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Tim probably shouldn’t be here. He’s already nearly turned around and gone home five times, and as he stands outside the door to Jon’s hospital room, it’s itching to be six. The flowers in his hand are slightly wilted, which he thinks is fitting.
Maybe he should go get some new ones—better ones. He turns around, takes a few steps away from the door, then stops and closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Tells himself that he’s being ridiculous because he is, because they’re just flowers, and it’s not like Jon is going to care whether or not they’re wilted carnations or shitty Sainsbury’s lilies or a dozen red fucking roses. Jon will probably take them from Tim no matter what they look like and thank him for them and have that look on his face that makes him seem a bit like a kicked puppy that still whines at your feet hoping to be petted.
Tim really shouldn’t be here.
He goes into Jon’s room anyway.
Jon is sitting up in the hospital bed. It’s all white sheets and white gown and white walls and white, white, white, and it smells like antiseptic and vanilla cinnamon from the wax warmer Martin brought in a few months ago back when he still came to visit. The truly obnoxious generic pop music isn’t playing anymore, which is a relief, but Tim kind of wishes that there was something to fill the space between them when Jon turns to look at him, eyes widening in surprise.
“Tim?”
Tim holds up his hand in a half-wave. “Hey.” He shuts the door behind him and makes his feet cross the room to Jon’s bed. Jon’s eyes follow him every step of the way, the weight of them heavier than it’s been in the past. It reminds Tim of the little bit of acting he did in his uni days—the feeling of an audience’s eyes as he stood in front of them, expectant and waiting for him to give them something to watch. It’s a bit unsettling, sure. Creepy, probably. But it’s not like he wasn’t expecting that.
“What are you…?” Jon swallows, looks down at his hands. “How … how have you been?”
“Oh, you know. Just peachy.” Tim shrugs and sets the flowers on the table next to Jon. There’s a half-full paper cup of water and a statement there already. Maybe that explains the medical miracle level of coherency after six months of being kind of dead. “Things are great back at the Archives. If by great, of course, you mean the same level of low-grade awful they’ve always been. Elias is gone though, so … you know. Small victories.”
“Yes, Basira said.” Jon hesitates. “And … Martin is with … Lukas?”
“For what it’s worth, I tried to talk him out of it. But he didn’t really take any of…” Tim gestures vaguely toward Jon. “… this very well.”
“Oh,” Jon says quietly. He pinches his lips together and twists his hands in the thin sheets covering him. “I’m … I’m sorry, Tim.”
Tim sighs and leans against the wall opposite Jon’s bed. “Don’t. Just … don’t.”
Jon, predictably, carries on regardless. “I just—I know it’s been a long time, a-and I haven’t been here to—to make things right, to help with—with whatever’s been happening, but I—”
“You’re right,” Tim cuts in. “You haven’t been here. You’ve been in a coma. Was that on purpose?”
Jon opens his mouth, then closes it, clearly—for once—at a loss for words. “I—I don’t—”
“Was that part of some master plan that I’m not aware of? Did your spooky evil eye god tell you, oh no, don’t run, just get blown up and lie around for half a year mostly dead?”
“Uh, I—I’m not … no?”
“Then I don’t know why you’re apologizing for it. What happened before the Unknowing, yes—you did things that I hated you for for a long time, and yes, even though it doesn’t do a fucking thing, it at least makes sense for you to apologize for those things, but this…”
Tim deflates, slumping back against the wall, energy abruptly sapped. “You’re not responsible for every evil thing that goes on in that godawful basement, okay?”
Jon is quiet for a long moment. Tim doesn’t look at him; he can’t. Finally, in a hoarse voice, Jon says, “What?”
Fucking hell. Tim’s going to have to spell it all out, then. Christ. He should probably have just turned around and gone home.
(It’s … probably good that he’s here. Tim can hear that statement in his mind clear as day in the voice of his therapist, which means it’s almost certainly true. Frustrating, but true.)
Tim sighs and makes himself look at Jon. “I did a lot of thinking during the weeks I spent in the hospital after the Unknowing. The whole ‘exploding building falling down on top of us’ left me proper fucked up—alive, which was surprising, but with an anatomy book’s worth of injuries—and I had a lot of time to myself to just … think. I thought about Danny and Sasha—about finally destroying the thing that took them from me, and wishing that it felt as satisfying as I’d imagined it would. I think I expected it to finally get rid of that grief, that feeling of loss, to just … burn it all away. It felt good as hell, yeah, but … they were still gone, you know? And you were gone, and I didn’t know what to think about that, so I didn’t think about it.
“And then I went back to the Archives. You were gone and Elias was gone and that was supposed to be good, but everything just felt … off-balance. I thought it was that place, messing with my head and whining about the fact that you weren’t there, but Basira seemed fine and Melanie seemed fine and Martin seemed—well, not fine, but it wasn’t like that was anything unexpected given the general state of things. It took me a while, but I … I think I finally figured it out.”
Tim picks at the nail polish on his thumbnail—clear and thick, meant to keep him from biting them, only partially effective. “After things went south between us, and after the whole situation in the Archives became clear, it was easy to be angry. It was easy to be angry at you and to hate you because I was grieving Sasha and I felt so alone, trapped and helpless and looking forward to a bright future of endless servitude to a voyeuristic god of fear or, if I was lucky, an early trip to the grave. And you were the reason I came to the Archives, and after the worms, when I needed you—I cared about you, so fucking much, Jon, and then you just … burned everything we’d ever had, like you didn’t care. And it hurt, like losing Danny hurt, like finding out I’d lost Sasha hurt, like finding out I’d lost my life to that place hurt, and I … I got angry.
“So then, after everything, you were finally gone. And I just … I didn’t have a place to put all of it anymore. I didn’t visit you for a long time—couldn’t understand why Martin kept going because it wasn’t like you were going to wake up, and if you did, well … you were dead. People don’t come back from the dead. Not if they’re human. I was angry and I hated you and I kept hating you, but after a while, it just felt … like a habit, I guess. Like that’s what I was used to, so that’s what I would keep doing. So after a few months, I forced myself to sit down and think about it all. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. And besides, I … I don’t like being angry. Never did. It was just … better than feeling sorry for myself all the time.
“I’d had this therapist who I saw for a few years after Danny died. He was good for me—made me think about the things I didn’t want to think about and stuff. I stopped seeing him after a while, around the same time I stopped looking for information on the things that killed Danny. Just got tired, I guess. Comfortable. But I made myself call him again a few months ago, and … well, he’s still good at making me think about the things I don’t want to think about. Like the fact that I was sad that you were gone, and that I missed you, and that I’d been letting all that hurt sit in me for all that time until it became something that I didn’t know if I could ever let go of. I … still don’t know if I’ve let go of it. Or if I ever will. But…”
Tim sighs and makes an absent gesture with his hand. “I don’t think you’re evil or a monster—not like the other shit we’ve had to deal with. Okay? And I don’t hate you. And I’m really fucking glad that you woke up because I’ve already lost too many people who I care about and I don’t want to lose another one. So, yeah.”
Tim turns his head and looks out the window. It’s approaching twilight, which means that it’s probably almost time for him to go, which means he’s been rambling for way too long, and he doesn’t even know if he’d accomplished what he’d come here to do.
Then, he hears a sniff—small, choked, like it’s meant to be hidden but has slipped out anyway—and he turns to see Jon staring at him, wiping the back of his hand hastily across his eyes and making a poor show of pretending like he isn’t moments from crying.
“Christ,” Tim says, and then he’s across the room and standing by the side of Jon’s bed. He looks down at Jon—at the single IV in the back of his hand, his body otherwise unencumbered by tubes and wires and all the other things that have been hooked to him for six months. Then, before he can talk himself out of it, he reaches down and wraps his arms around Jon.
Jon stiffens, just for a moment, before slowly relaxing. Tentatively, he returns the hug, keeping the IV-encumbered hand on the bed and placing the other one flat against Tim’s back. There’s another sniff, quiet enough that Tim wouldn’t hear it if he weren’t right next to Jon’s head, and Tim tightens his grip until he’s clutching Jon to his chest with surprising intensity. Jon makes a noise and buries his face in the crook of Tim’s neck, apparently having given up the pretense of not crying, and Tim lets him. He holds Jon tightly and runs his hands rhythmically down the too-prominent bumps of Jon’s spine and says, “I’m sorry this happened to you. For whatever it’s worth.”
Jon hiccups, grips the back of Tim’s shirt with startling strength for a once-dead and kind of emaciated man, and whispers, “I’m sorry too.”
Tim sighs, moves a hand to cradle the back of Jon’s head, and resists the urge to press his lips to the crown. They’re not ready for that yet—he’s not ready for that yet. Instead, he holds Jon close, lets him cry, and hopes that tomorrow, things will be just a little bit less horrible.