Chapter Text
Jon felt even worse arriving at the studio on Monday than he had done a week prior. A week of staying up late obsessively scrolling twitter, reddit, and one particularly embarrassing time, tiktok, had not been good to him. His skin looked almost translucent, and he was at the end of his tether. He also had still not replied to Martin’s text from Saturday night. He added an extra teaspoon to his mug of the instant coffee he’d bought when he moved into the flat but had mostly ignored in favour of grabbing something as he rushed out of the door. Today, especially, that looked tempting. Anything to delay rehearsal time. God, how was he going to convince Martin that he wasn’t having… feelings when he was so clearly an open book. Practically an audiobook turned to full volume. Almost a 3D film.
On the tube, Jon tried and failed to come up with a game plan, unless you count “look less smitten, for God’s sake” as a plan. It was always Martin who had a good idea in a crisis. Looking back on the time he’d known him, Jon thought that the moment Martin had (deservedly) torn him a new one for not taking rehearsals seriously and being so distant and then offered to help him rehabilitate his image was the moment he’d really started falling in earnest. He could see it now, Martin red-faced with his hands on his hips, telling Jon that he wasn’t going to let some little “Oxford-educated posh boy” ruin this career opportunity. How all at once Jon had realised that he wasn’t just a glowing smile and a pair of biceps getting through life easily, blissfully unaware of how grim the world could be, the same world that seemed to love him. He was cynical as hell but he cared about his fans too. He was a talented dancer who had to prove himself after a lifetime of skipping rehearsals to hold down another job. At the time, Jon had thought it was just admiration that he was feeling, and maybe a sense of solidarity, but in hindsight he knew it was more than that.
Catching sight of his face reflected in his phone screen, Jon realised he was doing that dopey smile that he’d dwelled on for hours reflected back to him in twitter gifs. Groaning, he looked up and realised that the tube was at his stop. He rushed off, and gave himself a final bracing pep talk about keeping that kind of stupid facial expression out of the rehearsal room as he walked to the studio.
Martin explained the Viennese waltz (“It’s really just a faster waltz, you’ll be fine”) as he twisted Jon’s hair around his fingers. Martin had never gone for anything more elaborate than a simple bun, but the time it took for him to put Jon’s hair up seemed to get longer each week. Jon wished it wouldn’t, it was a constant fight stopping himself from leaning back into the touch.
“Are you sure there was nothing wrong last week? You seemed off.”
“No, nothing wrong. Just not an easy dance.”
Martin hmm-ed noncommittally. “It is a hard dance. But you’re a good dancer, and it seemed to be exactly in your wheelhouse.”
Jon didn’t reply.
“Jon, this doesn’t work if you don’t tell me things. If you’ve seen something online that has you worried again, I’d really like it if you could tell me.”
Jon jerked his head out of Martin’s grasp with enough force that it pulled on his hair. Martin had seemingly just been absent-mindedly stroking his hair at this point, so at least it was fully tied up. Best to put a quick stop to that kind of thing anyway, it felt amazing and Jon hated it. In the mirror, Martin seemed to deflate slightly, and Jon heard a faint, resigned sigh. It hurt worse than the hair pulling, like something twisting in his gut.
Rehearsals went fine, Jon thought. As well as they could have done. That was to say, he was still avoiding eye contact and he could see Martin’s face seesawing between frustration and dejection whenever he did look at him, which achedanew each time. Nevertheless the Viennese waltz was right up Jon’s street. It had a nice flow, a good speed, and the story was at least easy for him to understand.
“It’s about loving someone you can’t have.” Martin had explained on the first day. “We, uh- the characters, obviously, heh- keep running away from each other and back together because they don’t know what to do. You have to be very expressive with your body to communicate that kind of inner turmoil.”
The story was very easy to understand.
There was one moment where Martin walked away and the music stopped, and Jon had to follow him, touch his shoulder and turn him around. For some reason it felt all the more vulnerable in the silence. After Martin had turned to face Jon they paused briefly, before taking hold of each other again as the music came back. Looking up at Martin in that pause was torture, and Jon avoided it at all costs. On Friday, Martin came into the studio in a bad mood, and when at 3pm Jon finally asked him why, he said that he had tried to get the band to remove the pause since Jon seemed to be struggling so much with selling that moment, but that they had said it was too late. Hearing that stung like a skinned knee.
When Saturday night rolled around, Jon was hardly thinking about dancing, so focussed was he on performing the part of a man with no particular feelings about the tall, smart, beautiful man spinning him around a ballroom and looking down at Jon like he was someone to love. His expression when Martin walked into the makeup room was carefully schooled, he gave him a perfunctory nod and then tore his eyes back to his own reflection. God, get it together Sims. It’s showtime.
“Lazy, lacklustre, lacking in connection.” Craig said after they had danced. Jon flinched. He had seen other pairings get comments like that, but he hadn’t ever received them himself. He looked up, and Martin’s jaw was set in a tense line.
“I’m afraid I have to agree with Craig,” Shirley added. “You made such a promising start, Jon, I but you’ve really taken a turn for the worse lately. We’re in the semi-finals, you should be better than this.”
Jon had almost forgotten that these were the semi-finals. God, it was all going to be over so soon. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or heartbroken not to be doing this with Martin anymore. He ignored the fact that it could all be over this week, tomorrow in fact, but it gnawed distantly in his mind.
The walk to the balcony with Martin was tense. Jon wanted to apologise but knew he wouldn’t go back and change how he’d been acting if he could. This was for the best. When they arrived, the judges’ scores were bad. Properly bad this time, they even got a five from Craig. Claudia awkwardly tried to lighten the mood, and Tim gave them each a brotherly pat on the back and a sympathetic smile. Jon hated that he knew exactly what Martin’s fakest smile looked like and that he recognised it immediately.
“Try to get some sleep tonight, Jon.” Martin said quietly once they were backstage, before disappearing silently into his dressing room. He didn’t say anything reassuring about the dance-off. Neither did twitter, when Jon opened it the minute he was alone. He couldn’t see many posts theorising about his and Martin’s relationship for the sea of threads about how bad this week’s performance had been and why that might be. Wrapping his coat around him against the early December chill, Jon thought that this was pretty cold comfort.
Jon felt sick to his stomach all of Sunday, and staring into the swirling grey water of the pasta he was boiling to make himself eat something before he went to the studio to record the results show he thought of nothing at all besides an amorphous cloud of anxiety without any specific focus, or maybe with two many focuses to count. He hadn’t slept well again, he’d been up half the night on twitter and the other half writing more of his next novel. At least something was progressing as it should, although he had been loath to read it back. For the first time in years, he was doubting his ability to write. The pasta was soft and soggy, and Jon ate only a forkful before trudging out to the tube stop.
Waiting on stage for the results, Jon chanced a look up at Martin. This time he didn’t look back, staring forward with his brow set grimly in a line. Things were wrong in a major way, maybe worse than Jon had realised. He wanted to ask Martin how bad the outlook was, but there was no way he could do so in the silence.
“In no particular order,” the booming voice of the announcer foretold “the first couple through to the final is…” A pause for effect. God, when had these got so long? “Rogelio and Sasha!”
Jon glanced over, to see Sasha grinning and hugging Rogelio as the lights went out on them. He was a soap star maybe? Jon thought he had seen his face around. The announcer's voice turned into booming static in the haze of Jon’s anxiety as it continued to list results.
“And now, the couple with the lowest number of votes, who will be our first couple in the dance-off…” Jon felt Martin tense beside him. “Jon and Martin.”
The light above them turned red, and finally Martin looked at Jon. His face was an unreadable mixture of emotion, but Jon could easily see that his eyes were sparklier than normal. He brushed a quick hand across his cheek, passing it off to the wider public as scratching his ear, leaving only Jon with the guilty knowledge that he had done this to Martin. Jon felt like he was falling through a never-ending red void, like all of this might just be a horrible dream.
There was about ten minutes before the dance-off couples needed to be ready to perform during which time they had some filler items talking about costume and choreography, so Jon bolted backstage. Leaning over the bathroom sink and screwing his eyes shut so tightly that red flashed into his vision again, all he could think of was Martin’s face. Somehow, he had forgotten why he was even doing this. Sure, fixing his reputation had been important, but he hadn’t seen a theory post about him being homophobic in over a month and his fan groups on facebook had gone eerily silent. He could have been knocked out of the competition weeks ago and still had a perfectly fine public image. No, he was doing this for Martin. Martin, who sometimes came into the studio with a pinched expression and bags under his eyes that let Jon know that he had been up all night looking after a mother who didn’t even know how lucky she was to have him. Martin, who had forgiven Jon for being an absolute twat when they first met and had given him a second chance. Martin who looked so soft that every night when Jon went back to his cold, dingy flat all he could think of was curling up with Martin instead.
“Get over this.” He gritted out to his reflection in the mirror. “Get over this right now. You’ve let your pathetic, pathetic feelings hurt Martin, and potentially cost him an opportunity that he deserves more than anyone in the world.” He looked a little crazed, his hair wild and sticking up at all angles and his eyes unnaturally wide. “You did this. You did this to the man you-” well, if he was being honest with himself he might as well go all the way. “You did this to the man you love. And now you’ve got to fix it.”
Walking calmly back out onto the dancefloor, Jon felt focussed in a way he hadn’t in weeks. He met Martin’s gaze without a waver as the music began. If his stupid feelings for the man could ever be useful, they could be useful for this. As they began to glide around the ballroom, Jon let himself look with all the adoration he had kept folded up in his chest. It didn’t matter if Martin found out how he felt, he was getting over it anyway and there were more important things than Jon’s stupid pride. The dance was going well for the first time all week. With a start, Jon realised that the part Martin had wanted to remove was coming up. He had to get this part right especially.
Bury me six feet in snow
The music stopped. Martin walked away from him and Jon followed. He ran a hand up his arm, took hold of his shoulder, tender but firm, and turned him around. A pause. It felt like they were existing in a bubble, just Jon and Martin looking at each other, 50% real love, 50% the performance of a talented actor. Goodbye, studio audience, judges, all of Great Britain clustered in front of their television sets. For a moment, Jon didn’t care. He let himself forget the pretence and that Martin would never love him back and that there were bound to be gifs of this online later and let himself just admire the most perfect face he had ever seen and memorise it. For a brief milisecond Martin seemed to lean forward towards Jon's face, but then the music started up again:
Here we are, wasting our chances for the last time
This wasn’t a chance Jon was going to waste. As he felt Martin’s hand grab his waist and took hold of Martin’s shoulder, he knew that they were going to the final.