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Martin once again found himself standing at the eggnog table. Now thoroughly buzzed, his legs felt heavy, and his head swam in grey. Though he couldn’t really tell if it was fatigue or alcohol which caused it. He blearily watched Jon, who sat next to Gabe, his arm wrapped around the smaller child, a warm look in his eyes.
The man, with his salt and pepper hair once again messily braided by the smaller child’s hand, was now showing the boy all of the pictures he took of the Scottish countryside, including those of the fluffy cow variety. Martin distantly heard his squeals of delight.
Conversely, if Martin focused his hearing in the opposite direction, loud snickering could be heard, and those voices sounded conspiratorial enough to put him on edge, to make him shift uncomfortably. He’d heard many voices of similar creed and vitriol to be able to recognize their nature instantly. He supposed that was intentional—they wanted him to hear, and they wanted him to squirm.
“How do you suppose they, y’know--” Louis smirks at his uncle Hugo conspiratorially, who looked back at the younger man with a raised, amused brow. He was clearly unbothered.
Hugo shrugs, and gestures for Louis to continue, who speaks in a raised, obnoxious tone, “I mean, M***** is not really a man, so, I guess it's just…”
Martin couldn’t keep listening, he felt like he could be sick, the eggnog turning sour in his stomach and curdling. He put his glass down, no longer trusting his hand to remain steady. There was a pressure building in the space behind his eyes, and he closed them against the steady throb.
He took a deep breath, then opened them to look at Jon, his anchor, his reason. Jon was looking at Hugo and Louis, his face completely expressionless. Damn Jon’s ridiculous hearing. He’d heard them.
Jon turned his head to look at Martin and gave him a soft smile that for a moment made the rest of the room disappear. Jon lowered his head and spoke quietly to Gabe, who nodded and took Jon’s phone to continue scrolling through the Scottish countryside.
Jon stood and crossed to Martin, still with that smile, the one that had caused Rich in Accounting to exclaim, “I need someone to look at me like that!” The smile that people noticed. The smile that everyone else in the room seemed to have noticed, as the room grew quieter, until Jon reached Martin and put his arms around Martin’s waist and turned his face up to kiss him gently. Martin put his arms around Jon’s waist, and as he drank in Jon’s smile, he felt his stomach settling. The pain and the frustration and anger didn’t disappear, but at least he didn’t feel like he was going to throw up in the middle of the room.
The room that he suddenly realized was deathly still, silent except for the godawful Christmas tunes Vivi had playing on the radio, all eyes on him and Jon. Except for Gabe’s, still looking at cows.
Then still looking into Martin’s eyes, Jon’s smile changed, morphed into what Martin privately called Jon’s Shere Khan smile, and before Martin realized what was happening, Jon had turned around in his arms and turned the both of them to face Hugo and Louis, and Jon was leaned back into Martin’s chest, hugging Martin’s arms around him.
“I’ll answer your questions if you’ll answer mine,” Jon said. Martin couldn’t see Jon’s face, but he could hear the tiger smile in his voice, oh so smooth and refined and somehow very very unnerving.
Martin saw Louis draw back slightly, his eyes widening in uncertainty. Hugo glanced about, as if considering making a break for it. Looking for an escape route was a common reaction to Jon’s Shere Khan and Martin usually enjoyed it, but here, with his family staring at them? “Jon.” Jon bumped his back into Martin’s chest and squeezed his hands. Martin buried his face in Jon’s hair. Oh lord.
“Are you happy?” Jon asked. “Are you happy?” Jon’s voice softened and Martin could hear his smile soften with it, growing warm and contented. “Do you wake happy each morning because it’s another day you get to spend with the one you love? Do you look forward to spending every day of the rest of your life with them? Does it make you happy to think of growing old with them? Is every day a good day because no matter how shitty it was you fall asleep looking at your love’s face?
“Does your love look at you like you hung the moon? Do you know in your heart of hearts that they’ll always be there for you, no matter what?
“Do you and your love shop together and cook together and sometimes burn dinner because you forget why you’re in the kitchen and then laugh so hard you cry? Does shopping take three times as long because half the people in the market and all the clerks know them, and everywhere you go people smile when they see him and tell you how lucky you are because your love is the kindest person they know? Are you proud to be seen with them?”
Jon hugged Martin’s arms tighter around himself and gave a contented sigh. “Do you ask yourself every day how you got so lucky? I do.”
The room was silent. Except for a godawful song about Santa.
“I know what you say about us. I know what you think about us. So my question is, how happy are you? Because I wouldn’t trade where I stand for anything in the world.”
When what seemed a silent eternity later Jon turned in his arms and reached up to kiss Martin on the nose, Martin couldn’t help but be grinning like an idiot.
“Come on, let’s go look at pictures of cows,” Jon said and led him by the hand to sit with Gabe and look at pictures of cows. They were very good cows.