#misfiled

Martin sat, and he stared. There was a tape recorder in his hands, heavy and bulky and familiar while still being strange. Martin felt his face twist with a puzzled sort of frown, brows drawing down as the cogs and wheels in his head slowly started to turn.

He sat and he stared and he frowned, worrying at his lower lip as bits and pieces of the recent past filtered through what almost felt like a wall of fog in his mind. He was Martin, and he was worried.

He was Martin, and he was worried about Jonathan, Jon, the man with the slow, quiet smile and the quick recoil if you went to touch him.

He was Martin, the head archivist of The Magnus Institute, and he was worried about what lay ahead.

He hit play.

“Statement of Maria Mikhailova, regarding an encounter with the owner of Pinhole Books, recorded by archival assistant Sasha James,” he heard Sasha read out crisply. She did get on him about articulation sometimes, he thought distantly. “It was my anniversary recently, and I was out shopping for presents. Admittedly, half of them were for me. I have a rule, see, that if I'm going to be buying presents, at least one thing has to be for me, to keep it fun and interesting and all that nonsense I use to justify my spending habits.”

“Anyway, I was looking for antique-y type stuff, old chests and older knickknacks, but after a while I wasn't having much luck, and my eye landed towards local bookstores. It always seems to. It was towards the end of the day that I found Pinhole Books. It looked like just the sort of place I like, quiet and out of the way and organized more like an eccentric collector’s library than an actual store. It even smelled right, if you know what I mean. Old paper. It's just… it just means home to me, more than my parents’ place ever did when I was growing up.”

“I wandered about. Of course I did. Eventually, I found who I imagine was the owner, or so I thought at the time. She was older, with tightly pulled back greying hair, maybe it used to be red? I remember looking at those coppery strands tucked into that severe bun and wondering if she wouldn't be pretty if the look on her face didn't look like you'd just squatted and took a big, steaming shit right in the middle of the floor. She was polite enough otherwise-”

“She?” Interrupted a quiet voice from his side, and Martin jerked, nearly dropping the tape recorder in his surprise as his hands flew up.

“Ah! I- S-sorry,” that same person said as Martin clutched at his chest.

“Never you mind, Jonathan Sims,” Georgie sing-songed. “I was helping out a friend, that's all you need to know about it."

Jonathan leaned conspiratorially near Martin. “You see,” he said in a playful tone that Martin didn't remember hearing before, but between that and Jon’s closeness his blood was racing, “whenever she says ‘helping out a friend' that usually seems to indicate either sleepovers in creepy abandoned locations or-”

A pillow sailed over from the couch to smack the side of a smiling Jon’s head. “Never you mind!”

Martin’s brow furrowed and he opened his mouth to ask a question that was interrupted by a loud, long-suffering sigh from Georgie. “He's just teasing, Martin. Jon has never been the sort to mind who I spend time with, unless it's to fuss over me.”

Now that she had gotten a good look at him though, Georgie’s eyebrows shot up. She made a curious noise, and stepped closer. Martin noted that Jon didn't step back the way he ordinarily may have done. Georgie didn't touch him, though, just stood with her arms crossed. “You know I try not to ask questions about your personal life, Jon, but-”

“Is that a stuffed duckling?” Martin blurted out. He hadn't meant to interrupt the conversation, and had in fact wandered off to pretend to look around Georgie’s living room in his own attempt at affording privacy, but then he saw the duck. And the articles about corpses, and bottles neatly labeled as containing coffin nails. And the baby duck.

Georgie’s eyebrows went up when he spoke, but then she smiled. “Taxidermied, yes. Most of the things that stay in my house are dead.”

Martin absorbed this information for several long seconds. Then, as the thought percolated, he threw a look at Jon. “Jon, are you…?”

Misfiled, a Magnus Archives story by Slothabed/Antivancrafts on ao3

In September of 2016, a man named Jonathan Sims came to give a statement at the Magnus Institute. He sat across from Martin, staring him up and down with dark eyes behind darker glasses. Martin could only look back with a vague, uncertain smile at this unanticipated scrutiny. Jon was small and lean, with brown skin gone paler from the weak autumn sun. He had long, salt and pepper hair that he kept impatiently pushing out of his eyes as he frowned at Martin. Or more precisely, his nose. He wasn’t quite making eye contact, his gaze darting away as soon as Martin tried to meet it with his own. Martin wondered if it was a nervous habit, the way he himself picked at everything. Including these statements, he supposed.

Telling himself that there was no way forward but to start things himself, Martin cleared his throat. He politely ignored the way Jon twitched, almost like he’d been about to recoil before he stopped himself. “Statement of Jon-“

“Jonathan,” the man interrupted, pressing his lips into a thin line that put Martin in mind of a disapproving school teacher. He had to smother a laugh, guessing that Jonathan wouldn’t take that very well.

“Jonathan Sims,” Martin corrected with what he hoped came across as an apologetic smile, “regarding…”

“No one ever calls me Jon,” the man went on. Where some people would have said something about only their friends calling them by a nickname, he only fell quiet for a moment. “I prefer Jonathan. It feels more proper. ‘Jon’ is overly familiar. I do not want or need that.”

“Yes, well…” Martin gave an automatic smile that was more than a bit awkward, unsure of how to take the quiet, brittle pride in the tilt of the man’s chin. “About what this is regarding…”