Chapter Text
Sasha (Research): Hey Dave, you have fish right
Me: Uhh yes?
Sasha (Research): Great see you tomorrow
David doesn’t hate his job most days. Not even Mondays, usually.
Sure, he works in probably the least reputable academic institution in England. And yeah, the library could stand to be updated a little bit. Jonah Magnus’s values of tradition or whatever probably don’t mean that everything needs to operate like it’s the 1800’s. But the pay and benefits are good, he gets PTO, and his coworkers… Okay, never mind his coworkers. But the point is, David is perfectly happy with the way his career is going.
So when Sasha James from the research department drops a tank on his desk, he’s willing to withhold judgement for the time being. It can’t be that bad.
Sasha is really nice actually, and David’s thought about maybe getting to know her better more than once. It seems like every time he gets that idea in his head, though, Stoker’s always a step behind her. It’s like he knows. If David weren’t so used to Mr. Bouchard and his uncanny instincts, he would probably find it pretty creepy.
“David?”
He blinks. Oh yeah, Sasha is talking. Something about whatever’s in this little travel sized tank. “Sorry, Sasha. You know this probably shouldn’t be in the library, right? Because of all the water?”
Sasha sticks out her lower lip in a pout. “I was being careful! I wouldn’t risk hurting this little guy.” She flutters her fingertips along the top of the container, sending ripples through the water and making its occupant skitter excitedly.
David peers into the water and promptly chokes. “Sasha?”
“Mhm?”
“That’s a horseshoe crab.”
“Eeyup.”
“You’re aware that they’re considered a vulnerable species and really shouldn’t be kept as pets?”
Sasha narrows her eyes at him. “Funny, that’s almost verbatim from the article I read after I sobered up and realized that I probably shouldn’t have access to a debit card while plotting revenge.”
David sighs. “I don’t want to know how you were planning to use this little guy, but I’m assuming you decided to not do that and now you’re stuck with him. Enter: David?”
“Smart man! When faced with an aquatic dilemma, who else would I turn to but you? From what you’ve told us about your home aquarium setup, you’ve got to be an expert!”
In spite of himself, David feels a blush creep up his neck. Well, it’s not the kind of attention he necessarily wanted from Sasha but at this point? He’ll take what he can get. And yeah, he is proud of his tank setup! He’s the kind of person who winces when he sees a beta fish in a bowl; fish need and deserve way more space than that, and it takes a lot of time and care to do it right.
He can’t help but grin under the praise, putting on an air of humility. “Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.”
“It is,” Sasha insists. “Come on David, I know you’ve got a solution to all of this, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry Sasha, but I’m just not set up for one of these,” he explains. “They’re hardy as anything in the wild, but their track record in captivity is… not great. Not without near constant care, anyway. If I had the space and the means, I’d take him in a heartbeat! But my flat’s only so big, and with me being at work all day…”
Sasha looks sadder and sadder the more he says, so he just… stops. Backtracks a little bit. “B-But I do know a guy at SEA LIFE!” he says quickly. “I can ask how their population’s doing, see if they would have the space for another? Then we would know for sure that he’s properly cared for!”
Sasha claps her hands excitedly and beams at him. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Dave! I’ll just let the expert take it from here, then.”
“Yeah, I- wait, what?”
“You’re a real lifesaver!” Sasha calls over her shoulder, and the office door swings shut with a click.
David blinks. He looks down into the tiny tank, where the horseshoe crab has nestled into the scant dusting of sand resting at the bottom. “Alright then buddy, I guess it’s just you and me for now. Wish I had some food for you or… anything, actually. I know you eat… hm, let’s see, algae, definitely. Small things, like clams or shrimp or…”
His eye wanders across the floor as he thinks out loud, and there in the corner David spots something. It’s small, maybe just an inch long, and he's honestly surprised he even noticed it. It’s probably the color- the silver of its segmented body shines against the dark green of the carpet. “Alright, worm for lunch it is!” he declares.
David approaches the squirmy little thing with caution and his least favorite pen, scooping it up and carefully taking it over to the tank. It sinks with a satisfying plop and he watches with glee as his new acquisition gobbles it up.
As a lover of many scaly, slimy undersea creatures, David likes to think of himself as pretty unflappable when it comes to gross stuff. But worms? Ugh. The one thing he just doesn’t get about fish is how much they love those creepy little things. Give him a sea slug any day, but leave the worms at home.
“Ugh.” He shudders at his own thoughts. Worms in his house? God, he might actually die. At the very least he would do something drastic, like live in the library until they were all gone. “Alright, enough of that. I’ll get you better food later, Harry, but I need to work now.”
He takes Harry’s continued dismemberment of the worm as a tacit agreement, as well as acceptance of his new name. Hey, David never claimed to be all that creative. He’s a librarian, and that kind of stuff is what poets are for.
In a record-shattering streak, a second knock sounds on David’s door. He looks up to see a very familiar face. “Martin!” he exclaims with a grin. “How’s the glamorous life of research? Did you finally come to your senses and ask to get transferred back here?”
His former colleague shakes his head mutely and pulls up a chair to David’s desk. Without even commenting on Harry, Martin scoots the tank aside and lays his head down with a long suffering sigh. “I fucked up.”
Oh, David recognizes that tone. He quietly pulls a sweet from his secret illegal candy stash and passes it over. “How bad?”
Martin raises his head just enough to pop the candy in his mouth before letting it fall back to the desk with a thunk. “Jonny D’Ville is my coworker and Tim just told him I’ve had a crush on him for years.”
David mentally tacks on more sweets to his shopping list, right after the food for Harry. He was there for Martin’s Mechanisms fanaticism and the ensuing devastation when they disbanded. He remembers the January of the Depression Hoodie. He whistles low in sympathy and pushes another sweet across the desk. “Not the Jon who was such an arse to you last week?”
“The very same.”
“And that was your fuck up because…?”
Martin makes a pained sound and grips his head with both hands. “Because none of us realized that he was the same guy! Or, Sasha did. But Sasha knows everything, so why am I even surprised? I’ve been making a fool of myself for over a week and now I can never look him in the eye again. I’m screwed!”
Well, David wouldn’t say that. He taps his fingers absently on the side of Harry’s tank and thinks. “Well, how did he react when Tim told him? It couldn’t have been that bad.”
“He-” Martin blinks rapidly, mouth hanging half open. “He didn’t, actually. We all kind of brushed by that part because it was right after that part that we realized who he was. Tim didn’t know he was telling him, he was just talking about D’Ville in the third person and not by name.”
“Well, there you have it! He probably doesn’t even remember a throwaway comment like that after all the confusion,” David reassures him.
Martin gives an admirable attempt to smile. “Y-Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure he’s already forgotten all about it after all the craziness of the past couple of days. It’ll never come up again, anyway. He’s got a… a fan, I guess. He doesn’t need me fawning over him.” The smile folds in on itself with a wince. David swears he hears Martin mutter something about a ‘stupid postal boy’ but doesn’t press.
He pats his friend’s arm in what he hopes is a suitably comforting manner. “Hey, who needs him? If he doesn’t appreciate you, he’s not worth it. And that crush is over, right?”
Martin grimaces, and David narrows his eyes. “ Right? ”
“Oh hey, is that a horseshoe crab? You know they’re considered a vulnerable species and really shouldn’t be-”
“Oh god dammit, Blackwood!”
“I know,” Martin groans in despair. “But it’s not my fault!”
Although he’s making a conscious effort to be more reasonable toward him, Jon can’t quite manage to shake the thought that this is still somehow Martin’s fault.
The stairs to Georgie’s flat are a nightmare, and Jon quietly rejoices in the fact that he never moved in with her. As it is, he huffs and puffs his way up three flights with takeout bags in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Hopefully between the food and the alcohol, he’ll get at least a minute or two of peace before he’s attacked. He’s been lucky already that he’s been able to hold off on this conversation for an entire workday, but he knows he could never push that luck far enough to make it to the weekend.
Jon barely gets a knock in before the door swings open with alarming speed. Georgie grabs him by the arm and all but drags him into her flat, slamming the door shut almost as an afterthought. By the time Jon blinks, his coat is off and he’s sat on the sofa with the Admiral in his lap and a glass of wine clutched in his stiff fingers. The takeout boxes are plated on the coffee table, complete with flatware and napkins.
Georgie pulls up the ottoman so she can sit opposite Jon and leans forward on her elbows, eyes wide and fixed on him as she methodically and rapidly clicks her pen. “ Well?” she demands.
“Good evening to you as well, Georgina.”
She waves her notepad dismissively. “Yes yes, very good. Now spill.”
“Could we at least eat first?”
Georgie picks up her fork, stabs three quick bites of her shopska salad, and swallows them without breaking eye contact. “Whoo. I’m stuffed.” Then she blinks and looks down, finally tasting what Jon brought her. “Aw, Jon! You brought me food that you hate? I knew there was a reason my cat liked you.” She finally picks up the plate and starts eating in earnest. Jon breathes a sigh of relief.
“For the last time, I don’t ‘hate’ Hungarian food. I just can’t eat sheep's cheese every day like you can,” he explains. He sets the wine down and goes for his own plate of hortobágyi palacsinta, only for it to be whisked away out of his reach. “Hey!”
“I eat, you talk. I’m holding your dinner ransom until I get all of the spooky ghost details,” Georgie proclaims. Brandishing her fork in one hand, she repositions the other so her pen is once again at the ready. “Besides, you’re at attention right now. The Admiral is quite cross with you for worrying him and he demands pets as restitution.”
Jon sighs, but leans back into the sofa and obeys. “Well, I already told you everything that happened that night over the phone. The radio, the headaches… Gerry…”
“And the part where your coworker got possessed,” Georgie presses, showing her hand rather quickly in Jon’s opinion. “Did you see him today? How is he holding up? Has he remembered anything? Is he experiencing any noticeable psychological distress from the encounter or from the eye-opening revelation that ghosts are real?”
Ah, so she’s already writing for the podcast. Terrific.
“Yes, fine, no, and not to my knowledge. He ended up taking half the day, so we haven’t really talked about it.” Jon coughs. “But actually, as far as I can tell… he thinks that he didn’t actually get possessed by a ghost?”
Georgie’s whole face lights up. “He thinks it was something else? A poltergeist? Some malevolent, deitific force beyond our current understanding?” Her pen leaves skid marks across the surface of the notepad, threatening to tear right through the paper.
“Er, no. I may have convinced him that he.. Didn’t.”
The pen freezes, and Jon instinctively pulls the Admiral a little bit closer.
“Jonathan Sims,” Georgie says calmly. “You’re telling me that I am missing an interview with a victim of possession-”
“Alright, hold on a second Georgie-”
“-because you gaslight-gatekeep-girlboss’d him into thinking that it didn’t happen!”
“No, I-! Wait, I did what?”
“Joooooon!” Georgie buries her face in her hands, only to immediately remove one and take another bite of food. “I can’t believe that your whole skeptic act actually rubbed off on someone. How did you even get him to believe that? I thought you were still on bad terms because of the whole Mechs thing.”
Jon takes advantage of her distraction and steals his own plate back, carefully nudging the Admiral off his lap to nestle against the side of his leg instead. “Oh, that actually turned out to be an even bigger misunderstanding than I thought. He didn’t know who I was at all.”
“Wait, what?” Georgie frowns at him. “But I thought the two of you talked about it.”
“Well, we certainly talked at each other about it,” Jon admits. “It really is silly in hindsight, but apparently it was all coincidence. The notes, the tea, the Facebook thing; it was all just Martin and the others trying to be welcoming.”
Georgie raises one eyebrow. “And the shirt?”
Jon hides a smile in the rim of his glass. “Do I only wear your merchandise when you’re around? It’s his favorite shirt and it was casual Friday. That’s all.”
“Jon, I really don’t want to trigger your conspiratorial streak, but that sounds way too convoluted to be true.”
“Well, you know. Reality is stranger than fiction and all that rubbish.”
“Okay but wait- so if he wasn’t being starstruck when you first showed up at the office-”
Jon holds up one finger and finishes off his wine in one pull. “No.”
“But Jon-”
“We’re not going to argue about this, Georgie.”
Georgie huffs, but drops it for the moment. Jon rests well assured that she’ll bring it up again later, when his guard is down. “Alright, fine. So how’d you find out? He knows now, right?”
Maybe it’s the wine, but Jon can’t help but laugh a little bit. “I went to autograph an old concert poster and he tried to stop me because he thought I shouldn’t be allowed to write on it.”
Georgie’s own laugh is just as helpless. “I’m sorry?”
“I know!” Jon exclaims. “Georgie, if you’d only been there to see his face. I thought that Tim was teasing me when he recognized the poster, but he was actually teasing Martin for- for-”
Jon stops talking as his brain catches up to his mouth, and Georgie goes in for the kill. “For what, Jonathan?” she asks smugly. “Because it sounds like you just made my point for me.”
Jon mumbles out an answer.
“Sorry, can’t hear you!”
“For his, quote, ‘crush on the guy with all the belts.’”
“A-ha! J’accuse! He does fancy you!”
“He fancied D’Ville. Past tense, past persona,” Jon argues. The twist in his gut and the heat in his cheeks does little to support it. “He’s well over that now that he’s actually met me, I assure you. It’s not like we’re even friends now.”
“M-hm.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
Georgie pulls out her mobile and opens it to the Facebook profile of one Martin Blackwood. Under the ‘mutual friends’ heading is exactly one name: Jonathan Sims.
Jon huffs. “I’ve changed my mind. Hungarian food is terrible and I’m never getting it with you again.”
Another smug bite of salad. “You know what? I think I’ll survive.”