Chapter Text
When Jon is fifteen, he only knows about Michael Crew on reputation. Jon’s grandmother invokes the name when Jon is being particularly antisocial or eccentric: “At least you’re not that Michael Crew,” she mutters to herself, not that it seems to provide her with any comfort.
Jon brings it up with his classmates as they sit in the canteen one lunchtime.
“He’s weird.” Jon gets a lopsided smile that makes him feel like he’s being made fun of. He wishes he was in the library right now. “Not like you-weird, but proper weird. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk.”
“I’ve seen him have these fits sometimes,” someone interjects, all the enthusiasm of a natural gossip. “He gets really panicky, starts shaking, the works.”
Dominic from the year above pauses at their table, a strange look on his face.
“Mike got struck by lightning when we were kids,” he murmurs, so quiet that Jon is probably the only one who hears him properly. But Dom has never liked annoying little Jon Sims, so it’s easy to assume he’s lying about that one.
The rumour mill is full of nasty tales about Mike Crew, and for all Jon thinks he’s better than listening to hearsay, he believes more of it than he should. Mike Crew becomes this shadowy figure, larger-than-life and not to be associated with at any cost. At best, he’s the kind of problem kid who would drag Jon’s already-precarious social status into the mud, and at worst, Mike Crew seems dangerous.
When Jon is sixteen, a house down the road collapses, and he finds himself with a new temporary housemate.
“Just until the courts sort something out,” his grandmother mutters when he asks, eyes turned to the heavens as if praying to God for respite. Jon feels a stab of guilt and does his best to avoid her for the next few days.
Mike doesn’t look like Jon expected him to. He’s short, and even skinnier than Jon is. Even though it’s the height of summer, he’s wrapped up in long sleeves and a scarf. Through Jon’s time at school, concerned teachers have handed him plenty of patronising mental health pamphlets, so he sagely thinks covering scars. Mike Crew is a problem kid, but probably only dangerous to himself.
They don’t say a word to each other until a week into Mike’s stay, in the middle of the night.
There has always been a spare bed in Jon’s room, so when his grandmother reluctantly took Mike in, it was the natural place to put him. Jon isn’t used to the quiet rhythms of another person, and it throws him off, leaving him tossing and turning every single night. A petty part of Jon finds it comforting that Mike doesn’t seem to sleep any better.
“Do you want to know why my house collapsed?”
Jon startles so suddenly that he nearly knocks his glasses from his bedside table. It’s the first time Jon has heard Mike speak more than a few words, and he sounds… nice. His voice is soft and pleasant, at odds to the impression Jon has formed of him.
There’s silence as Jon thinks over his answer. When he risks a glance across the room, Mike is staring at him, pale-faced in the dim light breaking through the crack in the curtains.
“Okay,” Jon says at last — as he was always going to. He reaches out and slips his glasses on in a futile attempt to feel a little more awake.
Mike goes silent himself; by the look on his face, he’d expected Jon not to answer.
“It was a book,” he murmurs.
“A book,” Jon echoes, tone flat as his blood runs cold.
There’s a fresh eagerness to the terror on Mike’s face, like he’s desperate to tell Jon something awful and unknown. Jon swallows, wishing he was as ignorant as Mike thinks.
“The Journal of a Plague Year. Special edition from the—”
“Library of Jurgen Leitner,” Jon finishes, heart in his throat with a mixture of horror and hope.
Mike’s eyes go wide, moonlight catching the diamond-grey sheen of shock.
“A Guest for Mr Spider,” Jon offers. His skin crawls as he says the title; it’s the first time he’s ever given voice to the words, and it feels like he’s invited a thousand skittering legs to run across his body. “When I was eight.”
“Shit,” Mike breathes. He’s shaking, Jon notes, the movement a blur in the darkened room.
“Did you really get struck by lightning?”
Mike stiffens up, a bone-deep terror creeping onto his face and washing away any trace of sympathy. He nods, pressing a hand to his still-covered neck.
“When I was eight,” he echoes. There’s a second where Jon thinks he’s being made fun of, but nothing on Mike’s face suggests mockery anymore.
“Shit,” Jon echoes in return, and neither of them speaks for the rest of the night.
(When Jon finally gets to sleep, he dreams of electricity travelling along spiderweb wires, forcing his muscles to jerk and spasm without his control. It’s not the worst nightmare he’s had since he was a child, but he wakes up struggling for breath all the same.)
The next night, Mike creeps across the floor and shows Jon the branching lines of his scar. When Mike asks about Mr Spider, Jon answers, keeping his words vague; he’s unable to shake the feeling he might attract the spider’s attention once more.
They’re quiet afterwards, and that’s when Jon finally catches a hint of the smell curling in the air.
“You smell like storms.” Jon regrets the words as soon as he says them, flushing as he works through all the possible ways Mike could take them. Mike doesn’t seem to notice any implications, curling up into himself with a long sigh.
The acrid smell of ozone only intensifies, a sharp threat blowing through the room on a breeze.
“It’s not me. Not really.” He glances up at Jon, all desperation. “It’s followed me since I was twelve. There’s a storm on the horizon wherever I go, and I can’t trust my own senses.”
Jon leans towards Mike. He doesn’t want Mike to think he’s gullible, but there’s no tells that would point to Mike making this up. Then again, Jon has never been very good at telling when people are lying to him.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Imagine a person made of lightning, and then imagine that it hates you. When it laughs at me, it sounds like thunder rolling through my bones.”
Jon glances around the room, half-expecting it to appear from nowhere, and Mike sighs again.
“It’s not here. I think it’s lost my trail, but that— that won’t last long.”
Jon shouldn’t believe Mike. Mike, whose childhood trauma has probably only been compounded by the recent loss of his parents. The books, the Leitners, they’re real and tangible, but whatever is stalking Mike seems limited to the inside of his head. But Jon is sixteen; he’s not a sceptic yet.
“I believe you,” Jon says, and then, “what do we do about it?”
The expression on Mike’s face is one of pure relief.
“I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking. All these things seem to be different. The storm, the rot, the spiders. What if, somewhere, there’s something that can save us?”
A protest rises to Jon’s lips — he doesn’t need saving, he’s fine — and he swallows it back down. That’s not the point. He needs to be practical, even with fear urging at the corners of his mind. What Mike’s suggesting is— insane, isn’t it?
“I don’t think these are the kinds of things you can use. I think they’d just use you.”
“I don’t care.” Mike’s voice is full of such vehemence that Jon instinctively flinches back. “I can’t live like this. I don’t care what it takes.”
The message is clear: end of discussion. Jon nods, holding out a hand — it seems like the thing to do in this situation
“Together,” he says, trying not to feel stupid.
There’s something resigned to the upward curve of Mike’s smile as he nods. He takes Jon’s hand and shakes it once; Jon’s skin feels alight at the touch.
“Together,” Mike agrees.