Work Text:
Martin has always been alright at planning; when he was a kid, he looked at events pinned up on message boards when he went to the grocery store with his mum, always got the parents of the few friends he had to pick him up and bring him along. Sitting in the break room, he breathes over a mug of Lady Grey when he hears arguing through the wall. Jon and Tim again. He felt the tension boiling over for the first time two or three weeks after they came back from leave.
At that point the tone shift just seemed cosmetic – butterfly bandages that’d come off in less than a month, gas that made the air feel lighter and an investigation that had to have an end. And maybe it still will, but his new theory is that their reactions will outlast the events that started them. When Tim stormed out of Jon’s office it was too unfamiliar of a scene to seem like it was something that’d be familiar. Now it’s in that teetering place between a bad day and background noise, the one that makes Martin stiffen in his seat because sometime, that’ll make someone leave for good and he doesn’t really…see anyone outside of this?
“D’you ever worry about them? Jon and Tim, I mean?” He asks Sasha, who mirrors him at a stool by the break room counter with her own mug of chamomile and a look that’s blank but lacks distance. Martin, in all his vigilance, can’t figure her out. Her skin hasn’t been burrowed into since the time she went to the graveyard with that Michael thing, and her shoulder doesn’t even fall by her side at that weird angle any more. Maybe Martin’s the same – he’s not as self-aware as he’d like to be, but maybe his sharpness is fading in the same way hers is.
“Well,” Sasha says, still more still than the Archive used to be in the beginning. Everyone’s changing. Martin can and will get used to this. “I think that they’re stressed, right?”
“Right,” Martin says, a sigh coming out of his nose. “Can we – I don’t know – help them?” He wants professional facades and the simple feeling of being creeped out together and sighing it off as they go home – he wants all of that back. It’s not happening, Martin’s realistic enough to know that, but he can diffuse the tension a bit.
Sasha takes a sip of tea, expression still placid – maybe she’s coping through a level of distance. That’d be – why would she be having this conversation in the first place if that was the case. “Well, y’know, I saw an advertisement for a dancing social. Take work out of the picture, and we’re cutting out some of the stress.” Now there’s the logic she always applied.
“Sounds good,” he says. “Tickets, though…?”
“Five per person. I’ll pay – it’s seven thirty PM on Friday.” Well that’s simple, sounds fun too. Jon and Tim will probably hate it, but Jon hates everything he’s dragged along to, and isn’t hating something together one of the purest forms of bonding there is? For all intents and purposes, it could make Martin feel even more isolated among the rising drama, but a last-ditch effort if the first kind of effort available.
So, what’s Martin’s master plan for talking to an even more closed off Jon without pouring salt in anything that reaches the surface? There isn’t really one, but he’s in his comfort zone – rushing to make a comforting mug of tea, and of course, planning. It helps that the plot is already half-made.
–
The door is open – Jon either forgot to close it, or somebody just left his office. Martin knocks on the wall, as a courtesy. “Come in,” he responds. He sounds tired – not the struggling to speak type of tired, not even trying to hide it. His words sound glassy, like tone is pressed to the outside of his throat instead of following the lines drawn out by his words. Martin comes in with some consolation black tea, placing it on his desk.
Jon shifts his gaze towards Martin without moving – his veneer of professionalism was gone long ago, first burnt away in increments as Martin moved into the Archive and now cauterized and pulled too taut to move. “What do you want?” he asks.
“You need a break, Jon,” he tries to assert himself. “Something to do that isn’t working or sleeping – if you’re even, um, sleeping,” he falters at the intense, unmoving stare of the head Archivist. Still, concern seems natural – and it is. It’s the whole reason he’s doing this, so why not express it? “Do you want to go to a – a barn dance? It’s a social thing. I figure it’ll, I don’t know, help you loosen up?”
“Did you invite Tim?” Jon asks, swallowing down something. Right. They just argued.
Martin sighs. “Tim’s going to be on board, okay? Now Sasha has already paid for our tickets. Are you coming or not?”
Jon sighs into his hand. “I really don’t have time for this, and I’m trying to figure things out.”
Martin goes to his backup argument. “You’re already paid for,” and Jon concedes.
“When is it, then?”
–
And now for Tim. Martin doesn’t know why Sasha couldn’t just talk to him, nor why he expected her to in the first place. He finds him in the office, on his sticker-adorned computer. Doing follow-up for a case, probably. That’s a good sign – he’s probably cooled down by now. It’s been a few hours. Elias came down at one point to uninstall the Co2 extinguishers. “Prentiss is dead, yes?” He’d said, and that prompted Jon out of his dwelling with a sigh that dropped his shoulders as he leaned himself against the wall.
“Yes, but if there’s another Flesh Hive, or something else attacking the Institute–” “Then we deal with it when it happens. I don’t want servicing all of these canisters to take out Institute funding.” It’d formed into an argument that hardened into a compromise. He wouldn’t take all of the pumps out today, but some of them had to go. Tim must’ve used that time to reset without Jon telling him how to do so.
“Hey Tim?” Martin asked as he sat down at the desk beside him, opening up his own old laptop. “You want to go to a dancing social with me, Jon, and Sasha?” Tim must want the tension to disperse as much as Jon does, or just see Jon do something other than fall asleep at his desk for the third time this week because he just says “Sure.”
–
Sasha comes early. She’s apparently part of the planning committee or something on the weekends. Martin, Jon, and Tim don’t talk on the train ride commute. It’s not clear how much they understand that fun is desperately required. It’s held on the weekends at some church, but not held by the church. As the three enter, they note the live music – a stage with a band of probably-college students just about to start. Sasha waves the Archive workers over.
Looking around the crowd, it seems a bit more informal than anticipated. Jon is wearing a sweater vest over a white button-down, not too strange for him, but Martin put on one of his nicer sweaters and Tim has a bolo tie on with khakis and a collared button-down. Some people are wearing hoodies or T-shirts, and they feel overdressed.
“C’mon! We’re picking our partners for the first dance,” Sasha says, a smile stretched out. Martin wonders when she joined the planning committee – she’d always liked her evenings and weekends free, but maybe this was a welcome breach. Martin gravitates to Sasha – Jon and Tim need it, and it works.
“Stand across from your partners,” a man with a name tag that says Rick begins. “Make two lines.” The four Magnus Institute employees are in a square, Martin and Tim next to each other with their respective partners across from them. Rick seems to move effortlessly with the committee member across from him. “Do-si-do your partner. Do-si-do your neighbor,” is thrown out along with other instructions that result in the groups dropping down the line. Then the music begins – it’s some folk stuff. Martin’s into it, Jon and Tim are just pissed that they have to take each other’s hands.
About that, though, the contact makes the holes burrowed into them feel more exposed than ever. And with them prickling up to each of the two’s upper backs, they only get two or three switches down the line, grabbing their hands with new neighbors whose palms somehow don’t sweat and circling to the left in tune with the music – one of the strangers counts “one, two, three four,” and that’s four beats until Tim weakly grabs Jon’s wrists for the next move, feels a singe and tingle in them as they slide to his elbows, and drops himself against the head archivist’s weight.
They hold up the line, though the uniform bodies of the dancers keep moving around them. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong,” Martin asks as he gains awareness, expecting to see Tim crying or something with his sudden collapse. Sasha brings Martin along with the line, her smile only loosening a bit like nothing’s wrong.
He keeps an eye on Jon and Tim. As Tim tries to regain himself against the background of music that makes his head pound with a melody a bit too familiar, he straightens his back too quickly. The fabric must rub against the places the worms dug through his old shirt, and he takes an inhale and adjusts himself a little to the left. Jon is still stiff, pockmarks in his right arm finding his left hand as he presses thumbprints down just to see if he’ll react. “Oh my god, boss,” Tim hisses in pain. “I didn’t mean to, well, fall like that.” Jon just stands there. They wait for the first dance to be over.
“Thank your partners,” Rick says with the voice that sounds amplified by a microphone although both hands are still linked with those of the dancer that hasn’t spoken. Martin’s heart is racing as he gets out a quick thanks to Sasha and decides to poke around Jon and Tim’s business.
“You two alright?” He asks, though Jon is stiff like a corpse and Tim is slumped and shifting trying to find a comfortable way to stand. “I’m quite alright,” Jon lies before Tim can get another word in. “One more dance. I can do one more.”
“What?” Tim asks. “With all this literal nerve damage from the worm bites, my body can’t be arsed to stay upright. How are we meant to do this again?”
“We can, Tim. Just one more, then we can leave – or, uh, Sasha said there’d be a break afterwards. I’m just…,” Jon trails off. “We’ll do one more, okay?” He winces as he says it, talking with his hands isn’t very effective when they’re like swiss cheese with nerves living beneath it that are pinched and stabbed with every motion.
Rick tells them to find a partner they haven’t ended up with before. Martin pairs with Jon, while Sasha gravitates to Tim. None of them want to make a group with anyone outside of who they came with – tensions are high enough with just four people to deal with.
“Get in two lines again. Across from your partner.” He says, this time not participating in the dance himself. Jon’s not sure if it’s sleep deprivation, but it sounds like his jaw clicks when he talks. Yeah, he’s probably hearing things.
Rick walks around the room, teaching them the dance. Step in, step out, let the top group gallop down and back, take hands with your line and move through the arch that the last group makes. Then the music cuts on again. It’s in double-time, and Jon’s not sure how anyone could move that fast. His stomach wrenches. He already can’t really move his elbows, refuses to admit it so Martin knows he’s fine without being dragged out of the Archive, but this is too much. Just one night without watching everyone with all of the strangers housed in the sweaty building, including the ones he thinks he knows.
The stepping in and stepping back is fine, Jon’s back isn’t as hurt as Tim’s though his shoulders are tense and tingling and he should’ve known he was meant to rest. But as Jon and Martin become the top pair and gallop down, Jon’s own back stiffens and his hands loosen.
“We’re leaving,” Martin says as soon as the music falters out of volume. He isn’t alright at planning, and Tim and Jon aren’t alright, period.