[Another RP post! This one's got some Jon goin' on 🩷 semi angstful but also happysweet possibilities so I'd say it's bittersweet! Anyone is welcome to write Jon here! Also, multiple people can respond to my prompts]
Michael was doing that regrettable thing he did where he used his doors to invade the lives of those he'd once known in some capacity, or had interacted with and for whatever reason thought about oftenly.
Jon Sims and Michael Shelley had not been friends. They had not known one another, outside of a grisly statement about betrayal and becoming and Sannikov Land, and all the things the Distortion had gotten up to in its pre-Helen days.
But they'd spoken, once or twice, in that little time frame. Even if Jon had not thought fondly of it, the Distortion had once occupied a portion of his life, and maybe that'd been a befouled portion, but it was still something, and, these days, half-untwisted as he was, Michael couldn't help but grasp at the crumbs of that something and sniffle over them.
He'd taken care to only enter once he was pretty sure Jon was elsewhere, seating himself on the very edge of the man's desk, unwilling to take up more space than he'd allow himself. His fingers, not quite overlong, not quite regular sized, these days, in between, traced the edges of pages he shouldn't have grabbed, had no right to, but did, looking over one of Sims's statements.
These were wretched things, collections of suffering, but they were Jon's, and Jon teetered in that gray area Michael had where he did not know him but wished to, wished for some semblance of a regular dynamic, some sort of friendship. The archival staff had a kinship going on, had casual talks, enjoyed one another's company, in ways Michael remembered having with his own coworkers that had become lost to him now.
He'd give anything to have it back. To be unwounded Michael, curious and naive. He still was, in little ways, today, but things had become so different, so wrong, so complicated.
He wondered how many times a person could change before it was considered a death, a rotting of the selves that came before, even if the carcass was slowly weaving itself back together crudely, making an effort to be someone again now that it was allowed. Trying to start its heart back up, get it beating again to the same rhythm it once had.
Maybe Jon knew what it was like to become, to be something complicated and lose himself to it so much that, when he looked in the mirror and saw the scars and the differences everywhere, he felt a pit in his throat that mirrored Shelley's.
Or maybe he didn't. Maybe Jon would catch him and be revolted that the Spiral dared to sit so casually in his office, touching his things.
Maybe Jon wouldn't even recognize Michael. He'd been quite twisty last Jon had seen him, and, though there were little tells still here and there, Michael looked more Michaelly than spirally as of present, even if they were still halves of one another.
But Jon Saw. Like Gertrude could See, before she'd passed. Like Gerry Saw. So maybe his glamour would be spied right through soon enough.
Jon wouldn't have to worry. Michael would be leaving soon. He'd just like a minute to be in Jon's space first, though, to pretend at some normalcy, to pretend he was wanted and had a friend, even if Jon probably hardly knew he existed. Even if Jon had never met Michael beneath the twisting distortions.
Shelley only wanted to stare at his own misshapen shadow on Jonathan Sims's wall and picture it as someone else's, make friends with it. He'd try not to ask anything of the man himself.