Archive of Our Own

Oh no.

Oh god, not this as well.

Come on, surely he’s suffered enough? For a bit at least?

Come on, just a bit of reprieve, just a few days, would that have been too much to ask?

Clearly, yes. Clearly it would. Clearly two weeks spent as a prisoner in his own flat while a woman made of worms forgets the punchline to knock-knock jokes and quits while she’s ahead just isn’t enough.

Tinned bloody peaches just isn’t enough.

Because it is 8:58am the morning after Martin’s second night sleeping in the archives (better than the first, when every creak had been a knock and every shadow had been a threat and every tickle of the rough blanket from the breakroom sofa had been a worm coming to burrow through his skin and make him like her, destroy him like her,  turn him into a horrible living hive like her – better than that, but still not good, definitely not good, and he’s probably going to ask Tim to keep watch later so he can have a sneaky kip by daylight) …and there is an envelope on his desk.

It has his name on it, written in Jon’s beautiful, obnoxious, archaic cursive.

Martin groans.

The options as he sees it, are thus.

• List of catch-up tasks from when he was gone.

Probably the most plausible, and fair, actually, considering he’s, you know, an employee, and missed two entire weeks. Martin can’t wait to discover which of the tasks his CV claims he is perfectly capable of wait inside, for him to impressively fuck up in new and creative ways.

• Marching orders.

Less plausible, he thinks, mainly for the reason of why now? If he was going to get fired (which again, fair, honestly) it would have been weeks ago – he thinks that even Jon might have enough basic compassion to not decide that nice and freshly traumatised would be the time to deal that blow. But still, possible, in the sort of grim way that if it is that, there might be little to do about it other than laugh.

• Great big dirty stinking list of his incompetencies, littered with threats and profanity, and all the ‘i’s dotted with sarcastic little hearts.

Catastrophising perhaps. But not impossible.

Martin swallows.

Okay. Time to put himself out of his misery.

He teases the letter out of the envelope.

And crikey – it’s long.

Oh god, he’s in trouble.

Okay.

Here goes.

Can’t be that bad.

(God, the cursive is pretty, but this is dense.)

(You’re stalling Martin. Focus.)

(Yes, okay, I’m reading, I’m reading…)

Dear Martin,

Please forgive my not doing this in person. I am currently working at capacity and have little time for workplace conversation. However, there are some things that I feel need to be said. I hope that this letter does not end up unduly crossing any boundaries of professionalism, however unduly may be the operative word in that sentence. I fear it may become necessary to address some personal matters in order to fully convey what needs to be conveyed. I ask that if you take issue with this, you grant me the curtesy of coming to me before HR, however as will be exemplified in the contents of this letter, I am cognizant of my prior failure to provide you with a working environment in which you feel comfortable. Hence, my ask is nothing more than that – an ask, which you are well within your rights to disregard.

I apologise that my managerial style led you to believe that it was appropriate to endanger yourself, in the service of proving yourself to me. You may have intuited, or perhaps discovered definitively in another way that this rather abrupt appointment has been my first leadership role. This in combination with the extreme disorganisation of the archives, and the unexpected nature of your arrival to the department, have on reflection led me to adopt a significantly brusquer approach than is excusable. You bore the brunt of most of this, I admit, on account of being an unfamiliar face with some notable knowledge and skill gaps. For these, my patience was critically low, in the context of the obscene workload and lack of direction we have inherited.

To be frank (and somewhat vulnerable, if you’ll allow) for a moment, disorganisation, change and unexpectedness are something of a perfect storm to bring out the worst in me. While I do not deny that my personality cannot be reasonably described as warm – I will readily accept such descriptors as ‘objectionable’, ‘distasteful’ and ‘disagreeable’ as uncomfortable truths – I would abhor to be described as cruel. Unfortunately, I recognise that my treatment of you may well have crossed that line – and I have indeed been informed so, by our colleagues. Tim and Sasha are, incidentally, your best authority on whether my behaviour of the recent past is typical. I hope that they will provide the same evaluation as I myself have; that it is the worst parts of myself, amplified to their extremes by external circumstances. In short: I am usually not this bad.

I realise that the above may come across as an attempt to make excuses. It is not intended that way. I merely wish to provide some context for my manner, in the hope that as I make a concerted effort to improve, you may recognise the difference. I do not make, here, any promises of complete transformation, free of lapses in judgement (or indeed reprimands, when necessary – I remain your boss). However, I do here make a written, thereby tangible commitment to be more mindful of how my demeanour, attitude and tone may affect those around me – especially my subordinates, to whom I have a duty of care.

In acknowledgement of this duty of care, I invite you to take some time today to visit the breakroom. In the refrigerator, you will find that I have taken the liberty of providing you with some meals for the coming week. I have tried to cover most bases – all are vegetarian, just in case, but I’ve tried for decent variety, with spice levels kept moderate, and I have labelled all tubs with common allergens. If you wouldn’t mind informing me of what was successful and what was not once you have exhausted all I have provided, I can adjust accordingly for next week. Please do not worry about waste if anything is not to your taste – Tim has never turned his nose up at my cooking before and I doubt he will again. Although on that note – I might advise informing him of your claim on the tubs post-haste.

Additionally, in the bottom drawer of the unit behind the sofa, you will find some toiletries and creature comforts. Again, I have initially elected for what I feel to be safe choices (neutral deodorant, generic toothpaste et cetera), however if you have any strong preferences, please do let me know. I made a best guess at sizing as regards the slippers (and admittedly may have fallen against my better judgement to whimsy – although it is my personal opinion that most situations are improved by cats, even ridiculous plush ones) but again – if they are wrong, Tim will undoubtedly accept them.

I shall conclude by, in no uncertain terms, reiterating: I am sorry.

I am sorry that I endangered you, I am sorry that you endured a prolonged and traumatic experience on my account, and I am sorry that I cannot take that away. I hope that my written commitment to improve, as well as my practical attempts to provide some small convenience and comfort go some way to making amends.

I ask that this communication is kept between ourselves, and unacknowledged beyond my requests for feedback on the quality and appropriateness of the food and toiletries.

With a final vow to do better,

Jon.

…

It’s a prank.

It must be a prank.

Or a… an April Fool’s, what’s the bloody – nope, still March.

Surely it’s –

He stuffs the letter into his pocket and darts for the breakroom on shaky legs. It is blessedly empty, and he flings the fridge open. He is greeted by a neat wall of Tupperware, carefully stacked with white, fountain-penned labels stuck on top, declaring themselves to be Shahi paneer, Quorn sausage casserole, three-bean chilli.

He slams the fridge shut and makes for the corner unit, opens the bottom drawer – empty, ha, too good to be true, nice joke Tim, but ah, fuck, there’s two bottom drawers, flings that one open and –

Deodorant, toothpaste, soap, shower gel, hand towel, bath towel, fluffy cat slippers, hot fucking chocolate and a mug shaped like a sheep.

Martin’s going to die.

He’s going to expire right there on the breakroom floor.

He wonders if they’ll bury him with the cat slippers.

He’d quite like that.

Lightheaded, he pushes himself up.

Leans heavily on the corner unit.

Something rises in his chest.

And then abruptly, it changes direction –

And falls.

Oh no.

No, not that.

Anything but that.

He doesn’t have time for –

No no no…

He can't afford a new bloody poetry notebook. 

***

Martin has learned, in his thirty years of being, that life is often about taking small pleasures where you can get them.

A yes to cream at the coffee shop here, popping by Pets at Home just to look at the rabbits there, and most importantly, most spiritually nourishing of all – making a day of stuff.

Especially necessary when that stuff is of the vein of an inevitably soul-destroying dead-end search for original (probably haunted) circus fliers from 1918, in a basement belonging to a man called Raghnoll, who on the phone had sounded like he owned a lot of sharp things, and probably won’t even let them in.

Them.

Because he is not alone.

He’s not entirely sure how it happened, who authorised it, who organised it, who declared it, who decided it should be so, but somehow, midweek and drizzly, he is making a day of it with -

Jon huffs his way back into the car, balancing four boxes in a precarious stack under his chin. Somehow, he manages to sit down without upending any of them, and spreads them out on the dashboard before settling back and blowing out a breath, visible in the cold air. He tugs his coat tighter around himself and turns to Martin with a scowl.

“I thought I was the one with compelling powers. I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“Snob,” Martin replies brightly, reaching grinningly for one of the boxes and cracking it open, then passing it over when it reveals Jon’s begrudging chicken nuggets instead of his own Big Mac. “Don’t pretend you’re immune to the golden arches. Surely you like gold, its posh.”

Jon rolls his eyes.

“I’m not posh, I just speak properly. Anyway, I am immune to the golden arches, my grandmother used devious lies to make sure of that. She used to tell me they were the sign for Morrisons so I wouldn’t ask to go in. I hated Morrisons,” he shudders. “So I never got a taste for it.”

Martin nods with a pursed-lipped smile, amused and impressed.

“Smart woman. You spend a lot of time with her then? If she was policing your Maccies intake. Or lack thereof.”

Jon’s fingers still in their appraising poking of already soggy nuggets.

“Ah… yes. Most of my time, actually. She brought me up.”

“Oh!” Martin’s eyebrows fly up. That explains some things, Mr Rum ‘n’ Raisin. “So your parents…”

Jon has managed to poke an entire side of batter off one of the nuggets, and is wincing slightly.

Stupid Martin, people don’t usually end up parentless for nice reasons -

“Actually no, sorry, stupid big mouth, you don’t have to -”

“No no, it’s alright, I don’t mind, people just… seem to get a bit annoyed at the mood-killer, when I tell them -”

(Okay, mood-killer is morbidly tantalising.)

(You’re awful.)

(You agree.)

“Well, I mean – you still don’t have to, but trapped in a car is a pretty textbook venue for mood-killing conversations,” he points out, trying hard to feel guilty about it.

“We’re stationery, you could run.”

“Not without sacrificing the structural integrity of my Big Mac I couldn’t. But yeah, sorry, you don’t have to tell me.”

Jon hums, and looks at him appraisingly. On concluding his assessment, his face settles into a flat, resigned smile.

“You’re curious now.”

Martin shrugs to the footwell.  

“Hm. You know Dickens?” Jon asks inexplicably, in that tone of his that means he’s pretty sure he’s joking, but isn’t certain of the rest of the population’s thoughts on the matter.

Martin blinks at him.

“Yes Jon, I know Dickens. My schooling wasn’t that bad.”

“Hm. So you know what an orphan is?”

“Ah.” Oh, that’s - Martin nods awkwardly, lips pressed together. “Aesthetically that’s quite a good lead in, I’ll give you that.”

“Thank you, I try. Dickens-style, both of my parents were gone by the time I was four, I’m afraid. A blessing in a lot of ways – comparatively speaking of course. I don’t remember my father enough to miss him. Amma, I…” poke poke poke. The other side of batter falls off, and his next breath is minutely sharper. “A bit. I remember her a bit, and that’s -  But I never really knew anything else, so it was no great tragedy.”

Was a bit, Martin bites his tongue against saying. If Jon is at peace with it, who is he to argue. But still, the image of tiny Jon, in a tiny suit, in his head it’s raining, he was taught pathetic fallacy alongside Dickens after all, looking down, surely too young to understand that it’s Mum – no, Amma, Amma, that’s what he’d said – in there, being covered in soil, plop, plop, plop, not coming back, never coming back, it’s a little too much to bear, too much to think about, so to have lived through -

“You didn’t have a properly Dickensian childhood then? Not sent off to the workhouse?”

Jon huffs, and finally ceases his nugget-poking to examine his hands performatively.

“Hmm… by my count I still have all my fingers. Nothing chopped off in any industrial machinery. No, if anything it was a bit more Enid Blyton. If… The Famous Five operated solo, that is. And never compared notes or talked to each other.”

Martin winces.

“I took myself off on a great deal of adventures,” he continues, “Mostly poking slimy things in rockpools and getting myself stuck in cracks that looked ever so person sized at first glance. That’s about all Bournemouth has to offer, unless you want to pay tourist prices to be flung about in a spinning teacup, again. But yes, my adventures eventually ended in one too many rides home in a police car, and after that, my childhood was probably quite a lot closer to what you’d imagine of me. Lots of books. Until, that is…”

Something dark settles over his face. It seems, indeed to fill the whole car, and Martin shivers, something prickly happening to the hairs on the back of his neck. Then all at once it breaks, as Jon continues, a slight breathiness colouring his words.

“Until I went off them, for a bit. Settled into some – well, you can call it low level delinquency if you like - instead. Only, you know… exploring. Places that may or may not have had condemned signs.”

“I am…” Martin tips his head back and looks contemplatively at the roof, “Surprised by how little that surprises me.”

(And by how much it delights you.)

(Shut up.)

Martin tries in vain to hide his growing blush in a bite of Big Mac.

Jon, luckily not watching him, smirks.

“My enthusiasm for books was well and truly restored by late teen-hood, though. Needed to be, if I was going to fulfil my pre-ordained destiny as resident smart-arse.”

“A noble venture indeed,” Martin nods solemnly. “Wouldn’t have you any other way.”

(Shit.)

(Whoops.)

(Didn’t mean to say that.)

But luckily, Jon just laughs.

“I rather doubt that.” Finally, he actually takes a bite of a nugget, and wrinkles his nose. It flutters something in Martin’s stomach. “Hmm. Beige incarnate. Definitely needs –”

His eyes widen.

“Oh yes – wouldn’t be a good idea to forget about this.”

He replaces his nugget box on the dashboard and reaches into his pocket, then dumps out a handful of sauce packets into the glovebox. Then another. Then another.

Martin stares.

He moves on to the other pocket. Handful of sauce packets. Another. Another.

Martin stares.

Jon notices.

Jon frowns.

“What? They’re free.”

Martin scoffs.

“They are not.”

Jon’s eyes dart up in a darkly mischievous tail-flick.

“…they are if you’re quick.”

Martin barks a laugh.

And okay… alright, Jesus Christ –

Well that’s mightily inconvenient, isn’t it.

He doesn’t have time for that.

To be…

To be in…

Yeah. That thing.

***

Curious.

How curious.

How very curious it is that Martin –

Feels it. Himself.

As keenly as he would if the wound were his own.

As he dabs gently…

As gently as he can, but still it stings, he knows as he feels it himself…

With an antiseptic wipe.

At a cut, weeping again now, now that he has…

As gently as he could, removed the blackening crust with a cotton bud softened in warm water.

How curious, that tightness that he feels around his neck.

As something pushes close to the surface.

Something of his own, from his own throat.

Words, he identifies.

Three of them.

One. Four. Three.

Unspoken forever, probably, trapped, especially since he’s working to close the wound where they might have escaped from, if this thing of connection works both ways –

Hold on, if this thing works both ways –

Foolish.

Stop it, foolish.

There are no words hiding in Jon’s throat.

Not in the shape of his own.

Not in the configuration one, four, three.

Jon is wrung out, and hurting, and so very vulnerable, and surely the only words that can be at his throat right now are –

A break.

Please.

A break.

Those words should not hide, he should say them.

Someone would grant him that, surely, it really isn’t that much to ask.

Even of the cold eyes that greet him, the clenched fists that threaten him, and that is only those who are ostensibly on his side.

Jon flinches, silent, as he has been through this whole ordeal, and Martin’s throat stings.

Curious, so very curious.

Or actually –

Perhaps not.

Falling is, after all, such a physical sensation.

***

There are a lot of things Martin gets pissed off about these days.

It’s not an emotion that fits properly.

It’s too juvenile, and too simplistic for all that they’ve been through.

Maybe it’s something lingering from the Lonely, some sort of gauze over the barometer that tells him which feeling is which, or maybe it’s just an inevitable frazzling of his brain resultant from the madness of the previous few years. Jon’s hardly on kilter either after all, zipping as he seems to between panic and serenity and joy and terror and wonder and awe and sorrow like a worker bee in high summer.

But when Martin’s brain isn’t sure what it’s supposed to be doing, he seems to default quite insistently to pissed off.

And right now, he is pissed off because his key to the safehouse has broken off in the lock, and even more pissed off because Jon appears to know exactly what to do about it.

The second one though – it’s quite a nice sort of pissed off.

It’s the pissed off of you’re really pissing me off now, beautiful, capable, competent at so many weird and unexpected things but somehow still an utter disaster boyfriend, who I love, so very much, stop being able to do things, stop being hot about it, you’re really pissing me off now jon, stop it, stop it, stop being so pissing brilliant -

“Have you actually never broken into a building before?” Jon mutters incredulously, poking in the lock with an unwound paperclip that he’d had in his pocket for some reason.

“Well, other than the horrible Prentiss basement, and like… stuff I did with you, that weird storage lock-up thing, no. Why would I?”

“What did you do as a teenager?” he mumbles, almost sounding disappointed.

one bite mum, just one, they’ll just come up again if you take them on an empty stomach…

sorry, sorry, just tilt your head back a tiny bit more – mum, head back, that’s how you stop it going in your eyes – that… that’s forward, don’t, mum don’t open them –

mum, I’m sorry, I can smell it, it’s absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about, but we do need to get you clean – I’m not accusing you of anything, but the smell… something has happened here, hasn’t it, and we do need to sort that out – alright, there’s no need to shout –

“…a lot of Zelda.”

Jon hums, and furrows his brow as he leans closer to the lock.

“That’s the um… Link?”

Martin’s eyebrows shoot up.

“That is the um Link! How do you know about the um Link? Did the Eye tell you about the um Link?”

Jon huffs, a small, sad, nostalgic smile appearing on his face.

“No, it was uh - one Timothy Stoker I’m afraid. Via a very fetching Halloween costume.”

“Ah,” Martin adopts a similar smile. “Yeah, we… we did chat about it a couple of times.”

“He chatted at me about it a couple of times.”

“Hm, something you’d never do,” Martin says with a sage nod.

“Of course not. The things I’m interested in are objectively better than the things everyone else is interested in, and the only things that justify such behaviour,” Jon earnestly tells the broken bit of key that’s beginning to poke out of the lock. “Come on, come on…”

With a final, precisely-angled flick of the paperclip, it comes free and clatters to the ground. He pinches it between his fingers and holds it up triumphantly.

“Ta-da!”

“Ta-da indeed,” Martin says flatly, in all his pissed-off-ed-ness. “Now get off the floor by yourself.”

Jon scowls up at him.

“That’s just cruel.”

“Yeah,” he holds out his hands, and hoists his boyfriend(!) off the ground, adept by now at cupping his hand into a secure little platform for his bad side. Then, he kisses his boyfriend(!), smiling right into it. “Thank you. That was kind of hot. And useful.”

“You’re welcome,” Jon smiles back, blushing and smug. “I wasn’t exactly looking forward to a night in the woodshed myself.”

“Hmm. Why did you have a paperclip on you, by the way? I mean – stroke of luck but… not doing much filing with the cows, I wouldn’t have thought.”

“Oh, uh…” with a slight sheepishness, Jon reaches into his pocket, and reveals a chain of connected paperclips. “Got quite a few, actually. I’ve started um… they’re just nice… to hold, and play with, and pick apart, and…” He takes in a breath and looks down. “Fidget. With. It calms me down. It’s a… thing, for people like… people like, I suspect I might be – sorry, sorry, you know all that, I’m being - It just… it seems silly, now, after everything, to deny myself such small things that make life so much easier. You um… not weird, is it? Well – it is, but you don’t um -”

Martin kisses him again. He kisses him with a smile so big, that there’s barely room for the kiss itself.

“Not weird. Not weird at all. Brilliant.”

That falling sensation is back, full throttle, because Jonathan Sims is taking care of himself.

It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, and he is not pissed off at all.

***

Why now, when there is nowhere to land?

He thinks hysterically, as the blood begins to pour.

Why why why, when there will only be a corpse to fall into?

Why again now, at the end of all things?

Why is it happening again?

Why couldn’t my last fall, the fall I have to remember him by, have been painless, and bloodless, and happy?

***

Jon’s eyes are brown again, beneath their morphine haze.

They look up at Martin searchingly, curiously, blearily.

Those eyes are trying so hard, to find in Martin’s own what they have done.

They cannot, and they do not understand the set of Martin’s jaw.

Soon, the morphine will be gone, and Jon will remember, and then will come the apologies, and the defences, and the barbs, and the pleads, and the jibes, and the excuses, and the things said in anger that are not true, and the things said in anger that are.

But for now, Martin’s jaw remains clenched, as he smooths some wayward hairs back from Jon’s forehead.

“I need you to understand that it isn’t inevitable anymore, Jon,” he says quietly. “I’ve fallen in love with you before, so many times, but that isn’t what’s happening now. I am choosing to love you, even though I am so, so angry with you.”

Jon’s confused gaze follows Martin’s hand down to his own, the one unencumbered by an IV port. It watches, as he raises it to his lips and kisses it gently.

“You need to respect that choice, okay? You need to stay alive, and strong, and at the fullest capacity you can. So that we can live the love I have chosen, while working through everything that needs to be worked through. We didn’t get choices for a very long time, or certainly not good ones. This is a good one so -” he swallows. “I’m done falling in love with you. I’m done with anything with an impact that hurts. In full control, with full intent, I love you.”

Jon doesn’t understand, he can’t possibly.

His mind isn’t yet in a state where it can even separate words from sound.

And yet –

And yet –

His eyes dampen.

His hand in Martin’s twitches.

And with a movement so small that only someone trained to know his every molecule would notice –

He nods.

Martin closes his eyes.

“I choose, completely, to love you.”