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On the rare occasions when he would indulge in some self care, Martin would still insist on buying himself useful things. This way he felt justified in spending money for himself.
He'd ventured out of his flat to buy a new whisk, but got distracted by a stand with all sorts of old stationery. An item in particular caught his attention: an old, purple, leather-bound notebook. It must cost a fortune, he thought, as he carefully picked it up and examined it.
At first he thought his eyes were deceiving him, because there was no way such a piece of work could be sold at 5 quid, right? He asked the seller if the price was right, and, once he received confirmation, he pondered for a few seconds before taking out his wallet.
He studied it carefully once he was at home: the leather was covered in miniscule scratches from countless hands before his, the pages were yellowed, but blank. This struck him as odd, but sure enough, there wasn't a single stroke of ink blemishing the pages.
All in all, Martin thought it was going to make a nice poetry notebook. He placed it on his desk and went on with his evening, promptly forgetting about it for several days until the argument.
Jon wasn't kind. Martin knew that very well, and he was used to it. This time, however, he had outdone himself.
It was a small mistake, really, an accident: tea spilled over a statement. The Archivist spent a solid 15 minutes yelling at him, threatening to fire him and calling him all sorts of names. Incompetent, unprofessional, harmful...
It took Martin every ounce of strength in his body to refrain from crying; barely one second after Jon had kicked him out of his office, he burst into tears. Sasha had to hug him for half an hour, as Tim did his best to cheer him up. "Don't listen to that Tory prick."
He didn't know what he would have done without them.
At home, he went to open his old notebook, but a quick leafing through the pages reminded him that it was full. The new one. He grabbed a fountain pen, hesitantly opening the book to its first page. Poetry was the best way he had to express his feelings. A great deal of his creations had something to do with Jon, it was hardly news. This time he focused on the Archivist's cruelty, his utter indifference towards Martin's feelings, and the way he lied when saying "I care about you, Martin." Because obviously, he didn't. So, peppermint tea next to him, pen pressing on paper, Martin started writing.
~~
It was about 8 in the evening when Jon's skin started to itch. He was curled up on his sofa, engrossed in a book, when he began absentmindedly scratching at the back of his hand. After ten minutes, when he felt something protruding under his skin, he quickly put the book down, examining his flesh. Much to his horror, he found something bulging under his skin, something that pressed up, stretching his epithelium, until it broke with an eerie plop.
It was a flower.
Big and orange, Jon identified it as a marigold: the same kind of flowers his grandma used to grow.
He stared at it in shock, before hesitantly tugging on it. When he plucked the flower, blood started gushing out of the small hole where the stem was buried in his flesh.
His whole body was now itching. He stood up and shed his shirt and trousers, fingers fumbling over the buttons: small green buds grew out of him, blossoming into flowers in front of his very eyes. Panic seized him, as he frantically pulled at the plants, until his arms and hands were covered in blood. The more he plucked, the more flowers grew: the majority were white candytufts, snaking up his arms and blooming on his thighs; orange marigolds covered his hands, spreading across his cheeks; he traced his top surgery scars with a finger and realised with horror that bell-shaped purple deadly nightshade flowers were growing from them.
He brought a hand to his face.
When a marigold started blooming right next to his eye, his vision was impaired and he stumbled backwards.
The phone ringing barely even registered in his mind: he was desperately tugging at the flowers, blood trickling down his face, arms, legs, and chest. He didn't touch the one near his eye: even in his panicked frenzy he knew better.
He was hyperventilating, as his shaking red fingers plucked, and plucked, until blood loss combined with stress made him dizzy. He fell to his knees.
~~~
Martin re-read what he had written, with a satisfied hum. He felt much better now. He was about to shut the notebook and go on with his evening, when his phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Martin?"
Martin tensed up. "Mr. Bouchard! What can I do for you?"
"I tried to reach Jon, to ask him whether he could work overtime tomorrow, but I can't seem to get through to him. Could you try, please?"
"I, uh... Yes, of course."
"Excellent. Let me know if you get to him."
He hung up. Great. He closed the notebook and stared at Jon's phone number, hands shaking. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to his boss, maybe getting another scolding for invading his privacy, or something. Still, Elias asked, and Elias was slightly scarier than Jon (but only slightly), so he gathered up his courage and dialed the Archivist's number.
No answer. He tried three times, to no avail. Normally, Martin would have given up and texted him, but he had a bad feeling about the situation. He absentmindedly flipped the notebook open, but its pages were blank. Including the one in which he had just written his poem. Uneasiness seizing him, he grabbed his coat and keys, and left the house.
~~~
Jon could feel flowers growing inside of his lungs. He coughed, falling to the floor. He heaved, fingers clutching at his throat, head light and skin itching.
A knock at the door.
He shut the one eye that wasn't obscured by the marigold.
"Jon? Are you in there?"
He tensed up. Martin.
"Jon, open the door, please."
The Archivist was in his underwear, and as much as the situation was absurd, he was not going to greet his archival assistant in such a state. Still, Martin was knocking so insistently, Jon worried he might give up and tear the door down, so he draped himself in a blanket, covered half his face, and opened the door just enough to glare at Martin.
"Go away." His voice was hoarse and raspy, and his breath was heavy.
"Jon, are you okay?"
"I'm-" Jon coughed, a single flower falling in his hand.
Martin widened his eyes. "Jon, what the-"
"Go away!" The Archivist tried to shut the door on the assistant, but his weakened state lowered his already pathetic strength, and it wasn't hard for Martin to resist and push the door open.
Jon stumbled on the floor, coughing out another flower. The blanket had slipped from his body, revealing a macabre pattern of plants growing on his stomach, arms, shoulders, and legs.
Martin stared at him in horror, and he stammered for a full minute before finally uttering out a: "What the fuck, Jon?!"
The Archivist didn't reply: his fingers grasped at the flowers, pulling them out handfuls at a time. When the assistant saw the blood gushing out of the wounds, he knelt down and grabbed Jon's wrists. "Stop it! You're hurting yourself!"
Jon's visible eye was watery and wide with fear. "Help me..." He emitted a choked whisper, clawing at his throat hard enough to leave scratch marks.
Martin thumbed a leaf of... mint? growing on the Archivist's temple. "Oh, uh o-okay, let me just-" His fingers shook considerably, and he blinked away tears. "Damn it, I'll- I'll find a solution, I-"
He paused, finally recognising the plants blossoming on Jon. "Oh, shit."
The Archivist whined. "W-what?"
Martin flushed, his breath getting significantly raggedy. But he didn't reply. How could he say "I compared you to these flowers in my poem, and now they're growing on you, so this is probably my fault"? The situation was less than ideal.
Unless... maybe all he had to do was forgive Jon. He cleared his throat. "Uh, about what happened today..."
The Archivist was shaken by a cough, and he went limp, falling in Martin's arms. Martin yelped and placed Jon's head on his lap, hesitantly putting his hands on his chest. When the Archivist didn't move away, instead arching his back towards the friendly touch, he ran his hands on his chest to soothe him. "I-I forgive you. You hurt me, but you didn't mean to."
For a single, dreadful second, nothing happened, and Martin feared for the worst. Then, every flower on Jon's body fell: the stems simply slid out of his skin and the plants gathered on the floor around him.
Every breath he took came easier and easier, as the flowers in his lungs wilted and disappeared. When the flower next to his eye fell down, he took a deep, long breath and shut his eyes, shaking lightly.
Martin didn't know what he was supposed to do, but Jon hadn't told him to stop, so he kept running his hands across his chest, murmuring hesitant "There, there"s, and "It's over"s.
It took the Archivist a long time to calm down enough to look at Martin and say: "Thank you."
The assistant blushed. "O-oh, you're welcome."
Jon sat up, scratching at one of the tiny holes in his skin from when he pulled out the flowers. "How... How did you stop it by... saying that?"
The assistant let him go and stared at the floor. "I... Uh... I wrote a poem. And... And it was about you, and there were those flowers mentioned, and I wrote it in a notebook I bought, and it must be magical or something, and then I came here, and you were like that, and-"
"Martin." Weirdly enough, there wasn't a hint of annoyance in his voice. Confusion, perhaps. Puzzlement. Maybe embarrassment. "Did you write a poem about me because of the... conversation we had today?"
There was no point in lying. "Yes."
"Oh."
They remained quiet for an excruciatingly long time. Finally, Jon cleared his throat and mumbled out: "I'm sorry, Martin. I shouldn't have lashed out on you like that."
Somehow, this apology surprised Martin more than the entire flower debacle. "Oh, um, it's okay. I forgave you."
"Can I offer you anything? A cup of tea, perhaps?" He paused. "I mean, I've got some spare peppermint, apparently." He gestured at the plants around him.
Martin's eyes widened. "Did you just... make a joke?"
"Unless you actually want to drink tea made from my plants, yes, I did." Another pause. "Why did you come to my house?"
"E-Elias told me to ask you if you could work overtime tomorrow. He said he tried to reach you, but you didn't answer."
"Huh."
"... Please, tell me you're going to say no."
Jon arched an eyebrow. "Why?"
Sometimes - not all the time, but sometimes - Martin wanted to lift the Archivist's scrawny body, give him a good shake and teach him the importance of self preservation, even at the cost of yelling his ears off.
"What- Jesus Christ, Jon, you almost died choked by flowers!" Jon flinched at Martin's explosion. "Now you're going to call Elias back, and you're going to tell him that you're taking the day off, and that's final."
"I'm your boss." The Archivist grumbled.
Martin crossed his arms. "And I'm your friend, whether you like it or not." He felt a traitorous lump growing in his throat: if Jon couldn't even see him as a friend, how could he ever hope that they could become something more?
Silence. A deep sigh. "Fine. Thank you, Martin."
They both picked themselves up from the floor: Jon shuffling with the sudden, embarrassing realisation that he was in his underwear; Martin avoiding to so much as glimpse at the Archivist until he put on a shirt. He ran a finger over his surgery scars, before buttoning up his garment. "You can go now."
Martin nodded. "Are you sure you can spend the night alone?"
"So long as no one writes any more poems about me, I believe I will be fine."
The assistant awkwardly chuckled. "I'm going to take the notebook to Artifact Storage first thing tomorrow."
"Good." Jon put on his trousers and grabbed his phone; he frowned at it. "That's weird."
"What?"
"I have no phone call.from Elias. No text or email either. Are you sure he tried to contact me?"
"That's what he said."
Jon shrugged. "Well, no matter, I'll ask him as soon as I phone him."
Martin's hand rested on the door handle for just a few seconds longer than necessary. "I... Goodnight, Jon."
The Archivist barely had the time to reply "Goodnight, Martin", before the door shut and he was left alone.