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There wasn’t much to do in the cabin. It wasn’t very big to begin with, but with the curtains closed and the wind howling outside, it had begun to feel more like a prison than a safehouse. Though it was infinitely better than outside, there are still only so many times you can read the same books or play the same board games.
Jon could still see outside, of course. He could see everything. The pain, the fear, the ways reality bent and broke at the will of the Entities he had unwittingly released. It hurt Martin, the way he talked about the outside, how he knew that Jon felt like a monster.
Not even the normal activities that used to be so regular could bring them any solace anymore. There was no need for food, or drink, and sleep only brought them nightmares and no rest. Martin slept sometimes, not because he needed to, but because it was the only thing that could pass the time.
Jon… didn’t sleep so much as stare, lying on his back, eyes wide open. It was far from peaceful, and Martin knew that he was seeing all the horrors being experienced everywhere, all at once. As much as he wanted to, there was nothing he could do to wake him.
Comfort couldn’t be trusted. That’s one thing he had learned. And yet, Martin found himself leaning into comfort more than he had in the entire year before. Little things, like when they would sit and read, on the same too-small couch, or the fact that there was only one bed in the cabin. Funny how things like that become inconsequential, Martin thought, when there was an apocalypse outside. Even a year ago, he would have died on the spot if someone told him this is where he ended up.
Despite the increased proximity, he could still sometimes feel the fog of the Lonely, creeping in under the door of the cabin. Jon had been holed up in the bedroom since it started, only ever leaving it once or twice a day. In those moments, with the wind and the darkness, Martin could easily imagine he was the only person on Earth.
But then he would hear Jon, talking in that voice he was prone to using when he listened to those recordings. And Martin would get up from the couch, and over to the bedroom. And maybe he stood at the door for a moment or two, listening to Jon’s voice, before he realized he should probably stop him.
It was one of these moments that Martin heard it first, listening to Jon talk about how comforts cannot be trusted. In the time that may have passed for yesterday, Martin had tried to bring him tea. It wasn’t tea, and he didn’t even notice until it was squirming out of the cup. They’d ended up arguing, over whether or not all hope was lost, whether they could trust anything. Martin almost felt bad, saying that maybe they needed to have a bit of hope. He could never see all the suffering Jon has, after all.
He was so caught up in thinking about hope and tea and the poetry he’s written about Jon’s voice that he almost didn’t catch the thing Jon was actually saying.
“And despite all this, there is a comfort that you cannot refuse. A comfort that you know is futile and fragile and cannot last in this wretched landscape, yet you hold close the one you love and hope anyway.”
Martin froze, his hand hovering over the doorknob. Had he heard that right? But Jon continued, unaware of Martin outside the bedroom door.
“You hold him and you know that he is really holding you, and the world as it is now says that it is useless. The most primal instinct is fear, it croons, the oldest and the most pure. The world keeps turning on it’s horrible axis, yet your world has stopped, if only for the moment.”
Martin made a decision. He decided that he was going to open that door, despite the remnants of the Lonely still in his blood, and the memories of an archivist that had looked at him with nothing but disdain in the back of his mind.
On the other side was Jon, sitting cross-legged on the bed, tape recorder clasped in between his hands. He looked up, eyes tired and hair fallen in his face. He looked so tired, and Martin wanted to do nothing more than to stride over and hold him, to run his fingers through Jon’s hair and whisper reassurances that neither of them believed.
But he didn’t. He stood there, awkwardly, like a dumbass.
“Jon-” he started suddenly, at the same time Jon said “Martin, I-”
“Oh, sorry, go ahead,” Jon said, eyes softening almost imperceptibly, in that self-deprecating way he’d been seeing a lot more from Jon. It made Martin want to go kill Elias himself.
“I, uh,” Martin started, because he had forgotten everything he had to say, if he had really had anything to say in the first place. “I wanted to apologize for, well, maybe yesterday? Time moves so weirdly now. Anyway, I, uh, didn’t really mean to push it, it’s just that you’ve been so closed off lately and I think it really wouldn’t kill you to have some hope and-”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I know I haven’t actually seen outside or anything but we’re still here and we’re still alive and-”
“Martin.”
“I know you’ve been listening to those tapes way too much and it’s easy to get stuck in your own head, I’ve been there, but I miss you and-”
“Martin .”
Martin stops, realizing he’d been rambling about nothing at all, and hadn’t even apologized. The wind howls outside, but all else is silent, and for a minute he can’t even bring himself to look up to meet Jon’s eyes.
“So yeah, I’m sorry.” He still doesn’t look up, but he can feel the weight of Jon’s gaze. And not even in the monster sense either. He doesn’t feel the Eye, just the emotions that make the air thick and hard to breathe in a very human way.
“Martin, look at me.” There was no compulsion, Martin felt no need to look up save for the twisting of his stomach. He looked up anyway, and Jon was staring at him, an expression on his face that Martin has seen only once. It brought back the vague memories of heavy fog and the question. “What do you see?”
Oh.
Oh.
Martin moved before he thought better of it, sitting down on the bed behind Jon. He rested his chin on Jon’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around him, carefully plucking the tape recorder from his hands. Jon let him, only melting into Martin’s touch in a way that made Martin wonder when the last time he had contact like this with someone.
So he did what he’d been wanting to since the moment they had met. He reached up and brushed his fingers through Jon’s hair with one hand, and reached to grab his hand with the other, feeling along the ridges of scar tissue with his thumb. Like a cat, Jon melted deeper into his touch.
“I love you,” Jon said with such ease that Martin almost passed out. It may have been the apocalypse, and he may have been sharing a bed with Jon for the last month or so, but there was only so much his heart could take. And Jon was pushing that limit, as he looked up at Martin, eyes containing more emotion than Martin had ever seen from the man.
“I love you, and I should have said it the moment we got here. I should have said it when we were looking at those cows, and when this damned apocalypse started. I should have said it when you brought me tea, even if it wasn’t really tea. I should have said it back at the archives, when I asked you to run away with me.”
Martin’s heart couldn’t take any more. He buried his head in Jon’s neck, hiding the glorious red that had painted his face. He was sure Jon could feel the heat anyway.
“I love you too, Jon.”
Click. The sound of rewinding tape filled the silent air.
“I love you too, Jo-”
Click.
“I love you too-”
Click.
“I love you-”
Click.
When was the last time Jon had heard Martin’s voice? When was the last time the voice he heard was Martin’s? He only had the tape recordings now. Well, that and one single polaroid picture before it all began.
He knew not to trust comfort. He knew, and yet there was always one comfort that he thought he could trust. Not tea, not sleep or drink or food. What had he called it? A comfort that you cannot refuse. Despite everything, he trusted Martin.
It wasn’t Martin’s fault, and Jon knew that. The thing that betrayed him wasn’t Martin, not really. But he’d never be able to know the difference.
As Jon sat in the dark, looking up at the ever-watching sky, he heard the tape recorder click on. He didn’t even have the energy to tell it off. So instead, never taking his eyes off the absence of stars, he told it a story.
“There is a comfort you cannot refuse. It is not hope, or love, nor is it fear. It is something else. It whispers to you when you feel nothing but loss, providing fake solace in the absence of emotion. It draws you nearer to being the monstrosity that you know you have been hurtling towards since the beginning. In a sense, it is your tomb, burying the life you had before. But in another it is a chrysalis, and you are the moth. It is the flame you are drawn towards. You have no more sanctuary, no one to hold close and pretend you are still human. So emerge, and take flight .”
He told it a story, feeling the weight of the Eye bearing down on him, and he knew that this world was home.