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If anyone asks, Jon doesn’t smoke.
It’s not that the answer is out of shame. Not out of some disappointment in having failed his endeavor to quit, or hiding away like he’s going to get scolded for what he does with his own money that he makes from his job. His grandmother had been a bit of a hovering figure in that regard — she’d smoked herself her entire life and always told him never to start, that it’s an expensive bad habit to break, that she doesn’t need a grandson who walks around her house smelling of smoke and leaves cigarettes in his pockets to come apart in the wash. Politely, Jon had waited until after she’d died to pick it up.
And it’s some big secret either, obviously — no one goes out and stands in the alleyway behind the Institute when it’s twelve degrees and raining for the fun of it — but they never comment on it. He supposes he should be grateful for that. He supposes he should be relieved that when he stomps out of his office with his coat, swearing under his breath, that no one bothers to stand in his way. He’s a grown man and he can have a cigarette if he wants to. If anyone says otherwise, then he’ll, then he’ll—
Click, click, click—
Jon scowls as he thumps his lighter on the handrail, as if that’s going to make it work. Cheap piece of junk. He supposes that’s what he gets for buying a convenience store lighter instead of shelling out the money to repair the nice metal one he keeps at home. He thinks he might have had another around here somewhere, but he can’t quite place exactly where. It had something etched on the side. An animal, maybe? An insect. Doesn’t matter. That’s what he gets.
“Do you want me to...?”
Jon looks over at Martin. He’d nearly forgotten he was there — he’d been emptying the breakroom bin when Jon had come bursting outside in an energized fury, fed up with everyone in the office today because apparently it was “make assumptions about Jon” day and he’d missed the memo, and really he just needed a goddamn moment of privacy where he wasn’t the fucking center of attention, the one everyone’s looking at, the one people get one singular tidbit of information about and start spinning webs upon webs of ideas about even if it’s none of their fucking business—
Jon sighs through his nose and holds the lighter out to Martin. Martin takes it, clicks it twice, and then holds out the flame.
Jon gratefully lights his cigarette, puts it back between his lips, then takes a long, biting puff of it.
“Do you ever—” Jon starts. Pauses. Thinks over the words carefully that he’s about to say.
Martin glances at him sideways, raising an eyebrow. He looks cold, Jon thinks. His nose is an angry, frost-nipped pink color, dripping into the thin fuzz on his upper lip. He reaches up to wipe it away with a tissue, and Jon thinks about telling him to go inside where it’s warm. There’s really no reason for him to stand out here in this weather. “Do I ever what?”
“It’s nothing,” Jon says quickly.
“Okay,” Martin says in return.
And he could leave it here. He could. He could smoke his cigarette in silence until he went back inside and returned to the whole mess of files he’d been attempting to organize spread across his office floor, and Martin wouldn’t push it. That’s something he likes about Martin. That’s a reason why he thinks he and Martin get along easier than a lot of other people he knows.
Jon clears his throat. “Do you ever— do people ever make assumptions about you based on some very limited piece of information, and they’re not exactly wrong but they’re also not not wrong, but you can’t correct them because you aren’t even supposed to know about this information in the first place?”
Martin blinks at him. Presses his mouth into a tight line. His lips are shiny and pink from the chapstick he’s been smearing on them near religiously lately, and Jon can’t stop looking at them. “Uh,” he finally says.
Jon taps his cigarette on the handrail. “Sorry,” he says, feeling the awkwardness bouncing back now and smacking him square in the face. “That was a lot.”
“A bit,” Martin agrees, shrugs, breathes out in a puff of pseudo-smoke. He takes his hands out of his pockets and tucks them under his elbows. “I guess I know what you mean though.”
Jon raises an eyebrow. “You do?”
“Kinda,” Martin says. “It’s like— okay, you know how I worked in the library for a bit?” Jon nods, and so Martin continues. “Well, someone asked me once if I liked cake, and I’m not—” Martin’s brow pinches, his mouth twists like he’s thinking very carefully about the next words, “—I’m not exactly...a small guy, y’know? And people— they kinda— it’s not always malicious, but there’s like— they think things when, and they just kinda—”
“Ah,” Jon says without meaning to, but he sees where he’s going with it. “Um. Yeah, I— I get it.”
“Yeah,” Martin nods. “Well, I said no, because...yeah, and apparently when I said no, they thought that meant I never want cake, and so, um. When my birthday came around, they didn’t— no one, um. Bought me one.”
“Oh,” Jon says softly. His chest feels a bit tight, right under his sternum. He watches Martin’s hands fidgeting as he leans against the handrail, picking at a loose hangnail on his thumb, and thinks about reaching out to hold one. Instead, he takes a puff of his cigarette. “I’m sorry.”
Martin shrugs lightly. “S’fine,” he says, even if it’s not. Even if someone like Jon can tell that it’s not. “I mean, the next one we went out and you taught me all about emulsions, so I think it’s evened out.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
“Oh.” Jon doesn’t really remember that. He does have a vague memory of being wedged in a booth at that old ice cream shop three blocks away and saying something he doesn’t recall that had made Martin laugh and laugh and laugh until he’d cried. He thinks that’s the first time he’d heard Martin laugh. He thinks that might have also been the first time he’d thought about getting to know Martin better, instead of just knowing him as the guy who lets dogs into his archives.
The drizzling is starting to come down a bit harder now. Jon reaches out his hand from the protective cover of the awning they’re huddled under and lets it spread over his fingers.
“I guess it’s kind of like that,” he finally says, then pauses. He thinks about where he’s going with this. How he wants to put this into words. There’s a light, prickling feeling just at the base of his neck, a bundle of anxieties half-formed and unnamed, an irrational fear that Martin will think him strange for this. Even if Jon’s done much stranger things in Martin’s presence and never been accused of such. Even if Martin has never made him feel strange. Jon clears his throat. “It’s just— it’s something Melanie said—”
“Mm,” Martin hums, in a it’s always Melanie, isn’t it way that eases his nervousness.
“And it’s not— I don’t— it’s a...relationship thing, I guess, and I mean she isn’t— she’d gotten it from someone who I had told this to, a long time ago, and it’d been— since then, I’ve— I know she wasn’t being cruel, but she also wasn’t— because it’s more complicated than that even if I’m like that sometimes, and really it’s not any of her business to begin with so I don’t see why she has to go telling people that I don’t—” Jon’s words get caught in his throat, choked around some emotion that he can’t put a word to. Maybe it’s not an emotion at all. Maybe he’s just being silly again, working himself up over nothing that doesn’t matter and isn’t worth dwelling on as long as he’s been dwelling on it. He shoots a frustrated, desperate look to Martin. “...You know?”
Martin looks at him for a long moment, taking it in, formulating a response. Jon thinks about rushing back inside and forgetting this whole conversation ever happened.
And then Martin wets his lips, opens his mouth, and says, “So, she said you...don’t do something? But that’s not exactly true? And it’s bothering you?”
“Yes,” Jon says. “Basically.” Bless Martin for his deciphering abilities.
And the thing is—
The thing is, it is true. Sort of. It’s always been sort of true and sort of not true at the same time. Scenario and person and star alignment type of thing. It’s complicated. It’s Jon, who is always unwaveringly and unnecessarily complicated. It’s just that people never seem to understand the ‘sort of’ part, and everything else in between gets lost in translation.
I sort of do, Jon had told his first boyfriend, and he’d taken that to mean that Jon always does, he just needs a bit of coaxing. And that bit of coaxing had let to a bit of pushback, and that bit of pushback had let to a bit of arguing, and that bit of arguing had led to Jon’s emotions all spilling out of him as he’d sat half-dressed on the bed, crying like an idiot until he’d rubbed his eyes raw. The breakup had come shortly after.
I sort of don’t, Jon had told Georgie, and she’d taken it in stride up until the point where the boundaries became baby gates, became knowing what’s best for him, became answers without his opinion even when he insisted otherwise. She didn’t want to make Jon uncomfortable. Jon never knew how to explain that sometimes he wanted the discomfort.
Jon watches as Martin reaches up, scratches his jaw. “I mean,” he starts slowly, thoughtfully, “it’s kinda like smoking then, right?”
Jon inhales too sharply, the smoke catching in his throat and sending him coughing. “What?”
“Well, you told me you don’t smoke,” Martin continues, “back when— it was right after Prentiss, I think, and I came out here and you were out here with your lighter and you said not to tell Tim because he gets pesky if you have a cigarette because he says that’s not really being quit, or something?”
“Right before Prentiss,” Jon corrects, because he does remember that one. He’d been there late, and he’d forgotten about Martin staying there, and the stress of everything had just been getting him so bad that he needed a cigarette and he needed one right then and there, so he’d gone out the back. It feels like so long ago now. He feels silly for sneaking around so much back then. “I remember.”
“Right,” Martin says, tilting his head back against the wall. “Well, I mean, even if you have one every once in a while, it’s not exactly...smoking, right? Like, it’s different from someone being a smoker, I guess? I mean, even I smoke sometimes.”
“You do?” Jon asks. Martin’s never mentioned this before. Or he has, and Jon’s just forgotten. He does that a lot too.
Martin half shrugs. “Haven’t recently, but...yeah? Um. Back at my old job, I used to buy a pack just so I’d have an excuse to go stand out in the parking lot with this guy I had a crush on at the time.” He lets out a little laugh, a light, breathless thing. It’s been a while since Jon’s heard that. “Guess it was a little silly of me in retrospect.”
“Mm,” Jon hums neutrally. Not agreement or disagreement. Just— just observing. Taking in the information. Imagining Martin hanging out with someone while he smokes, tagging along outside with him just for a chance to chat makes him feel a bit strange. He doesn’t know what that strangeness is. It’s just— it’s just there, settling in his gut, and Jon tries to push it away. He tries to pack it into place. He tells himself it was a long time ago, that whoever that guy was is long out of Martin’s life, and feels a little bit better.
“Do you want me to talk to Melanie?” Martin offers.
“No,” Jon says. If he wants to talk to her, he’ll do it himself. But at the end of the day, he’s not even sure that it matters whether or not she or Basira or Georgie knows the truth, nor if they even deserve it. “I mean— it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Probably not,” Martin says, smiling gently at him. “But, y’know. Assumptions, and all that.”
“And all that,” Jon agrees. He takes a puff of his cigarette and thinks on it a bit. It doesn’t matter, really. Not with someone like Melanie. He doesn’t particularly care if someone like Melanie understands him, or would even try to understand him.
Martin would probably understand though, if he explained it to him. Jon puts that thought away for later.
“But people make silly assumptions all the time,” Martin continues.
Jon nods and hums in agreement. “Like when you assumed I was pushing forty.”
“Okay, hang on,” Martin counters, shooting him a look, “you were the one who said you were thirty-eight. I was just trusting your word.”
A wry grin tugs at the corners of Jon’s mouth. “Glad to know you think I look old, Mr. Blackwood.”
“There you go again, putting words in my mouth. I never said you looked old.”
“So you’re not denying that you thought it.”
“That’s not— well, is that such a bad thing!” Martin protests, turning up his nose in mock offense. “Maybe I have a thing for older men.”
And Jon laughs at this. He doesn’t mean to. It just catches him at the right angle, an elbow to the ribs, and punches out of him so sharply that it sends him into a coughing fit. Martin laughs too, though he’s polite enough to cover his mouth.
Jon has the sudden thought of kissing Martin then. Of testing if his chapstick really tastes as sweet as it smells.
“Think my hands are starting to turn blue,” Martin says, tugging him away from that line of thought before he can get too lost in it.
“Mm,” Jon agrees. The sensation in his fingertips has long since left him, and the only thing keeping his cigarette in place is muscle memory. “Suppose we should go inside.”
Martin hums in agreement.
“Let me finish this one?” Jon says, raising up his cigarette.
“Sure,” Martin agrees, and then steps a bit closer. Just to keep warm, Jon tells himself. Just to keep out of the drizzle that is rapidly turning into a steady pour, even if the wind is blowing it away from their direction. Jon considers his options for a moment, weighing them in his chill-numb hands, and then shuffles over to close the distance between them.
If it takes them longer than usual to finish their smoke break, no one dares to make office gossip about it.