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There are parts of Martin that don’t remember his mother.
Sometimes he’s thirteen again with her watching him cry ragged sobs under the yellow kitchen light, telling her that he liked a girl—a girl—and watching her walk away in silence.
Sometimes he’s nineteen again, coming home with a cracking voice and a dusting of facial hair, and watching her face move from confusion to loathing—listening to her spit in his face, get out. And going. Not stopping anywhere but the corner store to pick up the first pack of cigarettes he ever smoked.
But sometimes, it’s just blank.
Blackness.
Parts of Martin don’t remember her at all.
Those are the days he laughs more easily. Those are the days his shoulders are a little less slouched. Those are the days he eats without guilt.
It’s subtle, really. But he notices.
And Jon, it seems, notices too.
“You seem less… yourself, today,” Jon tells him one time when he deliberately goes for the oolong tea he’d drunk after picking himself up from the kitchen floor to the sound of his mother’s slamming door and the unbearable silence of the house. He remembers, today. And it sits heavy on him.
He’d put on his usual cheery smile, except he doesn’t know how today. Not as the person he is in this moment. Not with the memory of her disgust.
Instead, he sighs, letting the cup come to rest on the edge of Jon’s desk.
“I—you’re right,” he says softly. The shadows he’s so accustomed to waver at the edges of his vision. He feels remarkably, impenetrably alone. Even with Jon sitting right here across from him, expression uncharacteristically soft with concern. Especially with Jon sitting across from him.
The buzz of the fluorescents reminds him of the care home she’d died in.
He hadn’t stopped smoking until after she was gone.
“Do you need me to do anything about it?” Jon asks, gentle.
Martin considers, but his mind feels full of cotton.
The only thing he can think of helping is having someone lay directly on top of him for an hour after work. And he can’t well ask for that, can he?
So instead, he smiles. “It’s alright, Jon,” he says, and it comes out sounding almost normal. “I’m fine.”
“You hate oolong,” Jon says simply.
Martin gets up. “I know.”
With Jon in his arms, Martin feels most himself.
They’re cuddling on the safe house couch, Jon stretched out completely on top of Martin, who’s laying on his back gazing down at his partner, completely warm and with love washing over him. Or, as warm as he can get, after the Lonely. He still feels sometimes like there’s wet sand under his skin, but he’s been able to wash his hair today, and for now, that’s enough to keep him mostly present.
He doesn’t remember her.
His mind is drifting, and he finds himself trying to remember it—any of it. The Lonely. Peter Lukas. His mother. Blank, all of it. There’s just a void where the memories should be. Blackness.
He tries not to be disconcerted, but it sets a sense of unease crawling over him. Crawling between him and Jon.
Jon’s been nothing but lovely. His same blunt, regimented self, and lovelier for it. He’s cuddly, which Martin deeply appreciates. The sounds of contentment he makes when Martin strokes his hair and gently scratches his scalp are the ambrosia keeping Martin from sinking back into himself, unreachable.
Jon looks up as Martin starts to drift, as though he knows. There’s a chance he Knows, but Martin’s sure he’s trying not to.
“What are you thinking about?” Jon whispers.
Martin pauses before answering, gathering his thoughts.
“Them,” he finally says, simply. “My mother. Elias. Peter.” He tightens his arms around Jon’s waist. “I don’t remember it.”
Jon looks intrigued. “At all?”
“At all,” Martin confirms.
There’s a beat of silence between them.
“Does it worry you?” asks Jon.
Martin bites at a chapped place in his lip and meets Jon’s dark eyes. “Yes.”
He stays on the medications.
As his voice starts to deepen again and the fullness comes back to his facial hair, he wonders how he managed so long without it. In the hazy mist of the Lonely, he hadn’t wanted food, anyway. Now, when Jon cooks, he does his best not to feel guilty for taking seconds.
The shadows fade. The orbs don’t.
Sometimes he feels like someone else.
They’re sitting together on the couch again, when Jon says gently, “you feel more like you today, don’t you?”
Martin thinks for a moment before responding. “I can remember, today,” he says softly, and leaves it at that.