#panic mention

A bit ago I talked about how it may be that Bertrum is incredibly insecure, but this series of thoughts has a lot more in common with the sabotage theory, minus the sabotage bit.

Bertrum seems incredibly concerned about the possibility of his “possessions”—I headcanon money and material possessions on top of his canon screams concerns where it’s been shown he does this with intellectual property and businesses—being taken from him.

Bertrum practically flops over on the table at Sardi’s demanding creative control from Joey in TIOL and I’m 90% sure he’d have been far more suspicious if he wasn’t inebriated.

The (maybe even unintentional) jabs at his name from Joey take HIS NAME and TWIST IT INTO HIS OWN VERSION but that may be very well be an ego or respect-related frustration.

“My PaRk, My GlOrY” blah blah blah.

More speculation than anything but I’m willing to assume he’s rich as fuck and he COULD pull JDS out of the red if he wanted, but I Do What I Want With My Money.

As soon as he has some sort of comfort (even if it’s from within himself) regarding whether he has control, he gets way calmer about it. His “something wondrous” audiolog starts off very gently as he talks himself up about his grand idea, he’s incredibly chill at the Bendyland party in DCTL (presumably before Joey slaps his name around), he’s all happy to chatter about his 40 year career until he pisses himself off by talking about Joey, and if Lacie is to be believed, he’s quite optimistic about his weird mechanical Bendy doing cool shit.

It’s evening.  At least Martin thinks it is.  He’s rather lost track.  Time stopped making sense for him a while ago.  Had it really only been this morning when he was in his office, doing an endless stream of meaningless paperwork? 

Weeks and weeks and weeks and months and months and months of small meaningless tasks.  

He really hadn’t thought about it until now.  Is it really that much work to fill out a single form?  It shouldn’t be.  It isn’t.  But the sheer number of them… that’s what makes it drudgery.  Makes minutes and hours stretch beyond all logical comprehension.  Not to mention the endless intrusions of Peter Lukas.  

No.  Not thinking about that.  He’s …dead?  Right?  

Martin isn’t sure.  In the Lonely… out of the Lonely.  Everything a blur.  A cold, miserable, sandy blur.  And all he wants to do is sleep, but apparently that isn’t happening.  His brain is still trying to catalogue the endless, meaningless tasks he is leaving behind.  Still trying to run the budget and the expenses, and the personal reports that have been sliding over his desk for months.  

Paperwork heavy on the brain… heavy on the body.  Especially when that body has nothing to look forward to at his empty flat with its empty fridge and its empty bed.  

He is very tired.  

He can’t shake the feeling that this is a vaguely unsettling dream that he will wake up from in that cold and empty bed and search for breakfast in that empty fridge (because breakfast is the most important meal of the day, some distant parental voice tells him every morning even though the thought often turns his stomach) and hurry out of his empty flat for his empty office and that infernal ticking clock.  Measuring out every word he types.  Every breath he draws.  Every paper he signs.  Every spreadsheet he makes.  Every thought of Jon that he carefully does not think.  

‘For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.’  

Had he heard Jon say that once?  A quote from a play that Jon liked.  Hadn’t he read it to impress Jon, once upon a time?  A lifetime ago?  A death-time ago?  Three deaths ago?  

“‘For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.’”  He says it out loud, this time.  The first words to drop from his still frozen lips after leaving that Forsaken place.  Was?  Was that a joke?  

Jon’s head shoots up.  His eyes are wide and locked on Martin’s.  (Not that that is new, Martin keeps catching him staring.  Even as he tears around the archives gathering clothes and and statements and toiletries.  (Has Jon really just been living here?)  “Was that… that was… did you?”  

Martin blinks at him.  It might be his exhaustion making whatever Jon is trying to say incomprehensible, or it might be Jon’s exhaustion, for that matter.  

“That was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” Jon eventually stutters out, looking dumbstruck, half of a jumper that Martin thought he had lost sticking half out of a very battered backpack.  “You read it?”

Martin doesn’t have the energy for more words.  He nods.  

“I didn’t know you read it!”  Jon has perked up considerably.  “I read it in primary school, maybe a bit dark for a child, but my grandmother just bought me what was inexpensive… I was actually in it in uni….”

Martin would very much like to be paying attention to what had to be one of the most verbal and sharing Jon moments he has been witness to, but he’s very tired and it just sounds like white noise and he’s still thinking about that ticking clock floors above and an office he won’t go back to and paperwork that will never be finished and a half finished granola bar he had in his drawer for emergencies.  He could get his phone charger and laptop, in fact Jon probably already had… but ….but all that work.  All that he has done and all that he hasn’t… it’s all there.  And it’s going to stay there.  And Martin very much has not accepted that he doesn’t need to finish it.  Because he has been told every day in every email that he needs to finish it.  That there is a never ending stream of work that he can never catch up with that he can never overtake.  So he stayed long hours, turning himself into quite the hypocrite.  And Jon is still talking, his too-tiny form slightly revitalized with his excitement and nervous energy as he continues to pack.  

They are in a car.  Daisy’s, Martin thinks.  And Jon is still talking.  Possibly still about the play?  Possibly not.  Martin can’t tell.  He thinks he just heard Jon mention something about Scotland being a conspiracy of cartographers?  Is that right?  

Martin barely feels like he is there.  Is he tangible?  Or no… that isn’t what he is wondering.  He feels TOO tangible.  Too heavy but still not solid.  Like he is a wavering stack of signatures and numbers instead of a person.  Just a vehicle for meaningless work.  A thought that makes him dead tired.  What is he without that structure, those spreadsheets.  He has lost himself in the lines and fine print.  And he doesn’t know what is left.  Half fog.  Half paperwork.  All gritty eyed, and salty haired, and bone-weary.  

Jon has stopped talking.  He is… a passible driver.  Passible at best.  Having run himself out of things to say, the exhaustion is creeping back in.  His hands shake slightly on the wheel and they still have to stop by Martin’s sad, empty flat before they can leave London and make the terribly long drive to wherever it is they are going.  And Martin doesn’t have it in him to drive, and even if he did, he really really shouldn’t.  An ex boyfriend had tried to teach him once.  Once when he thought maybe he could drive a cab and maybe that would bring in enough money to fill his stomach, but that relationship didn’t last, and Martin was still scared shitless of driving anywhere but an empty suburb going 32 km/h or less.  

He curls around himself, trying to ward off the guilt that starts to gnaw at him then.  Jon shouldn’t have to drive the whole way.  Jon is exhausted.  And they don’t even have time to spend the night somewhere.  At least… that’s what Martin managed to get from the conversation with Basira that he… had technically been physically present for.  

No.  No.  No.  He’s fine.  He can pack.  He will Not make Jon do that for him.  Jon is clearly shaking.  Jon can take a shower and have a nap on his sofa (or his bed a little part of his brain says, leading to a dangerous heat in his cheeks) while Martin packs.  He can pack his own clothes.

 But they are at his flat now.  And Martin can hardly drag himself out of the car and up the two flights of stairs (broken lift).  His head is swimming and his limbs are heavy.  He sits heavily on the couch to gather himself, and Jon is already rushing around riffling through his things, stuffing jumpers and boxers and binders and socks and tea into a duffle bag that has seen better days.  He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed.  He wishes he could help.  

Then there is tea in his hands.  Made completely wrong, but Martin appreciates the effort.  and there are their bags at his feet and Jon is next to him.  There is no distance between them, and Jon leans into his side and Martin finds himself holding back tears.  Or failing to hold back tears.  In any case, he is tired and his face is wet and Jon is shaking slightly against his side and he can’t tell if this is the worst he has ever felt or the happiest he has ever been.  Perhaps both at once.  

Jon is easing him to his feet, nudging him towards the shower so he can wash the sea-salt from his eyelashes and hair.  

Martin is in his shower.

Martin is divested of binder and in an overlarge hoodie.  Hair wet but not salty.  He can’t help trying to picture Jon in that jumper.  Even large on Martin, Jon would be swallowed whole by it.  Jon is in his shower.  In his (Martin’s) less empty flat.  But his flat is hollowed out and gutted.  Jon asked him about 20 times if he would be alright on his own while separated by running water and water vapor and a door.  Martin had nodded each of those times.  Clinging to the sounds of Jon singing softly through the door.  

Martin gets the feeling that Jon is doing that just to ground him and Martin can’t say that he minds.  He wish Jon doesn’t need to, but he is grateful.  

He is coming down from a panic attack, and Jon is done in the shower but has yet to return.  Martin feels like he has been hard reset.  He is curled up on his couch.  The last of his possessions have been packed.  He isn’t going back to work.  He can rest.  Well… soon.  He can rest in the car.  He can rest in Scotland.  They both can, with any luck.  

Jon is coming out of his washroom, drying his hair and in another jumper Martin thought he lost months ago.  

Jon is in front of him, hovering and looking like he isn’t sure if he is allowed to touch.  Martin reaches out and grasps his fluttering hands.  And Jon sinks to the floor in front of him.