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Chapter Text

Before booting up Zoom, Jon took a moment to regret agreeing to this interview. The shed at the bottom of his garden was quiet, save for the faint sound of cars on the distant main road and much more nearby, the morning’s rain dripping from the eves. In here, he was safe from the outside world; just him at his desk, the lumpy old armchair in the corner that he had fallen asleep on once or twice this week, and the shelves upon shelves of books. You could practically hear the old structure groaning under their weight, and perhaps a more present person might have had a clearout. Jon was not such a person. He liked the way they lined the walls, creating his own anechoic chamber. Hell, some weeks he didn’t even turn the wifi on. Jon ran his hands through his hair, feeling its rough ends slip from his fingers and going again, trying to massage some calm into his scalp. Maybe even some social skills. No point in delaying the inevitable. His publishing house set these up every time a book came out, and although it was ultimately his choice, the voice Elias used on the phone would have anybody forgetting that.

“Good afternoon Jon,” the interviewer greeted him with a polite smile “How are you today?”
“I’m fine thank you,” Jon responded stiffly, feeling a familiar prickle begin at the back of his neck. Fortunately the interviewer seemed unphased. Jon was beginning to wonder if they were warned in advance.
“I was wondering if you could start by telling us a bit about your latest mystery?”
The interview continued on relatively safe territory, the interviewer wasn’t even particularly horrified by all the flesh-eating worms in Jon’s latest book. Good. Jon was just beginning to tentatively pat himself on the back when there came the question that he would have been dreading if he hadn’t been so determinedly avoiding it, standing there in the corner of the shed he called an office, glittering like a mirrorball.
“Just before we wrap this up, what’s this I hear about you going on Strictly Come Dancing? By all accounts the BBC has been asking you for years, what changed your mind?”

Christ, maybe Jon shouldn’t have been ignoring this question with such commitment, he could have come up with an answer in advance. He knew why the BBC had wanted him so much, apparently husbands refusing to watch Strictly had been driving ratings down and the BBC had decided that they needed to give them something to watch for. He knew, had always known on some level, that his audience was cishet men in their fifties at least, the kind of men who married the women who watched Strictly, the kind who would elbow him out of the way at the pub without really looking at him. He knew that. That didn’t mean it hadn’t been a shock just a few months back when Elias had finally strong-armed him into creating some kind of online presence, showing his face on the Facebook fan groups at least. The first post he saw on the largest group was about how he hadn’t given into the pressure to write gay romances into his books, completely ignoring how he had only written one romance and it had been, in his opinion, his worst work. Mysteries were no place for romances anyway. Something twisted in Jon’s chest, something that had been silent since he had accepted his sexuality in his first year of uni. He continued scrolling. There were plenty of positive, inoffensive posts, but his eyes skipped over those, focussing on the one making fun of people thinking the detective in his bestseller wasn’t white. Jon had really thought that he had nailed British Pakistani culture in that one, write what you know and suchlike. God, maybe he shouldn’t have baulked at including an author photo in his books. It wasn’t like he lived like a fugitive but it was clear that very little of his audience could picture him.

The hand running through Jon’s hair became more insistent, pulling a little as it went. He wanted to grab the person who had written that stupid post by the shoulders and yell in their face. He wanted to cry in his armchair. He wanted to go on national TV in a sparkly shirt and yell something about his first ever crush, Hamza Rahman, the boy he’d watched with something simmering in him that felt like anxiety if anxiety felt wonderful across the room in Quran class every week growing up. For the first time in his career, he wanted a presence.

Just then, an email notification. Elias again. Jon opened it and skimmed everything his agent had to say about positive engagement with fan communities, but stopped short when he saw the note at the end, a perfunctory comment that the BBC had invited him to be on Strictly again, and that Elias had said no thank you on his behalf. Jon’s fingers were typing a reply before his brain had had a chance to consider the matter.

Elias,
Tell them I’ll go on Strictly if they’ll let me dance with a man.
J

It didn’t take long for Elias to reply. God, did that man ever leave his desk. Not that Jon was one to talk. He was a ball of thrumming nerves as he skimmed over the message, something about weighing up the publicity this could bring him with how his target audience might feel about him dancing with a man. Ugh, target audience? Jon wouldn’t write a book intended for these people if you held a gun to his head. He tapped out a quick confirmation and hit send with one hand while rummaging in his pocket for a cigarette with the other.

Focus, Sims, you’re taking too long to answer the question. Jon obviously couldn’t tell the interviewer the real answer, that he had had a momentary impulse to stick it to the bunch of Tories, or God forbid, Reform UK voters, that were his entire livelihood, but what could he say instead?
“I’ve… been interested in having more of a public presence recently, I realise I’m rather known to be reclusive.”
Well, that was some of the answer at least. After concluding the interview, Jon took a moment to click his knuckles and bury his mounting panic about his upcoming ballroom debut deep within his desk drawer, before getting right back down to the first draft of his next book. Something about identity theft maybe.

Jon managed to maintain his sense of denial for the next two months, right up until he was doing up his trainers in his hotel room ready to meet the pros for the first time. He had tossed and turned all night on the unfamiliar mattress and was feeling distinctly grouchy. Checking google maps on his phone, he noted that the bus was on time. Good, he wanted to be early, hopefully get a feel for the place before anyone else arrived. Water bottle, check. Hair bands, check. Spare t-shirt in case the one he’s wearing has something wrong with it, check. Jon is stalling. Hands shaking, he shouldered his dark grey backpack and went to catch the bus.

The journey was thankfully painless, even if Jon couldn’t keep his eyes on his book, or out the window, or really anywhere for long, and all too soon he was dragging his feet through the studio doors. Inside, the lights were just a little too bright, seemingly made brighter by the sparkling mirrors at the end of the room. To Jon’s irritation, someone was there even earlier than him. The man had his back to the door, facing the mirror and fussing with his hair, a look of distaste clouding his face. He was remarkably tall, easily 6’3, built broad with large but gentle hands and strong legs. He caught sight of Jon in the mirror and turned, face already smoothing out into a placating smile. Well, at least this interloper was apologetic about putting Jon in such an awkward social situation.
“Hi, I’m Martin, uh, Blackwood. I guess.” The man was still smiling, clearly expecting something.
“Jon.” Jon didn’t exactly scowl on purpose, but he certainly didn’t feel like interfering with what his face wanted to do. Martin’s smile wobbled for a moment, before solidifying again into something a little less warm but still resolutely polite. Jon did not have any ideas for further small talk, but apparently Martin did.
“So, you’re one of the celebrities, right? What d’you do?”
“I write.” Martin seemed buoyed by this response for some reason.
“Oh really? What do you write? Not poems by any chance? Because they’re hardly any good but I do like to-”
“Poems tend not to be very good, it’s rather their default state.” Again, Martin looked crestfallen, and Jon was beginning to wonder if he hadn’t been too harsh when the studio door swung open again and three more people entered, chattering amongst themselves. Jon continued to observe Martin out of the corner of his eye, and noted that while he’d expect him to relax on account of no longer having to make small talk with a stranger, he instead seemed to stiffen, drawing himself up straighter. His smile became even more plastic, but also more polite.

The new people, who were setting down their bags in a pile in the corner, were clearly professional dancers. Jon had looked them all up late one night in a moment of unusually raw anxiety, but even if he hadn’t, he’d have known from the way they moved. The apparent leader of the pack, a man not quite as tall as Martin with strong, angular forearms and floppy dark brown hair that appeared to fall perfectly even as he bent to rummage for his water bottle was the first to catch sight of Jon, fixing him with a grin bright enough to give you a sunburn.
“Tim,” he said, approaching Jon with a hand outstretched. At least saying his own name and shaking hands was familiar territory, and Jon accomplished the task with relative ease.
“I see you’ve already met Martin, then,” the man continued, nodding his head towards the corner with the bags where Martin seemed to be cooing over photos of another professional’s new puppy.
“I, ah, yes.” Jon said, running a hand through his hair which quickly got caught in his untidy ponytail. He’d forgotten he had that in. When Jon didn’t elaborate any further, Tim gave him another UV level ten smile, and went over to join the others, who apparently hadn’t run out of puppy pictures yet. Jon noticed Martin look around the group and then at him, almost as if surprised not to see him joining them. Surprised? Jon hadn’t been invited, he was hardly going to muscle in on this dancer chat. Besides, he was a cat person. With little else to do while he waited for everyone else to arrive, he sat down on the floor across the room from them and tried to get back into his book. His focus had not improved.

The day consisted mostly of dance-related exercises done in pairs, which rotated every half hour or so while the producers watched them to assess chemistry. Jon was exhausted from learning all the new faces, and even more so from struggling through the first steps of a waltz ten times without getting any better. He could see that he wasn’t doing as poorly as some of the people in the room though, and that combined with the fact that the producers had apparently complied with his request to dance with a man just about kept him going. Finally, he was passed to Martin, whose left hand appeared to shake a little as it landed on his waist. Up close, Jon could see a few tiny freckles tracing up his nose bridge and feel the way his shoulder muscles moved under his fingers as he spun Jon around at a snail’s pace. He wondered how Martin felt dancing with another man. He didn’t seem to show any distaste, but then again, he could just be good at hiding it. Jon had been learning a lot about what people really thought as of late.

The music faded to an end and a producer clapped their hands.
“Great work today everyone, we’ll be in touch about your professional partner assignments and first official interviews in the next few weeks. Excited to be working with you all!”
Martin seemed to move as if to say something to Jon, but Jon had already let go and gone to gather up his bag and head out for the bus. The day had been as painless as it could have been, but he was not staying any longer than he had to. Outside, the clear morning had turned to a charcoal-grey late afternoon, and Jon turned up his collar against the wind and the noncommittal drizzle of rain. Over his shoulder, he spotted a group of mixed professionals and celebrities leaving the studio together and making for the pub on the corner, all chatting in a warm huddle. Martin’s head cleared the group easily, and for a moment Jon thought he saw him glance his way and make a few seconds of eye contact before jerking his head back to listen to whatever Tim was saying. Pulling his own gaze back to the approaching bus, Jon proffered his brand new oyster card to the driver with a sigh.

Chapter Text

Two weeks later, Jon was awoken by his buzzing phone pressed against his face. For a moment he was disoriented, but quickly he recognised the feeling of his cramping legs pressed to his chest, arms wrapped around him in an awkward position and a crick in his neck. God, he should really stop falling asleep in his office armchair. He peeled his phone off of his cheek and checked the notification, which turned out to be an email from the Strictly team.

Dear Jon,
Hope you’re well. Just getting in touch to let you know that Martin Blackwood is your assigned professional partner, and that the first official interviews will be on the 24th and 25th. We’ll organise particulars with your agent. In the meantime, please consider any songs you’d like to dance to and forward us a list.
Best,
Saorise Jeffrey
Executive producer

Jon barely registered any of the email beyond the word Martin. Martin? Seriously? Jon didn’t hate the man, despite how he may have made it look when they met. It was just that Martin had an annoying way of trying too hard. The whole time they danced together he kept looking at Jon with friendly little smiles that felt too much like pity. Plus, he was a dog person who liked poetry and made inane small talk about Jon’s career and how people’s holidays had been. No way could Jon have chemistry with someone like that. Leaning back, head bumping against the hard back of the armchair, Jon let out a groan. For the first time since he’d sent that poorly thought-through email to Elias, the enormity of what he’d signed up for hit him as if the shelves above had finally given out, showering him in hardcovers. In just a few weeks his first interviews with Martin would be online, and maybe his technical illiteracy had protected him from the bullshit his audience had been posting in their facebook groups, but he knew he couldn’t avoid a spotlight that bright. Rubbing his eyes with his fists and looking around for a pack of cigarettes, he dragged his creaky bones to his desk to keep writing.

It was at the costume fitting a week later that Jon saw Martin again for the first time. He was as tall as Jon had remembered, and was wearing a light blue t-shirt that had clearly attained ultimate softness from going through the wash every week for years. When Jon walked into the room, he was helping himself to a cereal bar from the snack table. He turned, giving Jon another of those smiles, the kind you’d give to a child who’s nervous to share what they did over the weekend during circle time. The back of Jon’s neck bristled.

“Have you done anything like this before?” Martin asked, leaning back against a wall.

“No, I’ve always valued keeping a low profile.” Jon responded, not moving any closer.

“It’s not that bad, it’s actually pretty quick and non-awkward. Well, mostly. There was that one time Jess tried to measure me and she couldn’t reach my shoulders whatever we tried. That was a bit awkward, but, ah- I’m sure today will be, uh- fun?” He seemed to run out of steam half way through his sentence, but was unwilling to let there be silence. God, he could stand to shut up sometimes. Jon “hmm”-ed noncommittally and finally walked away from the door to peruse the snack table.

Martin was right, the fitting was over relatively soon, all of Jon’s measurements stored in the smiling costume designer’s little notepad, ready to be turned into that glittery costume he’d been contemplating antagonising his supposed fans with.

“Only a few more fittings,” they told him, swinging the notepad shut and shoving it into a pocket, “And we’ll have you all glammed up and ready to dance!”

Jon shuddered momentarily at the thought, but then remembered the posts on that facebook group, the ones he’d been reading late at night when he let himself ruminate on how he’d cultivated such a following. He had a reason to be doing this.

Martin seemed to be done with the fitting too, Jon could see him throwing his head back laughing at something the costume designer said, his dishwater blond curls falling away from his face. Then, all of a sudden, his face was turning to Jon, and Jon was acutely aware that he’d been staring. Still, his smile didn’t falter, and Jon hoped that he hadn’t realised. This wasn’t unusual, Jon was someone who tended to zone out and stare into space, and sometimes space was a person, a stranger on the bus or someone in a meeting. It wasn’t like he was actually looking at Martin. Shit, he hadn’t actually stopped staring, and now Martin was coming over.

“It’s looking like we’re all done here, so I was wondering if you wanted to grab a coffee, maybe get to know each other a little? There’s a nice coffee shop on the corner, I especially like their jasmine tea. That is, if you’re not doing anything?”

Jon could think of few things he wanted to do less, and his mouth was replying before he even thought of an excuse.
“I am, actually. Doing something. I’ll see you at the next fitting, Martin.”

Jon hurried to gather up his coat and bag before Martin could ask what it was that he was doing. Despite himself, as he rushed out the door, he looked over his shoulder to see one of the costume designers give Martin a sympathetic smile. For the first time in a full week of bemoaning having to work with Martin, he wondered if he had been the partner Martin had been hoping for.

Martin wasn’t at any of the next costume fittings, which gave Jon plenty of time to stew over their last meeting. When he got back to his hotel he had immediately sat down at the desk and tried to keep working on his identity theft mystery. Writer’s block had never been something that Jon suffered from, he was instead prone to writing too much useless, verbose rubbish without really stopping to think if any of it was good. Today, though, he was stuck. Probably it was that the desk chair wasn’t remotely ergonomic. Refusing to focus on the world of his story, his brain kept instead meandering back to the last conversation with Martin. He really wasn’t doing anything, just writing another book for readers who’d hate him if they met, alone in his hotel room with the curtains shut. How long had it been since anyone had asked him to get coffee? His lie was starting to make less and less sense. Rolling his eyes at the room’s no smoking sign, he headed out onto the street for a cigarette to clear his head.

Back home Jon faced the same problem consistently over the next few weeks, getting increasingly agitated for every day he spent in his shed pacing, smoking and managing a page or two at most. By the time he was in London again for his first interviews, he was a ball of raw tension. He slumped down in the makeup chair and zoned out while the makeup artist tried to make polite conversation as he covered up his eye bags. God, he needed a coffee. When the makeup artist was done he clapped a hand on Jon’s shoulder, bringing him back to earth, and directed him to the dressing rooms. Jon startled, the lights around the mirror appearing to flare in his eyes, and then caught sight of Martin in the chair next to him being thoroughly powdered by a makeup artist with rather dramatic green hair. His jaw looked a little tense and he was resolutely not looking at Jon. Christ, okay, maybe Jon had fucked up more than he thought.

Anxious to get away, he trudged to the dressing room to put on the suit he always wore to interviews. Looking in the mirror, he noticed that the shoulders were still too wide on him and were sagging very slightly. Jon had never liked this suit, the memories of making forced conversation with interviewers clung to it like cobwebs that he could never seem to brush off. He took a moment to tuck his hair behind his ear. It had reached his shoulders now, less because he had made a conscious decision to grow it out and more because his old hairdresser had moved away and he hadn’t wanted to see a new one. The premature grey hairs that had started popping up in his early twenties had become streaks in the past few years, coarser than the rest of his hair and beginning to curl as he sweated in his wool suit. Knowing he was prolonging the inevitable, and with no small amount of trepidation, Jon headed to the interview room.

The studio was a large room, with a red C-shaped sofa and a large greenscreen set up on the stage. Around the stage, technicians buzzed around with clipboards and pieces of technology, talking and laughing and blurring into each other. The interviewer was already there, sitting at one end of the sofa while a sound technician adjusted their mic. She was a tall woman, with long micro braids falling over one shoulder and a short pink blazer dress. As Jon watched, she raised her head and said something to someone across the room, eliciting a loud laugh. Everything in this room was very loud.

Finally, one of the producers seemed to notice Jon and ushered him over to the sofa, asking if he’d like a water. As Jon politely declined, Martin sat down next to him, greeting the producer with a cheerful “Hi Craig!” as he did so, and accepting the offer of water. He looked just a little too big for the space, knees at slightly less than a right angle as he sat on the too-low sofa, easily reaching to rest his forearm on the back.

“Are you both ready?” the interviewer asked, giving the two of them an easy smile and thankfully saving Jon from having to say something to Martin.

“Yup! I never get tired of doing these,” Martin smiled back. It might have been the most natural smile Jon had seen from him, besides the very first one back in the dance studio. Without really knowing why, Jon was carefully cataloguing that information somewhere in his head when he realised that both faces had turned to him and were waiting for an answer.

“Oh, um, yes, I’m ready.” He responded, nervously running a hand through the hair at the nape of his neck.

A producer clapped their hands and suddenly all the camera people stood to attention like little toy soldiers, all seeming to stare right at Jon. The interviewer took a deep breath and then beamed at the camera, seemingly unafraid of its huge unblinking eye.

“Hello, and welcome back to the news with me, Amber. With just a month to go until the new couples take to the Strictly ballroom for the first time, every morning this week we’re introducing a new pair to you. I’m here today with bestselling murder mystery writer Jonathan Sims, and his new professional partner Martin Blackwood. So, Jon, what made you want to go on Strictly?”

There was that question again, staring Jon down and reminding him quite how rash that decision had been. In the months following his first interview about the whole business, his on-the-spot answer had become the one he was sticking to.

“I decided I wanted more of a public presence, to get out into the world and show people who I am, I suppose.”

“And you chose to do that in full spandex and sequins? That’s rather brave!” The interviewer pressed, still smiling.

“Well, it seemed as good a way as any.” Jon responded, nonplussed.

“And how are you feeling about dancing live on national TV?”

“Not good?” Seeming mildly dissatisfied, the interviewer turned to Martin and asked “And you, Martin? How does it feel to be back for your sixth series?”

“Pretty fantastic, thank you Amber! I miss my Strictly family year-round when we’re not filming.”

“Five seasons without making it to the final, are you hoping this year could change your luck?”

“Well, that would be wonderful, but I’ve always received great support from the people at home, so what really matters to me is I get to keep dancing and making them and my family proud.”

Jon could almost hear the crew aww-ing from his place on the sofa. Martin was a natural.

“And how about you Jon, anyone at home who’ll be watching you every week?”

Ah, that one stung. Jon had never really felt unhappy with his life of solitude, but sitting next to Martin sparkling brighter than a mirrorball with a family to come home to, maybe some little tiny Martins who’d hug their famous dad’s legs and demand piggyback rides, it was hard not to feel inferior.

“No, nobody at home.” The interviewer, thankfully, didn’t miss a beat.

“But I’m sure you’ll want to make your fans proud?”

“I honestly don’t really care what people think.” Martin’s head snapped to look at Jon then, a look of ill-concealed shock on his face. The interviewer took another deep breath, and made a final valiant effort to change the subject to one that Jon might be able to talk about.

“And how have you been finding dancing with Martin? He’s rather a favourite of our viewers.”

“Oh, that’s sweet of you to say,” Martin interjected goodnaturedly.

“We haven’t spent much time together. Martin seems…” Jon floundered about helplessly for something to say. He had a full series of bestsellers, but apparently finishing this sentence was beyond him. After an excruciating silence, it became clear that Jon wasn’t going to say anything at all.

“Right!” the interviewer said, by now looking distinctly frazzled. “How about we take five and regroup after we’ve all had some water?”

Jon didn’t do much better in the latter half of the interview, but following a stern talking to from one of the producers, he at least performed well enough for the editors to scrape something together. Something he was now about to watch. Sitting on his hotel bed the morning of the first day of rehearsals he fiddled with the remote until it was on the right channel, and all at once he was hit with Martin’s mellow, expressive voice. The interview was… fine. Better than he’d been expecting. Sure, he looked uncomfortable the whole time, especially whenever he looked at Martin, but that was how he felt. He rather thought he came over as reserved but no worse. Grabbing his backpack, he headed out for the bus.

Jon was hardly surprised to find Martin had arrived in the studio even earlier than him. He was standing at the back of the room, which looked like a smaller version of the one in which they’d met, leaning on the barre to slowly stretch out a leg. His face looked unmistakably pinched, and as he talked Jon through warmups and the first steps of the cha-cha, the warmth from his voice had all but evaporated in the cool rehearsal room. In the tense silence, with Martin’s hand on his waist, Jon thought about how long it had been since someone had touched him like that. God, not since uni? Was that normal? He didn’t remember it feeling this lonely to be close to someone.

It wasn’t until 1am that night that Jon figured out the reason for Martin’s distance. Lying in bed, he finally gave up on his resolution not to look at the wretched facebook group he’d wasted so much time painfully scrolling. When he loaded it up, he was surprised to see a clip of the interview he had watched on TV this morning. Foreboding settling over him like a weighted blanket, he clicked on the caption and immediately felt sick to his stomach. Seemingly his uncomfortable demeanour had been interpreted by some of his, ahem, loyal fans, as being discomfort at being paired with a man, which had apparently happened because the BBC had “gone woke”. There was even one sentence suggesting it might have had something to do with his height, which in the midst of all the fear and righteous indignation Jon still found time to feel a bit put out about. He’s 5’7, that’s perfectly normal thank you very much. Just as he was getting up to examine his stature in the mirror, his phone rang. It was Elias, he knew without looking. Numbly, Jon pressed accept call.

“Jonathan!” Elias’ voice crackled from the other end of the line. “Have you seen the article?”

“Article? No, I’ve been at the studio all day. Look, is this necessary right now? I’m sure whatever particularly scathing book review it is can wait until the morning, I’m really quite tired right now.”

“No Jonathan, the one about your interview this morning. I’ll send you a link. Apparently a post from one of your fan groups made it to the wider internet and people are not liking what they see. We’ve both always known what your fans are like, but I didn’t think you shared their beliefs.”

“You knew?” Jon asked. Elias didn’t respond. “I don’t share their beliefs at all,” he continued tiredly.

“Well what was all that on the news then?”

“I don’t know, I was uncomfortable? You know I hate interviews, it’s not my fault twitter has decided I’m a homophobe.”

“Well it’s certainly your problem to fix, and you best be doing so, I really don’t want to see you dropped from this publishing company. Goodnight, Jonathan.” Elias hung up before Jon could splutter out a response. Sign be damned, he was going to have a smoke and a cry in his room now.

Chapter Text

The next day was, if anything, worse. The studio felt colder, Jon stumbled over his steps and Martin seemed to verge on anger when he did. While he had never believed in the chemistry the producers seemed to think they had, Jon did remember being better than this at the very first rehearsal. He was glad that they had two weeks to learn this first dance, since the first two days had been such a writeoff.

They detached from each other as tactfully as possible at lunchtime, both keen to avoid eating lunch together. Martin suggested wrapping up early, and Jon didn’t object as the studio door swung shut, leaving him alone with his thoughts and his reflection, an excessively on the nose reminder of what he needed to sort out. The whole day, Elias’ words had been thrumming through his head. So maybe whatever it was that used to spur him on to write had not come back since fizzling out about a month ago, and his new hatred for his audience was a problem, but that didn’t mean he was eager to lose his publisher. He was well-aware he was behind in coming up with a plan already. Turning his back on his reflection and putting his hands on the barre, he tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling. Christ, how was he going to get out of this one.

The bus journey back to the hotel felt longer than usual, and Jon thought as he stepped through the door to his room and past the pile of takeaway boxes in the bin that he should really get a flat for the time he’s filming. Sitting down heavily on the end of the bed, the only thing he was really glad of was how tired he was. He tapped what had become his regular order from the local Chinese place into UberEats and lay there, semi-conscious, until it arrived. After dinner, he showered and then bundled his aching body into bed like a dirty sheet into a washing basket and went to sleep.

Jon barely felt better in the morning, but at least as he struggled to tie his hair up he felt more in a headspace to solve his problems. For the second time that month, he surprised himself by wishing that there was someone at home who he could call and talk to. He thought he’d grown past this, but here it was again apparently. Instead, he would have to turn to his only possible ally in this situation. And okay, maybe he’d known at some level the whole time that he’d have to talk to Martin about this, hated himself for not bringing it up sooner. He’d seen how the person who wrote that stupid Facebook post had insinuated that there was something about Martin specifically that made Jon uncomfortable dancing with him. Maybe all this media attention had been even harder on Martin, Jon couldn’t help but think that the whole country theorising about his personal life was the worst thing he could think of. He just didn’t know how to do it.

When he arrived at the studio, Martin was, predictably, already there. The graceful line of his arm traced circles as he stretched, and for a moment Jon couldn’t help but stand and watch. He noticed the bags under the man’s eyes, and suspected with a sinking feeling that they were new. He could already feel the tension in the air, thrumming like a distant stampede and thick enough to cut with a butter knife. Well, Jon had a conversational machete.

“I’m not homophobic.” Martin’s head jerked up at that, looking at Jon standing in the doorway holding his bag.

“Okay?” he responded, clearly expecting more. What, Jon had no idea.

“Okay.” Jon replied, stalling for time. There really wasn’t a guide online to having this kind of conversation.

Martin broke the silence. “What’s the deal with your fans then? I saw that post.”

“I only just realised they’re like that.” Martin scoffed at that, fixing Jon with an incredulous gaze. “I’m serious!” Jon continued, verging on desperate. When Martin still didn’t look convinced, he decided that he might as well tell all at this point. “That’s actually why I’m here. I asked to dance with a man. I found out what my audience is like and I wanted to… stick it to them, I guess?”

Seemingly, this was what it took to make Martin’s face soften. “That’s… that’s admirable actually.” he said, fixing Jon with a small, wobbly smile.

“And I’m sorry for everything they said about you.” Jon said, reluctant to stop now he’d plucked up all his social courage.

“It’s fine, it’s an open secret really.” Martin replied, leaning back against the wall. At Jon’s raised eyebrow, he elaborated “You know, me being… gay.”

“Ah.” Jon responded eloquently. Way to convince him you’re not homophobic, Sims. He managed a gruff but supportive nod and it might have been the most straight man-like thing he’d ever done.

“Right!” Martin said, shattering the hopeful, uneasy moment with his elbow as he rolled up his hoodie sleeves. “Come here then, we’re going to sort out your timing today or so help me god.”

Finally dropping his bag and walking away from the door, Jon went to join him.

It wasn’t until they were taking off their dance shoes and gathering their bags together that Jon brought up the situation again.

“Martin, I know you don’t owe me anything, god you hardly know me, but what should I do?”

“About what?” Martin responded, taking a big gulp of his water.

“The article. The homophobia. Everything, actually. How do I fix everything?”

Martin sighed as he put his bag back down, sitting down on the bench at the edge of the studio and motioning for Jon to join him.

“Look, if you’re here to fix your public image, you’re doing a terrible job.” Jon opened his mouth to come up with some retort, but closed it again. “Didn’t you even consider just being nice in the interview? Just tell them that you’re excited to be on Strictly and are enjoying working with me, for goodness sake. You don’t have to mean it if you really don’t have anything nice to say.”

“You always seem to mean it.” Jon replied, running a sweaty hand through his hair. Martin chuckled wryly at that. Jon glanced up. He’d never seen him any less earnest than a puppy wagging its whole ass as opposed to just its tail.

“Of course I don’t. Sometimes I give interviews when I’ve been up all night looking after my mum and then at rehearsals all day but I plaster on a happy face because this is my livelihood, Jon.”

Oh.

“Your mum?” Jon said, falteringly, half knowing he was crossing a line. Martin just sighed.

“My mum’s sick. Has been all my life. I just want her to be proud of me and I’ve worked my whole life-” he was getting a little louder as he spoke, hands moving more jerkily, voice thick. “My whole life to make her proud of me even though I was selfish enough to become a dancer, and to support her all by myself. This is my first ever dance job where I haven’t worked another job as well, whatever I could get, and I’m not- I’m not letting some Oxford-educated twat wander into my life and mess it up. I can’t afford to let my career go up in flames, even if you can.” As he spoke the last sentence, he shoved his hands into his pockets with more force than was strictly necessary.

For a moment, Jon was dumbfounded by the sheer volume of things he hadn’t thought thorough. Then, eclipsing or perhaps growing from the guilt, anger bubbled up from low in his stomach.

“I’m not trying to set my career alight for no good reason! You read what those guys wrote, they’re awful! They think my Pakistani main character is white, and I think some of them might vote Reform! Plus, it’s not like things have been easy, it’s not like I was one of the fresh out of Eton rich kids at Oxford, if you must know.”

A stalemate, Martin staring into Jon’s eyes, Jon staring back. With a start, Jon realised that this probably wasn’t a socially acceptable amount of eye contact and pulled away, coughing into his wrist.

“I’m sorry,” Martin said to his fingers, curled up in his lap.

“No, I’m sorry.” Jon took a very deep breath, and then another one. “That was unreasonable, and I didn’t properly think about how I’ve been acting must have affected you until now.” The silence was awkward, but at least not tense anymore. Finally, Martin sighed and said
“I can help you.”

Jon looked up. “Really?”

“Yes, I can help. You heard that interviewer, she was right, I really am the darling of every baby boomer in Britain, even if some of them might be pretending not to notice that I date men. I’m probably the best placed person in the world to help you.”

“Seriously?” Jon asked. “Why?”

“You’re the first partner I’ve had who has a shot at winning. You may be a little way up your own ass-” Jon moved as if to rebut that, but Martin silenced him with a raised finger. Jon supposed he deserved no better. “But I can tell you’re musical and coordinated and I think we could win this thing if you weren’t so determined to lose the entirety of the public vote.”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to win?” Jon asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh come off it, of course I want to win. Do you know what that would do for my career? My job would be way more secure and I could move my mum into a better care home. So, do we have a deal? I’ll help you fix your public image if you actually focus during our lessons.”

Jon nodded and proffered his hand. “Yes, we have a deal.”

Martin pretended to spit in his hand before shaking Jon’s. Then, he pulled Jon to his feet by their joined hands.

“Come on, it’s late, I’m sure you’ll want to be getting home for your dinner.”

Jon decided not to mention that he was hardly looking forward to another takeaway eaten with disposable chopsticks alone while watching whatever channel the hotel TV was already on. For the first time since he first found the godforsaken Facebook group, he felt there might be a way out of this right-wing hellhole his books had somehow dragged him into.

The next day Jon was at the studio before Martin for the first time ever, and was warmed up with his dance shoes on by the time his partner walked through the door. He told Martin this, and Martin grinned, and said that they'd have to go through the warmup anyway, just to be safe, earning a groan from Jon.

“Doesn’t your hair bother you, flopping in your face like that?” Martin asked as Jon pushed an errant tendril out of his eyes for the millionth time.

“It does, but I don’t really have time to have it cut, so I’m just-” he gestured to himself “like this.”

“I wasn’t saying it looks bad!” Martin hastened to add, a faint blush tickling his nose. “I’d just find it annoying not being able to see.”

“Oh, yeah, that too.” Jon said, pulling the hair band off of his wrist to tie it up. Within ten minutes, his ponytail had come undone. He pulled the offending hair band out of the knot of hair it was attached to and sighed.

“Come here,” Martin said “I’m used to doing my mother’s hair, I’ll put it up for you.”

Shrugging, Jon walked over and handed him the hair band. It was oddly intimate having Martin’s broad, gentle hands tangled up in his hair, coaxing it into a bun on the top of his head, but Jon found he didn’t mind. Must be a side effect of all the casual intimacy involved in dancing.

Clapping his hands down on Jon’s shoulders, Martin said “Right, we’re done.”

Jon had to admit that his hair looked kind of nice up. He’d always thought that something like this would just accentuate his severe features, but as he watched a curl freed itself at the back of his neck. He somehow looked younger than he had in years. He turned to thank Martin, and was startled by how close they were, their toes almost touching. No closer than when they danced, but somehow the lack of contact made the whole thing more intimate. Wow, Martin really was tall, huh. He snapped back to reality with a jolt and stepped back, clearing his throat.

“Right, from the beginning?” Martin suggested. Jon nodded stiffly, cracked his knuckles and got into position.

Chapter Text

It became a thing after that, Martin putting up Jon’s hair at the start of rehearsal. Not a thing thing, but like clockwork every morning Jon would approach Martin with a hair band and a slightly apologetic face and Martin would take it as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. He was remarkably skilled at the whole business, and so the hair would actually stay put fairly well throughout the day, on the bus home and up until Jon reluctantly took it down to have a shower. On the Wednesday of their final week of preparation, Martin was just sorting out Jon’s hair when he said

“We should have some camera people in tomorrow, they want rehearsal shots and to get some interviews about how training has been going.” Feeling Jon stiffen under his hands, he continued, more softly, “We talked about this, remember? You know what your narrative is for the interview now.”

Jon huffed. “Well excuse me for being nervous, last time I gave an interview I got cancelled on twitter!”

“And that won’t happen again. There, your hair’s done.” Martin smiled. “Ready to get started?”

The cha-cha was actually progressing quite nicely. Jon had the counts down to the point where he thought he caught himself instinctively one-two-chachacha-ing when he got up to go to the bathroom the other night. He could still only manage the basic steps though, and so to jazz it up a bit Martin was going all out, entering the ballroom by sliding across the stage on his knees. The costume department had been informed of the need for hard-wearing trousers. Apparently this was par for the course with Latin dances this early in the series before the celebrity partners got good, but it was still very funny to watch. Once, Martin had misjudged it and slid with too much enthusiasm, felling Jon in his path as if he were a heavy-duty forestry harvester and Jon no more than a silver birch. Jon had hit the floor with a loud thump, landing next to Martin, and for a moment everything was still. Then Martin snorted, and they both tipped into slightly uncomfortable laughter as Martin lied back against the cool wood floor.

“Sorry about that,” he said, turning to face Jon, “I’m not used to the size of this rehearsal room yet.”

“It’s fine, I’m not even-” Jon rolled over, noticing his aching knee. “Okay I’m a bit hurt but I can walk it off.”

“Do you need a break? We can practise answering interview questions again.”

It was something they’d started doing shortly after hatching their cunning scheme to get Jon back in the media’s good graces, and Jon rather thought he’d been improving. The questions were easy once you knew what interviewers were generally looking for: a smile, pleasantries, and an inconsequential tidbit about rehearsals.

“No, I’m okay, I think I’m starting to be more concerned about pulling this dance off than not making a fool of myself in my next interview.” Jon replied, stretching out his knee experimentally. Minimal pain. Good.

“That must mean I’m doing something right! Better get up now then, I think I’m starting to enjoy this lie-down too much, I’ll never move.” Jon watched as he stood, stretching his arms wide as he did so, and then offered Jon a hand to help him up. He took it gratefully, a week of dancing had not quite undone almost ten years of sitting in increasingly weird positions at his desk in the shed, and his joints were still achingly stiff.

“Maybe we could do a bit more over lunch though?”

Martin gave him a smile. “Sure.”

Pret A Manger was mercifully uncrowded as they selected their meal deals, and Martin watched with ill-concealed horror as Jon emptied what must have been five sugar packets into his earl grey without so much as stopping to consider if four might be enough. He allowed Jon the walk back to the studio in relative peace, but almost as soon as they sat down on the bench in the studio, he launched right in.

“So how have you been finding training with Martin?”

Jon wrinkled his nose and looked over, nonplussed. “What?”

“I’m starting interview questions. How’s Martin?”

“He’s a good teacher,” Jon offered a smile that was just a little too practised “even if his warmups do take too long.”

“Hey! Good inconsequential tidbit!”

“As a writer, you’d rather hope I could come up with one.” It was going well.

“Is anyone watching you on TV this week?”

That was a new one. Jon floundered for a moment. “Uh- no, not really.”

“And how are you going to spin that?” Martin asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you’re going to straight up tell them that, you ought to at least play it for sympathy.”

“I’m not going to play it for sympathy, that’s crass.” There was a beat of silence. “Do you seriously do stuff like that?”

“Yeah? Everyone does.” Martin shrugged, not noticing the tremor in Jon’s voice.

Jon shifted away on the bench. “There’s a level of integrity I’m planning to preserve.”

The afternoon passed unusually quietly after that, with Martin a little huffy and Jon ruminating on what else he might not know about celebrity culture. It was easy for Martin to say that he should spin the fact he was an orphan with no friends to win some pity votes, with his whole family at home watching on television and cheering him on. They must be so proud of him building a successful dance career while looking after his ailing mother.

With all that to mull over, it wasn’t until the bus home that night that he took a moment to really stew on the idea of the camera people coming tomorrow. He knew it had to be good, maybe he’d never cared much how the public viewed him besides not thinking he was a massive bigot, but clearly it mattered to Martin, and the guilt of the previous week was still sitting there at the bottom of his lungs. Especially seared into his brain was all the theorising from that godawful Facebook post about how Martin might be gay, and how probably that was why Jon was sitting such a distance from him on the sofa. God, he needed to protect Martin from more of that, and he needed to get them votes. That meant striking a careful balance between being too familiar and too standoffish in front of the cameras. Rubbing his temples, Jon wondered when dancing had got so complicated.

For the first time in a week, Jon arrived at the studio the next morning with his hair tied up. It had taken him three tries to get a semi-secure ponytail and it still wasn’t quite right, it moved too much as he walked and as he looked at its reflection in the bus window as if it was a spider that was getting too comfortable. The camera people were already there, getting set up and chattering amongst themselves. Martin smiled from his spot by the barre like he did every morning, and Jon walked over, careful not to stop too close. Martin’s Brown eyes flickered to Jon’s hair for a moment and his brow furrowed. When it relaxed, a bit of tension remained.

“Right,” he started awkwardly, “Ready to get going?”

Jon decided not to ask what the problem was. Being filmed rehearsing wasn’t as weird as he’d expected, but the whole morning did feel more subdued than normal. Maybe the bad mood from yesterday was sticking around, or maybe it was that Jon kept staggering gracelessly as he hastened to move away from Martin after they finished practising a section in hold. He’d definitely need to get that in order before they danced together on TV, almost tripping could lose them points. Still, the camera people seemed satisfied with the footage, so Jon ticked the morning off his mental list as a success.

After lunch, the producers took him to a spare studio for interviews. Sitting down on a spare chair someone had found, he took a moment to run his hand through his hair and compose himself.

“Right, we’re going to ask you a few quick questions, just to play over the shots of you rehearsing. Are you ready to make a start?”

Jon nodded, petting at his hair again and avoiding looking directly at the camera.

“How are you feeling about performing live on Saturday night?”

Good, Jon had practised this one. He smiled at the memory of Martin looking into his eyes unusually intensely one lunchtime while sitting on the bench, saying “Jon, listen to me. Do not say bad. Don’t tell them that you’re feeling bad.”

“I’m feeling okay, I’ve never done anything like this before but we’ve been rehearsing a lot.”

The producer nodded. “The cha-cha is quite an energetic, playful dance. How have you been getting in the mood for that?”

Jon tried one of his practised jokes. “I’ve been putting an extra sugar in my tea at lunchtime.”

The producer laughed, and he felt like taking a bow. He was really doing it.

If Jon arrived at the studio with loose hair the next morning, Martin didn’t comment on it. He accepted the hair band from Jon’s hand, wordlessly put his hair up with a faint smile on his lips and commenced the final day of training. Despite being punctuated by a dramatic fall from Jon and another trip to Pret, it was over far too quickly, and the reality of the next day began to settle on them both. As they chugged from their water bottles, Jon contemplated asking Martin if he had any last minute advice, but he didn’t even know what kind of advice he’d want. He supposed he just wanted something to cling onto. Instead, he dabbed his face with his towel one last time, shouldered his bag and said “Goodnight, Martin,” leaving without waiting for a response.

Saturday was a whirl of activity from the moment Jon stepped through the doors of the main studio. He was grabbed by some unassuming intern and hustled into a chair in front of a huge mirror to have his TV makeup done. Someone new did his hair, hair spraying it to within an inch of its life so it would survive the whole show. Jon didn’t mention that when Martin tied his hair up it stayed in place all day anyway. The costume had so many rhinestones he could only look at it for so long without his eyes going funny, but when he left the dressing room to see Martin in a matching one, Jon couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his lips.

“What?” Martin sounded a little self-conscious, and Jon felt his guilt stir and resettle.

“Nothing, nothing, this is all just… rather new.”

Martin took a deep breath. “Alright, do you want to get a final practise in in the corridor before we’re live?”

“Won’t people see us?”

“Jon, you’re about to be live on national telly. The costume team seeing you shake it a little bit is the least of your worries.”

Despite Martin’s fortifying encouragement, Jon did feel silly dancing in the corridor with Martin, bumping into walls and mishearing the counts he called out over the hubbub backstage. Tim, who Jon recognised from the first rehearsal, walked by and gave Martin an exaggerated wolf whistle, earning a grin and a shove in return.

“Looking good Mart-o!” he called as he scurried back into the dressing room.

Just as they were going over their final pose, an alarm sounded, making Jon jump out of his skin. Even Martin looked a little nervous.

“Looks like it’s time to get into position!” he said, still holding Jon’s waist as if to keep him from being dragged away by the tide of glitter-clad contestants rushing to the stage. Jon pulled at the stray hairs that had come loose from his updo, took a deep breath, and followed them.

To say the atmosphere on the balcony overlooking the dancefloor was tense would be like saying that Jon’s palms were “kind of clammy right now.” God, it was hot up here. Fortunately, he and Martin were one of the first couples to dance, saving Jon from boiling like a potato in his own nerves and those of the other contestants for too long. As they took to the floor, Jon noticed how the stage lights made his eyes feel raw, but also how they dissolved the live audience into a black haze. Focus. Starting pose on the stairs. Remember everything Martin said. You can’t touch your hair right now. Pray to whatever’s up there that he doesn’t misjudge the knee slide and hit you again.

It went fine, all things considered. There was academic dispute over his timing, Anton said that he had the one-two-cha-cha-cha perfect, Craig said that it was patchy. Nobody liked his characterisation, but that was to be expected. Jon really wasn’t a cha-cha sort of person. They were on the bottom half of the leaderboard, but only just. When Jon glanced up during the scoring Martin looked incandescent, even if Jon knew it was only for the cameras. The blinding lights reflected off of the powder caught some stubble he’d missed on his jawline, making him sparkle faintly from Jon’s vantage point. After they’d wrapped for the night, Jon stopped to talk on his way through makeup.

“I’m sorry about not making it to the top half of the leaderboard.”

Martin looked up from the mirror. “What?”

“The top half of the leaderboard. I feel like we could have made it if I hadn’t messed up the timing in the middle there.”

“Don’t be silly, it was quite alright.” The silence was easy for the first time in a few days, and Jon rolled his shoulders, not needing to say anything else right away.

“I guess I’ll see you on Monday then, Martin.”

“Yeah, see you Monday.”

Chapter Text

“We’re doing the foxtrot this week,” Martin said, twisting Jon’s hair between his fingers, “which means dipping your toe into ballroom for the first time.”

“That’s probably for the best actually.” Jon replied, leaning ever so slightly into Martin’s hands. “I’m not sure Latin really… agreed with me. What’s the song?”

“Honeybee by Steam Powered Giraffe, have you heard of it? I kind of assumed it was one of your requested songs.”

“I never sent a list in, actually. I don’t really listen to music.”

“You don’t listen… to music.”

“Just never really got around to it.” This bun was taking longer to do than normal, but Jon decided not to mention it. The conversation was kind of nice, even if he could see Martin in the mirror furrowing his brow in confusion. It wasn’t that abnormal not to listen to music, Jon thought. He didn’t hate it, it was just not something he did.

“Also, they’re making us do a beekeeping theme.”

That brought Jon back to earth. “A beekeeping theme.” He said dryly.

“Yes?” Martin’s voice only wavered a little. “You know how they love a theme on this show, they probably only let you off last week because you’ve got that whole academic vibe and had to do a Latin dance.”

“Academic… vibe?”

“We’re getting sidetracked.” He turned sharply away from Jon, heading to the bench to pick up what looked like a huge hat. “Look, Costume made me a beekeeper’s hat!”

“If you’re about to tell me they’re making me a bee costume…”

Martin grinned at Jon’s raised eyebrow. “No, you’re apparently just supposed to be a guy. A regular guy who’s trying to romance a beekeeper.”

Jon felt his cheeks redden. He really needed to grow up, it wasn’t like this was anything. It really wasn’t like he wanted it to be. He was just dancing with Martin in a competition to save his public image and help Martin's career. He just had to be professional about this.

“Want to listen to the song? The band are speeding it up slightly, they’ve sent a demo.” Martin asked, breaking the silence slightly too loudly. Jon acquiesced gratefully, and at equal volume.

Half an hour later, Martin was wearing his beekeeper’s hat, his face half-obscured by the mesh, looking from Jon’s lower vantage point like some kind of very tall mushroom.

“So you stand up straight, feet about shoulder-width apart to start with.” Jon tried to copy as best as he could. “Okay, now put your arms up like this,” Martin continued, imitating what looked to Jon like a classic ballroom dance stance.

“Like this?”

Martin shook his head. “No, broader than that in the chest, and your elbow is going to have to be higher because I’m… ah- taller.” He scratched the back of his neck, seemingly trying to shrink in on himself. “And lean back a bit. Yeah, like that. Honestly lean back further than you think you should.”

“It’s pretty hard to balance,” Jon said in a strangled voice, feeling like the combined effort of bending his back and keeping upright was leaving no space for air in his lungs.

“It’ll be easier once I’m there. My hand goes on your shoulder blade like this…” Jon’s breath hitched. What was that he was just saying about professionalism? “And then I hold your hand like this. So you can lean on me a tiny bit.”

Wow, Martin was close. His right hip was pressed against Jon’s and the net from his beekeeper’s hat was tickling Jon’s nose. It was probably good that Jon didn’t really have the option of looking in his eyes, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to.

“Ready to go over the steps next?” Martin asked, not letting go, his voice slightly hushed to accommodate the proximity. Breathing had definitely not become any easier. Okayokayokay. This was fine.

Having taken several deep breaths and had another firm internal pep talk about not making this weird, Jon managed to make good progress with the foxtrot, and was feeling cautiously confident on the tube home. This definitely was better than the cha-cha. Getting used to being this close to another person who he didn’t even know very well was clearly going to be a learning curve, but that’s fine. He could do it, he just needed not to overthink it. He cleared his head by spending most of the evening unpacking the flare he’d rented for his time in London, and then collapsed on the sofa exhausted and ordered a takeaway. So much for getting somewhere with a kitchen so he could cook his own balanced meals.

In the morning, Jon gave himself another firm talking-to in the hall mirror, covering such themes as not making things weird and not freaking out over perfectly normal human contact that might, yes, okay, be more than he’d experienced in years, but that didn’t make it unusual. This was going to be so fine, he thought, smiling as he slipped a hair band onto his wrist.

Jon’s good mood persisted into the studio, and he borderline-chatted with Martin about the book he’d been reading on the bus as they did their little hair ritual. Martin really had some interesting thoughts about literature, even if he had brought up poetry the first time they met. Jon shuddered. At least he didn’t write it.

Just then, someone strolled through the door with a camera. Jon caught sight of them and launched himself away from Martin, tugging painfully at his half-done hair in the process. Martin looked at him, and then over his shoulder, furrowing his brow at the camera person.

“Hey Zeynab, didn’t you say that the crew would be in on Friday this week?”

Zeynab shook her head. “Sorry Martin, scheduling changed last minute, I swapped you with Sasha.” She glanced at Jon. “Nothing wrong, is there?”

As Martin turned his gaze back to Jon, he looked like he wanted to ask the same question. His brown eyes seemed to look inside of Jon and rummage about, searching for the answer like a missing sock at the back of a drawer. He looked frustrated. Maybe a little hurt.

“No- uh, everything’s fine.” Jon told the two pairs of eyes on him. “Just still getting used to the cameras.” That lie had come easily, he must have been listening to Martin more than he thought.

Martin made an aborted little gesture towards Jon’s head and Jon flinched away, tugging the hair band out of his now tangled hair and putting it into a rough ponytail instead. With his jaw set in a straight line, he assumed the position they’d practised yesterday and resolutely looked at the wall over Martin’s shoulder as his partner slotted himself in.

“Head a little further back, Jon. Remember your neck is part of your spine, so it should follow the curve.” Martin’s voice sounded quiet, but not in the gentle, hushed way it had yesterday, like it was coming from very far away.

Steeling himself, Jon tilted his head back, pressing the right side of his body flat against Martin’s.

“Loosen up in the shoulders, you’re holding me like a tree.”

“I’m not holding you.”

Martin’s breath hitched, but he didn’t comment. Instead, his voice carefully calm, he asked “From the chorus?”

Jon nodded, and Martin let go of him to go and set the music to the right place. Standing alone in the middle of the cool studio, Jon felt like he was missing a piece of the puzzle.

Chapter Text

Arriving at the studio on Wednesday morning, Jon felt like he was back to square one. He wouldn’t have ever called Martin a friend, but he couldn’t deny that they had been developing a rapport. Now, Martin pointedly didn’t take the hair band from his wrist, and carefully looked busy as Jon tied his own hair up. He had also started asking Jon before every time he touched him, which was very sweet but not necessary and made Jon’s diaphragm ache with the earnestness of it all. God, how did he keep fucking this up.

“Can I move my hand to the back of your neck?”

“Yes, Martin, and you don’t have to ask.” Martin’s broad palm settled at the back of Jon’s neck, fingers intertwining with some hairs that had already slipped out of his ponytail.

“And can I put my other hand on your waist?”

“Yes, Martin.”

“Okay, and are you okay with putting your left hand on your face and your right hand on my shoulder?”

“Martin, stop asking!” That had come out snappish. Oh dear. There was a long silence, and then Jon placed his hand on the side of Martin’s face, cupping his jawbone in his palm. In this position they were forced to look into each other’s eyes, and Jon noticed that Martin looked as tired as he did, his lips set in a thin line of determination.

“Right,” Martin was speaking softly again, so close that Jon could feel his faint exhales on his lower lip. “Now we’re going to dip you, like this.” Martin pushed him slowly back, supporting him all the way down and back up again, keeping his face close enough that Jon could count the hairs of his stubble. Dimly, Jon realised that this was the kind of thing people do as a trust exercise.

They did the rest of the day like that, subdued but productive. Martin was pleased with Jon’s heel turns and it felt like the sun appearing from behind the clouds for a single second. They rehearsed the turning section until Jon’s body had moved beyond dizzy and onto a new plain of reality, and every time they went over the dip it hurt somewhere in Jon’s stomach. He counted Martin’s freckles to try to distract himself. Whatever kind of pathetic thing was going on with him was his business, he wasn’t going to make Martin uncomfortable. As he was heading out the door that evening, Martin said,

“I’ll see you at the BBC Breakfast studio tomorrow morning then.”

Ah yes, in the confusing forty-eight hours he’d had, Jon had almost forgotten about his next big interview. God, he wished he’d had more chances to prepare with Martin.

Jon wished that even more as he sat on the tube at 5am the next morning, twisting his hair distractedly between his fingers. He was wearing his interview suit again, which only felt like more of a haunted object since the last time he’d put it on. Maybe he should get a new suit. With every stop, he hoped the tube would break down, just for a bit, just enough that he’d miss interview time. He had been received fine on Saturday night, all things considered, but this was a proper interview where it really counted.

Unfortunately, the tube ran like clockwork and before he knew it Jon was ascending the wide staircase of the studio. In the makeup chair, he got lightly told off for constantly unexpectedly craning his neck to look for Martin, who turned out to just be in a different dressing room. When he finally saw Martin’s face, tired but still smiling as he talked to a technician, Jon felt calmer and more nervous all at once. They took their seats on the sofa in front of a cheery backdrop in shades of orange and yellow, and Jon nervously adjusted and readjusted his suit collar while Martin made small talk with the presenters. God, it looked so easy for him. Everything looked so easy for him.

“Are you ready to go live in a few minutes?” One presenter asked, checking her watch. Both her interviewees nodded. Looking down, Jon noticed Martin was jiggling his leg, his trainer squeaking slightly on the shiny studio floor. Weird, Jon had never seen him anything less than confident.

He was broken out of his train of thought by one of the presenters grinning at the camera like an advert for colgate and saying “Good morning, and welcome to BBC Breakfast. The time is six o’clock, and we’ve got an exciting show to wake you all up today. Later on we’ll be visiting Saffron Walden, where a clever little girl has thought of a novel way to raise money for charity. Hint: it includes rabbits and synchronised swimming. But first, we’re joined today by another Strictly couple, this time acclaimed mystery writer Jonathan Sims and his professional partner, Martin!”

The camera panned to Jon and Martin on the sofa, and Martin gave a perfectly-played shy wave.

“Hello to both of you! Jon, how did you find your very first live performance?”

“It was okay, but I didn’t like the cha-cha very much. I’m finding the foxtrot a lot easier. Martin says it’s because of my… ‘academic vibe’” Jon replied, punctuating the last part with finger quotes.

Martin laughed. “Well, you are doing very well with the foxtrot, so clearly your ‘academic vibe’ has its uses.” It was the first time he had smiled at Jon in three days. Why did he know that? Focus, Jonathan.

The presenter smiled too. Maybe Jon was doing a great job of this, actually. “Well Martin, does he make a good student?”

“The best.” Martin replied. “Every year I’m surprised by how lucky I am with my celebrity partners. Jon is dedicated, focussed and I think he’s actually got rhythm too.” Jon tried to conceal his surprise, and only kind of succeeded. It was remarkable how well Martin was able to hide the tension of the past few days and just perform. This was the man he hadn’t seen since the dancefloor on Saturday night, completely fearless and outshining the gauche set. Jon was actually kind of impressed.

“How about you, Jon? How is Martin as a teacher?”

“He’s very good. He has a lot of patience for me.” Jon looked up at Martin, and met his eyes for a moment.

The presenter nodded as she spoke. “And how have you found dancing with another man? Presumably this wasn’t what you were doing at all of your Oxford University balls.”

God, these people had really done their research. “I suppose not, but to be honest May Balls are mostly just glorified funfairs in black tie. I only went to one.”

“And how about the response of your fans?” the presenter pressed. “They seem… opinionated.”

God, there it was again, the vague insinuation that he was homophobic. Maybe it was the week he’d had, or maybe it was that he’d had to get up at 4am and all the coffeeshops had been shut, but Jon found his mouth forming words without really asking his permission.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, I like men.”

Martin’s head snapped to look at him. They certainly hadn’t covered this in their little unofficial media training sessions, he was going seriously off-script.

The presenter didn’t look much more certain of what to do with this information. “Oh?” she managed.

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Romantically.” Jon elaborated. “I like men romantically and I’m not homophobic.”

The presenter had clearly gathered herself in the time it took him to say that, and fixed him with a gentle smile. “Well, thank you for sharing that with us, Jon, I’m sorry for assuming. Moving on, could you give us any clues on what your routine is like for this week?” She said this while glancing at Martin, clearly expecting him to answer, but he didn’t look like he was going to. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his hands twiddling in his lap.

Jon tried to fill in, uncertain of what was expected. “It prominently features… insects.”

“Well!” the presenter said, feigning delight at the mental image of a ballroom full of insects. “We’re all looking forward to seeing what you do with that theme. Next, the news.”

As the camera zoomed back in on the two presenters arranging their notes for the news section, Jon and Martin were ushered off set. Martin was uncharacteristically quiet, taking off his TV makeup in the mirror and gathering his things. It wasn’t until they were standing outside the building that he turned to look at Jon with the furthest thing from his usual carefully pruned expressions.

“Why didn’t you mention it? Not that you had to tell me, of course not! It’s just that… you knew I’d be okay with it, right?”

“I knew you’d be okay with it, it wasn’t that.”

“Well what was it then?”

“I was thinking if I kept this whole thing under wraps, we’d still get the vote from my audience, which could seriously help with our plan to win. I’m sorry Martin, I didn’t think before I spoke and it just sort of… came out.”

“You just sort of came out!” Martin said, his voice trembling a little.

“I’m really sorry, Martin.”

“What?” As Martin spoke, Jon realised that the tremor had been the start of a giddy laugh. “It’s okay! God, I wouldn’t want you to keep something like that under wraps for a silly competition!”

“It’s not just a silly competition though,” Jon said, running his hand forcefully through his hair. “It’s your career!”

Martin sighed. “Jon, your comfort is still more important.” Jon didn’t say anything. “You know that, right?”

The sun was rising over London, the only kind of spectacle the city allowed to share the sky with the skyscrapers. Jon missed seeing the stars at night, but this was beautiful too.

“Do you want to get breakfast?” he asked. “I was too tired to eat when I left the flat this morning and I’m gasping for some caffeine.”

Martin smiled softly. “Yeah, uh, that would be nice.”

Chapter Text

Outside Chai Ada in Shepherd's Bush, Jon sipped on a karak chai while watching in amazement as Martin inhaled a full chole and garlic naan box at 7am in the morning. Clearly it took a lot of naan to power a man that tall and strong.

“Did you see this place accepts bitcoin?” Martin asked between bites.

“Does it?” Jon asked, craning his neck to look inside for a sign saying as much.

“There’s a sign over the counter, they actually accept a bunch of cryptocurrencies but I hadn’t heard of the rest,” Martin said, watching Jon carefully. “Wait, don’t tell me you’re into crypto?”

“God no, don’t worry. You wouldn’t want to be dancing with a crypto person. I just saw a sign about how you can buy a share in the business via NFT? I have no idea what that means and I’d rather not think about it, it’s making this chai taste worse.”

“It’s pretty good chai though, right?” Martin replied, taking another sip of his kesar elaichi chai.

“Mm” Jon responded distractedly. Much as he wasn’t enjoying thinking about what the hell kind of business model he’d just stumbled into, they were both clearly dancing around the elephant in the room. “How do you think that interview is going to go over?” He asked glumly, swirling his chai in the takeaway cup.

“Honestly,” Martin said, suddenly more serious, “I have no idea. That was an objectively weird thing to do, but I think it was very clearly sincere and at least the queer viewers will see that. You should have been nicer to the presenter though, you know she wasn’t actually implying that you were homophobic, right?”

“Wait, she wasn’t?” Jon’s head hit the table with a dejected thump. “I can’t believe I did that for nothing.”

“It wasn’t really nothing though, was it?” Martin asked gently, “It was probably tough keeping that under wraps.”

“Not really, it’s not like I usually talk about it all that much.”

Martin looked up, a little pink from his steaming takeaway cup. “No secret husband at home then?”

Jon gave a wry chuckle. “No, no secret husband at home.”

“Boyfriend, then?”

“Not that either.” Jon gestured to himself. “What about… this makes you think I’d be getting all the guys?”

“Oh come off it, you… could.” In the silence, it looked like Martin had considered saying something else. Jon tried not to take offence.

“What about you, then? What’s this family you keep bringing up in interviews like?”

Where Martin was pink, he very quickly went grey. “Oh, um… it’s mostly just me and my mum.”

Jon couldn’t quite read what was wrong in Martin’s face, it looked like a book that had just been snapped shut. “You mentioned she’s ill, right? How has she been?”

Martin looked very interested in pushing around a leftover chickpea on his plate. “More of the same. It’s chronic, that’s why I had to move her to a care home recently.”

Jon could tell that he was in very risky conversational territory. “I’m glad she’s getting the care she needs, then.”

Martin nodded. “It’s not bad having the flat to myself either.” A moment passed. “God, that sounds awful.”

“No, it’s alright. I looked after my grandma for a bit towards the end of her life, it was… difficult sometimes.”

For the first time, Jon’s mental image of Martin’s home life slotted together. Just him and his ill mother, long hours looking after her until he finally had to pass the reins over. God, that must have been hard, they must be so close. Still, it was a sad mental image, imagining Martin that exhausted and worried all the time. Jon had always held a level of animosity towards the image he had in his head of Martin’s family, a husband as tall and strong as him and twins that had their father’s soft, open face and broad, trustworthy hands, just shrunk down to tiny versions. A big house, full of warm light and delicious cooking smells. He thought it was probably jealousy, born out of all the evenings coming home to his cold rented flat and microwaving some more of the lasagne he’d made at the start of the week, but now he felt guilty. Martin deserved that kind of home, of course he did. Jon was bad for ever wishing he’d have anything different.

Martin broke the tense silence. “Shall we head back to the dance studio then? I’m afraid that we still have to get a full day of training in, despite waking up at stupid o’clock.”

The tube journey to the studio was quiet, but not uncomfortable. Inside his head, Jon turned the concept of Martin’s family life over and over, feeling its edges and trying to make sense of its shape. He tried to imagine Martin’s flat, probably a smaller version of the house he had previously envisaged, full of soft throw blankets and candles. Martin seemed like the cosy clutter type. Probably still had delicious cooking smells though. Jon wondered what Polish food was like.

Back at the studio, Jon anxiously rolled the hairband off of his wrist and offered it to Martin. Without speaking, Martin took it and stretched it in his hand before motioning for Jon to come closer.

The foxtrot was really starting to look rather good. Over the course of the day Martin changed a few steps to make them more difficult, which made Jon very proud. He really was quite a good student, if he did say so himself. The next day, Martin contemplated changing some more, but decided it was too risky the day before the next live show. By the time Saturday night rolled around, Jon was feeling remarkably confident. He attempted some light small talk in the makeup chair, and waved at Tim when he appeared to have his hair sorted out.

“What dance have you got this evening?” Tim asked after greeting the hairstylist (by name, Jon noticed. Does this man know everyone?)

“Foxtrot. We’re doing a… beekeeping concept.”

Tim laughed a laugh that reverberated off the faintly glitter-dusted walls. “That explains a lot actually, I saw Martin wandering around in a hat with some kind of mesh hanging off of it. It also had rhinestones. Don’t tell me he’s wearing that for the whole performance!”

“No, I take it off within about ten seconds. He does, um, dip me in it though.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing it!”

Jon nodded and smiled faintly, looking back towards his reflection.

“By the way,” Tim started again, “I saw your interview on Breakfast the day before yesterday. I thought it was very cool.”

“Really?” Jon asked, hope waking up in his stomach.

“Yeah, it was brave. I hope you didn’t let all of those stupid thinkpieces about you the other week get to you, nobody around here was listening to them.”

Jon took a deep, calming breath. “Thanks Tim, I… appreciate it.”

“Anytime!”

This time, Jon and Martin were almost the last couple to dance. Jon leant over the balcony, watching the other couples cover the dance floor in twirls and sparks of colour, like a paintbrush being swirled in a glass of water. He had never had much interest in dancing, but between seeing the ease with which the steps flowed through Martin and watching everyone else from up here, he was starting to get it. Everyone looked so beautiful. Suddenly, he felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Jon! There you are.” Martin said. “We need to get going, we’re up next!”

Glancing back down, Jon saw some technicians setting up glitter-encrusted beehive props. Shit. He ran after Martin.

As the song began, Jon descended the stairs at the back of the ballroom towards Martin, who was studiously pretending to tend to his bees, puttering between the two beehives. Under the bright stage lights, Jon could see a little furrow between his brows. He was really getting into it. Jon walked behind him, and tapped his shoulder. Martin turned in mock surprise, and immediately held Jon in a ballroom hold. You know, how any beekeeper would if unexpectedly disturbed at work. Slowly, gently, he slipped his hand up to the back of Jon’s neck, and dipped him. The net tickled Jon’s nose every time Martin exhaled. It did feel nice not to have to panic so much about being caught on camera this close to another man, not that it was like that anyway. As he was set on his feet, Jon grabbed the hat and threw it like a frisbee, to which Martin again feigned surprise. Jon didn’t have to feign his grin as Martin took hold of him again and started to spin him around the floor.

Chapter Text

Jon was still on a high while receiving the judges’ comments and heading back upstairs to recover, so much so that it didn’t hit him until Tess announced that the vote was now open just how much was riding on this one dance. It was the first week that eliminations were happening, and so far Jon had made no clear headway with improving his public image and even alienated his homophobic fanbase by announcing that he liked kissing men on live television. Who knows how he’d come over in today’s programme given that he was so uncomfortable when the camera people came to film them rehearsing. And yeah, okay, maybe in the light of all the conversations they’d had, how it had turned out that Martin wasn’t just a superficial crowd-pleaser, how he had everybody in the country over fifty wrapped around his little finger and was cynical about it but genuinely kind too, in the light of all of that then maybe Jon had been a bit rude when they had first met. He had meant to make up for it by dancing well and giving Martin a shot at winning, but clearly he’d fucked that up as well. Fuckfuckfuck.

Sleep didn’t find Jon that night, and he spent Sunday morning listlessly pacing around his flat declining calls from Elias. Whether they were to check how the next book was coming along (the one he hadn’t worked on for weeks) or to inform him of another stupid news article about him, he didn’t want to hear it. In the mirror his eye bags looked even worse than usual and his hair was greasy from all the hair gel he hadn’t washed out. Groaning, he dragged his aching bones into the shower. He should at least be presentable tonight.

Even once Jon had washed his hair, immediately caught the train to the studio, had gel put back in his hair and put on his costume again, the fact that it could all be over tonight still didn’t feel real. Deeply anxiety-inducing, yes, but not real. He met up with Martin on his way out of the costume department and he seemed to be in relatively good spirits, something that Jon couldn’t make any sense of.

“Aren’t you… concerned about tonight?” Jon asked.

“A bit?” Martin responded, rummaging around in a pile of rhinestoned ballgowns for his beekeeping hat. “Honestly though, we danced well. Made it to the top half of the leaderboard. We’re unlikely to go home, even though it does come down to just the public vote.”

“But there are so many variables!” Jon protested. He didn’t add “mostly ones that I created out of my own stupidity”, but he certainly thought it. He really needed another chance to make this right.

Looking up, Martin took in Jon’s eyebags and shaking hands. “God, you’re really worried, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t call myself really worried.”

“Look, you’ve just got to remember that it’ll probably be fine.”

Jon huffed noncommittally.

It was fine. They weren’t even in the bottom two, much to Jon’s surprise. Still reeling on the tube home, he couldn’t help but think it was a narrow escape. As he washed approximately a kilogram of gel out of his hair for the second time that day, he resolved to work harder than ever before in rehearsals next week, to make up for all the stunts he’d pulled so far. It was the least he could do really. Hair still wet and resolve still hardening, he crawled into bed and immediately fell asleep.

On Monday morning, Jon arrived at the studio with his jaw set in trepidation and an extra bottle of water in his backpack. He was ready to pull his socks up. Martin turned to him, smiled as he entered, and said

“I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this…”

“Christ Martin” Jon replied “It’s 7am. Can’t the bad news wait until after lunch?”

“Well no. It’s salsa week, which means it’s time for our first time trying lifts.”

“Lifts.”

“Yes, lifts? You know, where I pick you up and sort of…” Martin mimed something that looked concerningly acrobatic. “I suppose it could be the other way around, given that we’re both men, but I uh… I’m not sure I believe that you could pick me up. But you know lifts, right?”

“Yes Martin, I’m familiar with lifts. Let me just put my bag down while I come to terms with potentially falling to my death today.”

“Well, I suppose the song is Murder on the Dancefloor!” Martin laughed nervously.

It wasn’t that bad, all things considered, once Jon had drunk half his water and come to terms with his own mortality. Martin wanted to get right to the lifting to make sure that it was something Jon would be able to do before he choreographed the whole routine, and Jon wanted to get it out of the way. By midday, he was getting quite used to Martin picking him up, even if his pride was reduced somewhat by seeing himself in the mirror clinging to his partner like a koala despite knowing that he wasn’t more than a metre from the floor. Martin really was as strong as he looked, Jon mused, feeling the play of muscles under his fingers as Martin gently let him down.

“Good job!” Martin said, stretching out his arms. “Now I was just thinking, for the final lift, how would you feel about being upside down?”

Jon contemplated it. It didn’t sound fun. It didn’t sound terrible though, it sounded like something he could do, and he certainly had resolved to do everything he could this week to stay in the competition. He took a deep breath. “Yeah, okay, let’s do it.”

“Alright!” Martin smiled. “Okay so first of all I’ve got to pick you up, ah- bridal style, so if you could please put your arms around my neck…”

Jon did as he was told, and Martin hoisted him up like he was a feather at most. It occurred to Jon that this might be the first time his face had ever been level with Martin’s. He studied the curve of Martin’s nose from this angle, his soft, blond eyebrows, the tips of his teeth just visible through his barely open lips. Ah, there it was again. Jon had been rather pleased with himself so far for not making this whole business weird like he had done with the dip last week, but he could feel a familiar blush creeping up from his fingertips to his face. He still couldn’t figure out why he was being so unprofessional.

“Okay,” Martin interrupted his train of thought “now put your inside leg around my neck. Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

Feeling rather silly, Jon put his leg around Martin’s neck.

“And put your other leg under my arm and around my back, so you’re half sitting on my shoulder.”

Aah, this looked like the troublingly acrobatic thing Martin had mimed earlier. Jon shut his eyes and gratefully wrapped his leg around his partner’s back, feeling a little more stable.

“Good job! So here comes the fun part. I’m going to take my hands from your back and run them down your arms while you tip back, okay? Don’t worry, I’ll be holding onto you the whole time, you can’t fall.”

Nervously, Jon let his vice-like grip on Martin’s shoulders fall away and leant back, deciding not to look over his shoulder as he did. With Martin’s strong hands supporting him all the way down, he ended up hanging upside down off his shoulder, the floor looking worryingly close. His breath was ragged and the room was twisting as he watched. Unaware of his dizzy spell, Martin picked him back up again and set him down on his feet. Jon swayed uncertainly.

“Are you okay?” Martin asked, grabbing Jon’s shoulders in case he keeled over.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just gotta-” Jon sat down heavily on the floor, and not entirely by his own volition.

Cautiously, Martin sat down with him. Once Jon appeared to have got his breath back, he said “Okay, how about we don’t put that in the final routine?”

Jon, feeling slightly guilty, could only “mm” in response.

Despite this setback, the routine really did turn out rather well. By Friday, Jon was laughing as he dance-chased Martin across the floor (if you think you’re getting away) and grabbed his hand to turn him around (I will prove you wrong) before being dipped so hard he could swear he felt a loose lock of hair fallen from his bun brush the floor. He was really getting quite good at ignoring the camera people as they shot B-roll to their heart’s content. He saw the cameras zero in on him out of the corner of his eye as he tripped over one of Martin’s feet, but even with Martin’s hands on his waist to catch him, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

At lunch, Martin looked at Jon over his tea and said “I think you’re ready for the next step.”

“The next step?” Jon asked, wondering what ambitious trick Martin wanted to add to their routine at the last minute. Hopefully it would be one that could be completed with Jon’s feet securely below his head, the way he was meant to be.

“Yeah, the next step in the rehabilitation of your image, right? It’s time for you to get twitter.”

Jon attempted unsuccessfully to retreat behind his sandwich. “Are you sure? You realise they hate me on there.”

Martin sighed. “Have you actually looked since you got cancelled? They quite liked you coming out, I think they’re coming around to you. Apparently you’re weird in a fun way.” He punctuated the last part with air quotes.

Groaning as he got out his phone, Jon reminded himself what he was doing this for: Martin’s career. They spent half an hour fighting over which profile picture to use, and ended up compromising by taking a new one of Jon in the studio. Jon smiled as he added it to his profile, he really did like his hair tied up.

“Okay, next you need a bio.” Martin said, looking over his shoulder. Jon noticed that they were almost touching. Huh. Last time he’d looked, Martin’s lunch had been sitting between them on the bench. Weird. Shaking himself, Jon went to write a bio, and then stopped.

“What do I put? This is a pretty stringent word limit for any kind of biography, even smaller than an author’s biography in a dust jacket.”

Martin laughed. “Christ Jon, just put your pronouns, the name of a couple of your books and that you’re on Strictly Come Dancing.”

Once Jon had done as he was told, Martin slapped his hands down on his thighs and got up “Right, back to rehearsal. I’ll be expecting a tweet from you every day, Mr Sims.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “Twice a week.”

“I’ll accept that as a start.”

On Saturday night, Jon waited anxiously on the ballroom’s balcony for it to be his and Martin’s turn. Tugging at the ends of his hair, he watched as a woman he vaguely recognised from his first ever training session waltz with a man he thought he might recognise from a period drama. Her dark braids were done up into an elaborate twisting updo, complete with little gold charms that sparkled in the colourful stage lights. God, they were doing well. The stone in Jon’s stomach got heavier.

“I’ve always loved Sasha’s choreography.” Martin said, coming up behind him. “She’s such a nerd, she gets really analytical about it and she always has the most niche steps up her sleeve.”

“Martin,” Jon said woodenly, “I’m nervous.”

Martin’s voice softened. “Hey, we’ve been looking really good this week, right? You’re acclimating to lifts well, and you’re actually starting to bring some of the right energy to it. When I first saw you, I thought ‘There’s no way in hell I’m getting this man to shake his ass’, and now look at you!”

Jon chuckled. “Honestly, I hardly believe it either.”

Martin smiled at him, watching his face. “Well, clearly you can surprise yourself. Let’s go out there and prove your nerves wrong.”

Not really knowing why, Jon lent his shoulder against Martin’s. He was so sturdy, like a big old oak or a sparkling, mossy cliff face. It felt too vulnerable to thank Martin for the pep talk, but clearly he could do this. It felt nice to be close to Martin without it being for dance.

The salsa did go well. Jon received the best judges’ comments yet, and was actually in a headspace to process them for once. He still felt sick to his stomach when the vote opened, but then he looked up at Martin standing next to him, seemingly unworried and waving Sasha over to compliment her on her choreo. With each passing week (paso doble, samba, charleston), Jon felt a little less weak in the knees at voting time and got an hour more sleep on Saturday night. They weren’t even in the bottom two for charleston week, which shocked Jon given that it was quite frankly a terrible charleston. Jon really wasn’t good at being… funny. He was so buoyed by a few weeks of success that he entered the studio with a little spring in his step come Monday.

“Good morning, Martin,” he said, opening the door.

“Morning Jon, it’s rumba week!” came the cheery reply from the corner by the mirror.

Chapter Text

“Martin, you say that like there’s any way I’d know what a rumba is.” Jon said, handing over his hairband.

“Oh right, yeah.” Martin seemed to glow faintly pink as Jon watched him in the mirror. It suited him. “It’s the romantic one, I guess? It’s slow, you’ll like that about it. I even went with an extra slow song.”

Jon hummed noncommittally. “Will I have heard of the song?”

Martin laughed. “Probably not, when have you ever? It’s Say Yes to Heaven. Apparently it was big on tiktok recently.”

Jon scowled. “You’re not getting me on tiktok, twitter and instagram are quite enough.”

“You know, your most recent tweet was actually quite funny. I think I can live with you staying off tiktok.”

Jon preened under the incredibly ambivalent praise. “Romantic how, exactly? You know characterisation isn’t my strong suit.”

Martin tucked the ends of Jon’s hair into the bun and turned away, suddenly very busy with his bag. “It’s… touchy? Sensual. Kind of horny actually. But not in a weird way! It’s just… yeah.”

Ah, this was going to be a problem. Jon leant back against the barre, thinking. His eyes danced from ceiling tile to ceiling tile.

“Jon? Is everything alright?” Martin looked up from his bag, seemingly having found whatever he was rummaging for.

Jon ran his options through his head. It wasn’t that he was uncomfortable with anything that would be acceptable on British primetime reality TV, but how was he supposed to access the headspace required to really sell this? He and Martin had been creeping up the leaderboard, and it was crucial to their plan that they didn’t falter now. Jon toyed with his lip between his teeth. He thought back to Martin just a few weeks ago, standing outside the Breakfast studios, a stricken look in his eyes, asking Jon if he had thought that he would be anything but supportive of him liking men. Jon had thought better of Martin then, and he knew better now. He could be trusted with this.

“I’m asexual.” Jon said to the still, silent studio.

“Okay,” Martin responded, his gaze steady. “I promise not to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with. Do you want to have a chat about boundaries?”

“No, it’s not that, I’m okay with…” Jon flushed. “All of that. I’m just not sure how to get the character right if I can’t relate to… that.”

Martin nodded. “How about I puzzle over that while I teach you the basic steps, and then we can come up with a gameplan.”

Thank god Martin always had a gameplan.

Over lunch, Martin said “You know, I’ve been thinking it over and I don’t think it has to be about sex.”

“Oh?” Jon responded, suddenly shy, not looking up from his sandwich.

“It’s certainly about wanting, but it doesn’t have to be sex. It could just be touch, like… nonsexually. Which is something we all want, right?” His voice went a little softer towards the end. It made something deep in Jon’s chest ache.

Jon thought of every time he had all but jumped out of his skin at Martin’s touch, how he wasn’t sure of the last time someone had held him like that but that it must have been a while, of Martin’s shoulder firm and solid pressed against his when he was nervous about the salsa.

“Yeah, I guess that’s a normal human need.” Shit, way to make that response sound normal. Jon took another bite of his sandwich, so forcefully that he bit his tongue as well.

“Okay, so, I appear behind you like this,” Martin said, walking slowly to stand just behind Jon. This felt familiar, like having his hair tied up. “And can I touch your hip?”

“Yes, Martin, don’t start treating me with kid gloves now.”

“Sorry! Sorry. Okay so I’ll slide my fingers up from your hips like this,” Martin ghosted his way up Jon’s sides. Jon’s breath caught in his throat like a fishbone.

“Ticklish?” Martin asked. “I can avoid touching your sides if you like?”

“No it’s… fine.”

“Okay, and then I’ll put my arms around your chest like this, and you put your hands on my arms.”

Jon slapped his palms down on Martin’s forearms.

“No, not like that. More… longing. And gentler.”

Jon tried again, and looked up at Martin. Martin looked down at him.

“You know what, I like that, it’s very convincing. I’ll choreograph in you looking up at me like that.”

Like what, Jon couldn’t begin to guess. Or at least, he hoped he couldn’t.

Come Saturday afternoon, the rumba was looking fantastic, and Martin had a brand new fire in his eyes as they got ready for their dress rehearsal in the ballroom. Jon recognised that look from a certain kind of student at Oxford, the kind who went into exams with a spring in their step and a steely gaze. Ambition.

As the music started, Jon felt Martin’s fingers trace his sides, flicking over his hip bones and making miniscule jumps on his ribs. The strong arms he’d become able to recognise anywhere wrapped around his chest, and they swayed side to side with the undulating sound of the music. Jon looked up, and met Martin’s gaze. God, Martin really was in character, that look was impossibly soft and yet so far from peaceful, like the loudest longing in the world. Like screaming from a boat in the middle of the ocean.

Martin spun him away, and then pulled him back into a momentary embrace, one that lifted Jon’s feet off the floor. As Martin set him down, Jon felt like he was falling off a cliff. His body kept dancing, but his brain stopped, frozen to the spot where Martin had put him. He wanted Martin to come back and pick him up again. Shit, his arms didn’t just look strong, they looked good. The way he moved was fascinating, and as he snaked his way around Jon, trailing hinting fingers around his waist, Jon thought about how calculated his public relations strategy was, and how last week he’d seen Martin meet a little girl who was clearly his biggest fan and have a ten minute chat with her and her dad, with no cameras around. He wanted to watch Martin dance and be interviewed and order earl grey tea from Pret A Manger only to be disappointed by it forever, if only to see all the little expressions his face made.

God.

He had feelings for Martin.

The realisation brought Jon’s brain and body into focus, and to avoid processing that particular bombshell he laser-focussed on completing the dress rehearsal. Afterwards, he dashed backstage, outstripping Martin, and bundled himself into a costume closet. The minute he was alone he slid down the door to sit on the floor, head in his hands, ruining whatever the hairstylist had done with his hair with his anxious stroking and pulling. It didn’t matter, it didn’t look anything like what Martin did to it every day before they got started rehearsing. He didn’t want anyone else doing his hair. He was so deep down his panic spiral that he didn’t notice the pressure on the door behind him until it was kicked open rather forcefully, knocking him over like a bowling pin.

“Oh shit, Jon, are you alright?” Tim asked, clearly startled by his presence.

Jon scrubbed furiously at his eye with his fist. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Tim gave him a knowing look and shut the door quickly behind him, making the closet even more cramped. As he sat down on the floor next to Jon, he asked, “Is the pressure getting to you?”

This seemed like an easy cover story. Jon nodded.

“Hey, you’re killing it. We all know you’re the ones to beat.”

“We’re barely scraping through each week!” Jon barely looked up as he spoke, staring down at the patch of floor he had been staring at already for ten minutes at least.

“What?” Tim seemed genuinely nonplussed. “The public love you, you should see your vote figures. I have, Sash got into the system.”

Jon sniffed. “They just like Martin.”

“Well yeah, everyone likes Martin.” Jon didn’t find that part to believe, at least. Martin was very lovable. “But they like you too. You’ve made real progress, Jon. Come on, we’ll be late for the ten minute call.”

Barely conscious of what was happening, Jon allowed himself to be pulled to his feet and fixed with one of Tim’s giga-watt smiles and a brotherly pat on the back that was a little too hard. Conflicting emotions wrestled for dominance in his chest: the heavy, wet panic attached to his feelings for Martin, and something new entirely, knowing he was liked. God, he thought as he caught sight of himself in a mirror, he needed to get his makeup touched up before showtime.

Chapter Text

As Jon walked out onto the dancefloor, he couldn’t look at the man beside him. Martin, clearly unaware that anything was wrong, was shooting little smiles at particularly excited audience members, shining brighter than his shirt. Jon felt sick to his stomach and could feel his palms sweating. He left Martin in the corner of the dancefloor and proceeded to the centre alone to assume the opening position.

The lights went down. Everything was silent. The audience members seemed frozen where they sat like a malfunctioning computer screen. Jon felt like a thread pulled a little too tight. The lights went on again, bathing the dancefloor in peachy light. Jon took a deep breath and willed himself not to run off the stage. He could feel Martin approaching behind him, far too close and nowhere near close enough. Jon was quickly realising that that had been the case for weeks. God, how could he have been stupid enough to fall for his dance partner, and then stupid enough not to notice?

Large, gentle fingers brushed his hips.

Jon jumped, but hid it well.

The hands made their way up his body and then around his chest.

It would be a miracle if Martin couldn’t feel his pounding heart and erratic breathing.

They swayed gently, and fuck it felt good being held like this.

Jon knew it was time. He stole himself, and looked up to meet Martin’s gaze.

The rosy lighting refracted through Martin’s light eyelashes, lighting his grey-blue eyes up with shards of pink. His lips were a little parted, and Jon could see them move as he took a breath. It wouldn’t be that hard to lean up and kiss him right now, if this was happening in some kind of hazy daydream world where they were in their kitchen and not on television in front of the nation and a live studio audience. The most gut-wrenching part, though, was that Martin had the expression down. He looked at Jon with what Jon could almost kid himself was real love in his face. Jon took in a shuddering breath.

After that, the performance felt like a dream. The thing about rumbas is, for all they’re known as being romantic, a bit horny and very touchy-feely, they’re more about wanting than getting. You spend a lot of the time quite far from your partner, but then there are these awful, delicious moments of being pressed right up against them, breathing their air, feeling their exhales on your lips. Jon was in hell. It felt like his body and brain were perfectly in tune, like this was all it took to deconstruct the plague of cartesian dualism in the West, like every single inch of him was laser-focussed on longing. He had no doubt he was emoting correctly.

Jon took the judges’ comments with a straight face, barely aware of what they were saying. Motsi stood up and shouted something. He thought he might have seen the ghost of a smile haunt Craig’s face. This seems positive, said some distant part of his consciousness that was singlehandedly covering the rest of his consciousness’ shift in the brain-office. The rest of Jon was busy thinking about Martin pressed against his side, Martin pink in the face and a little out of breath. He was really beautiful.

With a start, Jon realised that he was being pulled upstairs to hear the judges’ scores. The sea of dancers on the balcony parted to let Martin pull Jon through to the front, and Claudia announced that the scores were ready. Jon realised that he must look properly out of it on camera. He contemplated rushing backstage, taking his costume off and going home the minute the camera wasn’t on him anymore, but then the thought of missing out on a single moment spent with Martin twisted unpleasantly in his chest. This was terrible.

Jon was brought back to himself by the sound of cheering. It made his ears ring. Surely this is louder than it’s possible for humans to be. He was just getting into a proper old man sulk when he felt Martin pick him up, spin him around and kiss his cheek.

“A forty! A perfect forty!” Martin shouted in Jon’s ear.

“Seriously?” Jon responded, “Full marks?”

“Yes! God Jon I’m so proud of you, you completely aced that.”

Jon smiled. “Pun intended?”

Martin smiled back. For a moment everything felt normal.

Everything did not feel normal the next morning, and besides filming the results show in the evening and spending the whole time stuck between attaching to Martin’s side like a limpet and finding another cupboard to hide from him in, Jon spent most of Sunday smoking in bed and making some actual progress on his next novel. The ashtray on his bedside table was overflowing by the wee hours of the morning, when he finally shut his laptop, closed his eyes, rolled over and went to sleep without brushing his teeth.

The next morning, Jon woke up feeling like something had died in his mouth, and at risk of being dramatic, like something had died in his chest. He brushed his teeth for an extra two minutes, spat into the sink and pulled a hairband onto his wrist with no little trepidation. On the tube, he shut his eyes and tried to savour each second.

Martin was by the barre where he usually was when Jon arrived, stretching out a long leg with an adorable look of concentration on his face.

“Jon!” He beamed when he saw Jon enter. “Well done again for Saturday, that was the best I’ve ever seen you dance. What happened?”

Jon knew exactly what had happened, he wished he could stop thinking about it, but he still preened over the compliments from Martin. “I don’t know really, I could just… suddenly do it.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got the emotions down, because we have contemporary this week. Actually, I was thinking we could have a talk about it. Sit down with me on the bench for a sec?”

Mutely, Jon sat down beside Martin, wondering what this was going to be about.

“I wanted to involve you in the choreography this week. People quite often make their contemporary routines very personal, so I was wondering if there’s anything you’d like to process through this dance? No pressure to tell me anything, obviously.”

Jon’s heart stopped. Had he been figured out? Time for some careful reconnaissance. “What kind of thing, exactly?” He asked cautiously, fiddling with the edge of his t-shirt.

“Oh you know, someone from a past season did one about how his mum died, someone else did one about learning to dance as a Deaf person. That kind of thing.”

There didn’t seem to be a hint to Jon’s feelings there. The mention of a dead mother turned his mind to his own parents, to his childhood with his grandma, how quiet his writing shed had been the day after she died when he realised he was all alone.

“Nothing really,” he replied, “I’ve lived rather an unexciting life.”

Martin nodded. “That’s okay! I had an idea prepared just in case.”

As Jon learned the dance, he tried to figure out what Martin’s idea was. The song definitely had very specific lyrics, something about men and their emotional availability and cognitive dissonance? Jon grimaced. Hopefully that wasn’t about him. Contemporary was very different to everything they’d done before, it had more acting, and it seemed to be done barefoot. There was also a lot of touching, and because the dance style was more freeform, it felt more real somehow. Guiltily, Jon loved every time Martin traced his thumb down his cheek and across his lip, every time he spun him close. The lifts were coming easier now, and Martin seemed optimistic about their chances on Saturday night. Still, there was something about him that was a little quieter than usual. It ate at Jon as they rehearsed.

Jon lasted until Friday before he asked what Martin’s inspiration had been. When he finally did ask, Martin didn’t look surprised, he just fixed him with a level gaze and said,

“My father left.”

“Oh.” Jon replied, and then kicked himself for the insensitive response.

“And it fucked my mum up a bit I think, so we’ve never had the best relationship.”

“Oh.” God, Sims, think of something other than oh. “I’m really sorry Martin.”

“It’s okay.” It really didn’t look okay. Think, Jon!

“So when you said you wanted to make your family proud?”

Martin gave a wry laugh. “I told you I lie in interviews, right?”

“And when you told me to milk the fact that nobody’s watching me at home?”

“I promise, it was coming from someone who knows, Jon.”

Jon went quiet. He placed a shy, trembling hand on Martin’s bicep. "I’m an orphan.”

Martin stopped avoiding eye contact. “Oh, Jon. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, I was pretty young when they died.”

“All the same, I’m sorry.”

There was something deeply peaceful in the silence, humming faintly in the air between two people who truly understood the inadequacy of their words and the importance of saying them. It occurred to Jon that his hand was still on Martin’s arm. His impulse reaction was to snatch it away, followed by the vague idea that he could hug Martin and maybe make all of this better. Instead he took the cowardly option: leaving it there for another second before giving Martin a nod and a smile that was more of a straight line and turning his face away to put his water bottle in his bag.

The pressure was on on Saturday night given their perfect score the previous week, but Jon hardly thought of that as he took to the floor with Martin at his side. He barely even thought about his idiotic crush for once, so focussed was he on doing justice to Martin’s story. He fumbled a bit going into a lift, but suspected that only Craig’s bionic eyes saw. The score of thirty nine was good enough from the moment he saw Martin beaming with pride down at him. Beaming was a perfect word for this, Jon mused, he really was like a shaft of sunlight through a crack in the blinds.

Jon was so buoyed from that smile that on the bus home he decided to post a tweet about the evening right then, really strike while the iron’s hot like Martin was always telling him to. He desperately wanted to hear Martin say he was proud again. After a few goes, he typed out something that he thought was passable. But then, as his finger hovered over the post button, he unexpectedly caught sight of his own name out of the corner of his eye. It took a moment of scanning the screen to find it again, but when he saw it it knocked the air out of him. His name was trending on twitter. Hand shaking, images of the posts on his fans’ facebook group already racing through his head, he clicked on the tag. The first thing that came up was a collection of gifs of him just a few hours ago. Jon had never watched himself on catchup, he could think of nothing more cringeworthy, but for the first time he was beginning to wish he had. Looking at himself now, he could see how plainly his feelings were written all over his face as he looked up at Martin. Scrolling, he saw a collection of gifs from the previous week, this one even more egregious in its sappiness, and accompanied by some theorising about his relationship with his dance partner that he could only bare to skim. He kept scrolling. Sure, there were pictures of Martin too, but Jon couldn’t pick up on the answering love in his face that the posters were clutching at straws to identify. He couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. By the time Jon looked up from his phone, the bus had long passed his stop and the sky was a deep greyish lilac, the darkest it ever gets in London. Cursing, he dragged himself off the bus and collapsed against the wall of the nearest building. Shit.

Chapter Text

Dragging his feet, Jon crossed the road to wait for a bus that would take him back towards his flat. The street was wide and the buildings were tall, grey and featureless, lit at sharp angles by bright shafts from the streetlights. He watched as cars streamed by, providing the only colour on the street. As the bus drew up, Jon stubbed out his cigarette on the wall behind him. There were only two other passengers, each studiously staring out the window at the grey and pretending not to notice him. Honestly, a welcome relief from all the eyes he felt on his back at this moment. He sat down heavily on an available seat and pulled his phone out again to keep scrolling twitter.

When Jon got home, he hauled himself into bed, still fully dressed, and spent the next eight hours in a fugue state going between fitful sleep and reopening twitter. At some point he spotted a link to a youtube video, which gave him an even more in-depth look at just how long he’d been looking at Martin with hearts in his eyes like an old cartoon character. From the beginning, apparently. There was no way Martin hadn’t noticed, Jon was just lucky that he had been too polite to say anything. Groaning and running his hands through his hair, he slipped back into sleep again.

By the time Jon admitted to himself that he wasn’t getting any more sleep, sunlight was already crashing through the gap in the curtains and making its presence known. He sat up, scrubbing at his eyes, and headed to the bathroom. Under the harsh bathroom bulb, the bruising colour of his eye bags looked especially stark. He pulled experimentally at a loose strand of hair and discovered that since he hadn’t undone the style from the previous night, the whole thing appeared to have turned into one big knot. Sighing, he pulled off the clothes he had slept in and got into the shower. As he tipped his head back he worked shampoo into his scalp and then attempted to untangle whatever bird’s nest his hair had become. Fleetingly, he thought of how Martin always touched his hair more gently than this, how he’d probably be great at getting the knots out. He killed that thought as soon as he noticed it.

Jon spent most of the day pacing, wondering if he was allowed to smoke in this flat and lighting another cigarette. He was dreading seeing Martin again for the results show that evening. He’d never been more afraid to be in the dance-off, not because he thought that there was any risk of them being eliminated, but rather because he had no idea how he’d ever dance with Martin again. Maybe dancing with someone who had… feelings for him was making Martin uncomfortable and he hadn’t liked to mention it. That was a painful thought. He put it out of his mind as best as he could for his own sanity.

Despite Jon’s best efforts, the evening came, and before he knew it a makeup artist was tutting like a mother hen over his eye bags and damp, tangled hair. Jon sat sullenly in the chair, stuck between watching the door in the mirror in case Martin walked in, and staring at his hands in his lap to avoid everyone’s eyes. Maybe all of these people knew, they’d seen him with Martin often enough, and he was clearly like that all the time. It wasn’t like he’d ever been subtle, according to one collection of gifs he’d seen last night he had been staring at Martin's lips much more than he thought. They did look soft. Did Tim know? Shit, maybe Martin had discussed it with him, Jon had seen them talking a few times. Maybe he’d known the whole time he was comforting Jon last week. Fuck.

Jon didn’t see Martin until it was almost time to go on stage, and Martin saw him first.

“Hi Jon!” He said as he approached, looking perfect as always in his dance costume. Jon hadn’t failed to notice that Strictly men usually had their shirts unbuttoned to a frankly unnecessary level. Tim was the worst offender, but Martin was guilty of it too. The weakest part of Jon’s brain wanted to curl up and nap on his broad chest. The rest of Jon was avoiding eye contact.

“Hello Martin.”

“Are you okay? You look a little off this evening.”

“I’m fine, Martin.”

“Are you nervous about the results? I wouldn’t be, you did really well last night, and the buzz about us online has been mostly positive.”

Jon flinched. Martin definitely knew. Jon was grasping around for a response when they were ushered out onto the stage for the show to begin.

Predictably, they were not in the bottom two, and when the lights above them went out Jon took the moment of being plunged into darkness to admire the gentle curve of Martin’s cheek.

Suddenly Martin glanced down, and seeing Jon staring, he smiled. Fuck, he could see. He searched Jon’s face for a moment, eyes skirting over the bloated shape of his eye bags and lips pressed into a thin line. He looked away, and then, staring straight forward, reached out and grabbed Jon’s hand. Jon’s heart stopped. Martin squeezed his hand and it felt like CPR. Jon worried about whether his hand was sweaty. God, it was definitely sweating now, all of him was. He could feel every micro-movement of Martin’s fingertips on his knuckles, so much so that he could almost convince himself that Martin was stroking his hand on purpose. Martin hadn’t looked down again, he was still staring straight forward with a look of trepidation on his face. This must be so unpleasant for him, Jon thought, holding hands with someone who had utterly failed to be subtle about their delusional crush on him. Feeling immediately bereft, he dropped Martin’s hand.

Jon’s sense of mounting dread had not subsided by Monday morning. In the half-light of his bathroom he splashed cold water on his face, noting his still-prominent eye bags, and brushed his teeth while staring into his own eyes and trying to come up with a gameplan. He needed to do damage control and convince Martin that he in fact was not having… feelings. About him. He also needed Martin not to realise that that’s what’s happening. He spat the toothpaste out. This was going to be a fine line to walk.

Martin had seemed to notice in the past when Jon hadn’t let him tie his hair up, so when he arrived at the studio he handed over the hairband without a word and gave monosyllabic answers to Martin’s questions about how his Sunday had been.

“Argentine tango this week”, Martin said conversationally. “I think you’ll like it, it’s not that fast overall and it’s got complex technique that I just know your nerd brain is going to enjoy puzzling over.”

“Mm.” Jon responded.

“The music we’re dancing to is classical, so you might even know it!”

“That’s good.”

Jon hadn’t prepared himself for how hard this would be. Well, he had been dreading many aspects of today, but one thing he hadn’t seen coming was how difficult it would be to not respond to Martin’s friendly chatter with quips of his own, something about how Martin was more of a nerd than him what with the vintage poetry anthology Jon always saw peeking out of his holdall. It wasn’t like they’d been friends for a decade, but he was quickly realising that they had developed a rapport that it was hard to pull himself out of.

Jon was almost annoyed that he did enjoy the Argentine tango. It felt like admitting that Martin knew him better than anybody had done in maybe the past five years, and that was a painful thought. He enjoyed it technically at least, the process of learning all the flicks and kicks and isolations certainly did scratch an itch deep in his brain. It was awfully up close and personal though, and that was… less ideal. Unlike the rumba, he was really spending a lot of the week’s practice sessions with his nose touching Martin’s and with their legs wrapped around each other’s. He was getting very acquainted with Martin’s ear in his attempts to avoid eye contact.

“You have to look at me, Jon.” Martin said for the hundredth time that week, sounding more than a little frustrated.

“I am looking,” Jon told Martin’s sideburn.

“No you’re not. You have to look in my eyes. The judges can tell if you don’t, the connection’s going to look off. And relax your hands, they seem to seize up whenever they’re touching me this week. Are you sure there’s nothing you’re uncomfortable with? I can still change the choreo?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Well look at me then!”

Jon huffed and looked into Martin’s eyes. He snuck a glance down at his lips and immediately wished he hadn’t. There was a brief silence.

“Good. Now from the top.” Martin said primly, sounding to the part of Jon’s brain still engaged in wishful thinking a tiny bit flustered. Jon looked away from his face immediately in case that traitorous braincell decided to imagine a blush next.

Despite Martin’s best efforts, the Argentine tango didn’t get much better from there. Jon was technically very clean, he always was, but this week it was coming across almost clinical, the opposite of what was needed. He touched Martin stiffly, avoided eye contact, and wouldn’t inject any urgency into his movements. Martin still regularly asked if there was anything wrong, but Jon insisted he was fine, or just tired, or struggling with some indeterminate technical element of the dance. Plus, he was constantly exhausted, spending guilty hours every night scrolling twitter or youtube watching the same gifs and videos over and over again, punishing himself for the way he looked at his dance partner. Twitter said he was in love, and he patted himself on the back for not being there, ignoring the part of his brain that whispered yet. Small mercies.

By Saturday morning, Jon was actually feeling nervous about performing for the first time in weeks. He knew it wasn’t good. He met Martin in the dressing room and they did one final rehearsal in the corridor, punctuated by dancers rushing past with their hair half done and their shoes in their hands, and by Martin telling Jon to look at him and not to be so wooden. Jon felt tense. He couldn’t grab the back of Martin’s neck and pull him closer like he’d seen some people do in the example videos he had been shown, because that kind of ad-libbing might look too much like making a move, but right now he was clearly erring too far the other way. His brain was so busy buzzing with strategy that he missed a beat, flicked his foot wrong, tripped over his own feet.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to… talk about, Jon?” Martin asked defeatedly as he let him go.

“No, I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Let’s go and get into position for the show.”

As Jon could have predicted, their scores were down drastically. Not enough to have any reasonable fear of the dance-off, but enough that twitter was talking about where he had gone wrong. To make matters worse, there were still gifs popping up of him and Martin, moments when he’d conceded to look at his partner during the dance and his face had immediately filled with ill-disguised wanting. Ugh. Clearly he’d have to be more vigilant next week. He dismissed a text from Martin reminding him not to beat himself up and to get a good rest over Sunday and re-opened twitter.

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.

Chapter Text

Jon almost cried when the judges unanimously voted to send him and Martin to the final. Martin actually cried, and this time Jon didn’t hate himself for it. He only got to gaze up at Martin’s face of incandescent relief for a moment before he was being swept up by a large pair of arms into a rib-crushing hug. He tried to hug back, worming his arms out of Martin’s grasp and clinging to him, sliding one hand up into his hair. With a twinge of guilt, he set aside his resolution to stop loving Martin and let himself enjoy this moment. He could almost kid himself that he just felt Martin nuzzle his face closer into his neck. God, he was happy for the first time in a while. Had the cameras wrapped yet?

Jon allowed himself a cursory scroll of twitter on the bus home. The good people of twitter had seemingly really latched onto that moment when Martin leaned towards him a little during the pause in their Viennese waltz. Apparently it looked like he was about to kiss Jon. Hah. In Jon’s dreams. Jon put his phone on to charge when he got to his flat, showered, and went to bed without looking at it again. It felt good. Nagging somewhere in his brain was a voice reminding him that he might be a little bit in denial about his decision to get over his feelings for Martin and how hard that all might be, but the pillow was soft, and as Jon sunk into it like a stone in a lake he drowsily placed a hand over that little voice’s mouth.

On Monday morning, the dusty sunlight slipping through a gap in the blinds was what woke Jon up. His resolve had not wavered from the previous night, all he could think of was seeing Martin again and rehearsing harder than ever before to make up for the previous two weeks. He picked up teas for them both in artsy sage green takeaway cups from a local coffee shop, and had to reverse through the studio door so as not to spill them, dropping his bag as soon as he could and striding over to Martin. For a moment, he thought about how much less scared he felt entering the studio now. When he and Martin had first started training the lights had felt blinding, and the enormous mirror had made them worse. It made Jon feel exposed, like a woodlouse discovered under a cool, dark rock by an inquisitive child. Now it was just a room with lights and a mirror, and some happy memories. Over there was where Martin knee-slid into him in their first week of training, the first time he had ever seen Martin laugh.

Martin sniffed his takeaway cup approvingly. “Is this jasmine tea?”

“Yes, I thought you’d have had something caffeinated already today, and we don’t want you bouncing off the walls this early in the day.”

Martin inhaled the steam from the cup with a kind of reverence that made Jon let out a fond chuckle. “Perfect choice, thank you Jon.”

“No problem.” Jon replied, feeling himself blush slightly as he watched Martin take the first sip.

“Do you want to sit down for a second to drink these actually, I have to brief you on the final.”

“Sure.”

“Okay so we have two dances this week. We have a showdance, which is basically freestyle, lots of lifts and suchlike.” Martin took note of Jon’s look of apprehension and gave him an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, your lifts have really improved. Also, we’re going to re-do one of our previous dances, but I’m changing the choreo a bit to make it harder, to show off how much you’ve improved. “

“What dance are we re-doing?” Jon asked between sips, already having one in mind but fearing how it could derail his plan to get over Martin.

“I was thinking the rumba, it’s iconic for us, but I’m open to suggestions.”

Against his will and better judgement, Jon nodded. “That’s what I was thinking too. I really see it as a turning point for us.” In more ways than one, he added silently.

“Cool! And I was considering doing a tango-style showdance. Since our Argentine tango was one of our worst ones, it would be nice to redeem ourselves. Plus, our chemistry is one of our strongest points, so it would be good to show that off.”

Jon almost choked on his tea. He couldn’t deny it though, the producers really had been onto something when they paired him up with Martin. Something scarily accurate, actually. That was something to freak out over later, he decided. He swallowed thickly and composed himself. “That sounds like a good idea.”

“And to complete our theme of using tiktok songs in order to get the young people on side, I was thinking Too Sweet by Hozier?”

That was the first song they had danced to that Jon actually knew. He had seen compilations of himself and Martin looking at each other set to it. Countless compilations, and most of them at 4am. Well, at least he was familiar with the rhythm. He tried not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Yeah, okay.” Jon drank the last of his tea, and took both of their cups to the bin. “Ready to start?”

Martin laughed. “Wow, you’re eager today, Mr I-Hate-Warmups.”

Jon huffed goodnaturedly. “I don’t hate warmups, I just don’t like to delay getting down to business.”

Martin rolled his eyes at the familiar rebuttal, and summoned Jon over to the barre.

“There needs to be more tension.” Martin said, putting Jon down from what felt like the millionth ambitious lift but leaving his hands on his waist. With barely any effort he pulled Jon closer, leaving maybe a centimetre between their mouths. God, Jon thought, he barely needed to murmur to be heard like this. “You’ve got to look less relaxed. You look like a cat in a puddle of sunlight, and you need to look at me like you’re either about to kiss me or kill me.”

Jon’s breath was already fast, but it became ragged on “kiss”. A traitorous part of his brain suggested that maybe he actually shouldn’t get over Martin for another week, because right now it was clearly going to be invaluable to his performance. He reminded himself that this was for Martin’s career and let his hands tense on his partner’s neck, his nails digging slightly into the soft flesh there. He furrowed his brow and stared desperately at Martin’s lips. This close to Martin, he could not only hear but also feel his breathing. This meant he felt, in exquisite quality, the tiny hitch of his breath before he schooled his expression and carefully looked at Jon the same way, doing nothing for Jon’s poor heart.

When Martin spoke, he sounded strangled, so much so that Jon slightly relinquished his grip on his neck. He didn’t want to choke the man to death. “Yeah that’s- that’s good Jon. You just have to do exactly that.” Both of their hands were shaking.

Jon could feel Martin’s words ghost over his lips. The weakest part of his brain wanted to lean a little closer, to risk everything they had worked for to feel the lips that had shaped those words, even just for a moment. God, he really needed to think about Martin’s career success right now. Reluctant to pull away or even stop looking at Martin’s lips, he whispered “From the chorus?” and ached as Martin drew back, heading to his phone in the corner to put the song to the right place.

The next day, they went over their new rumba choreography. Jon knew from the videos Martin had sent him for inspiration that rumbas were often sad, but this one was extra sad. Jon didn’t remember the original choreography being like this. There was a sense of longing, but without the hope that the first version had had. Instead, a profound sense of loss swirled around them like fog.

At lunchtime as he watched Martin order his regular from Pret, Jon thought about how many Pret trips they had left. Three. Four if they went on Saturday. Jon hoped they would go on Saturday. He smiled faintly at Martin’s grimace as he added six sugar packets to his tea. Three more times. Three more sandwiches. Eighteen more sugar packets. Three more chances to outrage Martin with them. The walk back to the studio was subdued, and that afternoon Martin was delighted with Jon’s acting for the rumba.

Jon still wasted more time on twitter than the version of him who had signed up for Strictly could possibly imagine, but these days he dwelled much more on the gifs of Martin. God, he was beautiful. Plus, until the date he had set to get over his feelings for Martin, (next Sunday, as soon as the show was over,) he might as well enjoy the parts of this love that were enjoyable. Watching Martin stare into his eyes as if he hung the moon and stars, even if it was just for the performance, felt like gorging himself on fresh berries in the Summertime. For three more days, he could get caught up in the people on twitter’s ridiculous idea that Martin could ever love him back. He felt slightly like he was eating his final meal on death row every time he replayed his favourite gif of Martin brushing his hair out of his face right after the viennese waltz.

The week went fast, what with Jon caught up in the whirlwind of his feelings, oscillating rapidly between impending heartbreak and a desperation to kiss Martin that made him dizzy, depending on which routine they were practising. On Friday, he dragged his feet in Pret, spending longer than usual inspecting all of the sandwiches in the fridge.

“Thinking of deviating from your usual?” Martin asked, sipping his earl grey.

Jon hummed. “Probably not. I just thought I should consider all options. I don’t want to waste any opportunities while I have them.”

Martin wrinkled his nose at the selection of damp sandwiches. “You don’t want to waste an opportunity for… tuna salad?”

Jon shook his head and picked up his usual chicken and avocado. “You’re probably right. Plus, it’s best I don’t have tuna breath in rehearsals.”

Martin chuckled. “Yes, I would appreciate that. Thank you.”

Jon kept staring at the sandwich display. Martin looked at him, still nonplussed. “Are you going to get that one then?”

“Yes, yes, yeah.” Jon took a deep breath, headed to the counter, paid for the sandwich and gave Martin his bravest smile. “Right. Last afternoon of rehearsals then.”

Martin gave him a similar expression in return. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Chapter Text

Saturday morning came like any other. Jon scrubbed sleep from his eyes and padded to the kitchen to make something vaguely resembling breakfast. He was to be moving out of the flat and back to his house soon, so he didn’t have much in. Experimentally, he drizzled olive oil on a slice of toast in lieu of butter.

He went on a walk in the morning to try to calm his nerves, but it didn’t help much. He couldn’t get the final out of his head, he caught himself counting the rhythm of Too Sweet while he walked beside the duck pond in Victoria Park. In another life, he’d like to be feeding the ducks with Martin, maybe followed by a trip to a coffee shop where they could smile at each other over steaming mugs and mutually pretend that their feet and legs brushing under the table was accidental. Much as Jon tried to put it out of his mind, the melancholy that that mental image brought with it followed him for the rest of the morning.

Sitting in the makeup chair for the last time, Jon tried his best to get his head in the game. The prospect of not seeing Martin every day hurt, but a win was the best parting gift he could give him. He just needed to tap into those feelings, pull off an incredibly sad rumba, power through being close to Martin for the last time for the showdance, and cry about it all tomorrow while smoking himself into a grey fog, probably. Totally fine.

“How are you feeling?” Martin asked, settling into the makeup chair next to Jon and startling him out of his train of thought.

“I’m okay.”

“Okay? At the Strictly Come Dancing final?” Martin smiled, “Aren’t you nervous, or sad about it being over? Or relieved, for that matter.”

“I’m… sad.”

“Yeah?” Martin placed a heavy, supportive hand on Jon’s forearm. “I’m sad too. We’ll still see each other though, right?”

“Yeah, we will.” Jon didn’t add that it wouldn’t be enough, or that it would probably be too much, given his plan to stop loving Martin starting tomorrow. He slipped out of the makeup chair and headed to costume, stopping for a brief sob in his dressing room. He really could have gone with this instead of the cupboard last time, in retrospect. It was nice to at least cry on a fancy chair in front of a lightbulb mirror.

The rumba was, predictably, gutwrenching. Martin’s gentle touch on his hips made Jon feel sick, and every time he looked at him, his face a pantomime of the drawn out heartbreak that was raging in Jon’s chest, he felt his throat close up. The judges’ feedback was glowing, Motsi even implied that Jon could consider a career in acting if he ever got tired of writing. Little did she know, Jon thought, that he actually had lost his passion for his work, but he didn’t have to act to look that pathetic. God, what was he going to do next?

Their perfect score washed over Jon without even rippling, and all too soon Martin was heading off to get changed for the showdance.

“Come to my dressing room if you get nervous,” he told Jon as he left. “We can talk about it.”

Ten minutes later, Jon was knocking on Martin’s door. He wasn’t nervous, exactly. The heavy thing in his stomach was deathly still rather than churning, more dread than nervousness.

“Hi Jon.” Martin’s face looked a little pale as he opened the door. “Feeling a bit off-colour?”

“You could say that.” Jon walked into the dressing room and slumped against the wall.

“It’s weird that it’s almost over,” Martin said as he touched up the concealer around his eyes. “I’ve become so used to daily rehearsals and filming on Saturday and Sunday being my routine.”

“Surely you’re used to the change by now, doing this every year.”

Martin shrugged noncommittally. “I guess so.”

The room descended into companionable, if subdued, quiet, until Martin broke the silence.

“What was your favourite part?”

“Huh?”

“What was your favourite part of this experience? And don’t give me one of your interview-prepared answers, I actually want to know.”

“I don’t know.” Martin waited in silence. “I really liked Pret-A-Manger?”

Martin laughed at that. “Seriously? Your favourite part of going on Strictly Come Dancing was going to a mediocre sandwich shop of which there are approximately a million in London?”

Jon felt defensive. “I don’t know! I liked practising interview questions while we ate our sandwiches too, and the rehearsals. My favourite things were all the things that happened leading up to Saturday.”

“Oh.” Martin smiled faintly, but didn’t seem to have anything to say.

“How about you?” Jon asked.

“Probably the rumba? It was a real turning point for us, it was where we really hit our stride. I was just so confident and so proud of you walking out onto the floor. It was also really nice to do such a romantic dance with another man, I kept thinking about my younger self watching that on TV and maybe feeling a little less alone.”

Jon smiled. “Yeah, I thought about that a bit too. I think my favourite dance moment was that dance-off viennese waltz though.”

“Really? It was so stressful!”

“Yeah, but didn’t it just feel good to prove everyone who thought that we’d peaked wrong?”

“Yeah, it did actually.” Martin’s face suddenly went sombre. “What was up that week? I don’t want to press but you really seemed off. I just want to make sure it was nothing I did.” His voice was quiet and sad. It tugged at Jon’s heartstrings until something broke.

The silence felt heavy. Jon looked back on Martin holding his hand on that one results show, Martin leaning towards him in the dance-off, blushing as he asked if Jon had a secret husband, the way his usually so sure hands shook learning their showdance, and all the tender little looks that Jon had missed but seen immortalised in gifs. He had a 1% chance, if that, but if he was never going to see this man again after tonight, he’d never forgive himself for not trying, and he’d already had a lifetime of choices that he hated himself for.

“It wasn’t anything you did. It was just that I- I went on twitter…”

“Oh?”

“I saw all the gifs of us together and I became embarrassed because I realised that I really wasn’t subtle about how I feel about you, and in trying to hide it I pulled away from you and almost lost us the chance to be in the final today. I’m sorry Martin, I shouldn’t have let my delusional ideas about this being anything more than dance get in the way.” It all came out in a rush, and when he was done Jon could only stare at his hands wondering what the hell he had just done.

“Oh my god you really didn’t notice” Martin murmured, more to himself than to Jon, as he crossed the room.

It had been five years since Jon had last kissed someone, and approximately thirty seconds since he had last imagined it. He didn’t remember it being quite this exciting. Martin’s lips were soft but sure, and his brows scrunched just slightly as he pulled on Jon’s lower lip.

Huh. Something wasn’t right. Belatedly, Jon closed his eyes. The kiss only lasted for a moment longer after that, but when he pulled away Martin didn’t go far. “Yeah?” he asked, his lips brushing Jon’s as he spoke.

As if there was any doubt, Jon thought half-hysterically as he pawed at Martin’s hair, feeling the hair department’s work fall to pieces under his shaking hands and not finding it in himself to care. The words that he had built a livelihood on did not seem forthcoming, and Martin faltered for a moment, his thumb slowing to a stop on Jon’s cheekbone where it had been stroking gently just a moment ago.

“God yes.” Jon whispered into the suddenly chilly silence of the dressing room.

He didn’t see Martin’s answering smile but he felt it against his own, anxiety turning to laughter in a moment. He leveraged his grip on Martin’s hair to pull him closer to his level as they traded brief, euphoric kisses with giggles and mumbled words in between that neither of them would remember later. Jon felt Martin’s front tooth brush against his lip, and nipped back experimentally, feeling a sharp intake of breath against his cheek for his efforts. The hands on his waist tightened, pulling him flush against Martin’s soft stomach and, somewhat embarrassingly, pulling a soft sound from his mouth. The breaks between the kisses became shorter, and when they did happen, the air was filled with increasingly heavy breathing. Jon wondered if he was about to wake up and spend a day of rehearsals struggling to look Martin in the eye after a dream like this one, but the insistent press of Martin’s tongue behind his teeth grounded him better than any breathing exercise.

After a while, they were forced to pull apart by mutual unspoken agreement that neither of their backs were equal to this level of snogging over such a height difference for very long. Jon rested his hands on his dance partner’s chest, feeling their unsteady breaths sync up. A younger version of him, the person who existed only in the dim memories of that one year at university before his grandmother had died when he felt half normal, would have decided that back pain be damned, he needed to keep kissing Martin. The version of himself from two months ago would have patted Martin’s chest, stepped back, nodded and said something that he’d cringe over lying in bed later. Jon wasn’t either of these men. Instead, standing in the middle of Martin’s dressing room with his partner’s eyes burning a hole in the top of his head, he drew on all the guilty moments he had spent half asleep in bed or exhausted on the tube imagining doing just this.

Smiling, he placed one hand either side of Martin’s collar and started pulling him backwards towards the countertop that served as a dressing table. He looked down at Jon in confusion, and then in realisation as Jon lifted himself up onto the dressing table, scooting slightly to avoid the lightbulbs from the mirror digging into his back.

“Wow yeah alright” Martin breathed, his tone frayed at the edges. “Do you want to-”

When he spoke, Jon was surprised to hear how ragged his own voice sounded. “Please, Martin, just-” he looked into his eyes, desperate and searching, and pulled a little harder on his collar, overbalancing him so he stumbled forwards, catching himself with his hands on Jon’s thighs.

That seemed to get the message across, which was good, because it looked like Jon was clean out of words again. Just before they both closed their eyes, he caught a glimpse of Martin’s expression, hard and full of intent, something Jon had only seen glimpses of in his tango performances or directly before he went on stage when he was feeling confident in their routine. His hands squeezed slightly at Jon’s thighs, pulling him closer on the table. Jon had not been wrong about him being strong. The kiss turned open-mouthed and urgent almost immediately this time, and Jon felt inordinately thankful that he was already sitting down as his knees turned to soup. Dimly, he remembered that it was rude to use tongue on a first kiss, that first kisses ought to be gentle with just the faintest promise of more. Whoever wrote that rule clearly had not had to spend two months within kissing distance of someone like Martin just trying not to want this.

Mindful of the hustle and bustle going on on the other side of the dressing room door, Jon muffled a faint sound against Martin’s neck, embarrassingly high-pitched and desperate, and felt it vibrate back to him against his lips. He looked up at Martin and saw that he had moved a hand from Jon’s back to his own mouth, trying to muffle whatever noise he might have been making himself. Just as Jon brought his mouth back up to Martin’s, they were interrupted by the intercom system.

“Jon and Martin, ten minute warning for your showdance, please make your way to the stage.” Fuck. Jon pulled back for the first time, as much as he could with his legs still wrapped around Martin’s waist, and looked. Martin’s breathing was heavy and his lips were red and swollen. He had a little bit of Jon’s face powder on his chin, and he staggered slightly as he disentangled himself from the insistent circle of Jon’s legs and stepped back. His face was all pink, and god, Jon had known he was beautiful for a while now, but this was really something else.

“We should uh-” Martin chucked, patting helplessly at his head to try and smooth his hair out. “We should head to the stage.”

“Not yet,” Jon smiled. “We look a mess. Come here, you’ve got some of my powder on your face.” Catching sight of himself in a mirror as he scrubbed at Martin’s jaw with a makeup wipe, Jon groaned. “Shit, my hair’s a mess.”

Martin got even pinker. “Sorry.”

“I think it was worth it.”

“Here, I’ll fix it. Do you have a hairband?”

Jon slipped off the table and handed Martin a hairband. The feeling of Martin’s hands in his hair, gentle but secure, was always grounding.

“We’ll talk about this after the showdance, yeah? Like what it means and stuff.” Martin asked, his voice sounding faintly nervous. Jon felt a twinge in his chest.

“I’d like it to mean something, Martin.”

The time it took Martin to respond couldn’t have been more than a second, but to Jon, unable to see his face, it felt like an hour at least. “I want it to mean something too.” he responded, and the relief Jon felt at hearing the smile in his voice was indescribable. They dashed to the stage, receiving a few funny looks from producers who noticed their flushed faces and swollen lips, and Jon’s impromptu hairstyle that absolutely wasn’t what the hair department had planned.

Jon started the performance alone, Martin had said that it was common to do this for showdances to show the increase in the celebrity partner’s confidence.

It can't be said I'm an early bird
It's ten o'clock before I say a word
Baby, I can never tell
How do you sleep so well?

He could feel Martin approaching behind him, grabbing his waist and hauling him into a swooping lift and wow the way his strong hands held Jon felt familiar. It was an honour to recognise the feeling of Martin’s short nails digging into his sides. As Jon turned around, he found it hard not to just beam at Martin. He needed to summon some of the tension he had felt earlier, maybe the feeling of wrapping his legs around Martin while sitting on a backstage dressing table and listening to him try to stifle his moans. Ah, yes, that worked.

The showdance was undoubtedly the hardest routine Jon had ever learned. Getting thrown around for most of the first two verses had him starting off dizzy, and then he needed to be steady and technical for the argentine tango-style kicks section of the third verse. It was honestly a welcome respite before hitting the chorus, at least his feet were on the ground.

But while in this world

Jon nodded at Martin, just the faintest amount, to show he was ready. Martin nodded back, traced his fingers gently down to Jon’s hips and lifted him over his head.

I think I'll take my whiskey neat
My coffee black and my bed at three

For the first time since learning this lift, Jon didn’t feel guilty for spending the entire time thinking about just how strong Martin must be. He could actually think of some good uses for that. Focus, Jonathan, you’re being set down. At least the next thing was a dip, which was ideal for someone whose legs were not feeling particularly inclined to hold them up, at present.

You're too sweet for me
You're too sweet for me

Chapter Text

More glowing feedback and another perfect score were both summarily ignored by the two happiest men in the world. Back in Martin’s dressing room, they immediately fell into a hug.

“You were so good.” Martin mumbled thickly into Jon’s neck.

“So were you. Thank you for all of this.”

“Anytime.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. When are you free? I’ll teach you more dances.”

Jon pulled away to look into Martin’s eyes. “Martin Blackwood, are you asking me on a date?”

Martin stroked his cheek with his thumb. “Maybe, would you say yes?”

“You know I’d say yes. What about that kiss earlier didn’t scream yes?”

Martin chuckled. “It was a good kiss.”

“Care to recreate it?”

“Gladly.”

“You know,” Jon breathed shallowly into the crook of Martin’s neck, “I’d take you to dinner right now if we had time before the results show.”

“Mmm, that would be nice, I’m starving, I was too nervous to eat lunch. I have no idea why they feel the need to have the final results show also on Saturday night.”

“Awful of them, getting in the way of me taking you out.” Jon placed a slow, lazy kiss on Martin’s neck as he thought, chasing it with a hint of teeth. “We could order something?”

“That- ah- sounds good.”

Staying as wrapped up in Martin as he possibly could, Jon pulled up Uber Eats on his phone, ordered the cuisines alphabetically and scrolled to P as a force of habit.

Martin laughed. “Wait, you do that too? I always have to scroll through loads of pizza places to find Polish food.”

“I’m looking for Pakistani food actually, I always check just in case there’s a place nearby.”

Martin looked at the screen. “It looks like there’s both, we could do fifty fifty and show each other our favourites?”

“That sounds nice actually.”

Martin took the phone and scrolled through the Polish menu. “Anything you can’t eat?”

“I don’t eat pork, I was raised Muslim and it’s one of the few things I kept.”

Martin nodded. “I always get the mushroom krokiet anyway, I like the sauerkraut.”

Jon smiled as he watched Martin add his stuff to the basket, and then efficiently added some Pakistani staples of his own. He was about to eat daal pakwan until he passed out, and he was going to do it with the most gorgeous man on earth.

“The orders should both be here in the next five minutes, I’ll go and wait outside” Martin said half an hour later, slightly flushed from killing time while they waited.

“Are you sure?” Jon asked as he dabbed at his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yeah, you wait here, I’ll only be a minute.”

Jon wished he had some candles around, something to make his first date with the man he loved slightly more romantic than eating out of plastic containers in a messy dressing room. He switched off all of the lights except for the ones around the mirrors, to try and give the place a bit of ambiance. It kind of worked, at least it was harder to see all of the clutter Martin left around now. Jon picked up a tube of moisturiser and felt its weight in his hand. Martin liked a citrus scent, apparently. He wanted to learn everything about him.

When Martin returned, they spread their coats out on the floor like they were on a picnic and sat cross-legged across from each other. Jon noted how three months ago his poor hips wouldn’t have been up to this. Dance really had changed a lot for him.

“What’s this?” Martin asked as he took a forkful of bheeh bhajji.

“It’s lotus root, that’s been spiced a bit? I’ve always wanted to learn how to make it.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“My grandma didn’t really like me in the kitchen, she said I got underfoot, and there was nobody to teach me after her.”

“I’m sorry, Jon.”

“Don’t be, it was a long time ago, and takeaways exist.”

“My mum at least let me in the kitchen, but she said that I fold the ugliest pierogies, so I haven’t made them since leaving home.”

Jon scooted around the takeaway boxed to get closer to Martin and rested his head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what those are, but I bet yours are beautiful.”

“They’re these, here, have one. They’ve got cheese and potato in.” Martin said, helping himself to one.

Jon, for the first time in his life, realised that he wanted to be flirtily fed something like a character in a terrible 80s teen film. He really wasn’t sure how to initiate this. Experimentally, he leant up against Martin and looked hopefully at the pierogi in his hand, and then gave him his best puppy eyes. Martin chuckled disbelievingly, but held it out for him. Jon made full eye contact as he took a bite, feeling simultaneously embarrassed and deeply in love with the man in front of him. There was a silence for a moment while he chewed, and then they both erupted into giggles.

“I’ll fold you all the pierogies you want if you’re going to look at me like that every time.”

Jon swallowed and nestled his head back into Martin’s shoulder. “It is really good actually, and I don’t think the perfectly crimped edges made it any nicer. I think I might take you up on that.”

Martin smiled. “Second date sorted, then.”

“Third date sorted, if you count your promise about continuing to teach me dance as the second.”

“I was thinking of that more as an ongoing thing,” Martin said, sacrilegiously dipping a krokiet into the karhi.

Jon felt his heart flutter in his chest despite the horrifying food combination Martin had just invented. “An ongoing thing?”

Martin went pink. “Uh, yeah, unless you don’t want this to be an ongoing thing?”

Jon smiled and lifted his head off of Martin’s shoulder to look him in the eye. “Martin, I realise it’s our first date, but do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Martin went even pinker. “I think going through all of Strictly is equivalent to five dates at least. Yes, of course I want that.”

Beaming, Jon wrestled Martin to the ground for another kiss, attaching himself to his new boyfriend like a koala and letting out a hum of satisfaction. Martin’s fingers drew little circles on his waistline, and Jon could feel him smiling against his lips.

“What are you going to do now the show is over?” Martin asked once they had begrudgingly agreed to finish the food before it got cold.

“I don’t actually know. I don’t think I feel like writing anymore, and I don’t really want to leave London either. I honestly haven’t written properly since… well since I’ve been happy, really.”

Martin tucked a lock of hair behind Jon’s ear and kissed his cheekbone. “You could move to London and just figure it out. Getting famous for your writing straight out of uni must have meant you never had that figuring-yourself-out time in your early 20s.”

Jon curled up against Martin, tucking his legs in and feeling small and safe. “Mm, that’s true. It’s certainly something to consider.”

“When did you realise you fancied me?” Martin asked as he finished off the bheeh bhajji.

Jon hummed thoughtfully, his head resting in Martin’s lap, his body well-fed and sleepy. “I realised during the dress rehearsal for the rumba, but I think I had felt that way for a while.”

Martin nodded, stroking Jon’s hair as he chewed.

“How about you?”

“Kind of from the moment I saw you if I’m honest.”

“What? Martin, I was a dick to you!”

“Yeah, but I love a man with long hair.” Martin grinned. “I went off you a bit when I thought you were homophobic, but when you said that you’d gone on Strictly to stick it to your homophobic fanbase, that’s when I started properly falling for you.”

Jon attempted to pull Martin’s face down for a kiss, and was disgruntled to learn that even he wasn’t that flexible. “You deserve better than that version of me.”

“I do like you better when you’re all happy and comfortable with me.”

“You’re being too charitable towards me three months ago. I may have been out of my depth, but I was also a bastard.”

“Mm, your hair made up for a lot.”

Jon batted at Martin’s arm in mock annoyance.

“Hey! Joking, joking.” Martin chuckled, batting back. There was a moment of silence where his hands returned to Jon’s hair. The feeling of them twisting it gently and stroking it flat was wonderfully familiar by now, and Jon took a moment to just bask in it. Then, Martin said, “Do you want to look on twitter?”

“What?”

“Face your fears and all that? We could look at the theory posts together.”

Jon smiled as he sat up. “Yeah, alright. I actually follow a couple of the most prolific ‘shipping’ accounts.”

Martin shoved him playfully, laughing in disbelief. “Well that certainly won’t have dispelled any rumours! Let’s see, then.”

Their blatantly freshly-made-out-with faces when they arrived for the showdance had not escaped the notice of Jon’s following page. They both laughed awkwardly as they scrolled through zoomed-in screenshots of them looking at each other like they were about to go at it all over again.

“Well, that saves us an announcement post on instagram, clearly they all already know.” Martin said, pressing a kiss to Jon’s temple.

“God, I tortured myself over this stuff.” Jon replied, still scrolling. “I was so angry with myself for being obvious and pathetic, and falling for my Strictly dance partner like some kind of walking cliché.”

“You weren’t being pathetic, and you clearly weren’t being that obvious either, I just spent three months being thrown in a loop trying to figure out how you felt about me.”

Jon winced. “Sorry.”

Martin pulled him closer, almost into his lap. “Nothing in the world to be sorry for, not when I get you like this.”

Jon wriggled properly into Martin’s lap and put his hands either side of his boyfriend’s face, close enough to be able to feel his breaths, which were getting faster. “Like what, exactly?”

Chapter Text

It was a perfect date. Jon got to properly admire the way Martin’s nose crinkled when he laughed, and the sheer amount of snogging made him feel like a teenager in a way that he couldn’t quite bring himself to be embarrassed about. He was owed a chance to be stupid and obsessed with his first ever boyfriend, he thought, it wasn’t like he was doing this at sixteen. He even tried the krokiet-khari combination and had to admit that it was actually weirdly nice.

When the intercom called them to the stage for the results show, Martin smiled bravely at Jon and helped him up, leading him to the studio hand-in-hand. Jon’s heart thundered in his chest, like it was trying to complete all the heartbeats between that moment and the results being revealed in record time. Jon took a deep breath and tried to remind his body that time doesn’t work like that. All the while, Martin’s solid form led him forward, keeping him afloat.

“What if we just didn’t go on stage?” Jon mumbled.

“What?” Martin asked, half-distracted and on a mission.

“What if we just didn’t go out there? We could just leave, not have to go through the terrifying moment of suspense.”

Martin stopped and turned around. “You know we can’t do that, and anyway, it might be good news! You wouldn’t want to miss that would you?”

Jon shrugged, not meeting Martin’s eyes. “Today is already perfect, I don’t want to risk it.”

Martin sighed and pulled him into an enveloping hug. “I’ll be right by you the whole time, and I’ll be proud of you whatever, you know that right?”

Jon nodded, hoping Martin could feel it against his chest.

“Don’t make me carry you.”

That pulled a choked laugh from Jon’s throat. “I wouldn’t complain actually.”

“Come on, you ridiculous man.”

The energy on the stage was electric, the kind of buzzing silence created by a lot of people trying to stay very calm. Jon saw Tim shoot Martin a supportive smile as they walked to their spot. He also saw him glance down at their joined hands and raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. Had Jon been the only person on set who hadn’t realised that Martin returned his feelings? Clearly they were going to have a lot of explaining to do at the afterparty. They took their positions under a glowing spotlight, and Jon leaned slightly into Martin and tried to imagine that the world didn’t extend beyond their little pool of light. Martin hadn’t let go of his hand, and Jon decided to pass a supportive squeeze along the connection.

“We’re live in one minute.” A cameraperson announced, not making anyone in the room any less nervous. Out of the corner of his eye Jon could see Sasha fidgeting with her dress, twisting the honey-coloured fabric between her fingers and pressing wrinkles into its pristine sheen. The lights went up in the studio, and for a blissful moment Jon was distracted from his impending doom by watching how the purple light played over the layered yellow, creating a golden hour in the form of a dress. Feeling Martin squeeze his hand, he felt himself jolt back to reality. Tess was already speaking.

“And now,” she told the camera, “It is time to reveal your winner of Strictly Come Dancing 2024.”

Tense music played in the studio, making the hairs on the back of Jon’s neck prick up. He patted at his hair, half trying to calm himself down, half trying to figure out if it had got messed up from kissing again, in the rush to go to the stage he hadn’t even thought about it. It was mercifully broadly intact, but this did nothing to calm his nerves. Martin’s hand was tense in his, almost painful with how hard he was clinging on. Jon squeezed back just as hard, trying to cram all of the fizzing tension in his body into one hand. God, how long had this suspenseful pause been going on for? He squeezed his eyes shut.

“Jon and Martin!”

The announcement almost knocked Jon off his feet, and then Martin actually knocked him off his feet, gathering him up into a bruising hug. They broke apart and Jon felt like he might be sick from all of the emotions he had felt in the past few minutes. Instead, but no less unbidden, words fell out of his mouth.

“God, I love you Martin.”

Martin’s mouth fell open, and for a moment his face was completely still. Then, he surged forward and kissed Jon, hands coming up to cradle his face. It was a snog for the ages. It was probably inappropriate for British primetime TV. It was definitely losing Jon what he had left of his fanbase with every anxious brush of their lips. It was two seconds long at most. When they broke apart, Martin’s eyes were wild and overwhelmed. Distantly, Jon could hear cheering, applause, and a few gasps. He clung onto Martin’s shoulders.

Tim collided with them like a comet, cheering and wrapping them both up in a group hug, and the rest of the cast weren’t far behind him. Over his shoulder, Jon could see the cameras panning away and the judges getting up from their seats.

“What was that, you two?” Sasha asked, her voice thick with smiling.

Martin blushed beautifully, and glanced down at Jon.

“What about it?” Jon replied, trying for nonchalance and landing on giddiness.

“You know! I had no idea you two had finally got it together!”

Martin beamed. “It’s a… recent development.”

“Oh?” Sasha’s gaze suddenly sharpened, but her grin was still there. “How recent?”

“Well…” Martin responded, tugging at the cuffs of his shirt. Maybe a better boyfriend would have jumped in to save him, but Jon was too blissed out to follow the discussion in any meaningful way.

“Wait, Martin,” Tim interjected, his expression mirroring Sasha’s, “When you came onstage for your showdance you did look kind of mussed up…”

Martin’s burning blush, and the way Jon hazily looked up, obviously admiring it, was a confession in itself.

Tim gave him a brotherly punch to the shoulder. “Good on you, Marto!”

They didn’t stay long at the afterparty. Sitting almost in each other’s laps and getting pleasantly tipsy while Tim and Sasha gave 110% to karaoke despite their exhausting days was fun, but Jon could feel his eyelids drooping as he snuggled closer into Martin’s soft form. Instead, stumbling out of the bar, they found themselves on the tube to Martin’s flat by mutual unspoken agreement. There was no way Jon was letting go of his boyfriend’s arm, centrally. They spoke very little on the journey, what with Jon almost falling asleep on Martin’s shoulder every time they stopped moving and Martin needing all of his slightly inebriated brainpower to navigate them both through the tube system.

As they stumbled over the threshold, Jon dimly noticed that Martin’s flat was exactly how he had imagined it, sans husband. There were little candles with clashing scents like “ancient library” and “plum jam” scattered across the surfaces, a host of surprisingly luscious-looking houseplants lined up along the far wall of the living room by the windows, and a variety of apparently hand-knitted blankets piled on the small, sagging sofa and the large armchair. The armchair also housed a small pile of wool and needles. For a moment, he imagined Martin curled up, Bake Off on the television, knitting away. Jon would like to be present for such an evening, he thought.

The alcohol in their systems definitely made the transition to cuddling in bed much easier. Too tired to be shy, Jon pulled off the joggers he had worn to the studio that morning and curled up under the covers, waiting for Martin to emerge from the bathroom. At some point soon he’d have to broach a proper discussion about asexuality, but for now Martin knew he was asexual and that was enough to make him feel secure. It was so hard to think about having any kind of serious discussion when instead he could press his head into the marshmallow pillow below him and smell Martin’s shampoo.

“Hey, move over,” Martin said softly, surprising Jon with his presence. “I need to be able to fit too, you know.”

Making a mock-annoyed sound at the back of his throat, Jon rolled onto one side of the bed to give Martin space enough to join him, but not enough that they wouldn’t be forced to touch. Their bare thighs brushed, and something in Jon’s chest sang with the intimacy. Hooking one ankle around one of Martin’s, Jon began to wrap himself around his boyfriend like ivy on an ancient building.

“Hello there,” Martin mumbled, stroking Jon’s hair and peppering kisses across the top of his head.

Tilting his head up, Jon pressed a soft kiss to Martin’s lips, one hand resting on his chest and the other angling Martin’s head down for more. It was nothing like any of the kisses they had shared earlier in the day, without the pressing urgency of being in an unlocked dressing room discovering that his feelings were requited for the first time, Jon could take his time learning the shape of Martin’s lips and the sleepy rise and fall of his chest.

“I love you too,” Martin whispered into a pause in their kisses. “I realise I didn’t say before, and I want you to know.”

“I don’t think you needed to say,” Jon smiled, finally letting his face say everything he felt. “I think that kiss said enough.”

Martin chuckled softly. “It certainly scandalised a few grannies in the audience.”

Jon snuggled into his neck. “Worth it.”