Chapter Text
-1-
It took Martin a solid twenty-three minutes from the moment he got out of bed to realize that the noise of wet spaghetti being stirred was gone.
The realization hit him like a sack of bricks out of absolutely nowhere. He’d been looking into his bathroom mirror, getting ready for the day after yet another night of little to no sleep; trying to pretend he couldn’t see the way his messy, light brown curls were limp and sticky with nervous sweat, nor the way his hazel eyes, usually bright and vivid, had a foggy sheen of desperate exhaustion to them. And then he realized the lack of noise, and froze, staring at his own reflection with a shocked expression.
He might have gotten so used to it, to that constant, goose-bump inducing background noise of squirming wetness interjected by the occasional bouts of long, steady knocking, that he’d just begun to ignore it, maybe.
He took a deep, centering breath that came out a little wheezy, like a weak whine.
He wanted it to be a good change. He really, really wanted it to.
He knew better than to expect it, though.
So he finished washing up and putting on the same shirt and sweatpants he wore yesterday. It seemed like an exercise in futility, actually changing in and out of his pajamas every night, but he just wanted to grasp at any sense of normalcy he could-- So he finished washing up and putting back on yesterday’s clothes. He launched the balled-up pajamas on the mess of wrinkly, sweat-damp sheets and blankets that he’d grasped at all night as he slid in and out of a fitful, nervous sleep.
He grabbed the -disgusting- dictionary covered in darkened, dried splotches of squashed worms in one hand, trying his best not to put his fingers anywhere near said splotches, and then carefully, carefully, he pinched one of the socks he’d stuffed in the crack under the door with the other, pulled slowly, like a child too scared to rip a band-aid away in one single fell swoop.
That way only one tiny little amount of space was freed, just enough to test what needed testing, and then he waited as tense as a coil, holding the dictionary up, ready to bring it down like a war hammer if necessary.
But the seconds passed, and no silver, squirming worm tried to breach the space of Martin’s flat. Everything was still dead silent; no wet spaghetti stir, no knocking, no faint voices trying to call his attention.
Martin waited, and waited, and waited, until his arms started to burn with the effort required to keep the heavy tome raised above his head, and then he slowly lowered them.
His heart was drumming somewhere in his throat as, with just as slow and careful movements as he’d used up to that point, he decided to pull the door open; just a crack, just enough to peek outside without dislodging too much of the desperate wall of socks and towels and shirts he’d used as his only protection for days.
The hallway outside of his flat wasn’t free of worms, and the sight of those small, silver squishy things all curled up on the floor made him want to scream and throw up and slam the door close-- But he didn’t, because they weren't moving.
There was also what looked like a whole bucket of blood having been dumped carelessly both on the floor and the once only slightly scuffed, inoffensively white walls of the hallway, but aside from that… Nothing.
No woman who’s more hole than person. No alive, squirming worms trying to assault him.
Martin could feel the bead of cold sweat running along his cheek, on the soft curve of his jaw, having escaped from under his damp curls. He opened the door a bit more, just enough to peek out and catch a glimpse of the rest of the hallway.
Empty.
With another tiny wheezing noise he took a step back, letting the heavy dictionary drop like a dead weight, ignoring the heavy thump of it hitting the floor.
Then he frantically put on the closest pair of shoes without even noticing they weren’t matching, grabbed his keys and wallet with sweat-damp hands, and ran out of there faster than he’s ever run in his entire life.
**
“Well,” Martin finished under Sasha’s and Tim’s concerned gazes. “That’s… That’s about it, really.”
As he spoke his voice managed to warm-up, from the starting gravel of being utterly unused for days to his usual gentler tone, tinged with anxiety and a sort of (always, always) self-deprecating, desperate humor.
“...Shit,” it’s all Tim replied with, sitting very slowly, alarmed eyes not leaving Martin’s face for a moment as he did so. The old office chair creaked under his weight. “Shit. Martin, fuck, I’m so sorry, we should’ve-- We should’ve known something was wrong--”
“It’s-- It’s ok,” Martin said after a long beat of silence. “I mean. It’s not, but. You know. You got the texts, they were definitely from my phone, and you had no reason to believe anything was amiss, right? So, huh, at least now we know that the supernatural knows how to… How to text?”
He laughed nervously, but the smile immediately slid off of his face as the attempt at humor fell utterly flat. He wished he’d got at least a pity laugh-- Not because of his ego nor anything, he knew the joke was weak at best and utterly out of place at worst, but he just--
He wished that Sasha and Tim would stop looking at him like that. With those horrified, shocked expressions. They just made everything feel orders of magnitude more real.
Which was-- Well, to be entirely honest, it was a ridiculous thought, Martin knew. It had been real. He lived it. For days.
“Ok,” Sasha finally broke the silence, slowly and carefully, and her expression slowly shifted away from the shocked/horrified combo into something more measured and serious. “Ok. Martin, I’m glad you are alright, I’m-- Tim is right, we should’ve known something was amiss. I’m seeing a glaring lack of preparation on our part, in light of this.”
“Well, to be fair we never had to deal with something like this, before,” Tim interjected with a just as measured tone. “Like, sure, we had to deal with interviewing some whackos, and there was that one time I got a toaster thrown at me through the window-- But human-eating worm monsters who follow you to your house and then use your phone to send messages are definitely. New.”
Martin chuckled nervously, and immediately didn't like the somewhat hysterical quality of his own voice.
Sasha mustn’t as well, because she glanced at him with a frown immediately betraying her deep concern.
“We’ll-- We’ll find some safety measures to adopt in the future,” she said. “We’ll think of something. For now I just want to make sure Martin is ok-- Let’s go to a hospital.”
“I am-- there’s no need--” he mechanically replied, or tried to; the little crack in his voice that forewarned the arrival of a solid bout of hysterical sobbing shut him up pretty quickly.
“Just… Humor me,” Sasha patiently replied, moving around the desk with the general air of somebody trying to approach a spooked fawn. Her touch on Martin’s shoulder was feather-light.
He sighed deeply, but let himself be guided out of the Archives in his stained shirt and mismatching shoes, feeling deeply bone-tired.
**
Martin wasn’t the biggest fan of hospitals (who was???), but he still managed to sleep on the uncomfortable bed like a rock.
It hadn’t been hard, truly. The constant background noises of beeping machinery and distant murmurs of nurses and doctors coming and going outside the room had been like a lullaby, after days of squirming worms and maddeningly steady knocking.
He’d been thoroughly checked (and he meant thoroughly), but aside from the general tiredness caused by the little amount of sleep he’d managed to get in the past few days, he’d been in perfect health. If he had to end up trapped like a cornered rat by a worm-monster-lady it was a good thing it’d happened in his flat, where he had water to drink and things to eat… Even though he’d never been able to look at canned peaches the same way ever again.
That was a shame. There was a reason he’d had so many of them. He used to love canned peaches.
Well, he could probably make a donation to the food bank; that sounded less wasteful than throwing them away.
Sasha had still insisted for him to stay the night under observation, just to make sure. Martin couldn’t tell if her insistence was born out of worry for his sanity or fear he might suddenly explode in a shower of blood and worms-- Likely both.
He hadn’t had any problem capitulating, anyways. The mere idea of going back to his flat made him feel dizzy and lightheaded, and it wasn’t like he was going to be able to, anyway; the ECDC and police were probably going to take some time to clean up the whole mess that was left in the wake of Jane Prentiss.
He’d felt a little silly, lying down on the hospital bed like an infirm even though he was arguably in perfectly fine health, Sasha and Tim sitting by his side and discussing the situation, keeping him company until a tired looking nurse tersely told them visit hours were over-- But once they’d left he’d just. Crashed.
He still woke with a startle, his brain on high-alert for wet squirming and knocks, but managed to relax when all he heard was that same vague beeping and distant noises.
Alright. He was still alive, and managed to sleep a whole, interrupted night. That was nice.
Martin groaned as he dragged himself in a sitting position. His whole body felt stiff and sore, to be honest it was criminal how uncomfortable hospital beds were, considering how much of his paycheck was sucked in an endless black hole of taxes.
He rubbed at his eyes, chasing away the stickiness of the long hours of oblivion, squinting at the room. It was hard to determine what time it was, the light coming from outside the shaded windows an unsurprising gray of a rainy London day.
It must’ve been fairly late in the morning at the very least, though, going by the fact that on the scuffed, ivory-white nightstand by the bed there was a change of clothes and his work laptop, along with a violently bright orange post-it note sticking on it. He peeled it away, squinting at the familiar handwriting.
‘You’ve been granted PTO, in case you feel like you want to stay in the hospital a bit longer ’, the post-it declared in Sasha’s curvy but neat handwriting. ‘We’re getting you a new phone, but in the meantime you can use the laptop to shoot us a message when you wake up. The hospital password is 1234password. Lovely to know that the NHS has their security locked down with a wet napkin.’
Despite everything, Martin couldn’t help but snort an amused laugh. He could just hear Sasha’s unamused tone right in his ears, moaning about incompetence and whatnot.
It was nice. Being alive was so nice.
The idea of staying in the hospital didn’t sound appealing, but also a nurse had come by and kindly inquired if he needed something a couple of minutes after he’d managed to wash-up best as he could in the tiny sink present in the room and changed into fresher clothes which smelt pleasantly of the cheapest laundry detergent the market had to offer.
He tried to tell her he was just fine and would likely leave right away, but then his stomach rumbled loudly. She smiled and simply told him to sit tight, she’d be right back; so there he was, sitting in the chair Tim had used the prior day and opening the laptop on his knees.
He connected to the hospital wi-fi no problem, another smile pulling at his mouth as the laughable password granted him access right away.
The first thing he did was open his emails, not even waiting for the unread ones to load in before composing a brief message to send both to Sasha’s and Tim’s addresses.
‘Just woke up. I’ll eat something and come to the office,’ he initially wrote, finger hesitating on the touch-pad for a moment. ‘Feeling well rested and worm-free. Thanks for the clothes.’ He added, and finally hit send.
Then he took a deep breath, and went to face the barrage of emails that had gone ignored in his days of imprisonment.
Most of the time he tried to read all of them, no matter how many inane reminders the Magnus Institute HR department felt the need to send on a daily basis, if only just to make sure that Elias wouldn’t surprise him again with that shark smile of his and a question like “So, Martin, have you submitted your H-345 form yet?”, which Martin was, to that day, still not entirely sure hadn’t been made up on the spot just to make him sweat a bit.
He seemed to enjoy the occasional spot of making his employees sweat, Elias.
But, at least this one time, Martin felt justified in trashing most of them after only quickly checking the subject line. For goodness’ sake, he’d been almost eaten alive by worms! If Elias had any problems with that, he really could just keep it to himself.
Once he’d cleaned up the least important messages he was left with only a handful of them. There were a couple from Tim’s that he must’ve sent the first day Martin had been missing from work, mostly pertaining to a follow-up they’d been putting both their heads on. One from Sasha sending both him and Tim a funny meme the day after. Another one from Sasha three days in, telling him that it was fine to let her know he wasn’t feeling well through text, of course, but to keep in mind that he might need a doctor’s note if he went over five days of absence.
More stuff about cases… Oh, paycheck! Right, payday had come and gone as he cried in tins of canned peaches, he supposed, and--
“Oh,” Martin exhaled gently, eyes widening slightly in surprise as he took in the mail address and the subject.
‘Are you alright?’
A knot formed in his throat. The kind nurse chose right that moment to come back with a gray plastic tray containing the saddest looking breakfast Martin had ever seen in his entire life.
“There you go, I managed to win the fierce battle with the guys in the kitchen downstairs,” she said with a smile of imperfect but white teeth. She stopped cold in front of him. “...Is something the matter?” she tacked on with a note of concern that felt both professional and genuinely human.
Martin blinked away the wetness in his eyes, forcing out a smile. “I’m fine, just--- A little stressed, is all. Ah, thank you, that was very kind of you--”
She put the tray down on the nightstand, smiling back with a little fold between her eyebrows.
“You just call if you need anything, yeah? You just need to press this button here.”
“I will. Thank you.”
Well, Martin thought as she left the room, the beds are awfully uncomfortable but at least the workers are nice. I hope they are paid enough. They are probably not paid enough.
With a little sigh, Martin ignored the breakfast a moment longer. There was no way he was going to delay his reply to that email a second longer, no matter how hungry he was.
The email was brief, just as he’d expected. Straight to the point.
Martin,
Is something the matter? Your latest texts have been… Bizarre, and you refuse to pick up my calls, not to mention emails going ignored as well.
Have I done something that offended you? Please do not refrain from answering this question with sincerity on my behalf. If I’ve done something wrong I’d much rather know, so I can remedy it.
You’re not obligated to, of course, but I would nonetheless appreciate an answer. At least let me know you are well, please. I admit I am rather concerned, considering what you said the last time we spoke.
Kind regards,
Jon
The knot in Martin’s throat was back again, just as the sting in his nose and eyes was. Goddamnit.
He was still smiling, despite it.
Jon,
I’m fine. You haven’t done anything wrong, don’t you worry. A lot has happened and I will tell you in due time, but I assure you I am fine, so you don’t need to be concerned.
I’m sorry about the shortness of this message, but I think you’d appreciate a quick answer more than an exhaustive one, at the moment.
I’ll hopefully be able to call you soon and explain. Hope you’re also well.
P.S: How did you find my work e-mail address???
Martin Blackwood
Archival Assistant
The Magnus Institute - London
The laptop clicked gently on the nightstand once Martin put it down, noise covered by a deep, long sigh.
It was… It was a good thing Jon went digging for his work e-mail address, he imagined. Granted, it was just a matter of time before Martin would gain access to his private one, but considering his accidental disappearing act Jon would probably appreciate being informed of his well-being as soon as possible.
Unsurprisingly he heard the whoosh of new incoming messages as he ate his unappetizing looking hospital breakfast. He was so hungry he barely registered the blandness of it, and mostly his tongue seemed to be having a party at the fact he wasn’t forcing it to once more meet the taste of canned peaches.
Alright. He was more-or-less clean, clothed and fed. It was time to move on.
He rapidly confirmed his intentions to get to the office to Sasha’s reply that he could take all the time he needed, really. Re-read Jon’s brief reply three times.
Martin,
I’m glad that you are well. I was growing quite worried and indeed appreciate receiving quick news; I count on an explanation at a later moment.
I hope to hear from you soon but, of course, take all the time you need.
Still call me at your earliest convenience, though.
Your work e-mail address is available on the website of the Magnus Institute for inquiries, surely you must know that.
Kind regards,
Jon
He could just imagine the slightly haughty tone Jon would’ve used when informing Martin of that last fact. Just doing that managed to both tighten the knot in his throat, and then relax it all at once.
Being alive was so, so nice.
**
When he strolled into the archives Martin pointedly kept his eyes on the prize, knowing Sasha and Tim would surely look at him with worry for his well-being and disapproval for his decision to come right back to work instead of taking some time to relax.
The prize being his desk. Not the best prize, to be honest, but Martin would take it.
“Hello,” he said with finality once sat, laptop put in front of himself. When he darted a glance at Sasha she rapidly looked away with fake focus on the screen of her own computer.
“Welcome back,” she said with a carefully light tone. “I hope you didn’t feel obligated to come to work right away.”
“I didn’t.”
“Because you know there is no shame in needing some time, right?” Tim interjected with that tone of his that screamed ‘I’m trying to be helpful!’ “After what happened--”
“I know, and I’m fine, I wanted to come here,” Martin interrupted him, not curt, but firm. But, generally speaking, he was no good at being firm, Martin, so he immediately followed with “L-look, I had nothing to do at the hospital and it’s not like I could go back home, right? To be honest one of the worst things about that whole. Situation. Was just how boring it was. I couldn’t stand the idea of twiddling my thumbs on a hospital bed after days of-- I’d much rather be here and do something, alright?”
The words had come out in an increasingly anxious cascade, and Martin forced his mouth shut.
The expression on Tim’s and Sasha’s faces were carefully schooled in a sort of understanding calmness. There was a long beat of silence, and then Sasha nodded wordlessly as Tim said “Ok, yeah, I guess I can understand that.”
“Right,” Martin said, trying to recover a bit of that stern finality he’d managed to adopt for all of fifteen seconds. “So, situation?”
“Tim and I went to take a look this morning, before the ECDC and police started cleaning up,” Sasha started in that familiar, reassuring logical tone of hers, which went to great lengths to make Martin feel more normal and less like a cracked glass being carefully handled. “Found the scene just as you described it, which makes me believe Prentiss didn’t try to come back.”
“Was there any sign of where she could’ve gone?”
“Not a one, as far as we could tell,” Tim said, sounding tired. “I mean, there was all that blood as you said, but also there were blood tracks in the hallway that made me think she might’ve been dragged away… They didn’t go very far, though, just up to that sharp corner before the stairwell, so it’s hard to say.”
Martin blinked owlishly. He hadn’t noticed such tracks but, to be fair, he’d also been running for his life with his brain stuck in a loop of ShitShitShitShit, so he couldn’t blame himself too much for not seeing them.
“Right,” he forced himself to say in an even tone. “So, what do you reckon?”
“You said you didn’t hear anything unusual, right?”
“No. Just woke up to silence-- It took me a while to notice, but during that time I didn’t hear anything that could indicate some kind of scuffle happening in the hallway, or anything of the sort. I’m sure I would’ve heard something like that very clearly, with how quiet it was.”
“So, assuming Prentiss was attacked by something, it must've happened while you were asleep.”
“Are we assuming that? Isn’t it possible that she attacked something and then… Left?”
“We took that idea into consideration, but if that was the case I think we would’ve found more traces, right? All there was was just… Blood and worms.”
A long pause of silence fell on the three of them as they ruminated over that information.
“Unless, well,” Martin said, slowly. “Remember Timothy Hodge’s statement? That woman who was likely attacked by Prentiss-- It took a while for the worms to… Erm…”
“Do their thing, yes,” Tim supplied with an unhappy expression as Martin trailed off, clearly uncomfortable. “I remember.”
“Right. So. Perhaps somebody found her, she… Infected them, and maybe that was enough to satisfy her, so she left?”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said with a frown. “I mean, of course it’s possible, it’s just… All that blood, and the way it was all around, I just… It just felt like there must’ve been some sort of fight, or something, although I have no idea who would be crazy enough to go and attack Prentiss.”
“Well, hopefully we’ll get some clarification once the ECDC is done analyzing those samples,” Tim interjected. “We might be able to know if all the blood belonged to the same individual. And also we’ve sent requests for cctv footage from any camera even slightly pointed at your apartment complex, so if we’re lucky we might spot anybody looking out of place or suspicious--”
“Or covered in blood.”
“Or covered in blood, yes,” Tim replied with a crooked grin to Sasha’s add-on.
Martin forced his shoulders to relax. They’d gone increasingly tenser as they discussed, and his neck was sore enough as is.
“Alright,” he tiredly said. “I guess there is not much to do about this case until we get some more info, is there?”
“Probably not,” Sasha agreed.
“I know you’ve both probably been busy, but is there any chance of you having picked up that phone for me?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Tim said, rummaging in his coat. “We considered it unwise to leave you without one any longer. Sasha is already putting the finishing touches to our newest, shiny security measures we are going to be implementing for our own safety, because this is our life now, apparently.”
Martin couldn’t help but laugh at his tone as he accepted the phone. It wasn’t one of the latest models, but it was definitely quite a lot more cutting edge than his old, Prentiss-stolen one was.
“We already put in our contacts, work contacts, whatever,” Tim explained as Martin unlocked the screen on a default background.
That felt… Strange. He’d had the same shot he’d snapped of London Bridge the very first day he arrived in the city as a background for… Ages.
Oh. Those were years worth of pictures in his old phone that he’d just lost. That was… That was a shame. He would need to go rummaging through mostly unused social media profiles, perhaps he could recover some of them that way--
“Martin?”
“Oh, sorry,” he mechanically replied, blinking himself back to reality. “Sorry, I got a little lost in my head. Huh. Thanks-- Thanks. For the phone.”
Sasha hummed casually, immediately pointing a keen gaze that felt all but casual on him.
She had very piercing eyes.
“I might step out and make a call, if you don’t mind,” Martin said, willing his voice to be steady.
“Sure thing,” Tim said, with a grin that did little to hide his own nervous concern. “We’ve also got you an endless minutes and data plan, so go wild. It was nice, having an excuse to use company funds to give you a little gift.”
Martin huffed a chuckle, and slipped outside the archives.
**
In that day and age nobody remembered phone numbers, so losing a phone was usually a semi-catastrophic event… Well, thankfully, it seemed Martin would skip at least this one annoyance, even though the reason for it was quite sad, truth to be told.
There were pretty much all but two numbers Martin hadn’t already got back courtesy of Tim and Sasha. After all, the various numbers of his workplace and colleagues were pretty much the only ones that he’d ever registered on his old phone, the only exceptions, well…
He couldn’t possibly forget either of them. One was the number of mum’s care home, and he’d made damn sure to memorize that one just in case. The other… The other number he got the one day he forgot his phone at home, like an idiot, and he spent the commute to work staring at that slip of paper and repeating it under his breath over and over and over until it had all but been seared in his prefrontal cortex.
Knowing Martin’s luck he hadn’t excluded the possibility of a sudden gust of wind ripping the paper away from his unsure fingers, or a snitty commuter bumping into him, or a pigeon deciding that a small strip of paper seemed appetizing, or… Or… Well, if he managed to lose that number Martin would’ve died out of sheer mortification before being able to ask for it again, so… Memorizing it was the way to go.
Martin was a pathetic, desperate gay disaster, who would’ve been able to accidentally leave his own head at home hadn’t it been attached to his neck, a fact that usually made him consider the idea of running away and disappearing into a patch of woods never to be seen again.
But this one time, this one time, the sheer gratefulness for his own bumbling incompetence made him want to weep in relief, as he registered the number into his phone once more, and then tapped the call icon.
“Who is this? ” The stern, no-nonsense voice Martin had grown so utterly fond of immediately barked in his ear after all but two rings, something painful and grateful lurching in Martin’s chest at the sound of it.
It was certainly not helping the whole ‘wanting to weep in relief ’ situation, but he wasn’t going to complain about it, not at all.
“Hi. It’s, huh-- It’s me,” he managed to let out with a little wet chuckle. “M-Martin, I mean.”
“Oh,” Jon’s voice immediately softened. Granted, ‘Jon’ and ‘softness’ tended to be two concepts that usually sat on very far ends of a spectrum, but Martin had known him… For a time, now, and he was, if nothing else, quite observant. The change in Jon’s tone was minute, but it was there, nonetheless. “Martin. I wasn’t expecting you to call so soon-- Are you using another phone? ”
“Ah, yeah. The other one is, is gone? Lost, I mean. Tim and Sasha got me a new one while I was in the hospital, really nice of them, they were so quick about it--”
“In the hospital? ”
Again, minute change, but there was an undeniable tenseness in Jon’s voice as he cut in with that question through Martin’s rambling, like a well sharpened knife.
“Don’t worry! It was just, you know, a check-up. Making sure I was ok. Which I was! And I told them, but they insisted, so--”
“...Alright, ” back to the gentler, quieter tone. Placated. “I’m sorry about your old phone. What happened, exactly? ”
Martin told him.
Jon stayed quiet for a long time, once Martin had updated him up to that point, so much so that Martin took a second to take the phone away from his ear and glance at the screen, just to make sure the call hadn’t dropped during his stammered monologue.
“...Martin. ”
“Look, I know!” Martin snapped, a little plaintive, before Jon could prime himself up for a scolding. He was very, very good at those. “I know. You told me it was a bad idea to go back there at night, alone, but-- This is just what we do here, ok? It’s our job, for how unconventional it might be--”
“Breaking and entering is your job? ” Jon asked, and the bare hint of amusement in his voice felt like a pleasant summer breeze. “I could’ve sworn you said something about archiving. ”
“Jon,” Martin muttered, his annoyance more for show than anything else. It still landed as intended, making Jon chuckle warmly in his ear.
The goosebumps rising on the back of his neck had nothing to do with the sensation of being watched that permeated the Institute, and everything to do with that warm rumble like the purr of a panther right in his ear.
He was such a useless gay, god .
“Very well, I shall keep my words to myself, this time around,” Jon conceded with the tone of a king granting an indulgence upon one of his subjects. “I count on your colleagues reminding you of safety procedures… Assuming you even have those, in that archive of yours.”
“Erm,” Martin smartly replied, and he could feel the squint of those breath-taking dark emerald eyes even through the receiver. Yeah, Jon was never ever going to know there weren’t such things as safety procedures in the Magnus Institute. Well, for all Martin knew there could be, it was just that he never had the time to read all of the hefty manual he’d been pointed in the general direction of on his first day on the job.
(Martin was fairly sure nobody had ever read that thing in its entirety. It probably hasn’t been upgraded since, like, the sixties.)
Knowing Elias, though, more likely than not any instructions present in the manual in case of potential disasters would only instruct the employees on what to do to ensure as little damage as possible was done to the library, or artifact storage, or the archives, even if it meant that they’d all succumb in various manners of horrible, gruesome and painful deaths.
(Seriously, the archives especially were egregious. There was no way there weren’t at least a dozen safety violations posed by the messy stacks Gertrude Robinson had left behind for Sasha to deal with. The entire place was a blazing fire hazard begging to happen.)
“Sure! They will. They totally will once, you know, they are sure I won’t just go to pieces like a cracked glass, and all that,” Martin rushed to add as the silence extended and the weight of Jon’s glare through the phone (??? how. How did he manage to do that.) could crush him. “I’m totally bracing for the full impact of the earful I’m going to get from Sasha and Tim. Promise.”
“Right,” Jon replied, sounding like someone who just replied ‘of course, sweetie’ to a child insisting they were totally ready for adult life and to stop calling them a kid. “All in due time, I’d imagine. You should take the time to recover after such an experience, which… Well, not to meddle in your business, but I can’t help but inquire… Where are you planning to live for the short-term future, exactly? ”
“...Huh,” Martin said, blinking owlishly at the inoffensive gray walls of the staircase leading down to the archives.
**
From a hospital bed to a cot. Fantastic.
Martin glanced at the brief text exchange between himself and Jon. He swore he could taste the disapproval in Jon’s ‘I see.’ that had arrived briefly after Martin informed him of Sasha’s generous offer.
It made him smile. It wasn’t all that bad, really-- Both she and Tim had readily offered him their couches first, which had been quite kind of them, but Martin didn’t feel comfortable at the idea of staying with them, not until he’d be entirely sure Prentiss wouldn’t come for him again.
No, he was much safer in the archives, surrounded by plenty of solid cement walls.
He kept staring at his phone.
There was no way Jon was going to ask. He knew how private Jon was, no matter the fact that they’d somehow managed to strike the most improbable friendship known to mankind, nor how strangely fond of him Jon seemed to be.
No, Martin was fairly sure he’d got a good read of Jon, by now. They were… At a good point on that whole ‘building a steady friendship’ thing, somehow, but not quite far enough yet for Jon to open up his home to Martin. Someone as deeply shielded and careful as Jon would certainly need a lot more time before being able to put all of that trust into somebody, leaving his private, safe space vulnerable to the intrusion of another human being.
So. He knew Jon wouldn’t ask. No way.
…He still hoped, a little bit.
It was stupid. Martin would refuse him as well in a heartbeat just like he’d done with Sasha and Tim. There was not a single, infinitesimal chance on God’s green Earth Martin would’ve ever put Jon in danger… It was stupid for him to hope.
Perhaps he just wanted to feel a little coddled, which was doubly stupid because he was already sick of Sasha and Tim treating him with kid gloves; it was just that… That…
(It was just that they’d always been kind to him, from day one. It was the only reason why Martin didn’t perish out of sheer anxiety when Elias informed him of his new job as an archival assistant. He already knew Tim and Sasha were cool with him, and he appreciated it deeply.
But Jon… Well, Jon was… Different. He came off as brusque and terse and prickly and haughty and…
But Martin knew there was more to him than that. Jon had conceded him some glimpses. Not much. Just enough to see the gentle man hiding under about three thousand layers of self-preserving cold politeness.
Just enough for Martin to get hopelessly charmed by him.)
He just… He wanted to be coddled by Jon , specifically. Just a tiny bit. Just a teeny tiny scrap of coddling, was all. Was that too much to ask?
His new phone buzzed in his hand with an unfamiliar chime, making him jump. It would take Martin some time to get used to the different text alert noise.
‘I hope you will figure out a better living situation sooner rather than later.’
Ok, that wasn’t the ‘Oh, Martin, you silly boy, why don’t you come stay with me? So you can take a peek about how I decorate my space and see a bit more of who I truly am, and maybe manage to figure out my favorite tea brand, and if you’d fancy it we could even cuddle on the couch under a warm blanket,’ Martin had daydreamed to see appear in that brief exchange of texts between him and Jon, but… Well.
It was something. As much coddling as Jonathan Sims could dispense, really.
‘Thanks. I’m sure I will. I’ll keep you posted.’ He wrote back.
‘Please do. Both of those things. Goodnight, Martin.’
Yeah. That would do. Martin stared at that last text until his eyes started watering because of his refusal to blink, and finally let the screen go dark with a little sigh.
Yeah. It was… Something.