Chapter 1

Jon does not sleep with people on first dates.

Okay, so maybe Jon just doesn’t tend to sleep with much of anyone. That’s a different conversation to be had. Jonathan Sims’s complicated, no good, complete mess of a sex life, which really isn’t all that complicated except that everyone else makes it complicated, and therefore it’s usually best just to not address it and let people think that it’s completely off the table. If there’s one thing Jon dreads, it’s conversations with people who don’t actually want to converse and just want to give all of their opinions on the matter. So, point: usually Jon doesn’t have a sex life. Usually Jon doesn’t have a sex life because he doesn’t want to have to explain his whole scope of feelings on the matter with some guy he’s just met over an app that he’ll probably never use again.

Martin’s different. Martin’s different because even if this is their first official date, one that they’re putting an actual name to, Jon has thought long and hard enough about what he’d do in this situation to give the whole affair a comforting casualness. He can firmly say that after knowing each other for the better part of the year, Martin is someone he considers a friend. Martin is also someone he likes very much, and that’s why Jon doesn’t feel that deep-seated dread in the pit of his stomach as he drags Martin’s giggling arse through the front door of his apartment before pushing him against the door and snogging him senseless.

“God,” Martin groans into his mouth, hips bearing down on Jon’s knee that’s found itself between his legs, and— oh, yes, it seems Martin is quite excited about all of this. Jon takes the opportunity to suck Martin’s bottom lip into his mouth and bite down. “Fuck! Jon!”

“Oh?” Jon says cheekily as he pulls back. “You want to?”

“Is that an offer?” Martin raises an eyebrow.

“Mr. Blackwood, you might call that a wholehearted invitation.”

Martin snorts, his nose flaring in a way that reminds Jon a bit of an excited puppy. “Then I will gladly take up this invitation for as long as it stands,” Martin teases, and a cocktail of affection and burning heat spikes in Jon as he takes Martin’s hand and drags him off to the bedroom, because he knows Martin means that.

Jon maneuvers them through his living room, around his case-less stacks of books and unvarnished canvases he’s been meaning to finish up by the glow of streetlights and a single lamp he’d left on, only breaking his grip on his date once they’re through the bedroom door. He then flops dramatically onto his bed that he thankfully had the foresight to make, and motions Martin to sit next to him.

Martin goes to sit like an obedient puppy before he remembers his shoes, takes two steps back to the doorway, and begins to peel them off.

“Do you have, um,” Martin begins as he unties his laces with a fervor that Jon finds a little ridiculous and wholly endearing, “condoms? And lube?”

“Nightstand, bottom drawer,” Jon says, and Martin nods before rounding the bed to retrieve them. Jon watches as he fishes around blindly in the dim lighting — he reaches over to switch on a bedside lamp for him — then pulls out his discoveries one by one and sets them on the bed — a lube bottle, a silvery wrapper, and—

Martin holds up the mass of pink silicon with a look on his face like he’s just found a chest of gold. “Is this yours?”

Jon snorts lightly. “Whose else would it be?”

“Fair point,” he says, then turns it over, squinting at what Jon assumes are the little buttons before he pushes something and the whole thing jumps to life in his hand. He quickly shuts it off, eyes wide enough to fall out of his skull. “...Can I try it on you?”

“If you like,” Jon says with a shrug, “but I’d quite like it if you continued kissing me right now.”

Martin meets his eyes — Jon truly could get lost in them, if he’s not careful — and smiles. Then he climbs across the bed and pushes him back into the comforter before putting his mouth to good use.

Jon can barely stifle a moan as he pushes up to meet Martin’s mouth, hands hooking under his arms to pull him in deeper. The fact that Jon can barely get his hands around the other man goes straight to his libido; he knows Martin’s a bit self-conscious about his size, but to Jon, it’s just one of the many things that makes him attractive. Martin’s big, and he’s warm, and he’s safe and soft and sweet. It’s hard to find one thing about Martin that isn’t attractive, really. And Martin is very attractive in Jon’s book.

Martin’s hand ghosts down his ribs before coming to rest just above his waistband, fingers finding the edge of his jumper and curling underneath it. “Can I?”

Jon nods quickly, shoving himself up to his elbows to allow Martin to tug every layer of fabric up and over his head all at once before they drop off the side of the bed and into the darkness. Jon tugs out his hairband and tosses it in the same general direction for good measure.

Martin’s hand falls back to his side, up his ribs and over to the thin patch of hair in the center of his chest. Cataloguing, Jon thinks. No judgment or disgust in his gaze, just gentle fascination. “You’re really pretty,” he finally says, then turns a deep shade of pink at his own admission. Well, a deeper shade of pink. Martin’s been pink all the way from the restaurant, from the moment Jon had leaned across the table and whispered exactly what he planned to do with him, and he quite intends to see just how dark he can go.

Jon chuckles softly, pushing his hair up and out from behind his neck. “I could say the same thing,” he says. He brings up his hands, landing them on the collar of Martin’s shirt. “My turn?”

Martin makes a little noise in affirmation, and Jon sets to undoing his buttons. The task proves more work than Jon’s jumper, expectedly, but the satisfaction of shoving the button-down off Martin’s shoulders when he’s through makes up for any delay.

Jon’s breath feels as though it’s been punched out of him as he takes in the whole of the man before him.

Martin’s body hair is much thicker than Jon’s, more widespread too. It covers his chest, his shoulders in soft whorls, easy to sink his fingers into and feel the warmth of his skin beneath. He traces the stretch marks at his sides with his fingertips, the folds of his chest sitting on his stomach, the little, white scars that speckle the rest of him — Jon has no idea what those are from, if he’s being honest. An old job, maybe? He has a vague recollection of Martin mentioning working construction once upon a time. Jon doesn’t care either way, really. In a sense, it’s charming. It adds character to the whole of him. His fingers trail up to a knot of scar tissue on his shoulder, one old and faded and reminding him slightly of a dog bite he has on his leg from childhood. Maybe this one is, too?

And then his fingers drift further up towards Martin’s neck, and he jolts. Chokes out a giggle.

Oh, he’s ticklish. Cute.

“You, uh...” Martin says, voice cracking before he clears it and tries again, “you like what you see?” It’s a joke, Jon can tell, but the insecurity bleeds through into his voice despite his best efforts.

Jon hums, folds his hands around the back of Martin’s neck. “Very much so. You’re quite handsome, you know that?”

Martin’s flush, much to Jon’s delight, spreads all the way down to his chest at the statement, and he looks away before his eyes can get any wider. “Do you even, um, find people attractive like that...?”

“Maybe not sexually,” Jon explains, “but I very much can find people aesthetically attractive. Or romantically, for that matter.”

“But you, ah, you still want to— to have sex with me, right?”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Yes, Martin, I would like to have sex with you.”

Martin lets out a soft, almost hysterical laugh before he can stop himself, then quickly looks away. It does little to hide the ridiculous smile he’s sporting from ear to ear. Idiot, Jon thinks affectionately. “...Cool,” Martin says, equally ridiculously, then seemingly realizes all at once that they are, in fact, having sex, and sits back to start undoing his belt.

Jon pushes himself up and rolls to his knees to snog him while he works.

Kissing Martin is surprisingly easy. Kissing Martin feels like he was meant to do it. His mouth fits so easily into the curve of Martin’s own, his tongue so neatly between Martin’s lip, Martin’s teeth. He’s quite certain he could do this for hours upon hours, if Martin would let him; maybe that can be on the schedule for their next date. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.

He only stops once he hears Martin fumbling with his zipper, anticipation spiking low in his belly. But no sooner than he leans back to look does Martin catch him by the back of his head, push their faces together, and suck his bottom lip into his mouth, the sensation squeezing a moan out of Jon before he even realizes he’s making the noise. God, fuck, he’s—

“Ouch!”

Jon pushes Martin off, falling back onto his rear with the poise of a newborn foal. His other hand shoots up to his mouth, pressing hard onto the point of pain as his eyes squeeze shut.

“Oh—!” he hears Martin exclaim, “fuck, I’m sorry! Are you—”

“Fine, fine,” Jon dismisses, the initial needle jolt having faded into a dull throb. He pulls his hand away from his lip, holds up his fingers. Red. Blood. There’s the slightest taste of copper on his tongue. At least he can’t say Martin isn’t enthusiastic. “You just, uh. You kinda...bit me.”

Martin stares at him.

“...I what?” he snaps, his eyes blowing wide as his hand shoots up to his mouth as if he’s going to find the offending tooth and give it a stern reprimand. Jon would chuckle, if his mouth didn’t hurt.

“It’s fine, Martin,” he says, wiping away the offending fluid on his trousers and not about to let a little cut ruin his evening. “Just, y’know, be careful. Not going to fault you for being excited.” He wiggles himself up to his elbows. “Now, where were we?”

Jon looks up with a lopsided smile, but Martin’s not smiling. He’s not looking at him at all. His attention’s been fixed outside of the room, outside of the window, where he stares blankly and unblinkingly into the blue-black of the early evening sky. He really is quite beautiful, Jon thinks, eyes trailing over the unshaved scruff of his chin, the soft curve of his jaw, his cheeks. He’s thought so for a while now, it’s just...easier to admit it now. Easier to admit that he’s quite fond of Mr. Martin Blackwood now that he’s gotten over the hump of having to ask him out and has the man firmly seated on his bed. God, Martin is in his bed. How many ridiculous dreams did he suffer through about that only for it to become a reality?

And then he hears Martin bite out a “shit” before he’s launching himself from the bed.

“Shit shit shit shit shit,” Martin curses as he fumbles around in the faint light, gathering up his belt, his shirt, his shoes. “Shit! I didn’t realize— fuck, I’m an idiot!”

Jon can only watch in mute bafflement before his senses catch up to him. “Wh— Martin, what’s—”

“I’m sorry!” Martin cries as he tugs on his shirt, fumbling with the buttons. “I’m really really sorry, Jon, but I have to go—”

“Now?” Jon echos, confusion morphing into distress as it drops into his stomach.

“Yes! Fuck, I can’t—”

“Hey, wait, Martin—”

“I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot, I’m a complete idiot!”

“Martin—”

Martin tugs on his shoes, stumbles to the doorway before finally looking up. He meets Jon’s eyes. Jon’s heartbeat picks up. Jon’s hands start to sweat as he grips the bedding beneath him, staring back into the eyes of the man he’d just been kissing, who now looks at him with the biggest, widest, wateriest look of utter terror.

Jon doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone look so goddamn sad in his life.

“You can’t go,” Jon whispers. It sounds too desperate, too needy, but it’s the only thing he can say. You just got here, he doesn’t say.

Martin’s lip quivers as he tries to find his words. “I’m sorry, okay?” he murmurs, so soft and so final that Jon nearly launches off the bed after him. He doesn’t. He can’t move.

Then Martin disappears from the doorway, rushing from his flat and calling out one final “I’m sorry!” as the front door creaks shut behind him.

Jon just sits there, silently, as his mind attempts to catch up.

...Oh, Jon thinks as the confusion morphs into dread morphs into complete and utter resignation, I think...I think I just got dumped.

...Huh.

Hm. Ha. That’s...well, that’s...that’s just his luck, isn’t it? Bringing the boy he’s liked for the past half a year months back to his flat only to get rejected once he’s already got his shirt off. Maybe it’s even a little funny, if he thinks about it in a poetic irony sort of way. Maybe he should have a laugh about it. Maybe Martin’s going to come stomping back in any second now with a “surprise! gotcha!”, even if he knows Martin would never do something so cruel.

Well, at least he thought Martin would never do something so cruel.

Martin doesn’t come back. Jon doesn’t have a laugh about it. He tries to, but the only noise that comes out of him is wet and choked off in the back of his throat as he feels his face growing hot, his jaw tight and his eyes stinging. Isn’t that wonderful. Isn’t that just wonderful.

Jon slides off the bed. Feels around in the darkness until he finds his shirt and picks it up. He thinks about putting it back on, about covering up a bit of the hot shame coursing through him, and instead opts to hold it across his chest as he wanders to the window. Maybe he hopes to see Martin outside, coming back in to tell him it was a mistake. Maybe he just wishes that the world were as easily digestible as his imagination makes it.

Only the moon stares back at him, wide and bright and taunting.

It’d been easy, becoming smitten with Martin Blackwood.

Jon doesn’t make a habit out of getting to know regulars. That’s Tim’s job, for the most part. Jon’s the guy who handles the behind-the-scenes work: the “putting things back on the shelves” work, the “cataloguing the whole new box of donations” work, the “calling the other branch who’s been a pain in the ass, because Jon, you have the scariest voice, they’ll listen to you!” work. It’s not that Jon dislikes his job. He’d say, if anything, he prefers the limited interaction that comes with a management position, only being called out to put the fear of god into whatever asshole decided to spend a little too much free time picking fights with the front desk for the day.

Martin Blackwood had serendipitously been one of those assholes about seven months ago, when he’d been softly, politely disagreeing about the contents of a book on common house spiders, which led to Jon being called in, which led to them having a full-on row in front of everyone in an ostensibly quiet library.

He’d been taken with him ever since.

Jon will admit, albeit a bit embarrassed, that he came to look forward to those Tuesday and Thursday evenings when Martin would come by to do his homework after his classes, if only just to learn a bit more about the man. He was getting his master's after being out of school for five years. He lived only a few stops further down the same route from Jon and had a whole list of the chai lattes he’d ordered along it, from best to worst. He had a not insignificant amount of opinions on the importance of just about every creepy crawly in southern London’s local ecosystem, almost all of them that Jon disagreed with and took great pleasure in arguing with him about.

And now he’s not answering Jon’s texts, and Jon is quite certain he’s the most miserable man in the entire city.

He thumps his head lightly against his desk before picking it up, rubbing his eyes, and attempting to remember what he was supposed to be requesting from the other branch. Something for one of the history classes, right? Maybe greek myth related? Martin liked greek myth. It’d been the subject of many of his poems, of which Jon definitely, absolutely hadn’t been reading for the entire morning over his instant oats.

Christ, he needs to get a hobby.

Jon groans, loudly, pushing his glasses up to rub at his eyes when the door behind him swings open.

“Boss!” Tim chimes, much too loudly for the time of morning and his misery headache. “Check it out, I’m here a whole six minutes before my shift— ooh, hang on.” He rounds the corner of the desk before motioning to the whole of Jon’s face. “I like the new look!”

Jon smears a hand over his chin as Tim gestures towards it. It wasn’t like he was trying to go for a fashion statement, just that he’d overslept, and by the time his third alarm went off it was the trimmer or nothing, which was a bit strange, given he typically only had to shave every few days. Hell, he’d shaved before his date on Saturday. It’s probably just stress related.

“It’s his depression beard,” Sasha says as she glides past with a basket of books, then adds in a not-quite whisper, “He got ghosted.”

Tim lets out a gasp. “No! What!” he exclaims, much too loud for the headache ringing between his ears. He makes himself at home in the seat next to Jon before he can protest. “Really? By Martin? Oh, but he seemed so nice!”

Jon barks out a laugh, a bit too rough and a bit too wet around the edges, but he hardly has the energy to care. “He was,” he says bitterly, “right up until we got back to my flat, and then he ran off and won’t text me back.”

Tim mouths an “ouch” in Sasha’s direction, and Jon lets his head slump into his forearms. Fuck his life. Fuck his entire life.

A soft hand lands on his shoulder, rubbing circles.

“You think you know a guy...” Tim mutters, too soft to be for anyone but himself.

Jon feels his shoulders slump in defeat. “I just— I wondered if it was some sort of emergency, you know?” It’d at least seemed that way by the urgency of the matter, and Jon won’t admit that he’d spent no small part of Sunday checking local hospitals to make sure he hadn’t been admitted somewhere after twelve hours of radio silence. “But if it was, then he should have responded by now, right? I mean, it’s been three days.”

“Jon,” Tim says seriously, lifting Jon up by the shoulder to fully face him. “This probably isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s what you need to hear.”

Out of the corner of his vision, Jon sees Sasha rolling her eyes.

Tim continues. “You can’t let him get in your head. You just can’t. You can’t try to reason out a reason for...all of this, because there likely isn’t one, and that is exactly what these types of guys want.”

“‘These types of guys’?” Sasha echoes from across the room.

“Yes!” Tim calls. “Trust me, I’ve dealt with plenty of them! They play the nice guy to get you to drop your guard, and then they feed off of your misery like some sort of...misery vampire.”

Jon doesn’t mean to laugh. He doesn’t. He pushes the smile off his face as quickly as the snort passes his lips and replaces it with his normal flavor of despondent dejection, but not before Tim catches it. His serious expression morphs into a smile. “Look, I know it sucks now.”

Lightly, Jon hums.

“But you just need to take your mind off of it. You know, a good book. A movie. A night out.” Tim pauses for a moment, taking in his own words, before his face lights up. “Oh, hey! Wait.”

...Oh god. Jon knows that look.

“How about we go out tonight?” Tim suggests. “Have a little fun. Take your mind off things for a bit?”

Jon’s blank expression quickly slips into a frown. “Tim, it’s a Tuesday.”

“...And?”

What is he, daft? “We have work tomorrow?”

“So?” Tim beams — god, Jon was afraid he was going to say that. “You’re the boss.”

Which...well. It’s somewhat true, but Jon doesn’t think that being shift manager gives him the ability to set working hours, nor does it exempt him from being fired.

Tim seems to sense his hesitancy, leaning over to shake him with all the dramatics of a Shakespearean actor. Which makes sense, when Jon remembers he did theater in university. “Jooon, c’moooooon,” Tim whines, “don’t be a stick in the mud, we’ll have fun! And it— oh! Hey, wait. Hang on, I know.” The atmosphere rapidly shifts as Tim jumps up, digging his phone out of his bright, red trousers. “I’ll even invite Daisy—”

“No, god, Tim, don’t invite Dai— Tim—”

His protests fall on deaf ears as Tim’s already gone, phone pinned to his ear as he swaggers off into the other room. Jon groans, pushing his palms into his eyes. Great. Just great.

“You knew he was going to invite Daisy,” Sasha says, leaning over the counter.

“I knew he was going to invite Daisy,” Jon agrees miserably. There’s something to be said here about the detriments of mixing friend groups. He pushes himself up, adjusts his glasses. “Would you finish filing this order for me? The screen...my eyes are kind of hurting.”

Sasha slides around the desk. “Sure, but can you finish putting those away then?”

Jon nods, then slides out from behind the desk and takes the cart to wheel it off to the nonfiction section.

It isn’t that Jon doesn’t like Daisy. Hell, he’d probably say that she’s his best friend, next to Tim and Sasha, and has been with him a lot longer than anyone else. It’s just that Daisy isn’t exactly the type of person he wishes to bemoan his romantic failures to, which he knows he’s now going to have to do and get her ever-blunt suggestion that he simply needs to get over it. Which he does. He knows that. That doesn’t mean he wants to hear it again.

Jon pushes the cart over through the sea of tables, not yet populated by students and their studymates, and slows as he passes the one by the window. It’s a nice spot, overlooking a birch tree with bright patterned cushions that aren’t so worn as the ones nearby, and it’s empty. Of course it’s empty. He highly doubted he’d be seeing Martin sitting there the Monday after he ghosted him, studying away like nothing happened, but reason doesn’t overturn the ache in Jon’s chest at the sight. He chews his lip, still sore where it’d split, and sighs. Continues pushing his cart to his destination and doesn’t look back.

Yeah, he really needs to get over this one.

“He sounds like a dick,” Daisy says once Tim has finished spilling the complete unabridged version of Jon’s weekend heartache to their small corner table and the two men sitting at the booth adjacent. Not that Jon thinks either of them particularly care about the mournful tale, but more that they were relieved of a choice in whether or not to listen as Tim’s voice carried high over the broadcast of the local football game. Daisy turns to him, her face, as usual, agonizingly neutral. “He’s a dick, Jon. You need to stop dating dickheads.”

“I know,” Jon says miserably into his half-empty glass. He should have thought twice before ordering the same drink he’d had Saturday night, because now all he can think about is Martin’s ridiculous giggling as he’d tipsily described Jon’s wardrobe as “English teacher chic.” Whatever that means. Jon still isn’t quite sure, but he’d found it funny at the time, and finds it heartbreakingly sad now that Martin isn’t there to say it again.

“Hey, go easy on him,” Tim says, gesturing to the sad heap of a man across from him with his mug. “Just look at him. He’s gotten his heart broken.”

“And he’s an idiot,” Daisy replies. She turns back to Jon. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

“I know,” Jon says again, equally as miserable.

This is how most of Jon and Daisy’s conversations go when it comes to dating. Honestly, it’s how most of Jon and Daisy’s conversations go in general. He’s used to it by now. Jon’s known Daisy for more than he’s known most everyone else in his life, at this point — almost seven years now, from back when he was fresh out of uni and a long way from sober. She’d shown up at the same addicts support group as him, sat across from him while he’d nervously spilled out his woes to a group of strangers, and then called him a jackass to his face after the meeting had concluded. He considers this the starting point of their friendship.

Huh. Maybe there’s a theme there, in Jon’s relationships.

Daisy picks up her glass, swirling it before taking a swig. “Whatever happened to that girl whose number I got for you? The one from my job?”

Ah. Right. Jon cringes at the memory, sinking his chin deeper into his glass. “Ah, she...um. Got weird after we had the, er, the sex talk.”

Daisy raises an eyebrow, but the look of distress on his face seemingly conveys the explanation well enough. She looks to her drink. “Oh,” she says, then takes another swig. “Well, she was a dickhead too.”

“Don’t worry, Jon,” Sasha says in an exaggerated southern drawl, swinging an arm around him. “We’ll find you a nice gal to marry so you can take over the family farm.”

“Or a nice guy,” Tim adds in an equally awful accent.

“Or a nice guy,” she agrees, and Jon wiggles from her grasp.

“Can we talk about something besides my romantic life?” He grumbles.

“What do you want to talk about then, lover boy?” Daisy says mildly, jabbing at his cheek.

Tim perks up at the lull in the conversation. “Well I know what I want to talk about,” he announces loudly — oh, there is definitely a headache brewing behind Jon’s eyes, “you seen that new rock climbing place? Well, Danny and I—”

Jon isn’t listening as Tim launches into his explanation, too focused on the lazy whirlpool he’s creating in the center of his glass. Something mindless, something he doesn’t have to think about. He doesn’t want to think about everything that’s gone on in the past few days, so he simply won’t. He doesn’t, at least, until Daisy nudges him with her knee.

“You holding up over there, Sims?” she asks, still with Daisy-typical levels of disinterest but almost soft enough for him to imagine she might mean it. Not that Jon thinks that Daisy doesn’t care. She just cares a bit differently — never quite keen on listening to the great, gorey details or the whole schlock of emotions that come with them, but happy enough to offer a distraction if need be. More than happy enough, he’d say, to get drunk with him on the rare occasions that Jon decides to flirt with his sobriety. Like today, when the cheap ale he’s sipping on bitterly reminds him of why he never took up day drinking. Like now.

He huffs out a humorless laugh, shrugging. “I guess.”

Daisy nods slowly. “Just sucks?”

“...Yeah.”

“Want me to find him and put him in his place?” she offers, taking a chip from the bowl in the center of the table and dunking it in ketchup a few times. “Just give me a name, and I will.”

The problem is, Jon knows she would. Between half a decade as police back before he knew her and the last eight being in cyber security, he knows it wouldn’t take much for her to track Martin down. Nor would it take much for her to give him a piece of her mind (and her fists, more likely), because despite the height advantage he had on her, Daisy isn’t the gentle soul that Martin is. Well, the gentle soul that Jon thought Martin was. Slowly, he shakes his head.

“No, I'm— I'll be fine, Daisy.” Might take a few weeks, but it isn't like Jon hasn’t dealt with heartache before. He's secretly grateful that Daisy hadn't known him until after Georgie, that breakup being a whole chapter of his life he wasn't exactly keen on reliving. “Just...y’know.”

Daisy hums lightly. “Yeah,” she says, difficult to parse if she means it. “...Do y’wanna do something this weekend?”

Jon glances over to her, frowning. “I thought you had your support group?”

“That was this past weekend,” she says, finishing off her glass and taking his from him. He doesn’t put up a fight. His head’s already pounding from a preemptive pre-hangover, and he’s feeling a little queasy. He really wishes they would turn the music down. “It’s only once a month. And I need to do something not with them or I’ll put someone in a coma at the next meeting.”

Jon laughs, a little nervously because he doesn’t doubt her capacity to do such. He reaches for his glass back, but she holds it out of reach. “Maybe,” he says, sticking his tongue out at her. “I’ll...I’ll text you, alright?”

“Sure.”

“I KNEW IT!”

Tim’s hand slams onto the table, and Jon flinches bodily, ears ringing at the shout like someone cracked a bell over his head. He turns away, biting back a dry heave.

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it was that Tom guy!” Tim’s saying to Sasha, volume still pitched over everything around them. “I cannot believe you! Not telling me! Your good pal Tim!”

“You good?” Daisy asks about 80 decibels softer, noticing Jon curled in on himself like a piece of roadkill. He certainly feels like it, at least.

“Headache,” he rasps out. He absolutely cannot puke here.

“Stoker,” Daisy says in the vague direction of their table guests, “shut the hell up.”

Tim sputters out a protest. “Oh come on! She’s been cagey about this for months!”

“Because I knew you were going to act like this, Tim!” says someone who might be Sasha.

“Blrghhh,” says someone who might be himself.

“I just think—”

“Oh, piss off, Tim.”

“I just think that it’s funny—”

“I’m going to go,” says Jon, or, at least, he tries to. It really ends up coming out something between a groan and a gurgle, but Daisy seems to get the message as she reaches out to steady him.

“Careful,” she warns.

Tim barks out a laugh. “Like really, of all the people—”

“Like you have room to talk after last month!”

“Last month? Last month? You’re really going to blame me for— oh, woah, hey, Jon buddy, you alright there?”

Jon is most certainly not alright. Jon’s quite sure the world is tipping at a forty-degree axis as he focuses solely on Daisy’s hand, on the edge of the table under his own.

“He has a headache,” Daisy answers for him.

Tim frowns as he leans over into the foggy frame of his perception. “A headache? Why didn’t you say so— is it a hangover? A migraine? I can get you—”

“Do you want me to drive you home?” Sasha offers over Tim’s incessant chatter, but Jon declines with a wave of his hand.

“B’fine,” he mutters, pressing a palm under his glasses and into his eye. He tastes bile and today’s half-sandwich lunch. He thinks he smells ketchup. What was the medical condition for ketchup, again? Maybe it’s just the ketchup from Daisy’s crisp, still clinging to his senses as they fumble for anything to keep them upright. “Just need to have...have a lie down, think...”

A lie down. That sounds nice. That sounds nice, and Jon’s couch sounds even nicer right about now. With no smell of ketchup and no stench of stale beer. No loud televisions. No shouting. Jon thinks he would very much like to go home now. Jon thinks that he probably should remember how to get there in order to do such.

He makes it five whole steps before pausing and proceeding to empty a stomach full of red-black sludge onto his shoes.

Jon does not know where he is.

Mostly. He can tell that he’s no longer in the pub. He can tell that he’s had his clothes changed, likely because he’d projectile vomited all down the front of them earlier. He can tell that, given by the itch against his cheek, that he is likely in his own living room, or at least on his own couch, propped up by one of his own ratty pillows that he’s been meaning to throw out. It’s ugly and has a medium-sized pasta sauce stain on the back where he’d tested the limits of living room dinner the last time he was sick. Needless to say, the living room won, and it’s certainly winning again today.

Jon lets out some kind of noise that breaks from his mouth in a muffled groan, and hears a clank in front of him in response. He peels open an eye and glances down. A waste bin.

“Please make it in there this time,” Tim says from one of the armchairs.

Jon grunts in displeasure, forcing himself to his elbow and fishing around for his glasses. “‘M not gonna puke again.”

“Hey, hey, easy.” A warm hand takes his shoulder, trying to ease him back down, but Jon swats it away. Peels back his lips in a snarl-scowl to let him know he’s serious. He gropes blearily towards the coffee table, not close enough to actually reach, but Tim seems to take the hint and places his glasses in his hand.

“‘M fine,” he argues.

“Jon,” Tim says, and Jon can see the look of utter disappointment before his eyes even focus on the man sitting adjacent to him. “I literally carried you from the station.”

“Fine, I’m fine now,” Jon retorts, continuing to push himself up before stopping. Pausing. Holding onto the couch cushion below him with the grip strength to tear through the fabric with his nails as his vision, his strength, his stomach swims, struggling to write themselves against the new angle.

“Jon, please don’t tell me I need to take you to the hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Jon warns. Christ, he is not letting things come to that. He’ll will himself well with his own impenetrable stubbornness if it keeps him out of those sickly white walls even for a second. “It’s just...just a migraine.”

“Migraines don’t usually give you fevers,” Tim interrupts, gesturing towards the thermometer Jon recognizes from his bathroom drawer. A part of him feels a bit irritated at the thought of Tim going through that. “Neither does alcohol poisoning, which, granted, I was about to call EMS for—”

“Then it’s a bug,” Jon snaps back to derail the thought of entertaining medical professionals in his home. “One of those twenty-four hour things, maybe...”

Tim doesn’t seem to like that suggestion. He frowns, arms crossed as he leans back into the gray plush of the chair. “Has this been going on that long?”

Jon doesn’t want to tell Tim that he puked his guts out before going to bed last night, then woke up with what is likely the pain-equivalent of being jackhammered repeatedly into his eye sockets. He’d been trying to attribute that episode to spending the prior few hours being utterly inconsolable about the weekend’s whole affair. Instead, he just shrugs. Lets himself sink back down into a reclining position, given that his stomach refuses to settle despite his resolve, and really, he’s trying to prove a point here.

Tim doesn’t take that for an answer. “Jon."

Jon lets out a grumbling noise in protest.

“Jon, look—” Tim sputters out a sigh. “Just...has it been going on since Saturday?”

Jon squints in Tim’s direction. The framing of the lamp around Tim’s figure makes him near blinding to look at, but it’s evident he’s frowning by the tone of his voice. “Why does it matter?”

“Because you had a really weird date? One that, mind you, you haven't heard back from yet.” Tim argues, giving Jon some expectant look like he’s supposed to be following whatever the hell Tim’s getting at when his head is pounding louder than his upstairs neighbor’s work boots. When Jon says nothing, Tim continues. “I just...Do you think he— I dunno, do you think he could have given you something?”

“...Martin?”

“Yeah.”

“I-I don't follow.”

“I just—” Tim sighs, shoulders sagging as he lays it out. “Do you think Martin could have given you an STI?”

Jon sputters out a cough, grateful that he’s lying down by the way it makes his stomach lurch. “Um,” he says.

“I’m not. You know I wouldn’t judge for—”

“Y-yes Tim, I know.”

“I just mean, it would make sense why he was acting so weird? I mean, hell, I'd hate to— look, even if it wasn't on purpose, he still might have...y'know, known...”

“Um.” Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. “W-we didn’t...er...” He squeezes his eyes shut as he struggles around the words. It’s not that talking about sex with Tim in particular is weird, it’s just that talking about sex in general is weird. Sex is weird. Thinking about sex when he’s not in the mood for sex is even weirder. “We didn’t um. Actually have sex.”

He can practically hear Tim turning over that answer in his mind. “Oh,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jon answers.

“Well, that kinda puts a pin in my theory.”

Jon hums. “I mean, it isn’t like STIs can be spread just from kissing.” And then he frowns at the thought. Looks over to Tim. “...Can they?”

Tim shrugs with a sound that indicates “I don’t know,” and Jon’s frown only deepens. He pushes his hands up under his glasses and rubs at his eyes.

“I mean,” Tim says gently, “it wouldn’t hurt to get tested. Plus it could be something like, I dunno, mono maybe? Or I think the flu is going around.”

Jon doesn’t think he’s ever heard of stomach problems going with mono, but he doesn’t know enough to correct Tim. Instead, he simply shrugs. What he does know is that getting tested means a trip to the clinic, and Jon would sooner skip town than set foot in there willingly, which means he’ll be willing himself well with the power of his own stubbornness and whatever anti-nausea medication he has in his cabinet.

Jon crosses his arms in front of him, relenting. “Maybe.”

Tim gives him a sympathetic smile. “We just worry about ya, y’know?”

“Yes, yes, I know. You’re all quite obnoxious about it.”

“That’s me, Mr. Obnoxious,” Tim says with a grin like a cartoon cat. Then he makes a little “oh” shape with his mouth, fishes his phone out of his back pocket, and asks, “By the way, do you feel well enough to eat? I was gonna order take-out from that vegan place down the block—”

Jon lets Tim order take-out, personal stomach situation aside. Even manages to get a bit of the tofu pad thai Tim picks for him down without feeling like his insides are tearing themselves apart, even though the smell of it is both much too strong and just south of the wrong side of sour for him to truly enjoy the meal. He doesn’t mention this to Tim. Just wordlessly takes the bits of tofu and egg rolls that he passes him and chokes them down without protest.

Tim only leaves once he’s certain that Jon’s not going to keel over the second he steps out of the flat, and even then insists on bringing him his phone, his charger, and a ginger ale, just in case. Tells him to call if he feels any worse, and manages to make the statement just cheerful enough that it feels like a threat. Maybe it is. Jon resolves not to call Tim even if a meteor smashes through the ceiling of his flat. Well— not that he would likely still be alive in such an event, but still. He’s not calling Tim now, and he’s certainly not calling Tim if he keels over from some catastrophic cosmic event the second he leaves his flat or if he has any further stomach trouble. He can take care of himself.

Jon stumbles to the bathroom once the flat is empty, head still throbbing like a slimy cut-out heart but managing to contain his stomach’s outbursts. He looks like hell. His eyes have stained themselves bloodshot red behind his frames, skin tinged in clammy gray and sticky as he runs a hand down his cheek, over the rough stubble of his jaw. Maybe that part should be more cause for concern, if he’s being honest. Jon’s never been much one for facial hair mostly because he’s never been able to grow it quite right — it’s always too thin, too patchy, too streaked in gray in the spots it will grow to do anything other than make him look like he’s just been spit out of the local mad scientist convention. So it’s probably weird that it’s suddenly decided to grow in just how he always wished it would, dark and fuzzy and uniform, but he can’t find it in himself to give any more thought to it than passive curiosity. He picks at the dried streaks of spit stuck in the stubble on his chin. Gives up after a minute, and digs out some shaving cream and a razor.

And then no sooner does he set the blade to his face does his stomach churn again, and Jon can’t get the toilet lid up fast enough.

The fact that calling out from work involves informing his coworkers that he is still, in fact, violently nauseous from the time he wakes up all the way till the present moment and cannot stop tasting the putrid concoction of stomach acid and cheap alcohol on his tongue has always been a downside for Jon, so he elects to not do such. It’s easier to just shove a handful of whatever he has in his medicine cabinet down his throat and board the train, praying that no one stands close enough to him to be within spraying range, and if they do, that at least their shoes are cheap to replace. He doesn’t end up puking on the train, thankfully. He does end up puking as soon as he gets off of it, however, and spends a solid twenty minutes making himself reasonably presentable in the station bathroom before going to clock in.

Jon rubs his hands over his cheeks, displeased at the prickle they leave behind. He’s on organization duty today, which thankfully means that he can keep out of line of sight from Tim and Sasha for the better part of the morning and avoid a whole line of questioning on why he looks like shit. He just needs to get through this day. He needs to get through the day without his friends telling him how much he needs to go see a doctor; he’s not going to keel over from something like this if he has any say in it. If a man has never willed himself well by the power of spite then Jonathan Sims is quite determined to be the first.

The nausea isn’t even the worst of it. The worst is that, last night, while he’d been sitting on the floor of his bathroom waiting for the next bout to hit him, he’d noticed Martin online for at least fifteen minutes, meaning Jon now had full confirmation that he was ignoring him. It wasn’t some broken phone or family emergency or rapid-onset medical condition that had left him in a coma. It was simply that Martin Blackwood had decided that the local librarian was not meant to be in his future, going forward, and somehow that hurt more than anything else.

Jon stops by one of the tables on his way back from lunch to collect the books left strewn about, dumping them onto a nearby cart to log and put away for later. He needs to get over this. The stress of the whole thing is getting too much for him, affecting his health, his sleep, even his fingernails now feeling thin and brittle when he bites them in a nervous tick. He needs to find a distraction. Maybe he should go out. Tag along with Tim to one of those speed dating things or sign up for one of those indecently named dating apps. Just something to take his mind off of this week and the untamed, motion-sickening spiral of thoughts that keep running in his head.

Jon pushes the cart over to the next table, scooping up that stack of books before heading to the drop-off box, unlocking it. There aren’t many sitting at the bottom of the box: just a few novels, a textbook, a nonfiction one on submarine travel that looks as if coffee’s been spilled on the side. The library traffic is still relatively slow, at this point in the semester, not quite to midterms and just after the drop period when everyone has firmly settled into their chosen poisons, and the book loans reflect such. Jon’s reaching for one of the novels just as the drawer slides open from the other side with a hearty ka-thunk before closing, a pink book sliding off the tray and into the dusty base of the box in front of his hand.

Jon picks it up, frowning. Coughs a little at the cloud it stirs up as he dusts off the cover — jacketless, which foretells more work for Jon as he’ll have to resleeve it before returning it to the masses. He’s really going to fine whoever checked this out last. Is it so hard to borrow a book for two weeks without getting it shredded to pieces? He’d had girl’s dog chew the cover off of a signed copy last week, gifted to the library by the author personally, and Jon’s never seen a better argument against the inappropriately named “man’s best friend.”

And then his hand comes to rest on the worn, embossed letters of the title. “Psychosocial Myth,” it reads, and “commonality of cultural mythology.” A last name with a C that’s well worn away, but Jon doesn’t need to see the full thing to recognize the book.

His heart goes hammering into his throat as he leaps up, casts the book aside, and goes chasing after its borrower.

“Martin!” he calls, lungs burning as he hauls it down the sidewalk. “Martin, wait!”

If he didn’t know any better, Jon would say the man ahead of him picks up his pace. He tucks his head and bolts forward until he catches up to him.

“Martin,” Jon says, breathless, as he falls in pace behind him. When that fails to get a reaction out of him, he opts for a curt shove on the backpack hard enough to jangle the collage of pins across the front pocket. “Hey!”

Martin finally slows to a halt. His shoulders scrunch up to his ears like they’re making friends with them before dropping with a loud exhale. He turns around. Gives Jon a pressed smile like he’s testing out how many wrinkles he can get from a single facial expression. “Jon,” he says curtly, before the whole sight of what stands before him seems to sink in, and he frowns. “Are you alright?”

Jon huffs out a humorless laugh. “Oh, I’m just fine,” he says smoothly. “And you?”

“Me?”

“How are you?”

“Um...” Martin begins, face caught between the indecision of confusion and that passive-aggressive smirk he’d had earlier. “I’m...alright?”

“Alright?” Jon echoes, giving Martin time to nod before he continues. “See, I was just wondering, because I hadn’t heard from you in a while.”

It’s slight — barely enough to notice — the way Martin deflates at the words, but Jon notices. He can’t not notice. The look on Martin’s face might as well be a bright, blaring bell at the top of a high striker, and Jon’s hit his mark clean. “...Ah.”

“You know, usually,” Jon continues, “when people go off-grid, they at least tell someone about it. Gives people the wrong idea if they don’t, you see. Might even cause people to call around to the local hospitals to check and make sure there isn’t a man matching their description lying in a morgue somewhere.”

Passive aggression seems to be the expression Martin finally settles on as he presses his lips together. Fine. Jon can deal with passive aggression just fine. “I wasn’t in hospital,” Martin says cooly.

“Oh, don’t worry, I knew that. Even checked,” Jon says, not holding back on the bitterness that seeps into his words. “So.”

“...So.”

“What...were you doing then?”

Martin doesn’t blink as he searches for his words. He heaves a heavy sigh through his nose and answers through gritted teeth, “I’ve been busy.”

“Oh? Busy, that’s all?” Jon raises an eyebrow. “Well, then. Nothing to worry about. If you were busy, that is. I mean, I did try to call you...and text you, and even sent you an email — one which I know you check because it’s your school email, and given the fact that you’re standing here, you probably haven’t dropped out yet — but I didn’t hear back. But of course. Not a problem. You were busy—”

Martin cuts him off with a dry chuckle. “ Yes, Jon, I was! And oh, don’t worry, I saw them! All the texts, and the calls, and the multiple emails, and the paypal, and even the letter — which, do you want the stamp for that back, by the way? I know how weird you get about those—”

“Martin,” Jon interrupts firmly.

Martin pauses. His lips are peeling where his own teeth and the cold weather have gotten to them, his jaw restless as he decides on what scathing remark he’s going to unload next. Then he squeezes his eyes shut, lets out a long exhale through his nose, and asks softly, “What do you want me to say, Jon?”

Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. The wind tugs at his unbuttoned cardigan and he shivers with it, no longer burning with the anger that had driven him out of the library and after the man on the other side of the drop-off box. What does he want Martin to say? What does he want from Martin here exactly? An apology? Sorry I’ve been letting you think something horrible happened to me, please forgive me?

...No, that wouldn’t feel right, wouldn’t feel sincere enough even if he got on his knees and begged for Jon’s forgiveness. He’d thought that maybe an excuse would feel better, some concrete reason for being ignored — a car crash, an illness, a broken phone or a sudden emergency out of town — but none of those feel right either. He’d never wish harm upon Martin. Hell, maybe he just wanted to have a good row like they used to, like they could have had, if the Martin before him now was the spitfire who’d first picked a fight with him in the library instead of the man who looks as if he’s barely holding up around the seams.

Jon wets his lips. “You know, maybe it’s not what I want you to say to me, but what I want to say to you.”

“Go ahead then,” Martin says, and Jon wishes he didn’t revel in the way his voice cracks. “Say it.”

Jon wants to say it. He wants to. He wants to spill it all out in an uncaring rage like entrails spilled from a predator’s claws, to tear down that false curtain of optimism pretending that everything is alright. He wants it to hurt. He wants Martin to hurt.

Jon swallows around the lump in his throat.

...But he can’t. He can’t find it in him. All that simmering rage that he’d been dragging behind him when he rushed out here is missing, gone soft around the edges, gone damp from the autumn humidity. That’s how he feels inside — soggy and unsteady. Like anything he could say in this moment would only end up making him cry, and Jonathan Sims does not cry, especially not in front of Martin Blackwood.

So he just stands there, trying not to tremble as the wet anger inside him cools and hardens into sticky goo on the sides. He might even say he hates Martin Blackwood, if it didn’t hurt so much to admit it.

Martin just watches him silently, not even a blink betraying any sign of his thoughts beyond his damnably neutral expression. “Nothing?” He asks after what feels like an eternity. “Right. Well. Excuse me, but I’m already late for class — you know, what I’m here for.”

Martin turns and begins to walk away. Jon waits for something to change. Something to snap. Martin, to turn around and say that he didn’t mean it. Jon, to reach out and beg him to stay.

He does neither, in the end. He just stands there, silent and soft and unsteady, until Martin gets too far away for him to make out any of the pins on his backpack. And only then, as if some spell keeping him stone still has been lifted, Jon takes two steps forward, balls up his fists, and shouts:

“At least you could have been a bit more convincing when you lied about liking me!”

Martin doesn’t stop walking, but he slows a little. Just a little. Just enough for him to turn a quarter of a ways back towards Jon, raise his hand up to his mouth, and call back, “Wasn’t lying!”

That stirs something in Jon. That turns the heat back on as he digs his nails into the skin of his palms, not caring if they break skin, not feeling the beads of blood that curl up and run down over his fingers in striped war paint. He wants to break something. He wants to tear something apart.

Jonathan Sims is not a man who cries, but he has, on occasion, been known to get very, very angry.

“They didn’t have rum raisin,” Georgie calls as Jon hears her shouldering open the door, grocery bags complaining against each other the whole way through. “But I got cookie dough and butter pecan.”

Jon should get up and help. He would, if he didn’t have a twenty-pound cat sprawled across his lap like he owned the place, whom he is quite certain would be near impossible to move without either getting a claw to the hand or throwing out his already terrible shoulders. It’s just the sort of thing one surrenders to. His legs fell asleep over a half hour ago, and Jon knows the pain is going to be unbearable when he finally does get up — but. Well.

Jon hums, not quite an answer but feeling enough direction to form a coherent comment on the matter. He’s too busy picking at a matt in the Admiral’s fur. It’s starting to piss him off, which is good, he thinks, because he’s been steadily becoming less angry about the whole Martin affair over the past few hours, but he’s not certain that he actually wants to be finished with being angry for the day. It’s a burning, sticky sensation in his stomach, like heartburn or indigestion or a too-rich sweet that refuses to properly digest, and he likes the feeling as much as he hates it, because at least it’s something to focus on. If he can focus on the feeling of being angry then he doesn’t have to think about anything else. Like being upset. Like being hurt. Probably. Or maybe he’s just a hardass.

Cold plastic presses into the side of his face, and Jon looks up to find Georgie holding out the butter pecan container and a fresh spoon. “Here,” she says, “to keep you company in your moping.”

“I’m not moping,” Jon mopes, but takes the spoon and container.

Jon doesn’t quite know how to put a word to his and Georgie’s relationship. “Exes” doesn’t feel right — too formal, too negatively connotated — even if it’s technically correct, and “friends” leaves out a whole mess of clauses that have tacked onto their kinship over the years that bear repeating if one wants the full picture. Georgie’s one of the few people who knew Jonathan Sims before he had painstakingly accumulated everything that he would consider currently makes him Jonathan Sims in the first place. Georgie had been his first real girlfriend (and, in turn, his first real heartbreak). Georgie has known Jon as a uni student, as an addict, as a homeless twenty-some-year-old, as a grad student, as a convenience store cashier, and as the man he is today. She’s a constant. One who asks too many questions and pesters him when he refuses to answer the majority of him, but a constant nonetheless, and one he can’t really ever imagine not having in his life.

She slides up over the arm of the couch, swinging her feet around so they tuck into the cushion beside him. “Sure,” Georgie says, wholly unconvinced. “Then to keep you company in your...whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I’m...thinking.”

“Thinking. Right.” She takes the spoon from him, digging a scoop out of the container. “And this thinking is totally unrelated to the guy you’ve been seeing?”

Jon’s expression drops into a scowl. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, you’re the one who wanted to come see my cat,” she retorts as she licks the spoon clean and deposits it back into Jon’s hand, which is completely unnecessary, he thinks, given that she has her own perfectly usable spoon right there. He wipes it off on his jumper before digging in himself.

“I’m still technically his father,” Jon says matter-of-factly. “My name is very much present on his adoption papers. Besides, it’s not my fault he likes me better than you.”

The Admiral meows at this, which Jon takes as a resounding agreement to the statement, before he stretches, yawns with all of his razor-sharp teeth, and then proceeds to step directly onto his spleen.

Jon punches out a wheeze, flailing to shove the twenty-plus pounds of fur off of him with his ice cream still in hand. Georgie gives him the mercy of holding it for him (not without laughing first, though), and Jon wiggles out from under the beast, legs tingly and cramping as the Admiral just stands there watching him with black-saucer eyes.

“What was that about him liking you better?” Georgie teases. Jon rolls his eyes as he snatches his tub back from her, turning to the cat.

“You need to watch where you’re putting those things,” Jon scolds. “I’ve got important organs in there that don’t appreciate being crushed, you know.”

The Admiral meows again, like he knows but doesn’t care. Prick.

“Right, well, since you’re definitely not moping,” Georgie begins, digging her feet underneath him to steady herself as she leans back over the couch, fishes through the other shopping bag on the floor, “you get to help me pick which movie we’re watching. So—” She holds up the two DVDs, “—The Thing? Or The Fly?”

Jon glances between the two covers, then up to their holder as he raises an eyebrow. “Are you incapable of choosing normal movies?”

“Oh piss off. These are very well-renowned movies!”

“Yes, about a man turning into an insect and a monster bursting out of a man’s chest.”

“Okay, hang on,” Georgie says, holding up her fingers, “for one, you’re thinking of Alien — the guy’s arms get eaten by someone’s guts in this one, and two, I’m not going to sit around and let you feel sad for yourself over something like Pride and Prejudice.”

“If I ever willingly ask to watch something of Jane Austen’s, you have my full permission to call an exorcist for me.” Jon recalls getting into an argument with Martin over her at one point, sitting in the little student union cafe with odd hours and overly sweet choices in drinks; the man had refused to admit his poor taste, had touted her literary renown with the fact that people were still enjoying her work today, and Jon had argued back that people were still reading Emily Bronte today, which he does recall at least getting a shiver out of him. It was a happy memory, or at least, it had been. It’d been a happy memory before it was left out to sour, and now just leaves an ache in his stomach like spoiled milk.

“Noted,” Georgie says, then tucks away the DVDs, swings her legs around, and adds, “And just because you brought it up, we’re watching Alien now.”

Jon rolls his eyes as she slips off the couch. It’s not that Jon doesn’t like horror — on the contrary, really — it’s just that he finds a lot of the so-called “classic” ones wildly derivative. The virgin lives, the boyfriends don’t (is that him in this scenario, he wonders, or Martin?), and the killer disappears at the end in some largely obvious plot twist to set up for a half dozen sequels after. The comedy relief gets killed off first, and the morally gray protagonist goes through some horrible transformation that’s reflective of their own imperfections: yada yada yada. He knows how they go. He knows that most of big budget Hollywood is unfortunately sticking to what one knows, which leaves him to sit and put the pieces down ahead of the film as he watches as they all fall into place. Maybe that’s what makes them so difficult for him to just simply enjoy like Martin had (Jon had always found that a bit funny, that he enjoyed stuff like this. Now the thought just makes him sad) — the fact that everyone has to deserve something, in the end. The girl deserves to live for something or another and the other deserves to die for not having such. The true horror would be in the senselessness of it all, the complete lack of predictability, the protagonist who doesn’t deserve such a fate and can’t do a damn thing to escape it.

Jon sucks on his spoon. Tucks up his knees as he watches Georgie set up the VCR, then fumble through the living room looking for the remote. “You know, if chest-bursting monsters are the extent of this movie, then I’m going to be disappointed.”

Georgie gives him an unamused look, arm half buried down behind the back cushion of the armchair. “Trust me,” she says, then lets out a little “ah ha!” before snaking said limb back out, “there will be plenty more than that. It is renowned for a reason, you know — plus, well, Sigourney Weaver’s pretty hot in it too.”

“Ah,” Jon grins as he nods, “there’s the classic Barker.”

“Don’t tell me you ever doubted me.”

“Do you think I’d ever doubt you when it comes to—”

The noise that cuts him off is nearly animal, high-pitched and pained, that he almost doesn’t realize it’s coming from himself until his hand shoots up to his mouth to cover the source of the pain and the sound source all at once. He tastes blood. He tastes blood and his own bile-laden panic on his tongue as the white-hot burst begins to constrict, contract until its one pinpointable spot in his mouth. Georgie is saying something, in the peripheral of his awareness. Georgie is asking him what’s wrong, if he’s alright, what happened, but he can’t form words around the pain, and only succeeds in snaking his tongue up towards the spot. Around his tooth. Onto the searing point of contact, where he pushes lightly and feels it move and then—

And then...come loose.

Jon spits out the object from his mouth before he can let disgust win out and bring his whole lunch with it. His vision blurs, even with his glasses firmly lodged in place.

Because in the center of his palm, in a puddle of blood and spit, is a tooth.