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There is also tea. There is so much tea. In all these long days, all this lovely space, there is so very much tea. A little life held warming their hands, side-by-side or alone. A little life left on the coffee table, but Jon likes his tea cold as well as hot, so it works out well enough in the end. It's almost like sharing a meal, to drink tea together and talk about nothing. Almost like they're two humans, in love, just like normal, just like it happens.
Once, Martin is reading a book at the kitchen table, and Jon puts a hand on his shoulder just as he passes, and Martin flinches so hard he spills scalding hot tea all over himself. Martin tells him it's alright while he holds his fingers under cold water, and Jon says he's still sorry, but he doesn't really know what happened, and Martin snaps at him to just drop it, so Jon does. Like they're two humans, with baggage. Like this is normal, like this is how it happens.
This isn't how it happens.
And Martin doesn't know where to start a conversation like this.
When it happens again, Jon kisses his way from his mouth along his jaw and nibbles so very gently on his earlobe, and Martin doesn't flinch, just goes all misty at the edges all of a sudden, Jon says "Martin? Martin, what's going on– I'm sorry, please dont–" and Martin says "it's alright, j-just give me– one moment please," and holds all their hands level with their hearts until the warmth of the fire starts to condense his body back to something Jon can focus on with all his eyes, and he says "dont worry, just– I'll tell you later?" and Jon nods, and leaves it, the curiosity burning in his eyes unsated. Martin swallows a lump of butterflies with clipped wings. He makes them some more tea.
He knows he has to tell him. On the train journey up, huddled together with Jon, as he came back to himself in shifts and starts, he came to that realisation. Cold iron certainty that he has to, eventually. And maybe it's luck, or maybe it's something more deliberate than luck, but he doesn't feel the guilt quite as powerfully anymore. Something shifted in him, holding that gun, all that anger he'd been holding inwards found room to twist out all of a sudden. What's left of the Lonely in him reminds him that even if this revelation means Jon never forgives him, he would be alright with that He needs it out there, and Jon deserves to know. It all feels quite different now.
Half a dozen times he wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold cold sweat and has to wash it off before he can go back to bed. Jon sits on the floor of the hall waiting for him to come out and walk him the three steps back to their little bedroom. Sometimes he gets halfway through a Question, and Martin stops him – "Just a bad dream, I don't want to talk about it,"– and Jon's had his fair share of those. He learns better not to Ask. He gets alright at it. Eventually. Martin forgives him, and swallows, and Jon forgives him, and blinks.
Martin wonders, when he tries a shower at twilight, fading sunlight casting the room a soft bruise-purple, if his motives are really so selfless. So driven by justice and honesty. When has honesty ever been his first priority?
The water is sputtering, chattering at him. He takes a few hard breaths as he washes his hair under it, lukewarm at best and frequently icy. Jon had a shower earlier, and they must be out of hot water.
Maybe he just wants to be heard. Listened to. Maybe he just wants the person he has found, quite by accident, he trusts most in the whole world, to know this.
He bites his tongue, hard. He lathers soap into his hair, tugging on it harder than he needs to, impatient with himself. His teeth are gritted as he wonders, almost shaking with the fear that someone might hear him think, is that so bad? He dunks his head under the water again, and the cold shocks right through him. Is it? Is that something I'm not allowed? After all of this? Is that something he – Jon – would be angry with me for?
He thinks very hard about it as he finishes washing, quickly as possible. It's just about enough time that when he turns the shower off, he's come to a begrudging conclusion.
Maybe, after everything, if him and Jon can be happy, be okay – maybe that would be the way they win. Maybe, after everything, Jon can forgive him for wanting to be heard.
The conversation starts, as it turns out, easily. Jon gets hungry one day, gloomy and overcast and unable to see anything worth watching outside, and goes rooting through a box of various tapes and statements they got mailed from the archives. Martin finds him just as he stops to read the label – one word, shakey and barely legible: "Elias."
Jon asks, "What is this from? I'm not mistaken that this is your handwriting, am I?"
His heart stops. So this is it, then.
"No. You– uh, you. No, you aren't," he says as he kneels down and takes it from Jon.
"May I ask w–"
"No. Not now. I'll- I'll explain sometime, not now. It's not– it's bad. Don't worry, just– I need to– I need some time."
Martin smiles weakly, nervously.
I'm so sorry, Jon.
Jon smiles back, faint and reassuring. "That's alright. We have time. You–" Jon takes his hand and squeezes, "– you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. Ever. I just want to make sure you're alright, alright?"
Martin warms right through his frozen chickenbones and says, "Thank you. I – I'll do my best."
Jon nods, and his smile deepens. There's little crows-feet at the corners of his eyes, fainter than the frown-lines but lovely nonetheless. "That's alright. I'm here when or– if you to ever want to talk about it?" and there's such a worried edge to his expression that Martin has to distract, to pull away somehow, so he looks back into the box and they start looking for something for Jon to– ahem, eat.
Jon does his best to not make the wondering palpable. Martin does his best to ignore it. Practiced. Neither of them are very good at this part.
It's like nothing either of them have ever felt before out here. Green hills cosying up to the house, blue sky and endless air. Soon, they both know the paths around the fields and forests and all the ways to get to the nearest village as well as they know London. Better, maybe.
There's so much space to breathe out here. To think. To get to know the ground and their own lungs. To realise how truly madly in love they are.
Honeymoon is a word that flies around Martin's head incessantly, knocking things over every time it makes itself known. He feels like a cartoon character, eyes leaping out of his head every time Jon walks into a room, stars and hearts floating around his head.
Sometimes, Martin wakes first. He wakes to a creeping phantom feeling of being watched, to a presence in his bed too heavy to be just another human. He recoils, slightly, then breathes slowly and carefully for however long it takes until he can relax into Jon's koala-like embrace. It's warm, and comfortable, and as safe as anything could be, in this world. He has to feel safe here, or there's nothing left.
And he's decided there is something left. He's decided that he's going to make it to the other side of everything in one piece.
He feels wrong, and afraid, being known like this. Naked and bleary, wriggly and sweaty. He's not sure, never sure, no matter how much he tries to pry apart his feelings, where the fear of being watched stops being reasonable – human – and starts being the Lonely calling him back. Jon's hand finds his, and he squeezes. He's starting to make peace with not knowing. With living like this.
When he does it, in the end, he makes them tea before he broaches it. He wants to do some reading on what to expect but he realises, search engine revving in front of him, that he can't even write the words he needs to ask the question he wants an answer to. Can't even say what it is that happened to him to Google. Not even in incognito. Can't make his hands do that. He's not sure how he's going to tell Jon. He knows he can, though. Knows he will. Somehow.
Jon Knows something is up. He doesn't pry, not yet, not while sitting on the sofa waiting for the tea-kettle over the stove to start whistling, not while standing in the kitchen as Martin fills the mugs. He doesn't ask about the tape on the table. Maybe that's the Beholding, too, letting him know how much more than just any old monster story this is. Maybe it's just Jon, all his human intuition letting him know to be patient. Martin doesn't particularly have the energy to care about the difference.
Martin, shivering and sweating through his thick woolen jumper, decides in the end that he might as well make the most of their strange, horrible situation, and says, voice shaking, "I think I'm going to need you to Ask me."
Jon takes a breath, raising his eyebrows. He waits a beat, giving Martin space to take it back. Then, he says, "Are you sure? I-I don't mind, not at all, but I– are you sure that's the right thing?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. I don't think I can do it any other way." Martin find the ripples in the tea as he taps the mug with his fingertip very deliberately very fascinating. He's not sure he'd be able to stop himself bolting out the door if he looked anywhere else.
"You don't have to do it at all."
"I do. I have to. For me."
A soft, reassuring smile can be heard in Jon's voice as he says, "Alright then. Martin, what happened with Elias?"
It takes a while. A compulsion doesn't stop him from crying, just makes it easier to find the words in between the sobs. Jon holds him. Reacts only with gasps, comforting squeezes on his shoulder, and stony, angry looks into the far distance.
He feels like a washcloth twisted clean by the end of it. Something a little bit more raw than freshly laundered. A bit too cold and damp for laundered. A dressed wound, then.
Jon holds him tight and fast, when it's over. They like there, in front of the fire, and Martin apologises a lot, and Jon doesn't chide him, just kisses them away. Martin warms up, cools down. Finds it in himself to look Jon in the eye and bursts again into tears.
When he hides his face this time, Jon almost doesn't hear him when he chokes out, "I'm sorry I let it happen. It wasn't right to you," and Jon takes a deep breath, and then lets it out.
He cards his fingers through Martin's hair, and says, "You didn't. You did everything you could. This wasn't your fault."
It's what Martin knew, deep down, that he would say, and there's fresh, nauseating guilt spilling forth over the realisation that he just wanted to hear it, that he just needed someone else in the world to be on his side. Jon rubs comforting circles across his shoulders as Martin sobs harder.
It is a very, very long day. Jon cooks dinner, under occasional rescue from Martin, but he's adamant to take care of him, and even if the pasta is unpleasantly al dente, it's the best thing Martin's ever eaten. He starts crying again halfway through, and Jon hugs him again, and fetches him tissues, and when it comes to bedtime and Martin's face is rubbed raw, Jon curses the medicine cabinet, with nothing that could soothe his irritated skin. That makes Martin laugh, the fuss of it, the silly way Jon screws his face up as he concentrates on trying to Know if the pharmacy in town, miles away, would have something more helpful.
The laughter turns, again, to sobs, and Jon looks briefly stricken as he comes back to, before he rushes to bundle Martin up again. He fixes him a hot water bottle and some ibuprofen and more tea, like he's sick with something, which he supposed isn't all that inaccurate, really.
"It's quite a workout, really. All this crying." Martin says through a yawn, as they're both finally settled in bed together, the sky outside dark and the bedside lamp a comforting kind of dim.
"I can imagine," Jon says, reaching across the bed to hold his hand.
"Thanks for spotting me."
"Anytime."
There's a comfortable pause. Warm, safe as houses. It is, despite everything, the best Martin has felt in years.
"You're really not cross with me?"
"For?"
"For telling you. It was horrible. You needed to know, but I was kind of expecting you to be unhappy with me. At least for a little bit." Martin chews on his lip and looks away.
"Not at all," Jon says, turning to face him fully, "I'm just– I'm furious, of course, but not at you, not at all."
Martin laughs, dryly. "I love you. Thank you."
"I love you too."
His eyes are falling shut of their own accord at this point, so Jon turns the light off for him, and they lie down, limbs finding a comfortable tangle. Here, in the pleasant dark, held and holding, Martin is sure he was wrong. This, slipping into sleep, next to Jon – this moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, soft and exhausted, in the fall between the bottom stair and the landing where there is no fear at all, this is the best he has ever felt in his whole life.