Work Text:
Gray skies moved in haunting sweeps across the sky as Jonathan Sims pulled into his new parking spot. He had no idea that a promotion at work would lead to his own parking spot. If he knew that, he might’ve tried his damnedest to use that acceptance bonus to pay for a new Jeep instead of blowing it on that kitten he’d wanted for so long.
But, instead his heart was filled with love for little Critter, an orange cat with mud for brains and a love of bread ties, and his parking spot was filled with his shitty old Jeep Wrangler that’s back bumper was held on with duct tape, stickers, and the grace of God. He couldn’t find it in himself to be more embarrassed, after he thought about it for more than a split second.
Jon slammed the door shut so it’d stay that way, and he slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. Despite working at the Magnus Institute for nearly five years at this point, he had first day jitters. When Elias Bouchard had offered him the position of Head Archivist a few months prior, Jon quickly accepted, and he didn’t give a single thought to the fact he had plenty of experience researching and not a day of experience archiving. For that reason, his hands now shook and his legs felt like jelly.
He made his way to the front door, swiped his badge over the sensor, and took one deep breath as he entered the door he’d used every weekday for the better part of his twenties. Instead of heading for the stairs he was sure had his permanent tracks engraved into them, he headed for the ones that lead into the basement. Elias had taken the time just the week before to give Jon a tour of the archives, but even after that Jon felt so lost as he descended the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, there was a breakroom. It had no door, just an open archway that lead to a cozy, very yellow kitchenette and oh-so-90’s round dining table. Above the sink was a little mural of a chicken and the words ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ that just had to be Gertrude’s fault. Jon rolled his eyes and made his way further down the hall. There was a single-stall bathroom that had a frog theme—Jon cringed as he thought of that frog wearing overalls watching him make water—and a large storage closet that was filled with cleaning supplies, cassette tapes, and archival boxes. Across the hall was Archive Storage, marked with a dirty sign covered in a layer of faded, vintage Dora the Explorer stickers for some godforsaken reason. Jon shook his head, choosing to ignore it for the time being.
At the end of the hall, Jon stepped into the office area. There were four desks inside, but he’d only need two for his assistants. All the desks were covered in shit, though. Piles of paper, books, boxes, and a bunch of stuff that looked like it belonged to Artifact Storage. There was a door that lead outside, a bright blue door with a chicken hanger rusting over the window. Jon took it down and dropped it into an open trash bag.
Beyond the main office area was Jon’s new office. He pushed open the door, and he cringed at the mess. Elias told him that Gertrude just about lost her mind before the end, and she didn’t have any assistants, so she just totally trashed the place. That especially was true for the Head Archivist office. The floor was a carpet of paper, the walls had stuff pinned up on them, and there was…gasoline?
“What the hell…?” Jon picked up the red jug and sniffed it—yep, gasoline. “Christ…”
He set the gas can just outside the door, and from there he spotted one of his assistants parking. At least that calmed his nerves a bit. “Tim! ‘Bout damn time you got here,” he shouted, snickering when Tim flipped him off.
“It’s still 20 minutes ‘til our shift is supposed to start, you fucker,” Tim said as he went around the side of his truck. He opened up the door and helped out Jon’s other assistant, Sasha. “You should consider yourself so lucky that we’re here this early!”
“Need we remind you this is coal country, and coal country means it’s union country, Jon,” Sasha said with a laugh. “Don’t think we won’t get IWW cards if you push mandatory overtime!”
“Ha ha, very funny, Sasha,” Jon said, sticking his tongue out at her. She copied the action and made her way inside. “Still, I do appreciate y’all comin’ in early to help.”
“Eh, what else are we going to do?” Tim said with a laugh. He looked around at the mess and gave a whistle. “We’ve got…our work cut out for us, huh?”
“This is just the beginning…” Jon grumbled as he led the two around for the tour. “We’ll start in the actual Archive Storage room here, at least try to get it usable in here, then we’ll worry about the mess in the offices…”
“This is just insane,” Sasha said. “I don’t even know where to start…”
“Well, I think we should just…grab a box and go,” Jon said. “Once we start makin’ a dent in this shit, I do want to digitize all the statements. Maybe then we can throw some of this shit away.”
“Is ol’ Union Jack gonna let you do that?” Tim asked, snickering to himself.
Jon just rolled his eyes. “I don’t think Elias knows half of what’s down here. He won’t know if we have a big bonfire one day.”
“Right…” Sasha said, and she sighed as she reached for a box. “Then, I guess we should get started?”
“Let’s…” Jon said, nodding.
Jon sat at his new-old desk after having shoved off the piles of shit that littered it. It just rolled around to 8 am, and he…well, he found something interesting. For some reason, one of the statements managed to call out to him. He put it on his desk and fired up the old, decrepit Dell that looked like it was the shittiest model from 2006. As it forced itself to life, Jon had to scoff at the Windows Vista logo that greeted him.
“Spare no expense, huh, Union Jack…”
He had no idea at what point the three of them had started to referring to Elias as Union Jack, but it fit. The man was British, and posh as hell. He sure as shit didn’t belong in no coal town in Bumbfuck, West Virginia, yet here he was, acting better than everybody else like he shit didn't stink. Jon could remember the first time he heard the word yankee pass Elias’s lips, and he thought he might deck him. What gave him the right to insult everything they were like that? So, Union Jack stuck, since the only defining traits Elias had were Being British. Fucker.
The computer finally managed its way to the main screen, so Jon searched around for the scanner to his printer. He fed the statement into the printer and hit scan, but what showed up on his computer…was a black paper.
“What the hell?” he whispered to himself.
Jon tried instead to type up the statement, but as he did, the computer decided to give up the ghost. He smacked his hand against the thick keys of the ancient keyboard and swiped it off the desk. The damned thing just hung limply and spun pathetically by its cord.
“So much for digitizing the archives…” Jon mumbled to himself. He glanced around, and he saw an old tape recorder sitting on top a filing cabinet. He remembered the tapes he’d already seen strewn around the basement, so he figured this might be how Gertrude made copies of the statements. So, he swiped the recorder and managed to find a blank cassette.
“Let’s see what we can do, now…” he said. He popped the tape in, switched the recorder on, and hit record. The tape whirred to life. “Alright, how do I want to do this…” he said to himself, and he cringed at the thought of listening to his own voice. His accent, though try as he did to squash it, sat thickly on every word he said. He cleared his throat and squirmed in his seat, desperate to mask his accent as he spoke. “Statement of Nathan Watts, regarding an encounter on South Court Street, Athens, Ohio. Original statement given April 22nd, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the new Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, Huntington, West Virginia. Statement begins.”
He read off the statement, and he felt a certain unease and discomfort in his bones as he read aloud the story. Everything in the back of his mind screamed about how he could’ve had this issue if he still smoked, but he shook the thought from his head. There was no way this was real, definitely not, and even if it were…what reason would he have to cross the damn river, go to Athens, and fuck around and find out?
There was a commotion outside, and then suddenly his door swung open. In stepped a bigger man with fiery ginger hair, an uncomfortably warm looking sweater, and a face so flushed he could light a fire in the dead of winter with one puff of air. “Hey, hi, sorry!” the man said, panting. “Um, you haven’t, uh, seen a dog…have you?”
“I’m sorry—what?” Jon couldn’t have heard him right.
“Um—uh, a dog,” the man said dumbly. “A spaniel, I think?”
“In…general?”
“N-no, no, uh…here in the archives.”
Jon narrowed his eyes at the man, just about fit to be tied at the interruption. This guy needed to get out. “Why would there be a dog in the archives?” he asked, pointed tone nearly threatening the poor man.
“Oh, ‘cause I, uh…”
Actually, scratch all that for a minute. “Who are you?” Jon asked instead. If that poor boy could’ve gotten more flustered, he sure did then.
“Uh—M-Martin! And, uh, uh—I might have accidentally…let him in?”
Jon shoved back his chair and got to his feet. “Why?”
Martin squeaked, and he looked around anywhere but at Jon. “W-well, I didn’t mean to! I—we, uh, were outside, making friends, and uh—and I had to come inside, but my hands were full, and the door’s heavy, so I had to use my foot…a-and he just…slipped inside.”
Well, that answered everything except one real important part. “Why were you coming into the archives?” Jon demanded. He could feel his temper rising, and that would mean his accent would slip out. At this point, he didn’t really care. He’d get rid of this man who sounded like he came from the coast, and he’d be done with this and never have to deal with him again. Who cared if this asshole knew Jon sounded like a McDowell County hick?!
“Oh! I-I work here!” Martin said.
“No you don’t.” Jon said quickly. He could feel his own face heat up, but he didn’t know if it was from anger or embarrassment. “I requested Tim and Sasha, and last I checked, you ain’t neither.” Oh, he could kick himself for that.
“Oh!” Martin sounded like he just had some epiphany. “Ohhh, you’re Jonathan Sims! Mr. Bouchard said I’d be working for you!”
“He didn’t say nothing to me about it!” Now Jon was just madder than a hornet in a Coke can, and he was going to make it known.
“He said, well, um…H-he transferred me from the library, so…”
Martin’s nervous trail-off at least quieted the anger that flooded Jon’s veins, and he crashed back into his chair. “So, I’m your boss,” he said.
“I-I mean, yeah?” Martin said with a small, nervous laugh.
“Which means I have the power to dismiss you if this dog situation ain’t resolved immediately, right?”
“I—yeah, y-yeah, probably…” Martin gave another nervous laugh, then realization dawned on his face. “Oh! O-oh, right, yeah, I’m going…now…!” He shut the door behind himself with a ‘sorry!’ on his lips, and Jon sighed heavily. He turned back to his desk see about making any headway on cleaning this up. Maybe then he’d have somewhere to actually work on these statements…
Tim opened up the door without even a knock, and Jon growled his frustrations, slamming down the papers in his hands. “Hey, sorry, bossman!”
“Tim.”
“Hey, so…” Tim switched his feet nervously. “So, uh, hypothetically, what would you say if there was…mmm…a dog…situation. In the archives?”
Jon took in a deep breath, desperate to keep his nerves from getting the better of him. “I would ask if it’s getting worse?”
Tim let out a breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Alright, cool, cool, so—”
“Tim.”
“Hypothetically—”
“Tim!”
“Yeah…there’s a dog situation in the archives…It’s…there’s a mess…” Tim nodded, refusing eye contact with Jon. “…of the doggy variety…”
“Right…” Jon said through gritted teeth.
“Sorry, dude…”
“It’s not your fault,” Jon said as he got up. He could blame Martin for this whole mess. “Once we get the damned mutt out of here, I’ve gotta go have a little chat with our dear, dear Union Jack.”
Jon’s old Jeep thumped and threw him around as he pulled into his driveway, and he groaned when he saw Tim’s truck. Of course those two came over.
He got out of the Jeep and grabbed his grocery bags, fully intending to ignore them entirely until they left.
“Heyyyy, there’s our favorite boss!” came Tim’s voice from the screen door.
“Why are you here?” Jon asked, shoving passed Tim into his house. He dropped his bags onto the counter as he noticed the boxes of pizza.
“We knew you’d be strung up like this, so we wanted to help,” Sasha said from her place at the dining table. “Free food, a Mountain Dew restock, and we already fed Critter.”
“Thanks…” Jon said. He sighed as he took to putting away his few groceries. “You two know you’d gotta do this, right?”
“Jon, we’re your friends,” Tim said. “We want to help you, believe it or not.”
Jon grumbled to himself and pulled out a Mountain Dew from the fridge. He cracked open the can and guzzled down half the pop. “I’m your boss, now, too,” he said.
“Hon, we’ve seen you drunk off your ass ranting about emulsifiers and dinosaurs far too many times to see you as our boss first,” Sasha said.
Critter hopped up on the counter and meowed for attention, so Jon resigned to petting his kitten instead of arguing.
“Besides,” Tim said. He opened up the pizza and grabbed a slice. “We also know you won’t take care of yourself for nothing if we don’t make you, so here we are!”
Jon scoffed. “You’re not my parents, y’know.”
“Somebody’s gotta be, though,” Sasha said. Jon shot her a look.
Before either of them could say anything else, though, they heard a noise outside. The three of them darted over to the window, shoving back the granny curtains.
“Oh, fuck off,” Jon groaned at the sight.
Across the street, of out a far too nice looking Honda Accord, stepped Martin Blackwood. Not only did Martin come out of that car, but so did the dog.
“Ha!” Tim tore himself away from the window, giggling into his hand. “Who would’ve thought you’d be neighbors with your new arch nemesis!”
“This isn’t funny, Tim!” Jon fussed.
“Oh, it’s very funny, Jonny-boy!”
“Guys…” Sasha sighed. “Come on, he’s not that bad, Jon. And Tim, don’t tease him.”
“We don’t need him in the archives, Sasha, he’s just gonna cause problems!” Jon whined.
“He deserves a fair chance,” Sasha fussed. “From all of us.”
“Maybe we should invite him over for pizza!” Tim said, darting for the door. Jon ran after him and snatched him up by the waist, carrying the cackling man back to the kitchen with a great effort.
Jon couldn’t believe his luck. Now, every day, he was gonna see Martin and that damned dog before he went to work and after he came home. He was never going to know peace again.
Tim slipped out the door before Jon could even realize it, and by the time Jon spotted him it was too late. He knocked on Martin’s door, and that was all it took for Jon to hit the floor to hide with Critter. He could hear Sasha’s disappointed sigh, but he didn’t really give a rat’s ass.