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Jon lands back on London soil in the middle of the night with a page made of human skin burning a hole in his pocket.
He's tired. Not exactly unusual for a trans-Atlantic flight, he thinks to himself as he shuffles along to the taxi rank with the other bleary-eyed newly-landed, but he knows this goes beyond simple jet-lag. He's not sure if he can remember how it feels to not be tired.
No, that's not true. He remembers how he felt after reading that statement Elias sent him to tide him over.
Jon decides he doesn't want to think about that, right now.
After what feels like an age, he's at the front of what was really probably quite a short queue, and realises that he doesn't know where he wants the taxi to take him, at God knows what hour in the morning. His old flat, gone. He can't go back to Georgie's place. Going to the Institute at this hour feels absurd even to him. He could book himself into a hotel--
Jon sighs. No, who is he trying to fool.
"The Magnus Institute, please," he says to the cab driver, and spends the rest of the drive fighting off the paranoia that's telling him that this is going to end in yet another kidnapping.
Aside from stubbornly ignoring the urge to open the door and bail out the side of the cab at the next given moment, the drive is quiet. Jon offers few answers to the driver's good-natured questions and absolutely no questions of his own in return, and after a few minutes, the man seems to accept that his passenger is in no mood for conversation and turns his attention back to the radio.
Jon leans against the window and watches London buildings slip past in a haze of streetlight. There's so much he has to do. He needs to talk with the others about the Unknowing, let them know what Gerard - Gerry? - told him about Gertrude's storage unit.
God, when he gets half a minute he needs to burn Gerry's page.
As soon as he thinks it, bile rises at the back of his throat, sour and sudden. Jon grimaces at his reflection in the window and hopes that the thought and the bile aren't linked.
What else. He really ought to catch up with--
Jon's breath catches on a sudden tickle in his throat, and he almost knocks himself out on the window as he dissolves into a coughing fit.
The cab driver looks at him sharply in the rear view mirror. "Alright back there?"
"Fine," Jon wheezes, as soon as he can spare the breath to do so. Speaking of poorly timed physical reactions linked to thoughts. He shoves a hand into his pocket for a tissue as the coughing fit continues, trying to catch the soft, waxy petals as they leave his throat.
Apparently he's not as successful as he wanted to be, because the driver's face softens from the suspicious look of someone hoping that tonight is not the night a random stranger throws up in their car, into… something else.
"Missing someone?" he asks, an air of understanding wrapped around the words.
Jon clenches his fist around the tissue in his hand, and the petals inside it, and thinks, Good Lord, this is why he hates hanahaki: the part where suddenly your feelings are everyone else's business when you've barely come to terms with them being your own business.
Jon dearly wishes, not for the first time, that his useless body would still let him swallow them.
He thinks he does well not to start laying into the man right then and there. Just nods, stiffly, and says in a voice like ice water, "I'd rather not talk about it."
To his credit, the cab driver nods. "Fair," he says, and goes back to the road and the radio.
The Institute is dark when he reaches it, the corridors lit only by the faint glow of the after-hours lights. Everything looks washed-out under those safety lamps; once upon a time, he may have even called the effect eerie.
But either way, his staff card still lets him in through the back door at all hours, so Jon wanders down those deserted corridors until he finds his way back down to the dark, air-conditioned stacks of the archives. Flicking the lights on and seeing the now-familiar state of disarray that the files and tapes are in settles a strange sort of weight over Jon's shoulders. Like an old blanket, moth-eaten and foul-smelling but still perversely comforting. Like a homecoming.
"Christ, I wonder what that says about me," he mutters in disgust to the stacks as he drags his bag with him to his office.
This, too, feels like a sort of homecoming. Jon sets his bag down by his desk and runs a hand over one edge, picking up the faint layer of dust that's started to build there. He frowns at it, brushing it off on his trousers. He really has been away too long. If it hadn't been for Gerry, it would have been a pointless, wasted trip.
He wonders if Elias knows.
Jon drops heavily into his chair and looks at what's been left on his desk. Some notes, things he'd asked the others to look into, divided into what he can only assume whoever's responsible thought would be helpful piles. And a small box of tapes, the edges of the box neatly lined up with one of the desk's corners. More statements, then, he thinks with a sigh. He'll listen to them later. He doesn't know what Elias is up to, asking - asking the others to record, and after what he experienced in America he's sure it's nothing good. But, since the recordings exist, Jon may as well listen to them.
Later, though. Later. He's so tired. For a moment, he wonders if it's worth crawling back into the old camp bed in document storage.
Then he thinks about his nightmares, and decides he'd quite like to go a night without them, sleep be damned.
"Statements it is, then," Jon murmurs. Swapping one set of nightmares for another. What else is new by this point. He sighs, and reaches for the box of tapes, popping the earliest one into the tape recorder before hitting play.
~ ❀ ~
The hours pass.
Jon loses track of them, as he so often does in the sunless basement where the passage of time loses all meaning. He listens to the tapes. There's… an awful lot to take in. The statements themselves draw his attention in that way he's starting to become resigned to, like they're the flame to Jon's detached, distantly horrified moth of a mind, but once they're over, they're over. It's everything else surrounding the statements that pulls on him, leaves him with a rolling nausea in his gut and what feels like a thousand thoughts buzzing around his brain like so much static.
Click, goes the tape recorder as the last tape reaches its end, and Jon scrubs both hands over his face with a long exhale. God, he's left this place in a mess. Even worse of a mess than he'd thought. Some Head Archivist he's turned out to be, whatever that title actually means.
He leans back, and with a scowl brushes the cluster of waxy purple and delicate, spidery white that escaped him while he was listening off his desk.
Hyacinthus orientalis and myrtus communis, comes the knowledge from somewhere Jon doesn't know. He knows he's never read it anywhere. Purple hyacinth and common myrtle. Sorrow, a plea for forgiveness, and duty to one's home.
"Yes, well," Jon tells the sad scattering of blossom on the floor. "I think that's the last thing any of them want to hear from me."
He needs a cigarette. He needs a cigarette, or, or a cup of tea, or maybe both. Jon pushes his chair back with a scrape across the floor that makes him wince and makes for the door of his office.
He grabs the handle and, oh, someone else is outside.
Then he wrenches open the door before they have a chance to move away.
"Martin!"
Martin - because it is Martin, all the solid sameness of him - jumps backwards into the nearest desk with a loud squawk.
"Jesus Christ, Jon!"
"Sorry!" Jon says hastily, putting both hands up as he approaches his assistant. "Sorry, I didn't-- sorry, Martin. Are you - are you alright?"
"No!" Martin wheezes, rubbing one hand over his thigh where it collided with the desk. He's holding a stapler in his other hand, Jon notices. What Martin was planning on doing with it, he's not entirely sure. "I saw the lights on when I came in and thought, 'oh God, something's broken in, no one else comes in this early', and then you come barging out your office like that to give me a heart attack - when did you even get back?"
"Um," Jon says, eloquently. "Last night. The plane touched down and I, I didn't see any point in going elsewhere, so I - I came straight here." Jon takes another look at the stapler in Martin's hand. "… Wait," he says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the stapler. "Were you planning to take on your mystery intruder with that?"
Martin flushes. "It was the first thing I picked up off the desk," he says defensively.
For some reason, this frees a short, uncertain laugh from Jon's throat. He's relieved that it doesn't free anything else that might be hiding in there.
"Probably a good thing it was just me, then."
"Yeah, probably."
"Sorry again, for that, by the way."
"No, it's - it's okay, Jon." Martin sighs, finally laying the stapler to rest back on the desk. "I've just been so on edge lately, I mean, we all have, it's been--" He draws in a breath, quick and sharp. "It's not been good, around here."
"No," Jon agrees quietly. "I listened to the tapes." He knows that Martin, at least, expected him to, but it still feels like a confession.
"Oh." Martin blinks behind his glasses, but he doesn't look surprised. Then his face morphs, into a kind of appalled exasperation. "Wait, were you doing that instead of sleeping? Jon."
"I had jet lag?"
Martin gives him a flat look that Jon interprets, no doubt correctly, as I don't believe a word of that appalling attempt at an excuse and you know it.
"Hmm," is all he says, noncommittal.
"Tea!" Jon says suddenly, and scrambles to explain himself at Martin's look of confusion. "I mean, I was just going to get some. If you wanted to join me?"
His voice rises at the end with something more than just the question. Even as little as a year ago, he would have cringed to call it hope, but… God, Jon can admit it to himself now, he just wants a few minutes of conversation with someone who definitely doesn't wish him harm.
With Martin.
Behave yourself, he thinks sharply at the things fluttering in his chest.
He lets himself smile, a small, wry thing. "I haven't had a decent cup in… I'm not sure how long. I hate to confirm the stereotype, but they really can't do it properly over in the States."
Martin's lips curve up into a fleeting smile, sunshine chased by shadows. He makes an odd sort of noise in his throat that might be a laugh, and then he says, "Yeah, sure."
They make their way to the break room in silence, but it's not uncomfortable. At least, Jon doesn't think so. He walks next to Martin, who's still wearing his jacket and his bag slung over one shoulder, and he feels… not relaxed, but something closer to it.
Less hunted, maybe.
Safer.
"So… how was America?" Martin asks as they enter the break room. He flicks on the light and goes to pull down a couple of mugs from the cupboard. Jon leans against the wall nearby and watches him.
"Uh… big," he says, and immediately wants to hit his head off the wall behind him. Big, Jon? Really? He sees Martin trying extremely hard to hide a smile as he fills the kettle in the sink. Before he can begin ridiculing Jon for his less-than-inspired answer, Jon's traitorous, sleep-deprived mouth continues on its merry crusade with, "Managed to get myself kidnapped again."
Martin's hands slip as he tries to put the lid on. "What?!" he demands, turning to Jon with both hands clutched so tight around the kettle that his knuckles are turning white. "Jon--"
"Sorry - maybe kidnapped was a bit of a strong word," Jon hurries, looking at Martin's pinched features. One day, he thinks, one day, he will actually think about what comes out of his mouth before it gets there. "I, I ran into a couple of hunters. Did you know Trevor the tramp is still alive? In America?"
"What, vampire Trevor?" Curious disbelief wins over worry for a second in Martin's voice. Then his face shutters for a moment, and he puts the kettle on to boil before moving closer to Jon's little corner.
"Did they--" Martin starts, and cuts himself off with a sudden breath in and a sharp swallow. "They didn't hurt you, did they?" he continues after a moment, softer.
Oh.
Jon watches Martin's eyes linger over the mark of Daisy's knife at his throat, the ruin that Jude Perry made of his hand.
"No." The word comes like a rush. He hadn't realised he was holding his breath. "No, no, I got - actually, I managed to get the only useful information of the whole wild goose chase out of them. I'll - I think if I'm right, it'll, it'll be what we need. I'll fill you in with the others later, when they get here."
Martin looks at him a moment longer, eyes flickering over his face like he doesn't believe Jon wouldn't lie to him about being injured by a pair of monster hunters in the middle of nowhere, USA.
In fairness to Martin, Jon can begrudgingly admit that he probably would have lied about it if he thought he could get away with it. But the moment still seems to stretch on far longer than it has any right to.
The kettle boils, popping off the heat with a low, satisfying click. Martin sighs and returns to it.
"Yeah, alright," he says, digging the milk out of the fridge. "We've got some stuff to tell you as well. Stuff that's not on the tapes, I mean. But we'll need to do it somewhere where--" he stops speaking, and nods up at the ceiling with a meaningful look.
Ah, yes. Elias. Jon nods in understanding, watching Martin's hands as they fill the mugs with steaming water.
"Of course," Jon says softly.
Quiet falls over them again, punctuated only by the humming of the fridge and the clinking of the teaspoon against the sides of the mugs. Jon lets the quiet wash over him. It's a strange sort of quiet. Not strained, the way Jon has grown used to so much of the quiet being, but… charged. He feels like there's something he could be saying, should be saying, but has no idea what that might be.
"Here you go." Martin holds out a mug to him, handle-first, starting him out of his reverie. Jon reaches out and takes it.
"Thank you," he says, and means it, a tired smile tugging at his mouth. There's something so nostalgic about this, Jon realises; a warm mug cupped between his hands, the quiet of the archives at a time when few people are in it, Martin, hovering by the kettle. It's familiar, it's… he's missed it.
"Don't suppose you've eaten yet, if you spent all night listening to those tapes," Martin says with his own mug half way to his lips, sounding like he's resigned to the answer.
Is Jon really that obvious? "Are you going to start dragging me to the cafe again if I say no?"
A ghost of a smile, mostly directed into the mug. "Ha. Don't tempt me."
I miss it, Jon thinks, suddenly. I know I rolled my eyes and all the rest, I know, but I miss those lunches. I miss you, Martin. I don't know why I didn't see it before.
Jon's chest pulls with a feeling like tree branches in a high wind. His throat feels too full, a tell-tale fluttering he does not want to deal with right now. He gulps down a mouthful of tea in a futile hope that it'll do something.
"Martin," he says.
Martin glances over at him. "Yeah?"
Jon doesn't really know what he had planned on saying, or indeed if he even had a plan at all. But what he says when he opens his mouth is, "I - It's good. To see you," and that's when the dam breaks.
His throat spasms. His chest heaves. Jon sputters and coughs and lifts one hand to his mouth to try and stem what may come, even as the one holding his mug jumps and spills tea everywhere. He hears Martin call his name in alarm, feels a pair of hands take his mug before he can drop it, and at least he has two hands free to cough into now as he bends forward and clears that damnable fluttering in his windpipe.
"Jon? Jon, are you okay - oh."
Martin's voice turns abruptly smaller all of a sudden as Jon straightens up, his eyes watering. Jon dashes his forearm across his eyes in annoyance, still clearing his throat, and finds Martin staring down with wide eyes at the tea-soaked petals on the floor.
Shit.
"Right," Martin says, his voice steady like a layer of peeling varnish over hysteria, and hiccups suddenly. He makes a face that puts Jon in mind of somebody winded, says, "Right," again - and a shower of petals comes spluttering out of his mouth.
Martin instantly claps his hands over his mouth, looking mortified. Jon knows the feeling.
"Fuck," Martin mutters, the curse muffled by his hands. "I am - I am so sorry, Jon, I didn't mean - that wasn't meant to be--"
"Martin," Jon says wearily.
It's not that Jon doesn't know. Didn't know. Basira and Melanie gossiping on tape for anyone to play back and listen to aside, he's - there's been comments. Things he's ignored, deliberately. Jon knows that he can be extremely good at wilfully not seeing what's in front of him. He's got physical evidence of his skill at that on tape, a good forty of them by his count.
But it's different. Seeing it in front of him, a tangible thing that he could reach out and touch, if he wanted to. The pale, sea anemone-like fronds of Jon's traveller's joy and the rounded, almost fuzzy sphere of yellow acacia muddied by the tea that Jon sent cascading to the ground. Rest and safety, a love that is secret. Jon nervously brushes a couple of clinging, soft petals off the ends of his fingers, and the curved butterfly-wing shape of purple milk vetch joins the rest. Your presence softens my pain, comes the knowledge he's now almost expecting. He feels drunk, or maybe just a little dizzy; right now, he's an open book, if Martin only knows how to read him.
He tries to avert his eyes from the petals he knows to be Martin's, but Jon's will power has never been that strong, and the corners of his vision hungrily catch the tiny riots of scattered colour. Rounded buds of lavender Jon would have recognised even before the knowledge began to trickle into the back of his mind, perfectly round orange wallflower. Devotion and loyalty, faithfulness through hardship. Jon swallows and looks away, and as he does his eyes sweep across a large, delicate fall of pink.
Pink camellia, drips the knowledge into the back of his mind. Jon feels a lump in his throat that has nothing to do with flowers being caught there.
Longing for you.
Say something, Jon thinks. It's hardly a secret like this anymore, so tell him. Tell him.
Jon sucks in a breath and forces himself to look at Martin's face.
"Martin," he tries again, but Martin just shakes his head.
"It's okay, Jon," he says quietly. There are still high spots of colour on his cheeks, but he looks calmer, now. "You don't--" He makes an abortive gesture with his hands, "You don't have to say anything. About, about this, I mean, or anything, if you don't--" He shuts his mouth suddenly. Tries again. "What I'm saying is, I know you've got a lot on right now, and I know how you feel about hanahaki, I know it's - it's not your idea of a fun time. And I swear, I'm usually better with mine, I don't want to make you uncomfortable--"
"You didn't," Jon says, finding his words and also finding them sharper than he'd like. "Make me uncomfortable."
"Oh." Martin founders for a moment. He's not sure what to do with his hands; Jon watches them dither for a second before he grips one tightly with the other. "Okay then. Cool."
Say something, Jon thinks, and knows that he won't.
Martin hands him a tea towel; Jon does his best to sponge up the spots of tea on his hands and clothes, stoops to gather up the mess on the floor. It ends in a soggy ball of tea and half-crushed petals that Jon clutches gingerly between both hands like a live grenade.
"You're not getting rid of the whole thing," Martin tells him with an incredulous laugh.
"And what do you suggest I do with it?" Jon glares at him.
"Oh, give it here."
Jon relinquishes his grip and lets Martin take it so that he can fiddle around with it for who knows how long. If he really wants to pick out every single individual petal from a disgusting soggy mess of a tea towel, he can be Jon's guest.
… still.
"Martin, wait," he says, and catches the edge of Martin's sleeve between his fingers.
"You're right. I do - there's so much to think about, at the moment, not, not just for me, but all of us, I mean. It's, God, it's a lot." Get to the point, Sims, he thinks in frustration. "But Martin, I…"
Jon should tell him. Jon should.
But Jon is not a brave man. Jon is a coward, and Jon has taken the out that Martin has handed him, and so what Jon says is, "When, when things slow down. After we've dealt with Orsinov and the circus. We'll talk about this. I promise."
Martin opens his mouth for a moment, like he wants to say something. Then his mouth seals shut, and he nods.
"Okay," he says. "Promise it is."
~ ❀ ~
Jon ought to know better by now, than to make promises he cannot keep.