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The worst part, Martin thinks, slamming the leaky faucet into action, is that there was nothing either of them could have done about it this time. It was necessary, he reminds himself, wringing the excess water vigorously from the washcloth. It was the best way, the only way, that Jon could have reasonably dealt with the situation, he concedes, putting the kettle on. This wasn’t a step backwards, he insists to himself, snatching up every blanket on the couch and tossing them messily over his shoulder. It’s was a contingency plan, executed as well as it could possibly have been.
The woman had come out of nowhere, it seemed. They’d both been asleep on the couch, Jon wrapped in three entire blankets and drooling a bit on Martin’s sweatshirt sleeve, his chosen documentary – bird migration, Martin thinks? – carrying on without them, and then there she was, introducing herself as Eleanor Knight and apologizing profusely for calling so late. She’d been stood up by her ride home and wouldn’t ask if she had a better idea of where she was but she didn’t have a phone and she thought she might have recognized the name on the sweet little hand-painted welcome sign and did she know them? She thought she might – and neither Jon nor Martin remembered getting up to answer the door.
Afterward – when they called her a taxi, apologizing tersely for not letting her in – Jon had stared in a kind of resigned horror at the ground where she’d stood, at the gossamer web blooming there like blood from a wound. They hadn’t slept again that night, though they’d huddled together under the meager protection of the sheets and comforter, at intervals trying their best to sleep, or to give into wakefulness and talk reasonably.
As if this were a reasonable situation, Martin thinks, fuming as the kettle boils. He should have waited to soak the washcloth. As if anything about this were normal, or could be dealt with in a sensible way.
He’s not proud of it, but Martin Blackwood has often been the sort of man who gets through things like this by not thinking too hard about them, by letting the memories slip through his fingers like water and trying not to watch them go. So when the encounters escalated he did what he knew would get him through it: he looked away. He finally got around to putting that temporary wallpaper up on the big empty wall in their living room. He surreptitiously learned to make macher jhol so he could surprise Jon with it on his day off. He cleaned the baseboards, for heaven’s sake.
It didn’t stop her from coming back, of course. He knew what she was, and she knew how frightened she made him. There was nothing for it.
The kettle screeches at him and he jolts, his eyes focusing again, and he realizes he’s been zoned out for a few minutes. He swears softly at nothing and flicks the burner off, consciously gentling his hands as he pours boiling water over the teabags into his mug – the red one with a “K” on it, a tongue-in-cheek gift from Jon – and Jon’s, a solid navy thing with “Trophy Wife” emblazoned on the side. He finds a spoon in the messy mismatched drawer, and opts to bring the milk carton and sugar jar with him rather than waiting around in the kitchen any longer.
He re-wets the washcloth and mechanically wrings it out again. He repositions the blankets over his shoulder. He picks up both mugs in one hand, washcloth caught between two fingers, and tucks the milk and sugar under an elbow. He frowns at the spoon, then settles for holding the handle between his teeth. Jon probably won’t mind. He plods to the bedroom.
It feels like this whole process has taken a century or so at least, but Jon is still awake when Martin gets to him. He’s sitting on top of the whirlwind of covers, head on his knees and arms curled against his chest, breathing slow and soft. He looks up at Martin as he hears him coming.
“Sorry,” Martin mumbles around the spoon in his teeth. “One sec.” The relief of setting everything down on the wobbly bedside table might not fix anything that’s happened tonight, but it feels nice for a moment anyway. The spoon wobbles atop the sugar jar. “Two more minutes to steep,” he says off-handedly, settling heavily on the side of the mattress. It creaks beneath his weight. He meets Jon’s eyes.
Jon’s smiling a bit, which is odd. “Tea,” he says. “Of course.”
“It is my primary role in this life. I don’t know what else you expected.”
Jon grimaces at some hurt or another and shuffles forward to rest his head on Martin’s shoulder.
“Oh! Almost forgot.” Martin holds up the cold washcloth with his opposite hand. “For your hand.”
Jon looks baffled.
“You know,” Martin huffs. “Your right hand. I, uh, thought I remembered that when things like this happen it tends to make your scars act up. You usually put something cold on your hand, right? I’d have brought ice, but I’m afraid the tray is still just water at the moment.”
Jon takes the washcloth almost reverently, all slow and solemn and serious. “Thank you,” he says simply. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d noticed.” He wraps it around his scarred hand in a way that reads familiarity and practice, and his eyes fall closed in immediate relief. He folds forward into Martin’s shoulder again.
“So,” Martin ventures. “You seem to be holding up, at least.”
Jon sighs heavily. His breath tickles Martin’s arm through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. “It could be worse,” he grants.
“What does ‘could be worse’ mean? Are you hurting? Are you – oh, I don’t know, seeing worms crawl through the dirt outside our house and suddenly sensing that you know which of our neighbors had a traumatic childhood encounter with a clown?”
Jon snorts, which is usually a good sign. “No, no, nothing quite like that. I think I’ve just, er – made it angry. I’m trying to ignore it, but I’m getting the sense it feels – taken advantage of.” He infuses these last words with a cutting derision Martin hasn’t heard since 2016.
Martin tries to find a way to make his next question not sound accusatory. “I, heh, haven’t seen you do anything quite like that in a while. Not since – well. You know. Our little hiking trip.”
The joke doesn’t land. Jon, who has been rubbing his forehead and nose back and forth slowly against Martin’s shoulder like a cat, freezes. “Did you – what did you see?”
Martin decides not to lie, though it occurs to him to be glad to realize that he could if he wanted to. Jon hasn’t reached the point of accidental compulsion, anyway. “Well,” he says gently, “I saw you shake your finger at Eleanor Knight like an angry schoolteacher. And then I saw her dissolve into about a million spiders.”
He checks his watch and the color of the tea – steeping time is up. He deposits the teabags in the little blue plastic wastebasket in the corner and sets about adding milk and sugar, grateful for something to do with his hands. His movements jostle Jon a bit, and he drops a kiss into his hair by way of apology.
Jon crumples a little, hiding his face. “I’m sorry,” he says, sounding wrecked.
“Don’t apologize,” Martin says. He realizes he sounds snappish, and softens his voice. “You warned me this might happen.” Around and around goes the spoon in the mug. “It’s not your fault I didn’t quite process what that might look like.”
Jon takes the mug in his left hand and sips slowly, and Martin sees the moment it burns his tongue, though he doesn’t stop drinking. He shuffles around again so that his knee rests against Martin’s thigh, apparently unwilling to be without physical contact right now.
Martin changes the subject. “Did you find the kid?”
Jon smiles vaguely. “Yes, yes, he’s fine. Or he will be. I think.”
“Well, that’s not nothing.”
“No.” Another sip of the tea, another wince at the scalding heat. “His name is Thomas. I think he’s been, ah, investigating supernatural goings-on around Lower Dunpool.” His eyebrow quirks up in amusement. “Quite a serious researcher, that one. Field notebook, camera, specimen jars, torch – the works.”
“Oh, dear. Crowbar? Binoculars?”
“Mm, not yet, but give it time. I’ll need to keep an eye on that one.”
“We will.”
“He reminds me of myself, you know, if only in that he’s off chasing the horrors in the dead of night with no preparation and no idea what he’s getting himself into.”
“Well, then,” Martin says matter-of-factly, “It’s a good thing you’re here to keep him out of too much trouble.”
“If I can.” Jon slumps forward onto his bent knees again. He suddenly looks very small and very tired.
“Do you think that that was – something you could do again? If you needed to?” Martin takes a sip of his own tea, brow creasing. “Without – you know, dire consequences?”
“I wish I knew,” Jon confesses. He rubs absently at place under his hoodie where Martin knows the ghost of Melanie’s stab wound still bothers him. “I – I don’t even know what I did. This isn’t the – the world after the Watcher’s Crown, so I can’t just – ”
“Zap her?”
Jon grimaces.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. As I was saying – I can’t turn the Eye towards her, at least not in the same way. And I’ve always assumed avatars are beyond compulsion.” He barks out something that might be a laugh. “If they weren’t, I probably would have had a lot fewer near-death experiences.”
As hard as it is for Martin to hear sometimes, there’s a sort of power in talking about this matter-of-factly. “So if it’s not ‘Ceaseless Watcher Turn Your Gaze,’ or whatever, and it’s not compulsion – ”
“I don’t know. Maybe some combination of – of both? I told her, ah. I said that I saw who she was, and told her to leave.”
Martin nods. “Short, simple, to the point. I like it.”
Jon gives him a doubtful sideways glance.
“Do you think she’s coming back?”
“I think she could. For all I know, I didn’t even do anything. Maybe she just – I don't know, got annoyed with me, and left.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“How so?”
“Well, I don’t know what it feels like to dissolve into spiders, but I can’t imagine I’d do it on a whim.”
Jon raises his head at that, staring him down in disbelief. “Have you met an avatar?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.”
Something in Jon’s countenance shifts, and he sets his tea down on the bedside table – Martin’s – nudging the spiral-bound notebook aside with the side of his mug. His eyes droop. He looks around the bed, looking lost and confused, then dutifully inches over to his own side.
“What do you need from me?” Martin asks, keeping his tone gentle.
Jon looks up as if he’s forgotten, in their brief silence, that Martin is there. “I – ” He scrunches up his nose in that adorable way he does when the exhaustion of a long day hits him all at once. He wrestles the blankets back up toward the head of the bed with great effort, then reaches out his right hand, still wrapped in the washcloth, towards Martin. “Could you – ?” He makes a beckoning motion.
Martin toes off the rainboots he’d forgotten he was wearing and swings his legs onto the mattress. He efficiently arranges the pillows against their sad excuse for a headboard, fluffing them up so they provide some shelter from its ugly wire swirls. Jon waits patiently. Martin leans back gingerly into the pile and opens his arms.
Jon crawls half into his lap, slotting himself into Martin’s waiting embrace like he’s putting together a puzzle, and when he’s finally happy with his arrangement he goes entirely limp. Martin, ever practical, offers him the rapidly cooling mug of tea, and he takes it carefully, without looking, and rests it against Martin’s stomach.
“Martin?” he asks. His forehead is pressed to Martin’s neck, and his breath is warm on his collarbone as he speaks.
“Yes, love,” Martin replies.
“You would tell me if you were angry with me, right?”
“I’m not angry, Jon.”
“You’re upset, though.”
“Not with you.”
“Yes, well. You’re upset about me.”
“Jon, I’m upset for you.” He raises his eyebrows sternly, twisting awkwardly so he can see his husband’s face. “Because I love you, and I want you to be happy and safe.”
“Still,” says Jon, whatever that might mean. “Will you – can you promise you’ll tell me if I make you angry?”
Sure. Fine. Whatever it takes to make Jon believe that Martin isn’t one of the things set against him right now. “Yes. I promise.”
Jon nods, and then – apparently – falls promptly asleep.
Martin finishes his own tea, then Jon’s, and stays awake for some time – stroking Jon’s hair, brooding. Fuming, just a little, at another world that dares to hurt them. Keeping watch.