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It’s snowing in Scotland.
It’s honestly more shocking than Jon would care to admit. Realistically, he knows that it has always snowed in Scotland, just like it snows in England, or in Ireland, or in America, but all of Jon’s preconceived notions of the place are muddied by travel magazine snapshots of rolling green hills with cows and castles. The only one that has rung true since they arrived is the cows. The rest seem to be a bit exaggerated, a bit overly romanticized, but Jon doesn’t find reality too disappointing.
“It’s snowing,” Jon says. He’s got his face pressed up against the kitchen window, watching the lazy flurries begin to accumulate on the handrail, but his breath keeps puffing up the view. He wipes it away with his sleeve.
From behind, Jon can hear Martin open the microwave and place something inside. “It’s Scotland,” he answers, as if that’s enough of an explanation in and of itself.
“It’s October,” Jon insists.
“I don’t know what to tell you. Some places have weather?” Martin nudges his shoulder, and Jon turns just enough for him to push a warm mug into his hands. He gives it a sniff experimentally. It smells vaguely of chocolate.
Martin continues, “Radio says it’s supposed to snow all week. We should probably head into town and pick up some more weather-appropriate clothes, though. Seems my jumpers have been going missing lately.”
Jon only hums. He takes a sip of his drink — hot cocoa, just as he suspected. He pointedly does not look at Martin and does not admit that he has in fact been pilfering a healthy amount of knitwear from Martin’s side of the dresser, and instead turns back to look at the flurries outside. It’s impossible to tell if it’s the fog from his breath or the fact that his vision is getting worse that unfocuses the scenery outside, but the latter possibility excites him in a backwards sort of way. He hasn’t worn glasses since the coma. Maybe being away from the Institute is actually doing some good.
“Jon.”
“Hm?”
“The world’s not ending just because it’s snowing in October,” Martin teases, and Jon pulls his gaze back across the kitchen table. There’s a glob of whipped cream clinging to the scruff of Martin’s upper lip, and Jon opens his mouth to say something about it. Then he closes it just the same.
“I know,” he says instead. “I just— I know.”
Martin snorts. “You know, I can’t tell if you were a chronic overthinker before all this Beholding stuff and I just never noticed or if it’s a recent development.”
Jon grouses, “I am not overthinking —”
“Jon.”
“I’m not! I’m thinking a completely average, normal amount of thoughts as compared to the general human population, I’ve counted, and— and I would appreciate it if you would stop giving me that look.”
Martin doesn’t stop giving him that look. In fact, one might even say that he emphasizes said look, raising an eyebrow as he leans across the table curiously. Jon’s gotten better at controlling where he Looks at things. Unfortunately, that also means he’s had to get better at reading the many expressions and body language choices of Martin Blackwood. He thinks that this particular iteration is a very unsubtle way of saying “I told you so.” He thinks that he would be very much better off if Martin simply minded his own business.
Martin thumbs a dollop of whipped cream off his own mug and pops it into his mouth. Jon looks into his own mug, pensively, and finds that the whipped cream has melted into a white sludge.
“And for the record,” Jon adds after his previous line of thought has been thoroughly derailed, “I was thinking about my grandmother. She uh...she liked the snow.”
Martin tilts his head. “I thought you grew up in Bournemouth.”
“I did.” Jon cracks him a half smile. “Can’t say beaches are great for blizzards, but she was always hopeful. She’d say ‘this year, Jonathan. This is the year we’re going to have a white Christmas.’”
He can hear her now, in that creaky, old voice. The same way he can hear her telling him to wipe his feet, to clean his dishes, to bundle up when he leaves the house. Funny, he thinks, how long voices stick around.
Martin’s watching him carefully, whipped cream clinging to his lip. “Did you ever?”
“Oh god no,” Jon snorts. “It was well over fifteen most years.”
“Heh. That’s southern England for you.”
“I suppose.” Jon picks up his mug and takes a long swig of the clumped powder at the bottom. “I always uh...I always told myself I was going to come up north and see one, you know? A ‘Proper White Christmas,’ but, well— you know how it is. First you have school, and then work, and then not enough money,” he lets out a snort, “I mean hell, I spent last Christmas in a coma, so—”
“Oh.”
Jon looks up. Martin’s looking at his hand on the table — the burnt one, the one that Martin looks at a lot and rubs soft circles over when they lay in bed together in the morning, but not in the way so much that he’s analyzing it but rather more that he’s looking through it. Looking through Jon. Looking for something that isn’t there, but Jon can’t conclude what that might be.
He slides his hand off the table and places it in his lap.
“Martin?”
Martin opens his mouth, then licks his lips absentmindedly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m— sorry, I just. I guess I didn’t... I mean, I knew you were in hospital, but I guess I didn’t really...think about you missing things?”
Ah. Ah.
“Oh...um.” Jon fidgets in his seat as he searches for the words. “It’s...it’s fine, Martin. It’s not that big of a deal,” he ends up saying, which seems to be the wrong choice as Martin’s frown only deepens. Jon thinks twice about adding the part where he mentions that he also missed his birthday, and instead continues with, “It’s not like there won’t be other Christmases.”
Martin swirls his mug. “Yeah...yeah,” he says, but Jon can’t determine which part he’s agreeing with. Maybe he’s not agreeing with him at all. Maybe this is one of those things that Jon has never quite understood, where people say things that they don’t mean as a way to get around a conversation, even though there’s no conversation left to be had as Jon’s already said his part and there’s nothing Martin can really say to change any of it. Jon was in a coma last year for six months. Jon missed his birthday and Christmas and New Years all in one fell swoop, because none of those things were ever contingent on Jon being present for them. Jon pushes aside his empty mug. Jon reaches across the table and finds one of Martin’s hands. Martin smiles back at him in a way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes before he downs the rest of his own mug.
“Right then,” Martin says as he pushes his own cup away. “Suppose we should get into town before it gets any thicker out there.”
Jon only nods. “Right. Oh, and— Martin? You have a...”
He makes a motion to his upper lip. Martin mirrors the action, thumbing away some of the whipped cream and popping it in his mouth. “All gone?”
“Ah— almost.” Jon leans across the table. He swipes away the remaining cream before Martin catches his hand and licks his thumb clean. His tongue is soft. His lips are pink. Jon thinks this is the part where he’s supposed to feel something, but all he can focus on is how big Martin’s hands are. How small his own are.
“Good now?” Martin asks. He smiles with those pink lips. Jon thinks, absently, that he’d very much like to kiss him.
“Good now,” Jon agrees.
The thing is, Jon’s gotten rather bad at remembering what day of the week it is. It’s more difficult when he doesn’t go to work and instead spends the day on the couch, legs twisted up together with Martin’s as they both focus on their respective hobbies, and today is no exception. He thinks it’s a Friday. He thinks that makes a reasonable amount of sense, given that the barber shop by the clinic isn’t open when they trudge their way into town, but he supposes it could just be a temporary thing due to the weather. Jon isn’t sure how things operate around the weather up in Scotland. He asks the redheaded woman who checks them out at the grocer, but she only smiles and tells him that he’ll figure it out soon enough.
So they buy food. They buy clothes. They buy a set of matching boots, Martin’s in black and Jon’s in taupe trimmed with navy. Jon’s are by the door now, still dusted in a thin layer of ice and mud. Martin’s are on Martin’s feet, attached to the rest of Martin, who is currently out buying firewood from the older man down the road. Jon thinks his name is Tom. He has a wife named Carol. He’s missing two of his front bottom teeth and refers to Jon and Martin as the “nice English blokes down the road,” and Jon realizes he’s never really understood what it means to have neighbors. He determines, in the middle of making a cup of tea, that he likes it. He likes having neighbors. He also likes living with Martin. He thinks he’d be very much inclined to continue living with Martin, even after all of the Institute business blows over, if Martin would be inclined to live with him. Martin, whose sweet and warm and goes to buy firewood in a snowstorm because he cares about his boyfriend getting cold.
Martin, who he can hear bumbling his way in through the front door, so Jon sets aside his still-steeping cup of tea and heads over to meet him.
And—
To be honest, Jon’s not quite sure what he’s looking at.
Well, okay, that’s not completely true. He knows that he’s looking at a tree. A pine tree, and not a big one, but a bit taller than himself. Not as tall as Martin, who’s carrying it.
“What’s that?” Jon asks as Martin is tapping off his shoes.
“Oh!” Martin holds it out like he’s surprised what he even has. Jon reels himself back from rolling his eyes. “It’s uh. It’s a tree.”
“Yes, I can see that. What’s it for?”
“...Help me find a place for it first?”
So they do. Jon clears out a corner of the living room and finds a small wooden box to act as the stand so it doesn’t completely fall over, and then he sweeps away the trail of needles from the door with a dustpan printed in yellow polka dots. He can’t remember which one of them bought it. He thinks it must have been Martin, because he would have preferred one with stripes.
“So?” Jon asks again, dumping the contents of the pan into the bin. “What’s it for?”
Martin takes a sip of tea — Jon’s tea, which he doesn’t really care about but still feigns mock offense — and shrugs. “Well...I was, um. I was thinking maybe we could do a......a belated Christmas celebration. Of sorts.”
“Belated?” Jon echos. Christmas is still well over two months away.
Martin gives him a funny sort of smile at this. It’s the type that Jon hasn’t quite deciphered yet, out of all his Martin-isms, because it seems to cover a vast span of implications. Sometimes it means “I washed your white socks with my red jumper and now they’re pink.” Sometimes it means “we’re all out of eggs.” Sometimes it means “Jon, that’s quite literally the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, and I can’t believe you ever assumed that that was normal” — actually, a lot of times it means that one. Jon assumes that this smile Martin is currently giving him is probably closest to that meaning, but he can’t be sure. He can never be quite sure.
“Well,” Martin says, “I just figured we’d, you know, make up for last year.”
And...oh. Oh. Jon gets it now, he thinks. Sort of. He gets it enough to know that his initial instinct to say “you don’t have to do that” will only thicken the weird sort of atmosphere that’s hanging between them. Make that funny little smile that Martin still has on his face only linger longer. So he decides he isn’t going to say that. He hooks his arm around Martin’s elbow and looks over at their tree that’s somewhere snugly between Jon’s height and Martin’s.
“We’re just going to turn around and have Christmas again in two months,” is what he settles on saying instead, because it is true. It makes little sense to celebrate Christmas now when it’s already close enough as is. Silly Martin. Never looking at the calendar anymore.
Martin makes an odd, twisting sort of movement with his mouth and then says, “I mean, we could always celebrate something else in December I guess? Like...like Hanukkah!”
Jon frowns. “Neither of us is Jewish.”
“Well, I know! But...hm. Isn’t Melanie Jewish?”
The laugh escapes his throat before he can even register its presence. “I think Melanie would quite literally rather stab me again than ever celebrate a holiday together.”
“Hey, you never know unless you ask,” Martin teases, pressing a kiss to Jon’s hairline. And then he pulls back, brows knitting together. And then he says, “Wait, hang on. What do you mean ‘again’?”
Jon snorts in lieu of an explanation as he pulls him down and kisses him back.
So it goes something like this:
They come to an agreement of sorts. Jon relents, and Martin pushes, and then Jon relents some more. They go to the corner store and buy a pack of garden lights, some colored cardstock for ornaments, and a roll of orange ribbon with dinosaurs on it because it’s the only kind they have, and then they decorate their tree. It’s a blinding amalgamation of very unholiday-like colors, in the end, and the snowflake ornaments he attempts to cut out turn out reminding him of the time he’d cut his hair with fabric scissors as a child. Martin tells him it looks beautiful. Jon is heartily inclined to agree.
They hang lights. They play Christmas music. They build a lopsided snowman that Martin says looks like Jon and Jon says looks like Martin. Martin punches it in the face and watches it explode into a heap of white, and then tells him it looks like Elias. Jon laughs more about that than he’d care to admit.
They make eggnog and it turns out horrible, but they drink it anyway and complain the whole time. They watch an awful holiday romcom they find on tape in the hallway closet. They sit on the couch in front of the fire most of the week — or rather, Jon sits on the couch with his feet tucked under, and Martin hides in the bedroom for several hours before eventually joining him. Jon hasn’t asked him what he’s been doing in there. He suspects it has something to do with their gift exchange they’d agreed on — only so many presents for each, nothing over a certain amount because they’re still on a budget, not this, not that, blah blah blah — but he never comments, and Martin doesn’t offer any explanations. Honestly, he’s just glad that he’d gotten Martin to bow on the idea of Jon being the only one to get any presents. It hadn’t been an easy battle to win.
Because here’s the thing: Jon doesn’t really do holidays. He likes them just fine, sure, he puts up a few decorations and maybe wears a festive jumper and says “merry Christmas” to the cashiers checking him out, but it’s not— well.
It’s hard to celebrate by yourself, he supposes is his best excuse.
It’d been different when his grandmother was alive and he’d had a place to go back to. Without her, he’s just been an adult orphan with no family, no significant other, no one except his coworkers to buy polite gifts for at company-mandated holiday parties. There’s no tradition in being alone. Just familiarity.
So:
On a day that’s maybe Tuesday, or maybe Sunday, or possibly even Thursday, Jon wakes up to an empty bedroom. He’d been dreaming about Naomi Herne for a long part of the night, standing over her open grave until she’d given him the finger and told him where he could stick it, and then he’d been dreaming about his grandmother. He doesn’t dream of her as often as the others, but she never has eyes. No one who isn’t victim or monster does anymore; they’re all Jon’s, in his dreams, and maybe that’s for the best. It’s better that they don’t see him like that. It’s better that they don’t see and say things he Knows they never would because, real or fake, they’ll never know what he’s become.
When Jon wakes up, the right side of the bed is still warm. Martin’s missing, along with his glasses, but the soft chitter of the shower from down the hall subdues the initial reaction to leap from the duvet. Instead, he stretches toe to tip. He rolls out of bed. He finds a semi-clean jumper in the pile on the dresser and puts it on before heading into the living room.
The cabin’s dim with the morning’s snow-smeared skies, only illuminated by the string of lights they’ve hung above the fireplace — clear, of course, because the stores aren’t carrying holiday lights just yet, but Martin had tried to color in a few with a marker. It’d only really succeeded in making a royal mess in the end, but it’s the thought that counts, Jon supposes. Just like their mismatched tree. Like their little plush ghost with a cardstock santa hat and a sign taped over to read “HAPPY Holidays” in orange and brown. Jon likes Martin’s writing better than the scrawl of corporate calligraphy. He wouldn’t tell Martin that though, of course. Wouldn’t want him getting a big head.
He’s sitting on the couch, knees pulled up to his chest when the bathroom door clicks open.
“Peeking at your gifts?”
Jon lifts his head. Martin’s looking back, an amicable but suspicious smile across his face. His dark hair clings to his forehead, still wet.
“I promised I wouldn’t Know anything about what you were getting me,” Jon says, and it’s true. He hasn’t Looked. He won’t admit to it being easy though; he’d spent the first night with gifts under the tree reading the W volume of the encyclopedia cover to cover just to keep himself distracted. In the end, it hadn’t sated him much, but he did learn some fascinating things about whales.
Martin laughs a little as he strolls to the tree. “Okay, true, but you didn’t promise against any physical snooping.”
Jon rolls his eyes. “I didn’t peek.”
“Well, good.”
“Good.”
“Guess that means—” Martin reaches down and picks up one of the colorful boxes, “we can open presents now then!”
“Martin, I haven’t even brushed my teeth.”
“Well, just don’t go frenching me after you see what you got and we’ll be just fine,” he retorts, depositing a package on Jon’s empty lap and another on the floor beside him.
Jon smirks. “No promises.”
Martin sticks out his tongue.
The package in Jon’s lap isn’t too heavy, but it’s not light enough to be paper or fabric. Not loud enough when he turns it over to have too many pieces. Not breakable, hopefully, because Martin hasn’t said anything as he turns it over and over and feels it slide to each face with gravity.
“Open it,” Martin says gently.
Jon glances over at him. “Aren’t you going to open one too?”
Martin rolls his eyes as he mutters a soft “fine, fine” before he picks up his own box and begins to tear through the paper, and Jon takes that as his cue to finally do the same — a bit more methodical and neater than Martin, but he’ll call it savoring the moment.
Martin lets out a slight gasp, drawing Jon’s attention over to him. From the box, he pulls a small, plastic camera. The stark yellow shines against Martin’s muted wardrobe. It was the only color they had.
“A polaroid?” he whispers.
Jon smiles. “For all those good cows.”
“Oh, good cows and much more,” Martin chuckles, holding it up and pointing it teasingly at Jon. Jon covers his face with one hand on instinct, despite knowing there’s no film to catch him like this.
His other hand dives into his own box, fishing through wads of tissue paper before it lands on something smooth. He pulls it out. It’s a sleek, gold-trimmed journal. Then he pulls out a pen. Then a stack of sticky notes.
“So you have somewhere to put your thoughts,” Martin explains, “since we’re, y’know, trying to go tape-recorder free.”
“Trying” is the key word here; they’d been trying, throwing them out, smashing them, and even tossing one on the burning fireplace, but they kept popping back up. Martin was determined to make them disappear — “no spooky business in Scotland,” he’d said. Jon just finds the whole thing endearing and mildly amusing.
The next box is bigger than the first but still equally unrevealing. Inside sits a pair of house slippers lined in wool, and the soft plush swallows his feet the instant he slips them inside. Not as soft as Martin’s, of course, which he’d been “borrowing” for the past two weeks when he wasn’t looking, but Jon supposes there was probably an ulterior motive behind such a gift and keeps it to himself.
So they open gifts. Jon gets a jumper, a couple of books, a puzzle with ten thousand pieces that proudly depicts Stirling Castle, and a pillow that heats up in the microwave and smells faintly of lavender. Martin gets a booklet of cross-stitch patterns, a new scarf, an assortment of local loose-leaf teas, and a bright blue kettle — “the kind that whistles,” Jon clarifies cheerfully, as he knows how Martin has gone on and on about how those make the best tea. He doesn’t know if it’s true. He just likes the way Martin smiles at him when he says it.
In the end, they sit among the torn refuse of their packaging, gifts stacked up on the coffee table.
“Are you sure this was all within budget?” Martin asks in the end. He’s got his feet tucked up under him as Jon leans against his shoulder, body limp to the cold and the soft dip in the couch.
“Are you going to check receipts?”
Martin chuckles, pets his head. “No, no, I’ll take your word for it. Just wondering if we’ll have enough to buy groceries next week.”
“We will,” Jon assures him. “And even if we didn't, we still have, uh...severance, from Lukas.”
Martin sits up. Jon grumbles a little as his head slides down to his lap, but he quickly readjusts.
“How’d you—” Martin starts, then shakes his head, “Nope. You know what? Forget I asked that.”
Jon only chuckles. It’s cute when Martin gets flustered like this — and besides, admitting that he found Peter’s credit card in Martin’s jacket pocket is a lot less entertaining than leading to believe that he simply Knew it.
“Well, anyway,” Jon begins, “thank you for this, Martin. I had a very lovely Christmas.”
“Good,” Martin smiles. “I’m glad— wait, actually. Hang on a second.”
He slips to his feet. Jon sits up, a bit peeved at the disruption of his position, but watches curiously as Martin slips around the back of the tree, bending down to disappear behind its width.
He feels his stomach drop a second later when Martin reappears toting a large, white bag.
“Martin,” he frowns, “we said—”
“Shhh! I know, I know, you don’t have to lecture me,” Martin waves him off. He sets the bag at Jon’s feet before flopping back into the couch curve beside him. “And for the record, this was supposed to be for your birthday last year, so...”
“You could have at least waited until next month.”
“Could have,” Martin agrees, “but I’m not. Open it.”
Jon gives him a look. Then heaves a sigh through his nose. Then sits up, places his hands firmly on his knees, and then reaches into the bag.
And then he pulls.
And pulls. And pulls, and pulls, and pulls, until the whole thing is sitting in a heap on his lap, draped over his legs and onto Martin, who’s leaning close.
“A blanket?” Jon says softly. He runs a hand over it. It’s knit, spun with a soft green that turns a few shades darker about two-thirds of the way down. It smells like Martin’s detergent.
Martin gives him a funny, crooked sort of smile. “Y-yeah, you, um...well,” he starts softly, uncertainty laced in his tone, “I actually...started making it back after Prentiss? You were using that towel to cover up with when you worked because you said the cold hurt your leg.”
Jon nods. He remembers. It feels like a lifetime ago at this point, trying to remember the archives’ bitter cold winters or walking around without a cane more often than not.
Martin laughs a little. “You’d never take one of my blankets, so I thought hey, I’ll make you your own. But then there was the whole thing with Leitner, and then the Unknowing, and honestly, I didn’t even find it again until right before we left London— of course, wouldn’t you know, they don’t sell the same yarn brands up here as they do back home! But, I wanted to keep it green, since, y’know, it’s your favorite color and all...” His voice grows soft at the end, words turning wobbly and anxious like he’s scared of something. Something Jon doesn’t understand. You’d think he’d know every fear by now, with how scared he is these days.
Because here’s the thing: it isn’t. Jon doesn’t have a favorite color. He’s always found the whole concept to be trite and obtuse, and made a point to keep his closet muted from distracting dyes and patterns. Even now, after his coma, his wardrobe remains an assortment of impersonal and borrowed clothes that never quite fit him right.
But...but it’s funny, he thinks. He only seems to remember after Martin says it. Back in the archives, back when Jon wore ties and dress shoes and kept his hair clipped short, he vaguely remembers some sort of conversation regarding this. Someone had asked him what his favorite was. It could have been Sasha, he supposes, or Tim, but the stubborn, irrational part of his mind thinks it might have been Martin. He knows it likely wasn’t. They’d barely been speaking back then outside of petty office quarrels and follow-up instructions, but he likes the thought of it anyway, so he sticks with it. Can’t hurt to imagine.
So: Martin had asked him what his favorite color was over a cup of over-steeped earl grey that Jon had made for himself. He never drank tea back then, only coffee that he always hated, but he thinks he must have been trying to cut back on caffeine. Or maybe sugar? He doesn’t remember. He’s certain that it was awful.
But Jon had sighed, drunk his tea, told him to take a guess. And Martin had thought, and thought, and thought some more, and then finally, smiling wide and visibly pleased with his conclusion, he’d answered, “green.”
Jon can’t say why Martin had come to that conclusion.
He hadn’t even been sure if he’d ever worn green to the office at that point. Most of the time, he just wore brown or black. Most of the time, color was simply another distraction he didn’t need. But he’d thought about it. He’d thought about it deeply. He’d thought about the kids who’d push him off his bike when he was young for being boring. About that one guy in Research who’d said he’d had no personality. It wasn’t like those types of things hurt now, or even back when they occurred, but he knew the point they were making.
Point: Jon’s not a very interesting person.
Point, filtered through several layers of insecurity, the stress of a new job, uncertainty over interpersonal relationships, etc., etc.: Jon felt as if he didn’t have an answer for a question so simple, then he’d only be proving those faceless memories’ point.
So:
When Martin had said that Jon’s favorite color was green, he’d laughed a little. And then he’d thought about it. And then he’d nodded, and said, “That’s right. How’d you know?”
And now...
And now—
Jon doesn’t realize how tightly he’s gripping the blanket until Martin unfurls one of his hands. Places it in his own. Jon would blink away the blurriness if he could be sure it wouldn’t wake him up.
“Thank you,” is what he says instead, voice turning strange at the end. Not...bad. Not angry or even upset. Just strange. Soft around the edges and a few notes out of tune. Like cookies made from a different brand of dough than usual. Still sweet and still pressing out the words he means to convey.
Martin covers him properly with his blanket. He pulls him to his chest. He runs the back of his hand under his eyes to wipe away a bit of this strangeness that’s welling up in his throat, around his teeth, between the slats of his missing ribs that display his heart front and center. Martin makes him feel small, when he holds him like this. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes he doesn’t Know the whole world, just Martin and the cabin and the blanket on his lap, and it’s a good thing.
“Thank you,” Jon says again. “I— it’s wonderful.”
You’re wonderful, is what he means, unable to speak it clearly. But when Martin pulls him close once more, Jon thinks that he understands.