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The first time he comes inside Elias’s house, Martin’s trainers squeak on the gleaming floorboards.
He freezes instantly, mortified, self-conscious. The house is so silent, so dignified and distinguished, and the sound echoes down the long hallway, and even though there’s no one else here than himself and Elias, he feels exactly like all the attention of a hundred-strong judgemental crowd focused on him the instant his cheap plastic soles let out the first high-pitched screech.
But he can’t stay standing there, he has to move, Elias is — well, not waiting for him, but leading the way for Martin to follow — and he doesn’t say anything, just throws Martin a look over his shoulder, cursory and yet piercing, and Martin’s cheeks burn and his heart sinks.
But he… he’s here, isn’t he? He came here, and Elias (the heels of his own Oxfords making only a steady clack) has reached the end of the hallway and opened a door to what must be his bedroom, so Martin follows, cringing at every squealing step. God, what if the crappy soles leave rub marks?
It’s stupid, because he makes a lot of noises after that anyway, including squeals.
Still, when he leaves in the morning, Martin doesn’t put his shoes back on before he’s at the door.
The next week, Martin finds on his desk a cardboard box containing a pair of brand-new shoes. They are simple and relatively unassuming, but clearly excellent quality, much better than his dilapidated trainers ever were even before they started falling apart. Thin waxed laces. Leather soles. They make almost no sound on Elias’s floors except for the clack of his heels, a little staccato concerto with Elias’s pace, nearly in harmony.
It doesn’t even happen so often. Martin can’t help but think Elias must regret the value return on his investment.
When Jon is in China, Martin ends up at Elias’s house again, and hates himself, and hates the amused twinkle in Elias’s cursed eyes, but what he does enjoy is returning the stare straight back and seeing Elias flinch when Martin steps into his hallway and the entire house resonates with the shrill squeak of his shitty trainers.
“Really,” Elias sighs.
Over the evening, Martin puts his shoes on Elias’s bedsheets, in Elias’s bathroom, on Elias’s armchair and Elias’s coffee table, and he makes a point of putting them back on when he leaves rude-early in the morning. Elias can see and watch his movements anyway — if Martin’s presence must be known, then let it be known, as loud and annoying as possible.
(When they are planning how to take him down, and Melanie keeps spitting between her teeth about all the ways she could just kill him, Martin patiently points out to her the flaws in each plan, and on Friday evening, when everyone’s gone, he goes up to the library and practices moving across its old creaking floorboards silently in his socks.)