Work Text:
Once upon a time he’d told John he was worried he’d be fired, over being unqualified for his position. He didn’t have any sort of degree in archival work, and he’d started making tea out of sheer nerves and no idea what he was supposed to be doing. He’d stumbled through some of the filing system, started to understand the paperwork, and kept very clear of artefact storage. It wasn’t so bad.
He liked working with John. He liked reading about spooky supernatural things. He liked Tim and Sasha. He had a job, he had friends, he had a crush-- Martin was happy. Content, at least? Yeah. They’d go to the pub on Saturdays sometimes, and if he needed to work late to avoid his mother he could-
And none of that really mattered anymore, did it?
Because now he’s middle management. Now he was assistant to a Lukas and had to build a workflow for the entire archive, now he was managing payroll and literally doing Elias’ job and he hadn’t had a spare moment to consider how wildly unprepared he was for that kind of responsibility.
Not to mention all the other mess.
Which he promptly pushed to the back of his mind as he chewed his lip, typing out emails to different departments to requisition documents and artefacts, anything related to the Extinction. As he burned through employee complaints and disputes, tried to keep things afloat with a captain, hah, who wasn’t even bothering to steer the ship. Peter didn’t know anyone’s name. He’d forgotten Melanie’s at least three times. He didn’t understand how the departments were separated, let alone what their purposes were. He didn’t care. It wasn’t something he needed to care about. But if anyone had enough bad luck or nerve to bother him, they just disappeared out of existence. It made Martin panic.
So he did all he could, to...mitigate. He was cruel to people to make sure that they wouldn’t come in contact with Peter-- he heard the comments. About his split personality. One moment he’d be kind and cheery and the next he’d be snapping. He’d been avoiding people in the halls himself. Some days he kept his office door locked and slept on a futon he’d shoved up against the wall, just so he wouldn’t have to walk down crowded streets full of people. Martin couldn’t stand being looked at anymore.
All he had was work, and he did it pretty well. He was proud of himself, for that. For building the employee database and digitizing things Elias had left to paper on purpose. He was proud of himself, that only five staffers total had been eaten by the Lonely. He was proud of himself that...he hadn’t quite broken, yet.
When the door closed after he snapped at Daisy, he felt a knife of cold dread in his stomach before he heard the sound of Peter’s voice. It hurt him, to be cruel to people. It felt so antithetical to everything about him to push someone like Daisy away when she just came in to-- to see if he was-- to talk to him about J--
Peter told him about a meeting, is his usual glib self. No straight answers and nothing direct, just that he’s proud of him, of all his progress. It’s not fair. That the first time he heard words like that, they were from a man like Peter Lukas, demanding his fealty and obedience in exchange for a modicum of safety. He hated Peter. He hated that once again he wasn’t allowed to know the plan, or be told anything.
Days passed and nothing ...really changed. He kept trying to dig up research on the Extinction, waited for his meeting, fended off chance encounters with John. He was getting better at it. At guessing his schedule, at hearing Basira’s voice down the hall and ducking into an alcove. She caught him over her shoulder once and glared knives at him and it felt like they actually sank into his skin, slow, deliberate, poisoned.
He wanted to give up.
He couldn’t give up, because if he ded, Peter would just use someone else. Or the world as he knows it would end, and it wouldn’t matter how much he missed them if they were all gone.
And oh, he missed them.
He missed anyone.
He got up from his seat to find tea-- emails left half-sent and too many tabs open on his laptop. Martin found he was pacing more, learning the little nooks of the Archive better than he ever did even when he lived there.
Ten minutes later he had tea and hadn’t heard a sound on his way to the break rooms and back.
He slipped through a side hallway to avoid Daisy, mug of tea in both his hands. He climbed back into his chair, crossed his legs and hunkers down into the seat. The chair had been the first to go: Elias’ was some big wooden thing with no arm rests. Replaced with a wheeled one, wide arms, cushioned back. With a blanket and tea he could almost make it feel like...somewhere he belonged.
He stared down into the soft reddish-brown of his tea, distantly aware of the little specs of tea leaves that had snuck out of the teabag. It was warm, against his fingers. So few things had been warm-- he missed those feelings. Someone else’s hand. A shoulder against his own.
Martin looked back up at the screen and frowned. The input bar blinked and he felt, almost, like he could hear it. Like a heartbeat. It thrummed in his ears and pounded against the drums of them, until he’d zoned out for thirty minutes and it was past 9.
An email came in and asked for Peter’s formal signature on a requisition. Or a meeting. Either would be acceptable. Some departments were still demanding a proper sit-down with him and he couldn’t keep dodging, couldn’t explain, only so many people actually understood the gravity of what the Archives dealt with--
He took a breath and choked down the rising panic. It’d been worse since John got back. Almost like he could feel him in the building, moving, aware. An eye. A presence. It made Martin’s heart race in fear and want at once. It hurt. Everything he’d been working for, everything he’d put himself through in the time since John had been put in that coma, suddenly felt like a weight. It pressed at his shoulder blades, the back of his neck, the tops of his hands. Oppressive, suffocating, cold and intangible Loneliness.
Martin’s throat closed and his head tipped forward, forehead gently touching the cool of the desk. Grounding, grounding, he had to ground himself. Deep breaths. He’d been to therapy a handful of times, enough to learn coping mechanisms but not enough to fix anything because how was a therapist supposed to understand that it’d started with worms and progressed to tangible all-encompassing existential dread--
Spiralling, that was called spiralling. Annoyingly apt. He took a breath and focused. Grounded himself on the warmth of his mug, the cool of his desk, the sound of the air vents.
One step at a time, one day at a time. One statement, bridge the gap. Learn to play for the Beholding and the Lonely at once, but weave your web, lay your plans. He never intended to give everything over to Peter. Never. But he needed power. Some kind of power. Any kind of tangible, physical, bloody power--
Martin sat up and took a breath. Deep in, deep out. Settled his fingertips on home row and responded, curt, polite, that he would produce the signature post haste and would appreciate it if his position as assistant would be taken seriously in the future.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and took another breath, then, finally, a drink of tea. A long one. His eyes slid slowly up from the screen of the computer to where Peter leaned on a chair, rosy-cheeked polite smile asking if he could speak to management a careful mask on his face. He sipped at his tea for another few long. Drawn. Seconds.
“Hello Peter. Can I help you?”
“I am CCed on emails. I came to sign that form for you.”
“Did you.”
“Yes.”
And then they sat. Quiet, for several long moments. Martin felt the chill on his face. He opened his mouth to snap, but for the first time, Peter cut him off.
“You’ve been crying.”
“I’ve been wot?”
“There are tears on your face. You’ve been crying.”
Martin’s stomach flipped, then sank, then drained out of his body in a slow ooze that made him feel horribly exposed. He reached up and touched his face, wiped his hand across his cheeks to dry them. He realized-- he knew-- Peter hadn’t come to sign the form. He came because he felt how lonely Martin was.
It was so embarrassing.
Martin made a broken sound and turned his head, looked away. “You came down here to-- what. Watch me cry, then?” A barb, trying to joke, knowing it wasn’t true.
“I came down to ask if there was anything I could do.” He actually had the nerve to tilt his head just so, smile polite and sweet like he was talking to a child.
Martin physically felt his blood boil. “Oh-- like you-- Like this isn’t entirely your fault?” His hands bunched into fists on his thighs, and the rage only doubled when Lukas had the nerve to shrink back in discomfort. He hated being yelled at. And Martin hated feeling miserable.
“Hardly my fault. I think of it more as--”
“It doesn’t matter what you think of it,” Martin snipped, tongue making a satisfying snap against his teeth at the ‘t’. “All of this is your doing and you know it.”
“Now Martin. I know what I am responsible for. I also know why I choose--”
“Oh please, please shut it. I don’t have the energy to deal with your holier-than-thou justifications--”
“To stop the Extinction we need to be able to--”
“Gertrude certainly didn’t!”
“Yes, and she’s dead, isn’t she.”
The room chilled. Colder than Martin had ever felt it. His breath condensed as he let it out.
He’d never felt Peter’s power quite like that. Elias’ voice had strength. John’s made him shudder and melt. Peter’s made him feel like he was dying of the cold.
Martin’s throat hurt with how tight it locked. He looked at Peter with wide, watery green eyes and felt as the tears built up and spilled over his cheeks, pinpoints of heat on his skin that burned like liquid shame.
Peter only sighed, hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He moved, walked to Martin’s desk. “I know you’re having trouble dealing with the consequences of accepting the Forsaken’s power, but Martin, that was the point. This isn’t like going to church and completing confirmation, it’s meant to hurt.”
He knew that. Of course Martin knew that. He wasn’t an idiot.
“I’m not an idiot.”
“No, I’m aware. That’s why I chose you. Your position, yes, but also your intelligence.”
It felt like just another knife. Compliments and praise from the places he wanted it least.
“I could deal with the loneliness. If it weren’t-- You’ve made this much harder, than. It should be.” Martin found his voice coming in halting, wet syllables. The tears came more freely, His throat aching in that horrible half-sick way like a head cold.
“I have? I’d like to point out how inconvenient it is that your Archivist has only decided you’re an asset now, of all times, and--”
“Peter.” Less of a snap. A plea.
Peter sighed, tipped his head. He stepped around to the other side of the desk and leaned on it, looking down at Martin. Pathetic Martin. He knew that’s what people thought of him-- incapable of standing up for himself. Of dealing with his problems himself. The most he’d done was distract Elias and be left at the base, while everyone else saved the world.
He was so proud, of how well he was handling this. All of this, the balance of work, the careful game of hiding from his friends, and Peter just had to show up and point out how very poorly he was handling it indeed.
The shock of a warm hand touching his chin, firm and kind, made Martin’s brain short out like a dead torch.
Peter stared at him with ice in his eyes. Gray and salty and old, in an eternal sort of way. Ice of the sea, ancient ice that had floated at the poles for centuries.
Then he tsked. A soft sound, chiding. Martin winced. Waited for the blow, however it chose to form itself: words, a hand, the cold embrace of an empty room.
“I suppose I have made this hard on you. I forgot that of all the assistants, you had that endless compassion.”
His hand moved to Martin’s hair and combed it to the side, his hand warm and soft like weathered leather. Martin blinked back tears and sniffled, sat still as to not wipe his nose on his sleeve.
“You can’t stand to see people die if you can help it. You still value each and every human life, as though they’re worth the same as the whole of creation remaining alive. Commendable, but. Crushing.” He sighed. “And of course I’m the narrative villain you find it so easy to hate, despite needing Forsaken to save our kind as well as your friends.”
He leaned on the desk and patted Martin’s cheek, calming him. Martin sniffled again, feeling younger than he was.
“I don’t mean to break you, Martin. I can see that’s what’s happening, and I’m sorry.”
“I hate you.”
“I know. That’s alright.”
“Oohh, I hate you.”
He choked it out even as Peter’s hand settled on the back of his neck, as Peter pulled him in for a hug. Just a hug. Firm. Warm. So warm, too warm for a man so cold, so averse to being known, so desperate to be unseen and unchallenged.
Martin thought he was going to shatter but something in the hug held him together, kept him from snapping into thousands of shards. Another warm hand settled on his back and Peter held him as he sat in his chair, his own hands useless and tucked against his chest.
“It will be alright, Martin. I won’t let anything kill you. You’re far too important. And you’re far too clever to fall into anyone’s trap. You know what I need from you, you’re building your own net. I can see it.”
The tears hadn’t stopped, but Martin sobbed. He made a broken sound, fingers loosening just enough to latch onto Peter’s canvas jacket.
“Let it out. It’s alright.”
He did. He clung there, crying, hating Peter, and Elias, and the Entities, and John. And his mother, his father, his life, all of humanity. He let himself spiral in it, sink down into it deep and grimy and satisfying, let himself pour out his fury and agony in tears and groans and sobs.
Peter’s hand pet the back of his hair, his shoulder. It didn’t wander. It didn’t feel wrong. It felt so horribly right for someone to comfort him like that, to have a parental voice tell him things would be okay.
He didn’t even have the energy to be angry when he was finished. Just tired.
Peter produced a handkerchief from nowhere, wiped his eyes. Pressed it into Martin’s hands.
“Let’s get you to the couch.”
“I don’t need this.”
“Yes. I know.”
“You’re not my father.”
“Yes, Martin. I know.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
“You’re a grown man, Martin.”
He knew. Of course he knew. Of course Martin knew he was too old to feel parented, too old to need a father figure. He never wanted one. Never needed one. But he felt he had to say it, to whisper it as Peter moved him to the futon. He whinged even as Peter found a blanket and draped it over Martin, tucked him in.
Peter turned the light off at his desk and handed Martin his phone. His fingers wrapped around the smooth plastic of the case and Martin settled it on his chest, frowning even as that strong hand combed his hair from his brow one more time.
“If you ever feel this lost again, please let me know.”
“You’re not--”
“No, I’m not, But we are in this ship together, after all. And I am your captain, as it were.” He smiled that polite, parental smile one more time. Cheeks red and rosy, crows feet crinkling the corners of his eyes.
Martin felt the fight flood out of him.
“Get some rest, Martin.”