Work Text:
1.
The attic of Magnus Museum is, at best, a particularly eccentric treasure trove. At worst, Jon finds as he's kneeling on the floorboards with dust in his nose and a growing sense of dread, it is an alley-bin with no bottom.
Technically, the museum has a catalogue, although Jon has come to loathe the implication of the term. A catalogue makes a claim to being comprehensive and helpful, neither of which Jon has ever found to be true for the set of handwritten tomes that serve as a register of new items and have been proven nearly impossible to digitize. Where a location is given for a particular item, it's usually wrong; if the location is right, the item in question tends to be missing parts. It's infuriating, and would, in theory, need a skilled archivist and a dedicated team of volunteers with angelic patience to make sense of.
Instead, there's Jon.
He scrambles to his feet when the ancient stairs leading up to the attic announce the approach of someone Jon is quite sure he can't afford to be seen near tears by. The sound of knuckles rapping against the door, then, “Jon?”
“Right here, Sasha.” He pats some dust off his knees and clears his throat, straightening up just in time for Sasha to turn the corner and find him only somewhat dishevelled.
“Hey,” she says, slowly, as if talking to a feral fox. “Um, I just wanted to check in? You've been up here for ages.”
“Yes, I've, uh, been – failing at just about everything, really.” In another universe, there is, perhaps, a Jon who exudes the authority that a senior curator in charge of an entire museum should. “You don't happen to know if that absurd toy merry-go-round from downstairs still has an intact roof somewhere?”
“Oh.” She frowns. “Has to, doesn't it? Wasn't it one of the Fairchild donations?”
“I think so. Those are usually intact; Lord knows how an entire roof would go missing, but I've already opened a million boxes up here, and...”
Sasha moves about the room, ducking her head below wooden beams and waving away puffs of dust. “What do you need it for, anyway? Are we exhibiting occult merry-go-rounds now?”
Jon scoffs. “You say that like it'd be atypical for the place. No, I, uh, actually just got a loan request for it.”
Sasha stops in her tracks. “Seriously?”
“Wait until you hear who put it in,” says Jon dryly. It is something of a momentous occasion. He adopts his most solemn tone. “The Museum of Childhood.”
“Oh, you're joking.”
Jon nearly wishes he was. Not too long ago, any prestige institution actually wanting to collaborate with Magnus Museum would have had its curator jump with joy for even being considered. There is, however, a reason no one ever works with them, and it extends slightly beyond their abysmal reputation as City of London's worst-kept embarrassing secret. Dreadful record-keeping and decades of being understaffed have driven the odds of desired loan items actually being found all the way into the ground. “Well, I expect they'll come to regret it,” says Jon, resigned. “We could have really used something like this with the board's inspection coming up. And as usual, things being where they should be appears too much to ask of this place.”
She grimaces in sympathy. “D'you want us to help you look? It might be worth the effort. I dug up some really obscure stuff when I was still volunteering here.”
“No, this shouldn't be your problem to fix. ...I, um, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell the others about it, either? No point in getting anyone's hopes up.”
Sasha gives him a puzzled smile, clearly amused. “Not a word”, she promises. “No, that'd be cruel. After all, they're sooo invested in the museum's reputation –”
“Not sentimentally, perhaps,” says Jon, “but they're certainly being paid to put a lot of work into it. I mean, the only reason the V&A even found out about the bloody merry-go-round is because Tim's been really good about publishing what catalogue we have online, and Martin...” Martin is best left unexamined. Recently, thinking about Martin has not been getting Jon, his immediate professional superior, anywhere good. “I wouldn't want them to feel like their work isn't making a difference, that's all.”
“Sure.” Few people have so well mastered the art of pronouncing judgement with a single eyebrow as Sasha. “Like I said, not a word from me.”
He nearly believes her.
At lunch, Martin, at least, seems unperturbed. They walk to the river, because Jon hasn't quite figured out how to say no when Martin asks if he wants to come along yet (and he's weirdly sure that he'll never learn – that, too, is a problem for another day). Martin gives a vague report on his social media initiative, which Jon has been quietly impressed by ever since he tentatively transferred responsibility for PR to Martin. He was never any good at it, himself, and it's not as if they'll ever get the budget for a communications officer. On the bench they share, Jon nods along to follower counts and online photo challenges, and focuses on anything but the way Martin's tawny hair turns a softer shade of strawberry blond this time of year.
“So, uh, not trying to jinx it, but we might have a visitor base beyond goths and ghosts some time soon.” Martin smiles, the way only he does, nearly too quick to miss, like he might be told off for it. “With any luck, I mean.”
“Let's hope we don't get pulled too far into the mainstream, then,” says Jon. The sun is high. He blinks. “Say what you will about the goths and ghosts, I doubt many museums have such a dedicated core fanbase.”
“Well, if they are dedicated, I'm sure they won't be scared off by – I don't know, a run-off-the-mill, middle- class-friendly Family Day once a month.”
“Oh?” Jon bites back a smile. “Big plans, then?”
“Of course! I'm very attached to this job, you know.”
So am I, thinks Jon, and is once more left to wonder why or how that happened. For him or for Martin. The museum doesn't promise much security to any of them, which is probably how all of them ended up in jobs they're underqualified for: no professional who can afford to turn down an offer would take a job with the knowledge that their workplace might be shut down any second. If Jon was under haughtier illusions when he was first offered the position, he certainly isn't now.
Jon comes back to himself when he notices, suddenly, that Martin is watching him.
“Ah, sorry.” Jon shakes his head. “I'm not – not really with it today, I'm afraid.”
Martin hums in understanding. Then, because Martin sometimes knows what Jon has no idea is just the thing he needs to hear, “How are the cats?”
The cats are a joy. The cats are a menace. Martin, who, along with Tim and Sasha, briefly became their godparent this past winter, knows both of those things, and still asks. “They've grown a lot. Outgrowing my bedroom more and more by the day, actually.” Outgrowing their apartment, but Martin doesn't need to know that. “Do you, uh, want to see pictures?”
Martin does. “Oh, no,” he says at the sight of Frodo curled up around the stem of the lone potted plant Jon keeps in his room. He fails to hide a grin behind his hand. “Does he do that a lot?”
“Constantly. Georgie says he's a born adventurer.”
Before Jon has a chance to look away, Martin's smile softens. “Is it weird that I miss him a little bit?”
Jon is sure all he wants to say in return is something fuzzy and sympathetic, something about how he used to miss the Admiral when he didn't live with Georgie – reassure the man and move on. He says, instead, “I'm sure he'd be happy to see you, if you ever wanted to come by.”
“Oh!” Martin looks at him, pleasantly surprised. “Really?”
No.
“Sure, um. I think it'd be good for all of them, actually, to socialise with someone other than just Georgie and me.” He clears his throat. Back in his office, he'll be able to drop his head onto his desk and give himself the talking-to he deserves. For now, he adds, “If you like, that is.”
It's a hopeless lifeline. Martin smiles, and it makes a new pattern of the freckles on his cheeks. “I'd love to.”
Later, just as he's smoothed out the mess that whatever happened earlier has made of a normally decently organised mind, a knock on Jon’s door is followed by Sasha poking her head inside. “Hey, just letting you know I'm headed out. Everyone else has gone, so...”
“Right.” He nods. “Have a good night, Sasha.”
“You should wrap up, too, you know,” she says. “It'd give Martin heart palpitations to know the hours you're keeping.”
Would it? Jon blinks, then makes himself shake his head. “You know how it is.” He gestures at the papers surrounding him. “I'll go home once I've given up on finding a sorry replacement item to offer the V&A.”
“Oh, if that's what's keeping you,” says Sasha, and opens his office door the rest of the way to reveal a fragile wooden frame, round and painted red and gold, with what looks like paper bunting dangling from its edges.
It takes a moment for Jon to register what she's holding. “You found the roof? How?”
“I couldn't let it go.” She grins. “This place is disorganized, not a black hole. Things don't just disappear.”
In Jon's less than humble opinion, they very much do, but he's not prepared to argue that point just now. The merry-go-round's roof is caked in dust, but it's beautiful, too, with small wooden stars studding the roof panels and delicately painted floral decorations around its edges. Jon takes it from her, careful not to put any weight on the most fragile parts. “Where was it?”
“On top of that weird dresser in the basement. It was restored in the nineties. Doesn't seem to have moved much since then.” She points meaningfully at a small paper tag attached to the top. “See that? It's from the restoration office. I had a hunch most of the Fairchild pieces would have passed through there, so I went through our restoration logs, looked up the return locations,” she gestures, “et voilà.”
“Thank you,” says Jon. “Genuinely, Sasha. I know you don't –” But they don't talk about this, do they? One of the museum's more open secrets has always been that Sasha has good reason to be annoyed with his appointment, and between overly English professionalism and sympathetic camaraderie, there's never been any space to discuss it. Jon falls silent.
She keeps her eyes on him for a moment. “Sure thing,” she says finally, and smiles. “Go home, yeah? No restoration work on that cursed little thing allowed. You'll be no good tomorrow all sleep-deprived and grumpy.”
“All right.”
The door falls shut behind her, and Jon sits without moving, momentarily lost. After a while, he takes a deep breath. “Right,” he mutters to himself. As the lights in the hallway switch off one by one, Jon sets up the restoration space in the corner of his office, and goes about cleaning the merry-go-round with careful hands.
2.
Jon is old friends with Georgie's mildly fond look of disapproval. It was with him throughout some of his worst years, and, more recently, for a few of the better ones. It swung by when he brought in a very pregnant stray cat from the street, for one, so to see it again now feels a little bit disproportionate.
“I'm sorry,” she says earnestly, “but I'm just trying to understand what's so terrible about this. Is he not good with cats?”
Jon sighs. The Duchess Guinevere is curled up in her favourite spot at his feet on the sofa, and he's noticing with some dismay that his back isn't what it used to be. He can't reach her from where he's sitting, another small, everyday sort of failure. “He's good with cats.” Regrettably.
Georgie twists in her seat to pick a wandering Admiral up off the ground. Jon hasn't missed that the size of their apartment and their current situation combined mean that one typically only has to reach out one's arms to find some cat or other. The kittens need forever homes, and Georgie is often too kind to press him on the matter.
“What's the problem, then? You know they'll have to be exposed to more strangers eventually, and the sooner, the better.”
“It just seems unprofessional,” says Jon. “As was bringing the cats to the museum in the first place, but at least I didn't drag the others into it purposefully, then.”
Another expression of Georgie's that he knows all too well: the barely-suppressed smile, a silent pulse of amusement. “It's unprofessional to have friends?”
“I have no idea,” he says honestly. What does he know of leadership? Or of friendship, for that matter? “Can you be friends with someone whose income depends on you? Christ, I want to work in interpretation again. Feels like at every turn someone's gearing up to shut down the entire place or cut down on staff, and it's my responsibility to prevent it.”
“Well, I've never run a museum, but refusing to socialise with anyone who works there doesn't seem like the only way forward,” says Georgie. The Admiral places an inquisitive paw on her chin. “Just my two cents.”
And what could he say to that? Jon went full circle with his socialisation habits ever since he came to the museum, from unreasonable amounts of professional distance to tentative camaraderie to – well, whatever this is. He could have happily continued along his established track if the cat-situation hadn't come along to bond him and his co-workers in hushing up some gross museological malpractice.
(Oh, Jon knows it's just Martin. He wouldn't have thought twice about inviting Tim or Sasha over, and he knows exactly why. Not addressing that 'why' is a deliberate choice: whatever he feels for Martin needs a sturdy dam, or he'll find himself lost in the flood before long.)
The doorbell rings, and Georgie gives him a gleeful little smile Jon takes the time to roll his eyes at before he goes to open up.
Martin is wearing a cream-coloured sweater and holding a calathea prayer plant. He brightens when he sees Jon, although there's a wary edge to his smile.
“Hello, Martin,” says Jon. He wonders how he normally greets people.
“Hi! I, um, I brought this. Sorry, didn't really know what plant type you both liked with only the one reference, but this one's safe for cats, and, well.”
“Thank you,” says Jon. He takes the plant from Martin, whose hands are warm. “Come in – quite quickly, actually, the Admiral's a bit –”
“Oh!” Martin shuts the door behind himself just in time to divert the Admiral's blurry, lightning-quick shape into a different direction. “Close call.”
“Yes, he's – well. The great outdoors certainly haven't lost any appeal to him since four other cats moved in.”
Georgie waves at them from her spot on the couch. “Hi, Martin! Thanks for the plant.”
“Small fee to pay for access to cats,” says Martin with a quick smile. “Thanks for letting me stop by.”
“It's really a relief for him to bring in a human friend for once,” says Georgie, and Jon clears his throat.
“Would you like anything to drink, Martin?”
“Oh, um, I'll have a tea, if you were making some?”
“Right.” Jon directs Martin to his room, the realisation that shoving over a house guest to his cats while he stays behind to put the kettle on perhaps isn't the most polite thing to do coming slightly too late. “Georgie,” he says under his breath the moment Martin disappears in his bedroom.
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all, and then silently mouths, He's tall.
Jon lets the kitchen door fall shut.
When Jon enters his bedroom balancing two cups of tea on their largest cutting board, Martin has been, for lack of a better term, incapacitated. He's on the floor right by Jon's bookshelf, holding one cat in his arms as another clambers happily across his shoulders. The look he gives Jon is nothing short of terrified.
“Help?”
Having set down their tea, Jon gingerly plucks the orange kitten off Martin's shoulders and sets her down on the foot of his bed, where she's quickly claimed by her mother, who appears to have been paying Martin no mind at all. “Sorry,” he says. “Still a climber, that one.”
“I brought all these treats,” says Martin, still stunned. “I thought I'd have to ingratiate myself with them. They just attacked.”
“Hm, merciless, they are.” Jon scratches the Duchess Guinevere between her ears. “Frodo remembers you, I think.”
“Really?” Martin picks Frodo up off his lap – he still thinks he fits comfortably into Martin's palms, in spite of how much they've all grown. “You always were my favourite. Don't tell the others.”
“Careful, someone's going to take offense,” says Jon. The smallest of the three kittens, pitch black and notably shy, is peeking out from under Jon's bed with quick, wary eyes. “I'm sure the Duchess Guinevere here doesn't appreciate having her children put into competition.”
“You know, I always wondered.” Martin allows Frodo to start climbing up his arm, small claws doing considerable damage to the soft wool of his sweater. “What did you name them? Before Tim and Sasha and I, uh, interfered, I mean. You must've been calling them something.”
“Ah.” Jon winces. It's not the best question to be asked if he wants to maintain a drop of respectability. “Yes, I – I was. Still using them now, actually, alongside the ones you picked. Well, mostly, anyway; I consider Popcorn to be something of an affront.”
Martin laughs. “Come on, it suits her a little bit. She's got sort of a – caramelized look to her, doesn't she?”
“Her name is Pandora,” says Jon archly, “and you don't caramelize popcorn.”
“Sure, sure, whatever you say.” Martin points at the black kitten that's tentatively approaching him, christened Nico by Tim. “What about him?”
“That's Nyx.” Jon didn't actually hate Tim's idea, to the point where he's come to use both interchangeably – something which Tim, so long as Jon draws breath, will never hear a word of. “We named him first out of the three; it, uh, was a bit touch and go for him for the first couple of days.”
“Oh.” Martin frowns. “They all seemed so healthy when you brought them in.”
“They are now,” Jon says quickly. “I was here for immediate care, and Georgie knows a good vet, so it's all – they're well. Thankfully.” And we're up to our necks in bills, he thinks. Vet bills, and then there's buying food and litter for them all, and then there's the fact that he can't keep all five of them in their small apartment forever, and –
“How do you know so much about raising kittens?”
Jon looks up sharply. Martin, with Frodo balanced precariously in the crook of his neck, flushes a deep pink. “I mean, um. I think it kind of took all of us aback? You don't have to tell me,” he adds quickly. “Sorry, that's nosey, I didn't mean to –”
“It's fine.” Is it? “There were always stray cats around growing up. Semi-detached house in Bournemouth, nothing but a tall fence with gaps around the back yard; you couldn't really keep them out. The first time a stray had kittens in our hedge, I read everything I could get my hands on. It probably won't surprise you to learn that I was a deeply obsessive child,” he says dryly. “Without too many friends. Caring for young cats was something to do.”
He can't make sense of himself. All that effort to keep up his guard, and all it takes is a gentle voice and a warm smile to make him unravel like the loose thread on Martin's woolly sweater.
Martin's eyes on him are kind. Jon sees it, briefly, and has to look away.
“What was Frodo's name?”
A lifeline, thankfully. It draws them out of the moment with no brutality. “Pippin,” says Jon. “After the smallest Carolingian.”
Sitting less than a foot away from Jon's collection of historical biographies, Martin fails to hide a smile in his hands.
Georgie comes in halfway through the evening to ask if they're interested in dinner, and thus they are finagled into cooking. It's surprisingly easy. Georgie and Martin are both skilled at small talk and anecdotes, and the kitchen smells of roasting vegetables and balsamic glaze as the Admiral lazily watches them move about from his spot on the radiator.
“Research is by far the worst,” says Georgie. She's holding a glass of white wine and regaling Martin, who seems entranced, with trivia about the podcast world. “You wouldn't believe how many times I've resorted to questionable methods just to get my hands on some static recording of what's probably just a person coughing in an empty room.”
“Or a ghost,” says Jon.
She nods. “Precisely.”
“Actually, that's pretty easy to believe.” Martin gives Jon a meaningful glance. “We're unpopular enough to need to be, uh, unorthodox as well, sometimes.”
“Don't remind me,” says Jon. “Georgie, the LMA hates us desperately. Moreso than other City of London bodies, and I never even found out why. I called down in my first week about some of the old local parish registers, and they just told me that if I wanted something, I could come in personally to request it.”
“Which he didn't,” adds Martin. “He sent us. Well, he sent Tim, and Tim took me for 'strategic reasons'.”
“He didn't tell me that.” Jon frowns. “When I asked how he'd gotten his hands on the documents later, he winked and said,” he quotes flatly, “'Don't worry your handsome head about it, boss.'”
Georgie snorts.
“Sure, with you he's all delicate about it”, says Martin. He's stirring pasta, and Jon puts a careful hand to his shoulder to reach around him and grab a colander. “When we were there, he told me to sneak past the reception desk when he signalled me. Sneak! I mean, he's met me, right – but that's how we did it, in the end. Pretty sure Tim's social skills should be classified as, like, a public hazard.”
“Christ, I should have known it was something like that.” As in, really, Jon should have. Morally speaking. He should know when he's sending off his employees to trespass. “I probably shouldn't ask if things have improved recently?”
Martin hums. “Honestly, when it comes to Sasha or Tim getting access to things, it's best not to ask about the how of it all.”
“I'm sure resourcefulness is appreciated,” says Georgie. Jon doesn't miss the weight in the way she says it, more teasing than accusatory.
“Ah,” and Martin smiles, with easy sincerity, “yeah, we know it is.”
By the time Martin leaves, the cats in Jon’s room have slipped into various state of slumber, and the Admiral has fallen asleep on their living room radiator. The moment the front door shuts behind Martin, Georgie very pointedly pretends to be reading a magazine, something she hates doing (all the magazines in their apartment are Jon’s: he likes the variability).
Jon lets himself sink into their armchair. “No needling comments, then?”
She drops the facade, and the magazine. “You should ask him, Jon. You know I’ve been trying not to mention it, but --”
“Yes, yes.”
“I won’t pressure you.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that --”
“I know.”
“Right.”
Jon exhales. “Right.”
“Well, whatever they are, I'll leave you to your very deep thoughts,” she says mildly, and pats the top of his head as she walks by the armchair.
The fact that Georgie knows him to be a cerebral, brooding bastard is something of a relief: it goes some length in disguising the rare occasions on which he isn't. For once, his thoughts aren't going down rabbit holes. He stays curled up on the armchair with the Admiral purring next to him, brushes his fur with slow strokes, and thinks of Martin standing in their kitchen, cutting squash.
3.
“What's your verdict, boss?”
“Please remove the bug, Tim.”
Tim leans over to open a window and blows on his hand, and the small black beetle flutters off. “I think it's a woodboring one. Been finding them all over the place today. And since you said to mention anything that might impact the inspection...”
“Yes, yes. Thank you, Tim.” Jon glares at the room at large. The inspection. The inspection that is today. The inspection, on which so much of their future funding depends, and for which Jon has been preparing since the beginning of the year. That inspection. Undone by beetles.
“You know, possible infestation notwithstanding, you clean up really well,” says Tim. “Compared to this place, anyway. Should I get the others?”
One gets used to it after a while, the unsolicited compliments and (more rarely) blatant objectification. Today, Jon feels oddly soothed by it; some of the discomfort of being put in a suit is eased by knowing that it’s just another signal for Tim to declare open season on his boss.
“No, don’t –” Jon stops in his tracks. What is he doing? Bad enough that he’s got the entire board practically baying for blood, he doesn’t need to deliver them yet another reason to hound him on a silver platter. He doesn’t need to take it lying down, at least. The museum isn’t large, but it is an incomprehensible fucking maze. Most days, Jon feels as if there’s more wood in it than air. “Tell them to start looking,” he says. “Maybe – just in here and in book storage, first. Start with the furniture and picture frames.” And pray to whatever god will listen that they can move whatever the woodworm has made a home in.
Jon tries not to read anything into the fact that both Martin and Sasha are more than happy to drop their current tasks to come up and pull the second storey apart. Perhaps it satisfies a more violent instinct in a reversible way: instead of setting fire to the art collection, they open the blinds to the harsh light of late March sunshine, and instead of tossing furniture out of open windows, they pull it away from walls and stalk intrusive circles around it, shining phone torches on smooth wood to look for small, distinct holes or scattered dust of wood shavings. In the end, it’s Sasha who calls them over from the cabinet of horrors.
Her expression when Jon and Tim come in is nearly grief-stricken, and it is not, as would perhaps be appropriate, directed at Jon. “Tim,” she says, and winces when she looks at the grandfather clock nearby, “I’m so sorry.”
Ah.
It’s something of a story, Tim and their obscure, evil clock. Contrary to most other objects in what they’re affectionately calling their cabinet of horrors, the clock isn’t creepy as such, but rather… unsettling, in an existential sort of way. Its bell used to toll at seemingly random intervals, and its sound, more high-pitched and cheery than any of them expected looking at it, is just on the eerie side of clownish. Tim adopted it as a side project when he started his job, and became obsessed with clockworks in the process, at least for a while. Right up until he managed to wind and set Magnus’s clock properly for the first time, they’d occasionally tease him for it, which quickly enough made way for genuine admiration. Jon in particular has to respect his commitment: you couldn’t pay him enough to take the thing apart to rewind it every ten days or so, but Tim does it with a good amount of enthusiasm.
“No.” For a moment, it’s hard to tell whether Tim is succumbing to heartbreak or melodrama. “Oh, please, no. I’ve put so much work into you!”
“It’s still working,” says Sasha gently. “Just - uh, full of holes?”
Martin’s eyes are on Jon.
Jon’s mind is empty. He doesn’t dare look at his watch. The clock is a prestige object, one of Magnus’s more prized possessions, and there isn’t a museum trustee in the world who wouldn’t notice something off with it. They have no time to treat it, or cover it, or –
“Maybe if we just hid it…?” Martin doesn’t look like he quite believes in the idea himself.
“It’s really heavy,” says Tim. “I mean, I can disassemble parts of it, but moving the entire thing -”
“Where would it go, anyway?” Sasha, hands on her hips, has entered crisis mode. Jon can only think in static. “It’s their job to scour the rooms. They’d find it if we put it in the attic.”
“Ugh, this is making my skin crawl.” Tim shudders. “It’s like one of those sympathetic illusion things where you start itching because someone else was talking about fleas. Isn’t there a whole name for it? You know, some American -”
The sound of the doorbell, ancient and heavy, stops all four of them in their tracks, and tears through the veil of static that had settled gently over Jon’s mind.
“Cover it,” he says gravely. “I’ll take them to this room last. There’s nothing we can do beyond that; if they notice, they notice. Don’t worry.” He looks at each of them in turn. “This won’t come back to any of you.”
Being able to secure some positive type of condescension from old men is, according to Jon’s personal assessment, by far his most deplorable character trait, rivaled perhaps only by the fact that he doesn’t always mind. He tells himself he has a least ceased wanting the board’s respect for his own sake, just like he stopped giving a damn about his professors’ opinions in his final year of uni, but even when it’s technically unwanted, the implied Oxbridge sentimentality they try to sweep him up in is at least useful. Today, it lets them linger in the entryway and blather on about the weather and past conferences; it allows Jon to latch on to throwaway comments about crown moulding and to field distant, patronising smiles for what he can only hope is long enough for the others to get back to their work and pretend nothing was ever wrong.
When they reach the cabinet of horrors, Jon’s facade slips for a moment. The clock is gone. All of it. It’s not there and shrouded in black cloth like an omen of doom for all of them, it’s not there and pushed to the side of the room that’s half-hidden by the door, it’s simply… gone.
He stumbles through the vague introduction he had planned for the room, consistently waiting for the inevitable comment on an obviously missing item, and it does not come. Thin smiles and pointed remarks about Magnus’s questionable taste in wallpaper follow Jon out of the room, and then, before long, it’s over.
The moment he shuts the front door behind them, Jon slumps, dropping forward until his head is resting against the heavy, painted wood.
“All clear?”
One of these days, Sasha’s gift for walking quietly will give him a heart attack.
“Uh, yes, they’re...” Jon exhales. “It’s, it’s over. Sasha, please answer this honestly; did you defenestrate a 200 year old clock that is of immeasurable value to this house?”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” she chides. “The clock is fine. Ish, at least; I just had a look at it, actually - deferring to your judgement, but I think it’s salvageable. It had better be, anyway, or the emotional damage inflicted on Tim will bring us all down with it.”
“Heya, boss.” Tim waves from the staircase. “Did you know Martin’s been hiding superpowers from us?”
“Just tell me where the clock is, please,” says Jon weakly, omitting Before I have an aneurysm.
“Um, where do you want it?”
Jon cranes his neck to see Martin at the top of the staircase. Martin, in their ratty pair of mover’s gloves and looking barely strained. Martin, leaning back just slightly to remain balanced. Martin, holding an entire polythene-wrapped grandfather clock in his arms.
“We stashed it in the women’s loo upstairs,” says Tim proudly as Jon short-circuits. “Weird how there isn’t a single woman on the board, huh?”
“Good Lord.”
“I’ve already called Joshua.” Sasha smiles. “He’ll be around to pick it up for fumigation in a bit, and with any luck, it’ll look like a totally routine procedure on the bill.”
“And then,” says Tim, dropping his hands to Jon’s shoulders, “we’re all going to get a drink, and I’m going to forget I ever felt itchy. No protest allowed.”
Jon, who had no intentions of mustering any protest, gets shitfaced. It isn’t one of his better decisions, but there is only so much one can do after the sort of day that would, by rights, necessitate rinsing one’s brain with bleach.
In their cramped corner booth, Jon listens to Tim and Sasha bicker, watches Martin grow animated and un-selfconscious a few drinks in, and allows the others to pull more and more stories out of him the later the night. He’s never understood why they’d constantly be asking him to begin with, his life up until a few years ago having been uneventful at best and downright depressing at worst, but the alcohol makes it easier not to suspect them of anything beyond friendly curiosity. Yes, he did once work in historical re-enactment; no, there are no pictures. He knows better than to hope they’ll buy into that second part, but before Martin or Sasha can start digging, Tim announces that he’ll need Jon to help get their next round.
“Thanks for coming along,” says Tim with a gentle touch of his elbow to Jon’s ribs as they’re waiting at the bar. “I know you avoid this stuff. ‘S good to have you.”
“I’m not yet at the point of my night where I hate myself for agreeing to this,” admits Jon. “Though it’ll come. But, Tim. I have to ask you something.”
“Oh.” Tim looks amused. “Well, I’m all ears.”
Jon doesn’t recall having done anything funny. “This isn’t a joke, Tim.”
“Okay.” He leans minutely forward. “Okay, hey, see, I’m listening.”
Jon nods. This is good. Tim understands the gravity of their situation and he will, perhaps, provide some much-needed clarity. Tim knows things. The entire team just - know so much, really. Jon should ask them more questions. Especially important ones. “The -” Jon narrows his eyes to better focus. It is important to get this right. “How heavy is the clock?”
To Tim’s credit, he bites his lip for a second before giving up and bursting into laughter. “See, you best ask him that yourself,” he says when he recovers, and clasps a kind hand around Jon’s shoulder. “Bet he can give you an exact number and everything. Hm? I know numbers are your one and only.”
“I like other things,” says Jon.
“Yes,” agrees Tim solemnly, and takes three drinks at once into his hands. “Yes, you do. Like gin.”
Jon does like gin. And he likes Sasha, and the way Martin blushes when Tim leans in to whisper something conspiratory in his ear. He likes the way Martin blushes, in general. He likes Martin.
He really, really likes Martin.
Late that night - potentially early in the morning; Jon was too busy weathering the noise levels of the second pub they went to (grimey, open late, Mr. Brightside playing in reliable 30-minute intervals) to keep track of time - Tim and Sasha abandon them. Martin, it turns out, is something of a lightweight, certainly moreso than Jon, who helps him walk in a straight line on their way to the tube.
“Dickens got married here,” says Martin, and stops short before an iron gate on Sydney street. The church behind it is lit up, a stark yellow against the purple blue of the night. “Did you know? He - he actually treated his wife terribly, it’s sort of dreadful, really? But, well. Not like the church knew that there was an awful marriage ahead for them. It - hm, it probably wouldn’t even remember, if there weren’t a blue plaque. It’s somewhere round the back, I don’t think you can even see it from here -”
“Martin?”
Martin drunk is Martin slightly maudlin, all while being as chatty as ever, and Jon has no idea how to wrangle his fondness in response. Perhaps that’s why it comes out before he can stop himself - that, or his tipsiness, or the fact that, reluctant as Jon would have been a year ago to allow this, today was a good day because he wasn’t alone in it.
Martin has turned to look at him, somewhat startled, and somewhat - is that -
Is he hopeful? How in the world would he know to be?
Jon focuses. He clears his throat, and says, as clearly as he can, “Do you want to adopt Frodo?”
“Oh.” For an awful, brief moment, Martin’s face falls. Then, as if only now properly hearing Jon, his eyes grow wide before growing wet and glassy. “Oh - Jon - that’s -”
“No, sorry -” That is not how this was meant to go. He touches Martin’s shoulder vaguely, and cringes, drawing back his hand. Christ, but he’s a stupid bastard. “Sorry - idiotic idea to spring that on you right this moment, you probably don’t even want a pet, that was -”
“No,” Martin shakes his head, and drags a sleeve across his eyes. “No, I mean, yes. Of course. Of course I’ll adopt him. If - if you’re sure.”
“Ah.” Jon is very sure. He had better be, considering he’s been thinking of little else for a few months now, mulling the thought over, driving Georgie insane with his hemming and hawing. “I am. Though I’ll ask you again when we’re both sober, too, that… seems prudent.”
“Yeah.”
Martin blinks. His eyes are still wet. Without thinking, Jon reaches out, takes Martin’s glasses, and dries the corner of his right eye, the spot where the orange light catches. “Better get home before I ask anything worse,” he says, and replaces Martin’s glasses, brushing soft curls aside to reach behind his ears. “It’s been a horrendous day. I nearly proposed to Tim just for getting me that Monkey 47.”
“It - it’s good gin,” says Martin, with some delay. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind, really. If - if you wanted to ask anything else. That’d be. That’d be fine, too.”
Jon looks away from Martin, up at the sinister church that appears to have damned Charles Dickens’s poor wife, and hums. “Perhaps another time,” he says.
He’ll think of the right question.
4.
Housecats are crepuscular. Martin has learned this in the past two months. He never had much of a routine to speak of; these days, his routine consists of constantly adjusting around a very lively little creature’s moods in the morning and letting it keep him awake at night.
If a new cat isn’t supposed to be in your bedroom but keeps shouting and scratching at the door during the night, you must not open. That’s what Google said. Google said to remain stoic, no matter the heartbreaking pitch of your cat’s yelling, and to wait out the couple weeks it takes for the cat to get used to the rule.
Martin did not remain stoic. Frodo likes to sleep on his chest and to wake him up at dawn by sitting on his windpipe.
Martin has been coming in to work earlier.
Jon, more so even than his former cat, has separation anxiety. That is another thing Martin learned in the past two months. Adopting Frodo was a slow process, from setting up his flat to Doing The Reading to an increasingly stressful number of evenings spent at Jon and Georgie’s flat socialising with their cats. (Martin knows the way Jon’s books are organized, now - genre, then alphabet - and knows that he’s good at keeping animals alive and terrible at doing the same for plants. He knows the way Jon moves about his own kitchen and that he keeps an ancient discman on his night stand, because the humming noise of a CD playing in it helps him sleep. As emphasized: things have been stressful.)
When Frodo came to live with him, Martin naively, and perhaps clinging on to some hope for his sanity, assumed the designated Jon-time he had in a day would reasonably decline to what it had been before any cats drove it up. Now, as he’s making tea and arranging biscuits on a plate in lieu of a real dinner while Jon entertains Frodo on Martin’s embarrassingly ratty couch, he’s identified this assumption as a fool’s hope.
“I can make you up a daybed, you know.” He sets down their drinks, careful not to get in Jon’s way as he drags a string about the cushions for Frodo to chase. “Set up a desk or something as well, if you’d like to permanently relocate your office.”
“Hilarious,” says Jon without smiling. “I’d just like to make sure he’s adjusted all right.”
“I know, I know.” It’s still hard not to find it amusing. Jon’s presence here made perfect sense for the first couple weeks, when Frodo was still visibly struggling with the transition and only making slow progress to becoming his old self again. He barely purred, for the first week he spent at Martin’s, and never felt up to playing. By the third week, he was lively and affectionate, and Jon insisted that he’d better still come around to keep tabs on “other developments”.
As of now, Martin has not worked out what these might be.
“You feeling all right about the review, then?” Martin catches Frodo before he can slide off the couch in an attempt to attack Jon’s sock. “I don’t think Tim’s slept in a week.”
“Tim?” Jon frowns. “Tim’s nervous?”
“Oh, no, no, he doesn’t need to be, I don’t think. He just wants the big boss to have a bad time coming around tomorrow. Yeah, apparently there’s plenty of brainwork involved in causing mischief.”
“Perfect, another thing to wash my hands of when inevitably confronted.” Jon grimaces, but there’s no real edge to it. “To be honest, I haven’t given it any real thought until now. Things have been… going all right, actually, of late. Considering.”
He doesn’t need to specify: ‘considering’, in their workplace, encompasses the museum’s entirety, and a general sense of marvel at the fact that it still exists at all.
Between them, nearly sliding under the cushions, Frodo has rolled onto his back, batting at Martin’s hands as he pets his stomach. It took Martin a while to take to his style of communication: never having had any pets, he only started indexing and translating cat body language a few months ago, and still catches himself doubting his instincts. The fact of it is terrifying when he thinks about it too long, that he’s the sole person in charge of this small creature’s safety.
In that sense, Jon is probably right to keep checking in.
“Are you nervous?”
Martin jumps in his seat. Jon’s eyes are on him, dark and oddly intense. “Am -? Sorry?”
“About the review. Are you worried about the evaluations? Because while I’m perfectly aware that it’s not for me to share, not in this setting, at least, I’d hate for you to feel any actual anxiety about this, and I would -” He frowns gently. It’s a pretty expression on him, drawing his eyebrows into something stern, yet kind, that Martin fell for roundabout a year ago. “Allay it,” says Jon. “If I can.”
“Oh.” Martin’s brain catches up, if a beat too late. Jon’s presence in his life of late has muddled some of his cognitive functions beyond recognition; his average response time has broken down to the state of crushed mint leaves at the bottom of a cocktail glass. “Oh! No, I’m - I mean, I haven’t been all that worried. Maybe for the first time, to be honest. Like you said, we’re… doing well? Aren’t we?”
“We are.” Jon’s look as he pauses implies heavily to Martin that this isn’t the (dearly hoped for) end of the conversation. “Is there something else, then? You seem concerned.”
Does he? Martin can’t help but wince. Perhaps adding ‘possible telepathy’ to ‘super hearing’ (plus, as it turns out, ambidextrousness; he learned that one last week and is trying not to think about it) on the list of Jon’s absurd talents is in order. “Um, no, I’m - I’m good. Sorry, I just...”
Martin rarely comes undone under anyone’s gaze - truly unraveled, rather than vaguely, sometimes exaggeratedly, flustered - but all of a sudden, he can’t stand Jon looking at him like this for one moment longer. “If you’re still worried about Frodo, you know you can always ask to look after him again?” It comes out slightly too fast, but now that he’s in it, he’s in it. “At - at the end of the day, you know, he was your cat, and I understand if you’ve changed your mind about trusting me with him. I’m - I’m not saying it wouldn’t be awful not to have him here anymore, but I, I genuinely don’t think I’m as good a judge of his wellbeing as you are, so. Um. You really can be honest.”
Martin miscalculated. Having said this feels much worse.
“I do trust you.” Jon is frowning. “Martin, I do. I would never have asked someone I didn’t think could care for him perfectly.”
Oh, God. “No, sorry, of course you wouldn’t, I didn’t mean to imply that you -”
“Christ, don’t - don’t be sorry. My behaviour has been…” Jon grimaces. “Well. Whatever the adjective, I - apologise for it. You’re adjusting to a new situation and my constant lurking can’t have helped.”
This is all wrong. This is - Jon’s slipping away from him, like he did the first time they talked. Why in the world did Martin have to be stupid out loud, again? “No, hey, you’re just worried. I get it! It - yeah, I overreacted a little bit, but no, you’re totally right to fuss. I’d - I’d miss him too.”
Jon’s expression in response is strange. Literally, since Martin hasn’t seen it on Jon’s face before, but now that he sees it, he also can’t parse it at all. Jon looks, suddenly, exhausted, and like he’s in some amount of pain. He cracks a wry smile as if to cover both up. “Yes,” in his professional voice, the one Martin hears on the phone sometimes. “In any case, I’ve, ah… I’ve really not been handling any of this particularly well.”
He stands abruptly, and Martin remembers the presence of his kitten, who takes offense at the loss of his back cushion. Insulted, he crawls into the crook of Martin’s elbow, who now feels compelled to stay on the sofa, with Jon suddenly, awfully, out of his reach. He turns at the door.
“Thank you, Martin. For the tea.”
Quick as a ghost, he’s gone.
For a good while, Martin sits on the couch, quietly baffled, as Frodo attacks a loose thread on his sweater. He wants to go after Jon. He wants to cry, a little bit. He picks up Frodo, who only mildly protests when Martin presses him to his chest, and lets himself be pathetic for a moment.
Then, he gathers up their mugs, and goes to pour out their untouched and cooled tea.
It’s a surreal workday. Martin assumed it was going to be, even without the previous night’s… situation (does something of that sort warrant the term falling-out, when there was nothing to fall out of to begin with?). Review days are always strange, as are inspections. Their higher-ups from the board are intruders in the space of the museum more than anything else, disturbing a careful and comfortable balance to remind them that they are, in fact, city professionals working to keep a heritage body alive. That last part is easy to forget when one’s day-to-day tasks consist in handling allegedly arcane objects.
Contributing still to the unreality of it all, Martin’s review is glowing, more generously so, surely, than his fumbling attempts at a social media presence deserve. He’ll take it, though, especially when Tim and Sasha report much of the same.
“Yeah, I actually felt uncomfortable,” says Tim, one foot out of the door to head out for the day. “Almost like they were threatening us with prestige. Can you imagine our workloads if this place were actually taken seriously by anyone?”
“I shudder to think.” Sasha laughs. “Years of driving my job prospects into the ground, and for what?”
“Oh, an absolute nightmare, this.” Tim cuffs Martin gently. “Still not wrapping up, Romeo? The dinner invite stands.”
Martin declines, citing a flimsy excuse that Sasha and Tim exchange a Look about before saying their goodbyes. The head of department from their obscure City of London branch only just left, and Martin felt too high-strung to get anything done while he was still lingering ominously in Jon’s office. That, and Martin has seen little of Jon all day: he’s right to check in.
Still, he hesitates at the door. Would Jon even want to see anyone? How did it go? The soft-lit corridor is suspiciously quiet; there’s no noise from the office. Why, when he and the others received terrifyingly glowing reports today, is there such a leaden weight in Martin’s stomach?
Momentarily fed up with himself, Martin forces his hand to knock before he can think better of it. Jon grumbles his assent, so it’s too late to flee anyway, and Martin carefully nudges open the door.
Jon isn’t looking at him when he comes in. Jon is sitting at his desk, dressed the way he used to when he started his job: buttoned-up and maladroit, in a dress shirt that fits ill around his shoulders and a rumpled tie that gives away all too clearly that he owns only the one. It’s the Jon Martin first felt some sense of tenderness towards, haughty and horrible as he was. He was desperate to fill a role too large for him. Martin could relate.
“Hey.” Martin glances about the room, looking stupidly for traces of what might have caused Jon’s faraway gaze. “Um. Did everything go all right? I just wanted to check in before I left.”
“Hm?” As if only just noticing Martin’s presence, Jon looks up at him. He blinks tiredly, draws a hand across his mouth, and frowns. “I… I was demoted.”
It takes a moment for the words to register properly. “No,” Martin murmurs, but things are beginning to fit together, and beneath the sheer fury, it breaks his heart. “Oh, Jon.”
“They want to keep me on as an interpretation officer,” says Jon slowly. “My old position, in essence. Yeah, the, um.” He laughs: to his credit, it only comes out slightly hysterical. “It seems like everyone’s efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. The board would like some more involvement on site, now that there’s, well. Actually more of a site to speak of. They’ll announce their own candidate for senior curator and I... I’m not needed anymore.”
It’s laughable. It’s infuriating and hilarious and fucking heart-shattering, the idea that after a year of personal sacrifices and perpetually overworking himself, Jon should get a dent in his CV and a lower salary for his troubles, and it’s completely and utterly in line with what they can all expect of the place. Martin has no idea what to say. “Jon, I’m so sorry.”
“What?” Jon glances at him again, his hands moving unevenly across stacks of papers on his desk. “No, um... Hah. Martin?”
“I - yes?”
“Would you like to go out with me?”
“What?”
“I thought of the second question,” says Jon, clarifying nothing. “I’d apologise for not asking sooner, but I think you’ll agree that given the, uh, circumstances of our friendship and my position of authority over you, it wouldn’t - wouldn’t have been entirely appropriate.”
“I.” Martin’s vocabulary, inconveniently, appears to have been reduced to scraps. “You - you’re serious?”
Jon’s expression falters. “Well, I obviously don’t expect you to simply forget about -”
“No - stop.” One step at a time. Martin exhales. “Jon, did you keep coming round to my house because you wanted to see me?”
“Ah.”
A miracle happens. The miracle is Jon, a blush colouring his cheeks a shade darker, looking genuinely flustered in the most serious outfit he owns. Martin has seen Jon dead tired and annoyed and angry and happy and drunk off his face, but he has not once seen him shy.
“I’d appreciate it if you could tone down the glee, a little bit,” says Jon. “Especially as long as you’ve not... actually answered the question.”
Martin will not tone anything down. Jon is beautiful and incredibly sharp and makes no sense at all, and diminishing by force any of what Martin feels for him would be a bloody waste.
“Fine, we can go out,” says Martin, realising as he approaches Jon’s desk that he was much younger the last time he felt this giddy about anything. “I’m guessing you had something in mind? Tea at mine, maybe? Really switch it up?”
“You know, on second thought, I’m finding it rather hard to remember why I asked.”
“Hm.” Martin reaches down to take Jon’s hands, with just a glance at his eyes to make sure it’s fine. Jon never did go gently, least of all when it came to kindness. “What a shame. Yeah, I was about to bait you with cat quality time, as well.”
“All right, all right.” Jon fails to disguise a smile with an eyeroll. “Let’s get going, then. If I have a fair amount to answer for, I’d prefer not to do it here.”
Martin kisses his knuckles. He says, “Home?”
Jon brings up their hands between them, and his lips brush the inside of Martin’s wrist. Martin hears it beneath the anxious hum of anticipation, of tentative joy. Home.