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At the safehouse, there is only one bed.
There is also a sofa.
The sofa is a visual ode to the colour brown, displaying across its lumpy surface the range entire of unpleasant shades which exist on the visible spectrum. Though on first glance the darkest of the patches – evidence of coffee-pot spillages untended to – may be the most unappealing to lay one’s head upon, it is the lightest that, on contemplation, cause the most concern. These display the telltale fraying of caustic action, a good old glug of bleach, Jon hears in Daisy’s voice, and cannot in his own fraying state identify whether his brain conjured that up, or if it is the Eye confirming his suspicions. Either way, Daisy’s voice does not, will not, sound like that anymore, which is one more thing to make him wince as he deposits his rucksack beside the sofa. He has of course slept in, on and on the ground beside worse things, but forgive him – goose-down wouldn’t have gone down poorly after however many hours of fraught travel. Although, actually, that would have begged the question of where Daisy got the geese.
He wrinkles his nose.
Jesus, he’s tired.
Jesus, he’s tired, and there is only one bed, and there is a sofa, and Martin really loved him, you know, past tense.
So – visual ode to the colour brown it is.
“You have the bed,” Martin says, emerging from the dusty passage where the combined kitchen-living-room-dining-room(-kill-room-maybe-don’t-think-about-that) splits off into the bedroom and bathroom. “It’s springy as hell, but I found clean sheets in one of the drawers. I’ll help you wrestle them onto the duvet.”
“Absolutely not,” Jon mutters, trying to toe his boots off (having finally finished his appraisal of the state of the floors: fine for socks) before begrudgingly relenting and bending to pick at the laces.
Martin sighs.
“Okay, while the mental image of you trying to change a double duvet by yourself in your current state is entertaining, it’s not exactly a short film. Come on, abandon your pride for tonight, take advantage of my wingspan. That way we might actually get some sleep before the sun comes up again.”
“One, I don’t know what sort of living situation you imagined me having before the archives became home bitter home, but I am in fact capable of changing a double duvet by myself. Two, that’s not what I meant. The sofa and I were just getting acquainted, the bed’s all yours,” he looks up from his boots, laces still mostly knotted bloody stiff bloody hand bloody ooh it won’t hurt stupid stupid and gives Martin his best managerial look. “No arguments.”
Martin frowns.
“Jon, your back is –”
“Significantly smaller than yours. It’s fine, I’ve been on a cot in my office for months. The sofa will be like memory foam,” he says breezily, thinking about the memory foam mattress that’s been sitting chopped up in the skip down the road from the institute for the last month. It’s got bits of smashed up dining table and concrete sticking out of it, like some sort of grim hedgehog.
Martin huffs a humourless laugh.
“I actually have been on memory foam for the last few months,” he says, guilty and glum.
Jon hums.
“That’s rather fitting isn’t it, what with the Lukas’ whole remit? Come to think of it, perhaps it was harvesting –”
“Jon. Do not put that thought in my mind.”
Jon blinks, and notices that his by default temperamental filter appears to have been knocked even further askew. Perhaps it had happened when the train driver had slammed the breaks on somewhere between Carlisle and Haymarket and his bad knee had collided with the seat in front. Something had certainly jolted out of place then, but he’d thought it had been his patella.
“Right,” One bootlace finally releases, sweet victory, sweet relief. He wiggles the boot off and scowls glumly at the other. “Yes. Quite right. Sorry. I’m… very tired.”
“So get in the bed.”
“No.”
Jon drops decisively onto the sofa, which his bones audibly do not love, and looks at Martin pointedly. Martin looks back, just as pointedly, and raises his eyebrows.
“You’re going to need to get up again to get blankets and stuff.”
“I know,” Jon says, not having thought about that. “But I’ve claimed it, symbolically.”
“Have you now. With your arse?”
Jon nods sagely.
“With my arse. My symbolically powerful arse.”
He folds his arms, and his face beats him to going red before his brain catches up with what he’s said. All at once it does, and he bends down to concentrate very hard on his left boot.
“You wouldn’t have said that if you were less tired,” Martin observes, sagely.
“Quite probably not,” Jon mutters. “Case in point. Let me go to sleep on my lovely sofa.”
Martin sighs.
“If I don’t agree, you’re just going to knock yourself out like that without changing clothes or getting blankets, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” Jon confirms, popping the P as he finally wrenches the second boot off. He throws it up a couple of inches and catches it, then half-mimes using it to clock himself in the head. “That ought to do it.”
Martin shakes his head and blows out an exasperated breath. He lowers himself into the arm(ish – the left side is 60% arm and 40% missing chunk) chair, and picks at his fingernails for a moment.
“You know we’re… we’re not twelve,” he tells his fingernails. “We could share the bed.”
love (v)
Senses:
- Feel great affection for (someone)
- Like or enjoy very much
Forms:
loved, (v) past simple form of “love” (v)
Don’t you dare -
The past simple tense is a verb formation used to describe actions and states that were completed in the past and are no longer happening.
“Martin, it’s fine,” Jon says a bit too sharply, as a substitute for finding something equally sharp to spear through his own eyeball. “If you’re really that worried, we can get some sort of rota or something going tomorrow, but tonight, just… accept a nice thing, okay. You’ve had a hell of a few months, and an enormous shock at the end of it. Accept some comfort.”
“I’ve had comfort in spades.”
“You really haven’t.”
Martin squirms, and hunches over himself.
“… no. Not the sort that -” His mouth hangs open for a moment, and his face does something that Jon can’t quite parse. Then, it corrects itself to the familiar dazed exhaustion that has only seen curtain-chink interruptions of emotion since their fraught journey began. “But materially, I have had a posh bed.”
“In which case, I apologise for the downgrade, but I’m afraid it’s all our customer services team can offer. Cross-departmental exchanges with the living-room furniture section are not permitted under our policy,” Jon folds his arms.
“You know, Basira said you were funny once.”
“I try.”
“She was wrong.”
“Humour is subjective.” Jon draws his knees up to his chest and wiggles his cracking toes. “Regardless, I think we’ve lost the crux of the matter in all of this, which is that you are six foot four. It objectively makes more sense for you to have the bed, so please Martin, please take it, and get some sleep and tomorrow, we can…” What? “We can…”
He trails off.
He doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t want to talk.
He doesn’t want Martin to talk.
He doesn’t want to hear it.
Being let down gently always puts him in mind of deflating balloons, which are fucking useless, and punctured, and stretched all out of shape afterwards.
“Yeah,” Martin says quietly. “Tomorrow we can… we should… talk.”
Jon nods at the floor, where an earwig is luxuriating itself in fluff.
“And dust.”
“And dust.” Martin sighs. “Alright, you win this time. Only tonight, though.”
A pause.
“Yes,” Jon says, with the least affirmative-sounding affirmative to have ever affirmed.
“Jon…” Martin frowns reprimandingly. “Only tonight, until we’ve talked.”
“Yes. About a rota.” Avoiding Martin’s gaze, he points wearily at the ode to the colour grey in the corner. “There are blankets in the ottoman, they’re clean. Do you need help with the duvet or are you and your wingspan –”
“We’ve got it covered.”
Jon nods, his aching arms crying out in guilty exaltation.
“Alright. I’ll need to use the -”
“I’m done in there, it’s all yours. Careful, the cold tap takes some wrenching and spurts quite a lot.” He pauses a second, and his face does the unparseable thing again. It lingers a moment longer, right between Jon’s eyes, and Jon’s breathing sputters. Then, again, it rights itself and he pushes himself up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Jon nods.
“You will,” he says, low and solemn. “And I’m right here if you need anything.”
You won’t.
You won’t need anything from me as I am now.
Anything you need of me, you can ask of the me from your dreams, the me of old, the me of past tense.
But I, in the present tense, will remain here.
It seems that you do not turn to salt when you look back, as I do.
I am predisposed, perhaps, to crumbling, and in doing so blighting the land at what was once my feet.
I am sorry that all I can do is destroy.
I am sorry that it is in ways that cannot be fixed.
I am sorry that you loved me, past tense.
“Thank you,” Martin says quietly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Jon smiles softly.
“Sleep well,” he whispers.
***
Jon has had so much worse.
Habitually, in fact, habitually he has had so much worse, the archives are freezing at night and he wasn’t exactly first in line for the communal blankets they had all resigned themselves to, novelty things with superheroes on left behind by tim, god, tim, I’m so sorry tim, so he had regularly slept in his coat, supplemented shamefully by a still-a-bit-damp bath towel swiped from the Artefact Storage decontamination shower, and it had been fine and Daisy had taken pity on him once and dropped her jacket silently at his feet and looked at him with those big blue eyes, so cold themselves, but still she had given him her jacket why did she have to be so confusing, and it had been fine and he’d never got hypothermia, not even once, though whether because the Eye hadn’t let him or because he ran cold anyway and was just being dramatic about it was something he’d never had downtime enough to test, and it had been fine, it was fine, it was freezing but fine but here, but here, it is freezing and –
Not.
Not fine.
He is curled up as tightly as possible on the ode to brown sofa, and it is freezing and it is not fine. He had woken shivering and he had shivered some more, and then those shivers had grown to shakes, and now they have grown so big, grown so strong, that they are great convulsive things that threaten to send his bones surging through his skin Jared Hopworth eat your heart out with each pulse, with each jolt, with each desperate claw for warmth.
It can’t be that bad, he thinks deliriously, seriously, deliriously, Things always feel worse in the dark.
But the Eye is not telling him that it is fine, and god how he hates that lifeline, he knows it has barbed wire on it, but he also knows, keenly, that he can wash the blood from broken skin and have only scar tissue to show for it, but if he does not hold on at all he will sink, and whether he drowns or not, he will be lost, he will be forgotten, he will be another goddamn mystery.
So he convulses, and he panics, and despite it all he does not want to die, which is good, because he will not, he knows and Knows this, but it bloody feels like he might, and that’s ridiculous Jon, you’re ridiculous, just stop being ridiculous for one moment of your ridiculous life and for goodness sake sort yourself –
There are extra blankets in the bottom of the wardrobe in the bedroom.
But Martin is –
One of the extra blankets in the bottom of the wardrobe in the bedroom is electric.
But I’ll wake –
It is the same brand as the one your grandmother used through the 1990s. She would to give it to you when you were ill.
…look, I know you’re malevolent by nature but that’s just –
It is even the same colour.
For goodness –
Dusky rose.
Yes, alright, I’m going, I’m going…
A convulsion stills, and it is just reprieve enough, willed by the promise of warmth, for him to creak himself upright, gasping out a whine of panic when one of the blankets slips from his shoulder. He scrabbles to secure it back in place, tight around his neck, tickling Daisy’s scar you’re fine with things around your neck, you are, BE fine with it, you ARE. He stumbles forward, sciatic nerve pain shooting up his leg and crying out for the cane deposited by the front door but shut up, you can’t die of pain, you can die of freezing, you won’t though we’ve established that, yes but, yes but what, yes but let me get the fucking blanket –
He feels his way down the narrow passage and pauses outside the door. He can be quiet, he can, even in his current stumbling state. He rests his forehead on the wood, just for a moment, and gulps in a breath. Then, he opens the door, just wide enough, and slips through.
And oh.
Oh, fuck.
That’s why it’s so –
“Jon?”
“Martin…”
Martin is sitting against the headboard, above the covers, legs extended.
And around him, is swirling, shimmering, icy fog.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“Martin you need to…” a convulsive shudder snaps his jaw shut. He draws a sandpaper breath through his teeth. “You need to warm up. You need to –”
“It’s okay. I’m not suffering from it.” The tiniest line appears on his blank face. “Like you are.”
The ice lining Jon’s stomach coalesces into a ball.
“That’s not good, Martin.”
“No. Probably not.”
Jon stands there a moment, looking at him, breathing heavily, and I think we know which one is happening out of fight flight or freeze.
In an ironic rescue, another violent shudder shakes him out of his reverie, and he darts towards the wardrobe.
“Hang on, hang on just a moment, I just need to – I… I was cold and I need to… before I can -”
He flings the wardrobe open and retrieves the dusky pink electric blanket from the bottom shelf don’t turn it up too high, I don’t want you to burn yourself, but goodness me my boy, bless you, you do turn into an ice-cube when you’re not well, don’t you? and whirls around frantically for a plug socket. He holds the plug up desperately to Martin on not seeing one, and he gestures, vague and heavy, to the vacant side of the bed. Glory be.
Jon plugs it in and wraps it securely around himself, hoiking it up to the highest setting sorry Gran then clambers to kneel on the bed.
“What can I do?” he breathes, “What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“No,” Jon shakes his head. “No no no no no, that’s not right, that can’t be right, we… we got out. Everything was… it was going to be alright, I -”
“This is just me.”
“It isn’t,” Jon bites out, desperately. And in his desperation, he demands, somehow not compelling, “Tell me when you stopped.”
“What?”
“Tell me when you stopped loving me. A-and maybe the Eye can… I don’t know? I can try and get it to… to when you look at me… it can… I can see if it can… paper over me somehow, paper over me of now, with him, from before you stopped loving me. It… it’s worth a try, isn’t it, I mean, Elias could put anything in anyone’s – so… so surely if I… ask? Nicely enough? O-or try hard enough, a bit of… a bit of… a bit of window-dressing is child’s play, must be child’s play, for the Eye to -”
“What?”
“Tell me, Martin. I – I don’t want to get it wrong, come in too late, that’d surely just compound the loneliness, if I managed to make a double-layered monster that you don’t love -”
“I never stopped. That didn’t happen, Jon. I never, ever stopped.”
The fog stills.
Stationery, the particles almost seem to glisten.
What?
What?
“No you… you did. You did, you said – you said you really loved me. Past tense.”
“I said that in the Lonely. I said that in the Lonely where I expected to die. In the Lonely, where the present didn’t matter because the future wasn’t going to happen. It was true. I really loved you, past tense, and I wasn’t going to get the opportunity to love you, present tense.”
“But you are now…” Jon says faintly.
You are you are you are you are oh god you are oh please you are oh please please please -
“I am. For all the good it’ll do me.”
“What?” Jon croaks.
Please please please please -
“You’ll never -”
The fog is moving again.
Go AWAY.
He scrambles closer and lurches for Martin’s hands.
Freezing.
He shakes around them.
He squeezes.
“I will. I do, and I will, and I have, and I continue to, and I promise to, and I swear with every syllable that I will choke out of my throat in everything that I say, henceforth, forever that I love you, now, and tomorrow, and every tomorrow that will follow.”
He shuffles desperately closer, knees now pressed into Martin’s thigh.
“If you’ll have me,” he gasps, tamping down a plead with oh so desperate feet.
Please.
Please.
Martin’s chin raises and he meets his eyes finally, with wet eyes of his own, and miraculously, brilliantly nods. Then he nods again, and again, and the tears are falling, and the rest of his face is folding, and the fog is retreating, quite fast actually, and Jesus, maybe Gran had a point about the blanket, and Jon discards it, and instead scrambles down, and opens his arms, and Martin opens his arms, and he falls into his chest.
And Jon mutters, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t ask, I’m sorry I haven’t learnt my lesson, through all of this, that I’m nowhere near as smart as I like to think, that I rush to conclusions, that I see the details not the full picture, that I thought grammar was the be-all and end-all like the smart-arse that I am -”
And Martin mutters, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t clarify. I’m sorry that I didn’t get what I wanted immediately, and in a way that matched my fantasy, and decided that meant I wasn’t getting it at all, and that I didn’t check that you understood, when I know you don’t always, with stuff like this, and I will, from now on I will -”
“And I will too,” Jon vows, “And we will talk and we will listen, and we will not let each other drift away.”
“Yes,” Martin pulls him closer, “Yes. Yes, we will do that.”
“We’ll be anchors.”
“Yes. But not just that,” Martin says, deep into his hair. “We will be people too.”
Eyes and fog and eyes and fog and eyes and fog and eyes eyes eyes -
“Monstrous people,” Jon whispers.
“Most are,” Martin whispers back. “Does it matter?”
Jon shakes his head emphatically.
In that moment, nothing matters, aside from the thrum of Martin’s heart beneath his ear.
“No. No, not right now.” He closes his eyes, and as requested hours ago, abandons his pride. “Can you say it?”
“Say what?”
“I think you know.” He closes his hand around Martin’s t-shirt. “Please know.”
Martin’s arm shifts around his middle, and holds on very tight.
“I really love you, you know.”
And the final glistening particle of lonely fog falls, and lands, and melts.