Chapter Text
Jon woke up feeling warm and loved. Martin’s morning breath on his face and the Marquis’s tail gently flicking against his nose. It had been a rare sort of night when both he and the Doctor had slept at the same time, and he emerged from their shared dreams feeling well rested, and content, revelling in the feeling of sleeping without nightmares.
“Good morning.” Martin said wiggling forward to give Jon a kiss on the nose. Jon felt his hearts skip their beat, and a deep blush spread over his cheeks.
“Good morning.” He breathed in response, wondering, not for the first time, how he had gotten so lucky.
“Beach day today!” Martin said cheerfully, gently extracting himself from Jon’s kola like embrace. Martin hadn’t been much of an early riser before, but ever since his more plant like ancestry had come to the forefront he found himself far more awake whenever his body expected there to be sunlight around. It would have been irritating, except with the strange and nonsensical sleeping rhythms of time lords his only comparison Martin he hardly noticed except that he was more of a morning person than he had ever been. Jon on the other hand, was not.
Jon hummed in acknowledgement and turned over, hiding his face in the Marquis feathery soft belly. Martin laughed.
“You’re going to have to get up sometime.” He said fondly, before making his way to their bathroom, to give Jon a few minutes to pull himself to a state of wakefulness.
Jon didn’t want to get out of bed. If he got out of bed he would have to face the fact that he was going to a beach today, and he was not ready to face that fact. He’d known it was coming, of course he’d known, with the way Martin’s hair had had fewer and fewer flowers over the last few days, and how he seems to tire so much more quickly in the evenings, Jon had known that eventually they would need to go someplace where Martin could properly sunbathe, and do some proper photosynthesizing. But knowing that, and actually facing the very real need to put on a swimsuit we’re two entirely different things.
It wasn’t that Jon didn’t like the beach. He had grown up in Bournemouth after all. The beach was as close to nostalgia for home as he generally got, it was just, well Jon rolled over onto his back and held his scarred hands in front of him. He shut his eyes again. Listening to the sounds of Martin brushing his teeth and the gentle song of the TARDIS in his mind.
“Are you ok love?” Martin asked coming out of the bathroom to see his boyfriend still curled under the blanket. This in and of itself wouldn’t have been a cause for concern, but the Marquis was standing on the lump of time lord with a fiercely protective stance, like she was trying to find an invisible threat.
“I- I’m fine.” Jon said, trying and failing to untangle himself from where he had cocooned himself in his blankets.
“Right, do you want to try that again?” Martin asked sitting down and helping Jon extract himself.
“No, really, I- I’m fine.” Jon said, but he had always been a dreadful liar, and his alien status in no way changed that.
“Do I need to get the Doctor?” Martin asked, his concern growing.
“No! No, I- I’m fine. It’s, it’s nothing.”
“Obviously it’s not nothing if it’s bothering you Jon.” Martin said rolling his eyes. Jon looked down at his hands, pulling down the sleeve of his night shirt where it had ridden up, to reveal a few of the worm scars.
“It’s, well, honestly Martin it’s silly. Don’t worry about it.”
“Jon.”
“I just, I haven’t really gone swimming since long before I started working at the institute and, well, it’s just-“
“The scars?” Martin guessed. Jon nodded miserably, unable to meet Martin’s eyes.
“We don’t have to go to the beach today you know.” Martin said gently. Jon shook his head frantically.
“No! Martin I- your hair hasn’t bloomed in days! And your tired all the time. You need to get some proper sunlight! I- I can’t be the reason you wilt.” Jon said wrecked with guilt.
“Jon.” Martin said, reaching out and grabbing Jon’s hand, and rubbing along the ridges left from the ill fated hand shake with Jude Perry. “You don’t have to wear a bathing suit to the beach if you do t want to- I’m sure the Doctor wouldn’t even notice if you wore a Viking costume to the beach- you’ve seen the wardrobe. She has no concept of appropriate clothing.” Jon couldn’t help but laugh a little. “But if wearing a bathing suit bothers you that much, go talk to her. She probably has some weird alien swimwear that covers your whole body of something.” Martin added. Jon offer a weak smile.
“It’s just, well- you, you’ve seen them, the scars I mean. She, she’s never seen the extent of them beyond my hands and- I don’t know.” Jon shook his head unsure of how to articulate that he often couldn’t stand to look at them himself, and he couldn’t imagine anyone else wanting to see them.
“Jon, talk to her, I’m sure she’ll understand.” Martin yawned. “Now I’m going to get some tea and start packing our picnic basket- and you, are going to go brush your teeth and talk to your mom- no protests.” Martin added when Jon opened his mouth to argue.
“Al-alright.” Jon said. Martin leaned over to press a gentle kiss to Jon’s forehead.
“I look forward to seeing that alien bathing suit then. I’ll see you down at breakfast.” Martin slipped out, leaving Jon to finish detangling himself from the blankets. He could feel the Doctor down in the main control room making a few last minute adjustments, she was distracted enough that Jon was pretty sure that his anxiety hadn’t bleed through the bond. He had gotten pretty good at keeping his emotions private lately. His lifetime of emotional repression being a huge help there.
Despite what he had said to Martin Jon just wasn’t sure he was ready to talk to the Doctor about his scars. It was one thing for her to know about the abuse that Jonah Magnus has inflicted on him, but it felt like something entirely different for her to see it painted on his skin like that. So instead, Jon went to the closet, and pulled out a loose fit pair of pants- not his favourites, these ones just had normal pockets; but Jon had a nightmarish vision of trying to empty out sand from pockets that were bigger on the inside. It filled him with a deep and terrible dread.
Next he went to the replicator on the wall and asked the TARDIS for something resembling a surf shirt, long sleeved and loose enough that it wouldn’t show much in the way of the body beneath it. He encountered a surprising amount of resistance. Knowledge of the way clothing weighed swimmers down and the risks inherent in wearing baggy clothing in the water filtered through his mind.
“Not you too.” Jon moan letting his head rest against the wall as he tried to send the TARDIS. Images of how you could see where his chest wall dipped in from the missing ribs, and how painfully small he looked without the baggier clothing. Even with all the supplements the Doctor had had him taking he was still suffering from malnourishment from a lifetime of growing up with the proper nourishment for humans- not time lords.
The ship eventually relented and produced a slightly baggy swim shirt for Jon. It was still tighter than he would have liked, but it was better than any alternative Jon could think of. Including spending more time lost in the main TARDIS wardrobe than necessary.
Jon, now clothed held out an arm for the Marquis to land on, and wandered down towards the kitchen, grabbing some fruit for breakfast before setting some water to boil so Martin could make tea. Then he dug around in the cupboard for the bottle of vitamin gummies the Doctor insisted he have at least once a day. Today, trying the flavour of ‘a sense of accomplishment.’ It wasn’t at all what he expected, but he found it to be rather pleasant, and it helped chase away some of that mornings anxieties. He pulled the sleeves of the surf shift down a bit though anyway, out of nervous habit.
“Morning Jon.” The Doctor greeted him cheerfully, giving his hair a gentle tousle before she sat down. Jon nodded at her and looked down to hide the blush darkening his cheeks at the mental hug she sent.
Martin joined them in the kitchen not long after and they shared a pleasant breakfast before Martin went off on a quest to the TARDIS storage room to locate towels and flotation devices. Jon and the Doctor left for the control room, Jon had been receiving flying lessons, that mostly amounted to ‘pull the lever when I say’ and ‘push the button if the TARDIS tells you too’ but Jon was pretty sure that the Doctor didn’t really know how to fly the TARDIS either, and besides, it was always fun.
He was pretty sure that the flying lessons he had received were still more comprehensive than any that the Doctors human companions had gotten. Which helped make him feel less like a child playing pretend at driving, even if objectively speaking that was exactly what he was.
The TARDIS landed with the usual thump and the Doctor grinned at Jon.
“High five! Great landing!” She said, somewhere in the depths of the ship Jon heard something clatter to the ground shaken off its shelf by the rough landing. He returned the Doctors smile and high five just as Martin came around the corner.
“Are the landings ever going to get less, uh, aggressive?” He asked with a grin.
“I don’t know what your talking about.” The Doctor said striding towards the door. “That was a flawless landing- and nothing was broken, well nothing important!” She flung the doors open wide. “Welcome boys- to Corican 8, in about 50 years it will he discovered and turned into a pleasure planet- but for right now, it’s just uninhabited beach!”
And indeed it was, as Jon followed the Doctor our the door, all he could see was white glittering beach and blue waves.
They set up their things near to the TARDIS, both for convenience sake and to provide some shade to the hot suns. Jon watched with fondness as Martin selected a spot a ways away, spread out his blanket, stripped down to his swim shorts and planted himself down to absorb as much sun as possible. Jon noted with fond amusement, that one of the buds near Martin’s left ear had begun to open.
Jon yelped a little in surprise as the doctor pulled him down to his knees to join her on the ground.
“Lesson time!” She said cheerfully. “So this particular sand has some really interesting properties, go on and taste it, see if you can tell me what they are!” She encouraged. The Jon from a few years ago would have sneered at her and told her she was delusional. The Jon from a few months ago would have looked at her with suspicion and fear, worried that she might be some kind of avatar of the buried. The Jon of today simply sat down and without hesitation, licked a sand covered finger.
“It’s got quite a high concentration of calcium- and, and something else I’m not- it tastes like a carbon of some sort?”
“Good job!” She said excitedly. “The sand of this beach is comprised almost entirely of ground up diamond!” She launched in on a lesson about the history of the planet and Jon was content to sit back and listen, occasionally asking questions. For a while Jon completely forgot about his anxieties surrounding the day, and he was able to just enjoy the feeling of learning new things, and earning that knowledge. No eldritch parasite dumping it into his mind. Jon curled his toes in the warm sand, and smiled.