Chapter Text
“... and of course, this is Martin Blackwood. Martin, meet Jonathan Sims. He’ll be joining the research team with you, Tim, and Sasha.” Elias gestures between them before folding his hands primly in front of himself, clearly stepping back to allow for proper introductions.
Martin swallows thickly. He isn’t the kind of guy to check out complete strangers, but Jesus. If there’s a collective office crush on Elias as the collected, posh older gentleman, the library staff are going to go feral over Jonathan Sims. With a touch of grey at his temples and the rectangular glasses framing his piercing eyes, he cuts as dashing a figure as a man can while wearing a sweater vest and khakis. He is, as Tim would probably put it, a ‘DILF.’ Whatever that means.
A hand waves in front of him and Martin jolts out of his thoughts. Jonathan looks down his nose at Martin, looking confused and impatient in equal measure. He pushes his hand out once more.
“Hi!” Martin squeaks out, jumping up- how rude of him, honestly , still sitting down when greeting a new coworker- and giving it an erratic shake. “Me- I’m Martin.”
“Jon,” he replies, quickly pulling his hand away. His nose wrinkles in distaste as he turns back to Elias, effectively cutting Martin out of the conversation with one smooth pivot of his heel. “I’m assuming the empty desk is mine? I’ll have the files you mentioned done by two, maybe noon if I skip lunch-”
“There’s no need to do that!” Martin says in alarm, scrambling around from behind the desk. He tries to offer a reassuring smile when he catches Jon’s eyes again. “It’s your first day, so why don’t you take a while to get acquainted with everyone? I could make you some tea, too. If- oh, how do you take your tea?”
Jon’s fingers flex noticeably against his palms, held stiffly at his sides. “Christ,” he mutters under his breath, as if Martin isn’t two feet away.
Martin looks frantically to Elias for support, but his boss simply chuckles fondly. “Right to business as always,” he says in what might be a teasing tone, except that as far as Martin knows, this is his first time meeting Jonathan Sims as well. He claps Jon once on the shoulder. “I’ll leave you under Martin’s guidance, then. Welcome to the Institute, Jon.” And then he’s gone, leaving Martin alone with the prickly new researcher.
“So…” Martin draws out the single syllable with a wince. “No tea?”
Jon huffs. He gives the empty desk one more longful glance before sighing and gesturing for Martin to lead him. “Fine. You’d best at least show me where it is,” he snaps. “ Let’s go .”
Martin, having already started walking as soon as Jon agreed, stops dead in his tracks as his heart swoops down into his belly. Jon leaps to the side to avoid running right into him as Martin whirls around. “I’m sorry?” he says, both as a genuine apology and as the start to a question. “What did you just say?”
Jon levels him with a suspicious look, brushing invisible dirt from his arm where he brushed against Martin’s back. “That we have work to do?” he repeats slowly. “Did I misunderstand my job description?”
“No, not- the other part, you sounded so-” Martin cuts himself off with a nervous titter, face burning. “Sorry. Moment of deja vu, I guess. Happens around here, you know? Part of the whole ‘spooky’ deal, heh.”
“I suppose,” Jon responds, though the look he gives Martin when he says ‘spooky’ leaves him wishing the floor would swallow him up. “Tea?” he prompts.
“Tea!” Martin agrees, gladly taking the chance to hide his face and turning toward the break room. What is wrong with him? This new guy sounds vaguely familiar and that’s enough to throw him off this badly? Christ indeed Martin, get it together! Say normal workplace things! He remembers seeing a lighter poking out of Jon’s pocket. That’s something, right? “And uh, I should let you know, the opposite door in the break room leads outside, so you can smoke out there if you need to-”
“No,” Jon interrupts. “In fact, please just don’t even mention smoking. I’m trying to quit.”
Martin flinches, tries and fails to pass it off as nothing. “Oh, well. That’s great!” So much for that. And the strange sense of familiarity is only getting worse with every word he manages to pry from Jon. He opens the break room door and holds it, insistently waving Jon in first. “So this is where the tea happens! The kettle’s over there, dish soap is under the sink. If you bring lunch, make sure you put your name on it or Henry will probably eat it. Honestly, he might anyway, but at least that way he can’t use that stupid excuse of thinking it was the food he brought-”
“Right,” Jon sighs. “Where’s the microwave?”
Martin blinks. “The… well, usually when people want a hot lunch, there’s a place just down the block that gives us a really nice discount. Uh, they have sandwiches, and some pizza that’s actually pretty decent-”
Jon waves his hand idly. “Yes, yes, I understand that. I mean for the tea.”
“You microwave your tea?” Martin asks, way too loudly. He glances around to make sure he didn’t miss anyone sitting around, but no. They’re alone for the moment, and he has to deal with this terrible revelation on his own.
“It’s faster,” Jon explains matter of factly. “And it doesn’t make any real difference.”
“ Doesn’t make any real-?! ” Martin forces himself to take a breath. This is pointless. There is absolutely no reason for him to lecture his new coworker on his horrible tea making and make him even more irritable. “Never mind. In any case, we don’t actually have a microwave in here. Security had I.T. take it out because they said it kept interfering with the cameras.”
Jon frowns- or, Martin supposes, his frow just deepens. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No it doesn’t,” Martin agrees. “You can take it up with Elias if it’s going to, heh, delay your work by two minutes too many.”
From the look on Jon’s face, Martin realizes that he might seriously be considering it. “What type do you like?” he asks quickly. “If you really don’t think you’ll have time, I’d be happy to make yours along with mine. We have some chai- no, see, I know, but it’s really very good if you take the time, and let’s see, we’ve got some Earl Grey? I think Sasha keeps some Darjeeling here if that’s your preference, or-”
“Martin,” Jon says, and Martin should really be insulted that he keeps interrupting him but he can’t find it in him to actually feel like he’s been slighted. He’s actually a little shocked that Jon finally addressed him by name. “I can handle a kettle, so for God’s sake do not make my tea for me.”
“Oh.” Martin wrings his hands. “Er, okay. Sorry.”
Jon lets out another sigh. “Well, if that’s everything, I’ll be getting to work. Thank you for showing me... where the tea happens.” He doesn’t even wait for a response before leaving the way they came without a backward glance.
Martin blinks. That… he has no idea what to make of that, really, probably wouldn’t even if he could figure out what is so jarringly familiar about this stranger. He thinks maybe that was a joke? Or at least an attempt at social mirroring, in which case maybe Jon is making an effort to be friends! In his own way. That’s been his experience, anyway. People who know what social mirroring is and actively try to do it usually know that they’re not good at first impressions and are trying to make up for it, which is good! For now, that is what Martin is going to choose to believe and he’s going to act on that assumption until proven otherwise.
All of that is to say- when he leaves the break room eight minutes later, he’s carrying two mugs even though Jon told him not to. He went safe with the most generic black tea leaves they had in the cabinets. He sets two sugar packets on Jon’s desk along with the tea when he passes, and watches to see how Jon takes his tea for future reference. The man doesn’t even look up, already somehow elbow deep in filing. He lifts the drink to his lips without adding a grain of sugar, but when he takes a sip Martin swears he sees a reflexive, almost pleased smile. It’s fleeting, gone by the time Jon’s eyes refocus on his work, but Martin definitely saw it.
This time, the flip-flopping of his stomach is definitely not deja vu. Martin grins. Doesn’t make a difference, indeed.
“Pssst. Pssssssst! Martin!”
Martin jumps and looks across the office, where Tim is dramatically waving his arms two desks away.
“What?” Martin hisses, glancing over at Jon to make sure he isn’t paying attention; he’s not.
Tim mimes texting and holds up his mobile, pointing first to it and then to Martin. Martin fumbles for his own phone in his pocket and sure enough, he has three missed text messages from Tim. The first is a string of huge eyeball emojis, while the second is a mix of flames, raindrops, and eggplants. This confuses Martin profoundly until he reads the last message, prompting him to squeak and bury his face in his hands. How fucking predictable.
Tim: MARTIN!!!!! stop hogging all the ogling space and INTRODUCE ME TO THE DILF
Martin: *middle finger emoji*
Martin: I still don’t know what that means.
Tim: oh i think you do };)
Martin: Go back to work, Tim. Please don’t give Jon a reason to call HR on day one.
Tim: oh so hes JON now is he };)
Martin discreetly flips Tim off in real life. Tim forms his hands into a heart and winks before mercifully going back to his paying adult job. Martin should also go back to his, and he will.
… he’s just going to be utterly useless until he can figure out what’s nagging at him so badly. He opens a new thread.
Martin: Tim, Sasha, drinks tonight?
Tim: HA knew it
Sasha: Sure thing, what’s going on out there? I’m stuck in the library with Rosie
Martin: Tell you after work.
Tim: oooooh thisll be good
“So,” Sasha says slowly. “You feel like you recognize this Jon guy, and it’s making you feel weird- not bad weird, just weird- and you want us to help pick your brain?”
Martin takes another drink and grimaces. It isn’t great beer, but it’s cheap and he needs to not be totally sober for this conversation. He leans back against the vinyl backing of their corner booth and nods wearily. “Yeah, that about covers it. Help? Please?”
“Lucky for you, you’ve got the best research team in London on the case!” Tim declares brightly, already pulling out his phone. “So you said you’ve already ruled out school? Not from any of your parapsych courses at uni?”
“Well, obviously not,” Martin answers. Wait. Too confident for someone who supposedly has a master’s degree. “I mean, at that level those are all really small classes? I would have absolutely remembered a nontraditional student like him, and he clearly wasn’t a teacher.”
“Oh, but imagine if he was ,” Tim leers. He feigns a dramatic sigh and flutters his eyelids, leaning back next to Martin. “I can just imagine baby Martin at uni, staying after class to chat up his hot teacher for extra credit.”
Martin chokes on his beer. “Tim! I would not- that is entirely inappropriate.”
Sasha whacks Tim on the shoulder absentmindedly, staring intently at her own phone. “Nontraditional? You mean, like older people going back to school after typical college age? How old did you say Jon is? Also, give me a better description of him. There are way too many Jonathan Sims’ on Facebook, assuming he even has one.”
Martin and Tim look at each other. Martin sighs and waves Tim on. “Go on. I know you’re dying to.”
Tim grins. “Sasha, the name of the game with this one is ‘barely contained disaster’ and I am loving it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Martin asks, bewildered. “What about him is disastrous? He looked more put together than either of us! You were wearing jeans- I’m in a band shirt, for Christ’s sake!”
“It is casual Friday,” Sasha murmurs, still scrolling. She snaps her fingers. “Description, please?”
Tim makes a hum of agreement. “Quite. Late thirties by the way, Sasha. He’s got silver-streaked hair and glasses, and this whole buttoned up, stick-up-his-arse air about him. Speaking of his arse, it’s the only meat he’s got on his bones. If he looks like he weighs more than forty kilo, that’s not our guy,”
“Oh yeah, definitely not that guy then…”
Tim swivels back to Martin with a pointed finger. “He may look put together, but trust me; anyone who can focus that intently and that quickly on forms he’s never seen a day in his life is no stranger to multiple all-nighters in a row. Whether he was with you at uni or not, he spent the night in the library every time there was an exam. The competence is a ruse, I guarantee it.”
“Holy shit,” Sasha whispers, and all of Martin’s attention immediately abandons Tim’s nonsensical rant to focus on her. “Is this the guy?”
They lean in closer, Sasha holding the phone steady between them. That’s definitely Jon, Martin thinks as he scans over the profile. There’s only one decent photo on his entire wall, one of Jon sleeping with a cat curled up on his chest. It was recently posted by someone named Georgie Barker, and it might just be that Jon’s not scowling here but Martin feels like the photo isn’t at all recent. He studies this younger Jon’s face to see if there’s any spark of familiarity there, but there just… isn’t. They don’t seem to have any mutual friends, either, though he notes that they’re both following the What The Ghost page. It’s a little disappointing.
“Aw, he’s a cat person.” Tim groans. “There goes the fantasy of a cabin in the woods and three dogs, eh Martin?”
“Wha-? Tim, there is no fantasy. I swear, the things your brain comes up with-”
“Guys!” Sasha whisper-shouts. “The cat is not the point . It says here he went to Oxford. Look at the class date.”
Martin looks. Does the math. It’s one year after his own supposed graduation. He laughs nervously. “Yeah, like I said, a nontraditional student. If he went to Oxford, then I definitely didn’t have classes with him. Little rich for my blood.”
Sasha only shakes her head and points imperiously to the section of the screen labelled ‘personal information.’ Martin follows her finger down to Jon’s date of birth and stops breathing.
There’s a moment of dead silence around the table before Tim picks up his drink and downs it in one unhurried gulp. “‘Nother round?”
Martin nods numbly, fumbling for his own glass. 1987. The year he was born.
He and Jonathan Sims are the same age, and Martin is an arsehole.
“Tim,” he says softly.
Tim reaches around Sasha to rub his shoulder. He’s a good friend, Martin thinks. “Yeah, pal?”
“Does this mean I’m a DILF too?”
Sasha drops her phone and doesn’t stop laughing until they leave the pub two hours later.
Martin wakes up the next morning hungover in a way he hasn’t been since… well, seeing that he never actually went to college, probably ever. His entire flat is offensive to him, light coming from too many directions while appliances whirr and kick on and off. He decides to make some tea, as the thought of solid food is making him nauseated.
Something that is making him much more nauseated is the dawning realization that he just spent an evening fruitlessly stalking his new coworker while piss drunk. He slides down to the kitchen tile while the kettle boils, rubbing his face aggressively.
“Stupid,” he mutters to himself. “That’s not- okay for one thing that’s rude . Why did I let Tim talk me into that?” Did Tim talk him into it? Probably- it’s Tim. Either way, they didn’t manage to find any connection, any reason that Martin might have for previously knowing Jon. He can still feel it, though. It must be something about his voice, or his tone, or- hell, maybe it’s just his diction? Martin doesn’t get any ideas looking at the man- and he knows that for sure now, after going through all of the pictures he has on social media- so it must be something else.
Well, he’s not going to sit around and go crazy over that all weekend. He refuses. He has adult things to do, like laundry and cleaning and meal planning, and that’s all way more important than the Jonathan Sims problem.
The kettle starts whistling, and Martin picks himself up. He pulls a face when he catches a whiff of himself- he fell asleep in the clothes he was wearing the day before, and he forgot to turn the fan on last night. As much as he loves this Mechs shirt, it desperately needs a wash.