#i keep thinking abt how jaylen was SO fucking worried when mike was at vague risk of being alted but. didnt think to fear for herself

[haunthouse]

allijay + switchboard

premise is that jaylen was on a one-on-one switchboard call with allie when she was alternated!! chat rp hell my beloveds saw the other half of this convo with new jaylen so. this is old jaylen.

"Results are up," Jaylen says, ignoring the warning signs: the pressure of a headache building behind her eyes, the sinking feeling in her stomach. "Gimme a minute to read 'em, I'll give you the highlights."

She scrolls down the league's election results page. Unwin the underbracket, and gray creeps into the corners of her vision. Something about debt — never a good omen — and a rumbling like distant thunder booms. The Monitor has given gifts to every team, and the sound grows louder, and louder, loud enough that she drops the switchboard's phone to the ground and covers her ears with her hands, eyes clenching shut as the room trembles.

When she opens her eyes, the phone is in her hand again. She doesn't remember picking it up.

"Jay? You still there?"

It's still Allie's voice on the other end of the phone. Jaylen takes a deep breath, then another — she is no longer in Tot's garage, no longer at hir switchboard. The set-up in front of her is sparser; a soundboard, a connecting phone with its curlicue cable, a couple of notebooks and her guitar leaning against the wall — her guitar, the acoustic one with the old Garages stickers on it they'd printed on label paper back in college, half-peeling off.

"Allie?" Her voice comes out smaller than she wants it to be. Shakes on the familiar syllables of his name, splitting them into pieces, cracked pottery glued haphazardly back together. Her ears are ringing. "What the fuck was that?"

"What was what?" She can picture, even at a distance, the furrow in Allie's brow. "You alright, honey? What's wrong?"

"I don't know, it — I got fucking teleported or some shit, I don't know. Sounded like a bomb going off or something. You didn't fucking hear that?"

And it is, in this new universe and in the old one, Allie who makes the connection first, who says "Okay," who says, slowly in that way that means he's trying not to panic, "Elections were today, right? Jay, I need you to check the results for me."

"I was about to, uh, give me a second —" and Jaylen scrambles to find her phone where she dropped it, face-up on the table next to the switchboard.

The Flowers chose Jaylen Hotdogfingers to receive an Alternate Trust.

She reads the blessing aloud, like it's a death sentence, like how Parker III had read out Star player Jaylen Hotdogfingers is incinerated those first elections.

"Fuck. Fuck, Allie, are you — are you still there?" She asks, though what she means is are you still my Allie?

"I'm here, I — did not want to be right, shit. I'm here, Jay, I'm — are you still —" and it could be are you still there or it could be are you still my Jay and Jaylen doesn't know, but she doesn't let him finish the sentence.

"I don't know how to fucking tell, I — I was in Tot's garage, I was telling you about the shit the coin was saying, I was gonna catch you up on the Moss Woman bullshit after the election." She's counting the facts off on her fingers like they mean anything.

"No, you were — you were telling me about the farmer's market," Allie says, something sinking in his voice. "Shit. Uh. Hi."

And Jaylen — who had gone out of her mind with worry when the shadows were at risk of alternating just in case Mike got swapped, who had taken the news of Agan alternating from within the trench with immense panic on Allie's behalf, but who hadn't done anything to prepare for it herself, because why would she, she's a good pitcher, a famous one at that, and maybe Patterson's alternation should have made her afraid but she had hardly noticed it because it isn't like she'd cared about the first Polkadot at all — begins to cry.