Chapter Text
He'd always been good at hiding his pain, had Martin. It's something you learn when you grow up queer on a rough council estate. Not that he ever told anyone he was queer, but they bullied him for it anyway, even when he was presenting as feminine as he could. They'd always find an excuse -- that's what bullies did. Either way, part of him thanks them for it now. He learned a lot from them; how to swing a punch they can't block, how to stand his ground, how to not cry in a confrontation, how to hide when the fist in his stomach made him feel sick with pain.
That's why it was easy when he started getting aches every morning, shocks of pain that left him biting back groans, no matter what he did. He went to a doctor, of course, in between caring for his mother and trying to catch up on coursework, but they put it down to puberty, down to period pains, down to a growing body.
Eventually, he got a diagnosis that sounded a little more right: a soulmate. The concept wasn't rare, but it was far from common. His manifestation, though -- sharing primarily the pain of his soulmate -- was said to be one of those symptoms less commonly associated with the entire phenomenon. Within the freaks, he was, once again, alone.
It was deeply and awfully poetic to a sixteen year old Martin that his first impression of the person destined to fit him perfectly was through the pain they unknowingly inflicted on him. Still, it gave him an explanation, and a free prescription for some heavy duty pain medication to take on the worse days. He saved them, still; it was in his nature not to waste things, and they made him too drowsy to look after his mum. Between a high tolerance and a deep set resistance to wasting the little blue pills, he was good at hiding a wince or a pang of pain.
Still, he couldn't help but wonder why his soulmate hurt so much. He had theories, of course. Maybe they were an athlete, always pushing their body to the limit, honing their form... The thought made him blush. Even if soulmates didn't 'have' to be romantic or sexual in nature (as the books he'd hauled home from the library, buried under his PE kit, had stressed), there was an expectation associated with the phenomenon, and if he was going to end up with a beefcake... Well, his hormone-addled teen mind wasn't about to reject the idea. There were other, less savoury theories, too. He didn't like to dwell on those. He just hoped that -- whatever the reason, they had the pills too, and the sense to use them for their own pain, let alone that which Martin was sharing with them.
He did his best not to get into fights after the diagnosis. Not that he went looking for them before, but sometimes it was the fastest way out of a situation. By the time he was 17, he'd packed on a fair amount of solid muscle from his odd jobs in factories and on deliveries, and he was happy to use it if it meant getting out of a circle of intimidating assholes that bit sooner. Knowing someone else would have a black eye made that seem less appealing. That was when he picked up running. He was too big to hide effectively in the narrow streets, but he could run like the wind when the whim took him. It was freeing, too; the world, unable to keep up with him; the bullies, out of breath a three blocks away; the pounding of his heart and the welcome reminder of his feet as he hammered against the pavement, past the river, under the bridge, to wherever he was safe this week. His soulmate, he decided, wouldn't mind the dull ache of his thighs, underneath the shooting pains of their spine. Better than an undeserved beating, at least.
His mother disapproved of the whole deal. Martin hadn't even known you could disapprove of an illness . It wasn't like he chose to be cosmically linked to someone who spent all day in pain. But she found her ways to make it his fault, and he accepted it as another thing he'd failed her for. Everything became routine, eventually, be it pain, or just plain acceptance of his own uselessness. And when it was routine, it could be ignored, or numbed.