Chapter Text
The first time Martin meets Jon is also only the second time he’s ever been into the archives proper; the first time had been frantic and awful and panicked, rushed down to try and help an old man whose name he’d never learned laid out on a battered old couch, choking on the wrongness of his own lungs.
It hadn’t worked. Martin tries not to think about it as he descends the ancient wood of the stairs. Each step creaks under his feet with the tone of a threat, a warning that any farther is a mistake, but he keeps going. What else is he supposed to do?
The archives themselves are dim and windowless with a fine layer of dust and silence that coats the stacks and catches the light in a way that feels wrong, shadows strange and grasping beneath the meager hanging bulbs.
He walks slowly into the maze of shelves, away from the relative comfort of the desks and breathing room, calling out in a voice that’s traitorously small, “hello?”
“Back here,” calls a brusque man’s voice from deeper in the stacks. Martin’s heart does some impressive footwork as he carefully picks his way across the floor, avoiding the scattered boxes full of paper that someone seems to have dropped in all kinds of inconvenient places.
And then he makes it to where the voice was calling from.
At first, in the thick and clinging darkness of the archives, all he can make out is— eyes , wide and luminous, except Martin counts three, four, no, a dozen or more, far too close together to be part of anything but the same creature—
And then the figure straightens, shifting into the warm yellow light, whole and human in every way he can see. His eyes—of which there are definitely only two —are a brown so dark and rich the irises are almost indistinguishable from his pupils. There’s a look in those eyes that’s strangely knowing, like he’s seen every foible of Martin’s life from afar already. Everything else about him seems normal enough at first glance; sure, he’s underweight, his posture atrocious, his hair disheveled in a way that makes a mockery of what was once a bun, but that’s fine. None of those exactly prove he’s some kind of—of basement monster.
He’s definitely gorgeous, though. Bedraggled, but gorgeous. Martin wants to braid his hair.
He blinks, slowly, those dark eyes boring into Martin’s core, staring like he’s waiting for something.
“Er,” Martin starts, coming in strong, “uh—Mister Bouchard, he, uh, he asked me to bring you this—you are the new archivist, right?”
“Ah. Yes. It’s Jon,” Jon says, his posture improving slightly as he moves to take the file. He begins to flip through it absently as he talks, scowling at the pages as if they’ve wronged him. “Hm. Thank you, I suppose. Honestly, why Elias never bothers coming down here himself I’ll never know.”
The way he says it, Elias, drips with a vague distaste. Martin wonders why he agreed to take the job, if he hates his boss so much. Wherever he’d been before Gertrude’s sudden departure must have been unpleasant, if he accepted an offer from someone he seems to harbor nothing but disdain for.
Jon frowns at the folder, a little crease appearing between his brows. He looks downright mutinous a moment later, his face somewhere between a grimace and a scowl.
“Unbelievable,” he mutters, barely audible, and then suddenly he’s moving, brushing past Martin without a thought. When Martin just stands there, baffled, Jon glances his way and jerks his head towards the door. “—Come on, mister Blackwood, outsiders can’t be in here on their own.”
“Oh! Oh, yeah, of course,” Martin says, half-jogging after him. It’s only when they’ve made it almost all the way up the stairs that Martin realizes he never actually told Jon his name. He doesn’t really get a moment to catch his breath and ask about it, though, because Jon strides up to the old oak door to Elias’ office and yanks it open with a violent jerk.
“What can I help you with, Jon?” Elias doesn’t even glance up from his computer. Jon stalks across the room to his desk and smacks the folder down against it, displeasure painting his every movement.
“What is this,” he hisses.
“I believe it’s the requisite forms for transferring your new assistants to the archives,” Elias drawls, finally looking up as he leans back in his chair and folds his hands together primly. “It would probably be best, like I said, to choose people from the research department, since most of what they’ll be doing for you is-“
Jon tosses his head, making a cut-off, furious sound. “What they’d be doing is forcing me to take time away from my work to babysit a bunch of—ugh!”
He throws his hands into the air. Martin feels like he probably shouldn’t be here, but he’s frozen in the doorway. He watches Elias frown, icy grey eyes fixed on Jon’s face.
“You will need assistants, Jonathan,” he says, steely calm. “If you don’t feel up to actually reviewing possible candidates I am of course capable of choosing for you, but-“
“That’s not the point and you know it,” Jon hisses, cutting him off. “Working in the archives is—“ he stops. Glances back at Martin. Rolls his shoulders, sighing, sounding vaguely defeated. “ Fine. Fine, I’ll pick some researchers.”
“At least three is probably best,” Elias says, turning his attention back to his computer. “Good day, Jon. Have those forms for me by tonight.”
Martin scrambles awkwardly to get out of Jon’s way as he whirls around and storms back out of the office. The door shuts behind them with a startlingly gentle click and another grimace from Jon. He slumps, dragging his fingers through his hair in a way that makes it even more chaotic than it already had been.
“Uh,” Martin says. He’s not sure what to say, really, but the silence makes his skin crawl. “I’m, um, I’m sorry?”
Jon separates his fingers enough to stare at Martin through them. “What on Earth for?”
“I, I mean, I feel like maybe I shouldn’t have stayed and watched that,” Martin babbles. His ears burn. “Are you—are you okay? You seem upset.”
Jon sighs heavily and begins walking back down the hall towards the Archives, gesturing to Martin to follow. “I’m fine, thank you. Elias just has a nasty habit of springing things on me without warning. I guess I have to find assistants now.”
He pulls open the door leading to the stairwell without explaining how he knows about Elias’ nasty habits considering it is his first day at the institute and raises an eyebrow at Martin. “You’re in research, right? Any insights?”
“Um.” In an instant, his near-encyclopedic knowledge of his coworkers and their lives leaves him. Jon’s stare is destabilizing. “I mean, uh…I know Sasha James used to help Ms. Robinson out sometimes? Er, unofficially, I think. She started when she still worked in artefact storage and just kind of kept swinging by the Archives occasionally when she transferred to research.”
Jon nods; he has that look of recognition and understanding in his eye again, the one that makes no sense considering how new he is. Martin soldiers on.
“She’s probably, uh, probably your best choice, and she and Tim—Timothy Stoker, I mean—they work really well together. They’re kind of a team up in research. She’s got the, like, hacker skills, and he’s—“ Martin pauses to laugh, “—he’s a master of, um, of seducing information out of people.”
He puts on a hint of a silly voice at that, like he’s trying to gather up a team for some kind of heist. It’s absurd, but it gets a small laugh out of Jon, so that’s a win right there.
“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says with a wry smile. “I’ll go through their CVs tonight—I believe miss James was actually mentioned in some of Gertrude’s notes, so that may well be an excellent start.”
He sighs. “Is there anyone else you think works well with the two of them? I’m quite good at going through documentation, but I’m afraid my grasp of… human relationships… is weak at best. It would be good if my team got along well with one another, at least, since I doubt I will be especially good at. Meshing. With them.”
Martin blinks several times. He said all of that in the exact same matter-of-fact tone he’s said everything that wasn’t lobbing insults at his boss; it’s hard to tell if it’s something he regrets or something he’s just decided to accept. Either way…
“Well, I mean, there’s me, I guess,” Martin says. “I’m not gonna pretend I’m as good a researcher as they are, but me and Tim get on quite well, and I’m a hard worker.”
Jon fixes his eyes on Martin, then, impossibly dark pools staring unblinking at and through him, and suddenly Martin is absolutely terrified that the instant this man so much as glances at his CV he will know exactly how full of it Martin is and fire him without a second thought. Just bringing himself up was a mistake, he’s certain, but he’s so easily suckered by a mysterious man with a pretty face.
Finally, after several of the longest seconds of Martin’s life, in which he felt like a butterfly pinned to a block under the fascinated gaze of something huge and curious, Jon blinks. Nods. Offers Martin another wry smile.
“If you’re sure you want the position you’re welcome to it,” he says. “Fair warning, working down here will probably wreck whatever outside schedule you have at least a bit, but I can have the paperwork for the three of you finalized by tomorrow. Bring the others by at the end of the day to talk with me, please; we can go from there.”
“I’m—uh- okay!” Martin says, flushing even darker. Jon’s lips twitch another degree towards a proper smile. He leans against the doorframe languidly, seemingly unbothered by the foreboding darkness of the stairs leading down into the Archives.
“Excellent. Best you get back to Research, then, I’ve taken up quite enough of your day.”
He waves awkwardly at Jon as he walks away down the hall, and Jon raises one hand in acknowledgment before turning and heading down the steps, the door shutting behind him.
Even still, even with the heavy wood of the door solidly closed between them, Martin can’t shake the feeling that the Archive itself is watching him go. He heads back up to the well-lit normality of Research, and the daunting but mundane task of telling Tim and Sasha he might have gotten them transferred to the archives, in a hurry.