Archive of Our Own

Jon buys the first Christmas jumper he finds that isn’t completely and utterly hideous. It has a rather saccharine waving polar bear on the front which, for some reason, has antlers festooned with lights attached to its head, but it’s less than a week to go until Christmas so he should probably just be glad he found something vaguely wearable.

He hadn’t intended to go the stupid holiday party at all. He never has before, despite all Tim’s wheedling. But Elias called him up to his office for a meeting this afternoon and ended it by casually saying, “Well, I’ll see you at the holiday party this evening, Jon. Try not to work so late that you forget to make an appearance.”

“What?” Jon had said blankly.

“The holiday party,” Elias had repeated, his eyes narrowing in the way that always makes Jon feel small and foolish and grubby. “You are coming.” He says it as a statement, not a question.

“R-right,” Jon had said uncertainly.

Elias’s lips had pressed together in annoyance. “Really, Jon, is it too much to expect you to read the emails I take such great care to send you?”

“I do!” Jon had protested, and it’s true. Mostly. He reads everything relevant, but he does have a tendency to skip the sections that announce things like people’s retirements or new types of sandwich becoming available in the canteen. He doesn’t know any of the people and he never goes to the canteen, it’s surely not unreasonable not to clutter his mind up with things that don’t pertain to the archives! But Elias had been looking at him with a sort of irritated disappointment and Jon had felt shame curling in his gut. “Sorry,” he’d mumbled.

“All department heads are required to attend,” Elias had said flatly, still glaring at him with that look he gets sometimes, the one that feels as though he’s burrowing into Jon’s brain and rootling around in there like a pig grubbing for food.

“Right,” Jon had said, and suppressed a sigh. “Yes, of course. I’ll be there.”

“Good.” Elias had given him a rather chilly smile and dismissed him, and Jon had fled back to the relative safety of his own office, where he could bury his face in his hands and groan loudly in peace.

The only bright spot in the whole sorry affair had been the look of genuine shock and delight on Tim’s face when he’d bidden Jon farewell at the end of the work day with the joking words, “We’ll see you partying it up in a couple of hours, I expect, boss?” and Jon had looked him dead in the eye and said, simply,

“Yes. I’ll see you then.”

Tim’s mouth had actually fallen open. Then his entire face had lit up, and he and Sasha had exchanged an entirely too enthusiastic high five, and even Martin’s eyes had widened, though he hadn’t said anything about it apart from, “See you there, Jon.”

“Yes, yes,” Jon had said, and rolled his eyes and pretended not to notice the way Martin’s smile brightened his whole face.

Then he’d gone back into his office to finish up what he was doing before he left, and he finally surfaces to realise with horror that there’s less than half an hour before the party starts. Not nearly long enough for him to get home, change, and come all the way back to the Institute. He can’t show up wearing the clothes he’s been wearing at work all day. The teasing will be merciless, and Elias’s disapproval will be worse.

Instead he grabs his stuff, locks the archives up, and dashes down the street to find the nearest shop that sells any kind of clothes. The displays of jumpers are, thankfully, near the front of the shop, and Jon rattles through them at top speed, looking for anything in his size that’s not a complete abomination. He discards a reindeer holding a drink and puckering its lips, a monstrosity covered with battery powered twinkling lights, and a Santa baring his pale bottom before he finds the polar bear and snatches it up gratefully. It’s two sizes too large, but at this point Jon doesn’t care. He’s just glad not to have to wear something with a half naked Santa on it. He waits for what feels like forever in the queue for the checkouts, pays a frankly extortionate sum, and eventually finds himself back out in the damp, chilly December air.

He stops in a dark entrance to an alleyway on his way back to the Institute to take off his coat and cardigan and put the jumper on. Then he feels something poking him uncomfortably in the back of the neck and realises he hasn’t removed the price tag. He hastily pulls the bloody jumper off again, suppressing his shivers, and bites through the little plastic strip that holds the price tag in place. He shoves it and his cardigan into the bottom of his bag and pulls the jumper back on, then his coat, and hurries back again towards work.

By the time Jon gets there, he’s more than half an hour late for the party. He hopes it’s the sort of thing where people don’t actually arrive at the announced start time, although he’s never been able to tell the difference between that kind of party and the kind where everyone arrives on time or a little early and will be deathly offended if he’s late. At least this time being late means a bit less time standing around and making excruciatingly awkward small talk with colleagues he barely recognises.

He hurries up the stairs and is relieved to find that he’s not the only straggler. That must mean it’s okay for him to be late. A woman with long dark hair and the biggest antlers on a headband he’s ever seen gives him a conspiratorial smile and says, “I almost agreed to go to my wife’s Tory cousin’s gender reveal party for her baby to get out of this. Couldn’t quite make myself do it, though.”

Jon snorts with laughter. “I literally just ran to the shop to buy a Christmas jumper so that I didn’t have to go in just my work clothes,” he confesses, and the woman, whose name he should almost certainly know, gives a delighted cackle.

“Well, here we go,” she says as they crest the stairs and head for an open door through which chatter and jangly Christmas music is audible. “We two, we happy two.”

“We band of buggered,” Jon finishes, and, both laughing, they enter the party.

*

A few weeks before the Magnus Institute holiday party, Martin spends an entire morning and a generous portion of the afternoon happily going around his favourite shopping centre, looking for the perfect Christmas jumper. By three o’clock he’s narrowed it down to a festive black cat that he can’t help thinking has a bit of a Jon-like air, an absolutely adorable waving polar bear, and a tap dancing penguin. After lengthy cogitation, aided by a hot chocolate piled high with cream and marshmallows, he decides against the penguin. For one thing, the shop is right at the other end of the shopping centre and he’s already worn his feet out twice over traipsing from jumper to jumper, and for another, he’s always vaguely resented penguins since the sad day he’d first seen some at the zoo and felt a deep, painful betrayal as the majestic birds of six feet tall and more he’d been imagining from the pictures in his books had turned out to be tiny little creatures that couldn’t even tower over eight-year-old Martin, let alone a full-grown adult.

That leaves the cat and the polar bear. Martin goes back and forth between them several times until his feet really can’t take it any more, and eventually, reluctantly, he decides against the cat. It’s adorable and really does remind him of Jon, with its grumpy little tinsel-festooned face, but that’s why he can’t wear it—he’s afraid that if by some outside chance Jon does go to the party, he’ll see Martin’s jumper and immediately divine that Martin is well on the way to being head-over-heels in love with him, and that would mean Martin having to quit his job and move to Siberia.

Since he doesn’t really want to live in Siberia, Martin buys the other jumper. It’s very cute. The polar bear has a little heart-shaped nose and is wearing a pair of antlers with lights all over them, and waving cheerfully. And, most importantly, it won’t make Jon think Martin has any feelings about him whatsoever except for the usual mortal terror.

Not that Martin’s actually been scared of Jon since his first month in the archives. Oh, he glares and snarls and stalks around like he thinks smiling will get him arrested, but it’s all posturing, meant to conceal the hidden softness that lurks in the dark, behind the posh accent and highly polished shoes and lofty comments about Martin’s ineptitude. Mostly Jon keeps the softness crushed down so deep you’d never suspect its existence, but just occasionally, when he’s particularly stressed or tired or interested, there’ll be a hint of it. A relaxing of the tension in Jon’s shoulders when Martin puts a fresh cup of tea down on his desk. A small, brief, half-smile when Tim makes a joke and catches Jon’s eye at just the right moment. A fond tilt of his head when Sasha starts monologuing about one of the esoteric subjects she finds endlessly fascinating. Jon’s long, slim fingers clasped worriedly around Martin’s ankles, that time he had a nosebleed and Jon thought he was about to faint.

Plus, even the most terrifying person in the world gets a lot less unnerving when you’ve seen them besieged on their desk, practically swooning with fright over the presence of a spider in the same room with them.

He hadn’t expected his mortified fear to be so immediately replaced by a frankly idiotic level of fondness, but Martin’s never been one to love wisely. In some ways, the less attainable the target, the better. That sort of crush is safe. A bit miserable and lonely sometimes, yes, but at least there’s no possibility of Jon finding someone thinner or less depressed or more intelligent and vanishing from his life without so much as a farewell, because he’ll never think about Martin in that light, not in a million years.

Despite choosing a jumper meant to conceal his feelings instead of give them away, he’s genuinely surprised when, on the day of the holiday party, Jon casually announces that he’s going. Tim looks as though he’s about to spontaneously combust with excitement and is forced to exchange a vigorous high five with Sasha to relieve his feelings. Sasha herself beams at Jon and tells him it’ll be good for him to do something fun for a change, whereupon Jon looks at her dourly and says,

“I’m not going for fun,” as though fun is some kind of crime. “I’m going because Elias says I have to.”

Sasha’s face twitches as though she wants to laugh, but she’s kind enough to suppress her amusement. “Well, maybe it’ll be fun anyway.”

“Maybe,” Jon mutters.

Martin, who has been working hard not to let the sudden fluttering of his stomach show on his face, just smiles at Jon and says, “See you there.”

“Yes, yes,” Jon says, and rolls his eyes, but there’s no malice behind it. If Martin didn’t know better, he might even think Jon was a little bit pleased.

He can’t bring himself to be sad about the fact that he does know better, because this means he’s finally going to see Jonathan Sims, scratchy, abrasive little workaholic that he is, in a casual setting. Maybe even wearing casual clothes. Maybe even having a drink or two and letting his hair down a bit. Metaphorically, obviously. Or literally. Martin thinks Jon’s hair would look nice let loose from the severe bun he usually keeps it in.

He and Tim go to Sasha’s for the couple of hours gap between the end of work and the start of the party. Honestly, who decided on that? If Martin tried to go home, he’d have to turn around and come back again the moment he reached his front door. At least Sasha lives fairly close to the Institute, although this does mean Martin having to tolerate almost an entire two hours of her and Tim teasing him about the possible effects of mulled wine and Christmas music on stuffy archivists and giving him advice on the best way to make a move on Jon.

“Definitely avoid giving him one of your lectures about the place of spiders in the ecosystem,” Sasha says seriously. “He’s absolutely terrified of them.”

“I know that.” Martin rolls his eyes. He’s never told the others about finding Jon perched, trembling, on his own desk that time, but even without that it’s hard to avoid knowing someone’s arachnophobic when you work in an old building that’s bloody crawling with the things. Even Martin thinks it’s a bit much sometimes, and he likes them.

“Just trying to give you the best chance possible, Marto,” Tim says, patting his shoulder.

“I don’t need a chance!” Martin cries.

“That’s the spirit,” Tim says approvingly.

“Oh my god. I don’t need a chance because I’m not going to… to try anything!” Martin says. “Jon doesn’t even like me, for Christ’s sake!”

“Of course he likes you,” Sasha says.

“Sasha, he literally called me a useless ass.”

Sasha waves her hand. “That was just at first. He’s horrible with new people. Well, with people in general, really, but especially new ones. And Elias made you his assistant in the way most guaranteed to make Jon despise the sight of you.”

“Which he does,” Martin says.

“Nah,” Tim says. “Sasha’s right, he’s really warming up to you. Give him a chance. I mean, the first month I knew him, he called me an immature buffoon. Can you believe it?”

“You are an immature buffoon,” Sasha points out.

“Well, yes, but to just say it like that! Really wounded me,” Tim says, not looking wounded in the slightest.

Martin has to laugh, even though he can’t quite bring himself to believe Tim and Sasha. Things are much better with Jon than they used to be, but Martin knows the best he can hope for there is a sort of absent-minded tolerance, as though he’s a stapler that staples wonkily most of the time and occasionally not at all, but you never get round to actually replacing it, until you’re almost, but not quite, a little bit fond of the wretched thing, especially after you succumb to temptation and stick googly eyes on it.

He's not sure how he’d feel about Jon sticking googly eyes on him.

“Anyway,” Sasha says. “The point is that he likes you a lot more than he lets on. Remember when you had that nosebleed? We weren’t joking about him being about to phone around the hospitals.”

“He was having kittens over you,” Tim agrees. “It’s just that his love language is grumbling at people and piling extra work on them, so it’s sort of hard to tell until you get to know him.”

“If you say so,” Martin says, shaking his head.

Then he asks Sasha a question about her latest follow-up, and, to his relief, they both accept the change of topic. The question of Jon isn’t raised again until they’re at the party. It isn’t actually awful, as office parties go, although despite Elias’s insistence on calling it a holiday party it’s most definitely a Christmas party. But the desks have been pushed to the sides of the room and a slightly odd combination of drinks and food is arrayed on them, including Martin’s, Tim’s, and Sasha’s contributions, and there’s a rather scraggly plastic Christmas tree in one corner and paper chains strung up on the walls and across the ceiling. Christmas music is playing a little too loudly, and people are chatting and laughing, most of them wearing something more or less festive.

Martin himself has gone with “less”, and is just wearing jeans with his polar bear jumper and, at Tim’s insistence, a pair of antlers with jingly bells on them. Sasha’s wearing a jumper with a mooning Santa on it, and she’s carefully pinned tinsel around the cuffs and hem. And then there’s Tim, who is arrayed in what appears to be an entire dress made out of nothing but tinsel, reaching to just above his knees. Wrapped around him is a battery powered string of twinkling lights, which peek out of the masses of multicoloured tinsel, blinking cheerfully. He has a Santa hat on his head, glittery stockings, and gold, sparkly, high-heeled shoes. He’s not even the only one: across the room, Rosie is in a full on Santa suit, and someone else, Martin can’t see enough of their face to tell who, is wearing an intricately detailed and beautifully crafted reindeer costume.

“D’you think he’s all right?” he says, looking around to try and spot Jon in among the gaggle of constantly moving people.

“Who?” Sasha says, wrinkling her nose as she peers into her plastic cup of some sort of mulled concoction. “What is this? It’s definitely alcoholic, but beyond that…”

“Jon,” Martin says. “He did say he was coming.”

“Probably still holed up in his office,” Tim says. “Maybe we should go down there and dig him out.”

“Let’s give him a few more minutes,” Sasha says, giving up on identifying the mulled substance and taking a large mouthful instead. She swallows, pauses for thought, and adds, “You know how he hates being interrupted.”

“It’s half past seven at night, Sash! The work day’s been over for two and a half hours!”

“Well, yeah, but…” Sasha’s mouth falls open.

Tim and Martin turn to see what she’s looking at, and it’s Jon. He’s just walked in with Sunita from admin, and he’s laughing. Actually laughing! Martin’s brain short circuits so thoroughly that all he can do is stare as Jon and Sunita immediately head for the drinks table and pour themselves two drinks each.

“Has Jon made a friend?” Sasha says, her voice high with incredulity.

“That’s not just any friend,” Tim says, sounding awestruck. “That’s Sunita! She’s head of admin! I heard she once made Elias cry!”

“Seriously? How?” Sasha looks as though she’s on the verge of pulling out a pad and pen so that she can take notes.

“Dunno. That bloke, what’s his name, Rodney? Roderick? told me, but he was pissed at the time and he also tried to claim that Elias wasn’t actually Elias, so, you know, pinch of salt.”

“Shame,” Sasha says. “Still, she does seem like exactly Jon’s type, doesn’t she?”

A pang shoots through Martin at this, because she’s right. Slender, beautiful Sunita, head of admin and person who may or may not have made Elias cry, is far more Jon’s type than slow, ungainly Martin, who can still barely write a follow-up report without having it sent back with half a dozen corrections. He stares across at where Jon and Sunita are standing. Jon appears to have already finished his first drink and is gesturing dramatically with his free hand, as he does sometimes when he’s excited about whatever he’s talking about, and Sunita has clapped a hand over her mouth in response.

Tim pokes him in the shoulder and says, “Not that kind of type, Marto.”

“Oh!” Sasha says. “No, that’s not what I meant, Martin. Sorry.”

“Right,” Martin says flatly. Jon and Sunita are now both heaving with giggles at the other side of the room. Martin’s never seen Jon that way, and it’s not that he’s jealous, obviously, it’s just that he’s had a lot of daydreams about what it would be like to make Jon laugh like that, or smile, or relax in pretty much any way, really. How has Sunita managed it so easily?

“Stop looking like that.” Tim grabs his shoulder and swings him round so that he’s looking away from Jon and Sunita. “Believe me, Jon doesn’t act that way with people he likes.”

Martin snorts. “Are you trying to tell me that Jon doesn’t like her? Look at them!” He turns again and waves his hand at where Jon and Sunita are leaning, shoulder-to-shoulder, against a desk, Jon nodding vigorously at something Sunita’s saying.

“You know what I mean,” Tim says sternly. “Romantically. The way you like him.”

“He’s right,” Sasha says. “If Jon liked her like that he’d be all flustered and weird, and pretending to be annoyed so that she wouldn’t notice he had actual human feelings. He’d barely be able to look her in the eye.”

She shuts her mouth quickly, as though she thinks she’s said too much, and she and Tim exchange one of their indecipherable looks. Martin suddenly feels as though they’re having a whole different conversation with him from the one he’s having with them. Then Tim is nudging Martin playfully with his shoulder and saying,

“Look at the man! All relaxed, happy as a sandboy. You won’t catch him acting that way with a crush, Marto. You’re safe.”

Martin mutters wordlessly and takes a large gulp of his drink. He hopes they’re right, but he’s a bit suspicious that they’re just saying it to make him feel better. Martin doesn’t know how to explain that believing there’s any chance of Jon returning his feelings will only make him feel worse in the long run.

At this point, Jon finally catches sight of them and waves, then says something to Sunita. They both start to make their way across the room, but are intercepted by Elias, who is wearing a Santa hat and a rather grim smile. Jon and Sunita’s faces fall almost identically.

“You’d think Elias’d have the decency to make himself scarce so that we can all have proper fun,” Tim says. “Should I try and distract him?”

“Do you mean seduce him?” Sasha asks.

“Well, yeah. He’s quite hot in an evil kind of way, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely not,” Sasha and Martin chorus.

Tim rolls his eyes. “You’re just prejudiced against him because he’s creepy literally all the time and has the personality of a bar chart.”

“That’s rude,” Sasha says. “Some bar charts are actually very interesting.”

“Yeah, I see your point.”

They watch as Jon’s shoulders start to creep up towards his ears with familiar tension. Elias is standing just a little too close to him, and Jon’s eyebrows are pinching together in an unhappy frown.

“Goddamnit,” Tim swears softly.

Sasha’s already marching forward, but before she’s taken more than a couple of steps, Sunita’s eyes narrow and her mouth opens, and they’re much too far away to guess at what she’s said, but Jon’s shoulders relax a little and Elias takes a step back from him.

Sasha’s hand goes to her mouth. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “Did you see that?”

“Wow,” Tim says. “I’ve never seen anyone make Elias back off when he didn’t want to. Maybe she really did make him cry.”

“The woman has powers the rest of us can only dream of,” Sasha says.

Martin has to admit that he’s impressed, too. Elias is bloody terrifying. Martin had only about half wanted to take the transfer to the archives, despite the fact that it meant a bit of a payrise, but he hadn’t dared do anything but agree gratefully in the face of Elias’s piercing gaze and sharp-edged smile, and he always makes himself scarce in the depths of the archives on the rare occasions Elias appears down there. It’s nice to know that there’s someone at the Magnus Institute capable of standing up to him.

Coldly, Elias turns away from Jon and Sunita, and the two of them cross the room.

“He does, though,” Sunita says as they approach Martin, Sasha and Tim. “It’s really creepy.”

“Ooh, what’s creepy?” Tim demands.

“Elias,” Sunita says. “The way he looks at Jon.”

“He looks at me normally!” Jon says.

“Ohhh,” Tim says. “Yeah, no, he definitely doesn’t.”

Jon frowns.

“They’re right,” Martin says. Jon’s eyes swivel to him, and Martin tries, unsuccessfully, to suppress his blush. “Even I’ve noticed, and I’ve barely ever seen you together.”

“He looks at you like he wants to eat you alive, Jon,” Tim says.

“Right in front of everyone,” Sasha adds. “It is creepy.”

Jon sighs. “I need to be a lot drunker than I currently am to cope with this,” he says.

“Right!” Sunita drains her plastic cup with a flourish. “We were going to get totally plastered. Care to join us?”

“Oh, hell yes!” Tim says. “Hang on, let me put your coat and bag with our stuff, Jon. You’ll boil like that.”

“Oh.” Jon looks down at himself and seems to agree. He’s already so much more relaxed than Martin’s ever seen him. He wishes he’d thought of offering to take Jon’s coat. Maybe their fingers would have brushed together as Jon handed it over, or maybe Martin could have helped him off with it, letting his hands drift casually across Jon’s shoulders as he did.

But Jon is already giving Tim his coat, and when he turns back, Martin’s slightly fevered imaginings stutter to a halt. Why the hell is Jon wearing the same Christmas jumper as him?

*

Jon can feel his cheeks heating up. Martin is staring at him as though he’s grown a second head. Honestly, it’s surely not quite that unbelievable that Jon would have made some small concession to the festive season in the form of a Christmas jumper! He’s not actually an old man!

“What?” he starts to snap, flustered by the way Martin’s still looking at him.

“Oh my god,” Tim interrupts. “Did you two secretly co-ordinate your outfits?”

Jon drains the last mouthful of his second drink. He was right before: he definitely needs to be a lot drunker in order to cope with this bloody party. He peers at the others, trying to work out what Tim means. Tim himself is wearing a twinkling tinsel monstrosity which he somehow manages to look amazing in. Sasha, he realises with a shudder of horror, is wearing the jumper with the bare-bottomed Santa that Jon himself discarded not half an hour ago. Good Lord. And Martin… there’s something vaguely familiar about the jumper Martin is wearing. Jon gazes at it, trying to remember where he’s seen it before.

“No!” Martin himself is saying defensively. “Of course we didn’t! Why would you even…?”

The jumper is inoffensive compared to Sasha’s. It’s got a polar bear on the front, which is waving and has an inexplicable pair of antlers on its head. Wait, that’s… oh!

Jon looks down at his own jumper, and sure enough, it’s the same one. His cheeks get a little warmer.

“Are you trying to tell me this is a coincidence?” Tim says, wheezing with laughter. “Because I’ve got to say, that’s a hell of a…”

“Of course it’s a coincidence!” Jon says, baffled. “Why would we wear the same jumper on purpose?”

For some reason this only makes Tim laugh harder, and Martin has gone very pink, right up to the tips of his ears. This pleases Jon. He’s been finding Martin’s blushes an increasingly fascinating phenomenon, the way they sweep across his face in seconds, drowning his freckles and suffusing his skin with rosy pink. Sometimes they fade quickly, and sometimes, delightfully, they last for minutes on end. He’s even been essaying a few tentative experiments in discovering exactly what it is that causes them. So far he’s been able to note that Martin consistently blushes when Jon thanks him for bringing him a cup of tea and when he’s told he does something well, but most of his other blushes seem random. Jon will walk into a room, and Martin will be pink. Jon will ask Martin his opinion on something, and Martin will turn pink. Once last week, Jon, absent-mindedly reading through a statement as he made his way back towards his office, had tripped over a stray box of files and only been saved from falling flat on his face by Martin catching him bodily. For a heady moment, Jon’s face had been pressed into Martin’s soft chest and Martin’s strong arms had been wrapped tightly around him, and Martin had been just as warm and soft and strong as Jon has always carefully avoided imagining he would be.

And, which is the point, when he’d let go and Jon had managed to straighten himself up again, Martin’s entire face and neck had been absolutely crimson. Jon had stared at them in fascinated delight and they had somehow grown even redder. Could all that really have just come from the exertion of saving Jon a nasty fall, or had Martin been blushing? And if he’d been blushing, why? Certainly Jon had thanked him, but Martin had been scarlet-faced before that.

He doesn’t know why Martin’s blushing now, either. It doesn’t fit the only pattern Jon’s been able to find, that he blushes when people say nice things to him. And it can’t be embarrassment, surely? Of course, it’s a bit of a coincidence that they both ended up with the same jumper, but it’s not that embarrassing.

Jon shakes his head and goes to finish his drink, only to discover that he’s already done so.

“Well,” he announces, giving up on deciphering Martin’s blushes for the time being. “I’m going to get drunk.”

“Let’s go!” Sunita cries. Sunita’s brilliant. Jon’s a bit embarrassed that he only vaguely recognised her, given that she’s head of admin, but he’s never been very good with faces, or with getting to know people. And there’s an odd isolation that comes with being in the archives. Even Tim, who is gregarious to a fault, has admitted that he sometimes finds himself going almost an entire day without talking to anyone other than the archival staff. Jon’s just glad someone called Sunita by her name before she noticed that he was avoiding having to use it.

As they cross the room in a drink-seeking phalanx, Sasha sidles up to Sunita and says, “So is it true that you once made Elias cry?”

Jon swings round, agog. “Did you?” he demands.

Sunita puts on a sad face and says, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s just not true.” Sasha’s face falls. Sunita grins wickedly. “I made him cry twice.”

Sasha’s hand goes to her mouth. “This is literally the happiest day of my life,” she breathes. “If I were remotely capable of falling in love, I’d be falling in love with you right now. How? How did you do it?”

Sunita pours out a drink and hands it to Sasha. “What will you trade me for the information?” she says, and Sasha’s entire face lights up.

Jon catches Tim’s eye and they share a smile. Sasha isn’t terrible with people in the same way Jon is, but a lot of people never quite get her. Then he sees Martin watching with a smile of his own, and feels his cheeks get warm again. Maybe Jon should be charting his own blushes; they’ve been getting a little out of control recently. Hastily, he pours himself a plastic cup of wine, drinks half of it down straight away, and refills. He starts to feel pleasantly fuzzy around the edges.

*

Two hours later, Jon is pleasantly fuzzy at more than the edges. Focusing properly on anything is a challenge, and the room seems to tilt a little every time he moves. Tim and Martin wandered away for some reason he’s forgotten ages ago, and Sasha and Sunita are arguing happily about haunted houses while Jon leans comfortably against Sasha.

“Come on, Jon, you agree with me, don’t you?” Sasha cries, waving her drink in the air for emphasis and almost spilling it all over him.

“Definitely,” Jon says, very carefully, so that he doesn’t slur over the far too many syllables that word has. “Y’re always right.”

Sunita starts to laugh. “You don’t even know what you’re agreeing with!”

“Tha’s true,” Jon admits. “But Sasha knows evyy… everry… everything.”

Sunita laughs so hard at this that some of her drink dribbles back out of her mouth. She wipes it with the back of her hand and says, “You’re drunk, Jon.”

“I am not,” Jon says with dignity. “I am merely mildly inebr… inebr… inerrier… imbreniated.”

Inebriated is just a difficult word, okay? In hindsight, Jon probably should have gone with something easier, like tipsy. Or merry. Or sozzled. No, scratch that. He’s not sozzled.

“Sozzled,” he murmurs. “Sozzled. Sozz-uhled. Szzld. Sozzled. Sssozzled.” He turns his eyes up to the ceiling, imagining the word inscribed across it in big yellow letters. It’s definitely a yellow word. Pale yellow, maybe with some little bubbles. “Sozzled,” he says again, thoughtfully.

He lowers his eyes again and catches sight of Martin at the other side of the room. Martin is looking in his direction, so Jon waves, then narrows his eyes, squinting across the room as Martin waves back.

“Is he blushing?” he says to Sasha and Sunita.

“Who?” Sasha says, and then follows the line of his eyes. Martin isn’t looking over any more, he’s talking to some people Jon thinks he’s seen around the library, but most of his face is still visible. “Martin? Hard to tell from here. Why?”

“I need more data,” Jon says. He stops squinting. Even if Martin did blush, he’s probably stopped now. Also, it’s making his eyes feel funny.

“Data?” Sasha says, close beside him, since he’s still leaning on her in defence against the way the room keeps trying to spin. “About… Martin blushing?”

Ah. Jon remembers that this is supposed to be a private project, just for him, although he can’t quite think why at the moment. After all, Sasha loves data.

“Yes,” he slurs. “I’m trying to d’scover what causes it.”

Sasha is silent. Sunita, interested, says, “What for?”

This is a good question. Jon finds that he isn’t entirely sure. He just… he just has to know. Now that he’s noticed the phenomenon he can’t seem to leave it alone. He wants to know everything about it. What makes Martin blush? What affects the intensity of it? Does Martin realise how pink he goes? How many times could Jon make him blush in the course of a single day?

Sunita and Sasha are both looking at him, waiting for an answer. Jon shrugs. The room tilts again. “’S interesting,” he says. “Sort of pretty, y’know? He goes all pink. He does it when I say thank you for tea, ‘n’ when I tell him he’s done something well. So it’s def… def’n’ly,” Damn, that word again. He can’t seem to get his tongue round it. Oh well, his lecture is more important. “Def’n’ly when people say nice things to him. But!” He puts a finger in the air to emphasise his point. “’S not just that! Some… sometimes he does it for no reason! I jus’… jus’ come into th’ room and he’s all pink! Esplain that!” he finishes triumphantly, although he’s slightly lost track of what he’s triumphant about.

Sasha puts her hand over her face and groans loudly. “You two are going to kill me,” she says, which honestly seems a bit dramatic to Jon. She ought to be impressed by his dedication to his project! Maybe it’s just because she hasn’t seen the amount of information he’s been able to gather on the subject.

“I c’n show you my notebook,” he says. “I’ve got a lot of data!”

“Of course you have,” Sasha says. Sunita, inexplicably, is leaning against the desk behind her and laughing into her drink. “Of course you bloody have, Jon. Jesus Christ.”

“I just want to know!” he says, slightly offended by her attitude. “I like knowing things.”

Sasha sighs and pats him on the arm. “I know you do, but I’m not telling you. It’s Martin’s business.”

Jon eyes her. “What’s Martin’s business? Business. Business.” That’s a blue word. Blue and sort of thumpy. Jon likes words. Most words, anyway. There are a few that give him the shudders, like plinth, or haemorrhage. He used to think the name Martin was a bit of a boring one, pale brown and nondescript as it was, but not any more. Now it’s a pink word, warm and rosy in his mind, kind on his tongue.

“I just said I wasn’t telling you,” Sasha says. She shakes her head. “I don’t suppose he’ll mind your weird little hobby. He’ll probably think it’s adorable, god help the man.”

Jon stares at her, confused. He feels like he’s paddling shin-deep in the conversation while Sasha is cheerfully swimming around in the deeps. Maybe he shouldn’t have drunk quite so much. Or, no, maybe he needs to drink more. Yes. Much more sensible. In fact, if he takes Martin a fresh drink too, perhaps he can gather more of his all-important data. Observing Martin in a casual setting might give him an important clue to whatever Sasha’s hinting at.

Sunita just laughs at him when he announces his intentions, and Sasha shakes her head again and rolls her eyes.

“You do that,” she says. “Have fun.”

Jon manages to fill two plastic cups with wine, only spilling quite a small amount, and makes his way carefully across the room. It’s a bit of a challenge; every time he has to turn to skirt round a group, the room tries to lurch and spin around him, but he manages all right until Martin turns a little and spots him, and waves. Jon, forgetting that both hands are occupied, tries to wave back and almost tips wine all over himself before Martin is somehow right there, lifting both drinks out of his hands.

“Only one of those is f’r you!” Jon says indignantly.

“You can have yours back when you’re not about to fall over,” Martin says. “Are you sure you haven’t had enough to drink already?”

It takes Jon a moment to sort through the negatives in this question, but when he has, he glares at Martin and says, “Yes. And I’m perfly… perfectly able to stand up, thank you.”

Despite his crystal clear enunciation, Martin doesn’t look at all intimidated, but he does, at least, hand Jon one of the drinks back.

“Thank you,” Jon says again, and takes a large, defiant gulp. Martin laughs. He has a very nice laugh. Jon’s noticed it before, but this is the first time he’s been the one to make it happen. Pride and delight bubble up inside him, and he feels a smile spreading across his face.

Martin is going pink again. Jon watches happily as the colour sweeps across his cheeks and climbs his ears. He wonders if Martin’s face would be noticeably warmer if he touched it now. Not that he knows how warm it usually is. He’d have to touch him twice, once blushing, once not blushing. The fingers of the hand not holding his drink twitch. Jon likes touching things, nice things, anyway, and more and more often recently he’s found himself thinking of Martin as a nice thing.

“Um,” Martin says, a hand going to his cheek, still rosy pink. “I… is there something on my face?”

Jon blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Yes. I mean, no.”

He hastily takes another large gulp of his drink, and when he looks back up at Martin, he’s still watching him with a little frown. His blush, disappointingly, has receded. Jon wonders if he can make it come back. Something nice; Martin blushes when people say nice things to him. But Jon’s thoughts are all tangled up and fuzzy, and before he can think of anything, the room starts to do that annoying tilting thing again. Absently, he watches as the ceiling starts to shift towards where the wall should be. It’s oddly fascinating. He wonders if the whole room will turn itself upside down.

And then an arm wraps itself around him and the world abruptly rights itself, except that now Martin is holding Jon close against him.

“Martin!” Jon says, mildly scandalised. “Are you drunk?”

“Yes, Jon,” Martin says dryly. “I’m the one who just nearly fell flat on his face while staring at the ceiling like it held all the world’s secrets, and you’re the one who caught me just in time to stop myself breaking my nose.”

“You’re being sarcas… castic, aren’t you?” Jon says. He has to crane his head back to keep looking into Martin’s face, but he finds that he doesn’t mind very much. Martin is very warm, and very soft, and very strong, and Jon has an excellent angle on his glorious nose. “You’ve got nice nostrils,” he tells Martin. “I sort of wan’to push my tongue up them.”

“Wow,” Martin says, and Jon is charmed to see the tide of pink flood his face again. Compliments to nostrils! He must remember to write that down. “Wow, you are… how much have you had to drink? Come on, let’s sit you down.”

Arm still very firmly wrapped around Jon, which is really quite nice, Jon thinks, trying to unscramble his feet, Martin guides him towards some chairs that are set out at the edge of the room. He plumps Jon down in one of them and sits beside him.

“How are you feeling?” he says.

Jon casts about. “Where’s my drink?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, for some reason in the moment it felt more important to stop you from falling on the floor than your drink,” Martin says sarcastically. Has he always been this sarcastic? Should Jon like it this much? “Obviously next time I’ll go for the drink.”

“’S no need to be like that,” Jon says.

Martin shakes his head. “I’m going to go and get you some water, okay?” he says. “You just stay he…”

Jon only means to lean forward to block Martin from getting up, but he doesn’t seem to be entirely in control of his body just now, and he ends up flopping gracelessly across Martin’s lap instead.

Martin gives a little shriek. “Jon!”

“I don’ need water,” he says. The world is sort of better, lying down. It doesn’t spin quite as much. Also, Martin’s lap is lovely and soft.

“Oh my god,” Martin says. He’s holding his hands up near his chest as though he isn’t sure where to put them. “Jon, please sit up, you’re going to be so pissed off about this on Monday.”

Jon shuffles round so that he’s lying on his back and can look up at Martin comfortably. “You know,” he confesses. “I’m a bit of a pompous arsh. Arsh. Arse.”

Martin puts his hands over his face and groans. When he takes them away, Jon realises that he is, once again, in a perfect position to see right up his nostrils.

“So,” he says, because it’s worth asking, isn’t it? The worst Martin can say is no. “C’n I put my tongue in your nostril?”

“No!” Martin cries. His eyes, which are lovely and blue, a much nicer blue than the word business, which is bland and slightly too smooth for comfort, have gone sort of wide and panicky, but his face is still bright red. That’s nice. “God, you have to stop saying things like that!”

“Why?” Jon asks, interested. Conversations have so many rules he’s never been able to keep up with. He tried for a few months when he was a teenager. Bought himself a spiral bound notebook from Woollie’s and made a note of every conversational rule he came across. But he’d had to cross out and rewrite and amend and addend and footnote every supposed rule so much that they all became meaningless after a while. He doesn’t know how other people do it.

“I don’t think there’s any way to answer that question that isn’t going to make you want to fire me doubly on Monday,” Martin says, which, in Jon’s opinion, isn’t a proper answer at all.

“I woul’n fire you, Martin,” he says. “You’re too pretty.” Wait, no, that isn’t what he intended to say. “Nice,” he amends. “Y’r too nice to fire. ‘S what I meant.”

“Right,” Martin says, voice strangled, face scarlet. “Great. That’s… that’s great, Jon, thanks.”

“Y’welcome,” Jon tells him, and reaches up to pat him on the shoulder, although he misses by a bit and ends up patting Martin’s neck instead. That’s all right. Martin has a nice neck. Jon smiles happily up at him and pats it again.

*

Martin feels as though he might be about to spontaneously combust. Jon is lying with his head in Martin’s lap, smiling woozily at him and sort of vaguely groping his neck for some reason, telling Martin that he’s too pretty and nice to fire. Jon is doing this. His boss. His irritable, pernickety, mean, beautiful little boss, whom he’s half in love with, apparently wants to put his tongue up Martin’s nose. Martin has no idea how to handle any of this. He has his hands curled clumsily against his chest because there is literally nowhere else safe to put them right now, much as he’d absolutely love to run his fingers through Jon’s hair, which has almost completely come down from its bun and is hanging in soft strands around his face, or to teasingly tickle his sides, or even just to gently rest his hands on Jon’s arm.

But if this isn’t already a firing offence, and Martin isn’t fool enough to completely believe Jon’s slurred assurances that he won’t be dismissing him first thing on Monday morning, then letting himself touch Jon definitely would be.

Martin almost wishes he hadn’t stuck to non-alcoholic drinks tonight. He’s a dreadful lightweight and even one drink has been known to turn him into a maudlin mess who’s willing to spill his deepest secrets under the slightest provocation, and Martin really can’t afford to do that. Not now. Not here. It’s just that right now he feels like having a bit of alcohol in his system would probably help him cope with everything that’s happening.

Jon has fallen silent and his hand has drifted back to his side, rather to Martin’s relief. He isn’t sure he could have taken much more neck groping without having to rush home and stand under a cold shower for an hour or two. He might have to do that anyway. He looks around the room, hoping to spot Tim or Sasha and signal his desperate need for assistance, but Tim seems to have completely vanished. Elias, too, is gone, and Martin can only hope against hope that Tim hasn’t made good on his threat to seduce him. No, of course he hasn’t. Talk about jumping to conclusions! There are a dozen people Tim could be shagging in the stationery cupboard right now, not just Elias. Not that Elias would agree to be shagged in a cupboard. Probably. No, he'd take Tim up to his office, where there’s a nice big sofa, and…

Jesus Christ. Martin wrenches his mind away from the increasingly upsetting images that are filling it and scans the room for Sasha. It takes a while, but eventually he spots her. Oh god. She’s got Sunita pressed up against the wall and is… kissing seems like too feeble a word for what they’re doing, but Martin isn’t willing to search for a more accurate one. Why are all his friends so horny? Not that he minds them being horny. He’s not exactly unhorny himself. It’s just, why do they have to be horny right now? He needs help!

“D’you wan’ know my favourite word?” Jon says, so suddenly that Martin jumps and nearly knocks him out of his lap and onto the floor.

“Er,” he says. “Sorry, what?”

“My fa’rite word,” Jon repeats. God, he really is absolutely shit-faced, isn’t he? Martin wonders if he should offer to take him home. The thought makes him go hot all over again. Not that he ever cooled down much.

“Um, sure,” he says, distractedly. Sasha still appears to be trying to map out Sunita’s tonsils with her tongue and doesn’t look like resurfacing any time soon, and Martin doesn’t really want to get anyone who doesn’t know Jon well involved. He’s going to be embarrassed enough about this afterwards as it is, assuming he isn’t so drunk that he just forgets it all. Maybe it’d be better that way.

“Interloc…” Jon says from his lap. His lap. Jon’s head is still in his lap. The realisation keeps hitting Martin anew, as though his brain can only comprehend it for a couple of seconds before letting it go again for fear of exploding inside his skull.

“Interlock?” Martin says. “That’s your favourite word?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Jon says. He puts a wavering finger in the air and looks sternly up at Martin with his big brown eyes. “I’m saying it. Interlot… inter… inter…”

“Maybe you should just tell me on Monday,” Martin suggests.

“Shhh,” Jon says, and Martin, helplessly endeared, shushes. If someone had put a knife to his throat a few hours ago and asked what kind of drunk he thought Jonathan Sims would be, he’d have said mean without even thinking about it. He almost wishes he’d been right, because this excess of softness is… it’s just a lot to handle, okay? Not that he’s doing any handling! Jesus. He wonders if he’s ever going to go back to a normal temperature after this. The room is warm, Martin is flushed with embarrassment and an almost painful fondness, and Jon, draped across his lap like a sleepy cat, is so warm. He wonders what Jon would do if Martin rubbed him behind the ears or under the chin. Maybe he’d bite, but maybe he’d purr.

Nope. Nope. That is not a place he can allow his brain to go. Not now, not ever. God, what is wrong with him? Coming to this party was a huge mistake. He never should have let Tim persuade him.

Jon takes a deep breath and says, so slowly and carefully that Martin’s lips twitch with laughter, “In-ter-loc-u-ter.”

“Cool,” Martin says, and discovers that he’s grinning like an absolute fool. “Yeah, that’s a great word.”

“’S all shiny ‘n’ black,” Jon confides. “Bouncy. Y’know?”

“Yeah,” Martin says, although it’s never occurred to him to think of the word, or any word, that way. He glances around the room again and is deeply relieved to see Tim entering, the lights on his tinsel dress still twinkling merrily. He waves, and Tim’s face lights up like his dress. He lopes over to sit down in the chair next to Jon’s feet.

“Hello!” he says, somehow managing to make the simple word sound indescribably filthy. “Getting cosy with the boss, Marto? Good on you!”

“Shut up!” Martin hisses, feeling himself flush again. God. “He’s so drunk, Tim! He keeps on saying stuff!”

“Oh yeah? What kind of stuff?”

“Just… just stuff,” Martin says. He can’t tell Tim that Jon said he was too nice to fire, or that he asked to put his tongue up his nose, it’s too… nope. He just can’t. “I think he needs to go home.”

“Yeah, probably,” Tim says. “It’s getting kind of late anyway. Where’s Sash?”

Martin gestures wordlessly to the corner where Sasha and Sunita are still wrapped around each other, oblivious to the rest of the world. Tim makes a pleased sound.

“Nice,” he says. “I guess that means I’m taking this one home. Come on, mate.”

He tugs at Jon’s hand. Jon pulls it away, looking annoyed. “’M comfy here,” he says. “Mart’n’s soft.”

“Yeah, he is,” Tim says. “Lovely and soft. But it’s time to go home now. You can sit in Martin’s lap again next week.”

“Tim!” Martin wails.

Tim flashes him a grin, but relents. “Fine, the two of you can talk about that on Monday. Okay, Jon, are you going to sit up or am I gonna have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here?”

Jon appears to consider the question seriously for a moment, scrunching his face up in a way that makes Martin’s heart stutter in his chest. He wants to see Jon like this more. All the time. Not drunk, although maybe occasionally, but just… soft. Like for once he isn’t worrying about what people are going to think about him or desperately scrambling to meet some impossible standard he’s set for himself. Just being who he is. It’s so nice.

“Martin c’n carry me out,” Jon says at last.

Tim laughs, and Martin feels like his face is going to catch fire. “He keeps saying stuff like that!” he says helplessly.

“Told you he doesn’t hate you,” Tim says. “Come on, bud, I’m not really going to carry you, not in this frock. On your feet.”

He tugs again at Jon’s hand, and this time Jon lets himself be pulled up.

“Don’ see why Martin can’ take me home,” he grumbles, swaying slightly as he stands. “I need more data.”

Tim looks at Martin with an eyebrow quirked, and Martin shrugs, still hot in the face. He has no idea what Jon means by data, but he has a strong suspicion it’s better if he doesn’t find out.

“No clue what you’re on about, Jon, but Martin can’t take you home because he lives about an hour and a half in the wrong direction. Okay?”

“Fine,” Jon says, as though he’s making an enormous concession. “’M still going to say g’bye, though.”

“Go on, then,” Tim says.

Over Jon’s head, he grins at Martin. Martin gives what has to be an incredibly awkward smile in return, and then all the air is knocked out of his lungs as Jon lunges clumsily forward and flings his arms around him.

“Shit!” he squawks.

“Language, Martin,” Jon slurs primly, contriving to sound mildly judgemental even with his voice muffled by Martin’s knitted shoulder. “G’bye.”

Not knowing what to do, face burning, Martin lifts one hand and tentatively pats him on the back. “Bye,” he says. “Er, have a good weekend.”

He and Tim get Jon standing on his own two feet again, and then Tim, too, is leaning in to give Martin a casual, one-armed hug.

“See you Monday!” he says.

Martin waves as they depart, and just sits there for a while, head spinning. None of this is how he expected this evening to go, but it’s been… all right. Nice, even.

Really nice.

*

Jon is glad Tim let him say goodbye to Martin. He couldn’t hug Martin like that on a work day, it would be horribly unprofessional, but he’d wanted to see whether it would make him blush. And it had! He’d gone as red as an apple. No, a tomato. Jon isn’t fond of tomatoes, at least whole. They’re so smooth. But the colour, yes. Just like Martin’s face.

“Okay,” Tim says, as they approach the top of the stairs. “C’mere, I’m not letting you fall down the stairs and break half your bones. And I’ve called us a taxi. There’s no way I’m trying to wrangle you through the tube like this.”

He wraps his arm tightly around Jon, who mumbles, “Fine, fine.” He’d be more affronted, but his feet seem to have got tangled up again and it takes him a moment to sort them out. “’M usually better at walking th’n this,” he says.

“Yeah, well, you haven’t usually drunk as much as this,” Tim points out, starting down the stairs with Jon firmly clasped against his side.

Jon supposes this is true. He did drink quite a lot. It had felt important at the time. “Martin wou’n’t let me put my tongue in his nostril,” he says, as they come to the bottom.

Tim almost misses the last step and wobbles precariously in his high heels. “I’m sorry?” he says. “He wouldn’t… you what?”

“He’s got a nice nose!” Jon says defensively. “I jus’ wanted to know what it’d be like!”

“To… put your tongue up it,” Tim says.

“Yes,” Jon says. Tim starts to laugh, which Jon is slightly offended by. Martin does have a nice nose. It’s not so weird to want to lick it, is it? Is it?

“I really hope you remember this in the morning,” Tim says. He’s still laughing. “With, like, crystal clarity. Every single second.”

“’Course I’ll remember,” Jon says scornfully. “I’m not that drunk.”

Tim swings him round the corner into the entrance hall, and Jon clutches at his arm to stop himself from falling over.

“Sure, boss,” Tim says. “Barely drunk at all. That’s why you haven’t been able to keep your hands off Martin since I came back in.”

“I could keep them off him if I wanted to,” Jon says.

“Oh, I’m sure you could,” Tim says, with a tone in his voice that Jon’s brain is too fuzzy right now to parse. He’s grinning, though, in the way he does when he thinks Jon is being absolutely hilarious.

It isn’t until they’re in the taxi and on the way home that a possible explanation occurs to Jon.

“I don’ have a crush on him,” he says.

Tim’s eyebrows go up. “Martin?” He leans towards Jon avidly. “Are you sure, mate, because honestly…”

“’Course I’m sure!” Jon says. “I wrote a list ‘n’ everything.”

For several long seconds, Tim just blinks at him, mouth slightly open. Then, in a hushed voice, as though overcome with awe, he says, “You wrote a list? Oh my god, can I see it?”

Jon waves his hand. “I di’n’t actually write it down. Just in my head.”

“But you still made a list?” Tim presses. “Like, an actual list, with bullet points?”

“Numbers,” Jon corrects.

“With numbers!” Tim sounds as though all his Christmases have come at once. “And this is a list of reasons you don’t fancy Martin?”

“’Zactly,” Jon says. “So don’ you try an’ tell me I do like him, ‘cause I’ve got proof.”

“Hmm,” Tim says. “I don’t know if I can really believe you, Jon. Maybe you should tell me one or two of the items on this list of yours.”

Jon gives him a suspicious glare, and Tim gazes back at him guilelessly.

“The dog,” he says.

Tim frowns. “What dog?”

“The dog!” Jon repeats. “You know!”

“Oh!” Tim’s face clears suddenly. “From our first… wait, you’re still holding that against him? That was months ago!”

Jon isn’t holding it against Martin, actually. Hasn’t been for ages. When he thinks about the incident now, he feels a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, the sick, acrid panic of the moment softened and half-forgotten over time. He can’t believe he ever suspected Martin of spying for Elias. Martin is terrified of Elias.

Still, he can’t have Tim questioning his List, so he draws himself up, only slightly hindered by the taxi turning a sudden corner, and says “Thassno’… that is not the point, Tim. The point is that it was unpresh… unproshef… un… un…”

“Jon, if you’re too drunk to say it, I don’t think you can use it as an excuse not to like someone.”

“Tha’s not… it’s not that I don’ like him, Tim. Jus’ not like… not… oh.”

Jon puts his hand to his mouth. That is… huh. He likes Martin. He… likes Martin.

This explains so much. Why he feels warmer when Martin’s in the room. Why he’s so interested in the way he blushes. Why he wants to bite his nose. Why he doesn’t find him annoying, or unnerving, or even, really, particularly incompetent any more. Why he wanted to tell him about his favourite word. Why he likes listening to his voice. Why he thinks he’s nice. And pretty. And interesting.

“Jon,” Tim says. “I’m doing my best to be patient here, but I am not a patient man. You oh-ed about a minute and a half ago and you haven’t said a single word since. Please, put me out of my misery?”

Jon finds that he’s smiling. “I like Mart’n,” he says simply.

Tim squints at him. “And this is coming as a surprise?” he hazards.

“Well, yes,” Jon says. “I mean, first I thought he was spying for Elias, and then I thought he was jus’ incomp… bad at his job. But it turns out… it turns out that I just want to be his friend.”

“His friend,” Tim repeats, watching him.

“Yes!” Jon says, gesturing for emphasis and accidentally hitting his knuckles hard against the taxi window. Ow. “He’s nice, isn’he? He’s… he’s… y’know, he’s Martin.”

Tim nods solemnly. “Very true.”

Jon looks at him, suddenly feeling worried. “D’you think he’d even wan’… wan’ t’ be my friend?”

“You know,” Tim says, “I really think he would.”

“I haven’ been very…” Jon starts, but at that moment the taxi driver, whom Jon has completely forgotten about, announces their arrival, and the topic is forgotten as Tim extracts Jon from the taxi and holds him firmly by the arms while Jon, yet again, attempts to get his feet under control.

“You don’ have to come all the way up,” Jon tells him, once he’s more or less supporting himself and Tim is walking him towards home.

“No offence, mate,” Tim says. “But I absolutely don’t trust you to get up the stairs and into your flat in one piece under your own steam right now. Come on.”

In the end, Jon is grateful for his assistance on the stairs, not to mention him taking Jon’s keys out of his hand after Jon’s fifth failed attempt to unlock his own door and doing it himself. Tim is such a good friend. He’s lucky to have him.

“I am, aren’t I?” Tim says when Jon informs him of this fact. He grins. “You just remember that next time you want to complain about me not taking work seriously enough.”

Jon makes a guilty face. He snaps a lot more than he’d like these days. He just gets so stressed. Elias always seems to expect more than Jon is able to give, no matter how late he works or how many lunch breaks he skips, and he’s never angry about it, he’s just disappointed and seems to lose a little more faith in Jon each time they meet, and that’s so much worse than anger.

“’M sorry,” he says, leaning against Tim as he helps him off with his coat. “I don’ mean to be like that.”

Tim looks down at him and softens his voice. “Hey, no, I was joking. You’re not that bad.” He gets the coat off Jon and hangs it up. “Come on, you should drink some water and then we’ll get you to bed.”

“I like you, too,” Jon says earnestly. Telling Tim this suddenly feels very important. “’N’ Sasha. I like you a lot.”

Tim sits him down on the sofa and hands him a glass of water. “I know, Jon. We both know, okay? We like you too.” He puts his arm around Jon and drops a kiss on the top of his head, and Jon leans against him, sipping at his water. It’s a relief that Tim knows, and Sasha, too. Jon’s not always very good at telling people he likes them, and he’s maybe even worse at showing it. He knows this; people have told him often enough. But Tim and Sasha understand.

Maybe Martin will, too, he thinks as he obediently drinks all the water Tim gives him, and then, once Tim has hugged him again and bidden him farewell, fumbles his way out of most of his clothes. Maybe Martin will understand that, despite everything, Jon likes him. Maybe he’ll want to be friends. Maybe…

Jon crawls under his duvet and falls asleep almost immediately, mind still filled with happy images of his and Martin’s future friendship.