IV.
The following weeks pass in a blur that somehow manages to feel like a second and a whole decade all at once.
Once the last remainders of adrenaline wear off and nothing else happens that would get more of it flowing, Jon spends the majority of his time asleep and, after some initial attempts of just going on as if nothing had happened, finally concedes and no longer tries to ignore his body’s complaints. Instead, he rarely strays more than a couple of paces from the bed or sofa or –to Martin’s discontent - chair he had last dozed off on and simply tries everything he can to keep the frustration that has settled in his stomach at bay.
Martin stays at his side most of the time and it’s lovely to finally settle down with his boyfriend and not have to worry all the time but sometimes, all Jon wants to do is scream when he tries to leave the house on his own and his legs give in before he’s even reached the stairs, or when he wakes up and his head is already heavy with a splitting headache that makes it impossible to do anything else than lay silently in the dark and try to go back to sleep as fast as he can.
Most days are okay, and he spends his waking hours being soft with Martin, watching stupid movies whilst cuddled up to his boyfriend or reading whatever book is laying about in his proximity, half the time loudly complaining to Martin about the worst bits – or sometimes the whole thing. There are also days, Jon can’t decide whether he wants to cry out in pain or frustration, and he feels like he’s being drained of what little energy that is supposedly coming back to him.
On those days, he asks Martin to leave him alone in their bedroom even though the last thing he wants when he’s in that place is being on his own. But it’s not Martin’s fault he’s in pain and irritable and Jon would much rather let his other hand be burned than let his frustration out on his boyfriend- especially since Martin has been bending over backwards to try and make him happy basically ever since the day they’d first met.
The fact that, nine times out of ten, Martin will quietly slip into the room, headphones already on his ears, sit down next to Jon and hold his hand while Jon’s body contorts into near impossible positions in a hopeless attempt of getting comfortable, helps. On those occasions Martin keeps his mouth shut and his eyes trained to his phone or book, squeezing Jon’s hand in his from time to time to let Jon know he’s still there, all the while turning up the volume of the music or podcast he’s put on just enough to not hear Jon curse and lash out against the whole world and everyone he’s ever known beside him. He might not let Jon shut himself off with his pain, but he can leave him the dignity of not being watched and overheard as he gives up control and from time to time gets out nothing but choked moans and dry sobs.
Martin only directly looks up and takes off his headphones when Jon finally slips into a dreamless slumber or reaches up and touches the tips of his fingers to Martin’s jaw when it either gets too bad or it’s finally over and he can bear anyone else’s presence beside him.
Sometimes they stay like this for whole afternoons and the rest of the day drags on while Martin tries his best to distract Jon or get him to at least drink something when he can’t bring himself to eat. He doesn’t mention that most of the tea he makes for Jon on those days ends up sitting on the nightstand for hours until it’s cold and bitter and has to be thrown out but the smell seems to help.
The thing is, that Jon knows he’s getting better. He can feel his body slowly coming around and get stronger again and at some point, even the bad days don’t feel like he’s trapped within his own pain and helpless anger anymore. After a little over a fortnight, his head stops swimming every time he sits up, a couple of weeks later he doesn’t need to sleep two hours for every hour he’s awake anymore and slowly moving about no longer makes him want to scream. The progress is maddingly slow though.
It’s almost as if his body is deliberately taking its time, pointing out to Jon that no, it actually cannot be sustained by four hours of sleep every couple of days, cigarettes and statements instead of food and he better not try something like that again.
“Well, if that’s true, your body does have a point, you know”
Martin laughs when Jon tells him one rainy afternoon and kisses the sharp lines that edge themselves into Jon’s forehead whenever he frowns indignantly up at his boyfriend, which has gotten a lot more seldom since the word ‘boyfriend’ has started getting its fair share of use.
They are sitting outside on the porch, watching the grey sky and the sheets and sheets of rain turning the area into a cold swampland, huddled beneath every blanket they’d been able to find inside on a set of the most ramshackle lawn-chairs they had ever seen. It’s been the first three subsequent days Jon has been able to move about without being in constant pain or feeling too dizzy to stand on his own and it’s chilly and wet and utterly perfect, just sitting in silence, Martin’s soft, warm hand in his.
“Maybe, but that point has been made if you ask me”
“If you say so”, Martin pauses only as long as it takes for Jon to make a face, then goes on, “you look a lot better though”
“Lucky for me that the bar for that hasn’t been too high in the last years”
“Well, sleep and real food have their advantages- hey look”
Martin points towards the little clearing before the forest opposite their house across the street.
“What is it?”, Jon asks, squinting at the rain and wind that is slowly but surely washing the world of its colours.
“A deer- it’s right there, at the edge of the woods, next to the sign”
“There’s a sign?”
Jon’s eyes are little more than two dark lines with how hard he’s screwing up his face whilst following Martin’s pale hand pointing straight ahead.
“…It’s about six foot tall and bright red”
Martin drops his hand as he faces his boyfriend instead of the deer that’s (very clearly visibly from their position even through the rain) still ambling along the outskirts of the forest.
“Jon, how far exactly can you see clearly?”
“Well”, Jon says slowly, trying to make out what’s in front of him without squinting, “…there’s our driveway, our letterbox, a signpost, then the clearing and forest”
“And what does the signpost read?”
“I don’t remember, I didn’t really get the chance to get a feel for the area before-“
“Jon, that thing’s huge”
Martin takes off his own glasses, takes one look at the sign, eyes barely narrowing, then shakes his head.
“So?”, Jon asks, ready to feel validated because the writing looks so blurred from their position, surely-
“It clearly says ‘towncenter’”
“No, it doesn’t; it took us almost half an hour to get from there to the cottage”
Martin looks at Jon like he’d looked when Jon had told him, he’d accidentally stabbed himself with a butter knife, and Jon falters.
“Try again”, Martin says as he presses his glasses into Jon’s hand, “any better?”
“…a little”, Jon admits, lips tight, “but your prescription was always a lot weaker than mine, so…”
“When exactly was the last time you wore your own glasses?”, Martin asks as he takes his own back and replaces them on his nose.
“I”, Jon starts, but pauses again, realizing he doesn’t know for sure, “I think, either Breekon or Hope- one of them knocked them off when they took me to Nikola and, I think, I didn’t really need them anymore at that point? I mean, I don’t remember getting, or taking them back and I had no problem with my eyes afterwards, I”, he sighs, pinching the back of his nose, “I remember, actually not getting these really bad headaches anymore, after Helen got me out- stop laughing, Martin”
“Nope”, Martin shakes his head, still laughing, “You can be such a dunce, you know”
“Hey”
“It’s almost impressive”, Martin goes on, laughter slowly ebbing away, “I always thought that scene, where Spiderman realizes he suddenly has a six-pack and doesn’t need his glasses anymore and just went with it was stupid but apparently-“
“Don’t remind me of that movie”
Jon does not quite manage to not have the shudder than runs through him, be heard in his voice.
“Sorry”
“And it’s not like I woke up one morning with normal eyesight and toned muscles-“
“Well, thatmuch is obvious”
Martin pointedly drops his gaze to his own jumper hanging off Jon’s pointy shoulders and elbows almost three sizes too large, bundling around his legs and reaching almost halfway down his thighs. Trousers and shoes being about the only pieces of clothing Jon doesn’t even attempt to steal from him as they hang off his legs and feet so large, he can’t actually walk without either tripping over or loosing them.
Jon’s mouth involuntarily falls open when he stares at his boyfriend.
“Hey”, is all he had manages, most of his concentration focused on fighting the urge to cross his arms in front of his chest, which would send the sleeves he had rolled up flopping through the air.
“I’m sorry”, Martin repeats, more soberly this time, pressing his lips against his boyfriend’s forehead, which at least smooths down the lines on Jon’s forehead a little.
“You know I didn’t mean- you’re way more beautiful than that guy”
“Even without any detectable muscles”
Jon raises an eyebrow, but his face goes soft almost as soon as the tips of Martin’s ears turn pink.
“And honestly, I’m the last person in the world who should complain about his boyfriend’s appearance-“
The last word had barely gotten out before Jon is clamping one hand over Martin’s lips.
“No”, he tells Martin firmly, looking right into his eyes, “You are perfect, so don’t even try to say something else”
He keeps his hand in place for a few moments longer, all the while holding Martin’s gaze, his own eyes and the rest of his face so intense that any thought of protest evaporates from Martin’s head. Replaced with a rather more intense version of the warm, fuzzy feeling that starts in the pit of his stomach and spreads throughout his whole body while Jon continues to look at him as if he’s daring Martin to disagree with him.
For a heartbeat, Martin thinks that that lecture might be worth it, but Jon’s right; the time for beating himself up over his looks is over and honestly has no place in the here and now he shares with Jon who keeps looking at him like he’d hung the moon.
“Okay?”, Jon finally asks, a faint blush spreading over his own cheeks when lets his hand drop between them, blindly searching for Martin’s and lacing their fingers as he presses his forehead against his boyfriend’s, “I’m sorry, I just-“
“You are adorable”, Martin whispers as he hugs Jon tight and basically lifts him into his own lap.
“That lawn-chair is not going to bear both of our weight”, Jon mutters as he lays his head against Martin’s shoulder and clings back.
One day, one day they might stop clinging to each other every chance they got but Jon has the feeling that that day was a long way off and he couldn’t care less; they had spent far too much time miserable and alone and there’s no reason to prolong that, not when Martin seems to share his need for affection and is more than willing to take care of it. Especially after their last year at the archives…
“There’s an optician at the-“, Martin starts a couple of minutes later but then the frail cloth and wood give in under their combined weight with a surprisingly loud crack and yelp from Jon and they both land on the floor, Martin instinctively tightening his hold around Jon.
There’s a moment of stunned silence before Jon asks, if Martin’s okay, just as Martin says; “fuck, ow”
“I told you”
Jon’s voice rises towards the end of his sentence but it’s almost drowned out when Martin starts laughing so hard his face goes red and tears build up in the corners of his eyes as he throws back his head, still holding Jon as close as if he’s afraid, he might float away any moment.
“Are you- stop laughing, Martin”
“No”, Martin shakes his head, just before he kisses Jon with a little too much force that only doesn’t succeed in knocking him backwards since Martin is still holding him close, “I’m fine, don’t worry”
“If there’s anything I’ll never stop, it’s worrying about you, you strange, strange person”
“That’s sweet of you”, Martin says softly, but he’s still grinning, “not as cute as your shriek from just now-“
“I did not shriek”, Jon insists, face almost as red as Martin’s.
“You didn’t”
Jon knows, he’s made a mistake almost as soon as he’s opened his mouth to answer “No, I, in fact, did not” but before he gets out the second word, Martin’s hands shift, and he digs his fingers into Jon’s belly and side, gently as not to hurt him, but firmly enough to actually make Jon squeal as he tries to shove Martin’s hands away, his own laughter echoing in the silent, rainy afternoon. Because Jonathan Sims, former Archivist, avatar of the beholding and almost world ender is, to Martin’s immense delight once he’d found out by accident, ticklish.
“I hate you, I hate you”, he barely gets out between laughter, chest jerkily rising and falling as he tries to squirm out of Martin’s hold but the remains of the chair rise up around them.
“You’re right”, Martin finally says when he stops with the torture he calls ‘ticking’ and only keeps his arms loosely draped around Jon to not have him fall off his legs while he catches his breath, “compared to that, you really didn’t shriek earlier”
Jon stills and looks him dead in the eye as he says; “I hope, you can’t sit for a week”
“Worth it”
Martin grins so brightly down at him, Jon is half-surprised when the sky doesn’t immediately clear up above.
“You’re lucky, you’re my favourite person on earth”, Jon grumbles when he gets up, only sways lightly and extends his hand towards his boyfriend, who takes it, but has climbed to his feet before Jon has even started pulling him up.
“I know”, Martin kisses the top of Jon’s head before he stoops to pick up the blankets.
Jon is still quietly grumbling, when he follows his boyfriend back inside, his feet dragging against the wooden floor as he fights off a yawn. Nowadays, he doesn’t get sleepy but rather so tired all at once that he almost falls asleep where he stands once it starts.
The stairs look so immensely high from the bottom and right now, the welcome mat behind the front door looks like a fine place to fall asleep if it doesn’t mean climbing up the stairs Martin has already overcome and left behind. He thinks about calling for his boyfriend for a second before he decides, that that too would be too great an effort if he could just sit down at the foot of the stairs and lean against the wall, maybe rest his head against the ugly wallpaper for a moment before-
“Jon?”, Martin’s voice asks from way closer than it should be and Jon forces his eyes open, “are you okay?”
Martin doesn’t even try and hide his anxiety as he kneels down in front of Jon who sits slumped against the wall behind him, “O god, I’m sorry if I hurt-“
“No”, Jon tries to properly articulate his words but can tell they come out slurred, “I’m fine, just tired”
“You want help with the stairs?”
Jon doesn’t. He wants to stay right here and sleep; even the thought of shambling upstairs makes his head even heavier.
“Please”
Jon stretches one arm up without raising his head or properly opening his eyes. His hand comes up to about the height of Martin’s knees.
“You would tell me, if I did something wrong, right?”, Martin asks softly, as he picks Jon up and carries him up the stairs, Jon’s head lolling back as they ascend and make for the bedroom.
“’course”, Jon mumbles as his boyfriend sets him down on the mattress and blindly reaches for Martin’s hand again, “but you didn’t, ‘m just-”
“Just tired”, Martin finishes softly, meeting Jon halfway and letting himself be pulled down next to him, half on top of the blankets he’d dropped onto the bed earlier, “of course”
Jon is fast asleep before Martin has even closed his mouth and Martin decides to stay right there, just for a moment. It’s not like there’s anywhere he’d rather be.