Chapter Text
“Hello, Martin.”
The unexpected voice nearly makes Martin do a spit take. As it is, the sip of tea he’d just taken, goes down the wrong pipe, and he finds himself coughing and spluttering, tears springing up in the corners of his eyes.
“Good Lord,” Jon exclaims, coming around behind his desk to pat Martin on the back as he hunches over. “Are you alright?”
Then he’s crouching down and looking up into Martin’s quickly reddening face with an expression of soft concern.
“Fine,” Martin manages to choke out. “Just surprised me is all.”
It’s only seven in the morning, and he’s grown accustomed to having the first few hours of the work day all to himself. It is beginning to feel a little like he’s the only member of the archive staff even attempting to get work done. Tim hardly shows up anymore, Melanie’s nearly always busy plotting her next move against Elias, Basira’s usually got her nose in a book — this week it’s been a series of cozy mysteries all with cat puns in the title — and Jon …
Well, Jon is apparently back now. Home from America and dressed in a loud Hawaiian print shirt and baggy cargo pants, his face tanned a shade darker than Martin remembers, accentuating the streaks of silver in his hair and the new crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Or maybe the crinkles are the same, but Martin never noticed because Jon’s never smiled at him quite like this, big and bright as a penny.
It’s disorienting. Even more so when Jon reaches out his scarred right hand and brushes a curl of hair out of Martin’s eyes, the smooth heel of his palm lingering on Martin’s temple, cool against his embarrassed blush.
“Sorry about that,” Jon says, voice pitched low. “Took the red-eye and thought I might as well come straight to the office. So much to do, you know?”
“Could’ve told me you were heading back,” Martin says, nudging Jon’s foot with his own. “I would have done up a banner. Or at least brought in donuts or something.”
He is a bit surprised he didn’t get advanced warning of Jon’s return. They’ve been talking more than they ever have since he’s been abroad, daily check-ins which started out as Jon assigning Martin follow-up research projects. They have since devolved into something altogether less formal, though Martin hesitates at explaining what exactly that change means.
Thinking on it now, Jon had seemed a bit distracted when they spoke yesterday. He’d probably been on his way to the airport at the time. Had Jon been trying to surprise him? Martin wonders, with a little hitch in his chest. Or had he just not thought it worthy of mention?
Jon snorts and rolls his eyes.
“Saved myself then, have I?”
“Wouldn’t say you’re out of the woods just yet,” Martin warns, pulling himself back from too much introspection and into the moment. “There’s one of those terrible hipster bakeries just around the corner. I could still make you eat a kombucha cruller.”
It warms Martin’s chest to know he can tease the man now and expect a wry chuckle instead of a sharp reprimand. He expects that to be the end of it, though. Anticipates Jon heading into his office and shutting the door behind him.
Instead, he watches in shock as Jon tilts his head to the side in contemplation and lets out a considered “Hmmm.”
And that is how Martin finds himself walking next to a smiling Jonathan Sims on a brilliant summer day, watching out of the corner of his eye as the other man attempts to lick wayward powdered sugar from his lips. He has to bite down on his own tongue to stopper the squeak of delight he wants to make at the sight. It reminds him of a cat surreptitiously cleaning its face.
The powdered sugar comes curtesy of an apricot and rosemary jam-filled yeasted he watched Jon scarf down faster than Martin thought humanly possible. He’s only half-way through his own blueberry cake glazed. Probably a pedestrian choice, but a classic for a reason. There’s a breeze rustling through the trees that line the sidewalk, and Jon’s shoulder bumps his arm occasionally as they walk.
After so many weeks of tension, it feels like being trapped in a tiny bubble in a fizzy drink, effervescent and no doubt fleeting. Martin closes his eyes for a moment and enjoys the heat of the sun on his face and the releasing of one source of worry, at least. Jon’s not thousands of miles away anymore. Which at least means the next time something tries to kill him, Martin has a chance of intervening. Not that he could do much, but the kind of worry that’s been making a nest in Martin’s stomach over the past month isn’t exactly a rational thing.
He releases a contented sigh and blinks his eyes open slowly to find Jon staring. His face is shadowed, the ascending sun behind him making a halo of his mussed hair, but the direction of his gaze is unmistakable. Martin swears he can almost feel the tingle where it lingers.
“Have I got something on my face?” he asks, swiping self-consciously at his lips for stray crumbs.
“What?” Jon says, with a little shake of his body, like he’s pulling himself out of a haze. “No.”
So maybe not staring at Martin after all, just into space. Which makes much more sense. Not like Martin’s much to look at, really. The embarrassment stings just a little, but he likes to think it’s in a productive way.
“Do I?” Jon says.
“Hm?”
“Have anything on my face?”
“Oh, you do a little,” Martin says. “Just here.”
He gestures at his own upper lip, and Jon wipes at his face, utterly failing to clean it. Martin lets out a little huff of laughter.
“Come here,” he says, and Jon does with a grumble of displeasure.
It’s more than a little intimidating to be this close to Jon, so close he can feel the warm puff of his breath rustle Martin’s fringe. He focuses very hard on the task at hand, studiously avoiding looking Jon in the eye. Instead, he brushes the last traces of powdered sugar from the corner of Jon’s mouth with his thumb.
“There,” he says. “Perfectly presentable now.”
And then, in an action that doesn’t feel entirely of his own volition, Martin raises his thumb to his own mouth and licks the powdered sugar from it. His gaze flickers, unbidden, up to Jon’s as he does so, and he watches as the other man’s eyes go wide.
“Erm,” Martin says, taking a couple jolting steps back from Jon and wiping his hand on his slacks. “Sorry, um. I —”
“We should be getting back,” Jon says, smoothing over Martin’s sudden awkwardness. “The others will be in the office by now.”
“Yes,” Martin replies, ducking his head to try and hide the flames that must be licking at his cheeks. “Right. Let’s go.”
It’s a quiet walk back to the institute, but after a while the awkward tension fades, and it’s not unpleasant. Martin clutches a powder blue box of a dozen donuts for the rest of the archival staff in one hand. He knows it’s unlikely Tim will show up, but Martin picked out a decadent chili chocolate concha that he knows will be right up his alley. Just in case.
Basira, Daisy and Melanie descend hungrily on the box when Martin sets it dow on the break room table. The lift of sugar is a nice counterpoint to Jon laying out all the information he gathered on his trip, including the revelation of Gertrude Robinson’s storage unit, and that it might hold answers to how to combat the unknowing. By the time he’s done, and he, Jon and Melanie are heading out to check out the storage unit, the box is empty.
*
Martin returns home that evening with dust in his hair and a bruise forming on his back the size of a portable radio. He knows it will be that size, because that’s exactly what he landed on when Jon tackled him to the ground during their exploration of the storage unit.
Martin’s not an idiot. He wasn’t going to touch the damn explosives, he just wanted to get a better look. But apparently, for Jon, the combination of a clumsy, oafish Martin Blackwood and a pile of C4 is enough to trigger an automatic panic response because before he could even fully process what he was seeing, Jon was flying at him like the little ball of manic energy he is.
Under normal circumstances, Martin is sure Jon wouldn’t have been able to take him off his feet. But he’d just been so surprised he hadn’t had time to brace. So now Martin’s home and indulging in a little cathartic moaning.
“Ow,” he says to himself, rubbing his back and shuffling to the kitchenette to put the kettle on. “Ow, ow, fucking ow.”
The complaining continues as he moves to the bathroom to fill the bathtub and add plenty of self-indulgent bubbles.
“You’re the one who can’t be trusted around explosives …” he mutters as he adjust the temperature of the water to scalding perfection. “Also, ow.”
He’s carrying his cup of tea into the bathroom when he hears his phone ring and he has to do a little shuffling, placing the cup on the ledge of the tub, shutting off the roaring water, and digging into his trouser pocket for the source of the ringing, before answering.
“Hello?”
“Oh, Martin.”
It’s Jon’s voice on the other end of the line, seemingly surprised to be speaking to him.
“Yes?” Martin says, a little confused himself. “You called me?”
“Right,” Jon says, firmly. “Of course I did.”
Then there’s an extended beat of silence as Martin waits for Jon to explain why he’s calling when they only parted ways about an hour ago. With nothing forthcoming he powers on himself.
“Were there any new developments?” he asks. “With the ritual research? Something I should know?”
“What?” Jon says. “No. How could there be? I only just got back to the office.”
“You went back to the office?” Martin says, failing miserably to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Jon, you haven’t even been home since re-entering the country.”
“I have work to finish,” Jon protests. “Field trips do not count —”
“Field trips!” Martin’s voice trips upward an entire octave in consternation, and he flinches at the echo of it against the tile in the bathroom. “Jon, we didn’t go to the National Gallery. I didn’t get an ice cream or a Turner bookmark. We investigated a creepy storage unit full of explosives. For. Work. Because this is my life now.”
The last is muttered under his breath, petulantly, because while this doesn’t even crack the top ten weirdest things he’s done as part of his employment with the Magnus Institute, Martin still feels he’s earned a little petulance. He allows himself to stick out his lower lip because there’s no one around to see and rubs at his bruise.
“Yes, well, we are rather trying to stop the literal end of the world Martin.”
“And how exactly is passing out at your desk going to do anything to help with that, Jonathan?”
Martin supposes it’s the use of his full name that pulls out that grunt of surprise. He clenches his jaw and prepares for a sharp retort, or possibly Jon just hanging up the phone. Instead, though, he sighs long and low.
“I only need a couple more hours, then I promise I’ll go home,” Jon says, voice soft. “Just want to pull a few statements while everything’s fresh.”
Martin only half believes him, but it’s far more of a concession than he really expected.
“And go to sleep?” he pushes just a bit further.
“Yes, Martin,” Jon grumbles back.
“Alright then,” he says with a nod. “What did you need from me? Don’t think I brought any statements home with me.”
“Hm?” Jon says, and Martin can hear him shuffling papers around on his desk in the background. “Oh. No, er. I didn’t … That is to say. I, um. Well, I called to hear your voice, I suppose. It’s just. I know I’m not traveling anymore, but this is about the time I’d usually check in. And so I thought I’d just … Do that?”
Something in Martin’s stomach slithers and twists.
“Oh,” he says, more a puff of breath than a word.
What more can he possibly say to that? It is about the time Jon would normally call him, from Jon’s perspective at least. It’s just, he never seemed to get the hang of time zone changes. Martin is far more used to receiving Jon’s check-in calls well past midnight, sometimes waking from a restless slumber with a gentle buzz, sometimes rescuing him from a battle with insomnia.
Regardless, he never resented the interruption. Instead, the poet in Martin treasured those little jewel box moments, surrounded by a thick, satiny darkness, the world illuminated only by the glow of his phone screen and the heavy silence of early morning broken only by Jon’s voice from across an ocean.
More than once he fell asleep to the sound of Jon ranting about the nonsensical American infrastructure system or expounding on one of the many inaccuracies on the historical markers he encountered along his journey. He wanted to listen, he did, but Martin was always so tired, and it was so late, and Jon’s voice was husky and soothing even at a distance. Many mornings he would wake up with the imprint of his phone on his cheek, having fallen asleep on the screen.
One morning, he had woken to the sound of a blaring horn only to find the call from the night before still connected and ticking over into the five-hour mark. He fumbled with his phone and pressed it closer to his ear.
“Jon?” he called out frantically. “Jon are you —”
“Oh, you massive cockwaffle. Stay in your fucking lane!”
“What?” Martin spluttered.
“Sorry, Martin,” Jon replied. “It’s just, if Americans will insist on building roundabouts it would be nice if they bothered to learn to use them.”
“Right,” Martin said, still a bit confused.
Jon didn’t seem to notice, though, launching back into the middle of a conversation Martin didn’t recall starting. Something about a supposedly haunted house he’d visited and debunked within fifteen minutes.
“Please tell me it was a short in the wiring,” Martin mumbled, slumping back into his pillow, and trying to resign himself to getting out of bed a full hour before his alarm was meant to go off.
“Bad plumbing, if you can believe it,” Jon snorted, and Martin had stayed on the line while Jon drove through Hartford and he got ready for work.
I called to hear your voice echos through Martin’s head now on a loop. He feels like someone’s punched him in the gut.
“Martin?” Jon calls him back to the present.
“Sorry,” Martin says. “I’m here.”
“Are you on the tube?” Jon asks. “You’re sort of echo-y. I don’t want to make you miss your stop.”
“No, no,” Martin says. “I, uh. Bathroom. I was about to take a bath. Wash off some of the dust.”
“Oh,” Jon says. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”
Martin waits for a second, expecting Jon to say his goodbyes. When he doesn’t he feels himself flush but, well, it’s not like Jon can see him. They’re just having a phone conversation. So he puts the call on speaker and wrestles himself out of dress shirt and slacks.
“I started reading that book you recommended,” Jon is saying while he accomplishes this. “On the flight home. Strange and Norrell.”
“So, tell me what you think so far,” Martin prompts, slipping into the bath and letting out an involuntary groan of pleasure at the burn of the water. It immediately starts to relax his stiff muscles.
“Er, um, well …” Jon says.
“That good, huh?”
“No, uh, I’m enjoying it very much. You were right, Martin.”
Martin can’t help the smile that spreads across his face at that.
“Well, I don’t mind hearing that,” he says. “It’s the footnotes, isn’t it?”
“They are … So extensive,” Jon says, a little wistful.
“Christ, you’re such a nerd,” Martin says, soothing Jon’s grumble of protest immediately by adding “It’s fantastic.”
They discuss the book for a little longer while Martin soaks and sips at his tea before Jon sheepishly says he has to go back to work.
“And then home,” Martin presses.
He can almost hear Jon rolling his eyes.
“Yes, dear,” Jon says, before hanging up.
Martin snorts, then sinks down so that just his nose and the top of his head peek out above the bubbles. Ridiculous man, he thinks. Fuck, I’m in so much trouble.
*
Jon has been reading the same sentence for the last twenty minutes, and he still couldn’t begin to tell you what it actually means. He did go home last night. This morning. Well, he did go home. He’d promised Martin, after all. But it was only long enough to give the Admiral a scritch on the head, wish Georgie a good morning, and take a hasty shower before heading right back to the office.
He doesn’t think it’s exhaustion that’s at the root of his problem, though. He knows it isn’t. Exhaustion, Jon has learned to live with. It is practically a perpetual state of being, No, the problem is that now he’s had a bit of a break and a cup of tea, his brain has rebooted and is insistent on adequately processing new information. Unfortunately, the information it has chosen isn’t any part of the statement Jon is staring at.
No, the selected vital information is the conjured-up image of what Martin Blackwood must have looked like last night while they talked. Jon can picture it so clearly, Martin leaned back on the porcelain rim of the tub, bubbles lapping gently at his broad shoulders, pale skin flushed a delicate pink from the heat of the water, tawny curls sticking against his forehead with damp. Jesus wept. How is Jon meant to contend with that?
He has so many other things to deal with. A potential apocalypse to stop. Gerry Delano’s page burning a metaphorical hole in his top desk drawer. The knowledge of something bigger creeping up behind him, stalking and watching. He really doesn’t need the distraction. It’s just that Martin is, objectively, an aesthetically pleasing person to look at. And Jon hasn’t been able to look in so, so long.
He spent more than a month in America, criss-crossing the country tracing Gertrude’s movements, and so much time before that either kidnapped or in hiding. Now that he’s back, and Martin’s just on the other side of his office door, Jon feels a bit like a sailor with scurvy who’s suddenly been presented with a fresh lemon. He sort of wants to bite into it whole.
He should. He should just do it. Just ask. Martin will say yes. They’ve talked about it, and he told Jon he’d say yes, and he’s not the sort to mess a bloke around or be needlessly cruel.
Jon’s feelings surrounding Martin aren’t exactly a new revelation. It became clear once the other man moved into the archives and Jon began to see more of him, to see him in those soft, vulnerable moments — making tea in the break room in the morning still dressed in his pajamas with his curls tangled, exhausted and loopy late at night dragging Jon out of his office and forcing him into a cab home, tongue sneaking out of the corner of his mouth sat on the institute steps on a break while he tried to concentrate on writing a poem. Well, it didn’t take long for Jon to realize Martin could become a problem for him. A distraction he couldn’t afford. And at first he countered that knowledge by keeping his distance and maintaining his usual brusk manner.
But that kind of restraint is hard to hold onto over time, and lately Jon’s been failing miserably. It was the phone calls that broke down the very last of his resolve to keep his distance. It’s been … Unexpectedly intimate, talking every night, Martin’s voice pressed in close to his ear so that, if he wanted, he’d only have to whisper to be heard.
He found that the disorientation of traveling through unfamiliar cities and sleeping in grubby, nondescript hotel rooms was eased by the familiar cadence of Martin’s voice. It was so hard to maintain that wall he’d always insisted on, and Jon began to wonder what the point of doing so was in the first place.
Then Jon called Martin one night shaken by the feeling of someone following him, and Martin had spent half an hour waxing on about his favorite horror films just to distract him. It turns out that he has an unexpected soft spot for the Evil Dead franchise.
“They’re just so campy,” he explained when Jon expressed shock. “Like, in their heart of hearts, they’re comedies, not horror. Which I appreciate even more now. Feels a bit like flipping off all the creepy shit we have to deal with on a daily basis, you know? ”
“I should have known you’d go for something vintage,” Jon had said.
“Oi, Evil Dead Two and I are the same age, thank you very much. Not that vintage.”
“Practically ancient,” Jon had deadpanned. “Are you sure those aren’t in black and white?”
“You are two years younger than me!” Martin protested over Jon’s laughter.
They’d spent the next few hours talking about their favorite childhood films. It got later, and time started to feel like a slow, sticky thing. It made Jon feel bolder, somehow. So when Martin grew quiet on the other end of the line, he spoke.
“I don’t know what I’d do without this, you know?” he said, words pitched barely above a whisper. The peaceful quiet between them felt like something that could so easily be shattered “Just. Talking like this. Everything’s spinning apart, but you always make me feel … tethered, somehow. And I don’t want to revert to how we were before when I get back, I —That’s not all of it, exactly. But I have been thinking. And I think it would work. The two of us. Together.”
He paused, not expecting a response just yet, but gathering his courage for the next bit.
“I think,” he said. “That when I come home, I should ask you out on a proper date. See if this could really be something. I don’t want to pressure you. But. Martin. If I asked, do you think you would say yes?”
Jon forced himself to inhale and exhale even though he wanted to hold his breath and possibly, ridiculously, cross his fingers. But all his anticipation was met with nothing but silence. His heart constricted painfully in his chest.
“Martin?” he prompted finally, voice going too high and cracking at the end of the name. “Would you?”
Down the line, Jon heard a rustling of fabric, a deep inhale, then Martin’s voice, thick and rumbling with sleep, broke through.
“Course,” he said. Then, almost too quiet for Jon to pick up on “Never could say no to you.”
Well. Jon had made his excuses soon after that and hung up, too giddy and shocked to be trusted not to embarrass himself. But now he had that reassurance, at least. That he wasn’t just pining for nothing. Martin would say yes. He just needs to work up the courage to do the asking.
His internal dithering is interrupted by a knock on the door and, after a pause, the door being pushed gently open. Martin enters bearing a mug.
“Won’t interrupt for long,” he says, cheerily. “I just thought you could use a cuppa.”
Jon reaches out to accept the tea and, to his shame, startles so hard with their fingers graze on the hand-off that he nearly drops it.
Martin sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Seriously Jon,” he says. “You didn’t go home at all last night, did you?”
“I did!” Jon defends. Technically true.
Martin eyes him shrewdly, as though he can see through Jon’s hedging, but he doesn’t accuse. Just hums skeptically. He scrunches up his nose when he does, and Jon’s pulse stutters. He wants to kiss the little crease that forms between Martin’s eyebrows and …. Christ. Jon needs to ask. He’s going to. He’s going to do it. Now he really is. In just a moment. He is.
“Right, well, I’ll let you get back to it,” Martin says, hand reaching for the doorknob.
“Martin, wait!” Jon says, far too loudly and abruptly. His heart is pounding in his ears.
“Hm?” Martin asks, turning back and granting Jon his full attention in a way that makes a trickle of sweat crawl down his spine.
And now he has to come up with words. The actual words. Why didn’t he do this beforehand? He had plenty of time to put together a script. What an idiot.
“Jon, are you —”
“Drinks!” Jon says, voice veering toward hysterical.
Oh yes, well done.
“What?” Martin says.
“Us.” Jon elaborates. “Er. We. Should go out for drinks. Tonight. If you are amenable.”
“Oh,” Martin says, and tilts his head down to stare at Jon over the rims of his glasses in a frankly adorable display of puzzlement.
Shit. Did he do that wrong? It should definitely be dinner instead of drinks, shouldn’t it? Dinner indicates something more serious. And Jon is very serious. It’s just that if they go out to dinner, Martin will inevitably notice how little Jon eats nowadays, and it will become a whole thing. And if they go to the cinema Jon won’t even be able to look at or talk to Martin for most of the evening, which nearly entirely negates the point of the endeavor. Although it would introduce ample opportunity for hand holding, or an arm around Martin’s shoulders, which would be nice … But, no. He’s already said it. Can’t take it back now. And Martin has been quiet for entirely too long, Jon realizes. Has he changed his mind? Shit.
“If tonight doesn’t work, perhaps —”
“No,” Martin interrupts. “No that’s, um, that’s fine. Tonight. Drinks. Sounds great.”
Jon lets out a soft sigh and allows his body to sag a little at relief. He was beginning to doubt, but he shouldn’t have.
“See you around half six then?” he says, giving Martin a wide smile.
“Um,” Martin says, the tips of his ears turning crimson “Yeah.”
He turns to the door, turns back as though he might say something, but seems to change his mind and bustles out.
With a huff of a laugh Jon pushes his chair back from his desk and spins it once, twice before settling himself back to get some actual work done. He’s got to be efficient. After all. He has a date tonight. Martin said yes.