#decided I wanted to do one more TMA AU piece for this event :)
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[Treebark week] Day 7 - Past
[Martyn] Statement of Ren Diggity Dog and Martyn InTheLittleWood, regarding their shared domain. Statement taken directly from subjects erm- it was July 22nd, 2022 before the world went to hell. Audio recording by former Archivist, Martyn.
(Takes place after day 5 but before day 6)
Word count: 2022
[Click]
(Barking from a small dog)
[Ren] What is it, Obi?
(Pause)
Uhh... Martyn! Martyn, there's a problem!
[Martyn] (Distant) What? What's wrong?
(Footsteps)
[Ren] Would you rather I tell you or drop it in your hands?
[Martyn] If it's anything like the last thing you put in my hands, no thanks. Not a huge fan of fangs in my cookies Ren Dog.
[Ren] (Laughter) Dude, I couldn't see them! Sunglasses, remember?
[Martyn] Don't lie to me, Ren. You knew exactly what you were doing.
[Ren] No matter, you're getting distracted! Here, just- just listen.
(Silence filled by the gentle sound of a tape recorder turning)
(There's static for only a moment)
[Martyn] Is that...
[Ren] Yeah...
[Martyn] I hate these things...
[Ren] Should we give it a statement?
[Martyn] Oh man, it's been a while since I've done that. I don't know Ren...
[Ren] Maybe it'll help. Especially since you can't give me nightmares about it anymore. The recorder wouldn't be here if it wasn't important, right?
[Martyn] I guess so... I don't think my connection to The Eye is strong enough to compel so if you start to ramble like you always do, it's not my fault.
[Ren] (Laughter) That's fine, dude. Now say your archivist words.
[Martyn] Oh geez, you're really putting me on the spot- alright.
Statement of Ren Diggity Dog and Martyn InTheLittleWood, regarding their shared domain. Statement taken directly from subjects erm- it was July 22nd, 2022 before the world went to hell. Audio recording by former Archivist, Martyn.
[Ren] Shall I start?
[Martyn] If you want.
[Ren(Statement)]
When I woke up the day everything changed, I couldn't see anything.
At first, I thought you were just doing something in the other room so I wasn't scared. I never am. Whatever you do with The Dark is not really my business. So I just ignored it, and tried to go back to sleep. I heard creeks in the floor and distant screaming in the hall but that was pretty normal for your rituals. Nothing I hadn't slept through before.
I did find it strange that it was happening in what would have been early morning. You would think for an entity called "The Dark" I expected to only see you do that stuff in the dead of midnight. But I wasn't going to question it. Not when your circumstance was so... unique.
I hadn't realized something was wrong until I started to get this strange sense crawling up the back of my neck. A familiar shiver. It was the same feeling I used to get when you were head archivist. When you would listen to every detail, observing.
It shocked me to my very core, pulling me out of my bed to look for answers. Something was very wrong and I wasn't just going to sit there and let it happen. On the way through the hall, I tripped on pretty much everything in our apartment. It's really annoying how much junk you leave on the floor, y'know? Despite the mess, I found your room eventually.
I don't know how to explain it, but your room felt darker somehow. The entire place was engulfed in a pitch black but your room... it wasn't just blocking out the light. Your room was absorbing and extinguishing it.
I called your name into the empty room but you weren't there.
In that moment, I was hoping that if I couldn't find you, I could at least find whatever was making me feel like your ghost was haunting me. Because I knew it was you. Or at least related to you? The bizarre mix of darkness and watching was just too similar to be anything else. So I started looking through your things.
And for the record, Martyn has the messiest room I've ever had the displeasure of searching through. Even if there was something I could have found in there, I don't think I could have in the void we like to call Martyn's room. I tripped on discarded laundry, ritual junk he just refuses to put away, and a ton of anime books he can't even read anymore!
[Martyn] First of all, it's called manga.
[Ren] Whatever it is, you need to clean it off your floor!
[Martyn] And for the record, I bought them before I lost my eyesight so I don't see the issue. Pun intended.
[Ren] For the record, I'm rolling my eyes.
[Martyn] For the record, you're getting off-topic. You can complain about my organizational skills once The Eye- or whoever is sending these tapes- is satisfied with our statement.
[Ren] Well, if I must continue I'll do it... for the record.
[Martyn] (Laugh) Get on with it.
[Ren] (Laugh) Alright, Someone’s impatient.
I didn't find anything. But the longer I searched, the terror itching under my skin started to grow stronger. At some point, I stopped looking for whatever was causing the darkness and instead started looking for you. Or well, any sign to tell me where you went. Or that you were still alive. It took a while, but I found a single piece of long fabric I immediately recognized as your bandana.
Now, I know you hate it when I use my abilities to track you down. Something about really hating feeling like prey. But in my defence, I hate being left in the dark and I was really starting to panic. You never go out without your bandana. So I thought it might have been a cry for help. Something you left behind for me to find and use to hunt you down.
In some cases, I'm glad you left it. Though, in the moment, I was pretty peeved I had to find my way out of our apartment completely blind.
[Martyn] Oh no, how tragic for you.
[Ren] I’m choosing to Ignore Martyn's sarcasm.
The darkness stretched out into the complex hallways and stairways. I swear if I closed my eyes, nothing would change. It was all black anyway. Keeping a hand on the wall and walking slowly helped keep me on a steady and calm path. Yet, I felt something sink into the pit of my stomach when I reached the stairs. The anxiety of falling down with no one around to hear was creeping into my mind. But it was nothing compared to the ever-growing terror of losing someone special to me. So I pressed on.
[Martyn] Aww, Ren, that's really sweet of you to say to me.
[Ren] I was talking about Obi, dude.
[Martyn] I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.
[Ren] Your thing is literally listening!
[Martyn] Do you hear that Obi? I think it's the sound of a huge liar.
[Ren] Said the biggest liar on the planet.
[Martyn] How dare you-
[Ren] How dare you interrupt my statement, again.
[Martyn] For your information, it's actually our statement. Not just yours.
[Ren] Then why don't you tell the friendly tape where you'd been when the freaking apocalypse started, hm? I'm sure you'd love that.
[Martyn] Actually- it's okay, please continue.
[Ren] Thank you.
Climbing down the stairs was rather stressful but otherwise simple and easy. I was worried for a moment that they might go forever. That I had been the unlucky guy to get stuck with at least 3 entities messing with him at once.
But I could feel The Hunt dragging me closer to the mark. The target's scent danced in the air and I felt their fear along with it. At that point, I had forgotten who the target was and just found myself getting lost in the adrenaline of another hunt. Something more familiar to drag me out of the dark.
A foolish part of me expected it to be brighter once I stepped outside. I wanted to feel the sun on my face and in my fur. But when I desperately busted out of the apartment complex, all I felt was the taste of something rotten in the air slowly getting closer and choking itself in my lungs. The sound of a howling wind without an actual breeze to accompany it.
When I stared up into the sky, it stared back.
But I found you. In the middle of the street, staring straight into the pupil of it. You were trapped in some sort of trance, speaking into the sky as if the eye was listening to you. You just kept talking. Words about misery and destruction spilling out of your mouth, unending.
When you stopped, you silently slipped a pair of sunglasses onto my face and everything returned to normal. At least, it looked normal. I had trouble adjusting to the light of the sun at first. But our street looked the same as it always had. The sky was actually quite beautiful.
You said something about everything being okay before taking me back to our apartment.
I still don't... I still don't understand what happened. Or what is happening. I still feel like I'm being watched. A shiver constantly on the back of my neck. I've just been... trying to ignore it.
(Static)
[Martyn(Statement)]
The Archivist calls it The Age of the Beholding. I call it The End of All.
An entire change to reality itself along with all who inhabit it and brings nothing but inevitable destruction. A playground and slaughterhouse for those we can not comprehend. Listen close to the howls of agony on the breeze and helplessly behold as people crawl and scrape and dig for an ounce of freedom.
But of course, you can't see it, can you?
There's no need to survive here as whatever watches over our suffering ensures we don't die. Not really. Some may find themselves lucky, placed within a domain where it comes to an end, as all things do. But not us. We, among most others, will be kept alive to be feasted on within our domains. Our fear fuelling their ever-expanding hunger.
But what's there to be afraid of? I have you and you have me. There's laughter and joy within our walls so there's no need to look beyond the curtains. It's safe here, of course.
I moved hell and Earth to protect my partner. A pair of sunglasses keeping him blissfully ignorant of the world outside. Unaware our gardens are made of blood and bone. Our home is shrouded in the black of night today but I keep it at bay. He'll never know what crawls under our floorboards and in our walls.
But he knows I'm hiding something from him.
"It's better this way," I say.
Neither of us can see the amalgamation of our abilities stalking the halls. A monster of our own creation, our predator. The shadowy hulk hunting the both of us but in turn can't see us either. But I know you hear it too. It snarls and growls deep in what we pretend is night. Feel it breathing heavily down on the back of your head.
Yet we ignore it. Keep your eyes closed and discard them. I couldn't stop the apocalypse so pay it no mind. I can't fix the world so let me keep the one we made.
This is what comfort feels like, right? Or perhaps it's just been long since either of us has felt a sense of true Solace. The fear of losing what we've made, of losing each other, is ever-present. Preventing us from ever feeling truly at ease. It's only a matter of time.
After all, this is our domain. We are both the creators and it's only prisoners.
(Static fades)
[Ren] Martyn? You there my dude?
[Martyn] I'm... I'm sorry, what happened?
[Ren] What happened is you scared the living heck out of me!
[Martyn] Oh geez, did I space out again?
[Ren] Yes! Started talking non-stop and I couldn't pull you out of it.
[Martyn] I'm sorry man, if I could stop it, I would.
(pause)
You still can't hear a word I'm saying when I do that, right?
[Ren] Not a word. It's incredibly creepy, dude.
[Martyn] That's good. It's better this way.
[Click]
#treebark#treebarkweek#adventreebark#adventreebark2022#the au is meant to be /p but could be /r if you wanted#cherri.writes#decided I wanted to do one more TMA AU piece for this event :)#I've never posted a fic before so I hope you guys like this one
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rinse and repeat
His job was a grisly one- find the works of the avatars, document them, and then undo them.
Then prevent them.
Most of the avatars did not like him constantly 'destroying' their work.
Most.
Not all of them.
rated: T
warnings: described death.
AU: TMA
Length: 1,500 words (short-medium)
notes: i don't know much about TMA, but im having a fun time with friends talking about aus so :3
gift fic for @halfusek ft. magenda (as i unaffectionately call this one)
ao3 link here
The pervasive smell in the room clued him off before anything else. It was the sense of dread worsening that immediately followed, an apprehension that made his stomach knot. A flashlight was beaming towards his feet, red slick appearing at the edges of the fallen beam.
Johan did not want to turn on the light, though he could see the words superimposed on the wall above the small switch, a demand rather than a thought. Steeling himself, he flicked it on, filling the room with an unsteady, buzzing light.
Immediately, regret- no, not regret, some other sad emotion- filled him.
The filing room had a desk with three chairs in the center- or usually situated in the center, as they had been moved aside for a ladder that now took stage center left. A few papers were scattered about, ruffling Johan mildly. However, his job was not a pleasant one, and sometimes included observing mis-managed paperwork, and… other, worse things. Such as the corpse - his true purpose for entering the room. He noted the body, at true stage center, was perhaps two or three hours old.
It was a gruesome death.
Suffocation, electrocution, and decapitation all played their roles.
It was hard to tell which had killed him, though Johan snapped on a pair of gloves, and set himself to documenting the gritty scene.
A ladder.
A box of tools.
Electrician’s gear taken out.
It seemed like Bert- the man had taken upon himself to fix a faulty wire. Johan followed the trail to the circuit board and fuse box, and broke past the paneling to see the back of the fuses.
A group of four were miswired. The dead man had turned off the wrong one, without even knowing it.
It made Johan frown and sigh. How pointless.
He returned to the ladder, climbing upwards. Several wires were already dangling loosely, and Johan narrowed his eyes as he attempted to determine the sequence of events.
One of the wires hummed quietly.
Johan traced its path, noting the bloodied loop at one ridge. That would be the decapitation, potentially if the man had fallen forward. Pulling out a tape measure, he checked the likely trajectory. Unfortunately, it lined up. Which meant that indeed, the decapitation had happened last.
A pity.
It would have been the fastest death.
Johan nudged the ladder. It was sturdy. He looked along the wire, along the corpse.
The bruising by the neck was no longer severe, as it all had been, well, cut, but from what he could see, there had been significant pressure upon it. If Johan were to piece together the order of events (which was exactly what he was doing at the moment), he would have said as follows.
Bertrum turned off the fuse box, unaware that what he was turning off had nothing to do with the task he had taken upon himself. As the light switch was off, and the flashlight lay dimming, Johan decided that the man had not bothered to check the lights when he entered the room, setting down supplies. Had he paused to ensure that the fuse was off, he may have survived.
Doubtful.
Some other unfortunate happenstance would have occurred, perhaps more grisly than this.
Regardless. Continuing reconstruction.
Bertrum had then climbed up the ladder, and began working on rewiring the faulty electrical system. A significant burn on his hand, searing through to his flesh, explained the rest. While he was removing the old wire, he had gotten entangled, and as he had tried to pull it off, his hand brushed an unexposed part of the live wire. Then, with his body stiffening to the current, he must have lost his balance.
Severing his throat on the wire.
Johan was meticulous in his documentation. If he was not, he may miss something in the next run that would result in another failure. Or he might get himself… quite hurt. Usually the latter always left him snapping awake in his threadbare bed, gasping for breath and with a dull painful sensation in his chest, ready to try again. However, that was an outcome he tried to avoid.
Speaking of things that one tried to avoid….
Johan heard him before he saw him, the slightly off rhythm gait giving him away. Glancing around the room with a sigh, he acknowledged that:
Magenta had some connection to the death;
OR
Magenta was drawn towards it, like a fly to rotting flesh.
It may have been both.
He said nothing as the other lanky man entered the room, smiling.
Magenta surveyed the scene calmly, suppressing a shiver of delight. He said nothing to Johan, who was marking which of the wires were live. Johan rolled his eyes, and went back to examining the bad wire to determine where its true source really was to make sure that when he corrected this misconstrued blip, he did it properly - once. Magenta watched him work with a smile blandly painted over his face.
Eventually, Johan pulled out a chair, on the opposite side of the table from the corpse, and sat in it heavily, another sigh fighting to escape him. Magenta watched keenly, though his eyes were half open. Johan moved back a second chair, silently expectant, and Magenta sat in it.
“This one is fun, isn't it?” Magenta commented lightly, a smile still on his face. Johan shrugged glumly, staring at the paperwork before him instead of the body just beyond the desk. Unique, certainly; saddening, yes. Not quite so ‘fun’ for him, especially when one considered what his job entailed. “Don’t look so down, Jo!”
“Kinda hard not to when there’s a dead body in f-front of me,” Johan retorted, brow furrowing and mouth twitching downwards. Magenta shrugged, smiling still. “And when it’s so….”
“Purposeful?” Magenta questioned, teeth glinting in his smile. Johan stared at him, not enjoying the shudder of upset that he tried to hide. Magenta noticed it anyway. “Well, maybe that’s not the right word. Artistic might be a better one.”
“Right,” Johan mumbled. It surely was an artistic death. “Maybe the creator might have done well to warn me. Content warnings or w-whatever.”
Here Magenta frowned.
Johan looked away, abashed.
“S-sorry. That was unkind of me. I’m on edge.”
“Sure,” Magenta rolled his eyes, leaning back. Johan stood, picking up the clipboard, making some final measurements and documentations. “Don’t forget the dead fuse.”
Johan tilted his head as he looked at him. Magenta raised an eyebrow, a silent dare to check him. Johan saw no need to do so- as he would be able to check when he would do his… ‘cleanup’. Not to mention, despite the man’s goals, Johan trusted Magenta. Which may have been the fault of memories not his own.
The older man matched the tilt of his head, humorous.
“What?” he asked, a slight grin at the edges of his mouth. Johan’s lips parted to say something, and then closed. Magenta’s smile broadened cheekily, eyes flashing. “Oh, dear. Be more careful, Jo! We wouldn’t want…” Magenta glanced at Bertrum’s mutilated, burned corpse, fighting his smile from growing wider. “An accident.”
“Why d-did you tell me about it?” Johan asked, faced with a troubled emotion that he locked up and decided that he would not think about or confront. Magenta’s smile remained unchanging. “Mag….”
The other man stood up, still evenly looking at Johan.
“You’re smart, Jo,” the avatar of The End chided, tapping the end of Johan’s nose. “Think about it.”
“The resetting, I kn-know,” Johan replied, pursing his lips. He knew why Magenta was much more tranquil and compliant around him than the other essences of fears, who generally disliked watching Johan undo their work time after time. Not Magenta, though. Magenta was quite happy with the fact that he was able to expand on his medium repeatedly thanks to Johan’s role. “But why warn me a-about the fuse not working? You know what h-happens to me if… an ‘accident’ does occur.”
Magenta shrugged, smile still on his face.
“Thought it might make your day a bit better,” Magenta brightly replied. Johan looked away, face warming. “I’m sure that whatever weird process renews you is no party.”
“It’s… it’s definitely not, no,” Johan agreed, feeling pain creeping along his spine. He exhaled, softening, managing a small smile on his stressed visage. “So… I thank you.”
“It’s nothing, Jo,” Magenta’s own relaxed smile was dazzling, toothy and bright; yet sharklike. It made a trickle of fluster bloom in Johan’s chest, worsened by his next words. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a nicer way to thank me, don’t you think?”
Johan did not reply, looking away, face heating considerably. Magenta laughed a little, a chuckle, and Johan’s blushing intensified. A hand brushed his cheek as Magenta sauntered out of the room.
Johan watched him leave, words he could not describe resting on his tongue, unsure if he should go after the man, properly ‘thank’ him.
Instead, Johan checked his paperwork, inhaled, and reset.
#control art#control writes#batim#bendy and the ink machine#joey drew#johan ramirez#magenta#gift fic#tma au#batim tma#joeyverse#joeyverse tma#complicated relationships#tw death#tw described death#magenda#avatar of the end#archivist jo#slight tension
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Hi! I just wanted to tell you I really like your archivist Sasha au. A lot of the ones I see seem less like they like Sasha and more like they don’t like Jon. I really like how the story wasn’t just the events of the podcast but with Sasha and Jon switched; Sasha had her own strengths and weaknesses. She wasn’t perfect and solved everything like so many people think, Jon did survive in your story, but it was because the Not-Them decided to try something new, not because Sasha is somehow better than Jon, because she’s still being manipulated by Jonah Magnus, someone whose had 200 years to manipulate people. (Also probably The Web)
There’s also something about your writing that I really like, especially the first scene with Michael. Also I really like the idea of spiral Jon; I know he’s kinda seen as the poster child for The Eye, but I like to think he would be a good spiral avatar (also I really want him and Michael to be friends).
This is in no way pressuring, but do you think you will write any more? (I only ask because in case you don’t think anyone will read it, I definitely would.)
Thank you so much!! It's been a while since that fic, so seeing such a lovely message about it was nice to see!
I won't say the Archivist Sasha AU is abandoned; I have ADHD, so it can be difficult to get back to writing for a piece of media I'm not currently hyperfixated on. I've also started work on an original book series!
However, I was wanting to do a relisten of TMA, so chances are I'll get the kick to continue!
Thank you so much! It's these sorts of messages and comments that get me thinking all over again!
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ASH’S TMA HURT/COMFORT/FLUFF REC LIST
For the gays. (And @damcrows who’s been dead for the past 24 hours. Rest in peace babe. Read some gay fic. Deny the inevitability of canon. <3)
___
the end, but the start (of all things that are left to do) by @ajkal2
Jon wakes up.
aka. mag200 tore out my heart
(Very smol, very short, very spoiler. Def recommend for anyone who just finished the podcast.)
remind me how to smile by @tamerofdarkstars
Jon is probably fine, just hiding out somewhere while the whole murder thing blows over and that's... fine. Martin is fine with that explanation. Really. He's got plenty to distract himself - like listening through the entire What the Ghost episode library, for example. Or watching Georgie Barker's Instagram livestreams.
(Yea this was in the last rec list, but you don’t understand THE ADMIRAL GIVES CUDDLES)
Chamomile by Dribbledscribbles
Whatever the ex-tea was, if it really had ever been that last bag of chamomile Martin claimed he’d found tucked in the back of the cupboard, it was fast now.
Martin had tried catching it, chasing it, blocking its way with shoebox lids and plates and an upended footstool, but the thing was just too quick. Jon knew as well as Knew that he might have left off the attempts completely if not for the creature’s preferred game.
The game was, See How Many Times I Can Push Martin Towards Cardiac Arrest Before He Comes at Me with The Broom.
(Scottish Honeymoon Era. Adorable and weird. A vampire gets harassed.)
hey stranger by @ennuijpg
It’s a late night Tesco run, how eventful could it be? It’s not like Martin is going to run into his boss who’s wearing something absurdly different from usual and get the most acute form of whiplash possible from seeing him, right?
(Martin runs into Jon at the grocery store and has an existential crisis.)
roses roses, roses. by @judesstfrancis
Rose scented laundry detergent. Running into Jon in the breakroom. Running into Jon on his way back to his desk. Rose scented detergent. Running into Jon. Roses. Jon. Roses, roses, roses.
(Canon enemies to friends to lovers au-ish. Martin POV. Very pining much sweet.)
go softly by doomcountry
And there is nothing else besides this.
(More hurt/comfort than fluff. Scottish Honeymoon Era. Mild eye mutilation.)
Not Alone by @backofthebookshelf
After the coffin, Daisy and Jon are both fragile. They hold each other up.
(Post-buried Jon&Daisy starter pack. Very hurt/comfort.)
trust my love by antlsepticeye
“you… you’re real, aren’t you?” jon whispers, the fog slowly dissipating from his mind. “it is not a trick?”
“i’m here,” martin says softly, reaching up to grab jon’s hand that was resting on his cheek, intertwining his fingers with jon’s and squeezing. he moves jon’s hand to martin’s chest, resting it over his heart. “you’re alright. i’m alright. take your time, love. let’s just take some deep breaths, okay?”
(TOUCHSTARVED JON HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.)
reaching out by Athina_Blaine
By the time things settled, when Martin had finally managed to crack through his cold shell, feel some of his old self returning to him in bits and pieces, they had found their little routine.
One that had the two of them sleeping in the same bed, making breakfast, going to the mart. Where Jon reached for his wrist while they slept, and Martin luxuriated in the gentle warmth of his fingers.
But not one where Martin reached back. One that had Martin kissing Jon awake or taking his hand over the breakfast table, because ... Martin never had the courage to try. And then it never became a part of the routine.
And Martin desperately wanted it to be.
-
Martin and Jon have an important conversation.
(More Scottish Honeymoon Era for the soul. Hurt/comfort/fluff.)
Belabor by @janekfan
Jon's given the position of Archivist and is falling apart at the seams. Tim and Sasha are upset and playing games. Elias is overbearing and manipulative.
And poor Martin is stuck cleaning up the mess.
(THEE first fic I ever read for tma. Season 1, hurt/comfort/fluff, and hints of Jmartin. janekfan is the absolute master of seasons 1-3 hurt/comfort. This is my favorite, but pls check out the rest of their fics.)
tea, blankets, and a damnable stubborn attitude by ivelostmyspectacles
“Are you really gonna stay here and pester Jon all evening?”
“I’m not pestering him,” Martin retorted, sounding vehement if not busy going through the cupboards. “I’m heating up soup.”
“Oh, you might as well make him another cup of tea while you’re at it.”
“Oh, good idea.”
Jon shot Tim a withering look.
(The one where Jon is ill, Martin makes tea and they watch doctor who together. Fluff 1000%.)
A Kind Hand by @voiceless-terror
Jonathan Sims was adjusting just fine, thank you very much.
In which a minor workplace spill causes Jon to realize that he might have friends.
(Ah yes, the other master of seasons 1-3 fic aka voiceless-terror being my other fav author in the fandom. This one is also season 1 hurt/comfort/fluff.)
A Weather In The Flesh by @cuttoothed
"There is a span of years where Jon doesn’t touch anyone other than the occasional hand shake. It’s not so bad. He’s never been someone who’s needed physical affection."
*
Jon has never been any good at making people want to stick around.
(More touched starved Jon! Much hurt/comfort!)
Something Old, Something New by @cirrus-grey
Months have passed, and everyone is doing better than they were. Daisy and Basira are getting married, Melanie is feeling her old self, Georgie is as much herself as she has ever been, and even Jon has stabilized on his wild fall away from humanity. Everyone is doing better.
Well. Almost everyone.
(Daisy/Barsira wedding! Melanie is a bitch and we love her! Jmartin dance! Post-canon (almost) everyone lives!)
The Weight of Love by @voiceless-terror
Jon is a restless sleeper. Martin attempts to adjust.
(The fic where Jon is literally me and Martin attempts to sleep for 1k words.)
The Art of Conversation by @voiceless-terror
"Do you ever stop talking?"
Jon has a complicated relationship with words. Difficulties come and go.
(Jon has adhd and Martin is in love.)
Novelty by @backofthebookshelf
Jon experiences A Sexual Attraction; Martin has A Concern. They figure it out.
(Any fic that explores the ace spectrum is a 10/10. We stan all ace interpretations of jon on this blog.)
Half a Hug by Dathen
I know you weren’t going to hurt me, I trust you, he said again and again. And then a different kind of fear shone through, hollow and echoing: “Please don’t stop touching me."
-
Or: Life is hard when you're touch-starved but have trauma related to your closest friend. Spoilers through TMA 132.
(Honestly bless every author who saw jon&daisy and was like. They’re siblings. No I will not elaborate.)
the loneliness never left me (but i can put it down in the pleasure of your company) by Athina_Blaine
It was about Martin making Jon feel safe, treasured, and loved. And it had been so, so long since anyone made him feel that way.
And, in the face of it all, Jon was starting to flounder.
(At this point I just need to make separate rec list for Scottish Honeymoon Era.)
you can watch me corrode by scarletfish
"So, how long have you been pulling this shit then?"
"I… excuse me?" Jon’s indignant, certain she can’t mean what he thinks she means.
"When was the last time you ate?"
(Georgie decides Jon and Melanie need a normal day off. Jon learns that he and Melanie have more in common than he thought.)
(Look, Melanie isn’t my favorite person in tma, but she and Jon are like THE SAME PERSON and I adore fics that elaborate on their relationship.)
Out of the Wind, In From the Cold by @ostentenacity
There are two bedrooms in the safehouse, and two beds.
For a moment, Jon considers asking to share, but decides against it with a wince. “I really loved you,” Martin had told him. Loved. Past tense. And Martin doesn’t exactly have a lot of choices right now in terms of company; it would be cruel to demand he play at feelings he no longer has just to make Jon happy.
(For a moment, Martin considers asking to share. But he dismisses the idea with a shake of his head. Jon has already done so much for him. Martin isn’t about to ask for more, especially not when it’s something he doesn’t really need. He has his right mind back, and he has Jon’s friendship. That should be enough for him. It’ll have to be.)
---
Jon thinks that Martin doesn’t love him. Martin thinks that Jon doesn’t love him. They do not, of course, discuss this. Unrequited love is already awkward enough, right? No need to dwell on it.
(THEE SCOTTISH HONEYMOON ERA FIC. IT’S ABOUT THE PINING, BEING MUTUALLY OBLIVIOUS AND FALLING IN LOVE. 10000/10.)
I Do by @voiceless-terror
“I, um- this was supposed to be a lot more romantic, I swear.” Martin looks down at the dirty bar floor. “I had it all planned out, I-I was going to take you somewhere nice, and then we’d go for a walk in the square- I’ll still do it!” He hurries to explain, as if that’s the most pressing part of this situation. “It’ll be really nice, I’ve already hired a photographer-”
In a fit of protectiveness, Martin proposes to Jon.
(Everyone lives, Martin accidentally proposes and Jon is crying in public.)
________
#lmao follow for more fic recs#ash recs#ash's rec list#ash recs fics#tma fic list#tma fics#jmart#jmartin#jon sims#jonathan sims#martin blackwood#tma fic recs
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because my brain works the way it works, whenever I get into something I immediately shift into crossover mode, so I was thinking, tma and dghda
Dirk Gently characters in the Magnus Archives universe is just way too sad to think about, but tma characters in the Dirk Gently universe on the other hand!
Imagine:
When Jon is a kid, he encounters something dangerous and supernatural, like in canon, and like in canon he can only stand there and watch. But then it keeps happening. He keeps running into these terrible things happening to other people, and there’s never anything he can do to help, and he remembers all these things perfectly.
Then one day, a man comes to his grandmother’s house. Says he’s from the Magnus Institute, and he knows about this kind of thing. Says he can teach Jon about it, if he comes back to the Institute with him. So of course Jon goes, and when they get there Elias (because that’s the man’s name, of course) leaves Jon with a tape recorder while he “takes care of some paperwork” and suggests that Jon might feel better if he puts his stories to tape. So Jon does, and almost immediately, the awfully present memories begin to fade into something more… ordinary.
Jon lives at the institute, and Elias tells him about his powers, about the Universe and being connected to something bigger, and at first Jon finds it comforting. But as he gets older he begins to realize… that Elias isn’t going to teach him control, isn’t going to tell him that he can do more than just observe. That maybe he can’t do anything more than observe. Maybe that just isn’t what he’s for. Well, that’s fine.
So when Jon’s an adult, Elias sends him out of the Institute to record specific weird stuff, although he usually ends up getting sidetracked and kidnapped a lot before he’s able to get back. And he does go back, every time, because, you know, emotional manipulation. BUT THEN he meets Martin. Martin’s connected with something weird somehow, maybe as it turns out A Lot of weird things, but he doesn’t seem to be actually Involved with any of them. And Jon… keeps running into him??? So Jon is like, obviously this is a Suspicious Figure, in need of Further Investigation. And completely fails to realize that he just has a crush on the guy.
This story is called “New Children of the Old God” of course
More disjointed thoughts about this AU under the cut!
I haven’t figured out exactly what what Jon’s deal is as an Agent of the Universe but he’s probably something like a memory backup system? The stuff he gets drawn to involves other people like him and sticky causal situations, and a lot of the time (increasingly often??) situations where Holistics/the Universe aren’t working the way they’re supposed to and things are going wrong. So Jon observes these events and their fallout and records them in a tangible form that can be referred back to later by other people in case something like this happens again.
And he is ONLY supposed to observe, NOT help or interfere. That would corrupt the data! So as long as he stays out of it, he is very very hard to injure, since he does have to be in close proximity to dangerous situations. But there are times when he can’t help but try to help instead of just observe and he usually ends up horribly injured. Elias berates him for doing this, under the guise of being worried for Jon’s safety, but really he just doesn’t want The Mission to be compromised and he wants Jon to do what he says. Because he’s horrible.
In that vein, Elias has set himself up as this kind of Father Figure Mentor and he absolutely ruffles Jon’s hair a lot.
I also haven’t figured out Jon’s exact attitude towards the whole situation at the start of the story but, much like in canon, I think he’s in heavy Denial Mode. He can’t deny that he has powers or that supernatural stuff exists, but he absolutely is framing it as a power that he has, that comes from him, because he doesn’t want to believe that he’s just being pulled around by the Universe and if he doesn’t acknowledge it it’s not real right??? This is just his Job, and he’s going to be a Professional and Do His Job. Which, does require him to act like an insensitive jerk about other people being in danger, But Hey. (Also this attitude probably interferes with him doing his job effectively BUT HEY)
Oh and he does have the whole “compel people to tell the truth” thing. As well as the “sometimes you just Know Stuff” thing, not that it’s very helpful in actually piecing things together. Jon has the general background awareness of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, but not much more in that vein
There are two options for the Institute that I have to decide between. One, every Holistic went through there, like with Blackwing, and just some of them have “graduated” and live somewhere else now or just aren’t affiliated with them anymore. Two, the Institute has only ever had a few Holistics because… they don’t have a military budget lol. I’m leaning towards the second one, because of that and also some other stuff that I’ll get to.
So, the people who I know are at the Institute (in a similar position that the Holistics were at Blackwing): Jon, Gerry, Annabel, formerly Michael Shelley but not anymore. Might be more? I sure don’t know.
Annabel’s deal is the easiest to talk about so I’ll do that first. She’s actually pretty similar to Dirk, minus the detective thing -- she makes sure people and things are where they’re Supposed To Be, doing what they’re Supposed To Do.
She doesn’t do anything as unsubtle as command or compel people, instead she usually has a very good hunch for just what to casually mention or suggest in order to make them have the idea themselves. But she might also be able to control people by whispering to them while they’re asleep, mostly because I think it would be hilarious if she used this power to make Jon do dumb stuff and walk into things when they were kids. I mean, all of this is really subject to change given that we know jack shit about Annabel in canon.
Annabel is also the one who really Gets, like, what they are and what they do and what that means. She is just the kind of person who can fundamentally vibe with the idea that they are really just being pulled around by the Universe for its own designs and they don’t get a say in the matter.
So Michael is hard to figure out because fractals mean something totally different in these two canons. So do I give him a connection to the Backstage of Reality Mandelbrot dealie? Because here’s the thing I’m gonna go on like, a million tangents here but hey everything’s connected right
(Also something I have to figure out is which parts do I take from Michael Shelley and which parts do I take from Michael Spiralentity because we know the latter AN LOT better than the former so like, but on the other hand.... You see what I mean?)
Whatever Michael’s deal is, at some point he gets betrayed or finds out something and completely breaks from the institute and also starts trying to fuck up the Universe. At some point he meets Helen and I guess it’s sort of like a Bart and Ken situation?? Anyway and then at some point the Universe gets Fed Up with Michael’s shenanigans and forcibly rips his powers out of him and gives them to Helen.
But then I was thinking, maybe give the Mandelbrot Powers to Gerry, because I could not for the life of me figure out anything else, and also he has the biggest Hero Of Another Story energy, and also like I said fractals mean something different in the Dirk Gently universe.
But then, like, multiple people can have pararibulitis at once in canon so maybe it’s a moot point! Maybe they can both have Mandelbrot Powers who knows
Anyway
So they all live at the Institute together but they are fairly isolated and don’t see each other much until they’re like, older teens
Also I have to mention at this point: this fic is Jonmartin but! it might also!! be Jongerry!!! Because I’m nothing if not a sucker for “Gerry was Jon’s celebrity crush” and in this case they are actually living in the same building and Jon has absolutely run into Gerry doing inexplicable and slightly concerning Mission-related things in odd corners in the middle of the night, and also keeps hearing all these stories about him, AND THEN, he finally is old enough that Elias lets him go on Missions with the other Holistics his age and he gets to go on one with Gerry and he’s like okay be cool be cool be cool and he psyches himself out so much that he ends up saying something really insensitive and he’s like I Can Never Talk To Him Again, cause he’s a teenager. But, you know, they end up working together often and by the time the story starts they’re actually on pretty good terms. But then Jon’s in denial and Gerry has some complicated feelings about the Institute and he doesn’t really like what they’re doing, and those attitudes clash Bad sometimes.
Martin is also very jealous of the Holistics that Jon grew up with cause like, they grew up together, they probably understand Jon better than he ever will, right? And he’s jealous of Gerry especially but then he deals with his issues and gets over it and then polyamory can happen.
(It goes without saying that Jon is oblivious to ALL of this for a Very Long Time)
I don’t know who came up with “Holistic” but it probably wasn’t Jon, that being said this will not stop him from using it when people point out that he doesn’t actually know what an archivist does. It’s an instant Get Out Of Jail Free card. He can just answer anything with “Well, that’s because I’m a Holistic Archivist”
Jon is Elias’s Favorite but literally no one except him actually cares about that because Gertrude Robinson is also there and she’s just objectively so much cooler.
I’m not sure if Gertrude is Holistic or not? She might be, given her very “for the greater good” attitude that seems to be shared with the Universe (could she be… a Holistic Arsonist). But unlike Jon and his gang she is on pretty much the same level as Elias or at least he wants her to think that.
Dekker might be there too? But he’s definitely not Holistic, he’s a regular guy who just happens to be really badass.
(Much like the Holistic Gang, there might also be other adults there but I haven’t figured that out yet (I mean they’re all adults but some of them weren’t always if that makes sense))
The Deal With Elias: Obviously some kind of body-swapping happened there, there’s body-swapping in Dirk Gently already I have to take advantage of this precedent. Here’s the basic idea that I have currently: Elias Bouchard is kind of a loser. Okay, a big loser. But then one day he encounters something. Something weird. Something that makes him latch on to the idea that there might be Something Bigger. And the Bouchard family is a bit like the Spring family -- they aren’t Holistic or anything like that, but they have seen/done some weird shit, and they do have Resources. Resources Elias can use to, eventually (or maybe not eventually? perhaps even accidentally? definitely accidentally), look into the very Backstage of Reality itself. Resources that would be very useful to Jonah Magnus, who’s been waiting back there for a Very Long Time. Here’s the thing -- Elias Bouchard wanted to play a part in something bigger than himself. To be Important, in a cosmic sense. And Now He Is.
Also, og!Elias absolutely ran into/maybe worked with Gertrude Robinson before The Thing happened, solely because I n e e d to give them Riggins’ and Friedkin’s conversations. Can you imagine
So here’s the thing. I have no clue what Jonah Magnus’s intentions or motivations are in this AU! A possibility: he, like Michael, is Against the Universe, except he’s pretending not to be and in fact might have slightly manipulated Michael into trying to break the Universe? And maybe, when Michael is Replaced By Helen, he also gets taken to the Backstage of Reality (or maybe he was there when it happened and now he has no way to get out) where he meets! none other than og!Elias. I just think that would be fun. But on the other hand why was Jonah Magnus there in the first place? I don’t know, we didn’t get the chance to learn anything about the place before the show was cancelled, so
Another possible plot point: What The Fuck Is Up With Hill Top Road??? Seriously that house is the most Dirk Gently shit in the whole podcast. I mean, I really wouldn’t want to write about it until we learn what the canonical deal with it is but then I definitely for sure will not be finished with this fic by the time we do learn that so
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au fic: an archivist and his monsters
my inaugural prophecy girls post was going to be a picrew of the Earth Kids (the four protags: ashleah, robyn, and siblings tracy and sophie), my og ocs in a lot of ways, but I decided that I wanted to post one of the funnest things I've ever written instead. which doesn’t mean it’s good, either as a short story, a piece of the magnus archives-inspired fanfic, or an intro to my prophecy girls trilogy. it was just a lot of fun, and that’s what I’m trying to have on this blog, so why not???
content warnings: two or three brief mentions of a past suicide, accidental self-harm/blood, brief strong language, general unrepentant butchering of the tma canon and world for the purposes of my own happier take on having monsters for family.
+
For a blissful three months, it had been a normal job. He hadn’t had many of those, so he’d taken it for granted, which he regretted now. He should have spent more time wasting the Institute’s time, lolling in his fancy but well broken-in desk chair, maybe making an 80s-style mixtape with the tape recorders they had to use. You’re too old for that, he’d always thought, when the urge hit him.
He felt like he’d aged a century in the past year. He should have made a mixtape when he’d had the chance.
Doli Lin shouldn’t have been surprised, in hindsight. The whole downward spiral (no horrible pun intended) had started with loss: Stormy’s death had left a vacancy, and it was only natural that he should fill it. Elias’s suggestion had sounded logical, even through a haze of grief. He would finish Stormy’s work, wouldn’t he? Elias had asked. It had been so important to her. Of course, he was no Stormy, but he’d known her best; he was the most equipped to continue what she’d started.
Do the work. Honor Stormy’s death and Loreleaf’s before hers.
Elias hadn’t mentioned that the Archives was less a branch of an academic institution and more of an abattoir. And people who worked in abattoirs never walked out clean. It didn’t matter if Doli Lin had been responsible for any of its horrors or not. Watching his assistants, his friends, get eaten up one by one, slipping through his hands, felt about the same as if he had fed them to the powers himself. Even hearing the secrets of earlier archivists - Stormy’s secrets in particular - made him feel dirty with an inherited contamination. Sometimes he took two, three showers a day, just to feel a little bit clean.
No wonder Stormy had killed herself after what she’d done.
+
It was quiet these days, at least. Robyn had contained the Corruption. They’d stopped the Unknowing. No one was... well. Most of them were dead, if unconventionally. Sophie was the only remaining, living human. But they weren’t gone, was the point.
Long before Elias had gone to prison, Doli Lin had demanded an end to the assistants, to hiring any other Archives workers. Doli Lin and his... team... would handle it all. He would do it himself, if that was what it came to. Elias had been a little too easy to persuade, but then, it always felt like you were holding a losing hand when you talked to him. And Peter Lukas was accommodating, hands-off in every way Doli Lin could have asked for, which was, admittedly, nerve-wracking - things never went so right for him for so long - and he was only hands-on when Doli was willing.
He had to be careful with that. The one time they had almost progressed too far, a new door had opened into the room. And Ashleah, in her suite in the tunnels, saw further every day.
“I was stressed,” Doli Lin said when Ashleah wandered in one day, giving him the stink eye (so to speak), aimless in that way she could be when she was Watching something else. He thought she had about... twelve extra eyes that day? All the same color, so all on the same event. It was certainly nothing so boring as her stealing Doli Lin’s tea. But her human eyes were definitely judgy, if they were being honest with each other. Ashleah usually was.
“I’m stressed, now,” Ashleah said, sipping Doli Lin’s untouched mug of lukewarm puer. The matching eyes at the insides of her wrists blinked slowly and darkened, the hazel going richer and deeper. “Bad taste is bad taste, including when romance is off the table.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“It’s concerning,” Ashleah said. She was still so much of the young woman she’d been - she was still short and plump, still held herself with perfect posture, still had purple streaks at the tips of her black hair - and sometimes, when she wasn’t Watching, when the eyes weren’t there, it was easy to imagine she’d never been changed. She was still just a coworker, less an assistant than a co-archivist. Her intensity and intelligence had quickly outstripped his experience when they first moved to the Archives. That had probably been why it got her first. She’d been all too willing to find out more, and more, and more.
“What?” Doli Lin asked, shuffling at the statements he had to record. He was going to try it with the computer today, see if he could get lucky for once. “Are you shaming me?”
“Not for that,” Ashleah said, her jagged nails tapping the ceramic of his mug. “But for being around him at all, yes. He’s a very powerful avatar, Doli, and not one of us.”
Us, she said, like his new eyes would open any day now. “I’m not trying to convert. I’m trying not to turn at all.”
Her face pinched with pity. “You’re not free real estate anymore, Doli. And loneliness and knowledge don’t always mix well.”
“Says the Watcher living alone in the subterranean tunnels.”
She shrugged. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I? And I have a lunch date.”
“Oh?”
“Surprise location. If he wants me to eat pinecones again I’ll kill him. Even the Eye doesn’t Know how to adapt to pinecones.”
Doli Lin would have smiled, but it all hurt a little too much that day. “Sure.”
Ashleah set the mug down, her dark lipstick marking its rim, and leaned over the desk. All twelve eyes swiveled towards him, and Doli Lin’s skin crawled a bit.
“Don’t tempt the Lonely anymore,” she said. “You’re ours, remember?”
Ours, she said.
Doli Lin swallowed. “You’re making me more stressed,” he said as pointedly as he could.
Ashleah rolled her eyes - just the human ones, thank goodness - and turned, wandering from his office. “You can joke all you want,” she said over her shoulder, “but you’re too vulnerable to the mist for your own good. The Archives can’t protect us if it’s missing its head.”
Us, she said again, and this time, it was different. This time, he could admit she had a point. He did have a small army of monsters to tend.
+
Tracy was pacing. Doli Lin glanced at the scorched footprints she was leaving in the cheap linoleum, decided not to say anything about cleanup, and gestured to the coffee pot questioningly.
Tracy paused just to scowl at him. “I’m not a tool.”
“Some would beg to differ,” Doli Lin said, “not me, just some people.” He pushed the ON button and waited for the coffee to start burbling.
“What happened to your tea?” Tracy asked. “You were literally just in here.”
“Three hours ago,” Doli Lin said. “Ashleah decided she was thirsty.”
“Ugh.” Tracy turned away, her expression spasming, tightening the knot of her arms.
She and Ashleah had been close in a way that defied explanation. It must have been the camaraderie between two people with opposite but equally unpleasant personalities. Ashleah’s leaving had hit them all hard - it had been the first one in two years, and the first, period, where they had to watch the change in front of their eyes. Tracy, though, found it intolerable. It would have been easy to let Ashleah go, to scorch the earth and refuse to acknowledge that she had ever been there. But it was impossible to let go when Ashleah was still here, monstrously remade. Tracy hadn’t been allowed the dignity of forgetting.
Ashleah kept trying to reconnect with Tracy, and always ended up with a bandage around a new burn for her trouble.
“So,” Doli Lin said after a moment. “Have you made any progress?”
Tracy licked her lips. They were always dry now, and she claimed that any lip balm melted on contact. “I’m going tomorrow.”
“You’re… tomorrow,” Doli Lin repeated, and was proud of the fact that it didn’t sound like the breath had been kicked out of him. “That’s... soon.”
“Not soon enough. She could be dead already.” Tracy shook her head, running both hands through her gold hair, dragging at her scalp with her sharp nails. “I’ll do it without an anchor.”
What. “Sophie--”
“She’s not going to be here.”
Doli Lin stared at her. “Seriously? You’re not going to tell her?”
Tracy glanced at him like he was crazy. Which, fair. “If I don’t come out, then she’ll go in. She’s untouched so far. I’m not going to let something like - like - that get her.” She wet her lips again. “Give her the day off.”
“She’ll want to know why.”
“Lie.”
“I’m not going to lie for this - this - it’s not even a plan, Tracy.”
Tracy threw up her hands. On the counter at his elbow, the steam in the coffee pot thickened, turning opaque white. “You’ve kept one whole assistant human, and you want to put her in danger?”
Doli Lin tried not to flinch and failed. He looked towards the cabinets, picking a new mug with careful attention. “I just don’t think cutting her off from her sister is going to keep her human, and I don’t think having to tell her her sister’s lost in the Buried on an impatient whim is going to help matters.”
“God.” Tracy started pacing again. “I didn’t ask for your opinion. Just keep her out, okay?” She stared down at the floor, then shook her head, a flush high in her cheeks. “Take care of her.”
+
“You’ve got to talk to her. I don’t think she has an actual plan. I think she’s just going to--” Doli Lin mimed a diving motion with his hand.
Robyn blinked at him. “You think she’s gonna... drive a car into a pool?”
Doli Lin put his head on the table. “You know what I mean.”
Robyn no longer had an official job at the Archives, being legally dead, but they lived there most of the time since they didn’t have anywhere else to go, being legally dead. This was one of their off-weeks, though, which was a compromise they had struck with the bees. The bees liked the outdoors; Robyn liked sleeping in a bed and not having to wear a trench coat, scarf, and hat everywhere they went. With some creative scheduling, they made it work. It wasn’t the worst outcome the Prentiss attack could have had, all things considered.
It wasn’t the best, either, but Doli Lin was trying to learn to live with it, the way Robyn had. So to speak.
This was Robyn’s favorite outdoor cafe, due to the abundance of flowers on the veranda. (Maybe it was the bees’ favorite? He’d have to ask.) Enough of the bees had slipped away that Robyn was able to unwind their scarf and take off their hat, fanning their face with the brim. It was impossible to tell, now, that they were more beehive than human; the burrow-holes healed over almost immediately after the bees left them to pollinate, leaving only silvery, thread-like scars behind. It was beautiful, actually: Robyn with their silky braid and honey-colored eyes, shimmering in the sun with a thousand little scars.
They were happy like this. Doli Lin had been trying to take that to heart ever since the attack.
“Yeah,” Robyn said, smiling and sipping their tea - floral and honey-sweetened, of course, “I got it. I mean, I don’t get it, she’s crazy, but I know what you mean. I can come in tomorrow morning early, before she tries anything. I think We’re all satisfied for the week, anyway.”
Doli Lin nodded. “She might listen to you. She’s not even waiting to figure out an anchor.”
Robyn cocked their head. “She can’t melt off a finger or something?”
Without really meaning to, Doli Lin made a noise. Robyn winced in apology. “Sorry,” they said, “it’s just--”
“No, no, I should be used to this by now. You’re right. She might not have even thought of it.”
Robyn’s smile turned into a pleased grin. “She seems pretty... wait for it... hot-headed lately.”
Doli Lin groaned. “You’re fired.”
“Desolation pun number two!”
Robyn had learned to hide the deep purr in their throat when they spoke, but it was impossible to mask it in their laughter. It was the least terrifying avatar laugh Doli Lin had heard yet - like a cat purring beneath their vocal chords. He managed a smile for them.
“I just… I know how much it means to her,” Robyn added, their amusement fading. “But she can’t just jump into something she might not jump out of again. Especially considering Sophie. They’ve both been--”
They paused, and the nearby swarm of bees began to buzz a little louder. Robyn’s attention snapped to them, eyes narrowing as their pupils swelled, swallowing up the whites and then the hazel irises. The resulting facets of pure black glittered in the sunlight. “Something’s coming.”
Doli Lin was instantly on edge, before a familiar soft, shy squeak came from somewhere beyond them, in the alley on the near side of the cafe. He leaned his chair back on its hind legs to check, and saw a familiar sage-green door swing open where a door had never been.
“We’re safe,” he said, relaxing, before he frowned and added, “Well, maybe. Depends on if Ashleah wanted to eat here.”
Mollified, Robyn shushed the bees as they swarmed back towards them, and they unfolded a pair of dark sunglasses to cover their eyes while they returned to normal.
Even though he had been expecting it, Doli Lin jumped when he felt a cold hand settle at the back of his neck. A moment later, a sweep of staticky hair fell over his shoulder as Loreleaf leaned against him, resting his head against Doli Lin’s arm.
“Not-Stormy,” he sighed, “the Watcher has no taste and I hate her.”
“Shut up,” Ashleah said, coming around to the side of Doli Lin’s and Robyn’s table with an extra chair. Robyn interrupted her before she could sit down, jumping to their feet and throwing their arms around Ashleah’s shoulders. The embrace was fondly tolerated, if not returned. “I still have a stomach, you know,” she finished, when Robyn drew back. “I need person food, not deer food.”
They were both behaving: they’d chosen perfectly human-seeming forms for this date, no extra eyes or fractal skin. Loreleaf pressed his face into Doli Lin’s shoulder, exasperated. The contact sent chilly shocks up and down Doli Lin’s spine, but he sat through it. “She has a point,” he said.
Straightening, Loreleaf went to sit against the leg of Ashleah’s chair, stretching out his legs as a potential hazard for their waiter. “I hate you too.”
Doli Lin didn’t trust himself to respond.
Robyn gave Loreleaf a distrustful look, then asked Ashleah, “Is it stable enough for... public places?”
“Stability is kind of the opposite of the point,” Ashleah said dryly, and took her seat. Loreleaf tried to push the chair out from under her, but Ashleah must have Seen it coming. She grabbed the chair arm before it could slide too far away and dropped into it with an element of spiteful grace. Far from being disappointed, Loreleaf smiled, all teeth that looked a little sharper than they should have, and Ashleah stroked the top of his head. “Asshole.”
Robyn grunted and sat back down, too, as the agitated bees began to return to them, crawling over their forearms and neck.
It had taken weeks of working together - weeks of screaming fights, of finding Ashleah covered in mud, scratches, and blazing furious eyes after a time in the Woods, of migraines that rippled out from doors that appeared in walls and clapped open and shut like hungry mouths - but Ashleah had helped Loreleaf change his clothes. It didn’t sound like much of a milestone, but Loreleaf - or the creature wearing his body and memories - had spent months in the clothes he’d been sacrificed in: thick winter jacket and pants more shreds than anything, boots worn to nothing, gloves that showed frostbitten skin beneath. Ashleah had eventually gotten sick of it. She’d bought an oversized flannel and loose jeans from a thrift store and bullied their Spiral monster until it was human enough to wear clothes of its own again.
That was, maybe, the first time Doli Lin thought it might be Loreleaf deep underneath, not just a Fear wearing the skin of his family, someone he should have protected. (He should have seen the signs, before it happened. He should have shot Stormy himself - maybe not fatally, but in the leg, or the forearm, to bring her to her senses.) He’d hugged Ashleah tight that day, and when he heard her sniffle, he pretended he didn’t hear it. She deserved that much, at least, for restoring a little bit of what Stormy had stolen.
They were coordinating today, Ashleah in her black-and-purple plaid dress and black tights, Loreleaf in his black-and-green plaid flannel and black jeans. Her hair was as neat and shiny and perfectly styled as his was tangled, falling almost to his waist. They didn’t sync in any other way - her crisp sense of focus clashed with his disorienting lack of presence - but they had an unmistakable orbit between themselves, and it was hard to miss the way she watched him, with all her vast attentions, or how his jagged edges crystallized and became beautiful the nearer he was to her.
Ashleah nudged Doli Lin’s chair with her foot. “Order for us, won’t you?” she said. “Surprise me.”
“Can I surprise you?” he asked, picking up the menu again.
Ashleah showed her arms and pulled up the cuff of her leggings, displaying her eyelessness, except where they were supposed to be. “No powers or hungers or quirks. We’re using self control. We’re being good. Aren’t we?”
Loreleaf gave a sigh of reluctant agreement and picked himself up a little more, though he was still slouching, the side of his head resting against Ashleah’s knee. Robyn made a noise of skepticism and sipped their tea; they didn’t trust the thing Loreleaf had come back as, and Doli Lin doubted they ever would, no matter how much Robyn trusted Ashleah.
Doli Lin made their second order, and the waiter gave the two party-crashers only the briefest of uncertain looks. Once he was gone, Doli Lin filled Ashleah and Loreleaf in on Tracy’s plan, or lack thereof.
“Sounds like her” was Loreleaf’s pronouncement, as he reached up to steal one of Ashleah’s sweet potato fries.
“I knew she was planning something,” Ashleah said, smacking his hand, “but this is stupider than I would have given her credit for. She didn’t even ask me.”
Big surprise, Doli Lin thought, and knew from Ashleah’s irritated, cat-with-its-ears-back look that she’d picked up on the thought.
“It’s been almost two months,” Robyn said. “Of course she’s getting desperate.”
“Desperate doesn’t need to mean stupid,” Ashleah said tartly. “I’ll come with in the morning. We’re not losing her, too.”
Robyn’s nose wrinkled slightly. “Are you gonna try to help her or just tell her to change her mind? Because one of those things is going to get you a lot of first-degree burns.”
Ashleah picked her hamburger apart layer by layer, until it was laid across the plate, dissected to her satisfaction. Then she started nibbling on the bottom bun. “Depends on if she sees sense.”
“Maybe don’t start the conversation with ‘See sense or I’ll stop you,’” Robyn suggested as a bee landed on the tip of their nose. They didn’t notice.
“Mmm. I can see how that would frustrate her,” Ashleah said without a trace of irony. She tapped the top of Loreleaf’s head and handed down a slice of tomato covered in mustard. “Could you open a door into the coffin?” she asked him.
Loreleaf studied the tomato slice in his hand. “I don’t know,” he said. “I could try. It feels like it would... hurt.” His eyes lit up. “Might be fun.”
“Don’t do that,” Doli Lin said quickly, “please.”
Shrugging, Loreleaf took a small, delicate bite out of the tomato. “I could close a door on her hand… that would make an anchor.”
Ashleah laughed. Robyn’s nose wrinkled again, even though they’d suggested Tracy melting off a finger.
“If Jat is alive at all,” Ashleah said, regaining her equanimity, “we need to get her back, but not at Tracy’s expense. Why not just have Sophie for an anchor?”
“She doesn’t want Sophie there.”
Ashleah rolled her eyes and crunched on the piece of lettuce. “God, she’s such an idiot.”
“Well,” Doli Lin said, reaching for his coffee, “I don’t see how we can fail, with this supportive, understanding rapport we’ve got going for us. She’s sure to hear us out.”
“It’ll be fine,” Robyn said, giving Ashleah and Loreleaf a sour look. “I’ll come and tutor these two beforehand. Someone has to be there who knows how to talk to people.”
“’People,’” Loreleaf said softly, with added air quotes, and made a quiet buzzing noise. Ashleah almost choked on a piece of hamburger patty.
Robyn gave them irritated looks, and a moment later, the two both yelped out loud, Ashleah leaping to her feet and shaking her dress in a mild panic. But the two bees had already drifted back into Robyn’s grip without penetrating skin, except with their stingers.
“That kills them,” Ashleah accused, pointing at Robyn with all the drama of a courtroom drama lawyer.
Robyn scoffed. “Like I’d waste bees on you two. Mine are special, thanks.”
Loreleaf put his wounded wrist to his mouth, looking stung.
Doli Lin drank deeply of his coffee. “We’re all going to be fine,” he murmured to himself. “All just fine.”
+
If Doli Lin concentrated very hard, and spoke sternly to the thing in his head that goaded him to look more and deeper and closer, he could feel what was going on in Tracy’s and Sophie’s apartment without actually eavesdropping or seeing them. He could Know that Tracy hadn’t told Sophie about her plan (loosely speaking) but that she was acting weird, anyway, and that Sophie had picked up on it, being smarter about people and especially about her big sister than Tracy ever gave her credit for. She knew something was up, and she didn’t trust Tracy’s attempts to soothe her worry, and if Tracy wasn’t careful, Sophie would--
A wave of nausea crashed over him, and he stumbled to the trash can under his desk. Nothing happened, unfortunately, but he let out an exasperated sigh as the migraine started flashing in his eyes, and resigned himself to a sleepless night.
After a few minutes of resting against the trash can, weathering the sickness in his stomach, he heard a quiet rattle, close to his ear. He jumped and almost knocked the can over, then turned and relaxed, if just a little.
“I got it from Ashleah,” Loreleaf said, still holding out the bottle of migraine medicine. “She has them a lot, too.”
Doli Lin weighed the pros and cons, then took the bottle. “Thank you,” he said without opening it. “Did you... ask her, or did you just steal it?”
Loreleaf was wearing pajamas now, much too big for him. He collapsed in Doli Lin’s abandoned desk chair and said, woundedly, “I asked.”
“Just making sure.” Doli Lin swallowed two pills dry and heaved himself to his feet, fighting dizziness. “Oof. Well... thanks again.”
Loreleaf spun the chair from side to side. ���Are you dismissing me, Not-Stormy?”
“I really wish you wouldn’t call me that. And no, I’m just getting ready to go home.”
“No, you’re not.”
Doli Lin blinked. “Excuse me?”
Still spinning, Loreleaf pointed to the sleeping bag in the corner, not yet rolled out but covered in extra blankets and a couple pillows, then to the toiletry bag on a nearby chair, sitting atop a set of pajamas.
“Okay, well.” Doli Lin scratched the back of his neck. “Most of us live here now, anyway, so...”
Loreleaf laughed, chewing on the knuckle of one finger. It was such a soft laugh, and sounded so close. “I know lies when I hear them now, Not-Stormy... You’re going to sleep near the coffin, just in case Tracy comes in early. You’re going to hope that the lonely man isn’t here tonight, because you’re on watch duty, and don’t have time for distractions this evening. You’re going to put cream that doesn’t work on the scars from the Stranger because you’re tired of remembering that month alone. And you’re not going to sleep.”
Doli Lin stared at him, then rolled his shoulders and turned to the sleeping bag, fiddling meaninglessly with the blankets and pillows. “And you said you hated the Ceaseless Watcher.”
This time, Loreleaf didn’t protest, didn’t say that it had been Loreleaf that hated the Watcher, that It wasn’t Him anymore.
“You can’t spend so long here without picking up a few tricks,” he murmured instead.
Shiftlessly, Doli Lin moved to the pajamas and the bag. “That’s not creepy at all. I’m going to get ready for bed.”
“Can I stay?” Loreleaf asked suddenly, without making eye contact. “With you? By the coffin?”
Doli Lin almost dropped the bag. “Stay?” he repeated. “Why?”
“I want to... help.” Loreleaf gnawed at his finger again, and Doli Lin saw blood well up and drip down his hand. “Tracy and Jatatyla... need to come back.”
“Yeah, but - hey, stop that.” Swallowing his nerves, Doli Lin went closer and took Loreleaf’s hand, pulling it from his mouth and his sharp, bright teeth. “God, Loreleaf.” The gash was a couple inches long, deep and ragged, bright with blood that was red enough but didn’t look quite normal, though Doli Lin couldn’t have said how. There was already a runnel of it down to Loreleaf’s elbow. Doli Lin grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on his desk and held them to the gash, trying to stem the bleeding. He could never be sure how human the avatars in the Institute were, how blood loss would affect them at any given time. If Loreleaf had been more... Distorted, if he’d been hard to look at, and if it had been impossible to hold his hand like this because it was too heavy and clawed, he would have been far less worried. Might not have even bothered to tend to it. But Loreleaf’s hand felt small, and cold, and trembling, and human. And bloody.
“Can’t stop hurting yourself even in this state, huh,” Doli Lin said, putting more pressure on the tissue.
“I learned from the best.”
Ouch. Doli Lin gave him a quick look, then said, “Keep holding that down, okay?”
Loreleaf nodded, still curled over his bloody hand.
Doli Lin hesitated. “You... you can stay, if you want.”
His head lifted, eyes wide and glowing amber, almost unbelieving.
“Just let me get ready for bed,” Doli Lin went on, wiping the blood on his jeans - they were already so stained, what was a little more? “And then we’ll both head on down.”
Loreleaf smiled, slow and dawning. “I’m not lying,” he said, and pain crinkled the corners of the smile. “Everyone thinks I am... but I’m not. About helping, I mean... It wants me to lie. But I won’t. About this.”
“I… I know,” Doli Lin said, even though he most certainly did not. He was just going to have to hope. He patted Loreleaf’s injured hand once - it was the same one with Robyn’s bee sting on it, he noticed - and straightened again. “Just stay here. I’ll be right back.”
+
Regardless of what he or Loreleaf thought, Doli Lin did end up sleeping in the large storage room where they kept the coffin.
It was nicer than he’d expected. He was so tired, and the pills took the edge off his migraine, so when he piled three blankets on top of the sleeping bag and curled up tight, he drifted off almost instantly. It didn’t hurt that Loreleaf was humming, a slight echo to his voice that occasionally turned into the words of a song Doli Lin couldn’t possibly recognize. It was a nice way to end the evening.
What wasn’t nice was being woken by someone yelling at him.
“Did you do this? Doli L-- wake up! What the fuck!” A light kick to his ribs. “Doli Lin! Get up! Did you do this? Did you put her up to this?!”
Dazed, he struggled to a sitting position, rubbing his eyes in the sudden bright light. Someone had turned on the overheads, and he assumed that someone was Tracy, since she was the only one in the room besides him. He blinked up at her, uncomprehending, and she glared back, waves of heat rolling from her body.
“What,” he said groggily.
Tracy jabbed a burning finger towards the coffin, and Doli Lin followed it. Then he stiffened and scrambled to his feet, bracing himself on the wall. The coffin was open. The coffin was open, and Tracy was still here.
“Okay,” he said, “we can fix this. Probably. Maybe. Once I know the problem.”
“You better fix it,” she said, and pushed a scrap of paper into his chest. She was incandescent with rage, her blonde curls wild and untamed, her nightgown singed at the straps and hems. Some of the decorative flower buds had burned away, leaving black-edged holes around the neckline. Ash flecked her pale skin wherever it was visible. Doli Lin somehow always forgot that she was the same height as he was until her temper went off. “Read that and then tell me you didn’t tell her.”
Doli Lin recognized the handwriting as soon as he looked.
We’re each other’s anchor. It’ll all be okay. Me and your gal pal will be back soon.
soph xo xo xo xo xo xo xo
ps don’t be a bitch about this!! xo xo xo xo xo xo xo xo xo xo
He resisted the urge to point out Sophie’s postscript, since it was a little late, and probably wouldn’t help at all. Tracy was still waiting for an answer, trembling, and there was an uncontrollable terror behind the anger in her eyes.
“I’ll go,” he said before he could think about it. “I’ll - you can burn a finger off for me, and I’ll go in for both of them--”
A sage-green door swung open two feet from him, and Ashleah stormed in, her limbs swarmed with eyes, a tiny halo of blinding light around each one. It hurt to look at her, like looking into a sun that looked back.
“You will not,” she announced, flinging the door shut behind her. “I thought we’d agreed to not be stupid and impulsive.” Behind her, Loreleaf barely caught the door before it slammed in his face.
Tracy snarled slightly. “You talked about this without me?”
“Yes,” Ashleah said, taking Tracy by the wrist and dragging her a foot or two away from Doli Lin, “and we decided that it wasn’t worth it to lose you and Jat. We didn’t tell Sophie about any of it because, regardless of how stupid your wishes are, we respected them. If Sophie figured it out it’s because you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
Tracy tried to free her wrist, but Ashleah wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t stop looking at Tracy with every single exposed eye. Then Tracy flexed her fingers, and her wrist beneath Ashleah’s grasp began to glow a hot orange-white.
Ashleah rolled her eyes. All of them, this time. “Dumb jock,” she said, continuing to hold on. “You can burn your own hand off at the wrist or you can stop being a child and listen.”
“Listen to what?” Tracy demanded. “That I should just let both of them go? You want me to abandon them?”
“No.” Ashleah finally let go and approached Doli Lin. He couldn’t stop staring. He’d never seen her with so many eyes. When she held out her hand, he placed Sophie’s note in her palm.
Ashleah crumpled it up without reading it and tossed it over her shoulder. The eyes all over her turned the same shade of green as Sophie’s, and when she spoke, it was in Sophie’s voice, younger and higher and more purely human than any of them: “We’re each other’s anchors.”
Tracy shuddered and put a hand over her mouth. The first few tears made it no more than an inch down her face before they evaporated with a hiss of steam.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Ashleah said, her eyes returning to their familiar deep brown. She reached out to touch Tracy’s wrist again, and this time, Tracy didn’t fight it. “We just have to wait and trust her. Trust them.”
Tracy looked back at the coffin, one hand still covering her mouth.
“She’s been gone so long,” she whispered.
“I know.” Ashleah eased even closer, until she was close enough to take the hand from Tracy’s face, keeping her from burning the skin around her nose and lips even more. “But maybe that’s just the time it takes. Besides, most of us are here now, anyway. Sophie can’t ask for a better anchor than this.”
Tracy slumped slightly, and then she was collapsing into a sitting position, a marionette unstrung. She put her face in both hands, but this time, there was no faint sizzle, no terrible smell of burning skin.
Ashleah sat beside her much more gracefully, tucking her legs beneath her and guiding Tracy until she was leaning against Ashleah’s arm, exhausted. Then Ashleah glanced over her shoulder at Doli Lin and gave him a thumbs up, looking pleased with herself.
Doli Lin let himself fall back against the wall, bewildered and still half-asleep, but mostly grateful that he hadn’t had to burn a finger off.
“She lives in the tunnels,” he murmured to Loreleaf. “You could have just gone to get her on foot.”
“Ashleah says it’s six minutes, thirty-nine seconds to walk from the tunnels up to here.” Loreleaf shrugged. “It was quicker to take the Woods.”
“Did you see Sophie? Were you awake when she came in?”
“Oh... yes.”
“You did?” Doli Lin exclaimed, then forced himself to lower his voice. Tracy didn’t need a reason to go off again. “Why didn’t you stop her? You said you wanted to help.”
“Sophie has a better chance,” Loreleaf said, as if this was common knowledge. “And she was… nice, when she asked me.”
Doli Lin stared at him. “You didn’t even think of waking me up?”
With a vaguely horrified echo of a laugh, Loreleaf said, “You were sleeping so well... how could I?”
“Oh, my god.” Doli Lin rubbed both hands down his face.
For a long few minutes, there was silence. Ashleah and Tracy watched the coffin, though Ashleah took a moment off to text Robyn. Loreleaf finally came out of the door, shut it, and let it vanish; the fractal dizziness left his eyes and he yawned a moment later, the odd, invisible colors fading from his skin and leaving it normal and human. Doli Lin slid down the wall, back to his sleeping bag, and resisted the urge to leave the girls to their vigil and go back to bed.
“I think it would feel like asphyxiation,” Loreleaf murmured, setting his head to one side as he studied the coffin. A smile touched his mouth. “I would like to try it. See how much it hurts.”
Doli Lin kicked his ankle, unwilling to listen to such talk. Loreleaf sucked in a startled breath and looked baleful.
Doli Lin dozed, off and on. He kept trying to check the time when he roused but his phone was gone. He wondered if Sophie had taken it, if Ashleah or Tracy would get a call from his number any minute, Sophie using their voices like a crumb trail. He fell asleep again.
The fourth time he woke, it was because Robyn had joined them and sat on Tracy’s other side, slipping an arm around her waist. The bees were sleeping inside, and Robyn’s skin was pitted with their holes. It surprised him how little he noticed it now, and how willingly Tracy leaned into her, even with the bees just below the surface.
He dozed again, his migraine sharpening until he drifted off.
+
“Get it open!” Ashleah yelled, breaking Doli Lin out of his sixth sleep, “get it open - I can see something--”
Tracy and Robyn leapt into action, jumping to their feet and dragging the doors of the coffin wide open. The wooden boards thunked heavily against the coffin’s sides, and Doli Lin heard the voice of the force, the entity inside it just as clearly as he’d heard Loreleaf singing. He pressed back against the wall, his stomach turning again.
“There’s nothing,” Tracy said, leaning into the coffin, reaching into it, “there’s nothing there, they’re not--”
“Stop, stop, stop!” Robyn dragged Tracy a few inches from the coffin’s emptiness, pulling her arm from it. “What are you trying to do, follow them after - holy shit, Tracy--”
Where there had been nothing in the empty wooden coffin, there was suddenly churning, hungry, burbling earth, gallons and gallons of it bubbling up like volcano lava, or stomach acid. Tracy and Robyn both staggered away as it boiled over, a pot of water set on a stove too long, earth spilling across the ground in thin searching little rivulets, away from the coffin a little too purposefully. Loreleaf moved quicker than Doli Lin and scattered them with one frostbite-scarred foot.
“Help them,” Ashleah commanded, finally approaching the coffin herself and digging both arms into the dirt, “come on - Tracy, come on--”
Tracy blinked, then almost shoved Ashleah out of the way to dig through the dirt herself, small, broken, animal noises escaping her throat. Doli Lin got the sense to join them, and then all four of them were ringed around the coffin, pulling handfuls and armfuls of dirt free, trying to uncover what was buried and moving beneath.
A trickle of sweat was just rolling down Doli Lin’s neck when Tracy screamed and heaved backwards, clutching two hands in her own: one small and even paler than hers, and one burn-scarred and white-knuckled with desperation. Tracy made another wordless cry and pulled, holding the two hands close to her chest. Robyn and Ashleah and Doli Lin and even Loreleaf dug near where the two arms were buried, shouting encouragement, grabbing handfuls of clothing or sides or shoulders, getting a hold of anything they could, but it was Tracy who held them steady even when the coffin tried to swallow them back down, and it was Tracy who finally fell backwards, sprawled on the ground, and pulled two dirt-soaked, gasping figures with her.
Doli Lin drew back, trembling himself, and slammed his side of the coffin shut; Robyn did the same on the other side, bees swarming around her face and shoulders. He fumbled for the chain they’d used to lock it shut, but before he could do anything with it, the coffin was sliding downwards, down an opening in the floor that hadn’t been there before. It gained momentum and toppled into the hole, skidding down a steep green hill in a mist-strangled forest.
Loreleaf reached between them to pull the door in the floor shut, and it vanished as soon as his fingertips left the handle.
“Good idea,” Doli Lin wheezed, reaching over to squeeze Loreleaf’s forearm. Loreleaf smiled, almost shy, as warmth touched his cheeks.
Over on the floor, Tracy struggled to hold Sophie and Jat close at the same time, all but re-smothering them in her arms. Sophie extracted herself soon enough, coughing but laughing, her crimson hair tangled but still visibly red, all her dirt-stains superficial at best. She looked inordinately pleased with herself, and as soon as she was free of Tracy’s grasp, she accepted the high-five that Robyn offered and said, “I told her she was my anchor.”
Jat didn’t try to get away. Jat made herself as small as possible, fitting herself against Tracy’s chest as Tracy pulled her into her lap and wrapped her up in both arms like she’d never let go again. Tracy was crying again, and all Jat could do was whisper Tracy’s name, their foreheads pressed together, noses bumping.
Getting herself under control, Tracy took Jat’s face in both hands and pushed her away a few inches, wiping the dirt and mud from beneath Jat’s eyes. “Don’t ever,” she said roughly, “do that again, do you understand me? Don’t ever - don’t you ever leave me like that again.”
Jat looked like she’d been drowned in mud. Her hair was mud, her skin was mud, her clothes were mud. It was all over Tracy, all over her nightgown, in her fingernails and on her eyelashes. Neither of them cared. Jat whimpered at the gentle touches across her face and shook her head hard, unable to respond. She bent her head, tucking it under Tracy’s chin, pressing her face into the hollow of Tracy’s neck, and just breathed, clutching Tracy like...
Like an anchor, Doli Lin thought.
“Shock blankets,” Robyn said, “right?”
Sophie wrinkled her dirty nose, then blew it on her sleeve. Ignoring Robyn’s grimace, she said, “Nah, showers. The Buried is a nasty freak. I’ve got dirt everywhere. I mean, everywhere.”
“Ew,” Robyn muttered, as a bee nuzzled back through a hole in their skin.
Ashleah moved to Doli Lin’s side, where he stood trying to be awake enough to take everything in, to figure out what needed doing. “Happy ending, for once,” she said.
“For once,” he agreed, dazed. “Should we... carry them to the showers, or get some food ready first, or--”
“Doli.” Ashleah nudged him with her elbow, then winced: she’d smushed an eye against his shirt. “Go back to sleep. I think we can handle it from here. They just need a long bath and a bed.”
“No, no, I need to... I can heat up some soup, start the coffee, at least.”
Her lips quirked. “All right. Fine. Let’s see if you can stay awake ten minutes after making coffee. Whoever loses has to tell Peter Lukas, to his face, that he looks like the Gorton Fish Sticks man.”
He gave her a sideways look, as the others started to get Tracy and Jat reluctantly to their feet. “Kind of low, don’t you think?”
“I think I deserve it,” Ashleah said. “Go on, now, off to the breakroom, shoo. Prove me wrong.”
+
He had a bit of a hard time explaining himself the next time Peter found him, but at least Peter had a sense of humor. And it was almost worth it, to see the broad, smug, genuine smile on Ashleah’s face when she found him slumped on the floor by the coffee pot, halfway to REM already. He should have known better than to bet against his monsters.
#story: prophecy girls#fics + drabbles#but also#fanfic + aus#still figuring out my tagging system here and trying desperately to NOT let this get into either an official tag or a general writing tag :'
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