Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Institute’s yearly holiday party was miserable. 

The Institute’s yearly holiday party was always miserable, of course, but this year’s was worse than most, because this year – in addition to the lights being too bright and his dress-code-mandated tacky Christmas sweater being too itchy and the music being too loud and too festive and too repetitive (Jon swore to God, if he heard “Silver Bells” one more time, he wouldn’t be accountable for his actions) – the only coworkers he could stand were nowhere to be found.

It was their fault he’d even shown up in the first place. Tim had been pestering him for ages about his alleged inability to have fun, and Jon wanted to prove to him that he was at least occasionally capable of going to parties. His plan had been to arrive a little more than fashionably late, have one glass of mulled wine and a nibble of whatever looked good from the cheese plate while listening to Tim tell stories from his latest holiday and Sasha report what her dubiously-ethical snooping on their coworkers’ computers had revealed, and then slip out before he ever had to make small talk with strangers.

He’d already failed on that front. Unable to find Tim or Sasha, he’d somehow found himself dragged into conversation with Heather from HR and a man from payroll whose name he hadn’t caught. They were sharing the latest gossip about someone named Hannah and someone else named Jeremy, and while Jon was fairly certain he didn’t know either of those people, the possibility that he’d met both of them multiple times kept him from asking who they were. To prevent that or any other form of rudeness, he’d stuck mostly to nodding along while the other two spoke, and as such was less than fully engaged in the conversation.

When there was finally a lull in the small talk, Jon excused himself and went to search for the others.

A quick scan of the room produced no sign of Tim or Sasha. They were not by the drinks table, not on the dance floor, not in any of the little groups of chit-chatters that Jon could see. Half to get away from the migraine-inducing light and noise and half to avoid being sucked into any more small talk, Jon stepped into the hallway. He took a few steps towards the break room, thinking a glass of water and maybe a brief lie-down on the couch might help his headache, when he heard, from behind the closed breakroom door, the unmistakable sound of Tim Stoker whooping in delight.

Jon opened the door, and nine sets of eyes turned to him at once. Tim, Sasha, and Martin were sat on the break room floor with three of their old friends from Research whose names Jon knew – namely Amanda, Eric, and Salim – and three people from the library whose names he did not. They were all arranged in a circle, a bottle of wine at the center.

Tim’s face lit up. “Hey, you made it!” he said with a grin, waving Jon into the room. 

“Spin the bottle?” Jon muttered acidly as he closed the door behind him. “Really?”

“It’s a party!”

“A work party!” Jon countered. The sheer unprofessionalism on display was staggering.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Tim said, patting the little scrap of empty space between himself and Martin. “Come on, we’ve got room for another player.”

Hm. Jon had come here to prove a point, but now he found the goalposts being moved without his input. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to simply attend the party – he was sure that showing up and not letting his hair down would be worse than not showing up at all, as far as Tim was concerned. And Jon had never been very good at backing down from a challenge – not even a challenge that his opponent hadn’t been aware they’d issued – so, against his better judgment, he took a seat in the circle. Tim shifted to give him more room, while Martin sat right where he was and stared at Jon like he’d just grown a second head.

“It’s your spin, Lee,” one member of the Library contingent said to another, and with that Jon was mercifully no longer the center of attention.

Thankfully, with a circle that large, the odds of it landing on Jon more than a few times weren’t particularly high, and for once, luck seemed to be on Jon’s side. He shared a quick, chaste peck with Amanda from research, and a significantly less-chaste kiss with Tim that was, little as Jon was likely to admit it, not un- enjoyable, and aside from that, he was mostly free to sit back and watch.

There seemed to be some sort of drama brewing within the Library crowd. Two of them – Lee and Yewonde – kept landing on each other, and it quickly became apparent that there was some sort of history there. The first kiss was an awkward, close-lipped affair that was over in the blink of an eye, and they both quite clearly avoided eye contact after it was over. The second and third were a little less brief but no less awkward, but by the fourth (fourth! Jon did not envy them their luck that evening) they’d each had enough to drink to abandon propriety and engage in an activity that could only be described as sucking face.

Jon knew Martin used to work in the library with them, so he leaned over and asked, “Are they…?” He whispered the question as quietly as he could, though he doubted they would notice if he didn’t. They seemed pretty thoroughly otherwise engaged.

“They both insist they aren’t,” Martin answered at the same volume. “But everyone’s pretty sure they hooked up last year’s holiday party. Yewonde’s boyfriend definitely thinks they did, but they’re kinda on-again-off-again, and I’m pretty sure they’re broken up right now.”

Jon was grateful for the context, but before he could express his thanks, Lee had peeled themself off of their colleague and was spinning the bottle again. 

It landed on Martin. It was safe to say that Lee approached this kiss with less enthusiasm than they had the last one, but less enthusiasm was not the same as no enthusiasm. Lee drunkenly misjudged the angle and left a clumsy, wet kiss to the bridge of Martin’s nose, and Martin received it with a good-natured grin. 

Jon was glad he still seemed to have a good relationship with his old coworkers. He sometimes struck Jon as a little isolated down in the Archives, the odd one out in a group who had otherwise all known each other for years. It was nice seeing him relax like this, among friends.

“Alright, my spin,” he announced, though everyone in the room had long caught on to the game’s rules.

The bottle swung in a wide, complete arc, then another, then one more before finally coming to a stop with the cap pointed squarely at Jon. Jon’s heart sank.

It wasn’t that Jon hated Martin. No one could be blamed for thinking that he did, given how he acted, but he didn’t. It was just that, well, it took Jon time to get comfortable with new people. He’d been quite looking forward to running a department that contained only himself, Tim, and Sasha – two people he had known long enough that they’d long made it out of the ‘acquaintances’ category and were well into the range of ‘friends’ – and when he’d learned that a stranger had been thrust into their midst without Jon’s input, Jon had handled it… poorly. He’d softened a bit on Martin in recent months, coming to view him less as an unwelcome intruder, but that didn’t mean he wanted to kiss him.

Martin was the worst-case-scenario in this game – not enough of a friend for the interaction to be comfortable, not enough of a stranger for the interaction to be meaningless. Jon would have to kiss Martin, and then he would have to come into work with him on Monday, and then again the next day, and the next, and that thought froze Jon in place.

Jon’s thoughts must have been written all over his face, because Martin’s face fell. The easygoing smile vanished in an instant, and he cringed.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Martin muttered softly, but Lee interjected.

“Yes he does!” They were slurring their words, just a bit. “It’s spin the bottle! The whole game falls apart if you just ignore–”

“Alright, alright!” Martin cut them off, shoulders creeping up to his rapidly reddening ears.

“Come on, Jon!” Tim chimed in, slapping Jon roughly on the back. “He doesn’t bite!”

And Jon knew he didn’t, but now everyone was looking at him, and making a fuss, and he couldn’t move under the scrutiny of so many eyes.

Martin leaned over and planted a quick kiss to his cheek. He had to stoop quite a bit to bring himself level with Jon’s cheek, and his hot breath stirred the loose strands of hair beside Jon’s jaw. 

Martin’s lips were warm and dry and a bit rough. Jon wasn’t sure why that mattered more than the feel of Tim’s or Amanda’s lips had, but it did. 

It must have been the surprise. That’s all.

“That counts, right?” Martin asked, and the group all conceded that it did.

Jon very much wanted to sit in quiet contemplation of the memory of Martin’s lips against his cheek for a while, but unfortunately it was his spin next.

It landed on Tim, and Tim raised a single eyebrow enticingly. Jon thought about invoking his newly-established right to kiss on the cheek instead of lips, but he thought doing that again so soon might cause Lee to accuse him of destroying the integrity of the game again, so he sighed and kissed him.

Tim was a good kisser – Jon had known that for a while – but somehow it was Martin that he couldn’t get out of his head.

The game went on. Tim landed on Eric, Eric landed on Lee, Lee landed on the woman from the library whose name Jon had forgotten, she landed on Salim, Salim landed on Martin, Martin landed on Sasha. 

Jon could still smell Martin. That was hardly surprising – they were sitting right next to each other – but when Martin had leaned over, the smell had completely overwhelmed Jon’s senses, and now he lost himself trying to place the scent. It was vaguely citrusy. Not lemon, though. Bergamot, perhaps?

Sasha spun, and the bottle came to rest in front of Jon. She planted a sloppy kiss to the corner of his mouth (the library group weren’t the only ones who’d been getting a bit clumsy the more they drank) with a loud, “Mwah!”

Jon’s spin next. He couldn’t exactly say he was surprised at where it landed.

Martin visibly sagged. “I-It’s sort of between me and Sasha…”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Shut up, Lee!”

It really wasn’t.

Jon took a breath, steeled his nerves. Grabbed Martin by the shoulders, pulled him close, and pressed their lips together.

For a moment Martin went rigid against him, lips stiff and inflexible as wood, but still as warm and chapped as he’d remembered. Then he melted, turning soft and pliable beneath Jon’s touch, sighing softly against his still-closed mouth.

It was definitely bergamot that Jon was smelling.

When Jon pulled away, Martin’s eyes were closed and his cheeks were pink, freckles disappearing against the rising color. His lips were still slightly parted, as though waiting for Jon to lean back in for another kiss. Jon took in the sight for just a moment before he cleared his throat.

“I think I might head home,” he told the group. “I have to get up early tomorrow.” That was a blatant lie, but Jon needed an excuse that wasn’t I’ve seen what happens when you land on the same person too many times, and I’d rather not end up snogging with Martin as aggressively as the two of you did.

“I was actually thinking of calling it a night, too,” Martin said. “My hips are killing me; I’m too old to sit on the floor this long.” He stood up, and as though to prove his point, his knees cracked audibly.

“You can’t leave, it’s your turn!” Tim protested.

Martin leaned down and gave the bottle a final spin. It landed on Sasha, and he stooped to give her a hurried kiss on the cheek.

“Bye, Sash.”

“Bye, Martin! See you Monday!”

Tim looked up and tilted his cheek to Martin in clear invitation. “One more for the road, Marto?”

“Fine,” Martin laughed, and complied.

Jon couldn’t quite meet Martin’s eye as they made their way out of the building together. He supposed he could have found some excuse to peel off, maybe say goodbye to Elias or Heather from HR – hell, even make one more stop at the drinks table – anything to avoid the coworker he’d just kissed. Instead, they wound their way through the party shoulder-to-shoulder, and the silence was more comfortable than it had any right to be.

Neither of them spoke until they’d stepped through the front doors. They lingered on the steps of the institute. The December air was dark and brisk and sobering, and Jon took a deep, full breath of it.

“I’m glad you came tonight,” Martin said. “I, uh. I didn’t think you would.”

“Yes, well, Tim’s reports of my reclusiveness are overblown, I can assure you. I do actually leave my office on occasion.”

Martin laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m glad.” He blinked, then huffed another, softer laugh. “I-I guess I said that already, b-but–”

“I’m glad, too,” Jon said.

Martin smiled. His lips were growing pinker by the second, in the chill night air. For a second, it seemed that he was leaning toward Jon, and Jon found himself leaning in as well.

“Well,” Martin said, and the moment, if there had been one, was broken. “G’night, Jon.”

“Good night, Martin.”

Chapter Text

Jon wasn’t that hurt. Yes, his throat was still bleeding, and yes, the burn on his hand was still in pretty rough shape, but he wasn’t truly hurt. All things considered, he was in better shape than he had any right to be.

Martin seemed to disagree.

He was silent while he cleaned the wound. Jon kept his head tilted back to expose his bleeding throat, and Martin’s face was only inches away, so it was hard to get a good look at his expression. From the glances Jon was able to get, though, it looked grave. His brow was creased in intense concentration, and his mouth was a thin, flat line. When he pressed a bit too hard and Jon hissed in pain, he finally opened it to whisper, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jon said, though speaking only made the pain in his throat worse. “Thank you for doing this. You didn’t need to – I-I could have handled it myself, b-but–”

“No offense, Jon,” Martin said, “but it really doesn’t seem like you have things handled right now.”

That was probably a fair point, but Jon couldn’t bring himself to concede it. The only thing he could think to say in his defense was, “Hey, I survived this long.”

“Just barely.” Martin rubbed, more carefully this time, at the blood on his neck. “What happened, Jon?”

Jon swallowed, his adam’s apple bobbing beneath Martin’s hand.

He couldn’t answer. He wasn’t that hurt – he knew that – but two hours ago he’d been certain he was about to die, and he could still smell the hot-metal-gunpowder-blood scent on his clothes, as sharp as the moment Daisy had fired the gun, and he knew he couldn’t describe it all to Martin here, now, without falling apart. Instead he stiffened his upper lip as much as he could and whispered, “It doesn’t matter.”

Martin sighed. He set down the wet towel he’d been using to clean the wound, and rummaged through the first aid kit for a bandage, keeping his head low and his eyes down. Jon got the impression Martin was angry with him. No, not angry – disappointed. Jon could practically hear the words, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed coming from Martin’s mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t– It’s– I’m not–” Martin started, fumbling for his words. “Look, you don’t have to talk about it. I get it. But it matters, alright? It matters to me.”

Jon wanted to protest – though exactly what part, he couldn’t say – but heard Martin mutter, so softly it was barely audible, “You matter to me,” and the words died on his lips.

Martin set a hand on Jon’s chin, tilting his head back even further, and inspected the wound one last time. Then he tilted it back down again, and Jon suddenly found himself looking at Martin head-on, faces only inches apart. He caught Martin’s eyes, and Martin held his gaze.

“Just try? To take care of yourself?” he asked, and Jon was powerless to argue. Martin finally broke their eye contact to find the bandage and fix it in place. “I know it’s– A lot of it’s out of your control, and God knows you don’t need me guilting you about it, but–” He massaged his thumbs over the gauze tape, starting from the center and pressing out toward the edges, smoothing it out. “I just worry.”

He took his hands away from Jon’s throat and let them hover uncertainly in the air between them, as though he wasn’t sure where else he was allowed to put them.

“I’ll do my best,” Jon said, though he knew his best wasn’t much at all.

Martin’s eyes flicked downward and caught on Jon’s injured hand.

“When was the last time you changed that bandage?”

“Um,” Jon said, turning his own gaze guiltily to the bandage in question. “Never? I-I’ve only had the burn since monday.”

Martin puffed a whistling sigh out through his cheeks. “Eventful week, I guess.”

“Very.”

“Right. Well. Probably a good idea to clean and re-dress the wound.” He reached out carefully and took Jon’s hand in one of his own. “Can I?”

Jon nodded, and let himself be guided to the breakroom sink. Martin peeled away the layers of hastily-wrapped gauze from Jon’s hand and inspected the wound. His fingertips were calloused, but he touched Jon gently, barely grazing his palm, careful at all times to avoid the burn. He turned Jon’s hand this way and that with feather-light touches, taking it all in. Then he turned on the sink.

He fiddled with the temperature a bit before he pulled Jon’s hand under the water. Once again he turned it carefully, making sure to clean every corner of the burn. When he was satisfied, he turned off the taps and grabbed the hand towel from where it hung off the handle of the fridge.

“This might sting,” he whispered as he pressed the rough cloth against the burn. Jon gritted his teeth against the pain and did his best not to let his discomfort show. It must have, though, because Martin grabbed his forearm, above the burn, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. 

“I’m guessing you don’t want to explain how this happened either?” he asked as he dug around for more gauze.

“I shook hands with…” How to summarize Jude Perry. He didn’t think Martin would have ever encountered her in a statement. “...With a woman made of candle wax.”

“That’ll do it, I guess.”

Martin wound a long bandage around and around Jon’s palm until the burn disappeared entirely beneath the sterile white gauze.

“Not the greatest display of my self-preservation instincts, but, well…”

“Yeah, I know,” Martin said. “You survived.”

“I really am sorry, Martin, I–”

“You don’t need to apologize to me– it’s your hand–”

“No, I mean… I’m sorry I left the way I did. If I could have explained, or reached out, but… I-I couldn’t be sure if the police were watching you.”

“Probably a good instinct,” Martin admitted. “That detective – Daisy – she seemed pretty suspicious of me from the beginning." He loosened the bandages slightly, giving the burn room to breathe. "Not sure what I’d have done if I actually knew something.”

Jon frowned. He didn’t have a particularly high opinion of Daisy’s interrogation methods, and his stomach twisted with guilt at the thought of Martin being subjected to them. Martin caught his expression and started stammering.

“Not that I– I mean, I wouldn’t have turned you in, I’d never–”

“I know, Martin.”

“–No matter what! I couldn’t betray your trust like that.”

“I know, Martin,” Jon repeated. “Next time I get framed for murder, I’ll be sure to confide in you.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Martin said. “Your luck is too bad; you’ll jinx yourself.”

Jon laughed. Martin taped the gauze into place. “There,” he whispered, almost too softly for Jon to hear.

He stared down at his handiwork for a long second. He was still cradling Jon’s hand with an aching sense of caution, holding it like it was something fragile and delicate and dear. Then, as Jon stared on in wonder, he lifted it up and pressed Jon’s knuckle to his lips in a brief, reverent, kiss.

“Martin?”

Martin’s face reddened instantly. 

“I’m sorry, I– I-I don’t know why I did that.”

 “It’s fine, it’s– You– It’s fine.” Jon felt his own face growing several degrees warmer. “B-But I should probably–” he gestured behind him to the Archives at large. “Lots of work to catch up on.”

“Right,” Martin squeaked. He fixed his eyes on his hands and firmly away from Jon’s as he got started on packing up the first aid kit.

“Thank you for the first aid, Martin,” Jon said as stiffly as he could. “I– I truly appreciate it.”

“Right. Any time.”

Then Jon turned on his heel and fled the break room, leaving Martin flustered and red-faced in his wake.

Chapter Text

It was daytime when Jon stepped through Helen’s door and into the living room of Georgie’s apartment. It had probably been daytime when he’d stepped through the door in the House of Wax, but he couldn’t be sure. There were no windows where he was kept, and his own internal clock had gotten quite badly out of whack.

When he turned around, the living room wall was blank and bare again. There had never been a door there.

He supposed that was only to be expected. It wasn’t as though he’d been planning to invite Helen in for a cup of tea. But it was unnerving, being alone so suddenly after so long spent in that place, surrounded at all times by a hundred waxwork figures – most of them inanimate, some of them not. Judging by the angle of sunlight coming in through the window, it seemed to be about midday, so Georgie was almost certainly at work. Jon was alone.

He went to the kitchen and found Georgie’s charger plugged into the outlet as always. He plugged in his phone. It had been maddening, feeling the weight of it in his pocket the whole long month, feeling it buzz and buzz until its battery gave out, knowing that the means to call for help were so very, very close, if only he could get his hands free.

When his screen blinked to life, he was almost instantly bombarded with notifications – work emails, and facebook friend requests from people he hadn’t spoken to since uni, a chipper notification telling him his screen time was down from his average this week, for some strange reason. And several missed calls from Martin.

His thumb moved without any real input from his brain, swiping left to return the call. He raised the phone to his ear numbly and listened to it ring.

“Jon?” Martin asked as soon as he picked up. “Thank God, I was getting worried – Where have you been?”

“I–” Jon’s voice came out choked and hoarse. He sounded panicked. Was he panicked? He couldn’t tell quite what he was feeling, just then. “I was kidnapped.”

“Again?” Before Jon could respond, Martin quickly corrected, “Sorry, I didn’t mean– Look, where are you? Are you safe?”

“Georgie’s flat. And– A-And I’m not sure.” He’d been here – just a few feet away from this spot, in fact – when Nikola had threatened him. If she wanted him back, he doubted there was much he could do to stop her.

“Who’s Georgie?”

“An old friend. I’ve been staying with her since– since Leitner…”

“Text me the address, I’ll be right there.”

“It’s a workday,” Jon muttered helplessly. If he was more in his right mind, he wouldn’t have argued – he wanted to see Martin, desperately, needed to have him near – but his trauma-muddled mind fixated on the detail. It was the middle of the workday, Martin couldn’t just leave.

“Sod work, Jon, you’ve been kidnapped!” he sputtered. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Wait, don’t hang up!” Jon said. “I-I’ll text you the address, just– could you just stay on the phone with me? I don’t want to be alone, right now.”

Martin sighed into the microphone, sending a pleasant murmur of static over the line. “Sure,” he said, sounding marginally less frantic. “I can do that.”

Jon put his phone on speaker while he sent the text. It took a few tries to type it out correctly – his hands were shaking quite badly – but he managed. Martin monologued to him while he did. He seemed to catch on quickly that Jon wasn’t up for saying much, just listening, and he shouldered the burden of keeping the conversation alive with admirable smoothness. He filled Jon in on his day, what he’d missed at work, what had happened in Martin's life in the month he’d been gone.

“Mrs. Mei, my neighbor across the hall, just moved into a care home last week,” he said. “I can’t believe it – she’d been living here since the 70s, I think, I can’t even imagine this place without her…”

Eventually, the call cut out when Martin lost reception on the underground, but before it did, he assured Jon he’d be there soon.

“Google says 15 minutes,” he said. “Just hang on.”

It stretched on for an eternity. Jon’s skin was still slick with moisturizer, and crawling with the memory of being touched by cold, plastic hands.

He took out his phone again. Georgie always kept her phone off at work – she couldn’t risk it ruining the audio – but it wouldn’t hurt to leave a voicemail.

“Hello, Georgie, it’s Jon. I’m alive. I’m at the apartment right now, and if all goes well and I’m not kidnapped again, I will be when you get home. Call me back when you get a chance.”

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the knock on the door. (That would be easier now, he suspected – his skin felt like it had been loosened over the past month.) His instincts screamed at him to throw open the door immediately and let Martin in, but he fought them long enough to check the peephole. Now was not the time to throw caution to the wind.

Martin stood on the doorstep, anxious and alive.

Jon wrenched the door open.

“Martin!”

“Jon!” Martin’s hands were on him in an instant, roving over his shoulders, his chest, his sides – checking for injuries, or perhaps just assuring himself that Jon was real. “God, I’ve been sick with– I knew something was wrong, I should have looked for you, I should have–”

“It’s alright, Martin,” Jon said, though he was shaking.

Martin stepped inside and shut the door, then resumed his frantic once-over. “Did they hurt you?”

Jon shook his head. “No,” he whispered, and he was almost being honest.

“What happened?”

Jon explained, as best he could. He was calm enough at the start, or at least he thought he was – he felt oddly disconnected from himself, like his emotions were somewhere to the left of him. At the very least, his voice was level and his hands were only trembling the slightest bit. The more he spoke, though, the more real it became – that he had nearly died, and that he was alive – that he was safe now, and that he hadn’t been safe in a long, long time – and he couldn’t finish for a wave of wracking, choking sobs.

Martin pulled him close, wrapping his arms around him as though he could ward off all the dangers of the world.

“I’m sorry,” Jon whispered nonsensically, because he’d always hated making a scene. Martin just shushed him and squeezed him tighter.

“It’s alright, you’re alright,” he murmured softly. “You’re safe.”

He pressed his lips to Jon’s temple, right at his hairline, and Jon shivered at the contact.

They stayed like that for a very long time, Jon crying into Martin’s shirt while Martin all but held him upright and whispered reassurances into his ear, until Jon finally calmed. His breathing steadied and his heart rate slowed and he found himself possessed of the strange, unsteady calm of someone who had just had a long-needed breakdown.

He didn’t bring up the kiss. He didn’t ask why Martin had kissed his forehead; he didn’t even ask him to do it again. He just straightened up, and slipped out of Martin’s arms, and whispered a hoarse, “Thank you.”

He didn’t know what else to say.

Chapter Text

Jon’s excuses for being here were pretty flimsy. 

Except – except – they were actually Martin’s excuses. It was Martin who’d suggested that they might move their weekend overtime sessions (because Martin had started to work practically the same long hours as Jon, picking up the slack of the rest of the Archives team – a development for which Jon felt both guilty and grateful) from the damp and musty basement to a location where they might occasionally see the sun, and he was the one who’d suggested his own apartment as an option, and he was the one who’d added, “Plus, there’s a new recipe I’ve been meaning to try, so I thought maybe I could…” and then trailed off before he ever had to say the implied, make you dinner.

Which was how Jon found himself standing on Martin’s doorstep with a box of statements under one arm and a bottle of wine in the other hand.

It made knocking on the door a bit tricky.

“You made it!” Martin said when Jon had finally managed to knock. He was positively beaming – nose scrunching, round cheeks dimpling, soft brown eyes crinkling at the corners – and the sight made Jon’s heart do something anxious and fluttery in his chest.

“Yes.” Jon stepped inside and set down his box on a waiting side table. “I hope I’m not too early.”

“No, no, right on time,” Martin said, then his eyes caught on the bottle of wine in Jon’s hand. “What’s that?”

Jon thrust it towards him awkwardly. “A gift,” he said. “A-A thank you gift, for hosting. And– And for cooking, and…” and for putting in about a hundred hours of unpaid overtime, and for keeping me company in the Archives every night for the past three weeks, and for patching up my wounds when I get hurt, and for not strangling me at any point during the first year we worked together, even though I richly deserved it. Jon could have kept listing reasons he had to thank Martin all afternoon, but the longer he went on, the more apparent it would have been that a bottle of wine was entirely insufficient for the task, so instead he trailed off there and added, "I know tannins can sometimes give you a headache, so I went with a white instead of a red; I hope that’s alright.”

“Oh.” Oh, no, the smile was back. This time his eyebrows had gotten involved, scrunching together and turning slightly upwards, as though he was genuinely touched, and Jon had to busy himself taking off his shoes to keep himself from staring. “That’s– That’s actually really thoughtful.”

It wasn’t. If Jon was truly thoughtful, he would have remembered that wine gave Martin a headache before he was already in the wine aisle, selecting a bottle. He’d thought about getting something else, but he couldn’t think of another gift that wouldn’t tip them out of the realm of plausible deniability that they were so precariously occupying at the moment. If Jon had shown up on Martin’s doorstep with chocolates, or with flowers, it would have given the game away, made it clear that there was something here they really ought to talk about.

And Jon knew that they should talk about it anyway. They should talk about the fact that Martin was making flimsy excuses to get Jon over his house for dinner, and they should talk about the fact that Jon let himself be persuaded by them. They should talk about the way Martin kept smiling at Jon like he invented sunshine, and the unpleasant fluttering thing Jon’s heart always did in response, and the way their fingers brushed when Martin took the bottle from him. And while they were at it, they should probably talk about the fact that Jon hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the time Martin had kissed his hand, even after all these months.

They should talk.

But Jon can’t.

To talk about it would make it real. There was something between them now, something soft and fragile and nerve wracking, and if it was real, then it could end. It was only a matter of time, really, before something – Elias, the Unknowing, Jon’s own self-sabotage – came along to snatch this away from them.

And anyway, Martin deserved more than Jon could give him right now. He deserved Jon’s full attention. He deserved a real date, one where they weren’t both working (because Jon had brought a box of statements, and he fully intended to read them). He deserved someone who was in it for the long haul, and wasn’t going to get himself kidnapped or killed in the near future. He deserved guarantees, and Jon could make none.

So Jon didn’t mention the way Martin’s hands grazed his shoulders as he took Jon’s coat; he just said, “It’s nothing, really,” and wished his words weren’t quite so true.

Jon followed Martin to the kitchen where he found a heavy cast iron dutch oven on the stove that looked to be about as old as Martin himself, filled with roughly chopped aubergine, squash, peppers, and tomatoes, all simmering away and filling the flat with a warm, earthy aroma.

“I was just about to get this into the oven, actually,” Martin said. He slipped on a pair of oven mitts and hefted the pot up with both hands. “Do you mind getting…” Martin gestured to the oven, having to point with his elbow since his hands were full, and Jon dutifully opened it for him.

“Thanks,” Martin said, and he smiled again, and Jon was in big trouble.

With the food in the oven and a timer set, the two sat down to work. They spread out statements and notebooks across Martin’s small kitchen table, and pored over them in comfortable silence.

They’d gotten good at comfortable silences. They had spent a lot of nights like this, recently, though usually the beams of bright afternoon sunlight were replaced by the soft glow of Jon’s desktop lamp (because Jon would rather die than stay up until three in the morning reading under flickering overhead fluorescents), and the air smelled like must and old paper rather than roasting aubergine. Still, the basics were the same. They sat, they read. They each listened to the comforting sounds of the other breathing, and tapping their fingers, and occasionally complaining.

“This person’s handwriting,” Martin muttered irritably, before pushing the statement across the table to Jon. “Can you tell if this is meant to be an S or a G?”

“G, I think.”

“Thanks,” Martin said. He read the offending name again, then his face lit up with a sudden thought. “Hang on, James Gimondi – that’s the clown, right? The one who– w-well, Tim’s brother–”

Jon shook his head. “That’s Joseph Grimaldi.”

“Right.” Martin turned back to the statement. “I did think it was odd that a 19th-century clown would be hiring an accounting service in 1983,” he sighed.

“To be fair, I didn’t think a 20th-century Russian ringmaster would be in Georgie’s living room, and we both know how that turned out.”

Martin opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, he was interrupted by the buzzing of the kitchen timer.

“That’s the ratatouille done,” he said.

Jon tidied up the kitchen table while Martin took the dish out of the oven and rummaged through the cabinets for a pair of clean bowls. Then he grabbed the bottle of wine.

“Corkscrew?” he asked, and Martin wordlessly pointed him to the top drawer, beside the sink. “Glasses?” he asked next, when the corkscrew was found, and Martin pointed to the cabinet above the stove.

Martin cut a few thick slices from a loaf of sourdough (I made it this morning, he admitted sheepishly as he did, I used to stress-bake when I first got transferred to the Archives and I think I actually got pretty good at it) and threw them in the oven to toast for a few minutes while the ratatouille cooled enough to eat.

Eventually, the wine was poured, the dish was plated, and the bread was very lightly toasted, and the pair sat down to eat.

“Cheers,” Martin said, raising his glass, and Jon mirrored the motion.

“Cheers.”

He took a bite. Jon had not been eating particularly well of late – mostly takeout and ready meals, occasionally the granola bars he kept in his desk drawer so he could stay fed enough to maintain consciousness without leaving his office to get something more substantial – but he was certain that even if his standards were higher, the meal would be delicious. It was warm and hearty and tasted like summer, and he couldn’t stop a noise of disbelieving pleasure from escaping him.

“Martin, this is incredible.”

Martin beamed again. “Thanks.” He ducked his head to try and hide his joy, but it radiated off of him regardless. “I’ve always really liked cooking, actually. I haven’t had the chance to cook much lately, because, y’know – I mean, work’s been…” He gestured, vaguely, and let Jon fill in the blanks for exactly how work had been.

Jon cleared his throat. “You really don’t need to work so late, you know. I appreciate it, truly, b-but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to spend so much time–”

“Hypocrite!” Martin cried, shaking his head. “The absolute gall to tell me I work too much!”

“W-Well, just because I do doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

“Believe me, I know that,” Martin grinned. Jon felt a hot flush creeping towards his cheeks. “But with the Unknowing and everything, I can’t exactly slack off right now, can I?” Jon opened his mouth to protest – fully aware that it would only be further hypocrisy – when Martin added, more softly, “Anyway, it’s not so bad. I’ve had good company.”

Under the table, he nudged his foot playfully into Jon’s shin.

They really needed to talk about that.

Jon took another bite of the ratatouille and swallowed hard. “What, um. W-What are the herbs in this?” he asked, because he was a coward. “Is that basil?”

There was basil, in the dish, it turned out, and thyme as well, and that vein of conversation steered them well away from any dangerous confessions.

When they had finished their meal, Jon took care of the washing up – though he had to fend off a lot of protests from Martin to do so – and then it was time to get back to work.

They night stretched on, mostly in silence. Jon tore his way through statement after statement, waiting for the one that would finally make the Unknowing make sense, would give him all the answers of how to stop it, but none revealed itself. 

When the time came for Jon to leave, Martin insisted on walking Jon to his tube station. Jon didn’t argue.

The air was cool and pleasant, the hot summer day having given way, while they worked, to a crisp summer night. Jon hadn’t had much to drink – he’d been there, first and foremost, for work – but the wine had still left him feeling loose and light and buzzy. Martin’s hand brushed occasionally against his as they walked, and Jon let himself enjoy the contact.

When they arrived, they hovered beside the steps to the station, not yet ready to part ways.

“Thank you for this, Martin,” Jon said. “I had a lovely time tonight. This…” he huffed a quiet laugh, “This might be embarrassing to admit given how much of it was work, but this is the most I’ve enjoyed myself in ages.”

Martin’s eyebrows did that scrunching thing again, the one that looked so painfully sincere, as he said, “Me, too. I… I had fun.”

And it might have been the alcohol that made Jon do what he did next, or it might have been the eyebrows, but either way, he lifted himself onto his tiptoes, tugged lightly at the collar of Martin’s shirt to pull him forward, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Goodnight, Martin,” he said, before he could do anything else reckless.

“Goodnight, Jon,” Martin murmured, after a moment.

Jon made his way into the tube station, but he stopped at the door. When he turned around for one last look, he found Martin lifting a hand to his cheek as though unable to quite believe what had just happened.

Chapter Text

The light was low in Jon’s office.

It was broad daylight outside – a hot and cloudless summer day – but in the windowless basement, with only the desk lamp for illumination, it might have been any of the endless nights he and Martin had spent here, reading in silence, desperate for any information that might prepare them for today.

Jon knew he shouldn’t linger. The others were already waiting for him outside, and his overnight bag was already tucked beside the case of C4 in the boot of the rental car. He couldn’t stall much longer. But he needed to say goodbye.

Martin spoke first.

“Good luck tomorrow.” His voice was a low murmur, as though he thought speaking too loudly might shatter something.

“You, too,” Jon said at the same volume. The moment felt fragile. If he spoke too loudly, moved too quickly, said too much, it might all come crashing down.

“Martin, I–” He cut himself off. He could stop there, retreat, leave it all unsaid. But if he didn’t say it now, he might never get the chance. “I should have said this ages ago, but I– I–”

“Don’t,” Martin whispered. “Not now. Tell me when you get back.”

Jon nodded.

He wasn’t sure who moved first – it seemed to happen in unison. One moment they were both stood still, the next they were reaching for each other, stepping forward, leaning in to close what space remained between them. Martin leaned down, and Jon leaned up onto his tiptoes. Martin’s hands came up to encircle Jon’s waist, and Jon placed one hand on Martin’s shoulder to steady himself while the other clutched at the side of Martin’s neck, fingers tracing the curve of his jaw while his thumb came to rest on his cheek.

And still, they both moved slowly, each waiting for the other to pull back. Every tiny, cautious motion was a question, answered in the affirmative. Yes, you can touch me, yes, I want this, yes, please, yes.

Jon finally tilted his face up to meet Martin’s, and their lips just barely brushed.

A sharp, decisive bang rattled the office door, and they broke apart with a jump.

“Get a move on, Sims,” Daisy barked from behind the door. “We don’t have all day.”

“I’ll just be another minute,” Jon called back.

Neither of them moved. The space between them seemed charged with a gravitational pull, or perhaps a magnetic one – some inescapable, physical force – and Jon had the sense that if either of them moved even a hair, they would crash back together, and they’d never be able to pull themselves apart.

And Jon needed to leave. The world might end if he didn’t.

“I’ll, uh. I’ll call you when we get to the B&B?” he offered. “Let you know we got there safe.” He huffed a laugh. “Wouldn’t it be just our luck to get into a wreck on the way there?”

Martin didn’t laugh. He just nodded. “Alright.” He bit his lip, then said, “Take care of yourself, Jon,” with a finality that made Jon’s heart sink.

“I’ll do my best,” he said, because there was nothing else he could say that was honest, and he wouldn’t lie to Martin now. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

Jon didn’t see Martin enter the room. His eyes were closed, and his mind was elsewhere, watching nightmare after nightmare on an endless carousel. He didn’t see Martin stop in the doorway, as he always did, like he was shocked to see Jon still lying there, and he didn’t see Martin sigh and take his seat at his bedside.

“Hey, Jon,” he said softly, his voice a weak imitation of his usual bright lilt. “How are you?” He waited for a response, but none came. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.” His chair creaked underneath him as he struggled to get comfortable. “I’m worried about Melanie. She’s been… well she’s been getting worse. I get why she’s angry, I really do, but she– she scares me sometimes. I thought Elias finally getting sentenced might help, but it’s only gotten worse. She’s furious at me because he’s in prison and not dead, and she furious at Basira for– I don’t even know what! I think she just likes being angry.”

He coughed quietly. “Still, she’s been mentioning that friend more often – Georgie – and that’s got to be a good sign, right? That she has a life outside this place?

“I did tell you about Georgie, didn’t I? Melanie’s brought her up a few times, she seems to really like her. Wouldn’t it be funny if it was the same Georgie you used to live with? Probably not, though. Lot of people in London; I’m sure there are a lot of Georgies.”

Martin looked over at the still and silent figure on the bed, and sighed.

“I’m stalling.”

He shifted in his seat again.

“I wanted to tell you,” he said, though Jon couldn’t hear him. “That deal with Peter Lukas… I’m going to take it. Maybe he really can keep the Archives safe, maybe Melanie won’t be so angry if she doesn’t have to fight off monsters every other day. I don’t know. I hope so.”

He reached out and grabbed Jon’s hand. He never had before; he’d always kept a respectful distance from the figure on the bed.

“This isn’t goodbye,” he murmured. “I know that. Peter keeps insisting you won’t wake up, but he doesn’t know you like I do.” A few tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them away. “You’re too stubborn. You won’t let something minor like an explosion keep you down for long.”

Martin stood up and stepped closer. He reached out to brush the scar on Jon’s forehead that had been left by the rubble – such a small scar for such a significant injury; even Daisy had left a bigger scar than that.

“I love you. I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.”  He let his fingers drift from Jon’s forehead down to the curve of his jaw. “I might not get a chance to tell you properly–” His voice wobbled and threatened to break. He took a steadying breath. “So I’m telling you now.”

He hesitated. He hovered over Jon for a long, fraught moment before he leaned down and kissed his lips.

It was awful. Jon was cold and stiff and motionless – he didn’t sigh against Martin’s cheek, or curve up to meet his lips, or grab his shoulders for support, like he had before. He didn’t react at all, and Martin shuddered at the wrongness of it. He didn’t try to stop himself from crying this time – a pitiful, keening sob tore from his throat as he still had his lips pressed to Jon’s. When he stood up, his tears were running down Jon’s cheek.

He grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and tried to wipe them away.

“Sorry,” he choked out. Then, again, “Sorry.”

Jon said nothing in reply. His cheeks were still glistening, and Martin once again dabbed at them, movements slow and achingly gentle. He let his fingers graze against Jon’s lips before he straightened up.

“I’ll see you—” Martin managed to say. “later. I’m sure of it.”

Chapter Text

The wind whipped at Jon, tipped with salt that made his face sting and his eyes prickle, tearing the words from his lips as he wandered the empty beach shouting Martin’s name. He could smell the sea, briny and cold, and hear the gentle sound waves breaking against a shore, but no matter how far he walked, it never seemed to grow any closer or any farther, and he never saw it. The only thing he ever saw were the endless sea-smoothed pebbles under his feet, and the fog.

And, finally, Martin.

“Martin!”

“Jon?”

“I – I’m here,” he told him. “I came for you.”

Martin didn’t react. His face was grey and empty as he asked, “Why?”

“I thought you might be lost.”

“Are you real?”

“Yes! Yes, I-I-I am. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.” He reached out desperately for Martin’s arm, but Martin stepped back.

“No. No, I don’t think so.” He spoke so softly that Jon shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the sounds of the wind and sea, but his voice echoed through the fog as clearly as if he’d spoken the words directly into Jon’s ear.

“Why?”

“This is where I should be,” Martin said, and his echo repeated it endlessly – this is where I should be, this is where I should be – a terrible chorus of confirmation. “It feels right.”

“Martin, don’t say that.” 

He reached out again, and this time Martin didn’t pull away. He didn’t react at all as Jon grabbed the coarse, damp fabric of his coat sleeve and held it firm. He didn’t even seem to notice Jon was touching him. His eyes were blank and unfocused as he said, “Nothing hurts here. It’s just quiet. Even the fear is gentle here.”

“This isn’t right. This isn’t you.”

“It is, though.” Martin huffed a quiet laugh. For the first time, something like an emotion flickered across his face, but it wasn’t quite amusement. It looked more like surprise, as though he was observing himself from a distance and found himself curious at his own emotions.

Then he said, in that same awful, empty tone,

“I really loved you, you know.” 

Jon’s heart stopped. His world shrunk to a single point, and for a moment he couldn’t hear the wind or the waves. The only thing that existed was Martin – detached, grey, unfeeling Martin, beautiful Martin, courageous, self-sacrificing idiot Martin, who had loved Jon until there was almost nothing left of him.

Martin, who was fading from view.

The rest of the world came back to Jon in an instant. The waves were crashing in his ears, and the wind was whipping against his face, and Martin’s arm was evaporating from beneath his grip.

“Obviously he’s done something,” he heard himself stammer, “Peter’s done something to mess with your–” But Martin was fading fast, and Jon could hardly keep a grip on him. “Damn it!” 

In a last, desperate act, Jon grabbed Martin by his barely-corporeal shoulders and pulled him down, thrusting his own face up to meet him. He thought he felt the barest brush of Martin’s lips against his own before Martin disappeared entirely.

Then again, it might just have been the wind.

Chapter Text

They ended up in Martin’s apartment, after everything.

They didn’t have a lot of other options. Jon had been functionally homeless ever since the coma, and he wasn’t eager to return to the archives. So Jon let himself be led by the Eye to Martin’s doorstep, and Martin let himself be led by Jon.

Martin didn’t say anything, and Jon didn’t press. He just held firmly onto Martin’s hand to reassure himself that he hadn’t disappeared again.

He dropped his hand when they finally arrived, and the pair stood in the foyer, awkward and uncertain. Martin looked numb and entirely lost, and Jon knew he would need to take charge of the situation, but he was at a loss for what to do. The only suggestion he could think to make was a weak,

“Tea?”

Martin nodded, and Jon shuffled into the kitchen to make it. He couldn’t keep from glancing behind him as he worked, to where Martin still stood in the entryway, staring blankly into space. He didn’t move until the kettle began to whistle. Then he startled, and snapped all at once out of whatever trance he’d been lost in.

“Oh, here,” he murmured, coming into the kitchen and raising his hands to help, “Let me…”

“I’ve got it,” Jon said softly. He poured the hot water into two mugs and stirred in the sugar while Martin watched him with an open, aching look of want. There was something oddly wounded in his expression, too. He stared at Jon’s hands, bobbing the teabags in the water, like he wanted to touch them but knew, somehow, that they would burn him.

“Here,” Jon said when he had discarded the tea bags and added the milk. Martin accepted it with a mumbled, 

“Thanks.” Their fingers brushed as he handed over the mug, and Jon flinched against the cold of Martin’s hand.

“You’re freezing.”

“Sorry,” Martin mumbled, and Jon hated it – hated the blankness in his voice, hated the instinctual way he took on blame, as though everything about him was something that required an apology, the same way he had in the Lonely.

“No, it’s– You should really change, though. Your clothes are soaked.”

“You should, too,” Martin said, because Jon’s own clothes were still damp through from all that damned fog.

“I– I don’t have any spare clothes.”

“I could lend you some,” Martin said. He set down his mug. “Come on. This is too hot to drink right now, anyway.”

He led Jon to his bedroom and picked out some clothes for him – a pair of grey joggers and an old tee shirt with the words Magnus Institute Library Team Building Retreat 2013 printed on the front.

“I’ll just be a second,” Jon said before excusing himself to the bathroom to change.

The clothes were several sizes too big. It took quite a bit of cinching the drawstring waist before the joggers would stay up, and the shirt hung awkwardly off his thin frame, exposing his clavicle and most of his shoulder. It was not the most flattering outfit he had ever worn, but it was warm and dry, and smelled pleasantly of laundry soap.

When he stepped out into the hallway, Martin was already there, changed into a dry pair of jeans and a thick sweater. He glanced at Jon in his ill-fitting borrowed clothes, and for the first time in a very long time, Jon caught him smiling.

“I know, I know,” he muttered. “I look ridiculous.”

“No, you– you look nice.”

Jon opened his mouth. It seemed important to say something to that, though he was at a loss for quite what. Before he could make up his mind, his phone began to buzz in his pocket.

“Basira,” he told Martin when he checked the screen. “I should take this.”

He wandered into the living room while he spoke to her. She updated him on the state of Daisy, the Hunters, and the police, and Jon let her know that they’d gone back to Martin’s apartment.

“How is he?” 

“He’s… alive,” Jon said, because it was too early to say if he was fine, or safe, or unharmed. But once he’d said it, the truth of his words finally sank in. A disbelieving laugh escaped him as he repeated, suddenly giddy, “He’s alive, Basira!”

They both agreed that he and Martin should leave London as quickly as possible, and she told him that Daisy had a safehouse where they could lay low for a time.

“What’s Martin’s address? I’ll swing by and give you the key.”

“I can text it to you in a second…”

“No. No text conversations, no paper trails,” Basira said. It was hard to make out exactly what she said next, given their shaky phone connection, but it sounded a whole lot like she muttered, “...can’t believe we never caught you.”

When Jon hung up, Martin was hovering in the doorway between the corridor and the living room, and he was crying.

“Martin!”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I-I’m sorry I worried you. I’m sorry for all of it.” His voice was soft and shattered, and Jon remembered his own voice, too excited to consider volume. He’s alive, Basira! Martin would have to have heard it. 

“Martin,” Jon said again, more warmly this time. He closed the distance between them and pulled Martin close until their foreheads were resting against each other. “You don’t need to apologize.” Martin was solid beneath his touch, but the memory of how evanescent he’d been, just an hour before, loomed in his mind. “Just stay with me,” he whispered, and Martin flashed him a weak smile.

“Always.”

Their faces were so close Jon could feel the warmth of Martin’s breath sigh across his cheeks.

Jon paused a moment, savoring the closeness, the solid, certain weight of Martin against him. Then he tilted his head up to close the last remaining space between them and pressed his lips to Martin’s.

Martin responded immediately, reaching up to clutch at Jon’s back, pulling him closer, kissing him back with a desperation Jon was only too willing to match. When Jon licked into his mouth, he let out a high, keening, hungry noise that made Jon shiver. He wanted quite badly to make Martin make that noise again.

Nipping gently at Martin’s bottom lip did the trick, he learned to his delight. Letting the hand that wasn’t gripping Martin’s hair drift down to his waist and slip under his shirt provoked a higher, more surprised noise that Jon liked almost as much. He would have gladly spent the whole night cataloguing the sounds, but he felt something wet roll across his cheek, and he realized with a jolt that Martin was crying.

He pulled away instantly and began to apologize. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he stammered. “Is– is this too soon?”

Martin shook his head. “No,” he whispered, “it’s a year too late.”

Jon’s heart sank. He should have known, he should have realized he’d missed his chance. Martin caught his expression, and his eyes widened.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean–” He scrubbed at his wet cheeks and let out a quiet laugh. “How am I still mucking this up?” he whispered to himself. Jon just watched him, wide-eyed. “I meant,” he said finally, leaning down to press one more chaste kiss to Jon’s lips, “that we have a lot of lost time to make up for.”

And Jon wasn’t going to argue with that.

Chapter Text

They kissed quite a bit at the safehouse. Jon thought they had earned that right.

Cups of tea were always handed over with a kiss on the forehead. Jon lit a fire in the hearth and was rewarded with a kiss on the cheek. When the morning fog rolled in and Martin suddenly froze, eyes glazed over with bitter memory, Jon took his hand and pressed a kiss to each of his knuckles, murmuring soft, it’s alright ’s and stay with me’ s, and when Jon woke up from a nightmare with tears in his eyes and no breath in his lungs, Martin tugged him close, kissed the back of his neck, and told him it was just a dream.

They orbited each other like stranded satellites, never drifting far, always drawn back by the gravitational pull between them. Jon knew it wasn’t sustainable, this anxious, clinging codependency, but neither one of them was ready for anything else right now. That would have to come with time.

Jon stood up from where he’d been knelt in front of the hearth, tending the fire, and wiped the dust from his aching knees. Martin looked up from his knitting and stretched his arms out to Jon in obvious invitation. Jon did as he was bid, sinking into the cushions beside Martin and letting himself be pulled close until he was resting on Martin’s chest.

“How was your day, dear?”

Jon laughed. “You were here for most of it.” He cast his mind back, trying to think of something over which they could make conversation. “I’m coming around on this book,” he said, gesturing to the spy novel that was currently resting on the end table. “I think it might actually be a brilliant work of satire.”

“Oh? So you don’t think it’s ‘trite and overwritten, with clear overtones of misogyny’ anymore?”

“Oh, no, it definitely is,” Jon said. He sat up and stretched himself across the couch to grab the worn, cracked paperback. “Listen to this.” He flipped to the page he’d dogeared earlier, when Martin was in the shower and Jon had been buzzing with the urge to subject him to the passage. “Lindsey didn’t bother with a bra; she just slipped an old Yale tee shirt over her ample chest and bounced to the door. She regretted that decision a moment later when she saw the shredded, 6’4” bulk of Jack Masterson – That’s the protagonist’s name, Jack Masterson – on her doorstep. Her breasts perked up at the sight of him, and she was certain he could see her nipples standing at attention through the thin cotton of her shirt.”

“That’s– awful!” Martin exclaimed through wheezing laughter. “That can’t be real!”

“My point exactly!” Jon said. “It has to be a work of incisive self-parody, because no real human man could ever write that and expect it to be taken seriously.”

He settled back against Martin’s chest and rode the aftershocks of another wave of laughter. “You can borrow it if you like,” he offered. “I’m nearly finished.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

They laughed again, more softly, then fell into a comfortable silence. The fire popped and crackled beside them, and a log fell against the grate with a sharp crack. Outside the window, the crickets began to chirp. The lamplight and the fire cast a warm golden glow over the room, gilding the overstuffed armchair, the television set that didn’t get any channels, the axe that Martin used to chop firewood and that they both tried not to think of any other uses Daisy might have had for.

“It still feels like a dream,” Martin murmured eventually.

Jon twisted around so that he could look him in the eye while they spoke. “What does?”

“This? You? All of it,” Martin said. The reflection of the lamplight had flecked his eyes with gold as he stared at Jon in affectionate disbelief. “I’m… I’m glad we get to have this,” he admitted. “Even if Jonah kicks down the door tomorrow, drags us back to the Panopticon, plucks out our eyes – whatever he’s planning – we’ll always have had this. Nothing can change that.”

There were a thousand things Jon could have said to that, but in that moment, all of them felt insufficient, so instead he bowed his head and lowered his lips to Martin’s.

It wasn’t their first kiss, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was soft and sweet and languid. They weren’t in any hurry, anymore. After a moment, Jon pulled back and simply stared down at Martin, sprawled beneath him. His eyes had slipped closed and his lips were parted and his cheeks were growing pink. It might have been the most beautiful sight Jon had ever seen. When he opened his eyes, he looked dazed, and more than a little dazzled. Jon could sympathize.

“I love you,” Martin whispered, and that was a first.

“I love you, too,” Jon replied in a breathless rush. “God, Martin, I–” Once again, his words failed him, so he bent down for one more kiss. It seemed to get the message across.

Chapter Text

Jon had a thousand eyes, pockmarking his skin, encircling his head in grotesque haloes, swivelling and searching and drinking in every last drop of terror in the ruined world.

And all he could look at was Martin. 

Martin’s face, furious and terrified and determined beyond words. Martin’s hands, white-knuckled with effort as he tried to wrench Jon free from the web of black magnetic tape that spooled over his arms, across his chest, around his throat. The blood trickling from Martin’s forehead where he’d been struck by a chunk of fallen masonry. If he made it out of this, he’d have a scar on his forehead to match Jon’s, but he wouldn’t, he couldn’t if he didn’t leave right now.

“I can’t protect you from this,” Jon told him desperately. “Go!”

“I’m not leaving you trapped here killing the world while I watch!”

“If you stay, you’ll die.”

And Martin did not hesitate for even a moment before he said, “Then I’ll die!”

Jon’s answering, “No!” was all but drowned out as another explosion rocked the panopticon. The floor was collapsing under their feet, and the walls were crumbling, and half of Jon’s eyes were blinded by a shower of ash and rubble raining down from what remained of the ceiling. He couldn’t see what happened – and, God, what use was the Eye if he couldn’t even see this – but he heard a high, whimpering noise of pain as something hard and heavy collided with Martin, and then Martin collapsed onto Jon’s chest. Jon did his best to hold him steady.

“Martin, please,” he murmured. Even with all the noise around them, he didn’t have to shout when they were this close. “I can’t lose you. Not like this.”

“Tough! Okay?” Martin set his jaw and held Jon’s gaze. The floor shook again, but he didn’t flinch. “Where you go, I go!”

Jon heard himself murmur back, “That’s the deal.”

The fate of untold thousands of universes hung in the balance. If Jon lived through this, he would hate himself forever for how easy it was to make the choice.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was steady, now. A wave of calm had washed over him when he’d come to his decision. All he had to do now was ride it to the end.

Martin hadn’t yet caught on. “What?”

“Do it.The knife’s just there. Let them go.”

Martin gaped at him in horror. “I’m not going to kill you!”

“Cut the tether,” Jon insisted. “Send them away.”

Martin stared back. His face was painted an eerie white from all the ash and powdered masonry that clung to his skin, making the bright arterial red of his forehead wound stand out like a brushstroke on a fresh canvas. 

“Maybe we both die. Probably. But maybe…” Jon’s voice wobbled, then broke. “Maybe everything works out, and we end up somewhere else.”

“Together?”

“One way or another. Together.”

Martin stooped to pick up the knife. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly keep his grip.

“I don’t think I can…”

“It has to be you. The Eye won’t let me do it.”

“Are you sure about this?” Martin’s eyes were wide and fixed on Jon’s, and Jon couldn’t bring himself to lie.

“No,” he said. “But I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They kissed.

It was a farewell, and they both knew it, whatever Jon might say about Somewhere Else. Martin’s lips were warm and desperate, pressing into Jon’s skin like he was the last real thing in the universe, and Jon could feel him shaking and sobbing in his arms. It lasted just a second longer than Jon was expecting, and he was beginning to wonder if he would need to pull away, to remind Martin that they didn’t have time, when he felt the searing pain of a knife in his chest.

Martin’s hands were firm. Even while he shuddered with pain and disgust for the task at hand, in this one, most important moment, he was steady and unflinching. He dealt a single hard blow to the convenient gap in Jon’s ribcage, and the knife met no resistance on its way to Jon’s heart.

Jon gasped as if he’d been punched, all the air leaving his lungs with a sickening pop. He tried to say Thank you, tried to say I love you, tried to say I’m sorry, but he couldn’t get a breath. All he could do was clutch at Martin with clumsy, weakening limbs, and hope he knew how much it meant.

A ragged sob tore from Martin’s throat as the world collapsed around them. Jon felt a tug from the tapes, pulling him toward the rip in the fabric of reality. The last thing Jon felt before everything went dark was Martin tightening his grip, holding fast to him as the web pulled them both into that vast unknown, and he contented himself that wherever they were going, they would go there together.

Chapter Text

John rubbed wearily at his eyes. The spreadsheet before him was beginning to blur, and he was painfully aware that he’d skipped his morning coffee. He checked the clock in the top corner of his screen. Almost time for lunch, anyway. Might as well head to the break room now.

He minimized Excel and got up. His joints ached today, the way they always did when he didn’t get enough sleep. The nightmares had been getting worse with the change of the seasons, the summer air stirring up — well, not old memories, nothing so helpful as that, but a vague and unmotivated sense of unease.

He paused outside the door to the break room when he heard voices from behind the door. That wouldn’t normally be enough to give him pause – there always seemed to be at least a few of his coworkers in the break room – but he thought he caught the sound of his own name.

“Have you guys gotten a chance to sign John’s card?” Trevor from Human Resources asked. “His birthday’s today.”

Oh, right. It was, wasn’t it?

A whole year. 

“Oh, give it here,” Anne from accounting said. “Though I bet you anything it’s not his real birthday.”

John’s stomach gave a queasy lurch. He’d never told her that. How did she know?

John very much doubted it was his real birthday, but he had no way of being sure. He couldn’t remember a thing from before the Incident. Still, it had seemed appropriate enough. He’d been medically dead, according to the doctors, for at least a few minutes, so it was, if nothing else, the anniversary of a kind of rebirth.

“What do you mean?” asked a voice that John thought might have belonged to Tara from accounting, though it was hard to tell through the door.

“They’d have to change your birthday in Witness Protection, right?”

“Not this again,” Trevor sighed.

“Do we even have Witness Protection in England?” asked Probably-Tara. “I’ve only ever heard about it in American movies.”

“Maybe John’s American,” Anne suggested. “I’ve always said his accent sounds fake.”

A chorus of quiet chuckles rippled out from behind the door. John decided not to stop by the breakroom, in the end.

He may as well go out for lunch. It was his birthday, after all.

There was a bakery just down the street that sold good sandwiches and decent coffee, and he headed there. The sun blazed bright and beautiful in a cornflower-blue sky, bouncing off of windows, sidewalks, and the shoulders of pedestrians in cheery white-gold rays. John walked, and he soaked in the sunlight, and he thought.

A whole year.

There was a time he thought he’d never make it this far. When he’d woken up with no memories and no name – nothing but the clothes on his back and the knife sticking out of his chest – he couldn’t imagine making it to the end of the week. Now here he was, a year later, enjoying the little life he’d managed to scrounge for himself. It was not an impressive life by any stretch of the imagination, but he had a job and a flat and even a few friends, and none of those things had seemed likely a year ago. He thought, in spite of everything, that he was going to be okay.

There was something bitter to the anniversary, too. A full year had come and gone with no sign of recovering his memories, and John knew he’d have to accept that they simply weren’t coming back. He didn’t know how to process the loss, how to mourn his own life, how to come to terms with the fact that he didn’t even know his own name. (The hospital had labeled him a John Doe, and “John” had felt as right as any other name, so he’d kept it, but he wondered sometimes what his real name had been.) He didn’t even know where he was from – no missing persons report for someone matching his description had ever cropped up in London, so he suspected he might have been from out of town. Once he had tried to simply close his eyes and think of home to see if that brought anything back. He’d got a vague image in his head of a tiny cottage, and a fire in a grate, and something in the back of his mind had told him Scotland. But had just flicked past an old Hamish MacBeth rerun on the TV, so he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t influenced. He certainly didn’t sound Scottish.

Something flashed by in the corner of John’s eye, and he was shaken from his thoughts by a sudden bolt of terror. He froze, muscles stiffening, heart pounding so hard he couldn’t hear anything over the din of his own pulse. Slowly, he turned.

It was a mannequin in a shop window, and nothing more.

John shook himself. He hated when that happened. There were a number of memories, he’d learned, that his mind couldn't access but his body recalled instinctively, and nearly all of them seemed to send him into a panic. There must have been at least a dozen things he’d found so far that sent him into heat-stopping, pulse-jittering, fight-or-flight terror – spiders and clowns and confined spaces, worms and heights and anything touching the scar on his throat, and tape recorders, of all things.

Not all of them made him afraid, though. Some were stranger. He’d encounter some innocuous trigger – fog or tea or the smell of bergamot – and suddenly a hollow, empty pit would open up in his chest, and he’d ache. Sometimes a single tear would prick the corner of his eye, and on some rare and unpleasant occasions he’d find himself weeping – sobbing like an abandoned child over something or someone he knew only as an absence.

The bell jangled merrily, heedless of the turn of John’s thoughts, when he opened the bakery door. The woman behind the counter looked up at the sound, and flashed him a smile.

“Your usual?” she asked.

“Plus a small black coffee.”

He muttered a quiet thank you as she handed him his change and got started on his order. He’d beaten the lunch rush today, and there were no other customers in the store, so she chatted while she poured the coffee.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I was thinking I might take my lunch over to the park and eat outside today.”

“I’ll pack the sandwich to-go, then.”

A few minutes later, John walked out of the bakery with a cup of coffee in hand and a brown bag tucked under his arm. It was, in fact, a beautiful day – the sky was bright and cloudless, and the air was warmer than it should have been this early in spring, but every now and then a chill breeze would stir into life with a reminder of the recent frost.

When he got to the park, he grabbed a seat at his favorite bench, the one beside the linden tree that had a good view of the duck pond, and unwrapped his sandwich. He took in the park while he ate. Sunlight dappled the pond in flecks of gold. A young couple pushed a stroller over the footpath. A pair of ducks cruised the edge of the pond, waiting for someone to toss some bread their way. A tall man in a sweater stood at the waters’ edge and stared contemplatively into the shallows. A jogger ran past, tugged along by an excitable border collie. 

John froze. That familiar feeling washed over him, that he had seen something he ought to recognize but didn’t. It didn’t come with fear this time, or even sadness. He couldn’t exactly say what the emotion was that threatened to swallow him whole – it was too large to hold in his head. He held his breath, and waited.

The man at the edge of the pond turned his head. He was tall and fat, and wearing a blue cable-knit sweater that looked a bit too thick to be comfortable on such an unseasonably warm day, and he was stunning. His lips parted with shock when he caught John’s eye.

“Jon?” the man asked, and something within Jon clicked. Yes, that was his name, that had always been his name.

“Martin?”

He hadn’t known what he was going to say before he said it, but he knew, as soon as the word escaped his lips, that it was right. This was Martin. He couldn’t say who or what Martin was, but he was Martin, and that was the most important thing in the world.

One moment they were staring, frozen, and the next they were in motion. Jon rose from the bench, lunch abandoned, and Martin closed the distance between them in a few long strides. They collided with such force it nearly knocked the air from Jon’s lungs, but he didn’t care. He clung to the man in front of him with all his strength. Martin wrapped his arms around Jon, pressing him to his chest like he wanted to shove Jon into his ribcage and keep him next to his heart forever. Jon couldn’t say he’d mind.

Eventually, they pulled apart just enough to look each other in the eyes. Jon still clutched at Martin, gripping his arms tightly for fear he would disappear if Jon let go. At some point, Martin had begun to cry, and Jon reached up to brush his tears away. Martin studied his face.

“Jon,” he said again, voice breathless with disbelief. 

“Martin,” Jon repeated, because it was the only thing he could really be sure of.

Well. Not the only thing.

“I love you,” he whispered, because he did. He was certain of that, even if he still wasn’t entirely certain who he was – who either of them were.

Martin shut his eyes against more tears, and nodded. His voice was hoarse when he whispered, “I never thought I’d see you again.”

Jon didn’t think about what he did next. His body moved with practiced ease, tugging at Martin’s collar like it was the most natural thing in the world, pulling his face down to meet his, bringing their lips together.

It all came back to him in flashes. The Fears, the Institute, the end of the world. Sasha, Tim, Georgie, Basira, Martin – Martin in the Lonely, Martin in the safehouse, Martin in the Panopticon. The plan. The knife.

He tightened his grip on Martin, clutching tight fistfuls of his sweater. The weight of the past year settled on his shoulders, and he realized how desperately he had missed him in that time. A soft whimpering noise escaped Martin’s throat, and Jon hesitated, but Martin only pressed deeper into the kiss, warm, chapped lips burning against Jon’s skin with open desperation.

There was a quiet splash, followed by an indignant quack, and they both returned to the present at the same time. They were in public, Jon remembered with a jolt. They were, in fact, kissing and crying and trying to crawl down each other’s throats in the middle of a crowded park.

Jon pulled away, reluctant. He huffed a self-conscious laugh.

“Well.”

Martin laughed as well. “Yeah.”

Jon glanced at his watch. “I’m– I-I’m actually supposed to be back at work soon,” he said. “But I think, given the circumstances, I might have to take the rest of the day off.”

Martin smiled. How had Jon gone an entire year without that smile?

“M-Maybe we could head back to mine?” Jon suggested. “We– I mean, w-we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

The smile widened. “Yeah,” Martin said in a fond, familiar murmur, “I’d like that.”