emotions am I right?
Seeing Martin sucked. Jon couldn’t look at him, but couldn’t stop looking at him.. The entire time Jon went over his plans to digitize the statements with his assistants, Martin would just look at him, and it would hurt. Martin's eyes were still soft, kind eyes. The same that Jon would get lost in for time immeasurable as they traveled and fell into comfortable silence when there wasn’t much happening. Martin's eyes were missing that familiarity, Martin looked so nervous when their eyes met. This Martin didn’t know. Didn’t share the same bond Jon had with him. Hell, Martin probably didn’t even like Jon at this point in time. Jon could probably Know, but he didn’t want to. It would hurt more.
Had Jon known the last time he would’ve seen his Martin would be that moment, running his hands through Martin’s hair while feeling a trickle of hunger behind his eyes. Gosh, he would’ve said so many things. Or nothing at all. Just taken in Martin before it just ended. Done anything to put off the statement.
But no. It was too late for that kinda regret. Jon couldn’t have known the world would be restored in that moment, and he refused to regret that everyone was safe now. If it meant he was a little sad, it was worth it. He wasn’t even all that sure what did it other than the hunch it had something to do with the new fear that came to him. Not knowing the trigger, he understood that he closed the door he opened somehow.
There were 3 sets of eyes staring at him when Jon realized he’d stopped talking. His mind went blank. He couldn’t remember which were the last words that excited his mouth. Had he spoken the plans for his archives, or did he start speaking his thoughts about Martin? Jon couldn’t remember which parts were thoughts and which were spoken, but he could feel his eyes burning. That stinging burn one would feel before the waterworks started.
Sasha was the one to break the silence that fell on the office. “You okay? Your eyes look irritated. Do you need a moment?” Her voice was, well it was Sasha’s voice. It was strange yet familiar to Jon’s ears. If Jon could’ve recovered before, he was going to need that moment now thats she spoke.
Jon blinked and rubbed his eyes with his unscarred hand, forgetting his scarred hand was also unscarred at this point in time- would anyone notice he was suddenly a lefty from being used to never using his right hand for delicate actions anymore? Had he been using his left hand this whole time, while making the fake notes in the cursed boss book he bought last night, while writing out the plans to clean up his archives? He couldn’t remember. Could his right hand even be considered his dominant hand now? The Beholding provided that Sasha knew Jon’s dominant hand was his right, but the other two-
Jon forced himself to focus. “Y-yeah. Eyes hurt a bit. Allergies maybe? So much Dust down here I suppose I underestimated it or assumed it would’ve been cleaned after...yeah, right, I’ll be back. If you want to start pulling off some boxes from the shelf and see if there are any files that have research done on them. Would probably be a good spot to start testing the recording setup. Now if you will excuse me for a moment.” Jon hurried out of his office while pinching the area between his eyes before any of the three could say a word.
This was going to be much harder than Jon thought it would.
“Well. That was-” Tim sounded a bit shocked seeing Jon rush out. “Not the worst meeting I’ve participated in but...”
“Yeah, quite odd. He looked like he was about to start crying?” Sasha grabbed the papers Jon had photocopied for them all to used as reference. “Think if he isn’t back by 11 one of you’d like to check on him? Not that I have a problem bursting into the guy’s room, I feel like Jon might?” She had a smirk at that. No one used the restrooms on this floor.
Martin looked at the two of them. “Think that would be a good idea. Was it just me, or did it seem to get worse each time he looked at me?” Martin immediately looked flustered as Tim raised him an eyebrow to that pondering. “N-not like that! I mean, his mood dropped as we went, but seemed to get worse with me for some reason. He wasn’t excited when it was mentioned I would be transferred with you...You think he hates me that much??”
“Martin, Marty, My man. No. Jon is just cactus levels of prickly. This was not on you.” Sasha patted Martin’s back as she handed him one of the papers she collected. “Something was off with him, but you couldn’t be the reason he was late and looks like he needs a shower.”
“Now lets start checking out the spooky files. Maybe if we are lucky, they will all be researched and we only have to put them in order then have nothing but free time forever on.” Tim grabbed his paper and headed out of Jon’s office.
“Thanks...Yeah, I’m probably overthinking...” Martin sighed.
“You are, but you can’t help being over critical of what your crush thinks” Martin’s expression helped with the blooming smile on Sasha’s face. “You aren’t good at hiding it. Jon is dense though, so I can guarantee he has no idea.”
Martin groaned as he followed her out. He hoped she was right and Jon was okay.
-----
Jon stared himself down in the bathroom mirror, as the tears finally started to calm down. He was feeling better, but knew his eyes were going to betray him if he went out now. Allergies don’t do this. Could he ever get allergies any more? Maybe an experiment for a later date, shove his face in some random dog, see if he has regrets, or just get to enjoy puppy fluff.
He should’ve suspected that he would be overwhelmed by the three of them. Being alone in a small office with them. Sasha who he wanted to take in every detail of so as to never forget. Tim smiling face, alive and happy. Martin.
“Get it together Jon. This is…” Should’ve known all three would overwhelm him. It seems so obvious now that it’s happened, and that he should’ve planned for this. He hasn’t even figured anything out yet. Thoughts were still swimming around in chaos over the events from the last 14 hours or so.
‘One on one meetings for now.’ Jon typed into his phone's note app. He had added quite a lot to the app the night before, as reminders of current events around or certain ways to act. Things humans do that don’t apply to him anymore. Lists of statements he remembered, majority of that part was just dates or written in a code that only he knew what it meant.
With a dark chuckle, he thought of the notebook in Gertrude’s storage locker and how confused it made him trying to figure out what she was going on about. He still had no idea what anything in the notebook meant even with all his Knowing. The unknowing. To think they all thought it was a threat. Well, still was, but not the end of the world levels of bad. Nope. That threat was Jon’s to hang onto and prevent.
The other bits of notes in the app were short sentences or mentionings of things like “Laundry is a thing again, don’t wait till last minute to remember” or “lock house when leaving”. Things he hadn’t needed to do in the future.
He had thought about having some sort of order to it, but seemed pointless since it was for him only, and if anyone who found it, better if they didn’t understand it. Couldn’t save the world if people worried for his mental health and forced him to rest.
Much as he was an emotional mess, he felt quite calm on the mental health scales. Wandering a literal hellscape had helped him work through some of his more anxieties regarding humanity and his lack-there-of. Had plenty of interactions and time to come to terms with the things he could and could not control. Rules might be a little different now without the Eye in the Sky, but he still felt okay? No more paranoia at least like last time. Paranoia for protecting the others maybe, making sure they would all get grey hair the normal way.
Jon reached for his own, much shorter and less grey. He hoped it grew quickly. It had been something good to fiddle with that was always on hand. It had been so long before, unnaturally long if he lost track of it and didn’t cut it. Sometimes Annabelle would call a truce every so often and call off her spiders. Help Jon with it, help teach Martin various braids or hairstyles. Not like they had youtube for reference. He probably wouldn’t call it a fond batch of memories, but Martin was there. It’d been Martin’s idea to start interacting with other Avatars if they agreed to play nice.
Jon let out a deep sigh as Tim walked in. “Hey boss man, you’ve been in here a while. Wanted to make sure you didn’t fall in.”
“Fall in? Tim, you know I came in here to try and flush out my eyes? I’m small, but not so much I would need to climb to where I could fall into the sink.” Jon scowled at him. How he missed Tim’s jokes, even the bad ones.
“Ah, such a good joke wasted on you.” Tim shrugged with a grin. “Either way, seems like you didn’t. You need more time or you doing better?”
“I’m much better. Just trying to give my eyes a break before coming out there for you all to assume I was crying or something.” One on one was a lot easier to manage talking, though with all his effort to stay in character, there was a fondness leaking into his words.
“Nah, we wouldn’t Dare think you were crying. If I remember once you’ve mentioned emotions are unneeded and you’ve already grown out of your’s.”
“You remembered right.” Jon cleared his throat a little. “Thank you for your concern regardless, Tim.”
“Don’t mention it, Boss.” Tim could see something was up, but Jon probably needed some space. Tim couldn’t shake the feeling that reminded him of his last interaction with Daniel. He was really hoping it wasn’t something like that. “We got a nice stack of spooky files waiting for you.”
Jon followed behind Tim with a pained tone to his voice, almost like he was holding back a laugh. “Don’t call them spooky files…”