We can’t go back. Not now,” he said, sounding a lot less ‘sorry’ than anyone with half a brain would be convinced by.
“Have… have a good night, OJ.”
There was barely any time to process the last thing he muttered before he slipped through the door and slammed it shut behind him, leaving OJ to wordlessly stare at the empty space he’d left behind.
Alone.
His chest tightened at the thought and his hands found his eyes before he knew he was crying.
—
The next morning greeted OJ with the unfortunate news that the wait for the bus to be repaired would have to be stretched from a single day to three. Or, in other words, they would be staying at the motel for longer.
He didn’t share the rest of the group's relief at the idea.
As soon as the brief announcement ended, he decided to slip away from the group and head back to his room, not even bothering to pick at the scarce selection of breakfast items before he left. He was almost certain that everyone else had caught onto how miserable he was by now, and the only reason that no one stopped him from leaving early was because they pitied the sight of him enough not to pry.
In the event that someone did ask about his absence, he’d already come up with a plethora of excuses by the time he made it back to his door— most of which had to do with his sudden migraine. Whether it was a byproduct of the fact that he’d sobbed himself to sleep last night, his overall lack of sleep, or the several days of stress catching up to him was beyond him.
Right now, OJ needed time to think, and having to deal with the noise made by a group of around fifty objects eating breakfast in a crowded bus on top of a festering headache wouldn’t help.
There was a lot that he had to come to terms with.
About their current situation.
About… Paper.
His hand gripped the doorknob before him as hard as it could, the thought making him freeze.
Today meant that it was now four days since he stopped responding, and each passing second of silence was beginning to chip away at OJ’s reserves of hope. No matter what he told himself or how he tried to convince himself otherwise, he… was no longer able to deny that Fan had a point.
They were too far inward to turn around. It was true. That part was something he couldn’t disagree with now that he was thinking a little bit clearer.
He’d already checked a thousand times over with Test Tube about whether or not the pens were out of range, or ran out of battery, or had any other sort of issue that would keep them from working. And, at least on his end, there were no signs of a malfunction.
In theory, there shouldn’t have been anything keeping Paper from responding.
Save for the worst-case scenario.
…
No matter how many times that thought returned, OJ refused to give it any further attention as he shoved it to the back of his mind once more and hurried inside his room.
He needed a distraction.
The small flat-screen TV across his bed caught his attention as soon as he closed the door behind him, given that it was making noise. He must have turned it on last night in order to fall asleep.
Right. Watching television. That was something to do. It also ran little risk of making him feel worse about everything going on as long as he stuck to the broadcast shows and reruns.
After a few moments of feeling around, his hands managed to locate the remote among his bed sheets and he promptly got comfortable as he sat down to watch. The volume was too low for him to fully grasp what the object on screen was saying, and he squinted at the screen as he tried to figure out the topic through context clues instead.
What had he been watching yesterday…? The news, or something?
…
Of course it was the news.
If Inanimate Island had ever been located and visited by that purple corncob, then it’d have been all over the news by now, for one reason or another. And if the island was on the news, then Paper would have been on the news, too.
It would have been a huge enough story to travel to practically any station.
Obviously, one of the members of Fruit Bowl would have told them if the situation was that level of urgent, yet they’d never mentioned anything like that in the month they’d traveled with them.
…The logical conclusion to come to was that there was still a chance that Paper was on the island and perfectly fine. His pen probably stopped working or got lost or something.
OJ had replayed this very line of thinking all of last night and for the past hour that he was awake, and by now, it had stopped being truly reassuring. But it was all that he had to keep his hopes up, and thus, it would have to do.
He scrubbed away the last of his tears and reached to finally change the channel, though a change in camera angle made him pause as the object reading out the news disappeared. Instead, they were replaced by a simple display of the weekly weather forecast.
Right.
The weather. It was about that time, wasn’t it?
The last thing he cared about was the weather. If they absolutely needed to know the weather, one of the band members could simply pull it up on their phone.
Yet, this time, his eyes refused to pry themselves away from the screen as an object stepped into view, a light blue tie clipped to their middle.
He barely registered his thumb mashing the volume button until the television was practically screaming at him and he was throwing himself out of bed with reckless abandon just to press his face as physically close to the screen as possible.
“…joining us for today’s weather. Seems like there’ll be a high of 97 degrees that’ll dip into a low of 80 later in the day, so make sure to stay hydrated! The sunny skies we’ve been enjoying continue throughout the week until…”
“Paper?” OJ whispered breathlessly into the TV.
The pain that shot through his hand once he dug his nails into his palm was the only way that he could tell he wasn’t asleep or somehow hallucinating. The object on the television screen was real.
And the object on the screen was Paper.
It had to have been.
No one else would have that voice. That smile. That light in their eyes.
And OJ knew the way he’d smile, the way he’d laugh, the way he’d finish a sentence. The way he’d hold his hands together in front of him when he wasn’t using them, the way he’d beam wider than ever while he looked at him, the way he’d light up whenever he talked about something he loved.
How could he not?
He’d listen to Paper talk for hours, after all— hours he’d never trade for anything else in the world— he’d memorized the way he enunciated words alongside his favorite things, he’d etched his each and every microexpression into the core of his heart and carved out a space right next to them solely to keep the lilt of his voice.
This object shared all of it. Every last mannerism.
It was Paper.
One of his hands gingerly pressed itself to the warm screen as Paper continued on with his weather report, smiling all the while, blissfully unaware of what the mere sight of him had done to someone in the middle of who-knows-where on the other side of the screen.
If he could, OJ would have stayed right there, listening to him talk about temperatures and precipitation in silent reverie until the world itself ceased to exist. Yet no matter how much he wanted to, he knew well enough that he couldn’t.
His time to act was limited.
He needed further confirmation and there was only one way he could have possibly gotten it.
He forced himself to stop his awestruck staring and hurriedly pulled himself upright, rushing to grab the pen atop his nightstand and click it while Paper was on screen.
However, his frantic clicking rather predictably did nothing. There were no sounds of the pen vibrating being projected from the television audio, or any sign that Paper had felt it on his person at all as he continued to talk about Friday’s chance of rain.
…Fine, maybe he actually had lost it. Or maybe he didn’t have it on him at the moment.
The pens didn’t matter right now. What did matter was telling someone about what he was seeing before the one sign that his beloved was okay slipped through his fingers.
OJ burst through the door and practically flew across the parking lot as he made a mad dash for the charter bus, the sensation of sun-warmed asphalt on the soles of his feet reassuring him that this was reality.
“Fan!” he yelled as loud as he could. “FAN!”
Faster. He had to run faster—
As if the world itself was doing everything it could to work against him, his feet tripped over nothing right in front of the door, and with a sharp clink his face met asphalt.
He didn’t have time for that! Without a moment to spare, he picked himself up, internally cursing the loss of time and grumbling in annoyance as he furiously rubbed the pain out of one of his cheeks.
A fall like that might have killed him, though taking a moment to properly dwell on it would only be a waste of precious seconds. He settled for silently thanking the Blue-Ray’s existence instead.
One of his hands found the bus’ railing and he scrabbled up the stairs with almost no real coordination, his heart pounding with adrenaline as he fought to stand straight. Most of the group turned to look at him as soon as he appeared, their attention diverted from breakfast plates of half-eaten bagels and granola bars.
“Fan!” he called again, out of breath.
The top of Fan’s head popped into view at the back of the bus as soon as he heard his name, and without a second to waste, he got out of his seat and started pushing his way through the aisles. Test Tube trailed behind him, visibly concerned.
“…O-OJ?” he asked once he made it to the front of the bus. “What’s going—”
“Paper’s on TV!” OJ managed between gasps of air.
Test Tube scrunched her face in disbelief. “What? OJ, are you—”
“WHAT!?” Fan shouted, making her flinch away from him. “Th-That's impossible! That’s—”
OJ gave them no further time to ask questions as he leapt down the bus stairs and hit the ground running again.
His mind raced as he kicked open the door to his room and rushed to the TV in question, lifting it from the stand with all the strength he could muster. The moment the other two made it to the doorway, he turned its screen in their direction, hoping that its contents wouldn’t betray him now.
“See! He’s there!” he exclaimed, doing his best to reposition his grip on it so that it would stop slipping out of his hands. It was a lot heavier than he thought.
“He’s alive!”
Fan and Test Tube shared a glance that lasted barely a second. OJ didn’t need them to exchange words in order to understand what they were saying to each other anyways.
He immediately peered downwards as best as he could and tried not to grimace at the sight of the obviously-not-Paper object on screen. With an unceremonious huff, he dropped the television back onto its stand and dusted off his hands.
“…OJ,” Test Tube began. “Paper isn’t—”
“No, he was there for the weather forecast.” OJ crossed his arms. “You have to believe me.”
She sighed and rubbed her forehead in what could only be frustration.
“So you think he’s the weather reporter.”
“I know that it couldn’t have been anyone other than Paper!” he retorted. “He looked and sounded exactly the same!”
Fan and Test Tube exchanged another glance. The feeling of their skeptical, doubting eyes lingering on him made OJ’s glass crawl with unease and he quickly turned away to distract himself by looking for the remote in his bed for the second time.
“…you’re sure it’s him? Beyond a shadow of a doubt?” Test Tube asked.
“I think I could recognize my partner, thank you.”
“No one said otherwise, we just—”
“We… we want to be a hundred percent sure,” Fan added, audibly winded from having to run. “Paper leaving the island just to go out and get hired at some news station doesn’t really seem that… plausible.”
“Please. Do remind me, Fan. When have you ever cared about whether or not something’s plausible?”
From the way he fell silent, it was obvious that he didn’t have a response to that sort of scathing remark. OJ scoffed in response.
“If you don’t believe me now, then we can wait for the afternoon weather report,” he insisted, dismissively waving them off once he found the remote.
Fan piped up behind him as soon as he grabbed it. “C-Could I borrow that, actually…?”
Before he could even open his mouth to speak, the remote was abruptly yanked it out of his hands.
“Thanks, OJ.”
He played around with it for a little bit, willfully oblivious to OJ turning around and glaring at him. Then, with an outstretched hand, he pointed it at the TV and pressed one of the buttons a few times.
The audio stopped and the image of the news anchor on screen froze for a second before it began to… rewind.
A note of disbelieving laughter inadvertently escaped OJ’s lips.
Ah. Right. Since apparently a live news broadcast could be rewound now on these fancy new TVs. The wonders of the modern technology found in the outside world.
Once they managed to reach the weather report, however, he found that he didn’t exactly care to be cynical as the sight of the object on screen made his heart flutter the same way it did the first time. Fan promptly ceased his rewinding efforts and studied the image of Paper on the television with a raised eyebrow.
It was undoubtedly Paper delivering the weather report.
Yet a brief glance at the pair revealed that they seemed to be less swayed by the sight than he was, much to his dismay. Frantically, he gestured at the television as if doing so would convince them all by itself.
“See! That’s him!”
Test Tube leaned in closer to the screen, not paying his flailing much mind while she looked it over for a couple of seconds. Then, with a shrug, she shook her head.
“I mean, by all accounts, they certainly look like Paper,” she said, uncertain. “Which… I’m sure you know doesn’t exactly prove anything, OJ.”
OJ glowered. “No, it’s obviously him. Just listen.”
Before anyone could get another word in, he snatched the remote back from Fan and unpaused the TV.
“Good morning to everyone joining us for today’s weather. Seems—”
He paused it again.
“That’s exactly how Paper says good morning. Come on, you’ve both talked to him before! You have to believe me!”
Fan and Test Tube side-eyed each other for the third time in the past five minutes. Then, in some form of heated debate, they began to whisper back and forth.
After a few seconds, Fan appeared to emerge victorious from whatever argument it was, and he turned towards OJ with his hands clasped together in what was surely his best attempt at appearing ready to listen to him. It was anything but convincing.
“W-well, alright,” Fan said hesitantly. “Let’s say that… hypothetically… this is Paper. What do you suggest we… do, exactly?”
OJ narrowed his eyes. “What do you think? We go out and find him. He made it off the island, didn’t he?”
Test Tube was quick to jump in.
“With what resources, exactly? We barely have enough to get by while traveling as is,” she said, to which Fan nodded along. “Not to mention what the current state of the island might be if he’s here. And, please, the first time he shows up again is on the news? Seriously? This whole thing could be a trap!”
“I’m willing to take my chances,” he replied flatly. “All we have to do is find him.”
She pinched the space between her eyes, letting out a frustrated sigh. “We don’t even know which news station this is or where it’s located. For all we know, we could be a thousand miles away and make a trip that turns out to be fruitless! I mean, have you considered the possibility that this might not be Paper instead of immediately assuming it is?”
OJ stiffened.
Of course I have, I’ve considered it a million times over, he wanted to retort. Yet he knew full well that he hadn’t, and the longer he looked at the object on screen, the more he was starting to doubt himself. No television had ever displayed a perfect image of what it was broadcasting, and the first one to do so wouldn’t have been a beat-up flat screen in a shoddy motel room.
Her words lingered in his mind for an uncomfortably long period of time as all of his prior confidence began to slip away from him.
The image of the weather reporter— or, Paper, if he dared to allow himself to keep clinging onto what little hope he had— had seemed so clear only twenty minutes ago. But now, it was impossibly blurry. Whether it was due to the tears in his eyes or the doubt in his mind clouding his vision, he didn’t want to know.
It had been a month since they last saw each other. Four days since he stopped responding. Four days since OJ stopped getting proper sleep.
He rubbed at his eyes hard enough to see phosphenes, the weight of his eyelids making him wonder just how tired he truly was.
How could he trust his own two eyes when he could barely keep them open?
…Had it truly been so long that he was starting to forget what Paper had sounded like? Was he so desperate to have some sign that he was still out there that he was imagining similarities in random objects where there weren’t any?
The idea that he’d been… wrong… sat heavily in his chest and he chewed on the inside of his cheek to try and stop himself from ruminating on it. It didn’t work.
If it was Paper, without a doubt, would he have felt this unsure?
Without definitive proof that he’d been right, he could do nothing but hope that he was. And hope on its own had always done little to convince anyone of anything.
If he couldn’t even convince himself, then—
“…You’re right,” he admitted despite his own heart wanting otherwise. “It’s… been a long couple of days.”
Instead of saying anything more, Test Tube held out her arms, and OJ allowed himself to collapse into them before he could think to do otherwise. The familiar sting of tears returned to the corners of his eyes as he clung to her as hard as physically possible.
He didn’t want to be wrong. How pathetic was that?
“I know how hard this has been,” she muttered into his side while she wrapped her arms around him. “And I’m sorry that I can’t believe you. But without any proof, we—”
OJ finished her sentence for her. “Can’t take the risk. I know.”
Fan reached over and put a hand on his back and he tried not to flinch away from his touch.
“Thanks for understanding, OJ,” he said. OJ did his very best not to backhand him then and there.
Test Tube pulled away from him after a few moments more, her expression contorted into a pitying smile. He forced himself to smile back no matter how much he hated the sight.
“We’ll be back with updates on the engine when we have them,” she said. “In the meantime, please get some rest.”
“I will, thank you,” he replied, knowing full well that he meant none of it.
With one final pat on the shoulder, she let go of him completely and turned to leave with Fan. He waved them goodbye with as much strength as he could muster, and the moment they shut the door behind them, he buried his head in his hands.
The television stared back at him, the weather reporter still frozen in place from where he’d paused it.
Against his better judgment, he hit play.
“…like there’ll be a high of 97 degrees that’ll dip into a low of 80 later in the day, so make sure to stay hydrated! The sunny skies…”