#tape rambles

This is until Martin gets into baking, he always leaves them on the counter and says they’re for everyone but Jon ends up eating most of them. That’s when he starts becoming ashamed, he’s glad he’s gaining more weight but he feels a bit selfish for not leaving a lot for the rest of the team. So he tries to cut back on it.

Martin notices this and worries, because Jon’s way of cutting back on it is staying in his office all day so he doesn’t get tempted. When he asks him about it Jon is quite embarrassed.

“Well I didn’t want to have too many of your pastries and uhm… not leave any for the others.” He says while ducking his head back into a file.

“Is that it?”

The burn scars on his arms? He bought a cheap metal kettle and it broke while he was making tea. That deep scratch on his face? He made the mistake of picking up a less than friendly cat…

He’s a clumsy guy so it’s pretty common he walks into the archives with a new patch or plaster somewhere on him.

Does he tell anyone where he gets them? No, he finds it funny how the archives staff try to guess what happened.

But even despite this everyone he knows has seen him break down sobbing over something so seemingly trivial. One time Tim was over helping him move into a new apartment and he accidentally broke one of his picture frames and cut his hand. Even though Martin had nothing to do with his injury he felt so guilty he started crying.

He always feels like a burden for it, apologizing whenever he feels tears streaming down his face and trying to laugh through them.

But now he doesn’t have to anymore, he hasn’t talked to anyone for more than a few minutes since Peter Lukas took Elias’ position. He also hasn’t cried in a while, he just feels numb.

Of course they have actual security, but Elias refuses to hire more than two people for it because “It would strain too much of the budget.” While sipping a wine glass that’s probably the price of Jon’s mortgage.

Jon mostly just has Martin there for intimidation , he knows that he would probably let some crazy statement giver rip out a patch of hair before getting into an actual confrontation.

That being said… Martin is big and tall enough to give off the allusion that he would step in if things were to get physical.

When he went through with it he really liked it! At least he thought he did, maybe he was just happy his mom had finally smiled at him. So he kept doing it, whenever his roots started showing either his mother would point it out or he’d see it in the mirror, either way it was the same process to get rid of it.

But now, working under Peter Lukas, his mother is gone, there’s nobody to sigh when his roots start showing and nobody to smile when he gets them fixed. He looks in the mirror for the first time in months, his blonde hair all chopped off leaving him with red curls that go down to his neck.

He looked like his dad. He knew he did from the few photos he saw and the blurry memories he had when he was still around.

But maybe he deserved to look like him, to look like someone he hated.