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Jon finds the piece of paper folded neatly on the desk nearest the door while he’s cleaning up between classes. It's probably garbage, but he’s spent enough time around teenagers now to know to at least give the scrap a cursory glance, just to make sure it’s not some vital part of his student’s coursework he’s throwing away.
It’s funny, almost, that his first thought is a teacher-thought and not an archival one anymore. He was defined by being Head Archivist for a near decade and yet his ingrained thought process is no longer to properly catalogue archival documents but to sort through teenagers’ doodles.
He opens the paper and stops himself from where he’d been about to automatically chuck the slip towards the bin.
‘How did you come out to your parents?’
He recognises the handwriting, of course. It makes him wonder whether he’s supposed to have seen it. This private question, scratched onto a page torn off of an old worksheet.
He folds it up again and places it securely in his wallet, not wanting it to fall out of his cardigan or to wind up in the bin.
-
“Did you ever come out to your family?”
Martin gives Jon an odd look as he puts the last of their plates in the dishwasher. “What’s brought this on?”
“Something someone said today. Got me curious.”
“Hm,” Martin says, obviously unconvinced as he joins Jon on the sofa. “Yeah. Mum and dad, most of my aunts and uncles, at least the ones in this country. Most of the others probably know, what with the…” Martin trailed off, then gives a small “Huh.”
“Ominous.”
“No, no, I just realised I haven’t been on Facebook since the Institute.”
“Traded one all-seeing eye for another?”
“Something like that.” Martin drums his fingers against his chest, a steady beat of thought.
“Wondering how many memes you’ve been tagged in?”
“Hah, no. I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
Jon cocks his head and waits.
“You know how — there used to be that huge thrill for me, you know,” Martin averts his eyes, as if his embarrassment won’t let him look directly at Jon. “Updating your relationship status.”
Jon feels the grin growing across his face as the understanding blooms. “Oh Martin,” he says, his voice coming out in its treacle-like teasing tone, “You want to put the digital ring on it.”
“Shh,” Martin says, grabbing a cushion to bat at Jon’s face, an obvious attempt to put a couple of inches of cotton and polyester filling between himself and Jon’s admittedly dastardly smirk.
“The youth these days,” Jon laments, “Can’t be happy in a marriage until they’ve clicked a button and the pixels confirm it for them.”
“Shhh,” Martin tries again, a definite groan to it. “I regret opening my heart to you.”
“Maybe you should tweet about it. Local spouse teases husband about sham marriage that hasn’t been Facebook-ordained.”
“I bet you don’t even have Facebook, grandpa.”
“I don’t,” Jon confirms gleefully. “I don’t have any social media-”
Martin immediately perks up at Jon’s trailing off. “Except?” he prompts.
“No, no,” Jon assures, only he can tell the tone of his voice belies his insecurity because surely… surely, he would have deleted it…
“Oh my God,” Martin says, sounding far too thrilled. “What is it, a MySpace? Bebo? LiveJournal? Youtube vlogs circa 2007?”
Jon can’t help the wince on the last.
“Oh my God,” Martin says again, instantly scrabbling for his phone. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Again, we are married.”
“Hm,” Martin says a moment later, obviously displeased and no longer listening to Jon. “You’re lucky you’re one of a billion Jon Sims.”
Martin continues to prod at his phone, and Jon angles his head to see that Martin is searching variations on ‘Jon Sims’ + ‘vlog’, ‘youtube’, ‘archivist’.
“You won’t find it like that,” Jon says, which doesn’t seem to deter Martin from continuing. “I didn’t use my name.”
“Go on, what was it then? Angsty vlogs about uni in your alt phase? Terrible first year short films? Oh, please tell me it’s all of the songs you wrote for Georgie when you were together.”
“As if Georgie wouldn’t be the first to bring those up if they existed.”
Watching Martin come up blank no matter the search term puts Jon a little at ease; at least none of his students will be able to find him if, or when, they decide to Google him.
“You can’t just tease things like this then not show me, Jon, I’m going to spend every waking moment trying to find it.”
“You wanted to buy that puzzle the other day.”
“At least a jigsaw comes with all the pieces,” Martin moans, squidging up against Jon. “And a pretty picture on the box you can follow.”
“What can I say, I like to set something more challenging.”
“What if said I’d do the washing up for a whoooole week?”
“Would have worked before we got the new dishwasher.”
“What if I said I’d mark one class’s homework.”
“One whole class?” Jon says, unimpressed. “Big spender.”
“Two classes.”
“Don’t break the bank.”
“Three and a back massage, final offer.”
“Hmm,” Jon says, drawing the sound out as he rolls his shoulders, as if testing how achy he is.
“Jon,” Martin moans, wrapping Jon in a purposefully suffocating hug. “Show meeee.”
“Fine,” Jon relents after pulling the moment out as long as possible, a part of him morbidly curious to see a decade-old version of himself; the only real remnant of his pre-Archive self. “HelloMrSpider.”
“After…”
“Yeah,” Jon says, scooting up from where Martin has pushed him down so he can rest his head on Martin’s shoulder while he types.
And then he’s there, fifty-odd versions of himself in thumbnail-form. He’s in his mid-twenties, lightly coiled black-brown hair mostly down, sometimes draped over one shoulder, sometimes pulled back into a hasty bun, not a white hair to be seen. He’s holding a book up for the camera in each. Jon feels himself cringe to his very bones, skin prickling with the embarrassment.
“Book blogger,” Martin says in a gush of ecstatic disbelief. “Jon, you were a book blogger.”
In retrospect it really should have been a red flag, how he got hired at the Institute with nothing but a frankly amateur playlist of book analysis videos and a Bachelor’s degree in History. Elias must have had a fucking field day trawling through the videos, devouring Jon’s put-on persona.
Martin clicks on one at random, and Jon hears his voice — not quite as severe as his early Archivist days where he thought he had to sound far older, far more grave than his years, but it’s a prototype of it; serious, reaching for the ‘mature for his age’ he’d always striven for.
Jon stands up, distancing himself from the sofa like he has to put space between himself and Martin’s phone or he’ll get physically damaged by it.
“Do you want me to stop?” Martin asks, pausing the video.
“Yes,” Jon whines. “No, you can watch, I’m just.”
“Embarrassed?”
“Yes, Martin, I’m embarrassed.”
Martin’s cheeks dimple with how shit-eating his grin becomes. “Okay,” Martin says, pressing play again.
Jon can’t really hear the words past-him is saying as he paces their living room, but he can hear the youthful sincerity, the dedication he used to have to write up an analytical essay about the themes of the book in order to completely tear the premise apart.
He doesn’t think he gave any particular thought towards the authors of the books he reviewed, unconcerned about anything but what he used to consider the pursuit of pure, absolute knowledge.
Oh the folly of youth.
Martin snorts at something video-Jon says, and Jon feels himself get retroactively defensive of himself. “What?”
“Brecht, Chekhov, Aeschylus, Shakespeare…” Jon hears his past self say something, and Martin repeats it, “and not forgetting Carol Churchil…”
“What?” Jon asks, still confused.
“Jonathan Sims is a theatre elitist.”
“What?” Jon repeats, denial rising in him. “No I’m not.”
“Name one playwright who’s not an old white man.”
“Carol Churchill.”
Martin levels him a bored look. “Old white cis person.”
“Aeschylus was Greek, and he likely wasn’t what we consider ‘straight’-”
“Jon, are you convincing yourself with this argument?”
“Who wrote Jerusalem ?”
“Jez Butterworth? I don’t know if he’s-”
“Well I’m sorry I haven’t kept a more critical eye on emerging writers of colour while averting the apocalypse.”
Martin raises an eyebrow, then refocuses his attention back on the video. “Theatre snob.”
Jon watches Martin watching the video for a moment, irritated. Then he throws himself back on the sofa, arms crossed against his chest.
Video-Jon has a serious frown on his face as he speaks, occasionally tucking a strand of hair behind his ear but otherwise not gesticulating. “A book like this,” his past self says, every bit as horrifyingly haughty as Martin makes him seem, “That simply refuses to adhere to the classic tradition-”
“Who was your audience?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really go in for the viewer-interaction.” Jon sneaks a glance and isn’t surprised to see this particular video hasn’t broken triple digits.
“No,” Martin says, clicking back through to Jon’s channel and scrolling through the videos. “Who did you make them for?”
“For?” Jon frowns. “Youtube.”
“Target audience?”
“People who liked books?”
Martin hums in a way that says Jon’s just confirmed something.
“What? Why?” Jon asks when it looks like Martin’s just going to move on.
“Not like it matters,” Martin dismisses, “Unless you’re thinking of reviving the channel.”
“You can’t criticise past me. What if I’m still making the same mistakes?”
Martin lightens at that, and puts his arm around Jon’s shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. Jon untenses his shoulders, unfolds his arms and tucks himself against Martin’s side.
“There are going to be these people, right,” Martin says, idly flicking down Jon’s channel, “Who come to your poetry night and sit there with their arms crossed, rolling their eyes as you recite your work. Always. Either they’ve been dragged along by their friends, or they happened to be in the pub, whatever, they’re always there. Same for comedy, same for the movies, same for theatre, probably, and gigs.”
“Sure.”
“These videos, it’s like you’re making this video for them. Like you have something to prove.”
“Don’t I? They’re essays. You have to prove your point.”
“You’re allowed to make things for people you like.”
“Isn’t that just preaching to the choir?”
“Art doesn’t have to change the minds of people who deny the humanity of people like us.”
“Art?” Jon says, casting a sceptical eye over his single-camera, blurry video. He’d managed to get good at basic cutting and did some simple titles, but... “It’s hardly what I would consider ‘art’, Martin.”
“I don’t know. It’s entertainment designed for an audience.”
“Hm,” Jon says, remaining unconvinced. They watch another couple of videos together in silence, Jon only half-listening to his past self as he thinks.
“I got rejected.”
Jon frowns, coming out of the daze he’s in to parse Martin’s words. “Rejected?”
“From a poetry anthology I submitted to.” Martin continues looking at the screen, expression neutral. “I mean, I don’t know why I expected anything, it’s not like I’ve been particularly active for a while, and I haven’t really been practising writing my poetry, and it was some new stuff, not what I used to write about at all, and-” Martin bites his lip. “But yeah. Rejected. A big N-O for Martin Blackwood.”
“Oh,” Jon says, at an otherwise loss for words. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine, but, you know. I didn’t tell you I submitted anything because I kind of hoped to come home one day and just show you the printed anthology, but now I won’t, so that’s…” Martin starts another video, “Disappointing.”
“Yeah,” Jon agrees, pulling back slightly so he can take a better look at Martin’s face. “What was the poem about?”
“You, obviously,” Martin says, vaguely aggressive and his cheeks warm. “Not all of it, before you get too big for your britches.”
“Dare I ask?” Jon says, “Or have you submitted yourself to the fine historical precedent and written about how marriage is a ball and chain?”
“Got it in one. ‘Oh how I hate my spouse and his errant ways. Spite! Spite! O muse, provide me with respite!’”
“And you’re shocked you were rejected?”
“Oi,” Martin says, bumping his shoulder into Jon’s.
“Too soon?”
Martin shakes his head, ignoring Jon. “It was supposed to be a-” Martin’s words fail him, and the hand not holding the still-playing video grasps at air, like he’ll be able to catch the words that have fallen out of his head. “Hold on.”
Martin gets up and, a moment later, comes back with his rucksack, pulling a few sheets of paper from a plastic folder. He flicks through them like he’s checking they’re all still there before handing them to Jon. “I know you don’t like poetry. You don’t have to give me a video essay on your thoughts. Just, you know. Open mind, open heart.”
Martin doesn’t sit back down on the sofa, his eyes darting around the room. “I’m just going to. I’ll be in the kitchen. Doing something. Take your time.”
-
Jon can’t say that he gets it. It’s not like being married to Martin makes him suddenly appreciate poetry in a deep and meaningful way, but… he doesn’t instantly cringe into himself scanning the words.
It’s smooth. It reads like a calm sea, to begin with. Taken on a journey, eyes drawn across the page by words that slot together. It’s not gushy love poetry, no ‘the golden glow of his eyes’ or ‘the soft shell of his ear’; nothing that physically describes Jon, which he’s initially confused about.
He scans the whole poem once through, allowing the words to become jagged and panicked, short lines, paragraph breaks, the line of Martin’s thoughts skittering across the pages, lost, distant, scared, scary — before it calms into an almost comforting reminder of flow; warm and together again.
The second time through, he wonders who the poem is really about. Jon is in here, he supposes, near the end. Flatteringly woven into an idea of comfort and safety, separate, or separated from the waves of the opening.
He reads it the third time and hears Sasha in the waves, the push and pull of her voice, her laugh, lapping at the archive, or the moon drawing Jon, Tim, Martin, in, higher, rising, out, lower, calmer — and then the snap, the replacement. A sea without the moon is no sea at all. Not a storm, not the chaos of nature, not the comfort of a sisterhood in the sea but the unnatural oil slick that spills across the water, damping her blue down, tainting all it touches, an impossible, greasy poison digging itself, parasitical, into all it catches.
Heavy, suffocating. Too much work to do to mourn. All you can do is work to stop the spread, the corruption. Keep it contained, make sure there are no leaks, lock down your heart, prevent the crudeness from contaminating you, too.
Jon rises from that sea with Martin, to a blue sky. Not endless blue skies, not a happily-ever-after blue sky, but a blue sky that reminds you there’s life outside the sludge with its slick rainbow sheen dancing, taunting, mesmerising but false — the blue sky cuts like lime through grease, a breath of fresh wind on a sweltering hot day. And there she is again, Sasha, rising. Not impeccable, not perfect, not invincible Sasha; Martin’s moon.
Tim is a tangential star, a red dwarf eating itself up too quickly — hot and bright and brilliant and gone too soon, blinding beside Sasha’s moon, distracting, taunting, tragic, almost, if Jon couldn’t read a hurting admiration for it, for him. A star that goes out on its own devices. On its own terms.
Jon is not the sun in Martin’s solar system, which he is unendingly thankful for. Jon finds himself in the night sky, in the ever-growing expanses, in its edges, in the blackness that is unendingly beautiful, unendingly fascinating. Not without danger, not without sacrifice, but look up, Martin says, and find hope in the stars.
Jon runs a finger down the page, like he’ll be able to feel the ink-jet words, like they’ll print themselves on his fingertips. He’s probably missing a lot, probably not understanding it properly, probably a million miles off of Martin’s mark, but even still, Jon cannot fathom how Martin has managed to find the words Jon has wanted to speak, the words Jon could never put to his feelings. It feels like a bell being rung — clarifyingly loud, resounding through Jon like it can physically vibrate through him.
He stands, follows Martin to the kitchen, who is giving the cupboards a good scrub with antibac. Jon wraps his arms around Martin’s waist from behind, his chest to Martin’s back.
“Is that a good hug or a ‘you didn’t understand it so you’re panicking and giving me a pity hug?”
“Good hug,” Jon promises. “That anthology doesn’t deserve you.”
“You have to say that,” Martin says, continuing to scrub. “They said they liked it, it just didn’t fit the tone. They said it was more angry than they were looking for.”
“It was Sasha,” Jon says into Martin’s back. “For me. She was there. Sunk. Sinking. You caught her before she was gone forever.”
“It’s not — I didn’t — I couldn’t save her.”
“No,” Jon tries to interrupt but Martin continues-
“Her memory, it’s… tarred. I hate that I can’t unpick the shit from her. I hate that I — I had good moments. With the not-her. I hate that. I hate myself for those things, her laughs, from mixing them up. Sometimes I think about her and I get warm and then I realise it’s not Sasha I’m thinking about —” Martin swallows, voice thick. “I wish the scum would rise to the top so I could scrape it off. But I can’t, and… yeah,” Martin ends, defeated. “So I’m angry.”
“Yeah.” Jon says. He’d missed that. He was ready to believe that the poem was about moving on, because maybe Jon was ready to do so himself. Martin is still mourning. Martin knew Sasha better than Jon did; worked with her for longer, more closely. “You… I would be angry, too. You deserve to be angry.”
Martin breathes through his nose. “I thought you would say I should move on.”
Jon shrugs, hands wiping shapes across Martin’s stomach. “You get to be angry for as long as you need to be angry.”
“But don’t let it eat you up,” Martin says, disparaging himself. “Don’t let it corrupt you.”
“I would be an incredible hypocrite if I tried to tell you what to do with your anger.”
“Not even for my own good?”
Jon hums. “What stage of grief do you think writing poetry is? Because in my books if you’re churning metaphors out, you’re hardly blinkered by the anger and about to throw yourself into the line of fire to get revenge.”
“Pfft, yeah, I suppose.”
“You’re allowed to be angry.”
“Yeah.”
“And I liked your poem a lot.”
Jon can’t see the smile, but he feels it when Martin brings his hands up to clutch Jon’s. “I’m glad.”
“Did you?” Martin asks after a beat.
“Did I?”
“Come out to your family?”
“Oh, no,” Jon says, the word coming out like a sigh. “They all died before I knew.”
“Mm,” Martin says, then turns around to envelop Jon in a bear hug. There’s a beat, then Martin continues. “Would you… Do you… Would you have? Do you want to have had? Do you think about what they might have said?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Jon says honestly. “I guess I had that luxury.”
“Because you think it might not have gone well?”
“Mm, no,” Jon says, “My grandma probably would have liked you. She liked steady people.”
“‘Steady’?” Martin repeats. “I guess that’s a compliment.”
“She would have said ‘now Jon, why can’t you be polite like this boy?’ and you would have soaked it up.”
“I would have,” Martin says, unabashed. “I am a serial parent pleaser.”
“I don’t think she wanted to see great-grand children or anything. See the blood line continued. I think she just wanted to see me happy. If she was alive now, I think we’d have truly embarrasing dinner parties where she would bore you with stories and you would bore her with English poems and then you’d bond over some obscure Yemeni poet I’d never heard of and I’d get annoyed and whine until you took me home.”
“I would have liked that,” Martin laughs. “I love when you’re insufferable because you’re starved of attention.”
“Thanks,” Jon drawls. “Were your mum and dad…?”
“Oh, yeah, I don’t think it was much of a surprise for them. They were fine, they had bigger things to bully me over, the being gay thing was as old hat as having brown eyes.”
“At least they had that going for them.”
“Yeah,” Martin says. “Some of my Jamaican aunties were pretty excited, they thought I was going to be a flaming gay who’d remake them when they came to visit, and I had some vaguely excrutiating conversations with my Japanese uncles when they explained the origination of the term ‘cut-sleeve’ to me. Otherwise it was more like, ‘when are you going to find yourself a nice man to settle down with?’ ‘my neighbour’s oldest son is, you know, do you want me to get his phone number?’ I would say I counted myself lucky but I’m pretty sure there was a family Whatsapp group that got told the hour I lost my virginity, so, you know, that was terrible.”
Jon releases a loud, disbelieving laugh into Martin’s chest, absolutely cracking up at the thought of a dozen assorted aunts and uncles and cousins sending each other celebrating emojis while Martin was in a post-coital daze.
“You laugh, but it’s very scarring on a young lad,” Martin says, a weary laugh to his voice. “I never did find out how they knew in the first place.”
“Do they still…?”
“ Yes, ” Martin whines. “Be thankful that you’re an old fogey without socials or they’d send you daily messages asking when you’re going to, and I quote, give the family some Martin juniors.”
Jon lets out another disbelieving laugh, almost shaking imagining a panel of family members inquiring after their bedroom habits; the thought orders of magnitude more terrifying than aborting an apocalypse. “Martin, is that why we really moved to Scotland? So I wouldn’t have to deal with in-laws?”
“And you should be thankful,” Martin says, giving Jon a determined pat on the head.
“Do you think you’d want kids?”
“Uh,” Martin says, the hand stilling in Jon’s hair. “Like, now? Do you?”
“Not right this second?”
“Yeah, yeah, no, not right this second.”
“But,” Jon says, still talking to Martin’s chest. “Maybe. One day.”
“Oh. Huh,” Martin says, his fingers stroking through Jon’s short hair while he thinks. “Yeah. I think I would like that.”
“You don’t-” Jon starts, but Martin cuts him off.
“Really. I would like that. I never thought I would be adult enough to even consider it, but… yeah. I don’t know what changed. Or when it did.”
“Beating the apocalypse?”
“Absolutely not. That was our young adult teen romp if anything.”
“I doubt anyone could have looked at me then and read me as a teen. I’m more salt than pepper these days.”
“Yeah,” Martin agrees fondly, dropping a kiss to the top of Jon’s head. “It’s probably a long process. If we want it to be ‘one day’, we should maybe look into it now.”
“Do we google search ‘how to have kids’?”
“I mean, do you reckon the school library has a book about it?”
“I think we’d be handed the Bible, Martin.”
“That or some very, very old biology textbook.”
Jon drinks in one last soaking of Martin-affection before he pulls himself away. “I’ll grab my tablet.”
-
“I want everyone to write a question on a piece of paper. It can be about anything.”
Jon watches his class scribble for a bit, pinched brows taking his request very seriously. It’s interesting to see, when they all go quiet and complentative. It doesn’t last long, of course, and the sound level skyrockets back up as he collects the sheets of paper.
“‘What is every answer to every question on your next test?’” Jon reads. He gives the class an unimpressed look, balls the paper up and throws it into the bin.
“What? But Jon!” Jason complains, half-standing from their seat. “You said you’d answer any question!”
“No, I said you could ask me anything. Silly questions go in the bin where they belong.”
“What’s your star sign?” Jon reads, making a face as he tries to remember what Martin told him he was at a Christmas party years ago. “Scorpio? with, something, rising? Sorry I don’t remember the details.”
“Ooooh,” Femi says, waving her hand. “What about Martin?”
“Uhh, I think he said he was a Leo.”
“What? No, he’s an Aquarius,” Nnedimma says.
“Oh, sure,” Jon says, tucking that piece of knowledge in his head for later. He is going to have an absolute field day reminding Martin that he evidently lied about his sign to make himself look cooler while drunk at a party. Excellent.
Jon picks another slip of paper out. “How did you come out to your parents?” Jon says instead of reading out what is actually written; another plea for the answers to their next test. Jon gives the class a quick scan, as if he really is receiving this for the first time.
“Well, my parents both died before I was two, so I was raised by my grandmother. She died before I had anything to come out of.” Jon folds up the piece of paper, then pauses before he throws it out. “I don’t know how she would have reacted. I suppose she might have been very nonchalant about the whole thing. She might have been horrible. I’m lucky in that I never have to know if it was the latter. If this is written by someone thinking about coming out to their parents, I say - you don’t owe them anything. Easier said than done, of course, especially when faced with historical precedent. But it is a joyous thing, knowing yourself. Your parents are excruciatingly lucky to have you. They will treat you with the utmost joy and respect, and if they do not, they do not deserve your attention or your energy.”
Jon carefully folds the slip of paper up and bins it like it’s nothing before moving on to the next piece. “What’s your favourite colour? Black. Yes, Madeleine?”
“Black’s not a colour, Jon, it’s the absence of it, so it can’t be your favourite.”
“Alright Madeleine, thank you very much.”
-
Femi has a calculating smile on her face when Jon arrives in the library for their Gaymer game. This is not rare, but there’s something in her laser-focus attention on Jon that makes him feel like he’s about to get his arse handed to him. “Good afternoon, Femi.”
“Hey, Jon.”
Jon begins to set his place at the table up, bringing out his dice and his notebook, Femi’s grin never dropping. Eventually, Jon has to relent because he knows she won’t. “What can I help you with, Femi?”
“Ask me what I was doing in the library.”
“What were you doing in the library, Femi?”
“I’m so glad you asked, Jon. Mister Blackwood showed us some educational videos today in class.”
“...Right?”
“And I just happened to notice that there was a channel being recommended to him in the side-bar when the projector came up.”
“Sure.”
“And there was this familiar face-” Jon feels the bottom drop out of his stomach as Femi spins her phone around and Jon has his younger self reflected back at him.
“I’m going to absolutely murder him,” Jon says.
“Why, do you say something really bad in the videos?”
“Probably.” Jon says before realising he should be very, very careful with his words. “No. No, probably not. I just. I don’t feel entirely comfortable with you watching the opinions I had before you were — when you were a toddler.”
“You should really consider taking them down, then,” Femi says, as if Jon is old enough not to know there’s a delete button.
“Yes, Femi, very helpful, thank you.” Jon sighs, sitting back in his seat. “I suppose it would be naive of me to plead for mercy and ask you don’t show it to anyone.”
“I wasn’t gonna.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think —” Jon catches up with himself, frowning at her. “You won’t?”
“Nah.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart?” Jon says, skeptical but hopeful.
“Nah.”
“Yeah, didn’t think so. Okay, what form of blackmail are you bringing me today?”
“You mixed my question in with the others today.”
“Yours?” Jon asks, feigning ignorance.
“It was on different paper.”
“Ah. ...I’m afraid I can’t come out to your parents for you, Femi.”
“Yeah, obviously,” Femi says, tucking a strand of her braids behind her ear. “My dad already knows.”
“Oh.”
“He’s cool.”
“Oh! Good! I’m glad.” Jon’s brain begins to wind down, worried for a moment that she would reveal she had been disowned and Jon and Martin would find themselves adopting a child far sooner than they’d expected. “Not that we should live in a world where being glad is surprising, but-”
Femi doesn’t let Jon spiral, instead pushing a small envelope over to Jon. Jon’s pulse skyrockets again, his ears stretching to hear whether there’s anyone else in the library when he sees the small heart-shaped sticker pressed on the envelope. He does not reach out to take it, in face scooting as far back into his chair as he can.
“For your punishment,” Femi says, not meeting Jon’s eye, “Deliver this for me.”
“Deliver?” Jon asks, still not unfreezing.
“Yeah. Like, snail mail. To uh. Nnedi.”
Jon defrosts instantly, feeling the ice crunch as his arteries begin working again. “Deliver the letter to her?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, oh, great!”
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s an awful cocky attitude to have for a student talking to a teacher.”
“Youtube blackmail, Jon.”
Jon arches a brow, picking up the envelope. It’s lightly perfumed, which Martin will be very, very excited to know. Their expressions have swapped, now; Jon can feel his Cheshire cat grin spread while Femi becomes uncharacteristically small in her seat. “This is very, and I mean this completely un-patronisingly, cute, Femi. I shall do this task with great honour and I wish you all the best.”
“Sure,” Femi says into her chest. She jumps, slightly, when the library door bangs open and the rest of the Gaymers burst in. Jon slides the envelope into his cardigan pocket and spends the rest of the session trying (and most definitely failing) not to smile every time Femi and Nnedimma interact.
Jon nearly overflows with the amount of love he feels for the people in his life.