Chapter Text
It was on a chaotic Monday morning that Martin first met the man with the plain face.
Or perhaps that was an exaggeration. If simply existing in the same crowded space equalled met, then certainly they had met, but encountered may have been a more appropriate word.
Regardless - it was 7:46AM on a Monday morning, and Martin was hastily strapping a mask over his face to board the subway, his hand clenched around the printed employment form in his pocket. Vaulting through the doors before they closed, he secured a seat with the deftness of a trialed veteran, far past the stage when petty things such as courtesy could hold him back from the relief such a position could yield; being seated meant there was less chance of jostling a stranger - less chance of perhaps leaving an unwanted mark they may insist be compensated somewhere down the corporate line.
It also, of course, meant a temporary respite of pressure on the legs, but no one dwelt on such trivialities as that any more.
As Martin raised his head to check how many stations were to be stopped at before his own, his eyes involuntarily flicked to the face of the man who stood opposite him, holding onto a dangling handle with one bare hand.
That is, they would have, if there had been any face to be flicked to; even Martin's assumption of the stranger's gender was simply due to their build and posture. Unlike most of the rabble surrounding them, their face mask consisted of more than a simple sheet of fabric over the mouth. Instead, it seemed to be made of a similar material to a beekeeper's visor, and folded over the entirety of their face so that not a single patch of skin was visible.
A custom mask of that size must have been expensive, was Martin's first thought. His second was, Surely their whole face can't be plain? Followed by a bemused, But why would they go to so much trouble otherwise?
A moment later he realised he was staring, and averted his gaze to the subject of his previous aim - the subway route.
That was the first encounter Martin had with the man with the plain face - and, he had thought, the last.