searchingfordistraction

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moving day

". . . you want me to what?"

"I know you heard me."

"I think," Moran said, "it's time we discuss my next pay rise."

Jim rolled his eyes. "This isn't a job, Seb, it's a favor. You're free to say no."

Moran eyed him for a moment. Then he pulled out his mobile.

Long story short, here he is now, in a fake flat, with fake possessions in need of fake removal to another fake flat, with Jim all kitted up as Rich Brook on the sofa next to him, waiting for the doorbell to announce the arrival of a man who decided Icarus Removals was the kind of name that would inspire confidence in potential customers.

Jim fucking owes him.

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~~Once he's worked it out, he'll let Martin know~~ There is nothing to do with flirting going on here.

There is, however, awkwardness to spare.

"Yeah," he says, "uh, it's not really as bad as Seb says, he's just a bit fussy."

"No, no. That's—that's fine. Really," Martin assures. "Really, it's...fine."

How many ways can he repeat himself? He decides not to try, and instead just takes off his jacket and exchanges it for the hand-trolley. Unlike some people he had no idea who he'd be running into today, so an old T-shirt and jeans can be honestly said to be his typical outfit for this sort of work.

"I've had clients that were less ready to go. It's fine."

Rich's own attire is similar. Not much point dressing up to help a friend move, after all.

And if the t-shirt isn't that old, and fits a touch more flatteringly than the Storyteller shirt had done, well, it's not like that's difficult. The clothes for the show are designed to make him look benign and approachable, not to show off his physique. Which he does happen to put a great deal of work into, as any actor does.

Anyway.

"Oh, good," he says, looking relieved.

Yeah, this just isn't fair. Martin knows he's not exactly subtle, which means Rich is either completely oblivious or the straightest guy there ever was.

Martin's luck, it's the second one. OH WELL. He's been paid to do a job, and since it's clear that Rich isn't going to reciprocate, Martin resigns himself to being friend-zoned and gets back inside.

"Right. Well. Tell me what's ready to go, and I guess I'll work on that while the rest gets packed."

Rich . . . definitely does not pause to watch him go back in.

Moran is scrawling something across one of the boxes when Crieff comes in.

(It's you fucking owe me in Russian, which he feels confident in assuming Crieff won't be able to read.)

"Yeah, he really is like that," he says, looking up. "Sorry, mate."

No, he doesn't. What's more, he doesn't even ask what it says. Not his business, and all that.

He is a professional, after all.

"Like what, sorry?" asks Martin.

He doesn't even wait to be told which boxes need to go. It's pretty clear that the ones that are full of stuff and taped shut are the ones that are ready. He loads a few of those onto the hand-trolley.

"I'd say so far back in the closet he can't see the door," he says, "but the problem there is that is you have to admit the closet exists before you can get into it."

This may not be entirely on script. Moran doesn't care. He's bored and annoyed and he can't decide whether to feel sorry for Crieff or just be annoyed with him, too.

Jim probably knew somehow exactly what he was going to say anyway, the bastard.

Martin just rolls his eyes as if to say, 'well, that figures,' and tilts the trolley onto his wheels.

"It happens," he says with a light sigh. He doesn't even sound annoyed. In fact, he sounds almost like he expected something like that. Maybe right after 'married with three kids.'

This seems as good a time as any to take the boxes back to the van. At any rate, this news does seem to have put him at tremendous ease.

Outside, Rich is retrieving his mobile from the ground after having somehow managed to hook it out of his pocket and send it flying.

(He had to have some reason to hang back long enough for Seb to run his mouth.)

He straightens up, grimacing and flicking dirt off the casing.

Martin notices this, and the look that comes with damaging something that's a bit expensive to replace.

"Is it all right?" he asks, loading this set of boxes into the van.

He has no inkling of any subterfuge going on. Because that would just be a mean, horrible trick to play on someone.

Rich would never play a trick like that on someone. It would be wrong.

Frowning slightly, his focus more on the mobile than on Martin, he is calmer and more together than he has been since Martin first turned up.

". . . Yeah, I think so," he says, his expression clearing as he runs his thumb over the screen. "I need a cover for this thing, I'm not going to keep getting lucky like this."

"They come pretty cheaply now," says Martin. "I'd suggest the sort that break apart, instead of those squidgy ones. They protect your phone better."

Spoken like someone who's lost a phone or two to damage.

He finishes with the boxes and starts back inside. He has no idea what Rich is doing, and figures he's probably avoiding him, since people do tend to do that after a while. Probably for the best, because just because nothing will ever happen between the two of them doesn't mean Martin doesn't still want it to.

This time Rich does follow him in, saying,

"I'll remember that, thanks."

(The inscription on the box Seb finished with earlier catches his attention; he glances at it and doesn't quite roll his eyes.)

Martin loads up the last of the packed boxes, and before taking them out to the van as well, casts a quick glance around the flat.

Moran wasn't kidding about failure to pack. Oh well. If Martin were a disreputable removalist, he'd go relax in his van while these two increased the size of their bill.

Instead, he takes these boxes down and comes right back up to help pack the rest of it.

Crieff will be getting a decent tip out of this fuck-up of a day, at least. That'll probably be down to Moran, as Jim is likely to get bored and invent a reason to leave long before that detail crops up, and Moran appreciates proper professional behavior when he sees it.

Martin likes return business, and he doesn't get it by being like any of the other ten a penny removalists out there.

He takes the packed boxes down to the van as they fill up, and soon, the van itself fills up.

"I can't get much more in there without risking anything getting broken. One of you want to go with to let me into the other one so I can unload what we've got so far?"

He knows the horrible old van his dad left him is rather crap for this sort of work, but it's better than nothing.

And Jim is, inexplicably, still here, so Moran knows what the correct answer is to that.

"Yeah, I'll finish up here," he says, digging his keys out of his pocket and tossing them to Jim.

Who promptly drops them and scrabbles a bit to pick them up again.

". . . okay. Yeah."

Smooth.

Martin doesn't even give Seb an annoyed look or anything. He just cocks his head toward the door.

"Ready?" he asks once Rich has the keys back in his hands.

"Yep."

He shoves the keys into his pocket.

"Ready."

Martin heads back outside and unlocks the front door for Rich before heading to the back of the van to make sure everything's secured and locked up back there. There's nothing worse than having everything fall out on a busy A-road.

Well, except for maybe having everything fall out on a busy motorway.

Convinced neither of these will happen, he gets into the cab and goes through a quick (silent) checklist of everything up there before starting out.

"Marylebone, right?" he asks, confirming what he wrote down during the phone call with Seb earlier.

"Yeah," Rich says, going on to add a few details that Martin no doubt also has written down already.

He does seem more relaxed than earlier, though, now everything is in full swing. Even he can't be awkward forever, not when there's no concrete reason to.

And of course there isn't. He was just surprised before, is all. He's never met a fellow Milliways patron back home before.

Speaking of, narratively speaking...

"Does your friend go there at all?" he asks. "Milliways, I mean. Not Marylebone."

He laughs quietly, though not the sort of nervous titter that happens when he's absolutely failing to chat someone up.

He smiles in unconscious reaction to the sound of it.

"Not when he can avoid it," he says. "It's a bit much for him. He thought he was going mad until I let slip about it one night when we were drinking. And even then he half-thought for a while that he was contagious or something. I guess it's not for everyone."

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