Work Text:
Golden rays peaked from the folds of the curtains in Jamie's room. Off in the distance of Jamie's sleep induced brain, his cell phone's wake up alarm buzzed. A slender arm slithered from under the warm hug of his blanket and slender fingers tapped the screen to silence the sound. With a sleepy groaned yawn, he stretched his lanky limbs out of the bed.
Buckling on his prosthetics, Jamie hobbled into the bathroom for the usual morning routine. He moved in with Mako after family drama hit the proverbial fan. It's been five years since they've been living together in Mako's rent-to-own house. The moment Jamie moved in, he made it adement to Mako that he was going to get a job and not become a free loader. Mako never said anything to him about getting a job or the finances but he was proud to see Jamie taking his next biggest step on his own without holding back.
It was known that Jamie suffered from anxiety and depression. Possible even some other issues he never really opened up to Mako about. Going on his own to his first interview in years for a job was a big boost to helping him cope with his anxiety and give him a boost of confidence. And it worked. Jamie had gotten the job even without a degree. His new job was a baker at a local amusement park. He's always loved to bake but he struggled with it for a while until he met Mako. Mako taught him things he hadn't learned on his own.
Jamie had been loving his new job for a while... until shit started to turn bittersweet. His coworkers would often exclude him from social events they held as a team or tell him about them a day before the even so he had no time to prepare. They'd often exclude him from humerous commentary they held in the back while he worked or would act as if he wasn't there when he did stand among the small group. Often Jamie wondered if it was just the depression making him feel like a social outcast. But he'd always remind himself that he wasn't one for talking to people he didn't know shit about.
He could talk Mako's ear off all day long but when it came to people he didn't know, he felt his throat tighten up and his voice clam up. His coworkers would occasionally joke with him or say they were proud of how hard he was working and how he stuck to his job even when shit got tough. But he never could tell if what they said and did was genuine or if it was fake. His depression ruled his head and heart and poisoned his thoughts. Making him take every compliment, every passive joke as fake.
It hurt. It hurt Jamie so much. Since all he had ever really wanted was to feel needed. To feel important to be alive and not like a pissed on mindless puppet. It hurt Mako to hear how torn he sounded when he'd explain how his day went at work. The long pauses, the bobbing of his adam's apple and that distant sorrowful look in his glassed over amber eyes just ate away at Mako's heart. So much so that Jamie was taken a back by what Mako had snapped and told him one day after work.
Jamie had told Mako how he's begun to give hugs to his coworkers out of sympathy and understanding when they talked about having a bad day or sounded miserable. Mako quickly told him to stop doing that. Jamie didn't understand why, he thought he was in trouble or perhaps being sympathetic in that way was wrong. But Mako clarified his demand by telling him that those people don't deserve Jamie's sympathy or his feelings if they carelessly throw him under the bus or play him off like a fiddle.
Whenever Jamie came home from work after having broken down at work, Mako always held him tight. Always told Jamie how much he means to him. "Your my treasure." He'd say, pressing plush lips to Jamie's and wiping away stray sorrowful tears from his cheeks. No matter what happened, be it real or fake, Mako wasn't going to let Jamie feel like a waste of space. That's why, that morning and the mornings after, Mako always prepared breakfast and wrote empowering, endearing letters on the table for his "treasure".