tags
The Magnus Archives, Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood
- pre-slash
- lunch dates
- asexuality
He can’t pinpoint the exact moment that he and Martin become “lunch buddies,” as Tim calls it. It’s just one day Jon doesn’t eat lunch — partially because it’s a pointless meal that’s sandwiched in the middle of the day just to waste time, and partially because he usually forgets to pack it until he’s already on the Tube — and then the next Martin’s forgotten his, and hey, there’s this new cafe down the street, d’you want to come check it out with me? And well, what’s Jon supposed to say to that?
So it’s a regular occurrence. Going out with Martin, that is. Jon can’t say he’s used to frequenting any eating establishment enough to know when one starts being a regular, but the staff seems to know them well enough, always welcomes them back, always sits them at the same table that Jon had picked out once and decided he’d never sit anywhere else again. He just likes having a window view. It’s good for people watching, and even better for the occasional cat that wanders past on its way to the alley around back.
“God, what a dickhead,” Martin is saying as Jon shoves a spoonful of soup into his mouth. He’d been telling Martin about that man from earlier, you see — first screaming match of the week, if he’s keeping count, but probably not the last. Certainly not, if his luck is any record to go off of. “I don’t get those types of people! Like, yes, we’re the spooky ghost hunter place, but no one is forcing you to come and give your bloody statement!”
Jon hums, sets his spoon down, wipes his mouth. “My point exactly,” he agrees, “so if Elias comes down with another complaint, you have to back me up here.”
Martin slaps a dramatic hand across his heart. “You have my word. He shan’t lay a hand against your reputation if I have anything to do about it.”
“My knight in shining armor,” Jon snorts, then reaches across the table for the salt.
Jon likes Martin. He’s funny. It’s strange to think that there was ever a time that he didn’t share these sentiments. Not that Jon ever hated Martin, not really — his grandmother always warned him that hate was a strong word, and there was no use wasting your energy on hating something that wouldn’t hate you back — they’d just had...professional differences in the past, he’d call them. Differences that still sometimes arise when Martin doesn’t proofread his reports or prints off documents in the wrong color. They’re working on it though. They’re getting better about it.
Their waiter brings them their bills sometime in the middle of Martin rambling about his neighbor’s new puppy, some little golden thing that makes a habit of peeing in the elevator and crying like it’s been abandoned when let out on the balcony. Martin makes it sound like it shits rainbows too, from the way he talks about. Jon thinks it just sounds like it’s a nuisance, but he holds his tongue. Better to not say anything about it at all. He’s explained multiple times that no, he doesn’t hate dogs, he just likes bigger ones better, and he really doesn’t feel like getting into that argument yet again. People can have preferences, alright?
Jon reaches for the ticket closest to him and picks it up. Flips it around and goes over the math in his head. Looks down to the end of the bill, and—
“Have they started doing surveys here?”
Martin looks up, face catching between something of curiosity and confusion. “Sorry?”
“You know,” Jon says, “like those ‘rate our service on a one to ten scale, do you have any comments on—’”
“Yes, Jon, I know what a survey is, I just...what makes you ask?”
Jon blinks. “Oh,” he answers. Then he looks down, holds out his ticket, and says, “Well, there’s a number written on the bottom here, and—”
“A number?” Martin says, snatching the bill out of his hand and lifting it up to his nose. “...Jon. Oh my god. He gave you his number.”
“What?” Jon says, leaning across the table to peek at whatever secret code Martin is apparently reading from his ticket. “Who did?”
“The waiter! You— Jon, he was literally flirting with you the entire time we were here.”
“The waiter?” Jon echos, then looks back over his seat. He can see the man that took their orders — a tall, slender man that reminds him a bit of Tim, if he subtracted off half a decade — chatting with a coworker near the kitchen, seemingly oblivious to the entire conversation at hand. Sure, he’d been friendly, but it was hard to call his behavior flirty when he’d just been doing his job. Jon frowns. “No, he wasn’t.”
“Jon,” Martin says, looking almost pained as he fights back the grin tugging at the edges of his mouth. “Jon. He winked at you when you asked for a refill. He literally asked if you come here often — that’s the oldest trick in the book!”
“I-I figured he was just being friendly!” Jon defends — defends? Why is he defending himself? He doesn’t have any reason to be embarrassed about this, other than the fact that they apparently just sat through a half hour of flirting with only Martin noticing. How the hell was Jon supposed to know that? It wasn’t like he’d walked into the restaurant with a hi! I’m woefully single! sticker slapped across his forehead. “B-besides,” he continues to protest, “it wasn’t like we...we conversed or anything, he doesn’t even know me!”
Martin shrugs, picking up his tea to take a sip. “Well I dunno, maybe he just thinks you’re hot!”
Jon stares at him, lips pursed. “He thinks I’m hot,” he parrots.
Martin raises a brow. “I mean, probably?”
“Name one thing about me that’s attractive,” Jon says, crossing his arms. He’s not aiming for a “gotcha” moment here; it’s just that Jon’s been around the bend long enough to know what the general population does and does not tend to find attractive, of which he falls squarely into the latter of the two categories. People like muscular guys, tall ones, ones with smooth skin and strong features. Jon’s scrawny, under six foot, and speckled head to toe in deep pockmarks that he couldn’t even begin to cover up if he wanted to. That last one’s new — and something he’s definitely still coming to terms with. Not that Jon’s ever had any real concern over his looks, but if he wasn’t attractive before, then...well.
Martin, seemingly caught off guard, chokes around the drink he’s taking as the statement leaves Jon’s mouth. Sputters, then coughs, then wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “Um,” he says, smoothly. Then adds a “uh,” and follows up with a “well.”
Jon crosses his arms and waits.
“Well, you...” Martin starts again, then clears his throat, “you-you have nice hair?”
“...Nice hair.” Jon repeats, unconvinced.
“You do!” Martin insists. “It looks...soft. A-and you always dress nice! Always, um, look very...put together. Professional.”
Jon hums, noncommittally, but keeps his commentary to himself.
“And,” Martin continues, “you have a very nice voice. It’s um. Soothing, I’d say? Kind of...narrator quality to it? I mean, it’s quite obvious why Elias picked you for the archive’s audio recordings.”
Jon blinks at this, something strange and soft uncoiling within him as the words nest their way into his mind. He’s not sure he’s ever had someone compliment his voice. Only ever had the opposite — people whispering about how he sounds too posh, too much like a rich-dickhead who was riding off of dad’s money when he was really the scholarship kid just trying to fit in. Not soothing though. Never soothing. “Oh...um,” Jon says, suddenly feeling very out in the open as his crossed arms rotate to cover his chest. “Well, um. Thank you, Martin.”
Martin smiles at him. Martin’s got a nice smile; one of those ones that makes you feel like he really means it, but not one that makes you feel like an arse if you aren’t smiling back. A non-judgmental smile, Jon would call it, with just the slightest bit of a gap between his front two teeth. “Yeah,” Martin says, picks up his sandwich, “‘course, Jon.”
And then as soon as he opens his mouth to take a bite, something sparks in his face, and he shoots a hand up, knocking a plate in the process and sending Jon jumping in his seat in one fell swoop. “Oh! And— oh, sorry,” Martin says as he notices Jon’s startled expression, then places his hand off to the side out of clanging range. “And, you have a nice jawbone.”
Jon stares at him as his nerves reign themselves back in, and then he repeats the words in his head. Frowns. “A nice what?”
Martin raises an eyebrow. “A nice jawbone? You know, like your—”
“Yes, Martin, I know what a jawbone is but you— you can’t find bone structure attractive.”
Martin’s wide brown eyes scan Jon’s face, searching every crinkle and crevice and scar before his mouth wobbles. He snorts, barely contained. And then suddenly, like the crack has finally split, he bursts out laughing.
Jon just manages to sit there, looking bewildered.
“Haha, oh christ, Jon, you—” Martin cuts himself off with a cough, but he’s still grinning wildly, “sorry, I’m not — heh — I’m not laughing at you, I promise, I just— seriously?”
“Seriously what?” Jon snaps.
“Jon, that’s a very common thing to find attractive!”
“Wh— what? Why?” Jon argues, still unable to parse what could possibly be so comical in the scenario at hand. It’s— it’s bone, for god’s sake, it’s not like they’re talking about metaphorically structured abdominal muscles here, which he can at least understand somewhat in an abstract sort of sense.
“It’s just— it’s part of the face shape!” Martin attempts to explain, belly still shaking with his restrained chuckling. “You know, like strong noses and good foreheads?”
“You are literally speaking in code,” Jon retorts. Picks up his glass and takes a sip, then looks down the curve of the cup and mutters, “Don’t tell me you find those things attractive too.”
Martin flinches as if caught with his hand around a cookie— er, sandwich, he supposes currently. His face warms pink as he looks down to his lap. “I...might.”
“Martin.”
“It’s— I like strong features!”
“Martin.”
“Oh come on, Jon. You can’t say there isn’t some ‘look’ that you tend to go for in people.”
“I—” Jon begins, then falters as he finds no words behind the argument. He touches his chin. Stares pointedly at the swirling ice in his glass as he attempts to put form to what he wants to convey.
Jon’s dated people — not many, but enough. That’s not the issue here. He’s familiar with the strange and intricate societal rituals that come with courtship, the various levels of progression that take one from a casual relationship to something more intimate. First you’re friends, usually, and then you’re talking, and then you’re going on dates, and then you’re dating (there’s a difference here, Jon had figured out quickly in college), and then it’s hold hands, kiss, mouth kiss, awkward sex discussion, awkward sex, awkward post-sex discussion of things that probably should have been included in the pre-sex discussion, declarations of love if you haven’t broken up by then, move in together, and so on and so on. Jon knows how it goes, okay? He keeps a list. That’s not the issue.
It’s getting to the start of it all where the issue crops up. The part where Jon’s just supposed to magically know what makes someone attractive, because every guide out there seems to conveniently leave out the actual definition of the word itself. “It’s someone you like” — well now, that’s just real descriptive, isn’t it? “It’s someone you think is pretty” — he thinks Sasha has a nice smile and that Tim has nice hair and that Martin’s eyes are a very hypnotic shade of brown, but that doesn’t mean he’s lazing around daydreaming about them. “It’s someone you’d want to have sex with” — is that even a thing? Like, sure, Jon’s had sex, it’s fine, but he can’t say there was ever a time that he’s looked at someone and actively thought about it outside of another’s suggestion.
Martin dips back into his frame of view as he tilts his head. “Jon?”
“I’m thinking,” Jon says, trying and failing to not let his frustration seep into his tone. He hates thinking about this. He hates the needless complexity of these types of things. That there isn’t some written guide as to how to classify human relationships like there is for baking a cake, for putting together a bookshelf, for archiving a century’s worth of old documents. He can taste blood in his mouth as he chews his lip, but he doesn’t unclamp his teeth.
“Jon,” Martin says again, softer — god, he’s got that sympathetic tone going that really grinds his nerves, like this is something that Jon needs to be fretted over for, “hey, it’s— you don’t need to hurt yourself over it.”
“I just—” Jon snaps, much louder than intended given the way that Martin jumps, then stops himself. Reels the mangled knot of emotions splaying out every which way back in and sighs. “I just,” Jon starts again, gentler, “I don’t...get it, okay? I don’t understand why I’m expected to just know these things when no one’s ever bothered to explain them to me.”
Martin frowns. “Explain...what?”
“Th-this attraction thing,” Jon says. “Everyone always just— just says ‘oh, it’s subjective,’ or ‘oh, you’ll just know,’ but how the hell am I supposed to know if no one tells me?”
He doesn’t mean to get upset with Martin — and he’s not, not really. It’s not Martin’s fault that he feels like this, that he’s felt like this for a very long time and been cramming the lid down on it in an attempt to simply ignore it. And it’s certainly not like Jon has any love life to justify dwelling on something like this for as long as he has. People aren’t attracted to guys like Jonathan Sims. That, at least, he can understand objectively.
“Wait, so you don’t...?” Martin begins, and Jon can feel himself physically cringe in anticipation to— to— to what? To Martin saying he’s weird? For Martin to laugh and say yeah right, because who the hell doesn’t get that? C’mon Jon, that’s basic stuff. Be serious.
But then he looks up, and Martin’s not grinning at him. He doesn’t burst out laughing like he had before, nor does he roll his eyes and shake his head. He just sits there, mouth formed into a silent “oh” shape as if he’s just made a significant discovery, as if some puzzle he’s been working on has finally clicked into place. Martin looks up, meets Jon’s gaze with his wide, hypnotically brown eyes (they really are quite pretty, Jon’s noticed as they’ve spent more time together, much darker than his own and perfectly shaped to fit his face) and then he leans across the table.
“Um, Jon,” Martin begins softly, as if the empty cafe could be listening in on them, “you don’t have to tell me this if I’m overstepping here obviously, but...is this like...an ace thing?”
Jon’s not quite sure what he expected Martin to say, but it certainly wasn’t that.
“A what?”
Martin smiles at him — not a cheeky, smug thing, but instead something gentle. Something understanding. “An ace— er, an asexual thing?” he says, then seems to take Jon’s blank stare as some sort of confirmation and continues. “It’s...ah, how to explain it...... It’s like, um, not really experiencing attraction...? Or, usually it’s in reference to sexual attraction, but some people just use it for attraction in general too.”
“...Oh,” Jon says when he can’t think of anything else to say, eyes slipping down to Martin’s hands as they fidget with the edges of a napkin, a nervous contrast to the face he’s carefully putting on for Jon. Jon swallows. He doesn’t remember his mouth feeling so dry, but his glass of water seems so far away. “That’s a thing?”
That seems to be the right answer to a quiz he didn’t know he was taking, because Martin perks up, beaming. “Oh, yeah! It’s pretty common, actually. Or, well, not as common as like...being straight, but not rare...?” He picks up his glass, takes a drink. “I’ve met plenty of ace people before.”
Jon studies Martin’s face carefully. He thinks he’s heard the word before, a long time ago, back in college when everyone seemed to have a certain name to put to their experience. Georgie was bi, and this friend was gay, and that friend was trans, or gay, or lesbian, or some mix of them all, and Jon was just...Jon. Not straight, because apparently you couldn’t be that and date both guys and girls, but not bi either. Or pan. Or queer, or any of those other names that everyone seemed to just stick on him when he’d mention his past partners; they were all too complicated and yet not enough at the same time. At some point, he thinks he just decided he was nothing. It wasn’t like it had mattered anyway, after he’d stopped dating.
It’d never really occurred to him that there might be a name for being nothing. “Huh,” he says softly, because he can’t think of anything else to say. Can’t find it in himself to say it any louder and risk his voice falling apart on him, so he just sits there and folds his hands tighter around themselves. “Um. I-I don’t...uh.”
Martin shrugs. “Like I said, you don’t have to tell me.” Then he gestures across the table, and adds, “Are you gonna eat any more of those?”
“What?” Jon looks up, then follows Martin’s gesture to the little dish of apple slices by his elbow. “Oh, er, probably not.” He slides the dish across the table and watches as Martin picks out a chunk, pops it in his mouth.
There’s a little gap between Martin’s front two teeth. It’s something Jon hadn’t noticed for a while, like the little scar he has on the edge of his chin or the crinkles around his eyes when he grins. It’s something that Jon probably wouldn’t care about at all, except for the fact that he can see it when Martin laughs. He likes Martin’s laugh. Is that weird to say? He likes Martin’s laugh, and Martin’s terrible jokes, and Martin’s ability to keep up with him when he’s feeling argumentative. He likes that Martin gets rid of spiders without teasing him, just because he asks. He likes that Martin knows when not to press things.
But that’s the thing — there aren’t any pieces of Martin, physically, that make him stand out more than anyone else. He's just Martin. He's just someone who Jon works with, who he's maybe-friends with, who he gets a funny feeling around when he puts a hand on his shoulder or brings him tea or walks with him to the tube at the end of the day. And yes, okay, Jon likes Martin’s hands, and Martin’s voice, and Martin’s wide, toothy, lopsided smile, but he wouldn't like any of those things if they weren't Martin’s things.
Does that make sense?
Hm.
Martin reaches over the table and plucks the ticket from Jon’s hand. “I’ll go pay — and don't,” Martin warns as Jon opens his mouth to protest, “try to argue with me. You can get mine next time, okay?”
Jon clamps his mouth shut. Crosses his arms, but doesn’t argue. Martin slides from the booth and heads for the counter, and Jon watches as the waiter — their waiter — strolls over to assist him behind the counter. Jon studies him from his seat, carefully. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to see in the guy. He’s just a twenty-some-year-old with a couple of piercings and glasses. Martin checks all those boxes too and has the guy beat in both personality and height, so it’s not like he’s worth Jon spending any extra brain power on.
And then Jon sees Martin lean over, saying something to the man too quiet for him to hear from across the cafe, but the effect is instantaneous. The waiter goes a strange shade of pink. Then he takes a step back, lifts up his hands, and...huh. That’s kind of a strange reaction, isn’t it? Almost like he’s embarrassed of something. Jon feels himself cracking a half smirk. Well then. Serves him right, he supposes, for flirting with a customer. That’ll teach him something about professionalism.
Then Martin looks up. Makes a little “should we be going?” gesture towards the door, and Jon nods. They really should be getting back. He doesn’t want to hear it from Tim again about how Martin’s infecting him with his long lunch breaks — yes, they really are just going down the street, and he’d really appreciate it if everyone would stop referring to it as “canoodling.”
Jon gathers up his cane, snatches up the last apple slice to pop into his mouth, then hurries along to catch up.