Chapter 4

Jon only peels his hands out of his pockets to take his plate from the truck window. It’s gotten colder since they’ve walked over here. It’s gotten colder, and Jon’s irritation has only grown because Daisy refuses to say anything other than give the occasional hum and “sure” to his gripes. That, and he’s finding he’s really quite hungry. He hasn’t been used to that feeling much these days with that unrelenting illness. He tears into his kebab without barely tasting the thing while Daisy pays for both of their plates as he heads for the nearest park bench.

Daisy follows close behind. She sits down next to him with a thump and spreads her legs wide in a way she knows annoys him, knees rubbing up against his as he tries to turn away.

“Slow down,” she says, jabbing his arm. “You’re gonna get choked.”

Jon glowers at her in a way that probably looks more like a kitten attempting to hunt a toy than any real threat, but he does take his next bite slower. Daisy unwraps her own and tears into it.

“When’d you stop being a vegetarian by the way?” she asks through a mouthful, dripping onion shavings onto the plate in her lap. Sometimes Jon wonders if she were raised by wild animals. His grandmother’s ghost would rise from the grave if he so much had the idea to speak with his mouth full.

In the old woman’s honor, he swallows before he answers, frowning. “What?”

She gestures with her meal to his own.

Jon looks down at the kebab in his hand. He...huh. He hadn’t really thought about it when he’d ordered it. He’d just known that he was so fucking hungry and the only way to satisfy such would be to find something he could tear his teeth into like some sort of ravenous hound.

“Uh,” Jon says, trying to find a way to resolve that line of thought into a comprehensible string of speech. “I just...had a craving, I suppose.”

Daisy hums lightly as she reaches over the side of the bench to pick up her drink. “Think that’s a sign of a deficiency.”

Jon blinks. “What?”

“Yeah. Had a coworker tell me something about that once, about how when you crave something you don’t normally eat it’s like, your body’s way of saying you’re missing something,” she says, punctuating it with a gesture to the air, “or something like that. He was usually full of shit though.”

“Huh,” Jon says. She might have a point. Maybe he should start taking supplements — what was it again that typically came from meat? Vitamin B12? He’ll have to look it up.

Jon shakes his head. He's getting distracted. They're out here for a reason, and that reason involves the fact that Daisy Tonner is for some reason wandering around a college campus, despite the fact that Jon is quite certain she hasn't picked up a book in the better part of a decade. Not a nerd like you, she's always said when Jon would tout the importance of adult literacy.

His gaze swings over to his companion as the question rearises, his eyes narrowing. “Why...exactly were you on campus earlier?”

Daisy chews her food, surprisingly, then swallows. Sticks her tongue out as she tries to lick away a bit of sauce on her cheek, to which Jon offers her a napkin. She takes it, holding it in her lap. “Support group,” she finally answers.

Jon frowns. “I thought that was only once a month.”

“It’s every week,” she corrects. “I just can’t stand to go more than once a month.”

“Oh,” Jon says, not willing to breach the question of so why were you there today then?, because if Daisy doesn’t want to tell him, then Daisy isn’t going to tell him. He’s just learned to accept that aspect of their relationship. A near-decade of knowing a person makes it much easier to learn when to just roll over and show your belly.

Daisy doesn’t ask about his support group. She knows that he hasn’t been to one in nearly four years, because the last one had some arsehole in it that spent the whole time spilling his breakup story for the entire allotted hour, and whenever he left he felt more like he’d been run over by a truck. He’d stopped going after they decided to change venues. He doesn’t...the few therapists he’s had don’t seem to understand how hearing about the one thing you don’t want from a bunch of other people who are stuck in the same piddly little boat as you over and over and over again really doesn’t do the best for putting that thing out of your mind. Daisy seems to get it though. Daisy seems to get it, and that’s why she’s the only person from that time of his life he doesn’t mind keeping around.

“Didn't hear from you after Saturday,” Daisy says as she leans back into her seat further. “Thought you might have gotten carried away by vultures or something.”

Jon gives her a look. “Vultures don't— they’re carrion birds. They don't— they don't carry people away.”

“The name suggests otherwise.”

“You know, if you read a book more than once a decade you might know these things.”

“Yeah, and if you went to the gym every so often you might not be spindly enough where I have to worry about you getting carried away by birds,” she says with a pointed jab to his ribs; Jon jumps, glaring at her as he nearly drops his plate. “Look,” she continues, “if it was nothing, fine. I just...I know how you get when you...withdraw.”

Jon grimaces, staring down at his lap. He knows she has a point. Jon texts Daisy almost every day — even just a simple good morning, even if it's nothing more than a picture of something they ate. It's been a long-standing tradition that they've held for years, to keep each other in check when things have been difficult — when Daisy went through a rough patch with her girlfriend, when Jon’s grandmother died, when one of them changed jobs. His five-years sober coin didn’t come without a fight.

He picks at the back of his hand, where the skin’s gone rough and flakey from the cold. “I’m...I’m sorry. I honestly forgot.”

Daisy raises an eyebrow. “Am I getting too boring for you, Sims?”

He huffs out a laugh. “Well, your choice of arcade could be better...”

“They had decent pizza.”

“And a whole slew of health concerns to go with it,” he counters, drawing a chuckle out of her. He smiles. “I really am sorry. I’ve just been...” god, how to even explain it, “a bit ill lately.”

“Is that what this is all about then?” she asks, gesturing to the patch of hair on her own upper lip. It feels a bit silly now to remember a time, back when he’d still been a scrawny college kid who lived in oversized hoodies, that he’d been a bit jealous of Daisy’s ability to grow better facial hair than him — and even more frustratingly, to wear it well.

He glares at her with all the menace of a small prey animal. “Tim liked it.”

“And you’re going to let Tim dictate your wardrobe?” Daisy retorts, which...well, Jon can’t exactly argue with that point. Daisy had been his plus-one at the library’s christmas party last year to bear witness to the blinding display of blinking lights Tim had called a jumper — at least, until it’d come off (along with his trousers) about five drinks in.

Jon rubs at his scratchy chin. “Yeah. Well.”

“...How is Tim, by the way?”

Jon looks up, raises an eyebrow at her. “Seriously? Are you sure you’re not the ill one here?”

Daisy only shrugs lightly. “I can’t ask about your other friends?” she says, which...well, obviously she can, there’s nothing stopping her, it’s just that she doesn’t that makes him feel like he’s watching lobsters crawl out of her ears. She must notice this in the way he stares at her. The way he doesn’t blink up until his eyes start feeling dry, and only then does Daisy sigh, lean back, and add, “He just seemed...anxious on the phone, I suppose.”

Dread drops into Jon’s stomach at the words, mouth goldfishing open and closed. “You...”

Daisy sighs. “He called me, alright? Him and Sasha. And Georgie called them, and I know you only hang around Georgie’s when you want to see the Admiral, and I know you only see the Admiral when—”

Ah. Well fuck.

Jon’s vision blurs. Jon feels his throat closing up, feels the pit of his stomach opening up and threatening to make him fold in on himself. He wants to get up and run. He wants to tell Daisy to fuck off, that this isn’t any of her business, that he’s fine and he doesn’t need her giving him that damn look like he’s something to be disappointed in, it’s none of their business with what he does with his life, they have no right to interfere with how he handles himself when he never fucking asked them to, he doesn’t—

Her hand falls gently on his knee, and he jumps. It’s only then that he realizes how badly he’s shaking.

“Jon,” Daisy says.

“Don’t,” he bites out weakly.

“I only want to help.”

“You can’t help with— w-with this, so just don’t,” he snaps, hating how his voice trembles around the words, wet and shaky. She can’t help with this. She can’t help with this because everything that’s gone wrong within these past few weeks isn’t the product of one central, swirling implosion, no matter how much he wants to just point a finger at the gaping hole in his chest and call it a day. He hates this. He hates all of this. He hates that he can’t look in the mirror anymore and see the person he’s spent so long fighting to recognize over the years, now feeling like the carved out shell of the man he once was. Everything hurts. His chest hurts. His legs hurt. The deep-gnarled twisting in his bones like everything’s turned sideways just to spite him hurts, as does his stomach, his teeth, his fingers that he can’t help but feel keep bending in the wrong directions these days, the roaring thumping in his ears and in his as it claws at his ribcage — everything hurts, and there’s no way to seem to escape it.

He doesn’t realize how tight his throat has gotten, how warm his face feels until Daisy’s hand curls around his back and gently tugs him into her shoulder. He doesn’t want her to. He doesn’t want her to, but he can’t find himself able to do anything else except curl into the warmth of her jacket. He feels like an idiot, sitting there with his face pressed up into faux leather in public as he chokes off a full-blown breakdown, but Daisy only keeps quiet as she rubs her hand slowly up and down his back.

“I feel like an idiot,” Jon chokes out, fighting hard to keep the wobble out of his voice.

“You are an idiot,” Daisy agrees softly, “but I’ve known that for a while.”

Jon lets out a wet laugh, pulling back enough to smear his nose on his sleeve instead of on Daisy’s jacket. He clears his throat, wipes his eyes, then slips back into the space next to her on the bench. “Christ, I could use a cigarette.”

Daisy reaches deep in her trouser pocket, fishing around before she pulls out a crumpled box, holds it out to him. “Don’t have a light,” she says as Jon takes one.

“It’s fine,” he says as he sticks it between his lips. Christ, he’s a mess. It isn’t that he doesn’t know this. It isn’t like this is really a new discovery, either; it’s just that everyone else seemingly noticing this recently means that he’s fucked up somewhere along the way and landed flat on his face. He doesn’t want Tim or Sasha or Georgie to worry. He doesn’t want to be this person, so sick and paranoid all the time. Hell, maybe Martin really did make him a better person. Maybe he’s just forgotten what he was like before then.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Daisy asks, neutrally, for which Jon is grateful.

Jon starts to shake his head. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to tell her about everything that’s happened, everything that is happening to him — it sounds absurd to put it into words, and doing so only makes it feel more real. Ultimately, he settles on a weak shrug. “I...I-I caught something, um. From Martin, I think.”

Daisy’s face twists into a frown. “From...Martin?”

“My ex,” Jon corrects, realizing that he’s been so cagey about the whole thing that he hasn’t even told Daisy his name. He squeezes his eyes shut. “I-it doesn’t matter. It’s just— it’s just being sick, and the breakup, and work and and and—” He rubs at his eyes. “I-I don’t know. It’s just...feels like it’s all fallen apart.” Maybe it has. He’s been so busy trying not to think about it that it’s only now he realizes just how bad things have truly gotten.

“...You know we care about you,” Daisy says, and any other day it would sound completely insincere coming from her. Maybe that’s what makes it feel worse. That everyone’s worried about him, and there’s nothing he can do to stop them.

“I know,” Jon mutters. He clears his throat, not willing to risk another crack. “C-could we talk about something else?” he asks gently.

Daisy’s gaze softens. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Jon says, peeling off his glasses and rubbing them clean. “Just— just something else. I don’t really want to think about that right now.” Doesn’t want to think about how he’s completely fallen apart. Doesn’t want to think about everything that hurts so deeply he can feel it in his teeth. Someone’s teeth. He’s not sure the ones in his mouth are his own anymore. “Just— just, tell me about...about your football matches or something.”

“My ‘football matches’?” Daisy says with raised eyebrows.

“Er,” Jon to her sheepishly, “or something?”

“Jon, since when do you give a damn about that?”

Jon feels himself scowl on instinct, a welcome diversion from everything else he’s feeling. “I went with you to the last one, didn’t I?”

Daisy snorts. “Yes, and you fell asleep halfway through the game.”

“W-well you weren’t watching either! You were on your phone half the time!” He protests, feeling his face warm as he looks down to his lap. To his feet. None of his trousers seem to fit right, these days, always a bit too short in the ankles — which makes no sense, it isn’t like he’s grown at all, he’s twenty-nine years old, and the only other explanation he can think of is that they’ve all shrunk in the wash. Maybe he should buy new detergent. And milk. And shaving cream, though he’s not sure if razors are meant to be used on the back of a person’s arm. Jon frowns, picking at his nails. “Look, do you want to do something this weekend or not?”

“Snippy,” Daisy says cooly, just unbothered enough to spark a flare of irritation before she cuts off his rebuttal. “I could be persuaded. What did you have in mind?”

He thinks for a moment. “Hm. Anything but the arcade, I suppose.”

“So...football then?”

“Don’t push your luck,” he snaps toothlessly at her. Daisy just rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling lightly. That’s good, Jon thinks. That means he’s done something right for once.

Jon puts the cigarette back between his lips. Takes in a long breath. The air’s blowing in cold now, autumn nipping at his heels. There’s this itch that’s settled into him lately that he can’t seem to shake, a skin-crawling reflex that just won’t settle. Jon thinks about getting up and running to chase it. Jon thinks about running and running until no one knows him and no one would know to be worried about him. Jon doesn’t want them to worry. Jon doesn’t want to think about why he’s made them worried in the first place.

He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, shoves it into his pocket, and stays fixed in place.

Jon isn’t sure if his usual first date rule applies here or not.

It’s just— it’s difficult to tell if this counts as a date. It hadn’t started as a date; an hour ago, he’d been arguing with the arsehole running the trivia game at the pub where they’d gone for Tim’s birthday, and now he’s apparently on his way back to one Martin Blackwood’s flat. Or, at least, trying to get his way back to Martin’s flat. His feet aren’t exactly cooperating underneath him, so he’s primarily relying on the fact that the man with his arm slung around him knows where they’re going. Mostly because he lives there. But also because he’s about three glasses more sober than Jon at the moment and seems a lot more sure of which carpet panels aren’t going to fall out from underneath them both as they navigate down the hallway.

“Okay,” Martin is saying, mostly to himself, as he battles between digging out a key and fruitlessly keeping Jon upright. It’s a losing battle. It’s a losing battle because Jon’s legs just don’t want to stay underneath him, no matter how hard he tries to keep them there, and also because it’s just so easy to lean on Martin. He’s got those big broad shoulders that are easy to lean on, a nice pillow of a stomach and big strong arms. It’s strange — Jon rarely pays attention to others’ bodies, but he finds that he quite likes the shape of Martin. “Okay,” Martin says again as he gets the key in the door, nudges it open. “Alright, there we go, now just watch your ste—”

Jon’s foot catches on the threshold, pitching him forward head first in one quick motion and floor lunging straight for his nose before Martin’s hand catches around his waist.

“Jesus, Jon!” Martin exclaims as he spins him around, and— oh, yes, Martin is very close to Jon’s. Martin’s very freckled face is very close to Jon’s, and he’s struck by the thought that Martin’s face is quite nice like the rest of him: rounded out with soft cheeks and a missed patch of scruff on his double chin that somehow only makes him look more dignified. Jon would very much like to do something with that face, he thinks. He’s not exactly sure what he wants to do, just that he wants to do something. He thinks that he should tell Martin this, so he opens his mouth, and says very intelligently:

“You have a face.” Which...it’s not an unreasonable observation, except for the fact that he’d meant to get in a few more words in there to make it intelligible, and now Martin’s looking at him like he’s growing a second head. Is he growing a second head? He snakes a hand up to his neck, just to check.

“Okay,” Martin says quietly to himself, takes a breath, then says again louder, “okay. Right. You. Bed.” And then he wrangles Jon to his feet and proceeds to drag-carry him further into the flat. Oh, Martin’s taking him to his bed? Well, he’s not going to complain about that one.

A light only snaps on once they pass through the second door, illuminating what Jon, reasonably, assumes must be Martin’s bedroom. Unless Martin just keeps beds in each room of his flat on the off chance he wants to have a lie down in there at some point. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Jon should ask him where he’s procuring all those beds, if that’s the case, but — no, definitely Martin’s bedroom. It’s easy to tell once he looks around, with everything being so boldly Martin. The innermost wall is covered in band posters, art prints, and a hanging piece of canvas dotted in enamel pins like the ones that decorate Martin’s backpack, and to the left of his bed sits a desk. A stack of notebooks. A pile of unfolded laundry with that nice plaid flannel Martin had worn the other day lying on top. Jon had quite liked that shirt on Martin. Had quite liked it even more when the sleeves were rolled up and he’d seen the whole expanse of coarse hair on Martin’s very nice forearms, but he digresses.

Martin weaves him around a few houseplants looking in desperate need of a watering and sits him down on the soft blue quilt of his bed. Jon lets himself flop backwards into the cushions. Oh, this one has clouds on it, how nice. And this one is shaped like a cow. And this one—

Jon feels something tug at his foot, and he lifts his head up just slightly to see Martin undoing his lace. Oh, right. He probably should have taken those off before coming in here. Probably should have been more prepared to take things off when a man leads him into his bedroom, but Jon’s never been much one for forethought.

Wait.

Jon frowns, feeling Martin wiggle off the first of his shoes, and sits up a bit. Just up to his elbows, just so he can see the man at the foot of the bed. And then he asks, “Are we having sex?”

Martin’s hand slips, accidentally tugging the lace tighter. He clears his throat. “Do you...want to have sex?”

Jon thinks about it for a moment. It’s not that he’d never want to have sex with Martin, he thinks. Jon’s come to the conclusion over the past few weeks that he quite likes Martin and all that being around Martin Blackwood entails, but it’s the leadup of these things that tends to be the tricky part. The conversations to be had. The dos and don'ts, the yeses and nos, the “here’s my body and how to use x, y, and z, and but not y tonight, but maybe y tomorrow and not z, or maybe we should just do something to you and not look at any of me because all of this is so complicated and tends to be way too much for people” creeds that come along with sleeping with a person for the first time — even more so when it’s a person that Jon, unfortunately, quite likes. He frowns deeper. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay,” Martin says, and continues undoing his laces.

Wait.

Jon pushes himself up to his elbows, squeezing his eyes shut against the dizziness that comes with the action. “Is that not what you brought me in here for?”

“Wh—” Martin’s head snaps up. His face is very pink, Jon notes. Jon doesn’t remember Martin having alcohol flush, but then again, maybe he’s just never noticed. “Wh-what do you mean?”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “I’m in your bed?”

“W-well, yes, because...you need to sleep?”

“Oh,” Jon says. That makes sense, he supposes. People usually sleep in beds, which means— “Wait, where are you sleeping then?”

“I’ll take the couch,” Martin informs him as he wiggles off Jon’s shoe and part of his sock before setting it aside.

“You can sleep here too,” Jon says quickly, a bit carelessly, but, well. He scooches over towards the plush cow to make room. “I don’t mind.”

Now it’s Martin’s turn to frown. “Jon, I’m like, three times your size.”

Jon scooches over a bit more. “There. Now you should fit.”

“And I snore sometimes.”

“Don’t care. I’m a heavy sleeper.”

“And sometimes I—”

“Martin.” Jon doesn’t leave any more room for argument. Just grabs Martin’s hand and hauls him onto the bed with him, knocking a few insignificant pillows over the side with the movement, but it’s a casualty he doesn’t mind paying for. Martin doesn’t put up much of a fight. Just lets himself be pulled along until his rear is firmly planted on the bed, because at that point there’s no escaping Jon’s unyielding stubbornness.

Jon sits back, satisfied, into the mountain of pillows at the head for a moment. Then he glanced down at himself and his wrinkled post-work clothes and frowns. His hands find his zipper, and he begins undoing his trousers.

“Wh— Jon?!” Martin snaps out once he realizes what he’s doing. “I-I-I said we don’t have to have sex!”

“I’m not—” Jon wriggles his trousers down over his hips and to his knees, then kicks them over the side of the bed into the dark floor below. “I’m not stripping—”

“It kinda looks like you are!” Martin squeaks out, audibly strangled.

“I’m wearing pants,” Jon argues as he lifts up all top articles of clothing in one messy handful and rucks them up to his collarbones. “I just don’t want to wear this to sleep.”

“You can’t— you just—” Martin groans, low in his throat in frustration. Or at least, Jon assumes it must be from Martin. He can’t really see at the moment, glasses fallen over the back of his head somewhere and piles of fabric obscuring the rest of his vision, but he does feel a shift in the bed as Martin presumably comes closer. “Jon— christ, hang on, let me—”

One of Martin’s hands, cold as ice, falls in around his armpit. The other, fighting upstream against Jon’s thrashing, smacks lightly across Jon’s left nipple, and with the pained sound the other man makes one would think Martin was the one who’d been touched, but it ultimately finds its mark. Jon feels Martin’s hands come up under the tuft of fabric, then lift—

His head pops out from the mass of knitwear with a gasp. Christ, okay, note to self not to try that again while intoxicated. Jon is not very keen on the idea of having to make an impromptu hospital visit because he was nearly smothered by his own clothing. He shakes his head, tugs out his hairband, then looks back over to see Martin has neatly folded his clothes and is fumbling for something over the side of the bed.

“Let me see...ah—!” Martin raises back up, t-shirt in hand. He holds it out without looking in Jon’s direction. “Please put this on.”

Jon raises an eyebrow but doesn’t question. Martin’s house, Martin’s rules, he supposes. It’s purple. It’s a bit too big for him, pooling around the bend of his waist and hanging lopsided around his collarbones, but it’s soft, and it’s Martin’s, and well, Jon’s not complaining about either of those facts. “Okay,” he says once he has it fully on, just in case Martin was giving him the space to change in private.

Martin looks up. His eyes go wide. He lets out a little “oh,” barely loud enough to even acknowledge, as he looks Jon up and down, and then firmly fixes his gaze to his lap after he realizes he’s been staring a touch too long without saying anything. He’s really quite pink. Jon wasn’t sure he’d ever see Martin as pink as he was the day after the university’s summer festival a few months back, but it seems tonight is full of surprises. “Wow. I mean— thanks, shit, I mean—” Martin rubs at his eyes. “God, sorry. I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”

Jon snorts a little as he flops back into the pillows behind him. “And you say I’m the drunk one here.”

“Oh, trust me, you are,” Martin assures him. “I had to drag your ass away from a plastic bag because you thought it was a cat and wanted to pet it.”

“Lies. Slander. It could have been a cat, and you kept us apart. You’re a horrible man, Mr. Blackwood.”

“Jon, when’s the last time you had your prescription updated?”

Jon blinks, adjusting his glasses on instinct as he looks over to Martin. “How often are you supposed to get it updated?”

“Oh my god,” Martin giggles. He rolls to his side, the bed dipping welcomingly under his weight and inviting Jon to do the same, so he does. He looks at Martin. At Martin’s nose that’s much too big for his face and just asking to be kissed, at Martin’s hair that’s still hanging onto the last bits of pink dye at the ends and refusing to let go. Jon wonders if Martin will dye it another color soon. Maybe blue, or purple. He quite thinks Martin would look nice with purple hair.

He’d really quite like to kiss him. Maybe more.

“...actually, maybe I do want to have sex,” Jon says distantly, just as a possible throwing-it-out-there option. He isn’t sure how much he wants to commit to the idea at the moment, but it’s harmless floating out in the ether without anyone digging their fingers into it. Easier for him to step back and really get a good look at it. He’s not really turned on, alcohol never seems to work like that for him, but he wouldn’t mind doing something if Martin is. Yes, he thinks that’s about where he is. Good work team, hit the showers.

It’s only until Martin makes some sort of strangled noise that Jon’s drawn back to the present, and he looks over to the man sharing a bed with him. He’s really quite pink, Jon notes, as he turns away to hide his face in his arm. “Oh my god. Jon, you— christ.”

“What?”

“You can’t just— I mean, I thought you— god, fuck. Nevermind.”

“What?” Jon demands a bit more insistently, ready to push himself up to his elbow and force Martin to look at him.

He doesn’t have to. Martin looks back over at him, painfully self-aware of his own awkwardness as evident by his expression. He heaves a heavy sigh. “Your— you have that little flag on your desk, and I didn’t want to make assumptions but I guess I already did. I’m sorry.”

Flag on his...? Oh. Oh. Jon had forgotten about that, if he’s being honest. It wasn’t like he was quite keen on broadcasting it to everyone and their mother — labels always came with that caveat, that even if it technically fits, putting a name to it will only have people making assumptions. And people made a lot of assumptions. Hell, Jon hadn’t even bought the thing: it’d been something Tim had picked up for him at some parade or another, and he only kept it there because he liked the colors.

“Oh,” Jon says, a bit too belatedly given how long he’s been staring at Martin. He clears his throat. “You know that doesn’t mean I don’t—”

“Y-yeah, I know.”

Jon rolls onto his back. He looks up to Martin’s ceiling, speckled with what must be an old water leak stain and a few uneven coats of paint. He clears his throat. “Sometimes...sometimes I like sex.” It’s not a lie. It can be nice when it’s with someone he likes, someone he cares about from a purely connective, emotional standpoint. It’d never been anything life-changing, the handful of times he’d spend with Georgie, but he never found the experience wholly unpleasant. He glances over to Martin, watching quietly, before continuing. “But sometimes I don’t. And sometimes I really don’t...?”

“Oh,” Martin says softly, something glittering in his gaze as he looks at him. “Yeah, I...I think I understand?”

“Oh.” Jon raises an eyebrow. “You’re also...?”

Martin shakes his head. “No, I— well, I did some research about it back in the day when I was still figuring myself out? But, um, well it turns out I was just gay.” He lets out a soft laugh at this, mostly to himself.

“Ah,” Jon says understandingly, before the words sink in, and he frowns. “Wait, you’re gay?”

Martin looks at him for a long moment. “Jon. Oh my god.”

“What?”

“I— Jon,” Martin bites his lip, and for a second Jon wonders if he’s said something wrong. Has he said something wrong? He never knows how to talk about these things, about this whole...being queer thing, which is probably why an unfortunate amount of people have assumed he’s straight over the years.

It isn’t until Jon sees Martin’s shoulders shake that he realizes he’s laughing. “Jon. I have pink hair and a nose ring.”

“And...? I mean, you look very nice in both,” Jon says matter-of-factly, nodding hard enough to dislodge his glasses. He pushes them back into place on his nose. Looks over to Martin, who’s watching him wide-eyed. Martin swallows visibly.

“Jon...sometimes you...say things.”

“I say a lot of things,” he agrees, having absolutely no clue what Martin’s talking about. “That’s kind of something that distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom, you know.”

A smile begins to curl across Martin’s face. “Well, what are you saying now, Mr. Chatterbox?”

Jon thinks about it for a long moment. “I’m saying...I’d quite like a cigarette.” Then he pushes himself upright and leans over the bed, fishing for his trousers somewhere in the carpet below.

“You smoke?” Martin says, distantly, from up on the bed. It’s not judgemental, not upset, just...more curious than anything. Like Jon’s gone and surprised him, when Jon’s mental image of himself never goes without a cigarette plugged between his fingers. Funny how those sorts of things differ from person to person.

“Sort of,” Jon says as he finds the box in his front pocket, wiggles one free. He hauls himself back onto the bed and flops back into his spot. “Or, well— not really? I used to, but I quit because of—” he makes a vague gesture with his hand, “—everything, so now I just sort of...”

Jon puts the unlit cigarette between his lips and takes a long inhale in. Leans back into the cushions behind him, closes his eyes. Martin’s rounded stomach is pressing up against his side, from this angle, and the warmth of it is grounding in a way he’s not sure he’s felt before. He wonders if it’d be weird to ask Martin to lie on him. It’d probably feel nice, like a big, weighted blanket.

Martin breathes slowly beside him, soft and steady. “How long have you been quit?”

Jon closes his eyes. “Hm...a-a little over five years?”

“Good for you,” Martin says, and Jon peels open an eye to see he’s smiling sincerely at him. Jon pulls the cigarette from his mouth, and Martin follows the movement. “Could I...?”

Jon offers it over to him. He watches as Martin takes it, delicately, as if the thing might fall apart in his fingers, then puts it between his very pink lips. Takes a slow, closed-eyed breath in. “Wish I’d taken this up back in the day instead of everything else. Least they don’t make you go to rehab for having a cigarette.”

That catches Jon’s attention. He rolls over to his side to fully face the other man. “You were in rehab?”

Martin smiles lightly. “Yeah. Early twenties, y’know? I was, um. Not well, for a bit there, I suppose, but...yeah. Fine now.” He shrugs, as if to say it is what it is.

Jon knows what it is, is the thing. He’s been there too. He’d spent the better part of twenty-two being in the exact same place, except he usually doesn’t bring it up to people. It’s not that he’s exactly embarrassed about it. It’s just that most people who haven’t been in his shoes tend to not understand, tend to tread too lightly around him after it comes up, tend to think it’s some sort of recurring problem that they need to be careful about, and not just another bit of trivia about him in his youth. He was in rehab. He’s also gotten a master’s degree, a job, and a new car since then. Big deal.

But Martin is sharing this bit about himself too. And maybe that means Martin will understand. He thinks over for a moment, mulling on how exactly to wade into the conversation, and then asks, “...Did they ever make you play those god awful ice breaker games?”

Martin stares at him. His face splits into an exasperated laugh. “Oh, god, yes. Every time we got someone new, it was ‘oh, tell us something fun you’ve done recently’ when the only thing you’ve done over the past week is some ‘therapeutic arts and crafts’ and relay your whole family history to a group of strangers.” Martin pauses for a moment. “Wait, you...?”

“Smoking wasn’t my only vice,” Jon smiles softly. “Um. M-my friend Daisy that I’ve told you about? We...we met there.”

“Ah,” Martin says. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and examines it. Rolls it between his fingers. “Well. I’m...glad you’re not there anymore.” He holds out the cigarette back to Jon, who takes it gratefully.

“Same to you,” Jon answers as he puts the cigarette back in his mouth. He swears he can taste a bit of Martin still on it. A hint of mint from that gum he’d been chewing earlier. A smidge of leftover wine from the bar. A strange combination, but a comforting one, nonetheless.

...And then Jon rolls the cigarette over the tip of his tongue and snorts at the whole scene of the two of them he pieces together in his mind’s eye. “You know,” he says, “I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to do the whole ‘smoking in bed’ thing after the sex.”

Martin giggles, a little hysterically. “Do you. Um. Still want to...?”

Jon thinks about it for a moment. He’s a bit tired, if he’s being honest with himself, the thought he’d been entertaining earlier seemingly having floated off out of reach from his physical ability. Jon takes in a long, thoughtful breath. “I...don’t think so. I think I’m a bit too tired now.”

“Okay,” Martin says — oh. Huh. That...

It’s the simplicity of it all that gets him. It’s the fact that Martin gets him at all. That no is an answer that doesn’t require any more justification nor argument against that floods over him in such an all-encompassing wave of relief, that if he’d been standing it would have surely knocked him down. Jon is nothing more than Jon to Martin, and somehow that’s more comforting than he could ever explain. He thinks that Martin is quite a wonderful man. He thinks that he’d quite like to kiss Martin Blackwood.

Fuck it. He’s only twenty-nine once.

Jon rolls over to him. Props himself up on one elbow. “Would you...ah...” He swallows and wets his lips. “Would you be...amenable to kissing, though?”

“Would I be amenable,” Martin echos, face splitting into a grin. “Jonathan Sims, I have never been more amenable to anything ever in my life.”

God, if that just isn’t about the best thing Jon’s heard all day.

He scoots closer to Martin. He swallows back his nerves. He places a hand gently on Martin’s cheek, on the underside of his jaw where the residual prickles of his facial hair tickle the palm of his hand, and then—

Wait, what?

Martin kisses him.

No, no, hang on—

Martin kisses him. He kisses him gently. He kisses him like he’s been waiting to for years, like he’s a starving man, like he’ll never get the chance again to press into Jon’s mouth while he whimpers and whines up into it. He—

No, wait. Stop.

This hadn’t happened. This hadn’t happened like this. Jon hadn’t kissed Martin. Jon hadn’t lied there while Martin crawled on top of him. Jon hadn’t felt the full weight of comfort as Martin had straddled over him, taken his face between his hands. Martin kisses Jon like he wants to taste the deepest part of him and pull it out in the open for all to see. Martin snakes a hair behind his head, digging his fingers into Jon’s mess of hair. Martin brackets Jon’s hips with his own and bears down. Jon doesn’t moan. Jon doesn’t buck up, chasing the feeling. Jon doesn’t find Martin free hand and snake it up his shirt to his chest to let Martin touch him here, here please, yes, please god—

Jon bursts awake in a cold, sickly sweat.

It's dark. It's dark and he’s in bed, lying chest down with his limbs contorted in all manner of man-made knot as he wrestles free the arm not pinned to his stomach from the duvet. He can hear the television on in the other room where he'd forgotten it earlier, and the bathroom light is still peeking out from the door behind him. God, he'd just meant to sit down for a second, how long was he...?

In his fumbling, he hears the thump of his phone on the ground below, groaning as he pushes himself up. So much for adjusting his sleep schedule. He'd been doing better about it too — actually had a full eight hours yesterday — though part of him wonders if the residual exhaustion from two weeks of nausea had simply caught up with him.

And then his hand that’d been stuck beneath him comes free, and he freezes.

It feels...warm. Sticky, even. Sticky and precariously placed low on his abdomen where his fingers could easy slip beneath his waistband without much effort. When he'd been dreaming of—

No. No. Absolutely the fuck not. He's not— christ, he is twenty-nine years old, he absolutely cannot be dreaming of his ex like this. Embarrassment, shame, humiliation and every other word in the book comes rushing over him in a shivery, sickly sweat as he unsticks (ugh, fuck) his hand from his pants and reaches out with the other to fumble on a light.

It spews out of its bulb harsh and yellow. He winces as he blinks against it, looking down at his hand stained in crimson.

Oh. Ha. It's not— it's just blood. Christ. The relief can't come fast enough to exchange the mortification he’d felt not a moment ago at his own juvenile behavior. God it— it wasn't that type of dream. Whew.

And then his brain seems to catch up with the rest of his body, trembling enough to make his vision blur, as he realizes oh.

That's blood. That's a lot of blood.

The sink is blurry beneath his hands.

Everything’s blurry. Everything’s blurry and it’s difficult to tell whether or not it’s because he’s panicking or he’d left his glasses on the nightstand in said panic. Maybe it’s both. Maybe he should stop focusing on that and instead focus on the blood that’s drip drip dripping in thick globs into the sink below.

Jon stares at the nails on his left hand, trying not to be sick.

The first two it’s difficult to tell if anything is wrong. There’s blood welling up underneath them, sure, but there the nails still sit where they’re supposed to, still cling relatively firmly in place against his skin. The third — the middle finger — is a bit more alarming, the whole nail having gone white where it isn’t stained from the blood dripping down from his cuticles.

And the fourth—

Jon has to physically fight back the urge to retch at the sight of his ring finger nail, just barely still clinging to his skin in the left corner where it hangs limply. He can’t be sick again. He can’t let the nausea win out, so he forces down the complaints of his stomach’s feeble constitution and lifts his hand up to his face.

It’s...

Okay, it’s bad. It’s really bad. Jon doesn’t think he’s ever broken a nail this badly, even after ramming his pinkie toe into a post as a child and breaking it clean across. But that's the thing — he hadn't broken this one; it'd been healthy and pink and still attached to his skin when he'd brushed his teeth and crawled into bed two hours ago. Which means that he’s either managed to cause himself grievous bodily harm in his sleep and not wake up to it, or—

Or...

He doesn’t want to do it, but he doesn’t seem to have much of a choice as he grabs the dangling nail with his other hand. It comes away with barely so much as a fight, just a soft squelch of blood and puss that hits him straight in the gut and sends the tastes of the curry from earlier and bile up to the back of his mouth.

Oh. Oh, okay, that’s...

Jon isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

There’s...a nail there. Underneath the other one. It’s only about half the length of the original, bone white and jagged, like it’s growing into a sharp point in the middle. Like a claw. Like a nail that’s just grown in after breaking the original, except that’s impossible because nails don’t grow that fast. Fuck, he’s getting dizzy. He’s getting dizzy as he takes two steps back, as if to put distance between himself and his own hand, and then finds the toilet behind him with the other to sit down.

Jon swallows, hands shaking as he gently pokes at his new nail. Well...okay. Okay, it could be worse. He could have no nail there to begin with and be left to deal with the gorey aftermath; that’s what he’d told himself with the teeth thing too, even if he can’t stop cutting his tongue on them. When did growing back become the baseline for things that he shouldn’t even be losing in the first place? Things growing back and things growing wrong and things growing in places they shouldn’t be growing (how is he only noticing the hair between his fingers now? Wonderful! Bloody fantastic!).

Jon’s hand trembles as he digs out a pair of tweezers. It’ll be easier to get it over with. Easier to just bite the bullet and get ahead of the whole sickening process.

He barely feels it as he pulls each of them out, one by one. He tells himself it doesn’t hurt. He tells himself it doesn’t hurt so long as he doesn’t look at it, so he keeps his eyes shut as he wraps up his hand in bandage after bandage after bandage.

He...okay, fuck, he’s going to need more bandages. More bandages and more painkillers, because the prickle beneath his skin has spread all the way up to his arm, like the muscle doesn’t fit right underneath his own flesh anymore. He needs to calm down. He can’t panic now, not after he’s lost so much blood, and risk sending himself into shock. He’s not going back to the clinic. He’s absolutely not going to the hospital.

Jon shucks off his blood-soaked pajamas in favor of a pair of sweatpants, throws on a hoodie, and heads out clutching his keys and his own trembling hand.

He only realizes it after he’s gotten six blocks from his flat that he has no idea where he’s going.

He hadn’t really had a plan when he left his flat, is the thing. He’d just needed to get out of the cramped space and breathe in air that didn’t smell like the reheated curry he’d burned earlier or the cigarette smoke from his neighbor above. It’d been overpowering, near suffocating, and only here does he finally feel like he’s coming back to his body.

His very strange, very untraditional body that his sense of self can’t seem to fit comfortably in these days, but as least he can feel his feet again. And his hand. It’s starting to throb, which he supposes is at least a sign that it’s not yet undergoing necrosis. He really doesn’t want to visit the clinic again.

The sounds of the night are faint on this side of town as Jon wanders: a few cars cruising past with their windows down, a man walking a dog that looks much too small for him, a few distant shouts of excitement from a pub advertising trivia night on a sign out front. Jon supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised; the night’s closing in on two a.m. on a saturday, and despite being as close to campus as he is, most people seem to have the good sense of when to go home.

Most people, keywords here. Jon is not, in fact, one of them.

He only pauses once he reaches a crosswalk, the red light blaring up at him from the puddles on the road. Jon peels off his glasses. Rubs his eyes, then winces as he remembers his hand, then goes back to rubbing his eyes with only the one not swathed in plasters. He can’t tell if it’s the cold nipping through his thin sweatpants or an oncoming headache that’s making his teeth ache, but he knows he should do something about it. God, he’s hungry. He should probably eat something, too.

It’s not that the twenty-four hour corner store is of any particular note when he enters it. It’s just that it’s across the street when the walk sign pops up, and Jon takes that as invitation to push his way inside out of the chill.

The jingle of the door announces his arrival, and yet no one greets him upon entrance. Honestly, it looks as if there isn’t anyone to greet him — just a single young woman behind the counter who scrolls through her hello-kitty speckled phone without even acknowledging his presence, but Jon can’t say he’s too bothered. If anything, he’d rather not be the subject of spectacle this late at night, not wanting to risk someone calling the police or an ambulance on him. His grandmother always warned him nothing good happened after midnight.

He wanders through the aisles quietly. There isn’t much of note. It’s the same as every other corner store he’s ever been in ever since he moved from Bournesmouth — mostly junk food, a few microwavable meals, a row of shrink-wrapped sugary breakfast buns and sleeves upon sleeves of candy. He snags a box of smarties and some plasters from the shelves, tucking them under his arm, and feels a bit like a child going on a roadtrip. His grandmother always scolded him when he got crumbs all over the floor of her car on the rides up to see his aunt. Huh. Jon hasn’t spoken to her since his grandmother died. He wonders what she’s up to these days.

...Fuck, maybe he should call someone. Just something to ground him back into place. That’s usually what sensible people do when they feel like they’re teetering on a ledge instead of going out wandering in the middle of the night. The problem is that he doesn’t know who exactly to call, one he’d never even conceive of having a decade ago. Georgie? No, she’d already be asleep by now. Tim? Danny just got into town, he’s probably busy. Daisy? Sasha? Ma—

Jon claps himself on the cheeks, half to keep himself awake and half to thoroughly derail that line of thought. No. Absolutely not. He doesn’t even have the excuse of being intoxicated to blame for that careless notion. Martin has made it thoroughly clear that he does not want to hear from Jon, and not even the many nights spent over the phone while he locked up the library are going to change that.

It won’t. It can’t. It doesn’t matter how much he misses it.

Jon pauses his wandering as that thought hits him upside the head.

...Oh. Yeah. He misses that.

He misses those times. Those long talks through a grainy speaker about whatever essay Martin had been working on, whatever poem he was tapping away at and needed a synonym for the word “beauty” yet again. He misses those nights that they’d go out for ice cream too late, those mornings they’d get coffee too early from that overpriced place near the architecture building. He misses those long, rainy days in the library, those movie nights where they watched every godawful Friday the 13th, those afternoons that were spent pouring through old reference books for “that perfect reference” for Martin’s thesis paper.

He misses Martin. It’s only now he really thinks about it. It’s only now that the blind anger in his chest is burning itself out that he really feels the ache settling in, and it’s near unbearable. His eyes burn. His face feels wet, droplets rolling down his nose and falling to the cracking coffeeshop logo of that place Martin used to work on his hoodie with a slow, steady drip, drip, drip. Oh, that’s Martin’s too, isn’t it? Fuck, he misses him. He misses him really bad.

Jon pushes his glasses atop his head, wipes his eyes half with his sleeve and half with the bandages swaddling his hand. “Fuck,” he mutters to himself, then clears his throat when he hears how ruined his voice is. God, he’s a fucking mess. Maybe if he wasn’t so goddamn sad he would feel a bit silly about getting all weepy-eyed in the back of a twenty-four hour store in Chelsea.

Jon heads to the refrigerators for a drink, pulls it open and selects something red with too much sugar. It swings closed when he releases it, thumping back into place as his reflection stares back at him.

At least— yikes, is that really him? He’s glad that no one he knows in their right mind would be out to see him like this — face unshaved, eyes red and puffy, hair jutting out every which way as it struggles to stay in the half ponytail he’d tied it into earlier. Maybe he should cut it. Pick up a pair of shears on the way back and hack it all off — he’d done that once in uni and regretted it for the next six months. Hell, the night is young. What’s one more bad decision?

And then his eyes trail over beside his own face, where the display with more crisp flavors than he knew was possible, and onto the figure that stands with their back to him.

Jon freezes.

He turns around.

He stands there, staring at the back of the man’s head, at the faded pink tips of his hair, at the worn out back pocket of his jeans patched over with red floss, at the flannel shirt that’s fraying at the bottom, that’s rolled up to the elbows like it always is, that’s the same color that he’d been wearing yesterday.

And then the very man turns around, bag of crisps in hand, and promptly drops it as he sees who’s watching him.

Right. Right, because this is just how his night would go, isn’t it?

Martin’s eyes are wide as marbles, nearly big enough to fill the entire frame of his glasses. “Jon,” he chokes out, voice as rough as Jon’s feels. His eyes trail up the whole of him, from his worn plaid sweatpants to his complete wreck of hair atop his head, and then his disbelief is replaced with a look of concerned horror. “...Are you okay?”

Jon lets out a laugh, low and wet. Sniffles, then wipes the snot on his sleeve. “Define ‘okay.’”

“You look like hell.”

“Thanks,” Jon says. He wishes Martin would stop looking at him like that. He wishes he had it in him to just leave like he so desperately wants to, but he supposes Martin was always the one out of the two of them to actually act on his feelings. “Feel quite like it too, with whatever the hell you gave me.”

“With...with what I gave you...?” Martin frowns.

Jon waves his hand dismissively. God, he’s tired. He’s so fucking tired. “Doesn’t matter. ‘S not important. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

Jon attempts to side step around the other man, but Martin steps with him. He steps the other direction. Martin does the same. Jon frowns, then ducks his head as he takes a bullheaded step forward and collides with Martin’s soft stomach, stumbling back from the force. He glares up at the man but finds him blurry this close up. Where did his glasses...?

“Martin,” Jon starts, warningly.

“Jon,” Martin says in return, “you look like shit. You cannot seriously tell me that you walked here six blocks at two in the morning.”

“I did,” Jon retorts evenly, “and I’ll do it again. Now please get out of my way.”

Martin frowns, still anchored in place. Jon knows better than to try and push past him; he’s not even sure he could make the man budge. “Jon, I— let me call you a cab, at least.”

Absolutely out of the question. Even if it’s the smart decision, even if Jon really shouldn’t be walking through this part of town at this time of night alone, letting Martin do him a favor would mean that Jon owes him. The only thing Jon really owes Martin is a strongly worded letter full of colorful language and maybe a slap across the face. “Martin—”

“Look, that wasn’t a suggestion,” Martin says more than a little firmly.

“Oh, so what, you get to— to decide what I do now? I don’t get a say in what I do with my own time? Maybe I like walking around at two in the morning,” Jon bites back.

“You and I both know that’s not true,” Martin says, voicing the both of their thoughts aloud. He looks...uncertain? Uncomfortable, at least. A little spark of indignant satisfaction bubbles up in him. “Look, Jon we— I know our last meeting went— we really should...talk.”

Jon can’t help the scoff he lets out.

“I’m serious,” Martin says, frowning deeper.

“Oh, you’re serious, are you? After you spend three weeks blowing me off, you think we should talk?”

“Yes, Jon,” Martin snaps, patience clearly wearing thin. Good, Jon thinks. Let him get angry. Maybe he’ll understand how Jon has felt. Martin lets out a heavy sigh. “Look, I...I know this probably won’t fix things, but I—” his words choke in his throat. “I at least owe...you an explanation.”

An explanation! An explanation! Jon has to hold himself back from laughing out loud right then and there. “No, Martin,” he corrects, “you owed me an explanation after you ran out on me. You owed me an explanation after wouldn’t talk to me for a week, and after you basically told me to fuck off when I was worried about you, and after you tricked me into falling in love with you like an idiot.” His voice cracks on the last word as he struggles to keep eye contact. Fuck, he won’t cry here, he won’t cry now. He swallows back the lump in his throat. “So yes, you owed me an explanation a long time ago, but it’s too fucking late for that now.”

Oh, okay, Martin’s crying now too. Just what Jon wants to have to deal with on top of everything. You know what? Fine. Martin wanted a scene so badly and now Jon’s made a royal scene of the both of them. There. Payback. Even if it only makes him feel even worse. Martin’s voice wobbles as he says, “I didn’t trick you into doing that.”

“Fuck you,” Jon snaps before gathering all his strength and shoving his way past. Martin doesn’t so much as stumble as he steps back.

“Jon,” he says, and Jon’s never hated hearing his own name so much.

“Don’t.”

“Jon.”

“Martin, I don’t want to hear—” Martin’s arm grabs his wrist, and he instinctively thrashes against it. “Let go of me.”

“Jon, please listen to me.”

“I said, let—” A noise bubbles up from deep in his chest, low and foreign and yet all he can do when words fail to convey to Martin to get the hell away from him—

Martin’s grip loosens on his. He takes a tentative step back. “Did...did you just growl at me?”

Mortification falls over him like a cold bucket of water, dropping straight into his gut. “...Um.”

Martin opens his mouth. Closes it. “Okay,” he finally says, like he can’t think of anything else to say, “well. Um. Why don’t—”

“I need to go.”

“Jon, wait—”

“IfyoukeepmehereonemoreminuteIsweartogodI’mgoingtobesick,” Jon chokes out all in a rush as the emotion twists nauseatingly within him, squeezing his eyes in a last ditch effort to alleviate some of the pressure that slams against the back of his eyes, crawls down his spine in a sickly, cold sweat.

“...What?” Martin says after a minute of seemingly trying to parse what the hell Jon just said.

“I—” Jon says, opening his mouth. Then he closes it. Opens it again as he looks back to the hand that’d been holding him. Up to the man connected to the arm, with his wide, concerned eyes, with his stupidly soft hands and stupidly soft hair and stupidly soft face that would be so much easier to never see again. Jon wishes he could hate Martin Blackwood. Jon wishes that he could find it in himself to hate that he loves him, even. “I think—”

Martin leans forward, earnest in his anticipation.

Jon takes one step to turn towards him. Sways lightly, and then says, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

And then he folds over at the waist and proceeds to do just that.