Work Text:
Objectively, document storage shouldn’t be a comforting place. The walls are all grey scuff marks on ugly off-white chipped paint. The LED lights whine in his ears and make his eyes water. The floor smells of old coffee spills and cheap citrus-scented cleaning solution. One particular corner still harbors the mildly alarming smell of stale dog urine. When a younger Martin Blackwood thought about academic work, he envisioned dark oak shelves lined with thick volumes of all colors and shapes and sizes, old-fashioned furniture, warm lights – Pinterest bait. This is not that. This is a windowless box of warped pressboard and scarred linoleum. This is flickering overheads and nowhere to plug in the lamp you brought from home to save your poor suffering eyes. This is ugly yellow manila envelopes crammed into file cabinets that refuse to open properly on days ending in -y.
And yet – he has a little peace here, right now, or something like it. The light is never entirely gone. There are rubber guards along the bottom of the doors, fire extinguishers in every room, and two exits – three, technically, if you count the door that has to be unlocked with a screwdriver. The security cameras in the corners of each ceiling are unnerving, of course – especially now that he’s wandering around in his pajamas most nights – but at least they mean someone knows whether he’s alive.
And there’s Jon, of course. Always, there’s Jon.
It’s seven o’clock in the evening when Martin works up the nerve to ask if Jon has eaten any supper. He hasn’t, and seems surprised at the time. They scrounge for leftovers together and come up with something resembling a meal.
It’s eight thirty when Martin excuses himself from the breakroom table, hoping that his overexaggerated yawns will remind Jon of the lateness of the hour.
It’s nine thirty when he gives up on privacy, changes into his pajamas in a bathroom stall, and settles down on the cot to try to write a few lines of a poem. The looping of his pen over the cursive letters fills his mind with writhing worms. He shudders, tears out the page, and starts again in messy, blocky print.
It’s eleven when he hears a familiar cough from down the hall and comes to the conclusion that Jon isn’t going home.
Tucking his notebook securely under the thin mattress of the cot, Martin wanders down the hall to make tea. As he passes Jon’s desk, he makes an attempt at feigning surprise. “Oh! Heh, sorry, I didn’t realize you were still here.”
Jon startles and gives him a strangely guilty look. “No, I’m sorry, I – I lost track of time.” He looks around at his desk as if noticing it for the first time. There’s a half-full mug of cold tea beside him, which he lifts, grimacing as his hand touches the cold ceramic, and places neatly back on its ring-shaped stain. There’s a statement in front of him, turned to the last page, though he must have finished reading it hours ago, given how long it’s been quiet in here. Another stack of statements, presumably unread, sits at the back of his desk. Jon sits curled like a shrimp on the hard desk chair, one foot propped up on the seat, his leg folded up by his shoulder. He winces at the pop of his knee as he stretches it out. “I – I should go. I’m sure you’d prefer some privacy.”
“Oh, no, don’t worry about me, I don’t mind the company. It’s just – well, it’s been quite a long day for all of us, and I thought I heard you come in rather early this morning, too.”
Jon opens his mouth as if to reply, then seems to change his mind. His eyes wander about the chaos of his desk, lighting first on his bag, still open and resting on the floor against a corner of the desk, then on his discarded shoes, then on the stack of statements at his elbow.
Martin breaks the silence for him. “Well, I was just about to make a cup of chamomile tea. Should I make two mugs?”
Jon’s eyes make their way back over to him, not quite meeting his gaze but settling somewhere just over his shoulder. “That – that might be nice. Only if it’s not too much trouble, of course.”
“No trouble at all.”
He’s halfway to the kitchen when he hears Jon’s hesitant “thank you, Martin.”
--
Jon ends up deciding to “just get through one more statement” before calling it a night, and Martin brushes his teeth and daubs on acne medication to the soothing rumble of him speaking in the next room. His voice comes to life in the strangest way when he reads a statement, Martin thinks. It’s as if all the thready weariness of the past several weeks drops away as he immerses himself in the text. It’s as unnerving as it is addictive, listening to him like this.
By the time he finishes reading, Martin is back in the nest of blankets he’s made on the cot, watching a YouTube video on the lowest volume setting with subtitles on so as to still hear the murmur of Jon recording in the background. It’s nearly midnight when he finishes, and Martin’s chest aches a little at the ragged sigh he hears mark the statement’s end. There’s the grating squeal of a chair being backed up, and the clunk of something heavy being laid ungently on a hard surface. Martin hears the thump of the desk’s weight shifting between its uneven legs. He pauses his video and waits to hear Jon’s footsteps on the stairs, headed home.
Three minutes later, he hears instead a soft knock on the door. Jon’s there in the little rectangular window, eyes cast down, worrying at his lower lip.
“Hey, Jon,” Martin calls softly. “You all right?”
Jon opens the door just a few inches, leaning into the crack but keeping his eyes mostly on the floor. “Yes, yes. It’s just – I was wondering – do you need anything before I go?”
He’s not sure he’ll ever get used to this new Jon. “No, I think I’ll be good here. Thank you,” he says, trying to sound grateful and not baffled.
“Right, of course,” Jon says. His eyes flick up to Martin’s for just a moment, tired and more than a little red. “I’ll just be a moment, then, and I’ll get out of your hair. I’m just – that statement was – ” Not for the first time tonight, he appears to abort his next words at the last moment. “I’m sorry to keep you awake so late,” he says instead. “I’ll try to be quiet packing up.”
“Please don’t worry about me,” Martin says, clicking his phone off and setting it facedown on the pillow. “You’re not bothering me. I can sleep through anything if I’m tired enough. I just hate seeing – I hate it when people are exhausted all around me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” He laughs nervously. “Sorry, I don’t mean to fuss, it’s just an old habit.”
Jon smiles weakly at him – or, rather, at the floor near his socked feet – and backs away into the semi-dark of the hallway.
It’s twelve fifteen when he appears again. He’s wearing a faded graphic hoodie over his button-down. He clears his throat nervously before knocking on the door. “I saw your light was still on,” he says. “I was just washing up my mug and – do you want me to take yours?”
“Oh, I was going to get to that when I got up to get my charger in just a few minutes.”
“I can do it, it’s no trouble,” Jon mumbles, reaching out for the mug.
Martin hands it to him wordlessly, and he slinks away again, closing the door silently.
It’s twelve twenty-five when he hears the kettle going again.
Martin considers trying to sleep for a full minute before plodding out into the hallway himself. “Jon?”
There’s a clatter of something being dropped, and a soft curse. “Yes, sorry, just – it’s a bit cold tonight, and I have a mug here that needs to be brought home, and I was just going to – I wasn’t sure if you’d still be awake, so I put some in a thermos for you,” he says, indicating the battered metal container. The string of a teabag is caught in the threads of the lid, and the little bottle of honey is stood next to it. “Sometimes I make myself a cup to drink on the walk home if I miss the last train,” he mumbles.
Martin rubs his eyes blearily and looks him over, really looks. The hood of his sweatshirt is caught on his ponytail holder. It looks as if the strings have recently been pulled tight. His bag is closed now, and sitting on the corner of his desk, but his laptop is out, paused in the middle of an amateur recording of a stage play, with a battered pair of earphones still plugged in. A manila envelope has been laid over the top of the statement Jon read earlier as if to hide it. There’s an old tartan blanket draped over the back of his chair, crumpled into a vague outline of Jon’s narrow shoulders. There’s a tissue in the wastebasket Martin knows was just emptied this evening.
Jon clutches a kitschy cat-shaped mug to his chest, running a thumb back and forth over a chip in the glaze. He glances up at Martin’s face and seems to shrink a bit from whatever he sees there. He becomes very interested in a divot in the floor. His hands tremble, then tense to still themselves.
It's only human, Martin supposes, to not want to be alone sometimes.
“Well, if it’s too cold to walk back, I’m sure we can work something out. Tim brought about a hundred extra blankets last week. I was just about to put on something to watch. Helps me sleep. Like I said – I generally like having company.” Martin hesitates – maybe that’s too forward. “If it’s between that and walking two miles in the cold, you know.”
Jon searches his face, brow furrowing, before seeming to arrive at a decision. His shoulders sag. “All right,” he murmurs.
The chamomile in the thermos is over-steeped and has a bit of a metallic aftertaste, and Jon keeps sneaking unreadable glances at him as he drinks it. Martin smiles at him, warm and genuine, and he visibly relaxes.
It’s twelve forty-five when Jon falls asleep on Martin’s shoulder.
Martin waits until Jon starts snoring before he delicately extracts himself, holding his breath as he lowers his sleeping body to the blankets on the floor, supporting his head with one hand and his bony shoulder with the other. As he moves to stand, grimacing – his left hip has gone completely numb at some point, how exciting, he really shouldn’t sit on the floor for that long – he realizes with a start that Jon’s got the hem of Martin’s blanket caught between his fingers. Martin pulls experimentally at it. Jon’s forehead wrinkles. Martin lets go.
He tucks that blanket around him, too, and finds another.
A little after one o’clock, Martin settles down into the cot – mugs washed and honey put away – this time actually meaning to sleep. Beside him on the floor Jon snores like a freight train. Feeling a little bit brave and a little bit wistful, Martin presses his fingers silently to his own lips before reaching over and smoothing the blanket tenderly against Jon’s shoulder blade.
He feels safe in thinking that Jon won’t know that part.
But also, he considers – for the first time – that maybe Jon wouldn’t mind quite as much as he'd thought.
He falls asleep with the taste of chamomile and tin on his tongue.