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The Death of His Grandmother
Jon smokes what he thought to be his last cigarette on the night of his grandmother’s funeral. The services are over and the few guests who have shown up to pay their respects are long gone. He stands outside the chapel, leaning against its gray walls, looking down the asphalt road where a single streetlamp fails to illuminate anything in the dark beyond it. The flick of his lighter apes the lighting of the scene in miniature. He draws a long breath, exhales slowly, and lets his head softly thump against the stone behind it. The air steams with the echo of a just-passed summer storm, and his smoke mingles with the sharp, sweet smell of city streets turned warm and wet.
His grandmother’s death hadn’t been a surprise. His parents were older when they had him, and thus his grandmother was well into her eighties. In fact, like most things in her life, it seems she has judged approximately the right time to go to best suit his needs. He had just begun a research post at the Magnus Institute and the inheritance he will get from her, while not substantial, will go a long way to securing a decent flat in London.
In many ways, that’s all he’d been for her: a burden to steal the last of her—her strength, her years, her patience. They moved through each other, and as he grew, she diminished. Even now, he will eat on whatever is left of her while her body shrivels in the ground.
Jon exhales another stream of smoke into the black just as two headlights turn a corner and creaked through the street. The front tire dips into an oil-slick puddle of rain by his Oxfords. He glances up and sees a shimmering pair of square-framed glasses turn his way, as if Jon is a bit of curious scenery, before moving on.
He sucks in another breath through his teeth, then flips the cigarette butt to the ground, squashing it under his shoe. He is in the dark again.
When he was young, after his parents had died and he’d moved in with his grandmother, he woke up to a dreary night similar to this one. A rainstorm had just moved through; there was an eerie, unfamiliar streetlight outside of his window. Curtains fluttered in the humid breeze. There was nothing beyond that circle of light; nothing before or after it.
His grandmother moved through the house, floorboards creaking softly under her light step. The noise stopped at his door. He could barely see her diminutive outline.
“Why are you still up?” she asked gruffly.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
She turned away. He stared out the window, covers bunched over his lap and twisted in his fists. Didn’t think about his dead parents. Didn’t think about this strange house and what was lurking in it. Didn’t think about this room that wasn’t his.
The steps came back, and he jumped, surprised, when his grandmother placed a nightlamp on the floor in the corner of the room and plugged it in. She flipped the switch and the new light shone on her pallid face and light blue robe. She seemed a bit less hard than she did in daylight; the strange, unnatural glow softened her edges.
“In case you want to read,” she offered, then retreated once more to her bedroom.
Now, Jon stares out into the nothing in front of him. He puts a hand to his mouth and is surprised to find it trembling. His eyes burn with the lingering smoke of his last cigarette, and the memory of her.
The Death of Tim Stoker
Tim and Jon were never really together—they are fundamentally incompatible as a couple, or perhaps Jon is simply fundamentally incompatible with relationships—but while in research they toyed with the idea.
Tim takes Jon back to his flat after a few drinks one Friday night while Jon is too tipsy to think about the “talk” they should have before it’s too late. They make out on the couch for a while, Jon kneeling over Tim’s lap, his knees bracketing Tim’s thighs. When Tim breaks away with a gasp and asks, “Do you want to take this to the bedroom?” Jon suddenly remembers why he doesn’t do this sort of thing.
It’s dark except for a shard of light coming from some half-open closet in the front entryway. Tim is panting; his eyes are shining; he’s beautiful. He’s waiting. Jon wants to jump out the window.
Instead, he takes a breath. “I have to apologize. I’ve misled you.”
Tim’s brow furrows. He’s adorable when he’s trying to make sense of something. “What—? No. No, Jon.” He tries to straighten up, but it’s made more difficult by Jon not really moving from his position on his lap. “This is a lot; we can take our time.”
Jon lets out his breath now, dimly catching sight of how his bangs move with the force. He should get off Tim’s lap, but he really doesn’t want to. He just wants this, very much—this contact.
“No, it’s not that. I mean… well. I mean that I don’t.” It really doesn’t get any easier. Maybe it would if Tim weren’t looking at him so generously. “I don’t do that sort of thing.” He pauses, looks down, then meets Tim’s eye again. “Ever.”
Tim is silent under Jon’s gaze for a long moment. “Oh,” he says. Then, “Oh.”
Jon forces himself to move then, shifting his knee back. “I really am very sorry. It was inappropriate of me to not mention—”
Tim’s arm shoots out and snatches his wrist. “Wait,” he says.
Jon hesitates, half-off Tim’s lap. He arches a brow.
“So you’re asexual, right? That’s okay.”
Jon doesn’t know what to say. “What’s okay?”
“We don’t have to do anything else, ever. I am—” Tim huffs a breath that sounds like a laugh. “I am more than okay with this.”
Forever? Jon wants to ask. You’d be okay with that for the rest of your life?
But they’re co-workers and have only been on this road for about the last two hours so he doesn’t think that’s a conversation that should come up yet.
Tim curls his fingers around Jon’s wrist. “Stay,” he says.
And Jon leans back in.
Later, they will discuss boundaries and what’s okay and what’s not, and Tim makes it all so simple that it’s honestly the reason why Jon refuses to admit they aren’t going to work out for longer than he should. Even after they agree they’re better off friends, Tim remains physically affectionate—an arm over his shoulder while they’re sharing a booth at drinks, a kiss on the forehead when Jon is slumped at his desk with a headache, feet in his lap while they’re watching a movie in his flat. He’s a person who just lets Jon be, who understands without Jon having to say, whose mere presence is such a relief it fills Jon’s lungs with air.
Then Jon is promoted and it gets bad.
Well, Jon gets bad. After finding Gertrude dead in the tunnels, he can’t stop wondering who killed her, when he’s next, who it will be that finally catches his unaware. He fractures his relationship with Tim with stalking and paranoia; he feeds it with lies and distrust. He takes every good thing about Tim and twists it to fit into his definition of betrayal. By the end, they are both unrecognizable.
Jon spends countless lonely nights thinking about Tim’s embrace, Tim’s smile, Tim and his eyes that have taken all of Jon in and still found him worthy of affection. He misses him more than he misses air. He wants Tim back. He wants himself back. He wants their friendship; he wants to save him.
In the end, Jon doesn’t get any of that.
Instead, he hands Tim the opportunity to indulge his death wish. Wants him not to take it. Wants him to choose to stay with him instead. In the hushed whispers of their last argument in the wax museum is the thread of something raw, probably rotten. When Jon hisses, all barely-contained fury, “I am not going to lose you,” he sees the Tim from a quiet couch late at night, fingers on Jon’s wrist, asking him to stay.
Jon stays, but Tim doesn’t.
After Tim dies, Jon finds a too-large jumper stuffed away in the bottom desk drawer in his office and realizes it’s Tim’s from some other place and time. He takes it out and carefully smooths it over the statements skewed on his desk until it takes shape. It’s just a plain red, deep, almost maroon but not quite. The musty air of it still carries a faint cinnamon scent of Tim’s favorite pastries.
Jon scoops the sweater into his hands, presses its chest to his own, and lets the empty sleeves fall around him. He bows his head over the neck and closes his eyes, tries to feel the shape of Tim in it, surrounding him with solid, warm flesh. When he shivers, when the first tears begin to nick at his eyes, he buries his face into the soft fabric and breathes it in—chasing the air, trying to drown.
The Death of Sasha James
Jon loses Sasha just… so many times. His grief for her is fragmented, broken into the elements of mourning with vast swarths of confusion in between. He’s angry when he first finds the tapes with her original voice, when he pieces together the puzzle and realizes Sasha has been taken over by something different, that all his memories of her have been replaced by this monster who destroyed his friend. He’s angry at himself for not realizing for an entire year that Sasha, who was his responsibility, had been murdered in the worst way imaginable. He hadn’t just let her die—he’d let her be forgotten.
After the anger, after NotSasha has been bound in the tunnels, there is nothing. Just a tape with this woman’s voice, a voice he doesn’t even recognize. He wants to apologize, wants to scream and cry, wants to hurt himself and bleed for her, but nothing comes. He doesn’t know who Sasha was to him. He doesn’t feel anything.
In the safehouse after the apocalypse, Jon rewinds the tape and listens to Sasha’s voice over and over again.
And all at once he remembers.
She should have had his job. She was smart, smarter than Jon, too smart for Elias’ plans, so Elias couldn’t let her have it. She resented Jon, of course she did, but she was too professional to let it get in the way of their relationship. They weren’t friends so much as acquaintances in the same Friday night drinking group, but he recognized her competence and knew he needed her when he took over the Archives.
She was also brave, or rather foolhardy, had spent most of her life clawing her way out of the sometimes insidious and sometimes blatant sexism of academia, and it had turned her into someone who was ready to take too many risks to prove herself. She was curious, brash, a bit of a know-it-all; she had three sisters and was well-loved by her family, spent every holiday in their cozy kitchen being terrible at baking, and one year her grandfather had given her his first edition of The Mysteries of Udolpho which was worth—
“Jon.”
Jon is staring down at a hand that has covered his to turn off the tape recorder. When he looks up, he finds Martin’s face twisted in a mixture of sympathy and helplessness.
“No spider tea?” Jon asks.
It’s a weak joke. Better Martin doesn’t acknowledge it.
“Look, Jon, at least—at least do another tape for a while, yeah?” He puts his heavy hand on Jon’s shoulder.
He realizes that there are no days, no concept of time anymore; it’s all just a swirling, horrible vortex of nightmares, and Martin’s been waiting a literal countless amount of time for Jon to get over himself and help him heal the world. Jon’s obsession with Sasha is just the latest in his own reckoning, where the only one who can extract any punishment for Jon’s sins is Jon himself. A woman everyone forgot—everyone except Jon now, he supposes, and he can’t even hold the precious memory of her without making it about himself.
Later, he’ll get up and go with Martin, travel through the domains of so many fears to find a way to reverse what Jon’s done to the world.
When they stumble upon the monster in the Stranger’s realm, it’s easy to say NotSasha goaded him into killing her. It’s easy to say it’s not Jon’s fault, that he was just ridding the world of a creature that steals lives. The truth, however, is that anger is all he has when it comes to grieving her. Vengeance doesn’t help in the least, which makes it all the worse. He can listen to her tapes for the remainder of an immortal life and still not touch the sort of pain he should feel as the keeper of her memory.
Jon is no better than NotSasha. She stole Sasha’s life; he stole her story.
“Hey. Martin.”
“Hmm?” Martin’s feet are eating up the vague wasteland under their feet to keep up with Jon’s relentless pace, but he slows when he notices Jon has.
“The… Sasha. Back there.”
“What about her?”
Jon could leave her buried; he doesn’t think Martin wants to hear these things. He’s sure Martin misses Sasha in that abstract, aimless way Jon once had, but it’s different facing up to the realization that your memories—and they do feel real still, even to him—have been perverted by a thing that killed your friend. And well, it’s not exactly as if Martin has appreciated what Jon’s been able to tell him about the horrors around them so far. But it’s also not about Jon or Martin. It’s about Sasha. So he says, “I want to talk about her—the real one. And I want you to stay and listen.”
Martin draws a sharp breath. “I—” He looks over at Jon and seems to see something there that makes him release it. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, okay, Jon. Tell me.”
And her life, all of it—details and thoughts and private moments he should never have known—spill from Jon’s lips as if he’s a mere conduit to bring Sasha James back into the world.
The Death of Alice (Daisy) Tonner
Jon isn’t sure how to grieve Daisy.
In many ways, Daisy is the best friend Jon’s ever had. In other ways, Daisy is the worst thing that ever happened to him. It’s hard to reconcile at times.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” she admits in front of Jon’s desk one day, shuffling from side to side. Daisy has been taking turns simply standing in Jon or Basira’s offices since she got back, and he’s taken to finding it comforting. Daisy is no substitute for Martin; she’s not constantly needling him about self-care, but he figures they’re all past any hope for healthy psyches now anyway.
“I’ve been informed of the myriad of ways in which diving into the Buried’s coffin to get you back was a poorly-formed plan on my part,” Jon answers without looking up from the papers in front of him.
“Then why’d you do it?”
He taps his pen and shifts his eyes to the side.
“Were you just hoping to die in there with me?” Daisy presses.
“I would have hardly asked the Boneturner to pull my ribs out of my chest if I were just hoping to die, Daisy.”
“I tried to kill you. And I would have, if Basira hadn’t—”
Jon looks up then, touches the scar on his throat where Daisy had held the knife as both of them faced a grave she’d forced him to dig. “Yes, Daisy,” he says, and he means it to sound harder than it comes out. “I’m aware.”
She is a shadow of herself since the coffin; her muscles have decayed and left behind a ragged skeleton in skin a few sizes too large. Her hair and complexion are several shades paler than before; her eyes are shadowed and hooded, almost cavernous. She looks a bit like a reanimated corpse. But—so is he, in a way.
Daisy’s eyes are steady on his. “You think you deserved it—what I did to you?”
Jon swallows. That night still lives in his nightmares. It took hours of showering and scrubbing to get the dirt out from under his fingernails. He still panics when he shaves. Jon is a small man; he’s never held a chance at overpowering anyone when it came to it, but he had never felt quite so small as when Daisy meant to put him down like a rabid dog.
“Quite a word, deserves,” he says finally. “Who’s to know what anyone deserves, much less if they get it? You and I, we’re both beholden to our respective, ah, deities, and I suppose I thought—well, that you were worth saving.”
She holds his eyes for a moment longer, long enough that Jon realizes what he just revealed to her and feels a slow guilty panic begin to build. Then she shifts her gaze. “I won’t be a part of the Hunt anymore,” she insists. “I’m going to fight it. Be better. And so are you, ‘cause I’m gonna make you.”
Jon gives her a tenuous smile. “I would like that, Daisy.”
I would like us both to be worth saving.
But Daisy gives into the Hunt in the end, and Basira puts her down.
Martin is saying something as he cleans and re-dresses the wound on Jon’s leg. They are not very far from where they left Basira, but Jon’s leg is already looking significantly better. Martin doesn’t say much about that, just continues his work as if it’s at all necessary at this point. Jon almost wishes it were, because once he no longer feels the pain from Daisy’s teeth and claws, she’ll just be another scar on his body.
“Hey—hey.” Martin brings him out of his reverie. He’s done with the dressing now, and he takes Jon’s hand from his throat. He hadn’t been aware he was touching it. “You here with me?”
Jon clears his throat. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Mmm. Doesn’t seem that way.”
He blinks up at Martin who is crowding his vision, all soft eyes and fluffy hair. “You know,” Jon says distantly, “I think I was just another victim to her, in the end. One of the monsters that had to be hunted down and killed. I don’t think she kept track of them. I don’t think she cared.”
“Jon, don’t—”
“I had thought we were friends, after the coffin, but… maybe not.”
“Well, I’m given to believe it’s tough to remain friends with someone who tried to murder you. Twice.”
“And yet so many of mine seem to make the attempt.”
“Get better friends.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Martin is looking down at him with a disapproving glare.
“You haven’t tried to kill me,” Jon says.
Yet, is unspoken, and it’s clear this shared, silent implication makes Martin uncomfortable. He clears his throat and settles next to Jon and his outstretched leg. “Are you sad about her?” he asks.
Jon feels the weight of her in his chest. Even dead, Daisy is his burden, his mirror. “I am,” he answers, though the words come out somewhat strangled. He blinks back the sudden tears and takes a deep breath to steady himself.
Martin glances at Jon out of the corner of his eye. “Look, Jon, I can’t pretend to know why you would mourn someone who hurt you like that, but… I’m here if you need to.”
It’s a misunderstanding that wounds Jon, though he won’t admit it to Martin. Martin is still under the impression that Daisy and Jon are at all different, that Daisy giving into the Hunt meant she wasn’t Daisy anymore. Jon wants to ask Martin what it makes him that he started a whole fucking apocalypse, that all he is to almost anyone who asks is just “The Archivist,” but he knows Martin will argue the point to death and Jon is just too tired for it.
And… he just misses Daisy. He misses the way she made him feel like they stood a chance. The way she never asked for his forgiveness, and he never had to give it. The way it seemed there was no slip so far, no plunge so deep, that they couldn’t crawl their way back from it.
The Death of The Cows
In Daisy’s safehouse, Martin and Jon shared the bed. It wasn’t even something they discussed. After Jon pulled Martin from the Lonely, he didn’t want to let Martin out of his sight, and from there it was just a given. They spent their days wrapped up in each other with all the comfort of an old married couple—Jon huddled under quilts on the couch, pressed up against Martin’s side while they read; Martin throwing himself over Jon in his sleep like a weighted blanket; holding hands as they walked through the haze of gray skies. It had been three weeks of something perfect. If Jon had known it would end so quickly, he would have tried to memorize it all better—the scent of the rain that caught them while they were out on one of their meandering strolls, the way Martin’s cold fingers warmed in his while they sat in front of the fire, the taste of burnt coffee and dry toast and Martin’s lips.
“Penny for your thoughts. Except there’s not really any place to spend those anymore, hah, so. Um.”
Jon doesn’t have to look up to know Martin is standing there, hand on the back of his head, eyes crinkled in nervous laughter. He absently pats the spot beside him, and Martin plops there cross-legged, hands over his knees.
“Georgie and the others were wondering where you’d gone off to,” he says.
“Just needed some time,” he answers softly.
“Er—yes—” Martin seems to want to say something about that. “Does that mean you’d rather I didn’t—”
Jon finally glances at him and spends a long moment there studying him. There’s something of the man he knew so long ago, awkward and stammering. It’s not often he sees this Martin anymore. The Martin of the apocalypse is harder; the love he offers is no longer infatuation, but defiance. An effort. A choice. Jon likes this—these days, he likes anything that doesn’t feel inevitable.
“No, Martin,” Jon says. “You can stay.”
Martin nods and they both look out into the middle distance, a million miles away even though Martin’s crossed knee bumps up against Jon’s thigh. Jon knows what Martin’s thinking; he doesn’t look, but he knows.
Then Martin inhales like he’s coming back into himself. “Do you want to talk, though? It’s just that you’ve seemed… distant. About the plan.”
Jon sighs. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Right, yeah.” Martin lets the silence stretch between them. He’s good at silences now.
With a long inhalation, Jon breaks. “You remember the cows?”
That elicits a bark of surprised laughter from Martin. “Yeah, Jon, ‘course I remember them. Why, do you think—oh. Oh, Jon.”
It’s rather ridiculous, but Jon’s face is now pressed into his upturned knees and he’s shivering with soft sobs. Martin scoots closer and wraps his arms around Jon’s shoulders, pulling Jon towards him. It’s awkward because Jon refuses to move his head from between his knees but Martin perseveres and Jon is eventually stiffly tucked away into Martin’s chest with Martin running a soothing hand over his arm.
“It’s just. They were nice,” Jon sniffs, and finds it difficult to think of another time he had so thoroughly humiliated himself. “Now they’re gone.”
Martin makes a humming noise. There’s nothing he can say to that. They are gone. And it’s Jon’s fault.
“All of it was nice,” Jon continues, because he might as well finish the job now that he’s started. “Daisy’s cabin. Bare bones and all, but.” He takes a shuddering breath. “I miss the cows, Martin.” Then all at once he’s crying hard, deep wrenching sobs like a child. He clenches his fist in Martin’s sweater and closes his eyes, tries to swallow around it and can’t. He can’t breathe. He can’t find himself here. He is nothing but terror and pain.
Martin making shushing noises, something akin to comfort if that can exist anymore. He cradles Jon’s cheek with one soft hand, holds it there over his own heartbeat, then bends his head low and presses lips to the top of Jon’s head. To his credit, Martin doesn’t say it will be all right, because it won’t be. They’re not on the same page anymore, and whatever happens next will hurt. They’ve lost their chance for a happy ending. They’ve lost their chance to stroll through the countryside and look at the cows.
“I’m sorry,” Jon says when he can catch his breath. He scrubs at his face absently but otherwise doesn’t move. “All the world has gone to hell because of me and I’m just feeling sorry for myself.”
“You’re allowed,” Martin says, low, still bent over Jon’s hair. “You know that, right?”
“I’ve sent billions of people to be tormented by their personal nightmares, Martin,” Jon answers miserably. “I think I’ve lost the right.”
“We’ve been over this. Elias used you. You can’t—you can’t keep blaming only yourself. We all made mistakes, but you didn’t want this. You’re allowed to feel… angry, or upset, at being used like this. At what’s been taken away from you.” Martin pauses, then adds softly, “From us.”
Jon looks up, finds Martin staring back down at him with too-bright eyes on the cusp of his own grief.
“Martin,” he breathes. But an apology isn’t sufficient for what he’s done to him.
“Don’t, Jon. I chose this, remember? Many times? You offered me ways out before.”
It’s a pre-emptive grief, losing Martin, in whatever way he will lose him. It’s hard to say. So much of who they were and are now has been strung up by creatures like Annabelle Crane and Jonah Magnus. Why did they want Martin beside Jon in the end? It can’t be good. Peter Lukas had offered Martin what was probably the nicest possible way Martin Blackwood could meet his end, and Jon ripped him out of that Lonely place and killed Peter for it. Because Jon wanted Martin. That’s all. He just wants. Doesn’t care what Martin suffers for it.
There’s a sick feeling in Jon that everything is about to go terribly wrong. He has to find another way.
“You’re not hearing me, Jon,” Martin says. He jostles Jon a little with a hand on his shoulder. “All right, then. Get up.”
Jon shoots up and is about to give Martin a withering glare when he sees Martin’s hand held out for him. “What’s this?” he asks, more suspiciously than the situation warrants.
“Dance with me.”
Jon coughs a laugh. “What?”
“We were both idiots and danced around each other and never got a proper date, so here it is. Let’s dance together. For once.” Martin is standing now, hand still held out to Jon, waiting.
Jon eyes Martin a moment longer, then gives him his hand, and Martin hauls him up.
“I don’t know how to do this, though.”
“Neither do I.”
“This is absurd—this feels absurd—”
“Yup.” Martin pulls Jon closer until they’re flush together, then moves Jon’s hand to his shoulder and places his own on Jon’s hip.
“You’re leading, then?” Jon asks, arched eyebrow.
“Sort of tired of playing the sidekick all the time,” Martin answers with a teasing smile. “Also, I’ve watched a lot of Dirty Dancing.”
Jon snorts and Martin grasps his other hand and begins to move them in a sort of clumsy semblance of dance, and it is ridiculous; they’re in the middle of a nightmarish hellscape and there is also definitely not any music unless you count the endless buzzing drone of all the Eyes upon them. But it’s also Martin and the whole thing is very endearing and sweet. Jon lets himself rest his forehead against Martin’s chest and feel the heat of Martin’s palm in the small of his back, the muscle in Martin’s shoulder under his own hand. Martin tucks Jon’s head under his chin and begins to hum something vaguely recognizable as I’ve had the time of my life…
“Oh, good Lord, Martin—”
“Just hush for once in your existence, Jon.”
Surprisingly, Jon does, and gradually, very gradually, the rhythmic swaying and gentle vibrations in Martin’s throat as he hums are all there is. It drowns out the noise of the Eye, of the fears and nightmares. He is surrounded on all sides by Martin, and he is something different now. He is not Jonathan Sims or The Archivist. He is just an anonymous man dancing with his lover.
Every step from here on out will be for someone else, but this moment now, imperfect as it is, is theirs.
And it’s their last.
The Death of Jonathan Sims
Martin Blackwood has a lot of complicated feelings about the sea. It is, after all, the sound of his greatest happiness, but also his deepest loneliness. Turns out those two aren’t so different these days.
When he’s there by his little writing desk overlooking a foggy beach, he thinks about the scent of salt and the deafening waves and a small man with square frames over sharp eyes that find Martin’s own every time.
Martin writes his poetry when he can but he doesn’t need to; he’s been more than taken care of with Institute money since the world has reverted back to normal and Basira found herself in possession of Elias’ bank accounts. So more often than not, he simply stares over half-finished pages into a shrouded landscape and thinks and finds his heart empty of words. And it doesn’t escape him that he has surrounded himself with all the trappings of the Lonely without actually being there. The only one who could ever find Martin among the fog and the waves was a man who is dead now.
At the end, Jon begged Martin to hate him, to never forgive him, but to live, please live, and not lose himself again. But Jon died so what he wanted doesn’t matter now. That sounds harsh but it’s just how it is. You can’t tell people what to do if you die.
Sometimes, Martin walks along the shore. He will see the outline of a fishing boat on the horizon or a couple sitting at the end of the pier. That’s how he knows he’s still here, in the world, that he hasn’t slipped back in that comforting place where he felt nothing, where no one bothered him. He wants to walk up to the people and ask them if they understand what he had to sacrifice to save them, but the reign of the Eye is only fragments of nightmares to most people now, and Martin realizes a hermit ranting about the apocalypse is a bad look.
Basira, Melanie, and Georgie all take their turns checking in on him. He bears their presence. It’s well-meaning. He makes them tea, pulls out the small sofa for himself and insists they take his bed. They typically only stay one night. Martin’s not great company these days. Melanie grumbles, Basira gives him meaningful glances, but Georgie’s the worst because she always asks. Melanie and Georgie often come together, but the three of them don’t usually tag team him all at once.
Then, about a year later, they do. They bring some cheap red wine to make up for it.
Melanie knocks back her second glass as they sit round a small kitchen table not really designed for four people. “God, do you remember how insufferable he was about—”
“Everything?” Georgie finishes.
Melanie laughs. “Your show lacks rigorous academic inquiry, Miss King, like he wasn’t just taking down statements from every whackjob off the street with a ghost story.”
“Also,” Basira supplies, “way too damned picky about where we’d get our curry.”
“He was picky about food in general,” Georgie says, holding her wine glass out as Basira tops everyone off. “Not really a food snob because he didn’t actually know what he was talking about; he just liked to disguise his long list of food aversions. I’m not saying that’s the reason we broke up, but it certainly didn’t help.”
Melanie reaches for Georgie’s hand. “Sweetheart, I love you, but I can’t say I blame him. Your taste in takeout is horrendous.”
Georgie mock-glares and Melanie laughs; even Basira cracks a smile. Martin wonders where he is in all of this. Wonders what kind of intervention this is. Talk about Jon times? Well.
“He hated sugar in his tea,” Martin says quietly, but his voice has the same effect as if he shouted it. All three women turn their attention to him. He looks down at his half-empty glass of red, sloshes it between his hands. “But he didn’t tell me for the longest time.”
“Should have known then, buddy,” Melanie says. “Nit-picked everything you did except for how you did his tea? Repressed crush right there, that is.”
“Is it?” Basira asks. “Just thought it was Jon being his usual idiot.”
“No,” Georgie says. “Jon being his usual idiot was shaking hands with an avatar made of literal fire. Being a bully about everything except his tea was just really stupid pining. But so is making your arsehole boss tea every morning despite him being the absolute worst.” She winks at Martin.
And then there’s a stretch of silence, deep and oppressive, until Melanie scrubs under the cloth that covers her eyes.
“Damn,” she says. “I miss the bastard. Didn’t think I…”
Martin feels the heat in his eyes and clenches his glass hard.
“May be time to call it a night,” Georgie offers.
“Oh.” Martin blinks. “Sure, the two of you should take the bed. Basira, you can have the fold out-sofa; I’ll make up a cot for myself.”
“I booked a lodging in town,” Basira says. “Figured you’d be full.”
“Well, let me walk you at least. It’s not far but it can be a bit confusing in the dark.” Martin is already pulling on a coat. Georgie waves to the two of them as she leads Melanie to the bedroom, promises to find Basira in the morning and a good breakfast place in town.
There’s a bit of a chill in the air but Basira doesn’t seem to notice it. They take the road in silence for a while until she pulls her bag around and scrounges for something. It’s a tape, of course. “Been meaning to give that to you,” she explains. “I’ve been cleaning out the Archives finally and found it in his desk.”
Martin stares at it for a bit, then clicks on the flashlight on his phone. He recognizes the case number. It’s a recording from the Jane Prentiss infestation.
“It was among personal effects,” Basira explains. “So I thought it must have held… some significance.”
“Figures if I want to be comforted by my dead boyfriend’s voice, I’d have to also be re-traumatized by worms trying to eat me.”
Basira shrugs. “Well, it was that or his rib.”
“Oh, God. I don’t suppose I want to know what you did with that.”
“You really don’t.”
Martin tries to recall what’s on the tape, what kind of conversation they had when Martin and Jon had waited out the infestation, praying for salvation in the form of Sasha and Tim because Jon was too injured to outrun the worms. He believes it was the first time he had actually snapped at Jon, fed up with his overbearing skepticism even in the face of sentient worms trying to beat down the doors to their office.
Why do you do that?
Because, I’m scared, Martin.
It’s a funny conversation for Jon to be sentimental about, but it’s not like he can ask Jon about it now, and he thinks he knows anyway. In that moment, Martin wasn’t politely awkward or Jon annoyed and aloof. It was the preamble to Martin admitting Jon was a real enough person to be frustrated with, the beginning of Jon shedding his prickly exterior when he allowed himself to be scared in front of Martin. And in that space where they were both a bit vulnerable and a bit ugly—well, maybe that’s where Jon found love, even if he didn’t know it right then.
The thought burns a hole straight through his gut.
He leaves Basira at the inn and goes the long way back, walking along the rocky sand on the beach. Halfway along, he takes off his shoes, stuffs his socks in them, and rolls up his trousers. The ocean is bitterly cold and it burns an ache into his calf muscles. He breathes through the pain as he’s always done, and remembers.
He remembers laughing when Jon was briefly worried Martin was a ghost, the indignant look Jon gives him, the defeated sigh. He remembers the first time Jon said thank you when Martin delivered him tea, and the way Jon glanced up at him with tired eyes like he meant it, like Martin was a source of comfort. He remembers how Jon cupped his hands around Martin’s face in the Lonely, how relieved Jon’s breath sounded around Martin’s name as Martin came back to him and Martin had never felt so wanted and loved in his entire life—hell, he didn’t even know what it was to be wanted until Jon found him.
Knee-deep in the ocean, Martin closes his eyes and holds out one hand low where it fit snugly in the curve of a smaller man’s hip once, holds his other hand out to the side and curls it around the heavy air. If he fades just a bit, allows himself to dip backwards in time, he can still sense the warmth of Jon’s hand in his. His voice is rich when he says Martin’s name with such incredible fondness, and he feels the curve of Jon's smile where he relaxes his forehead against Martin's chest.
The night is so dark and he doesn’t know yet if the fog is endless here, doesn’t know if he wants it to be or not. The scent of salt hangs in the air; he tastes it on his lips. Heedless of the tears on his face, he sways small circles in the water and begins to sing softly.
And I’ve searched through every open door
‘till I found the truth
and I owe it all to you.