Chapter Text
There is a belief in writing, and even more so in the lackluster critic of it, that tragedy and suffering through it is the highest form of art and reveals the deepest truths and that honest changes-the-world-for-them-love is the only substantial counterbalance it can experience. There is also a belief that universe-shattering-then-reforming-in-an-image-that-can-only-hold-you love is silly and vapid outside of such suffering. These are all false. There is great truth to be found in joy, love for it’s own sake holds plenty of value but a better counterbalance to the horrors of life might be knitting (and cats).
Martin Blackwood did not really care. As Jon laid in his arms, not yet dead but fading fast, he wished he could do something to fix the stab wound in his love’s (perfect) chest. He was in a series of black, dark corridors. He could only see because Jon was doing a wonderful impression of a giant, green glow-stick.
He started walking but the corridors just kept going. It reminded him briefly of Helen, or Oliver’s bloody roots. But he needed to find a way out and get Jon to a hospital.
As the minutes passed and Jon’s light was dimming and there did not seem to be an end or change other than the turning of the hallways in sight, Martin decided he was never letting Jon out of his sight again. There was another thing bothering him about the hallways. They were freezing, the distortion at least had the good sense to be at room temperature. The cold couldn’t be good for Jon’s injuries.
In desperation Martin kicked a wall. It had been one hell of a day. He also swore. A lot.
Before.
It had texture of rocks made of soft wood or of soft wood made of rocks, he could tell that much.
During.
Fractures formed around his foot like glass on a window pane.
And.
The fell apart easily as though it was nothing but packing Styrofoam.
After.
Maybe not after. Martin was ever a poet and knew when words failed. He had seen the impossible for the past six months, it wouldn’t shock him anymore.
More hallways, twisting impossibly back into the wall he just kicked through. Deciding to go on forever. Jon shifted in his arms and Martin clutched him tighter.
The universe might really hate him. He could at least let Jon die as peacefully as he could, Knowing he was loved. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be far behind. He sat down as gently as he could and adjusted Jon in his lap. Jon was sounding out the words for something but Martin couldn’t quite tell. He brushed the strands of hair that had landed in his love’s face and kissed his forehead with all the tenderness he had. Jon smiled at that.
Martin decided to change his initial wish. To have loved Jon before all of this had happened, at a normal job. Or better yet on the tube home. Have fallen in love without either of them having to fall apart for it. Buying a house together, why not if you’re wishing for the impossible. An old Victorian one with the crown molding Jon liked.
He caressed Jon’s face. “You really are beautiful.” Jon should get to hear that again before he died. Jon was happy to hear it, even if he could no longer show it.
Now you dear readers should know something about this house. There is a lengthy book on the subject but you don’t need to read all of it to know the house is a strange place. It had endless corridors that could change on their own. It could destroy all that you owned. It was a metaphor for the spiral into insanity that will always echo the past and it was connected to the house on hilltop road.
All houses that haunt have the same heart.
That heart was, among many mostly bad things, a romantic. The past decades of binding the hearts of mortals and love ultimately saving people had given it a taste and seeing these men have so much desperation to stay together made it want to see how it could end, given a bit more time. The opening for the two to move through wouldn’t last forever so the house used the last bit of connection to the multiverse and gave Martin a world with everything he had wished for.
The groaning the current owner had been subject to for the past ten minutes stopped and she looked up from her book to the doorway in her living-room. “Are you feeling better now? Digested a squirrel? Right, I forgot, you don’t like animals.”
One of her cats jumped up onto her chair and she started petting it. The house on ash tree lane did suck about as much as her friends thought it would but she couldn’t afford to move. And she put a “welcome home” mat in front of the doorway and the house hadn’t eaten it so the house couldn’t be too bad.