Chapter Text
Three days. Martin wondered what his colleagues thought had happened to him. He’d been hoping that Tim and Sasha, at least, might be worried about him, but he was starting to lose that hope. He had thought they were becoming friends, the three of them. Still, three days wasn’t that long. They probably thought he was ill and would be back soon. Not calling in was weird, but not unheard of. People did that. Not Martin, but they couldn’t know that. Yet it hurt to think of them sitting down there in the archives, not bothering to question his absence. Jon, of course, was probably actively glad he wasn’t there. In a way, that was a comfort. It might be with dislike, but at least Jon thought about him.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Martin found himself thinking of a coping mechanism he hadn’t used in nearly ten years. He reached for Minnie, his cow soft toy, and clutched her to his chest as he listened to the knocking on his front door.
-
Five days. Martin wasn’t exactly starting to run out of food, but he was realising that he might be here for a long time. Jane Prentiss hadn’t left his door once since she woke him up that first night with her knocking, not even just for a couple of minutes. If she didn’t need to eat or sleep, there was nothing that could make her go away. She could stay until he died, knocking and knocking and knocking. Two tinned meals per day, and two tins of peaches. Why did he have so many tins of peaches anyway? They were the sort of thing he’d drop into his shopping basket without thinking much about it, something vaguely healthy that he intended to eat and never did. At least they were food.
Nobody from work had tried to visit him. That was a good thing, obviously, because if they did the worm woman outside his door would probably kill them. But it hurt, too. It felt like they didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t. Huddled on his sofa with Minnie held tightly in his arms and his duvet wrapped around him, Martin finally let himself reach properly for that long abandoned headspace, let his thoughts go fuzzy at the edges and his eyes slip closed. It would be nice if he had some of his old stuff, but he’d never bought anything new after Mum found all his little things and threw them away. He never let himself be little again after that. Not until now. He stroked Minnie’s soft fur and his adult thoughts fell away easily. When the next knock came, he started to cry into Minnie’s head.
-
Nine days. Martin knew for sure, now, that nobody was coming for him. If they were, they already would have. They must have thought he’d simply walked out of his job without giving notice or even telling anyone. People did do that, didn’t they? It made his tummy hurt to think of Tim and Sasha, and even Jon, assuming that he would. Had it occurred to none of them to check on him, just in case? He just disappeared off the face of the earth, not a hint, not a phone call, not even a quick text, and nobody cared enough to want to make sure he was okay. He didn’t want them to be attacked by Prentiss, but – well, it was no good thinking about it. They weren’t coming.
Martin was too afraid to try to sleep on purpose, but he kept drifting off anyway and then being startled back into sweaty, heart-pounding wakefulness when another knock came or he had a nightmare about worms burrowing into his skin. He was spending most of his time small now. It didn’t make Jane Prentiss any less scary, but at least when he was little he didn’t feel like he had to try and make himself feel better or talk himself out of crying. He could just hunch up in his duvet with his arms around Minnie, sobbing and whimpering to himself, and let himself feel bad.
-
Twelve days. Martin had stopped crying. He just lay there, curled up on his sofa with his duvet around him and Minnie in his arms, shivering in the cold of his flat and trying to stop himself from thinking about why the people he’d thought had been becoming his friends, except Jon of course, had decided to let him die, alone and besieged in his own home. Instead, he spent hours at a time in littlespace, cuddling Minnie and singing nursery songs under his breath, trying to listen to himself instead of the worm woman outside his door. He hurt in his body and his mind, and he wanted someone to cuddle him, and he knew now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was going to die here. Big Martin still tried to kick against the knowledge, to summon up hope and believe that someone would come for him, but little Martin just lay still, sad and hurting, waiting for the end. It was better that way. It was simpler. In an odd way, it was comforting. Even if he was going to die, at least he could sing his way through the teletubbies theme song thirty times in a row and nobody would think it was strange.
-
“There’s a room in the archives I use to sleep when working late. I suggest you stay there for now,” Jon said.
Martin stared at him. His statement had poured out of him in a steady stream, words he hadn’t thought about in advance rising to his lips, articulate and descriptive and containing all his fear, but now that it was finished he was back to his usual clumsy self, stuttering and nervous under Jon’s steady gaze.
“Okay,” he managed to get out. “Thanks.” And then, because apparently he’d lost all his filters during the last fortnight of not talking to anyone but himself, he added, “To be honest, I didn’t… didn’t expect you to take it seriously.”
Jon’s brown eyes flickered down to his desk at that, in a way that in anyone else Martin might have interpreted as shame or regret. Then he looked back up and explained that he’d been getting texts from Martin all this time, saying he was ill, and for a moment Martin’s brain seemed to short out with shock. Texts. Jon had been getting texts. Martin didn’t just disappear off the face of the earth, unnoticed and unmourned. His colleagues thought he was ill. Jon even tried to call him! They cared. All the time, they cared.
Martin managed to stop himself from crying, but it was a close thing.
-
Jon listened to Martin’s statement with slowly growing horror. He wanted, desperately, to tear it to shreds as he would any other statement, but Martin’s eyes were wide and red-rimmed, and he was dishevelled and shaky in a way Jon had never seen before. His words had the horrible ring of truth. And then there was the little jar of worms that was still sitting on his desk. Not to mention his phone, with message after message from Martin on it, claiming to have a stomach bug, a parasite, when Martin had just told him that he lost it two weeks ago at Carlos Vittery’s home.
And it was his fault.
Martin kept saying it. Due diligence. I hadn’t really done enough investigation for you. It’s my job, isn’t it? To prove to you that it happened. I wanted proof for you.
Jon practically sent Martin into Jane Prentiss’s arms, ripe and ready to be terrorised. For a ludicrous, highly inappropriate moment, Jon almost offered his own sofa for Martin to sleep on, since it clearly wasn’t going to be safe for him to go back to his own flat until Jane Prentiss was no longer active, but he stopped himself just in time. The camp bed in document storage was probably safer anyway. Jon’s building wasn’t exactly what you could call secure. Even if the look of astonished, flustered gratitude on Martin’s face when he offered it did make him wonder how Martin would have looked if he had offered his sofa.
Jon resolved to try to be nicer to Martin. He wasn’t completely oblivious, he knew he’d been dreadful, but it was… well, it was complicated. He could still feel the flush that had rushed into his face the first time he’d ever seen Martin, standing in his doorway and asking if he’d seen a dog. It had been flaming hot and deeply embarrassing, and he couldn’t have feelings for a colleague, especially when he was that colleague’s supervisor. He – no.
But he could still be nice to Martin without having feelings for him, couldn’t he?
Of course he could.
-
It turned out that Jon had a camp bed tucked away in a corner of document storage, half hidden behind bookcases and filing cabinets. It was small, but it had a surprisingly soft mattress and a couple of pillows and a duvet covered with little rainbows. Martin wondered if it was Jon’s own, brought from home. Then he wondered just how often Jon did sleep at work, if he had a whole bed set up here.
He left his hastily packed backpack on the bed and followed Jon back to his office to be given a new case to work on. Jon was being weirdly nice and would probably give him the rest of the day off if he asked, but Martin didn’t want that. He just wanted to feel normal for a while. The file Jon handed him didn’t give him chills when he read through it, and he wondered whether Jon had given him an easy one on purpose.
He could hardly get his head around the fact that Jon was letting him stay here. He could hardly believe that Jon believed him. But he did. An hour or so later, passing Jon’s office door, Martin heard him practically yelling at Elias about the need for better security and had to blink tears away again. Tim and Sasha were being nice, too. They’d apologised profusely for not realising something was wrong, even though they couldn’t possibly have suspected anything with Jane Prentiss replying to their texts like everything was normal. Tim went out to the nearest shops to stock up on supplies for Martin because the thought of leaving the archives ever again made him go cold and crawly with fear, and Sasha checked his back for worms when he had a panic attack halfway through the afternoon. He could tell they didn’t entirely get it, how utterly terrifying the whole ordeal was, how sure Martin had been that he was going to die, but they were kind anyway.
When Tim asked what he needed before going to the shops, Martin’s mind shot to the little stock of supplies he used to have, all those years ago, when he’d regress in the quiet solitude of his own bedroom, before Mum found them and threw them away in disgust. But he couldn’t bring himself to ask Tim to buy him a colouring book, let alone a sippy cup or a pacifier. Anyway, he survived the last two weeks without them, didn’t he? He had Minnie and he had himself. That was all he needed.
“Is there anything else you need before we go?” Tim asked anxiously, some time later. He and Sasha were hovering beside Martin’s desk, where he was pretending not to have been unsuccessfully googling Jane Prentiss for the last two hours. “Cup of tea? Hug?”
Martin looked up at him. A hug would be nice, actually. Simple human connection was the thing it had hurt most to miss while he was trapped in his flat. He hadn’t realised, before that, how much he’d come to rely on the way Tim was constantly touching people. A hand on his elbow as he came past, playful arm slaps, brief, casual hugs given for the smallest of reasons. Even Sasha had been known to give him a friendly pat or shoulder nudge, and he’d missed them. He had missed them so much.
Maybe Tim saw it in his face, because he stepped forward, holding out his arms. Martin pushed his chair back and went into them, and Tim wrapped him up, warm and tight and safe. For one impetuous moment, Martin imagined just letting go and slipping into littlespace and letting Tim take care of him. He pushed the thought away, and the fuzziness that kept creeping into his thoughts with it. It was just because he’d spent so much of the last two weeks little, that was all. He didn’t need it any more. The urge would fade soon enough.
Jon didn’t bid him goodnight when he left. Martin wasn’t even sure when that was, he was so quiet about it, but that was okay. Jon had done enough for him, and really, there was no reason for him to tell Martin when he was going home. By nine o’clock, Martin was curled up on the camp bed, asleep almost the moment his head hit the pillow.
-
Jon hadn’t meant to stay quite this late. He’d been getting better, recently, at leaving work at a decent hour. But Martin – Jane Prentiss – she was still out there, and that meant none of them, not Martin, not Tim and Sasha, not Jon himself, were safe. He had been combing through boxes of statements, continually misfiled and disorganised, trying to find any clue he could. It only felt like about half an hour since Tim and Sasha put their heads into his office to tell him they were going home, but here it was, ten o’clock already.
He gathered his things quickly, shrugged his coat on, and hesitated in the corridor. It was rather late, but he was determined to be nicer to Martin. Knocking on his door to check he was all right and bid him farewell would, perhaps, be a good start.
Document storage was completely silent when he approached, but Martin might just be reading or something. Jon raised his hand to knock, and then hesitated. She knocked and knocked and knocked, he remembered Martin saying. Maybe knocking wouldn’t be such a good idea.
Instead, he turned the knob and pushed the door open a crack. “Martin?” he called quietly.
There was no answer. Jon pushed the door fully open and entered the room, stepping sideways to peer around the filing cabinets that half concealed his camp bed, and there was Martin. In the light that spilled in from the corridor, Jon could see that he was lying curled up on his side, eyes closed, a small, troubled frown still on his face. He looked younger this way, his plump arm curved around a soft toy of some kind, his chest rising and falling gently as he breathed.
Silently, Jon left the room and closed the door behind him.
-
It felt almost surreal to be back at work after the last fortnight. Sometimes Martin wondered whether he was actually still in his home, on the point of death and having a rather mediocre dream about what might have been if he’d escaped. Or maybe it was the whole worm siege that had been a dream. Maybe he’d had a raging fever and imagined the whole thing, and that was why Tim and Sasha were being so kind and Jon was treating him like he was made of something fragile that would shatter at the tiniest careless touch.
Except that there was still a jar of dead worms on a bookshelf in Jon’s office, and at Martin’s request, Jon showed him the texts Jane Prentiss sent him while she was standing outside Martin’s door. Tim and Sasha each had a few, too. That was evidence. It happened.
(They cared.)
Martin did a barely adequate job of following up on the statement Jon gave him yesterday, but when he gave Jon his report, Jon just accepted it with an absent-minded nod. He didn’t even comment on the fact, which Martin discovered a few minutes later, that he had forgotten to put in the whole first section Jon always insisted on, detailing who followed up the statement and when and how. And when Martin brought him a cup of tea in the afternoon, he actually smiled.
It would be really nice to have Jon treat him this way if it weren’t for the terror that forced a burning path up his throat every time he thought he saw a pale, shiny shape out of the corner of his eye or heard any sound that resembled knocking. By the end of the day, everyone had given up knocking on doors even when Martin wasn’t in sight, after he heard Sasha tapping quietly on Jon’s door while he was in the break room and was abruptly tilted into his worst panic attack yet.
In other words, Martin was a complete mess.
To make things worse, he kept feeling the tempting pull of regression at the edges of his mind. It had been so much simpler at home, when he could be little for as long as he needed. Not nice, no, because he’d been certain he was only days, maybe hours, from dying, but easier. As an adult he had to try to control his panic and appear okay around the others. He had to think about work and not getting fired and how the hell he was going to cope with living in his workplace, grateful as he was to have anywhere to sleep at all. If he could just let himself slip away into littleness he wouldn’t have to worry about those things. He could just be.
He was so tired.
Tim and Sasha gave him hugs again before they left, and as he tried not to cling to them with too obvious a desperation, he abruptly made a decision. He’d do it. Just one last time. Just to give himself an easier evening as he tried to adjust back to normal life. He’d wait until Jon left and then he’d cuddle under the duvet with Minnie and let himself be little until he fell asleep. Just once.
Martin wrapped up what he was working on and popped into Jon’s office to let him know he was knocking off for the day, and then retreated to document storage with a cup of tea and a book. He wasn’t sure exactly what time Jon usually left, but he would keep an ear out so that he knew when he was safe.
But the book was engaging and Martin was tired. He sank into the story and, for a while, the world fell away. The next time he looked at his phone it was almost nine o’clock. He must have missed Jon leaving, probably ages ago. That was okay. It meant that Martin could tuck a bookmark into his book and finally do what had been becoming more and more tempting as the day went on.
He changed into his pyjamas, went to brush his teeth in the loo, returned to his room, crawled onto the camp bed, and sat down, back against the wall, legs drawn up to his chest, duvet wrapped around him, warm and cosy. Oh, he’d been needing this. He picked Minnie up and hugged her against his chest, resting his chin on her soft head and stroking her fluffy body.
That was all it took to make his adult thoughts start to drift away like pink and yellow balloons, away, away, away. Martin even gave them a little wave, and then giggled to himself and nuzzled his face against Minnie. He wished he had something fun to do, like colouring or building blocks. He used to have a lovely book about a little boy who was a mermaid. Martin thought he’d like to be a mermaid. He could jump in the sea and swim away to play with the fishes. Minnie could be a mercow and come with him. They’d play so many lovely games. But cuddling Minnie was nice, too, and…
Something silvery wiggled in the corner of his eye, and Martin threw himself sideways to get away from it, making the bed rock and Minnie tumble away onto the floor. He could hear his own voice gasping with fear, and he looked for the worm but there was nothing there. Where was it? Where had it gone? Tears running down his face, Martin pulled Jon’s rainbow duvet clumsily off the bed and turned it over and over. There were no worms on it. He patted the pillows all over with trembling hands. This was scary. Too scary. He wanted somebody here, someone who would help him and cuddle him and kiss the tears away, but he wasn’t allowed to be around other people when he was little. That would be bad. They’d think he was gross and stupid and weird, like Mum did. Maybe he was.
Light from the ceiling lamp above him glinted off the screen of Martin’s phone. Still kneeling on the floor with the duvet bunched up over his knees, Martin stared at it, putting the pieces slowly together, like a difficult jigsaw puzzle. That was what he’d seen. A glittering shape. Not a worm, just his phone.
He started to cry again. How stupid, to get so scared. But he couldn’t help it! Even though now he knew it wasn’t a worm, he was still frightened. He was in a weird, silent room filled with bookcases and filing cabinets that had strange, grown up things piled high on them, and he was kneeling beside an unfamiliar bed and everything was too much, too hard. Martin buried his face in the duvet. Apart from Minnie, it was the only nice thing here, soft and pretty with all its little rainbows. He muffled his sobs in it. Being noisy wasn’t okay. Bad things happened when he was noisy. He reached for Minnie and held her tightly as he cried into the rainbows.
“Martin?”
Oh no. Oh no. Martin had been crying for a long time now. The desperate sobbing had given way to dreary, miserable little whimpers, and he’d been drowning them in the duvet and Minnie’s fur, but his knees hurt and his back hurt and he was so scared and he didn’t know how to make himself feel better so he just kept holding onto Minnie and crying and crying and crying, and he’d thought it was all right because nobody was here so he couldn’t be bad, but now somebody was here.
He looked up and saw a blurry shape that he realised was Jon. Oh no. Jon was scary. He didn’t like Martin very much. He was frowning down at him and that meant he was cross. Martin hid his face back in the duvet as more tears started running down his cheeks and his mouth gave another stupid loud sob. Maybe if he hid from Jon, Jon wouldn’t realise he was crying. Maybe he would go away and leave Martin alone.
“Martin?” Jon said again. Face still buried in the rainbows, Martin shook his head. Go away, Jon. Go away. “Martin, you’re – can – can I help? A – a cup of tea, perhaps?”
Martin shook his head again. Jon wasn’t being mean yet, so he might not have noticed Martin’s crying, but he wasn’t going away, either. Martin tried to think what to do to make him. He should tell Jon he was okay. He never talked much when he was little, but he only had to say two words. I’m okay. That would be enough. Jon didn’t even like him, he’d be glad to hear he could leave. Martin just had to say it. He could do that. He could. Even stupid little boys like Martin could say two words, if they were brave about it.
He pulled his face away from the duvet, not far enough to have to look at Jon, just so he could talk. He sniffed and gulped and blurted out, “I’m fine,” trying to sound as big as he could.
Then he buried his face in the duvet again and waited for Jon to leave him on his own.
-
Jon had ended up staying ridiculously late again. It was half past nine by the time he’d packed up to leave, but he hurried through the archives to document storage anyway. If Martin was asleep he’d just leave him alone, like he had last night, and if he wasn’t then Jon could say goodbye. It had been – well, it had been surprisingly easy to be nice to him. Jon was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that, crush or no crush, he might actually quite like Martin.
As he had last night, Jon opened the door to document storage a careful crack and said, very quietly, “Martin?”
The light was on, but there was no reply. Martin must have fallen asleep with the light on. Jon’s hand was outstretched towards the switch when he heard a small sound from round the corner where the camp bed was. Martin must be awake after all. Jon took a few steps into the room and rounded the filing cabinets, mouth opening in preparation to make a slightly awkward farewell.
Then his eyes fell on Martin and his mouth closed again. Martin was kneeling beside the camp bed, his face buried in Jon’s duvet, his arms around the same soft toy he’d been holding last night. He was wearing a pair of soft jogging bottoms and a faded t-shirt, and he was crying. Only softly, but there was a distinctive sound to it, as though he’d been at it for a long time.
For a moment, Jon almost turned tail and fled. He was no good with emotions, or comforting people, or being someone people turned to when they were upset. He wasn’t good with people, full stop. That was Tim’s purview. But he was supposed to be being nice to Martin. And anyway, he was the only person here besides Martin himself. And Martin kept whimpering, as though he was too tired and broken to do anything else, and Jon couldn’t just leave. It was awful. It made him hurt.
He said, “Martin?”
Martin’s face turned up to him, blotchy and wet, his blue eyes tear-drenched and wide with alarm. He sobbed and hid his face again. Oh, hell. There was no turning back now, though. Martin had seen him, he knew Jon was there. Leaving him like this would be inexcusable. Jon tried to think of something helpful to say.
“Martin?” he started. Martin shook his head. “Martin, you’re – ” No, not helpful. “Can – can I help?” Better. “A cup of tea, perhaps?” Martin liked tea.
But Martin just shook his head again. Jon stared down at him, his slightly uncomfortable concern starting to morph into real worry. This felt like more than someone having a bit of a cry to get their feelings out. It felt like fear and pain and desperation. It felt like despair.
Martin shifted slightly, pulling back from the duvet, but not far enough for Jon to get a good look at his face. He sniffled. “’Mfine,” he said, fast and high and trembling, and then buried his face again.
Jon frowned. “You’re obviously not fine, Martin,” he said. “You’re crying.” Then he made a face. What a stupid thing to say, as if he thought Martin might somehow have not noticed there were tears flooding down his face and needed Jon to point it out. Then, as Martin continued to tremble and sob quietly into his duvet, Jon wondered whether he’d even heard him. He stared down at his shivering colleague and, once again, wished he could just turn around and leave. He could call Tim. If he told him what kind of state Martin was in he’d come back here in a shot to take care of him. He’d be infinitely better at this than Jon was.
But Jon was the one who was here, and Jon was the one who’d got Martin into this mess in the first place. He was the reason he’d been having panic attacks four times a day and jumped every time he heard a knocking sound. Whatever it was, specifically, that had got Martin crying like this, it was almost certainly Jon’s fault.
He had to fix this. He had to fix this and he had to do it properly. No half measures.
Jon took one deep, steadying breath and walked over to the camp bed. He sat down on it, right next to where Martin was still kneeling on the floor, muffling whimpers in Jon’s duvet, close enough that his leg was touching Martin’s side, and rested his hand gently on Martin’s shoulder.
“Martin,” he said, screwing together all his courage and determination. “Would you like a hug?”
He could feel the way Martin froze under his hand, against his leg. He didn’t even tense up, he just went completely still, like a prey animal that thought a predator might not notice it if it just stayed still enough. Then, very slowly, he lifted his face up from the duvet. God, he looked wrecked. How long had he been crying for, sobbing his heart out on the floor of document storage while Jon worked on in his office, oblivious?
Martin stared up at him for what felt like forever, tears still trickling down his cheeks, face swollen and blotchy. Slowly, as though he’d half forgotten how to make the gesture, he nodded.
All right, then. They were doing this. Jon steeled himself. “Come up here, then,” he said. “My knees don’t cope well with floors.”
He half expected Martin, even tear-drenched and trembling, to make a bad joke about old man joints, because people always did. Martin didn’t. He got up clumsily, slowly, still sniffling and heaving with sobs he didn’t seem able to help, and shuffled until he was sitting on the camp bed, close beside Jon. Once he was there, though, he didn’t seem to know what to do. He was still clutching his soft toy, which Jon could now see was a rather sweet Highland cow, staring down at where his pale hands were clasped around it.
Jon supposed that meant it was up to him to make the first move. Feeling like a fool, he lifted his arms and said, “Come along, then.”
And Martin did. He didn’t so much lean in to Jon as collapse against him, and despite being so much bigger than Jon, he buried his face in the crook of his neck like a child seeking comfort, breath hitching with another sob. One of his hands came up to cling to Jon’s cardigan sleeve, while the other stayed in his lap, holding his stuffed cow. Jon put his arms around him, letting his hands rest lightly on Martin’s back. Martin continued to sob damply into his neck, a sensation that normally Jon would hate, but right now he was just so relieved that he’d somehow hit on what Martin needed that he didn’t care. He’d suffer a wet neck every night for the next month if it made up a little for sending Martin into Jane Prentiss’s clutches.
-
Jon was good at cuddling. That was a surprise, because he was frowny and cross and mean nearly all the time. But now he was letting Martin hold onto his lovely soft cardigan and hide his face against his neck, which was warm and soft, and he had his arms around Martin, and he didn’t seem to mind at all that Martin couldn’t stop crying or that he was still holding Minnie. After a bit, he started stroking Martin’s back, up and down, up and down, up and down. It felt nice. Nobody had ever cuddled Martin when he was little before. He’d always wanted it, but he hadn’t known it would feel this good.
It took a long time, but Jon kept on cuddling him, stroking his back and rocking him a little from side to side, and Martin started to calm down. Eventually he was just leaning against Jon, one hand holding tightly to his cardigan, his face still buried against his neck, sniffling a bit but otherwise quiet. He didn’t want to move. It felt so nice to be held like this, and Jon was warm and gentle and he smelled nice.
But Martin was starting to remember that it wasn’t good that he was still little. Jon didn’t know, that was why he was being kind to Martin. If he knew, he’d pull away and his mouth would go that funny shape it made when he was disgusted by something, and then he’d start being mean again. He’d scold Martin, like Mum did when she walked into his bedroom and found him curled up in bed with his pacifier in his mouth. Maybe he’d even take Minnie away. Martin needed to get big again quickly, before Jon realised.
He tried hard to think big thoughts. Work. Statements. Research. But the words felt strange and foreign in his head. Those weren’t things Martin was supposed to think about. He sniffed again and, like he was answering, Jon patted his back. Martin wanted to stay here, held safely in his arms, forever. Why couldn’t he get big? He’d always been able to before, whenever he wanted. But he was so tired, and he’d been scared for so long, and this felt so nice.
“How,” Jon said, his voice a quiet rumble right next to Martin’s ear. “How are you feeling?”
Oh, that was a hard question. Martin didn’t know how to answer it. He was scared. He was sad. But he was glad, too, because Jon was cuddling him. He didn’t think he could make words right now. Especially not words that sounded big. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug.
“All right,” Jon said. “Would, ah, would you like to talk about it?”
Martin shook his head. He wondered if Jon was starting to get cross with him. Was that why he was trying to make him talk? He found himself clinging tighter to Jon’s sleeve, pushing his face into Jon’s shoulder. He didn’t want Jon to stop cuddling him, to shove him away or start telling him off. But Jon didn’t. He just sighed and patted Martin’s back again.
“That’s – that’s all right. You don’t have to,” he said. “Is there anything – anything else I can do? To help?”
Another question. Another question Martin felt too little, too quiet and sad and tired to answer. He managed to stop himself from whining miserably. He should be answering Jon. He should be trying harder to get big. How did he usually do it? He just thought about big things, he thought, and it – happened. Not today, though. He couldn’t seem to catch hold of the big thoughts. They slipped away from him like a bar of soap in the bath. He didn’t know how Jon hadn’t noticed yet. Every second Martin stayed little and frightened and helpless was another second of danger, and he was starting to feel slow and sleepy. He was going to do something stupid, he knew it.
“Martin?” Jon said. He pulled away from Martin, and Martin wanted to follow, to keep his face hidden and his fingers curled in Jon’s cardigan, which was soft and nice to hold, until he fell asleep, but he didn’t. He was scared Jon would get cross with him if he tried. He made himself sit up instead, although he didn’t dare look at Jon’s face. He just looked down at his own lap and lifted Minnie to his chest, holding her tightly against him as if she could protect him from whatever Jon was about to say, and waited to be told how bad he was.
-
Jon had been relieved, at first, when Martin had accepted his hug and it had seemed as though he was doing a halfway decent job of comforting him, but now the worry was creeping back in. Martin hadn’t said a word apart from that mumbled little I’m fine when Jon first came into the room, even when Jon had asked him questions. It wasn’t as though Martin was a huge chatterbox, although Jon was uncomfortably aware that he talked a lot more to Tim and Sasha than to him, but still, he said plenty. None of the panic attacks he’d had over the last two days had sent Martin into a silence like this, he’d always been able to communicate with them. Jon wondered whether that just meant this one was worse, but Martin seemed mostly calm now. Except for refusing to speak, he seemed quite normal. He wasn’t crying or shaking any more. His face was still damp and flushed, his hair disarranged, his stuffed cow toy clutched in his arms, and he looked exhausted, but spending two days having panic attack after panic attack would surely do that to anyone, and heaven knew the whole last fortnight must have been a nightmare for him.
Maybe he was just embarrassed at being caught crying by Jon? After all, Jon had never exactly been kind to him. Quite the opposite. If only Tim were here, or Sasha. Martin probably wished that, too. Jon tried desperately to think of something to say to put him properly at ease, but before he could come up with anything, Martin gave a sudden yawn and clapped his hand to his mouth. His eyes went to Jon, wide and worried, and, despite his size, he seemed to shrink. Did he think Jon was going to despise him for being tired? Maybe he did, Jon thought with a pang of shame. He’d been really horrible to Martin, before all this.
He cleared his throat, the sound loud in the heavy silence of the room, and suppressed his wince of awkwardness. He gentled his voice as much as he could. “I – sorry, you probably want to get to sleep?” Martin’s eyes flicked to his face for a moment and then lowered again. There was a long pause, but eventually Martin nodded, still gazing down at his own lap.
“All right,” Jon said. “I’ll, I’ll leave you to it, then.” But when he said that, Martin’s eyes lifted back up to his face, very wide, and Jon was alarmed to see his mouth quiver as though he was about to start crying again. “Or I can stay?” he said quickly. “Just u-until you fall asleep?” Actually, he felt almost relieved. It wouldn’t have felt right to leave Martin alone like this. He seemed strangely vulnerable just now.
Martin nodded, and then buried his face in his stuffed cow like an overwhelmed child. Jon blinked. That was – odd. Very unlike Martin. Jon had seen him blush and trip over his words and apologise and even, on one or two occasions Jon was ashamed to remember, tear up, but he’d always looked him in the eye, sometimes more than Jon was comfortable with. He’d been upset by things, many things Jon had said, but not like this. Not hiding his face and refusing to talk, not clinging to Jon like he was the only thing keeping him together.
Jon’s eyes went to the stuffed cow again, and he remembered the high, wavering quality of Martin’s voice when he’d tried to tell Jon he was fine. It felt like there was something there, if only Jon could put the pieces together.
But then Martin lifted his face and his eyes crept up to meet Jon’s, looking fearful and shamefaced, and Jon pushed the thread of thought aside to be picked up later. He hadn’t expected to need to take care of Martin in quite this way, but now that he’d started, he was damned if he was going to leave until he was sure Martin was all right.
Martin still hadn’t made any move to get himself settled, despite agreeing that he wanted to sleep, so Jon leaned around him to push the pillows into place at the head of the bed.
“Why don’t you lie down?” he said tentatively, half expecting Martin, even now, to roll his eyes or look annoyed at the way Jon was treating him. But he just did as Jon suggested, curling up obediently on his side, one arm wrapped around his cow, his eyes darting to Jon’s face for a second or two at a time before slipping away again.
Jon got up from where he was sitting on a corner of the duvet, most of which was still draped over the side of the bed and onto the floor, and picked it up, shook it out, then laid it carefully over Martin. He couldn’t quite stop himself from tucking it much too assiduously around Martin’s shoulders, but Martin didn’t object, either verbally or otherwise. For a moment, Jon stood there, looking down at him. He looked small and lost, and Jon felt a strong, entirely unexpected surge of protectiveness. Jane Prentiss wouldn’t get her hands on Martin again. She wouldn’t.
He turned to move towards the light switch, but before he’d gone three steps, Martin let out a tiny noise, not even quite a whimper, but enough to make him turn back again quickly.
“I’m just going to put the light out,” he said. “It’ll only take a moment.”
Martin just stared at him, and since Jon had no idea what that might or might not mean, he scurried as fast as he could around the filing cabinets to the door and snapped the light off. Then, more cautiously, he fumbled his way back to the camp bed. By the time he’d reached it, his eyes had adjusted to the small amount of light that was spilling in from outside, and he sat back down on the bed, perching rather awkwardly at the edge somewhere around Martin’s drawn up knees.
“Try to go to sleep,” he said, still keeping his voice as gentle as he could. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Martin’s eyes fluttered slowly closed, and Jon hoped it wouldn’t prove to be too much of a lie, that Martin really would feel better in the morning. But he suspected it would take longer than a couple of nights to recover from being besieged for a fortnight. He sat there, listening to Martin’s breathing, which was mostly quiet and even, but with an occasional little hitch that showed he wasn’t quite over his crying fit. Once again, Jon wished it was Tim here instead of him. Tim would know just how to make Martin feel better, with the added benefit that he hadn’t been bullying the poor man for months on end.
There was a slight movement beside him, and one pale hand crept out from under the duvet. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Jon could quite easily see Martin’s eyes blink open, his hand reaching towards Jon, palm upturned. It was obvious what he wanted. Well, Jon had come this far, hadn’t he? If Martin needed his hand held to feel comfortable, or safe, or just able to fall asleep, Jon could do that. He rested his hand gently in Martin’s and threaded their fingers together. Martin’s eyes fell shut again.
Jon wasn’t sure how long he sat there in the darkness and the silence. Martin’s hand was very warm, much warmer than his, and every so often his fingers would tremble and squeeze around Jon’s, and Jon would squeeze back, hoping to be reassuring, and Martin’s would relax again. He found himself humming under his breath without meaning to. Rose, Rose, Rose, Red. Not particularly suitable as a lullaby, perhaps, but it was what came into his mind.
And eventually, after what felt like a long time, Martin’s hand went limp in his and Martin’s breath evened and deepened, and Jon knew that he was asleep.
He sat there a little while longer, just in case Martin wasn’t properly asleep and woke up distressed. But he didn’t. All that happened was that he made a little snuffling noise and turned his head into the pillow. Jon laid Martin’s hand down carefully on top of the duvet and got up. Martin was asleep. It was time for Jon to go home and try to achieve the same.
And maybe do some googling.