rude awakening

[loficharm]

Martin wakes with a start and a quiet huff, not sure why. It's a little like waking up from a nightmare, only he doesn't remember what he'd been dreaming about at all — not even a sense of it. Instead, he's flooded by wakeful things: the feel of the sheets, crisp and wrong, like new, fresh sheets and not the ones with little stars on that he's had since he was practically a baby. The bed itself, much too big, the ceiling, the walls, the whole room, different, unfamiliar. Light coming in from the wrong window in the wrong place. And there's someone else here, with him, in the bed. A boy, his age, that he's never seen before.

All this happens very quickly, so quick that it isn't like he notices each of these little things independently, it's more like they flood him all at once, overwhelming and scary. The moment he realizes there's a boy beside him he sits bolt upright and flails back, kicking the sheets away with a little shriek.

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[pushbackthedarkness]

"I can put us on speaker phone," Marcus says with a nod, withdrawing the phone from his pocket again and swiping up so it opens for him after recognizing his face. He goes to his favourite contacts and presses the screen to call Kat, then hides that number pad so he can set the phone to speaker.

He has no idea what the hell he's going to say to her short of your boss and his boyfriend are children, but he doesn't think that's going to go over well with John or Martin. He's specifically left out the bit about them being boyfriends so far, not wanting to add to their stress, although they're not stupid children, he thinks they'll understand it eventually. Especially if they think on their flat for very long, which Marcus assumes has only the one bed for the two of them.

In his hand, the phone starts to ring, the sound filling the little room they're in.