Tim changes and never explains why.
When he’s 8, Tim’s nanny stops dropping him off at school, and Tim doesn’t say anything other than answers to direct questions for a month. He stops inviting other kids to play with them, after that, and Ives has never been the kind of person people want to play with so it’s usually just the 2 of them.
When he’s 12, some kid Tim has never even met dies, and he cries in school. He doesn’t tell Ives about his crazy plans for the future anymore and stops inviting himself to Ives’ house.
When he’s 13, Tim’s mom dies, and Tim starts lying. He says he’s already seen Terminator 2. He offers Ives mysterious cookies that he says Mrs. Mac baked.
When he’s 16, Tim’s dad dies. Tim moves to Bludhaven and stops having friends for 2 months. When Ives tries to ask Steph if Tim’s still talking to her, he finds out she’s gone too. Tim comes back perfectly fine and they only talk about movies and video games. Ives doesn’t know if Tim’s watched any of them.
When he’s 17, nothing happens to Tim at all, that Ives can tell, but Tim disappears anyways. Ives next sees him in a suit, holding a press conference. They go out for coffee once and talk about inanities. Tim gets engaged. Ives has never been the kind of person people want to hang out with, but he’s adapted. There’s people he talks to.
When he’s almost 18, Tim shows up at Ives’ house on crutches, holding an honest to goodness VHS. It’s Terminator 2. Ives doesn’t own a VCR anymore, so he forces Tim to change into something other than the suit while he downloads a copy. Tim says that he thinks his father might be a zombie. Ives tells him that if he finished school he wouldn’t have problems like that. Tim says that’s almost certainly true, but he’s going to be a billionaire playboy CEO and doesn’t NEED a high school diploma.
Ives wants to tell Tim that he isn’t going anywhere, but decides that research into ways to reverse zombification would probably be more helpful. They watch the movie.