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The door to the third floor men's toilet at the Magnus Institute doesn't lock. It makes sense; it's your standard institutional multi-stall restroom, and all the stalls have latches. There's no reason for the outer door to have any sort of lock.
But Tim wishes, today, that he had a way to keep others out—then at least he could have his breakdown in peace.
He should have known better than to think that he could get through Danny's birthday like it's a normal workday. Last year he'd still been working at the publishing house, and he hadn't even called in sick—just stayed in bed when his alarm went off. He'd curled under the covers and tried not to think about the trip he and Danny had talked about going on for his birthday. It hadn't worked.
He doesn't know why he decided to come in today, knowing what day it was.
He thought…he's not sure.
Maybe he thought it would be different, now that he's at the Institute. That the fact that he's doing something, looking for answers, would...help, somehow. Surely it had to be better than sitting alone in his flat, drinking himself into a stupor to keep himself from thinking. Right?
It's not.
It's worse.
He makes it almost to lunchtime before it all becomes too much. He's been working on tracking down some primary sources about Robert Smirke, work that he would normally find fascinating—but today, every obstacle seems insurmountable, and every description of Smirke's buildings disintegrates in his mind into an incomprehensible muddle. Then he stumbles across of mention of Covent Garden and suddenly he is right back in that theatre, staring down at that stage watching Danny being torn apart and doing nothing to help him—
He tells his supervisor that he's taking an early lunch and flees. He makes it to the bathroom just before the pressure in his chest bursts out in a shuddering, gasping sob.
What does he think he's doing here? All the books and the research and the stories of spooky occurrences won't bring Danny back. They probably won't ever even get him firm answers about the things that took him. He hasn't brought Grimaldi up by name with anyone at the Institute; he knows that they deal with the supernatural, but he doesn't think he could bear it if they treated him like a statement-giver: listening to his story, and then pulling it apart behind his back, picking at the details to find some reason to disbelieve it.
Why the hell is he here?
Tim clutches the sink so hard he can imagine the ceramic crumbling under his fingers. He tries and fails to control his breathing, sobs shaking him until his grip on the sink is the only thing holding him upright. He knows he's going to hyperventilate if he keeps this up, but he can't do a thing to calm himself down. All he can think is that he wants to go home, and that now that Danny is gone nowhere will ever be home again.
It's at precisely this moment that Tim wishes he could lock the restroom door, as someone pushes through and stops dead in the doorway.
Tim doesn't look up to see who it is, too far gone to even try to pull himself together for whoever has had the misfortune to stumble in on his grief. He hopes they'll just go away and tactfully never speak of it again; barring that, he hopes they at least don't ask if he's all right, when he is clearly as not all right as it's possible to be in a workplace washroom.
The person in the doorway doesn't leave, and they don't ask any inane questions. Instead, after a brief, painful pause, Jonathan Sims says,
"The tile in here is truly atrocious."
It's so far from anything Tim would have remotely expected someone to say that it stops him mid-sob. He looks up at Jon, who is examining the tile with apparent disdain, and not looking at Tim at all.
Tim doesn't know Jon very well. Their desks may be next to each other, but Tim has found Jon to be thus far impervious to small talk. Not that Tim minds. He hasn't been much for small talk himself, these last few years.
He would have pegged Jon for the type to immediately turn and leave at the sight of a coworker sobbing in the bathroom—Tim once saw him stumble so painfully through a congratulations on an engagement that the other person apologized—but instead he is still standing there, making seemingly unrelated comments about the tiling.
Tim can think of no good response to such a statement.
"What?" he says.
Jon starts at the question, and finally looks uncomfortable.
"I-I'm sorry," he says. "It felt rude to just leave, but I didn't think you would want—I wasn't sure what—what to say."
"So you went with a criticism of the interior design?" Tim's voice is rough but he's pleased that he gets the whole sentence out without a wobble.
Jon's expression does an admirable gymnastic routine between exasperated and sheepish.
"No one ever accused me of being good at comforting people," he says, tucking his hands in his pockets. He still hasn't looked directly at Tim. "And the tile is atrocious."
Tim laughs. It's not much of a laugh, but still. It's more than he could have managed even a minute ago. The overwhelming pressure that was bearing down on him seems, against all odds, to have lessened slightly, and he no longer feels on the verge of a panic attack.
He finds himself oddly grateful to Jonathan Sims and his choice of topic.
"It really is," he says. "Do you think Jonah Magnus chose it himself?"
"Well, this floor was part of the original building that was built in the 1840s," Jon says. "But I imagine it's been through some refurbishing since then. The tile isn't the right sort to be original to the building; at that time it would usually have been—" Jon stops himself abruptly. "Sorry. I-I tend to go on, sometimes, and you don't want—I'm sure a lecture on tiling is the last thing you need right now. I-I'll go."
He turns to leave, and is nearly out the door before Tim finds his voice.
"No, wait."
Jon stops and turns back, giving Tim a quizzical look. Tim doesn't blame him—he's not even sure why he doesn't want Jon to leave. He just knows that in this moment, he can't stand the idea of going back to being alone in this bathroom.
"You don't have to leave if you don't—if you don't want to. I mean—not that you should stay and hang out in a toilet if you don't—I just mean—" Tim huffs a frustrated sigh. He doesn't usually have nearly this much trouble with words. "I don't mind the tiling lecture, is what I'm saying. I think it…I think it helps. If that's okay."
"Oh." Jon looks as confused as Tim must have when Jon first walked in. "Are—are you sure?"
Tim nods. Weirdly, he is sure. "Yeah."
He leans against the wall and slowly slides down to sit on the offending tile floor. Even though he's calmed down, he's not sure how much longer his legs will hold him.
"O-Okay," Jon says. He tentatively folds himself down onto the floor next to Tim.
It takes him a moment to get going again, but Jon tells Tim about the trends in tile manufacture in the 1800s, the preferred materials and firing methods, the changes with the introduction of mass production. It's genuinely fascinating, and Tim lets his head tip back against the wall and his eyes slip closed, so that he can focus on nothing but his breathing and the sound of Jon's voice. The bathroom smells like pine-scented cleaner and lemon-verbena hand soap. Tim wonders if the others in Research are right, and that Jon is putting on that posh accent. If he is, he does it very well, it hasn't slipped at all even as he gets more enthusiastic about types of ceramic.
After a few minutes Jon winds down. "I wish I could have seen what was here before, it's got to be better than this."
Tim opens his eyes to look at Jon, who is glaring at the tile. He chuckles. "You really hate the tile that much?"
"I suppose in the grand scheme of things it's not important," Jon says. His voice has just a hint of petulance to it, and it makes Tim smile. Jon smiles back, tentatively, and Tim can't help but notice how even that small smile utterly transforms Jon's face.
He takes a deep breath. "Thanks."
"Not—not a problem," Jon says. "It—did it help?"
"It did. Truly. Thank you."
Jon nods.
Tim realizes that Jon is content to leave it at that—that he's not going to ask any more questions about why he was crying alone in the bathroom. It should be a relief—but instead, Tim finds that he wants to say something, to tell someone about Danny. He's spent all day trying to act normal, to pretend that nothing was wrong, and it feels remarkably good to finally let that go.
It takes him a couple tries. The first few times, he opens his mouth and no sound comes out, the words all stuck in his throat. He sits up a little, takes a deep breath, and tries again.
"It's my brother's birthday today," he says. "He would have been twenty-eight."
There is silence for a moment, that particular sort of silence when someone brings up something terrible like the death of a loved one. Tim watches Jon out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his reaction. He doesn't look shocked, or afraid, or even uncomfortable—he just looks sad.
"Oh," Jon says finally. "I—I'm so sorry, Tim." His gaze hovers just below Tim's chin, as though he feels like he should be looking at Tim but can't bring himself to look him in the eye. "Do you…do you want to talk about it?"
Tim considers. Usually the answer would be a resounding "no". But for some reason, here, it feels like those barriers have been lowered a little. Maybe it's because Jon has already seen him fall apart and he's still here, sitting with him on the bathroom floor.
"I don't know. I..." He hesitates, then he thinks, fuck it . "Do you believe in any of it? The stuff we research. Do you think it's real?"
Jon bites his lip, then nods.
"I-I do. A lot of it is nonsense of course, but some of it…yes." He pauses. "Was…what happened to your brother, was it…?"
Tim heart constricts at the realization that he is actually doing this, actually talking to someone about what happened. He lets his head drop forward onto his knees and lets out a slow, measured breath. His chest trembles with tension at the closeness of the topic, and he knows if he tries to speak right now, that tension will break. He nods.
"And that's why you're—why you're here, isn't it? At the Institute?"
Tim inhales sharply.
"How did you know?" he whispers.
Jon sighs a little, and adjusts his seat against the wall.
"I had an encounter when I was a child. Something—ah—I believe you would call it spooky. "
Tim can't help but huff out a laugh at the poorly hidden disdain in Jon's voice.
"A-anyway, I don't pretend to know what—what your experience was like. But I know how something like that can—can leave its mark. Once I found out about the Institute, it felt like a place where I might find…answers. So I understand why you—why it might have been the same for you."
Tim thinks about how desperately he's wanted answers about what happened, how the Magnus Institute had seemed like an oasis in a world that insisted that things like this just didn't happen.
He can't imagine how it must have felt for Jon, having carried something like this from childhood. He lifts his head off his knees so he can look at Jon.
"How old were you?"
"Eight."
"Christ, Jon."
Jon looks down at his hands. "Yes, well."
"Have you ever told anyone?"
"I tried, when it happened. My grandmother thought I was making it up, the policeman I tried to tell laughed at me, and…and so on. Eventually I…stopped trying."
Jon shrugs. The resignation in his voice makes Tim's chest ache. He nods slowly.
"I don't think people want to believe things like that, you know? I tried to tell my parents, but they—they thought it was just shock, or grief, or…I don't know. They started getting angry when I wouldn't let it go. They didn't understand why I quit my job, or why I came to work here, and…we haven't talked in a while."
A lump starts to form in Tim's throat, and he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. He doesn't want to cry again, not right now, but oddly, it's not because he thinks Jon will judge him. He's just so tired of crying.
"It's bad enough that he's gone, but I can't—I can't even talk about him without thinking about how it ended, and there's nothing—no one to talk to about that."
From beside him, Jon inhales like he's about to say something, but then he pauses, the moment held in with his breath. Then there is a feather-light touch on his shoulder, Jon's hand resting there so lightly that Tim can barely feel it.
"I-I know we don't know each other very well, but, for—for what it's worth, I—" Jon hesitates. "I know what it feels like, to not be believed. And I—I'm willing to listen. If you need someone to talk to—someone who will believe you."
Something unwinds inside Tim's chest at that. It's so simple, someone just saying "I believe you." He doesn't think he realized until now, how much he needed to hear it.
He reaches up and covers Jon's hand on his shoulder with his own.
"Thanks, Jon."
They sit for a while, Jon's hand a comforting, warm weight on his shoulder. Tim doesn't want to move, doesn't want to break the moment, but eventually, his body begins to register protest at sitting on a hard bathroom floor for so long, and he sits up, rubbing his face.
"Christ. I should get back."
Jon lets his hand drop and gives him a skeptical look. "I think you should go home."
"Jonathan Sims, telling me to skive off work?" Tim presses a hand to his chest in mock horror. "I've never seen you leave before six, and you're telling me to go home early?"
Jon scowls. "I just get caught up in things, and it's easier to stay and finish than to try and pick it up—ah." He stops as Tim finally fails to hide his smile. "You're teasing me."
"Only a little."
"Hmph."
Tim laughs at the disgruntled expression on Jon's face, and it's the lightest he's felt all day.
After a moment, Jon pushes off the wall and clambers to his feet. Well," he says, "if you're not going to go home, would—perhaps we could—get lunch? If you would like?"
Tim peers up at him.
"Now you've got me concerned. Advocating leaving work and eating? Who are you and what have you done with Jonathan Sims?"
"I eat ," Jon says.
"Mhmm, a likely story."
"Besides, I'm only thinking of your welfare. Hydration and food are important, when you've been, that is, after—well—"
"An emotional breakdown?" Tim provides.
Jon's cheeks darken. "Quite."
"Come on, then," Tim says, holding his hand up to Jon. "Let's get away from this atrocious tile."
Jon covers his face with his hands for a moment, but he smiles, and reaches down to pull Tim to his feet.
They go for lunch, and Jon tells Tim about the origins of chicken tikka masala, and Tim tells him about the time Danny got the chef at their favorite Indian place to let him back into the kitchen to watch him cook. Jon doesn't comment when Tim lapses into silence at the end of the story, and quietly asks for a box for Tim's uneaten food.
When they leave the restaurant, the prospect of going back to the Institute seems suddenly overwhelming—but the thought of going back to his empty flat is almost as bad. Tim tells Jon that he thinks he will go home, after all, and then asks, haltingly, if Jon would mind coming over. Just for a little while, until he's able to stand the thought of being alone.
Jon, to his surprise, agrees immediately, and after stopping back to collect their things, they head to Tim's flat. They don't talk much, although Jon goes on a small tangent about the development of the electric kettle as he prepares them both a cup of tea. For the rest of the day, they just…exist together. Tim orders them pizza for dinner, and the evening finds them collapsed on Tim's sofa, a documentary playing on the television.
Tim looks over at Jon, who is curled against the arm of the sofa, watching the screen with eyes half-lidded with sleep.
"Hey, Jon."
"Mm."
"Thank you. For everything today. I…thank you."
Jon nods sleepily. "Of course. I'm glad I could—I could help."
They fall asleep on the sofa, the documentary still playing softly on the background, and when Tim wakes in the middle of the night, shaken out of sleep by his usual nightmares, he sees Jon, curled in an impossibly tight ball at one end of the sofa, and takes comfort in the fact that tonight, at least, he is not alone.