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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

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Vast!Jon Au - time for some REVEALS

Oh, oh, oh, there are some BIG CLUES as to what's going on in this scene.

Fair warning: We don't know no stinking timeline. I am back on my self-indulgent bullshit, y'all, and that means it's ALL going in the pot.

Martin/Jon Childhood Friends

Vast!Jon, professional photographer

Lonely!Martin, YouTube baker

A plane crash! Angst! Drama!

Old guys playing dice with the universe!

Stoker brothers! Archivist Sasha!

Agnes Montague?

Mike Crew???

Nothing is sacred here.

And now... phase two.

-----------------------

A week of nothing is good for them all, surely.

Jon and Martin text constantly, but Jon will not show his face, or say what he’s doing. So that’s fine.

Sasha swears she’s okay, and shows up for dinner with the Stokers. She won’t talk about Jon. So that’s fine.

Martin is sure none of this is fine.

But he’s in a holding pattern until Friday, which is when he must be at the top of his game. He spends some of his waning bank account on a haircut and a manicure, ensures his clothing and makeup are on point, and prepares for the show of his life.

Not one job application he's sent out has gotten a nibble.

This Lukas thing, whatever it is, has to work.

Tim calls it The Martin Effect.

Danny calls it a little bit spooky.

Martin calls it working the room, and considers it an easy performance. Even when performing for a bunch of weirdos.

The Lukas family is… more than a little bit weird, actually?

They’re all tall and freakishly pale, which has to be genetic. Eyes like ice, all of them. They stand in a cluster, watching their guests, like freaky gods made of stone and misanthropy.

Oh, their smiles are friendly, and their handshakes are good, but Martin is skilled at reading people and knows damn well not one of them is actually friendly at all.

But they sure do have a fancy as fuck house.

They'd invited him to their manor, in Kent - which is nearly eighty miles from London, and would have been an automatic no (Martin has seen horror movies) - except that they prefaced the invite by explaining it had to be on a certain date because others’ schedules weren’t very flexible.

Those others were several people like him (nobodies) and several of those YouTubers mentioned in the note (nobodies who’d made good).

The Lukases even sent a car to get him. With drinks.

Fancy.

Also weirdly lonely, because there was a divider so he couldn’t even speak to the driver, and the car wasn’t a limo but it was too big, and Martin sat in the back and played on his phone and felt severely out of place.

He’s still doing this.

The Mooreland House came looming out of an unseasonable fog like something in a ghost story. Huge, all gray stone, somehow both absurdly posh and weirdly featureless, it does not feel welcoming.

Martin arrived at the same time as everyone else, coordinated.

Then it was awkward-as-fuck meetup time, which is fine by him.

“No, that’s completely reasonable,” he says to his fellow nobody’s absolute rant about comment misbehavior. “It feels very personal, really.”

His fellow nobody beams like Martin gave them a prize.

Martin doesn’t mean a word because the rant is stupid. They’re internet comments. Yes, humans make them, but it’s humans on the other side of a screen, faceless, nameless, person-less.

Which is how they view you, even though they have your face and name, he thinks, but outwardly commiserates with BabyBrian (whose makeup isn’t very good, but Martin won’t tell them that), then moves on to meet the next nobody in line.

He’s spent time with nearly all the nobodies now. It’s horribly familiar; same as moving every few months and first trying to make friends, then moving every few months and just trying to make peace, same as not mattering and nobody mattering and sinking slowly into himself and his mum not caring, until they came to Bournemouth, when he was six, and his father walked away, and mum didn’t want to move again.

And Martin found Jon.

And for the first time in his life, felt seen.

He remembers that. Even though he was young, he remembers meeting Jon, more clearly than he recalls his father’s face.

But that doesn’t matter, because none of these people are Jon.

It’s so damn fake. Martin’s good at fake. He knows how to stammer just so, when to drop his eyes, how to smile.

Just keep it together, he tells himself, because he doubts very highly that the Lukas family (who is watching all of this with unreadable expressions) is going to give them all the golden ticket.

It’s obviously some kind of competition, though to what criteria, he doesn’t know.

So. He’s himself.

The part of himself that doesn’t have Jon, that is.

There are two nobodies left to talk to in this group, and lucky him, they’re standing together, making it easy. “Hello!” says Martin brightly as he walks over.

So, two things immediately jump out at him.

One: they are absolutely nothing alike, but when they turn as one to look at him, he feels in his core that they are absolutely the same.

Two: that something same is whatever horror now lives in Jon.

It damn near throws him.

They’re connected. They’re serving evil gods. He’s certain.

Martin smiles more brightly to cover his spike of terror and offers his hand. “Martin. I bake muffins.”

The guy responds first, smiling just as brightly and shaking his hand. “Mike. I do optical illusions.”

“Oh, I’ve seen those!” says Martin brightly. “I recognize your voice. CrewsClues, right?” It is a hell of a channel. Obviously, it must be camera tricks, some kind of manipulation, but no one’s ever figured out how he does it.

For the first time, Martin is afraid that maybe it isn’t technical prowess behind those tricks.

This guy can livestream, and while livestreaming, twist a road into spirals, or make it seem like the building he’s walking by has just rusted itself to holes and timber, to mold and curling paint. Fascinating stuff.

Mike also does gross food stuff, but Martin loves food, and won't think about that.

However, he wonders why the hell this guy isn’t on camera.

Mike is fucking hot. Fit, toned, tanned; nearly white hair, shocking blue eyes - and, intriguingly, the branches of some kind of lightning-scar peeking above his shirt to kiss his throat.

Maybe he doesn’t go on camera because his smile is as fake as Martin’s.

Something in the eyes…

Mike Crew is not a friendly person, and Martin logs him away as dangerous.

“That’s me,” says Mike. “This is Agnes.”

Agnes is… Well. Intense is one way to put it. She is unblinking, still as a sheathed knife, and does not smile. Her hair is long and auburn, her eyes seem almost orange, and she’s nearly as tall as Martin.

She also doesn’t shake hands, apparently. “Hello.”

“She’s got that It All Burns channel,” says Mike.

“Oh! Oh, that’s… wow. Fascinating,” says Martin, looking fascinated, internally terrified.

It All Burns somehow combines an unnerving, visceral fear of the dark - of what’s in the dark, unseen - with sudden and violent flame, and there’s never any way to know just what she’s going to set on fire.

Martin hadn't even know the channel was run by a she. The host never speaks.

Of course, it isn’t real, say the comments, because it’s illegal, the things she burns - from as small as fancy men’s watches to entire derelict flats. Because someone would have caught her if she were actually doing arson, and besides - no matter what she’s burning, the flame she sets always looks the same.

It’s white.

The last time Martin glanced at her comments, speculation was still rife as just what she was doing to make flame white, regardless of fuel.

He stopped checking after that. Agnes’s videos disturb him.

Agnes disturbs him more.

Now that he knows monsters are real… “It’s great to meet you,” he chirps, smiling brightly. “Hey, can I refill your drinks?”

“Naw, I’m about to bail,” says Mike with a shrug that stretches his half-buttoned shirt (white, to make his tanned skin more interesting). “I don’t think this is for me, anyway. I was curious, but I don’t really need the help.”

“Lucky you,” Martin laughs. “Well, I’m glad I got to meet you.”

“Yeah,” says Mike, with an unexpected and appreciative look. “You’re cuter than on your videos. Maybe we should collab, sometime.”

Martin laughs like that wasn’t absolutely audacious flirting. “I don’t really know what baking and illusions could do together.”

“Could do a test. See what happens to muffins over time.”

Mike had a couple of live feeds constantly monitoring food allowed to rot.

Martin pushes those out of his head, because they’re gross. There are maggots.

Why the fuck live feeds like that had an audience, he has no idea, but he’s not letting anything like that near his muffins. “Not a bad idea. Let’s chat about it sometime, okay?”

Mike knows.

He knows he just turned Martin’s stomach.

Mike's smile is cruel.

Martin’s is sweet and sunlight and fresh-found honey.

“See you,” says Mike, and leaves.

“So that was - ” Martin starts, but Agnes is leaving, too. Did they come together? “Not for you, either, huh?” says Martin.

“It’s a trap,” says Agnes.

Martin can’t quite hide this reaction. His eyes go wide, and he goes too still, just for a moment. “What?”

“I like you. I hope you lose,” says Agnes, coat donned, hair pulled free from her collar. She meets his eyes, pinning him again. “Good luck.” And she leaves.

“But what are you - ”

Nope. She’s not going to tell him what the trap is. She’s gone.

Oh, Ariana, we’re really in it now, he thinks hysterically, and sips his drink to cover it.

So does he leave?

He has no other options. He tried to get a job. He tried to get a loan. He has to do this.

He can’t take his mother into his closet-sized flat. Not only would her hospital equipment not fit, they would definitely kill each other within a week.

Jon…

He knows Jon would take him in.

He knows Jon would spend his own money to care for Martin’s mother.

Martin will not do that. He’s refused the offer before. He won’t.

He doesn’t even know why, but he won't.

“Excuse me, everyone,” says a cheerful voice, and Martin turns to find yet another Lukas has joined the fray.

This one’s different, though. He’s not so pale. His smile reaches his eyes. “Thank you all for coming! My name’s Evan. I guess you all know why you’re here, so I won’t drag it out. Leave the long speeches to the old guys, right?”

And it’s not really funny, but his delivery is so charming, and so personable, that Martin finds himself chuckling with the rest of them.

“It’s time for your individual interviews. Now, I need to stress this: just be yourself. A front isn’t something anyone can maintain forever, and we’re looking for genuine above all else here. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, only one of you is going to get the sponsorship this quarter.”

Yeah, they’d all guessed. A few people sip drinks, nervously.

Martin is not one of them.

“We’re going in alphabetical order,” says Evan. “And hey - there isn’t anything to be afraid of, all right? In fact, we’re giving you all financial compensation for spending the day with us so nobody feels like we wasted their time. Right! Martin Blackwood?”

Oh good, I’m the guinea pig, he thinks, and raises his hand and smiles. “Present and accounted for!”

“Come on dooooown,” says Evan.

Martin snorts. Only one other person in the room seems to get the extremely dated Price is Right reference - the sea captain, Peter Lukas.

Everyone else's looks are just... stone.

“Follow my aunt Susie.” Evan shakes Martin’s hand. “Love your muffins, by the way. They’re great for parties.”

“Right? Thank you,” Martin says, feeling like this is the first time he’s smiled for real all day, and follows aunt Susie down the hall.

#tma fic #tma au #fic in progress #vast!jon #lonely!martin #agnes montague #mike crew #michael crew #peter lukas #wip #amwriring

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