Chapter Text
Martyn
He wasn’t sure why he even bothered to come…much less why he was here before 7 AM. But it wasn’t like he’d done much sleeping in the past three months, anyway. The university was reopening soon, but not today soon, considering the chaos caused by the council. It wasn’t like anyone truly knew what had gone on either way. The only way you would know was if you had some connection with one of the under-city folk…like Martyn did.
He’d gotten an email that the performing arts department was reopening it’s doors to faculty who were still in the city, those who wanted to root through their offices or even just try to get back to routine.
Routine? Routine?
Come in, check the broken stage lights…fix up things upon these very same boards where he’d sat for long hours surrounded by grading papers and an extremely uncooperative tablet.
How strange, to ask that of him.
How could you ask that of me?
When he still hadn’t heard any news from the under-city, despite all he and Scott had done? Despite coming to know the local superhero, despite Zed going missing through a rift and stars above knew what happened to him, despite, despite…
“Agh…”
Martyn checked his phone for the fortieth time. He’d texted and called Scott, insisting he deliver any word if Jimmy made a reappearance now that they at least knew that more false bedrock wasn’t being produced.
Nothing.
The tremors had stopped recently, and people were slowly coming out of their shell, but even still Martyn didn’t know.
He didn’t know.
He’d gone to Ren’s apartment every night since the tremors had halted, since Scar had reported the destruction of the bedrock initiative device…and his boyfriend hadn’t been there.
Still trapped down below?
Are all trapped? Are they even ok down there anymore?
His stomach turned.
He considered just going home. He didn’t have to be here.
This was going to be hell, and he just knew it.
He kept pounding the pavement anyway.
Because what else was there to do? Without Ren. Without his final chance, his last throw, the person he’d laid down all his misassembled metaphors in service of.
Beloved, indeed.
White sneakers drummed up the stairs, and into the atrium he went, the blustery cold of early spring abandoned as the glass doors closed behind him.
The atrium with the table by the door, where he’d first gotten Ren’s number playing at tech support.
Where Ren had run around when the motion-detecting lights had gone out on them, calling out dramatic lines in his baritone, waving his arms again.
And Martyn? He’d laughed.
And when was the last time I laughed?
Their last date, probably.
It had been such a beautiful day, in it’s brilliant mundane quality.
Three months back.
Ren had played his part flawlessly, considering he’d known since that morning it would be their last.
Stop it!
He’d known. Ren had known it would be their last day together, and he hadn’t wanted to bog it down with the truth of that fact. So he’d held his tongue, and made Martyn smile and laugh just the same as always.
Just the same.
Maybe even more.
Martyn swallowed the lump forming in his throat as he shoved his balled-up fists into his electric green puffer vest. The chill of the morning still insisted he wear the extra layers, but spring was here.
No one else was, though.
Scott was probably passed out, having stayed up working all night yet again. Scar was aching from exhaustion, patrolling constantly, even if Martyn had half-heard some news or the other about potential monster appearances, but he wasn’t in the mood to scroll his socials or check the podcast inbox. He’d do all that later. In a couple hours.
Probably after he’d had a good cry sitting on the edge of the stage?
He sighed to himself, weary. Weighty.
The atrium was silent.
The door to the break room was closed as he walked by. Headed for the backstage entrance.
The stage where he and Ren had sat together under dimmed aisle lights, working away, firing words back and forth so comfortably.
The stage where Ren had slipped on some tossed aside papers and pinned Martyn to the floor on his way down. And while they were down there, they might have gotten a bit sidetracked.
The stage where Martyn had insisted to Ren that he was ready and willing to endure the hard moments.
Face the most difficult times.
And we’re there now…aren’t we?
That pulled a jaded scoff out of him. When he’d said he’d endure the worst of times, he’d meant misunderstandings or silly fights or disagreements over wallpaper.
Not this. How could he have ever expected this?
Expected he’d endure it well…?
Did I endure it well? Well, Ren? Did I? Did I!? Would you get back here and tell me so!?
His teeth grit together hard. Martyn lit up his phone screen, then unlocked it. As much as he wanted to set the photo to his lock screen, he knew better than to do something that stupid. Leaving evidence of Ren’s inhumanness somewhere anyone could see it if they happened upon the device. But the photo was saved to his favorites, not like he even needed to pull it up through there. It was open in a tab, had been opened like that ever since he’d taken it. Green eyes, weary and dull from sadness and sleeplessness, looked the photo over in a single sweep. He’d spent so much time staring at it, committing it to memory, as the weeks turned to months, and he feared Ren might one day fade from his mind entirely.
Martyn had sworn to himself that Ren was his last shot.
If things ended like this…
"I love you."
Said like some kind of casual secret. Said as if Ren wanted to escape the weight with which those words would slam themselves down.
The lump pressed back up his throat. Tears stung in his eyes as he walked out onto the stage, hitting the switch as he went. The catwalk lights snapped on, warming to gold as they cast over him, separating his shadow into thirds. His footsteps echoed in the empty space.
So empty.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in here alone for long.
He considered, eyes looking around, the familiar whorls of the wooden stage floor, and then to his phone again.
To the photo again.
The photo he’d taken, and seconds later, Ren had said those three little words, knowing full well Martyn wouldn’t have enough time to respond to them. After he’d slid his sunglasses onto the blonde's face, like a cute little joke, when he knew full well he’d have no use for them where he was headed, and may as well leave them behind as a memento.
Always the dramatist.
That was just Ren’s style.
Martyn wanted to wring his neck over it. Wanted to cling to him and sob over it. Wanted to bury himself into that man, into everything he was, into everything he loved, stars, he loved him…and never let it go again.
Why…why would you ever think I wouldn’t say it back?
His exhaustion must’ve been piling up more than bearable, because his eyes were refusing to focus on his phone screen. He shoved the device into his pocket again and raked his fingers into his hair. Instead of hitting his usual headband, they met with smooth matte black plastic.
Ren’s dark sunglasses.
He couldn’t have explained why he’d tucked them atop his head when he’d left that morning, picked them up where they’d sat untouched for three months now on the tiny side table between his sofa and his bed in his studio apartment. His headband was scrunched up in his pocket; instead, he hadn’t even bothered to tie his hair back properly. Long blonde strands tumbled over his shoulders, and pinpricks riddled his scalp as he tightened his grip on them. The sunglasses rested just above his fingertips. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes and burned as they fell, and he felt like they should’ve been distinctly impossible.
Hadn’t he already cried all he had?
Surely, surely, he had to run out of tears at some point.
But if he ever got to the point where he could withhold tears merely thinking of Ren, then would that mean he was drifting?
Drifting before he’d even gotten to say those three words back?
He grit his teeth, trying to catch the broken sob that escaped him, regardless, punching out as if to punish him for trying to withhold it.
“Why…why would you j-just…agh…you…you idiot!” His voice started low and rose, grew louder, grew angrier, as he turned, threw his arms wide, and cried out his frustrations to an invisible audience, to the empty chairs.
“Do you hear me!? Do you!?"
He cried out as he paced back and forth on these wooden boards that had seen them fall in love, that had known them in those small moments that lived amidst the dredges in Martyn's heart, so tired, so empty...
"Stars above, you…you…y-you…!”
He stopped, turned to face the stage again, planted a foot and swept out an arm like he was waiting for a roar of the crowd.
Nothing.
Empty.
And how could he cry out the fact?
How could he howl it into the ether?
To say…
“I…”
To wish.
“...I…”
To claw at the front of his shirt and remember that man's fingers in his hair when they’d slid these sunglasses onto his face as if to hide the tears that were pouring again, angry and heartaching, because Martyn wasn’t heartless.
Not anymore. Not like he ever had been, even if he'd played pretend about the fact.
“...I…! I LOVE YOU!”
He screamed it into the echo of his empty stage. To the emptiness that had hollowed out his chest while he was busy trying to prop up everyone else, crumbling around him.
A city that was cracking apart at the seams, and who was he to claim he could stitch anything back together?
And he heard something distantly. Distantly.
His electric green eyes shot up, his fingers gripped into the long strands of blonde hair. His favorite zip puffer vest hung open over his sweater, as his body felt suddenly like it’d been struck with a live wire.
“...tyn…!?”
…who was that…?
He knew who it was in that smallest syllable, the smallest snippet, of course he did.
He’d dreamed of that voice. He’d had waking nightmares about it. He’d tangled himself within those vocal chords in his own head, three little words in that gorgeous, gorgeous baritone.
“MARTYN!?”
He recognized a clatter of footsteps approaching.
Someone moving at ridiculous speed, a dead sprint he’d figure, and that dead sprint was faster than any human ought to be able to manage, the noise of their shoes down through the atrium, completely missing the stairs, closer, closer, closer….
“Martyn! Martyn! Martyn!”
The doorway he’d just come through was filled.
Filled.
And what was there to say?
As a sob wretched from his throat, as his hands dragged down from their tangle in his own hair.
There was a figure larger than life in the doorway.
Big broad shoulders and stunning long ponytail of dark brown hair.
Ren had his overstuffed backpack swinging from one shoulder. His ponytail was halfway fallen out, leaving his incredibly long dark brown hair falling in arches past the sides of his head. His fingers on one hand were closed around the doorframe. He wore his favorite bright red button-down, dark jeans with flared bottoms, overlong to the point you could only see the toes of his sneakers, even when he stood at quite the intimidating height.
He didn’t look very intimidating now, though.
His gaze was desperate, his shoulders were drawn tightly, panic was obvious in pale blue eyes; it was all there.
And he was here.
Ren was here.
“R-Ren…?” Martyn rasped the voice, unsticking it from someplace inside his heart where he’d curled tight around it, where he’d known it would flee him at some point, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?
It wasn’t. Not now.
Not when Martyn took two steps in the time it took Ren to break ten.
“DARLING!”
Ren bounded down the center aisle, his backpack falling from his arm and landing somewhere between rows four and five. He vaulted up onto the stage, sneakers striking the wood as he straightened up.
“O-Oh my…s-stars!” Martyn reached for him with the fear as if this was some illusion, hesitation, crushing, but Ren didn’t stop.
No, he was rushing
And damn if this doesn’t feel like something out of a playbook.
Across the stage and slamming into him with force, but he’d never complain of it. His feet left the ground as Ren’s arms closed around his middle and easily lifted him, spinning them several times on the stage.
“Oh, it’s you! I thought you might be here when you weren’t home!” Ren exclaimed against his ear, his voice, bold baritone, stuck and stilted on emotion.
Martyn half-hiccuped off a sob, and Ren finally set him down. His hands had come down from his own head, scrabbling a moment before finding purchase. One hand fisting into the back of Ren’s shirt, the other against the back of his head, pinning him close.
Here, here, here.
“Y-You! AGH! I can’t believe you! How could you just…!?”
Those weren’t the first words he’d wanted to say, though.
No, no.
Martyn slapped his palms to either of Ren’s cheeks, pulled back to gaze into those pale blue eyes.
Felt all sorts of interlocking strikes of fondness, he was full, so full, when for months now he’d felt so aching, bled dry.
“I love you, too.”
Ren’s eyes were already wet and misty.
Martyn shook his head. “…you jerk.” He gave a playful yank to Ren’s messy ponytail, and the man winced, but took it with good nature.
“…sorry about that, darling.” He murmured, one large hand sliding up and down the blonde's spine through his puffer vest, and Martyn felt his breath speeding faster for entirely different reasons, now.
“You b-better be.” He muttered, but it didn’t have any real bite to it, releasing the fistful of Ren’s hair he’d gotten in order to bring them closer. His hands found their way to settle on his cheeks again, the rough scratch of Ren’s stubble a welcome prickle over his palms.
The first kiss was rushed.
The second was forceful.
By the third, Martyn was believing this was actually happening.
In an empty theatre on center stage, all his fears were swept aside.
There was only one thing he needed to know in the here and now, though.
“You’re s-staying, right?” He asked, and Ren’s face turned unbearably soft. He pressed their foreheads together and beamed. For the quickest of moments, Martyn saw the points of his fangs before they vanished into the haze of glamor, illusion squaring them off to appear human.
“You’d need an army to drag me away, darling.”
Good enough?
No.
It was better than before, better than the three hellish months of bedrock, better than…?
Hm.
Martyn wasn’t quite sure where else to put it aside from ‘better’. He slid his hands back to tangle them into Ren’s hair again.
“Then prove it.”
Ren’s hummed in his chest, near to a growl, something that might’ve hinted toward his inhumanness…but Martyn loved that side of him, too.
Loved all of him. And here he was, center stage, finally having gotten to say it.