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Martin didn’t know why he started recording the statements, at first.
No one told him to do it. It’s not part of his official scope of duties, as an archival assistant. Hell, he’s not even sure Jon would have appreciated it, if Jon had been in any position to care at all about what sort of busywork Martin was getting up to in the office, back when Jon was on the run from the literal law. Jon is so particular about how he does things, so thorough and pedantic and meticulous about every last detail, and Martin...isn’t any of those things. He’s tried. It’s not how his mind works. If Jon’s brain is a well-oiled machine, Martin’s brain is a gymnasium full of cats, and all he can do is try to herd them in vaguely the right direction and hope for the best. He’s been that way his whole life. It used to drive his mum crazy, how scattered he is.
Anyway, the point is: if you had asked Martin why he was recording the statements, he probably would have offered any number of reasons. He would have said it was because he thought Jon would have wanted him to do it, or because he thought someone had to try to hold things together down here, or because he thought keeping the archives running as normally as possible would help them avoid scrutiny from Elias. That kind of thing is basically second nature for Martin. Undue attention from higher-ups is incompatible with his long-term career goals of keeping his head down and collecting a paycheck.
(Well, those used to be his career goals. Nowadays his professional ethos mostly consists of the words STAY ALIVE written in bold block letters.)
(Of course, this was back when Martin still thought Elias was just their vaguely creepy double-boss, rather than a literal comic book supervillain. And back when Martin still thought it was at least theoretically possible to leave.)
So, yeah. Martin would have had a lot of excuses ready. He might have even believed them, at the time. That doesn’t mean they weren’t bullshit. The truth is, he started recording the statements because something about being here, about being in this place, made him feel like he had to. And by the time he started to suspect there might be a reason for that - by the time he cajoled Jon, bit by bit, into sharing his hard-won knowledge, because Tim is right, ignorance is not bliss, not when it comes to this sort of thing - it was too late to back out. Of course it was. That’s just how employment works at the Magnus Institute. Competitive salary, reasonable benefits, and eternal servitude to C’thun.
(At least other corporate jobs only imply you’ve entered a blood pact with a malevolent entity, rather than outright stating it.)
It takes a while before Martin starts to fully understand the consequences of his new career path. He’s not really expecting anything to happen, aside from some interesting new nightmares and a sharp spike in his already considerable levels of anxiety. He’s pretty sure there’s no such thing as a capital-A Archival Assistant, the way Jon is a capital-A Archivist. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to Martin. Uncanny powers and dark prophecies and grand mysteries aren’t for him. He’s just the dumpy sidekick to Jon’s main character. Hell, he’s not even that. Frodo didn’t leave Sam behind to staple papers while he went off to save the world. Martin is a background extra, at best.
(One time, when his mind was wandering, Martin wondered what would happen if he told Jon “Don’t go where I can’t follow.” And then he’d shoved that mortifying thought right back down the hole it came out of, because nope, nope, nope, not going there, not today, that idea is too embarrassing to entertain even as a daydream.)
So. Martin isn't expecting anything to happen. But then, one day, something...does happen. It happens when Martin is passing Jon in the hall, and stops to ask how he’s doing, because Jon always looks a little bit like hell these days, and it makes Martin feel like he has to do something, and useless small talk is pretty much all he can do, so that’s what he does. And instead of grunting or shrugging or mumbling something dismissive, Jon replies, with perfect, involuntary clarity, "Every part of me aches, and I would just about kill to have someone rub my shoulders right now."
There's a positively deafening silence as they both come to grips with this unprecedented turn of events. Then they both start talking at once.
"Ah," says Jon.
"Wow," says Martin, at the same time.
"So that's what that feels like," says Jon, as he avoids Martin’s eyes in favor of performing an impromptu wall inspection. "Good to know, I suppose."
"Yeah," says Martin, as he simultaneously begins to conduct an examination of the floor. Wow, the tile down here is actually really dirty. And cracked. Elias, in addition to his other sins, must be cheaping out on the building maintenance budget. Someone should file a complaint.
"So...you can do it too, now," says Jon, while Martin flashes back to all the times Jon told him off for stating the obvious, back when Jon was still his proper boss, rather than his co-prisoner in evil eldritch eyeball hell. How the tables do turn.
"I guess?" And now it's time for Martin to man up, because there's something very important that needs to be said right now, and Martin will never forgive himself if he lets this moment slip through his fingers. Martin steels his spine and speaks up, trying to project more confidence than he feels. "Uh. Jon. I wouldn't mind doing that for you. Just so you know."
"Wouldn't mind" is, in fact, the understatement of the century. Martin is painfully aware of just how much he is playing with fire right now. Dancing around the reality of his stupid infatuation with Jon was bad enough before; dancing around the reality of his stupid infatuation with Jon now that they both apparently have magic truth spell powers is pretty much the equivalent of juggling live grenades. Blindfolded. While standing on a tightrope.
“Oh, you don't have to-” Jon begins, still with a decided lack of eye contact, in what Martin strongly suspects to be a bullshitting tone of voice.
Martin kicks his brain into overdrive, does some lightning-quick mental math, and decides to call Jon on it once. Just once. If Jon keeps protesting, he’ll drop it. “Jon.”
And it turns out Martin’s hunch was correct, because Jon throws up his hands, blusters an "Alright, alright, fine," and caves with the comical immediacy of a man who never wanted to refuse in the first place. Martin isn’t going to read too much into it. It probably doesn’t mean anything, aside from the obvious facts that Jon is under a lot of stress and his bad posture is starting to catch up with him. Martin wonders if it would be weird to buy Jon one of those orthopedic back support pillows for his office chair. Probably. That would probably be weird.
(Later on, when Martin is pressing his thumbs into the knots of Jon’s trapezius, trying not to act too interested in the way Jon’s eyelids flutter and his eyes roll back in his head, Martin reflects that it's about time all this bullshit magic stuff did something useful, for a change.)
-
Jon isn’t good at eating. He’s been that way the entire time Martin has known him. Martin’s never asked why. It's too personal a question, and they're not that close. (He kind of wishes they were that close.)
Martin does have a few theories, though.
(Martin has a cousin who’s on the spectrum. He vaguely remembers the way his aunt would loudly despair over her son's eating habits, complaining to Martin’s mum that there were days when the only things she could get him to eat were green apples and unseasoned white rice.)
(Mum's response, if he remembers correctly, was that it's no good indulging fussy eaters, and that he should eat the food his mother puts on the table and be grateful. That isn't helpful.)
Martin is also aware that Jon is getting worse, the deeper he gets into the supernatural stuff. Martin doesn't know how much is stress and how much is...everything else, but it worries him to death. It doesn't matter if Jon doesn't technically even need human food anymore. Martin can see the way the Eye is sinking its hooks into Jon, and the more Jon relies on...fear god juice, or whatever, to keep himself alive, the deeper those hooks are going to go. Martin can feel it in his gut.
Jon doesn't usually stop long in the archives, nowadays, but sometimes he'll hole up in his office to record a statement - Martin tries not to think of it as Jon grabbing a snack - and use his computer - does Martin even want to know why Jon is reading articles about taxidermy? - before rushing back out on his way to god-knows-where. He also seems to be going out of his way to avoid being in the same room with Martin and the others, which is kind of ridiculous, in Martin’s opinion. If what Jon has is catching, Martin has already caught it.
Luckily, Martin unobtrusively dropping tea on Jon's desk is such a long-established routine that Jon hardly seems to notice him doing it, so Martin is occasionally able to sneak in a plate of something-or-other alongside Jon’s customary mug of Earl Grey, in an attempt to get Jon to ingest some calories that aren’t of a metaphysical nature. It doesn't seem to do much good.
(It also makes something in Martin’s chest ache, to see the queasy way Jon looks at the small plate of shortbread biscuits Martin just slid surreptitiously onto his desk, like he’s not sure what they are. Jon likes that brand. Or used to, at least. Martin knows that for a fact.)
One day, Martin decides he's had enough. He happens to catch Jon in the act of rifling through a filing cabinet and muttering to himself - Martin can’t imagine what Jon expects to find, considering Martin is pretty sure the files in that section aren’t even alphabetized - and, in a fit of wild impulsiveness, corners him.
"Jon," Martin says decisively, "Is there anything I can do to make it easier for you to eat actual food?”
"Clementines," Jon answers automatically. "I'll compulsively peel and eat just about any citrus fruit, even lemons, but I like clementines best. I stopped keeping them around my flat because I'm not good at remembering to take the rubbish out often enough, and all the peels kept attracting fruit flies."
Jon blinks in surprise, and then gives Martin an affronted look. Martin smiles.
A bag of clementines appears in the break room, later that day. From then on, whenever Martin gets a chance to leave a cup of tea on Jon's desk, he leaves a clementine sitting next to it. And he makes sure to take out the rubbish every day, so there won't be any flies.
(And the next time Martin goes to the store, he buys two bags of clementines, because everyone else in the archives also apparently has a secret lust for small citrus fruits. The first bag had dwindled down to nothing with alarming speed.)
(One time, just for kicks, Martin leaves Jon a lemon, because he kind of wants to see if the mad bastard really will eat it.)
(He does.)
-
It may be a cold comfort, but one of the silver linings of the whole...turning-into-some-kind-of-eldritch-something-or-other situation, is that Jon and Martin don't get mad at each other when they slip up. It would be pretty hypocritical if they did. Hell, sometimes it's even a little funny, in a gallows humor sort of way.
(It’s better than the alternative. Martin has seen the way the others look at Jon, these days, like he's a bomb waiting to go off. The unfairness of it twists Martin’s stomach. They've all seen what the real monsters look like. Jon isn't one.)
(They're starting to look at Martin that way, too, sometimes. That part doesn't bother Martin nearly as much, for some reason. Which...probably doesn’t say great things about his self-esteem, really, but, well. It is what it is.)
Anyway. Here's an example: Martin is currently standing in the hall, arms crossed, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. He keeps restlessly taking his phone out of his pocket, clicking it on, glancing at his notifications, and then immediately shoving it back into his pocket, just for the sake of having something to do with his hands. It doesn’t occur to him how suspicious this must look until Jon brushes past him on his way to his office, pauses, turns back, and gives him a hesitant, “Everything alright, Martin?”
Jon has started doing that lately. Making small efforts to talk to them, in that careful, deliberate, more-than-slightly-awkward way of his. Martin is glad, even though he's probably the only one who actually appreciates it. Unfortunately, he's not very inclined to appreciate it right this very second, because what his mouth says, in a tone of immense suffering, is:
"I really need to pee, and Basira is hogging the bathroom, and I don’t want to go use the one upstairs because Rosie might see me and then I’ll have to make small talk and I can not deal with that right now. If this takes much longer I'm going to have to seriously consider locking myself in document storage and peeing in a cup." There's another one of those cricket-chirping silences. Then Martin blinks, and says, in a somewhat differently-flavored tone of suffering, "Gee, thanks, Jon."
“Ah," says Jon, who has the gall to be visibly suppressing a laugh. "My sympathies."
"Yeah, well. I guess it’s karma getting me back for all the time I used to spend camping out in there. Back when I was living here, I mean.” No, duh, self. Jon already knows that. Stop saying stupid things.
Rather than call Martin out for stating the obvious, the way Martin always subconsciously expects him to, Jon just smiles crookedly and says, “I remember that. What were you even- ah. Hm.” Jon cuts himself off, recalibrates, and continues, in an increasingly uncertain tone, “I was going to ask what you were doing in there that took so long, which I’m...just now realizing is a weird question. You can just...go ahead and ignore that.”
Martin can feel some red trying to creep into his cheeks, but he decides to answer as honestly as if Jon had compelled him, because Jon looks like he’s contemplating a retreat, and Martin doesn’t want this conversation to end so soon. “No, it’s okay. It’s just, uh. I have a bit of a...skincare routine. And sometimes I was doing my hair. Looking back, it was kind of a stupid thing to care about, with everything else that was going on, but it made me feel more...grounded, I guess?”
(And, yeah, sometimes he was wanking, sue him. Martin is under no obligation to say that part out loud, thank God.)
Of course, all of that stuff has fallen pretty thoroughly to the wayside, as of late. (Except for the wanking. Shut up.) Martin’s undercut, in particular, is a mess right now. It's growing out all fuzzy on the sides of his head, and it’s that pain-in-the-arse length where he can never get it to lay down from where it gets crushed against his pillow while he sleeps, so he ends up going around all day with parts of his hair sticking out at odd angles. It’s the least of Martin’s worries, but it still grates on him a bit every time he sees himself in a mirror. It sucks when every day is a bad hair day.
And now Jon is starting to look guilty, which is the last thing Martin wants. Martin is the one person in the archives who doesn’t blame Jon for everything under the sun that goes wrong around here. He doesn’t want Jon to think that’s changing. Martin forges on with false cheer. “I’m probably due for a trim now. Reckon I’ll get around to it soon.” He’s definitely past due, and he’s definitely not going to get around to it. Who does he even think he’s kidding.
There’s an awkward pause, in which Martin silently mourns the death of what had actually been a borderline pleasant conversation. Then, to his surprise, Jon saves the day by abruptly blurting out, “Um, I used to cut Geo- that is, I know how to cut hair. I could help you. If you want.”
So that’s how Martin - after he gets his turn in the restroom, thank fucking God - ends up digging out his hair stuff and spending fifteen minutes in ASMR heaven-slash-hell while Jon buzzes the sides of his head and gives his top-fluff a trim, maintaining a stream of soft, slightly stilted small talk as he gently tilts Martin’s head this way and that with his objectively lovely hands. It’s borderline torture in the best possible way. Martin never wants it to end.
(For the next few weeks, whenever Martin sees himself in the mirror, looking almost presentable with his fresh cut, he feels the urge to smile.)
-
Jon has been disappearing for increasingly long stretches, lately. Martin isn’t sure where Jon’s staying, when he’s not in the archives. Martin wonders if Jon even still has a flat of his own. He can’t think of a non-weird-sounding way to ask.
(Martin kind of hates the small, pathetic part of himself that wishes he had an excuse to offer to let Jon stay at his flat. He’s pretty sure it’s the same part of his mind that remembers the words “There’s a room in the archives I use to sleep when working late. I suggest you stay there for now,” with more clarity - and much more frequency - than it really should. It’s a good thing that Jon isn’t desperate enough to rely on someone like Martin for that kind of help. Martin will just have to settle for offering cups of tea and clementines. And, on rare occasions, carefully platonic shoulder rubs.)
Anyway. A week without seeing Jon is pretty normal, these days. That doesn’t stop Martin from pausing when he passes Tim in the hall, and tentatively asking him if he’s seen Jon around. Tim replies with a terse, “No. I don’t care where he is, and neither should you.”
Martin doesn’t even realize what he’s done until Tim visibly starts, and then gives Martin a look of such disgust that Martin’s face burns with- something. Shame? Defensiveness? Indignation? Martin doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask again.
Two weeks without seeing Jon is pushing it, but not unprecedented. Martin, in an act of incredible selfishness, actually finds himself slightly resenting Basira, purely because her presence in document storage means he can’t give in to the irrational temptation to start sleeping on the cot again, like some kind of Jon-watching stakeout. And then Martin feels so horrible about that particular thought that he ends up insisting on buying drinks for the whole group, the next time he joins Basira and Melanie for one of their mildly awkward Archival Assistant Drinking Sessions.
(Martin wonders what it says about him, that these small acts of eldritch imprisonment solidarity probably constitute the most active social life he's ever had. Well, actually, no, he doesn’t wonder. He knows it just means he’s kind of a loser. Still, it’s...almost nice, for what it is. Even if Melanie is kind of a mean drunk, sometimes.)
By the time three weeks pass without anyone spotting hide nor hair of Jon, Martin is crunching through statements like popcorn, trying his best not to rip out his hair and gnaw his fingernails bloody. Emails from Elias continue to trickle into Martin’s inbox, full of various lines of inquiry for Martin and the others to follow up on. Names and places and dates that have no meaning to Martin at all, in neat little bullet-pointed lists, sandwiched between the kind of blandly polite office-speak that Martin can’t interpret as anything but mocking, under the circumstances. Per my last email, Martin’s arse.
Throughout all of this, Elias remains conspicuously silent on the subject of Jon’s absence. Martin hates Elias more than he’s ever hated anyone.
(There’s a hysterical voice in Martin’s mind that’s tempted to challenge Elias directly, to ask him, to Ask him where Jon is, to push and push and push until something breaks and answers start to leak out of the cracks. That voice is tempered by the more practical part of Martin’s mind, which knows, on a level that’s half logic and half instinct, that to do so would be foolish at best and suicide at worst. Martin’s fledgling powers aren’t up to that kind of challenge. Whatever Elias truly is, he’s a more powerful version of it than Jon and Martin are. Martin knows he can’t win in a contest of strength.)
(Martin can’t win in a contest of guile, either. He examines the situation from every angle, trying to look for a string to pull, a resource to tap, a missing scale on the belly where he can stick something sharp. There isn’t one. Martin has absolutely nothing to work with. He can’t even pretend to believe in God long enough to pray, these days. He belongs to a different god now. They all do.)
So, because Martin has literally no other options, Martin reads, and researches, and records, and repeats to himself a mantra of it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s probably fine. Jon has already survived more horrors in the span of a year and a half than most people encounter in their entire lives. Jon is tough. Jon will be fine.
Jon isn’t fine.
Two days after the one month mark, while Martin is sitting at his desk, staring with glazed eyes at his computer screen, Martin hears the “click” of a tape recorder turning itself on. Martin is on his feet and headed for the door before the tape even starts to whirr. Right on cue, Jon shambles into the bullpen, looking ashen and haggard and like absolute shit, just in general, but he’s alive, he’s alive, thank fucking Christ, he’s alive. He even looks like he’s in one piece, as far as Martin can tell.
And then they both just...stop, and look at each other. Jon looks at Martin with an exhausted expression, swaying slightly where he stands, and Martin looks at Jon with an expression that is trying hard not to convey that he is currently restraining himself from doing any number of insane things, like clutching Jon against his chest, or grabbing Jon by the shoulders and shaking him, or yelling at Jon, or kissing Jon.
Martin very deliberately does not do any of those things. Instead, he drinks in the sight of Jon, cataloguing every aspect of Jon’s appearance, combing through every alarming change like he’s searching for clues. Jon’s hair is long and wild and tangled, and his eye bags are worse than ever, and he has more beard than Martin’s ever seen on him, and his clothes look like they should probably be burned, and his skin is...in weirdly good shape, actually, aside from the scars. Huh.
(Martin is pretty sure he smells...cocoa butter? ...why?)
That one why feels like it opens a floodgate in Martin’s mind, and he suddenly has to bite his tongue to keep the questions in, muzzling his desperate urge to ask what happened, and did they hurt you, and are you okay? He already knows the answers are "terrible things," "yes," and "no," respectively, and forcing Jon to go into any further detail would be the opposite of helping. If Jon wants Martin to know, Jon will tell him.
(There’s a morbid part of Martin's mind - a part of his mind that he suspects no longer entirely belongs to him - that wants to ask anyway. He doesn't. He won't. He refuses.)
(Martin remembers how it all came pouring out of Lynne Hammond, when he asked her. He remembers the smell of smoke and singed hair, and the sight of a young woman wreathed in flame. He remembers how shaken Lynne had looked, when she left. He remembers the pleasurable caffeine buzz sensation that came after. The feeling of the Eye fucking around with the machinery of his brain, giving him a little dopamine reward for doing what it wants. Martin remembers the dreams.)
(Martin hasn't taken any more live statements since then.)
Instead, Martin says, "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Wouldn't mind a hug, honestly," says Jon, in a defeated tone of voice. He doesn’t look surprised. Martin wonders if Jon was expecting Martin to ask. Martin wonders if it actually makes things easier for Jon, when Martin asks, or if they're both just too tired to keep fighting what they're becoming. "Bit of a lie-down probably wouldn't hurt, either. Can't remember how long it's been since I actually slept."
The cot in document storage isn't really big enough for two people, especially when one of them is, uh, not the smallest guy. They have to squeeze in tight, with Jon practically lying on top of Martin, to make it work. It's not too bad. Jon is light, lighter than he should be, thinner than he should be, despite Martin’s best efforts to get human food into him whenever possible. When Martin wraps his arms around Jon, chest aching, trying to project every ounce of comfort and reassurance he’s capable of, Jon conks out almost immediately.
Nightmares aside, it's the best sleep Martin has had in months.
-
It's almost zero hour. Martin has a lighter in his pocket. Depending on how things go - with Elias, or the Unknowing, or both - this may or may not be his last night on Earth. He and Jon are having a last minute friend-buddy chat in the tunnels, just the two of them, just two guys in a hole in the ground standing two feet apart because they're not romantically involved, you know, as one does, and Martin still doesn't have the balls to make a dramatic, season finale-style confession to Jon, because he is the biggest bloody coward on the face of the planet, and also just generally lame and awful. This is Martin’s lot in life. He has made his peace with it.
"I'm still not sure this is even a good idea. Elias is dangerous. Probably more than any of us realize," Jon is saying, with a painfully earnest expression, while Martin tries not to think of every "stay behind and be safe while I'm off participating in the dramatic climax, please" speech he's ever seen in a movie. Jon is not an action movie hero. Even if his scruffy beard and increasingly long mane of hair and growing collection of scars do make him look rather dashing, in Martin’s opinion.
"Well, I'm pretty sure he won't actually kill me, what with the whole...backup Archivist thing," Martin offers weakly. It's an unconvincing argument. They both know it is.
"There's a lot of middle ground between alive and dead," says Jon, in the weary voice of a man who has spent the past several months occupying various points along that spectrum, and frequently coming way too close to the "dead" end for Martin’s comfort. And then Jon has to go and ruin everything by adding, "Are you sure you want to risk it? After what happened to Melanie?"
"Jon, I would do just about anything for you," says Martin, with horrifying honesty. And now he has to choose whether he wants to get angry, or curl into a ball and scream into his hands. He decides to go with anger. "Really, Jon?!"
"Ah. Sorry, I didn't. I. Um," replies Jon, with an expression that Martin can only describe as a mental bluescreen. Or possibly a “For some fucking reason, I am apparently surprised to learn that you have feelings for me, despite this fact being common knowledge to literally every other person who works at the institute, up to and including the janitor” sort of expression.
Okay. Fine. You know what? Let's see how you like it, you dense, dense bastard. "Jon. Your thoughts on my previous statement?"
And then, in a breathless rush, like he's been waiting for an opportunity to say it, which is nonsense, that can't be right, Jon says, "I'm trying to figure out if it's okay for me to kiss you."
Martin’s train of thought jumps the tracks and goes crashing into the countryside. There are no survivors.
And then Martin’s brain does a hard reset and decides to just go ahead and have every possible thought, simultaneously. Holy shit. Oh God. Oh no. Oh yes. Is this real? This is amazing. This is the scariest thing that's ever happened. What does Martin’s breath smell like? What did he eat for lunch today? Did he eat lunch? He can't remember. He needs a shave. He's all stubbly and he really wishes he had a chance to nip away and brush his teeth. Martin's dreams are coming true. Martin is going to die. Jon is looking at him. Shit, shit, get it together, say something, Jon is starting to look freaked out.
Martin grabs his flailing brain in a stranglehold and says, in his best attempt at a relatively composed voice, "You could always ask?"
Hm. That came out a bit pitchy. It'll have to do. If Jon doesn't know by now that Martin isn't cool, there's no hope for him.
Jon’s dawning smile is, no pun intended, a sight to behold. "Martin, would it be okay if I kissed you?
And finally, finally, Martin has no trouble saying, "It's more than okay. I want you to kiss me all the time. I want you to kiss me and never stop."
So Jon kisses him.
It's way, way better than okay.