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“Alright?”
Tim watches as the orange ember—the only bit of Jon he can discern in the darkness of the alleyway—rises like an ascending firework, then flares a little as he takes a drag of it. It’s not cathartic, like the whizz-and-bang of a firecracker. It’s stressful. It’s—it’s nothing.
Sort of like his greeting, which isn’t a greeting, it’s a reflexive gesture of politeness. ‘Alright?’ but it’s actually ‘I don’t care, do us both a favour and don’t answer me’.
Jon’s never been very good with niceties, though.
“Yes,” he says, and it must be a trick of the light—what light?—that makes it look like that same ember-glow is in his eyes themselves, a sunset-red sort of luminescence, like in those old photos when someone’s head was at a bad angle and they looked like a demon. Jon looks a bit like a demon.
“Are you?” Jon asks, and Tim feels that uncanny pressure you get in your head before your ears pop as the plane ascends. Once, when he was a kid, coming back from—Spain, maybe, on holiday, Tim had experienced the agony of an air bubble getting caught between his teeth. As the pressure changed, the bubble grew, and it was like something searing and malicious was trying to tear his bottom jaw in two. For a second, he thought the world was ending, the pain was so white-hot and blinding.
It’s funny, because now that the world very well may actually be ending, there’s no pain. Not like that. Everything hurts, of course, but that’s—that’s just what existence is, isn’t it?
Tim certainly can’t recall any other sensation.
“Other than the imminent murder-clown-apocalypse?” he asks, but there’s no humour in it. “Yeah. Smashing.”
Up the glowing ember goes again, and as it flares, the twin lights above it glow unnervingly brighter too.
“I—understand. I know it’s all—less than ideal.”
“Yeah,” Tim hisses in a long, breathy drawl. “Yeah, it’s a bit less than ideal.”
“I mean it,” Jon insists, in that same earnest, gentle tone that always sets Tim’s teeth on edge. It’s woe-is-me bullshit, but worse than that, it actually is genuine, because while everyone else is busy getting the fuck on with things, Jon is unironically and wholeheartedly caught up in his stupid one-man melodrama. Lucky him.
“So do I,” Tim says dismissively.
“I was only asking,” Jon replies apologetically, and it takes a significant bit of effort for Tim not to clock him one in the bloody jaw. God knows he’s earned it.
“Were you?” he snaps. “Just like you were only asking when you made Martin guilt me into giving one of your fucking statements?”
“Tim, I—”
“Yeah. I know. You didn’t ask, because for some reason he’s your little bloody lapdog anyway, isn’t he?”
He smirks, because it’s pretty rare, especially these days, for something to shock or vex Jon into silence.
“I don’t know what to say,” he manages after a few seconds.
“That’s a nice change of pace.”
“Tim, I- we’ve spoken about this. I worry what would happen if you stayed behind. Or if Martin came.”
“Yeah. Yeah, loose element, blah, blah, blah.”
Up and flare and down like a dud firecracker once again.
“Not just that. I think- I think you deserve your vindication, your—your revenge, if you prefer. And here is not the place.”
“You still think you’re going to boss me around if it all goes to hell tomorrow?”
Tim doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s giving that lopsided smirk. “Well, it is in the job description.”
“Piss off.”
“In a minute.” Up, flare, double spooky reflection, down, the kshhhhh as he exhales. Tim remembers how it tastes.
Completely irrelevant is how.
“You didn’t have to come and join me.”
“It’s not called ‘Sims Avenue’, last I checked.”
“It’s not an avenue.”
Tim feels his expression grow even more unimpressed. Rather than replying, he squints his eyes in the dark shadow of the Institute, and it’s like the weird glow in Jon’s barely visible eyes grows in intensity. Like the sun through the smoke of a wildfire.
“Anyway,” Jon continues when it’s clear Tim isn’t going to say anything else for the minute. “I thought you couldn’t bear the sight of me.”
“Can’t see you,” Tim replies readily.
Jon makes this breathy little sound that must be some kind of laugh, because when he speaks again, his voice is a little lighter.
“Is that your roundabout way of saying you wanted to—spend—time with me?”
“No,” Tim says, and he means it. “I don’t have any time, and even if I did, I—w- f- who else is there, really?”
“Melanie? Martin?”
He exhales for a long moment, and the reflection in Jon’s eyes is obscured as he tips his head forward slightly, and some of his hair falls in his face. It wasn’t long enough to tie back when they met. He used to wear it all pushed back, combed into position in the mornings when it was still wet.
It’s not like the longer hair looks bad on him. It’s that—it’s that life looks bad on him. He always looks a little bit bedraggled and unwashed, like he’s slept at his desk, because usually he has.
“They’re busy,” Tim says. And even if they weren’t, they’re not the ones he’s pissed off at. Melanie has a pretty good grasp of the shape of things, so he doesn’t really have anything to say to her tonight, and Martin’s only real transgression is being as loyal to Jon as he is. And if Tim got a bee in his bonnet every time Martin did something stupid—especially something stupid because of Jon—he wouldn’t still love him as much as he does. And he does. And he doesn’t want his maybe-last memory of Martin to be screaming at him.
He’d tolerate it, though. He’d let Tim rail and shout his throat raw about how stupid and unfair and pointless it all is, and then he’d probably get him a tissue, and put his arm around him, and mutter platitudes like this isn’t anything bigger than a dead pet or something.
Jon, though.
Jon, Tim doesn’t give a toss if their last memory of one another is spitting curses and vitriol and making each other fucking bleed.
At least that would be something. At least it’d be—relief. A conclusion.
Maybe they’re both too irreparably broken to even have that.
Maybe coming out here and attempting to interact with Jon—at all—was a stupid idea. Maybe they should just—leave it where it is and be done with it.
It’s unsatisfying. But—it all is. Tim’s fucking dissatisfied.
“Why are you here, then?” Jon says quietly.
“Don’t know.”
Jon stands and steps forward, and the light in his eyes dims. He almost looks normal. But not quite. There’s something about his face that’s just wrong. Like when you look through the front-facing camera on your phone.
Like Danny’s skin?
No. Fuck. Not now. It’s different.
Jon’s—different. Maybe he’s in there somewhere. Is there something else, too, though? Can it take him off like a costume? Like Danny? Like Sasha?
Or is he the thing that puts people on like outfits and takes them off and discards them as soon as it’s the most convenient option?
“I- it’s—it’s good to see you, Tim.”
“You’re really shit with word choice. Do you know that?”
His face crumples into irritation. “You—you know what I meant.”
“Ah! Also a three out of ten, honestly.”
It’s not funny, but Jon laughs like it is. He laughs like he used to when Tim caught him off guard with a stupid or slightly-PG joke. He laughs like nothing’s different.
“How do you do that?” Tim says, coldly.
Jon’s face falls. “What, laugh?”
Tim doesn’t answer.
He watches as Jon gropes, helplessly, for meaning. It’s sort of nice to see him squirm, for once.
“Like, mechanically, or—”
He finds the gumption to laugh as Jon watches him with a perturbed frown, looking genuinely a bit offended. The old Tim—the Tim that gave a shit about him, or about any of this—would have stopped, and apologised, and explained it’s not his fault.
But it is his fault.
It’s all his fault.
“It’s kind of comforting, in a way,” Tim says, after his laughter subsides. “That it’s you. Kind of—kind of good to know your freaky fear god—”
“Beholding.”
“Oh, sorry,” Tim hisses. “Was that not reverent enough?”
Jon doesn’t say anything.
“Beholding is screwed if it’s got to rely on you.”
Now, Jon smiles. Not like he used to. But it isn’t malicious or—unnerving, either. He smiles like someone who’s about to light a firecracker for the first time.
“What do you want me to do, Tim?”
He frowns. “Nothing.”
That sounds—too familiar, by itself.
“Nothing you can actually do.”
It’s in the following few seconds of silence, as Jon takes another hesitant step towards him, that Tim realises he should probably also work on his shit choice of words.
“Try me, then,” Jon says, and again his voice is infuriatingly soft and earnest and Tim clenches his fists instead of lifting them and tearing at his face which might not even be his anymore.
But it is.
Their eyes meet, and those are Jon’s eyes staring back at him, and it’s somehow worse that way. It’s the same Jon that’s done all this. That’s turned Tim into someone he doesn’t recognise when he looks in the mirror. Someone spiteful and angry and vengeful.
Tim was never violent. He was never preoccupied with thoughts of tearing things and people to shreds with blades and fists and feeling the slick of the blood between his fingers. A thought like that would have horrified him. Would have horrified Jon. Even after Danny’s—even after Danny. He didn’t want revenge. He wanted to understand.
Now he does understand, and he kind of wishes that he didn’t.
And Jon did that. It’s not that he’s just borne witness helplessly. He’s dragged Tim and Martin and all the others along for the ride because, what, he’s curious?
“I can beg, if you want,” Jon says, and the look of sober diffidence on his face only piques Tim’s anger all the more. He still feels fucking sorry for himself. “If it’ll help.”
“Won’t.”
“Tell me, then.”
Again, the weird ear-popping sensation and the bone-deep pain, between and under and behind his teeth, and the only thing that feels like it’ll help is opening his mouth to let the pressure out.
“I want you to die for it. Maybe I’ll forgive you then.”
Tim would have thought before this moment that it wasn’t possible to feel betrayed by Jon anymore.
“You fucking prick.”
“I’m sorry,” Jon says hastily, lifting his hands as though to touch him, then thinking better of it. “Jesus, Tim, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
He’s not really conscious of what he’s doing until Jon grunts when his back hits the wall, and then he only registers it because it’s weird to feel the heat of his flesh against the back of his arm as he balls a fist in the front of his shirt.
“Yeah,” he says, and even now, he’s a bit shocked at himself, honestly. Everything’s wrong. Including this. “You didn’t know you were doing it, right?”
He scoffs and Jon stares up at him in cautious silence.
“How long does that work as an excuse, d’you think?”
Jon inhales.
“How long before you admit the reason you don’t know until after is because you fucking never consider how you’re going to affect anybody but yourself?”
“Tim, please, I—I mean it.”
There’s another moment of fraught silence, then Tim loosens his grip, but doesn’t let go entirely.
“It probably shouldn’t shock you that I’ve continued my trend of putting my foot in my mouth,” Jon says, and at least he doesn’t sound all fucking simpering for a second. “And, yes, the consequences are—a little more dire these days. Yes.”
He puts his hand on Tim’s elbow, not affectionately or anything, just—there. Like he’s trying to anchor himself.
“And you—you probably—” He cuts himself off with one of those breathy, self-effacing chuckles that Tim honestly used to think were kind of adorable, because he didn’t think it was necessary for him to doubt himself so much. Now, though, it feels pretty proportionate. He doesn’t quite hate himself enough, if anything. “You most likely don’t want another apology, so I’ll spare us both, but—Tim?”
Tim’s not looking at his eyes anymore. He’s staring down at his own clenched fist in Jon’s rumpled shirtfront, and the irregular scars pocking his skin. He doesn’t even recognise his own flesh anymore. Knowing something like the back of your hand. Is that ironic?
“Tim,” Jon insists, his grip tightening. “Listen.”
He meets his eye again.
“I hope if I’m going to die tomorrow, it’ll—do something for you. I hope it gives you vindication, or- or closure.”
For the first time in recent memory, there’s no fear in Jon’s eyes.
There’s no glow, now. Tim’s blocking all of the light, so it’s only through his proximity that he can make out Jon’s face at all.
“How are you so calm?” he mutters, mystified.
Again, Jon smiles without bitterness or joy.
“I- honestly? I- I’m very tired.”
Tim frowns down at him in the darkness. “You should have been sleeping more.”
A roiling, nauseous sensation rises in his guts, because he doesn’t—he doesn’t want to care. He doesn’t care.
So why did he say that?
Jon looks down at Tim’s fist, then closes his free hand around his wrist, laughing softly or sighing shakily. He can’t tell.
“Not that sort of tired.”
Tim doesn’t recoil.
“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. I—I know that one.”
“Yes,” Jon murmurs. “And I—I’m sorry for that, too. Whether or not it matters.”
Tim’s skin prickles like there’s something horrid and bloodied and hungry beneath it.
“It doesn’t.”
“I thought not.”
They stare at each other for a silent moment, and the weird, creepy glow returns to the back of Jon’s pupils. Tim expects the return of the sensation of pressure, but the only pressure he feels is from Jon’s hands on his arm. He’s never been very good at expressing himself, especially in a tactile way. That’s sort of how they started actually being friends, because Tim can’t help—or, back when he was surrounded by people he knew and liked, couldn’t help—touching shoulders and elbows and backs as he passed by people. It was on purpose, because after Danny, he hadn’t wanted anyone to feel as isolated or alone as he had when it happened.
Jon had been like a cat. At the Loughton house—the one Tim and Danny grew up in, the one Mum and Dad sold after Danny died because they couldn’t bear the memories—there’d been a neighbour kid with one of those crotchety old one-eyed cats made mostly of spite. She explained to Tim that it’d approach if he didn’t look at it directly, and extended a hand and waited. Turned out the scruffy little thing was eager as anything to rub its half-bald head against your hand and sit in your lap and purr for hours, it just needed to figure out you were safe first.
That was how it was, when they met. Tim didn’t discriminate in giving affection to people, even to the human version of an angry one-eyed cat.
And as soon as Jon had figured out that Tim was safe, he’d started doing it back, in his quiet, reserved way. He’d bump into Tim as he passed by him—the plausible deniability bit had always been really important to him—or he’d sit so that their legs or shoulders were touching if they were in a pub or on the tube or whatever.
Jon squeezes Tim’s wrist and elbow where his hands are still resting, and that’s what tells him the thing he’s known this whole time—that this is the old Jon, but he’s changed, and Tim’s changed, and even if they don’t die tomorrow, things can still never be like they were, and it’s never going to be okay again.
“You don’t have to forgive me,” Jon says, and Tim tugs his arm out of his grasp, cradling it like it’s burnt, and takes a step back.
“Yeah,” he replies sharply. “Thanks, I knew that.”
“Tim.”
He takes another step backwards. “What?” he spits, lip curling at how gentle Jon’s gaze has become.
“I- I just—look. Don’t forgive me. Fine. But—I- I still want to tell you I regret that things turned out this way. I regret—how—” He gestures vaguely between the two of them. “How—we are, now.”
How they are.
Tim regrets how they were—trusting and close with one another—when this is what Jon was going to become. He regrets how they’re going to be. Dead and fucking useless. And, worse, dead and useless together.
There’s no escaping the indelible mark Jon’s made on him and it leaves the bitter taste of blood in the back of his mouth.
It’s not fucking fair.
Sasha never did anything like this. Sasha wasn’t culpable like this, and he won’t remember her face if he were to spend years trying—not that he’s got years.
He thinks of Danny and the clearest memory is watching his face tear and distort and vanish, bloodlessly. Every other memory is dulled in comparison. A whole lifetime and the strongest image is the one from after he was already fucking dead.
But the memories of Jon grow stronger the more recent they are. Hell, it’s hard to recall what—exactly—things were like before the Archive transfer. He thinks of Jon’s face—which, admittedly, he tries to do as infrequently as possible—and it’s the one sallow from sleeplessness and pock-marked with the same galaxy of scars from fucking worms as Tim’s got. They’re the same.
He takes a step forward again, planting his feet and keeping his arm pressed against his chest.
Why should Jon get to be the only one leaving scars and damage and open wounds in his wake?
He looks up at Tim as he approaches with the weirdest mix of confusion and—hopefulness.
God, that’s pathetic.
But they’re the same. So Tim’s pathetic too. Pathetic for wishing things were any different. Pathetic for choosing now to fight back against all of this. It’s not like it’ll make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
But it’s not about that. It’s about Jon, and clawing back something that feels for two minutes like a freely made decision. And if one of Jon’s last thoughts is the way this conversation ended, it doesn’t mean that Tim or his life mattered, but at least it means that they hurt each other. Mutually. It balances the scales a little bit, and that’s the best thing Tim can even begin to hope for, so.
“There’s one thing,” he says.
Jon’s forehead wrinkles in concentration, because the nosy prick can’t help but ask questions, even knowing what the potential consequences of it are now.
“Anything,” he says.
They’re practically toe-to-toe, and Jon looks afraid again. Tim lifts his left hand, and sees the particularly gnarly worm-scar on the back of his thumb, and that’s all the reinforcement his resolve needs. He rests his hand on Jon’s shoulder, and rubs with his thumb. He can feel the tension there, like the knots in the muscle are tied with frayed, straining rope.
“I want you to remember this.”
Jon inhales to ask a question, but Tim’s already kissing him.
He melts into it, but he doesn’t make any move to touch Tim with his hands. Just accepts it, and—savours it, all the tension under Tim’s hand melting away.
Good.
When he breaks away again, he leans his forehead against Jon’s, and speaks in a gentle whisper.
“I hope you survive, Jon,” he says, and he means it. “I hope when I’m dead you think about this.”
He squeezes his shoulder, then withdraws his hand.
“I hope it doesn’t make a lick of sense, and I hope it keeps you up at night.”
He straightens, exhaling through his nose, and smiles benignly.
“That’s what I want you to do. I want you to wonder and never know.”
Jon’s top lip twitches, and his brow furrows in the effort to keep his face straight. He nods, like he expected to hear that, and Tim has to devote attention to not spitting out the faint taste of the cigarette Jon smoked.
“Night,” he says, and watches for a second to make sure it’s sunk in, and then he turns to go back inside.
Before the door closes, he hears Jon sighing.