Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steven had just gotten employed at the British Museum. He was absolutely ecstatic! He might not be a tour guide, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Maybe he could be promoted from gift-shopist to tour guide one day.

As he walked up the steps to the museum doors, Steven tried to recall earlier jobs he’d had to prepare himself, and he found the memories blank. He knew he'd worked before. He swore he worked as a teen, and he had jobs after that. His teen years were a long time ago. It made sense he couldn’t recall. Everything after was probably because he had been travelling. He remembered more the attractions he visited than the jobs he took as he went along. Yeah, that was why he couldn’t remember. 

Steven reached for to open the door of the museum only for it to not budge. He frowned at it, then looked at his watch. Right, he was early. He had made sure to get there early. He wouldn’t want to be late on his first day, would he? Besides, he knew himself; he often lost track of time. Sometimes it was to the point days had gone by. This time, though, he had put himself enough reminders and alarms to make sure he wouldn’t forget. 

Steven sat on the front steps as he waited for someone to open up the museum. Well, he was thirty minutes early… maybe he overdid it a bit this time. He let out a small chuckle to himself. His leg bounced, and he watched the people who were walking by. Most were on their way to work. About 15 minutes before his shift was supposed to start, someone arrived with the keys to the museum. Steven stood up and walked up to the man. He was dressed in what looked like a security uniform. 

“Hi,” Steven said, bouncing on the balls of his feet as the man raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m new here. I just got a job.”

The man started speaking as he opened the door for the both of them, but his voice quickly became background noise as Steven was faced with the entrance of the museum. The Egyptian exhibit was visible from here. With wonder in his eyes, Steven approached it. This was everything he ever dreamed of. All these years of reading up on this in books, of childhood daydreams of becoming an archaeologist, or looking up images online did not do justice to these very real artifacts that were in front of him. There were statues in the centre of the room and sarcophagi lining the walls in glass cases. 

“Uh, mate?” The security guard called out when he realized the new employee wasn’t listening to him. “Earth to… what’s your name? Sir? Kirk to Scotty?”

Steven snapped out of it and turned to him. “Sorry?”

“I was just saying the staff should start trickling in soon. Where’re you working?” 

“Oh, right. I’m working at the gift-shop.” Steven’s eyes were drawn back to the exhibit. “It’s fantastic.”

“Well, you get used to it as you work here,” the man said. “It loses its magic after a while. Anyway, I’m JB. I work security. If ever there’s something suspicious, you come to me.”

“It’s nice to meet you, JB,” Steven replied, not really paying attention as he stepped closer to the exhibit. 

“Right back at you, Scotty.”

True to JB’s words, the staff of the museum started to arrive to prepare it before it opened up to the public. Steven met Donna, a woman who immediately got on his nerves, but he stayed polite around her. She didn’t seem horrible, just a bit pushy. He was given a name tag, and another employee was in charge of training him this morning.

Steven spent his break and lunch exploring the exhibit. He would never get sick of this. He was sure of it. 

After his first day, Steven was tired, but he felt good. This was going to be good for him. He was sure of it. He waved at JB as he left.

“See you tomorrow,” he told the man.

“You too, Scotty,” JB replied and Steven stopped. He realized he had never given JB his name. Why did he call him Scotty?

“Actually, my name is Steven. With a V.”

JB nodded in acknowledgement. 

The first few days at his work had gone by beautifully. But of course it didn’t last; luck had never been on his side after all. Not even a full week into his new job, he found himself waking up after his alarm… It did go off, right? He got ready quickly and arrived almost an hour late. Donna gave him a dirty look when he did. 

“Stevie, you’re late,” she chastised, pointing out the obvious.

“Sorry, Donna. I didn’t hear my alarm go off. Also, it’s Steven,” he corrected. Donna has been calling him Stevie since the first day. No matter how many times he corrected her, she ignored it. 

“Just make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she warned. 

“Of course!” he quickly agreed. 

But it wouldn’t be the last time it happened. He was sure he set his alarms, but then again, he was so tired at night that he barely remembered his evenings, if at all. It was good that his evening-self left notes for his day-self or else he would be completely lost. He couldn’t remember using the last of the oat milk, but the note reminded him to buy some more. It was funny how forgetful he could get. He guessed that’s what happened when he got as little sleep as he did. He must go through the evening half-asleep. Maybe he should try to fix his sleep schedule. 

This morning, he arrived late to work for the third time in two weeks since he started.

“You’re so bloody useless!” Donna exclaimed to him. He couldn’t help but flinch slightly at the harsh words. “You’re lucky the other who worked at the gift-shop quit or else I would’ve fired you already.”

“Sorry, Donna,” he mumbled. Donna hadn’t been necessarily kind, but she hadn’t been that harsh before. 

It didn’t help how he’d been feeling lately. He started sleepwalking. Just a few nights ago, he woke up in the middle of London. It was already the second time this happened. He was afraid it’d happen again. He didn’t want to encounter someone dangerous during his nightly escapades or even cross the road without looking. 

Donna’s words put Steven more on edge than he had been already. He went to work. His hands shook slightly. 

“Deep breaths,” a thought in his head said, and he followed the instructions. “Good. In and out slowly. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

The thought guided him through breathing till his hands stopped shaking and he felt less on edge. Wasn’t it curious that when he calmed himself, he thought in an accent that wasn’t his? It had always been like this. Usually American, sometimes it even had touches of Spanish to it, which was weird considering he didn’t speak the language. 

Later, when he tried to recall the morning, the memory had become hazy. He still remembered it, but not as well as he used to. Why did he get upset over it? He probably overreacted or something. 

With time, Donna’s words grew harsher. They cut deeper. One day, Steven surprised himself by snapping back, an uncharacteristic but familiar anger boiling in the pit of his stomach. Donna’s wide eyes matched his.

“Sorry, Donna. I… I don’t know what came over me.” He frowned. 

“You didn’t need to apologize,” his thought said in a Hispanic accent. “She deserved it.” 

“It was a bit harsh,” Steven replied to the thought. 

He could almost feel the mental shrug to that.

The Hispanic thoughts became more regular in Steven’s daily life, especially the harsher Donna became. He frequently chatted with it without noticing. He especially reached out to it when he got lonely or felt stressed or just bad in general.

Eventually, Steven realized he hadn’t heard the accented thoughts this much since his teen years. It came and went through his whole life, but this one had especially been present in his childhood. 

Steven took out his laptop and opened a new Chrome tab. “What age do kids grow out of imaginary friends,” he put into the search bar. The first thing that showed up said that it was approximately by the age of 8 or 9. Other sources said that there was no age, but that as children grew older, most would stop before their teens years. 

Steven frowned. He had an imaginary friend growing up who followed him well into his teen years. Did he ever really leave? He must’ve. It wasn’t like he spoke to him anymore… right? The Hispanic thoughts in his mind sounded quite similar to those of his imaginary friend, didn't they?

“Jake?” He called out mentally. 

For a moment, there was no response and he called the name again before he got a response he could barely hear: “Hola, Steven.”

Steven chuckled. “I must really be lonely to be making you up again… Or maybe my lack of sleep finally got to me,” he said out loud.

The thought chuckled back at him. “Well, I’m replying to you, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s likely the lack of sleep.”

“That’s not what I meant, but whatever makes you sleep at night, Steven…”

“We should go to bed,” Steven said as he ran a hand through his hair. 

His thought hummed back in agreement. 

Steven woke up. He was soaking wet under the London rain. His curls clung to his forehead. The clouds hid the stars and moon above him. He didn’t know where he was. A shiver ran through him, the dark jacket on his shoulders barely enough to keep him warm. He patted his pockets for his phone. It wasn’t there. 

He could feel the panic add to his disorientation. How could he go back to his flat if he didn’t know where he was?

His feet started to move. He didn’t know where he was going, but his body seemed to. Maybe he subconsciously remembered how he got there. Another shiver ran through him and he started walking quicker. After some time, he could recognize the buildings that surrounded him. He didn’t know how he got there; the entire trip went by in a blur, but he was nearly home and that was all that counted. 

He couldn’t remember what happened after he got home, too exhausted to really do anything, but the next time he woke up, he was dry. The light stubble on his cheek showed he hadn’t shaven in a few days… that wasn’t right. He shaved yesterday. He looked at the date. A few days had passed, but he felt more rested than usual. Did he sleep through all those days? He tried to remember the last few days. He found fuzzy memories, but they confirmed he didn’t sleep through all of it. 

He must’ve been so tired for the days to go by in a blur like that. He must’ve been on autopilot. 

Steven went to the bathroom to shave. “My moustache…” the Jake-thought whined in the back of his mind. 

“It’s itchy,” Steven mumbled, as if trying to explain his actions to himself. He was talking to himself. Why did he have to justify his actions to himself? “Anyway, this can barely be called a moustache, it’s just stubbles.”

“It won’t be a moustache unless you let it grow.”

Steven frowned slightly as he observed himself in the mirror. Besides the facial hair, he looked almost older. How old was he again?

“I must really be losing it if I’m talking to you.”

“I think we lost it a long time ago.”

“What does that mean?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would, actually. Very much so.”

“I’m more real than you think, Steven.”

“What? You’re not just some imaginary friend? What are you, then? A hallucination? I thought hallucinations were supposed to feel real… you’re clearly inside my head.”

“I never said I wasn’t inside your head.”

“Then how could you be real?”

“...”

“Jake?”

“You’re not ready. I’ll tell you when you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Jake?”

But he didn’t get a reply after that. Steven sighed as he finished shaving. Maybe it was the facial hair that made him look older. He looked more like his usual self. 

He really lost it, didn’t he?

Chapter Text

You see, the thing is Jake would like to tell Steven. He truly would. But this wasn’t knowledge that would be easy to digest, and Steven wasn’t going through the best time. He wasn’t sure if it would help or make it worse. His purpose was to protect Steven, Marc, and the body. He didn’t want to accidentally harm Steven with this. He knew Steven; he would try to dig into things he shouldn’t. He didn’t leave things alone. He was too curious for his own good. 

However, with Marc going out at night and leaving Steven more tired and haunted by the lingering stress of the night, it was hard to let things continue as they did. Especially not after that time Steven found himself drenched in the middle of the night. Jake had to pretend to be Steven for the few days that followed, so he wouldn’t lose his job. 

“ The travellers of the night need you, my knight, ” the booming voice of Khonshu rang through his head.

“Fuck off, Big Bird,” Jake muttered as he put the divorce paper Marc had printed through Steven’s paper shredder for the second time this month. “Tonight, we sleep.”

The skeletal bird slammed his staff against the floor.

Jake gave him an unimpressed look as he stood up from the couch. He put the shredder back in its place under the pile of paper Steven was planning on shredding but hadn’t yet.

The clutter of the flat made Jake scrunch his nose. 

“ If you won’t, I demand Marc do it! ”

“Yeah, no. Estamos sueño. We need sleep.”

“ Those who do harm do not sleep. ”

“And we’re less effective the more exhausted we are.”

Unfortunately, though, Marc was often triggered to front by Khonshu’s presence and Jake was pushed out. He had tried to keep Marc from fronting, but the damn bird had to appear. He sighed and leaned back against an imaginary wall in their head. 

He chuckled to himself as Marc looked for the divorce paper in confusion. He knew Marc would just get more, but maybe he would give up eventually if they kept disappearing. 

Giving up, Marc sighed and went to get his hidden phone in the wall. There was a new message left by Steven.

“ Hello, mum! ” The message started. Marc listened to the message Steven left, taking note of what Steven had done since the last message left. The fatigue was evident in Steven’s voice despite him lying about how he was doing. “ Well, that’s all for tonight. Hopefully, you’ll answer tomorrow. Laters gator. ”

“If you got more sleep, Steven wouldn’t be this tired. The world won’t stop turning just because you didn’t listen to Big Bird for one night,” Jake said in their head.

As always, Marc barely acknowledged it, just assuming it was his own thought.

“You can’t keep ignoring me forever, Marc. You’re going to have to acknowledge me eventually.”

He pushed Jake more to the back. Everything would be so much easier if Marc stopped being in denial about his existence. 

He had tried to let Marc know he was there a long time ago, but to no avail. He just brushed it off. 

Jake took his usual position at the back of their head and shut up, ready to jump in if necessary while Marc went running on the rooftops of London. 

In the days that followed, Marc’s emotional state nearly triggered Steven. The loss of their mother had a shockwave effect no matter how horrible she had been or how oblivious Steven was. It had brought back up feelings that had long been buried. It left Marc having more flashbacks and a grief that felt like a betrayal against himself. 

It was only a couple of weeks later before Jake couldn’t hold Steven back anymore. Marc’s fragile emotional state triggered him into co-consciousness. Steven may not be the one actively in control, but it didn’t stop him from panicking as Marc took a knife to the gut. 

Jake jumped in front, grabbing both Marc and Steven and throwing them back into unconsciousness. He grabbed the arm, which barely had a chance to retreat from the knife, and broke it in seconds. He took a moon dart on his belt and threw it at the neck of someone with a gun in the back. The man fell as it hit the jugular artery, blood spraying out. He took out the rest of the men with the same deadly precision. 

Their blood was being washed away by the rain. It swirled down into the nearest sewer of the alley. The stab wound was nearly fully healed by now, the suit back to clean white bandages.  

He could feel Marc coming back to the front as the threat and panic passed. He looked around himself, a bit confused, but continued on with his nightly activity. 

“You have to tell Steven,” Jake said. “This will continue to happen. You know it will.”

“I’m not telling Steven,” Marc thought. “He can’t know. He needs a normal life.”

“He can’t have a normal life if yours isn’t. This is as much his life as it is yours.”

“I won’t tell Steven,” Marc insisted.

Jake had been right, and as the nights went on, Marc’s emotional turmoil followed him during his nightly activities, and Steven was being pulled more and more into co-consciousness. Steven would wake up thinking they were nightmares. 

Nightmares or not, they affected Steven. He saw Steven growing more and more on edge as the weeks dragged by. He kept trying to convince Marc to tell Steven, but that only resulted in him being ignored. He knew Marc couldn’t help the denial, but it was frustrating nonetheless.

Steven didn’t know what Jake was, but he often conversed with him, and Jake enjoyed it. It made him feel less alone. 

Steven was hunched over his laptop on the desk, covered in books and notes. The screen was the only light in the dark flat. He was currently looking on Amazon for restraints to try to prevent his “sleepwalking”. Yet again, he'd ended up stranded, nowhere near home, with no recollection of how. This made Jake sigh mentally. 

“You don’t need that, Stevenito.”

“I have to stop waking up outside my flat,” Steven mumbled aloud. 

“You think people who sleepwalk go through the trouble of dressing up before they go out for a stride?”

“Well, perhaps my case is special.”

“Or maybe it’s something else.”

“Yeah? Like what?” 

Steven scrolled through the Amazon page, his tired eyes blurring and unable to see the images of restraints. Jake pushed himself into front, the screen coming back into focus. He opened up a new tab. After a moment of hesitation, he typed “dissociative identity disorder” into the search bar. He stepped back, letting Steven take back control and go from there. 

He could hear Steven’s thoughts race and the pit of anxiety that dug itself into their gut. 

There were two main thoughts that battled. The first one was one of relief at having answers to all his questions. The other one denied everything and tried to find other explanations.

“You’re not an imaginary friend, are you?” Steven asked in a small, shaky voice.

“No, I’m not,” Jake replied gently. 

Their vision grew blurry, the letters on the screen losing meaning and doubling. Steven tried to focus his eyes and readjust his glasses on his nose so he could continue to read, but it didn’t work.

“I think you’ve reached your limit for tonight, Stevenito.”

“I don’t… I have to continue. I have to be sure.”

“We’re diagnosed, Steven. We have been for a few years.”

“What? But- How could I not know?”

“Amnesia. You read it. You’ve experienced it. Now, c’mon, let’s do something else.”

Jake took back the front, sliding into the metaphorical driver’s seat. “What do you do in your free time?”

Steven’s British accent lingered a bit, but Jake’s accent gradually took over. He could feel Steven’s reaction to the accent that fell from his lips. The knot in his stomach tightened. 

“Hey, you’re gonna be alright.”

Jake let himself fall on the couch and turned on the TV. It opened on BBC Earth. Penguins wobbled on screen and the comforting voice of Sir David Attenborough droned on. 

“You like these shows, right? Look, cute animals on screen, you love these.” 

“I want to do more research.”

“You’re only going to make yourself dissociate more. You can resume tomorrow when you’re feeling better and more rested.”

The knot didn’t go away. Jakes sighed and muted the TV. He closed his eyes. He mentally materialized himself and found Steven in the fronting area of the headspace. It was basically just a void. There wasn’t much detail besides the both of them. He went to sit down next to a curled up Steven. He wrapped an arm around his shoulders. 

“This okay?”

Steven was slightly surprised by the gesture but nodded. At that, Jake pulled Steven into a proper hug like he did back when they were kids. Back when Jake comforted Steven when he was being picked on by other kids. 

“You’re gonna be alright. You’re not alone.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of his head.