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The new house is actually a little bit smaller than the safehouse.
Wildly more pleasant of course, (though the bar was rather low) with its crawling ivy and cobblestones, its reinforced thatch and expansive garden, its sympathetically restored original sash windows and woodworm-less beams. It even has a picket fence, an actual picket fence.
As they have been doing since arriving Somewhere Else, Jon and Martin have elected not to question nor scrutinise, not to second-guess nor query quite how perfect it is. To do so is a choice. A very difficult choice. A necessary choice, because the alternative is –
Well, it is dust.
And they.
Are.
Not.
Dust.
It is a choice which allows them things like an unrushed Sunday morning, of finally unboxing all of their clothes into the rich mahogany bedroom wardrobes. They stand, either side of the bed, two mugs of Earl Grey on the windowsill, air thick with bickering about folding technique and fashion choices.
“God Jon, all of your clothes are for either the office, bonfire night or DofE,” Martin gripes, holding up a thick woollen jumper and a pair of walking trousers illustratively.
“Ah, the Duke of Edinburgh Award,” Jon sighs wistfully. “I quite enjoyed it actually, although I spent a decent amount of the hike scrambling out of the ditches that taller group members strategically placed me into. Then some bright spark realised it might be of merit to have someone who can actually read a map at the front. Or perhaps as canon fodder for territorial cattle.”
“Of course you enjoyed DofE,” Martin shakes his head fondly. “See I knew you extended the apocalypse trek unnecessarily sometimes. Just can’t resist a long walk.”
“Damn it all, I’ve been caught out,” Jon replies drily. “I pitched left towards the fields of locusts just to relive those past glories. Actually, the locust fields were doubly nostalgic, very Old Testament.”
“Oh, I remember. I didn’t do DofE, for the record.”
“Your CV says you did. Right up to Gold. Now Martin, I know your CV is somewhat embellished, but besmirching the name of the crown –”
“I’m sure Prince Philip won’t mind. Too busy… what is he up to these days, aside from the career racism?”
“Being dead, I think.”
“Ah.”
Martin picks up a pair of thermal leggings and grimaces.
“Seriously though, a shopping trip might be in order before the heatwave hits next week. I’m not peeling you off the floor if you pass out from heat exhaustion.”
“Yes you would.”
“Yes, I would,” Martin admits. “But I’d prefer not to.”
“That’s fair. Yes, maybe we can assist Lukas’ bank account in sustaining the chiffon industry. Or linen, perhaps, that’s the more eco-friendly of the breathable fabrics, isn’t it?”
“I’ll have to defer to you on that, human encyclopaedia.” (And doesn’t that feel nice. Human.) “It’s going to be an absolute scorcher though, there’s even weather warnings. Might need to get you some daft little shorts or something.”
Jon snorts.
“I wouldn’t put you through that, don’t worry.”
Martin frowns a bit. The delivery was light, but in a slightly morose way that he marked down long ago as a Jon-ism. Those moments when he gets a little too sincere about something without noticing. Sometimes it’s best not to poke the bear when those pop up, but something about the almost imperceptible melancholy that seems to have dusted over his content expression all of a sudden, has Martin feeling distinctly pokey.
“Put me through what?”
Jon rolls his eyes a bit.
“Far as I want to get from archival work, I shan’t be pivoting quite as far as swimwear modelling even when the heatwave hits. You don’t need to worry.”
“Okay… can’t say I had you down as the swimwear model type anyway – although obviously, darling, love of my life, I will fully support you in any endeavour you choose, etc etc – but what’s the ‘worry’ about?”
Jon sighs exasperatedly. At least it chases away the melancholy.
“For goodness sake Martin, I was joking.”
“Yeah…” Martin pouts, “But you were definitely joking in that weird, sad way.”
“I’m a weird, sad person!”
“No, you’re not. You’re a weird, traumatised, frequently ominous, but generally pretty content at the moment person. At least I hope so.”
“Yes, yes you’re right, I’m -”
“What did you mean, then?”
Jon puts down a sock to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“Do you actually want me to spell it out?”
“Yes please, everything, all the time.”
He produces a huff that could have launched a fairly sizable ship.
“My legs, Martin. I was referring to the visually unappealing nature of my legs.”
Martin’s frown deepens.
“What, have you got like… eyeball legs or something?”
“Eyeball legs?”
“So not eyeball legs then? Are they just like weird and small like the rest of you. Because it can’t have escaped your notice that that’s kind of what I’m into?”
“No, they’re a little more distinctive than weird and small,” Jon says slowly, tipping into patronising for a reason that Martin can’t quite discern.
“Why do I feel like I’m missing something here?”
Jon sighs, and mutters heaven forbid I try for a joke under his breath. Where’s Basira when you need her, she’d have got it.
(If the rumours are to be believed, somewhere near Tibet, pretending her name isn’t Basira and spending a lot of time writing in ciphers.)
“I was attempting to make light comedic reference to the burns on my legs from the Unknowing, Martin. I know my attempts at levity are sometimes an acquired taste, but thank you for the assurance that I’ll be barred from the Edinburgh Fringe before even making the samosa stand. We’ll save hundreds on train fares.”
He shakes his head and carries on folding. After a moment, in what feels like an ironic reversal of roles, he feels Martin’s gaze on him. He looks up, and he is stock still, mouth slightly agape and eyes wide and questioning.
“What?” Jon asks, skin pricking self-consciously.
(God, how many people did he make feel like that. How many –
Not the time.)
“You got burned in the Unknowing?”
Jon stills, and drops the t-shirt in his hands, as his mouth too falls open.
Martin’s face is a picture of horror, the like of which he hasn’t seen in a blessedly long time.
Oh. It appears he’s made a miscalculation.
An assumption perhaps, that he oughtn’t have -
Surely it’s not possible that -
“You didn’t know?”
“Of course I didn’t know!” Martin squeaks. “If I’d known, I’d have -”
“But I… You must have known. I was wrapped up like a mummy when I woke up from the coma.”
Martin recoils from the bed, hands gesticulating wildly.
“I assumed it was like… shrapnel wounds, or, or… bruising or, I just… I guess I didn’t think about the… the specifics of how you got hurt, it was enough that you were hurt and I couldn’t do anything about it –”
“Martin -” Jon edges towards him with his own palms raised.
“God, of course it was burns, of course you got burned, it was an explosion for Christ’s sake, god how could I be so stupid –” he shoves his face into his hands, and groans loudly. Then he rips them away, as his eyes flash with further realisation. “That’s why you cover up all the time?”
“Of course.”
“Why didn’t you say? You didn’t mention it at all in those awkward ‘boundaries’ conversations early on. You just said, ‘obviously me being undressed is a no’ or something and moved on, I thought it was an ace thing!”
“Well I thought it was obvious!”
“It was not obvious, Jon.”
Jon approaches awkwardly and lays a tentative hand on Martin’s bicep. He feels a gentle, anxious quiver beneath his fingertips.
“Well… now you know, I suppose,” he says softly. “I apologise, I didn’t mean to bring it up, really, or make a thing out of it. I just wanted to reassure you that I’m mindful of staying covered up, whatever the weather does.”
The look Martin gives him makes Jon genuinely wonder if he’d accidentally started speaking Mandarin. He didn’t think he could do that anymore, but he’d never actually checked. But no, that isn’t it. Martin speaks, shaking his head like a distressed St Bernard.
“What? No, no, you don’t need to do that at – why would you need to reassure -”
“It’s really a very small courtesy to offer you,” Jon interrupts, still using the placating tone he used to coax the highland cows in Scotland. “Drop in the ocean, frankly, compared to all that you put up with.”
Martin scrambles onto the familiar ground like a lost sailor crashing onto an all-inclusive island resort.
“Jon, I don’t know how many times we can have this conversation.” He pinches Jon’s chin with his forefinger and thumb. “I don’t put up with you, I love you, and I also like you.”
Jon waves a dismissive hand and steps backward, out of the pinch.
“Yes yes, but you can both love and like me, whilst acknowledging that those things are difficult, and that yes, actually, you do put up with rather a lot. But this particular Thing – which I appear to be pronouncing with a capital letter now, so thank you for that – simply doesn’t fit into the same category as what we’ve discussed before. Surely you must see that?”
“Jon, you’re doing the whole cryptic thing. I don’t understand. What am I not getting here?”
He sighs and drags a hand down his face. Come along, Martin.
“As well you know, my body is something that I must endure, and which others must unfortunately tolerate.”
Martin is, by now, well and truly reduced to incredulous wide-eyed gaping.
Jon, oblivious, continues.
“Anything I can do to make the experience of that tolerance less arduous, I will without question and without hesitation. This is especially in the context of the man I love – that’s you by the way – since your decision to be my partner entails that your tolerance must be in close quarters. There really is nothing more to it than that.”
He returns to folding the clothes with a small shrug.
Martin, world shifted three and a half feet to the left, watches him slack-jawed.
“I… I actually don’t know what to say.”
“Brilliant, maybe you’ll fold the jeans a bit neater if you’re concentrating.”
“Tolerate, others must, tolerate, like looking at you is some sort of… begrudging...”
“The horse died years ago, Martin, you can stop beating it.”
Martin surges to Jon’s side of the bed and rips a cardigan out of his hands, tossing it on the bed. Then, he grasps him by the shoulders and pivots him so they are facing each other. He peers searchingly at Jon’s face, which remains impassive, with a tightening of irritation beginning at the right side of his mouth. It falls away, when Martin’s expression takes on a distinct heartbreak which Jon simply does not understand.
All he’s done is exemplify a fact of the universe that he had taken entirely for granted.
The sky is blue, the grass is green, and his body is something shameful.
“You actually believe it, don’t you?” Martin whispers, “That you’re doing me a kindness by hiding yourself.”
“Well, I mean,” Jon mumbles, regretting the words even as he says them. “You did sort of ask for it.”
Martin’s hands fall away from his shoulders. He staggers backwards.
“I – what? When? There’s no way in hell that I can have said anything like – oh.”
A half-memory, that smells like smoke.
“Oh…” he whispers.
“Remember?” Jon asks carefully.
“Jude Perry’s domain. Jude Perry’s domain, I said –”
“Burns scar horribly and make you sick,” Jon fills in, light as a feather. “Perfectly accurate evaluation.”
Martin does not think, that in all the hellscapes they travelled through, he ever felt a horror quite as nauseating as this one.
“And you just…” He gulps and waves a vague hand in the air. “Immediately internalised that? Didn’t maybe think to say, ‘Hey Martin, that’s kind of a shitty thing to say to your boyfriend who literally has a burn scar instead of a right palm. Might give him some sort of complex, you know.’”
“I keep telling you, I don’t have any sort of complex about it. And anyway, I really don’t think that was the time for a heart-to-heart.”
Martin barks a laugh so bitter that Jon flinches slightly.
“Okay one, you do have a complex about it, it’s just a complex so complex that it’s stopped being a complex and has become its own ecosystem instead – your decision to be my partner entails that your tolerance must be in close quarters - Jesus Christ Jon. And two, you could have brought it up any time after. It just… it worries me so much that you just… immediately accepted that I might feel so negatively about any part of you, and decided that I was perfectly justified in spitting it out so callously!”
“I don’t think it was callous! I think it was a highly, highly fraught situation and you spoke your mind. It makes even more sense now that I know you were unaware of… quite how particular a sentiment it was to my situation.”
“Yeah, yes, right, your situation, let’s get back to that.” Martin takes in a shuddering breath. “You have scars from the Unknowing. Do they hurt?”
Jon makes an aborted sort of unsure noise and half-shrugs.
“I mean, not really. They feel odd, like all of them do. Sort of stiff and… and plasticky. And it feels strange if they pull, when I move too fast or… sometimes they sort of contract and expand without much rhyme or reason that I can work out. And they look… yes. I’d rather I didn’t have them. Like you said. Horrible. But you know…” he trails off weakly, and completes the shrug. “Trousers.”
Martin produces a half-laugh half-sob.
And ah, there it is.
Jon feels guilt wash over him, and sinks into the familiar lapping against his marred skin. He reaches up and cups Martin’s jaw.
“We were having such a lovely day,” he pleads. “Please don’t cry at the word trousers.”
The noise comes again, and Jon huffs and pulls Martin into the crook of his neck.
Martin wraps his arms around Jon’s back, and very much crying at the word “trousers”, sobs, “Why the hell are you the one comforting me right now? You’ve just casually said the saddest thing I think I’ve ever heard in my life like it’s one of Newton’s Laws.”
“I’m not sad about it,” Jon whispers into his hair. “It’s just the way it is.”
“But it isn’t though. Do – wait, let me go, I want to look at you, and also sit down.”
Jon obliges, and they shift a precarious pile of jumpers into the centre of the bed.
Martin heaves in a breath.
“Have I really never made it explicit how astonishingly physically attractive I find you?”
Jon thinks for a moment. And of course, he finds things. Comments about the silver fox look and academic charm. The odd beautiful when he’d worn a new suit to a rare fancy dinner, to which Jon remembers thinking yes, the jacket is beautiful, isn’t it? There was stuff in the poetry of, about sunrise smiles and elegant fingers, sentences embellished by their mode to create an idealised figure that simply was not him. Or rather, that he had thought was not him.
“I mean, you’ve… said stuff. But I always know to adjust things according to context.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, you know, if someone says I’m looking nice today, I know that it’s in light of the baseline context that I’m fundamentally not nice looking. What they mean, therefore, is that I look the maximally pleasant that it is possible to achieve, in the context of the basic facts.”
Martin blinks at him.
He’s not crying anymore, which is a good thing, Jon supposes.
He smiles tentatively, and Martin does not smile back.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, your insane thought processes are one of the things I love most about you. We are in the one-percent right now, Jon.”
Jon isn’t quite sure what the appropriate response to that is.
He tries for, “…sorry?”
Martin sighs very heavily, and solemnly takes Jon’s hand.
“Jon love, with respect, other than looks, what else did you really have going for you when I first met you?”
Jon splutters.
“I’m sorry?”
“Well I mean… myriad things, that I know about now, like startling intellect and wide-eyed curiosity, and a kind and thoughtful heart – shut up, edgelord, you know it’s true -but from my point of view, then? You were just a guy who didn’t like me and was pretty mean about it. Unfortunately for me, you were also insanely beautiful.”
Jon splutters again, unsure if he’ll ever be able to make any other sound.
“I’m talking my breath was stolen beautiful. Actually stolen, I think I audibly gasped. No, I know I did, because I remember thinking I thought that was a figure of speech. I remember thinking oh, wonderful, my boss who hates me is the platonic ideal of beauty, and I’m going to have to take an inhaler puff every time I see him. AND, it’s not even me having weird taste or whatever. Tim used to call you the one that got away, do you know that? And like, he was joking, I think he was joking anyway, but those descriptions he used to give of your smouldering eyes were pretty damn detailed, you know. I’m… do you have eyes Jon, do you actually have eyes?”
Jon, utterly dazed, can only reply, “You… realise what an ironic question that is, right?”
“Yeah yeah, but I’m serious. What do you actually see when you look in the mirror.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
“I…”
See, this is the bit he doesn’t look at. The bit he can’t quite put into words. The bit that predates the wormholes and the burns, the slashes and the nicks, the missing ribs and the discolouration and those tired, tired greys. The bit that made the mirror a stranger long before the word gained a capital letter and became nominal. The bit that was never enough of a distinct issue to tease out and properly examine. He could never be sure, it wasn’t something he could test with evidence, because he only lived inside his own head. But other people, when they talked about their bodies, they were simply… better at it. They could talk about their eyes and their ears and their noses and their necks and their arms and their legs and their fingers and their toes as though they could look in the mirror, and produce an image more precise than the vaguely unpleasant impressionist artist’s rendition of a human being that Jon saw when he did the same.
He could see others fine. Martin, for example, he was blessed each day to see in full technicolour glory – all the details of his freckles and his laugh lines, the silvery flecks in his eyes and the dimples in his cheeks.
But the mirror… did something. It hazed his edges, blurring the details like something that ought to be hidden, something that would shock and terrify and cause complaint if revealed in full.
That is what he sees.
A question, with a terrible answer.
Martin is still waiting, he realises, holding his limp hand.
He opens his mouth, but no words come.
Perhaps he should have said Statement Begins.
Martin squeezes his hand.
Perhaps not.
“I’m not sure,” he whispers, a half-truth. “I don’t think I’m entirely sure what I look like.”
“Because of the scars?” Martin asks, soft and careful. “You’re not sure what you look like anymore because you’ve changed with the scarring?”
Jon shakes his head slowly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to tell what I look like.”
Martin nods, then lets his thumb work up and down Jon’s hand as he stares at the wall contemplatively. Jon isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to be doing in that moment. He feels like he should be comforting Martin, still visibly upset, but if he’s completely honest, he…
Isn’t feeling too hot himself anymore.
He concentrates on the press of Martin’s thumb, and watches as its movement slows to a stop.
“Okay, non-patronising phrasing incoming, but correct me if I’ve made an incorrect assumption. Body dysmorphia, you know what that is, right?”
Jon can’t stop the pitiful half-laugh that puffs from between his teeth. “Yes Martin, I know what that is.”
“Right, good, but do… do you know what it is beyond the context of like… teenage girls having a rough time? Because I didn’t, nobody ever talks about how it’s not just that. But then I did know just from, you know – not important. Not important now. Just… some of that… baffling stuff in there sounds a bit… like it could be that? Or something similar… or…” he shakes his head. “Just… you know how next week when all the boxes are unpacked we’re finally doing the big brave functional adult thing and looking into therapists.”
Jon grits his teeth and nods.
He’d been resolutely not thinking about that.
“Might be something to… maybe bring up?”
Jon barks out a small, incredulous laugh.
“I’d think it ranks rather low on the things I ought to be bringing up with a therapist. I think the whole ending the world thing, however I eventually work out how to metaphorize it, might come first.”
“It’s important though,” Martin implores. “The way you were talking it’s… that runs deep Jon, you managed to somehow rewrite the rules of the universe according to your own insecurities.”
“There are a lot of jokes I could make here about eldritch powers.”
“You tried a joke earlier and it didn’t work, remember,” Martin says, bashing into his side gently. Jon manages an approximation of a smirk. “Just… just think about it, okay. It’s important to me. I can’t hurt you with ignorance, I won’t. I want to understand this part of you, like I want to understand it all. Okay?”
Very slowly, Jon begins to nod.
“Okay,” he says quietly.
“Thank you.” Martin blows out a slow breath. “Well. That got heavy. Proper cuddle?”
Jon nods enthusiastically. He turns back to the bed, looks rather mournfully at how it is covered with neat piles of clothes, then makes an informed decision and swipes them all onto the floor.
Martin sighs exasperatedly.
“God, you’re just a big naughty cat.”
“I’ll take that as a win,” Jon says, still a little shaken but approaching tentative smugness. He bats at a pile of trousers that had survived the initial sweep. “You’ve been fast and loose with the shortness comments recently.”
“A tiiiiiny naughty cat,” Martin corrects, shuffling against the headboard and pulling him into his lap. “A tiiiiiiny tiiiiiiiiiny astonishingly handsome with no corroborating context naughty cat.”
“You don’t have to do that every -”
“Shh.”
“… fair enough.”
They lie there, in the heat of the sun that is not yet a heatwave, as the air settles back into something lighter. Jon presses his nose into Martin’s chest, and feels his hand close across the small of his back. Fingertips tap lightly across his vertebrae.
“Will you let me see them?” Martin asks quietly, the words rumbling into Jon’s ear, muffled by the ribcage in the way. “The scars?”
Jon tightens his grip on Martin’s shirt.
And ah – it isn’t an immediate yes, he realises.
If his reluctance were truly for the reasons he’d been telling himself, it would have been, Martin having laid bare his regret and his ignorance. But even knowing now what he does, something unpleasant rises in Jon’s throat at the thought. Something unpleasant, and old, and screaming for attention in the way of something long ignored.
What a thing to realise, on a sunny Sunday afternoon when everything is fundamentally alright.
There will be space for things like this now, he resignedly acknowledges.
And they will not ignore them.
He’s taken too long to reply, and his grip is too tight and –
“It’s okay, if not. But it has to be up to you. Not imaginary me.”
Jon, re-establishing his once familiar grip on fear hello old friend, how have you been getting on, nods very slowly.
“Yes. But not right now.”
“Of course,” Martin kisses the top of his head. “Whenever you’re ready. We have all the time in the world.”
And startlingly, they do.