Chapter Text
When Martin thinks back on it, what feels like weeks later but according to the analog clock on the wall is only five and a half hours, he can’t quite grasp the switch from there to here. It slips away from his mind like water on wax, and in moments where he tries too hard to catch a glimpse of anything—a feeling, an image, a color or a sound—his head begins to throb and he presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, hard, to relieve the pressure.
Maybe that’s for the best. Because when he’d been there, Jon had been slumped against him, his rasping breaths echoing in Martin’s ears and the movements of his chest shallow against Martin’s. Martin’s hands had been stained red—so, so red, the color of cherries and fall leaves and red crosses plastered on hospital doors—and they had shaken badly enough that the knife had slipped from his hand, hitting the ground with a clatter that rang in his ears louder than the sound of the world around them folding inward.
And when he’d finally come back to himself here, Jon had been still in his arms. So, so still.
He thinks, now, that if he remembered the exact moment when Jon’s breathing cut off completely, the exact moment when he could no longer feel the motion of Jon’s chest against his, he might be sick. Small mercies, he supposes.
He does remember, though, the moment Jon had awoken with a shuddering, ragged gasp, his hands gripping the sleeves of Martin’s jumper with surprising force. Martin’s grief, acute and all-consuming, was ripped apart by a shock so intense he couldn’t help his full-body flinch, his yelp that echoed through the corridors around them.
The corridors. Lit by dim fluorescents, cool concrete beneath them, familiar in a way that nagged at the back of Martin’s mind, beneath the all-consuming thoughts of no no no please Jon wake up don’t do this to me oh my god oh my god Jon Jon Jon.
Jon coughed again, and blood stained his lips and blood stained Martin’s hands where they pressed against Jon’s back and blood stained the floor beneath them and help, they needed help.
Martin doesn’t remember shouting. He barely remembers the faces that had surrounded them, wide-eyed and terrified, all utterly unfamiliar.
He remembers the ambulance. And he remembers the familiar glass doors they’d carried Jon out through, the familiar marble columns that decorated the front of the building. The golden plaque by the doors, etched with words Martin has come to hate with every fiber of his being.
He thinks that might have been the moment when his mind shifted from there to here. When he realized they were somewhere else. Because the stones had crumbled around them and the windows had shattered inward and the flames had consumed what lay beneath, and yet they were here, in a building left unscathed.
A building utterly devoid of the intense pressure of being watched.
Time’s funny after that. There are stark white walls and the sharp bite of antiseptic and anxiety crawling up the back of his throat as he waits in a reception area that feels much too small, suffocating him as he sits in hard-backed chairs and tries to remember how to breathe. There are questions he can’t answer and paperwork he can’t fill out and conversations he doesn’t follow, the haze in his mind blocking out anything that isn’t Jon. There are tubes connected to machines and monitors that beep a steady rhythm and a scarred hand in his and he can finally breathe again because Jon’s alive.
Jon’s alive, and he’s breathing, and his heart is beating, and it’s the only thing keeping at bay the panic at being in another hospital room, sitting next to Jon’s beside and waiting for him to finally open his eyes.
Five hours, thirty-one minutes, and twelve seconds after Jon’s heart restarted, he does. And Martin lets out desperate, hiccupping cries of relief as he squeezes Jon’s hand tightly and presses kisses to the back of it and says Jon, Jon, Jon.
Later is the word of choice, in the days that follow.
Minutes after Jon wakes, Martin begins to stutter out apologies, hands fluttering uselessly in the air, not daring to touch Jon’s back, and Jon silences him with a soft we’ll talk about it later.
Jon tells Martin what to write on the paperwork, what to tell the nurses, what to write down for a permanent address and National Insurance Numbers. I’ll explain later, he says, cutting off Martin’s half-asked question.
When Jon’s released 72 hours later—too soon, Martin thinks, but Jon’s recovering well according to the doctor so he mutely collects the discharge papers and the wheelchair that Jon hates but can’t do without—Jon gives the taxi driver directions to a small house on the outskirts of London and tells Martin where to find the spare key. The inside is dark and dusty, but the lights flicker on weakly when Martin flips the switch. Later, Martin, Jon says when Martin looks at him, a million confused questions hovering on the tip of his tongue. Just… just later.
Martin doesn’t know exactly why this is the one that breaks him. It’s mild by comparison—an absentminded we can try to buy some more tea later, if you’d like—but it sparks something hot and angry within him.
He sets the mug he’s holding on the counter hard enough that the liquid within it sloshes over the lip and kisses his skin with a scalding heat. “When is later, Jon?” he says, and he hates how clipped the words are, but he can feel a week’s worth of emotions welling up within him—frustration and panic and grief and terror and guilt so thick he chokes on it—that threaten to suffocate him. “Because I’m getting really tired of you brushing off every single attempt to talk about this.”
Jon’s frown is deep, but there’s a hesitance behind it, a discomfort that gives away the recognition of Martin’s meaning even as he says, “About the tea? We can go tonight.” A short, bitter laugh escapes him. “It’s not like we’re incredibly busy at the moment.”
“Don’t do that.” Martin hates how angry he is. He hates it hates it hates it. But at some point, the guilt had eaten through him completely and had left behind nothing but an empty, aching hole in his chest. He wishes he could say that filling it with frustration and bitterness wasn’t easy, but. Well. It was that or a sadness so crushing it would have consumed him utterly, and he thinks he’s had enough of that to last a lifetime. “You know what I mean.”
Jon sighs, and he barely covers a wince as the motion strains his back, still plastered with bandages that wrap around and around him like a gauze embrace. Martin feels something sour rise in the back of his throat, and he swallows it down quickly because it’s not the time for him to have a breakdown about this. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Martin.”
Martin can’t quite hold back his noise of frustration. “Anything!” He takes a deep breath, and when he speaks again, his voice is more level. “I’m the one who has things to say. And I wish you would let me say them.”
He hasn’t gotten to apologize. He hasn’t gotten to process any of this—not with Jon, not without the cloying smell of blood and antiseptic filling his nose and mouth. And the thought eats and eats and eats at the anger simmering within him, replacing it with an acute guilt that makes him ill, even as he continues, “All we’ve done is sit in this house—which I still don’t know how we ended up in, by the way—and we haven’t talked about how- how we even ended up here, whether the- the fears are here yet or- or still just lingering at the edges, what happened when I—”
Martin cuts off with a wet, choked sound, and he realizes all at once that he’s crying. His cheeks are painted sticky with tears and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe—
“Hey, hey, hey, Martin,” Jon says, and then Jon’s hand is gripping his and his thumb is rubbing soothing circles across the back of Martin’s hand and Martin hates it, because Jon shouldn’t be comforting him. Jon is the one who’s taking painkillers three times a day and relying on a wheelchair because of the nerve damage in his back and sleeping fitfully enough that it can barely be called sleep at all, and it’s all Martin’s fault.
Jon had died. He’d died, and then he hadn’t, and god, Martin can feel it shattering him from the inside out.
“Stop,” Martin says, his voice thick and choked, but he doesn’t pull his hand away, and when Jon makes to let go of Martin’s hand, he follows the motion of Jon’s hand until he can capture it again, holding it safe within his own. “Don’t- it’s not- you, you shouldn’t be- Christ, Jon, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, and- and I don’t know what to do to- to make it better—”
Martin cuts off with a low, keening noise of distress, and closes his eyes. He can’t look at Jon, at the soft, forgiving look that had been on his face just moments before. Some very, very small part of Martin reminds him that Jon had pressed the knife into his hands, still sticky with Jonah Magnus’ blood, and that he had asked. Had wanted Martin to do it. Had trusted him.
The rest of him remembers how Jon’s hands had hugged his sides as he’d driven the knife into his back, just to the left of his spine, and that he’d had his lips pressed to Martin’s when he’d gasped, a low, pained sound dragged from his throat in tandem with the sob that ripped its way free from Martin’s. The rest of him remembers how afraid Jon had looked, even as he’d asked Martin to cut the tether, and the pain in his eyes even as he tried to smile when the knife pierced his skin.
“Martin,” Jon says, and beneath the placating softness of the word is something rawer, rough like sandpaper. When Martin looks at Jon, finally, he sees the faint shine in Jon’s eyes, the redness clustering around the corners. Before Martin can speak again, a thousand apologies on the tip of his tongue, Jon continues, firmly, “You don’t need to apologize. You… you only did what I asked you to do.” There’s a heavy pause before Jon says, quietly, “What I made you do.”
There’s a guilt in Jon’s voice that mirrors Martin’s own, and Martin doesn’t know what to do with it. He wants to tell Jon that he doesn’t have anything to feel guilty for, that it’s not his fault, that the decision hadn’t been his alone and he doesn’t have to shoulder the blame for it. But the words stick in his throat, and he can’t force them out around the knot of anger that still lingers there, a hot, simmering coal that won’t quite extinguish.
I didn’t think you’d go through with it! Not without me! I can’t believe you’d do this! That you’d leave me like this! You swore to me! You swore to me, you bastard!
He swallows the anger down and down and down, where he knows it’ll sit and grow until it finally, inevitably explodes. If he lets it out now, he- he doesn’t know what he’ll do. So instead, he says, “That doesn’t make it any better.” He’s surprised how calm he sounds, despite the choked, ragged quality to his voice, when he continues, “I still had to kill you, Jon. Regardless of the reason, I did it. It was my choice, in the end. I- I told myself I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t, but—”
He cuts off with a short, sharp laugh, like nails on a chalkboard. “But clearly, I could. How can you even stand to—?”
He can’t finish the sentence; his voice cuts off with a gasp, like he’s been drowning, and he realizes belatedly that Jon’s other hand has come up to grip his, holding onto both of Martin’s hands and connecting them together through two points of warmth. He used to cup Martin’s face, Martin remembers; after the Lonely, in the safehouse, when Martin felt bits of himself begin to fade, Jon would rub his thumbs softly against Martin’s cheekbones and whisper I love you I love you I love you. He’d press gentle kisses to Martin’s cheeks and nose and the corners of his mouth, and Martin would cry, and Jon would kiss his tears away too. But Martin’s always been too tall for his own good, and now, Jon can hardly reach past Martin’s shoulders without straining his back, the motion threatening to pull out the stitches that sew the jagged wound just to the left of his spinal cord shut. Somehow, that’s the thought that breaks the dam within Martin fully, and he begins to sob, full-body and all-consuming.
I’m sorry, he chokes out between gasping breaths. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Jon holds his hands tightly and repeats back, quietly, It’s all right, Martin, it’s all right. It’s all right.
It’s not. Martin doesn’t know if it ever will be again. But when his tears finally run out what feels like hours later and he slumps forward, resting his forehead against Jon’s and ghosting his lips against the bridge of Jon’s nose, he lets Jon’s I love you, Martin plaster over the aching hole in his chest.
“I love you too,” he murmurs, pressing a gentle, closed-mouth kiss to Jon’s lips. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
“I know,” Jon says softly. He brings a hand up carefully, runs it through the curls brushing against Martin’s cheek, rubs his thumb along Martin’s cheekbone in that same comforting rhythm that centers Martin in a way nothing else can. Bit by bit, Martin melts into Jon’s touch, and when Jon says, after several minutes of silence, “I forgive you, Martin. It’s not your fault,” Martin can almost believe him.