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It’s not easy coming back from the dead… again. Most who have experienced it haven’t had the absolutely bone chilling knowledge that their body is gone. Most find themselves resurrected within minutes, maybe even days or months. Maybe they’re brought back from the grave, rising to find themselves alive again. Or nearly so. Most haven’t watched as someone tore the last remaining bits of their skin and spirit from a book, vowing to destroy it.
Gerry though remembered that exact moment as if it were yesterday.
The thought had occurred to him that Jon had lie, had taken the page and kept it for some ritual, perhaps an offering when his life was on the line and he had little else to save his neck but offering up Gerard’s own. He is beholden to one of them, after all, and his actions and motives are not always his own.
Except Gerry had seen the pain in Jon’s eyes when he’d found him on the train. He’d seen Jon’s expression, heard the timbre of his voice, and perhaps he has little reason to believe him, to believe in an Archivist again, but he did truly believe that Jon had kept his word. Whatever powers had brought him to this place, had left not only his pages but the uncharred book that contained his mother as well, they were not the actions of the Archivist.
He’s still not accepting that others from the Institute, namely Elias, might not have had a hand in Gerard’s undoing though. As he’s come to think of it.
Whatever the truth is, who or whatever had a hand in this, he’s not up to looking a gift horse in the mouth. For one, horse’s bite. Then there’s the fact that he’s alive, and in a place where the Avatars they’ve known aren’t apparently player, and whatever Avatar is behind this place is either is disguise, or brilliantly hiding themselves from even those that would know what to look for. Whatever it is, he believes he’s here for a reason, brought to this place to try and do something to help. Even if some days he finds himself resentful as hell.
Worse, when he finds himself utterly confused and uncertain, caught up in things he’s never really thought about before.
Too much of his life had been spent fighting against his mother’s machinations, in learning all he could about Leitner and then doing all he could to destroy those books, and doing what he could, as he grew older, to stop those things that endangered others. He barely remembers the times when he was in school as being anything more than boring lectures on things he already knew, and the knowledge that no where was safe.
It wasn’t hard to spot the teachers who had a brush with one of the entities when they were younger, the secretary who still feared the Dark, and the students who had already been marked by Flesh. There was no time for games or romance or sports for Gerry in those days. Not when he knew he couldn’t take anyone home, and if he was late without reason, he might well answer to his mother. It became easier to keep his own agenda where others weren’t involved.
None of it though was anything he’d thought much about over the years. Not before Gertrude, and certainly not after he started working for her, travelling with her, when he was busy and caught up in trying to protect mankind. He hadn’t thought about it much at all in his life, sad as that might be. Not until the first time Jon’s hand brushed his own.
It was just days after he arrived, asking for a smoke while Gerry worked out the basics of a dominant, or something to pay for his own packs. It was casual, nothing that should have meant anything, and yet as Gerry’s fingers brush against Jon’s, there is a jolt that he can’t ignore. That sensation that comes when you’re nearly asleep and you suddenly feel as if you’ve slipped, that you’re falling, and you jostle yourself awake.
It was like that, with all of the shock and quickly drawn breath as one lays there, trying to calm themselves enough to slip back to sleep. Yet Gerry knew he was awake. Wide awake, feeling a bit warm, flushed as if he were sitting by a fire, and his hand shook as he used that spider engraved lighter to light his cigarette.
“I swear, soon as I have money I buying you a new light. Just so I don’t have to keep looking at that one,” he said, giving Jon a smile, a true smile, though it was quickly gone as his lips wrapped around the cigarette.
The conversation went back to this place, to the dangers of contracts, and to the ways things in this place changed, playing havoc with people and their minds. Normal conversation for this place he was finding, but that didn’t mean that Gerry could stop thinking about things.
But Gerry couldn’t stop thinking about that sensation.
He tried, for a day or two, to recreate the sensation without one very key variable. So he let himself brush against others while he walked, or over reached for his coffee so his fingers brushed that of the shop girl. He got a few looks, a couple of offers, and a reminder than she would be at the cat cafe later that night, if he was interested, but nothing like that sensation.
Logically his mind assumed it was not because it was Jon, but because it was the Archivist. Had he had casual contact with an Avatar before? Sure he’d had a run in or four with them but had it ever been just as normal and uneventful as fingers touching as one took a pack of cigarettes? Logically his mind knew it was nothing more than a visceral reaction that anyone sane enough to know just what was going on in the world would had.
Except he trusted Jon. At least just about as much as he trusts anyone in the world anymore. If it was truly just the natural reaction one should have, why was Gerry so nervous about it happening again.
Jon was part of the Eye. It’s not as if avoiding touching him could change what he could see, the things he would know and feel. It’s not as if Gerard was hiding anything. Would Jon even fault him the reaction? He doubted it. So why then was he so careful about contact?
Maybe it had to do with all of the other ways he wasn’t avoiding the Archivist.
He found himself making excuses to see him, asking about this place or that, the contracts, advice on how to handle things when the time came to speak to a lawyer. He asked, and he mostly listened, but he also mostly found himself staring.
Staring at Jon’s fingers, imagining them brushing once more against his hand. Gerry’s own fingers were calloused, marked from years of handling books, and turning pages. Scars from fights and injuries he couldn’t avoid. Spots left smooth by fire and others jagged from where something caught the flesh and tore. He had been dead, his body skinned to turn him into a ghostly encyclopedia, but all of the marks of the life he had lived were still born on his skin.
Just as Jon bore the marks of his life. Most of them don’t show, hidden by the clothes he wore, by the care that Gerard himself also took depending on the situation. Except Jon’s hands. Long, nimble fingers suited for the work he does. Hands that bore the same smoothness on the right hand that Gerry knew well, often finding himself rubbing the same heat smoothed skin on his own hand where he had once taken too much chance in destroying a book and found himself burning himself as well.
He found himself staring often at Jon, realizing a day or two later that it’s more than his hands he noticed but the Archivist himself as well. No, not the Archivist, though he knows they’re one and the same, but Jon.
It wasn’t the Archivist that had destroyed the page made by the woman he’d replaced. It may have been the Archivist that came for answers but he knew Jon had done as he asked. No matter if the page still existed, Gerry had some faith in the man that had done that.
It’s in one of those moments, caught up more in Jon than in what he’s supposed to be doing that Gerry realizes just what that sensation had been days ago when his hand brushed Jon’s. A sensation he’s never really felt before, and had considered positively not part of his life actually. It hadn’t ever bothered him. Not as if he had the time for such things to slow him down anyways but he’d been a fool in not realizing this sooner.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
He mutters the words under his breath suddenly, not even realize he said them out loud until he noticed that Jon is staring at him. He shook his head. “Nothing. Just.. thinking.” He paused, his gaze dropping to Jon’s hand. “Can I bother you for a smoke?”
He knew Jon wouldn’t say no, and so when the pack was held out to him, Gerry made sure his fingers brushed over Jon’s once more. This time it wasn’t casual, an accident because of proximity. This time was intentional, stroking his fingers along Jon’s as Gerry curls his fingers around the pack. His gaze stayed with Jon’s, swallowing hard against the nerves that were unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
Jon offered the lighter without a word, this time flicking it open and offering the flame to Gerry. In the circles they kept it could easily be a threat but it felt like anything but. Cupping the hand that held the lighter as he leaned in, drawing against the paper and tobacco and sighing softly. It’s the only thing he feels like he truly missed during the time he was dead.
Only when Gerry closed his eyes, savoring the nicotine and smoke filling his lungs, did Jon speak.
“Anything else I can do for you?”
Soulful eyes fluttered open, staring at Jon once more before he shook his head, taking another drag as he turned away.
“Not yet,” he said, still sorting out what the hell this all meant to him. “Not yet, but soon.”