Chapter Text
“I would do it, you know.”
Martin’s head snaps up. Jon has reappeared in the doorway, arms branched stiff from his sides as if stopped mid-reach to steady himself on the jamb. He looks fit to collapse. Every lick of his energy gathers in his eyes; the weight of his attention sparks something in Martin, a squirming instinct filling his hindbrain with flight signals. He’s tempted. He wouldn’t even have to run, to get away. He could tip off his chair and slip sidelong into Loneliness and be done with this. He can’t quite remember why he must resist the impulse. He would stop existing entirely, to escape that stare.
“Jon,” he sighs, and turns his eyes to his keyboard. “Please.”
“I- I’m sorry, I just- I- I had to-” Oxfords tap the office floor, measured and fierce. Jon has always walked loudly, for such a small person. “You should know,” he says, so intent that it trembles. “You need to know, I don’t think of you as— I didn’t come to you for an out. You’re not an excuse to me, Martin.”
Martin watches scarred hands shake, and remembers distantly that once he would have longed to soothe them still, to run his fingers over the palms, maybe follow with a press of lips to lifeline. What a futile thing he was.
“Okay. Are you done?”
Those hands go fist-tight, knuckles sharpened, tendons stark. “I- no. No, I don’t think I am.”
“Jesus,” Martin breathes. Then, louder, “Jon—”
“Wait, wait, let me explain, I—”
“You’ve explained, Jon! You’ve- you—” God, he’s so tired. Why does Jon have to make everything this bloody difficult? “Why can’t you just—?” —give up on me. Just give up on me. I have. It’s not hard.
“I know- I know you want me to leave. That I-I-I- I probably should.” Jon’s gaze falls and skitters away. “It’s- it’s just- it’s imperative that you- I need to know you’ve understood me.” He looks up again. “I- I- Martin, I’m not asking you to make the decision for me. I’m not.”
Martin laughs, hollow. “Not asking—!?”
“Yes, okay, it- it’s shaken out that way, but that’s not- I-I-I- I didn’t intend that. Truly, I— The point is that I-” a sharp inhale, “-I would do it. I would. But not- not without you. Not because- because I want you to absolve me, or- or— It’s not that, I-I- it’s—“ He pulls another deep breath. Closes his eyes. Opens them onto Martin, terrible yawning things that flay him, threaten to drink deeply from the most private well of his person.
“I can’t leave you here alone, Martin.”
Martin’s laugh skews cruel. “Hasn’t bothered you so far.”
“You wanted it.”
“When have you ever noticed what I wanted?”
The words twist Jon’s face. A stab of satisfaction lances sour through Martin’s stomach. His entrails flinch with it. He tastes bile. It’s the most aware he’s been of his body in weeks.
“I’m sorry,” Jon sighs so deeply that his chest sinks with it. “I’m so sorry, Martin, for- for all of-”
“I know.” A nip of pain in his palm. Martin glances down, sees he’s pressing his thumbnail into his opposite hand. How long has he been doing that?
Oblivious, Jon keeps on. “I should have—”
“Please- just- stop.”
“Martin—”
“Stop it, Jon!” His voice scrapes the top of his register, sears his throat.
Across the desk, Jon goes still. His stupid, huge eyes blink slow. He mutters something, then takes a half-step back. Another. Okay. He’s leaving. Finally. He turns towards the door. Finally.
But, of course, he turns back.
He gasps. “Martin. You’re-”
Martin looks down at his hands. Ah. He’s fading. “Like you said. It’s got me.”
Jon rushes to the desk.
“I’ve got it under control,” Martin says. Jon stops. Martin leans back in his chair, an instinctive need to put space between them, the desk before him not enough. “I just need you to leave, alright? Just—”
Jon’s face hardens. “No.”
“Jon—”
“No, no.” Fierce, unshaking. “I’m not leaving you again.”
He actually means it, doesn’t he?
“You’re really suggesting this,” Martin says, voice pulled thin.
“Yes.” No hesitation.
“You would- actually do it?”
“I would.”
“With me.”
“Yes, Martin.”
“Why?” Because love is blind, says something cliché and cruel in the pit of his gut. Christ, he never was much of a poet, was he?
“B-b-because you deserve a life outside this place,” Jon says.
And suddenly Martin can feel his chest, the fondness struggling to swell against stress-tight muscle. He feels his lungs shudder. He feels his tongue, bitten-tender on one side. He feels how sore his neck and lower back are after months of hunching over a keyboard. He feels how the blazer he’s wearing, has worn every day for weeks, clings too tight to his upper arms.
He feels.
Oh, god. He is in a room with Jonathan Sims.
“How would we even do it?” he whispers, unsure whether he wants the answer.
Jon lurches closer and makes an aborted motion to grab at the desk. His eyebrows pinch desperately upward, igniting a flourish of frown lines far too deep for a man his age.
“We would. We’ll just- we would.”
Martin laughs. It’s sharp, but it’s real. It hurts. “God, Jon. You haven’t changed at all.”
Jon smiles at him, strangled but sincere, and oh, the surge of adrenaline through Martin’s abdomen has a name, and it is anger. He wants to grab Jon by the shoulders and shake. He leans into the feeling, because it is happening. This is happening.
He could touch Jon from here, could hold him or hurt him if he just reached out. He doesn’t.
“Martin, I- I have changed,” says Jon, soft, lashes shuttering over a downward glance. “Significantly. Dangerously.”
Martin swallows. He can’t remember the last time he did that consciously. “Yeah.”
“But I would-” Jon looks up again with those eyes, those eyes that Martin thinks he might actually hate in this moment, “-I would never want to hurt you, Martin, even given what I am. But I can’t- I can’t promise that I won’t.”
There’s that sharp laugh again. Martin slips into it with ease, intimately familiar with the shape of his own bitterness. “Jon, that is- that’s hardly even a concern.”
Jon’s eyebrows do that desperate thing again. “What?”
“Do you think I care if I get hurt? I don’t even know if I still exist in any way that matters.”
Martin spreads his hands, looks at them. He’s solid again, but his skin is pale enough to bare the bruised blue of his veins, his freckles hardly a suggestion. His nails are a sheer, naked pink. He doesn’t remember removing his last coat of nail polish, but he must have done.
And then. Then—
Jon’s hands touch him long before he feels them. The impulse to pull away dies in his shoulders, a flinch that wracks his upper back and jerks his neck straight. All he can do is watch, mouth dry, as narrow, knobbed fingers ease between his thick ones, as thumbs settle over his knuckles, as pressure pushes against his palms. The warmth comes last, a slow build crawling through Martin’s skin, stirring everywhere that Jon’s hands touch his.
Jon is here. He’s here.
Martin looks up. Jon gazes upon him, a force of nature and yet a meagre man, cheeks hollow and eyes bagged, hair limp against his shoulders and much greyer than Martin remembers. An overlarge jumper sags, lopsided, over one sunken collarbone, and Martin recognises it as his own: a green, cabled thing that he thought he lost. He’s lost most everything, hasn’t he? And yet, here it is.
Jon gasps and tightens his grip. “Martin, you’re—”
“Oh,” Martin whispers. He can see Jon’s hands right through his. The longer he stares, the less he feels Jon’s warmth. “Yeah.”
This isn’t safe. It isn’t safe for Jon, or for Basira or Daisy or Melanie, and especially not for Martin.
Jon’s hands fall through flesh gone immaterial. He reacts, but Martin doesn’t quite see how. He lets his eyes unfocus. His hands, hardly hands anymore, fall limp to his lap.
Stillness hushes through him, cool and gentle, until he no longer feels the burden of his body. Fog eases behind his glasses. This will be easier. It has to be. He’s so goddamn tired.
“Just leave, Jon,” he murmurs. He closes his eyes, and hears waves crash on a distant shore.
“Martin!”
Jon’s voice rips through him. Every nerve bursts with it: skin and muscle and bone and viscera. Each hair stands on end. His eyelids tear back beneath the flood of force. Jon’s presence fills the room, his hair twisting about his face, his eyes a colour that Martin cannot name.
Martin is Seen, completely, devastatingly.
“Please,” he hears himself sob. Tears peel in hot, horizontal stripes back towards his ears. “Jon—”
“I know,” Jon says, a thundercrack through Martin’s sternum. He plucks away Martin’s glasses, then his hands sink into Martin’s cheeks. He thumbs the tears from his lashes. He bends over Martin’s shaking body, and presses his mouth and nose into his hair.
“I know.” The whisper is soft, this time, hardly more than a breath across Martin’s crown. Sharp arms, blunted by baggy sleeves, wrap around his head and shoulders. They squeeze, and Martin whimpers. Jon sighs a tight, broken sound. “I know.”
Martin clutches Jon’s elbow, harder than he means to. He doesn’t let go, even when Jon sucks a breath through his teeth.
He’s here. Jon’s here.
“It hurts,” Martin gasps.
Jon makes a small, aching noise. Then,
“Do you want me to let you go?”
Yes, Martin wants to say. But static prickles through the base of his skull and tingles along the edges of his tongue. It floods his mouth and buzzes into the roots of his teeth, and he gasps,
“No!” His hand cramps around Jon’s elbow. “No! Don’t- I’ll- I’ll fade again, Jon, I- I don’t know if I can come back- please don’t- I can’t—”
“I won’t. I won’t.” Jon curls closer to him, squeezing in tight, nails in Martin’s scalp, jaw jutting against his forehead. “I’m here. I’m right here. You’re here, I-I have you.”
“I’m here,” Martin repeats, and it frightens him. God, it frightens him. Should fear feel like home? “You’re here.”
He does not know how long Jon holds him. Jon’s arms compress him until his shoulders ache, until pain blooms between his temples. He tries not to feel it, at first. But eventually the throbbing won’t be ignored, and he has to experience his skull, and then his body with it: the weight of it, the sore joints, the effort of heaving in breaths that don’t quite make it to the bottom of his lungs.
Eventually Jon drags Martin, rolling chair and all, closer to the desk to sit himself on its edge. His legs give out as he settles, and he breathes a bitten-off groan into Martin’s hair. Martin leans further into him, relishing the bite of the desk’s corner into the sensitive flesh just below his ribs. His head rests on Jon’s chest, cheek to the rabbit pace of his heart. He dreamed of this, once: being this close to Jon, these arms around him, this body pressed close. It should make him happy, he thinks. But he is not happy. He is limp, and he is tired, and he is fuzzy with adrenaline, and he is—
He… is.
“I think…” the words barely make it past his lips. He swallows, tries again. “I think… you can let go.”
Jon hesitates. His fingers flutter over the back of Martin’s neck.
“Jon,” Martin whispers.
“R-right.” Jon gives him a last, aching squeeze, then draws away. The moment the pressure lifts, Martin begins to shake. His hand remains locked around Jon’s elbow, and he knows that he’s probably bruising him, but he can’t make himself let go.
“Okay,” he breathes, tremulous.
“Okay?”
“Y-yeah.” He nods, and despite his best efforts, despite the cold kiss of Loneliness on the back of his neck, despite the hell of this past year, he looks at Jonathan Sims, and he trusts him. “Let’s do it. Let’s - let’s quit.”
Dear Jon, Martin typed. He frowned, and pecked the backspace.
Dear Elias… No. Worse.
To Whom It May Concern-
“God,” Martin mumbled, and held the backspace until the screen went blank.
He could circle back to that. The important part was the body. He sat up straight, drew a deep breath, and huffed it out. He could do this.
I regret to inform you that I am resigning from my position as- no. Too cold. He wanted to explain, at least. He backspaced.
Due to family issues- ugh, god, no. He couldn’t use his mum as an excuse, even if he still felt raw from getting her moved. If anything, he should have kept this job for his mum. But he could hardly send her money if he died, could he? Backspace.
Given the pattern of danger- it was reasonable, but it didn’t- feel right? Back.
I’m so sorry, Jon, but- back back back.
Martin slapped his hands on the edge of his desk and pushed away, sending his chair rolling a bit deeper into the empty Archives. As his momentum slowed, he tipped his head over the back and sighed. The ceiling yawned above him, ridiculously high for a basement, in his opinion. With most of the overhead lights off, shadows draped through the exposed beams, the bare-bones architecture made little more than geometric gradients.
“This is stupid,” he said to the ceiling. “I can just- tell him to his face. He’s a room away. Just- go over, knock, and say it. Say it. Say ‘I qu’— hm.” His throat went tight, and his heart picked up. The sweat would follow any minute.
“Okay. That’s alright. It makes sense to be anxious.” He nodded along with his own affirmation, as if to trick himself into thinking he took any comfort from it. “He’s- plenty intimidating, isn’t he? But he’s just a person, not- heh- not a-a human worm farm, so.” He laughed thinly. “So you can handle it, right? Right. Okay.”
Despite the pep-talk—one of his better ones, incidentally—Martin still sat for a moment with his hands clenched into his jeans, doing his breaths. Five seconds in, eight seconds out, right? Or was it seven and eleven? No, he’d remember if it rhymed.
“Okay,” he said, and clapped his hands resolutely to his thighs. “Here goes.”
He made it to Jon’s office door without incident. Mouth pinched with determination, he knocked. There was no answer. That was usual enough. The first knock rarely yielded anything, so he tried a second without giving it much thought, adding a soft, “Jon?”
As the silence stretched, his stomach soured in a way he was becoming all too familiar with. He’d been anxious his whole life and had learned to live with it, but this new fear—hell, terror, he should call it what it was—felt like it might eat him alive. He tried to keep his head, to knock again and wait like a professional, but then he began to shift on his feet and hear the squelch of worms, and—
He opened the door to soft snoring.
Jon lay folded into the antique leather chair in front of his desk. His legs hooked at the knee over one arm, and his head lolled at a truly appalling angle against the other. Martin winced in sympathy and stepped forward to wake him, then stopped as he considered the consequences. Jon would… probably snap at him. And it wasn’t like he could wake his boss from what looked like a dead sleep and say, ‘Hey, I’m quitting, actually!’ so it would be just as well to leave. Still, Martin would want someone to intervene if they saw him destroying his own alignment like that. ...And Jon would probably be a demon tomorrow if he slept poorly and woke up in pain.
With a sigh, Martin chose the lesser of the evils.
“Jon?” He leaned, tentative, over the back of the chair. A wrinkle slipped across Jon’s brow, and his lips parted, but he simply shifted and settled again. Martin’s heart threatened to choke him, it sat so high in his throat.
When Tim had claimed over a shared lunch that Jon was under thirty, Martin hadn’t believed it. But he could see it now. Maybe it was his expressions that aged him, or the way the shadow of his glasses emphasised the bags beneath his eyes. With his face bare and reposed, Jon looked… god, he looked like someone whose cheek belonged in the palm of Martin’s hand.
Oh. Oh, god, that was- damn it. He didn’t need that right now. He pushed it away and reminded himself of the task at hand.
“Jon?” he whispered. No response. Slowly, carefully, Martin brushed his fingers over Jon’s shoulder. “J—”
Jon jerked upright, shouting. His hands darted out to slap at his body and the chair beneath him, and Martin knew the desperation in his wildly searching eyes, because he’d been waking up the same way for over a month now.
“Jon! Jon, it’s okay, it’s okay—”
Jon’s head snapped up, pupils shrunken in the brown depths of his eyes, clearly just noticing Martin’s presence. He whiteknuckled the back of the chair, blunt nails squeaking into the ancient leather.
“Martin? What’s— Is it the worms? Is Prentiss—?”
“No, no, everything’s okay!” Martin realised he was gesturing as if to a frightened animal, and lowered his hands. He began to wring them, thumb pushing hard against his palm. “Sorry, I’m sorry. You looked— That’s a bad place to fall asleep.”
Slowly, Jon looked down at the chair under him, which he now slumped in diagonally, one leg still over the armrest and the other akimbo on the floor. His brow furrowed. He sighed.
“Yes, I… I do suppose you’re right. What time is it?”
Martin managed not to baulk at the utterly decent response. That would probably be rude. “Ah. Half nine?”
“Mm.” Jon swung around to right himself in the chair and took his glasses from the desk. He let them dangle from his fingertips for a moment, and brought his other hand to massage around the orbits of his eyes, grimacing. When finally he glanced up at Martin through his reapplied specs, he seemed… off.
“Jon? Um-” Martin drew a breath for courage, “-is everything alright?”
He fully expected to be snapped at or dismissed, but Jon surprised him by sighing and admitting almost immediately:
“The Prentiss statement.” He gestured to his desk, as if Martin was supposed to identify the statement in the sea of papers. “I recorded it earlier. I don’t know, it…” his mouth opened and closed before he continued, “i-i-it was... challenging.”
“Oh. All the, ah, worms?”
Jon huffed, and it took Martin altogether too long to identify what he’d just seen as a laugh, and a flash of a sardonic smile.
“Yes,” Jon murmured. “Worms.” He frowned into the middle distance for a beat, then looked back at Martin. “Did you need something?”
“Oh! No- not- I didn’t, I just thought you should sleep somewhere better?”
“I’m not going home at this hour,” Jon snapped.
(There it was.)
“No, I- the couch, I meant? In the break room? I’d offer your cot back, but—”
Jon huffed a clipped, dry laugh. “But the couch is far more suited to someone my size,” he sighed. “Yes. Yes, fine.” He stood up, and right before Martin’s eyes, the youth ebbed from his face: eyes drawn thin, brow creeping lower. It culminated in a frown that ended this moment, whatever it had been.
“Goodnight, Martin.”
Martin nodded. “Erm- yeah. Goodnight, Jon.”
He turned to go, and found his heart beating much softer leaving than it had upon entering. Maybe he found familiarity in the brusque dismissal. Maybe familiarity sat easier with him than the thought of leaving. He couldn’t even make himself upset about that; familiar, too, was weight settling into his gut, shaped awfully like shame.
“And,” Jon said, soft, stopping Martin in his tracks, “thank you.”
Martin stilled, hand on the doorknob. Those two words filled the space between his ears, dripped honey-thick into his chest, and filled that, too. His eyes stung, which- christ, Martin. Keep it together.
“S-sure, Jon.” He didn’t look back as he shut the door.
Head hung, Martin trudged to his computer to shut it down. A dialogue box appeared, asking if he was sure he would like to leave his document without saving. He stared at the message for a moment, then clicked cancel. He opened the file viewer, found the document in its folder. Right click, drop-down menu, left click.
Are you sure you would like to delete Letter of Resignation.doc?
“I’m sure,” he sighed. God help him, but he was sure.
“I’m not sure about this,” Martin says.
He stumbles after Jon, whose palm is a live coal against his. He doesn’t know when his grip slipped down from Jon’s elbow or when their fingers laced together, only that if he lets go, he will be no more. The early September breeze tears at his edges, cooler than it has a right to be. Hungry. The only difference between Martin and a cold spot on the London pavement is Jon’s hand in his.
Jon does not slow, but Martin can just see the edge of his mouth twist. “I won’t force you to go through with it.” It’s his Boss Voice, sharp and deliberately aloof.
Martin huffs. “Not that. I meant- didn’t that feel too easy?”
This time Jon looks fully back, face open with incredulity. “Easy!”
A muscle twitches in Martin’s cheek. Maybe he can smile at Jon again, one day. “Getting out of the Institute. I thought Peter would vanish us, for sure. Or you’d, what, drop dead when we crossed the property line.”
Jon laughs. It’s brief and brittle, but it happens, it definitely happens. Martin almost stumbles.
“Could still do.” Jon’s hand tightens in Martin’s, deceptively strong. It hurts, in a way that he needs at that moment. “We might die, Martin.”
“Mm. I know.”
“Do you want to?”
“Do I- want to die?”
Jon’s voice thickens. “Yes.”
“I—” Martin falters. He allows their footsteps to steady him for a moment, his heavy loafers a bass line to the tap of Jon’s dirt-clouded oxfords.
“I don’t think so,” he says, finally. “But I’m ready, if it happens. It’s felt a bit inevitable for a while, you know?”
Jon stops, and Martin has to sidestep to avoid tripping over him. Jon spins to face him and pulls their linked hands to his chest, wraps his burned one around them.
“I will do everything in my power,” he says with the weight of an oath, “to keep you living.”
A shudder rolls through Martin. He is aware, again, of his entire body. Fatigue threads through his calves and pulses in his thighs. He stands on a sidewalk in Barking, with his hand clutched in two slimmer ones, and looks down at the man that he—
Oh. He still does, doesn’t he?
Had he forgotten?
Martin swallows. “Um. Where was it, that Basira wanted to meet?”
For a moment, Jon just bathes him in that agonising Stare. Then he blinks, and turns to take them on their way. “Not far. Some pub Daisy likes. Never been, myself. It’s a bit of a cesspool.”
“Ah.” Martin’s brow furrows. “Do you just… Know that?”
Jon tosses a brief, soft smile Martin’s way. “I just know Daisy.”
The pub is, indeed, a bit of a cesspool. Jon shoulders with a grimace through the alley-only entry, as if a grimy crash bar even ranks in the unpleasantries of their lives. Though, come to think of it, this would be a prime nest for the Corruption. Martin resolves not to touch anything.
Smoke blurs the rough details of the pub’s interior. Though the atmosphere puts Martin perhaps a bit too much at ease, Jon spots their colleagues immediately and pulls him through the haze. Basira and Daisy share a booth seat and a sceptical expression. Melanie sits opposite them, frowning at the label on her beer as she picks at it with a black fingernail.
“Thank you all for coming.” Jon stops at the head of the table, posture oddly hesitant. All three women turn to him with varying levels of wariness.
Melanie huffs, and Martin is struck by how weary she looks, her shoulders drooped inward and keen eyes heavy-lidded. “Hard not to, when you say it’s life and death.”
“Isn’t everything,” Basira sighs. Then her brow crinkles, and her gaze slides, with some apparent effort, onto Martin. “Oh. Martin? Did you—?”
“Where did you come from?” Melanie sits up straight, eyes wide.
Daisy leans back slightly, brow knitting. “Decided to show up?” Then her gaze, a shade too close to yellow, drops to Martin’s hand in Jon’s. She looks meaningfully back up at Jon, but he just runs a thumb over Martin’s knuckles and ignores her.
“I have something very important to tell you,” he says, “about the Institute’s resignation policy.”
Martin sits at the edge of the booth, as far from Melanie as he can get, and Jon grabs a nearby barstool to perch himself at the end of the table. It puts him above the rest of them, and he hangs there ominous and gargoylesque as he explains. He goes into a bit more detail than he had with Martin, touching on Eric Delano and Gertrude’s discussion, the significance of eyes and the mention of Elias. He gestures as he speaks, sometimes pulling Martin’s hand up with him when he becomes agitated, but never letting go.
For a moment, he hesitates over stating the explicit particulars of the quitting ritual, surely knowing that everyone at the table has figured it out for themselves, but then he takes a deep breath and says, “So. The only way to escape Beholding is to become completely blind.”
And so ends the world’s worst HR briefing. Melanie flops back against the booth with a squeak of plastic, puffing a big sigh through her cheeks. A slight frown sits on Daisy’s thin lips, her eyes fixed on Jon. Basira has a distant, resigned look that Martin reads as, Sure. This might as well happen.
“I… take it that you’re quitting,” Basira says after a moment, turning to Jon.
He nods. “I… yes. Yes, I am.”
“And you?”
Martin jolts, having thoroughly forgotten he was a person who could be addressed. “Me?” he squeaks. Basira nods, and he clears his throat. “Um- yes. Yeah.”
Daisy draws up straight, regarding Martin with just a bit too narrow a slice to her pupils. “Just like that? Thought you had big plans, with Lukas.”
Now everyone at the table looks at Martin, and oh, he does not like that. He breathes in deeply, and winces as he feels it catch in his throat.
“I- um, I did.” He looks at Jon, and finds that he greatly prefers the weight of that gaze to the others. “I was… sticking it out, mostly. To keep an eye on him, see what would happen.” The comfort of Jon’s stare diminishes quickly, and Martin has to look down. He rubs at the back of his neck with his free hand. “I dunno, it’s… Maybe I should have stayed.”
“No,” Jon says, simple, final.
Martin laughs brokenly, because he does not know what to do with the huge, warm feeling uncurling against the cold-brittle cage of his ribs.
“So what was this mysterious plan?” Melanie asks.
Basira leans forward. “He wasn’t trying to get you to do a ritual…” Graciously, the Was he? implied by her tone remains unspoken.
“No,” Martin sighs. “No- I don’t think so, at least? There’s this— Peter thinks another power is emerging. The Extinction. Fear of change, apocalypse, obsolescence. All that.”
“All that,” Melanie repeats.
“Yeah. He said… he was trying to convince me that there was a way to stop it emerging. But he kept saying I had to be the one to do it. And- well, come on.” He scoffs and gestures to himself. Jon makes a small noise and squeezes his hand.
“Martin—”
“I just mean- I know what manipulation sounds like, okay? If he just needed someone touched by Beholding and the Lonely, that would be one thing, but he kept saying it had to be me. I mean, a- a powerful entity with a mission of world-saving proportions comes to me for help right when I happen to find myself purposeless and- unneeded?” He sighs, scuffs his shoe against the tacky floor. “I’m not stupid.”
He feels Jon’s gaze against the side of his face, and struggles under it. Jon’s free hand lands lightly on the shoulder of his uncomfortable blazer. Reflex, he shrugs off the touch. A small intake of breath next to him, then Jon tries to untangle their long-held hands. Martin tenses his grip.
Don’t go.
He can feel Jon blink. After a moment, Jon presses his hand back in, tighter than before.
I won’t.
In the quiet, Melanie picks up her beer and clicks the rim against her lower teeth, a jarring tap-tap-tap of glass on enamel. “So… is the Extinction real?” she asks after a moment.
“I think so.” Martin chooses a grain of the table and follows it with his eyes, then stops when the swirl of the wood begins to tighten towards a spiral. “I’ve… read a lot of statements about it. Could be a combination of other fears, maybe, but it’s pretty distinct.”
“Don’t suppose he told you how he planned to stop it,” Basira says flatly.
Martin sighs. “No. He was bloody cagey about that.”
“I doubt it can be stopped.” They all turn to Jon. He watches a point above Daisy and Basira’s heads, pupils overlarge. “The size of a Fear, it’s... Sisyphus could never stop the boulder as it fell, let alone unmake it with his bare hands.”
Basira crosses her arms. “So. We’re admitting that stopping these rituals is just- endless, thankless work?”
Jon’s eyes refocus, and he turns them on Basira. “Did I say that?”
“You did,” Melanie mutters, an echo into her empty bottle, “in the most pretentious way possible.”
Abruptly, Daisy sits forward and leans into her elbows against the table. Directly beneath the overhead lamp, her lean muscles cast stark shadows down her thin limbs, and her skull-short red hair catches an ever so slight halo. Martin is struck, for the first time, by how much smaller she is than Basira. It always felt the other way around.
“So we can’t do anything about that,” Daisy says, with her usual assurance, but without the harshness Martin has come to expect. “Next topic, then. Who’s planning to gouge out their eyes?”
That sends a hush over them.
“Us, apparently,” Martin says, because he has to learn to fight the quiet sometime. He glances up to find Jon watching him, the lines of his face softened by something Martin can’t quite place.
“Yes,” Jon murmurs, “us.”
“Precious,” Daisy mutters. Basira snorts.
Melanie shakes her head and spins her bottle between the table and her pointer finger. “It’s… not really the kind of decision you can make quickly, is it?” she murmurs. “Unless you’re Jonathan Act-First-Think-Later Sims.”
“Wha-!” Jon sits up straight on his stool, sputtering. “I am- I do a lot of planning, I’ll have you know—”
“And how long did you take between learning this information and making your decision?”
Jon sits back, bites his lips into his mouth. “Mm.” He clears his throat. “That- is hardly relevant.”
“Did you even think about where you’re going to go?” Basira asks, her eyebrows arching into their full, sculpted shape. “You’re not planning to just render yourself effectively defenceless and then sit like a duck in London.” Are you?
“Ah,” says Jon.
Melanie laughs, high and a bit cruel. Martin can’t blame her.
“She has a point, Jon,” he murmurs. “If— Maybe we should take a bit. Plan some?”
Jon’s right leg begins to bounce, his heel hooked on the highest rung of the stool. “No- damn. Damn, we- we can’t. Damn! As soon as we left the Institute— It’s a ticking clock. Peter will take you if we go back. But if we’re gone for- what, a-a-a-a few weeks, a month? -the Eye will start draining you. No, shit, I started our clock the moment I dragged you out of there.”
“You didn’t drag me,” Martin says faintly, unsure whether he’s defending his own agency or trying to soothe Jon’s agitation. He can multitask, he supposes.
“Sims.” Daisy’s voice is soft, firm. Jon goes absolutely still in a way Martin hasn’t seen much, just suddenly relinquishing his nervous energy—all at the touch of Daisy’s hand on his knee. She looks up at him with a calmness that would register as a predator putting its prey at ease, if not for the ever so slight smirk cut at the corner of her lips.
“Daisy,” Jon says, weary.
She draws her hand away and sits back in the booth. “I’ve got a house. Up north. Middle of nowhere, well-stocked, stash of weapons if you need ‘em. I can get you the keys in an hour.”
In an hour. Christ, this is happening.
Jon swallows, a sharp bob of his throat. “Oh. You’re- sure?”
Daisy arches one eyebrow. “If you are.”
“I- yes. Yes.” Jon nods, then looks at Martin. “Yes?”
Martin nods back. “Yes, yeah.” He looks to Daisy. “Up north?”
She smiles, a surprisingly delicate thing. “Scottish Highlands.”
Jon’s fingers tighten in Martin’s. “Thank you, Daisy. I-I don’t know how to—”
“Don’t.” She raises a hand, putting a stop to Jon’s stuttering. “Just- stay safe.”
Jon chuckles shakily. “That’s… certainly the goal.”
And just like that, Daisy gets up. “Alright. Meet back here in an hour?”
Martin’s stomach tightens. “Oh, that- that might not be enough time? I-I’m not sure what we might need, but—”
“Three hours?” Jon hedges.
Daisy frowns. “Two.”
Jon sighs heavily. “We’ll try.” He hops off the stool, and Martin rises with him.
Basira gets up as well, stepping immediately to Daisy’s side. She looks back at Melanie, who glares down at her long-empty bottle. “Melanie? You know what you’re going to do?”
“Mm. Think, probably.” She sighs and slides out of the booth, shoving her hands deep into her hoodie as she stands. “It’s, uh… a-a lot to process.”
“Yeah,” Martin huffs. “It is. Do you- is there someone you can… talk to? About all of it?” Jon gives him an odd little look out of the corner of his eye, but Melanie, to Martin’s surprise, smiles.
“Actually, yeah. Don’t worry about me. I think you two are about to have enough on your minds.” She starts to brush past them, then turns and points at them with narrowing eyes. “Get therapy. Both of you.”
Jon sputters, “Wha—?” and Martin feels that awful, warm fullness in his chest.
“Will do,” he says.
Melanie smirks, and flicks a wave over her shoulder as she leaves.
When they emerge from the pub, Martin’s eyes squint nearly shut against the daylight, and the crisp air stings his lungs. Jon must notice the shudder that runs through him; he pulses his fingers lightly between Martin’s, a flutter of reassurance. Shrinking from the brightness, Martin looks down at Jon—at the warm olive glow drawn from his rich brown skin by the sun, the coarse hairs draped a stark grey across his forehead, the hook of his nose, arch of his lips, cradle of silver-streaked scruff beneath his cheekbones, and those stupid-large, leagues-deep eyes—and he thinks that maybe he’s lucky that he doesn’t have long left to look at this face, because prolonged exposure might actually kill him.
“What?” Jon asks softly.
Martin’s mouth quivers. “Nothing.”
A throat clears. They jerk as one to see Basira, giving them a slow up-and-down. “Did you hold hands all the way here?” she asks.
Jon starts to stammer.
Basira’s eyebrows lift, face lighting with an amusement she manages to exude even without cracking a smile. “On the tube, too?”
“Um,” Martin squeaks.
“That’s a forty-five minute ride,” says Daisy.
“Forty-eight,” Jon says, clipped. Martin’s face goes well and truly hot. “The powers are- jealous creatures,” Jon continues, voice sharpening as his hand tightens. “The Lonely could still come for him!”
“Oh, yeah.” Basira nods. “Can’t be too careful.”
Daisy nudges Jon’s shoulder with her own, knocking him into Martin’s arm. “Convenient,” she says.
“Oh- shut up,” Jon snaps. “We’ll- we’ll be back in two hours!” He starts down the street, and Martin follows.
Neither of them let go.