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Jon had never liked showers at the best of times – they were repetitive and dull and there were so many steps required outside of the simple fact of standing under the water, and they always seemed to be so time-consuming – but he hated them even more now. Any extra second that he had alone with his own thoughts was a nightmare, not to mention the very real fact that it seemed utterly ridiculous to be showering in the apocalypse. It still needed to be done, he supposed; just like they could still technically eat, and sleep, and Martin insisted on some form of routine, but with the whole world quite literally gone to hell outside it seemed almost insulting that Jon would have to devote some of his energy to soaping shampoo through his hair.
Jon timed the showers as a way to entertain himself. He kept a tally of how long he had been in there for and tried to beat his score each time, but there was really only so much improvement that could be had at this point. His scores now varied within the same few seconds, and he didn’t think he could get it done any quicker if he tried. The fact that he had apparently perfected the art of showering, at least in terms of efficiency, was not a great achievement, but it had been a useful distraction. Without it, Jon found himself floundering. It was easy to drift into his own thoughts in the quiet warmth of the shower, and if he did that, it was difficult to come back. Several times he had been lost in the sheer amount of knowledge now open to him, only returning to himself after Martin’s frantic pounding on the door finally got through to him. He would find that hours had passed; his fingers were wrinkly from the water, though the water itself never grew cold. It was the look on Martin’s face that was always the worst thing to bear, pale and etched with worry. He had assured Martin he would start leaving the door unlocked, just in case, but it was a lie. Perhaps part of Jon liked those little accidents more than he let on, but really his reasoning was much more innocent – the thought of Martin having to come in and find him in that state, completely lost to the world and without a stitch of clothing, was quite frankly more mortifying than Jon could bear.
Shutting the shower off, he cringed at the thought. It was nothing personal against Martin, of course – it was just that Jon was a very private person, and ever since he had been a child, he hadn’t enjoyed any unnecessary stripping. Other boys his age would whip off their shirts on warm days, but Jon kept his firmly on, even when the sun beating down on his dark hair had been unbearable and he longed for some respite. At school he had rushed into the changing rooms early or loitered until last before swapping into his PE uniform, and during the dreaded weeks where his class would be trotted out to the local swimming pool instead of their regular gym exercises Jon would forgo the communal benches and slip into one of the cubicles. This was apparently not strictly allowed – something about health and safety and his teacher having to be able to see all the children in his care at all times – but after the first time Jon had stood stock-still and refused to change until all the other boys were done, his teacher had turned a blind eye to it.
The only exception seemed to be backstage. For some reason Jon was completely devoid of his self-consciousness when quickly swapping costumes between scenes, or throwing clothing on in a hurry alongside bandmates. He supposed that was the wonder of acting – it wasn’t really him, was it? Even backstage, immediately before or after a show or during scenes, he was still half outside himself. It was easier to see changing as just another practicality then, the same amount of intimacy as throwing a new coat of paint on a wall or washing grime off a car.
He had to wonder if he would feel the same way now. The heat of the shower had brought a trace of colour to the scars mottling his hand, though the strange marbled quality of the skin remained. Jon held it up and inspected it, seeing the little rivulets of pink, the jarring contrast between the pale scarring and the olive tone of his unmarked skin. It was, he realised anew, rather grotesque. Of course, he was always painfully aware of it, but right now it hit him in a fresh wave of revulsion. Perhaps it had been the philosophising, the concentration he had turned to his history with this kind of thing. Deep down, he realised now that he had had it easy back then. What had he been so self-conscious about? It had just been a body – his body, wonderfully unmarked aside from the odd wear-and-tear scar that had come from being a precocious child prone to misadventure and then the co-parent of one very opinionated cat. He’d really had nothing to worry about, and now it all seemed like a ridiculous waste of energy.
Jon began to towel his hair, but quickly realised he didn’t have the energy to stand there and do it. The room was too warm and he felt light-headed; he didn’t want to lose his grip on himself. Instead he threw on some of his clothing, not caring so much about the fact his hair was still dripping water down his back – or the lower half, anyway. It had grown longer than Jon had expected, now he thought about it. He so very rarely wore it down, and barely thought about it while hurrying through his shower routine; now it was down to his mid back, and if he pinched it and pulled it straight from its slight curls, it was practically down to the small of his back. Jon pulled the soaking hair tie from around his wrist and roughly pulled it up off his neck, and then reached for his shirt. Unfortunately for him it was also soaking wet – the water dripped down from the shower door, which he had opened too far. Jon sighed and threw the wet shirt over his arm along with his towel, and then ducked across the hallway to the bedroom.
The cabin was always pleasantly warm, inoffensive in the same way it was inoffensive with everything. There was always just enough, and anything they needed appeared immediately; it had even sourced the specific coconut conditioner that Jon always used, which was about his only way to stand a chance at keeping his unruly hair in line. Compared to the bathroom, however, the rest of the cabin was icy, and Jon hunched his bare shoulders as he sat on the edge of the bed and let his hair down again, tilting it forward so it dripped down towards the carpet. He went about towel-drying it with a sudden ferocity, determined to keep his mind on the task at hand and not let it drift. Unfortunately for him, the process of drying his hair was incredibly dull, and it was impossible to keep himself from slipping.
He was aware of Martin, who was whistling to himself as he tidied a few dishes in the kitchen. As a rule Jon tried not to peek into Martin’s head, but he liked to watch him whenever they weren’t in the same room as one another; he liked to know that he was alright. If Martin knew that Jon kept the door locked – which he most certainly did – he wasn’t about to mention it, and despite trying not to Jon peeked before he could stop himself, seeing that yes, Martin was well aware. At the very least he seemed understanding; there was none of that expectation there that most people would have, that because they were now officially boyfriends they had to let down all the barriers between one another and immediately start trampling over their own boundaries. Jon had heard of it happening many times before, and he’d experienced it to a degree himself – he knew that his private nature had annoyed Georgie somewhat, when they had been dating for almost a year and he still ducked away if she happened to come across him while changing. She had teased him for it pretty good-naturedly, but it had annoyed her.
As had a lot of things about him, really. Jon dried his hair with new vigour, forcing his mind back onto the present. He was drying his hair. He had not made much progress. This was going to take an hour. The cabin most certainly had a hair drier somewhere, but Jon could not stand the brittle feel of hair blow-dried too often. He was in it for the long haul.
He was concentrating so hard that he had managed to distract himself a little too well; when the knock on the door came, Jon started and looked up, alarmed. The door was ajar, but Martin had knocked anyway; he peeked around it, smiling both out of amusement and apology.
“Did I really manage to sneak up on you?” he asked.
“Uh, yes,” Jon said, flustered. “I suppose so.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“I was actually thinking about how much I hate drying my hair.”
“You should just let it air-dry.”
“I do,” Jon said grimly. “I have to towel it for eighteen months first, or it will stay wet right up until I next wash it.” He sighed. “Anyway, you’re—everything is alright, I presume.”
“Yeah,” Martin said. “Just the usual question. If you wanted a cup of tea, and if so, do you want it in here or in the living room?”
“Ah,” Jon said. “The, uh—the living room is fine. I think I’m getting bored of this.”
He put the towel beside him on the bed, reaching for his hair tie; it was not around his wrist. Muttering, Jon looked around himself in vain, until Martin came over and plucked it from the carpet, holding it out.
“Thanks,” Jon said. “Ironic, I know.”
“You losing something?” Martin asked. “I don’t know. I like the touch. Like how everyone is equal in death.”
Jon snorted, and then froze. He wasn’t sure how he could have forgotten, but somehow the movement of his arms had reminded him – as he had raised them to scrape his hair back into a messy bun, he had abruptly realised he was still shirtless. He fumbled with the hair tie and dropped it again, briefly closing his eyes in frustration; it was a mistake. Without the grounding sight of the room around him Jon almost pitched forward into the swirling torrent of images and thoughts and sounds that lurked just beyond his foremost thoughts, nearly sliding right off the bed as though his body aimed to somehow physically follow the sensation. He opened his eyes just as Martin caught him gently by the shoulders, pushing him back from the edge of the bed.
“Jon?” he asked, concerned. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Jon said, a little too quickly. He could see the doubt plain on Martin’s face, and wondered how embarrassing it would be to confess that his sudden spell had had nothing to do with the horror of bearing the entire weight of the apocalypse’s combined terror on his shoulders, but rather the fact that he was apparently the sort of person who realised he was shirtless in front of another person and had an attack of what he could only surmise was what the Victorians had been referring to when they mentioned the vapours. He groaned. “God.”
“What’s wrong?” Martin asked. “You look—you look kind of pale.”
“I’m fine,” Jon said. “I think—maybe the shower was too hot.”
“Yeah,” Martin said. “You do tend to turn it into a sauna in there. Here, um—do you mind?”
He held up the hair tie. Jon looked at it, and then back to Martin’s face.
“Do you… know how?” he asked.
“Know how?” Martin asked. “Jon, it’s—it’s not rocket science, I think I can tie your hair for you—”
“No, I mean—you don’t have long hair,” Jon said.
“Really?” Martin asked. “I’d never noticed that, actually.”
“Martin,” Jon said, exasperated. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what I’m doing, Jon,” Martin said, amused. “I’ve been tying hair back for a long, long time, you know.”
Jon suddenly felt incredibly stupid. It was something he felt often, which he thought was ironic, considering the fact he could access any piece of information that he wanted. He supposed he was living proof that knowing the facts and putting them together were two completely different schools.
“Ah,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Right. Your… um, your mother, I presume?”
“Yeah,” Martin said. “She was pretty weak, you know? Even before she got really sick. And tying your hair back, I mean – you don’t realise it when you’re well, because why would you? But when you’re that sick, you realise just how much effort it actually takes to hold your arms up for that long, and at that angle.” He snapped the band against his thumb. “So… can I? I mean, obviously if you don’t want me to…”
“No, it’s—it’s fine,” Jon said, realising that it actually was. He tried to remember the last time he had allowed anyone to touch his hair before, let alone when it had been down. “It’s, uh. Unruly. I should warn you.”
“Yeah,” Martin said appreciatively. “You’ve got like, enough for three people. Do you want me to try and brush it?”
“Don’t bother,” Jon said, pulling a face. “Not until it’s dry. It just tangles itself up worse.”
Martin moved over to kneel on the bed behind him, making surprisingly quick and gentle work of gathering up Jon’s hair and twisting it into a bun that almost exactly resembled the kind Jon tied for himself. He was about to ask how Martin had managed it when the answer hit him and made him colour slightly – Martin had watched him do it enough times, and it had always been the kind of thing that attracted his attention. Not for the first time in his life, Jon had a brief moment where he wished he was more inclined towards physical affection. It was not something he often dwelled on, and certainly it wasn’t anything that Martin had ever made him feel guilty for or ashamed of, but he wished it nonetheless. It might be nice, to be that kind of person, but wanting to want something was different to actually wanting it. Jon had never confused the two.
Still, he could at least acknowledge that the feel of Martin’s fingers, warm and careful, was nice against his skin. It was only light touches, brushing against the side of his neck, but Jon could sense a pleasantness to it that he wished he could focus more on. Unfortunately for him, touching any part of him also meant brushing up against a scar, and that never failed to illicit a shiver of disgust or self-consciousness. He tried to be subtle about it, but Martin was attuned to such things.
“Do they still hurt?” he asked quietly.
Jon shook his head. “No. I mean—they itch, sometimes. In the heat.”
“Those hot showers again,” Martin said. He sighed. “I’m sorry, Jon.”
“What?” Jon asked, a little too quickly. “They’re hardly your fault. If anything they’re mine, because I really should have seen—”
“Stop it,” Martin said firmly. “Jon, look at me.”
Reluctantly, Jon turned so they were both sitting properly on the bed, facing one another. “It’s true, Martin. I—”
“I won’t listen to it,” Martin said. “Jon, you blame yourself for everything. You must have a really high idea of yourself if you sincerely believe that absolutely everything that’s ever gone wrong, ever, is solely your fault.”
“I, ah…” Jon said. He swallowed. “I suppose, if you put it like that…”
“This is—I mean, I hate to say it, because I hate the guy, and if I had my way I’d punch him in his gross little old man face, but—you have to admit this plan was brilliant.” Martin sighed. “The amount of time it took, how subtle each stage of it was – it was masterfully done, Jon, and you can’t predict everything. You didn’t even know what you were looking for. You didn’t even know you were part of a bigger plan.”
“I should have—”
“No. It was constructed that way, Jon. You didn’t stand a chance, and it’s unfair, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Get angry if you want – I know I am. But don’t bother getting mad at yourself, because you’re a victim here.” Martin’s eyes darted to Jon’s throat; to the many pockmarked clusters on his face and shoulders. “Sometimes in life you get—well, absolute arseholes, if I’m honest, and it’s just bad luck that some of these arseholes happen to be smart, too.”
“I just think I should have worked it out sooner,” Jon said. “That’s all.”
“You were literally set up on all sides,” Martin said. “Jon, you would blame yourself if you ended up framed for murder by a total stranger, I swear.”
“I was framed for murder,” Jon said darkly.
“Did you blame yourself?” Martin asked.
Jon spluttered.
“Exactly,” Martin said. He blew upwards into his hair. “Jon, you’re impossible. It’s like you want to beat yourself up.” Slowly he reached out, gently tracing a finger along the edge of the faded stab mark at Jon’s shoulder. “Don’t you think you’ve suffered enough?”
Jon tensed, but didn’t move away. He could feel Martin’s sympathy, sincere and genuine; he could feel his anger, too, wild and directed at the whole world and everything that had once been beyond it. Surprisingly there was nothing directed at him, and Jon wondered how. Surely there had to be a little piece of it reserved for him, for being the one who had brought all this to pass? It would take a saint to avoid such a natural reaction, and while Martin was lovely he was certainly no saint. The only explanation was that Martin genuinely believed it, and while Jon couldn’t understand how, there was no denying the facts.
Beneath all of this, however, was something that Jon could understand. Martin was curious. Jon could hardly blame him. As a rule, Jon kept his scars as hidden as possible, with the exception of the ones he could do nothing about – the worm scars on his face and neck, the slash at his throat, the burn on his hand. With his shirt off, the rest of them were laid bare – the clusters of yet more worm scars, the stab marks courtesy of Melanie and the thing that had been Michael and was now Helen.
There were other, more subtle marks too – grazes and lighter burns from the explosion that had killed Tim and, Jon supposed, himself as well; light patches of discolouration from where he had crawled through ever-tightening passageways and unforgiving stone had slowly rubbed away the skin at his elbows and knees. There was no scar where he had lost his ribs, but his chest looked odd on that side, and shirtless the lack of symmetry was obvious. High up on his forearms, just below the elbow, there were even souvenirs of the Vast: tiny half-crescents where Jon’s nails had dug desperately into the skin there, trying to reassure himself that he was real, solid; that he wasn’t falling to his death.
Jon didn’t resist when Martin’s finger traced lightly down his arm, running over the pockmarks that were naturally in its way. He was sure that Martin’s touch had left a trail of fire behind it, but that couldn’t be true – he was just so aware. There really were so many of them, clustered together mostly, with the occasional lone dip in his skin. It was possible to see the patterns of the teeth as they had burrowed and twisted their way in, represented in interacting semi-circles of white at the bottom of the dip, almost like some strange version of yin-yang. Jon could barely think about them without recoiling in disgust, but Martin traced his finger over them without hesitation, and his only prevailing reaction to them was sadness. Jon thought about saying something, but there was something about Martin’s silence, the look of concentration on his face – Jon didn’t dare interrupt it, even as his heartrate picked up. What was he so afraid of? He didn’t have the answer. All he knew was that he wished he could pull away, that they could forget these marks were ever there – but no, that wasn’t it, either.
What he really wished, he realised, was that they weren’t there at all; that they had never been. That he didn’t have to walk around marked like this, a living tapestry to Jonah Magnus’s cursed genius. It occurred to Jon that Magnus would have undoubtedly looked; he would have admired his work, looked upon it with a sense of satisfaction and self-congratulation. In that moment Jon almost wished that Martin would look at him with disgust, that he would react as somebody should – an acknowledgement that this was disgusting, that it was abhorrent, that it was vile. Instead Martin gently clasped Jon’s burned hand and looked at it, turning it over, running his thumb over the whorls of skin. Looking at it laying there, pale and scaly in Martin’s warm, pink hand, the flesh whole and healthy, Jon was reminded of the dead, cast-off fish he had seen as a boy, fallen off the backs of crates at the harbour in the early morning and picked apart by the gulls.
He almost sobbed. He managed to swallow it back at the last moment, clearing his throat with a weak, wet sound that made Martin look at him in alarm.
“I’m not—it doesn’t hurt, right?” he asked.
“No,” Jon managed. “No, it’s—I just—”
“Jon,” Martin said gently. “It’s—it’s alright. I just—here. I’ll leave it alone. You probably don’t want me gawking, right?”
“No, it’s fine,” Jon said hurriedly, even if part of him did agree; did wish Martin would never look at him again, never had to see this again. That was what he wanted, but it wasn’t practical, and besides – it wasn’t much to ask. Martin looked away from a lot. He accepted a lot more. Jon was hardly the person to lecture somebody on curiosity, and why shouldn’t Martin see what he had done? It was only right. Jon didn’t think he had the right to hide this, not with the whole world destroyed and all thanks to him. “I—I’m just not used to them being… looked at. I know people see them, but they don’t look.”
“Surely they stare,” Martin said.
“Yes, but—but it’s different.” Jon took a steadying breath. “People stare, but that isn’t the same as looking. People stare because they’re curious, or they’re nosy, or they’re shocked. People look when they’re trying to work you out, or— or when they have worked you out, and they know precisely what’s happened, and they’re staring at the evidence in horror.”
“I’m not—Jon, I’m not horrified by you,” Martin said. “I would never—I love you, Jon. I’m not—I’m not repulsed by you.”
“No,” Jon said quietly. “But don’t you think you should be?”
Martin’s face flickered with shock, and then clouded with anger. “Jon. What kind of a question is that?”
“Think about it,” Jon began, but Martin shook his head.
“I will not think about it!” He let out a rough laugh. “Why should I be repulsed by you? Why—what makes you think that? Why do you think that would solve anything?”
“I’m not saying it would solve anything, I’m just saying it would be a normal, healthy response to something like this.”
“And what do you mean by something like this?”
“I mean—” Jon swallowed. “I mean I ended the world, Martin. Regardless of how we dress it up, I did that. And even before that, I was—I was feeding on people, I was ruining their lives—”
“So, what?” Martin asked. “I’m supposed to beat you up for it? Threaten to kill you if you don’t stay in line? Act like you’re some untrained animal who needs to be beaten and terrorised into submission?” Martin laughed again, and this time it was nothing but anger. “Jon, it’s illegal to train dogs like that, and people were just—Basira and Melanie were just treating you like that! Like some mongrel that needed to be kicked into place! Is that what you want? Is that what you expect of me?”
“No!” Jon said hurriedly. “I just—”
“Spit it out, Jon!”
“I don’t deserve your sympathy!” Jon said loudly. “I don’t deserve it, Martin! I did this! I allowed this! I put myself in this position, and now look! This isn’t a misunderstanding, or a faux pas, or some silly little mistake that can be rectified and written off and laughed about later. I ended the world. The world is gone! It’s changed, irrevocably, and people are suffering endlessly because of me!”
“Because of Jonah Magnus!” Martin snapped. “Not you! This was his idea, his planning, his ritual.”
“He used me!”
“He used the Archivist!” Martin said. “Who happened to be you! Jon, for God’s sake! You can’t be held responsible for something that began two hundred years before you were born! He couldn’t have predicted your birth and selected you because he knew you were going to have a messed up experience with a spider as a kid. He’s omnipotent, not a fucking clairvoyant!”
“Martin—”
“You might be determined to hate yourself, Jon, but you won’t make me hate you,” Martin said firmly. “You won’t find an ally here. I love you, alright? And yeah, maybe I hold the controversial opinion that you’re not responsible for ending the entire world. I’m saving all my hatred for someone who deserves it, and when we finally get our hands on Jonah Magnus—”
“We don’t even know if we can do anything to him.”
“Well, we’re going to try,” Martin said. “We’re going to try very thoroughly.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not disgusted by you, Jon. I’m not looking because I’m horrified, or disgusted. I’m just—I’m sad, and I’m angry on your behalf, and I guess I’m a little curious.”
“Why?” Jon asked glumly. “You know what happened.”
“That’s such a you response,” Martin said, snorting. “Because, Jon. They’re part of you. I’m not curious because I want to know all the gory details – I’m curious because I don’t see them often, and I’m interested in you. I understand if you’re just not the type to strip off in the house or whatever, but I really, really hope that wasn’t because you thought I’d see all these scars and suddenly decide hey, maybe I do think you’re the antichrist or something. Because I don’t, and I never have, and I never will.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Martin said. “I knew what I was getting into, Jon.”
“Did you?”
Martin sighed. “Alright. Admittedly, I didn’t see the apocalypse coming. But I knew what was going on with you, at least in terms of the whole ooh, big scary monster thing, and I still chose you. I chose you, Jon. We don’t get much choices these days, so please stop trying to rob me of one I actually made.”
“Fine.” Jon slumped his shoulders. “Fine, if you insist—”
“I do insist.”
“But it doesn’t change the fact that—”
“That you want to blame yourself,” Martin said. “I know, Jon. You’re wholly determined. You think if you blame yourself you could have done something different, but you couldn’t. You did the best you could.”
“And it wasn’t enough.”
“Sometimes it isn’t.” Martin fixed him with a hard stare. ”Sometimes you do everything you can – for someone, for something – and it still isn’t enough. It’s not a reflection on you, Jon. It’s just the way the world works.”
Jon held his gaze. He knew, then, what Martin was saying with it – the defiance there, the challenge to disagree. Jon found himself suddenly unwilling to argue. He knew, of course, what Martin was referring to; where he drew his experiences from. All those years caring painstakingly for his mother, devoting his life to her so sincerely, loving her so completely – and it still had not been enough to make her love him back. It had not been enough to make her stop seeing her husband, the man who had caused her untold pain, and instead see her son – the one good thing she might have wrenched back from that despicable man.
“I’m sorry,” Jon said quietly. “If I made you feel like—like I was saying otherwise.”
“It’s not about me,” Martin said. “I know this. It was a hard lesson – and yeah, I know you peeked, but this is a one off, alright? It was a hard lesson to learn, but I learned it. I just need you to understand that watching you blame yourself for this is as ridiculous as if you had to watch me blame myself for my mum hating me. In fact, it’s even more ridiculous, because I just had bad luck and yeah, I’ll say it, a bad mother. You had a centuries-old plan working against you, along with some kind of Old God.”
Jon let out a weak snort. He was aware of Martin’s thumb, tracing circles against the burn again. It still set him on edge, an odd heat there like the flesh was still burning, but at least it was easier to sort through now – his own dislike and hatred of it, and not the fear that Martin’s was incoming. It wasn’t better so much as no worse, but Jon was quickly learning that the gap between not better and much worse was a chasm.
“I still don’t think I deserve… this,” he mumbled, gesturing to where Martin held his hand.
“Yeah, well,” Martin said defiantly. “We all get things we don’t deserve. You might as well let it be something good, for once.”
Jon found he couldn’t argue there.