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Martin is fine.
He's fine. He's better now. He's fine, he eats three meals a day plus snacks - good meals, different meals, new meals sometimes - and he likes it. He hasn't thrown up in two months, and even then it was only once. He's fine.
To start with, this is a nice feeling - a really nice feeling. The sheer novelty of having something that works, after all these years. He's had his good periods and his bad periods, and his time during the Lonely that was - something else, at least. But he's never had a good period that's lasted this long before.
So it's nice. It's fine. He's absolutely fine.
He doesn't really notice when his adherence to this thought turns from reassurance into a kind of desperate constriction, as the weight and pressure of his good weeks start to weigh in on him. Or he doesn't want to. Not until he finds himself clutching to it so hard it breaks.
It's almost a surprise, when he finds himself back on his knees in the bathroom again. It's not like it's not happened before, after all - he's already done this once since his conversation with Jon in the kitchen all those weeks ago, but that felt lighter. Easier to shake off. There's something about this one that feels more final: like a fall, instead of a stumble.
The second time he finds himself there, the worry in his chest starts solidifying into dread. The third time isn't a surprise at all.
The worst part about all of it is, as it keeps happening and keeps happening, that he doesn't know why. No - he thinks, the worst part about it is that Jon doesn't know at all, and Martin doesn't know how to tell him. Because he's supposed to be better now. The soft, happy look on his face that Jon gets sometimes when Martin catches him enjoying him enjoying a meal - it seems like a soft, quiet kind of happiness for Jon, one that Martin doesn't want to take away.
This is what he tells himself, about why he hasn't said anything: it's for Jon, to protect Jon. But he thinks the deep-down truth of it is that as long as he doesn't tell Jon, he doesn't have to admit to himself that this is happening again.
And the stupid part of that is that he doesn't even think Jon would mind. It's not like Jon's a stranger to the intricacies of living life with unexpected needs or changes: over the past few months, Martin has watched his infrequent nonverbal periods change and start to grow outside of his habitual moments of frozen panic, at the same time as those moments themselves have lessened.
It's not the same as his panic attacks, Martin's sure of it. Jon doesn't seem to be struggling to speak: it's more like he's simply more comfortable not doing so. But at this point, whenever Jon has something he wants to communicate, he only speaks it aloud about fifty percent of the time. The rest of it is gestures and facial expressions, the scant sign language that they've managed to scrape off the internet from their trips to the village and signal, and a basic offline text app that Jon downloaded a month ago.
It’s not a bad change: Jon’s been clear on that, and Martin trusts him, even if he hadn’t been able to see how calm and comfortable Jon seems during these periods of speechlessness. Martin’s watched him step outside of the local shop after talking to the shopkeeper, and pull out his phone to make some comment to Martin — and how much easier it looks on him to do so at these moments, how much it feels like he trusts Martin, that he’ll let Martin into this with him.
That Martin can’t do the same for him feels bad in a way that Martin doesn’t know what to do with. And that feeds itself into his growing panic, along with everything else.
Jon sleeps more deeply now than he used to when they first arrived, which is lovely for a lot of reasons, but also means that when Martin starts slipping out of their shared bed again in the middle of the night, he doesn’t think Jon notices. That only makes it feel more like a betrayal.
He’s never felt so bad about relapsing in his life, which makes this relapse worse than any he’s ever had before. The speed and intensity of it scares him: it takes less than a week between throwing up once the first time to throwing up during the day, and then less than a week after that and he’s throwing up two, three, four times a day, sneaking off while Jon’s elsewhere or busy.
The climax of it is simple: he wakes up one morning with the clean and straightforward awareness that he cannot go on like this. He simply cannot eat, at all.
So he doesn’t.
He skips breakfast, choking down a black coffee and trying not to think about it. Then he skips lunch, waving Jon off when Jon wanders outside to offer him a sandwich.
Then Jon asks him, head stuck in a book and phone screen slung casually over the spine, if he’d like for them to eat together tonight, and that’s when Martin finally breaks.
“I can’t,” Martin says, and the tears are already rolling down his face. There’s a great pit yawing inside him for so many reasons, and he feels like he’s teetering just on the edge. Jon’s head snaps up at his tone: Martin, already shaking, covers his mouth. “Sorry — sorry, I just can’t, I—“
Jon’s face transforms with alarm. He closes his book immediately, sliding close and taking Martin’s hands, in a reversed gesture so familiar that it makes Martin hurt somewhere deep inside.
He only lets go of one of Martin’s hands to type. Martin doesn’t know what to do with that kind of softness.
I’m sorry. Jon tells him, painfully gently, tilting the screen to show him. It’s alright, you don’t have to, you can eat by yourself.
“I can’t,” Martin chokes out again, hand opening and closing reflexively around Jon’s. “I don’t know how. So I just can’t, Jon—“
Martin, Jon types, eyes wide and scared. It’s alright. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, I promise.
Martin sucks in a few deep, shuddering breaths, and then tries his best to still.
“I can’t — eat. At all,” he says, pleading, and watches as Jon’s eyes narrow in understanding. “Please don’t ask me to. I just can’t.”
Jon’s face does a fascinating journey that starts at a kneejerk kind of disapprovingly horrified at Martin, and then veers into self-directed horror and finally into a deep and mortified apology.
“It’s alright,” Martin tells him, taking a breath, grateful for the veneer of aching fondness that put over the hurt and panic roiling inside him. “That was very — you — of you.”
You know, Jon types hesitatingly, glancing up every other word as if to gauge Martin’s reaction, most people don’t find that reassuring.
Martin lets the soft joke work on him: he gives a big sniff, and Jon relaxes.
“They’re missing out,” Martin tells him, weakly but heartfelt. Jon gives him a soft smile.
Please stop trying to flirt with me in the middle of your moment, Jon tells him mock-sternly, and Martin finds himself letting out a little, watery laugh.
Can I ask why? Jon says delicately after a few seconds, and Martin takes a couple more deep breaths.
“When you eat,” he says eventually, looking at his hands, “you know when to start, and when to stop. You probably don’t even think about it, do you? It just happens.”
When he looks up again, Jon is frowning in a way that Martin knows means something like “yes, I suppose, I’d not thought of that before”.
“The worse I get, the more I lose that,” Martin tells him, fighting to keep his voice even. He ignores the tiny, pained noise Jon makes. “Until it’s just completely gone. And then I have to choose between not stopping, or not starting.”
So we have to find another option, Jon types, without a beat of hesitation.
Martin doesn’t know what to say to that: it’s not like he hasn’t spent the last fifteen years thinking about another option, after all. But Jon, just across from him, looks like he’s thinking something through. After a moment, he deletes what he had on the screen and starts typing quickly again.
Do you judge me for what I eat? Jon says, and Martin screws up his face against the pang of hurt that causes him.
“No,” he says. “I — I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was.”
No, it’s not that, Jon says, grimacing. Sorry, that was poorly worded. It was a sincere question, though, I have an idea — it might be clumsy to explain, I’m sorry.
“Take your time,” Martin tells him softly.
Well, Jon types, his brow crinkling in a way Martin immediately wants to kiss. And then he does, and Jon — still looking into the middle distance — gives a pleased, distracted kind of hum that warms Martin from the inside out. How would you feel about doing a little less day-to-day? Physically, I mean. Just for a while.
Bless him for trying, but Martin doesn’t understand at all.
“Um — I don’t know, Jon, I don’t see how that would help—“
Sorry, sorry, six steps ahead, Jon says, shaking his head exasperatedly. He deletes that and starts again. It’s just — I was thinking that if we equalised our calorific outputs, you could eat the same as me, with me — to the crumb, if it would help — and know that I thought it was a good amount. And maybe that might make it easier, if you could look at me and not judge what I was eating. I was just thinking that way, you wouldn’t have to decide when or what to eat — if you trusted me enough to help decide that for you.
The text size is getting extremely small at this point. Jon waits for Martin to read it all, and then when Martin doesn’t say anything, he rushes on.
And I know that you tend to do more on a day-to-day basis, between my leg and my— here, he waves pulls the same face he always does when he’s trying to talk about his frequent fatigue —you know, and I wouldn’t want to starve you of the energy you needed, so if you reduced your activity level to my level, perhaps it would be healthier—
When Martin blinks, his eyes are swimming with tears again.
“Oh,” he says, very quietly, stopping Jon’s typing mid-sentence. “I — I — don’t know. That wouldn’t be too weird for you? Me eating the exact same as you?”
Jon deletes the text again with a sharp tap.
Martin, he types instead, with a touch of dryness about his mouth. I don’t think it’s possible for me to have the moral high ground about how one eats in this house.
Then he seems to backtrack very fast.
NOT that I’m comparing the nature of the Beholding to what you’re living with — not at all, I just wanted you to know that I wouldn’t consider this to be weird, at all — or even that I’d have thought I needed to clarify that, if you hadn’t—
“Can I offer you something to get that foot out of your mouth?” Martin enquiries sweetly, swiping at his eyes again. Jon laughs softly, relaxing against him.
Please, he types, earnestly, and then — so. Do you think that would help at all?
“I don’t know,” Martin says, in a tiny voice. “But honestly — it helps that you’d offer. And I can try it, at least. Thank you.”
Can I confess something, Jon says hesitantly, and Martin slips an arm around him without even thinking, the motion as easy as breathing.
“Course,” he tells Jon, hoarse but sincere. “Anything.”
I like that you let me help you with this, Jon types. He squeezes his eyes shut briefly and takes a deep breath. I don’t know. I just feel like I’ve spent so long hurting people, or being so helpless about other people being hurt, it feels good that you trust me with something like this.
And that you’d be able to— he grimaces, deletes that, and starts again. Like I said, I know I haven’t always had the most— he pulls another face —customary of diets. So the idea that you could use what I consume as a benchmark of how to relearn something like this, in a sense: it makes me feel so human.
“Shut up,” Martin tells him, deep and heartfelt. “Oh, God, Jon. You’ve never not been.”
Jon’s fingers hesitate over the screen for a moment.
I never think that’s true as much as when you tell me that, he types.
“One day I won’t have to,” Martin tells him, shifting him closer. “You’ll just know. We’ll get there. And until then, you’ve got me.”
And you’ve got me, Jon says, switches off the screen, and turns into his shoulder.
Jon makes dinner very carefully: an old and comfortable recipe, one they’ve eaten a few times before. Martin excuses himself from helping so he doesn’t get caught up in worrying over the ingredients, and clears and sets the table instead.
Jon is used to the way Martin needs to eat by now — quietly and with focus, at a designated place at the tiny kitchen table, the same place for every meal that he leaves as soon the meal is over, so he can be sure of a clear and designated break between eating and not eating. Sometimes Jon eats with him, ankles tangled under the table. Sometimes he’ll grab food at a different time, or elsewhere.
Martin tries hard not to envy him too much this freedom. Jon has his own history with sustenance.
But today, Martin sets two places at the table. He considers going out to pick something from the garden as a centrepiece, and then discards the idea. He doesn’t have the energy to look ahead to this meal as anything other than what it is: a hill to crest; a cliff to climb; a war to survive. What matters is that he makes it through.
It smells delicious as they sit down together. It would do even if Martin wasn’t so screamingly hungry. Jon’s a good cook, and he made this for Martin because he loves Martin, and he’s trying so hard to understand and help, and —
Martin can’t bring himself to pick up the fork.
Jon, mouth already closed around a bite, looks at him with inscrutable eyes. He swallows and sets down his cutlery, and then pushes their placemats together.
Slowly; and with enough time that Martin could stop him if he wanted to, he carefully scoops a pile of rice and peas onto Martin’s fork, and holds it out handle-first for Martin for take. When Martin does so, he makes a fussy, pleased noise that sinks into the marrow of Martin’s bones, and fills his own fork.
He doesn’t watch as Martin raises the fork to his own mouth. Martin’s grateful for that: it means he can pretend just for a moment that this is fine and normal, just a meal like anyone else might share with a loved one. But Jon does seem to carefully time his own bite to Martin’s anyway, and that helps too. Because watching Jon eat — making meals for Jon, seeing his sharp edges round out over the past weeks and months of easy rest and food — has been one of the few guiltless, straightforward pleasures of Martin’s stay here so far. It’s a nicer for him to focus on that, and easier.
He doesn’t know if he actually needs Jon to fill up the fork for him a second time, but Jon doesn’t wait to see or ask. And in some ways, it’s a relief not to have to make the decision. So he just watches Jon do it: the familiar crease in his forehead as Jon chases a stray bean. Covers Jon’s hand with his own as Jon passes him the loaded fork, and focuses on the actual flavour and texture and feel of the food on his tongue.
“It’s good,” he tells Jon quietly, swallowing, and means it. Jon gives another little pleased hum, and refills his fork.
Like this, bite by bite, Jon takes him through it.
After dinner, they migrate to the sofa and just kiss for a while. Martin’s grateful for the opportunity to get outside his head for a little bit, on top of that sweet little thrill he still gets that he’s not yet outgrown, that he gets to do this with Jon. This is them now.
And it's like this for them a lot — definitely more than Martin expected, or has experienced before in his other relationships. He’s not entirely used to kissing like this as anything other than as a prelude for what comes next: being with Jon is something of an education on what he’s been missing. He’s found, gently and with a growing kind of joy, that he enjoys kissing for its own sake more than he ever thought he would — without the lack of that pressure and those expectations, it’s just him and Jon being close and gentle together for a while. Which, if he’s being honest with himself, is something he wants an unreasonably enormous amount of the time.
It’s not even like he misses sex, in the rare times that he remembers the lack of it. And in his quieter moments, he thinks that’s maybe something he could talk to Jon about — get Jon’s opinion on, hear about Jon’s own realisation, if he wanted to share. But they have time for that.
Eventually the kisses slow and they end up just lying together, breathing. After a few minutes, Martin’s pretty sure that Jon’s fallen asleep right there. He thinks distantly about the dishes in the sink, and the way that the fire is starting to die — but Jon is warm and quiet on top of him, and away from Jon and their little pile on the sofa by the light, it’s dark and cold. So Martin is content to lie there, running his hand through Jon’s hair and thinking — with some concerted effort — about nothing at all.
The first thing he knows about when Jon wakes up is when he speaks, a little dry in the way he gets when he hasn’t said anything for a while. The way he’s sprawled out all over Martin means he’s talking directly into Martin’s neck.
“God. Has anyone ever told you you’re the perfect shape,” he says sleepily, and then seems to freeze. He follows it up with an extremely awkward and much more awake, “Uh. If — you — you — if you’re comfortable—“
“Don’t freak out too hard there,” Martin tells him, amused out of any of the normal threatening body panic. “But — uh. Not recently, I suppose.”
“Well, it’s true,” Jon says stubbornly, almost defensively. He rubs his face down into Martin’s chest: ticklish, Martin swats at him.
“I just think you have a very nice body,” Jon continues, and then immediately and with deep embarrassment, “Oh, God.”
“Jonathan Sims,” Martin says, in a scandalised tone and against the bright bubbles of laughter threatening to escape up his throat. “How dare you. Objectifying me like that, for shame. I’ll have you know I’m a taken man.”
“You’re a menace and I hate you,” Jon says, without the slightest bit of heat. “I’m divorcing you.”
“Technically, I don’t think you can divorce someone you’ve not married to, and have in fact only been together with for a few weeks,” Martin points out, lightly.
“Three months and ten days, though,” Jon says immediately, and then, “—uh. Not that I’m counting.”
“Clearly,” Martin says, aiming for teasing and falling short under the weight of his joy and fondness.
“I hate you,” Jon signs quickly, because he’s pushing his face into Martin’s chest again.
“So I was thinking,” Martin says nonchalantly, and feels Jon shift against him. “Uh. You remember what you said a few months ago, when I, uh. When you found me in the kitchen. You know.”
Jon goes quiet and still against his chest.
“Probably, yes,” he says. “I remember a lot of that for a lot of different reasons. What, what — why?”
“No, no, it’s — after that, you remember how you said you didn’t like the word boyfriend?” Martin asks, and feels Jon relax.
“Actually,” Jon tells him, in what sounds like relief and a little bit of smugness. “I don’t recall saying that. All that I said was that it sounded a little juvenile. Which I still stand by, for the record, but. It’s as good a word as any, I suppose.”
“Well, I’ve been having some thoughts,” Martin says slowly, and watches Jon lift his head to look at him, eyes alight with mischief.
“Oh, really,” he says to Martin, delight audible in his voice. “Well. By all means. You should know I’m always keen to hear your thoughts on this matter.”
“Well,” Martin says, forging onwards. “Like you said. Boyfriend is a bit - primary school.”
“Yes,” Jon says, in a go on kind of way.
“Lover is gross.”
“Also technically incorrect,” Jon points out, in a helpful tone.
“Beloved is a little Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy, I’m cold — you know.”
“I don’t agree, actually,” Jon says, in the kind of voice that makes it very clear that he’s only considering it because Martin isn’t. “I think it has a certain charm to it.”
Martin screws up his face.
“Well, I was thinking — partner,” he says, and there’s a resounding silence from Jon. “I just — I like what it suggests. That we’re — I don’t know. A unit, not — not just romantically, but. Like it’s us against the world, kind of. Together.”
“And it wouldn’t make you uncomfortable,” Jon says after a moment, lowly. All the mischief is gone from his voice: he sounds — raw. “Calling you my partner. Or like we were rushing things. That we’ve only been dating for three months—“
“And ten days,” Martin adds impishly, heart still in his throat, and Jon loosens and bats ineffectually at him.
“But you also feel,” he says to Martin, and audibly swallows. “Uh — like that. Like we’re a, we’re a partnership.”
“Aren’t we?” Martin asks quietly, and Jon exhales.
“Yes,” he says, and then, like it’s wrenched out of him — “In every way that matters, it feels, most days. Yes.”
“Okay then,” Martin says, breath escaping in a rush of relief. “S-settled, then?”
“I love hanging out with you,” Jon says, quiet and muffled. “I love spending time with you, I love trusting you. I love helping you, I love being helped by you. I love you, I love you.”
“If you keep going like that, I think you will be able to legally divorce me soon,” Martin says, voice thick.
“Tell you what,” Jon says, and then breaks off. He makes a little, gentle circle around Martin's left ring finger, a gentle movement of his own hand. “Well. I’m just looking forward to the next time we discuss how to describe this relationship.”
“Yeah?” Martin says, barely audible now.
“Yeah,” Jon says. “But I’m in no rush. It’s not like I’m not happy with things as they are. If — if you are.”
As Martin breathes, he shifts and he feels Jon shift against him; when Jon moves to take the weight off his hip, the way he finds himself moving his own body to find a space for Jon to rest a little easier. The two of them, together, endlessly curving into the spaces that each of them has left for the other.
“Yes,” Martin tells him, and feels the solid truth of that expanding inside him, spreading to all the spaces he doesn’t know how to fill yet on his own. But he’s learning, he thinks. He’s got time. They’ve got time. “I am.”