Archive of Our Own

It was always so hard to tell what day it was.

It was such a trivial thing to be bothered about, considering everything, but it became tedious to have to constantly squint at the calendar and consider whether he had already marked off the day or not.

Of course, even that wasn't a reliable method of keeping track—Jon had once gone a week thinking it was the same day until Elias randomly popped in and pointed out that he hadn't marked off his calendar once in that whole time while making idle conversation, as he was wont to do.

The only reason he hadn't completely gotten rid of the calendar was because of all the trouble he had gone through to get it; entering society for the first time in however long, trying to figure out if he actually cared about the one he had chosen, having a panic attack in the aisle when someone acknowledged his existence by making eye contact with him, and then still having to pay.

Even if he had no real feelings towards the thing itself and it was functionally useless, he was still rather stubborn out of instinct and so the cat calendar remained sitting on his desk beside the mountains of statements he had yet to work through.

He stared at it dispassionately, faint thoughts passing through his head like small wisps of fog, before he reached out with his pen and drew a neat cross over the next day along that hadn't already been marked, then leaned back in his chair and just continued to watch it for an unknown amount of time.

He didn't know how long he stayed there, pen tapping lightly against the surface of his desk, but the fog was impossibly thick when he finally focused once more, making it hard to see anything past vague outlines around him.

With a sigh, he wafted his hand around until he could see the statement he had been about to read, scanning through its contents and silently categorising it into The Buried without really having to think about it—it was a prediction, he wouldn't really know until he fully recorded it, but he had a bit of a knack for it after doing nothing but reading statements for…

That was another issue with not being able to tell the time; he couldn't quantify anything properly.

It was rather tedious, when everything was categorised in periods of time—minutes, days, months, years, they were all used to measure everything, from things as simple as how long one had slept to more hard to define concepts such as suffering.

Time was like water to him, dripping through his fingers when he tried to grasp at it, the numbers swirling and floating around until the entire concept of time was nothing but a river he was drowning in, overwhelmed by his inability to understand or apply it to anything.

It was easier to just let it wash over him.

And that was what he did, turning his attention to his work and almost instantly forgetting what he had been doing beforehand as he let those statements slowly wrap him into their embrace.

His voice was muffled and barely discernible to his own ears, and he had long since lost the memories of what it was supposed to sound like—something that he was sure would have worried him at one time, but now was just another observation that stirred nothing but a murky sort of intrigue that was quickly dragged back into the fog when he took his attention off it.

The only thing that could really break through the fog was the quiet influence of The Eye, which had been slowly but steadily building up since he started reading through the mounds of statements in the archives identical to this one in everything but the amount of people occupying the space.

It wasn't as strong as the pull of the quiet nothingness, but it had settled in alongside it without any trouble, just doing what it did best and watching him as that fuzzy intrigue sharpened just the slightest bit with every statement read, until it was the only thing he felt anything coherent towards, a soft humming in his brain that offered bits of information that slipped away soon after they had appeared.

He didn't exactly understand any of it, but he also didn't care to understand it, and the only two people he spoke to assured him that he was 'doing well', whatever that was supposed to imply.

They left him alone most of the time, though, and that was all that really mattered in the end.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by a soft sound outside his door, dragging his eyes away from the statement and letting it fall back down onto the desk.

The door started creaking open, the fog around it dispersing quickly as though startled away, and Jon just pulled it around him like a blanket, watching silently as a man stepped into the room holding a steaming red mug in one of his hands.

He was like a shock of colour in the washed out space, deep blue jumper and ginger hair with these impossibly warm brown eyes that looked around the space with barely concealed interest—even the white shirt he wore beneath that deep blue jumper seemed brighter than his own when he idly raised his arm and squinted his eyes to compare the colour of their shirts.

He thought that his shirt was white too, but it seemed to be an off-white, or a very light grey, in comparison.

Any thoughts he could have formed on the matter drifted away before he could grip them tightly enough, so the topic disappeared from his mind and his arm dropped back down to where it had been leaning upon the armrest of his chair.

The fog shifted sluggishly around the man's ankles with every step he took forwards, but Jon wasn't sure whether he could actually see it because he didn't react to it even as it curled up around his calves with clear intrigue, clinging to him as he placed the mug down on the desk after hesitating over where exactly there was space to put it down.

If he couldn't see the fog (that was being pulled away as though magnetised to him instead) then it made sense that he couldn't see Jon either, even looking right through him—those warm eyes unfocusing as he stared in his direction for a moment.

Despite this fact, Jon still hunched in on himself, dragging more of the fog over himself as a very faint, vague panic began to build up in his throat as those eyes pierced through him; he wasn't sure if the reaction was because of having any eyes on him at all, or if it was specifically because of those eyes, almost burning in their warmth.

Thankfully, the man looked away, focusing instead on the contents of the desk between them and raising a brow at the calendar as his hand hovered over it as though weighing up whether to grab it or not, but eventually falling away when he decided against it.

Jon wasn't sure whether he really would have cared if he had picked it up, but he did find a fuzzy feeling of relief making its place in his chest when he didn't.

The man muttered something under his breath, the noise sounding impossibly distant despite how close they were to one another, and then hesitantly picked up the stack of sticky notes kept beside an unorganised heap of statements so he could write something on the top one with a pen he pulled from his back pocket.

Hm…Jon was certain that those sticky notes had been a neon green, but now they appeared almost dull when put up against the bright splash of life and colour that was this man.

When the man moved again, it was to gently peel away the top sticky note and put the rest back where he had taken them from, sticking the one he had written on to the still-steaming mug before straightening up and looking around the space one more time as he retreated back out of the room, closing the door with a gentle click behind him.

Silence fell back over the space, fog flooding back into the space when he finally released his grasp on it, once again covering the floor in a thick blanket while he considered the mug now sitting on his desk.

After what he presumed to be a moment, he reached over to the mug, plucking the sticky note off it so he could read the words written in untidy yet somehow graceful strokes.

'Made you some tea! it's callendula, which I thought you'd like to know, in case you had allergies or anything.

- Martin :)

P.S Sorry for using your sticky notes!!

P.P.S Your calendar is off by two weeks, I'm not sure if you noticed.'

Ah, damn.

Time-related issues pushed aside, he was sure that this was a nice gesture as a whole, but he couldn't really appreciate it like other people could, which was a shame.

Instead, he just slipped the note into a drawer (he wasn't…quite sure why he was saving it, but he didn't really think about it) and picked up the mug containing the tea- and then blinked in faint surprise as he registered just how much it burned his hands when he cupped them around it.

He was certain that it was because of his long-since frostbitten hands, but it was still strange to hold something warm after so long wrapped in nothing but empty cold, and he found himself unable to do anything but just sit there and continue to hold it.

It wasn't long before the fog creeped in and leeched the warmth from the tea, steam eventually disappearing and the smooth porcelain cooling in his hands when he finally raised it to his lips and took a sip.

It was nice, but nice in the same way he found anything that wasn't actively negative to be distantly nice.

Perhaps it was better warm…

He supposed he would just have to wait and see if this…Martin would decide to make him some more tea.

~*~*~*~*~

The Head Archivist's office was always freezing.

Like, all of the archives was pretty cold, what with the ancient heating system having long given up on them, but there was something different about the cold that clung to the office when Martin stepped in there to deliver tea.

It dug deep into his bones and just sat there for ages even after he had left, even when he purposefully layered up before going in.

Honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal, it just made him more appreciative of the warm tea he came back to, but he did often find himself worrying over the individual who did have to work in such a…hostile environment, for lack of a better descriptor.

For all he knew, Jonathan Sims (as the nameplate on the door proclaimed his name was) actually preferred that temperature to work in, and had somehow made it so it constantly felt like there was a draught or an open window despite the lack of windows in the office, but on the off-chance that he hadn't….well, it didn't seem like a very healthy workplace.

But he didn't really know what to do about it, so he just kept bringing tea when he made some for the others every day, setting it in the same place with a post-it note identifying what kind it was (his own, after that awkward first time).

At first, he hadn't really been sure if anyone was even drinking it, but then he noticed that the red mug he used was always empty and sitting in the drying rack in the kitchen the next day, which was…nice to see—it meant that he wasn't wasting anything, at least.

After that, he found a mug with a cat in a tie in a charity shop, and he couldn't really help but buy it when he thought of that strange calendar in the office, never marked off to the right day no matter how many little P.S's he left on his notes; he stopped mentioning it eventually, instead just offering little tidbits about his day to fill in the space.

Maybe Jonathan didn't appreciate them, but he never made a complaint about it, so Martin assumed he couldn't be that bothered.

Then again, nobody ever saw him, or heard from him—the only way that he 'interacted' with his assistants was through the neat stacks of statements that appeared on their desks every morning, and the finished reports disappearing at the end of the day.

It was strange, obviously, but he did think that Tim was being a little over the top when he implied that their boss was a ghost of sorts.

Like, he knew that they worked in the Magnus Institute, and if there was any place most likely to have a ghost working there, it was the institute, but he still found himself sceptical about the whole idea that Tim had somehow seen a work friend that had gone missing two years ago in the break room (while half-asleep, mind you), watched the 'man' disappear and had automatically presumed that he was dead and in charge.

It didn't seem very realistic, did it?

In fact, he found himself pretty worried about Tim because of it, especially with how he was almost obsessing over this conspiracy theory and trying rather ardently to get them to believe in it as well.

To be completely honest, Martin didn't even know who Tim was on about—he had been working in the library when the others were in Research, and nobody had mentioned the missing coworker's name, so he couldn't rely on old gossip he had heard at the time to fill in the gaps of knowledge.

Sasha, however, did know who Tim was talking about, and she didn't seem to appreciate the insinuation that this disappearing colleague had died, becoming a little more vehement in her disagreement every time it was brought up.

It was to one of these conversations he walked in on in the break room one morning, yawning into his hand and immediately moving to the kitchenette to make them all tea as usual; he wasn't getting involved with the debate this time, it was far too early for all of that, and he didn't remotely have a personal reason to get involved.

Best to leave them to it, they'd move on to another topic eventually…even if they did sound a bit more heated than usual.

"-I mean, come on, Tim! He was a very memorable person, there was no way nobody would have called the police if he was actually missing."

"Is there? Sash, we knew absolutely nothing about him that wasn't related to work—hell, for all we know, we were the only ones who even noticed he was gone!"

"I know Jon didn't like to speak about his personal life, but that doesn't automatically mean that he didn't have one."

"Wait, sorry, good morning guys- what did you say his name was?" Martin chimed in as he placed two cups of tea in front of his friends, receiving twin smiles of thanks before the two went back to glaring at each other.

"Who? Oh, my precious snookums?" Tim replied, referring to that disappearing co-worker in the same manner he always had. "Jon, Jonathan Sims."

…What?

He frowned slightly, brows furrowing as he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay, great joke, guys. What's his name really?"

He did not, in fact, receive the usual grins he got when he caught them out in a lie, instead getting Sasha turning to him with confusion clear on her face, which left him just the slightest bit concerned.

"No, Martin, his name really was Jonathan Sims. Why would you think that's a joke?" She asked, and he felt his face beginning to flush beneath the scrutiny he was now being put under.

"Well, it's just- uh. It's the name on the nameplate of the Head Archivist's office."

Silence reigned over them all for a few seconds, before Tim broke it by literally scrabbling to his feet and leaving the break room, presumably to go check it out himself (seemingly for the first time, which was…incredibly in character, actually).

Sasha was still staring at him like she could somehow make the information make sense and yet still fit with her viewpoint on the matter. "Hey, Martin?"

"Yes, Sasha?" He replied, a strange sense of foreboding settling over him.

"Do you think I'd get caught if I got into the employment records of the institute?"

He was honestly pretty surprised that she hadn't done it for fun already, but also he didn't exactly want to condone the act itself so he just shrugged, and she nodded like he had given a definitive answer, before also standing (taking her tea with her though, unlike Tim) and just exiting the room without another word.

Now, Martin was a little surprised by the seemingly matching information, but he did think he was being a bit more objective about it all than the others.

After all, someone could just have the same name as the missing co-worker, as improbable as it sounded, or maybe Jonathan Sims had switched departments and hadn't told Tim and Sasha—he seemed like a private person, and maybe he just saw them as distant colleagues that didn't need to know such information.

It wasn't like Research was going to the Archival department loads either, unless it was the heads of the departments liaising on something or other, so it just made even more sense—plus, it would explain how Jonathan had gained the position of Head Archivist seemingly out of nowhere.

For some reason, these things sounded more like excuses than actual alternative explanations, and he could admit that 'same name, same workplace' thing was a bit far-fetched, but the other one did actually hold up!

Tim came barging back into the room with wild delight in his eyes, grinning triumphantly at the evidence that pointed towards his theory having some sort of standing. "Such valuable proof under our noses this whole time! I can't believe you didn't say anything, Martin!"

He didn't even get a chance to defend himself, with Tim grabbing the cup of tea made for him and looking around the space. "Where did Sasha go?"

"She's checking employee records-" aaaand he was gone.

Martin sighed softly, rolling his eyes with a smile as he picked up both his own tea and the other cup he made every morning, moving to take it to the Head Archivist's office.

He couldn't blame Jonathan wanting to avoid them all when this was the kind of stuff they focused on on the regular.

~*~

The information that the employment records gave them was…strange.

Apparently, Jonathan Sims was employed at the institute from 2011 to 2013 as a researcher, until there was a strange blip in his records simply labelled as 'training' until after Gertrude Robinson's death, when he was promoted to Head Archivist almost instantly.

Now, Martin would have just said that this 'training' was likely the man training to be Head Archivist, or doing some sort of education that would help him gain that role, but then Tim did some…undercover work, as he put it, to get Sasha access to the police records (he didn't know how, and he wasn't sure he wanted to ask) so she could look further into this issue.

There was a missing persons report on Jonathan, but when the lines of enquiry led to the investigators of the case to learning he was an employee of the Magnus Institute, they dropped the whole thing soon after.

Which was weird.

He didn't quite know what to say about the whole thing; there was obviously something off about it, but he didn't really know what they could do about it no matter what they found out.

It wasn't like they ever saw the guy while working (or outside of work, when Tim tried to 'catch him off guard'), so they couldn't just ask him about it.

Sasha had gone deep into a rabbit hole on the matter, finally more convinced by the facts, and Tim was more fervent in his attempts to get a sighting of Jon than before, while Martin…

Well, he just kept making tea.

He didn't know what to do, okay, and he was pretty good at making tea!

Jonathan (it felt weird to call him Jon because he didn't really know him as well as Tim and Sasha) didn't seem to have any complaints about it, and there really wasn't anything he could do—he was well aware that he wasn't good at most things, not like the other two, and he was more likely to get in the way than he was to help anything.

So, tea.

Tea and sticky notes, to be precise.

He didn't expect anything to come of it, it was just another part of his routine at this point, which was why he was thrown off when he got to his desk one day and found a simple pack of post-it notes resting on his desk, perhaps once neon but now strangely washed out like something had sucked the brightness out of it.

He sat down and picked them up hesitantly, turning them in his hands as he looked around in confusion for any sign of who could have left them there, before he noticed that there was actually writing on the top note.

'A stock up, as you seem to use them often.

- Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist

P.S. Thank you for all the tea, I especially enjoyed the chilli-infused green tea blend you made yesterday.'

Oh wow.

Okay.

What- what did he do with this?

He stared at the note for a fair few minutes, trying to decide what he was supposed to do now that his boss—someone who his friends were certain was some sort of ghost, who had been entirely unseen and unheard from by all three of them, to the point where they questioned his existence at first—had randomly decided to send him a note.

He could tell the others; they'd been trying to find a way to interact with the man for ages, or to just prove the man was actually alive, and now here was that sign.

It'd be awful if he didn't tell them, considering how worried they'd been about it, even though he had already neglected to tell them that he was giving him tea every day, tea that the man was seemingly drinking every day (which implied that he couldn't be dead, because ghosts probably couldn't drink tea).

Instead of doing that, though, he found himself making another cup of chilli-infused green tea in the cat mug, the top note still folded into one of his hands as he worked.

Jonathan was obviously not someone that liked to interact or be in the general vicinity of any people, and the fact that he had reached out at all was practically a miracle in the grand scheme of things.

He didn't want to scare him off by telling Sasha and Tim, who would probably start pushing for something or other now that there was proof of life at all, and he also didn't want to ruin this tentative outreach for communication that had been handed to him specifically, despite the fact that he didn't know Jonathan like the other two did.

And okay, yeah, maybe he was a little smug that it had been him their elusive boss decided to talk to, even if it was just a one time thing.

So, he made the tea, moving back to his desk to write a little note in return to thank Jonathan for the post-it notes, and to tell him that he was glad he liked the tea, and that it was very important to keep an eye on steeping and temperature with this one—just another useless bit of information like he offered with every note he wrote.

He left it in the man's office, and that was that.

Until he found a note resting on his desk once more, this time when he had gotten up to bully Sasha into giving him some of her backlog, because she had been very distracted by her research and he thought it'd be easier to just do it for her.

Now, he didn't exactly know how it got there without any of them noticing, but it was here now and it was a response, so that was all that really mattered, surely?

(Even if he did begrudgingly offer a point to the 'he's a ghost' theory.)

'I would almost believe that there is a story behind that advice, Mr. Blackwood. Care to share?

- Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist

P.S. The mug is also nice.'

Okay, okay, he was actually gunning to have a conversation, this was fine, this was great actually!

He didn't bother making a cup of tea again (mainly because the mug hadn't yet returned to the cupboard), instead just grabbing a random file he had finished the follow-up for to use as cover for moving from his desk again, and writing a response detailing the time he had tried to make the same blend for another boss and had gotten distracted helping someone clean up a spillage, leading to a tea that was more chilli than it was green, to put it lightly.

And so it continued throughout the day, a note appearing on his desk whenever he left it for more than a quick second or two, charming little responses that he saved away into the same drawer he kept his poetry journal, because Sasha and Tim knew not to go in that drawer.

He considered the likelihood of it being a one-off on the bus home that day, anxiously turning the thought over in his mind—it wasn't like Jonathan was obliged to respond to him, that wasn't why he did it, but Martin had genuinely enjoyed talking to him and didn't really want to stop now that they had started.

He needn't have worried though, because the next day there was another note on his desk, this time resting on the pile of statements he'd be expected to follow up on, picking up their conversation from yesterday as though there hadn't been hours between it at all.

It was nice, talking to Jon about things; he was overly formal in everything he said, as though he wasn't even sure how to write in a manner that wasn't anything but formal, but he also had this dry, sarcastic tone when he happened to talk about the statements they had both worked on, something that only grew in frequency the longer that they exchanged notes.

Martin knew that it should probably be embarrassing how quickly he fell for a man he had never even met in person, but he always was a bit of a hopeless romantic, and there was nothing that screamed 'romance' more than exchanging notes with a mysterious gentleman every day.

He was charming and bluntly sincere in everything he did, his handwriting a work of art in and of itself, with its swirls and curls and...

Okay, maybe it was a bit embarrassing.

He had squealed the first time Jon had started signing his name as just 'J' in his notes, to the point where Tim had actually gotten it into his head that Martin was engaging in some sort of forbidden office romance with someone from another department, and was now treating it as a Romeo and Juliet plotline where he was the judgemental father.

…Martin really hoped that he and Jon didn't end up in a Romeo and Juliet style plotline.

If they ended up in a romance at all!

It was more than clear to him that Jon was way out of his league—smarter, more sincere, somehow so kind, and just everything Martin would never be able to keep up with.

Plus there was the fact that he still hadn't decided whether Jon was a ghost or not; he knew it was entirely stupid, yes, but he couldn't help it!

It was just little things, really, but they all kept piling up when he thought about them too hard.

Jon never spoke about his personal life, but not through evading personal questions—no, he started answering the question, but then trailed off halfway through a sentence as though he had forgotten what he was trying to say, and then just moved on like the whole question had completely passed from his mind.

Memory problems didn't point to him being a ghost exactly, but it did fit in with some films he had watched recently (no, they weren't all romance, either), so he hesitantly gave a point to the 'Jon is a ghost' scoreboard.

Then there was the fact that he had terrible time keeping skills—the calendar, for instance, was never on the right day, and he never referred to specific time measurements, like, ever.

It was a weird thing to notice, yeah, but he couldn't stop noticing it after he first made note of it, and it was kind of weird to not mention specific time periods even casually.

Like, martin would joke about being able to take fifteen minute longer breaks so he could write back to Jon, and the man would respond that he hadn't touched a statement 'in however long it had been' so he could adequately reply, or he would ask when Jon left work and he would reply that he hadn't left the archives for 'a long time'.

Yes, that entire statement was worrying and got its own point on the scoreboard, but he was focusing on the time thing right now.

It wouldn't be weird if it was only an occasional thing—everyone used general descriptions of time, after all, but Jon wouldn't even use phrases like 'a few hours' or 'a couple of seconds,' he just avoided all mention of them entirely!

It felt in character for a ghost to avoid or not use time, so Martin offered half a point to the scoreboard and started marking days off properly on the calendar, because he could only imagine how disorienting that must be for the poor man, even if he wasn't actually a ghost.

He still hadn't told the others about the conversations, but that was because he didn't even know where to begin, and also they'd be so pissed off with him for not telling them, so he kind of definitely wanted to avoid that.

He would tell them! Just…when he got the time to formulate how to explain it all.

Or, well, that had been the plan.

Then he had made the stupid mistake of breaking into a basement to try and get a good piece of evidence to keep Elias off Jon's back (apparently the man was getting hounded for better follow up on Carlos Vittery's statement, and it was really Martin's fault for not providing it in the first place) and met Jane Prentiss.

And then he was too busy focusing on not letting his flat be infested by parasitic worms to think about whether his friends would be upset with him for not telling them about his correspondence with Jon.

~*~*~*~*~

There had been no tea for a long time.

Now, Jon understood that time worked differently for him than it did for normal people; at one point he could blink after placing his mug back into the cupboard and there would be a steaming cup of tea sitting in front of him once more, at another it felt like he had been alone for an impossibly long while before the next day on his calendar would be crossed off with a neat smiley face, or a star.

Once, he had asked Peter why it was like that, and he was told that 'The Lonely likes to play with time', which he supposed was an explanation, just not a very good one.

Nonetheless, he was almost (almost) certain that it had been far too long since the last interaction with Martin.

Part of him asked why it really mattered—he knew that everyone left eventually, nobody could really stand to talk to him for so long and it had really just been a matter of 'when' Martin decided that he had had enough of Jon, not 'if' like it would be for most people.

Because most people weren't weird or off-putting, most people knew when to talk and how to talk and what to talk about; he had never been good at any of that, often blurting out random things at inopportune moments because he believed they fit with the conversation topic in the moment, only to think about it later and realise that he had been weird and that was why he received odd looks.

…At least, he thought that was why—he hadn't spoken to people face to face for enough time that it was all hazy and hard to parse through, to the point where it almost hurt to try and focus on it for too long, so he just let the fog brush it all away and pretend he could remember why he had ended up caught in The Lonely in the first place.

Why would he want to remember it if it hurt?

No, better to let it drift away into nothingness while his mind was filled with nothing but fine mist and ice.

It was this passive part of him that had thrashed and complained the most when he had been taken out of The Lonely and dropped back into the inhabited world, the one that dragged the fog tightest around himself and muffled any of the faint feelings that curled in his chest when he interacted with Martin in their strange little way.

At first, he had believed that those faint feelings were really just a result of the warmth of the tea, but even after the steam had long stopped rising from it (and it wasn't that one that burned his throat even without being warm), he found them still neatly pressed into his chest, stuffed deep below between thick layers of fog.

Now, he was certain that it was probably some form of affection or love, but it was still so muffled and quiet that it was rather hard to care or really do anything about it.

It was, however, that small part that held all the bottled up feelings that was trying to signal to him that something was very wrong about not seeing Martin for this long, as though they had any measure of how long this long was.

It was trying to make him do…something, something that he hadn't been able to put into coherent thoughts, similar to how it had always taken him so long to write out a response to Martin because offering meaningful, interesting comments in return to those gentle words was hard when he couldn't quite drag the words together that would offer such things.

He always spent so long staring down at his post-it note with the closest thing he could ever feel to frustration gnawing at his insides.

He had that same feeling now, hazy and undefinable but impossibly negative as he stared up at the ceiling, unable to pick up a statement and keep working like he always did when he had focused too long on the aching quiet where there was supposed to be something bright and loud in his chest.

He just- he knew that something was wrong, but he couldn't figure out what it was, and he wasn't used to focusing on these things so much, especially when they were causing him some level of distress like this very much was.

His brain felt clouded, more so than usual, as though The Lonely didn't like him thinking so hard and so much about another person—which, he supposed, made sense considering that he had so easily let most other people slip from his mind the second they weren't directly in front of him, the only exceptions being Elias and Peter, though he was sure that was more because of Peter's control over The Lonely than any real care he felt for them.

Martin had been like everyone else in that aspect at first, disappearing from his thoughts when Jon slipped those notes away into a desk drawer and felt vague confusion about the empty mug resting on his desk before brushing it off and washing out without giving it another thought.

But, whether through the fact that they never stopped appearing or the fact that he found himself suddenly longing to offer something in return for these random little thoughts on too-bright bits of paper, the man began to stick in his mind the same way Peter and Elias did, only this time without the need for manipulating The Lonely or something.

Which The Lonely did not like.

Usually, it was the thing that decided how much he remembered, The Beholding blending with The Forsaken to create a toxic little cocktail of being thoroughly reminded of all those in his life who had watched his descent into the fog and hadn't done anything about it, whether they had realised what was happening or not.

That was his special 'brand' of The Lonely, according to Peter.

It didn't really matter, because he couldn't remember anyone outside of those little moments.

Except Martin.

An exhale escaped him, fog rising to join the rest of it covering the space as he considered the situation distantly.

It certainly didn't help that there was this gently, barely-there brushing against his brain, The Eye trying to get past those clouds in his mind to offer some sort of information.

Most of the time, he didn't even notice it was doing this, and when he did, he just shrugged it aside because he truly didn't care what it wanted to tell him—nothing was ever really that important to him.

But now he had a reason to care, and he was actively reaching for this knowledge, which was an impossibly strange situation to deal with for the first time ever.

And The Lonely didn't appreciate the twin efforts, practically on the verge of wholly dragging him in to cut it out.

It wasn't the first time that had happened while he was trying to work out this faint sense of wrong that couldn't be drowned out—he had been yanked into the uninhabited world, fog and outlines of eyes floating around him almost comfortingly until he had forgotten what had bothered him so much in the first place.

He didn't really mind it; it was just trying to help him maintain his Loneliness while soothing his vague distress, not quite able to understand that it wouldn't work this time around.

No, he didn't mind, it just meant that his already naturally frayed focus was split between staying out of The Lonely and trying to grab at the information The Eye was offering him, all the while the two Fears warred for dominance.

There was nothing fun or glamorous about wielding two Fears at once, no matter what Peter and Elias said.

he wasn't even sure how it all broke, not really; one second he was trying to pull the clouds from his head, the next The Eye was shoving information into his head, so vibrant and vivid in contrast to everything else that he physically squeezed his eyes shut as though that would do anything to stop it.

The clouds rolled over once more, cutting off the little rip he had created, but the knowledge of Martin, terrified and trapped in his flat while swarms of worms tried to get in so they could take control of him was burned into his mind so brightly that it hurt.

He wasn't sure how long he spent trying to process the information, heels of his palms pressed against his eyes while the fog worked to soften the harsh lines of the knowledge handed over by another entity, unused to having something so…so clear amongst the blur and smudges that made up the rest of his thoughts and memories.

Eventually, though, he knew that he had to do something about this, and tried to figure out exactly what that something was.

He sat there, considering his options, when another sharp stab of information had him choking down a grunt as he buried his head into his hands once more, fingers reaching up to tangle into his hair and hold there tightly—even pain was muffled in the fog, so it was just an extra level of discomfort to have to feel it so vividly.

It seemed that The Lonely couldn't quite patch up the little tear he had made, and now The Eye had an in.

An unfortunate discovery if all knowledge would hurt this much to learn, but one he couldn't exactly feel any regret for, both just in general and because all he could think about was helping Martin.

After giving himself a moment to recalibrate with this new information, he made a targeted effort to piece the bits together until it wasn't just a disjointed jumble rattling around in his head, and then tried to pull together some sort of plan on a bit of scrap paper after attempts to do it all mentally just led to him forgetting the previous steps when he came up with the next one.

Even with that workaround, he still spent some time looking down at the completed plan, trying to figure out why he had even written it before the memory of Martin being trapped and scared and without help was flashing in his eyes and he was scribbling a small message onto a post-it note.

He stumbled to his feet, pulling the fog along with him as he stepped out of his office and made his way through the haze that was the rest of the archives.

He knew where he was supposed to go, retracing the steps he had taken every time he went to give Martin a note, although this time he felt like he was drifting just a little more without that small anchor of a destination.

Because he didn't really know where to put the note, he just knew he had to put it somewhere visible in the room where Martin always sat to do work.

When he made it into the room, there were two people already in there, one sitting at a desk and the other leaning against it as they talked, their conversation muffled and their features disjointed smears of colour more than something he could pick apart and put back together into something coherent.

It didn't matter what they looked like, though, so he didn't focus on it as he drifted over to the unoccupied desk that he knew wasn't Martin's and stuck the note to the middle of the bright monitor so that he could be sure it would be seen, before quickly retreating back to his office.

He didn't really know how long it was until there was a distant, incoherent yell followed by the slightest sounds of movement passing the door.

Good, they had seen his note.

He just hoped they remembered to take the fire extinguishers.

~*~*~*~*~

Martin was living in the archives now.

It was obviously really weird to sleep in the same place he worked, but there was at least a slight difference between Storage and the main office, enough that he was able to separate his workplace from his current sleeping space.

Plus, considering the state of his flat, he'd probably rather sleep on the break room couch than go back there—that wasn't necessary, fortunately, what with the sudden appearance of an arguably more comfortable cot with a mattress topper and piled high with far too many blankets.

When he worked up the courage to ask Jon about it, hesitant to sound ungrateful for the obviously exceedingly kind gesture, he just received a 'is there enough blankets? Elias said the archives were rather chilly' in response.

It made it better, honestly, to sleep on that thing every night because it was just another sign that he was cared for, that he hadn't been forgotten or left to die as he had been beginning to think, trapped in his own home with nothing but the slow but almost routine knocking on the door from whatever remained of a woman that really, really wanted him dead.

The fact that Jon of all people was the one to realise that something was wrong and take action, the man who couldn't remember what day it was most of the time and struggled with remembering anything not related to statements, only made that warm feeling grow in his chest.

He was memorable.

So memorable, in fact, that a man who couldn't seem to remember anything had taken note of his absence and reached out to other people for the first time in however long just so he could tell them to help him.

He might have teared up a little when Tim and Sasha told him about the very ominous note left upon Tim's monitor, one that outlined that Martin was in incredible danger and that they needed to go and save him with fire extinguishers, but it did really mean a lot to go from wondering if anyone even noticed that he was gone to having basically a rescue mission ordered on his behalf.

Tim and Sasha had noticed too, but they'd been getting messages from his phone (which was a terrifying thought—also how did the worms figure out his password??) so they hadn't thought anything of it until the post-it note.

And then they had faced off with a parasitical worm woman with no idea that the fire extinguishers would even do anything and saved him?

Maybe Martin was feeling a bit more loved than he knew what to do with, because he had been wholly expecting to just rot away in his flat until Prentiss either got bored of him or the worms got in.

Tim and Sasha, of course, were also very upset that he hadn't told them about Jon, but they weren't pushing him about it right now, which he appreciated; he had just been through an extremely traumatic experience, and he'd rather not be interrogated about something that didn't even remotely important in comparison.

He did explain the general situation though, because he did feel bad about not telling them as it was (but he also felt a little protective about his connection with Jon so it was a strange little mix there), and Tim made some sort of comment about how 'of course his tea would be the barrier breaker to get in contact with Jon, how didn't we realise this before?'

Which made him smile.

Really, he was going through a lot of emotions right now, and they were all very overwhelming, too all over the place to drag down into poetry.

Because that was basically his main way of working through these things, he spent a lot of time just sitting in Storage and trying to tell himself that there was nothing on the other side of the door.

Even though there had been the occasional worm or two appearing around the Archives whenever they least expected it, all of which died swiftly and (hopefully) painfully beneath a concentrated blast from a fire extinguisher, often paired with the aggressive slamming of a boot and screams to the effect of 'ew fucking kill it ew!' and 'I'm killing it I'm killing it fucking help me!'

Both efficient and comical, like watching a clown show in real time—on the few occasions that he wasn't involved with the performance himself.

Being alone in the archives while thinking about the worms was so much worse; he was just there, tensed up and waiting for a knock that he hoped would never actually come, or for worms to start wiggling their way beneath the cracks in the door.

He didn't sleep much during the first few days of being there.

Then he mentioned it to Jon, and again the man decided that there was something he could do to help.

Every night after that, a soft light would appear below the door, followed by the unmistakable shadow of someone sitting down in front of the door with the low sound of a tape running and a pen scratching against paper.

At first, it had scared the shit out of him, but a note slipped below the door telling him that Jon was 'just working' and to 'go to sleep, Martin.'

He didn't think it would really help, because he had just been distracted by the fact that Jon was right there, sitting on the other side of a door and he could just open it at any moment…but then he had found himself laying in the cot, drifting off to the gentle sounds emanating from outside and sleeping better than he had in far too long.

Because it did help, really—having someone waiting outside that he knew wouldn't hurt him, just casually remaining there to make sure nothing could get to him…it helped so much, and he found it somehow easy to not want to open that door and see what the man looked like, almost a little giddy over the mystery of it all, not knowing what his secret little crush looked at when he was right outside.

He didn't even know what he sounded like, the two continuing to communicate solely through passing post-it notes rather than just speaking despite being less than a metre apart from each other on the nights where he sat down against the door, directly opposite where he thought Jon sat on the other side.

Even though he was distracted with romanticising the whole thing—another interaction he selfishly hoarded away from the others—he couldn't exactly deny the general weirdness that came from those nightly visits.

There was- there was fog, okay?

Whenever Jon was outside the door, there was this thick fog that curled beneath the door and started coiling around space, around him if he was near the door, but it always disappeared by morning.

And the room…it didn't get cold, not exactly, but he was definitely more aware of the draught crawling in with the fog, and the idea of rooms getting colder was literally something that all ghost hunters said was a sign of a spirit being present.

The fact that outside only felt colder—where Jon was!!—only highlighted the whole thing!

He felt watched too; you always felt watched in the archives, it was just another part of working there, but this was- it was more vague, and it always came when that fog creeped in beneath the gap in the door, like it was Jon himself watching him, which was so much more comforting than the feeling he got when he worked in the main office with the others.

Jon definitely didn't notice he was doing it or he would have apologised profusely for it (like how he had when being asked how he knew what was happening to Martin, notably not explaining), so Martin decided not to mention anything, instead just nursing that impossibly warm feeling in his chest as the nights passed.

Was he falling in love with a ghost?

It actually seemed pretty in character for him, always one to get himself into situations that would consistently end with him heartbroken in some manner—he wasn't quite sure how it was going to play out in this scenario particularly, but he was sure fate had something nasty in mind.

And yet Jon kept coming, undaunted by the anvil that was slowly but surely being pulled above his head, ready to drop at any moment.

Or he just wasn't aware of it, because Martin was too selfish to warn him of all the bad things that happened to people who showed him even a shred of decency.

Jon was a silent presence that offered unmeasurable comfort in the form of a mere shadow cast below his door and quiet sounds of movement that he always ended up falling asleep to; he just couldn't comprehend losing that.

They passed notes sometimes, sliding them beneath the door with anything that came to mind, and Martin sometimes got the privilege of being able to hear the near-silent huffs of amusement in response to usually subpar jokes he had made.

Most the time, though, they just sat there, so impossibly close and yet never trying to close the gap, content with the knowledge of another presence as Martin slipped into sleep propped up against the thick door that he was almost certain Jon was leaning back against too, when he wasn't shifting and scribbling and very occasionally muttering under his breath—too quiet to make anything out, of course.

(Once, he had been having a nightmare while in that spot, and had been woken to a gentle, impossibly smooth voice whispering his name from behind the door, concern dripping from those two syllables.

He loved the way the man said his name—dropping the 'r' like it was nothing more than a placeholder while stretching out the first syllable just the slightest bit, morphing it all into more of a 'Mahtin' than a 'Martin'; it was gorgeous, and he would have nobody else say his name ever again if it meant getting to hear Jon say it one more time.)

Honestly, Martin was pretty sure he'd happily sleep in the archives forever if it meant maintaining this routine every night.

Which was why he was particularly concerned when the man didn't appear one night.

It was literally just a normal night, completely the same as most previous nights had been, and yet Jon hadn't shown up after the others had left like he always did—the exact time differed, sometimes right after the door had closed and sometimes two hours later, but he never missed one.

He sat there, anxiety growing slowly as every minute passed without fog creeping below the door (which was something he never thought he'd be worried about) with the distant feeling that something was incredibly wrong.

After hemming and hawwing over whether or not to leave the room—he was surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, really) nervous about accidentally bumping into Jon as he made his way over—he decided that the worry swirling around inside was similar enough to that gut feeling of danger when he was in the basement with Jane Prentiss lurking around in it that he was willing to risk it.

So, he steeled himself, grabbing both a fire extinguisher and his trusty corkscrew before stepping out of his safe haven and starting the daunting trek to the Head Archivist's office.

He was sure that fear and anxiety was making the archives seem more dangerous than it actually was in the dim light, but every slight shift in the corner of his eyes had him flinching and angling his fire extinguisher in that direction, squinting into the shadows before hurrying along through the hallways.

In all honesty, Martin was expecting to have completely exaggerated the whole threat in his mind and find absolutely nothing in the office, maybe do a sweep of the whole place just to soothe his nerves and then retreat back to his makeshift room to worry about where Jon was from a reasonably safe place that worms could not randomly get into.

So imagine his shock, and very quickly following horror, when he heard just the slightest whimper of pain from Jon's office when he was near enough to open the door.

Immediately, all rational thought left his mind and he just barged into that office, hand fumbling for the light switch and flipping it on to illuminate whoever was hurt (Jon, he knew it was Jon, he just couldn't realise that in the moment).

It was horrifying.

There was blood smeared along the floor, half-hidden beneath the thick layer of fog that was hiding most of the space, acting as an almost morbid trail that led up to a man, one that was slumped against the back of the ornate desk and staring up at him in confusion with greyish-brown eyes that were unfocused with obviously agony while a letter opener dug messily into the top of his leg.

At first, Martin couldn't quite comprehend why he was doing this, until he saw all the holes torn into his washed out clothes, and obviously deeper than that with the blood oozing from them, and he realised exactly what had inexplicably happened to Jon.

"Oh god," was what slipped out of his mouth as he rushed to drop down beside him, hands fluttering panickedly over his form and trying to figure out what the fuck he was supposed to do with all of this—there were worms digging into Jon's flesh, and he was trying to remove them with a fucking letter opener, and Martin was trying not to hyperventilate.

He was going to throw up, actually, this was literally awful, what the fuck, how had this happened?!-

A grunt drew him out of his spiralling, and he watched distantly as Jon dragged out one of those bastard worms, giving it one good stab with the far too blunt blade for good measure before trying to launch right back into the next tear in his skin without even a little bit of regard for how badly digging around in his leg would go.

Automatically, Martin reached out to grab the man's wrist, his other hand moving to pick up the corkscrew from where he had discarded it alongside the fire extinguisher when he dropped down, not really knowing what to do with the startled look Jon gave him and so just ignoring it.

He had to focus on extracting these worms, and he would take whatever time he needed to dissect that expression when he was not performing fucked up impromptu surgery on his boss/friend/crush.

"I'm so sorry, this is really going to hurt but it's better than a letter opener," he started babbling as he dug the corkscrew into the first injury he saw, but it wasn't like that could soothe the cries of pain that started falling from jon's mouth freely now that he wasn't in charge of removing those worms.