Work Text:
The place doesn’t open till ten, but Martyn’s in there bright and early at 7:45 to open up.
Plenty to be done, after all - cleaning staff’s work is never done in a place like this. Grubby handprints to clean off the glass at every height, from inquisitive kids who haven’t quite learned how to read a please-don’t-knock-it-scares-the-fish piece of paper, to the grown adults that somehow manage to miss it even years into literacy. Spills, in the café and the halls, coffee and freshwater both. General bathroom unpleasantness, nothing so bad that it would be a problem if they let it fester overnight, just a bit of a slog. It’s all slog, really. Life is slog. Can’t go two feet without bumping into another slog.
Martyn mops and vacuums and breaks out the blue roll, absolutely not for the last time today. Every time they make it to the end of one, the lucky sod who’s finished it gets to ritually bonk everyone else with the paper tube at its tootsie-pop elusive centre.
(He’s never seen a tootsie pop. It’s just kind of a thing you hear about on telly. He wonders what they taste like.)
Still, the time between now and when front of house opens to the general public is his and his alone. He can work his way around the place in whatever order he pleases. Which is the same as the order he's always used, but it's not like he has to do it in this order.
When he makes it round to the saltwater tanks, there’s Blue Hair and Pronouns, running a scraper down the inside of the glass in the middle of the room. He’s new - just started working here a couple of weeks ago. Martyn’s still not sure if he’ll last.
“Oh, hello,” he murmurs, eyes not leaving the movement of the blade. “Good morning.”
“Alright,” says Martyn, pretending he’s busy with something else, but also not starting up the hoover. “Had a good weekend?”
“Yeah,” says Blue Hair, “it was quiet. I wish there were a few more clubs in town.”
“Missing student life, are you?”
He looks up, at last, makes fervent eye contact. “You have no idea.”
Martyn didn’t go to uni. As much as school was pushing for it, as much as he knew he’d get the grades to at least go somewhere, it was… there was a level of detachment in it. Like university was somewhere that other people went. Dreams for other people to achieve. Loans for other people to shoulder. And Martyn, rooted to the ground as he was, had instead found cheap rent close to home, and a cleaning job at the local aquarium - it just made sense, didn’t it?
Three years later, he’s settled into uninteresting equilibrium. Even the arrivals of brand new, rare fish have become expected. It’s just kind of life.
“Do go on.”
Blue Hair sighs dramatically. “I cannot get used to how boring the night life is here. I knew it was, like, ninety percent old people on the way in, but this is ridiculous. I haven’t had a hangover in months!”
“Well, hey, isn’t that a good thing?”
“I guess,” he pouts.
“Ah, you’ll work it out. Surely the other aquarists have, like, a pub quiz night or something? Gotta be some kind of excuse for it. It’s the great British pastime and all.”
He chuckles. Scottish, Martyn notes. Must be a long way from home, all the way out here. “Maybe. I’ve really only warmed up to Cleo so far.”
“Wait, Cleo was your first pick?” Martyn makes a huff of bemusement. “You’re mad. Tough as nails, she is.”
“She’s been nice to me so far.”
“Yeah, well, you better watch your back. One step outta line and you’re dead. They can be bloody brutal when they wanna be.” He knows her ire too well, has been on the wrong end of it more times than he can count (and he knows full well he’s bad at math, case in point).
“Okay,” says Blue Hair, like he doesn’t believe it. “Any other threats I should know about?”
Ah. In-house gossip - now this Martyn can claim his expertise in. “Well, if you’re gonna cosy up with Cleo, you should avoid Etho and his lot.”
“Etho is… white hair?”
“That’s the one. Him and the other front of house people, really, although you’re probably fine if you wanna get close with Skizz. I think they had a thing once? Cleo and Etho. And now it’s weird, y’know?”
“I can imagine,” Blue Hair smirks.
“Then, uh… Cleo’s good side… Pearl and BigB are probably also fine. They’re the café crew. Oh, and Lizzie, she’s in on weekends.”
“Should I be taking notes?”
“Yeah, obviously, get your pen out, this will be on the test.”
“My mistake!”
They both laugh, and Martyn realises that he’s forgotten to look busy for a little too long. “Right, well, this linoleum isn’t gonna clean itself, is it?”
“Hey, wait, my notes! How am I supposed to study in these conditions?”
A line, however fleeting, passes through Martyn’s head - you give me your phone number, I’ll text you the answer key. He doesn’t even know this man’s name, for god’s sake, and here he is tempted to swap digits?
(He feels proud of himself, for a second. Then he feels bad about feeling proud.)
“Eh, I’m sure you’ll manage. Qualified for this job, didn’t you?”
“That’s different! I’ll have you know I spent several years checking my notes about marine biology. I barely know the difference between Scar and Bdubs right now.”
Martyn raises an eyebrow. There’s a pretty obvious difference between Scar and Bdubs. “One of ‘em’s way shorter.”
“That’s the problem!”
“I’m sure you’ll get it,” he says, dipping into a rare moment of sincerity, “and, y’know - if you don’t, everybody’s wearing nametags at least?”
Blue Hair hums. “True. Except you.”
“Oh - Martyn.” He’s… kind of not used to people not knowing his name. Been a long time since anyone new got added to the staff, and that was Pearl, about two years ago now? They’ve got a good thing going round here. “I’m Martyn.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Martyn!”
“And do I get to know your name as well, or am I just gonna have to keep calling you Blue Hair and Pronouns in my head?”
He laughs at that, full-bodied, like he hasn’t heard a joke he liked that much in a good long while. “No, you can - c’mere, you can read it. My nametag’s brand new, actually, it just came in on Friday.”
Martyn makes a show of trying to read it through the glass between them. “Alright, that’s not working, I’m clearly going blind already.”
“I said come here!” Blue Hair extends his free hand, the one that’s not gloved and coated in algae runoff, across the tank and makes a move for Martyn’s shoulder.
He ducks it - “You’re not dunkin’ me that easily!” Scar’s got him with that before; it’s only really funny the second time.
They have a little chase around the island in the middle of the room, the tank that’s only home to a couple of weird little marine life who don’t do much. Martyn might have the lay of the land already, but he can’t quite match up to Blue Hair’s smaller frame and agility. Eventually, he’s cornered. “There you go.”
“Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be chasing you?”
“I don’t know,” says Blue - says Scott, his name is, on the tag, “do you want me playing hard to get?”
“‘S nice to meet you too, Scott.” Martyn offers a hand to shake, claws back what amount of his personal space that he can manage.
Scott takes it.
They run into each other again later in the week, when there’s been a bit of a bigger splash than normal at feeding time. Who knew the catfish could get so enthusiastic?
“Shift up, then,” Martyn says to announce himself, bringing in the aquavac in their time of greatest need.
Scott and Bdubs back away in sync. “Wasn’ his fault,” Bdubs reassures, “old Betsy’s just gettin’ a li’l excited in her old age.”
“That normal for catfish?”
“Uh -” Bdubs postures performatively “- yeah, Martyn. Am I the fish expert here or are you?”
“I think there’s a couple of fish experts in the room, actually.”
Both sets of eyes turn to Scott. “I mean, it’s not, like, weird.”
Satisfied with this assessment, Martyn gets back to his actual task of clearing up the water. As he works, he notices Scott picking sullenly at his trousers.
“Regretting your life choices?”
“These are nice jeans,” says Scott.
“Oh, yeah, no, you don’t wear nice pants to work,” Bdubs nods solemnly. “You never know when you’re gonna get poop on you. I was workin’ with a pod of penguins, once, you wouldn’t believe the mess!”
“Pods are dolphins,” Scott points out, but Bdubs seems to scoff at the importance of taxonomy.
With the spill cleaned up, and the awkward surveillance of another member of the aquarist team, Martyn reckons he’d better actually get on with his rounds instead of lingering about to get a bit more water-testing small talk in.
He shouldn’t really be testing any waters anyway, he reminds himself. He’s got prior engagements to answer for. Hope to hold on to. Promises to keep.
Instead, he sticks to his purpose here, and follows a magnet path around the premises, mopping up behind the messes that the various guests of the morning leave. On his lunch break, he pops out to grab a sausage roll and a cup of tea from the Greggs down the road and eats it sitting on the curb outside the car park. After this long in the business, he’s developed a sixth sense for feeling out when the lunch rush fades from the cafe; he waltzes back in, broom in hand, right about the time that Pearl is moving to put a sign up on the door.
“How’s it going?” she asks him.
“Not bad, yeah.” He artfully sweeps around the carcass of a fallen can of Coke and the sticky residue of its spillage. He’ll get to that when he’s back on the mop. “Have you had a chance to meet the new guy yet?”
“What, blue fella?” Pearl grimaces. “Yeah, ish. I spilled his drink on the first day, got ice all over both of us. He’s not come in while I’m on the till since then.”
“Oh,” Martyn muses with raised eyebrows, “interesting.”
“Why d’you ask?”
“Just wondering. Y’know, I’ve only run into him once or twice, I can’t really get a read on him in that time, right?”
She squints at him. “I s’pose.”
“You get it,” Martyn declares, and drives back in on his sweeping before she can get another question in. The last thing he needs right now is Pearl and BigB keeping eyes on him.
When he goes back through for another round of child handprint removal, he finds himself in the rockpool room, ear caught by a familiar accent.
“So you can see there are two pools,” Scott is telling a group of about a dozen primary school kids, “we have the starfish pool, which is the lower one, and then the higher one is the urchin pool. You are allowed to put your hands - not yet - you can put your hands in the lower pool, and you can touch the starfish, in a second, please,” he insists, dragging some six year old’s hand away from the surface of the water, “but please don’t touch any of the animals in the higher one. Sea urchins, if you could all take a look at it for a second, don’t put your hands in, sea urchins are very spiky, do you see?”
A dozen tiny murmurs of agreement sound in canon.
“That’s a defense mechanism. They’re trying to make sure that none of the bigger animals in the sea can eat them.”
“Why would they want to eat it?” asks a girl in a high-vis yellow vest, who looks about one step removed from a child leash.
“Because they’re hungry! There’s only so much to eat at the bottom of the sea,” Scott explains, in a tone that’s halfway between gentle and condescending. “But you’d have to be very careful if you wanted to eat one of these!”
She looks puzzled for a moment; then she shrugs, mollified, and turns to poke at the starfish pool instead.
Scott looks up, just for a second, and catches Martyn’s eye.
Martyn makes a face that tries to convey kids, am I right?
Scott’s gaze darts away, though, as soon as it’s landed, like a dragonfly with an agenda. Instead, he launches into a list of fun facts about starfish. They come in many shapes, Martyn learns, as he busies himself in polishing the tank with the rays in it, including more or less than five-pointed stars. Some starfish can look like squares; others have more than a dozen limbs. He’s never put much thought into the concept of starfish, but it definitely makes sense that they’d come in different varieties. Animals are a lot more variable than most people give them credit for.
Eventually, the woman chaperoning the group of kids encourages them to move through to the next room, so they can take a look at the pond exhibit. Martyn should probably have got ahead of them while he had the chance.
Buuut, since he hasn’t, and it’d be a hassle to follow them through the building now…
“Interesting stuff,” he says, low, backing into the display with his cloth slung over his shoulder. “You ever seen a squarefish in real life?”
“No,” says Scott, “careful where you’re putting your hand.”
He freezes, arm midair, and cranes his neck to check where his palm was about to land. It is not, as he had planned, on path to collide with the other side of the display, where the informational plaque is nailed into the stone display corner. “Shit,” he hisses, pulling it away from the sea urchin’s quills, “that was close, huh?”
Scott smirks at him. “You’re welcome.”
“Never liked that thing, anyway,” says Martyn, “I don’t understand why it’s even in the display in the first place. Surely you get half a dozen kids complain about getting spiked every week.”
“Less than you’d think! Or, at least, it’s been a good month.”
He pivots, so his back isn’t facing the water, and leans with a carefully placed elbow on the glass wall instead. “Nasty little bugger,” he continues.
“Someone’s got a grudge. Did you get spiked when you were a child?”
“No, no, I just think it’s a stupid animal!”
“Did you know,” he grins, “that sea urchins have their mouths on the sea floor, and their anus pointing out the top? We have to feed them pellets, they grab it with their feet and just -” Scott makes a little scooping gesture “- drag it under them.”
Martyn snorts. “See what I mean? Unauthorized fucking things. Anything that’s got its face on the bottom and its butt on the top, I don’t trust.”
Scott laughs as well, and it strikes Martyn how nicely the tealy-turquoise of the polo shirt he’s wearing for a uniform goes with his hair. How good he looks in this shirt, just in general, really.
And then he flinches, and averts his gaze. Thoughts that get in the way of prior engagements; thoughts that should not be entertained.
“Well, if you hate it that much, I suppose we’ll have to move the conversation somewhere else?”
“No, no, I should get on,” he levers himself upright and raises hands to excuse himself, “I’ll catch you about though, yeah?”
“I hope so,” Scott tells him, like an instruction. “I still want to get to know you better.”
As he carries on, he wonders, still?
They do keep running into each other. Maybe Martyn shifts about his previous routine a little to account for those encounters. Maybe this is how he’s always routed through the building, and anybody claiming otherwise just hasn’t been paying enough attention. He’ll never tell.
It’s honestly quite refreshing to be done with the bathrooms first thing in the morning, although for years now he’s been putting them off until about ten minutes before front of house opens. Instead, he’s cleared up everything that doesn’t involve the main floor by the time the aquarists have finished their feeding rounds; it’s a very efficient system that way.
“Martyn,” Cleo starts, and he can already tell this is going to go badly, “where have you been for the last forty minutes?”
“Did the bathrooms and the café?”
“Can you, like… be where the mess is? Please?”
“I mean, I’m pretty confident saying that the toilets are where the mess is most days -”
“You know what I mean,” she sighs. “We had a bad spill in the brackish bit, we had to break out the emergency bucket.”
“See? You had it under control. Nothing a load of blue roll can’t fix.”
“It’s still not good,” they fold their arms, “I don’t wanna have to petition for you to get a walkie talkie.”
“Oh, please can we do that, I want a walkie talkie!”
“You can pay for one out of pocket, and I’m only gonna use it to whinge at you.”
“Ey, who says you get the other one? I’m givin’ it to Scar!”
Cleo makes a face.
“Okay, yeah, Scar’ll just start telling me about Star Wars while I’m trying to dilute bleach.”
“Just - please don’t completely vanish from the main floor when there’s a high chance we’re gonna need your equipment.”
“You got it, boss,” he salutes.
“Not your boss.”
“You got it, gamer!”
Cleo’s expression as he strolls away is indescribable.
The bright side of it is, as always, his little conversations. In a move that’s perhaps cute or perhaps concerning, Scott has worked out when he takes his lunch break, and begun following him down to the shops for his hour out. Well, that or it’s a weird coincidence, but after maybe the fourth time that he spotted Scott elsewhere in the line at Pret, he’s come to assume the former. When he raises the question, Scott admits with wide eyes that he’s just new in town, and he didn’t know where else to go, and he’d been packing lunches before this development. Martyn decides to believe it.
They chat on the curb by the car park, and they chat over the sweep-arc of mop water on the plastic coated floor, and they chat in the corner by the broom closet at the end of Martyn’s shift. Martyn learns a lot about Scott: that he’s three years older than Martyn, give or take; that he studied Marine Biology in St Andrews, straight out of college; that he’d been in Madagascar studying coral reefs for six months before he came back to the UK and ended up here. It’s a bloody big story for a man his age.
“What made you pick up sticks like that?” he asks, fiddling with the corner of his sandwich bag. “Run off to an island off the coast of Africa, that’s far. You don’t just do that on a whim.”
Scott takes a moment to respond. “It’s a unique ecosystem. Some things you can’t just learn from textbooks and labs.”
“So you travelled all those thousands of miles across the globe… for a change in ecosystem?”
He hums assent.
“Alright,” says Martyn, not convinced. “Was it good, at least?”
“Oh, it was amazing,” Scott gushes, suddenly effervescent at the thought of it, “if you’ve never actually seen a coral reef before you have no idea what it’s like. It’s so beautiful, and so expansive, I could have stayed underwater for hours just exploring and looking at all the different species, and the anemones, and…”
Martyn folds his sandwich bag into a tiny square while he listens to Scott talk. Evidently, this is what he’s here for.
They head back, of course, and finish out the work day same as ever. It’s a couple of days before they really cross paths again, during which time Martyn begrudgingly makes himself available on the main floor before he really has to. Cleo seems satisfied with his availability again, at least.
The nights are getting longer, now. Martyn’s been able to leave while it was still light out every day this week. But if there’s any problems that crop up at shutdown, they’ve gotta be corrected on the spot, and that means he ends up dossing about the front entrance on his phone for a while on Friday, waiting to be sure that the newly delivered fish have made it in and out of quarantine okay and don’t need mopped up after.
He wanders round a bend, and who is it but Scott that he finds leant up against the pufferfish display.
Leant with his head against the glass, face turned away from Martyn in the doorway. Shoulders moving. Heaving, even.
Martyn turns around and walks back out.
He waits a lot longer than he has any right to, all things considered. Clearly, if they needed him, they’d come get him. Instead, he’s not disturbed until Scott comes trotting past him where he’s sitting on the front step of the building.
“Martyn,” he says, and there’s a measure of surprise in it.
“All clear in there?”
“I- yeah,” Scott nods. If you weren’t listening out for it, you wouldn’t pick up on the stray stickiness of tears clogging up his throat, or the dull streaks on his skin. “It worked out fine. I think Bdubs is locking up.”
“Great, sick, yeah.”
“Martyn,” he repeats.
“Mm?”
“Can I ask you out?”
The wind knocks out of him. “Can you?”
“... Okay, yeah, fine, I’m asking you out. Let’s get dinner.”
“I’ve been meaning to get your number, yeah,” he admits, “just - had a couple things on my mind, is all.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” says Scott. “So let’s get dinner. I’m sure we’ll find plenty of other things to think about.”
Martyn stands up, because it feels a little awkward to be having this conversation with his eyeline flush with Scott’s kneecaps. “Dinner where?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one who’s lived here for… um.”
“Forever.”
“See? You’ll know.”
He purses his lips. “There is a good pub down by the funeral home. King’s Head. Does a bangin’ fish and chips.”
“As if we don’t have enough fish in our lives already,” Scott points out.
“Burger and chips, then. Chicken schnitzel. Get the vegetarian.”
“We’ll see what happens?”
“Yeah,” Martyn grins, pulling out his phone again to get that number, “I guess we will.”
“Would I be right in assuming that this stuff’s nothing like the kind you were looking at in Mauritania?”
“Madagascar,” Scott corrects gently. “Yeah, there’s… a pretty wide gulf between the species that live in Réunion and the kinds that can survive in a tank in England. And they’re a lot of work, even then.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm! For one thing, you have to keep the pH balance in the tank exactly right. Lucky they make machines for that, but still, we have to test it constantly to be sure they’re not dying of malnutrition behind our backs.”
“Picky bastards, are they?”
Scott chuckles. “You could put it that way. And of course they need natural lighting, too, because it would be too easy if we could just turn on the fluorescents, so the lights in that room are on a specific sunlight imitation program.”
“Ohhhh,” says Martyn, “that’s the room where I’m not allowed to change the bulbs. Where they get a specialist in every couple months.”
“I would expect so.”
“What about cleaning the tank, is that twice as hard as well?”
“Eh,” Scott shrugs, “you can mostly just go at it with a toothbrush and it’ll be fine.”
“Instead of the big scrapers? That must take fuckin’ forever.”
“Kind of! They’re not plants, they’re more closely related to jellyfish, so they can get attitudes.”
Martyn makes a face. “I’ve known some plants get attitudes before.”
“You two,” interrupts a familiar voice, “are you gonna keep - keep chip-chabbering away there, or are you gonna feed the coral?”
“Sorry, Scar,” says Martyn, “just wanted to see the demonstration!”
It’s true, as well. Martyn’s fascinated by the fact that Scott is holding - … he’s pretty sure those are prawns - in a bag, with the hand that hasn’t been loosely entwined with Martyn’s this whole time. Those are, apparently, the coral food. He has literally no idea what it’s going to look like, watching a coral fan eat a prawn.
“Alright,” Scar rolls his eyes, “well, don’t tell Mom you’re letting unauthorised personnel in on the secret.”
“It’s not a secret,” argues Scott, “animals eat food, that’s just a thing.”
Scar must not see the worth in debating, because he leaves them to it. Martyn watches, in vaguely horrified amusement, as Scott climbs into the tank and then threads the needle between leaving the little crustaceans for the coral to eat, without letting the butterfly fish that flit around the mini-reef get to it first. He looks good in waders, too, somehow. Maybe he just looks good in anything.
With the coral appropriately nourished, Scott changes back into his normal walking about clothes (he’s learned to not wear nice trousers in the intervening months, but these ones are clean at least). “Good news,” he greets, once he’s back on dry land, “those were not the ones with the leak in them.”
“Wahey,” says Martyn, “last thing you need is a wet leg!”
“Eh - you get used to it.”
After work, Martyn sits on the front step, as ever; Scott comes to greet him, as ever; they go back to Scott’s place, which is a damn sight prettier than Martyn’s. (He’s been thinking about not renewing his let at the end of the twelve months. Aquarist just pays better than janitor, and it shows.)
A lot of the time, they’ll watch movies. Martyn will cook, if he’s got the energy left in him, and if he doesn’t then they’ll treat themselves to a Chinese, because the delivery options around here are pretty severely lacking outside of Chinese food. They drink, when there’s wine in the fridge. Ninety percent of the time, it ends in at least a healthy dose of heavy petting.
It’s not what Martyn spent eighteen years of his life dreaming about, but it’s Scott, and that means that it doesn’t have to be.
Tonight, Scott’s made himself at home in Martyn’s lap while some Marvel movie plays on the screen behind him. They were making out, amid the dulcet tones of Captain America having a fight with Iron Man, but now they’ve fallen into a comfortable spell of silence. Scott’s head rests against the flat of Martyn’s collar.
“Y’know,” Scott mumbles into the fabric of Martyn’s shirt, “I missed this.”
“Missed what, my shoulder?”
He shakes his head indignantly. “No -” it’s a little slurred from intoxication “- not that. I missed… I guess intimacy.”
Martyn swallows. They haven’t discussed their respective relationship histories before. “Bit of a dry spell?”
“Mmm, well, that’s offensive. He didn’t mean to… He didn’t leave me.”
“And he is?”
“I, um.” Scott pushes off of Martyn’s lap to the other cushion of the sofa. Evidently, this is a full eye-contact, no lap-sitting conversation. “I was engaged. Last year.”
Funny story, so was I, only mine had been sitting on the back burner for a hot minute. “And something happened?”
“He’s dead.”
Oh, shit. “I’m - god, I’m sorry. That sucks.”
“That’s why I went away like that. In my fourth year, I was - we’d been together since I was eighteen, we were gonna get married when I graduated. And he died. So.” He chokes on a tear-saturated laugh. “Little bit hard to submit your final project after that.”
“I can imagine, yeah,” fuck.
“But I managed it, somehow. He had these friends, childhood friends, they helped me through it. And then when it was said and done, and I got my diploma, I… moved to Madagascar. Until I felt like I could look at anything close to home without breaking.”
“Mhm?”
“And then I got this job. And I got you. And I like this.” One tear manages to fall, escaping through the prison bars of Scott’s eyelashes between blinks. “I just… missed this feeling, is all.”
“Well, don’t sit there and deprive yourself of it, then, come on,” says Martyn, pulling Scott back in for a proper hug. “I’ve got a sob story as well, if we’re swapping.”
“Sure?”
God. Where to begin with explaining Ren?
There are a thousand places he could start. Mud potions on the playground. Secret societies under the slide. Rituals out in the woods over summer. Childhood adoration turned to infatuation imperceptibly, in the space of a bus ride home. The way the sunlight had caught on his hair, golden brown, and Martyn had decided that he’d never love anyone else the same.
And, now, an absence. A hollow feeling that had come with Ren’s ticket out of this town, leaving Martyn behind to mop floors. DMs between them left to mould in disuse. Nothing but hopes to hold on to and prior engagements to keep on the books.
He has no idea how to make it all make sense. He died, so I went to Madagascar is a hell of a lot more clear cut.
“So, y’know how every queer kid’s got a story where they fall in love with their best friend?”
BigB sets a pot of tea between them; sugar cubes on the side; two cups and saucers with teaspoons slotted through the handles. Scott starts pouring, zeroed in on the task.
Martyn locks eyes with BigB, and wishes he hadn’t.
“So,” he says, big grin and all, “how are things going with you two?”
He can already tell that playing dumb’s not gonna work. He doesn’t have any better ideas, though. “I mean, we’re about to have a nice little sit down for the next fifteen minutes, unless you’ve got any better ideas?”
“C’mon, man. I wanna hear the good stuff!”
“There’s no good stuff to say,” Martyn lies, “we’re literally just drinking tea.”
“It’s your first time up to bat, since -” BigB makes a sweeping gesture that means Ren “- I just wanna make sure it’s working out for ya, y’know?”
Martyn’s eyes flick across the table to Scott, who is taking a surreptitious sip of his tea instead of contributing. He mulls it over, puts the cup back down, and stands to go grab some milk.
BigB turns for just long enough to watch him go, and then makes himself at home in Scott’s chair, for some reason. “Seriously, Martyn. You’re happy?”
He offers a smile that’s a little coloured with discomfort. “Be a lot happier if you two weren’t having a massive nosey in my business like this.”
“Hey,” Pearl protests from the till, “don’t drag me into this!”
“I am literally ninety-nine percent sure you’ve got a bet going about whether we’ve -” okay, maybe his coworkers don’t have bets on his sex life, but it’s probably something close to it “- something, at least. Some milestone. And I don’t really wanna be the one who’s putting money in either of your pockets.”
“Awww,” pouts BigB, “you’re not gonna tip?”
He huffs. “I’ll tip, yeah, but I won’t tip you off about whatever it is you’re squabbling over. No satisfaction from me, guaranteed.”
Scott returns to the table, two milk tubs in hand, to find his seat occupied. “Excuse me.”
“You guys are so mean,” BigB gives in. “Martyn, I want you to blink twice if you’ve already shared all your dark secrets.”
Martyn engages for a staring contest.
Unfortunately, BigB’s damn good at staring contests.
“Ugh,” he blinks once, deliberately, just to prove his point, “can you at least give him back his chair?”
“Give who?”
“Him.”
“Sorry, I’m not familiar.”
“You know who Scott is.”
“What’s your relation?”
“He’s -” my boyfriend, right, okay, that’s what BigB wants to hear. That’s how he gets his tenner. “He’s the man whose coat is on the back of that chair, actually, and I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with the concept of finders keepers?”
“Sure,” BigB shrugs, letting Scott back to his place, “and how’s being a kept man for you?”
Martyn scoffs. “Kept man?”
“So you’re not together?”
“Hold on,” Scott interrupts, “who exactly gets the money?”
“I said you’re definitely already exclusive,” BigB explains, “Pearl’s money has been on Ren for, like, ten years, though.”
Scott’s expression withdraws, just a little. “Well, I’m afraid she’s gonna have to give it up.”
She groans, dramatically throwing herself across the counter, inches from her hair landing in the coffee machine. BigB fist pumps the air. “Martyn,” she complains.
“Sor- ry,” says Martyn, “s’not my fault I moved on, is it?”
“It kind of is. Like entirely.”
“Well, I don’t see how it’s your problem.”
“I just lost ten pounds, you nugget! You gotta tip me off about these things!”
“It’s his life,” Scott points out sternly, “he doesn’t have to tell you shit.”
“I could’ve been celebrating for the happy couple this whole time,” BigB laments. “With my ten pounds. That I won.”
“Alright, alright, shut up about your tenner,” Martyn shoos them both back to the counter from whence they came, “if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got tea to drink before it goes cold.”
Scott’s hand finds Martyn’s knee under the table; Martyn wraps his own fingers over it.
As much as the rest of the staff will be thrilled to hear about their workplace fling when Pearl and BigB gossip it into circulation over the course of the next few hours, the time between then and now is theirs and theirs alone.