Chapter Text
Christmas is altogether too soon, and snow is falling.
Again.
London, it seems, has decided to forsake a mild winter this year, favoring instead a bitter, bone-deep chill and heavy snowfall.
There’s a little park where a gaggle of schoolchildren seem happy enough with the stuff, laughing and shrieking and pelting each other with packed snowballs. They’ve got a dog with them too, an enormous black thing that gallops through the thick, fluffy flakes without a care. Even the woman watching over them smiles like her nose isn’t bright red from the cold.
Jonathan Sims, proprietor of Juniper Tree Books, is decidedly less impressed. Particularly when trudging his way through four accumulated inches of white, assailed by snowflakes and wind with every step. His long coat, neither threadbare nor prepared to cope with this extremity of weather, does its best to keep the cold out. By the time he reaches his flat, his trousers feel like pure ice from his knees to the edges of his boots. The rest of him feels little better. There’s music flowing from the flat upstairs, some cheerful, animated orchestral piece that sounds just this side of too seasonal for his tastes. He yanks at the laces of his boots—actually begun to freeze over—until they come off, peels anything wet away from his shivering skin, and abandons the lot beside a newly-acquired space heater.
As though the holiday season weren’t harried and maddening enough without the addition of abnormally aggressive weather patterns.
Jon pays the music little mind while he changes into dry clothes and boots up his computer. This isn’t the first time he’s overheard his neighbor’s musical choices, and it won’t be the last. It’s less an obnoxious habit of—what was his name? Martin—and more a failing on the part of their shared walls. True, it’s not usually the same Christmas music Jon’s got more than enough of at work, because Georgie insists it’s what the public likes, and while Jon knows books (and he even knows selling them), Georgie is undeniably better at people, and if he has to hear ‘Last Christmas’ one more time he’s fit to knock over the front display—
Anyhow. He’s grown accustomed to tuning Martin’s music out. Which is what he fully intends to do now.
The trouble is, it’s not usually so loud.
He ignores it while pulling on two lays of wool socks.
He ignores it while heating up a frozen meal, and he ignores it while he eats.
He ignores it through ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ and ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’ and more than one volume increase.
It’s not until the transition into ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ that he gives his ceiling a dark look and mutters, “It most certainly is not,” and it is difficult to resume ignoring, after that. He doesn’t want to go upstairs—the last thing he wants to do after a long day is interact with the neighbors—but he isn’t sure how much longer he can stand the festive barrage.
And so, come the earliest strains of Mariah Carey, Jon exits his flat and walks intently up the stairs.
He takes a moment at the door, fashioning his expression into something meant as vaguely friendly, and knocks. There’s no change in volumes. Ten seconds pass, and twenty, and thirty, until a full minute has gone, by his watch’s reckoning. He’s lifting his hand for a second knock when the door opens. They don’t cross paths often (especially as Jon makes it a point not to cross paths with his neighbors if he can avoid it), but he recognizes Martin on sight: a tall, awkward sort of man with dark hair and large glasses that make him look a bit owlish. He holds a mug that smells powerfully of chocolate and cinnamon and wears pyjamas dotted with reindeer.
“Hi?” Martin looks bewildered, which only increases his resemblance to an owl. Spectacled, perhaps. “You’re, um, Jonathan, right? From downstairs?”
This, Martin remembering his name at all when it’s been months since they’ve last interacted and the previous interaction can’t have been more than a jerked nod of solidarity after a downpour, when they both might have been drowned rats rather than men, takes Jon aback. He doesn’t count himself particularly memorable. “Jon is fine. And you’re Martin.”
“Right.” There’s a moment of—well, it’s hardly silence, now is it? “Jon. Did, ah, did you need something?”
“Yes, actually,” Jon says, squaring his shoulders. If there’s one tone he’s mastered—particularly this time of year—it’s polite but stern, and it’s this he adopts now. “Your music. Would you mind turning it down?”
“My…oh!” For a moment, Martin still looks puzzled, and then for the first time seems to notice Mariah belting out her sole Christmas desire. He sets his mug down on some out of sight table and hurries away. Jon watches his back until that, too, is out of sight. In a moment, the music has fallen to a much more bearable level. In another, Martin has returned to the door.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, taking his drink back in hand. Shaking hand. His hand is shaking. Hard enough, in fact, Jon’s surprised its contents aren’t splashing over the sides. He’s smiling, too, a nervous little thing that Jon thinks might vanish if he makes any sudden movements. He raises his mug as though to offer it over. “Make it up to you with some cocoa? I made too much for just me and it’s never as good reheated, so I’ll just have to wash it down the sink if you don’t say yes, and I’ll feel terribly.”
Jon studies his neighbor. He ought to say no. Martin is clearly having an out of sorts night, and he hasn’t come up to make friends in any case: he was here to have the music quieter, and he’s accomplished that. There’s quite a bit of work waiting for him downstairs. He opens his mouth to turn down the offer, but hears himself saying, “Yes, thank you.”
It seems to cheer Martin.
Who then takes a step back to let Jon by. The flat has been decorated more thoroughly than any overdone department store Jon has seen this season, though it’s less gaudy, at least, than the Fenwick Georgie hauled him to the other day. Martin’s tastes appear to veer toward the tasteful. It comes as a surprise, given his pyjamas. There are fairy lights strung along the ceiling, glowing blue and white. His Christmas tree looks both as though it shouldn’t fit in its space, and as though it should be bent over like a tree assailed by a hurricane, given the number of ornaments covering it up. There are wall decorations, and floor decorations, and a Christmas rug.
Jon says, as Martin closes the door behind him, “This is…festive.”
Martin steps up, his smile having grown, if marginally. He takes a drink of his cocoa. “I love Christmas.”
“Yes,” Jon says. “I can tell.”
“You can sit wherever you like,” Martin says, indicating the space of his living room with his empty hand. That one’s shaking as well. “I’ll be just a moment.”
Then he bustles away, and Jon is left alone with the carols and the lights and a somewhat unsettling elf that happens to be at eye level. There’s a couch, and several chairs, and Jon steps around the coffee table—decorated with bits of a Christmas village—to peer through the window. It’s continued to snow; he thinks, irritably, that it’s coming down harder now than it was previously. His tracks have been wiped out by a fresh layer of white.
He watches his breath fog the glass, and the poor bastards still outside in the mess, growing more sodden every moment, and he shakes his head.
“Cocoa!” Martin announces, and Jon turns from the window. Sure enough, Martin’s acquired a second mug, this one exhibiting the gifts as featured in ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ and dangerously overflowing with whipped cream. “I wasn’t sure how you like it, but I think everyone likes—”
He cuts off abruptly, his smile faltering as he glances toward his stereo system. The song has changed, Mariah giving way to a version of ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas.’ Martin sets the mugs on an end table and walks too quickly to the stereo, where he jabs at a button to change the song. Jon’s brow furrows, deeper still when Martin takes a seat without a word, bringing his own mug to his mouth and not drinking from it.
Jon collects his own mug, but he doesn’t drink either as he settles himself into a chair. He lets Martin keep quiet. Whatever it is, it can’t be his business. They’re neighbors. Not friends, hardly even acquaintances. But Martin’s hands are still shaking around his mug, and his face has lost its color, and Jon is somewhat concerned that he might start crying without notice. He has the idea those shaking hands are what got the yes out of him. He clears his throat. “Is everything all right?”
“Oh, no,” Martin says, sounding crestfallen. He looks up from a mug. “I’m being a rotten host, and that’s after the music.”
“It’s fine,” Jon says. “I can’t stand people who try to host me properly. Is something the matter?”
Martin shrugs in a way that says, yes, something is very much the matter. “It’s nothing. Wouldn’t want to put it on you.”
“I asked,” Jon says, though he really has no reason to care. He ought to act a proper Englishman, and just be relieved it’s not going to be made his problem. “You’re clearly unhappy about something.”
“That obvious, is it?” Martin laughs, like he knows how he must look right now. “My mum called a bit ago. She doesn’t want me to come home for Christmas. She’s…too depressed, I suppose, to have me around. Dad always loved Christmas.” He nods to the stereo. “We’d play Christmas music as loud as we could, from the end of November right through to December twenty-fifth. We were in in the middle of nowhere, nearest neighbors were ages away, so we could do that, and never hear any complaints. I try to do better, living here. Sorry, when I don’t.”
“It’s fine,” Jon says; forget proper Englishman, he feels a proper arse for asking, and still he says, “Go on.”
“Dad passed away in February. Sudden heart attack, nothing to be done. Now Mum’s upset because of the season and she said I ought to just stay in London.” He pauses before a doleful, “I thought we would get through the holiday together.”
Jon flounders. He’s not good at dealing with other people, their emotions and working out what they might need in the moment. There’s a reason he works with books.
“Suppose that’s why it got so loud,” Martin says, like an afterthought. “I wasn’t paying attention, trying to drown myself out, all that. But I shouldn’t be burdening you with all my mess, go on and drink your cocoa.”
Jon does have a drink then. It’s hot on his tongue, and delicious, and he says so, which gets him another part of a smile. He thinks Martin would be rather adorable, if he kept smiling. He says, “What will you do instead?” and immediately thinks it’s the wrong question, but there’s no taking it back.
“Dunno,” Martin sighs. “Suppose I’ll stay in with the Christmas music and do a bit of moping. I’ll make sure to keep it quieter than today. Oh, but I’m sure you’ll be out, dunno about the rest of the buildi—”
“No,” Jon interrupts. “No, I’ll be staying in.”
Martin blinks. “Having people over then?”
“No,” Jon says again. “My parents passed when I was young, and my grandmother several years ago. It’s just me now.”
Martin looks stricken. “Oh, god,” he says, “I shouldn’t have said anything, I’m so sorry. I…I’ll just go and get some biscuits to go with this, shall I, stay right there.”
Before Jon can insist everything is fine, tell him not to worry and to stay where he is, Martin’s fled—fully fled—back to the kitchen. Jon peers after him. What an odd man. Nervous, too. Ready to blow over in a stiff breeze, metaphorically speaking.
It’s a minute before he returns, carrying a small plate. He sidesteps, suddenly and for no apparent reason, saying, “Watch out there, George.”
“Sorry,” Jon says, just stopping himself from looking around to see if there’s a third person in the room he hasn’t noticed yet, “who’s George?”
Martin dips his chin toward the floor, and even craning his neck Jon cannot see what might be there. “It’s a spider. Well. Lots of spiders. I call them all George. It’s been the same one for a month, though.”
“You talk to your house spiders,” Jon says, feeling a need to clarify he’s heard correctly, “and you call them all George.”
Some of the color returns to Martin’s cheeks in a flush. “I like spiders,” he says. “I work with them at the London Zoo. I know it’s odd.”
Jon considers this. “No odder than naming a bookshop after a fairy tale involving cannibalism, I suppose.”
Martin’s face scrunches up, and again Jon thinks he’s rather cute. He resumes his seat, and sets the plate of biscuits within reach of them both. “Is that something you’ve done, then?”
“Yes,” Jon says. “I’ve got a shop in Shoreditch. Juniper Tree Books.”
“That sounds like nice work.”
“It is,” he says. “Mostly. If I have to field one more person asking after a book with a blue cover, or fire in the title, or maybe it was about a girl with fire magic, and possibly the cover was orange, and the author’s name began with an N, or maybe a W…I might make my shop’s name more true to source.”
Martin laughs, and this time it’s because of him, and Jon wouldn’t terribly mind that happening again. “Not sure how you’ll work that out, unless there’s a place next door you can persuade into a Sweeney Todd reenactment.”
“It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“You must have heard some pretty awful ideas then.”
Jon fixes him with as serious a look as he can manage, with a smile doing its best to wrestle its way onto his face. “I own a bookshop, Martin. People tell me about their terrible ideas all day long. I’ve heard everything.”
“Tell me about the worst,” Martin says.
Jon tells him several. Martin’s laughing very hard indeed by the time he finishes telling him about the middle-aged man who was certain his autobiography, Aliens and Affairs, was destined to take the world by storm. “I’d offer to tell you stories about my workplace,” he says, “but I don’t think you’d want to hear about Gretel the tarantula.”
“They’re not all George at the zoo as well?”
“I did petition for it.”
Jon snorts, though he’s not certain that was a joke.
“Do you do any writing of your own?” Martin asks.
“Yes,” Jon says, suddenly self-conscious. He doesn’t often tell people about his work, aside from Georgie, who would prise it out of him with a crowbar if he tried to avoid it. “I’m working on a historical novel.”
“I hope I have the chance to read it someday,” Martin says.
“Maybe.” Jon sets his mug on the table with a wan smile. “I’d best be going. I’ve intruded enough on your evening.”
“No more than I have on yours. I appreciate the distraction.” His hands have stopped shaking. “Thank you for keeping me company.”
Jon looks away from that bright smile. “Try to keep your music at a more reasonable volume, or I’ll have to come back.”
“I’ll have to play it very loud from now on then,” Martin says.
Jon practically sprints down the stairs when the door’s shut behind him, but that’s not what’s got his heart rate high enough to have any medical professional lecturing him about taking up extreme sports in his less than peak physical condition. Still, he smiles as he returns to his desk. Perhaps there are worse things than dropping in on his neighbors.