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There’s something to be said for the satisfaction of being able to kick his feet up onto what was once Elias’ desk. It’s shiny and sleek; doubtlessly made of some kind of expensive wood and designed by someone very rich and talented.
Martin doesn’t much care about that, but it’s nice to know that somewhere, this may be irritating his old boss.
That is, if Elias isn’t already trying to remotely kill him with the power of his mind because of the whole Peter thing. And the way Martin has been running his beloved institute.
(He almost certainly is, and Martin has made his peace with that. Obviously, if something of that nature was within Elias’ capabilities, it would have already happened anyway. The man had certainly proven himself to be enthusiastic enough when it came to disposing of supposed threats to the sanctity of one of the Beholding’s favorite temples.)
Aside from his feet, the desk is completely covered with various forms, files and reports that are a necessary part of keeping the institute running. He thinks he’s been doing a decent job keeping up with all of it on his own, if he ignored what he was increasingly sure was carpal tunnel and accepted the necessity of destroying the institute’s pertinent records the minute he’d stopped needing them.
It helped that Peter had literally never shown up to a single conference or even met anyone else at the institute face-to-face before his mysterious disappearance.
(Well, not including the researchers Peter had introduced to the Lonely. The man would prattle endlessly at his chosen sacrifices, for reasons unknown but Martin suspected had something to do with psychological torture. He really should have taken it as a red flag at the beginning, when Peter was so chatty with him.)
No one expected to see him around the institute. No one looked for Peter Lukas in the halls or missed him at fundraisers or sent him passive aggressive emails when he wasn’t to be found in his office. Or well, people had done that last thing, until they finally put together the link between the string of office disappearances and the last email in the missing party’s outbox.
The only real changes were that Martin didn’t have to fend off the regular attempts at talking him into serving Forsaken, and his increasing skill at forging Peter’s signature.
(And his refusal to go searching for new staff to replace those that they’d lost. And his filling out countless disposal requests for dangerous artefact storage items. And his prescription to the Gertrude Robinson school of filing, the central tenet of which was to throw whatever you couldn’t immediately destroy into the first folder you laid eyes on.)
Honestly, it seemed too simple.
He’d successfully battled the bureaucratic side of the institute into submission through a combination of hard work and strategic half-truths, but wasn’t its true purpose to act as an extension of the Beholding?
Surely, it would matter that the interim head of the institute had been killed.
(Surely, it would matter that Martin ran it with the express purpose of destroying as much information as possible without burning the damn place down.)
But did that mean that a new institute head would have to be found? Would the role just bounce back to Elias? Or would it fall on him, since he had been doing all of Peter’s work anyway, and he’d been the one to kill him in the end?
It would be just his luck that he’d kill his boss and be made into some kind of evil eye monster (or worse , be made like Elias) as a reward.
Martin didn’t feel as if any eldritch duties or abilities had been bestowed on him. He still had just the two eyes, and was not feeling especially murderous toward those who posed a threat to the institute, quite the opposite.
Nor did he get the impression he was a beating heart of any kind, with staff bound to him as fingers to a hand or whatever the hell it was that Elias had said. He’d tried to tell himself he was fired, standing in front of the mirror after getting rid of Peter, but it really hadn’t felt… significant in the he’d imagined it would.
He could only imagine that the Beholding was waiting patiently for someone suitable to come take over, someone unlike Martin. Elias back from prison, some other fear avatar, maybe one of the Archive staff more approved of by the Beholding.
But in the meantime, at the very least, he could hold down the fort. And ideally, make sure that when it all caught up to him, he had at least done enough damage to make a difference.
-
Maybe it should have been obvious what it meant, but when Martin felt Jon step foot in the Archives, he didn’t think anything of it.
He just got to his feet, and rushed out of his office, down the stairs, down to where he somehow imagined, somehow knew Jon was picking through the dusty contents of his abandoned desk, eyebrows furrowed in consternation. (It wasn’t strange to come to the conclusion that Melanie and Basira were out for lunch, that Jon was alone down there.)
Martin slammed open the door to the Archives, and Jon jumped, dropping the pen he’d been examining. He turned, and met Martin’s eyes and smiled a little awkwardly, and he was there, and alive.
Jon was wearing jeans and a new-looking t-shirt that still bore the creases from the package it came from. His face was lined with exhaustion, and his hair noticeably more grey than Martin remembered, as well as tangled and greasy-looking. He hadn’t shaved in a day or two, judging by the stubble on his jaw. His lips looked dry.
Jon coughed, and Martin’s eyes snapped back up to meet his. He hadn’t even realised he’d been staring.
“Did you miss me?” Jon asked eventually, the joking lilt of it falling entirely flat. His voice was thin and thready.
His eyes still looked the same, though. That shade of brown so dark it was almost black. The eyes that had persistently featured in Martin’s dreams (and some of his nightmares). The eyes that he’d he’d fallen in love with before anything else.
“Yes,” Martin decided.
It wasn’t a decision when he took two quick steps forward and pressed a kiss to Jon’s mouth.
He only snapped out of it when after a long moment of shocked stillness, Jon relaxed and gently set a hand on his shoulder.
Martin flinched and stepped back, dislodging Jon’s hand. What did he do? What was he doing ? Did he just…?
Jon was no help at all, watching him with the dazed astonishment of the rudely awaken. His hand was still hovering in mid-air between them.
It had felt so natural, like something he had done a thousand times. He wanted to do it again. He couldn’t ever do it again.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me…” he said, speaking half over his shoulder as he took another step back and then turned on his heel, grabbing at the doorknob, mortification just starting to burn in his chest.
“Martin, I didn’t know that you-” Jon started faintly as Martin swung the door open, resolutely ignoring the part of him that called for him to stay back. (Barely aware of the part of him that wanted to, that reached for Jon’s thoughts, tried to find an end to the sentence.)
He only barely remembered to say, “Welcome back, Jon,” before he shut the door behind him and leaned against it, heart pounding. What was wrong with him?
Maybe it was some aftereffect of being freed from the Lonely, compulsively reaching for connections. Doing something he’d managed not to do for years . God, he was such an idiot.
“Martin?” came Jon’s voice, tentative and muffled through the door. “It’s, it’s alright, we don’t have talk about- about, I mean, if you don’t want to. It’s fine.”
“Yep, I- I’ll just go up to my office,” Martin managed quickly, practically sprinting away in his effort to get away from the door before Jon opened it and, god forbid, tried to let him down easy.
-
He’s not overstepping when he reminds what’s left of the Archival staff not to visit Elias, he’s not.
Melanie just snorts scornfully at the idea that she would ever visit that freak, and leaves the room without another word (although she does grab what’s left of Martin‘s mocha frappuccino and take it with her, much to his silent dismay). Basira watches him with cold suspicion, although the transparent fascination with which Jon studies him with is almost worse.
“Did Peter Lukas tell you to say that?” Basira asks levelly.
From the seat next to her, Jon leans closer, his eyes glinting with interest. He’s been very obviously bursting at the seams to interrogate Martin about Peter ever since he’s heard of the man’s existence, but has been limited by his complete inability to control his ability to compel answers and his reluctance to do it unintentionally.
Martin starts to shake his head, and then shrugs.
“I mean…it was implied?” he offers. (He tries to ignore the way the half-truth is making his skin crawl.)
“And you’re just passing it along? Maybe there’s something he doesn’t want us to know, maybe Elias has information,” she shoots back.
Martin doesn’t want this to turn into a fight, but there’s an intensity to her that almost matches Jon. He has to wonder just how much Basira had been leaning on the Beholding for inspiration while Melanie was being rotted from the inside out by the Slaughter and he was busy trying to play the game with a Lukas.
“Of course Elias has information, it’s just not information that’ll actually help anything.”
Well, that’s true, for a certain value of help. Martin sincerely believes that if Basira, Melanie or Jon were informed of Martin’s more unsavory actions re: homicide, it would definitely not help them in figuring out anything about the Watcher’s Crown (or the potential emergence of a 15th fear, which has become Martin’s pet project after he decided Peter’s warnings on the subject were worth worrying about.)
Jon, who has been practically vibrating with his desire to ask a question, says, “And Peter told you that,” delivering it as a statement to try to limit any compulsion.
Of course, the second he opens his mouth, Martin knows it's not going to work. There’s that familiar resonant hum, like there’s a struck tuning fork somewhere inside Martin, vibrating relentlessly through his throat and out of his mouth.
He can practically taste it on his tongue. No, Peter hasn’t told me anything for the last few months because he’s been dead. Oh, why is he dead? Because I murdered him, of course!
But instead, he says what he wants to say, what he’s thinking and trying to say.
“Jon, we’ve talked about the compelling.”
Jon flinches, looking surprised and then guilty. Then curious, and then guiltier.
“I apologise, Martin, I really didn’t intend to…”
Martin nods through Jon’s apology, mostly trying not to panic over what a close call that had been. Politely pretends not to notice the hole that Basira is trying to stare into his head.
(He hadn’t wanted to answer the question, the compulsion, and so he didn't. The Archivist said, tell me , and Martin ignored it. He can still feel the question trembling the air in his lungs.)
“So, yes, to summarise,” Martin starts once Jon has fallen silent, “Peter implied to me that it might not be in our collective best interest to visit Elias. Because he isn’t in the habit of helping us. At all.”
Basira tilts her head in silent concession at that, well aware of Elias’ policy of non-interference.
“And I passed it on to you guys, because it seemed like it could be hinting at something bigger and very possibly dangerous that he wouldn’t ever tell me directly. “
Silence. Basira and Jon are staring at him, both of their gazes equally unnerving for different reasons.
(Jon watches him with the uncanny interest of the Archivist, like he’s about to trip on a statement at any second. Basira looks utterly herself, which makes Martin wonder if she’s even changed at all, or she’d already been...something else when she joined the Archives.)
“And because being direct makes Peter… uncomfortable,” he finishes lamely.
Basira raises her hand, her tone slightly mocking while she lifts a quizzical eyebrow. “And we are respecting the boundaries of your spooky-” Jon twitches- “boss for what reason, exactly?”
“Well, it’s not like I can bully the man into telling me things.” Not like I could , back when asking him questions was still an option…
“Can’t you?” Basira says lowly, and Martin shakes his head before the real implication of the question registers.
“No! No, I don’t- can’t… do that. And even if I could, I’m sure he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of...um, pushiness?” Probably true. “Besides, isn’t that an Archivist-only kind of thing?” he adds, glancing at Jon.
“As far as I can tell, yes. If Elias can compel answers, he’s never seen fit to demonstrate,” Jon offers, shrugging slightly.
“Yes, and let’s not give him a chance to prove you wrong, then,” Martin says, trying to sound final rather than pleading.
It must do something to sort the issue, because when Jon and Basira nod- the latter with visible reluctance- a tape recorder that had been whirring quietly in the corner of the room clicks off.
None of them jump.
-
Martin hadn’t ever gotten on well with Daisy.
She’d been awful to everyone when she’d first started coming by the Archives, she’d nearly killed Jon, and she’d obviously taken a strange sort of satisfaction in intimidating him, specifically.
Of course, now he knew that his terror in her presence must have smelled so sweet and tempting. It hadn’t been anything personal: she’d been a predator, and he’d acted like a frightened rabbit. Just nature, he supposed
And now that Jon had (with his reluctant blessing) descended into the Buried and come back out with Daisy following meekly at his heels, Martin was resigned to her at least making an attempt to inspire the same fear in him.
It wouldn’t come easily, he didn’t think. Some combination of the time he’d spend with Peter and his position in the institute had made feelings a little hard, lately. Of course he still felt afraid, irritated, upset, embarrassed , but it was all just easier to turn away from.
So when Daisy knocks on the door to his office, Martin puts on his friendliest face while he neatly tucks all the loose ends of his emotions away and out of sight.
“Come in,” he calls, resisting the urge to invite her in by name. That is Jon’s bad habit.
Martin had not expected the woman that walked into his office. The woman that took care to open the door as quietly as possible, and walked as gently as her injured legs would allow.
Of course he’d been there when Jon had climbed out of the coffin. Of course he’d seen Daisy looking filthy and pale and haunted.
He just hadn’t imagined she’d look so human.
“Hi,” she says, and then, “D’you mind?”
What exactly was it he was supposed to be minding? He shakes his head, confused and more than a little curious (terrible habit, but couldn’t be helped). Daisy laboriously heads to the sole unoccupied chair in the room and settles in it.
Martin waits. Daisy says nothing. A long moment passes and she takes out her phone and starts to play some kind of app game.
Is he… missing something?
Maybe this is some kind of mind game. Martin gets back to skimming a book detailing how the atomic bomb was conceived, which had to be at least somewhat relevant to the Extinction. But he can’t stop glancing up at Daisy, seemingly serene as a number of little cartoon figures met gruesome ends on her phone screen.
“Sorry, did you need… why are you here?” Martin eventually asks, setting down his book with a thump. Daisy flinches, very slightly, and he doesn’t feel guilty.
“I just...like to be around people,” Daisy says quietly.
Ever since I was Buried , Martin finishes for her.
Martin would like to pretend he wouldn’t be able to make himself kick Daisy out of the office, if all she wants is quiet company. But he is well aware that he would have done so without a second thought a few months ago. He could still do it now, but he doesn’t like the way he acted while he worked for Peter very much.
(However much he changes, he would like to think it matters, who he’s trying to be.)
So Martin says, “All right, then,” under his breath, and wakes up his laptop. There’s work to be done, after all.
-
It’s funny, how sure Martin had been that his emotions were drifting out of reach after he killed Peter. Maybe he had just been bored, or something. Because it only took a few choice words from Jon to get him seething .
“Are you kidding me, Jon? We get an evil coffin, and your first bright idea is to walk straight into it!?”
The worst part is that Jon is looking him straight in the eye. Martin hasn’t seen him so confident since… well, ever. (Disquieting that a suicide mission would be the thing to put that steely look in his eyes.)
“If I go in there, I can get Daisy out. It’s the only way to get her back, and I have a way to get out, if I just find an anchor, then I’ll be able to follow it back.”
An awful, selfish part of Martin wants to ask why they want Daisy back. They’ve gotten on well enough without her. She’s a murderer. She died . (But Martin was a murderer, and Jon had died and come back, so why not?)
He forces those thoughts away. First things first.
“Are you sure? Like, sure-sure? Beholding-sure, or is this just conjecture from a statement you read?”
(He tries not to think too hard about citing the Beholding as a good source of information. Desperate times, and all that.)
Jon exhales in a quick gust of air, darting his eyes away for an instant .
“It’s from a statement-”
“ God, Jon-”
“But it’ll work! I just need something really connects to me, to my body and I should be able to find my way back-”
“Oh, like what ?” Martin interrupts again, unable to stop himself.
Here, Jon averts his gaze completely. When he speaks, it’s a notch quieter and directed mostly into his shirt collar.
“It just, it’s seems that, well, a body part would do the trick-”
“ Body part? !” Martin hisses, appalled, and Jon throws up his hands in exasperation.
“I mean, if you’ve got something better, I’d love to hear it!” he says, as if Martin is being unreasonable by opposing Jon’s super sensible self-amputation strategy.
Easy, don’t go in the fucking coffin. Call it quits on the crazy woman that tried to cut your throat and bury you in the woods.
“I don’t- I don’t know,” he says instead. There’s a terrific migraine building right behind his eyes, where at this point in an argument he might have previously been fighting the urge to cry, before Peter and all that. Small blessings.
“I don’t like it either, Martin, of course I don’t. It’s my finger that’d be getting chopped off-” Martin winces, but Jon stubbornly carries on-”but it doesn’t seem like there anything else I could do.”
“You’re sure there’s nothing else?” Martin asks, pinching futilely at the bridge of his nose in a weak attempt to stave off the pain, suddenly feeling very tired. “Maybe there’s a statement somewhere… we could look around and see if there’s... just anything else.”
Jon’s previously slightly flustered countenance takes on a new layer of discomfort. He starts fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt, which Martin remembers most prominently from his unconvincing attempts to explain why exactly he’d had printed pictures of Tim’s house on his desk.
“Jon…?” Martin asks, letting a slight warning enter his voice. Jon was still the man that would run away to have chats with servants of the Desolation. Hesitation on his part was extremely foreboding.
“Well, ah, the…” Jon stops fiddling with his shirt buttons and starts valiantly trying to pick at the nonexistent scabs of long healed burn scars on his hand. Martin narrowly suppresses the urge to smack his hand to make him stop.
“Technically, the more reliable way in statements is, well, human connection. It was just the one that had a physical object acting as the anchor… it worked, though!” Jon finishes, perking up slightly, and then wilting the moment he looks back at Martin’s face.
“And there’s no…?” Martin forces himself to say. He forces himself not to think about Georgie, who had come out of nowhere to harbor Jon when he was suspected of murder. He knows it will only lead to unkind thoughts.
“No, there’s no… I mean,” Jon is intently looking down at his hands. He glances up for a moment, and then goes back to watching his hands, twisting them so that his knuckles whiten.
“I suppose, it's sort of dream logic that it runs by, so... you could, or I- or not. No, never mind. It’ll have to be a finger, I think.”
Martin feels like he’s missing something. Jon is shifting like he’s about to stand up and leave, but there’s something unsaid in the way that he won’t meet Martin’s eyes.
“Wait, sorry, what were you going to say?”
Jon twitches and stills.
“I don’t think it’s important.”
“I think it maybe is?”
“It’s not… look, you wouldn’t want to. It’s not- well, appropriate on my part-”
“Look, Jon, just spit it out!”
“I thought, to help establish an anchor, maybe if I kissed you-” Jon says, and then actually claps a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with shock.
There’s a long silence. Jon has moved his hand to cover his face, seemingly overcome. For his part… Martin isn’t quite sure how he feels.
“You kissed me earlier,” Jon eventually elaborates, without moving his hand from his eyes. “And I wasn’t… opposed, and if it’s about connection , then I think it.... Um.”
“Not... opposed ?” Martin hears himself echo faintly.
Jon moves his hand, and he is wearing a look on his face that might best be described as ‘humiliated’.
“It was nice, I mean. And with the symbolism of it, maybe it, I know it's not exactly a relationship, but, um- I do like you. So if you'd want to give it a try, um...”
“And... you kissed me, um, when I got back, do I thought maybe you were...interested?” he adds, as if Martin has forgotten his stupid little slip.
There’s a part of Martin, recently neglected and bearing a thin layer of dust, that is desperately casting about for a way to call Forsaken to him. The rest of him of him is busy rediscovering that he still has quite a lot of feelings for the man that has just offered to kiss him.
The same man who was trying to very subtly get out of his chair and flee the room.
Wait, hang on. Martin gets out of the fancy ergonomic office chair he’d inherited, starts to step around the desk with one hand outstretched.
“Jon, just. Wait a moment?”
Jon freezes, half-standing, looking very hunted for an instant. Martin gets around to his side of the desk, and leans back against it.
“Just. Stay there. Let me think for a second.”
Jon opens his mouth, and then closes it. He looks back at the vacated chair and awkwardly settles on one of the arms, assumedly trying to appear as though he hadn’t just tried to make a break for it.
(There’s this look on his face, anxious and faintly hopeful, that makes Martin’s chest hurt.)
Martin tries to think past all the stupid emotions that are trying to make themselves heard. (There’s a giddy joy trying to push his mouth into a smile, and it’s just shy of overwhelming.) Yes, he had kissed Jon, but he hadn’t expected it to go anywhere... insofar as he’d had expectations about something done completely on impulse.
Was it possible that this was another one of Jon’s acts of self-sacrifice? It was a painful thought, but it sort of made sense, in an awful way. Jon needed a connection, and Martin was right there- well, scrap that, he’d practically had to break out the thumbscrews to get Jon to bring it up. Was it that Jon would sooner cut off a finger than kiss him, or would rather mutilate himself than talk about his feelings? A good case could be made for both.
But the easiest way to find out would probably involve asking him.
“Before we consider this as, well, an option, I just need to check that you don’t feel… obliged? To do this,” he asks, and there’s something familiar. It’s the same look Jon always used to give him when they were arguing about the viability of a ghost as a murder suspect, or something of that nature. Incredulous and faintly confused, although there is thankfully no disdain or disappointment in the way Jon looks at him now.
“Why would I feel obliged to kiss you?” Jon asks, sounding very sincerely baffled.
“Because, I don’t know, you don’t want to have to cut off any parts of yourself? Because I've kissed you without asking? Sorry for that, by the way.” Martin replies, confused but also relieved he’s finally gotten that off his chest.
“Oh, apology accepted, obviously.” Jon says quickly and without ceremony, before he continues, “In all fairness, you’d be equally obliged in that scenario, since you also have a vested interest in making sure I remain uninjured.”
Martin starts to argue, and then cuts himself off. Jon has a point. And he’d said that he’d liked Martin, for what that was worth. Any further argument was probably just stalling. But he had to be sure.
“I just, I need to know. That you’re okay with this,” he says, watching Jon intently for any nervous fidgeting, any hint of discomfort. “We can find another way, if it comes down to it.”
Jon has shifted to the edge of chair arm, leaning in his direction. He looks Martin in the eye, and his eyes are as intense as ever. Irises that were dark brown, almost the same color as his pupil, but there’s no reflection in them. Anything they see, they keep.
“I am okay with it,” Jon says, snapping Martin out of his brief daze. “And, honestly, I’d rather that we tried this before we did anything else.”
He smiles at Martin, only a bit awkward. Martin feels searingly warm, out to the tips of his fingers.
“Well, in that case... Come here?” Martin says, and still managed to be astonished when Jon does, getting to his feet and stepping easily into Martin’s space. He’s barely shorter than Martin, just enough to be noticeable when in close proximity.
Jon gently sets a hand on Martin’s shoulder and leans in.
The kiss is nice. They’re both a little hesitant, but when he tentatively puts his hand on the back of Jon’s neck, Jon sighs happily and kisses him again, a little deeper. The second kiss is better, warm and intimate.
Martin loses count, after that.
It’s a significant amount of time before he leans back a little, places a kiss on Jon’s forehead, and wraps his arms around him for a proper embrace. When Jon hugs him back, his throat gets thick and he has to swallow against it a few times.
“Do you think that worked?” Jon whispers, resting his head on Martin’s shoulder.
“I don’t know, we might have to try a few more times before it sticks,” Martin says, and Jon laughs quietly into his neck.
They'll have to talk about this, far more than they've already done.
They'll have to talk about comfort zones, and boundaries, so they can try to avoid stepping on each other's plentiful raw spots, avoid reopening wounds.
But for now, he lets himself enjoy the warm, human feeling of Jon's breath on his skin, and the quiet sincerity of his answer:
“Agreed.”
-
Daisy has become something of a fixture in Martin’s office. Well, no, she’s not there that often, just when Basira is out on one of her mysterious solo missions (normally fruitless little quests regarding the Watcher’s Crown) or Jon is having a statement. But she’s there a lot compared to what Martin’s been acclimated to, which is no one visiting him, ever.
Well, okay, that’s not fair, if he counts recent developments.
Jon has been around a lot, but he has some sort of mental block against actually coming in to talk to Martin in the office that was once Elias’ unless it’s about something serious or he’s feeling particularly affectionate. Otherwise, he hovers in the doorway, seemingly in the hopes that Martin will eventually give in and follow him down to the Archives. Martin tries not to find it sort of cute, mostly unsuccessfully.
Basira will come in and try to get information from him, sometimes. He seems to have been tentatively removed from the ‘compromised’ box she’d mentally placed him in back when he’d jumped ship, and set somewhere closer to ‘informant’. Old habits die hard, after all. He tells her all he reasonably can on matters of the Eye, which is not very much. He’s thinking about letting her in on his research on the Extinction, but he’s not entirely sure she wouldn’t do something rash. She and Jon have far too much in common, some days.
Even before she'd begun her slow dissociation from the institute, Melanie had avoided his office like the plague. Suffice to say, it seemed to bring up bad memories.
(In this estimate, Peter doesn’t count as a visitor. He counts negatively, actually. Considering.)
Daisy isn’t business-like with her visits. She’ll drag in a rolling chair somewhere around lunchtime and tap away on her phone. Sometimes she’ll bring in a laptop and stream an episode of one of the various soap operas she keeps up with, mostly the Archers. (She claims the connection is better out of the Archives, since both being a basement and a hub of supernatural activity doesn’t do the internet speed any favors.)
When Martin’s on his lunch breaks (which he actually takes, Jon ), she’ll strike up a conversation. It’s a little odd being the one to be chatted at, especially while it’s Detective Alice Tonner, the terrifying former policewoman and serial killer, making small talk.
But, well, his time with Peter has somewhat cured him of his nervous babbling habit. And he can’t exactly throw stones in the area of putting down troublesome avatars, can he? (He’s still mad about the whole Jon thing, though. Probably always will be.)
So he allows Daisy to coax him into talks. It’s surprising, or maybe not, that it’s so easy to have a conversation with the woman that once interrogated him and terrified him out of his wits. Maybe it’s the interrogation training that makes her a decent conversationalist.
He doesn’t talk about anything important , of course not. But he can mention the little things that had been secret back when he was just a researcher. The fake degree. The dying, now dead, mother. All that. Hopefully that’ll satisfy her if she’s trying to trick him into letting down his guard and give something up.
She’s surprisingly non-judgemental. Even more surprisingly, she’s open about herself.
Maybe it’s a product of a near-death experience, maybe not. Certainly, the same thing had brought out a whole new side of Jon. (Sometimes he wondered if the Jon that woke up was a different person entirely. He would worry about it more if it weren’t for the eyes, completely unchanged.)
She talks about Basira, eyes gone soft in a way that Martin almost feels unworthy to witness. She talks about the call of the Hunt, with a mixture of longing and regret. Sometimes, barely ever, she talks about her kills, and the creases in her face are all disgust, self-loathing. (Martin pretends he doesn’t listen to these stories with a special interest, looking for anything familiar, that he’s seen in himself. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything about it.)
Martin takes it all in, doesn’t contribute much in the way of reassurance or condemnation. Maybe she likes that, maybe she just wants someone who won’t feed it to their god. He sincerely hopes that isn’t what happens when he listens.
He tries to tell himself that he doesn’t care, but he’s familiar with the sensation, of caring . He’s grown to like having her around, rather than just tolerating her presence.
He likes less that she sometimes asks careful questions about how he’s doing.
They’re so… indirect, is what bothers him. She asks them in a way that suggests it won’t mean anything when he inevitably brushes them off, but surely it does . Surely she’s keeping track of the empty space left by every innocent query he talks around.
There are the times he goes cold and quiet, rebuffs any friendliness and works through lunch. It’s extremely easy to do, but... it makes him feel ridiculous, like he’s sulking.
It’s easier, less guilty, to just feed her curated answers, filled with vague complaints.
Has Peter been as much as bastard as usual, lately?
“Sure, of course. Honestly, if he was suddenly pleasant, it would probably creep me out more .”
Things’ve been alright, though? He hasn’t done anything?
“No, yeah, it’s all business as usual. I run the whole institute for him, and he comes in sometimes and does his best to proselytize while I beg him to sign off on the tax forms. The most he does is make ominous comments which I’m choosing to interpret in the same vein as Christians inquiring about the state of my immortal soul.”
Of course, it’s inevitable that he slips, he supposes. He is himself, after all. He’s like the human equivalent of waving to an acquaintance who was actually smiling at someone standing behind him, so you can’t expect too much.
It’s maybe a week since her last check-in on him, some casual inquiry about how he’s doing with managing a job that he had about zero training for. (“Honestly, it’s hell, but not the kind of hell the Archives is. In the Archives, I’d have worms eating me or some shit, and here I’m busy volleying endless emails from the nice people over in our financial department because they’re used to how Elias had them do things and unused to following actual laws re: the illegality of tax evasion.”)
He and Daisy usually have lunch together at least once a week, and they alternate on who is supposed to pick up lunch for the other. Neither of them can cook to save their lives, so what they get is mostly reflective of their respective fast food tastes. Martin likes to get pre-made sandwiches and the little pastries they have at supermarkets, and the like. They’re always decent, and they’re good with tea.
Daisy prefers water to tea (a preference he treats with thinly veiled contempt) and so she usually picks whatever she can find that’s hot and freshly made. It’s almost always different, as she has a near-compulsive need to visit a different place each time. Martin wonders if she lives in London just for access to a nearly unlimited supply of unique restaurants.
They’re both rather picky, so it’s with a palpable lack of enthusiasm that Daisy picks the croutons out of yet another salad, and some dismay that Martin sets into a mediocre curry from a restaurant that Daisy has reputably been “meaning to try” that took her a round 60 minutes trip to access.
(It’s definitely reading into it to say that they need the distraction. Bickering over lunch is pointless, and doesn’t change that Daisy is probably dying, that Martin is definitely changing. They both know this, so neither of them say anything about it.)
He’s wincing at the mixed taste of sweet tea and savory curry when Daisy, who’s absolutely demolished her portion and is now wistfully regarding the portions that she’s picked up for Jon and Basira, gets it in her head to ask him one of her check-up questions.
“Just don’t answer if this is prying, but Peter hasn’t done anything, right? No direct threats?”
Martin almost bristles before he remembers that he hasn’t told her about how Elias had been after Martin had deliberately pissed him off. It’s a sensible question. It’s not supposed to have him hearing Elias’ voice, flat and impatient. Let’s just get this over this, shall we?
That’s what Martin’s mostly thinking of when he answers, Elias’ cool fingers gripping his wrist while unwanted knowledge, a face that could be his own in ten years, is forced into his mind.
“No, he’s never really been threatening , precisely? Like, I’ve never thought he was going to do anything beyond like, shove me into the Lonely for a few days, once I got to know him. He’s ominous and creepy but indirect by nature.”
Something flashes across Daisy’s face while Martin is talking, and he can’t quite catch it before she’s settled back into the rather familiar ‘I’m angry but for you rather than at you’ face.
“I think Basira’s mentioned something about him being indirect, yeah,” she says, and Martin can’t help but feel that there’s… a piece missing. It’s almost like a word he can’t quite remember, just out of reach. Daisy has something she’s not saying.
Martin doesn’t say anything, but lets the silence stretch while he makes a valiant effort at polishing off his lunch. The only thing worse than warm curry was cold curry.
It’s probably a horrible, supernatural invasion of privacy rather than some inherent talent at reading the tone of silences, but he can actually feel Daisy decide to say something else, prod just a bit more.
“...So, you’ve never had to defend yourself, then?” Daisy asks eventually, setting down her plastic utensils and watching him steadily. Martin’s learned that Daisy’s face doesn’t change when she’s nervous or trying to hide something, but instead her accent flattens out a bit.
Focusing on the little tell helps to distract him while the question itself has panic seeping cold through his chest. His heart doesn’t bother to race anymore, but he feels a little lightheaded anyway. This is so close to his secret. She almost certainly knows.
He lets his anxiety flows into his words, switches on the faucet of irrelevant chatter so he can answer her question and give himself some time to think .
“I mean, if you’re asking verbal defense then yes, I kind of tell him off every other time he comes to bother me-”
If she knows, why has she messed around and not just confronted him? God, can she tell that he’s killed? He doesn’t know, doesn’t know anything -
“Originally, I was kind of super nervous around him, like when I first ran into him while Elias was still here?
It does seem like she’s fishing for information. Maybe a confession, but maybe she’s not sure. He’ll have to believe she hasn’t told the others, since it’s way more sensible to just have Jon compel him if they want him to admit to anything.
“But, when I came to him to ask about protecting the archives, I was sort of burnt out of fear, or maybe just that kind of fear-”
But she has something, enough to be suspicious, to justify the prying, this whole roundabout attempt to get his guard down.
“So the first time I talked back, I maybe sort of expected to be jettisoned into Forsaken, but he kind of ignored it and in retrospect it makes sense since the man can’t stand confrontation-”
God , he was so stupid , it was the gun. Oh course it was the gun, what else. It was gone, he’d taken it, used it, and thrown it in a lake at a national park and of course people notice when their things are gone.
“And yeah I mean. To answer your question, sorry about the word vomit, yes, technically .”
Daisy is looking a little round-eyed. And yeah, to his memory, they didn’t chat much when being an anxious chatterbox was his trademark, but surely she’d seen enough that it wasn’t too out of character in her mind.
Christ, he hoped she would just assume the gun just disappeared on its own.
“God, Martin, I was just going to ask you if you took one of my guns,” she says, sounding a bit blown away.
And this is Martin’s real fuck-up, because the combination of incredulity at the point-blank question and absolute, overwhelming panic produces the unexpected result of laughter. Uncontrollable, hysterical laughter.
See, the thing is that It’s not funny, it isn’t, but that’s sort of funny, too? And him losing his composure like this is humorous in a pathetic, him-hating-himself way.
And Daisy looking at him like he’s just confessed to his secret dream of being a full-time circus clown is extremely funny, and he briefly remembers the horrible laughter of that thing that called itself Michael, and has the thought, well the tables have turned, haven't they? Which also isn’t funny but still cracks him up anyway.
He laughs until he wiping away tears, and then has the thought that he’s terrified of a serial killer finding out that he killed one monstrous person because he doesn’t want her to judge him, and giggles about that until his stomach hurts.
By the time he’s managed to collect himself enough to speak, Daisy is looking thoroughly alarmed, halfway through taking her phone out of her pocket as if to call for backup.
“I’m sorry, Daisy, I really am,” Martin says, wiping his cheeks and trying to force down residual giggles.
“It’s uhm, it’s alright,” she says, sounding rather unnerved. That’s fair, ominous laughter is something of a red flag in their line of work.
“I just-” he tries to force away his stupid smile, barely succeeds- “it’s just, I did do that!”
“Sorry, you what ?” Daisy asks, her tone slowly moving from concerned confusion to concerned exasperation.
“I just, I wasn’t expecting you to just come out and ask , you know? Yes! Yes, Daisy, I did steal your gun! I shot someone with it, too!”
The words are just as horrible and irrepressible as the laughter. A part of him even enjoys them, relishing in the feeling of an awful secret revealed. Or well, maybe not a part of him .
Daisy’s posture shifts in an instant, alert. Behind her eyes is something he hasn’t seen for a while, sharp and starving. Worst of all is how much she resembles Jon in her hunger.
“Who?”
It’s awful, it’s so terrible, but the intensity of the question and the juxtaposition of their location is suddenly comical all over again. Daisy has wheeled her swivel chair over where Peter Lukas bled and breathed his last. Hell, she’s probably noticed it before, old blood stains that Martin hadn’t been able to sponge out of the carpet, and just dismissed it as something else. Maybe she thought it was left over from one of Elias’.
He can’t stop the grin, his shoulders are still shaking with suppressed mirth, so he covers his mouth with one hand. Hopes the shudders can be confused for something else.
“Peter Lukas,” he tells her, voice trembling, though he no longer feels giddy and high with the truth. He feels sick, and small.
This is apparently not what she expected, because the Hunt leeches out of her as quickly as it had come, and Daisy slumps back limply into her chair. Her phone drops out of her loose grip to the floor, and she doesn’t try to pick it up.
“You just…?” she asks, then hesitates and starts again. “So you…”
“Yep!” Martin tells her brightly, his words coming out high and wavering. “Peter was disappearing researchers, and I was doing his job, and the Archives didn’t even seem to need any damn protection, anyway, and he was just, just a problem, and I couldn’t sleep, and I just didn’t, didn’t care if I died, so I. I dealt with him.”
His voice breaks sharply on dealt, and a tear slips down his face. God. He misses back when he was apathetic all the time. Where was the Lonely when you needed it?
The thought, and the inherent irony of missing the Lonely, makes him laugh, but it comes out much closer to a sob.
He’s broken out of his misery by the sound of Daisy gently rapping her knuckles on his desk, just next to his elbow.
He looks up at her, presumably pathetic and tearstained, and she manages a surprisingly warm smile. It really does transform her whole face when she smiles, makes her look kind.
She meets his eyes, as steady as ever, resting one hand just shy of his own. Not pushing, but there.
“I don’t know if it helps you to hear this, but you did the right thing,” she says.
She sounds so sure, completely without doubt, looking at him without a hint of judgement in her eyes.
He takes her hand.