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“You look happy.”
“Mm,” Martin confirmed, attention still mostly on the essay he was currently marking on their sofa.
Jon watched him for a while longer, his own pile of homework long-completed. He took a sip of now-lukewarm tea and watched as Martin bit the corner of his lip to prevent himself from giving Jon any more clues. “You’re not going to tell me why.”
“Mmhm,” Martin confirmed, a small, sly smile curling at one corner of his mouth.
“Should I be afraid?”
“Oh be afraid,” Martin said in his best scary voice, drawing a circle over a student’s work in his green biro. “Be veeery afraid.”
Jon couldn’t help the smile he always caught when Martin was in a silly mood. He’d been told (mostly via the mode of poetry) that he went fond around the eyes, the wrinkles that had set in furious frowns and across tired scars stretching into bright and careful excitement.
Jon had been told that he looked ‘soft’; ‘so, so soft’ in those moments. He’d fought that, the word a battered and accusatory word that reminded him of people he’d chosen to leave behind, but now he found such power in it. Softness. Him, Jonathan Sims, allowed softness.
“Poirot will think you’ve abandoned him.”
“Hm?”
“You’ve finished your marking, you might as well finish the book that’s been sitting on your bedside table for a week.”
“Mm,” Jon said dismissively, rooting himself further in his corner of the couch.
“Honestly Jon, you read a literal tome about a, a medieval priest or something in three hours, but you can’t finish a little Belgian?”
“Mmm,” Jon moaned, “I read a Christie before.”
“You read a Miss Marple.”
Jon squirmed out another wordless “mm” of disagreement, but was saved having to explain himself when Martin looked up with another, much more wicked smile.
“What?” Jon asked with growing dread.
“Nothing,” Martin said, tone dripping with mischief. “Just thinking about how one of us has a luscious moustache ripe for styling.”
Jon’s hand came to his mouth almost protectively, as if Martin could spirit a pair of scissors and moustache wax into existance through the power of thought alone.
“With prelims coming up, a certain history teacher works himself into a tizz, then sleeps like the dead… Wouldn’t be hard to bring out the clippers while he slept...”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Jon said, words muffled by his own hand.
Essay on Romeo and Juliet completely abandoned, Martin let the paper and his pens land on the floor as he mimed a pair of clippers, buzzing as he crawled over to Jon’s side of the sofa. Jon laughed as he tried to push Martin back with his legs, but it only made Martin fight more, using his weight to pin Jon’s struggling’ legs with his own. “I’m gonna shave it,” Martin said, trying his best to adopt his villain-voice through his own laughter, batting away Jon’s hands to bring his buzzing puppet-beard-trimmer to Jon’s face.
“No! Bad!” Jon said, scrambling as far back as he could, then switching plans to snake one of his hands to Martin’s side, launching a successful first attack by sticking his cold fingers underneath Martin’s shirt and earning him a moment to push himself up and away from the imaginary clippers.
Martin was quick to fight back with an affronted “Oh I see, playing dirty, are we?” He crawled further until he was straddling Jon’s midriff and relaxed so his full weight was on Jon, who let out a quiet huff, but continued to move his cold hands over Martin’s skin.
Jon looked up at Martin with a look he knew riled Martin, half come-hither, half withering egotism. “I will tickle you,” Jon threatened.
“Will you?” Martin said, still holding up his imaginary trimmer and giving the occasional buzz.
“I will,” Jon promised. “If you come one milimetre closer. I’ll do it.”
“You don’t scare me, Sims.”
Jon narrowed his eyes, pinching some of Martin’s skin to test him. Martin kept a level expression.
“Shaving my beard is an affront to Allah.”
“Trimming the moustache is part of the fitrah.” Jon’s eyes narrowed further as Martin’s expression took on the smugness of a cat who’s got the cream.
“Well, I’m not a man, so it’s not fitrah.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Martin agreed, though didn’t lower his hand.
“Just because you can’t grow one,” Jon said, keeping his own tone lofty and recognising the glint of delighted indignance in Martin’s eye.
“Ohhh, low blow, Sims!”
“What can I say,” Jon said, finally lowering his hand from its defensive position over his moustache to run his fingers through his full, thick beard. “Some of us were not born to sport peach fuzz.”
Martin dropped the fake trimmer, cupped both of Jon’s cheeks and squidged them together, making his lips part like a fish. “Rude.”
Jon tried to convey his own delight at the win through his compromised face, and got a kiss to the nose as a reward.
“You’re a terror, Sims.”
“Thank you. I do try.”
Martin squidged his cheeks a moment longer before pushing himself off of Jon and back towards his side of the sofa. “Anyway, I think you’d look impressive with a Poirot-stashe.”
“I’d look like a right creep. Can you imagine the parents’ faces as I walked into school?”
“‘What a fine, upstanding citizen that teacher looks!’” Martin said, putting on his poshest voice.
“‘Must have too much bloody time on his hands. Give ‘em more work, I say’.”
Martin huffed a laugh as he bent to retrieve the thankfully un-ruffled essay from where it had fallen half-under their sofa. “Speaking of.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll stop distracting you.”
“The pains of having an adorable, loving husband.”
“Not adorable,” Jon said, more out of habit than anything, then picked himself up off the sofa. “Fine, Poirot gets one more chance. But only because I love you.”
“We’ll make you a fan of him yet, Jon!”
-
Jon understands Martin’s mood the previous night the moment he’s sat in the meeting, his terrible coffee in his stained mug placed beside the piece of A4 that’s been laid at his seat.
‘S2 school trip’ the header reads. To the aquarium and bird sanctuary as part of the biology curriculum. Humanities teachers were needed to supervise. He scans the page and sees Martin’s name, then a couple of names down is his own.
He doesn’t need to look around his colleagues to tell they’re all grinning at him; either because they’ve set this up themselves or because they’re so thankful that he and Martin would so graciously provide them with such bountiful breakroom gossip free of charge.
-
Teenagers smell. Jon has found this out the hard way.
A coach-full of teenagers smells worse. Jon is finding this out the hard way.
They’re loud, too, squabbling and yammering over each other to get attention. It was no surprise that his four no-gooders: Madeleine, Jason, Nnedima and Femi had bum-rushed the back row (joined by another kid from their class, Sophie,) and were the root of the ruckus.
Jon and Martin were posted at the front. They had initially been sat together, but that had lasted all of five minutes until Sal had started getting sick and “Please, Sir, can I come sit at the front?”
And so Sal had taken Jon’s place up front with a coo-ing Martin with a sick-bag, and Jon had been pushed a row back, straight into the line of fire. Jon had less than thirty seconds of peace before Jason dropped into the seat beside him.
“Hey Jon!”
“Morning Jason. Do your belt up if you’re going to sit there please.”
“Sure thing, Jon.”
Jason did as Jon had commanded, though not without narration. “Bit pointless though ain’t it? Doing the seatbelt? If the bus gets crashed into, it’s not like this thing across our laps is gonna stop us from cracking our noggins open.”
“Did you need something, Jason?”
“Has anyone told you you ain’t got any bedside manner, Jon?”
“Regularly.”
“Did you used to be a doctor?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Maddy reckons you killed someone down in London.”
“Just one person? What happened to the theory I was a serial killer?”
“That one was only ‘cos she wanted to start a podcast.”
“Ah, I see.”
There’s a couple of moments of silence where Jason plays with the old ashtray built into the back of the seats before them.
“You have any hobbies?” Jason asks.
“Hobbies?” Jon repeats, slightly taken aback. “Er, I suppose I read?”
“Like nerd history books and shit?”
“Please don’t swear,” Jon says on instinct. “And yes, but not all of the time. I like to read everything I can.”
“Have you read like, manga then.”
Jon allows a small smile at that. “I have read a manga, yes.”
“What ones?”
“You’ll have to ask Mister Blackwood, it was from his… collection.”
“Has Mister Blackwood watched Attack on Titan?”
“Probably, you’ll have to ask him.”
“Why aren’t you Jon Blackwood? Or why isn’t Martin Mister Sims?”
“We got married rather… quickly, and under extenuating circumstances.” Jon scratches at his beard. “Also, we’re both pretty lazy and changing our ID sounded like too much hassle.”
“Hm.” Jason plays with the ashtray again, eyes locked to the front. “Is it?”
“Is what?”
“Is it hassle. To like. Change your ID and stuff.”
“Not if you have the right people to help you, no.”
“Does Muslim like trans people?”
“Islam,” Jon corrects gently, biting down on what might have been a disparaging laugh. “I...” he says after a pause, “I’m trying to find a diplomatic way to phrase this, Jason.”
“So no, then.”
“I…” The teacher part of him wants to turn the question back on Jason, to ask the kid the question they’re obviously asking: ‘Do you feel like Catholics do not like trans people?’, but Jon knows that that would be an unfair question.
“I turned away from God; from Allah and from Islam for a long time. Because of how I was raised, and in part because of how I began to see people of my gender, of my sexuality were being treated by those who had once called me brother.” Jon scratches at his temple, feeling one of the pock-marked worm scars under his fingers. “For other things that started to go wrong too.
“It’s not easy. I lost faith, I lost trust for a very, very long time. I still struggle with it. Trust. Mine was broken over and over, and it made it very hard to see warmth when love was directed at me. I pushed friends away because love began to feel like the beginnings of scorn, of ostracisation...” Jon clicks his tongue at himself. “The beginnings of people not wanting to be around me,” he rephrases.
“So I had to practise. Quite a lot, to be honest. Practise letting people be around me. Practise letting people go, and practise desperately keeping hold of others. Practise telling myself that no matter how hard some people convince you they do, they do not speak with Allah’s voice. With God’s voice. They’re people, as flawed as you or I.”
Jon thinks about Elias, instantly made queasy by the false-Prophet narrative he had been spoon-fed by the man. But just as quickly, thoughts of Elias are told to fuck off and are replaced with the thoughts he has worked hard to remember: of pub nights with Tim and Sasha early on, of date nights to discounted restaurants with Georgie, or reading with Basira and with Daisy, of baking lavendar shortbread in a Scottish kitchen with his husband. Of love, and of trust.
“That’s who Allah is to me,” Jon says, tilting his head back to look at the plastic AC vents in the roof near his head. “It has not been easy, but I choose to believe that Islam is love, and is trust.”
Jon blinks, feeling a bit overwhelmed by his self-actualisations, then remembers himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to begin lecturing you. God knows I’m not fit to preach religion to anyone -” Jon turns his head slightly, afraid to find Jason’s eyes glazed over, either in trance or in boredom, and feels his heart break to find Jason quietly weeping instead.
“Oh God, are you-” Jon’s hands hover over Jason’s shoulders, not wanting to touch the kid but unsure how to give any form of emotional counselling. “I’m so sorry, I said too much, I thought I had learned how to keep my mouth shut- ”
“Can I hug you, Jon?”
A dozen child-safety seminars flash through Jon’s head, but he pushes them aside to open his arms as un-awkwardly as he can in the tiny two-seater nook they’re in.
Jason headbutts Jon’s chest and wraps tight arms around Jon’s torso, and Jon can feel his shirt already begin to wet with the kid’s tears and, presumably, snot.
Jon feels so far beyond his realm of comfort he feels almost as if he’s in a dissociative state, distant from the pure gushing of emotion coming from this child latched onto him. God, Jon could never have been this small, this delicate. Even when he had met Mister Spider, he must have been bigger, surely? Less lost? Less lonely? Less out at sea?
He feels Jason’s fingers tighten in his shirt and he thinks about himself at 13. Already distant, already called aloof. No friends, no laughter. No backseats of the coach, no teacher to ask hard questions to, nobody to cry on.
Just a sackful of charity shop books.
Not old books, not useful books, just second-hand books. Second-hand knowledge about middle-aged issues. Cooking books and gardening guides and well-thumbed thrillers and the occasional book about world religions.
“I, er.”
What did he even want to hear at thirteen? What did he need to hear? That the world was scary and fucked up and full of monsters? Monsters who were literal embodiments of fear, and monsters who were not but who decided to be nasty anyway. Full of humans who hated for the fun of being hateful.
He wanted to have heard that. He’d love to have had the warning. Probably wouldn’t have prevented him from making the same egotistical mistakes but might have made the 2 + 2 equation a little quicker. Might have saved a life, if he had been lucky.
But, Jon thinks with a deep breath, that is not the memory he wishes he had. The treasured childhood memory he could go back to, to draw power from. To remember on the darkest nights, when sat alone and fearing that the whole of humanity was out to get him.
“You’re a child of God, Jason. God loves you.” Jon begins what he hopes is a soothing pat on Jason’s back as he speaks; pulling from a memory of Martin’s hands on his own back, mimicking the motions he found comforting in his darkest moments. “People love you, your friends love you. You are loved, and worth every single second of love and more. You deserve love, and while people will tell you otherwise, I am telling you that they are wrong. You are loved, and you deserve love.”
Jason’s breathing evens out after a while, and Jon realises a good few miles later that the kid’s fallen asleep on him, and that he’s in for a rather uncomfortable two hour ride.
-
Martin cottons on to the situation a half hour later, and while the bastard just gives him a soppy-eyed look and doesn’t so much as try to help Jon’s poor dead arm and absolutely frozen shoulder from where it’s been pressed against the cold glass, Martin does have the good graces to wake Jason up ten minutes before they arrive so he can offer the kid a wet face-cloth to clean their face and get themselves sorted out before the coach pulls in.
“Sorry,” Jason says quietly. “About your shirt.”
“That’s alright,” Jon says, trying to rub any sort of feeling back into his shoulder without causing the kid more emotional damage. “Martin always packs extra anyway.”
Jason’s face lights up at that, though their eyes remain wobbly and threaten to leak again. “Also just. Sorry.”
“For what?”
Jason shrugs weakly. Jon gives them a moment. “Imprinting I guess. Didn’t think that…” Jason plays with their tie. “Bet you didn’t think your biggest problem at a Scottish all girl’s Catholic school was going to be the random trans kid unloading all their feelings onto you.”
Jon feels himself warm at that, the childhood innocence to be worried about anything so damned pure. “No,” Jon allows. “Though to be fair, I did think my biggest problem was going to be the fact that I was on the run, Bonnie and Clyde-style from my string of serial killings.”
That does get a small laugh out of Jason. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Don’t tell Madeleine though. You’ll want to reserve that for at least season three of her podcast.”
Jon is treated to a second, more genuine laugh, and he feels his heart grow about twenty sizes.
“Also, and I know this is very little, but I put the request in for staff not to refer to students as the collective term ‘girls’.” Jon scratches at the worm-hole on his temple again, wondering if he’s about to start developing a nervous tick induced by wanting to impress his students. “I don’t know whether they’ll listen, but… Martin wants to do a pride month this year, and he’s going to get some lanyards and badges and start some after-school clubs and...” Jon stops himself. “I want you to enjoy school, Jason. I want you to enjoy learning, and falling out with your friends because you like different TV shows and make up again when you’ve thrown turkey twizzlers at each other across the canteen.”
“What’s a turkey twizzler?”
“What’s a -” Jon has a horrible moment of incomprehension. “You know, they used to serve them in canteens until Jamie Oliver-” Jon does a quick bout of maths in his head and comes to the horrifying realisation that the person he is talking to is younger than the scandal he deems as a recent memory and has to close his mouth before he catches a fly. “You can wikipedia it later,” he says instead.
“Alright,” Jason says, and Jon doesn’t need Martin to translate that as kid speak for ‘I absolutely won’t’. “I’m gonna… get my backpack and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Jon says, waving the kid off and immediately slumping once they’re out of his view, closing his eyes to give himself a short rest. He feels the familiar comforting press of Martin coming to sit beside him and Jon can’t resist a “Seatbelt,” smiling when he hears the huff, and the click a moment later.
“Okay?” Martin asks.
“I’m good.”
“Think you’ll last ‘round the aquarium and the bird centre? I can text Jenny and ask if she’s cool with taking some of our kids if you need a break.”
“Very sweet of you, Martin, but I’m good, thank you.” Jon reaches blindly for Martin’s hand, and squeezes it once he finds it. “Maybe we can talk about it when we’re home.”
“Of course,” Martin says, slightly too fast, a remnant of his desire to please, before he catches himself and forces himself to relax. “Of course,” he says again. “If you want to, and when you’re ready.”
“And if you’re in the right headspace,” Jon says, a routine of building each other’s boundaries for each other. “I am fine, though. Just a sore shoulder. Nothing a loving massage from a loving husband won’t fix.”
“Oh I see how it is,” Martin says, and Jon doesn’t need to open his eyes to see Martin’s mirroring the smile Jon’s wearing.
“I am going to need a spare shirt, though.”
“Oh, sure! Which do you want, the white one with the red bits on it, or the light blue one?”
“You brought… multiple spares?”
“Who do you think I am, Jon? I’m a big, sweaty, messy dude. I kept shirts at the institute before I lived there in case of ketchup, and then in case of blood. We’re about to unleash 90 kids on a zoo. I brought more than one shirt.”
“Yeah,” Jon can only really think to say in response. “Yeah, that’s fair enough.”
God, he thinks, for the last five minutes of peace he gets that day, kids these days don’t even know about turkey twizzlers-
-
"Oh," Jon says, just before he's about to fall asleep that evening. "What was all that grinning about the other week?"
"Grinning?" Martin asks, obviously slightly miffed at being spoken to just as he's been about to fall asleep.
"Yeah," Jon says. "You were being a silly bugger."
"Oh," Martin says, and Jon can feel the love bleeding from him as Martin reaches out to drag him into a hug. "Well, what with everything going on, we never really had a chance to, you know. Go on a date."
"I suppose," Jon says, not really connecting the dots.
"And, you know. Aquariums, zoos, that's pretty dating 101 stuff, so. I just thought it was cute, to think of it like a date."
"It was a school trip. We had 90 kids with us. You had to change your shirt three times. You had to buy a fourth shirt."
"Yeah," Martin says, and it comes out so fondly Jon almost has to wonder if he's dreaming. "I got to hold hands with my adorable husband as he screamed at our 90 children not to put actual animal shit in their mouths."
"I am going to kill Madeleine," Jon says, but he can't feel that earlier anger anymore, not when he's here, not when he's wrapped in Martin's arms, not when Martin's voice has gone all soft and warm.
Love and trust, huh. He wonders when he started really believing it. He's glad he does. Inshallah he never has to question it again.
"Next time," Jon says, wamth enveloping his whole soul, "We should go on a date without out 90 children."
"Yes," Martin says, little more than a whisper. "That would be nice."
Jon snorts a laugh, and then he dreams happy dreams.