Chapter Text
The days pass so slow, lately.
Martin wakes up to the sound of chirping fieldfares, the beginnings of main street traffic, and the quiet thrum of rain having a go at the concrete. He used to like all of the noise, really, but it irks him now. Just about everything irks him now, or makes him unreasonably sad, or —
...The birds and the beeping and the downpour, it's all just a little bit too much.
Martin sits up and kicks his legs over the side of his bed with vigor, pushes himself off of the bed with one elbow-shove of effort, and lets his bare feet hit the ground. The hardwood is bloody cold, and that makes him all the more irritated. He stands to slam his window shut, a little more forcefully than necessary, and winces at the noise.
He frowns at himself in the wet reflection of the glass pane and then draws the blinds closed, too.
(Martin wishes he could find his slippers. They've been missing for months.)
With a hand on the wall as his support, he makes his way to his kitchen, teetering and sluggish with every step he takes. He gives an utterly exhausted look to the thermostat just outside his bedroom door — it's a chilling 1°C today — and, as if on cue, he shudders so hard that it hurts. He shoves the sleeves down on his jumper so that they cover his palms and tries desperately to keep his body heat to himself.
The calendar on his fridge says it's a Sunday. Martin sighs, something deep and low in his throat, and turns his back to it to dig somewhere deep in a cabinet, looking for something to brew. Sundays are when he used to call the nursing home to check up on his mum, and every weekend he'd get the same type of answers — no, she doesn't want to talk, yes, she's doing fine, no, she doesn't want you to visit, call back later — and he'd hang up feeling awful, but at least it was something to do. At least the nurse who picked up the phone, Wendy, was nice. She used to ask him how his days were.
He doesn't call the home at all anymore. There's no need to, nobody to check up on. He wonders if Wendy is doing well.
There's a lone tea bag on the third shelf, hidden behind all of the baking materials. He has to hold it up to his face to see it properly, and gives it nothing short of a grimace when he realizes it's chai. Martin also realizes, now, that he can't see all that well, and that his glasses are still on his bedside table.
Right. Cardamom chai is not the best tasting thing in the world, but it's something, and unfortunately for Martin, caffeine is the only thing that he can depend on anymore.
He tries to think about where he got it from. A variety pack or maybe a gift? He's just assuming, because he doesn't think he would ever buy cardamom upon good conscience. He can't remember. He stops trying to remember.
So, Martin makes tea he doesn't like in a pot far too big for one person, and the doorbell rings while he's pouring some of it into a mug he hasn't washed in days. Filling the cup could've taken thirty seconds or thirty minutes; Martin can't tell which. His attention phases in and out these days.
The doorbell rings again while he's stirring some honey into it, and rings once more as he takes a sip. As expected, it doesn't taste good.
Then, there's a familiar knock, five taps in rampant succession and two more, somewhere lower on the door.
He knows it's Tim and Sasha. It's always Tim and Sasha. It's never been anybody else, at least, given the state of his social life and the way it's been dwindling with his mourning this and depression that. On one hand, it tends to make him feel a bit pathetic: the fact that he used to know so many people, and the fact that he has to use the phrasing past tense. But maybe having a smaller circle is not all that bad. Sasha and Tim been keeping him afloat all this time without complaint, like it's an easy thing to do. And that's all he can ask for, isn't it?
He grabs two more mugs from the shelf and fills them up, too.
"It should be open," he calls quickly, loud enough to hear from the opposite side of the door, and it opens just as swift.
Familiar voices tumble in through the doorway. One is light, polite and snippy, and another, gruff and sarcastic and warm. They're bantering, like they usually do coming into Martin's flat, and he listens in to the overlapping argument of just how high a man should be cuffing his jeans.
(Tim says that there's no such thing as too high of a cuff. Sasha says that a two-inch cuff is more than enough. Martin doesn't know where he falls on the matter.)
There's the noise of two pairs of boots being shucked off, dripping wet from the rain outside as they hit the ground, and following the sound is a very fond statement of, "Tim, you're the only person who would ever consider cuffing their trousers to the knee."
They aren't entirely unexpected or unwelcome, Martin considers, dipping his spoon into some more honey to sweeten up Sasha's tea and not bothering with Tim's (who drinks his tea like a heathen — sugarless and sad), but he wishes they would warn him first. A text, or something, just to let him know to clean up first.
He runs a palm over the scruff on his chin, contemplates on hiding away in his bathroom to shave his patchy stubble, and then thinks that he should be fine. They've seen him in worse states than this, surely. (Have they? They have, haven't they?) Martin still takes a bit of precaution to ruffle up his bedhead before balancing all three mugs in his hands and making his way out to his friends.
"Hi." His voice is meek. "Tea."
It's quite dim there, in the living room, save for a window that Martin's yet to have shut the shutters on. It usually lets in a minimal amount of light, but even less so, now, given the weather outside. The rain's grown terribly thunderous and the rainclouds are doing a great job at hiding the sun. He can see the outline of the biggest pieces of furniture and that's about it. It's not a problem, because he mostly knows his way around by memory.
But, apparently, despite so many late nights in at Martin's place, Tim doesn't.
"Martin!" Tim exclaims, bright like the sun. He walks forward, arms open for a generous hug, and nearly trips over something absolutely obscured by darkness. It startles Martin so bad that he almost drops their tea, and Sasha stifles a little laugh.
"Hello!" Sasha greets kindly, stepping around Tim carefully to get to Martin. He hands off her tea to her and she takes it with a high look of thanks, one that Martin has to squint at to see among the gloom in the room.
She takes a nice, long sip from her mug, and then hums. "Ooh, thank you. That hits the spot — chai, is it? How did you know we were coming?"
"Uh, I didn't. I made this just before you rung the doorbell and had an inkling it was you two."
"Sorry for just barging in." She always apologizes for it, and never really seems sorry. She rubs at her eyes, her glasses tipping on her face a bit, and says, "We called a few times last night. You didn't pick up, and we were a bit worried, so we just came right over."
"Huh. Can't see shit in the Blackwood household." Tim sounds out from a few feet away, feeling along the wall with his hands. He bumps into something that sounds suspiciously hollow and tall, probably Martin's bookcase, and several objects fall to the floor. "Sorry. Can I turn on a light?"
"Sure," Martin says without much thought., "If you can find it."
After some time, Tim does find the light switch, and the lamp overhead flickers on. Martin takes the moment to hand Tim his mug of tea, and he lets out a low whistle as he accepts it. While he and Sasha survey the room, Martin takes a good look at them both.
Sasha wasn't kidding when she confessed that they'd rushed right over.
Her long, curly hair is tossed up in a high bun, frizzy from the rain, and there's a significant lack of jewelry on her — Sasha has always been one to keep up appearances, and copious amounts of accessorizing is just her thing. Her signature plum-colored lipstick is nowhere to be seen. She's in a frilly, nightie-looking slip dress with a hoodie over top. And Tim is dressed much the same: his hair is a little flat on one side but otherwise he looks just fine. He looks snuggled to hell in a pullover far too big for him and some plaid pajama bottoms.
Martin doesn't feel so bad about how he looks anymore. But he does feel bad about the state of his living room floor.
"Wow, it sure is... awful, in here." Tim's concern and amazement is audible, looking over the clutter of the room like he's impressed by it. Sasha slaps a hand to her cheek and makes a sound like she's deflating.
Martin tears his eyes away from the contours of Tim's face. Tim is right. It's not great. The light exposes a lot more than he was ready to see.
Yesterday night sort of comes back to him.
It's an odd lineup of emotions in his mind. Martin tries hard to remember it all, but it's so pitiful that he stops halfway through. He recalls a few things: clinging to the very few nice moments he's ever shared with his mum, mourning the loss of someone who's taken care of him all his life, very pointed anger at his father for up and leaving, fear that it was his fault that his mum died unhappy. He'd forgotten how it started — he'd like to think that there's a reason for his behavior, rooting through everything that reminded him of his mum to have something to hold onto. But sometimes he just gets like this, and Martin's come to accept that — and he didn't care how it ends.
Everything is out of place. There's family memorabilia everywhere. There are vintage-looking knickknacks, old books slightly ajar, and scratched up vinyl records buried in shag rug under the coffee table. Some of the vinyls are broken. Lined pieces of paper that have small, quaint writing on them are ripped up like pieces of confetti, and they seem to be shoved into small piles, like Martin tried to clean up and just couldn't. The coffee table itself looks a little wounded as well, dented at the base.
Martin wonders how he could've forgotten he did this. He forgets a lot, lately. Probably could've stopped Tim and Sasha at the door, told them he's busy, or maybe just played it off as a messy room; but it's too much. He's been caught red-handed in the aftermath of a breakdown.
It could all be poetic, maybe, if it wasn't such a miserable sight.
Martin warbles a bit on his feet like he's been pushed.
"Sorry," he apologizes sincerely, gulping down a rush of emotions that he doesn't want to confront right now and his voice breaks even though he really wishes it wouldn't, "I didn't know I got, um,"
"Oh, Martin," Sasha murmurs softly.
It's only a matter of time before there are a pair of slim arms around him, holding him so close and so tight that he feels like he'll pop. She smells like lavender and clean laundry, and this is the most comfort he's received in what feels like a decade. His jaw gets tight and his face gets hot and his nose starts to prick up, but he doesn't cry. He doesn't let himself.
It's not that he thinks he's too tough to cry. It's just that he's sick of crying in general.
He lays his head on the top of Sasha's, sighs deep into her curls, and tries to blink back his tears. It works, mostly.
"It's okay to grieve, still," she says into the warm space between his head and shoulder. .
But Martin is sick of grieving, too.
Sasha lets go, reluctantly. Her hand lingers on the sleeve of Martin's jumper before she steps all the way back to give him some room. He notices Tim, out of the corner of his eye, who's taken to help cleaning up the area. He's folding up his mum's old quilt and shutting a jewelry box on the ground with the heel of his foot at the same time. His throat gets tight again.
Martin tries to do the same as Tim. Soon enough, Sasha's joined them, trying to clean up in little ways. Tim picks up a broken piece of vinyl with his bare hands and Sasha makes it a point to smack his grasp away; it drops back into the shag rug and disappears like it's always belonged there. They bicker over it, like they bicker over everything, and it fades into the background as Martin makes eye contact with an open photo album on the floor.
The page is flipped to a much happier time in his life, and Martin sees himself: age 6, maybe age 7, at his first ever big birthday party located in the backyard of his childhood home. Right before his dad left. Right before his mum started to hate him.
It's a shoddy image, taken with a disposable camera older than time and developed so poorly that there are blotches on the image. But it's him, young and blindfolded and laughing, rosy-cheeked and freckles on display, wielding a bat more than half his size and wearing two party hats. And his mum is behind him, hand on his shoulder, sporting some very early 90's typical fashion. In this photo, she's laughing. She looks young. She looks healthy. She looks happy.
Martin wonders who took the image.
He crouches a bit to close the album.
It's been six months. He misses his mum all the time.
Is it normal, to miss someone so much, even when they didn't like you to begin with? When all they did was mistreat you when you tried to love them? How is he meant to cope with the fact that she's gone, now? Martin assumes that if it was him who'd passed, his mum wouldn't miss him like this. His mum would probably sell all of his things and then use his funeral brochure as a dartboard.
He fights with himself over everything, but this is the toughest conflict to date. He loved his mum so much and she did everything in her power to prove she felt otherwise. Martin can't keep doing this, though: he's ready to learn how to let it go. He's been ready to learn how to let it go for a long time now.
Martin breathes heavily and turns on his heel to face Tim and Sasha. He squares his shoulders and his jaw. "Want to sit?"
The best thing about Tim and Sasha is that they're quick to pretend like an emotionally charged moment never happened, for the sake of comfort.
"Okay,"
"Let's take the floor." Tim plops down without a care in the world, his hands cradling his mug like a newborn, and then groans. Sasha makes a concerned noise, to which he responds, "My fucking knees. Christ, am I getting old?"
"Sure," Sasha's voice is a phenomenal balance of fond and venomous, "let's sit on the fluff rug, with all of the hidden broken sharp bits in it instead of the couches."
And it's not a comment meant for him, but it still sends a pang through Martin's heart. It's his fault, anyway. "M'Sorry," he frowns, and Sasha sends him a sad look.
Sasha, just as careful not to spill her tea as Tim was, sits on the floor next to him. She crosses her legs under her and is on the ground in seconds. Martin seats himself directly across from them, lowers himself down slowly with one arm so as to handle all of his weight, and then gently hits the ground. The tea in his other hand just barely spills out of its' mug. He uses the couch behind him to support his back.
Then there's silence. If Tim and Sasha are doing that thing where they communicate with their eyes instead of their words, he doesn't see it — his eyes are trained on the lint on the hem of his sweatpants.
After awhile, they clear their throats at the same time. Martin looks up.
"We actually came over for a reason," Sasha confesses, just as Martin's opening his mouth to start idle conversation, and then starts to root through her messenger bag furiously. Martin raises his eyebrow.
Any acquaintance of Sasha's will know that it holds everything you'd ever need — any friend of hers will know that you have to dig to find it. She pulls out a pale pink, crinkled paper, an advertisement printed on what looks like faux parchment, and holds it out.
Martin takes it and inspects it like it's his job.
It's labelled at the top in neat, handwritten scrawl. 'DEAR YVETTE,' in big, bold letters, and underneath is an explanation: 'UK BASED PEN-PAL ORGANIZATION'. A very 1800's-looking illustration of a woman practicing her penmanship is stamped just underneath, and around her is information that's meant to sell the whole idea — making new friends in your area! A development of social skills and comprehension! Make memories! — and while the flyer itself is very pretty, Martin finds himself looking upon it with confusion and a bit of dismay.
There is no way they want him to do this.
Is there?
"What is this," Martin looks up and asks, flatly.
Sasha doesn't look all that phased or upset, but she trips over her words a bit like she is. "It's a — well, a pen-pal... thing! I ripped it off of the wall at the pub." Sasha rips everything off of the wall at the pub.
"And you want me to sign up for it." Martin squints, skeptically, and then adds as an afterthought, "there is no way you got this off of the wall at Harp & Crest."
"What? No! Never. I got it from the Spade. It was either this or signing you up to a poetry competition without your permission." Sasha shrugs and tucks a stray curl behind her ear. "Slam poetry. Tim and I thought you could win, so I've got the poster in my bag, if you want to see it—"
"Slam poetry?" Martin's voice is carefully level, trying not to let disappointment show through as he hands the paper back to Sasha, but he's never been too good at that sort of thing, "You have a phenomenal misunderstanding of the way I express myself. No thank you. To any of this. Look, I really appreciate it, but I..."
Tim cuts him off with a huff at the same time that Sasha's face falls, and that makes Martin ache all over. The last thing he wants to do is make them upset, but he doesn't get it, not really. Doesn't understand why this has been associated with him, or why it should make him feel better. Having a penpal is a neat idea, sure, but he's just not sure if he's that type of person. He doesn't see himself as someone who'll sit down with a good cuppa and pour his heart out in letters to someone he doesn't even know. He's bad at socialization, in real life and over text, so what about wielding a pen would make that different?
Sasha starts to fold up the advertisement, and Tim looks a little distraught, like they had nothing else planned for this little visit of theirs. And it eats Martin up from the inside.
It occurs to Martin, all at once, that today, they visited just to try and help him. They thought of him.
Because, well. Tim and Sasha, they only have Martin's best interest at heart. Obviously, they have his best interest at heart. It's always Tim and Sasha. Something in Martin keels over in guilt for being ticked off at them for presenting the idea.
It would be unfair not to give their ideas a chance. They're here for him. Martin gives a decision maker's sigh, contemplative and begrudging.
Martin shoves away his pride away, swallows it back along with his self-pity and despair, and with his attitude a little short at the idea that he's giving in, he says, "Okay. What's the point?"
Sasha almost immediately brightens up again, unfolding the pink Dear Yvette paper. Tim seems to do the same, although he's a bit less animated; his back straightens up with an easy confidence, like a goddamn salesman, and Martin almost regrets folding to this whole penpal business.
"I mean, let's see," Tim follows, like he's had this prepared all the while, like he was expecting Martin to kick back — which, yeah, but ouch, — "the pros are that you want to talk to more people, but you don't want to talk to more people. And you want your life to get back to normal, but you don't want to leave the house. Retro vintage is your thing, right, and you own a lot of stationery already!"
"Sounds convincing," Martin rolls his eyes, and it comes off as a little less peeved and a little more compliant than he would have liked, "what's the catch?"
Tim leans into Sasha, sips his tea slowly, and propositions, "The con is that you might get paired up with a 62 year old lady mourning the death of her cat. And that's highly likely, but it's not that bad. Could be worse, yeah?"
Martin hums under his breath. Could definitely be worse — it has certainly been worse before. He thinks back to some more recent times, where he's tried to put himself back into the world before he was ready.
A few weeks ago, when Tim had invited him out to the bar for a drink after work, he began sobbing uncontrollably at the table for practically no reason. Tim, thankfully, wasn't upset, and escorted him back to his flat with a comforting hand on his lower back and a soothing coo. Another time previous, when he thought he could drink away his sorrows at a different half-empty pub, some pretty girl tried to get his number, and he'd embarrassed himself trying to turn her down. Far before that was a quaint get-together with Sasha, her twin sister, and two of their college friends that he can't remember the names of: a spunky, short brunette with overgrown bangs and broad-shouldered lass with a dirty blonde mullet and far too many struggle scars to count. He'd spilled hot soup on the latter and, upon receiving a snarl, decided it was time for him to go.
Dear Yvette. Develop social skills.
He sure as hell could use it.
Tim and Sasha... they're trying. And Martin can see that they're trying, so desperately, to help him be the Martin they once knew in whatever way they can. He used to be the Martin that never passed up a local trivia night. The Martin that would offer to do anything with you anywhere, even if it was grocery shopping. The Martin who prepared elaborate sleepovers and get-togethers at Tim's flat after a stressful work week because pretty soon, they'll be too busy and too old to watch Princess Diaries and drink wine without worrying about the consequence it has on tomorrow.
Martin sort of misses that side of himself, too.
Sasha uncrosses her legs and pulls them up to her chest, holding them close, chin resting on her knees, and stares hopefully. Tim looks just as tired as Martin feels, underneath that calm, confident, expectant grin. He hasn't shaved in a bit, too, stubble taking up the better half of his face, and the bags under his eyes are horrendous. Martin knows he's part of this issue. Tim and Sasha have had to look after him and take care of him lately. It makes him feel terrible, first, for taking up all their time, and grateful to have such a support system, second.
This is the least he can do. If he convinces himself it's for them, for the two people who do nothing but support him, it's a little bit easier for him to swallow.
"Right." Martin huffs out, lowly, and takes a long drink of the chai tea he does not like until it's gone. "Right, okay. How do I..."
"Okay, see here," Sasha explains excitedly. She puts her mug on the floor beside her and uses both hands to both hold and point to the paper, "you sign up with the email at the bottom, and they tell you all of the guidelines and stuff. Then you get paired up with a pen-pal already in the system or something? I don't know how that part works."
"We can figure it all out together." Tim waves it off. "Who knows. Maybe if you get paired up with an absolute academic hunk of a man, I'll think about doing this whole penpal thing, too. For you and your romance, I'm thinking an unrequited storyline, Lemony Snickett style. Separated by distance. Forbidden mail carrier lovers."
"I can put a good few pounds on the fact that you've never read a Lemony Snickett book in your life, ever. Not once." Martin prods back, "You're lacking an important childhood experience."
"Uh, wrong! I read the back of the books at my local library, like, two months ago. Fuck off."
Sasha buries her face in her hands, shoulders jumping with laughter. "God, do you guys ever stop?"
Martin breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, just like he was taught to. He thinks something along the lines of, 'well, what's the worst that could happen?' and then stops himself from letting the thought breach his lips.
This could be good, he considers instead.
Maybe he'll like writing letters.