#jonmartinweek

The Institute’s yearly holiday party was miserable. 

The Institute’s yearly holiday party was always miserable, of course, but this year’s was worse than most, because this year – in addition to the lights being too bright and his dress-code-mandated tacky Christmas sweater being too itchy and the music being too loud and too festive and too repetitive (Jon swore to God, if he heard “Silver Bells” one more time, he wouldn’t be accountable for his actions) – the only coworkers he could stand were nowhere to be found.

It was their fault he’d even shown up in the first place. Tim had been pestering him for ages about his alleged inability to have fun, and Jon wanted to prove to him that he was at least occasionally capable of going to parties. His plan had been to arrive a little more than fashionably late, have one glass of mulled wine and a nibble of whatever looked good from the cheese plate while listening to Tim tell stories from his latest holiday and Sasha report what her dubiously-ethical snooping on their coworkers’ computers had revealed, and then slip out before he ever had to make small talk with strangers.

He’d already failed on that front. Unable to find Tim or Sasha, he’d somehow found himself dragged into conversation with Heather from HR and a man from payroll whose name he hadn’t caught. They were sharing the latest gossip about someone named Hannah and someone else named Jeremy, and while Jon was fairly certain he didn’t know either of those people, the possibility that he’d met both of them multiple times kept him from asking who they were. To prevent that or any other form of rudeness, he’d stuck mostly to nodding along while the other two spoke, and as such was less than fully engaged in the conversation.

When there was finally a lull in the small talk, Jon excused himself and went to search for the others.

A quick scan of the room produced no sign of Tim or Sasha. They were not by the drinks table, not on the dance floor, not in any of the little groups of chit-chatters that Jon could see. Half to get away from the migraine-inducing light and noise and half to avoid being sucked into any more small talk, Jon stepped into the hallway. He took a few steps towards the break room, thinking a glass of water and maybe a brief lie-down on the couch might help his headache, when he heard, from behind the closed breakroom door, the unmistakable sound of Tim Stoker whooping in delight.

Jon opened the door, and nine sets of eyes turned to him at once. Tim, Sasha, and Martin were sat on the break room floor with three of their old friends from Research whose names Jon knew – namely Amanda, Eric, and Salim – and three people from the library whose names he did not. They were all arranged in a circle, a bottle of wine at the center.

Tim’s face lit up. “Hey, you made it!” he said with a grin, waving Jon into the room. 

“Spin the bottle?” Jon muttered acidly as he closed the door behind him. “Really?”

“It’s a party!”

“A work party!” Jon countered. The sheer unprofessionalism on display was staggering.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Tim said, patting the little scrap of empty space between himself and Martin. “Come on, we’ve got room for another player.”

Hm. Jon had come here to prove a point, but now he found the goalposts being moved without his input. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to simply attend the party – he was sure that showing up and not letting his hair down would be worse than not showing up at all, as far as Tim was concerned. And Jon had never been very good at backing down from a challenge – not even a challenge that his opponent hadn’t been aware they’d issued – so, against his better judgment, he took a seat in the circle. Tim shifted to give him more room, while Martin sat right where he was and stared at Jon like he’d just grown a second head.

“It’s your spin, Lee,” one member of the Library contingent said to another, and with that Jon was mercifully no longer the center of attention.

Thankfully, with a circle that large, the odds of it landing on Jon more than a few times weren’t particularly high, and for once, luck seemed to be on Jon’s side. He shared a quick, chaste peck with Amanda from research, and a significantly less-chaste kiss with Tim that was, little as Jon was likely to admit it, not un- enjoyable, and aside from that, he was mostly free to sit back and watch.

There seemed to be some sort of drama brewing within the Library crowd. Two of them – Lee and Yewonde – kept landing on each other, and it quickly became apparent that there was some sort of history there. The first kiss was an awkward, close-lipped affair that was over in the blink of an eye, and they both quite clearly avoided eye contact after it was over. The second and third were a little less brief but no less awkward, but by the fourth (fourth! Jon did not envy them their luck that evening) they’d each had enough to drink to abandon propriety and engage in an activity that could only be described as sucking face.

Jon knew Martin used to work in the library with them, so he leaned over and asked, “Are they…?” He whispered the question as quietly as he could, though he doubted they would notice if he didn’t. They seemed pretty thoroughly otherwise engaged.

“They both insist they aren’t,” Martin answered at the same volume. “But everyone’s pretty sure they hooked up last year’s holiday party. Yewonde’s boyfriend definitely thinks they did, but they’re kinda on-again-off-again, and I’m pretty sure they’re broken up right now.”

Jon was grateful for the context, but before he could express his thanks, Lee had peeled themself off of their colleague and was spinning the bottle again. 

It landed on Martin. It was safe to say that Lee approached this kiss with less enthusiasm than they had the last one, but less enthusiasm was not the same as no enthusiasm. Lee drunkenly misjudged the angle and left a clumsy, wet kiss to the bridge of Martin’s nose, and Martin received it with a good-natured grin. 

Jon was glad he still seemed to have a good relationship with his old coworkers. He sometimes struck Jon as a little isolated down in the Archives, the odd one out in a group who had otherwise all known each other for years. It was nice seeing him relax like this, among friends.

“Alright, my spin,” he announced, though everyone in the room had long caught on to the game’s rules.

The bottle swung in a wide, complete arc, then another, then one more before finally coming to a stop with the cap pointed squarely at Jon. Jon’s heart sank.

It wasn’t that Jon hated Martin. No one could be blamed for thinking that he did, given how he acted, but he didn’t. It was just that, well, it took Jon time to get comfortable with new people. He’d been quite looking forward to running a department that contained only himself, Tim, and Sasha – two people he had known long enough that they’d long made it out of the ‘acquaintances’ category and were well into the range of ‘friends’ – and when he’d learned that a stranger had been thrust into their midst without Jon’s input, Jon had handled it… poorly. He’d softened a bit on Martin in recent months, coming to view him less as an unwelcome intruder, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kiss him.

Martin was the worst-case-scenario in this game – not enough of a friend for the interaction to be comfortable, not enough of a stranger for the interaction to be meaningless. Jon would have to kiss Martin, and then he would have to come into work with him on Monday, and then again the next day, and the next, and that thought froze Jon in place.

Jon’s thoughts must have been written all over his face, because Martin’s face fell. The easygoing smile vanished in an instant, and he cringed.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Martin muttered softly, but Lee interjected.

“Yes he does!” They were slurring their words, just a bit. “It’s spin the bottle! The whole game falls apart if you just ignore–”

“Alright, alright!” Martin cut them off, shoulders creeping up to his rapidly reddening ears.

“Come on, Jon!” Tim chimed in, slapping Jon roughly on the back. “He doesn’t bite!”

And Jon knew he didn’t, but now everyone was looking at him, and making a fuss, and he couldn’t move under the scrutiny of so many eyes.

Martin leaned over and planted a quick kiss to his cheek. He had to stoop quite a bit to bring himself level with Jon’s cheek, and his hot breath stirred the loose strands of hair beside Jon’s jaw. 

Martin’s lips were warm and dry and a bit rough. Jon wasn’t sure why that mattered more than the feel of Tim’s or Amanda’s lips had, but it did. 

It must have been the surprise. That’s all.

“That counts, right?” Martin asked, and the group all conceded that it did.

Jon very much wanted to sit in quiet contemplation of the memory of Martin’s lips against his cheek for a while, but unfortunately it was his spin next.

It landed on Tim, and Tim raised a single eyebrow enticingly. Jon thought about invoking his newly-established right to kiss on the cheek instead of lips, but he thought doing that again so soon might cause Lee to accuse him of destroying the integrity of the game again, so he sighed and kissed him.

Tim was a good kisser – Jon had known that for a while – but somehow it was Martin that he couldn’t get out of his head.

The game went on. Tim landed on Eric, Eric landed on Lee, Lee landed on the woman from the library whose name Jon had forgotten, she landed on Salim, Salim landed on Martin, Martin landed on Sasha. 

Jon could still smell Martin. That was hardly surprising – they were sitting right next to each other – but when Martin had leaned over, the smell had completely overwhelmed Jon’s senses, and now he lost himself trying to place the scent. It was vaguely citrusy. Not lemon, though. Bergamot, perhaps?

Sasha spun, and the bottle came to rest in front of Jon. She planted a sloppy kiss to the corner of his mouth (the library group weren’t the only ones who’d been getting a bit clumsy the more they drank) with a loud, “Mwah!”

Jon’s spin next. He couldn’t exactly say he was surprised at where it landed.

Martin visibly sagged. “I-It’s sort of between me and Sasha…”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Shut up, Lee!”

It really wasn’t.

Jon took a breath, steeled his nerves. Grabbed Martin by the shoulders, pulled him close, and pressed their lips together.

For a moment Martin went rigid against him, lips stiff and inflexible as wood, but still as warm and chapped as he’d remembered. Then he melted, turning soft and pliable beneath Jon’s touch, sighing softly against his still-closed mouth.

It was definitely bergamot that Jon was smelling.

When Jon pulled away, Martin’s eyes were closed and his cheeks were pink, freckles disappearing against the rising color. His lips were still slightly parted, as though waiting for Jon to lean back in for another kiss. Jon took in the sight for just a moment before he cleared his throat.

“I think I might head home,” he told the group. “I have to get up early tomorrow.” That was a blatant lie, but Jon needed an excuse that wasn’t I’ve seen what happens when you land on the same person too many times, and I’d rather not end up snogging with Martin as aggressively as the two of you did.

“I was actually thinking of calling it a night, too,” Martin said. “My hips are killing me; I’m too old to sit on the floor this long.” He stood up, and as though to prove his point, his knees cracked audibly.

“You can’t leave, it’s your turn!” Tim protested.

Martin leaned down and gave the bottle a final spin. It landed on Sasha, and he stooped to give her a hurried kiss on the cheek.

“Bye, Sash.”

“Bye, Martin! See you Monday!”

Tim looked up and tilted his cheek to Martin in clear invitation. “One more for the road, Marto?”

“Fine,” Martin laughed, and complied.

Jon couldn’t quite meet Martin’s eye as they made their way out of the building together. He supposed he could have found some excuse to peel off, maybe say goodbye to Elias or Heather from HR – hell, even make one more stop at the drinks table – anything to avoid the coworker he’d just kissed. Instead, they wound their way through the party shoulder-to-shoulder, and the silence was more comfortable than it had any right to be.

Neither of them spoke until they’d stepped through the front doors. They lingered on the steps of the institute. The December air was dark and brisk and sobering, and Jon took a deep, full breath of it.

“I’m glad you came tonight,” Martin said. “I, uh. I didn’t think you would.”

“Yes, well, Tim’s reports of my reclusiveness are overblown, I can assure you. I do actually leave my office on occasion.”

Martin laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m glad.” He blinked, then huffed another, softer laugh. “I-I guess I said that already, b-but–”

“I’m glad, too,” Jon said.

Martin smiled. His lips were growing pinker by the second, in the chill night air. For a second, it seemed that he was leaning toward Jon, and Jon found himself leaning in as well.

“Well,” Martin said, and the moment, if there had been one, was broken. “G’night, Jon.”