Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Jon is fifteen, he only knows about Michael Crew on reputation. Jon’s grandmother invokes the name when Jon is being particularly antisocial or eccentric: “At least you’re not that Michael Crew,” she mutters to herself, not that it seems to provide her with any comfort.

Jon brings it up with his classmates as they sit in the canteen one lunchtime.

“He’s weird.” Jon gets a lopsided smile that makes him feel like he’s being made fun of. He wishes he was in the library right now. “Not like you-weird, but proper weird. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk.”

“I’ve seen him have these fits sometimes,” someone interjects, all the enthusiasm of a natural gossip. “He gets really panicky, starts shaking, the works.”

Dominic from the year above pauses at their table, a strange look on his face.

“Mike got struck by lightning when we were kids,” he murmurs, so quiet that Jon is probably the only one who hears him properly. But Dom has never liked annoying little Jon Sims, so it’s easy to assume he’s lying about that one.

The rumour mill is full of nasty tales about Mike Crew, and for all Jon thinks he’s better than listening to hearsay, he believes more of it than he should. Mike Crew becomes this shadowy figure, larger-than-life and not to be associated with at any cost. At best, he’s the kind of problem kid who would drag Jon’s already-precarious social status into the mud, and at worst, Mike Crew seems dangerous.

When Jon is sixteen, a house down the road collapses, and he finds himself with a new temporary housemate. 

“Just until the courts sort something out,” his grandmother mutters when he asks, eyes turned to the heavens as if praying to God for respite. Jon feels a stab of guilt and does his best to avoid her for the next few days.

Mike doesn’t look like Jon expected him to. He’s short, and even skinnier than Jon is. Even though it’s the height of summer, he’s wrapped up in long sleeves and a scarf. Through Jon’s time at school, concerned teachers have handed him plenty of patronising mental health pamphlets, so he sagely thinks covering scars. Mike Crew is a problem kid, but probably only dangerous to himself. 

They don’t say a word to each other until a week into Mike’s stay, in the middle of the night.

There has always been a spare bed in Jon’s room, so when his grandmother reluctantly took Mike in, it was the natural place to put him. Jon isn’t used to the quiet rhythms of another person, and it throws him off, leaving him tossing and turning every single night. A petty part of Jon finds it comforting that Mike doesn’t seem to sleep any better.

“Do you want to know why my house collapsed?” 

Jon startles so suddenly that he nearly knocks his glasses from his bedside table. It’s the first time Jon has heard Mike speak more than a few words, and he sounds… nice. His voice is soft and pleasant, at odds to the impression Jon has formed of him.

There’s silence as Jon thinks over his answer. When he risks a glance across the room, Mike is staring at him, pale-faced in the dim light breaking through the crack in the curtains.

“Okay,” Jon says at last — as he was always going to. He reaches out and slips his glasses on in a futile attempt to feel a little more awake.

Mike goes silent himself; by the look on his face, he’d expected Jon not to answer.

“It was a book,” he murmurs.

“A book,” Jon echoes, tone flat as his blood runs cold.

There’s a fresh eagerness to the terror on Mike’s face, like he’s desperate to tell Jon something awful and unknown. Jon swallows, wishing he was as ignorant as Mike thinks.

“The Journal of a Plague Year. Special edition from the—”

“Library of Jurgen Leitner,” Jon finishes, heart in his throat with a mixture of horror and hope.

Mike’s eyes go wide, moonlight catching the diamond-grey sheen of shock.

“A Guest for Mr Spider,” Jon offers. His skin crawls as he says the title; it’s the first time he’s ever given voice to the words, and it feels like he’s invited a thousand skittering legs to run across his body. “When I was eight.”

“Shit,” Mike breathes. He’s shaking, Jon notes, the movement a blur in the darkened room.

“Did you really get struck by lightning?”

Mike stiffens up, a bone-deep terror creeping onto his face and washing away any trace of sympathy. He nods, pressing a hand to his still-covered neck.

“When I was eight,” he echoes. There’s a second where Jon thinks he’s being made fun of, but nothing on Mike’s face suggests mockery anymore.

“Shit,” Jon echoes in return, and neither of them speaks for the rest of the night.

(When Jon finally gets to sleep, he dreams of electricity travelling along spiderweb wires, forcing his muscles to jerk and spasm without his control. It’s not the worst nightmare he’s had since he was a child, but he wakes up struggling for breath all the same.)

The next night, Mike creeps across the floor and shows Jon the branching lines of his scar. When Mike asks about Mr Spider, Jon answers, keeping his words vague; he’s unable to shake the feeling he might attract the spider’s attention once more.

They’re quiet afterwards, and that’s when Jon finally catches a hint of the smell curling in the air.

“You smell like storms.” Jon regrets the words as soon as he says them, flushing as he works through all the possible ways Mike could take them. Mike doesn’t seem to notice any implications, curling up into himself with a long sigh.

The acrid smell of ozone only intensifies, a sharp threat blowing through the room on a breeze.

“It’s not me. Not really.” He glances up at Jon, all desperation. “It’s followed me since I was twelve. There’s a storm on the horizon wherever I go, and I can’t trust my own senses.”

Jon leans towards Mike. He doesn’t want Mike to think he’s gullible, but there’s no tells that would point to Mike making this up. Then again, Jon has never been very good at telling when people are lying to him.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. Imagine a person made of lightning, and then imagine that it hates you. When it laughs at me, it sounds like thunder rolling through my bones.”

Jon glances around the room, half-expecting it to appear from nowhere, and Mike sighs again.

“It’s not here. I think it’s lost my trail, but that— that won’t last long.”

Jon shouldn’t believe Mike. Mike, whose childhood trauma has probably only been compounded by the recent loss of his parents. The books, the Leitners, they’re real and tangible, but whatever is stalking Mike seems limited to the inside of his head. But Jon is sixteen; he’s not a sceptic yet.

“I believe you,” Jon says, and then, “what do we do about it?”

The expression on Mike’s face is one of pure relief.

“I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking. All these things seem to be different. The storm, the rot, the spiders. What if, somewhere, there’s something that can save us?”

A protest rises to Jon’s lips — he doesn’t need saving, he’s fine — and he swallows it back down. That’s not the point. He needs to be practical, even with fear urging at the corners of his mind. What Mike’s suggesting is— insane, isn’t it?

“I don’t think these are the kinds of things you can use. I think they’d just use you.”

“I don’t care.” Mike’s voice is full of such vehemence that Jon instinctively flinches back. “I can’t live like this. I don’t care what it takes.”

The message is clear: end of discussion. Jon nods, holding out a hand — it seems like the thing to do in this situation

“Together,” he says, trying not to feel stupid.

There’s something resigned to the upward curve of Mike’s smile as he nods. He takes Jon’s hand and shakes it once; Jon’s skin feels alight at the touch.

“Together,” Mike agrees.

Chapter Text

In the end, Mike only stays with them for a few months, until some relatives in London manage to get him into a local Sixth Form. He packs up all his odds and ends, gives Jon his mobile number, and then he’s gone like he was never there at all.

Their communication is sporadic. Neither of them is much for small talk, so they only converse when Mike manages to find something interesting, horrifying, or more often than not, both at once. Sometimes they go months without talking, and sometimes Jon will hear from him three times in a single week. Jon’s own research is lacklustre — it’s Bournemouth, for crying out loud — but he does his best to keep up with Mike’s pace.

Over time, it becomes a friendship of sorts.

A year or two after moving to London, Mike finds another Leitner.

“You should come and see it,” Mike says over the phone. To anyone else, he would sound calm, but Jon is familiar with the edge of urgency that his voice has gained.

“I can’t get to London on a whim. Train tickets aren’t cheap.”

“Pretend there’s a university open day, I’m sure your grandma will be thrilled to pay for it.”

“I’ve already applied to university, as you well know.” It’s a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood, but the words come out so acidic that he shouldn’t have bothered. “I can stay on the phone until I run out of minutes, if that seems like a suitable compromise?”

When Mike laughs, Jon lets out a relieved breath. His shoulders lose some of their tension.

“Thank you,” Mike says, a rare warm undertone to his voice.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Jon mutters, embarrassed, and changes the subject. “What is this book called, then? Something suitably dramatic, I hope.”

“The Boneturner’s Tale.”

“Hm. Even for these books, that sounds distinctly ominous.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me. It made the rest of my books bleed.”

“It… what?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“... Does it do anything else, or is it just a horror movie special effect wrapped up in a macabre supernatural book? Please don’t tell me you’ve read it.”

Mike laughs, and Jon recognises the strain of morbid humour in the sound. 

“Oh, I’ve read it.”

Jon feels a wave of fear all at once, mingling with a petty betrayal until he can’t tell the difference between the two feelings. He knew Mike was desperate enough that he’d ignore any sensible wariness regarding dubious secondhand books, but it still puts Jon on edge.

“Honestly? It does what it sounds like,” Mike continues with a false levity. “Turns bones, bends them, breaks them. Pulls them out and puts them back in. It’s versatile.”

“Mike, please don’t tell me you’ve used it already.”

“Mm. Not on me. But it took some practice to work out what it does.”

Jon nearly drops his phone, the whole world tilting numb and terrifying around him.  He has to sit down to steady himself, trying to wrap his head around what Mike just said. The crackle of dead air between them is oppressive.

“Christ.”

“I know,” Mike says, resigned but not repentant. “Jon, I told you I don’t care what it takes. I want to be free.”

Jon forces himself to breathe evenly, his lungs aching with the effort. He glances at the corners of the room in a reflex borne from nearly ten years of paranoia. There are no spiders, no webs. But he’s still scared. He can’t imagine not being scared.

“Right,” Jon murmurs. “I suppose I understand.”

“I haven’t used it on myself yet. I wanted to wait for you, in case it all goes wrong.”

“Well. I’m here.”

“You shouldn’t be. I’m desperate, but I’m not stupid. You can’t be okay with this, Jon.”

Jon shouldn’t be okay with this. Point of fact, he is very much not okay with this. Mike has confessed to grotesque mutilation at best and outright murder at worst. But this is Mike. Jon keeps looping back to that: this is Mike. He’s the only person who knows what happened to Jon, who understands. He’s the most important person in Jon’s life.

“I’m here.”

“Oh,” Mike says, very quiet and very relieved. “I’m glad. You’re the only friend I’ve got, Jon.”

That’s a lot to cope with — somehow even more than the uncertain abyss of what Mike has done. Jon isn’t the kind of person who anyone would call their only friend. Maybe it makes sense that Mike is the exception.

Jon swallows and tries to direct the conversation to comparatively less dangerous waters.

“You’re going to use it on yourself.” It’s not a question, of course. 

“Yes. I have to try. This all started with my scar, so maybe if I shift the right thing, I can—”

Mike cuts himself off with a wordless noise of pain and the sharp crack of breaking bone. His breathing turns strained with agony. There’s a wet, meaty sound that makes Jon’s skin crawl with phantom sensation — ideas of fingers reaching in and moving things about until nothing is recognisable as human anymore.

Jon repeats Mike’s name over and over into the phone, trying desperately to provide some kind of comfort. It’s a feeble effort, but it’s all he can do. He’s not sure he could stomach seeing this happen, for all a morbid part of his brain is curious about it.

“Damn,” Mike says through gritted teeth as the awful cacophony of flesh vanishes at once. “No luck with this one.”

Mike laughs. The sound turns tinny through the phone line, hollowed of all emotions.

“It’s a fractal,” Mike continues, voice quiet with horror and involuntary awe. “The scar goes on forever. No matter what I do, it’s there. A Lichtenberg figure burnt into my bones and beyond.”

Jon doesn’t know how to respond, but he’s fairly sure Mike doesn’t expect him to.

“I just need a moment, and then I’ll… I’ll put myself back together.”

Neither of them speaks for a few minutes, though Jon shudders when that array of unspeakable sounds begins again. It’s worse than before, as though the power is rebelling against the idea of Mike fixing himself. Jon never wanted to know what the sound of a bone healing unnaturally fast was, but now it’s seared into his brain forever.

“Are you alright?” Jon asks when all that’s left is Mike’s shallow breathing.

“I’m going to hand this book into Chiswick library.” The process of planning is an answer in itself, even if it’s not a happy one. “Someone else can deal with it, and I’ll keep looking.”

“Can I…” Jon almost asks to see the book. But he isn’t in Mike’s position — Jon’s fear has no tether to his body, aside from the silvery puppet-strings that haunt his nightmares — and for all that Jon is uncomfortable with the inconveniences of having a flesh-and-blood form, there’s nothing he’d want to change about himself so viscerally. “No. Ignore me.”

“I’m going to Chichester in a few months,” Mike continues, still in that determined tone. “It’s no London, but there’ll be books.”

“Yes,” Jon agrees, aiming for dry and hitting it admirably, given everything. “I think Chichester probably has books to spare.”

When Mike finds another Leitner, Jon has a terrible laptop that can just about support Skype, so they’re treated to the rare novelty of a face-to-face conversation. Mike doesn’t look any healthier than Jon remembers — he’s run himself ragged, and there’s a fervent gleam to his eyes.

“It’s Cyrillic of some kind, I think.” Mike holds the book up to the camera. The book in question is a thin grey hardback that, yes, is written in Cyrillic. “Any ideas what it means?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me.”

“I thought they taught this sort of thing at Oxford?”

“I’m doing History, not Classics—” Mike smiles with tired fondness, and Jon feels himself flush, self-conscious. “If it were in Latin, perhaps, but I don’t study anything approaching Cyrillic.”

Mike gives a soft laugh, barely more than a breath, and Jon feels his cheeks warm even further.

“Where did you pick this one up, then?” Jon asks. “Charity shop? Library? Antiques fair?”

“Oh, I found it on my bookshelves yesterday.”

“That’s… odd.” Jon has never considered the idea that the Leitner books might have some kind of agency in their own right. They always seemed like the kind of thing a person would stumble across unknowingly. The concept that they might intentionally put themselves in someone’s path is… disturbing on many levels.

“I sent you a message as soon as I noticed it.” Mike’s smile fades, but his gaze is as intense as ever. “I didn’t want a repeat of… well, last time.”

Jon swallows, nodding. It’s a stupid thing to feel grateful for, but he does. If Mike is going to do terrible things, Jon needs to be a part of the process. Perhaps — perhaps — he can mitigate it.

It’s hard for Jon to suppress a shiver as Mike’s attention turns to the book he’s lowered to his lap. Mike knows what he’s dealing with, Jon reminds himself, even if his approach is foolhardy. There’s the sound of pages turning, a lurching moment of annoyance and relief where Jon can convince himself this was a false alarm, and then Mike’s eyes go wide.

When Mike slams the book shut, darkness encroaches on the edge of the video like his camera is blinking, slow and predatory. Jon glances at his own webcam, and for the briefest of seconds, the round glass-and-metal looks instead like a bloodshot eye, staring at him with unwavering force. Then it’s gone, and normality reasserts itself.

Through the audio, Jon can hear Mike’s panicked breathing.

“This one is no good,” Mike says, terror and frustration all at once. “It just wants to read me.”

There’s the unceremonious rustling sound like a small book being dropped into a plastic bag.

“I’m going to bury it somewhere it can’t read anyone else.”

Mike finds the final Leitner on a cloudy night in Jon’s last year of university.

“Ex Altiora,” Mike says. Through the phone line, Jon can hear the rush of wind like white noise in the background, and Mike laughing, faintly hysterical. “This is it.”

The definitive tone makes Jon halt in his tracks. Beside him, Georgie gives him a worried look.

“Are you sure?”

“From the Heights, it means in English,” Mike continues as though Jon never said anything — and as though Jon doesn’t know his way around Latin, really. “It wants to take me to the sky, and let me fall forever. It’s— pure vertigo. It can free me.”

Jon’s breath leaves him all at once, crisp and sharp like the bitter relief of winter.

“Where are you?” Last Jon heard, Mike was still in Chichester researching demons, but for this, Jon is willing to book a last-minute flight to Australia if he has to. Nevermind his dissertation, nevermind his money — though he’d have to think of something feasible to tell Georgie.

“It’s too late,” Mike tells him. “There’s a real storm coming. It has to be now.”

“Mike, where are you?”

“If this works,” and Jon can hear the desperation welling up in Mike’s voice, “then I’ll find you.”

“Mike, don’t you dare—”

A click of disconnection, and then there’s nothing but the dial tone. Jon doesn’t bother to call back; he knows Mike won’t answer.

Georgie is staring at him with brows furrowed in concern. She asks what’s wrong, and Jon can’t find a single reasonable answer to give her. He stares up at the starless sky and tries to account for the hollow ache of loss in his chest.

It’s the last Jon hears of Mike for a long while.

Chapter Text

It’s Jon’s first time in a plane, and the reality is both more fantastical and more mundane than he expects. Being who he is, he’s meticulously researched what to expect from the process, and as usual, it hasn’t been as big of a deal as he thought it would be. In fact, it’s simple: they’re taking off from Heathrow, and within an hour or so, they’ll be on solid ground again.

He’s spending a week in Paris, complete with a tour of the catacombs under the city — a rare treat that he’s allowed himself to celebrate the completion of his Masters degree. It may even be enjoyable, provided his lacking knowledge of French doesn’t cause any mishaps.

(Georgie wanted to visit Paris, Jon remembers with bitter nostalgia. The beautiful ‘City of Love’, with mysteries hidden below the streets; it’s exactly the kind of thing she always ate up. But Georgie is— who knows where. Happier without him, almost certainly.)

Jon had planned to get some reading done, but once they break through the grey skies of London and into the sunlit world above, he finds himself staring out of the window instead, enraptured. The view is unlike anything he’s ever seen before: an immeasurable world of formless, alien shapes, so physical and yet so intangible all at once.

Fanciful, perhaps, but Jon is allowed to indulge in that sort of thing every once in a while.

If he ignores the sounds of the other passengers, Jon could almost call it peaceful.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The voice that comes from the seat beside him is low with contemplative awe, and more importantly, it’s heart-wrenchingly familiar. With slow movements, Jon lowers his unopened book to his lap and turns to look at Mike.

At first glance, Mike looks the same as he’s always been. Just as short as ever, just as skinny, with pale skin and wild grey eyes. His dark hair is a little longer than Jon remembers, brushed backwards and curling haphazardly at the edges. His jaw is coated with a thin layer of stubble, cut through by the branching white lines of his scar — a scar that Jon can track down Mike’s neck and below the airy fabric of his half-unbuttoned shirt.

In the second before Mike’s eyes go wide with recognition, Jon feels an awful lurch in the space behind his ribs. He barely stops himself from slipping from his seat as vertigo makes him sway.

“Jon,” Mike breathes, looking astonished and delighted in equal measures.

The dizziness vanishes as abruptly as it began, and Mike’s smile parts to show gleaming white teeth. There’s an ease to his posture that Jon has never seen, loose-limbed and unworried.

There’s a tangle of emotions knotting in Jon’s throat. Relief, certainly, a pale and soaring creature that beats its newly-healed wings in his lungs. But there’s a sharp betrayal too, like a thorn nestled in the crevices of his heart, leeching silent poison into his veins.

When his bewildered staring doesn’t clarify the situation, Jon manages to stammer out something that sounds vaguely like a greeting and vaguely like an insult.

“It’s good to see you again,” Mike says, a buoyant quality to his tone.

“I, ah, yes, I—” Jon swallows, trying to pick something to focus on. Anger is easiest, and his next words taste like acid on his tongue. “I thought you were dead.”

Mike blinks. His expression sharpens then softens in the space of a moment.

“That’s fair. Sorry about that.” He doesn’t sound particularly apologetic. If it weren’t Mike, Jon might call his tone outright dismissive.

“It’s been— three years.” Three years and Mike looks nearly exactly the same, while Jon is already starting to go grey at twenty-three. “You said you’d find me and then you didn’t. And now I just bump into you on a plane to Paris?”

“I don’t normally take planes anymore, but sometimes I get a hunch.” At that, Mike gives Jon an appreciative once-over, grinning with an uninhibited happiness that doesn’t fit the hunted lines of his face.

“Three years,” Jon repeats, refusing to let himself be distracted.

Mike’s smile fades. He sighs the biting chill of winter winds.

“You’ll hate me if I say I thought it would be easier, won’t you?”

“I—” Jon bites back his fury; if he raises his voice any louder, they’re going to get in trouble with the on-flight staff. “I’ll hope you have a good explanation,” Jon continues, moulding his voice into the flat derision he’d used with the private school kids at Oxford. Strangely, it makes Mike smile.

“I’d say so, yeah.”

“The book,” Jon prompts, annoyance building immediately. It’s like the tide, the never-ending encroachment of the sea on land — as soon as he’s calmed himself to his usual state of mild disdain, something sets off another wave of outright annoyance.

“Ex Altiora.” Mike’s expression gains a dreamlike distance, something wistful to the gleam of his eyes. “I didn’t fall forever, in the end. I don’t think I can comprehend how long I spent in that welcoming expanse of sky, but it wasn’t anything close to forever.”

Mike goes quiet, but there’s something in the tilt of his head that tells Jon he isn’t finished speaking. His lips press together as if in consideration.

“I can show you,” he offers. “It might be easier to understand.”

“Show me what?”

The relaxed smile that question draws to Mike’s face is the very opposite of reassuring.

“Trust me?”

“I shouldn’t,” Jon mutters, well aware of what that’s admitting to.

“Maybe not,” Mike concedes, “but it’s grand you do.”

He gestures towards the window. Against his own better judgement, Jon looks outside.

There are no clouds. No land, either, no matter how he cranes his neck from side to side. The sea is the wrong shade of blue, indistinguishable from the sunlit sky. Jon leans closer and closer to the glass until that endless blue is all he can see.

He feels Mike’s hand against his back, and Jon’s stomach lurches as he feels Mike push.

The infinite sky steals his breath from his lungs. Words are impossible, and any noise he manages to make is snatched away before he hears it. Jon feels certain that he’s going to die here — no, he’s going to fall here, forever, nothing to impact that would claim his death.

He presses his eyes shut in animal terror, and everything is still blue, blue, blue.

“Not really sure this is working for you, is it?”

Mike’s voice is clear and warm as ever, somehow audible through the rushing wind as though they’re sitting right next to each other. His presence is the opposite of grounding, the very voice of vertigo. Jon feels dizzy with it; he gasps for air until the space behind his eyelids is dancing with a thousand identical shades of sapphire.

On the edge of Jon’s awareness, Mike makes a contemplative sound. Jon feels like laughing, hysterical, but every hint of oxygen in his lungs is a struggle hard-fought.

“Give me a moment, I think I can—”

Panic rises in Jon’s throat as Mike’s voice vanishes. That non-presence — as though Mike was nothing but another fragment of the merciless gales — was better than nothing at all. Jon has been left alone to fall through azure nothingness, no way to measure the passage of the void.

Except— as he tumbles, arms outstretched in a pointless attempt to slow his fall, his hand passes through something. His fingers go numb with cold and damp, and it’s so strange that Jon has to open his eyes.

What once was empty sky is full of clouds. Some seem the size of skyscrapers, others are barely more than wisps of possibility. They mark the incomprehensible scale of the brilliant blue, and even if there’s still no land beneath him, the certainty helps.

(If he weren’t terrified and oxygen-deprived, he might even call it beautiful.)

“You see?”

Mike is beside him, plummeting through the air without a care in the world. In the formless sunlight of this place, Mike’s skin is the white of the clouds he conjured, striking and inhuman.

“Sometimes people need something to make the scale seem real. Tangible, but just as endless.”

Mike reaches out with ease, and his touch is as insubstantial as the biting wind. He turns Jon’s gaze towards those towering clouds, and— yes, they really are quite beautiful. Jon allows awe to trickle into his mind as though a sense of peace and wonder will somehow dilute the horror of it all. There is nothing to be afraid of, he tries to tell himself; it’s just him, Mike, and the sky.

“You do understand,” Mike says, sounding pleased.

I don’t, Jon wants to say, but any sound he makes is swallowed up by the infinite blue forcing its way into his lungs, making his chest ache and his vision blur.

Mike shrugs somehow, as though he knows what Jon is thinking.

“Not all of it, then. Not yet.”

As quick as it started, it’s over. Jon is sitting in his seat and trying to remember how to breathe. Mike presses a steadying hand to his back. It isn’t comforting, probably isn’t meant to be.

“So—” Jon manages, voice hoarse. “So that’s—”

“Where I went when I used the book. What I gave myself to, in the end.”

“Wh— Why?”

Mike tilts his head like he doesn’t understand the question. He looks no less relaxed than before, something hazy to the slow blink of his eyes.

“I always liked roller-coasters,” Mike says. As explanations go, it’s not exactly comprehensive. Jon doesn’t have the energy to argue, though, not while adrenaline is still releasing its grip on his veins. It hurts to breathe; he thinks he can taste blood in the back of his throat.

A flight attendant walks past, and Mike removes his hand from Jon’s back. Immediately, Jon feels more grounded, real world pressing in on him from every sharp angle it can. 

“Do you want to try it again?” Mike asks, pleasant. “Now that you know what you’re expecting.”

“I—” There’s a part of Jon’s brain that looks around at the cramped noisy plane and says yes without hesitation, and then there’s the sensible part of Jon’s brain. “No. No, thank you, Mike.”

“Suit yourself,” Mike says. Though he’s still smiling, his tone is one of quiet indignation.

He allows Jon a few moments to gather his thoughts — and his book, fallen to the floor while Jon fell. An outsider might even mistake the silence between them for companionable.

“So,” Jon starts, aiming for vicious and coming out somewhere closer to plaintive. “Why did that — what you just did — mean you couldn’t come and find me, exactly? Not even a ‘hello, I’m not dead, see you never’ sort of message.”

“Like I said, I thought it would be easier.” Mike moves his hand towards Jon’s arm, drawing back at the last second. “It’s not news that I do what I have to do to survive. I didn’t think you’d approve.”

“I don’t,” Jon sighs, very tired.

Mike laughs, bitter. There’s a hard light to his eyes, resigned and ruthless all at once. His hand finally brushes across Jon’s upper arm, and the plane begins to feel less claustrophobic.

“Of course you don’t.”

His grip tightens on Jon’s arm until it’s bruisingly painful, and then — of course — the sky swallows them both once more. The world narrows down to base sensations: cold, pain, bright. And Mike is gone, leaving Jon to fall alone. 

When Jon finds himself back on the ground, so to speak, Mike’s hand has been replaced with that of a flight attendant. She looks at him with concern.

“Sir, are you alright?”

“I—” Jon’s words come out pained, choked, but he forces a smile and nods. “I’m alright, thank you. When are we landing?”

Chapter Text

There’s a letter waiting for Jon when he gets to his hotel, suitcase in hand.

It’s from Mike, of course, and it’s very simple. A date, a time, and a location, all written on a piece of paper taken straight from a corporate notepad — Pinnacle Aerospace is written in bold letters across the top. Mike’s moving up in the world, Jon thinks, then has to take a moment to mentally punch himself.

It couldn’t seem more like an invitation to a kidnapping. But Jon wants to trust Mike roughly as much as he wants another shot at interrogating him, so he steels himself. 

One sunny morning, Jon wanders through Paris and finds himself standing at the base of the Tour Montparnasse.

It’s rather ugly from the outside, all bland grey glass, but it towards over the surrounding architecture in a way that is at least striking. Jon pays his eighteen euros and steps into the lift. Forty seconds later, he’s standing on top of the world, so to speak.

It’s an entirely different experience to being dropped through the endless sky at ludicrous speeds. From up here, Jon can see Paris laid out like a tapestry, and against all odds, he is utterly fascinated. The world looks so very small from up here; even the most wondrous monuments of Paris are utterly insignificant in the sheer scale of things.

It is, Jon thinks reluctantly, rather beautiful.

“Jon.”

In sharp contrast to their meeting on the plane, Mike sounds hesitant. He’s fidgeting with restless energy, like there’s static prickling across his skin. Jon leans against the barrier overlooking the city, knowing full well it wouldn’t stop Mike from pushing him into an abyss.

“I’m sorry,” Mike says, before Jon can get a word in. “I overreacted. I don’t talk to many people who aren’t… well, like me. I suppose I’ve forgotten how normal conversations work.”

“It doesn’t sound like much has changed,” Jon mutters, though he’s unable to summon as much bitterness as he’d prefer.

“No, maybe not.” As if that’s settled the matter, Mike joins Jon by the barrier with a soft smile. For a long and faintly-awkward moment, they look across Paris together. “It’s a nice view, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jon admits with a sigh. “Are you going to push me into it this time?”

“No,” Mike says, entirely without the appropriate horror. “But I did want to show you something.”

There’s a cold breeze, and Jon shivers, pulling his coat tighter around himself. Mike doesn’t seem to notice, the sleeves of his button-up rolled to his elbows, jacket slung over one arm. It suits him, in a rakish sort of way. Mike looks almost ethereal in the crisp morning light, a pale thin figure with scarring creeping up his neck, utterly apart from the world.

Jon blinks. He’s been staring, he realises, and quickly turns his head to watch the people milling around the viewing platform. Smiling couples and boisterous families are everywhere, and Jon would really like it if they all shut up.

There are two men who look similar in the way of brothers, Jon notes with a detached sort of interest. One is standing a little further along the barrier, admiring the view, and one sits on a bench at the center of the platform, looking faintly queasy.

Mike makes a confirmatory noise beside Jon, though what exactly he’s confirming, Jon hasn’t the faintest idea. Something is about to happen, Jon just doesn’t know what.

The brother standing at the barrier begins to sway, tilting into the railing at such speed it must hurt. He tips to the ground on hands and knees. His eyes go wide as he meets Mike’s gaze, confusion and recognition mingling on his face. Mike stares right back, an assessing glint to his eyes that quickly fades into boredom. The man sways again, arms shaking underneath him.

Mike’s gaze turns to the other brother.

For a moment, nothing seems to have changed. Then it’s like a strange double-vision settling across everything. Jon knows he’s on the Tour Montparnasse, one arm braced against the barrier behind him, and yet at the same time, he feels only empty air behind him. Rushing wind bites at his skin, and there is no sign of the city below.

Mike holds Jon’s arm in that other Paris, keeping him from tipping off the edge of the tower. Jon clings to Mike’s grip with one hand, though he’s under no illusion that it would keep Mike from pushing him into the abyss once more.

The platform is empty except for them and the brother who had been sitting.

He turns pale, and through the wind, Jon can just make out his panicked questioning. Where are you, Grant? Where is everyone? Where have the elevators gone? There’s a clear frustration behind the panic, and the message is clear: there’s no saving this man.

Jon wants to step forward and help, but Mike’s hand on his arm is all that keeps him steady.

There’s a ladder, Jon notes, focusing on cataloguing the details of this place. No barriers, but a ladder. It doesn’t take a genius to work out what the point is.

“He’ll be at it for hours,” Mike says, tone flat, as the man starts texting. “They always are.”

With that proclamation, the double-vision fades, and they’re standing alone in the lift going down to street level. Jon blinks away the disorientation, blinks away the phantom image of the terrified man. It takes him a moment to realise how hard he’s gripping the rail at the side of the lift.

“That’s what you do.” It’s not a question. Jon has seen enough of the Leitner books to know that this is exactly the kind of thing they do.

“Mm. Give them enough hope they don’t break down entirely, then give them a taste of heaven. Not that most see it that way.” His aside glance to Jon is a silent you do, a conspiratorial blink that leaves an awful taste in Jon’s mouth.

“It’s horrible.”

“Yeah,” Mike agrees after a quiet moment. “Yeah, it is. But that’s the way of things. Feed that which feeds you.”

“The book?”

“Close enough. The embodiment of open skies and vertigo, the feeling of falling forever through endless heights. I can’t live without it anymore than you could live without the blood in your veins.” At this, Mike smiles, faintly dreamy. Jon rather wishes they weren’t in a lift together.

“Why did you show me that? Why did you show me any of this?”

“I’ve not been a good friend to you, I understand that. I want you to see what I see in the world.”

Jon finds himself laughing, the sound curling in his throat like acrid smoke.

“I’m hardly going to go traipsing around the world throwing people off skyscrapers at your behest and having a wonderful time.”

Mike’s answering laugh is just as bitter as Jon’s was, but his voice is quietly wistful.

“I just wanted to show you.”

“You’ve shown me. Now what?”

“... I’d like to keep in touch, like old times. Not that I have signal often, but— I’d try. Life hasn’t been the same without you.”

Jon swallows, considering the idea. Terrifying, wonderful Mike, back in his life again, as though he never vanished. It’s an awful idea.

“Alright,” Jon says. “We can keep in touch. I don’t see the harm in that.”

Chapter Text

“I think you’ll be a good fit for the Institute,” Mr Bouchard says, pleasant smile doing an admirable job of reaching his eyes. It’s as though he’s genuinely happy to have Jon on board.

Jon keeps his handshake firm and his expression neutral, but inside he wilts with relief. It’s not that he was desperate— except, that’s exactly what he was. The field of paranormal research is as competitive as it full of crackpots and dreamers. Jon had almost resigned himself to withering away in an office job, Mike’s calls from far-flung places the only things keeping Jon sane.

The Magnus Institute isn’t prestigious — Jon has read a number of the statements from the 90s leak — but it is at least a promising start for Jon’s career. He will grudgingly admit that their policy of researching every story they’re given is pleasingly thorough, and Mr Bouchard himself seems sensible, if a little upper class for Jon’s liking.

“I’ll send you a copy of the paperwork,” Mr Bouchard continues, “and if everything is to your liking, I was hoping you’d start next week?”

“That sounds— acceptable,” Jon replies.

“Excellent.”

Mr Bouchard guides him out of the office with more warmth than Jon would expect from a man who looks like he’s been extracted from the highest echelons of the banking sector. 

“If it wouldn’t impose on your time, I’d be happy to introduce you to the research team now.”

“Of course,” Jon says, trying not to show his displeasure at the concept. At least an early introduction will give him time to prepare himself for having to interact with his coworkers.

The researchers’ office is surprisingly open-plan. The desks are a mixture of sophisticated antique furniture and something that looks suspiciously IKEA-esque, placed in small groups by the windows. Shelves line the other side of the room, full of files and books and the occasional object that makes Jon’s spine prickle just from looking at it. The air is filled with a low companionable chatter, but everyone seems genuinely hard at work.

A hush falls across the room as the researchers notice Mr Bouchard’s entrance.

“Good morning, everyone. Don’t let me disturb you; I was just hoping to give our newest researcher a tour of the facilities, as it were.”

Jon tries for a polite smile, attempting to assess each of the researchers in turn. Mr Bouchard leads him towards one particular cluster of desks and clears his throat.

“Sasha, do you happen to know where Martin is?”

Sasha is a young woman with a pleasant smile and a floral jumper. In some ways, she couldn’t be less intimidating — but of course, for Jon, that only makes him more nervous about the prospect of having to interact with her. His grasp of social niceties is not sophisticated, and the ones he does understand, he frequently doesn’t care about.

“Sorry, no clue,” Sasha says, adjusting her glasses. “I heard there were problems on the Underground, so he might have got stuck. You know how it is.” (Privately, Jon is fairly sure that pressed-suit slick-hair Mr Bouchard does not know how it is on the Underground.)

As if on cue, there are hurried footsteps from the corridor outside, and the sound of heavy breathing like someone’s been running for a long time. Mr Bouchard turns on his heel, arching one eyebrow in a disdainful expression that Jon can only dream of imitating.

“Ah, Martin.” The unfortunately red-cheeked Martin flushes further, mumbling apologies that Mr Bouchard seems content to ignore. “I was hoping to see you. This is Jonathan—”

“Jon, please.”

“Jon is the newest addition to our research team. I’m placing him with you and Sasha until he acclimates. I trust you can show him the ropes when he starts next week.”

Martin stammers some more, eyes wide and nervous.

“I— Of course I will, Elias.”

“Perfect. Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your work any longer, Martin, so we’ll get out of your way, won’t we?”

It takes Jon a moment to realise he’s being addressed.

“Ah, yes. Certainly.”

Mr Bouchard smiles again, and that’s that.

The next week, it goes like this:

Jon sits at a desk next to Martin Blackwood and diagonally from Sasha James. There is a fourth desk in their little cluster, but as Martin explains, “no one uses that one, it gets too sunny by the window and I think someone passed out from heatstroke one time.” By the end of the week, Jon has come to the conclusion that Martin contains a variety of information on the social life of the Institute, and yet retains nearly no practical knowledge of anything supernatural or academic.

“I’m just saying,” Jon tells Sasha while Martin is out at lunch, “I’ve never met anyone less suited to a life in academia and research.”

For all of his reservations about certain other coworkers, Jon finds himself forming a pleasant workplace friendship with Sasha. She’s a dedicated researcher and she has functioning social skills; she puts up with Jon’s various eccentricities amiably, able to give as good as she gets when he finds himself snappish.

“He’s been here longer than I have,” Sasha replies, but not necessarily in a tone that says she disagrees with Jon’s assessment.

“Well, that just makes his incompetence all the more frustrating.” He glares at Martin’s cluttered desk as though it will magically tidy itself up. “I’m this close to moving to the desk beside you, sunstroke be damned.”

“Well, it’s your eyesight,” Sasha says, tone mild and pointedly non-judgemental.

“Yes, well, I think that ship has already long-sailed.”

The conversation ends there as Martin returns with three lukewarm cups of coffee. Jon leaves his untouched and resumes his work. 

He moves desks the next day, resigning himself to an awful lot of squinting at his computer screen. At least now when Martin is trying to make conversation, Jon can distract himself by staring down at the street below, or up at the never-ending reaches of the clouded sky.

Most of Jon’s projects are beginner-level. Useful work, no doubt, but the kind of thing even an inexperienced researcher (or Martin) isn’t likely to mess up. It’s frustrating, but there’s something pleasant to the monotony. Jon starts to feel honestly relaxed for the first time since— ever.

That is, until he’s handed the Simon Fairchild case, a few weeks into the new year.

It seems equally monotonous at first — haunted building, cursed jewels, a dead con artist. Someone with more free time could turn it into a very exciting novel, Jon is sure. He can’t find the real name among the selection of aliases attributed to the con artist, but records in the 1930s weren’t what they are today, so he isn’t too disappointed with the lack of information.

He tries to dismiss the case as a minor haunting, but… Simon Fairchild had been pushed from the fourth floor and never hit the ground, and doesn’t that sound familiar?

Some cursory research indicates that, in the modern day, the Fairchilds are a wealthy family with all sorts of ventures to do with the sky and sea. One of the company names strikes Jon as familiar; when he gets into his flat that night, he pulls out Mike’s note from Paris. There it is: Pinnacle Aerospace, a member of the Stratosphere Group that launched a space station in the early 2000s, and majority owned by the Fairchild family.

It’s with a heavy sigh that Jon resigns himself to calling Mike.

“Who are the Fairchilds?” Jon asks as soon as the call connects, not bothering to sugarcoat it.

“Hello to you too,” Mike says, dry. There’s the sound of rushing wind distorted by the phone line. Jon can only just hear Mike’s voice through the noise. “What’s brought this on?”

“The name came up in some research I’m doing. Don’t change the subject.”

“Is this Magnus Institute business?” Mike’s tone has lost its humour all at once.

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“I’m not really interested in going on file with you and yours, if I’m honest.”

“Me and mine,” Jon echoes sceptically.

“Mm.”

“What about— if it wasn’t going to go on file? Just personal curiosity.” 

“... Maybe. Not over the phone, though, if that’s alright with you.”

“It will have to be, won’t it?”

“Mm,” Mike hums again, then starts to tell Jon about an observation platform that opened a few months ago in China, the highest in the world. For all of Mike’s claimed desire for privacy, Jon imagines there will be new statements for the Pu Songling Research Center in coming weeks.

Jon doesn’t bring up the Fairchilds again. He files the case in the ‘hauntings’ section with a vague sense of fatigue, and moves onto the next project, and the next, and the next. 

He finds himself staring out at the sky more and more often, these days.

Chapter Text

Jon’s life remains in an exhausting equilibrium until he gets the call about his grandmother.

In many ways, her death isn’t much of a surprise. She’s been seeing various doctors over the past few years, always dismissing Jon’s offers of financial support — the Sims family pride themselves on independence, she tells him over the phone with a smile. When she got bad, she signed herself into a hospice and died in her sleep a few days before Jon was going to visit.

Jon doesn’t feel guilty, exactly, and he’s not sure he knows how to feel grief. He’s just sad, like someone has hollowed him out and poured a gentle nothingness into his chest. 

He goes into work as usual and writes an email to Elias about the circumstances. Elias responds promptly, offering condolences and a week’s paid leave at Jon’s convenience. It seems generous, but Jon doesn’t plan on refusing.

As he leaves that night, Sasha appears beside him, linking her arm with his.

“Are you alright, Jon? You’ve seemed a bit out of it today.”

“I’m fine,” Jon replies on reflex, then shakes his head. “Death in the family, that’s all. I’ve been doing what I can to bury myself in work. More than usual, I suppose.” Jon gives her a wry smile.

“Oh, Jon.”

“I’ll be in for the next few days, then I’m going down to Bournemouth at the weekend. There’s the funeral, and then I have to sort through the house, so I imagine I’ll be rather busy.”

“Do you want some company?” Sasha asks, looking genuinely sympathetic. “I’ve got some holiday left over, and Elias is pretty good about—”

“No, no. That’s— that’s very kind of you, Sasha, but no. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” she murmurs. “Well, let me know if you need anything.”

“Just hold down the fort while I’m gone, I suppose. Heaven knows Martin will spend the whole time gossiping and making tea without more sensible influences.”

“He makes good tea,” Sasha chides, though she doesn’t hide her gentle smile.

“I’ve had better,” Jon mutters; tea appears to be Mike’s standard olive branch on the rare occasions that they see each other in person. Cliche as it is, Martin makes his tea too sweet.

“I’ll look after Martin for you,” Sasha promises. When she lets Jon go, fingers lingering on his jacket, it is an aching untethering. They go their separate ways on the endless London streets.

The train to Bournemouth is miserable. The empty, dusty house is miserable. The funeral is doubly miserable, hardly worth the effort of buying a decent suit.

“I’m so sorry,” his grandmother’s few friends tell him over and over. The words are hollow things; they all know she and Jon got along much better once he stopped being her responsibility. Jon doesn’t remember how he replies, and none of them offer to stay with him after the funeral.

He has a week to sort out all his grandmother’s things. What’s going to charity, what can be sold, and (the smallest category) what he’s keeping thanks to the remnants of familial affection. 

He has a week to find an estate agent who can sell the house. There is no nostalgia in this place, only a bitter familiarity that leaves him scowling at the antique wallpaper. 

He has a week. If there’s one thing Jon knows how to do, it’s overwork himself.

Sasha calls him once. He stares at his phone until it goes to voicemail, unable to bear the thought of her genuine concern turned tinny and unreal. Martin, of all people, calls too. He apologises for getting Jon’s number from Sasha, leaving some condolences that are so awkward that Jon privately thinks he shouldn’t have bothered.

Jon keeps himself locked up in that house until he can’t bear it anymore.

All he intends to do is go outside and have a cigarette, but instead of lingering in the overgrown front garden, he finds himself wandering slowly and inexorably towards the seafront.

That evening, the sky is like something out of a painting, dappled with a thousand colours that Jon can’t name. The sunset catches the bottom of the clouds, turning them to an alien landscape. It’s like the surface of Jupiter has been projected into earthly solidity, and all he has to do is reach up and touch it. 

He pauses to admire it for a few moments, and then there’s a lurching feeling in his stomach. He takes a grounding drag from his cigarette; there’s no need to get caught up in daydreaming. He carries on walking, feet heavy against the pavement.

The seafront is quieter than Jon remembers it being. The rhythmic back-and-forth of the ocean waves leaks into his thoughts; his shoulders relax as he wanders along a near-empty pier.

This, at least, is nostalgia: burnished sky and gleaming waves and the blessed peace of being disconnected from the people around him. It was an exhilarating freedom as a child, caught up in the euphoria of his own explorations of the wide world, and now it’s a gently roaring calm.

He stares across the English Channel, and as he lights another cigarette, he contemplates the distance. It’s so far, and yet so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

(Technically speaking, he probably isn’t meant to be smoking on a public pier. But there’s no one around to be annoyed by it, and a fine isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.)

Leaning against the barrier at the end of the pier, Jon can almost imagine that the world is only sea and sky, meeting in the middle and yet never once touching. The world narrows down to the sound of wind and waves. With the breeze against his skin, he can imagine himself falling into those endless reaches. It feels like a defeat to admit how comforting the idea is.

With a guilty sigh, Jon throws his cigarette into the sea.

The water reflects the setting sun like scattered diamonds. It churns with the pull of the tide, the rush of the waves like siren-song luring him into the infinite darkness. As he watches, the waves go still and quiet, as if holding their breath in anticipation.

Fine, Jon thinks, a tired exhale on his lips. If it wants him, it can have him. But he won’t jump.

In the silence, he turns his head up to the sky, imagining the distance to every pinprick of light.

Then he’s tipping forward, the barrier long-gone, and the cold waves swallow him.

There’s panic, of course. It’s an instinctive, animal thing, the thrashing dread of a creature certain it’s going to die. But already, the surface is out of reach, the shapeless light spilling downwards doing nothing but illuminate how much further he has to sink.

Maybe he will die here. All of Mike’s power came from a Leitner, after all, while Jon fell with nothing to guide him but his own impulse. It’s almost certainly going to be the death of him. That realisation is strangely calming — not the imminent death, but the inevitability of it all.

The water is cold, but not unpleasantly so. The way it soaks into his clothes should weigh him, but instead he feels light, like he could float here forever.

He isn’t drowning. He isn’t breathing, but he isn’t drowning.

Time fades into something meaningless. He sinks and sinks, the world around him turning darker and darker. The panic fades as the pressure increases. It’s a comforting pressure, like when his grandmother would let him use a heavy hand-made quilt in the wintertime. 

Something glimmers in the darkness.

It takes a great effort to convince himself to move, rather than just letting himself sink. He hasn’t swam since primary school, but he remembers enough that he can get where he needs to go.

It’s his cigarette, somehow still lit, gleaming like a beacon in these endless depths. He finds himself laughing, joyous beyond words, air bubbles spilling from his mouth. As he brings his hands up to cup it, its warm light illuminates his fingers in the blue-green nothingness.

Chapter Text

Jon wakes up with cold sand beneath him and cold air raising goosebumps on his skin. 

Someone is pulling him onto the beach, grunting with exertion. They speak, but Jon can’t make out the words, distracted by the realisation that his lungs are full of water. He has a distant awareness that if it didn’t kill him before, it isn’t going to now, but that doesn’t stop him from coughing and coughing until his chest feels like a hollow void below his skin.

When Jon finally collects himself, he rolls onto his back, utterly unsurprised to find himself staring up at Mike. There’s an unreadable distance to Mike’s expression.

“I thought you didn’t want to become something else.” Mike sounds offended, indignant — betrayed. It makes him seem more dangerous than ever, as though he’s this close to throwing Jon back into the icy grip of the ocean waters.

“I don’t,” Jon protests, wincing at the rawness of his throat.

“Could have fooled me.”

“I didn’t—” Jon cuts himself off with a quiet sigh. “It was… rather spur of the moment.”

That makes Mike smile, although it’s one of his old smiles, filled with tired resignation. 

“I figured. Otherwise you would have managed to drag yourself out of the sea on your own.” Mike exhales in something that might be a laugh. “It’s not something I’m good at, you know? I’m not the rescuing sort.”

“I understand, I think,” Jon says, and Mike goes quiet. “I— Maybe not in the same way as you do. But I think I understand. It is beautiful.”

The harsh edges of Mike’s smile soften slightly, and he nods.

“It is, isn’t it?” He seems content not to say anything else, still staring at Jon like he’s trying to assess him on some unseen metric. Well, that’s his business. He’ll either tell Jon or he won’t.

Jon rubs the feeling back into his fingers, discarding the damp cigarette clutched in one of his palms. He’s shaking with the cold, but he pulls himself to his feet, scowling all the way.

“Christ, I’m drenched.”

“That’s what happens when you fall into the ocean, in my limited experience.”

“Oh, shut up. I liked this jacket, and now it’s ruined.”

Mike laughs quietly, and a hint of fondness finally makes its way across his face.

“You can buy a new jacket. I don’t think you’ll need it, though; doesn’t the endless oceanic abyss make here feel all the warmer?”

“Well, yes, but— it was a nice jacket. I got it in a charity shop, I doubt I’ll just stumble across—”

“I missed you.”

All of Jon’s complaints dry up as he registers what Mike just said.

He’s heard that confession before, of course, but never like this. Mike is smiling, the corners of his eyes wrinkled with happiness. There’s no undertone of sadness or desperation, only relief.

Reluctantly, Jon smiles back, licking the sea salt from his lips.

“Yes, I— I missed you too.”

“It’s strange, being back here,” Mike says, glancing around the kitchen of Jon’s grandmother’s house. “I didn’t think I was going to see it again, but here it is.”

“In all honesty, I sympathise,” Jon replies. He takes a sip of tea, though it isn’t helping to wash away the taste of the ocean. “I mean, obviously I knew I’d come back, but— in the abstract.”

It feels less odd than Jon would have expected it to, sitting at the battered old dining table with Mike across from him. Reality hasn’t settled back in; it still feels like he’s suspended in quiet nothingness. Insignificant and free all at once.

He takes a deep breath, trying to ground himself on the physical. Warm ceramic in his hands, uncomfortable wooden chair beneath him, his damp clothes still clinging to his skin.

“This was where we started,” Mike muses, not paying him any mind. “Upstairs in your bedroom. It’s fitting that we’ve come full circle, I suppose.”

“Where ‘we’ started,” Jon echoes flatly.

“I said what I said, didn’t I?”

On principle, Jon refuses to respond to that inanity. Mike hums, mouth curving upwards in amusement, but he seems to take the hint.

“You’re selling this place, then?”

“Well, that’s the plan. It’s not as though I have much reason to keep it. I can hardly commute from here to London every day, and there isn’t much in the way of paranormal occurrences in Bournemouth, aside from our own experiences.”

“You’re staying at the Institute?” Mike frowns, like something about that bothers him.

“… Yes?” Jon raises his brows. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says, and even Jon can tell he’s lying. “I thought you might not want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to? Just because I’m—” Jon cuts himself off; he’s not comfortable with putting voice to how something in him has changed. “I’m not going to go running off with you.”

“Right, right, of course not.”

“I know you found it easy to cut ties with your old life, but I— I like my job. More or less.”

Mike is quiet for a moment, taking a long sip of tea and never breaking eye contact with Jon.

“I don’t think I had much of a life. You were the only thing keeping me grounded.”

“And now you’re an— an embodiment of vertigo and heights, wandering around the world and terrorising acrophobes. I don’t think I did a particularly good job.”

“I thought you said you understood now.” There’s a sharp edge to Mike’s voice, almost threatening, but Jon can’t find it in himself to be intimidated. There’s nothing Mike can do to hurt him anymore — not physically, at any rate.

“I do— at least, I think I do. But I don’t— I just want to go back to my life, and—”

“And forget about this.”

“No,” Jon answers, so vehemently that he startles himself with the force of it. “But I’m not going to let this change me. Not if I can help it.”

“That’s not how this works. Whatever made you let the ocean take you… you already had it in you. These things can’t change you, no matter how much they want to.”

“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”

They share a look across the table. Jon is ready to continue this argument if he has to, but as he watches, Mike’s anger fades into tired sadness, a quiet loss that Jon can’t identify.

Jon exhales, forcing his shoulders to ease. He turns his eyes to the window, to the night sky that stretches further than any human mind can truly comprehend. Not many stars, not with the light pollution, but he can imagine the scale of them better than he ever could before.

“I don’t want to hurt people, Mike.”

Mike is quiet. Jon itches with the urge to glance back at him, to try and work out what he’s feeling. He lets his gaze trace nonsense constellations over those distant points of light.

“You’re a better person than I am,” Mike says at last. “I hope it doesn’t kill you.”

There isn’t much to say to that. They drink their tea in silence.

Even sitting in the dated furnishings of this old and dusty house, Mike still has an ethereal quality to him. His shirt of choice is just as loose and thin as the last one Jon saw him in, but at least he’s wearing a coat this time, faintly sodden at the edges of the sleeves.

“Why did you pull me out?” Jon doesn’t realise he’s asked the question until it’s already left his mouth and Mike is blinking at him with gleaming grey eyes. 

“… I wasn’t sure what had taken you. There are more powers than ours, you know.”

Despite everything, Jon’s chest warms at being included in that ‘our’, even as he shudders at the remnants of past horrors. He brushes his hands off on the tablecloth, unable to shake the feeling of spiderwebs clinging to his fingers.

“I’m not an expert,” Mike continues, “but I know some of them overlap. There’s a lot of things it could have been, and… I didn’t want to lose you to something else.”

“Tell me what they are,” Jon demands. Mike sighs, a faint smile on his lips.

“I don’t know the names of all of them, but the ocean can be a lot of things. Choke, Starless Night, maybe even The One Alone. Or a mixture of all three.”

There are a hundred new questions burning on Jon’s lips. He swallows and asks the one he already knows the answer to.

“But it wasn’t?”

“No,” Mike says, his smile widening. “It wasn’t.”

“Our… power. What is it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve heard it given a lot of names, but the Vast is the simplest. It’s all… the incomprehensible scale of the universe, heights, insignificance, the draw of gravity.”

“Yes, I… I get the picture. It’s just a lot to deal with.”

“By definition, yeah.” Mike leans across the table, gaze firmly locked on Jon’s face. “I can see it in your eyes, you know. They just… go on forever. It’s something special.”

Jon blinks reflexively, doubly caught off guard. For one, there’s something disconcerting to the idea that one simple choice has changed his being irreversibly. But Mike is staring at him rather like a schoolboy with a crush, and that’s honestly as nerve-wracking as any occult matters.

“Well, ah,” Jon laughs nervously, “stare into the abyss, I suppose.”

“I plan to.” On anyone else, it might be flirtation, but Mike says it so plainly that Jon can’t tell.

(It strikes him that he’s never seen Mike show romantic interest in anyone. When they were friends before, he was always more interested in hunting down this or that supernatural phenomena, and after Ex Altiora… well, it isn’t a subject that comes up.)

“Is that—” Jon averts his gaze, downing the rest of his tea in an attempt to distract himself. “You’re teasing me.” It’s not a question, just a statement of probable fact. Mike has to be teasing him because the alternative is so perplexing that Jon genuinely can't comprehend it.

“I’m not. It’s just the truth.” Mike smiles hesitantly. “If you want.”

“That’s…” Jon stutters and stammers for a few seconds before he finally forms a coherent reply. “That’s a lot to process. I’m not known for— my romantic talents, I suppose.”

“I’m not asking you to jump into things. But you’re attractive — at least, I think so — and you know me better than anyone. We’re free from the things that haunted us. Jon, we’re free.”

“Okay,” Jon says, because if he doesn’t distract himself he’s going to start thinking about spiders again. “So you’re asking me if I want to… date you?”

“Yeah, essentially. Maybe choose a fancier word, though, because I don’t think you’re the ‘date’ sort. Court, maybe? Woo? Seduce?”

“Oh, good lord.” Jon can feel his cheeks heating up, and the worst part is, he doesn’t think he’s opposed to whatever Mike is suggesting. It sounds… pleasant. Yes, pleasant.

“You don’t need to decide right now. We’ve got a lot of time to work things out. It’s not like you’re going anywhere,” Mike adds with a hint of bitterness.

“Right. I’ll… I’ll think about it.” He coughs, trying to redirect the subject to give himself some space to consider. “What do you have against the Institute, exactly? I know it’s hardly reputable, but I wouldn’t have thought you’d care about that.”

“I looked into it when I was doing research, and— honestly, it puts me on edge.”

“It puts you on edge,” Jon echoes.

“I didn’t go in, or anything — I wasn’t going to tell my story to some stranger — but I felt like I was being watched. Like… that Cyrillic book. Something with no eyes was watching me. It wasn’t right.”

“Honestly,” Jon scoffs. “The only thing that’s not right is its lax standards for its employees. I swear, if Martin— Well, I’ll put it this way: you had more sense as an amateur researcher with no resources than he does with years of academia under his belt. It’s a miracle that he hasn’t been fired yet.”

Mike’s eyebrows raise, his expression one of gentle amusement.

“You’re sure you want to go back there?”

“Yes. Most of my coworkers are competent.” For a moment, he entertains the idea of introducing Mike and Sasha, before remembering how terribly that would go. “And the work is satisfying.”

“Well, I can’t say I understand, but suit yourself. As long as you’re happy.”

“I suppose so,” Jon replies. He’s… content, certainly. That’s all he needs from his life.

Chapter Text

It isn't that Jon is expecting his life to go back to normal, precisely.

He goes through the motions, of course: the usual overtime at the Institute, declining offers for nights out with his coworkers, getting the Tube home to a flat that feels far too small, reading until he feels tired enough to sleep. It’s all normal, but he knows something has changed.

Walks by the Thames become a frequent occurrence, glancing up at the glittering spires of London’s tallest buildings. He’s started taking his breaks outside of the building because otherwise the walls press in on him until he can’t breathe through the claustrophobia. 

(He’d never admit it, but he thinks Mike might be right about something watching him. It prickles at his neck more and more often these days, and it’s very rarely Sasha or Martin looking.)

But he manages to fool himself into thinking that this is as far as it will go — that the scales will never tip one way or another. He bring himself to accept that this feeling of safety is only temporary.

It’s on one of his lunch breaks that the illusion breaks, normality refusing to reassert itself.

He’s sitting on the Institute steps with a sandwich and a packet of crisps from the Sainsbury’s up the road. It’s not a clear day, but the quiet and fresh air is pleasant enough. Occasionally Sasha accompanies him, but today he’s alone, watching the world go by. 

Over the road, there’s a man watching him back. Or, no, Jon corrects himself; the man is watching the Institute, mouth twisted in a frown. Jon’s presence on the stairs only makes the man’s frown deepen as he crosses the road, striding towards the building with purposeful steps.

There’s something familiar to the friendly curves of the man’s face. A name drops from Jon’s lips before he’s even aware of making the connection.

“Dominic?”

The man — who bears more than a passing resemblance to Mike’s old friend Dominic Swain — stops and stares at Jon. His expression turns suspicious, then a startled grin crosses his face.

“Christ, is that Jonathan Sims?”

Dominic laughs, and Jon lets out a nervous chuckle of his own. He hadn’t thought ahead to the prospect of socialising with someone who barely tolerated his presence all those years ago. But the anxiety he’s expecting doesn’t come. Dominic didn’t matter when they were schoolmates, forced to share proximity by their mutual friendship with Mike, and he matters even less now.

It should be concerning. Instead, the apathy feels freeing, a weight lifted from his shoulders.

“I— Yes, that’s me.” Jon frantically wracks his brain for the correct way to continue the conversation, to smooth it over so he can go back to the open air. “How have you been?”

“Oh, up and down,” Dominic replies, with the cheerful smile of a man who actually enjoys small talk. “I’ve been working as a theatre technician on some West End projects. What about you?”

Jon shrugs, hoping that will be enough to satisfy Dominic. He barely knows the answer to that question himself, and if he did, Dominic Swain is a long way down the list of people he’d tell.

“Just… working, mostly.” Dominic mutters something that sounds suspiciously like ‘you haven’t changed’, and Jon scowls. “I, ah. I’m a researcher here. At the Institute, I mean.”

Dominic’s smile turns stiff, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He doesn’t reply. Jon would let the conversation die, but it’s occurred to him: why is Dominic here?

“Are you making a statement?”

“Yes,” Dominic says shortly. “I’ve actually got an appointment, so if you’ll excuse me—”

“Hold on.” Jon stands up, brushing some crumbs from his trousers. “I can show you the way to the Archives. Why statements get taken there when we’re the ones meant to be researching them, I’ll never know.”

Dominic gives a strained laugh. To Jon’s surprise, he doesn’t protest the company.

They don’t converse as Rosie signs Dominic in at the front desk. Jon honestly expects them to conduct the whole journey to the basement in silence, but then Dominic sighs.

“So you’ll be investigating my statement, yes?”

“Probably. It depends what it’s about — we’re all assigned to a few different projects, so it might be one of my coworkers instead.”

“Right.” Dominic doesn’t look comforted by this assertion, burying his hands into his coat pockets. There's hesitance to his voice when he speaks again, like he expects to be laughed out of the building. “So if I said it was about a book…?”

Jon stumbles. Why is it always books?

“A Leitner?” Jon asks, just to be sure. Dominic gives him a nod, eyes widening slightly. “That will probably be me, then. I keep telling Elias that we need to do more about them, but—”

“Don’t worry. This one was… well, it was dealt with, let’s put it that way.”

“Good to hear. What was it called? It’s possible that we already have it on file.”

Dominic wavers on his feet for a moment, sighing in terrible reminiscence.

“Ex Altiora,” he says, and Jon goes cold.

“Yes,” Jon says, after the pause has become unbearable. “I’ve heard of that one. Not that I’m clear on the details of what it does.”

“I don’t know how, but it gave me horrendous dizzy spells. Vertigo, like I was falling and I was never going to hit the ground. And… well, I might have imagined it, but I kept smelling ozone.”

“I thought it would be something like that,” Jon says, feeling very tired. As an afterthought, he adds, “but you’re alright now?”

“It all vanished when the book burned.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Jon has so many questions to ask, but they’ve reached the Head Archivist’s office, and Dominic knocks on the door before Jon can say anything more.

In his time at the Magnus Institute, Jon has heard many disparaging remarks about the Gertrude Robinson’s competence and organisation. All of these remarks feel well-justified as he looks around the office; it’s a mess that makes the researchers look like minimalists.

The Head Archivist herself embodies the word ‘grandmotherly’ far more than Jon’s own grandmother did. She looks up at them with faint surprise. When she speaks, her voice is frail.

“Oh, hello. I’m sorry, I believe I was only expecting one statement today?”

Dominic waves a hand, and Gertrude nods, tapping a pen to her lips. She turns her gaze to Jon, a foggy confusion to the furrow of her brows.

“I’m a researcher upstairs,” Jon explains, shifting underneath her scrutiny. “I offered to show Dominic the way here. Thought I’d save Rosie from getting up.”

It’s a weak joke, but it makes Gertrude laugh, the sound as fragile as rose petals.

“Well, isn’t that sweet.” She looks back at Dominic, all gentle smiles. “Now, it was Mr Swain, wasn’t it? If you’ll give me a moment to get some paper, you can write your statement through there.” She waves a bony hand at a door with a window in it.

“That sounds fine to me.”

When Dominic has vanished into the other room, Gertrude turns to smile at Jon.

“Now, dear, would you like to wait for him? I know what it’s like, meeting an old friend.”

“We’re really not—… I have work to do upstairs, and my lunch break has already finished.”

“Oh, what Elias doesn’t know won’t hurt him, dear. It’s hardly the end of the world. Still, I appreciate that you’re a dedicated young man. I just get frightfully lonely down here with so little company these days. Humour an old woman?”

“I— I suppose I could wait.”

“Excellent!”

Gertrude waves at a seat on the opposite side of her desk. It’s buried beneath a mountain of files, but it’s comfy enough when he finally manages to sit down on it.

Despite her proclamation of loneliness, Gertrude seems content to sit in silence for several minutes. She shuffles files around with no obvious method and takes the occasional sip of tea.

Jon gets more and more nervous with every second, fidgeting in his seat and trying desperately not to lose his composure. It’s even more claustrophobic in this tiny cluttered underground room than it is in the rest of the Institute, and the feeling of being watched is stronger than before.

At last, Gertrude looks up at him, head tilted in an owlish manner.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name.”

“Ah, it’s Jon. Jonathan Sims.”

“Wonderful.” Without looking away from him, she scrawls something unreadable on a piece of scrap paper. “And how long have you been with our Institute, dear?”

“About two years now.”

“Oh, lovely.” She meets his gaze directly, and Jon is frozen. Her expression is still one of frail affection, but her eyes are piercing, almost assessing. “Has Elias spoken to you recently?”

“I— No, he hasn’t.”

“Hm. Interesting. There are a lot of opportunities for career progression for bright young men like you, you know. I’ll be happy to put in a good word with him during our next meeting.”

“That’s very kind, Ms Robinson, but I’m honestly not sure—”

“Nonsense! We’ve only just met, and I can already tell that you’re a talented young man. Research is all well and good, but the world is much wider than that, isn’t it?” There’s something sharp to the quirk of her lips now, as though she’s expecting him to pick up on some inside joke.

“If you say so,” Jon replies, as neutral as possible, casting a glance around the unsorted files.

Gertrude’s smile fades back into absent-minded pleasantness, and she nods as though the matter is decided. She jots something else down, then returns to shuffling through her papers.

The tension in the air finally breaks when Dominic returns. He looks pale, a shaken quality to the downward curve of his lips. He silently hands the papers to Gertrude, and she places them atop one of the piles, seemingly at random.

“A pleasure to meet you both,” Gertrude says, and that seems to be the end of that.

(Jon makes a mental note to request Dominic’s statement when he gets back to his desk. Leitners are his favoured project, after all.)

They walk upstairs in silence. Jon wasn’t lying about overrunning on his lunch break, but, well— it’s his first offence in his time here. If there are any disciplinary actions, they ought to be mild. For all the he should get back to work, he finds himself so very curious about what happened with Dominic and Ex Altiora. 

“Did you burn the book?”

Dominic stiffens like he thinks Jon is trying to accuse him of something. He peers at Jon with furrowed brow, then he shakes his head.

“No.” He hesitates. “Have you heard of someone named Gerard Keay? Or Mary Keay?”

“Neither of the names ring a bell, no.”

“Gerard was the one who bought it from me. Then he threw it in my bin and burned it.”

“And Mary?”

“She runs Pinhole Books. Or ran it. I’m still not entirely clear on…” Dominic trails off. The glance he gives Jon is defensive. “Apparently she died in 2008. But there she was.”

“A ghost?”

“Could be,” Dominic comments with a wry laugh. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Jon struggles to understand why anyone wouldn’t be burning with curiosity at the prospect of a ghost affiliated with someone who goes around buying and destroying Leitners. It’s fascinating, and he plans to go over the Leitner files with a fine-tooth comb after this conversation is over.

“It’s been nice catching up, but I’ve got other places to be.”

“One more thing.” Dominic winces, but doesn’t turn to leave. “How did the book make you feel?”

“I already told you. Dizzy, like I was falling.”

“Yes, but how did it make you feel?”

“I mean, not good? If I never have to smell ozone again, it’ll be too soon.”

Dominic doesn’t understand. The thought flickers through Jon’s mind with a sadness too large and strange to be wholly Jon’s own. The terrible heights of vertigo didn’t speak to Dominic’s soul, not filtered through a book already used to fuel Mike’s… transformation.

But Jon never saw Ex Altiora, and yet here he is.

Jon glances up at the clouded sky. There’s no harm in trying, is there? After all, it’s the impact that hurts, not the fall. Jon is… well, he’s always been too curious for his own good.

As if on cue, Dominic sways, having to catch himself on the wall. 

“Damn, I thought this was over. That’s what I get for dwelling on it, isn’t it?”

“Another dizzy spell,” Jon comments mildly. It’s not a question, but Dominic doesn’t notice.

“The worst one yet,” Dominic confirms. Interesting. Are these powers more intense when channeled through a person, rather than an object? Or is it something to do with how Mike used the book to escape his pursuer?

There’s a roaring sound like ocean waves as Jon reaches out to place a steadying hand on Dominic’s shoulder. He gives Jon the faintest flash of a grateful smile, and then they’re falling.

London stretches out below them, the familiar twisting streak of the Thames winding its way across the ground. But no matter how fast they plummet, it’s always out of reach, like a terrible, wonderful optical illusion.

The thin air coalesces in Jon’s lungs like a caress, and he laughs, even as he’s aware of Dominic trying to scream. 

It only lasts a few moments before Jon lets go. Their legs buckle beneath them as they impact, tremors of pain echoing through fragile bones. Jon laughs again, eyes locked on Dominic’s trembling body. The exhilaration is so much more when it’s his own choice.

“Was it like that?” Jon asks, though he doesn’t really need to. Dominic stares at him in horror.

“What the hell was that?” Dominic manages, his voice raw.

“I’ll take that as a no. It was…” Jon trails off as the magnitude of what he’s done begins to set in. “It was nice seeing you again, Dom. Shame about Ex Altiora. I’d have liked to have read it.”

Chapter Text

Jon spends several sleepless nights dwelling on the memory of Dominic’s terror.

He tries to justify it to himself — he hadn’t hurt Dominic, he hadn’t trapped him. Compared to what he’s seen Mike do, it was harmless. Now Jon knows what he can do, and he shouldn’t — won’t — do it again. It all rings very hollow. His horror at himself is a distant, empty thing.

He throws himself back into work, day after day. He forces himself to breathe through the claustrophobia, working through his breaks and refusing to leave until the sun has already long-set. The smog and the light pollution blot out the heady heights of the night sky; it’s safer to avoid it, he tells himself, even as he grows tired and restless in equal measures.

In truth, it comes as a blessed relief when Elias calls him into his office one morning.

“I’ve been hearing some concerns about your attitude to your coworkers in recent weeks.” Elias’ tone is just as calm as his face, bland and neutral and non-judgemental. “I’ll spare you the details of the complaints, but I wanted to remind you that this is an open-minded environment.”

“It’s hardly my fault that everyone around me is incompetent,” Jon mutters, a little too loudly.

“You are part of a team,” Elias reminds him. “I’ll concede that your independent research is leagues above the standards of some of your fellows, but you are still expected to collaborate with them. I understand that you’re going through a difficult time, but if your behaviour doesn’t improve, I may have to let you go.”

“What?”

There’s an instinctive rush of anxiety, a desperate need to do better, but it’s just as swiftly followed by the strange sense of… freedom on the horizon, sunrise breaking over an empty sea. He could let go of all the tethers keeping him on solid ground, surrender to the Vast just like Mike did. Then Jon remembers Dominic’s face, and he swallows, eyes averted from Elias.

“I… I’ll try to be more… polite.”

“Excellent,” Elias says, one eyebrow arched even as he smiles blandly. “That will be all for now.”

Jon doesn’t need to be told twice. 

He leaves, resolving to bury himself even deeper in his work. Sasha keeps giving him strange looks, but he finds himself brushing her off when she asks. It’s safer for her if he keeps her at a distance — and besides, she’s probably just sick of him snapping at people.

As the weeks pass, Mike doesn’t call. Normal enough, but it fills Jon with anxiety in a way it hasn’t before. He has the irrational feeling that hearing the voice of someone who understands might make this better again; no matter how much he scolds himself for the notion, it persists.

In a way, Jon is proved right, though not how he expects.

“Rather rude to make an old man wait out in the cold, you know.”

 Jon turns, fumbling his ID card into his pocket as the Institute door swings shut behind him.

A man leans stands in the centre of the pavement. He’s short and thin, giving the impression that he’s been put together out of sticks, and his flushed face is wrinkled. His clothes are somewhat eccentric, and the cane in his hand looks as though it costs more than Jon earns in a year. Despite his obvious age, there’s something youthful to his demeanour.

“But,” the man continues, “I suppose I’ll let you off, since I imagine you weren’t expecting me.”

“Do I… know you?”

“Oh, no! But I’ve heard plenty of things about you, of course. Goodness, you are in a state.”

He steps closer, peering at Jon like he’s examining a wild animal. There’s a sense of familiarity about him, as though the ache that hollows Jon’s bones is calling out to kindred hungers.

Ah. Jon sees it now.

“You’re…” like me, Jon doesn’t say, the mere idea of the words sparking a lurching nausea. Besides, it would sound pretentious and, even worse, it would betray how inexperienced he is.

“Yes!” The man grins, amiable and terrifying all at once. Jon is used to Mike — they’re on the same level as each other, so to speak — but this man is something new and dangerous. “Simon Fairchild. Pleased to meet you.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Jon is caught off guard.

“Simon Fairchild. Any relation to the con artist who was pushed out of a building and never hit the ground?” He tries to keep the question neutral, but he can’t help his curiosity creeping in.

“Well, you’re already full of surprises, aren’t you? I can see why Elias wants you around.”

Simon smiles, eyes gleaming with delight. His cane clicks against the pavement as he turns and begins walking, motioning for Jon to follow. There’s a moment where Jon tries to convince himself to turn around and go home, but he already knows it’s a fool’s errand.

“That doesn’t answer the question,” he says when he catches up with Simon.

“No, I suppose not. Yes, there’s some relation, in that I took on his identity after that particular incident. He was rather rich, you see, and I was bored with having no money. It worked out quite well, I think.” 

Everything Simon says only provokes more questions; Jon frowns as he does some quick mental maths, a distant horror blooming in his chest.

“That would make you—”

“Ludicrously old by most standards, yes.”

Well, that’s one more thing to keep Jon up at night, isn’t it?

“But that’s not why I’m here,” Simon says, before Jon can enquire further. “I’m here, or so I’m told, to offer you a job.”

“I already have a job.”

“Well, yes, but it can hardly be satisfying, cooped up in the Watcher’s temple all day. Gives me chills just thinking about it. The open air is the place for our sort, isn’t it?”

Jon has lost track of where they’re going, but when he looks up and sees the Thames in front of him, he’s not all that surprised. The grey-tinged night is reaching down to the edge of the opposite shore, blanketing it in mist and making the river seem endless as the ocean.

“I like my job,” Jon says, on the defensive and not entirely sure why. “It’s peaceful.”

Simon says nothing, humming pleasantly as he leans on the railing that overlooks the water.

“… What kind of job are you offering?” Jon asks, trying to make it sound begrudging.

“Truth be told, it would be less of a job and more of a mentorship. Officially speaking, I’m looking for an assistant — Harriet got rather bored of me, but I do like a little company from time to time. In practice, I doubt there’s anything you can do for me that I can’t do for myself.”

“So why are you asking me in the first place?”

“Well, there’s something to be said for the satisfaction of passing on one’s knowledge. Perhaps you’d understand that, living and working in the Watcher’s stronghold. Or perhaps you wouldn’t.”

“I don’t need a mentorship,” Jon snaps, irritation rising to cover his unease.

“Oh, you have power, but a little bit of finesse never hurt anyone — so to speak.” Simon glances at Jon with a smile, then shrugs, pushing back from the railing. “But suit yourself. Elias will be happy to hear that you’ve turned me down. He was quite irritated to realise you’d been wholly claimed by our patron; I believe he had an eye on you for his own schemes.”

“Wait,” Jon says, before Simon can turn and leave. “Elias is…”

“Oh, yes. He’s not one of ours, of course, but the Ceaseless Watcher and the Falling Titan aren’t as incompatible as all that.” Jon starts to speak, but Simon holds up a quieting hand. “I don’t expect he’s told you anything. In my experience, the Eye only gives you answers when they’re exactly what you don’t want to hear. The truth, oh yes, but a terrible truth.”

“The Eye,” Jon echoes, remembering a book that read Mike back, and a twitching, bloodshot eye staring out at him from his laptop. “It’s knowledge, isn’t it? Or something along those lines.”

“Precisely! Awful, dangerous knowledge, truths that hurt. Being watched, being known, all your secrets left on display for the world to see. A lot of the servants of various powers dislike it, but I’m personally ambivalent. Over the years, that sort of thing has seemed ever more trivial.”

“Elias wants me to stay at the Institute.” Giving voice to the words doesn’t help Jon work out what it all means, unfortunately.

“Yes, and truthfully, I can see why. You’ve got the right mindset for it, and— well, I don’t know the details, but I know that his Institute is always looking for those touched by other powers.”

“Touched. Not claimed.”

“Mm. Someone marked by one power and then surviving is a rarity, let alone multiple.”

“I suppose that makes Mike lucky, then,” Jon mutters, running a hand through his hair.

“Is that a no, then?” Simon’s eyebrows are raised expectantly, like he knows exactly what Jon is going to say — very impressive, since Jon doesn’t have a clue.

“I—” Jon cuts himself off, taking a moment to think. With a sigh, he remembers the relief he’d felt at Elias’ threat of firing him. “If I did accept this… mentorship, what would it involve?”

Simon smiles, something like victory playing around the corners of his eyes.

“You’d spend a lot of time following me around as I feed our patron, but you’ll have plenty of free movement too, if you want it. You seem like the type to get easily bored.”

“Feed our patron,” Jon echoes, almost questioning. He thinks of a plane over the English Channel, of Tour Montparnasse, of Dominic’s terrified face. “I… I understand.”

“You’re not happy with it, are you?” Simon’s smile turns to one of patronising amusement, and Jon bristles at it, offended.

“I don’t like hurting people, no.”

“Not the big picture sort? That will be interesting. I suppose I understand, even if I don’t empathise.”

Jon sighs. He leans forward, resting his arms on the cold metal railing and staring out across the river. He wonders if there’s anyone else walking by at this time of evening, heart gripped by unease at the endless misty waters. The fog obscures the lights on the other shore, and it feels as though it’s just him, Simon, and the depthless waves below.

“So, you’re proposing that I follow you around and watch you terrorise people, essentially?”

“Yes! You’ve got the Eye’s curiosity, so think of it as an opportunity to study the infinite variations in how our patron manifests. It isn’t all terrors—”

“Just mostly.”

“Well, very rarely, you come across someone who understands. They might come across someone else who understands in turn, and so on and so forth.”

“Is that what the Fairchilds are?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. We’re hardly a tight-knit group, but we look out for each other. The name is more of a marker than anything else, but perhaps you could consider us a family.”

“Mike hasn’t changed his surname,” Jon says without thinking, and Simon laughs.

“Well, he’s stubborn, and very independent. Not that I blame him, given his history, and I like him as well as I like any of our fellows. Not all that ambitious, but I can’t fault him for that.”

“Would I have to change my name?” 

“If you like. It might keep up appearances, but those don’t matter as much as they used to.”

Jon sighs. He’s already made his decision, hasn’t he? Without even a thought to monetary concerns (his grandmother left him plenty, and her house sold for plenty more) or the life he has here (an empty thing, excepting flashes of camaraderie with Sasha or annoyance with Martin). 

He searches for something else to ask in a desperate attempt to feel less impulsive.

“You have an aerospace company, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, and more besides— but the Daedalus really is our finest work, collaboration aside. Most of my investment is going into space travel right now, to be honest; it’s a rich vein for our lot.”

“Yes, I can imagine.” Jon is suddenly distracted by the dizzy thought that he might be able to go into space. It’s ridiculous, almost delirious, and he can’t help but laugh at the idea of it. Simon smiles like he understands exactly what Jon is feeling. Maybe he does; he can’t always have been like this.

“It’s abandoned now, of course, but between you and me, it isn’t impossible for us to get to.”

Jon’s giddy laughter calms as he considers it. The quiet calm of it, and the view.

“It must be beautiful up there,” he murmurs, staring up at the clouded sky.

Simon nods, leaning on his cane and affecting an air of boredom. Or perhaps he actually is bored; he seems otherworldly in a way that Mike never has, a strange inhuman thing only pretending otherwise because it would be inconvenient to show his true self to the world.

“So, Jonathan, what do you say? I can’t hang around waiting for you to make up your mind.”

And, well, Jon knows exactly what his answer is going to be.

“Excellent,” Simon says, “I’ll be in touch in a few weeks, once you’ve wrapped up your loose ends at the Institute. Say hello to Elias for me, would you?”

As Jon enters work the next day, he breaks away from Sasha’s company and walks up to Elias’ office. Before he’s even raised a hand to knock, he hears Elias’ voice.

“Come in, Jon.”

Elias levels him with a piercing look as he enters, but not an unimpressed one.

“I assume you’re here to hand in your notice, then. Sasha and Martin will be sad to see you go.”

“Well, we’re hardly close,” Jon dismisses, confused at the idea that Martin, of all people, will miss him. “I’m sure they’ll get along better with whoever you hire to replace me.”

“Perhaps, but I doubt your replacement will be as dedicated a researcher as you are.” Elias sighs, shaking his head. “I hadn’t expected Simon to go this far, but he’s continually unpredictable. A word of advice: don’t let the sprightly elderly gentleman act fool you. He’s very old, and he knows more about esoteric politics than he prefers to let on.”

“Are you trying to convince me to stay?” Jon asks, one eyebrow raised.

“I suppose so,” Elias says, smiling thinly. “Though I suppose it’s pointless at this stage. Pity. In another world, you would have fit in well with my patron. You’re not typical of the Vast’s devotees.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage,” Jon bites out, and Elias’ smile grows sharper.

“Mm. Do keep in touch — I’d be interested to hear how you’re progressing.”

“Alright,” Jon says, without really meaning it. “If that’s all?”

“You’re the one who came to my office, Jon. Yes, that’s all. Be sure to tell your coworkers that you’re leaving before they find you packing up your desk in two weeks, hm?”

Jon had, in fact, been planning on leaving it until just then, and he flushes irritably even as he nods.

When Jon gets downstairs and enters the researchers’ office, he feels as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. The claustrophobia has vanished, replaced by a nervous anticipation.

Sasha is happy for him, if wide-eyed and startled. She makes him promise to stay in contact, and he agrees, though he doubts he’ll hold her interest for long after he leaves. He’s hardly the most interesting company over the phone, and their conversations have always focused on research.

Martin, though, fidgets nervously, something sharp and unfamiliar to his gaze.

“It’s a good job?”

“Yes, Martin, or I wouldn’t be quitting to do it.”

“Right, right, of course. Just… keep in touch. With— with Sasha, I mean, I know we’ve not—”

“I will,” Jon says, mostly to cut off one of Martin’s characteristic rambles, but he thinks, perhaps, he means it. He’ll try and make an effort. Though how much of the truth he’ll tell is another matter.

Chapter Text

The next time Jon sees Mike face-to-face, they end up on the London Eye.

It’s hideously expensive and, quite frankly, a miserable day. But Mike’s wind-cool hand in his seems to make all of Jon’s pettier worries fall away, replaced by a blessed calm that allows him to focus on the city view below.

“You’re not changing your surname?” Mike asks, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I’m not sure,” Jon admits, giving Mike a wry smile in return. “It hasn’t come up since that first meeting, but— well, I’m half-expecting Simon to appear and hand me a deed poll one day like the whole thing is decided.”

“I’m just saying, Jonathan Fairchild sounds downright Dickensian.”

“I suppose so.” Jon sighs, leaning forwards and peering down at the ant-farm bustle of the crowds below. “But… I’m not opposed to the idea. It might be nice to be a part of a family.”

“Maybe.” Mike sounds more amused than convinced — ever-independent, Jon supposes.

“At any rate,” Jon begins, trailing off as he frantically scrambles for another subject to talk about. “I met Dominic recently. Dominic Swain?” Silently, he curses himself; this subject isn’t any less potentially-fraught than the last one was.

“Huh.” Mike seems uninterested, and Jon feels a spark of annoyance.

“He’d stumbled across Ex Altiora himself.”

At that, Mike goes still, his brows slowly raising.

“Wow,” he says at last, laughing quietly to himself. “Small world.”

“I…” Jon tries to find the words to describe what he’d done to Dominic, the look of horror on Dominic’s face and the exhilaration that had lifted Jon to the heavens. But he chokes on the shame of it, and the worst part is that he knows Mike will understand it. Michael’s smile softens.

“I know, Jon. I can— sort of tell?”

“You can?” Jon’s stomach twists unpleasantly. He doesn’t like to think of himself as visibly different, visibly other from what he was, but he’s more and more certain that’s the case.

“Mm. You’re… more, I suppose. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Jon admits, remembering that lurching moment when he saw Mike again for the first time in years. The obvious ways he’d changed, and the subtler ones too. “I do.”

“It suits you, if that makes you feel better. I never thought I’d go for windswept academic, but…”

“I’m not windswept.”

“Better than drenched, isn’t it?” Mike smiles, all easy affection.

“I suppose, when you put it that way…” Jon finds so much of what he can do fascinating, and the connection to the ocean is no exception, but he’s never been fond of getting wet. “I don’t know if I enjoyed doing it, but—  it was satisfying. Like research.”

Mike hums, nodding as he caresses the curve of Jon’s fingers, a cool breeze against his skin. 

The London Eye reaches the peak of its rotation and in near-unison, they both turn back to stare through the glass at the insignificance of the city below them.

“I can see the Institute from here,” Jon mutters, wry, “or I could, if the weather cleared up.”

Mike glances around the pod with a conspiratorial air, his fingers pressed to Jon’s pulse.

“Do you want to?”

Jon stares at him, feeling a slow smile spread across his face as he considers the possibilities.

“Let me try,” Jon says, with rather more arrogance than he feels. It’s worth it for the uninhibited grin it brings to Mike’s face, as if Jon is the most amazing thing he’s ever seen — which simply can’t be true, given what Mike is and what he can do.

Jon turns his gaze back to the sprawl of London before he gets more distracted, reaching for the endless abyss that runs through his veins. He stares at the line of the horizon, somewhere between focused and self-conscious; he’s never been very skilled at relying on his instincts. 

Come on, he thinks in annoyance, and inhales sharply when the horizon seems to— shift. One blink, then another, and soon it feels like he can see all the way to the stubborn green at the edges of the London suburbs. A little more, and Jon fancies he can see all of England from this vantage point, and every mile of it is just as insignificant as the rest.

“Christ,” Mike breathes, awed and almost worshipful.

Jon comes back to his body all at once, normality snapping into place like a rubber band. His breathing is heavy, like he’s just run five marathons in a row, and he has to stumble to the seat in the centre of the pod.

(There are other people in the pod with them, and all of them have gone pale and shaking, but it hardly registers as Jon tries to ground himself in his own body again.)

Mike follows him, light hands resting on Jon’s shoulders as he kisses the breathless feeling from Jon’s mouth. Exhaustion is replaced by a now-familiar plummeting exhilaration, and Jon lets his eyes fall shut, drowning in the feeling of Mike’s lips against his.

“Sorry,” Mike says when he pulls away, though the gleam in his eyes is the opposite of repentant. “I just— I couldn’t resist.”

“It’s alright.” Jon pauses, surprised by the fact that he isn’t lying. Kissing has always held a fairly mixed appeal for him, messy and complicated and not worth the bother, but that— that was something different, almost transcendental. Not that he’ll admit that to Mike any time soon.

“It’s just, this is why I love you,” Mike continues. Jon goes still against him. “You’re curious for curiosity’s sake. It’s always been a means to an end for me, but for you it’s more.”

“I…” Jon pauses, catching his breath and considering Mike’s words. “I suppose it is.”

He wants to ask about that confession, those three words that feel too large for what they are. How can Mike possibly be so sure about something like that, to say it without any hesitation like it’s nothing at all? But Jon can’t bring the question to his lips, so he leans forward and kisses Mike on his own terms, precise and experimental.

I love you too, Jon thinks, but he can’t speak the words without further consideration.

They descend slowly. They don’t kiss again, but Mike’s hands caress Jon’s face, bitingly gentle.

“Did good old Dominic mention what happened to Ex Altiora?” Mike asks, once they’re back on solid ground, the romantic mood faded from the air. “Sometimes I regret leaving it behind.”

“Destroyed, I believe. A man— ah, Gerard Keay — burned it.”

“Right,” Mike mutters, something almost like grief crossing his face. “Sensible, I guess, if it didn’t appeal to him.” He glances up at the grey sky like he’s half-expecting lightning to pour out with the rain, that fractal finally back on his scent. But there’s nothing.

“We’re free,” Jon reminds him. “That’s what this is. We’re free.”

Mike smiles, pressing his lips to Jon’s once more.

“We’re free,” he agrees.