Work Text:
Jon has started to enjoy poetry. Not all, mind you. So much of it was performative and self congratulatory. Some of it, though..
Some love poems rambled on, desperate to try and make a reader understand something impossible to put to words. Jon understood this now. He never had the words himself, and could understand the determination. Martin said such sweet things.
Martin was honest and raw, and it scraped Jon clean of his own roughness in a way that was both frustrating and freeing. How long had they been here? A week? Two? Each day dragged on like the last lazy days of summer holiday where it could be forever or a moment but never enough. And he wished he knew how to say that. Because Martin did.
Then there was the way Martin looked at him. His eyes alight in ways they hadn't been before. It made Jon's heart hurt and soar.. and.. well.. he was not a poet himself. Saying these things felt impossible.
It was on a night following a very short disagreement on the virtues of some specific poet, after Martin had placed a kiss to his head and retired to his turn in the bedroom that Jon picked up the book and tried to read through some of it. It was horribly depressing, and Jon could not understand for the life of him why Martin would want to read that while things were already feeling quite overwhelming. Then Jon followed to the room to gather his sleeping things and found Martin awake. It was something electric, and Jon felt sure there was a sadness to this as well that wanted it's own space on a page.
More days, more afternoons, more lazy walks to the village. Martin's hand was starting to feel like home and he was eager for each reason to take it. As they walked, sometimes Martin would point out a specific wild flower in his singingly excited tone and Jon would suddenly be interested in a flower he had never thought twice about before. Martin would run his fingers along the tops of the long weedy grass that grew in unkempt tufts at the posts of fences, and Jon would a bit more stiffly and with the self consciousness of being aware he was so, follow suit.
Martin said that cloud looked like a trolley. Jon would think on it and then offer that it was more of a hippo. Martin would laugh and say, "sure. Now it does. You just waited until the wind changed it. Okay.. a hippo.. what about that one?"
Martin did laugh, and Jon could tell it was hard. Especially at first. It was hard for Jon as well. They started cracking open, though. Each new fissure that appeared let something else leak out of him. Laughter, then teasing, then intimate conversations of dreams and hopes eventually came in a way he wasn't even sure he was ready for yet.
When Martin was sad, or feeling those dregs of his loneliness, he played a game with Jon. Asking him where he would take him on dates when they got back. He knew it was Martin's way of making sure that this was not just some fantasy they were playing at while they hid, and Jon found that he was afraid it would disappear once they left this place too. Neither of them thought that life would ever be that simple, of course, but it was vital for their recovery and mutual assurance that this love wasn't temporary. First Jon would guess at somewhere he thought Martin would like. Soon he learned what Martin's goal was. Martin wanted to know where Jon liked to go. What parts Jon was willing to show him. Martin would close his eyes and lay beside him, asking him to describe the places. The way they smelled, how the light came in the windows, the taste of his favorite drink, the art on the wall. Poetry.
Martin was hungry for Jon and he made it clear. He wanted to know thoughts, opinions, memories. The sad bits, the hard. The things that made him sentimental. The way the other man took all of him in and loved each broken part made Jon feel both stronger and also more vulnerable. Martin gave willingly in return. As they gave and took from each other generously, selfishly, Jon learned pieces of himself he had not understood before. How had he never known how lonely he was? Now that he knew, he clung to Martin's love like it was the last branch hanging him over a precipice.
Some nights were silent. Facing each other, watching. Hands on cheeks and small kisses. Conversations in looks and touches that soothed aching empty bits of him and filled him more and more. How badly he wanted to fill Martin in return.
This would end. Of course it would. Jon knew this. There was a world out there that they were obligated to return to. They were a piece of something larger. Uncontrollable and frightening. But for now, for him, he would learn to like poetry.