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It wasn't unusual to go entire workdays without seeing Peter Lukas, so Martin didn't think anything of the two hours he spent hunched over Elias' computer before the office door swung open. He didn't even look up from his email (not absorbed in the work so much as he was wholly uninterested in whatever nonsense Peter would be throwing at him this morning), nor did he register the drop in temperature. All things considered, Peter Lukas was a very easy monster to grow accustomed to.
Which is why when Martin opened his mouth to offer his usual tired greeting he was surprised to be cut off.
"Morning, Martin! I see you're already hard at work, so I won't keep you. Just swinging by to drop off the ankle-biters."
Martin looked up, found Peter smiling almost tensely down at him from the doorway. To either side of him stood a handful of children, who were immediately recognizable by the far-off look in their eyes: Lukases.
"You know about that whole office tradition, right? Taking your kids to work with you?" Peter waved a hand dismissively and his flock filed into the room, standing on either side of the desk. "I'm afraid something's come up with the boss and I'll be out of the Institute today, but you'll be fine watching them. Absolute angels, wouldn't have it any other way."
"Mister Lukas," Martin started, but he was interrupted again.
"Don't lose any of my children, Martin."
Peter shut the door as he left, and Martin shut his eyes tightly as if he could will it all away if he just tried hard enough.
Of course Peter Lukas had children-- the issue wasn't with the acquisition of the children --but Martin couldn't have imagined this scenario if he'd exhausted every other pointless task outside of his job description that could possibly exist. What was there to gain from packing up kids who hardly leave their home and bringing them all the way to London if the end result is just leaving them with somebody else entirely?
Unless they were here to kill him. Would Peter Lukas use his children to kill Martin? It was doubtful, but he couldn't say that he discounted the idea entirely.
Martin opened his eyes and, unfortunately, looked curiously from child to child. None were looking back at him. The two on his either side, taller than the rest and harsher around the eyes, were staring straight back at the door they'd walked through. At the corner to his right was a boy who couldn't be more than eleven, holding a book open in a tight fist at the top of its spine. On the far side of the desk a little girl was adjusting her long skirts in one of two chairs, and behind her an older one was skimming the titles on Elias' bookshelf. Five.
Martin bent at the waist to check under the desk.
He sat up again with new confidence. Just the five.
And none of them seemed to be paying him any attention whatsoever. Martin watched the child at the bookcase run their finger across the spines, stopping at this or that one to rub at the embossing of the titles while their sister turned and tipped her head as if trying to take in the entire office, but also as if she were trying to keep her head in constant motion. She very pointedly did not look at Martin, her eyes moving in an arc over the back of Elias' chair rather than look him in the face, and when the boy with the book turned a page the sound was nearly deafening in a room so quiet. Martin found him tucking the page over at the middle before sliding it across the last and replacing his grip on the spine and he noticed how the pages were uncomfortably ruffled towards the bottom. That was no way to read anything, he thought, but he said nothing to that effect.
The unsettling quietness and stillness of the children to his immediate left and right went unbroken in all of this time.
Perhaps a bit too late to be polite, Martin said, "Hello," to no actual response. "Um, I'm Martin. I work for your dad!"
Still not a one of them looked at him, and in fact the girl in the chair settled a wide-eyed stare into the corner where the walls met the ceiling. Were they meant to be ignoring him? He supposed that it made sense, their being children of a family known for their estrangement from others. That still didn't tell him what they were doing here, though. Bringing your children-- Did Peter Lukas drive a mini-van?
Martin shook his head. Bringing your children out only to have them ignore your employees... It sounded accurate. Some kind of test, maybe, like sending him down to the archives.
"I'm sorry I didn't know that you all were coming. I would've brought biscuits." This didn't work, either. Martin thought that maybe he should stop trying, but even with his better judgement the prospect of leaving the kids unacknowledged felt wrong. The twins at his shoulder looked hardly old enough to drive, let alone devote themselves to the patron of loneliness. Though they seemed to be doing an alright job of it. "Well, just let me know if you need anything. Not to brag, but I know where all of the bathrooms are."
He sat back in his chair, self-satisfied with his joke, but none of the children so much as exhaled sharply through their nose.
Martin stifled a sigh and turned back to his computer.
***
It was around lunchtime, following a trip to the break room to grab his sandwich and a fresh cup of tea, that Martin started to notice the tension in the room start to break down. The child by the bookshelf had long since moved on, now sitting with a handful of statements off the desk in their lap and thumbing at the corners while they read (It really wasn't reading material for kids, but they hadn't responded when he asked them to please, not do that, and Martin reasoned that they already had a history with the supernatural and a couple of tamer stories wouldn't kill them. Now they fidgeted in their seat). The two children at his sides had also moved, though they didn't go far: they were sitting with their backs to the wall behind the desk, and one of them appeared to be dusting a low shelf with their fingers. The boy with the book had left it, fanned with its cracked binding, on the corner of the desk, and now he was leaning over the arm of the youngest girl's chair, where she was playing games with her fingers. They were bored, and it wasn't hard to see why. When things weren't breaking in to slaughter the archival staff work at the Institute was terribly boring, and Martin had been working through file sorting and correspondence all morning. It was hardly interesting to watch, and without any noise, at their age...
Martin ate in thoughtful silence.
***
Unsurprisingly, the day's workload ran dry much sooner than the day itself was over, and Martin straightened his back with a huff. His eyes were absolutely burning.
"Right, that's Peter's job done for him." And he managed to keep most of the sarcasm from his voice while he pulled open the supply drawer and took out a piece of copy paper. It took some trial and error, and a lot of re-folding, and possibly a tutorial off of Google images, but when Martin pushed the chair away from the desk he had a serviceable fortune teller in his hand. And when he looked up, the youngest of Peter's brood were looking back at him. The boy with the book looked away again with a whip-like motion of the head, but the girl sitting beside him only ducked slightly, her eyes still trained on what Martin was holding.
"You know what this is?" He asked her, snapping the toy like a crab claw. The girl hesitated for a moment, looking nervously from sibling to sibling, and then shook her head. Martin tried not to let his relief at any sort of recognition show on his face. "It's a fortune teller. You flip it open like this and if you follow the steps, you can predict the future of somebody else. Go on, ask me a question."
If Martin had turned to look he would have seen the twins by the wall stand up and lay their hands on the desk, but he didn't, busy as he was demonstrating the toy for his audience. When Martin asked for a second number the girl was interrupted by her brother, who said four more quickly than she could open her mouth.
He couldn't help the smile when he read off, "Not in a million years."
"Oh," She folded her hands in her lap with a pinch in her brow.
"Give it to me! I'll get a better fortune!" The boy took the toy out of Martin's hand and tried to arrange his fingers inside of it. "Nonnie, ask me a question!"
The reply came from Martin's left, the child who no longer had a lapful of statements (and thank god). "I don't want to ask a question. Ask Dawn for a question."
The young girl whined, "Just ask him a question, Nonnie! I want t'see what you get!"
Nonnie groaned, something dry and out of use, and they shook their head. "Will I die in this bloody office?"
"Not a good question, but, fine," The boy demanded a color next, and Nonnie was just as reluctant to answer him as the first time. Dawn watched with rapt attention over his shoulder.
"Sources say..." He paused for dramatic effect, entirely the fault of Martin's extreme use of ellipses, and in a curious tone answered, "Yeees?"
"What?"
"Well, that's how it's written, see? Dawn, you read it this time."
Martin shook his head and turned, finally noticing that the older siblings had come forward. He couldn't place whether they looked more angry or more upset, staring down at their siblings where they were sat around the fortune teller. Nonnie was griping again about stupid questions while Dawn flipped open another unread flap. They looked like they were having fun. It rankled a bit to see their siblings looking so dire about it.
"Do you want to play?" Martin asked tentatively. As they were older, it was possible their connection to their patron was stronger, or at least that they would rather listen to their father. That, and paper fortune tellers were for babies. "I could make another one,"
"We aren't supposed to be talking to you." One of the oldest said, and they finally looked over at him. "They know that."
Martin set his jaw. "It's not going to hurt them to occupy themselves, if Peter can't even be bothered to be here."
"We wouldn't be talking to you then, either!" The other said, jaw equally set. "We're not even supposed to be talking to each-other!"
By this point Dawn and them had gone quiet, and they were watching their siblings with restless expressions. The sooner the argument was over, the sooner they would know whether or not they could play again. Still, nobody said anything for several moments.
"You know I've been bored out of my mind all day," Nonnie said finally, gesturing to the game frozen-in-progress, "At least it's something to do."
"You could have brought something from home, like Brian did!"
"You didn't bring anything! You've just been moving everything on that shelf a couple centimeters to the right for the last three hours, I've seen you!"
"And I hate that stupid book." Brian grumbled halfheartedly, fiddling with the folds of the fortune teller. Dawn shook her head disapprovingly.
"But it's something!" The oldest shot back.
"A stupid something!" Nonnie argued.
"Stop shouting!"
"Make me!"
"That's enough!" Martin interrupted a hearty inhale from one of the twins, who shot him a glare under their fringe. Good! They deserved the frustration for all of this nonsense! "Nobody's allowed to shout again unless they lose an eye!"
"'Hope you lose an eye..." This was grumbled under a breath, almost too quiet for him to hear, but Martin didn't let it go without an offended glare.
"Nobody's being hurt." He continued, "I don't think there's anything wrong with kids having a little fun while dad's away."
Dawn sneered, leaning far over her knees, "As long as nobody's tattling, Willa!"
The neater of the twins looked taken aback, more effected by their siblings' arguments than by Martin's. "Well-- I wouldn't need to tattle if you weren't always doing things you're not supposed to!"
"Tattle-tale, tattle-tale!" Dawn sang, wiggling her fingers like worms behind her ears. "Tattle-tale!"
"Am not!"
"What did I just say about the shouting?" Martin huffed, and pushed himself to his full height. "Do you or do you not think that we can keep this from Peter, seeing as he's not even here?" He asked. One of the twins was glaring down at the desktop, picking at the rough edge of the wood, while the other's sour look was trained on Martin.
"You used to be cool about it." Nonnie said. The twins didn't react.
Until they did. One-- longer hair, pulled into something that could've been a bun when they'd left the house but had been pulled and plucked into knots --broke first, shaking their head and waving a dismissive hand. "Do whatever you want." Willa groaned, but nodded.
"Just don't get us caught! We're on a good streak this month!"
Dawn grinned, her brother already reaching for the fortune teller again. Nonnie flopped back onto the floor with a long exhale. The twins slouched, defeated, over the desk.
The two of them watched their siblings play-- shortly Dawn started pulling Elias' books off of his shelves and stacking them into small castles --with the same dire looks on their faces. Martin offered a handful of activities that they outright rejected before finally opening his email, suggesting they write as many curses as they may know into the body of an email that they could send to Martin's boss. Not only were the twins eager to begin, all but pushing Martin out of the way of the screen, but Nonnie threw themself up from the floor and rushed behind the desk to contribute, as well.
Martin heard a stack of books crash down onto the carpet and found himself very pleased with this small mischief.
***
It might've been stupid of him to assume that the Lukases didn't know what tic tac toe was, but after the day he'd had it could hardly be held against him. Now some twenty-odd boards sat between them on a handful of papers, and the number was growing fast. Martin shook his head and set the pen on the desk between them. "I could also make up a hangman board, if this gets dull."
"It'll only get dull," Nonnie said, taking up the pen, "if she keeps losing."
"Hey!" Dawn grabbed for her sibling's hands, little fingers trying to pry the pen out of them to no great result.
"If you're going to fight over it, I have another pen in the desk drawer!" Martin circled 'round Elias' desk to the other side, getting a glimpse of the computer screen on the way, where Ross and Willa were busy leaving a frightful comment on a youtube video. He grimaced, but he wouldn't say anything against it if it meant that they were enjoying themselves.
The drawer was a mess, had been since before he'd moved into the office-- full of papers from a decade ago, dead sharpie markers, paperclips and rubber bands. He needed to do a little rummaging to find what he was looking for, and in that time he failed to notice the hush that descended over the room. Like a weight over his shoulders that he wasn't aware of until he looked up to see Peter stood in the doorway with a horrible frown.
"Peter." He said dumbly. Peter said nothing.
Martin was peripherally aware of the children standing, setting down their pens and papers and pushing out their chairs. None of them said a word, either, and it was this that finally pushed him to speak again.
"Peter, this was my fault. I thought that they were bored and I wouldn't let it go. I'm sorry, but you can't blame them for this."
"I can blame all of you for this equally, Martin, and I do." Peter's usual light tone was absent, and he gestured for his children to come to him. They went without hesitating. "I expected more from the lot of you. Now,"
"Peter--"
"Now, I know that I didn't raise you, but I taught you better than this!" Peter's hand hovered pointedly an inch or so from Ross' shoulder. "What did you think would come of acting out like this? Or did you think you would manage to hide this from me, like I can't feel the connection you experience? How many notes have you passed that I came to take from you?"
Ross cast their eyes to one side, Willa the other. Nonnie was shuffling towards the younger two and away from their father. Not that Martin had any experience with this particular aspect of Peter's life, but the way they bent to set their playthings on the floor seemed very practiced.
"Peter, I really think they should be fine now that you're back!" Martin said, filling that shameful silence that'd fallen over the room following Peter's admission. "I decided that they should do something on my own. I'm..."
"Martin,"
"Very annoying when I want to be. Your kids ignored me for as long as they could."
Peter met eyes with Martin and those eyes were unreadable.
"... Right. Don't worry, Martin, you'll get your fair share." Peter swept the door open and gestured gestured widely with one hand, herding his children out the door. Not one of them looked back, but he couldn't blame them for that. "Thanks for the help today. I noticed that everyone still has all of their fingers-- just as I left them."
A handful of small fingers wiggled at Martin from the other side of the doorway before disappearing again. Peter didn't seem to have noticed, and for his own sanity Martin opted to believe that he really hadn't.
"Of course." Martin said. Peter didn't look back at him as he shut the door again.