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Jon feels the kite-string of sense slip through his skinless palm as Martin wraps gauze around his hand in the winding motion of a jack-in-the-box.
Idiot, Martin had whispered and Sorry, Jon had whispered back, then marvelled at how the words had managed to reshape themselves so drastically from I think I might love you on their journey from his stomach to his throat.
He peers at Martin through the paracetamol haze settled around his head, and takes in first the line between his eyebrows, and then the purse of his lips, and then the stoop of his shoulders. He begs the kite-string back, willing it to dye itself red in the weeping blood of the burn, so that he can weave crime-wall connections between these parts of Martin and finally, finally - something other than fear will make sense.
The winding ceases, Martin stills, and Jon flinches from the lurch of a clown that isn’t there.
***
“… so all that is to say, me and a few other members of staff think that Jon would really benefit from some extra support in school.”
His grandmother doesn’t laugh exactly. Laughs have turned up sides and a loud noise that Jon can’t ever get quite right. But it’s the closest thing that he has to describe what she does.
He doesn’t meet Miss Porter’s eye, can’t afford her even that when she’d spent half an hour coaxing him out of the stationery cupboard he’d crammed himself into, but he meets the empty space beside her head.
It is just in focus enough for him to see her wince, when his grandmother replies, “I don’t think that will be necessary, thank you.”
***
“Get up.”
Jon doesn’t.
“Get up.”
It is the first time Tim has touched him since Research, a friendly pat on the shoulder that neither knew would be the last. The fibres of his shirt brush the Cheshire cat smile wound on his neck as Tim hoists him to his feet and shoves him against the wall with a low growl.
“Do something.”
Jon Knows that Tim had carved a crude +sasha onto his brother’s grave that morning and knows (by olfactory means) that it had taken him four shots of Talisker to do so. He resists the urge to petulantly go limp under his grip, and instead stands on tiptoe to be nose-to-nose with Tim.
“Do you not think, Tim, that one ought to be permitted to choose the manner of their grief?” He manages to keep the shake out of his voice. Comforting, in its way, that if Tim decides to shift his grip a couple of inches upward, he will at least be killed by a hand with muscle-memory of kindness.
“No,” Tim snarls, the cold burn of frostbite on hot whiskey breath. “Grieve angrier.”
He’s right, whispers the pack of Rothmans in his desk drawer.
Let us into your lungs and stoke the fucking fire.
***
“Oh dear Archivist, you look ever so bored! Perhaps a little music! Oh Eustace! Come over here so I can wind you up!”
I’ve no time to plead and pine
I’ve no time to wheedle
Kiss me quick and then I’m gone
Pop! Goes the weasel!
Eustace’s head rolls to a stop against Jon’s bare toes.
He hadn’t flinched this time.
***
“I’ll shout when I’m back,” Georgie says softly around the door frame. Jon watches her worry the glittery ‘G’ charm on her housekeys between her forefinger and thumb. He wonders if she’s predicting that he’ll be the object of danger, or the agent.
He drops his gaze to his lap, and feels hers attempt to probe through the seaweed-tresses of his damp hair – clean for the first time in weeks.
“I’m okay with it now,” he says quietly. “Knocking.”
“look steph, he doesn’t like knocking and he doesn’t like not being able to see doors and he had a piss poor excuse for a childhood and he doesn’t want me to know more than that and i don’t want to think about it too hard so can you just move the sodding table and let me put the sign in the porch and – oh, hi jon, i thought you weren’t coming down til later –”
She flicks the keyring into her palm.
“I’ll shout.”
***
How many more times, Jon wonders, picking at a circular scar on his left forearm, will he need to get hurt before somebody loves him?
It is all he can hope for, after all.
Love through pity.
***
knock knock knock.
He fumbles and drops the remote he was pointing at the television, fingers seizing suddenly. His grandmother rolls her eyes, and sets her reading glasses on the table.
“For goodness sake Jon, it’s only Tabitha. Go and open it, you’ll see.”
He shakes his head, folding his arms and backing away.
His grandmother sighs heavily.
“I’m at my wits end, I really am.”
Jon strains his ear to listen to the doorstep greeting, then startles at his grandmother’s raised voice.
“Jon! Come and say thank you. Tabitha’s brought cake!”
are you sure you wouldn’t like to refer jonathan to any of our psychological services, mrs sims? because to be frank, i can’t see that a repeat performance of a fractured skull from slamming one’s own head into a wall would be much fun for anyone involved.
***
Sometimes, he and Daisy lower themselves into the swirling fog at their ankles and squeeze each other’s hands as hard as they can. It’s a pitiful display, really, one with muscle atrophy and another that never had any to begin with.
It is the only time that Jon feels as though he can breathe properly, being gently crushed by a murderer with impossibly soft hands.
***
i… i should…
a bone-rattling shiver surges through his body, temple to toes. his teeth slam together.
what love? what do you need?
martin looks so worried. there is a cloth in his left hand. the world around him is a crude and unfinished watercolour. salesa is here somewhere, bleeding into the washed-out sky or maybe the grass.
i should start… sh-ah… should start eating rotting stuff… f-fruit matter and… and…
martin is beginning to fade too, as he and the pain begin to homogenise, the radiation glow of it warping and fusing and pulsating in his cells.
why’s that love?
b-because that’s what flies eat. and spiders eat flies. and maybe if that f-fucking spider would come back…
the shape that was martin before the fever melted him away touches its forehead to jon’s.
no, jon.
maybe this could be ov-
no.
***
“Have you ever been tested?” Sasha asks, as he sheepishly returns her spare ear defenders. If anyone were to ask, no, she has never found her boss curled up in a ball under the break-room table during a test of the fire alarm. Her concern for her job security ensures this.
“Tested for what?”
Her face does something he has seen a million times.
“Oh, Jon.”
***
“That’s the spirit, Jon!” Melanie says with a biting false joviality that could wilt flowers. “You just keep persevering with those apologies. One through fifty-eight didn’t cut it but maybe fifty-nine will hit the spot. Go on, try it. Don’t be shy.”
He takes the bait, even though there’s already a fishhook through his lip.
“I’m s-“
Her laugh has so many teeth.
***
America is big. America is loud. Everything is scary, all of the time.
Martin is calling him.
Everything is scary, but this is a different kind of scary.
This scary feels…
oh, shi-
***
I see you Jon.
Is… is that good?
A soft chuckle, Somewhere Else.
Yes love. It’s good.