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Since they reached the safehouse, it’s been harder for Martin to function in the evenings. He isn’t sure if it’s easier to let the fog seep in, or if he starts feeling worse for clinging to Jon like he’s the last person alive. It makes him feel so oddly childish, becoming so predictably fragile whenever he’s up past his bedtime.
Jon doesn’t seem to mind, though. He never does. He just pads around the safehouse in his worn black socks, narrows his eyes at the back covers of books he pulls off Daisy’s shelves, bites the tip of his tongue in focus whenever he makes dinner. He feels guilty when he can hardly taste it.
They sleep beside each other, listening to the frogs and crickets outside, and Martin almost always sleeps soundly, never quite left alone by the nightmares that curl in wisps of fog around his heels, but he’s usually forgotten them by the morning.
So he’s confused when he wakes up in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason, as he can’t find anything wrong. No lingering flashes of dreams, no dulled roaring of an endless sea. He feels cold and his hands are numb, but he hasn’t really been able to feel his hands since December of last year. Jon is still beside him— he’s curled into himself, shoulders drawn in and chin tucked against his chest. It doesn’t look comfortable, though. Even in sleep, his expression hasn’t smoothed out, his brow pinched in worry and tension pulled taut across his shoulders. It looks more like he’s trying to hide.
You’re not allowed to touch him , Martin remembers, and can’t understand how he forgot. It’ll just make everything worse if he does so, for Martin and especially for Jon. And that’s all he cares about, really.
He’ll do more thinking later. For now, he lies back down, mattress shifting against his shoulders, and rolls onto his side to face Jon’s back, turned away from him. He’ll be back to sleep in no time, he’s sure. He’s been so tired lately.
Twenty minutes later– thirty? There’s no clock in the room– Martin blinks drowsily back into awareness, never having really fallen asleep, to find his hand resting on Jon’s shoulder.
He can feel body heat seeping through the well-worn shirt he’s wearing, the shape of his shoulder blade against his palm. He’s not meant to be doing this, but now that it’s there, he can’t bring himself to move his hand away. It’s warm, after all, and something about the tiny thrill of breaking a rule is staving off the fog that he can feel hovering like an audience of ghosts all around him.
He swallows, throat dry.
“Jon?” he whispers. The name fits just right on his lips, and he wonders why he doesn’t say it more often. He hears a shallow inhale, a shift in the covers, and a moment later Jon slowly uncurls, turning over to meet his eye. His eyes soften and he lets out his breath.
“Martin,” he replies, like he’s seeing the sun rise after an endless night. Some soft blend of greeting, relief and fondness that makes something flutter in Martin’s chest. He’s about to crush it back down when he remembers that it’s fine, now. There is nobody watching him. There is only Jon, and the hopeless adoration in his voice that Martin doesn’t think he’ll ever learn how to handle.
He wants to bring his hand to Jon’s cheek in return, but decides against it. Because then he’ll feel each shiny, pulled spot of skin from Prentiss, be able to catalogue the shape of his face until he convinces himself that he could never in a million years forget it. And if he does that, it’ll make him feel too much, and he doesn’t want to feel exhausted and wrung out from crying again. So he sets his palm over the back of Jon’s on his cheek as a compromise, crossing his thumb over Jon’s.
“Alright?” he asks.
“I am now,” Jon replies, and Martin thinks that if he ever heard Jon say something so gently and kindly back when he began working for the Institute he would have had to leave the room to recover. Now, he just presses his eyes shut, because he doesn’t want to think about leaving.
“What was it about?” he says, half because he wants to know and half because he wants to hear Jon’s voice a little longer before one of them falls asleep again. That, and the worst part about a nightmare is always knowing it was only you who saw it. He used to think it was the best part, but he’s changed his mind since then.
“You,” he replies, the edge of his voice wavering with upset. “Again. I couldn’t save you. You kept crying, telling me to please just let you go, and I- I gave in.”
“Oh,” Martin breathes, opening his eyes. He doesn’t think about that scenario, as much as he might have expected himself to. He just can’t bring himself to imagine a world in which Jon did not take his hand, a bright-eyed beacon in the fog, and lead him out of the Lonely. Maybe he’s just too scared to. “Well, I forgive you.”
Briefly, Jon smiles, a slight twitch on his lips, but his eyes remain sad. There’s a scab on his bottom lip Martin’s seen him occasionally biting at, picked red and raw. “I don’t think that… that version of Martin forgave me.”
“It’s not that version of Jon I’m forgiving,” he says, curling his fingers around Jon’s against his cheek. He wonders if Jon’s considered going days without letting go of each other’s hands in the same way he has. Maybe someday he’ll bring himself to ask. “This is me , forgiving you. You understand?”
There’s a pause, then nods shallowly. Martin thinks he might be able to hear Jon’s breath hitching. “Yes.”
“Good.”
He’s still looking at Jon, and briefly imagines reaching forward to curl a hand into the front of his shirt and pull him close enough to kiss on the lips, and has to hope the dim light conceals the flush to his cheeks. Before he can say anything else, though, Jon sighs softly.
“Sorry for waking you. Are you going back to sleep?”
Martin shakes his head, both waving off Jon’s apology as well as responding to the question. “I don’t mind lying awake, though.”
He hears Jon shift, turning onto his back to lie just slightly touching his side to Martin’s. His hands fold together over his stomach, hollow chest rising and falling with slow, full breaths. Martin can see his side profile against the moonlight bleeding into the room, catching slivers of grey in the hair arranged in a messy halo on the pillow around him, and wonders how on earth he’s ever meant to get used to this.
He wonders how nice it’ll be when he finally does.
“Neither do I.”
