Work Text:
As the tower burns and the Archive bleeds, the tapes unspool into nothing.
Though movement as a concept exists only tenuously in the absence of anything to move relative to, those things attached to the web of tapes can be said to be moving, and insofar as they are moving, doing it fast. They are not falling, quite, in the absence of an up or down or left or right or northeast or southwest or anything that would categorize this movement as a fall. There is no wind to bluster through hair, to wring tears from squeezed-shut eyes, no physical bodies for the Archive and his lover to cling to. But they cling nonetheless, alive insofar as anything can be called alive in this great nowhere, and colors and chaos and chrome flash past them as they and all that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies hurtle through the space between.
And then everything, which is only everything insofar as anything is anything here, shatters.
It should be noted that it does not break. It does not tear. It does not rip or crumble or unwind. It does not dissolve or rend or snap or even simply stop. Despite the lack of physical presence or physics at all, or any concept of sound, it absolutely and definitively shatters.
Thus ends Annabelle Cane’s web, and the Archive and his lover, and all that is terror and fear. Ostensibly speaking.
<><><>
Somewhere that is a somewhere, today is the day that Jonathan Sims dies. Usually.
Martin doesn’t know this, of course. As far as he’s concerned, today is the first and only time this day will happen. The only version of this day is the one where he looks at the man on the train platform, out of all the other weary commuters, for a few seconds longer than usual.
It isn’t because the man is—he begrudgingly admits to himself—attractive, in an uptight and weathered sort of way. It’s more that Martin could swear he knows him.
It’s just an itch in the back of his brain, tiny but persistent. The features aren’t bringing up anything specific in his mind, and this bothers him given the fact that he’s usually good at remembering faces. He should be able to tie the deep-set, dark eyes or the graying hair yet unlined face to a certain place or event, and he just…can’t. He watches idly for a few seconds as the man paces, rifling through a folder of scattered papers, drifting precariously close to the edge of the tracks.
It cannot, of course, be confirmed that this is why he’s still watching when the stranger stumbles. Maybe he would have been paying attention regardless. Maybe somebody else would step in. Maybe the stranger would have caught himself. But what is undeniable is that on this unremarkable morning, as the oncoming subway roars, one of the man’s polished shoes slips over the edge, and Martin sees it happen.
Martin lunges forward and seizes the stranger by the arm. He overcorrects and yanks them both back, knocking them down in an undignified pile of limbs as the train blares past. The man squawks, belatedly, when they’re already on the ground.
“Sorry,” Martin says on reflex.
The stranger stares at him. His eyebrows undergo a fascinating process of working themselves into a deeper and deeper furrow until they’re practically tied into a knot. “What the hell was that?” His accent is particularly posh with outrage.
Martin feels his brow wrinkle. “I—um, the—you were about to—”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you saved me from something horribly ignoble, but I haven’t got any cash,” the man says archly, clambering upright and brushing himself off. He gives a bereaved look to his papers, now scattered across the tracks.
“No, you—” Martin tries to push himself up to stand, but one of his feet slips and he falls back down twice, smacking his knee, before he can actually get up. “You were about to—”
“You obviously want something, and now that I’m going to be late, if I even bother to show my face without that file, I’ve apparently got time,” the man says, his voice rising, gesturing animatedly. “So? What is it?”
Martin opens and closes his mouth a few times. His knee smarts. Was this stranger so distracted that he really didn’t notice himself almost falling onto subway tracks? “I, uh,” he says, “I thought I…knew you from someplace.”
Well. That isn’t what he expected to come out of his mouth. But it’s out there now, starkly loud even against the bustle of the tube station.
The man scoffs, but he doesn’t look away from Martin. In fact, his eyes rove across Martin’s face, not blinking nearly enough for anyone’s comfort. “We’ve never met,” he says, perhaps trying to sound firm, but his voice is distant and soft with distraction.
“Yeah, I mean, obviously I was wrong, it was just a- just a feeling,” Martin rambles. Then, despite himself, he adds, “Y’know, if I hadn’t…done that, you would’ve missed your train anyway.”
“Oh, and now I’ve been accosted by a stranger with precognition.” There is a biting edge to the man’s voice that makes Martin feel small and wish he were smaller. He knows how this goes, helping someone who doesn’t want to be helped. He should know better, but when has he been able to stop himself?
And yet…the itch in the back of his mind makes him press on. Somehow, he manages to hold that dark gaze, eyes the bitter brown of oversteeped tea.
“You were about to fall onto the tracks. I couldn’t just watch it happen.”
The man stares at him, something slowly, infinitesimally softening in the hard lines of his gaze. He looks at Martin like he wants to take him apart and figure out how he works, like Martin is a problem he doesn’t understand. Martin wishes he would solve it. He wants to see him try.
At last, the man heaves a very deep sigh. “Right. Well. Assuming you’re telling the truth, I ought to thank you.”
“Assuming.” At the rumble and screech of wheels, Martin tips his head to indicate the source of the noise. “Your train?”
“Ah. It is. Yes.” The stranger hesitates, then- “Is it also yours?”
“Nope. I got here early.” Martin gives a weak smile. “I suppose it was lucky, wasn’t it?”
“Yes….ehm. Jonathan.” The man puts out a hand. “Jon. Actually.”
“Martin.” He accepts the handshake with a slight, nervous laugh. “You, you seemed cross about being late, so…I won’t keep you.”
“Right.” Jon nods to himself, turns, and walks towards the train. “Right.”
He fades into the crowd fast, thin and harried, but Martin can’t forget the way Jon looked at him. He’s used to thinking of himself as a problem, at best a puzzle, but he’s never wanted to be solved in the way he did then. Like it would mean being understood.
Maybe Martin will arrive early next week as well. He sighs to nobody in particular; he really ought to know better.
<><><>
In a different somewhere, there is a very strong possibility that Jon will never visit this cafe again. It’s the middle of the lunchtime rush, and there appears to be only one barista, a large man who seems determined to diminish that aspect of himself as he scuttles back and forth behind the counter. Frankly, the only reason Jon bothers visiting this establishment is that it’s the nearest source of caffeine to the offices of the small press that recently hired him on.
Perhaps he can write up a poor review of the place, he thinks as he steps inside and a tinny bell dings above the door. He wasn’t hired to be a food critic, per se, and the circumstances might lack some journalistic integrity, but it’s an idea.
He waits his turn with mounting impatience, and by the time he reaches the counter to order, he has firmly decided what he’ll be getting: a hot Americano, low on creature comforts, high in caffeine. The order is lined up on his tongue, ready to trot out once it’s his turn, but then he makes eye contact with the barista and finds the words reshape themselves entirely.
“I’ll have a hot tea.”
The man has soft eyes, shallow-set, rimmed by short dense lashes and a pair of round spectacles that are slightly too small for his face. His name tag says Martin. Nothing about this should contribute to Jon changing his mind at the last moment, and he feels as though the idea was simply dropped into his head with force.
Martin picks up a cup, rote and routine. “What kind?”
“Assam black.” Jon could swear that Martin is already reaching for the correct jar of loose leaf before the words are out of his mouth.
As he spoons tea leaves into the little strainer, Martin absently says, “Splash of milk, spoonful of honey?”
“No, instead of—well. Yes. Actually.” Jon stares at the man, who is now staring back with those wide eyes. He’s never met this man, let alone mentioned how he takes his tea. “I’ve not been here before. I would certainly remember if I had.”
“Lucky guess?” Martin gives a nervous laugh. “I guess you just seem like the type.”
Jon would like to interrogate him as to what “the type” is, but he’s becoming very conscious of the line extending behind him. “Right. Well.”
Another half-laugh as Martin returns to the register. “I s’pose you learn things, working here. Not much else to do besides people-watch. Um- sorry, can I, can I get a name? For the tea, I mean?”
“I can’t imagine what else you might need it for,” Jon mutters waspishly, but at normal volume he says, “Jon.”
When ordering at restaurants and the like, he always gives his surname. Giving his first creates a risk of becoming not only a “regular”, but the sort who will be accosted with a chat every time he visits. The surname creates a comfortable barrier, much like having headphones in or reading a book someplace public. Why on earth he has torn down that barrier in one fell swoop—for a vaguely irritating stranger at that—is beyond him, but it’s too late to take it back now.
The rest of the excursion proceeds as normal; he stands to the side to wait, impatiently drums his fingers against his hip, collects his drink when it’s ready. On the cup, in what he assumes is Martin’s sloping hand, it reads, Jon. No H. Most people, when given only the abbreviation of his name, assume the more conventional spelling, but Martin has managed to spell it right.
He takes a sip of the tea, and it’s excellent—oversteeped the way he likes it but doesn’t bother to request, an undercurrent of bitter smokiness beneath the light, sweet taste of the milk and honey. He looks up at the counter, at Martin who is not looking back at him, the stranger who steeped his tea for a few extra minutes in the middle of a rush without him asking.
Well. Unfortunately, the strangeness of today has made him curious. Perhaps he’ll have to return here after all.
<><><>
Somewhere else, Martin is getting married tomorrow. One might think that if he knew the way this usually goes—hundreds of timelines where they go through with it and go on for many decades without discord or divorce—he would be happy, but he doesn’t know this, and it seems as though the news wouldn’t excite him as much as it should.
He’s not getting cold feet, or anything. It isn’t like that. Geoff is kind and reliable and stable, and he’s got a proper degree and a job that might actually be able to keep them and Martin’s mother afloat. He’s even reasonably handsome, and doesn’t pressure Martin too much for sex, and rarer and more valuable than all that, he actually likes Martin. Hell, he’s the one who proposed. Wanting to be with Martin, all on its own, makes him a catch too rare to let him get away.
Not that he wants to get away. At least, Martin doesn’t think so.
So, all right, then why is he going to a little local hole-in-the-wall on the late drizzly night before his wedding, planning to drink too much but not so much that he’ll hate himself tomorrow? Why is he walking down the street alone, getting damp without ever feeling the impact of what can’t quite pass for rain, repeatedly and uselessly clearing off his glasses?
Because it would be too simple for Martin Blackwood just to be happy, he thinks ruefully. He has to learn new knots to tie himself in first. Like a damn Scout. Four-in-hand and now he feels better with something to worry about. Honestly.
But that’s not quite it, either, is it? He was going to stay home, turn in early, get on with it. But there was this incessant needling in the back of his mind, a prodding for something more than a drink. It wanted to go somewhere. So he went.
He ducks into the bronze-lit bar, under a slightly too-short doorframe, cleaning off his glasses for what he hopes is the last time. For a moment, he pauses before putting them back on; the room looks dreamlike without them, softer around the edges, more allowance for imaginings and kindness. But back on the glasses go—he can’t exactly order if he can’t see.
The beer is middling, and Martin doesn’t usually drink beer anyhow, but if he has to make a decision right now he thinks something in him might break, so he picks it arbitrarily. It’ll all go down the same anyway.
The place is mostly empty, though the smoke in the air makes it seem less hollow. Some of that smoke, at least, is coming from the cigarette held by another patron, a few seats down the bar. Martin is surprised to find that he recognizes him; he’s one of Geoff’s friends’ something-or-other. Partner, maybe. If Martin knew better, he’d leave both of them to their respective pensivenesses and leave well enough alone.
But there’s something about the man that makes Martin think—If I talk, he’ll listen.
He isn’t sure what it is. There’s nothing in the man’s sharp features, formidably greying temples, or starched collar that would suggest he’s the open or welcoming type. And yet, Martin is almost sure of it.
He scoots two seats closer and gives a laugh that probably sounds terrified. “Those things’ll kill you. I’ve heard.”
The man looks up and raises an imperious eyebrow. “So have I.”
Right. Martin is an idiot and has apparently gone mad before he’s half a glass deep. That bodes well. “Right, I, um—aren’t you one of Geoff’s friends’....something? Georgie’s?...”
The man takes a long drag. “Well. Yes, or, as a point of reference yes, but as a fact…Hm.” Another deep inhale, another halfhearted cloud of smoke to join the general haze. “Former. Partner.”
“Oh.” Martin blinks. Somehow, he has made an ass of this twice. Maybe he should go for the record. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—if someone had told me—”
The man almost cracks a smile. “No one would have. It’s only been about an hour.”
“Oh, uh. Thank you? For….telling me? I guess?” Martin is well aware that every word he says is coming out as a question, but he really isn’t sure of anything at this point. Not in a statement-y mood.
“Well, I was hardly going to lie.” This man’s tone uses the line between irritated and drily humored as a jump rope. Martin is not enjoying it. “Needless to say, I will be…absent, tomorrow.”
“Right, of course, wouldn’t want to force you to….watch,” Martin finishes lamely, complete with a veritable circus of vague hand gestures. “The, um. You know, vows and all.”
“Not to mention I’ve been subtracted from my plus-one status, yes.”
“Right.” Martin would like for this bar stool to fold into a horrifying eldritch form and eat him in one bite. “It’s, um….there are upsides, y’know. To the whole, being single….thing.”
The man raises both eyebrows. One of them is shot through with silver hairs. “Says the man about to be married.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a whole lot of stress you haven’t got,” Martin grumbles into his glass. “Color swatches, flower arrangements, homophobic cousins, pleasing all his friends—Our friends. Actually, who am I kidding, they’re his friends.” The whole what’s mine is yours thing was a lovely idea, but the friends they claimed to share had been Geoff’s first and would be Geoff’s long after Martin was gone.
If he was gone. Hopefully he won’t be. He probably shouldn’t have thought of it so….certainly.
“Wedded bliss?” the man muses, dry as a sand dune.
“That’ll come eventually. After the, you know. All that.”
The man scrutinizes him for a moment, his eyes dark in the dim amber light of the bar. “You don’t know my name. Do you?”
“Ummmm.” Martin swallows. It’s too dry to do much of anything. “Sorry, er, bit foggy, with the….”
“All that,” the man finishes in a tone he can’t parse.
“Right. Sorry. Again.”
Martin hasn’t seen many blessings in his middling-length life, but one of them comes right here and now, when Geoff’s friend’s ex-whatever looks at him with what is almost a smile. “I don’t know yours either.”
“Well then. Let’s pretend we’re strangers.”
“Meeting an engaged man at a bar. How uncouth.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean for—I mean, it’s not weird, I didn’t want any, or rather, intend to—” Yes, the man is attractive, but Martin is trying very hard not to think about that because it really is just like him to mess up a good thing, isn’t it? To be discontented by something he should be grateful for?
“Jon.” He discards his cigarette in the nearby ashtray, one silver-streaked brow raised as if in a challenge.
“Oh, uh—Martin.” He at least keeps his senses enough to not offer a handshake.
For a moment, there is quiet, a quiet that ebbs when the bartender sets a bottle in front of Jon and then flows back into silence.
“Surprised you’re not out at some sort of stag…thing,” Jon comments, gesturing with the bottle.
“Oh.” Martin laughs sheepishly. “Well, it’s—like I said, Geoff’s friends are my friends, and they’ve already had their own do, so I don’t really. Um. Have? Anyone else?” He rubs the back of his neck, well aware of how pathetic he’s made himself sound. “It’s fine though, I don’t really…parties aren’t….my sort of thing.”
“It’s a large wedding, for someone who dislikes parties.”
“I…I s’pose, but Geoff really wanted everybody and the whole to-do, you know, so I couldn’t say no to him.”
Jon studies him for a moment, his brown eyes a rich dark gleam in the smoky dimness of the bar. They do not bore into Martin so much as they open hungrily, bottomless pits, drawing him down. He does not break this stare nor blink as he asks, “Why not?”
“Well I—I want to make him happy.” Martin swallows and takes another drink, finding that his mouth has gone dry and seeking a reason to look away from that yawning gaze. What he’s said is more or less the truth. He has to make Geoff happy, because if he doesn’t, he’s not getting a second chance. It was a miracle that he got something this good in the first place. He knows better than to expect it to happen again.
“Does he extend you the same courtesy? Partners are supposed to do that. I’ve heard.”
You’re not exactly a love guru yourself, Martin does not say. “Of course. We got the cake flavor I wanted.”
Again Jon’s eyes are on him. Martin is not sure he ever looked away. “White tea and strawberry,” he says stubbornly, even though it might make no difference.
Jon raises the bottle to his lips, lifting away the weight of his stare at last, and takes a long drink. The amber light from the low, swaying lamps draws a line of gold along his throat.
Martin stares down at the countertop.
Without ceremony, Jon rises from his seat, pushes the bar stool back in. He looks at Martin one more time. “Congratulations,” he says, without much feeling.
“Thanks,” Martin replies, and he doesn’t think either of them mean it.
He watches Jon go and stares at the empty wall for a moment. Then he takes out his phone, pulls up Geoff’s contact, and prepares to make either the best or the stupidest phone call of his life.
<><><>
Yet another somewhere, Jonathan Sims is the proud owner of a doctorate in folklore and the very bemused owner of a train ticket to Scotland.
It’s not that the manuscript hasn’t been an absolute pain in the arse to write, because it has, nor that it wouldn’t be nice to have some quiet, because it would. The proposal itself gave him enough migraines that he started to believe he was developing a disorder. It’s just that he doesn’t see why the university would recognize any of these things, much less take action about them.
Better not to look a gift horse in the mouth, although as someone paid to be an expert in mythology, he knows well that one should always do that at risk of becoming a kebab on a Trojan spear. Just this once, however, Jon takes the favor, which is how he has found himself awkwardly dragging his meagre luggage up the path to the cabin that he’s been told was booked for a writer’s retreat.
He probably should have asked which other faculty would be attending, he considers. Too late for that now.
Thus, Jon opens the door and immediately knows he should have taken his own advice regarding gift horses.
The figurative Trojan spear, in this case, is tall and unassuming, collecting bruises on the kitchen cabinets and humming softly. Blackwood. Of course it would be him.
There are versions of this moment where Jon turns around before he is seen, boards the first returning train, and makes himself a nuisance to those in charge of expenses until he is reimbursed for it. Even now, it strikes him as an excellent idea. However, his limbs do not seem to agree; as if externally compelled, his feet step over the threshold onto the rustic wooden floor, his hand closes the door behind him, and his mouth says, “Hello, Martin.”
They look at each other in mutual surprise at this turn of events. Martin blinks a few times too many. Jon does not blink enough.
“Oh, um.” Martin Blackwood, poetry adjunct, does not seem to be aware that he was meant to be the Trojan soldier hiding behind a gift and frankly looks more like he’s the one in danger of attack. “Hello.”
Jon is struck by a sudden and violent déjà vu, in which this moment—stepping into this cabin with ears stinging from the cold, hanging up his coat while Martin putters around the kitchen—feels as familiar and routine as returning to his flat at night and considering that he should really get around to adopting a cat. It passes like a lightning flash, leaving only a vague dizziness in its wake, and Jon realizes he’s been standing here a bit too long without saying anything.
Martin jumps on the lapse in conversation and doesn’t quite stick the landing. “There’s two rooms, um, I mean obviously, but anyways I’ve taken the one…well, the one with the door open and my stuff’s in there so you could probably tell.” He clears his throat. “So. You can have the, um. The other one.”
“Right.” For what is not the first time in his adult life, Jon thinks that this might as well happen. He wheels his suitcase into the empty room, which has a faded green quilt spread over the bed, some sort of desk-nightstand combination, and little else, and stands there about as dumbfounded as he was in the doorway.
He’s not usually so….completely lost, in a situation. Somehow this is Martin Blackwood’s fault.
He returns to the main kitchen-living room combination, sans suitcase, with the vague intention of making himself an equal amount of a problem to Blackwood. The poet in question has finished his tour of the kitchen and is now setting up an honest-to-goodness typewriter on the desk facing the window.
Jon stares at him. Eventually Martin seems to feel the stare, look up at him, and give a nervous laugh. “More charming than a laptop, isn’t it?”
“That cannot possibly be efficient,” Jon says.
“It’s a writer’s retreat, though, isn’t it? Point isn’t to be efficient. It’s to be immersed.” Martin seems satisfied with the position of the typewriter (teal in color, off-white buttons, some of them with the paint almost worn off) and stands back to look over his work.
“Isn’t the…immersion supposed to result in more work being produced?” Jon asks, knowing full well that he’s being an ass on purpose and perhaps even enjoying it a little. Immersion, honestly. Poets.
He’s fairly sure that this is the most he’s spoken to Martin at once since….ever. Their disciplines have the occasional crossover, which results in a professional and perfunctory conversation, perhaps an exchange of emails, but that tends to be the end of it. They’ve attended a few of the same faculty functions, but Jon vastly prefers to observe at those sorts of things, where Martin makes awkward but gamely attempts to socialize. He’s always managed to be outside the range of said attempts, but today he has not been so lucky. Should’ve left when he had the chance.
“Better work. Not always the same thing.” Martin smiles like he’s unsure about the act of doing it, then quickly returns his gaze to the typewriter as if it will have moved in the last few seconds.
There are a few breaths of silence, and then Jon finds himself saying, “You weren’t on my train.” Apparently saying inane things is contagious. He’s going to come out of this retreat entirely incoherent.
“Oh, um—I probably couldn’t catch the same one. Had some family stuff.” Martin shoots him a cautious glance that Jon wouldn’t even begin to know how to interpret.
If he remembers correctly, Martin came up through Oxford’s library by generally endearing himself to the staff and wormed his way into a funded Master’s program via those people skills that Jon is always being told he should develop, often with Martin himself as an example. From where he’s standing, however, the man doesn’t exactly seem like a beacon of charisma.
“Right.” Jon realizes that he left his laptop in the bedroom he claimed, and now would be an excellent time to make a swift exit and go retrieve it. Once again, however, his limbs disobey him and keep him standing right where he is, behind a sofa that is too tartan to not be a tourist gimmick. “And no one else is coming.”
It wasn’t a question, but Martin answers it anyway. “Not that I know of. Um—I was going to put on some tea? If you’d like?” He attempts another smile with all the bravery of a martyr, once more unto the breach. “Helps me feel more, er, writer…ish.”
Writerish. Jon pins the other man with a flat stare while trying to figure out what he could possibly say to that. In the end, all he can come up with is a begrudging, “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
As if he has at last found his footing, Martin brightens. “Right then! I’ll just, er…I’ll get that started.”
He bustles off into the kitchen, leaving Jon alone to stare out the window at the gentle slope of grass, its color dulled by the sky and oncoming winter, rippling gently as the wind rolls across it. A thin, rough brown path snakes through it and over the shallow rise of a hill, disappearing on the other side of the pale horizon. A few clouds, stretched out and thin as though they’ve been combed through, meander past. Somewhere down the path he’d passed a pasture of Highland cows.
It’s quiet here, he supposes as the water begins to whisper its oncoming boil. He still doesn’t know why he didn’t leave, can’t think of a truly good reason not to, and yet…
He can imagine so clearly, almost too clearly, how the rest of this weekend will unspool. It’s as vivid as a memory, his imagination of it—how the tea will smell, Assam black softened by early wildflower honey; the steady click and ding as Martin’s hands will move thoughtfully over the old typewriter; the comforting roughness of the blanket thrown over the back of the sofa, which he has yet to touch. Something about this place puts his mind at rest in a way that isn’t entirely explained by the peace and near-solitude. Something about having Martin here doesn’t bother him as much as it should.
There will be time to dwell on these things later, Jon tells himself, in the days before he returns to work. In the meantime—he has writing to do.
<><><>
In a place that is not the final somewhere, just the last one we hungry watchers get to see, Martin is reading a book.
It’s quite a good book; not overly dense like one from Jon’s collection, but not as flashy and swashbuckling as the sort of thing Tim likes to recommend. Just a nice, solid in between with a good story and good things to say. The perfect thing, Martin thinks, to be reading on this sofa that is overly cushy to the point of being a sinking hazard, while rain keeps a soft and steady time against the window. It is a quiet Sunday afternoon, and the sky is silver with a gentle storm, and he is in love. A good book on top of it all almost seems like an overindulgence.
“Enjoying it?” Jon asks from where his head rests below Martin’s collarbone. He’s laying mostly on top of Martin and exuding a bewildering amount of body heat.
“You know I am, because you could never hold this still for this long if you weren’t focused on not disturbing me.”
Jon makes a sound of affront. “I’m hardly hyperactive.”
“No,” Martin says, smiling fondly, “just twitchy.” He settles a hand on his lover’s shoulder, and Jon shifts upwards with an awkward wiggle, tucking his head right beneath Martin’s chin.
“Itchy as well,” Martin complains, trying to smooth down Jon’s hair to no avail.
“I think I’ll go sit with the Lady instead. Surely she’ll make less of a fuss,” Jon gripes.
“Have you met our cat?” Lady Grey is perched over on the rocking chair, looking disinterested, but her brother (the Earl) has likely wandered off to hide under some furniture.
“I suppose.” Jon is quiet for a moment, during which he takes his newfound freedom to move around and shifts into a more comfortable position via a process that seems to mostly involve elbows.
“Ow. I swear you’re just a collection of joints all thrown in a bag.”
“And they say romance is dead,” Jon says fondly.
Martin gives a soft laugh and gives up on the book for now, dog-earing the page specifically because he knows it will incur a lecture from Jon whenever he notices. He sets it aside on the coffee table and, with his hand now free, drapes an arm over Jon’s chest, relaxing with a contented sigh.
For several breaths, it’s quiet, all rain and silver windows and Jon letting his eyes slide closed for once. He never looks so beautiful as when he’s at peace, and it’s just as well that he can’t see the look on Martin’s face. Horribly besotted, probably.
Maybe it’s that, that makes him think of it. Maybe it’s the complete lack of melancholy he feels despite everything being grey. Or maybe it’s the quiet, allowing the thought to wander into his mind.
“You know,” Martin says, causing his boyfriend to crack open one eye, “d’you ever think about how lucky we are?”
“Every day.” His answer is so quick and so sure that Martin is almost surprised out of speaking his next words.
“I mean, how small the chance was, of this. Us. There’s a thousand things could’ve gone different, little stuff, but it could’ve changed everything. It was a really, really easy chance to miss.” He cards a hand through Jon’s hair, and now he can’t stop thinking about the rarity of the gesture. How close he came to never hearing the contended little hum, rumbly bass, that Jon makes when he does it. How he does this every day, and how many butterfly-wingflaps had to happen in just the right way for him to earn the privilege.
“I suppose so,” Jon responds softly. “What made you think of that?”
“I’m not sure, actually.” Martin lifts an arm so that his boyfriend can duck under it and curl up against his side. “The idea just sort of…fell into my head.”
“As ideas are wont to do.”
“Oh, shut up.” He grins to himself. “Y’know, I’m glad we’re in the version of things where we made it.”
“You’re talking about parallel universes now?” Jon asks, drily amused.
“I’m not saying I believe in them—”
Laughter follows, and what will surely be more bickering, but it is blurred to us now, on the other side of a window slick with rain. In each of the clinging drops there refracts a different reflection of them, a different segment in a different shape or light, a thousand fractals in whose coalescence they are made whole.
This Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood, these versions of them, do not know that they are somewhere else. This is the only somewhere they’ve ever known, and it is a place with dog-eared books, and overly squashy sofas, and cats whose names are the result of an argument between formal titles and tea, and storms that know the way to be kind. It is a place where being in love is an easy thing to remember, and an easy thing to protect.
Just as shattered things after their end do not vanish, only get swept away or consumed or buried, the end of a world turns out to be simple redistribution of matter. Perhaps in one of these somewheres, the sea and sky become a bit hungrier, the deep a bit more frightening. Perhaps in another, the occasional spider seems cleverer than it should. Perhaps in another, security cameras seem to stare a bit more. But they are few, and small, and scattered along the torn threads that remain of a web.
It is so with memories. It is so with more than fear. Redistribution of matter. No, the Archive and his lover are not tied by fate, not together in every universe, even strangers in many of them, but there was one world in which they chose that love. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, they pressed on. They sought one another. It was not enough to save them or to salvage their own tragedy, but beyond the end, flung throughout the space between, it was enough to change everything.
An ending, in this case, is infinite second chances.