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Chapter Text

When Jon told Martin he knew the way home, he supposed he meant something more like “Citymapper and I, and The Beholding if it comes to it, know the way home.” Still, it felt very strange to be opening his phone and debating between the bus and the tube at a time like this. Martin was slumped against the wall of the institute’s smoking area, eyes unfocused and hands fiddling idly with the damp edge of his grey shirt, and Jon didn’t know whether to be concerned about his obvious anxiety or pleased that he was still doing something so human. The tube was probably more anonymous, Jon thought.

Martin hadn’t said a word since murmuring out his address and humming in affirmation when Jon showed him the map. Now, standing at his front door, he didn’t move to open it, he just stared as if watching scenery go by from a car window.

“Do you have your keys, Martin?” Jon asked gently.

Martin jumped slightly and then nodded, fumbling around in his bag. For a moment, Jon considered all the times he had imagined standing right here under very different circumstances, waiting for Martin to open the door to his flat. Perhaps they would have stumbled home together after one of Tim’s archival team pub nights that Jon never once went to, warm from the alcohol thrumming through their bodies and from the secure line of their sides pressed together. Maybe Martin would have kissed him for the sixth or seventh time that night pressed against that door before smiling against his lips and leading him into his flat. Perhaps they would have drank herbal tea and laughed conspiratorially over the latest news from Tim’s love life, safe in their glowing little bubble. Jon realised with a start that the door to the flat was open and he was alone on the doormat, and nervously followed Martin inside.

The flat was coated by a thin blanket of dust that seemed to muffle any sound. All the windows were open, and the late September air blew right through Jon’s coat. He could only imagine how Martin felt, wearing only a shirt to work. Jon contemplated closing them, but decided to leave well enough alone. The surfaces were littered with knickknacks, little scented candles and vintage milk bottles full of wilted sunflowers. Jon picked up a candle, and the sight of the dust-free countertop below it settled like a boulder in his stomach. Martin was sitting on the sofa, shrunk down into a little ball of creased office wear. Jon padded over, loud enough to warn him but not so loud as to truly disrupt the chilling silence of the room, and wrapped a blanket from the arm of the sofa around him. He looked up, and Jon wasn’t sure if it was the rich red colour of the blanket reflecting off of his face, but his skin looked a little brighter.

“Thank you Jon.”

“You looked cold.”

Martin shrugged, more of an exhausted heave of his shoulders than any clearly recognisable motion. “I suppose I was.”

Jon deliberated over where to sit down. The other end of the sofa felt too far, although it was by no means a big one, probably not even a three-seater, but right next to Martin felt presumptuous. He still had yet to ask what of Martin’s old feelings had survived the past year. Eventually, he sat down stiffly, equidistant between Martin and the opposite arm of the sofa. God he was bad at this.

“Basira mentioned something about a safehouse as we left, but she might not text for a while,” he started uncertainly.

Martin nodded in response, looking over.

“We could order something, if you’re hungry? Did you have lunch?” Jon continued.

Martin shook his head. “I’m not sure I even had breakfast.”

Jon pulled up UberEats on his phone and turned on his location, reasoning with himself that if Elias wanted to know where they were then he wouldn’t need to track their location to do it. “Is pizza okay?” he asked, having decided that it was the most neutral option. In another life, he thought he might have scrolled to find something more romantic, befitting a first date. He might even have lit a couple of those candles.

“Yeah, pizza’s good.” Martin scooted infinitesimally closer, looking over Jon’s shoulder at the menu. “What are you getting?”

Jon tried not to let his voice waver as he replied. This was stupid, they weren’t even touching, not quite. “I was thinking the garlic chicken.”

Martin nodded sagely. “I think the farmhouse for me.”

“Good choice,” Jon replied as he tapped in their order, having no idea if it was a good choice as someone who didn’t eat ham. As he put his phone back in his pocket he scooted slightly closer to Martin, using the phone as an excuse for the shifting around. Their shoulders were now touching but without any kind of pressure, just brushing like strangers on the tube. Slowly enough that he wouldn’t have felt it had he not been hyper aware of every little movement made on that sofa, Jon felt Martin lean against him. Not daring to look anywhere but straight forward, Jon put a little of his weight on Martin in return. It was idiotic after the day he'd had that his heart was pounding over this, and even more so that he feared Martin would hear it in the near-silence of the flat. He wanted to look at Martin’s face, to see if he felt it too, but if he did then he might do something stupid like kiss him and that was the last thing they needed. Suddenly, his phone vibrated against his thigh.

“That was fast!” He said, slightly too loudly.

“It was,” Martin responded at a similar volume. “I feel like it should take way longer than this to make a pizza.”

Jon looked down at his phone. “Oh, it’s from Basira.”

“What does it say?”

“Just coordinates. Hold on, I’m putting them into google maps.”

Jon could feel Martin’s breath on his cheek as he zoomed out on the map to figure out where they were going. His hands shook. “Scotland, apparently. Could be worse.”

Martin nodded. “I’ve never been.”

“It looks like the nearest train station might be Dalmally. I’ll look at trains while you pack?”

“Sure, will we need to go to your flat after this to get your stuff?”

“No, I- ah, haven’t had a flat since I woke up.”

“Where have you been sleeping?”

“When I sleep, it’s mostly at my desk.” Martin winced, and Jon wasn’t sure if it was the sleeping at his desk, or the implication that he hadn’t been sleeping as much as a normal human. Jon put on an encouraging smile. “I’ve got most of my stuff in my work bag, I’ll be fine.”

Turning away, Martin said “I’ll pack a few extra jumpers for you,” before scurrying off to his room and leaving Jon to resurrect an old daydream about curling up in one of Martin’s big, soft jumpers and breathing in his smell.

Fortunately, there was a room left on the quarter to midnight sleeper to Glasgow, and so by the time Martin emerged from his bedroom with a battered blue holdall Jon had bought their tickets all the way to Dalmally and picked up their pizzas from the delivery driver downstairs. They’d have to walk the rest of the way to the safehouse, about an hour and forty minutes. He hoped Martin would sleep on the train.

“We’ve got some time before our first train, so don’t rush yourself” Jon said as he opened a pizza box, the steam from the pizza immediately fogging up his glasses. “I think this one’s yours, although I can’t exactly see at the moment.”

Martin sat down on the opposite end of the sofa, wordlessly taking the pizza box and staring at the food with a grey face. Jon shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, stuck between moving closer and backing away as if Martin were some kind of skittish animal and not the man who he had just chased through the physical manifestation of loneliness powered by the unabashedness of his love. He took a bite of the pizza to fortify himself before trying to speak again, the chicken waxy on his tongue.

“We’ll have to take a sleeper train to Glasgow, walk across Glasgow, take another train to Dalmally and then walk to the safehouse ourselves. I’m sorry, I know it’s not ideal.”

Martin nodded, appearing for a moment as if he wasn’t going to say anything else. Then, he murmured “There’s nothing to apologise for.”

Instinctively, Jon shifted closer to hear better. “You must be exhausted though. I just- I wanted to do something better than this.”

“You’ve done quite enough, Jon.” Martin still hadn’t looked up from his pizza, but he had yet to take a bite either. Jon’s heart sank.

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

They met Basira at St Pancras Station, because she seemed to think it was the most anonymous place available to them and Jon was more than happy to defer to her. When she arrived she looked awful, with bruising circles under her eyes, tugging her hijab down to cover her hairline.

“Here are the keys,” she said, without wasting time on pleasantries. The carabiner that held the keys was huge and heavy duty, and the number of keys was not in keeping with a small cottage in rural Scotland.

“What are all these for?” Jon asked.

“I know at least three of them are for the front door. The rest? No idea. You might prefer not to know.”

“What did she get up to up there?” Jon asked, never having been one to prefer not to know. At complete odds with the topic of conversation, Basira’s face softened and crumpled all at once.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you never go up there?”

She shook her head briskly. “There’s a lot I never- you know what, never mind, we don’t have time for this. You’d best be going, you’ll miss your train.” She nodded curtly at Jon, and then at Martin, who had been staring mutely at his scuffed white trainers for the entirety of the conversation, and disappeared into the crowd before Jon had a chance to point out that they had forty-five minutes yet.

“I suppose we should get to the platform,” Jon said into their little bubble of silence in the bustling station.

The train was already there when they got to the platform, looking like a big sleeping animal under the inky night sky. The platform was quiet, and some of the rooms on the train already had their shutters down, their occupants maybe already asleep.

Jon wordlessly guided Martin to the right carriage, and tried to exorcise all thoughts of other contexts in which this could be happening. This would be kind of a romantic trip, actually, if they were just going for fun. Maybe in this other life he’d have got really into hill walking. Martin looked like the kind of person to do that kind of thing, he was all tall and sturdy, with broad shoulders and, in the rare moments he felt comfortable, a confident stride. Maybe they’d have booked a little bed-and-breakfast in the highlands and he’d get to watch Martin get rosy-cheeked on the tops of mountains when the wind whipped at his face and start waking up with more energy, finally free of his job and his responsibilities and London altogether. Maybe Jon would even have booked a double room on this train. He was interrupted before he could get any further with that train of thought by the cold metal of their cabin’s handle in his hand, and the cold realisation that he was going to have to think of a way to ask Martin which bunk he’d prefer that didn’t sound like a double-entendre.

Mercifully, Martin walked into the room and immediately sat down heavily on the bottom bunk. Jon sat down next to him, feeling apprehensive.

“You should get some sleep, it’s a long journey.”

Martin looked up at Jon, his mouth a little open as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know how. His eyes searched Jon’s face for an answer.

“I can’t go to sleep,” he mumbled.

“Why not?” Jon asked as gently as he could.

“I just keep thinking the moment I’m not in control, I’ll end up back there.”

Jon nodded slowly. “I don’t think that’s how it works, if it helps.”

Martin shook his head. “Sleep is about as alone as you can get, right? Nobody can be in your head with you.”

Jon took a deep breath. “I could… stay?”

Martin’s eyes opened a little wider and Jon steeled himself and ploughed on. “I don’t think you want me in your head, but I could stay here with you, so you’re not on your own? I could even um- hold onto you, so there’s no chance of you uh- wandering off.”

For one horrible moment Martin was silent and stock still, just staring at Jon, and then he nodded sharply and said “I’ll get into my pyjamas.”

Jon excused himself to the bathroom and tried to subdue the cocktail of nerves and guilty excitement churning and flipping in his stomach. When he returned, Martin was bending over the washbasin, splashing water on his face. While Martin was in the bathroom he rummaged through his work bag to find something resembling pyjamas for himself, and ended up with the t-shirt from his ill-advised trip to America and a pair of joggers that he’d worn around Georgie’s house back before everything went completely haywire. Once he was changed, he sat down on the bottom bunk and tried to stop himself from bouncing his leg in nervousness. It didn’t work.

Just then, the door opened and Jon’s head snapped up to look up at Martin. He looked lovely, his eyes faintly crinkled with sleepiness, soft but sturdy in a t-shirt that had been washed to softness and a threadbare pair of plaid pyjama trousers. He had pushed his hair away from his face and it had half stayed there, sticking up in a cowlick, with some pieces flopping across his forehead. Jon had never seen his hair this long, but then, he noted as he put his own elbow-length hair in a ponytail, he had missed a few haircuts too over the past months.

He pushed himself back on the bunk until his back was against the wall, and then self-consciously lay down on his side, stuck between watching for Martin’s reaction and avoiding eye contact as much as possible.Martin stepped into the room, sat down on the edge of the bed and did the same, leaving about 15 centimeters of space between their bodies.

“Did you want to uh-” Jon whispered, uncertain of how to finish that sentence. Cuddle? Be held? Let me hold you, please, and never let go? He shook himself, and almost missed Martin’s equally quiet response.

“Yeah.”

Jon scooted forward a little as Martin scooted back, so his back was brushing against Jon’s chest with every breath he took. Slowly, telegraphing all his movements, Jon slid a hand around his waist, hand resting feather-light on Martin’s stomach. From here he could feel Martin’s breath properly, how it hitched on first contact and then slowed in contentment. Emboldened, Jon tightened his arm and pulled himself a little closer, his entire body now pressed up against Martin’s. He didn’t sleep as much anymore at the best of times, and he had no idea how anyone could sleep like this, thrumming with nervous energy and the shock of proximity after months without any kind of gentle touch. Mixed in with it all was the fact that this was Martin, the man he had pined for but never expected to have a conversation with again, going soft and heavy with sleep in his arms. He stroked an experimental thumb across Martin’s stomach, and was rewarded with a sleepy sigh. He was on cloud nine.

Jon didn’t go to sleep, exactly, but he did float bonelessly in the relief of Martin being safe in his arms, snoring softly. At about 4am, Martin murmured faintly and rolled onto his back, pushing Jon towards the wall. Jon hesitated for a moment, but then wrapped his arm back around Martin, swung a leg over one of his, and rested his head on his broad chest. Martin’s trouser leg had been pushed up in his sleep, and the feeling of his soft leg hair against Jon’s ankle was transcendent in the simple intimacy of it. Jon closed his eyes and managed to sleep until morning.

They were woken by a shaft of light sneaking through a crack in the blinds and shining into their eyes. Martin stretched from the tips of his fingers to his toes, and when his arms came back down one rested over Jon. Martin jumped, clearly having forgotten that he wasn't alone, and then looked down at the body curled around his. He didn’t remove his arm.

“Hi,” Jon breathed, looking up into his blue-grey eyes.

“Hi,” Martin murmured back, his gaze just as soft. They were so close together that Jon could see each hair of Martin’s beard, smell his morning breath faintly when he spoke. He really shouldn’t be feeling affectionate about this. It wouldn’t be hard to just tilt his chin up and press his mouth to Martin’s, to kiss him good morning like they woke up like this all the time. For a moment he fancied he saw Martin glance at his lips, but he couldn’t be sure, and god there was so much he was unsure of between him and the man holding him in the early morning light on a train carrying them to Scotland alone together for god knows how long, and now he had let the moment go on for too long and missed his chance, if he had ever had one. Martin looked away, picked his phone up from the side of the washbasin and checked the time.

“It’s almost eight, when does this train get in?”

“It gets in at eight thirty.” Jon said begrudgingly. “We should probably get up.”

Martin groaned faintly as he unlooped his arm from Jon and sat up, stretching again on the end of the bed.

“I brought our leftover pizza slices,” he told Jon, producing an old takeaway container from his holdall.

“Is it safe to eat those?” Jon asked, his brow furrowed. It seemed unlikely that some eight hour old chicken would be the thing to take down The Archivist, but Martin was more human than him.

“Probably, right? It’s like taking a ham sandwich to work if you get up really early and make it,” Martin shrugged, already opening the tupperware. Jon felt a pang of fondness when he saw that Martin had packed his own pizza upside down to make sure that no ham touched Jon’s. He gratefully took a slice and bit into it. It wasn’t bad, all things considered, faintly congealed but it still held the fatty, salty healing power that cold pizza had had when he was a hungover university student.

“I’m going to shave my beard off.” Martin said as he finished a slice.

“Oh, why?” Jon asked tentatively. “I thought it looked rather, uh- nice.”

The tips of Martin’s ears went a little pink. “I didn’t mind it either, but, well, we’re on the run, right? I think it’ll help if I look a bit different.”

Jon nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense.” He paused. “Would you cut my hair?”

Martin wheeled around in shock. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, why? You were right when you said we should look different.”

“It just- never mind. Yes, I’ll cut your hair. I’m not going really short though.”

Jon smiled to himself. The tips of Martin’s ears were still pink. “Alright, that’s fair. Can we shake on shoulder length?”

Martin smiled shyly, then pretended to spit in his palm and held it out to Jon. Jon took his hand and shook it.

Jon ended up cutting Martin’s hair too, after he had shaved his beard. Once he was done he looked up at the man standing before him, looking for all the world like a slightly more tired version of the boy who had shambled into his office blathering about a dog. That is, except for one thing.

“Jon, you’ve given me a mullet!” Martin exclaimed, looking at himself in the mirror.

“It’s not that much of a mullet!” Jon lied.

“Look at the party going on in the back! We’re going to get arrested for having an illegal rave in this cabin!”

“It’s really hard not to accidentally do a mullet! Look, do you want me to cut the back more?”

Martin combed his hands through his hair protectively. “I didn’t say that.”

It turned out, it was actually quite hard not to accidentally do a mullet when cutting hair on a moving train while leaning over a tiny washbasin.

“I swear I didn’t do this as revenge,” Martin said as they both eyed Jon’s new haircut.

“No I believe you, it’s an easy mistake to make,” Jon said, turning his head slightly to look at the back. It was longer than Martin’s, but still unmistakably a mullet.

“What should we do with the hair?” Martin asked, eyeing the sink. “We’ve got to take it with us, right? It could be used as evidence.”

Jon nodded uncertainly. “I don’t know, how would we even do that?”

Martin picked up the tupperware that had held their pizza leftovers. Jon grimaced.

“Look, we’ll just bin the tupperware at the station, as soon as we’re somewhere anonymous.”

“Martin, this is really gross.”

“Oh I’m sorry, have you not been desensitised to gross in the way I have, what with being besieged by worms?”

“You know I’m sorry about that, right?” Jon said, looking at his feet. The giddy mood they’d woken up in had broken as they both remembered the terrible reality that could be waiting for them outside the train.

“I know Jon, it’s okay.” Martin replied, already turned away from Jon and filling the tupperware with handfuls of hair. Jon brushed his teeth in the train bathroom, and by the time he unlocked the door people were streaming out of their cabins and leaving the train. It looked like a grey day in Glasgow.