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It’s easy to ignore things when you’re concentrating. You might subconsciously notice them, yes, but they don’t really grab your attention at first, easily pushed to the back of the mind to focus on more important matters. So it’s when Kate finally lifts her head from her books that she notices the smell. A smoky, acrid, burning odor wafting in from under her bedroom door.
She pushes back from her desk so quickly the chair falls over and darts from her room toward the stairs as fast as her short legs can carry her. There isn’t any smoke, as such, but the entire hall is a bit hazy, and as she jumps from the bottom step and runs toward the kitchen, she wonders if it’s possible to carry seven text books and a laptop at once, or if it would just be better to chuck the books out of the window first.
As soon as she walks through the kitchen door it’s evident what the problem is. The microwave is running, and whatever is inside is starting to smolder and turn dark. The timer still has 26 minutes left on it when she pulls open the door to see a half-melted bowl and a tangle of burnt noodles.
“Who in the name of all that is holy did this?” she yells, waiting to see if the guilty party will show themselves. Probably not, the ingrates. The problem with sharing a house with a pile of college students shows itself occasionally; the only one of them with any real sense whatsoever is Martin, and he’s so rarely around he never makes much of a mess to start with. Although she wouldn’t mind if he did, honestly. At least it would give her an excuse to talk to him.
Kate shakes her head with a sigh. Thirty-year old pilots wouldn’t be interested in awkward, too-quiet twenty-two year old students, anyway. Especially not ones that can’t pass their anatomy exams. She gingerly lifts the ruined bowl with a towel and turns around to toss it in the bin. When she goes around the corner into the alcove where they set up a small kitchen table, she chokes down a scream.
Martin is there, asleep with his head lying along one arm atop the table. He’s disheveled and worn, wearing a faded tee shirt and pajama bottoms even though its nearly four in the afternoon. His nose, a cute little freckled button that Kate loves, is red and swollen and a pile of tissues is clutched in his hand. He must be sick, and fell asleep waiting for his lunch.
She should wake him. He can’t be comfortable there, hunched over the table and probably freezing. It’s rather mild outside, but the old house really holds the damp. Kate reaches out gingerly, hesitant to touch him even for something so simple as this. She rests her hand lightly on one shoulder, getting a little fluttery when she feels the solid muscle under the fabric, the product of lifting other people’s furniture for his second job. His chest must be amazing, and the muscles across his back simply divine. Oh, don’t be such a creeper, Kate, honestly, she thinks, then refocuses when she realizes that the heat coming from his skin is worryingly high.
“Martin,” she whispers, shaking his arm a little. “Martin, wake up.”
Martin stirs slightly, groans, and tucks his forehead back against his arm and sniffs. Kate reaches out and tries again, shaking a bit harder.
“Martin. You have to wake up. You’re drooling on the table.”
He blinks, shakes his head a bit and looks at her, slightly confused for a moment until he starts to cough, a deep, wracking sound that hurts Kate’s chest to hear it. When it finally subsides, Martin is doubled over with Kate’s hand on his back. He comes up for air, flushed, and drops his forehead on the table again.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
Martin groans. “I’m sorry, Kate, I just made something to eat, I didn’t mean to get my germs all over the kitchen like this. I’ll get my noodles and get out of your hair.”
Kate cringes. “Um, Martin, I’m sorry, but your noodles aren’t … salvageable. I think you must have set the timer for forty minutes instead of four. That’s what brought me down here.” She points gravely to the bin, and Martin looks inside.
“Oh, no. That was my last one. At least I didn’t burn the house down.” He blows his nose and throws his tissue away, and when he turns back to Kate, looking her in the face for the first time since he woke up, she gets the full force of just how ill he probably is. His eyes are puffy and watery, his nose red and peeling from the constant application of tissues. Even his lips are chapped.
“You look awful!” she blurts, then kicks herself. “I mean, you seem really, really ill. I think you should go see a doctor.”
Martin stands, a little wobbly. “No, I’ll be fine. Just need to rest. Fortunately nothing scheduled this week.” He shuffles over to the cabinet marked Martin Crieff: Touch and I break your fingers and opens the door. It’s bare except for a package of tea, one of bread, and a jar of peanut butter. “Damn,” he says, and opens the bread and drops one slice in the toaster.
Kate can’t stand it. She’s always has a soft spot for hurt and injured creatures, and Martin is one of the most pathetic cases she’s seen. “I can make you something,” she blurts, then covers her mouth in horror at her own forwardness. “I mean, if you want. I’m not the best cook or anything , but I think you have a fever and I should help you back to your bed, I mean, your room! So you can sleep. Yes. After you eat.” Kate busies herself at the sink before she can sound any more like an idiot, rinsing a cloth to clean up the leftover mess in the microwave before Martin reaches out to take the wet cloth from her hand.
“Here, let me. I almost set the micro on fire, after all. You don’t need to clean up my messes.” He starts to wipe down the door, and when he bends down to try to get at the back, he wavers a bit, catching himself against the countertop. Kate lifts a hand, almost rests it between his shoulderblades in sympathy before she pulls it back.
“Go back to bed, Martin,” she says gently. “I’ll bring you something, okay?”
Martin stops, sighs, and blows his nose again. He looks down at the floor, then up at Kate, smiling a shy little half-smile that makes her heart clench in her chest. “That would be really nice,” he says quietly. “Thank you.”
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The first time Kate Osborn saw Martin Crieff was when she was moving in six months ago. She was looking at her da’s truck, wondering just how she could get the small bureau out of the back without dropping it. Then how she could get it into the house, up the stairs, and into her room, which would require lifting it. Given her five-foot-five inch frame and her almost five-foot tall bureau, that was going to be something of a problem. The genius of having her brother help load the bureau wasn’t quite carried over into making sure he could come to the house with her to unload it, of course, and he cheerily waved her off and went to work as scheduled. She was frowning and mad at her own lack of forethought and generally frustrated when Martin walked up, asked nervously if he could help her, and when she explained her problem, lifted and carried the entire bureau into her room without another word.
She followed him inside, trying not to stare at his muscles where they flexed under the tight tee shirt he was wearing, and generally approving of his really rather fine arse as she watched it go up the stairs ahead of her. When she tried to say thank you, he simply blushed, the tips of his ears going pink under the curls of his bright red hair. She giggled a little, almost as flustered as he was, and cheering a little inside at the prospect of at least one of her roommates being a cute, kind, gentlemanly sort.
The second time, about a week later, Kate was lounging in the sitting room, wrapped in her fleece bathrobe with smudges of mascara under her eyes and her brown hair twisted up in a messy knot. She’d just settled into watching a Graham Norton marathon when Martin strode in. He wearing his pilot’s uniform, and looked so handsome and polished she just sat there stunned, barely able to answer him when he asked if she’d seen his hat. He located it perched on the antlers of Ricky’s mounted deer head, fitted it across his smoothed-down curls, gave her a tentative smile, and left.
Kate felt like she’d just melted into a puddle.
Every time after that they’d just passed each other in the hall or in the kitchen. Martin didn’t spend a lot of time in the common rooms, usually going straight to his attic when he got home, and there were plenty of days he just didn’t come home at all. So other than a few short, awkward conversations, Kate hadn’t has as many opportunities as she would have liked to get to know him.
That’s about to change rapidly, she’s hoping, as when she balances the tray across the crook of her arm and cracks open the door, he’s fast asleep lying diagonally across his bed. He’s not even under the covers, and his body trembles slightly with fever-induced chill. It looks like the poor man is barely functional. Kate debates the awkwardness of nursing a man she secretly has a crush on versus leaving him there to suffer alone. Other than occasional lifts to work, no one has come to visit him, nor has he brought anyone home, the entire time she’s lived there. She wonders if his mum is anywhere nearby.
Martin curls in on himself and starts another coughing fit that leaves him gasping, his eyes barely open and looking absolutely miserable, and she’s committed. Other than revising for the exam she has day after tomorrow, there isn’t anything else on, and she isn’t entirely sure Martin won’t just die up here if left to his own devices. She sets the tray on a small table in the corner, and starts rummaging through his bureau for a pair of socks.
“Kate?” He mumbles. “What’re you doing?”
“Sorry, Martin, but you’re not well enough to take care of yourself. So I’m helping. Is that all right?” She turns around with a pair of fuzzy blue socks that look like a great-aunt’s last Christmas gift and waves them under his nose. “You feel chilled, I’m guessing.”
Martin sighs, takes the socks from her hand and pulls them on. He scoots back enough that Kate can fold down the duvet and he can slip inside.
“Can you eat something?” she asks.
“I think so,” he says, his forehead scrunched up. “I was trying to eat earlier, before it all caught fire.”
Kate giggles. “No, not quite on fire. But close enough.” She gets the tray and helps him place it across his lap. Chicken soup and bread and tea, and Martin finishes about half of it, with occasional breaks for coughing that leave him limp and Kate clutching the tray to keep it from tipping over onto the floor. He swallows the paracetamol she gives him without complaint.
“Thank you so, so much. I’m sorry I’m such a mess. You probably think I’m disgusting,” he sighs, and slides down into the bed, snuggling into his pillows.
“You’re welcome, and you aren’t.” Kate smiles. His voice is lovely, if a bit roughened from coughing, and he looks adorably rumpled with his curls sticking out every which way. She ventures carefully to sit on the side of the bed, waits until his eyes slide shut before reaching out to smooth his hair back from his fevered skin. He sighs and turns slightly into her touch, which thrills her much more than it probably should.
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Three hours later Kate’s roused from her studies by the sound of someone crashing into the wall outside her room and cursing, then coughing. She flings open the door to find Martin collapsed in a heap on the floor, holding his foot.
“What happened?” she demands, crouching down next to him and trying to get an arm under his to help him up.
“I missed the bottom step,” he mutters, bracing himself with one hand on the wall and one on Kate’s shoulder and getting to his feet somewhat unsteadily.
“By a mile? Are you all right? It sounded like you hit the wall, too.”
“I did. I’m fine, I think. Sorry to have bothered you, again. I’m, I need…” he gestures desperately toward the bathroom at the end of the hall.
Kate keeps her hold on his arm, steadies his steps until he can flip on the light and hang onto the sink.
“I’ll be here to help you get back upstairs,” she says, “if you need me.”
Martin turns to her, his eyes still bleary and skin flushed. “Why are you being so nice to me? I mean, thank you, but I’m not used to people doing things to help.”
Kate smiles, flushing just a little. “I really want to,” she says.
“But why?”
Kate bites her lip. “Because you helped me. And you seem like you could use it,” she says, and reaches out to close the door for him.
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Kate settles herself more firmly into the corner of the sofa and tries to focus on dog anatomy, but it’s hard to ignore the soft wheezing coming from the bed behind her where Martin is sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning every few minutes.
She gives up with a sigh and claps her book closed. After helping him get back upstairs and back into bed, she decided she might as well stay up here for a while, save herself from running up and down. At least Martin’s room is comfortable, which isn’t what she had expected at all. It’s massive, to start, almost the size of the entire footprint of the house, and Martin’s set up a little living area with a couple of tatty, squashy chairs and a sofa in front of a tiny television on one side. No wonder he doesn’t spend much time downstairs.
She knows she’s being a bit forward, moving her studying into his room, but even if she’s invading a little, she doesn’t think it wouldn’t hurt to stand up and look around a bit. It’s not like she’d really get this opportunity again.
She circles the room, wondering what kind of man lives in a student rental for as long as she’d been told he had. He must love his job, she muses, looking at the shelves full of books on aviation, model planes, posters of fighter jets and the Wright Brothers, little trinkets from all over the world. Craig had told her he was an airline captain, so there must be something in his life to make him still live here.
He sounded like the luckiest man on Earth. She’d wanted nothing more than to be a veterinarian her whole life, and here she is, barely making her way through the vet assistants program. Thing is, she’s wonderful with animals, they respond to her, but the actual tests were just giving her fits. She’d never failed to make the correct decision during clinic, but ask her to describe it or choose a written decision path, she’d answer incorrectly every time.
Martin turns, kicking off his covers. Kate hurries over, places her hand on his forehead. It looks like his fever has broken at least for now, leaving him overheated and sweaty. The paracetamol was about five hours ago, now, and he’d need more in an hour or so to keep the fever down. She’ll stick around at least that long, then go down and go to bed. One more go through the bone structure of Canis Lupis Familiaris, at least. She pulls the horrible old orange and brown afghan from the back of the sofa, wraps up, and opens her book.
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Kate wakes up loggy and disorientated, the side of the room she’s on completely dark but with a soft glow coming from over the top of the sofa. She bolts upright as soon as she realizes where she is, her book sliding off her lap with a crash.
“Fuck!” she hisses.
“Are you all right?” she hears from the other side of the room.
Kate peers over the top of the sofa. Martin is sitting up in bed, reading by the light of his bedside lamp. Oh bugger.
“Hi,” she says uncertainly. “I, um, thought I’d stay to make sure you got your next dose of paracetamol, and I feel asleep. Dog anatomy, you know, not the most exciting thing in the universe.” For the love of all that is holy, Kate, stop being a babbling idiot.
“Should I have woken you?” he asks, a little wrinkle appearing over the bridge of his nose. “You looked so comfortable, and I…” Martin blushes, glancing down and looking a bit sheepish.
“I’m fine, really, but I’ll just go back downstairs, now that you’re feeling better.” Kate starts to gather her books and notes, feeling a bit disappointed – and guilty for being disappointed. She sighs. If nothing else, maybe now their encounters in the hall would at least be more comfortable.
“Must you?” he asks. “I mean, well, it is awfully late, but I’ve been in bed for days now and I thought I was up for a movie, and maybe you’d like to see it too?” Martin’s face is bright red now, and Kate can’t help but find him devastatingly adorable, even sick and disheveled and probably smelly.
“That would depend on the movie,” she teases.
“The Big Sleep?” he answers hopefully.
Kate squeals, then claps her hand over her mouth in horror. “Oh god, you must think I’m a nutter. But I love Bogart.”
Martin grins at her, a bright smile that changes his entire appearance, makes him look younger, less troubled. “I’ll set it up if you wouldn’t mind getting some drinks,” he says, and Kate wastes no time bolting down the stairs for the ginger ale.
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“Douglas will never believe me when I tell him I watched a movie and it wasn’t about planes,” Martin says, settling the blanket more firmly around his shoulders and clicking off the DVD. Kate flicks her eyes toward him quickly, assessing. He seems to be doing well, but despite the second dose of paracetamol, his fever could come back.
“Who’s Douglas?” she asks.
“My first officer. Thinks he’s God’s gift to pilots, and has an ego the size of China.”
Kate giggles. “China? Why there?”
“Well, you know, big. Forever to fly through. Like Russia.”
“I’ve never been there,” Kate says wistfully. “I’d love to travel, when I’m done with school.”
“I don’t get to see much of the places I go, really. Just the airport pilot’s lounge. And every cheap hotel within a mile of it.” Martin picks at the duvet wrapped around his body and blows his nose.
“Doesn’t your boss pay for your hotels?” Kate asks. She figured pilots would at least get something nice, the job seems so glamorous, going around the world on a regular basis.
Martin laughs. “Sort of. When she remembers to. She’s not really known for her generosity.”
“Sounds like a peach.”
“You have no idea.” Martin smiles shakes his head, lifts his eyes to hers, and Kate finds herself feeling a bit warm. The silence stretches, the tension rising the longer Kate holds his gaze. She wonders what he’d do if she asked him to dinner tomorrow. She’s just about to open her mouth and lay her ego on the line when he sneezes.
Kate sighs and hands over the box and he blows noisily. “Sorry,” he says miserably. “Oh no! You’re probably going to get sick, too, now. I didn’t even think of it. I’m so sorry, Kate.”
“Don’t even worry about it. I rarely get sick anyway.” Kate starts piling her books and slips on her shoes. It’s late, almost 1 AM, and he needs to sleep. Besides, she really shouldn’t ask. Watching a movie with a housemate is a lot different than going out on a date with one.
“Kate,” he starts, and she turns back to see he’s gotten up and followed her to the door. “Thank you.”
Kate feels the butterflies start in her stomach again. Good Lord, she’s really got to get this under control. “Thank you for asking me,” she says, fighting the urge to touch his forehead to check for fever. “You seem much better. Take care of yourself, all right?”
“I’ll try. Um, listen, if…if you’re free sometime, I do have “To Catch a Thief” around here somewhere. And I’ll probably still be here tomorrow, so…” Martin ducks his head and Kate finds it a little difficult to breathe. They’d chatted throughout the movie, and he was so easy to talk to, a little too invested in his job maybe, but cute and funny and interesting and interested in her, which was rare enough.
“Yeah,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound as lame as she thinks she probably does. “That would be really great.”
He beams. “That’s…really fantastic. Good night, Kate,” he says, reaches toward her tentatively, fingers outstretched. Kate thinks for a wild second that he’s about to touch her, then he diverts suddenly to tuck a sliding folder back into her book.
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The next afternoon Kate raids her closet, pulling out every single pair of jeans she owns, tossing them all on her bed in frustration. Too tight, or too lose, or too frayed, the entire lot. She’s disgusted with herself for caring so much, and even more disgusted with herself for waiting until the last minute to figure out what to wear.
This is insane. She’s an adult, he’s an adult, she’s not particularly a clothes-horse and he’s been so sick he hasn’t left the house in five days. Hell, he might not have even showered yet.
She finally settles on her favorite worn in jeans and a long sleeved striped t-shirt. Long hair down, brushed till it’s a shining, glossy wave. Mascara, lipgloss, and a dot of concealer to cover the dark circles under her eyes, and she’s ready.
There’s about an hour until she thought she’d knock on his door, so plenty of time to start work on her little surprise, a specialty of her mum’s, a baked concoction of sausage, cheddar cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and green onions to spread on little circles of toasted French bread. She loves to cook, really, and she doesn’t think Martin gets to eat very well, probably living on airline coffee and terrible catering.
Once everything is out of the oven, Kate puts together a nice tray with the food and a few bottles of water and Orangina, balances it carefully and makes her way upstairs. When she gets to the top, she can hear voices. She figures he’s on a call, so she taps quietly and cracks the door open, and nearly drops the tray.
Martin is standing there fully dressed in his uniform, with a younger, blonde man gently tying his tie, patting his shoulder affectionately and brushing the lint from his lapels. The intimacy of their actions is clear signal that they’ve known each other a long while, and their relationship is a fairly close one. Oh God, she thinks, how on Earth could she have been so incredibly stupid? She glances around, looking for somewhere to put the tray down before she drops it.
“Kate!” Martin says, hurrying over to take the tray from her. “Oh, no, did you do all this for me?”
Kate nods, not trusting herself to speak. It isn’t possible, she doesn’t think, to feel any more embarrassed than she does right now.
“I’m so sorry. We were hired this afternoon for an emergency trip, and since I’m not dying thanks to you, I need to fly to Prague about two hours from now.”
The blonde man taps Martin’s shoulder and starts to leave. “Mum says ten minutes, Skip, or she’ll start paying you just so she can give you a fine.”
“Arthur!” Martin squeaks. “That is private!”
“Sorry,” he says, but his cheerful voice doesn’t sound all that sorry at all. “I’ll just meet you in the car, shall I?”
“Yes,” Martin says, then quickly adds, “Kate, Arthur, Arthur, Kate.”
“Hi!” Arthur says, and holds his hand out. “Skip says you took care of him when he was sick. That was awfully nice of you.”
Kate shakes it tentatively. “It wasn’t a problem,” she mumbles.
“Arthur, can you, ah…” Martin makes little shooing gestures at the door, which it seems Arthur understands as he waves and leaves without another word. Martin closes the door, then comes back to stand in front of where Kate is resolutely looking at the floor.
“So, who’s he, then?” she asks quietly.
“Arthur?” Martin says. “He’s my boss’s son, and our steward. He came to check on me and see if I was up to flying to Prague. His mum would have come, but she’s down with a broken ankle at the mo’ and can’t manage the stairs. Why?” He tips his head down, tries to look at Kate, but she turns her head. She feels utterly ridiculous, and now her embarrassment is tripled, beyond concealment, and she should really go.
“Nothing,” she says, and starts for the tray.
“I’m sorry, did I do something? I mean, I have to go to Prague, but I’ll bring you some chocolates…wait. This isn’t about my going to Prague, is it?” Martin looks more closely at her heated face. “What, did you think you’d walked in on me? You didn’t, Arthur was helping with my tie, he’s much better at a full Windsor than I am, so … Oh God! You thought he was, that we were…Oh God!”
“I didn’t!” she says, but she’s knows she’s caught out when she can feel her face flush. She’s probably bright scarlet by now.
“You did! You thought he was my boyfriend and you … were you upset?”
Kate wants to die, wants the floor to open up and drop her down into the basement where she can die a nice, peaceful, dark death. Martin reaches into his pocket, pulls out some sanitizer and coats his hands with it before taking one of Kate’s hands in his own. Kate looks at his long fingers wrapped gently around her hand, then looks up into his face, his expression shy but hopeful, his red nose not detracting from his looks in the slightest.
“I hope you were,” he starts, and Kate stiffens. “No! I mean, if you were upset that means you might feel about me the same way that I feel … about … you. Perhaps. Do you?”
Kate giggles, relief washing over her in a warm wave. She squeezes his hands, lifts them to press against her cheek. “I really do,” she whispers.
Martin beams at her, then pulls her hand toward him to press a gentle kiss to the back of it. “I’ll be home tomorrow morning. And you have your exam in the afternoon. So tomorrow night?” He gestures around his room. “I can’t promise much more than this right now, but I’d be honored if you’d come up.”
“It’s perfect, really,” she says. And she means it. Just the two of them, laughing together at a good movie, chatting and finally getting to know each other. Kate makes her way back toward the door, picking up the tray on the way, her happiness making her giddy, bold. “I like my chocolate dark, and perhaps you could pick up a bottle of wine in duty-free?” If he’s well enough to fly a plane, he’ll be well enough for a few drinks, and she’s more than ready to really get to know him as he really is, not when he’s made vulnerable by illness. “And don’t forget these.” She tosses him the box of tissues, blows him a kiss, and makes her way down the stairs, his surprised smile leaving her laughing.
Title from the Beatles, I've Just Seen a Face