Chapter Text
In a far-off kingdom Somewhere Else, where such things as bleeding books and doors where doors weren't before exist, it is considered quite fortunate to be an orphan. Everyone knows, in fact, that the only thing luckier than having one’s parents whisked away at a young age was to have encountered one of the many grotesque and horrifying beasts believed to be the source of the world’s magic and survived.
Jonathan Sims was one such poor orphan, and by all proper accounts should have spent the rest of days living the charmed life of a hero: being taken off the streets and mentored by a great wizard after gutsily attempting to pickpocket him; rubbing elbows with royalty and merchants and other powerful sorts; and ultimately becoming a vaunted wizard or handy with a sword, tracking down one of the great beasts (perhaps even the one who had Marked him as a child) and binding their power to him in a nearly-unbreakable contract. There were certainly an endless number of fairy tales and epic ballads dedicated to such fortuitous foundlings.
As it stood, Jonathan Sims lived an exceptionally uncharmed life. He grew up in the reluctant care of his grandmother, who forbade him to go out into the cliffs north of their little village of Branscombe Cliffs, but otherwise expected little more of him than that he keep his clothes tidy and be home in time for dinner. Even still, there’d been a certain amount of anticipation around Jonathan’s arrival, as those who knew his story (everyone, as no one gossiped more than fishermen and their wives) assumed he’d be blessed by fate and perhaps bring some fame to a village that was little more than a fleck of ink on most maps.
But Jonathan, or Jon as he would snap if called otherwise, was widely regarded as querulous and fussy. He complained about fishing and was singularly unathletic. In conversation he came across as stilted and prickly. He condescended to the children his age and tolerated the littler ones for as long as they’d let him read aloud to them. Reading was just about the only thing he would tolerate. By the age of eleven he’d read through every book the village’s tiny library had to offer and spent the next two years bullying every person he could to get them to lend him their personal reading material. Those who held out hope that Jon might reveal himself to be some sort of genius, socially awkward but gifted in academics, were sorely disappointed. He did well enough in school, but was impatient and easily bored, and gained a reputation for wandering out of the classroom whenever the subject matter became, as he said, “not worth anyone’s time.”
It was no small relief to nearly everyone in the village when, at age fifteen, Jonathan Sims left Branscombe Hills for the capital city of Vigil’s Gate.
His grandmother, worn down by a decade of her neighbors’ complaints, wrote to an old friend of hers who was eventually able to secure for Jon a seat at one of the notable schools in the capital. The school was well-known for sending a significant number of its graduates off to apprentice under the kingdom’s most powerful witches and wizards. The few who still held out hope that Jon might yet experience a sudden windfall were always conveniently gathered near his grandmother’s gate when the post arrived.
Jonathan Sims was not made an offer to become the apprentice of a powerful wizard or witch.
Instead, Jon found employment working as a researcher in one of the many branches of the Royal University’s library system. The branch, dedicated to both historical ballads and fictional epics, was so many branches afield of the Royal University's prestigious Central library that it could scarcely be called a twig. Whether or not it was here that Jon learned how blindly he'd been robbed of his chance at fame and fortune is a story for another time.
And so from here Jon navigated the waters of academia—often tedious, occasionally choppy (and on more than one occasion nearly wrecking on the crags of workplace politics), but always rewarding—until after five years he had worked his way upstream and into a research position at the Watcher King Magnus’ Institute for Magical Preservation and Study. Despite its title, a position at The Institute was perhaps even less well-regarded by those back in Branscombe Cliffs than Jon’s previous role: The Institute did not teach magic, nor train wizards and witches, nor develop new spells, nor produce anything of clear value; it was, as far as anyone could tell, a place for folks to ask vague questions about magic and on occasion dump their cursed and unwanted items of dubious origin.
The only thing anyone found interesting about The Institute was its Archivist, an ancient woman by the name of Gertrude Robinson who was said to be one of the most powerful witches of Beholding, second only to the Watcher King himself. As rumor went, she’d offended the current Watcher King back in the early days of his reign, and he’d bestowed upon her the “honor” of serving as the head of the Institute, left to gather dust alongside the evil books and rambling first-hand accounts of magical misadventures that people occasionally inflicted upon The Institute’s Archives.
Still, it seemed to Jon as though everything was, if not as it was meant to be, perfectly adequate: he had his books, and the work, and enough coin to let his own room within walking distance of the Institute, and a sort of fellowship with the other researchers wherein they mostly left him to his own devices (with the exception, to Jon’s chagrin, of Melanie).
In this way, two years passed to the fanfare of quills scratching away into the night.
About this time, everyone began talking of Peter Lukas, Wizard of the Lonely, again. It was said that Lukas had threatened to vanish the royal magicians if The Watcher King Elias didn't accept his proposal of marriage. The will-they-won’t-they of King Elias and Peter Lukas, whose ancient noble family had protected the throne from outside threats about as many times as it had itself been a threat, had been chaff for the rumor mill for years. Everyone had expected that King Elias, nearing forty, would finally accept Lukas’s proposal. Everyone had also expected that Lukas, if turned down, would only vanish one or two royal wizards, just to make a point.
So when King Elias rejected Peter Lukas’s proposal again and, that very night, a thick fog blotted out the whole of the Vigil’s Gate, seeping over thresholds and rising like a sluggish tide to drag nearly half of the royal wizards from their beds, never to be seen again, people got very scared indeed. For the first few weeks few dared even venture from their homes (unless they worked for Gertrude Robinson, who the fog had not deigned to vanish). After that, almost nobody went out on their own, particularly in the early morning when the mist still lay low in the city’s darkened thoroughfares. It was a great annoyance to Jon when Sasha, who split her time between Artefact Storage and Research and was by all accounts far too interested in other people’s business, assigned almost all of the Institute staff an involuntary “buddy” to walk with to The Institute.
“But you're not making Gertrude ‘buddy up’!” Jon had protested when Sasha had posted the names on the door of the little kitchen where most of the staff tended to take their lunch or tea.
“You know as well as I that Gertrude hardly ever leaves The Institute long enough to warrant needing supervision,” Sasha had said smartly. “Besides, if the Fog had been able to tolerate her then it would have taken her in the first place.”
Jon begrudgingly conceded that Sasha had a point, and resigned himself to feeling thankful she hadn't paired him up with David from the library staff or, worse, Melanie. Basira, at least, was just as allergic to idle chit-chat as he was, and the two of them spent many a morning walking to The Institute discussing their current research or in a silence that (should Jon have ever considered it) could almost be considered companionable.
Just as things had begun to settle into near-normalcy, reports began trickling in from the north that a strange lighthouse had been spotted bobbing over the moors just beyond the town of Barnsmouth. There was no agreement among those who saw the thing as to what it looked like: one account described it as resembling a great Maypole twisted from top to bottom with ribbons so garish it gave one a headache to look at for too long; an illustration in one of Vigil’s Gate’s more reputable daily papers showed a lumpy, porous-looking tower not unlike a termite’s mound; still another witness stated it “didn't look like a lighthouse at all, but a deep hole for falling in.” At times, it was said, the fixture atop the lighthouse seemed to draw in light rather than send it out, while at others it twitched and turned like a great eye surveying the surrounding land. The only detail anyone seemed to be able to agree on was that it appeared to float atop a rippling swell of impenetrable fog, and so most assumed it was an arcane staging ground for Peter Lukas who, it was believed, was waiting for the right moment to swallow up the town and its residents whole.
The appearance of the lighthouse brought with it a slew of work at The Institute as nobles and magic users alike arrived with inquiries about its nature: Jon and the other researchers scurried around the city like ants, digging through libraries and personal collections, interviewing anyone who claimed to have seen the lighthouse in person and tapping the knowledge of what royal wizards remained available. In the Archives, Gertrude's three beleaguered archival assistants dug through boxes of crumbling statements looking for any sort of answer about what could be the origin of the mysterious monolith. More than once in the late hours of the night, while bent over dusty tomes or laid out on one of the cots Gertrude kept in The Archives for just such an occasion, Jon overheard the others whisper that perhaps the lighthouse was beyond even the Sight of The Watcher King. Even the Lukases, for all their mist and misdirection, could never entirely escape the Watcher’s Gaze when it was turned upon them. For this lighthouse to be able to do so would make it an anomaly none at The Institute had ever before encountered.
Jon, for one, buttoned his fear up tight and insisted there was a perfectly mundane magical explanation for it all. There was some grumbling, particularly from Melanie, when a week later Jon was proved right.
The lighthouse never left the moors, and it was learned that it did not belong to Peter Lukas but to the Wizard Martin. This was met with some confusion at first, as no one had ever heard of the Wizard Martin or his kaleidoscopic lighthouse. Soon enough it was agreed that Wizard Martin was a powerful practitioner of the Spiral, thus neatly explaining both mysteries. A few ominous rumors trickled out after that that Wizard Martin had a knack for twisting quite intricately the hearts of young men.
Yet Wizard Martin and matter of his unconfirmed twistiness was promptly forgotten among the Institute staff when, in the span of less than a day they received word that Gertrude, who The Watcher King Elias had sent to Barnsmouth to Behold the lighthouse, had disappeared somewhere on the road; discovered that that someone had broken into Artefact Storage and left behind a door that wouldn't open and; found themselves wholly without an Archives staff after a mist swept into the basement of the Institute and whisked away Gertrude's three archival assistants.
It was in that very basement that Jon and Basira were documenting anything that could possibly be related to the disappearance of the assistants that Jon’s Newest Misfortune was delivered, to his deep displeasure, by Melanie.
“Hey Jo-hon, guess what?” she chortled as she tromped down the stairs to the Archives.
Unwilling to give her the satisfaction of a reaction, Jon carried on with his work.
“Come on, Jo-hon, you know you want to know.”
He didn't just carry on with his work; he attacked it with an admirable vigor, the nib of his pen crossing parchment with enough force to tear the page and bleed the ink.
“Jo-hon, it really is important,” Melanie said in a wheedling voice.
By this point his notes looked like they'd suffered an attack by a rather energetic octopus.
“Jo-hon…”
“Oh, come off it Melanie,” Basira started, “you know how he is about his name.”
But it was too late. Jon’s head snapped up from where he'd been fixedly staring at the table to lever a scorching glare in Melanie’s direction.
“Will you stop using such juvenile tactics to rile me up?” Jon spat. He tugged a hand through his dark hair, the strands of which after hours in the Archives had escaped his bun to curl and twist like a manic halo around his skull.
“Not when they keep working, ‘Jon with no h’,” Melanie said, aping his crisp affect at the end. “And not when you insist on ignoring me when I don't.”
“I ignore you,” Jon snipped as he began blotting a particularly deep pit of ink on his notes, “because you very rarely have anything important to say.”
Melanie crossed her arms over her chest and shot him a satisfied smirk.
“Well this time I do.”
“Oh I can't wait to see what qualifies as ‘important’ to you,” Jon muttered. Basira shushed him with a glare.
“Go on,” she prompted Melanie.
“Sasha needs to see you two up in the kitchen,” Melanie said.
“All…right?” Basira said with a frown. “Can it wait, we're kind of in the middle of, you know, trying to find the three people who disappeared the night before last.”
The other woman shook her head, shedding her mischievous demeanor like a pair of gloves.
“She said it's urgent. She wouldn't tell me what it's about, just that she received a missive directly from The Watcher King and it involves all of us.”
As if tied to the same string, Basira and Jon shot up at once, mirrored looks of consternation reflected on their faces.
“Why didn't you say that in the first place?” Jon yelped.
“By The Eyes, Melanie, lead with that next time!”
And that was how, with great fear and frustration, Jon, Melanie, and Basira learned that, along with Sasha, they had been transferred to the Archives, effective immediately. They huddled over the fine, white parchment, gawping at the King’s precise handwriting and feeling vaguely uneasy at the way his official crest seemed to watch them with unblinking delight, and read that they would all fill the role of “Archival Assistant” for the next four months at which point, should Gertrude Robinson be found dead or remain missing, one of them would be appointed as The Archivist and head of The Magnus Institute.
“So it's a contest, then?” Basira huffed, finally breaking the silence between them.
Sasha leaned back in her chair and tossed her dark curls over her shoulder with a sigh. “It certainly seems that way.”
“Well I don't want to be The Archivist,” Melanie said. “It's bad enough wasting away reading about magic rather than practicing it-” for Melanie had been a witch-of-the-Knife-in-training before an injury had cut her apprenticeship short, “I hardly want to do it in a moldering old basement and be in charge of all you.”
“I don't think anyone wants that,” Sasha agreed, not unkindly.
“I don't want it either,” Basira said. “I'll make do in The Archives since we don't have a choice, but I like research better.”
The three women turned to stare at Jon.
The unease growing in his stomach spilled over into his chest. It was true he'd wanted something like this—recognition for his hard work, a prominent place in academia—but he knew he was far from qualified and that no doubt, given his life’s luck to this point, it would go miserably should the position be bestowed upon him.
“I… Sasha’s better qualified,” he said, not meeting their eyes. “She's got experience in Research and Artefact Storage and has worked with Gertrude on more than one occasion. She's good with people and… and even arranged that whole partner nonsense after Peter Lukas attacked.”
With a scoff, Melanie rolled her eyes and began to speak, but Sasha silenced her with a hand on her arm. Basira just considered him in her usual, quiet way.
“Thank you, Jon,” Sasha said. Her voice turned teasing then. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, even though you make it clear when you think my ideas are ‘nonsense’.”
Jon’s cheeks darkened. “Well, what I mean to say, that is—you'd be a wonderful Archivist, Sasha.”
There was a brief and awkward silence before Sasha stood up and brushed her hands on her skirt. She then looked to the other newly-minted Archival Assistants and nodded.
“Hopefully Gertrude will pop back up by then and we won't have to deal with it,” she said crisply. “In the meantime, let's go down and get a real lay of the land.”
The lay of the land was, in fact, quite bad. As one ventured past the small work area when the assistants took statements on magical myth and mishap and penned often uninspiring follow-ups, the basement became a claustrophobic labyrinth of bookshelves and crates, all crammed full of scrolls and loose sheets of parchment and books so old the glue had all but vanished from the binding.
“Blast The Eyes,” Melanie swore as they stared into the dark disorder, and for once Jon found himself inclined to agree with her.
For the next month, Jon buried himself in the work. Sasha took to running both the Archives and the daily mechanisms of The Institute, an outcome which seemed a welcome relief to the rest of the staff. Melanie, the best with people of the remaining three and the most outspoken about not being stuck in the basement, was out most of the day, running about Vigil’s Gate doing follow-up interviews on statements and cajoling the stuffy librarians of the larger branches to let her into their precious collections. Basira mostly worked with the Research team, coming down to the Archives only when some poor soul came to give a statement. That left Jon to the task of sorting, organizing, and categorizing the statements stored in the basement. The best he could tell, Gertrude and her previous assistants had come up with a rather inventive system of classification and storage, by which they walked down into the Archives, closed their eyes, spun around until dizzy, and then tossed the statements willy-nilly as far away as possible.
It seemed just his luck, Jon thought as he skimmed a statement about disappearing mountains from a box labelled “Skin”, that his first real opportunity at a meaningful promotion would turn out like this. Every day he spent in the Archives seemed longer, more exhausting, to the point that most nights he’d simply collapse into the cot he’d dragged downstairs after too many mornings spent waking up slumped over his desk with an aching back. Not like the cot did much to improve the aches; anytime he stood up it was to a cacophony of creaks and pops, and Melanie, when she deigned to actually come down into the Archives, had taken to calling him “Grandfather Jon.”
If it were just the aches and pains of spending too many hours in one place, then Jon might have found a way to take some small pleasure in the work. But the statements themselves were maddening, often describing magic and monsters so far beyond what was documented in the kingdom that most could only be attributed to an affliction of the senses. Statement after useless statement describing great mechanical birds that gulped up hundreds and disappeared into the clouds on motionless wings or tiny windows one could hold in a single palm and open up upon the vast and infinite knowledge of the universe: all of them insanity.
How unhinged the majority of the statements were only made worse the ones that Jon, with jaw clenched, discovered and simply knew to be true, such as the one describing a remote mountain lake that turned out to be the upturned and drooling maw of an unspeakable beast. He was certain Gertrude had been able to discern the veracity of all statements that crossed her threshold, yet had not seemed to care to keep them separate from the rest. As such, Jon would often stumble across one amidst his mindless sorting and find himself even more worn and irritable for the rest of the day.
And all of that was nothing to say of the unshakeable sense that, when the Archives were empty for all but him, there was something watching him. Scrutinizing him.
He'd made his mind up half a dozen times to quit the Archives, even quit the Institute if he had to, yet every time he worked up the energy or courage to trudge up the stairs and tell Sasha, something got in his way. Most of the time it was his own damnable curiosity: his eyes would snag on some unusual description of a Web Spell or he'd lose track of time searching for a cross-referenced statement about a vampire, and then before he knew it it'd be well past the end of the day and Sasha long gone. Occasionally Jon would be waylaid by an unexpected statement-giver, arriving when Basira was out doing follow-up with Melanie or done for the day. The days where Jon had to take down someone’s statement were often the worst.
“And can you tell me again, exactly how thick was the fog?” he said.
He channeled every dram of his frustration into pinching the bridge of his nose so that he wouldn’t say something even more damning. Lady Herne, he’d been informed, had been engaged to one of the younger Lukases prior to his unfortunate passing, and despite the current aggravations between Peter Lukas and the Crown, the extended family was still quite influential amongst the nobility.
“I don’t know, thick? Thicker than usual?” Lady Herne snipped.
"Have you considered that the fog may have simply been a natural… extension of the powers attributed to the magic users of your fiancé’s family?”
“Are you saying, what, this was just a side effect of the Lonely?”
“Well, it would certainly make sense that it was nothing more than that, given your grief-”
“Then what about the strange road I found? And those hulking metal monsters with the piercing beacons, whizzing by impossibly fast? Are you saying those are just ‘part of the Lonely’ too?”
Jon’s head ached as he pictured the horrible rumbling of the beasts Lady Herne described, their high-pitched howls broken only by deep, throbbing sputters. He could almost feel the buckle of metal and bone as he stumbled dazedly into one’s path and met its unforgiving muzzle. He shook his head and the image away, hard.
“What I’m suggesting,” he said with attempted delicacy, “is that perhaps some of the… things… you saw had a more mundane explanation: shapes in the fog, maybe, enhanced by your… heightened emotional state.”
The woman, pale, sharp features made even moreso by the deep black of her gown, scoffed.
“You think I’m insane, don’t you?”
She pushed back from the table and stood, gathering her skirts.
“All of Evan’s friends said it was foolish for me to come here and waste my time with all these old, molding books,” she said. “I should have listened and gone to a real wizard.”
Her words took the last bit of patience in Jon’s chest and twisted it until it snapped.
“Yes, Lady Herne, perhaps a real wizard would be able to conjure a spell suitable for your paroxysmal delusions.”
Lady Herne stormed off. Jon was not sure if he felt fortunate or unlucky that Sasha was not there for Lady Herne to launch a formal complaint.
Some word of what happened with Lady Herne must have gotten back to Sasha, however, as a few days later she came down into the Archives for what she billed a “casual chat.”
“You can’t go on losing your temper with every poor person coming in to give a statement!” she shouted in an uncharacteristic fit of anger. Jon reflected, somewhat regretfully, that Sasha looked as tired and worn as he did.
“I, I know, I’m sorry,” he said, eyes glued to the floor. “It had been a long day and I was… on edge.”
“You haven’t been getting enough sleep,” she said, voice softening.
Jon picked at a thread coming loose from his shirt. “I’ve had a few late nights,” he conceded.
“A few?” He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “Jon, I don’t think I’ve seen you leave The Institute before nightfall in a month, and that’s only when you leave the Archives at all. It’s not good for you, and we both know it.”
“I’ll be fine,” Jon said, but even he could hear the defensive edge to his words. “It won’t happen again.”
“You’re right, it won’t.”
Something in the turn of Sasha’s voice made him look up. A small, certain smile graced her lips.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like whatever it is you’re about to propose?” he asked.
“Because you hate going out, but going out is exactly what you need. You’re spending too much time cooped up in here, and it’s taken the sweet, kind-hearted man—”
Jon shot her a look that only made her laugh.
“All right, the well-intentioned, attentive man I know and turned him into a geriatric grump.”
“I’m not that bad,” Jon protested weakly.
“You are, and you know it, and so you’re going to come out with me and the rest of the Archives staff tomorrow before one of these old bookshelves does you in.”
As if in threat or agreement, a long creak came from one of the settling bookshelves deep in the Archives.
“Tomorrow? But tomorrow’s—”
“Saturday?” Sasha cut in. “And May Day, at that. The Institute will be officially closed and all staff out on official holiday for the rest of the weekend, starting at noon today.”
Before he knew it, Jon was being swept up the stairs to the main floor of the Institute and ushered out with the rest of the staff.
“We're all celebrating at Georgie's tomorrow. Melanie invited us all over—yes, even you, Jon,” Sasha added before he could protest. “That's not going to be uncomfortable, is it?”
Jon was too busy shading his eyes with his hands as they stepped out of the Institute and into the sun to say, ‘Yes, of course it will be uncomfortable for me to spend time with my coworkers at the house of my previous sweetheart and the woman she loves,’ so instead he just grumbled a confirmation that he'd be there. He felt… livelier now that he was out in the warm, Spring air. Perhaps there was some merit to Sasha's suggestions. And despite their past, he still considered Georgie a close friend.
He was beginning to regret his decision when dawn broke the next day. He'd hardly slept, and his head pounded as if he'd spent a night in the pub rather than in his own bed. One glance in the mirror suggested the same: his eyes were bloodshot and bruised; his hair dry and splitting; and his clothes were stale and wrinkled. The smile he attempted in the mirror reminded him more of a pained grimace.
While he'd never admit it to Melanie, what he saw in the mirror rather looked like someone's aging, forgotten grandfather. And wasn't that what he saw in himself as well, someone better suited for a life as dry and dusty and dark as the statements he read day-in, day-out, someone who would do half the work for the gravedigger by spending the rest of his life six feet under?
Still, Jon was nothing if not stubborn. He'd said he'd brave the May Day crowds to visit Georgie, and so he would. He washed up and applied oil to his hair before wrangling it into a plait. Finding most of his clothes dirty or in serious need of pressing, Jon dug around the chest at the foot of his bed until he found the white suit, embroidered in Watcher’s green, that he’d worn for his grandmother’s wake. The effect, unfortunately, when he looked again in the mirror, reminded him of that of a ghost.
Before he left his little rented room, Jon shoved a few statements he’d brought from the Archives into his bag, then slung the bag across his chest. Worst came to worst he could hide away in Georgie’s study and get some work done once the rest of them were properly drunk. Or maybe he’d get properly drunk and finally work up the nerve to quit. Either way, Jon was intent on spending the rest of his day productively.
The May Day streets pulsed and clotted with people laughing, singing, and drinking. Someone had erected a Maypole in the square not far from Jon’s room, around which clusters of children and young people danced and twirled. As he pushed through the crowds, he couldn’t help but feel the Eye of the Watcher King’s Sigil, standing proud atop the Maypole, observing his progress. Of course, it was known that The Watcher King could Behold almost anywhere in his kingdom through almost any eye but a living one, yet Jon told himself the chance that the King himself would be Watching him at that very moment was slim to none. Still, he picked up his pace as he crossed the square and was none-too-relieved when he fell out of the Eye’s Sight.
Yet while the square granted some space for the celebrating crowds to spread, the streets bunched them up again, and Jon felt himself pressed and pushed along at times almost against his will. His shoulders hunched as he tried to make himself small and unnoticeable. For many, though, May Day was all about noticing and being noticed. Every which where, people were dressed in their finest, strolling and swaggering and smirking and shouting. People catcalled and others fluttered eyelashes and blew kisses in response. It had always been too much for Jon, but after nearly a month’s worth of days in the silent Archives, the bustle was quickly becoming unbearable.
Jon darted onto one of the side streets, hardly caring that it would take him longer to reach Georgie’s that way. The oppressive crush of the crowd lessened enough for him to breathe, but only barely. This particular street was lined with pubs and cafes and stands selling street food, and where the revelers in the main squares and major thoroughfares seemed filled with an exuberance particular to the holidays, those here seemed mostly filled with beer.
“Well, aren’t you a handsome thing?”
Jon’s stomach lurched, and as his eyes met the pale gaze of the man who’d approached him, he wasn’t sure that it was entirely on account of overstimulation. Something about his eyes seemed to go on and on and on, as if he were looking at Jon and taking in the whole of the universe at the same time. Jon eventually broke eye contact with the man, only to notice the unusual spread of his scar, which climbed up his chest and neck and seemed to wind over to his back. The man had little compunction showing it off, as his voluminous shirt was unbuttoned halfway down to his navel, and he smirked as he noticed Jon staring.
“Like what you see?”
“Ah, well, it’s just—” Jon stammered, looking away. “It’s a fascinating pattern, like lightning—”
Despite barely surpassing Jon’s meagre height, the man seemed huge, expansive even, spreading and stretching in front of him into something endless and inescapable—Jon took a sharp breath and tasted something sweet and stinging.
“Struck as a child,” the other man said with a smile. “I’m Michael, but my friends call me Mike. Why don't I get you a beer, and then I can show you just how far the scar goes?”
Jon could feel the answer—a firm no—on his tongue, but for some reason it got lost in a dizzy headrush.
“I-I think I’d—”
“Darling, there you are! I thought I'd lost you in the crowd.”
The air punched from Jon’s lungs as if he’d suddenly hit the ground, hard. He staggered back and into the solid chest of a man who seemed more than twice his size in all directions. The hand the man put on Jon’s shoulder to steady him was large but surprisingly gentle.
Michael scowled at the man behind Jon. A moment later, his expression turned curious.
“Do I know you?”
The larger man shifted so that he was standing at Jon’s side and slid his hand down to Jon’s waist. From the outside, Jon could picture, the move would look familiar, possessive. Yet the man’s fingers barely pressed into the fabric of Jon’s shirt. Something about it—the consideration in the light touch, the unspoken acknowledgement of the boundary—made Jon feel a little dizzy again.
“No, I don't think so,” the man said. His voice was high compared to Michael or Jon’s, but the edge was sharp.
“Come on, love,” he continued, steering Jon gently away from Michael. “I saw some kebabs down the street I think you'd like, let's go before they're all out.”
Jon nodded dumbly and followed. He glanced back at Michael and knew the other man wasn't convinced. Michael crossed his arms and smirked.
“I do recognize you,” Michael called to the large man. “You'd better keep your pretty boy under lock and key, unless you want your Master to whisk him away!”
The man at Jon’s side tensed. A sudden chill breeze swept past Jon, and he shivered.
“Go throw yourself off a cliff, Michael!” the man called without looking back.
Jon felt horror creep into his expression. Of course, it was just his luck to escape one threat only to fall into the hands of another. Still, Jon let himself be navigated through the crowd, even as the fingers at his side flexed and gripped him more tightly. The sound of Michael's laughter followed them to the end of the street.
The two of them came out into a larger road and the man made a sharp turn. The moment they were out of sight of the side street and, presumably, Michael, the big man’s hand dropped and he took a step away from Jon.
“I am so, so sorry,” he began. “That must have been really uncomfortable for you but I… you looked cornered, and I couldn't just leave you there. Are you all right?”
The man ran a hand through the cloud of ginger atop his head and pulled at the ends in obvious agitation. For the first time, Jon got a proper look at his savior-or-abductor.
It struck Jon that Michael’s assessment of him had been exceptionally far off, for here was a truly handsome man. Under the curls sat a plush, peachy face that, when not pulled into an expression of concern, was no doubt warm and friendly. Despite only coming up to the midway point of the man’s chest, Jon could see the dappling of freckles that crossed his button nose and danced along his cheeks. Even when pursed in pique the man’s lips were full, welcoming even. His costume, while plain, flattered his build: the full-sleeved white blouse he wore accentuated his broad shoulders and the pleasing swell of his stomach, while the forest-green dress breeches drew attention to thick, muscular thighs. It was an easy matter for Jon to imagine this man plucking him right up from the ground as if he weighed little more than the dandelions that graced the man’s head in a delicate crown.
Jon cut that thought short. Now was hardly the time for inappropriate thoughts about a complete stranger.
“Are you all right?” the man asked again.
Jon blinked, and it felt as though he’d suddenly returned to his body after a long holiday.
“Ah, yes, right, sorry, of course…” Jon fumbled, “Yes, I’m, I’m fine.”
And now that Jon was properly back in his body, he was painfully aware of his own deficiencies. In the face of this strapping young man, whose expression was painted in genuine concern on his behalf, Jon could only shrink back, as if he could hide his creased funerary clothes and the dark circles under his eyes and the creaking of his weary bones.
“Are you sure? I’m sorry, it just seems—I’m sorry if I crossed any lines and made you, made you feel—”
The man put his hands up in supplication, and Jon could see that he was shrinking too, trying to make himself seem smaller, less threatening. A pang of offense struck Jon that this man might have any inclination to lessen himself.
“No, yes, I’m sure,” Jon hastened to say. “I’m just. It’s all a bit overwhelming, isn’t it? So, ah. Thank you. For helping me.”
Relief unfurled across the man’s entire frame.
“Cool. Good. I’m—that’s good,” he breathed.
He then looked around the busy road, took in the bustling crowd with eyes Jon thought might almost be a muted grey. Jon followed his gaze and almost at once felt a wave of anxiety sweep back over him. The thought of traversing through the throngs of merrymakers the rest of the way to Georgie’s nearly made Jon reel. Jon must have reacted—stepped back or let out a sharp breath—because the man’s attention flicked back to him in an instant.
“Do you want—I could walk you? The rest of the way, to wherever you’re going?” he asked hesitantly.
“That’s not necessary,” Jon said, even as the lie left him with a bitter taste. “I’d hate to… to trouble you again.”
“No trouble,” the other man said. His voice grew cool and a touch distant. “It’s not exactly like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”
“In—in that case,” Jon said stiffly. “I. Yes. I would appreciate your company.”
The smile that lit up the man’s face was brighter than Jon could have imagined.
“All right then. Fantastic, great. Lead the way.”
The man kept close as Jon began to navigate the crowd—not touching or guiding as he’d done as they escaped Michael—but near enough behind Jon that people saw them coming and moved out of the way. It made the rest of the trip to Georgie’s significantly faster, an improvement that Jon came to regret as he drew up to Georgie’s door.
Jon stood awkwardly at the front step and turned to the man.
“Well, ah, this is me,” he started. “Well, not me… my friend’s, but…”
“Right, great. Good,” the man said. “Glad I could, uh, help.”
It struck Jon that he did not want the man to leave. The urge to invite a total stranger into a home that wasn’t his rose up and nearly escaped his mouth, when at that moment the door swung open. Warm light and raucous laughter spilled out across the threshold.
“There you are!” Georgie cried as she swept Jon into a tight hug. Jon could smell sweet wine on her breath when she pressed a firm kiss to his cheek. “Everyone had almost given up on you coming, though Sasha insisted—” She paused and looked over Jon’s shoulder. “And who’s this?”
Jon squirmed in Georgie’s embrace until he was able to look back at the man standing behind him in the street.
“Ah, no one—” he started, and he saw the man’s shoulders drop. “I mean, that is to say, we’ve just met, in the crowd, he—”
Georgie shot him a sly look, well-versed in the manner in which Jon’s embarrassment manifested.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked the big man. “We’ve got plenty of wine, and Basira’s just broke out the guitar.”
Another chorus of laughs, this time accompanied by the twang of strings, came from inside. The man shook his head, an expression Jon couldn’t interpret crossing over his round face.
“No but thank you. I’d best be going—places to be and all,” he said. “May The Watcher keep you well.”
“But wait, you said—”
Yet before Jon could protest further, the man stepped back into the crowd and all but disappeared.