It's much easier to understand Peter Lukas if you didn't actually listen to him at all, Martin finally realizes, glancing at his boss jawing off in the doorway about some boat-related thing or another.
Well, maybe. He thinks he's heard the word 'rigging' in there somewhere and that's the point at which his eyes glaze back over from the dutiful fear and anxiety he's generally accustomed to in Peter's company, to the banality of paperwork. Spreadsheets, names he knew, names and the slots beside them empty, numbers that are beginning to make sense despite his lack of any business-related training.
He keeps typing. Peter has to know he's not actually listening, but he seems content to monologue away in tune to keystrokes and clicks and frankly that's alright with Martin. Peter has been away for two weeks now, returned yesterday, and the more time he's spent in Elias' office shuttered away with Martin the better - it's a hard job, keeping watch over a monster who could disappear at a moment's thought, and the times when Peter was out of sight were rather more frightening than when he popped into existence to bother him.
Randall, J. Another blank space. Only three so far, four counting a statement giver before Peter had even started working here. Not an awful record - not a great one, really, not for the lost, but in terms of the Institute's rather grim body count... well, Martin likes to consider himself an optimist.
Minutes pass. Martin makes the appropriate hums and nods (sails and canvas, and how to fix them, or something, except he's missed the context of time and vaguely wonders if this is some small personal sailboat Peter has, or perhaps a high seas adventure in the previous century; but by now it's too late to ask, and far too rude). Another glance - Peter is sitting now, chair over by the closed door and facing a little ways away from the desk. Legs crossed, back straight (the man has very good posture, Martin has to admit, and it'd been one of the first things he'd noticed about him, the way Peter held himself so forthright, so unlike his own hunched form). Staring straight ahead into nothingness, and his fingers toy with the end of his suit jacket as he speaks.
Restless, then. Martin saves his work, then scoots back from the desk. The scrape of the chair seems to interrupt Peter's words, and he tilts his head in Martin's direction, not exactly looking at him.
"Getting some tea," Martin offers to Peter's blank look. "I've also finished the payroll reports, if you wanted to look over -"
"No, no, I trust you on those. Dreary things."
"Oh, the numbers too small for you? Not enough commas?"
A brief flicker of eye contact - Peter's smile grows, and then he looks away again. "It's just too sad, you see."
Martin snorts. "Right, then. I'll be back." Peter looks back down, fiddles with a stray thread. The corner of his mouth is still quirked up.
Martin returns with two mugs, steaming.
(Peter's not there, of course, but by the end of the hour the cup has disappeared, and at the end of the day Martin finds it washed and returned, sitting on his desk).
-
A week later finds Peter talking at Martin again (usually at, never much to, these rambles of his). This time, it's about a shipwreck, the Medusa and it's horrid crew, crush of men between timbers, starvation on the open sea.
It's... a lot, at 8:30 in the morning, and Martin blinks blearily up at Peter, all broad and straight-backed, and his voice, though not necessarily loud, pierces the quietness of the office that Martin's come to enjoy.
"Yes. A crudely constructed raft, and no way to even guide it! One hundred and fifty men and it sank to their waists, and only wine and biscuits enough for one meal, and only one compass, too."
(Oh, breakfast. He's missed it, never that hungry so early anyways, and begins to type in some delivery service).
He's not looking at him, again. Peter never really does, when he gets like this - like there's always something more interesting beyond Martin's shoulder, but it's a quirk he's become accustomed to. And prefers, perhaps, because if he has to interrupt he feels mildly less guilty about it.
"Bagel?"
"What?"
"None left in the break room, and it's raining outside." Martins scrolls through the options, cheek resting on his hand. "Might go for a smoothie, too." There's a pause after he speaks, and Martin looks up again to find Peter staring right at him.
"All those starving men, and you want breakfast, yeah?"
Martin grimaces, but there's humour in Peter's words, and mirth around his eyes. He snorts. "Well, you know... it was just such an inspiring tale."
"I'm delighted." Peter crosses over to Martin's side, behind the desk (always the desk, technically Elias', technically Peter's, but while Martin's the only one who sits at it anymore, well... it just seems wrong, to make that claim). "...I don't know what half of these mean, to be honest." His hands are clasped behind his back, and he leans forward, inspecting the vague implications of health food and vitamins.
"The Bohemian's pretty good?" Martin flushes, embarrassed for no good reason at his own offer, at the concept of getting his murderous, monster boss something so stupid as a smoothie, but then he speaks before thinking better of it. "Do you even need to eat?"
Peter doesn't look down, blank interest in the menu. "I like to eat. Just get me whatever you're getting. Use the institute card."
"Alright." Shrugging, he doesn't look as Peter steps back, and there's a familiar chill - he's gone, then, and Martin sighs. "You can... finish telling me about the Medusa later," he says quietly, just in case.
-
Breakfast arrives promptly, and of course Peter is nowhere to be found - Martin doesn’t dawdle too much, simply leaves Peter's serving on the corner of the desk, then heads out to eat. He takes all the right hallways, doesn't see a soul, and as is becoming more common doesn't particularly want to. The day, he thinks, is made for solitude anyways: gray, muted sounds of rain, cars whooshing by pleasantly.
He'll get a lot done today, he knows, and is pleased by this; he's always liked completing small, menial tasks, and the repetitiveness keeps other, darker thoughts at bay.
(The situation he's in, that they're all in, in general; his mother; past, future, a heady dose of the need to stay in the present, always; and Jon, of course, but Martin wills thoughts of him away faster than the rest. It did no good to pine, he tells himself, from such distance and purpose).
Martin settles down on a windowsill near the unused back entrance and unwraps the bagel - salmon and cream cheese, that delicate pink-orange making his mouth water. A little rich, maybe, for this hour, but why not indulge? Start the day out right? Peter would agree with him.
Peter pops up a lot in his thoughts, actually. He doesn't chase these ones away so frequently, leaves them to settle (fester might be the better word) and ponder over, because they seem... safe, he supposes. For all this talk of rituals and Extinctions and monsters, Peter is his boss, Martin his beleaguered assistant, and in that duality things get done - sadly a far enough cry from how things were... before. Safe, too, in the way that he is allowed to think about Peter, and not so much anyone else.
Small bites, enjoyable. Martin fiddles with an app as he chews, makes reminders for himself, work notes and a grocery list. Did Peter need to do such things? Remember to pick up eggs on the way home, make a little check mark next to the salt? It seems too trivial for him, but then again Peter did like trivial things - maybe, Martin thinks, it's less to do with monsterhood and more to do with... with class differences; maybe some poor soul was doomed to be the Moorland House personal shopper, Peter and his ilk never bothering to grumble angrily at an empty fridge, mentally calculating taxes with worry in the check-out line.
He certainly eats well enough, whether by actual food or... other things - they’re about the same height, though Peter's shoulders have width on him, and are settled far more squarely and confidently besides - and they both have thicker builds; Martin attributes his own to lack of exercise and Peter's more to age, and most likely muscle (he's not quite sure how active a sea captain is, really, but he likes to think there's more thrill to it then standing sternly and pointing at numbers. All these talks Peter has put him through, and he hasn't learned a thing). Still, there's weight there, which Martin can almost appreciate - Elias had been lean and judgmental, while the space that Peter takes up lends an air of joviality to him, however false the truth of it.
(Does feeding your patron count as sustenance? He’s noticed Daisy’s been looking awfully thin these days, but, no, no, he tells himself, best not to think about her).
Best not to think about anyone, really.
He pops the rest of the bagel into his mouth, finishes his game, and heads back to work. Peter's food is gone and in it's place a small yellow post-it note with 'thx' scrawled on it - this is new, Martin muses, and he tucks it into the bottom drawer.
-
It begins almost like an experiment, of sorts. Maybe not quite an interest, but more of something to do to pass the time. Martin thinks he's pretty safe no matter what he does - Peter has laid his importance upon him a few times, and so long as he keeps his head down amidst the others, well, it's not like there's any reason for Peter to mess with him.
And so. He's not exactly sure how much one can bond with an avatar of the Lonely, especially with a burgeoning one such as himself, but it's certainly a way to... to connect, maybe, beyond long hours spent staring at a screen or hunched over boxes filtering out any Extinction-related statements, few and far between among the other depressing horrors.
Buying a copy, then, of Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea: An Anthology, is actually one of the highlights of Martin's week.
To be fair, the gift itself is unplanned - he'd been wandering in a mall he used to like, before the lights became too bright, everywhere, always too crowded, but he'd suffered to see if there were any new tarantulas for sale at the pet store (there were, but he'd think on it, always think on it, and never commit).
Still. The store looks like it's on it's way out soon anyways, but Martin's pity dissipates when the clerk raises an eyebrow at the cover, smirking.
"Bit of a voyeur for disaster, eh?"
"Sure," Martin sighs as he tucks it into his bag. "Something like that."
At home, he flips through it before wrapping the book in the plainest blue paper he can find stashed in his house (there is a touch of self-consciousness in him - of wanting to be proper, that this is a gift, after all, but not wanting to seem too particular over it). There's an entire section dedicated to being stove by whales, which is a term he's never heard of, and thus, he figures, as he tapes up the last corner, he's probably made the right choice.
As always, with most things he needs to give to Peter, he leaves it on their technically-shared desk, and finds himself adjusting the thing endlessly in an effort to seem careless but not too careless - he forces himself to stop after the tenth nudge, and instead scrawls out a quick note:
Peter,
Saw this at the bookstore the other day - thought it might interest you.
- Martin
He hesitates before signing his name (after all, who else would leave a gift behind?) but does so anyways, and it's as soon as he tucks the piece of paper in behind the book that Peter's fog starts creeping in from nowhere.
"Hello, Martin!"
"Ah - !"
Peter pays no mind to Martin's surprise and instead strides over, tilting his head slightly to look at the package. He lays one hand on the paper, and his eyes narrow in what Martin thinks is confusion.
"And what have we here?"
"I-it's a, uh, a gift? I was just going to, like, leave it here, but, well." Peter looks back at him, frowning at first, but then he blinks and there's an empty smile on his face. Martin feels his cheeks go red and just hands him the note, feeling somewhat defeated (he was hoping, actually, that he'd be able to just leave the gift here and return to the office with it gone, as things usually go).
He shrugs as Peter reads, clasping his hands together.
"Well, you know, you always tell me all these stories about boats -"
"Ships, Martin."
"- Ships, so I thought you might like... more. Of them."
Peter holds his eyes for a beat longer than is comfortable, until Martin averts his own, and then he's ripping along the paper seam delicately. Martin wonders if Peter ever really gets gifts. Probably not.
As the book is revealed Peter doesn’t speak, but instead hums in surprise (something that makes Martin strangely happy, that Peter can be surprised), and lifts his eyebrows.
"I mean I figure The Tundra is probably really quite boring, er, not boring, but, uh, safe, er, safe, for you, so these stories seemed." He’s babbling, he can't stop, he has to stop, Peter is just looking at him with that typical bland smile. "Fun," he finishes, lamely.
Peter seems to consider this - his eyes slide off of Martin's and he taps the book lightly against his chest, staring at the blank wall behind the desk.
"You're certainly right about that," he smiles, just a touch. "Thank you, Martin."
Martin can't help it, looks down at his shoes and shrugs, the beginnings of a stammered 'you're welcome' forming on his heavy tongue, but already there is the slow creep of fog swirling around his feet, and he knows before he looks up that Peter is no longer in the room.
-
Martin sees the book three times in the next two weeks, left behind first on the desk, then a chair, then on top of some paperwork, and each time the thing looks a little more worn, thumbed through and pages dog-eared closer and closer to the end. He doesn't mention it to Peter, never will, but instead holds onto the little bit of warmth that crawls through his stomach and rests easy and pleasant in his chest.
My first multi-chaptered fic! I hope you enjoy some slow-burn PeterMartin. Title is from Anna Ternheim's "Today is a Good Day".