Work Text:
like a force to be reckoned with
a mighty ocean or a gentle kiss
i will love you with every single thing i have
like a tidal wave, i'll make a mess
or calm waters, if that serves you best
i will love you without any strings attached
// sleeping at last, "two"
They’re hardly out of the Lonely – tear streaks drying on Martin’s face, Jon’s breathing shaky and uneven, each clutching the other’s arm like a lifeline – when Jon stops abruptly. Martin takes a moment to notice, takes another step and is jerked backward by Jon’s grip on him, and turns to look at him with a singularly exhausted confusion. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and he doesn’t wait long for a response before giving a pitiable sniffle and pulling his arm away, jarring Jon from what seems like a trance, and asking more insistently, “Jon? What’s wrong?”
Jon shakes his head once, quickly, and whispers his reply. “I don’t know where to go.”
Martin frowns. “I thought you said…”
“No, yes, I know – I know how to get to – anywhere, really,” Jon explains apologetically, “but I don’t know where we’re supposed to go.” He winces at the overwhelming mass of his own thoughts before taking a deep breath and continuing, in as casual a tone as possible, "Actually, I – I wanted to talk to you about something?"
Furrowing his brow, frowning deeper, Martin scrutinizes Jon for a long moment before prompting him to continue. “Yeah?”
Jon seems relieved that Martin is even willing to hear what he wants to say. "Yeah, and if – well, if you don't want – I'll make sure you stay safe, obviously, of course,” he stammers, “but we don’t have to be together – I mean, we can go different places if you want, when I'm done saying this."
"Why would I want that?" Martin nearly snaps at him. He's far too tired and emotionally drained to take the suspense of Jon dancing around the topic of whatever it is he wants to say. Jon will drag out an important emotional conversation for hours if nobody stops him, so stubborn in his refusal to come out and say what the hell he means. Martin tries, in this moment, not to think about how much he's like Peter in that regard.
"Because," Jon begins, but his mouth is too dry. He swallows hard, rubs his eyes, continues, "Because I'm – I'm – I'm going to tell you something you may not want to hear."
"Okay," says Martin, slow and cautious and firm, a tone he hopes will convey to Jon that he needs to just say it, "what is it?"
Jon takes a moment, takes a breath, looks down at the ground with a determined focus, then thinks better of that, decides it’s sort of necessary to look at Martin when he says this, and finally, finally he works up the courage to say it: "I love you."
It turns out to be a very good thing that he kept his eyes on Martin’s face, because it means he doesn’t have to question the silence, doesn’t have to wonder if Martin is upset or if Martin hates him. He can plainly see that Martin is surprised – whether it’s a pleasant or unpleasant surprise is still up in the air, but it’s not an expression of pure fury or loathing, so Jon is better off than if he had to trust his own conjecture.
Still, it’s a harrowing, eternal moment before Martin responds. “Quick question,” he says quietly, clasping his hands before him in a businesslike manner, his face a smooth mask of neutrality, “are you stupid?”
Struck dumb, Jon blinks several times at him, his mouth hanging open like a fish. He replays the past minute in his mind, trying to find where they veered off track, but he can’t figure it out. Eventually, he resigns himself to simply answering the question as if it were a serious one. “I’m – I mean, I don’t think so?”
“Alright,” Martin replies with a single, slow nod of his head. “I’m just wondering what in the world could have made you think that I wouldn’t want to hear that.”
“Well, it’s – it’s just that – it’s been so long,” Jon tries to explain, his voice strained, a distressed frown settling over his face. “I thought you’d – gotten over it, gotten over… m-me. I mean, you – you said –”
“Oh no, God no, I’m sorry,” Martin cuts him off, earnest and guilty. “I didn’t mean it, not really, it was all just – he was in my head and I thought… I thought it was better that way, but I was wrong, Jon.”
Biting his lip hard, Jon manages to muffle but not completely restrain a small, miserable moan. “You shouldn’t be apologizing to me,” he mumbles. “You were – well, you were wrong about staying there, but you weren’t wrong about – about me. About your… the… past tense.”
“Yes, I was,” Martin says emphatically. “I didn’t know what I was talking about, Jon, I – I never stopped, alright? Maybe I wanted to believe it was over because it was easier to accept being lost if I didn’t think I’d miss you. But I missed you every second, no matter how hard I tried.”
A long, oppressive silence settles over them, Jon flexing his fingers and clenching them into fists over and over as he thinks so hard about too many things at once. He refuses to look at Martin now, knows he won’t be able to not cry if he sees the look on his face. Eventually, he squeezes his eyes shut tight and says, halfway between a whisper and a mumble, indistinct and soft, timid and reluctant, “But you haven’t said it back.”
Martin lets out a soft, sympathetic breath, looking at Jon with round, sad eyes. “Jonathan,” he says in a broken whisper, tilting his head to come face-to-face with the other man, taking his cheeks in both hands and holding him as a fragile and precious thing. “I am so deeply, desperately in love with you. You must know that.” Jon gives him a minute nod with a nearly inaudible whimper, and Martin continues, “I’ve loved you as long as I can remember, and I could never be upset with you for accepting that and giving it back to me.”
His eyes sliding downward to look at his hands twined over his stomach, his lip quivering slightly, Jon tries like hell to keep the tears from escaping. “You should hate me,” he mutters shamefully. “I’ve been – ungrateful, insensitive, selfish, condescending, negligent, arrogant, controlling, critical, impulsive, cruel, thoughtless, nasty, pompous, dishonest, obstinate, tactless, antagonistic, cynical, unyielding, antipathetic, unreliable –”
“And quite verbose, add that to the list,” Martin interrupts with a small smile. Then, seeing Jon’s face fall, his frown deepening and his eyes filling with tears, Martin makes an executive decision, leans in and kisses him.
It’s a quick, tentative little thing, a soft press of warm, dry lips on what ends up being the corner of Jon’s mouth. Moving in and tilting Jon’s face up simultaneously meant there wasn’t much time to aim, so now Martin is stuck with this decision. Jon’s lips are just as dry as Martin’s, his stubble prickling against Martin’s skin, and he takes a sharp inhale when Martin makes contact but almost instantaneously puckers his lips to return the kiss, just in time for Martin to pull away and rock back on his heels.
He gives Jon a long, warm look, taking the other man’s bony hands in his own, and says fervently, “I forgive you. I forgive you all of it. You’re everything to me, and nothing’s going to change that.”
Finally, Jon breaks under the pressure of Martin’s understanding, curls in on himself as much as he can with his hands held firm, and cries. Really, properly cries, with tears rolling down his cheeks and deep gasps between shaking sobs while he valiantly tries to utter coherent words. “You shouldn’t – shouldn’t have to – just because I’m – I’m – I’m all you have left,” he moans wretchedly, pulling a hand back from Martin’s grasp to hold over his mouth and muffle his despair. “Everything’s ruined and I don’t deserve you and you – you keep – you keep…” his sentence trails off into wet, miserable groans, his body wracked with sobs.
Martin moves, then, steps forward and into Jon’s space, wraps both arms around him and pulls him close to his chest. “I keep loving you,” he murmurs, his voice thick with the beginnings of his own tears. “I do, and I will, and it’s not because you’re all I have left. It’s not because I’m afraid of being alone, or because you’re my only choice. You’ve – you’ve always been my only choice, Jon, don’t you understand that?”
He pauses, rubs soothing circles into Jon’s back as Jon shakes and presses closer into his chest. “I’ve been upset with you, Jon,” he says after a minute. “I’ve – well, you said it yourself. It’s been a long time, and I’ve had all that time to be hurt and bitter and resentful, and it – it wasn’t half as satisfying as forgiving you. None of this is ideal, but – but we won, didn’t we? In the short term at least, sort of? You saved me, we got out of there, and we’re okay. And I am so grateful that you’re here, because I love you.”
“I love you,” Jon echoes, the words muffled against Martin’s shirt before he sniffles, pulling back to look up at Martin's face and continue in a fervent, disorganized voice. "I'm sorry it took me so long, I'm sorry I couldn't stop all this from happening before you could get hurt. I'm sorry I let him get to you, Martin. I'm sorry I left you, and that you were so alone, and that I wasn't there to help you." He pauses, takes a breath, realizes he's run out of things to apologize for, at least off the top of his head. “And – you’re sure? You want to – to stay with me?”
“Always,” Martin murmurs without hesitation. “Now, let’s go home, Jon.”
"I don't know where home is," Jon laments, the gears turning in his head far too fast, far too hard. It's not nearly as intense as when he tried to Know about Peter, before, but it's enough to give him the first stirrings of a nasty headache. "I mean - we can't very well go back to the Institute, not with the way we left it," he continues, anxious and uncertain, "and I'm sure both our flats are a bust. I guess our best bet is to find Basira? But I don't even know if - God, I left them there, and - fuck."
Stroking Jon's hair, tucking a lock behind his ear, Martin shushes him gently and presses a firm, solid kiss to the center of his forehead. "It's okay," he soothes, feeling Jon relax marginally under his touch and his voice. "We'll handle it. We'll figure it out."
Somehow, in spite of everything, Jon believes him.