Work Text:
“There’s the man!” Tim calls when Jon emerges from his office for the first time since he’d gone in that morning. “Sasha, you owe me a fiver.”
Sasha sighs dramatically, reaching into her bag for her wallet. “I didn’t think we’d see you before 2:00, but Tim said you’d come out by noon.”
Jon, predictably, scowls at the explanation. “Don’t you have more productive things to be doing than taking bets on my daily schedule?”
Martin laughs, but looks a little scolded. “Oh, Jon, come on. It’s just a bit of fun.”
“That’s a loose definition of ‘fun,’” Jon mutters, pushing past the group toward the break room. When they’re sure he’s out of earshot, Sasha starts giggling.
“Oh, God, he’s in the worst mood,” she whispers. “I wouldn’t have told him if I’d expected that.”
“Probably shouldn’t have told him either way,” Martin points out. “It doesn’t quite seem like the kind of thing he’d find funny.”
“We should get back to pretending to work,” Tim suggests.
“Double or nothing says you can’t get him to tell you what bug he’s got up his ass,” Sasha offers.
“I thought you liked me.”
“Well?”
“It’s a deal,” Tim replies, his tone chaotic enough that Martin is sure he’s serious.
When Jon reluctantly must go back to his office from the break room the way he came, he’s carrying a bottle of water and a small protein bar, and seeing as that it’s already ten minutes to noon, it’s safe to assume this is meant to be a whole meal. He flinches dramatically in disdain when Tim calls out to him, stopping him from returning to his work.
“Jon, buddy,” Tim calls, and it feels alarmingly like putting his fingers directly into the cage of a wolverine, “how’s your day going?”
“Well, I’m here,” Jon mumbles. Tim laughs just as it becomes clear that it wasn’t a joke.
“Not that I don’t already know the answer to this, but would you like to have lunch with us? Might make you feel a bit better about being here.” he offers. Jon rolls his head from shoulder to shoulder to stretch his neck, wincing a little as he does so.
“Kind of you to offer,” he says politely but sharply, “but I’m busy.”
“We’ve barely seen you in three days,” Tim points out. “How can you possibly still have urgent work to do?”
This isn’t an unusual conversation--in fact, it’s one of the few ways to get Jon truly excited enough to open up and start talking about what he’s been doing, usually including an insufferable amount of detail about file organization and statement recording. Though he’s never glad for the interruption, Jon always leaves the conversation in a better mood.
Jon sighs. “Fine, then. Kind of you to offer, but no, I don’t want to have lunch with you. I’ll be in my office.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply before storming off, the door slamming ever so slightly harder than normal, but perhaps that’s Tim’s imagination. He turns to the others with a look of horror.
“Did you see that glare?” he asks. “Am I on fire?”
Sasha laughs, pretending to put out a few of the phantom fires Jon’s laser-stare had started from Tim’s dress shirt. “You’re all good,” she declares when she’s done with the bit, seating herself on the corner of his desk. “Let’s all go out for lunch. It’ll be good to get away from this place for a while. Tim, yours is on me, since I owe you.”
Lunch at the bistro is, Tim has to admit, a nice distraction, but he can’t altogether push Jon’s strange mood out of his mind. He’s seen Jon cranky--in fact, he’s rarely seen Jon be anything but cranky. Jon can be rude and short-tempered and even a little mean, but that’s only usually when he’s interrupted from recording a statement. Over all, Jon’s a nice guy, if a bit prickly. They’d been friends in research, and Tim still considers them to be friends now.
“You don’t think we forgot Jon’s birthday or something, do you?” he asks. He doesn’t really think Jon would be petty about that sort of thing, but who knows?
Immediately, Martin shakes his head. “I’ve got a calendar on my phone with everyone’s birthdays on it. Jon’s isn’t for a few months.”
“Aw, Martin, that’s adorable!” Sasha remarks. “You’re a gem.”
“There’s got to be something we’re missing,” Tim continues as if neither of them had spoken.
“Maybe Elias said something to him?” Martin offers. “He--I saw Elias leaving Jon’s office, earlier.”
“Did he look angry?”
“Not really,” Martin considers. “Actually, he looked rather pleased.”
Tim grimaces. “That’s worse,” he says. “Alright, Detective Blackwood, I think you’ve cracked the case! Elias probably gave him some heinous amount of work to finish today.”
“Let’s bring him a sandwich,” Sasha suggests. “If he’s that overloaded, I’m sure he won’t take a break to eat, so we should bring something he can have in his office.”
“Good thinking,” Martin replies. “It might also get him out of that mood he’s in.”
Tim excuses himself from the table--the only person Jon has dined with enough times to know his lunch preferences, and orders something he knows Jon likes, and a cookie, too, in case Jon doesn’t feel he has time for a whole sandwich but still wants to get something into his stomach.
They leave the bistro with some time to spare on their lunch breaks just in case Jon has softened enough to let them stay in his office for a bit while he eats (which is more common than Jon coming to lunch with them, but still unlikely).
When they get back to the Institute, Sasha and Martin unanimously elect Tim as “person Jon is least likely to shoot on sight,” ignoring Tim’s arguments that Sasha is clearly the better choice, because she has the fewest qualities that irk him. Under duress, however, Tim eventually accepts the responsibility and knocks on Jon’s door. When his only reply is an annoyed groan, Tim smiles to himself as he pushes in the door.
“Hey, Jon. The three of us thought you might like some lunch.”
Jon looks rough, to put it lightly. Surrounded by paperwork and folders, all of it wildly disorganized, he’s sitting at his desk, hunched so far over that it makes Tim’s own shoulders twinge. His hair is down, and messy like he’s been running exasperated hands through it. He isn’t hostile, however, when he looks up at Tim, still hovering in the doorway.
Instead, he sits back in his chair, pressing a thumb firmly to his temple. “That was kind of you,” he says, meek and tired and possibly even a bit raspy. “How much do I owe you?”
Tim shakes his head. “It’s on me, this time,” he says. When Jon shoots him a look, he laughs lightly. “Fine, fine. You can just owe me a latte or something later this week.” Jon nods, and when Tim looks around for a place to set the bag, he can’t seem to find a single inch of space. He stacks a few folders together to make room. “Your day isn’t going any better than when we last spoke, then?”
Jon shuts his eyes. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Tim emphasizes, “that we’re not mind-readers, Jon. If there are things you want us to do that we’re not doing, or if you’ve got too much on your plate and need someone to sort a few stacks, you need to tell us.”
Jon is already shaking his head halfway through Tim’s offer, which is infuriating.
“Even if I did let someone help with this, Elias would only give me more to do. I don’t think he cares about the work, honestly. I think his only goal is to keep me from going home.”
Tim arches his eyebrows. “You asked if you could go home early?”
Though he looks like he regrets bringing it up, Jon doesn’t lie. “Just an hour or so. Pretty sure I’ve finally got that bug that’s been going around the archives.”
Tim frowns. “You mean the flu,” he supplies. Jon merely shrugs. “And Elias wouldn’t let you leave?”
“He told me to record a statement first and see how I feel, like that’s going to change something. I really just want to lie down, but…” He trails off, and while it’s meant to be casual, Tim can see the misery behind it. He’d been the one to bring the flu into the office in the first place: it had hit him like a truck halfway through the day two weeks ago, and though he’d gone home soon after, it apparently hadn’t been quickly enough, because a few days later, Sasha called out, and Martin after that. Jon spent so much of his time in his office that Tim hadn’t really thought there was a risk they’d infected him, but apparently, he was wrong.
“Well, that’s ridiculous. You should have said something. We would have helped, if we’d known. We just thought you were in a mood, no offense.”
Jon shrugs, shivers. “I know I’ve been difficult to deal with today,” he admits. “I just wanted to be finished with everything.”
Tim nods. “Understandable. Why don’t you go lie down on the couch in the break room? Or, don’t you keep a cot in one of those unused storage rooms? That’d be even better. I can record the statement for you; I’m sure Elias won’t mind.”
“Already asked,” Jon mumbles. “Said it had to be me.”
Tim rolls his eyes. “What a prick,” he says, smiling when Jon simply hums as if to agree. “Alright. In that case, I’ll go grab you a statement and a tape recorder. I’ll look for a short one. Then I’m taking you home. Elias can die mad about it.”
Without waiting for a response, Tim heads off toward the stacks and fishes around for the thinnest folder he can find. He leafs through the pages for content: they’re all pretty disturbing, but he can at least make sure there are no spiders or children involved—statements like that tend to get to Jon more deeply, and Tim doesn’t want to give him nightmares on top of everything. He swings by the kitchenette for a bottle of water, too, before arriving once more at Jon’s office and entering without knocking.
“Thank you, Tim,” Jon says sincerely, exhaustion thick in his voice, when he takes the folder and water. There’s a tape recorder on his desk already, of course, and he shifts some of the disorganized mess around to set his new project. When Tim doesn’t move to leave, he looks up. “Is there… something else?”
“I think I’m going to stay, if you don’t mind,” he admits. “Make sure you don’t try to sneak away to do more work before I can drive you home.”
Jon looks surprised, confused. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“I can spare 20 minutes.”
This is only a half-truth. He does want to make sure he could see Jon home without having to make an ordeal out of coming to find Tim in the assistants’ bullpen when he’s finished, because he knows they’d have questions, which would make Jon so uncomfortable that there was a decent chance he’d decide against it altogether. However, a small part of him is just plain curious. Reading statements… does something to Jon, something that leaves him exhausted and cranky for the entirety of the day. He hardly manages one a week, they’re so draining, and there’s something about it that feels different from normal work, even something different from just reading a tragic, traumatic story. It’s unnerving that Elias seems to believe it’ll make Jon feel better, somehow, to put himself through that, but… what would it mean if he’s right?
A true testament to just how awful Jon must be feeling, he doesn’t argue the point of Tim remaining in his office, so he sits in the chair across from Jon’s desk and pushes it into the opposite corner to give him a bit of space. He plays on his phone idly while Jon begins to read.
Jon is about halfway through the statement when his tone changes, shifting away from the unsettlingly musical reading-voice and beginning to slur and stutter the words on the page, just around the edges. Tim looks up but Jon does not. It only gets worse the longer Tim listens, and when he begins rereading the same lines over and over without seeming to notice, Tim is left with no choice but to interrupt.
“Jon,” he calls softly, trying hard not to startle him. Jon doesn’t stop reading, if he can even call it that, anymore. “Jon, hey, you’re—okay, you’re done with this for the day,” he intervenes, shutting the folder and switching off the tape recorder. Only then does Jon seem to come back to himself, disoriented and groggy. “Jesus. Are you alright? What was that all about?”
Jon blinks slowly, still looking confused. He’s shivering harder, now, than he was before he started reading, and his face is alarmingly pale. Though he can’t say he even knows what he’s comparing it to, Tim rests the back of his fingers against Jon’s cheek, then his forehead, and winces. It doesn’t take a doctor to be able to tell he’s running hot.
“I knew a statement was a bad idea,” he curses himself under his breath for even allowing it to happen. Tim should have immediately marched down to Elias’ office and told him Jon needs to take a sick day, that he’d get a doctor’s note if he needed it but that he couldn’t stay here. When Tim had come into Jon’s office sick two weeks ago, Jon had told him to go home without a second thought, promised he’d deal with letting Elias know, asked several times if he felt well enough to drive home and offered to call a cab if he wasn’t sure. Tim, on the other hand, had let Jon run himself into the ground, all because he had the macabre desire to know what Elias was playing at.
“I’ll be right back,” he promises. “Sit tight. Here,” he shrugs off his bomber jacket and places over Jon’s shoulders before he leaves, because his teeth are chattering. He looks small underneath it: his boss, who did not ask for this promotion, even argued when it had been offered to him, who’d been given the choice between being Head Archivist and quitting. Tim had been happy in research, sure, and sometimes, when he feels angry and lonely because Jon, the only reason he’d transferred to this department, hardly seems to give him the time of day anymore, he forgets that Jon had been happy in research, too. “Two minutes. Don’t move.”
Jon doesn’t even pick his head up from where he’s let it rest against his desk to grunt an affirmative reply.
Tim knocks twice on Elias’ door and opens it just a sliver without waiting for a reply. “Elias,” he calls. “I’m taking Jon home. He’s ill and will probably be out the rest of the week.”
Elias frowns, looking up from his paperwork. “Yes, he informed me he wasn’t feeling well,” he says, his tone bored and indifferent but with an edge of sympathy that almost seems mocking. “Did he record a statement like I asked?”
Tim has to take a deep breath to control the sharp reply that wants to spring forth. “He got halfway through one,” he bites, “then practically collapsed at his desk. He’s burning up and can’t even get through a full sentence.”
Elias looks slightly surprised. “Ah,” he replies. “Well, that’s fine, then. Tell him to rest up, and that I do hope he feels better.”
Tim grits his teeth. “Right. I’ll be needing the afternoon off, too. He needs someone to keep an eye on him. Maybe he could have gotten himself home before he read the statement, but there’s no way I’m leaving him alone in this state.”
He doesn’t wait for approval before shutting the door behind him and hurrying back to Jon, who is still hunched over at his desk, his cheek pressed against the tape recorder and his eyes closed. His heart squeezes in concern and sympathy as he shakes Jon’s shoulder lightly.
“Hey, Boss, wake up,” he calls quietly. Jon mutters something Tim can’t quite make out, but it sounds like a protest, and Tim bites down on a smile. “Aw, don’t be like that. Don’t you want to lie down? Tea, a blanket, and finally having the opportunity to let me get you invested in Broadchurch? Up you get.”
Jon begins to stand with Tim’s help. “Lying down sounds nice,” he admits. Tim is happy to hear that he’s at least a little more lucid than a few minutes ago, but he’s still slurring his words quite badly, and he’s not confident that Jon listened to any of the conversation past the promise of sleep. That, however, appears to be enough to motivate him. If Tim is lucky, Jon will sleep through the car ride to own flat and wake up too groggy to argue that he’s perfectly fine to go back to his own home.
Predictably, Jon is all but unconscious again by the time they reach the car, but Tim won’t complain about that, even if it is worrisome. For the moment, he’s just glad that Jon told him what was bothering him. No matter what happens, Tim knows they’ll be okay as long as they keep close.