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Jon is making tea in the cramped kitchen of Daisy’s safehouse, half asleep and dunking the cheap bag into his mug impatiently, when the door opens with a bang.
The sodden lump of whatever generic-market blends are made of flies from his hand and smacks wetly into the window, splattering brownish water across the glass in a way that’s a little bit too much like blood. Jon drops to the floor, heart slamming into his ribs as he presses his back to the cupboard doors and tries to ignore the scream of his mind trying to decide what exactly (out of everything he’s pissed off) is about to kill him.
And then the bang—a brittle, crashing noise of an old wooden door slamming into an old wooden wall, all because it doesn’t have one of those little stoppers to prevent it—is followed by a yelp.
It’s an apologetic yelp, the kind that clearly says I’m sorry or possibly oh shit depending on the person. Whatever the sentiment, Jon doesn’t know if it’s meant for the door, the wall, or even for him. But he knows it’s a Martin kind of thing, and something Martin probably wouldn’t do if he was fleeing for his life.
Probably.
So Jon gets up, using the edge of the sink to haul himself to his feet, and pokes his head around the doorframe a little bit less cautiously than he might have when they arrived a week ago. He still makes sure that the knife block is in reach and that the hems of his sweatpants are safely above his ankles and out of tripping range. And he sighs.
It is indeed Martin, turning a brilliant shade of red that only he seems to be able to manage. One hand is on the door knob as he holds it close to him, as if to take back the awful bang he just made at not even eight in the morning. The other is at the back of his neck, buried in his curly and messy hair.
“Jon! Jon, I am so sorry,” Martin says, all bright eyes and red cheeks, “but I—there was a cow.”
“A cow?” Jon repeats, stupidly and somehow still a bit sleepily even after having his self-preservation instincts go haywire with adrenaline.
Martin nods.
He’s standing there at the door, embarrassed but still radiating delight in his shapeless jumper and worn out trainers, and Jon has no idea what else to say.
It seems like an important moment. The kind with capital letters, and Jon…he’s afraid that whatever he chooses will be wrong, because he’s used to saying the wrong thing by now and he has no idea how to get better. He’s afraid that an honest attempt to understand will be taken as dismissal or derision, because Jon was such a prick back in the beginning before Prentiss. And he could handle it, if screwing up got him yelled at. Or stabbed. He’s used to his mistakes being met with violence and he has the scars to prove it.
What he can’t handle though…is if whatever he says makes Martin crumple under the weight of the haze and the smell of saltwater that's not banished as easily as Peter Lukas.
Martin’s eyebrows furrow the slightest bit as the silence continues a second too long, and the panic claws at Jon's throat. So he tries to think of something that’s the farthest thing from a beach with no one else in sight.
“Did…Did you want to show me?”
Somehow it’s the right thing to say, because Martin is smiling and grabbing his hand and pulling Jon out the door almost before Jon gets his shoes on. They walk for a few minutes to a farmer’s overgrown field—marked by a rural, waist-high wooden fence—stretching into the distance and dotted with what are probably other cows. There’s only one by the fence though, and it’s a nice enough cow. Big and brown and entirely unremarkable apart from the fact that it made Martin happy.
Well. Maybe it’s a very nice cow.
It’s not the last time it happens. Jon sticks an old pair of trainers he packed but hates behind the door to cushion it, because Martin tries to be careful but the cabin is already in bad shape and was picked by Daisy. It wasn’t exactly made with someone like him in mind.
(Then again, neither is Jon. Scrawny and bony to Martin’s tall and soft, yet Martin’s hugs are never too tight, his friendly little bumps at the kitchen sink never too hard.)
The next ‘event’ is over a cat: a big, fluffy, magnificent cat right outside the cabin that has Jon running out the door in his socks. He spends ages sitting in the grass, talking softly to it, but he forgets his damp trousers the minute it stalks over to gracefully perch in his lap. It gives him ten seconds of shocked joy before it meows at him to demand attention, and proceeds to wash its face while Jon pets and pets and pets.
Martin has so many pictures of it that Jon swears there’s a different one on Martin’s lockscreen for every day of the week.
Of course, that’s what really opens the flood gates. Yes, Jon may have cried, but really it wasn’t that big of a deal. He’s used to being indoors, that’s all. Still, it means that Martin feels completely comfortable to rush in from that point onwards, breathless and flushed to tell him about whatever he’s seen that he wants Jon to see too.
Martin doesn’t always come back to get Jon, though. Sometimes he just takes pictures and tells him all about it while they’re sitting together in front of the fire, or when they’re making dinner. Cows are plentiful and…become an inside joke of sorts. They never discuss why, but Jon knows it’s because they were the first thing to send Martin careening back to the cabin with the force of how much he wanted to share his joy with someone—how much he didn’t want to experience something alone.
It’s…good.
xxx
“You should have come with me on my walk today,” Martin says again, scrolling through his camera roll while Jon sleepily watches. Martin might not write much poetry anymore, but he’s taken to photographing things like flowers growing from the road and bent trees when he goes out. It’s visually poetic in a perfectly Martin way, and Jon likes seeing them—even blurry due to his glasses being on the table.
“Next time.” Jon doesn’t ache so much when he’s pillowed on Martin, and Martin has insisted that Jon’s bony elbows are not uncomfortable, so they spend more than a little of their time tangled up on the couch. “What kind of squirrel did you see again?”
Excitement bubbling up in his voice, Martin launches into his description of the russet red squirrel for the second time that evening. There’s only a single blurry photo, hence his regret that Jon hadn’t been along this time, but Jon’s just glad that Martin got to see it. The evening wears on in much the same way, talking and pictures and smiles, until the fire burns down and the dark spreads through the room.
Jon wakes to a chill that he shouldn’t feel when he’s still snuggled up to Martin, and swears he can smell the sea. He squints, sees that Martin is still holding his phone in his hand, and his eyes seem...faded. Jon’s heart jumps in his chest and he tries to push himself up, desperate to get his glasses and see if it’s just his own terrible vision playing tricks on him.
“You can’t honestly like seeing all these, can you?” Martin asks then, soft and distant, as his thumb remains paused over the screen. It doesn’t even sound like he’s actually asking the question to anyone but himself. His voice isn’t cold but the air is, and Jon shivers. He knows he needs to say the right thing again.
(Jon doesn’t need Martin to say anything when he wakes up from nightmares, or when a kitchen accident heals too fast and he remembers he’s a monster, he’s a monster oh god he’s a monster. Because Martin gathers Jon into his arms and holds him, and that’s what’s right for him and Martin has always been better at that than Jon.)
But he’s had a couple weeks to get better at not being wrong, and Jon manages to take a deep breath before he presses closer against Martin’s chest and shuts his eyes.
“Show me the ducklings from last Tuesday again, please.”
And just like that the faint chill eases back and Martin makes that awkward, happy sound that means Jon has caught him off guard. Jon likes that he knows what that noise means. There’s a hint of tears in it, but not the kind that need addressing, and he likes that he can hear the little bit of delight in Martin’s voice when he speaks next.
“Y-You remember the day?”
“I remember all of them.”
So Martin scrolls back to the ducklings, and when they fall back asleep Jon’s hand is tucked into Martin’s free one.
xxx
It takes a few tries to take a picture that isn’t blurry, and Jon is convinced that technology just hates him. Get in line, he thinks as he scowls at the camera app, enlarging the photo to make sure it really isn’t some horrible mess of pixels that somehow looks fine until he zooms in the slightest bit. There are far worse things that hate him than mundane things like smartphones, after all.
But the picture he has on the screen is a good one at last, and his scowl eases into a smile. Martin had fallen asleep on their ratty picnic blanket they got from the thrift shop, half-propped up over the cheap notebook where he’s started recording all their animal run-ins. It’s a bit like a bird-watching journal, Jon supposes, except its filled with things like cows and rabbits and squirrels and the cat that definitely has a home but still graces them with visits.
It also has what Jon thinks might be poetry, and…it’s nice. Not the poetry itself, since Martin had turned that unhealthy shade of red when Jon had asked about it and Jon isn’t about to snoop, but the thought that Martin is writing again. It feels like it means something. Jon wants it to mean something.
“What are you doing?”
“Ah! Nothing,” Jon says jauntily, locking his phone when Martin blearily opens his eyes and yawns. His hair is messier than usual and it's adorable.
“Hm.”
Jon doesn’t reply to the skeptical little huff, and Martin groans as he rolls over onto his back. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he looks up into the sky aimlessly as Jon pretends he isn’t watching. There’s something strange and pleasant about harmless suspicion that doesn’t mean anything beyond a breath of air. They stay that way in content silence for a few more minutes until Martin suddenly gasps and grabs Jon’s wrist.
“Look! An eagle!”
Automatically tipping his head back, Jon squints up through the sunlight, trying to pick something out from the blue and the clouds.
“I don’t see it.”
“It’s right there!” Martin is pointing frantically, but Jon still can’t see anything in the patch of sky that’s been designated.
“I really don’t—”
“You’re just the wrong angle. Here, come on!”
The hand on Jon’s wrist pulls him backward and rather than just adjusting his position as Martin had probably expected, Jon falls right over.
He—thankfully for his battered body—lands on Martin, who makes an odd squeaking noise as the two of them somehow make an even bigger mess by trying not to make one at all. Jon’s glasses get knocked askew and for a minute everything is impossibly messier. It's all half-finished apologies and half-started sentences, until at last he manages to free his hands and get the metal frames jammed properly back onto his nose so he can look at Martin with what should be a frown but probably isn’t.
They’re tangled up and a little too close even though they’re closer when they’re sharing the cabin’s single bed, eyes making contact from only a few inches apart. Martin is getting pink around the ears as the seconds drag on, and Jon thinks that this is right about the time in The Archers when one of them would confess their love.
So Jon bloody well does. Thanks, Daisy.
“Martin?”
“Y-yeah, Jon?”
“I…About what you said in the Lonely? I mean if you still do…I-I love you too.”
“You what?” Martin squeaks, and he sounds so aghast that Jon almost feels like he’s made a horrible mistake, until he realizes that the emotion behind Martin’s instant disbelief is something close to ridiculously happy.
Because they never actually talked about it when they got to the cabin. They fumbled through unpacking and sharing the bed and even managed to talk about Jon’s boundaries when it came to that. But they never talked about why Jon’s first panic attack ended with Martin pressing kisses to the graying hair at Jon’s temple, or why Martin’s ended with Jon holding his hands as he repeated over and over that he was there. It had been weeks of dancing around it, and it was time they stopped.
So Jon nods, and presses Martin’s hands to his cheeks. Blushes don’t really show up on his dark skin, so he hopes that Martin can feel the heat in his face and make the connection. He tries to ignore how badly his hands are shaking as he holds Martin’s, and closes his eyes in an attempt to keep his composure. The feeling of Martin’s thumbs brushing against the pocked scars in his cheeks isn’t really helping, but Jon doesn’t really want him to stop either.
With his eyes closed, he can hear Martin’s breathing as if it's his own, soft and maybe a little too fast. Then Martin swallows and takes a huge, shuddering breath in. The movements of his thumbs finally stops, but Jon keeps his eyes closed. He’s afraid again, and he’s not sure he won’t See more than he ought to just to soothe his fears.
So it’s an honest surprise when Martin shifts so he’s mostly sitting up, pulling Jon with him and one hand still holding Jon’s face as he manages to croak out a single question.
“Can…Can I kiss you, Jon?”
“Yes.”
Jon’s voice is just as hoarse, and their first kiss is barely a brush against each other, like they’re both waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it doesn’t, it never will, and their second kiss is a proper one. One that makes Jon feel a little bit like maybe everything can’t have been completely and terribly awful if it’s gotten them here.
xxx
“As much fun as listening to you monologue is, I’ll give you some privacy. Go for a walk.”
“Let me know if you see any good cows.”
“Obviously I’m going to tell you if I see any good cows.”
Jon laughs quietly to himself at the joke, far too old to still be funny and yet still going because somehow loving someone makes even deadpan—teasing—comments about cows endearing. He shakes his head a little, sighing as he picks up the statement he’s pulled from the bag that Basira had gotten for them. For him. Jon does hope she knows how much he appreciates it. He could really do with a little extra energy; he’s had to miss out on the last few walks with Martin.
“Right. Statement of Hazel—”
He doesn’t even finish the name at the top of the page before the door bangs open. It’s not a bang like the first time though. It’s a muted sort of thump that runs through the house and makes it shake and ought to make Jon’s anxiety go through the roof, but the sound just means Martin to him and he’s already turning away from the desk when he hears Martin calling out that the cat is back.
Halfway to the front door, Jon realizes he’s still holding the statement in his hand. He tosses it at the dining table, which he knows Martin will scold him for when he sees it, but it’ll have to wait because cats never do.
xxx
Martin does see it when he goes inside to get one of his jackets to drape over Jon, because the wind has gotten chilly and Jon refuses to break the bond of feline trust by removing the cat from his lap. And he sees the words there past the introduction and it’s like the Lonely crashes over him in one fell wave he’s so cold, but then fire burns through him, his own will lit by his love for Jon, and he puts actual fire through the statement.
When Jon finally comes back inside—and Martin has made him a cup of tea because he never did get the jacket—they talk about it because they’ve learned, they’ve learned what secrets and not talking does. From then on Martin curates the statements Basira sneaks them, mustering up enough levity to jokingly inform Jon that he’s keeping him on a strict diet. He reads the statements all the way through and Jon worries, but Martin refuses to skim in case Elias starts his gloating anywhere.
It makes things a little messy again, but they make it through like they’ve made it through the rest of the trauma gifted by the Eye and the Lonely: together and talking so that the bad days are only ever bad days, and not the end of what they fought for.
Somehow, it works. The apocalypse doesn’t take away their little cabin and the lives they build in it, and one day they even see Basira and Daisy again.
And if Jon does start calling the cat Lady Luck...well, it’s just because Martin said it first.