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i.
Jon shows Martin to the showers by artefact storage and immediately gets to work. He starts with the cot, stripping the used sheets and remaking the cot with the soft blue flannel sheets he’d bought just a few weeks ago and hadn’t yet had a chance to use himself - largely because he kept forgetting about them until he was about to collapse out of sheer exhaustion. He composes an email to Elias out loud as he makes the bed, muttering under his breath to test the words.
“It is the responsibility of the Magnus Institute to ensure the wellbeing of its employees, including by offering housing at such time housing is unavailable to …? No, that’s no good, Elias would never - oh, good lord,” Jon breaks off, scowling, as he tries to bully the pillow into its case.
Jon has to sit for a moment to catch his breath after the cot is made up. “As Martin lost access to housing due to work done on behalf of the Institute, it is in the Institute’s best interests to …?” he mutters vaguely, fingers curling and tapping at the hinge of his knee. “The Institute is, hm, uniquely situated to, to offer a … safe environment from the threat of Ms. Prentiss … “
He trails off and stares hard at the wall, brows furrowed, thinking. Martin, stuffing spare fabric under the door, stripping his bed of sheets. (Had he said that?) Martin, heating up frozen meals on the hob, so grateful that his stove was gas so he could still have warm food. (Was it? It must have been, Martin’s power was out.) Martin, staring miserably into a can of--
“Peaches,” Jon says vaguely. His thumb rubs over the crest of his kneecap. Taps twice, making a hollow sound.
He’s on the phone with the curry place down the street a moment later. He is so intent on ordering food that he forgets, right up to the moment that the server asks what he would like to order, that he doesn’t know what Martin likes.
“Excuse me?” the server prompts. Jon realizes he has been sitting there silently with his mouth half-open, mind wiped white with static.
“Erm,” Jon says, and then, “I, uh, just, just a moment, please,” and he puts the phone down and presses his knuckles against his mouth and finds himself very nearly drowning in the sudden certainty that this is his fault, it is all his fault, and he can’t even order Martin a damn curry to make up for thirteen days of ready meals because he doesn’t know what Martin eats.
There is a hesitant shuffle of steps, a cleared throat. Jon’s eyes snap up to find Martin hovering in the doorway, redressed in his stale clothes but looking much more put together, if a bit damp, after his shower. “Martin,” Jon says through his knuckles--realizes he still has his knuckles over his mouth, and hastily clears his throat and lowers his hand, wiping his knuckles surreptitiously against his trousers and hoping there wasn’t saliva on them. “I, ah, was about to order you something to eat. Is curry alright?”
“You don’t--Jon, that’s--you don’t need to,” Martin says, and Jon says, “You’ve been living off canned peaches--,” and Martin says, “I can get something myself, really,” and Jon says, “I’m already on the phone, it’s fine,” and Martin says, “Really, Jon, that’s nice but it’s not nece--” and Jon says, “For Christ’s sake, Martin, it’s just a curry, just give me your damn order,” and Martin gives him his damn order.
Jon nods at him once, sharp, and raises the phone back to his ear. The other line is silent; they must’ve hung up on him. Jon blinks at his phone, wrong-footed and panicky, and Martin tries, once again, to say, “It’s not that big a deal--”
Jon stands up and pushes past Martin. “The cot’s ready for you,” he says curtly. “Get settled in, and I’ll let you know when the food is here.” He closes the door behind him to cut off any protests and hurries to his office, mentally hitting himself for telling the man with no belongings to get settled in, Christ, who says that?
The food arrives in twenty minutes. Jon lifts his fist to knock at Martin’s door, but a shiver begins to build at the base of his spine. Knock knock, he hears Martin say, and knock knock he feels deep in his bones, and knock knock he remembers reading so vividly he could almost taste the sound--
Jon clears his throat, lowers his hand, and calls Martin’s name quietly. Waits a moment, calls it again. Opens the door, and says, “Oh.”
Martin is curled up on the cot as if trying to make himself as small as possible, breathing the slow rhythm of the sleeping. Even his freshly-scrubbed pink cheeks can’t make up for the shadows beneath his eyes and the lines of tension at his brows and mouth.
Jon turns off the light and closes the door quietly behind him. He’ll just leave a note, he decides. No reason to wake Martin when he so clearly needs the rest.
Jon leaves the food out to cool for a while before putting it in the refrigerator. He sends quick update texts to Tim and Sasha--Martin had an encounter with Jane Prentiss. He is safe, but will be living in the Archives for the foreseeable future--and sits down to write the email to Elias.
ii.
Martin has been living in the Archives for three months, which--considering how Jon goes home only to sleep and shower, and sometimes not even then--means he and Jon have essentially been living on top of one another longer than Jon has ever lived with anyone else.
It also means that Jon is deeply, intimately familiar with Martin’s diet. And it’s not that Jon is in any sort of position to judge other people for what they eat - he has been on the receiving end of judgmental ‘concern’ over his eating habits enough times that he frankly refuses to put anyone else in that sort of position - but, well.
Stacks and stacks of the same four flavors of soup. Canned tuna and vegetables and fruit (no peaches). Freezer stuffed with ready lasagnas and pizzas and pastas. Crisps and biscuits in the cupboards. Fridge full of sandwich materials and leftovers from the canteen and the occasional Chinese or curry.
And it’s not--it’s not that Jon is concerned. It’s just that the ready meals and takeout mean that the trash bin is always nearly-full, and it’s--well, it’s, there’s quite a bit of sodium, isn’t there, in ready meals, and Martin only ever gets the same few meals from the restaurants he does get takeaway from, and it’s not like Jon cooks for himself all that often, but he has the option, at least, doesn’t he? Martin doesn’t. Martin has a microwave and a toaster and an electric kettle and a communal kitchenette with barely enough counter space to prepare a sandwich, let alone cook a full meal. Jon has a kitchen, and Martin doesn’t, because Martin needed to do his due diligence for Jon, and--
Well. It’s not as though kibbeh is hard to make. And mihshai malfoof may be time-consuming, but it’s good to keep his hands busy. And once he’s gotten started, he might as well make a salad to go along with it, and if he’s making a salad he should round it out completely and add dip and pita, and his grandmother had an excellent lemon chicken soup recipe, if Jon can only just find it, and then it is Monday morning and Jon is staring at the stacks and stacks of tupperware on his counter, wondering how the hell he’s going to get it all to the Institute.
Worse than the commute, though, is trying to figure out how to fit all the containers in the Archive break room’s fridge. Not even eight yet, and Jon already has a throbbing headache building behind one eye. He’s starting to think that he may have, perhaps, overdone it, just a little bit, when a voice says, “Jon?” and he flinches so hard from his position kneeling on the floor in front of the fridge that he very nearly loses his balance and topples over.
“Good Lord, Martin,” Jon snaps, once he’s managed to get his balance again. Martin, standing in the doorway with one hand over his mouth, looks like he’s about to start babbling apologies. “Don’t just stand there,” Jon says irritably, before Martin can say anything. “Come over here and help me figure out how to reorganize the fridge so I can fit all this.”
“That’s … a lot of food,” Martin says slowly as he comes closer, pausing at the counter next to the fridge. With Martin standing and Jon still kneeling, Jon is aware of Martin’s height and breadth in a way that he’s never been before, and of just how small he is in comparison. “What is all this?” Martin asks. “Did you accidentally order way too much, or something?”
Jon clears his throat and slowly pushes himself to his feet, grimacing a little at the accompanying headrush. “No,” he says shortly as he closes the fridge door. “I made it. Far too much of it, as you can see, since it doesn’t fit.”
Martin’s eyebrows raise. “No offense, Jon, but are you going to be able to eat all this before it goes bad? Even if you actually eat lunch every day this week, there’s a lot.”
“It’s not for me,” Jon says. “It’s for you.”
There is a beat.
Martin’s eyes are very wide.
“What?” Martin asks, voice small.
Jon rolls his shoulders and fixes his eyes on the counter. “It’s for you,” he says again. “They’re all labeled, and of course if you don’t like any of it you shouldn’t feel obliged to eat it, and it’s not--it’s fine if you don’t like it, I mean, I’ll hardly be bothered. I was just, ah, in a, a cooking mood, I suppose, and I thought, well, you might as well benefit?”
He’s rocking on his heels. He tries to still the motion and immediately begins tapping his fingers together.
“Jon,” Martin says. “You didn’t--this is too much, I can’t--”
“I’ve already made it and gone through the trouble of bringing it here,” Jon says. “You said it yourself, I’ll hardly be able to eat it all by myself.”
Jon chances a glance at Martin. His eyes look suspiciously wet.
“Just accept the food, Martin,” Jon says, looking studiously at the counter again.
There’s a quiet sniff.
“Yeah,” Martin says in a quiet, strained voice. “Yeah, I--thank you, Jon. Really. This is--this is really lovely.”
Jon nods, once, twice. “Help me fit everything in the fridge, and we’ll call it even.”
It takes half an hour, but they manage. The whole ordeal is worth it, in the end, when Martin takes his first bite of mihshai malfoof and he makes a sound so full of appreciation that Jon feels warm all the way to his core.
iii.
“Can I get you a cuppa, Jon?” Martin asks, and, “I’m making a cup of tea, do you want one?” Martin asks, and, “Thought you might be thirsty, here you are,” Martin says, and, “It’s a bit chilly down here, thought you’d like a nice hot cuppa,” Martin says, and Jon doesn’t understand why.
He says no every time, but he somehow finds himself with a cup of tea in his hands or at his elbow or waiting on his desk at least once a day. It’s not that Martin never made him tea before Prentiss attacked the Institute--
(before Jon found out his predecessor was murdered--before Jon realized he is not, has never been, safe in the Archives--before Jon knew that he was working with a murderer--)
--but it’s different, now. He hovers, for one thing, almost like if he’s not there, Jon will forget how to take care of himself. He’s constantly asking Jon how he’s doing, if he’s warm enough, if he wants Martin to get those books from the library for him so he doesn’t have to deal with the stairs on the same day as physical therapy. He’s just so--aggressively helpful.
Maybe it could just be that he’s concerned for Jon’s wellbeing. Maybe. But Jon knows he’s hiding something--has the evidence written in Martin’s own hand!--and he won’t trust Martin. He can’t.
He just wishes it weren’t so easy to want to trust Martin. Because--because despite the evidence, despite that Martin is lying about something--
(lying about what? Jon thinks at night, clutching the letter to his chest, panicked heartbeat ringing in his ears and thrumming through his veins. Lying about finding Gertrude’s body? Lying about his motives for staying in the Archives? Whatever web these statements have caught you in, he’d said, I’m there, too, and Jon thinks of long, spindly legs reaching out of a doorway, and he thinks knock knock the sound of prey waiting to be let in the sound of a predator terrorizing its victim the sound of Martin bringing Jon tea--)
--there is a part of him which just can’t believe it. This man could be Gertrude’s killer, Jon thinks after he finds himself absentmindedly sipping at tea Martin left on his desk; He could be my killer, Jon thinks as Martin pokes his head into Jon’s office to say he got an extra sandwich if Jon wants to eat something; He’s lying to me, Jon thinks as Martin fusses over the wound on his forearm, scolding Jon for itching at it; He’s lying to me, Jon thinks as Martin brings him to a cafe down the street, chattering about how he’s always wanted to try their fancy drinks, but never saw a reason; He’s lying to me, Jon thinks as Martin laughs at something Jon said, eyes crinkling at the corners; He’s lying to me, Jon thinks as Martin helps him with his coat and He’s lying to me as Martin tells him not to forget his leftovers and He’s lying to me as Martin smiles at him with a ridiculous foam mustache from the overpriced hot chocolate and He’s lying to me he’s lying to me he’s lying to me--
“I lied on my CV,” Martin says, utterly miserable, and the fury and the terror drain out of Jon so fast he’s left swaying on his feet.
They don’t eat together again for well over a month. Jon, unbelievably, finds himself missing it; finds himself gathering his things, waiting for Martin to come to his office to tell him it’s time for lunch.
It’s just that they had a routine, and Jon’s always gotten wrong-footed when his routines get out of sorts. It’s nothing important. It’s just--Jon was used to going out for lunch with Martin, and now that they’re not, he’s … off-kilter. It’s fine.
But then Martin knocks on his door and says, “Was planning on going to that fancy cafe again. Feeling a bit posh today. Want to join?”
And Jon, unthinking, already standing and reaching for his jacket, says, “Yes.”
iv.
“Jon, wait,” Martin calls. Jon turns from the boot of the car, where he’s trying to figure out how to pack his bag without disturbing the luggage which Daisy so precisely arranged to fit. Martin is jogging towards him, a reusable Tesco’s bag hanging from one shoulder. In the flat grayness of early morning, even his vibrant teal jumper seems washed-out and dull.
“Martin,” Jon says, fumbling with his bag--what is he doing? Offering his hand for a handshake? Christ, what’s wrong with him? He wasn’t expecting to see Martin today, especially not after the, ah, the gossip he’d heard, and he’s not--he doesn’t--there isn’t a script for this, not for someone like Jon--
“Oh, do you need help?” Martin asks as he comes to a halt in front of Jon. “With your luggage, I mean.”
“No, that’s--it’s fine, I’ve, I’ve got it,” Jon says. He tries to shove his bag into a random spot between two of Daisy’s trunks, but it stubbornly refuses to fit.
“You sure?” Martin asks, sounding dubious. Jon grimaces at his messenger bag and half-heartedly wriggles it, as if it’s just the angle preventing it from fitting.
“Yes, well, it’s--it’s fine, I’ll deal with it in just--anyway, I, I wasn’t expecting to see you, I didn’t realize you were. Um.” He tugs at a loose strand of hair. “Hi,” he says, finally.
Martin smiles, a wobbly little thing. “Hi,” he echoes. He shrugs the bag off his shoulder and holds it up in one hand. “I brought snacks? And tea, of course.” He laughs, and it sounds all wrong.
“Oh, Martin,” Jon says. He accepts the bag as Martin passes it over, and is surprised by its weight. Peering inside, he sees there are four thermoses, each labeled with a bit of post-it. The thermos bearing his name is blue. He finds himself staring at the rounded letters of his name, throat so tight all of a sudden that he doesn’t think he can speak.
“It’s, I mean, it’s not much, I’m not a great cook or anything, but there are some sandwiches, and I baked biscuits--um, they’re a bit overbaked, I think, but, well, it’s, they’ll be good with the tea, at least--”
“Martin,” Jon says again. He has to blink several times, willing the heat out of his eyes, before he can look at Martin. “Thank you.”
Martin nods. Nods again. Reaches out abruptly, and Jon has barely half a moment to panic over the sudden touch before he is being folded into an embrace, the bundle Martin so carefully put together crushed between their chests.
“Come back, okay?” Martin whispers, so quiet that Jon isn’t sure he was even meant to hear. “You and--and Tim, you make sure you come back.”
Jon wriggles one arm out of the embrace and carefully wraps it around Martin in turn. I will, he wants to say, but he has a terrible feeling it will be a lie.
“I’ll do my best,” Jon says instead, and he closes his eyes, pain spiking through his chest, when Martin makes a choked-off sound almost like a sob. Martin’s arms tighten around him. Jon steels himself and turns his face into the warm curve of Martin’s neck. He wonders if he should apologize for the trickle of tears he’s sure Martin can feel, but words feel far away, somewhere he cannot reach.
“I’ll see you when you get back,” Martin says when he finally lets go.
Jon nods. Nods again. “Yes,” he says. “I’ll--yeah.” He clears his throat. “See you when I get back.”
Together, they arrange his luggage neatly in the boot and manage to get the lid shut. Tim gets out of the car, just briefly, to give Martin a casual hug. Jon gets the feeling, watching them, that they’ve already said their goodbyes.
“What’s in the bag?” Basira asks without looking up from her book as Daisy starts the car.
“Ah--tea, and some snacks for all of us. From Martin,” Jon says. He busies himself with passing out the thermoses, but he can’t quite stop himself from turning his head to look back at the lone figure standing on the front steps of the Institute, watching them leave.
Martin was right. The biscuits are overdone, but with the tea, they’re perfect.
v.
Jon makes tea. When he’s thirsty; when his hands are cold; when the guilt and shame and grief threaten to choke him; when he finds himself wishing he’d made a different choice, when Oliver gave his statement - he makes tea. He makes it exactly as Martin did (does), timing the steeping precisely, measuring out careful spoonfuls of sugar. It tastes the same. Of course it tastes the same; it’s just tea.
It’s just tea.
That’s the problem, of course. It was never the tea, Jon is realizing at precisely the worst moment. It was the hands that held the cup, the voice that asked if he was busy.
It’s so quiet in the Archives, these days.
Jon takes to leaving a mug of tea on Martin’s old desk. Not every day, or even most days. But some days, he’ll find himself making a second cup of tea, almost as if by muscle memory. He’ll leave the cup on Martin’s desk and then hide away in his office, refusing to let himself look. When he comes out of his office again, hours later, the cup of tea will be there, untouched, cold and over-steeped.
Once, though. Once, Jon leaves his office and Martin’s desk is clear, and the mug has been washed and placed to dry on the rack. Daisy was asleep; Melanie was out all day; Basira was chasing down a lead.
Jon slumps against the counter and puts his face in his hands and cries quietly.
He keeps making tea. Keeps putting it on Martin’s desk. A silent offering, hoping that one day he will reach out and find Martin reaching back.
vi.
Their first night in the safehouse, Jon and Martin don’t bother doing much of anything. They arrive so late that it’s verging on early again, and in the quiet darkness of that liminal hour the single bedroom that awaits them feels only like a respite, not a danger. They pause at its threshold, wavering on weary feet for just a minute, before Martin says, “We can talk about it in the morning, yeah?”
And Jon, eloquently, says, “Yeah,” and doesn’t expect to be able to fall asleep with Martin so close Jon can feel the electric current between the hairs on their arms, but he does. He wakes only once in the night, as Jess Tyrell’s nightmare slips sideways into a sense-memory of the choking embrace of the Buried. Jon matches his shaky breathing to Martin’s sleep-steady pattern of inhale-exhale, and marvels at the way the crushing pain in his chest sweetens, shifts from a bruise-dark hurt to an intimate, blooming ache. He lies on his side and breathes to the rhythm Martin has set, one hand pressed to his breastbone as if he could feel the shape of the ache beneath his palm, and slips back into sleep between shared breaths.
They kiss for the first time in the morning, still tangled in their bedsheets. An accident, really. Jon, mind hazy with the last remnants of sleep, means just to kiss Martin’s cheek, right along where the crease of the pillow has left a red mark. But just as his courage overtakes his trepidation and Jon leans in to kiss that mark, Martin turns his head to say, “Should we talk about--,” and Jon’s mouth lands on the curve of Martin’s bottom lip.
There is a quiet, lingering moment. Jon’s mouth trembles against Martin’s. He, or maybe Martin, makes a quiet, whimpering sound.
Martin’s lips are chapped. They taste vaguely of salt.
Jon pulls away. Martin looks at him. If looks are anything to go by, Martin’s cheeks feel as hot as his do.
“I was gonna ask if we should talk about the whole, um, sharing a bed thing,” Martin says.
“I love you,” Jon says, feeling light-headed.
“Oh,” Martin says, and then he giggles, a confused little sound. “Um. Cool! Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Jon says.
“Yeah,” Martin echoes.
They look at each other. Martin covers his face with one hand. He is starting to grin.
“Um, to clarify, I, ah, I’m--I enjoyed, um, sharing the bed. It was--it was, um, it was very nice,” Jon says, cringing at his own words. He tries again: “I would be, be--very happy to, um, t-to continue. Doing that.”
Martin is giggling. Jon’s ears are radiating heat.
“Sorry,” Martin says. He wipes at his eyes and hiccups. “I love you, too. God, of course I do. I’m just--two days ago I thought I was going to die, and now you’re--and it’s--we--” and his giggles are turning into small, sniffling sobs.
“Oh, Martin,” Jon whispers. Whatever trepidation he feels crumbles when he reaches out clumsily to fold Martin into his spindly grip and Martin begins to cry in earnest. Jon can do nothing but hold him tighter, cheeks pressed together, and let Martin weep out the fog. “I’m here,” Jon finds himself saying through tears of his own. “I’m here.”
They hold each other through the storm. Jon learns the texture of Martin’s hair and the warmth of his arms and the soft touch of his breath against the intimate cradle of Jon’s throat.
Afterward, they lie together in a silence of their own making; not the oppressive damp of fog, but an open stillness that breathes with them. It is such a foreign feeling that Jon doesn’t know what to do with it. It sits in his chest in the same place as that tender ache, making a home nestled close to his heart.
There is a low, growling sound. Jon tenses, fingers tightening where they’d been carding through Martin’s hair. Martin shifts his weight and pulls away from Jon, propping himself up on one elbow. He wipes at his face, grimacing a little, and says, “Sorry. Guess all that crying really worked up an appetite.”
Jon blinks. “Oh,” he says. “You’re hungry.”
“I--yeah,” Martin says. “I am, actually. Are … ?”
Jon has to take a moment to think about it. His appetite for the, ah, non-spooky, is inconsistent at best, and understanding his own bodily needs has never been his strong suit. He’s surprised, and a little pleased, though, to realize that the minute tension growing in his belly is hunger.
“Yes,” he says slowly, smiling. He reaches for Martin’s hand and, finding it, gives it a gentle squeeze. “I could eat.”