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There were reminders hidden in a hundred harmless things. Both of them had been so consumed by the Fears and the Institute and the Archives for so long that it was only once they were out from the shadows of those things that they realized it. For Martin, everything had been overwhelming compared to the quiet isolation of the Lonely. For Jon, it was something more physical, more visible, marking him in the eyes of everyone who looked at him.
They wound up taking a slight detour for disposable earplugs before leaving London, and for the first time Martin is thankful for the fact that he was so overdue for a trim that his hair now covered his ears. Not that the two of them could possibly not stand out in the crowds either way, but it was one fewer thing to draw attention to them. Later, the earplugs would be forgotten and when it came time for Jon to record the statement that would end the world Martin would, instead, go out for a walk.
Jon, on the other hand, hid as much of himself as he could behind layers of fabric. Countless scars that all caught the eye and elicited questions from nosy strangers were disguised as best he could manage, and the occasional bout of vertigo didn’t bring him to the ground because of Martin’s steady, careful hold on him. The times when he didn’t trust himself to speak without the taint of compulsion he could look to Martin, and if there were a couple of incidents where neither of them could trust their own voice, well...they still wouldn’t be the rudest people those strangers encountered that day.
Hope was a dangerous thing. That had been a lesson learned time and time again. And yet, the more time they spent together the more they dared to reach out tentatively to each other. The first time Jon leaned, exhausted, against Martin’s side he half-expected the larger man’s steady form to dissolve like mist but instead was met with a sturdiness he’d long thought about. The first night in the safehouse, Martin would awaken several times expecting to see nothing but emptiness and fog surrounding him but instead would feel the unfamiliar warmth of another human being by his side. It wasn’t always good; when Martin stroked Jon’s arm or face affectionately, it would sometimes unwittingly echo the way Nikola had touched him while she prepared him to be skinned, and sometimes Jon would unknowingly choose exactly the wrong words to bring Peter’s voice echoing in Martin’s head.
Sometimes it was easy to explain what went wrong. Easy to fix. Like Jon, waking up thrashing and whimpering in the middle of the night because Martin had pulled him close while they slept and triggered memories of the Choke. Martin would reassure him, careful not to touch, and in the morning he would hide the bruises and pretend they didn’t exist because it wasn’t either of their faults that this happened. They would both vacillate between needing physical contact and being repelled by it, and even if their reasons were different it was easily understood.
Other times, it would be Martin snapping the pencil he’d been holding because the sound of Jon stirring his tea, that Martin knew he had no right to be so irritated by since he’d brought it to him in the first place, was like a series of ice picks stabbing directly into his brain. Jon would notice and ask him about it, but Beholding’s hunger would creep into his voice and force an unfiltered answer from Martin’s throat. The cabin would be abnormally silent that night, but there would be no grand fight preceding the silence. Just both of them needing and giving space until they were able to think straight again.
As the days went on, it would get better. More unspoken triggers would be covered, sometimes unknown to either of them until the line was crossed. There would be moments of lashing out, because god knows neither of them had learned how to handle things like this, but progress was made day by day. Martin would not need to stare out the window as the fog rolled in, dissociating until he forgot that he was still a person, because Jon would notice the faraway tone in his voice before it got to that point. Jon wouldn’t slice his fingers open on porcelain that had fallen and shattered when he tried to pick it up with his bad hand because Martin would be right there with the dustpan to shoo him off.
They would have just enough time to almost fall into a comfortable routine. Just about enough time to start simply being two people who had crawled through hell to come out the other side broken but still somehow holding together. Because it would have so much more effect to take something delicate that’s just beginning to knit itself back together and destroy it then. And despite everything they might have wanted, they were never actually unwatched.