Archive of Our Own

"Home. Such a simple word. Home - not house, not dwelling, not residence or address, not domicile or flat or lodging or abode or apartment or property or accommodation. Home."

Martin hasn’t ever had a home before. 

Oh, he’s lived in his fair share of houses and apartments, moving frequently as a child to smaller and more cramped houses as his mother’s condition worsened and their already meager funds slowly diminished. He’d originally grown up in a nice, normal house, with a proper backyard, lots of friendly neighbors, and both parents, but that, of course, hadn’t lasted very long at all. Looking back, that was probably the closest he had to a home, before his father left him and his mother behind. After that, none of the places he lived in his slow rotation of shrinking houses were home. They were just places where he went when school was over, places to do his homework, to look after his mother, to realize he wasn’t going to get to graduate.

He tried to make his London apartment a home. He really did. With his mother in the care home, he could pick out his own decorations, his own furniture, have whoever he wanted over. Or - that was the plan, anyway. He never quite found that group of friends to invite over every Friday night for games or drinks or movies or whatever other people did at their friend’s apartments. 

Plus, even if he had been able to fix his flat into a home, three weeks under siege from a woman with worms swimming through her skin would have been enough to undo that. 

His flat couldn’t be home, after that. It was just a reminder. 

The archives weren’t home, either, of course, they weren’t. A place isn’t home when you’re being watched by a man with ill-fitting eyes, when you’re trapped and bound in place by unknowable forces, when you’re being killed off, one by one. But Jon was there (and Tim had been there, and Sasha had too, once), and if nothing else, document storage had been, at least for some time, safe. 

The archives weren’t home. But they were something. 

Daisy’s safehouse is something, too. 

The little analog clock by Martin’s head clicks slowly into midnight, and he lets out a sigh. Sleep seems to be still firmly out of reach for the night, despite the exhaustion that weighs his eyes down, despite how content he feels under the weighted quilt with Jon tucked snugly into his side. 

They’ve been at the safehouse for a little less than a week now and Martin’s spent a good chunk of that time realizing he has a lot to learn. To start, he’s been learning how to slow down and take his time with things, and how to get used to this new life he is leading, getting slowly comfortable with how much gentler and kinder and more tender it is than anything he’s ever had before. He is learning to shake off the grip the Lonely still tries to hold on him, remembering that Jon is here, and that he is not alone and is loved, and the creeping white tendrils of fog come less and less as the days go by. It still strikes though, with or without reason, still reluctant to truly let him go. He’s also learning to get used to Jon spending every minute practically glued to his side, learning how Jon feels pressed up sleepily against him, learning how to hold him, learning how to kiss him, again and again until he gets it right, and learning how Jon shares his affection in return. Martin is learning that Jon’s love is quiet but earnest and eager, often existing in soft touches and constant, overlapping reminders, that he is here, that he loves him, that Martin can take care of him, but that he can take care of Martin, too. Martin is learning how to accept his safety, for however long it’s willing to last, despite the worry that still plagues him. 

He’s also been learning a lot about home repairs. 

They’ve both been learning how to talk to each other, something neither really has enough experience in. They talk about the things that have happened to them, of course, but are figuring out how to talk about normal things, too. They’re learning to talk about groceries and village gossip and what they were like as teenagers and the repairs and cleaning they still need to do to fully turn the safehouse into a home. 

Neither of them actually have actually said the word, but Martin feels it hovering in the air above them, warm and bright. Home. 

He’s not totally sure how he feels about that yet. 

They don’t talk about everything, though. Certain topics are religiously and mutually avoided. They don’t talk about what happened to Peter Lukas, beyond Jon’s quiet muttered explanation during their second night here, eyes downcast. They don’t talk about what had happened after The Stranger’s failed ritual, who they’d been before, and everything it’d taken from them. They don’t talk about Martin’s last few months of self-isolation. They don’t talk about Jonah Magnus. 

Sometimes Martin feels like they managed to pick up again straight from where they left off before the Unknowing, like some unspoken agreement to just pretend things were as easy as they used to be. Maybe that should comfort him, somehow, but the thought hasn’t sat well in his stomach. 

Martin turns away from his scattered thoughts and the ticking clock, and looks down at Jon. He is still latched onto Martin, as he often is while sleeping, but Martin notices, the dim moonlight falling messily across them both, that Jon’s face has slipped out of the relaxed contentment of peaceful sleep, and is screwed up in pain instead, eyebrows pressed down, eyes squeezed shut. 

The dreams haven’t stopped since leaving London. Martin knows that. He reaches out hesitantly, brushes a lock of Jon’s hair out of his face, and lets his fingertips linger for a moment on Jon’s cheek. Jon’s expression lightens ever so slightly, but quickly tightens again.

“Hey,” Martin breaths. His hand moves to rest on Jon’s shoulder, and he gives it a squeeze. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” 

Jon gives a muffled groan, and his eyes slowly crack open. “Hi,” he murmurs. 

“Dreaming again?” Martin asks. He moves his hand slowly up and down Jon’s arm, trying his best to be steady and comforting. 

Jon nods, and swallows. “Yeah. Yeah, it, uh…” 

“It’s okay,” Martin says again. 

“Yeah,” Jon says. He rubs his hands over his eyes and then moves in closer, placing his head on Martin’s shoulder. Martin responds by running his fingers gently through Jon’s messy hair. They’re quiet together, and Martin listens, content, as Jon’s breathing evens out once more, as he falls slowly back into sleep. Martin closes his eyes, now so tired he can feel it in his chest, and follows.

The next time Martin wakes up, he is alone. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep, but it must still be night, because everything around him is dark. When he looks over to check the time, he finds that his eyes are crusted and fogged with sleep, and he can’t quite make out what the clock says.

He blinks and turns to the cool, empty side of the bed where Jon had just been, less than a few hours ago. Martin throws off the quilt and hops off the bed, the wood floor is chilly beneath his feet in a way he hasn’t ever noticed before, and when he goes to grab the sweatshirt he usually keeps slung over the bedpost before leaving the room, it isn’t there. Jon must have borrowed it whenever he’d gotten out of bed and left, or at least that’s what Martin tries to convince himself is the case. He folds his arms around himself, his t-shirt suddenly feeling very thin. 

Martin wanders out of the bedroom. No shreds of moonlight reach the hallway at this time of night, apparently, and every inch of the wood floors and walls seem monotonously gloomy, all painted with the same even brush of shadows. Goosebumps rise and ripple over his bare arms, and the floorboards don’t creak underneath him. 

It’s odd how unfamiliar the safehouse looks in the dark. He could swear even the patterns in the grain of the wooden planks look different somehow, less static than they were before. 

“Jon?” Martin calls out. It is unusual, but not altogether unbelievable, for Jon to have simply left the bedroom and gone into the kitchen or the front room, to pace or worry or just keep an eye out for some of the nastier things that want them dead. They’ve both done it their fair share of times.

There’s no answer. Martin shuffles forward down the dim hall, and pokes his head into the kitchen. There is once again no moonlight shining through the big window over the sink, so Martin leans over and flips the light switch on.

Nothing changes.

Martin frowns. He flips the switch again - still no change. He tries again, and again, and then one more time just to be sure, but the lights don’t turn on. 

Well, Martin thinks warily, he’ll just have to remember to buy lightbulbs the next time he goes into town. Or maybe to check the wiring in the morning - not that he actually knows how the electrics work in this house. 

He does his best to suppress the dull panic rising in his gut.

 “Jon?” he calls again, a little louder this time. Still no answer as Martin steps into the front room. It is just as evenly dark here as everywhere else, the curtains drawn closed and blocking out any potential moonlight. Martin takes a shaky breath and leans over, finding the light switch, and flips it on. 

The lights don’t turn on.

Fear surges through Martin, and he tries to ignore it, all while suddenly deciding that he is actually very sick of this flat darkness that covers the entire cottage. He strides over to the other side of the room, determined, and yanks open the curtains that hang above the couch. The curtains open easily, but the room stays just as dark, no moonlight appearing outside to shine in and illuminate the room, and when Martin looks out the window, he finds himself choking on a sob.

The usual beautiful and vibrant view of the rolling hills of the Scottish highlands that Martin has been getting used to is gone, replaced by endless waves upon waves of a thick white fog. Now that the curtains are pulled open, Martin can hear it - the dense static, the roar of ocean waves crashing upon a beach that will never decide where the sand stops and the water begins. He can feel it as well - the numbing cold that worms its way under his skin, spreading the chill through his veins and his bones. 

The tendrils of fog begin to snake closer to the house, and suddenly Martin can see them creeping underneath the door, through the cracks in the window, coming closer and closer and closer.

For a moment he’s frozen, staring at the deep fog. Then Martin tears himself away from the window, hastily tossing the curtains closed again, and races back down the hallway. 

“Jon? Jon!” he yells, voice beginning to crack in desperation. The safehouse they’re in is so small, and cramped, and Martin looked in every corner, so where is Jon, and why can’t he hear Martin calling? 

There is still no goddamn answer as Martin throws himself back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him and proceeding to double-check every shadowy corner, every single nook and cranny of that tiny room, anywhere Jon might have squeezed himself. But Martin can’t find him. 

He isn’t alone, though, because he refuses to believe that. Martin knows exactly what lies outside that door, rolling ever closer, and he won’t let it win by getting consumed in its falsehoods of how lonely he is, won’t let it win by thinking about how much he needs and wants Jon here with him.

Martin climbs back onto the now-cold bed, and wraps the quilt around him, trying to imagine the way Jon wrapped it around his shoulders so many times before when the chill settled in a little too sharply. He tries to remember how warm it always was before, and tries to believe that it will be enough to trap out that cold white fog that is moving ever closer, slipping through the crack underneath the door. It rolls and tumbles into the room, and soon, the fog coats the entire bedroom floor, an ocean beneath the bed frame. 

“Leave me alone,” Martin says, angrily pulling the quilt tighter around himself and thinking only of Jon and his warmth and the way he smiles so openly now, but only ever around Martin, the way it’s something private and something just for Martin to see. “Why are you still here? I left you, and I’m not ever coming back. I’m not alone anymore, you know that. I’m not.” 

The fog doesn’t respond, but Martin thinks for a moment he hears the static grow stronger, hears the ocean waves crash closer, feels the cold drop a few more degrees just for good measure.

“Leave me alone,” Martin moans again, squeezing his eyes shut and closing his fists tight around the quilt, which still lays freezing atop him. He wishes it would grow warm like it was supposed to. He wishes his tears didn’t feel like ice against his face. He wishes Jon was here, and they could both warm each other up, and Martin could witness that small smile one more time. He wishes he wasn’t alone.

The waves crash louder, and they must all be in the bedroom now, but Martin won’t look, can’t bear to open his eyes and see how much the Lonely enveloped him while he looked away. The aching and heavy cold has settled now, marking its place deep inside his bones and his heart, and suddenly he can’t stop thinking about it, how alone he is, how alone he’s always been, always will be, and-

“Martin?” 

Martin’s breath catches. Hardly daring to believe it, he opens his eyes, and there, hovering over him, is Jon, worry etched into the lines of his face. His hand rests gently on Martin’s shoulder, and his eyes gaze down, open and honest. 

“Jon,” Martin says, and the relief soaked in the name rushes out of him in a sob. 

“What-?” Jon begins to ask, but Martin sits up and wraps himself around Jon, selfishly drinking up his warmth. 

“It was - it was so cold,” Martin says into Jon’s shoulder. Jon reaches up and begins rubbing his hands up and down Martin’s back. 

“What was?” 

“A-and you weren’t there, and I was looking for you but it was too dark and none of the lights were working, and I couldn’t find you anywhere, and the fog just started covering everything again, and-” 

“Hey.” Jon extricates himself the tiniest bit so he can look Martin in the eyes. “It’s okay. I’m here, and the Lonely isn’t. I promise.”

“I know,” Martin says. He sniffs and rubs furiously at his teary eyes. “I just - Christ. I know. It just felt so real.”

“I know,” Jon says, his voice heavy. He sits up on his knees so he can reach, and wraps his arms up around Martin, running his hands through Martin’s hair, and dropping a kiss on top of Martin’s head. Martin lets out a low sigh, tension slowly slipping from his chest, and lets his forehead fall onto Jon’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” he murmurs after a moment. 

“You’d do the same for me,” Jon says, “and you have.” He slowly moves back to see Martin’s face and reaches up, wiping a stray tear off his face. Martin leans into the touch, still searching for any extra warmth he can with the memory of the Lonely’s chill still quite present in his mind.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. His breathing begins to slow and steady itself, and the icy feeling in his fingers begins to melt away. 

“How are you feeling about going back to sleep?” Jon asks cautiously, after another few quiet minutes pass. Martin tries not to feel too guilty catching a glimpse of the bags under Jon’s eyes while he slowly shakes his head. 

“Not - not right now. Not yet.” 

“How about I make some tea?” Jon suggests. 

Martin smiles. “I’d like that,” he says.

Jon smiles and slides off the bed, and Martin follows, sliding out from under the quilt and grabbing his glasses and his sweatshirt to throw on over his t-shirt. They walk side by side down the hallway, which is half-illuminated by the moon, and the floorboards creak loudly under Martin’s socked feet. When they reach the kitchen, Martin leans in immediately to flip the light switch, and above them, the lights turn on.

“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Martin’s tea is warm, and he cups the mug in his palms, letting its heat chase away the slight chill that still runs up and down his spine. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jon says vaguely. He’s sitting in the chair next to Martin, instead of sitting across from him, and scooted his chair over when they sat down so their shoulders bump up against each other. “We should probably keep cleaning. I swear, we’ve dusted this place from top to bottom five times already and it still looks like no one’s been here for months.” 

Martin laughs under his breath. “Well, sixth time’s the charm, right?” 

“I’m sure,” Jon says, and Martin swears for a moment that the fondness in Jon’s voice makes the last chills of his nightmare dissipate entirely. “I was also thinking we could try tackling the hall closet, just to see what we can use and what we should leave be.” 

“Are you sure?” Martin asks. “I’m like, ninety percent sure that thing is going to be overflowing with Daisy’s old weapons.” 

“I mean…” Jon hesitates. “I could Know, just to check that it’s-?” 

“No, no,” Martin says quickly. “Guess it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have some weapons handy, anyway. Just in case.” 

“We’re safe here,” Jon reminds him softly, after a slight pause settles between them. “I will make sure that we’re safe here.” 

“I know,” Martin says. He stares into his tea, and watches the way the last wisps of steam rise and curl in on themselves, fading before they get even a couple of inches above the rim of the mug. 

The sun is beginning to peek out over the horizon, and little slits of yellow begin to fall through the window and onto the kitchen wall. Martin stares at them, an uncomfortable feeling crawling up the back of his neck. It’s that odd sinking unease and dread that sometimes accompanies accidentally watching the sunrise, that silent insistence that he is missing something by not being asleep. Next to him, Jon yawns. 

“Back to bed?” Jon asks, and this time Martin nods. They place their unfinished mugs into the sink, just one more tiny thing for them to clean in the morning, and then they shuffle back down the still hallway, Jon leading the way and loosely holding onto Martin’s hand. 

When they walk in, Jon immediately slips back under the heavy quilt, and Martin slowly follows. Martin folds his glasses back onto the rickety nightstand tottering by the bed, and then Jon rolls over and tucks himself into Martin’s side, his head resting on Martin’s shoulder. 

“I think,” Jon murmurs, sleepiness already coming back in to slur his voice and drag him under, “that first we’ll actually sleep in really late, and then we’ll get around to the cleaning.”

“Sounds good to me,” Martin whispers with a smile, and he lays an arm over Jon’s waist. He can feel as, once more, Jon’s breathing slows and evens, and as he falls into what Martin can only hope is a dreamless sleep. 

Martin keeps his eyes open, and takes in Jon by his side. Greying hair spilled a messy silver over the off-white pillowcases. Small, circular scars beginning to gleam in those first pinpricks of the morning sun now making its way into their bedroom. Martin’s t-shirt, almost comically oversized, half hanging off of Jon’s thin frame. 

Martin keeps his eyes open. He doesn’t fall asleep. 

Jon is in love. 

He doesn't know if he's any good at it - being in love. Is it something you can be good at? He's doing his best, anyway, catching up where he fell behind before. 

See, the thing is, he always has the worst timing, always finally comes to his senses when everything is about to go wrong. He doesn't know exactly how long he's loved Martin, nor is he quite sure when he started to realize it. The knowledge had just sat in the back of his brain, waiting and growing, until one day he sat up and realized he'd actually known for quite a long time. 

The problem with that revelation was that it had come too late. 

There was nothing he could do with the love now sitting and still waiting inside him, as by then he was about to lose himself to the carnival of the Unknowing, and then to endlessly dark and twisting dreams, and when he finally woke from those, he found he'd lost Martin to the fog that now slunk along the floors of the Institute. 

His love got all twisted then, caught up and entwined with the sickening knowledge of having been too slow, the ice-cold worry for Martin, and the red-hot hurt of having so many doors slammed in his face. Can you be good at love when you can't untangle it from everything else aching inside you as well? Jon isn't quite sure.

But it was all because he was too late, wasn't it? He was too late, and that thought ran through his mind, a tape rewinding and playing over and over. All he wanted to do was catch up, and all that unused love began piling itself on top of him. 

By the time months of silence had slipped away and Jon had arrived staggering, bruised and weary, at the edge of that unholy Panopticon, no Martin in sight, with only Elias to see, he was so sure he was too late once more, but he wasn’t. No matter what Lukas has said, Jon hadn’t been too late, not this time, and he took hold of Martin and brought him out of that Forsaken place, held onto him and brought him home like he'd promised, and didn’t let go until they’d reached the doors to Daisy’s safehouse.

The safehouse isn’t much. If you’re being generous, it’s maybe five rooms in total. The sagging front porch leads into a big front room with a rundown couch, a mostly empty bookshelf, a dusty fireplace, and a plain wooden table with a few mismatched chairs tossed around it. Down the hallway is the kitchen, the bedroom, the closet, and back door that leads to an ill-kept and small fenced-in yard. The kitchen is first, with its cracked counters, a refrigerator that’s somehow still running, and an ancient kettle that Martin cleaned thoroughly on their third day there. Further down is the closet (contents still unknown), and the bedroom, which has no wardrobe, and hardly any room for their suitcases. The mattress on the bed leaves something to be desired, but the quilt they found draped over it is as thick and comfortable as anything. The bedroom leads to the tiny bathroom, which has a pinkish tiled floor, with a somewhat functioning toilet, a less-than-functioning sink, and a bathtub with stains that have yet to fade fully.

The safehouse isn’t much. More than anything else, it’s a lot of work, potentially containing months of home repair projects, and both of them have spent most of their time here so far trying to keep it from falling down around them. The bathroom sink in particular has already broken twice in the few days since their arrival. Jon doesn’t have as much experience working with his hands as Martin seems to, but he’s rapidly catching up between the intense dusting, the plumbing repairs, and even some much-needed weeding by the porch whenever he needs a bit of fresh air. 

The safehouse isn’t much. But it’s safe. It’s enough.  

As it turns out, they do not find incredibly dangerous and deadly weapons in the hall closet of Daisy’s safehouse. They do not find any weapons at all. 

Instead, tucked in the back, amidst various bits of inconsequential clutter, they find a guitar. 

“Oh,” Jon says. He actually hadn’t been expecting that. 

“Huh,” Martin says. “Do you think Daisy used to play?”

“I - I don’t know,” Jon says, and he does his best not to Know either. “She never mentioned it?” 

Martin pulls it out fully and blows futilely at the thick layer of dust coating the instrument, only somewhat revealing a body made of a rather orange wood. “Looks kind of old, actually. I wonder if-” 

“It wasn’t Daisy’s,” Jon says, the information dropping in without warning and then rushing out of him, leaving behind a cold, clammy feeling. “She bought this cabin off an older gentleman ten years ago, and he used to play it every day before the arthritis-”

“Jon,” Martin warns, and his hands drop the guitar and reach over to land on Jon’s shoulders, to hold him in place as Jon tries to chase out the Beholding and slam the door. He shivers for a moment under Martin’s anchoring weight, clamping his jaw shut as he waits to be released from the Eye’s grip, for it to fade back to its quieter but still ever-constant staticky drone. 

A long and sticky moment passes before the pulse of Knowledge stops humming through his skull. Jon takes a low breath. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

“I know,” Martin says. 

Jon nods wearily. Not completely able to look Martin in the eye, his gaze falls instead to the guitar now propped up against the wall, and an old memory wriggles its way back into his mind. “I used to play, you know.”

“You what?” Martin asks, sounding startled. Frankly, Jon finds it a bit rude how incredulous he sounds, so he raises his eyes back up to meet Martin’s and nods again, much more curtly this time. 

“I learned when I was back in college,” he explains, “before I really got around to meeting people or anything. I usually just practiced alone in my dorm, and after that I, um, anyway-” 

Martin snatches the guitar off the wall where it’s propped and thrusts it into Jon’s arms so quickly Jon is barely able to register what’s happening. “Play something?” he asks.

“I - I don’t know if I really remember any-” 

“Please?”

Two, three years ago, Jon would have very firmly said no and moved on, but it isn’t then - it is now, and Jon is in love, and trying so hard to be good at it, so he turns away from Martin’s pleading eyes and huffs a defeated sigh. “It’s probably incredibly out of tune,” he says, making his way out of the hallway and into the front room, sitting down on the worn and sagging couch. Sure enough, when he experimentally brushes his fingers over the strings, a discordant bundle of pitches comes back as a reply. Jon winces. 

“Will you be able to tune it?” Martin asks, following Jon and settling in beside him. The couch is small, and the neck of the guitar extends out over his lap.  

“Maybe?” Jon says. “I don’t exactly have perfect pitch, and without a tuner, it’ll be basically impossible to get it exact, but if it’s not too old, I should be able to - ah.” 

“What?” 

Jon slides Martin a somewhat bashful glance. “I might actually have perfect pitch now - or, at least, I’ll Know whether the strings are in tune or not.” 

“Ah,” Martin echoes. Jon nods and hastily sets about fiddling with the guitar. It’s a lot heavier than the one he’d played at uni, and turning the tuning keys round requires a fair bit more strength than he’s used to. It takes longer than it would have taken him with his old guitar, as it had been sitting in that closet for years, but they get lucky, and after fifteen minutes of careful tuning and testing the strings, Jon gives another cautious strum, and the strings that sing back are far more complementary in their pitch. 

“Got it,” Jon says, and Martin smiles. 

“Play something?” he asks again, voice softer this time. 

And because Jon is in love, he smiles back and nods, letting his fingers fall and press down on the strings, arranging themselves around the frets. He tries not to think too hard, tries to just let muscle memory take the lead. His other hand, the one wrapped in a burn, floats over the main part of the guitar, giving another testing strum before his fingers slowly find their place among the strings, trying out a single chord, and begin to pluck out a quiet tune.  

It’s simple and sweet, a song he hasn’t heard or even thought about for years, and his fingers may as well be moving of their own accord as they dance slowly over the strings, the memory of the melody dripping in and becoming stronger as he plays on. It isn’t a difficult one either - only using three strings, a bit repetitive, and easy enough to do mindlessly once he’s started. Jon plays through it once, twice, keeps looping around, and then glances over to find Martin staring at him with a soft smile and even softer eyes. Jon’s fingers stall, suddenly hesitant, hovering over the strings, which still vibrate slightly and fill the room with a hum that slowly fades away. Martin’s face falls.

“Oh, don’t stop,” he says, “that was really nice.”

Jon looks away with a shrug. “Just something I didn’t even realize I hadn’t forgotten yet, I guess.” He rests his palm on the strings, stilling them into a more complete silence. 

“Do you remember any others?” Martin asks with bright eyes. 

“I - maybe? I might.” Jon slowly rearranges his fingertips over the strings again, flitting through a few different chords, briefly regretting the fact that after years without practice, he lost the calluses he once worked so hard to build up. The strings of this guitar press more harshly into him, and are especially unkind to his heat-seared hand. Thankfully, that is at least the one he uses to strum, instead of the one he uses to push down chords in their place. 

He thinks back to what he used to play, years ago, and tests a few notes of one he particularly remembers liking, and finds he does still remember how it goes. His fingers fall into the rhythm of it right away, easily settling back into the old pattern of the tune. This one is more melancholic, more complicated than the last, and Jon is careful to let memory lead the way. 

He wonders if he really can remember the song this well, or if he accidentally let himself Know something again. Perhaps his muscle memory is just that strong, to remember a song on an instrument he hasn’t played in years. Perhaps not. 

The melody meanders and weaves its way around them, and it spreads a kind of painful nostalgia all over Jon, makes him think back to the simpler days alone in his dorm, teaching himself this old tune. Eventually he reaches the end; this tune doesn’t loop around in quite the way the first one did. When he looks up, Martin is still staring at him. 

“That was lovely,” Martin says, quiet, a little awed. 

“Just - just old stuff, I told you.” Jon is a bit fidgety under his praise, his face flushing and his hands fluttering over the strings, indecisive and agitated. “I really must have learned all that… years ago.”

“Still,” Martin says, “it sounded lovely.” 

“I suppose,” Jon says. He stills the strings once more, quieting the soft buzz the guitar still hums with, and then shifts to stand and put it away. As he does so, though, Martin makes a sort of disappointed sound in his throat, and Jon stops to look back up at him and raise an eyebrow. “What?”

“I just, um,” and Martin’s cheeks flush, “I was wondering if maybe you could - teach me?” He peeks up at Jon. “I just, I always wanted to learn when I was a teen, but I didn’t really have the time to learn that kind of stuff, ‘cause I was, you know-”

“I - I mean I’m hardly an expert,” Jon says, “but o-of course, if you really want to, I can try.” 

“Really?” 

“I mean, we’ve got nothing else to do, right?” Jon says. The half-cleaned house creaks around them. “Plenty of time for lessons.” 

“So…how do you want to-?” 

“Here,” Jon says, and he hands Martin the guitar, who immediately holds it the wrong way. “No, not like - okay, yes, almost, there you go-” 

They move to the rug for more room, Jon sitting opposite Martin, and start with basic vocabulary, identifying the different parts that made the guitar sing. 

“These are?” 

“Tuning keys. If you look, you’ll see they’re each connected to a string, so when the strings get out of tune, you turn the key to get it back.” 

“Right. These?” 

“Frets. That’s what helps you figure out where to put your fingers for different chords. Also, all of that is technically called the neck of the guitar, and then the hollow bit is the body, which has the bridge, and-” 

“Are you going to quiz me on these? Should I be taking notes? Oh, or making flashcards?” 

“…yes, definitely, I’ve already got the whole lesson plan written out.” 

“Heh. You would. Okay then, what’s this called?”

Dinner that night is a simple spaghetti and sauce, with what were perhaps once meatballs. It’s another of Jon’s attempts to make one of Daisy’s many ready-meals into something that more resembles real food, and he thinks he did a decent job. At any rate, Martin eats most of it without complaint, and Jon gives the maybe-meatballs a try before pushing them to the edge of his plate and focusing on the spaghetti. 

The sun has mostly set at this point, and Jon is watching the last glimmers of light that slide through the dirty kitchen window and land across the wall. Some dying drips of sunlight cling to Martin’s hair, and fall into his eyes, deepening the dark brown wrapped around his pupils. Jon’s doing his best not to stare. 

He also brought out the ancient radio from the bedroom, managed to tune it into some station playing decades-old hits. The sound is crackly and half the time they can’t even make out the song through the static, but it’s rather nice all the same, he thinks. Occasionally he’ll even recognize a song. More than once, he swears he catches Martin humming snippets of the tune under his breath or tapping a foot along.  

They wash the dishes side by side, and the radio crackles nearby on the windowsill, the host saying something in a garbled voice before a new song comes on. Next to Jon, Martin perks up a bit as the piano entrance begins and a man starts singing. 

“Know this one?” Jon asks, as he runs a towel over his plate. 

“Hm? Oh, yeah, actually,” Martin says, smiling down at Jon. “When I was younger, before - um, my mum would play this one all the time. She loved dancing to it.” His smile fades slightly. “I…I haven’t heard it in a long time.” 

Jon nods and finishes drying his plate, and then wipes the remaining suds from his hands on his pants before turning and extending his hand out towards Martin. “Do you want to…?” he asks, trying desperately not to look embarrassed. 

It takes Martin a second or two to get what Jon is doing, but it’s clear when he understands, because his face flushes and he hastily sets down his own half-dried plate. “Oh, um-” 

“I-I mean we don’t have to, if you don’t want-” Jon backtracks immediately. 

“Yes, I - oh, no, I mean, I want to, um-” As an answer, Martin takes Jon’s still outstretched hand, and lets Jon lead him away from the sink so they have a bit more room.  

 The piano entrance and first verse have now led into the chorus, a man and a woman crooning about a lost love, or maybe a found love, or maybe a love they had all along. Jon can’t quite make out the lyrics, partially because the static is so crackly and overbearing, and partially because he’s rather focused on figuring out where to place his other hand. He lands just above Martin’s waist, and squints up. “This okay?” 

Martin nods quietly, arranging his arms around Jon, hand landing on his shoulder. Jon has no idea if either of them are doing it right, and he can’t remember the last time he actually danced with someone, can’t remember the last time he took enough care to figure out where his hands went and how to ensure he stepped and swayed in time with the music. 

For a moment, they’re both still, holding each other at an arm’s length while the song whiles away, staring with wide eyes and heated cheeks. Then Jon lets out a small laugh and pulls Martin closer, stepping back and forth to the rhythm of the song warbling from the radio, and they quickly fall into place against each other. It’s not a fast song by any means, but not necessarily one slow enough to just sway in place, either, so they do their best. The music is tinny, and their steps are clumsy and rather out of beat, but that’s alright, Jon supposes. It’s enough to be here, dancing with Martin under the heavy yellow kitchen light, their socks sliding over the cracked wooden floor, holding onto each other. It doesn't really need to be any better than this. 

The pace of the song picks up slightly after the first chorus, and then Martin smiles, clearly relaxing even more, and begins to take the lead, even begins to sing along, just a little bit, snippets of lyrics here and there. Jon lets himself be pulled along, laughs as their dancing gets sillier and even more out of sync with the music, and feels himself glowing from the inside out, full to bursting with contentment and love. 

He’s smiling so widely that when the song ends and Martin leans down to kiss him, he can barely stop smiling to properly kiss Martin back, all while the radio host comes back with his garbled voice, reciting an advertisement about some type of yeast. 

Jon winds his fingers into Martin’s curls, which are just getting long enough to poke around his ears now, presses their foreheads together, and breathes. 

“I-”

“I love you,” Martin whispers. Then he blinks. “Oh. Uh, sorry, you go.” 

“I love you, too,” Jon says, and he’s back to not being able to stop smiling. 

(This isn’t the first time they’ve said it, nor is it the second or the third or the fourth, but it never feels any less exhilarating to Jon, that he can say those words and hear them returned so easily.) 

Martin kisses him again, hand cupping the back of Jon’s head, thumb gently brushing against his cheek, and then they move apart a little, just loosely holding to the other’s arms. Meanwhile, the radio host finishes his list of sponsors, and another song starts, much slower this time. 

Martin lets go of Jon’s hand, only to extend it back out towards him. “May I?” 

Jon laughs. “You may.” 

And he lets Martin pull him into what is more of a hug than a real dancing position, reaching out and gathering Jon up in his arms, slotting his chin on top of Jon’s head. 

Jon rather likes it when he does that. Come to think of it, Jon likes quite a lot of things about Martin. Jon likes the way Martin sticks the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he’s on the verge of putting a line of poetry together in his head. He likes the way Martin pretends to like his cooking. He likes how Martin kisses him like he’s miraculous, like it’s his last opportunity to ever do so, like kissing Jon is the best gift he’s been given his whole life. Jon likes Martin’s sweaters, and he likes stealing them as well, especially when Martin goes to the village by himself. Jon pulls the oversized woolen monstrosities over his head and sits in them for those hours, curled up on the couch, delighting in how much they smell like tea and ink and Martin. Jon likes Martin’s poetry, because he knows Martin now, and he can connect the words on the page to the way Martin’s mind works, can see how Martin sees things now and how he puts them on paper. Jon likes holding onto Martin while he sleeps, and he really likes when Martin shifts over in his sleep and holds onto him as well. Jon likes Martin’s hands, sturdy and freckled, and he likes Martin’s eyes, how they deepen when the sun hits them just right, and he likes how Martin’s glasses sit just a bit lopsided on his nose and how he never wears matching socks and the fact that he just shifted away slightly to look down and give Jon a fond smile, brushing a lock of Jon’s hair behind his ear.

Jon returns the smile somewhat dizzily and leans his head against Martin’s shoulder. He breathes in, breathes out. He wishes the song would never end. 

(All songs end, of course, and this one song on the radio is no different, but it’s a nice sentiment, all the same.) 

This song is slow enough to just sway in place, so they do, and the man on the radio sings about love, sings about a world on fire, and Jon closes his eyes and thinks about Martin. 

“I love you,” he whispers again, words weaving themselves into the wool of Martin’s sweater, quiet enough that Martin might not hear, but Martin just holds him a little tighter in response. 

Sunsets here are different. London sunsets were dull, mostly grey things that hid the colors behind the tall buildings, behind thick clouds. Here, the sun cuts the sky open in slashes of red and orange, dropping a dense yellow light over all the rolling green fields. The glow of the sunset is thick enough to swim in, covering every inch of the hills, coating every blade of grass and wisp of hair. The sun’s rebellious glow fades quickly though, the blue of the night sky leaking back in, and casting everything in view into a soothing, airy violet. 

Martin loves to watch them, to drown himself in the rainbow hues of the sun’s trek downward. On nicer nights, when the autumn chill doesn’t settle in so deep, he’ll drag Jon out for evening walks, down past the fields and pastures. 

They’re out on one such walk the first time Jon says it. 

The long fields of wildflowers are rippling in the slight evening breeze, with what Martin finds to be an almost hypnotizing effect. That golden glow of the sunset is fading into muted shades of lilac, and with it, the small amount of warmth from the sun is being washed away as well. 

Jon shivers by the fence as the breeze picks up into more of a gust, and Martin notices. 

“It’s getting pretty dark,” Martin says. “We should probably get back to the house before we can’t see anything at all.” 

Jon hums in assent. “It is getting late,” he agrees, laying a hand on Martin’s arm. “Let’s go home.” 

Martin blinks, hard, and stammers something out in response. He turns away from the fields and takes Jon’s extended hand as they start back up the dirt path. They’re quiet as they walk, and Martin is lost in thought. 

Home, Jon said. Martin tries to imagine saying it, tries to imagine thinking of Daisy’s safehouse while saying it. The word feels far too sticky in his mouth, unwieldy, rolling, and raw, like something not quite done cooking yet. He thinks of Daisy’s safehouse again. 

Home. It fits closer to the word than anything Martin ever experienced before, he thinks, but it still isn’t quite right. What is he missing? 

For maybe the first time since arriving at the safehouse, Martin feels like he’s on a different page than Jon is, a few steps behind. It’s an oddly isolating thought, and he does his best to put it out of his mind, but he can’t quite forget it. 

The front door creaks in its now-familiar way as Jon unlocks it, and Martin feels a sweeping sense of comfort as he changes into an old t-shirt and crawls under the thick quilt with Jon to try once more to sleep, but still something is not there for Martin, something evidently present for Jon. What makes this home? When does this become home? 

Those thoughts are uncomfortable, discomfiting, coiled in white whispering fog, and Martin sleeps fitfully, grateful when the sun finally begins to rise, and he can slip out of bed, make some tea and think. 

Poetry isn’t what it was before. There are plenty of empty hours at the safehouse that Martin has been trying to fill with writing, but more often than not he finds himself staring at a blank page, trying to prod the section of his brain that used to know how to wax poetic into opening up and spilling words onto the faint blue lines of the paper. Martin starts and stops, writing a handful of words with Jon’s pen, and then crossing them out and trying again. 

(If nothing else, it is supposed to be a hobby, something to do to keep busy in all this free time they’ve somehow gotten hold of. Jon had taken up cross-stitching, a cheap kit bearing a brown and white kitten design having caught his eye at one of the rest stops on their way up to Scotland, and so far he’s seemed perfectly content to curl up on the worn-down armchair for a few hours each day to repeatedly stab through the fabric with his shiny needle, watching as the little threads slowly formed into a recognizable shape. He mentioned offhand to Martin at dinner one night that he found it was really quite cathartic, and so the next time Martin went shopping, he bought an armful of supplies for future projects from the village’s local craft store. 

Jon already finished the kitten design a few nights ago, and Martin hung it up over the fireplace while Jon tried not to look too proud of himself. He’s working on another project now, and though Martin isn’t completely sure what it is yet, the colors are slowly piecing themselves together day by day, extending out along the bleached white fabric.) 

Martin once more finds himself sitting in the kitchen in front of the accursed notebook, rolling a pen between his fingers and sipping his tea while the early morning sun falls through the windows and lands in squares on the wall above his head. 

Martin thinks about what home is supposed to be. He thinks about the way the fields ripple in the distance around them. He thinks about waking up next to Jon every morning. But then he thinks also about the tiny and congested house he’d shared with his mother, the hollow feeling that drowned his London apartment, and the incessant knocking on his front door that washed away any comfort remaining there. 

Words float, disconnected, through his brain, and he tries to snatch at them, to find something real to piece together and print onto the page, but the half-there phrases just slide out of his grasp, and the page stays empty. Even when for a moment or two he thinks he might have caught something worthwhile, his brain picks it apart, displaying to him the cliches or clunky phrasing, and so he tries to think of something else, something better.

He decides on one more attempt, leaning forward and placing the pen onto the paper, careful but casual, as if he can trick his brain into just letting loose the words he wants, but - nothing. As usual, there’s nothing. 

 Martin scowls and closes the notebook. 

He knows what the problem is, of course. Besides the supernatural remains of Loneliness still clanging around inside him, making everything a bit harder to focus on and feel, he is also just woefully out of practice at this point, where poetry is concerned. It must be well over a year now since he was able to bring himself to record his thoughts on paper, poetic in verse or otherwise. In fact, if he’d ever remembered or bothered to date his poems, he would see clearly that the last one was written mere days before the Unknowing.

He hadn’t been able to write anything after that, and he doesn’t care to think back to the hollow nights he spent alone in his flat, staring at the notebook full of scribbles of poetry that suddenly seemed exceedingly trivial. There was no sweet line of verse Martin could pen then, no string of words that would capture the deep and glowing darkness, the rage and grief and loneliness battling it out inside him. There was no way to translate the way his stomach dropped when he’d heard what happened to Jon, and what had happened to Tim- 

Anyway. Once he started working with Peter, stuff like poetry and writing down his feelings was highly discouraged, to say the least. It was easy, even, to shove the notebook in the back of his closet, and for Martin to step away from the written word and into the fog, to accept the numbing of the pain and to welcome the lack of any emotion so strong he’d feel the need to write it down.

That just means it’s hard enough, now, for Martin to keep a hold on his emotions, to be open with them and share them with Jon, and not to shove them back inside as he did these past few months, let alone actually be able to capture them and pin them down on a page. 

The worst part is, he has so much he wants to write about, to record to look back on later. He wants to write about Jon, and about how loved he feels, and how warm he is now, and he wrote about Jon so many times before, in notebooks that very strictly never left his flat when he could help it, so why is it so hard now? Why is it so hard to write down how easy love seems to come to him now, when it was so easy to write about the love that seemed prickly and distant, an unrealistic fantasy? 

Martin bites his lip and flips open the notebook again, aiming a solid glare at the empty page. He feels oddly determined to just get some goddamn words out onto the stupid page, if he can only manage to figure out how to-

“Martin?” 

Martin startles and drops his pen, and looks up to see Jon standing awkwardly in the kitchen doorway. He takes a steadying breath. “Jesus, Jon.” 

“Sorry,” Jon says, pulling at the sleeve of his jumper, “I just - I woke up and you weren’t there.” 

“Oh.” Martin’s cheeks grow hot, and he looks away from Jon, under the pretense of searching for his pen, which seems to have fallen directly under his chair. He finds it and looks back up, shifting under the weight of Jon’s weary eyes. “I’m sorry.” 

“Are you - is everything alright?” Jon asks. Martin can hear the uncertainty laced in his voice. “What are you doing out here?” 

“I’m fine,” Martin answers automatically, fiddling with the pen in his fingers as Jon crosses the room and sits across from him at the small table. “Just couldn’t sleep, I guess. Thought I’d try to write poetry again.” 

“Any luck?” 

Martin shakes his head. He hasn’t gone into detail with his poetry struggles with Jon, not wanting to bring up the cause of the writer’s block, but Jon’s glimpsed Martin irritatedly closing the notebook without writing anything concrete enough times in the days they’d been here. 

“Can I… help, at all?” 

“I - I mean, it’s not usually a two-person job.” 

“Right. Of course.” 

“Um. Thanks, though?” Martin bites his lip. He thinks he wants to tell Jon the problem, but…oh. He can’t actually think of a reason not to. He shifts in his chair before starting. “It’s just that - I think it’s that I want to write about this, about here, Scotland, you and me, the stuff I would’ve loved to write two or three years but…”  

“But what?” Jon asks, not unkindly. 

“I don’t know.” Martin sighs. “The words don’t come out right, I guess?” 

“How so?” Jon’s head is leaning on his hand, and he’s gazing up at Martin. Martin feels oddly seen and known under that gaze, but known in the good way, lower-case k. 

“I think… I think it might be what I want to write, and not what I need to write,” Martin says, and he’s a little surprised he hadn’t pieced that together earlier. Somehow saying it out loud made it all the more obvious. 

“And… what do you need to write?” Jon asks. His voice is all caution and all care, with no trace of the Eye’s curiosity. 

Martin blinks and looks away. “I…I don’t - I mean, the Lonely, I guess, but - it, it feels like there’s something else?” He clears his throat, blinks again. “I just don’t have the shape of it yet.”

“That’s okay,” Jon says quickly. “You’ve got a place to start, at least, right?” 

 Martin grimaces. “I mean, I suppose, I just…I don’t want to write about the Lonely. I know I probably should, to get through it, or whatever, but I don’t want to go through it again, or even spend time remembering what it’s like, and I - it’s already still so close, sometimes. I don’t want to tempt it, I guess.” 

Jon is quiet for a minute. “You could always… write about what it isn’t?” 

“What?”

“You know,” Jon says, gesticulating with his free hand, “if you don’t want to write about what the Lonely’s like, just write about everything that it isn’t.” 

Huh. Martin smiles. He’s not totally sure that will work, but it’s a sweet idea all the same, especially coming from Jon. “And you say you don’t like poetry,” he says to Jon, who harrumphs softly in protest, and Martin laughs under his breath. 

They sit quietly for a moment, Martin tapping his pen against his notebook. 

“So…” Jon starts slowly, his fingers tracing around the wood grain on the table. “The stuff you would’ve loved to write about, two or three years ago? Does that include-?”

“Yes,” Martin says, teasing, smiling a bit wider, “it includes you and me, together. Running away to Scotland is just the added poetic bonus, really.” 

Jon laughs quietly. “And did you? Ever write about it?” 

“A bit,” Martin says vaguely. 

Jon raises an eyebrow. “Just a bit?” 

“Well, a lot,” Martin concedes, “but I made sure to never bring them into work, so you didn’t nick any of those poems out of the bin from document storage.” 

Jon’s eyes widen slightly. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re referring to,” he says, voice lofty but hiding a grin all the same, and Martin just laughs, long and hard this time, and when the sun comes drifting up to cover both of them, he finds he doesn’t mind. 

The third time the bathroom sink breaks, it’s Martin’s turn to fix it. 

Quite frankly, he couldn’t put a name to the problem if his life depended on it, but he’s pretty sure that the issue likely lies within the pipes this time (last week, it was a leak in the faucet, and four days ago, there had been… something clogging the pipes, sitting directly beneath the drain), and at this point he should have a vague idea of what he needs to do. That being said, there’s no water coming out of the faucet, and Martin has no idea what to do. It is his turn to fix it, though, especially since Jon was the one who had to deal with unclogging the drain by pulling whatever that gross greenish-black mass was out from the pipes. 

Martin sets off to fix the problem, and Jon comes in to come help, anyway. 

“You’re sure there isn’t something clogged in there again?” Jon asks, hovering behind Martin to look at the sink. 

“I guess there could be? Don’t really see how, though, since we’re the only ones using this sink but… who knows at this point, you know?” Martin sighs, accepts the makeshift tool Jon has handed him. 

“Hm.”

“I mean-” Martin starts to pop open the drain lid- “unless you think the latest eldritch horror coming after us is going to crawl up the pipes?” 

Jon laughs. “No, I think we’re good on that front.” 

“Yeah, you know, as slimy as he is, I just can't imagine Elias getting desperate enough to ruin his fancy suits by chasing us through the sewer system.” Martin flashes a grin upwards as Jon laughs harder, then pokes his untwisted and repurposed coat hanger down into the pipe to attempt to root out the source of the problem. 

“Anything?” Jon asks. Martin can still hear the smile in his voice. 

“Uh, nope. I don’t think there’s anything clogging it? Which means there might be something wrong with the pipes, or the faucet, again-”

“Are you sure you don’t just want me to Know?” 

“No, no,” Martin says, standing up and brushing the grime off his pants, “we’ll just have to figure this out the old-fashioned way.” 

Jon raises an eyebrow. “So what next?” 

Martin shrugs in response, and starts to look over the sink. The top of it looks fine, no cracks in the ceramic or noticeably broken faucets, so he gets on his knees to take a solid look at the pipework. 

Ah. 

One of the pipes is leaking a rather impressive amount, forming a sizable puddle underneath that Martin probably should have noticed earlier. Upon closer inspection, there don’t seem to be any damning issues, such as holes or rust or mold or anything else they’d actually need a professional for, just a pipe that needs to be tightened a bit more, and he looks up to tell Jon as much. 

“-but I think we’d need a wrench or something to fix that, and I don’t know that I’ve seen one in any of Daisy’s stuff, yet,” Martin finishes.  

“Hm,” is all Jon offers at first, face screwed up in concentration. “I think I might have seen some pliers in the closet, if you think those would work?” 

“Good enough for me,” Martin says, and Jon nods and ducks out of the bathroom, headed down the hallway. Martin can hear him rummaging around in the closet’s disorganized clutter for the tool, and he returns a moment later, looking a bit disheveled, but proudly holding out a pair of pliers. Martin takes them, thanking Jon with a soft smile, and turns back to the pipe. It’s really leaking now, a small but steady drip that only grows more and more as the seconds drift by. 

Martin pries open the pliers, which are ancient and a bit rusty, and carefully adjusts them around the part of the pipe that he’s pretty sure is where he’s supposed to be tightening. He double-checks around the sides to make sure they’re perfectly in position, then squeezes his eyes shut as he gives them a solid turn around, hoping it’s enough force to properly tighten the pipe. 

Instead, however, he’s immediately hit with a spray of disturbingly brackish water, and is utterly soaked before he can even process what’s happened. 

“I - Christ - ” Martin splutters, trying to fix it and stand up to get away all at once. 

“It - shit, I think that was the wrong way,” Jon says, rushing in to help. He wasn’t spared either, and is only marginally less soaked than Martin. Together, they get their hands around the pliers and yank them the other way around, shutting off the sudden spray of water. 

“Ah,” Martin says in the silence that follows. “Oops.” 

“Good job,” Jon teases, his tone lighthearted. Martin rolls his eyes and then, without much success, attempts to squeeze some of the water out of his shirt. 

“Gross,” he mutters, as the green-and-yellow-tinged puddle around him grows. “I don’t want to know what’s even in this water.”

“Er - yeah, you really don’t,” Jon says with a shudder. “Anyway… I think maybe we should just put some duct tape over it.” Martin glances over to nod and agree, and instead notes that Jon looks unfairly cute, all sopping wet like that, long hair now stringy and dripping everywhere. So before Jon stands, Martin leans over to cup his face and kiss him, even though they’re both still soaked, even though he can still taste the sink’s pungent water still splattered over both their lips. Jon laughs a little as they fall into place against each other and then hums contentedly, and for a moment Martin forgets that he’s drenched, forgets about all the extra cleaning he has to do. Then he pulls back with a small smile, and sends Jon on his way to get that duct tape, while he roots around for towels to begin mopping up the excessive puddles around him. 

The days and nights go on. 

Some evenings they eat dinner late, sitting on the couch instead of at the table, talking quietly and holding onto each other. Other nights they laugh and joke, teasing each other over tea or mugs full of whatever terrible wine they manage to uncover from Daisy’s store. Every now and then, they peek outside, brave the evening chill, to take in the stars blinking above them, a blanket of cosmos much thicker than anything that could be glimpsed in London. Some nights Jon picks up the guitar, and Martin listens to his slow, soothing strums that fill up the room. 

Sleeping doesn’t really get easier. Some nights they do just sleep, falling into bed and into each other’s arms before the sun has even gone down properly, but other nights writhing nightmares arrive to clutch at them and yank them from peaceful slumber. Martin will startle himself awake, chilled to the bone, the salty smell of the sea hanging around him, or the insistent knock of his apartment door ringing through his ears. He’ll turn to Jon, seeking out of the comfort of his touch, and find him awake and already reaching out. Martin tries to do the same then, when Jon wakes seared by the fear of others, the feeling of a million eyes crawling up and down his skin. 

However bad the nights are, though, the days are warm and love-soaked, and they press ever forward, time slipping haphazardly through Martin’s fingers. 

Jon hasn't ever really had a home before. 

He supposes, of course, that when he was young and his father was still alive, his mother still alive, that his house then had been something of a home. But his father died, and then his mother died, and his home was packed up, sold, and lost, and he was sent to his grandmother’s. 

His grandmother loved him, he knows that, and she did her best, but a house full of breakable family heirlooms and the now-cherished belongings of his deceased father is hardly a comforting place to grow up. It was indeed a dull and dusty place, and could his grandmother really blame him for wandering off so many times? The house was large, but noticeably empty of comfortable spots or little nooks where he could hide and tuck himself into yet another book. 

Jon thought, for some time, that he had actually managed to find something of a home at uni, with courses that interested him, and new friends, and most importantly, Georgie. But graduation came far too quickly, and the break-up that followed not long after led to the realization that most of the people he hung out with then were his friends because they were Georgie’s friends, too. 

His London flat wasn’t home, and he never even tried to kid himself into thinking that it was. It was just a place to waste rent money and to avoid while working long, unending nights at the Institute. 

The archives weren’t home. 

Even when they almost were - having a debate over some bit of trivia with Sasha in the breakroom, sharing a lunch with Martin out in the courtyard, listening to arguably terrible radio shows on the floor of his office with Daisy - there was always something else in the background, looming, holding that comfort just out of reach. The Eye, of course, but also his old insistence to maintain a professional distance to seem more qualified for the job, his unceasing paranoia, the grief over losing not only his humanity, but so many friends as well. 

The archives weren’t home. 

Daisy’s safehouse is home. 

Aside from the fact that he can see the bits and pieces of the Daisy he grew to know poking through in the personality of the home when they arrived, already enough to comfort him and warm him to the cabin, now all Jon sees, when taking the house in, is him and Martin. 

His disorganized notes on the kitchen table, Martin’s sweater slung over the back of one of the chairs, the novel Jon is halfway through reading laid on the couch with a receipt sticking out as a bookmark, Martin’s notebooks half-filled with crossed-out or circled lines of poetry. Jon’s newly-finished kitten cross-stitch, hanging above the fireplace, the incessant dusty smell Jon has managed to grow not only used to, but fond of as well, both pairs of their shoes by the front door, sitting side by side. The kettle whistling and Martin bustling to get to it, the sunlight falling in slanted squares onto the wooden floor, a few scattered Polaroids on the coffee table that Martin captured when Jon hadn’t been looking, and one that Jon snuck of Martin in return. 

But most importantly, Martin is here. He is here when Jon wakes up, when he cooks in the kitchen, when they both sit quietly on the couch doing their own separate things, when he goes to sleep at night. 

Martin is here, and so Daisy’s safehouse is home.

“Alright, so - what are we running low on?” 

“Uh, tea.” 

“Okay.”

“Eggs. Milk. Soup.”

“Yep.” 

“Um, I was thinking about making lasagna for dinner sometime if you wanted to-?” 

“Pasta, sauce, cheese, got it. Anything else?” 

“No, I think that’s - oh. The bread’s gone stale.”

“And a new loaf of bread. Right.” 

“Well, and I was thinking-” Jon sucks in a breath before rushing through his next few words- “maybe I should come shopping with you?”

Martin pauses halfway through folding up the shopping list. “Oh,” he says, “um-” 

“Listen, you don’t have to - I mean, I’m not going to -” Jon takes a second to gather up his thoughts. “I know you’re still struggling with the Lonely, and I think I should come with, just to be safe.”

“Right,” Martin says, drawing out the word and biting his lip, and Jon can see he’s fishing around for a way to politely ask Jon to please not feed off the fear of the locals while Martin tries to buy ingredients for dinner.  

“And I, I’m not hungry, yet?” Jon adds. “I still feel, uh, full, or whatever, statement-wise, from Peter. Besides, it’s a small village, so it’s unlikely there is even anyone here with a statement.” 

“Yeah,” Martin says, still sounding vaguely unconvinced. 

“Plus,” Jon says, “I’ll have you to keep me in line, right?”

Martin softens at that. Jon sees it in the way his uncertain frown flips into a faint smile, and how his shoulders lose their tension and sink comfortably back down. “You would,” Martin says. 

“So?” 

“I mean, if you’re so insistent on coming to the local grocery shop, I don’t really think I can stop you.” 

The village is perhaps a twenty-minute walk from the safehouse, and is like all the other paths they’ve tread on their evening walks. The autumn winds ruffle their hair as they make their way along the path that leads to some semblance of civilization, which is more dirt than gravel, and surrounded on both sides by fields that seem to go on forever. Sometimes the fields are empty, just endless waves of grass and stubborn wildflowers. Sometimes there are cows.

Jon rather likes the cows.

Before running away to Scotland, the only cows he’d ever seen were the more disgruntled-looking calves at petting zoos he’d visited as a child. These cows are much larger, much fluffier, and much calmer. They roam up and down the fields, spending their time laying in the diluted Scotland sunlight or chomping down on as much grass as they can handle. Jon finds them rather grounding - there is something knowing in their gaze, but also a sort of simple peace in their dark eyes, a gentle contentment that only comes with a wholly uncomplicated life.

As they make their way down the road, Jon spots Martin subtly craning his head, scanning the fields ahead for any tell-tale brown dots.

Jon knows that Martin quite likes the cows, too.

When they round a corner and the much-anticipated animals come into sight, it’s a mutual and unspoken decision to make their usual stop to lean on the fence that separates farmland from unclaimed wild fields, and to go back and forth a bit about what they would name this or that cow. Jon, as usual, insists that titles work best for the large shaggy beasts, while Martin is more prone to classical names, picking from a selection of his favorite authors. They split the difference, naming one cow The Duchess, and its partner Virginia. They both agree there’s no name for the prancing calf more suitable than a succinct, and accurate, Fluffy. Then they continue on, reaching for each other’s hands as the village grows near.

It’s… charming, Jon thinks. It’s really nothing more than a small cluster of stone and brick buildings nestled in a cozy valley that rests at a lower point of the ever-expansive rolling hills. It’s picturesque in a way that’s almost over-the-top, like it knows exactly what people expect to see from a tucked-away village in the Scottish highlands. As they draw closer, Jon can see that there aren’t many shoppers out today - the deepening chill probably chased away those less determined to make the trek to the local bookshop or farmer’s market. 

Martin draws Jon to the center of the town square, and they both gaze up at the listing of businesses in the area. 

“Don’t you know what’s here already?” Jon asks. Martin’s probably done at least three or four solo trips to the village at this point. 

“Yeah,” Martin says, shuffling his feet, “but normally I just get the groceries and come back. Glanced around in the bookstore once, and of course I’ve stopped in the craft shop, but… I don’t know. Guess I usually spend my shopping trips trying to finish as quick as I can so I can come back to the house.”  

Jon nods, and turns back to the list of shops. There’s the bookstore, the craft store, like Martin mentioned, and the grocer’s as well, but there’s also an antique shop, a bakery, and a scattering of a few more various stores and restaurants. 

Jon eyes the bookshop. As much as he loves Daisy, he does not care for the stash of trashy romance novels she left behind in the safehouse (or so he keeps telling himself), and he would rather like something a bit more his taste to read for those quiet hours when his fingers are too sore to stitch or to pluck at the guitar’s thin strings. 

Martin follows his gaze. “We can go in, if you want.” 

Jon nods. “If you don’t mind?” 

“Not at all.” Martin gives him a small smile. 

So they cross the square and step over the threshold into the shop, and a little golden bell rings over their heads as they enter, and because Jon knows how much Martin adores the more old-fashioned aesthetic, he glances over to see the spreading delight on Martin’s face, and he smiles. 

The bookshop is dimly lit and musty, and has that soothing smell of old books, of aging paper and faded ink. Martin makes a beeline for the stacks of poetry collections, and Jon watches him for a moment before wandering over to the historical section, tracing a fingertip over various titles. He opens one and skims a few pages, relishing the opportunity to read something new. Nearby, he hears Martin shift over to look at the magazines. 

After flipping through a few different books, Jon decides on one detailing all the local history of the town they’ve found themselves in, plus a misshelved mystery novel he discovered as well. When he checks out, he glances behind his back to make sure Martin isn’t within view before adding a copy of that week’s recommended poetry collection to his pile of purchases, and the old man ringing him up offers a knowing smile. 

His books placed in a bag, poetry collection hiding snug between the other two books, Jon goes over to tap Martin on the shoulder and lead him out the door, and the man behind the counter gives them a friendly wave goodbye. 

“Groceries next, do you think, or is there anywhere else you want to stop in?” Martin asks, as they stroll back into the center of town. 

Jon goes over the list of shops in his head. “I think I’m alri- oh, actually, the bakery just pulled out a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies if you wanted to-?” He looks up at Martin, and it takes him far too long a moment to connect the dots as to why Martin looks so disappointed. “Right. Sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Martin sighs, but it’s not, clearly, because he’s far tenser than he was before, holding his shoulders tight and tucking his arms into himself as he heads across the square, towards the supermarket. Jon blinks, then hurries after him. 

Guess they’re not getting those cookies, then. 

The supermarket’s lights are a blinding white, harsh and artificial, and Jon winces when he walks in, accustomed as he is now to sunlight, candlelight, and the creaky yellow ceiling lamp in the safehouse’s kitchen. In Jon’s moment of pause, Martin has grabbed two shopping baskets, and handed one to Jon. 

“Come on,” Martin says, and sets off with the air of someone who has finally figured out where everything is in the store, and is proud to show off their new knowledge. Jon quickly follows. Martin comes to a stop in the third aisle, digs the shopping list out of his jacket pocket, and glances at it a moment before speaking. “Okay, first up is tea and soup. I’ll get the tea in this aisle if you go two over and get whatever cans of soup you want?”

Jon nods to show his understanding, then dutifully heads off to where Martin pointed. He finds it easily, and soon finds himself staring up at rows of unfamiliarly-branded soup. 

It’s - odd, he thinks, to be doing something so mundane when his life is now anything but. It hadn’t really hit him in the bookshop, but here, under the fluorescent lights of the store and staring at cans of soup, the absurdity of the situation begins to sink in a little deeper. He really could just stand here, get his groceries like any other normal person living their normal lives, and he could pretend like that’s okay and normal, like he’s okay and normal. 

And for a moment, he is okay and normal. Then he feels the tug. 

It’s like there’s something in his gut, worming around, pushing out of his skin, begging him to turn and look. It’s like a fish hook, stuck in the skin of his cheek, pulling him around. It’s like a million hands, grabbing at him, shoving him, pushing him towards it. It’s like a harried whisper sitting inside his ear, yelling and screaming at him to just Look over there. It’s like every molecule in his body got tuned to a different frequency, and is now being drawn to something - to someone hovering in his peripheral.

Maybe some time ago, he could have resisted. But it’s been two weeks now without statements, and he’s tired, and he’s hungry, much hungrier than he realized, and he forgets about the soup. Jon turns to look. 

There’s a mum and her daughter standing at the other end of the aisle. The mother is puzzling over the various healthier cereal brands, and the daughter is begging for just one box of the more colorful, sugary brand. Mundane, normal, by all accounts. Except: the mother has thick freckles dotting up her forearms that almost cover an explosive reddish-pink scar, but not quite, and she is young, but her eyes are a dusty brown and older than they should be, swimming with something haunted, and her movements are a little too skittish for a grocery store, a little too protective of her young defenseless daughter, and she reeks of it, that mindless carnage, the fear of that bloodthirst pumping through her veins. She has seen the Slaughter in action, and it terrified her.

And Jon Knows this. He Knows that it was just over five years ago, only one year after her daughter was born, and he Knows it happened in the London Underground, which is why the mother moved up here, to escape, and he Knows that it left her with more than the one visible scar, but he wants to Know more. He has to Know more. 

He sets off down the aisle, eyes locked on the woman, practically glowing in anticipation of a meal.

“Jon? I got some Earl Grey if that’s alright with you. They don’t exactly have a huge selection, and I - Jon?” 

There’s some extra noises, some muffled speaking, but it may as well be meaningless white noise that lingers outside of the thick glass fishbowl that surrounds only Jon and the mother. He steps closer, and closer, and soon he’ll be able to ask for her story, and it will fill him up, and- 

“Shit. Jon!”

Something grabs his arm. He tries to pull it back, drops the empty basket he didn’t realize he was still carrying, but Martin yanks him around, cutting away at that fish hook and pushing off those million hands, and turning his gaze away from the woman so he has no choice but to stare up into Martin’s face. Like a dying engine, the hunger within Jon fades from a roaring starvation to a dull ache, the static ringing in his head slowly falling away, and as Jon comes back to himself, he realizes what he has once again let himself do. His eyes sting, and his head is pounding, but none of that compares to the thick weight of disappointment and horror and revulsion settling inside him, seeping through the cracks in his bones. 

Martin keeps his eyes trained on Jon for a minute more, still holding both of his arms firmly at his side, but his eyes flick up, and his grip loosens. “She’s gone. It was her, right?”

“The - the mother, yes,” Jon says, voice croaky and raw as though he’d spent the last few hours screaming at the top of his lungs. “She…she’d seen the Slaughter.” 

“Christ,” Martin says under his breath. He shifts a little further from Jon, still holding onto him, and examines him, weighed-down eyes peering into every inch of him. “Is it… better now?” 

“I’m not going to chase after her the second you let go of me, no,” Jon says, and attempts to add a dry chuckle to somewhat lighten the situation. It doesn’t go over well, though, as Martin’s expression only slides from freaked-out and panicky to settle into something stony and impassive. 

That’s the worst part, Jon realizes, like a kick in the stomach. Martin’s disappointment, palpable in the air between them. 

“Come on,” Martin says. He lets go of Jon, but grabs his hand and gives him the dropped shopping basket. “Let’s just finish the list and get the hell out of here.” 

Martin doesn’t let go of Jon’s hand for the entire rest of the shopping trip, even when it’s more inconvenient than beneficial. They don’t spend time going back and forth on different brands, instead just picking the cheapest necessities and throwing them in the basket. When they bag the groceries, Jon keeps his head down and doesn’t make eye contact with the cashier, but Knows anyway that she’s only working here to save up enough money to go to uni and study archaeology, and that her favorite dinosaur is the triceratops. 

The second they’ve finished paying, Martin grabs most of the bags and Jon meekly follows, holding his books and the other two grocery bags. Martin leads them out of the store, and then straight out of town, not stopping in any of the other shops or hesitating to read a sign or greet a villager. Jon walks beside him, convinced that Martin doesn’t trust him to stay if he were to fall behind, and Jon wants to show he won’t do it again, that he’s trying so hard to never do it again. 

They don’t speak for most of the walk. 

Finally, they reach the top of a hill, and Martin pauses to stretch. The view here is utterly breathtaking. They’re on something of a high ground, and can see the tidal waves of grass that surround them, can even almost see as far as the ocean, and the distant mountains tower over them. The afternoon is at its peak, and the sun is shining bright, warming Jon’s cheeks as he tilts his head up towards Martin. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon says. He knows he should have said it before but he… he couldn’t. The Archivist still had something of a grip on him then, and he wanted to wait until the words were honest to say. 

“Yeah,” Martin says. He doesn’t look at Jon, just puts the groceries on the ground for the moment. 

“I am,” Jon says, forcefully. “You know I wouldn’t have come if I thought there would actually be someone here with a statement. I just thought… small town, you know? What are the odds?” He kicks half-heartedly at a pebble. “Guess I’ll leave grocery shopping to you in the future.” 

“I want you with me, you know I do,” Martin says, his voice strained and his eyes still looking away, “but I can’t stand by and let you feed on the locals.”

“I know you can’t, and I’m not - I don’t blame you for that, it’s not like I’m asking to - you’re right, it’s just not exactly something I can control.” 

“I know, I just-” Martin sighs, his gaze turned up to the sky. “It’s hard enough, okay? I want to be happy, and enjoy what time we have right now, but it’s hard, and I just - I can’t worry about all the villagers on top of worrying about you.” 

Jon flushes. “Martin, you don’t need to-” 

“Yeah, except I do, alright?” Martin snaps. He turns away and rubs his hands over his eyes. 

“Listen,” Jon says, exhaustion and embarrassment pulling his shoulders down, “let’s just go home,” and for some reason that’s what causes Martin’s expression to slip from resigned disappointment to actual anger and irritation. 

“Don’t - you need to stop calling it that,” he says, voice on the verge of cracking. “Don’t - don’t say it’s home, because it’s not.”

“I - Martin-?” Jon tries to break in, but Martin is suddenly agitated, running his hands through his hair, and rolls right ahead. 

“It’s just a house, alright? It is just a house, where we are staying, so we don’t get killed, and, and even then, it - it’s not - ‘cause, I was - I was trying to figure out what I was missing, and the thing is,” Martin says, turning around to finally look at Jon, getting more and more worked up, the words spilling out of him almost too fast for Jon to keep up with, “homes are - they’re supposed to be safe, a-and they’re supposed to stick around, and we - we’re not safe, we’re anything but safe right now. And we are fucking kidding ourselves if we think we’re going to stick around.” 

“Martin-” 

“So just-” Martin drops his shaking hands to his side, squeezes his eyes shut, and looks down. “Just, don’t. It’s not home. Not for me.” 

Jon stares. What is he supposed to do with that? 

“Martin…” he tries, but Martin just wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, and picks up the groceries, and heads wordlessly down the hill. 

Jon follows.

They put the groceries away silently, and then drift to opposite sides of the house. Jon ends up curled in on himself on the side of the couch, and Martin goes to sit in the bedroom. 

The house hasn’t ever felt so empty before. 

Jon tries and fails to read his new books, his eyes glazing over the printed words while his ears ring with Martin’s words. In a spurt of frustration, he slams the history book shut and tosses it onto the coffee table. He leans back, shoving his face into the cushions, and squeezes his eyes shut, breathing in deep. The couch doesn’t smell great, a staleness stirred in with the scent of dust and something unfortunately rather mouldy. But it’s familiar now as well, comforting and soothing, and Jon can feel it in his gut. This is home. 

Disjointed music stumbles down the hallway from the bedroom. Martin must be trying his hand at the first few chords Jon taught him the other day. For whatever reason, that somewhat assuages the steady beat of shame and mortification pumping in his heart, and Jon sits up a little, running his hands through his hair. He crosses the room, picks up his cross-stitching from where he left it on the arm of the stained armchair, and settles back into the couch. He finished the outlines with black thread two days ago, and finished the light-brown highlights yesterday, so now he’s working on filling most of it in with a rich orangey-brown. 

It’s a cow, not dissimilar to the ones roaming the nearby fields. There had been a free packet of patterns included with the supplies Martin had gotten for him, and Jon knew instantly what he was making next when he discovered this pattern. In fact, Jon thinks it bears a striking resemblance with the Duchess in particular. 

His needle was already threaded when he’d left off last time, so Jon just takes out his reference sheet, and goes right ahead. The needle goes up and over, through the bottom right corner of the tiny squares embedded in the fabric, into the top left. Then in reverse, up through the top right corner and down into the bottom left. One stitch done. Only - Jon checks his sheet - two hundred and ninety-seven left to go. With this color, anyway.

Bottom right, up and over, top left. Top right, up and over, bottom left. Rinse and repeat. 

He rather likes the motions of this simplistic, repetitive formula. They’re good for him, and they focus him, helping to draw down the world to just the flashing needle leading the colorful thread. He always breathes a little easier as the needle goes up and down, the weight of the day’s worries melting off of him. 

How had he described it to Martin? Cathartic. Yes, it’s easier to stop getting caught up in all the agitation running rampant in his brain, and instead take the time to think, really think, about what Martin said, and about what he can do to help.  

Martin doesn’t feel safe here, which is reasonable. Smart, even. Perhaps he’s being rather more realistic about the whole situation than Jon is. 

Jon, who feels at home, can almost pretend things are normal and happy - except, of course, for the spikes of hunger that have begun to creep back in, except for the nightmares, except for the fact that now he knows there are people here with statements, and- 

(Push the needle through the fabric. Pull the thread through. Bottom right, top left.) 

He wants to get off this couch, to stand and walk the few short paces down the hallway and into the bedroom, but he knows he needs to let Martin come to him on this one. He can’t fix this by barging in and offering potentially unwanted-solutions.

(Pull the needle through. Push it back in. Top right, bottom left. And so on.) 

Jon looks away from the half-stitched cow to peek down the hallway, anyway. The bedroom door is still closed, and he can still hear the halting sound of Martin trying to get another chord right. He seems to be having more difficulty this time, from the frequent starting and stopping, and Jon is informed that it is, in fact, C minor. He looks back at his stitching. 

The thing is, maybe Jon makes homes where he shouldn’t. 

He’d known uni wasn’t forever. But staying up late, laughing with his friends, and spending his time and affection on Georgie had felt so much like a home, and he’d revelled in it. He lived and breathed it, that sense of belonging and of being wanted by others, and basked in the revelation that he actually had so much love to share. It glowed inside him, kept him going during the rougher patches of being a student. Then he graduated, and he doesn’t know what he thought would happen, but breaking up with Georgie and drifting away from his friends and feeling the sunny warmth of a home dissipate back to nothing definitely wasn’t it. 

He spent a long time wondering what he could have done differently to minimize the sting and grief of losing a home, wondering what he could have done instead of letting himself get drunk on the comfort it provided. He didn’t spend enough time wondering what he could have done to help it stick around. 

At least he’d known there was no way the peaceful moments he found within his sudden friendship with Daisy would ever stick around. Still, every now and then, when they were sitting on the floor of his office, listening to terrible radio dramas at ungodly hours, he couldn’t help but feel the pulse of that almost-familiar warmth in his chest. Couldn’t help but wish, despite all the other terrible things going on around them, that this respite could last just a little longer. 

And here, now, in her safehouse. 

Jon tries to think back to the first time he thought of it as home. Was it a week ago, or maybe just after three days? He thinks it might have been the first time he woke up next to Martin, or possibly just the first time he walked through the front door. So maybe that’s too impulsive, or rash, or whatever, to be on the run from a million different deadly things, and to immediately decide the first house you camp out in is home. 

But the argument’s always been the same, hasn’t it? Maybe he shouldn’t have made a home in uni, or in the archives with Daisy, because maybe if he’d pulled away earlier, it wouldn’t have hurt so much when it was over. But pulling away hasn’t worked either, and if anything, just brought more hurt in the last few years. 

Because, the thing is, Jon has had a home before. He was home in uni. He was home with Daisy. And he is home, now, with Martin. 

So Jon decides he will call the safehouse home, will let himself love every minute of it, because he knows it isn’t really about the house. It will hurt, maybe more than any of the others when it ends, whenever he has to leave it, but he can always make a home somewhere else - anywhere else, with Martin. Until then, though, the safehouse is home. He is home. 

He just wishes he could share that with Martin. 

The bedroom door creaks open maybe a half hour later. 

Jon had been expecting it, hoping for it, as the half-hearted sounds of guitar had died out about ten minutes earlier. He’s gotten through a few more lines of the rich brown in his stitching, but still has quite a bit more to do before he’s finished with that color. 

Jon peeks out of the corner of his eye to glimpse Martin, standing in an uncertain sort of way in the doorframe, and he forces himself to look back at the needle and thread, to wait for Martin to come to him. 

It takes a minute, but Martin walks down the hallway and sits down on the couch, across from Jon. He draws his feet up onto the couch, folding into himself. Jon puts the stitching down and looks at him. 

Martin fidgets with his hands in his lap. Jon is bursting at the seams with a thousand things he wants to say, but he can tell Martin is working up the nerve to say something, so he waits. 

“I’m sorry,” is what Martin says first, followed by, “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. That wasn’t fair.” 

“It’s fine,” Jon says quickly. “You were stressed, and I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s not fine,” Martin says. He breathes in slowly and looks down at his hands before continuing. “I was already scared by what happened, and then you - and then, I took it out on you. And I shouldn’t have.” 

“Well, it is my fault you were scared,” Jon says. 

“It’s not,” Martin retorts, “you said yourself that you can’t control it, and I know you didn’t go into the village with the goal of feeding on people, okay? Yeah, we need to work on it, but you’re not blaming yourself for something out of your control.” 

“Well, then I’m sorry for - for assuming, I guess,” Jon says. He picks at a fraying thread on one of the cushions. “I shouldn’t have just presumed that you felt the same as me about all this.” 

“Do you really feel like this is home?” Martin asks. “Do you really feel safe?” 

Jon hesitates. “I… don’t know if I need to feel safe to be home, but yes, I - I do. I don’t know why, but I just look around and it feels like home.” 

“It’s just-” Martin shakes his head. “I mean, I do like it here, and it’s cozy and everything, but I just don’t think home can be a house for me, right now. It’s-”

“Well, actually, that’s the thing,” Jon cuts in, “because it - it’s not really just the house, Martin. I mean, yes, I also quite like it here, and I like what we’ve done with the place, but it could be any other house, anywhere, and I’d still be home. With you, I - I would always be home.” 

Martin stares at him, face slowly growing more flushed, and Jon hopes desperately that wasn’t too much, too soon. 

“Funny,” Martin finally says, sounding a little breathless. “I was just going to say the same thing.” 

That night, they eat on the couch, a blanket spread over both their legs while a thunderstorm rolls over the hills, the deep thunder occasionally rattling the windowpanes and the lightning jumping through in bright, blinding flashes.The rain is heavy as well, and it beats a steady tattoo on the wooden roof above them. 

Jon keeps glancing at Martin out of the corner of his eye, a quick glimpse up to check, and then back down to his bowl of soup. 

Martin knows why. The dreary weather outside is perhaps darker, louder, and more violent than the Lonely was, but it’s no less gloomy, and Jon is worried, and he still feels bad about earlier, so that worry is poking through in more obvious ways. 

And it’s fair for him to be worried, Martin reasons with himself. After all, he’s rarely had a night yet where his sleep hasn’t pulled him down to endless fog, to whispers of abandonment and of being so fully unloved. It’s simply reasonable for Jon to worry about Martin, to worry about losing him - and Martin does hate thunderstorms. 

Maybe for others, they’re nice to fall asleep to, and Martin really doesn’t mind when they’re just gentle rumbles off in the distance, but the storm raging outside is anything but. 

Another sharp blink of lightning races over the walls, and the thunder responds almost immediately, splitting and echoing like a god’s gunshot over their heads, and Martin flinches in spite of himself, and Jon notices. 

“You okay?”  he asks, voice soft and low. 

“Fine,” Martin says. He rolls his spoon between his fingers. “Just got - surprised. I’m fine.” 

“Okay,” Jon says, but he slides over a little closer and his arm brushes up against Martin’s as he lifts his spoon to his mouth. 

Martin remembers that Jon likes thunderstorms, that he actually looked excited at the first distant hints of a storm coming in over the hills, that he told Martin he’d always been comforted by a good, solid thunderstorm. 

Martin swirls his spoon through the soup, turning round the bits of vegetables. He doesn’t like thunderstorms. 

Next to him, Jon finishes his soup and leans forward to deposit his empty bowl onto the chipped coffee table before leaning back and pressing up into Martin, head bumping against Martin’s shoulder. Jon lets out a long breath, and Martin can feel it go through his whole body as a more subdued roll of thunder groans through the walls. 

Martin sifts his spoon through the thick soup one more time, then places his half-filled bowl beside Jon’s empty one. “Bed?” he asks, looking down at Jon. 

“Mm. Not yet,” Jon says, wriggling closer to Martin, then yawning and stretching out. Another crash of thunder falls down on them, and Martin’s breath catches. Jon notices, because Jon notices everything now, and lays a hand on Martin’s arm.

“Fine,” Martin says preemptively. Jon grumbles a bit at that, but just leans his head back onto Martin’s shoulder. He speaks after another few rain-filled moments. 

“Do you really not feel safe here?” he asks. 

Martin shrugs. “I mean, do you? Really? I know we’re more difficult to find here and everything, but… we’re still pretty defenseless. Like, for example, if you haven’t noticed, we don’t have any real way of defending ourselves, no old weapons of Daisy’s or anything. Even the front door is actually pretty flimsy.” 

“I suppose,” Jon says. 

“And there’s just - Christ, there are just so many people who could be looking for us,” Martin says, ”I mean, even besides Elias, there’s the Hunters, and the thing that took Sasha, and Daisy - sorry,” he adds, as Jon winces slightly at the name. “You really miss her, don’t you?” 

Jon nods, slow, snuggles in a bit closer. “She was a friend when I needed one, and she understood what I was going through better than… anyone, I think. And she was trying so hard to not be a monster anymore.” 

“I’m sorry,” Martin repeats. He doesn't entirely get how Jon can be so warm and trusting towards Daisy, but he thinks he understands a bit more these days, even though he still gets sharp streaks of protective anger running through his gut whenever he catches sight of the scarred slash across Jon’s neck, the one that was so close to killing him. 

“Yeah,” Jon says quietly. He leans in closer to Martin before speaking again. “Really, though, I know there’s - basically everything terrible out there after us, but… you know I’ll keep you safe, right?” 

“I do,” Martin says, drawing an arm around Jon to bring him closer. “It’s just - it’s just, a lot, sometimes. And, I don’t know, I just - sometimes this feels almost too quiet. Too good to believe that we can really have this, you know?”

“I know,” Jon says. 

“And I - I guess I just keep waiting for it all to go wrong,” Martin admits. 

Jon doesn’t say anything to that, not right away. Martin knows neither of them like to consider it - the end of this peaceful period that is inevitable, the violence that lingers somewhere on the horizon. Sometimes Martin thinks it’d be easier if he was just given a timeline, told clearly how many days he had left to be happy before the shitshow their lives were in London comes back, knocking on their flimsy front door. 

“We’ll get through it,” Jon says finally, “whatever comes next. I’ll be with you, so we’ll get through it.” 

Martin opens and closes his mouth, and blinks, not sure he trusts himself to do anything but cry if he tries to respond to that, so he just nods and leans his head on Jon, and Jon reaches over and takes one of his hands, giving it a comforting squeeze. They sit there for a minute or two, wrapped up in each other, before Jon speaks again. 

“On a lighter note,” he starts, sounding oddly proud of himself, “I got you something.” 

“I-” Martin shifts to look at Jon better. “You did what?” 

Jon leans away from Martin, towards the pile of books on the coffee table, and slides out a smaller book from in between the two Martin knows he purchased at the bookstore. 

“Is that-” Martin can’t quite hide the tone of disbelief in his voice as Jon displays the cover. “Is that poetry?” 

“I, ah -” Jon looks down at the book in his hands shiftily. “I got it in the bookshop, before we went into the supermarket. I - I thought you might like it.” He pauses. “It doesn’t have any Keats, though,” he adds, a touch of defensiveness in his voice, and Martin almost has to suppress a giggle. 

“Who is in it, then?” he asks. 

“Er…” Jon opens up the table of contents. “Quite a varied selection, I believe. I’m not familiar with most of these authors, but…oh!” Jon points at one poem, but Martin can’t read what it says upside-down. “I actually had to read this one in uni.” 

“Did you now?”

“Mm. Pretty sure I got a B on that assignment. Wasn’t very impressed with any type of poetry back then.” 

“Really? I never would have guessed.” Martin laughs and dodges the faux glare Jon shoots up at him. “Go on, then, which is it?” 

Jon flips absentmindedly to that page and tells him. Doesn’t make much difference though, as Martin hasn’t heard of it, and says as much. It’s true, too, because for all his love of poetry, he’s never actually had the time to read much of it beyond a few dollar-store collections. 

“Oh?” Jon says, and then without much warning, he starts to read the poem out loud. 

Martin is only taken aback for a few seconds, and then he hopes he isn’t blushing too much. Jon’s shifted into the same voice he uses to read statements, focused, but concentrated on the words on the page, emphasizing the emotion of the writing, and Martin likes it a lot more than he’s willing to admit. 

The poem is about two lovers who find their house again, and find their love inside the house, bathed in yellow light. Except- 

(When we came home together, we found the inside weather-)

Except, they call it a home, and Martin can see Jon looking a bit bashful as he reads the word. But Martin doesn’t really mind. Maybe they did find their love in this house. In this home. 

(All of our love unended, the quiet life we demanded-)

They call it a home, and Martin doesn’t mind, instead losing himself in the other words of the poem. They fit comfortably with him, the lines and verses falling neatly into place with where he’s found himself. It’s difficult, when taking in the poem, to think of anything other than himself and Jon. That’s what poetry is for, though, isn’t it? Seeing yourself reflected in the words of someone else. 

(The deepest world we share, and do not talk about, but have to have, was there, and by that light found out.)

It’s a short poem, so all in all it lasts less than a minute, and Martin allows himself a brief moment of disappointment when Jon reaches the end. Upon finishing, however, Jon clears his throat briefly before flipping to another page, and reads the poem printed there as well, and then another, and another. 

They’re all love poems, Martin realizes, every single one. 

Soon after they get ready for bed together, and the thunderstorm is nothing but distant rumbles that Martin can barely hear. He gets under the covers with Jon, and holds him close, falling swiftly into a dreamless sleep, and when, hours later, he wakes up first, blinking to consciousness in the early hours of the morning, Jon is still wrapped around him. Martin doesn’t move, doesn’t want to wake him, instead taking the time to think. 

It’s like what he told Jon. 

Martin does not find home in houses, has not for a long time, now. Sure, he grows to care for a place, to revel in its familiarity, but that’s not what makes him feel at home. 

Home is tracing his eyes along Jon’s peaceful face on mornings like these when he wakes before Jon, cataloguing every scar and freckle and strand of hair, finding constellations between them. Home is Jon teaching him guitar, arranging his hands just right over the frets, encouraging and complimentary even though Martin’s sure he’s really not very good at it. Home is dancing with Jon in the kitchen, tentatively reading Jon the little snippets of poetry he’s managed to scrawl down, cooking side by side with Jon, swapping recipes from their respective childhoods. Home is kissing Jon, again and again, because he keeps getting it right. 

Martin knows that wherever Jon goes, he will follow. So for now, the safehouse is a kind of home, because Jon is here, and that makes it home. Wherever they may find themselves next, he will also be home, because if Jon is there with him, then he will be home. He will always be home. 

Martin smiles to himself, burying that tiny grin in the crook of Jon’s neck. Having a home is, of course, a brand-new experience for him, but he’s finding more and more that he really, really likes it.  

Martin is home, and a tiny, silly, starry-eyed part of him hopes it can last forever.

“Let me know if you see any good cows.” 

“Obviously, I’m going to tell you if I see any good cows-” 

It’s funny, the things that can change everything, the things that can end the world. Global warming, maybe, or a nuclear war always seemed the more likely, imminent choices. 

All it takes here, however, is a single letter, a few scars, and a very unlucky man. 

Martin gave him that letter, and then he walked out the front door and left Jon alone with it. How could Martin know he’d never again see the cabin, or at least, never see what it had been before? How could he have known what contemptible apocalyptic scrawlings were written on the pages he handed over? 

Apotheosis arrives in the most unexpected ways.  

Martin gave him the letter and left, and then came back to a hulking, darkened safehouse that was nothing of what it had been before, comfort stripped away to reveal something deeply unholy and callous and wrong. 

“There is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you trap yourself and claim that it is safety. It was once a cabin and professes still to be such, but-”

It hadn’t been Martin’s home. Not really. 

“…It is a rotten sanctuary of lonely companionship.”

That doesn’t make it any easier when the walls evolve around them, from wood to something fleshy and claustrophobic, something choking and draining and isolating. Martin hates it - hates the feel of it, when his hand accidentally brushes against it, hates how it smells like everything unfinished and insecure. 

Jon’s cross-stitching is gone. Melted into the walls about a day or two ago, to Martin’s guess. Hard to know how many days it's been without any sunsets to count. The guitar is gone as well, or, in any case, it’d been sitting in the closet during the Change, and that door doesn’t exist anymore. 

Martin still has his book of poetry, keeps it in his jacket pocket. Sometimes he can even read it, stumble through a poem or two, but usually when he opens it, the words are blurred, spiraling down the page in a staticky smudge. The quilt in the bedroom is still here as well. It’s too heavy now, though, and weighs down on Martin whenever he tries to sleep. Sometimes he swears, as he lingers on the fringes of unconsciousness, that he can hear it whispering to him. Sometimes he swears it’s filled with spiders, or worms, or something, because cotton doesn’t wriggle like that in what should be the dead of night. 

They’re out of tea, as well. Martin wishes he was still thirsty enough to actually need a cup. He wishes he was hungry enough to actually need food, tired enough to actually need the sleep he tries so hard to get, even though Jon doesn’t see any point to it. 

Jon is- he’s - 

Jon is coping, is what Martin tells himself, even if he doesn’t exactly agree on how healthy those coping mechanisms are. Even though Martin tries not to listen, Jon plays the tapes so often that sometimes all Martin can hear, over the groans of the deadened world, are the voices of Tim and Sasha and Gertrude and all the others running around in his brain. 

But Jon is busy coping, and Martin is busy being there for him, because that’s what he does. He’s good at caring. He’s good at waiting. He’s good at not thinking about how the creaks of the house are too close to human groans of pain, now.

(He’s good at waiting, but he packs bags anyway. Finds an entrance to the attic and snatches the rope stashed inside, rummages around under the sink and finds one battered box of tea, collects the other remnants of the life they made here together that still exist and packs them up before the cabin can claim them as well. He’s good at waiting, but he packs bags anyway and dreams of leaving.)

Martin aches at the loss of their world, of course, but sometimes he thinks it’s worse for Jon. Besides the misplaced guilt that weighs him down, keeps him trapped in the bedroom and chained to the tape recorder, Jon had ever so cautiously begun to call the safehouse a home, and though he hadn’t said anything, Martin could tell he had spent time tentatively fantasizing of a future there as well. Martin knows now there is nothing much of a future left in this living horror of a house. 

(How long did it take Jon to read that letter? Fifteen minutes? All of that, a home, a safe world, a future and a life together, gone in fifteen minutes-)

Sometimes Martin wonders whether he feels the anger or the grief more intensely. 

Despite that, despite all of it, he is still home. His world is gone, and nightmares rage outside their door, but every night, or as close as he can figure, he gets in bed and holds onto Jon, who stays awake and unblinking but holds back anyway, and he is home. He is still home. 

The oddest part is the safety. That’s what he had been so worried about, hadn’t it? It feels like a million years ago now, but Martin had once been so caught up on how safe they actually were in the safehouse, and now that’s the one thing they’ve been granted: safety. He doesn’t know how he knows, but the safehouse is safe, safer than anywhere else in the world, and only for the two of them. It’s a sanctuary, regardless of whether Martin wants it to be so. He knows, though, from something deep inside of him, that he could stay here for all eternity, and despite everything else, he would be safe. But he doesn’t care about that, not anymore. Safety isn’t as important as the world. 

So he’s not surprised, not really, when Jon says the cabin isn’t right, not anymore, that it’s holding onto them, draining them, and that it doesn’t want them to go. Martin briefly considers tearing it down, burning it to the ground for trying to steal him and Jon from each other. Jon isn’t sure that’s even possible, and-

(“We’re not even gonna try? Look, we’ve got your lighter, maybe if we just-”

“We can’t fight the world, Martin.”

“Heh. Says you.”)

So, instead, they leave, and Martin tries desperately to remember what he’d thought before about home, how for him it is a person, not a place. He squeezes Jon’s hand as they walk out the front door and reminds himself that he is still home, because home is the intelligent and dark depths of Jon’s eyes, the lines crisscrossing his unscarred palm, and the growing streaks of grey running through his hair, because Jon will always be home. He can only hope that he is still enough of a home for Jon, too. 

Jon squeezes his hand back, and they start to slowly walk away from the creaking cabin. The sky watches their hesitant footsteps, and the wind howls miserably around them. 

Jon turns back once, as they make their way to the end of the dirt path, to catch a final glimpse of the place where they had lived so happily.

Martin doesn’t look back. He presses forward.