Chapter Text
jon hears calliope music all the time. it’s distant, almost unnoticeable, but it’s there and he’s noticed , and it is slowly driving him insane. he thinks it might be getting louder, or it could just be that the apartment is quieter now that georgie has moved out.
he goes to work and he hears the music. he comes home, and still it follows him. he doesn’t go many other places; maybe that’s why he can’t seem to shake it from his ears—it knows where he’s going to be and waits.
it’s ridiculous. he knows it’s ridiculous. but it’d gotten so bad the other day he’d asked sasha if she heard it. she’d cocked her head and listened for a few seconds and looked surprised before she said, “you know, i think i caught a few notes. must be a circus in town somewhere. you know calliopes can be heard from miles away?”
jon didn’t know this, but he tries to take that as the explanation, even if when he has a free moment he looks it up and there are no circuses in town.
when he starts dreaming the music—no longer just a calliope but a whole orchestra playing jaunty, taunting music—he knows it’s not just in his head. it all feels too real to just be his imagination, even if his imagination does run away with him some days.
he’s certain he could never imagine the feeling of peeling off his own skin so clearly. the sensation sticks with him for the rest of the day. when he catches himself picking at an old scar on his jaw he nearly has a panic attack.
he has the dream again, and again, until finally he’s no longer the performer but the audience, a single person in a gallery of stone, flashlight aimed at the stage and the man standing in its spotlight. he calls out and the man on stage grins, too wide, too toothy, not nearly enough skin on his cheeks. he wakes up screaming and he’s almost glad georgie isn’t there to be woken up with him.
he thinks, after that first sighting of him, that he recognized the man on the stage. after the fourth time he’s positive he knows who it is, and for the first time he seeks out tim stoker on his own.
tim is not hard to find, seeing as he comes by the library every other day to pick up sasha for lunch (the alternating days sasha goes to the publishing house to retrieve him), and he seems delighted when jon intercepts him on his way through the building.
“you don’t have a mysterious and yet completely real reason to be in your office right now?” he says after jon asks to speak to him.
“is your brother a fan of theater?” jon replies, too tired to try to stick to social conventions. his skin has been crawling all day, and he’s managed to open a spot just beside his nose that stings when he moves any part of his face.
tim makes a face like he isn’t sure if jon is joking. “not really. and if you’re planning to ask him out, i hate to break it to you, but danny is straight.”
jon huffs, shaking his head. “no, that’s not—i don’t want to date him; i keep having dreams about him.”
tim’s expression grows more skeptical. “right...and what happens in these dreams? do i even want to know?”
“he tears the skin off his face while you watch,” jon says. “i think he’s in danger.”
“and that has something to do with the theater.”
“it happens in a theater. it feels like it’s underground or—buried? it’s hard to describe.”
“okay. so my brother is going to find an underground theater to tear his face off in front of me? that doesn’t really sound like him. or any sane person, really.”
“i know that,” jon snaps. this was a stupid idea. he’d kind of started to like tim, and now tim was going to think he was insane forever. “forget i said anything.”
tim catches his arm before he can escape. “you really think something’s going to happen to danny?”
jon studies him for a second, searching for a sign he’s being mocked. tim just looks concerned. jon resigns himself to losing tim’s friendship as he extricates his wrist from tim’s grip and says, “i think he’s going to die. maybe worse.”
tim lets him go this time.
jon has the dream again, and again, and again
tim calls him in the middle of the night. “you were right.”
jon sits up in bed. “is danny—”
“he’s alive.” tim laughs. it’s a hollow, wet kind of laugh. “he’s—i followed him. have you ever heard of urbex?”
jon can hear an ambulance. “no, i haven’t. tim—”
“the royal opera house. that’s the theater. it’s not underground, though, not sure where you got that one.”
the ambulance is getting louder.
“tim, are you okay? is that ambulance coming to you?”
“oh, i’m fine. the ambulance is for danny.” tim laughs again, and it’s a sound jon never wants to hear repeated. “he was cutting into his face when i found him. i had to drag him out here, and now he’s not waking up. he’s breathing, though, so at least he’s not, you know.”
the siren drowns out anything else tim might have said before it cuts off abruptly and unfamiliar voices start talking. tim tells them he found danny with a straight razor and how long he’s been unconscious, that he didn’t see anything that might’ve caused that. jon gets out of bed while he talks, puts on the first semi-acceptable clothes he finds, and when tim starts talking to him again, he’s carrying his shoes to the front door. he gets tim to tell him what hospital they’re taking danny to and promises to meet him there.