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Martin almost doesn’t bother to even look at his phone when it rings--no one, save for a few phishing scams or the occasional wrong number, have called him in--God, months, it must be--but anxiety won’t let him ignore the ringing. In the end, he’s glad he does look, because the person on the other end of the call is Georgie Baker.
“Hullo?” Martin greets, clearing his throat when he realizes this is the first person he’s even spoken with today. All week, possibly.
“Martin,” she breathes. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
Though he can’t say it aloud, Martin thinks it’s actually good to hear ANY voice. Peter Lucas would be angry, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
“Is everything alright, Georgie?”
She sighs. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Well, I can’t really--explain it? You’ll think I’m mad.”
Martin chuckles. “You--you remember where I work, don’t you?”
Georgie hesitates, then laughs a little, too. “Oh,” she replies. “I. I suppose that’s true.”
“Just tell me what’s bothering you.”
After a beat, she finally speaks. “I’ve just… I have a bad feeling. That something’s happened to Jon. Have you seen him, lately?”
And he’s not quite sure how to answer. “Not… exactly,” he admits. When he can practically hear her stiffen on the other end anxiously, he backtracks. “It’s not--I’m sure nothing’s happened! I just… haven’t seen much of anyone. Not lately. What makes you think it has?”
“This is… where it’ll sound crazy.”
“Take your time.”
“I’d been having dreams. And Jon’s always been… always been there.”
“You’re having nightmares about bad things happening to Jon?” Martin says, trying to let the glimmer of humor overshadow the dark nervousness that’s settling in. “I hate to say, ‘join the club,’ but you’re not—”
“It’s not that,” Georgie curtails. “They weren’t nightmares per se, but he was always in them. Not, like, as an active participant, not like I’m dreaming about Jon. More like he was watching.”
Martin pauses. “That’s… unsettling.”
“It was, and I told him as much!” she exclaims. “He said he couldn’t help it; that it happened when he slept. But then it started sort of… I’m not sure. Changing, I guess. I’d only see him for a few hours a night, then every other night, and now… Well, now it’s been three nights, and I haven’t seen him in my dreams at all.”
“And you’re worried.”
“I just want someone to make sure he’s not dead,” she says, voice hardening. “Or. Well, worse, I guess, considering what you guys do.”
A shiver runs through Martin. “I’m sure he’s just in his office. Mind if I get back with you after I check on him?”
“You don’t have to do that,” Georgie says, and for a moment, Martin chokes on a feeling that reminds him of secondhand smoke. That’s been Jon’s whole life--full of people who care only enough to want someone else to care for him. He keeps people at arm’s length, but perhaps it’s because no one has ever tried to hold him any closer, or maybe just not in any way that hasn’t made him run.
“Thanks for letting me know,” Martin says, and apparently that counts as a goodbye, because Georgie just hums something noncommittal and hangs up the phone. Martin wants to know Jon is okay, has to see it with his own eyes, so he makes his way toward Jon’s office.
He’s not surprised when he finds Jon there, but the state of him is not comforting: hunched over so hard that that Martin can feel it in his own back and upsettingly pale, he’s staring at a statement but seemingly not really reading it. More worrying still is the fact that he’s wearing the same clothes Martin saw him in yesterday morning, and his desk is littered with empty mugs. Martin frowns when Jon doesn’t look up at his entry.
“Have you been smoking in here?” he can’t help but ask before he can ask anything else. Jon jumps.
“Good lord,” Jon startles, blinking hard and rubbing his chest with one hand. “Some warning would be nice, next time, Martin.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Martin apologizes. “But I’m--I’m right, right?”
Jon’s face melts into a soft expression Martin isn’t familiar with. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“You know I can’t—”
“I know; I know--I’m just--how are you?”
Jon doesn’t trust Peter and he hasn’t made any effort to hide that, but he’s never been anything but civil about the choices Martin makes with which he disagrees. Probably because he knows the feeling.
“I’m fine,” Martin says. It’s true, mostly. He’s no less fine that he usually is, no more alone than he remembers--now, it’s just explicit, the boundaries, so naturally, Jon wants to break them. “I wanted to make sure you were doing alright, honestly. You don’t look well.”
Jon chuckles, taking off his glasses to rub his eyes and in the process revealing the dark circles beneath them. “I think ‘well’ is a bit unattainable for most of us, at the moment,” he dodges.
Martin sees right through it. “Maybe. But, I mean, there’s a difference between prematurely greying and actively looking like a corpse.”
Jon flinches. “Rabbit punches,” he says, and Martin realizes how he’s sounded. Wow, he really hasn’t spoken to anyone in a while. Is he really so out of practice?
“Sorry. I--I’m just--worried. Georgie is, too. She sent me to check on you, actually.”
Jon stops rubbing his eyes, pressing one hand to his temple with a wince. “She hasn’t even been speaking with me.”
“Right. She, uh, said something along the lines of you’re… not appearing in her dreams, anymore? I wasn’t sure what that meant—”
Jon perks up, though his eyes are still dull with exhaustion. “That’s worked, has it?”
“What’s worked? You know what she’s talking about?”
Jon is reluctant to answer but bound by the promise he’d made to tell the truth as he’d tried to regain their trust.
“I, erm, well. Not me, exactly, but the Eye. It… Watches, when I sleep. And whoever it’s Watching, apparently, sees me in their dreams. I’ve been told it’s… unsettling, at the very least.”
Martin gapes. “So you, what, just--haven’t been sleeping?”
“What right do I have to—”
“Christ, Jon! There are other solutions!”
“There really aren’t.”
“Sleep during the day!”
“It’s anyone I’ve taken a statement from, Martin. Anyone the Eye has Seen. There are people all over the world; all kinds of time-zones and schedules.”
Martin can see him shaking, and he’s not sure whether it’s from the exhaustion or fear. “You have to know this,” he gestures widely at all of Jon, “isn’t sustainable. You’ll collapse.”
“Hah,” Jon laughs mildly in a tone that suggests it’s already happened. “If I’m going to destroy everyone around me, I think the least I can do is start with myself.”
Martin can’t have that.
Martin won’t watch that.
Martin shouldn’t be here.
“You need to go home, Jon. Get some actual rest.” Jon is already shaking his head by the time Martin finishes his sentence, and Martin rolls his eyes. “You think you’re any use here when you can’t focus? What if we--aren’t you, Daisy, and Basira working on some kind of plan together? A way out?”
“I don’t know that there is one, Martin.”
“But if there is, you’re certainly not going to find it dead on your feet.”
To Martin’s shock and horror, Jon doesn’t get angry. Years of experience getting to know Jon, learning to predict how he might react to any given stimulus, and he can still be terrifyingly wrong. Instead of yelling, Jon presses his palms to his eyes again, this time trying to force back and cover up frustrated tears.
“It just feels like any move I make is in the wrong direction,” he confesses in a small, broken tone.
“Oh--oh, no, hey,” Martin coos, stepping forward, only to be stopped by Jon putting up a hand.
“Don’t,” he commands lightly. He doesn’t compel, but Martin obeys. He supposes that, for Jon, comfort in this moment would be like putting a plaster over a gaping wound: it won’t stop it bleeding, so why endure the sting when you, inevitably, have to rip it off?
“Well. I’m not leaving until I see you get to the cot. And I’m very busy.”
“Yes, you’ve--made that clear.”
Martin sighs. “Jon,--”
“We don’t have to,” Jon says. The exhaustion is thick and clings to him virtually visibly, practically palpably. “I never see you. I don’t want to argue if you’re not going to be around to apologize to, later.”
There’s a poem in that, a cheesy one.
“Come on. It’s almost midnight. Georgie’s waiting for you.”
Martin’s never seen it up close, but Tim has told tales of Jon, exhausted beyond all reason, becoming quite malleable, and his lack of resistance as he gets to his feet, staggers to the side, and lets Martin steady and support him is a testament to that. It’s cute for only a moment, however, when Jon’s sleepy listing to the side turned into a full-fledged collapse that has Martin yelping and able to do nothing but ease him to the ground and keep his head from hitting anything. He pushes Jon’s hair from his face, and it’s one of those rare things Martin does that’s just for him: Peter would be disappointed in him; Jon would shout at him, but yet, he strokes it out of Jon’s eyes, then smooths it down twice more before resting his palm over Jon’s forehead. It’s cool, but that provides very little comfort.
Martin thinks over his options: if he leaves Jon here, he’ll certainly get up and keep working when he wakes. If he waits for him to wake and attempts to get him to bed, it’ll just be the same argument all over.
The only real option, as Martin sees it, is to take matters into his own hands.
He takes Jon into his hands, frighteningly light and bony, and carries him quietly to the cot in the spare room. When he lays him down, Jon curls around Martin’s arm before he can take it away and it breaks his heart a little.
“Oh, Jon. You’ve done a number on yourself, haven’t you?” he whispers, not expecting an answer. He wishes he could be close enough to be kind to Jon again, because it’s apparent that the little things he’s been doing--restocking Jon’s favorite tea when the break room runs low, swiping a few statements off his to-read pile when it gets too tall and overwhelming, placing Jon’s jacket over his shoulders when he falls asleep in his office chair--are only making him feel better.
He loves Jon. But that’s not enough if Jon can’t feel it, and all the warmth he’s been trying to send promptly rises up and away until he’s left with nothing but a choking chill.
For now, Martin takes Jon’s shoes off and covers him with the blanket. Jon probably won’t remember who put him to bed tomorrow, he accepts with a shiver.