Work Text:
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Somewhere, your mind wandered. You quietly tapped your pen against the back of your hand, staring at an empty cubicle a hall away from you.
What happened to him?
The program open on your computer screen was left, forgotten, as you let yourself get distracted. The quiet pitter patter of nameless faces passing by in a hurry was gone, now. You silently missed the sound.
After the Super Collider's meltdown, many of the labs that had been involved in its creation… disappeared. It was the main research focus of Alchemax's physics department. Mass layoffs to that extent usually meant a company was closing down, but somehow it kept going. The building was half empty, now, save for a skeleton crew of labs that weren't vital to the Collider's construction, or had nothing to do with it at all.
You let out a sigh, your eyes wandering through the hall, empty and barren of people you had gotten close to. Smiling and laughing faces, hot cups of coffee shared over good mornings, quiet whispers of office gossip, were gone - replaced by a stillness that wasn't welcome. At least, not to you.
They couldn't find his body - not even Liv's.
You were a part of one of those unimportant labs. Your lab was called the CFLC lab, or Client-Focused Long Coding. An extremely boring job, but a necessary one. Your lab conducted manual long coding for all software created by Alchemax, ensuring it was as optimized and free of error as possible. Yeah, I know. Riveting stuff.
But, everyone in your lab loved physics or mathematics in some way, shape, or form, so you were able to easily fit in with the scientists around you. You mostly listened to other people talk about their research, because you weren't exactly doing anything rant-worthy. But, you lived vicariously through their passion projects.
Ones that don't exist anymore.
Where was he?
You let out a sigh. What were you doing here, still?
You made a lot of friends during your time here, before everything went south. You still talked to a lot of them, but there was only one person you considered close. Jonathon Ohnn. That man could talk for 24 hours without stopping, about physics. It was quite literally his entire life. He lived it, breathed it, and for a split second, you thought he had died from it, too.
You glanced back to the empty cubicle that used to be his desk. You could hear him walking to your desk without having to look back to see, most days. The familiar ‘excuse me!’ ‘sorry!’ ‘I am - oh I am so sorry about that - um's that would fill the hall as he got closer and closer never failed to make you crack a smile. And then, when he finally got to you, he'd lean his entire weight into the corner of your desk, engulfing your vision with the biggest grin possible as he shoved a paper into your face and yelled ‘check this out!’
He was extremely cute. And silly, and kind. And weird, but so was everyone else, including you. And -
You sucked in a sharp breath, not feeling the tears pricking the corners of your eyes until you had blinked back to reality. You forcibly brought your attention back to your desk, eyebrows knit together as you took a few deep breaths in and out, staring hard at the screen in front of you.
That's enough reminiscing. You should get back to work.
You spent your time outside of your job trying not to think about your job at all. You used to love it - now, you're looking into working somewhere else. Granted, so was everyone else still working in the all but dead physics department.
And that’s that. That’s how your life was, for the most part, until a random Tuesday evening, when a lot of questions would be answered all at once at the grocery store.
You loved grocery shopping, and you especially loved it late at night, an hour before closing, on a regular week day. Not a single soul would be in the store, and you were free to pop in your earbuds and jam out to your heart’s content as you slid through the frozen produce aisle. It was one of life’s small joys, to you.
Bananas and apples, check. Yogurt, check. A freshly baked baguette - absolutely. Your regular collard greens, some tomatoes, some cucumbers, some cheese, that’s all in the cart. Those chocolate covered frozen strawberries that you can never justify buying for the price but buy anyway because they’re just too good - tentatively, you peer into the cart and see them there. Avocado oil, some sauces, yep. A strange warped looking white figure with dalmatian black spots littering their body running straight for you while being actively pursued by the cops - check. Wait -
“What the fuck!?” Your body jerked to the side on instinct, narrowly missing a full-on collision with the figure but bumping into them nonetheless. Harshly. You almost fall over, but a hasty hand yanks you backwards, not letting go as they continue to run. You think you hear them shout out a ‘sorry!’ in the process, but you’re too busy sadly glancing back at your abandoned shopping cart and slowly defrosting frozen strawberries. Silently, you accept their loss, and bring your attention back to the fact that you’re now in a hostage situation.
You were being pulled from corridor to corridor, through the store, and eventually through a black hole. Literally. It wasn’t like, an actual real black hole. It was quite literally a hole that was black. Or maybe it was an actual black hole? You didn't know, and you didn't have the time to think about it. Briefly, you and your kidnapper flew through a strange, void-like dimension before falling back to your reality again, this time on the top of a roof. They prefaced it by warning you, ‘this is going to be a bit weird, just hang tight!’, but that did not actually prepare you whatsoever for it. You blinked, unable to fully process what your eyes were showing you. Too much - what the fuck.
“Let go of me!” You tried to yank your arm back to you, planting your feet firmly into the ground, but ended up just stumbling over yourself instead. Your message seemed to have come across, though. The figure paused, then, and your arm was suddenly freed. You brought it back to your chest instinctively, glaring at them.
“You know, I grabbed you because you were falling and I felt bad for bumping into you, but then I kind of just. Forgot. That I was still dragging you. And then I didn’t know what to do, so I kept dragging you, and uh.” They - he - let out a chuckle, turning around to fully face you as he scratched the back of his head. “Whoops! Sorry about that! Won’t happen again. I -”
His voice, the way he let out a nervous chuckle when he apologized, the instinctual scratch to his head even when he had no hair or any reason to do so. And most of all, his body language. Still just as lanky and awkward as always.
The two of you recognized each other within the same moment. Your brain was still trying to catch up to you by the time he started talking.
He was… scared. You could feel the fear and pain that radiated off of him, staring into a hole where a face used to be.
“... Ohhhhhh…! Uhhh, would you look at the time! Ha! I should really get going, y’know, with the cops after me and all that.” He stared at you for a long, hard moment, before high tailing it out of there, jumping off the building and onto the next without another word.
Your eyes widened, and you ran to the edge of the roof, calling out to him as he slinked away from portal to portal. “Wait! Jonathon! It’s - It’s okay!”
You knew he had heard you, but he was already gone.
Well, you were not sleeping that night.
And you didn’t.
That was Jonathon. That was the man who brought you coffee every morning, who spent well past his lunch break talking to you, who visited your desk whenever he wanted to rant about something, who came to karaoke nights just because you invited him, the same guy who sat on your couch and talked to you about special and general relativity for four hours over pizza and Half Life 2. You happily listened to him explain, despite knowing the topics well, because you loved how excited he was to share.
That’s what happened to him.
You dragged your hands down your face, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness of your room as you thought back to what happened. The gentle breeze of your ceiling fan, your soft and sweet kitty sleeping beside you - they couldn’t help still your racing mind.
You had many questions, about many things, and your fridge was still sad and empty, and so was your stomach. But, you brushed all that aside for now, choosing to think about them at a later date.
All you could think about was how horrible he must feel, about himself. He was your friend. It didn’t matter what he was now - the fact that he had been going through all that alone, without any help - it hurt you.
Slowly, quietly, your eyelids weighed themselves down, and you drifted off to sleep.
And, just the same, slowly and quietly, you continued on with your life. You still caught yourself glancing at his empty desk at work, but with a newfound sadness. Eventually, you came to the conclusion that there was nothing you could do, except on the off chance that you ever saw him again. You chatted with your lab mates, you looked for another job, and you went about your daily life as usual. But now, you would end each day staring up at the ceiling, or your wall, as you thought about how his immediate reaction to seeing you was to be scared.
Until one late night, as you typed away on your keyboard in the darkness of your room, with a podcast playing in the background. You were getting ready to go to bed, already in your PJs, when you heard something. A noise from what sounded like your living room.
Now, you had a very sweet cat that you loved and cherished very much, but she wasn’t particularly noisy. And she was also asleep right next to you.
You froze, fingers hovering over the keyboard, and listened. Maybe it was just the upstairs neighbors.
Both fortunately and unfortunately, you were wrong. A loud crash reverberated through the hallway, paired with the stressed mumblings of a familiar voice loudly whispering ‘Oh - wait wait wait no no not the Legos! Not the Legos! Nooooo… maaan.'
Looks like you'll have to rebuild one of your Lego sets tomorrow.
“You're helping me fix that.” You called out, half-smiling. You had a feeling it'd help defuse the air.
Slowly, a white head poked out from the crack of your door, one hand coming to gently hold onto it. He looked sad, even though he didn't really… have a face. It was a surprisingly expressive faceless face. “It was the love bird set…”
You feigned a gasp. “You killed them!”
“I knowwww I'm sorry.” He sighed. “I'll help, if you need it.”
“I'd love your help.” You shot him a genuine, warm smile. “Please.” You didn't want to come off too strong and scare him away more, but you were absolutely ecstatic that he was here.
He took a moment to look around the room, until his attention fell onto your cat, who was now wide awake and staring right at him. She jumped down from the bed, made a beeline to him and proceeded to rub her body all over his legs, purring happily as she did so. He melted at the gesture, squatting down to pet her gently.
You watched the scene in silence, a content smile radiating from you, as he muttered to himself. “I can't believe she still knows it's me.”
“Of course she does.” He looked up to look at you, then. “You're always going to be you. It doesn't matter how much you change, we're still going to love you the same.”
“You're not… scared, of me?” He paused, letting the silence hang in the air as you shook your head. “... When you called out to me, I needed some time to think about what you said. I'm sorry I took so long I just… I wasn't expecting that. Everyone thinks I'm a monster. And I don't blame them! I mean, look at me.” He stood up, gesturing down to himself. “I look like a domino.”
“I think you look cute.” You couldn't hold back a snort at the domino comparison. “Seriously. I thought you looked cute then, and I think you look cute now. It's a constant.”
You swear you saw a pink cartoonish blush on his face.
To dial it back down, you stood from your bed, walking over to pick up your cat and stand beside him as you smoothed her fur down. “What I mean is, you don't have to be alone in this anymore. You're not a monster. You're my friend Johnathan, and you really like khaki shorts.”
“I am a monster.” He pointed out. “And I really miss khakis.”
“You're not.” You debuted. “And like, no one's stopping you from wearing clothes. Why are you naked? Put some pants on man!”
“I don't have a dick,” he laughed, though you had a point. “Nothing matters anymore!”
“Public decency.” You pointed out, walking to your closet to throw him some sweat pants. “Do you know of it?”
He opened his arms to catch them, but missed clumsily anyway. With a laugh, he picked them up, sliding into them. He also grabbed a bucket hat and shades from a side table to complete the look, gesturing to himself. “I do now!”
“You look like a dad who's been dragged to a PTA meeting.” You snickered, though you had to admit he did rock the look really well. You're thankful this form kept his dad bod, at least.
“I'll take that as a compliment!”