Chapter Text
“Here.”
“Oh- um. Thanks, Mr. Bouchard.”
“Of course.”
“How big of a slice would you want? Big, small, or-?”
“I have no preference.”
“ Alright then. I’ll just-”
Martin was getting tired of Elias, honestly. Every talk with him felt like a nice little stroll to the guillotine, no matter how innocuous . Even now, with Elias handing him a literal knife to cut Jon’s birthday cake, it felt like he was toeing some sort of line that Elias could see and he couldn’t . This was so much worse than the CV thing. With a cautious glance to his boss, Martin crept back to the counter of the break room where the cake rested quietly on the counter. The large knife felt all too heavy in his hand as he stared at the sickeningly sweet frosting, calculating exactly how he should cut it.
He heard Tim, Sasha, and Jon all chatting on the other side of the room. Something about going out for drinks after work, or apologizing for scaring the daylights out of Jon, or something like that. He’d heard snippets of it the last time he was here, so he didn’t bother straining his ears too hard to stay included like he had before. That was the old him, this was the new. They were waiting for the cake. So was Elias – Jonah. Jonah . The name left a rancid taste in his mouth and feeling in his mind. Though he let the feeling pass in case the man himself was trying to pry his head open like usual .
“Hey, Martin! The birthday boy needs his slice!” Was what Tim said. Martin startled at that and remembered his job.
“Right, sorry! I’m on it.”
“No worries!”
Right. Now to just cut it. Easy. Simple, really. His hand that brandished the shiny kitchen knife raised, poised to stab into the white frosting. For a moment he thanked every god out there ( not the fears) that the cake’s icing wasn’t red. That would make it so much more difficult.
As the shiny steel made contact with the fluffy sweet, something burst from the surface. Martin’s stomach dropped as something wet and warm flecked on his face, spraying from the cake as if he had broken a sprinkler. His hand parted with the utensil and flew up to his face, desperately wiping the red spots on his glasses. Judging by the warmth clinging to his chest, the substance had stained more than his face. His vision cleared and he realized it was blood . It had bursted from the cake as he stabbed it, like he had- He spun on his feet to face his friends to see if they could help him or- or something. Nobody seemed too startled when he faced them, just confused lightly at his certainly quaking expression.
“Something wrong?” asked Sasha, tilting her head.
Martin took a moment, just shaking like a leaf and gauging their reactions. Nobody was looking at his jumper. Nobody but- Jonah Magnus gazed upon Martin with a Knowing look. His sharp eyes flickered to his blood-soaked attire for a split second before meeting his gaze. Of course.
“No, I’m- I thought I saw something is all,” Martin explained, gritting his teeth after. He wasn’t really wrong, he supposed. Half truths. They were Jonah’s specialty, anyway. If asked, he could say he learned from the best. He spun back around to face the oozing cake once more, determined to cut Jon’s slice. As he slid the knife through too-solid sponge cake – which spilled more blood with every millimeter he cut – he tried to think about more pleasant things; Jon specifically wanted the corner of the cake because it usually had the most frosting. The man had never told Martin the preference specifically, but he could always guess by the way he took extra sugar in his tea. That man had a sweet tooth, for sure. Not that he should know that now. Martin frowned as he finished separating the corner piece from the remaining area of the cake. He vehemently ignored the way the dark, viscous liquid streamed over the knife and down off the counter. If the blood were real, it would’ve terribly stained the carpet.
The knife clattered loudly on the counter after he dared to move the piece to a paper plate. It was not cake. In no world could that be cake . The cube with frosting adorning the top was not a sweet sponge. Instead, it was solid and fleshy, with horribly thick veins running around every side. It pulsed and pumped like a man. It wasn’t a man, either. Every now and then a seam would disturb the mass, revealing beady eyes with neon green irises. They watched him. Evidently there were arteries too, Martin thought ridiculously. Where else could all of this blood have come from? Wisely, he stumbled back from the mockery of a cake, his chest rising and falling quickly. The action made his darkened, sticky sweater cling to him.
“Is something wrong with the cake, Martin?” a smooth, all-too-knowing voice nearly cooed from the other side of the room. Martin wanted to look at the man. He wanted to glare and shout and scream how he wouldn’t play Jonah’s games – but his mouth slammed shut and his lip wobbled almost involuntarily. Not now. His friends would have too many questions.
Crashing out of the trance the eyeball-cake had caught him in, he felt a spiking pain on his left hand. His brain processed that at some point when moving the piece of cake to the plate – his bare left hand lightly supporting the edges as the knife in his right hand did most of the heavy lifting – the knife must’ve slipped and nicked his fingers. Amidst the fake blood, he could feel very real and warm droplets land on the carpet beneath his outstretched arms.
“I’m- uh. I cut myself, I think,” was all he could muster as an explanation, yet he refused to turn around. This stirred a rise from his coworkers- friends and he could hear their concern falling around him like a haze. Sasha was the first to approach. Her unfamiliar but familiar face moved around his periphery until she stood in front of his shaking fingers. He assumed she called for Tim to get a first aid kit of some kind. Though, after a minute she moved away from Martin, presumably to help a clueless Tim find the kit. Jon was- well, he was somewhere in the room.
Everything sort of felt like a shifting mist to his eyes. Through his imaginary blood-smudged lenses, he could see the walls swim. The offensive cake on the counter was practically taunting him from where it stood poised, like it wanted to take a bite out of him instead. Maybe it had , the open wound on his fingers whispered. His unblemished hand’s fingers moved to the cuts and pressed into them, trying to pry into what he pondered were teeth marks.
Warm hands grabbed his shoulders and struck him out of the daze like a bolt of lightning.
“Here, come sit down. I’ve got the kit,” Sasha’s tethering voice pulled him nearly as much as her sudden presence did. Somehow he ended up plopping down in the uncomfortable chair in the corner of the breakroom. From there, he could see Jon and Tim staring down at him a few feet away; They looked like they were the ones having a mini-breakdown. “Don’t touch the cuts, Martin – God.”
Martin ashamedly pried his right hand from his left, noting the concerning strand of blood connecting them like a web. He felt a bit sick at that, which was good. At least that was a normal thing to feel. Sasha began wiping the wounds gently with a clean rag. It was slightly damp and easily soaked up the spilling blood. It hurt in a way that made his face scrunch up like he’d eaten something sour. Martin felt his hand instinctively try to pull away from the pain, but he forced it to sit in place. To distract himself from it all, he let his head drop so that he could stare down at his jumper. Though the others couldn’t see it, it was still sticky and dark and- and then it was clean. As suddenly as the blood had sprayed on him, it faded away. His blue sweater was blue again, not the dirty purple the cake had made it. His vision still warped with smudges on the lenses of his glasses, but he knew those lingered from his own fingers.
When his throat felt less cluttered, Martin murmured a sorry towards Sasha – though he didn’t look up to face her.
“It’s fine, Martin. I don’t think any blood got on the cake,” Sasha attempted to comfort him, but it fell flat in his mind. Martin almost wanted to laugh about worrying about blood on the cake/not cake. He stifled his amusement, knowing that if he were to lift his head and face the counter, he would see a pleasantly-frosted sponge cake. “Look at me,” Sasha added suddenly; Her voice took on a firm tone.
Martin did as asked and lolled his head upwards.
“It’s fine . I’ll get this bandaged up and Tim can finish serving cake. He hardly does any actual work anyways. He can handle cutting a little cake.” Her words were punctuated with a jovial roll of eyes. The warmth of it bled into Martin’s frantic mind, and he could feel his chest rise and fall much slower than a few minutes prior. Right. He had friends. He’d do bloody well to keep it that way. With a plastic pop! of the kit, she pulled out the necessary bandages and pads. In only a minute or two, the whispers of his wounded fingers were stifled and it was blissfully quiet.
“Thanks, Sasha. I really appreciate it,” Martin praised with a small smile. It felt easier to wear when he could forget the piercing gray eyes surveying the room.
“Anytime.”
“I’m going to go- um. Wash my hand, I think,” hedged Martin, shakily standing from the chair.
“You don’t need anyone’s permission .”
“Right. Um. Thanks.”
And so Martin crossed the room to the small break room sink. It wasn’t too far down the counter from where Tim effortlessly – if not carelessly – sliced the large birthday cake. As he turned on the faucet, he said:
“Corner piece ‘s for Jon.”
Tim glanced up at Martin, his expression reading like he wasn’t prepared for any conversation at the moment. His hand holding the knife stilled momentarily before proceeding down its invisible path.
“I- alright, sure. If you want, you can take it to him while I cut the rest.” Tim’s voice held an air of caution to it. Martin recognized the tone instantly as he washed the deep red splotches from his right hand. He’d heard it many times before, particularly when Tim tried to coax Jon into going out to eat with the other assistants. It felt disconcerting to hear it towards himself, Martin thought. Instead of vocalizing these thoughts, Martin nodded, dried his hand on a paper towel, and chucked the paper towel in the bin near the counter. Silently, he stepped around Tim and picked up the paper plate.
It carried a simple, sponge cake slice. No flesh, no blood, and certainly no eyes. Excellent. Martin let out a minute sigh, which he hoped Tim didn’t pay all that much attention to. With a newfound resolve, Martin pivoted around and crossed the room to where Jon was standing. Unfortunately, the man in question was ensnared in a conversation with one Jonah Magnus . And then each step Martin took felt like another step closer to doom. To a world of fear.
“Here’s your piece, Jon,” Martin said, offering the slice up as casually as he could. He kept his eyes firmly on Jon, though he opted to stare at the man’s forehead instead of his eyes. He wondered briefly if it was a habit he’d picked up once Jon really Looked or if he had always instinctively avoided eye contact.
“Ah, thank you, Martin. Your hand, is it-?”
“It’s fine. Yeah. Not a problem.” Martin replied, with just a touch of nerve. It wasn’t purposeful, but he was already immensely thrown off-kilter. Jon stiffly took the plate from Martin’s hands and made sure the plastic fork precariously balanced atop it wouldn’t fall.
“ Glad to hear it.” But that wasn’t Jon’s voice. It was Jonah’s . He very rudely cut into their conversation. “Though I would hope an incident like this isn’t a daily occurance,” he added, just to be an arse (Martin assumed). Heat bloomed in Martin’s cheeks unpleasantly at Jonah’s words, feeling the sharp curl of shame in his stomach. Despite having seen the literal end of the world, Martin still couldn’t shake off the deeply ingrained fear of disappointing others. Brilliant. Something like that was forever etched into Martin. It embossed his form in such a way that a couple weeks (months? Years?) of the apocalypse couldn’t smooth it out – his parents certainly made sure of that. Martin fought the urge to snatch the cake knife and plunge it through his hand out of spite.
“I- Um. No, of course not,” was the only defense he could muster without rousing any suspicion.
“Good. Keep it that way.”
That was all Jonah left hanging in the air before he briskly walked to the counter, presumably to get his own slice of cake. Martin stood, glaring at nothing in particular. The heat slowly dissipated from his face, but he still felt gross and sweaty in a way he always did when interacting with people like Jonah. He could be courteous and amiable, but his body didn’t care; It would let its distaste be known. Or maybe he was overthinking things and it was just a result of his recent testosterone injections. The doctor did say it would make him sweaty and irritable. Though, he didn’t remember feeling quite this miserable at Jon’s original birthday he attended in the other universe.
“Happy birthday, Jon,” Martin said with as much joy as he could muster. Jon was hesitantly picking at his cake, clearly also perturbed by Jonah – Elias in his mind – and Martin’s conversation. The man’s lips flattened into a line that held a whisper of a curl at either end. Almost a smile.
“Er- Thanks.”
In the end, Martin didn’t have any cake. After the whole debacle, sponge cake looked rather too spongy in his eyes. Instead, he tossed out conversation starters to his friends, trying to bring back the levity that had been thoroughly sucked out of the room already. Jonah left the archives not too long after he’d picked his own cake slice, which Martin was grateful for. Of course, the man’s eyes were everywhere in the archives, so saying he was gone was a stretch. However, it was a stretch that Martin grasped onto like a life preserver in a hurricane. It was the only thought that could keep his pained smile on his face while his friends reluctantly returned to their chatter. Drinks after work was still on the table.
Despite his best efforts, the foggy outskirts of the break room grazed Martin’s shoulders and embraced him. He knew better. He knew better. Peter Lukas and the Lonely were only a means to an end. A horrible end that he had witnessed. And yet Jon, Sasha, and Tim stood oblivious to it all a few feet away. They ate their cake slices and talked in such a hopeful way. Like they didn’t have the fate of the world resting on their shoulders. Martin thought rather bitterly that The Beholding and The Forsaken had a lot in common. Secrets made him feel rather lonely.