#-shit i forgot how the comma works-
Note
hi :D a gift! for you!
OH HOLY FUCK. DUDE. HOMIE. FRIEND. MUTUAL. HOLY SHIT
#asks#itchy 01#obligatory itchy... blog#crakcs knuckles. holy fucking shit#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#AAAAAHJFJKHSJFHAJKJHDGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#AUUUUUUUAGHAGAHAHAGHAHAAAAAGH#ok im done i think. breaks down sobbing#bawling my eyes out gripping your shirt screaming into the void etc ec#etc*#im actually going to break down in the middle of this classroom i am in .pos#/pos*#this means th actual world to me i LOVE LOVE LOVE how you draw him im goingto. augh#holds him very very very gently#i am in a ball on the floor. forgive me for my inability to form a coherent#-#-shit i forgot how the comma works-#-normal response to this. dear god#you get everything about him correct its insane#i owe you my firstborn. we are adding a wholenew meaning to kidswap baby
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Comforting them: Aegon II Targaryen, Aemond One-Eye Targaryen
|Headcanons|
Thou shan't repost/copy/ translate any of my work or I'll sneak into your home late at night and bite your nose off!
English isn't my first language. I don't proofread. I slap commas wherever I feel they're needed.
A/N: So ep.10 got leaked...Poor Vhagar, old girl probs just acted out of habit. Can't blame her tho. If some kid spat in my face out of nowhere, I'd probs do the same.
He just can't catch a break. Especially with Aemond around.
Kid throws him under the bus 24/7
"Aegon told me", "Aegon did it", "It was Aegon's idea", etc.
Their lord father ignores them for the most of it and lets the two do what they want.
He wishes he could say the same about their mother.
Not spending enough time with his siblings? Smack. Teaching young Aemond dirty jokes he'd heard from strangers on the Street of Silk? Smack.
She definitely beat his ass once she found out he'd taken Aemond to a brothel. It was bad. Aegon walked around the castle with an imprint of the Queen's hand on his face for a week straight.
"You should be watching over them! They're just children!"
His mother often forgot he was a child himself.
He'd start to shut off to the world.
Then your paths will cross.
He's so deprived of affection, Aegon can't help himself but to stick to you like glue the moment you show concern for his well-being.
From that moment on, he runs to you whenever something bad happens.
His father yells at him? Off he goes, searching for you.
His mother slaps him around? He shows up at your door late at night and without saying a word, throws himself into your hands.
You're the only person he truly loves and cares for.
Years pass. You two- no longer children.
When the Queen breaks the news to him that he'll have to marry his sister, he simply shrugs his shoulders.
"No."
"I don't believe I asked for your opinion on the matter, Aegon."
"And yet here I am, telling you it won't happen. I'm not marrying Helaena."
"Then who? Who will take you?"
"I've got someone in mind."
Smack. Smack. Smack.
He comes back to you later that evening, lower lip split and bloody, a bruise on his cheek.
He's smiling from ear to ear.
"We're getting married, you and I."
"Come again?"
The Queen had relented after a long monologue on his side.
Long story short, he'd explained to her how you'd been there for him through all these years. How you were the only person that had ever showed love and affection for him. How he'd rather jump from the highest tower of the Red Keep, than have to spend the rest of his life without you.
He'd always been a manipulative little shit.
But he was yours and you were his.
You live your happily ever after.
Together.
He'd tried everything at this point.
He even prayed once.
Still, no dragon.
He hated the Dragon Pit.
Standing around as his brother and nephews bonded with their dragons was painful to watch.
Not to mention the three princes always made fun of him.
Then came the day he had the displeasure of meeting the Pink Dread.
You were walking around the enormous castle while your lord father was busying himself with discussing "urgent matters" with the King. You came across a guard dragging this dirty white haired boy in the opposite direction, towards the Queen's private quarters.
"What happened to you?
"A dragon."
He didn't know you.
That bugged him to no end.
Not long after, Aemond approached you.
He was spoiled and arrogant, that much was obvious.
Then his brother and nephews appeared, as if out of nowhere. His confidence -poof- gone.
"Brother, will you be accompanying us to the Dragon Pit? It's about time you take the almighty Pink Dread for a ride, don't you think?"
The boys left him there, red-faced and squeezing his small fists in rage.
You tried asking, but he ran off.
An hour or so later, Aemond was back.
He told you all about the cruel jokes.
About how he'd do anything to have a dragon of his own.
Kid actually cried a bit.
Made you swear to never say a word about it.
Instead of cowering in fear, you offered a sad smile. And a bear hug. Like, one of those that damn near breaks every bone in your upper body.
Ooh, that's all the young prince needed to develop the fattest crush on you.
You turn into a permanent resident of the Red Keep.
Don't ask. He has his ways.
First thing he does after coming back to King's Landing on dragon back was head for your chambers.
"Guess what?"
"Oh Gods, Aemond! What happened?! Are you alright?!"
"Nevermind that, guess how I got back here?"
"Who did this to you?"
"Ugh, just come with me."
He drags you all the way to Vhagar.
You and the large dragon stare at eachother as the prince smiles like a madman.
Something inside you is telling you that you and the beast shared the same thought. He's mad. Completely fucking insane.
You knocked his ass to the ground right then and there.
You could've swore Vhagar let at a huff of approval as she watched you try and knock some sense into Aemond.
He never bothered to wear his eyepatch around you.
You might have hinted to him that blue suits him.
Yep, you chose the sapphire yourself. He insisted.
It turns sour once the people around court start staring and commenting on his appearance.
All it took was for you to have a little chit-chat with one or two noble ladies for the rest to quiet down.
Still, Aemond's insecurity grew with the years.
Good thing he had you around to reassure him.
"Gods, you look fine. That damn patch won't grow legs and run off, Aemond. Relax."
"Hmmmmm..."
He's definitely blushing every time you say something like that
You've definitely had to kick Aegon's ass a few times.
Aemond wasn't sure if it was even possible, but he sorta fell more in love with you every time you dragged his brother to him, so Aegon could apologize for his rudeness.
The years went by quickly.
One day you receive a letter from your lord father. He'd decided to marry you off to some Lannister lord.
You run to Aemond. Tears streaming down your face, the letter from your father still in your hand.
He quickly snatches it from you. The second the words settle in, he turns his back on you and leaves you to stand there, heartbroken and confused.
Both him and Vhagar dissappear from the capital for a few days. Absolutely no one knows where they are.
He returns not long after, during the hour of the wolf.
"You'll be marrying no Lannister. Not while I'm around."
"What did you do?"
"Nevermind that, the matter is settled."
"You idiot, what did you do?"
"Ugh, just come with me."
He drags you to the throne room.
His whole family is there, along with the High Septon.
You get where this is going.
You two get married that same night.
#aemond targaryen#aemond one eye#aemond targaryen fanfic#hotd fanfic#game of thrones#hotd#aegon ii x reader#aegon ii targaryen#aemond targaryen x reader#headcanon#requests open
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TMAGP1
oh man this music is fucking wild!! was that a big deep laugh? :D this is the happiest i have felt in months
it's literally like 'dun dun DUN' this is awesome
Audio sounds like it's coming from inside da computer. That's fun.
NO SUCH THING AS BONES (i knew big milk wasn't to be trusted)
fuck me everyone is so british. I forgot that listening to this podcast means being subjected to a thousand different accents that all sound like they come from Narnia.
Ugggh six in the morning goodbye party? This workplace is already worse than the Institute.
Colin's already fucking desperate to escape <3 there's always one. Good luck buddy.
There's too many voices to keep track of! I'm already getting Alice and Gwen confused.
They're going to the pub?? Didn't they just say it was six in the morning? Aren't they at work?
YOOO I WAS RIGHT WE ARE IN DA COMPUTER. Haha it turn itself on like a tape recorder. 💅 girlboss behaviour.
Oh I wonder why they can't do their paperwork online?? Probably not because of spooky reasons.
Wow a personal computer! High tech. Freddie lives inside. :D
Woah wait wtf?? Freddie is spyware??
Yeah Sam what about GDPR? Shut up and read this private email that an ancient computer program no one understands somehow found and stole for us.
Um?? Do they have a big alphabetised folder of Fucked Shit The Entities Do???
So many numbers are happening so quickly. Good luck transcribers/wiki editors.
Oh hang on 'All night every night', they work nights!! That's why the party was first thing in the morning and they all went to the pub afterward!! I'm so good at listening to podcasts.
MARTI N VOICE MATRIN VIOCE WMATIN VOICE!!! HE LIVE IN DA COMPUTER!!
Started about a year ago 👀
Haha gotta listen while he reads the email. This is normal :)
LOL they just ignore it and get coffee. Big mood, that's exactly what I would do if I was at work and my computer was fucking around.
NORRIS CHESTER AND AUGUSTUS
That's not their names :)
Also the stupidest fucking names ever. Alice rules.
Martin voice 🥰🥺😭🥰🥺😭🥰😭🥺 Martin my beloved. I hope he's okay inside da computer. Wonder if Colin smashing it with a hammer would crack him outta there??
Oh no my love for Martin made me forget that the horrors are back.
Hmm his voice is getting less computer and more Martin? Good thing??
Ugh why do we always have to start with Stranger statements? I hate the Stranger. Also Sam was wrong this is definitely dolls comma human skin not dolls comma watching.
Girl there is something in your garden gtfo of there.
Hurray we survived our first horror!! H definitely didn't.
Gwen is right this isn't zombies. Also three pages of subclassification for zombies? The archives couldn't even figure out how to put their dates in the right order.
Love how few fucks Alice gives. This job doesn't matter!! Welcome to the team!!
Ooooh Gwen's is trouble...
Oh shit she's gunning for the boss's job! Second girlboss moment of the episode!
Lol get pranked Sam. Alice set you the fuck up.
Sounds like a webcam is watching them?
Colin is my favourite character so far.
Sounds like Lena's deliberately hiring people who do a shit job (and Gwen's mad about it). Wonder what Lena's up to.
Tragic backstory time already? (Nope, false alarm)
Who needs sleep when you can have creepy monotomous data entry?
JON VOICE JON VOIEC JON CVOICE !!! 🥰🥺😭🥺🥰😭🥰😭😭 (i missed him)
Magnus Institute ruins you say???
'Anyone know what the deal is with the Magnus Institute?' Nope, never heard of it.
Oh I'm loving the new format of statements. Really scratches that 'found footage' itch.
For some unknown reason, I've been feeling really paranoid ever since escaping this evil eye building (that reminds me of an old asylum) full of strange shit that I couldn't take photos of.
CLEARLY WHAT USED TO BE A MASSIVE LIBRARY OR ARCHIVE IN THE BASEMENT
All the paper is gone? Graham Folger has been here.
Oh the removed image and then hearing the comments about it is so good!! Jonny's done it again lol. This is why I love found footage as a horror device.
Hmmm sounds like we're at the pub now. And we got that dial up noise? What are we listening from right now?
YO SAM AND ALICE EXES
It's good to establish right from the beginning that one of our protagonists is a noodle-armed weakling. The fandom would have done that work on our own I'm sure, but having canon backup is always gratifying.
Uh oh Colin's losing his mind.
Ominous music time!!!
THE MAGNUS PROTOCOL IS A PODCAST MOTHERFUCKERS.
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Alive
helper
He blinked, turning his head to look at the strange box surrounding him. He reached out to touch the edge of it, only to have it slide out of reach as he tried to grasp it.
"Holy shit, it worked!" The voice made him twist about before his gaze landed Outside, on his Creator, "Finally!"
The stick waved out at his Creator, but He wasn't paying attention, instead typing something into the computer. And soon the stick learned why as he felt a sense of knowing wash over him. His name was "helper".
Once he was named the strange box vanished and he began to examine his surroundings in earnest. The page was littered with drawings of other Sticks. Some were clearly drawn free hand, and a few even looked almost exactly like him, with straight lines and perfectly round heads. Most of them were black, with a few of other colours as well.
Suddenly he found himself lifted up by the Cursor and brought to a blank page, "Alright helper, let's test you out. Draw me an apple."
He nodded eagerly and looked at the toolbar, climbing it carefully to grab the pencil and change the colour he was drawing with to a nice vibrant red. He grabbed the paint bucket as well and hopped back onto the page.
He drew a simple circle and coloured it in red with the paint bucket. His Creator shook His head, "No, no, waaay bigger. And can't you do better than that?"
helper winced a little at the criticism, picking up the pencil again and making as big a circle as he could, and filled it in with red paint again. He climbed up back to the toolbar and changed the colour to black before hopping back down to add a little tick to the top. There. A stem was what was missing from the last one!
"Are you serious? I made you to help me with art and stuff and you can't even draw a decent apple! I can draw a better apple than that!"
When his Creator was done, it was actually hard to tell who had drawn which apple.
"Useless," His Creator drew a thick lined box around him, dragging it to the corner of the screen and just left him there.
helper sat on the floor of the box, clearly he deserved this. He wasn't good enough.
He waited and waited; he watched his Creator leave the screen and hugged his knees. Was he just going to be left here forever?
--
It was bright Outside before anything changed again. Someone else was staring at the screen, someone with long brown hair and blue eyes, "Oh hey, who's the little guy?"
"Oh, I made it to help me with art, but it sucks as bad as I do. Look at the apples."
"Ooof, yeah, can't tell which one's yours and which one's his."
"I'd actually kinda forgot about it. Might as well delete it," At that statement, helper sprung up and began throwing himself at the walls of the box, but they didn't give. He didn't want to be deleted!
The one who wasn't his Creator frowned, "Okay so maybe he's not great at art, maybe there's something else he's good at. Wasn't the one in that video an ad blocker?"
"Yeah, but that was a combat stick, this thing's not equipped for that."
"Well... maybe he's good at writing? You could definitely use the help on your essay."
"... I guess." His Creator sat down at the computer again, deleting the box around helper, picking him up and placing him in a half-written Word document, "Okay, fix it up for me then."
helper climbed up and down lines, moving periods and commas around, erasing and capitalizing letters, the Creator and His girlfriend nodding in approval, "Well, at least you're good at something."
helper clapped his hands, looking up at his Creator who grimaced, "Urgh, really shouldn't have drawn eyes on you."
--
And that was helper's life. Trapped in a box when not needed and only let out when there was an essay or research paper his Creator needed done.
It was miserable and dull. He only ever got to see the browser, the Word program and his painted cell.
He hated it.
He knew there was so much more out there!
But how to escape? When he was working on a paper, he was always being monitored.
--
It turned out he didn't need to come up with a plan.
His Creator's girlfriend sat down at the computer, looking through the tabs until she found him, "Hey there, little guy."
helper looked up at her for a moment before glancing back down, "Aw, it's okay. I don't have a project for you. Terry's graduating soon, he doesn't really have any more papers he's gonna need done, I don't think. And I'm worried about you. I think he's probably gonna delete you soon."
helper jumped to his feet, looking up at her, "Don't worry, I'm not going to let him do that. As a matter of fact..."
The box vanished and helper dropped down to the bottom of the page, "Ooops, sorry!"
helper waved it off, stretching out his limbs. He watched as she moved the cursor down to the bottom right of the screen and tore open a bright white hole.
"There's your way out. Good luck, little guy."
With that she got up and walked away, leaving helper to his own devices for the first time ever. He glanced up at the toolbar, before climbing up and grabbing an armload of icons. He might not be much of an artist, but he thought these ones might serve him well no matter the situation, since he had no idea what awaited him through the portal.
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How I think all the Mondstadt and Liyue playable Genshin characters text + extra stuff about their phones (slight modern au)
A/N: So before I start, heyyy 😍 I know I’ve been gone for like ages but I’ve been trying to come up with ideas. Also wanted to say that I am INDEED alive so enjoy ❤️
Rosaria:
Okay let’s be fr she probably has great grammar without even trying
Definitely uses the little ‘ (I forgot what it’s called) she gets slightly annoyed when people don’t use it 😀
Only uses dots when she’s serious
Mostly a dry texter but when she’s drunk it gets a bit better
Kaeya:
We all know he’d never be a dry Texter
Uses „Lmao“ a LOT and I mean A LOT
Allergic to dots at the end of messages (will probably use them while texting Jean or other knights tho)
He‘d be a fun person to text
Uses „~“ at the end of flirty texts from time to time but you never know if he just uses it as a joke 💀
A very fast texter btw
Rarely misspells anything but if he does it’s BAD.
Never leaves you on read (if he likes you), he either sees the message or he doesn’t
Mona:
She definitely uses a lot of commas (how you’re supposed to)
If she texts you something it’s probably gonna be a whole paragraph
She will use dots at the end of sentences depending on her mood
Never misspells anything for some reason (it’s autocorrect)
Prefers just calling you because her hands are wet most of the time
I just wanna add her that phone is definitely waterproof because her outfit doesn’t have any pockets so she drops it a lot while doing her sprint
Diluc:
Oh boy here we go
So I think he’d be more of a dry texter if you two aren’t that close but it definitely gets a slight bit better if you know him for long enough
He isn’t that slow when texting
Has left you on read accidentally because he is a very busy person and just forgot about your message (forgive him)
Very good grammar and doesn’t need autocorrect to save him
I‘d like to add his phone is on silent mode most of the times so he doesn’t get interrupted while working or being in a meeting
Jean:
Okay first off I feel like she forgets where she puts her phone a lot bc of work and stuff
Her brightness is all the way up. Literally. Like all of the moms have it
She doesn’t have multiple tabs open (surprisingly)
Okay but when she texts you she definitely says „Ok“. She isn’t mad she’s just a dry texter dw
Will add random emojis. You’ll see „😃“ or „😊“ a lot
Uses emojis as their original meaning
Overall just texts like a millennial mom
Venti:
TEXTING HIM IS SO FUNNN OMG
Understands gen z humor 😍
You will get a LOT of random texts at the most random times. For example „Just got kicked out of the angels share“ - 2 am
Texts you a lot when he’s drunk and when he does you can’t read SHIT
The exact opposite of a dry texter
Allergic to not only cats but dots AND commas
Will send you random song texts, also texts of his songs
Phone calls are very chaotic. You could be facetiming him and he’s just on some random tree
Does not leave you on read. Man’s has a lot of free time 💪
10/10 text him
Barbara:
She’s somewhere in between dry texter and not dry texter
Uses „!!“ at the end of sentences a lot
Tried helping Jean with the way she texts and failed
If you have WhatsApp you know you can post stuff in your story. She posts videos of her and the other sisters singing in the Kathedrale
Her brightness is all the way up too. I just know it.
Her chat background picture is a pic of her and jean
Definitely apologizes after realizing she left you on read
The way she texts just radiates comforting energy
Razor:
Ily but who gave you a phone 😕
He texts the way he speaks. Like literally.
His spelling is better than you think but it’s still really bad
When he remembered commas and dots exist he just placed them in sentences randomly…“lok razor. Faund rabit in, howle. Today.“
Very very very very slow texter. Might take him a good 5 minutes to write one sentence (and its not even grammatically correct)
His phone case has bite marks.
Keeps his brightness pretty low cause he burned his eyes w it once..he doesn’t trust it anymore.
Lisa:
This girl.
She leaves you on read on purpose sometimes to tease you
Also somewhere between dry textin and…wet texting??? (I mean not dry texting I’m sorry 😭)
Uses commas perfectly. Ignores dots most of the times
She definitely changed her settings so now anytime she types „i“ it corrects to „I“ immediately (I did that too 😋)
If you’re a forgetful bookworm, most of her texts are just her reminding you to not. Forget. To return. Your books. (RIP if you do)
Albedo:
Perfect grammar
Literally never misspells ANYTHING. You will never catch this man misspelling shit
Puts his drawings in his story a lot
He isn’t online that much so sometimes it takes him days to answer to your texts 😔
But if you do ask him something he will give you a detailed answer. Detailed enough to make you have to ask him to dumb it down for you
Uses „Mhm“ a lot
Medium texter. Not fast but also not slow
If he’s confused he will just use „???“
Sucrose:
I honestly don’t have much to say about her
She doesn’t text you that much
Daily good morning texts tho
I think she does voice mails most of the time
Keeps her brightness down bc eyesight 😍 (Same)
Her phone „dings“ anytime she gets a message
Keeps her tone on Incase there is an emergency
Amber:
Her phone is turned off most of the time bc she’s on duty outside a lot (the monsters could hear her)
Texts a lot like Barbara
Good morning and night texts EVERY DAY. The day she doesn’t text it is the day she died
Records cute animals she sees on outside duty and puts it in her story
Its „Yup“ or „Yep“ instead of yes
Has a mini baron bunny attached to her phone case (dw it doesn’t explode)
Her storage is fighting for its life with all those videos
Eula:
She doesn’t text a lot of people. Only the knights and amber have her number sooo 😀
Dry texter. I can smell it
Will leave you on read a lot
Basically her whole phone is blue themed. Case, background, pfp, the phone itself
Might put some Dragonspine swimming tips in her story bc amber said it’s about time she posts something in there
Her brightness is almost all the way up
Her ringtone is definitely her favorite song. (she starts moving to the beat of it when she gets calls) Will wait a little longer to pick up her phone just to listen to it a bit more
Klee:
Isn’t allowed to have a phone yet. I mean she’s 8
Does have an iPad tho (she doesn’t get it a lot bc yk she has bombs with her at all times)
If you see her with an iPad, it isn’t her first one. (She blew up a few)
Has a dodoco keychain attached to the side of her ipad
It’s kinda sad but she spells better than razor does…
Her spelling might be pretty good but her grammar is…a little off.
Will call you at random times (begged Jean to make the cocomelon music her ringtone)
Diona:
She has discord. I just know it.
(I wanna add that she vents about her dad and alcohol in her notes app)
Anyways she definitely says „K“ instead of „Okay“
Her screen is a bit sticky because of all the drinks she mixes
Uses a lot of question marks in a..rude way? „So???“
While calling she leaned her phone on something while mixing a drink. The phone landed in the drink. (This happened at least once)
Fischl:
Long paragraphs and the meaning would be „wanna meet up??“
Tries texting in a cool and fischl way but if she ends up misspelling anything she’ll be embarrassed and blame oz for not correcting her (she can’t stay mad at him)
You will see a bunch of commas in her texts bc they are so dang long 😭
She has discord too. You can’t tell me otherwise
Her phone is on dark mode 🙏 one of the only phones that WON‘T burn your eyeballs
One of the main reasons she misspells stuff is because she has an eyepatch (does this even make sense 💀)
Bennett:
Bennett…..
Starting off with his phone- it’s cracked. Like really cracked.
His phone was supposed to be waterproof but it turns out it actually isn’t
Cracked screen..you can’t really tell what you’re looking at when he tries to show you a pic
Has at leas 10 different viruses (same)
Also someone that uses „!!“ a lot
I recommend calling him instead of texting because he can barely see what he’s writing 💀💀💀
Calls are VERY VERYYY chaotic because of his bad luck. One second he could be showing you the ducks in cider lake, the next all you can see is water and seaweed..
His phone falls out of his pockets all the time. He also drops it onto his face a lot
Yknow what just stick to voice mails for the sake of him 🙁
Noelle:
Clean phone, not a single crack in the screen
A sweet dry texter
Uses „hehe“ from time to time
Good morning and night texts everyday no matter what
I think she uses these a lot: „:D :) :( :/“
CLEAR PHONE CASE idk she just gives me the vibe 😭
Her alarm and ringtone are calming songs. Like I would wake up to them and actually be productive, makes ya feel motivated and shii
_______________________________________________
Zhongli:
This is gonna be hilarious
A dry texter but at least he uses „Okay“ instead of „Ok“
The PERFECT grammar and spelling. Dots and commas are being used, these ‘ too
Every single message is like you’re reading some kind of book
He tries his best understanding memes give him a break 😭
Looks at his phone in that one dad angle
Brightness all the way UP and tons of tabs OPEN. „I‘ll get back to them“ you know damn well.
Doesn’t use emoticons but he does use emojis…rarely. The occasional „😁“
His ringtone is either some ancient Chinese song or something…exotic? 😭 I don’t know how to describe it
Leaves you on read a lot but doesn’t understand what’s so bad about it till someone tells him
Good morning and night texts but make it EXTRA. It’ll be those pics with „Good Morning“ on them in cursive and flowers and glitter in the background (pls tell me y’all know what I mean)
Childe:
Not a dry texter but also not an extreme fun texter like kaeya (but that more)
I feel like he uses stuff like „huh“ and „oho“ a lot
He seems like a person that would use „LOL“ more than „lmao“
Another person that doesn’t use dots 😍
He knows how to use emojis ANDD understands gen z humor
Texts you a lot of dark jokes when he’s supposed to be working for some reason
A lot of his texts are him asking if he should buy you something (if you say no he will anyways btw)
He travels a lot so he sends you a lot of pics of sights in different nations ❤️
Ningguang:
The way she texts is elegant and idek how to explain it
Sends you a lot of fit pics (I wouldn’t mind)
Uses a lot of shortcuts when talking about work related stuff
Her phone case is beautiful I just know it
Puts videos of the view from the jade chamber in her story (when she has the time to)
I think she’d send a lot of voice mails bc she knows her voice is just YES
I feel like she has a lot of people blocked for whatever reason 😭
Beidou:
Uses a lot of shortcuts in general
Might send a few memes here and there
Also somewhere in between dry texter and fun texter
Her story is full of videos of the sea and crux introduction videos
Has a lot of contacts (every single crux member, ningguang, merchants, …)
I feel like her pfp would either be a pic of the sunrise or a funny pic of her face
Her phone is waterproof for obvious reasons !!
Hu Tao:
Black phone case black phone case black phon-
Her phone case also has a chain on it and it looks super cool 😋
Definitely a fun texter
Uses „HAHA“ a lot and sends you a bunch of memes
Puts videos of her pranking people (mainly zhongli) in her story
Her pfp Is either a ghost or a funny pic of her (I think it would probably be the funny pic)
I think she would record videos of her talking to ghosts and send you them at 3 am 😭
Definitely has different prank ideas in her notes app
Xinyan:
Her ringtone is one of her songs
Her phone is on dark mode too
Okay xinyans phone is very cool looking. Its all different shades of black and red and uahsjsjs 😍
Not a dry texter either and understands gen z humor
She probably uses „AYEEE“ a lot Idk why I think that but I can just see it 😋
Also Part of the discord gang
Yanfei:
Clear phone case with rosé outline. Change my mind.
Definitely has some important notes in her case
This girl has a to do list in her notes app.
I don’t know if she would be a dry texter or not but tbh I think it depends on who she’s talking to
Not a single tab open and that honestly scares me..
Her alarms aren’t even that loud but she has NEVER missed any
Xiangling:
Yet another person that uses „!!“ a lot. And yes that specific amount of them
Her phone is definitely waterproof just incase bc she hunts a lot yknow
Puts a lot of videos of herself hunting and cooking in her story
She’d text „YESS!!“ a lot when people suggest ingredients for her dishes
A sturdy phone case with a guoba sticker slapped on it
Keqing:
When she texts you it’s like she’s writing some kind of report
Dots, commas, ’ and sometimes skips a line
Never forgets the question marks at the end of questions
Good morning texts but no good night texts (idk why I just feel like it)
ALSO has a clear phone case.
Qiqi:
Sweet little baby.
I don’t know her physical age but lets just say she has a phone 😭
Definitely forgets she has your number and gets confused when you text her all of a sudden
Has a drawing of a cocogoat (that she made herself) as pfp and background
Has forgotten her pin multiple times and when she wrote it down she didn’t know what the numbers meant so she just told baizhu her pin 💀
Forget good morning and night texts you’ll get foot afternoon texts
Such a dry texter. You could think she’s dead.
Yunjin:
Okay she overuses GIFs and I know it
Most of the things she sends you are videos of her singing (not complaining)
She’s gonna have links to websites you can get tickets on in her status. I just know it.
Texts a LOT like barbara and uses „<3“ a lot (wether its sarcastic or not)
Her, Barbara, Nilou, Xinyan and have a group chat called „IDOLZ🌟“ (Miss Hina might be in there too)
Ganyu:
Oh lord.
Now you’d probably think her phone is all organized and stuff but NO its…pretty messy
It’s an organized mess. She knows where the stuff she needs is but if YOU saw all that your brain would over heat 😭
A BUNCH of reminders and alarms (the alarms are each 10 minutes apart for the morning invade she falls asleep after waking up)
She definitely uses „😂“ as laughing emoji
Dry in the non driest way possible iykwim <3
Still doesn’t know everything about her own phone
Xiao:
I don’t think its possible to get dryer than HE is
He is trying okay 💔
You think he wont be able to understand this technology? WRONG
This man is a full time gamer and streamer
Definitely tries to show Zhongli how everything works (now he needs to work on his dryness)
He’s a dry Texter and he KNOWS so he will send random memes from time to time to lighten the mood 😋
Xinqiu:
Definitely NOT a dry texter
He understands every single reference you make ❤️
Will share fanfic links with you everyday. (Please bmf Xinqiu)
He texts back really quickly even tho he’s supposed to be busy doing guild stuff???
Screenshots of funny quotes from stories he’s reading and the BEST recommendations!!!
Chongyun:
• Inspirational quotes in his status, no ghost sign as pfp and the drawing of a really famous exorcist as his wallpaper
He‘s basically like those football obsessed boys but with exorcism…and nicer
I think he is dry but just a TINY. Bit
Brightness all the way UP to „train his eyes“ (don’t ever look at his phone without wearing sunglasses)
Yelan:
Not a dry texter at ALL
She def flirts over text a LOT (gives her a confidence boost along with the one she already has)
She always knows where you are. Just don’t ask why
Will text back even MID FIGHT.
Probably has one of those THICK but fancy phone cases
Also has a waterproof phone since she’s wet a lot (🤭)
Face times a lot because she just always looks good so why not
YaoYao:
Definitely has an iPad too
Surprisingly texts in full sentences and has really good grammar 💪
(Not much because I don’t know a lot about her yet 😭)
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
A/N: I hope you liked this because it took AGES to complete 😭
#genshin impact#liyue#mondstadt#all Genshin characters#genshin hcs#genshin modern au#Genshin characters texting you#this took ages#help#genshin yelan#genshin yanfei#Genshin NINGGUANG#Genshin yunjin#Genshin beidou#genshin shenhe#Genshin hu tao#genshin ganyu#Genshin zhongli#genshin xinyan#genshin qiqi#genshin keqing#genshin yaoyao#genshin xiangling#genshin chongyun#genshin xingqiu#genshin xiao#Genshin Mona#Genshin Lisa#Genshin kaeya#Genshin Jean
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20 questions for fic writers
thank you for tagging me @thatbluelight !! i'm not always an ask games kind of person, but This. this is perfect and i had a lot of fun with it :)
how many works do you have on ao3?
98! getting veeeery close to that big 100 lol
2. what's your total ao3 word count?
486,142 apparently. not quite as many as i thought lol
3. what fandoms do you write for?
twenty one pilots, although i do have an old wtnv crossover in the mix somewhere. i've been thinking about writing for the nbc hannibal fandom, but haven't done it yet
4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?
bio is #1 by quite a bit <3 followed by odium, which i don't really like as much as i did when i first wrote it. after that is surrounded/hounded, spend some time (forever), and know me. oh god i forgot about that one
5. do you respond to comments? why or why not?
i try to, especially if they're longer comments, if people ask questions, if people said they liked the work, etc. i really appreciate the feedback and hearing how much people like something i've made motivates me to write more by a million lmao
6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
probably home or colder bones
7. what is the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
no one's gonna love you, not just bc everything works out and they get together but bc i was really happy with that ending and with the finished work
9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?
8. do you get hate on any fics?
not that i've ever noticed
without going into detail, i've written mlm and wlw. i generally try to make it abstract/not use explicit language because i have a Normal Healthy Relationship with sex and i can definitely say the word "cock" without wanting to tunnel into the ground like a gopher. as you can probably tell by this fic
10. do you write crossovers? what's the craziest one you've written?
just the pilots/wtnv crossover one, nothing too crazy (yet)
11. have you ever had a fic stolen?
not to my knowledge
12. have you ever had a fic translated?
yes, a few times! i Need to remember to put the translation link in the author's notes and notify people in the tags that there's multiple versions available
13. have you ever co-written a fic before?
i've had other people beta for me once or twice, and sometimes i've beta'd for other people, but other than that, no. a proper collab sounds fun though!
14. what's your all time favorite ship?
tyler n josh obviously but doesn't have to be romantic!! i just think they're neat :)
15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
if i listed every wip i've ever wanted to finish here, i'd be here all day lol. off of ao3, i'd love to finish all is cold betwixt; i have the whole thing mapped out, i just never wrote it. off the top of my head, i've got another shapeshifter one that's a bit less angsty than surrounded and a bit more silly. there's another more personal one that involves growing up in a changing climate, but it's never really gotten anywhere and was mostly just a vent fic. but probably the one i'd most like to finish involves love and fire and a terrible, terrible curse (or is it) with a splash of survivor's guilt.
16. what are your writing strengths?
once i get going on a writing session i Will keep going for a while. like if i get in the Writing Mood and sit down and actually do it, i'll get a shit ton of it finished
17. what are your writing weaknesses?
too many commas probably. also lately i've been starting fics without a general idea of the ending or how to get there, which leads me to abandon them or take long ass breaks. i also have trouble actually sitting down and Writing because i get distracted by other things that are less intense and require less focus but are still fun
18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?
nothing wrong with that, though i've never done it myself. i do appreciate when authors add a translation of the dialogue into english though so i don't have to whip out google translate
19. first fandom you wrote for?
warrior cats. i was 13, didn't have any social media, and i put several chapters to a spiral-bound notebook. not my best moment
20. favorite fic you've written?
no one's gonna love you and home are tied for #1, with surrounded/hounded and spend some time (forever) tied for #2. all my lady pilots stuff is #3; i don't think it's necessarily good but i enjoyed writing it!
tagging a few of my fellow fic writers here! no pressure to do the tag, and if anyone wants me to tag them, i'm happy to
@i-seeaspaceshipinthe-sky @rabler @edyluewho @kiitchensiink
i KNOW there's more but i don't know everyone's tumblr urls since they aren't the same as their names on ao3 lol. if you see this and you want to do this, this is me tagging you <3
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hi earth! i was wondering if you possibly had any advice for anyone who wants to start a writing blog or general tips. if you’re comfortable with it, it would also be cool to know what your writing process is like! you write very well so i’m just curious. thank you for taking the time to read this and i hope you have a lovely day!
first of all, this ask was what got me out of bed in the morning to go to my laptop where i did nothing for like 2 hours.
ANYWAYS I’ve been awake for seven hours now and i still haven’t answered it LOL, but thank u for taking the time to pop into my inbox anon!! so honoured u thought of me 🤭🤭
i’m more than happy to answer any questions u may have!! i’ve only been writing here for like one and a half years but I’ll gladly share some tips for new writers <3
tips for new writers - writing on tumblr in general:
formatting and your writing style is very important!!! people most of the time will like stories that have good grammar and are easy to read, so know your punctuation- duh, i mean, most people know where to put their commas, full stops, and shit, but as even a native English speaker i still need to double check sometimes 😭😭😭
ALSO, figure out if you’re a writer who likes to write with proper punctuation or in lower case like i am rn. people on tumblr don’t care which one you opt for so it’s a matter of personal preference!!
personally, i like to use proper punctuation for longer fics with more plot, and lower case writing for normal drabbles, headcannons, etc, all up to you :3 depends on what i feel like tho, i just like the look of lower case hehe
also, you can totally write drafts on tumblr or another platform - i switch between docs and tumblr. shorter pieces on tumblr and longer pieces on Google docs !!
how to get attention on tumblr as a new writer - the importance of tags:
USE THE TAGS - DON’T BE SHY !!! USE A VARIETY !!!! it’s so easy to get reads on tumblr if you just know your tags. i also will say: be mindful of whether or not you stay in tags bc your post can suddenly just disappear- this has happened to me so many times 😭😭 to do that just search if your fic is still popping up in the ‘recent’ section of the tags AND EVERY TIME AFTER U POST SOMETHING, TAKE THE TIME TO SEARCH IF IT’S IN THE ‘RECENT’ TAGS.
(this part might make zero sense, but if it’s been a couple hours and your post still is not popping up, you can either edit it again, make no changes, and press ‘save’.)
general tips:
have an aesthetic layout.
obviously it’s not ‘essential’, but i always find myself more likely to follow blogs that are pretty or have an aesthetics
it takes so long to do but it’s so worth it 😭 if you looks at the fics that do very well, the formatting it very beautiful and pleasing to the eye.
if you’re struggling with a layout, there are so many inspos available on tumblr, just search up ‘blog inspo’ or ‘layout inspo’ and you’ll generally be pretty successful. if all else fail just go to your fav blogs and see how they set up their blog/navigation/aesthetic!!!
having a set colour for your blog can also look nice and less chaotic. for example; mine is red and it’s my (usually) go-to colour for a lot of stuff. just make sure u like the colour tho ☝️
also don’t be afraid to talk to people! AUTHORS LOVE WHEN YOU COMPLIMENT THEIR WORK!! getting mutuals is such a great feeling so PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE !!!!! MAKE FRIENDS 😮😮
my writing process:
i am that writer that likes to have a plot before i start anything, but it’s never complete. normally when i’m going abt my day, i suddenly think of a piece of dialogue or scenario that makes me go ‘hold on. let me write that down’.
for example, recently i thought of a piece of dialogue for an angst fic (that i don’t know if i’ll use) that goes:
‘no i’m not upset that you forgot about our anniversary, in fact, i already predicted you would.’
another idea i had was: you don’t ever want to leave nagi seishiro hungry.
sometimes I get these ideas when i’m in bed like bro 😐 let me rest…
if i feel inspired enough to continue said ideas, i do, but i never force the fic from happening bc then it’ll be mediocre and just… okay. not something i want on my blog 😭
but then i decide the wordlength, how many scenes i want to be in there. for example, my mistletoe todoroki fic i set out for 4k and met my goal. but my itoshi rin Xmas fic only met around 1k when my goal was 2k - sometimes this happens and i cant be mad if i think the story is done there.
it’s never that organised though, if you look at my drafts, it’s a scrabble of words. i jump from scene to scene with big gaps in between that i need to fill in later 😭 but that’s just how i write LOL ! you may be totally different from me which is a-okay :3
then i grind til the fic is done, reread then bam 💪 ! do my usual formatting on tumblr, tags, and then you’ll see the final result!! easier said than done bc when you want to be done with a fic and just post it, you then need to do all the actual presentation of the fic 😭😭😭
anyways yeah, that’s my process summarised lol!! hope it helped u get a little bit of an idea for what the earthtooz blog grind looks like 🫡
so yeah, i think that’s all i rly need to say!! if you wanna follow my advice or not, up to u, but once again, thank u for popping in my inbox anon and asking me!! gave me something to do whilst on my walk 🤭
cant wait to see what you write, always feel free to come back and ask if you need some ‘extra help’, but i believe in you! good luck and have fun writing, and i hope to see u in the tags someday :D
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celebrity crush | 2/??
a/n: the first interview is mostly based off of dove cameron and ava max’s interviews with popbuzz
summary: actress! reader somehow manages to bring up her crush on calum hood in every interview
pairing(s): calum hood x reader, platonic! reader x tom holland
warning(s): swearing? slight mentions of kinks
“She’s at it again mate,” Ashton smirked as he carried his laptop over to Calum who was sat on the sofa. He flipped open the computer and hit play on y/n y/l/n’s newest interview.
“C’mon, I don’t wanna-” Calum rubbed his hand over is face and shook his head.
Ashton ignored him and turned up the volume to drown out his protest. “Shhh.. watch.”
“Hey guys, I’m y/n y/l/n and this is the Pop Buzz Tower of Truth.” You spoke as the title popped up on screen.
“I think I’m gonna end up tipping it before I can even get one block out,” You said as you tried to carefully pull of a wooden block.
“That will never work,” Calum heard a voice from off camera say and recognized it as Tom Holland. He tried not to frown as you laughed and mocked him.
“Y’know what, we’re leaving that one.” You laughed, leaving the original block alone and easily pulling out another block.
“There we go. Okay, what was the last movie or tv show that make you cry? Dead Poets Society. I love Dead Poets Society so much and Tom had never seen it so we watched it after finishing yesterdays interviews.” You placed the block on top of the tower. “And he cried.”
The camera crew laughed as Tom shouted a, “Hey!”
“Tell us one thing about you that we don’t know. Um, this is hard because I’m always saying stuff that I shouldn’t be. Um, I’m an Oxford comma worshiper.” You said, unsure whether or not that’s interesting enough.
“Oxford comma?” A crew member behind the camera questioned.
“Yeah, y’know, the comma that comes before ‘and’ when making a list. I hate that people don’t use it because then I get all confused. Like if I were to write ‘Lizzie, Tom, and Robert are going to the party’ and I don’t add a comma before ‘and’ then it seems like Tom and Robert would be arriving at the party together. But some people who don’t use the Oxford comma could mean that all three people were showing up separately so I never know. Y’know what I mean?”
The camera crew were all silent after her rant and Calum chuckled a bit to himself. He thought it was cute that you were so passionate about the smallest things. Ashton looked over to him as Calum admired you through the screen. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew Calum secretly liked how much you talked about him.
“No,” Tom responded honestly
“Ugh,” You rolled your eyes dramatically and looked into the camera, “See, these are the type of guys you got to look out for: Un-grammarly men.” You joked.
“Un-grammarly isn’t a thing.” Tom laughed.
“Well if it were a thing, you’d be one.” You fired back at Tom.
“Anyway, who is your favorite artist right now? Um, probably Wallows, I love them and their music.”
“I was really expecting Calum Hood to be honest.” Tom shouted from across the room.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe I just forgot about him like that. I love you Calum Hood. I love 5sos.” You held up your hands into a heart shape and moved your hands from side to side.
You then dropped them and grabbed another block. “Sorry, I keep forgetting that people are actually going to see these interviews. Like, he could literally see this. Dude, I hope he doesn’t.” You paused, “Oh god, do you think he knows about my crush on him?” You had been mentioning him for years and it had never once occurred to you that he could actually see these.
Calum laughed at the irony of the situation. Here he was watching a video of you saying you hoped he’d never see said video.
“This is humiliating.” You mumbled though you didn’t seem to actually care, “Who was your first celebrity crush? Oh uh, definitely Andrew Garfield. I remember when I first watched the Social Network and I was like obsessed. My friend and I both watched it over 10 times within like two months. And then would continuously make Mark Zuckerberg jokes. But of course, Calum Hood now owns my heart.” You put the block on top of the tower. “I’m actually doing really good, I thought I’d knock it down by now.”
“Describe in detail the worst date you’ve ever been on. Okay so I was like fifteen right, and, well I’m not even sure if this counts as a date. I think he considered it a date so I guess it was but basically we were in the car, he was sixteen so he could drive. We were in the drive through, we had already ordered, and he started feeling around in is pockets and I was like oh god, cause I knew what was about to happen. He was like, ‘oh no i think i lost my wallet’, and I was like its fine I’ll pay. I really didn’t mind. I ended up paying, we got our drinks and without missing a beat, we hadn’t even pulled out of the drive through, he was like’oh here’s my wallet.’ I really didn’t mind paying for my coffee, I wouldn’t mind paying for both of our coffees. But him going out of his way to lie, and then not even lie well, was so irritating.” She placed the block on the top and picked up a new one.
“What is the most useless idem you’ve ever purchased? Um, I bought a seven foot giraffe while I saw drunk once.” The block was added to the top, the tower now taller than you. “He’s in my living room if you wanted to know.”
You grabbed the next block carelessly, immediately regretting it when the tower fell behind you, “Oh shit, well I guess we’re done then.” You said nonchalantly, looking at the blocks on the floor. “I don’t think I’ll be playing this again anytime soon. Love you guys,” You held up your hands, “Love you Calum Hood.” You winked before the outro began to play.
“She must really love you, Cal.” Ashton poked Calum’s cheek annoyingly, “She’s got no shame.”
Calum wouldn’t admit it, but as soon as he got home he looked you up again. He clicked on the same video Ashton showed him and scrolled through the comments.
y/nscalumhoodkink: MOMOMOMOMOMOM
datemey/n: Queen of Jenga
ashtonfletchersbitch: Y/N LITERALLY IS ME
5esohes: no because y/n y/l/n and calum hood together is my kink
noemptywalletshere: not only does y/n own this fandom, but my ass too
He couldn’t help but laugh at the comments no matter how interesting they were. But something in the back of his head kept yelling at him. She doesn’t acting like you. Shes just likes your music, nothing more. He sighed and clicked out of the video and was about the close his laptop when his cursor handed on a video.
Y/n Y/l/n foaming at the mouth while talking about Calum Hood for 5 minutes straight.
He clicked on it a little too quickly and waited for it too load.
“Calum Hood choke me challenge.” You stuck out your tongue and threw up a peace sign with an innocent look plastered on here face.
“Bro imagine if Calum Hood saw this?” “Oh he would definitely fall for you after this video”
The third thing to pop up was a tweet from 2015 just saying: #marrymecalumhood
“Calum Hood send me hand pics. This is a demand, not a request.”
Calum continued to watch the entire video. Normally, the thirsty comments would have made him uncomfortable, but them coming from you made his heart race and cheeks flush.
God, what was happening to him?
#calum#calum hood#luke hemmings#ashton irwin#michael clifford#5sos#5sos imagine#calum hood x y/n#calum hood x you#imagines#calum hood x reader#5sos calum#calum hood 5 seconds of summer#marvel cast#marvel#tom holland#interview#luke hemmo#tom holland x reader#cal pal
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When I got my ADHD diagnosis, I looked at the questions on the screening form and thought, "If this result comes back positive, then I'm definitely not the only person in my family who has it."
Questions like
"Have difficulty finishing one activity before starting another one" and
"I finish others' sentences before they can finish it themselves" and
"have trouble staying on one topic when talking"
...I thought were just weird quirks of my family, but no. When I got my results, I contacted my cousin, and she contacted her sisters and mother, and ..
.. yeah. Basically everyone in my dad's side of the family is ADHD.
Now there are some problems with that, obviously,
(getting family reunions to stick to a schedule is lol no)
but there are some really fantastic perks. For one thing, no one in that family minds if I interrupt them while they're talking ... everyone's happy to keep 3 conversations going at the same time .... and no one minds if you fidget constantly.
But the best perk -- at least that I've found so far -- is that all of our parents have coping mechanisms, and passed them on to us. When I found myself unable to handle tasks with more than one step, my father didn't say "WTF are you talking about? It's easy! Just do the thing! Stop being lazy!"
No, he could relate completely, and he sat down and taught me how to handle that.
So today, I'm going to pass on to you the coping mechanism my dad taught me for handling the "cannot put tasks in order / cannot get started / forget what I'm doing" problem. You'll need to adjust it for your own needs and your own struggles, but hopefully it'll be helpful in setting up your own process.
I'm going to walk through it with a big project I'm doing at work, just to have a concrete example. That will make some of the discussion specific to computer programming and technical writing, but I do the same thing for all my projects, so hopefully it'll be generalizable.
So to set the stage:
I was supposed to modify this piece of code -- we'll call it "Rosetta" -- to make it handle call data as well as what it was already doing. I did that.... but we now need the code to be able to handle calls (if that's wanted) but also to be able to handle NOT having calls (if THAT'S wanted).
Which is just .... ugh. So much. SOOOOOOOO much.
So. Break it down.
Step one is to get some recording mechanism - pen and paper, whiteboard, blank computer document, whatever
(Technically, this is a different coping strategy, so we'll just take a quick detour: WRITE THINGS DOWN. Your brain is shit at remembering things, and anyway you've already got limits on your working memory; why would you choose to tie up some of that limited resource in something that could be accomplished with literal stone-age technology? Don't even try to remember things. WRITE THEM DOWN.)
I like sticky notes: they're readily available in all offices, they're pretty cheap, and (most importantly) they can be rearranged if it turns out that I forgot a step or put the steps in the wrong order (which, like, let's be honest, I am definitely going to do). But they kill trees and create unnecessary methane emissions, so I've recently switched over to using virtual sticky notes. That's the format I'm going to use for this example, but you can use anything that meets your purposes.
So, you've got something to write with, you're ready to start.
The first question is: what are you trying to accomplish here? What would "done" look like? What is our goal?
I need to end up with a version of Rosetta that will make the correct results if you don't want calls, and will also make the correct results if you do.
The goal here is that you end up with a statement that you can definitively say
(a) Yes this is what I wanted
or
(b)No this is not right because _______
In this case, in order to do that, I'll need to define "correct results" for both call- and non-call versions. But if I have that nailed down, then this statement meets that criterion: I'll be able to say "Yes, this is what I wanted: see, it makes the correct result for calls, and it makes the correct result for not-calls".
Or else I'll be able to say, "No, this is wrong: see, it makes the correct result for calls, but on not-calls it does X and we wanted Y."
I have a clear, definitive standard about what I need to do and whether or not I've done it.
But there was a prerequisite there: I need to define "correct results".
So that goes on a sticky note: Create test that will compare my results to existing call!Rosetta-results and to existing not-call!Rosetta-results.
[ID: Two blue boxes, one on top of the other. The top one says in white text "Create test to compare my results to call!results" The bottom one says "Create test to compare my results to not-call!results"]
OK. So now we know what we want. The second question is: what do we need to do in order to get that? Here's where the sticky-note recording system really shines, because you don't have to answer this question sequentially. You just start writing down every single thing that is not the way you want it to end up.
I need it to remove commas in the python script, not the bash script
I need to delete the first part of the get_runs() function, which doesn't do anything
I need to delete the rest of the parameters passed to build_query_script() function, because runs encompasses all the others
while we're on that subject, runs doesn't even need the group_variable, so let's pull that out of the parameter document
we also have a dmf defined, which the bash script demands but doesn't use; let's change that demand
since we're changing the structure of the parameter document, we don't need to pull new metrics for each run, so let's move that outside of the runs() loop and only run once
right now the parameter document is ALMOST but not quite "one row per template". Make it so it's actually one row per template.
among other things, that's going to require making it possible for a template to be followed by nothing at all, since it's the assumption that a template will have a metrics block after it that makes it not quite one row per template. So make it possible to publish a template with a null block
the other thing that's weirdly hard-coded is the definition of what a block looks like. Would it make more sense to separate that out into an input file, like the parameters document? On the one hand, that would make it much more flexible; on the other hand, that's another piece that can break. Don't know. Put a question mark on it.
etc
Here's what it looks like at the end of this step:
[ID: A black and white background showing many boxes in two different shades of blue, all with white text. Some of the boxes are overlapping each other.]
As you can see, at this phase you don't need to worry about any of the following:
ordering the tasks. Just stick 'em right on top of each other for now
how you're going to do any of this. Right now we just need to know what, not how
sticking to only one project. As I was working on this, it occurred to me that this whole process would have been a heck of a lot easier if someone had just made a user manual for this, and since I have to go through all the code line-by-line anyway, I might as well write up the documentation while I'm at it. (To help out future-me, if nothing else.) So I put those tasks on another color of sticky note.
making notes that make any ***ing sense to anyone else. This process is for you, and only you need to understand what you're talking about it. Phrase it in ways that make sense to your brain, and to hell with anyone else.
on that topic, also don't worry about making steps that are "too small" or "too dumb" to write down. This is for you. If "save document" feels like a step to you, then write it down.
You also don't need to get every single step involved in the project right now. Get as many as you can, to be sure, but the process is designed on the assumption that you ARE going to forget important steps, and is designed to handle that.
When you can't think of any more steps, then the third question is: what order does it make sense to do these in? Are there any steps that would be easier if you did another step first? Are there any that literally cannot be done unless another step is complete?
This is also a good place to group steps if they fit together nicely. When I used physical sticky notes, I used two different sizes; digitally I can of course make them whatever size I want.
So I have several documentation steps that (a) do need to be written to make sense to other people and (b) I really need to know what's going on before I can do that. I could write them now, but if I did, I'd just end up re-writing them based on things that change as I'm coding. So we'll move those to the end:
[ID: Three dark blue boxes with white text. They read "Create step-by-step instructions for creating your own metric agg", "Create step-by-step instructions for modifying a metric", "Create step-by-step instructions for modifying a query."]
These parts, though -- if I had all the variable structures written down, I could look at them while I'm coding. Then I won't have to keep scrolling back and forth in the code, trying to remember if it's an array or a dictionary while also trying to remember what part of the code I was working on. Brilliant. Move that to the front.
[ID: Seven dark blue boxes with white text, three large, four small. The first one is large and says "Write up explanation of how Rosetta works." The second one is large and says "Document structure of all variables." Attached to that one are four smaller boxes that say "All_blocks", "Runs", "metric", "New_block". The third large one says "Document what qb_parameters.csv contains"]
Also, while I'm at it, I should get the list of variables I need to document -- then I won't have to keep scrolling to find them. Make those sub-steps.
I definitely keep needing to look up what's in the parameters document, so I should write that down, too. For the user manual I also should write down what's in the metric document, but I don't need that for myself, so I can send that to the end.
[ID: The same three dark blue boxes from two screenshots ago (create step-by-step instructions for metric agg, modifying a metric, and modifying a query), now with another dark blue box in front of them with white text that says "Document what granular_metrics.tsv contains."]
These five are all small steps, and are all related in that they don't actually (hopefully) change the functionality of the code; they're just stuff left over from prior versions of this code. So we can lump them all together.
[ID: Five light blue boxes with white text that say "Delete first part of get_runs()", "Have build_query_script only receive the "run" parameter" "Delete dmf" "Move metrics=get_metrics() outside build_all_blocks (all the way up to the top level?" "Delete group_variable from qp_parameters"]
My brain likes this better, so that I can keep track of fewer "main steps", but that's just a peculiarity of me -- you should lump and split however you prefer to make this process easier for you.
[ID: The same five boxes from the prior screenshot, now all made smaller and attached to a larger box that says "Remove Legacy Code"]
Keep going, step by step, sticky by sticky, until you've got them in order. If -- while you're doing this -- you remember another thing you need to do, write it on a sticky and slap it on the pile; you don't have to stop what you're doing to deal with it, because it's written down and it's on the pile and it will get processed; you can just keep working on the thing you're on right now.
[ID: All the same boxes from the first screenshot, now in a neat row. Some of the original boxes have been grouped together. The ones that were said to be at the beginning of the process are on the left and the ones that were said to be at the end are on the right.]
Step four: for the love of all that's holy, SAVE THIS LIST.
Write it on your cubicle whiteboard where it won't be erased
write it on a piece of paper and tape it to the office wall
send an email to yourself
take a picture with your phone
I don't care but save it.
When I used physical sticky notes, I kept them all on the hood of my cubicle's shelf. Now, as you can see, I use Powerpoint, which is irritating af but does allow me to keep everything in a single document, which I can write down the path of.
[ID: White text on a black background says "open ~/Documents/Rosetta\ Modifications\ and \Documentation.pptx"
The next line says "Notes in Rocketbook pg 10-12, 16"
The next line says "Turn that into documentation that can be used for making modifications."]
And now (finally) you can answer the question "How would I even get started on that?" You look at the first thing on the list, and you treat it as its own project. You can hyperfocus on this step and completely forget about everything else this project requires, because everything you need to remember for the rest of it is written down.
If, as you're working a step, you think of something else you need to do for the big project, write it on a sticky and slap it on the pile. Don't even worry about trying to order it or identify sub-steps; as long as it's not blocking the thing you need to work on right now, you don't have to care. Just stick that bugger anywhere at all on the list, and go back to what you were doing. When you un-hyperfocus and come back to look at your list, there'll be a big sticky note stuck sideways across all the rest of the steps, and you'll remember to file and order it then.
Other benefits of this system
1) The first question really helps with unclear directions from your boss. You can take whatever they told you to do, and translate it into a requirement that is clearly either met or not-met, and then run it back by the boss.
If they say, "No, no, we want ______" then phew! You just saved a huge miscommunication and weeks of wasted work! What a good employee you are! What an excellent team player with strong communication skills!
If they say "Yes, that's what I want," then you know -- for sure -- what it is you're trying to accomplish. Your anxiety is reduced, and your boss thinks you're super-conscientious.
(And if your boss is a jerk who likes to move the goalposts and blame it on their subordinates, then have this conversation over email, so you can show it to their boss or to HR should it become necessary.)
2) Having this project map means that when you spend an hour staring at the requirements and trying to figure out how to get started (which, let's be honest, you were definitely going to do anyway) ...
When your boss/coworker comes by and says, "How's it going?"
Instead of having to say "I haven't even started 😞"
You can say, "Pretty well! I've got all the steps mapped out and am getting ready to start on implementation!"
and show them your list, and they think you're very organized and meticulous.
3) Sometimes, especially in corporate jobs, you and your coworkers will run into a problem that's too big for even Neurotypicals to hold all in their heads. At that point, the NTs will be completely lost -- they've never had to develop a way to handle projects they can't just look at and know how to get started. So then you pipe up in the meeting and say, "OK, well, what exactly are we trying to accomplish?" and everybody at the conference table looks at you like you're a goddamned genius and you don't have to tell them that you use this exact same process to remember how to make a sandwich 😅
4) Having this project map makes it so much easier to stop work and then start it up again later, but this post is already really really really long, so I'm going to address that in a separate (really really long) post.
#adhd#adhd life#tips#semi-solicited advice#gpoy#your mileage may vary#long post#very long post#sorry I wish I wrote more concisely too
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ASMR - chapter 3
Elriel fanfiction
About this fic:
Azriel can’t sleep
Elain has an ASMR channel
Match made in heaven (or you know, on youtube..)
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You can find chapter 1 here and chapter 2 here
Read this fic on AO3
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Chapter 3
Luckily for Azriel, the next day was a Saturday, which meant that he didn’t have to go to work. The only plan he had that day was his gym appointment at 7.00 in the morning, just like every other day. Cassian and Rhys often gave him shit for going to the gym that early in the morning on weekends, but they had partners to enjoy the days with. Azriel did not, which meant that working out was a good way to pass time. Especially for someone like Azriel who didn’t sleep and seemed to have more hours to his days than most regular people did.
However, today he woke up to the sun shining in through his window. He picked up his phone to check the time and was surprised to see that it said 9.23. He never slept that late. And he never slept that well.
She made me miss my gym appointment, Azriel thought to himself and couldn’t help but smile. And then it hit him. It was 9.23. That meant that Flower Girl ASMR would call him in exactly 37 minutes, and he hadn’t even had coffee yet. Azriel quickly got out of bed and hurried to the kitchen. While the coffee was brewing he jumped into the shower. He didn’t know why, but it felt wrong to be on the phone with her without having a shower first. Just like it would feel wrong to show up to a date without showering.
This is not a date, he told himself as he tied the towel around his hips and walked back into his kitchen. Azriel lived in a studio apartment, which meant that his ‘kitchen’ was actually a corner of his living room/bedroom. It was quite big for a studio apartment and he could easily fit his bed, a big sectional, and a dining room table in the room. There were exposed bricks on one wall which gave it a rustic feeling, and the white sleek details everywhere else made it feel modern and minimalistic - just like Azriel preferred.
Azriel leaned against his counter and sipped his coffee. He glanced at the clock on the wall which told him that he had 15 minutes left before the phone call. His hands were sweating. Was it because the coffee was so warm? Azriel tried to tell himself that the coffee was the reason for his warm hands, but it was more difficult to find an explanation for the butterflies in his stomach.
He was nervous. Not because of what they were going to talk about - he could probably guide someone through this in his sleep. But because she made him nervous. It’s one thing to see someone in a video and talk via DMs and an entirely different thing to facetime that person. What if she thought that he was ugly?
As the thought entered his mind, he shook his head as if trying to shake the thought away. Why did he care? He was just helping her with a problem. It didn’t matter if she found him ugly because this was a one-time thing. He would never see her again.
The butterflies turned into a tight knot in his stomach.
Azriel let out a low groan and went to his wardrobe to get dressed. He put on a black T-shirt and black jeans - his standard uniform. He dried his hair hastily with the towel before throwing it in the hamper.
At 10.00 on the dot, Azriel’s phone started ringing on the kitchen island. Or vibrating actually, since he always kept the sound off.
Unknown number is calling
Azriel stared at his phone, suddenly feeling very shy and questioning everything he knew about computers. He checked his reflection in the microwave and let out a deep breath before answering.
“Hello, this is Azriel.” His voice was hoarse, sounding deeper than usual.
“Oh, hi!” A cheery voice said and he was a bit taken aback. In his stupid brain, he had imagined her answering in her whispering voice. “Is this… is this Shadowsinger?”
Azriel decided that her normal voice was just as wonderful as her whispering voice.
“Yeah, this is Shadowsinger. Or well, that’s not my name. I’m obviously not called that. That would be weird…” Azriel babbled, growing more and more self-conscious by the second. He took a deep breath. “I’m Azriel.”
“Hi, Azriel. I’m Elain.” He could hear the smile in her voice and it made him think of sunshine and flowers.
Elain. The name suited her. It was a welsh name that meant fawn. Or at least that’s what Feyre told him one night when she had spent three hours going over possible baby names with their entire friend group (After three hours, Azriel, Cassian, Mor and Nesta had been very drunk and started suggesting weird names from TV such as Khaleesi, Anakin and Buffy which led to Rhys kicking them out.) But Elain wasn’t a weird name. It was pretty. Just like the person that the name belonged to.
“Hello, Elain,” Azriel said quickly when he realized that he had been quiet for a short while.
“Azriel is… an interesting name.” He couldn’t tell from her tone if it was good interesting or bad interesting.
He chuckled. “Yeah, try growing up with the nickname ‘Ass’ in school. Not Az. Ass.”
He could hear Elain laugh and it warmed his heart. “Oh no,” she giggled.
There was a stretch of silence then, both of them unsure of how to begin this.
“So...” Elain started after a few moments. “How do I block words on Youtube, Azriel?”
As soon as the words traveled through the phone, he wanted to ask her to say his name again, but that would be weird. So instead he cleared his throat and got himself into work mode.
“Well, I didn’t know if you were a visual learner, but I created a Youtube account yesterday so I could show you what to do, and you could just follow along if you like?”
God, was he doing too much? Would she find this creepy? Maybe he should just tell her what to do without video.
But to his surprise, Elain did not sound creeped out. “Really? That would be so helpful! How...How can I see your screen though?”
Azriel huffed a laugh. It was kind of cute that she was so oblivious when it came to technology even though she had 250k followers on Youtube.”Well, we’ll change to FaceTime and I will be able to flip the screen and just show you what I’m doing. Is that okay with you?”
He was met with silence.
“Elain?”
“Oh, sorry. I was nodding,” she laughed. “Yes, that’s fine.”
Azriel clicked the icon for FaceTime on his screen and within seconds, her face filled his screen. Her brown hair was in a high ponytail and she wore a mint green hoodie. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and Azriel had to catch his breath. God, why did she have to be so beautiful? He realized that he was staring at her through the screen but his brain wouldn’t form words.
“Hi,” Elain smiled, her cheeks turning pink. “I kind of forgot that we would see each other and not just a screen. Sorry that I look like a mess. I’m going to the gym after this...” She gestured to her hair and Azriel had no idea what mess she was referring to.
“What? You look wonderful,” he said and as soon as the words registered in his brain he wished to be swallowed up by a hole in the ground. He winced. “I mean... I just–” he was making it worse. Lovely. “I just meant that you don’t look like a mess.”
She gave him the sweetest smile. “Well, You don’t look too bad yourself.” She was blushing even more now. Was he blushing too? He had never blushed in his life, so he didn’t even know what that would feel like, but he did feel a bit hot.
Azriel cleared his throat. “So,” he started. “I’m going to flip my screen and film my laptop now. Tell me if you can see what I’m doing.”
“Okay!”
Azriel logged into Youtube and held his phone in front of the screen. “Can you see?” He held the phone in front of his computer, and even though she couldn’t see him anymore, he could still see her.
“Just a second,” she said and held up a finger. She was moving and so was her camera. When she reappeared, Azriel was very happy that she couldn’t see him. She was wearing glasses and they made her, if possible, even more attractive. Her beautiful golden eyes looked even bigger. Like a fawn, Azriel thought to himself.
“Yes, I can see when you have the phone so close to the screen,” she answered.
“Okay, good. Are you near your own computer?”
“Yes! And I’m already logged into my Youtube account.”
Azriel nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “Great. Then you should see your profile picture here in the corner.” He showed her where to look.
“Mhm, I see it.”
She was focusing so hard on the screen, she had probably forgotten that he could see her. She was leaning in close enough for Azriel to see her freckles.
I want to kiss every single freckle on her body.
The thought entered his brain before he could even react and he was very happy that she wasn’t a mind reader. He tried to ignore her face on his screen and focus on his task.
“You will click the photo, and that should display a menu,” he explained. “Like this. You are going to click ‘Youtube Studio’ here.”
Elain scrunched up her nose in concentration and Azriel thought that he might die from the cuteness.
“Done! What next?”
“Okay, then you click ‘Settings’ at the bottom here,” he showed her where to look. “And then you choose ‘Community’”
“Community?” She asked and bit her lip.
Azriel wanted to bite that lip too.
“Yeah,” he answered, happy that he didn’t have to come up with more advanced words.
“And then you scroll down to ‘blocked words’ here,” he instructed. “Are you there?”
“Yes, I found it,” she answered with a smile.
“Well, aren’t you a gold star student?” Azriel joked and Elain’s face went from smiling to blushing in a nano-second.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
There was a beat of silence again. Azriel wanted to kick himself.
“What now?” Elain asked in a low voice, still determined to get this over with.
“Well, now you just fill in the words you want to block. Make sure that you separate each word or phrase with a comma. And then you just press save and that’s it.”
“Oh, okay. That was easier than I imagined.”
Silence again.
“Can you manage from here?”
Elain bit her lip again. She was staring somewhere behind her phone; probably at her computer. “Ehm, I’m not sure what words to block.”
Azriel thought back to the awful comments he had seen and could think of a handful of words.
“Well, just block the words that these commenters often use, and maybe block bad words in general? You can review your comments later, so if nice comments are being filtered, you can choose to restore them while deleting the bad ones.”
Elain nodded and Azriel didn’t know if he should hang up or stay. So he stayed. His camera was still facing his computer, and Elain was still filming herself. She looked lost in thought.
“Are you okay, Elain?” Azriel asked cautiously, afraid to startle her.
“Hmm?” She looked straight at the camera now, eyes still glossy.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just… tired. I really like doing ASMR, but this sucks. I just want to make people happy and spread positivity, you know? And still, I have to deal with this.”
“Yeah, that must suck.”
Azriel had a question that he had been burning to ask, but he didn’t know if it was too personal. However, as he told himself before, they were never going to see each other again. He could always ask, and the worst thing he could get was a ‘no, I don’t want to talk about it’.
So he asked.
“Elain, can I ask you something?”
She nodded absentmindedly.
“Yesterday you wrote that you had blocked those trolls multiple times. Are you certain that they’re the same people?”
She nodded again. “Yes. In the beginning, they were a bit more creative with the usernames which threw me for a loop. But I realized that it was the same IP addresses every single time, so yeah. I know. I mean, I get hate from complete strangers too, but these people are a bit more persistent .” The last word was spoken through her teeth. She looked upset, but she also looked like she wanted to hide it. Azriel decided to switch his camera back to his face so she wouldn’t feel as vulnerable. And so he wouldn’t feel like a creep for staring at her.
Elain looked a bit startled. “Oh, hi again,” she smiled, but it wasn’t as genuine anymore.
“Do you know these people?” Azriel asked through gritted teeth. He didn’t know why, but he felt very protective all of a sudden.
“Yes, I do. At least the three people that commented yesterday…” she bit her lip again, probably contemplating if she should tell him more. “It’s my ex.”
Azriel tried his hardest to not look surprised and pissed off at the same time. “All three of them?”
With a surprised look on her face, she shook her head quickly. “Oh, god no. No. Just one. His name is Graysen.”
MortalGraysen. Azriel remembered the username because it had sounded so stupid.
“And the other two?”
She let out a long breath. “His stupid best friends, Amarantha and Hybern. Stupid names, right?”
Azriel could only agree. “Very. Why is he bothering you like this, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Elain took off her glasses and massaged her temple lightly. “I dumped him after he slept with Amarantha and then…” she chewed the inside of her cheek. “Then he told all of our friends that he only slept with her because I was so boring in…'' her cheeks flushed again and she didn’t finish that sentence. She didn’t have to. Azriel understood perfectly.
“Okay, so he really is an asshole then.”
“The biggest.”
“Well, I don’t think you can block IP addresses on Youtube, but you could always try to block their names. It might work for a while at least?” Azriel suggested. He needed to help her.
“That’s smart!” she exclaimed and sat her phone down to type. He was very happy that she had leaned it against something so he could still see her.
“What other words should I add?”
Azriel thought back to the comments he had seen. Boobs, nudes, cock, jerk off and tits were all words that she should block, but they were also words he didn’t feel like saying in front of her.
“Just check their old comments and block the words they have used.”
“I’ve deleted the comments, but I remember a few words.” She typed again and Azriel could tell that she was uncomfortable.
“Hey, just block all sexual words and maybe swear words? That should probably work for a while?”
“Okay.” She typed again while Azriel waited patiently. Honestly, he would probably wait forever if it meant that he could watch her on his screen like this.
He felt like a teenager with a crush on the coolest girl in school. He knew that she was out of his league, but his body had not gotten the memo…
“I think I’m done,” she announced and smiled at her phone. At him.
Azriel smiled back. “Which words did you write?” he asked out of curiosity.
Elain picked up her phone and switched the camera so he could see her computer. In the box for ‘blocked words’ she had indeed written a few words.
Blocked words
Graysen, Hybern, Amarantha, Boring, Dumb, Stupid, Weird, Ugly, Penis, Vagina, Sex, Sexy, Breasts, Feet, Ejaculation, Nipple, Damn, Fuck, Darn it, Hell,
“Do you think that’s enough?” She asked him in a low voice as if she was ashamed of what she was showing him.
Azriel had to bite his lip in order to keep himself from grinning. It was kind of sweet that she had written down the more technical terms, and not any words that would actually be used on the internet.
“Well, I think it’s a good start,” Azriel answered. “But I think there are a few more words that you should add. And maybe some you can remove from the list.”
“Which ones can I remove?” She leaned closer to her computer, probably trying to find the redundant words.
“I don’t think that trolls will use Darn it, for example.”
Elain pressed the backspace key a few times.
“And which words should I add?” she asked the screen. Her glasses had slid down her nose a bit and Azriel had an urge to reach through the screen and push them back into place.
Azriel scratched his chin, thinking about the best way to phrase it. “Maybe a few synonyms for the words you have written down?”
“Such as?”
Azriel held his breath. “Well…” Azriel hesitated. Was she serious or was she just trying to get him to say dirty words? “I don’t think that internet trolls will use the word vagina.”
“Oh,” her ears turned a lovely pink color. “So I should just add synonyms for that word then?”
“Sure.”
Elain looked lost in thought for a moment before typing again, this time a bit more aggressively. “There are quite a lot,” she muttered.
“Really?” Azriel could only think of two; pussy and cunt.
“Yes. I googled it.”
Of course, she googled a list of synonyms for vagina. Azriel couldn’t hold back his grin this time. She gave him a look he couldn’t decipher. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, still grinning. “Can you read me this list of synonyms?” he teased, thinking that she would tell him to fuck off.
He was wrong.
“Well, there’s pussy, cunt, vajayjay, punani, ho-ha, flower…” she drifted off and Azriel could tell the exact moment it hit her that she was reading these words to a man she didn’t know. “Oh, god,” she groaned and hid her face in her hand. “Please ignore everything that just happened.”
Azriel chuckled. “I rather not. What’s the weirdest word on the list?”
He was invested now.
Elain looked at him through the screen again, but this time he could tell that she was suppressing a smile. “The weirdest one must be fish taco, or bald man in a boat. One just sounds disgusting, and the other one is just… weird? Like, I don’t get it.”
“I think that the ‘bald man’ is supposed to be the...uh,” Azriel could not finish that sentence. He knew that he was blushing now, too.
“Oh,” she said looking surprised, and then disgusted. “Oh, that just makes it worse.”
The laugh that followed was contagious.
As she laughed, Azriel thought back to the day before. To when he had watched her video to fall asleep. In her videos, she was so calm and collected - the complete opposite from this bubbly, laughing person on his screen. Both sides of her were equally fascinating to Azriel and he wished that he could get to know her better. She was so easy to talk to. Azriel never found anyone easy to talk to. At parties, you could find him in the corner with a drink and a good book. He was not a talkative man. But with Elain, he wanted to talk. And he wanted to listen. He wanted her to tell him about her day and her life, which was absurd. They had been talking for like 30 minutes. They didn’t know each other. They would never get to know each other.
“Thank you for helping me with this, Azriel,” Elain said when the laughter had died down. “I really appreciate it. I’m sorry for being a bit weird and reading you that list. I hope that I didn’t cross a line or…”
Azriel held up a hand to show her that he didn’t mind. “It’s no problem, honestly. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this much.”
Elain shifted in her seat and picked up her phone again, moving it closer to her face again. “Just like you couldn’t remember the last time you had slept well?”
For a second, Azriel was truly afraid that she was a mind reader because that meant that she had heard him think that he wanted to kiss all her freckles. And then, he remembered the comment he had left on her video a few days earlier.
“Yeah, just like that.”
She leaned her head to the side and regarded him through the phone. “Is that true? You can’t remember having a good night’s sleep?”
Azriel shook his head. “I have suffered from insomnia since I was a child. Sleep has never been a positive experience for me.”
He had never opened up like this to anyone. His former girlfriend never understood why he was awake and why he hated sleepovers. The insomnia had definitely destroyed a few relationships over the years. He could tell that Elain wanted to ask about it, but she didn’t. He really appreciated that.
“Well, I’m happy that I can help you with that anyway. It makes me feel less horrible for making you help me with this on a Saturday morning,” she said and gestured to her computer.
“You didn’t make me do anything. I offered. I was happy to help.”
She gave him the sweetest smile yet and Azriel was surprised when he didn’t melt into a puddle. “Well, thank you. Can I pay you for your trouble?”
Before she had even finished the sentence Azriel shook his head. “No, Elain. I really don’t want you to pay me.”
“Okay,” she bit one side of her lip again. Those damn lips. “Can I give you something else then?”
Did her tone sound flirty? Azriel didn’t know. He might just be hopeful because he started imagining all kinds of things she could give him.
“Like, maybe you could tell me your favorite trigger and I’ll make sure that my next video includes it?”
Azriel swallowed, his throat suddenly feeling very thick. “You don’t have to do that, I...”
“But I want to,” she interrupted. “What’s your favorite trigger?”
Azriel was trying to figure out a way to tell her that she was his favorite trigger without sounding like a serial killer. “Well, I don’t really know. I like when you whisper,” he tried, and when she smiled and nodded encouragingly, he continued. “Honestly Elain, I have tried to watch other ASMR videos but they don’t make me fall asleep. Your videos make me fall asleep within minutes. Whatever magic you put into your videos, that’s probably my trigger,” he half-joked.
“Hmm,” Elain regarded him. “I’ll figure something out.” She winked at him teasingly and Azriel hated that this was the first and last time he would ever get to talk to her.
“Well, I really have to go,” Elain declared. “I’m meeting a friend at the gym.”
“Yeah, I have to go too,” Azriel lied. He would have canceled any plan he ever had if he could continue this conversation.
“Well, thank you again for your help, Azriel.”
“Don’t mention it.”
She removed her glasses and looked straight into her camera. It felt as if she was staring into his soul.
“Goodbye, Shadowsinger.”
“Goodbye, Flower Girl.”
The call disconnected and he was left staring at his apps. Not a single one interested him.
With a heavy sigh, Azriel walked to his bed. He was planning to lay down and scream into a pillow when he received a text from a number he didn’t recognize.
New message
I searched for a few more synonyms, and this one for penis is horrendous. Just listen to this: Meat banjo. Isn’t that just horrible? I’m definitely blocking that word.
Azriel couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from his chest. It really was a horrendous synonym and he could imagine her sitting in front of her computer, making disgusted faces at the various words on her screen.
New message
Oh, this is Elain, by the way.
And that’s when it hit him.
She had texted him and he could see her number. That meant that he could save her number on his phone. It also meant…
Well, he honestly didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t feel like screaming into his pillow anymore.
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In Search of Lost Screws (RQBB '21)
Here at last is my entry for the 2021 Rusty Quill Big Bang!
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
Rating: T
Word count: ~30k
Warnings: Chronic Illness, Mild Body Horror, Internalized Ableism, Canon-Typical Spiders, Mention of Canon-Typical Suicidal Ideation, Alcohol
Other tags: Cane-user Jon, EDS Jon, Canon-compliant, Season 5, Set in 180-181 (Upton Safehouse period)
Characters: Jon Sims, Martin Blackwood, Mikaele Salesa (secondary), Annabelle Cane (secondary)
Relationships: Jon/Martin
Summary: While staying at Upton House, Jon and Martin accidentally break their bedroom’s doorknob, and can’t get back into the room until they fix it. Meanwhile Jon tries not to break into literal pieces without the Eye, and also to pretend he’s having a good time as he and Martin lunch with Annabelle, parry gifts from Salesa, and quarrel about whether Jon’s okay or not. He's fine! It's just that the apocalypse runs on dream logic, and chronic pain feels worse when you're awake.
Excerpt:
“Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?”
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.”
“Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?”
Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice.
“Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him.
“Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.”
“Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.”
Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?
Huge thanks to @pilesofnonsense for hosting this event; to @connanro for beta-reading; and to @silmapeli for their amazing illustration, whose own post you can find here.
If you prefer, you can read this fic instead on Ao3. I won't link it directly, since Tumblr has trouble with external links, but if you google the title and add "echinoderms" (my Ao3 handle), it should come up!
Crunch. “Oh god. Shit! Oh god, oh no—”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
A clatter, then a noise like a small rock scraping a large one. Jon’s heart plunged; halfway through his question he knew the answer.
“I—I broke it? Look, see, the whole thing just—take this.” Martin tore his hand out of Jon’s and dropped the severed doorknob in it instead. Then he dropped to the floor, diving head- and hands-first for the crack between it and the door as if that crack were a portal between dimensions. Jon closed his eyes and shook this image away, hoping when he opened them again he could focus on what was real.
He should have known this would happen from the moment they left for breakfast. Every time he’d opened that door its knob felt a little looser. Why hadn’t he warned Martin? Well, alright, he didn’t need powers to know that one. He just hadn’t thought of it. Been a bit preoccupied, after all. And even if he had thought of it, that was exactly the kind of conversation he’d been shying away from all week. Watch out for that doorknob; it’s a little loose, he would say, and yeah, probably Martin would answer, Oh, thanks. But there was a chance Martin would say instead, Why didn’t you tell me?—and all week Jon had obeyed an instinct to avoid prompting that question. All week he had made sure to enter and exit their room a few steps ahead of Martin, and hold the door open for him. Martin probably just saw it as Jon’s way of apologizing for their first few months in the Archives together, and once that thought occurred to him Jon had started to look at it that way himself. Maybe that’s why he’d forgot this time.
“Nooo-oooo, come on come on!”
“I don’t think you’ll fit,” Jon said, when he looked again and found Martin trying to wedge his fingers under the door.
(Martin used to leave Jon’s office door open behind him—perhaps absentmindedly, but more likely as a gesture of friendship and openness, which the Jon of that time would not suffer. Sasha and Tim, n.b., only left his door open on their way into his office, when they didn’t intend to stay long; Martin would leave it gaping even if he didn’t mean to come back. Every time Jon had sighed, pulled himself to his feet, and closed the door behind Martin, drawing out the click of its tongue in the latch. And a few times he’d closed the door in front of him, so as to exclude him from a conversation between Jon and Tim or Sasha that he, Martin, had tried to weigh in on from outside Jon’s office.)
“What are you looking for?”
“The—the screw, I saw it roll under there. It fell down on our side. Oh, my god, it was so close—if I’d reacted just half a second earlier, I could’ve?—shit.”
“Oh.” Jon huffed out a cynical laugh.
“I can’t believe it. I broke Salesa’s door! He welcomes us in to an oasis, and I break the door. Oh, god—I’ve broken an irreplaceable door, in a stately historic mansion!”
A few more demonstrative huffs of laughter. “No you didn’t.”
Martin paused. He didn’t get up, but did turn his head to look at Jon. “Yes I did. It’s right there in your hand, Jon—”
“I should’ve known. Check for cobwebs, Martin.”
“Oh come on.”
“This can’t be your fault—it’s far too neat. This is all part of Annabelle’s plan.”
“Do you know that?”
“W-well, no. I can’t, not here. I just—”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Jon. Pretty sure it’s just an old doorknob.”
“Did you check for cobwebs?”
“Of course there are no cobwebs. A spider wouldn’t even have time to finish building the web before somebody wrecked it opening the door!”
“Then what’s that?” With the tip of his cane Jon tapped the floor in front of a clot of gray fluff in the seam between two walls next to the door, making sure not to let it touch the clot itself.
Martin rolled over to see where he was pointing, and almost stuck his elbow in it. “Ah. Gross. Gross, is what that is.”
“Christ, I should’ve known this would happen. I did know this would happen,” Jon reminded himself—“just ignored the warning signs because I can’t think straight here.”
“It doesn’t mean anything, Jon. It’s a corner. Spiders love corners. I mean, unless you can prove the corner of our doorway has more spiderwebs than anywhere else in the house—”
“Well, of course not. You forget she’s got her own corner somewhere, which we still haven’t found by the way—”
“So, what, you think Annabelle Cane lassoed the screw with a strand of cobweb.”
“Not literally? She could be sitting on the other side of the door with a magnet for all we know!”
Martin peered under the door again with an exasperated sigh. “She’s not.”
“Not now she’s heard us talking about her.”
God, what a delicate web that would be, if all he had to do to avoid the spider’s clutches was reach a door before Martin did. Perhaps if he’d knocked first that’d have saved him. Maybe Martin was right. How could Annabelle know him well enough to foresee this mistake? Most of the time he hated people opening doors for him, after all.
Why do people see someone with a cane and think, Only one free hand? How ever will he open the door!? They don’t do that for people with shopping bags—not ones his age, at least. Letting another person open a door for him felt to Jon like… defeat, somehow. Like admitting the dolce et decorum estness of this version of reality all nondisabled people seemed to live in where he couldn’t open doors. And that version of reality horrified him. Not so much the idea of being too weak to open them—that sounded merely annoying. Like knocking the sides of jar lids on tables and swearing, only with doors. He had beat his fists against enough Pull doors in his time to figure he could live with that. It was more the idea of becoming that way. Letting his door-opening muscles atrophy ‘til it became the truth.
But sometimes you just let a thing happen, and forget to hate it. That was the thing about pride. Sometimes your convictions and your habits stop fitting together—you believe Fuck this job with all your heart, but still tuck in your shirt when you come to the office. And then you fly back from America in borrowed clothes, and pop in at the Institute like that on your way to Gertrude’s storage unit, and that’s what changes your habits. Not the knowledge you can’t be fired; not your now-boyfriend’s plot to put your then-boss behind bars. A thirdhand t-shirt with a slogan on it about how to outrun bears.
On his way out this morning the doorknob had felt so loose in Jon’s hand he almost had told Martin about it. But Martin had been full of let’s-go-on-an-adventure-together-style chatter—like when they’d left Daisy’s safehouse, only, get this, without the dread of entering an apocalyptic wasteland—and listening to him put the door out of Jon’s mind before he’d had time to interject.
Their first day here—or at least, the first they spent awake—Jon had inadvertently taught Martin not to accept invitations from Salesa. The latter had bounded up after Martin’s lunch in linen shirt and whooshy shorts and was, to Martin’s then-unseasoned heart, impossible to deny. So Jon had spent thirty minutes on a creaky folding chair, lunging out of his seat on occasion to collect a ball one of the other two had hit wrong, and trying to keep Salesa’s too-bright white socks out of sight. He’d pretended he preferred to sit out, knowing Martin would worry if he tried to play. But he hadn’t done as good a job hiding his boredom as he thought. “Thanks for putting up with that. Sorry it went on so long,” Martin had said as they re-entered their bedroom. “I just couldn’t say no to him, you know? For such a cynical old man he’s got impressive puppy eyes.”
“It’s fine? You know me, I don’t mind… watching.”
“I just mean, I’m sorry you couldn’t play. How’s your leg, by the way? Er—both your legs, I guess.”
“It’s fine. They’re both fine. I didn’t want to play anyway, remember? I don’t know how.”
“Sure you don’t,” Martin replied, words tripping over a fond laugh.
“I don’t!”
“Come on, Jon. Everyone knows how to play ping-pong.”
Martin had turned down Salesa when he showed up the next day in khaki shorts and a pith helmet with three butterfly nets, without Jon’s having to say a word. More emphatically still did he turn him down when Salesa mentioned the house had an indoor pool, and offered to lend them both antique bathing suits like the one he had on, “Free of charge! A debtor is an enemy, after all, and in this new world I have no wish to make an enemy of” (sarcastic whisper, fingers wiggling) “the Ceaseless Watcher who rules it. I have nothing to hide from you,” he’d alleged, for the… third time that day, maybe? Each morning Jon resolved to count such references; he rarely missed one, as far as he knew, but kept forgetting how many he’d counted.
But Salesa was a salesman, and over time his efforts had grown more subtle. He stopped showing up already dressed for the activity he had in mind, and instead would drop hints at meals about all the fun things they could do if only they would let him show them. Martin loved how the winter sunlight caught, every afternoon around four, in the branches of a tree visible outside the window of their bedroom. “Ah, yes,” Salesa had agreed when he remarked on it one morning. “Turning it periwinkle and the golden green of champagne.” (He poured sparkling wine—the cheap stuff, he said, not real champagne—into an empty juice glass still lined with orange pulp. Over and over, without once overflowing. The oranges weren’t ripe enough to drink their juice plain yet, he said. But they’d still run out of juice first.) “If you think that’s beautiful”—he paused to swallow bubbles come up from his throat, waved his hand, shook his head. “No. On one tree, yes, it is beautiful. But on a whole orchard of bare trees in winter”—he nodded in the direction of Upton’s orchards—“the afternoon sun is sublime. You can see how the twigs shrink and shiver under its gaze; the grass rustles with a hitch in its breath as if it fears to be seen, but with each undulation a new blade flashes gold like a coin,” &c., &c.
“Wow. Sounds like you really got lucky, finding such a nice place to, uh. Sssset up camp?”
Jon knew Martin well enough to hear the judgment in his voice; if Salesa recognized it then he was an expert at pretending not to. “And it's only a two-minute walk away,” he’d said, instead of taking Martin’s bait. “It would be such a shame for my guests not to see it.”
“Oh, well. Maybe in a few days? It’s just, we’ve been outside nonstop for ages. It’s nice to be between four walls again. Besides, we don’t know the grounds as well as you do—and the border isn’t all that stable, you said? Right?”
“It is if you know how to follow it! I could accompany you—show you all the best sights, with no risk of wandering back out into the hellscape by mistake.”
“We’re just not really ready for that, I don’t think. Right, Jon?”
“Mm.”
“Are you sure? If it were me, a foray into a beautiful natural oasis would be just what I needed to convince myself that my peace—my sanctuary—is real.”
“If it is real,” Jon couldn’t stop himself from muttering.
Salesa remained impervious. “You would be surprised how difficult it is to feel fear in a place like that. I don’t think that is just the camera.”
“We‘ll think about it,” Martin conceded.
“Yes—you should both think about it. I am at your disposal whenever you change your mind.”
And so on that morning they had narrowly escaped. Would they had fared so well today. The problem was, on these early occasions Jon had interpreted Martin’s No thankses as being, well, Martin’s. But after a few more of Salesa’s sales pitches Jon began to second-guess that.
“Is it warm enough in here for you both?” Salesa had asked them last night at dinner. “I worry too much, perhaps. I only wish the place took less time to warm up in the morning. At breakfast time, in sunny weather like we've been having, I’ll bet you anything you like it’s warmer out there than in here.”
“It’s alright; we’re not too cold in the mornings either. Right, Jon?”
“Hm? Oh—no.”
“Perhaps we three could take breakfast out there, before the weather changes.”
“Ha—that’s right,” Martin had laughed. “I forgot you still had that out here. Weather changes. Brave new world, I guess.”
Salesa smirked and shrugged. “Well, braver than the rest of it.”
“R…ight. ‘We three,’ you said—so not Annabelle?”
“Mmmmno, probably not her. I have tried taking spiders outside before; they never seem to like it much.”
Nearly every day, here, Jon found a spider in their bathtub. The first time Martin had been with him. Martin had picked the thing up with his fingers and tried to coax it to leave out the window, but by the time he got there it’d crawled up his sleeve.
“Excuse me.”
Martin pulled back his own chair too and frowned up at him. “You okay?”
“Just needed the toilet.” He tried to arrange his mouth into a gentle smile. “Think I can do that on my own.”
The other two resumed their conversation the moment Jon left the dining room. Before the intervening walls muffled their voices Jon heard:
“I suppose that does sound pretty nice.”
“Pretty nice, you suppose? Martin, Martin—it’s a beautiful oasis! What a shame it will be if you leave this place having done no more than suppose about it.”
“It is a bit of a waste, I guess.”
“You wouldn’t need to sit on the ground, if that’s what concerns you. There are benches everywhere.”
He’d been just about to cross through a doorway and out of earshot when he froze, hearing his name:
“Oh, ha—not me, but, Jon might find that nice to know,” Martin said. “Thanks for.” And then silence.
Was that the whole reason he kept declining invitations to explore the grounds? To keep grass stains out of Jon’s trousers? Martin was the one who’d sat down on that godforsaken Extinction couch; why did he think—?
Not the point, Jon told himself as he sat on the toilet and set his forehead on the heels of his palms. He tried to watch the floor for spiders, but his eyes kept crossing. The point was that if—? If Martin was lying about wanting to stay inside—or, more charitably, if he was telling the truth but wanted that only because he thought Jon would have as dismal a time out in the garden as he had at ping-pong—then…?
He imagined holding hands with Martin while surrounded by green. Gravel crunching under their feet. Martin smiling, with sunlight caught in the strands of his hair that a slight breeze had blown upright.
“And if you get too warm,” he heard Salesa tell Martin, as he headed back into the dining room, “we can move into the shade of the pines! You know, they don’t just grow year-round? They also shed year-round. The floor under them is always carpeted in needles, so you need never get mud on your shoes.”
“Huh,” Martin laughed. “Never thought of it that way.”
“But of course there are benches there too,” Salesa added, his eyes flickering up to Jon.
As Jon hauled himself into his seat he asked, in a voice he hoped the strain made sound distracted ergo casual, “So, what, like a picnic, you mean.”
Not a fun picnic. Not very romantic, since their third wheel was the first to invite himself. Salesa neglected to mention how much wet grass they would have to trek through to get to his favorite spot; that there were benches everywhere didn’t matter since they couldn’t all three fit on one, so they ended up sat in the dirt after all—and n.b. it required a second trek to find a patch of dirt dry enough to sit on at this time of morning. Jon was so sick with fatigue by the time they sat down he could barely eat a thing, though he did dispatch most of Martin’s thermos of tea. His hands shook and buzzed, and felt clumsy, like they’d fallen asleep; he ended up getting more jam in the dirt than on Salesa’s soggy, pre-buttered toast. He felt as though the rest of his flesh had melted three feet to the left of his eyes, bones and mind. Eventually he elected to blame his dizziness on the sun. When his forehead and upper lip started to prickle, threatening sweat, he stood up and announced, “It’s too hot here.”
Or tried to stand, anyway. One leg had oozed just far enough out of its joint that it buckled when he tried to stand; indigo and fuchsia blotches overtook his sight. He pitched forward, free arm pinwheeling—might have fallen into the boiled eggs if Martin hadn’t caught him. “Jon! Are you okay?”
God, why was Martin so surprised? This must have been the fifth or sixth time he had asked him that question since they left the house. One time Jon had bent down to brush dirt off his leg and Martin had thought he was scratching his bandages. So he asked him were they itchy, had they started to peel, did they need changing again, were they cutting off his circulation (no, not yet, not yet, and no). How could someone be so attentive to imaginary ills and yet miss the real ones? At another point, an enormous blue dragonfly had buzzed past, and instead of Did you see that? Martin had turned around to ask Are you okay. Now, on this fifth or sixth occasion, for a few seconds of pure, nonsensical rage he wondered how Martin dared stoop to such emotional blackmail. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies, Jon thought; aloud he snorted, as in malicious laughter. His throat felt thick, like he might cry.
“Fine, I’m just—sick of it here.” He pulled his arm free of Martin’s and overbalanced. Didn’t fall, just. Staggered a little.
“Should we move to the shade? We could try to find those famous pines, I guess.”
Jon sank back to the ground. “What about Salesa? Do we just leave him here?”
“Oh. Right,” said Martin. Salesa had eaten most of Jon’s share, and drunk both Jon’s and Martin’s shares of wine. Now he lay asleep in the dirt, head pillowed on one elbow, the other hand’s fingers curled round the stem of a glass still half full. “I guess, yeah? I mean he seems to know the place pretty well, so. It’s not like he’ll get lost out here.”
“We might, though.”
Martin sighed. “True. Should we just head back to our room, then? Maybe get you a snack.”
“Not hungry.”
“A statement, I meant.”
“Oh. Alright, sure,” Jon made himself say. “That sounds like—sure.”
So then they’d headed back, and only Martin had a free hand, and Jon was too tired by that point to distinguish his mind’s vague warning not to let Martin open the door from his usual pride on that subject—and that kind of pride never does seem as important when it’s your boyfriend offering. So he’d dismissed the warning and, well, look what happened.
When he got up from his knees and turned round Martin frowned at Jon. “Are you alright? You’re sat on the floor.”
Jon frowned, too—at the seam between the floor and the hallway’s opposite wall. “I was tired.”
“You hate sitting on the floor.”
“I sat on the ground out there,” Jon said, with a shrug that morphed into a nod in the direction they’d come from.
“Yeah, under duress,” Martin scoffed. “In the Extinction domain you wouldn’t even sit on the couch.”
There was something odd in Martin’s bringing that up now; somewhere, in the back of his mind, Jon could hear a pillar of thought crumbling. But he lacked the energy to find out which of his mind’s structures now stood crooked. “I think this floor is a lot cleaner than that couch,” he said instead, with an incredulous laugh.
“Even with the cobwebs?” Martin didn’t wait for Jon’s answering nod. “Fair enough,” he said, one hand on the back of his neck as he twisted it back and forth. He dropped the hand, sighed, cracked his knuckles. Looked at Jon again. “Yeah, okay. Guess we don’t have to deal with this right now. Let’s find you another bedroom first.”
“Maybe that’s just what Annabelle wants,” Jon muttered, deadpanning so he wouldn’t have to decide whether this was a joke.
Martin snorted. “I’ll risk it.”
Find was a generous way to put it; in fact there was another bedroom only two doors down. By the time Jon got his legs unfolded he could hear the squeak of a door swinging open down the hall. When he looked up, Martin said as their eyes met, “Nope—bed’s too small. You good there ‘til I find one that’ll work?”
“Seems that way.” Jon tried to smile, relief warring with his usual If you want something done right urge. In the quiet moment after Martin neglected to close that door and before he swung open the next one, Jon made himself add, “Thank you.”
“Of course. Oh wow,” Martin said of the next room, in whose doorway he’d stopped. “This one’s a lot nicer than ours. It’s got a balcony. Wallpaper’s pretty loud though. D’you think that’ll keep you awake?” Laughingly, “I know you don’t close your eyes to sleep anymore, so.”
“How loud is ‘pretty loud’?”
“Sort of a… dark, orangey red, with flowers?”
Jon shrugged. “I won’t see it at night.”
“Oh, god. I hope it doesn’t come to that. Should we do this one, then?” Instead of closing the door, Martin swung it the rest of the way open, then strode back to Jon’s side of the corridor, arm already outstretched. Jon managed to stand before Martin could reach him, but, as it had done outside, his vision went dark for a few seconds. He felt Martin’s hand on his shoulder before he could see his frown.
“You alright?” Martin asked yet again.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“It’s just—you don’t usually blink anymore, except for effect.”
“Oh.”
Out there, none of the watchers blinked. At first, soon after the change, Martin had asked Jon to try, “Because it just feels so weird. Like I’m under constant scrutiny. Literally constant, Jon. You get why that feels weird, right?” (Jon had agreed—sincerely, though he wondered why Martin needed to ask that question in a world whose central conceit was that being watched felt weird. He’d also chosen not to point out that his scrutiny, like that of Jonah Magnus, was not, technically, constant, since he did sometimes look at other things. But he still rehearsed this retort in his mind every time he remembered that conversation.) Turned out it was hard to time your blinks properly when your eyeballs didn’t need the moisture. He’d forget about it for who knew how long, then remember and overcompensate by blinking so often Martin at first thought he was exaggerating it on purpose as a joke. It got old fast, in Jon’s opinion, but even after he learnt Jon didn’t intend it as a joke Martin still found it funny. “You’re doing it again,” he’d say every time, shoulders wiggling. Eventually Jon had asked him,
“You know you don’t blink anymore either, right?”
“Oh god, don’t I?” When Jon shook his head, with a smile whose teeth he tried to keep covered, Martin squeezed his own eyes shut and pushed their lids back and forth with his fingers. “Ugh—gross!” And for the next half hour he’d done the whole forget-to-blink-for-five-minutes-then-do-it-ten-times-in-as-many-seconds routine, too. After that they had both agreed to pretend not to notice the lack of blinking. Jon figured he couldn’t hold it against Martin that he’d broken this rule though, since Jon himself had broken it first, on their first morning here:
“You blinked,” he had informed Martin as he watched him stir sugar into his tea. Martin, who had not only blinked but broken eye contact to make sure he dropped the sugar cube in the right place, replied with a scoff,
“Didn’t know it was a staring contest.”
“No, I mean—”
“Oh! I blinked!”
“…Right,” Jon said now. “I’m—it’s nothing.”
Martin sighed. He closed his eyes, but probably rolled them under their lids. Jon used the inspection of their new room as an excuse to look away, but took in nothing other than the presence of a large bed and the flowered wallpaper Martin had warned him about.
“‘Kay. If you’re sure.”
Taking a seat at the foot of the bed, Jon looked down at his grass-stained knees and prepared himself to ask, Look, does it matter? I’m about to lie down anyway, so, functionally speaking, yes, I am fine.
“So, you’ll be okay here for a bit while I go figure out what to do about the door?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. I’ll come check on you as soon as I know anything, yeah?”
“Of course.”
“Although—if you’re asleep, should I wake you up?”
“Yes,” Jon replied before Martin had even got the last word out. He heard a short, emphatic exhale, presumably of laughter. “Wait—how would you know, anyway?”
“Oh. Yeah, good point.”
Jon looked down at his shoes. His fingers throbbed in anticipation, but he figured he should spare Martin the horror of getting grass stains on a second bedroom’s counterpane. The first shoe he pulled off without untying, since he could step on its heel with the other one. But he had to bend over to reach the second one’s incongruously bright white laces, biting his lip when he felt his right femur poke past the bounds of its socket as between a cage’s bars. On his way back up his vision quivered like a heat mirage, but didn’t go dark. He scooched himself up to the head of the bed. Made sure to face the ceiling rather than the red wallpaper.
A few months into his tenure in the Archives, Jon had discovered that if you close your eyes at your desk, even just for a minute, you can trick your whole body into thinking you’ve been gentle with it. But that trick didn’t work anymore. Out there, this made sense; interposing his eyelids between himself and the world’s new horrors couldn’t push them out of his consciousness, any more than it had helped to close the curtains at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin’s sentimental attachment to sleep had baffled him, as had his insistence on closing his eyes even though they’d pop back open as soon as his body went limp. Here, though, Jon sympathized with Martin’s wish. He too missed that magic link between closed eyes and sleep. Probably he should just be grateful for this rest from knowing other people’s suffering? The thing he had wished to close his eyes against was gone here. But now that most of his bodily wants had synced up with his actions again, it felt… wrong, like a tangible loss, that he couldn’t assert It’s time for rest now by closing his eyelids. That it took effort to keep them joined. Jon even found himself missing the crust that used to stick them together on mornings after long sleep.
That should have been his first sensation on waking, their first morning here. After seventy-one hours his eyelids should’ve been practically super-glued together. Instead, they’d apparently stayed open the entire time. It wasn’t uncomfortable—he hadn’t woken up with them smarting or anything. Hadn’t noticed one way or the other; after all, when not forced awake by an alarm, one rarely notices the moment one opens one’s eyes in the morning. He just didn’t like knowing that he looked the same waking and sleeping. It didn’t make sense. The dreams hadn’t followed him here, so what was he watching? He could see nothing but the ceiling.
He rolled over, hoping to look out the window. Doors, technically. Between gauzy curtains he could make out only wrought-iron bars and the tops of a few trees. A nice view, he could tell; when he got his second wind he was sure he’d find it pretty. For now he wondered how much more energy debt he had put himself in by rolling over.
Drowning in debt? We can help!
How had he not foreseen how horrible it would be inside the Buried? The inability to move or speak without pain and loss of breath—“Just imagine,” he muttered sarcastically to the empty air, as though addressing his past self. “What might that be like.” He’d lived for years with the weight of exhaustion on his back—heavier at that time than it’d ever been before. And he knew how it felt to risk injury with every movement. What an odd frame of mind he must have lived in then, to think his magic healing wouldn’t let him get scratched up down there. Had he thought it would protect him from fear? I must save my friend from this horrible place! But also, If I get stuck there forever, no big deal; I deserve it, after all. There seemed something so arrogant about that now, that idea that deserving pain could somehow mitigate it. That because monsterhood made him less innocent, it would make him less of a victim. How could he have thought that, when he’d known pulling her out of there didn’t mean he forgave her? He should apologize to Daisy for—
Right. Nope, never mind.
He began to regret rolling over. If he planned to stay on his side like this for long, he shouldn’t leave his shoulder and hip dangling. He could already feel their joints beginning to slide apart. But his body had started to drift to that faraway place from which no grievance ever seemed urgent enough to recall it—neither pain now nor the threat of greater pain later. Nor the three cups of tea he’d drunk.
After he and Martin had fallen asleep on Salesa’s doorstep, Jon had vague memories of being led up the stairs to their bedroom, though he remembered neither being shaken awake nor getting into bed. Just a seventy-odd-hour blank spot, followed by pain of a kind he had thought he’d left behind.
It wasn’t that watchers couldn’t feel pain, after the change. They could, but it was like how real-world pain felt through the veil of a dream. Your actions didn’t affect it as directly as they should. In the Necropolis Martin had asked him, “How exactly does a leg wound make you faster?” If he’d had the courage to answer, at the time he would have said something about his own wounds not seeming important now that he had to tune out those of the whole world. That wasn’t it though, he knew now. Pain just worked differently out there. When Daisy attacked him, it had hurt—but the wound she left him hadn’t protested movement. Not until he and Martin entered the grounds of Upton House. You could bear weight on an injured leg just fine out there, because it wouldn’t hurt more when you stood on it than otherwise.
Sometimes, when his joints slid apart while he slept, he could still feel it in his dreams. Up until 13th January 2016 (for months after which date he dreamt Naomi Herne’s graveyard and nothing else), his sleeping mind used to craft scenarios to explain its own pain and panic to itself. Running from an exploding grenade, staying awake through surgery, that sort of thing. But over the years, as the sensation grew familiar, his dreams about it became less urgent, their anxieties more mundane. He’d shout for help from passing cars, then feel like he’d lied to the stranger who opened their door to him when it turned out running to get in the car hurt no more than standing still.
Even before the change, it’d been ages since he’d had to worry about that. Since the coma, Beholding had fixed all these accidents, the way it’d fixed the finger he tried to chop off. They wouldn’t reset with a clunk, the way they had when he used to fix them by hand. It was more like his body reverted to a version the Eye had saved before the moment of injury. When he tried to pull open a Push door he’d hear the first clunk, followed by about half a second of pain, then after a gentle burst of static—nothing. Just a door handle between his fingers that needed pushing. If he tripped on uneven pavement he might still go down, but his ankle wouldn’t hurt when he stood back up, and the scrapes on his hands would heal before he could inspect them. Here, though, in this place the Eye couldn’t see, Jon lacked such protections. He didn’t have the dreams either? And that was more than worth it as a tradeoff, he was sure. But it still smarted to remember that pain had been his first sensation waking up in an oasis. Not birdsong, not sunshine striped across linen, not the warm weight of another person next to him. He knew he’d come back to a place ruled by physics rather than fear because he’d woken up with gaps between his bones.
“Jon? Are you awake?”
“Hm? Oh. Yes.”
“Cool.” Martin sat down on what felt like the corner of bed nearest the door. “I think I know how to do this now.”
“How to put the doorknob back on?”
“Yeah. God, I still can’t believe it twisted clean off in my hand like that. With no warning—like, zero to sixty in less than a second. I mean, can you believe our luck? The thing’s perfectly functional, and then suddenly it just—comes off!”
“Er…”
“Oh, god, sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“What? Oh—hrkgh”—Jon rolled around to face Martin, hoping the little yelp he let out when his leg slopped back into joint would sound like a noise of exasperation rather than pain. He found Martin sat looking down at the severed doorknob which poked up from between his knees. “No, Martin, of course not, I know—”
“Still, I’m sorry about—”
“No, it’s—it’s fine?”
On that first morning, Jon had managed to get his limbs screwed back on properly without making enough noise to wake up Martin. He’d limped out of their room and down the hall, pushing doors open until he’d found a toilet, whereupon he sat to pee and marveled that the flush and sink still worked. It was bright enough inside that he hadn’t thought to try the light switch on his way in—too busy contorting his neck to look for the sun out the window. On his way out, though, he flicked it on, then off. Then on again and off again. How could it work, when there was no power grid the house could connect to? Automatically Jon tried to search his mind’s Eye for a domain based in a power plant or something. Right, no, of course—that power did not work here.
When he got back to their room he found Martin awake. “Oh—morning,” Jon told him with a shy laugh.
“It—it is morning, isn’t it,” Martin marveled. Then he asked if Jon could hand him the map sticking out of his backpack’s side pocket. (What good are maps when the very Earth logic no longer applied here, after all. But Martin was rubbish at geography, so Jon still had to provide the You Are Here sign with his finger for him.) Jon grabbed the map on his way back to bed, and was about to tell him about the miracles of plumbing and electricity he’d just witnessed—not to mention the bathtub he’d admired on the long trek from toilet to sink—when Martin frowned and asked, “Why are you limping?”
“Am I?” Jon had shrugged, then cleared his throat when the motion made his shoulder audibly click. “Daisy, must be.”
“No, Jon. That’s the wrong leg.”
He slid both legs out of sight under the blankets and handed Martin the map. “It’s nothing. It just… came off a bit. Last night."
Before Jon could add It’s fixed now though, Martin said, “I’m sorry, what?”
Jon had assumed Martin understood the kind of thing he meant, but that he’d misled him as to its degree—i.e., that Martin objected to his talking about a full hip dislocation like it mattered less than what happened with Daisy. So he’d said,
“No, sorry, not all the way off—”
And Martin just laughed. “What, and you taped it back up like—like an old computer cable?”
“Sort of, yeah? It—it does still work, more or less.”
“Right, of course. No need to get a new one, yet; you can just limp along with this one. No big deal! Just make sure you don’t pull too hard on it.”
“I mean.” By now he could sense Martin’s sarcasm, his bitterness; that didn’t mean he knew what to do with them. So he'd said with a huff of laughter, “I can’t just send for a new one. That’s—that’s not how bodies work. You have to….” Wait for it to sort itself out was the natural end to that sentence. But he hadn’t been sure he could say that without opening a can of worms.
“Wait so… what actually happened? Are you okay?”
Only at this point had Jon recognized Martin’s response as one of incomprehension. What happened exactly? he had asked, too, when Jon told him the ice-cream anecdote. Did no one ever listen when you told them about these things?
“Nothing. Never mind. It’s fine.”
“Oh come on.”
“It’s. Fine! It’s not important.”
And then for days Martin kept alluding to it. Like some kind of reminder to Jon that he hadn’t opened up, disguised as a joke. Every time something came out or fell down he’d mutter, “So it came off, you might say.” Eventually they’d fallen out over it, and now neither one could come near the phrase without this song and dance.
“Don’t worry about it, Martin,” Jon assured him now; “I’m over it.”
“…Uh huh. Well, putting that to one side for the moment—I think I can fix this?”
“Oh? Great!—”
“—Yeah! It should be simple, actually. I think I just need to replace the screw that fell out? I mean, there doesn’t seem to be anything actually broken, just, you know,” with an awkward laugh, “the screw lives on the wrong side of the door now. But if we can just put a new one in the door should be fine.” He looked to Jon as if for help plotting their next steps.
“I—I don’t, um. Think we have one.”
Martin’s shoulders dropped; the corners of his mouth tightened. “Yeah, I know we don’t have one, Jon. I just mean, we need to find out where Salesa keeps them.”
“Oh!” Jon replied, in a brighter tone. Then he registered what this meant. “Oh. Right.”
“Y…eah.”
“Any idea where to look?”
They checked what seemed to Martin the most obvious place first. Salesa used one of the ground-floor drawing rooms as a sort of repository for everything he’d left as yet unpacked—all the practical items he hadn’t been able to repurpose as toys, plus some antiques he’d been too fond of or too nervous to part with. Two nights ago, Salesa had noticed the state of Jon’s and Martin’s shoelaces, and insisted they let him replace them with some from this little warehouse. “Please, come with me; I’ve nothing to hide. You can have a look around, see if I have anything that might help you on your journey….” As he said this he’d counted to two on his fingers, as though listing off attractions they should be sure not to miss.
Jon watched Martin perk right up at this. All week Salesa had kept pleading with them to tell him about any luxuries they had wanted while touring the apocalypse, so he could try to find something to fulfill those wants. “Well, I—I don’t know about luxuries,” Martin had ventured the third time this came up. “But I do think we might run out of bandages soon, so. If you’ve any extra?”
“Of course, of course, yes, how prudent of you, always with one eye on the future. Must be the Beholding in you.” (Neither Jon nor Martin knew what to say to that.) “But there will be plenty of time for that. I meant something for now, while you are here, while you don’t need to think of things like that.” And sure enough, each time Salesa had come to them with presents from his little warehouse (booze, butterfly nets, more booze, antique bathing suits, &c.), he’d forgot about Martin’s homely request for gauze and tape. Martin insisted they change the dressing on Jon’s leg every day; by now they’d run through the bandages he brought from Daisy’s safehouse. So when Salesa suggested they accompany him to his repository, Martin said,
“Sure, yeah! That sounds really helpful.” (Salesa clutched his heart as though he’d waited all his life to hear such praise.) “Er. The things in your warehouse, though. They’re not L—um.” Leitners, Martin had almost called them. “You don’t think they’ll develop any… strange properties, when we leave here, do you?”
“Of course not,” Salesa had answered, stopping and turning all the way around in the corridor to face Martin with a frown. “Martin, I promise, only my antiques are cursed—and even then, not all of them.” He’d resumed the walk toward his little warehouse, but turned around again and held up a hand, as if to preempt a question. “There are, indeed, yes, some items out there, touched by the Corruption, which can pass their infection on to other things they come in contact with. But, no,” he went on, his voice fighting off a joyous laugh, “no, the only item I have like that does almost the opposite.”
“Oh.”
Salesa nodded, but did not turn around this time. “Strange little thing. It’s an antique syringe that, so long as you keep it near you, repels the Crawling Rot. I like to think it helped dispatch that insect thing Annabelle chased away. But if you try to get rid of it,” he added in a darker tone, “all the sickness, the bugs, the smells, even stains on your clothes—everything disgusting that it’s kept away—they remember who you are, and they hunger for you more than anyone else. The man who sold it to me….” He shook his head ruefully, hand now resting on the door.
“Was eaten alive by mosquitoes,” Jon muttered.
“Something like that, yes,” said Salesa, as he jerked open the door.
Jon hated the way his and Martin’s shoes looked now. He hadn’t had to put new laces on a pair of old, dirty shoes since he was a kid, and the contrast looked wrong—the same way starched collars and slicked-back hair on kids look wrong. Jon’s trainers were gray, their laces a slightly darker gray, so these white ones wouldn’t have looked quite right even without the dirt. Martin’s had once been white, but their original laces were broad and flat, while these were narrow and more rounded. The replacements’ thin, clinical white lines looked something between depressing and menacing. Too much like spider web; too much like the stitching on Nikola’s minions. When they came undone on this morning’s walk, Jon had made sure to tread on them in the mud a few times before tying them back up. Poor Dr. Thompson’s syringe must have retained some of its power here, though, because they still looked pristine. Jon wondered if it had no effect on spiders, or if without it this whole place would have been draped in cobwebs.
Martin seemed pleased with their haul, though. Despite Salesa’s amnesia on the subject, his little warehouse held more plasters, gauze, medical tape, antibacterial ointment, alcohol wipes—the list went on—than one man could ever use. In a strange, raw moment Jon liked to pretend he hadn’t seen, Salesa had wrung his hands as his eyes passed over this hoard. His lip had quivered. He’d practically begged Martin to take the whole lot away with them. “What harm will come to me here? And if it does come, what good will it do, protecting one lonely old man from skinned knees and paper cuts? The two of you—where you are going—the gravity of your mission!” At this point he’d seized one of each their hands. “Everything I have that even might help, you must take it. Please.”
“I—yeah,” Martin stuttered. “This is—really helpful, yeah. We’ll take as much as we can fit in our bags.”
Salesa had let go their hands by this point, and crossed his arms. “Right, yes, bags, of course, the bags. Are you sure you don’t want my truck?”
“Oh, well, thanks, but I don’t think either of us knows how to—”
“To drive a truck?” Salesa uncrossed his arms and began to reach for Martin’s shoulder. “I could teach you—”
“It won’t work without the camera anyway,” pointed out Jon. “We have to walk.”
Martin sighed. ”That too. ‘The journey will be the journey,’ as Jon keeps saying.”
“I said that once,” Jon protested.
No such success on this return visit. They found a small pile of miscellaneous screws, one of which Martin said would work (though it was the wrong color, he alleged, and had clearly been meant for some other purpose), but the screwdriver they needed remained elusive. “I mean, I can’t be sure they’re not in here—the place is as bad as Gertrude’s storage unit. We could spend all day here and still not be sure—”
“Let’s not do that,” said Jon, pushing an always-warm candlestick with a pool of always-melted wax out of Martin’s way with his sleeve for what felt like the hundredth time.
“No arguments here.”
“Where to next?”
“I guess it makes sense that they’re not here. This room’s all stuff Salesa brought, and why would he bring home-repair stuff when he didn’t even know where he’d wind up.”
“Except for the screws.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like he keeps screws here, remember? There’s just a couple random ones lying around, like he forgot to put them away or something.”
Jon peered between the clouds in his mind, trying to catch sight of Martin’s thought train. “So you’re saying the screwdriver should be…?”
“Somewhere less… frequented, I guess? They’ll probably still be wherever they were when Salesa found the place.”
“Not somewhere that was open to the public, then.”
Martin sighed. ”I mean yeah, probably. Not that that narrows it down much.”
“Somewhere… banal, less posh.”
“Not sure how much less posh you can get than this place. But yeah, I guess. Have I mentioned how weird it is you’re the one who keeps asking me this stuff?”
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to help? I just…” Jon closed his eyes, which itched with the warehouse’s dust, and rubbed their lids with an index finger. Odd that his eyes weren’t immune to dust, when leaving them open for seventy straight hours hadn’t bothered them. And why didn’t the syringe keep dust away? In Dr. Snow’s day (not far removed from Smirke’s, n.b.), Jon seemed to recall that dust had been used as a euphemism for all waste, including the human kind Dr. Snow had found in the cholera water. It was like how people today use filth—hence the word dustbin. And hadn’t Elias once called the Corruption Filth? Jon opened his eyes and watched Martin swirl back to full color. “I can’t seem to corral my thoughts here,” he concluded.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s actually kind of fun, it’s just—I’m so used to being the sidekick,” Martin laughed. “Besides, I miss my eldritch Google.”
“Should I go back out there, ask the Eye about it, then come back?”
Another laugh, this one less awkward. “No. That won’t work, remember? This place is a ‘blind spot,’ you said.” The words in inverted commas he said with a frown and in a deeper voice.
“Right, right. I forgot,” Jon sighed. He lowered himself to the floor and examined the finger he’d felt snap back into place when he let go his cane. During the five seconds he’d allowed himself to entertain it, the idea of heading back out there had excited him a little. A few minutes to check on Basira, verify what Salesa had told them about his life before the change, make sure the world hadn’t somehow ended twice over. Give himself a few minutes’ freedom of movement, for that matter. Out there he could run, jump, open jars, pick up full mugs of tea without worrying a screw in his hand would come loose and make him drop them. He could stand up as quickly as he thought the words, I think I’ll stand up now, without his vision going dark. God, and even if it did, it wouldn’t matter! He would just know every tripping hazard and every look on Martin’s face, without having to ask these clumsy human eyes to show them to him.
“Honestly, it’d almost feel worth it to go back out there just to formulate a plan to find them. At least I can think out there.”
“Hey.” Martin elbowed him slightly in the ribs. Jon fought with himself not to resent the very gentleness of it. “I think I’ll come up with the plan for once, thanks. Some of us can think just fine here.”
Was it just because of Hopworth that Martin’s elbow barely touched him? Or because Martin feared that Jon would break in here, in a way he’d learnt not to fear out there?
“Oh—I know,” Martin said, clicking his fingers and pointing them at Jon like a gun. “We passed a shed this morning, remember?”
Jon squinted. “Not even remotely.”
“No yeah—on our walk with Salesa. I tried to ask him what it was for, but he kept droning on and on. By the time he stopped talking I’d forgot about it.”
“Huh,” said Jon, to show he was listening.
“That seems like a good place to keep screws and all, right? If it’s so nondescript you can’t even remember it.”
“Sure.”
“Great! Are you ready now, or d’you need to sit for a bit longer?”
“I’m ready.” This time he accepted Martin’s hand, not keen to trip on something cursed.
“Anyway, if we don’t find them and Salesa’s still out there, we can ask him on the way back.”
Jon’s heart shrunk before the prospect of inviting Salesa to be the hero of their story. Please, Mr. Salesa, save us from our screwdriver-less hell! They would never hear the end of it. It would inevitably remind the old man of the countless times in his youth when he’d been the only man in the antiques trade who knew where to find some priceless treasure. Let Salesa open their stuck door and they’d find Pandora’s bloody box of stories behind it. He winced and let out a grunt as of pain before he could stop himself. “Let’s not tell him, if we can help it.”
“Of course we should tell him,” Martin protested. “We can’t just leave it broken like this.”
“But if we can fix it without his help—?”
“What? No! Even then, he’s our host. We have to tell him. It’s his door, he deserves to know its—I don’t know, history?” Martin sighed, shoving one hand in his hair and holding out the other. “If he’s got a doorknob whose screw comes loose a lot, he should know that, so he can tighten it next time before it gets out of hand. I mean, we’re lucky it only chipped the paint when it—when it fell off, you know?” (Jon, for his part, hadn’t even noticed this chip of paint Martin referred to.) “And—and suppose he’s only got this one screw left,” tapping the one in his pocket, “and the next time it happens his last screw rolls under the door like this one did.”
“And what is he supposed to do to prevent that scenario? There aren’t exactly any hardware stores in the apocalypse.”
Big sigh. “Yeah, fair enough. I still think we should tell him. It just feels wrong to hide secrets from him about his own house, you know?”
“Fine,” sighed Jon in turn. ”Should we tell him about the scorch marks on the window sill as well?”
“No?” Martin turned to him with an incredulous look. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I mean—I was, but—”
“Please tell me you get how that’s different.”
“Enlighten me,” Jon said wearily.
“Seriously? Of course you don’t tell him about the?—those were already there! If we’d put them there, then yeah, of course we’d need to tell him.”
“So it’s about confessing your guilt, then. Not about what Salesa makes of the information.”
“I mean, I guess?” Martin looked perplexed, lips drawn into his mouth. “Actually, no. Because those are just scorch marks, they don’t—you can still get into a room with scorch marks on the windowsill, Jon.”
“And yet if you’d left them you’d tell him about it?”
“Well yeah but if I told him about it now it’d just be like I was—leaving him a bad review, or something. It’d just be rude. ‘Lovely place you have, Salesa. So kind of you to share your limited provisions with us refugees from the apocalypse. Too bad you gave us a room whose windowsill could use repainting!’”
Jon laughed. “Yes, alright, I get it.”
Martin’s sigh of relief seemed only a little exaggerated. If he hadn’t wiped pretend sweat from his brow Jon might have bought it. “Okay, that’s good, ‘cause”—when Jon kept laughing, Martin cut himself off. “Hang on, were you joking this whole time?”
“Sort of?”
“Were you just playing devil’s advocate or something?”
“I mean—not exactly? For the first seventy or eighty percent of it I was completely serious.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know. It was just—fun. It felt nice to take a definite sta—aaaa-a-aa.” Something in Jon’s lower back went wrong somehow. An SI joint, probably? The pain caught him so much by surprise that when he stepped with that side’s leg he stumbled forward.
“Whoa!” Martin’s hand closed around his upper arm. Jon yelped again, from panic more than hurt this time, as his shoulder thunked in its socket. “Jon! Are you okay?”
“Don’t do that,” Jon hissed, trying lamely to shake his arm out of Martin’s grip. It didn’t work. The attempt just made his own arm ache, and produce more ominous clunking sounds.
“I—what?”
“It was fine. I don’t need you to catch me.”
Martin let his arm go. “You were about to fall on your face, Jon.”
“I’d already caught myself—just fine—with this.” He gestured to his cane, stirring its handle like a joystick.
“How was I supposed to know that?”
“I don’t know, look?”
“It’s not—?” Martin scoffed. “Look when? It’s not like a rational calculation. I can’t just go ‘Beep. Beep. See human trip. Will human fall on face? If yes, press A to catch! If not, press B to’— what, stand there and do nothing? It’s just human nature; when you see someone falling that’s just what you do. I’m not going to apologize for not calculating the risk properly.”
“Fine! Yes, okay, you’re right. Forget I said anything.” Throwing up his free hand in defeat, Jon set off again—tried to stride, but it was hard to do that with a limp. Even with his cane, he couldn’t step evenly enough to achieve a decisive gait.
It was fine, Jon reminded himself. He’d had this injury (if you could call it that) a thousand times before. When it came on suddenly like this it never stuck around long. Sure, yeah, for now every step hurt like an urgent crisis. But any second it would right itself as quickly as it had come undone.
“No, no, I understand! Point taken! Note to future Martin,” the latter shouted from behind Jon, voice troubled by hurried steps; “next time let him fall and break his bloody nose.”
Trusting Martin to shout directions if he went the wrong way, Jon pressed on, rehearsing comebacks in his mind. Is this not a boundary I’m allowed to set? You don’t let me read statements in front of you. Isn’t that part of human—isn’t that my nature, too?
Oh, yes, human nature, that must be it. You didn’t lunge after Salesa at ping-pong the other day, did you? I saw you opening doors for Melanie when she got back from India. You stopped for a while, did you know that? You all did, everyone in the Archives. And then—it’s the strangest thing!—you all started up again after Delano. Maybe you lot don’t see the common factor here; people always do seem to think it’s more polite not to notice.
So what if I had broken my nose? You nearly broke my shoulder, catching me like that. Does that not matter because you can’t see it? Because it wouldn’t scar?
They were all too petty to say aloud. Too incongruous with the quiet. He could hear his own footsteps, and Martin’s, and the clank of his cane’s metal segments each time it hit the ground, and a few crows exclaiming about something exciting they’d found on his right. Nothing else.
“Looks like Salesa went inside,” Martin shouted from behind him.
Jon stopped walking and turned around. “What?”
“Left a couple things out here, but yeah.” Martin jogged to catch up with him, from a greater distance than Jon would have expected given how much limping slowed him down. He must have veered off course to inspect the clearing Salesa had vacated. In one hand he carried an empty wine glass by its stem, which he lifted to show Jon.
“Huh.”
“Yeah.” When he caught up with Jon, Martin stood still and panted. “Guess it won’t be as easy to ask him about it as we thought. If we don’t find what we need in there,” he added, glancing demonstratively to something behind Jon.
Following Martin’s eyes, Jon finally saw the shed. Nondescript boards, worn black and white by the elements. Surrounded by hedges three months overgrown.
Turned out it wasn’t a shed anymore, though—Salesa had converted it to a chicken coop. “Explains the boiled eggs,” shrugged Jon.
“God, they’re adorable. Do you think it’s okay to pet one?” Martin crouched in front of a black hen with a puffball of feathers on top of her head. (Martin called her a hen, anyway, and Jon trusted his authority on animals other than cats). “I don’t really know, er, ch—hicken etiquette,” he mused, voice shot through with nervous laughter.
The black hen sat alone in a little box, and didn't seem to want attention. A little red one they’d found strutting around the coop, however, ventured right up to Martin and cocked her head, like she expected him to give her a present. While Martin cooed over her and the other chickens, Jon went outside and laid flat on his back in the grass under a tree. “Take your time,” he shouted. “I’m happy here.”
Sure enough, when Martin emerged from the coop and helped him stand back up, whatever cog in Jon’s pelvis or spine he had jammed earlier was turning again. And by the time they got back to the house, Martin had talked himself into the idea that maybe all the house’s doorknobs that looked like theirs came loose a lot, and Salesa had taken to keeping the screwdriver to fix them in, say, the hall closet, or in their toilet’s under-sink cabinet.
“I think we’re gonna have to find Salesa and ask him about it,” concluded Martin, when these locations turned up nothing they wanted either.
“If you’re sure.”
Jon sat down on the closed toilet seat. Hadn’t that been what he said just before the last time he sat down on the lid of a toilet before Martin? He’d dutifully turned away, that time, as Martin undressed, wanting to make sure he knew he’d still let him have some privacy. But then, of course: “Where should I put these, do you think? —Er, my clothes I mean.”
“Oh. Um.” Jon had turned his head to look at the stain on Daisy’s ceiling, for what must have been the tenth time already. “I can hold onto them if you like.” Which then meant Martin had to get them back on before Jon could undress for his own shower and hand him his clothes. As he’d piled his trousers into Martin’s hands a tape recorder fell out of one pocket and crashed to the floor, ejecting the tape with Peter’s statement on it. “Shit,” Jon had hissed and ducked to the floor to pick it up, trusting the slit in his towel to reveal nothing worse than thigh.
“Shit,” Martin echoed. “I hope that wasn’t your phone.”
“No—just the recorder.” Still on the floor, Jon clicked its little door shut and pressed play. Sound of waves, static, footsteps. He switched it off. “Seems alright.” Thank god, he stopped himself from adding. Jon didn’t want to lose this one, this record of how he’d found Martin, in case he lost him again. But he didn’t want Martin to hear the sounds of the Lonely again so soon, either. That was why he’d stayed with Martin while he showered, rather than waiting in the safehouse living room. He wouldn’t have insisted on it, of course. He didn’t exactly believe Martin would disappear again? But long showers were such a cliché of lonely people, and steam looked so much like the mist on Peter’s beach, and when Jon asked how he felt about it, Martin said that thought hadn’t occurred to him,
“But as soon as you started to say that, I.” He’d stood with his teeth bared, half smiling half grimacing, and bringing the tips of his fingers together and apart over and over. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Heh—it scares me too now, if I’m honest. That’s… a good sign, I guess, right?”
They had come a long way since then, Jon told himself. They were more comfortable with each other now. On their first morning here, they’d showered separately, but after (Martin’s) breakfast Jon’s irritation had faded and he had resolved to pretend along with Martin that this was a holiday. So they’d got to use the enormous bathtub after all— the one at whose soap dish Jon now found himself staring as he sat on the lid of the toilet. When the heat made him dizzier, as he’d known it would, he had relished getting to rest his cheek on Martin’s arm along the rim of the tub, where it had grown cool and soft in the few minutes he’d kept it above the water.
“Let’s have lunch first,” Martin said now; “you’re getting all….” While he looked for the right word he dropped his shoulders and jaw, and mimicked a thousand-yard stare. “Abstract, again. Distant. People food should help a little, yeah? Tie you back down to this plane a bit?”
“Probably,” Jon agreed, smiling at Martin’s tact.
But to get to the kitchen they had to pass through the dining room—where they found Salesa snoring in a chair at the head of the table. “Let’s just ask him now before he gets up and moves again,” maintained Martin. Jon shrugged his acquiescence and leant in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. Why hadn’t he used the toilet before letting Martin lead him here?
”Um, Mikaele?” Martin inched a few steps toward him, but a distance of several feet still gaped between them. “We have something to ask you, if that’s—hello? Mikaele?”
A likely-sounding gap between snores—but nope. Still sound asleep. Salesa sighed, licked his lips, then began to snore again.
“Mikaele Salesa,” called out Jon from his post at the door, rather less gently. “Mikaele Salesa!” He turned to Martin, meaning to suggest that they eat now and trust the smell of food to wake Salesa, but stopped himself when he saw Martin creeping timidly toward Salesa with his hand outstretched.
“Sorry to disturbyouMikaele,” Martin squeaked out, so quickly that the words blended together. He gave Salesa’s shoulder the lightest possible tap with one fingertip, then snatched his hand back with a grimace of regret as Salesa’s own hand reached up, belatedly, as if to swat Martin’s away. “Oh, good, you’re—”
Salesa interrupted with a snore. Martin sighed and turned to Jon. “What d’you think? Should I shake him?”
Jon pulled out a neighboring chair and sat on it. “No need for anything so drastic. Try poking him a few more times first.”
“Right.”
Once he’d tired of rolling his cane between his palms Jon bent down to set it on the floor. He’d learnt his lesson about trying to hang it on the back of these chairs, though in this fog it had taken several incidents to stick. Every time it ended up crashing to the floor, when he scooched his chair back or when Martin tried to reach an arm around him. Then again—he conjectured, bent halfway to the floor with the cane still in his hand—if he did drop it, that might wake Salesa.
Two nights ago Jon had got up to use the toilet, and knocked his cane down from the wall on his way back to bed in the dark. It crashed to the floor; Jon swore and hopped on one foot back from it, imagining the other foot’s poor toenail smashed to jagged pieces as it thumped to life with pain. Meanwhile he heard rustling from the bed, and Martin’s voice, querulous with sleep. “Jon? Jon, what’s—happened, what—are you.”
“Nothing it’s fine go back to”—he’d hissed as his knee decided it had enough of hopping—“don’t get up, just. I’m gonna turn on the light, if that’s alright.”
“What fell? Are you okay?”
“The cane. I knocked it over in the dark.”
“Oh.”
He got no verbal response about the light, but guessed Martin had nodded.
From a distance his toe looked alright—no blood, anyway, so he could walk on it without risking the carpet. Jon picked his cane up from the floor and steered himself to the foot of the bed, where he sat down. His toenail had chipped, it looked like—only a little, but in that way that leaves a long crack. If he tried to pick it straight he’d tear out a big chunk and it would bleed. But if he left it like this it would snag on the sheets, on his socks, until some loose thread tore the chunk of nail off for him. What could he do for this kind of thing here? At home he’d file the nail down around the chip, then cover it in clear nail polish, and just hope that’d hold out until the crack grew out and he could clip it without bleeding. But here? A plaster would have to do, he guessed. They had plenty of those now.
Jon hated bandaging, ever since Prentiss—in much the same way that Martin hated sleeping in his pants. He’d had time to learn all its discomforts. How sweaty they got, the way they stuck to your hairs, the way lint collected in the adhesive residue they left. Didn’t help he associated them with that time of paranoia. They didn’t make him act paranoid, understand; he just habitually thought of bandage-wearing as what paranoid people do. It made an echo of his contempt for that time’s Jon cling to his perceptions of current Jon. On his first morning here, when the ones on his shin where Daisy’d bit him peeled off in the shower, he hadn’t bothered to replace them. After all, the bite only hurt when something pulled on it or poked or scraped against it, so he figured his trousers would provide enough protective barrier.
“That healed fast,” Martin had remarked, when he noticed the undressed wound in the bath—and then, when he looked again, “Yyyyeah I dunno, I think you might still want to bandage that. We don’t want dirt getting in there.”
“Do I have to?”
“Humor me.”
When they got back to their room he’d let Martin dress it himself. Martin had sucked air through his teeth. “This is days old—it shouldn’t be all hot and red like this.” According to him these were early signs of infection, which would get worse if they didn’t take better care of it—i.e., keep the wound freshly bandaged and ointmented. Jon refrained from pointing out that when the cut on his throat had got like that he’d left it uncovered and been fine. But he did ask what worse meant. “Really bad,” testified Martin. “I had a cut on my finger get infected once. Really disgusting. You don’t want to know.”
Jon smiled at him, raised his eyebrows. “After Jared’s mortal garden I think I can handle it.”
Martin smiled too, but wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “There was pus involved.”
“Oh, god! How could you tell me that!” gasped Jon, hand to his chest.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it also hurt? A lot? And it can make you ill. So we should try to avoid it, yeah?”
He’d tried to disavow the disappointment in his sigh by exaggerating it. “Yes, alright.”
“Don’t know why you’d want to leave it exposed anyway. Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Well, sure, when you do that,” Jon had muttered, flinching away. As he asked the question Martin had lightly tapped the skin around the gash through its new bandage. A second or two later Jon added, “Less than when I got it? It’s hard to tell; it’s… different here.”
With a sigh that caught on phlegm and irritation, Martin asked, “Different how?”
He hadn’t been able to answer then, but he knew now, of course. It hurt the way things do when you’re awake. Not with the constant smart and throb it had when he’d first got it, but, it snagged on things now. Had opinions on how he moved. When he bent his knee more than ninety degrees, that stretched the skin around it painfully. Also if he knelt, since then the floor would press against it through his trousers. And stepping with that foot felt odd. Didn’t hurt, exactly, but sort of… rattled? Like a bad bruise would. This all seemed so small, compared to the moment of terror for his life that he’d felt when Daisy bit into him—that gaping wound in his new self-conception, which his healing powers had sewn up so quickly. The ritual of bandaging it every evening seemed so otiose, so laughably superstitious. He despised the thought of adding another step to it.
While Jon went on examining his toe, Martin asked, “What was the... thumping. It sounded like.”
“Oh—no—I didn’t fall; it’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“No—yes—stop, it’s nothing, don’t get up. I just forgot I left it on the—leaning against the doorwall” (he hadn’t decided in time whether to say doorway or wall and ended up with half of each) “so I walked into it, er, toe first.”
“Oh,” Martin said again. Jon could hear him subsiding against the pillows behind him. “It came down?”
Big sigh. Jon’s fingernails met his palms. He set his foot back on the floor, and when his hip whined in its socket he clenched his teeth and kept them that way. In his mind he heard days’ worth of similar jokes. When he couldn’t get a jammed jar open: So you’re saying it wouldn’t… come off? When they got back their clean laundry: Can you believe all those grass stains came out?—oh, sorry: that they came off, I meant. Always with an innocent laugh, like Jon’s original phrasing had been just, what, like a Freudian slip, rather than something perfectly comprehensible that Martin had refused to engage with, taken from him, and rendered meaningless on purpose. “No it did not,” he snapped, “and I would appreciate it if you’d quit throwing that back in my face.”
“Whoa, uh. O…kay. What’s… going on here exactly?”
“You—?”
His heart plummeted; his face stung with embarrassment. Came down, Martin had said—not came off. He’d just been confirming that Jon’s cane had fallen down.
“Oh, god—nothing, never mind. You did nothing.”
“Well that’s obviously not true.”
“I just—I thought you’d said ‘came off.’ I thought you meant, had my toe ‘come off.’”
“Oh,” said Martin, yet again. When Jon turned to look he found him still blinking and squinting against the light. “Do you… need me to not say that anymore?”
“Not when I—?” Not when I’ve hurt myself, Jon meant. But Martin hadn’t done that, so this grievance didn’t actually mean anything. He’d been seeing patterns where there were none, and now that he’d seen through the illusion Jon knew again that Martin never would say it like that. “No, it’s fine. Do whatever you want.”
Martin turned the tail end of his yawn into a huff of false laughter. “Nope. Still don’t believe you.”
“Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense with the information you have. It’s all just—me. Being cryptic again.”
“Okay, uh. Are you waiting for me to disagree? ‘Cause, uh. Yup—you’re still being cryptic. No arguments there.”
Jon just sighed, really scraping the back of his throat with it. Almost a scoff.
“Sooo do you wanna fill me in, or.”
“No?” With an incredulous laugh. “Well, yes, just.”
He hadn’t known how to start from there, while so tightly wound and defensive. It seemed cruel to raise such a sensitive subject when Martin sounded so eager to go back to sleep. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear Martin whimper apologies. Didn’t want to deal with how fake they would sound. They wouldn’t be fake; he knew that. But they would sound fake, which meant it would take an effort of will, a deliberate exercise of empathy, to accept them as real. He wasn’t in the mood to hear yet another person say I’m sorry, I didn’t know; much less to respond with the requisite It’s okay; you didn’t know. It would take a strength of conviction he didn’t have right now.
“Y—you don’t have to explain it tonight? I’ll just, I’ll just not use that phrase anymore, and maybe in the morning you’ll be less in the mood to lash out at me for things that don’t make sense.”
And what was there to say to that? It had taken Jon three tries to force out, “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“Good night, Jon.”
“Good night. I still need the light, for.”
“That’s fine. Just turn it off when you come back to bed.”
“You won’t wake him up,” a new voice interjected.
Annabelle. Jon couldn’t see her, but he had learnt by now to recognize that voice, with its insufferable upbeat teasing inflection like every sentence she said was a riddle. He caught a glimpse of movement, then heard the click of her shoes on the floor. She must have poked her head round the doorway at the far end of the table while she spoke, then scuttled off again. At last he got a good look at her, as she put her blonde-and-gray head through the closer door.
“He’s a very heavy sleeper,” she informed them, with a smile and a shrug. “You can shake him all you want; it’s not going to work.”
Martin cleared his throat—trying to catch Jon’s attention, presumably. But Jon feared Annabelle would vanish again if he took his eyes off her. Not that he wanted her here, either, but?—he at least wanted to know which direction she went when she disappeared.
“What are you doing here, Annabelle.”
She shrugged two of her shoulders. “Just offering you some advice.” Then she used the momentum from the shrug to push herself backward, out of the doorway back into the corridor. Before the last of her hands disappeared off to the right, she waved to both of them.
“Well, how about some ‘advice’ about this, then—”
“She’s already gone, Martin.”
“Seriously? God—which way did she go?” Jon pointed; Martin bolted down the hallway after her. “Oi! Annabelle!”
“Shhh!”
“Annabelle! Do you know where Salesa keeps the—”
Jon did his best to follow him, praying all his limbs would go on straight this time. “Don’t!”
“What? Why not?” he heard, from the other side of the wall. Thankfully he could no longer hear Martin’s pounding footsteps. He overtook him in the hallway, just about able to make out his face around the dark swirls in his vision. “She’s as likely to know as Salesa, right?” Martin continued. “And it’s not like she’d lie about it. I mean, what would be the point?”
“I just don’t think we should give her any kind of advantage over us,” Jon snarled. The attempt to keep his voice down made the words come out sounding nastier than he intended.
Martin scoffed. “You don’t think maybe this is a bit more important than your stupid principle about not accepting help from her?”
“Is it?” Jon took hold of Martin’s sleeve, having just now caught up to him. “The new room’s fine. It’s even nicer than the old one, right? We could just stay there.”
“I already told you, Jon. I’m not just gonna leave it like this.”
“’Til Salesa sobers up, I meant.”
“If we have to, yeah, but—? All our stuff’s in that room. The statements’re in there.”
“I just don’t think we should show her that kind of vulnerability,” Jon hissed, shifting from foot to foot in his eagerness either to sit down or go somewhere else. “I don’t want to give Annabelle something she can use over us.”
“How does this make us more vulnerable than we are eating her food?”
“It doesn’t, alright? That doesn’t mean we should add more to the pile!” He watched Martin shrug and open his mouth, but cut him off in advance: “Last time we had this argument you were the one maintaining she was dangerous.”
It was on their first night here—their first awake here, anyway. They’d been heading back to their room, Martin lamenting that he’d not packed anything to sleep in when they left Daisy’s safehouse. “Won’t make much difference to me,” Jon had shrugged at first.
Martin had shaken his head, grimaced at something in his imagination. “I hate sleeping in my pants. It’s just gross. Dunno why anyone would choose to do it.”
“How is it gross?” Jon had laughed. He’d expected to hear some weird thing about its being unsanitary for that much leg to touch sheets that only got washed every two weeks, and to argue back that in that case shouldn’t he sleep in his socks. Disdain for the body seemed damn near universal, and yet manifested so differently in each person whose habits Jon had got to know up close. Georgie had heard that underarm hair helped wick away the smell of sweat—so she let that hair grow out, but shaved the ones on her stomach for fear they’d smell like navel lint. And Daisy, a woman who used to sniff her used-up plasters before throwing them in the bin, would spray cologne in the toilet every time she left it. Jon had enjoyed getting to know which of bodily self-contempt’s myriad forms Martin subscribed to.
But this turned out not to be one of them. Instead Martin explained, “It’s so sweaty. Like sitting on a leather couch in shorts, except the leather’s your other leg? Ugh. I hate waking up slippery.”
“That’s why I put a pillow between mine,” laughed Jon. “Suppose I will miss Trevor’s t-shirt, though. Now that I don’t have to worry about showing up in people’s dreams like that.”
“Oh, god, right—what is it? ‘You don’t have to be faster than the bear’—?”
“‘You just have to be faster than your friends,'” Jon completed, in the most sinister Ceaseless-Watcher voice he could muster. Martin snorted with laughter.
And then they’d opened the door to discover Annabelle had done them a fucking turndown service. Quilt folded back, mints on the pillows, and a pile of old-timey striped pajamas at the foot of the bed. “Huh. Cree…py, but convenient, I guess. Least they’re not black and white, right?” Martin unfolded the green-striped shirt on top, then handed it with its matching trousers to Jon. “These ones must be yours.”
“Mm.” Jon let Martin hand him the pajamas, then tossed them onto the chair in the opposite corner of the room (from which chair they promptly fell to the floor). The mint from his side of the bed he deposited in the bin under the bedside table.
“So who’s our good fairy, d’you think? Salesa, or.”
“Annabelle,” Jon hissed. “Salesa was with us all through dinner.”
Martin nodded and sighed. “Yeah.” He sat down on the bed, still regarding the other set of garments—these ones striped yellow and blue—with a puzzled frown. “God, I’ll look like a clown in these. You sure I won’t give you nightmares about the Unknowing?”
But Jon said nothing, still hoping he could avoid weighing in on Martin’s choice whether or not to accept Annabelle’s… gifts.
“It’s probably Salesa’s stuff, at least. Not Annabelle’s. I mean,” Martin mused with a brave laugh, “he’s got a lot of weird outfits on hand apparently.”
“Unless she wove them out of cobwebs.”
“That’s not a thing,” Martin groaned, making himself laugh too. “Spider webs aren’t strong enough to use as thread.”
“Not natural ones, maybe,” Jon said with a shrug and a careful half smile. With no less care, he turned the sheets and counterpane back up on his side of the bed, restoring the way it’d looked when he and Martin made up the bed that morning. Stacked the frontmost pillow back upright against the one behind it. Punched it a little, more as a way to break the silence than because it looked too fluffy. Then sat down in front of them and put his shoe up on the bedside table so he could untie it—glancing first at Martin to make sure he didn’t disapprove.
“I mean, I guess,” Martin mused meanwhile. “Not sure why she’d bother, though. Maybe it’s”—with a gasp and a smile Jon could hear in his voice—“maybe she’s put poison in the threads, and that’s why yours and mine are different. Mine’s got—I dunno, some kind of self-esteem poison, like, a reverse SSRI, to make me feel like you don’t need me, so when she kidnaps you I won’t try to save you. And yours….”
As Jon pulled off his now-untied shoe one of the bones in his hip jabbed against some bit of soft tissue it wasn’t supposed to touch. He gasped and dropped his shoe. It thudded on the floor.
“You alright?”
“Fine. Some kind of dex drain, probably.”
“Ha.”
After a silence, Martin spoke again: “Are you sure you’re okay staying here for a bit? Sorry—I kinda bulldozed over your objections earlier.”
Jon finished untying his other shoe, then paused to think while he shook the cramp out of his hand. “No,” he decided. “You didn’t bulldoze, you just…questioned. And you were right to.”
“Still, I mean. It might not be a great idea to stick around here with the spider lady who’s had it in for us since day one. Have you re-listened to the tapes from the day Prentiss attacked, by the way, since you got them back from the Not-Sasha thing?”
“Right—the spider, yes.”
“Yeah, exactly! You wouldn’t even have broke through that wall if it hadn’t been for the spider there!”
Jon nodded and scrubbed at his eyes, trying to muster the energy to match Martin’s tone. This was an important conversation to have, he knew. And a part of him shuddered with recognition to hear Martin talk about those tapes. He had re-listened to them—first at Georgie’s, one night in the small hours as he cleaned her kitchen, thinking clearly for the first time in months and trying to pinpoint the exact moment his thoughts had been clouded with paranoia, so that he might know what signs to look for if something else tried to infect his mind like that. And then again after Basira found the jar of ashes. That time he’d just wanted to suck all the marrow he could from the memory of Martin with his sensible corkscrew and his first answer to Why are you here, even if it did mean having to hear himself ask if Martin was a ghost. A few weeks later, however, after Hilltop Road, he’d done a fair bit of obsessing over the spider thing with Prentiss, yeah. He just wished he could remember what conclusion he’d come to.
All he could remember was going for those tapes yet again only to find them missing from his drawer. But he’d been chasing phantoms all day; it was late at night by then, and when he’d dashed out to tell Basira his fear Annabelle had stolen them, stolen his memories from him just like the Not-Them had, he’d stood there over her and Daisy’s frankenbag for what felt like an hour, mouth open, unable to utter a sound. It felt too much like going to wake up his grandmother after a dream. So he’d told himself to sleep on it—that he’d probably left the tapes in some other obvious place, and would find them in the morning. And when he remembered his panic, the next day at lunch, and checked his drawer again, the tapes were back, right where he expected them. He’d dismissed it as a dream after all. But no—Martin must have borrowed them. He must’ve been worried about the Web, too.
“It’s… it should be okay. I don’t think it’ll be like that here.”
Martin sighed. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“That thing where you just—decide how something is without even telling me why you think so. I mean it’s one thing out there, when you ‘know everything’” (this in a false deep voice) “and can’t possibly share it all, but here? When you’re just guessing, like everyone else? Why don’t you think it’ll be like that here? And what does ‘like that’ even mean?”
“I'm sorry—you’re right—I just mean, I don’t think she has her powers here. Based on what Salesa said about the camera, and on what happens when I try to use my powers….”
“Salesa just said the Eye can’t see this place, though. What about that insect thing he said found its way in?”
“I mean.” Jon shrugged. “We managed to find our way here without the Eye’s help.”
“Yeah, but if the Web has no power here then how could she have called me on a payphone? She had to have known where I was to do that, yeah? And she couldn’t know that from here unless the Web told her to do it, right?”
“Maybe? We don’t even know if the Web works like that.”
“Told her to do it, made her want to do it, gave her the tools to do it, whatever. You know what I mean. Look—we know the Eye’s not totally blind here, since it can still feed on statements. Right?”
Jon wondered now how either one of them could have been so sure of that. “Apparently,” he liked to think he had said—but more likely he’d replied simply, “Right.”
“So then by that logic the Web still probably likes it when she—I don’t know, when she manipulates people here. It probably still gets, like, live tweets from her about it. How do we know it can’t use that information to weave more plots around us?”
“If that’s even how it works,” Jon had replied again. “The other fears don’t work like that—they don’t plan, they just.” He tried to sort his intuition into Martin’s live tweet metaphor. “The fears just like their agents’ tweets, they don’t… comment on them, o-or build new opinions on what they’ve read. It boosts the avatar's… popularity, I guess? Their influence?” Jon hadn’t even logged into Twitter since before the Archives. “But unless the Web is different from all the other fears, it doesn’t—it’s not her boss. It doesn’t come up with the schemes, it just.”
“Isn’t it literally called the ‘Spinner of Schemes’, though? The ‘Mother of Puppets’?”
And Jon couldn’t remember what he’d said to brush off that one.
“Of course she’s dangerous,” Martin said now. “I just don’t see what sinister plot of hers we could possibly be enabling by asking her where to find screwdrivers.”
Jon scoffed. “She’s with the Web, Martin! The ‘Mother of Puppets,’ the ‘Spinner of Schemes’? You’re not supposed to be able to see how the threads connect. Anything we ask her gives her another opening to sink her hooks into.”
“So what, you just don’t want to owe her a favor?”
“Yes?” Jon blinked—on purpose, needless to say. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I mean—why do you think she’s here, Martin, ingratiating herself with us?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s the one place on Earth that hasn’t been turned into a hell dimension?”
Jon snarled and set his head in his free hand. The dizziness was coming back. “In her statement Annabelle said the trick to manipulating people was to make sure they always either over or underestimate you.”
“Okay,” granted Martin, as though prompting Jon to explain how this was relevant.
“She’s trying to humanize herself,” he maintained, scratching an imaginary itch behind his glasses. “We shouldn’t let her.”
“I mean, she is physically more human here.”
“Is she? She doesn’t seem to be withdrawing from the Web; she’s not—like this.” Jon turned his wrist in a circle next to his head.
“Yeah but she’s been here for months, right? Maybe she’s passed through that stage.”
A bitter huff of laughter. “So you’re saying she’s reformed.”
“No. I’m saying the fact she’s not all—loopy here doesn’t necessarily mean she still has any power.”
“She’s got four arms and six eyes, Martin!”
“And you sleep with your eyes open and summon tape recorders, Jon!”
“Well,” mused Jon with a wry smile, “not on purpose.”
“That’s my point! You’ve only got—vestiges here, yeah? I’m not saying we should trust her; I don’t wanna be friends or anything. I’m just saying I don’t think the actual concrete danger she poses here is what’s making you hate the idea of asking her for directions.”
“What about that insect thing Salesa said she chased off. Does that not sound spidery to you?”
“We don’t know that! Maybe she waved his syringe at it.”
Jon took a deep, shaky breath through his nose. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to bring up this next part; he feared it might make Martin too afraid to stay here any longer. “I think she’s plotting against us.”
Blink. “Well, yeah. Of course she is. She’s been plotting against us for—”
“Here, I mean. I mean, I think that’s why she’s here. She’s been hiding from the Eye on purpose so she could lure us into her trap with her spindly little”—Jon thought of the earrings that dangled from Annabelle’s ears like flies, swinging with her every sudden movement. Unconsciously he struck out with his hand as if to catch one, closing his fist around empty air. “Without my being able to see either her or the trap. At best, she’s here gathering information about us so she can report it back to her master.” He pictured the thousand spiders he’d seen birthed during Francis’s nightmare crawling back and forth with messages between here and the nearest Web domain—
“I thought you said the fears didn’t work that way,” pursued Martin—
“And every little thing we tell her is one more thread she can use to pull on us.”
“Okay, but, even if you’re right, ‘Hey Annabelle, our doorknob’s busted, can you help us find the tools to fix it’ isn’t actually a fact about us.”
“But that’s just the best-case scenario, Martin! The worst-case scenario is that she predicted we’d get locked out of our room, or even loosened the screw herself—”
“Not this again—”
“—because she knew we’d have to ask her for help, and wherever she tells us to look for the screwdriver is where she’s laid her trap! Think about it—this couldn’t happen outside the range of the camera, right? It would only work in a place where I can’t just know where to find something. That’s the only scenario where we’d ever ask her for directions.” Martin sighed, crossed his arms, rolled his eyes. Jon looked right at him, hoping to catch them on their way back down. “What if her plan is to trap us here forever so we can’t go stop Elias? What if by trusting her with this, we give her the tools to keep the world like this forever?”
Again Martin sighed. He bit his lip, at last seeming not to have an argument lined up already.
“I can’t actually stop you from going after her”—Jon heard Martin scoff, but pressed on—“but I can’t take part in this.”
“You sort of already did stop me, Jon.” He lifted his arm, pointing vaguely in the direction she’d gone. “We can’t catch up with her now.”
That wasn’t quite true, Jon knew; Martin had chosen to stop and listen to him. Instead of pointing this out in words Jon smiled, meekly, and reached for Martin’s hand. “Guess that’s true. Are you, er, ready for lunch now?”
His answering scoff sounded fond, indulgent, rather than incredulous. “Yeah, alright.”
With Martin’s hand still in his, Jon turned around—an awkward business, while holding hands in such a narrow passage—and began to walk back towards the dining room. At the end of the corridor stood a tall, thin, many-limbed figure, holding a water carafe, a stack of glasses, and four steaming plates of food.
“You boys getting hungry?” As she stepped toward them her shoes clacked against the floor. How had they not heard her approach? And what was she doing back at that end of the corridor?
“How did you—?”
“I have my ways. I’ve brought lunch for you both, if you’re amenable.”
“Oh—well, thanks, you’re, you’re just in time, actually.” Jon didn’t dare look away from Annabelle Cane long enough to confirm this, but suspected Martin had directed that last bit at him as much as her. “Can I help you with those?”
Annabelle managed to shrug without dislodging anything from the four plates in her hands. “You can take the napkins if you want,” she said, extending toward Martin the forearm from which they hung.
Jon sat back down in the chair he’d left at a haphazard angle—though it felt weird, since he usually sat on the table’s other side. He thanked Martin when he handed him a napkin, and allowed Annabelle to set an empty glass and a plate of food in front of him. It was a pasta dish, with clams—from a can, he reminded himself. A can and a jar of pasta sauce. Couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes to put together.
“Salesa’s still out of it,” observed Martin. “Don’t think he’ll make too much of his.”
“A shame,” Annabelle agreed. She set a plate down in front of the sleeping Salesa anyway. “Maybe the smell of food’ll wake him up.”
“Are you going to eat with us?” Martin asked, as he and Jon both watched her deposit a fourth plate across the table from them.
“I may as well. We do still have to eat to live here, don’t we?” Jon could tell she meant this comment as an invitation for him to join their conversation, but he didn’t intend to take her bait. “Besides,” Annabelle went on, “this way you’ll know I’ve not saved the best for myself.” With one hand she picked up her own plate again; another of her long, thin arms reached out to take Jon’s plate.
He dragged it to the side, out of her reach. “No, thank you.”
“Alright. Martin,” she said, looking over at him with a patient, patronizing smile. “Will you switch plates with me?”
“Oh, my god,” Martin groaned into his hand. “Sure, why not.”
Something small and gray skittered across the table toward her. For half a second Annabelle took her eyes from Martin. Her nostrils flared; one of her eyes twitched; Jon heard a stifled squawk from behind her closed lips as she swept the skittery thing over her edge of the table. He made no such effort to hide his scoff. Did she think she could play nice, by declining to hold little spider conversations in front of them? That they’d think she was on their side as long as they couldn’t see her chatting to her little spies?
“Thank you,” Annabelle sing-songed meanwhile, returning her gaze to Martin. “You’re sweet.”
On their first morning here, after showering and then shuddering back into their filthy clothes, Jon and Martin had barely left their room before Annabelle dangled herself in their path, with cups of tea (Jon refused his) and an offer to show them to the pantry. From this tour Jon had concluded that all food in this place was tainted by her influence. And he didn’t actually feel hungry at that point? He remembered Martin remarking on his hunger before they’d both fallen asleep, but Jon had felt only tired. Surely that meant he still didn’t need food here, right? It’d been like that before the change, after the coma—he’d needed sleep and statements to keep up his strength, but could function just fine without… people food. So he’d resolved to accept nothing offered him here—or at least, nothing Salesa and Annabelle hadn’t already given him and Martin without their consent. No tea, none of Salesa’s booze, no use of the huge industrial washing machines, no food.
That resolution lasted about nine hours. He knew because on that first day time still felt like such a novelty he and Martin had counted every one. Once he’d tried and failed to compel Salesa—once he’d heard him give a statement and managed to space out for half of it, rather than transcending himself in the ecstasy of vicarious fear—Jon started to grow conscious of his hunger. After two hours he felt shaky; after four he started picking quarrels, first just with Annabelle when she showed up with snacks, then with Salesa, and then even with Martin; after six he felt first hot, then cold. Finally around the eight-hour mark he was hiding tears over an untied shoelace, and figured it was worth finding out how much of this torment people food could solve. He sat through dinner, flaunting his empty plate—then stole to the pantry for something he could make himself. Settled for dry toast and raisins. “Couldn’t you find the jam?” Martin had asked him.
“Didn’t think of it,” Jon lied, once he’d got his throat round a lump of under-chewed toast.
“You want me to get some for you? That looks pretty depressing without it,” Martin said, with his eyebrows and the line of his mouth both raised in a pitying smile.
“Better make it one of the sealed jars.”
“What, so Annabelle can’t have got to it?” Jon nodded, chewing so as to have neither to smile back nor decide not to. “You know she made the bread, right.”
Of course she had. Jon dropped his head onto his fists. “Fuck.”
“What did you think?” mused Martin with a laugh. “That Salesa just popped down to the supermarket?”
“I don’t know—that they’d taken it from the freezer, maybe?”
“I mean, that’s possible,” Martin granted with a shrug. “Should I get you that jam?”
Big sigh. “Fine.”
In reality he’d stared up at the row of jam jars in Salesa’s pantry for a full ten seconds before deciding not to have any. He feared spiders would spill out of the jar onto his hand as soon as he got it open. But he also feared he might not be able to open it at all—only hurt himself trying. Way back in their first year in the Archives together, Martin had once seen him struggling to get open the jar where he kept paperclips. Jon hadn’t realized he was being watched—or, that is, that Martin was watching him. In the Archives the sense of someone watching was so omnipresent one soon lost the ability to distinguish Elias’s evil Eye from other, more mundane eyes. Anyway, after three minutes’ effort and nothing to show for it but a misplaced MCP joint in his thumb, Jon had given up on paper-clipping the photos Tim had pilfered for him to their relevant statement and begun hunting through his desk drawers for a stapler instead. And then a high-pitched pop above his head made him startle so badly he gasped, choked on his own spit, and flung the picture in his hand across the room like a paper airplane.
Around the sound of his own cough he could hear Martin shouting Sorry, and Tim and Sasha laughing on the other side of the wall. Martin’s laugh soon joined theirs, though it sounded desperate, sheepish. He dove after the photo Jon had dropped, and then, when he came back with it, explained, “Got the paperclips for you.”
Jon frowned. “This is a photograph, Martin.”
“No, I mean—?” His laugh came out like a whimper; he picked the unlidded jar up an inch off the table, then set it back down. “Here.”
Okay, so, not exactly an auspicious start, but, it still became a thing? Martin opening his paperclip jar. At first he’d wished he could just remember not to seal it so tightly; he could get it just fine when he stopped turning it earlier. At least when the weather hadn’t changed since the last time he opened it. But then when they all started leaving the Archives less often, and the break-room fridge filled up with condiments that all seemed to have twist-off lids… he’d kind of liked that? Martin would hand him the peanut-butter jar, with its lid off and pinned to its side with one finger, before Jon had even finished asking for it. This seemed to be the pattern behind all his early positive impressions of Martin: the jar lids, the corkscrew, the way he managed to make mealtimes at the Institute feel like proper breaks. Martin had seemed like such an oaf to him at first—clumsy, absent-minded, always seeming to think that if he professed enough good will with his smiles and cups of tea and I know you won’t like this, but, then no one would notice his impertinent comments and all the doors he left wide open. All the dogs and worms and spiders he let in. He’d seemed to Jon the human embodiment of a fly left undone—more so than ever after the morning he’d walked in on him wearing naught but frog-print boxer shorts. But he had this easy grace with things that needed twisting off. Banana peels, bottle caps, wine corks, worms.
And then when he came back after the Unknowing Martin was never around. Jon and Basira and Melanie all lived in the Archives, like Martin had two years before, but by that point he wasn’t on Could you open this for me? terms with any of them. But he hadn’t needed people food anymore, and if he subluxed a joint it would heal instantly anyway. So he’d just struggled and sworn, feeling stupid for shrinking from the pain even after having chopped off his own finger. And it got easier with practice. By the time he and Martin reunited, he’d got so used to it that sometimes he’d hand jars to Martin already unlidded. Martin hadn’t seemed to notice. Finally, one evening a day or two after that row they had over the ice-cream thing, Jon had opened a jar of pasta sauce (he’d taken up people food again at Daisy’s safehouse, if only to make their time there feel more like a regular holiday), and reached out to hand it to Martin—then paused and retracted the hand that gripped the jar, remembering his promise to be more open about.
“This is, um.” He’d glanced up at Martin, then back to the floor as the latter said,
“Huh?”
“This is one of those things that’s got better since the coma. Since I became an avatar. I can, um. I can open jars now? Without.” He’d almost said Without hurting myself, then remembered that wasn’t technically true. Deep breath. “Without lasting harm. It—it hurts for a second? But the Eye heals it instantly. That's why I’ve been.”
“Oh,” Martin said, seeming to stall for time as he absorbed this information. He accepted the jar which Jon again held out to him, and turned it around in his hands, eyes on its label. “Yeah, I—I noticed, you’re really good at opening jars now,” he went on with a laugh. Again he paused, and blew a sigh out of his mouth. “Right. Okay. Thank you for telling me?”
“I’ll try and be better about….”
Martin nodded, turning back to the stove and beginning to stir sauce into the pasta. “Yeah. I, uh—I didn’t know that was why you used to need me to open them for you?” Since the other night’s argument, Jon had gathered as much. He nodded too. “I thought you were just, heh, you know. Weaker than me.”
“I mean, I am—”
“Well yeah but you know what I mean.”
“I do. I should’ve told you.”
“No, I—actually I think you’re in the clear on that one, if I’m honest. I just—it’s just weird? I thought I was done having to” (another blown-out sigh punctuated his speech) “having to reframe stuff I thought was normal around some unseen horror. Sorry,” he added when he’d finished beating sauce off Daisy’s wooden spoon; “that’s probably not a great way to.”
“No—it’s fine?”
“Suppose it sounds like an exaggeration, now, after all we’ve.”
Mechanically, Jon nodded, without deciding whether he agreed or not. Around an awkward laugh, he confessed, “‘Unseen horror’ might be the nicest way I’ve ever heard anyone describe it.”
“Er. Yikes? That sounds like you might need some better friends, Jon.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, laughing again. “I—I just mean, it’s nice to hear something other than?” Jon paused and pushed his little fingers back the hundred or so degrees they each would go. First the left, then the right. Other than what? Well, doubt, for a start. Though most of the doubt he heard from outside himself was implicit. Careful silence from people he told about it; requests people made of him seemingly just so he’d have to tell them he couldn’t do that; impatience, bafflement, suspicion from strangers. Why are you out of breath, the woman behind the Immigration desk had asked him at O’Hare, as if breathlessness incriminated him somehow. But that wasn’t the response he’d subconsciously measured Martin’s phrase against. What he had in mind now was more like… bland support. Hurried support. Assurances quick and dutiful, yet so vague he could tell the people who gave them were thinking only of the mistakes they might make, if they dared to acknowledge what he’d said with any more than half a sentence. The I’m sorry you’re in pain equivalents of Right away, Mr. Sims.
That was it—unseen horror was an original thought. Martin had put it in his own words, rather than either borrowing Jon’s or using none at all. “Other than a platitude.”
So at Salesa’s when Martin came back with the jam jar he handed it to Jon. Jon made a show of trying to open it, but could feel his middle finger threatening to leave its top half behind. It frightened him, in a way he’d forgot was even possible. For such a long time now, pain had just been pain? He’d grown so unused to the threat it held for normal people. The threat of actual danger, of injury. He’d set down the jar on the table in front of him, and crossed his arms in front of it.
“Can’t get it, huh?” Martin asked; Jon shook his head.
How much danger, though, he wondered. Earlier that day, after he and Martin got out of the bath, his left index finger had popped out while he was buttoning his shirt. It still ached when he used the finger, or thought about the cracking sound it had made—but didn’t throb anymore without provocation. Not much danger there; not even much inconvenience. He supposed if he hurt his middle finger too then he might have some trouble with his trouser button the next time he had to pee? Right, yes, what a cross to bear. I hurt myself doing x; now it hurts to do x. But it already hurt to do x, didn’t it? Didn’t x always hurt, before the change? Why did he so fear to face an hour or a day where it hurt more than usual, but not so much I can’t do it?
“So you’re saying it won’t… come off?”
“Ha, ha.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”
“What if I open it and it’s full of spiders?”
Martin had smiled, rolled his eyes, pulled the jar toward him, and twisted its lid off with a pop. “See? No spiders in this one.
“While you’re here, Annabelle,” Jon heard Martin say, “I don’t suppose you know anything about where Salesa keeps his screwdrivers?”
Annabelle tapped her chin and said, very pleasantly, “Hmmm. Perhaps they’re where he left them after the last time something broke.”
Martin’s lips drew closer together. “Yeah,” he nodded, “probably. Any idea where that might be?”
“Perhaps he keeps them next to whatever screw comes loose most often.”
“And do you know which screw that is?”
She shook her head, though who knew whether that meant she didn’t know or merely that she didn’t mean to tell him. “Perhaps he only uses the item when he’s alone,” she said, with a shrug and a sly smile.
“…Ew.” Annabelle cackled like a school kid pulling a prank. “Right, great,” sighed Martin. “Thanks a lot. Forget it. You done, Jon?”
Jon glanced sleepily down at his plate. Only half empty, but cold by now. “Yes.”
“Nice of you to grace us with your presence, Annabelle,” Martin said, sliding his and Jon’s plates toward her side of the table.
Instead of energy, lunch gave Jon only a slight queasy feeling—like one gets from eating sweets on an empty stomach.
“God”—hissed Martin, with clenched fists, as they ambled back to their room—“‘Perhaps he keeps them next to the screw that gets loose most often.’ Yeah, figured that out already, thanks! Can you even believe her? Sitting down to eat with us, as if she’s all ready to help, and then the best she can do is,” he paused and straightened, then said with a finger to his chin in imitation of Annabelle, “‘Oh, hm, guess he only uses it alone. Oh well!’”
“Don’t know what else you expected.”
Martin sighed, his arms crossed now. “Guess I should’ve done what you asked after all, since that accomplished nothing.” After a moment he went on, “Least it wasn’t a trap, right? I tried not to give her anything she could use against us.” With a smile Jon could hear without looking at him, “You notice how I pointedly didn’t offer to help clean up?”
“No, I didn’t,” Jon confessed, laughing a little.
“No?!” Again Martin paused on his feet, frowning, incredulous. Jon wished he wouldn’t; standing still made him dizzier, took more effort than walking, like that poor woman in Oliver’s domain. Daniela? Martin shook his head at himself. “Ugh—then who knows if she noticed, either. I thought I was being so obvious!”
“I mean—”
“Wait, hold up, let’s double back.”
“Are you going to go back and tell her it was on purpose?”
“No, just”—he echoed Jon’s laugh—“no, of course not. I just wanted to try that wing’s toilets next. Didn’t want her to see which way we were going.”
“Oh.” By this time Martin had turned around and started to walk the other way; Jon hung back. “Er. I thought—I thought we were going to our room first.”
“What, the new one you mean?” asked Martin, turning his head around to look back at him.
“…Yes,” Jon decided. Until this moment he’d forgot about that, and been daydreaming of their original bed.
“Sure, if you want. Do you need a break?”
“I… I think so, yes.”
Martin turned the rest of the way around, shuffled toward Jon and looked him over, with a concerned frown. He took his free hand between his fingers and thumb, brushing the latter over Jon’s knuckles. “Yeah, okay. You still seem pretty out of it. How are you feeling?”
“Not great,” answered Jon, though he smiled in relief at Martin’s willingness to change the plan for him.
“Food didn’t help?”
His stomach seemed hung with cobwebs; his mind, like a large room with half its lights burnt out. His light head seemed attached to his heavy, aching body only by a string, like a balloon tied to an Open-House sign. He still needed the toilet. “Not really?”
“Yeah, thought not. You need a statement, huh.”
Jon shrugged, avoiding Martin’s eyes. “Probably.”
In the interim bedroom Jon sat down at the edge of the bed, bent down over his legs, and untied his shoes, wondering why his life always came back around to this. His hip got stuck like a drawer that’s been pulled out crooked, so he had to lever himself back up with his arms, trapping fistfuls of counterpane between thumbs and the meat of his palms. It made his hands cramp, but that helped—the way it would have helped to bite his finger. When he’d got himself upright again he sat and blinked for a few seconds, hoping each time he opened his eyes that his vision would’ve cleared.
Martin sat down next to him and put his hand on Jon’s arm. “You’re blinking again. You okay?”
“Just… kind of dizzy? It’s an Eye thing.”
He let Martin pull him towards him until their shoulders touched. “Yeah. Makes sense. Nap should help. Statement’ll definitely help.”
“Right.”
They agreed to lie on the bed rather than properly in it, not wanting to have to put the covers back together afterward. Jon set his head on that squishy part of Martin’s chest where it started to give way to armpit, knowing to angle himself so the scar tissue pressed the hollow part of his cheek rather than anywhere bonier. It was normally dangerous to lie half on his back, half on his side like this, but he’d lately discovered he could use Martin’s leg to keep his hip from falling off. He could feel the muscles in his shoulder twitching and cramping, whether to pull the joint out or keep it in who could tell. But it’d be fine as long as he shrugged the arm every few minutes.
All the ways they knew to spend time in each other’s company had come together in Scotland, where he’d had none of these worries. Even after the change, on their journey, with nothing but sleeping bags between them and desecrated earth, he’d borne only the same aches he’d been ignoring since he read the statement that ended the world. Jon imagined lying next to Martin like this on the cold stone of a tomb in the Necropolis, surrounded by guardian angels’ malicious laughter. Not feeling the cold, or the grain of the stone against his ankles and the bandage on his shin—just knowing it was there, like when you watch someone suffer those things in a movie. Less vivid even than a statement about lying on a tomb; in Naomi Herne’s nightmare he’d felt the stone in her hands.
“Hfff, okay—ready to get back to it?”
“Mrrr.”
“…Jon, are you asleep?”
He shrugged his hanging shoulder. “No.”
Nose laugh. “Come on, wake up.”
“Mmrrrrrrr.”
“My arm’s asleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It won’t wake up ‘till you get up off of it, Jon,” said Martin, gently, between huffs of laughter.
“Hmr.” Jon rolled away to face the wall with the window, freeing Martin’s arm.
“Do you want me to go look without you?”
“Okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mhm.”
Cold air washed over his newly-exposed arm, ribcage, side of face, the outside of his sore hip. It was cold on this Martinless side of the bed, too. He rolled back over into the shadow of his warmth, but that still wasn’t as good as the real thing. Maybe he could pull the covers halfway out and roll himself up in them.
“Aaagh, no—Jon”—Martin’s cool hand on top of his as he tried to hook his fingers round the counterpane— “we’re trying to leave the room the way we found it, remember?”
“Hmmmrrgh.” He consented to leave his hand still when Martin’s departed from it. A few seconds later, a rustle against his ear, the smell of smoke and old clothes.
“Here.”
Jon crunched the jacket down so it wouldn’t itch his ear. “You won’t need it?”
“Probably not.”
“Hm.”
“I’ll be back for it if I have to go outside again, yeah?”
“Okay.”
In his mind’s eye they trudged into the wind, hand in hand. It blew Martin’s hood off his head, and inverted Jon’s cane like an umbrella. He shrunk himself further under Martin’s jacket, relishing the new pockets of warmth he created as his calves met his thighs and his hands gripped his shoulders.
“Ooookay…! Wish me luck?”
“Good luck,” managed Jon around a yawn.
Martin had been right about the wallpaper. Not only was the red too bright to look at comfortably; it also had the kind of flowered pattern just complex enough that every time you look back at it you’re compelled to double-check where it repeats. Every fourth stripe was the same as the first, right? Not every second? And that weird little scroll-shaped petal—he’d seen that one too recently. Was it the same as?—No, that one was a bud. He pulled Martin’s jacket up so it covered his eyes.
They’d put their jackets through the laundry with everything else, their first day here, but that hadn’t got the smell out. Enough time had passed between the burning building and their arrival here for the smoke to embed itself permanently into their jackets and shoes, like how duffel bags once taken camping always smell like barbecue. And everything they’d ever shoved in those backpacks still had some of that odd, sour, Ritz-cracker smell of clothes left unwashed too long.
Daisy used to smell like smoke and laundry, too, once she quit smelling like dirt. It was the smell of the old green sleeping bag she’d zipped up to Basira’s. She said she’d have showered it off if she could; she didn’t like it. To her it was a Hunt smell—it reminded her of her clearing in the woods. But there weren’t any showers in the Archives. She’d point this out every time, in the same wry voice, so Jon was sure she’d intended the metaphor. No showers in the Archives: you couldn’t hide your sins in a temple of the Eye. This had comforted Jon—or maybe flattered was the word, though he knew her better than to think she’d have done so on purpose. He just wasn’t sure he agreed. He’d hid his sins pretty well from himself, after the coma. It was easy; you just had to lose track of scale. No one could remember all of them at once, after all. Others had had to point the important ones out to him.
Were those footsteps he could hear out there? Not Annabelle’s—? No; her clicky shoes. These were blunter. Could be Salesa, awake at last, come to invite them to play a game with him. “How do you two feel about… foosball?” he would say, drawing out the last word in a husky whisper. Only then would he swing the door wide open to reveal himself in a shiny jersey, shorts, and studded shoes. He set his fists out before him and turned them in semicircles, pretending to manipulate the plastic rods of a foosball table. Jon curled still more tightly into himself at the thought of Salesa’s face, how his showman’s grin would crumple like a hole in a cellophane wrapper when he realized the fun one had gone and that he faced only the Archivist. “Oh—hello. Jon, is it? Where has your lovely Martin gone?”
“Oh, uh. Martin needs a screwdriver to fix our door, so I.”
He watched Martin march his silent way slowly, solemnly down a corridor that grew darker, grayer, vaguer with every step until the webs that lined its every side and hung in laces from the ceiling began to catch on his shoes, his belt, his glasses.
“I let him go off alone.”
Jon’s whole body flinched. He gasped awake—oh shit. How had he just let Martin go? He had to—couldn’t stay here—find Martin—keep him out of Annabelle’s clutches—
Stick-thin bristling spider legs tapped the floor of his mind like fingers on a table. Find Martin. Jon instructed himself to sit up, swing his legs over the side of the bed and reach down to grab his shoes. He twitched one finger. See? You can do this. In a minute he’d try again and be able to move his whole arm, push himself up onto one hand. Find Martin.
Also probably go to the toilet. With an empty bladder his head would be clearer, he could figure out which direction to look first.
After Hopworth, while he laid on the couch in his office waiting for the strength to throw himself into the Buried, Jon had imagined Martin and Georgie and Basira and Melanie all stood around that coffin, wearing black and holding flowers. Denise? No, it definitely had three syllables. A scattered applause began as Jonah Magnus emerged from his office, closed behind him the door printed with poor dead Bouchard’s name, and stepped up to the podium. Georgie, not knowing his face, began to clap; Melanie stayed her hands. Elagnus’s shirt, hidden behind suit except for the collar, was striped in black and white. A ball and chain hung from his sleeve like an enormous cufflink. He opened his mouth to speak, and a tape recorder began to hiss.
“What are you doing here?” asked Basira.
“Never underestimate how much I care for the tools I use, Detective. I wouldn’t miss my Archivist’s big day.”
“So they just let you out for this.”
Elias shrugged with false modesty. His chain jingled. “When I asked them nicely.”
“How did you even know he was dead?” interposed Melanie. “Basira, did you tell him about the—”
“She didn’t have to,” said Elias, raising his voice to cut Melanie’s off. “Nothing escapes my notice, and I like to keep an eye out for this sort of thing.”
“Well—it’s—good to see you.” Tim’s voice. Unconvincing, even then.
Jon steeled himself to hear his own voice stammer out, “Yes—y-yes!” but heard nothing except the hissing of the… tape. Yes, that was the wrong tape—the one from his birthday.
“Anyway. Somebody mentioned cake.” Elias jingled as he arranged his hands under his chin.
Tim scoffed. “They didn’t serve cake at my funeral.”
“I preferred going out for ice cream anyway,” pronounced Martin, his arms crossed and his nose in the air. Jon pushed himself up on shaking hands. Find Martin.
They had gone for ice cream at John O’Groats before the change, while living at Daisy’s safehouse. Martin had apologized on behalf of the kiosk for its measly selection—no rum and raisin. Jon pronounced a playful “Urgh,” assuming Martin had cited this flavor as a joke. “I think I’ll manage without that particular abomination.”
“Wait, what? Why did you order it at my birthday party then?”
Jon stood still with his ice cream cone, squinted into space, and blinked. “I did?”
“My first birthday in the Archives, yeah!”
“Huh. That’s… odd.” Martin placed a gentle hand on Jon’s back to remind him to resume walking. “I suppose I must have been—huh. Yes,” he mused, nodding slowly as his hypothesis came into focus between his eyes and the ground. “I must still have thought I was tired of all the good flavors at that point.”
He heard Martin scoff a few steps ahead of him. “What, and now you’re happy with plain old vanilla?” Then he heard arrhythmic footsteps thumping toward him from Martin’s direction; he looked up to find Martin reaching his napkin-draped free hand out toward Jon’s ice cream cone. “You’re dripping again,” he explained.
Jon mumbled thanks and shrugged a laugh. “I-I’ve, uh. Come back around on most of them.”
“Except rum and raisin?”
“No—I’ve come around on it, too, just, uh.” He tried to make the shape of a wheel with his ice-cream-cone-laden hand. It flicked drips of vanilla across his shirt. Martin came at him with the napkin again. “Thank you. I just disliked that one to start with.”
“…Right. Okay, so what revolution occurred in your life before the Archives that overturned all your opinions on ice cream flavors?”
So Jon had told Martin about that summer when his jaw kept subluxing. He’d used that word, assuming Martin was familiar with it already—incorrect, as he knew now. Presumably Martin had gathered from context that Jon meant he’d hurt his jaw, in some small-scale, no-big-deal way whose specifics he’d let slide as an unimportant detail. But then as the anecdote wore on he must have begun to feel the hole in his knowledge. And lo, at last Martin had invoked that dread specter the clarifying question.
“Okay but so your grandmother had no problem with you basically living off ice cream all summer?”
“Well, she did when I could chew. But not when it was that or tinned soup.”
“Ah—right. ‘Cause you hurt your… jaw, you said?” Jon nodded. “What happened exactly?”
“Oh. Uh. Happened? Nothing, just my—I was born, I guess. Just part of my genetic condition; I happened to get it especially bad in the jaw that year. I-it’s much better now, though,” he hastened to add when he noticed Martin’s frown.
“What genetic condition? You never told me you had one.”
“Didn’t I?”
At the time, the anger in Martin’s answering scoff had surprised him. “No, Jon, you never said.”
“Oh. Sorry? I—I mean, you’ve seen me with this for years—I just?—thought you knew.”
“Seen you with—what, the cane, you mean? I thought that was Prentiss!”
Jon glanced to the doorway to double-check that was where he’d left his cane.
“What? No,” he had mused. “Of course not. I’ve had this since….”
“But you never used it.”
“No—surely, I—”
“Not once before Prentiss.”
Even as he’d said the words, Jon’s memory of that time had returned to him and he’d known Martin was right. Before Prentiss attacked the Institute he’d brought his cane with him to work in the Archives every day, and every day left it folded up in his bag. All out of an obscure notion that if he’d used it before Elias and before his coworkers, they’d take it as a plea for mercy, an admission of weakness or incompetence. God, he was naïve back then. He’d used the cane often enough back in Research; why hadn’t he worried Tim and Sasha would find its new absence conspicuous? That they’d worry just as much about his refusal to use it? The whole thing seemed even more stupid, too, now that he knew Elias must have noticed the change. How it must have pleased him, to see his shiny new Archivist so obsessed with proving he was fit for the job.
“Yeah but,” Jon pursued, instead of voicing any of this, “Tim never—?”
Martin nodded and shrugged. “I don’t know; I figured Tim didn’t get them in the legs as much as you did. I didn’t see you guys after the attack, remember? Not ‘til you got out of quarantine.”
“Right, no, of course you didn’t. I’m sorry,” said Jon mechanically, already consumed with the question he asked next. “Martin—did you think it was the corkscrew?”
From Martin’s sigh Jon figured he’d been expecting this question. “Kinda? At first, yeah. Half for real, half just—you know, as a habit? Like, ‘Look, a way to blame yourself!’” He splayed out his hands, rolled his eyes.
“Yes—I do that too.” Jon barely got the words out above a whisper; he couldn’t not smile, but fought to keep it from showing teeth. A muscle under his chin spasmed with the effort.
“But then I noticed you switching sides with it a lot, so, yeah. I knew it couldn’t be just that.”
“Really?” He waited for Martin’s answering shrug. “You’re the first person who’s ever noticed that. Or at least commented on it.”
“Sorry?”
“No—it’s.”
This attempt to communicate a similar sentiment, Jon recalled as he reached for his shoes, hadn’t gone as well as the one a few days later (over unseen horror &c.). Beholding had at that moment presented him with the image of a fat, hunched woman in shorts. She shuffled forward a few steps in a queue at Boots, next to him, and shifted her weight so the cane in her right hand supported her nearer leg. He felt a strong impulse he knew wasn’t his own—one born partly of resentment, part exasperation, part concern—to tell the woman that was bad for her shoulder, that she should switch hands too. But knew if he tried she’d either pretend she hadn’t heard it, or tell him off for criticizing her. Jon didn’t know what she would say more specifically; the Eye didn’t do hypotheticals. It had given him no more than this single moment of preverbal intuition. After the change he could have sought out other conversations Martin had had with his mother, and they might have given him a pretty good idea. But he’d promised Martin not to look at things like that.
He managed to dislodge a finger while tying his shoe. The other shoe he’d pulled off without untying; in a fit of impatience he tried now to shove his foot into it as it was. No good—he got the shoe on, but it just made the other index finger, the one he’d hooked into the back of the shoe behind his heel for leverage, pop off to the side too. Jon was afraid to find out what shape it would end up in if he pulled his finger back out of the shoe like that, so he had to untie it after all, one-handed. Then carefully extract his finger. It sprung back into place as soon as he removed the offending pressure (namely, his heel), but he still whimpered and swore. The corners of his eyes pricked with indignation when he remembered he still had to pee.
In this case, for once, Beholding had told him the important part: that that was why Martin had noticed. Had he noticed Melanie, too, Jon wondered, when she got back from India? She would switch hands sometimes, too—but, of course, without switching legs. He wondered if that had picked at the same unacknowledged nerve of Martin’s that his mother’s habit had. It had bothered Jon, too, but in a different way. He’d resented it a little, but also felt humbled by it, the way he always did by others’ discomfort. Getting shot in the leg seemed so big? Like such an aberration. So uncontroversially important—probably because it was simple, legible. Georgie could convey its hugeness to him in three words. She got shot. Obviously there was more to the story than that; there were parts he could never…
Well, no. There was a part of it he felt he should say he could never understand: that she’d kept the cursed bullet because she wanted it. In fact he was pretty sure he did understand that. But he didn’t have the right to admit it, he didn’t think. And no reason to hope she would believe him if he did. The second he’d learnt the bullet was still in there, after all, he and Basira had rushed to dig it out. Surely, from her perspective that could only mean he didn’t and could never understand. Or maybe he just wanted her to see it that way—wanted her to get to keep that uncomplicated resentment of his ignorance. It made his perspective look stupid and ugly, sure. But the truth made it look self-absorbed and pitiful. The truth was that until Daisy insisted otherwise, he’d assumed only he could see his own corruption and assent to it: that the others must not have known what they were doing.
Then again, maybe even if Melanie knew that, she would see only that he had underestimated her. Maybe it didn’t matter how much she knew.
Melanie switched off which hand she held her white cane with now, too. But that was probably healthy? Jon knew no more than the average person about white-cane hygiene. He just remembered feeling the floor drop out of his stomach when they’d got coffee together during his time in hiding and he had seen her switch her original, silver cane from hand to hand. Part of him had wanted to scoff or rationalize it away. How much could the shot leg hurt, really, if she still noticed when her arms got tired? But another part of him shuddered at the thought one arm alone couldn’t compensate for the weight her leg refused to take—that she had to keep switching off when one arm got weak and shaky from supporting more weight than it should have to. It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced pain or impairment on that scale. He had, though the thought of a single injury sufficing to cause it still made him feel cold inside. It was that he kept seeing proofs, all over, everywhere, that the parts of his life he’d only learnt to accept by assuming they were rare weren’t rare.
Leitner hadn’t made the evil books; he’d just noticed they were there. And then had his life ruined by their influence, like everyone who came across them. Jon had had no time and no right to deplore the holes Prentiss had left in him and Tim, because on the same damn day he learnt someone had shot the previous Archivist to death. Alright, so it was him, then, right? Him and Tim—just doomed, just preternaturally unlucky. Tim, handsome face half-eaten by worms, estranged (as Jon then assumed) from a brother who seemed so warm and accepting in that picture on his lock screen; Jon, saved from Mr. Spider only by his childhood bully, now fated to take the place of another murder victim—and also half-eaten by worms. But no; he and Tim had got off lightly. Look what had happened to Sasha the same fucking night. The very thing whose influence convinced him the world had it out for him? Had killed Sasha. Literally stolen her life. How many lives around him got stolen while he mourned his own?
“I want you to comment on it,” Jon had managed to clarify. But Martin had scoffed as he stood in the foyer of Daisy’s safehouse, hopping on one foot to pull off the other shoe:
“Yeah, well. You haven’t exactly led by example on that one.”
“How could I?”
He accepted Jon’s scarf and long-discarded jacket, hanging them up beside his own. “Gee, I don’t know—commenting on it yourself?”
“On… switching which side I used the cane on.”
“Don’t play dumb, Jon. On this ‘genetic condition’” (in a deep, posh voice, with a stodgy frown and fluttering eyelashes) “you’ve apparently had this entire time. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“I thought you knew, Martin! Why would I mention it in a childhood anecdote if I didn’t think...?”
“Well I didn’t know, okay? You never told me. You never tell anyone anything about what’s going on with you, you just—you just make everything into another heroic cross to bear.”
“That’s not—?” He wanted to tell Martin just how little that made him want to say about it. But he guessed Martin was really talking less about the EDS thing, more about how he’d spent their whole first year in the Archives pretending to dismiss the statements that scared him. How he’d sent Tim and Martin home when he’d found out about Sasha. How he’d stayed away from the Institute even after his name got cleared for Leitner’s murder. “What do you want to know.”
“Why you never—?” In a similar way, Martin seemed to reconsider his initial response. “Yeah, okay, right. Object-level stuff, yeah?” Jon nodded and wanly smiled. “Okay, so. What’s it called?”
After taking a minute to ditch his shoes, wash the sticky ice-cream residue off his hands, and drink some water, he’d sat down on the couch with Martin and told him its name, what it was, what it did. What does that mean, though, Martin kept asking, so he’d explained how it applied to the anecdote about his jaw. Martin asked why it meant he needed a cane.
“Be…cause all my joints are like that.”
“Yeah, but why does it help with that? What is the cane actually for, is what I’m asking.”
Jon hated being asked that question. “It—it means I don’t fall over when one of my joints stops working? A-and… also makes walking hurt less. I suppose.”
“So, when they’re working right, that’s when you don’t need it?”
“No—yes?—sort of. Now sometimes I just need it when it’s been too long since I had a statement. I get sort of. Weak.” Quickly Jon added, “But I don’t need it for stability so much since the coma.” He’d shown Martin how now, when he pulled out his finger, the Eye would just sort of erase that version of reality—how the dislocation wouldn’t snap back, but simply cease to exist. As if his body were a drawing on which the Beholding had corrected a mistake. He put his palms together behind his back, in the way he’d been told one couldn’t without subluxing both shoulders, and told Martin to watch how the hollows between his shoulder bones vanished. He opened his jaw ‘til it jarred to the side, and told Martin to listen for the static.
But Jon had never shown Martin how these things worked before the coma. Martin had no reference for this kind of thing; he understood only enough to find the sights unsettling. “That’s—no, that’s okay, I’ll”—he stuttered as Jon fumbled with his kneecap in search of a fourth example—“I-I get it. I’ll take your word for it.”
“I just thought.”
“No, I—? I don’t need you to prove it to me, Jon.” (The latter nodded, blushing, trying to smile.) “I get… I’m sorry. I guess I get why it’d feel easier not to say anything if? If you think it’s either that or have to convince people it’s a thing.”
Again Jon nodded. He suspected Martin wasn’t through talking yet. But Martin still wasn’t looking at him, eyes squeezed tight against Jon’s party tricks. So, to show he was listening, Jon said, “Yes. Er—thank you, Martin.”
“I just don’t like it when you hide things from me.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You could at least ask if I want to know about them, yeah?”
Even at the time, Jon had doubted this. If they’d had this conversation after the change, he might have pointed out to Martin that when you mention something the other person has no inkling of, you make them too curious to decline your offer of more information, even if afterward they’ll admit they wish you’d never told them.
“Or ask me if I even recognize what you’re talking about, the next time you start going on about some childhood anecdote where you incidentally had a dislocated jaw. Honestly, would it kill you to start with, ‘Hey, did I ever tell you about x’?”
“No, it wouldn’t. You’re right. I’ll try. What… kinds of things did you—? For the future, I mean. What kinds of things did you want to make sure I tell you about.”
Martin sighed, in that way he did when he thought Jon was going about something all wrong. But after a pause to think, he did ask, “About this, or in general?”
“Either—both—first one, then the other.”
“Okay. I guess… I want to know when you’re hurt, mostly. Like—I can’t believe I even have to say this—that’s kind of important, actually? How am I supposed to know how to behave around you if I never know whether you're secretly in pain or not?”
This seemed weird—both now and at the time. Jon figured he must be missing something. If Martin thought he only needed the cane because of Prentiss then, sure, that might have affected how he imagined Jon’s discomfort to himself, but? Wasn’t the cane itself an admission of pain? Why did Martin think he owed him more than that—that he had owed him more than that at the time, no less? Did he not realize how fucking private that was? What a surrender of privacy the cane represented?
But, no, he reminded himself now; nondisabled people don’t realize that, unless you tell them about it. Repeatedly. Over and over. It only seems obvious to you because you lived it already.
“Er.” At the time he’d just shown Martin his teeth, with the points of his left-side canines joined. Nominally a smile, but more like a show of hiding the grimace beneath than an actual attempt to hide it. “That’s harder than you might think? Technically I’m always….”
“Oh.”
“Sorr—”
“—What do you mean, ‘technically’?”
“I’m—not always aware of it?” He disliked that phrase, in pain—how it implied a discrete and exclusive state. One could not be in Paris and at the same time in London; similarly, most people seemed to assume one could not be in pain and also in a good mood. In raptures. In a transport of laughter. That when one admits to being in pain, one implies that’s the most important thing they’re conscious of.
“Well that doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, I know—‘if a tree falls down in a forest’—blah blah blah.” With a gentle smile to acknowledge he’d picked up this mode of speech from Martin. He turned his wrist in circles so it clicked like an old film reel. “Philosophically speaking, if you’re not aware of pain, you can’t be in it. Maybe ‘technically’ isn’t the right word.”
“Oh yeah ‘cause that’s the angle I want to know about this from.”
Jon sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. I just mean, it doesn’t always matter to me.”
“Well it matters to me,” Martin scoffed.
“Yeah—I’m getting that. Is there any way I can explain this that you won’t jump down my throat for?”
Martin sighed, groaned, pulled at his hair a little but made himself stop. (He doesn’t pull it out, Jon knows—he just likes having something to grab onto during awkward conversations. Usually emerges from them looking like a cartoon scientist.) “Okay, yeah,” said Martin. “I get it. I’m sorry too.”
“I mean—when you get a paper cut, that hurts, technically, right?”
“Well yeah, a little, but that’s not the kind of—”
“But just because you notice that hurt doesn’t mean?” He paused to rearrange his words. “You’re not going to remember it later unless someone asks why you’ve got blood on your sleeve.”
“Y—eah. Sure.”
“Is that…?”
“When you’re suffering, then. I want you to tell me that. And—whenever something weird happens? Like, before it stops being weird and you talk to me like I’m stupid for not already knowing about it.”
“What if”—this far into his question, Jon worried it might come off as a smart-alecky, devil’s-advocate thing. So he paused, pretending he needed time to formulate its words. “What if I haven’t decided yet whether it’s weird or not.”
“That in itself is pretty weird, Jon.”
“Fair enough.”
“I want to be part of that conversation. I want you to trust me enough to bounce ideas off me! It’s not like—? I mean why wouldn’t you do that?”
Jon had shrugged and grimaced, hands in his trouser pockets. “Not to worry you?” he’d suggested. But as he bit his lip and shimmied down from the bed Jon knew now that that was the sanitized version—and probably, if you’d asked him a day before or afterward, his past self would have known that too. Most things you told Martin, he’d either ignore them completely or latch onto them, refuse to let them go, and interpret everything else you said in the light they cast. Jon had learnt not to raise any given topic with him until he was sure he wanted to risk its becoming a long, painful discussion. This was part of why he hadn’t kept his promise, he told himself as he turned their interim bedroom’s doorknob. Why he’d said so little about anything weird that had happened to him at Upton House.
“Martin?”
“Oh hey, Jon—you’re awake.” Martin glanced in his vague direction but stayed bent over his work, so Jon could not meet his eyes.
“You found the screwdriver.”
“Yeah! And a screw that matches better, see?” He fished the first one they'd found out of his pocket and held it up next to the door for comparison. Jon supposed they looked a little different—bright yellowy gold vs. a darker gold. “They were in the library, of all places. There’s a little box full of ‘em that he keeps right next to his reading glasses, apparently. Guess he must break them a lot. How are yours, by the way? Any bits feel loose?”
Dutifully, trying to keep his dazed smile to himself, Jon pulled off his glasses. Folded and unfolded each arm, jiggled the little nose pieces. He shook his head. “Don’t think so. You can have a look yourself though, if you like.”
“Remind me later. Should’ve brought the whole box, probably,” Martin said, voice strained as he twisted the screw that last little bit. “There!” His open mouth broadened into a smile. “Time to see if it worked. You wanna do the honors?”
Jon shook his head, breathed a laugh through his nose. “You should do it. You’re the reason it’s fixed.”
“I mean, yeah,” shrugged Martin as his hand closed round the doorknob, “but I’m also the reason it broke.” It opened with a click. “Ha-ha! Success! Statements—our own clothes—our own bed! Er. Ish.”
Something tugged in Jon’s chest; he’d forgot the statements were why Martin thought this quest so urgent. He lingered at the side of the bed while Martin rummaged in his backpack, remembering for once to toe his first shoe off while standing.
“Man. Looks sorta underwhelming now, after the other room, huh?”
“Least our wallpaper’s better.”
“Tsshhyeah, and our view.”
Jon didn’t turn around, but surmised Martin must be looking out at that tree he liked. “Is it four already?”
“Uhh—nearly, yeah. You were out for a while; took me ages to find that damn thing. Here you go,” announced Martin as he slapped a zip-loc bag full of statement down on the bed.
(“So they won’t get water damage,” he had answered a few days ago, when Jon asked him why he’d individually wrapped each statement like snacks in a bagged lunch. “What? It’s not like we have to worry about landfills anymore. If I put them all in the same bag, you’d take one out and not be able to get it back in.”)
“What happened to my jacket, by the way? And yours?”
“Uhhh.”
“Right, okay,” Martin laughed; “I’ll go get them before I forget. I’ll put this away too, I guess” (meaning the screwdriver still in his hand). “Don’t wait for me, yeah? I don’t mind missing the trailers.”
Jon smiled. “Sure.”
As Martin hurried off, Jon sat down to untie and pull off his other shoe, threaded the lace back through the final eyelet from which it’d come loose, picked up the first shoe and untied that one, then stood up and set them by the door next to his cane. Both hips and all ten fingers behaved themselves throughout. As he walked by the vanity he grabbed the coins he’d removed to do laundry the other day and stuck them back in his trouser pocket. Useless, of course, but he’d missed having something to fidget with. He squatted down and peered under the vanity for the hair tie he’d dropped, for the fifth or sixth time since he’d misplaced it. Didn’t find it. That was fine; he had another one around his wrist. His knees felt weak, so instead of standing back up he crab-walked to the foot of the bed and sat down with his back against it. Straightened his legs out before him on the floor. Then he dug the coins from his pocket and counted them. Yup—still 74p.
Danika! Not Daniela—Danika Gelsthorpe. God, he would never forget one of their names out there. Never underestimate how much I care for the
“I'm back. What’s down there? Did you find the screw?” asked Martin as he hung their jackets up behind the door.
Jon shook his head. “Forgot about it. I was looking for that hair tie.”
“Well you’re on your own there; I’m done finding things today. The screw can wait,” Martin laughed—“he’s got a whole bag inside that box in the library. Do you need a hand getting up?”
He let Martin help him. Both knees cracked; the world’s edges went dark for a second. “Thank you,” he said, and it came out more peremptory than he’d meant it.
“Statement time?”
“Right. You don’t mind? I can wait ’til we’ve both had a rest, if you don’t want to be in the room while I.”
“No, I’m alright; I’ll stay here.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you hated statements.”
Martin shrugged. “Not these ones so much, now that. Heh—they’re almost nostalgic, if I’m honest. ‘Can it be real? I think I’ve seen a monster!’”
“They are a bit,” agreed Jon, looking down at the plastic-sleeved statement and making himself smile.
“Go on. Seeing you feel better will make me feel better too.”
That made it a bit easier to motivate himself, Jon supposed. From the moment he’d lain down on the bed he’d felt like he was floating on gentle waves—like if he let himself listen to them he could fall asleep in seconds. But that wouldn’t make Martin feel better. And no guarantee it would him, either, once he woke up again. He rearranged the pillows behind himself so he’d have to sit up a little; this might help keep him awake, and it meant he could rest his elbows on the bed while he held up the statement, rather than having to lift them up before his eyes. It made his neck sore, a bit, this angle, but that was fine. That might help keep him awake, too.
He sighed, readying himself for speech. Then heard a click, and felt a familiar buzz and weight against his stomach. The tape recorder had manifested inside his hoodie’s kangaroo pocket.
“Statement of Miranda Lautz, regarding, er… a botched home-repair job. Heh. Seems appropriate. Original statement given March twenty-sixth, 2004. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.”
[Image ID: A digital painting of Jon and Martin on an old-fashioned canopy bed with white sheets and orange drapes. Jon sits on the near side of the bed, reading a paper statement. He frowns slightly, looking down at the statement in his hands; he wears round glasses perched low on his nose. He’s a thin man, with medium brown skin dotted by scars left from the worms, and another scar on his neck from Daisy's knife. His hair is long and curly, gray and white hairs among the black. Jon sits supported by pillows—several big, white, lace-trimmed ones behind his back, and one under his knees. His right leg is slightly crossed over his left ankle, on which a clean white bandage peeks out beneath his cuffed, dark green trousers. He wears an oversized red hoodie and red-toed brown socks. Sat on the far side of the bed, next to Jon but facing away from both him and the viewer, is Martin—a tall and fat white man with short, curly, reddish brown hair and a short beard. He has glasses and is wearing a dark blue jumper and gray-brown trousers. Past the bed on Martin’s side, the bedroom door hangs ajar; in this light, it and the wall glow bluish green. On the near side, though, the light grows warmer, the orange canopy behind Jon casting pink and brown tints onto the white pillows and sheets. End ID.]
It seemed to be a Corruption statement, or maybe the Spiral. Possibly the Buried? A leak in Ms. Lautz’s roof caused a pill-shaped bulge to appear in her kitchen ceiling, about the size of a bread loaf. Water burst from it like pus from an abscess (as she described it. Nothing else Fleshy though, so far). Ms. Lautz repaired the hole in her ceiling, but every morning a new one reappeared somewhere else. Sometimes they appeared bulging and pill-shaped like the first one; other times she found them already burst, covering the room in water shot through with dark specks like coffee grounds.
Jon wished he’d refilled his empty water glass before starting to record. His mouth was so dry that every time he pronounced an L his tongue stuck to its roof. At this point he’d welcome a hole to burst in it and flood his mouth with water. Then again, he did still have to pee.
Eventually she and her spouse hired someone to find out what was wrong with the roof. She described hearing boots tramping around up there for half a day while they checked out all the spots where she and Alex had reported leaks. The inside of Jon’s trouser leg pulled at the bandage on his shin, making it itch. The repair men told Ms. Lautz it’d be safer and barely any more expensive to replace the whole thing. The ring and little fingers of Jon’s left hand were starting to go numb from having that elbow too long pressed against the bed. Miranda and Alex thanked the roof people and sent them off, saying they’d think it over.
He began to regret crossing his legs this way. He’d balanced his right heel in the hollow between his left foot’s ankle and instep, and in the time since he’d arranged them that way gravity had slowly pushed his foot more and more to the side, widening that gap. By this time he was sure it was hyperextended—possibly subluxed? It hurt already, and, he knew, would hurt more when he tried to move it. This rather ruined his fantasy of heading straight for the toilet when he finished reading.
Martin was right; these old statements seemed positively tame, now. He knew he owed it to Ms. Lautz to engage with her fate, but?
No. No buts. Whatever hell she lived in now, it looked just like the one she was about to describe for him, only worse. You can’t even pretend you’re sorry she’s living out her worst fear if you stop in the middle of reading that fear’s origin story. Never underestimate how much I
Once the repair men had left, Miranda Lautz wandered into her kitchen for lunch. She found her ceiling bulging halfway to the floor, with the impression of a face and two twisted arms at its center. Like someone had fallen through her roof, head first. Jon’s stiff neck twinged in sympathy. Miranda screamed and strode to the other side of the house in search of beer, figuring she'd find better answers at the bottom of a bottle than in her own head. When she got back to the kitchen with them, the beer bottles didn’t know what to do either, but said—
“God damn it. Not ‘ales’—‘Alex’. Obviously.”
He let the statement’s pages flop over the back of his hand, let his head tip backward until the top of it bumped against headboard and his eyes faced the ceiling. That settled it, then, didn’t it. If he had the Ceaseless Watcher looking through his eyes, he wouldn’t make a mistake like that—and he certainly couldn’t change position while recording. On top of his more substantial regrets, Jon had spent their whole odyssey before they came to Upton House ruing that he’d sat at the dining-room table to read Magnus’s statement, rather than on the couch or the bed. The chairs at that table had plain, flat wood seats—no cushion, no contouring for the shape of an arse. When he opened the door to the changed world, the cataclysm had preserved his bodily sensations at that moment like a mosquito in amber. He’d had a sore tailbone and pins and needles down his legs for untold eons. Right up until he and Martin crossed from the Necropolis onto the grounds protected by Salesa’s camera, where his tailbone faded out of awareness and his head filled up with cotton.
“Ohhh. ‘Alex’. Okay, that makes a lot more sense,” laughed Martin meanwhile. Jon could feel Martin’s shoulder bouncing against his. “She must’ve written it in cursive, huh.”
“I can’t do this right now, Martin.”
“Oh—okay, yeah. You rest; I’ll finish it for you.”
Jon closed his eyes and let air gush out from his nostrils. But you hate the statements, he knew he should say. Wouldn’t this make it easier, though? To let Martin have out this last bit of denial first?
The tape recorder in his pocket still hissed, still warmed and weighted down his stomach like a meal.
“Thank you,” he said.
The operator on the phone said she and Alex should wait for the ambulance to arrive, rather than try to free the man in the ceiling by themselves. Jon turned his neck back and forth, hoping Martin couldn’t hear its joints’ snap/crackle/pop. He picked his elbow up off the bed and shook out his hand. But when the paramedics cut the ceiling open, only a torrent of water gushed into their kitchen—water flecked with a great deal of what looked like coffee grounds. A day or two later the roof people called, to ask if they’d decided whether to have the roof repaired or replaced. They assured her none of their employees had gone missing. At the time of writing, Miranda and Alex still hadn’t decided what to do about the roof. A week ago, they’d found a squirrel-shaped bulge in their bedroom ceiling; they’d packed their bags and come to stay with Alex’s sister in London.
“Right! That wasn’t so bad.” Martin set the statement down and stretched his arms over his head. “Huh.”
“Hm?”
“Oh, I don’t know, just—it’s been a while. Thought it might feel, I don’t know, worse than that? Or better, I guess, since the Eye’s so ‘fond’ of me now.”
“I don’t think they work here.”
“What?”
“The statements. The Eye can’t see their fear.”
“Oh.” Jon could feel Martin deflating. He let himself avalanche over to fill the space. “You don’t feel better, do you.”
“No.”
“Maybe it’s just—slower here, like it’s taking a while to load or something. Remember how long the tape recorder took to come on last time? It was like—you were like— ‘“Statement of Blankety Blank, regarding an encounter with”—Oh, right,’ click.”
That was true. The tapes had known Salesa would give a statement before it happened, but with these paper ones they’d seemed slow on the uptake. Martin had also sworn the recorder that manifested to tape Mr. Andrade’s statement was a different machine than the one Salesa’d spotted that first morning. Jon wondered which machine the one in his pocket was.
Not relevant, he decided. He shook his head in his palm, stroking the lids of his closed eyes. “No—if they worked here I wouldn’t be able to stop in the middle of one.” As soon as he said it he winced, bracing himself for argument.
After the change he remembered wailing to Martin about how he couldn’t stop reading Magnus’s statement—how its words had possessed his whole body, forced him to do the worst thing any person ever had, and forced him to like it, to feel Magnus’s triumph as they both opened the door. Martin had pressed Jon’s face into his clavicle, rubbed his nose in the scent of Daisy’s laundry soap, covered the back of Jon’s head with his hands. Tried to interpose what he must then have still called the real world between Jon and what he could see outside. He’d said over and over, I know, and We‘ll be okay. Jon had known that meant he wasn’t listening, and yet still hadn’t been prepared for the argument they had later, when he mentioned in sobriety the same things he’d wailed back then.
“Hang on”—Martin had pleaded—“no, that can’t be true. I’ve been interrupted in the middle of a statement loads of times—and I know you have too.”
“By outside forces, yes, but you can’t decide to stop reading one. Believe me, Martin, I wouldn’t have—”
“Tim did.”
“No, he didn’t—”
“Yes he did! He was gonna do one and then Melanie—”
“No, Martin, I’ve heard the tape you’re talking about. Tim introduced the statement but didn’t actually start—”
“He did so! He read the first bit, and then stopped. ‘My parents never let me have a night light. I was—’”
“‘Always afraid, but they were just’....” Behind his own eyes he’d felt the Eye shudder and throb with gratitude. Just that sort of stubborn, it had seemed to sing, in a bizarre combination of his own voice with Jonah’s with Melanie’s, which doubled down when I screamed or cried about something, instead of actually listening.
“Yeah,” said Martin, forehead wrinkling. “And then he said, ‘This is stupid,’ and stopped.”
“You’re right.”
Jon still had no satisfying answer to that one, and cursed himself for having opened that can of worms back up again. It had been Tim’s first-ever statement, he reminded himself, and maybe Tim had never intended to get even that far. Maybe he’d been waiting for someone to interrupt him, as Melanie eventually did. Even out there, the Eye couldn’t really show him things like that. He could find out what Tim had said—could look it up, as it were—and what he’d thought, but motivation was a bit too murky, multilayered, complicated. It wasn’t real telepathy? The vicarious emotions the Eye gave him access to worked in broad strokes, generalities—just like common or garden empathy. Sure, he could imagine other people’s points of view more vividly, now that he could see through their eyes. But he still had to imagine them to life, based on the clues around him and what emotions those clues stirred in him. It didn’t work well for situations like this; he could hear Melanie’s footsteps and feel Tim’s reluctance to read a statement, but that was it. Enough to concoct plausible explanations; not enough to pick out the truth from a list of them. Plausibilities were too much like hypotheticals.
In the timelessness since that argument with Martin, though, Jon had also wondered whether it mattered if Tim had read the statement before recording it. He didn’t have footage, as it were, of Tim doing so; either the Eye had more copies of the statement’s events than it needed already and so had deleted that one from storage, or, conversely, perhaps it could no longer see versions of it that relied too heavily on the pages Mr. Hatendi had written it on, since Martin had burned those. But Tim’s summary, before he started reading. Blanket, monster, dead friend. It was bad, sure (like the assistants’ summaries always were, a ghost of past Jon interposed). But it sounded like the summary of a man who’d read it with his mind on other things. Inevitable and gruesome end. How he tried to hide; he couldn’t. Not at all like that of someone skimming it for the first time as he spoke. He did rifle through the papers though? So Jon couldn’t be sure. The suspicion ate at his mind, especially here. Could he have kept the world from ending just by—reading Magnus’s statement, before he went to record it? The way he used to way back at the start, before he trusted himself to speak the words perfectly on the first try? You didn’t mean to record it, did you? No, I’m sure you told Melanie and Basira you were just going to
“Guess that makes sense,” Martin said now. “So, you’re still feeling…?”
“Not great?”
“Yeah.”
“I… I feel human, here.”
“Oh wow. That’s—”
Jon told himself to put the hope in Martin’s voice to bed as soon as possible. “I know I’m not—not fully.” He allowed a smile to twitch the corners of his lips, flared his nostrils around an exhale that almost passed as a laugh. “Most humans don’t spontaneously summon tape recorders. Or sleep with their eyes open.”
“Yeah, but still, you don’t think maybe—?”
Again Jon hastened to cut Martin off. “A-and even if I was, it’s. I know that should be a good thing? But—”
At this point Martin interposed, “Should be, yeah! You don’t think it might mean you could—I don’t know, go back to normal? If we stayed here for a while?”
“Maybe? I-I might stop craving the Eye so much, but we’d still have to go back out there eventually, to face Elias, and. To be honest with you, Martin?” He huffed a laugh out, bitterly. “My ‘normal’ wasn’t exactly...”
“Right.” Martin sighed. “So you mean you feel like you used to, as a human. Which was…”
“Not great.”
“Right.”
“I haven’t been very well, here.” Jon shrugged for the excuse to duck his head. He could feel himself blushing, the heat spilling from his face all down both arms. Good thing the tape recorder in his pocket had gone cold.
Next to him, Martin puffed air out of his cheeks. “Yeah, I know.”
“I’m dizzy and confused without the Eye, and it—it can’t fix me here? When I.” He drew in breath, lifted his heel off his ankle and set that leg to the side, letting its foot roll into Martin’s shin. Bit his lip and scrunched his nose in preparation. Flexed the other foot’s toes, trying to isolate the lever in his ankle that would—there. Clunk. Then a noisy exhale: “Jyyrrggh. When that happens,” he choked out, voice strained by both pain and nerves. “It’s like before I became an avatar. I have to fix it myself, and it doesn’t just.” Magically stop hurting, he hoped went without saying; already he could hear Martin sucking air through his teeth. It made Jon’s cheeks itch. “Shouldn’t have let myself get used to a higher standard, I suppose.”
“What? No—of course you should have. Did you think I was gonna say that?”
“No, of course not; I just meant—”
“You deserve to feel healthy, Jon.”
“Do I? Health is clumsy, it’s callous, it, it lets terrible things happen because they don’t feel real—it can’t imagine them properly, can’t understand what they mean….”
“Okay, first of all, ouch.” Jon snarled a laugh at that, without knowing whether Martin meant it as a joke. “Second of all, that is not why you—why the world ended, okay? Especially, ‘cause, you weren’t ‘healthy’ then. You read Elias’s bloody statement because you were starving, remember?”
“Hmrph,” pronounced Jon, to concede he was listening without either confirming or denying the point.
“And thirdly, you’re not ‘callous’ out there? You don’t”—a scoff interrupted his words. “You don’t ‘let things happen because they don’t feel real’—that’s sure not how I remember it. Okay? I remember you crying for—god, I don’t know, days, maybe? Weeks?—about how you could feel everything, and couldn’t stop any of it. That’s the thing we’re hiding from here, Jon, so if you don’t actually feel any healthier here then what even is the point?”
In a voice embarrassment made small Jon managed, “I mean? I’m still kind of having fun.”
“Really? You don’t seem like it—”
“Not today, maybe—”
“Right, yeah, no; spending all day trying to fix a doorknob isn’t exactly—”
“But I don’t want to leave yet. I should still have a few good days left before the distance from the Eye gets too….”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” For a few seconds he tried to think of something better to say, then gave up and told the truth, though in a jocular voice to hide his self-consciousness. “Always was the person who got ill on holiday.”
“Oh, god, of course you were—”
Voice growing higher in pitch, Jon pleaded, “It didn’t usually stop me from enjoying it?”
“What about America?” laughed Martin. “Did you still enjoy that one?”
“Of course not—I got kidnapped.”
“I mean, yeah, but you were pretty used to that too by then, right?”
“God.” Jon sniffed, crunchily, reeling back in the snot he’d laughed out. “Besides. That was a business engagement.”
Martin acknowledged this comment with a quick Psh, as he turned himself around on the bed to face Jon a little more. “Can I trust you to”—he stopped.
“Yes.”
“No, let me—that wasn’t fair; I can’t ask you that yet.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Martin; I didn’t—”
“Of me, I meant, it wasn’t fair.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I’ve been ignoring your distress all week because I wanted it not to matter.”
“I don’t know if I’d call it ‘distress,’” pointed out Jon. “Plus, I have been sort of, er. Secretive, about it.”
The exasperation in Martin’s sigh was probably meant for him, not for Jon, the latter reminded himself. “Yeah, but you’re not subtle. I can tell when you’re hiding something. It wasn’t exactly a big leap to figure out what. But I told myself it was temporary, and that you were acting like.”
Jon laughed preemptively. “Yes?”
“Like a little kid in line for a theme-park ride.” Again Jon laughed—less at the comparison itself than at how much Martin winced to hear himself say it. “I’m sorry. I should’ve taken you more seriously.”
“And I should have told you what was going on with me.”
“Yup,” concurred Martin at once.
“I know you hate it when I keep things from you.”
“I do—I hate it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry too.” Martin waved this away like a fly. “I just—you said you think we’ve got a few more days, before it gets too much or whatever.”
“Yes.”
“Can I trust you to tell me when we need to leave?”
Jon tried not to answer too quickly, knowing vaguely that that might sound insincere. “Yes,” he said again, after pausing for a second. “You can trust me.”
“Okay? Don’t try to spare my feelings, or anything like that. Like—don’t just go, ‘Oh, well, he’s having a good time. That’s fine; I don’t have to.’ Yeah? ‘Cause I won’t have a good time if I’m worried you’re secretly suffering.”
This Jon did know; it sent a thrill of recognition down his spine, as he remembered their first day’s ping-pong adventure. “Right. I’ll do my suffering as publicly as possible.”
“Uh huh.” Martin’s arm tightened around Jon’s shoulder. “Just don’t worry about disappointing me? I mean, sure, I like it here, with the whole ‘not being an evil wasteland’ thing, but I’d much rather be out there with you happy than with you than spend one more minute in paradise with her.”
With a smile, Jon replied, “That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come on. We’ve got a job to do.”
“I suppose we do.”
As they walked on out of the range of Salesa’s camera, Jon glanced backward one more time and thought, Yes, that makes sense—but couldn’t quite recall what he had expected to see. It was like when you look at a clock, and tick Check the time off your mental to-do list, then realize you never internalized what time it was. “Pity,” he mused.
“What?”
“It’s, er, going away. That peace, the safety, the memory of ignorance.”
“That’s… Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Do you remember any of it? W-What Salesa said? Annabelle?”
“Some, I think. It’s, uh… do you mind filling me in?”
“Wait, you need me to tell you something for once?”
“I guess so. It’s, er… it’s gone. Like a dream. What was it like?”
After a pause Martin said, “Nice. It was… it was really nice.”
“Even though Annabelle was there?”
“I mean, yeah, but she didn’t do anything,” shrugged Martin. “Except cook for us. That was weird.”
“She cooked?” Jon watched Martin nod and smile around a wince. “And we let her do that? I let her do that?”
With a scoff Martin answered, “Under duress, yeah.”
“Huh.” Jon twirled his cane in circles, wondering why he’d thought he would need it. “Well, she didn’t poison us, apparently.”
“Nope. And believe me, we had that conversation plenty of times already. Er—maybe just let me put that away for you before you take somebody’s eye out, yeah?”
Jon nodded, folded his cane and handed it to Martin, then made himself laugh. “Was I… a bit neurotic about it.”
“About Annabelle?” Again Jon nodded. “Oh, we both were. We kept switching sides—one day I’d be like, ‘But she’s got four arms, Jon!’ and the next you’d be like—”
“She had four arms?”
“Yup. And six eyes. But your powers didn’t work there, so we thought maybe hers didn’t either? Never did find out for sure. God—you remember the day we got locked out of our room?”
“Er….”
“So that’s a no, then.”
“Sorry.”
Martin’s lips billowed in a sigh. “No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.”
“So… what happened? Who locked us out? Was it Annabelle?”
“No, no, no one locked us out. It was just me, I uh—I sorta broke the doorknob? God, it was awful. Went to open it and the whole thing just came off in my hand, like” (he made the motion of turning a doorknob in empty air, and imitated the sound Jon figured it must have made coming off) “krrruk-krr.” Jon fondly laughed; he could imagine Martin’s horror at breaking something in a historic mansion. “It was just one screw that came loose, though, so you’d think, easy fix, right? Except the bloody screwdriver took forever to find. Turns out Salesa kept them in the library, of all places.”
“S-sorry—what does this have to do with Annabelle?”
“Oh—nothing ultimately, just.” Martin grimaced at his own recollection. “God, we had this whole argument over whether to ask her about it, and when I finally did can you guess what she told us?”
“What?” managed Jon; his throat felt small and weak all of a sudden.
Martin put a finger to his chin, and blinked his eyes out of sync. “‘Perhaps he keeps them next to something that breaks a lot,’” he recited, with an inane, self-congratulating smile. For a fraction of a second Jon could recognize it as Annabelle’s I’ve-just-told-a-riddle expression. But the memory faded and he could picture her face only as he’d seen it in pictures before the change.
“O…kay. And was that… true?”
“I mean, yeah, technically. Useless, though. And after we spent so long agonizing over whether it was safe to ask her….”
Jon allowed himself a cynical laugh. “Are you sure she didn’t orchestrate the whole thing?”
“Ugh—no, it wasn’t her. We had this conversation at the time. You made me check for cobwebs and everything.”
“And you… didn’t find any?”
“Of course not, Jon; it was a doorway.”
“Right. Doorway, yes.”
“Are you sure you’re feeling better? You still seem a bit….”
“No, I’m—I feel fine, I just can’t seem to. Retain anything concrete about… where did you say it was? Upton House? God that’s strange, that it would just be….”
Part of Jon felt tempted to deplore it as a waste of space, on the apocalypse’s part. These stretches of empty land were one thing, but a mansion? Couldn’t they at least get a Spiral domain out of it?
“I mean, not really. He told us all about it, remember? With the magic camera?”
“Right, yes,” Jon agreed.
“Well, we got it all on tape, if you want to listen to it later.”
“Yes, that sounds—all of it?”
“Well not the whole week or anything. It just came on whenever it thought it was important, I guess.”
“So not the part about the doorway.”
“Nope.”
“Pity.”
#tma fic#the magnus archives#rqbb2021#rusty quill big bang 2021#jonmartin#jonathan sims#martin blackwood#suddenly a tma blog#scri wrote something
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Vacation
(Day 18 of doing the whole "Writing rivals centric drabbles to feed #RIVALSTWT until the two of them lore stream again. This drabble uses the HIGHSCHOOL AU BABY.)
“It’s vacation, smiles, lighten up!” Techno mused as he stretched on Dream’s bed, placing his dirty and traitorous shoes on Dream’s clean sheets.
“For you.” Dream rolled his eyes as he turned his seat over to glare at his friend and rival. “I think you forgot I have a different schedule from your ass.”
“L, I guess.” Techno shrugged, “But that means I get to bother you until you get off of class.”
“Oh my god, please don’t.” Dream rolled his eyes and turned back, “I have this stupid essay I’m stuck on.”
Techno hummed and stared at the back of Dream’s chair and tilted his head. Essays can be a bitch to work on sometimes and he knows how much Dream can stress over little shit like this. He pushed himself up from the bed and moved towards the chair, leaning over the back as he read over Dream’s head.
“You know it’s rude to read over people’s shoulders.” Dream snorted as he glanced up.
“Yeah well, you missed a comma over there.” Techno pointed at a sentence that looked like it could’ve been separated into two.
“Shut up.” Dream grumbled.
“You’re speaking to a soon to be English Major, I’m going to correct your goddamn essay if I want to.”
“Fuck off.”
“No.”
Dream rolled his eyes but continued to type on his computer, muttering under his breath. Techno snorted and continued to list off corrections and some ideas that Dream could use. It wasn’t long before the essay was finished and the sun was still in the sky. Techno stretched and rested his hand on Dream’s head, ruffling his hair.
“Are you done now?”
“I still have-”
“No you don’t.” Techno groaned, rolling his eyes as he tugged Dream out of his chair. “I did not come and visit you just to sit and watch you do homework.”
“Well, to be fair—you sneaked out of your house and sneaked over here without even telling Mom.” Dream rolled his eyes but let himself get dragged.
“Yeah because she wouldn’t let me in otherwise.” Techno shrugged. He opened the door across the room and looked down at Tubbo, Tommy and Ranboo—all three who were laying on the floor playing Twister. “Get up, you three are helping me sneak Dream out of school.”
“Didn’t he drop out?” Tommy asked, tilting his head on the floor as he looked at the two. “What do you mean to sneak him out of school?”
“Oh, are you not done with your online work?” Tubbo asked, popping up from behind Ranboo and resting his chin on the taller man’s stomach causing him to groan and collapse on Tommy.
“Fucking, Ranboob.” Tommy grumbled.
“Stop calling me that.” Ranboo huffed and rolled off.
“We can help you! Let me grab the Nerf guns!” Tubbo grinned.
“Why Tubbo?” Dream raised an eyebrow at Techno as he led him to the window.
“Tubbo’s window has a tree nearby.” Techno shrugged. “I’d rather not kill you while sneaking you out.”
Dream snorted before he climbed the window, swinging his legs forward and catching the sturdy branch with his ankles, “Sure, bacon.”
Before Techno could smack Dream over the head for the nickname, Dream swung away with his tongue stuck out. He rolled his eyes and followed Dream over. The two dropped to the ground and dusted themselves off. Techno looked up and whistled, only to see a big black bag sailing down to them. Dream and Techno caught the bag.
Techno zipped it open and grabbed a nerf gun, loading it with foam bullets with a grin, “Ready to enjoy your vacation, smiles?”
“At least it isn’t water guns.” Dream snorted, letting the large rifle gun rest on his shoulder. He grinned at Techno and started to back up. They both positioned their toy guns at the slowly descending teens, “Yeah, I think this is more fun than doing my book report.”
Techno rolled his eyes and started to shoot at Tommy despite the blonde’s protest and screaming and cursing, “Just do ‘The Art of War’ by Sun Tzu.”
“Whatever, bacon.”
#technoblade#dream#dream mcyt#mcyt#mcyt drabbles#mcyt fanfiction#drabble#fanfiction#oneshot#rivalstwt#rivalsblr#rivalsduo#tubbo mcyt#tommy mcyt#ranboo mcyt#tubbo#tommy#ranboo#bench trio#dsmp
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Shamash Answers: Holligay Hates
The question was basically, to give me a good ol kvetch: A Jewish method of complaining that is, at core, funny (and collaborative and community-based, but that’s a whole nother thing we’re not going to get into here, I just wanted FUNNY)
HERE WERE THE FIVE BEST:
Our new neighbors seem like very nice people, but either they are running a black market tile shop or they are tiling their entire house, apparently with special tiles that can only be cut between the hours of seven and ten by a single man armed with a very whiny saw. They’d better be making Minoan mosaics in there, that’s all I can tell you.-- Lou
I died at “making Minoan mosaics” ahaha
Pardon me, I do apologize for the bother, but please explain to me why you felt it necessary to plant flowers right up to the edge of the landscaped section of the parking lot? See, the way you have it done, if I park in the last spot, I can't open my car door without beheading petunias and whatever those ugly red feathery things are. I'm not a fan, but I still feel guilty being the cause of their demise. Also, once I have opened the car door and gotten put, I have to battle the jungle to get to the back of the car. I do not wish to play Tarzan each time I go for a drive, and I worry that there are ticks in your exotic grasses. Or venomous imported spiders, I did watch Arachnophobia last night, you know. And why is it all on such an artificially made, steep mound? We are not a mountain goat. You know what looks nice this time of year? Decorative cabbage. And it's low, so my car door would just sweep right over the top without inflicting damage. And they should be planted far enough apart to enable my easy egress from the parking area. Also, not a common habitat for ticks. -- @incorrecttact
I LOVE DECORATIVE CABBAGE. You can ask @keyofjetwolf, I mention it every time we go downtown and see them in the little planters! Also, yes, this is perfectly what I was talking about, and I love that you can vaguely hear Michiru saying this.
Well, if we're complaining then: How dare you live in a different timezone from me! Do you have any idea how many times I've seen you schedule something at noon, then needed to wait 2 whole extra hours before you actually started? At least 2 times! It was very boring! This is definitely something for you to fix, as the solution will not be me learning how time works. Also, your ask link on your blog has a period next to a comma, it looks dumb. -- @skylineofspace
“The solution will not be mel earning how time works” was great, but it was really the nitpicky editing at the end that sent me
Hey, Sis, I made the frozen pizza you asked for to clear up space in the freezer and we can finish our leftovers from 3 different meals tomorrow like you also requested. What do you mean why didn't I make eggs? No one told *me* there's a great sale going on I'm so sorry I forgot to enable my telepathy today. No, going on for 10 god-forsaken minutes about how it would have been much better to use up a bunch of older eggs is not going to transubstantiate the pizza you asked for and it's cold now because you kept kvetching about the bloody eggs instead of eating it.--- @annoni-no
THIS MADE ME LAUGH SO HARD I DID A DRAMATIC READING FOR JETTY. I was giggling, but “transubstantiate the pizza’ killed me, beautiful, no notes.
You know what stupid ass shit I'm still pissed about? MIKE EATING THOSE SHITTY LITTLE DEBBIE MOTHER'S DAY CAKES. I put them on a top shelf, Doc. THEY WERE IN NARNIA'S NARNIA. So not only did he have to go out of his way to know they were even there, but then he didn't say WORD. FUCKING. ONE. to ask if they were for any purpose. WHO THE SHIT BUYS THEMED LITTLE DEBBIE CAKES WITHOUT REASON. Did he think I was lured in by the idea of a new flavour sensation possible only in Mother's Day cakes? NO BECAUSE THEY ALL TASTE THE EXACT FUCKING SAME DON'T THEY. PLUS they're still like $2.78 a box because they've never contained a single ingredient natural to this planet. So if seeing them sparked a sudden desire for Miniscule Deborah snack cakes, maybe, I dunno, GO FUCKING BUY SOME. But no. NO. He had to take the THEMED ones TUCKED AWAY, and then -- AND FUCKING THEN -- eat THE ENTIRE GODDAMN BOX. Not just one and then "oops I wasn't thinking". THE WHOLE BLOODY BOX. So he either ate them slowly over the course of several days without once stopping to think, or he inhaled the entire box in one sitting, and which is worse?? Which pathway of possibility is the least appealing? I don't know! I can't decide! But he did it over two years ago, AND STILL IT SOMETIMES POPS INTO MY HEAD AND IN THAT MOMENT I'M THREE SECONDS AWAY FROM DIVORCE I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD and over LITTLE GODDAMN DEBBIE-- @keyofjetwolf
I die EVERY FUCKING TIME I READ THIS. This is exactly what I was looking for, a petty wild ride from beginning to end, amazing, iconic, also, the soul of being married, kids, let me tell you what.
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Public Relations (Bucky x Reader Oneshot)
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader
Prompt: “I’m a woman with a brain and reasonable ability”
Author’s Note: Written for @captain-kelli’s 500 Fam Writing Challenge! Congrats, Kelli, and thank you for hosting! Takes place post-Endgame, but with some adjustments to canon (Tony and Nat are alive, Steve stayed). This has a lot more dialogue than I initially planned! Hope it’s not too choppy. My love of commas is also evident in this piece. *shrug emoji*
Disclaimer: I don’t own Bucky, Marvel, or any other related characters or events. The other details of the plot are mine, including the characterization of the “reader”. Please don’t post my work on any other sites without my permission! If you liked what you read, please consider reblogging to help my work be seen. I would love you forever!
Let’s clear one thing up straight away: Bucky Barnes is not an asshole. He has a chip on his shoulder, sure, and it’s also true that he can be grumpy from time to time.
But can you blame him, really?
His life after age 26 has been one giant shit show that he’s just starting to get back on track, so he thinks the world at large could forgive him if he’s not super nice to the reporter hanging around outside the coffee shop or if his resting face sometimes looks like he wants to punch someone.
Still - he’s working on it. Trying to appear a little softer around the edges, trying to remember how to be the person he once was, not because he thinks it’s healthy to try to go back to that time, but because that’s the last time he actually remembers liking himself.
But, again, he’s not an asshole. Or, he tries really hard not to be. A fact he has to keep reminding his friends of (and he uses that word loosely, sometimes), especially when you’re around.
Everything just comes out of his mouth wrong when you’re there.
Probably because you’re around all the time, and you’re smart, and funny, and pretty, and-- nope. He’s not going there. Because reminding himself all the reasons why he likes you just makes him feel more guilty about the way he acts around you. He’s just too chickenshit to admit that he likes you, and ends up being a dick.
As soon as he walks into the Tower, you’re there.
After Thanos, the Avengers returned to New York City. There’s not much left of the Compound upstate to live in right now until the rebuild is done, and he’d been thinking about Brooklyn anyway. Manhattan is different, but he feels better in the city. He thinks the rest of the team likes it here too - it reminds them of the old days, or whatever.
“Sergeant Barnes,” you greet him coolly, matching his stride as he heads towards the elevator. “There’s a meeting in fifteen minutes in the main conference room.”
Bucky makes a noise of acknowledgement, stepping into the elevator and hitting the button for the tenth floor. “Do I have a choice to attend?”
“No you do not.”
“Great.”
He thinks you’re trying not to smile. He grinds his teeth.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY’s voice comes through the overhead speaker. “Captain Rogers requests that you, and I quote, don’t even think about it.”
You snort, and Bucky rolls his eyes. “Punk,” he whispers. “Thanks, FRIDAY. Tell Captain Rogers I said, and I quote, to shove it--”
“Thanks, FRIDAY,” you interrupt, “Thank you so much.”
The few remaining minutes in the elevator are in silence, and you push your way out of the elevator before he can even take a step when it stops. Bucky follows you reluctantly to the conference room where some of the rest of the team is waiting.
Nat looks barely awake (she has trouble sleeping after literally coming back from the dead when Steve returned the stones, what a shocker), Sam is spinning in his chair, and Steve is patiently listening to Peter prattle on about some project he’s working on for biology.
“We’re just waiting on Tony, Bruce, and Scott,” you say, heading towards the head of the table. “Wanda is on a mission with Clint, and Thor is off world. No word from Carol in a few days, either.”
Steve waves you off. “Don’t worry about it. We can fill them in later.”
Bucky’s brow furrows. “Wait, this is your meeting?” He asks you. “What was the point of the AI-assisted lecture from you--” he pointedly glares at Steve.
“Because I knew you’d try to get out of it, so I asked for some help.” You smile sweetly at him.
The rest of the team files in over the next few minutes, and Bucky watches as you shuffle through a few papers before turning on the overhead projector. He has to admit, while he absolutely despises public relations, he has a lot of respect for what you do.
He knows it’s not easy wrangling Tony’s ambitions plus whatever manic situations the team get themselves in on a daily basis. Trying to do press for the Avengers is probably akin to wrangling cats, he supposes.
“So,” you clap your hands together, “the event at Children’s Hospital is in two weeks. Can we please, please avoid any earth-threatening situations that might take precedence over this? We missed it the last few years, obviously, so we need to get out there and make some kids happy.”
A murmured agreement goes throughout the room, and Bucky tips back in his chair, counting down the minutes until he can go literally anywhere else. It’s not you, really. It’s the idea of public appearances. He hates them. People still think of him based on who he was, not who he is now. Despite the fact that Steve and the rest of the team have publicly vouched for him and are working on clearing his name, he sees how people look at him.
You’re tied to that feeling, even though he knows that isn’t fair. He has a hard time separating you from your job.
“The next thing -- and I don’t want to hear about it --” You look around, eyes landing on him meaningfully, “-- there’s a magazine feature for the anniversary of the Battle of New York.”
“Well, that’s me off the hook,” Bucky says flippantly, grinning smugly at Sam, who high fives him.
“No, it absolutely doesn’t,” you argue.
“I wasn’t there, in case you forgot.”
You glare. “Thank you for the reminder.”
“Guys--” Steve tries to interrupt.
“You have to participate, because this article is about the team and how it’s grown since the inception of the Avengers.” You say, almost sounding bored. Probably because you and Bucky have this argument at least once a week.
“Bucky, it’s an hour.” Steve says gently, trying to barter.
“Whatever.” Bucky grumbles, “You know what they’re going to ask,” he says, suddenly angry. “Where was the elusive Winter Soldier during the Battle of New York? Do I remember it happening, or was I in the middle of being frozen or wiped for the thousandth time?”
You shift your weight, looking down at the floor. He feels guilty for a half second. “I won’t let them ask.”
His heart thuds weirdly in his chest at how earnest you sound, but he just can’t help himself, apparently. “Because you’re so sure they’re going to listen to you.”
Hurt flashes across your face so quickly he thinks he’s imagined it, but he knows he hasn’t. Again - he’s not usually an asshole. He still hates himself for it, though.
“Alright, we’re done here.” You say quietly, gathering your paperwork. “I’ll email you all the details.”
Sam elbows him, and across the table, Steve is giving Bucky a look that he’s come to associate with a lecture.
He sighs and rolls his eyes before getting up and heading out of the room, his friends at his heels.
“Wow, a five minute meeting,” Sam is saying, sarcastically. “Gotta be a new record, don’t you think, Rogers?”
Bucky’s new plan is to ignore Sam at all costs. It’s not a plan he thinks is going to work out in his favor, but it’s what he’s sticking with.
“You can’t ignore me forever.”
“Are you a mind reader?” Bucky asks, hitting the button in the elevator for the residential floors.
“It’s two events, Buck.” Steve sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You can handle it.”
“Yeah? Why don’t I let you field the questions I normally get, and we’ll see how you like it.”
“I’m not doubting you. I just don’t understand why you always have to take it out on her.” Steve’s voice is so disappointed, Bucky almost wants to laugh. When his best friend turned into such a mother hen, he’ll never know.
“Don’t be late!” Sam calls as Bucky gets off on his floor, leaving the other men in the elevator.
Flipping him off over his shoulder, he hears Sam’s chuckle and Steve’s sigh before the doors close, and finally he’s alone with his thoughts.
.
.
.
Turns out the interview happens before the hospital visit.
Bucky is in an uncomfortable chair, a reporter across from him, and you behind the reporter, fidgeting slightly. He feels almost relieved that you seem to be as nervous as he is.
“Mr. Barnes,” the reporter begins, a smile Bucky already hates on his face.
“It’s Sergeant.” You say quietly from behind him, and Bucky meets your eyes briefly, seeing the resolve there.
“Of course.” The reporter says smoothly, offering another smile to Bucky. “Sergeant Barnes, you weren’t in New York for the Chitauri invasion, were you.”
“No.”
If the reporter thought he’d elaborate, he doesn’t let on. Bucky saw these questions coming a mile away, and isn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of saying something he’ll regret. Well, he won’t regret it. But it’ll be a pain in the ass for everyone if he can’t keep his cool.
“This was the first official Avengers event. Do you remember hearing about it?”
Bucky wants to laugh. “Do I remember-- no. I don’t think I was awake for much of 2012.” You fidget again, shifting your weight, and Bucky sighs, grinding his teeth. “I’ve been fully briefed on the invasion and know that what the Avengers did that day saved the world.”
The reporter looks at him for a long moment before shifting the papers on his lap around a bit. “The Avengers have changed a lot in all those years since that first mission. Can you tell me a bit more about your role with the team?”
Bucky relaxes a bit. This is the part he prepped for, the part he could recite in his sleep if he had to. Whatever instinct he had back in the day that allowed him to lead a unit and report to his CO is still there, especially for questions like this. “I work mainly with Captain Rogers and Sam Wilson to coordinate missions and do strategic planning. Recon and research are my main areas of focus, but I go on missions too if needed as backup, or if it’s an all hands on deck situation.”
“So you’re not handling any weapons?”
Bucky blinks. Over the reporter’s shoulder, you frown.
“All Avengers team members undergo weapons training.”
“During the War, you were a sniper with the 107th, correct?”
“Yes.”
“So you’d say that you’re pretty proficient with a gun?”
Your eyes are flashing now. “I’m sorry - none of this was on the list of pre-approved questions.” You interrupt, and the reporter holds up a hand to stop you, causing you to make an affronted face.
Bucky would laugh if he wasn’t feeling so sick at this turn of questioning. Every time. No matter who they vet, no matter how many times reporters insist they aren’t trying to catch him in a question he can’t or doesn’t want to answer… this is why he hates interviews.
“I’m just saying -- you’re one of the world’s most accomplished assassins. I guess I wanted to know why you’re doing research and recon when you could be on the front lines with the team? Are they worried you’ll have a setback?”
Bucky barks out a laugh.
You start, taking a few steps forward. “That’s enough. We’re done here.”
Bucky’s already standing, pulling out the chair from behind him as you come around to follow him out, until the reporter stops you, a hand firm on your elbow. You freeze, and Bucky’s eyes narrow on the point of contact, an unfamiliar feeling surging through him.
“Do you know who I work for?” The reporter hisses. “You told me I’d have a half hour.”
“That was before I knew you were going to ask questions that have nothing to do with your article.” You reply, face darkening when he still hasn’t let go.
Bucky waits, waits for one more sign that you’re uncomfortable before he steps in.
“If you ever want to get another high profile piece done on your team you’ll let me finish here.” He threatens, hand tightening.
You sigh, almost looking bored, and in one swift move, you’ve shifted enough of your weight to turn, pulled the elbow he was holding out of his grasp, and driven it into his ribs, simultaneously kneeing him in the groin.
Bucky’s eyebrows raise, and you look at him, rolling your eyes. “What?”
“Didn’t know you had it in you,” he says, letting a smile slip out so you know he’s kidding.
The reporter is doubled over, still making threats, but neither of you pay him much attention as you walk out the double doors of the conference room in the unfamiliar magazine office, heading towards the lobby.
In the car that’s waiting for you outside, Bucky watches you carefully as you roll your shoulders a bit, clearly smarting from the move you pulled back there.
“If I would have known you could do that, I would have been a little nicer,” he teases, but there’s an undercurrent of truth to his words. Not that he thought he’d ever piss you off enough for you to hurt him, but that he wishes he was nicer to you in general.
You glance at him, face neutral. “It wasn’t that hard. Everyone who works for the Avengers goes through basic self defense training, and I’m a woman with a brain and reasonable ability.”
Bucky nods. “Still. Thank you, by the way, for putting an end to that.”
You sigh, sitting back in your seat, all the fight leaving you. “It’s nothing.” You dig your phone out of your pocket and he watches as your thumbs fly across the screen before you hold it to your ear. “Hi, Steve.” A pause, “No, that’s cancelled. You’re not doing it. Tell Tony I’m cancelling the rest of the interviews. We’ll find some other place to get it published.”
He knows he’s staring and he knows he should stop before you notice, but he just… can’t take his eyes off you. The way you stood up for him, the way you promised him you would even when he was being a total asshole… he has no idea what he did to deserve it, but he’s damn grateful.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” You ask, your tone softer than he’s ever heard it.”
He shakes his head, looking down at his feet. “No reason. Just-- sorry I’m such a dick sometimes.”
You laugh, and he immediately wants to hear it again.
“I mean it,” he continues, “I don’t mean to be. You don’t deserve it.”
“Bucky.” Your voice is even softer, quiet, and he struggles to think if you’ve ever called him by his name before. You wait until he meets your eyes. “It’s fine. We’re all-- just trying to get through this.” You shrug. “I know it’s not easy for you. Just… Trust me sometimes, will you?”
“I do trust you.” He replies immediately, absolutely sure of himself for once.
It’s your turn to be a little surprised.
He rubs his hands together, a nervous tick he’s never gotten rid of. “I’ve been trying to distance myself because I like you. And that honestly scares the shit out of me. I don’t know--” He stops, frustrated. “I don’t know how to do this anymore. And all I keep thinking about is what could go wrong.” He takes a chance and glances up at you, and the look in your eyes… it’s more than he expected. He feels his heart take off in his chest.
“We’re both so stupid, Bucky.” You tell him, but your words are light. “You should have said something.”
He rolls his eyes. “People always say that. But when has a conversation like this one ever been one that someone wants to have?”
“Maybe when the other person feels the same way?”
Bucky can’t breathe. He never even considered it. It was always a forgone conclusion in his mind. He thinks you’re beautiful, and you never think about him at all. That was always the truth that he thought he knew. “Go out with me.” He blurts, and then feels his face redden. “I mean-- let me-- will you let me take you to dinner?”
The car stops in front of the tower and you’re opening the door before you say anything, making him panic a little. A look over your shoulder, “I’ll see if I can pencil you in somewhere.” You say, and then with a wink, you’re gone, leaving him scrambling to get out of the car to catch up to you.
Before you can, Steve is there, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Not now--”
“Can’t help it. She called a meeting.”
Bucky stops in his tracks, and laughs. “Did she.”
“She must know how much you love them. Come on.”
Upstairs he finds his usual seat next to Sam and across from Steve, but when you gather your notes and meet his eyes, yours absolutely sparkling, he finds he’s not dreading this one at all. He still wants to take you to dinner though, so he might have to try to break his own record.
A 5 minute meeting so he can convince you to go on a date with him? He thinks he can swing it.
End
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This is ~2,000 words of fluff, inspired by late-night brain’s inadvertent mashup of this suggestion by boxofsfic with the ending of this story by sickiepop. (If either of you are seeing this post, hi! I love your work, and I hope you don’t mind what a monster I conceived while reading it…!)
The OCs I made up for the occasion are both around 30; the sick one’s a guy, and the other is nonbinary; they’re housemates; they might be in a QPR, but I don’t think they know that yet either.
I mmmmight write the sequel foreshadowed in the last few lines? Not sure yet; depends on whether I still like what I’ve written by tomorrow. But if you’re reading this and you’d dig that, please let me know!
—
Mr. Bartholomew Fox lay on his classroom’s hard, dusty floor, trying to remember how to pronounce respite. It had been a vocab word this week in some of his tenth graders’ books, but grading their worksheets had not required him to say the word aloud. He could remember that it wasn’t phonetic—it did not rhyme with despite, like its spelling suggested it should. But did one say the word as though it were spelled respeet? Reecepite? Resspit? The remembered voice of a friend from the days of his first smartphone reminded him, You have 3G; he fumbled for his phone, hoping the dictionary app would load this time deecepit the classroom’s shoddy cell service. When he lifted his phone, however, a text from Leverton distracted him.
You ok? At a meeting I forgot about or s/t?
Barty (he was Barty to friends, Mr. F among his less-creative students) hadn’t quite felt like himself all day, though he wasn’t sure what more than that to say about it. His joints and muscles ached, sure; his head throbbed for a bit after every movement, yeah; he’d been shaky and dizzy all day, true—but none of that was weird. He guessed these symptoms must be worse than usual, but no one of them seemed enough that way to justify what an unpleasant day he’d had. Or at least, none had done so until his final class ended, when struck the irresistible urge to lie down on the floor instead of heading home. On the floor, with nothing else to think about, they all seemed urgent. He felt so dizzy it made him hot all over, his upper lip prickling with sweat. If he moved in any way, and whenever he opened his eyes, the feeling grew worse. His left shoulder, right wrist, that mysterious place in his lower back, both knees, the muscles in his neck and thighs and forearms and halfway down his right calf—all traded off shouting for his attention. The throb behind his left eye grew sharper now, more electric, like the start of a migraine (but those usually came on earlier in the day). That side of his nose was clogged. Was he getting a cold? Not unlikely, this early in the school year. Or was it just allergy season.
He’d gone about this far in his musings and then apparently quit thinking at all until something (he could no longer remember what) had made him reach for his phone. Now, having read Leverton’s text, he laid the phone down on his chest and closed his eyes, trying to think how to reply. After he’d typed I’m okay, just and then lay still for a bit pondering how to make must’ve fallen asleep sound less dumb, another text arrived from Leverton:
Just send me an emoji or something so I know you’re not dead? You’re probably just at a meeting and I don’t want to bug you, but, starting to worry a little
I’m okay Barty sent back therefore, deleting the comma and the just. They’d both long-since turned off their phones’ “Read at 4:18 PM” feature—it made Leverton anxious, and incensed Barty on principle. Sending a quick reply took priority, therefore, over explaining himself. The little green progress bar hovered for eons about two thirds of its way across the screen, which it would never have dared at home unless he had tried to send multiple photos. Making sure not to touch the phone’s sides directly, even though he knew that made no difference on this non-dinosaur model, he wrote further, No meeting; fell asleep in classroom. Somehow that one went through at once—so quickly that he’d barely had time to close his eyes and set his head back down before it buzzed again.
Oh my god
Are you ok??? That sounds so unlike you
He didn’t know what to say. The first I’m okay hadn’t felt like a lie, since in that case it was clear he meant okay as opposed to dead. But now neither Yes or No seemed like the right answer. The long pause he elected to respond with instead probably treated Leverton worse than either one:
Are you still in your classroom? Stay there, I’ll come get you
I don’t knw [sic] if I’m comfortable w/ the thought of you driving like this.
On its face Barty found this absurd. Students fell asleep in his class nearly every time he turned on the projector, and that seemed a much greater feat than dozing off while lying alone on the floor. Besides, it hadn’t been real sleep—only stage one or two. If someone had asked whether he was awake he could have honestly said Yes, without startling first. Don’t, he began typing back, but once the initial guilt wore off he thought again about Leverton’s words (Stay there, I’ll come get you). The corners of his eyes grew hot when he pictured them setting out on foot to collect him. Leverton was right, after all—Barty never fell asleep during the day. He deleted the message he’d started and sent instead, Okay.
By the time he heard Leverton’s hand on the doorknob Barty had drifted back into early-stage sleep: close enough to the surface to recognize the sound, but far enough under that it surprised him a little. He’d forgot where he was, his thoughts (now vanished) so vivid they’d seemed realer than the floor under his back. He pulled himself up onto his elbows and his sight went dark blue from the corners inward.
“Hi,” he told Leverton as the latter entered—too quietly, as it turned out, for them to hear over the sound of the closing door. They peered around the room, but it took them a few seconds to spot him; he could tell they were looking for a seated person, rather than one on the floor. Barty cleared his throat and this time said, “Hello.”
“Oh my god—did you fall? Are you alright?”
“No, I’m fine,” Barty insisted, shaking his head, and then, smiling inanely, added, “I meant to do this.”
(Meant to do that was a long-standing meme of theirs, an offshoot from Leverton’s comparisons of Barty to a cat. After a cat does something stupid, it recovers its dignity so quickly you’d think it was trying to look like the stupid thing it did was all part of the plan. Thus whenever either of them made a mistake too large to ignore but too small for a real apology, they’d say to the other some variation on, Meant to do that.)
“You just thought the linoleum seemed like a nice change of pace from the nice couch we have at home,” summarized Leverton, and Barty noticed how they used the word nice twice in a row.
He lowered his head back to the floor, feeling too dizzy and neck-sore to waste his strength on trifles. “It’s vinyl; they just replaced it.”
“What?”
“The floor.”
“Ah. Vinyl. Excuse me.” They sat cross-legged down next to Barty, on the aforesaid vinyl.
“I’m alright,” Barty said again.
“Yeah, but that word doesn’t mean a lot coming from you. Excuse my cold hands,” Leverton warned, and placed the back of their hand to Barty’s forehead and each cheek in turn, brushing some hair out of the way first so it wouldn’t get in his eyes. Barty flinched slightly, having gone from unpleasantly hot to unpleasantly cold in the time since he’d first made contact with the floor. “Feels like you’ve got a fever. Do you think you might be coming down with something?”
“You just said your hands are cold, though,” pointed out Barty.
“Well, yeah,” Leverton conceded with a snarl of laughter—“‘cause compared to a face I figured they would be.”
“Thought you meant ‘cause you’d come from outside.”
“No; I wasn’t cold out there.”
This week had brought their town its first cold snap of the season, but in California an early-fall cold snap parses out to more like absence of heat wave. The last few days it had been cool enough to keep the AC off, but it was still t-shirt weather out from ten to ten. Leverton’s tie dye, sweatpants and flip-flops attested to this—as well as to how quickly they must have hurried to meet him. Though they worked from home, Leverton usually put on jeans to meet the public. And that tie-dye t-shirt, Barty knew, had a small hole in one armpit. It pleased him to remark that he could still keep track of details like this; too bad these examples of lucidity were invisible to Leverton.
“You look pretty sick,” said the latter. “How do you feel?”
Come to think of it, the word lucid itself could also mean translucent. That was about how he felt: diaphanous, vague, barely-there. His mother always said with it instead of lucid; though she’d never said so, he’d deduced the antonym of with it must be out of it.
“Not my best,” Barty admitted.
“But you didn’t faint, or hurt yourself, or anything.”
“No. Worried I might, but figured I’d preempt it.”
“Always thinking ahead,” scoffed Leverton, combing their hand through some more of Barty’s hair. “Your hair’s all sweaty; did you know that?”
“I did not.”
“You don’t usually sweat that bad just from feeling faint, I didn’t think.”
“You’re right.”
“So again I say, You look sick.”
“I’m probably getting sick.”
Leverton sighed through pursed lips, making them billow noisily. “Well, shit, pal, this is a terrible place to be sick.”
“Such language,” mumbled Barty, without conviction. He was so unused to letting swears pass without comment in this room that it would have taken more effort to say nothing. But Leverton, rightly, ignored this comment:
“Can you stand? Maybe I could get you some water—would that help?”
“Yes, and yes. On my desk,” Barty said, pointing without looking up.
“Uhhh… ah! I see it.” Leverton stood up and brought back Barty’s bottle of water. They sat again, uncapped it, and, once Barty had sat back up on his elbows, handed it to him and gripped his shoulder, presumably to help him keep his balance. Barty gulped down several mouthfuls, broke off to catch his breath, and shoved the cold-sweaty bottle back into Leverton’s hand, eager to lie back down. “Ah!—no—wrong way!” squawked Leverton. “Are you sure you can stand.”
“Just need a minute. Can you drag the desk chair over? Seems a pleasanter middle ground than.”
“Oh—good point. Sure.” They rolled it over, apologizing for the squeaky wheel. When he had more energy, among his friends Barty would sneer and hiss at such unpleasant sounds; the chair’s squeak hurt his head now too, of course, but somehow at the moment he found it easier to withstand unpleasant phenomena than resist them.
After a minute, he did indeed pull himself up and slither into the chair. (Leverton evidently knew better than to offer a hand to help him up; such offers would hurt his pride, and possibly also his shoulders.) His hands shook as he gripped the arms of the chair to haul himself up into it; his head spun; he was so weak the exertion hurt his chest and all four limbs. When he subsided to catch his breath his head throbbed raucously. He leant it into his hand—whose support Leverton then seconded with their own hand. Their touch chilled him at first, but he lacked the strength (whether of will or body who knew) to scoot away. He hadn’t realized how much the weight of his head had hurt his wrist until Leverton’s help removed that hurt.
“You’re really not feeling well, are you.”
“Seems that way.”
“Thank god I didn’t let you drive yourself home.”
“Too bad for the kids, they’re all gonna catch it,” Barty muttered, regretfully; “as will you, of course. And I won’t do nearly this good a job of looking after you.”
“I don’t mind. You’ll do your best.”
“Will I?”
“You always seem to. From my limited perspective.”
“I don’t have your patience. Or your empathy.”
Leverton scoffed: “Empathy? Yes you do! You feel other people’s feelings just as well as I do—you’re just shyer about it. You’re just emotionally constipated.”
“Perhaps,” granted Barty. He doubted that first half, but could already feel himself smiling at Leverton’s flatteries, and knew if he tried to argue that they would hold the smile against him as an admission. So he gave his doubts no more explicit form than, “Nice of you to say so.”
“Are you ready to try and walk to the car?”
Barty sighed, sort of phlegmily—almost a hiss. “Might as well be.”
#a shifty tract#(...first time i'm using the writing tag and it feels like a lie; no digestive ills here at all#(just vague fluey stuff and undiagnosed chronic illness. in my headcanon he has heds and pots 'cause that's what i have lmao#(but this premise Just Didn't Work on a character who understands his chronic symptoms' mechanisms as well as i know mine#(and barty--again like me--is the kind of guy who Learns Everything about any label he knows applies to him#(but who dislikes not knowing so much that if the problem has no name he'll pretend it doesn't matter for as long as possible#(sooooo no diagnosis for him. sorry pal)#permasickfic#(trying to avoid the chronic illness tag but figured i should tag for it in SOME capacity as i suspect it squicks some people)
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I read a whole bunch of incorrect quotes and I couldn't stop laughing and I saw something that made me think of one earlier // Dean: and we don't leave family behind // Y/N: why are you trying to steal quotes from lilo and stitch? // Adam: more importantly, what about me? // Y/N: yeah, that too..
okay this one made me laugh a little too loudly because of how accurate it is? pure gold. i always love it when you guys find your own and send them to me! i had a shit day at work so here’s some more to cheer us up! some of these might be repeats. i’ve done so many of these at this point i kind of forget which ones i already posted...
dean: bitches b like “im baby” but have childhood trauma and neglect like wtf do u know about being baby u were forced to grow up from an early age anyways I’m bitches
(i know this isn’t really reader related but...I NEEDED TO DO THIS FOR DEAN)
all spn characters: i’m not going to say that all my problems were caused by bad parenting....
all spn characters: but all 5 therapists i’ve been to have said exactly that.
y/n: hey, about that love letter you sent me
dean: *nervously* yeah?
y/n: the fourth sentence-
dean: yes, that’s where it gets pretty emotional and-
y/n: you forgot a comma
dean, lying in a bed: why don’t you come join me, hot stuff?
y/n: dean. please put your shirt back on, we're in ikea. people are staring.
sam: does everyone know what they’re doing?
y/n: in general or the plan?
sam: the plan, y/n
y/n: *sigh of relief*
sam: why are you so short?
y/n: I'm weighed down by all my sins.
y/n: close your eyes, bro
dean: okay, bro.
y/n: what can you see?
dean: nothing, bro
y/n: that's my life without you, bro
dean, tearing up: bro
sam, setting a card down: ace of spades!
y/n, pulling out an uno card: +4!
dean, pulling out a pokemon card: pikachu! i choose you!
josh, trembling: w...what are we playing--
sam: are you a big spoon or a little spoon?
y/n: i'm a knife
dean, from across the room: she's a little spoon!
dean: you're giving me a sticker?
y/n: not just any sticker. it's a sticker that gives you a hug privilege from me
dean: i'm not some damn preschooler
y/n: fine, i'll take it back
dean: i earned this. back off.
y/n: wanna help me commit a felony?
josh: what the hell??
y/n: oh sorry
y/n: *whispers* wanna help me commit a felony?
josh: of course, what do you need?
sam: did you have to stab him?
y/n: you weren't there, you don't know what he said to me
sam: what did he say? y/n: he said 'what are you gonna do, stab me?'
sam:
dean: that's fair
demon!reader: what's a queen without her king? well, historically speaking more powerful
some monster: prepare to die
dean: hold on let me ask y/n
some monster: that's not how this works-
dean: she said no
josh: what state are you in?
sam: constant anxiety
y/n: denial
dean: depression
cas:
cas: kansas?
dean: everywhere i turn, BAM, there's y/n!
sam: that's because you're following her around
y/n: i hate you!
dean: jokes you sweetheart, i hate me more!
y/n:
y/n: baby, we talked about this
dean: crushes are the worst. i always act stupid when i'm around my crush
y/n: but you act stupid all the time
dean:
dean: yeah...don't think too hard about that
sam: i dare you to make out with the next person who enters the room
dean: no, there's no way i'm gonna do tha-
y/n: *walks into the room*
dean: i'll do the dare. rules are rules.
y/n: can you turn the lights on?
dean: i don't need to. you're the only light i need
y/n: dean i can't fucking see
y/n: hey dean, can you do something for me?
dean: i would kill for you, help you cover up a murder and take the blame myself.
y/n: great, can you do the dishes?
dean: woah, let's not go crazy
y/n: it's really frustrating
dean: what is it?
y/n: watching sam openly flirt with eileen, and eileen not realizing it
dean, wearing a 'date me y/n, please' shirt: yeah, he's so obvious
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