Chapter Text
Click.
“Is it running?” Scuffling, the sound of something being knocked over. “Shit. All right, all right, it’s running.” A throat clears. “Recording, uh, number one, of Timothy Stoker’s investigation into Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. The date is—hold on, let me just—“ A pause; more scuffling. “The date is March 9, 2018. Fuck, it’s cold in here.”
A small snort. “I did say to bring a jacket, Timothy. You sound so serious—are you sure you’re not the Head Archivist?”
Tim glares at where he thinks the voice came from. It’s pitch black in the tunnels, and his torch had died immediately when he’d descended the stone stairs, so he’d had to settle for fumbling his way forward, one hand on the cool stone next to him. “Ha ha. You’re the comedian of the year.” But after a moment, the glare softens into a smile, and he continues to press forward, despite the cold settling in his bones. “Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted, I was about to lay some groundwork for my investigation.” Another snort, which he steadfastly ignores. “I’m in the tunnels under the Magnus Institute. Do not ask me how I found them—if I told you, I’d have to kill you.” He chuckles to himself. “I spent a lot of time wandering around down here before I figured out how to get to the Archives—those are in the basement of the Institute, and they’re quite dusty. Thank god nobody was there when I popped in the first time.”
“Yeah, not one for planning, are you?”
“I plan, thank you very much. I have a plan right now.” He holds the tape recorder a bit closer to his mouth. He’d wanted to take his phone—would have been much easier and probably would have solved the torch issue—but he’d done a test recording on it, just to make sure it worked, and the audio had been all distorted, like he’d fried the circuits or something. He’d been relieved to find that it still worked, after all that, and even more relieved to find an old tape recorder tucked into a box in his closet.
“So again—my investigation into one Jonathan Sims. I’m sure you’re probably wondering why I’m wasting my time on some stuffy librarian when there’s a literal labyrinth down here.”
“I’m certainly wondering.”
Tim ignores them. “Well, it’s a funny story. Or- or maybe not funny, I suppose, but you know. Funny like peculiar.” There’s a churning in his stomach, but he pushes it aside. “I, uh. I have these dreams? Every night, almost, since- well, for a while. I don’t know where the hell I am in them—some sort of theater, maybe? But it’s underground, and everything’s stone. And- and my brother’s there, and he—“
“Hey,” Sasha says, softly, placing a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “It’s okay. They’re just dreams. You saw Danny a few days ago.”
Tim forces himself to nod. They’ve stopped, at some point, and he’s leaning against the wall of the tunnel, which is now made of coarse brick. His heart is thrumming in his chest, and he forces his breathing to settle. “Yeah. Yeah, sorry.” He gives a smile in what he thinks is Sasha’s direction—it’s so dark, and his eyes have only adjusted enough to make out the faint outline of the walls. He starts walking again; they’re almost there. “It’s a right horrible nightmare, I guess is the point. And after- up on the stage, next to Danny, is Jonathan Sims. It took me forever to figure out who he was, once I’d had the same dream enough times to start to wonder where I’d seen this face before. Because dreams- your brain just takes faces you’ve seen before, even if only briefly, it can’t actually create new faces. And this must have been a damn memorable one, because I see it every single night, and unlike everything else in the dream, which is always the same, he’s- he’s different, lately. I mean, it’s a little hard to tell, what with the—“ He shudders, the image flashing through his mind unwanted. “The eyes, and stuff. But recently, he’s started to look more- more, I don’t know, sentient? Then one night a couple of weeks ago, he looked at me. The way he looked at me, the- the pain in his eyes—I couldn’t take it anymore. So I did some research.” He takes a breath, steadying himself. “And I found him.”
They’ve reached the trap door; there’s a thin ring of light leaking around it, which is the only way Tim can tell it’s there. Which also means there’s someone in the Archives. That’s fine, right? He’d planned for this. “He works in the Archives at the Magnus Institute—Head Archivist, actually, whatever that means. And we’re underneath them.”
“So dramatic,” Sasha says lightly. “Can we go now? I’m dying to see this place. What does the workplace of a man who spies on people in their dreams look like?”
Tim grins and shakes a finger at her. “Uh-uh, that’s speculation. This is a serious investigation—we need facts, hard proof. My brain might just be fixated on his face. His objectively horrifying face. I wonder if he has that many eyes in real life? Probably not, right?”
Sasha shrugs. “Only one way to find out.”
She pushes open the trap door.
Click.
“—was a close one, Jesus Christ.” Heavy breathing echoes loudly in the cramped closet Tim’s hidden in; he narrowly avoids knocking a file off a shelf with an errant elbow. “Sasha, are you good?”
“Never been better.” Her voice is even and unlabored; she even sounds a bit amused. “Remind me why we hid in here, again?”
“We can’t let him see us, remember?” Tim hisses, lowering his voice as he hears footsteps pass by the closet. His heart hammers in his chest. “That would defeat the entire purpose of an investigation.”
“Oh?” Sasha’s eyes sparkle with humor. “You’re telling me we can’t just ask a man why he’s in your dreams all the time? I suppose that could be taken rather the wrong way.”
“You’re a menace.” Tim leans his head back against the wall, his heartbeat slowing gradually. There’s a moment of silence, filled only by the sound of breathing and—
“Huh.” Tim holds up the tape recorder in his hand; it whirs gently, the wheels of the tape within spinning rhythmically. “Don’t remember turning that back on.” After a moment, he shrugs and says, “Might as well give an update, I suppose. I guess this is recording number two, now, of my investigation into Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Same date as before. Not much new information, other than that he’s a workaholic, apparently, since it’s midnight on a Friday and he’s still here. Almost gave me a goddamn heart attack when I saw him hunched over his desk—honestly, did not look like a comfortable sleeping position.”
“Mm, and then you had to knock over that stack of papers on his desk.”
“Hey, that was an accident!” Tim protests. “I just wanted to take a look. To make sure it was really him, you know. It’s not my fault his desk is like a war zone of mugs and manila folders.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Do… do you think he saw us?”
Sasha shrugs. “We got out of there pretty fast. But he had this… glassy look in his eyes? Like he was still somewhere else when we woke him up.”
Tim nods, relieved. Then, with a small grin, he says into the recorder, “Fact #1 indicating that Jonathan Sims is spying on me in my dreams: he had a glassy look in his eyes. As described by one Sasha James.”
“Hey, I thought this was a ‘serious investigation.’” Sasha makes quotes with her fingers. “I’m just stating the facts.”
Tim shoots her a glare without any bite, then glances at the door. It’s been quiet for a few minutes. “Do… do you think he’s gone?”
Sasha follows Tim’s gaze. “Maybe.” She reaches for the door, but Tim’s quick to stop her.
“Oh no, not again. Last time you opened a door without checking, we ended up in an office with someone in it. I’m doing the opening this time.”
Sasha holds her hands up, stepping back. “Not my fault, but whatever you say.”
Tim slides over to the door and puts his ear to the wood. He doesn’t hear anything, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no one out there. Slowly, slowly, he opens the door a crack.
Nothing. Emboldened, he sticks his head out fully, scanning the hallway. It’s completely empty; the light coming from the office they’d ended up in after coming out of the tunnels is off, and the only thing illuminating the hallway is a string of emergency lights studded along the corridor. He pushes the door open fully. “There’s no one here,” he says, voice low. “Come on—his office is empty.”
“Tim—“ Sasha groans, but Tim’s already hurrying down the hall, ducking his head quickly in through the door to make sure the office is, in fact, empty, before stepping fully in. Once Sasha is inside, he shuts the door firmly and flicks on the small lamp sitting on the desk in lieu of the brighter overhead light.
“The office has been infiltrated,” he says dramatically into the tape recorder, and he hears Sasha stifle a laugh. “Phase two of the operation commences.”
“Phase two?” Laughter bleeds into Sasha’s voice.
Tim pulls open a few drawers on the desk with a flourish. “Rifling through his things, of course.”
“And what are we hoping to find, exactly?”
Tim settles himself into the large chair that is, somewhat unsettlingly, still warm, and kicks his feet up onto the desk, nearly knocking the lamp off in the process. “Not sure yet. I try not to come up with a theory before collecting evidence. Scientific method and all that.” He begins thumbing through the nearest drawer, his bottom lip pinched between his teeth in concentration. It’s mundane—pencils and paper, mostly. The next drawer is less so.
“Hey, Sash, what do you think this is?” He holds up the clear jar, filled with a dark dust.
Sasha, who’s been flipping through some of the files on the shelves, raises an eyebrow at him. “Uh, that’s super creepy. Are those ashes?”
Tim turns the jar, trying to get a better look. “Not sure. Why would someone have ashes in a jar in their work desk?”
Sasha’s eyes grow wide. “Ew, you don’t think…”
Tim drops the jar like it’s burned him; it rolls to the edge of the desk, barely avoiding dropping to the floor. “Okay, I’m sufficiently creeped out.”
Sasha eyes the jar with distaste. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re like… his mother’s, or something? That’s a normal thing, right?”
Tim shudders. “Absolutely not. This is definitely something a weird, eye-dream-monster would have though.” Into the recorder, he dictates, “Fact #2: Jonathan Sims keeps human remains in his desk. Not directly indicative of an ability to invade one’s dreams, but you never know.”
Sasha flips through another file. “Tim, these are weird. These are some proper horror stories. I’m pretty sure this one’s about someone who got skinned by a doll.” She shudders, sliding the file back onto the shelf quickly.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Tim says casually, though the word skinned rings in his head like a gong. “Everybody knows that the Magnus Institute is a joke. I bet whoever gave that statement was high off their arse.”
“Hm,” Sasha says. She doesn’t seem convinced; her eyes keep skittering over to the shelf of files, like she can’t look away. “Well, your story would sound pretty suspicious too. Haunted by a dream man with too many eyes?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tim throws a file at her; it barely makes it halfway there. “Keep looking.”
They search for the better part of an hour, but other than more creepy statements and a slew of tape recorders, there’s nothing to find. Finally, Tim leans back in the chair, which is much less comfortable than it had been at the beginning, and throws his hands up in defeat. “That’s it—I quit! You were right, Sasha—there’s nothing here that’s useful.”
“Of course I’m right,” Sasha jokes, but he can see the softness in her eyes—the silent apology. “But, there has to be a reason, right? Even if we can’t find it here.”
Tim shivers, rubbing his hands together unconsciously. “Maybe. Or maybe I just saw him on the street once and my brain immediately decided to never let me forget.” He pauses, considering. “I mean, he is kinda hot, don’t you think?”
“Timothy Stoker!” A pen flies across the room and smacks him in the chest. Her words are accompanied by a puff of condensation.
“Alas, I am a simple man with simple desires. Also, I have eyes.”
“And according to you, he has hundreds of them.”
Tim feels the cold curl in his chest. “Yeah, I suppose but…” He trails off with a shiver. “Why is it so cold? Do they turn off the heat at night or something?”
Then, Tim hears them; footsteps, just outside the closed office door. He starts to swear, cuts himself off at the last moment, and scrambles off the chair. “Sasha!” he hisses, pointing at the trapdoor. She’s already halfway there, her eyes wide.
“Hurry, Tim,” she whispers, halfway through the opening. Tim reaches out, reaches for her hand.
The office door opens.
Quicker than he thought possible, Tim kicks the trapdoor shut, hiding Sasha underneath, and spins around as nonchalantly as he can. “Oh, hey!” he says, flashing a smile that’s more confident than he feels. “I was just—“
The shatter of ceramic hitting stone cuts through his half-baked excuse. The man standing in the doorway is staring at him with impossibly wide eyes, the mug that had been gripped in his hand lying in pieces on the ground, next to several tapes. In the dim light of the lamp, Tim sees his face drain of color, the pale white starkly contrasted against the burgundy curls that frame his face. Then, in a small, shaky voice, the man says, “Tim?”, and Tim’s smile slips from his face.
“Uh.” How eloquent, Stoker. “Do- do I know you? I mean I don’t come down here much,” he quickly adds, trying to come up with a cover story on the spot. “I- I work upstairs? In the uh- library?” God, he hopes this place has a library.
“You…” The man is still staring at him, horrified, like he’s seen a ghost. “You’re not…?” Then, horrified disbelief morphs into equal parts terror and disgust. “Stay- stay back!” He fumbles around on the shelf next to him, his hand eventually closing on a stapler that he holds in front of him like a talisman. “Stay back, or I’ll- just don’t come any closer!”
Tim holds up his hands, taking a small step backward; his foot creaks against the wood of the trapdoor. “Okay! Okay.” He glances down, almost instinctively; when he looks back up, the man is staring at Tim’s feet, and he sees a new, more powerful flash of terror pass over the man’s face.
“Don’t even think about- about trying to—“ The man sucks in a deep, rattling breath, like he’s trying not to cry. “I’m not letting you just- just walk around, wearing his- even though they said he- oh, god.” A tear slips down the man’s cheek, and it looks like thousands more wait just behind the dam. He scrubs it away with the back of his hand, angrily. “No, no- I’ve already- I’ve already cried for him. You, whatever you are, don’t get to- to just pretend you’re him.”
“Uh.” Tim doesn’t know what to say to that. God, maybe this place is full of lunatics. Lunatics armed with staplers. Not the most threatening thing, is it? “Listen, mate, not to be disrespectful, but I truly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie!” The man takes a step closer, and Tim flinches back into the wall that’s now at his back. Great. Nowhere to run. “You’re not Tim. Tim is- he’s—“ The man struggles with the words, like they’re stuck in his throat. The stapler shakes, and Tim’s honestly surprised he hasn’t dropped it yet. “He’s dead.”
Tim can’t help it; he laughs. It’s just so absurd. He’s always been a nervous laugher, which is quite an unfortunate quality to have at the best of times, but now, it’s like the sound activates something within the man standing in front of him. His eyes harden, and before Tim can jerk away, the stapler hits him square in the forehead.
“Ow!” Tim tries to stumble back, but only hits more hard stone. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The man stares at Tim, clutching his forehead, and then at the stapler, which now lies at Tim’s feet. He looks like he’s going to lunge for it; Tim quickly places a foot on the stapler and slides it away into the shadows. He’s not too keen on the idea of getting smacked again. Tim drops his hand, now stained with red, pain making way for hot anger. “God, you’re all freaks here, aren’t you? I don’t know what the hell all of those drugged-up people who stumble in here to give some half-assed scary story have been telling you, but clearly you’re all just as insane as them!” He waves his hands around, wiggling his fingers. “’Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding sinister happenings’—bullshit. I’m not dead, you fucking wanker, and I’m certainly not pretending to be myself, whatever the hell that means.”
“Martin?”
They both whip their heads around to stare at the still-open office door.
“Martin, what—?” A figure steps into view of the office, scrubbing sleep from their eyes, but their hand stills when they catch sight of Tim. “What.” Their voice is harder, and Tim’s anger fades to a dull roar as he recognizes them.
He might as well stop pretending that he’s here for any other reason than to spy on Jonathan Sims, then, since apparently neither of them are going to believe anything he has to say. “Awesome, just the person I wanted to see. Didn’t want to get hit with a stapler for nothing.”
“Jon!” The man—Martin, Tim surmises—flicks his eyes from Tim to Jon, then back to Tim again, like he’s afraid that if he takes his eyes off him for too long, Tim will lunge at him. “Can- can you—?”
Jonathan Sims steps fully into the office, and Tim’s heart drops a few beats as he realizes that his eyes are glazed over with a silver-green something, and Tim swears he can see a version of himself reflected in them. Instinctively, he shrinks back against the wall. This Jonathan is nothing like the one in his dreams. The sadness, the pain, the longing—it’s all gone, replaced with something cold and hard. “Why are you here?” Jonathan—Jon—asks, and the question vibrates down to Tim’s very soul, pulling at him until words spill over his tongue, unbidden and velvety.
“I saw you in my dreams. I have a recurring dream of my brother—“ Tim pulls back against the words, not wanting to say it, not wanting to think it, and they choke him, forcing him to continue. “—my brother being skinned, and you’re always there, with too many eyes, watching him. And that was horrifying enough, but then you started looking at me instead, like it was my pain you were drinking in instead of his, and I just had to know if you were real. You felt so real.”
Jon pulls back slightly, surprise coloring his face, and Tim feels the grip on his throat lessen; he draws in a ragged breath, feeling tears collect behind his eyelids. He shouldn’t have come here. Sasha was right; he would have been better not knowing.
“I—“ Jon sounds unsure, and his eyes flick to Martin. “He’s not lying.”
Martin’s still glaring at Tim. “They could have his memories. That’s- that’s what happens, right? When they steal someone’s—?” Martin gags around the words, like he can’t force himself to finish.
Another strangled laugh forces its way past Tim’s lips. “Why would I be lying? Do you think I’m that fucked up, to lie about seeing Danny die every night? God, I know it’s not real. I know it’s not, that Danny’s still alive, but it just feels so—“
“What do you mean, Danny’s still alive?” Jon’s eyes are boring into his, and an overpowering sensation of being absolutely, terrifyingly known washes over him like an icy wave.
The words are pulled from him like teeth. “I mean that he’s still alive! God, what else do you want from me? Please, just let me go—I won’t bother you again, I swear, I just wanted to know why it all feels so wrong, somehow!”
He stops short, like he’s hit a verbal wall. Wait, what? When had that happened? But now that the words are out of his mouth, he realizes that they’re true; the feeling of wrongness settles over his shoulders like a heavy winter coat. Maybe it had always been there, and he’d just never noticed it.
Fingers ghost against his forehead, and he flinches away instinctively. Jon pulls his hand back, an apologetic look flitting across his face. “Sorry.” Then, turning slightly: “Martin, look at his forehead.”
Tim can’t help the hand that flies to his face; it comes away red, but there’s no sting of touching an open wound, no dull ache of a newly formed bruise. It makes his mind go a little fuzzy.
“Tim.”
Tim looks up, and Jon’s staring at him again, and he tries not to meet Jon’s eyes but he can’t help it, like a moth drawn to a flame. “Just one more question.”
Tim wants to say no. He wants to run away and never come back, but it’s like he’s pinned there, under the weight of those eyes, and he can’t move.
“What happened to you?”
And Tim can’t help but tell him everything.
They’re sitting on some crappy couch in a room that Martin called ‘Document Storage’ but that looks more like a makeshift hostel. Or, rather, Tim is sitting on a crappy couch: everybody else is clustered around him, leaning against walls or sitting on equally as crappy cots. Martin is further back than the others, practically bleeding into the shadows; he looks uncomfortable, like he’s not used to the concept of other people, but every time Tim think’s he’s about to actually disappear into the fold of the dark, Martin glances at him and seems to solidify, somehow. It always gets a little bit warmer, then.
Tim hopes Sasha is safe. He wishes she were here, with every fiber of his being, but he knows he made the right decision shutting the door behind her. He gets the very distinct feeling that he’s stumbled into something far greater than himself—and far, far more dangerous than he could have ever expected—and if she’s not here, if they don’t know about her, then she’s safe. Maybe… maybe she’s getting help.
Does… does Tim need help?
After Tim had finished spilling his whole life story—waking up in the hospital with the past few years of his life just erased, trying and failing to piece everything back together, the dreams—he’d felt so hollow, like releasing the words into the space between them had somehow taken parts of him with them. And then he’d been pulled into a tentative hug, and he’d found himself surprised—and then surprised at being surprised—to hear Jon’s voice in his ear, stammering apologies, insisting that he’d just had to make sure, that he was sorry for leaving Tim behind, that they’d met things that could pretend to be other people before. That he’d never gotten the chance to make things better between them, and that it had eaten at him ever since the—
Tim’s stomach twists, and he sinks further back into the couch. Right. Since the explosion that had apparently killed him.
“So are we going to talk about why there’s a dead man sitting on our couch?”
The speaker, a woman wearing pajamas and a navy blue hijab, leans forward on the cot she’s sitting on, staring pointedly at Jon. “Because while we’ve established that he’s not actually just a taxidermied version of Tim, I don’t think we ever actually answered the more important question of how someone who died is here, alive.”
“His brother is alive too, apparently,” Jon says quietly.
“What?” Another woman sits up from where she’d been lying on a sleeping bag on the floor; her bright purple hair is matted on the side of her head, where she’d clearly been sleeping on it when they’d been awoken quite rudely by Jon barging into the room with Tim in tow. Briefly, Tim wonders why on Earth anyone would want to sleep where they work. Then, he discards the thought for the million other questions swirling around in his brain. “I’m sorry,” the woman continues, “his brother? Like, the certified dead, ‘killed-by-the-circus-from-hell’ brother?”
Tim winces, and Jon seems to notice, because he shoots the woman a firm glare, which she returns tenfold. “Look, I don’t have all the answers yet—“
“Oh?” the purple-haired woman interrupts. “You can Know exactly how many square feet are in London and what I ate for breakfast, but you can’t Know something that’s actually useful?”
The way she says the word know, like it has a weight to it—Tim’s certain that it’s connected to how Jon can appear in his dreams. He’s given up on his ‘randomly-selected-brain-face’ theory; clearly, whatever’s going on here, it’s not nearly so accidental.
Jon pinches his nose and closes his eyes. “Believe me, I am much more frustrated by that than you are. But I can’t control what I Know, and Tim can’t give us any more information than he already has.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” Tim grumbles, and all eyes in the room instantly land on him. He feels pinned, and something within him instinctively pushes back. “Look, I don’t know what’s happening here. I don’t know you people, even though you seem to think that I should. But…” He pauses, uncertain, the but churning his stomach into ribbons. The wrongness he hadn’t known he’d had creeps back over him, twisting into his skin until he itches all over. “But I guess I haven’t felt right since I- since the accident. I… I don’t think I noticed until now, but now I can’t forget it. And as much as I’d like to just go home and forget any of this ever happened…”
He takes a deep breath. “I don’t think finding the tunnels was an accident. And I don’t trust you, and I certainly don’t trust this place, but I trust myself. And I think a part of me wanted me here.”
There’s a pause, where the shadows seem to grow a bit heavier. Tim thinks he sees some of them stretch, moving in a way that’s almost human, and his heart rate quickens.
“Great,” the woman with the hijab says, leaning back. “Now that we’ve got all of that settled, we can decide what we’re going to do next.”
“Next?” Jon echoes.
“Yeah, next. A plan. Things are kind of going to hell around here, and now Tim’s back? That’s quite a coincidence.”
“Hey, whatever messed-up shit is happening around here is not my fault,” Tim interjects, holding his hands up in a gesture of innocence.
“No, no of course not,” Jon says quickly, and god, Tim wishes he would stop looking at him like that—like he’s going to fade into the shadows and die all over again. “I- I think for now, let’s just do what we would do if this were any other situation.” Jon drums quick fingers against his thigh; Tim notices, for the first time, that they’re mottled with thick burn scars. “Research. Of course, we have the distinct advantage of the statement giver being here, so we can do direct follow-up, but there’s only so much we can do since Tim doesn’t remember the- the, uh, incident.” He clears his throat, like he’s uncomfortable thinking about it, and then continues. “First order of business then.” He looks at Tim. “We should talk to Danny.”
Something in Tim bristles, protective. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Jon blinks, clearly startled. “What? Why?”
“Why? Because you’re all convinced that we should both be dead!” Tim stands suddenly, and Jon flinches. “Danny has been helping me, ever since I woke up. He helped me find a new job, since no one could figure out where I worked before the accident. When I told him about the nightmares—“ Tim shoots Jon a pointed look, and Jon turns away, his face flushing unhappily. “—he moved in with me for months, because I would call him every morning to make sure he hadn’t been skinned. I never told him about you, Jon. I didn’t tell him I was coming here. He doesn’t know about any of this, and I don’t want him to. Because—“
Tim feels the words catch in his throat, like the dialectical opposite to being compelled to reveal his secrets. It feels almost as terrible. Softer, he says, “Because if you’re right, and he died just like me and then came back, then that means that my dreams are real. And I can’t think of anything more horrible than that.”
Silence falls over the room, and it’s almost a comfort. Then, in a small voice, Jon says, “Okay.”
Relief washes over him. “Okay.” His shoulders relax, the tension bleeding out of them, but he doesn’t sit back down. “I’m going to leave now.”
“Wait!” It’s Martin, emerging from the shadows, and everybody jolts, like they’d forgotten he was there. “You’ll- you’ll come back, right?” He’s easily the tallest one there, though just a hair taller than Tim, but right now he looks so small, shrinking into himself slightly.
“Yeah.” Tim surprises himself when he means it. “I- I promise. Not for a few days, I think. I- I need time to process this. But I will.”
The cold recedes a bit, and Martin nods. Then, before Tim can react, he’s wrapped in another, icy-cold hug, and he instinctively stiffens, then immediately feels bad and tries to force himself to soften. “I missed you,” Martin says, his voice slightly muffled as his face presses into Tim’s shoulder. “I- I know you don’t remember me, and that’s okay, but I remember you. I remember you, and- and I missed you so much, Tim.”
Tim doesn’t know why his arms reach around Martin, to fist gently in his jumper, but he leaves them there and just breathes.