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Martin rounds the corner from the hallway back into the bullpen where the assistants sit with a full, steaming mug in his hands, and Tim can’t help but smile as he locks eyes with Sasha in a knowing glance that would have Martin blushing if he knew what it was in reference to.
“Have either of you seen Jon?” he asks, trying and failing to sound casual.
Tim bites down on a smirk. “Not in a few hours,” he replies. “He’s still down in the archives. I suppose you’ve made him tea?”
Martin looks away, a little flustered. “Yes,” he replies. “You know how he can get when he’s wrapped up in something. I doubt he’s drank anything since he’s gone down there to clean up, and have you heard him today? Poor thing’s got an awful cough.”
“Right,” Tim says. “Well, I was actually about to go get a file, myself. I could bring the tea to him… unless you’d like to come with?”
Martin flushes, shaking his head. “Oh, no, I don’t--I mean, it’s not that--I just—”
“Martin,” Tim chuckles. “I’ve got it.” He takes the mug carefully and winks. “I’ll be sure to tell him it’s from you, but I’m sure he’ll know that already.”
“Don’t say anything weird!” Martin calls after him, which he dismisses with a casual wave of his hand over his shoulder.
Tim has to admit, when he hears Jon muttering to himself alone in the archives, distractedly complaining about dust and disorganization, in a strange, inexplicable way, he sort of understands Martin’s crush. Jon’s grouchiness and general grey disposition were a lot more endearing when he could see that the glimpses of cheer and warmth that he displayed to them on occasion were the outliers, and not the other way around.
Apparently, not only was Gertrude horrifically disorganized in terms of cataloging, but she made no effort to keep the shelves themselves clean. Tim learned this because earlier this morning, Jon went downstairs to put a shelf of statements in chronological order and came back up not fifteen minutes later, searching murderously for dust rags and wood polish. No one had bothered him since.
The angry muttering, charming in its own way, is interrupted by a sound which is much less so--the cough that Martin had been referring to. Martin tends to use the words “poor thing” rather liberally, particularly when it comes to any of the archives staff, but even Tim has to admit that the sound, wheezing and strained, makes him wince. He rounds the corner to find Jon cleaning a bottom shelf, sitting on the ground as he does so. There’s a faint whistling noise that Tim can just barely hear when he’s quiet enough, and he’s growing more concerned by the moment as it begins to become clear that it’s coming from Jon’s chest.
“Hey, Boss,” he greets lightly, apologizing when Jon startles badly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up.”
Jon shakes his head and puts down the rag in his hand, then buries his face in his sleeve to cough once more, awful and breathless and long, like he’s struggling to get it under control. He closes his mouth around it in an attempt to stop, but Tim can hear the struggle.
“You alright?” he asks, and Jon waves him off.
“Fine,” he replies, “not a--big deal.”
“Right, the ‘needing to breathe halfway through sentences’ thing is really backing that up.” Before Jon can argue, Tim holds the mug toward him as a peace offering. “Martin made this for you. He’d have delivered it himself, but I was coming down here, anyway. It’s for the cough.”
Jon blanches, but he’d been so pale before, it isn’t really noticeable. “You can--hear that? Upstairs?”
Tim rolls his eyes. “I think Martin just has a sonar for that sort of thing,” he replies. “But he’s not wrong. Are you feeling alright? You sound like hell.”
Again, Jon dismisses him, turning back to the shelves again, but this time, it’s done pointedly. And he still hasn’t caught his breath.
“Dust,” Jon says simply. It appears as though talking is taking more air than just sitting and cleaning had, because Jon’s breathing is sounding worse by the minute, strained on the inhale and high-pitched and wheezing on the exhale.
“Are you allergic or something?” he asks. Jon coughs again, now with a hint of desperation when he breathes in. “Christ, Boss. You really ought to stop smoking.” He offers the tea, hoping against hope that it might help, but as he suspects, this isn’t a cold, and Jon’s face is turning awfully red. It’s only when one grating breath is halted halfway through in favor of coughing, leaving Jon wincing and rubbing his chest, that he remembers an incident from his first few weeks at the Institute that he’d all but forgotten about.
“Oh, shit,” Tim exclaims. “You’re--you’ve got an inhaler. You need an inhaler.”
“M’fine,” Jon tries to choke out, but that only lasts a moment, long enough for Tim to get him sitting forward with his head near his knees. “Desk--top drawer,” he advises lamely. Tim rushes upstairs and back so quickly that he’s not even sure if Martin and Sasha saw him. When he returns, Jon is hardly getting any air at all, his lips and fingertips tinged a disconcerting shade of dusky purple.
Tim presses the inhaler into the palm of his hand, but doesn’t let go of it completely, helping him to hold it steady while he struggles to calm his breathing even enough to draw from it.
“Easy, Jon,” he comforts uselessly. “Even if you can’t breathe all the way out, better to get a little than none, right?”
Though he’s sort of making that up, it apparently tracks, because Jon puts the inhaler to his mouth and presses down while he takes the deepest breath he can, which is bigger than Tim would have thought but still worryingly shallow. A few seconds later, he does the same again, this time on a considerably deeper breath, and after hesitating for a long moment deciding whether he’d need a third, he pockets the inhaler and sits back. Tim allows himself a sigh of relief.
“Better?” he asks when Jon seems to have caught his breath, and Jon nods.
“Yes,” he says. “Thank you. And, sorry.”
Tim frowns. “What are you sorry about?”
Jon shrugs. “The… drama? I don’t know; I’m just--sorry.”
“You’re not sorry; you’re embarrassed,” he supplies. “And you shouldn’t be either. I just wish you’d have come and gotten one of us.”
He’s avoiding Tim’s eyes, but he’s willing to let it slide. “It didn’t start up properly until we were talking,” he admits.
“Still, it could have, right?” Jon shrugs again. “Then you should have had your inhaler down here. Or, better yet, asked one of us to do the dusting.”
“I originally only intended to do the tops of the shelves,” he defends. “I got a bit carried away.”
“Shocking, truly.”
“Watch it.” Jon’s smiling, though still clearly mortified by the ordeal, and Tim is feeling merciful.
“I’ve got a follow-up interview with the woman, Jessica, from that statement you gave me last week, and I’ve got a bit of a feeling she might not want to talk to just me alone. Would you mind coming along?”
What he doesn’t say is, “we both know you’re done down here for the day, and you’re probably too tired to record a statement, considering how much they exhaust you, but you’re certainly too stubborn to go home, so here is an easy way out for all those things,” but it’s implied.
“Of course,” Jon says, standing without Tim’s help and brushing past his worried, waiting hands when Tim is nervous he won’t be able to stay on his feet. “Thank you. Really.”
Tim throws an arm over his shoulders in that way Jon hates, and Jon tilts to the side to dump him off in that way Tim finds hilarious. “Don’t mention it, Boss.”