Chapter Text
“We need to go on a walk.”
Martin said it to the ceiling, reclined on the couch as he was, and not to Jon. It could be argued that the message would find its way to Jon anyway, as he was the only viable recipient in the area, but indirectness took it out of Martin’s hands.
He really did not want to go on a walk.
He really didn’t want to do much of anything.
Rustling from Jon’s side of the couch. “Do we?” He rustled some more and leaned over enough that Martin could see his face in the corner of his vision. He didn’t look, exactly, but Jon was obviously there. That was…nice? Reassuring? He was there.
Martin was forced to focus a little more when Jon only continued to stare, insistent at the corner of his vision. Like a spot burned into his retinas. Martin was sure that if he closed his eyes there would be an inverted blue impression of Jon seared on the backs of his eyelids.
”Yes,” he replied after a moment.
Jon worried at his lip with his teeth and inserted himself further into Martin’s space. Martin wanted to tell him to back away, but there was a barely-louder part of him that whispered to let him stay. It didn’t make Jon’s proximity any less unpleasant. “Is, er, is something wrong?” He looked so earnest.
Martin looked a little to the left, putting Jon back in the periphery of his vision. Yes, he thought. My thoughts aren’t working. I can’t feel. I think I left my soul back in the Lonely and I just feel so empty here without it. “I just need some fresh air,” is what he said instead. It sounded too distant, like he was hearing himself from fifty feet away.
The day hadn’t started well, per se, but…but Martin was sure he didn’t wake up like this. He didn’t remember feeling any other way, but there’s a vague acknowledgement shimmering through his thoughts that he felt some other way earlier.
Jon sucked in a put-off breath. “I see your point, but, well, it’s raining now, like it’s really—it’s coming down in buckets, Martin, and I just, uh, well to be honest I don’t really want to bother getting dry again after the fact.” He was silent for a moment, and—yes, if he listened, Martin could hear the rain, pit-patting against the window. He wondered when that had started. He hadn’t noticed it. Jon apparently pushed in closer, because his voice became louder and his breath puffed against Martin’s cheek. “Martin, are you sure you’re alright?”
Martin let his gaze skate down over Jon’s face for a facsimile of eye contact, then looked back up at the ceiling. “Never better,” he said, and tried not to believe it.
Jon pressed closer again, made himself unavoidable, eyes so open and earnest and doubtful, and annoyance burst snapping and frothing to the front of Martin’s mind. “God, Jon, can’t you believe I know my own feelings?”
Cold numbness iced over the thoughts left behind once the words escaped his mouth. Jon didn’t deserve this. Martin pushed himself to his feet, dimly noting that his own shoulder clipped Jon’s on the way up and sent him reeling for a moment before he could regain his balance. Jon didn’t deserve that, either. “I’m going on a walk. You can come with me if you want.” He wanted to punctuate the statement by storming to the door and pulling on his boots, but he just stared out the window. It really was raining. It had been raining a lot.
He tried very hard to muster up an opinion on this fact, but nothing was there.
He kind of wished he was crying. Maybe then Jon would comfort him, except at the same time there was nothing worse he could imagine. Now that he was standing, he couldn’t fathom walking all the way to the door, much less somewhere outside. Jon was right, it was raining a lot. It would probably just make things worse. He would just get cold and wet.
There really wasn’t a point, was there?
Martin turned around to go back to bed, but Jon had already sprawled himself across the bedroom doorway. He didn’t block the way very well at all, but they both knew it was more of a symbolic effort anyway. Of course he knew what Martin was planning. Jon always knew better, didn’t he? Faced with Jon’s frank determination, Martin couldn’t do anything but pull his lips into a sneer. “Oh, so first we can’t go because it’s raining, and now I can’t change my mind?” He stormed over to Jon, let himself loom. In the moment, it was a little darkly satisfying to be so much bigger than him. “Let me through, Jon.”
Jon jutted out his jaw. “No.” He narrowed his eyes up at Martin. “We are going on a walk.” Gooseflesh erupted up Martin’s shoulders and neck. It felt like the world was breathing down his neck, pressing him closer and closer to Jon’s infinite eyes. Fear shook his next exhale, and when Jon’s eyes widened marginally, Martin wondered if Jon could taste it.
Martin took an unintentional step backward. He tried for a confident “You don’t get to decide that for me,” but he stuttered on the start and warbled on the end. Jon apparently took it as a win, because his cheek pinched in a smug smirk and he ducked around Martin to put on his coat.
Martin’s traitorous feet took him to the front door as well. “I was being a bit melodramatic about the rain,” Jon huffed as he wrestled with the laces on his boots. “A bit of rain never killed—well, th-that is to say, um, anyway, we can’t know it’s so terrible unless we go out ourselves.”
Martin couldn’t take his eyes off Jon. Did he think this was normal? In a way, Jon was doing him a favor, coaxing reactions out of the cold husk of his mind. What a shame they were all violent and angry. “So you have to experience things to know they’re unpleasant?” He pulled his gloves on, a bit more aggressively than he meant to. The seams dug into the meat between his fingers. He turned away from Jon, finally. “’S that why you had to go in the coffin?”
As he opened the door he heard Jon fall over behind him. His already-poor sense of coordination was always worsened by emotional surprises. In some situations it was almost funny. Not so much now.
Martin got a good few strides away from the cottage before the door burst open again behind him. Jon grabbed briefly at Martin’s elbow before remembering himself and reeling his arm back in. Funny, which boundaries he decided were worth respecting at any given moment. “Mar-Martin, I know you’re upset, but you weren’t there, you don’t underst—”
“Oh, yeah, I didn’t feel it myself, so I have no idea what it was like. You’ve made your point, Jon.”
Jon kept splashing gracelessly through the muddy grass. Martin wondered if he ever existed quietly, or if Martin was just so attuned to him he couldn’t ignore him. Like a sore on the inside of his lip. “No, not at all, if you’d just—Martin!” Martin didn’t stop. The rain was starting to clump his lashes together, making everything blurry and indistinct. The hills held a lot less majesty through a veil of precipitation. “Martin,” Jon pleaded, “Martin, can we—I—I just had to do it, can’t you see? And, and, and stop wandering off, I don’t want to lose you again!”
Martin checked over his shoulder, but Jon wasn’t falling behind even a little. “You can handle me being six feet away, Jon,” he mumbled. He slowed down, though.
Martin had no idea where to go from here, directionally or conversationally. So he just picked a direction to walk, and didn’t say anything else. At least Jon could be useful for keeping them from getting lost, if nothing else.
The rain was cold, and unpleasant. It was a different sort of unpleasant from sitting on the couch, at least. His back twinged and his thighs burned and his lungs stung in a way that made him feel a little self-conscious, but it was something. He remembered, now, why he wanted to go on the walk. He felt like he was back in his body and mind now.
They weren’t precisely pleasant places to be, but it felt almost worthwhile.
Jon let the silence sit for all of five minutes before wildly throwing another conversational dart. “Can I, er, say something? Or, ah, ask something, rather?” He’d jogged to get level with Martin, and seemed to be struggling with the rain hitting his face. He winced a little when each drop hit. Martin nodded, not feeling like verbalizing a response, and Jon took a deep breath. “I, um. Are you, uh, punishing yourself, coming out here?”
That finally brought Martin to a halt. “You’re really asking that? You?” He scoffed. “Oh, that’s rich.”
Jon bristled. “You’re avoiding the question,” he hissed. “I don’t want you coming out in the rain t-to hurt yourself when I just got you back. Or, um. Ever, for that matter.”
“Not everybody spends their free time looking for swords to fall on, Jon.”
“I don’t see why this keeps getting turned back at me! Can you answer the damn question?”
Martin threw his hands up. “Maybe I just needed to get out of the house, Jon! Maybe I wanted to, I dunno, be one with nature, or something! I didn’t think about it that hard, I’m just trying to not dissolve into fog again!” He felt very tired all of a sudden, and dropped his arms. “I didn’t really expect the rain, to be honest. I’d wanted to go on a walk in the sunshine. Look at—flowers, or bees, or something. But the rain, it’s also, uh, grounding, in its own way.” He wiped at the rain on his face. “I think I want to go back inside now, though.”
Jon’s eyes were darting back and forth; between what targets, Martin couldn’t guess. “I can start taking us back,” Jon eventually declared. He pulled back his sleeve and squinted at his bare wrist, then patted around for a phone he didn’t have in his pockets, then finally announced it was almost lunch time anyway, before picking a direction and marching onward.
Jon didn’t take them directly back, but Martin had suspected he wouldn’t from the moment he suggested it. He took them in a broad arc which would eventually circle back to the safehouse. Martin was annoyed, but too tired to do anything about it. And the walking was nice, even if his socks were starting to get wet. Neither of them tried any more conversation starters.
Jon held the door when they got back to the cottage. Martin couldn’t tell if it was meant to be chivalrous or passive-aggressive. Knowing Jon, probably both.
“Are you gonna flip out again if I try to lie down now?” Martin asked as he shrugged out of his coat. Jon just rolled his eyes, which Martin took as acquiescence rather than press the issue.
He ended up laying sideways across the bed, because he may have changed into new clothes, but his hair was slow to dry and he didn’t want to contend with damp pillows later. The new view of the ceiling was interesting, which was probably a poor indicator of the general quantity and quality of entertainment in this house. The rain tapped sharply at the window and dully on the roof in a percussive lullaby. He wasn’t sure how he didn’t notice it earlier. It seemed so obvious now.
He didn’t realize he fell asleep until Jon shook him awake for lunch. It hadn’t been the plan, but, well, plans change. The rest of the day might be better.