Chapter Text
“Statement of June Hitchens, given July 7, 2015.”
It’s half-past eleven, although time rather seems to lose its meaning down here, amidst the cramped rooms and dusty shelves where no daylight penetrates. Jon’s mouth tastes awful. When did he last eat? Breakfast, probably, but he can’t remember what he had. Doesn’t matter. He’ll order something in when he gets home.
“I’m being followed by a man with no face. I’m quite sure about this now, even though I know how mad it sounds. I spent so long trying to convince myself it was my imagination – the drugs, or the drink, or just my paranoia getting the better of me – but I can’t ignore the facts. It’s him that started all this. If I knew what he wanted from me I might be able to stop it. But I don’t. And I can’t.
“The police won’t help. I’ve been to them twice now, the most recent time being last month, and they haven’t bothered to hide their contempt for me. I’m just another crackhead to them, not worth more than a minute of their precious time. I haven’t been back since. I’m not going to go back. There’s nothing anyone can do for me; I know that, now, and – ”
The door opens.
He jumps violently, knocking over the mostly-empty cup of tea sitting at his left elbow. “Who – oh, for God’s sake, Martin, can’t it wait?”
Martin shrinks back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I, er, didn’t realise anyone was still here.”
“Just knock next time, please,” Jon says. He realises that he’s been unconsciously massaging his temples and forces himself to lower his hands. God, his head hurts. Probably another tension headache. He shifts, wincing at the twinge that goes through his neck, and rolls his shoulders.
Martin’s footsteps come closer. He says, “Are you all right?”
Typical. Jon squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them wide. It’s no use. The sense of total immersion that always comes over him while he’s reading, as if a great wave has swept away all remnants of his identity and replaced them with nothing but the words on the page, has passed. He is himself again. It is not an improvement. “Fine,” he says flatly, and gets to his feet.
There’s a rushing sensation in his head. The world dissolves into static, black spots sparking at the edges of his vision, and Jon finds himself clutching the edge of the desk with hands gone unaccountably numb. He hopes that he is not about to collapse. Martin will never let him hear the end of it. Gritting his teeth, he white-knuckles the desk and focuses determinedly on staying upright, and gradually the rushing feeling fades and equilibrium reasserts itself. He straightens up fully and gives Martin a look, daring him to say something.
Predictably, Martin returns the look with one of his own: mingled concern and disapproval. “It’s almost midnight, Jon. Shouldn’t you be going home?”
Jon’s instinct is to snap at him, but he bites it back. Martin’s the one actually living here, which means it’s a fair enough question (though still an irritating one). “I will in a moment. I just need to finish off this recording and then I’ll go.” He gives his body a few seconds’ warning before crouching to pick up the fallen mug. Thankfully, it’s unbroken. A small puddle of cold tea has collected on the edge of the desk and is starting to drip on to the floor; he mops it with his sleeve. “For that matter,” he says, grimacing at the sensation of damp cloth against his skin, “shouldn’t you be asleep?”
There’s a brief pause. Then Martin shrugs. It looks offhand, but Jon isn’t fooled. He sees the stiffness in his posture, the way his mouth twists slightly to the side before he speaks. “I’ve not been sleeping too well recently. Just keep thinking about stuff. I know she can’t get in here, I do know that, but… It’s the ‘what-if’. And I keep going over it in my head and planning what I’d do if she turned up and how I’d get out and – and, I’m rambling. Sorry. Look, I just came in here to get my sandwich, have you seen it?”
“Your…? No, I haven’t.”
“You sure? I thought I left it in here earlier.”
“Tim probably ate it.”
Martin huffs a laugh. “Sounds like him.”
For a moment neither of them says anything. Jon realises that there’s a noise in the background, a faint whirring – so familiar that it no longer registers – and reaches out to stop the tape recorder. He’ll have to finish that particular statement later. Martin has thrown him off. “Do you have something else to eat?” he says.
“There’s some biscuits and stuff in the breakroom, and – I think a curry? Might be past its sell-by, though, I need to check.”
Jon knows the one he’s talking about. He makes a face. “Ugh. That’s got to be at least a month old. Why don’t you just go out and get something?”
Another shrug. Martin’s picking at a hangnail, and doesn’t seem eager to reply. Jon is just opening his mouth to say something else – what, exactly, he doesn’t know – when the tape recorder clicks back on.
They both stare at it.
“Is, um,” says Martin. “Is it meant to be. Doing that?”
“Some sort of glitch, I expect,” says Jon, knowing full well that “a glitch” is basically just technician-speak for “thingummy”, and only a few steps up from, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Martin looks unconvinced. Understandably so. After all, tape recorders switching themselves on is not exactly an everyday occurrence. At this point, though, Jon’s stopped wondering. He’s come to accept that there is something not quite right (he refuses to say 'spooky') about The Magnus Institute. If it were possible to measure oddness in the same way as, say, radioactivity, his Geiger counter would be ticking away like nobody’s business.
Quite suddenly Jon wants nothing more than to be out of there – to be outside, in an open space away from the filing cabinets and sickly greenish lighting and the smell of hot, recycled air. He reaches out to turn the tape recorder off again. And stops. What would be the point? “Just go and get yourself something to eat. I’m heading home in a bit, once I finish up, but I’ll probably still be here when you get back.”
Martin shakes his head. “I’m fine, really.”
He doesn’t sound fine. “You’re scared,” Jon says.
“No!” says Martin, too quickly.
Jon gives him a look.
“…maybe a bit,” Martin amends, quietly.
The words come out almost without his permission: “Would it help if I went with you?”
“Oh,” says Martin. “Well. That’s very kind, but you really don’t have to.”
“I’m going that way anyway.”
Martin fidgets. He’s still tugging his hangnail, which has started to bleed. Jon fights off the impulse to reach out and pull his hand away. Instead, he tells him, “Get a jumper. It’s cold.”
It is cold. Frost has already begun to form on the grimy pavement, and Jon’s foot slips on the step as they went down, almost sending him sprawling. Martin catches his arm. He jerks away. “Sorry,” Martin says, lifting his hands and holding them, palms out. “Just thought you’d probably had enough of nearly falling over for one day.”
“Yes, thank you, Martin.”
That jumper really is awful.
“There’s a chippy just up the road, I think,” says Martin. “And the Co-Op should still be open, unless – it’s not a Sunday, is it?”
“Wednesday. Almost Thursday, technically.”
“Right. Right, yeah. You lose track of time a bit down there, don’t you?”
“No natural light.”
“Mm.”
They walk up the road towards the chippy, not speaking. Jon twists his hands into his pockets, trying not to shiver, and glances left and right to make sure nothing is out of the ordinary. There is only the dark street, and up ahead the small row of off-licenses and takeaways lit up in neon yellow.
When they come up to it, Jon eyes the posters in the window with faint disgust. They are peeling and look older than the actual shop. There’s a picture of some salad, coloured the kind of green that you just don’t get in nature, and the rest is all chicken wings and kebabs loaded with enough grease that the photos themselves seem to glisten faintly. He resolves to stick to chips. “Right,” he says. “Food.”
“Food,” Martin agrees. They go in.
It’s stiflingly warm inside and smells of vinegar. They hang awkwardly around by the counter, waiting for the order to come through, surrounded by the chatter of other late-night customers and the hum of the deep-fat fryer. Their food arrives after about ten minutes. Predictably greasy, but at least it’s hot. Jon picks up the polystyrene tray, wrapping some napkins around it to stop it from burning his hands, while Martin counts loose change out on to the counter. “Paying separately or together?” the man behind the counter wants to know.
“Separately,” Jon says, at the same time as Martin answers, “Together.”
Their eyes lock in challenge.
“I can get this,” Martin attempts.
“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s no need for that.”
“But I’d like to.”
“I do need an answer at some point,” says the man.
“Oh, for – ” says Jon, and he takes a tenner out of his pocket and shoves it across the counter. “There. What’s the change? One fifty? Keep it. Let’s go.”
“Jon,” Martin says, anguished.
“It’s a chicken kebab, Martin, it’s not exactly going to break the bank.”
He pushes open the door and steps back out on to the street, taking in a generous breath of fresh air. (As fresh as air ever gets in London, anyway.) It’s colder than ever, and when he exhales it comes out in a pale cloud, like someone spilled bleach on a black T-shirt. At least now he has a trayful of chips to stop his fingers from getting frostbite.
Behind him the door opens again and he hears Martin’s hurried footsteps. “All right,” he says, drawing level with Jon, still fumbling with various coins and receipts, “if you won’t let me pay you back, then… at least let me walk you to the station?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Well, I’m going to anyway. Also, thanks. That was nice of you.”
“Don’t go on about it,” Jon says. “It’s fine.”
Except it isn’t fine, because the tube has stopped running.
Of fucking course it has. He should have expected that, but he doesn’t normally leave this late, except on weekends, and then there’s the night tube, so it’s never a problem. Swearing under his breath, Jon opens his phone and looks up bus times. The quickest journey is almost two hours, and the bus isn’t even due to arrive for another thirty-five minutes. He scrolls frantically through travel options. Nothing is coming up.
He’s stranded.
“What are you going to do?” Martin says.
He’s wringing his hands, something Jon hasn’t thought people did in actual real life. “Good question,” Jon snaps, and sees Martin recoil minutely.
“Get an Uber, I suppose,” says Martin. “Or… well.” He tails off.
Jon waits. When no follow-up occurs, he prompts, “Or what?”
“You could just stay at the Archives overnight,” Martin says in a tiny voice. “There’s a futon somewhere, I think, or you could have the cot. I’m not tired anyway.”
“Don’t be absurd, I’m not kicking you out of your bed. And I haven’t got any of my things, I can’t simply stay the night on a whim – ”
“What things do you even need? Toothbrush? Deodorant? You can get those at the shop.”
Jon breathes out hard through his nose, staring at his phone screen without really seeing it. His eyes have gone a bit blurry. It could be the chilly air or it could be simple tiredness. Maybe both. “I can’t,” he says.
“Jon,” says Martin, “you’re being stupid again.”
“No, I’m not, I just – what do you mean ‘again’?”
“Listen.” Jon might be terrible at subtext, but even he can tell that Martin is trying very hard to be patient with him. “Even if you do make it back home, you’re only going to get about three hours of sleep before you have to come in again the next day. It doesn’t make sense.”
Jon puts his phone back in his pocket. Presses both palms against his eyes. They make a squeaking sound when he rubs them, which is a bit weird and probably not good, and OK, so maybe Martin has a point. “Fine,” he says. “Yes. All right. But I’m not taking the cot.”
“We can argue about that later. Come on, I still need to go to the shop.”
Jon trails awkwardly behind Martin as he wanders up and down the aisles, basket piling ever-higher with a variety of cans and bottles and microwaveable meals – does the Institute even have a microwave? – and various other non-perishables. And a toothbrush, Jon notices. “Let me pay for that,” he says.
“It’s only a toothbrush,” says Martin. He’s got both hands full now, one clutching the shopping basket and the other fumbling for his wallet. “It’s not exactly going to break the bank,” he adds, mocking Jon’s tone. “Just grab me that tin of tomatoes and we’ll call it even.”
The tomatoes are on the second shelf from the top, and he has to stand on tiptoe to get at them. When he turns back he glimpses Martin quickly smothering a laugh. Damn. Jon was rather hoping that he hadn’t seen. "All done?" he says, a little sharply, and deposits the tomatoes in the basket. "Come on, then."
They go through self-checkout and begin to make their way back towards the Institute. Jon sneaks a glance at the shopping bags. There is a comb sticking out of the top. “What’s that for?” he says, pointing at it.
“Er… your hair?” Martin gives him a sidelong look. “Let’s be honest, it does need it.”
Jon tries to say thank you. What comes out instead is, “I don’t… use combs.”
“I really, really believe that,” says Martin.
Jon decides that this is the last time he will try to do anything nice for another person.
Once they're back inside Martin leads the way, down the maze of corridors and into the small storage room where he’s staying. The futon remains elusive; Jon doesn’t much care. He’s slept on worse things than a bare floor. Martin has brought some of his things over – when did that happen? – and although they don’t do much to make the place feel homey, the little indications of human habitation lend it a sense of character that is almost entirely absent in the rest of the building. A few books are piled here and there (mostly poetry), and a CD player, and a lamp in the shape of a moon, and a suitcase that presumably contains even more terrible jumpers. There’s a peace lily sitting on one of the shelves. The lack of daylight doesn’t seem to bother it much; its leaves are still green, the single white flower standing tall and proud above them. “Is that yours?” Jon asks, nodding towards it.
“Yeah,” Martin says. “Don’t really know my neighbours well enough to ask them to plant-sit for me, and I thought she’d probably die if I left her at my flat without watering her – I mean, she’ll probably die anyway, but I wanted to keep an eye on her. She seems to be doing all right so far, though.”
“’She?’”
“Oh, I – I mean, I just think of it as a her. Not sure why.” Martin's ears have gone red. He ducks his head and digs into his meal.
Hm. That’s – oddly endearing. “Does she have a name?”
“Not yet.”
“Call her Gertrude,” Jon suggests.
Martin shrugs. “OK.”
They eat sitting on the cot, leaning against the wall, and he’s forced to admit that the food isn’t actually as terrible as he feared. Borderline pleasant, in fact. “So what do you do in here all day?” Jon says.
Inwardly, he cringes. Bad conversation starter. Bad. Martin doesn’t seem to mind. “Catch up on research, mostly,” he says, “and sometimes when I can’t sleep I listen to audiobooks – they’re quite soothing, you know? I’m halfway through Harry Potter right now. Never actually read it before. Well, I suppose I’m not really reading it now, but it amounts to the same thing.”
It sounds like a pretty lonely way of whiling away the hours, but Jon decides not to point that out. Instead, he says, “You know, I could bring you some actual books. If you wanted.”
Martin goes an interesting shade of pink. “Oh, wow. Well. That’d be really nice of you, but I don’t really – I can’t get on very well with actual books? Like, physical books. I’m dyslexic, so… But you can, if you like, I just. Might take a while to get through them.” He stutters to a halt, glancing down at his now-empty carton as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.
“I didn’t know you were dyslexic,” Jon says.
“Why would you? It’s not come up before.”
Jon eats a chip without really tasting it. His brain helpfully decides to offer up a slideshow of all the times he’s chewed Martin out for being slow, or stupid, or incompetent, or having frankly abysmal spelling, and informs him that he might have been, perhaps, just a little bit of a dick.
Jon tells his brain to shut up. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know much about all this stuff. Dyslexia and dyspraxia and so on – he’s aware that those conditions exist and that some people have them, but that’s about it. Georgie used to pester him to go to the university's wellbeing service and get assessed (come on, it can’t hurt!), but he resisted. Once he got as far as picking up one of the forms and taking it home. He only got halfway through it before crumpling it up, inexplicably discomfited and annoyed. Do you find it difficult to make and maintain close friendships? was the first question, followed by Do people frequently describe you as ‘stiff’ or ‘pedantic’? and then Do you experience over or under-sensitivity to sounds, touch, smells and tastes? Jon dislikes labels. He dislikes being pathologised even more. He crumpled up the form and threw it away and didn’t think about it again, or at least tried very hard not to. “You should have told us when you applied,” he says now, digging his thumbnail into the polystyrene until it gives way.
“I thought they might not give me the job if I did.” The bit of polystyrene breaks off. Jon crumbles it into dust between his fingers. “Anyway,” Martin says, “it’s not important. I don’t even know how much longer I’ll have a job here.”
Jon glances sideways at him, alarmed. “You’re not leaving?”
“Oh, no. No, God, I hope not. But things feel a bit fragile right now, don’t they? Dunno exactly how it’s all going to pan out, but it might be good to have a backup plan. Just in case it all goes weird.”
“Being trapped in your house by worms for a month doesn’t qualify as weird?”
“Weird-er, then. Anyway, I thought I might try and get a job at the British Library, if they’d have me. Or UCL – they’re always hiring. I checked their employee reviews. They seem pretty positive and, y’know, normal, so that’s a bonus.” He hunches his shoulders, abruptly self-conscious. “Well. I’m just batting ideas around, I suppose.”
Jon isn’t sure why the idea of Martin resigning bothers him so much. “You’ve really thought about this, then,” he says.
“Maybe? A bit. Right now it seems like we’re… heading towards something? Something big. Not sure what, exactly. ‘S just a feeling.”
Well, that’s nice and vague, isn’t it? Jon does get it, though. Ever since Martin stumbled in looking like six kinds of hell and fresh off a month-long siege by a woman made of worms, the world has felt… well, not safe, it’s never been safe, but up until now the danger had felt a comfortable distance away. Something that happened to other people. Like the Archives was protecting its own. No longer. “I know what you mean.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“I’m just scared,” Martin says. “All of the time. Like something really bad's going to happen at any moment. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Not at all.”
Martin smiles at him, or tries to. It turns out a bit wobbly. “When this is over,” he says, “we should all take a holiday.”
Jon makes a displeased sound. He’s now dismembered most of his polystyrene tray and piled the remains on his lap, like a tiny igloo. “Ugh. No.”
“What? It’d be good for you, you know. You could get out. See the world. Meet some new people.”
“I don’t like people.”
“Well, that’s silly, you haven’t met all of them.”
“I have met enough of them to know that I don’t like them,” says Jon, with dignity, and he stands up to put the sad remains of his takeout tray in the bin. A snowdrift of polystyrene crumbs falls from his hands. He winces slightly as his grandmother’s voice rings out in his brain: oh, for heaven’s sake, Jon, look at this mess, why you can’t just eat your food instead of playing with it I’ll never know –
A shuffling sound from behind him makes him turn around. Martin is on his feet too, tugging the blanket off the bed. And one of the pillows. “Here, you take these,” he says. “Sorry, I know it’s not much.”
Jon frowns. “You’ll be cold.”
“And you’ll have a crick in your neck. We can suffer together.”
Reluctantly, sensing that protest is futile, he accepts the offering and lays the blanket out on the carpeted floor. He could, of course, go to sleep in a different room – but Martin might be offended if he did that, and besides, it’s sort of. Nice. The company. Not having to fall asleep alone. Jon wasn’t much for sleepovers when he was a child, partly because he was never invited to any, so it’s all a somewhat novel experience. “Thank you,” he says.
They talk for a while longer, empty meaningless stuff, until Martin starts making noises about feeling a bit out of it, and Jon takes the hint and lies down. Martin leaves the moon lamp on. It’s the kind with a dimmer, and he turns it to the lowest setting before switching off the overhead light, so the glow isn’t particularly bothersome. If he closes his eyes he can’t even notice it. “Goodnight.”
“Yeah, g’night,” Martin says around a yawn.
He goes to sleep long before Jon does. Jon watches him for a while, which is undeniably creepy, except what else is there to look at? The suitcase? Gertrude the peace lily? Martin’s hand is by his face, palm upward, slightly curled. Jon thinks, unprompted, that if he wanted to, he could reach up and take it. Which is ridiculous. He doesn’t want to. He pulls the borrowed blanket almost all the way over his head and closes his eyes. It smells nice. Not of anything, in particular – just a general nice sort of smell.
Martin is a heavy sleeper. When he breathes it’s very slow and very quiet, so quiet that it’s almost noiseless – the sleep of the dead, Jon thinks, which seems like much too ominous a phrase to apply to this situation. Besides, Martin doesn’t look dead. He looks peaceful. Calm. Jon is, he has been reliably informed (thanks, Georgie), a terrible sleeper. Always has been. Even before all this. He kicks and thrashes, steals the bedclothes, jolts awake at odd hours, holds one-sided conversations that mostly just sound like gibberish, and – on one memorable occasion – mistakes his sleeping partner for an intruder and shoves them out of the bed. (Sorry, Georgie.) On the plus side, he does have the cat-like ability to fall asleep pretty much anywhere. Face down on the desk, usually, although there’s always the risk that Martin will walk in and give him that “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” face.
Whether it’s the slow, regular sound of another person’s breathing or simply his own exhaustion catching up to him, he can feel sleep coming on almost instantly. His brain slows. The world turns soft and grey at the edges, darkness drawing in. As he drifts, a voice in the back of his brain speaks up. It says, very quietly, Safe.
Jon sleeps, and does not dream.