Here’s my thing about polyarchives is like I love it but in my head NONE of their dynamics have been talked about or agreed upon verbally ONCE. They just sometimes… do things together.
Sasha was good friends with Jon, and maybe brushed his hair out of his eyes for him once at the pub and when Jon started stuttering about it Tim would NOT let him forget it (much to his dismay and Sasha’s eye-rolls).
I saw someone say Tim would rest his head on top of Jons when he was thinking (gahh need to draw that). Jon tells him to stop it but sometimes when he’s alone and lost in thought he gently touches the top of his head. He doesn’t even realize he does it or why.
Martin started with a simple reassuring touch on the back when he brought him tea, but now he’s giving Jon shoulder massages and it feels too good for Jon to shoo him away. But they. Do Not Talk About It.
Everyone at the institute knows about Tim and Sasha that one’s easy… so everyone wonders but doesn’t ask when they suddenly don’t have that same rapport… and frankly Tim does too.
Tim listens secretly to Martin’s poetry when he can and starts to flirt a little harder and a little more desperately when he feels Wrong suddenly around Sasha. Martin thinks he’s not really anything more than a coping mechanism for him but is too lonely to give that up. And he’s half right.
Jon and Tim started making out when they fought once… whatever. That didn’t happen. We don’t talk about it. Martin totally didn’t overhear it. He’s not jealous about or aroused by it at all.
Sometimes at home in his room Tim paces, fuming about how Jon is acting. But he also can’t stop thinking of how Jon used to loosen his tie and unbutton the first few buttons on his shirt when they went to the pub (and was very clearly trying to look cool doing so). How he used to actually laugh. The sound of Jon’s laugh. Tim will then throw something at the wall violently. He walked into Jons office once planning to let him have it and when Jon looked up wearily and Tim sees he’d taken his tie off and unbuttoned his shirt… he just walked right back out. Immediately. Jon doesn’t know what that was about.
Look what I’m saying here is Polyarchives to me is the most unhealthy distressing There-But-Not-There sort of…. Thing. We-All-Ignore-The-Pit ass dynamic. Sometimes Elias refers to it as “whatever you’ve all got going on here” and everyone immediately protests angrily to the insinuation.
I love seeing polyarchive cuddles and fluff so much but I literally can’t think of a time they’d all actually be on the same page like that. (Tearily and longingly saying “they would not fucking do that” bc I wish they would)
As a footnote I really don’t see chemistry between Jon and any of the other female characters besides Georgie and they’re now in their “exes that are still friends” era. Idk in my head when a man hates another man it has the potential to be homoerotic. When a woman hates a man thats all it is. Maybe it’s the overuse of the “hard to get” thing with women that makes me wary of it. Not really offended by anyone who does ship him w Melanie/Basira/Daisy bc Jon is too pathetic in those dynamics to be forcing himself on them lol but just not my cuppa.