Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Martin’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t mean to sit down in the far off corner of the library at all. He’s meant to be looking for a book for one of his friends, something with a Cyrillic title that he hasn’t a single clue how to read, let alone pronounce, but he’s been up and down the aisles four or five times now and he still hasn’t found it. He swears the Cyrillic section of the library was right in this corner the last time he was here with Daisy, and if he’s reading the call number correctly it should be right in front of him, somewhere, but the only titles he can see are in plain English and have titles like “The Universal History of Numbers,” and “An Introduction to the History of Cartography,” which are most decidedly not what he’s looking for. One title does mention progressive reform in Russia in the early 1900s, but considering he can actively read that one, he hazards a guess that that’s probably not it either.

He’s about ready to give up and go down to the main lobby for help when he takes a turn around the stacks into an area he hadn’t noticed before. He was sure he had gone all the way around the entire perimeter of the floor at least twice over, but if he did he had completely missed the little nook nestled in the corner where the windows ran the full length of the wall and two desks sat pressed up against each other right in the middle of it all. Martin doesn’t think he would’ve missed it if he would have been here before, considering he almost smashes his knee right into a filing cabinet labeled “microfiche returns” upon rounding the corner. He knows he wouldn’t have missed the guy sitting in one of the desks, papers swirled around his workspace in an order that Martin can’t place at a glance and isn’t sure he would be able to place if he had more than a glance, either. If the way the guy at the table is sifting through everything with what looks like an increasing frustration is any indication, Martin has to hazard a guess that there isn’t any sort of order to it at all.

He’s wearing a rather rumpled and oversized looking jumper, sleeves catching over his hands enough as he searches through the papers on his desk that he has to stop and shake them loose more than once as Martin watches. A stray curl of hair falls in front of his eyes and he barely pauses in his search enough to blow it out of his field of vision; it falls back in front of his eyes seconds later. The rest of his hair is collected at the back of his skull in a small, haphazard ponytail that looks like it was trying to be a bun before everything went by the wayside, held together with binder clips and a single rubber band. It’s a wonder any of it is still in place at all. There’s a startling amount of silver streaking through the unruly waves, much more than Martin would have expected for someone who looked like he couldn’t have been over the age of twenty-three at the latest. A lack of any sort of coordination or precision in the lighter strands betrays the idea that it could have been at all purposeful. The jumper, oversized as it is, slides down a little on one shoulder, exposing just a bit of his collarbone; the fine line above it that reveals the skin there to be just lighter than the deep brown tone of his neck, hinting at days spent somewhere in the sun.

All told, he’s kind of checking all of Martin’s boxes.

If he had any boxes to check, that is. Not that he’s at all considering anything, because that would be weird, he doesn’t know this guy at all, but midterms are picking up and he’s stressed, and when he’s stressed he plays out daydreams in his head to cope, and maybe some of those daydreams happen to involve whirlwind romances starring oddly attractive men that he sees either on the bus or behind the bar of a coffee shop or, yes, sometimes in the middle of his university’s main library. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, except that he’s painfully starved of romantic affection. But that’s not the point.

The guy in the desk in front of him let’s out a deep sigh and removes his glasses before dragging his hands over his eyes and sitting there with his head in his hands for a few seconds. It makes an itch settle into Martin’s chest, right beneath his breastbone.

The guy taps the toe of his boot quickly against the leg of the desk before shaking himself out a little and squinting back down at the work in front of him, only remembering his glasses as an afterthought when he has to narrow his eyes further and further the closer the page is to his face. The dull thud of rubber soles against old wood startles Martin into moving and before he knows it, he’s seated in the other available desk. He swings his bag just a little too forcefully off his shoulders on his way down and produces a loud, resounding smack as it collides against the point where the two desks are touching.

Shit. The two desks rattle, just a bit, and Martin winces. He sits frozen in place for a bit, hardly daring to breathe, but no sound comes from the space across from him except for a faint rustling of papers and the light click of something mechanical, like a pen. A few seconds later he hears the knocking of rubber soles against wood again. Nothing else. He decides he can relax.

Martin doesn’t mean to stay, he doesn’t, but it would be weird to just immediately get up and leave and it would be weirder still to sit there not doing anything for fifteen minutes before he thought it would no longer be weird to get up and leave, so he stays. He does have work he could stand to get done, and Daisy had said she wouldn’t absolutely need the book until later on, anyway. He’ll have plenty of time to find it and get it to her after taking a few minutes to knock a few biochemistry assignments out of the way.

He ends up staying for two hours. Daisy and Basira give him hell for it when he meets them in the language building later to drop the book off. Which, as it turns out, happens to be the wrong book anyway.

“Martin, you were gone for two hours, and you didn’t even find the right one?” Martin doesn’t like the look on Daisy’s face. It’s the one she gets when she’s about to make fun of him for something.

“I thought it was the right one?” he says, trying to deflect. “I can’t read it!”

Basira’s tone is dry when she speaks. “You can’t read numbers, Martin?” He doesn’t like the look on her face, either. It’s the one she gets when she’s about to agree with Daisy for making fun of him.

The thing is, Martin knows it’s the wrong book. He knows, because when he picked it up Daisy had just texted him asking if he could bring the book now, please, because her study group was about to meet soon, and he had just realized it had been two hours and so he’d panicked and walked briskly through the aisles on his way to the elevators until he found something with Cyrillic writing on the cover. There had been a sum zero chance that his excuse of not speaking Russian being the reason why he didn’t bring the right book would actually work, but he figured it was worth a shot anyway.

“Who is he, Martin?” Daisy asks.

Martin decides to play dumb. “Who’s who?”

“Nice owl impression. Who is he?”

“Why do you assume a guy had anything to do with it, I do have work to be doing, you know, and I was in a very big hurry to get here in time and—”

The twin unimpressed looks from both of his friends makes Martin cut himself off. “Okay, fine. There was a guy. But I actually was getting work done, it wasn’t like I was just sitting there looking at him for two hours.”

Daisy looks like she doesn’t believe him. So does Basira, but she’s nicer about trying to hide it. “You could have been, though,” she says, not unkindly. “I know how elaborate your daydreaming gets.”

Martin resolves not to get drunk around Daisy and Basira ever again. That particular detail about himself had been told in complete, misplaced, wasted confidence. He knows he’s gay and lonely, okay, he doesn’t need other people to mention it.

“Ay, okay, but I’m not going to stare at him the whole time. That would be weird. And a good way to get hate-crimed.”

Daisy rolls her eyes and places a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder. “We know, Martin, we’re kidding. You can tell us all about how distractingly beautiful he is later and we promise to only make fun of you about it for like, five minutes max.” And they will, too, but they’ll be nice about it. For all of her outward brashness, Daisy’s never mean on purpose.

“Right, I’ll see you then. Sorry about the book, by the way, I really did try to look for it at first, but I swear that Cyrillic section—”

“It does not move, Martin, you just don’t know where it is.”

“It does! You know it does, you told me it was on the fourth floor and I walked up and down it like twelve times and I never found it.”

Daisy continues to protest, but over her shoulder Basira gives a distinct nod of agreement and Martin can see her clearly mouth the words definitely haunted. He smiles.

“Right, well,” he says. “Anyway, I did look it up on the library’s online search later? It should be available in full online. If you need to pay for it, let me know, it’s my fault you don’t have the book anyway.”

“I absolutely will not let you pay for my books, Martin, I’ve seen how much just your organic chemistry textbooks cost on their own,” Daisy insists. “But thank you. We really do have to get to the study group now, though, see you tonight! Don’t pay for anything!”

“You can’t stop me from paying for it if I do it when you’re not there and just send you the file download.” Martin can hear Daisy protesting behind him as Basira keeps her walking through the doors of the language building and he laughs.

As he walks in the direction of the tram to head home for the day, he wonders how long he needs to wait before returning the incorrect book so it doesn’t look like he’s an idiot who has no idea what he’s doing.

Jon spends his two free hours in the middle of the day in a little half-desk, half-cubicle in the far corner of the fourth floor of the main library, right next to a wall of large windows overlooking one of the student garages. The desk has a sort of hutch on top that encloses all sides of the desk except for one, with a little shelf attached to the back and a power strip in the top right corner that snakes through the bottom to plug into an outlet on the floor. Pressed up against its back is another desk just like it. They are nestled so far in the back of the library that the winding maze of shelves casts a cozy shadow over the two of them, broken up in fits and starts by the warm glow of the sun filtering through the trees in the window. The area is so secluded that Jon is pretty sure most people think the fourth floor of the main library ends about two shelves over. Well, at least everyone but the student that’s started to sit in the desk pressed against the back of his. Other than him, Jon has never seen anyone else come this far back.

The first time the student had taken a seat in the empty desk against his own, Jon was pulled out of the mountain of notes scattered in front of him for his fiction production midterm paper with a startling jolt as he felt something knock heavy against the legs of his desk, causing a pen to roll from one end to the other. He’d been so used to the relative quiet in this part of the library that he had almost jumped out of his seat at the shock of it, but managed to remember that other people attend this university, Jon, and keep it at a (what he hopes was) inconspicuous glance upwards to see who had disturbed him.

Jon had barely caught a glimpse of the student’s face before he’d settled fully into the desk, barely enough time to catch the dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose, the wire-framed glasses perched there. The most Jon had been able to see of him after that was a tight mess of soft brown curls, sunlight from the window catching on certain strands and turning them a bright auburn red.

He’d gone a whole two and a half years sitting in this part of the library without anyone else stumbling upon it and making the choice to sit there with him, so he hadn’t expected to see much of the student after that. That is, until he’d arrived at his spot the day after to see the student was already there, headphones in and laptop open, looking like he didn’t intend to leave for a while. That was a few weeks ago, now, and he still hasn’t gone anywhere. Jon might have tried to be a little annoyed that he had to give up the quiet and privacy of what he had come to think of as his corner of the library, but truth be told it didn’t take him all that long to get used to it. It was nice to have someone around to look after his things if he had to get up and stretch his legs, and the soft noises of someone else occupying the space around him kept his head from spinning when he forgot his headphones at home.

Jon doesn’t know anything about his desk mate except that he comes in every day around the same time he does—either just before or just after—and spends a lot of time muttering under his breath to himself about limiting reagents and p49 genes and something about crispers. He isn’t quite sure what crispers has to do with all the rest—he’s no STEM major but he likes to think he would know scientific terms if he heard them, and “crisper” doesn’t fit his admittedly very arbitrary guidelines—but to each their own, he supposes. Other than that, all he has are descriptors. The student has the tendency to wear jeans with holes in the knees, form-fitting and cuffed at the ankles, and old t-shirts that look well-worn from years going through the dryer except for Thursdays when his wardrobe is a little more professional. Jon wonders what kind of job he has that only calls him in on Thursdays but still requires him to wear slacks and button downs.

He’s gotten to see the student in various stages of dishevelment, as well, hair flat from where he’d presumably been sleeping on it, collar uneven and coat slipping off his shoulders. If Jon’s being honest, he comes in disheveled more than he comes in put together, but it’s not as if Jon has any room to talk. He barely brushes his hair out with his fingers most mornings before giving up and digging out a rubber band and a few paper clips to keep it out of his face, knows that his favorite jumper is two sizes too big and constantly slides down his arms, sitting askew on his frame in a way that makes it look like he’s just rolled out of bed. Half the time he has just rolled out of bed.

His desk mate is also tall, taller than he has any right to be, and Jon would be a liar if he said that didn’t pique his interest just a little bit. Not that it’s hard to be taller than he is, but it’s always been one of Jon’s things, people who tower over him. Even so, it’s not something that particularly registers in his brain until the day the student comes up to the side of his desk with a paper cup from the tea shop on campus in hand and deposits it on the corner of his workspace.

He startles a little, turns to see who belongs to the hand that’s just set the cup on his desk. And he has to look up. Like, up, up. Jon has to lift his gaze high enough that it requires him pushing his seat back, a little, and he may have misjudged just exactly how tall his desk mate is by at least four inches.

“Sorry!” he hears coming from the man in front of him, lilting voice rife with apology. Jon spares the thought that it’s a bit much for simply making him jump when he wasn’t paying attention, but the majority of his cognitive function is screaming at him that hey he's kind of cute, actually. Have you noticed that yet? Have you taken the time yet to consider how artfully the freckles across the bridge of his nose seem to be dotted into his skin? I know you clocked how tall he was almost immediately, but have you really noticed? Isn’t it kind of endearing how he’s stumbling over his words trying to have a conversation with you and you’re just sitting in front of him in silence like an idiot?

The part of his brain that’s involved in getting him to act like a regular human being finally decides to take over the reins. In front of him, his desk mate is still talking, drumming his fingers fretfully over his own arm. “Sorry, I didn’t want to bother you but um, well, I stopped for tea on my way here? And I just thought that—I thought that you seemed a little stressed lately, sort of, or like...tired maybe? So I thought I’d…?” He appears to be trying to make himself look a little smaller as he trails off, shoulders curled inward, and Jon tries not to think about the disappointment he feels at the action.

He moves to respond, finally, but the student in front of him barrels on without seeming to notice. “I don’t know what you like, obviously, so this is just kind of, um, regular breakfast tea?” Jon thinks if he knew him better, he’d make a joke about not knowing what kind of tea he ordered, but he looks nervous enough as it is, so Jon keeps quiet. He's well aware that his jokes tend not to land so well, unless you know him well enough to know that they're meant to be jokes, and contrary to popular belief he does always at least try to sound approachable.

“I brought some sugar just in case, wasn’t sure how you’d take it.” Six packets of sugar join the cup on his desk. “You don’t have to drink it though, if you don’t like it. Obviously.” It sounds like an afterthought, like he hadn’t considered the possibility but wants Jon to know, anyway. Like he’d genuinely just walked into a tea shop and said, “well so long as I’m here, I might as well pick something up for the weird guy that sits with me in the library and watches my stuff sometimes when I leave.” And Jon doesn’t doubt that’s exactly what happened.

He realizes the flow of apologies and explanations has finally reached a halt and takes his opening before it can start up again. It isn’t necessary, firstly, and he really doesn’t want the man’s instinctual kindness to send him into an anxiety spiral just because Jon is hopelessly awkward.

“No, uh, it’s fine.” Fine. Fine. The guy is clearly nervous about the whole thing, and all Jon has to say in reassurance is fine? He tries again. “It’s great!” Christ, that was loud. The whole fourth floor doesn't need to know how horrible you are at communication, Jon. “Thank you, uh…” Right. He didn’t actually know this guy at all. But the guy doesn’t offer his name and the silence kind of feels like it’s stretching on endlessly like saltwater taffy and Jon did technically make it sound like he was going to continue that sentence, and the guy is still standing in front of him like he’s waiting for Jon to finish his thought, so. “Thank you.” Solid finish.

It sounds a little hollow in his own ears, a little weak and certainly not sincere enough, but it doesn’t seem to come off that way to his desk mate because a nervous smile lightens up his eyes and he says “oh! Oh, okay. Great! I’ll just, um...right,” before moving to get settled into his own desk. Jon thinks he might see a slight flush spreading across the back of his neck when he turns.

The thing is that Jon isn’t really a fan of breakfast tea. Too strong, too much caffeine. It tastes a little burnt, most of the time, doesn’t have enough flavor to save it from its overpowering bitterness. He takes a hesitant sip anyway, because what else are you supposed to do when a cute boy goes out of his way to bring you a little pick me up, even though he doesn’t know anything about you beyond what he can pick up from sitting with you in the library for two hours every day, just because he noticed you were running yourself a little ragged?

It still doesn’t taste good. He tries not to make that too obvious, in case his desk mate is watching. The six sugar packets sitting in front of him go directly into the cup without a second thought. It helps a little bit. It had never occurred to him as a possibility to leave without finishing the tea regardless of how it tasted, but it’s nice to have a little sweetness to cut into it.

By the time he has to leave for his next class, he manages to finish it. It’s not so bad once he gets used to it, but it still isn’t something he enjoys. Still, though, Jon knows he wouldn’t refuse it if it was given to him a second time. As he reaches to pick up the cup again so he can throw it away, he notices a name written on the side in black Sharpie. Martin.

Jon gathers the rest of his things, keeping the cup in his hand instead of throwing it out right away like he’d been intending to. As he crosses past the other desk in front of him, he tips the cup in Martin’s direction, trying to catch his attention. It works. Martin looks up expectantly, reaching up to remove one earbud so he can listen. Jon hadn’t really intended on saying anything, had just meant to offer up an acknowledgement, but.

“Cheers, Martin.”

He keeps walking as he speaks, but the soft “cheers” Martin offers in response follows him down the aisles anyway. 

Martin had at least waited a couple weeks until he tried to make a fool out of himself. That should be seen as the tremendous accomplishment it was, he thinks. And it wasn’t like he intended to do anything, okay, it’s just that one of his labs had actually ended early for once so he stopped at the little tea shop on campus before heading to the library to get some work done and while he was waiting by the order pick up counter he had made the mistake of thinking. A dangerous activity, really. It never ended well for him.

The thing is he was standing there replying to emails from freshmen in the lab he preceptors for on Thursdays, thinking "man, I can't wait to drink this tea, I am so tired," which lead to him thinking about how the cute guy in the library had been looking a little tired lately, dark circles under his eyes deeper than Martin had ever seen them at least. And, well, Martin had never exactly been good about not taking care of people when it looked like they needed it.

He hadn’t let himself think about it too much beyond “this would be the nice thing to do” before abandoning his spot near the order pick up to get back in line. It wasn’t a big deal to him, at the time. Or, at least, it wasn’t a big deal until he rode the elevator up to the fourth floor of the library, walked all the way to the secluded back corner, and promptly caught a glimpse of himself from the outside perspective: two cups of tea in hand, his own half-empty and starting to grow cold, as he walked towards a man he had never spoken to beyond the phrases “would you mind watching my things for me” and “yeah, of course.” Martin had ducked into one of the aisles before his desk mate could see him.

He’d leaned lightly against the shelf behind him, eyes closed as he’d tried not to panic. This is stupid. You don’t even know him. What are you doing? But he had already bought it, and he wasn’t about to drink forty ounces of caffeinated tea all by himself at one thirty in the afternoon, and if he’d waited any longer it would’ve gotten cold, anyway. So he’d taken a deep breath and opened his eyes, spared a minute to think “oh so this is where the Cyrillic section is, I could’ve sworn it wasn’t here last week,” and reappeared in the corner of the library with a purpose.

And it wasn’t that bad. The guy had startled a little, sure, but he had also seemed somewhat pleased, something that Martin hesitated to call a smile playing at the edges of his lips, and when he’d gotten up to leave he’d tipped the empty cup at Martin and said “cheers” before leaving. It had been all the license Martin needed to decide that he was going to be doing it again.

At the tea shop now, he scans through the different blends on the menu, narrowing down the choices.

The thing about bringing his library friend tea in the afternoons is that his library friend was exceptionally particular. Not that he’d ever said it to his face, mind, no he never even leaves the library without finishing the whole thing, but Martin can tell.

The first tea, a breakfast blend with nothing in it, had been the worst choice so far, but Martin doesn’t blame himself for that one. He hadn’t known anything about what the guy liked, then, and he went with something incredibly basic. He still doesn’t know anything about the guy, not really, but watching his reactions to the different flavors the past couple weeks gave him enough of an idea. The breakfast blend had been immediately met with a slight wince, followed by six full sugar packets being dumped into the cup before another, slightly less pained sip is taken.

So. No breakfast tea. Probably something that isn’t as strong, then, definitely something with more sugar.

Switching to green tea was met with slightly less grimacing. Adding milk and sugar only seemed to increase its quality a little bit. Early grey had been a very resolute no, so much so that Martin hadn’t even tried saving it with cream and sugar the next time, deciding instead to just scratch it from the list of possibilities entirely. Oolong doesn’t quite get a bad reception, but it doesn’t get a good one either. He could’ve stopped there. Drinkable tea was as much as he needed, really, but at this point he was too deep in it to stop. Like, what, he’s just supposed to spend weeks cataloguing someone’s reactions to drinking different flavors of tea so he can finally order them something they like only to stop when he gets to one that’s passable? No.

He’s going to get it right eventually. He thinks today’s order might be the one.

Because up next in his list is African rooibos with vanilla and no one can say that African rooibos with vanilla tastes bad. Even without milk and sugar, the flavor is impossible to object to. It’s vanilla. The sweetness from the milk and sugar just elevates it. If the guy in the library ends up reacting to it the same way he has all the others, he might have to give up. If that’s the case, there’s no hope.

So Martin feels pretty good about it when he approaches the two desks by the window and sets the cup on the little shelf at the top of the guy’s desk, making sure to make enough noise as he gets closer that he doesn’t startle him. He still blinks a little as he looks up, takes a minute to realize that Martin is there, but as he becomes aware he fixes Martin with a shy looking smile, as always, a soft “thanks, Martin,” thrown his way before turning back to the notes scattered across the desk.

Martin has to wait a little before he gets his reaction. The guy gets distracted for a second, clicking around on his laptop and squinting every so often at the screen as he pauses to read, before he leans back and remembers the tea sitting on the shelf of his desk. Martin watches as he pops off the lid and brings the cup to his lips, eyes shut as he takes the first cautious sip.

His reaction isn’t immediately recognizable as good or bad—the widening of his eyes, the tilt of his head—and Martin has a minute where he thinks oh my god, he doesn’t like this one either, what is wrong with him. Because really, what’s he supposed to do next if that’s the case? What, he switches to black tea? Sure, okay. Because that would be an improvement.

He doesn’t have to worry about it too much before the man in front of him lifts the cup again and takes another drink. And then another. Martin privately celebrates a little in his head. It’s a bit stupid, maybe, but he can’t stop the pleased smile that instinctively arises from staying fixed in place as he sets up his laptop and gets ready to settle in for the next couple hours. And if it grows a little wider as he watches his desk mate rise from his seat not ten minutes later to toss the now empty paper cup in the recycle, well. Maybe that’s stupid, too, but it’s still nice.

Jon hates every single one of his friends. He really does. Seconds after he gets to the union to join them for lunch before his next class, all eyes are on him. They don’t say anything immediately, and he doesn’t comment on it.

Sasha’s the first to say anything. "So…" The word falls, all but sung, from her lips.

"Been giving the barista fake names, Jon?" Melanie asks soon after. She looks seconds away from laughter.

"No?"

Across from him, Tim rolls his eyes. "Oh, for—who's Martin, Jon?"

Shit.

Jon looks down at the cup in his hands, twisting it until he realizes the name scrawled on the side had been set to face the rest of them. He looks up, notices the four of them looking at him with barely concealed amusement. “No one,” is his brilliant response.

“Oh, okay,” Tim says, turning back to ask Sasha about some assignment for a screenwriting class.

Jon blinks. They never let anything go that easily. “Wait, really?”

“No, not really, are you kidding?” Melanie says. “When have we ever.”

“Yeah, Jon, you only know us, and we certainly didn’t get that for you,” Georgie chimes in. “It’s a big deal. When’s the last time you talked to anyone long enough for them to get you tea?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Jon insists, doubling down when the four of them raise their eyebrows. “It’s not! And what are you two doing here anyway.” He turns to Georgie and Melanie. “You don’t even go here anymore, shouldn’t you be off doing some sort of ghost thing?”

Tim snorts. “Solid deflection. But who is he?”

Jon sighs, resigns himself to divulging everything for them to laugh at later. “He’s just, someone I met in the library recently, that’s all.” Not a single one of them looks like they believe him. “We’re...friends, I think.”

“Jon, you’ve never met a single person who didn’t have to bully their way into being your friend,” Georgie reminds him. “Except for me, and that’s because you liked me. I know what you’re like.”

“She’s right,” Tim says. “It took me nearly a month and a half to get you to even admit you liked working with me after we got partnered up in that film analysis class freshman year. When you asked if I needed a roommate for the Spring semester, I almost threw a party because I still didn’t know if you actually considered us friends or not.”

Sasha nods. “Yeah, the only reason I knew you didn’t hate me is because Tim told me you were just like that, otherwise I would’ve left you alone. I was genuinely surprised when you invited me to Christmas, the first time.”

“I thought the reason you moved out when I started living with Georgie was because you didn’t like me,” Melanie chimes in. “Which, to be fair, I would’ve gotten, but still. I had to spend weeks pretending like I didn’t know the best way to frame certain shots just so I could get you to talk to me long enough to decide you did like me.”

“And anyway, even barring all that, you expect us to believe that your friend—” Tim’s hands are too busy with his food in front of him to make air quotes, but Jon can still hear them clearly in his voice. “—just, what, brings you tea every day for no reason? I don’t even bring you tea every day for no reason, you’d yell at me for getting it wrong.”

“That’s because I know you,” Jon says, responding to the one bit of Tim’s argument that doesn’t sound wholly accusatory. “It’s not rude if I tell you I don’t like something, you’ve been my friend for three years. And you’d probably be doing it on purpose to bother me, anyway, it’s what you’d want.”

The attempt at steering the conversation in a different direction does the exact opposite.

“Hold on, wait a minute, so he actually has brought you tea every day for no reason? I was kidding.”

“Oh no, there’s something else there, Martin got it wrong too, at first, didn’t he? And you didn’t say anything?” Melanie looks at him like she knows something that even Jon doesn’t. It would make him shift uncomfortably in his seat, if he wasn’t already used to it.

“Jon are you ill, you yelled at me like two days ago because I forgot to write ‘interior’ for the setting on a mock script that we weren’t even turning in, you’re telling me someone brought you the wrong tea order, multiple times, and you didn’t say a single word about it? Exactly how cute is he, because he can’t be prettier than I am.”

“It is not every day,” Jon says, as soon as they let him get a word in. “And look, I’m not going to just shout at someone for doing something nice just because I don’t like English breakfast tea. I’m not actually mean.”

Sasha takes pity on him “You’re not,” she agrees, “but you’re also not, like, particularly great at making strangers feel comfortable? I would’ve expected you to let it go cold and just throw it away.”

He probably would have, too, except Martin was cute, and tall, and stuttering through apologies like anyone could be mad at him for doing something so nice, and Jon had suddenly very intensely felt like he would do anything to not disappoint him. And okay, yes, maybe Georgie was right, at least partly, because he had only felt that way once before, when they were in high school and she had lent him a pen without being asked because she could see that his was running out of ink.

Like hell if he was going to admit any of that to this lot, though.

Tim reaches out with the end of his fork and pokes at the tip of Jon’s right ear, snatching his hand back before Jon can swat at him. “Ears are burning there, Jon.”

“Shut up,” Jon says, “I don’t even know him, really.”

Melanie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, he just brings you tea every other day and you blush when you talk about him,” she says. “We’re not stupid, Jon. You think he’s cute.”

“Okay, maybe,” he relents. “But I still don’t really know him. I’ve spoken to him maybe twice.”

“Maybe twice?” Tim sounds properly indignant, now. “You’ve talked to him maybe twice, and you’re friends already? You still won’t even admit I’m your best friend and I’ve known you for three years! Maybe twice, Christ.”

“That’s because I know it bothers you,” Jon says. This, at least, is a familiar refrain, and it’s a much more preferable topic than the interrogation about his potential romantic endeavors. “And because you’d be absolutely insufferable if I did. I only admit it when you’re not here.”

There appears to be some internal war happening in Tim where he can’t decide whether he should be happy or irritated. Jon tries his very best not to react, no matter how desperately he wants to start laughing. “Okay but what does that mean?”

Jon’s not stupid. He can see the way Tim’s eyes brighten a bit when he says this, how his gesturing and the tone of his voice become comically more exaggerated; it’s Tim’s way of obviously redirecting the attention away from him. And it’s very much a joke, he knows, but it is especially during times like these that Jon has to wonder how Tim ever even entertains the idea that Jon doesn’t think of him as his best friend.

“Tim, do you honestly think I’d live with you this long if I didn’t genuinely like you?” He heaves a very dramatically put-upon sigh and watches as Tim squints harder in response.

“I really can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or not.” The slight twitch of Tim’s lips after he says this betrays the claim’s validity.

Jon only shrugs, content to let Tim effectively derail the conversation. He knows, eventually, that they will bring Martin up yet again, and he’ll have to actually answer their questions instead of trying clumsily to dodge the subject. For now, though, they let the discussion shift without complaint and with only minimal eyebrow raising in his direction.

Maybe he doesn’t hate them all the time.

When Martin walks into his regular spot in the library on a Wednesday afternoon towards the end of the semester, he sees something that makes something soft well up in his chest for absolutely no good reason at all.

Across the room, deep in the back corner, he sees the skinny man that he’s been bringing tea for the past two and a half months rounding one of the aisles with a chair trailing behind him, struggling a little to get it through the tight space without knocking any of the books off the shelves. He just barely manages, moving his hips to the side just in time to settle a book back in place before it tumbles to the ground.

Martin realizes the desk he usually occupies is missing its chair.

And it’s like...okay, so he could’ve gotten his own chair, right, and it’s not like bringing a chair from the other side of the library is a declaration of love or a marriage proposal or anything but it’s nice. Daisy and Basira hardly remember to grab an extra seat for him half the time and they’re his best friends. It’s nice to be thought of like that. Not that his friends don’t usually think of him, Martin has a whole shelf on his desk at home dedicated to the small trinkets they bring him when they’re out together and see something they think he might like, but it’s just...it’s different.

Martin doesn’t know why the idea of someone paying attention to him enough to know that he sits in the same place every day and caring enough to grab a chair for him when the chair that’s usually there is missing makes him feel so warm inside, especially when it’s not exactly hard for this particular person to know his library habits when he’s basically inserted himself into the man’s life and made it his business, but, well, here he is.

Maybe it’s a little pathetic. Martin’s self-aware enough to know that. He’s also self-aware enough to know that he doesn’t really give a shit how pathetic it seems. His feelings are his own and there’s no one else in his head to judge him for it.

His desk mate doesn’t seem to notice him just standing there, staring, as he leaves the seat pulled out a little from Martin’s desk, and Martin decides it would be best to get a move on and actually sit down before he does notice. Just because there’s no one else in his head to judge him doesn’t mean people in real life couldn’t do the same.

Half an hour passes before he realizes he’s been staring at the same research essay prompt the whole time without actually knowing how he’s meant to answer it. It’s been a long semester, and at this point he barely remembers how to draw a five-carbon sugar, let alone how to hypothesize on different mechanisms of genetically modifying produce in order to make sure it lasts longer and increases crop yields.

Across from him, the guy that brought him his seat lets out a heavy sigh and Martin can hear the sound of a pen being forcefully clicked over and over again in frustration. Martin’s not sure what the guy’s major is, thinks it’s probably something that has to do with a lot of writing and even more reading, probably not even something remotely related to any sort of food science, but...it’s worth a shot? At the very least, they could both use the break.

Martin reaches around the sides of the desks, taps once on the top of the desk across from him. The man sitting there jumps slightly. “Sorry,” he says. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about genetically modifying produce to prolong freshness during transit, would you?”

The man blinks at him, slowly. “No.” He gets up and moves his chair around next to Martin anyway.

It takes a bit of rearranging, to get the two of them to fit comfortably in the small space, but they manage.

It dawns on him, suddenly, that he still doesn’t know the guy’s name. After two and a half months of bringing him tea. After almost having a small breakdown over the fact that he was nice enough to grab an extra chair for him. He thinks squeezing into a desk hardly large enough for Martin on his own, let alone for the two of them, is a pretty good opening, so he asks.

“Oh, I never mentioned it, did I,” the man responds, seeming a touch sheepish. “It’s Jon.”

Jon. It’s nice, Martin thinks. It suits him.

“Jon,” he says. Jon smiles a little upon hearing his name echoed back at him. “So, um...any ideas?” Martin gestures broadly to his laptop screen, reaching over belatedly to adjust the brightness and make it easier to read.

Jon squints at the screen for a minute, eyes moving back and forth from the prompt he has on his screen and the three different articles he has open that he thought might have some sort of answer in them. “I have to be honest with you, I have no idea what any of this means,” he says.

“Fair enough,” Martin replies. He barely knows what any of it means, and most of that is only because he’s already read the section of each article that explains what all of the acronyms stand for.

Not knowing what any of it means doesn’t appear to stop Jon in the slightest. His gaze keeps scanning over the words for a minute before he reaches out and points at something on the screen, careful to avoid actually touching it. “What’s this? C-R-I-S-P-R?” He spells the acronym all the way out and Martin hates how cute he thinks that is.

“CRISPR,” he says. “It’s a sort of method of gene editing, you can use it to make new DNA sequences out of bacterial fragments. It’s mostly used to try and prevent viral disease, I think, but I thought it might be helpful?”

“That’s what you’ve been saying.” The statement is so soft that Martin could almost convince himself he didn’t hear it. Jon looks a little flushed around the ears though, pinkish undertones rising up beneath deep brown skin, and Martin isn’t quite nice enough to let it go.

“What do you mean?”

Jon looks like he didn’t expect him to hear that. The flush around his ears deepens.

“Sometimes I forget my headphones at home,” he says, “or they start to hurt my ears so I take them out, and I can hear you talking to yourself over here. You’ve mentioned this one before, but I didn’t know what you were talking about, and…” A nervous laugh escapes him. “I may have thought you were talking about, like...vegetable crispers?” Jon’s voice goes a little high at the end, embarrassed, and Martin has to try very, very hard not to laugh.

It must be obvious how much he wants too, though, because Jon all but shouts “don’t laugh!” It’s a little loud for the quiet floor of the library, but nobody is around them and Martin finds it hard to care, anyway. “Don’t laugh,” Jon says a little quieter, despite laughing himself. “I thought it sounded weird, but I figured you would know what you were talking about better than I would, so I didn’t think about it too hard.”

“Well I appreciate the confidence,” Martin says. He thinks it’s very honorable that he manages not to sound too amused by the whole thing. A vegetable crisper. He’s going to be thinking about that one for a while.

For a minute, Jon just sits there with a delighted little smile on his face. Martin thinks he could be content to say to hell with his research paper and just sit inside that moment for the next hour or two.

Before he can, Jon seems to shake himself a little, blinking and clearing his throat as he turns his attention back to the screen in front of him. He reaches to scroll down on the page before stopping himself and pulling his hand back at the last minute. “Um, sorry, do you mind?”

Martin shakes his head, gesturing towards the laptop. “Go for it.”

After a few minutes, it appears Jon has found what he’s looking for. He stops scrolling to highlight one block of text and flip the laptop towards Martin. “It looks like this CRISPR thing might help with...what was it?” He squints at the prompt on the other side of the screen. “‘Prolonging the freshness of produce during transit’? Just like a regular crisper I guess, only more...science-y.”

Martin doesn’t laugh at the vegetable crisper comment, mostly because the idea is good. The highlighted text in front of him mentions the similarities between CRISPR and existing GMO processes, and even goes on to say that, while gene editing via CRISPR has been considered for improving crop yields while also prolonging freshness, no concrete experiments have ever been done yet. And it’s only from two months ago. That makes it incredibly unlikely that any studies have been done since then. He can really use this.

“Why hadn’t I thought of that yet?” Martin mutters under his breath, mostly to himself. He’s been looking at this article for at least two days. How did he miss something so simple?

“I think you’ve just been looking at it for too long,” Jon offers. “Sometimes the words blur together after a while.” He has a point. Martin may have been looking at this article for two days, but that doesn’t mean he was able to focus enough to read past the first two paragraphs of the introduction. So much has been piling up lately that his brain has barely been online long enough to figure out how to even open the document.

Jon clears his throat suddenly. “Um, did you—did you need anything else?”

Martin doesn’t, really, but. Well, it’s nice, isn’t it? Having someone to work with. And maybe he’s just being hopeful, thinking with his own daydream logic, but it looks like Jon doesn’t quite want to go back to his own work, anyway. Far be it from Martin to be the one who prevents anyone’s procrastinating.

“Actually, would you mind looking through a few more of these papers with me? You don’t have to do anything but mark down whatever you find that seems relevant, really, I’m just looking for a second set of eyes. Evidently, I could use it.”

Jon barely waits for him to finish asking before he’s reaching around the sides of the two desks to swipe at a notebook, rising a little out of his chair when he realizes his arms are too short to make the distance. As he stretches, Martin catches a peek of the garishly printed T-shirt tucked into his jeans. Martin can’t quite tell what it’s supposed to be, there’s too many bright colors fighting for attention for him to be sure, but he can tell that it clashes horribly. He thinks it’s cute.

Jon drops back down into his seat a moment later, notebook in hand and already squinting at one of the other papers open on the screen. He makes no move to drag his own laptop over, and Martin doesn’t comment on it. It’s kind of nice, really, the way their shoulders knock into each other as they try to navigate the limited space they’re in. Martin’s laptop isn’t really large enough to have two grown men crowding in front of it at once, trying to read six different articles open in six different windows at once—it’s barely large enough to have two windows open at a time. Neither of them complain.

A silence falls over the two of them and Martin takes a second to just look at Jon. His hair is still up in that awful half-ponytail trying to be a bun, held together with hope and binder clips. The oversized sweater Martin has begun to realize might be his favorite still falls off his shoulders and tangles itself up in his hands as he works. This close, though, Martin can see these small gatherings of tiny, circular scars dotting across his skin. Most of them are concentrated on his cheeks, but there are a few scattered on his chin as well. There’s one near the corner of his mouth that kind of looks like a small, lopsided heart. It would be the perfect spot to kiss him, he thinks, before he remembers he only just learned Jon’s name not twenty minutes ago and also that it’s kind of weird to think about kissing people you only know from your university’s main library.

“Chicken pox,” Jon says, rather suddenly.

Martin’s unsure what that has to do with anything regarding the freshness of produce. “I’m sorry?”

Jon waves his free hand over his face as he jots something down in the notebook in front of him, not bothering to look away from the screen. “Chicken pox. Got it real young before I had the chance to get the vaccine. Never was good at trying not to scratch at things, so...the scars.”

Oh. Martin hadn’t been aware he’d been that obvious about the staring. Christ, Jon must think he’s an asshole. “Oh! Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I was—”

Jon cuts him off, sounding amused. “Don’t worry about it, I know you were trying not to. They’re sort of everywhere, though.”

“Still,” Martin insists, “I shouldn’t be staring, that’s rude. You probably get that enough as it is.”

“Not as much as you’d think, actually,” Jon says. “I’ve managed to go all semester without someone asking about it. Congratulations on being the first.”

Martin could very well take that as the sarcastic admonishment it sounds like, but there’s something just underneath the words that makes it sound like he’s probably kidding. “Was that a joke?”

Jon doesn’t exactly smile, but Martin can tell that it’s a near thing. “Yes, sorry. I’ve been told they don’t always land so much as they just sort of...fall.”

It’s the way he says it that startles a laugh out of Martin. “Well I can’t imagine why,” he says.

“Martin,” Jon sighs, “just because I’m no good at making jokes doesn’t mean I can’t tell when someone else is making one at my expense.” It’s a little more recognizable, here, that he’s trying to be funny, and even though it isn’t, really, Martin finds himself having to twist his mouth to the side to keep from bursting into undignified giggles anyway.

Somewhere around the ninth or tenth heavy sigh in a row, Jon decides it's time for them both to take a break. He knows that he, at least, hasn’t processed a single word of information. Given all the heavy sighing from the desk in front of him, he hazards a guess that even if Martin is processing any of the information he’s reading, he’s not enjoying it. As Jon pushes away from his seat, he hears another heavy sigh from Martin.

“Whatever you’re looking at couldn’t have possibly offended you that badly.”

Martin startles a little, obviously not expecting Jon to be there. It’s entirely possible he’s forgotten he was even in the library in the first place. Jon knows how it goes. The closer it gets to finals, the longer he spends in the library, and the less he remembers he’s an actual person inhabiting a physical body.

“Jon! I’m sorry, was I too loud? Did you need something?” He doesn’t even wait for a response before closing his laptop and leaning back a little, like he’s been hoping for an excuse to stop working for a while. Maybe he has. It makes Jon smile.

“That eager to get away from everything, are you?”

Martin rolls his eyes. “It’s just this stupid research paper. I need to have like twelve academic sources and my professor kept saying the drafts I was turning in didn’t expand enough on the methods, whatever that means, so I’m trying to find supplementary sources to help with that, but it’s not like I know what I need, because it’s not like I’m actually carrying through the experiment, so it’s impossible for me to do any sort of power analysis to come up with concrete values, which is apparently what I need, and I can’t just plagiarize an entire other experiment’s methods because I don’t know what I’m doing, because then I won’t get any points on that section because ‘this experiment has clearly already been done.’”

The whole thing sort of goes over Jon’s head. He sympathizes, of course, but he has no idea what he should be commenting on. “Yes, the paper about the vegetable crispers, I remember,” he says, hoping the joke covers for his ineptitude.

It seems to work. At the very least, it makes that frustrated furrow between Martin’s brows smooth out a little as he huffs out a laugh. “Yes, those horrible crispers,” he says. “Did you need something, though? Because I’m not going to lie to you, I’d take just about any excuse you gave me to get out of here.”

“I don’t,” Jon answers, and he tries not to think about the way his stomach dips when he sees Martin deflate a little at his response. “But I was needing a break myself and I was wondering if you’d want to come to lunch with me? Seems like we could both stand to get out of here for a while.”

“Yes.” Martin’s answer comes more quickly than Jon might have anticipated. He doesn’t quite manage to stop the small huff of laughter that escapes him. “Sorry, I really need to get out of here and do something else, I’m like five minutes away from just dropping out.”

Jon hums. “Well, can’t have that, can we? Wouldn’t know what to do without you here, I think.” He hears himself say that last part more than he consciously says it. Martin’s skin goes a little pink and Jon has to turn abruptly and busy himself with getting his things together to avoid it.

It’s not wrong. Jon isn’t in the habit of lying to people, even unconsciously as the case may be. He may not have expected to feel that way a month ago, is a little surprised he feels that way now, but they’ve been...comfortable, for a while now, and Jon likes that. He doesn’t have that with a lot of people, is generally too anxious to put in the effort, can’t fathom sometimes that people actively want him around, and it’s nice.

Because the thing is, Jon is well aware that he’s kind of allergic to being a person. He doesn’t really know how to interact without putting people off. His jokes don’t always land, it takes him a while to open up, he can never figure out how quick is too quick when it comes to defining his relationships with other people. Other people talk to him and he freezes up because he doesn’t know what they want from him. If they’re okay with him thinking of them as a friend even though they’ve only spoken twice; if it’s okay to tell them about how his weekend actually went or if they’re just asking for the sake of it; if it’s okay for him to go on and on about the film composition documentary he watched last week and felt so entranced by that he still couldn’t stop thinking about it or if their eyes are going to glaze over five minutes in because they only asked if he’d seen any good movies lately during a lull in the workshop, they weren’t actually interested. So often he’s wished there was some sort of timetable, or a script for him to follow, just so he would know that he wasn’t screwing anything up.

It wasn’t like that with Martin, though. Martin just walked in one day, out of the blue, and handed him tea. For no reason. Not because he accidentally ordered the wrong thing, but because it was nice. Because he wanted to. And he had been so nervous about it, too, like Jon was the one who was going to tell him that he was being weird. Like he wasn’t an objectively very attractive man bringing Jon tea and Jon wasn’t seconds away from just falling at his feet right then and there.

Martin kept doing it, is the thing that got Jon. And he paid attention, even though Jon had done his best to never let any of his dislike for whatever tea he was drinking show where Martin could see. And it isn’t like Jon’s other friends haven’t been like that, haven’t been genuinely nice to him and showed him that they cared by cataloging little things about him here and there and remembering for later, he doesn’t mean to insinuate that. But it was just different.

His friends always joke that he’s never had a friend that didn’t have to bully their way into his life, that the only reason he warmed up to Georgie so quickly was because he was in love with her. That’s not quite right. In truth, Jon had seen them all as friends near immediately, he just wasn’t sure how much he was allowed. He’d warmed up to Georgie so quickly because she had outright referred to him as her friend within a week of knowing each other. The others had done plenty to show them they liked him, sure, but they never said it. He needed that confirmation.

Martin was easier. Jon had recognized the way he had stammered out apologies over the tea, the first time. It was the same thing he did, when he did something friendly for someone and started overthinking it, wondering if it was too much too fast. Wondering if it was only something really good friends would do, and if he wasn’t quite at that point yet, and if the other person would find it weird. He didn’t need the confirmation, for that one, because he just knew. It wasn’t often that people gave him cues he understood, but those he’d known immediately.

Jon finishes packing his things up and turns to see Martin standing behind him, bag slung over his shoulders and a tentative smile on his lips. “Ready?”

“Yes.” If Jon sounds a little breathless, he pretends he doesn’t. If Martin can tell, he pretends he can’t. “I was thinking of heading down to the union? I know it’s not much, but—”

“It’s great,” Martin insists. It sounds genuine. “Anywhere sounds great right now, I really wasn’t kidding when I said I was five minutes away from dropping out. I just need a change of scenery and to not think about this stupid research paper for an hour or two.”

“Well the union might not be the most exciting change of scenery, but it should do for that I think.”

It only takes a few minutes to get from the library to the student union, and they walk most of it in silence, but it’s not uncomfortable. Jon insists on paying once they arrive and get their food, something Martin protests loudly.

“I’m not going to let you pay for an entire meal, Jon, I can—”

“You’ve been bringing me tea for two months, now, Martin, I think I owe you a lot more than one meal. Besides, it’s not like it’s a twelve-dollar entree at some fancy restarant, it’s dining hall food. It hardly counts as a meal anyway.”

Martin does end up conceding, mostly because Jon has already swiped his card and there’s no way to go back now anyway. “I’m going to keep bringing you tea, too,” he grumbles, grabbing for his food and turning on a dime to give a polite smile to the woman working the cash register.

“I really don’t think that’s the threat you think it is,” Jon says, amused.

Still, Martin tries to make it as much of a threat as he can, stalking off to the small cafe that operates in the corner of the union and returning with two more cups of tea.

“You do realize this means I’m just going to end up buying you lunch more often to pay you back for the tea, right?”

Martin doesn’t give him the satisfaction of receiving a response to that.

Jon pulls the sleeves of his sweater over his hands before grabbing for the cup in front of him. It’s a reflexive movement, at this point, before grabbing something hot or cold or before going outside in the winter—especially before going outside in the winter, with the way the wind nips harshly at the scar tissue, even now. And it’s not as if it’s all that conspicuous a movement, either. Hardly anyone notices it, anymore, least of all him, but he catches Martin looking. He looks a little amused, more than anything, certainly not like he’s about to comment on it, but Jon explains anyway. It doesn’t bother him, and in his experience the longer he goes without mentioning it, the more people can’t stop looking. He thinks the looking isn’t voluntary, usually, and it’s really not a big deal, but, well.

When people are too busy staring at your hands to have a proper conversation, it does get a little annoying. And he’d rather spend more time having proper conversations with Martin than not, so. Might as well get it out of the way now.

Jon shakes his left hand free of its sleeve, wiggles his fingers a little to show the uneven scar tissue across his palm. “The cold is worse than the heat, but neither is exactly fun. Turns out you really shouldn’t put your hands on a hot stove.” As he speaks, he pulls his hand back into his sleeve, gathering up the fabric to once again use as a buffer against the heat of the cup. “Not that I meant to, just sort of...forgot it was on? There was a bit of a mishap with blooming yeast and I went to brush it off the stovetop before it burned, and...well, you saw.”

All at once, Martin’s posture crumples. “Oh shit, was I—? I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice, I mean—not that I wasn’t looking, I know I was looking, sorry, I just didn’t notice the er, the—”

“I know, I wasn’t trying to—”

“Jesus, that’s twice now, yeah? I should probably stop—”

“It’s fine, I’m—”

“You really didn’t have to tell me, I promise I wasn’t, like, staring or anything, I didn’t even notice—although I guess after last time, you’d have a reason to think I was staring, wouldn’t you, Christ, I’m still sorry about that by the way? It wasn’t how I meant it, but that probably doesn’t—”

“Martin.”

“I was just…” Martin looks down, pokes around at the food in front of him with a plastic fork as he finally lets himself trail off. “Thought it was cute, is all.” His voice goes a little softer there, as if he hadn’t quite meant for it to be audible.

Jon isn't sure how to respond to that. He can see the flush beginning to creep in at Martin's neck, feels his own cheeks get hot, and decides not to.

Jon can’t decide if it’s a blessing or a curse that this is when Tim and Sasha decide to run into them. Then the first words out of Tim’s mouth are, “well I’ll be damned, he is prettier than me,” and Jon is sure that it’s a curse.

He thinks he can feel a migraine beginning and is suddenly very grateful that Martin decided to threaten him with buying more tea. “Martin,” he says, hiding none of the exasperation in his voice. “This is my friend, Sasha and my roommate, Tim. Tim, Sasha...Martin.”

“Best friend,” Tim interjects.

“Sure,” Jon relents. “Best friend.”

Sasha, at least, has the decency to at least try and look like she’s not going to be interrogating Jon for the next hour and a half during lecture. Tim just keeps grinning like the overly enthusiastic protagonist of a John Hughes film.

“Um...hello?” Martin’s greeting comes out as something of a squeak.

Thankfully, Tim does at least know how to pick up on social cues. But that doesn’t mean he’s not still embarrassing. He decides to diffuse the nerves he’s created by pulling out the chair next to Jon and turning it around before sitting down, crossing his arms over the back. Jon thinks he’s going to kill him.

“We’ve heard a lot about you,” Tim says. “Been wondering why Jon’s kept you hidden from us. Now we know—you’re just too pretty.”

Jon’s definitely going to kill him.

“Okay, that’s been fun,” he says, dragging Tim up from his seat. “Terribly sorry, Martin, but we have a class to get to soon.” And then, just to Tim: “I’m going to kill you.”

Sasha, ever his personal hero, takes Tim by the shoulders and starts leading him out of the union. “We’ll meet you outside Jon. Nice to meet you Martin! Hope we’ll see you around.”

“Sorry about that,” Jon says. “Tim’s...well he’s nice, but he can be kind of…”

Martin still looks a little nervous, but the smile on his face is genuine when he says, “he’s your best friend. I get it.”

“I just don’t want you to think he meant to make you uncomfortable.” He only meant to make me uncomfortable, Jon thinks. He’s not about to say that out loud, though.

“No, of course not. Can’t say I’ve ever been called pretty before, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.”

You are, though. The thought comes to him, unbidden, and he worries for a minute that he might have said it out loud. When Martin doesn’t say anything about it, he figures he’s in the clear.

“Well. I do actually need to be going, though,” Jon says apologetically. “There is a lecture I have to get to soon, that wasn’t just an excuse.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Martin responds, “but thank you.”

Jon will deny it if anyone asks, but he still takes his time clearing the table to avoid leaving. He’s sure he’ll catch hell for it when he meets Tim and Sasha outside, but he has to pick his battles sometimes.

“Oh!”

He turns at the sudden exclamation to see Martin grabbing for his phone in his pocket. Martin’s hands look a little shaky when he comes away with the phone and he laughs a little nervously before speaking. “I just thought—” his voice comes out a little choked sounding and he clears his throat before continuing. “I was thinking, you know, I’m not going to be in the library tomorrow because I have a performance evaluation in the lab I preceptor for, and I realized I wouldn’t have a way to tell you I wouldn’t be there so I thought we could? Trade numbers maybe? I don’t know, I wouldn’t want you to be worried or anything if—I mean, I know I would be worried if you just didn’t show up one day and I didn’t know why, so—”

Jon doesn’t think anyone’s ever been so anxious to talk to him that they’ve tried to make this many excuses to get his phone number. Tim had just ripped his notebook out of his hands in the first class they had together and scrawled his number across the top without preamble.

Martin is still rambling, still trying to make excuses, when Jon reaches out for his phone and asks, “would you unlock it for me?”

The shocked, pleased little smile that crosses Martin’s face then will stay tattooed on Jon’s hippocampus for the next several hours. If he zones out thinking about it more than once in the middle of lecture, that’s no one’s business but his own. And Sasha and Tim’s, he supposes, because they tend to make his business their own, but they seem more than content to simply share a laugh at his expense and not mention it besides.

It’s the weekend, and Martin’s research paper is driving him crazy. He knows more or less what to write, at this point, but the citations are killing him. APA format should be reserved for people with a PhD only, not junior year undergrad students who just needed to get something turned in before reading week so they can actually start studying for their exams. If the free website he’s using to format all his footnotes asks him to watch an ad to continue his free trial one more time, he might drop out of college. For real this time.

Another ad pops up just as he’s trying to copy and paste a new citation, and he ends up accidentally clicking on the ad instead. It opens about forty different new tabs, all in separate windows. Martin slams his laptop shut without another thought. The force of it jostles his phone a little, where it’s sitting next to the computer on the bed. Martin makes a decision.

He’s yet to make any use of the number Jon entered into his phone a few days ago, unless you count opening up his contact information every so often and laughing at him for entering his full name. He hasn’t had to. Now is as good a time as any, though, he supposes. Martin’s spent the past four hours alternating between copy-pasting citations and trying not to pull his hair out, and based on the amount of work Jon always has piled in front of him in the library, Martin has to assume he isn’t doing any better.

please tell me you’re not doing what I think you’re doing rn

this is martin by the way

what is it exactly that you think I’m doing?  

The reply comes almost immediately. Martin tries not to think about how he probably looks like a complete love-stricken idiot when he falls backwards onto his mattress and doesn’t bother hiding the grin that breaks out over his face. There’s no one there to see it, and he will absolutely deny it happening. 

same thing I’m doing

locking yourself in your room and driving yourself crazy over final projects

well

I won’t tell you then  

I knew it!

I’ve seen u in the library

I know u never take your head out of your notes until someone makes u  

tim has made a rather valiant effort

but I really do need to get this paper done

besides, I think I could say the same about you  

probably

but I’m not in my notes rn am I

I’m talking to u

It occurs to Martin that he’s trying to flirt with Jon in the only way he knows how: not face-to-face, and rather miserably at that. But the intention is there. It’s absolutely not going to come across, but it is the intention. 

right

well I suppose I’m not in my notes either then  

Jon isn’t flirting back at him. Martin knows that. You could barely call what he’s saying flirting, anyway, and he only calls it that because he knows that the only way he’s capable of even attempting to flirt with anyone is by telling them he’s ignoring other responsibilities just to talk to them. It’s nice, anyway, to hear it back.

good!

u deserve the breaks

right

but this paper is worth 30% of my grade  

when is it due  

………

The mental image of Jon physically typing out a row of ellipses makes Martin laugh a little. He thinks he would tell him that, if it weren’t for the fact that his brain is very rapidly switching over to the mode it has where he can’t focus on anything else when he thinks he has to take care of someone.

jon

when is it due

3 weeks?  

jon

omg

stop

okay fine

when is yours due  

how do you know I’m even writing a paper

I could just be watching netflix rn

  you literally opened this conversation

by telling me you were driving yourself crazy over final projects

you know that right  

Martin may have forgotten about that minor detail.

okay fine

I’m still working on that crispers paper

but! I am taking a break

that’s why I texted u

you know I know that it’s crispr

don’t remind me that I thought it was vegetable drawers

it’s ok I have no idea how cinematography works so

and like? scripts?

what does ext. even mean

why would they use so many abbreviations

I know I only read two or three papers for you

but they were almost entirely made of abbreviations

it was worse than the time I took american history to fill a humanities credit

they’re different though

they make sense

they actually mean things

He very resolutely does not mention that he hardly ever remembers what the abbreviations mean without cross-referencing the abstract to every paper. There’s a point he’s trying to make, and that doesn’t help.

ext. just means exterior

like it’s outside

it’s not even an acronym

crispr is an acronym that sounds like a word and that’s worse

Martin has to admit he has a point. The acronyms that sound like words are worse. Because you think it’s a noun, but then you realize it means something completely different, and you have to keep the words straight in your head because otherwise you have no idea what it does, but then the word that the acronym sounds like sounds like it shouldn’t be what the words that make up the acronym mean, and then...it’s a whole thing. He gets it.

yeah ok

got me there

can’t really argue with that

I told you

anyway you’ll be very happy to know I’m letting tim drag me out

you’re right, breaks are important

I don’t think I noticed but

even just talking to you has been...refreshing

thanks  

Martin’s never going to admit how soft he feels inside, hearing that. A couple minutes later and the next message he receives is a media message. He tries to ignore the kick in his chest as it downloads.

It’s clearly been taken by someone else. A little blurry, like whoever had taken it had gotten caught. It’s still clearly Jon in the photo, one hand fisted in his sweater sleeve, wrapped around a to-go cup, and the other reaching towards the camera. He’s stuck between expressions, half a smile twisting into an exasperated grimace, like he’d just noticed what was happening as it was happening. A flash of light obscures the upper righthand corner of the photo, creating some sort of softened, blurry halo effect. He looks...precious.

Martin lets himself pretend for all of three seconds that he’s not going to immediately save the photo to his camera roll. Then, all at once, five separate texts roll in. They come so fast, his text tone gets stuck and he has to hit the lock button two or three times before it finally turns off.

u finally got him out of the house!!!

thx martin :)))

this is tim btw kjdfskfalkf;’’s’p;;’sdfkja;l

sorry, tim doesn’t know when to mind his own business

please ignore all of that

Martin is absolutely not going to ignore any of that. He’s already saved the photo, for one. It would take too many steps to erase it.  For two, he’s already caught himself scrolling back up in the chat thread to look at it more than once. Even if he wanted to ignore that, he couldn’t. It’s staying. If he lies to spare Jon’s feelings, though, he doesn’t have to know the difference.

oh already forgotten

promise

I don’t even know what you’re talking about actually

you’re a terrible liar, you know

Okay. Maybe he does have to know the difference. Martin keeps playing along anyway.

no really

what do u mean

how could I be lying

martin, really

There’s something about the conversation that makes Martin’s cheeks hurt with how hard he’s trying not to smile. It’s stupid, maybe. They haven’t really said much of any substance, and Martin has spent most of it giving paper-thin, increasingly more ridiculous excuses to keep himself from admitting how cute he thinks the picture is. But it feels...light. It feels fun.

And that’s not to say they don’t usually have fun. Jon’s right, his jokes are terrible, but Martin has never spent a single minute around him without trying not to laugh. It’s just that there’s a lot less pressure, here, like this. Martin feels like he can say more, like he can tease more freely. And maybe it’s just him projecting, again, because there’s no way for him to know how Jon intends his tone to come across in the message, but it seems like maybe he feels the same. He knows Jon, he thinks. Enough to picture him with the same twist to his lips as Martin, trying not to show teeth as he looks down at their conversation.

I have no idea what this conversation is even about

who’s tim idk him

sure, martin

he wants me to tell you he’s offended by that

I’m sure that would be sadder if I knew him

but give him my apologies anyway

Martin finds himself feeling weirdly happy to hear that Jon is talking about him with his friends, even if it is just relaying their messages back and forth. That Tim had decided to contact him at all, even if it was by stealing Jon’s phone, fills him with warmth. He finds himself humming lightly under his breath as he gets up to stretch his legs around his flat.

It takes a minute for the next message to come in, but it doesn’t bother him. Not like it might have a month ago. He knows, instinctively, that he’s not being ignored. The lull lets him spin a couple circles around his kitchen, stretching his arms high over his head and breathing deep to release the tension over his chest that had built up from spending the entire day hunched over his laptop. Admittedly, he hadn’t given himself quite enough breaks to straighten out and stretch his muscles to make sure his binder wasn’t compressing anything too hard in the wrong direction. It was hard to remember when he’d kept thinking “just let me finish this one citation and then I’ll get up for a minute,” only for yet another popup to open and tell him to wait forty-five seconds while he watched an ad so he could continue using the site for free, at which point he had to get as many citations done as he could before another ad came along, and then the cycle would start anew. Maybe he should take his own advice, try getting out for a refresher as well.

sorry martin I think I’ll have to cut this short

I don’t think tim’s going to let me ignore him for much longer

thanks again for getting me out of the house

I think I needed it

Martin smiles a little, at that.

no problem!

have fun with tim

even though I don’t know who that is

of course not

see you soon martin

you too jon  

Locking his phone, Martin slips it into the back pocket of his jeans and seeks out the sneakers he keeps near the front door. If he’s going to tell other people to take a break and get out of the house, he might as well take his own advice. In any case, cursing at his laptop every time it shows him an ad instead of letting him copy a citation isn’t helping him write his essay. Clearing his head with a walk will at least let him relax enough to be able to deal with it later.

Jon tends to forget about time, during reading week. He always means to set an alarm so he can get home on time, but even when he does remember to do that, he inevitably sets his phone to do not disturb because the infrequent buzzing from different notifications distracts him. That’s how he finds himself in the main library at twelve in the morning with no way to get home and no real desire to walk all the way back to his flat in the dark.

Just as he’s about to resign himself to checking out a study room and holding out until morning, again, he sees Martin stand up across from him and sling his bag over his shoulder. It startles him, a little. Jon hadn’t realized Martin was still here.

“Jon?” Evidently Martin hadn’t realized Jon was still there, either. It’s a little sad that they’ve both been there for so long that they’d each expected the other to be gone and hadn’t even noticed when they weren’t. “Are you still here?”

“Might be here for a while,” Jon says, removing his glasses to scrub his hands across his face. “Got a little caught up and forgot what time it was. Not too keen on walking home in the dark, even if it isn’t that far from here. The streetlights aren’t all that reliable.”

“Oh, well,” Martin starts. He rubs a hand across the back of his neck, looking slightly nervous. “I mean, I could drive you? If you don’t want to be stuck here.”

Jon shakes his head. “No, that’s alright, you don’t need to go out of your way, I’ll just—”

“It’s really not that out of the way,” Martin insists. The nerves seemed to have melted away a bit. Martin does this thing where, once he’s decided he has to take care of someone, he’s not going to let anything stop him, not even the fact that he is clearly very anxious about possibly being refused. Jon finds it stupidly endearing. “You just live a couple blocks down, right? Besides, you went out of your way to bring me lunch last week when I was having a breakdown about getting my essay turned in on time and refused to go anywhere until I was done, let me just take you home.”

The idea of sitting slumped in an uncomfortable wooden chair in a study room for the next six hours doesn’t actually appeal to Jon in the slightest. It doesn’t take much to get him to relent. Still, he tries to refuse one more time, just for good measure.

“Really, Martin, I—”

“Jon. Your place is on the way, anyway, come on.”

Martin begins taking an active approach in getting Jon to get up and leave by packing his things away for him. There’s not much Jon can do about it after that.

“Right, fine,” he agrees, rearranging the things in his bag just a little and hoping Martin doesn’t take offense. Martin doesn’t seem to notice at all, just looks at him sort of bemusedly. “You are letting me buy you lunch again as a thank you.”

“Jon, you literally buy me lunch all the time, it’s fine,” Martin sighs. He grabs at Jon’s shoulders and tugs him towards the door. Jon takes one last minute to make sure he has everything and that he hasn’t left his desk a mess before he follows with more purpose.

“Yes, but that’s to pay you back for the tea because I know you won’t actually take my money. This is different.”

“You do know I only bring you tea, like, twice a week,” Martin reminds him. “I know lunch costs more than that.”

“Not,” Jon says, holding the door open for Martin and giving a quick thank you to the man behind the front desk before they make their way to the parking garage, “if I’m using a meal plan. I hardly notice it.”

It takes Jon a moment to realize that, while he’s still walking, Martin has come to a standstill a few feet behind him. He turns to see Martin staring at him with his eyebrows raised. “You’ve been using your meal plan on me? Jon!”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Relax, there’s way more than I need on it anyway, I wouldn’t offer if I couldn’t handle it. Besides, you’re getting me back by driving me home, right? Don’t worry about it.”

Martin doesn’t quite stop arguing, but he does at least resume walking. “You do realize that means absolutely nothing when you’re already bullying me into letting you buy me lunch again, right?”

“Yes, I may have noticed that we’ve locked ourselves into something of a vicious cycle now. Guess we’ll just have to be stuck with each other for a while.” Jon hopes that comes off as dry as he had intended, instead of needy and desperate like it sounds in his head.

“Lord, not sure what I’ll do about that.” The voice Martin uses sounds extremely exaggerated and put-upon. He follows it up with a gentle nudge to Jon’s shoulder. Jon has to suck his cheeks in a little to keep from smiling at the warmth that curls in his chest at the touch.

They have to walk up a couple levels of the parking garage before Martin gestures at a blue...something, Jon’s never been good with cars, and says, “This is me. Sorry if it’s a bit of a mess.”

There’s exactly one grocery store receipt on the floor of the passenger side and an unopened sleeve of Ritz crackers sitting in one of the cup holders. Even by really harsh standards, it could hardly be considered a mess. Jon wouldn’t have even mentioned it if it was.

Jon leans his head back against the headrest and thinks that if he doesn’t try to keep a conversation going, he’ll fall asleep before they even hit any major streets. “So, um...any plans after finals?”

He turns his head enough to see Martin shake his head as he checks his mirrors before pulling out of the parking space. “Probably just stay home, maybe see when Daisy and Basira will be in town. They usually come back a few days before New Year’s, but they haven’t told me their plans yet this year.” 

“Not going home for the holidays, are you?” Jon asks without thinking.

A thin, too forced smile appears on Martin’s lips. “‘Fraid not.” There’s a story there, but for once in his life Jon doesn’t press it. God knows he understands.

“Well, um,” he says, clearing his throat when the words don’t seem to want to come out. “My friends and I, Tim and Sasha and all them, we usually do something here for the holidays, before they all go home for New Year’s, so if...well you’re always welcome at ours, you know. If you wanted to get away for a minute. I’d—we would...we’d love to have you there.”

Martin turns to look at him when they come to a stop sign, teeth worrying at his lower lip. “You’re sure? I mean, I wouldn’t—”

“Martin. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t mean it.”

“But you’re sure the rest of them—”

“Martin. Tim and Sasha have been wondering when they’d get to see you again since you all met that first time. And I think Georgie’s going to kill me if she doesn’t get to meet you soon, so.”

Jon doesn’t miss the warm, sort of watery smile that touches Martin’s lips at that, but he turns his head towards the window to pretend that he did. Martin doesn’t answer, not right away, but Jon gives him time. He leans his head against the window, letting the vibrations of the uneven road beneath them keep him awake.

When they reach the first major stoplight, Martin clears his throat. “That, um...that sounds good. I think I’d—I think I’d like to come. If you’re sure.”

“I don’t know,” Jon sighs, letting enough sarcasm seep through his tone so Martin knows he’s joking. The way the corner of Martin’s mouth twitches almost immediately lets him know it worked. “You know, you took so long to answer, I’m just not sure if I—”

The laughter is evident in Martin’s voice when he says, “Shut up, Jon,” and the hand shoving at Jon’s shoulder is nothing but gentle. “Should I bring anything?”

“Just yourself.”

It’s a little softer than he means it. From the one flickering streetlight on the street that’s even semi-functional, Jon can see the slight tinge of pink rising in Martin’s cheeks.

“This is just to one-up me for the paying each other back thing, isn’t it,” Martin says, very concentratedly looking straight ahead. Jon lets him have the out. It’s not as if he doesn’t need it just as much.

“Damn,” he says. “You got me. My whole plan, ruined.”

He lets it go a little while longer before he decides it’s more important to him for Martin to understand than it is for him to keep repressing his emotions just to feel comfortable.

“I’m serious, though,” he says. “We—I...want you there. You don’t need to do anything else.” Jon squeezes his eyes closed, head still leant against the window next to him. He feels very warm all of a sudden, a little itchy. He’s not used to telling people things like that, usually preferring to wait for them to bully him into talking about things or to just shove it deep down inside himself and never mention it. Martin would never bully him into talking, though. And it’s important to Jon that he knows.

Martin’s voice is a little thick when he replies. “Thanks, Jon.”

Jon doesn’t quite trust his own voice just then. He just hums in response.

After a moment, he remembers he’s supposed to be giving Martin directions and sits back up in his seat, opening his eyes so he can see the road. “Um, you’ll want to take a right up here at the next light, and then make the first left turn after that. It’s the only complex on the street.”

There’s still a sort of buzzing energy in the car when they pull up to the complex, but it’s settled into something more comfortable since that first light. Like maybe admitting you have emotions isn’t always all bad. Jon still thinks he isn’t going to do it often, though. 

Martin yawns in the driver’s seat when he parks and Jon cringes, looking at the clock on the dashboard. The numbers flash 12:43 AM. “Look,” he says, before he can stop himself. Before he can let himself feel awkward enough to forget about it. “It’s late and I know you must be tired, I don’t know how far the drive is back home for you, but if...if you don’t want to be out driving this late, again, you could...stay.”

“I really don’t live that much farther, Jon, I—”

“Martin, if you keep driving you’re going to fall asleep at the wheel, you’re barely awake enough to look at me right now. Come inside?”

It’s a testament to how tired he must actually be that Martin turns off the engine without any further argument and gets out of the car. Jon is suddenly very grateful that he could get over himself long enough to ask him to stay.

Once inside, they argue over who has to take the couch. It’s all said in hushed whispers, to avoid waking Tim up in the other room—he’s always been a firm believer in “if I don’t know it by ten o’clock, then I don’t know it.”

“You’ve already made me stay with you for the night, I am not taking your bed—”

“That couch is horrible, I know it’s horrible I paid for it, please just—”

“Why the hell would I agree with you after you just called your own couch horrible, I’m certainly not going to let you sleep there now, are you—”

“Look, it’s one night and it’s better than slumped over a desk in the library, I’ll be fine. You’re like a full foot taller than me, you’ll be uncomfortable, I’m not going to—”

“You’d be uncomfortable too! I’m laying down. You can’t make me move. I’m here and I’m not getting up until seven.”

There’s a thought pressing just behind his teeth that Jon quickly swallows down. He is not about to offer that they just share. He’s not doing that. First of all, he’s too repressed for that. Jon is pretty sure he would actually die if he did ask. Second of all: he has an ancient disaster of a twin mattress. It wouldn’t work anyway.

It’s clear Martin isn’t going to budge, despite how uncomfortable he looks as he twists to fit better along the length of the couch. Jon sighs—clearly, he’s not winning this one. “Right,” he says, resigned. “I’ll get you a couple of extra blankets.”

Jon does not have extra blankets. He has two sheets and a too-big quilt that he folds in half. Martin doesn’t need to know that though, he decides as he strips the quilt off the bed and takes it back to the living area.

Despite Martin’s insistence that he wouldn’t be getting up from the couch until seven, when Jon makes it back to the room he’s standing somewhat nervously just behind it, arms crossed over his chest and shoulders hunched in on themselves.

“Are you alright?” Jon asks. “I can turn the heat up, if you’re—?”

Martin jumps as he realizes Jon’s presence, stretching out his arms and coughing purposefully before he answers. “No, it’s fine, I just—would you mind if I used your bathroom?” He shrugs a little as he asks the question, shoulders rolling back in a motion that makes him look uncomfortable.

It’s a curious thing, but Jon doesn’t ask after it. Maybe he ate something earlier that didn’t agree with him and he’s embarrassed about it. Maybe he has some sort of bedtime ritual and it makes him uneasy if he doesn’t do it before he goes to sleep. Maybe it’s really none of Jon’s business.

“Of course,” he says. “Just down the hall, the only door that’s open. Help yourself to anything you need, there should be spare toothbrushes in the cabinet under the sink.” He holds the quilt out in front of him in an unruly bundle before tossing it over the back of the couch. “I’ll leave this here for you.”

Jon makes the retreat to his room after that, opting not to wait while Martin tends to his business despite wanting to make sure he’s okay. Something tells him that, whatever Martin is uncomfortable about, it’ll only be worse if Jon is still there waiting for him when he’s done. So he minds his own business and shuts the door to his room firmly after bidding Martin goodnight, letting him know he can knock if he needs anything.

He does get up about two hours later, making his way through the living room for what he tells himself is a glass of water from the kitchen. The excuse carries him in the direction of the fridge for all of five steps before he pivots, squinting into the dark to cast a quick glance towards where Martin lay asleep on the couch.

His face is smashed into its arm, causing his glasses to sit crooked on his face, one lens up over his eyebrow. Jon can already see a red line forming along his cheekbone from where the frames are pressing into his skin. The quilt is pulled high over his shoulders, held tight between his hands to keep it secure, and Jon makes a note to turn the thermostat up a degree or two on the way back to his room.

Jon realizes he’s staring about two minutes later, when Martin shifts just a bit and startles him enough to set him back in motion. He walks closer to the couch, steps gentle so he doesn’t make too much noise. After settling the quilt more fully over Martin’s frame, making sure it covers him evenly, he gently slides Martin’s glasses off and folds them before putting them on the coffee table, well within his range of sight for when he wakes up. Somehow, he manages to resist the urge to smooth Martin's hair away from his forehead. Instead he turns back down the hallway and adjusts the heat and forgets about the glass of water he’d told himself he wanted.

By the time he wakes up, somewhere around nine in the morning, Martin is gone and the quilt is folded neatly over the back of the couch. Jon doesn’t have a chance to wonder on that before Tim is waving a piece of notebook paper at him with a grin on his face that really has no business being that wide or that self-satisfied.

“You had a boy here last night,” he says, looking stupidly eager. “I want the details.”

Jon snatches the paper out of his hand. “Shut up, Tim, you know I don’t do that.”

“Okay, yeah, obviously,” Tim says, rolling his eyes. “You know that’s not what I meant. I know you didn’t get in until late last night, and I also know that you’re half in love with that guy, so...details, come on, tell me.”

“It’s nothing—really, it’s nothing.” Jon doubles down when he sees Tim raise an eyebrow at him from across the kitchen counter. “I stayed too late at the library and Martin offered to drive me home. I felt bad making him stop here, and he looked tired, so...I asked if he wanted to stay so he didn’t have to drive. It’s nothing. I was being nice.”

Tim scoffs. “You don’t—”

“I am perfectly capable of being nice just for the sake of it, Tim.”

“Yeah, no, I know that, Jesus. If you’d let me finish...you don’t just let people into your space for the sake of being nice. I know you.”

“It’s not like he was in my room. He was just on the couch, he was barely even here.” Jon very resolutely does not add that he did try to get him to stay in his room while he took the couch, because Tim does not need to know that. Because Tim is right—Jon doesn’t just let people into his personal space very easily. The fact that his brain had suggested it to him so readily was a surprise even to him.

Tim seems to see right through him. “Uh-huh. Look, Jon, I’m not going to interrogate you about it or anything, okay, I just...I was excited for you. You clearly like him. And he clearly likes you—don’t give me that look, you know he does—so just...let yourself have this one, okay? You can admit to people that you care. They like that.”

Jon deflates a little. He does know that it’s just...difficult, for him. “I know, Tim,” he assures. “You just want…”

“I just want you to be happy,” Tim finishes for him when he sees that he won’t continue. “I love you, Jon.”

“Yeah, you’re not so bad yours—” Jon cuts himself off before he can finish; takes a pause, kicks at the ground a bit where the carpet of the living area meets the hardwood of the kitchen. “Love you, too, Tim.”

Tim, to his credit, doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Jon can tell that he wants to, but he doesn’t. He just grabs the two steaming mugs from next to the kettle and hands one off to Jon. “I do hope you have a better story next time, though, because really—”

“Don’t you have a study group to get to soon? I’m going to take back the I love you, you know. I’m not above that.”

“Please,” Tim says. “You’d never.” He wouldn’t. “But you’re right. I do need to leave soon, you don’t need a ride anywhere do you?”

Jon shakes his head. “Thought I’d study here today, avoid getting home at one in the morning again.”

“Cool. See you, then.” Tim leaves his still-full mug on the counter when he leaves. Jon rolls his eyes and puts it in the microwave for when he gets back. You’d think the man would be able to remember to put his tea in a travel mug, with how many times Jon’s had to do this, and yet here they are. Jon’s pretty sure he just likes to drink lukewarm, reheated tea.

Alone, he finally takes a minute to look down at the scrap of notebook paper held tightly in his hand.

Jon-  

sorry I had to leave so early—apparently the preceptor meeting to set up the common lab final couldn’t be set for literally any other time. thanks for letting me stay  

see you for the holiday! and in the library at some point too, I’m sure  

Martin

There’s something scratched out just above Martin’s name that Jon can’t quite make out. He tries not to think about it too hard.

Martin, initially, wasn’t quite sure what to get someone for Christmas when you’ve only known them for a couple months and you’ve spent most of that time thinking it might be nice to hold their hand, on occasion, or maybe even kiss them once or twice.

Now that he has it, he still isn’t quite sure.

He doesn’t know much about Jon at all, is the truth, except that red tea appears to be his favorite, and he can’t rightly show up to a holiday party with nothing in hand but a tin of tea. That doesn’t mean he hadn’t been about to. Because he very nearly did. But then he had been at the store and he had seen a few skeins of yarn that had reminded him of the hideous oversized jumper Jon always wore, remembered the way Jon always wrapped the sleeves of his sweaters over his hands to protect them from the cold, and he’d gotten an idea.

By the time he finishes it, about a week and a half later, he wishes he had just bought the damn tea.

Because here’s the thing: knitting an entire item of clothing for someone, with enough thought put into it to think about things like pattern matching and pockets, is painfully personal. Even more so when it takes a week and a half, and that week and a half is smack in the middle of your final exams.

Martin’s not trying to make any assumptions as to what Jon’s plans are for the night. He might not have even gotten him anything. And then Martin will show up, give him something entirely too personal that clearly took him way too long to make, and make him feel like an asshole for showing up empty handed. And what is he supposed to do with that?

He should have bought the damn tea.

When he arrives at Jon’s flat, Martin resolves to keep the gift wrapped securely in his coat and shoves it deep underneath a cushion of the couch at the first chance he gets. If the right opportunity comes up, he’ll get it, but until then it no longer exists.

He meets Melanie and Georgie, and Tim claps him on the shoulder before unceremoniously dragging him over to sit on the floor around the coffee table where the rest of them are gathered. Tim makes a faux-innocent comment about how maybe now that he’s here, Jon will finally calm down. Jon throws a half-eaten bread roll at him. Martin tries not to overthink it.

They go around the room throwing small gifts at each other and Sasha presents him with a small bag of homemade cookies, which he hadn’t expected, but other than that it goes exactly the way he had anticipated. He tries not to let it get to him that Jon hasn’t given him anything, because technically Martin hasn’t given Jon anything, either, and it would be insane to complain about someone not giving you a gift when you didn’t give one to them in return.

Even when you did get them a gift, but you’re holding out on giving it to them because you feel a little stupid and unsure about it, insecurities wiggling into your brain and telling you that actually it is a bit weird, isn’t it, how you spent a whole week doing nothing but knitting this stupid scarf to get it just right for a man you barely even know, Martin, even if you do get lunch together more often than not anymore and he’s introduced you to all his friends and you call each other on the weekends sometimes to make sure the other gets out of the house because god knows you both have the tendency to overwork yourselves and you’ve driven him home once and he offered you a place to sleep afterwards if you didn’t want to be driving again this late because he’d already taken you this far out of your way, and it wasn’t really out of your way at all, not really, but he had sounded so sincere about it, more so than you’ve ever heard directed at you in your entire life, so of course you agreed to it, and you’re so painfully in love with him that it feels like your whole chest has gone hollow.

And it’s not as if one of the excuses Martin was using to save himself the mortification of presenting Jon with a gift wasn’t that he didn’t want to make Jon feel guilty about not getting him anything, so.

Anyway, it’s fine. Jon doesn’t give him anything and he doesn’t give Jon anything and he tries not to let his brain play games with him by suggesting that Jon had been deliberately avoiding eye contact with him during the entire gift exchange. He does let himself notice the elbow Georgie nudges into Jon’s side, and the answering quirk of Jon’s eyebrow, but only permits himself about five minutes to actually dwell on it. He’s having fun. It’s the first fun Christmas he’s had in recent memory and he’s not about to let his mind run wild with theories about how it isn’t. 

He nearly loses the fight with himself to not dwell on it when he catches sight of Georgie typing something out on her phone and sending a pointed look in Jon’s direction no less than five times. It’s always during a lull in the conversation, never interrupting anything, but Martin has always paid more attention to Jon than he maybe should, and so he notices. Jon always follows up with an exhausted roll of his eyes and a very short text back before turning to the room at large to reinvigorate the conversation, presumably to remove Georgie’s attention from himself.

Martin doesn’t think it’s about him, really, he just wonders. And they don’t seem like they’re fighting, either, it’s just odd is all. He hopes everything’s okay.

The next time it happens, Martin is about ready to finally ask after what’s going on, but suddenly Tim's voice grows louder in volume and he gets distracted. He's able to pick out the words "register," and "old white man" before he tunes in fully.

Georgie, effectively pulled away from whatever she’s been badgering Jon about all night, scrunches her face up and says, “oh god, another one?”

“Yes, Georgie, another one,” Tim says. He raises the glass in his hand in a sarcastic cheers as the confirmation is met with a resounding groan from the rest of the room. Martin's fairly sure he knows where this is going. “Honestly, it's like...obviously I'm not racially ambiguous. We can all tell I'm very much a Korean man. But how many old white men are going to hold up my line asking me where I'm from for forty-five minutes because they don't know how to inoffensively ask what kind of Asian I am? Like, they have to know I see right through that. There are only so many different intonations you can put on the word 'Manchester' before it stops sounding like a word entirely.”

Martin knows how it goes. He works in the labs now, checking out Erlenmeyer flasks to eighteen-year-olds at eight in the morning and making sure they don’t burn themselves with the dry ice, so he doesn’t get it much anymore, but he had worked customer service jobs for years before that. It gets to a point where it’s easier for you to count the weeks where you don’t get asked where you’re from. And before that, when he was younger and out with his mother, the most common questions he got where about who really raised him—if his mom was just a family friend, if he was adopted, and wasn’t his mom just so great and brave to take him in and raise him in the city, away from “all that.”

Nothing ever changes, really, it’s just the way they ask it. When you’re young, it’s with pity and a soft, sad smile, but by the time you hit fifteen it becomes confrontational. The question isn’t so much “where are you from” as it is “why are you here.”

After that, Martin doesn’t have a chance to question what Jon and Georgie had been texting about back and forth all night. He lets himself forget about it in favor of commiserating with the rest of them.

Eventually, Georgie and Melanie end up pulling him into a conversation about their joint ghost hunting research. Martin finds it endlessly fascinating, how they built up their own cult followings. Jon spends most of the time sitting in the corner of the couch, rolling his eyes at the stories they tell about touring abandoned buildings at three in the morning, but Martin can tell he has an appreciation for it as well. In any case, he always has something of his own to add whenever they mention a specific episode they recorded, and it’s always an insightful enough comment that Martin can tell he watches every video and listens to every supplemental podcast with intent.

Sometime around ten, everyone has left and Tim has shut himself up in his room for the night, albeit not without sending a teasing wink in their direction that Martin very deliberately does not react to. He does, however, take a minute to ruminate over how absolutely absurd it is that he is apparently this obvious that everyone can clock his feelings after barely spending any time with him and yet the one person he wishes would actually pick up on it to spare himself the mortifying ordeal of having to string the words together is just clearing paper plates off the kitchen counter and acting like he doesn’t notice his best friend is actively trying to set them up. Or maybe he isn’t acting. Martin has, admittedly, only known him for so long, but Jon does seem the type to genuinely just not notice things unless they’ve been explicitly spelled out for him.

In any case.

Martin isn’t so sure what he’s supposed to do now. Leave along with everyone else, probably, is the answer, but he still has that stupid scarf hiding underneath his coat and he’s wondering if he should just suck it up and give it to Jon now, if it would make it less weird now that everyone’s gone or if it would still feel like too much; if it would feel like even more now that everyone’s gone. His hand twitches a little involuntarily to the corner of the couch he’d thrown his coat on before he stops himself, curls his fingers back around the now empty mug in his hands. He turns, lips parting to say something, anything, to justify why he’s still here, when he notices that Jon is no longer in the room.

Okay. Had he gone to bed? But his door was open. Martin didn’t presume to know how he slept, though. Maybe he didn’t like having the door closed. Was Martin supposed to leave? Did he miss some sort of invisible cue here? He realizes he’s still twisting the mug around in his hands and decides he can at least be responsible and rinse it out in the sink while he’s busy sending himself into an anxiety spiral. If by the time he’s done washing the cup he’s still alone in the room, he’ll leave. Simple as that.

He doesn’t anticipate turning away from the sink and crashing directly into Jon, but it’s just as well. The sound of paper crinkling between them barely registers as he rushes to apologize.

“God, I’m so sorry, are you alright?” He doesn’t realize he’d reached out to keep Jon steady until he feels the shoulders underneath his hands tense a little, notices how close they are. “Sorry, are you…” The words come out a little too raspy and he clears his throat; let’s go of Jon’s shoulders, doesn’t quite move backwards because the proximity makes him feel a little dizzy, yes, but in the nice way. “Are you okay?”

Jon just sort of looks at him for a moment, something Martin can’t quite place swimming behind his eyes and Martin feels warm all over, like Jon’s gaze is a physical presence. Jon shakes himself out of it. “Yes, fine, it’s fine,” he says in a rush, one hand moving inconspicuously to rub across his own shoulder, the other clutching the handles of a red gift bag.

Oh. Martin feels very silly, suddenly.

It takes longer than Jon cares to admit for his brain to come back online. It’s just that he had felt so nervous, he supposes, that when it had come time to do the whole gift exchanging thing, he had deliberately left the red gift bag on the bedside table in his room. He’d received a surprisingly sharp elbow to the ribs from Georgie in exchange, followed by periodic texts throughout the night, varying in capitalization, kindly informing him that “if you don’t give him that stupid cow I’ll actually kill you.”

Far be it from him to tempt fate. He procrastinates the ordeal long enough, sure, enough for everyone to go home and for him to pretend he doesn’t notice the wink Tim sends his way before very pointedly closing the door to his bedroom while he busies himself clearing off the kitchen counters and leaving Martin alone on the couch in dead silence like a coward.

He doesn’t expect Martin to be quite so close when he comes back with the gift in hand. Maybe he would have if he had actually been looking up from the ground as he crossed the room, but there was something so startlingly domestic about watching Martin stand in the middle of his kitchen, hunched over the sink to avoid knocking into the overhead lamp as he ran a sponge around the rim of his mug more times than was strictly necessary, that made him just ache, so profusely that he had to look anywhere else for fear that he might soon become the first ever live observation of spontaneous combustion. So he doesn’t notice until it’s too late to avoid it and then suddenly Martin’s hands are on his shoulders to keep him upright and people don’t usually touch him so casually, okay, not unless it’s Tim and that’s more to bother him than it is anything else. So his muscles tense a little on reflex, which he instantly regrets because now the warm and grounding weight is gone and he feels the loss so intensely that he once again thinks of spontaneous combustion.

When he finally looks up, Martin is standing so close that he has to tilt his head back a little to see. He's faintly aware that Martin’s lips are moving, and he thinks he should be paying attention, should maybe try and respond, even, except he can’t quite process what’s being said because holy shit.

Tragically, and he would never admit this to anyone, but tragically Jon has found himself quite enamored with the scattering of freckles across the bridge of Martin’s nose since just about the first day he saw them. This close, Jon can see the faint sprinkle of others feathering out across his cheeks. They're lighter than the rest, so light they look like they sit just beneath the tanned skin there instead of right at the surface like the others. Jon knows he’s staring and he kind of wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole, a little, but before he starts to get really desperate, his brain finally deigns to catch up with him and respond to Martin’s question.

“Yes, fine, it’s fine,” he rushes to assure. His hand absentmindedly reaches up to rub across the top of his opposite shoulder, still feeling the ghost of fingers curling firmly around it. He notices Martin’s gaze flick downward towards the bag in his hand and abruptly remembers what he was doing before he decided it would be fun to completely forget how to be a person.

“Right!” The exclamation sounds a little like a shout in his ears and he stumbles over himself trying to cover it up, holds the bag aloft as a distraction. “I, uh...well, I got you something, but I wasn’t really sure if...so…well, here.” Nice. Really stellar communication there, Jon. It’s a wonder he hasn’t already fallen in love with you yet.

It doesn’t seem to matter to Martin how ineloquent he is, though. Jon would even go so far as to say he looks pleased. Happy, even. Imagine that.

Jon watches as a slow grin makes its way across Martin’s face, the way his teeth dig into his bottom lip as if to stop it from spreading further. “Oh!” he says. “Oh, I—yes, I...well, I got you something, too, actually, hold on.” Martin steps carefully around him, mindful of how close they still are, and reaches a hand behind one of the couch cushions, of all things, before returning with a small, lumpy package in his hands. Jon feels something skip in his chest.

“I didn’t know if it was…” Martin starts speaking so quickly the words almost run together, lets himself trail off to try and catch up. “Well, I didn’t know if we were...doing that, you know, so I just—I got nervous, I guess.” He gives a single nervous laugh, bringing up a hand to rub anxiously at the back of his neck as a flush rises to his cheeks.

God, they both sound so stupid. Jon thinks, distantly, that he’s never been more in love.

A brief moment of silence passes before they seem to remember themselves and unceremoniously thrust their gifts at each other, laughing sheepishly when the sudden movement makes their limbs crash into each other rather clumsily.

The package feels soft and pliable underneath the paper in Jon’s hands, and he won’t deny that he’s itching to rip it open right then and there, but he sort of feels like if he doesn’t get to see what Martin thinks of his gift soon he’ll actually lose his mind, so he waits. Realizes Martin is doing the same and gestures with one hand for him to go ahead, pulling himself up to sit on the edge of the kitchen counter as he watches Martin carefully push back the tissue paper and reach inside the bag.

Martin seems to know exactly what it is before he even gets it all the way free of its wrapping. “Oh, god, you didn’t.” He lets the bag and the tissue paper fall to the floor, holding the gift gently in both hands in front of him with a look on his face that Jon can’t quite describe but thinks might be something like fond amusement. “You did! You really did. God, this is…this is ridiculous,” he says but the dimple on his chin gets so deep it looks like it should hurt and Jon has to assume that means he did alright, has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep his delight at Martin’s reaction in check.

When Jon had first invited Martin to spend Christmas with him and his friends, he hadn’t considered the idea that he might have to actually get him a proper present. Georgie, Tim, and Sasha, they’re all easy, they only expect food and warm socks and new CD’s, but Martin is different, somehow, and Jon had found himself instantly aware that he had no idea what he was meant to get a friend that he had only known just recently and found himself idly wanting to kiss a startlingly numerous amount of times.

The idea didn’t occur to him until about a week before the holiday, sending him rushing out of his flat at seven o'clock on a Saturday night to make it to the university bookstore before it closed.

It had been a joke at the time, or he thinks it was at least intended as one, but a few weeks into knowing each other Martin had asked if Jon wanted to come along with him to the bookstore for some supplemental class notes that his professor hadn’t told him were mandatory until the day prior and Jon had said yes because he had been working on his essay for his documentary class for the past hour and a half and he really needed a break. Once there, Martin had gotten immediately distracted by and subsequently fell in love with a small stuffed cow covered in long brown fur, clad in a tiny rugby jersey bearing the university’s logo.

It had been ridiculous. “What in the hell does a Highland cow have to do with anything?” But Martin had spent an oddly long time running his fingers through the fake fur and Jon could tell he thought it was cute—Jon thought he was cute—and so he remembered it. Miraculously, they’d had exactly one left when he’d revisited the store, despite it being one week until the holiday.

Jon promptly felt incredibly stupid about the purchase all the way up until the moment Martin unwrapped it and he could see the genuine excitement blooming across his face as he became aware of what it was. He thinks it maybe must have been a good choice, after all.

Across from him, Martin keeps turning the stuffed cow around in his hands with this bemused little smile on his face. It’s unspeakably endearing. Jon has to make the conscious effort to not make any noise as he watches, lest Martin notice and feel self-conscious from the attention.

Eventually, Martin looks up, lips parted to speak before he notices Jon watching. He squirms a little under the scrutiny before setting the small cow on the counter next to him, mindful of where the few dishes are dripping water as they air dry, and poking at the still unwrapped gift in Jon’s hands. “Well, go on then,” he says. He continues in the sort of anxious babble Jon has come to expect from him when he’s a little unsure of himself, says “I hope you like it, I kind of...didn’t know what to do? So I just winged it, a little. You don’t have to lie to me, if you don’t, it’s fine really, I just—”

Jon stops listening as soon as he realizes what it is.

The yarn underneath his hands is thick, smoother than anything. The colors cross over each other in intentionally misplaced stripes, each one clashing horribly with the color below it. It’s so obviously meant to be ugly that he can’t stop the part in his brain that says it’s the most beautifully patterned scarf he’s ever seen. He can’t help but notice that it sort of mimics the pattern on his favorite sweater; he wonders if that was intentional.

Turning the scarf around in his hands, he feels his fingers catch against a bit of extra fabric. He resolves not to say anything about it, figuring it must be a dropped stitch or two, until he feels around a bit more and it dawns on him, with a soft “oh” of surprise, that it’s not loose yarn at all, but a pocket. He lets it unravel, feels across the length of it, and finds an identical bunch of extra fabric on the other side. Pockets, plural.

It should be embarrassing how quickly he moves to loop the scarf around his neck, but it doesn’t quite register in the moment. He’s too busy noting the fact that the whole thing is long enough to loop around his neck twice and still hang low enough for his hands to fit comfortably in the pockets without bending his elbows or inadvertently choking himself in the process.

He can tell, instinctively, that it’s handmade. That Martin had spent days working the different colors together in a pattern haphazard enough that it was painfully obvious how intricately constructed it was. That he took into account how long it would have to be for Jon to be able to reach the pockets comfortably. That he spent however extra long making pockets, because Jon’s hands get painfully cold in the winter time, the scar tissue on his palms aching with the chill, and Jon hadn’t even noticed that Martin was paying attention when he had told him that, the first time, but he remembered. Remembered enough to put extra work in. The cow feels so small in comparison, so inadequate.

It takes him a moment to realize Martin has stopped talking and is instead looking at him, eyes so soft that everything around them goes a little hazy, like a dream. Jon feels suddenly very intimately exposed, somehow, despite the extra layer the scarf gives him. Hands still in the pockets of the scarf, he wraps his arms securely around himself for fear that he’ll do something stupid and wrap them around Martin instead.

“I, uh,” he starts. Clears his throat when the words come out too soft, tries again. “This is great. Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Martin sounds a little nervous when he speaks. “I wasn’t sure if—I don’t know, I think I might have gotten a little in my head about it? It seemed sort of...like it was too much, maybe? It’s part of the reason I didn’t just give it to you when I got here, I didn’t know if it would be weird, or if you would—”

“Martin,” Jon says. He does his best to maintain eye contact even as a buzzing heat starts prickling at his skin, starting just behind his ears and spreading down through his arms, to the tips of his fingers. “It’s perfect. I mean it, thank you.” He wants to say that, if anything, it makes his own gift seem weird and stupid, but he gets the feeling that that’s what Martin had meant when he said he wasn’t sure if it was too much. Jon’s trying to reassure him, something he’s not usually so good at, but he knows that wouldn’t be the best way to do it.

Martin softens. The nervous tension leaves his shoulders and his posture opens a bit more, spine straightening and hands leaving his pockets. “Oh,” he says. A soft smile plays at his lips. The buzzing heat prickling at Jon’s skin gets a little warmer. “Right. I’m glad...again. Thank you, as well.” Martin reaches out, somewhat unconsciously Jon thinks, to the stuffed cow sitting on the counter. “Just realized I never said that, sorry.” He laughs sheepishly, fingers idly combing through the fake fur. “I do like it. A lot. Didn’t think you would’ve noticed that.”

I notice a lot of things about you, Jon thinks. Luckily, his mental filter is working well enough to keep him from saying it.

“Please,” he says instead, aiming for a more lighthearted tone. “You spent long enough looking at it that you nearly forgot what you were there for in the first place, how was I not meant to notice?”

Martin, bless him, notices the change in tone for what it is, like always. “Right, okay,” he replies, laughter ringing out beneath the words. “You got me there, I suppose. Still though, thank you. It’s nice.” Jon dips his head in response, a polite hum of acknowledgement accompanying the movement in place of any verbal reply.

Relieved of eye contact, Martin’s gaze catches on the clock on the stove and he appears to startle a bit. “Oh Christ,” he says, “I should really get going, I’m sorry. Didn’t realize how late it had gotten.” His brow is set into an apologetic furrow and Jon has to resist the impulse to smooth it away with his thumbs.

Neither of them moves. Jon realizes it’s because he’s being waited on to respond. “Right! Sorry, my fault really. Didn’t mean to keep you so long.” He walks over to unlock the front door, Martin following close behind him. “I’ll be seeing you, then?”

“Of course, Jon. Thanks again, for having me. I had fun.”

Martin gets about three feet down the hallway before Jon suddenly feels a very deep, physical ache in his chest. Something about Martin leaving without knowing when, exactly, he’s going to see him again, leaves Jon feeling slightly off kilter. He doesn’t think about how clingy that sounds.

“Martin?” he calls down the hallway.

Martin turns, one corner of his mouth turned up, an eyebrow lifted in confusion. “Jon?”

“If you, um...if you weren’t already busy, I know you have Daisy and Basira, but Tim’s going to be with his brother for New Year’s and I was just going to do something on my own, but...you know, if you don’t have plans, I was wondering if you would…?”

The confusion on Martin’s face dissolves, replaced by something much softer, something that Jon hesitates to put a name to. “I’d love to, Jon. I’ll see you then?”

Jon nods, not quite trusting his voice anymore, and watches Martin continue down the hall, looking back over his shoulder at Jon much longer than necessary. Just before he descends down the staircase, Martin turns back once more, lifting his hand in a wave when he sees Jon is still watching.

“Let me know when you get home!” Jon shouts just as Martin disappears. Martin’s answering chuckle and “will do, Jon,” echo up from the narrow staircase as Jon steps back into his flat and closes the door.

As he crosses the floor to his own, Jon pounds a fist against the door to Tim’s bedroom and hears a slight stumbling come from the other side. He doesn’t comment on it as he flicks off the hallway light, stepping into his own room and closing the door firmly behind him.

“Martin, if you look at your phone and make that sad face one more time, I’m going to make you eat it.”

Martin can’t quite tell if that’s a joke or not. It probably is. But he can never be too sure, with Daisy. It’s usually best not to chance it.

Basira rubs a hand over Daisy’s shoulder and shakes her head a little fondly. “What she means is...are you okay?”

He’s fine. There’s absolutely no reason to be upset, not at all, except he hasn’t seen Jon since Christmas and he won’t have another good excuse to see him until New Year’s in four days and this is the longest Martin has gone without seeing him since they met. He doesn’t think he would’ve batted an eye at not seeing Jon for three days back when they first knew each other, when they communicated exclusively in tea and grateful nodding, but now that they know each other. Now that Jon has invited him for Christmas, let him stay at his house, texted him constantly on the weekend to keep him company through the phone while he worked on research papers, bought him a cow plushie that Martin had never admitted to wanting but that Jon could see was somehow so dear to him...it was a little excruciating.

And it would’ve been easier, too, he thinks, if they had at least communicated since Martin had left his flat three days ago. But they hadn’t. Martin had left the flat with an invitation to come back for New Year’s, and nothing else has happened since and now here he is, sitting in his sad excuse for a living room with Daisy and Basira, checking his phone every ten seconds and waiting for a notification that never appears because Jon habitually forgets that his phone even has a texting feature and Martin is too hopelessly repressed to contact Jon first.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “I was just, uh...waiting for something, I guess.”

Daisy rolls her eyes, albeit somewhat fondly. “Is it Jon again?”

“No,” Martin says slowly, stretching the word out into multiple syllables. Both Daisy and Basira settle him with twin unimpressed looks. “Okay, maybe. Okay, yes. But it’s not important. It’s nothing. I’m just being stupid.”

“You miss him,” Basira infers.

“Maybe,” Martin answers.

“And he hasn’t texted you in a while so you’re moping because you think you can’t text him first or he’ll think you’re needy,” she continues.

Well, Basira has never really been one to beat around the bush. Still. “Maybe,” he repeats himself.

“Didn’t you just see him, like, three days ago?” Daisy asks.

“Okay, well when you say it like that—”

“Just...talk to him,” Basira interrupts. “Martin, I know you think you’re too chatty or whatever but regardless of whatever feelings you two might have for each other you’re friends. He’s not going to be mad that his friend wants to talk to him. That’s hardly anything weird.”

Martin thinks about this, for a moment. She’s right, but… “But what if he—”

“Martin.”

“No, seriously Basira, what if—”

“Martin. He cares about you. I don’t have to know him personally to know that. And you do know him personally, so you obviously have to know that. He’ll be happy to hear from you, nothing else. So get yourself together. Don’t you already talk to him over the phone all the time anyway? Why is this a big deal for you.”

This is different, Martin opens his mouth to say. This isn’t me using protecting our mental wellbeing as an excuse to talk to him over the weekend because I can’t stand the thought of not talking to him for forty-eight hours. I don’t have any excuses, this time. What am I supposed to say? Hi? 

He doesn’t get to say any of that, though, because Daisy is suddenly waving his own phone at him from across the room. “No worries, Martin, got you covered. Has anyone ever told you that you should really set a lock code for this thing?”

Martin panics. Daisy isn’t mean, no matter how much she tries to be, but you know when you accidentally tell your older sister you might have a crush on someone for the first time so she steals your phone from you and reads all your messages and pretends to write a disgustingly sappy love confession and you can’t tell whether or not she’s actually typing and is going to send it? Yeah, this is that.

“Daisy, please tell me you didn’t—”

“Relax, Martin,” Daisy says, rolling her eyes. She tosses the phone back to him and he has to scramble to catch it before it smacks against the hardwood floor. “I didn’t tell him you were in love with him or anything, I just invited him along with us this evening.”

“You what.”

The three of them had somehow started the tradition of going ice skating together on the night that Daisy and Basira return from their little “Vacation From the Holidays,” as they like to call it—neither of them celebrates Christmas and they prefer to spend their time together, alone, somewhere they can build a world set apart from the constant advertisements and tinny music for a week. It had started rather on accident, just something to do while they caught up, until the next year they decided to do it again, and now here they were with the night’s plans already a foregone conclusion.

Here they were, inviting Jon, because Martin was a little helpless and Daisy was a little impulsive and Basira thrived on sitting back and watching.

It’s not that Martin doesn’t love Daisy and Basira. He does, more than anything. It’s not even that he doesn’t want them to meet Jon. Because he does. Oddly, he thinks Jon and Daisy would make very good friends. Martin just doesn’t exactly relish the thought of having to field questions from the two of them all night, stuck in the cold and no way to get out of it. Ideally, he would’ve been able to organize this first meeting on his own. Ideally, he would’ve had some sort of control over the situation. Ideally, he would have time to prepare himself.

Instead he has two hours and a loud buzzing against his palm that alerts him to Jon’s response.

“Might want to get that,” Daisy says when he doesn’t immediately open the message. “You’ve been waiting for it all night, right? Go on.”

“I hate you, you know.”

“You don’t.”

He doesn’t.

With a sigh, Martin clicks his phone on and opens the unread message.

are you sure?

if this is a personal thing for you three I wouldn’t want to intrude on it  

There’s an out here, that he could use. He could make something up, say that sorry, actually, I hadn’t asked before I invited you and they would really prefer it was just the three of us, maybe some other time? It would be easy to lie. But Jon’s tentative response endears him, a little, and Martin finds that now that he’s faced with the possibility of spending more time with him he doesn’t really want to lie, impending interrogation by his best friends be damned.

daisy’s the one who sent that actually

so I think you’re more than welcome

if u don’t want to though that’s ok

“Oh thank god,” Basira says next to him. “I was afraid you weren’t actually going to answer.”

“Please be quiet.”

“Okay, but you thought about it right?” Daisy chimes in. “I saw you hesitate.”

“Please be quiet.”

no, that sounds lovely

you said seven? should I meet you there?  

Lovely. Martin’s brain stutters over the word. He stares stupidly at it for a touch too long, long enough for him to be able to feel Basira’s gaze on him; long enough for Daisy to flick at his shoulder and say, “you still in there? What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Martin rushes to say. It comes out sounding something like a squeak, and he plows on to cover it up. “I, ah...spaced out. Dissociating. Trying to find the right words? Don’t worry about it.”

yeah, 7!

u know where it is right?

I could give u directions if u needed

or we could swing by and get u?

we usually walk and you’re not that far out of the way so

up to u!

“Ay, Martin, are you writing him a novel?”

Normally, hearing Daisy horribly butcher the slang he uses makes him laugh. She says it casually enough that you can tell it’s just something she picked up from being around him for so long, but the vowels still sound all wrong, no matter how many times she has said it. Martin kind of wants to laugh at it now, too, but as it is, well...he’s rather keyed up, at the moment.

“Daisy, I am literally begging you—”

“Right, right, sorry. Compose your sonnet.”

It’s not a sonnet, he thinks. He doesn’t get a chance to say that, though, because Jon’s response comes in seconds later and, much to his two friends’ amusement, Martin gets a little distracted. He does manage to spare a glare in their direction first.

no, I know where it is, thank you

I’ll see you then?  

yeah of course!

see u

Martin doesn’t say “it’s a date,” but it’s a near thing. Like, he has it fully typed out and thumb hovering over the send button before he realizes what he’s doing, deletes it, and, as nonchalantly as he can, wedges his phone between his thigh and the couch cushions so he can’t do anything so stupid.

It’s not nonchalant enough to fool Daisy and Basira, of course. Nothing he does ever is. Somehow, though, he manages to get out of it with just a roll of the eyes from Basira and a surprisingly gentle tap on the cheek from Daisy before they continue regaling him with stories from their week away. Martin suspects it has less to do with them not wanting to make him uncomfortable and more to do with the fact that they’ll have plenty of time to do so in another two hours.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s shouldn’t exist, is what Jon thinks. It has nothing to do with the usual emptiness people say it has and absolutely everything to do with the fact that he really has no good excuse to see Martin until then. Sure, they have their regular weekend calls, used to make sure the other hasn’t gone insane staying cooped up in their flat for too long, but that hardly has any merit during the long break. If there’s no work to overwork yourself with, what’s the point of a check-in? Although to be fair, the point of the check-in is really just to make sure that neither of them is falling victim to cabin fever, and since neither of them currently have anything to do then maybe that’s all the more reason to call. Jon frets about this for another thirty minutes before his phone buzzes in his hand, Martin’s name flashing across the screen.

Well. There’s that, then.

The message turns out to be from Daisy, actually, as Martin soon makes clear, and learning that makes him thaw out, a bit. It’s not that Jon thinks Martin’s friends won’t like him, it’s just that he assumes most people won’t like him. So it’s nice to know that they wanted to see him first. That they won’t see him as some annoying intrusion.

Jon does feels monumentally stupid for saying the idea sounded lovely, of all things, but Martin doesn’t comment on it and if he isn’t going to make a big deal out of it then Jon doesn’t care to, either. He’s sure he’ll have enough time to make a big deal out of other things later tonight, because there’s an extremely high chance he’ll make a fool of himself somehow. Namely because he has no fucking clue how to ice skate.

It is, at least, a problem he doesn’t have to worry about for another two hours, yet. Those two hours pass much faster than he expects them to, however. It feels like he blinks and suddenly he’s wobbling around on shoes with two very thin, glorified knives bolted into the bottoms, trying not to fall right on his ass.

“You could’ve said you didn’t know how to skate, you know,” Martin says, bringing a hand up to Jon’s elbow to steady him for about the fifteenth time in less than six minutes. Jon doesn’t think he’s gone more than ten seconds without catching an edge and buckling at the knees. He also doesn’t quite think he minds, when the warmth of Martin’s touch at his elbow sticks around much longer than it has any right to.

Jon extends one of his arms outwards, a little, bringing it away from the midline to try and more evenly distribute his weight in a poor attempt to keep his balance on his own. It doesn’t work. He feels Martin’s hand at his elbow again. “I figured I could fake it?” It’s a stupid answer. Jon knows this. “Obviously not the case.”

Stupid as it is, it does get Martin to laugh. “Obviously. You’re not doing so bad though? Haven’t fallen yet at least.”

“I rather think that if you weren’t here I would have fallen within the first ten seconds and just not gotten up. They would’ve had to sweep me off the ice with all the snow at the end of the night.”

“You think so?”

Jon makes the mistake of turning too quickly to give Martin a look and very nearly goes crashing to the ground right then. A couple of skinny arms wrap around his shoulders and haul him back up before he has the chance.

“It’s really a good thing we’ve been doing laps around you two all night,” Daisy says, making sure he’s steady on his feet before releasing her hold on his shoulders. Basira covertly props him up with her own shoulder when he wobbles, a quick brush of their limbs to keep him standing straight as she cuts in front of him to skate backwards. “Don’t think Martin would’ve been quick enough for that one.”

Jon isn’t used to warming up to other people so quickly. Or, more accurately, he supposes, he isn’t used to other people warming up to him so quickly. But as soon as he had arrived, Basira had waved him over with a warm smile and Daisy, already on the ice herself, had immediately come to an abrupt stop in front of them on the edge of her skates, spraying ice at the three of them with a rather direct “you must be Jon. Glad you could make it, I think Martin was going to explode if he didn’t get to talk to you before New Year’s.” That had sent Jon sputtering, a little, in as dignified a manner as he could, before Daisy had gently knocked an elbow into his side and said, "I'm kidding. He did want to talk to you, but this was purely for my benefit."

Daisy and Basira had both seemed content enough to leave him and Martin alone to struggle through keeping Jon upright while they frequently skated laps around them, but at every turn around the ice they would pause, like they are now, and pull Martin and himself into conversation. So far, they’d always made it a point to ask after something Jon had done or to wonder over his opinion on something, and they had seemed genuinely curious when they did. Jon had caught himself rambling on, once or twice, and tried to let himself trail off naturally, but it was always met with a polite request from Daisy to carry on. So far, he hadn’t made nearly as much of a fool of himself as he’d thought he would.

Now, Daisy grabs at his wrist and starts pulling him along. He tries not to windmill his free arm too wildly as he focuses on just keeping his legs level enough to continue gliding smoothly. Jon doesn’t quite know how to stop on skates, and if he tries to move away, he will immediately hit the ground, so it’s all he can do.

“Sorry Martin, I’m taking your boy for a minute,” Daisy says. Jon barely has a second to register the phrase “your boy” before she’s rounding a corner faster than he thinks should be legally allowed in a public skating rink. “He’ll be in good hands though!”

“Daisy, if you would—”

She very suddenly spins around to face him and knocks the side of her foot against the inside of one of his own, widening his stance a little. “Don’t stand so stiff,” she says, easily balancing on one leg as she kicks at his feet again. Jon bends a little at the knees and she gives an approving hum. “You wonder why you keep losing your balance, it’s because you’re all locked up. The ice can smell fear, you know.”

“Right,” Jon says flatly, even though he does find it a little easier to keep himself upright, now. Daisy tugs at his wrist again, picking up speed, and he hardly even stumbles.

“You’re a film major, yeah?” she asks. He nods, unsure of what that has to do with anything. “It’s like when you’re acting, then. You’ve got all those lights on and you’re standing for a long time and if you lock yourself up, you’re going to fall right over. Feet apart, knees loose, can’t fall.”

Jon wants to tell her that he’s just a film major, he doesn’t act, but he gets where she’s going with the analogy, so he leaves it alone. It does make more sense, when she puts it that way.

“Think you can keep up if I let go?”

“Probably not.”

She lets go anyway, slowing down to accommodate how much speed Jon loses without her grip on his arm to propel him forward. He finds that he can go much longer now, though, without having to windmill his arms to keep himself upright. That’s not to say he doesn’t trip almost immediately, but he does do it less. It’s an improvement.

Jon flexes his fingers, shakes them out a little the next time he has to hold an arm out to steady himself. The cold has made his hands go a bit numb with the prolonged exposure, but it still makes his palms ache, stiffens them up and causes a twinge of pain to start at the base of his thumbs, radiating inward. He’s wearing the scarf Martin had gifted him a few days ago and it helps, when he remembers to keep his hands in the pockets, but there’s only so much he can do when he has to keep flailing his limbs to stop himself from crashing to the ground altogether.

“Alright?”

“Hm?”

Daisy very pointedly looks down to where Jon has been rubbing his hands together, trying to warm them up while working the feeling back into them.

“Oh,” he says, flexing his fingers once more before slipping them back into the pockets of the scarf. “Old injuries. The cold irritates the scar tissue sometimes. Probably should’ve worn gloves, but I suppose I didn’t think it would be this cold indoors.”

Daisy raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t think it would be cold in a room full of ice?”

“Well.” Jon huffs out a laugh. “When you put it like that.”

“Right then.” Rather unceremoniously, she reaches out to pull his hands out of the scarf’s pockets and wrap them in her own, sharing her own warmth as easy as anything. “They do sell hot tea in the lobby for a reason,” she continues, tugging him along the boards towards the exit door where they cross paths with Martin and Basira.

“I’m taking this one into the lobby to warm up,” Daisy says. “No rush on your end, we’ll wait for you there.”

The other two stop to acknowledge them. Daisy and Basira share a meaningful look that Jon can’t quite interpret. Martin’s face steadily morphs into a look of concern. “You okay?” he asks.

Jon smiles reassuringly, freeing his hands to hold one up as evidence. “Bit too much for me, I’m afraid.”

Martin’s concern turns into understanding. “Right, just give us a few minutes and we’ll be right behind you, then.”

“Please don’t rush yourselves on my account, really. In fact, I’d be fine on my own if you’d all like to—”

Daisy lands a solid, but surprisingly gentle punch to his shoulder, effectively cutting him off. “I’ve already shown extreme vulnerability by breaking down all five of my emotional walls to show concern for you, I can’t leave you alone now, you might tell someone about it.” Jon thinks it’s a joke. He looks over at Martin and Basira and is meant with a fond eye roll from each of them, almost completely synchronized, as if it were a practiced movement.

“Besides,” Daisy continues, in that stiff way that Jon has started to notice she has. “I might actually want to talk to you or something. Imagine that.”

Yes, imagine that.

“If you’re sure,” Jon says. “I know I sort of intruded on—”

“You were invited,” comes a chorus of voices. This time it is completely synchronized.

“Martin and I will do a few more laps, continue getting caught up,” Basira says, offering it up like a sort of consolation to soothe Jon’s worries about monopolizing their time. “We’ll meet you out there in a few minutes.”

Martin looks like he might want to protest, moves a few inches forward like he’s about to suggest just following them out, but Basira shares another indecipherable glance with Daisy and starts pulling him along. He seems to realize, rather quickly, that it’s not worth a struggle.

“Try not to get them too warm too fast?” He throws a gesture towards Jon’s hands, once again buried deep in his pockets, fingers twisted around the fabric. “It’ll make it worse.”

It makes something stupid and giddy bubble up in Jon’s chest, the insistence that he take care of himself. He does his best to ignore it as he nods his agreement and Martin follows Basira down the ice, falling easily back into conversation.

The lobby is significantly warmer than the ice. It seems like that would be obvious, but after a couple hours standing on literal ice, you tend to forget what normal temperatures are supposed to feel like.

When Jon gets the tea, he doesn’t immediately put his bare hands on the cup like he kind of wants to. He kind of wants to put his hands in the cup actually, but that would probably be the opposite of helpful and rather weird besides. Instead he settles for pulling the sleeves of his sweater over his hands, like always, and waiting for the warmth to seep through the fabric. The tea doesn’t taste the same as the one Martin usually brings, when he takes a sip, and he tries not to make a face. It’s more for his hands than anything, anyway.

“Martin really does like you, you know,” Daisy says after a while. “He’s not going to say it, and technically I shouldn’t be saying it because he’d get all embarrassed about it and wouldn’t talk to me for like an hour, but he’s not here, so…”

“Um,” Jon says, rather stupidly. He’s suddenly much warmer than he needs to be to keep the ache out of his hands.

Daisy laughs, not unkindly. “You two are exactly the same. I should’ve expected that.” Jon isn’t quite sure how to respond to that. He doesn’t. “Look, I’m not here to give you a whole ‘shovel talk,’ or anything. I don’t think you need it. I’m just saying he does like you. And I wouldn’t be saying that if I didn’t like you. You’re good for him, I think. Martin’s always been outgoing, but he’s never...well, he’s less lonely now that you’re around.”

Jon blinks.

“Of course, I never told you any of this. And if you tell him I did, whatever shovel talk you’d been imagining will be the least of your worries. That’s a promise, not a threat.” It certainly does sound like a promise. Jon thinks he appreciates the honesty more than he feels threatened by it. In any case, he’s certainly not going to mention any of this to Martin, if not to save Daisy from whatever potential fallout may occur, then at least to save his own dignity. He doesn’t really have a lot of it, all things considered.

The conversation blissfully shifts to topics that make Jon feel less like every molecule of his body is about to crawl right out of his skin and leave him to disappear in a puff of smoke, after that. Daisy doesn’t make him uncomfortable, on her own, but talking about feelings, even if they weren’t explicitly his own, has always made him feel just off center. He’s much more well-suited to listening to Daisy complain about the number of times she’s had to correct a freshman on their use of articles (which don’t exist, she makes him aware) in the introductory Russian language course she preceptors for, and responding in kind with his own frustrations with the underclassmen who check out cameras and scratch up the lenses or lose the caps or return them without recharging the batteries or clearing the memory card.

By the time Martin and Basira catch up with them, the ache has left Jon’s hands and he feels safe in thinking he can walk away from the night considering Daisy a friend. It’s odd, but he feels no hesitation in thinking she would consider the same of him. She’s very matter of fact, straight to the point. Daisy doesn’t seem like the type of person to beat around the bush about anything, and Jon thinks if he’s learned anything about her in the last few hours it’s that if she didn’t want to talk to him, she would say so.

They end up splitting apart, about halfway down the block, Daisy and Basira back to Martin’s flat, where they left their car, and Martin electing to follow Jon further down the road to his own place. Jon tries to protest, for a moment, because it’s really not that far, but Martin just keeps following along.

“I know you don’t like walking on your own when it’s late,” he says. “And you’re right, the streetlights here are terrible.”

Jon thinks his voice would come out a touch too soft, if he were to respond just then. He doesn’t.

It really isn’t that far to his place, but it’s also never taken long for any sort of chill to settle deep into his bones and make him feel like he might never be warm again. By the time they reach the next streetlamp, its cheap bulb dully flickering in and out, he finds that he has to clench his jaw a bit, to keep his teeth from chattering.

Jon doesn’t like to wear more than two layers at a time, as a general rule, mostly because it makes him feel sort of itchy and slightly claustrophobic, but also because all of his warm clothes tend to be about two sizes too big for him and that doesn’t quite lend itself to layering anyway. The fact of the matter, though, is that it’s January, and it’s cold, and he just spent a good majority of the last few hours in a very cold building skating around on literal ice. He kind of wishes, just this once, that he had at least thrown on an extra long sleeved button down over his undershirt. The sweater he’s wearing helps, a little, but the knit is relatively open and it’s a relatively windy night. He sticks his hands deeper into the pockets of the scarf around his neck and crosses his arms tight over his chest, trying not to shiver too visibly.

Then he jerks at a particularly biting gust of wind and ends up accidentally elbowing Martin in the ribs. So much for not shivering too visibly.

It makes Martin pause, rightly so. “Are you alright?” he asks.

“Hm? Yes, I’m fine, sorry. It’s cold out, is all.” Jon decides not to make a big deal out of it. He knows Martin has a bit of a thing for wanting to take care of people. Jon isn’t about to send him into a whirlwind worry fest over it when there’s not really much he can do about it anyway, not this time. Besides, it’s not like it’s a big deal—he’s been cold before, he’ll go home and turn the stove on for five minutes and get over it. “No worries, almost home anyway.”

Jon may have neglected to consider that Martin’s instinctive reaction to hearing someone is cold might be to immediately take off his own jacket, no questions asked, and offer it up to him. It rucks up the sweater he’s wearing underneath, a little bit, and Jon feels himself flush at the brief expanse of soft skin there. He very pointedly looks away.

“Martin, really,” he starts to protest.

“I mean, you can take it or I can just stand here holding it, it doesn’t make a difference to me I guess. Might as well make one of us warm, though, at least.”

Jon may have thought that he was simply being dramatic, and for a minute he did. But then Martin really did just stand there, holding the jumper in his hand and staring, and Jon knew well enough when to give up on an argument he clearly wasn’t going to win. Besides, it’s cold and he’s only human. If the chill weren’t already settled so deep in his bones, he may have been more than willing to stand around for another hour or so, however long it took before Martin got tired and finally gave in so they could continue walking, but unfortunately the one thing that rivals Jon’s stubbornness is his unwillingness to let himself be uncomfortable for more than five minutes at a time.

Martin doesn’t even try to look less than triumphant when Jon takes the jacket from him.

“I’m not going to be happy if you start complaining about the cold now, you know,” Jon says, willing himself not to blush as he pulls the jumper over his head. He’s not sure how he’s going to get it over the too-large sweater he’s already wearing, but he’s in it now. He’ll figure it out.

“I’ll be fine, Jon.” Martin’s voice sounds a little muffled as the jacket gets caught over Jon’s ears. “I tend to run a little warm anyway, and it’s not that far to get home, don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.” Jon’s not too sure about that one.

After some wrangling, Jon manages to get the borrowed jumper on over his sweater. It's a bit lumpy in places, and Jon thinks his sweater underneath is almost turned around a full one hundred and eighty degrees, but it'll do the trick. In any case, he’s certainly not about to complain about it. Normally, he might. It’s rather uncomfortable, if he thinks about it too much, but he doesn’t really think about it too much. It is warm, and it smells nice, and the gentle smile on Martin’s lips grows ever-so-slightly larger when Jon adjusts the scarf around his neck to jam his hands back into the pockets.

He thinks maybe there’s one thing that overrides his being uncomfortable when it comes down to it. He thinks maybe that one thing is Martin.

Jon doesn’t end up giving the jacket back, at the end of the night. It’s only an accident in that it’s the excuse he’ll use if Martin ever asks. Martin never asks.

Martin forgets, sometimes, that Jon is a film major. Then there's times like these, sitting across from him on the raggedy old couch in his flat as increasingly terrible horror movies drone on in the background, where Martin can't believe he ever forgets.

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Jon says. Martin isn’t quite sure what’s set him off this time, hasn’t gotten to absorb enough of the movie in between listening to Jon complain, but he knows the rant that’s going to come next. “They think they need to use all these special effects and everything to get the scares in, right, but it’s just so boring. It’s just for shock value! All they’re doing is showing blood spewing out of this woman’s arm, and for what? This isn’t even factually accurate, I mean I have no problem with an old-fashioned slasher film but it has to be done right, you can’t just say, ‘hey what would happen if I cut off a woman’s arm during a jump scare and sprayed blood everywhere to make the audience scream?’ and call it a horror movie. It’s lazy.”

Martin’s lost the ability to reply intelligently, at this point. He exhausted his talking points somewhere around the third time Jon brought it up. This isn’t to say that he minds. Maybe he should have found it annoying, but Martin had never been one for horror movies anyway, and it ended up being a lot more entertaining to watch Jon get angry about plot holes and lazy writing than he thinks it would have been to just watch the movies themselves. It had been particularly fun listening to Jon get into his personal vendetta against Stanley Kubrick.

Shelley Duvall carried that movie. She did, no question. And he gets all the credit? He didn’t do anything. I know. It was glorified abuse, too! I know, Jon. So he does good camera work, anyone can do a wide-angle shot like that, it’s not that clever. You’re right. And it certainly shouldn’t distract from the mistreatment of people on set. I know. Just for the sake of one good take? It’s ridiculous.

“Really,” Martin says, trying to squash down his amusement. “I mean, you’d think they’d learn.”

Jon turns his head to squint at him. “I can tell when you’re humoring me.”

“Look I do think you’re right,” Martin responds, “I never thought of horror as something that could have artistic merit until I heard you talk about it. It’s just that you’ve said the same thing in five different ways in the past two hours and I don’t know how to agree anymore without repeating myself.”

It’s hard to take Jon’s answering glare seriously when he’s tucked so far into the corner of the couch that he’s lost the ability to sit up straight. Even less so when he has his socked feet between the cushions for warmth and the hood of his jacket pulled up over his ears, collar sitting high enough to cover his chin. It doesn’t escape Martin’s notice that the jacket isn’t Jon’s usual favorite oversized jumper, the one with the hideous pattern, but instead that he is wearing the one that Martin had loaned him a few days earlier. It would have been impossible not to notice. Martin is about three sizes bigger and nearly a foot taller than Jon. The thing completely dwarfs him. It makes Martin’s insides squirm every time he thinks about it too hard.

Martin thinks maybe he’s been staring a touch too long, as Jon’s glare melts away in favor of a nervous blush. Jon digs his face a little deeper into the hood of his—Martin’s—jacket and clears his throat. “We don’t have to keep watching these, you know,” he says. “I know how I get.”

It makes Martin ache a little, the way Jon says that. Not like he’s upset or apologetic, but like he’s been told enough times that he just accepts it. Like there’s a limit to how much people will put up with from him and he knows it and the subject is more of a joke than anything, for him.

“Jon, that’s not what I—I was joking, I’m sorry, I should have—”

Jon startles a little at the sudden shift in Martin’s mood, tries to sit straight up and has to struggle a bit to get himself unburied from the corner of the couch. Martin thinks he would find it horribly endearing at any other time.

“No, Martin, I know,” Jon hastens to assure him. “I wasn’t—I know you didn’t mean it like that, you wouldn’t. I know that. Anyone else, maybe, but…” He shakes his head. “I know you, you’re not like that. It was a joke, perhaps a bad one, I just meant—I meant, I know I’ve sort of commandeered the evening, so if there’s anything you’d rather be doing don’t feel like you can’t mention it on my account.”

It takes Martin a second to respond. He’s still firmly stuck on I know you. Jon had said it so casually, as if it should have been obvious to anything with a functioning brain, and Martin isn’t quite sure why it’s affecting him like this. Of course he knows him, they know each other, it’s not as if they haven’t spent more of the past few months in each other’s presence than not, but...well, isn’t that all anyone ever wants? To be known? To be understood in such a way that their motives are never questioned?

He does manage to answer before it gets too weird. “There’s really nothing else I’d rather be doing at the moment.” It comes out a little softer than he intends it to. “I mean we might have to get up for food at some point, but...I just like being here with you.”

The way Jon’s eyes widen at that, and the way he twists his hands together a little nervously, makes Martin feel unspeakably fond. The air feels very staticky, all of a sudden.

A scream from the television gets his attention, and he remembers the reason they’re having this conversation in the first place.

“People really do scream too much in these things, don’t they?” he wonders idly, trying to dispel some of the buzzing energy in the room around them. “Is it supposed to be like an audience laugh track, do you figure, like is it supposed to tell me that what’s happening is scary?”

Jon’s wide-eyed look melts into a wry smile and he settles back into the cushions, extending a leg to knock his knee gently against Martin’s own. A pleasant burn starts building just beneath his skin where their limbs remain in contact, despite the layers of fabric between them. Jon doesn’t move except to turn his head back to the movie, seemingly content to allow his legs to rest solidly against Martin’s. Martin stays very, very still. He couldn’t bring himself to move if he wanted to. He thinks that it would take something very dire to get him to rise up from the couch, at this point.

As it happens, something very dire comes in the form of his stomach gnawing at the rest of his insides about an hour later, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten since noon. Jon seems to notice the way Martin shifts a little uncomfortably from his side of the couch, and he rises to make his way to the kitchen. Martin twists to rest his chin on the back of the couch so he can still see him.

“I did have something planned for dinner,” Jon says, “thought we could do something nice for the holiday. But we could order in still, if you prefer, I didn’t realize how late it was getting.”

Part of Martin wants to say they should just order in—it’s been hours since he’s eaten anything and he’s not sure he has the ability to wait long enough for something to cook, but. Well, Jon is standing with his hand on the door to the refrigerator with this sheepish look on his face, and Martin is kind of curious as to what he’d been planning. The majority of him is so stupidly endeared by the mental image of Jon puttering around the kitchen, steam fogging up his glasses as he leans over a pan on the stove, that he can’t quite bring himself to vote in favor of takeout. He’ll survive the extra forty-five minutes.

“It’s not too late,” he says, trying to sound nonchalant. Because it is. Eight thirty is way later than anyone should ever be just starting to cook dinner, but he’s not going to say that. Not when faced with the prospect of Jon cooking for him. “Wouldn’t want to miss out on whatever your plans were.”

Jon’s answering smile is shy and warm as he begins pulling things out of the fridge and arranging them on the counter.

Martin isn’t going to lie. He had been expecting, like...maybe spaghetti. A pre-prepped meal box, if he’s being generous. Certainly nothing so exciting as what the ingredients sitting on the counter seem to suggest. There’s a whole prepped fish wrapped in plastic sitting on a cutting board next to the stove. Jon turns to open a cabinet over the sink and a myriad of spices join the fresh herbs and the bowl of soaking rice on the counter.

“You had all this together already, and you were just going to let me tell you to call for take away?”

Jon looks a little rueful as he stretches up to reach something on a higher shelf. “I really did intend to start this about two hours ago. Figured I could save it for tomorrow if it was too late.”

“Well I’m glad I didn’t tell you to, then, this looks well worth—Jon, is that a mortar and pestle, how nice are you intending to get?”

In response, Jon holds up a small jar of red-orange threads. “It’s for the saffron. I prefer grinding it myself?” He sounds a little shy when he says it, a little unsure. Like he’s started to overthink everything.

It’s unnecessary, the overthinking, and Martin wants to tell him so, but he settles for getting up and crossing the room to join him at the counter and asking if he needs any help. Martin is absolutely hopeless in the kitchen, but Jon doesn’t need to know that. Not that he doesn’t figure it out near immediately once he sees the way Martin holds the knife when he’s asked to chop the shallots.

“And I thought you were supposed to be a food science major,” Jon says. “How do you not know how to hold a knife?”

“That’s not what it is and you know it,” Martin laughs. He’s aware he’s being made fun of, but it’s in the soft way that Jon usually does, dry and with no heat to it. “I don’t cook for myself a lot, and when I do there’s usually a lot less knives involved.”

Jon nudges him gently with one shoulder and Martin releases the knife, taking that as his cue to trade places. There isn’t much for him to do, in this new position, but he pokes at the rice boiling on the stove with a wooden spoon and pretends he’d have any clue when to remove it from the heat.

“You can’t tell me you don’t know how to cook at all,” Jon says, looking up at him without pausing from slicing the shallots into thin pieces. It makes Martin wince, a little, but his fingers stay just out of the way each time, like this is such a practiced movement that he wouldn’t need a single one of his senses to complete it. “You’re brown, I know you must have something.”

“Didn’t really have a lot of time to learn, growing up,” Martin responds. It’s a sore spot, one that he doesn’t usually like to bring up, but it hurts less than it used to, and he wants Jon to know, he thinks. Wants Jon to see all of him, not just the good parts.

“It was my dad who was the brown side,” he continues, “and after he left...well, mum didn’t want much to do with anything that reminded her of him.” He hears the chopping come to a dead stop next to him and is aware he’s being watched, but he keeps his gaze locked firmly on the rice dancing in front of him. “Sort of...lost the culture, a bit, after that. I tried to keep up with what I could, saved a few recipes to try myself when I got older, but, well you can see me. Always did look more like him than she’d like. So I let a lot of it go, because it was easier. It’s a miracle my Spanish is still as good as it is. And I’m always so afraid that I’ll screw something up if I try, so...I just don’t.”

It’s quiet, for a moment. Martin wants to crawl inside himself and hide. He settles for poking at the rice some more with the spoon.

“Well,” Jon starts. Martin chances a glance upwards and notices that Jon has turned back to the cutting board, resuming his work with the shallots. “Maybe we’ll just have to try one of those recipes then, the next time.”

Something warm settles into his chest. He thinks he’d like that.

“Speaking of recipes,” Martin says, trying to shake off the thickness of his voice. “What’s this one?” He points to the pot of rice still bubbling away on the stove. “I have no idea what to do with this by the way.”

Jon laughs and pushes him out of the way with his shoulders again, adding the shallots and a bit of vegetable oil to a deep walled pan and turning the heat on high. “Just wait until they look...I don’t know, dense.”

Dense. Dense. What the fuck does that even mean. Jon must see the confusion on his face because he leans over the pot to take a look and, after a moment of thought, says “two minutes.”

“Two minutes?” Martin asks. Jon nods. “And then they’ll be...dense.”

Jon gives a mildly exasperated sigh, rolling his eyes as he does so. “I don’t know what you want me to call it, Martin. They just look done.”

“You do realize that makes it harder to interpret.”

“I am aware of that, yes.”

As the pan with the shallots heats up, the oil begins to bubble and pop and Martin worries briefly about starting a grease fire before Jon reaches over to turn the burner down a little.

“So the recipe?” Martin asks again, trying to remember what time it was when Jon had told him the rice only needed two more minutes. He chances a glance at the clock on the stove and decides a minute has probably passed already.

Jon’s smile is a little sad around the edges when he answers. “Sabzi polo . You’re technically supposed to eat it on real New Year’s, in the Spring, and if we’re being authentic we really should have eaten it about nine hours ago, but I’m told my mother always made it for both. My grandmother only made it a couple times, she wasn’t really...well, she did what she could, but she had never really been someone who fancied herself a parental figure, even before. I picked it up when I was around ten. Would you mind throwing the fish in the oven? I think the herbs have had enough time to settle in.”

It is, as everything Jon does, painfully nonchalant. Like poking at old hurts doesn’t bother him except for the way it makes his face contort rather irritatingly in sadness for a few brief moments as he recounts them. Martin knows it’s more than all that, but if Jon wasn’t going to press him on his own issues, then he isn’t about to do it to him. He grabs the fish from where it has been cut into uniform slabs and dusted with various herbs and spices and slides the pan into the oven. About a minute too late, he notices that the rice should be dense now, according to Jon, and hopes he didn’t mess it up as he pulls it off the burner and turns off the heat.

It looks dense, he supposes. At the very least, it isn’t sticking together in clumps like it’s been overcooked into mush.

“How long for the oven timer?”

“Just until it’s done.” Martin can see the corner of Jon’s mouth twitch when he answers, and he thinks he kind of wants to smack him. He kind of wants to kiss him, though, too, so he resolves to just not do anything.

It turns out not to be a lie. Jon never sets a timer, and he never opens the door to the oven to check on the fish as he drains the rice and the shallots and throws it all together in a different pot. He doesn’t even glance in the oven’s direction when he tosses an arbitrary amount of each spice onto the rice before giving it a quick stir and doing something complicated involving tying a kitchen towel around the lid to the pot. And yet, when he takes the fish out of the oven it’s perfect.

Jon doesn’t have a dining table, because he’s a college student living in a tiny flat just barely off-campus, but Martin isn’t about to begrudge him for the fact that they have to eat standing at the counter when he’d clearly put so much effort into everything. It hardly even matters that it’s nearly ten by the time they do get to eat. Martin nearly loses his head when Jon pulls another bowl out of the fridge before he starts plating the food, revealing yet another component of the meal that he had prepared in advance. He thinks he’s going to kill Jon for ever even entertaining the possibility of ordering in, regardless of the late hour.

“This is wonderful, Jon,” Martin says, hand covering his mouth as he chews. Jon flushes at the praise, voice soft as he mutters a quiet thank you. Martin makes it a point to tell him again, at least five more times, over the course of their meal. Jon reacts the same way every time, occasionally adding something about “it’s really not that big of a deal,” or “I’ve been doing it forever, Martin,” or “I’m sure whatever you make will be even better, when we get to it.” Martin doesn’t let his mind linger on the use of we, but he does mention, one last time, how much he enjoyed everything as they set about washing up dishes. He does let his mind linger on the soft look in Jon’s eyes when he responds this time, how he taps a gentle finger against Martin’s wrist once, then twice, and says “it was better with you here.”

When the fireworks start up outside a little later, startling them out of their lazy post-meal dozing on the couch, Martin steals a glance at Jon, all rumpled looking and with a big red mark on his cheek from where he’d been leaning heavily into the arm of the couch, and wishes he had the courage to kiss him. He thinks Jon might let him, if he did.

Chapter Text

Spring semester has its drawbacks. Primarily the burnout, of course. There’s something about the second half of the school year that just drags on and on. Exams feel like they come faster. The days get longer, literally and figuratively. He has a real job working inside the labs now, setting things up for different lab sections, instead of just assisting with one section once a week, and that takes up a lot of his time. It makes it feel like things are moving even slower.

All that is bad enough, of course, but Martin would be lying if he said he didn’t think it was made all the worse by the fact that his and Jon’s schedules no longer overlap as heavily as they once had. It’s a little stupid, but he’s man enough to admit that his last semester had been greatly improved by all those hours spent together in the library, to the point where time hardly felt like it was ticking away at all.

It’s two weeks in before he gets to do anything more than meet Jon in a crowded walkway on their ways to separate classes and exchange brief complaints about how big their workloads already are. They make do with what they can manage, they spend a lot of time talking over the phone, but it’s not quite the same. So Martin misses him, whatever. He’s allowed.

Now, though, Jon sits across from him at a corner table in a cafe just off campus. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other, properly, since about two days before the semester started. It’s ridiculous how much better Martin feels just sitting with him. He would say he wasn’t going to think too hard on what it means, but who is he kidding. He knows full well what it means. Martin isn’t so oblivious to his own feelings that he didn’t notice himself falling for Jon from the very start.

They sit in comfortable silence for the first little while, Jon sipping from the cup of tea Martin had ordered (because Jon had asked him to order it, admitting rather shyly that he liked whatever Martin usually brought for him best, and hadn’t that been a shot to the chest to hear). Then Martin takes it upon himself to break the silence, in the most awkward way possible.

“I’ve missed you,” he says.

Appropriately, Jon is taking a drink as he says it and promptly starts choking.

“Oh, shit, I—I’m sorry, are—are you okay?” Martin sits there in sort of a panic, waving napkins in front of him like it’s going to help anything.

Jon waves him off as he catches his breath, coughing intermittently. “I’m fine,” he croaks. “Fine, I just…” He trails off, clearing his throat. “I missed you, too.” The last bit is spoken softly, almost too quiet to hear. Martin does hear it, though. He doesn’t think he can stop hearing it, or at least he won’t be able to any time soon. It bounces around in his skull like a balloon popping in a reverb chamber.

“You did?” Martin asks, rather stupidly. He suddenly has no idea how to maintain casual conversation. “I mean, uh—right. Yes. Me too?”

Jon smiles, then, no longer choking. “I know. You’ve said.”

Right. He had, hadn’t he? He’d said it first, even, which is why Jon had been choking, and why Jon had said it back.

Jon missed him. It was nice to hear, even if he’d sort of suspected.

“Yes,” Martin says, trying to recover. “I did say that. Is that weird? It hasn’t been that long, really. And we’ve still kept up with each other.”

Jon shrugs. “I don’t think so. It’s different, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Martin agrees, pleased that Jon seems to feel the same.

And it is. Different. He can talk to Jon over the phone all he wants, and wave at him from across the mall on his way to class, but all that pales in comparison to the view Martin has right now: the surprisingly tidy bun tied up at the base of Jon’s skull, his eyes warm as he gazes at Martin from across the table, the oversized jumper that drapes over Jon’s frame—Martin’s jumper, because Martin had loaned it to him and Jon had never given it back and Martin never asked for it back because he kind of liked the way it stole all the air out of his lungs every time he saw Jon wearing it. The ties hanging from the hood are frayed at the ends, like Jon’s been chewing on them. Martin should probably find that grosser than he does. As it is, he doesn’t find it gross at all. Not in the slightest.

“So, your labs?” Jon asks suddenly. “You’re working full time now, right, how’s that going?”

And it’s not hard for Jon to remember that, it’s the reason they haven’t seen each other very often. It makes Martin go all soft, anyway, knowing that he does remember. “Yeah,” he answers, “yeah, I am. It’s nice? The freshmen have no idea what they’re doing, to be honest, but I suppose I didn’t either, when I was them. Their TA keeps trying to yell at me for helping them fix their experiments.”

Jon laughs. “Of course you fix their experiments for them,” he says. “Have you ever met someone in trouble that you didn’t want to help?”

Martin thinks back to the time he first met Jon, back in that corner of the library. When he’d taken a few too many looks at him and decided that Jon was someone in need of help and Martin was someone who was rather good at helping himself. So he’d gone and brought him tea as a pick me up, and kept doing it because he hadn’t gotten it exactly right the first time. And they’d started talking after that, and then suddenly they were helping each other. Martin with his knitting and his tea, and Jon with his lunches and his inviting Martin over when he was lonely.

And then it was more than that. Then it was soft touches over the holidays and creating real spaces in their lives for each other and dismayed sighing when they compared schedules for the new semester and declaring they missed each other when they hadn’t seen the other in a couple of weeks, even when they’d spent those two weeks in constant contact besides.

“No,” Martin says. “No, I suppose I haven’t.”

Jon has the audacity to look pleased when he next takes a sip of his tea. If Martin didn’t know any better, he’d think Jon could see into his head. It would be rather embarrassing if he could. Although maybe it would be for the better, if he could. Then Martin wouldn’t have to do something embarrassing like tell Jon how he feels, out loud, with words and everything.

It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. He thinks, though, despite his wishes otherwise, that he actually quite likes it like this. Because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do things like tell Jon he missed him on accident and watch how Jon fully fell apart at the admission. There’s not much Martin finds himself willing to trade that for.

Jon gets a text from Daisy a couple months into the semester.

he’s not going to tell u this bc he doesn’t like to talk about it

but martin’s birthday is coming up and I thought u should know that

And Jon isn’t stupid. He knows what that means. It makes his chest feel tight. Jon wasn’t exactly a stranger to bad birthdays. The most his grandmother ever did was send him off to school with a pat on the shoulder. It was acknowledgement at least, he supposes, and he’d gotten used to it quickly enough, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Not when everyone else brought homemade cupcakes for the class and passed out glittering invitations and wore extravagant paper crowns throughout the day, toothless grins firmly in place until it was time to go home. He knows birthdays for Martin must have felt the same, as a kid, if not worse. Considering he still doesn’t like to talk about it, Jon hazards a guess they were probably worse.

He figures Daisy probably told him this for a reason. And he’s not usually one for grand gestures, is the thing. But if there was ever a time for it.

I figure you probably plan something together usually

but would it be overstepping

if I talked to everyone and put something together?

It takes a while for a reply to come through. Jon almost turns his phone off in a panic, worried somehow that he’s already overstepped just by asking, before it finally buzzes in his hand.

sorry sorry! got distracted

but no not at all

that’s why I brought it up, actually

I think he’d like that  

you’re sure?

it’s not going to be upsetting or anything right

I know the first time tim suggested throwing me a party I threatened to move out

This is why he doesn’t do grand gestures. He works himself up about it and decides it would be better if he didn’t do it at all, in case it’s received poorly, even when he’s told otherwise. Although, he hardly thinks the tentative concept he had of inviting people to his flat can be considered making a big deal of things, not like Tim’s idea of making shirts and creating Jon’s likeness out of frosting and being generally over the top in just about every way possible had been. It wouldn’t be anything he doesn’t already do with Daisy and Basira, probably. Just friends supporting another friend during a day with a lot of shitty memories attached to it and trying to make it a little better. It’s nice, when he thinks about it like that.

Daisy sends a confirmation about five minutes later.

okay I don’t know tim well

but I assume u threw a fit bc he was like

Being Weird About It

u don’t strike me as the type to go over the top with anything

and it’s not like we don’t usually celebrate together with him?

so it’s not like he’d hate the idea in general

I just think he’d like to have u there

and I know he won’t ask u himself  

It takes him a bit to get everything sorted. Well, more like it takes him a bit to convince Tim not to do anything stupid about it. 

But soon enough Jon ends up leading Martin into his flat the next weekend under the pretense of returning a textbook Martin had left there on accident. Which, to Jon’s credit, he had. It wasn’t technically a lie, Jon did want to give that back. It just wasn’t wholly the reason he was ushering Martin through the door to the sight of Daisy valiantly trying to throw potato chips into Tim’s mouth from ridiculous angles. From the state of the floor at Tim’s feet—absolutely dusted in crumbs—it was clear that either one or both of them wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

They turn, Daisy with her hand poised to give it another go, at the sound of Jon closing the door rather pointedly.

“Oh shit,” Tim says, “they’re here. Guys shut up.”

Sasha rolls her eyes before sending an apologetic glance in their direction. “I don’t think this is how surprise parties work, Tim.”

“A surprise what?” Martin asks. Jon turns to look at him and finds him taking everything in with a look on his face like he can’t quite figure out how he wants to react.

Jon had deliberately made the choice not to make anything too big of a deal. For one, he didn’t think it would be appropriate, and Daisy had as much as told him besides. For two, Jon has never thrown a party in his life and he wasn’t about to try to do something as horrifying as decorating, even if Daisy hadn’t warned him against it. So it scarcely looks like a party is supposed to be happening, aside from the fact that everyone is crammed in his living room surrounded by more food than is strictly necessary.

Nobody offers up an answer, instead looking deliberately at Jon to explain. Which is fair, he supposes. The whole thing was sort of his idea, except that it was technically Daisy’s, so really she should be the one to have to explain, but whatever. He can be thrown under the bus for this one. It’s not like he was initially hesitant because he thought Martin would hate him for it or anything.

“Um,” he says. “Do you want to follow me for a minute? I do actually still have that textbook you left here.”

Martin nods for him to lead the way and Jon walks towards his bedroom in complete silence. Predictably, everyone only starts talking outside once the door is firmly shut. He thinks he hears the distinct sound of Daisy throwing more food at Tim and it landing sadly on the hardwood floor.

“So,” Jon says, grabbing the book off his bedside table. “This is yours.”

“Right, thanks,” Martin replies. “The whole—party thing, though?”

Jon nods a little robotically. Martin’s starting to look sort of wet around the eyes and his voice is a touch strained and Jon isn’t sure if he’s going to end this night feeling good about himself or never wanting to leave his flat ever again. Only one way to find out, he supposes.

“Daisy mentioned it was going to be your birthday this Tuesday?” he starts, unsure of himself. “And I obviously don’t know the state of your childhood exactly, but I figure...well, considering what I do know, I figure birthdays probably weren’t the best. And I didn’t want to make it a whole to-do, you know, but I remembered how much I appreciated Tim doing something for me, back when I wasn’t too sure about birthdays either, so I thought I would try to do the same.”

Martin doesn’t respond right away. And Jon has never been good at leaving a silence unfilled when he’s anxious, so he continues on. He’s probably making an ass of himself, and in fact he’s sure he’ll take at least an hour to dissect exactly how stupid he sounded while he’s laying in bed at the end of the night, but standing there in silence would make him feel like even more of an ass, so it’s not like he has much choice.

“I haven’t told anyone why? I figure it’s not anyone’s business, and—well, actually they just seemed happy enough to have an excuse to throw a party so they didn’t really ask. But we don’t—we don’t have to make it a big deal, if you want, I can ask everyone to go home? Only Daisy brought it up, and I figure she wouldn’t have done that if it didn’t mean something to you, so. I thought I’d try something nice.”

“Jon,” Martin says, voice strangled.

Jon immediately takes it as a bad thing. “Right,” he says, “sorry. I can just tell everyone to go home. Well, except Tim I guess. But I could make him leave, if you want? Unless you just want to go.” He moves to leave through the door but Martin stops him with a shake of his head.

“No, it’s—it’s not...not that,” he says.

“Not...what, exactly?” Jon asks.

The wetness around Martin’s eyes starts to fall, leaving tracks that roll slowly down the sides of his face. “I’m not upset.”

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but it kind of looks like you are?”

The sound Martin makes then is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Jon doesn’t know what to do about it. “I’m not,” Martin says, “I promise. It’s just—” he gestures to the mattress up against the wall. “Do you mind if I sit, for a minute?”

Jon shakes his head. “No, um...make yourself at home?”

Martin crosses the room to sit at one edge of the bed. Jon doesn’t expect Martin to motion for him to join him. He really doesn’t expect Martin to immediately throw his arms around him once he sits.

Jon isn’t...great, with displays of emotion. It usually makes him feel sort of itchy. He doesn’t understand how people can trust other people enough to be openly emotional, is the thing. He’s going to try for Martin, though. Doesn’t think he could do much else, really.

So he hesitantly brings his arms up to wrap around Martin’s shoulders and holds him as close as he dares and exhales a little shakily when Martin grips him harder and makes a noise like he’s choking. It’s the only noise, for a while. Jon wouldn’t be able to tell Martin was crying at all, if it weren’t for the wetness he could feel soaking into the collar of his shirt where Martin’s face is pressed firmly into his neck.

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say here, so he doesn’t say anything; focuses instead on keeping still aside from the hand he lets move across Martin’s back in gentle circles. He hopes it’s helping. Martin doesn’t immediately tell him to stop, so he figures it must be. Or, at the very least, he figures it’s not hurting anything.

When Martin speaks next, he doesn’t bother moving away from the hug at all, and the words are spoken into the juncture between Jon’s neck and shoulder. Jon very deliberately does not react to the feeling of Martin’s lips against his skin; it is most decidedly not the time.

“Sorry, it’s just...I’ve never had this many people that cared about me before, you know? It’s a lot, sometimes.”

Jon gets it. He doesn’t understand how anyone couldn’t care about Martin, but he knows what Martin’s talking about. You spend so long convinced that you need to make yourself smaller and smaller, taking up less and less space, because it’s the only way people seem to appreciate you, and then suddenly you have a room full of people grabbing you by the shoulders and saying I am going to care about you on purpose. Not regardless of anything, just because they do. Just because they like you. And you don’t even have to do anything.

It’s like Martin said: it’s a lot, sometimes.

“I know,” Jon says. “Could hardly believe it myself, the first time Tim insisted. Still can’t, sometimes. Hardly anyone that’s met me thinks it’s worth the effort.”

Martin pulls away from the hug now and looks at him a little funny. “I don’t think I believe that.”

“Don’t think I believe it about you, either,” Jon counters.

And that’s it for a moment. It’s quiet except for the muttering from the living room that can be heard through the walls. Jon starts to squirm a little in the silence. It’s Martin that breaks it first, dropping his arms when he misinterprets the reason for Jon’s squirming.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I do. Think it’s worth the effort, I mean. Have from the very beginning.”

Jon tries to ignore the stuttering in his chest as he answers. “For what it’s worth, I do, too. And I think everyone out there probably agrees with me.”

At the mention of the others, Martin startles a little. “Oh, Christ, they’re all out there aren’t they? We should really get back, then. Do you think they’re worried?”

I think Tim and Georgie are going back and forth about whether or not it’s taking so long because I’m trying to make a move and Tim is going to look insufferably smug when we go back in there and they realize that I haven’t, Jon thinks. “Maybe,” he says instead. “I’m sure they just don’t want you to feel like we’ve ambushed you, though.”

Martin shakes his head. “No. Caught me a little off guard, maybe. Sorry about how I reacted, it was just—well, you know.”

“I do,” Jon says. “It’s fine, I probably should’ve told you first.”

“We could go back and forth apologizing like this all night, you know,” Martin responds with a laugh. Jon is relieved to hear him sound a bit lighter now. “You don’t have to apologize. I know I sort of cried on you for a minute there, but it’s because I was happy, I promise.”

Jon could counter that Martin didn’t have to apologize, either. He doesn’t think that would get him anywhere, though. If anything, they would just be going back and forth about not having to apologize until either they lost their voices or the rest of them finally got tired waiting and broke the door down, whichever happened first.

“Sure,” he says. “I’m glad you’re not upset.”

Martin seems to see the statement for the pseudo-apology it is, if the widening grin on his face is anything to go by. “Quite the opposite,” he assures. “Should we go back out there, then? Let them know that I’m not about to block them all online or anything?”

Jon gestures towards the door. “After you.”

Tim does look insufferably smug when they make it back to the living room. Everyone else has the decency to ignore him and instead turn their attentions towards Martin. Jon follows suit. Martin looks good like this, he thinks, surrounded by people he loves, that love him just as much in return. He doesn’t think he’s ever noticed it before, but Martin looks brighter than he usually does around his friends, almost like he’d been waiting for the verbal confirmation before he got truly comfortable. It suits him, even though the idea that he’d ever been unsure makes Jon’s heart clench painfully in his chest.

Martin is not above making excuses. He’s not. It’s why he ends up convincing Jon to stay a half hour late after whatever film workshop he has on Wednesdays so he can meet Martin in the labs and Martin can drive them both home.

It’s not like the arrangement gives them a lot of time together, or anything, but it’s more than they would have had without it, and Jon barely hesitates before agreeing, the first time Martin suggests it. He thinks maybe they’re both a little more put out than they’d like to admit about having schedules that aren’t quite so synced anymore. Sometimes Martin gets the feeling that Jon would have made his own excuses, if Martin hadn’t come up with one first. That feeling has only amplified since Martin had learned how much Jon truly hated getting home late.

It was Tim that clued him in, the first time.

“You know,” he’d said, “Jon hates being out past, like, five. Finals week is the exception, but that’s mostly because I make him turn off the lights after midnight and he thinks I’m annoying for preferring to sleep.”

Martin had gotten the feeling that Tim had been trying to tell him something. He’d gotten the feeling he knew what Tim had been trying to tell him. He’d feigned ignorance anyway. “What are you getting at?”

Tim had held his hands in front of him in a sort of placating gesture that had mostly failed because he was Tim and he really couldn’t help himself from throwing a wink in Martin’s direction as he answered. “All I’m saying is, he willingly left the house after seven just to go ice skating with you. Just because you asked. And now you’ve got him staying on campus an hour later than he has to.”

“It was Daisy, actually,” Martin hadn’t been able to stop himself from saying. “Who asked. About the ice skating thing.” Tim had looked monumentally unimpressed.

Martin was sure he knew what Tim had been getting at. He hadn’t been able to stop the flush that rose to his cheeks as he barreled stubbornly onward. “Anyway, he never mentioned that? We’re out late all the time, he’s never looked like it bothers him.”

“I know. I don’t think he minds so much when it’s you.” And that would have been enough to effectively render Martin useless for the next hour or two. But then Tim had had to continue with “I think he misses you, when you’re not around. Even when it’s only been a couple days.” And Martin had felt the same sentiment so wholeheartedly, felt wrecked at the idea that someone thought that way about him, and it had left him feeling like he was floating for weeks.

He still feels like he’s floating, thinking about it, even now.

After the last of the students files out of the lab, a short knock comes from the doorway. Martin turns to see Jon peeking his head into the room. “Okay?” he asks.

Martin waves him in. “I’ve got a few things I still need to put away first, you can just sit in one of these desks if you want?”

Jon just stares. “How many times—you know I’m not going to do that. What can I do to help that won’t potentially kill me?”

“Really depends on your definition of things that could potentially kill you,” Martin says. “Last week you wouldn’t bring the hydrochloric acid into the back because you thought you were going to lose a hand.”

“That’s acid, Martin,” Jon protests. “Concentrated acid!”

Martin rolls his eyes with no small amount of fondness, moving to one of the benches in the back to toss a box of gloves in Jon’s direction. “The bottle was fully closed, you only needed to carry it for like ten feet. Can you wipe down the benches with acetone for me? And make sure the temp readers are turned off, they always forget.”

Jon, ever the multitasker, continues complaining even as he pulls on the latex gloves and grabs the squeeze bottle of acetone from one of the fume hoods. “Okay, but the thing is I already have impaired function in my hands? I don’t want them literally corroding.”

“They wouldn’t corrode, oh my god,” Martin says, gently pressing a wet sponge to the side of one of the Mel-Temps to cool it off. “It’s in the bottle. How’s it going to corrode your hands through the glass?”

Jon’s only response is another quiet, petulant, “it’s acid.”

Despite the childish tone, Martin finds himself unreasonably endeared. He turns to look at Jon and finds him dutifully wiping down the benches, pausing intermittently to check the temp readers with a single-minded focus that Martin has come to realize is simply how Jon approaches just about every task he’s given, no matter how mundane. Stupidly, it endears him further.

Stupidly because now there’s the distinct sickly sweet smell of burning sponge filling his nose and he realizes that the Mel-Temp was just at three hundred degrees and he’s been sitting there holding a rather flammable object to the side of it without thinking for a touch too long because he was too busy fawning over the way his friend checks temp readers. At least when he finally gains the presence of mind to remove the sponge it’s not physically on fire so much as it’s blackened on one side. A burnt sponge is much easier to deal with than an on-fire Mel-Temp. Not that he’d mind so much if the lab had one less Mel-Temp for him to deal with, but it would come out of his paycheck if something happened to it. And they do cost about three times more than he makes in a semester. So it’s really better that his hopeless romanticism didn’t set one on fire, regardless how much he hates the thing.

“Martin? Are you alright over there?”

Jon very obviously knows what’s happening. When Martin looks back in his direction, he’s still wiping down counters and turning off temp readers, but he’s biting his lips against a smile and Martin had heard the amusement when he spoke. He’s making fun of him. Martin finds this far more charming than he has any right to.

Martin makes the wise decision to throw the burnt sponge at him. He ducks, but Martin overshoots it anyway and the sponge ends up sailing into one of the fume hoods and almost overturning an entire bottle of sodium bicarbonate.

“Really, Martin,” Jon says, pretending to be completely engrossed with spraying acetone into a stray beaker, “they leave you in charge of this place? That seems irresponsible, what if that had exploded?”

It takes a lot for Martin not to burst into undignified laughter right there. “Jon, this is a general chemistry lab for eighteen-year-olds,” he says as he crosses the room to retrieve the sponge from the fume hood. “Why would we leave an explosive in the fume hood?”

“You told me two weeks ago they were doing a lab where they carried around glorified hydrogen bombs masquerading as balloons,” Jon deadpans. “It’s not too far of a stretch to think that would explode, too.”

And okay, he has a point. Martin had been pretty horrified by that one, but no one had burned their eyebrows off or anything, even though he’d seen four different students almost back right into someone else’s balloon and give themselves some pretty nasty burn scars.

“That’s different,” he says, acting like giving eighteen-year-olds hydrogen bombs didn’t scare the hell out of him. “Besides, this is sodium bicarbonate, it’s to soak up acid spills.” To punctuate his statement, he rubs the unburned side of the sponge across Jon’s neck as he passes to throw it into the trash.

“If I get a skin disease from that—”

“What skin disease could you possibly get from a burnt sponge Jon?”

Jon shrugs as he strips the gloves off his hands, apparently done with the acetone. “Could be anything, I guess,” he says. “How should I know what they put in synthetic sponges?”

It had better not be a synthetic sponge, with how much Martin pays for tuition, but who knows. Considering his lab section this semester apparently only has enough money to provide two microscopes for a class of over thirty students, anything is possible. And yet they still have ten Mel-Temps lining the back counter at all times. Go figure.

There’s a temp reader blinking just behind where Jon is standing. Martin doesn’t really think before he leans towards him and reaches an arm over his shoulder to turn it off. Everything gets rather warm exceptionally quickly. Jon doesn’t seem to be breathing. Martin isn’t so sure he is, either.

“You, um,” he starts, clearing his throat when it comes out sounding a little strained. “You missed one.”

Jon nods almost imperceptibly. “Right. Sorry, got distracted by the beaker someone left out.”

They are very pointedly not looking each other directly in the eyes. Martin thinks he can see the skin around Jon’s ears darken a little. He wills his own not to do the same, but he’s not sure how well he gets away with it.

“Should I put it in the back, or—?”

“What’s that?”

“The, um...the beaker.”

Right. Right! Right.

Because they’re supposed to be cleaning up a beginning chemistry lab. Because Martin has no business looming over Jon thinking about what might happen if he just ducked down and kissed him when there’s still two more Mel-Temps behind him that are sitting somewhere around two hundred degrees.

“Martin?”

“Right!” he says, springing backwards. “There’s actually a, um—a lost and found drawer? It’s right back here, actually, I’ll take it.” It takes more effort than it should for him to not fumble the beaker in his hands and let it drop straight to the ground where it would shatter into a million pieces when he takes it from Jon’s hand. If Jon notices, he doesn’t say anything. Martin appreciates it.

He tries to cool down the remaining Mel-Temps with less disaster and manages to only slightly singe one corner of a sponge by the time he’s finished. Jon stays leaning against one of the lab benches, providing base commentary on whatever he’s reading on his phone as if the last five minutes or so hadn’t happened. Martin laughs in all the right places, attempting to do the same.

The tension has more or less evaporated by the time they’re set to go. Jon perks up at the sound of the fume hood rolling shut, the usual signal that everything’s been cleaned and put away.

“You’re ready then?” he asks.

Martin can’t resist teasing, a little. “Would’ve been ready faster if someone wasn’t afraid of holding the hydrochloric acid.”

“Martin, I’ve told you, it’s my hands. I’m not risking it.” Jon sounds equal parts like he’s serious and like he’s just making excuses. It’s about what Martin had expected. He knocks his shoulder playfully into Jon’s in response as they exit the doors of the lab.

“Oh, by the way,” Martin says as they’re waiting for the elevator. “You don’t mind walking today, do you? Had to leave my car at home because the battery died again and I didn’t have time to give it a charge.”

Jon rolls his eyes, attempting to look put upon but failing miserably. It’s an expression Martin knows well, as he’s seen it a lot lately because of his car’s failing battery. Martin will complain, and Jon will lecture halfheartedly, and they’ll do the whole thing again the next time it dies. It’s routine. Martin thinks it amuses Jon more than anything, at this point.

“You know,” Jon says, “if you would just trade it in for a new one, like I’ve been telling you.”

“And like I told you,” Martin responds, “when you get a license that doesn’t say you have to have a legal driver and no one under the age of eighteen in the car with you, you can tell me what to do about my battery.”

Jon scoffs at the dig at his inability to drive. “Look, I can drive perfectly fine, tests just make me nervous. Anyway, yes, it’s fine. It’s not too dark yet. If you’re sure you’ll be alright walking home by yourself after?”

The elevator chimes and Martin smiles warmly as the door opens. He doesn’t have the same aversion to walking at night as Jon does, his height and build usually keep people out of his business, but he appreciates the sentiment. “I’ll be fine,” he says as they step into the lift. The door closes in front of them and they ride down to the lobby in companionable silence.

It takes Jon about forty-five minutes to get up on Saturday because he feels like his eyelids are glued together and he can’t manage to swallow without feeling like he’s just eaten glass. It would figure that he would be coming down with a cold during the weekend. He supposes it should have been a blessing, as now he’d be free to just stay home and whine about how congested his sinuses were, but he hadn’t seen Martin in days (two of them, even) due to their conflicting schedules and they’d had plans to meet each other for lunch today and Jon missed him, okay? Aside from extremely debilitating physical injury, there wasn’t much that was going to make Jon cancel their plans.

So it does take him forty-five minutes to get up, and about another two hours to actually get dressed and feel at least sort of normal, but he does it. He even manages to leave on time. He’s even early. It’s an achievement.

When Martin shows up, though, he takes one look at Jon and immediately protests. “No, absolutely not. Are you kidding? You look half dead, I’m taking you home.”

“Martin, I’m—”

“Jon, your jacket’s on backwards. And your eyes are so watery I’m surprised you know it’s me. You’re not even wearing your glasses, why are you here?”

Jon answers without thinking about it. Being sick has always made his mental filter work a little slower. “Wanted to see you.” If he had been more coherent, he may have flushed in embarrassment. As it is, he’s already sweating with the small effort it took him to walk from his flat to the dining hall. He’s not about to make himself warmer.

Martin softens a bit, at that. “You could’ve called me. I would’ve come to you, instead.”

“You had a meeting this morning, it was easier for me to be here.”

“Do you even know where you are?”

“Martin, I’m not dying, I did even manage to get here on my own.” Jon doesn't mention the fact that the lights are so bright to his dry, burning eyes at the moment that in order to see anything he has to squint so hard his eyes may as well be closed. That's quite beside the point.

Regardless, Martin still doesn't appear to be too impressed. “Right, well, I’m not so sure you’d be able to get anywhere else on your own today, so. Off we go, then.”

It’s not as if Jon is really in a position to resist being pulled out of his seat and walked out the door. The fact that he hardly notices having crossed several streets and walking up several stairs to get to the front door of his flat is something of an indication that Martin had the right idea, anyway. Jon is very much not going to admit that.

“Jon, is that you? Thought you were going to be out all day, didn’t you have a—”

Jon, thankfully, does still have the presence of mind to know that Tim is about to do his best to thoroughly embarrass him. “Tim.”

The interruption causes Tim to look in their direction. He does at least have the decency to look abashed when he notices Martin’s presence. “Martin! What are you—whoa, Jon, please don’t take offense but you look like shit, are you okay?”

Jon rolls his eyes, trying to ignore how it makes the strain in his temples worse. “Fine, Tim, just a bug or something.” Suddenly his limbs ache so badly that he can’t even think about holding himself upright without feeling like he’s going to fall into a heap on the floor. He throws himself face first onto the couch.

“Is he sure about that?”

“I think it must just be a cold,” Martin answers. “You know, coming back to campus and all that? It’s been going around.”

Jon hears Tim hum in something of a surprised recognition. “Bit late this time around for it to start spreading. Suppose it did have to at some point, though.” His voice gets closer. “Hey, Jon, I’m going to be out for a bit, if you’re okay on your own?”

His answering groan is maybe more than a little petulant. “Fine,” he sighs. It is fine. Jon just doesn’t particularly like being alone when he’s sick. He doesn’t like being alone period, usually, but it’s worse when he’s ill.

Tim voices this for him in a stage-whisper, voice fond. “He’s a bit of a baby when he’s sick. Doesn’t like being by himself.”

Jon lifts his head from the cushions a little. “I am right here. And I’m fine on my own, I’ve told you, it’s not like I think I’m going to die. I managed to walk all the way to campus on my own, even.”

“Yes, and now you’re face down on the couch and you look like you think your skull’s about to rip in half any time one of us speaks,” Tim responds. “Truly the epitome of health, I’m sure.”

Someone clears their throat then, and Jon pulls himself upright to face the others. “Really. See? I’m sitting now. It’s fine, go, I’ll manage a few hours.” Someone clears their throat again and this time Jon can tell it’s Martin.

“I mean, I have a few things to do at home, but? I could—that is, you could come back with me, if you wanted. I wouldn’t mind the company.” And Jon can tell he’s deliberately framing the suggestion as if it’s for his own benefit, not just because Jon is a child who gets clingy when he feels bad. It should be embarrassing. Instead it’s just sweet.

Jon doesn’t have it in him to decline. Martin looks hopeful, a little red around the ears, and Jon really would prefer to not be on his own. There’s no reason to decline, really, except for his usually well-meaning but often-wrong self-preservation instincts, and he finds that he’s not too inclined to listen to those at the moment, considering. So he simply agrees.

Tim claps him gently on the shoulder just before he leaves, surprisingly nonchalant until he reaches the doorway and sends Jon an exaggerated thumbs up over Martin’s shoulders. Jon can only hope the barely-there glare he manages to send in Tim’s direction is enough to convey how the mouthed “good luck!” and comically over-the-top wink that follow are terribly misplaced, given that Jon can barely drag himself up to standing and will likely spend the majority of time asleep on Martin’s couch while Martin sits in his room working on whatever it is he needed to get back to.

On the walk down to Martin’s place, Jon becomes distantly aware that he’s leaning heavily into Martin’s side as they walk. Martin doesn’t seem to mind, though, and the grounding that the contact offers at least keeps Jon aware, unlike earlier when he’d just sort of crossed major streets in a haze and only didn’t end up splattered over someone’s windshield through sheer force of will. It’s a good excuse, if nothing else.

Once inside, everything goes just about how Jon had expected. There’s a slight fussing from Martin before Jon convinces him that, really, all he needs is to lay down and not move for a while, and the next couple minutes or so pass by in companionable silence as Jon lays on the couch with his eyes closed and Martin sits in the armchair in the corner typing sporadically on a laptop. But then an itch settles somewhere beneath Jon’s skin and suddenly he can’t get comfortable.

The fabric of his clothes is all wrong, his jumper is twisted around rather disagreeably, his shirt is too tight, buttons dig right into his bones so hard he thinks they have to be leaving bruises. He tries not to shift around too much. All he needs is to lay down and not move for a while—he’s hardly going to bother Martin about something he doesn’t have the power to fix.

Martin is much more perceptive than Jon ever gives him credit for. Jon is also much worse at disguising his discomfort than he likes to think.

“You alright? Did you need something?”

Jon doesn’t open his eyes as he responds. “Fine.” It’s a little too strangled to be casual, but he figures he can blame that on the soreness in his throat. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, tries to pull the sweater he’s wearing into some sort of order that doesn’t make him want to crawl out of his own skin. It doesn’t work. He has to swallow back the noise of irritation he feels building on his tongue.

“Did you want to try that again?” Martin sounds amused when he asks, the hint of a laugh in his voice. Jon abruptly realizes he isn’t going to be able to get away with this one.

But still. How is he supposed to bring that up? Technically, I’m fine, it’s only a cold, and being here is nicer than being at home alone, but everything all at once feels monumentally uncomfortable. Usually I love this sweater but suddenly it’s strangling me and it feels a little suffocating, actually, and why did I decide to wear it when it’s really getting quite warm outside, do the walls feel like they’re closing in on you, too? I think whoever invented buttons must have had some kind of pain kink. Must collared shirts be quite so stiff? Do you think—? 

“Jon?”

He sighs. “Can’t get comfortable.”

The answer is a barely more than a mumble, but Martin seems to have no trouble hearing. “Oh! Um. I mean, the couch probably isn’t the most comfortable place, is it?”

“That’s not—”

“And I could probably lend you something...looser to wear? If you wanted. You look like you might feel a bit...stuck.”

Jon chances opening his eyes. Martin is still in the armchair in the corner, legs slung over the side and laptop perched on his knees. He looks...nervous, and Jon can’t quite figure out why. He also looks sincere. And Jon isn’t one to let himself wallow in discomfort, not when someone offers a solution that they wholeheartedly intend for him to accept.

“Right, um. Thank you? Yes.” His ability to string coherent responses together is gone now, too, it seems. Good to know. At least it makes the nervousness fade a little from Martin’s face as he swings his legs off the arm of the chair and stands to lead Jon down a short hallway into his bedroom.

He’s presented with a soft cotton t-shirt in short order and it becomes apparent to him, all at once, that he’s standing in Martin’s bedroom, preparing to change into his clothes. It kind of makes him want to climb down the fire escape. He only doesn’t because he knows he’d lose his grip and break his legs on the pavement.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of trousers,” Martin is saying, “I think they might be a bit too overly big. It seemed like the shirt was your biggest problem though, so? Hopefully just this helps.”

Jon is aware that he’s staring. He’s also aware his legs are starting to sway rather dangerously. Martin takes the staring differently than Jon means it.

“Right! Sorry. I’ll just?” He turns to face the opposite wall and Jon finds himself deliriously charmed. He takes the opportunity to sit cautiously at one edge of the mattress and makes quick work of changing into the shirt.

It is nicer. It doesn’t cling anywhere, nothing digs into his skin. It’s big enough that the fabric twists around when he moves, but not so much that he can’t get it untwisted. It smells like Martin. Jon is man enough to admit—privately, to himself—that the scent provides an added comfort he hadn’t quite anticipated.

After a deep breath, that he will deny his motives for if pressed, he clears his throat to indicate that Martin is safe to turn around. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he hears what he would describe as a rather strangled sound escape Martin’s throat.

“Um. Right, so I can leave you here then? And I’ll just—”

Jon finds himself shaking his head without really thinking about it. “Uh, no, please.” It’s embarrassing to say out loud, but it’s also Martin. So he carries on. “I wouldn’t mind—much the opposite, actually—that is if you don’t mind, I can understand if—”

“Okay, Jon,” Martin says, putting a mercifully quick end to his rambling. The bed dips behind him as Martin sits and Jon finds he isn’t exactly sure what to do now.

Should he lay down? Offer to move over? Say something? He should probably say something. He opts to sit in agonizing silence instead, ignoring the way his body desperately tells him to stop sitting so tense and just relax in favor of preserving his sense of propriety. Martin brought him in here, sure, but this was his room, his bed. Jon’s not about to take over just because he’s sick. Not even if he starts falling asleep sitting up, back ramrod straight and sure to seize up in the morning if he doesn’t just let go.

There’s a shift behind him and suddenly Martin’s hands find their way into his hair. Jon is pretty sure he would have seized up then if he had any sort of control over his own muscles. As it is, he relaxes pitifully into the touch and tries not to think about how much Martin may be reading into it.

“You know,” Martin says, pulling at the rubber band holding his hair together. Jon winces slightly at the sharp tug, and the sting is smoothed away almost immediately by a pair of thumbs rubbing gentle circles at the base of his skull. “Sorry about that. You know, these are bad for your hair. If it weren’t obvious from that live demonstration.”

Jon shrugs. “Gets the job done.”

“Does it though?” Jon is sitting with his back to him, eyes barely open, so he can’t see Martin’s face at all, but the tone of his voice suggests a certain incredulity that Jon has become rather accustomed to. It hardly matters that he can’t see him, he can picture it perfectly. “To my understanding, it’s meant to keep your hair out of your face. Which it never does. You can’t argue with me, I’ve seen you.”

“S’what the paper clips are for.”

Martin pulls out one such paper clip, careful when it tangles a little in the greying strands. “About those. Not sure if they’re good for your hair, either.”

“Faster than redoing the whole thing.”

“You know, if you just did it right in the first place you wouldn’t have to re-do it at all. You could also get real hair pins that aren’t liable to stab you.”

“These don’t stab me, either.”

Martin lightly jabs him in the temple with the dull edge of the paper clip in his hand. “Just did. Guess you’ll have to get real pins, then.”

Jon tries to laugh but it comes out as more of a wheeze that catches in his throat and sends him coughing. He has to brace his hands against his knees and squeeze his eyes shut to keep the room from spinning.

“You okay?” Martin asks. A hand traces light circles against Jon’s back as he catches his breath.

“Fine,” Jon says. “Didn’t expect that. This whole thing sort of just snuck up on me.”

A few minutes pass before Jon’s muscles relax again, a shiver running through his limbs as the ache settles back in. He tries to bring himself upright but moves too fast and ends up flopping rather gracelessly into Martin’s lap. Jon thinks he’d like to be mortified by the whole thing but as it is he’s not really in a position to shoot immediately upright and start stumbling over apologies like he wants to, so. He settles for groaning and turning to hide his face in Martin’s knee. It’s quite comfortable, actually. He wonders, for a moment, why he hasn’t done this sooner. Something about them being friends, he supposes, but through the current haze in his brain he can’t quite seem to figure out why that should matter.

Jon hears a soft noise escape from the back of Martin’s throat and abruptly realizes oh. He should be asking if this is okay, shouldn’t he? You can’t really just...go throwing yourself in other people’s laps, friends or no. Before he can say anything, a hand settles back into his hair and begins gentle combing through the tangles left by the rubber band and the paper clips.

“Um. Alright?” Jon can’t for the life of him see how Martin would think this is anything less than perfect, but he nods anyway. He means to say it, that it’s perfect, but the words get stuck in his throat, the itch there making it hard to speak. He thinks maybe he’ll be grateful for that later. It’s hard to tell what he’s supposed to be embarrassed about right now.

Until he feels Martin shift beneath him a couple minutes later, like he’s trying to get away, and Jon feels a stabbing sort of anxiety.

Martin mumbles something Jon can’t quite catch just before he starts to get up. Jon feels like he must be half out of his mind. At least, that’s how he chooses to reason to himself why his mouth had uttered the words “please stay” without any input from his brain.

“I will, promise, just—I have to get up for a minute?” There’s something in the way Martin speaks just then that fills Jon with a deep sort of longing. Like it twists his heart to answer as much as it twists Jon’s own to ask. “It’s just been a while, is all, and if we’re going to be like this for a bit I should probably take this binder off before it cracks my spine in half.”

The last part is spoken rather matter of factly, but Jon turns to look at him with a renewed clarity, just to be sure. This feels like something he should be lucid and present for while discussing. “You don’t—you don’t have to stay, if...if you would be uncomfortable.”

Martin only smiles. “I know. But it’s fine. I'm comfortable with you.”

He’s only gone for a couple minutes, but Jon feels like something important has slotted back into place when he comes back, hardly letting himself feel any embarrassment when he reaches out to hold Martin where he wants him.

Once they’re situated, Martin resumes combing his fingers through his hair and Jon finds himself drifting off quicker than anything. “Sorry,” he says, apologizing preemptively. He knows he’s not going to wake up any time soon, if he’s left to it, and he knows he has the tendency to get rather clingy when he’s sick.

Martin doesn’t pause at all in his actions as he responds, nor does he make any move to get up. “Why?”

Worn denim brushes across Jon’s cheek as he shakes his head. It makes his brain go all fuzzy. He maybe sits like that for longer than anyone should be allowed, nuzzling his cheek against Martin’s thigh like a particularly attention starved cat, before he realizes what he’s doing. Martin doesn’t make a note of it. Jon doesn’t quite care to bring it to his attention, despite the fact that his self-preservation instincts haven’t exactly been firing on all cylinders this afternoon.

“You said you had stuff to get done,” he mumbles instead. “And I do have to warn you, I won’t move from this position for at least the next three hours. You’re going to be stuck here.”

Martin laughs, gently, and Jon can feel it in the way he shakes underneath him. “I don’t mind, it’s not due for another few days. You can make it up to me by ignoring your own work and taking care of me next time. Probably in like, a week, because I’m sure I’ll be catching this next.”

That doesn’t sound so bad, Jon thinks, taking care of Martin. He certainly wouldn’t mind acting as Martin’s personal body pillow as he slept off a virus. He thinks he manages to hum an agreement just before he falls asleep, the gentle feeling of Martin twisting and untwisting his hair with his fingers lulling him into unconsciousness.

Martin had never been one for spring break, before. It’s too much time alone, for one, and labs are closed so he’s worryingly short on money for a week, before classes start up again and he can get back to having a job.

This year, though, he finds himself excited for the week off, for a few reasons. The steadier payment from the new full-time job he has in the labs pays him enough now that he’s not nearly as strapped for cash as he had been in years previous. Daisy and Basira are forgoing their annual trip up North this year to save up for a better flat, farther away from the unkempt student housing that surrounds the university. He is, for once, caught up on all of his work and doesn’t have to worry about working on a single thing until classes resume in another week.

He gets to see Jon much more often. Whenever he wants, really. Or at least, whenever Jon wants to see him, which as it turns out overlaps very neatly with whenever he wants to see Jon. Which is pretty much all the time, if he’s being perfectly honest with himself. He doesn’t let it go to his head.

As it turns out, Jon’s friends end up wanting to see him more often than not, too. It shouldn’t surprise him anymore, after everything, and for the most part it doesn’t, but he can’t help but feel thrilled just the same when Jon shows up unannounced at his flat one day, Tim and Sasha and Georgie and Melanie behind him, and asks if Martin would like to join them all while they go out.

“Basira and Daisy too,” Jon adds. “I already called Daisy, she said she’d meet us.”

And Martin already has his shoes on, with his keys and his wallet in his pockets, because he had actually just been getting ready to show up at Jon’s flat unannounced, so it’s easier than anything for him to agree and lock up the door behind him.

“Sorry for ambushing,” Melanie says as they meander down the street, “but we made Jon let us come along to get you. You were on our way, anyway.”

Tim laughs like he knows something that Martin doesn’t. “As if Martin wasn’t the reason we were coming out this way, anyway,” he says.

The idea that they’d come out this way just for Martin makes him feel warm enough. The sight of Jon next to him, turning red around the ears at the statement, makes him feel like he might never catch a chill again.

Everyone seems content to wander, for the most part, pausing to window shop here and there. Really, they all just seem to be out for the simple pleasure of enjoying the afternoon. They catch up with Daisy and Basira outside a small corner cafe, both of them sufficiently supplied with caffeine for the afternoon out. Every now and again Tim will grab for the cup of coffee in Daisy’s hand, managing a sip or two before Daisy realizes and threatens to chase him down the street. She has no such qualms with Sasha doing the same thing seconds later, just to prove a point. Martin thinks of the group of them from the outside perspective and realizes they must look like one of those groups of rowdy college students that he usually crosses the street to avoid.

It’s...strangely nice, to be part of that for once.

They end up ducking into a bookshop after a while, to take a break from walking and get rehydrated. Martin takes great delight in letting Jon order ahead of him at the cafe inside just so he can tack his own order on at the end and pay for the both of them. Jon doesn’t make a scene, not in front of the cashier, but Martin can tell he wants to. He swats at Martin out of view of the register and makes several offhand comments while they wait for their drinks to be made. Martin doesn’t really pay attention, opting instead to hum noncommittally when there’s a break here and there. It's not as if Jon hasn't been paying for Martin’s lunches for the better part of a year—he doesn’t exactly have a leg to stand on here.

Martin notices their drinks are ready before Jon does. He hands Jon’s off to him, interrupting him mid-complaint. “To be fair,” he says, “paying for your tea is sort of my thing at this point. You only pay for lunches.”

Jon looks like he might be intending to argue more, but thinks better of it. “Well,” he says. “You got me there.”

They all disperse to different areas of the store, after taking a moment or two to converse in the cafe. There’s some updated research on the Dyatlov Pass in a magazine Melanie usually reads, apparently, and she and Georgie head to the newsstand to check it out. Martin can hear Tim bothering Daisy to teach him how to read Cyrillic and Martin knows the rolling of her eyes is performative when she drags him along with her to the language reference section—she relishes in showing off how easily languages come to her, and never hesitates when she’s given the chance. Sasha and Basira trail along after them, both looking particularly fond as they do so.

Jon takes the lead guiding them around the store, but he doesn’t seem to have a particular destination in mind. Martin doesn’t, either, is content to drift through the aisles as they talk about nothing in particular. Sometimes it’s just nice to walk about aimlessly in a busy store with the boy you like and talk about whatever comes to mind, knowing that somewhere in the store there’s six whole other people that appreciate your company.

For a minute, they get caught up in the poetry aisle. Martin’s never been a poet himself, but he’s always had a sort of fondness for it. He’s tried writing his own, but they never really work out. He’s a lot better at more tangible forms of art.

He looks at Jon, flipping idly through one of the collections on the shelf, and wonders if he would be any good at it. Does script writing translate to poetry at all? Probably not. Martin thinks it would be nice, though, if he tried it. Then again, Martin’s liable to think anything Jon comes up with is nice, so maybe he wouldn't be the best to judge.

Jon stops to read, silently, spending more time on this one particular poem than the others he’s skimmed through. Martin considers asking him to read it out loud, before he realizes how embarrassing that would be. He does catch Jon chancing a glance at him from the corner of his eye when he finishes, though, before he folds the book closed rather abruptly, places it back on the shelf, and keeps moving. If Martin grabs it as he passes, hoping to figure out exactly which poem  he’d been reading, that’s no one’s business but his own.

Their feet take them to the photography section next, one aisle over. Martin doesn’t know much about photography, but Jon moves down the aisle with a single-minded focus, seemingly searching for a specific book. He lights up when he finds it and Martin tries not to be quite so delightfully charmed.

Once it’s clear Jon won’t offer up an explanation himself, Martin takes the initiative to ask after it on his own. “Find something?”

Jon startles a little, like he’d forgotten Martin was there with him. He looks sheepish as he turns the cover in Martin’s direction. “I, uh—I’d forgotten this was going to be out quite so soon. I’ve always been, um, interested? In photography?”

It’s stupid that Martin thinks that’s cute. “That makes sense,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

Martin shrugs. “You’re a film major. It’s not...well, it’s not the same, but? Movies. Still images. I mean, it’s like how I always think different kinds of biology are interesting. It’s close enough, and I’m not actively studying it, so it’s more fun to think about.”

Jon smiles like he wasn’t quite expecting the explanation. “Yeah, that’s—that’s exactly it, actually,” he says. “This particular photographer does studies of people in movement. It’s...interesting, looking at people in movement when it’s a still image. You have to frame it differently than you would in video, because you’re focusing on the motion rather than the movement itself.” The smile on his face grows a little self-conscious as he trails off. “If that makes sense?”

Martin nods. “No, it—it makes perfect sense, yeah.” And then, because he can’t help himself: “Show me exactly what you mean?”

Jon moves closer to him, holding out one edge of the book in his hands. Martin takes it for the invitation it is, shifting the poetry book in his hands to grab onto the side of the photography collection that he’s being offered. He shifts a little, using the excuse to slide closer to Jon so they can both see properly.

He doesn’t retain anything Jon says, as he points at different photos and talks about the differences between lighting and coloring and framing. It all sounds very competent and it is very hot, how well Jon knows what he’s talking about, but Martin is afraid that if he were asked to summarize it all, he wouldn’t be able to do it with any degree of clarity.

Even so, when he flips the page next, he moves to point out one of the photos that catches his eye so he can ask after its composition. Jon points at the same one, at the same time he does. Martin’s breath catches in his throat when their hands come in contact. He turns his head to look at Jon. Then, so slowly Martin could almost convince himself he’d imagined it, Jon turns to look back.

Martin doesn’t say anything. Jon’s eyes are steadily moving between looking at him and looking at his mouth. Martin’s heart kicks into overdrive, even as he starts tilting his head downwards. He could be imagining it, but he thinks Jon starts stretching up to meet him.

This is, of course, when Tim rounds the corner and runs into them.

“Jon!”

Martin startles, jumping away from Jon before Tim can notice the position that they’re in and say anything untoward. Jon immediately grabs Tim by the arm and drags him away, leaving Martin with barely any time to process what happened. He can catch bits of conversation between the two of them, here and there, but most of it is too quiet.

“Oh shit,” he hears Tim say, these words louder than the rest. “Were you—”

There’s a loud shushing noise that cuts him off before he hears Jon speak, much quieter than Tim had. “I am begging you not to make this a big deal, I don’t even know if that’s what it was.”

The rest is too soft spoken for Martin to make out. Out of context, none of what the two of them said means anything, really. It doesn’t stop the hope from blooming stubbornly in Martin’s chest. It was something. He may not have context, but it was still something. And that was enough, for now.

Jon may or may not be desperate.

Well, okay, he knows he’s desperate. How else is he supposed to explain the bubbling feeling that rises up in his chest when Martin does something as simple as ask if he wants to go grocery shopping? Like? It’s grocery shopping. They’re going down to the shitty student-run marketplace just off campus for vegetables and more tins of discount trail mix than any one person could or should reasonably consume on their own. There’s nothing uniquely exciting about it, and his heart rate is going to skyrocket just because he got a text from Martin that said hey I need to grab a few things today did u want to go grocery shopping with me?

It’s so stupid. Does he want to go grocery shopping. Christ.

He does want to go grocery shopping. It’s just not because he particularly wants more tins of discount trail mix.

Somehow, he manages to compose himself enough to leave the flat. Somehow, he manages to ignore all of Tim’s extremely specific innuendos (all perfectly nonsexual, in deference to Jon’s orientation).

By the time Jon gets there, Martin is already standing under the awning in front of the store, waiting. He looks up from his phone when Jon gets closer, and Jon tries not to pay attention to the tensing in his chest when Martin levels him with a gentle smile in greeting.

“You haven’t been waiting long, have you?”

“Just got here, actually,” Martin assures. “I know it takes you ages to get ready to go anywhere, so I waited a bit before I left.”

“Okay,” Jon says, only halfheartedly protesting, “I can’t be blamed for not being ready to go out when you’re only ever free before ten or after six.”

Martin has the audacity to look amused. “It’s one in the afternoon, Jon. What’s the excuse for today?”

Bi panic, mostly. “Laundry day. Clothes weren’t dry yet.”

Martin gives him a look like he knows he’s lying and is about to tease him relentlessly for it, but ultimately decides against it. “You’re such a homebody,” he says instead, holding open the door to the shop. Jon’s heard the sentiment before, in various degrees of annoyance, but never before has it sounded so fond. “You don’t have to come out if you’d rather be home, you know. I ask because I want to talk to you, but I can always meet you at home instead.”

Jon very resolutely does not let that go to his head. He also very resolutely does not mention that, short of committing unnecessary murder, there’s not much he wouldn’t do to spend a few unexpected hours with Martin. “If you don’t mind that I’m always late, it’s really not a big deal. I do like going out with you, promise.” And then he chokes a little. Going out with you, really? Really? He blows past it by rushing through the doors and pretending to be very fascinated by a display advertising vitamin D supplements. Which might actually be worse? He hasn’t decided yet.

He thinks he course-corrects fast enough to the bakery section just to the right of the display to avoid it being noticed, but it’s anyone’s guess. Either way, Martin comes to stand beside him and knocks a gentle shoulder into his own, soft enough to be on accident, and he isn’t quite sure what to do about that, but Martin doesn’t say anything, so he doesn’t either.

“So,” Jon says, clearing his throat when it clicks a little. “What are we here for, exactly?”

“Actually not much?” Martin looks nervous when he answers, color darkening his cheeks further than usual. “Should be a quick in-and-out, to be honest, just...I don’t know, thought it would be more fun if we were together, I suppose.”

Oh. “Oh.” Jon doesn't know why the admission hits him like an elbow to the windpipe. A smile curls onto his lips without his permission. He turns his head to the side to try and hide it. “That’s fair. I’ve never been one for grocery shopping, either. It is...nicer, like this.”

He means it’s nicer when you have company. He’s aware that’s not how it sounds. He’s aware of how it does sound. He goes back to studying loaves of brioche like he has any intention of buying one.

Perhaps as a result, or maybe just because he really does want some brioche, Jon isn’t too full of himself to think that he must be the cause, Martin grabs a loaf from the table in front of him and drops it into the basket hanging from his arm. Martin moves along rather quickly, maybe to save Jon some of his dignity. He appreciates it.

For a minute he just lingers there, walking slowly through the tables of baked goods, until he notices the small table of floral arrangements just beyond. There’s a tall bundle of sunflowers sitting in the middle, standing out from the rest of the drooping daisies and brightly dyed orchids. He finds himself standing in front of them without consciously moving towards them. The petals, when he reaches out, are strong and smooth underneath his fingers. He almost pulls them out of the mess of flowers on the table before he lets his hand drop back to his side.

It’s a frivolous purchase, not something he needs. He wants them, sure, thinks they would look nice sitting on the desk next to his bed, but he doesn’t have a reason to justify spending the money on himself, so he doesn’t. It’s fine. There will be other, more appropriate times to buy himself flowers.

Something catches his notice from the corner of his eye and Jon glances upwards in time to see Martin standing back in the middle of the bakery section, searching. Martin’s gaze scans the area for a second before landing on Jon and melting into something amused. He makes his way forward and grabs Jon’s hand without preamble. Jon doesn’t get any time to react to it as he pulls him along.

“I do have things to get, you know,” Martin says. “I didn’t invite you along so we could wander around on opposite sides of the store.”

Jon doesn’t respond. It’s probably for the best. He’s not sure he trusts himself to sound very steady. Instead he lets himself be led through the aisles of the market and tries very hard not to react. It’s hard, when it’s something that present. Jon keeps looking down at their hands swinging between them—Jon’s own hand angled upward, to compensate for their differences in height—and feels a million exclamation points knock against his skull every single time.

There’s a bright yellow hair tie wrapped around Martin’s wrist. Every now and again, when they walk closer to each other, Jon can feel it brush against his own wrist. For a minute, he wonders why it’s there. It can’t be Basira’s, Daisy’s hair is too short, Martin’s own curls aren’t quite long enough to warrant a tie to pull them out of his eyes. Of the rest of Jon’s friends, he thinks Tim is the only one Martin’s close enough with to do something like that, but even then it doesn’t make sense.

And then he remembers, hazy and distant. Hands in his hair, fingers picking through the tangles left by the exposed elastic and the myriad of clips pinning it all together. You know, these are bad for your hair. Jon lifts his free hand to push his hair back from his face, just to test it.

The response is near immediate—it’s like he’d been waiting for it. Martin untangles their hands to slip the tie off his wrist and hands it over without even looking, still scanning the shelves like a more appealing brand of breakfast cereal is going to make itself known if he stares hard enough. It looks deliberate. Jon can’t comment, because so was his acting like leaving his hair down was bothering him.

Martin looks rather pleased with himself by the time Jon is finished putting his hair up, not bothering to hide the soft smile that blooms across his lips. It pins Jon right on the spot, like a butterfly under glass. He clears his throat before he speaks, so he doesn’t embarrass himself. “Thanks.” Martin shrugs like it’s no big deal, even though the look on his face says otherwise.

Everything stagnates for a moment. It’s like someone hit pause on a remote and they couldn’t move even if they wanted to. Martin breaks it first by reaching out to grab for Jon’s hand again, a movement so unexpected it jolts him right back into moving. This isn’t something they do, normally, but if Martin isn’t going to make a fuss about it Jon isn’t either.

It’s something he’d like to do more, truth be told. There’s a lot more he’d like to do, too. He’s beginning to think Martin might want the same. Things have shifted between them since the holiday break. They spend more time around each other now, even more than when they stayed holed up together in the library for hours on end. Even when their schedules don’t match up enough to see each other, they’re still together in other ways. Martin always at least calls him at the end of the day when they don’t have the time to get together for lunch or impromptu grocery runs.

And then there was the day he spent sick in Martin’s flat. Then a few weeks after that, when Jon is maybe sort of convinced that Martin had been about to kiss him before Tim rounded the corner and made him jump about a foot in the air. The thousand times in between when he’d answered the phone to hear Martin’s smile bright through the receiver as he said hello, even when he was about to launch into a ten minute complaint about how stupid it was to only have two microscopes in a lab of thirty students not two seconds afterwards. Like his day was better just because Jon was there to listen.

The thing is, Jon doesn't usually pursue relationships. He wants to, especially with Martin he finds, but it's...hard. He's too blunt, he's a little stoic, he has a hard time expressing how he's feeling, he has to explain to them that he doesn't want to have sex, not just with them but with anyone, and sit through whatever their reactions may be. The only person it was ever really easy with was Georgie, but that was in high school when things were decidedly easier all around and anyway it's not like it really worked out. They'd just sort of...fallen in together, and just as soon they'd fallen out. Not dramatically, their transition into friendship was as smooth as anything, they lived together for a semester in college even, before Georgie dropped out and met Melanie, but still. They'd never left themselves time to be friends first, Jon thinks was the problem. Maybe if they had they'd realized that's all they were suited for a lot sooner.

He and Martin had been friends first. For a while now. And it's nice. It's great, even. But there's something more there. He doesn't think he can deny anymore that the something more probably goes both ways. So in his experience it usually isn't worth it, yes, but Martin isn’t exactly usual. Martin is worth a lot. A lot more than Jon can probably give him, but he can start by giving him the effort.

And Martin’s hand is still in his, and neither of them says anything about it, and Martin doesn’t even look like he notices, and Jon keeps trying not to react. He supposes it must not even register as something noteworthy, considering not too long ago Jon had spent a considerable amount of time lying across Martin’s lap like it was nothing, falling asleep with his hands in his hair like it was a regular occurrence. If you can’t hold someone’s hand without ceremony after that, what can you do?

If you can't ask someone out for dinner after that, like Jon desperately wants to, what can you do?

He’s never made the first move, but...well, this isn’t really the first move, is it? There’s been a few moves already, so many he can’t quite count them all. The moves may have started all the way back at the beginning, actually, with tea and asking for pens and watching each other’s things without being asked in that sunny back corner of the library. They’ve been locked in this dance for a while, when Jon thinks about it.

He could be wrong, but...he doesn’t think he is. At least, he hopes he isn’t.

So it takes him until they leave the market and arrive at the entrance to Jon’s building to gather up the courage, but he does it. Makes the first move, that is—or the fifth, or the tenth, or the thousandth. Doesn’t matter which one it is, really. Just that he’s making it.

They both linger on the sidewalk, neither of them too keen on separating just yet. They’re running out of excuses to stay there, talking. Jon decides it’s now or never.

“Martin,” he starts, interrupting a silence where they’re just standing there, staring, trying to think of something to keep them there for a while longer. “I, um—actually, I was talking to Melanie the other day and she mentioned this restaurant she’d just been to with Georgie—a diner, I think, like they have in America.” Martin looks like he isn’t quite sure why Jon finds it so hard to describe a restaurant without having to restart his sentence no less than three times. Jon doesn’t know why, either, but he assumes it has something to do with the fact that his heart is beating so fast he can feel it in his brain.

“I was wondering,” he continues, and he can barely hear himself over the rush of blood in his ears, but he presses on anyway. “If you might want to go with me? Next weekend, maybe.”

Was that too soon? Should he have suggested a day further away? Or was it not soon enough? Would Martin forget? Would he forget? He was more likely to forget, all things considered, maybe he should—

“Sure, Jon.” Martin’s answer comes quick enough that Jon doesn’t have the time to throw himself in a proper spiral about it. Just the same, his ears start ringing when he realizes Martin has answered and the ringing gets ever louder when he realizes the answer was an incontestable yes.

“Really?”

Martin huffs out a laugh like Jon is being particularly daft. It’s a noise Jon hears a lot. “Really, Jon, it sounds nice. I’ll see you then. Or, well, before then too more than likely, but. Yeah, I’ll go with you.”

Right. Well. That was easier than he expected.

“Great,” Jon says, maybe a bit too loud. The adrenaline hasn’t quite left his system yet. “Well, I’ll see you. Like you said. I should probably get upstairs before Tim thinks I’ve lost my keys, or something.”

Martin starts backwards down the sidewalk as he says his goodbyes. “I’ll see you, Jon. Have a good night, I’ll call you later.” He turns after a final wave in Jon’s direction and Jon will reluctantly admit to watching him leave for much longer than is warranted before he finally enters his building and finds his way into his flat.

When he starts unloading his bag, Jon notices something out of place. There’s an irregularly shaped thing sitting in the middle of his unnecessary tins of discount trail mix, wrapped in brown paper. He didn’t purchase anything that needed to be wrapped, he thinks. Truth be told he can’t fully remember what he did purchase, too preoccupied with thoughts of Martin’s hand settled warmly in his own to really pay attention to anything the cashier was doing. Only one way to find out, he supposes.

Peeling back the paper reveals long, green stems and waxy, yellow petals. Jon knows he didn’t buy these. He distinctly remembers forcing himself to leave them be and only buy what he needed, even though he didn’t really need anything and just walked out with a couple tins of trail mix and a bag or two of shredded cheese because he thought people would accuse him of stealing if he left without buying anything.

But Martin had found him there. Had noticed him lingering, probably. Had likely gone back for them when he’d left Jon at the checkout by himself with the excuse that he’d forgotten something and he’d be back in just a moment, don’t worry about it, go ahead and buy your things. If Jon thinks about it for too long his brain starts melting.

So he puts everything away and fills the one vase he owns with water and carries the flowers into his room, all the while trying not to look too visibly pleased in case Tim walks out of his room and finds him there with flushed cheeks and warmth in his eyes and makes him spill all the details right then and there. Jon wants a minute to have this for himself.

It's not a date. It's not a date. Jon would've said if it was a date. And he didn't! So it isn't. Which is fine! It's fine. Really, Martin is okay that it isn't a date.

Except that he kind of wants it to be a date. Wants it more than he wants most things, actually. And it kind of feels like it's supposed to be one? But it isn't. Because Jon hadn't said it was. And that's it.

He wonders if maybe Jon had forgotten to mention it was a date. Martin had been a little confused as to why he’d sounded so nervous when he brought it up. But if he had, then he’d surely have mentioned it by now, right? It’s been a week, after all. They’re meeting for dinner in two hours. He would have mentioned it. Even Jon wouldn’t let that slip his notice.

So it’s not a date! And that’s fine. Sort of.

Except he gets there and meets Jon where he’s waiting outside and it feels even more like it’s supposed to be a date because Jon has never been on time a day in his life, let alone early. It only gets worse when they go inside. There’s a lot of stuttering over words and Martin can’t quite get himself to make eye contact and every time their knees knock together under the table on accident, they both just about jump out of their skin. Martin gets halfway to asking about fifteen times over the course of the night, but his nerves take over every time and he lets it go.

Because it isn’t a date. He knows that. Jon doesn’t beat around the bush about anything, and if he wanted to date him, then he would have asked point blank. The thing is sometimes Martin gets the feeling that Jon does want to date him. Like when he shows up places still wearing the jacket Martin had loaned him months ago, or when he flushes so deep Martin thinks he’s going to have to take him to the emergency room any time they brush hands, or when he says things like I just wanted to see you even when he looks half dead and like he could do with about two days of staying at home not seeing anyone. When he lets Martin pull him around a grocery store by the hand for two hours without once letting go except to tie his hair back. When Martin very nearly loses his head and just kisses him in the middle of a busy shop at two in the afternoon and he doesn’t make a move to pull away until someone interrupts.

But all that could mean anything, really. It doesn’t mean this is a date in the slightest. Jon would’ve told him.

And then Jon insists on paying at the end of the night.

“It was a date,” Daisy says when he shows up at hers and Basira’s later in a panic.

Martin sprawls rather dramatically over the carpet in their living room while they look down at him pityingly from where they’re puttering around in the kitchen. “But he didn’t say it was. And it can’t have been because then if it was, I blew it and he’s never going to want to date me again.”

He can practically hear Basira rolling her eyes when she answers. “If you think he’s not going to want to date you just because the night was a little awkward, I think you don’t pay enough attention to the way he looks at you.”

“Or the way he talks about you,” Daisy adds. “I love him, Martin, but every time we have a conversation about you it makes me want to rip my own teeth out. I don’t even talk about Basira like that.”

“You do,” Basira says, “but that’s beside the point.”

“Guys. You don’t get it. I said maybe three words all night. I think I spent most of the time making sure I was looking somewhere near him rather than at him. He asked me if I was feeling well, like, nine times.”

The noise that comes out of Daisy’s mouth then can only be described as a cackle. “Oh, Martin, you’re both practically dating already, what was the big deal?”

Martin refuses to touch the implication that they’ve already been dating for months. They haven’t. He thinks he would at least know that much with some degree of certainty. “I didn’t think it was a date!” he insists. “But then when I got there I couldn’t tell and I was too nervous to ask and…” He trails off with a groan, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I ruined it.”

Daisy sighs and finally crosses into the living area. “Right then,” she says. “Basira, help me move the table out of the way.”

“What? Why?” Basira sounds as confused as Martin feels.

“Our friend is clearly insistent on spending the night moping on our floor,” Daisy responds. “We’re going to mope with him. Come on.”

“I just finally got the water boiling—”

“Basira.”

There’s another sigh, this one sounding performatively put upon, and suddenly the table is moved into the corner and Martin’s friends are laying down on either side of him, one hand in each of his.

“So why don’t you think it was a date, then?” Basira asks first.

“He did not explicitly tell me it was a date,” Martin answers.

“What did he tell you?”

“He asked if I wanted to get dinner. Which in my defense we do all the time.”

They both seem to be waiting for him to expand on his answer. He doesn’t. Daisy breaks the silence first. “O-kay. Context. What were you doing when he asked?”

Martin isn’t sure what that has to do with anything. “Literally just grocery shopping.”

Daisy sighs. “Martin, I need you to work with me here. I’m trying to convince you that this was a date and you’re not giving me a lot to go on.”

“I’m telling you, it can’t have been a date. I needed a few things from the market, so I asked him to come with me and when we got back to his place we talked for a bit and he asked me to dinner. That’s it.”

Daisy and Basira crane their heads to look at each other over Martin where he lays between them. They seem to come to some sort of conclusion before settling back down to resume staring at the ceiling. “You’re leaving things out,” Basira says.

“I’m not!” Martin feels them both staring at him. “Okay, I am, but it’s not important and it’s none of your business.”

“Martin.”

“Daisy.”

“Martin.”

Martin sighs. “Okay, fine. Fine! I may have had a moment of insanity where I decided it would be appropriate to hold his hand through the entire store without saying anything. But I fail to see what that has to do with it not being a date.”

There’s another silence before Basira speaks again. “Martin. Exactly how did he ask you to dinner?”

He shrugs. “Dunno, he sounded kind of nervous, I guess? Which I thought was weird, but I figure maybe he was in a rush to get inside. He asked if I was sure about it, kind of like he was surprised? But we’re both pretty busy these days, so. To be honest I’m surprised too when our schedules finally match up.”

“Martin.”

“Yes, Daisy.”

“I don’t know how else to tell you this, but you held a man’s hand and he asked you to dinner afterwards. And he was visibly nervous and unsure. You went on a date.”

Yeah, when Martin says it out loud, he can kind of see that. He always has been good at denial, though. “I think he would have at least mentioned it after he found the flowers, if he had forgotten to tell me it was a date.”

“I’m sorry, after he found the what?”

“You bought him what?”

Right. He knew there was a reason he left that part out, the first time.

“That’s not important,” he says. “The point is: he had time to tell me it was a date. And he didn’t. So it wasn’t.”

“Except that it clearly was,” Basira says.

“Yeah,” Daisy agrees, “I don’t know if you noticed, but Jon is kind of bad at these things in general. He doesn’t talk about his feelings a lot, you have to look for it. And when he does, he doesn’t explain. He just says it and figures you know what, exactly, he’s saying.”

“But—”

“You know how Daisy and I started dating?” Basira asks. “She told me where to meet her when I asked if she was busy during the weekend and spent about four hours walking me around town buying me things. I didn’t know it was supposed to be a date, either.”

Daisy sits up suddenly so she can look at Martin when she speaks this time. “Embarrassing, but she’s right. This is the same thing. I can tell, because it’s something I would do. Because I have done it.”

They’re right. Martin knows they’re right. But he hates that they’re right, because now he has to deal with it. Now he has to ask. Has to make himself vulnerable and talk about feelings. Which is kind of what he’d been avoiding in the first place, if he’s honest. At least Jon had been able to say something about it, even if it hadn’t come across the way he meant it.

“Ay,” Martin says.

Daisy nods solemnly. “Ay.”

Basira nudges him with her elbow. “You’re catastrophizing.”

He nods. “Yes, probably.”

“Why?”

He sighs again. “If I asked him on a date, and he didn’t know it was supposed to be one and he acted like I did tonight, I would pretty much consider it over before it started. Because my behavior probably wasn’t very encouraging.”

Basira hums, considering. “You mentioned he looked kind of unsure the whole time too, though, right? He probably realized he forgot to ask and then just...didn’t want to say anything.”

“But then—”

“You looked uncomfortable, Martin,” Daisy says. “You wouldn’t even look at him, you said. If you already seem nervous, he’s not going to just say ‘oh hey, by the way, this is a date. Surprise!’ What, is that going to make you less nervous?”

“Probably not, no,” Martin admits. “But still—”

Daisy tilts her head up in exasperation and makes a noise that kind of sounds like a growl. “So you had a bad date, whatever. You both kind of got in your own way. He still likes you. Kind of a lot, if I had to hazard a guess. So just...get out of your own way. Fix it. Man up and ask him on a real date, and then in ten years when you’re telling your kids how you got together you can all have a good laugh about it.”

Martin chokes a little. “Right, yeah, um—okay, sure. Right. Great.”

“Look,” Daisy says. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get off the floor until you stopped moping. Kind of need you to give me something here, this carpet hasn’t been cleaned in entirely too long.”

Martin knows that’s a lie, because Daisy cleans the carpet kind of obsessively for that exact reason—that she can’t stand when it’s dirty. He can tell she’s trying to help by lightening the mood, though, so he goes along with it. “Yes, fine. You’re right, you always have been right, and I’ll...I’ll talk to him.”

“Good.”

“So then,” Basira says, squeezing his hand before she lets go and stands up, “problem solved. You’re going to tell him that yes, you are in love with him, he’s going to be relieved, and you’ll both get to be just as obnoxiously in love as you have been, only now you’ll both finally know that you’re dating.”

Daisy gets up to join Basira back in the kitchen after giving Martin one last look, equal parts gentle and chastising. “It’s going to be fine, Martin,” she says. “Stop creating problems for yourself.”

Martin elects to stay on the floor for a while longer, collecting himself. He’s not sure what, exactly, he’s going to say, or how, but he has time, he supposes. It doesn’t have to be now. It doesn’t even have to be this weekend. It should be soon, probably, but thinking about it makes his heart beat about four times too fast in his chest, so he doesn’t think about it. Maybe in the morning.

Somehow, Jon finds himself with all seven of his friends packed into his flat, arguing over whether they should be watching a nature documentary or binging bad reality television. Jon thinks they should all be working on getting their final projects of the year started, but he can’t deny that he could do with a night or two off before he has to really hit the books, so he doesn’t mention it. He knows everyone can likely tell he’s thinking it, anyway, and that’s good enough.

Instead he leaves them all to figure it out and makes his way to his bedroom to grab the quilt off his mattress. It’s only just past noon, but chances are he’s going to end up asleep leaning against the front of the couch about an hour into whatever they decide on, and if he’s going to give himself a stiff neck, he’s at least going to be comfortable. He doesn’t notice that Tim follows him until he speaks.

“So, how’s Martin?”

The question startles him, and Jon whips around with the quilt held aloft like it would realistically help anything if he was actually being threatened. “Jesus Christ, Tim, make a noise next time.”

“I did,” Tim answers cheerily. “Don’t avoid the question.”

Jon sighs. “You can ask him yourself, he’s on our couch.”

Tim looks equal parts sympathetic and exhausted when he replies. “You know what I meant, Jon. Weren’t you meant to be on a date a couple weeks ago? You were excited about it, I could tell. What happened with that?”

Yes. He was meant to be on a date a couple weeks ago. But the trick of it was that he forgot to mention that it was a date And Martin clearly thought it was just supposed to be a friendly dinner, like usual. Because they had dinner together kind of a lot, actually, so why should he assume it was a date? And Jon hadn’t been able to figure out how to tell him he meant it romantically, especially when he’d already let it go so long without saying anything. So they had avoided talking about it rather awkwardly and moved on afterward like nothing happened, acting just the same as they had before only now the romantic tension between them manifested as a visible haze whenever they were within a hundred feet of each other. Jon didn’t know how to fix that.

So they’re just kind of...somewhere in between, at the moment. Martin grabs his hand sometimes when they’re out, and Jon leans his head on Martin’s shoulder when they’re studying together late at night and he starts to get tired, and they just...don’t say anything about it. It works, except that Jon thinks one of them is liable to explode within the next week if one of them doesn’t do something soon. Easier said than done. Because yes the tension is there and yes Jon would very much like to be dating and yes he’s more than a little convinced that Martin would, too, at this point, but he’s already mucked it up once. What’s to say he’s not going to do it again?

What’s to say he’s not just making it all up? He’s not great at reading people, really. He’s been disastrously wrong about things like this before. It had taken enough out of him to ask Martin to dinner in the first place, to work past everything that was telling him not to do it it, that he would look stupid if he did, trying to convince him despite everything that there wasn’t actually anything between them in the first place. He’s not sure he has it in him to do that a second time.

Tim is still looking at him kind of expectantly. He sighs again. “Right. Well, the thing is I kind of...forgot to tell him?”

Tim blinks. “You...forgot to tell him? You asked him on a date, and you forgot to tell him. Jonathan Sims, you have got to be the biggest disaster I have ever met. Why don’t you just tell him now?”

“Well it’s been too long now, hasn’t it? And what if—what if he’s just pretending he didn’t know it was a date, because he wanted to let me down easy or something, what if he doesn’t—”

“Stop,” Tim says. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to you tell yourself blatant lies. You know he does. He probably knows you do. You’re both just waiting for each other to do something without realizing that’s what the other is doing, too. I’m not going to push you into doing anything right now, obviously, you don’t look like you’re up for that and certainly not in front of everyone, but think about it, yeah? Soon.”

And Tim is usually right. He knows how Jon’s brain works better than anyone else, and more often than not his perspective on the situation is usually closer to the truth than anything Jon’s rapidly spiraling thoughts can come up with. Jon trusts his insight. “Right. I will.”

Tim gives him a look like he doesn’t quite believe him. “I’m trusting that you mean that,” he says. “And stop selling yourself short on everything, I’m going to tell Georgie to yell at you again because you’re not being fair to yourself. People like you, Jon. Rightly so.”

Sometimes Jon wonders what he's done to have people like Tim who care about him so much. Seven of them, even, all gathered in his living room fighting good naturedly over the merits of what is all objectively very bad television. He never asks. He knows what everyone's answer would be, anyway. Sometimes it just has to be enough to believe that they mean it. It's easy to do that on nights like this one.

Tim knocks a shoulder into his own. “Come on. Don’t want them to think we’re into each other.”

Jon snorts rather inelegantly. “Please. They haven’t even noticed we’re not there. I bet you Melanie’s trying to convince them to put it on some true crime drama instead as a ‘compromise.’”

“I bet you Martin has noticed we’re not in there.”

The idea, stupidly, sends a thrill down Jon’s spine. “Shut up,” he says, pretending it hadn’t. He’s sure Tim sees right through him.

They both turn out to be right. Most of them are clustered together around the coffee table, stealing the remote back and forth to pitch their choices to each other. Somehow even more choices have been added into the mix, including, as Jon had predicted, a new crime documentary that had been added to Netflix earlier that month that Melanie had been dying to see. Martin is the only one that sits apart from the commotion, curled into one corner of the couch and angled slightly in such a way that he could easily see movement coming from the hallway. Jon can see the exact moment Martin catches sight of them emerging and promptly feels like his skin is peeling off.

It should be illegal to look at someone like that. Like how, he can’t quite place, but it should be illegal all the same.

Martin pats at the open space next to him after catching Jon’s attention, and, well. Jon had planned on taking his space on the floor, like he usually does on nights like this where people are over and he doesn’t want to crowd everyone, but. He’s only human, you see. And Martin is warm, and he smells nice, and he’s looking at him like that, and Jon had promised Tim that he would at least try, so. Yeah. He takes the seat.

“Are you alright?” Martin asks when he sits down. There’s a slight crease in his brow, and the words are softer than Jon’s ever heard them. Jon thinks his bones might be liquefying. Like, actually. It’s a very real concern.

“Fine,” he answers. Then, to avoid having to explain, he offers up a corner of the quilt. The crease in Martin’s brow melts into a smile as he accepts.

Jon couldn’t tell you what everyone ended up settling on. He hazards a guess that it’s probably some variation of a crime drama, judging by Melanie’s barking laugh of superiority. Or maybe it’s more likely that it’s one of those paranormal retelling shows that she and Georgie like to laugh at for being so unprofessional, considering the amount of scoffing he hears coming from where they’re crowded together on the ancient office chair that masquerades as living room furniture.

That’s all he’s got to go on. He doesn’t process anything that’s on the screen, despite steadfastly staring straight ahead and willing himself not to twitch too much at the feeling of Martin’s thigh pressing warmly up against his own.

He’s so absorbed in focusing on that that he startles a little when Daisy sits in front of him on the floor, letting herself lean against his legs. Once he recovers, he reaches out a hand to squeeze her shoulder in recognition. She reaches back, a quick tap of her knuckles against his hand in response, before tugging Basira closer to her on the floor. Jon feels eyes on him and turns to see Martin regarding the interaction with a small, fond smile. His neck burns and he turns his attention back to the television. It’s one of those paranormal retelling shows, like he’d suspected.

Jon doesn’t end up falling asleep, at least not then. He’s too keyed up for that, at the moment, and once Sasha and Tim join in on the ridicule that Melanie and Georgie are throwing at the screen it becomes too loud to fall asleep anyway.

Once it’s gotten late and they’ve all indulged in more than their fair share of carbs, though, the environment becomes a little smoother. They’re all dozing, barely offering up any commentary except to laugh when the actor’s portrayals get a bit too exaggerated. Jon lets himself lean into Martin more and more as he feels himself drifting and very pointedly does not notice it when Martin lets an arm fall over his shoulders to hold him in place.

He’s not sure how long he’s been out for when he starts to hear voices, louder than the hushed laughter that had lulled him to sleep.

“Just leave him, Martin, he’ll be fine,” he hears Tim say.

“He can’t be comfortable like that,” Martin responds, sounding like he’s standing somewhere above and behind Jon. “I’ve slept on this couch before, you remember, I know what it does to bones.”

Jon could get up now. He should get up now. He kind of wants to see what plays out if he doesn’t, though.

“Well, I’m not going to move his scrawny ass into his room.”

Oh fuck. Jon should really get up now. For the sake of his dignity. But if he’s technically asleep. Can you have dignity when you’re unconscious? Does he care if he does?

Martin’s voice is higher than usual when he responds. “I wasn’t going to suggest that!”

“Good luck waking him up, then. He’s a heavy sleeper,” Tim lies. There’s a fifty-fifty chance Tim knows he’s awake at this point and is just pretending to be asleep. The other half of the fifty-fifty is just Tim trying to get Martin all worked up. It’s probably both, actually.

It works, is the thing. Because the next thing Jon knows, Martin is very resolutely saying “well I’m not just going to leave him here, finals are coming up and I’m not going to let him hurt himself on his own couch before he even gets halfway through studying,” and then Jon is being lifted rather unceremoniously into the air. It takes everything he has not to let out a very undignified squeak. 

Look, Jon’s not exactly a big guy, alright, Sasha can lift him, but this. Well. Jon’s not biromantic for nothing.

He thinks it would be worse, if he were to wake up now. And it’s not like it isn’t nice. And if he keeps his eyes closed, then there’s no way for him to know who’s watching him and having a laugh at his expense. So he focuses his attention on remaining convincingly limp as Martin deposits him in his room and gently maneuvers the quilt around him so it’s less tangled up in his limbs. And he keeps his breathing as steady and even as possible when Martin slips his glasses off his face and sets them somewhere on his bedside table.

When Martin brushes Jon’s hair away from his forehead and whispers a quiet goodnight, Jon has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from returning the sentiment. He relaxes a bit when he hears the click of his door closing, but it’s a while before he’s able to settle enough to sleep. When he does, it’s with the thought of Martin holding him close on the couch. He wonders if Martin might have done the same now, if he’d had the courage to ask.

It aches.

Martin can’t take it anymore. They’ve almost kissed once, he’s pretty sure that night at that diner was supposed to be a date no matter how many times he’s convinced himself otherwise, and he knows Jon lets him get away with way more than anyone else he’s friends with, even Tim. There’s no point dancing around it anymore. That is, of course, easier said than done.

Because one minute he’s decided fuck it, here goes nothing, and the next he’s staring blankly at Jon from the other side of his kitchen counter with his heart in his ass because what if he’s wrong. What if he says it and Jon doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or he gives him that look, the one he normally reserves for when he comes across a particularly bad bit of writing in a movie, where you can just tell he’s thinking, “why would they do that? Why would they think that makes sense?”

He knows Jon isn’t going to laugh at him, he isn’t mean, but he’d get that calculating stare on his face, like he was trying to decide just exactly how Martin came to the conclusion that Jon liked him, and how he should best go about breaking the news to him that he’d gotten it all wrong. And that actually might be worse. Martin can take a rejection, not that he’s ever gathered up enough of his courage before to really get to a point where rejection might be an option, but he thinks if Jon treats him with that gentle kindness, like he thinks he’s going to have a breakdown or something, Martin might actually have a breakdown.

It doesn’t escape his notice that it’s pretty stupid of him to be having this particular crisis while Jon is literally standing in the middle of his kitchen in socked feet, a towel slung over his shoulder while he washes their dishes because he always insists on it when they have dinner together at Martin’s flat even though it’s almost always just takeaway. There’s still soap in his hair from when Martin flung it at him after halfheartedly arguing over letting him at least help. It’s something straight out of a scene from one of his most embarrassingly domestic daydreams.

So it should at least be some sort of indication that things aren’t going to come crashing down around him when Jon had simply turned his head to the side and rubbed the excess soap directly into Martin’s shirtsleeve without looking up from the sink as he continued to scrub at the dishes and a brilliant smile spread across his lips.

Still, though. Heart in his ass, and everything.

He can loophole his way out of it, maybe? If he alludes to having a crush on someone, but he doesn’t say who it is, then maybe...maybe then, if he’s wrong, he can play the fool, say “oh no no, not like that, of course not, I know you don’t, this is someone completely different.” Not that he’s ever been that good at lying to Jon in the first place, but it’s worth a shot.

“Jon? Can I ask you a personal question? Personal for me, not for you.”

Jon looks up briefly at the question, pulling his hands out of the dishwater and turning his gaze back and forth, presumably trying to find the towel that is still firmly sitting atop his right shoulder. Martin plucks it off his shoulder and leans back against the counter, letting it hang off one finger while Jon spins around at the feeling of the towel brushing past his neck.

He smiles sheepishly as he takes it, drying off his hands as he asks, “You want to ask me a personal question about yourself? Am I being tested on something?”

“No, I...I mean it’s just something that’s personal to me, it’s not about me. It’s hard for me to ask, is what I mean.”

Martin doesn’t quite succeed in not letting himself sound too nervous. It gets Jon to slow his movements some, fumbling behind him to discard the towel onto the counter without taking his eyes off Martin. “Are you alright?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, it’s—it’s nothing, I…” Martin takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “There’s...a guy.” Jon raises an eyebrow. “I think I might...like? Him? And I think he might...like me.” When Jon doesn’t respond right away, he continues. Martin tries to put just enough feeling in his voice as he speaks, enough that it’s clear he’s dropping some pretty unmistakable hints, but hopefully not so much that it’s too obvious, in case he does end up being wrong. “But I’m not sure? I mean, there’s plenty of evidence in support, and I am quite sure, actually, but I’m not...sure. If that makes sense? It’s like...we’ve both been sort of...dancing around it, I guess you would say, and—and I don’t know, I guess I’ve convinced myself that it’s just my being hopeful, at this point.”

Jon seems to deflate more and more as Martin speaks. There’s something in his eyes as well, though, something that’s equal parts bright and hesitant. Martin isn’t quite sure how to take all of that. Is it because he’s figured it out already and he doesn’t want to have to let Martin down gently, or… Or. Martin doesn’t want to say, in case it jinxes the whole thing.

“Oh,” Jon says. Martin isn’t quite sure how to take that, either. “Well, he’d have to be rather stupid not to like you back, wouldn’t he?”

It’s the way he says it that does Martin in. Like he’s a little sad, yes, but also a touch...hopeful, maybe? Like he knows, but he isn’t quite sure, so he’s preparing for either outcome.

Martin takes another deep breath, until he can practically feel his lungs pressed up against his ribcage. “Well...would you? Like me back, I mean.”

He’s met with about forty-five seconds of dead silence. Martin had never really understood the phrase “the silence was deafening” until that moment. He can hear his blood rushing in his ears, feel the beat of it where it’s stuck firmly in his throat. The sound of the bubbles still popping in the sink is suddenly very sharp. If he concentrates very, very hard, he thinks he can make out the sound of the clock in his room even through the closed door, ticking away as it counts down the seconds.

Counts down the seconds to what, though, he’s not sure. Jon’s expression isn’t exactly giving him a lot to go on. He looks a bit frozen, actually? Like when you click a link too many times and the screen is still loading. You know, how the timer keeps spinning around and around in circles and you can tell it’s thinking about responding, finally, but it’s still firmly stuck on the same original screen, so you just...keep clicking even though you know that won’t fix it? It’s a little like that. Only, instead of clicking the link over and over again, Martin is standing completely still, not daring to move at all in case he accidentally hits something else and ends up turning the whole thing off.

Well, Martin thinks. If he is going to run the risk of ruining everything, he may as well ruin it good and proper. “It’s you, Jon,” he says. “I’m talking about you.”

Jon still doesn’t respond. The silence isn’t quite as loud this time, though, because even if Jon doesn’t respond he at least finally reacts. All the hesitation in his eyes leaves in one quick rush, replaced almost immediately by something else. Martin hesitates to put a name to it, but he recognizes it just the same. So he smiles a little, encouraging. And Jon smiles back, slowly. And he waits. And Jon still doesn’t respond.

“Well?” Martin asks, laughing nervously despite himself. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Jon hopes he’s talking about him. He doesn’t dare to hope at all, in case he’s wrong. Martin isn’t exactly good at being subtle, nor is he good at keeping a secret. Perhaps it’s a wonder how they haven’t had this conversation before, actually, especially considering everything else that’s happened.

But the thing is, Jon has been steadfastly operating under the assumption that he feels way more for Martin than Martin does for him, even considering everything else that’s happened. That’s just how it is, usually, in his experience.

Or was it? Jon’s always assumed it was the case, that people didn’t care for him nearly as much as he cared for them, but...that didn’t seem to be true anymore. Maybe it was never true at all.

Tim always picks up on his nerves and uses himself as a buffer between Jon and whatever’s bothering him, without even asking or making a big deal out of it. Sasha always notices when he’s being quiet instead of just being quiet and makes it a point to check up on him afterwards, out of earshot of anyone else. Daisy had figured out how starved he was for physical affection almost immediately and didn’t hesitate in draping herself over his shoulders at any opportunity, even when they had only known each other for a week or two. Melanie knows all of his favorite orders from every restaurant they’ve ever been to together and always brings something back for him when she and Georgie are out. Georgie still gets so defensive when someone says something mean about him that she thinks he doesn’t deserve, even when that someone is himself. Basira notices when he’s being talked over and nods at him to continue, a silent acknowledgement that she’s still listening even if no one else is.

And Martin.

Martin had spent half of finals week knitting Jon a special scarf just because he complained once that his hands hurt when the weather turned cold. Martin keeps spare hair ties around his wrist, just in case Jon forgets to bring his own. Martin laughs at his terrible jokes and thinks his constant commentary during movies is endearing and always looks faintly pleased with himself whenever he lends Jon a spare change of clothes. Martin once bought him sunflowers just because.

And then, cutting through it all, he hears, “it’s you, Jon. I’m talking about you.”

Because of course he is. Of course he’s talking about Jon, it’s always been there right in front of him. Even when he didn’t know, when he didn’t want to let himself think about it too hard in case he’d gotten his feelings hurt, it was right there. The way Martin’s looking at him right now, that’s the way he’s always looked at him.

It was there that Saturday when Jon was sick. The details are hazy, but Jon still remembers. Remembers the soft glances Martin sent his way, despite how his eyes were crusted over and burning, despite the wetness around his nose, the redness there. Remembers how he had said “please stay” and Martin had looked so stricken as he responded, said “I’m coming right back,” and how when he did it was with a smile so gentle Jon thought he might have been liable burst into flames right then and there. Although, to be fair that may have been the fever talking.

It was there three days after that, when Martin caught the same virus. When Jon walked down to his flat after receiving a text that just said feeling sick can’t make it today :( and Martin had answered the door with fogged up glasses and a blanket around his shoulders, arms crossed firmly over his chest, and he had looked so miserable but his eyes still brightened when he saw Jon in the hallway. When Jon wordlessly walked into Martin’s bathroom after one too many coughing fits and turned the water on as hot as it would go and eased Martin to sit across from him on the cold tile floor, hand on his chest so he could follow his breathing, and Martin had opened his eyes finally when his chest felt less tight and all he could seem to focus on was Jon.

That day when they all went to the book shop, when they had been aimlessly walking through aisles before stopping to flip through a photography collection, and they had both reached out to point at a particular image at the same time, and they both looked over at each other so slowly that Jon swore he could feel every individual muscle in his neck twisting with the motion. That night at the diner, when Jon fucked up and forgot to tell Martin he wanted to date him, and Martin had spent most of the night with that little nervous wrinkle between his brows and every time they knocked knees under the table he would straighten up and smile a little unevenly.

Even before all of that. Even back when they barely knew each other’s names. When Jon bought him lunch that first time and Martin fretted over his hands and said “just thought it was cute, is all.” Just after that, when Martin had fumbled with his phone when trying to ask for his phone number.

It’s hard to pinpoint when it started. It’s even harder to catalogue every moment.

The night they spent doing laundry in Jon’s complex’s basement. The afternoon Martin stopped by his flat with a bottle of water and a winning grin and told him they were going out for a walk. The days neither of them could get away from their work and they spent the day with each other on facetime in the corners of their rooms.

Every lunch. Every library meeting. Every cup of tea, every time they met up in the chemistry lab, every night spent at the other’s place because they lost track of time.

It’s always been there. It’s always been Jon.

It’s always been Martin.

A nervous laugh captures Jon’s attention. “Aren't you going to say anything?”

And Jon can’t help but tease, now that he knows. “You think you might like him?”

Martin reaches out and shoves at his shoulder, the laugh he gives now sounding much more relieved. “Shut up, Jon.”

“I’m just saying, I need reassurances, you know. Might get a complex about it otherwise.”

“Think I’m starting to change my mind, actually.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.” Martin sits much more relaxed than a few minutes earlier, face less pinched, hands no longer shaking slightly. There’s a wry look in his eye now, voice confident and purposefully dry as he says, “I might get a complex about it, though, if you don’t answer me.”

Jon might be the slightest bit nervous at the prospect of verbalizing it. He might deflect that nervousness the only way he knows how: by being kind of a bastard. “Mm, I don’t recall you asking a question, though.”

“Jon.” There’s that look again, the one that’s just run a montage of its greatest hits through his brain. Jon gets the sudden urge to stretch its limits—if it stayed stubbornly in place even when he was being deliberately obtuse, what else would it stay through? Would it be just as soft and intense if it saw him in the middle of a class, arguing over something just for the sake of it? If it saw him painstakingly removing every bit of shredded lettuce from a pre-wrapped sandwich from the student market because he didn’t like the way it felt like hair in his throat? If it saw him gasping for air in the middle of the night, eyes wide as he jerked awake?

Jon knows the answer must be yes. It’s still there even as Martin prompts him the second time. “Please, Jon. For me.”

There’s not much Jon wouldn’t do for Martin. Not even swallowing back all of his nerves and finally opening up about his feelings, apparently. Tim was going to be so pissed when he heard Jon was reduced to vulnerability with only minimal cajoling and he wasn’t there to see it.

“Martin, I—you have to know.” Jon can feel his heart against his ribcage as he speaks. He tries his best to maintain eye contact regardless. “You have to know how I feel about you—how I care for you.”

Martin looks like he itches. It’s a curiously happy look, on him. “I thought so. Hard to be sure, sometimes, with all the back and forth.”

And that just won’t do. Jon can’t afford to be vague, not about this. It’s too important.

“I do like you, Martin. Kind of a lot.”

Jon gets the distinct impression that Martin is about to crack in half. “Kind of a lot?”

His breath leaves his lungs all in a rush, nerves fleeing alongside it. “Shut up, Martin.”

The ever-growing grin on Martin’s lips lights up Jon’s chest and he’s sure his own face is the perfect mirror image. It must look stupid, the two of them standing on opposite ends of the small kitchen, leaning against their respective counters and smiling so wide it looks like their cheeks hurt. Jon isn’t sure he minds how stupid it looks.

He does mind the distance between them, though. Five feet feels entirely too large for the moment. The two of them seem to come to that conclusion at the same time, and they meet in the middle.

They’ve been in this position before, sort of. Granted, Jon was half out of his mind with a fever and tried to spend most of that time not thinking about how nice it was, but it was nice. This is nicer still.

Jon buries his face in Martin’s shoulder now, deliberately, because there’s no reason for him not to. He leans heavily into Martin’s warmth and pulls them close enough to fuse together without any pretenses or excuses because he can. He reaches behind himself and pointedly tightens Martin’s hold around his waist because he’s come this far already and the momentum carries him along ever further.

He feels Martin’s breath moving through his chest and turns his head with the movement to say, “you know I did try to ask you on a date,” because he has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The laughter that shakes through Martin’s shoulders warms him down to his toes. “See, I thought that was supposed to be a date? But you never said, and I was too nervous to ask. Didn’t want to make it weird.”

“Yeah, I really cocked that one up,” Jon says, and he feels Martin lean down to lean their heads together. “Glad you weren’t too nervous to say anything now, though. Don’t know how long it would’ve taken me on my own.”

“Yeah.” Martin’s voice is barely a breath when he responds. “You know, as long as we’re being transparent, I very nearly almost kissed you that one day in the book shop. Not sure if you’d noticed that or not.”

“I think I did. Fancied it a bit of wishful thinking on my end, though, I’m afraid.”

“Can I kiss you now? No wishful thinking, I promise.”

Jon’s heart stops, just for a second, just long enough to feel noticeable. It makes up for it by picking up overtime.

He and Martin look up at the same time and that look is still in his eyes and Jon thinks there’s so much going on in his chest at the moment that he wouldn’t be surprised if he burst wide open. Instead, he nods.

It's ridiculous, with their height difference, how Martin has to sort of stand with his legs apart and bend at the knees to be able to rest his chin on Jon's shoulder while he stands at the counter. It's also not very comfortable. Hell if he's going to move, though.

Jon reaches across the counter for an onion, laughing softly when he meets resistance in the form of Martin tightening his hold around his waist. “You know, I thought the point of this was you wanted to learn.”

“I am learning,” Martin insists, punctuating the statement with a kiss to Jon’s shoulder. “There’s an onion in it. Didn’t know that before.”

“You’re falling asleep on me, is what you’re doing,” Jon retorts, stretching out his fingers a little farther to pull the onion in question closer to him. Martin relaxes his grip around his waist to allow him to move away if he wants to, but once Jon has the vegetable in hand he settles comfortably right back against Martin’s chest. “Think you can chop this for me?”

“Don’t know,” Martin says. He straightens up and grabs a knife from the block on the counter anyway. “Remember last time, you took the knife from me and put me in charge of watching rice instead?”

“Yes, well.” Jon puts a hand over Martin’s on the knife as he speaks. “Now I can use your horrible knife skills as an excuse to do this.”

Martin rolls his eyes, charmed as ever despite himself. “We’ve been dating for a bit now, Jon. I think you can hold my hand without making fun of me for not knowing how to cut vegetables.”

“I can,” Jon agrees. “I will. But I actually would like you to know how to use a knife, so you don’t take your whole hand off. I was trying to be cute about it.”

It still startles Martin, even after they’ve been together for just over a month, how openly affectionate Jon is. How, after spending so much time around each other stuttering over anything even sort of resembling their feelings for each other and blushing any time one of them did something that may have alluded to them having those feelings, Jon’s been able to flip it like a switch, taking no time at all to start doing things like teasing him with unnecessary excuses to hold his hand in the kitchen. To say things like I was trying to be cute about it without choking over the word cute and sounding embarrassed about it.

Martin had brought it up, once, about a week after he had finally gotten out of his own head and just told Jon how he felt about him.

It was a weekend, and they had both been shut up in Martin’s room, obsessing over studying for their respective midterms. Martin had just about been ready to tear his hair out after reading the lab procedure for his practical when Jon had taken the laptop from him and closed it before moving it over to the bedside table. And then, before Martin could protest, Jon had leaned back in one fluid motion, pulling Martin fully on top of him.

Martin had tensed instinctively, even as he’d let Jon adjust them until they fit together more comfortably.

Look. Martin didn’t care that he was fat. It’s just how he was built—he was comfortable like this. He wasn’t upset about it and he knew Jon wasn’t upset about it, but the fact of the matter was that he was. And Jon looked like a particularly strong wind could snap him in half on the best of days. So it wasn’t an insecurity thing when he consciously focused on holding himself just a little bit above Jon underneath him. It was practical.

Jon had made an impatient noise anyway, tugging at one of his arms to try and get him closer. “Relax, please. This is supposed to be a break, you’re going to make yourself sore in the morning.”

“Jon, you have to know that you’re significantly smaller than I am.”

“I hardly see what that has to do with this.”

Martin lifted his head far enough to stare at Jon reproachfully. “Really.”

Jon had just rolled his eyes, pulling and prodding until he’d had Martin where he wanted him, arms around his middle, forehead resting against his shoulder, loose and compliant and decidedly not tense. The way Jon had melted into the mattress almost immediately upon receiving the full, direct contact stole any protest Martin had right from his throat.

Still, though. “You’re alright?”

“Martin,” Jon had said, voice strong and steady and unwavering. There wasn’t much after that. Just a gentle hand on the back of Martin’s neck, fingers curling into his hair. Another hand came up to his shoulder, one finger sliding briefly under the elastic strap that had begun to peek out from under his shirt. “You’re alright?” he’d asked, softly.

Martin had taken a deep breath, assessing. Nothing had felt tight, just yet. If they’d intended on staying like that for longer than a few minutes, his answer might have been different, but Jon was notoriously diligent when it came to keeping study breaks under twenty minutes. “Fine,” he’d answered, finally. “Thank you.”

Jon had barely acknowledged the thanks as something he’d needed. “Let me know if you need to get up and stretch or anything.”

“We’re only going to be here for another ten minutes max before you decide you’ve gone too long without looking at a study guide,” Martin teased. “I’ll be okay. I can take it off later.” Jon leaves it after that, settling a kiss against the top of Martin’s head and relaxing further into the mattress. Martin had appreciated that. The casual asking after his own comfort and the way he hadn’t made a big deal out of it when he’d received an answer, hadn’t kept pushing. How Jon was worried about him, yes, but still trusted that Martin knew his own limits and didn’t try to insist that he knew better.

“You know, it would have been helpful,” Martin had said after another few minutes, “if you were going to be this affectionate with me already, if you had maybe said something about wanting to date me first, before I had to go and make myself look stupid talking about ‘you know, there’s this guy I like, but I’m not sure how to tell him.’”

Jon had just hummed and pulled Martin closer to him. And then, once Martin had given up listening for a response: "I’m sort of terrified all the time, actually.”

His voice had been so matter of fact as he said it, so nonchalant that Martin hadn’t been able to help the laugh that escaped him. “Really? Of me?”

Martin couldn’t see Jon from where his head had been tucked under the man’s chin, but he’d been able to feel the immediate shake of his head, the distinct no, of course not that it implied. “No, not you. Never you. I’m just not...used to telling people anything about how I feel, or doing anything to explicitly show them, not unless they make me. But you wouldn’t do that. And it’s important to me that you do know how I feel, so. It’s easier for me to get over it than it is for me to sit there worrying that you don’t know how much I care for you.”

And that. Well. Martin had felt his heart squeeze rather painfully in his chest, and he hadn’t been quite sure how to respond. Jon had let out a satisfied sigh at the barely-there kiss Martin had pressed against his collarbone in lieu of a response, though, so maybe he didn’t have to.

Now, Jon adjusts his hand over top of Martin’s to be more practical and begins directing him on how to slice the onion on the cutting board in front of him. “There’s a guard right here, on the back,” he says. “You want to rest your index finger against that. And then you don’t want your thumb to curl around it, you want to sort of rest it on top—no, not on the blade, just at the end of the handle—like that, great.” Martin adjusts his hold on the knife as he’s told, noticing the difference in the way it sits in his hand now as opposed to how he’d been holding it before. It feels a lot less like he’s got a murder weapon in his hand, now, for one.

Jon continues, moving their joined hands around the knife to begin chopping. “Start with the tip of it,” he says, demonstrating the movement as he speaks, “all the way through. And then sort of just rock it downwards until the base hits the board.” The root of the onion falls away and wobbles a little where it lands on the cutting board. It’s more effective than Martin’s usual method of “saw at it with a dull butter knife until you get somewhere.” The cut is a lot more even than it would have been, too.

They cut a few more slices, like that, before Jon releases his grip on Martin’s hand. The movements are a touch awkward—Martin has to keep his arm just limp enough to allow it to be moved around while also keeping enough control to move with the precise movements of the knife on his own, and Jon is clearly more practiced at it, which makes the few movements that Martin does make on his own all the more stilted—but just like earlier, when he had been ridiculously slumped over in order to keep his chin hooked over Jon’s shoulder, Martin isn’t going to say anything about it.

Jon leaves him with that, ducking under Martin’s arm and moving on to mince up a truly alarming amount of garlic. He makes quick work of it, and when he’s done he directs his attention back to Martin. Martin thinks he’s doing pretty well, all things considered. The slices are a little uneven, an effect of him not quite knowing how to hold the onion steady in his other hand, but they’re going to be cut into strips later so he figures it doesn’t matter too much. The onion slips in his hand again as he tries to make the next chop without cutting into his knuckles in the process. Jon catches him struggling and readjusts his grip for him.

“You want to hold it like this,” he says, demonstrating in the air above his hand. Martin does his best to copy it. “Almost like you’re trying to dig your nails in, but not quite. Harder to cut yourself that way. And if you do, it’s more of a scrape and less of an amputation.”

It does help, but Martin can’t help but laugh in response to their new position: Jon behind him, barely up to his shoulder twisting around so he can still see the counter even while he tries his best to mirror Martin’s earlier stance, one arm around his waist the other curled gently around his wrist to keep his hand steady and in place.

"Are you sure you can even see what I'm doing, from back there?" he asks.

Jon swats at him with the towel he’s had draped over his shoulder. “I’m not helping you anymore,” he says, but he moves back to the cabinet where Martin’s taped up the recipe to see what the next step is, and there’s a laugh in his voice as he says it, anyway.

Martin still comes up behind him, when he’s done with the onion, and drapes himself over Jon’s shoulders, leaving a trail of light, teasing kisses across his cheeks, pushing his hair to the side and out of the way so the back of his neck gets the same amount of attention. Jon dissolves into helpless laughter almost immediately, falling back against him and letting whatever he'd been holding drop onto the counter with a dull thud as he raises his arms to grab onto Martin's where they're crossed over his chest.

"Okay," he says. "I get it, you're sorry. I know you know I'm not actually mad. Are you sure you're not just stalling because you don't want to dice any more vegetables?" He ends the question by tilting his head to the side and upwards. Martin takes the cue to land a kiss at the corner of Jon's mouth.

"Trying to give my eyes a rest from the onions, actually," Martin answers with another kiss. "This just seemed like a nice way to pass the time."

Jon hums. "Nice?"

Martin pretends to contemplate, for a moment, long enough for Jon to open his eyes a little wider and raise an eyebrow at him. "Maybe better than nice," he finally answers, voice soft. "I'm being lenient, you know, you've been sneaking bits of onion off the board this entire time, I've seen you. Not pleasant."

"Not pleasant, he says," Jon says, voice equally as soft as Martin's had been despite the teasing argument they're devolving into. "I kiss you, even after you put sardines on your pizza. And I don't complain."

"And I'm kissing you, even after you've just eaten half a red onion raw." To prove his point, he spins Jon around and lands another kiss full on his mouth. "It's good."

The corner of Jon's lips twitches upwards in an amused smirk. "Oh, so it's good now? We're upgrading?"

"Mhmm. Great, even. Better by the second. See? Not complaining."

Jon makes an exaggerated face, scrunched in the middle. It’s a face he only makes when he either can’t see or he’s about to be a (rather tragically endearing) bastard about something. Martin hazards a guess it’s the latter. “I might be complaining,” he says.

“Oh?”

“Mm. You’re too tall. My neck hurts.”

Martin grins, and he can see Jon struggling not to do the same. It’s a subtle thing, but he knows what to look for. “I think I might have a way to fix that.”

“Oh wonderful, let’s hear it.”

Rather than give a proper explanation, Martin goes straight for lifting Jon by the waist and depositing him directly onto the kitchen counter, mindful of the ingredients scattered across the space. “Better?”

Jon looks rather pleased with himself when he answers. “Very efficient, thank you.”

“Glad to hear it. Should we get back to it, then?”

“You will have to let me get down from here for that, you know. And I'm not too keen on moving just yet, I don't think.” As if to illustrate his point, Jon kicks out with one leg to curl around Martin's waist and keep him in place.

Martin hums his agreement. "Me neither."

The cooking goes forgotten for a few minutes while they trade soft kisses in the space between them. Martin could make a joke about I thought the point of this was that you wanted to teach me, but he doesn’t. He’s perfectly content to stay tangled up in each other for the time being. That is, until there’s a horrifying pop from the stove.

“Oh, hell,” Martin says rather smartly.

“Right,” Jon adds. “Forgot I turned the burner on.”

It takes another loud pop for them to startle out of it and move to get the pan off the stove before the very real possibility of a grease fire occurs.

“Suppose we should get back to it, then.” Jon sounds reluctant to move. Martin would be lying if he said he didn’t feel the same. Still, though. They’ve come this far. It would be a shame for it to go to waste just because they can’t let each other go for more than five seconds at a time.

Martin puts a steadying hand on Jon’s waist, keeping him in place before he can hop off the counter. “No, stay there. Just let me know what I have to do.”

“You’re sure?”

“Promise. Even know how to hold a knife properly now and everything.” Martin picks up one of the knives from the counter in demonstration and waves it a little carelessly on purpose.

Jon doesn’t look amused. Martin can’t help but laugh at the look on his face anyway. “Right.”

“Joking, I swear.”

Jon still doesn’t look convinced, but he does let one corner of his mouth twitch upwards. “Well the good thing is you won’t need it anyway. Everything’s already chopped, you just need to put it in the oil and turn the heat back on until they brown a little.”

It goes pretty smoothly after that, Martin following instructions to add water and pre-shredded chicken into the pot with the vegetables and oil. He balks a little at the amount of hominy that’s supposed to join everything, but goes along with it with little more than a “if I can’t taste anything but this glorified corn when we’re done, it’s on you," nevermind the fact that it's a family recipe. For a minute he tries to rip the cilantro by hand, but he can’t get it fine enough. He grabs the knife again and goes to work.

At a certain point, the room gets a bit too quiet and Martin begins to realize he hasn’t received any idle commentary from Jon in a while. When he turns, it’s to see Jon cross-legged on the counter, head leaning against the cabinets and regarding him with a rather soft look on his face. Martin feels much too big for his body, suddenly.

“What,” he tries to joke, “did I miss something?”

“No,” Jon answers, “it’s perfect. I just like you.”

And Jon is surprisingly open with his affection, as Martin has mentioned before, but it’s never been outright romantic. He thinks it probably wasn’t done on purpose, given how matter of factly Jon had said it, but it makes him duck his head and he feels his cheeks grow hot all the same. By far the worst of Jon’s sweet gestures are the ones that he makes completely on accident. He’s just like that. It’s infuriating.

“Are you trying to fluster me?”

“Not particularly. Why, is it working?”

Martin makes the wise choice to drop the knife in his hand before he accidentally slices into his own fingers while he gestures restlessly with his hands. “Yes!” The answer is more of a squeak than he’d like to admit.

He should have lied. He knows he should have lied the second he answers yes. Because the soft look on Jon’s face shifts a little, at that, turns into something with a bit more of an edge. “Really?” he asks, and his posture changes so he’s sitting at attention, like he’s getting ready to take everything in. “Well, if that’s what happens when I’m not even trying…” Martin thinks he’s going to start levitating, fuck, he really regrets not just lying about being flustered, earlier. “What happens, then, if I tell you, truthfully, that you’re the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met?”

Martin dies, apparently. That is apparently what happens when Jon tells him that he’s the most gorgeous man he’s ever met—he just dies. Because there’s a teasing note in his voice, yes, but the words also audibly soften as he says them, until the end of the question is no more than a whisper occupying the space between them, and Jon’s just looking at him, warm and intent and genuine, and Martin just dies. That’s it.

“You,” Martin says, trailing off when he can’t think of how to respond. A giddy smile bites at his cheeks and his brain feels like it’s full of something fizzy. “I’m going to burn this if you don’t stop that. Then we won’t be able to eat and you’re going to have to walk me through it again next week.”

“Stop what?” The teasing tone is back in full force, and Martin readies himself to be thoroughly reduced to nothing more than a pile of mush by the end of the night. “Telling you how absolutely breathtaking I think you are? Or should I stop telling you that the first time I talked to you all I could think was that I was so completely doomed, because here was this beautiful man that I’d never spoken to before, bringing me tea, and I didn’t know what to say because all I could think about was whether or not I’d get to see you again, properly?”

Martin’s brilliant response is a strangled string of nonsense syllables. It takes a few moments for his brain to come fully back online. “Okay, I think—you are banned from speaking for the next, like, hour and a half while you help me finish up over here, or else I might actually set your entire kitchen on fire by accident.”

For a minute, Jon looks like he’s going to ignore Martin and continue on before he seems to think better of it and hops down from the counter to join Martin at the stove. “Fine,” he says, giving the pot in front of him a stir before testing the broth for spice. “But I want you to know I’m only agreeing to this because I think you’ve done a really good job and I don’t want to waste it. Also I think I've reached my limit, I was starting to get nervous.”

Martin brings a hand up to curl around Jon's cheek, reveling for a minute in the way Jon unconsciously leans into the touch even as he is preoccupied with making adjustments to the food on the stove. "You're cute, you know."

"Cute? I tell you all of that and all you have for me is cute?" And despite the indignation coloring his words, the color in Jon's cheeks deepens by about two shades.

“Absolutely adorable,” Martin responds. It’s incredibly thrilling, watching the way Jon twitches under the attention.

“Were you trying to get me to set my own kitchen on fire?” Jon’s question is a little strained, voice high in his throat, and he resolutely avoids eye contact. “I did mean it when I said I didn’t want to waste this. Also, I think Tim would kill me if we had to find a new apartment, he rather likes this one.”

Martin wants to say something about staying with him, if the place did catch on fire. He doesn’t. He thinks it would come out much too sincerely. It’s a bit too soon for that, even if he is trying to say it as a joke. It’s weird that he doesn’t think of it as a joke, though. That’s probably something to think about some other time.

It isn't the first time Jon has kissed Martin, far from it. It's not even the first time they've made out on Martin's couch, far from that, too. He's long past being nervous about it. He enjoys himself. The gentle press of Martin’s lips against his own, the comforting weight of Martin’s arms around him, holding him close. He gathers that he doesn’t get what people usually do, out of kissing, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t genuinely like it. It’s intimate at a level he appreciates, without having to go further. It’s an excuse to be closer. To have more.

Sometimes Jon feels like he’s been spending his entire life trying to connect. Like he’s spent so long craving this sort of affection without knowing how to ask for it. Finally having it, like this, is something else.

It feels safe, is the thing. With Martin wrapped around him, trailing kisses down his neck, laughing into his mouth and whispering promises that make Jon feel like the world is too small to contain him. It doesn’t feel like anything is being expected from him. It’s contact for the sake of contact, not to get somewhere else. The limbs tangling together, the lips on his, the hands in his hair—they’re the destination, not the roadmap.

So Jon doesn’t stop him when he feels a warm, gentle hand sneak underneath his shirt. It feels nice. He leans into it, even, returns the touch in kind, one hand skimming over the skin of Martin’s side. Martin seems to tremble a little beneath his hand, but otherwise doesn’t react.

It’s when he remembers that this is it for him, yes, but it isn’t usually for everyone else. Martin still doesn’t make a move towards anything more sexual, seems content to go on as they had been, but now Jon can’t stop thinking about. It’s something they should talk about, maybe. No time like the present, considering he’s not likely to be able to focus on anything else. He pulls back a little, just far enough to speak.

“Hold on a minute actually? Sorry, I just, um. Could we talk about something?”

Martin stops almost immediately, moving backwards to give Jon space and pulling his arms away so he doesn’t feel boxed in. It’s sort of unnecessary, but Jon appreciates it all just the same.

“Are you alright? Are we—”

“We’re fine,” Jon says, before Martin can finish the question. “It’s not—it’s not anything about us, I promise you that. It’s just. It’s something that I should probably tell you? Something I should’ve told you a while ago, probably, but I didn’t think about it and then it seemed kind of presumptuous to bring it up after that and it was just never the right time, so—”

“Jon.”

“Look, I...I really like you, Martin.” It sounds juvenile, saying it like that, and Jon almost cringes at the way it sounds to his own ears. Martin deserves to know that, though. There’s a lot more that Martin deserves to know. A different word, mainly, that more accurately summarizes how he feels, that sounds less like he’s thirteen and asking a boy to go to the mall with him on a Saturday afternoon. Jon’s not as scared to say it as he might have been, before, but he’s still a little hesitant. Now isn’t the time, he thinks, at the very least.

“It’s important to me that you know that,” Jon continues, “because that’s not what any of this is, okay? People have the tendency to get that confused, and I...I don’t want you to think that.”

Martin smiles patiently. Worry still creases his brow, but it’s a little gentler now. “You haven’t told me anything to get confused yet, Jon. I just need to know you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. More than fine, actually. There’s nothing wrong with me.” There had been a time when Jon hadn’t thought that way. That was a long time ago, now. Still, it fills him with a sort of lightness, saying it. There's nothing wrong with me. “I’m just not really...used to saying it, out loud.”

“Do you mind if I…?” Martin reaches a hand hesitantly towards his own and Jon takes it without a thought. The contact helps both of them, he thinks. Their fingers tangle together and Martin still looks a little worried, but he also looks like he understands, maybe, and Jon feels safe.

“You can take your time, Jon,” Martin says. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

Jon holds onto that as he begins. “I’m—well, actually, can I ask—this might...take a while, for me to get through, so would it be okay if—if you just...didn’t interrupt, until I got it all out? I’m sorry, it’s just—”

Martin cuts him off with a gentle squeeze to his hand. “I get it. It’s easier to say things all at once, yeah? Floor’s all yours.”

“Right,” Jon says, “well then...I’m asexual. That—well it means a lot of different things, really, but for me it’s...I am unlikely to—” Say what you mean, Jon, he thinks. No more saying what you think other people want to hear, just so they’ll like you. He’s done enough of that. And he wants this thing with Martin to work. He doesn’t think Martin would hate him for this anyway, not really. His full reaction is yet to be determined, but he wouldn’t hate him. Martin would never hate him. Jon knows that more than he knows anything.

“I don’t like sex," Jon says, point blank. "It’s...I don’t get it, to be honest, but it also seems wildly unappealing. And—full disclosure, here—I haven't had sex, so it's not that I've just done it wrong or had a bad time." Jon realizes what else that might imply as he says it and rushes to clarify. Martin hardly even blinks, running a thumb over the knuckles of Jon's hand in lieu of saying anything. "And it's not that I'm just nervous, either, that I don't know what I want. I'm an adult, I know how I feel about things. Truth be told, it's taken me a long time to understand how I do feel about things, but I...I know. I don't like sex. Quite honestly, the idea of it makes me uncomfortable."

Martin, true to his word, keeps quiet; just sits there across from him, keeping a comforting grip on his hand, looking at him with nothing but a soft sort of encouragement. Jon keeps having to avert his gaze as he speaks—he's never been good at maintaining eye contact in general, it's impossible when he's trying to be open and vulnerable—but every time he looks back at Martin he's met with a slight twitch of the lips. It loosens the pressure in his chest some.

"I know," Jon says, "that this isn't—that is, I know that some people think this is sort of...where everything ends. They expect to have that, and when they don't, it's...well." Martin's hand twitches a little in his own, at that, and Jon hastens to correct. "I know you wouldn't, believe me, you've never given me any indication that you've expected—well, anything from me, but certainly not this. I don't think that about you, it's just...if sex is something you like in a relationship, if it's something you want, I can't rightly ask you to go without any more than you could rightly ask me to have sex with you. And I think that might be something we need to talk about. Something we need to figure out how to navigate, maybe, because I don't want you to be afraid of this. I don't want you to spend our whole relationship tiptoeing around me and ignoring your own feelings. And I don't want you to realize all these things later and feel like you wasted your time."

He hates how his voice cracks at the end. He doesn't want to sound like he's afraid of this, doesn't want to make Martin feel like he's already planning out the end in his head because he isn't. It's terrifying, talking like this, and Jon's heart has fancied itself something of a doomsday prepper all his life. He can't help but at least consider the worst-case scenario, sometimes. He can't help that thinking about it hurts.

Martin waits a few seconds before speaking. "Okay?" Jon nods in response.

"Jon," Martin starts. "I kind of need you to look at me when I say this, because I know what you said, and I believe you know that, but I need you to feel what I'm saying. And I need you to understand that I mean it."

That kind of scares the shit out of him, if he's being honest. But Martin doesn't sound upset, more nervous than anything. A little sad maybe, but not at him, and Jon trusts him. This isn't going to be a bad thing. Despite the fact that his heart is doing a rather spirited acrobatics routine in his throat, and that if his hands weren't firmly anchored by Martin's they'd be shaking so fast they nearly blurred together, Jon knows this isn't going to be a bad thing. It never is, with Martin. And so how could this be any different?

"I love you, Jon," Martin says. Jon can tell that he means it, just from the way that he sounds when he says it. Being able to see the unfiltered emotion in his eyes as he says it causes it to settle in his chest a little differently. "I made that decision a long time ago, quite before I even knew I had. And I don't think you're the kind of person anyone just lets go. At least not the kind of person I could just let go."

Jon kind of short circuits, a little. He thinks he should say something in response. You can’t just listen to someone tell you they love you and then sit there in silence. He does, though. It's not his fault, okay, he wants to say something, but he gets stuck. What are you supposed to say to that without sounding profoundly inadequate?

He doesn’t have to think too hard on it, though, because Martin continues on without waiting for him to speak. “It’s a non-issue. It isn’t now and it won’t be later, and I know—I know that I have no real way of knowing that, but you’re going to have to trust me on it, okay? I can honestly take or leave the sex, it doesn't matter to me. The thing is, you're kind of the only thing that does matter. I don't need anything else. We don't even need to do the—the, uh, earlier, when we were…if you don't want to."

It's funny, after all that's been said, how Martin blushes and stutters through everything to avoid saying anything related to the words making out out loud. Sort of makes the whole thing sound ridiculous, if he’s honest. Which it isn’t, Jon knows that, establishing boundaries in a relationship is good, it’s necessary, but. Well, it just makes him feel like maybe he shouldn’t have worried so much in the first place.

“No,” Jon says, “that’s...I did like that. Wouldn’t have done it otherwise. If I’m going to trust you—and I do—on this not being an issue for you, I need you to trust me when I say I wouldn’t let you do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. Kissing you is...more than comfortable.”

“Okay.” Martin reaches out with his free hand and places it tentatively on Jon’s shoulder. There’s no pressure behind it, and in fact it’s kind of a nervous movement, but Jon lets it pull him forward until he’s leaning against Martin’s front and Martin has no choice but to release his grip on Jon’s hand and wrap his arms around him. “So the touching then?” he asks.

Jon smiles into Martin’s collarbone. He shifts a little until he’s free to slip a hand under the back of Martin’s shirt, fingers splayed out and pressed gently into the bare skin at the small of his back. “I like that, too. It feels...safe, I guess? The contact, it’s—it’s nice.”

Martin hums, a low, sweet sound, and they settle into the couch with a comfortable silence surrounding them. It’s hard for Jon to feel embarrassed about anything, like this. He doesn’t make himself vulnerable very often, is hesitant to admit the things he wants, but after everything that’s already been said—after struggling through a much more difficult conversation, for him—he thinks it would be pretty stupid to feel that way now. It’s not that he’s suddenly cured of his aversion to talking about his feelings, he’s sure he’ll have his moments later on, but at the moment everything is just fine. Martin does usually have a way of making everything feel that way, in Jon’s experience.

“I love you, too, you know,” Jon says abruptly. Martin tightens his hold on him briefly and presses a light kiss to his temple. “I think we blew over that, sort of. And, um...thank you. For understanding things. I’ve never had to have this conversation, and...it’s not that I thought you’d actually be awful about it, but I didn’t quite know what to think at all, really. You know, I’m very secure in who I am at this point in my life, but sometimes those little nagging what ifs are still hard to shake.”

Martin’s response is to pull Jon impossibly closer to him and smush his face into the top of his head. “Jon.” The name is breathed into his hair, a faint hint of teasing running through it. “I literally thought you were going to tell me you had some sort of incurable disease. I was really rather relieved when it turned out that all you wanted to tell me was that you don’t like sex.”

All you wanted to tell me. Like it wasn’t a big deal at all. For the first time in his life, Jon feels like maybe it really isn’t.

“Nothing quite so exciting as a disease, no,” Jon says. “Sorry.”

He feels Martin shake his head as he laughs. “Truly a shame. Maybe next time.”

“You’re going to have to give me at least a year and a half before we have a conversation like that again.” Jon’s aware of the implications behind what he’s saying. He means them. Martin doesn’t respond except to press a kiss, featherlight, to the top of his head, and Jon figures that means he knows.

It’s quiet for a bit, after that, but comfortably so. Jon almost finds himself drifting off before Martin nudges him a little. “Hey.”

“What?” The letters slur together a bit in Jon’s mouth.

“I love you.”

That wakes him up a bit. Jon lifts his head to make eye contact when he speaks. “I love you, too, Martin.”

The cup of tea Martin takes a sip from isn’t very good, at least not taste wise. It’s about three parts milk and one part actual tea, and he knows that once it’s empty there will be a thin film of sugar coating the entire bottom of the mug. But it’s the way he makes Jon’s tea, because it’s the only way he’ll drink it, so that’s the way Jon had made it for him, because that’s the only way he knows tea tastes good. So Martin drinks it anyway. Because it isn’t good, but it’s still good, because it serves its purpose of bringing him warmth and comfort, because Jon made it for him and he couldn’t conceive of any other way to make it, because he thought Martin made it best and that was that. And not much else mattered, really.

Not much else besides the fact that Jon was sitting at the small fold-out desk in the corner of his room wearing loose cotton trousers and a too-big shirt he’d stolen from Martin’s drawers without preamble about two weeks ago. The fold-out desk is new. It doesn’t fit well in the room, all unfolded as it is, but it does the trick.

Jon has a thing about doing work where he sleeps, something about decreased productivity that's probably actually true but Martin doesn’t care enough to fact check, he likes doing his work sprawled out over his mattress just fine thank you very much. Anyway, the point was, Jon flat out refused to sit next to Martin on the bed while studying after he started staying over more and more often and Martin couldn’t get comfortable enough out on the couch where the only available table was and he felt less self-conscious by now about the fact that he sort of missed Jon when they weren’t in the same room, as ridiculous as that sounded, so. He’d found a cheap fold-out desk at the thrift store and set it up in the corner of his room and that was that.

There’s a definite probability that, at some point, he’s going to trip right over it in the middle of the night and risk serious injury but it hasn’t happened yet, and anyway that was rather the point of it being foldable—he could just pack it up when it wasn’t being used and lean it against a wall. He just has to make sure he doesn’t forget, which, again, hasn’t happened yet. Martin has no doubt that it will, eventually.

Anyway, Jon is there, in his room, posted up at the rickety old desk, looking all sleep worn and comfortable except for the fact that Martin is pretty much convinced he’s more or less about to scalp himself if he’s left to his own devices for much longer. Martin has developed his own metric for how stressed Jon is at any given moment, and it’s entirely reliant on the state of his hair. He takes care of it, mostly, despite his tendency to continue using rubber bands and binder clips to hold it together in a pinch, but when he really starts getting anxious, it...well.

The state Martin had found it in when they first met was apparently only about a two on the panic scale, to put it nicely. Now, when it’s all tangled together and sticking up on one side where Jon keeps pulling at it, a pencil lost somewhere in the fray and looking very much like he hadn’t seen a brush in years rather than a few hours...that’s when it’s obvious there’s a problem.

Martin chances a glance at the clock on his nightstand and okay, that’s. Well. They should probably think about giving up and going to bed full stop at this point, he isn’t so sure they should be closing in on two in the morning without at least considering taking a break. He doesn’t agree with Tim’s usual method of shutting everything off at ten in the evening and deciding it’s not worth it, not when he has two finals in his hardest classes tomorrow afternoon, but surely two in the morning is a bit excessive. Jon lets out a frustrated noise and tugs at his hair again, and Martin makes the decision.

He folds his laptop shut and pauses for a moment to straighten out of the truly horrifying position he’s been curled in on himself in. Surely his joints shouldn’t be cracking like that when he’s only in his early twenties. At least, he supposes, he remembered to take the binder off before settling in for the night. That had been a wise decision.

It takes a minute for him to regain feeling in his legs, when he uncrosses them, but as soon as he does, he comes up behind Jon and slides a gentle hand into his hair. It takes a bit of effort, actually, with how much more nest-like than hair-like it is, but the tension still eases minutely from Jon’s shoulders, so Martin counts it as a success regardless.

Jon takes the distraction rather easily and slides the laptop in front of him down the length of the desk, crossing his arms over the space in front of him and dropping his head in the cradle it creates. Martin takes the opportunity to move both his hands over Jon’s shoulders, digging into the muscle with his fingers to relieve pressure. Jon melts a little.

“Thanks,” he mutters, sound muffled from where his head is still smushed in the space between his arms.

Martin hums. “Maybe,” he says cautiously, “maybe it’s time we think about sl—about taking a break.” Martin catches himself before he mentions sleeping. One thing he’s learned about Jon is that he doesn’t quite know when to stop, where his work is concerned. Suggesting he quit, point-blank, is no more likely to get him to actually slow down than telling a particularly fortified weed to stop growing in the cracks of your front walkway is likely to get it to keep from showing up year after year.

That’s what Jon is like. A particularly fortified weed that grows in the cracks of your front walkway. One of the ones with the really bright flowers, though, so you don’t actually mind that it’s there, because it’s kind of pretty really, you’d just prefer if it wasn’t right in the middle of your walkway, because really someone’s going to trip at some point, and it’s not like it’s good for the weed to be there either, because then it’ll be more likely to get trampled, and then...well, the metaphor sort of falls apart if you think about it for too long, but Martin never has fancied himself good at poetry.

Jon is clearly seconds away from passing out, is the point. He won’t admit it, but he is. And he won’t take kindly to the suggestion that what he’s doing isn’t important enough to stay awake for, even if what he’s doing was probably over and done with three hours ago and he’s just needlessly picking at it at this point. So it helps to start with suggesting a break and let him get to the end result on his own.

He starts mumbling something, but it’s lost in the folding of his arms.

“One more time?” Martin asks. “Hard to hear you.”

Jon shifts so his chin is resting on his folded arms. “I’m going to get a horrible grade on this paper.”

“You are not, you—”

“I’m going to fail it, and then I’m going to be stuck in undergrad for the rest of my life, and I don’t even know how I got into this class really, how am I supposed to—”

“Jon,” Martin says firmly, pressing his thumbs into the muscles at the base of Jon’s neck so he cuts himself off from his spiral with a satisfied humming noise. “You’re not going to fail your paper, I’ve read it like a hundred times—Tim has read it a thousand more times and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. You’re going to do fine, you’re just tired.”

“Okay, but even then,” Jon says. “Even if this is done, and it’s good, which I’m still not sure it is, I still have that exam tomorrow afternoon that’s comprehensive for some reason, even though it never said that on the syllabus, and I really need to pass that one, because if I don’t I can’t get into the advanced section, and then I’ll be stuck here forever, and you—”

Martin’s really running out of muscles to dig his hands into to get Jon to stop working himself up. This time, he leans down and presses a kiss to the edge of his jaw. It works just as well. “I’m not going anywhere, Jon,” Martin whispers. He’s draped over Jon’s shoulders now, speaking directly into his ear. “Not without you, at least. And you’re not going to be stuck here forever, you’re going to do just fine. I’ve seen you going over those flashcards for the past month and you’ve had them memorized since about week two. You need sleep more than you need to look at your notes again.”

“Martin—”

“No, I get it,” he insists, gently. “I’m sure I was much worse when I was taking my first gen chem final. But Jon, love, you’re not going to get any better worrying about it like this. You’ve done what you can, and now you need to sleep—I need to sleep. And I’m not going to be able to do that if I’m worrying about you worrying.” It’s a cheap shot, kind of, but Martin is well aware by now that a surefire way to get Jon to take care of himself, if he won’t do it on his own, is to mask it with the insinuation that it would be helpful to Martin if he did.

There’s a moment or two of silence, but then Jon sighs heavily and straightens up in his seat, turning to press a kiss to the side of Martin’s neck as he does. “Right. Let me just upload this, then, and I’ll be right there.”

Satisfied, Martin straightens up himself and squeezes Jon’s shoulders one last time before returning to his side of the bed and turning down the covers before he plugs in his laptop and puts it away for the night. “You have five minutes,” he teases. “If you’re still looking at it by then, I’m turning it in for you.”

He’s met with the resounding sound of a track pad being clicked rather pointedly. “There,” Jon says. “Done.”

“Four and a half minutes to spare, even,” Martin responds as he settles under the quilt. “What are you going to do with it?”

He expects Jon to make some sort of quip about flashcards, but he only responds by folding up the desk and turning out the light. Martin can’t see, with the light extinguished, but then there’s a rustling of sheets and the bed dips and Jon’s legs are suddenly tangled with his own. If he focuses, Martin can just about make out Jon’s features.

“Don’t know,” Jon says. “This is kind of nice, though.”

You would think, after dating for a couple months, Martin would no longer react to Jon being cute. He does, though. Because it is cute, and Martin is stupidly in love with him, and Jon still doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. It’s so ingrained in him, apparently, that it just sort of comes out on autopilot, even at half past two in the morning when he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. And that kills Martin, in the best way possible.

Martin’s eyesight adjusts to the dark a little more, aided by the blinking light of his alarm clock, and he just sort of...watches. It’s weird, maybe, but Jon is watching back, looking at him like he doesn’t ever want to stop, and so Martin isn’t about to stop either. He leans in after a moment or two and presses a gentle kiss to the corner of Jon’s mouth, right over the scar that resembles a lopsided heart, the one he’d been oddly infatuated with from the very start.

Jon’s nose wrinkles in response. He’s aware of Martin’s obsession, has been for a while, and never fails to act like it’s some great hardship for him to endure. It is, like most things Jon does, hopelessly endearing. Even more so in this sleepless haze they’re in.

“Four minutes are up,” he murmurs, shimmying closer to Martin under the sheets until he’s curled safely against his chest. “Go to sleep.”

“Only if you do, too.”

Jon’s reply is spoken against his neck, lips brushing against the skin there. “I’m trying, you keep talking.”

Martin very deliberately does not say a word in response. Jon huffs a laugh against his collarbone. “Good night, Martin."