Archive of Our Own ^beta

Martin clutched a stack of statements in one hand and a teacup in the other. He’d triple checked the information on the latest statement, and even managed to find an older statement to cross-reference the location. It was, well, perfect felt a bit like an overstatement, but he hoped it was close enough to please Jon.

If it wasn’t, perhaps a nice cup of tea would help smooth over any… technical difficulties.

He tried to flick through the pages with one hand, double checking that he’d remembered to include page numbers. They weren’t strictly necessary, but he figured they couldn’t hurt.

He was at page seven when he collided with a solid shape in the crosshairs of Jon’s office. Papers and tea fumbled from Martin’s hands and he lunged forward, reaching for the documents that Jon had requested. Paper crumpled in his hands and the crack of the teacup ricocheted across the room as it hit the floor.

Nearly boiling tea splashed across his sweater and he spared a moment to be grateful for the thick woollen fabric. The majority of the papers fluttered down towards the ground and he swatted at them like they were a lazy fly hovering too close to his ear, moving them away before they could land in the puddle of tea.

Jon let out a deep, exhausted sigh from where he’d expertly stepped out of the way of the tea and paper mess after the initial collision. He looked up at the taller man with resignation.

“Honestly, Martin. Is one day without incident too much to ask for?” Jon shook his head and stepped back into his office. “Clean this up. I want that report by the end of the day.”

The door to the Archivist’s office slammed closed and Martin barely suppressed his flinch.

Shit. He’d really tried his best with that report. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t just reprint it, but now it would be tainted by the memory of the current disaster.

He snatched a handful of tissues from the box on his desk and dropped to his knees, mopping up the tea and ignoring the way the liquid burned his fingers. His sweater was damp and likely to stain but he couldn’t bring himself to worry about it when Jon’s disappointed eyes were seared into his memory.

He threw the soggy tissues and cracked mug into the waste-paper basket by his desk and made a mental note to empty the bin before the end of the day.

Tim dropped down beside him and gathered the closest documents into his hands, straightening them against a dry part of the ground and passing them along to him. Tim clapped a hand to Martin’s back in a gesture that almost made him fall face first against the floor.

He’d welcome the escape from potentially having to face Jon again.

“Don’t stress it, Jon gets huffy when he’s focused. Nothing personal, usually,” Tim explained, standing up in one fluid movement.

Tim offered his hand and Martin took it gratefully.

“Are you sure?” Martin asked, up on his feet. “It’s just, it feels personal, sometimes.”

“Can’t see why it would be. Unless you ran over his cat or something.”

“Jon has a cat?” Martin couldn’t picture the man owning anything soft and dependent, but the idea of Jon curled up around a ball of fluff crept into his mind and snagged in place.

It would suit Jon, a cat. Martin had always been fond of cats.

Tim shrugged. “Jon’s just a bit of a prick at first. He’ll warm up to you, or you’ll get used to it. Probably the latter.”

“Thanks. I’ll, uh, try not to take it personal, I guess.”

Martin set the papers down on his desk and rubbed at his eyes. Sleep hadn’t been the easiest since starting in the Archives a few weeks prior, dreams of monsters lurking just behind his eyelids. Jon would think… well, Jon wouldn’t approve.

“Oh,” Tim said, perking up. “Anyone I know?”

“Hmm?” Martin followed his eyes to his arm, where his sleeve had fallen back to reveal his dead timer. “Oh, no. Probably not. Missed connection, some guy at a pub when I was, uh, in Uni.”

Tim nodded and Martin was surprised to find that the pity he’d expected was absent. It wasn’t uncommon to have a missed connection. Touch was inevitable, pressed shoulder to shoulder on the crowded Tube or walking along main street. It wasn’t as if the timers alerted you when they stopped counting. No fireworks.

He hadn’t even realised his had stopped until he’d gotten home and peeled off his sweater.

“You?” Martin asked, hyper aware of his exposed skin but hesitant to draw more attention to it by pulling the sleeve down.

Tim made a half-hearted gesture towards the empty desk across from them. “Sash, figured it out a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh.” Martin stared at Sasha’s empty desk, trying to connect the dots Tim had drawn. It made sense, in a strange way. Except, well… “I thought, you and the filing clerk at the police station?”

A satisfied smirk crept across Tim’s face. “Oh, no, definitely. I mean, Sasha’s hot, don’t get me wrong. I’d hit that in a second, but,” he shrugged, “I don’t know. I get the feeling that maybe it’s a platonic thing between us. For now, at least. No rush, right?”

“Right, course.” Martin’s eyes darted towards Jon’s closed office door. “And uh, Jon?”

“Oh, same as you. Doesn’t talk about it much.”

Warmth crept across his spine and he tried not to let it show. It was a silly thing, a cruel thing even, being excited by the news that Jon had also lost his soulmate to the vastness of the London population.

Besides, Jon didn’t even like him.

.

The girl across from Martin had a metal spike coming out of her eyebrow and a rainbow pin on the sleeve of her jacket.

Martin felt like there were a hundred eyes watching him, seeing his tattered sweater and neat curls and knowing that he didn’t belong in the dark pub.

It was dumb, following the girl into the pub. He didn’t even know her. God, what if she thought he was some sort of stalker and called the cops or, or…

The girl caught his eye and grinned wide. She made her way closer, moving through the crowd with a fluidity that Martin with his bulky shoulders and soft stomach never quite managed to pull off.

“Hey,” she called over the roar of the crowd.

Martin tried to speak and found his tongue a dry, wriggling thing in his mouth. He swallowed twice. “Hello.”

Please, he thought, please don’t call the cops.

“Wanna hit?” She held out something that Martin was pretty sure wasn’t a cigarette.

“No, I’m… No, thank you. I, uh, I like your pin?”

The girl placed the joint in between her lips and reached for her pin, detaching it easily. It was a small thing, round with rainbow stripes cutting across it diagonally.

She held it out to him. “Have it.”

Martin blushed at the implication. “I, I couldn’t. It’s yours and I’m not…”

She raised an eyebrow and her eyebrow piercing flashed in the lights of the pub. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Martin reached out for the pin. It was lighter than he expected, and warm against his fingers. It felt fragile against his palm, like he could crush the cheap metal with ease.

The girl’s fingers brushed against his and a jolt went through Martin’s body. He could see the numbers of her timer on her arm, glowing almost neon against her dark skin. It steadily ticked down.

He didn’t need to see his own timer, hidden under the layers of his sweater and undershirt, to know it hadn’t stopped at the contact.

This girl with her pierced face and not cigarettes and colourful pin wasn’t exactly his… type.

Martin carefully attached the pin to the front of his sweater. When he looked up, the girl had disappeared back into the crowd and the lights had dimmed.

He should leave. This place was as far from his usual scene as possible and his mother would be waiting for him and–

Lights lit up the stage and a deep, velveteen voice cooed out across the speaker system. The sound seemed to sink past the layers of fabric and skin and muscle until it rattled against Martin’s bones.

On the stage a rag-tag group had set up instruments. A cast of bright coloured hair and metal and leather.

Centre stage stood a man, gloved fingers curled around the microphone in a way that sent shivers down Martin’s spine. Dark lines, like veins, spread out across his skin from where old steampunk style googles obscured his eyes.

“Hello,” the man purred into the microphone. “We are the crew of the Starship Aurora.”

The man looked across the crowd and… and the lights were so bright and the pub was so crowded but for a moment it felt like he was staring right at Martin.

“I am your captain tonight.” The crowd roared out in mock protest, but the man didn’t turn away from Martin’s direction. “Jonny D’ville.”

Martin didn’t leave.

.

Martin traced the dead timer on his arm for the thousandth time, following the familiar pattern on his skin. Growing up, the numbers had been vibrant, the colour of ripe peaches and the curls on his head. Four digits, two sets of numbers with a colon between them, starting right next to his wrist and reaching out to the middle of his forearm.

People had designed digital clocks to mirror the idea of them. Back when people still used physical clocks instead of their phones.

He wished people still used clocks. Maybe then he’d have some way to tell the time in his cramped apartment aside from the slippery sound of worms outside his door. He’d boarded up the windows a while ago and the idea of peeling back the tape and the towels to find the glass covered in writhing bodies was enough to prevent him from checking.

It had been a week, at least. He was almost certain.

But again, no clock.

Aside from the one on his arm. Which was both dead and not a clock.

People called them timers but that implied an actual countdown. In actuality, the numbers that he’d grown up watching and tracing had changed at random. Occasionally, there would be talk of someone whose timer was linear, but soon enough it would produce a number sequence that didn’t fit, and the idea would be debunked.

The only thing anyone really knew about timers was that they continued counting until the day you touched your soulmate and then they stopped. No numbers frozen into your skin like a revelation, just the faintest imprint of zeros on your skin, like the batteries had run out and the clock or timer or whatever it was had died.

Martin’s timer had been dead for almost a decade.

He really, truly hoped that he wasn’t going to join it in whatever afterlife there might be anytime soon. But he’d eaten the last of the canned peaches in his apartment – really, he’d quite liked the fruit before all of this – and after probably a week it was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to get the heroic rescue he’d been envisioning.

If he wasn’t so damn clumsy and had actually managed to keep a hold of his phone, well… what did it matter now?

He was going to die in the shitty flat he’d only rented because it was close to the Institute with nothing but canned peaches in his stomach and he would never get the opportunity to find out who had wiped the numbers off of his arm or see Jon smile and–

The worms were quiet.

How long had they been quiet? He couldn’t remember a time in the past maybe-a-week that he hadn’t been able to hear the incessant wriggling just behind his front door.

He crawled closer and pressed his ear to the wooden door.

Silence. No wriggling. No taunting. Not even the slow pacing he’d grown used to.

Why would she just leave? It didn’t make sense; he was clearly trapped.

But… what if it was a new trap?

What if it wasn’t?

It wasn’t as if he could stay inside forever, not when he was tired and out of food. What were his options, really? Leave and maybe become worm food or stay inside and starve to death… and then become worm food?

A week before he’d made the terrible decision to follow up on the Vittery case, Jon had told him that his latest report was satisfactory. His lips had twitched into something that could almost be a smile.

Martin wanted to see Jon smile properly.

He opened the door.

The corridor to his apartment was empty, not a single hint that a swarm of worms and a hive disguised as a woman had been holding him hostage inside his flat for the past week or so.

Except– there.

A single silver worm, wriggling against the dark flooring.

He darted back inside and grabbed an empty can of peaches, carefully using the lid to pick up the worm and trap it inside.

It was almost dark when he stepped outside his building, clutching the can to his chest. The barest glimpse of colours lingered in the sky, but he marched down the street in the only direction he could.

The Institute loomed a little less after a week or so trapped in his apartment. He was much more frightened of the tiny worm he carried than the monstrosity of brick and mortar. The reception desk was empty, as were the stairs and Tim and Sasha’s desks. But light peeked out from Jon’s closed door and his deep drawl was only half muffled.

Jon was recording a statement. He recognised the intense, almost desperate edge that Jon’s voice got.

It was the second most beautiful voice he had ever heard.

Martin opened the door with a touch more force than necessary and Jon looked up at him with wide eyes, mouth stuttering through his sentence until he fully processed what he was seeing.

“Martin?”

Martin upturned the can. Amongst the peach juice, a tiny silver dot stood out against Jon’s desk. It wriggled.

Jon stood and scrambled back, eyes darting between the worm and Martin. “What is that?”

“I think I ought to make a statement, Jon.”

.

The statement was easier than Martin expected. Sitting in the chair across from Jon, it was as if the Archivist had taken hold of the words and gently pulled them out of his body one sentence at a time.

When he was finished speaking, Jon reached over and turned off the recorder.

“Jon?” Martin asked, waiting for the snide comment, the look of pity in his eyes, like Martin was just confused. Or a liar.

“I,” Jon glanced at the sticky part of his desk where the worm had been before he’d set it aside in a new container out of the room, “I believe you.”

Martin blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I believe you.”

“Oh. I, thanks. But… why?”

Jon ran his hands across his face, rubbing at his eyes. “You lost your phone two weeks ago, correct?”

“Yeah,” Martin replied, as hard as it was to wrap his head around the idea that he’d been trapped that long.

“Well,” Jon slipped his hands into his pocket and pulled out his phone, “in that time I have received several text messages from your phone, saying you were ill with stomach problems. The last one said that you thought it ‘might be a parasite.’ I tried to call, but you never answered.”

Jon had tried to call him. To check on him? To yell at him about missing so much work?

Jon looked over at him, and maybe it was the way that Jon’s hair was tousled from his hands or the fact that Martin had spent two weeks thinking he might never see him again, but there was softness there. Jon’s eyes were gentle as they watched him.

Jon had noticed he was missing; he’d tried to call.

He believed him.

The phone buzzed in Jon’s hand and both men turned their gaze to it. Jon turned the screen towards himself and read the warning aloud.

“Keep him. We have had our fun.”

Underneath the bubbling terror, a desperate, hopeful part of Martin lit up at the words.

Keep him. He rather wished Jon would.

It was a foolish thought and really, he wasn’t even sure where his interest in Jon had come from. Sure, Jon was attractive, in an unconventional, librarian kind of way, but he was also unpleasant to be around at least 80% of the time.

And he clearly, if not hated, at least disliked Martin.

But then Jon stood from behind the desk and his lips curled into the soft smile that had haunted Martin’s mind in the barricade of his apartment and it didn’t matter that Jon was a prick most of the time.

“There’s a cot in document storage I use when I stay late. The room is supposedly humidity controlled, so it’s airtight.” Jon stepped around the desk and lowered his voice into something that was almost nervous. “You could stay here, if you wanted. No worms, I promise.”

Martin found himself leaning into Jon’s space without meaning to, but neither of them pulled back.

Jon believed him.

“Okay,” Martin said, hushed to match Jon’s tone. "Thank you.”

.

It took almost a month of living in the Archives for Martin to realise that Jon rarely left. Occasionally, he would think he was alone with just stacks of statements and research, but then he’d duck into the break room to make a cup of tea and find Jon half passed out on the table, cold tea in front of him.

It was… nice, living with Jon like that.

He’d never really had a housemate before, if he didn’t count his mother. It was comforting to know that he was rarely as alone as he felt.

Plus, Jon was warming up to him, a bit, maybe. At the very least he seemed less likely to ask Elias to sack him.

But if Jon rarely left, even more rarely did he eat. It wasn’t a thing, Martin thought. Not like a disorder or Jon overthinking his body or anything like that.

He’d seen Jon reach out for a pastry or a sandwich in the breakroom and he’d never denied a free meal when offered, but only ever between statements. He’d watched Jon stumble out of the office, eyes red-rimmed and hazy like he’d forgotten to blink, earlier that day and realised that unless Jon was storing food on his person like a human chipmunk, the man hadn’t eaten since he’d entered the room at least twelve hours earlier.

And then, before he’d gotten a chance to offer him anything, Jon had grabbed another pen and retreated back into his office.

Tim and Sasha had left at least an hour ago, joking playfully about Tim’s latest conquest. They’d invited him to whichever bar they were headed to, but Martin wouldn’t have gone even if he weren’t terrified to leave the premises.

Jon was still in his office. The low drone of his voice promised that he had no plans to leave any time soon.

Martin tapped at the door and inside Jon’s voice cut off abruptly.

“Yes, what is it?’

He opened the door and sent Jon his best attempt at a peacekeeping smile. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Oh, Martin.” Jon hated being interrupted, had given Tim quite the telling off a few days earlier for doing as such, but his face softened, just the slightest bit. “Is everything alright?”

“Yep, worm free. I just thought, well, it’s past six and you’ve been here since before dawn so…” Martin held up his arm to reveal the plastic bag looped over his wrist. “I ordered Chinese?”

Jon glanced between the papers in his hand, the still running recorder and the bag of take-out. “I… suppose a break wouldn’t hurt.”

Jon reached over and clicked the recorder off, shuffling the papers to the side and clearing a space on his desk. Martin sat the plastic bag down and carefully pulled out the different containers.

“I wasn’t sure what you ate so I got a few different dishes, I hope that’s okay?”

Jon sent across one of the rare half-smiles that Martin lived off of. “It’s perfectly fine. I’m not a particularly picky eater.”

“Great.”

Martin took out the plates he’d nicked from the break room and two sets of proper cutlery. Jon sent him a thankful look and he wondered when the last time the man had eaten something homecooked had been.

He wished he could… could what? Make him dinner? It was a foolish thought. Jon in Martin’s shitty little apartment eating at his dining table, across from him.

Like a date.

Martin forced the idea out of his mind and reached for the first unrelated thought.

“What statement are you working on?” Martin asked, at the same time that Jon looked up from his half-filled plate and said, “How is your current research going?”

Their words tumbled over each other, making both questions barely decipherable. Martin flushed right up to his ears and Jon turned his gaze firmly towards the plate in front of him.

After a moment of silence, Martin took a breath and tried again.

His “sorry” was louder than anticipated and completely smothered Jon’s simultaneous soft apology.

Jon gaped at him and Martin cursed his own inability to just keep his mouth shut for five minutes. Jon probably thought he was incredibly rude, forcing dinner and his company on him and then talking over him every time he tried to speak.

Jon’s knuckles were flushed white with tension around his cutlery.

Martin swore that he wouldn’t be the next person to speak, in case he cut Jon off again and scared the smaller man away entirely. He reached for a tub of satay chicken and tried not to watch as Jon slowly released his grip on the utensils and continued filling his plate.

The room was silent aside from the metallic clink of cutlery and the scrape of plastic containers. He glanced towards Jon and the other man’s eyes darted back to his own plate as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

It was… honestly, not entirely unpleasant. He didn’t think being this close to Jon could be unpleasant, when it didn’t involve a reprimand.

It felt a bit like having dinner at a friend’s house for the first time when he was eight, like he was suddenly unsure whether the way he ate was the way the rest of the world did. Sitting across from Jon, watching the way he arranged food on his plate, felt unfamiliar in a way that he really wanted to get used to.

Martin spoke before he could remember that he was letting Jon have the next word. “Do you think Tim and Sasha will ever work it out?”

Jon looked up from where he was scooping rice onto his plate. “Hmm?”

“You know, with the whole Soulmate thing?”

Fuck. Why’d he bring up the soulmate thing? Tim had told him that Jon didn’t like talking about that stuff.

Jon placed the container of rice back down and frowned, the space between his eyes crinkling. “I hope so. I don’t know Sasha that well, but Tim deserves someone to make him happy.”

So do you, he thought. And then it took all his strength to keep the blush from showing on his face because shit, when did he get so cheesy?

The rest of the meal was easy.

As they strayed further from work-related topics, Jon’s comments shifted from the slightly dry humour he sometimes shared with Tim around the office into something more care-free.

Martin loved spending time with Jon, mostly because of the tiny little ginormous crush he’d developed on the man, but leaning across Jon’s desk with empty take-out containers around them listening to Jon make a ridiculously detailed argument about why Elias Bouchard must have some sort of crush on Tim since he was always popping into the Archives unnecessarily made something twist in Martin’s chest.

Jon wasn’t some mystical creature that he could keep watching from a distance. He was real and a little bit tipsy from the wine Martin had found in the back of the breakroom and, and…

And Martin wanted to kiss him.

Which was ridiculous, of course, because Jon was his boss and maybe his friend and not someone he was allowed to kiss for so many reasons.

Mostly because Jon didn’t want to kiss him back.

Jon laughed at his own words, something about finding Elias a sugar baby or maybe something about Elias being a sugar baby, and Martin watched the way that his normally perfect hair dipped down across his forehead.

A lazy smile crept across Jon’s face as he looked over at him. It was a painfully familiar smile, one that didn’t belong on Jon’s face.

“Are you listening, Martin?” Jon asked, leaning almost fully across the table.

“Of course,” Martin whispered. He couldn’t help but listen. Sometimes it felt like looking away would kill him.

Jon paused at his quiet words and when he breathed out, Martin felt it against his lips. They were much closer than they’d been to start with, both leaning across the table more than was necessary for the conversation.

It wasn’t a secret that he liked Jon, except maybe, hopefully, to Jon.

Because Jon didn’t like him and he didn’t know if he’d be able to handle the pity in Jon’s eyes when he let him down gently.

Except…

Except, Jon still hadn’t pulled back. He was leaning across the table, right in Martin’s personal space and his breath smelt like the sweet wine they’d been drinking.

Martin reached across the space and, slowly, like speed would shatter the moment and send him waking up from a dream in the cramped cot a few doors down, he moved the lock of hair away from Jon’s eyes.

Jon’s hand shot up and his fingers wrapped around Martin’s wrist, but he didn’t push him away and Martin didn’t move. Jon’s fingers were gentle against his skin, right over his pulse. His fingers were touching the side of Jon’s face, held in place where he’d moved the hair aside.

Martin wanted to kiss him.

Jon didn’t want to kiss him back. Right?

Jon’s eyes were a rich, velveteen brown, heavy in a way that made Martin welcome drowning if only they kept watching him. There was intelligence there, more than he’d ever really be able to understand. Like Jon knew more of him than Martin ever could.

Jon looked at him like he knew the answers to every question he’d ever asked.

The sleeve of Jon’s cardigan had slipped down when he’d grabbed Martin’s wrist and he could just make out the barest trace of faded zeros on his skin. It was a pale yellow, faint against the deep brown of his skin. Martin wondered if the timer had been gold once.

Jon pulled back almost violently, falling back into his seat on his side of the desk.

Martin’s arm dropped back to his side as it was released, and he rubbed his shoulder at the sting of pain that came with the sudden movement.

Jon’s eyes were wide and vacant, cut off from the world and Martin’s questioning glance. He wanted nothing more than to bring back the laughing, care-free Jon he’d seen minutes before. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong, but it was clear that whatever that had been was over.

Jon’s hands were shaking. He wanted to reach for them but Jon quickly put them under the desk and out of sight, sitting up straighter in his seat and sending Martin a pointed, disappointed look he was too familiar with.

“Well, then,” Jon said, voice rough in a way that Martin wasn’t certain was alcohol related. “You ought to be going. I think you’ve managed to distract me long enough, some of us have actual work that we need to get done, Martin.”

His tone was unrelenting, like he’d found Martin slacking off by making an extra cup of tea or realised that the larger man had a report overdue. Martin stood and quickly gathered the empty take-out containers back into the plastic bag they’d come in, stacking the plates and cutlery and picking them up too.

“Right, of course. I… sorry.” Martin stumbled in his haste for the door, almost dropping the plates, and flushed red, muttering another apology.

“Martin,” Jon called, softer, avoiding his eyes when Martin turned to him. “I… thank you. For dinner.”

Martin smiled at him clutching the plates and bag more securely. “You’re welcome, Jon.”

Jon was his friend.

Maybe that could be enough.

.

The concert was… surprising. Martin didn’t know all that much about Norse mythology, but Jonny’s voice was raw and smooth and from his vantage point at the side of the stage, Martin had ample time to watch Jonny’s slim figure command the space.

The crowd was electric, pulsing with energy and bringing Martin into the fray with ease. It was the first time in his life that he had been touched so freely without thoughts of timers and soulmates at the forefront of his mind.

Even more electric than the crowd was Jonny’s voice.

It wasn’t music that Martin had ever heard before. He wasn’t really sure it counted as music at all at times, and, well, Martin had never considered that incantations could be hot before.

And then, too soon, the show finished. Jonny wished the crowd a goodnight and sauntered off stage.

Martin allowed the crowd to push him out of the building, feeling lost in the sensation of blood still thrumming through his veins. It was like stepping outside a movie theatre, that lingering rush of adrenaline as you hit the sunshine and wonder how other people could be so blind when your life had changed profoundly.

Stepping outside of the pub was so much bigger than that.

Martin felt warm and giddy, surrounded by people that he would never usually call his peers in a part of town he usually avoided. For the first time, he felt like he belonged.

In his pocket, his phone vibrated.

He pulled it out and the frigid night air rushed in.

Twelve missed calls. All from his mother.

Shit.

The phone vibrated again, his mother’s contact details flashing on the screen. He stumbled around the corner to the back of the pub and answered the call.

His mother’s voice was loud against the quiet of the parking lot and the muffled laughter of the concert goers. “Martin, do you know what time it is?”

“I’m so sorry.” Martin was surprised to find his voice slightly hoarse. “I got a bit distracted and I didn’t hear my phone and–”

Martin’s mother scoffed, a harsh, cruel sound. “Have you been drinking?”

He could have been. He was twenty. There was nothing stopping him from going to a pub and having a pint or two. Maybe he’d even meet a bloke there and let him take him home.

Not that he’d even done so much as kiss a man.

He was overly aware of the pin on his chest. And how his mother would react if she saw him wearing it.

“No, Mum. Of course not. I just lost track of time. I’m sorry.”

“All you do is lie.”

“I’m not. Mum, I swear,” Martin insisted, tugging at his sleeve and rubbing at the active timer on his forearm.

“Don’t come home tonight, Martin.” She sighed over the line, a heavy, disappointed sound Martin was intimately familiar with. “You’re just like your father.”

The line went silent.

It took Martin a moment to realise that she’d hung up.

.

Jon turned to him and pried the recorder out of his bloody hands. Then, he set it down beside him. He’d almost died trying to get his hands on a recorder, and he was willing to let the only one they had out of their hands?

Jon reached out for him instead, his hands hovering just above his arm like he was afraid Martin really was a ghost and he would fall right through him.

He didn’t understand a great many things, but Jon’s behaviour was rapidly advancing to the top of the list.

Jon’s eyes were wide and honest, and he was more beautiful than he’d ever been, which made it more painful when he leaned in and said, “you’re a terrible researcher, Martin.”

He startled and tried to lean away, wanting to use his free hand to cover his ears but too afraid that he would just bump into Jon’s outstretched hands. He didn’t want the last thing he ever heard to be Jon telling him how much he wouldn’t be missed.

Jon continued anyway. “You get distracted and you believe things too easily and sometimes it’s like you have no actual academic experience. You’re clumsy and disorganised and–”

“I get it. You hate me,” Martin’s voice sounded wreaked, like he’d screamed himself hoarse. “Stop, please. I get it.”

Jon laughed. Not even a mean laugh, really, just a quiet sound of disbelief. Almost amused. He looked up at Martin with a glint in his eyes that the hopeless, romantic poet in Martin would have called wonderstruck, if it were anyone other than Jonathan Sims.

“That’s, that’s the thing, Martin. I really, really don’t. I want to hate you, but I don’t.” Jon was still looking at him, in the same strange way that Martin had caught him looking at him for months. “You’re kind. You’re kind and you’re smart and you care about everyone. You notice when I forget to eat and when I don’t go home and no one noticed you were missing but you would have if it were one of us. You see so much and you don’t ask to be seen in return even though you deserve to be.”

Martin’s head spun. Jon… well, maybe didn’t hate him, but certainly didn’t like him enough for anything he’d just said to make any sort of sense. Jon shouldn't look at him at all, much less look at him like he was something delicate and precious. Like he deserved it.

“You’re hurt and you’re confused. You, you don’t mean that.”

“I have never meant anything more in my life, Martin.” Jon pulled back the blood-splattered sleeve of his cardigan, smearing his dead timer with his own blood. “I was young and afraid, and I made a mistake and let them go. I lost them and I thought that meant I didn’t deserve to be happy. But we are going to be eaten by fucking worms and I don’t want to die without you knowing that you and your cups of tea and your kindness mean everything to me.”

Martin pushed the bloom of hope down into his stomach. “You mean, as an assistant?”

“I absolutely do not mean as an assistant.”

Jon twisted around to face him, as much as a man with a hole in his leg could, threaded his fingers into Martin’s curly hair, and kissed him.

Jon’s lips were dry and chapped from endless hours in the air-conditioned Archives and his hands were sticky with his own blood and Martin had to be mindful not to bury the corkscrew into Jon’s skin in his surprise.

It was the second happiest moment of his life.

Jon kissed in a way that he’d never be able to relate back to the stern, cardigan-wearing Archivist he knew. Jon’s kisses were reckless and wild, fingers tangled in hair and teeth tugging at his bottom lip.

Nothing existed outside of the warm press of Jon’s mouth against his own. Not Jane Prentiss and her army of worms waiting to turn them into living hives or compost. Not the strange feeling of eyes on him. Not the possibility of Tim being dead the next room over or Sasha being dead a floor above them or the possibility of Jon and him joining them soon.

If he was a ghost, he was quite content in his personal heaven right there.

Jon pulled away, eyes wide and face flushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to assume, I just–”

Martin dropped the corkscrew and kissed him again.

.

Voices drifted closer as concert goers stumbled his way, laughter loud in the midnight air.

Too loud, too close.

Martin didn’t, he couldn’t deal with people right then. Not when it felt like the lining of his stomach had been peeled away and bile soured the back of his throat.

Just like your father.

He didn’t, he didn’t want to be anything like his father. Not when all his father had ever brought was pain. Not when he’d left.

A girl giggled as she rounded the corner and a distant, hazy part of Martin recognised her as the girl with the eyebrow piercing.

He turned and fumbled with the back door of the pub, stepping inside and letting the warm, stale air comfort him for a moment. But movement sounded from down the hall, loud cheerful voices, and the overhead light was blinding against Martin’s eyes.

The wall in front of him seemed to sway and a shrill buzzing started in Martin’s right ear.

I’m going to have a panic attack, a quiet part of Martin’s mind mused.

The rest of his brain was focused on stumbling down the hall and opening the door to the first dark room he came across. The dark was a relief to his sensitive eyes.

Martin closed the door a bit more forcefully than intended and slumped against the wall beside it. He let his body slide down until he was sitting on the floor.

It wasn’t the first time his mother had told him not to come home for the night. A decent amount of his high school years had been spent at all night coffee shops or the patch of weeds in his backyard. If he’d tried hard enough, he could almost convince himself it wasn’t too bad.

He couldn’t really blame her.

His father had walked out so long ago that Martin didn’t even remember what he looked like. It had been hard for his mother, raising Martin alone, getting sicker every year. His father must have been a cruel man.

Martin didn’t want to be like his father, he couldn’t.

He couldn’t, he–

He–

A thump sounded from across the room and a voice, gruff and irritated, let out a noise of surprise. Seconds later a bright light shone across Martin’s form from deeper in the room.

“Fuck off,” the voice snarled. “You want an autograph you wait in line like a decent fucking human being.”

Martin looked at the light with unfocused eyes, lost in the jumble of thoughts spiralling in his mind. His fingers were digging into his knees and he was vaguely aware of the way his lips were trembling.

His father was a bad man.

Martin had tried so hard to be different.

“Shit,” the voice said, quieter.

The light moved closer until it shifted to face the ceiling as it was set on the floor beside Martin. A familiar face was illuminated by the glow.

Oh, Martin thought. Not like veins, like lightning.

“You’re having a panic attack,” Jonny D’ville told him.

Giggles erupted from Martin’s trembling form. “I know,” he said.

And then he was crying. Not the big dramatic sobs everyone pictured, but quiet gasping tears. The type that stole his breath and sent his head between his knees in an attempt to remember how to exist outside his body.

Someone knocked on the door beside him and a female voice said something that Martin’s panicked brain couldn’t comprehend.

“I’m fine, Ashes. I’ll see you later,” Jonny said.

It took him a moment to realise Jonny was talking to the woman outside the door.

Slowly, limb by limb, neuron by neuron, Martin came back to himself.

His body was damp with sweat and tears and utterly exhausted, but his mind felt sharp.

Jonny D’ville was sat across from him, smudged eyeliner and wild hair, watching him in the dark.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Martin’s voice was barely a whisper, but it felt loud in the quiet room.

“What’s your name?”

Please don’t call the cops, please don’t call the cops, please don’t call the cops.

“Uh, John,” Martin stuttered out. “My name is John.”

Wait, shit. No. Why had he gone for John? Fucking Keats.

Jonny stood, pocketing his phone. “Okay, John. It can get loud in here after gigs. I know a place that’s quieter.”

Without the light of the phone torch, Martin could barely make out the hand Jonny offered down to him.

“I promise not to murder you.”

Despite his better judgement, Martin took the offered hand.

.

The bright sunshine made Martin dizzy as he stumbled out of the tunnels for the second time.

Somewhere, miles behind him, the police were probably still examining the room he’d shown them. And all its… contents.

Despite the warm air, he shivered and wrapped his arms around himself.

The area outside the Institute was a mess of emergency vehicles – ambulances and police cars and, unsurprisingly, pest control. He wasn’t sure who’d had the thrilling job of convincing exterminators to show up but judging by the passive faces of the police officers littered around the scene, there were clearly plans set up to deal with this exact type of situation.

He was quite happy not to think about that particular fact.

He stumbled through the mass of people, grateful to be mostly overlooked as he crossed the front steps of the Institute and scanned the crowds.

Tim would be easiest to spot, with his long legs and bright shirt and loud voice. Sasha, surely, wouldn’t be far away.

By the doors of the Institute, a man waved off a medic and Martin sighed out a breath of relief. Tim was covered in bandages, but he was alive enough to huff out something to the medic that made the woman shake her head and stomp away.

A woman was tucked against his side. For a brief moment Martin wondered why she wasn’t the short, curvy dark-skinned woman he’d expected.

Which was ridiculous, because Sasha had always been tall and slim, all blonde hair and perfectly ironed pencil skirts.

He couldn’t see Jon.

Jon was stubborn. There were a dozen perfectly good reasons he wouldn’t be with Tim even though he had been when Martin last saw him.

Even though Tim was covered in more bandages than Martin could count.

It didn’t mean anything at all.

Tim caught his eye, relief evident in the posture of his shoulders as he smiled in a way that almost reached his usual levels of Timness. Martin attempted to smile back but clearly missed the mark because Tim’s smile dropped and he nodded towards the cluster of ambulances, pulling Sasha closer to his side.

It didn’t mean anything that Jon was still with the medics. He’d just gone second, that’s all. Because his injuries were so minor he could afford to wait.

Martin didn’t run to the ambulances. He forced his feet to move in steady, well-paced steps and stuffed his hands into his pockets to stop them from shaking.

“I told you, I’m fine,” Jon’s voice growled out from the other side of an ambulance.

Martin’s steps faltered and he pressed his back against the warm metal of the vehicle, closing his eyes and listening to the drone of the medic as they told Jon to stay still. They sounded aggravated, but not particularly frantic so he believed Jon’s assessment, despite not being able to see the man.

He could. He just needed to step around the corner and Jon would probably be sitting on the edge of the van, perfectly fine.

But… Jon had said that they were going to die. He wasn’t sure what it meant that they hadn’t. Was it all just some ridiculous bucket list type of thing? Kiss a co-worker because you’re about to die and there’s no one else around to choose from?

Jon didn’t seem like the type, but then again, he also really didn’t seem like the type to want to kiss Martin when they weren’t in mortal peril.

“Sir,” the medic said from around the corner, “I have already told you that there were no other injured parties aside from Mr Stoker and yourself. Now I need you to stay still or I’ll be required to restrain you.”

“They found a body. Please, just tell me who it was,” Jon’s voice was barely audible, softer than before. He sounded like a man on the verge of tears. “Just tell me if it was him. His name is Martin Blackwo–”

Martin lurched around the corner. Jon was standing by the doors of the ambulance, one arm wrapped in the same bandages as Tim, the rest of his body covered in tiny, circular wounds. Blood was smeared across his skin and the white of the bandages.

He pushed the medic away as Martin came into view and stepped towards him. “Martin.”

“God, Jon. I’m so sorry.”

If Jon heard his apology, he seemed determined to ignore it. He marched over to the taller man and swung his still bleeding arms around his neck, burying his face in the unblemished skin of Martin’s shoulder.

“Martin,” Jon whispered against his skin. “Martin.”

Martin hesitantly pressed his palms to Jon’s back and buried his face in his messy hair. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to let go and then it was so dark and I couldn’t find you and…”

Jon was shaking against his body in big, violent movements. He’d never seen Jon cry, not when he’d held him down so Sasha could dig a worm out of his leg, not when he’d looked at him and said with certainty that they were going to die. Never.

He pulled back and Jon looked up at him with wet cheeks and red eyes. But when Jon opened his mouth, it was laughter that emerged from his throat rather than sobs.

He sounded half wild, eyes glazed with the same desperation he’d had in document storage, sure they were going to die.

“Jon?” Martin asked.

Jon stepped onto his tiptoes and grabbed Martin’s face. The kiss was initially more teeth and tears than was productive, but Jon’s enthusiasm made up for the clumsy nature of his actions. Despite his earlier wildness, Jon quickly settled and used his grip on Martin’s jaw and cheeks to angle them into a softer kiss.

They weren’t about to die.

Martin cupped Jon’s face in return, cautious of the wounds littering his jaw and cheeks, and kissed him the way he’d been yearning to for almost a year. This was the Jon he’d been imagining. Soft and tender and surprisingly gentle.

Jon released his face and clutched his hands. He brought them up to his mouth and pressed his lips against Martin’s palms like he was holding a relic he was worried would turn to dust if he let it go.

He whispered Martin’s name again, like a prayer, like a promise.

No one had ever said his name like that.

.

Martin rolled over and reached out for Jon, only for his fingers to find the sheets cold and empty. He groaned into his pillow and blindly grabbed his phone from the bedside table to check for missed calls.

He groaned again for good measure and climbed out of bed, pulling on a jacket and his shoes. The apartment that Jon had been renting for the past five years was dark, but he managed to make his way through the obstacle course of stray shoes and furniture and the box of Martin’s journals that they’d yet to unpack.

Technically, he’d only been living with Jon for a few days.

Truthfully, he’d moved in the day after the Prentiss incident, a month ago. At first it was purely practical – Jon was hopeless at caring for his wounds and Martin had a lifetime of experience from living with his mother. Besides, they’d basically been living together in the Archives for months so, really, how different was it?

Being with Jon was easy in a way that he had never thought possible. Even when Jon was grumpy and refused to take proper care of his wounds and constantly snuck back into work in the middle of the night.

Which, judging from the lack of calls from his co-workers, was exactly what Jon had done.

The walk to the Institute was quiet and brief. It was almost too easy to replace the trip with the memory of frantically tracing the route between his own flat and the institute the previous year, a single silver worm in a peach can in his hands.

Prentiss was dead. He’d seen the ashes himself, even if he was pretty sure they were mostly just a symbol to appease Jon’s constant questions.

Still, standing before the Institute, he hesitated. The building was empty, as was expected at just past two in the morning, but he never had been able to shake the feeling of being watched when he was there.

The side door was unlocked, the faint smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the cold night air. By the time he was midway down the steps to the Archives, he could hear the sound of something causing a ruckus and he was only partially surprised to find Jon standing in a destroyed room.

Tim’s chair had been pushed over onto its side and the files from his and Sasha’s desks were scattered across the floor like the aftermath of a group of rowdy toddlers in a library.

Jon was on his hands and knees in the middle of the room, searching through the files like he was drowning and they were oxygen. He looked up at the sound of Martin’s approach and froze.

“Martin.”

“Jon, what are you looking for?”

Jon sat up on his haunches and smiled politely, like it was a normal day in the Archives and Martin had offered to help him find a file. “The Cortez statement. I know it was in my office because I recorded it the last time I was here. Tim must have taken it home, which is against Institute policy and–”

Martin sighed and stepped carefully across the room to his own neat desk. He picked up the file and held it and a hand out to Jon. “I needed to cross-reference it with a new statement.”

Jon took the statement and allowed him to pull him up from the floor, glancing towards the mess of Tim’s desk and back to him. “You?”

“Me. I would have had it back in place before you returned to work had you listened to Elias and not decided to cut your time off in half despite everyone’s wishes.”

“Oh.” Jon bent back the bottom-left corner of the file and bounced on his heels like he expected Martin to yell at him.

Martin took the file from him and held his small, scarred hands between his own. “Come home, Jon. Please.”

“I,” Jon laughed, eyes darting around the Archives and back to Martin, “I can’t. I need to be here, I need to know.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Jon answered immediately, and then frowned as if surprised by the answer.

“Come with me.” Martin stepped back towards the stairs, hands still holding Jon’s.

Jon allowed himself to be led.

When Martin finally opened the door to the roof and stepped out, Jon hesitated. His eyes were wide, glazed not with the paranoia that had haunted him for the past month, but with some older ghost.

“Okay?” Martin asked, voice soft.

“Yes,” Jon answered, equally soft, his focus coming back to the present as he stepped out onto the roof by Martin’s side.

They settled down at the edge of the roof and for a moment when Martin looked over, he expected to see dark lightning bolts stretching out from around Jon’s eyes.

Obviously, it was ridiculous. Jon was soft cardigans and rough edges and sharp kisses and…

It wasn’t even a thought worth entertaining, despite how familiar Jon looked in the starlight, hair and eyes bleached silver.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Martin asked. An echo from a lifetime ago, a different roof, the same stars.

Jon looked at him like he wanted to brush the conversation away, deny anything was wrong and pretend he was fine. Martin squeezed the hand he still held, and Jon softened.

Watching the coarse outer layers of Jon peel away was still a marvel to him. Gone was the prickly, ancient Archivist; in his place was a young man with lost, searching eyes decades older than they should be.

Jon curled his legs up and pressed his body against Martin’s side, allowing Martin to pull him close. When he’d daydreamed of being with Jon, he had failed to account for how tactile the man was. It was a surprising, but not unpleasant development.

“Gertrude was murdered by someone she trusted. I just… know it.”

Martin didn’t say he was crazy. “Are you worried that someone wants to kill you, or that it was someone you trust?”

“I don’t know, both maybe?”

“Tim called me last week.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Martin replied, not comparing the gravelly tone of Jon’s voice to ghosts long since past. “Do you really think he did it?”

Jon tucked his face into Martin’s neck so that when he spoke the words were only for them. “There’s too many inconsistences, too many gaps in his background and his qualifications and his reports. Trevor Herbert is alive even though he told me to my face that he’d died. How did he know where to look? Why not just leave? Why me?”

Martin exhaled in a rush, letting the warm breath fan across the top of Jon’s head. “You aren’t talking about Tim.”

“I thought that if I followed Tim long enough, maybe I’d find some evidence. Something, anything.”

“Tim didn’t kill Gertrude Robinson.”

Jon reached up and blindly twisted his fingers into Martin’s curls. “Neither did you.”

It was a question, a plea, even if he hadn’t phrased it as such.

“No. You’re right, though,” Martin said, and Jon froze against him. “I have been lying to you.”

Jon pulled back but didn’t fully detach himself from where they were curled together. There was something keen and hungry in his gaze, something heavy that lingered on Martin’s skin.

“I lied on my CV. I don’t have my Masters, I never even finished high school. Half the time I’m completely lost with all the research and sometimes I cut corners and don’t double check the information I give you. But I genuinely didn’t mean to find Gertrude’s corpse, trust me I’d much rather have stayed by your side.”

Jon frowned, a barely there thing, like his smiles from the year prior. “Why?”

Martin sighed and tried to put it as simply as possible. “I needed a job and I didn’t have the qualifications so–”

“No,” Jon cut him off. “Why choose me?”

“Oh.” Martin cupped Jon’s face in his hands and ran his thumb along the delicate line of his jaw. “Because you deserve it.”

Martin leaned down and kissed him, the barest feather touch of lips against lips. Jon sighed into his mouth. It still felt surreal, the fact that he could kiss Jon whenever he felt like it. The past month had been a fever dream he never wanted to wake up from.

Jon climbed into his lap to lean back against his chest, tucking his head under Martin’s chin. Together they looked up at the stars.

Martin did not think about the last time he’d watched the stars on a London roof well past midnight. He did not compare the warm, soft skin of the man in his lap to the memory in his mind.

“Did you really think I killed Gertrude?” Martin whispered after a while of silent company.

Jon’s answer was quiet but determined. “No.”

He was sure that if he’d been able to see Jon’s face it would be an echo of his earlier reaction to the easy trust he’d found himself giving away. Trust was easy, accepting that ease was a different story.

He pressed a kiss to Jon’s head.

He hadn’t killed Gertrude Robinson, but for Jon he might have been willing to.

.

“Martin,” Jon called, peeking his head out from his office, “could you come here for a moment?”

“Ooh, snogging in the office during work hours? Bold move, Sims. I approve.”

Martin tossed a pen at Tim as he set his current report down and headed across the room.

“Use protection!”

He didn’t bother to explain to Tim how useless the warning was. He and Jon had had that discussion almost as soon as it was confirmed that whatever had happened in document storage wasn’t a one off.

Jon let him past into his office and closed the door with a pointed look in Tim’s direction.

“What a tosser,” Martin said, rolling his eyes good-humouredly. Jon remained facing the closed door, spine stiff. “Jon?”

Jon shook and turned to face him with a smile that was just slightly off kilter. “Take a seat, Martin.”

He collapsed back into the seat and blinked up at Jon.

Shit. Three months in and he’d fucked it all up somehow. Jon knew that he was purposefully avoiding doing the dishes and had finally gotten sick of him and his subpar reports and…

“Oh. No. Martin, love, breathe.” Jon bent down in front of the chair, taking his hands and pressing kisses to his palms. “This isn’t… we’re good. This isn’t that sort of talk, okay?”

He frowned at Jon, squeezing his hands. “It’s not?”

“No. I don’t plan on having that conversation, ever.”

“Oh.” He barely repressed the thrill that came with the idea of Jon pushing the thought away so easily. Of being wanted. “What did you want to talk about?”

Jon pulled one hand away to pull his hair out of the short ponytail he’d begun wearing it in as of late.

Martin wanted to run his hands through it, feel the strands slipping between his fingers like silk. He liked seeing Jon like that, messy and wild and just for him.

“Who’s your soulmate?”

Martin gaped at him, unable to comprehend the sudden shift in topic. “My soulmate?”

Jon rubbed his eyes and shook his head. “I, shit, sorry. I don’t mean, like, tell me who they are. I just meant, are you… Did you talk to them? Do you know who they are?”

Did he? In theory, certainly. He had a name and a face and enough information that he should have been able to track Jonny down. But somehow the man had been so damn secretive about his true identity behind the persona that all of Martin’s searches had turned into dead ends.

Because he had searched, of course he had. But even at twenty years old he’d known well enough how to take the hint and leave some ends uncovered.

“Martin?” Jon asked. His hair was hanging around his face, just barely reaching his shoulders. Black with hints of silver like starlight reflecting off of it.

“Sorry. I… sort of?”

What was he supposed to say? His name was Jonny D’ville and sometimes I think he looked a lot like you? It didn’t mean anything. Martin just had… a type.

“We spoke but we didn’t, like, exchange details and neither of us even realised what had happened until after we’d parted ways. Or, at least, I didn’t.”

“And you don’t know who it was?” Jon persisted, leaning back against his desk to look at Martin with an intensity he didn’t fully understand.

“I, no? Why the sudden interest?”

Jon shrugged, but his smile was forced. “Curiosity, I suppose.”

“Right.” Martin frowned. “Do you know yours?”

Jon’s eyes darted down to Martin’s covered forearm for a second. “I’m not sure.”

“You aren’t sure?” How could he not know whether he knew them?

“It doesn’t matter,” Jon said, smile finally relaxing into the gentle expression Martin loved best. “You’re it for me.”

He really wished it were that easy, that simple.

A world in which he’d met Jon instead of Jonny. Where there was nothing lingering in the shadows of their pasts reminding them that there would always be something missing, even if they both chose to believe otherwise.

A world in which he wouldn’t need to choose between reality and ghosts.

.

Martin grabbed Tim’s arm as he stepped around the corner outside the institute and tugged him into the alleyway. Tim twisted in his grip, ducking under his arm and pining Martin to the wall.

Tim blew a strand of hair away from his eyes and squinted at him before stepping back and releasing his grip on Martin’s coat. “If you wanted to hook up, you could have just texted me. Although, our resident Archivist might have something to say about it.”

Martin sighed in exasperation. “Yes, thank you, Tim. I need your help with something, but you can’t tell Jon.”

“Oh? I love a secret, spill.” Tim leaned against the brick wall, bumping Martin’s shoulder in encouragement.

“Right, uh, well it’s our – Jon and I, that is – it’s our six-month anniversary and I wanted to do something special.” Martin glanced at Tim from the corner of his eyes, willing the nervous energy out of his voice unsuccessfully.

“What gave you the idea that I was the person to ask for dating advice? Do I look like someone who’s made it to the big six-month mark?” Tim asked, gesturing to his partially unbuttoned shirt and artfully tousled hair.

“I don’t need advice; I need a distraction.”

“That,” Tim said, grin forming, “I can handle.”

.

“Martin?” Jon called from down the hall, followed by the sound of keys. “Sorry, I’m late. I swear, I’ll kill Tim if he even mentions Sasha’s boyfriend again. I don’t care how much he dislikes the guy, there’s no way he’s going to convince me the man is a lizard alien planning on skinning her alive.”

Martin quietly lit the candle he’d picked up from the thrift store down the street on his way home and stepped closer around the table as Jon showed up in the doorway.

Jon noticed him first – Martin loved the way his shoulders relaxed at the sight of him, as if Martin’s very presence was enough to soften the rough exterior – and then his gaze caught on the bright tablecloth, lit candle and set of the nice plates Jon kept in the back of the kitchen cabinet.

“Martin?”

Martin twisted his hands together and smiled with too many teeth. “Happy six-month anniversary? I hope it’s not too much, I just thought, well, work has been a lot lately and I’ve wanted to be able to have a traditional home-cooked dinner with you for, honestly, an embarrassing amount of time and- oh.”

Jon had stepped right up to him and buried his head into Martin’s chest, wrapping his arms around his torso and holding on tighter than usual. He stared down at the messy head of hair, the threads of silver and grey twisting through the black, before wrapping his arms around Jon in return.

“It’s perfect,” Jon murmured into his shirt. “Thank you.”

I love you, Martin thought, pressing a kiss to Jon’s hair. It wasn’t exactly a new thought, but it scared him all the same. It felt too momentous. Too real.

The absolute last thing he ever wanted to do was scare Jon away.

His phone chimed from the countertop and Martin quickly detangled himself from Jon. He grinned down at him and gestured towards the table as he moved in the direction of the oven.

“Take a seat, I made one of the casseroles from your Gran’s recipe book that you said you liked.”

Jon smiled, a real smile, not the polite, forced expression he often wore at the Institute. “You’re amazing. Just one second, I’ll be right back.”

He ducked out of the room and Martin was left confused as he pulled the dish from the oven. But by the time he’d placed it on the heatproof mat on the table, Jon was there, hands behind his back.

He restrained himself from glancing around the smaller man to see what was hidden. “Jon?”

“Close your eyes.”

He closed his eyes and held his hands out, palms up and side-by-side. Jon grabbed one and turned it until something smooth like wax-paper brushed against his palm and he grabbed hold. Whatever it was, he could hold it in one hand, fingers curled around it, while the other hand was moved to stabilise the hold.

“I know it’s not much, but I saw them and thought of you so… yeah.”

He opened his eyes. In his hands was the most magnificent bouquet of flowers he’d ever seen. He couldn’t identify them all, there were flowers in so many different colours and types that the bunch almost looked haphazard.

Except, every single flower was one he’d previously pointed out in passing to Jon.

“The florist tried to get me to buy an arrangement but, well, I know you like these ones, so… Do you like them?”

Jon looked up at him with a desperate glint in his eyes.

He set the flowers down on the table, far enough away from the flame of the candle, cupped Jon’s face between his palms, and kissed him.

Jon smiled into the kiss and stretched onto his toes. “Is that a yes?”

Martin laughed. “I love them. Sit down and I’ll grab a vase.”

Jon attempted to protest, but Martin pushed him gently towards the table. He got a vase from the cabinet – another of the homewares that had barely been used before he moved in six months prior – and set the flowers in the centre of the table.

“This smells delicious,” Jon remarked, already serving himself a portion of the dish. “Really, you didn’t need to go to so much trouble. This must have taken you half the– Oh. Tim?”

Martin blushed. “Sorry. I needed to keep you distracted and I couldn’t sneakily cook you dinner when we live together. In my defence, I didn’t mention anything about lizard aliens, that was all him.”

“You could have just asked me to stay away for a few hours, you know,” Jon said, fondly.

“Right, cause there’s nothing at all suspicious about that.”

“Exactly,” Jon mused. “So, you won’t question it at all if I say precisely that when your birthday comes ‘round.”

Martin laughed through his next bite of casserole.

Dinner was a relatively normal affair, albeit a standard of normal that would have felt insane six months earlier. Eating a homemade meal with Jonathan Sims in their home, sharing smiles and jokes over a bouquet of wildflowers.

But, as they cleaned up the plates and spooned the remainder of the casserole into a container, his mind kept drifting back to Tim’s words from earlier that morning. Because, well, he’d never pictured Jon as a six-month mark kind of guy either, much less with him.

It wasn’t a secret that Martin was the more… enthusiastic one about relationship stuff. Hell, he’d practically pushed Jon into letting him move in on day one.

It was with that thought pressing against his brain that Martin opened his mouth as Jon curled against him on the couch and said, “this is too fast.”

Jon instantly pulled away from him, until no part of them was touching. “I’m sorry.”

The look of utter horror on his face almost destroyed him.

“No, shit. I mean… is it? Is this too fast?” Martin clarified, wanting to reach for Jon but desperate not to cross any more boundaries than he already had.

Jon frowned. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re asking me?”

“Yes, is this too fast for you?”

“No? No. Of course not. Where is this coming from? Is this too fast for you?”

“No. I just.” Martin ran his hands across his face rather than reaching out to Jon. “It’s just some comment that Tim made, nothing bad, just something my brain ran with and, well… I forced my way into living with you after a single day when most couples wouldn’t even be living together after six months and–”

“Martin, look at me. You didn’t force anything. If I hadn’t wanted you here, you never would have been invited to stay. I can be pretty stubborn, if you hadn’t noticed. Trust me, if you were overstepping, you would be able to tell.”

“You’re sure? Martin asked. “And you don’t mind that we’re going a bit faster than most couples?”

“I like our speed just fine, as long as you’re okay with it.”

“I am. Okay with it, I mean,” Martin admitted.

“Good,” Jon said, smiling.

Martin loved that smile, loved seeing Jon with his barriers down, loved knowing that no one else got to see the soft, delicate parts of him that way.

“What?” Jon asked, smile never faltering.

“Nothing… It’s silly.”

“Martin,” Jon drew out his name, soft and intimate and so unlike he would have a year prior.

“I was just thinking that if someone had told me that I could have this – you, us – a year ago, I would have thought they were insane. And, I mean, I know six months isn’t like, massive, but it’s… nice?”

“It is, yes.” The corner of Jon’s mouth twitched and he moved closer, running his hand along Martin’s jaw. “I’m sorry that I was such a twat last year. You didn’t deserve that.”

Martin turned his head and pressed a kiss to Jon’s palm. “Hey, none of that. You’ve apologised more times than I can count. We’re good. More than good.”

“I…” Jon’s gaze was heavy, like someone had turned up the brightness fully and not given Martin any time to adjust.

I love you, Martin thought, but didn’t say.

Then, Jon’s gaze shifted to his collarbone and he squinted, the brightness dropping away like clouds obscuring the sun. “Since when have you had a freckle there?”

Martin glanced down, barely able to make out the dot of faded brown against his skin. “Uhh, always? I don’t know, guess it could be new. It’s been sunny lately.”

“Right.” Jon reached out and pressed his fingertip to the freckle, eyes intent. “Would you notice, if I wasn’t me anymore? If one day I was just… somebody else instead?”

Martin blinked, then blinked again at Jon’s serious expression, like it was a life or death type of question. “Of course, I would.”

“But how?” Jon pressed. “How would you know?”

“I just, would. You’re you and I know you and I would know if you weren’t you. Does that make sense? Probably not, sorry.”

“But what makes me, me? What makes me special? Memorable?”

“You’re smart, and brave and you care more than you let on. When you think too hard you get this look in your eyes like you want to rip the world apart and put it back together in a way that makes more sense.” Martin pressed a kiss to his nose and grinned. “Plus, your voice. I mean, I could pick you out of a crowd in seconds. There’s just something about–”

“My… voice. Of course. Of course.”

Jon jumped up from the couch, eyes wild with something Martin couldn’t comprehend. He picked up his keys from beside the front door and already had the handle half turned when Martin made a noise of distress.

“Jon?”

He turned and something in his gaze cleared as he looked at Martin, who watched him with hopelessly confused eyes.

“Are you… leaving?”

Jon glanced between the half open door and Martin before slowly closing it and placing down his keys. “It can wait.”

He returned to Martin’s embrace on the couch and Martin pressed kisses to his hair and his forehead and his lips and told himself that it didn’t matter what was going on, because Jon had chosen to stay.

.

Jonny led him down the hall and to a back staircase. Martin wasn’t sure if it was luck or skill on Jonny’s part that allowed them to avoid other people.

Standing beside him, Martin was surprised to find that Jonny barely reached his shoulders. On stage he had felt larger than life, but in a quiet staircase, fingers still intertwined with Martin’s like a lifeline, Jonny D’ville looked like something fragile and fleeting and monumental.

At the top of the staircase, Jonny let go of Martin’s hand to open a door. Martin felt a sudden pang of longing at the lack of contact, but Jonny quickly reached back and took his hand again, tugging him through the door.

Cold night air flooded Martin’s lungs and he blinked past Jonny to see an infinite number of stars surrounding them.

They were on the roof.

Jonny led him to the edge of the roof and let go of his hand to sit down a metre away from the edge. Martin sat down beside him, glancing nervously at where their feet just barely hung off the edge.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of heights, it was just that, well, it was not a short distance from the roof to the ground.

“John?”

Oh, right. He was talking to Martin.

“Thank you,” Martin said softly, the wind gently tugging his words away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, to ruin your night.”

The smile Jonny sent him was impossibly soft. “You didn’t ruin anything. Promise.”

Jonny looked younger without the goggles covering so much of his face, eyeliner smudged into soft lines against his cheeks, hair slightly frizzy. He couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than Martin.

“Do you ever feel like you’re going to… to disappoint everyone?” Martin looked away from Jonny and blushed. “No, of course not. Look at you. Sorry, stupid question.”

“I feel that way every single day.”

Martin scoffed, but it wasn’t cruel like his mother. He nudged Jonny’s shoulder gently. “You? The fearless Jonny D’ville?”

Jonny laughed. Not the wild, electric laughter from the concert, but a quiet, soft sound. “We all die eventually.”

“Even immortal space pirates?”

“Yeah.” Jonny looked up at the stars. “Even immortal space pirates.”

Martin tilted his head up towards the sky, watching Jonny from the corner of his eyes.

Jonny sighed. “It doesn’t matter, what matters is how you live.”

Jonny made a high-pitched cackling sound and suddenly curled up.

Martin scrambled up onto his knees. Was he having a stroke? God, was this because of Martin? Had he broken Jonny D’ville?

Jonny let out a burst of laughter and turned to Martin with tears in his eyes. “Sorry, I sound like a pretentious prick.”

“I,” Martin stumbled for the right words, staring at Jonny’s grinning face, “I mean, yeah. A bit?”

Jonny laughed harder, ducking his head between his knees. His shoulders shook with the force of his laughter and Martin couldn’t help but join in.

It felt… good. Exactly what his body needed after the earlier panic attack.

After they began to settle down, Jonny looked up at him and smiled. He was definitely around Martin’s age.

“Sorry,” Jonny said, grinning.

“I don’t mind. I can be a bit of a pretentious prick myself sometimes.”

“I suppose I’m in good company then.” Jonny settled back into his earlier sitting position, legs stretched out in front of him.

.

Fuck. Fuck. There was so much blood.

Martin tried to recall what Jon had been wearing that morning – was it really only that morning? He was certain that he’d been stuck in those hallways for weeks – but he couldn’t picture it. A white shirt? The baby blue button down? One of his sweaters?

There was so much blood.

Behind him, Tim was leaning against the doorway and emptying the contents of his stomach. He felt like he was moments away from joining him, but first he needed to know where Jon was.

Jon didn’t own a waistcoat.

His hands weren’t that pale or that wrinkled.

These were things that he knew, logically, but there was no logic in that bloody room.

Jon’s office. Fuck.

Slumped on the ground before the desk was a body, or, or part of one? Underneath a layer of blood and gore were pale limbs and a well-dressed torso, but where a head should have been was only a mess of…

Fuck. He was going to be sick.

He needed to find Jon.

“Oh, dear,” an elegant voice murmured from the doorway.

Elias Bouchard stood tall, looking over the scene with distant eyes. He tutted and shook his head as if the entire ordeal was quite the inconvenience for him. Martin supposed that having two people brutally murdered in one’s establishment would be a tad difficult to handle.

“What has our Archivist done this time?”

“Wh- You think Jon did this?” Martin exclaimed, gesturing towards the body without looking at it. Not Jon. Not Jon.

Elias looked at him with an expression he couldn’t interpret. “If not, why run?”

Martin sputtered out something incomprehensible. “Uh, maybe to get away from whoever just murdered someone in his office and probably tried to kill him too?”

“Where’s Sasha?” Tim asked, stumbling over, a fleck of vomit clinging to his chin. “Has anyone seen her?”

Elias’ eye softened as he turned to Tim. “I am sorry, Mr Stoker. I fear that this poor soul was not the first of Jon’s victims tonight. We have yet to recover a body, but I assure you that when we do-”

“No,” Martin insisted. “Tim this wasn’t Jon. It wasn’t. You know Jon.”

Tim turned and punched through the plaster wall. He kicked and punched until a hole comparable to the one from Prentiss’ attack the year before had formed. “I’ll kill him,” he swore.

“Tim.”

Tim met his gaze, no trace of the light-hearted man he knew left in his eyes. “I’ll kill him.”

Elias walked Tim out of the room, mummering words of support, but Martin was stuck in the room.

There was so much blood.

Halfway under the desk, a metal pipe lay discarded. Something pale was visible under the blood, stuck to the side of the weapon. Bone.

Whoever had done this, they’d hit this person so hard that their skull had shattered.

He’d seen Jon take bugs outside rather than kill them. But he’d also seen Jon crush a spider hard enough to dent the wall.

No. Jon hadn’t done this. He, he couldn’t have.

But, then, where was he?

.

“Are you Martin Blackwood?” The new assistant asked, standing next to his desk and glaring down at him.

Melanie something. She had short, blue hair just a few shades short of neon and was dressed in a way that he knew wasn’t according to Institute dress code guidelines. Tiny daggers with red paint on the tips hung from her ears. He’d watched a couple videos of her YouTube show, but she was a lot more intimidating in person, despite not even reaching his shoulder.

“Sure am, did you need me to show you how the filing system works? I know it’s a bit tricky at first.” He smiled as genuinely as he could.

It had been a month since he’d seen Jon, a month with no contact. Nothing to confirm that his partner was even alive aside from the questions the cops kept asking.

Melanie scoffed. “I have no intention of learning how this place works. I’ve got a message for you.”

“A message?”

She dropped a crumpled receipt onto his desk and shook her head when he moved to unfold it. She glanced around the Archives pointedly. “Not here.”

“Thank you?” He tucked the receipt into his pocket.

“You have shit taste in men,” she said, and left.

.

Martin’s fingers slid across the smooth paper, as they had been for the past several hours. He didn’t dare take the receipt out and look at it in the Archives, but nothing was able to stop him from overthinking about the contents.

Jon had sent him a message, via Melanie of all people. Which was… confusing.

He had buried the need to unfold the paper and read the words, Jon’s words, for the remainder of the day. But only barely.

“Goodnight, Tim, Melanie,” he called, packing up his belongings at what he hoped was his usual pace.

Melanie looked his way, but otherwise ignored him. For the best, really.

Tim didn’t look up from the paper he’d been reading, fingers pressed to the faded ink. One of Sasha’s old documents.

The real Sasha.

Martin left the Archives, smiling at Rosie as he passed the front desk. He walked to the hotel he’d been staying at and closed the door of his room behind him.

Alone, away from the curious eyes that lingered within the Institute’s walls, there was nothing stopping him from taking the note out and opening it. But… what if it wasn’t from Jon after all? What if it was, but it was a break-up message?

He pulled the receipt out and ran his fingers over the crumpled paper. It was folded haphazardly, corners unmatched and creased over. Like Melanie had shoved it into her pocket without caring how it would wrinkle.

He smoothed out the paper and opened it slowly. The receipt was much smaller than he’d expected, no space for a long-winded letter. In fact, when smoothed out to its full length, the paper was no longer than his pinkie.

He turned it over and found only one piece of writing on it: a phone number, written in unfamiliar handwriting.

He reached for his phone and dialled the number before he could second guess himself.

It rang three times.

“Hello?” A voice answered, soft and feminine and determinedly not Jon.

“Uh, hello. Sorry to bother you.” Martin looked at the receipt in his lap and double checked that the numbers matched. “I was looking for Jonathan Sims. I was told… I thought he might be-”

The woman sighed and cut him off. “I already told the other officer; I don’t know where Jon is. Please make a note in your report and stop calling.”

“I’m not the police, I swear.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure that lying about your identity counts as fraud even if you are a cop. I haven’t seen Jonny in years. Please, just leave me alone,” the woman said, then hung up.

His entire body stiffened at the name and he crumpled the paper in his fist.

Jonny. It was a normal nickname for Jonathan. Really, it was more surprising that no one had called him that yet. It was a coincidence.

But Melanie giving him the number of someone who obviously knew Jon fairly well couldn’t have been a mistake.

He called again. And again, when she didn’t pick up. It took eight more attempts before she answered.

“I’m not the police,” he promised, soft but firm. “Please don’t hang up. Melanie gave me your number.”

Silence greeted him from the other side of the line.

After long enough that he checked that she hadn’t, in fact, hung up on him, she spoke. “Is this Martin Blackwood?”

He clutched the crumpled paper to his chest and breathed out in relief. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

“My name is Georgie Barker,” she said, voice gentler than it had been during the first call. “Sorry about earlier.”

“It’s fine. Is… is he there? Is he safe?”

“Yeah. I mean, he’s got these weird scars everywhere, but he said those are from last year.”

He rubbed at his face and found his cheeks wet. “Thank God. I was so worried. Everyone said he was in hiding or on the run, but I just kept thinking, what if he’s not? What if he’s rotting in a ditch somewhere and nobody even cares because they think he’s a murderer?”

“You really care about him, don’t you?” she asked, softly.

“Yeah, he’s… Yeah. I do.”

“Let me go wake him up, he’s been waiting for your call.”

“No,” Martin objected, despite how desperately he needed to hear Jon’s voice, to know he really was okay. “Let him sleep. I can’t imagine that he’s been getting much of it lately.”

“Yeah, okay.”

The line was quiet aside from their shared breathing. Martin laid down on the stiff hotel bed and closed his eyes. Jon was okay. He was safe and alive and staying with Georgie, who had called him Jonny.

“How do you know Jon?” He asked, hating the bitter edge of jealousy that crept into his voice.

“Technically? I’m his ex-girlfriend. Which is weird to think about because, really, it lasted about five minutes.” Georgie laughed, but it wasn’t malicious.

Ex-girlfriend. It shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was. He knew Jon had dated other people before him. He knew Jon was bisexual. Obviously, he had ex’s out there somewhere, Martin just hadn’t expected him to move in with any of them.

“I’m, Jon and I, we’re… I’m not just his assistant,” he felt the need to clarify. “We’re together.”

“He’s been moping around my apartment for the past month, complaining about missing you. Even if he hadn’t told me about the two of you, it wouldn’t exactly be hard to figure out.” There was laughter in her words.

Martin laughed, half in embarrassment and half at the idea of Jon moping about.

“Honestly, though,” Georgie continued. “I’m glad he has you. I wasn’t sure he would let himself get close to anyone again, after his timer stopped.”

Martin’s heart sputtered and he sat upright on the bed. “You know Jon’s soulmate?”

Georgie’s voice softened. “No. All I know is that he was really looking forward to meeting them and then one night he showed up at my place, a complete mess, with a dead timer.”

It was probably best that she didn’t know. Jon was so private about his soulmate; it wasn’t right to hear about them from anyone else. But, well, he was so private about his soulmate.

“All he ever said about them, was that they seemed lost.”

“Oh,” Martin whispered. He tried to picture Jon, twenty-something years old, meeting his soulmate. His mind conjured messy eyeliner instead.

She’d called him Jonny.

Martin had been pretty lost that night.

It was a foolish thought. Jonny probably wasn’t even his soulmate’s real name.

“Martin?”

Martin blinked, momentarily surprised to see the ceiling of his hotel room instead of the stars. “Yeah?”

“He cares about you, a lot. I’ve never seen him like this, not even that night,” she confessed. “The only reason he came here was because he didn’t want you getting dragged down with him. If he could, I know he would go home right now.”

“That would probably be unwise,” Martin admitted. “The cops have been staking out the apartment since this all started. I’ve been staying in a hotel a few blocks away from the Institute.”

“That sounds rough. How have things been at work? I don’t know the full story, but I know Jon’s worried about everyone there. Well,” she mused, “perhaps not Mel. I’m honestly just surprised they haven’t killed each other yet. I mean. not that Jon would. He-”

“I know he didn’t do it,” Martin reassured. “Work has been… as expected, I suppose. Uh, you know Melanie then? I mean, obviously, she gave me your number, but…”

“Oh, yeah. Mel’s my soulmate.”

He tried to picture Georgie, tried to imagine what Melanie’s soulmate looked like. Absently, he noted that Jon and Melanie had the same taste in women, which was… something.

“Right, well. Can you let Jon know I called? And tell him that I believe him and I-” love him “miss him.”

Georgie’s voice softened. “Of course. He misses you too.”

After he exchanged goodbyes with Georgie, Martin laid down on the bed, stared at the unfamiliar ceiling and wished Jon was beside him.

.

Martin was exhausted, past skin and muscle and arteries, right down to his bones. He’d spent the past eight hours longing for nothing more than to collapse in his bed, his real bed preferably, and pass out for the next eight at least. Or maybe, finally call Georgie again and speak to Jon.

So, of course, as he trudged up the stairs and made it towards his hotel room, he found the door ajar.

Eight hours of Detective fucking Tonner asking him over and over where Jon was, picking apart every last detail of his statement again and again and again and now she’d broken into his hotel room to, what? Double check?

He pressed his palm to the fading wallpaper beside his door and took a breath, going over his statement again. He didn’t know where Jon was. He’d had no contact with him at all since he disappeared. He didn’t think Jon was guilty. No, he didn’t have any evidence to prove that.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

He pushed the door open fully and stepped inside.

A figure sat on the bed, legs curled up and tucked under their chin, so still that had he not been looking for them, he might have missed their presence entirely. Their eyes were closed, like they were meditating, or half asleep, but nothing about them gave the impression that they were unaware.

It was not Detective Tonner.

“Jon.”

Jon’s eyes shot open and he stumbled to get up from the bed, but Martin was already there, wrapping his arms around him, feeling the warm, solid presence in his arms.

He could feel Jon trembling as he pressed his lips to his messy hair.

“Martin.”

He pulled back and looked down at Jon for the first time in well over a month.

He’d seen Jon step out of the sharp persona he wore to work plenty of times since they’d gotten together, but he’d never seen him so unkempt. Jon’s hair was messy, half tied up in a bun and with the rest falling down around his shoulders in knots. His eyes were dark with sleepless nights and bloodshot like he’d been crying, which Martin couldn’t afford to think about too hard, not when Jon was right there in front of him. Dressed in a faded t-shirt that suited him better than any of his clothes back at their flat, Jon was both a dream and painfully real.

He pulled Jon back in, squeezing him against his body like he was afraid he’d vanish. Which, considering the circumstances, was a pretty fair possibility.

Jon inhaled a sharp, pained breath and he instantly pulled away.

“You’re hurt.”

“No, no,” Jon replied, twisting his left arm behind his back. “I’m fine, I just–”

He grabbed hold of Jon’s elbow and gently pulled the arm into sight. And then almost threw up.

Jon’s hand was blistered to the point of mutilation. The skin was red and glossy, swollen and cracked in parts. He couldn’t imagine what could have possibly happened to burn him so badly, until he turned the hand around and saw the imprint of fingers on the back of his hand.

Like someone had grabbed his hand and set it on fire.

Burning had always been Martin’s least favourite pain, the way it lingered for weeks afterwards, a constant reminder. Even after the heat was gone the flesh continued to burn, no matter what you did.

“Fuck, Jon. I, what? How? Who did this to you?”

Jon tried to pull his hand away. “No one, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Jon, this is not fine.” Martin said, holding tight to his elbow. “Please, I just want to help.”

“I…” He deflated slightly. “It was payment, I suppose, for a statement from Jude Perry.”

“Payment?” He wanted to demand more information, but Jon made his earlier exhaustion look like a good long nap. “Okay. Hold on, I think I have a first aid kit around here somewhere.”

He began rummaging through the drawers, amongst the messy piles of clothes he’d scavenged from their apartment between police searches and interrogations and work at the Archives. Jon watched him from the bed.

Despite the fact that their lives were going to shit and Jon was wanted for murder and had been burned by a psychopath, the situation felt oddly domestic. Like it was any other day and Jon had just gotten a papercut for him to obsess over.

“I suppose Georgie told you where I was?” Martin mused, finally locating the first aid kit and pulling out burn cream and bandages.

“Not exactly. It’s complicated.”

Martin sat beside him and gently took hold of his arm. “You’re on the run because a man was beaten to death in your office. And I’m bandaging your hand because a woman gave you third degree burns in exchange for a story. ‘It’s complicated’ doesn’t quite cover it anymore, Jon.”

Jon flinched as the burn cream was applied and desperately caught his eyes. “You need to believe me, I didn’t kill–”

“Never thought you did. I know you, even if things are complicated.”

Relief dawned on Jon’s face and Martin resisted the desire to lean across and kiss him until the foolish idea that he would ever believe anyone over him was long forgotten.

He gently wrapped the bandage around the wound, careful not to pull it too tight. “Are you okay, really?”

Jon flexed his bandaged hand and sighed. “Okay as can be expected, I guess. And you? I know the police must be putting a lot of pressure on you.”

Martin pressed his forehead to Jon’s and closed his eyes. “I’m stronger than I look. It’s so good to see you, though. I wish you could stay.”

“I wish I could, but…”

“I know.”

“Oh,” Jon said, pulling away abruptly. “Sasha. You need to know. She’s not the woman you think you’ve been working with. Last year, when Prentiss attacked–”

“Sasha’s dead and something else has been pretending to be her since Prentiss.”

“I, yes. You know?”

Martin moved a strand of Jon’s hair away from his eyes and frowned. “Elias said you killed her, which was utter bullshit. So, I looked into the research you’d been doing and figured it out. Took a while to convince Tim, but I think it was easier for him to believe that she’d been dead for most of the year rather than… Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter now. We haven’t found any sign of the thing since you went after it, but knowing our luck it’ll show up eventually.”

“Oh,” Jon replied, staring blankly at him like he was trying and failing to process the information.

“I may not have your fancy University education, but I’m not completely incompetent, you know?” He joked.

“You aren’t incompetent, Martin. You’re incredible.” Jon leaned forward and kissed him with enough force to push him back against the mattress.

“Jon, your hand,” he protested, pulling away and trying to get a glimpse at the injured appendage.

“Is fine.” Jon held his hand above Martin’s head, out of sight, and leaned in to kiss him again.

He pressed his palms against Jon’s chest and caught his eye. “Jon.”

Jon cupped his face with his good hand and ran the pad of his thumb along his cheekbone. “I’m okay, I promise. We deserve one moment of peace. Please.”

Jon sounded lost. Like the thing holding him down to Earth wasn’t gravity, but Martin, and he was afraid he would drift away.

Sometimes his love for Jon felt heavy enough to pull him under and leave him bloated and breathless at the bottom of the sea.

Perhaps together they could find a balance.

He gently threaded his fingers into Jon’s knotted hair and pulled him down to him. He hoped Jon could understand all the things he was too nervous to say out loud, finding a statement in the brush of his lips and the twist of his tongue.

I miss you. I’m so scared for you. I want you to stay.

I love you.

It wasn’t the right time, even if it were true. Not when the words would be stained with blood and fear and uncertainty. He’d get his chance, but not yet. He had to believe that.

Jon’s t-shirt shifted off of his shoulder to reveal the scarred skin there. He looked so young, curled up against Martin’s chest in clothes that hung off his frame.

Martin pressed a kiss against the exposed skin, then adjusted the shirt to cover it. He hoped the well-worn material would keep the kiss safe enough for Jon to take back with him to Georgie’s.

Jon leaned back and smiled at him, but Martin was caught on the script written across the chest of the shirt.

So faded that it was almost illegible, the shirt read: The Mechanisms.

It was impossible. It had been a decade since the band had broken up and they’d never been that well known to begin with. Not well known enough for Jonathan Sims to be wearing his soulmate’s band shirt as comfortably as he usually wore Martin’s sweaters.

A crazy coincidence.

Martin had long since stopped believing in coincidence.

“Martin? What’s wrong?”

If he tried, it wasn’t very difficult to imagine the dark circles under Jon’s eyes as eyeliner, smudged from sweat and kisses.

“Where’d you get that shirt, Jon?”

Jon stiffened, just the slightest bit, before glancing down at his shirt and shrugging. “Nicked it off Georgie, some old band she liked in Uni. Why, you know them?”

Georgie, who was soulmates with Melanie, with her blue hair and knife earrings. Who apparently knew about the Mechs. Who’d called him Jonny.

He was the right age, the right height and skin tone and eye colour. The hair was almost the same length now, although a bit greyer at the roots. His name was Jonathan for fucks sake.

But really, how much did he even know about Jonny? Shit all. He could have been wearing contacts. His name could have been anything.

Martin wasn’t the type of person who got second chances.

“No, just curious,” Martin said, pulling up a half convincing smile. “Sorry, my brain is still scattered, I guess.”

For a moment Jon’s stare felt too heavy, like the weight of it would suffocate him. And then the pressure was gone, and Jon curled up against him like an old cat seeking warmth.

“I can’t be here in the morning,” Jon whispered against his chest, breathing out a sigh of warm air.

Martin pressed a kiss to his hair. “I know. Just… a little longer, please?”

“Okay.”

Martin closed his eyes and pretended that they were back at their flat. He pretended that they’d never joined the Institute and had met at a coffee shop or a park instead. Pretended that he’d never met Jonny D’ville or heard of the Mechs and that it didn’t matter that sometimes Jon and Jonny’s faces blurred together as one.

When he woke up the next day, his favourite sweater was missing from the closet and the Mechanisms shirt was folded neatly on the dresser.

.

There was a bloody line across Jon’s neck, dripping down to stain the collar of Martin’s stolen sweater.

Martin had been crossing the Institute’s lobby, clutching his half-eaten egg salad sandwich in one hand and his wallet in the other, hoping to squeeze in a quick trip to the local shops to pick up a new box of the tea Tim preferred when Jon walked in through the front doors.

Jon, who was definitely still on the run and should have been safely hidden at Georgie’s.

Silver glinted as Detective Tonner stepped in behind him and jabbed at Jon’s back, urging him further into the Institute. Basira followed shortly after them, looking at least like she was half hesitant to be brutalising someone in a public place.

Martin dropped his sandwich in a potted plant and shoved his wallet into his pocket, stumbling blindly in their direction. Jon’s eyes caught his and he shook his head slightly, a warning not to do anything irrational. As if he’d left Martin any choice in the matter.

“Martin,” Jon called, drawing the attention of the few people lingering in the lobby. “Please let Elias know that we require a meeting.”

Martin looked between Jon and the detectives. “Sorry? Are you insane?”

Jon sighed and sent him a look of fond amusement that was so achingly familiar it hurt. “Trust me.”

His eyes caught on the blood barely beginning to crust around Jon’s neck. “Okay.”

They quickly fell into step, Martin leading the way with Jon and the detectives a few metres behind. Every step towards Elias’ office felt like a march towards the guillotine, but he wasn’t sure if it was Jon’s head or Elias’ that he should be worried about.

So quietly that Martin had to strain to hear it, Jon spoke to the detectives. “If you touch him, I’ll kill you both.”

“Noted,” Detective Tonner hissed out.

Martin shivered at the gravelly tone of Jon’s voice.

Thankfully, Rosie seemed to be on her own lunch break as they approached Elias’ office and Martin opened the door and disturbed the man inside.

Elias looked more dazed than he’d ever seen him, clinging half to reality for a moment like Jon did when he was interrupted mid-statement. Then Elias blinked and that intense feeling of being too seen, of having layers he didn’t even know he had be peeled back to let Elias look at what was hidden underneath returned.

“Ahh, Martin. Right on time.”

“Jon’s here? He would like to speak to you. Detectives Hussain and Tonner are here with him,” Martin explained.

“Perfect,” Elias exclaimed, quietly smug in a way that unnerved Martin. “Please go and fetch Mr Stoker and Miss King. They really ought to be here to hear this as well.”

Martin looked back at Jon, at the blood on his sweater and the knife Detective Tonner still held against his back.

Jon’s eyes were determined, no sign of fear despite the situation. “Go on, Love. We’ll wait for you to get back.”

“Right. I’ll be right back.”

He stepped out of the room and set off in a sprint towards the Archives, searching for any signs of blue hair or bright fabric. Just as he reached the steps to the Archives proper, he barely avoided crashing into Melanie and Tim.

Tim reached out and steadied him. “Something’s happening.”

“Jon’s here, with the cops. They’re going after Elias. Come on, quickly.”

By the time the trio arrived back at Elias’ office, Martin half expected to find it as much a bloodbath as Jon’s office had been a few months prior. But all parties were exactly as he’d left them, almost bordering on bored.

Martin stepped up next to Jon, ignoring the literal growl that Detective Tonner let out at his proximity. He tried to ignore the knife, but he was acutely aware of how quickly the threat could become deadly. “I need you to tell me what’s going on, Jon.”

Jon’s eyes never left Elias as he answered. “Elias is about to confess to his crimes.”

“I certainly am. You may wish to take a seat.” Elias paused, but when no one moved to sit he shrugged and settled in his own chair. “Suit yourselves.”

“Is this going to take long?” Melanie drawled. “I was hoping to leave early today.”

The look Detective Tonner shot towards Melanie was almost as dangerous as the knife at Jon’s back.

“I promise not to take up too much of your time, Miss King. Where was I? Oh, yes. Confessing. As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, Jon, I killed Gertrude Robinson, oh, nearly two years ago now. It was her own fault, really, for even thinking of burning down my Archives.” Elias looked at Martin, expression harsh in a way that he couldn’t decipher. “And then Jurgen Leitner was at risk of exposing more than I wanted so I dealt with him too.”

“And Sasha?” Tim’s voice was ice, splintering with rage.

“Oh, I didn’t kill Miss James. She’d been dead for a year before that whole thing with Leitner even came to pass. A shame, really, how even you couldn’t tell the difference. And here I thought Soulmates were special.”

Tim ignored the bait and Martin wanted to reach out to him, to comfort his friend even if nothing would ever be able to mend the fissures in his soul.

“But you knew,” Jon growled. “You knew what had happened to her, even back then with Prentis you knew what was happening. You did nothing to stop it. You could have, couldn’t you?”

A shiver ripped through Martin’s body at the sound of Jon’s voice and even Elias paused. He’d never heard Jon like that, never heard anyone– No. That rasp, half feral, like the words had been dragged out of some deeper part of him… he had heard that voice before. Granted, it hadn’t been accompanied by the pure wave of… of power that settled over the room. But he knew that voice.

It belonged to Jonny D’ville.

Elias’ laughter cut through the room. “Oh, I like that. Tingly, sort of. Even Gertrude never tried to compel me with her full strength. Yes, I think you’ll do quite well, Archivist.”

Archivist. Jon.

He was in the Institute, with Jon. It was Jon’s voice he’d heard, and anything else was just… wishful projections. He was just confused, mind still caught up on the faded t-shirt Jon had left with him a couple of weeks prior.

It was ridiculous. And when Jon spoke next, asking about Michael’s involvement, he could almost believe that he’d imagined the familiarity in his voice.

Elias dismissed Michael altogether, claiming him a nuisance. He sounded almost bored, which was a feat with the way that Detective Tonner was inching forward, eyes cold like a predator tracking its prey.

“Enough,” she snarled. “He confessed. It’s on tape and everything.”

She tucked the knife away and Martin took the opportunity to tug Jon out of her immediate reach. Until she replaced the weapon with a gun, glinting in the artificial lighting of Elias’ office and Martin realised that none of them were out of her reach.

But Jon seemed forgotten as she aimed the gun directly at Elias’ forehead and released the safety.

Tim and Melanie released a flock of obscenities and Martin grabbed Jon’s hand to pull him behind even as the smaller man stepped in front of him instead.

“Daisy,” Basira hissed, reaching out to her partner, “put the fucking gun down.”

“He’s dangerous. It’s our job to deal with dangerous people, or have you forgotten?”

“It’s our job to put them away.” Basira hadn’t even reached for the gun at her own waist, eyes steady on Detective Tonner’s weapon.

“To put them down, Basira. You think a prison cell is gonna hold him? I know you can feel it too, how… how off this place is. How off he is.”

Basira hesitated and Martin knew that she’d felt it too, the creeping, unsettling feeling of wrongness that was perhaps infused into the very foundations of the Institute.

Her pause was enough for Detective Tonner apparently because she stepped forward and pressed the gun against the relaxed skin of Elias’ forehead. The grin that spread across her face was as unsettling as her target.

Run, something in Martin’s mind seemed to whisper. Run before she picks you next.

Martin flinched as the phone on Elias’ desk rang, shattering the tense air.

Elias smiled, ever steady despite the gun to his forehead. “Excuse me a moment, Detective.” He lifted the phone off its cradle and answered chirpily. “Yes, Rosie? Perfect timing as ever. Please ask them to wait just a moment. Thank you.”

He hung up the phone and nodded to the Detectives. “Your colleagues are here. I figured I’d make it easy for you both; much simpler to arrest me with assistance, after all. Unless you’d rather continue with your current plans, Detective Tonner? Why, you wouldn’t be avoiding your colleagues for some reason, would you?”

“Daisy?” Basira asked, stepping forward and laying a hand on the gun barrel. “What does he mean?”

Detective Tonner shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Basira. This’ll be over soon.”

“Oh,” Elias’ exclaimed delightedly. “She hasn’t told you?”

“Told me what?” Basira snapped.

Elias’s grin was almost a match to Detective Tonner’s earlier smile. “You never wondered why she was avoiding the precinct? Our dear Detective Tonner is quite the killer, whether the victims struggle with arrest or not, it seems. She was, quite rightly, worried that I’d found or fabricated some evidence of her crimes and sent it along to her superiors.”

“Shut up,” Detective Tonner snarled, pressing the gun further into Elias’ skin.

“Daisy,” Basira whispered. Hands trembling on the gun.

“But you know what they say about wolves running in packs. Your employers don’t really mind the murders, the fact that there is evidence though… Well, that’s a different matter.”

“So, I kill you and go to jail. I’ll take that deal.”

“Be smarter, Detective Tonner, you know exactly what happens to people like you who get caught.” Elias’ eyes darted to Basira. “You… and your loved ones.”

Basira startled out of her shock. “They wouldn’t.”

“They would.” Detective Tonner frowned. “What do you want?”

Elias hummed, ignoring the gun against his head as he tidied paperwork on his desk. “It would appear that the departure of Miss James leaves me down an Archival Assistant. No offense, Miss King.” He pushed the paperwork to the edge of the desk, closer to Detective Tonner.

She lowered the gun a smidge as she glanced down at it, her forehead wrinkling at whatever she read. “An employment contract? You want me to work for you?”

“I’m afraid your Patron would probably find issue with that. This is for Detective Hussain.”

“Me?” Basira’s fingers jolted on the barrel of the gun, dragging it further from Elias.

“Like fuck she’s going to– Basira.”

Basira stepped forward, grabbed a pen from the desk and signed her name neatly across the dotted line. “Send them away.”

Elias grinned, a savage expression that didn’t seem to fit his face correctly. He picked up the phone and sent a message through Rosie, dismissing the situation as a false alarm and sending the cops on their way.

Detective Tonner’s laughter broke the silence before it could settle. “You think that’s going to stop me from killing you?”

“She is still holding the gun,” Melanie agreed.

Beside Martin, Jon stiffened and reached out for his partner. His fingers were ice cold against Martin’s, the bandage around his palm the only spot of warmth.

Elias sent a calculating, satisfied look Jon’s way before addressing the Detectives. “My apologies. Sometimes I forget how little… most of you still know. I know you’ve noticed that the Institute exists as something outside the ordinary. Think of it as a living, breathing creature. My Archival Assistants, including you now, Detective Hussain, could be considered the fingers. Myself, I am the beating heart. Cut off a few fingers, the body survives fine, but remove the heart and the entire body shuts down. Trust me, Detectives, it would not be a pleasant death. But really, it’s your decision. Kill me if you wish– and watch your partner die screaming.”

The gun was forgotten as Detective Tonner turned to Basira, halfway torn between anger and as close to sadness as Martin had seen on her.

“What is Jon?” Martin asked, startling the room’s occupants out of their misery.

Elias frowned. “Elaborate please, Martin.”

“If you’re the heart, and we’re the fingers. What does that make Jon?” Martin squeezed Jon’s fingers, mindful of the burn under the bandages. “If you die, what happens to Jon?”

“Jon’s role is yet to be determined. As is his fate.” Elias clapped his hands, making Martin jump and glance towards the gun still in Detective Tonner’s hands. “Enough of this. You’ve gotten your confession, now I need to speak to my Archivist alone. Out, out.”

The remaining original Archival crew shared a look, an unspoken understanding flowing between them before Tim pulled Melanie, Detective Tonner and Basira out of the room.

Martin pressed a kiss to the back of Jon’s bandaged hand. “Find me when you’re done, okay?” Then he turned his attention to Elias and his expression hardened. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you with my bare hands, consequences be damned.”

He could have sworn Jon’s eyes followed him out with a fond look at the threat.

Martin closed the door behind him and pressed his forehead to the cool wood. There were things happening, happening with Jon, with the Institute, that were pushing him out of his depth. A couple hot cups of tea weren’t going to be enough this time. But, surely, they wouldn’t hurt.

He stepped back, ready to head down to the Archives and prepare Jon’s usual cuppa when he registered the low drone of voices on the other side of the door.

“Truly, it’s remarkable.” Elias drawled. “It took Gertrude close to a decade to reach even half the awareness that you’ve developed over the past few months. You may be my best investment yet, Jonathan Sims.”

Jon sighed, a slow release of the tension that Martin had seen riddled through his body from the first step back inside the Institute. He barely heard Jon’s words, buried by the door and the quiet tone of his voice. “Am I… still human?”

Of course you are, Martin wanted to scream, regardless of whether or not it was true. Even with a door between them he could tell what Jon wanted to hear so desperately.

“You already Know the answer to that, Jonathan. Don’t you?”

Another sigh. “Yes. I, there’s a lot I Know now. Not everything, not yet, but I Know that will come in time. There’s no way to, I don’t know, stop this? Reverse it?”

“Aside from killing you now and starting over with a new Archivist? No. And I have no desire to start from scratch when you’re so close.”

“Right. Right.”

Martin forced himself to take a step back from the door and then another. If Jon had wanted him to hear that he would have asked him to stay. He needed to leave before they finished and opened the door and found him standing there. Even if he had little doubt that Elias knew he was still there.

Tea. He was going to make tea. There was so much that he couldn’t do to help but tea he could do. One sugar, scorching hot, no milk. He’d hid Jon’s favourite mug in his desk drawer, so he’d need to give it a quick rinse first.

He walked downstairs, nodding to Tim as he passed the otherwise empty Archives and mindlessly went through the motions of washing the mug, boiling the water, spooning out the sugar and setting up the teabag.

The kettle boiled and he switched it off but didn’t pour the water into the mug.

He’d just wanted a way to afford the medical bills when his mum got sick again. Maybe save a little extra to finally move out. He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up still stuck in the Institute ten years on. At least he had–

A throat cleared behind him and Martin jumped. Jon stood there, looking almost sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck and smiling the shy smile that Martin hadn’t seen since he’d brought him flowers for their six-month anniversary a lifetime ago.

“Hey,” Jon murmured.

“Hey,” Martin replied. “Tea?”

Jon’s smile brightened. “Please. I love Georgie but she can’t make a good cup of tea for the life of her. Mel prefers coffee.”

“The heathen.” He reached out and found the kettle lukewarm, so he switched it back on and fiddled with the handle of the mug. “At least you’ll have your steady supply of good tea back when you return home, huh?”

“About that…”

Martin set the mug down and turned to face his partner properly. “Jon.”

Jon ran his hands through his hair, fingers getting caught in the tangles. His hair had grown even longer in the couple weeks since Martin had last seen him, and was now halfway to matted, filthy with dirt and his own blood. Martin blinked away the ghost image of smudged makeup, dark lightning stretching across skin.

“I’m not coming home.” He shook his head at Martin’s attempt to interrupt him. “It’s not safe. Not yet.”

Martin scoffed. “And Georgie’s place is so much safer than home? What does she have, bulletproof glass?”

“I just, I need to figure some things out first.” Tears glistened at the edges of his eyes.

Martin turned around and poured the water into the mug, giving them both a moment of privacy to process the news. I’m not safe for you, was what Jon wasn’t saying. Which was bullshit, obviously. The safest he had ever felt was when he was wrapped up in Jon’s arms.

Humanity be damned, Jon was home for Martin.

But if that was what he needed to feel in control, to feel safe then…

Martin turned back with a smile and a perfect cup of tea. He pressed the mug into Jon’s hands and cupped the smaller man’s face in his palms. “Okay. Just promise me you are coming home, eventually. When it’s safe.”

Jon smiled and leaned into his touch, closing his eyes for a moment. “I promise.”

“Good. Drink your tea.”

.

The video was grainy and unfocused, the camera angle shifting as the hand holding it moved. The clip was hidden in the deepest corners of YouTube. Martin had scrolled through dozens of videos on everything from clock making to car parts to mental health before finally finding the decade old upload.

It was unclear whether the sound had been corrupted through some technical error or if the original footage was truly just that low in quality despite iPhones having been at least 5 models in by that year. It didn’t matter, though. Even without the sound to back it up, he recognised the wild man parading across the stage in the clip, microphone held comfortably in his hands. The outfit wasn’t quite right and a few of the other band members were unfamiliar, but Jonny beamed out at the audience with the same bright smile and dark smudges of lightning seeping out from under his goggles.

God, he was beautiful. Martin’s memories filled in the gaps from the rough footage: the warm brown of his skin, the way his dark hair frizzled around his face, the velveteen drawl of his voice. And then he filled in the rest that the clip couldn’t reveal: the kindness in his eyes, the sound of his laugh, the comforting weight and warmth of his body, the taste of his mouth.

He wasn’t sure if he was describing Jonny or Jon.

He watched the clip twice more, and then clicked the suggested links until he found another video by a different user. That one was too dark to properly make out Jonny’s features. The one he found next was too far away to get a clear shot. The following video was more focused on one of the female band members, only getting Jonny in the frame for a few seconds. On and on it went, what few videos he could find being bad quality, as if the universe was conspiring against allowing him a straight answer.

Eventually he’d composed a playlist of the seven videos he could find in any way connected to The Mechanisms. All of them were missing audio, either due to it having been removed for copyright infringement or just not having been good enough to hear properly in the first place. A few of them had half decent clips of Jonny prancing around the stage, but between the age difference, the outfit and the makeup it was impossible to say for sure whether Martin’s assumptions about Jon and Jonny were correct.

There were certainly similarities, Martin had always known that. They were similar ages, similar ethnicities, had similar hair and heights and builds and eyes and– fuck.

Martin paused the current video on the best shot of Jonny it had to offer and allowed himself a moment to do something he’d been supressing for years. He looked at his soulmate and admitted to himself that he wanted it to be Jon, not just because he was in love with Jon… but because he missed Jonny.

He’d barely known the man for a few hours, and part of that time had been spent stuck in a panic attack, but Jonny was funny and smart and honest and beautiful and real in a way that so few people in his life were. It had been easy talking to him, like they’d known each other since the beginning of time. Like all the cliches about meeting your soulmate were true.

Jonny was a man touched by chaos, all wide smiles and starlight. He’d looked at Martin like he was worth something, like he was more than everyone thought. It was the first time in his life that Martin had stopped worrying about playing the right part and had just existed.

He’d gotten home that night, pleasantly numb in a way that made it easy to ignore his mother’s threats and had only been mildly surprised to see the faded zeros on his arm when he finally pulled his sweater off.

He’d wanted to be enough for someone like that.

But then he’d tried to find any trace of the Mechs, of Jonny, and had come up empty again and again. Had his arm not shown him the proof, he might have believed that he’d imagined Jonny after all. So, he’d stopped looking.

He’d found Jon. He’d fallen in love.

That should have been enough. It was enough… until it wasn’t.

He reached across for the faded old band shirt Jon had left behind and ran his fingers over the soft material. It was a simple design: plain black cotton with The Mechanisms printed across the front in a font that perfectly encapsulated the bizarre mix between Victorian steampunk and futuristic science-fiction that had made the band so unique.

He could perfectly imagine Jon stressing over choosing the correct font. Could imagine Jon, not even twenty years old and already needing some form of escapism, carefully choosing the name Jonny D’ville. He wondered if Jon wrote all the songs himself or if the rest of the band contributed as well. He wondered why he’d chosen lightning and leather and chaos.

He… needed to stop thinking about Jonathan Sims as if he really were Jonny D’ville. Just because it was what he wanted, just because it would be so easy if the man he was in love with were secretly his lost Soulmate this entire time.

Martin didn’t get easy. He never had. It was as if it was programmed into his DNA.

But he’d seen the expression of familiarity on Jon’s face the year before on the roof of the Institute, like Martin wasn’t the only one living in his memories of a different roof.

And… he’d heard Jon in Elias’ office. He knew the sound of his voice. He’d heard and memorised so many different variations of it. The deep, slow pace of a statement; the light, happy laughter of a casual day spent at home; the stern, angry rasp he’d grown familiar with that first year when he thought Jon hated him.

When Jon had spoken in Elias’ office it had been familiar in a way that didn’t belong to Jon.

.

Martin denied the drink Tim offered when he arrived, partly because he wasn’t a big drinker in the first place but mostly because it was barely 11am on a Tuesday. When Tim hadn’t shown up to work that morning, Martin had taken it as the chance he needed to catch Tim alone outside of the Institute.

He’d been to Tim’s place twice before, back before Prentiss and everything that followed. It was a decent sized flat about twenty minutes away by the Tube. Unlike himself, Tim hadn’t chosen to live close enough to the Institute to walk to work. It was probably the wiser choice.

Tim waved him towards the lounge as he poured himself a drink. The alcohol left a sharp tang in the air. Tim swallowed it down like a shot, despite having filled at least three quarters of the glass.

Martin almost asked how he was doing, but choked the words down at the last minute. Despite the day-drinking and the piles of laundry that were scattered across the flat, Tim really did seem to be doing a little better lately. He wouldn’t risk dragging him back down if he could help it.

Martin sat and pulled his laptop out of his carry bag, rubbing his fingertips across the smooth plastic cover. “Can I show you something? I just… I think I need a second opinion.”

Tim squinted down at the laptop suspiciously. “Usually when people take a sicky, it means they don’t want to work.”

“It’s not work related.” Martin kept his gaze focused on the cover of his laptop, aware that speaking his next words out loud would make them real in a way he couldn’t take back. “Before all the insanity of the past year and a half, you asked about my soulmate and I told you I didn’t know who it was.”

“Right?”

“I lied.”

Tim hesitated for a moment, emotions flickering across his face too quickly for Martin to identify, then poured himself another drink, settled down next to him on the lounge and nodded for Martin to continue.

Martin loaded up YouTube and pulled up the playlist he’d made, but kept the screen angled down, away from Tim’s gaze.

Tim settled his drink down between his thighs and ran a hand through his hair. It fell across his forehead and made him look softer, younger, with the lack of product. “Okay,” he said, finally.

“The sounds gone all wonky, and the videos aren’t the best quality,” Martin warned.

Tim leaned closer to Martin and the laptop. “I’ll admit it, I’m intrigued.”

Martin scrolled through the playlist and selected his favourite video of the lot, turning the laptop so they could both watch as the screen showed a dark, full bar. The camera was focused on an empty stage for ten seconds before a spotlight flickered on and followed a man across the space.

He’d wanted to watch Tim’s reaction to the video, but as Jonny D’ville leaned closer to the microphone and the rest of the band slid into place, Martin was unable to pull his eyes away from the screen. Despite the lack of audio, when Jonny’s lips moved and the crowd jumped in excitement Martin could imagine the deep rasp of his voice. For a few seconds Jonny looked directly into the camera from across the room and it was almost like being back in the dimly lit pub a decade ago.

Tim shifted on the couch and Martin glanced at his friend, finding him staring at the screen like he’d found a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. His eyes met Martin’s and he frowned.

“His name was Jonny.”

“You’re fucking with me, right?” Tim gestured to the screen, where the next video was loading. “This guy’s your soulmate?”

Martin felt the blush creeping up to the tips of his ears and over his cheeks. He knew what people saw when they looked at him, how wildly out of his league Jonny had always been even if the universe seemed to think differently. “We met after a gig, his last gig actually.”

Tim’s face softened. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no he,” Martin’s stomach clenched at the idea, at the misunderstanding in Tim’s eyes, “he isn’t dead.”

He hated the wall that built back up behind Tim’s eyes, the distance the other man put between them suddenly. But not as much as he hated the idea of Jonny being really, truly lost to him forever.

“At least, I don’t think he is,” Martin added on softly, half to himself.

They watched the next two videos in silence, Martin pretending he didn’t notice the way Tim glanced between him and the screen, comparing him to Jonny, debating whether or not they would have worked out. He couldn’t blame him; He’d done the same when he first found out about Tim and Sasha.

His bet had always been on the two of them figuring it out, someday.

Eventually, Tim reached out to pause the video. “Aside from convincing me that your standards have somehow dropped catastrophically low in the past decade, what, exactly, was the point of showing me this?”

“That’s the thing,” Martin began, heart racing at the idea of saying the words out loud. He still had time to keep his suspicions to himself, but he’d made a promise to himself and he was determined to see it through. “I’m not sure my standards have dropped. I don’t think they’ve changed at all.”

Tim sighed. “I’m not Jon, I don’t do the riddles thing. What is it you’re trying to say, Martin?”

He looked at the frozen image of Jonny on the screen. Even with the goggles obscuring his eyes, it was easy to see the pure exhilaration on his face. It was like someone had managed to capture a lightning strike on camera. Martin felt electrified just looking at him.

“I think Jon is my soulmate. I think this is Jon.”

“Bullshit. Have you met Jon?”

He frowned and pulled the laptop closer, cradling it to his chest protectively. “I’m serious.”

Tim stopped and studied him for a moment before reaching out for the laptop. “Okay, fine. Let me see.”

The next clip was fragmented from Tim’s constant pausing, pressing the spacebar every time a new angle of Jonny’s body was revealed. Martin couldn’t figure out if he was genuinely considering the possibility or just humouring him.

“Look, Martin,” he said after the clip finished. “I see where you’re coming from, I do. But this footage is shit quality and it’s not like there’s a lack of guys that fit Jon’s physical description out there in London proper. What actual evidence do you have that Jon, our stuffy Head Archivist Jon, could possibly have once been… this?”

All of the things that had felt like massive signs when he was sitting alone in his once shared flat suddenly felt insubstantial. What could he say? That sometimes Jon got this aura around him that just felt like Jonny? That he’d only ever wanted to drown in two people’s voices and that couldn’t be a coincidence?

“There was a shirt, Jon borrowed it from Georgie but…”

Tim closed the laptop and turned to face Martin so their knees were brushing. “Martin. You need to stop before you fuck this up.”

He’d expected pity. Martin Blackwood, attempting to carve the man he loved and the man he was supposed to love together into the same puzzle piece. Martin Blackwood, seeing the impossible in places it wasn’t. Poor, foolish Martin Blackwood.

There was no pity in Tim’s eyes, only fury spreading across his face. The last time he’d seen Tim this angry was in Jon’s office, gore spread out across the floor like a charcuterie board. He’d sworn to kill Jon, absolutely shattered by the lie of Sasha’s murder at the Archivist’s hands. Martin hadn’t believed him capable of it until that moment. Even later, learning the truth, hearing Elias admit to knowing it all along, that anger had never fully returned.

Until now.

Tim leaned forward and caught his eye, forcing him to listen. “Jon is in love with you. He has been for longer than I think any of us even realised but it’s pretty fucking obvious at this point.”

“He’s never said as such, not to me.” It was a weak excuse, even to his own ears.

“Doesn’t matter what the two of you have told each other; He is in love with you. He¬–” Tim glanced at the closed laptop. “I’ve known Jon for years. We were probably as close to friends as Jon allowed back in Research. The guy isn’t known for his vulnerability, so it means something that he trusts you enough to let you in.”

“I know that. I’m not trying to push him away, I’m trying to bring us closer,” Martin insisted.

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.” The answer was immediate and true right down to his bones.

Something broke behind Tim’s eyes. “Tell him that then. Or you’ll lose him while you’re off chasing ghosts.”

“What if I’m right, though? What if Jon is my soulmate?”

“What if he isn’t? Are you willing to risk it all on the hunch that he might be some guy you met ten years ago?”

He wasn’t sure. He wanted to say no, because he did love Jon, possibly more than he’d ever loved anyone or anything in his entire life. He wanted forever with Jon. But if there was even a chance that Jon was Jonny, didn’t he owe it to them both to find out?

Martin curled in on himself, feeling tears of frustration welling up. He tugged at his curls to ward off the emotion. “I just… I just, I thought that if I got anything at all, maybe it could be this. Maybe I could have both of them without losing either. The whole world is utter shit and I just wanted this one happy ending.”

Tim lifted his glass and swallowed his drink in a single mouthful. “Fuck happy endings, Martin. They’re all just lies we tell children to get them to sleep faster. The only parts of fairytales that exist are the monsters.”

Martin froze, the events of the past hour hitting him hard. He’d come to Tim because they were friends, because Tim knew Jon best out of the Archive staff other than Martin. He’d come to Tim and complained about missing his soulmate, about how unfair it was that he couldn’t be with him. He’d tried to sell a fairytale where he got everything he ever wanted.

He hadn’t asked how Tim was doing, because he didn’t want to deal with the answer.

He was a terrible friend. Truly, an absolutely horrible friend.

“Shit, Tim. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have put this on you. I loved Sasha too. I know¬–”

“Bullshit, Martin. You don’t know a thing about it. You’ve never… you didn’t lose Jon. He’s still right there; you could call him right now if you wanted to. You could see him again, touch him, tell him–” Tim cut off with a pained whine, rubbing his palms over his face and scrubbing at his eyes in a way that had to hurt. “I loved Sash; She knew that. But I never got the chance to fall in love with her. I’ll never get to experience that. Don’t waste your chance like I wasted mine, soulmate or not. If you want Jon, just go be with him. Don’t ruin it by trying to make him into someone he isn’t.”

The room grew silent aside from Tim’s ragged breathing. A part of Martin wanted to leave; another larger part wanted to comfort his friend.

After a few tense minutes, Martin spoke. “I asked Sasha about it once, about what it was like to know your soulmate and get to spend time with them. She told me it felt like falling in love with your best friend. Like the ease that came with decades of friendship, of knowing that you’d found the one person capable of truly knowing you. Like finding home in a person. She told me it was the absolute best feeling in the world.”

Tim’s voice was halfway to ruined. “What’s your point, Martin?”

“She loved you too.”

Whatever thread had been holding the last scraps of Tim Stoker together was shredded at Martin’s words. Tim threw his glass across the room, not even flinching as it shattered against the wall and embedded shards of glass in the carpet.

He expected that anger to twist across Tim’s face again but instead it drained away, taking every last drop of energy with it. Tim curled into himself, pressing his hands roughly against his closed eyes and, for the first time that Martin had witnessed since learning of Sasha’s death, Tim began to sob.

It started off small, contained, but quickly progressed to the big, heaving full-body cries that Martin knew well. The ones that tore you up from the inside, like you might very well end up experiencing heart failure from the sheer intensity of your grief.

Sooner than expected, Tim’s cries trailed off and he rightened himself, rubbing at the wetness on his face. Martin grabbed a box of tissues from the coffee table and offered them to his friend. Tim took three, using one to blow his nose before letting another soak up his tears.

“Are you okay?” Martin asked, because even a stupid question had to be better than nothing. Just something to remind Tim that he was there, that he wasn’t alone.

“No.” He looked… empty, staring directly through Martin. In his lap, he meticulously ripped the remaining tissue into pieces.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s like someone reached inside me and carved away at my soul with an ice cream scoop, taking every last memory, every last trace of her away from me. But they took too much. There’s just,” Tim let out a hollow laugh, “there’s nothing left of me either. She was every good part of me. I didn’t even notice her die, Martin. That thing wriggled its way into my mind and my heart and I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t her.”

“You couldn’t have known. We’ve both read the statements about what that thing does to people. It wouldn’t let you. It could have taken every single person we know and none of us would have been any the wiser. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I can’t even grieve her properly. I can cry for a few minutes if I’m lucky, but after that it’s like the pain just dries up and there’s nothing left at all. No pain, no sadness, no anger; Nothing. That thing might as well have taken me too.”

Martin hadn’t spent most of his life trapped inside his own head without learning to recognise the signs. “If it helps at all, I’m glad it didn’t.”

Tim turned to him with dead eyes. “It doesn’t matter if Jon isn’t your soulmate. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Either way, they’ll rip him away from you if you let them. If you’re lucky, he’ll still be human when you lose him.”

Martin barely suppressed his flinch. He knew Tim was talking from his own experiences, of monsters hiding under the guise of your loved one’s skin, but his words hit a smidge too close to home after what Martin had overheard between Jon and Elias. He didn’t care if his Archivist was human, he just wanted Jon.

He hoped he wanted Jon enough to bury the ghost of Jonny.

.

“Do you wanna talk about it? Earlier?”

Right. Panic attack. Ambushing Jonny D’ville in his dressing room.

Martin let his feet dangle off the roof. “Sometimes… Sometimes I think my mother hates me. Like, actually, truly hates me.”

Jonny hummed in acknowledgement and watched Martin with gentle eyes. Not pitying like he’d expected just… kind.

“My dad left when I was a baby. He… I don’t remember him, but she says he was terrible. I mean, he must have been, right? Leaving her, leaving us?” Martin leant back until his back was on the floor and he was staring directly at the night sky. “I think I look like him. She tells me all the time how much we have in common and… it’s not a compliment. It’s like she thinks I’m doing it on purpose.”

Jonny laid back beside him, shoulders barely touching on the cold concrete of the roof. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on you for something you can’t control.”

“Yeah, yeah it is. I love her, but…”

“Family can be complicated?” Jonny offered.

“Family can be complicated,” Martin confirmed.

Jonny’s shoulder pressed a little bit more firmly against Martin’s.

“My parents died when I was a kid.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Martin scrambled up onto an elbow to look down at Jonny. “Here I am bitching about my mum and, and… Shit, I’m so sorry.”

Jonny smiled up at him lazily and tugged him back down beside him. “It’s not a competition. My parents can be dead and yours can suck at the same time.”

Martin settled in beside him, closer than he probably should have considering he’d met Jonny less than an hour ago. Something about the man just felt… comfortable.

“I grew up with my grandmother. She loves me, but,” Jonny continued, shrugging, “I think she’d already used up most of her love on her own kid, you know?”

“Yeah… I do.”

Martin sometimes thought the same thing about his mum. Like maybe someone had come along and wrung her dry when he wasn’t looking, but he couldn’t remember a time when she had been full.

“I’m a triple major at Uni. I volunteer on the weekends. I don’t do drugs, aside from the occasional cigarette, as hard as that is to believe looking like this. It just…” Jonny turned to face Martin, his eyes almost grey in the light of the stars and the streetlights. “It’s like I need to work so much harder to impress her and sometimes I think that if she really loved me, I would be enough as is.”

You are, Martin wanted to say. You are enough.

.

Martin didn’t recognise the woman who stepped into the Archives through the vibrant yellow door. Despite every part of his rational mind telling him that the door hadn’t been there moments prior, it made sense. Of course there was a door there. He was tired, his memories were just playing tricks on him. There had always been a door there.

The woman was dressed in a bright pink pencil skirt and a neon green blouse. Odd fashion sense aside, there was nothing particularly strange about her, until she smiled. It wasn’t that it was a strange smile, not in a way that he could pinpoint, but every part of it felt wrong. Like whatever was hiding underneath the façade of the brightly dressed woman hadn’t yet figured out how to smile through her mouth.

“What happened to Michael?”

“Hello Martin.” The woman’s smile deepened, spreading just slightly too far across her face. “I guess you could say I’ve decided to give the saying ‘New Year, New Me’ a try.”

“It’s June,” he replied.

Before she could respond, a familiar scarred hand reached out from the doorway and he shot forward to help Jon into the room. “Jon? What are you doing here with…”

“Helen,” the woman supplied helpfully.

Jon stumbled into his side and for a moment Martin couldn’t think of anything except the warmth of his boyfriend pressed up against him. It had been over a month since they’d seen each other last. He’d been trying his best to give Jon all the space he needed to figure out whatever was going on with him.

Jon leaned on him a moment longer than was necessary and when he pulled away he took hold of Martin’s hand and squeezed it tight. “I’m sorry. I know how worried you must have been but I’m okay. Helen rescued me and my skin is better than it has been in years.”

Jon’s skin was indeed almost glowing, free from the perpetual dryness that haunted him due to the constant air conditioning of the Archives. His unscarred hand was baby soft against Martin’s fingers.

“Rescued?” His voice was higher than usual as he reached out with his spare hand to touch Jon’s face, checking it for new scars. “What are you talking about?”

“I, the Circus? Nikola?” Jon’s face crumpled into a frown. “They’ve had me for a month. Did you not know?”

Panic hovered at the edges of Martin’s mind, ready to overwhelm him at any moment. “A month? Fuck, Jon. I, oh my God. A month. A month. Fuck. Fuck.”

Martin couldn’t focus on anything but the ringing in his ears. The room was spinning. The room was so much taller too. And, hadn’t there been a door against the far wall? Something bright, orange maybe? Yellow? No. No, of course not. There had never been a door there.

Jon had been gone, kidnapped, for a month. How hadn’t he even noticed? He’d spent the time lounging around, watching videos of Jonny and trying to find differences between the two and Jon had… Jon had been… Jon was…

Jonny was sitting in front of him, hands on either side of his face, telling him to breathe.

No, not Jonny. Jon. Jonathan Sims.

When had he sat down? He tried to focus on Jon’s hands, warm and scarred against his cheeks as they breathed together. Jon was okay. He was okay. He wanted to close his eyes and let the darkness soothe him but that would mean losing sight of Jon so instead he just focused on the deep brown of Jon’s irises until he no longer could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

“There you are,” Jon murmured into the quiet between their bodies.

Martin wiped at his eyes, unsurprised to find his face damp with tears. “Shit, sorry.”

Jon frowned at him. “None of that. Are you okay?”

“Am I– Are you okay?”

Jon helped him stand and kept hold of his hand afterwards, rubbing circles into his palm. “I’m fine. They weren’t planning on skinning me until whatever ritual they were planning was ready.”

Martin took in that information and then purposefully pushed it to the back of his mind to fully process later. “I swear I didn’t know. I would have come for you myself if I’d known but Elias said you were fine so I assumed it was some secret Archivist mission and that you’d call me when you were ready and, and…”

Jon squeezed his held hand and then pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “It’s okay, Martin. I know.”

Martin blinked as a thought occurred. “You know or you Know?”

Jon shrugged and didn’t elaborate. “I need to have a word with Elias. Will you be okay on your own?”

He wanted to say no, to refuse to let go of Jon’s hand for the next month to make up for the one they’d lost. Instead, he nodded and forced a smile. “Of course. I’ve got a couple statements to record anyway.”

Jon stiffened, eyes flickering towards the pile of statements on Martin’s desk. “You’ve been recording them?”

“I, yeah. I mean, someone had to and you weren’t here and I’ve been here the longest aside from Tim, who, uh, isn’t doing too well right now, so it just… made sense?”

Jon looked ready to protest and Martin would have welcomed it if only for the additional minute or two it would require Jon to stay with him. But after a moment Jon nodded and let go of his hand, heading towards the stairs. Before the first step, Jon paused and turned back to him.

“Please be careful, Martin. I…” Something danced across Jon’s eyes, some great emotion that Martin was afraid to put a name to lest he be correct. “I can’t lose you.”

.

Jon’s voice and their quiet breathing were the only sounds in the room. Martin smiled into the silk pillowcase and rolled his eyes.

“I’m sure not every American is that out of touch, Love.”

Jon laughed, a breathy sound that settled comfortably under Martin’s skin. “If I find one that isn’t, I’ll be sure to let you know right away. You should see the shit they’re passing off as tea.”

Martin muffled his own laugh. “What time did you say it was over there?”

“Just past seven. I would have called earlier but I had a bit of trouble finding the place and I only just caught the end of their dinner service. I’m sorry, I know it’s late back at home.” There was a pause and then Jon’s voice came out softer, hesitant. “I can let you go if…”

“No.” Martin adjusted the phone’s position on Jon’s vacant pillow and closed his eyes. If he tried, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that Jon was beside him, both of them finally back in their own bed at their shared flat. “No. I can talk a little longer, it’s okay.”

The silence was comfortable, both men happy to just exist in each other’s space. It was the kind of quiet that Martin had always thought was mythical. He’d certainly never had it with his mother growing up. It was the type of silent contentment that he sometimes dreamed about sharing with Jon for the rest of their lives. Minus the whole being a world apart thing.

“This is nice,” Jon said softly, attuned to his thoughts perfectly.

Martin wasn’t sure if it was Jon’s spooky all-knowingness or if his boyfriend just knew him that well. He hoped for the latter.

“Yeah, it is.” Martin lingered in the silence for a moment before giving in to the thoughts that had been crowding his mind since the day Jon had left. “You really can’t say when you’ll be coming back home?”

Jon’s sigh sounded as exhausted as Martin felt. “I can’t. I just know that when I find what I’m looking for… I’ll Know, I guess? I hope so at least. It just, it feels like there’s something happening, something soon, and for whatever reason I need to be here right now.”

“That’s bullshit,” Martin remarked, not unkindly.

“I’m not disagreeing,” Jon reassured.

“It’s just… you just got back from being kidnapped. The Fates can’t give you, like, two weeks to recover?”

With me, he didn’t need to say.

Jon had still been staying at Georgie’s when he’d been taken by the circus. Martin hadn’t had the courage to move back to their shared flat alone. He’d visited once, felt Jon’s missing presence like a physical weight in the air, filling the room with ash that soured on his tongue, and returned to the hotel.

After the circus, a month a month a month, he’d dragged Jon back with him, refused to let the smaller man out of his sight for any longer than necessary.

And then Jon had run away to America with no more explanation than that it felt like the correct move.

“I want to,” Jon promised, whisper soft in the almost empty room. “I’m sorry.”

“Nope. No apologising.” Martin shuffled over to glare at Jon’s name on the phone screen before his gaze softened. “Just… just promise that you’ll be okay, please? Really, properly okay, not your Jon version of okay that apparently means not being skinned alive. That should be the bare minimum, okay?”

Laughter carried gently through the phone speaker, the quiet half-muffled chuckle that Martin loved so much and so rarely heard outside of their own private bubble.

“Okay, no being skinned alive. I promise.”

“As a bare minimum, Jon!”

“As a bare minimum.”

The silence settled in as the last of Jon’s muffled laughter slowly died off, but it was comfortable still. Martin closed his eyes and let his mind drift somewhere on the verge of consciousness until Jon spoke seconds, minutes, hours later.

“Are you still… reading statements?”

He hummed in confirmation. “A couple, sometimes.”

“It’s dangerous,” Jon insisted, voice strained.

“I can stop, if I want to. It’s not the same as it is with you. I think, at least. There’s no need behind it. Just curiosity. Besides, it uh…” Martin cut off, blush heating across his cheeks.

“Besides?” Jon prompted, not Asking even though they both knew he was getting better at it. Not with Martin, though. Never with Martin.

“Besides… It, they, the eye or whatever, seems to… like me? Better than Tim or Melanie or Basira at least.”

“Huh. I suppose that makes sense.” The whisper of paper moving crept through the line from Jon’s end.

Martin wanted to ask what exactly he meant by that but was cut off by the need to muffle a yawn into his pillow, already shaking his head before Jon started talking.

“Martin.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, failing to muffle the next yawn and glaring at the phone as if it had personally offended him by sharing the sound with Jon.

Jon huffed out a laugh. “Go to sleep, Martin. It’s late and I’ve already kept you up way too long.”

Martin hummed noncommittedly, limbs warm and heavy as he tugged the sheets up to his chin in a cocoon of fabric.

“I’ll call again tomorrow. Earlier than I did today and we can talk longer, promise.”

“No kidnapping?”

“No kidnapping.”

“Stay?” Martin mumbled, holding onto consciousness with white knuckles.

“Until you fall asleep,” Jon promised, accompanied by the sound of shifting fabric.

He could picture it: Jon settling down to spend the next few hours reading statements and making frantic notes into his recorder in the hopes of understanding whatever it was he was supposed to be in America to understand. He wondered if his hair was already braided back from earlier in the day or if he’d merely pulled it up into a messy knot to get it out of his face.

“Jon?”

“Mmm?”

“…I miss you.”

Jon’s breath hitched over the line. “I’ve never missed anyone the way I miss you, Martin.”

I have.

The thought came on almost violently, shocking him out of the lull of half consciousness.

I miss him so much that I see him in everything you do.

Suddenly, it wasn’t Jon’s quiet breaths filling up the room from the other side of the line.

Jonny hummed, his voice the same deep timbre as it was the last time Martin heard it in person, on a rooftop beneath a million stars, close enough to feel the vibrations against his skin.

“Are you asleep yet, Martin?” Jonny asked, loud against the held-breath-silence of the room.

It didn’t matter that Jonny shouldn’t know Martin’s real name, he still revelled in the way it sounded from his mouth, envisioned how his lips would curl around the syllables like a kiss.

Martin held the air inside his lungs like it was a secret, listening to the give and take of Jonny’s breathing.

“I love you,” Jonny said whisper soft, barely more than just another exhale.

Martin buried his face in his pillow, letting the silk stain with his tears. By the time he had settled enough to breathe the open air of their bedroom without the sounds of his emotions bubbling past his lips, the phone call had long since been ended from the other side.

Jon loved him.

Martin loved him back, with every aching, broken part of his soul.

Except for the part that longed so desperately for his soulmate that it was willing to risk the best thing he’d ever had for the chance to pretend that the similarities between Jon and Jonny meant something.

.

Martin hadn’t expected some big dramatic reunion when Jon returned from America, but he had expected something a little more romantic than arson.

Or, well, plans to commit arson.

In the days since Jon had returned to him, it felt like every waking moment was preoccupied with developing the plan to stop The Unknowing from destroying the world. Which, yeah, sure, that’s pretty important but so was spending time with his boyfriend.

The first six months of domestic bliss (aside from the brief incident or three of Jon stalking Tim with the assumption that their co-worker was planning on killing him in his sleep) felt like they were a lifetime ago. In between the whole on-the-run-for-murder thing, the apparently multiple kidnappings (and Martin was not pleased to discover that Jon had managed to get captured in America despite his promise not to), and the aforementioned trip across the world, he’d barely had any face-to-face time to spend with his partner.

So yeah, saving the world sort of sucked, actually.

“D’you think they’re wax all the way through, or are there bones and shit underneath?”

He sighed and ran his fingers across his eyelids. “Honestly, Melanie, I genuinely do not want to find out.”

“They can’t be all wax. They were going to use Jon’s skin,” Georgie commented, thoughtfully.

Melanie shoved another box of matches into the duffle bag she and Georgie were packing with a grin. “You’re right! I wonder what other parts they use.”

“Right. On that note.” Martin set down his own duffle of arson equipment in the pile they’d been accumulating and wiped his hands on his jeans. “I’m going to find Jon. Please, don’t die or get yourself skinned out there.”

He stepped out of the room to the muffled sounds of the soulmates’ morbid discussion and into the darkness of the tunnels. They’d been using them as a base of operations since Jon’s return and despite the fact that his eyes had adjusted to see a little better in the dim light, he still hated the space.

The darkness felt oppressing from where it lingered at the edges of his vision, his phone camera too dim to fully light the narrow walkways. He could feel phantom worms digging into his skin. He didn’t want to imagine how Jon and Tim felt about the location.

But they’d all agreed that despite the less than stellar memories associated with the tunnels, they seemed to be safe. At the very least, they seemed to be empty.

If everything went to plan, they wouldn’t have to spend another night in the dark, whispering their plans, anyway. Melanie and Georgie were almost finished packing the equipment they’d been keeping down there with them and Basira and Detective Tonner were gathering the explosives from the storage unit.

They’d decided early on that keeping the explosives and the ignitors in the same space was a recipe for disaster, even before taking into account their usual luck.

They’d even set up an area to record their statements, just in case. He didn’t like to think too heavily on what in case meant. He was the last one due to record a statement, but he had time. His first priority was finding Jon and getting the chance to talk to his partner before they all left him and Melanie behind.

A light flashed his way from the opposite direction of the tunnel and he waved his phone torch around to signal that he was there. The steps approaching were loud, uncaring of the way they echoed through the space.

Tim’s face was only half lit from Martin’s torch, but his steps gave him away well before they met face-to-face. His hair was styled with enough gel that it almost shone against the light, but his eyes were dull.

“Martin,” he rasped out, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes. “I was hoping to talk to you before we leave.”

Martin peered around the taller man, hoping to spot Jon further along the tunnel. “Oh, sorry, Tim. I was just, have you seen Jon around?”

“He’s back there, yeah.”

Back towards where they’d set up the recorder, exactly as Martin had feared. Jon would get so engrossed in the idea of fresh statements that he would spend the whole day watching the recorder run if nobody stepped in and pulled him away. He’d been more dependent on the statements since America, like he was ravenous for every new word.

Tim’s hands settled heavily on his shoulders, dragging him back to the dim tunnel. “I wanted to thank you, Martin. You were a better friend than I deserved.”

Even the new statements that their little group had recorded earlier that day seemed to have some sort of pull that Jon couldn’t resist. Despite knowing the basics of what they contained, he’d gravitated towards them. He had yet to listen to them, purposefully saving them for later, but just being close to the recorder seemed to settle him a little. Martin didn’t like the uneasy feeling it gave him.

Tim was looking at him with expectant eyes and he winced as he realised he’d zoned out. “Sorry, Tim. What were you saying?”

Tim’s smile was uncharacteristically small, so far from the wild grins he’d started off with when they first met. “Just wanted to say goodbye, that’s all.”

“Oh, it’s okay. We’ll get a chance to say goodbye before you all head off, I’m sure.”

Tim shrugged, squeezing Martin’s shoulders gently. “Jon and I aren’t exactly best mates right now and I barely know the others. You’re the only one left I wanted to see.”

Martin’s face softened and he reached up to squeeze Tim’s hands where they were gripping his shoulders. “Good luck out there. Give ‘em Hell, yeah?”

“Go out with a bang, right?” There was a hint of that Tim Stoker smile in the corner of his mouth.

“Sure, Tim.” Martin stepped out of Tim’s grip, manoeuvring so they were on opposite sides of the tunnel than they started on so they could continue going the different ways they were originally headed. “I’m sorry. I wanted to talk to Jon before it was too late.”

Tim waved him off, shuffling on his feet with prebattle jitters.

Martin made it halfway down the hall before Tim called his name.

“Yeah?”

Tim’s hair was a mess, like he’d run his fingers through it in that moment that Martin had turned his back. “I want you to be happy, okay? Fuck whatever I might have said in the past. You deserve to be happy.”

“Oh.” He looked for a hint of mockery in Tim’s gaze but found only honesty. “Thank you. You deserve that too, you know.”

Tim shrugged. “Maybe.”

“We’ll talk when you get back, okay?”

Tim twitched as if he was ready to bolt down the hall and stop the Unknowing single handedly. Martin was glad to see him taking an interest in something again. “Right, when I get back.”

Jon’s muffled voice bounced through the corridor, unidentifiable murmurs that sounded far too much like the beginning of a statement for Martin’s nerves to handle.

He nodded to Tim before turning back the way he had been headed, allowing Jon’s mesmerising voice to act as a lure.

Tim’s sigh was almost silent, would have gone completely unheard if not for the way the traitorous tunnels grabbed hold of the slightest sounds and amplified them.

Martin paused, finding Tim’s back to him when he looked. Something about the slump of his spine, less like he was carrying a great weight on his back and more like he was only barely resisting being pulled down to the ground, gave him pause.

“Sasha would be proud of you, Tim.”

Tim’s spine stiffened but didn’t straighten. “I never needed her to be proud of me, I just needed her to be alive.”

.

“Jon?”

Martin turned the corner and found his partner exactly where he had expected to, nestled into the small space they’d set up as a make-shift recording studio for taking their statements.

It had been a long discussion between the group, whether or not they should try to keep the recording devices as far from their plans as possible or not. Ultimately, Jon had managed to convince them that the tape recorders were more his than Elias’ at that point and that the tunnels acted as a sort of signal blocker.

His powers were muffled in the tunnels so anything they said on the tapes wouldn’t be Known until after they emerged unless he listened to them directly. They were betting that the same could be said for Elias.

That didn’t mean that any of them, especially Martin, liked it.

“Jon,” Martin repeated.

Jon looked up from where he was half curled in on himself, cradling something between his hands. He blinked twice before seeming to come back from wherever he’d gone. “Martin.”

He gently took the tape recorder from Jon’s hands and placed it back with the slowly growing pile of identical devices. Jon let him without complaint, something Martin knew wasn’t a luxury awarded to the rest of their group, aside from maybe Georgie.

Jon’s eyes grew foggy for a moment. “You have a recorder in your left pocket. It’s still running.”

Martin dug it out and stared at the machine in his palm. It was warm, the quiet thrum of the recording like a pulse against his skin. He clicked it off and placed it next to the others. “That wasn’t there an hour ago.”

“No,” Jon confirmed, tearing his gaze from the new addition. “Something important must have happened, something we would want to hear.”

He wasn’t sure if we referred to the two of them or to Jon and The Eye. He didn’t really like to overthink it, not when he probably wouldn’t like the answer.

Instead, he reached out and took Jon’s hand, drawing the Archivist back to him one thread at a time. After a few silent moments, Jon looked back at him with a new sense of recognition.

“Hi,” Martin whispered.

“Hi,” Jon replied. “I was drifting again.”

“It’s okay.” He settled into the space next to Jon, sitting with his back against the cool stone of the tunnel and his side pressed flush to Jon’s.

Jon had been different since returning from America. Both More and Less at the same time. He said that it would settle soon, one way or another, probably not for the better.

Basira had gone out with Jon to follow a lead the day after he’d returned and had come back to the Archives silent and pale. She hadn’t told Martin what had happened, but later, curled together in the dark, safe space that was their bed, Jon had whispered the truth.

That he was different now, that he could Ask people and they would tell him what he wanted to know. That even though he wasn’t really The Archivist yet in the way that Elias wanted him to be, he could feel it there at the periphery, waiting patiently.

Basira had seen it that day, closer to the surface than Jon usually allowed when around his friends. It had scared her.

Martin didn’t think it would scare him, but Jon promised never to use it directly on him regardless.

“Do you Know what’s going to happen out there?”

“No.”

“Could you, if you tried?”

“Maybe.” Jon pulled Martin’s hand into his lap to hold between both of his. “I don’t know if I want to Know, not if it wouldn’t make a difference.”

He put his phone into his pocket and waited for his eyes to adjust as darkness flooded the room. Sometimes it was easier that way, just Jon and Martin and nothing to remind them that anything existed outside of the little space in the dark they’d carved out for themselves.

Jon’s fingers twisted around Martin’s hand in his lap, tracing familiar lines on the paler skin. “Martin.”

There was something in the way he said it, like it was something so fragile that it might break when exposed to air, that reminded Martin of the night on the phone months prior.

I love you I love you I love you I love you

“Jon…”

“Martin, I¬–”

He closed his eyes, hating the feel of Jon’s gaze despite the dark pressing in around them like a weighted blanket. “Don’t. Please.”

Jon’s inhale was less a gasp of surprise and more the sound of a dying man letting go of the last pocket of air in his lungs. It made Martin want to take back words he hadn’t even said yet.

Martin closed his eyes tighter until his eyelids burned red but held on when Jon tried to let go of his hand. He could almost taste the apology that was pooling at the back of Jon’s throat and continued before it could be released.

“Please,” he repeated, softer this time, “not when I can’t–” be sure I’m only speaking to you when I say it back, not when I look at you and still search for traces of him “Not yet.”

They were silent for long enough that Martin almost opened his eyes again, but then Jon gently squeezed his hands.

“Okay,” Jon whispered. “But… you do… you know, right? You know.”

“I know,” Martin confirmed, squeezing back. “Just, come back to me. Please?”

“If it were up to me, I’d never leave you again.”

They both knew he couldn’t promise more than that.

If Martin was owed just one good thing in his life, he hoped it was this.

.

The text that Melanie sent him was simple, just a single fire emoji.

He flicked open the lighter that Jon had pressed into his palm before they’d split up to play their separate parts and let the flame flicker unsteadily for a moment before bringing the first statement up to meet it. The old paper caught quickly, devouring the faded ink with a hunger that fascinated him.

He’d grown to view the statements as being as close to sacred texts as he really got in his life. Either because of the connection that Jon had with them, or because of the Eye’s odd fondness for himself, he almost wanted to flinch away from the flame and protect them.

But another part of him knew that burning them might cause Elias even the slightest bit of discomfort and, God, he really fucking wanted that man to suffer.

He brought another statement up to the flame.

By the time Elias’ aggravating drawl called out from the other side of the door, he had already burned through a third of his stack and the endorphins had well and truly settled in.

“Martin, open the door.”

He could feel the warmth of the fire against his face as he leisurely waved the burning statement around. “Sorry, Elias, I didn’t quite catch that.”

The sound Elias made was closer to a growl than a sigh, heavy with his deep-rooted disappointment. “Really, Martin, I do not have time to deal with your attitude right now.”

“Oh, am I keeping you from important plans?” He lit another statement and grinned at the closed door. “My deepest apologies.”

Elias sighed again, louder than it should have been with the solid door between them. It filled the space up in a way that unnerved Martin. “Okay, then.” Elias said, yielding.

It didn’t feel like a win.

The other side of the door was silent but he could feel that Elias hadn’t left. The Institute was always Watching but suddenly, Martin knew what it meant to have the Eye’s gaze turned his way. It was as if every inch of the room was covered in eyes that had been there the whole time, only now they had Opened.

It was nothing like Jon’s power. Nothing like reading statements in the depths of the Archive late at night. This time the Eye was Looking and Judging and Martin had never realised how lucky he had been standing on the side of the battlefield until he was stuck in No Man’s Land and all Eyes were on him.

“You were right,” Elias said, voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. “Your mother did hate you.”

Okay. Right, he had expected this. He could handle it.

He could handle it.

“It was never because of your father,” he continued, amusement clear in his voice. “Or, it was, but not in the way you’d always imagined. Your father was a terrible person, and a worse husband. But she didn’t hate him for leaving; she hated you for it.

“It was a dream she’d let take over at night, especially those nights when she’d tell you not to come home and finally get a few hours of freedom from you. She imagined that she’d never fallen pregnant, that he’d had no reason to leave. She truly believed that he would have stayed if you hadn’t shown up. And who is say otherwise? Even I can’t see whether or not it would have made a difference to their relationship.”

He could handle it.

“So, what?” Martin cut in, holding another statement up to the flame and pretending that his hand wasn’t shaking as it caught alight. “She hated me. It doesn’t change anything. She’s dead and I don’t even remember what my dad looked like. They don’t mean anything to me anymore.”

Elias hummed from the other side of the door and from the walls and from inside Martin’s head. “But he still does. Funny isn’t it, the things we latch on to. What’s it been now, a decade? That’s a long time for a man whose face you never even got to see properly.”

He could handle it.

He had to.

“Can I tell you a secret, Martin?” Elias’ voice was smug.

Martin hated it. “I have a feeling you’re going to whether I want you to or not.”

“You always were one of the smarter ones.” Elias paused, letting the silence settle back in so he could have his dramatic moment like the fucking prick he was. “He barely even thinks about his soulmate anymore. Why would he? He’s happy and he’s in love and he doesn’t even think about the boy from the roof.”

Objectively, it was good news. He hadn’t ruined Jonny’s life by not doing a better job of finding him. But it also felt like lying down in that old apartment and letting Jane’s worms eat him alive would have hurt less than this.

“But Jon’s soulmate? Oh, he thinks about that missed connection constantly. Sometimes, he misses Jon so much that he forgets how to breathe.”

He had no right to the jealousy that was a tsunami rising in his chest, ready to pull him under.

Jon was his. Jon loved him.

It was easier to pretend that Jon didn’t have someone out there missing him the way he couldn’t help but miss Jonny.

“He would risk almost anything for the chance to see his soulmate again,” Elias continued, well aware of Martin’s spiralling thoughts by his self-satisfied tone. “And you can’t even be sure that you love Jon more than you love the thought of a man you knew for an hour when you were twenty years old.”

He couldn’t handle it.

“I do love Jon,” he insisted, but there was seaweed curled around his heart and the tsunami in his chest wasn’t jealousy, it was shame.

Because Elias was right.

Because he couldn’t finish his sentence without lying to himself and the head of the Institute was in his head so what was the point when they’d both know anyway.

“I love Jon,” he repeated, because that, at least, was the truth.

“No one will ever love Jonathan Sims more than his soulmate. And,” the word wrapped around Martin’s seaweed heart and made it hard to breathe, “there is no one who Jon will ever love more than he loves his soulmate. Without each other, they crumble.”

“Fuck off,” Martin snarled, so vicious that he couldn’t recognise it as his own voice for a moment. The momentum left as soon as it had come and his next words were weak. “Just, fuck off.”

“You know it’s true, Martin. There’s no point in spinning a pretty lie when the truth is so much more painful. You’ve been distracted and the people you claim to care about have been getting the short stick of it. You’ve spent so long looking for Jonny D’Ville that you stopped being able to see what was right in front of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you should have said a proper goodbye to him when he offered you the chance.”

The flame clicked off on the lighter.

The Tsunami pulled him under.

.

Martin paced around the Archives, holding Jon’s phone alongside his own as Tim’s cheery voicemail greeted him for the sixth time.

Martin had tried calling Jon first but had found his partner’s phone tucked into the top drawer of his desk, still on charge where he’d left it. It was reckless and stupid but it was hardly like having his phone tucked into his pocket would have made much difference anyway.

Unless Jon had been kidnapped, again.

He really hoped he wasn’t kidnapped.

On the floor above him, Martin could hear Melanie giving her statement to the cops for the third time. It had been chaos from the moment the police arrested Elias and pulled him out of the Institute in cuffs.

There had been an almost physical shift in the air right before and he didn’t want to overthink it but it had felt too easy after everything, too mundane, to see Elias arrested like he was just a normal person and not… whatever he was. It felt too much like an adult humouring a child and playing along with their silly little games.

Daisy’s phone went straight to voicemail as well.

It didn’t mean anything. No one ever turned their phones off of silent mode anyway.

Elias was just trying to scare him.

Melanie stomped down the stairs to the Archives, her face twisted up into a scowl as she glared down at the phone in her hand. “Something’s wrong. Georgie was supposed to call me as soon as it was over and it’s been hours.”

“I’m sure they¬–” Martin’s phone was ringing.

Georgie’s name was on the screen.

Melanie’s face scrunched up even further. “Answer it.”

He did.

.

The hospital was too cold, the air too artificial from the constant air-conditioning, and it was easy to blame the way his breath caught in his throat on that instead of the memories.

His mother had died slowly, days and days and days of just sitting around and waiting for that last exhale and being helpless to stop it from coming.

It was safe to say that hospitals weren’t his favourite places, but Georgie had told them to come and so they had.

She hadn’t told them anything else.

At the reception desk, they were asked who they’re there to see. He didn’t know how to answer so he stepped back and let Melanie try to bully the receptionist into telling them if any of their friends had been admitted recently.

It didn’t mean anything, the shit Elias had said about saying goodbye.

It couldn’t.

A flash of a familiar Hijab caught his eye and he latched onto Melanie’s arm, pulling her away from the receptionist mid yell.

Basira drifted down the corridor like she was caught up in a riptide, migrating from one side of the hall to the other without any true sense of direction. When Martin caught up and reached for her shoulder, she didn’t even startle.

Her eyes stared back at him, completely dull.

He didn’t ask her where Daisy was. He didn’t have to. He hadn’t seen the two parted since that first day of interviews in the Institute after Leitner’s death.

He pushed down his guilt and asked, whisper-soft to lessen the blow, “do you know where Jon is?”

Her face didn’t crumble the way most would recognise, but Basira was an Archival Assistant now and the past couple months working together had allowed him to read her better than most. Slowly, like every movement took something away from her that would be impossible to recover, she nodded.

“Room, 305. Georgie stayed with him.”

Martin nodded his thanks and squeezed her shoulder once in what he hoped was a comforting way before stepping away.

Melanie held up a finger to halt him and stepped close to the other woman. With gentle movements, she reached up and tucked a strand of Basira’s hair back into her Hijab.

Basira’s fingers came up and touched Melanie’s for a second in silent thanks.

.

Georgie was slumped in one of the seats outside room 305, her face covered by her hands and her long curls. Melanie bumped into his shoulder in her rush to get to her soulmate. She dropped to her knees, peeled Georgie’s hands away and replaced them with her own.

Georgie stared down at her with such a broken, relieved expression that Martin almost looked away. But Jon wasn’t with her and he needed to know why.

“Hey,” Melanie murmured, voice so much softer than he had ever heard it before. “I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re okay?”

“Nothing is okay.” Georgie cracked further, eyes darting across to the room in front of them, over to Martin, back to the room again.

“I know. But,” Melanie pulled her focus back, “you’re okay?”

Georgie reached out to cover Melanie’s hands on her own face. “I’m okay.”

“God, baby.” Melanie sat up a bit taller on her knees to press her face into the mess of dark curls spilling across Georgie’s shoulders. “I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t there with you for- for…”

“What happened?” Martin asked, his voice seeming to snap Georgie out of her thoughts. “Where’s… Did you stop it? The Unknowing.”

“I don’t even know. I think so, I hope so. There was so much¬– and then they were melting and, and–”

Melanie cut off her frantic words before Georgie could work herself back into a panic attack. “Hey, hey. Baby, breathe. Breathe for me, yeah?”

Georgie closed her eyes and Martin gave her the minute to catch her breath.

The door to the room before them had a little window, but it was covered up. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to see what was inside, not without first knowing what had happened.

It was such a simple thing, one slab of wood and a little bit of glass separating him from Jon. If he didn’t go inside, he could pretend for a moment longer that Jon was fine.

“Okay, sorry.” Georgie said, calmer. She leaned against Melanie and gave Martin a weak smile. “I don’t know the whole story. I was outside for the first part, on watch like we agreed, and it sounded like it was going well. But then, then I don’t know what happened but everything was on fire. Too much fire. I think, I think they knew we were coming.”

“We saw Basira,” Melanie, murmurs. “Is Daisy…”

Georgie shook her head. “We couldn’t find a body but the fire was so hot and there were so many bodies, and–” Georgie let out a half hysteric laugh “turns out they do use more than just the skin when they make their wax bodies because, god, there were so many corpses, or, or partial corpses–” Georgie closed her eyes and took another breath, calming herself down a little. “We couldn’t find a body but she couldn’t have survived it. Basira said that she, she Knows somehow that Daisy never left the building.”

Detective Tonner – Daisy – was dead.

Okay, that was… something he was going to repress until he had time to fully process it. But he had basically already known that, just from the lost look in Basira’s eyes.

He looked back at the door as he spoke. “Tell me why we’re here, Georgie.”

“It’s difficult to explain and I don’t want to freak you out more than necessary.”

“Is Jon alive?”

“That’s, uh, that’s the difficult part?”

He turned back to the women and frowned, reaching up to tug at his own curls. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Sit down, Martin.”

He did, slumping heavily into the chair directly next to Georgie as Melanie stayed on the floor. “Explain, please.”

“Did Jon ever mention the whole, transforming into something, I don’t know, bigger, stronger, thing to you?” Georgie started, continuing when Martin nodded along. “Right, well, I think this is to do with that. Like a cocoon. He’s butterflying.”

“Georgie,” Martin urged, utterly exhausted even without her nervous rambling. “Just say it.”

“He’s in a coma.”

Martin’s word narrowed down to the tiny square window on the door across from him. It felt like he could remove the blind covering it by force of will alone if he tried hard enough.

Elias was right. He hadn’t taken the chance and now he never could.

He stood and crossed the hall without thinking, and before he could process it his fingers twisted the handle and he was in the room, staring at the figure in the hospital bed.

Jon looked so small, dressed in the hospital gown with his hair spread out across the pillow like a renaissance painting. He grabbed his hand, sandwiching it between his own and holding tight.

It wasn’t fair. He’d barely gotten Jon back. It was as if they were cursed to this yo-yo existence, meeting for a fleeting moment only to be pulled even further away from each other with every new swing.

It took longer than it should have for him to realise that something was missing, because everything was missing, Jon was missing, nothing mattered in comparison.

Except, “He doesn’t have a pulse. Why doesn’t he have a pulse?”

Georgie sighed from behind him. “That’s the difficult part. He doesn’t have a heartbeat. Technically, he should be dead, but he’s not. The doctors don’t have an explanation.”

He was going to throw up.

He’d only ever asked for one thing from the universe and apparently it wasn’t willing to let him have it.

Except, that’s not true is it, Martin? It was never just Jon you asked for, was it?

The voice in his head sounded too much like Elias’ to push away the way he was used to with his own intrusive thoughts.

“So, that’s it? After everything, this is how it ends? We do everything we can and Jon fucking dies anyway.” He laughed, a bitter, humourless thing that got caught in his throat.

“Not dying,” Basira said, startling the three living people in the room from her place at the doorway. “Becoming.”

“How do you know?” Melanie asked, peering over at Jon’s still figure.

“Jon is becoming part of the Eye. You must feel it too, even with your other attachments, you’re Archival Assistants.” She said it as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

Martin could feel it, distantly, if he focused particularly hard. The part of him that seemed to wake up when he was reading statements, the part that Knew which ones would need to be recorded on tape and which could be thrown away.

That part of him was thrilled with Jon’s coma, Jon’s Becoming, even if the rest of him wanted to scream.

But it was such a small part, as if the rest of him was waiting for something more fitting to come along and fill it.

Basira had taken to working under the Eye so much better than any of them ever had, aside from maybe Sasha. He trusted her.

“You’re sure? He’ll be okay?”

“He’ll be the Archivist,” Basira replied, as if that was reassuring.

He hated that it sort of was.

He dropped down into the seat next to Jon’s bed and pressed his lips to cold fingers, holding on tight and ignoring the unnerving stillness. Jon would wake up. He hadn’t missed his chance. There would be no goodbye, missed or otherwise.

He glanced around the room, finally noticing what else was missing.

“Where’s Tim?”

.

The fog crept across the stark white room like steam fogging up a mirror. He could feel it pressing against his skin, breathed it into his lungs and let it sit there for a moment too long before exhaling. It clung to him like condensation and settled over his skin.

He’d felt it at the edge of his consciousness for weeks, but he’d suspected that the Flesh’s attempted attack on the Institute the day prior would push it into action.

He pressed his lips to Jon’s limp hand and placed it gently back on the bed, where it had sat motionless for the past three months.

“Peter Lukas,” Martin murmured, letting the fog dance between his fingers.

“Martin Blackwood,” Peter replied, stepping through the fog as easily as Helen stepped through her doors. “We haven’t officially met.”

“And yet, I know enough about you to know I should tell you to leave.”

“Are you going to?”

Martin breathed the fog in again, feeling it in his lungs – feeling it and nothing else – even after he exhaled. “No.”

“Good boy.”

.

“You’re pretty easy to talk to,” Martin admitted. “I haven’t told anyone the stuff about my mum.”

Jonny grinned at him, an almost manic smile. “It’s cause I’m not real.”

“Excuse me?”

“Me, Jonny D’ville,” Jonny gestured down his body, the action a bit distorted by their position flat on the ground, “I’m a figment of your imagination.”

Martin laughed and nudged Jonny with his shoulder. “Piss off.”

Jonny laughed and leaned in closer to Martin with a sigh. “You’re right, though. Talking is easier as Jonny. I’m going to miss him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tonight is Jonny D’ville’s last day. Tomorrow, we mourn his long and adventurous life.”

Martin sat up. “You’re not thinking of doing anything… unwise, are you?”

“Relax.” Jonny sat up and turned to face him. “I’m not planning to off myself. I told you, even immortal space pirates die eventually. Tonight was the last ever Mechs concert.”

“Oh.” Martin couldn’t contain the rush of sorrow that seeped through his body. “Too bad. I think I quite liked him.”

Jonny’s eyes lingered on him a way that was unfamiliar to Martin. “He quite liked you too.”

Martin blushed, feeling the warmth travel across his cheeks and caress the tips of his ears. He was suddenly aware of just how close Jonny and he were. And just how empty the roof was.

“So, uh, your grandmother. Does she know about,” Martin gestured to Jonny’s outfit, the dark lines of eyeliner stretching away from his eyes like lightning strikes, “this?”

Jonny laughed and brushed away a lock of frizzy hair from his face. “God, no. Hardly anyone knows who I am outside the band members.”

“Why?”

“I’m,” Jonny blushed, the colour spreading slowly across his dark skin, “people don’t like me as much without all the makeup and the pizzazz. They don’t like the real me very much.”

Jonny looked out across the vacant parking lot. His hair looked almost silver in the glow of the streetlight and his eyelashes curled against his cheeks.

Martin wanted to know him, the real him. He wanted that very much.

Jonny frowned. “I’m scared I’ll spend my whole life being looked at and not seen.”

Jonny’s eyes flickered back to him and Martin forced himself not to look away.

“I see you,” Martin said, brave for perhaps the first time in this life.

.

Martin hated being watched, even before he stepped into the Institute that first day and suddenly felt suffocated by the feeling of eyes on him. It was a combination of growing up with a strict parent and an unhealthy dose of anxiety.

Add being queer to that and it bred paranoia like mosquitoes in a backyard pool.

He’d never quite fit in with the other Archival Assistants, never quite accepted the heavy gaze of the Eye as something comforting rather than threatening.

The Eye had Seen him and come away wanting and it had made him want to peel his own skin off to remove the feeling of eyes and judgement.

But not from Jon, never from Jon. Jon had Seen him and Understood.

The Lonely felt like stepping into a climate-controlled house after a long day out in the humid, summer air. It felt like coming home.

He hated how easy it was to settle there.

It had only taken him a month to learn how to use the Lonely like a weighted blanket, wrapping it around himself and disappearing into the perpetual fog that lined the halls of the Institute. It wasn’t the same as what Peter could do, he wasn’t controlling the Lonely so much as using it as a shortcut, but Peter told him he was a natural, that he’d get to that point if he wanted to.

The traces of the Lonely that Peter brought along with him didn’t reach the hospital. He knew that if he wanted to he could probably pull it along with him as he travelled, shape it into whatever he wanted it to be, and make it reach the room with the silent, motionless figure he loved.

He didn’t.

The Archive was different without Sasha there to offer him a smile. Without Tim making snarky comments across his desk. Without Jon’s comforting voice creeping out from under the door of his office as he made a statement.

Even Daisy’s absence was stark in the quiet room.

Melanie was sprawled out across the couch in the corner, not even pretending to work on anything Archive related as she typed away on her phone.

Basira was set up at Sasha’s old desk, piles of statements neatly stacked around her as if there were any point in doing actual work.

Neither of them noticed Martin, shrouded in fog in the corner.

He wondered if the Archive itself noticed the difference, if it felt the same way when he and Jon and Tim and Sasha had replaced Gertrude and her Assistants.

He wondered if it felt a little like being left home alone at a friend’s house, that unnerving feeling of displacement lingering under your skin until your friend returned.

Except, the new assistants – Basira, at least – had always seemed to fit in better than he ever had. He had seen her on her first day working there, seen her tense at the feeling of being known that he was intimately familiar with at that point, and then relax. As if it were a comfort.

He didn’t understand it then.

He got it now, with the Lonely wrapped around his skin like a lover.

.

Jon woke up on a Tuesday.

Martin wasn’t there to see it.

.

“He’s looking for you,” Peter said, eyes still focused on the screen of his laptop.

Martin hummed, idly flipping through a book he’d nicked off of Peter’s – Elias’ – bookshelf. He wasn’t reading it, in the same way that he knew Peter wasn’t actually doing anything productive on his laptop.

“Are you going to go and see him?”

“That would be a little counterproductive to my current plans of keeping him away from all this shit,” Martin drawled.

The only other noise in the room was the rustle of the page turning in his hands. He could feel Peter’s eyes on him from across the room, not heavy like Elias’ always were, but persistent.

“Don’t you miss him, Martin?”

He snapped the book closed but didn’t look up from its place in his lap, breathing in slowly and holding the breath in his lungs for a long moment before exhaling. “Don’t you?”

He didn’t mean Jon.

The relationship between Peter and Elias was simultaneously a shock and not surprising in the slightest. It made sense in a twisted sense because of course, of course, even those fucking monsters got to have their soulmates close to them.

He hated that he envied them, that they had everything he had ever wanted, that they seemed to spend half the time trying to kill each other and the other half in the sort of domestic bliss that he dreamed of.

Of course, there was the whole issue of Elias currently being locked in a maximum-security prison, but something as simple as that was never going to be a problem for someone like Peter.

“Yes, I do,” Peter replied easily. “You know, being an Avatar of the Lonely doesn’t mean you have to be alone, Martin.”

“Good thing I’m not an Avatar then, huh?” He set the book down and looked towards Peter.

Peter wasn’t even attempting to hide the way he was watching Martin. “You could be, if you wanted to.”

Martin wanted to argue back, to remind Peter that he didn’t care if he would make a good Avatar or not because he wasn’t interested. But exhaustion had been tugging at his bones for six months, weighting them down like they were slowly being replaced with concrete.

He didn’t have the energy in him to lie.

He sighed, running his hands through his hair, curls limp and ashy in the harsh lighting. “I know.”

Martin hated the smug glint in Peter’s eyes.

“Why do you even care?” Martin asked, giving up all pretence of ignoring the older man. “Shouldn’t you be encouraging me away from Jon? God knows Elias never wanted me around his precious Archivist.”

Peter hummed, an echo of Martin’s earlier response, and folded the laptop closed.

“I understand why. The Eye and the Lonely, well they really aren’t supposed to work together. It’s hard to feel alone if you’re constantly watched, and it's hard to know everything about someone who is barely there. But it’s different for us, for those who are destined to be together. For Elias and myself, it isn’t a contradiction, it’s an enhancement. I can’t say exactly how it works for the Eye, but for the Lonely, when they’re combined… Imagine you have someone who is so stripped bare to the world, who is Known but never truly Seen. The loneliness is compounded, twisted in on itself. It’s a wonderful thing.” Peter was a man half made of fog, lost in the fantasy of the perfect victim, but he stepped back towards the real world at Martin’s cleared throat. “But when two different Avatars aren’t soulmates, it dampens their powers rather than amplifies them. At least, that’s what Elias believes.”

“And you?” Martin asked, hesitant.

Peter’s smile turned rotten. “You can love Jon to your heart’s content. I know that no matter what you do, you will never be able to fully scrub the taste of Jonny D’ville from your tongue. And one day, Jon will know that as well.”

I hate you, He wanted to say. You’re a manipulative piece of shit, Peter Lukas.

But hatred was an emotion that felt too heavy for his weary bones to carry.

Martin sighed.

His breath came out like a puff of fog.

.

Martin wasn’t sure which day of the week it was.

He wasn’t sure that it even mattered anymore.

His lungs filled with air that tasted like salt.

.

The stars were half clouded over by the usual London fog, but he knew that they were still there. The same stars as yesterday, as last week, as a decade ago.

It was a comfort, knowing that it was just him that was different.

He let his legs dangle over the side of the Institute’s roof and pretended that the mist that came with his exhale was as result of the chilly night air.

He wondered if rooftops reminded Jonny of him.

Maybe it was just because that’s all they’d ever had, that rooftop, the same stars, but rooftops would forever belong to Jonny D’ville. It didn’t matter that he’d been on that exact rooftop more times with Jonathan Sims than he’d ever been on any rooftops with his soulmate, Jonny had them copyrighted in his mind.

He wondered about Jonny a lot, since the Unknowing, since the Coma, since meeting Peter.

Elias had said he was happy, in love.

At the time he hadn’t been okay with it. Why would he be? That was his soulmate, the one person that was fated to be perfect for him, and he’d gone off and found his happily ever after with someone else.

But then… God, then Jon hadn’t answered his phone and the plan had gone to shit and he was alive but Not and Martin didn’t give a single fuck about Jonny D’ville when Jon’s hands were cold and limp between his own.

Jonathan Sims was it for him, soulmate or not.

He leaned until his back was flat against the dirty concrete roof. Up there, he could almost forget about the shitshow that was his life. It was just him and the stars and the ghost he was slowly letting go.

The door to the roof was loud in the quiet night air as it swung open.

Martin twisted around to see Jon step out, muttering to himself and tugging at his hair. It had grown longer in the six months he’d been in the coma, and he hadn’t bothered to cut it in the three months he’d been awake. It was greyer too, pale strands woven through the black like starlight.

Martin loved him so much it felt like the fog in his lungs was suffocating him.

Jon paced the perimeter of the roof twice, still muttering under his breath and progressively making his hair messier until it had fallen out of the half-bun entirely. Each time that he got to the part of the roof where Martin was still lying on his back, feet dangling off the edge, he unconsciously detoured around him.

The third time Jon made his way around the roof, he stopped right as he went to step around Martin, and sat instead. He mirrored Martin’s original position, feet dangling from the edge of the roof as he sat.

Martin watched from his position on the floor as Jon pulled out a cigarette and lit it with that damn spiderweb lighter. They sat there in silence as Jon slowly puffed his way through the cigarette and then a second one. He left the butts beside him on the roof and sighed into the open air.

Jon closed his eyes and laid down beside Martin, so close that if Martin was real, was a living solid person and not just an exhale lost in the night fog, they would almost be touching.

Jon looked tired, the kind of tired that flowed through Martin’s veins in place of blood nowadays. But he also looked like Jon, like the man that Martin had spent so many nights – not enough nights, never enough time – laying beside just like this in the bed they shared.

It hurt so much more than avoiding him ever had.

“Have you ever lost something really important, and all you really know is the places it absolutely cannot be?” Jon said whisper soft. “That’s what it feels like, only More.”

Martin didn’t answer, could not answer, because he didn’t exist and Jon was not speaking to him.

“I figured it out, though. When I’m Looking, there are spaces that I can’t See. Or, no. I can See them, but they’re so incredibly empty that the logical thing would be to look elsewhere.” Jon turned his head and opened his eyes, so impossibly close to Martin that his next words were breathed out against his lips. “Right now, this is the emptiest space in the whole fucking world, Martin.”

Hysteria bubbled up in Martin’s chest, threatening to slip out of his mouth.

Jon was there, Jon saw him, Jon had been looking since he’d woken up.

He loved Jon so much it hurt to breathe.

He stayed silent and hoped Jon would leave while he still could.

“Please,” Jon whispered, voice hoarse. “Please, Martin. I’ll stop looking, I promise. Just please, I need to know you’re here.”

Jon was looking right through him, trying to See him so hard that his face scrunched up the way that it did when he was trying to find the link between two different statements.

Martin took hold of the fog and wrapped it a little tighter around himself. Then, against his better judgement, he breathed out and let a single puff of that fog escape. It could almost have been brushed aside as a natural fog lingering in the cold air of the roof, except for the way it twined around Jon’s fingers when he held them out, like a cat seeking out attention.

Jon let out a laugh that was equal parts exhilaration and devastation.

“Martin.” Jon had a way of saying his name that was indescribable. Like it was a delicate, tender thing in his mouth as he formed the syllables. There was a difference in the way he said it sometimes, when he was saying Martin’s name but meaning something else. The same way some people called their partners Baby, Jon sometimes looked at him and said his name like it was the most important thing in the entire world.

He hadn’t heard it said like that in nine months.

“God, Martin. You have no idea how much I miss you,” Jon said, still playing with the fog. “Or, maybe you do. I’m so sorry that you had to go through the aftermath of the Unknowing on your own. Losing me, losing Tim, dealing with whatever bullshit that Elias said to you when we sent you off to him like a human sacrifice. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

He stayed silent, watching Jon watch the fog. He didn’t defend Jon’s choices, remind him that it had been Martin’s idea to be the bait for Elias, promise that he didn’t blame Jon for dying.

Instead, he soaked up the sight of Jon, so close that he could almost feel his warmth even through the layers of fog.

Jon sighed and dropped his hand down into the space between them. “I don’t blame you, for leaving, for joining him. I,” Jon closed his eyes for a moment before he continued, “I’ve never said this out loud before, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to understand, but it’s you.”

Jon turned his head back towards him and opened his eyes. “I used to think that Gertrude and Elias were heartless because of how they spoke of acceptable losses. I used to think that even one loss was unacceptable. And then… then we lost Sasha and it took us so long to even know. And now, Tim and Daisy are gone too. And I get it. Acceptable losses. Because I can live with those deaths, even if they’ll haunt me until the day I die. But I cannot accept losing you, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin’s cheeks were damp with silent tears when Jon reached across and pressed his fingers to the space where he laid. It took every last bit of his energy to remain incorporeal, to ensure that Jon’s hand met only air.

Jon didn’t pull away, even though Martin had given him nothing of himself aside from a wisp of fog. “I understand that you think you’re helping me, taking on the burden of the Lonely so I don’t have to face it personally. I’m sure Peter is very encouraging. And maybe it’s also a little bit easier, not existing right now and that’s okay as well. But Martin, Martin, you are never going to be an acceptable loss to me. I need you to know that.”

Martin cried against Jon’s hand, silent and invisible and lost.

He left before Jon could leave him, slipping out of Jon’s embrace and into the arms of the Lonely.

Jon had been right, about him taking on the burden of the Lonely so that the Archivist wouldn’t have to. But it was more than that.

Martin couldn’t be an unacceptable loss to Jon, not when he hadn’t even loved him enough to choose him over Jonny. Not when his distraction had led to Jon’s death nine months ago.

Not when Jon’s true soulmate was somewhere out there, yearning for him, with the ability to amplify Jon’s power, maybe even enough to stop Elias.

Jonathan Sims was it for him, but he could never be it for Jon.

Jon had never been his to have.

.

May slipped into June into July.

Martin used to be scared of ghosts.

It was almost funny, in retrospect.

.

As opposed to what people probably assumed, Martin didn’t actually live at the Institute or in the Lonely. The upper Institute wasn’t quite as cosy as the little document storage room he’d basically co-habited with Jon during Prentiss’ initial attacks and the people who actually lived in the Lonely full time weren’t the sort of people who got to leave it so both options were out.

Even Peter had an apartment across town that he stayed in when not at the Institute. A swanky place that had been bought with the names Peter Lukas and Elias Bouchard both printed on the deed.

They owned half the apartment complex, actually. Which was how he’d ended up staying in an apartment a few floors down from Peter. He’d kept his and Jon’s original apartment as well and still transferred half of his pay cheque across to pay for the weekly rent despite the fact that neither of them had lived there for almost a year.

Peter paid him better than Elias ever had, so picking up Jon’s half while he’d been in the coma had been easy and then he’d never stopped.

It helped that the new apartment was included with the new position and Peter had set up an automatic grocery service on his tab.

He liked having the old apartment for sentimental reasons, even if he knew that Jon wouldn’t move back in without him. It wasn’t as if Martin was out spending any of the extra money on a social life, anyway.

It had been a very long time since he’d lived alone – properly alone, not the sort of alone that he’d been lingering in for the past few years while Jon had been too busy on the run or kidnapped or in America or dead. He’d been alone, but he’d been surrounded by reminders of Jon, two toothbrushes in the bathroom, Jon’s clothes intermingled with his own in the wardrobe, Jon’s favourite tea in the kitchen cupboard.

Even back when he’d been staying in the hotel and Jon had been hiding out at Georgie’s, there had been constant reminders of Jon.

The new apartment, Peter’s apartment, held no trace of the man he loved.

Peter had insisted on buying him all new clothes, already hung up in the wardrobe the first time Martin entered the apartment. Even his soap was a different brand to the type that he and Jon had shared.

It was better that way.

Safer.

Lonelier.

The only thing he’d brought over from his and Jon’s apartment was the t-shirt that Jon had left with him at the hotel, the curling letters of The Mechanisms faded across the front.

He bundled it up and carefully hid it at the back of his sock drawer so he wouldn’t have to figure out if it reminded him of Jon or Jonny.

He didn’t take it out and breathe in the phantom scent on nights where sleep evaded him. Didn’t try to figure out which man cigarettes and night air belonged to more.

But it was a close thing.

Instead, he pressed his nose into his pillow and inhaled the alien scent of someone else’s fabric softener.

It was ironic, really. He spent so much of his life in a daze, barely even awake, so exhausted that it was difficult to breathe, and yet sleep felt as unattainable as Jonny did.

He turned onto his back, traced the unfamiliar designs of the crown moulding with his eyes and ignored the deep ache in his bones as he gave up on the suggestion of a good night’s sleep.

His apartment was six floors below Peter’s, but if he concentrated, he could almost sense the older man. He’d always felt oddly attuned to him, from the first moment that Peter Lukas had stepped into Jon’s hospital room and held his hand out in an offer of More.

It was different to Elias Bouchard, whose presence had left a grimy sensation on his skin, no matter how far Martin was from the Institute.

Peter and Elias were two sides of the same coin, but he knew which side he was betting on every time.

Reluctantly, he dragged himself out of the bed and changed into something more appropriate for the day ahead. Long gone were the brightly coloured sweater vests that he’d worn daily during his first few years at the Institute. Instead, Peter had bought him washed out baby blues and creams and the occasional apricot sweater, as faded and lifeless as his curls and his timer.

He let his fingers search out the piece of black fabric at the back of his sock drawer for just a moment before closing it and pulling his shoes and socks on.

He took the stairs, drifting down towards the ground floor one step at a time. He moved between the fog of the lonely and the florescence of the real world with every new flight. It was a comfort, slipping back and forth between the two worlds, knowing that he had the power to come and go as he pleased.

It had scared him at first, but fear was numbed alongside all of his other emotions.

Half of the apartments in the building were purposefully vacant, but he was still glad to find the staircase blissfully empty. The bliss lasted until he stepped out of the lobby and breathed in the crisp night air.

Slumped at the side of the building, curled up so tightly that he almost missed her, was a woman he knew lived a couple of floors below him. She was wrapped in a jacket that was far too thin for the temperature and her mess of blonde hair did little to hide the tear tracks staining her cheeks.

She startled when she noticed Martin, stepping closer to the light spilling out from the lobby entrance with a tight smile.

Martin smiled back, a pitiful thing.

He’d seen her and her boyfriend, partner, husband, whatever, fighting in the lobby and the courtyard and the elevator more than a few times since he’d moved in eight months prior and could guess why she was outside at well past midnight, crying in the dark.

“Sorry, I must look a mess,” she said, awkwardly attempting to laugh off the situation. When she reached up to wipe at her cheeks, there were bruises ringing her wrist like a bracelet. “You’re the new guy, right? Or, not new new but the newest in a while. It’s not often we get new people around here.”

He knew the right thing to do in the situation. He knew that he should give her his sweater, maybe bring her back to his apartment for a cup of tea and an offer of respite there if she ever wanted it. He should tell her that there are people she can call, that it gets better. He could even share some of his own stories of being stuck outside in his youth on the nights his mother was particularly angry.

But he also knew that look in her eye, knew that nothing he said would stop her from going back up to that apartment and letting that man whisper fake apologies and repeat his actions the following day and week and year.

It was so easy to grab hold of the misty night air, already curled around her like a blanket, and pull it over her head.

She met his eyes as she was dragged under and it wasn’t the ocean he could smell, but the scent of rain and fresh tea and ink on paper.

He was alone in the street outside of his apartment.

.

Peter answered the door before he could knock, looking as put together as always.

“How do you feel?”

“Awake,” Martin answered.

“Come inside.” Peter stepped away from the door and ushered him in.

For the first time in longer than he could remember, Martin felt good.

He wanted to hate it.

He didn’t.

.

It took two weeks for the heavy blanket of the Lonely to settle back over Martin’s shoulders.

Peter liked to remind him that he could stop it if he wanted, but he’d taken to ignoring Peter whenever possible. It was easier to drift through the Institute like a ghost, slipping between the different departments and waiting for something, anything to catch his interest.

Most days nothing did.

He avoided the Archive, even when the rumours bubbled through the other departments of the return of the missing cop, the angry one that half of the Institute was afraid of.

He leaned across the desk of the girl from Artifact Storage who’d replaced Sasha when she’d made the move to the Archive all those years ago. She shivered but continued her typing.

Smart girl, perhaps she’d make it in the Institute after all.

Her co-worker walked into the room with a grin and she glanced at him twice before closing her laptop and giving him her full attention. “Okay, spill.”

He wriggled his eyebrows in a way that cut straight through to Martin’s heart, having seen an identical expression hundreds of times when Tim had gossip to share.

“Okay,” Not-Tim-But-Close said, “you know the guy from downstairs, tiny, long hair, always looks ready to fucking pass out?”

“Yeah, the serial killer guy. What’s he doing now?” Almost-Sasha replied.

“He’s up at Mr Lukas’ office screaming at him. You can hear it all the way down on the third floor. Something about his new assistant.”

Martin left without hearing her response, stepping further into the fog and exiting in the hallway outside Peter’s office to find Jon slamming the door closed behind him.

Jon startled to a stop, eyes wide and bloodshot. There was something different about him, a little too unhinged for his usual brand of ‘overworked and out of his depth’. He reached out to Martin and then immediately dropped his hand back down to his side. “Martin.”

“Jon,” he replied, voice barely above a whisper.

There must have been something in Martin’s eyes because Jon reached out and held his hands close enough to Martin’s own that he could feel the phantom touch against his skin. “Stay, please.”

Being around Jon made him feel alive in the same way that he had two weeks prior.

He still should have said no.

“Just for a moment,” Martin compromised.

Jon exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since the last time Martin had spoken to him, almost a year ago in the quiet before the storm of the Unknowing.

Martin understood the feeling.

“We, uh, we got Daisy back a couple of weeks ago.”

It didn’t really make a difference to him. Daisy had never been one of his people, but Jon seemed glad to have her back.

A selfish part of him wondered what made her any more deserving than Sasha, than Tim. What gave her the right to live when they hadn’t?

He almost wanted to drag her into the Lonely out of spite.

But as quickly as his anger had come, it was gone and he was left hollow boned once more.

“You were yelling at Peter,” Martin stated, eyes darting back to the office behind them.

Jon followed his gaze and stepped away from the door, leading Martin silently down the hall as if that would make a difference. As if the Eye and the Lonely weren’t already seeped into their blood.

“I got a statement last week, some prick from across town. Says his girlfriend left to get some fresh air and never came back. Peter Lukas owns the building they live in,” Jon explained.

He knew that the frantic glint in Jon’s eyes meant that he wasn’t telling the whole truth because he was afraid of what he might learn. “Peter didn’t take her into the Lonely.”

“He has before, so many people.”

He hummed in agreement but shook his head. “But not this one.”

Jon looked at Martin like he was afraid he might never see him again. “No, not this one.”

Martin watched him back, categorised the way his hair was threaded with an impossible amount of grey for his age, the familiar exhaustion in the slump of his shoulders, the way he was still the most beautiful man he’d ever known. “Do you hate me?”

“I could never hate you, Martin Blackwood.” Jon sounded like the words were ripped out from deep in his body, sinew and blood and More still clinging onto them.

He wanted to take them into his own body, let them assimilate under his skin so that a part of Jon was with him always. “Even now?”

“Even now,” Jon promised, so sincere that it hurt.

“It would be easier if you did,” he admitted.

Jon laughed, deep and bitter and broken. Martin wanted to pull him close and never let him go, to pretend that they weren’t the two men they were, that the one simple, good thing in his life could have stayed that way.

Jon reached out to him again, daring to get a step closer this time, fingertips so close that Martin didn’t have to imagine the warmth radiating from Jon’s skin.

He stepped away.

“You don’t have to do this, Martin,” Jon whispered, fingers still outstretched like pulling them back might kill him. “Please come back, come home.”

The timer on Jon’s arm was the exact same yellow as the first rays of sunshine that cut through the misty morning fog every day. He imagined it a decade ago, how it must have shone golden and bright and warm in a way that nothing else in Martin’s life ever had - except for the stars on that rooftop, the way his eyes lit up, his laughter drifting out into the universe – and he resisted the urge to reach out and touch it. He’d touched Jon thousands of times, but never there, never intentionally just to trace the faded zeroes on his skin.

It had never been within his rights to touch that part of Jon that belonged to someone else, no matter what they promised each other.

He caught Jon’s gaze, pulled it down to his exposed soul mark and back up to Martin’s face. “I can’t, Jon. I can’t keep paying rent in someone else’s home. It’s time…” He fought back the need to close his eyes and take a breath, lest it be even more obvious how much he didn’t want to do this, to give this up. “It’s time you go out and find the person who belongs there.”

“Martin,” Jon said, breathless, voice aching with confusion, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

He stepped closer again, and Martin moved back and found the wall a solid weight behind him, trapping him in, exposed to Jon’s searching eyes.

He welcomed the fog of the Lonely as it swept over him, stepping effortlessly between the hallway and Peter’s office.

He ignored the satisfied glint in the older man’s eyes.

.

Martin had never been to Georgie’s house, but it was sort of exactly the place he’d expected her to live in. A pretty little place, all brick walls and literal white picket fences. Half hidden behind fruit trees and flowering bushes, it was as if someone had picked up a cottage from the middle of a forest and dumped it at the edge of London.

It felt like a safe haven.

He was so glad that Jon had this place to take refuge in.

But he wasn’t looking for Jon.

He knocked twice and Georgie carefully, cautiously, opened the door enough to peek out. Relief dashed across her face, followed promptly by confusion.

“Jon isn’t here, he moved into a hotel when he woke up,” she explained, still holding the door mostly closed. “I know he left the address on a sticky note on your desk.”

He had. Martin had thrown it out without reading it, not needing the extra information to linger in his mind, tempting him.

“I’m not here for Jon.”

Georgie scoffed, quiet but obvious and, yeah, he deserved that.

“I heard about Melanie. I just wanted–”

“No,” Georgie practically growled, the most fight he’d seen from her since he’d met her. Gone was the sweet girl that brought sandwiches to their end of the world planning meetings. “You can’t have her.”

Martin jolted back like she’d reached forward and pushed him. “I’m not, I wouldn’t, I just want to talk to her, I…”

“No,” Georgie repeated, pushing the door closer to closed.

“Let him in,” Melanie called, voice distorted from somewhere deeper into the house. “Baby, let him in.”

Georgie hesitated.

“I’m here as a friend, I promise.”

Georgie ushered him inside, pulling the door firmly closed behind them and setting the deadlock in place. It wouldn’t stop him from coming or going, much less anything that actually wished to cause them harm, but he let her retain her sense of security, however false it was.

She led him through to a small, warm bedroom at the back of the house.

Melanie looked tiny, half hidden amongst the bulk of blankets and pillows. The pyjama shirt she wore was too big on her, hanging well past her wrists, a well-loved baby pink that contrasted with everything he had ever known about her. She cradled a mug of something warm and fragrant in her palms.

She brought the drink up to her face, not to sip, just to inhale the scent.

He was staring, but it wasn’t as if she could tell so he didn’t bother averting his eyes.

The bandages covered most of her face, stretching down from her forehead to just above her nostrils. Already, he could see spots of discolouration forming where fresh blood was seeping through. He didn’t want to know what it must look like behind the layers of protection. He didn’t really need to guess.

Peter had been thorough in his description of what had happened. Of what she had done.

Martin didn’t want to think about it.

But he was.

“Is that what we are, Martin?” Melanie asked, setting her drink back down in her lap and facing his direction.

“Pardon?”

“Friends? Is that what we are?”

“I’m not sure, I suppose so. It’s,” Martin shrugged and shuffled on the spot awkwardly, “certainly not the most common way of making friends ¬– trying to save the world and sending your psychopathic boss away for tax fraud – but what do we know of normal anyways?”

Melanie sighed and leaned back against the pillows, but she didn’t tell him to leave. “Yeah, okay. Friends.”

He could feel Georgie’s overprotective stance just behind him, caging him into the room as if that would do anything to stop him from dragging Melanie into the Lonely if he wanted to. But you don’t put friends into hellscapes, and he and Melanie were friends, apparently.

“Was it worth it? Did it… Did it…” He asked, desperation heady on his tongue as he watched the bandages shift with her movements.

“It worked. It’s, hard to explain, but for the first time in fucking years, it’s like I’m finally alone.” She reached up as if to rub at her eyes, but dropped her hand before she made contact. “I would do it again, Martin. But I don’t think it would work the same way with Jon. It’s not like cutting off a finger, like Elias said, Jon is something more vital than that.”

He wasn’t sure if he had wanted to hear her say that, or to hear the opposite. It didn’t matter either way, there was no easy way out for him and he already knew that Jon’s way out came with more power, not the absence of it. But he needed to hear it for it to become real.

“Are you happy, with Georgie?” He hadn’t really meant to ask it, the words had dripped out of his mouth before he could swallow them back.

“Excuse me?” Georgie asked, behind him, indignation lacing her tone.

Melanie stayed facing his direction, as if she had anything to see him with behind the bandages. “I am.”

“What’s it like?”

He refused to think of Jonny, refused to remember the electric feeling of lips against his and midnight air and makeup smearing beneath his fingertips.

Refused to think of Jon finding that happiness with someone who wasn’t him.

“Easy. Like coming home.”

He took a deep breath in. On the exhale, he let the dream of having Jonathan Sims go.

“I need you to do me a favour.”

.

Something had changed at the Institute. Since Peter had taken over, since he’d wrapped the Lonely around Martin like a favourite sweater, it had felt different, easier, lighter to walk through the hallways. Like he was a ghost, but he’d finally found the place that he was supposed to haunt.

That morning was different. The air felt heavy and sticky and something itched under his skin. It wasn’t necessarily unpleasant, but it felt like he’d taken a misstep along the way and ended up in someone else’s home.

Peter had brushed his fingers over the wood of his desk, reverent like he was saying goodbye, and sighed when Martin brought up the change.

“The eye has made its way home,” he’d explained, cryptically.

“Elias? He’s back?”

Peter hummed, glancing leisurely across the room like it was a typical morning, like nothing had changed in the veins of the Institute so fundamentally that Martin could feel it in his own. “No,” he said. “Not Elias.”

He’d sent Martin off to his own office with no further explanation.

Which left Martin where he was, tucked in behind his own desk, scrolling mindlessly through an excel document. Despite the way that the Institute seemed to be a living creature breathing down his neck, someone did actually need to make sure the staff got paid every week.

He was finalising the funds allocation for a new project in Artifact Storage and steadily ignoring the feeling of wrongness that had refused to leave his body since he’d stepped into the building that morning when his door burst open.

Jon half-ran, half-stumbled into the office, like he’d been expecting more resistance in crossing the threshold. A week ago, he might have been right in expecting such, but something had shifted in both of them since then.

His hair was a wild mess, a section pulled into what could only be called a bun in the loosest sense of the word, and the rest a tangled mess down past his shoulders. So much more of it was grey than it had been a few weeks prior, almost overpowering the black.

Martin wanted to sit him down and gently comb it out until it was the silky tresses he remembered. Wanted to sink his hand into the strands and feel them slip between his fingers like water.

He wanted to pull Jon into his embrace, pull him impossibly closer, tuck him away somewhere safe and quiet and warm where no one would ever find him again except Martin.

But even just the thought of pulling Jon into the Lonely, Martin’s version, not the cold, wet version that Peter loved, made something shift even further in the air. He could no more pull Jon into his Lonely than Jon could make him See. Not anymore.

“Martin,” Jon gasped out and then stopped, staring at the other man like he genuinely hadn’t expected to make it that far, had focused all of his energy in just getting through the door.

Jon lifted his hands to his hair, trembling, sending static electricity through the air, and that’s when Martin noticed the knife. Clutched in his left hand, half obscured by the too long sleeves of the sweater – Martin’s sweater, the one Jon had taken with him while he was still on the run, leaving the faded Mech’s t-shirt behind as payment – was the one good knife that the kitchenette down in the Archives had.

“Jon,” Martin said, aiming for stern but falling short, the name coming out as a plea instead, “what are you doing here?”

“What are you doing, Martin? I, I went to visit Melanie. I wanted to ask about…” Jon shook his head, hair falling in his face. He pushed it away with the knife, losing a few strands in the process. “She passed along your message.”

Martin tracked the knife in his periphery, not wanting to draw attention to it until he got a better grip on Jon’s thought process. “Then you know you shouldn’t be here.”

Jon laughed and stepped forward, glancing around the room like it was the first time he’d seen it despite him having been in and out of it for months, leaving notes that Martin threw away without ever reading. “I haven’t seen you properly since I woke up, have barely been able to say two words to you in over a year, and when you finally reach out…”

Jon’s energy cut off suddenly, like someone had come over and snipped his strings. His arms dropped to his sides and his shoulders slumped. “You can’t mean it.”

Martin’s shoulders had subconsciously echoed Jon’s, drawn down low like he was trying to be smaller than he was. Like if he didn’t exist as much, he wouldn’t have to face the conversation. “I do.”

“I know it’s been a hard year, a hard few years, but, Martin, you have to know how important you are to me. This past year has been, not seeing you, has been, the most difficult thing I’ve ever experienced and,” Jon laughed, a little too close to manic for Martin’s liking, “I got eaten by worms so I don’t say that lightly.”

“Jon,” he whispered, the word torn out of his throat.

Jon paused, one hand still held up, gripping the knife with white knuckled fingers. His eyes were wide, burst capillaries turning the whites bloodshot. The bags under his eyes were a deep purple. Even his eyelashes seemed dull and lifeless.

There was this look he used to get sometimes, back when he’d get stuck amongst the statements, before Martin had ever even really considered that his feelings could be reciprocated. It was as if Jon was mesmerised by the words on the paper, like he was witnessing something holy and fragile and ethereal and was afraid that if he looked away it would disappear.

Jon was looking at him with that same gaze and all Martin wanted was to close his eyes.

“Martin,” Jon pleaded, clutching the knife to his chest like a lifeline. “I’ve spent almost a year chasing after you and never getting close enough and you’re going to break up with me through Melanie? I know I’m not perfect, I know I’ve fucked up a million times, but I just need you to talk to me. Please.”

Martin reached out and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the knife, brushing against Jon’s own as he gently pried it away. “Please give me the knife, Jon.”

Jon let go like the weapon had burned him, staring at it in Martin’s hands like he had never seen it before. He stepped forward and pressed his hands over Martin’s, containing the knife safely between two sets of palms. “I wasn’t going to use it on you, I swear. I would never–”

“I know. I wasn’t worried about me.”

Jon glanced between the knife in their hands and Martin’s face. “She said you told her that you wanted me to find my soulmate.”

Martin couldn’t meet his eyes, not when the very idea of Jon going through with it made him want to scream and hide away in the lonely like a child under the covers.

“I thought… I thought that we were on the same page about that. But it’s okay if that’s what you want. To go out and find your soulmate. If you want someone better for you than me. But please don’t put it on me, don’t tell me that it’s for my benefit when all I want is you. If you don’t want me…”

He should have taken the opportunity, should have broken Jon’s heart and pushed him away and maybe saved the world in the process. But…

“I do.” Martin released one hand and curled his fingers across Jon’s jaw, holding him like the precious, breakable thing he was and hating that he was too weak to commit to the lie of not wanting Jon but he did, so much so that he felt the other man’s presence under his skin like his own heartbeat. “I’ve never wanted anything the way I want you, Jon.”

For the first time in his life, it was actually true. A part of him would always long for the what-if’s of Jonny, but his entire heart belonged to Jonathan Sims.

Jon leaned into the touch like a cat preening in the sunshine. “Then why? Why do you keep pushing me away?”

He needed to pull his hand away.

He didn’t.

“Because want isn’t enough this time. It’s not going to change the fact that you deserve to be whole, that you need to be, and somewhere out there is a puzzle piece that fits. And no matter how much of myself I carve away, that’s never going to be me.”

“Martin,” Jon pulled away one of his own hands to mirror Martin’s position, pressing his palm over Martin’s own on his face. “I’m… different now. I Know things that I didn’t before the coma. If I wanted to know who my soulmate was, I could. But I don’t want to know who they are, I don’t care. I am choosing you.”

He couldn’t tell Jon that the reason he needed to choose his soulmate over Martin was because it could save the world. Not when he wasn’t sure Jon would choose the world over him.

Martin closed his eyes for a moment, revelling in the feeling of Jon’s hand against his own, of the rough stubble against his palm, of Jon’s presence so close for the first time in so long. He wanted to live in the memory forever. Warm and happy, like he was drifting in that space between sleep and consciousness.

But it had been years since Martin had dreamt anything but nightmares.

“You can’t, Jon. I won’t let you.”

“Martin, please,” Jon whispered, the warm air of his breath washing over Martin’s neck.

Martin breathed in, let Jon’s exhale invade his lungs and linger there. “I’m so sorry.”

The loss of Jon in his arms was sudden as he opened his eyes and looked across at Peter, sitting behind his desk. Down the hall, Jon would be trying to find him again.

He couldn’t let him succeed.

Peter hummed, the sound loud in the room, and nodded like Martin had spoken already. “You’re finally ready.”

Martin exhaled, letting out the last traces of Jonathan Sims. “I am.”

The Lonely beckoned like an old friend.

.

“Can I kiss you?”

Martin flushed at the directness of the question. “My, uh, my name isn’t actually John.”

Jonny’s gaze was steady. “I know.”

“Oh, um. Okay then.”

Jonny scooted closer and Martin tried in vain to organise his long legs into something resembling order. Jonny reached up and cupped Martin’s face with his hands. Martin was surprised to find them warm despite the cool night air.

He could feel Jonny’s warm breath against his cheek.

“Okay?” Jonny murmured.

“Yes,” Martin replied, more certain than he’d ever been about anything.

Jonny scooted forward again, settling himself directly in Martin’s lap.

Before Martin had a chance to properly react to the reality of having the smaller man cradled between his thighs, Jonny’s lips were on his.

Martin was a romantic. He wasn’t ashamed of it. When he thought of his first kiss, he imagined fireworks and sparks and all the other clichés.

Kissing Jonny wasn’t like fireworks.

It was like slipping into a bath of scolding water after a long day. The first sudden shock of the water, too hot and then, once you’d adjusted to the temperature, an all-encompassing warmth.

It felt like coming home.

Jonny slid his hands up into Martin’s hair and Martin whined into his mouth. It was a desperate, needy sound that he almost couldn’t imagine coming from himself.

The Martin from a few hours ago would never kiss a stranger on the roof of a pub. But the air was crisp against his flushed skin and their only witnesses were the stars and Jonny was a warm, solid weight in his lap. He didn’t feel like a stranger.

He reached out and hesitantly rested his hands on Jonny’s hips.

Jonny huffed into his mouth and pressed closer, opening his mouth to tug Martin’s bottom lip between his teeth. When Martin inhaled sharply, Jonny took the opportunity to slip his tongue into his mouth.

Jonny kissed like he sang, with a single-minded focus that left Martin weak. He leaned forward, pressing Martin down until Martin was flat on the roof. Jonny settled above him and Martin reached up and cupped Jonny’s face between his hands, marvelling at the delicate angles of his cheekbones. Make-up smudged under his fingers and he had a sudden surge of pride.

He wasn’t just kissing Jonny D’ville. He was kissing the man beneath the make-up.

Jonny leaned down and kissed him like he was determined to sear the moment into Martin’s brain.

It would haunt his memories for the next decade.

.

Martin had been dipped in the Lonely for so long that he hadn’t expected it to feel any different to be submerged in it completely, but it did. There was a chill that had sunk under his sweater and skin and settled in his bones. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since Peter had sent him there and there was nothing that would allow him to determine time passing.

Lonely came in many forms.

His own personal brand of Lonely was quiet houses and empty beds and cups of tea that grew cold before you got the chance to take the first satisfying sip. It was breathing in the scent of stolen shirts and finding only laundry detergent lingering behind on the fabric.

Peter’s was the tiny strip of land surrounded by endless sea, obscured by fog so thick that he wasn’t sure what was his own wisps of breath and what was the landscape invading his lungs. It was looking out between the mist and seeing only the ocean and knowing that no one was ever going to find him.

Longing verses Lost.

It was fitting, Martin had been lost his whole life. At least now it was for a reason.

He could have wrapped his own Lonely around himself like an old sweater, he had reached that threshold that night outside his apartment building, but that came with too much power. It came with the option to leave.

It was safer to let peter have the reins, this one last time.

He breathed in the sea-salt air and managed to avoid wincing at the way it scraped his throat raw. Already his skin felt stripped bare by the wind but he didn’t ask Peter to take him out.

Instead, he finally let himself wonder about Jon’s soulmate – the man who waited, who never gave up hope. Whoever he was, he was better than Martin. He had to be, to be good enough for the universe to give him everything Martin had ever wanted.

He hoped Jon’s soulmate was kind. He hoped that he would help Jon heal once everything was over, not just from the loss of Martin but from everything. Jon deserved the space to remember who he was Before. He deserved to act his age for once, go out and see a film, walk in the park, fall in love with someone who could reciprocate.

Martin had spent so long torn between the memory of Jonny and the reality of Jon that by the time he had chosen, Jon, Jon it had always been Jon, he’d lost them both.

He hoped that Jon was different than him in that regard. He hoped Jon would give his soulmate a chance. He needed him to, even if a selfish part of Martin didn’t want that.

Even if he would never get to see the ending, it would be worth it to know that Jon was loved, that Jon had won. He could live with the pain and the emptiness so long as Jon didn’t have to. He’d been doing so for over a year.

At least in the nowhere place that was Peter’s Lonely he couldn’t count the days.

He wandered through the fog, letting it form a heavy blanket across his shoulders, weighing his sweater down like it was waterlogged. When he reached the edge of the water, he expected to feel the ocean lapping at his heels through the fabric of the designer pants that somebody else had picked out for him, but the water rushed right over him like he was still just a ghost.

It was a special trauma to not even be acknowledged by the sea.

He deserved every last impossibly infinite second of it.

The past year had been filled with memories of the night of the Unknowing. They had snuck into his dreams and then proceeded to haunt him when he was awake as well.

Jon’s pleading eyes, wide even in the dim light of the tunnels, whispering truths into the dark that Martin wasn’t ready to hear aloud. He should have let Jon speak the words into existence, should have cradled them close and let them find sanctuary in his chest where their counterparts had lived for years. He should have gifted them back to Jon, whispered them directly into his mouth and promised to tell him again and again, for as long as they had.

But he was a coward. Then, now, since he could remember.

All Jon had wanted was to let Martin know that he was loved, and Martin hadn’t even granted him that.

And Tim…

Martin had found the recorder months later, tucked into the same pocket it had appeared in originally. He’d sat at Jon’s bedside, watching the Not-Dead-Not-Alive body of the man he’d never told that he loved and pressed play, expecting anything except for Tim’s voice to filter through the speaker.

Tim called out his name, re-enacting their final conversation and the second time around Martin recognised it for the goodbye it had always been.

He didn’t need recordings of the few conversations that they’d managed in the months leading up to that final goodbye to know that it wasn’t the only time he’d missed the signs.

Worse than looking Tim in the face and missing the way he was already half gone, was the immediate relief months later that out of Jon and Tim, it was Tim who hadn’t returned.

Maybe his mother had been right about him. Maybe she’d taken one look at his tiny, womb-fresh body and known that there was something about Martin Blackwood that was unequivocally, irreparably wrong.

He wished that Jon had seen it too. Perhaps he could have saved himself the heartache that came with trying to love someone who loved in halves instead of wholes.

Maybe that’s all he’d ever been, a ghost of a man. All of his veins haunted with memories and what-if’s where there should have been blood. Maybe that’s what it meant to be without your soulmate. Like Jonny had taken the most tangible parts of Martin with him when he fled into the dark a decade ago.

If he thought about it like that, it was almost enough to convince himself that he was saving Jon from a similar fate.

He stepped forward and the ocean leapt up to greet his calves, washing over him like clouds instead of water. Even when he reached down to dip his fingers into it, when he could see the water covering up to his knuckles, still there was nothing actually touching him.

Peter’s Lonely came in waves of fog, at times filling the air so thickly that he might as well have been in a cloud and at others so thin that it teased the idea that he might see something other than endless ocean.

He wanted to settle but the timelessness of the place itched under his skin. That all-encompassing sense of dread that was strong enough to wake you from sleep, like his body was telling him that he’d overslept but he had no clock to check.

The water didn’t shift when he dropped down onto his back and submerged himself in the shallows, letting it wash over his face. He left his eyes open, waiting for the saltwater sting that never came and took a breath that filled his lungs with neither air nor water.

He wondered how much of this world was created purposefully and how much just existed because some part of Peter’s subconscious had willed it into being. His own brand of Lonely was mostly accidental, based on the apartment he and Jon had shared, the apartment that had ended up being too big for just him when Jon went on the run and never fully returned to him. He’d tried to make adjustments, tried to make it nice for its lone occupant, but the Lonely would only ever feel like home for those who it claimed, not those who were offered to it.

Even there, surrounded by a Lonely that was not his own, there was a comfort to it where there should not have been. He could feel it tugging against him, not as a victim but as an Avatar, encouraging him to reach out and adjust the world into something that fit him better, like swapping out Peter’s fancy clothes for his own worn-out hand-me-downs.

Is this how it ends? The lonely seemed to ask. Haunting a world that has already forgotten your name?

Yes, Martin replied, closing his eyes and letting relief wash over him where the sea refused. He will remember, that’s enough.

Is it, though, Martin Blackwood, Avatar of Mine?

A part of him wanted to scream that no, no it wasn’t enough. A part that was selfish and bitter and didn’t care if the world fucking burned if it meant that Jon would look at him one more time. A part that wondered how it would feel to curl his fingernails into Elias’ smug face and give into the temptation of every dark thought the Lonely whispered into his head at night. A part that wanted to see what would happen, if it would be enough.

He submerged that part, let it drown in the way he couldn’t.

Eyes closed, surrounded by the shallows and a Lonely that wasn’t his own, he let his mind drift until it landed on the what-if’s he’d been supressing. He’d spent the past couple of years imagining that Jon and Jonny were one, so caught up in wanting back what he lost without losing what he had. Now, having lost both, he allowed himself the luxury of the truth.

He loved Jon, loved him enough to die for him, loved him enough to live the rest of his hollow life for him amongst the fog and the ocean breeze. But sometimes he wondered what it would have been like if he’d met Jonny just a little earlier.

On a different night, a different roof, would he have been able to make him stay? Would Martin have become a groupie, hovering around after the show for Jonny to wipe off his make-up – even in his fantasies, it was difficult not to picture Jon under those layers, hiding behind lightning bolts and foundation – take his hand and drag him backstage. He wanted to be the one Jonny sung to at every show, the one that got to see the quiet, vulnerable man he’d only gotten a glimpse of.

He imagined them stepping into their adult lives hand in hand. Would Jonny still have quit music when he did? Would Martin have needed a job so badly he’d lie on his CV and end up at the Institute or would this version of him never even meet Jonathan Sims?

Would he have been okay giving that up, if it meant he had Jonny?

No.

He could feel Jon under his skin, more present than his own heartbeat. He couldn’t imagine giving that up for anything, not the Lonely, not to get Tim back, not even for Jonny D’ville.

The universe was wrong.

Too bad it was too late for it to matter.

He could sense the current drifting over him more than he could feel it. His thoughts drifted with it, slipping just out of reach pulling away the anger, the resentment, the joy, until he was numb with a vague sense of longing, and nothing else.

What use were emotions in this place, anyway? Better to let the cold seep into his bones and try and convince him he was already dead. Death would be a relief if not for the knowledge that Peter needed him alive to keep him trapped. The Lonely had no use for corpses and he could only imagine how Peter would use his body against Jon if given the chance.

He refused to hurt Jon, not even in death.

Better to remain in this perpetual limbo where he could at least imagine Jon moving on without him.

He wondered if Jonny could feel him, still haunting his periphery.

He prayed Jon couldn’t.

And then, it was too much effort to wonder or pray or think at all.

He was a dream and the rest of the world was stirring awake with no memory of what was slipping away. He breathed in the not-water-not-air and let the fog welcome him home.

It was okay.

He was done.

Finally, he could rest.

A tune swam through the fog like whale song, haunting and beautiful and familiar.

One of Jonny’s songs he’d only ever heard once. He knew the melody only from memory, never able to find a record of it hidden in the crevasses of the internet.

It took his consciousness a moment to crawl back to his body before he realised he was the one humming.

A hello, A goodbye, An acceptance.

Farewell to the man who should have had his heart.

Farewell to the man he had given it to instead.

Farewell to Martin Blackwood, may he be forgotten easily.

I have found my final home.

.

The fog echoed the song back like a hollow duet. There and then gone again, like the Lonely was trying to decide if it was crueller to indulge or deprive him of this final goodbye.

Still, it waited on him, holding onto the part of the victim that it recognised as More, as Mine.

Martin made the selfish choice.

.

The music had always been there.

.

The song had just started.

.

There had never been music at all.

.

Martin hummed

“Martin?”

and the world hummed back.

No.

Not the world.

Martin sat up.

He hummed louder and someone answered by singing lyrics that no one from the Institute should have known. He got to his feet, finding his legs unsteady like they’d been asleep for days, and stumbled forward into the thick of the fog.

“Jon,” he whispered, knowing it wasn’t him, couldn’t be. Jon had no reason to know the song, no reason to link it back to Martin. Not unless he Knew it but to use it against Martin would be cruel and Jon wasn’t cruel, not to him.

“Martin?” Distant, half-eaten by the fog, a voice that could have easily been Jon or Jonny.

He’d never told Jonny his real name.

“Jon!” He shouted, twisting around as the song continued to surround him, like the fog had taken it and weaponised it against him. “Jon, I’m here!”

“Martin?”

Jon sounded close enough to touch but all Martin saw was fog and endless sea. The Lonely he’d locked himself into, as much a prison for himself as it was protection for Jon. If Jon found him, he’d never look for his soulmate instead, never grow strong enough to end Elias’ reign of terror.

“No. Jon, you need to leave. You can’t be here. I don’t want you here. I don’t,” Martin closed his eyes and breathed in the salt air, “I don’t love you.”

“Martin,” Jon whispered, so close that Martin wasn’t sure if it was breath or fog against the back of his neck. “I know you’re lying to me. And I Know why. And I’m here anyway.”

Martin pulled the Lonely closer to himself, creating a barrier that he knew Jon was right on the other side of. “Why? If you Know then why would you come here?”

“Because I told you once that I was scared I’d spend my whole life being looked at and not seen.”

A rooftop with an audience of a million stars. The same words coming from a different man’s lips. Home, Home, Home.

“You told me… you said that you saw me. I need you look at me now, Martin. I need you to tell me what you see.”

He opened his eyes as the fog drifted and thinned. Standing on the other side was a man with lightning bolt eyes. He watched Martin through the haze the same way he’d watched him in dreams and memories for the past ten years.

And then he was gone.

And Jon was there, a hand outstretched, dead timer on display.

It had been golden once.

Martin reached out and took his soulmate’s hand.

“I see you.”