Work Text:
There is someone outside Martin’s window.
Logically he knows that he knows this because he hears the occasional footstep and notices the intermittent blocking of the dull, rain-tinged moonlight, but it seems to him almost as though he feels the presence in his bones – knows, without having to rely on any external sense, that he isn’t alone.
He sighs tiredly and takes stock of his surroundings. It’s a drizzly Tuesday night – nearly nine, and he’s just now getting home. His feet ache, his eyes are tired, and his stomach is growling. A can of unoffensive but unremarkable soup is heating slowly on the stovetop. He doesn’t remember what kind it is, but putting it in a pan instead of the microwave almost feels like cooking. He picks up his mug to squeeze out the teabag and finds that he’s forgotten to pour the hot water into the mug. He’s too tired to even be annoyed as he clicks the kettle on a second time.
There is still someone outside his window, and in theory he should be afraid. Or, at the very least – it would be reasonable to be afraid. He investigates and alphabetizes nightmare fuel for a living, and he’s only just this week talked himself into going to bed without towels jammed around the doorframe. Being stalked in his own home isn’t a hypothetical fear for him, it’s a bad memory. Yes, he should be afraid.
He’s too tired to be afraid.
Martin pokes at his soup with a plastic spatula because his good silicone one is dirty and he wants to cry at the thought of washing it right now. His sink is by the window. He doesn’t like feeling watched.
There is someone hovering near the window of his house, and Martin can hear him approaching and retreating and approaching and retreating like a shy cat, and really, he should be annoyed. He should be angry. He isn’t angry.
(Most people think he doesn’t get angry. That’s not true. But he isn’t angry about this.)
He knows Jon is far, far more afraid of him than he is of Jon. It’s a novel thought, in the context of their working relationship. It doesn’t bring him nearly the relief he might have once thought it would.
The kettle clicks off, and he remembers this time to pour the water.
Martin walks to the door, not trying to be quiet. He shoves his feet into slippers and steps outside, crossing his arms. He doesn’t have to try to look exasperated.
Jon stands staring at him from the front garden like a frightened deer.
Martin raises an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation.
Jon opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again. “I – I’m sorry.”
“Look, if you’ve stopped for tea, the water’s just boiled. It’s a bit late for social calls, but I’ve got an extra clean mug.”
Jon cringes. His eyes dart to the street and back. The lines of his face are so readable these days, accented and exaggerated as they are by the stress and sleeplessness he wears. “I was just – I was on my way home and – ”
“And you got lost?” He might not be angry, but he’s snippy. He feels like he’s allowed.
“I’m – no.”
“And you decided to detour all the way down to Stockwell? Just for what, for fun? In the rain?”
The way Jon shrinks in on himself makes Martin feel cruel, and an image of his father comes unbidden to his mind. He takes off his glasses, pinches the bridge of his nose, and breathes deep, half expecting Jon to have disappeared when he looks up.
Jon hasn’t moved, though. He’s staring somewhere in the general vicinity of Martin’s feet. His curls are plastered to his forehead from the rain, and he looks like he’s shivering.
“Look, Jon.”
Jon looks up, briefly, then immediately back down.
“We’ve got two options. Either you can go home with whatever information you’ve somehow gathered from standing outside my kitchen window, I can file a harassment report that someone upstairs will pretend to care about, and we can act weird around each other until we forget this ever happened – ” he pauses, cursing himself for the words he can’t stop himself saying – “or you can come inside, help me finish off this box of frankly extremely sub-par Earl Grey I got when the Tesco was out of the good one, get dried off before you catch your death of cold, and we’ll both pretend you came here on friendly terms.”
Jon swallows hard. “I did – I mean, I’m not here on, uhm. Unfriendly terms. I – I was just in the area, and I – thought this was your neighborhood, so I…” he trails off.
Martin raises his other eyebrow. “I see. Right. Well, inside with you, then. Leave some of the rain for the grass.”
He’s a little shocked when Jon does just that, toeing off his squelching shoes on the mat inside the door. He is indeed shivering. Martin wordlessly goes to the shelf in the bathroom and brings him a towel.
Jon, to his credit, only looks at it like it might bite him for a moment before taking it with a murmured thank-you and wrapping up in it like a blanket. He looks so young and vulnerable for a moment that Martin has to turn away. He takes the teabags out of the mugs and goes about the familiar business of making them both just the way they like them. He feels Jon’s eyes on him. “You can take the couch if you want, or the table. Doesn’t matter to me.”
Martin doesn’t hear him moving, but when he looks up Jon has perched himself on the edge of the sofa like he’s bracing to sprint out of the house at any moment.
“Here we go,” Martin says. “Tea's pretty awful, but milk and sugar help.”
“I meant to knock.”
“Sure you did, Jon.”
“No, really.” Jon’s eyes, so flighty and elusive a moment ago, bore into his. “I meant to knock. I wasn’t – I wasn’t meaning to spy.”
“Jon, I’d really rather we just forget the whole thing.”
“I wasn’t sure where to go.”
Martin’s brain pauses for a moment. “Sorry?”
“I wasn’t – I haven’t been, um. I’m not doing well with, um, evenings. In general. A-a-and I needed to eat something, but my flat is – um. Intimidating? Quiet. So I was going to ask you if you would have dinner with me.”
Maybe tomorrow Martin will find it funny how much that sounds like the world’s strangest way of asking someone on a date, and tomorrow Martin will let himself agonize over his stupid heart and its useless, unshakeable love for this man. Maybe he’ll let himself spiral a little bit over trying to parse whether Jon’s telling the truth right now.
For now he just gets up and adds a second tin of soup to the pot.
He should be angry, but right now Jon is looking at him like he hung the moon over a tin of chicken noodle, and Martin decides that that can wait.