Work Text:
There’s no reason for Tim to be here. The Institute has some weird policies, including a truly esoteric dress code, but it doesn’t have mandatory team-building night-outs. Tim has no reason to get to know his coworkers, no need to ingratiate himself to them beyond what he can get by smiling, making bland comments about his weekend plans and never microwaving fish in the breakroom.
The pub they’re in, somehow identical to every workplace-night-out pub he’s ever been to, seems to be having some sort of throwback night. Early-nineties hits play just loud enough to grate, and Tim eyes his new coworkers, trying to muster up some enthusiasm for striking up a conversation. He imagines what they might say if he told the truth. Hi, I’m Timothy. I left behind a career in publishing to be a junior researcher so that I can hunt monsters like fucking Scooby Doo. If you need me, I’ll be chasing answers I’ll never find, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about them even if I did! Another round?
Maybe that’s why he came tonight. To have these thoughts somewhere other than his flat. His little studio can only hold so much brooding.
He’s interrupted from his current round of brooding, first by an unsteady grab at his shoulder, then by a cascade of beer, then by a glass clattering onto the floor followed by a hush in the surrounding buzz of conversation. A quiet, posh voice swears, and Tim recognises one of his coworkers bending down to try and clean up the mess, though it takes him a moment to place the name.
“I’m sorry,” Jon says, glancing up at Tim before sheepishly looking back at the mess on the floor. Off to the side, a few tables give a sarcastic cheer and a round of applause. Tim worked food service long enough to instinctively dislike anyone who does this. He grabs some napkins and bends down to help Jon.
“Hey, no harm done,” Tim says, trying to remember how to sound friendly. He scoops up the somehow still-intact glass. “They’re wise enough to make them sturdy around here.”
Jon huffs, somewhat ineffectually blotting at the spreading puddle on the ground. “Did - your clothes, I didn’t, ah-”
“Only a glancing blow,” Tim answers, brushing at the damp spots by his hip. “And after I went to all this trouble to dress up for the occasion.”
Jon looks up in alarm, before registering that Tim hadn’t even bothered to change out of his work clothes. He gives a small, reluctant smile; one of the first expressions Tim’s seen from him that wasn’t some variant of thoughtful frown.
He’s seen Jon around a bit, in his few weeks at the Institute - about Tim’s age, relatively nondescript, tonight clad in a surprisingly lush leather jacket. Tim had made the mistake of asking him a couple of questions on his first day, when the person actually training him was on lunch. Jon had blustered and prevaricated for a few minutes before admitting it was only his second week in the job, so he didn’t actually know.
That was about the only time they’d interacted, though Tim had noticed a few other things. There were a few loose groups of friendships in Research, and Jon didn’t seem to be a part of any of them. He never seemed that steady on his feet, and he tended to avoid eating in public. He rarely asked for help, unless he needed something that would require him to use one of the library ladders, which he seemed determined to avoid. Tim had wondered idly about vertigo, or mobility issues, before reminding himself these weren’t the questions he was here to answer.
Tim had always noticed people, collected little details about them in his head whether he intended to or not, but he thinks his observations used to be about happier things, though it’s hard to remember exactly how he was, how he felt, before - it wasn’t the kind of thing he ever tried to memorise, the kind of thing he ever thought he could lose. Now he finds himself taking note of the coworker who comes back from their lunch break with faint puffy red marks around their eyes, or the older guy who checks his phone with something like dread in his eyes. Danny would have called it his older brother instincts (but what good did those instincts do him? ).
Tim blinks back to the present, realising he’s been pushing a napkin over the same spot of floor for a while now. Jon offers him a hand up, though he braces himself on the bar with his other hand before he does. Tim takes care not to let Jon take too much of his weight as he’s hauled back up.
“Ah, thank you. And apologies, again,” Jon murmurs, gesturing awkwardly at Tim’s lightly-beered clothes.
“Happens to everyone,” Tim says easily. Jon still looks lightly anguished, and Tim silently wishes this could have happened to someone else, someone with the confidence to laugh it off. “I’m always convinced I’m going to drop something when I go in the silent study bit of the library,” Tim offers.
“Ah...that worry hadn’t actually occurred to me,” Jon replies, solemn enough that Tim can’t really tell if he’s joking.
Tim finger-guns. “Any other anxieties I can stir up while you’re over here?”
“I’m quite capable of stoking my own neuroses, thank you.”
Jon glances over his shoulder at the tables the rest of the department are occupying, perhaps doing the same thing as Tim and trying to psyche himself up for some more hollow smalltalk. Tim notes that his jacket seems slightly large on him, but in a way that kind of works. The collar of his shirt is slightly out of place beneath it. There’s a lump forming in Tim’s throat, even though nothing is happening - nothing but standing close to someone, noticing the little signs that they’re real and alive entirely independent from him. He’s aware, as he always is, of the hollow pit in his stomach, pain ebbing and flowing but never gone, new flares thrown off from a familiar wound, now pulsing with a kind of loneliness. All this, just from standing close to someone and trying to make them feel better about a mistake that didn’t matter.
“I...might go out for a smoke,” Jon murmurs eventually.
And here’s where Tim could say sure, wave him off and go back to moping, buy everyone an obligatory round, flex his meaningless chat muscles and be home by half 9. “Mind if I join you?” he asks instead, and to his surprise Jon nods immediately, as if he’d been hoping Tim would say that.
They duck outside to find dark clouds have given way to an anticlimactic drizzle. They stay close to the pub, shielded from the rain by the slight overhang of the roof. Jon fumbles with a lighter and Tim finds his gaze drifting over the rain-slick streets. It’s been a while since he’s been...anywhere, really, other than work and his flat. Longer than he can remember since he was outside in the never-quite-dark of the city.
Despite himself, Tim finds himself admiring the buildings across the way, modern painted shop-fronts on the ground floor giving way to weathered brick and occasional stone carvings above. It was the first thing he’d loved about London, how you only had to look up to catch a glimpse of its history, and it almost wounds him all over again, that that love isn’t gone too. It would be easier if he was just one thing, all the way lost. It would be easier if he didn’t still love the world that killed Danny.
Jon lights his cigarette, and silently holds the lighter out to Tim. Tim shakes his head, and Jon doesn’t question him about why he’s come out here if he doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t press about the way Tim must be looking; he knows he’s never had much of a poker face. Danny tried to teach him poker, on a visit home from uni; Tim left for six weeks and came back to playing cards and strategy guides everywhere - his brother, who could never sit still even in his own head -
“Where were you, before this?” Jon asks. Tim wouldn’t have pegged him for a smoker, but he looks immediately more relaxed with a cigarette in his hands. Nice hands, too. It would be easier, if he didn’t-
“Publishing,” Tim answers, before he can drift again. He wants to say more, to make sure this undemanding presence isn’t going to leave his side, but his throat is still tight. “You?”
Jon frowns, as if debating something to himself, then gives a tiny rueful smile. “Tesco.”
Tim grins. “Was it a haunted Tesco?”
“Only by customers,” Jon replies, dry as bone.
The rain is picking up slightly, and both of them silently tuck further into their little alcove, bringing them shoulder to shoulder. The air tastes of smoke. Tim is watching moths in the streetlights above, partly out of fear that if he looks directly at Jon, he’ll realise how close they are and pull back.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Jon asks, voice hushed. He gestures and Tim follows the point of light with his eyes. “The smell, I mean?”
“Always kind of liked it,” Tim answers, matching Jon’s tone. Jon scoffs in disbelief. “What? You’re the one who inhales the things.”
“Exactly,” Jon says. “I have a biochemical justification for finding the smell tolerable. What’s your excuse?”
Tim spreads his hands, little spots of rain landing on his sleeve. “I never claimed to make sense.”
In the corner of his eye, Tim catches Jon hiding a smile with his next drag. It’s a good smile, one he wants to get a proper look at sometime. It’s as if now that he’s noticed one beautiful thing, he can’t stop seeing them: the buildings; the rain; the passing pair of drunk students across the way, walking arm in arm, holding each other up. There’s a curl of anger in his chest, that these things still get to exist, but for the moment it coexists with a kind of quiet warmth.
“You want to know a secret?” Tim asks, finally turning to look directly at Jon. Jon doesn’t speak, doesn’t nod, but he stares and waits, lights reflecting in his dark eyes, and for a moment Tim feels as though he must already know what Tim is going to say, that he can look into Tim’s eyes and learn everything he’s ever tried to hide. He can’t decide if it’s peaceful or terrifying.
Then Jon blinks and the feeling is gone, as quickly as it had come. “I like this party better,” Tim finishes, gesturing to the two of them. The things he could have said hang in the air between them.
Jon doesn’t quite manage to hide his smile this time, and yeah, that’s something Tim needs to see more of, all slow and crooked.
“Well,” Jon says, still in the same hushed voice, as if they’re sharing secrets. “If you ever need to borrow my smoking habit, get you out of an unpleasant social situation…”
“Knew that was why people smoked,” Tim says, nudging Jon’s shoulder with his own. “I’m not normally…” He trails off, unsure how to explain himself. Normally I’d care at least a bit, about all those people in there. Normally I’d at least have the energy to pretend.
Jon considers this half-finished thought for a long moment. “Abnormality is...rather the Institute’s specialty,” he offers eventually. Tim feels a kind of gratitude he can’t name or voice, so he doesn’t, just stands there listening to the rain while Jon finishes his cigarette, and for a long time after.
Not a bad night out, after all.