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“Huh,” Basia snorts, looking down at the corpse before them, “someone really killed him?”
Martin prefers to do this at the morgue, or better yet, at the actual scene when Daisy can get them in. Things are always so artificial when they have to go to a chapel or funeral home. There are always big floral arrangements with the same trite words of condolences, the same grannies and great aunts come out of the woodwork to wear their Sunday best and gossip, the same moving eulogies. Death may turn a messy, moving human life into a corpse, but preparing for burial removes all nuance from a person, even without all that embalming the Americans are fond of doing.
Whoever had prepared Jonathan Sims must have had a personal mission to make him look as boring and unassuming as possible. They’ve given him a fresh shave and combed out all his curls to lie limp and flat on the white satin pillow behind his head. This is the man who sat at Martin’s counter with red rimmed eyes and cigarette stained fingers, going on his third day fueled by only coffee and paranoia. The same man who spent nearly an hour in the alley behind the Pie-Hole trying to coax out a cat that may or may not have existed out from behind the bins after Martin told him he thought he might have heard a meow.
In all his years of a customer-facing role, Martin’s met all sorts of people, and he’s encountered even more people from his work with Basira, and he’s still never met anyone like Jon Sims. Now some wretched funeral director tidied Jon’s beautiful mess of hair, put him in an ill-fitting, plain black suit Martin’s sure Jon would never buy for himself, and propped him up in what looks like the largest casket they could find, with white silk spread out around Jon for miles.They’d even folded his right hand so completely over the left that it hid the waxy, still healing burn that wrapped around Jon’s left hand.
Like this, Jonathan Sims looks more like a bank teller or secretary at a primary school; someone you saw regularly enough that you really should remember their name or any defining feature, but just couldn’t. He certainly didn’t look like someone who could inspire much emotion in someone else, much less murder.
“Could we… I mean, maybe you could, um,” Martin stammers on and while Basira looks at him with an eyebrow raised, she doesn’t offer any help. Finally, Martin is able to take a deep breath and stare her down firmly. “I need to do this one alone.”
Basira is a suspicious, curious person, but she’s never wanted to look too closely at Martin's ability so she just shrugs. “Sure, I’ll distract the witnesses.”
The room is still closed; Basira somehow knows someone everywhere and got them a few minutes to view the body before the casket’s closed for the services. Though there had been a few people in the lobby when they walked in, there are other parlors in the home, and from the way Jon’s talked about his co-workers, Martin’s not even sure who would be here for him.
“Sounds good,” he tells Basira anyway.
She spares Jon one more curious glance and then is out the door, leaving Martin alone. Alone, with a coffin.
When Basira had told them their case the night before, Martin had tried very hard not to be alarmed. It’s not like Jon had a particularly rare name; it’s Jonafterall. With each detail Basira listed off, that hope inside him sputtered, trying valiantly to stay aflame despite each dousing. Male, early thirties, south Asian, found in his (single occupied) flat in Central London, reported missing by one of his colleagues at some posh research institute. Martin had been barely able to get the words out, but he just had to know.
“Yeah,” Basira had said, “Magnus Institute sounds right.”
Martin, an optimistic some would say, stupid and waiting to get his heart broken his mother would say, still hoped there would be some mix up or some other Jonathan Sims who worked at the Magnus Archives. And even if itwas his Jon, then doing this would get Martin closure, right?
Looking at Jon, so still and so small, Martin doesn’t feel closure, he mostly just wants to throw up. Instead, he leans over and taps Jon, just once, on the cheek.
***
Jon first comes by the Pie-Hole nearly a year ago, in the heat of summer. Martin hadn’t sprung for aircon when he bought the place and regrets it every August when the heat in the shop rivals that of the kitchen with it’s four industrial ovens. It’s nearing 10 AM, getting close to the end of the morning shift and well past the morning rush, and there’s only two customers in the shop so Martin’s unhurried in the kitchen. The bell over the door rings, and Martin continues pulling a lemon custard pie from the oven as he throws a “be right there!” over his shoulder. Once the pie is on the counter, he dabs some cold water from the tap on his face, a mostly pointless activity to tamp down the flush that persistently sticks to his face from mid July until the first cold front of fall, and steps out from the kitchen, where there is a beautiful man sitting at the counter.
Martin has dealt with beautiful customers before, there's no reason to be flustered, but still he has to swallow several times before he can croak out a greeting.
“Coffee,” is the reply, in an equally beautiful voice.
Ah, so a beautiful, rude stranger. Martin has also had to deal with rude customers before. It’s a bit unavoidable in his line of work. Still, he’ll give nothing but his best service, take nothing personally, and hope the man leaves as soon as possible.
“Have you had a chance to look at the menu yet?” Martin asks once he sets the mug and saucer down in front of the man.
“Jon,” the man replies, blinking several times like he’s suddenly woken up to find himself in a pie shop. Maybe he has; he eyes the cup with great suspicion. “That wasn’t what you asked me, was it?”
“Are you alright?” Martin asks.
“I… I can’t go to work.”
Oh. Martin wonders if perhaps he needs to change his assessment to a beautiful, unhinged stranger. Now that he’s really looking, the man does look tired and his fingers are tapping restlessly on the counter. He’s got small bits of gauze all over his face, from hairline, all the way down to his collar that Martin hadn’t not noticed when he first saw him, but they only added to the man’s mystery.
There is no protocol for unhinged customers and all Martin really wants to do is make him tea, wrap him up in several blankets, and finger comb the luscious black hair that stops right before it grazes his shoulder. Keeping it appropriate, however, Martin just clears his throat.
“I mean, I’m on leave for… this,” cue lifting a hand to point to the plaster on the ridge of his right cheekbone. “I can’t go to work and if I sit around in my empty flat one second longer, I’ll—” Jon stops himself with a long sigh.
“I’m sorry, do you need— “
“No, no,” Jon has apparently decided to become a normal person and actually picks up the menu to look over. “Where’s the pie?”
Martin points to “a dessert shop” underneath the Pie-Hole logo. It’s on every menu, the marque outside, any promotional ads.
“Oh,” Jon disappoints. “You really have enough business with just dessert?”
He’s not exactly wrong: there’s a reason Martin started working with Basira anyway, but it is rather rude.
Jon seems to catch on, coming back after a few seconds pause to add on his hurried apologies.
“That’s it.” Martin cuts him off, feeling a bit bold. “New rules: I am legally unable to serve anyone who hasn’t slept in over 24 hours.”
“That can’t be a legal mandate.”
“‘Fraid so, I can’t abed anyone in their crimes against decency.”
“I am sorry.”
“I know, but it’s also a crime to taste my pies for the first time on anything but a rested mind and a pleasantly full stomach. I’m guessing the last time you ate was also around the last time you slept.”
“I had a bar.” Jon does not specify when.
“If you come back later, after some rest, your first slice will be on me.”
“First? You assume there will be more?”
Martin’s not one to assume, but he is an optimist.
He doesn’t have to wait long. Jon comes back at the same time the next morning, and he comes back every day for a fortnight. Most days, he stays for awhile, camped out in the back booth that gets the least sun, with his laptop and stack of files. The most Martin ever gets about Jon’s job is that he works as an archivist at a research institute and his multiple wounds come from an incident where the object of their studies got “too close”. Martin tries to guess the studies of the institute based on their conversations and though Jon shoots down all his suggestions, Martin has narrowed it down to: the paranormal or something to do with forensics.
If Jon ever questions a piemakers knowledge of true crime, he doesn’t say anything and for the first couple days they talk a lot about decomposition rates, gun wounds, murder motives, etc. Several customers make faces, and Jon gets into the habit of staying past the morning shift to be able to talk to Martin without an audience while he cleans the kitchen and preps for the afternoon. Sometimes they even talk about monsters, rather than true crime, and every now and then they even talk about Martin’s poetry or Jon’s band in uni.
When Jon’s officially off his work leave, Martin is initially worried, but Jon is there the next morning, albeit during the morning rush so they only get a few to exchange a few words and a tight smile when Martin wishes him a happy return to work. Jon returns a few days later, this time after work, and while he can’t come every day, it’s rare a week goes by without two or three visits from him.
They still talk a lot about murders and just like Jon ignores a piemaker’s knowledge of true crime, Martin mostly ignores what sounds impossibly like Jon, a scholar, is trying to figure out which of his colleagues murdered the previous archivist. Though, of course, Jon only ever says displaced but Martin doesn’t think you’d go to such extremes as following a coworker home and spying on their house for hours over a simple workplace firing. It’s not too hard to get Basira to ask around and find out the corpse of one Gertrude Robinson, previous head archivist at the Magnus Archives for fifty years, reported missing in March 2015, has been recently removed from under the Magnus Institute. With one touch Martin could solve the issue of whoever “displaced” her, but he doesn’t know how or what he’d tell Jon.
Sometimes he wants to tell Jon about it all. The only people who know about his power have all died (again) soon after they find out or are Basira, who caught him resurrecting a budgie that’d flown into his window. There’s never been anyone Martin’s actually wanted to tell, but sometimes when Jon mentions he came by during lunch to find the lights off or after Martin’s had to send a victim barely older than a teen back to death, Martin wants to offload it all on to someone who would understand. Given what he’s read about the Magnus Archives, Martin supposes he has the perfect makings of a statement, but he can’t bring himself to tell him.
By November, Jon’s tried all the pies on the menu, and several others Martin’s experimented with. He still thinks Martin would have a bigger lunch turnout if he had real pies, and nearly goes into shock the first time Martin serves him a slice of fruit fool pie, but he’s never left a piece of pie unfinished. By December, the other regulars all get knowing smiles when Jon walks in and they coyly ask Martin over their holiday plans.
There’s the night in February where Martin stays late at the Pie-Hole, finishing preorders for Valentines Day, when Jon shows up at the locked door, without an overcoat, eyes wide and glassy. That time, Martin actually does wrap him up in a blanket, upstairs in his flat (though he doesn’t touch Jon’s beautiful hair) and leaves him to sit in front of the radiator while Martin fixes him a cup of tea. Jon spins another badly disguised tale of murder (would you really be on the run from the police if your boss just “hurt” a “librarian” and framed you?). Martin called Elias being the murderer, Tim and Sasha sounded too normal, but his vindication is quickly muddled with worry over this man who has long since been a beautiful stranger to him.
Jon accepts Martin’s offer to house him, but only for the night. The next morning, Martin definitely doesn't take his morning tea watching Jon sleep on the couch, no that would be creepy and weird and cross so many boundaries, but he does allow himself a moment or two to look. It’s the first time Martin’s ever seen Jon’s brow entirely slack and he’s got his foot stuck out from his blanket cocoon, sock riding low to show one perfectly circular scar on his ankle, identical to the ones on his face. As he tiptoes downstairs to open the Pie-Hole, Martin tries not to think about mapping out the rest of Jon’s scars with his fingers and mouth, fails, and tells his early morning regular, Mrs. Faamona, that the flush in his cheek is from the ovens.
Jon pops in soon after, dressed in yesterday’s clothes and the outer gear Martin could convince him into: the single glove that’s been in Martin’s sock drawer for years, an old puffy jacket Martin’s mostly grown out of that still swallows Jon up, one of the many knitted caps he receives every Christmas from the florist across the street. Even in his mismatched outfit, he looks better than the night before. Despite Martin’s protests, Jon tells him he can’t possibly overstay his welcome and will stay with an old friend until things “calm down”. When Jon heads out, after a slice of dark chocolate silk on the house, he leaves behind the key Martin had left for him to lock up, glinting in the sunlight on the counter.
Martin isn’t expecting to see Jon after that, but he’s back the next day, and the day after that. He never accepts more than tea, as he claims his cards are being watched (over a workplace misunderstanding, sure) and he stays for hours with his work, now focusing on a circus of all things. Finding a loophole to feed him anyway, Martin uses Jon as a test subject for his savory pies, never letting Jon know he’s not really planning on adding pork pie or steak and kidney to the menu any time soon.
Even though things “calm down” enough that Jon can go back to work, he looks more haggard the more times goes on. Each time Martin sees him, he looks tired and haunted and shows up to the Pie-Hole on the brink of collapse at least thrice, once clutching a hand so badly burnt Martin closes up the shop and takes Jon to the nearest A&E. Martin wants to march down to the Magnus Institue and give them a piece of his mind, even nearly does so when a trip to a murder scene with Basia takes him across the river, near Milbank, but stops before he makes a block or two of progress. The Institute is old, a historied establishment, that despite all the fishy going-ons Jon has described, is still a place of esteem and Martin is a drop out with a pie shop that’s only staying afloat because of his dubiously legal side gig with Basira.
When Jon fails to appear for a full week, Martin is tempted once again, especially as the weeks pass without a visit. Perhaps if he could call Georgie, he would but he doesn’t even have her number. He knows how she keeps her flat and that her cat is named the Admiral and her opinions on the slices of pie Martin sends home with Jon, but he has no idea what he’d ask her.
Instead, Martin puts his hopes aside and continues on as normal, making pie and waking the dead in his off hours and hoping there are no more beautiful strangers in his future.
One week before Martin’s work takes him to the funeral parlor in Chelsea, Martin is hoisting a bag over his shoulder to tip into the bin when he hears a noise behind him.
“Hello Gertie,” Martin calls without turning. The cat is a permanent fixture thanks to Jon’s insistence they feed her and she’s usually around at this time for any scraps Martin brought along with him. But then he hears footsteps.
“Not Gertie then.” Martin lifts up his hands as he starts to turn around. “I should let you know I don’t have any money on me.”
But Jon is not here to rob him, probably. He looks terrible, not sleepless or frustrated or tired of hearing Martin fuss over him or annoyed with the customer that needed the menu read over three times when they were only ever going to order apple pie. This look doesn’t have anything to do with the state of Jon’s hair (limp, greasy at the roots), or the bags under his eyes. It’s like something’s struck Jon in the chest and every moment upright was a battle.
“Jesus, Jon, are you alright?” It’s what Martin had asked, not nearly as desperate, the first time they met.
“I’m— ” Somehow, Jon is less equipped to answer than when he was covered in gauze or on the run from the police.
“Can I…” Martin is sure what he can offer. It doesn’t seem tea and a slice of pie will do this time.
“Can I kiss you?” Jon asks.
They’re at the bins and Martin’s got fruit smeared on his apron and his fingers are red from all the raspberries he’d been prepping, but there’s no situation where he’d say no.
Jon steps up to him, bumping his chest into Martin’s and leaning up, but it’s Martin who takes the final move and lowers his mouth to Jon’s. It’s quick and chaste and Martin’s got “there now, we’ve gotten that out of the way,” on his tongue as he pulls away because as much as he wants this, he wants not to mess this up more, his only friendship in years. Before Martin can go far, Jon surges forward, tangling his hands in Martin’s hair to pull him close and hold him there. Martin’s mouth falls open to Jon’s probing tongue and he moans into the kiss.
After what’s surely not enough time, Jon pulls away. It could just be a twinkle from the streetlights, but Jon's eyes look particularly wet.
“I should— “
“Do you want— “
They both chuckle.
“Do you want to come in? I can make some— ”
“No, no. I should go.”
Martin begins to wonder if this is a dream. But Jon wouldn’t be leaving so soon, he thinks.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I have… I’ll be back.”
Martin doesn’t quite believe him, but the next day, Jon slips in with a rush of customers at breakfast time, sitting at the counter instead of his usual booth. They don’t talk about this kiss but Jon tells him about America and China and when he leaves with a promise to be back soon, he fits his hand over Martin’s for just a second. He’s out the door so quickly that Martin can’t say anything about it, but he does see a small smile on Jon’s lips.
One week later, Basira tells Martin they have a new case.
***
Jon does not take his resurrection well. Most people don’t. There’s lots of screaming and crying and Basira has had to comfort more than a few people who were, up until recently, grisly murder scenes. She’s shit at it; awkward back pats and “there, there”s that have gotten no less wooden despite how many times she’s had to do it, but Martin literally cannot touch anyone and render their victim permanently dead before they’ve gotten the information they need.
Jon doesn’t scream and he doesn’t leap out of his coffin, but he groans and retches and his hands reach up to clutch his head. When his wild eyes catch Martin, there’s recognition, thankfully, but it slides right to suspicion. He presses up on his elbows, one hand coming to the rim of the coffin like he’s going to vault over the side, and Martin takes a hasty step back.
“What is this?”
Martin has the explanation timed down perfectly— “I’m a private investigator who can temporarily wake the dead, so I’ve been hired to solve your muder. Can you tell me who killed you?”-- but what’s pulled from his lips next isn’t that.
“I don’t want to lose you.”
They both frown at that and Martin touches his own lips like he might discern the reason for their disobedience. “What are you— “
“How?”
“I can bring people back from the dead.” Martin answers, again not of his own volition.
“Why? Why did you bring me back?” His eyes are hard now, a glare Martin hasn’t seen since when they first met and Jon was convinced someone was trying to murder him.
“Someone hired me to find out how you died. Jon, can you let me— ”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Basira handles the jobs. Can I get a word in edgewise now? Please?” Martin takes Jon firmly closing his mouth as a yes. Martin takes a step closer.
“I can bring people back from the dead. Exchange a life for a life as it is. All I have to do is touch them. And if I touch them again within two minutes, they’ll return to the dead and it won’t… well, when you stay alive for longer than two minutes, someone else has to die.”
“Why?” Jon asks, though this time, Martin can answer how he wants.
“I work with a private eye, Barisa Hussain. She gets the cases and get’s us access through her police contacts and I wake them up and we figure out who killed them. You said yourself, a dessert shop doesn’t make great money and… at least I’m helping people. Getting families closure and all that.”
“I see.”
There is a gloomy silence and Martin is painfully aware of each second that ticks by. There was never really a goal for this aside from the vague hope of closure, but Martin never expected it to go this bad.
“Jon?” Martin tries. Jon cracks an eye, but other than that lays motionless, hands folded up on his stomach like he’s… Martin doesn’t want to think about that, so instead — “I’m sorry that I didn’t, ah, tell you? It didn’t really seem— and you didn’t tell me you could do that question thing either.”
“It’s fine,” Jon says, eyes sliding closed again.
“Do you want to tell me, who killed you? Or…”
“No.”
“Jon.”
“No,” Jon finally opens his eyes again and turns his head to meet Martin’s gaze. “I know who hired you and I don’t… he doesn’t need to know. I doubt he even…” Jon trails off, leaving Martin waiting anxiously for the rest of that statement, but Jon doesn’t deliver.
“ I’m sorry, Martin, to get you mixed into this. I hope you get paid”
“It’s quite alright. I’m sorry you…” Martin fiddles with a loose string where the satin attached to the wood of his coffin, rather than making eye contact. “Jon?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t… well, whatever you did, it was true. I don’t want to lose you.”
“But someone else has to die?”
There’s no way to lessen that blow. “Yes.”
“The world’s probably better off without me, anway,” Jon mutters darkly.
Martin keeps his hand on the rim off the coffin. “I’m going to leave my hand right here, if you want to touch it— ”
In the silence, Martin can hear all the way from the lobby, the cadence of a female tone that could be Basira, the hum of human life. The seconds tick down and there is no touch to his hand.
“No one killed me. It was, ah, very stupid actually. There was mold in my kitchen. And there are a lot of things I can’t fix, lots of things I’m supposed to fix, I thought if there was just one thing I could handle on my own… It was bleach and ammonia, if you can believe that? It’s not like I didn’t know not to use them together, but I wasn’t… It happened very quickly, I didn’t have time to call out or get to my phone, but I did think, at least no one can use me anymore.”
“Jon, I’m— “
“You can go now, Martin. I’ll… handle this.” Jon has never missed his promise to return to the Pie-Hole soon, it doesn’t escape Martin’s notice that there’s no promise this time.
***
The Magnus Institute is a small, but dignified building, as unassuming amongst all the other old, dignified buildings on the row as Jon had been in his casket. Martin stands with his back to the Thames, just watching the building for a long time.
It’s been a fortnight since Martin’s seen or heard from Jon. He’d thought Jon would… well, he at least thought he’d here about an accidental near-burial or whatever story would be spun to explain Jon’s revival, but the only news story to come from out of the funeral home in the late weeks of July had been the untimely death of one mourner, Katherine Hill, aged 46, who collapsed with an aortic dissection while taking a smoke break and died within a minute. She probably didn’t deserve to die, but Martin’s had to send many mothers, fathers, sons and daughters back to death and very few deserved it.
Inside, the Institute is just as impressive as its exterior. Right through the entryway is a large lobby, open to the top floor, with rich mahogany pillars and marble floor. It’s as Martin pictured, a place for minds like Jon’s, but the woman at the receiving desk is kind and cheerful and she calls for an escort to the archives without any fuss. A short woman, who Martin recognizes as Melanie King from Jon’s stories and his own youtube exploring, arrives to lead him deep into the building, less overtly cheery but kind enough. Martin knows they’re close when they exit a stairwell and then, there’s Jon, alive and waiting for them once they get close to the archives’ entrance.
“Thank you Melanie,” Jon says once they reach them. Melanie looks between the two of them, but she’s wary enough of the abrupt dismissal to question it. Jon leads him into a small office, and sits before a table with a sigh.
“I really do have a statement for you,” Martin starts before Jon can say, or ask him anything. “I didn’t come just to see you, though it’s nice. You look…” Tired but decidedly not lying in a coffin too big for him at a funeral with too few attendees.
“Alright,” Jon clicks on a large tape recorder on the table as Martin sits down. “Statement of Martin Blackwood, regarding…”
“A series of choices. My mum was never a very healthy person…”
Jon watches with rapt attention as Martin tells him about his grandfather’s funeral, the long halls he’d walked and walked and walked, passing identical parlor with identical mourners, open doors to such intimate scenes. About the woman who’d finally led him out and how she’d knocked on his door, a few years later. About opening the door to her, after he’d kept it closed for weeks, not allowing in the neighbors, the caseworkers, anyone who’d come to check in. About how he’d found his mother in her armchair, a few weeks before, cheeks still flush, skin still soft, an overturned pill bottle on the table next to her.
Martin tells him about the choice the woman gave him and how he’d taken it without question. About his mother, closed off before but now as sealed up as an oak barrel, spending the months after her resurrection without even looking at Martin until one day he couldn’t take it and tugged at her arm.
Martin tells him about picking up baking in foster care, anything to be useful, getting pallets of old fruits and vegetables from behind grocery stores and markets, using the very small sum of life inheritance to start the Pie-Hole. About his regular, a cop who came in nearly every morning and the tentative rapport they’d built and how Martin thought it would all come crashing down when she’d seen him with the budgie in his back alley. About the owners of the building wanting to sell to condo developers and the plan Basira had come up with. About the case she had brought him that morning.
When he’s done, Jon tells him about the Archives, filling in all the details Martin had ever known— the statements, the fears, Jane Prentiss, Nikola Orsinov, the Unknowing, the beholding. Jon tells him about becoming the archivist and meeting Gerard Keay. Jon tells him about Sasha.
At some point they’ve transferred over to the Pie-Hole, Jon in his usual seat at the countertop and Martin behind it. It’s dusk and the shop should be open, but Martin’s kept the closed sign flipped outward. He could be selfish, for just this night.
It doesn’t stop Martin from prepping the pies, he can’t take off every day to do nothing but bask in Jon’s presence after all, and he’s got his hands covered in lime juice while he recounts the time he and Basira had to bat off the bees he’d accidentally brought to life when resurrecting a beekeeper. Jon’s got his head pillowed on his fist, a small drowsy smile on his face that suddenly transforms to intrigue.
“How does that work?” Jon asks, nodding at the lime Martin has just picked up to juice.
“Citrus fruits tend to have— “
“No, I don’t mean juicing. How does… Well you said you can’t touch something you’ve revived again, and aren’t most of your fruits originally dead?”
Martin had to have told him, right? He thinks back to what he’d said during his statement, trying to remember if he’d really leave out such an important factor, but he must have been so focused telling Jon how it happened that he didn’t tell him how it worked.
“This,” Martin snaps the band of his plastic glove.
“That’s enough? You can touch if it’s not skin-to-skin?”
Feeling bold, Martin dips one finger into the bowl of cream and drags a bright white streak down Jon’s cheek, quite content that he’s able to leave such a definite mark of his touch on Jon’s skin.
“Oh,” Jon whispers.
Martin can’t hide his smile and the shop is suddenly very warm, even without any of the ovens on. Later, he and Jon will go upstairs where Martin will make them tea and they’ll sit together on the couch with the thinnest blanket he can find separating them and they will talk even more, but for now, the sun is setting, the shop is quiet, and Martin can’t find it in him but to be anything but glad over how it all turned out.