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Jon is, at the very least, allowed to lose consciousness when Tim detonates the bomb and brings the building down around them. He regains it, briefly, somewhere loud and frenetic, maybe an ambulance. It’s chaos, each sense fighting for control as Jon is assaulted with blaring lights and voices shouting over each other, and above it all is pain. Jon cannot feel if he's succeeding in waggling his fingers or not, but he can feel every pain receptor flaring at once. Someone mercifully puts him under again.
When Jon awakens the second time, there is a similar period of disorientation, not all in a rush, but the slow trickle of awareness, mostly characterized by a lack of stimuli. It’s quiet and still, but most importantly, he can't feel much of his body, pain or otherwise. If anything, the closest feeling Jon can liken it too had been the unsteady nauseous sway he’d felt in his kitchen two weeks ago, but where that had been sinking deeper and deeper into the dizziness, Jon knows this time he’s rising out of it.
Jon opens his eyes and sees Martin, brow pinched and eyes misty, sitting in the small metal chair he’d pulled up next to Jon’s hospital bed.
“Hi,” Jon manages.
Martin starts with something like a cry. His hands come up towards the bed on instinct before he catches himself and crosses his arms over his chest, even as body leans in closer towards Jon.
“Hi, Jon.” Martin’s voice, too, is watery.
The silence after is so heavy Jon can hear the ever familiar hiss of a tape recorder from god knows where, steadily recording this moment in it’s obsessive need to document.
“I-” Jon has to clear his throat before he can start again. He’s gained just enough bodily awareness to tell his throat is sore; he can’t fathom how the more battered parts of his body must feel.
“I am sorry Martin. I am so— “
“You said it wouldn't be dangerous! You didn't say anything about blowing yourself up!”
“It wasn’t-”
The chair scrapes noisily against the linoleum as Martin pushes back to stand. It takes a great deal of effort, not to mention dizziness, for Jon to lift his head enough to track Martin’s movement across the small hospital room, but he’s loath to let Martin out of his sight.
“You don’t get to just, just disregard your own life like it’s nothing. It's not right. You don’t... you don't… And I’m so bloody mad at you right now but all I want to do is kiss you silly.”
Jon has never wanted something so badly, but instead he wills his hand to reach out towards Martin, stood stiffly a foot of his bed,
“There’s not likely to be a shortage of gloves here if you wouldn’t mind settling for holding my hand,” Jon says.
“I-uh- I brought…” Martin produces out a pair of dark, thin-looking gloves and Jon has to swallow several times. No one has ever put this much thought into him. No one has sat vigil at his bedside with teary eyes. Jon stretches out his hand a little bit further to get into Martin’s all the sooner.
“You promised,” Martin keens once he’s back at Jon’s side. Whatever his gloves are made of, the fabric is soft and warm around Jon’s hand, even if Martin’s grip is like a vice. Jon tries to meet the pressure in kind, though he’s got the disadvantage in strength even on a normal day.
“I know. I really didn't-” Jon wishes he had gloves of his own, to reach up and cradle Martin’s face, try to get it through in touch. “I told you, we couldn’t detonate the C4 until the ritual had started, but we did try, really, to get out of there.”
“You were so beat up when they first brought you in. None of the doctors were even sure how you were alive,” Martin continues without paying Jon's word much mind. With the hand not clutched in both of Jon’s, he strokes his fingers over Jon’s hairline.
The press of Martin’s thumb feels like pressure on a bruise, and it very well could be, but Jon cant find it in him to ask Martin to stop.
“I’m sorry, Martin.”
Slowly, Jon extracts a hand to push against the bed and scoot further towards the other side. It’s a slow process, muscles either stiff and slow to move or completely unable to, but Martin catches on and with his big, gentle hands, moves Jon over. When they’re done, there’s enough room Martin can get one hip onto the bed and lean his weight there.
Even with Martin crowded up into his space, it’s not enough. Martin’s hands on him are the only thing he can really feel, everything else is numb, just limbs and a body Jon barely recognizes. He wants to feel Martin everywhere, have him climb up into the bed like it’s any normal night at Martin’s flat and they’ve folded themselves into some safe and cozy arraignment on his couch. Martin’s properly covered up, even in the August heat, with his jeans and a cardigan and the gloves he’s brought. Someone’s even found it to put Jon in long-sleeves too, so skin contact isn’t a risk, but Jon isn’t sure he’s got the right to ask after what he’s put Martin through.
Martin spends a quiet moment look at their joined hands, face particularly solemn when he looks up. “Tim and Daisy, they didn’t make it.”
“Oh. That’s…” That’s… Jon’s head falls back to his pillow, a very short trip as he’s barely made any headway into sitting up. The room goes blurry and Jon can feel the bed shift as Martin moves closer still.
“They couldn’t find Daisy’s body, but Tim’s was recovered pretty quickly. He was actually, he was right by you. And his body’s here now, at the morgue, if you want me to.”
Jon clenches his eyes shut, flexing so hard he can hear the rumble in his ears.
“No.”
It comes out harsher than the meant it, so he tries to temper the blow. “No, it’s… I don’t think he’d want that.”
Eyes still closed, Jon slips a shaky hand into his sleeve before bringing it up to his face. He presses his thumb and forefinger to one eye to collect the tears, meaning to move on to do the other eye next, but Martin’s there before he can. Martin’s grip is careful, cupping either side of Jon’s face, his thumbs brushing away tears that seem to fall harder at the touch.
Martin takes in a deep, heavy breath before speaking. “Did you?” He asks in a wavering exhale and Jon opens his eyes as intensely as he’d shut them.
There’s the beginning of a sob on Martin’s voice as he continues, “did you want it?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Jon answers hastily, but he knows he’s missed the mark when Martin is the one to have to clamp his eyes shut and inhale again. Careful not to touch the sliver of skin between his sleeve and glove, Jon reaches up and wraps his hands around Martin’s wrists. He means to try again, say it kinder, but Martin beats him to it.
“Did you,” Martin asks through grit teeth, eyes still closed, “choose to stay alive so you could kill yourself stopping this?”
“I-”
Martin’s touch is still so light, despite the hard glare he sets on Jon when he opens his eyes.
“I know I can’t make you, but you have to tell me the truth, Jon.”
“I don’t know Martin. I wanted to— “
“You have to come up with a better way to solve things than throwing yourself at the issue and hoping it sticks.”
“Martin— “ Jon’s never heard the fury in Martin’s voice, or the tenderness in his own. Even if Jon could feel the rest of his body right now, all the sensation would be focused on where his body touches Martin, the press of Martin’s thigh to his side, Martin’s hands clutching his face and how they’re tightening, seemingly without Martin’s awareness. One of them is trembling.
“I will touch you right now, I will, if you’re going to keep doing that. Tell me right now, and I will end it.”
Jon knows, even without Knowing, that Martin means it.
It's easier, Jon realizes, to ask for that touch he'd been so hesitant to earlier, now that he wants to comfort Martin. Carefully, Jon lets go of Martin’s wrists and guides his head to rest on Jon’s chest. In an instant, Martin burrows both arms under Jon’s back and holds onto Jon so tightly his ribs ache. For sometime, Jon just lays there, regaining sensation to feel Martin's sturdy weight where ever it presses into Jon's own body.
“I’ve made a mess of your jumper,” Martin says sometime later, though he makes no move to lift his head up. Jon can feel the sizable wet spot on his chest, cold against his skin, and the matching one on his own pillow.
“Isn’t it yours?” Jon asks.
Jon feels the chuckle, Martin’s body rumbling against his own. He’s nearly fully on the bed now, a good portion of his weight on Jon’s torso, a comforting pressure even as Jon's lungs protest with each labored breath.
“Didn’t have much time to run to your flat, not when I’ve got the call you’re in extremely critical condition after an explosion. You know, if you just kept your things at mine; you practically live at— “
Jon loops a lock of soft brown hair around the forefinger of his good hand. “Ok.”
“What? Jon, are you— “
“Let’s move in together.”
Martin stills for just a second before he is motioning for Jon to let go so he can sit up and arrange himself a little further down the bed so they won’t go cross-eye trying to look at each other. “Are you just saying this so I won’t be cross with you anymore?”
“No,” Jon says. His leg, he’s noticed, has shifted without his notice, to press against Martin. “Yes.”
“Jon!” Martin laughs.
“It’s…” Jon takes a deep breath, but what truly settles him is the gloved hand that reaches for his own again. “I love you, Martin, but I don’t have much practice in loving myself. It’s always seemed a bit...unnecessary when ignoring my needs seemed to work just as well. So, every instinct is telling me to retreat, not to burden you. So I think that’s what I ought to do then, right?
The laughter, now, has taken on a nervous edge and Martin’s very determined to look anywhere but Jon’s eyes. “You’re assuming a lot of my feelings.”
“Oh. Oh Martin, I am so, so— “
“I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” Martin cries, flapping his hands in a big show of exasperation. “Of course I love you! Do you think I’d cry my eyes out over someone I what… tolerated?” A flush has bloomed, on his cheeks and has even begun to creep down his neck, and Martin finally looks at Jon. “I love you, Jon.”
“I love you, Martin.”
“You know, earlier when I said I wanted to kiss you silly?”
“Me too,” Jon answers and he doesn’t even feel the pain, when his smile pulls on his split lip or Martin’s hand squeezes his. In a way that’s probably not granted very often, Jon’s somewhere past pain, and he holds onto the feeling as hard as he can.