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He spent nearly a year under the influence of the Lonely. All that time, utterly alone. It was bound to leave a mark on his psyche. Isolation in general leaves deep scars in the brain, but being lost in the Lonely meant disconnecting from the world around him. He had to put distance between himself and…well himself. So leaving the Lonely and having to participate in the world around him again was a challenge so to say.
One that, for once, he was actually kind of excited to take on. Of course, he wasn’t alone. Jon had hardly left his side since they left the Lonely. He figured it was supposed to be nice, despite being also deeply confusing.
It would be nice.
If only he didn’t still feel alone, even if he logically is not.
He still feels alone as they walk, hand-in-hand, out of the Lonely and back into the tunnels below the institute. He feels alone even as Jon manhandles him to sit on the sofa in his flat. When Jon disappears into the kitchen to bring tea, it is all he can do to prevent the rising tide of fear that he will slip back into the Lonely without Jon’s anchoring presence right next to him. He was so lost in this fear that he misses Jon returning until after a warm cup of tea was placed in his hands and Jon began to speak.
“Martin—” Jon starts to say, his voice still soft and so full of feeling that he does not know how to handle it because when had Jon started saying his name like that? How did he miss it? How much of himself did he have to kill so that the Lonely could fit within? There was no confirmation that this was real. This all could just a part of Lukas playing with him to make sure he fully falls into the Lonely’s clutches. The rest of whatever Jon tries to say is lost with the rising static inside him as the fear and anger take his focus away from the man in front of him.
It rises and it rises, emotions inside mixing and increasing. He is lost within as he feels so much for the first time in months. High and higher, it comes to crest.
And then he feels nothing as it all becomes fog that starts from his chest spreading out into the flat. He thinks he sees fog at the edges of his vision slowly creeping in and outwards. He ends up entirely missing whatever it was that Jon had been trying to say to him. His connection to the world was beginning to fade just as the image of Jon began to become translucent.
He only comes back when there’s a hand on his wrist. He watches first detached and then with trepidation as it slides up his arm and shoulder stopping once the fingertips begin to tangle into his hair. The warm pressure of the full palm draws him out of the Lonely. When he looks again, it’s into Jon’s wide brown eyes. For a moment he gets lost looking into them and categorizing all the ways that these are Jon’s eyes and Jon’s alone. They both sigh and he breaks the eye contact.
The silence is full even as they’re both silent. Then he speaks, soft and quiet. So quiet he’s hardly sure he even actually says it and it was so unlike him to even be as soft-spoken as he says simply, “Sorry.”
Jon keeps looking at him, he doesn’t stop looking and maybe he should feel uncomfortable but he doesn’t. Not with Jon, not ever with Jon.
“Don’t—Don’t be sorry Martin. Leaving the influence of an entity is…it’s uhm it is difficult. Of course you haven’t left it completely yet.” Jon says and the more he speaks the more flustered he gets. He gets even more flustered and finally stops looking at him to instead look at a point behind him and continues to say, “I…I’ll be here wi—with you, I won’t leave you…alone. I won’t leave you alone Martin.”
He misses Jon’s gaze upon him as soon as it’s gone. He misses it so much he nearly doesn’t absorb what it was he was actually saying. But when he did take it Jon’s words, oh when he did. He looked back to Jon and his expression was pinched like he had to force those words out of himself and he didn’t like the result of it. Any joy or hope within him died with that expression.
Of course, it was just, Jon looking after his assistant. He was worried, they’d lost so many already and he wasn’t a bad boss. Jon wasn’t Gertrude. Jon didn’t want anyone else to die, or get eaten by any fear gods more specifically. It was just that, Jon was just looking out for his friend. They were friends. Most likely. It’s not like he was particularly kind to Jon this past year but he had to believe in the Jon he listened to on the tapes. He had to believed that his choices didn’t mean he’s lost him.
He had to.
That didn’t stop the little thread in the back of his mind. The little one that leads back to an empty foggy beach. But he wasn’t there yet and the discomfort on Jon’s face started to shift back into worry.
“Martin…Martin, what do you see? Do you see…me?” Jon asks and his eyes are such a beautiful brown. The warm press of Jon’s hand as it cradles the back of his neck brings him back again, this time from himself rather than the Lonely.
He nods and speaks again, this time his voice a little bit stronger. “Yes, Jon. I see you.” He says and manages to add a smile with the words. It doesn’t feel genuine but he knows it should be.
“Martin.” Jon keeps saying his name and despite the broken record sound of it, he can’t get over the way it sounds like a prayer. He feels too much and not enough at the same time though, he can’t even manage to nurse the ember that is born from the repetition of his name.
Jon’s hand pulls him closer and they rest their foreheads against one another. He watches as Jon’s eyes close. He knows he should feel something and maybe he does, maybe he can feel the delicacy of the moment. The majority of what he feels is the void from before becoming something real and it hurts so much. Feeling anything outside the fog of the Lonely again is so shocking and it makes him want to run back to the emptiness from before.
Instead, he watches Jon’s face and is pulled even closer again as Jon moves to embrace him fully. He feels the tight press of their chests together and how their hearts seem to almost beat as one. The fogginess from before finally burns away and he never realized how much being loved would hurt.
They pull away from one another after a few minutes of the tight embrace. He feels settled and solid as he sits there with Jon. He isn’t sure yet if he can be alone and when Jon halfheartedly asks if he wants to be alone, he holds onto his arm and says no. So for the night, they stay like that, together on the sofa. They settle in and it’s only a little awkward when despite sleeping on different ends, their feet still end up being tangled together but he doesn’t think he can quite handle not touching at least some part of Jon.
In the light of the following morning, he is not as quiet as the night before. His smiles to Jon feel a little more genuine he can tell they’re both breathing a little easier as he makes them tea. It has been so long since he last made tea for Jon, and so the warmth that starts to run through him again as he pours into the mugs is refreshing. It is more than welcome.
The room is quiet, filled only with the sounds of two men drinking their tea in the morning light. He is startled out of his thoughts when he feels a touch on his wrist. Jon’s hand was outstretched and sliding towards his. Or it was until he startled and was helpless to watch Jon’s hand pull back again as if shocked. He watches Jon’s face as it shifts through various expressions, all avoiding his gaze. He’s trying to figure out what that means when a sharping ringing breaks whatever is going on between them.
Jon takes the opportunity to scramble out of the chair he’d been in and away from the room. He comes back into the room still fumbling to hold onto an angrily vibrating and ringing cell phone. The phone is somehow answered and then dropped during all that and all the two of them can hear is small angry yelling until Jon dives down to press speaker and toss the phone onto the table, as if afraid to even hold it.
“Jon I swear to god if you don’t answer me—” Basira’s voice rings out from the phone’s tiny speakers and changes the gears of their general panic to a more controlled fear of Basira Hussain herself, “—I will do things and you will not like them do you hear me?”
“Yes Basira, I—we’re both here,” Jon says with a sigh, leaning his weight onto the table.
“Good, welcome back Martin by the way.” Basira says and continues speaking over the small "thank you" he says. She probably hadn’t even heard him, which is fine it’s to be expected really. She simply carries on saying, “Sorry to have surprised you both, I’m calling off a burner phone and I realize you might not have recognized me.”
Jon doesn’t ask how she knew the number if she weren’t calling off her regular cell. There’s a pregnant pause as they all acknowledge what it was that let her know what numbers to press. So instead he says, “No it…it’s fine Basira. What happened in the Institute?”
“Elias and Peter are both gone. You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you? It doesn’t matter actually, the less I know the better,” At this Basira’s voice pauses and then she continues more carefully. “Daisy’s gone too, but don’t try looking for her Jon. I’ll find her.”
“I won’t. I-I can’t actually,” Jon’s voice is soft as he says this, his hands tighten their hold on the table.
Basira almost doesn’t register what Jon had said and is about to move on when she stops for a moment, “That doesn’t make sense. When could you not Know something?”
He steps in then and tries to pry himself from the comforting coldness he could feel coming back when a conversation he felt excluded from happened in the same room. “It could be because he entered the Lonely. Like when Daisy was in the Buried? Maybe it separated your connection to the Eye.”
“That doesn’t sound right but I don’t know enough about being an avatar to dispute it so, I think you two should leave.” Just like that Basira changes the topic and if either of them were really in the place to care they might have been mildly hurt by her curt words.
“Ah yeah—that should…” Jon floundered and he could tell that the Archivist within was struggling with the idea of leaving its stronghold.
“Where should we go Basira?”
“Daisy has a safe house out in Scotland, I left a map and the keys to a spare car of her’s near—”
“No need to say where Basira. I somehow seem to Know where it is, and I think it’s best you don’t risk other’s somehow Knowing as well.” Jon interrupts to say, burying his head in his arms from where he’s now leaning all his weight against the table.
Basira doesn’t say anything for a moment and then, “I thought you couldn’t Know anything?”
“Seems I was wrong.” Is all Jon says, muffled from his place within his arms.
The call ends soon as Basira has to make her goodbyes and goes back to pretending she has no idea where either of them currently are. He knows they have to start moving and getting ready to leave; however one look at Jon, who hasn’t made a sound or movement for the end of the conversation, quickly kills that idea. Or the immediacy of it at least.
He would give Jon space and begin to gather his own things, but being alone when Jon is so silent already is too terrifying a thought. So instead, he sits at the table and waits while staring at his hands. When some time has past and Jon still hasn’t moved, he gets up and makes tea for them. No words are spoken and Jon automatically starts drinking the tea placed on the table without much movement beyond sipping it from where it was placed.
Another thirty minutes pass like that and then he can’t take it anymore. He takes the now empty teacups and cleans them, hoping it’ll spur Jon into movement. It doesn’t. Jon stays where he lays, face still hidden in the depths of his arms.
“Alright that’s enough now,” He says while moving around the table and pulling Jon’s chair out. “I know there isn’t much to see there in your sleeves and we have got to be going. So on you go, get up!”
Jon refuses to move even as his chair is pulled back and the sound he lets out could almost be considered a whine. If anyone had thought Jonathan Sims to be have been capable of a good long whine at least. For now, it only serves to show that they need to move now or they never will.
He stands there next to Jon who still refuses to move and then sighs. “I don’t want to move you without permission Jon. So could you please start on your own? We need to grab as much as we can.”
Jon gives one last huff and then finally removes himself from the cage he’s seemed to have made out of his sleeves. He starts to move deeper into the flat before he stops and turns back sheepishly, shuffling his feet as he says, “This isn’t mine. This is your flat. I have nothing to get here.”
There’s a pause as he remembers that as well. “Huh, so it is. Might’ve forgotten that.”
“That this was only your flat? Or was it that you even had one at all?” Jon asks with a small smile. Like he was trying not to laugh at him.
“Both? Is that weird?”
“Not at all. Let’s go Martin, we don’t really need any of this that can’t be replaced up in Scotland.”
Now he’s the one laughing lightly as he grabs coats for the both of them and offers one to Jon. “You know, you won’t be able to stop me from buying an absolutely horrific item of clothing from every town we stop in.”
Jon’s smile gets even bigger and he doges the coat that’s being held out for him and instead goes for the largest and most comfortable looking jumper. His next words are suitably smug, “I wouldn’t ever dream of it.”
When they head out the door, it’s Jon who reaches for his hand again and their fingers intertwine one more. Jon even swings their hands as he leads the way to the car Basira had left for them. On the way there, he keeps sneaking looks up and it would be frustrating that nothing is being said except for the fact that it’s Jon. There is little in the world he wouldn’t do to keep Jon’s eyes on him.
But also he has his limits. So when they reach the car, but before they get in. He snaps. A little. “What is it Jon? You keep looking at me like there’s something important I’m supposed to understand but I can’t alright!”
Jon’s expression furrows a bit and he purses his lips before smoothing out his expression. “It’s…I love you Martin, is all.”
I love you Martin, is all.
The words repeat in his mind, and Jon’s hand in his feels infinitely warmer. The air is warmer too. The sun, everything is getting to the point where it’s so scalding. Is Jon sure an avatar of the Desolation hasn’t suddenly appeared and that’s what he had been trying to say this entire time?
“Oh.”
“Yes…oh.” Jon says, smiling as he watches Martin.
That changes everything, but it also changes nothing. Jon’s hand is still in his, and he still can feel the fog trying to press in on him at any moment, but for now, he is Martin Blackwood and he is loved. He is loved even as they get into the car and he bats Jon’s hand away from the stereo to play pop songs from the 2000s. And Martin loves him back too.