Work Text:
It’s something that only breaks once, the ability to trust in others. Jon’s grandmother had always provided him with the things he’d needed and nothing more, enough to survive more like a zoo animal trying to put on weight rather than a child learning the ropes of personhood. When Jon’s trust had broken, it hadn’t shattered, not anything so dramatic, nothing where the pieces could be collected and shoved back into place until it was different but usable: it had been a clean snap right through the center of a weight-bearing beam of Jon’s personality, one upon which he’d had to construct the rest of himself alone.
Tim couldn’t see the crack in the foundation, but there was no denying the wobbly house. The sides seemed to always cave in after just a few moments of cracking a window, and the door had never once been functional. It might take the whole house down if he tried.
And Tim had always tried to be patient. A wobbly house, after all, is not a choice, not always. He waited for Jon to initiate opening up, and he basked in it for as long as he’d allow before the trebling of the walls made him too nervous and he had to slam the shutters once more.
Some things, though, can’t be excused that easily, and Jon’s ridiculously short fuse is one of them.
Agitated, Tim can handle--Jon can be a little short when he’s anxious or stressed, and Tim has never once held that against him. Avoidant, too, because Tim is used to having to coax an overworked Jon out of his office like a scared kitten under a porch.
He draws the line at snappish, draws it when Sasha leaves Jon’s office with hurt in her eyes deeper than the angry scowl on her face.
“What happened?” Tim demands before she even has a chance to return to her desk, and she rolls her eyes.
“Jon, obviously.”
Tim nods. “Right, I gathered that much. What did he say to you?”
“It wasn’t what he said,” Sasha admits, “so much as how he said it.”
“So, he’s in a mood?”
“That’s an understatement.” She tries to direct her focus to her work once more, but she’s clearly still fuming, and it doesn’t work for long. “He’s snapped at me before, you know? That’s just Jon; I get it. It’s never anything personal. But I’ve just never seen him actually angry about an interruption before. I had a legitimate question, too.”
That catches Martin’s attention, and he rolls his office chair closer. “You, too?” Sasha nods. “He got me earlier over my handwriting on a translation. Jon knows he can just leave them on my desk when he can’t read them so I’ll know to type them out for him, but Christ . He was outright nasty about it. So condescending.”
That makes Tim mad, too. And, when he thinks about it, he’s overlooked a few snide replies this morning. “Well,” he begins, “you know, when you’re house-training a puppy, the first thing they teach you is to not reward bad behavior. Jon might be our supervisor, but he’s not our only boss, and he certainly can’t fire us. Want to hear my suggestion?”
Martin nods as Sasha bites down on a smile. “That’s a rhetorical question, Martin; he’s telling us either way.”
“I think we should work on basically anything other than what he’s shouted at us to get done. If he wants us to do something, he needs to treat us with some respect.”
When Jon had finally given up on trying to read a statement after 25 minutes of staring at words on the page while they blurred and swam before his eyes, he’d handed it off to Tim. Of course, Tim had wanted to know why. That made sense. Normally, he admits, the 25 minutes he’d spent just trying to start the statement would be enough to read and record it in its entirety, but… the idea of telling Tim about the headache and the blurry vision and the fact that if he sits still too long, he feels as if he’ll fall asleep--that’s too vulnerable.
So, instead, he reminds Tim that he’s his boss, and that he doesn’t need to explain these things to him, because it’s an assignment, not a favor.
True? To an extent. Kind? Certainly not.
Sorting through Martin’s translation had gone much the same way--trying to read his handwriting had been a nightmare, but he’d been too exhausted to really be irritated about it. In fact, the idea of having so much to do and not ever knowing where to start rather made him want to have a little frustration-cry in the spare storage room.
Martin would see through that in seconds and start coddling him, would feel the tension in his shoulders as soon as he pulled him in for a supportive hug and fret over the dark circles under his eyes, showing stark against his pale face, see the exhaustion in every thin thread that was keeping him barely standing.
Perhaps he’d overcompensated, in retrospect. He’d reached for his normal level of irritability, but judging by the look on Martin’s face, he’s pretty sure he missed the mark.
He’s hardly even registering half of what he’s saying to Martin, but he knows immediately that it’s far too hostile.
He’ll apologize later. Or he won’t, and he’ll just make eye contact and thank him when he brings a cup of tea later in the day, and expect that to count as an apology, and Martin will probably accept it as one.
Whether that says more about himself or Martin as a person is something he doesn’t have the energy to dissect right now.
When Sasha comes in without knocking, Jon startles so hard he almost loses his tenuous grasp on the nausea he’s been trying to ride out. He spends the entire time she’s speaking so focused on not being ill that he doesn’t hear a word she says, so when she prompts him for an answer, he responds with something rude and mean just to get her out of his office.
It doesn’t make him feel good, certainly, but he can explain himself later, he supposes. Right now, his priority is getting through the day without incident. His coworkers/assistants/friends can think he’s a prick, but so long as they don’t think him incompetent, he’s considering it a win.
Near the middle of the day, Jon’s exhaustion and headache become unbearable enough that he emails Sasha from his office rather than leaving to see if the assistants are finished with the tasks he’d given them, and it goes ignored. He sends a text to Tim saying the same thing, and Tim leaves it on “read.” Before he convinces himself to send an owl for Martin, he decides to muster the energy to move one last time, because the sooner the work is in Elias’ hands, the sooner he can go home and sleep.
Meekly, Jon shuffles out of his office and toward the assistants’ desks, working his way up to his best impression of himself on the way, fixing a frown upon his face and tightening his posture.
“Hello, Tim, Sasha, Martin,” he greets, ignoring the way that moving his jaw makes the pulsing behind his eyes worse. “How are you all?”
“We’re fine,” Martin snaps a little, just enough bite that Jon knows it’s there but not enough to be disrespectful. Or, perhaps that’s in Jon’s head.
“Good. That’s--good.”
A few beats pass and Jon doesn’t continue.
“Did you need something?” Sasha asks.
Jon shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I was wondering,” he hesitates, “if you’ve all finished with the assignments I gave you this morning.”
Tim smiles. “Nope,” he says. It’s simple and unapologetic and Jon freezes.
“I’m sorry?”
“No, we haven’t finished,” he repeats, “and we won’t be finishing today. Is that all?”
Tim braces himself for the outburst of anger he’s certainly earned, almost giddy for it, but the tension in Jon’s shoulders doesn’t boil over into a shouting match in the slightest: rather the opposite. Instead, Jon scrubs his hands over his face, looking worn and utterly wrecked, and sighs.
“Right. Okay. I can--here, I’ll take them back. I know you’ve got other. Other things to do, I shouldn’t have expected--alright. I’ll be in my office.”
Sasha tries to call after him, but he acts as if he hasn’t heard her, and when she turns to Martin, her eyes are wide.
“What was that about?”
“Not a clue,” he replies. “It can’t be good.”
“I’ve never seen Jon do that before,” Tim adds. “I was expecting more ‘erupting volcano’ than ‘collapsing star.’ That wasn’t fun at all; it was just sad.”
“Does he really think we’re so incompetent that we can’t do what he asked us to?” Sasha asks. “I mean, clearly he does, right? Or he’d have shouted?”
“I don’t think that’s it,” Martin ventures. “I--I mean, I could be wrong. But he didn’t seem… I don’t know. I think he knows we ignored the work on purpose.”
“Then why isn’t he exploding?”
Tim shakes his head. “I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. Just… for now, savor what life you’ve got left, because Jon is certainly plotting to end it.”
Hours pass. Jon doesn’t emerge from his office. Not to shout, not to assign mountains of busywork as punishment, not even for tea or lunch.
“Is this his punishment?” Tim demands after he watches Martin jump a foot at the sound of Sasha accidentally shifting the rubbish bin under her desk with her foot. “To keep us on edge all day?”
Sasha laughs, and it’s definitely at Tim rather than with him, even though it’s good-natured. “God, Tim, he’s our supervisor, not a daytime television villain. He might be crabby, but I don’t think he’s, like, nefarious.”
Tim scowls. “Then what’s his end game!”
“Maybe he just… needed the work done,” Martin suggests, “and he’s… in his office, doing it?”
“That’s what he wants you to think, Marto,” he says. “Jon’s not the martyr type. He’s going to get us back. I’m certain of it.”
Sasha shrugs. “It’s time to go home, anyway. Not our problem anymore. Grab your coat.”
Tim can’t shake the feeling that he’s still missing something. If he wants to sleep tonight, he’ll have to figure it out.
“You two go on ahead,” he says. “I’m going to stick around just a bit longer.”
The lights in Jon’s are so dim that Tim’s eyes have to adjust for a moment when he enters. As soon as they do, the rant he’s been rehearsing dies in his throat, because Jon is face down over his arms, wearing both his cardigan and his actual coat, in front of a truly monstrous pile of work.
He’s too soft.
“Hey, Boss?” Tim calls, knocking on the door frame as he enters. Jon gasps and sits up, which, predictably, ends with his eyes unfocusing and a hand fluttering weakly to his temple. “Easy; it’s just me.”
“Right,” Jon tries to his usual, proper tone, but it’s flat and quiet. “Did you need something?”
Tim frowns. “Is this why you’ve been a prick all day?” he asks, gesturing vaguely toward him. “So you wouldn’t have to tell us you’re ill?”
Jon rolls his eyes. “I’m not ill.”
“You’re certainly not well.”
Jon sighs. “Different things.”
“But splitting hairs.”
“Can I help you with something?”
Tim sits in the chair across from Jon’s desk. “What is it, then? Migraine? Or are you just exhausted?”
Jon lets his eyes fall closed. “Both, I think.”
Tim nods. “Have you eaten today?”
“Haven’t been hungry.”
“Drank any water?”
Jon gestures toward his half-full water bottle. “Plus a cup of tea this morning.”
“That’s a start. Come on. I’m driving you home.”
“I’ve got work—”
“We’ll make sure Elias knows it wasn’t your fault,” Tim promises, “but there’s no way you’re going to get it done tonight, anyway. We’ll work on it in the morning.”
Jon sighs. “I hate to overload you.”
“We ignored you on purpose, and you know it,” Tim replies. Jon winces. “In our defense, there’s no excuse for you. Migraine or not, you don’t get to be an arsehole.”
Jon nods. “I know.”
“And you certainly don’t get to work yourself so far into exhaustion that you can’t move and not tell us.”
“I asked you—”
“As our boss, yeah,” Tim says. “But you’re an arse as our boss. You should have asked as our friend. We’d have dropped everything. You have to know that, right?”
“I can’t--I can’t do that anymore.”
“Do what?”
“I’m your boss, now. It’s. It’d be inappropriate to expect you to give my requests preferential treatment over your own work just because we’re friends.”
Sometimes Tim wonders if he’s the first real friend Jon’s ever had.
“You do realize you’re just, I mean, textbook-definition describing friendship, right? That we do things for people we like even when it’s a bit inconvenient? Because people need that, sometimes?”
“It’s not the same—”
“We can have this conversation some other time,” Tim curtails before they lose the thread too much, “but I’m stopping you there, for now. You’re going to close that folder and get in my car and let me drive you home.”
Jon might just be too drained to argue, but he complies. Tim tucks the folder under his arm and sets it on his own desk as they pass it so he’ll remember to do it first thing the next morning.
Jon apologizes for needing a ride more than he thanks Tim for providing one, but that’s not why he’s doing it, so he doesn’t find that he really cares.