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1.It was watching again. Michael. Since the very first meeting, since it had slipped into his office, had dragged his blood from his veins in pearlescent red droplets. It watched, and watched, and watched. It’s eyes following. Staring.Jon would like to say he was angry, was worried but… Anger was a privilege, a privilege for men whose eyes didn’t drip in exhaustion, that didn’t constantly have nightmares lolling behind their eyelids like a soft kiss. And he was so tired. And so lonely. So. He did not address the yellow door that seemed to seep into the walls like a thick mold, like a congealed, caked layer of blood, dripping into the walls of an institute already coated in it. The door seemed to follow him everywhere. One look and his thoughts ran loose in his head, what little coherent thought that still streamed through his aching mind seeming to slide loose. The sight of such strange doors around the institute became common. A routine. A comfort.But always near him, always following. There was something about that thought that, privately, secretly, Jon thought was warm. Warm like a fire, ready to burn, ready to catch its surroundings ablaze. But still warm. Still beautiful. Sometimes an unlucky researcher would step into a door, painted eye melting yellow, never to be seen again. But only sometimes. Only when their fear was great, and their thoughts running in a spiral. Michael never actually tried to talk to him, but if Jon noticed that his headaches, burning and painful from reading too many statements cooled when Michael’s door crawled into his walls….Well. Nobody had to know. Nobody cared to know. It only watched, looking from It’s domain like an ever present eye. Never truly entering Jon’s office. That was until of course he walked into his office and saw a cup on his desk. A cup of tea, the contents swirling, singing in colours of warmth, stardust stringing itself into a flavour. The mug itself, a view of memorising, horrific colours. The vision of it slipping through the air, like scar tissue.A offering almost. The honey sweet thought that it was an offering of friendship pooled in his mind. Drinking it would be a risk but, the very sight of it was a tempting poison ready to burn in his veins. So, he drank it. If, for no other reason, than to cradle the warmth of it against his palms, and down his throat in a soft cradle he has not felt in so long.It had the sweet taste of an imploding acherontic galaxy, every colour and sound shifting through his eyes like a weight lifted, and a warmth brought to his chest. Even as his eyes slipped closed, regardless of his will, he could not find it in himself to be afraid. To be upset.Not as the tea slipped through his veins like a soft hug. Not as he seemed to dream of long fingers curling through his hair. 2.Jon had been captured again. Not by writhing, wriggling worms. Or ambushed by coworkers with invites. (Jon had the sneaking suspicion that there would not be another invitation, not now, not ever, not again). He had been taken by statements. The statement he had promised himself was the last for an already long evening had seemed to stretch, as though it was attempting to keep him to itself. A statement that seemed to be by grace of the owner of the yellow door that he somehow knew sat in the archives outside his office door.And now Jon was sat in his office at midnight. Not ideal, but nothing he hadn’t done before. In some ways it was better here. Here there was a door. A door that watched him, that was painted a warm yellow. Here there was something. Here, the loneliness could not slink into his bones. Could not bring phantom touch to the surface of his skin. Jon was no stranger to pulling all-nighters at the institute.As he finally finished the statement, its contents still grasping his mind, still curling his thoughts into delicate spirals, he got up for tea. If he was going to stay in the God forsaken institute then he could at least be caffeinated. His mug, Michael’s mug, in hand.The warm haze of a statement still clouding his mind as he got up and went to leave his office. It was only as his hand touched the doorknob that he realised that there had never been a door next to the large windows of the room. It was only as his thoughts slipped to sweet static and contented emptiness that he noticed the blooming yellow of the door in front of him. It was as the statement still fresh in his empty mind grasped even tighter into his incoherent thoughts that he stepped away. That he stepped away from the mind rending incoherency of a door that was not there. That was when he noticed the thick scent of colours, the viscous weight of the mug in his hand. The tea that had not been there even a moment ago, in his beautiful abstract mug.It was as he noticed these things, that he noticed the heavy set of his eyes, as the impossibly colourful ink of the statement caressed his eye sockets he noticed the tired thoughtlessness of his head. He barely noticed as he lay on the small couch of his office, as his thoughts slipped from barely there grasps to complete emptiness. He did not even think to notice how the mug he had thought full was now empty. How he was now so warm. How the clock had ticked half an hour in a matter of what seemed only moments. When Jon woke, he felt safe. He felt like the soft heat of his veins was tempting him back to sleep. The phantom prickle of his skin was… muted. He was… empty. In a way he hadn’t been since he’d accepted the job. Archivist.If Jon had noticed the soft, comforting creak of Michael’s door as It retreated to its halls then that was between him and the ephemerally coloured mug of still warm fresh tea beside him. 3.He hadn’t even noticed it at first. The soft creak of a door, the whining, grating sound of the heat death of the universe, of time forever unseen. His voice so loud in his ears as he recorded the statement. He hadn’t even noticed.So used to the ever present watching. He hadn’t noticed the presence behind him. Hadn’t felt as the warmth was dragged from his skin. Hadn’t noticed as his body burned raw beneath a supernova. He didn’t notice until the recording ended. Michael.Its spirals of blonde, streaking and blurring, an eternal glitch. Its iridescent brand slicking its own skin, an oil spill of dripping entropy and weeping blood that coloured itself in scribbles. Fractals brandishing in its eyes, its fingers a mangled crackle of bones and flesh. So sharp, the burn of flesh as it slit and parted. Every false breath carving through the air like a scourge.It stood behind him, so sharp, so incoherent and aching. And yet. Yet…. Yet Jon still felt no fear, still felt no pain. So, he stared. He let himself fall and sear in its eyes of infinite fractals. Somehow so warm, so comfortable.He didn’t notice as it hand went to his wrist. He almost didn’t notice as it entered his flesh, his carved bone. He almost didn’t notice as blood seeped from the skin, begging to fall from the burn of his wrist. He barely noticed as the spiral was immortalised in his flesh. He noticed as the fractals in its eyes seemed to melt into saccharine pools of comfort.He noticed when Michael seemed to take the blood on its clawing fingers into its gaping maw with a curiosity. He noticed when his reality seemed to slip to ashes against the floor, an echoing static. By the time he awoke, his head reeling, he noticed the empty room. He noticed the freshly boiling tea of impossibility dripping so softly into his mug. He traces the scar. The spiral in his skin. And if he noticed that Michael’s door is suddenly in his vicinity. If he notices its colours seem to puddle into a soothing, soft colour when he does. Well…. 4.Jon was tired. Not anything new. Not great. 48 hours without sleep wasn’t the longest he’d ever gone. However usually he was caffeinated, coffee or tea streaming through his system like an old lover. However, now any attempts to feed his addictions have been met with the tea of infinite colours. Privately he called it the sleep tea, since it seemed to immediately send him to sleep. Cups of coffee, and black tea, fading into iridescent colours, losing their caffeine.So. Jon was tired. Jon was tired and not properly medicated in a way that he could retain the words of any statements. Stubbornly, he refused to leave work, if Michael wanted him to sleep so desperately it would have to do so itself.One issue. He had drunk a slight sip of the colourful tea. Not noticing the change in colours when pouring himself yet another attempt at coffee he had almost drunk from the mug and had drunken slightly from it.His brain became a pleasant static, his eyes heavy and his body loose. He seemed to become… loopy, as though he had been filled with morphine. In his haze he didn’t register the sweetly excruciating creak of the door behind him. He did however register when a rasping echo of broken strings and a thousand orchestras’ symphonies echoed in his ear.“Archivist”A musical silk of poison. He didn’t even think- couldn’t think under the crushing weight of its voice. Reverberating in his ears, a toxic euphoria. He didn’t think, not as he collapsed into its arms, it’s hair impossibly long, curving and turning in ways that could not possibly happen. But did. It was… beautiful. His eyes betrayed him as they slid closed. Leaving him in the arms of Michael. Leaving him at the mercy of a merciless creature. He could not fight, not as carefully dulled edges slid kindly through his hair. Not as its claws scratched dully, carefully against the scar hidden against his wrist, loving and contented. Not as his brain fell apart at the seams. Not as he slowly slid into a sleep of ethereal hallucinations, not as a carefully cradled warmth surrounded his heart, his body. 5.Michael was in his apartment. Michael was on his sofa. The sofa Jon was on. The sofa Jon was sat on with a mug (Michael’s mug) of chamomile tea, dressed in a too big shirt and some shorts. The small sofa. The small sofa that barely fits Jon.Michael was sat with him on his too small sofa, where he was sat. They were sat together.Oh great.His thoughts were running in a spiralling ache of silken static. Wonderful. “Michael”The being Itself spoke its own name like a poison, a tempting. Agonising. Poison.Then a laughter that sung a thousand bleeding symphonies grasped the air in a sweet kiss, branding it with the sound.Jon could only look on a hazey sheen sliding across his eyes like a soft kiss, bewilderment set in the lines of his face, a spiralling curve around his body of loose shock and warmth .“Michael?”Jons voice rang out. The warm comfort of eternal spirals scratching softly against his skin, against his thoughts. The sound of his voice a soothing note against the skin of the bleeding air.His eyes fixed against the brush of Michael’s hair. It’s curling twist a spiral of eternity. An embrace against his arm, an agony of sweet touch.He was lost again. In incoherence. In the static caress of his mind. Michael was. Wrapped around him now? A twist of muscles and bone and joints, cracked like a doll, it’s soft silk against his skin a burning love.He sunk into it. A blank stare into the emptiness. Just. Someone being embraced, being cared for. “Archivist”It’s voice sung, a soothing, beautiful note. An agonising mess of raging notes. He didn’t. Comprehend much of what happened next. What he does remember is the warmth of falling asleep in Its embrace. He remembers simply sitting with it for so long as it sunk into his veins, the burn a sweet kiss in his blood, in his arteries. He remembers his scar, soothed. For the first time in a long time, he hadn’t even realised it needed soothing. He would like to fall asleep with Michael more often.He would like to be with Michael more often. But that.Is a different statement.