Work Text:
Johnathon used to hate working at the cannery.
It was boring and the smell of dead fish took forever to scrub out of his body, only to start it over again the next day.
A mind numbing, soul crushing job.
He’d been working there since he was seventeen and his twenty first birthday was right around the corner, when Lewis Finch had started working there.
Everyone knew the Finches.
A family full of tragedy ever since the beginning of time, from the moment they crashed onto the shallows of Orcas Island all those years ago, Odin Finch going down with the original house they tried to sail across the ocean.
Johnathon was only a year or two older than Lewis.
Lewis who was a well-known burn out, it had gotten worse since his brother Milton disappeared a few years ago, not a trace besides a flip book showing Milton as a prince, drawing a door and disappeared through it with a bow.
The guilt had clearly been eating Lewis alive for years.
He was suppose to be watching Milton but he’d been so caught up with their younger sister Edith, that he didn’t know he was gone until dinner that night.
They searched for hours and never found him.
Johnathon himself had been part of the search.
All that was left was the flipbook in his castle bedroom, right next to a painting of a door.
The missing posters were still posted around the island.
Now Lewis was working with him at the cannery.
At first Johnathon thought it was a bad idea to keep a perpetually stoned dude working with a fish be-header, but Lewis did fine.
They actually got pretty close on their breaks.
They actually had a lot in common, and it was nice to talk to someone who he could relate to.
Johnathon had lost his younger brother too, a motorcycle accident at barely 18.
Joshua. A life taken far too soon.
Something Lewis had grown up hearing stories of.
It was like a puzzle piece being connected.
———-
Johnathon was going to lie…Lewis was very attractive. Almost distractingly so at times.
He wasn’t movie star gorgeous or anything, but he wasn’t a troll either.
He didn’t dress the best, neither did anyone else at the factory really, no use wearing your Sunday best while chopping fish, but he had such a good soul it exemplified everything about him.
He was kind. Funny. Sweet. A good brother.
Lovable.
He had fallen for Lewis Finch like a baby bird being dropped from the nest to learn to fly.
A stone in water.
Sometimes Johnathon believed Lewis was reciprocal in his feelings, but he never said anything to him, and vice versa.
He didn’t want to ruin anything, Lewis had been his first real friend in a long time.
Things really turned around when Lewis got sober from marajuna.
But not in the best way.
It was good he was sober, but Lewis wasn’t the same.
He was physically there but it was like he mentally checked out, but was still doing his job with eerie efficiency.
Like he was off in his own world.
Whenever Johnathon managed to snap him out of it for breaks, Lewis told him all about the kingdoms and the beauty of it all.
A labyrinth of his imagination.
It sounded amazing.
No wonder Lewis was always thinking about it.
Johnathon offered to write it all down, it was too beautiful for him not to and it would help Lewis keep track of it all.
It brought the two of them closer than ever before.
Lewis telling tales every day of the world he’d created in his mind, and Johnathon diligently taking notes.
When Lewis described a beautiful prince that would be waiting for him coronation, one that sounded similar to Johnathon, his heart had skipped a beat but he didn’t say anything, but playfully teased Lewis about his dream guy.
Lewis had turned red and whacked him on the arm with his work glove.
———-
For months that’s how it went and every day Johnathon fell more and more in love with him.
But after a while…it was getting worrisome.
Lewis was checked out from the minute he got to his station and sometimes had to be physically pulled away to snap him out of it, which always seemed to frustrate him.
He never got snappy, he just seemed to hate being in reality.
Reminded of everything around him.
Johnathon wasn’t sure what made him confess his feelings, but he kept getting the feeling that he had to.
A pull.
Lewis had reacted oddly, not unhappy or angry, but definitely surprised, before grinning at him and letting out a playful teasing remark, not one of rejection but one of reciprocity.
After that things seem to be just like before, only now they were together (even though that was between them. No one else knew besides Lewis’ therapist.).
Johnathon kept writing down everything Lewis told him.
Things looked so good.
For months, everything had been so normal.
They were talking about discussing meeting each others families.
Moving in together.
Maybe even marriage.
Until the morning the foreman walked in the next morning and found Lewis’ body.
He was already gone.
The first time Johnathon met Lewis’ family officially had been at the funeral.
No one at the funeral knew who he really was to Lewis.
To them, he was Johnathon the grieving friend.
Not a heartbroken boyfriend.
Maybe that was for the best.
He wouldn’t say he moved on completely, but he never forgot Lewis or the guilt he felt for not recognizing the signs of him being suicidal.
Was real life that much of a burden on Lewis
Did he think the only way he could ever be free was leaving?
He didn’t blame Lewis.
He couldn’t.
He just wondered why he’d leave him like that, so suddenly.
Why he didn’t tell him about the pain he was in.
He still kept the journal of the story Lewis had been telling him.
Locked away safely.
They had been planning on getting it published but now it didn’t feel right to do it without him.
It wasn’t fair for Lewis to never see it.
It was their private thing.
No one else would ever read it.
Only three people knew about it and now one of them was dead.
The only one who truly mattered.
Even now, years later he still had it. He occasionally reread it, whenever Lewis crossed his mind.
Sometimes it helped.
Sometimes it just made him miss Lewis more.
He wanted to visit Lewis’ grave, but ever since Edie Finch passed the night Dawn and Edith left, the house had been closed up.
He’d give anything just to even hear Lewis’ voice one more time.