#martin blackwod | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

late-to-the-magnus-archives · 8 months

Text

Two Eyes - a Magnus Archives fic

“Can I have a cigarette?”

No. No, this… couldn’t happen.

One moment of fear gripped me, memories of stories, and of the thing I’d seen in the Unknowing, shucking people out of their skin like corn. But I wasn’t the same; the world wasn’t the same. Even if this was happening, I was not some weak human anymore.

Part of the Magnus Monsterverse.

AO3

--------

Martin and I spent the rest of the day celebrating my new job and pretending we didn’t feel like there was a threat to the whole world possibly looming over our heads.

Was something going on? Absolutely. Did we have further means to figure it out right now? We did not! Did we need stress relief? Yes.

And… well. We hadn’t really gotten the chance to be… goofy together. Silly.

Dating.

Flirting. (As absolutely poor as mine was, he received it with grace.)

Eating each other’s ice cream, and… all those things.

Here we were, giggling over dropped whipped cream on a cafe table, leaning in, and being ridiculous.

I only saw him. I only wanted to see him.

He took my hand and brought it to his lips, smiling at me over my knuckles. “I’m dating a hot librarian, did you know?”

“Not a librarian,” I said. “Only a temporary worker. Shelver.”

“Bringing down hot librarian money ,” he said.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Right. Flush.”

“Absolutely rich,” he murmured, absolutely not meaning money, looking at me through his lashes.

Oh, Martin…

I’m sure, statistically, I must have been happier in my life, but at that moment, I could not think of one such time.

“I have to admit it,” I murmured, my head on his shoulder. “Quiet London is nice.”

“Right?” said Martin, his head resting on mine. We sat on a bench in a park called Hadrian’s Folly. (Not the Roman general, but an architect born eight hundred years later, who’d tried to turn this park into a palace and discovered it to be all but swamp, sinking his creation. You could still tour the upper rooms.) “Honestly, it… it’s nice. When I need to be alone, I can be. Truly. Or at least, according to my five senses.”

I knew what he meant. It was quiet, but oh… I still knew. Knew every mind that passed, knew the fleeting hearts that beat with such concerns all around, knew the weight upon them to be silent and show nothing and stay calm.

I did not yet know why they felt those things. Which was curious. I’d have to push to learn more, and I didn’t want to do that. I exhaled. “I just wish we had more time like this.”

“Maybe we will. We don’t actually know what’s happening. What the danger is. If there is any.”

“I think the Gerrys are right,” I murmured. “And I think that… possibly not-evil Jonah was genuinely trying to warn me of something.”

“So let’s go eat Leitner and cut it off at the pass,” Martin said, mostly joking. He threaded his fingers between mine.

“Ha,” I said. “If he’s cagey enough to make Jonah Magnus nervous, he’s probably even worse than a pair of haunted eyeballs.”

Martin laughed and began naming other potentially haunted body parts.

We grew quite ribald, and had anyone come near, I suspect we would have embarrassed them.

But no one did. In Quiet London terms, we were loud, but we were also left alone.

That night, tucked into his too-small bed, we slept. Or really, Martin slept, and I lay awake, trying to ignore the next logical step staring me in the face.

I wanted to learn more without losing myself. I knew I hadn’t exhausted my fellow Eye-based resources yet. Not at all. However, I didn’t want to see him.

I didn’t want to! But there weren’t a lot of us Eye-type folk here, curiously enough. I wasn’t sure why that was, and the Eye wasn’t telling me (tonight’s topic was the history of Nesalogus netscheri , the world’s rarest breed of rabbit). I’d exhausted the Gerrys; I already knew that even if I visited the other two, they would basically say, We already talked about this? And then maybe go make out with Michael, or whatever.

But Jonah was new, I told myself. He wouldn’t know anything, I told myself. It would be a waste of time, I told myself.

The Eye wanted me to talk to him.

The Eye still wanted us to… get along.

I fidgeted. Rolled over. Flopped over Martin, spooning him from behind like some weird ocular backpack.

“You good?” he murmured.

“No,” I moaned. “It wants me to talk to Jonah.”

“You’re probably going to have to, anyway,” he said.

“He’s not asleep.” I knew . “He’s waiting for me.”

“What… now?” Martin half sat up and checked his phone. “Jon, it’s two in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” I said pitiably.

He rolled over.

This bed really was too small for us. Even on our sides, we were face to face, or pressed up close; and neither of us wanted anything else. (Which amazed me, because shouldn’t he want space from me?) “Do you need to go, Jon?” he whispered.

“It’s not exactly visiting hours.”

“Sasha doesn’t sleep. She’ll let you in.”

“You’re awfully calm about this,” I said.

“I’ve been over there this late.”

He said it so casually, so… so throwaway. But I knew, suddenly, why. Panic attacks; feeling the world go vague; terror that he’d just… lose himself, and wander Quiet London in a state of emptiness, or an empty city, or maybe that he’d make it empty, and wouldn’t even know, and—

“Martin,” I breathed. “How… how long have you been here?”

His eyes tightened. “A while.”

“How long has all this been going on?”

“A while.”

“Martin…”

He touched my cheek. “You don’t know how long I waited. How long I had to wait. I gave up, Jon.”

Here we were, lovers, together in a way we’d wanted to be in the non-apocalyptic world, and never had the chance… and I hadn’t known this about him. “I’m so selfish,” I whispered. “I should have asked.”

“If I’d wanted to talk about it, I would have,” said Martin. “If you need to go see her tonight, go on. You’ll be fine.”

“Hunters?” I suggested.

“They’re rare,” he said. “And you’ll be careful.”

“And we’re currently suspecting Leitner and have probably got on somebody’s radar,” I said.

He kissed my forehead. “And you can stop them. Which nobody else is able to do.”

He really had changed.

I mean. I knew that. Of course he had. So had I. But he… he was so much quieter. Solemn. The nervous fidgeting was just… gone; his caution, too, seemed to be largely lost, in odd ways.

His focus on me was so very steady. Like I was the only light he could see. And I was missing something else. Something…

Forgive him , the Eye encouraged, but I had nothing to forgive. Martin had never wronged me. “You’re really encouraging me to go out in the middle of the night and see the younger version of a man I hated so much I ate .”

“Admit it,” he said. “You’ve done far weirder.”

I laughed. “I get it now. You’ve become the mad old wise man who lives in a cave.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “With a baking show. Also a blazing social life.”

“Blazing, you say.” Did I really have to leave?

“Absolutely hedonistic,” he said with a small smile, and kissed me.

We were busy for a little while. I no longer felt nearly as anxious, and that truly helped.

He exhaled slowly, forehead against mine. “I choose to believe you’re going to be fine. That you can handle whatever comes at you. That we will be fine.”

This sounded like a mantra. “I can get behind that.”

He looked at me again. “I waited so long. I don’t think I can do it again.”

“I love you,” I whispered. “I…” We weren’t each other’s… us. But we were. Weren’t we? “This is confusing,” I added.

“Yeah,” he said, not asking for clarification, and kissed me again.

“You sure I should go tonight?”

“Will you sleep if you don’t?”

I made a face. “Probably not.”

“You have to go sign paperwork and all of that tomorrow. Go see him. Might as well get it out of the way.”

“You really think this isn’t dangerous.”

“What I think,” said Martin, unblinking, “is that if I don’t choose to trust you now, and get all possessive and weird, I will be feeding the worst parts of myself. So I choose to trust you’ll be safe.”

He wasn’t okay, was he?

The Eye was silent; It didn’t know. This was Martin. It saw Martin. It didn’t analyze Martin. It saw him. Not helpful.

Maybe Martin had just… figured it out. Maybe he really was older and wiser, and I was worried over nothing.

He laughed suddenly. “Your face is a journey right now.”

“Caught me.” It didn’t matter if he wasn’t the one I’d known before. I knew I wanted him now. I knew I loved him now. At this point, I think we both would have known if we didn't fit. “All right. I’ll go.”

“I probably won’t sleep until you get back,” he said, watching me dress in the dark.

“Bribery,” I pronounced, and kissed him again. “I’ll be back.”

“Jokes aside.. If you do somehow run into trouble, please just run.”

I looked down at him, sprawled in his bed, watching me unblinking. “I will. I promise.”

He touched my hand, and I left.

Quiet London was, big shock, even quieter at night.

Not much was open. Lights kept things feeling safe, but there just… wasn’t anyone. No music. No late-night plays letting out. People were awake; I felt them—more pf them lived in London than had in my time, because here, somehow, rent prices had stayed within the grasp of the common man.

It wasn’t really a comforting quiet, though. There was something abjectly miserable about it, though I couldn’t say what. Anticipation? No; a sourness, familiar enough to leave me almost knowing what it was, and yet just altered so that I could not immediately put my finger on it.

I could know.

“Yes, Jon, let’s do that, risking losing myself on a public street, alone and without help. Brilliant,” I muttered.

“Can I have a cigarette?” someone said.

I froze.

To my right was an alley. A shape stood there, human, swaying almost hypnotically, rhythmically, over and over, left and right.

Had I stroked out? “What?”

“Can I have a cigarette?”

No. No, this… couldn’t happen.

“Can I have a cigarette?” said the shape, swaying.

“Listen,” I said, taking a step closer. “I may be new, but I damn well know you’re not supposed to be hunting on your own.”

It swayed, mesmeric. Echoes wafted around it, things I heard not with my ears—cries, screams, the loss of life thanks to this horrifying creation. It had been hunting for a very long time.

Oh, I was getting angry. “Last chance. I will react with prejudice.”

“Can I have a cigarette?” said the shape.

I opened all my eyes and saw .

The angler fish was no solid thing, no proper, unified construct, and it began to peel, shreds of skin and the barest shape of a person beneath cracking and dropping away. The horrifying blob beneath that shape shuddered as if in pain (but it felt none, because it was not real), slivering and melting and falling apart in globs of stolen fat until all was gone.

Behind it stood the puppetmaster.

How could I be surprised, and yet not surprised at all? How could I even have missed the fact that I had met only one Stranger here in our entire group? Stranger-survivors were even rarer than the Eye's, and we were opposites, opposed, enemies.

Especially this one. “Hello, Nikola,” I said.

“Archivist,” said Nikola, her borrowed voice box just as twistedly bright as her old one had been. “Funny meeting you here in the middle of the night! I suppose you want to have a little chat. It does seem your style.”

And she—

This wasn’t the Nikola who’d been locked up. I knew that. So how the hell was she here?

I knew something else, too, as I stared at her, as she stepped out into the light of the street lamps, her hideously malformed plastic smeared with blood and gore, her ringmaster’s uniform shredded and faded: she was old . Very old. Much older than the Nikola I’d known. Impossibly so. She was far, far older than the portal Manuela had made to get to this place.

It was so funny, not being afraid of her anymore. Absolutely bizarre. “How did you even get here?” I started.

“Are you going to turn me in, Archivist?” she said. “I suppose they might believe you, though I don’t think you could actually force me to go with you. A manhunt, I think! How fun! Well, they wouldn’t find me. Not like that other .”

“The other you,” I said.

“Oh, yes! She’s a copy, you know.”

She…

I almost understood that. She was Stranger, and… well, that was the whole thing, wasn’t it? None of them were real . So a copy of a copy may not make a difference to the rest of us, but it did to them, for some reason.

But hadn’t they gotten that Nikola in the usual way? Scooped out of another world? How could that one be a copy of this one? This one… who had been feeding on people for so many years .

She wasn’t building toward the Unknowing. This was just for her. Taking children, taking people, keeping them in an impossible grip of terror and confusion until their bodies simply gave out. Torturing them and enjoying the absolute nightmare she put them through as they screamed, louder than they had ever been in their entire lives.

She’d been doing it for so long. “How dare you hurt people,” I hissed. “You could’ve gone any other way, could’ve joined us, could’ve been helped , and instead, you’re doing this? How dare you!”

“Funny words from a funny man,” said Nikola, clacking her filthy hands at me (one with eight fingers, the other with three). “You feed all the time… do you feel guilty? Oh, I’m sure you do . I’m sure it just eats at you, makes you question everything. I don’t, little Archivist! Isn’t that lovely? You could join me, instead, and avoid their gaze. You could be free of the worst wickedness!”

What the hell was she talking about? “I’m… I… I do not feed all the time, and you are changing the subject,” I snapped, ignoring her accusations of guilt, because of course I felt that, we all felt that, how could we not?

“Funny, funny man,” said Nikola. “I must go rebuild my prop, though, so if you’re all done being scary …”

“I am not done being scary!” I blurted like an idiot. “I can’t leave you out here. Come with me, turn yourself in, or I swear to hell, I will destroy you.”

She stared at me, or I thought she did—whatever paint her face had once had was gone, burned away, leaving patches not quite in the right places for face, nose, eyes—and then, she laughed. Because of course she did.

“I mean it, Nikola.”

“I know ! That’s why it’s delightful. Do you think I’m going to… oh, what is that phrase? Come quietly?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation?”

“You are far more confident than my last Archivist,” she said, and (predictably) revealed a morbid history. “Chomp, chomp! He was quite gamy. And he cried.”

Yes, yes, she’d killed me, whatever . She was covered in the blood of innocents here . Why was I even fooling around with this? “We are not far from Sasha’s. You’re coming. Or you’re dying. Now. ”

The Eye was eager for both. Either. Whichever one didn’t matter.

She sighed. “Oh, very well.”

She didn’t want to die. I had that to leverage over her. “Do you know where the hospital is? For our kind.”

“I do.” She sounded so bored.

“Lead the way. I am not taking my damned eyes off you.”

“As if you’d take them off me no matter where I walked,” she said, but began lurching up the street at speed.

“Nikola!” I snapped, and ran after her like an idiot. This was not what I’d promised Martin I would do. Oh, well! I was in it now, wasn’t I?

Sbe surged up the hill, her limbs moving slowly but covering great and terrible ground, and I knew I was going to lose her.

Idiot! I thought to myself, and taking out my phone, sent Sasha a message without taking my eyes off Nikola. Incoming Via Sacra going north passing Branzen’s pub right now Help Help

Right, that would tip her off, but the activity of running as fast as I could while watching Nikola and also looking at my phone was… dizzying.

Straining? No, not exactly, but this was splitting attention in a way I hadn’t done before. I was amazed I could, and sort of proud of myself, but also running out of mental space very damn quickly.

“Stop!” I called after her. “You’re making things worse!”

“I think not, Archivist!” Nikola called back at me from near the top of the hill. “I think the next meeting will be on my terms, don’t you?”

How dare she threaten me. How dare she threaten those I love, because if she was coming after me, then Martin was not safe—

Which was when Sasha hit her from the side like a wolf, or a truck, or a saber-toothed lion.

Hit her so hard that they both flew through the glass of a shop, and the sounds were nightmare—screeching and yowling, weird plastic torque and a howl that could have come from any damn thing, Stranger or Flesh alike.

No siren sang in response to that destruction, which in itself was bizarre, but I had no time to consider. I ran up, gasping, feeling the limitations of a body I did not understand at all, and found—

The Sasha-mass of flesh boiling and bubbling like smoke, battling some unspeakable thing in a shape I could almost identify, a creature I almost knew, which filled me with instinctive fear because, whatever it was, it was just a little wrong, and within it, Nikola wielded her disconnected limbs like clubs.

She hit, and the mountain of flesh that was Sasha bled, and though it did not seem to slow her down, it hurt .

She’d hurt her , hurt Sasha , and did it with joy.

I would not permit. “Stop!” I roared, command in my voice, a weird echo I couldn’t explain and felt vibrating through my entire form, and the word cast forth from me with physical effect and swept before me like a wave.

Pieces of glass and carnage whipped up as if in a gust of tornadic wind, violent and concentrated. Nikola recoiled from my cry as if I’d somehow smacked her with an enormous glove.

Sasha shuddered, her form not quite returning to familiar and beloved woman.

Nikola fixed her gaze on me, and I knew. We both knew. She hated me, on a level I couldn’t begin to comprehend, and I knew she’d decided this was it. I wouldn’t let her leave. She wouldn’t let me. She would die here, or I would.

She lunged.

Sasha tackled her from behind (neither of them had mass in the way understood, both a surging bulge of fear converging in will, affecting the physical world, but not of it), and slowed her enough for me to… react.

To…

Do something.

To fill with a thing I did not understand, to channel the helplessness and rage and other feelings I’d ignored and pushed down and denied, to feel the truth of what I spoke even as I spoke it, and I said these words with full knowledge of what they would do, and at the same time, absolute and puerile ignorance: “No.”

And with this word, I denied her.

Denied her right, denied her future. Denied her further chances to change her ways, to alter paths, to do anything other than shatter on the limit of my anger.

Nikola blew apart. Exploded. Slammed into me and the streetlights and the goods in this electronics shop and Sasha, and knocked me over and cracked the street and sent the fire hydrants shrieking water into the sky, and made the city shake and the earth sing and caught the attention of

Caught the

Caught the attention

Something looking at me, something seeing me , something I’d disrupted, something too big to understand that turned toward me at the speed of galaxies, and I—

Sasha stood over me, looking normal, though her hair was a mess and had bits of glass in it. “Jon?” she said softly. “Hey. Hey, there you are. Look at me, Jon. Come on.”

Oh. I was on the ground.

Still no sirens, but for this place, it was awfully noisy: there were voices, and the sound of water being pumped over crackling fire.

I hurt. So much. “What…”

“Martin’s on his way,” said Sasha softly. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” I said like an idiot.

“Maybe what just happened?” she suggested.

A debrief. She desperately needed one, not just for her own sake. Terrible things had happened here, and she needed to know I was innocent. “Saw her,” I managed. “Offered a cigarette. Like the… the… angler fish.”

“I remember the angler fish,” she said, soothing. “What happened?”

“Confronted. She ran. I texted you, tried to keep up.”

“And what happened then, Jon?” she said evenly. “What happened while we were fighting?”

Something absolutely terrifying that no one else in this world could do and I did not at all understand.

Fuck.

Lie?

I felt the lack of that ability right now. I couldn't lie, not seeing like this. I saw her, saw the fire, saw the people fighting the fire. Saw the reporters, saw the news, saw distant people lighting up as if touched with some current as they learned of the weird incident here.

I saw too much, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t turn it off . “I…”

“Just try,” she said softly.

Too many people. Too many emotions. Dreams and hopes and fears, lusts and disgusts and rages. Too many, flooding me, turning my tongue back into to eyes.

My own fears joined the world's. What would happen if I told her I didn’t know? Was I about to be locked up like the other Nikola? Would Sasha try to kill me? To help me? Was I going to lose my freedom? Would Manuela dissect me like a bug? I couldn’t make my tongue work.

“Let me help,” said Jonah Magnus, kneeling beside her. “He’s overwhelmed. Seeing too much. We called it inebrians cernentia—intoxicating visions.”

The children of parents who heard the news and feared some political rebellion and how it could affect their jobs and their lives, the police who suspected supernatural bullshit but had no way to verify or defend and had to pretend it wasn't weird, the—

She gave him a stern look. “Jonah, if you mess this up, you ruin all the progress you’ve made. You know that, don’t you?”

The conspiracy theorists who wondered if this was tied to Them, the foreign spies who parsed the official report of a gas leak and refrained from opinion until they knew more, the—

“Oh, of course,” said Jonah happily. “I would never harm him. You ought to know that.”

“Well, fine,” said Sasha. “Give it a try, then.”

Wait, what was happening?

Jonah smiled down at me, absolutely beatific; though clean-shaven, he’d kept his hair long enough to fall in those loose, golden curls. In a simple white t-shirt and jeans, he looked so damn normal . He’d catch a glance, perhaps, for being pretty, for being mildly cherubic in spite of a torso now revealed to be suspiciously wiry with muscle, but one would never know, looking at him, that he was one of the wickedest humans who had ever lived.

My own fear spiked.

“Oh, no, not that,” he said, his eyes widening. “No, no—don’t be afraid of me. Never of me. I adore you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I slurred.

“This will,” he promised, and—

We saw?

My vision, in my mind, briefly split, all those lives and people and homes, all those opinions and broadcasts and feelings, the murmur of conversations and spike of emotional concern, all of it split , came apart neatly as if the glue had failed, and…

Relief.

I made a small sound, feeling as though I swam up from the bottom of a well. Getting better, feeling lighter, less overwhelmed.

Feeling… more me.

I stared at him.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he said softly, eyes lidded, unblinking.

BROTHERS , the Eye chirped at me wordlessly.

Dear lord, get me out of here. I tried to sit up and groaned; my side felt… really awful. Burning and sharp and terrible.

“Easy,” said Sasha. “You’ve been impaled.”

“I what?” I blurted, looking down. Oh. Oh, I… lay on some kind of rubble with rebar sticking out of it? Out of me? Right through my side? Oh, I… oh. “That’s not good,” I said in a high, weak voice.

“Shhh. You’re all right. You don’t even have organs , Jon.”

“It hurts!” I said, because it should hurt, shouldn’t it, because I’d done something awful , and I didn’t even know what, and it was frightening, and—

“It’s all right, Jon,” Jonah purred. “Breathe—not that you need to, of course, but psychologically, it helps. You’re all right.”

“But it hurts,” I said like a stupid child.

“So see it,” he said. “See yourself free of it. See it gone, dissolved, turned to something so sweetly organic it cannot hurt you or the environment. See yourself free, Jon, because you can. ”

What was—

Why—

Why did his words matter?

I was angry over it, offended, even as what he said came true, because I understood (in a vague way I doubted I’d be able to repeat with ease) what he was saying, and freed myself from the horrible thing in my side.

It melted into sugar, into water, into nothing that mattered at all. Some laser-like awareness I hadn’t even noticed eased. Relief. Like stepping into shade, after standing in hot sun.

But I couldn’t quite envision being healed. I couldn’t see this body, couldn’t see myself, and so could not see the hole in my side closing. Now, it just hurt. I cried out.

“Jon!” Martin cried, running toward us, and anyone in his way was moved aside as if some unseen wave carried them. He fell to his knees beside us, practically showing Sasha away, and pulled me into his arms.

It hurt. It really hurt. I tried not to cry out.

“He’s wounded, Martin,” said Sasha. “But I think he’ll be all right.”

“This is my fault,” said Martin, and pressed his face to my head. “Oh, gods. Jon. I’m so sorry. I did this.”

“You didn’t do this,” I mumbled, and clutched his shirt. My hands shook. “I did this. Broke my promise to run.”

“I’m fairly sure the weird thing I just fought did this?” said Sasha. “No blame here.”

“No,” purred Jonah, who was watching me, who had not blinked, whose gaze held a sweetness I could not ignore, and it made me want to cry and I didn’t even know why. “No blame.”

Martin did a double-take. “What the hell are you doing out?”

“Therapy!” said Jonah with a bright smile.

“I think I’m passing out,” I told Martin, because these things should be communicated.

“Fascinating,” murmured Jonah.

“Sasha,” said Martin evenly. “I need a reason, right now, not to fucking drown something.”

“Let’s talk about it at the clinic, all right?” she said cheerfully, and stood.

Martin stood as well, holding me.

I felt drugged. Sluggish. Safe, with him. “Love you.”

Martin’s eyes filled. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“This wasn’t you.” He needed to know. He shouldn’t feel guilty for this. “Broke my promise. I chased her.”

“I shouldn't have… what was I even thinking? What did I do?” he murmured. “Oh, gods. Jon, I’m so sorry.” Tears slid down his face now, dripping on to me, and his heart ached, pounded , and I could feel it, because I knew him.

No. No, I… I didn’t want him to feel this way. He shouldn’t be squashed with guilt, weighed down, his heart aching in his chest. Not my Martin. I couldn’t quite lift my hand to touch his face. “Not your fault.”

Sasha was talking to someone (police, I knew ), getting us out of here without having to make a report or anything, and they knew who she was, and she had power over them somehow (What? How?), and they were going to let her go, and I didn’t care.

Martin. Martin ached.

I couldn’t let Martin ache.

The Eye whispered, and I knew what to do. “All is forgiven, my love,” I whispered, too.

And the world

Changed.

The tiniest tremor, the shiver of reality shaking snow off its shoulders.

Jonah gasped.

“Oh,” said Martin, and stared at me. His eyes grew wide. “Oh,” he said again, more firmly, and frowned.

He looked toward Sasha, and I didn’t understand. It was not a good look. It was… angry.

Then he shook his head as though discarding whatever that had been, and looked back at me. “You’re going to be all right. I’m carrying you to her hospital.”

“All right.” As if I had any problems with this. The pain was terrible; but the relief…

Jonah had… shuttered it all, somehow. Done, really, what I’d hoped Gerry would do: he’d shared the load.

I hadn’t even realized how much I was carrying. “I’m going to sleep now,” I murmured, because Martin had me, and I was safe.

“Incredible,” Jonah whispered. “Beautiful.”

Then Martin began to describe some truly inventive ways for him to violate members of his own family, and I let myself drift to sleep.

#tma #tma fic #tma au #tma spoilers #magnus monsterverse #jonathan sims #nikola orsinov #jonah magnus #sasha james #martin blackwod #jmart #jonmartin #teaholding

10 notes · View notes