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Martin’s health had always been delicate. He hadn’t been allowed to do much of anything as a child due to his poor health (no one had ever asked Martin how he’d felt). For a while, he wondered whether his father had made it all up to be rid of him — whether the doctors and concoctions weren’t simply making things worse.
That was before he’d upended his life to follow Will to London.
Truthfully, Martin didn’t know who he was without Will. He didn’t want to.
Will and Hartley had been his only tether to sanity as a child — the only people he’d ever allowed himself to trust — and then one day Will had been gone and Hartley had started avoiding him, and Martin hadn’t known what to do with himself. He could tell himself that he was fine without Hartley (though was he, actually?), but Will…
He could never pretend that he was fine without Will.
If anyone could see the letters they’d exchanged, they’d probably put him in the pillory. Martin was careful to keep his true emotions from flooding the page, but surely someone could tell if they’d read them.
That never stopped him from writing.
For as backwards as he knew his own desires were, Will was a wonderful, amazing person who, for some reason, wanted Martin as his best friend. Martin wasn’t going to abandon him. He wrote to him every day he could. He didn’t care if it came across as suspicious; Will was his very best friend in the whole world.
So it was only natural that, when Martin first saw Will after the Fotheringay, he stopped in his tracks.
This was the person he loved most in the world; there was no doubt about that, and there never would be. But this Will was so different to the Will he remembered home on leave, handsome and charming and oh-so-sure of himself.
This Will made Martin want to wrap him up in blankets and feed him chocolate and soup until he felt better. Not that Martin would ever admit to a thought like that, of course.
He promised Will he’d do whatever he needed, so ,instead of wrapping him up, he followed him into opium dens.
He didn’t know what, exactly, had happened on the Fotheringay, and he didn’t particularly want to ask. Will would tell him if and when he decided he was ready, and until then, it was none of Martin’s business.
Martin simply wanted the head of the man who’d made Will feel this way.
(Unfortunately, he was a baronet, not a duke, so his options were rather limited; he had little actual choice other than letting the law decide.)
He knew he had no business going into opium dens.
Oh, he didn’t have any sort of proclivity toward addiction; the lord knew he’d endured enough laudanum in his life to know that much. He was, in that way, the perfect companion to see Will through the depths of hell.
No; it was his lungs.
So when he’d drag Will out of those opium dens and see him home and promise him that he’d never leave him, he didn’t think much of what he was exposing himself to.
London was bad enough, but the air in those dens…
Well, he supposed it was only natural that his breathing was worse in the city than it had been in Cumberland. He had poor lungs to begin with; he always had. No one went to London to recover from illness.
(Will wouldn’t go back to Cumberland, and Martin wouldn’t force him.)
One night, after going back to his lodgings, he began to cough.
He always coughed, really, but this was different. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He coughed into a handkerchief and wondered whether he’d die here, tonight, and more importantly: what would happen to Will if he did?
He didn’t die.
But when he pulled the handkerchief away, it was speckled with blood.
In that moment, Martin knew what had happened. As much as he wanted to deny it… well, he’d always thought he’d end up dying for Will one way or another. This wasn’t worth going back to Cumberland for.
He just had to make sure Will never found out. He’d never hear the end of it. Will would never forgive himself (even though it wasn’t his fault in the least), and Martin would never let himself be fussed over the way Will would want to fuss over him.
No; he’d hide it from Will until he couldn’t any longer. It might not have been the perfect plan, but it was good enough, he thought.
Besides, Will was worth risking life and limb. If anyone was worth this, it was him; Martin wouldn’t let himself regret it for a second.