Chapter Text
Jon stood in his bedroom with his hands on his hips, staring critically at two sweaters lying on the bed. His gaze hardened as if trying to suss out some unknown truth from the wool. They were virtually identical in everything except for color, one being forest green and the other a royal purple. He’d narrowed it down to these two. The weather and venue demanded something warm, the infuriating need to be liked demanded something at least semi-presentable. Unfortunately, Jon had no idea whether green or purple suited him more, had no scientific way to check, and this was certain to drive him utterly insane.
What was the point of being liked, anyway? It wasn’t like he was going to stop in his tracks, point at Jon’s sweater, and confess love on the spot. Purple and green wouldn’t change a goddamn thing, and if it did, then Jon wouldn’t want any part of him anyway. And so what if he didn’t like him? Jonathan Sims was a thirty-odd-years-old man, anyway! He didn’t need the affection and feelings for a man that he barely met! He was self-sufficient! And perhaps he’d rather be on his own, regardless! It was easier to be alone, than to have to go through this at every social outing, pouring over whether he’d prefer purple or green like it mattered at all in the grand scheme of things! People were dying, somewhere, and here this man was making Jon worry about purple or green, green or purple, and –
Jon caught sight of himself in the mirror. “Oh, good Lord,” he whispered in aggravation to himself, reaching up to pinch the edge of his nose.
Nerves. Nerves, that was all it was. When Jon got nervy, his temper flared. And that was the last thing he needed, walking into dinner because he’d managed to get himself in a bad mood. He reached for the green sweater and slid it on, the wool soft and comfortable against his skin.
Dating was impossible. Truly. The sweater looked goddamn fine.
It wasn’t even dating, not yet, which was far more daunting to consider. They were just going out. The difference was gigantic and minuscule simultaneously. Things wouldn’t change except in the most surface-level of ways if they were dating, of course, but then again the ‘dating’ label would slap on certain expectations and the possibility of progression. People were dating, then six months later they were moving in together, and then two years later they were marrying, and then Jon would have to share breathing space with someone until he died.
Then again, he had spent enough time with him to know that Martin wasn’t like that.
Martin, for what it was worth, just seemed pleased to have company. While that didn’t exactly speak in support of romantic interest, Martin didn’t push or remark on the state of their relationship. Martin did not ask what are we? While that soothed Jon’s anxiety considerably, it also left things up to him to ask what, exactly, they were.
Which he would. Eventually. When things were right. When the planets aligned, so to speak. The planets hadn’t aligned on their last “date”, nor the one before. Jon tried to coach himself, to say that things would be considerably more relaxed once he asked that question, and he could enjoy Martin’s company fully, but that was always approximately twenty seconds before his brain chimed in with the worst-case scenario.
Jon’s mind could never agree on that was, precisely. Sometimes Martin’s face would contort into something shy and uncomfortable, slamming right back into that shell Jon had brought him out of. Sometimes Martin would turn him down flat. Sometimes Martin would be straight. Sometimes Martin would make an excuse that he had to go and Jon would never hear from him again. The last one was more common and uniquely devastating, because that would entail Jon losing the first man that he could ever really connect to.
Granted, that wasn’t saying much. He’d met far fewer people than the average person.
About ten months ago, Jonathan Sims had woke up in an alleyway. Disoriented and frightened, he had immediately run into oncoming traffic. In his defense, London had a lot of it.
Nothing had hit him, thankfully, saved by the gridlock that was London rush hour. Some kind Samaritan had gotten out of their car and gotten him to hospital. It was only then, in a bed with a doctor standing next to him, that Jon realized he couldn’t give the doctor his name. His age. Every single bit of information about himself, his memories, where he had been, had been yanked from his head.
He’d hyperventilated.
Of course he had. It was profoundly terrifying, not knowing who one was. He could still read and write, could still recall most of the books that he read, could recall who the prime minister was and the country they were in and even the name of the hospital. But as for his address, who he voted for, and whether he had ever been here before: no clue. It was like anything with his identity or personhood attached was simply carved out of him.
Thankfully, a worker at the hospital had recognized him from before.
As to be expected, there were a battery of medical tests to be performed on a heavily scarred man who couldn’t remember an iota of his own history. It was just after he’d gotten an X-ray done of his chest to explain the strange soft part of his ribcage. Frankly, the first comparison that popped into his head was that it was akin to the soft spot on a baby’s head. Jon didn’t like that idea. Not at all.
Nor did he like the way the X-ray tech squinted at the scan of his chest.
Apparently, he was missing two ribs. The X-ray had informed him of that in an accusing tone, like Jon was meant to apologize and say he’d left them at home.
The injury had been usual enough to trigger the memory of a nurse at the hospital of the strange man who had come in with two cleanly missing ribs.
And so, a name (and medical record) were given. Jonathan Sims. Admitted multiple times to this very hospital over the years with some very grotesque trauma. Notes were given about the wound on his neck, the wound on his shoulder, the various wounds on his leg and face, his burned hand, and, of course – the two missing ribs. Hell, his medical record didn’t even account for all the wounds on his body, there were a few nasty looking ones on his torso that didn’t seem to be documented at all.
None of it rang a bell. And, really, Jon was almost glad that it didn’t.
The other bits he would’ve cared to know, though.
His birth date was written down in his medical file, putting him at a measly 33. Before then, Jon would have sworn up and down that he was in his late forties, if not older. His knees alone had to have been eighty. He still wasn’t sure whether he believed that, but who would lie about their age on a medical form?
He’d spent more time than he wanted in the hospital and got half a dozen prescriptions for his trouble and a recommendation for a really good therapist. The way the doctor had stressed it, a really good therapist, had the undertone implication of: you’re gonna need one, mate.
Probably not that far out there, honestly.
That had all been ten months ago. In the meanwhile, he’d gotten a job shelving books at the local library. A deep Google dive of himself had turned up a literature degree from Oxford University. With honors, too, that was something. That made sense, given his knowledge of books, but for what Jon had learned there specifically … he hadn’t a clue. Still, the paper proof of his degree existed.
Identification cards had been replaced. He’d gotten access to his bank accounts and gotten other copies of his cards. Bizarrely, a decent amount of money was placed in his account every other Friday. A paycheck, to be certain, and not from the library he worked at. That particular lead had fizzled out. The name of the transfer was too vague to track anything down and the bank refused to tell him what account they were wiring from.
So Jon had left it alone. After all, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?
He crossed from the bedroom into the living room. According to the listing he’d gotten this flat from, it’d been “cozy” and “efficient”. Which, of course, were massive red flags. But small and utilitarian suited Jon’s needs just fine. As became swiftly apparent, Jon didn’t much have the attention span for television (books, however, were practically invaluable), didn’t enjoy decorating, and didn’t need much kitchen space. One pot and one pan, thank you, he was no Gordon Ramsay.
Most of one wall of his living room was taken up by a large rotating cork board on wheels, like an exhibit wall in a procedural drama. Jon had pinned several dozen notes and pictures there. They all related to information about his life. The degree from Oxford was on there. “Don’t like pesto”, underlined several times. Photocopies of his parents’ and grandmother’s death certificates. “No criminal record?” Every photo that he could find of himself on the Internet. On a dusty pinned index card, Jon had written and underlined: “Friends??? Loved ones???” A noticeable empty space surrounded it.
Frankly, it looked obsessive. It looked like he was stalking someone. And he supposed, in a way, he was.
He hadn’t expected to have many people over, which is why he didn’t mind his evidence wall taking up most of the section where people would keep a television or a fireplace. He barely spoke with his coworkers (they certainly didn’t know that he was a card-carrying amnesiac) and certainly didn’t have the patience to meet people online. It didn’t bother him like he thought it would. It bothered … regular people, didn’t it? Being alone?
Until, of course, he’d met Martin Blackwood.
His therapist had recommended a support group. Not that Jon wasn’t doing excellently, she promised, but because it might do good to share his unusual experiences with others. Jon didn’t much like the idea at first, because who could begin to understand what he had been through?
Apparently, there was a support group for those with memory issues. Jon had been flabbergasted and signed up immediately. A rare seed of hope bloomed within him. Perhaps this strange illness, more suited for a soap opera than reality where things were messy and inconvenient (people in soap operas didn’t have to go to court to prove they’d been born), was more common than he previously thought. He could find people who understood him there. Advice for things that Jon still had no clue how to manage: how to find past leases for flats that might’ve been in his name? How to determine life-threatening allergies? How to figure out who was putting that bloody money in his account like he did a job?
Of course, if Jon had thought about it for more than five minutes, he would have realized that the people at the support group would be of little help.
He hadn’t thought it through in his excitement, but of course most memory issues were gradual. Very few people had sudden, total memory loss – particularly with no head injuries to speak of. It was a condition that was found much more commonly on television than in real life after all. The doctors had been unable to explain it, but Jon thought that he would perhaps find a sort of kinship here.
Most of them were early stage dementia or Alzheimer’s patients, all of them at least twice Jon’s age. Their stories were devastating, forgetting seemingly innocuous details and holding immense fear with what was to come. Jon could see it in their eyes, the way they fidgeted with wedding rings, purses, shirt buttons. Others chimed in with words of support, empathy, and understanding. Loads of people started to cry.
All of it summed up? Depressing, and made Jon feel like an outside observer more than an active participant in group therapy session.
Until someone had come in the door. A young man with short, wavy hair had literally stuck his head through the doorway. “Sorry,” he asked, looking genuinely timid. “Is this the support group for people with memory issues?”
“It is!” Jon had blurted out with more volume and eagerness than he’d really wanted to. But he was so relieved to have someone even vaguely in his age range here. “It absolutely is. There’s a seat open next to me, come on in.”
Even if they hadn’t shared any more words than that, Jon nevertheless was cheered by the presence of an ally. Perched awkwardly in a squeaky folding chair, this man understood his uniquely awkward position.
But of course, clearly he was coping better than Jon was. He was murmuring words of support, genuine and heartfelt: oh, Mrs. Wilkins, your daughter sounds like a brilliant young woman. You’ve done such a good job with her. Like he’d known these people for years. It was bizarre. Jon felt his eyes shooting over to his face whenever he opened his mouth, unsure of whether he was exceptionally well-adjusted or a massively strange person. Was this standard? Should Jon have been more sympathetic? Murmur platitudes?
Even so, neither Jon nor the strange new man elected to share their story to the group. After perfectly normal, depressing stories from old men and women slowly losing their mental capacity – Jon personally didn’t feel it appropriate to air his own personal episode of Unsolved Mysteries.
They’d taken a break about thirty minutes in, and Jon had all but fled to get some coffee and a pastry. He had lingered at the table for far longer than he really needed to, pretending like he was an alien that had just come from Earth and had never encountered a coffee thermos before, when he became aware of a presence just behind him.
“Um, hi,” the man greeted.
“Oh, I’m – sorry, I think the button on this dispenser is stuck,” Jon jerkily lied, shoving his thumb down. The liquid dispensed into his styrofoam cup. “Ah! There it goes, excellent, right, there we are.”
“The – what? The coffee thing! Yes, of course.”
After pouring a good amount of sugar and cream into his coffee, Jon looked up into the man’s green-blue eyes. He returned the gaze. They stared like that for a few moments, Jon quietly cursing ever learning to talk, much less come here, because he didn’t know why they were looking at one another and he’d clearly already confused the poor man but why else would the man come over if it weren’t for coffee or maybe he was just a pastry guy because truly it looked like most of the coffee was generally untouched, made sense for pensioners, it was 6:30 PM and he’d be up all night as it was –
Still looking at one another, they broke into an awkward giggle at the precise same moment. The man’s cheeks flooded with color.
Affection poured into him, all at once, concentrating into his lungs. They became nothing more than two useless lumps of tissue in his chest, rendering Jon breathless. There’s no reason for this, Jon tried to argue with his senseless mind. No reason for my body to enter a state of mild shock just because of … nothing, really! And yet, all of Jon’s feeling and sensation concentrated in his torso, making his limbs feel like they were only blocks of lead. This had to be what prey felt when they were cornered by a predator in the wild, surely, and yet – somehow, during the course of human evolution, the human psyche had gotten so irreparably damaged as to conflate this with … with …
A crush. On a man whose name he didn’t even know.
God, you are so desperately lonely, aren’t you.
Jon did not like this at all. He did not like this feeling of being seen. And, yet, his green-blue eyes looked down at him in a way that seemed to scream, I see you. Don’t think you could go hiding from me, mister.
“I’m Martin. Martin, ah, Blackwood, actually. Pleasure to meet you.”
Thankfully, Jon’s tongue loosened, though he couldn’t imagine a more appropriate setting for forgetting his own name. “Jonathan Sims. Jon.”
Martin’s eyes dipped down. Following his eyesight, Jon saw that Martin was sticking his hand out for a handshake. If that wasn’t endearingly formal.
He hadn’t noticed before, but Martin was wearing gloves on both of his hands. It was a pleasant spring evening outside, and they were indoors. And yet, Martin Blackwood was wearing two thin black compression gloves on his hands. Surely they were warm, weren’t they? That was odd, and rather at odds with the short-sleeved polo he was wearing.
As if Jon needed another reason to pay attention to this man.
“So,” Jon offered, “What brings you to, ah – “ He gestured with one hand to the circle of chairs, filled with politely gossiping elderlies. “Here.”
“Oh, you know.” Martin took a pastry and held it in his gloved hands. Jon noted what sort of pastry it was with the same alacrity as someone studying for an exam: strawberry doughnut. “Woke up one day with sudden, complete memory loss. Haven’t recovered it since. The usual old story. You know,” he added with an impish grin, “I didn’t even know my name at first. I mean it, everything just poof!”
Oh. Feeling like his heart might stop, Jon shot one hand out on the pastry table to keep him steady. Perhaps this ailment was more common than he had thought, but other than that … good lord, he’s come here expecting an entire group full of people like him. Now, it seemed like a stroke of absurdly good luck that he had met one person just like him. A kind person, no less. (A handsome person, Jon’s mind chimed in, but Jon had learned a long time ago not to always listen to his mind.)
“Er, you okay there? You’re looking a little peaky.”
“No, I’m fine. God, promise I’m not crazy,” Jon told him. “It’s just that, I’ve – eurgh. The same thing happened to me. Woke up. No memory. No brain trauma, either. Practically the opposite of a medical miracle.” He brought the styrofoam cup up to his lips and took a sip – and nearly choked. Eurgh, that was terrible. Did he even like coffee before all this? It felt like the coffee had been sitting out since the AA meeting the week before.
“You’re kidding!” Martin stuttered out. He gestured towards Jon with both of his hands enthusiastically. “That, that’s – that’s amazing. Well, no, it’s a tragedy, obviously, and, uh, I’m very sorry to hear that it – but it makes me feel like I haven’t gone mad, or that I’m just, just, making things up.”
“Making things up?” That struck Jon’s curiosity. “How on Earth could you have made something like losing all your memories up?”
His newfound friend dropped his gaze to the floor momentarily. Martin’s thumb anxiously stroked the pastry he was holding, succeeding in nothing but strewing crumbs all across his glove. “Seemed about as likely as complete memory loss with no head injury?” He offered, and Jon found himself laughing.
“Too right. Hm. Too right.” The few members of the support group that had left on break started to shuffle back into the room. An unspoken urge to reconvene swept over anyone, and Jon tried not to feel disappointed. But of course he was. This man, he could relate to. None of those people.
And then – an idea hit him. Well. Why not?
“What do you say,” Jon asked Martin in a quiet voice, “If we chat about it while getting coffee elsewhere? I know a decent place. And this is deeply unfit for human consumption. No insult to these young women and men here – “ Martin’s face screwed up, as if trying not to laugh. “But I do feel like we might be able to help one another a bit better.”
Difficult to tell what Martin was thinking. Was he worried about being rude? Was he not a coffee man? Did Jon misread this entire situation, and was actually deeply fulfilled by this group? Some people felt fulfilled about talking to old people. Jon was not.
But when Martin’s face had turned back to him, his expression was sunny and warm. “Sure! Let’s try and get out of here before they start back up again. I’ve not found a good coffeeshop yet – one of the very few drawbacks to forgetting everything,” he joked, already moving to hold the door open for Jon.
And that was Jon’s first evening with Martin. They’d gotten coffee and sat there until the shop closed up. Jon certainly wasn’t about to suggest that they go home – what an absurd thought – and so, they wandered around London for a few hours more until Jon seriously began to question how he’d get home that night.
As he suspected, Martin’s story was eerily similar to his own. Jon walked in silence with Martin for some time, only breaking in to ask a question. Martin had woken up in a hospital bed. The only reason he’d known his name was his nurse telling him, but according to her, he’d been admitted in quite a rush and hadn’t been able to fill out the proper intake forms. No identification. Nothing. What was more, Jon found it curious that it was the very same week Jon had lost his memory. Martin couldn’t give him any date more concrete. Apologetically, he said that he’d been so hazy the first couple of days from the medication that he couldn’t remember the exact day of his amnesia.
“I don’t even know how old I am,” Martin had cheerfully chirped. “Not a clue. I think I’m in my thirties.”
“You couldn’t find a, a birth certificate? Medical records, anything?”
“Well, you’d be surprised, but loads of places won’t release forms if you can’t list anything besides a name, even if you tell them you have amnesia. Apparently people say that a lot to try and dupe them? And …” Martin bit the side of his lip curiously. Jon’s gaze never left his face. He found that eye contact had never bothered him – in ways that perhaps it should have, because Martin was looking squirmy underneath Jon’s gaze. “And I’ve, um. They didn’t have me on record at the hospital. No Martin Blackwoods.”
“You couldn’t find a birth certificate?”
“I’m, like. I’m like reasonably certain that Martin Blackwood isn’t the name I was born with,” Martin had said. And for that moment, he left it at that.
Martin had been unable to find any other information about himself. No friends and certainly no family. No identification, no forms, no reason to say that Martin Blackwood had ever existed. That he hadn’t forgotten anything at all, but perhaps instead just popped into existence as a thirty-something year old man and told to make the most of it.
It had frankly flabbergasted Jon. “How did you survive? You had no money, no identification, what did you do?”
“Things were hard, for a couple of months.” It was all the explanation that Martin was willing to give. Jon had noticed almost immediately Martin’s unwillingness to let the conversation dip to a tone anything below ‘cheerfully radiant’.
Martin Blackwood was a fascinating man. It’d been nearly two in the morning when Jon yawned so hard that his jaw cracked, and Martin chuckled at him and offered to get him a rideshare home. Jon could very well get his own rideshare, but he had made sure to trade numbers with Martin Blackwood.
Although it got easier to breathe and talk around him, Martin Blackwood hadn’t left Jon’s mind for more than a few seconds at a time for 24 hours after.
They spoke frequently ever since. It was mostly concerning their memory loss, still: sharing strategies that they’d used to survive in the world at large. However, Jon also began to learn a little more about Martin the Man: he worked in an office doing data entry, he was transgender, he never took off those gloves in public though washed them nightly. Jon didn’t know why. He didn’t think Martin was likely to tell him.
Martin was, currently, the only friend he had in the world. Which is what made this date-not-date business so tricky. Of course, didn’t all the relationship books advise dating someone you considered a friend (those books were firmly in a box in his closet, because if Martin was ever to visit someday, he was not going to see those)? Perhaps, if he broached the topic gently, Martin would just-as-gently shut him down and that would be that. That would tell off the archaic chemical impulses in his brain seeking to find companionship to provide strength against any potential predators. To hell with evolution and biology, he was a modern man that didn’t need companionship.
Jon caught sight of himself in the mirror, saw how the sweater had mussed his hair something terrible. He scowled and started to fix it. Wouldn’t want to appear slovenly, would he? Not just for Martin. But Jon aimed to look presentable whenever he stepped out. He would not have people be pitying the poor, poor, poor strange little man who had lost his memory. People already looked at him askance because of the scars, but he would not be pitied.
There. That would do. It made him look like a recently-sacked professor, but that was the sort of thing people liked. The sort of thing Martin liked, probably. Martin went for that sort of thing.
Probably.
He turned around from the mirror to stare at the large evidence board in his room. A moment of uncertainty grasped him as he felt himself pulled towards it, like a hooked fish.
Jon grasped the bottom of it and grunted softly, exerting himself to spin the board around so that he could see the other side. This side, more often than not, faced the wall of his flat. Jon preferred it that way.
There were other things pinned to the dark side of the evidence board. New articles of every murder that had occurred in London in the two weeks proceeding Jon’s memory loss. Every residence in a three-block radius. Articles on blood DNA typing. Pages that Jon had torn out of a book on criminal profiling. Pictures of every alley, rubbish skip, and generally hidden place he had investigated. Pictures of what human corpses looked like an hour, ten hours, twenty hours, two days, a week, a month after death.
This side of the board contained far more articles of interest than the other – not because of a surplus of information, but because of the obsessive research frenzy Jon had undertaken with it.
There was something else.
He hadn’t told Martin. He hadn’t told his therapist. Christ, how could he? People would think him crazy – optimistically. Besides, they could find no answers, because Jon had thrown everything at that particular Gordian knot and it refused to crack. Jon was still going to try, of course, but he had no real hope of success.
His name was Jonathan Sims. A minute after he’d woken up in that alley, he’d stumbled out into oncoming traffic. The person that had helped him along to the hospital had described his behavior as erratic, panicked, and bordering on frenzied. He had been babbling one phrase over and over.
What have I done, what have I done, what have I done, what have I done, what have I done.
In the alley, Jon had woken to the sight of shiny blood the color of cherries on his hands, all the way up to his elbows. More was spotted in the ground around him like it’d rained down from the sky. A prodigious amount – certainly an amount that a human being couldn’t live without. Terrified, Jon had grabbed whatever disgusting refuse in the alley that he could and wiped the muck off him before sprinting blindly out. He had to get away. Away from all of it.
His name was Jonathan Sims. He had murdered a person approximately ten months ago.
He just wished he could remember.