Chapter Text
“There are days when everything / feels like a metaphor / for your having died / There are days / when nothing does.” - Mark Bibbins, from 13th Balloon
The night their quarantine ended, Martin Blackwood went home for the first time in… well, a long time. Four months? Is that right? It felt longer. It felt much longer.
It was past midnight, and the night tube had stopped running, so he ended up shelling out for a taxi. The driver barely said anything the whole time, which Martin thought a small blessing. Small blessings , he thought, That’s what it’s all about. Just look for the nice, small things. But there hadn’t even been very many of those, recently. Trying to find them was like pulling teeth.
His flat wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been - should’ve been, rightly. Sasha had volunteered to go round to make sure everything was alright, and she’d clearly vacuumed or something, because the place wasn’t nearly as much of a mess as it should’ve been. He’d prided himself on being pretty neat, generally, but he remembered leaving plates in the sink, and at least one mug of half drunk tea on the coffee table, before he’d left - all, blessedly, gone. Just a pile of bills on the floor and some cobwebs. Both dealt with easily enough - or he hoped so, anyway. He really didn’t like the look of some of those bills.
He wanted to sleep. But not really. Even being back had made his hands itch, every creak or shadow making him flinch. Prentiss is dead, he said to himself, she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.
He’d made Jon say it, when he’d been panicking. Say it: she’s dead. He remembered Jon’s loosely curled fist pressing into his shoulder, the way his whole body had shaken, how thick his voice had sounded when he repeated the words. Martin had been worried he was going to hurt himself, or aggravate some of his injuries, at least. She’s dead, she’s dead. Jon’s palm, flat against Martin’s chest, grounding both of them.
Alright, he thought, that does it. He grabbed his keys and made his way back out into the street, around the corner, and into the Tesco Express he knew he could buy food at. He was going to make the biggest pot of spaghetti bolognese anyone had ever seen, sleep be damned.
He considered picking up a bottle of wine, and then decided against it. There was already a headache pushing at his temples, not helped by the lights in the shop. The cashier was also silent, as she checked him out. He made sure to smile at her as he left, and got nothing back. That’s alright, he thought, People don’t need to be smiling all the time. It’s fine.
But he wanted someone to smile at him, really, wanted someone to touch him gently. He wanted Jon’s hand to be pressed against his chest again, would do anything for the simulacrum of affection it had been, knew it was pathetic, wanted it anyway.
It was drizzling by the time he got outside again. There were some very drunk girls on the other side of the street, wearing heels so high they hurt Martin’s feet just to look at them. They looked like they were playing tag, dodging one another and laughing - A disaster waiting to happen, Martin thought. And, of course, one of them fell, so hard Martin expected her knee to burst open like an overripe orange - but after a moment of cradling her leg, the girl just laughed, her friends laughing with her. They helped her up and limped off together. They never even noticed the strange man with the shopping staring at them. Suddenly, Martin wanted to cry.
He wanted someone to notice that he was crying. He wanted for there to be someone waiting for him when he got back to his flat, wanted for them to ask him if he was alright, wanted them to tell him that it was okay if he wasn’t. He felt very bitter all of a sudden, and that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. So he went home, and cooked, the method and normalcy of it helping somewhat.
He was starving by the time the pasta was done, but he didn’t mind. It was a real feeling, a tangible feeling, something he could fix. He almost felt too tired to eat, but he forced himself to.
He remembered cooking for Jon and Tim and Sasha in the breakroom, and then spending the better part of an hour trying to convince them all to eat. The pain medication made Tim feel queasy, but he needed to eat something to be able to take it. Sasha simply hadn’t felt hungry, as she’d said she hadn’t since the attack, which Martin could understand. And Jon… was Jon, he supposed, stubborn and paranoid and perpetually annoyed. And in pain, Martin reminded himself, very much in pain.
It made him tired even to think about it. Like battling with children, and him the only grown-up, except they were all grown-ups and they should’ve known how to take care of themselves. That was a bitter thought, and he didn’t like the taste of it. He didn’t want to be alone to take care of himself - why should he expect anyone else to? If he could’ve gone home with Jon, he would’ve. If he could’ve kept all of them in the Archives, where he could see them and take care of them, he would’ve. He was good at taking care of people, if they’d just let him, for once.
He wanted to take care of Jon, in particular. He wanted to call him baby and sweetheart and a dozen other infantilizing, patronising pet-names that Jon would probably hate. He wanted Jon’s gratitude almost as much as he wanted his love. And there was a part of himself, one that Martin usually recoiled from, that wanted Jon to take care of him, for once, for Jon to be as gentle and as careful with him as Martin needed someone to be.
He tried to put those thoughts away, but it was hard, once you got started. He did the washing up and put the leftovers in the fridge, took a proper, hot water, shampoo-and-conditioner shower for the first time in four months. He realised that the bed surely needed fresh sheets, and found some to put on - the ones he’d brought from his mum’s, that had holes in them - and then, when he couldn’t think of anything else to keep his hands busy, he finally tried to get some sleep.
The empty space next to him felt sharp and cold, sharper and colder than he remembered it feeling. He thought about Jon’s hand on his chest again, how delicate and birdlike his fingers had been, what it might feel like to hold it in his own hand. It didn’t help. It only served to make him feel colder. He tucked his head into his pillow, and tried not to cry, and attempted, with an awful, hopeless desperation, to sleep.