Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jon is twenty-four iterations into the nightmares when the door changes.

He’s ignored it up to now, the sickly yellow thing carved impossibly into the side of the crushed train car like a piece of collage pasted over his reality— it’s always there, always beckoning, whispering soft terrible promises into his ears in the barely-there static hiss of Michael’s voice, of Helen’s, of countless people he doesn’t know and never will. Jon doesn’t listen. He doesn’t go through the door.

It’s nothing new, he tells himself. He’s seen through the door, has lived through Helen’s stumble down the maddening hallways behind it. Whatever sits behind the peeling yellow paint now can’t be terribly different, just twisting and turning insanity and the death grip of the Spiral, but Jon— well. He knows more than enough already, he thinks, about this particular feature of his dreams.

Except then, on his twenty-fifth descent down the wailing coffin’s steps and into the subway car beneath, the yellow door is gone.

Jon can’t change the dreams, he knows this. He’s tried and failed to alter them plenty of times, tried to speak to the statement givers trapped in his psyche and offer them help— it never works. He can't fix anything in here, he knows that by now. All he can do, like the twisted little voyeur his unwanted patron has made him into, is watch.

So this, he reasons, must be something else entirely.

The door— the new door— is white. Clean white, the paint around the edges fresh and crisp, with a brass door knocker sitting cheerily below a plaque reading 7B. It’s not strange, at least, no stranger than a door sitting in the middle of a subway car being crushed into oblivion would normally be. There’s none of the distortion around the edges, none of the bright electric crackle that makes the hairs on Jon’s arms stand on end when he gets a little too close. 

It’s just a door.

Even here, miles beneath the earth, Jon can feel the crushing gaze of the Eye looking down on him— awful, inescapable, the prickle across the nape of his neck reminding him that he is never, never alone. The Eye doesn’t react, not really. He’d felt what he thought might have been a twinge of disapproval the first time he’d tried to alter a dream, attempting to dig poor Naomi Herne out of her solitary grave, but aside from that—

Nothing. It just watches, while he slowly loses what’s left of his mind treading the same footpaths through a dozen different terrors that aren’t his own.

He sits down on the dusty subway bench, two seats down from the crumpling body of Karolina Górka, and looks at the new door.

On one hand, he reasons, it could be the Spiral fucking with him. It likes to do that, likes to make him doubt his senses, planting a trap just tempting enough that his curiosity gets the better of him. Distortion-Helen doesn’t seem quite as eager to kill him as Michael was, granted, but he’s not entirely sure that means it’s safe. 

On the other hand, though— for as much as he avoided the old yellow door each time he descended down into the subway, he hasn’t been able to shake the tiny nagging feeling that that door wasn’t the real thing, either.

Whatever hellish dreamscape he’s found himself in, one thing is clear— it’s the Watcher’s doing. The great hulking eye in the sky is more than enough proof of that. 

Jon doesn’t know it nearly as well as Elias might, but he highly doubts the Eye would let an entity as unpredictable as the Spiral wreak havoc in its own house, with its own playthings. And the Eye, for whatever reason, wants Jon alive.

Or, well— as whatever passes for alive, in this strange feedback loop he’s trapped in.

He’s got a hand on the doorknob as soon as his mind is made up— the door had been across the subway car before, while he was sitting, but it seems to have somehow found itself right in front of him now. He hardly has to take a step before his foot sinks down onto what appears to be a faded brown welcome mat, sitting there at the threshold.

Jon takes a breath, dry and dusty and full of stale underground air, and opens the door into—

An apartment.

Not a freakshow of an apartment, where the walls ooze blood or meat or flies or some other grotesque horror, not a strange, twisting set of hallways designed to drive him into utter insanity, just— an apartment. Clean, lived-in, with a single dim stove light on in the kitchen and the faint smell of burnt-out candles hanging in the air. It’s silent, aside from the quiet hum of electricity coming from the refrigerator.

Breath held, spine ramrod-straight as he braces himself for whatever new horror the Eye is about to thrust at him, Jon paces over to the window and peers down.

London, sprawling and damp and tinged orange with the first weak rays of dawn, stares back up at him.

With a start, Jon realizes that this is the first time in what feels like days, weeks, that he hasn’t felt the crushing weight of the Watcher on him— it’s not gone exactly, but it feels softer, somehow. If he closes his eyes and tries very hard not to think about it, it’s almost pared itself down to the same low-level buzz of observation that he feels at the Archives. Not nothing, but after spending twenty-four endless cycles in the dreamscape he can’t seem to shake himself out of, having the weight of the Eye lifted feels like flying.

He backs away from the window, letting the sheer gauzy curtain fall shut and blanketing the apartment in soft darkness again. 

It’s strange, Jon thinks. This doesn’t feel like any statement he’s taken before. Sure, he’s gone through so many at this point that it’s hard to keep track, but— well. He has an excellent memory, unfortunately. 

More than that, though, nothing really seems… off about the apartment. Not, at least, in any way that would suggest the presence of one of the Entities. It’s not quite gloomy enough for the Dark, with the kitchen light on and the early morning dawn streaming in from behind the curtain, it’s not unclean enough for the Corruption, not unsettling enough for the Spiral or the Stranger.

The Lonely, perhaps, he thinks— it’s certainly silent and empty enough for that, but the flat feels lived in in a way that doesn’t scream of isolation. There’s a book open on the coffee table, a couple of unwashed mugs in the sink, a soft-looking jumper thrown over the back of one of the armchairs that digs faint claws of recognition into Jon’s hindbrain. Padding over, he perches himself on the plush arm of the chair, running a thumb over the well-worn fabric. He’s seen this sweater before, he knows he has, but where—

A door creaks open, a thin beam of light spilling out from a room he hadn’t noticed. 

“It’s near four in the morning,” a voice calls, low and warm and rich in a way that sinks heavy into Jon’s bones. “Where have you b— oh.”

Jon looks up from the faded green threads of the sweater, up to the open doorway beside the living room, heart wedged like a stone in the back of his throat.

“Tim,” he breathes.

It comes rushing back over him like a tidal wave, the memories leaving him weak-kneed and shaking— the Circus, the awful dance and the terror of forgetting who he was, what he was. Tim above him, detonator in hand as Nikola ripped and clawed at Jon as though she was trying to peel his skin from his flesh like a jacket, and then— 

Nothing.

He’d opened his eyes in that examination room, head hazy and pounding, and the doctor had sliced open the apple in his hand to reveal rows of diseased, yellowed teeth. He’d forgotten.

“Are you,” Tim starts, taking a handful of stumbling steps forward into the living room. He raises an arm in a stilted, half-finished gesture towards Jon’s face that ends with him hanging there, hand inches away from Jon’s skin, unmoving. “Are you crying?”

Jon reaches up, pressing his fingers to his cheeks. They come away wet.

“Suppose I am,” he murmurs, voice oddly loud in his own ears. “Tim— where are we?”

Tim scrunches up his face, nose wrinkling in confusion the same way it does when he’s bent over a particularly stubborn piece of research, or when the coffee maker in the break room has decided to stop working at the exact moment he decides to top up his mug. It’s sweet, familiar— Jon can’t remember the last time he’d seen Tim so normal. 

Before Prentiss, probably. Before Jon went and fucked it all up with his paranoia. Thinking Tim of all people would have been out to kill him— it nearly makes him laugh, the idea of it. He’d been such an idiot.

“What do you mean?” Tim asks. “We— we’re home.”

That would half explain it, Jon supposes. Of course Tim lives here, when the whole place smells faintly of his cologne and his sweater is over the back of the armchair and he’s just stepped out of what must be his bedroom in nothing but a ratty old t-shirt and boxers. Jon’s never been to Tim’s flat before, not even in their research days when he would sometimes accept the occasional invitation out for drinks with the other interns— they’d never quite been that close, and getting moved down to the Archives certainly hadn’t helped matters. 

Then the worms, and then the stalking, and now Jon can’t remember the last time Tim looked at him with anything even resembling softness in his expression. 

Which, now that Jon thinks about it— there’s something wrong with the picture in front of him, and it’s not just that Tim is looking down at him with fond concern written all over his face. It’s dim, sure— the sun doesn’t seem to be rising any faster, and the dim kitchen light is still all he has to go by, but Tim’s face is all off.

It’s— it’s smooth, Jon realizes, with a shocking degree of alarm. He’s got stubble framing out the hollows of his cheeks, yes, but the rest of his face should be scarred, little circular corkscrew marks littering his skin where the worms had burrowed into his flesh, same as Jon’s. 

Except there’s just— nothing.

Tim squints at him, skin infuriatingly even, and now that Jon’s looking he sees more. The stress wrinkles that had lined his brow, the hollow dark circles under his eyes, the faded freckles that he had gotten running around chasing leads for a weekend two summers ago— they’re all just gone. He looks young again, soft and inexplicably light, none of the weight of their shared horrors on his shoulders.

Jon glances down at his hands, just to check, but the scars are dotted across his own skin, the same as always. 

“You’re being too quiet,” Tim says, concern lacing through his voice. “Is… is everything okay? What did you find out there?”

Jon furrows his brow, confused. “Out where?”

Tim squints down at him, like he can’t quite tell if Jon is playing a practical joke on him or not. Ironic, really, considering Jon’s the one here feeling like he’s swimming through a conversation he only understands one side of. 

“The theater,” Tim says, not unkindly. “Are you sure you’re alright? You seem—”

Jon shakes his head. “It wasn’t a theater,” he replies, stilted. “It was— it was a museum, you know that.”

“—a little shaken,” Tim finishes, sitting down on the couch opposite Jon and reaching out to take one of Jon’s hands in his own, grip soft and warm. “I just— you’re probably tired, sorry, I know I worry too much.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Jon scoffs. “You, worried about me.”

Tim just looks at him, though, silent and unblinking, like Jon hadn’t said anything at all. It’s unsettling, wrong, having Tim’s eyes on him like this— careful and beseeching, while he rubs the pad of his thumb up and down over the scarred skin on the back of Jon’s hand. 

“Tim,” he tries again, ducking his head a little so he can look right into Tim’s soft green eyes. “Tim, I don’t—”

“Danny,” says Tim, bulldozing right over Jon’s words like he hadn’t even registered them. “Danny, you’re scaring me.”

Danny.  

Realization sparks through Jon’s brain all at once. He’s still stuck in the fucking dreams, trading one nightmare for another. Tim hadn’t given his statement straight to Jon, sure, but Jon had listened all the same. The Eye, he supposes, doesn’t make much of a distinction when it comes to that. 

With all the care he can muster, he pulls his hand free from Tim’s grip and stands, staggering a couple paces away from the armchair. There’s no one else in it, not that he’d thought there was, when he’d been sitting in it the entire time, but he’s been through the nightmares enough to know that’s not always how it works. It’s not always a one-to-one replication of the statement.

Except— it’s not quite the same as the others, even now. 

He’d interacted with victims in his other dreams, sure, some of them called out for help, or treated him like the horrors that were stalking them. None of them, though, had touched him. None of them had spoken to him, had seen him like he was really there and not just a nameless, faceless observer.

And Tim thinks he’s Danny, Jon understands with a twisting clarity, but he’d answered Jon’s questions nonetheless.

Unbidden, pushed into the forefront of his brain by cold, steady fingers, another memory swims into his awareness— Tim, with his shaking fingers clutched tight around the detonator, recognition flickering back into his eyes as Jon shoved every ounce of compulsion he could muster into him. 

“Tim,” he says again, more purposeful this time. Tim blinks, dragging his gaze upwards from the empty armchair. Jon can feel the prickling of the Eye across the nape of his neck again, stronger now with the realization that he’s still trapped in its grip— he grabs onto the feeling, digging his fingers into the threads of power there and weaving them into his voice until it drips with static. “Tim, who am I?”

Jon’s spent the better part of a year watching Tim very, very closely. He’s catalogued the expressions that cross Tim’s face, his reactions to mundane situations as much as terrifying supernatural ones, the way he holds himself around Jon versus everyone else in his life. 

It’s because of this, then, that Jon can pinpoint the exact moment that the compulsion takes hold, wiping the film of distortion from Tim’s eyes and letting him see Jon clearly— it’s glaring as a neon sign, the way his eyes go from soft and concerned to hard, furious, in the span of a single heartbeat. 

“What the fuck,” he growls, staggering to his feet and striding forward to twist both hands firmly into the collar of Jon’s shirt, “are you doing here?”

Jon feels the wall hit his back before he registers the fact that they’re moving— Tim presses him up against the clean white drywall with knuckles digging into his collarbones. There’s a hazy sort of recognition in his eyes, the fiery anger of the Tim that Jon’s known for the last year looking oddly out of place on this younger, softer face. 

The second he catches himself thinking that, he feels the prickle on the back of his neck again, and the skin around Tim’s eyes begins to crease into crow’s feet, his hair growing longer and fluffier until it curls up around his temples, little pockmark scars blossoming along the curve of his throat like flower petals until Jon’s facing down the Timothy Stoker he knows, he remembers.  

“Okay,” he says, rather nonsensically. “I don’t— I don’t know what’s going on here.”

“Why are you in my apartment?” Tim repeats, voice guttural and dripping with anger. “Where’s Danny?”

And— oh, this isn’t a pleasant conversation to have at all. Gingerly, Jon reaches up, tangling his fingers into the seams between Tim’s and prying them, one knuckle joint at a time, away from his shirt. The fabric comes free crumpled, and Jon smooths it down with a single careful hand before slipping sideways out of Tim’s grip and sinking down onto the couch with a deep exhale. 

He’s not sure how to catalogue this Tim in his brain— he seems muddled, confused, but his anger suggests he remembers Jon, or at least the terrible doomed spiral of their relationship after Prentiss’ attack. 

“Tim,” Jon says, careful like he’s talking to Georgie’s cat and not one of his oldest remaining not-friends. “I’m going to ask you a few questions, okay?”

Tim looks over, green eyes boring into Jon’s face with a feeling oddly reminiscent of the worms burrowing into the hollows of his cheeks. He squints. 

“If you’re going to use your freaky evil eye powers on me,” he spits, “I’ll punch you, I swear.”

Jon winces. He’s earned that, he supposes. Raising his hands, he scoots over pointedly to make room for Tim beside him on the couch. It takes a moment, Tim staring at him the entire time like he’s a spooked animal ready to bite, but eventually he relents and sinks down onto the soft cushions on the opposite end of the sofa. 

Carefully, keeping every ounce of compulsion he can manage back behind his teeth, Jon asks again—

“Who am I?”

Tim scoffs. “My asshole boss,” he replies. Jon bites back the bitter laugh that bubbles up in his throat. “Really, ask me something better, if we’re going to be doing this.”

“Fine. What’s the last thing you remember?”

It’s harder, this time, to keep the static from spilling over his tongue. He swallows it back before asking, feeling it trickle down his throat like sparkling wine. 

“I don’t—” Tim starts, opening his mouth and then closing it again, brow scrunched. “I don’t know. Everything’s all… hazy, jumbled together. I remember the worms, and the Archives, and— and Sasha, and I remember—”

He breaks off, expression going pale and pinched. “I remember Danny and the theater, but everything in the middle is…”

He trails off, going silent and staring down at the scars dotting his hands. Jon waits for him to finish, sitting silent for a long moment before it becomes clear Tim isn’t going to say anything else. 

“Do you remember the Circus?” Jon prompts, and this time he lets the faintest trickle of compulsion color his words. 

Tim doesn’t seem to notice, maybe because he’s too preoccupied, or maybe Jon’s managed to keep it subtle enough that it doesn’t raise any flags. He shakes his head, mouth open around the beginnings of the word no, but stops short before the sound leaves his throat. 

“I don’t,” he says instead. “I don’t know, I might? I know there were, uh… explosives, Martin finding a crate full of C4 somewhere, I remember holding the detonator, and—” he breaks off, coughing once. “And you. I remember seeing you. Everything else is all… blurry.”

Right. Blurry. Jon’s starting to feel that way a bit himself— he can remember Tim standing over him like a terrible, beautiful shield between himself and Nikola’s claws, and he can remember heat and light and fire, but after that—

Well. He woke up here. Absently, he entertains the thought that this might be some kind of fucked-up purgatory, some sick afterlife inflicted upon him by the eye. He’s never been one for religion himself, really, but he supposes that if awful eldritch horrors that feed on the fear of living things are real, if ghosts like Gerry are real, the concept of an afterlife isn’t terribly unfathomable. 

The prickle skitters across his skin again. 

“Fuck off,” he whispers, to no one in particular.

“Fuck off yourself,” snaps Tim. “It’s my goddamn flat.”

Jon blinks, looking back up at him. “I— sorry,” he says hastily. “That wasn’t— I wasn’t talking to you.”

“...Right.”

It’s terribly awkward, Jon thinks, here in a home empty save for the two of them— all of their conversations lately have been hurried, stilted, tinged by anger or fear or the inevitable weight of the fucking clown apocalypse hanging over their heads. It’s odd, then, to be somewhere so… domestic, curled up on the end of Tim’s couch like they’re trading late-night secrets at a sleepover and not, like, maybe dead. At the very least, Jon thinks, it’s preferable to whatever waits on the other side of Tim’s front door, where all he can do is stand there and watch as unimaginable horror gets inflicted on a dozen strangers, over and over. 

“Are you going to ask me anything else?” Tim bites out, and Jon realizes he’s been sitting silent for far longer than is really socially acceptable. 

Jon could, he’s got a dozen questions lined up on the tip of his tongue, with varying degrees of relevance to their current predicament, but only one really grips at him, aches to be asked, to be answered, to be known. 

The prickle is back. Jon feels something akin to cold fingers prodding at the base of his brain stem. 

He inhales, focusing carefully on Tim’s left shoulder so he doesn’t have to look into his eyes. “You said,” he starts, chewing carefully on the words. “Last time we… spoke, you said that you didn’t forgive me.”

Tim stiffens, turning so quickly to look away from Jon that he can hear the quiet crick of his neck as it twists. “That’s not a question,” he replies. 

The prickle gets stronger, static climbing fuzzy and uncomfortable up the length of Jon’s spine. He can’t keep the compulsion out of his voice any longer, the strain of scraping it off his tongue snapping like a whipcord when he opens his mouth again. 

“What don’t you forgive me for?”

It’s maybe a low blow, sure. Jon knows, objectively, that he has a lot to apologize for. The stalking, yes— but after the stalking, he could have reached out, made sure Tim was okay, taken even the slightest bit of notice when his mental state started to slip. He was kidnapped, but only sometimes. The rest… well. He could have done more.

Except Tim’s still angry with him, a fact Jon probably should have considered before opening his mouth. 

“All of it,” Tim says, eyes opening wide as soon as the words pass his lips, then narrowing angrily at Jon. “Everything, I don’t know. The stalking, the screaming matches, the fact that I couldn’t fucking get rid of you even when I hopped a plane to get away— fuck, I told you not to do that.”

“Sorry! Sorry,” Jon babbles, reaching up to cover his face and resisting the urge to peek through his fingers at Tim’s likely furious expression. “I didn’t mean to, it just— it’s stronger here, I don’t know.”

“Here— what, in my flat?”

“No, I mean—” Jon falters, floundering for a way to say hey, actually, I think the two of us are stuck in a little bubble in Eye hell, or something without sounding entirely insane. “It’s not. We. Um.”

Tim sighs, leaning back against the couch and running one large hand through his hair, letting it fall loose and tousled over his forehead. It’s— well. Jon peeks through the slim gap between his fingers at the sight, eyeing the way Tim’s hair curls up at the ends ever so slightly, infuriatingly attractive for someone who allegedly just stumbled out of bed. 

He squeezes his fingers back together, tight, bathing his vision in darkness. 

“Spit it out, boss,” Tim says. He sounds terse and exasperated, but Jon jumps a little at the feeling of a light kick to his shin, Tim’s leg extended across the cushions to nudge him gently. 

“I think we’re not… really here,” Jon squeaks out. “The, uh— the sun still hasn’t risen, and everything’s a little fuzzy, and it feels a little like we’re… I don’t know, in a dream or something.” Or in freaky Eye hell. He doesn’t say the last part. Tim looks like he’s sucked on a lemon anyway. 

“What, you’re just breaking into my fucking dreams now? Is this more of your weird magic bullshit? Can I pinch myself and wake up?” He tries, digging his fingers into the meat of his arm and making a frustrated little huff when it does, predictably, nothing.

Close, says a voice, vague and disembodied. Jon feels it more than hears it, like a vibrating resonance down the entire frame of his skeleton. Try again.

Jon shakes his head, the prickle spreading from the nape of his neck down his arms, pooling in his hands and leaving his fingers feeling like he’s just stuck them into an electrical outlet. “No, I uh— I think you’re in mine. Or something. I don’t know.”

Tim scoffs. “Fine, then can you pinch yourself and get the hell out of here?”

Don’t, the voice says. You’re not done yet.

“Christ, what now?” Jon huffs, more into his palms than anywhere else.

“Ex cuse me?” Tim snaps. 

“Not you,” replies Jon, fully aware that he’s sounding more off his rocker by the second. 

The prickle retreats, crawling its way back up his arms and settling down in the hollow between his ribs. Right answer, it hums. Wrong question. Which makes… absolutely no sense. The Eye— at least, Jon’s pretty fucking sure that’s what he’s hearing— goes stubbornly silent. 

For a long, silent moment, Tim just stares at him. He’s starting to blink the sleep out of his eyes, the early morning haze of exhaustion that had hovered over him like a cloud when he had first stepped out of his room, despite the fact that the stovetop clock hasn’t ticked a single minute up since Jon first stumbled out of the dusty, crushed-up subway car. 

Jon is struck, all at once and rather terribly, by the realization that this is perhaps the longest they’ve been alone together in a very long time. Tim’s been avoiding him nearly as long as Jon spent trying to dig up his secrets— most of their conversations over the past few months have been limited to a few tense words, a couple of sarcastic jabs thrown out by Tim and a stilted, awkward, not-apology from Jon before they both agree that it’s far too difficult to tackle the mountain of shit that their relationship has turned into while also hunting down murder clowns, or whatever the fucked-up monster of the month is. 

Jon watches the little blinking LED numbers above the stove, 4:48 shining perpetually back at him in dingy fluorescent green, and tries not to think about the irony of that. 

“How long has it been?” he murmurs, only really half to Tim.

It doesn’t seem to matter, though— he’s not quite careful enough, doesn’t tamp down the static on his tongue in time, and when the words spill over it he knows he’s fucked up. 

“Three weeks,” Tim blurts out, almost as soon as Jon’s mouth shuts. He blinks, surprise and then confusion crossing his expression before morphing back into the incandescent anger Jon’s become so well-acquainted with. 

“Tim—” Jon starts, but that’s all he can get out. 

“Sorry, wait— what? Three fucking weeks?” Tim snaps, eyes flickering frantically over the features of Jon’s face like he has the answers, which is frankly ridiculous, considering Jon’s done nothing but wander around the awful landscape of other people’s nightmares for…

Now that he thinks about it, three weeks does sound about right. 

“You’ve been in here for that long too?” Jon asks, pulse picking up— part of him realizes, a little too late, that questioning maybe isn’t the best course of action when Tim is this upset with him. Still, there’s an itch to know that sits just under his skin, to figure out why exactly he’s been dumped here into Tim’s apartment, an apartment he’s never even seen, and why Tim seems to have been stuck here right alongside him. 

“I don’t know,” Tim growls, running a hand through his hair in frustration once again. “I don’t know why I said that, I haven’t been here for three weeks, I just woke up for God’s sake— is this more of your fucking Ceaseless Watcher bullshit, Jon? Because so help me—”

“You’ll kill me, I know, I know,” Jon cuts in. The words leave him feeling oddly hollow, something he can’t place tugging at his chest before he manages to push the sensation back down. “Sorry, I’m just trying to understand.”

“Well, try harder,” Tim spits, pushing himself up off the couch and stalking off towards the opposite end of the living room. “And don’t use that fucking compulsion shit on me.”

Jon sighs, dragging his palm down his face, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. He hasn’t even slept, he realizes, no chance between the endless slideshow of horrors to catch some shuteye. It’s not like he’s getting more tired, not really— but there’s a baseline level of fatigue there, the dull thrum of weariness settled into his bones from months and months of sleepless nights and running from impossible terrors and still managing to do his day job, on top of all of it. Tim, several feet away and staring pointedly out of the window, looks just as tired. 

“Look,” Jon says, tongue heavy in his mouth. “I don’t— I think I made a mistake, coming in here.”

Tim scoffs. “Oh, you think?”

“I’ll just. Um. Go, then, shall I?”

“Can you?”

Jon grimaces. Holding his breath, he pinches his arm, hard, just in case that really was the trick— but, unsurprisingly, it does nothing. When he opens his eyes, he’s still sitting on Tim’s couch, sinking gently into the soft cushions, early dawn light spilling in through the windowpane. 

“I have to admit,” Tim says, smirking rather meanly. “That was a little funny to watch.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jon snipes back, but there’s no heat behind the words. Tim snorts. 

“Would that I could, boss,” he replies, dry and sardonic. 

Jon glances up at him, up at the window, then over to the front door he’d come through in the first place. He could try going back through that, he thinks— this place doesn’t seem to follow any kind of strict logic, and he’s more likely than not to be dumped right back into the depths of the Buried, but it’s at least not here. 

Not the quiet domesticity of a dimly-lit home that isn’t his own, with Tim glaring down at him like he can’t decide whether he wants to punch Jon or toss him out of the nearest window, with his head pounding and full of television static every time he tries to pick apart the gaping holes in his memory to figure out how he got here in the first place. 

He remembers heat and fire, and Tim above him. He remembers Nikola’s grating voice digging into his bones like nails on a chalkboard, taunting and prodding until Tim finally worked up the courage or desperation to press the little button in his hand—

Oh. Well. So there’s a non-zero probability that he really is stuck in some kind of fucked up afterlife, with Tim here to haunt him eternally. Or vice-versa, he supposes— it’s far more believable that he’s a punishment for Tim, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps freaky Eye hell wasn’t so far off the mark, after all. It’s just rather in poor taste, Jon thinks, to stick himself and Tim into it like this just because they’d had the misfortune of dying together.

Tim looks angry, though, tense and upset and stiff as a board at his spot beside the window. Jon tries to picture the face he’d make if Jon decided to just come out with it— I think we might be dead, and stuck here, and I’m sorry. He’s not entirely convinced Tim won’t just try to kill him all over again.

He makes a silent choice, instead. 

Stiffly, he unfolds his legs and stands up from the sofa, padding back over to the front door. With one hand on the knob, he turns back to look at Tim— but Tim doesn’t look back, still staring out at the grey London sky. 

“I’ll see you around,” Jon murmurs. 

“Hope you don’t,” replies Tim. He doesn’t turn around. 

Jon sighs, pulling open the door and stepping back into the choking dusty air of the subway car. When he gathers the courage to look back, five whole minutes later, the door behind him is yellow and peeling. 

It takes another fifteen nightmare cycles for the door to reappear. 

Jon’s taking to tracking them like days— sometimes the statements featured shift around, Jordan Kennedy and the ants being traded out for the dark endless expanse of the Schwartzwald, poor Karolina in the subway car replaced by the crushing black depths of Lost Johns’ Cave and Laura Popham’s desperate pleas for her sister’s death, and so on. Aside from that, his afterlife stays mostly the same, still the ever-shifting horrific film of detachment coloring Jon’s presence, forcing him to stand back and watch.

The door, when it finally appears, shows up hovering three inches into the empty air at the top of the bell tower in Chichester Cathedral, in the space where Michael Crew had just thrown himself into empty, storm-filled air. 

Jon pauses when he sees it— one second it’s gone and the next it’s there, bright white and beckoning, and Jon’s heart does a strange little one-two in his chest at the sight of it. He hadn’t really been sure he would, to be entirely honest. Whatever awful trick of the Eye has trapped him here, it doesn’t particularly seem like it cares to grant him a few brief moments of reprieve, and even less so when that reprieve is as comfortable and domestic as Tim’s little flat above a chip shop in Soho. 

But, well— he can’t just turn down a chance like this, not when he’s got no idea when it’ll come around again.

Herbert doesn’t seem to notice either the door or Jon himself, too busy clinging to the railing and screaming his head off. Jon steps around him, wary of the puddles of rainwater gathering in the slick divots of the stone floor, and bangs the door knocker three times. 

For a long, terrible moment, he thinks Tim isn’t going to answer and he’s going to have to walk all the way back down the endless stairs and off into the next waiting horror— but then, after what could have been minutes or hours, he hears a voice cutting through the crashing sounds of the storm around him. 

“Can’t open it,” Tim says, muffled through the wood. “Should be unlocked.”

Jon isn’t entirely sure Tim knows it’s him, is half-convinced he’ll be booted out onto the street the minute he steps foot over the doorway, but he turns the knob and inches the door open anyway. 

When he steps inside, he’s hit full in the face with the scent of food, warm and delicious, some kind of curry bubbling away on the stove and setting his stomach growling. Tim stands there in front of it, the stovetop clock still reading 4:48, an apron around his waist over a slightly more presentable t-shirt than the last one Jon had seen him in.

“Figured you’d be back sooner or later,” Tim says, and his voice sounds tired. Not slow and languid like he’s just been pulled from sleep, but exhausted, drained and defeated as he stirs the pot in front of him with a wooden spoon. “Couldn’t figure out what the hell else would be keeping me here.”

Jon hovers in the doorway, feeling rather awkward all of a sudden. When he’d last left, Tim had been angry with him— not that that’s anything new, Tim is angry with him all of the time nowadays— but Jon still gets the distinct sense that he’s intruding, no matter how thoroughly the Eye seems to have pushed him in Tim’s direction.

He manages this for all of four minutes before Tim sighs deeply, still keeping his eyes fixed on the bubbling pot. 

“In or out, boss,” he says, resigned. “You’re letting the storm through.” 

And, well— Jon supposes that’ll have to do.

He toes off his shoes, still soggy with rainwater, and leaves them lined up beside Tim’s at the front door before padding into the apartment. He steers clear of the living room, detouring instead into the kitchen and perching himself on one of the barstools at the counter. 

“Have you—” he starts, before biting the words back when the prickle of static begins to crawl its way up his throat. “It’s been two weeks,” he says instead. Safe, straightforward, not a question. 

Tim’s mouth quirks up just a little at the corner when he notices, before smoothing itself back out into his usual deadpan expression. “Something like that,” he replies. “Haven’t really been able to keep proper track, what with— uh.”

With one scarred hand, Tim gestures vaguely at the window. The curtains have been drawn back fully, dim sunrays bathing the apartment in just enough light to see— it’s still dawn, from what Jon can make out, but now there’s a thick storm beating down the glass windowpane, faint trails of lightning arcing through the clouds in the distance. 

“Ah.”

“Yeah.” Tim turns back to the curry, cutting off the flames underneath the pot and reaching up to pull a pair of bowls from the cupboards above him. “You hungry?”

God, Jon can’t remember the last time he ate. It’s not like he needs to, what with the strange state of suspended reality the Eye seems to be keeping him in, but something in him aches to think about just how long he’s gone without the creature comforts he’s used to in the waking world. 

“How did—” he starts again, biting down on his tongue to keep the compulsion from slipping through. Tim snorts, apparently taking the frustration on his face as a yes and depositing a steaming bowl of food in front of him. 

“Cute,” he says, somehow managing to make it sound like an insult in Jon’s ears. Ladling out a bowlful for himself, he takes up a seat across the counter from Jon, eyeing him warily. “Easy questions are fine. Not like you can help it, or whatever.”

Jon lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, dropping his gaze to the countertop. He should be used to it by now, Tim treating him like some kind of monster-in-the-making, deflecting with stilted jokes and biting insults so Jon can’t tell how deeply uncomfortable he is under it all.

Jon knows, though. He’s always known, despite how much he’d wanted to believe Tim still saw him as human. Another terrible gift from the Watcher— ignorance is bliss, or whatever, and the Entities don’t like to deal in bliss. 

“How did you make this?” he asks, after a long moment spent choosing his words. Tim quirks another dry smile, a dead-eyed thing, and takes a bite before replying.

“Had the ingredients lying around,” he replies. “Guess I’d gone grocery shopping the day that, uh—”

Tim breaks off, face blanching every so slightly as he struggles against the compulsion to finish his sentence, and Jon jumps in before he cracks.

“Today,” he interrupts, meaning the day your brother died. The Eye prickles along his skin, displeased. He thinks very hard of an image of himself, both middle fingers raised. 

“Yeah,” breathes Tim, with the barest note of relief in his voice. “Today. Not much to do around here, and I can’t leave— trust me, I’ve tried— so I’ve been keeping myself busy where I can. Finally started on the backlog of books I’ve had sitting around forever. Cleaned the hell out of my closet. Figured out how to make this.”

He finishes with a gesture towards the bowl, still steaming-hot. With a single shaky hand, Jon raises a bite to his lips, swallows it down. He’s had better curry before, but this is warm and flavorful and he hasn’t eaten a single thing in nearly three weeks now, and when the food touches his tongue it’s heavenly.

It takes an embarrassingly long moment for him to realize that the debauched little sound echoing through the quiet kitchen is his own, and when he opens his eyes, Tim is staring at him with something like amusement etched across his face.

“That good, boss?”

“Shut up,” Jon snipes back, cheeks flaming. Then after a moment, softer, “yes.”

Tim chuckles, smile more genuine than Jon’s seen in months. Maybe ever, he thinks morosely, thoughts sharp around the shape of the facade Tim’s worn ever since Jon first met him. They eat in silence for a moment, Tim avoiding eye contact and Jon savoring the small comfort of a home-cooked meal, so deeply incongruous with the hellish experience of the last few weeks— he’s not sure what the Eye will do to him in order to make up for this little slice of normalcy he’s been allowed, but for this? 

Jon thinks it’ll be worth it. 

When he finishes, bowl scraped clean, Tim takes it from him without a word and retreats to the sink. It’s not until he’s put enough distance between the two of them, water running softly in the sink as he scrubs away at their silverware, that he speaks again. 

“I’m going to ask you questions this time,” he says. His tone leaves little room for argument, not that Jon would have tried.

Jon nods, before realizing Tim can’t see him, then hums his agreement instead.

“I don’t have your weird powers, or whatever,” Tim starts, voice oddly quiet. “But don’t— don’t lie, okay?”

Something twists, cold and mournful, in the pit of Jon’s stomach. Not much use for lies anyway, he reasons. Not here.

“I wouldn’t,” he replies. “Not now.”

The reassurance seems to be enough for Tim— but whether he’s decided to believe Jon point-blank or whether he was swayed by the honesty of Jon’s unspoken admission that he would, indeed, have lied to Tim in the past— Jon isn’t sure. 

Tim takes a deep breath, then switches off the taps. “How much do you know about… all of this?”

Nothing, Jon wants to say at first, but he promised no lies.  

“Not much,” he says instead, keeping his words slow and careful. “I think… I think you’re going through something a little different than me, if you can’t leave. I’ve been— out there, at least, I’ve been living out all the statements I’ve read before. I can’t stop, except apparently when I’m here. ”

Tim exhales shakily, leaning back against the counters as he weighs Jon’s answer. “That’s pretty shit,” he says eventually. Jon huffs a laugh in response. 

“It’s not the best, I’ll admit.”

“So… what? Is that more Eye nonsense? Elias pulling strings and fucking with you from wherever he is?”

Jon pauses, considering that. It’s not like he’d put it past Elias, not after everything he’s learned about the man— but at the end of the day, Elias seems to be a pragmatist, and even more than that, he seems to take a certain amount of sick pride in making sure Jon knows exactly whose hand is guiding him. 

“Not Elias,” he murmurs, more to himself than to Tim. “But the Eye, almost definitely.”

The prickles pick up again, tracing pleased, soothing circles into his skin. Jon grimaces, shoves down the strange mix of disgust and pride that wells up in his chest at having gotten it right.  

“Of course.” Tim leans back on his elbows, tilting his face up to stare at the ceiling.

Stomach turning ever so slightly, Jon worries his bottom lip with his teeth as he pieces together another careful sentence. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “This one isn’t nearly as bad as the rest.”

Tim laughs bitterly at that. “Sick little joke, that is. Think it can see us in here, too?”

“Pretty sure it can,” Jon replies, because he’d promised the truth. The Eye tugs painfully at his tongue in protest.

Tim chews on his answer for a second, expression cycling through a myriad of emotions before settling on the same tired resignation he’d sported when Jon stepped through his door. “Ah, well,” he sighs. “No worse than our creepy, voyeuristic little murderer of an employer, eh?”

Jon’s not entirely sure he agrees, but Tim’s ire isn’t on him at the moment, so he just nods along quietly and turns his attention back to the window. 

The storm outside rages, heavy rain pebbling against the glass and leaving thick streaks down the surface of it. Beyond that, London is still just as silent and empty as the first time Jon had looked down on it— not a single pedestrian on the streets, no cars to be seen, not even a lone bird perched on the rooftop of the row of flats across the road. It’s just himself and Tim here in the quiet of the apartment, silence so thick their breath sounds loud as a siren in Jon’s ears.

He doesn’t see it, not with his gaze fixed on the window, but Jon hears Tim take an unsteady breath in before speaking again.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Jon’s breath catches in his throat.

Almost like clockwork, he feels the Eye perk up, skittering little electric sensations down his spine as it waits for him to answer. Suppressing the shiver that goes through his body at the feeling, Jon tugs his gaze away and down to his hands, one dotted with pockmarked corkscrew scars, one burnt nearly beyond recognition. His cuticles are getting a little unkempt, he realizes. With great effort, he resists the urge to bring his fingers to his mouth and chew.

“...Some of it,” he says carefully, after a moment of consideration. “My memories are still a bit of a blur, I don’t know how much of that is because of the Stranger and how much is because of… well, me.” He gestures vaguely to himself, to which Tim bites back an amused little huff. “But some of it— I remember us talking, the night before. I remember holding you back, stepping into the main hall with you when the music started, nearly losing you in all the dancing.”

Tim nods along, brow furrowed in concentration as Jon attempts to haltingly piece together the fragments of his consciousness from where Nikola had left them scattered.

“I didn’t recognize you at first,” he continues. “Nikola— the mannequin, she pretended to be you, I think, to get me to trust her.”

“Interesting choice.”

Jon bites down on the bitter smile that tugs at the corners of his lips. “It worked, didn’t it?” he murmurs, just rhetorical enough that the static doesn't rush to his tongue. And it had— the promise of Tim had been enough to break through his defenses, to get him weak-willed and weak-kneed enough to hand over the detonator without so much as a fight. Nikola had chosen well. 

“You’d know better than me, boss,” says Tim quietly, and there’s a strained edge to his voice that Jon can’t quite put his finger on. “What then?”

“You— the real you, I mean, you found me. Attacked me.”

Tim nods along, recognition sparking in his eyes as the memories seem to slot into place for him, too, coaxed out by Jon’s voice. 

“I didn’t know it was you,” he says, a note of shame in his voice. “At first. Thought you were one of the clowns, I think.”

“I know,” Jon says, quietly. Somewhere in the back of his head, he can hear the far-off sound of explosions, the blistering heat of the fire. “It’s okay.”

With a scoff, Tim tilts his head to the side and tosses a disbelieving glare in Jon’s direction. “I don’t need that from you.”

Forgiveness, Jon is quickly discovering, is a very uncomfortable thing to convey. Especially like this, when he still isn’t sure whether he and Tim are talking circles around the same thing, or if Tim even knows he very likely killed them both.

Ask him, says the Eye. Jon bites the inside of his cheek, shoving away the sensation and clamping down tight on the urge to demand answers.

“Still,” he replies eventually, staring back down at his hands. He can still feel Tim’s eyes on him, warmer than the heavy, oppressive gaze of the Watcher, more like a blanket over his shoulders than the feeling of being buried alive. “...Anyway. I woke up here— or, rather, in the operating room from that old statement from the professor with the creepy anatomy students.”

Tim shivers, and Jon is abruptly reminded of the fact that he’d been the one to go investigate that statement, one of the last times he and Jon had worked together on a case before Prentiss, before everything went sideways. It had been so much easier then, without Jon’s paranoia and the loss of Sasha weighing so heavy on their shoulders that they’d forgotten how to look at each other without the phantom feeling of knives at throats. 

Absently, Jon lifts a hand to rub at the scar across the side of his neck, where Daisy’s knife had bitten down hard. She’d let the fear in so deeply, he thinks, so convinced that he was a murderer. How easily it could have been him instead, there with a blade to Tim’s skin. Jon, all at once, is hit with a blissful relief that it wasn’t.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” Tim says, and when Jon lifts his gaze again Tim is there, staring at him with an unreadable expression. “But you’re going to get wrinkles if you keep that up.”

Jon huffs a laugh, forcing the muscles of his face to relax. 

“Look,” Tim continues, before Jon can figure out how to fill the gaping silence. “If it really is all that bad out there—” he breaks off, waving vaguely at the front door. “I’m not looking to leave here. I’ll probably go fucking stir crazy in a couple more days, unless you can figure out how to get us out of here, but— well. Better than the alternative, I guess.”

He trails off into silence. Jon resists the urge to prompt him, to ask for more. 

“I don’t mind you coming by,” Tim finishes, after an endless moment. “Here, I mean. If it’s better here than it is everywhere else. Or you could stay, if you think we can go a week without ripping each other’s heads off.”

It’s a kind offer. It’s the closest thing to an olive branch Tim has given him in a very, very long time. He looks uncertain for once, and it looks strangely out of place on his tall frame, usually so solid and sure. For a brief, blissful moment, Jon lets himself consider the fantasy Tim’s unwittingly laid out in front of him— the two of them here, safe in the gentle haze of dawn for as long as they want. They’ve been running for so long, he can’t even fully comprehend the idea of getting to stop, to rest, to tangle up their existences long enough that they can finally begin to let the raw and ragged gash of their friendship begin to knit back together like a healing wound.

But Jon knows, even without the all-seeing power of the Eye, that this isn’t how it works.

“I… don’t think I can,” he says, and the Watcher dances electric currents of agreement over his skin. “I don’t think it’ll let me.”

He’s not sure if Tim’s acceptance is genuine belief or if he just thinks Jon’s lied to him out of propriety and doesn’t care enough to fight him on it— but all Tim gives him is a little nod and a quiet yeah, fair enough half under his breath. Jon itches with the need to explain himself, to make sure Tim knows he isn’t trying to pull away again, not after everything. 

“I’ll come back if I can, though,” he murmurs softly. “I promise.”

And he does, for as much as it counts. It becomes a strange, lopsided sort of routine. Every week or two, the door will appear— always in a different statement, always the same soft dawn light behind it. It’s the one constant that Jon’s been able to find in the Eye’s fucked-up idea of purgatory, and he reaches out and clutches onto it with both hands whenever he can. 

They don’t always talk.

At first, sure, they’d spent the few fleeting hours they were allowed together trying to piece together a stronger idea of where they were, testing the Eye’s boundaries. They’d tried getting Tim out, sneaking him through the door with Jon as he left, cracking open the window and scaling down the fire escape— none of it works. Sometimes the Eye talks to him, giving him cryptic little comments about asking and learning and knowing every time Jon attempts to float another theory as to why they’re stuck, but he’s gotten very good at tuning it out, much to its palpable irritation.

Instead, after a few weeks of trying and failing to break free, they give up and settle into companionable silence whenever Jon finds himself in Tim’s flat.

Tim seems happy for the conversation, most of the time— occasionally, though, his face will go dark and stormy when Jon tumbles through the door, and Jon knows without having to Know that Tim’s going to shut himself up tight in his bedroom and ignore Jon’s presence until he leaves. 

It’s fine, really. It works for them, and Jon can’t imagine that Tim’s having the best time of it either, being stuck in a never-changing facsimile of his apartment on the worst day of his life, so he can excuse it. 

And besides, Jon’s happy for any chance he can get to escape the never-ending revolving door of horror that he lives through the rest of the time. Getting to see Tim on top of that is just— it’s nice. He’s not complaining. 

Despite that, Jon hasn’t ever worked up the courage to voice the idea that they’re both dead, the ever-sharper memory of Tim pressing his thumb to the detonator switch and blowing them both to pieces within the wreck of the wax museum. It wouldn’t help, he’s certain of that. 

He’s lost count of the days by now, but it’s roughly six months into this strange new normal that the door appears in the Schwartzwald for the first time. 

Jon’s been here before, of course— it pops up every few cycles, leaving him trudging through the mist and the snow and the bone-chilling cold as the Eye watches and the strange eyeless farmer hovers just beyond the dark tree line. The Schwartzwald, strangely enough, is one of the tamer horrors he has to live through— no screams or horrifying mutilation to witness, just the unsettling man staring at him as he hikes in broad circles around the mausoleum waiting for the landscape to shift. 

This time, though, when he walks up to the mausoleum, the heavy stone-and-iron grate at its entrance is gone, Tim’s clean white front door in its place. He stumbles through it in a flurry of snow and icy wind, the warmth of the flat hitting him like a soft, solid wall of heat that wraps broad arms around his shoulders with a little noise of surprise—

Oh. Not just the warmth of the apartment. Well. 

Red-faced and babbling nonsensical apologies, Jon extricates himself carefully from the tangle of Tim’s arms around him. It’s not the first time Tim’s hugged him, sure— they’d been embarrassingly touchy-feely back in their research days, even more so on the nights Jon actually accepted the occasional offer for drinks with Tim and Sasha. As strange as it is to think back on it now, after everything, Jon can still remember a time when Tim touched him more often than not; an arm slung over his shoulders, a bump of hips to get his attention, Tim coming up behind him in the stacks and reaching for a book on the top shelf, then settling his chin on top of Jon’s head just to tease him for the ridiculous height difference. 

Easier days. Simpler ones. 

This, though, is likely the first time Tim’s ever held him close accidentally— the first he can remember, at least— and when Jon pulls away to reorient himself Tim’s face is beet-red and scrunched up, and he can’t quite meet Jon’s eyes. 

“ Jesus, Jon, you’re freezing,” he hisses, yanking his hands away like he’s been stung. 

A laugh bubbles up out of Jon’s throat, more awkward and nervous than anything else. “Yeah, uh— I was— there’s a snowstorm.” Rather stupidly, he gestures back behind him to the closed door, the white howling Schwartzwald behind it. 

“I noticed,” Tim replies with a wry smile, still flushed pink but somehow managing to pull off cocky despite it all. “And you’re in— what, a sweater vest and slacks? Surprised you haven't keeled over with frostbite yet. Get on the couch.”

Sure, Jon had been cold, just like every time the Eye had taken him to the Schwartzwald, but he’s never really thought much of it. It’s not like he’d die out there, not when he’s probably already dead, and he’s not really sure how much things like temperature matter when you’re living out an endless carousel of horrors in your own head. 

Still, he can feel the chill settled into his bones now that Tim’s pointed it out. It rattles him a little, making him shiver and dotting his skin with gooseflesh as he takes stock of it— the melting flakes stuck to his hair and beard, the cold and damp feeling of his socks in his loafers, soaked through with snow and thoroughly unsuited to tramping around a forest in the middle of winter. 

He toes them off, socks and all, before padding across the room to settle onto the couch and wrap himself in the thick, fuzzy throw blanket Tim’s managed to procure from some mysterious linen closet. 

It’s strange, how real it all feels. Perhaps that’s the nature of this place, he reasons— better for him to witness the terror of the statements when he can feel the cold, can smell the blood or the fire or the dirt, can tap into every miniscule sense that comes his way as clearly as if he were living it out in the real world. 

Still, he’s not complaining about it. Not when the blanket is so soft and warm around him, sensation slowly returning to his limbs as he rubs them together underneath the weight of it. Tim’s gone, off in the kitchen fumbling rather loudly with something— Jon can’t see him from this angle, but he can hear the unintelligible muttering of Tim talking to himself, before he finally rounds the corner with the red flush gone from his face and two steaming mugs in his hands. 

“It’s not as good as Martin’s, probably,” he says, depositing one onto the coffee table in front of Jon. “I’ve seen him make it for you enough times though, I’m pretty sure I remembered how you take it.”

Jon reaches out for it, biting back a hiss as he leaves the warm cocoon of the blanket to pick it up, and takes a sip of the tea. 

It’s delightful, hot and spiced with a splash of cream, just the way he likes it. A soft, pleased little noise bubbles up in his throat, and he’s not quite fast enough to choke it down before it escapes him. 

He can’t help it, not really. It’s just been so long since he’s had a good cup of tea. 

Tim seems to be feeling gracious today, because he doesn’t so much as snarkily comment on Jon’s horrible lack of decorum, instead staring him down with a careful look on his face that makes Jon want to dig the pad of his thumb into Tim’s face just to smooth out the barely-there pout on his lips. 

Something inside of him goes a little warm and gooey when he looks up to meet Tim’s eyes and finds them already fixed, unblinking, on his own. There’s a strange and distant chord in his expression, hard and searching behind his irises like he’s trying to sort out something to say— but he stays silent, and after a while, Jon drops his gaze.

It’s strange, he thinks, just how easily he’s managed to settle into the strange comfort of Tim’s apartment over the last few months— not all that short of a time in the end, he supposes, but when his  entire life is now comprised of varying levels of murder and terror and awful eldritch manifestations of humanity’s deepest fears, he’s sure he can be forgiven for craving the sweet respite of Tim’s presence as much as he does. 

And more than that, too, is the realization that they’ve softened, little by little. Time or proximity or the comfortable mundanity of their meetings has worn away their hard edges one piece at a time— at least, Jon’s pretty sure that’s what’s happened. Tim doesn’t look at him like he’s a stranger anymore, and Jon doesn’t have to fight off the lingering phantom pull of distrust every time he turns his back for fear of Tim stabbing a knife into it. 

It’s not quite the same as they used to be, not that Jon had ever entertained the delusion that they’d be able to return to the easygoing rapport of their research days after everything they’ve seen and done. Instead, it’s morphed into something different, something new— and frankly, a little terrifying. He’s not entirely sure what to do with the enormity of it all, the vast and cavernous feeling that fills him every time he steps through the door. 

After a minute, he finds himself staring down at Tim’s hands where they’re wrapped around the mug, broad and scarred.

“I’m going to ask you a question,” he says, the words out of his mouth before he even realizes he’s parted his lips. Tim looks up, surprise etched into his face.

Jon’s gotten used to warning him before the questions come, after all this time. It’s not easy to have a conversation without them, not when Jon is inquisitive by his very nature and the Eye seems to have a vested interest in bringing out the worst of that— but Tim’s managed to take it rather in stride, after a bit of a rocky start. He nods after a beat of silence, fixing his eyes on Jon with that piercing, searching gaze as he waits for the words to come. 

“How have you been?”

Tim inhales when the compulsion hits him, breathing in deep and slow through his nose and exhaling again before answering. 

“In general? Better than expected, considering everything,” he says. “But since the last time you saw me?”

Jon hums. His last visit had been another of Tim’s moody episodes; he’d tumbled out of the Grifter’s Bone show and into Tim’s entryway to the sight of Tim pacing in circles and nearly ripping his hair out over something Jon never got the chance to ask about. Tim had taken one look at him, thrown his hands in the air and muttered something about comedic fucking timing before stalking off to shut himself in his bedroom for the better part of five hours. 

He’d reemerged eventually, looking exhausted and resigned, and made miserably bland small talk with Jon until they both silently agreed it would probably be less painful for Jon to go back and listen to the band that was so terrible it apparently inspired its listeners to violent murder.

“Sure,” says Jon quietly. “Since the last time I saw you.”

Tim chuckles, a soft and bitter thing. “Could be better, boss, won’t lie. Shut up in here, going a little crazy— y’know, I thought about painting my walls just for a change of scenery? Figured the landlord wouldn’t be able to complain, but I forgot I can’t just pop out to the shop for a gallon of paint anymore.”

Jon huffs a laugh despite himself. “I’ll bring one back, if I see one out there.”

“Not sure it’d work anyway,” Tim sighs. “But I appreciate it. I don’t know— I thought it was nice, at first, to have nothing to worry about in here. I’m not, you know... I’m not you out there, facing down a hundred fucking nightmares between every time you come by, so I shouldn’t even be complaining. No clowns, no worms, no Archives or Bouchard breathing down my neck. I just— I don’t know. Maybe I’m losing it.”

“Maybe you’re lonely,” Jon offers. 

He half expects Tim to get angry about it, to spit and scoff and lash out in denial— but he just sighs instead, leaning back against the plush cushion of the armchair and dragging his eyes up the length of Jon’s frame where he’s curled up on the couch.

“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe I am.”

It’s weird, seeing Tim so docile. Jon’s not sure if he likes it— it seems out of place, somehow, on someone he’s used to seeing so vibrant. Even when Tim was angry with him, spiraling and self-sabotaging and throwing himself headfirst into the end of all things, he was still incandescent and larger-than-life in a way that pulled Jon in like a moth to flame. 

Here, though, with the weight of the last six months sitting heavy in his posture and lining his eyes with dark shadows, Tim seems wrong.

All at once, with the terrible clarity of dawn, Jon is desperate to know why.

You could ask, the Eye says. He would tell you.

But no— Jon doesn’t want it to go like that, no matter what the Watcher is trying to shove down his throat. He’s flirted with its patience enough to know that it won’t really interfere past trying to convince him to compel Tim, it’s too much of an impartial voyeur for that. Still, Jon knows Tim well enough by now to know that he won’t just answer, if Jon tries to come at him teeth-first. 

So instead, he changes tactics, standing up from the couch with the blanket still wrapped tight and padding over to the window. It’s snowing outside, the bitter blizzard of the Schwartzwald settling heavy over London as it waits for Jon to venture back out into the icy air, but that’s not what he’s looking for. 

Freeing one hand from the warm confines of the blanket, he walks past the window to the bookshelf beside it, tracing a gentle finger over the wood of the shelves. Rows of books are lined up on them, skewing surprisingly fantasy and sci-fi, which Jon hadn’t exactly expected from someone who worked an actual career in paranormal investigation— but the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. Tim’s always been one for heroics, he thinks, even at the end of it all.

“Is this what you’ve been doing when I’m not here?” he asks, a harmless enough question. “Reading through these? I could try to find more for you, I wind up in Pinhole Books every now and then.”

Somewhere behind him, Tim makes a soft noise of affirmation. 

“Got through most of those in the first month or so,” he says. “Reread a couple, can’t usually keep my attention together long enough for it, though. I’ve been spending most of my time going through, uh— Danny’s old records.”

Jon doesn’t miss the way his voice stumbles over Danny’s name, going soft and a little hoarse around the syllables. His chest clenches tight— Tim’s gotten better at talking about Danny, but he still doesn’t like to, and Jon hates to hear the note of pain in his voice when he does. 

“Didn’t know he collected them,” he murmurs instead. Part of him itches to turn around, to see if Tim is making that pained, scrunched-up face again, but he shoves down the desire. 

“‘Course not,” Tim replies. “You never knew him. He didn’t have too many, I think it was more of a passing hobby than anything else, but— well. They’re all here, tucked up into the closet in his room.”

Jon doesn’t ask when he had worked up the courage to enter Danny’s room for the first time. He has his suspicions— a particularly bad week not terribly long ago, when Tim hadn’t even shown his face after Jon stepped inside, and spent the entirety of the visit playing rock music in his bedroom loud enough to give Jon a headache. Underneath the raging noise of the record, Jon had been half-convinced he’d heard the sound of screaming, but the door had been locked, and he hadn’t had the strength to knock.

He supposes that makes a bit more sense now, in context.

Jon thinks about that for a long minute, about Tim here, alone, trying to sift through the fresh bones of a brother he’s mourned for years with no way to escape. He wonders, not for the first time, whether the Eye truly sees Tim’s existence here as fundamentally different in any way from the poor, tortured souls in the nightmares outside Tim’s front door. If, perhaps, their weekly stolen visits are as much of a reprieve for Tim as they are for Jon.

Everyone has a horror to face, says the voice in his bones. Jon shivers, and it has nothing to do with the chill. 

“You could play some,” he suggests, and he hears Tim’s sharp inhale at the words. “Not— not if you don’t want to, I mean. I won’t tell you what to do.”

Tim scoffs. “That’ll be a first, boss,” he jokes, but the tone of it falls just shy of properly teasing.

Finally, Jon turns around to face him, leaning back against the bookshelf and fixing Tim with a soft, apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry, you know,” he says. The words feel strange on his tongue, foreign. Jon’s chest goes tight with the realization that this is the first time he’s actually apologizing to Tim. “For all of it— I didn’t think everything would go so sideways when I pulled you from research, I really did just want to have someone around who I could trust to do good, thorough work.” 

“You don’t—” Tim starts, but Jon cuts him off. 

“I do. I do have to say it.” He laces his fingers together beneath the blanket, pressing a thumb into his knuckle joints one by one until the churning thing in his stomach begins to settle. “I took you out of research and dropped you into this mess, even if I didn’t know it, because I trusted you, and then I went and tried to convince myself you were a killer anyway.”

Tim’s face does a funny thing then, the flush on his cheeks draining and leaving his skin pale and sallow, his lips pressing into a tight line and a brief flash of pain flickering behind his eyes. 

“Jon,” he says, his voice strained and raw. His mouth works for a moment, opening and closing like he can’t quite figure out what to say, before he finally seems to shake himself and speak. “I can, uh— let me go get a record.”

And then he all but bolts from the living room, and Jon is left with the distinct feeling that he’s still misunderstanding something deep and fundamental about whatever is happening here. 

Tim takes long enough to hunt for the record that Jon ends up going looking for him instead— it’s not a terribly large apartment, just Tim’s bedroom opposite Danny’s, and then a little home office at the end of the hallway. Still, he’s quiet and careful as he steps out of the living room and into the rest of the flat; he’s gotten past his paranoia-fueled stalking tendencies, but he’s never quite been able to shake the muscle memory of it all.

For a brief moment, Jon weighs the pros and cons of walking into Danny’s room— but before he can lift a hand to knock on the door, the soft sound of a record player starts up across the hallway. It’s not a song he recognizes, not that Jon’s spent a terribly long amount of time listening to music; something slow and acoustic, very different than what he’d expected. 

He pushes open the door to Tim’s room hesitantly, poking his head inside to see Tim fumbling with the volume knob on a fairly new-looking record player, vinyl already spinning on the turntable with the needle tracing through its grooves.

Outside, the snow falls thicker, frost beginning to creep up the edges of the bedroom window. Inside, Tim’s bedroom is low-lit and warm, a table lamp throwing soft light into the darker corners of the room. 

“This is… nice,” Jon says, hesitant, and sinks down onto the edge of the bed to listen. 

And it is, surprisingly enough— Tim doesn’t sit down with him, but he leans back against the wall and closes his eyes. After a long moment, Jon does too, letting the sound wash over him in a gentle wave. The song is slow, a touch of melancholy in the singer’s crooning South London accent, and Jon finds himself swaying gently to the sound of it despite his best attempts to stay still. 

Dancing isn’t something he does very often. If, that is, he can even call this dancing— he hadn’t had much of a taste for it before, two left feet that left him stumbling over his own steps more often than not. 

Then Nikola, and the Circus, and then he’d died. It’s a foreign feeling now, the urge to move along to the music. 

When he opens his eyes, Tim is looking at him again, that unreadable expression etched into his handsome features. Jon thinks he can make out the shape of it, if just barely— a hint of pain written into the downward twist of his lips, concern in the furrow of his brow, a strange restlessness in the way his fingers tap out an errant rhythm against the curve of his thigh. 

He stops when he catches Jon looking at them, fingers stilling before clenching and unclenching once— and then he’s moving, stepping closer and reaching that same hand out into the empty air between them with his scarred palm up. 

Jon stares at it. 

Logically, he knows what this means. He’s seen it a hundred times, in movies and stories and once at a very ill-advised party he had attended in his early days at uni, weeks after he had met Georgie for the first time and realized, rather belatedly, that the heart in his chest was good for more than just pumping blood. 

What he can’t figure out, though, is why Tim would be offering him a dance. It seems wrong somehow, incongruous with his reality, far too kind and sweet and gentle for the tentative peace they’ve managed. 

“I don’t get it,” he whispers, the words quiet underneath the lilting record. 

“Christ, Jon,” Tim sighs, exasperated but fond. “You’re not this thick, I know you’re not. Get up and dance with me.”

Jon’s heart does a funny thing then, a stuttering little one-two knock up against the bars of his ribcage that leaves him feeling a little dizzy. He’s warm all over, the blanket doing nothing for him now— so he leaves it, letting it pool onto the mattress, as he reaches up with shaking fingers to take Tim’s hand.

It’s still cold in the apartment, the snowstorm outside wailing with a ferocity, the thick German winds so out of place blowing through the London sky. Jon doesn’t feel the chill, though, not with the two burning points where Tim’s hands rest on him— one on his shoulder blade, arm wrapped gently around Jon’s side, the other wrapped in his own and tugging him gently forward until they’re rocking side to side, swaying in tentative time with the soft strum of the guitar warbling out of the record player.

It’s barely a dance. Jon doesn’t even have the chance to trip all over his own feet, not with the way they’re just sort of shuffling in a tiny circle on the narrow bit of floor space between Tim’s bed and the desk that the record player sits on. 

Tim is taller than him. Jon’s known this, of course— hard not to, when he’s known the man for the better part of half a decade, but it’s one thing to be aware of it and another entirely to be face-to-face with Tim’s collarbones, sharp and angular where they peek out from beneath the soft fabric of his button-down. He’s overcome, all at once, with the inexplicable urge to lean forward and rest his forehead against them.

“Ask me a question,” Tim says, voice a low rumble. Jon doesn’t realize he’s moved until he feels the vibrations of it, the low hum in Tim’s throat reverberating against his cheek where it presses up against the warm plane of Tim’s chest. 

For a long moment, Jon considers just staying silent. There’s a piece here that he’s missing and he knows it, some facet of Tim’s brain that’s driving this push and pull of their relationship, blisteringly angry one visit and desperately sad the next, and then soft and gentle and resigned on the third, like nothing’s happened at all— but this isn’t how he wants to pull out the answers. 

He’s offering, says the Eye, and the tingling sensation of its gaze spiderwebs out from every point of contact between himself and Tim, turning the expanse of his skin to fuzzy television static. 

Which is true, technically. Jon’s not looking up but he can hear the way Tim’s breath is shallow and quiet as he waits for Jon to speak, and the sweet haze of the low lights and soft music is chipping away at his resolve bit by bit anyway.

“Alright,” he says shakily, breathing the words right into Tim’s collar. His tongue prickles with compulsion. “Why are we doing this?”

It’s a safe question, open-ended enough that Tim can probably twist his answer into one he wants to give with just a little bit of effort. 

Strangely enough though, he doesn’t even try. 

He just tenses as the compulsion hits him— Jon can pick up on the moment that it does by the quiet hitch of breath in the back of his throat, the slight twitch of his fingers where they’re wrapped around Jon’s own. 

“I used to like dancing,” he says, by way of obtuse answer. “Before Danny. Went to clubs on the weekends, learned salsa with an ex, the whole nine yards.”

Jon hums along to show he’s listening— Tim’s voice is mesmerizing, the same way it is every time Jon takes a statement, and he loses himself a little in the sound of it overlaid by the record.

“And then Grimaldi happened— what, four years ago now? And I stopped. Just— stopped. Went to bars instead of clubs, didn’t so much as tap my foot when I listened to music. I couldn’t bring myself to, I think, I felt a little sick every time I tried.” 

Tim shifts them a little to the left, spinning Jon in a small circle before pulling him close again. 

“Every time,” he continues, “I’d see the face of that— that thing, the awful fucking clown grabbing my brother by the hands and pulling him around like a limp little puppet before skinning him alive. And then I joined the Archives, and you sure as hell weren’t the type to go out dancing, and even Sasha preferred a pint of Guinness and a board game night instead— at least, I think she did, given some of the texts I still have from her— and Martin is, well. He’s Martin. ”

The song picks up, just a little, the singer’s voice going from quiet and melancholy to stronger, pleading, and Tim shifts the hand on Jon’s back to cradle the nape of his neck instead, guiding Jon’s head back down to rest on his shoulder. There’s a weight, then, just a gentle thing on top of his head. Tim’s chin, resting lightly on his curls.

“So, you know, I thought it would all work out in the end. None of you would think anything of it, and I’d never have to make excuses to avoid going out with you all. And then the fucking Circus happened.” He spits the words, the hard biting edge of anger seeping through into his voice despite how gently he’s holding onto Jon. “It happened again, and I was so fucking terrified of it, scared and bitter and fucking furious that it couldn’t have just satisfied itself with my brother, it had to go and take my friends, too. It took Sasha, and that cut me to the bone, and I was so fucking mad at you, Jon, because you didn’t even let it take you, you just fucking pulled away and called us all murderers. And then you turned right around and tried so hard to let yourself get killed by a dozen different horrific goddamn monsters, and I— we couldn't even do a single thing about it.”

“I—” Jon starts, and the crack in his voice makes him realize with a start just how long it’s been since he’s spoken. The song turns over, something with a little more energy to it now, but Tim keeps leading them in the same slow circle of steps. “I’m sorry,” he finishes, and it sounds hollow and empty and not nearly enough in the face of everything they’ve been through. 

“I know,” Tim says, a little softer. “I wasn’t lying, you know, when I said I didn’t forgive you. Not that I could have lied, I think— your little silver tongue made plenty sure of that.”

Jon grimaces, opening his mouth to retaliate. As soon as he does, though, Tim spins him out again, leaving him a little dizzy and too concentrated on not falling over himself to form the words. 

Tim inhales, pulls him in close again. “Which is why— and I want you to know this, Jon, I want you to know I can feel your awful fucking powers working on me, I know the Eye is watching all of this happen and doing fucking nothing about it— I wanted to say that I do now.”

Jon trips, his foot catching a divot in the rug, and it’s only Tim’s arms wrapped tight around him that keep him from crashing face-first into the floor. 

“You— what?”

“Keep up, boss,” Tim huffs. “I’m saying I forgive you.”

Jon blinks. They’ve stopped moving, interrupted by his rather graceless slip, but once he manages to right himself Tim just slips his hand back into Jon’s own and starts up a gentle swaying rhythm all over again. 

The song changes, slower again, more suited to the kind of schoolboy slow dancing they’re doing. Jon’s heart keeps pounding that same unsteady rhythm in his chest, blood and static and Tim’s voice rushing in his ears. 

“You hate dancing,” he says, rather bluntly. “We’re dancing. Which you hate. Why are we dancing, Tim?”

“Hated,” replies Tim, like that’s any kind of answer. “For four whole years. And then that awful mannequin danced with you, right there in front of me, and the only thing you did the whole goddamn way through was look at me, like I could stop her from peeling off your skin like Danny all over again.”

“I would have thought that would make you hate it more, no?”

Tim huffs a little wry laugh. 

“Well,” he says. “You’ve still got all your skin, don’t you?”

And then the record stops, the music ending and the needle scratching a soft, repetitive hiss as it skips over the blank grooves at the end of the album, and they don’t stop swaying. 

“I think it doesn’t matter anymore, not now. Not since I, ah— ended it,” Tim says, and Jon’s heart drops into his stomach. 

“You ended it,” he repeats, careful not to let his voice shake. 

Slowly, achingly, they come to a stop— Jon’s not sure who stills first, but when he takes stock of his body he’s standing frozen on the carpet, Tim’s hand still in his own, Tim’s arm still wrapped warm around his waist. He makes to pull away, to put a little distance between them so he can see Tim’s face, but Tim just grips him tighter, keeping Jon’s eyes pressed into his chest. 

Without the soft hum of the music filling the air, Jon realizes he can hear the quiet pounding of Tim’s heartbeat underneath his skin. 

“I think we’re dead,” Tim whispers, and all of the warmth goes out of Jon’s body. “I killed us, didn’t I?”

Fire, heat, Jon remembers. Tim’s finger on the detonator, Nikola’s horrible, shrieking voice.

“When did you figure it out?” he asks, muffled into the fabric of Tim’s shirt.

“A couple weeks ago,” replies Tim, and he sounds weary, exhausted by the weight of it. “When did you?”

Jon fumbles with the answer on the tip of his tongue, briefly considering the option of lying to spare Tim’s feelings— but Tim would hate that, Jon knows him well enough for that by now, and he’d promised no lies once before. 

With a slow, shaky exhale, he opens his mouth. “The first time I showed up here,” he admits, and Tim jerks away like he’s been burned.

“The first time— six months, Jon? You’ve known for six months?”

Jon winces, fiddling with his hands. They feel strangely empty, now that Tim’s not holding him anymore. “I didn’t want to say anything,” he offers, but it's a weak excuse at best. “We weren’t— we weren’t always great, and I didn’t want to make it worse.”

“Make it worse?” Tim scoffs, and there it is, all the furious anger in him on display all over again. “Jon, you can’t make this worse, you’re dead.”

“I don’t know,” Jon says, shrugging. “I could be dead without you here.”

“That’s not the point,” snaps Tim.

“Then what is?”

Tim growls, turning away from Jon and tangling his fingers messily into his hair. “Why are you here, Jon? Why did you spend half a bloody year acting like everything was fucking peachy and we were just hanging around having— having fucking dinner dates when you knew that I killed you?”

“It’s not like you had much of a choice,” Jon snipes back. “What, either death by joint suicide and ending the clown apocalypse or doing nothing and letting them win, and we die anyway? That’s not your fault, Tim, I’m not going to blame you for that.”

“You were supposed to run,” snarls Tim, and when he turns back around his eyes are red-rimmed, glistening wet and wide, and Jon has to bite down on the urge to fall into him all over again. “You were supposed to get out, Jon.”

“What, and you were supposed to stay there and die?”

“Yes.”

Jon sucks in a sharp inhale, the realization hitting him a second too late, the static fizzling on his tongue as the compulsion washes over Tim, and they both know without a single doubt that he meant it.

There’s a long, stilted moment of silence, both of them shaking and breathing heavy into the cold air. 

Then, without warning, Tim sinks down to sit on the bed. “I never expected to come back,” he admits, his voice tight and strained. “I was always going to die there, Jon.”

“You can’t know that—”

“I was supposed to be the distraction. I told you as much, I told you that if it came down to killing me or letting them win that you needed to let me die and get the hell out of there.”

“We still won,” he snaps, the need to know hot and acidic across his palate. The Watcher crawls its steady way up the length of his spine, settling behind his eyes and waiting. “So why are you so hung up on this when it’s over? I don’t get it, Tim, just tell me—”

“Because you were supposed to live, Jon,” Tim bites out, furious and beautiful. “Because I love you, and I needed you to live, and I fucking killed you. Just like you always thought I would.”

Tim finishes with a thick, heaving breath, eyes wide and fixed on Jon’s— unreadable, he’d thought for so long. God, he’s been so blind. Tim loves him. 

Tim loves him. And it wasn’t enough to save them, but Jon doesn’t think he cares all that much, not when the bright incandescent thing in his chest has just been granted a name. 

He’s not sure who moves first. He’s not sure it matters, in the end— not sure anything matters except for the fact that he and Tim are staring wide-eyed and bewildered at each other one moment, and then the next they’ve crossed the terrible, impassable distance between them and crashed their lips together like they’re drowning.

Kissing Tim, Jon thinks, is rather more similar to shaking Jude Perry’s hand than he ever would have guessed. Tim’s so fucking warm, all the time, and the heat licks its way up Jon’s face and down his skin until he’s burning with it, with the feeling of Tim’s hand in his hair and Tim’s lips on his own and the soft scratching sound of the record skipping over and over and over, the needle hovering at the edge of the vinyl and going nowhere. 

Outside the window, snow falls through the hazy dawn light. Beyond Tim’s bedroom door, underneath the single dim lamp in the kitchen, the stovetop clock ticks over to 4:49. Tim wraps his arms solid and sure around Jon, holds him tight, tight enough that Jon thinks he can hear the brittle crack of his dead heart under the weight of it.

If this is how the Eye ends it, he thinks desperately, please let it be enough. 

The first thing he registers, even before he manages to crack his eyes open, is the sound of a low, familiar voice. The second is pain, a terrible aching stiffness that radiates through every inch of his skeleton, limbs that have forgotten how to be used and simply lay tense and dormant beside him. 

The third, he thinks with a dry, burning gasp, is that he’s thirsty.

He hasn’t been thirsty in months. He hasn’t needed to eat or drink, hasn’t needed to sleep— and he was sleeping, he realizes, on his back in an uncomfortably hard bed with a thin linen sheet pulled over him and tucked in around the edges like he’s a child again. 

He doesn’t feel dead, either, which is strange.

“You don’t sound very sure,” the voice says, clearer in his ears now.

“I mean— I don’t know,” says another, dry and laced with something his muddled brain registers as good, safe, comfortable. “It might be a different model, maybe? I thought it was plastic— but yeah.”

Jon fumbles for the threads of consciousness that skitter over him, forcing his eyes open and gasping gently at the harsh glare of sunlight that meets them. The ceiling above him is a clean, sterile white. There’s a gentle beeping somewhere to his left, quiet and rhythmic. 

“So,” says the second voice again, and Jon’s brain kicks into overdrive as he recognizes Georgie, the sound of her, the space she takes up in a room. “What does it mean?”

“That’s an excellent question,” he croaks out, voice hoarse and brittle, and Georgie screams. 

There’s a moment of chaos, a shuffle of overlapping voices as he reorients himself and struggles to sit up, and then Basira— yes, that was it, he remembers Basira— leans into his field of vision, eyes wide and startled. 

“Jon,” she says, very carefully. “Is it still you?”

Jon considers that for a long moment. He’s still real, he thinks, hasn’t been bodysnatched by the stranger or posessed by the Spiral— but he doesn’t think he’s the same person he was before the Circus anymore.

Or, perhaps more accurately, before the first time he walked into Tim’s flat. 

“I think so,” he replies, because that’s easier than explaining what he’s gone through. “I, uh— I don’t know how you’d prove it, though.”

Basira gives him a little hm of suspicion, and Jon moves to stand up, to— he doesn’t know, talk to her, prove to her that he’s still himself— but Georgie hurries in and presses him back down to the mattress with a surprisingly firm grip.

“Enough,” she hisses. “Stay still, let me get a nurse.”

“I’m okay,” he argues, and is met with another chorus of protests. “Really, I’m fine—”

“Jon.” 

He looks up, really looks at Georgie for the first time, and is startled to see her eyes rimmed with thick, glistening tears. 

“You’re not okay,” she says. “You’ve been in a coma.”

Oh. 

Oh.  

That would certainly explain it.

A thought tickles at the back of his brain, and he opens his mouth to speak before even realizing it. “H— How long?”

“Six months, give or take,” says Basira, quietly. Jon bites down on the shocked little gasp that bubbles up in his throat. 

If he’s been alive this whole time, if he survived and he’s just been in a coma—  

It’s too soon to know, he tells himself. The Entities don’t like to play nice, and while the Eye might have spared him for its own ends, there’s no guarantee it’s done the same for anyone else, even though it owns them all now, bound by the Institute’s strange, eldritch employment contract. 

Tim might very well still be dead, buried underneath the rubble of the wax museum.

“Six,” he murmurs, tamping down on the horrible wave of hope in his chest. “The others. Tim. Is— is he…”

He’s met with a long, torturous moment of silence— Basira looking down at him with a look of sad pity on her face, Georgie gripping his hand and refusing to make eye contact. 

Of course. It was too much to hope that Tim had survived the blast, too. Jon thinks back to their last moment together, wrapped up in a tangle of limbs on Tim’s bed as Jon drifted off into a facsimile of sleep and waited for the nightmare cycle to start over again— all at once, he’s filled with a terrible wave of bitterness, despair and anger and frustration at the Eye, at the Stranger, at himself for daring to think that he could have one good thing in this fucked up existence that won’t seem to let him so much as die—

There’s a clatter from somewhere outside the room, a shriek that sounds suspiciously like Martin, and the furious patter of bare feet on tile, before the door to the hospital room bursts open with a bang.

“You’re alive,” says a voice, bright and open and beautiful, and when Jon’s head snaps up to look he sees Tim in the doorway, heaving and flushed red with the effort of running, dressed in a thin blue hospital gown with an IV line hanging limply from his arm. He staggers into the room, one unsteady foot after another, and sinks to his knees beside Jon’s bed. “You’re alive,” he whispers again, grabbing wildly at Jon’s hand and pulling on it until he can press a bruising kiss to the scarred skin. 

“Tim—” Jon chokes out, and for a half-formed Avatar of the Eye, he’s suddenly incredibly blind to anything but Tim in front of him, Tim real and warm and alive. “You— you’re here?”

“Just woke up,” replies Tim, and if Jon had any doubts that he remembered their six months in the Eye’s domain as well as Jon does, they’re shattered when Tim leans in, gathers him up into a tight embrace. 

“You know,” he says, with his lips pressed into the crown of Jon’s head and his fingers shaking where they’re pressed into Jon’s skin, warm and solid and sure. Jon feels, for the first time in a very long time, blissfully and impossibly happy. “I just had the strangest dream.”