Work Text:
His boyfriend is beautiful.
Jon always scoffs when he says it, rolling his eyes and tucking his nose back into the thick knit jumper pulled over his knees, and Martin wishes he didn’t understand why.
As much as it hurts, it’s hard to remember that stern, bespectacled man looking up through his scowl that he met those years ago, with his smooth skin and steady breath, unblemished hands and just the slightest hint of silver sitting at his temples. A bit plain, sure, but certainly handsome, wrapped head to toe in tweed (and someone Martin seriously thought was going to chuck a stapler at his head). The years since haven’t been kind to him, that short but solid little academic. When Martin catches sight of Jon’s old ID peering out of his wallet, it’s difficult to reconcile the two faces as one and the same.
But god, he thinks, staring across piled up duvets and mismatched bedsheets, just look at him.
Martin is a poet, and he spent enough of his youth up to his arse in the sappiest and most pretentious verse to know there’s a thousand ways to describe how Person A looks like Pretty Thing B.
Summers days, starry nights, dewdrops on fresh grass and a hundred other things that make human beings stop and stare and sigh. But as he lies there, head cradled in the crook of his elbow on a winter’s morning, Martin doesn’t think that’s right for them. Not for the mop of greying curls and dark, pitted skin peeking through the fleece, face slack and lips parted in the lull of sleep.
In his heart, Jonathan Sims sure does make him think of those things. He’s a sappy sod okay, and not afraid of the odd cliche. Martin would quite like to tell the man whose feet freeze against his thighs that he is like a moonlit garden, a sunlit meadow, and a hundred other saccharine metaphors, even if those sentiments would make the other snort and flick dishwater in his face.
But it’s more than that. Deeper than that, and as he watches Jon snuffle, frowning a little and drawing the pale line of circular marks long and tight across his forehead, a sharp heat of affection makes Martin reach across the mattress. Resting his other hand against the dip of Jon’s waist under the sleep-warm covers, Martin is careful, as he always is in the fumbling early morning light, to hold him only where he knows Jon feels safe and secure, offering touch just to coax him closer. There, he feels thick, knotted burns, rough but warm against his palm and rising with every breath, and instinctively Jon draws himself ever nearer. Martin smiles as his boyfriend grunts, his face pressed against the downy hairs on his chest.
It’s a shame, because now that lovely face is hidden, tucked away. But as two skinny arms wrap around his stomach, and as he delights in the shining diamond of a fact that prickly old Jonathan Sims is a shameless, aggressive cuddler, Martin’s point starts to take shape.
Jon wasn’t painted in oils. Wasn’t carved from marble, or cast in bronze, though he’s been so strong under heat and chisel for so very long now. Jon wasn’t shiny or smooth, masterfully crafted and perfectly preserved to be held behind glass for the rest of time.
No.
To Martin, he thinks, resting one hand against his boyfriend’s neck and stroking against the baby hairs dusting the bottom of his hairline, Jon looks like …
Well, Martin had a teddy bear once.
Look, it’s not the stuff of Shakespeare, he knows, but hear him out.
Old Ted was his name. He was a smart little thing, pressed into chubby hands on a long forgotten birthday between sheets of overtaped wrapping paper. He was nothing special, no one in his family had the budget for plush velvet or glass buttons, but he had bright brown eyes and soft black fur, the perfect size to tuck under a little arm or peek out of a preschool backpack.
Martin loved him to pieces.
Even years later, after hundreds of flat moves and endless nightshifts and early starts, his little friend sat first on his bed, then on his bookshelf, dutifully watching his charge grow taller and broader while the little thing grew thinner and greyer. His nose stitches loved off and lustre long gone from one too many trips in the washing machine, old Ted bore the dust with grace, and even now Martin still feels a stab of guilt that he didn’t think to grab him in their rush to Kings Cross those weeks ago.
He was shabby and grey, probably in need of a good shake, but he deserved the soft place in another’s arms he was made to fill.
He’s still there, after all this time. In one piece, almost, despite everything.
As the warm body latched around his belly huffs into Martin’s shoulder, the soft brush of stubble scritching pleasantly along his chest, the picture only becomes clearer in his bleary-eyed mind.
Sure, next to any stuffed toy in a shop, glossy and bright with their tags still on, bears like old Ted would always look a bit sad, a bit tatty, with all their stuffing wrung out. But weren’t those ones, a little threadbare and struggling to sit up by themselves, weren’t they the best kind? The ones that have been there as long as you can remember, a little battered but still waiting for you in the warmest, darkest places to keep you close.
They’re something precious. Cherished. Something to keep safe and nearby, years after most would expect you to give them up.
To give up on them.
But of course, the wear and tear he sees on Jon’s skin wasn’t kind. The marks across his face and spaces in his rib cage weren’t from too many nights pressed close to soft cheeks or gentle hands, from sweet excursions in simpler times; the odd misadventure in a high street puddle or many mornings found and rescued from the bedroom floor.
Jon looks like Jon does because he was hurt. People hurt him, and they did that just because they could, and he was afraid. Jon was absolutely fucking terrified, every time, and each skipped stitch can’t be written off as anything but cruel. Mornings like this, with even breaths and sunlight still streaming through the curtains, are rarer than they’d like, simply because those scars run deeper than the edges of Jon’s skin, and are keen to keep him up long into the early hours.
God, Martin wants to fix it. He knows he can’t undo the past, and Jon would never ask him too. Try as he might, they’re not his wounds to heal.
But if he could, he’d buff the edges just a little, at least. Sew him up and dust him down, patch him with something patterned and bright. Not to hide it, never, thats not his decision to make. But he’d kill, Martin really, really would, just to make it hurt a little less. Protect what Jon has left inside to pad him out, give him a steady base on which to sit up and stand on.
No, wait. Actually, Martin wants more than that. If he could, and maybe he can now, with Jon loose and languid over his chest, Martin would finally, finally leave behind some wear of his own.
He would kiss the stubble from his cheeks, brush the colour from his hair, wear the lines into his eyes deeper and deeper with every touch, every smile. Yes, Martin would love him stitchless, right down to the last button, if it proved to the whole world that Jonathan Sims was precious to him. He would show the places his fingertips were gentle but sure, a constant reminder that shows on every part of him.
Jon might be grey and worn, but he’d be kept soft and dear in his hands, swinging in his grip along crowded pavements and tucked under his chin at night, so anyone could look and know that, if nothing else, at least one person on this planet chose him, kept him and loves him for all his frayed seams and faded threads.
And perhaps, and Martin feels surer of this everyday, maybe Jon will loosen some of his threads too. It would be nice, Martin thinks, to watch himself wear away. Not to disappear, no. But he would very much like to become something familiar, something special and a little creased, with pieces slowly coming loose but still held together in another’s arms.
So Martin stares down at the mess of silvering hair and twisted skin, and lets himself smile as Jon makes a soft, sleepy noise against his collar. He presses a light kiss to his forehead, and is rewarded with a tight squeeze, a gentle hum, and a nose rubbing closer against the curve of his chin.
Buds of May and Pilgrim’s Lips were great and all, but this, Martin thinks, as he draws the blankets back over them both and wraps his hands across the small of Jon’s back, this is better.
This is real.