Chapter Text
Martin didn’t know how he was convinced to come here.
As if it wasn’t enough that his roommate had dragged him out of their dorm on a night that was unseasonably cold, he found himself in a densely packed basement, surrounded by a sea of fishnets, distressed jeans, and undercuts. The room was more well-lit than he’d expected, purple and red LEDs illuminating what of the room the small spotlight on the performing area didn’t touch. The smell of cigarettes and weed was… pervasive, to say the least, despite nobody in the room currently smoking. It wasn’t terribly loud, which was a relief, though he didn’t doubt it would soon be overwhelmingly so.
“Are the bands going to play there? It looks a bit… tiny,” Martin remarked to Melanie, whose denim jacket adorned with patches and bleached-blonde hair blended her in with the crowd much better than Martin’s plain green jumper.
“It’s a house show, Martin, there isn’t a stage. But yeah, they perform up there. They’ll be coming on in a second. You don’t have to stay for the whole thing, but I probably will,” Melanie said. The buzz in the room was undeniable as the small but dense crowd waited for the first band to come up and take up their instruments. Martin was surprised at the polite smattering of applause as four people stepped behind instruments and microphones- he had thought that this crowd would be more eager to yell.
He recognized the drummer- Georgie, Melanie’s girlfriend, the person he’d been goaded into coming and supporting. She begged him for days, insisting that this was their first gig for anyone other than family and friends and that there needed to be a packed crowd. In the end, he relented, in exchange for Melanie agreeing not to kick Martin out of their room to have sex with her girlfriend for a month. Georgie’s tight curls were pulled into two buns at the back of her head, and her ripped crop top revealed a belly button piercing that he didn’t know she had.
A blonde man in much brighter clothing than his bandmates that he didn’t recognize stood behind a keyboard, checking the instrument. Why the keyboard sounded like saxophones, Martin had no clue. Why not just play a saxophone? Though, he supposed that for this sort of band, it wasn’t exactly the sexiest instrument to be playing. His shirt, adorned with a swirling pattern of yellows and pinks, paired with his bright hair, left him looking a bit like the odd man out of his compatriots.
Holding a heavily stickered guitar was just about the edgiest man Martin had ever seen. Long black hair- obviously dyed, given his overgrown roots- as well as thick black eyeliner, stood out against alabaster skin, as did a myriad of tattoos up his arms. Christ, he had a tattoo on his neck? The idea of a needle getting close to Martin’s neck had him shivering, even in the room that was gradually getting sweatier as the energy around him increased.
The man behind the microphone… was beautiful, a thought which nearly shocked Martin out of his own head. He was decorated similarly to his bandmates- well, all of them but the keyboardist. He had long black hair, similar to the guitarist, though it was much more natural-looking, and more textured as it fell down his thin shoulders. The man had a black t-shirt on with the logo of some band he didn’t recognize, paired with very distressed black jeans. He seemed to have fishnets for sleeves as well as underneath the holes in his jeans, and Martin struggled not to stare. He wore leather platform boots, though that didn’t prevent him from needing to adjust the microphone stand down a few inches with a small scowl. Martin could see even from the wall his bright green eyes, decorated with black eyeliner, reflecting the colorful light in the space. He typically wasn’t one to openly stare but, well, almost everyone in the room was looking at him anyway. He barely noticed Melanie speaking to him until he felt a gentle tug on his arm.
“…and once they start playing, I’d better hear you screaming, or I swear to god I will kick you out tonight. I will make you sleep in the hallway, Martin Blackwood,” Melanie said just as the band seemed to wrap up their various sound checks. Martin felt his breath catch in his throat as the singer stepped closer to the microphone and began to speak.
“Good evening, everyone. It’s so great to be here with all of you tonight, this is a fantastic venue,” Martin wasn’t expecting this guy to sound so… posh. His appearance certainly didn’t suggest the formality of his speech. Regardless, he hung on to every word, even those cut through with the feedback from the microphone. “We are the Watchers. I am joined by Michael on the keys, Gerry on guitar, and the fantastic Georgie on drums…” each band member gave a small beat or note of their respective instruments, earning polite claps from the audience- save for when Georgie was announced, which earned a loud whooping cheer from Melanie, laughter smattering through the audience.
“And I am the Archivist. We’re a bit of a… younger group, so we don’t yet have any originals to share with you all. But we hope that you like what we do have. This is Outlier and Hyppocrates by Will Wood. Ready?” The Archivist asked as he looked back at his bandmates. Really, the opener was a cover band? A bit disappointing, though honestly, Martin would watch this man play the triangle if need be.
A few soft notes emerged from the guitar and the keyboard respectively, and Martin watched with bated breath before the Archivist began to sing.
“Did you know that the hole in the apple didn’t come from the outside in?”
The Archivist’s voice was gentle, and Martin was surprised by their opening song seeming so… low energy. Not that he wasn’t relieved for it, part of him was worried that if things in the room got too energetic, he would be trampled by a stampede of Doc Martens. Though, realistically, he knew that he wasn’t a short man, or a small one. Getting past his initial surprise, he couldn’t deny that this man’s voice was lovely, it seeming to wash over the room like a gentle rain.
“But a few bad ones won’t spoil the eyes
If they fall far enough from the tree
The rind is all you see
Leave Eden with my… seeds in your stomach.”
Singing turned to speech with those penultimate four words, and all at once, the band erupted with sound. Georgie was a whirlwind on her drums, and Melanie cheered as the music rapidly picked up. Gerry and Michael seemed rather in sync, banging their heads to Georgie’s drumbeat as they played their respective instruments. Martin suddenly understood the purpose of the keyboard being a saxophone the sound undercutting the guitar and drums and binding the music in a way that Martin had never heard before. Loud as they were, they sounded fantastic. The crowd, initially less-than-enthusiastic, began slowly moving in time with the music, a handful of people near the front of the crowd dancing much more fervently than Martin thought made sense.
“Who’d want to be human anyway?
Who pilots all these crude machines?”
As nice as it sounded soft and sonorous, the Archivist’s voice carried just as his energy seemed to build. He gripped the microphone like a lifeline, knuckles white against it. Martin noticed, with a start, that from the moment the band had begun playing, the Archivist’s eyes had been tightly shut.
“Like freaks of nurture,
Well isn’t it funny?
Well, not “ha-ha” funny, but y’know, funny.”
The Archivist’s eyes opened on the last line, spoken and not sung. His eyes seemed to search the room as he opened them, traveling for barely a moment before settling on the far wall, where Martin was leaned against, desperately wanting to be out of the way of any of the other concert-goers. Martin felt as though there was a grip around his throat- the Archivist’s eyes were right on him. He couldn’t have actually been looking, right? He couldn’t have been.
Was he?
“Too weird to love, too scared to die
Too alien to take you home,”
Martin was almost too concerned with the hot lead singer seeming to have his eyes on him to listen to his voice- almost. There were certainly things he was missing, like Melanie sliding past people to get closer to the band, but the Archivist’s voice wasn’t one of them. Neither was the way he looked, gradually working up a sweat as he poured his energy into his song- well, Will Wood’s song- his voice not wavering for a second despite the amount of effort he was putting in. It seemed as though this man belonged here, singing, performing. Staring directly into Martin’s soul.
“When Chuang-Tzu awoke he sat up,
Almost choking, spat out a butterfly and said,
“Five more minutes, please? You wouldn’t believe the dream I just had.
I mean you were there, and you were there, and you, and you,
And you were there!”
He hadn’t ever heard a song interjected with so much talking, not that he wasn’t grateful for every last syllable. Martin watched the Archivist address each of his bandmates during the small interlude, until the final “And you” where the man turned his gaze back to the wall and grinned, before diving headfirst into the spirited chorus.
“Cause I doubt that you would even if you could change
The things that make you special are what make you strange,”
His voice wasn’t flawless, nor effortless, but he looked to be pouring his whole self into the final crescendo of the song, the intermingling of singing and shouting into the mic oddly working for him. The crowd around Martin seemed to completely lose their apprehension and- while not quite moshing- were jumping and dancing with an energy that was contagious enough to reach Martin, who was bobbing his head to the beat. With a final resounding note, the Archivist enraptured the room with his voice, raspy and full and raw. The instruments, rather than stopping entirely, petered out and then went silent. Applause filled the space- none louder than Melanie, who had squished her way to the front row and was screaming her head off. Martin looked between her and the stage, stepping to the side to try and see the Archivist, though the man was turned towards his bandmates and was sipping at a water bottle, leaning against the keyboard. The goth guitarist took the microphone.
“You have all been fantastic, thank you so much… Unfortunately Jon- the Archivist messed his throat up a bit, so we are gonna concede the stage to- fuck, who’s going on next…? Um, Michael’s Crew,” Gerry said, slightly awkwardly as he began to usher the other three back out of the door they had entered from. Martin watched them go just as the next band began setting up and jumped at the feeling of a hand on his arm.
“What’d you think? I told Georgie they should play their own stuff, but apparently, everyone else likes the covers. Shame they had to leave so fast, though. I’m gonna go get Georgie, but you feel free to stick around, yeah? See you tomorrow,” Melanie said quickly before rushing off to retrieve her girlfriend. Martin, who wanted nothing less than to stay in this room without an Archivist to ogle at, headed directly to the door and up the stairs, out into the cool night air. It was a welcome relief, as it felt as though he was nearly sweating through his jumper.
The walk back to campus wasn’t long, another relief. He found himself replaying the events of the night in his head as he changed into his pajamas and climbed into bed. It had been a long time since he’d had an honest to god crush on a person- well, was it a crush if he didn’t know the person’s name? He didn’t even really know who he was, besides being a pretty boy in a band with his roommate’s girlfriend. Still, despite this, he found himself adding a particular Will Wood song to his Spotify likes just before he drifted off to sleep.
Martin didn’t have an inordinately difficult school day ahead of him. His Tuesdays and Thursdays were his simple days, with only two lectures to attend. However, it wasn’t his classes that he was dreading.
He’d been trying to put off getting a job as long as he possibly could- his tuition, as well as room and board, were paid for with scholarships, and he needed to focus on his academics. However, endless phone calls from his mother just about forced his hand, and he found himself applying for a part-time position at the University’s library. He figured that there would be no possible way he would be offered a job- positions for on-campus jobs were few and far between, after all. However, after an initial job interview with Ms. Robinson, the woman who ran the library, he found himself saddled with a preliminary position that he in no way wanted.
Regardless, at promptly 4:00 pm he headed into the library, walking past a few students with headphones in, studying and working. While the library wasn’t packed, as was customary for August, come exam time it would be filled to the brim with those completing term papers and doing last-minute cramming. Martin wouldn’t be among them, preferring to do his studying in the comfort of his and Melanie’s room, or outdoors.
His eyes flitted around as he walked, looking for Ms. Robinson, or just anybody who had a name tag on. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see the aging woman anywhere, and so elected to walk directly up to the front desk. A handsome young man sat behind the counter with his feet up on the desk. He had close-cropped brown hair and a blue patterned button-up shirt- not quite Martin’s type, but he was quite attractive.
“U-Um, hi, my name’s Martin Blackwood. I… work here. Well, I’m starting today, anyway. Ah, is Ms. Robinson here?” Martin asked, silently cursing the way that he stuttered and stumbled his way through his sentences. The young man looked up and gave Martin a bright grin that somewhat eased his anxiety as he moved his feet down from the desk.
“Right! She mentioned there was a new hire- I’m Tim, by the way. Gertrude had to go… well, somewhere, didn’t quite say where, or for what. The old bat’s a bit cagey. Anyways, I’m stuck up on desk duty, but she said that you’d be trained by Jon, at least for today. He’s probably in the back room organizing, you can head straight back there, code’s 624687,” Tim smiled before returning to reading a large textbook with an image of a skyscraper on the cover.
Martin fought to memorize the door code as he headed to the door behind the front desk, trying and failing to type it in twice before managing it on his third attempt. He steeled himself for a moment before opening the door and stepping in.
He could do this. It was just a stupid library job, there was nothing to worry about.
Upon opening the door, Martin found that he had slightly more than nothing to worry about.
In front of him, with a sour expression, flipping through a large stack of documents, was the Archivist.