#long jon is martin's worst nightmare

[occudo]

Tall Jon -finished this post

[rainbowchewynuggets]

TMA Encore #14b

Not-Martin cannot reach his partner.

Not-Jon isn’t listening. Even now, as the man drags his screeching nightmare of a body around, the end of which is held in unseen space by his masters. The worst part is that he knows it. He knows he has failed to control the hunger, and he still won’t stop. With his back against the wall, he managed to phase through it into a whole new realm of delusion.

NJ: It’s still happening all over the world. We can’t just leave it like this.

Not-Martin could hear Not-Jon’s voice carried through the field of obstacles set between them just after the hellscape had risen.

NM: We weren’t supposed to fix the entire world. We only wanted to undo our part in it.

Not-Jon then told him what he saw in his flash of true omniscience. The apocalypse could still happen a hundred different ways. Not as closely managed as theirs had been, but still teetering on certainty more than either of them had dared to fear.

Not-Martin could almost see it as the image crept out of the crack in the barrier Not-Jon holds between himself and his partner. Not-Martin had had just enough time to question if it’s only true of this world or of every world they’ve attempted to save before perishing the entire possibility. He begged and threatened, finding no argument beyond what has driven them so far. Their mission is over. They don’t belong here. They have no future here. It’s time to go.

He cannot reach his partner.

Not-Martin moves silently through bucking, shifting halls. There is no choice but to do his worst. The long sharp piece of industrial steel in his hand should be enough. The enigma that used to be the prison can’t hurt him at this point, and it isn’t trying to. Not-Jon can barely make controlled use of his abilities and doesn’t want to. He only tries to push Not-Martin away. The two know each other too well for the contest to be swift. Only now, Not-Jon is marred by the degradation of his body and the panic of the threat of premature death. Not-Martin can feel his vulnerability. It draws him forward.

Then, he finds him cornered. Motionless. Staring.

Not-Martin has the perfect shot to do it. Multiple shots. The makeshift dagger twitches in his grip but doesn’t move. He can’t even take a step closer. The grisly fate of being the stronger candidate to carry out this Extinction wrests his will. Cradling Jon as he died and waking up alone in the house on Hill Top Road stretch on for eternity in his memory. A hint slips through the barrier of the sheer enormity of the hunger’s pressure. He feels the fear that the Entities soak up from Not-Jon. The creature knows that if he surrenders, he’d be leaving his heart behind with all of his pain. If they shared it, it would grow until they tore at each other before eventually moving on to the rest of the world. He can’t bring himself to kill them both. It paralyzes him just as it does Not-Martin. He can’t die. He has to hold it all down just the way it is, or the Entities will win.

Not-Martin tries to shut it out, but the hellscape seizes the exposure of fear. It divides the chamber in two and pulls their occupants miles apart. Not-Martin is dragged down through the floor and encased in a cell within layers of brick and cement. Feeling like he’s out of moves, he surrenders to his isolation.

He cannot reach his partner.

~

Tim and Sasha sit in silence on the peninsula as the cracked tape plays.

It stops with a click.

Listening to the tape wasn’t very comforting. It at least prompts them to break the quiet and process things aloud for a while.

Neither of them fully forgive Jon. They had already gleaned that Jon’s worst nature was being pressed by an entity that knew him inside and out. They did try to warn him. Though, they do give him points for realizing his mistake, if too late. They’re both in the same boat with him, really.

Sasha ponders her relationship to agency and risk. When she found out about her death at the hands of the Stranger, she was so afraid and upset because she felt like she had had her life and participation in something important torn away and misused. But now that she’s here, after making her best efforts not to die and not to sit out, she finds that she has still been made into a tool. In hindsight, the right thing to do really was not to participate at all. How could she have known? The trap was shut before she knew it was there.

Tim takes the time to unravel some grief. After losing Danny, he had investigated the death as hard as he did because part of him hoped that he could hunt down whatever did this. As if it could be held accountable. Getting confirmation from Not-Jon that it was something real and evil that could potentially be killed was gratifying. But it all turned out to be so much bigger and deeper than he’d imagined. And now, it’s made its way inside him and his friends. They’re part of that “other”. If he gets up now, his drive to see things set right will only be used against them.

Martin is the most worrying case. It had at first seemed that his outbursts of bravery were signs of him coming out of his shell. In hindsight, it was a sign of something much worse.

They think that perhaps the best, most resilient thing they can do against their tormentors now is nothing.

~

In his quest to find Not-Jon, Martin stumbles upon Not-Martin’s cell through a small hole in the surrounding materials. He almost passed by, thinking it was empty at first. It’s hard to see through the haze that now follows him everywhere.

Not-Martin fails to express his surprise that Martin made it this far and the clear reason why, based on his faded pallor. Martin’s face is unreadable. He reacts mechanically without a word, trying to pry the door of the cell. Not-Martin stops him. It would be better if he stayed. His voice is low, like the hum of air flowing through an empty vessel. Martin lets his discomfort show, if only slightly.

Martin: You could have told me that this apathy thing was part of the Lonely.

Not-Martin muses humorlessly that he wouldn’t have been able to abstain from the Entities’ power either way. This way, he has some leverage.

Martin stifles a bitter frown.

NM:  Are you going after him?

Martin: *heavy sigh* Yep.

NM: Take this.

He gives Martin the sharpened steel. He admits that he’s never going to be able to stop Not-Jon. Martin will have a better chance since Not-Jon won’t be expecting him. He hasn’t been watching Martin for a while. If he’s remorseful enough, he might even hold back.

Martin: It’d be smart to take care of you first, wouldn’t it?

The sharp end of the steel gravitates toward his double’s throat.

NM: Well, I think I’d be good for it at this point. But he won’t play fair if you do. I’ll try my best to stay put.

Martin takes a minute to consider.

He leaves.

~

The fog that follows Martin begins to dissipate as he arrives at the wreckage of the Institute at the very top of the island’s interior. The field of loose boards and shrapnel creates a consistent chaos that makes it difficult to distinguish out-of-place shapes. 

He wades further into the wreckage.

Further. Further.

Suddenly, a mass of metal tines and canvas pulls itself deeper into the junkheap with the sound of crunching glass. He follows.

The heap grades down into a steep hill where larger pieces of rooms slowly drift. There, he finds his target half-submerged in the debris. It shoves away slabs of brick wall and window from the center of the pit, making awful noise. It doesn’t appear to notice as Martin approaches under the din.

Dark purple tissue rises and falls beneath the missing ribs on Not-Jon’s right side. Martin readies the steel dagger.

Closer…

Closer…

Closer…

Martin tightens his fingers and plunges the weapon into the gap. Wet reeking soil and maggots spill out, covering his hand.

Nothing else happens. Martin retracts.

The tissue tightens, but the creature ignores him.

Martin looks for another spot, wondering if he could get away with tearing the thing open neck to hip so that it can’t move.

As if reading his mind, the creature raises its head.

NJ: Your hands are cold.

It speaks in a voice nearly unrecognizable. The faint remains of the voice he knows are what freezes him solid.

NJ: You should have turned around while you still had the chance.

Martin readies himself for an attack, but one doesn’t come.

Not-Jon stops. He hoists himself out of the wreckage and looks at a figure cresting the lip of the pit. Martin turns, and an incredulous thought crosses his mind.

Oh my god, is that Jon?

Jon, a dot in the distance, shouts and throws a pipe at the creature. It misses by several feet, but the creature recoils all the same. The trash starts to shift, rapidly increasing the distance between them and Jon. The creature itself dives into the wreckage and out of sight. Jon scrambles forward, hopelessly outpaced by the still expanding ground.

Martin doesn’t move. Or, he doesn’t try to. The world around him twists and loses definition. The myriad images taken by each movement of his eyes suddenly don’t add up. He feels dizzy. He doesn’t move.

When it finally stops, Jon slides in next to him, panting. He steadies himself on Martin’s arm.

Jon: Are you alright? I-I didn’t mean to do it like that. I was just scared I wouldn’t find you again.

Martin: You... you did that?

Jon has to sit down, more than a little dizzy himself. He gets Martin caught up on his strange developments. When he’s finished, he pushes his disheveled hair back and looks up at him. Martin looks positively ghostly to Jon.

Jon: It’s happening to you too, isn’t it?

Martin nods, sitting down next to him. Up close, he can see that Jon’s clothes are torn and stained in more places than they had been before. So are his own. Two scraggy little rats huddling in a monster’s trash yard. He puts down the dagger.

Martin: It didn’t work. He shrugged it off.

Jon winces and lets his head list forward.

Jon: Right. Of course he did.

Martin: I should have been more suspicious when Not-Martin told me to go for it. But I couldn’t… stop myself, I guess.

He swallows hard.

Marin: Turns out he’s as tied in with the Entities as the other Jon, after all. For all we know, they’ve both been having their strings pulled this whole time.

Jon: And I think I know what their masters want.

Jon outlines a theory he’s been formulating since their departure at the waterfall. He’s being marked on purpose to prepare him to replace Not-Jon as their avatar. Not-Jon is dying too quickly, and Not-Martin is too unmotivated. If Martin marks him with the Lonely, him killing Not-Jon would replicate the replacement ritual that killed the first Jonah. He’s already close with the power he has. That’s why the creature was afraid of Jon. Why he tried to separate him from Martin.

Martin observes that they would just be repeating the cycle again. Jon defeatedly says that he doesn’t think they can escape the cycle, but they can mitigate its trajectory from here. If Jon had control of the hellscape, he could let the others go free. Then, they could come back with a cement truck before Jon loses the will to stay in the enigma. He, Not-Martin, and the intruding Entities would be left to die. The rest of them could go on.

Fog thickens around them.

Martin was seriously considering the plan up until that last part. Assuming that he wouldn't make it out alive had excused him from having to think about where this escapade would lead. If he survived, he would have to live on with the guilt of dooming Jon and being stuck as a creature of the Lonely. The Fears might still escape through him. Reflex tells him to push the thought away, but it doesn’t go. It’s too important.

Blood suddenly rushes through his brain, as if he’d slammed the brake at high speed just before he would have rammed into traffic. His pulse pushes the coldness in his veins out into the air.

The sureness of the plan vanishes. It feels like desperate haggling with a devil that controls all the variables.

Martin: No. I can’t. You can’t. It’s not gonna fix it. You said so before.

Jon: It’s too late, Martin. We have to!

Jon’s voice quivers with palpable uncertainty.

Martin is speechless.

The Lonely turns on them, closes in, and swallows them both.

~

The fear that had just gripped Martin materializes. He can’t find Jon or anyone. The more he calls out, the more he can feel the ice in his body, needling through his muscles and bones. He can’t move. His legs are lead. He has to go find Jon.

Move damn, it. Move.

Hot sears on cold as he takes a single step. Every impulse tells him to stop. They warn that he’s giving up on the only power that gives him an edge. He’ll be vulnerable. Killed. Used.

He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want this.

Another step. He nearly falls. He wants to live. They are going to live through this. It’s the only way.

~

Jon appears to be outside. The hellscape has spread. The civilians all around him are suffering in terror. Their screams and writhing forms are muted and gauzy, as if he exists on a plane apart from them.

He isn’t one of them anymore. He did this to them.

His shadow is too long, too large. He looks down, and all we see is color. Above, the Entities fill the sky.

He feels his connection with them as a person identifies an appendage as an extension of themself. They’re not as devious as he had imagined. Dull, abstract amalgams of the fears of the living more than creatures in their own right. Their “voices” are loud, but they don’t command him with speech. They act on impulse. Their base repulsion at impending death and the desperation to feed are only reflections of that which dwells in their creators. In Jon.

It’s human. Almost pitiful. Though, their endless size makes Jon acutely aware that he is their appendage. They pay no heed as he pleads, “Stop… stop… stop… stop.”

The only path clear of victims lies straight ahead of him, stretching on toward another enormous shape on the horizon. He resolves to follow that path to its conclusion. The haunting chorus wanes behind him as he walks. His shadow passes over a sliver of black. The dagger. He picks it up.

The enormous shape ahead begins to shrink, as if retreating further into the distance. Jon quickens pace to catch it. That coward. He’s not going to let it get away.

The shape shrinks further and further and further until…

Not-Jon tries to talk Jon out of it as he approaches. He tells him about the other possibilities he saw for the apocalypse.

Jon doesn’t reply.

Not-Jon says Jon will never be able to stay in the enigma any more than he has been able to entomb himself. He always knew that he should have and tried many times, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The urge to get out and act always won out.

Jon: I’ll risk it.

Not-Jon: You don’t want this.

Jon: I have to.

Not-Jon: No, you don’t. You shouldn’t.

Jon’s expression twitches, but he keeps coming. He can feel his emotions twist and pull him back form the inside. From the Web. From the Eye. He's sick of being manipulated.

NJ: I’m sorry. I never should have laid this all on your shoulders. I thought that if I had the right to torment anyone over this, it was you. But I could hardly have prevented what happened to me any more than you could prevent what’s happening to you. Trying to take control now–believe me, it won’t make you feel better.

Jon lunges.

Jon: Stop groveling. Do you really expect me to just let it happen and pretend I couldn’t have done anything?

Not-Jon recognizes the exhausted contempt in his rival’s voice. Just as it had from a version of Martin he once knew, who had petrified and ground down to become the one he knows now. Just as it had from the friends he lost a lifetime ago.

He could keep trying to scare his younger self out of this, but he suddenly thinks he’s already done enough damage. Instead, he reaches with difficulty into a long-buried vault to offer something more compassionate. He can feel himself tearing apart as he does.

NJ: It doesn’t have to be that dire.

He says that the best successes he ever had were small–trying to help other people through the ordeal rather than directly tackling a force that always outmatched him. It added up, and lives were spared. It helped him keep going.

Jon’s expression grows complicated.

Jon: They won’t be spared if they die at the end.

NJ: They might not.

Jon: Prove it.

He searches his double’s eyes when an answer doesn’t come.

Jon: You don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.

The worn, scarred hands that hold the dagger back tremble with exhaustion.

Not-Jon: No. I… I can’t.

Jon pushes with all his might, the dagger’s edges biting at his hand. But the broken man is still made of iron. Still trying to force him to obey with the power he insists he doesn’t want.

Frustration boils in Jon’s chest. With little hesitation, he burrows into Not-Jon’s mind to force him to give up rather than being coerced himself. To tear away whatever resilience is still holding the creature up.

That’s where he finds it. The obsession that has grown in him like a tumor over decades. There is nothing to hold or take away. It is an absence. An abyssal certainty of doom.

Grasping at the nothing inside of Not-Jon brings Jon an epiphany.

It only makes sense. Thinking that life could continue after the worst-case scenario would contradict the urgency of the mission that keeps him from giving in to the Entities. At the same time, his masters need that fear to manipulate their puppet and sustain themselves.

The cycle turns on that certainty. Questioning it might be the only way out.

Jon could radically, illogically trust the road ahead and hope for the best, making whatever improvements are within his reach. In that way, at least, he cannot be controlled by his fear or despair.

The thought is asinine. It goes against every value of logic he has. The thought of the inherent risk alone is killing him.

Not-Jon reads it in his face, the jagged steel point inches from his chest.

NJ: You understand now, don’t you?

Jon sets his jaw.

Jon: You lied to us–threatened us–because you said it was the only way. But did you actually try trusting us before? Or was that another lie?

NJ: We did. Many times. They always got to you in the end and drove you apart. Most of you didn’t even make it past Prentiss. I had to try something else when I felt the ceiling starting to come down on me.

Jon: So it was more reliable to manipulate us to put us where you wanted us. You didn’t actually intend for us to get killed.

Not-Jon needs a moment to summon another breath.

NJ: Wasn’t planning on it.

Jon: But if it hadn’t worked, you would have done worse.

The creature has to steady itself, but he manages a nod without looking away.

Jon: Because what can’t you afford to do when the alternative is oblivion?

Not-Jon holds his steadfast gaze.

NJ: Would you honestly have done any better if you were me?

Jon: Well, like you said. I don’t have to be you.

————

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Index

[darth-shado]

Azrael's Fic Master List

Here's my (rather long) list of fanfics I have published on ao3 and will be updated in the future.

List is divided into three categories: on-going works, completed works and one-shots.

How to read the list: Title (and link) — Rating — Word count — Brief description.

On-going works

Home: A place in a Galaxy — T — 3,3k — (post tbobf, Dinluke centric)

3 times Tim tried to get Jon and Martin together, and 1 time he realised he didn't have to — T — 2,8k — Co-written with: @.im-gonna-squeet — (post MAG: Fluff, Tim and Sasha being matchmakers)

The stars will be ours (once again) — T (GDoV) — 8k — (post season 4, Virravos and Magefam centric)

Completed works

Edward's Bar and Grill — T — 3,5k — (Ed instead of becoming Kraker decided to deal with Stede leaving him by opening a restaurant)

3 times Aziraphale wanted to kiss Crowley and 1 time he did — G — 1,9k — (Aziraphale throughout 6000 years wanted to kiss someone (Crowley) three times until one day he finally did, Aroace spec Ineffable husbands)

One-shots

Star Wars

Ret'urcye mhi ner kar'taylir darasuum — G (MCD) — 5,7k — (post tbb s2e3, Cody and Codywan centric, based on unused Kenobi script)

Differences in similarities — G — 705 — (Aroace Hunter, discussion about being aroace)

Romantic feelings, are not for everyone. — G (Referenced aphobia) — 584 — (Aroace Din Djarin, implied Din/Cobb and Din/Omera)

Planning under pressure isn't easy — G (Description of sensory overload) — 485 — (post tbb s1e8, Hunter centric)

Trick or treat — G — 477 — (Din & Grogu going shopping for Halloween costumes for Grogu, Modern au)

Forgotten Lullaby — G — 426 — (post Mandalorian chapter 13, additional fluff scene)

Freezing break — G — 295 — (Rey/Rose, Prompt: Rose drags Rey into the freezing cold to make a snowman.)

Omega's story — G — 241 — (Short scene addressing Omega being trans)

Taming hair before the meeting — G — 187 — (Leia/Han, Prompt: Han helping Leia brush her hair after a shower.)

The Magnus Archives

Loss of a family — M (GDoV) — 1,3k — (Fnaf plot written as a statement)

AITA for forcing people to tell me their trauma? — G — 245 — (AITA but it's season 4 of TMA)

Genshin Impact

Lovely crime — G — 907 — (Heizou/Kazuha, detective x criminal)

Heikazu week 2022 — G — 1k

Good Omens

Ineffable morning ��� G — 531 — (Ineffable husbands fluff)

Would you like to move in with me? — G — 251 — (Aziraphale asks Crowley if he was to live with him)

The Dragon Prince

Growing flowers — G — 397 — (Claudia's and Terry's first meeting)

Escape from the mirror — T (self-harm but for a spell) — 339 — (Viren frees Aaravos, post season 2)

MCYT (not rpf)

Welcome back gift — G — 1k — (Mumbo returns to Hermitcraft, Waffle Duo reunion)

(Not so good) Memories — G (GDoV) — 810 — (Double life desert duo angst)

Sherlock (BBC)

I love you for who you are. — T — 332 — (Johnlock centric, Asexual Sherlock, Coming out)

Stargazing with consulting detective — G — 328 — (Johnlock, Prompt: John and Sherlock spending the night on the perfect hill for stargazing.)

Honkai: Star Rail

How to deal with nightmares — T — 1,3k — (Dan Heng/March 7th/Trailblazer, Pre-relationship, Literally sleeping together)

Sons of The Forest

Simple Gestures — G — 632 — (Kelvin & Tim & Virginia (can be platonic or romantic), Kelvin and Virginia bonding)

Our Flag Means Death

Nightmare worst than a Kraken — G — 184 — (GentleBeard, fix-it au, episode 10 is just a dream)

Marvel

Soft Spot(s) — G — 448 — (Fluff and Crack, Lego99)

Baldur's Gate 3

When Astarion saw himself for the first time since becoming a vampire — G — 815 — (Astarion & or x Artist!Reader)

[an-aura-about-you]

July 25th, 2014

Litmus Test

From the Files of the STP

This is the entry that has the spicy stuff from the fic, and by that I mean sex pollen type issues of consent and (since this is the horror type of sex pollen) sexual violence/injury as well as some monster insect-related body horror and a bit of gun violence. If you want to check it out but want to skip the worst bits, I've marked the beginning and end of those segments with a + . If you want to give the whole thing a skip, I totally understand. For everyone else, here you go:

Martin isn’t entirely sure why he chose to make dinner instead of ordering out. He’s considering calling for delivery in spite of being in the middle of chopping vegetables for a salad. It’s unusually hot, even for the summer, and turning on the oven is out of the question. In any case, he puts the knife down for now, his focus fractured. He sighs and clicks on the kettle. Ideally, some tea will soothe both him and his husband.

Martin’s lived with Jon long enough to know how wound up he gets about the end of July, and for good reason. As the 28th draws nearer, as the Ethereal Realm begins to permeate the Physical Realm, Jon can’t help but absorb at least some of those energies. Most of the time, it gets processed as nightmares. And most of the time, Martin has been able to comfort Jon and help him get back to a more restful sleep. But it looks to be building up particularly bad this year. Maybe it’s too romantic of an idea, but he kind of hoped the joy of being newlyweds would help buffer some of that, would make it easier. No such luck, it seems.

The kettle clicks off, and Martin goes to the living room. “Jon? What kind of tea would you like, love?”

Jon is curled up on the sofa, hugging his knees to his chest. He lifts his head and says, “Don’t know. Not sure I can really drink any tea right now.” He unfolds one of his arms, trembling slightly as he moves, and holds out a hand. “Could you come here, please, Martin?”

“Of course,” Martin answers, slowly stepping towards him. “What do you need from me?”

“I’m not sure,” he answers. “It’s… it’s like it’s prickling all over me. Like the heat. Like I’m about to catch fire at any moment. And I need to be pulled out, but it’s not like I can be pulled out of myself.”

Martin reaches out with his own hand, but he stops short of actually touching Jon. “Do you want me to hold you?” he whispers.

Jon looks at how close their hands are, enough to feel the heat between them but still not making contact yet. “Please?” he whispers back.

Martin gently takes Jon’s hand in his own, but he nearly pulls it back when Jon makes a soft, wounded sound. The only thing keeping him from doing so is Jon’s vice-like grip. “Jon?”

“I- I don’t understand it,” Jon tells him, getting to his feet. “As soon as you touched me, it’s like a hunger opened up in me. And your touch starves and sates it in equal measure. I don’t know what to do.” He makes a breathless little laugh. “It’s such a strange way to be scared.”

Martin’s breath catches, and he resists the urge to squeeze Jon’s hand as he doubts it would be reassuring at this time. “Are you afraid of me?”

Jon hurriedly shakes his head no. “Of course not. You’re the one thing I’m sure I’m not afraid of.” He reaches up as though about to cup Martin’s cheek. “Are you afraid? Of me? Or anything?”

“I guess,” Martin answers, “in that I’m worried for you and don’t know what to do.”

“I still want you to hold me,” Jon says, closing the distance and pressing his hand to Martin’s cheek.

Martin gasps at Jon’s burning touch, so hot he’s surprised Jon hasn’t combusted. “You might have a fever, love,” he says, and he checks Jon’s forehead with the wrist of his free hand.

“I don’t know if I’m sick,” Jon tells him, leaning into the touch. “Maybe? I’ve never been sick like this before. Please, please just hold me.”

“I don’t know if that will help,” Martin says even as he gingerly places his hands on Jon’s shoulders.

“But I can’t think of anything else for it,” Jon protests, wringing his hands into Martin’s shirt and pulling himself into his husband’s arms.

Martin sets his hands on Jon’s back when he presses in close, gently rubbing his shoulders. “H-hey, okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” he murmurs. He cradles the back of Jon’s head and gives him a soft kiss on his fevered brow.

Jon shudders and claws at Martin’s upper arms, gripping tight. “Martin,” he half-gasps, tipping his head and leaning up for a proper kiss.

Martin tentatively meets the kiss, and when he does a new understanding rushes through him. The heat that has built up over the day strikes him with a strange ache. The kiss smashes through him, makes him burn stronger, brighter, hotter. He doesn’t know when it will end. All he knows is that he needs to feed it.

-

Gertrude is not an unreasonable woman. If there’s a solution that doesn’t involve explosives, she’s willing to hear it out. Especially because she’s not even sure blowing up Stonehenge will work in this case. It’d make her feel better to blow up Stonehenge, something about the finality of destruction. And if it does the job, it’d be worth the loss of such a historic landmark. But for now, she has to put the idea aside.

“If you really want to blow yourself up to stop an invading Ancient, I won’t stop you,” Gerard promises. “But we do have a serviceable banishment ritual for once.”

“Which is all well and good if we know which Ancient is invading,” Gertrude says. “C4 is the great equalizer.”

“Because setting DeFoe Manor on fire took care of the Chzo problem,” Gerard points out. “Besides, you always like waiting until it gets underway, make sure it can’t get started again anytime soon. It could give us some time to find hints about which one’s trying to get in.”

“Probably not Chzo,” Gertrude guesses. “Not unless he’s making an early start of it. But if he is, the C4 might not work out anyway. Knowing him, he’d probably enjoy it.”

The two start their investigation of the landmark, vigilant for any signs of cult activity to go along with the creature activity. Some try to wear a human face or vocalize the way a person might. But the illusion shatters when a buzzer makes a startled cry of pain or a face morphs into a huge fist. Gunshots ring out, those of the world of magick still vulnerable to the perils of technology. More are sure to come, but they clear out the worst of the lot to buy a brief reprieve.

There are some crudely painted runes and scattered papers with writings dedicated to their gods. It doesn’t take much reading for either Gertrude or Gerard to figure out it’s not Chzo. Half the documents read like worshipful medical journals. The other half read like someone decided the Marquis de Sade was a prophet.

“You think Jack Frehorn and the Marquis de Sade ever met?” Gerard wonders aloud.

“I try not to think about that at all,” Gertrude answers. “So, disease and lust.”

“Sound like Gnix and Byarla working together.”

“But which rune to complete the banishment ritual?”

Gerard lifts up some pages and says, “We can probably find the runes in these. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out which one’s doing the invading.”

“That should be relatively easy to figure out,” Gertrude answers, getting out her phone. “The Ministry has the perfect litmus test by pure coincidence.”

Gerard’s eyes narrow in confusion before it clicks. “Which one are you calling?”

“Trilby seems like the best place to start.” Gertrude holds the phone up to her ear.

“Trilby here,” Trilby answers on the other end, the volume up high enough that Gerard can hear.

“Gertrude Robinson,” Gertrude returns. “Anything going on in London?”

“Yes, I can read my phone’s screen, Robinson,” Trilby retorts. “Not that I know of.”

“And you? Are you well?”

“No, actually,” Trilby answers. “I seem to be ill?”

“You seem to be ill,” Gertrude prods. “How?”

“Some kind of fever. And a strange sort of… itching is the only way I can think to describe it. It’s making me pretty nauseous.”

“Any boils, blisters, things of that nature?”

There’s a moment of static-y quiet and the rustle of clothes as Trilby apparently examines himself. “Not that I can see,” he says, though his breathing becomes more labored. “Fever’s weird, though. No chills. Just hot. Like I’m on fire.”

“Keep us posted with anything else you learn,” Gertrude says.

“Why?” Trilby asks. “Where are you?”

Before Gertrude explains, she puts the phone to her chest and turns to Gerard. “Call Jonathan or Martin. I’m not getting enough information from Trilby alone.”

Gerard gets out his own phone, shaking his head. “Should have called them first,” he says as he pulls up his contacts.

-

+

Martin isn’t entirely sure how he and Jon ended up on their living room floor. It started with a kiss, and that turned into kissing, but he can’t pinpoint the when or how of losing balance and pinning Jon beneath him. It reminds him of the first time Jon told him he loved him.

But this moment, this almost feels like reliving it but without the unexpected sorrow. Just this perfect moment with his husband. “I love you, Jon,” he whispers, breath hot and hands sliding up Jon’s sides. He grazes his teeth along his jaw before pulling his shirt out of the way and biting his neck.

Jon makes a broken cry in response, dragging his nails down Martin’s back and writhing beneath him. “Martin,” he whimpers. “Martin, please…”

Martin props himself up on his arms, groaning at the friction. There’s a strange, cold trickle in the back of his mind, something reminding him that this is unusual, but it vanishes at the feel of Jon’s fingers brushing against his chest as he unbuttons his shirt. He returns the gesture, ripping Jon’s shirt open and sending buttons scattering across the floor.

Jon leans up, bare skin touching as he does, and he crushes his mouth against Martin’s. He pulls Martin’s shirt away as he bites his lower lip.

“Ow!” Martin yelps, half-jumping back and touching his bitten lip. His fingertips come back bloody, and the cold awareness trickles in again.

Jon sucks in a breath. “Oh, I’m sorry, my love,” he whispers, taking Martin’s hand in his and kissing the fingertips before softly brushing his lips against Martin’s in repentance.

Martin eagerly kisses back, the feeling gone just as fast and replaced by that all-consuming heat. He takes hold of Jon’s leg, pulling it up and over his hip. He caresses his palm down Jon’s thigh as he leans forward again, coming down against Jon in a grind.

Jon reaches between them as they resume their frantic kissing, making a muffled whine as he fumbles with undoing his and Martin’s trousers. “I can’t-” he tries to explain.

Martin groans and takes Jon’s hands in his, pinning them above his head. “Oh fuck,” he ardently whispers before diving in for another kiss, teeth clacking together so hard he might have chipped one.

Jon arches up, gasping into Martin’s mouth as the two try to match each other’s thrusting, the urge to move stronger than the desire to remove the clothes in their way. Just as Jon hooks his other leg around Martin, they’re both stopped by the buzz of a phone on vibrate going off.

+

Martin asks, “What?” at the same time Jon asks, “Your phone?”

Martin reaches for the phone as Jon resumes peppering his face with kisses. “It’s fucking Gerry?” he asks aloud and accidentally swipes to answer.

“Martin!” Gerry says on the line the moment the call connects. “Are you and Jon alright? He’s not answering his phone.”

“Yeah, yeah we’re fine, Gerry,” Martin answers, not realizing how out of breath he was until he started talking. “Look, is this important?”

“Potentially stop the apocalypse important,” Gerry answers.

Martin doesn’t hear the very next thing Gerry says, accidentally letting out a moan when Jon bites his earlobe.

Gerry pauses a moment before asking, “Martin, are you and Jon fucking?”

Martin sputters and gently pushes Jon back on the floor so he could stop being distracted for the moment. “Why are you even asking tha-”

“Byarla. Lust elemental trying to invade,” Gerry cuts him off. “We think. If we’re right about that, stop fucking. Or if you weren’t, don’t start or you might never stop fucking.”

This time the cold trickling feeling crashes through Martin like being hit by the wave of a flash flood, and he pulls himself off of Jon completely.

Jon trembles, his shirt falling off his shoulders and pooling at his wrists as he sits up. “Martin?”

Martin looks at him, taking in the confused passion, the undercurrent of fear that had been channeling itself through the physical. During the pause, he can hear Gerry and Gertrude exchanging words on the other side of the phone followed up by a gunshot. Martin and Jon flinch at the sound, which is abruptly cut off by the call dropping.

“What the hell is going on?” Jon asks, his words steadier now than they had been all night.

As Martin tries to gather the words to explain everything, the noises of their building filter in. Either their neighbors had been quiet before or they had been too caught up in their own activities to notice it until now. They’re surrounded by the sounds of beds creaking, bodies scrabbling on the floor, and moans and cries caught somewhere between pleasure and pain.

Martin swallows and decides simple is best for now: “Probably a lust elemental?”

“Right.” Jon gets to his feet. “That, th-that explains some things.” He fixes his trousers and hunts for his phone. “Ah, I- I’m going to get some fresh air at the window and check my messages.”

Martin nods and follows suit, trying to block out the noises from the other side of the walls. He focuses instead on the sound of Jon’s footsteps, of putting his voicemail on speakerphone, and of the window being pushed open.

“Good lord,” Jon breathes.

“What is it?” Martin asks, going to join him. But then he sees it.

+

The foot traffic on the streets below has come to a complete stop. Couples and groups are stripping and embracing, moving in frenzied thrusts and scratches and bites sinking into flushed skin. Some are touching themselves, tearing at their chests and clawing at their crotches to overstimulation and bloody rawness. And there are huge insect-like creatures scrambling into the pornographic display with the humans. Buzzers and scuttlers penetrate the writhing bodies and lay their eggs until their impregnated victims are so weighed down they must crawl on their bellies, their moans of pain muffled from their faces crushed against the pavement.

+

They’ve seen enough. Jon shuts the window as his messages go on, member after member of the STP and the Ministry asking if they’re okay or if they’re aware that London’s descending into a terrifying orgy. The only blessing is that awareness of the situation is lending their coworkers some measure of control, though it’s hard to tell how long that will last. More than one voice wavered with barely restrained arousal.

“We need to barricade ourselves and try to get back in touch with Gerry,” Jon says, already looking for anything he can move to block the windows. “And now that I know what we’re actually dealing with, I need to try countering it as much as I can until they can complete the banishment ritual, assuming they’re still able to do that. Will you be able to block the door?”

Martin nods, head clearing thanks to the point of focus. “Jon?”

“Yes, Martin?”

“What do we do if Gerry and Gertrude fail?”

Jon opens his mouth a moment, closes it, then says, “I don’t know. I could go to Stonehenge, try to complete it myself? I have no idea how much time I’d have if that’s the case. I’m assuming not much if London’s already falling.”

“Jon, I won’t let you go alone,” Martin insists. “If you go, I go. That’s what I promised you.”

Jon cups Martin’s face in his hands, no longer feverish. “Martin, it won’t be safe.”

Martin returns the gesture, brushing his thumbs over Jon’s cheekbones. “It’s not safe here, either. If we can’t be safe, we might as well be together.”

Jon stares at him, mirroring the same soothing act of smoothing his thumbs over Martin’s cheekbones. He then leans up like he’s about to give him a kiss, but stops and reconsiders it, a fair assessment considering the threat of Byarla. Jon then takes one of his hands back, presses a kiss there, and then places his fingertips on Martin’s lips.

Martin takes Jon’s hand in his, knowing they have to hurry but grateful for this moment they have. With his other hand, he returns the gesture, his fingertips carrying a kiss to his husband’s lips. No other words need to be spoken, not right now.

With that, they pull away and get to their work.

-

“Fuck!” Gerry calls, looking over his shoulder at the remains of the entity Gertrude shot, the fat man’s humanoid shape melting away to a formless blob with a final deep, unsettling chuckle.

“You need to stay aware of your surroundings, Gerard,” Gertrude admonishes.

“Yes, thank you, by the way Byarla’s invading and with any luck I stopped Jon and Martin from fucking to death,” Gerry says.

“Thanks for the valuable contribution.” Gertrude holsters her gun. “Shall we press on?”

The two move to cover each other. Gerry takes in every breath around him, every shift, every tiny hint of a sound. If Gertrude hadn’t been here, the fat man would’ve gotten the drop on him. He can’t afford any other lapses in focus or coordination.

Gerry turns back to Gertrude when he hears her cock her gun, but only after he’s sure his side is clear and only for a splitsecond. She makes a gesture with her free hand, some kind of sign language? She moves her thumb this way and that over her lips before moving her hand outward as if bracketing something with her thumb and forefinger. He turns after another check just as she lowers her gun, finding a man already waiting at the bottom of the steps and likewise holstering a firearm.

“Friend of yours?” Gerry asks Gertrude.

“Professionally speaking,” Gertrude confirms.

The old man eyes Gerry, but he doesn’t take up his gun again. “Don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

“Dangerous words when a lust elemental’s invading,” Gerry counters. “But I’ll pass, thanks. Gertrude can confirm: only professional interest in Ancients here.”

“Gerard, this is Adelard Dekker,” Gertrude introduces, glossing over Gerry’s retort and continuing her descent. “Dekker, this is Gerard Keay.”

Dekker gives him a shallow, professional nod.

Gerry’s phone buzzes. He glances at the notification and finds two texts from Martin, one with an attachment and one begging to know if he’s still alive. “Our contacts have sent me an update on the situation and asked for one in return.”

“We’ll cover you,” Gertrude says, arming herself once more.

Gerry checks the attachment, a photo of the streets of London. Yeah, that’s pretty undeniable proof that it’s a lust elemental. He sends a quick reply that yes, he and Gertrude are still alive and yes, they’re still on it. He shoves his phone back in his pocket. “Well, now we’ve got photographic evidence just to get rid of any lingering doubt. London’s busy playing Fuck-Marry-Kill only they forgot ‘Marry.’”

Gertrude hums. “The Ancients might be beyond our comprehension, but apparently subtlety is beyond theirs. At this point, the question is who’s going to banish Byarla?”

“I���m not about to miss out on the fun,” Dekker says. “But I wouldn’t mind comparing notes before I go.”

Gerry stands guard while Gertrude and Dekker talk logistics, going over the banishment ritual and the rune needed to fill it out. The agreement is Dekker will carry out the ritual, practicing each rune until he’s certain he’s got them individually and in sequence. There will be a fight beyond that with something as powerful as an Ancient, but the ritual makes it possible and keeps the fight out of the Physical Realm. If he fails, Gerry is next to attempt on the basis that he’s more capable in a fight. (Gerry mentally calls bullshit, but he doesn’t have a better counterargument and somebody has to be next in line.) If he fails, Gertrude is using the C4.

Once everything is set, Dekker gives his farewell.

“Try not to die,” Gertrude says.

“I either will or won’t,” Dekker replies. “I have no intention of experiencing a little death right now.”

Gerry snerks at that. “Won’t Byarla be disappointed: inviting you to a worldwide orgy only to find out you won’t come.”

Gertrude arches an eyebrow and says, “You’re the one who turned him down.”

Dekker cocks his gun in preparation. “Now that I know you actually have a sense of humor, I’ll have to come back.”

Gerry wasn’t expecting all the jokes, but he appreciates them more and more as he and Gertrude sit in their vigil. There is the occasional creature to destroy, and at this point it’s just a matter of waiting for them to either run out or, in the case of catastrophic failure, overwhelm them. He can’t imagine things being much better for Dekker. Everything they see here is a limb of the Ancient reaching out to them, but it’s a forced manifestation, a glimpse that does no more to tell of the whole than a square might convey the shape of a cube to a flat world. There’s only so far the human mind can bend. Even if Dekker is able to return, he might spend the rest of his life trying to convey upward but not northward.

It is quiet and still for long enough that it’s a miracle when Gerry doesn’t shoot at the first sign of movement. He hears Gertrude likewise ready herself to shoot, but both of them pause just in time.

Dekker has clawed his way out of the depths of Stonehenge, injured but alive.

Gertrude makes the same sign she did before.

Dekker returns it with a two finger salute.

“Glad to see you’ve still got your mind,” Gertrude says. “And Byarla?”

“Done,” he answers. “For now.”

Gerry gets to work helping Dekker up. The worst of his injuries is a broken leg, but they don’t have the means to splint it. It’s going to be a considerable walk to the car and then a trip to what will likely be a crowded hospital, but at least these concerns are human matters.

[webster-max]

AND since I’m still thinking of time travel fics, what I wouldn’t do for one where s5 Jon, still satiated from a globe’s trauma poured directly into his brain, can initially be so kind and gentle and helpful. He drives s1 Jon nuts with this, because s1 Jon has never been any of these things. S5 Martin is so proud of his Jon, and Sasha and Tim are so pleased to know their insecure and defensive friend really does have the heart of gold they always knew he had- he just needs time and comfort to express it.

And then. S5 Jon gets hungry. Even the world’s trauma is a finite supply, and with time, he degrades. He holds back, he resists it, but the worst of him is laid bare. Perhaps he goes after avatars again, perhaps even the same ones he ate up when the world was his. Typical that michael managed to be killed so many times, really; by the distortion, by helen, by Jon in another world and now Jon again.

Perhaps he even feeds on his archival staff, the same he never wanted to hurt in the first place and who he especially didn’t want to hurt now he knows better. Ultimately it’s utilitarian. A blood donation to a leach. They can’t be hurt by the nightmares since they’re still bound to the archives, and they still know how to sever that bond, if they want.

Perhaps Martin’s hungry too. There were two domains fuelling him, and now there is a chasm. Surrounded by lonely people, his own lonely younger self his his equally lonely friends, perhaps Martin just longs to open himself up to that place and show them what life could be when you’re truly alone.

Eventually, that’s how it ends. Martin takes his Jon to the lonely, and that’s the last their younger selves ever know of them. It’s a relief for them all, especially Jon. There’s no relief from the wondering, though.

After all, now everyone knows that Jon, for better or worse, has potential.

[see-arcane]

Final Thoughts

I honestly don’t know how to feel about it. On the one hand, it wasn’t The Absolute Worst version I could have dreamed up. On the other hand, it felt a lot like getting a bullet to the head rather than the expected slow agony of a Jigsaw trap. On the third hand, it just...

Well, yes, it was always going to be a tragedy. But beyond a satisfyingly curt [SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PROMOTION] on Jonah Magnus, Jon and Martin didn’t get anything at the end. No last second victory, no salt-in-the-eye to the Web. Nothing. We get to see exactly why the Web made Jon so forgetful of the lighter--blanking on Georgie taking it the episode before--and whatever Jon might have been planning against the Web, against the Big Fear Move, it was all torn away before he could even try anything.

The Web has presumably won its apotheosis. And it never, ever suffered a single consequence. We can guess that it likely never will. Which really is incredibly on point as far as existential/cosmic horror goes. The Cthulhu Mythos and similar flavors of grand scale horror are fearsome on a solely supernatural and unfathomable level. But this?

This we can and do fathom. We know exactly what the Fear(s) wants. We know what it is capable of. What it will do. And that isn’t where our misery comes from: it’s the fact that there was no way to win. No way to change anything. Nothing to do but pass it on to the next victim; or victims, plural. That’s what makes me sit back in agonized awe of it. Not any of the phobias made solid. Just the pure crushing defeat of it all. It’s a deflating, stagnant recognition of helplessness that twists the knife far worse than any mere bogeyman. 

Jon did everything he could and failed. The only plan that ‘went right’ was the one the Web decided upon, which was designed to inflict itself and its kin on other worlds. The Only Success Allowed is the Success of Your Tormentor. 

God. God. 

I will say I liked the implications of that last scene; that Simon Fairchild and the rest of the depowered sadistic avatars got what was coming to them. (Much as I still love her, I honestly hope Annabelle Cane suffered some severe Mastermind Buyer’s Remorse when she realized she was left high and dry by her patron. Whoops. (For Oliver’s sake, I hope he was either spared or was finally allowed to die peacefully.))

Much as I loathe all the “Hope-hope-hope-Let’s-make-ourselves-feel-better-by-pretending-we-don’t-know-we-willingly-fucked-over-another-infinity’s-worth-of-victims-hope-hope-hope-!” talk from the survivors, I do appreciate the fact that it is an ambiguous “end” for Jon and Martin.

No bodies likely means they went with the Panopticon down the drain. Martin had to kill Jon to make that happen. Which can mean one of two things.

1) Martin is with the Fears alone--hello brand new Lonely avatar status--unless he found a way to end himself too. That’s the short version. Very neat.

Which makes me doubt it. So we turn to:

2) Jonathan “Too Inhuman to Stay Dead” Sims bounced back again. This isn’t just wishful thinking talking. Not counting his survival post-Unknowing, he was still the most powerful thing on two legs due to the Eye and the Change ritual. Martin being able to kill him made nightmare logic sense--but in the presence of the Fears, sans Terminus, death remains a temporary state. 

Jonah absolutely fucked off to the Corpse Roots in those final moments, may he rest in piss.

But Jon? Jon who was willing to sacrifice everything of himself since day one and was long past fear of dying? Jon who is the Eye’s Chosen Pupil? Jon who I’m sure in my bitterest heart of hearts is still far too ripe for torment for the Web to just let go, free from its strings at last?

I think this ‘death’ was as permanent for him as hitting the off switch on a tape recorder.

Which is all a long way of saying I think Jon is still alive with the Fears in their new playground, along with Martin. I honestly believe that. I believe this without any of the bells and whistles of wishful thinking. Because I frankly can’t tell--or don’t want to tell--if survival was a good or bad thing. Just that it’s very likely.

Thank you for the nightmare, Jonny Sims. It was horrible. I loathed it. I feared it.

I cannot wait to listen again. 

Supplemental:

For what it’s worth, Jon did confirm one important thing for us post-Pupil. The Web is making assumptions. Theorizing about what waits for it on the other side of Hill Top Road. It is likely we and all our interdimensional neighbors are there, true. But I do like to think that the fact of its obliviousness to what’s actually waiting there means it will meet something unexpected. 

To borrow one of the Web’s favorite words, perhaps it is another smorgasbord of waiting victims, free for the taking.

Perhaps not. 

Perhaps the Fears are not alone. 

Perhaps, even if we do not get to hear it, there is some catharsis waiting on the other end of the chasm. A frightful realization made too late that perhaps the Fears were only ever a big fish in its own small pond.

And now that the Web has swam the Fears out into the open ocean with no way back, perhaps now is when they realize they were never the apex predators they thought they were. Only a schoolyard bully faced with the sudden presence of a threat, or threats, infinitely greater than themselves.

Perhaps they have finally knocked on the wrong door. And what lurks on the other side has happily, hungrily welcomed them in. 

[ghostbustermelanieking]

cracks

Sasha feels the moment the change happens. Something electric in the air, wire going taut. Something she hasn't felt properly in three years. She has nightmares that night, the worst she's had in a long time, the kind that have you shooting up screaming in bed, and when she wakes up, she just knows, somehow. That hasn't happened in a long time. 

She finds a tape on her kitchen table. A new one. The last one. She doesn't even need to listen to it to know it's the last one. And she has a voice-mail on her phone from Annabelle Cane. 

She calls Tim first, right then, at one a.m., and he picks up. She knew he would. She knows he felt the change, too. "We have to go," she says. "Right now. We've got to go back. Something's happened."

---

Tim knows this trip and he knows what lies on the other end of it. He made the reverse of this trip over a year ago: tired and quivering in the passenger seat of Sasha's car, unable to stop staring at her, explosion still echoing in his ears. It's been a long time since then, but it's still hard to shake the memories. He remembers it all well enough.

"Something's changed," he says, in the silence of the car. 

Sasha's fingers are tapping frantically against the wheel. "You feel it, too, don't you?" 

Tim winces. It's like a weight returned, like he's gotten a burden off of his back in the time since he woke up here, and now it's… now it's back. "Of course I feel it," he says. "I thought I'd never feel it again. I… I thought we were safe here!"

"I didn't think it was over," says Sasha, hushed. "All this time. I-I knew there had to be a reason we ended up here, i-instead of somewhere else… o-or nowhere at all…"

"I thought we left it all behind," says Tim. His voice comes out choked; his hands are jammed together in his lap. "I thought it was over, I thought we were safe, I-I thought we could… I thought we could move on…"

"Did you really?" Sasha says. "After all this time, a-after you came through alone, without Jon… did you think we'd never see any of this again?"

"We're in a different fucking world," Tim says, strangled. "I thought that'd be enough."

Tim stopped listening to the tapes a long time ago. Tim couldn't bear to hear it, the mess left behind; he didn't want to think about it, wasn't supposed to think about it, it's gone, it's over, he's done. That's what dying is. He doesn't want to sit and listen to Jon and Martin and the others suffering and slipping away and becoming strangers. It's too hard. Sasha lets him know, every now and then, that they're still doing okay, or whatever resembles that back there. That they're still alive—that Jon and Martin are together, which is strange to hear, but Tim is glad for them, he is. (He's missed them. Waking up here, alive somehow, with the Fears gone, and his Sasha alive, and some version of Danny alive and all right… since then, since everything, he's genuinely started to miss them. Miss the way things were before everything went wrong. Miss when they all used to be friends. He misses his friends.)

"Hey." Sasha covers his hand with hers. "If this is too much for you, we don't have to… I mean, I can take you back. I don't want to… pull you back in if you don't want it." 

Tim chews at his lower lip, stares down at his hands. It's tempting, to say the word. To go home and be out of this for good. 

He can't do it, though. If things are really changing, if the things that touched their world could possibly touch this one, do what it did there here… 

"No," he says. "N-no, if… if what you said is true, then I… then we…" 

"We have to check," Sasha says, hushed. Her hands clutching at the wheel. "We have to. We do. If there's any chance…"

"Any chance," Tim repeats. "Yeah. Let's do it." He squeezes her hand, tells himself it will all go all right. Ahead, there are signs for Oxford on the road. 

---

There is a house on Hill Top Road, looming and dark and just a little bit wrong. Tim and Sasha know this house, know it well. They woke up in the house, in the basement, several years ago—Sasha alone, Tim with Sasha waiting for him. Both of them tangled in a mess of recorder tape. 

There are people in the basement now. Sasha leads them through the dark, cobwebby halls, down to the bottom, and Tim can immediately see the two human-like shapes in the dark of the room, lying huddled on the floor.

He halfway hopes it isn't them. Doesn't like seeing how still the shapes are. But Sasha shines her torch on their faces and this confirms it. Tim sucks his breath in sharp through his teeth. 

Jon and Martin lie there, tangled in a fierce embrace (arms coiled around the other's necks, legs tangled, foreheads together), both of them tangled in the tape, both of them covered in blood. There is a knife in Jon's side, dust and tear tracks and more blood on their still faces. They aren't moving, their eyes shut. 

Sasha swears, loudly. "Jon? Martin?" she says, nearly shouting, and neither of them answer. Neither of them stir. Sasha stumbles a few steps back and mutters, "S-she didn't say… no one who's come through has been…" 

Tim isn't breathing. Can't take his eyes off their stone-still bodies. Can't stop wondering if this is it, if they've finally all died like he always thought they would. He'd thought Jon would die with him, when he pressed the button on the detonator, felt something like sick relief push through when Sasha had told him he hadn't. 

"I-I'm going to call an ambulance," says Sasha, pulling out her phone and going for the stairs. 

Tim goes to his knees, beside the entangled forms on the floor, and reaches for Jon and Martin, to take their pulses. He can't get to their wrists—the tape is tangled too thickly, and the grip the two of them have on each other is too strong, anyways. Dead or alive, they aren't letting go. So Tim reaches for their necks instead, fumbles to find the pulse point under their jaws. He's mumbling something under his breath, something nonsensical—maybe an apology, maybe a plea. He feels like he hasn't taken a breath in many long minutes—can't stop thinking that if this is it, if they died after everything, after he and Sasha somehow managed to live… 

It doesn't matter. Tim presses two fingers to Jon's neck, and then Martin's, and he finds what he is looking for: two heartbeats, pulsing weakly, but as steady as anything. They're alive. 

[wordsintimeandspace]

The Cat Incident

There’s a cat in the Archives. Jon adores it, everyone else adores Jon, and Martin might be falling a little bit in love.

Jon/Martin, rated G, ~1800 words. Read on AO3!

Oh no, Martin thinks as he catches a glimpse of a fluffy orange tail right before it disappears down the stairs towards the Archives. Oh no, it’s going to be the dog incident all over again.

With a groan and a muttered curse he races down the stairs after the cat. It’s just his luck that this would happen twice, but maybe he can still do some damage control.

Just as he makes it to the bottom of the stairs he sees the cat again - just a few meters down the corridor, opposite from the door to Document Storage where Martin has been living for the past week. It sniffs curiously at a box of statements deposited there, but startles at Martin’s approaching footsteps. Without warning, it darts off into the direction of the stacks.

“Come back,” Martin whines and dashes after it.

There’s no sign of the orange fur when Martin gets into the stacks, but it’s no surprise. The stacks are a maze and, to be frank, a complete mess. There’s boxes everywhere, together with folders and loose papers stuffed into every corner. It looks like a cat’s dream, and Martin’s worst nightmare.

“Pspsps,” Martin whispers as he slowly ventures into the stacks. “Come here. You can’t get me fired, not after I’ve been feeding you tuna every day.”

There’s a quiet meow from the other side of the room and Martin’s heart skips a beat. As quickly as he can, he tiptoes down the aisle between the shelves towards the sound. Once again he catches just a glimpse of the tail as the cat disappears beneath a shelf.

Martin lets out a long sigh, and immediately drops to the floor to peer beneath it. The cat is curled up in the corner, looking at him with wide eyes and its ears turned back. Martin softens at the sight.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry I scared you. Will you come out?”

He holds out his hand, but the cat just presses itself more firmly to the ground. “Come on, please.”

“What are you doing?” Tim suddenly says somewhere behind him and Martin jumps, his heart stopping a beat.

With a curse, he pushes himself back to his knees and whirls around to find Tim in the corridor, an eyebrow raised.

“Christ, Tim. Don’t scare me like that,” Martin wheezes, a hand pressed to his chest.

“Sorry. But seriously, what’s going on? Everything alright? It’s not the worms again, is it?”

“No- it’s...” Martin lets out a trembling breath, nervously glancing around to make sure Jon is not within earshot. “There’s a cat hiding down there.”

Tim’s other eyebrow shoots up. “What, really?”

“It was an accident. It’s- it’s a stray that lives around the Institute. I feed it sometimes. It just slipped inside with me.”

To his surprise, Tim suddenly grins and claps his hands together. “Oh, that’s fantastic,” he says gleefully. “I’ll go fetch Jon.”

Martin freezes in horror. “Wha- no! Tim! You know what happened last time. He will, I don’t know, probably change his mind about letting me stay here. Or just fire me for getting an animal into the Archives again.”

Tim’s smile softens, but there’s still something mischievous there. “Don’t worry. He won’t.”

“But-”

“Martin.” Tim steps closer, resting a hand on Martin’s shoulder for a moment. “Trust me. You want Jon to see this.”

Before Martin can figure out an answer, Tim disappears back between the shelves. Martin curses and buries his face in his hands. He doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve all this. He takes a few deep breaths, gulps down the panic rising in his throat, and drops back to the ground. Maybe he can still solve this before Jon appears to chew him out.

The cat is still crouching beneath the shelf. This time, it hesitantly comes closer as Martin stretches out his hand. With bated breath Martin watches how the cat sniffs his fingers. Finally its posture relaxes, and it bumps its head against Martin’s palm with a quiet, friendly meow.

Martin takes his chance. He grabs the cat before it can get spooked again and pulls it out from under the shelf. Cradling it in his arms he rises to his feet, but as soon as he turns he finds himself face to face with Jonathan Sims.

Martin freezes. Before he can panic properly, he notices that something is startlingly different about Jon.

There’s no frown on his face, no sign of the tension he always carries with him. Instead he looks at Martin with sheer adoration and fondness, a soft smile on his lips and a gleam in his eyes. Martin’s heart skips a beat. He didn’t know Jon could look at someone like this. Especially not when that someone was Martin. For a long moment, Martin can only stare. His cheeks grow hot and his heart picks up a beat and there’s a flutter in his stomach and-

 Oh.

 Oh, no.

“Oh, look at you,” Jon says in a tone that Martin can only describe as adoring. “What a handsome cat.”

He steps forward to take the cat from Martin’s arms. Still in shock, Martin can’t do anything but let it happen. The realization that Jon has been looking at the cat and not at Martin hits him suddenly, hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs. Still, the warm feeling in his chest doesn’t dissipate.

“Where does it come from?” Jon asks, pulling Martin from his thoughts.

“Oh, um, it’s- it’s a stray,” Martin stutters. “Jon, I’m so sorry. It just brushed past me when I came in.”

“A stray, hm?” Jon muses as he scratches the cat behind the ear. It leans into Jon’s touch, purring loudly. “Come on then, we’ll see if we can find some food for you. You must be hungry.”

In a daze, Martin follows Jon out of the stacks. Tim suddenly appears beside him, grinning widely.

“Sorry Marto,” he says and slings an arm around Martin’s shoulder. “But Sash and I kept telling you that Jon can be sweet when he wants to and you never believed us, so I had to take the chance to provide evidence.”

It’s still hard to wrap his head around that. Jon. Sweet. But there’s no denying it, not when Jon coos at the cat purring in his arms and presses a kiss to the top of its head right before they disappear into the breakroom.

“He- he kind of is, isn’t he?” Martin says faintly.

“Yep.” Tim grins and leans closer, lowering his voice. “Downright adorable, although he would probably fire me if he heard me say that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to sneakily take a picture of Jon while he feeds his lunch to this cat. Sasha will want to see it. She’ll be so bummed that she missed this.”

And with that, Tim follows Jon into the breakroom. Martin is still standing in the corridor, his head spinning. This all feels like a fever dream, but he has to admit that the way his heart speeds up when recollecting the look on Jon’s face is very, very real. Martin lets out a trembling breath, and bolts to have a crisis somewhere in peace, away from Tim’s curious eyes.

By mid-afternoon, Martin finally feels like he has sufficiently recovered from the experience that is Jonathan Sims with a cat to make his usual rounds. The door to Jon’s office is ajar, so he just pushes it open, a steaming mug of tea in hand.

Jon is sitting at the desk, reading over a statement. “Ah, thank you,” he says as Martin sets the tea on Jon’s desk. Jon pushes his chair back a little, and that’s when Martin finally notices the ball of orange fur curled up on Jon’s lap.

“Oh,” he says softly. “The cat is still here?”

“Yes.” Jon looks down at the cat, a fond smile on his lips. “It looks like she has some kind of eye infection. I’m taking her to the vet later today.”

“Um, okay. That’s nice of you.”

Jon looks up at him, and once again Martin startles at the unusual expression in his eyes. This time though, it looks like Jon is… nervous, maybe? He averts his eyes as soon as Martin meets his gaze, and twists the black ring he wears on his middle finger.

“It will surely be beneficial for her recovery if she doesn’t have to stay outside for a while,” Jon starts, a bit hesitant. He clears his throat. “And, well, my landlord sadly does not allow any pets.”

“O-okay? What do you want to do?”

“I thought I might just bring her back to the Archives, if you don’t mind.”

“W-what? Seriously?”

“Yes. Don’t tell Elias, please. I just thought…” Jon trails off, a light blush creeping onto his cheeks.

“What did you think?” Martin asks softly when he doesn’t continue.

“It might be, um, nice,” Jon stammers, resolutely not looking at him. “For you. To have some company down here. I know this is far from an ideal living situation and, well...”

For a moment, Martin can only stare at him. His traitorous heart flutters in his chest and he blinks away the moisture in his eyes. “Oh. Oh, Jon, I…” Martin starts, voice cracking. “I mean, yes. That would be great, actually.”

Jon lets out a breath. “Good. She’ll probably need some medicine for the eye. I’ll make sure to come in the next couple of days to give it to her.”

Martin blinks, perplexed. “Tomorrow’s a Saturday.”

“I know.”

“You don’t- I mean, you don’t have to? I can take care of her.”

“It’s no trouble. And, well, as I said…'' Jon clears his throat and finally looks up, and there’s that soft look in his eyes once again. But this time it’s unmistakably directed at Martin. “I thought you might appreciate some company. Even if it’s not the best, given that it’s, well, with me.”

Martin tries hard to pretend that his knees didn’t just go weak at the look in Jon’s eyes. His cheeks are burning, and he hopes that Jon doesn’t notice in the dim light of the Archives. "You- you’re not just doing that to have an excuse to spend more time with the cat, right?" he asks, raising an eyebrow at Jon.

Jon’s eyes go wide. "What? No!"

Jon looks so affronted that Martin can’t help but laugh. "In that case, I'd be happy to have some company,” he says with a grin. Jon hesitantly smiles back and Martin softens at the sight. He takes a deep breath. “Thank you, Jon. It means a lot, really.”

“Of course,” Jon says softly. Martin’s heart skips a beat, but the initial panic that accompanied this feeling earlier is absent this time. Maybe, he thinks, this won’t be too bad after all.

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Don't mind me, I'm just being sad thinking about the 'home and how it betrays you' mottif throughout the magnus archives.

Warning, lots of angst ahead...

Martin's apartment becoming his very own personal hell, knocking on his door becoming a constant reminder of never being safe anywhere, even in the place you should be most safe.

Trying to make the archives his new home away from home thinking it's safe only to be exposed to the same exact threat. Where can he go? Where is safe? No where.

Jon is just the same, discovering that his place of work, somewhere he worked so hard to make safe and feel comfortable, had failed him. Finding out about Gertrude dying at her desk, the tunnels, the sense of threat under the surface. Trying so hard to familiarize himself once again with the place by exploring its mysteries, trying to figure out what the secret is so he can make sure to be safe from it. Having to escape once again when nearly the worst thing that could have happened did. And where did he escape to? Home? No. That place isn't safe for him either. Never will be again.

Jon at Georgie's, his ex's apartment. Trying to feel comfortable but knowing he's probably a burden. Washing the dishes unasked, babysitting the Admiral, offering to leave if Georgie brings home a date. All to give his thanks because this isn't his home. Wearing Georgie's clothes because he has none of his own. Slowly feeling more and more of a burden as the dangers he tried to escape come creeping back into his life. And he doesn't want to put Georgie in danger. She is not a part of this. He is not in his own home. I'm convinced alot of his investigations during this time were at least partially an excuse to leave the house. To not feel like freeloader who ungratefully sits around all day in a place that is not his.

Jon getting a new flat (episode 102) once he gets back to the archives from what has to be the most horrible few months he has ever experienced, only to then say "I should try to get comfortable, change the locks. Even if I might need to be leaving it for a while." since he's off on a long trip away to unfamiliar places. And coming back to face off worst nightmare yet and losing everything in the process, including his sense of belonging, if there was any left.

Once waking up, he has no home. No flat to go back to, no clothes at all, no pens ("Coma, great! Let’s rearrange his office. Sleeping people don’t need – pens."), Melanie can't stand him, Basira is suspicious of him, Martin and Georgie aren't talking to him. Basira has updated him that they are constantly followed and attacked for being part of the Eye, choosing to mostly stay and sleep in the archives which are giving them a very false sense of safety (episode 123,125,150). They are still attacked there anyway, by the Flesh, Melanie's plight, Breekon and the coffin, webs everywhere, Helen lurking, the hunters attacking, Peter. It's not a safe place. Not a home. But where is better?

Martin has a place, but in his own metaphorical-basically-also-real words "I also have the power to clean out the fridge, and it’s still a mess. It’s not that I don’t want to clean the fridge, it’s just- Some things are just hard." Not really having the energy to make your place feel accommodating also shows how little you feel like you belong there.

And then finally "come on let's go home. How? Don't worry, I know the way." they go back, first to the hostile place that is the Panopticon and the ravaged institute. And then to the safehouse. Which is hopefully not a "kill room". Finally they have a home, a place where they are somewhat content and feel as safe as they could. Only for it to be snatched from beneath their feet and replaced with their worst nightmare. There is no home. Only each other, traveling towards something that is not a home but perversely the closest thing they have to one.

And as the cherry on top of the angstiest of cakes, Episode 198:

ARCHIVIST: Come on. Let’s get home.

[FOOTSTEPS AS THEY START WALKING]

MARTIN: You mean the tunnels?

ARCHIVIST: I suppose.

I don’t really know.

[CLICK]

Off to (possibly) burn and destroy the only place they always end up going back to, the only place that ever actually acted as their home, for good or bad. But mostly bad.

[nat-20s]

for @jonmartinweek THE FINAL DAY prompt- Pining/Longing. This one takes place, well, you’ll see

~*~

A Study of Longing, Told in Six Parts

Part 1

Martin wonders if he’ll ever get to a point in his life where kindness doesn’t feel like a shock to the system. It’s already surprising enough when Tim and Sasha invite him for drinks in a genuine offer of friendship, but for that kindness to come from Jon? Martin has no idea what to do with being believed, let alone being protected.

And now here he is, blearily opening his eyes only to find himself staring at a mass of hair. As he sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes, the shape resolves into the form of one Jonathan Sims. He had apparently fallen asleep with his head cushioned on his arms, against the cot Martin was currently occupying. It’s not an image that Martin can fully process at the moment, so instead he debates whether or not to wake Jon up or quietly get off the cot to let him get some much needed sleep. He decides on the former, both thinking that it would be hell on his back to keep sleeping in that position, and that he would like an explanation.

Hand hovering above Jon’s shoulder, but not fully touching, Martin oh so quietly calls out, “Jon?”

That’s all it takes for Jon’s head to rush up with a gasp, glasses askew, and with the texture of his sleeves pressed in red marks on his face. It is a horribly endearing look. “Hrn?”

Martin opens his mouths, closes it, and waits for Jon to get his bearings. Jon smooths down his (frankly ridiculous) sweater-vest, adjusts his glasses, and slips back on his professional demeanor. “My apologies, Martin, I, ah, must have fallen asleep.”

Glancing to the crappy little digital clock resting on a file box next to him, Martin rolls his eyes. Only Jon could be quite so stuffy at 4:32 in the morning. “No apologies needed. Though, um, was there? Something you needed or..?”

Jon shakes his head and stands up, dusting off imaginary grime. “No, no, nothing like that. I had just, er. I had heard you cry out and I- I wanted to make sure nothing was going on. It appears that it simply a nightmare,so I will be.. taking my leave. Now.”

He doesn’t know what part of himself replies, “Oh! You don’t have to go!,” but he replies it anyway. Jon does that little thoughtful frown at him, which forces him to continue, “I mean, if you wanted the cot. For sleeping. I’ll probably be awake for the rest of the night, so, you know, no skin off my back .”

“Ah. No, that’s quite alright, Martin. Try to get some more sleep, there’s still a long work day ahead.”

Jon doesn’t even wait for a response before turning on his heel and leaving. Martin sort of hates how much he wanted him to stay.

Part 2

Jon is laughing. Jon is terrified, all the damn time, and yet, somehow, he’s laughing. Honestly, he was starting to wonder if he was still capable of it. Martin is gesticulating wildly with his fork, animated in a way that Jon’s only ever seen when in they’re in the middle of a rather silly debate. He thinks this lunch’s topic was something like whether or not snakes were cute? He lost the thread of conversation about half an hour ago, honestly. Covering his mouth, he lets the giggles run through his whole body, shaking his shoulders and heating his core. He feels light, heady, like he’s reminiscing with an old friend and they’re both on the edge of having had too much to drink.

He only wishes he could trust this feeling. He wishes that he could trust Martin, that they were normal coworkers having a normal lunch, that the previous person in Jon’s position had gone into an easy retirement instead of being violently murdered. He wishes he hadn’t read that letter telling him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Martin, Martin, who took him to lunch and brought him tea and seemed so very warm in so very cold circumstances, was lying to him.

Jon stops laughing.

Part 3

Of course, the second his body hits the simultaneously stiff and weirdly lumpy motel mattress, his phone goes off. It may only be about 8 pm, but he’s tired, and he’s sore, and he’s had a persistent headcold for the past week for some unholy reason, the last thing he wants to do is talk. However, only about four people have the number to the burner cell, and they’re almost certainly have a purpose behind their call.

Closing his eyes and letting out a sigh that turns into more of a groan, he picks up on the 4th ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Jon! It’s Martin, I’m not sure if you have my number programmed in that phone, or if it even has caller ID if you do. Anyway, it’s been about a week since I’ve heard anything, and I wanted to make sure you weren’t, y’know, dead or arrested or anything.”

His previously tense and aching muscles all relax, without him consciously deciding to relax them, and a sleepy smile spreads across his face, because some time in the past year he’s become a parody of himself. Yes, maybe he should be more affronted by how much Martin’s tinny voice brings him comfort, but he’s had a rather terrible time of things since...since he began work in the archives, really, and he’s worn down enough that he can admit he misses his friend.

Huh. Friends. They are, aren’t they? Wonder when that happened. (He can guess, something involving a fake CV admission, but he doesn’t feel like it right now.) “Martin, I recognize your voice, no need to introduce yourself.”

“Right! Yes, uh, ‘course..of course you can. Right. Sooo...I take it you’re not dead, then.”

“Correct. I haven’t been arrested, either.” It’s only sort of a comforting lie, so Jon thinks it can be forgiven.

“Good. Great! Yeah, that’s...that’s good.”

The conversation could probably end there. Jon could probably tell Martin good night, and they’d hang up, and Jon could get the sleep he had been so desperately craving not moments ago. Somehow, he thinks that neither of them want that. Scrambling for something to talk about, Jon replies, “Hang on, isn’t it something like 2am over there?”

“It...might be.”

“Martin!”

“What! It’s not like you have a monopoly on bad sleeping habits. Besides, I was up anyway, and I just..”

“Just what?”

“I just missed your voice.”

Oh. Heat rushes to his cheeks, and tears start to prick at the corners of his eyes, and god. He had missed Martin’s voice too. “Really? I know you’ve had to listen to a fair number of tapes lately, thought you might be sick of it by now.”

“No. I mean, I am a bit tired of tapes, honestly, but even the ones that you recorded, that not really your voice, is it? I mean it is, but it doesn’t sound like you when you’re actually, um, you. I wanted..I wanted to hear you.”

Jon’s far too worn out to deal with that sentiment, and the way that it makes his heart clench. So instead  of addressing it, he says, “I am very close to being asleep.”

“Oh. Right, sorry, I’ll let you go-”

“No! No. Um. Would you mind staying on the line? Until I’m gone? I-I like hearing your voice. As well.”

“Oh! Sure, yeah, definitely. Anything in particular you want me to talk about?”

“Whatever you like. Something nice?”

“All right. I can do that. Um. Did I tell you about this little yarn shop I found the other day. It’s called ‘Puttin’ on the knitz’, and it’s…”

Jon peacefully drifts off, listening to the voice of the man who he can only admit in moments such as these, he wishes was in this bed, laying beside him.

Part 4

please come back please come back for the love of god come back I can’t believe you’re doing this do you have any idea how stupid this is come back to me come back come back come back

Part 5

There is plenty of things to long for in the apocalypse. A decent cuppa. The relief of actual sleep. Murdering Jonah Magnus. For there not to be a apocalypse. They are grateful, however, to not have to long for each other.

Part 6

Martin comes to without a knife in his hand, or bloodstains on his clothing. Those, under other circumstances, would be good things.

Martin comes to, laying in the grass, without anyone beside him. He barely has the moment to feel agony spike through him before he’s out once more.

There are no Jonathan Sims admitted to the hospital. As far as he can tell, no one was admitted into the hospital at the same time as him, and certainly no one with a stab wound.

There are thousands of ‘Jonathan Sims UK’, typed desperately into a library computer search bar, wielding mostly results about a sport manager and a romance novelist. None of the images are of the right person.

Sometimes Martin puts one foot in front of the other, carefully blank in heart and head. Surviving, even  during times that he’s not sure he wants to, is one of his greatest abilities.

Sometimes Martin despairs.

On the worst nights, he tries to call the Lonely back to him, tries to be swallowed whole. It never works. He’s not sure if it’s because the fears aren’t in the reality or if they’re not established enough to have any leverage or if his connection has simply been broken. (He doubts the last reason. He hasn’t been this alone since Tim’s funeral. Even then, Melanie had thrown a few stilted condolences towards him. No one is aware enough of him to give condolences now. He misses Melanie. He misses all of them. He misses Jon like a gaping, bleeding wound misses skin.)

Seven months later, and he has enough money saved and identity built that he moves on to Scotland. The little village they had been adjacent to exists in this reality. Daisy’s cottage does not.

On a whim, he enters the yarn shop. He’s not going to pick anything up, hobbies are the last thing he can focus on, but it’s nice to look. To feel the various textures, to take in the rich variance of colors, to, hopefully be present in his own body, if only for a moment.

Martin steps in. The bell chimes. He’s there. Standing in front of him. Whole. In a cry that’s closer to a gasp, he calls out, “JON!”

Jon turns, looks up at him, recognizes him even before he’s even fully seen him. It’s his Jon, he’s here he’s here he’s here. The callback of “MARTIN!” sounds like it was punched out of him, the start of a sob and a laugh all at once.

In a blink, they’re together, their embrace a tangle of limbs, a collision of lips, a mixture of tears. Martin can’t tell which of them is saying the litany of “thank god thank god thank god” and who’s repeating “it’s you it’s you it’s you.”

It’s Jon that’s telling him, “I knew you had to be here. I knew it, because I kept thinking. Surely. Surely this new universe wouldn’t be so cruel as to allow me to live, but to make me live without you.”

It’s Martin that replies, “I didn’t know. I thought it would be that cruel. Please don’t make me go through that again.”

Jon pulls him in tighter, eliminating the centimeter of space between them. Speaking into Martin’s neck, whispered in fierce devotion, Jon promises, “Never again. Never again. You and me. Together. For the rest of our lives.”

Barely discernible through his sobbing, Martin tells him, “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

~*~

There are people that think that wanting is more worthwhile than having. Martin thinks, frankly, that those people have never been in love.

[radiosandrecordings]

Crossposting my @summer-in-the-archives-event fic here too. [AO3] [Accompanying beautiful art]

He’d never get used to the rolling fields of quiet.

Miles behind and miles to go, not that he could see any of it through the thick blanket of fog that clung to his ankles, and his wrists, and his eyes. Miles to go before I sleep…

It was hard to describe the rain that fell, because even ‘fell’ felt like too active a descriptor. It didn’t pour, it didn’t ‘beat down’, it didn’t pelt, because those all required a sense of agency that the landscape just felt too apathetic to muster. It simply existed, and just happened to be moving downwards by coincidence.

Jon wasn’t sure if he knew or Knew that it seeped into his clothes, coating his skin, but he couldn’t even feel the droplets landing, even pinpricks of touch creating too much of a sensation for this place. He briefly wondered that, if he still had need for his glasses, would the rain even make the effort to trickle down and cloud the lenses.

The last Lonely domain he’d passed through, he’d never seen the avatar that lorded over it. He didn’t have any real interest in finding out, not like the personal vendettas that lead him to seeking out Jude, or Jared. Because with Peter dead he wasn’t left with any Lonely avatars left to chase, save the vague notions of the Lukas extended family. He was simply going to keep his head down and keep trudging, hopefully emerging through the thick banks of mist before he lost his mind to the monotony. If there was ever something to make you miss muffled cries from beneath the earth…

“Why are you here?”

The sound was accusatory, and may as well have been a shotgun in the silence. The damped chill was nothing in comparison to the ice that shot up his spine. The voice had no clear origin, no figures even silhouetted in shadow against the overgrown grass, but it came in close, delivered on the gentle, numbing breeze. Despite this, though, never in a thousand domains could he forget the sound of it. Of course it was his. Of course. Of course. “Martin?”

“No! ”

The voice sounded… Angry. But hurt, like it flinched away from the word. Like something that had been left to sit in the dark too long, that recoiled back from a stinging source of light.

“... I’m going to assume no one has called you that in a long time.” He tried to keep his voice light, as much as the stifling atmosphere would allow it.

“No one is anything here. It’s easier that way. If you’re somebody, you can be hurt. If you have too much personality, too many little facets and cracks, things start to snag and catch on it, and it drags you down to where things ache. But if you’re nothing, then they don’t have anything to cling onto. You can just slip away unharmed.” The voice sounded like it was moving, curling around him and moving from ear to ear, forward and back as it droned on in that echoing monotone that Jon had hoped he would never hear again, and at the same time, had longed to.

“And what about the good things?”

“There isn’t anything good, not anymore. You saw to that.”

Jon snorted. “Low blow, but fair.” He hesitated for a moment, trying to summon the words.

He’d had time, after he left the Lonely, to consider his actions. Regret pooled like acid in his stomach at the memory, and somehow it hurt more than ending the world. He wouldn’t say it was more important. He knew whatever he felt, and moreso, knew that one human life, was not paramount to the suffering of every creature great and small, but it felt more tangible. When he walked through the hellscapes, they were dreamlike, hazy, information in such clarity but to an extreme where it still felt nonsensical to perceive it as reality. He knew the fundamental truths that surrounded him but it still felt hard to accept them even as he lived them.

Yet despite having lived without it for eight months prior, the space beside him that failed to solidify into Martin still stung with his absence. And Jon regretted it every not-day he spent walking the hellscape, both in knowing he doomed a good man to suffering, or worse, revelry, in this new world, and in the far more personal, and far more selfish, part of him that missed him so goddamn much.

“But- But Martin, I think I made a mistake.”

“Obviously.”

“Not- Not that. I mean, when we were in the Lonely. The- The first time. With Peter Lukas.” The silence droned on, and Jon took that as his cue to continue. “Do you remember what I said? That maybe you were safer here? And that’s… That’s why I let you stay. I didn’t push you to, to leave with me because I thought you wanted to be here, that you’d be safer here than you’d be with me. But I don’t think that was entirely true.”

“I am safe here.”

“Maybe so. It doesn’t mean it’s better though, does it. Martin, I saw those people, in the last Lonely domain. I know it’s different, they were victims and you’re… You’re an avatar, here, you’re feeding off of all of this, but I promise you they were not happy. They were so alone and it didn’t protect them, it just made it worse. Think about it, the logic of this world. There are threats out there of unimaginable horror, and yet they were still assigned here, it’s their worst nightmare. And you were assigned here too. You’re all suffering, just in different ways, but all calculated to be your personal worst.”

“The Martin Blackwood you thought you knew doesn’t exist anymore. He had to be filed down, too many breaks and tears in him that grew and grew, any time someone raised a harsh word. The best way for him to be protected, is for him to go away entirely. You cannot hurt something that doesn’t exist.”

“Are you sure about that? Because you just said ‘I’.”

“What? ” That anger reemerged again, and as staunched as it was it was beautiful, a return to form amongst the dull monotone, reminiscent of the few times Jon had been privileged enough to witness a truly pissed off Martin Blackwood.

Jon found himself grinning. “You said ‘I am safe here’. Emphasis on the ‘I’. Ergo, you still have some form of identity left, and thus I would wager that the part of you left is Martin. Unless I’ve wandered across some other avatar of the Lonely who sounds like him, of course.”

“You’re always so fucking smug, you know that?”

The voice is coming from behind him. Actually, physically, presently behind him and Jon spins around so fast he’s almost dizzy.

And as much as it made his heart soar, and much as he was glad to finally, finally , see him again when he’d thought he never would, Martin looked… Bad.

His skin had darkened, mottled and blotchy with large swathes of a bruise-like blue or sickly green cropping up across his face and neck, or the parts of his forearms visible where his cable knit sleeves rolled back. It was like frostbite from the cold, or some disturbing onset of trench-foot from the damp, corpselike and unsettling. What was worse, though, were the parts that simply ceased. His hair didn’t even reach the tips, simply fading out into a grey static that merged with the mist, and it consumed his eyes whole, tear tracks streaking down his face in patterns of fuzzy, crackling grey that snapped and popped in the silence, far too reminiscent of a tape.

The sight made Jon’s heart clench like a fist, the combination of relief and horror, and in that moment he understood Jane Prentiss more completely than he ever had before. It would’ve felt like a rude comparison to consciously make, the person he cared for most equated to a pulped and writhing mass that churned out creatures that made your skin crawl before tearing into it. But he knew what she had seen in it, that call towards the thing that fascinated you, despite the turning it causes in your stomach.

Despite this, however, Jon steeled himself. This was rapidly becoming a battle, and he couldn’t afford the cost of emotions. He had to keep Martin, well… Martin. Draw out the emotion. In short, be a bit of a bastard. So instead, he cocked an eyebrow. “I thought you liked that about me?”

He could see Martin’s fists clench, the colour of his extremities dyed black from frostbite. The irritation was still clear as he started into “Fucking hell J-” but they both appeared taken aback as he dissolved into a choking, hacking cough.

It took everything in him for Jon to tamp down the need to surge forward, put a hand on his back and ask if he was okay. It was a strangely mundane thing; the man was made out of static and fog and despite seeming to have an on-and-off-again relationship with his corporeal form, this was the first recognisably human thing to adversely affect him. Why, though? What had Martin done to trigger- Oh. Oh .

“That- That priest from the statement… 0113005? Father Burroughs. He couldn’t say the name of god. Anything related to it, really. And you… You couldn’t say my…”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Martin spat. “You’re not a god or thee god, whatever your new eye magic might imply. It’s just…” He let out a breath that turned into a grumble. While his eyes had always been cloudy, he was now refusing to meet Jon’s gaze.

Regardless, it still drew a breathy laugh out of him. “No, I’m not that far gone into my own self importance yet. But… It’s about the connection, isn’t it?” Something in the conversation had changed, it’s tone or it’s flow, that felt contradicting. Tension coiling up to spring, or they’re barrelling towards a culmination, but at the same time, Jon felt like the wind had been kicked right out of him. He lowered himself to the ground, slowly, settling among the grass and trying to ignore the unpleasant dampness under him. Hey, he could feel the damp again. That was something.

“That’s more flattering, actually, I would say… The Lonely, it thinks if you acknowledge me directly, that would loosen it’s hold on you.” Jon huffed out a breath. “You know I listened to all the tapes. What was it that Daisy said to you, when I was on the run? ‘People say you two are close’? Well, the Lonely appears to agree.” He took a minute before adding, “I would, as well. And, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was too… Too in my own head, before, to admit it. Too much of a coward to do it before that, even. But you need to know I love you. And I know that you… Cared for me, at least? Even if I stuck my head in the sand to ignore it. But the Lonely seems to think you do, still. So will you please come back to me? I know it’s not- I know it won’t be much better, travelling through the domains, but it’s all I can offer and it has to be better than this. I can’t promise anything kind will be waiting for us in London, but you’d be yourself again, and I can’t… Martin, I can’t lose you again. To leave here, again, without you, I’d be losing you. Please.”

“No.”

There wasn’t even a delay to his response, stating it in monotone the second Jon had finished speaking. It felt like ice, lancing through his heart.

“Martin. Martin, please -”

“I said no. I thought you would’ve learned by now; I’m not exactly amenable when you come crawling to me with half baked plans of escape. Because you don’t love me, you love the idea of me. You are quite literally the only free man left in the world and you’re lonely . So you’re looking for a familiar face. Kind Martin, caring Martin, always there with tea and taking your side in every argument. Defending you to Tim when you’d just as soon slag him off behind his back, or on tape. Pretty appealing when everyone else is trying to kill you. At least he treated you like a god before this even started.”

Each sentence felt like another dagger to the chest, and it took him a moment to compose himself, tears forming at the corner of his eyes. Eventually, though, Jon spoke. “That’s not true, though. I- Martin I can’t apologise enough that that’s what it’s felt like, for you. But I need you to know, that isn’t true. A-At the start, maybe, I can’t deny I was stupid and spiteful, but you didn’t deserve any of it. And after that… I didn’t do a one-eighty and decide you were a doormat. I liked you because you were secretly enough of a prick as well. Any time you’d pull me out for lunch when I dragged my heels, or argued back when I said something shitty, that was… It felt like I was seeing the real you. The one you didn’t want to let people think of you as, but the one you were, because despite wanting to appear like the picture of innocence, you are a bitch, Martin Blackwood. And that’s my favourite thing about you. Maybe time is sweetening my memory, slightly, but I truly don’t believe there’s rose coloured glasses here. If we walk out of here, I’m not under any sort of illusion that it’ll be a honeymoon. We will doubtless find something to argue over, if not several, but I want that. I want you at my side to, to disagree and point out all my blind spots. We’re both stubborn bastards but I’m stupidly fallible, and I need you to keep me balanced. I don’t want a yes-man, I want you, Martin, and I’m asking for that knowing full well what it entails.”

When the words stopped flowing, he found himself gasping for breath, sobs building in his chest and threatening to spill over. But Martin was standing closer.

“That’s- I don’t- Fuck.” As Jon looked up, wiping at his own eyes, he could see fog starting to trickle from Martin’s mouth, coming in short bursts as his nostrils flared and chest rose and fell noticeably for the first time that Jon had seen since he stepped foot onto the moors. This caused a conflict of emotion in Jon, because while it seemed to be another step towards humanity, Martin letting the Lonely fall to the wayside in favour of reclaiming himself, it also looked far too close to a panic attack to be something worth celebrating.

“I don’t understand,” he finally settled on, voice cracking on the words. He slowly let himself sink to the ground opposite Jon, knees pulled up to his chest. “I left you. Time and again I left you. I left you to work with Lukas, and I left you when you tried to get me to run away, and I left you when I stayed on the beach.” His palms were pressed into his eyes, mist seeping from between his knuckles as he dragged them across his face, though Jon couldn’t be sure if he was attempting to wipe the fog away, or if he was stalling while he faltered, trying to summon the words. Both, maybe. Jon took the silence from him.

“You didn’t really choose that, though. You didn’t feel like you even had a choice. So Martin if… If you’re worried that I think badly of you for that, I don’t. Martin, I’ve done so many terrible things, so to- No, no, actually I don’t mean it like that. I don’t mean that you’re a good person, compared with me. I think you’re a good person full stop. And I just want you to be able to see that. I know the Lonely is quite literally clouding your judgement right now but… Please, just, just make me a deal?”

Martin’s palms were resting on his chin now, cupping his cheeks and curving around his neck. He nodded once, wearily, for Jon to continue.

Jon drew in a breath “I think I’m in some sort of… Bubble. Like a miniature domain, when I’m travelling. I think, if you agree to come with me, even for a little bit, that might dissolve some of the Lonely’s more adverse effects. Make it easier to think, to, to be yourself without its influence. If that is what happens, and you want to return… I’ll bring you back. But please, just… Try? For me?”

Martin sighed, hands dropping from his face. “...Fine.”

“You- Really?”

“Yes. I… Look, J-” Martin bit back another coughing fit. “Look. I am… There is a lot of me right now that wants to leave. The fog is… It’s in my head, figuratively, probably even literally, but… I remember something Basira said. When she got back, from, from The Unknowing . Melanie wanted to know how she got out, when the other three… When you, and Daisy, and Tim, didn’t. She said she reasoned her way out. So I’m going to listen to reason for a minute, as much as it’s paining me.”

Despite those final words, Jon felt his face crack into a smile. “That’s… Yes, you’re right. Well that’s… That’s a very reasonable connection to make.”

And for the first time in a long time, Martin smiled.

“Uhm, so how does this work then?” He eventually said, hand coming up again to scratch the back of his neck in an old nervous habit Jon could not be more happy to see.

“Well”, Jon said, taking a moment to brush sodden grass from his trousers as he got to his feet, “I would say, based on the dream logic that everything here seems to run on here, it should be rather simple.” He held out a hand to tug Martin up after him.

Martin took it.

It was almost cliché, how the Lonely fell away from him. It only took a few seconds, all in all, for the bruising to fade, receding their colourful splotches until his skin lay clear again. His frostbitten fingers healing themselves, sewing broken skin back together and returning to a healthy colour. His face, too, was returning to its original pallor, the change creeping up his neck and across his cheeks and leaving rich brown in its wake. Dark eyes stared down at Jon from behind long lashes, blinking away the last of the fog. He was beautiful.

“Hi,” Jon managed to choke out.

“Hi,” Martin said, and pulled him into his arms.

Jon just let himself be held in the pressure of the embrace for a moment, before bringing a hand up to card his fingers through Martin’s hair. While it had solidified into soft curls, the colour had stayed the same, bleaching it white under his fingertips. He wasn’t sure if Martin had noticed or not, but that was a conversation for another time. They were both a little preoccupied for the moment.

“How do you feel?” Jon eventually said, words pressed into the side of Martin’s neck.

“Uhm. Strange?” Martin eventually settled on. “It’s… I can remember what my thought process was, what the Lonely was pushing me to believe, but it’s like… It’s like the camera panned out, and now I can see it all clearly, and it looks… It looks stupid. Thank you, Jon. For coming to get me.”

“Of course,” Jon whispered, “Of course.”

Another moment passed before Martin spoke up again. “...Did you mean what you said, though? Or was that… Was that just to try and get me to leave? I- I won’t be angry, if it was, that- that’s very clever, I just want to know.”

Jon furrowed his brow. “Which part do you mean?”

Martin let out an agitated sigh. “You- You know which one I mean, Jon. The- The part where that you said that you…”

“That I love you?” Jon said, picking up where Martin trailed off.

Martin’s face flushed, and just the sight of colour spreading across it made Jon’s heart soar, let alone the implications of why . “Of course I did. I- I’m sorry that you would think I would lie about that, even for something like this. No, Martin, I love you. So very much. And I know you might not feel that way anymore, in which case I am very much embarrassing myself here, but I know that you did at one stage so I hope it won’t make things too awkward between us.” “I do, Jon.”

“What?”

“I do. Still feel that way. I love you too, of course I do. My hero.”

It was Jon’s turn to feel his face flush, pleasant warmth bubbling to the surface. “Oh,” was all he managed to stutter out.

“Can I- Jon do you mind if I…” Martin trailed off again, and Jon began to think this might be a recurring theme between them. He’d make it work. He was pretty good at reading Martin, and the eyeline pointed directly at his lips made intentions quite clear.

“Is- Would just the cheek be okay?” He replied. It didn’t really feel like the time for a full run down on where boundaries lay, but he figured it was a start.

“More than,” Martin said, leaning down to press his lips softly against Jon’s cheek. He lingered for a few seconds, skin largely healed but still chapped from the cold, and it was one of the most beautiful things Jon had ever felt. He slipped one hand into Martin’s, and he felt their fingers twine together.

Martin leaned back, clearly trying to calm his grin into something more close-lipped and calm. “Where to now then?”

“Uhm. Forward, really, is just how I’ve been going. There isn’t any real sense of geography to it, we’ll just…. Get there when we get there.”

“Right. Because nothing can be simple these days.”

Jon missed this. He missed him. But he didn’t have to miss him anymore, did he? He was right there.

He squeezed his hand once, and started leading the way.

[occudo]

Tall Jon

[weclassybouquetfun]

The Academy has spoken. The nominations for the 94th annual Academy Awards have been announced. Some minor surprises? No acting awards for DON'T LOOK UP. People speculated that Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio would get nods. No Best Director nomination for Denis Villeneuve, but he did garner a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. No Lady Gaga nod. Dame Judi Dench pulling a nod while her more lauded costar Caitríona Balfe didn't get one. Jesse Plemons who was largely ignored garnering a nomination (a slot that IMO should have gone to Jared Leto for HOUSE OF GUCCI or even Ben Affleck for THE TENDER BAR).

It's a love affair. Two couples are nominated. Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem and Kirsten Dunst and her fiance Jesse Plemons.

Record making. Jane Campion is the first female director to get two nomination. Denzel Washington is the most nominated Black actor.

BEST ACTRESS Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter) Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers) Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos) Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

BEST ACTOR Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos) Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick … Boom!)

"Aside from your own, which nominated movie do you wish you were part of?

“The Worst Person in the World.” It is one of my favorite films of the year. The way Joachim Trier makes films, tells stories is so poignant and inventive and fresh and alive. You can’t help but want to be in the dance numbers in “West Side Story.” To fall in love like Alana [Haim] in “Licorice Pizza” and hang out in the desert in Arrakis in “Dune” and watch Timmy Chalamet becoming the king he’s always meant to be." - Andrew Garfield

Will Smith (King Richard) Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth) Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) Judi Dench (Belfast) Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog) Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Troy Kotsur (CODA) Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog) J.K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos) Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) Ciarán Hinds (Belfast)

BEST PICTURE Belfast CODA Don’t Look Up Drive My Car Dune King Richard Licorice Pizza Nightmare Alley The Power of the Dog West Side Story

BEST DIRECTOR Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)

Kenneth Branagh (Belfast) Steven Spielberg (West Side Story) Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

BEST COSTUME DESIGN Cyrano (Massimo Cantini Parrini) Dune (Jacqueline West) Nightmare Alley (Luis Sequeira) West Side Story (Paul Tazewell) Cruella (Jenny Beavan)

BEST SOUND Belfast Dune No Time to Die The Power of the Dog West Side Story BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Don’t Look Up (Nicholas Britell) Dune (Hans Zimmer) Encanto (Germaine Franco) Parallel Mothers (Alberto Iglesias) The Power of the Dog (Jonny Greenwood)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY CODA (Sian Heder) Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe) Dune (Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts & Denis Villeneuve) The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal) The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion) BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Belfast (Kenneth Branagh) Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay & David Sirota) Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson) King Richard The Worst Person in the World BEST ANIMATED SHORT Affairs of the Art Bestia Boxballet Robin Robin The Windshield Wiper BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT Ala Kachuu — Take and Run The Dress The Long Goodbye On My Mind Please Hold BEST FILM EDITING Don’t Look Up (Hank Corwin) Dune (Joe Walker) King Richard (Pamela Martin) The Power of the Dog (Peter Sciberras) Tick, Tick… Boom! (Myron Kerstein & Andrew Weisblum) BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING The Eyes of Tammy Faye House of Gucci Coming 2 America Cruella Dune BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Encanto Flee Luca The Mitchells vs. The Machines Raya and the Last Dragon BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Ascension Attica Flee Summer of Soul Writing With Fire BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT Audible Lead Me Home The Queen of Basketball Three Songs for Benazir When We Were Bullies BEST ORIGINAL SONG “Be Alive” — Beyoncé Knowles-Carter & Darius Scott (King Richard) “Dos Oruguitas” — Lin-Manuel Miranda (Encanto) “Down to Joy” — Van Morrison (Belfast) “No Time to Die” — Billie Eilish & Finneas O’Connell (No Time to Die) “Somehow You Do” — Diane Warren (Four Good Days) BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Dune (Greig Fraser) Nightmare Alley (Dan Lausten) The Power of the Dog (Ari Wegner) The Tragedy of Macbeth (Bruno Delbonnel) West Side Story (Janusz Kaminski) BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE Drive My Car (Japan) Flee (Denmark) The Hand of God (Italy) Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (Bhutan) The Worst Person in the World (Norway) BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Dune (Zsuzsanna Sipos & Patrice Vermette) Nightmare Alley (Tamara Deverell & Shane Vieau) The Power of the Dog (Grant Major & Amber Richards) The Tragedy of Macbeth (Stefan Dechant & Nancy Haigh) West Side Story (Rena DeAngelo & Adam Stockhausen) BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Dune Free Guy Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings No Time to Die Spider-Man: No Home

[iceeckos12]

time travel snippet

little time travel au oneshot. season 5 jon travels back in time to season 1. from the perspectives of tim, martin, and sasha. 3.5k.

i dont think i need to tag anything, but please let me know otherwise.

Tim wakes up that morning, and it’s just like any other day.

Well—no, okay, that’s a bit misleading. Today is his first day working as an archival assistant, so he’s one part nervous, one part that breathless, exhilarated feeling you only get when you’re about to do something unfamiliar that may or may not redefine your life for the foreseeable future. When he says “it’s just like any other day”, he means that he wakes up, and he’s a normal person doing normal people things like eating a healthy breakfast and going to work.

(So, no. In short, he doesn’t realize that today is the day when It happens, that big, life-changing event that you think will Never Happen To You.)

He gets out of bed, stumbles into the bathroom. Washes his face of whatever residue that’d built up during the night, tries to scrape away the evidence of his nightmares, smiles big and bright at the mirror to see how successful his efforts were. He’s betrayed by the traitorous bags beneath his eyes, but that’s okay. Sasha taught him how to wield concealer as a shield whenever his past wore down his armor.

He shoots twin finger guns into his reflection, making soft pew, pew! noises that are almost too-loud in the hush of the bathroom. Then he turns on his heel and walks away, sauntering and humming along with the chorus of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.

He gets to the Institute twenty minutes before he’s supposed to—not because he’s trying to impress his boss or whatever (he and Jon have known each other long enough that there’s no point). It’s just, Jon will probably want to make some sort of game-plan before the actual workday starts. 

The poor man had been relieved to an almost comical degree when Tim had said yes, I’ll come with you to the Archives. It’s painfully obvious how out-of-his-depth Jon is with the whole “Head Archivist” thing. Tim’s honestly baffled as to why Elias had singled him out for the position in the first place, considering his lack of qualifications.

But, whatever. It’s fine! Tim and Sasha will be there to help him—although the third assistant is a bit of a problem, considering that they know absolutely nothing about him. There’s no guarantee that this Martin Blackwood won’t report inadequacies or mistakes back to Elias. If that’s the case, Tim and Sasha will have to be Jon’s safety net, which is partially why Tim is hoping to talk to Jon before anyone else gets there.

He also wants to talk to Jon because he just knows the man is probably working himself up over all of this. Maybe reassurances won’t do away with the source of anxiety entirely, but at least it’ll remind Jon that he’s not alone, and that he can count on Tim and Sasha.

As expected, when Tim gets there he can see a sliver of light pouring out from the cracked door of the Head Archivist’s office. He selects a desk and sets his bag on top of it, noting a set of strange gouges in the fake wood with a raised eyebrow, and then an internal shrug. The Institute issued laptop is near the far edge of his desk, and his collection of pictures are strategically placed so that he can see them all clearly.

His eyes linger over the image of him, his mother, and his brother. Their smiles are almost perfect replicas of each other, like someone took a mold of one of their faces and recreated it twice over.

Briefly, he closes his eyes. Then he shakes himself, releases a slow, steadying breath, and goes to check on Jon.

Tim’s not sure what he’s expecting to see when he goes into Jon’s office.

(That’s misleading too, though. He’s not sure if Jon will be visibly calm or upset, if he’ll be on his laptop, if he’ll be picking at the skin around his fingernails, as he so often does when he’s stressed. He is expecting Jon as he is and always has been—a twenty-some year old going on sixty, who wraps his gruff, grumpy demeanor about himself to protect the soft, vulnerable core he likes to pretend doesn’t exist.)

He comes up to the door, and the soft rectangle of light that emanates from beneath the door paints the tips of his shoes gold. “Jon?” he calls softly, rapping his knuckles against the frame. There’s a soft rustling noise—papers maybe? but no audible response, so he shrugs and pushes the door open. “I’m coming in.”

Tim steps inside, a quip instinctively readying itself on his tongue—but then his gaze lands on Jon, and he freezes dead in his tracks.

Even years later, he still vividly, viscerally remembers the moment he saw Danny standing on the stage underneath the Royal Opera House, the way he’d looked...not quite right. The wrongness had been subtle, so much so that it had been unnoticeable upon first glance, upon second glance. The longer Tim had looked though, the more obvious it had become, exposing all the little faults in that almost-perfect recreation of his brother.

Looking at Jon now, it’s the first and only thing he can think of. Because—yes, there’s the long, silver-streaked black hair, there’s the rich brown eyes, there’s the pair of spectacles that make him look far older than he actually is. But that’s where the similarities between the Jon he knows and this Jon end.

Jon’s always been a small man, but his feigned haughtiness makes him seem much bigger than he actually is. Except—except this Jon looks smaller somehow, his shoulders curved protectively inward, like he’s trying to present less of a target. And there’s something about his face, too—his expression is too sharp, too much—

But the worst of it is his eyes. There’s something very wrong with his eyes.

Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with Jon? He doesn’t say it out loud though, just keeps staring at Jon, a heady mix of terror and horror making any sort of reaction impossible.

After a moment Jon’s lips thin, contorted by some distant cousin of displeasure, and he rises to his feet. Tim stumbles instinctively backward, his breath escaping him in a sharp gasp that’s immediately swallowed up by the apathetic stacks of books and papers surrounding them. He’s struck by the fact that if he dies here, it’s unlikely anyone will notice; he’ll become just another set of marks gouged into the desk, willed away with an uneasy shrug.

Jon freezes, lips parting subtly, as though he were about to speak. Tim feels his breath catch in his chest, unable to shake himself out of the clouded stupor his mind has fallen into.

In the end, Jon says nothing. Just releases a long, slow breath of air and sits back down, pushing his chair close to his desk. The motion looks heavy, tired, as though it takes far more energy than it should.

“You—you should go,” Jon rasps, and there’s something off about his voice too, though Tim can’t put his finger on why. He can’t cobble together enough of a train of thought to make sense of any of this, all he can think of is that clown ripping Danny apart—

He stumbles out of Jon’s office, sits down at his desk. Stares down at the cheap, fake wood, at the gouges that have marred the otherwise pristine surface. Puts his head in his hands, and tries to will his heart to stop pounding in his chest.

-0-

Martin’s heard things about Jonathan Sims.

He’s not usually the type to pay attention or encourage gossip, as the vivid memories of his classmates tittering cruelly whenever he walked by still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.The problem with the Institute is that the employees get bored pretty easily. Though most would consider academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal to be fairly interesting, it’s still academic research. And the subject content can get to be a bit...repetitive. There’s only so many gruesome statements you can read without thinking, oh great, more meat.

So the employees gossip a lot, and while Martin usually tries to keep his head down and avoid it, it’s difficult not to overhear some things. And from what little he’s heard, he’s...a bit concerned. Rude and unsociable has frequently been mentioned, as have arrogant and unnecessarily finicky, and worst of all, a bit of a stuck-up know-it-all.

Normally he tries not to put too much stock in office gossip—he’s well aware that the grapevine tends to exaggerate one’s most undesirable traits—but if any of it is true, then he might just be in trouble. It was hard enough being a library employee when his boss wasn’t even paying attention most of the time. If Jon is as exacting as they say, it might be enough to expose the fact that Martin has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. And if that happens, then he might get fired, and he can’t get fired, he needs this job, he can barely keep up with his mum’s medical bills as it is—

Calm down, Martin tells himself firmly, pressing his hand against his sternum, as though that will be enough to quell the rising panic. It’s only your first day. Maybe he’s nice, and we’ll actually be good friends.

(With his luck? Yeah, right.)

The Institute looms in the distance, growing closer with every terrified, grudging footstep. A shiver runs up his spine at the sight of its imposing presence, a dark, ugly blot of a building against the backdrop of the iron grey clouds.

If there’s one thing he’s good at though, it’s keeping his head down and muddling through until he’s able to figure out what is actually expected of him. He can twist and fold himself into whatever role they need him to fill, as he has done so many times in the past. Not easily perhaps, but he has always managed. The alternative is untenable, after all.

So he takes a deep breath, and shoves his panic down as deep as possible. Lifts his head and forces a smile onto his face, like a good attitude will be enough to protect him from his boss’s wrath.

He could really do with a cup of tea.

Martin trudges down the stairs, giving the blank walls, the old-fashioned carpet, a dubious look as he does. The Archives themselves are as he remembers it—he’s been down here a couple of times when Gertrude made a request for something specific, but—

He pauses when he notices a man sitting at one of the desks, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders aren’t shaking and his breathing is even, so Martin doesn’t think that he’s crying? He’s just….sitting there, his stillness so perfect it’s almost inhuman.

“Hello?” Martin calls softly, cautiously, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet.

The man looks up, revealing a very handsome face and brown eyes so dark they may as well be black. His cheeks are dry but his eyes are bright and a little wild, and his mouth is pressed into a small, tight line. He doesn’t speak, just keeps watching, blinking dazedly in Martin’s direction. Martin gets the feeling that this person isn’t entirely there at the moment, like a house in which every room is lit, but there are no people inside.

He swallows and shifts nervously back and forth, trying to decide whether or not to call for some backup. Eventually he sets his bag on the floor and shuffles a bit closer. “Um—are you—is everything okay?”

The man blinks rapidly, some semblance of awareness creeping back into his gaze. He shakes his head slowly, pushes his short, gelled hair back from his head. His hands are trembling. “I’m...yeah, I’m fine. It’s—everything’s, it’s…”

But then his gaze lands on something over Martin’s shoulder, and all the color drains out of his face, his mouth shutting with a painful sounding click. Martin quickly spins around, searching for whatever could’ve scared him so much—

There’s someone standing in the doorway of Gertrude’s office.

There are so many things that one normally takes in upon first meeting another person: their hair, their skin color, all the little wrinkles and marks that give you the briefest insight into their life. Martin looks at posture first, tends to check if a person is intentionally looming, or if they’re making themself smaller.

But all Martin can see are the eyes.

There’s—two of them he thinks, but two is such an arbitrary number when the thing you’re applying it to doesn’t ascribe to human values (he’s not sure how he knows that—how does he know that—?). That horrible, terrible gaze is an unerring arrow, all-encompassing, all-consuming, piercing the deepest corners of his mind. It hurts in some distant, nebulous way he’s not even sure he comprehends—

Then he blinks, and the sheer terror, that feeling of the horrible, violating exposure of everything that he is, abruptly snuffs out. What’s left is just a person, wispy and small, his slight frame fairly drowning in a chunky, cable-knit jumper. He’s leaning against his doorframe, his eyes—two big brown ones, rich and unfathomably sad and more than that, human—drinking Martin in, his lips parted in a soundless gasp.

“Um—” Martin glances over his shoulder, and almost leaps out of his skin when a land falls heavily on his shoulder. The man who’d been sitting in the chair is standing just behind him, a strained but polite smile on his face.

“Hi Jon,” the man says, an undercurrent of a warning in his voice.

Martin glances between the two, his confusion growing with every passing moment. This is not what he was expecting when he first came into work today, and the uncertainty makes him feel strange and off-kilter.

The person in the door swallows once, twice, then straightens, one hand still gripping the doorframe like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. When he speaks, his voice is soft, tentative, a little ragged around the edges. “Tim. It’s, um...it’s good to see you.”

“Martin Blackwood, was it?” Tim continues, injecting a bit of cheer into his voice. It takes Martin a moment to realize that he’s being addressed, and he shoots Jon—this is Jonathan Sims?—an uncertain look before nodding slowly. “We’re happy to have you on the team.”

“O-Oh?” Martin squeaks, then grits his teeth and bodily forces his voice back into its normal range. “I’m—um, I’m happy to be here?”

“Good,” Tim says through a grin that looks more like a grimace, giving Martin’s shoulder a friendly pat. The look he shoots Jon is a dark, mistrustful thing. The look Jon gives him back is fragile, vulnerable, that winds the tension in Tim’s shoulders so tight it has to be painful.

Jon’s gaze flickers to Martin, just for a second—and then he disappears into his office, leaving the door cracked behind him.

Tim and Martin stand there for a second, staring at the door. Tim’s still tense as a bowstring, and his grip on Martin’s shoulder is almost uncomfortable. The air in the Archives feels stuffy and too warm, and there’s a strange prickling sensation on the back of Martin’s neck, like he’s being subjected to close scrutiny.

Then Tim sighs and lets go of Martin’s shoulder, a little of the tension bleeding out of him, and without it he looks small, deflated. He goes back to his desk and sits down, booting up his laptop without a word of explanation to Martin.

Martin stares at the back of Tim’s head for a moment, a number of questions clamoring around in his brain—what the fuck was that? What’s wrong with Jon? Why are you so obviously suspicious of him?—but the words won’t come. Breaking the silence feels...sacrilegious, somehow. Every breath of air sticks against the back of his throat.

In the end, he doesn’t say anything either, just sits at his desk and takes out his Institute-issued laptop. Stares blankly at the screen as the machine slowly, laboriously, comes to life.

-0-

Sasha’s not entirely sure how to interpret the tense atmosphere that has descended over the Archives.

The first day she’d arrived a couple of minutes before she was supposed to, prepared to follow Jon’s direction and help him adjust as best she could. (Her feelings about Jon’s promotion...didn’t matter. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t his fault that Elias was an old-fashioned misogynist.)

But when she’d come down the stairs, Tim and the assistant she didn’t know, Martin, had been seated quietly at their desks. They’d both had the same distant, shell-shocked look on their faces, like they’d received some shattering, horrible news. Sasha had sent Tim a confused look, but he either hadn’t noticed it, or hadn’t wanted to explain.

She hadn’t even seen Jon that first day, just received a polite email asking her to start organizing the statements according to the system which he’d devised.

It’s been almost three days, and nothing has changed. Oh sure, they’ve all started organizing the statements as directed. Tim cracks jokes, Martin tiptoes around them and makes copious amounts of tea. That strange tension that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, like the world is holding its breath in anticipation, hasn’t faded though. And while she doesn’t know Martin all that well, she knows that something’s still up with Tim. He seems more subdued than usual, keeps sending uncomfortable looks in the direction of Jon’s office—

—which hasn’t been open since that first day. She hasn’t seen Jon at all either, no matter how early she arrives or how late she stays. The only proof she has that he’s still alive is the polite email she periodically receives, detailing some specific task that he wants for them to do.

Even then, his emails are...odd. She’s not sure how she can tell, but they feel...awkward? Stilted? Like he’s only half-aware of what he’s typing, or like he’s only asking them to do things because he feels like he should, not because he has any actual goal in mind.

Normally she’d be frustrated by this, would complain bitterly to Tim about Elias passing over her for someone who obviously doesn’t properly appreciate the position they’ve been given—except that she knows Jon. He’d made a point to explain the situation to her himself, an apologetic twist tucked into the corner of his mouth. More than that, he’d asked her to follow him to the archives, saying that he wanted the two people he trusted most, her and Tim, to come with him.

He respects her too much not to take this job seriously.

The strangeness of the archives is only emphasized by Jon’s complete and utter lack of presence within it, but she doesn’t—she doesn’t buy that. She doesn’t believe that he’d just suddenly decide not to do the job he’d been so anxious to excel at. 

More damning than anything is Tim’s complete, utter silence regarding Jon’s strange behavior, but whatever he knows about it, he isn’t saying anything. Martin is willing to talk, but he seems to be as lost as she is.

“I—that first day, Jon…” Martin shrugs, shooting a nervous glance toward the door leading to the archives. He’s been spending a lot of time hovering in the break room making tea, not that she can blame him. “He—I mean obviously I don’t know him very well, but he seemed...upset?”

“Upset,” Sasha repeats dubiously.

Martin lets out an exhausted sigh and turns away, waving a dismissive hand. “Look, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. He just—okay, so, bear with me for a second, but he reminded me of this guy who used to live in my neighborhood.”

Sasha backs off, folding her arms and leaning against the counter. “Okay?”

“There was this little old couple that used to live in my neighborhood. They were—they were really sweet! The husband used to give candy to us younger kids. But um—sometimes you’d see him sitting in the rocking chair on his porch, and it was like...he wasn’t entirely there? Like, he’d just sit there for hours, rocking and staring at nothing. That’s—that’s what Jon’s expression reminded me of.”

Martin gets more animated the more he talks, Sasha notes; his hands move in broad, sweeping gestures, his expression twisting into an expression of extreme concentration. The moment he finishes he deflates again, tucking his hands into his armpits self-consciously, a hedgehog curling protectively in on itself.

“So, yeah,” he finishes eloquently.

“Huh,” Sasha says thoughtfully.

She gets back to her desk. Looks over at Tim, who’s studiously working through a box of statements, his mouth set in a neutral, concentrated frown. Takes a deep breath, letting the taste of dust and old papers sit heavy on her tongue.

Then she opens her laptop and starts looking through the catalog of cursed items that are currently being held in Artifact Storage.

(She doesn’t think that she’ll find anything, but—but just in case.)

-0-

They all get the call the next Monday morning: Elias Bouchard was found dead in his office.

[spacestationdaedalus]

morning kisses (jm)

62. Lazy Morning Kisses Before They’ve Even Opened Their Eyes, Still Mumbling Half-Incoherently, Not Wanting To Wake Up

from this kissing prompts list for @malevon, almost a month late because it be like that sometimes!! but ily to pieces

...

Martin opens his eyes to a familiar ceiling. It’s not a remarkable ceiling - made from old crooked beams, with a spot by the door that tends to leak in the rain, no matter how many times Martin patches it. But it is their ceiling, and that's what matters.

Grey light filters through drawn curtains, just enough to cast the room in gentle shadow. It’s a penumbral quality so specific to early morning, it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. It's tranquil, and Martin fights back a groan that threatens to break it.

Martin has a complex relationship with sleep. Or maybe, sleep has a complex relationship with him. Late nights and early mornings have always been typical, even before he'd dropped out of school to care for his mother. Full time employment only made that worse, but he could still manage a few nights of solid rest here and there. And then he'd started working in the Archives, and it was just a supernatural decline from there.

The Lonely was the worst, though. It’s counterintuitive - the months he’d spent with the quiet fog at the edge of his periphery had done nothing to help him fall asleep most nights. Some days he’d lay in bed well past midnight, staring at the ceiling thinking absolutely nothing until he would blink, and then it would be morning. Whether or not that time was spent sleeping, Martin wasn't sure. But he was sure of the exhaustion it etched deep into his bones, like runes carved into cursed stone.

And then the world ended, and didn't, sandwiching a literally indescribable amount of time not needing to sleep, and it was. Yeah. A bit complicated.

But that was then, and this is now. More than months but not quite years. And it really has been getting better, for both of them. But he's sure as the sun rises that the occasional sleepless night and morning will never truly leave him. A birthmark of everything they had come from.

But it's worth it, to watch Jon sleep.

It's something Martin doesn't have the pleasure of doing often. If anyone has a more complicated relationship with sleep, it's Jon - plagued by chronic insomnia and nightmares even before he'd started at the Institute. The therapy and medication helps, sure, but it's a process. Like most important things are. Most nights Martin drops off to the quiet comfort of Jon reading next to him, and most mornings require Jon halfway to leaving for work before Martin even gets two feet on the floor.

But now, in the early graze of morning, Jon is curled on his side. Facing Martin's side of the bed and making Martin's job even easier. Dark lashes brushed against his cheeks, worry lines across his forehead and around his mouth slack in the pure relaxation of true and deep sleep. His lips are parted ever so slightly, gentle and curved and so, so beautiful. Like the rest of him. His hands are curled on the pillow in front of him, and Martin would take them in his, if he wasn't so sure the pressure would wake him up.

The buzz of bergrugeon wakefulness behind his eyes lets Martin know he won't be falling back asleep any time soon. So he keeps watch, practically daring anything to disturb the restful sleep that Jon deserves.

It's not long, though, not long enough before the time approaches Jon's first work alarm. It's obnoxious as all hell, a grating jingle set to full volume that Martin absolutely despises. But hopefully it won't be necessary, this morning.

Martin brushes Jon's hair away from his face with the backs of his fingers, touch as light as he can manage. It's soft, freshly washed from the night before. Soft like the skin at Jon's temple, behind his ear, where Martin's fingers linger. He twists his hand then, slow and methodical, to sink his fingers in the hair at the back of Jon's neck. Exactly how Martin knows he likes, when he's conscious. Jon breathes a blissful sigh into his pillow and the sound of it spreads a smile across Martin's face. But he doesn't wake.

Martin props himself on one elbow, giving himself the leverage he needs to press a kiss to Jon's forehead, warm from sleep. Jon's brow twitches ever so slightly. Martin presses another kiss there, like he's done with so many already and like he'll do for the rest of their lives. And another to his cheek - that pulls a sound out of Jon's throat, downy and sweet - another to the tip of his nose, and another to his forehead-

"You skipp'd one." Jon murmurs, half obscured by the pillowcase billowed under his cheek. His voice is low, husky in that way that sends a trill down Martin's spine. But he still manages to sound petulant, and Martin grins.

"Sorry, love. You have to be awake for that one."

"Yeah?" Jon hums, pulls in a breath that he holds with the stretch of his ribcage. His eyes flutter open as he breathes out, and the air tickles the hair by Martin's ears. Jon's smile is loose with the hold of sleep, but it still reaches far enough to crinkle the lines around his eyes.

"Is this passable, Mr. Blackwood-Sims?"

"I think that'll do just fine, Mr. Blackwood-Sims." Martin doesn't make Jon move a muscle as he closes the space between their lips. It's a light one, first, barely a brush. Followed by another, and another, full and clumsy in the curve of their smiles. The tingling pressure of Jon's lips lingers like a melody when Martin pulls back, as Jon's eyes threaten to fall closed again. Can't have that.

"Oh no, you don't. I'm doing this for you."

"Oh, just for me?" Jon smiles. Smug bastard.

"So you can turn that blasted alarm off before we have to listen to it."

Jon stills his cat stretches for a moment. Opens his eyes just enough to level a stare at him.

"Martin, dear. Love of my life. Apple of my eye. Today's Saturday."

Martin blinks. "Oh?"

"Oh."

Awareness of the rest of the world comes back to him, and he knows Jon is right. Now the inability to fall back asleep is actually annoying. Martin opens his mouth to apologize for waking Jon so early on his bloody day off, but it's cut off by a quick but deliberate interception of Jon's lips on his. Jon raises himself on both elbows to reach, pulled back just enough now to make eye contact with him.

"Don't worry. Between you and me, I think this is a great way to spend a Saturday morning."

Later, Martin will get Jon to take a nap to make up for the lost sleep, offering himself as a willing pillow in apology. But now, the pure adoration in Martin's chest threatens to lay him flat, so he uses the momentum to wrap his arms around Jon's waist, and pull. Jon lets out a little yelp before Martin cuts off the sound with another kiss. Deeper than before, with the pleasant thrum of Jon's little hums reverberating through Martin's chest. Sometimes it's easier to show your agreement than say it out loud.

[janekfan]

ooooh..... difficult anniversary and/or you’re not human anymore bingo prompts for jarchivist obliteration?

AAAA This took so long! I am SO SORRY!!! <3 <3 <3

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31123295

Jon was used to hurting.

Used to hiding.

Which is why he didn’t notice. Didn’t understand what was happening to him and more importantly why.

A panic attack here. A bad day there. A cold, maybe? Until the scars on his skin from the worms and the corkscrew and the scratching woke one day as though they were fresh and new. His skin crawled, the slightest touch filled him with revulsion and, lord, he had to keep it together because Martin would almost certainly overreact and Jon hated, hated to be the source of his worry.

So he would ignore it as usual.

Whatever it was would pass. And he could avoid being the center of attention for this thing that was out of their control. He’d read the Lord of the Rings. He knew about the less romantic side of anniversaries. What was one more thing for him to overcome?

It didn’t stop them from hurting like the day they were drawn on his body and while the rents in his skin looked the same as they ever did, he nearly bloodied himself after a particularly wretched nightmare with his frenzied clawing.

And it passed. The burning, bleeding, boring sensations disappeared and Martin hadn’t suspected a thing. Okay, that was a lie. But he seemed mollified enough when Jon wrote it off as a tough week at university.

“I’m just tired, habibi.” He forced himself to reach for Martin’s hands, sighing in gusty relief when everything was normal and allowing himself to get wrapped up in warm arms.

The mark left behind by the Distortion ached deep and throbbing and somehow also elsewhere. It was a phantom pain traveling the myriad corridors of his veins, his arteries, his nerves and when he couldn’t rid himself of it in any conventional way, he waited. It would pass. It would. Just like the last one. This was just pain. He knew pain. Was fast friends with it by now and this was nothing like his worst days.

“Jon-darling?”

“Mm?” He was flipping through the pages in a book, not too fast, not too slow, not really reading anything, trying to pretend that everything was normal when his foot cramped up like he’d been bitten. He was practiced now in not looking; there wouldn’t be anything there anyway. His skin might as well have been a great big door and the only way through to the other side didn’t involve knocking.

“You look pale.” Ah. Well. Pain like this would do that to a man.

“Just a little sore today, love.” It wasn’t a lie. Jon set the book aside, not bothering to mark whatever random page he’d landed on, and threaded their fingers together.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you talk me into carrying the shopping.”

“What are you talking about? I always help carry the shopping.” Despite his chronic conditions, Jon pulled his own weight.

No, stop. Of course you do and you have nothing to prove, especially not to Martin of all people.

“You’ve been run down.”

“I have not!” Martin fixed him with a stern look and he cowed under his scrutiny. “Perhaps a bit, but you know how these things go.”

“I do. And I can’t help but feel like there’s something you aren’t telling me.” Here it was. Martin’s overture, his olive branch. His invitation to come clean and tell the truth and avoid his wrath when he found out later. But Jon never was a quick learner of these social lessons.

“I’m fine, hayati.” Jon soothed, tipping Martin into his newly throbbing shoulder. “I’m fine.”

The next three hit him like a lorry, nearly as hard as they had a year ago and nearly all at once.

His burn scar, just like the worm scars, felt blistered as badly as the day he’d taken Jude’s hand, and he shook violently at the onset of it, thankful he was squirreled away in his office at the University and not crying into Martin’s shirt even if that’s where he’d prefer to be but Martin hates burns.

Hates how they look, how twisted and ugly they become when they scar.

Burns made him upset. Burns made him sick.

He hates them. Hates them. And while Jon was reasonably sure Martin would never turn him away when he was hurting like this, the fluttering undercurrent chanting what if wouldn’t leave him be.

So Instead he sniffled away in the dark, wrist pressed between his knees in a vain attempt to stop the shaking while he tried to remember how to breathe.

It was dark when he slipped into bed beside Martin, dead asleep after a run of night shifts. For a frantic moment Jon wanted to shake him awake, beg for reasurances, for relief, but it would ruin this. Martin looked so peaceful, face relaxed in repose, cheek soft when Jon pressed his trembling lips there.

“Jon... ?” Washing out on a swirling tide his voice was fuzzy, thick with exhaustion, and the hand that brushed the small of his back lingered only for the time it took for him to drift back under. No. He’d wrought enough damage here. Better for Martin to rest without worry. He shouldn’t have to deal with Jon and his problems. Especially when they would be arriving like clockwork for the rest of his life. Jon pressed himself against Martin’s warmth, trying to soak it up, stop the shivering. How could he be so frozen when his whole right arm was engulfed in flame? Silent, he let the tears come, closing his eyes against a burgeoning dizziness he knew would only grow worse.

Be quiet. Just be quiet. Don’t disturb him, you mustn’t. You’ve nothing else to give except more burdens that aren’t his to carry.

The ceiling was spinning so fast above him; lights, cast shadows, cabinets whirling, reeling, spiraling so much he’d be sick with it any minute. The vibrations from Martin’s pounding footsteps resonated through the whole of him, pulsing, in time with his uneven battering pulse.

He barely remembered the actual fall, just the terrifying sensation of being weightless and the fear welling in his throat like coagulated ink. Forever. He’d be falling forever. Nothing to hold. To grab. To slow. To Know.

Endless.

His scream wrenched away from him in the rushing winds filling up his ears, stealing his voice, his breath. No one could hear him in this place. Martin would never know what happened. That Jon was eaten up by the sky. Surrounded infinitely on all sides by a sea of simultaneous nonexistence and brutal presence. Jon’s awareness whittled down only to the pull of gravity in all the wrong directions.

“Jon!” A bleary shape manifested above him, blocking out the worst of it. Hands, gentle, probing, searching subconsciously for breaks, contusions, his training winning out over the panic Jon could just make out in the set of his mouth. Fingers ran soft through his curls, seeking out any swellings and Jon winced when he found one. Must’ve struck his head on the way down. Those cool hands settled, cupping his face, and twin thumbs brushed over his cheeks. “You’re warm, love.” A murmur, almost to himself as Martin puzzled.

“B’bit of, of vertigo, s’all.” Uncoordinated, Jon’s arm struck out as he tried to reach for him and landed on his wrist. “Tryin’...nnh.” He gripped Martin like a lifeline, slamming his eyes shut against the need to be ill.

“You’ve clocked yourself.” Fair enough. “But I think you’re alright. Think you can move?” With no other option than to speak lest he set it all swirling again, Jon whimpered. “Okay.” With one more pass through his hair Martin stepped away and soon enough had Jon settled as best he could on the tile, tucked beneath a blanket with a cold pack pressed to the back of his neck. Relief came gradually and Martin’s unasked questions lingered on the edges of their companionable silence. “Better?”

“Mm.” Despite the hard surface applied to every pressure point, Jon was falling asleep cocooned in the safety of Martin’s soothing company.

He wouldn’t be able to keep this up

Martin teased him mercilessly about the loss of his voice and Jon let him have it if it kept him from noticing how sore his throat really was. He wanted to tell him that it was Daisy’s mark, to cry and come clean and beg Martin to stay.

But that wouldn’t be fair. Jon had to be a whole person in this relationship and stop relying on Martin to pick up the slack. He would figure this out. He’d prove his past didn’t control him.

After he could get out of bed.

And here was what he’d strived to avoid. Finally laid low.

“I worry, Jon. You know that.” That was the problem. Martin was already going to be late to work from all his fussing. With the scrap of voice he’d gained back he protested in a hoarse whisper, syllables squeaking past what felt like a shredded voice box and listened to Martin call in again. He had to be better than this but he was overwrought, dangling at the end of a very frayed rope. This marked a sharp decline and Jon was sure it hadn’t escaped Martin’s notice that they were coming up on the date he’d more or less died. He could barely rouse himself in the mornings for school, drifting through lessons and relying more on his TA than he’d like. More than once he’d splurged on a cab, not sure if he’d make it on the tube and Martin’s fretting and worry and distress only made Jon more secure in his conviction. If it was this bad already, how bad would it become if he knew the reason it was all happening? They were supposed to be free of this. Jon wasn’t supposed to keep doing this to Martin.

Melanie’s scar throbbed, chipping away at any scant reserve he had left and ruthless with its aim. It was worse than Daisy’s even though he could understand both motivations. Daisy was putting down a monster. Mel was striking out at someone trying to help, driving home with the scalpel that no good deed goes unpunished. Rationally, he knew he’d deserved it. Too bad it didn’t dull the sting of it all really.

“Darling? Sweetheart?” Jon forced his eyes open, gasping when it sent the dark room to pirouetting, his stomach to churning, staging a mutiny against the scant meal he’d forced on himself not too long ago. Anything he’d gained in their short reprieve had long melted away under the stress. “I’m here, what’s wrong, love?”

“Nnothing…” he regretted the word as soon as it passed his lips.

“You’ve a fever so high it woke me. That’s not nothing, Jon.” Mercifully, he gave him a moment to gather his thoughts, catalogue how much more of this he could take before it broke him. Burned hand shaking, Jon clenched his fist which didn’t help the pain rocketing through his arm and into his heart, but steadied him.

“Jus’a, a bit of a flare up.” Those sometimes came with fevers.

“Oh, love. Why didn’t you say?”

Because it was a lie. Because I didn’t want you to worry. Because I never want to see you upset over me. Because I’m not worth it. Because if it’s always going to be like this--

“Din’t want you to, to…” The cramping agony slurred his voice badly, stringing syllables together with an uncooperative tongue was too much effort. “Nngh.” Dazed and groggy, Jon shut his eyes tightly, trying to focus on Martin’s soothing touch stroking over his face. Like a coward, Jon let sleep rescue him from the truth.

It was the flesh that gave him away.

Woke him screaming; hot and twisting in agony with Jared’s phantom fingers dug into his rib cage. More fingers clamped onto his shoulders, shaking him, a distorted voice calling, shouting his name over and over and over.

“Jon!” Martin was little more than a blur, obscured by tears, and Jon’s panic was reflected straight back at him. “Where does it hurt?”

“Wha…?”

“Where, habibi? Left, right? Please, Jon.”

“Not...not. S’not--” He couldn’t get the words to come, to admit after so long what he’d kept poorly hidden.

“Not what?” Frustration bled sideways into his words and Martin gripped him harder as though he might tear the answers out of him.

“Real.” It burst from him in a raw, somehow soft explosion. It wasn’t. Not really. The wounds were long healed over.

“Looks plenty real from here, Jon.” He batted away questing fingers.

“No. No.” There was no way he’d be able to explain through this piercing agony, the literal holes invisible in his skin.

“It’s the fears, isn’t it? Your marks, your scars.” Martin already knew judging by the disquiet in his tone. This was merely confirmation.

“Yes.” He sobbed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” There was hurt in his voice, sadness and betrayal, alongside the ire.

“I thought, I thought--” Jon couldn’t breathe, panic and pain stealing the very air from his lungs. This was only going to get worse. After all they’d done, he’d done--how was he still a monster?

“Shh, shhh, thought what, love?” Martin held him carefully, mindful of all the ways Jon hurt, ticking off fears and scars on mental fingers, trying to figure out how long he’d been hiding it. How long he’d been suffering alone.

“Supposed to be, god, supposed to be safe, free of this.” He was trembling now, with chills or anxiety or both, gasping for every sip of oxygen and swallowing seawater for his trouble. “Can’t, what if--?” Choking himself off, Jon strangled. Martin stayed silent, rocking them both gently, back, forth, soft, slow, calm, calm, calm, and when Jon finally spoke again had to strain to hear him over the echo of a hammering heart beat. “Every year?”

Every year.

He couldn’t Breathe.

Everything was close. So close, too close, and he was crushed under the implications.

“Jon?” Now he was heaving for it, fast and deep, and while Martin could feel the strain it was to breathe he knew it wouldn’t be long before Jon lost consciousness altogether. “Hey, hey, listen, hayati, slow down, sloow down.” Jon’s entire body lifted when Martin inhaled, and again, and again, until he picked up the thread and made more than a half decent attempt. “Okay, there you are, you’re doing so well, sweetheart. So well.” Time passed in measured breaths, so much so that Martin had begun to think Jon had fallen asleep when:

“You’ll leave.”

Soft and shattered. All the fear that he’d piled onto the pain flowing out of him, a dam burst and broken.

“I won’t.” Jon’s movements were hard-won but he managed to shift himself enough to face him. His expression was firm.

“You, you can’t be stuck taking care of an i’invalid again, Martin. I won’t. I won’t have it.”

“Ah. You won’t have it.” Martin scoffed. “And what about me? When do I get a choice?” Jon, eyes wide and dark with exhaustion and pain, looked at him as though he’d grown a second head, perhaps a third.

Or like Martin was a predator and Jon was prey, cornered and hurting.

“You shouldn’t want this.” Me. “This, this burden. This trap!”

“You’re not some sort of trap!” Martin could see the moment Jon decided to change tactics, to try and convince him otherwise, win the game. Too bad for Jon that Martin knew him better than he knew himself.

“You want this don’t you?” He sneered, so convinced, and while once upon a time it would have made Martin wilt and retreat, now he was familiar with Jon’s lashing out. Sorry, Jon. “I won’t be another reason for you to martyr yourself.”

“And I won’t be scared off by your nasty attitude.” Softening, he reached for Jon’s trembling hands, running his thumbs methodically over the backs of them. “I won’t. Together. Right?”

“Martin.” His name broke open on a sob. “I don’t. I don’t want this for you.”

“Tough.” Smothered, Jon’s next words died in his throat, a fledgling bird crushed before it could take flight. “You don’t get to choose for me, even to protect me.”

“Every year--”

“We don’t know that. Not yet.” Martin eased him down. “You aren’t a burden. You aren’t trapping me here.” He kissed away the tears, the hopelessness, even as Jon shook his head nigh delirious.

“I am, I am.”

“No, love. What you are is worn out and hurting.” Martin teased out Jon’s tangled curls, stroking his fingers through them and watching him relax as much as he could at the moment. “What you’re going to do is let me take care of things. Of you, Jon.”

“Don’deserve you.” Fresh tears welled in half lidded brown eyes, slipped into the fly aways at his temples when they closed. “Never have.” Martin stood, pressing lips to his hot brow, intending to gather up anything he thought might help.

“We’ll talk when you’re feeling better.” Jon nodded and Martin turned to leave, stopping when he found himself caught by quaking fingers tangled in his sleeve.

“I, I love you.” Contrite, whispered and awaiting rejection. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, darling.” Martin leaned down, thumbing away new tears. “I know, I know and I love you too.” He stole one more shivering kiss. “Let’s get you taken care of.”