Martin takes great pride in ruining your dating life routinely. 

Well, to him, he doesn’t exactly ruin it. All he does is prevent you from wasting your time on inferior men - stupid, lustful little boys - when you could be spending it all with him. 

It’s easy to know when you have something romantic coming up. You’ll arrive to work on the morning of a date, hair done differently, looking even better and more put together than you usually do. To Martin, you always look decent. On the days that you have plans, he thinks you look exquisite, leaving him even more flustered in your presence than he normally finds himself to be. The doctor is calm and collected around everyone he meets. It frustrates him to find himself much less self assured around you. 

As his assistant, Martin finds you competent. Clever, perceptive, careful. Always helping him and aiding him in every way he could need. Every way, apart from in the ways he truly needs, ways he cannot bring himself to admit to you - as an assistant you are irreplaceable. As a person, Martin finds you irresistible. 

But, of course, dating is something entirely different from work to Martin. He doesn’t find it’s a world he's as confident in as others. As a doctor he is cocky, but as a human he is not as assured in his emotions as he wishes. He is not as smooth as he desires to be. So, lacking in the skill of suave sweet talk, the closest he can get himself to asking you out is asking you to work late with him. Even better when he knows that he’s the one taking up your evening instead of some other inadequate young man. 

Echoes in corridors often tell him of your evening plans before they’re ever truly set in stone. Whispers to colleagues, hushed excitement as you update them on the newest potential addition to your life, and mentions of plans to go out to get to know each other more. Stifled giggles as they ask you if he’s handsome, or kind, or rich. Martin is nosey, and along with it he’s also perceptive - in his eavesdropping, he can pick up the optimism and the giddiness in your words. 

Martin always makes sure to set your schedule in such a way that will prevent you from attending yet another little date. The overtime he gives you is only ever over the weekend - a Friday, more often than not - when he knows you’re likely to have made plans already.  

Every time he asks you to work late with him, it goes the same way - Martin takes in the way your shoulders drop, your face falls, and your mouth opens quickly with a rejection at the ready only to shut before it comes. It would be embarrassing for you to admit to your boss that you’re heading off on another silly date, he assumes. It’s difficult to say no to him. Martin knows of your reluctance to deny the request - he wonders whether there may be an eagerness to please underneath your calm surface. He hopes there is. 

Every time it goes exactly the same. Martin takes some comfort in this, despite knowing how much it disappoints you. 

Only, this time, you very firmly say no. 

Martin hadn’t expected such rejection to come from you. Particularly not when in relation to an event he always thoroughly enjoys. The overtime he spends with you is the most amount of time he gets alone with you all week, and the idea that you don’t enjoy it quite as much as he does bothers him far more than he wishes it to. 

But, reluctantly, he finds himself working late alone regardless of your absence. 

The lab seems so much more lonely in the late hours of a Friday evening. When so many of the rest of the staff are at home with their families, or out on the town with partners or friends, Martin finds the isolation of his office to be unnerving. It isn’t like him to think so - but on this particular evening, knowing that you’re off in these late hours doing god knows what with your new beau, he finds the four walls of his office to feel more like a cell than a place he should be working. 

Working is the only thing he should be doing with his overtime. But, with nothing but you and your company on his mind, he finds he can’t quite make himself concentrate on it. 

With his chin propped up on one hand, and his pen held loosely in the other, Martin finds he can’t quite bring himself to focus. A black coffee grows cold next to his elbow. It always tastes better when made by your hand. The steam of it is long gone while he ponders over your absence. His eyes stare off into space. Though they stare off blankly, they are drawn to rest on the spot you usually take up in front of his desk, where you sit to go through papers and discuss his experiments. Martin knew he would miss your presence tonight, but he hadn’t quite realised just how much the solitude would bore him. 

Bore him, and bother him enough to cause a persistent dull pain in his chest. 

The end of his pen taps a rhythm on the desk. Why don’t you enjoy his presence just as he enjoys yours? His work feels long and lonesome without you here. The paperwork feels endless without your aid in it. Quality time is just what he had desired this evening, but you’re choosing to spend yours with someone else instead. 

A heavy sigh escapes him as he thinks about this,, about the ways you might be spending your night with your lover. Even the word itself makes his stomach twist and turn. Martin runs a hand through his hair. Then, another. One drops to his neck, to loosen his tie and allow his body some reprieve from the discomfort his tired flesh feels. It feels childish to him, to feel himself this worked up over his assistant's absence, though he knows it’s far less to do with your absence and much more to do with the reason for it. 

And, though he very much hates to admit it, the emotions that your rejection stirs inside him. 

Martin tries to push through these feelings, forcing his attention to the papers in front of him, but he finds he can’t even bring his eyes to fix on them. It makes him feel all too human to be so distracted by you. 

Another minute of forcing an attempt of concentration, and Martin gives up with a frustrated grunt. The pen he once gripped tightly gets thrown down swiftly. Black coffee still sits untouched right beside him. He stares off into space once again, swirling thoughts spinning his tired mind, though through the irritation they always end up landing on you. 

Had he always been this foolish? Stricken with loneliness and a jealousy that he dare not name? He mulls over this, fixated again on your empty seat before him, until he feels that his eyes can’t stare at it any longer. The lids droop before drifting slowly closed, tiredness and boredom taking over despite the everlasting ache in his chest, and he decides that he’ll put off his own diagnosis until another time. 

If he is infected with some illness of the mind, something similar to what some people like to call love, then Martin knows he’ll have to name it after you. 

Both hands rise to cover his face, eyes shutting tight, head resting heavily in his palms. He allows his tired head to sink down to his desk, and he lets one arm fall to cushion the side of his face from the hard surface of it. The papers below him will be crumpled under his weight. In this moment, he doesn’t feel he can care. 

A short rest lasts much longer than Martin had intended, and before long he feels himself quickly drifting off, but not without you still dancing around every single thing on his mind. 

***

A quiet tap on his door is what stirs Martin from his sleep. 

Bleary eyed and barely awake, he begins to stretch his sore limbs. His arms and legs feel stiff, and his back completely aches. It takes him a moment to wake up completely, wondering through his exhaustion about who may have come here to disturb him, knocking on his door at such an ungodly hour. 

An ungodly hour, he thinks - until his wrist watch tells him that it’s 9:02. 

He blinks quickly. Then, scans frantically around the room. His office is still empty, still lonely, though the noise now filtering in from the rest of the lab makes it feel a little less so. The sounds tell him that the rest of the building has started their day without him. His short little rest turned into a much better night’s sleep than he had expected himself to get, even if every bone in his body now feels the full effects of sleeping slumped over his hardwood desk. 

When Martin finally does fully gather his bearings, he comes to realise that the person on the other side of his office door is still softly knocking intermittently. His watch tells him now that it’s been a minute or two since he last checked it, meaning his lack of response is gradually beginning to appear even ruder. A quick pat down of his suit, a quiet cough while he clears his throat, and Martin calls out to the visitor. The door opens soon after he invites his visitor in. 

“Good morning, Dr Brenner,” he swallows hard when he sees you, suddenly feeling far more alert than he had done only moments ago. He feels his heart pick up in his chest as you move closer. Another symptom to add to his never ending list. “I brought you your coffee.”

His reaction is a delayed one. Martin stares up at your face just a moment too long, mouth agape and tongue feeling dry, before his eyes dart to the mug held out in your hand. Or, as much as he wants to deny it, they’re drawn more so to the fingers wrapped around it. A quiet little thank you is all he musters up as you place it down for him, next to the untouched one from the night before. 

When you sit down in your chair, ready to start the day, Martin is disappointed to find that you get straight into your work without much more chit chat. Despite this, he does find himself relieved to notice your lack of a comment towards what he assumes must be a very disheveled appearance. Without his suit fully fixed or his hair combed neatly, Martin finds that he feels far less put together than he usually does, and in your presence this feels rather inadequate. 

Still, he makes an attempt to return to the work before him, to distract himself from his tired mind. This doesn’t last long at all before you decide to suddenly interrupt it. 

“You worked late.” 

You say it like it’s a scientific finding. Martin’s attention fixes on you, like it often does, and he finds your eyes still focused down on the paperwork in your hands. He uses this fact to his advantage to study you while he can. 

Sharp eyes take in your face in one sweep. Skilled from years of studying and experimentation, they take in all of the information they need in only a second. Martin registers the navy hue just below your eyes, and the slightly paler complexion of a person seemingly exhausted. Your lips are turned down, following the curve of your slumped shoulders. 

This exhaustion doesn’t seem like typical morning laziness. Something about the way you are today tells him that this doesn’t stem from any normal late night or even from overworking. Pieced together with the date you had in the evening, Martin deduced that unlike his own lonely fatigue, this exhaustion stems from a person being kept up by the company of another. 

At this realisation, he feels his face turn red. The idea of you tangling limbs with someone who isn’t him makes his skin feel too hot, and his wrinkled clothes feel far too tight. 

He doesn’t like to think of himself as a jealous person - but, when it comes to you, he feels it far too often to claim to not be one. 

Ignoring in your previous statement, Martin decides to broach the elephant in the room, already sick of the way it weighs down on his shoulders so heavily. With his best attempt at remaining uncaring, he casts his eyes down to his crumpled paperwork, reaching for a pen to scribble some notes. The pages are folded from however long he spent unintentionally resting on them. “How was your evening?”

“My- oh, my evening. It was good.” With an innocent stare, you give Martin a polite smile joined by a small nod. 

This answer doesn’t satisfy him in the slightest. His eyes burn even hotter into the page in front of him. 

“Did you do anything… special?”

Shifting slightly, your eyes trail down to follow his sketchy handwriting. His own flick for only a moment up to you before nervously dropping back down to the page that he’s trying so hard to keep his attention on. “Are you referring to my date?”

A temptation sparks in Martin’s mind, an impulse to ask what the hell else he could possibly be referring to, but he shoots this down very quickly. 

“Mhmm. How did that go?”

He forces himself to look at you properly now. Holding his own breath, he sees a moment of hesitation in you before a warm hue dusts your cheeks. Martin doesn’t miss the small twitch that tugs at the corners of your lips, or the way your expression is a fond one while you gather the memories of your night. 

“It was, well… good.” His eyes drop down to the way your hands play in your lap. Nerves or excitement? He’s not quite sure. “We had a lovely dinner, and… yes, it was nice.”

Martin nods slowly, and thinks over the dinner he had - or, the lack of any actual proper one - and it bothers him to think that he could have been the one enjoying a meal with you instead. Did the boy who took you out even take you somewhere decent? Someone fancy, expensive, low lit and romantic? Martin would have taken you to the finest place in town. Would your manchild’s budget have even stretched past a cheap little diner?

It would have been a shame to take someone so lovely out to anywhere less than what they deserved. There’s no doubt in his mind that you would have styled yourself well, as you always do here in the lab - for him, he likes to think, with just how much time you both spend together. Some silly hope that helps him to believe some tiny chance he may have. 

Despite not knowing the first thing about the person you went out with, Martin has already settled on a dislike for him. 

“Where did you go for this… date?” The word gets hissed out more harshly than intended. He already pictures you being subjected to cheap burgers and soda in the nearest dingy diner. 

An awkward shift in your seat shows that you pick up on his judgemental tone, though you don’t bother to address it. Tired eyes don’t meet his when you respond. 

“Sorrento’s.” A moment of stunned silence in which Martin does not answer, as yours has dissatisfied him greatly. The place is far more upmarket than where he had expected your date to take you. Admittedly, it’s likely a place that Martin would have proudly brought you himself. It would be with great shame that he would ever admit the way he had previously envisioned himself bringing you there one day. “You know, the one on-“

“I know it.”

Another snappy response, while Martin finds himself now much more irritated than he already was, and far too annoyed to try to hide it any longer. You take this as a sign to go back to working once again. 

After this you continue in silence, checking through papers while he does a terrible job of focusing on his. Martin is much more concerned with not so subtly keeping a close eye on you. 

At one point, you sit back slightly, and a shift of your shoulders moves your shirt collar just an inch. This fact should not be significant in the slightest, and Martin wouldn’t take much notice of it, if it wasn’t for the way it now allows his curious eyes to find yet another clue towards how you spent your evening. 

It shakes Martin terribly to see his new finding - just above the crook of your neck, where your collar would normally cover, sits the dusting of a bruise on your skin. The blooming deep shade is difficult to miss, the perfect small match to your lover’s hungry mouth, and his eyes are drawn straight to it like a bull to a matador’s flag. 

And, just like the bull, the sight of this colour drives a fury through his blood. 

Already tense fingers tighten harshly around his pen. Martin can’t bring himself to look away from it. Did the boy have the decency to only leave you with one, to stop his primal urges there, or did he selfishly litter the rest of your skin too? Such a disgusting and immature act, to reduce your lovely presence to something ultimately so much more carnal. 

Disgusting and immature, but only because Martin wasn’t the one engaging in it with you.

“Can I… ask you something, Dr Brenner?” Hearing your voice catches his raging mind off guard. Pushing past the feeling of his blood now boiling in his veins, Martin forces himself to answer your question with a simple curt nod. If you had caught him eyeing up the new bruise you are sporting then he’s not sure he even cares. The way your eyes don’t quite meet his sparks some concern at the topic of what you may be looking to investigate. “When I stood outside the door this morning, I could hear you quietly call my name. I thought you were calling for me, but you didn’t answer when I responded… why?”

At this, the anger once coursing through him is very quickly replaced with intense mortification. An embarrassment too strong to hide tears through his body as he tries to figure out what you may be referring to, finding himself unable to come up with an answer himself before attempting to offer you one. 

Then, after a few moments of very stunned silence, Martin remembers that you had already been standing outside his door before he had woken up. 

He shuts his eyes for a moment before attempting to stutter out a response. Martin knows his feelings for you are much more than a normal workplace relation, but your name falling from his lips in his sleep is a brand new symptom on his ever growing list of them. One hand rises to fidget with his tie, but this only serves to remind him that it’s still loose, making him feel even less presentable than he already does in his flustered state. 

“I- well, I, um…” he swallows hard. It’s not often that he finds himself at a very genuine loss for words. The room feels like a sauna with your curious eyes stuck on him. Not quite meeting his, but moving along to scan his red face, making him feel as though he is under the same sort of investigation that he normally trains on you. For as long as he stretches out this very awkward silence, Martin still can’t find any viable excuse other than the very shameful truth. “I’m not sure.”

“Oh. Well, I just was unsure if-“

“I suppose I may have been thinking of you.” Martin blurts it out long before he even fully registers the words leaving his mouth. A stupid truth thrown out on impulse. It feels like far more of a confession than he is currently ready for. Far more of a confession than the romantically stunted doctor thinks he would have ever been ready for.  

For the first time in a long time, Martin feels very truly stupid.

Stupid for confessing so easily. Stupid for allowing himself to be so flustered in your presence. Stupid for even wanting you so terribly in the first place. 

The doctor had long thought himself to be above such human desires as this, but you have managed to prove his theories wrong in every way possible. 

A knowing look sparks up in your eyes as you process his silly answer. It’s your turn to blush, a pink hue dusting your soft cheeks, a one that only makes Martin even more flustered. You bite your lip softly and the action makes him feel the slightest bit dizzy. 

Martin doesn’t like the way you look at him now - as though his words have just confirmed a suspicion you had held all along. The idea of anyone reading beyond his guarded ways so easily leaves him feeling exposed and unsettled. Normally, Martin prefers to be the one bringing up these feelings inside others. 

And yet again, unlike his usual ways, he feels himself genuinely worried about what impression his confession may have left on you. 

“I may have told a lie.” This response initially ignites an alarm inside him, until the rest of your statement leaves him with some much needed relief. “My date didn’t go that well. I mean, it was going fine, until… Well, I just definitely won’t be seeing him again.”

This perks Martin up, storming mind subsiding only slightly. Maybe he was right to assume the terrible things he had thought about the person you went out with. 

Though his mind does drift back to the very obvious little bruise decorating the side of your neck, he decides to push past the jealousy it still sparks in him, and opts instead to make an attempt to show some sense of genuine interest in your evening. 

“Why not?”

“Just not the right person I suppose.” It’s a fair answer, and one that makes him feel a little better. It also makes him wonder what your idea of the right person would be. Martin resists the urge to ask whether he would fit into that mould in any form. 

“That’s a shame.” Martin knows his lie is not a very convincing one even before he says it. 

A small nod in response shows that you don’t intend to take this topic any further, and you waste no time in changing it. “Will you be working overtime tonight?” 

This swift change of topic catches him by surprise, but only slightly. A glance down at his watch tells Martin that he’s gotten far less work done than he should have by this point of the day. 

“I’m not sure I would like to, but it seems I’ll have no choice.”

A beat passes while you consider his words. Again, he finds himself studying the small furrow of your brow while you think, and the way you chew gently on your lip right before opening your mouth to speak. 

“I’ll stay late with you.”           

A tilt of his aching head. It's very unlike you to offer up your time to him so freely. If anything, his requests for you to do so are normally met with much reluctance. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” Your kind smile warms his cheeks, and he feels that he much prefers to have them reddened by your sweetness rather than his own anger. “Two heads are better than one after all. This work shouldn’t keep us here too late if I stay here too.”

With a quickening heartbeat and a still racing mind, Martin can’t help but return your smile warmly. His previous frustration begins to leave his body, the still present ache in his chest now finally slowly fading. 

Offering to give up your free time to work with him of your own accord is the closest Martin feels he may get to having you fully ask him out. To him, it may as well be the very same thing. 

“Thank you. It’s-“ Martin resists the urge to call it a date. “It’s settled then.”

When he finally does return to his work reluctantly, Martin feels far more relaxed than he had expected based on his previous frustration, and he wonders if you may be both the cause and the cure to his persistent emotional illness. Either way he decides that more time spent with you would surely do him no real harm.