Chapter 5

Jon shovels food into his mouth like he hasn’t had a meal in ages.

Maybe that’s partially true. It’s been...weeks? since he’s eaten without the overwhelming shadow of nausea standing over his shoulder, which is probably why the cheap chicken sandwich he’s currently tearing apart with his teeth tastes like the best thing he’s ever eaten in his life. It feels good to have something he can pull apart like this. It feels good because that gnawing feeling in his stomach has started to round back into that sickly feeling that chases the taste of bile, and not even the dead flies that litter the windowsill or the hum of the neon “open” sign in the near-empty restaurant can keep him from devouring his meal whole.

Martin only watches silently as he sits across from him. It’s not like there’s anything else to look at. There’s only the two workers in the kitchen and a college-aged girl with her likely boyfriend sitting in the opposite corner, because no one in their right mind would be getting fast food on this side of town without being under the age of twenty-one or high or drunk. Or maybe all three. Jon wonders what that says about them. He’s quite certain he’d at least looked drunk when he’d vomited on the convenience store floor, but the complete bewilderment and frantic apologies Martin had made to the lone employee as he’d dragged him outside had been worth it in some capacity.

Martin passes his barely-touched sandwich in Jon’s direction, and he picks that up and starts to eat it too.

“Do you want another?” Martin finally breaks the silence. “I’ll order one.” He looks tired. Jon supposes he probably looks tired too, being that they’re both out well after two in the morning; the reasonable thing to do in this scenario would be to insist that they do this another time, for them to both go home and sleep off the burning cocktail of emotions they’d down not a half hour ago, but... Well. Jon’s not exactly interested in being reasonable anymore.

He looks down at the empty sandwich wrapper before him. Then he shakes his head. Picks up a chip instead.

Martin nods slowly, expression unreadable as he scans over Jon’s face, his hair, his hoodie, and then down to the table. “What— er, what happened to your hand?”

Jon looks down at the bandaged mess previously known as his left hand. The plasters around his fingertips have stained wet — with blood or pus or ketchup, he can’t be certain — with the tips of his nails poking just over the edges. The nails that hadn’t been there an hour ago when he’d left his flat because he’d pulled them out with bloody tweezers, and now he’s just supposed to hysterically accept that he’s regrown fingernails in under an hour even though that’s absolutely not normal.

The thought makes him a bit ill, the more he thinks about it. He tucks his hand away into his lap under the table. “Slammed it in a door,” he lies.

Martin doesn’t bother arguing with him, but he doesn’t look convinced. He swirls the straw in his drink that’s likely more water than cola at this point. “It’s not sprained, is it?”

Jon doesn't answer for a moment, just picks at his food to avoid making eye contact with Martin. He gives a weak shrug in a loose, non-answer.

“Jon.”

“It’s not sprained,” Jon mutters, too quickly to be convincing.

Martin lets out a sigh through his nose. “Okay...did a doctor tell you that or are you just telling me that to get me off your back?” he says, then waits long enough for Jon to fail to reply before adding, “You...you have seen a doctor, right?”

Jon doesn’t reply as he shoves a few chips in his mouth.

“You said you’d been sick?” Martin presses. “I don’t...look, do I need to take you to a clinic? Because I know how—”

Jon lets out an exasperated sigh. “Can we skip the part where you pretend to give a damn about my health?”

Martin’s expression morphs into a frown. “Uh, I literally do?” he says, offense clear in his tone. He’s got that look on his face, like Jon’s done something to disappoint him and not the other way around — Jon focuses fiercely on the little wrinkle between his eyebrows from squinting to avoid making eye contact. “You do know I care about your wellbeing, right?”

Jon doesn’t mean to, but he lets out a scoff. Martin only frowns deeper.

“Jon, you do know that, right?” Martin repeats.

“Sure,” Jon mutters bitterly under his breath.

“What was that?”

“I said ‘sure,’ because your recent actions totally give me the impression that you give a single fuck about my wellbeing.”

“Jon—” Martin says, reaching for his hand.

Jon snatches it away with a scowl. “No, you don’t— you don’t get to Jon me, not after—” His voice catches in his throat, mangled on emotion, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Takes a few deep breaths as he counts backward in his head. “This was a bad idea,” Jon says quickly before beginning to slide out of the booth.

“No, stop, we are talking,” Martin snaps, snagging Jon’s arm and tucking him back inside. Maybe if Jon hated Martin Blackwood more he’d have the strength to fight it. Instead, he simply lets himself flop back into the booth on his arse. “We are not leaving this bloody place until we have a proper talk.”

“Oh, like you’ve been avoiding for the past three weeks?” Jon retorts, but it comes out weak and unsteady. He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired and right now he just wants to go home and sleep and hope his entire hand hasn’t fallen off by the time he wakes up. Christ, he’s going to have to go to the clinic again. He absolutely does not want to go to the clinic.

And Martin...the tension drains out of Martin as he looks over at him, all that smoldering anger replaced by something...something else. Something Jon doesn’t want to put a name to. Doesn’t want to accept what Martin might actually feel.

“You’re right,” Martin says finally. “No, you’re— you’re right.” He takes in a long inhale through his nose. Pushes his hands up under his glasses to rub at his eyes. “You know, it’s a lot easier to...to feel like you’re doing the right thing for someone when you’re not sitting face to face with them.” He smiles — or at least, tries to, but it wobbles and sways under the weight of his words.

“So that’s what this is?” Jon asks. “You just...deciding what’s best for me? That I don’t get a say in what happens to me?”

“Jon,” Martin says softly.

“I waited for you,” Jon says, and, god— okay, fuck, here come the emotions. Of fucking course. He fights hard to keep them out of his words, out of his expression. “I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and— and I gave you time and space, and I—” He swallows the lump in his throat. “I thought we understood each other better than this. I thought— I thought we were better than this.”

Maybe it’s stupid. Maybe Jon’s always been a naive, hopeless romantic, stuck in this— in this delusion where everything ends up alright. He almost laughs at the thought, that he’s still hanging on to a happy ending out of this as if they haven’t soared past the epilogue already, now firmly lodged in this nebulous in-between.

Martin stays quiet, expression unreadable as he stares down into his folded arms atop the table.

“When did things change?” Jon says, the one question he’s wondered this entire time.

Martin swallows audibly. “They haven’t changed,” he says softly, like he’s trying to convince himself of his own words. “They’re not— we’re still us, Jon. I’m still me. You’re still you.”

You don’t know that, Jon wants to say, because he really isn’t sure. He isn’t sure that he knows the person who could think of Martin without this ugly, aching hole in his chest; he isn’t sure that the body he’s living in is still his own. “We broke up, Martin. We’re not— we’re not the same people.”

Martin is quiet for a moment. “I didn’t leave because I hated you,” he begins softly. “I didn’t leave because I— because I wanted to hurt you. God, Jon, I’d never— I’d never hurt you on purpose. Never.”

“Then why, Martin?” Jon pleads.

“Because I was scared,” Martin explains, desperation bleeding into his tone. “Because I— I made a stupid mistake, okay? I made a stupid mistake because I wasn’t checking my calendar, and I-I panicked, and I couldn’t— god, Jon, I’d never forgive myself if I hurt you, or—”

“Hurt me?” Jon interrupts, confusion twisting his face into a frown. “What do you mean, hurt me?”

Martin goes white then — a sickly, sallow sort of pale that makes Jon wince at the drastic change in tone. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Pulls his hands off the table and into his lap, where he watches them intently as if they’re the most interesting thing in the world. “I don’t...s-sorry, I, um.”

“...Martin,” Jon says tiredly.

“I don’t—” Martin starts, squeezing his eyes shut, “I don’t...know how to put this.”

Jon frowns. “You don’t have to—”

“I don’t know how to put this so you’ll believe me,” Martin corrects, eyes lifting to meet his. There’s a gravity to his expression that makes Jon flinch, hands coming up around his arms defensively.

Jon picks at his skin as he pulls apart Martin’s words in his head. Turns them over. Lays them out on the ugly, banged up restaurant table between them, a gap so easy to close and yet impossible to reach across, and frowns. He thinks. He says, “Martin, you... Look. I— if you’re trying to protect me from...from myself or something, then— I know I’ve been in rehab, but if you think I’m bothered by the fact that you...”

Martin tilts his head.

Jon takes a deep breath, swallowing his nerves. “...that you sell drugs, then—”

“What?” Martin snaps, eyes blown wide in disbelief as he looks at the man across from him. “Jon you— you think I sell drugs? Seriously?”

Jon stares at him blankly. “Is that not...?”

Martin’s mouth twitches before he breaks down into what can only be described as a hysterical giggle, pressing his hand to his mouth to stifle it. “Oh my god, Jon, fuck, I cannot believe—” His words are choked off by a sniffle as he raises a hand up to wipe his eyes. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

“W-w-well, what then?!” Jon snaps, disbelief quickly replaced by irritation as Martin desperately attempts to reign in the burst of emotion that’s swallowed up any ability to get out a coherent word.

“Christ, Jon,” Martin says as he smears his eyes on his sleeve. “God, I can’t— I’m not talking about something illegal!”

“Then what, Martin,” Jon says, desperation bleeding into his voice as he leans across the table. “You said I wouldn’t believe you, but why?”

“Because you literally said you don’t believe in those types of things!”

The words come out a near shout, loud enough to make both Jon and Martin flinch as they echo across the restaurant and draw the looks of the other pair of patrons. Martin sinks low in his chair, picking up his drink for shielding as Jon picks apart the words in his head. Doesn’t believe in those types of things? What types of things? When had he...?

“I don’t...” Jon begins as he tries to puzzle out the words, “I-I don’t know what you mean.”

Martin takes a slow breath in. When he speaks again, it’s barely a whisper. “It was...when we went to Elias’s office, we were talking about your thesis and you said...you said you don’t— don’t believe in most of that stuff.”

Most of that stuff. Most of that stuff. The conversation comes flooding back to him in waves, gentle and lapping, and then all at once. Jon leans forward, checking to ensure that no one is looking. “You’re talking about...the supernatural, correct? Vampires, o-or ghosts?”

Biting his lip, Martin nods.

Okay. Okay, well— “And this relates to you...how?”

Martin shifts in his seat, the low squeak of old pleather and worn out box-springs near deafening in the silence between them. He doesn't look at Jon. He can't seem to look at Jon, too focused on the line of dead flies in the windowsill like a funeral procession as his mouth opens, closes, opens again. “I,” he chokes out, voice tight, “because I—”

Oh. Oh. Jon’s eyes on instinct slip down to Martin’s mouth as he wets his painfully dry lips and asks, “Martin, you're not...you're not dead...are you?”

“What?” Martin’s head snaps up. “Jon, you— seriously? A ghost?”

Well— okay, maybe Martin is right to laugh, given that he was definitely solid enough to order food for the both of them not ten minutes ago. Nevertheless, irritation sparks up within him. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to think!” Jon snaps. “Look, you— i-if you're not a ghost, then— y-you're what, some sort of monster? A vampire?”

“N-no, not...not a vampire,” Martin mutters. He looks...nervous? Yes, definitely nervous. Jon watches as he reaches up and rubs the back of his neck where his undercut is frizzy and growing out. “Well, I mean, n-not what you’re thinking of as a vampire; those tend to be a bit more along the lines of—”

Jon swallows dryly. “Martin.”

“More like, um. I just—” Martin starts, voice wobbling in desperation. “I—”

And then Martin’s gaze slips down from Jon’s, and his eyes suddenly go wide.

“Is...is that...from me?”

Jon frowns as he tries to follow his gaze, but ends up cross-eyed once he gets to his nose. He lifts a hand up. He feels around in the general area of his lower face where Martin is looking, over the mole on his cheek, over the rough patch of facial hair that tickles to the touch—

His fingers stop on the little pale pink line that splits the left side of his lip.

“Oh,” he says, “you mean...?”

Pale-faced, Martin nods.

There's no use lying about it. There's no point — it isn't like Martin wasn't there when Jon had snogged him senseless in his bedroom (and now must pretend like he wouldn't give anything to do so again), so he wets his lips, opens his mouth, and says, “It’s...okay, yes, but really it’s— it's fine Martin. It's not really a big deal.”

Martin absolutely does not look like it's not “a big deal.” Martin looks like he's just seen a ghost (which Jon supposes lends credence to his argument that he's still of the living) or like he’s going to throw up (which Jon has already done enough of for the both of them for one evening), but the reaction does little to reassure him as a whole. “You said you've been sick lately,” Martin says slowly, carefully, like each word is carefully selected. “Jon. What do you mean you've been sick lately.”

Jon frowns, opens his mouth—

The door jingles faintly behind him as it swings open. Jon pays it no mind. Probably just another intoxicated college kid looking for something greasy to cure a hangover, and this certainly was the place for it.

All until Martin lets out a faint “shit,” eyes wide, before diving for a menu to hide behind.

Jon blinks, unsure of what to make of the scene. “Martin, what—”

“Shh!” Martin hisses, just a few strands of faded pink poking over the image of a whipped cream topped milkshake. “Keep your voice down.”

“Well it would help if I knew what I was keeping my voice down from!” Jon hisses back, glancing over his shoulder. It’s just for a second — just enough to get a glance of close-cropped hair, a beanie, a worn leather jacket and a long scar right under the left eye—

Jon whips back around, sinking low in his chair as he mouths, Julia Montauk?

“You know her?” Martin whispers as he peaks around the corner of his menu.

“W-we met once,” Jon explains. “A while ago...um, business related. It doesn’t matter. But why is she here?”

Martin almost laughs, spitting out a huff before he remembers to reign himself back in. “Because she’s out of her mind?” he hisses back. “Christ, she’s been following me for...I don’t even know. Fuck. W-we need to get out of here.”

“Now?”

“Yes!”

“Martin, she’s literally—” Jon takes the chance to glance back behind him and immediately regrets it. She’s taken the booth two tables down from theirs. Bloody hell. He can practically smell the mix of leather and sweat rolling off of her like a snarl, a chill rippling up his spine in response. “She’ll see us.”

“Then we’ll go out the back,” Martin says, pointing with his thumb to the door that very clearly leads to the kitchen. “Look, just— don’t turn around, and follow my lead.”

Jon bites back the urge to retort. He’s not getting much of a choice in the matter, is he?

Martin slides out of the booth in one fluid motion as he stands and spins himself around. Julia, from Jon’s distorted view in the window’s reflection, doesn’t so much as move as Martin makes his way to the back door. Well, that’s a good sign, right? Good enough, he supposes, as he begins to slide out of the booth himself, heart beating wildly and feeling just a bit bad about leaving their trash all over the table like this. Extenuating circumstances, he tells himself. Extenuating circumstances like the fact that they’re trying to get away from a woman who carries bullets on her like that’s a normal thing to do, from a woman who knows both of their faces. Fuck him, honestly. Fuck his entire life.

Jon stands up. He takes one last sip of his water, hands sweating more than the condensation of the cup, then puts it down. Takes two steps forward. Takes another. Takes—

“Oh,” Jon hears that soft voice behind him say as his stomach drops to his knees. “Hey, it’s you. Jon, was it?”

Jon doesn’t think as he tucks his head and runs.

He hits the kitchen door with a bruising thud as he slams it open. Leaps over a stack of boxes, around a chair. Dodges around an employee who definitely isn’t getting paid enough for this with a sharp apology as he hears the kitchen door opening behind him, darting for the back door—

The night air slams into him hard enough to knock the breath out of him, cold and bitter and acrid from the overfilled bins of the alleyway. Martin jumps as the door hits the wall. He looks to Jon. He takes a step forward, frowning, and says, “Jon, what—”

“We need to go,” Jon pants, lungs and legs burning. “Martin, we need to get out of here, we need—”

The door swings open behind him, a shot of ice straight to his veins. He doesn’t want to turn around. He doesn’t dare turn around, but his body doesn’t seem to give him a choice as he turns, taking in the whole horrible sight behind him.

Julia stands in the glow of the open doorway, framed in shadow as it dances off her yellowed eyes like embers, like sulfur, like an animal on the hunt. Her face remains neutral, expression painfully unreadable as she takes a step toward them. She shoves her hands low in her old jacket pockets. She smiles, something that’s maybe blood, maybe bile, maybe rot clenched between her teeth.

“Jon,” Julia says mildly, though the delight is evident in her tone, “when I said to contact me with any information on Mr. Blackwood, I would have never guessed you’d bring him right to me.”

Jon swallows, taking a step backward towards Martin. There’s no chance of Jon himself protecting Martin, but he puts a defensive hand out anyway.

“Why don’t you piss off,” Martin snaps, firm despite the waver in his voice. “I thought you and Herbert were only supposed to hunt monsters.”

“And what would that make you?” she sneers. Her gaze swings to Jon. “Do you even know what he is, Jon? Whose bed you’ve been lying in? I thought surely not, when you’d met with me at the cafe, not with all your questions, but now—”

“J-just leave us alone,” Jon says, walking back one step at a time until he hits Martin’s stomach. “We haven’t done anything.”

Julia grins wide with her blunt teeth that feel ever-sharper than the ones he digs into his own cheek with. She cracks her neck. Takes another step forward. “That,” she says, “only makes the chase that much more fun.”

And then—

He barely sees Martin as he moves, just the blur of his shirt and the glint of metal before he sees the bin go flying at Julia, and a firm hand takes his wrist.

He doesn’t look back as they run.

They run. They’re running. Jon hasn’t run in years, not on purpose since he’d tried track that one year in high school and promptly tripped and sprained an ankle, but the adrenaline makes up for whatever lack of shape he’s in as his feet and the bruising grip on his arm carry him forward. Jon runs. Martin runs. Jon runs and follows Martin and he has no bloody idea where the fuck they’re going except that they have to keep going and going and going—

They make a left. Then another. Then a right and forward. Martin tugs him over a pile of crates and around a dumpster, and Jon can only wonder in the haze of his fear how the hell Martin is so fast.

“Where are we going?!” Jon calls once he’s managed to choke in enough air in between sprints.

“Away!” Martin snaps back.

Jon hears the clatter of metal behind him as Julia races to catch up. “She might have a gun!” he warns.

Martin spits out a hoarse laugh. “That’s why we’re going away!”

The boxes and bins and bags of rubbish gradually thin and dwindle until the alley opens up, and before them stands a street.

Jon looks to the left. To the right. It’s empty, mostly — a few cars parked along the sides stand abandoned, and the only people he can see are too far for his glasses to make out. All the windows stand dark. All the doors hold shut.

Martin swallows audibly as his gaze swings back and forth, left to right. “Okay,” he says softly to himself as he tries to make up his mind. “Okay, um. This— this way.”

“Where are we?” Jon asks as he hustles after him.

“Hopefully somewhere we can hide,” he answers, which Jon takes as meaning he has no fucking clue, then cuts around the corner. Jon follows. Jon follows because his heart’s pounding out of his chest and he has nowhere else to go, so he runs and hopes that the pounding of his shoes aren’t too loud against the concrete for whatever the hell kind of beast is following them.

“Why is she chasing us?” Jon asks. It sounds stupid once it comes out of his mouth, but even back in the cafe, even after— after the bullets, he would think that a person would at least have enough sense to not murder someone in the middle of London. Julia, apparently, is not that person.

Martin stays quiet. They weave around a car and cross the street.

“Martin,” Jon says.

Martin doesn't answer.

“Martin,” Jon says again.

Martin hisses out a sigh. “Look, Jon, I will tell you, I will, just— just after we get somewhere safe.”

“Well maybe if I could understand why she wants us dead, then we could—”

“Here.”

Martin slows up when they reach a chain link fence.

“Here,” he says again as he turns back to Jon. “This way we might be able to lose her. You first.”

There’s no room for argument, so Jon sets his hands to the chains and climbs, wincing at every rattle.

Martin boosts him up by the rear, then the leg, then the foot as Jon swings himself over the top and drops down to the other side.

And then no sooner than he stands up is Martin turning away from the fence.

Jon snags a bit of his shirt through one of the links before he can get away. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?!”

“I’ll go around the side,” Martin assures him as he unknits Jon’s fingers from his shirt. “I’ll catch up with you.”

“Martin, she’ll—!”

“She can’t follow us both.”

“She’s not after me!” Jon hisses back, but Martin’s already jogging around the side of the building. “Martin!”

“I’ll catch up!” he calls back, and then disappears out of sight.

Jon looks up at the fence, knowing it’d be near impossible for him to climb back over without assistance, let alone before Julia finds him, so he sighs, turns, and sets off down the alley. Martin went left around the building, so he’ll just go left and catch up with him. Easy. Piece of cake.

Jon climbs through a smattering of overturned bins, plugging his nose, and does just that.

God he’s an idiot, he thinks as he runs. He’s a complete idiot — stupid, stupid! If meeting with Julia willingly wasn’t the worst of it, now he’s gone and led her right to Martin. What the hell will she do when she gets to Martin? What the hell will she do to him?

I don’t think you’d believe me, Martin had said, and Jon struggles to wrap his brain around what he could even mean by that — what Martin could mean to land himself on such a dangerous path, but more importantly, what Julia could think he is to warrant such a reaction.

Jon turns the corner, spotting the opening of the alleyway back to the streets—

Something snags his wrist. Something snags his wrist hard and yanks with a force so strong he can hear the pop, pop, pop of the mass of tendons and bones in his wrist before his back hits the alley wall. He tries to scream. He tries to yell out, to flail and fight and get the hell away from his attacker, but Julia grabs the front of his hoodie and gives him another slam against the cinderblocks for good measure.

“You know, you should count yourself lucky that I enjoy the chase,” she snarls through rows of yellowed teeth. “Might consider you rude if not.”

“Fuck you,” Jon spits back, not nearly as intimidating as he’d like as he chokes off the building instinct to start hyperventilating. “He hasn’t done anything, y— y-you don’t get to play judge like this.”

“You know I should have noticed,” she continues. “I’d thought that smell was just from you getting cozy with him, but it seems he’s already got his teeth into you.”

Jon’s eyes go wide. “Wh— Ghhk!”

Julia’s hand goes to his neck and squeezes.

He can’t breathe. The breath is knocked out of him all at once as she pins him up against the wall and he can’t breathe and he can’t speak and he can’t cry for help and his feet can’t touch the ground and his hands can’t touch her because she’s too far away and he can’t breath he can’t breath—

Jon only distantly registers that the gurgling noise in the air is coming from him. It’s difficult to be aware of anything else. His eyes sting with unshed tears and his nose drips and his lungs burn as he flails wildly, trying to find purchase on anything, anything that can get him out of her grip. He tries to kick out, but his legs are aching and tingling. They don’t kick the right way he wants them to. They don’t bend the right way either, or at least he thinks they must. Legs don’t bend like that, do they? Surely the lack of air is getting to his brain. Surely legs don’t really bend that way and surely hands don’t grip the way his try to and surely the popping of his joints and spine and odd, ugly tightness in his skin and the burning, the itch, the searing prickle of every nerve on fire is just his fleeting, fading consciousness as he gasps and gasps and gasps.

Something sharp presses into his stomach, drags up over his thin plate of ribs before it comes away and rests pointedly just under her hand on his neck. He can smell it then — the sharp tang of blood and the sizzle of his own flesh under it as she bears down. Julia’s saying something, something he can only barely see through his own blurry vision going black with spots: something about “should have known,” he thinks, as her mouth forms around the words. Something about a “mercy kill.”

Jon doesn’t think as he lifts up his hand — the unbroken one, the one he’d bandaged up earlier in an attempt to hide, the very same bandages now hanging off him in torn strips where his skin has bulged and stretched and torn through and his hand isn’t even really much of a hand anymore but he has no other word for it, no other word or he’ll risk making the whole scene real — and swipes.

Jon hits the ground and it hurts. It hurts when he drops and it hurts when he becomes aware of every bit of him all at once, wheezing and coughing and choking as the air comes rushing back into his lungs. He can still feel the crushing grip of her hand on his neck. Can still barely see with his vision muddled with spots as he stares down at his hands — no, not...not hands exactly. Did his hands always look like that? Were his hands always stretched out and distorted, hair thick on the backs of them, nails filed into sharp points?

It’s only the noise of someone rising from the ground with a slow, labored grunt that pulls his attention away. He looks over to the source of the noise. Watches in terror as Julia pushes herself back to her feet, eyes locking on him as she smears away the blood from her nose, from her cheek—

The sight of the four red gashes across her cheek makes his stomach drop. Oh, Jon thinks with mounting horror, did I...?

“Wish you things just had the decency to die,” she mutters between a hiss, then clicks open her knife and heads at him.

Jon needs to get away. He tries to get away. He pushes himself half a foot backwards until his back hits a crate and then proceeds to tumble onto his ass, unable to move, unable to get up when his legs refuse to bend the right way. He makes a sound, hoarse and rung out, that might be a whine, might be a growl in warning. He pulls back his...lips? Lips, yes, and other extensions of his body he can’t quite identify at the moment because he’s ninety-nine percent sure that he usually doesn’t normally have them. He’s terrified. He’s a trapped animal. He finally spoke with his boyfriend and now he’s going to die at the hands of some crazy homicidal woman in a dark alleyway, he has to get away, he has to get away—

And then something hits Julia like a freight train and sends her flying.

Jon hears her hit the wall with a crack, then the ground. He can smell blood. He can smell blood and sweat and things he shouldn’t be smelling from this far away, not unless they were overwhelming, and yet he does. Something else too, mixed in underneath it all— fear, maybe. That doesn’t make sense. Fear doesn’t have a smell and yet he doesn’t have any other way to describe it except fear and adrenaline and terror and—

And anger. And anger coming off of the shape that stands before him where it had rammed into Julia. His eyes trail over the hulking form. Up its legs and up its torso. Over its hands(?) and its ears and its snout.

It’s not a dog. Dogs don’t move that way. Dogs don’t stand that way, hiked up on two legs and certainly don’t have paws with fingers that flex and curl around a set of ferocious claws. God, it’s huge.

It certainly isn’t human either.

And then it turns towards him.

Jon tries to scramble away. He does. The look of those big, bulging eyes with too much white in them for an animal sends a bolt of adrenaline shooting through him, every instinct screaming to get away get away get the fuck away. Doesn’t matter that his throat is still wheezing around air like it’s collapsed in on itself, doesn’t matter that the wrist he’s pushing himself back on is definitely broken as it shoots white-hot pain up every nerve as he pushes back and back and back—

His spine hits the wall. To his left, sits a dumpster. To his right, a pile of bins that he could hardly maneuver over with ease, not with the creature boxing him in as its hot, wretched breath spills from its nose and leaves him feeling sickly and sweaty despite the night air’s chill.

“Don’t,” Jon whispers. His voice barely sounds like his own, in his terror. “Please don’t, please—”

Jon watches as the thing puts its two front...hands? paws? on the ground. Then it lowers its head. Then it pulls back its ears, lets out the softest, barely-there whine—

Jon has no idea what he’s looking at. He must be losing his mind. He must be losing his mind, because if he had to say, he’d reckon that the big hulking beast in front of him was being friendly with him.

And then its tail starts wagging. Oh. Okay. So he’s not going completely off the deep end.

Stupidly, Jon holds out a careful hand, not quite certain of where he wants it to land, but not doing anything else more useful to justify keeping it to himself. The beast gives it a small lick, then whines excitedly.

“Okay...” Jon says, more to himself than anything as he struggles to find his bearings. “Okay, you...right. Right.”

Jon takes in the whole of the creature before him without the complete lens of panic.

It’s big. Bigger than him, well over six foot and padded all over in fat and soft muscle that shines even through its fur. It has a lot of that. It has it all over, even between it’s fingers (he feels a bit hysterical calling them fingers, but he can’t very well call them paws when they stretch and bend like that) and stretching up to the tip tops of its pointed ears that can’t seem to decide whether they wish to be pulled back or perked up in earnest. Jon doesn’t dare touch it. He can’t, but his stupid hindbrain keeps shouting at how soft it looks in thick ruff piled up behind its ears.

And then his eyes slide down to its forearms, down to the torn sleeve still clinging to its arm, and his stomach drops out from his knees.

“That’s not...” Jon swallows, nausea bringing the taste of bile to his lips. “Please tell me that isn’t Martin’s.”

The beast gives a low whine, tail picking up at the words.

And then something snaps into place.

Something Jon wouldn’t believe in. Something Jon didn’t believe in, at least not before tonight, because the very existence is quite rather absurd. And yet here, not a foot from him, lies the clear, tangible proof that there’s no denying against exists.

Not a vampire. Not even a ghost.

Holy shit.

Jon swallows around his own dry throat, trying not to feel stupid, but he has to know.

“Martin.”

The beast picks its head up and tilts it.

“Martin,” Jon says again. “You’re...Martin. My Martin.”

It — he — lets out a low whine, tail wagging in heavy thumps against the concrete of the alleyway.

And then the huge animal pushes itself up slightly, closes the gap between them, and gives Jon a big lick across the face.

“Blegh, okay, okay, I get it,” Jon says as he pushes him off, a nervous, relieved, hysterical giggle bubbling out of him. This is his Martin. His Martin, who also happens to be a— a werewolf, he supposes. He’ll give Martin credit where credit’s due, because he was right: Jon wouldn’t have believed him if he’d told him the truth three weeks ago. Martin leans over and gives Jon another lick across the face, and Jon snorts as he pushes him away, smearing the slobber and dog stink off of his face. “Yes, yes, yes, I’m happy to see you too. You know, you could have given me a warning before you did all that; it would have at least been—”

Jon’s hand stills where he’d been smearing it across his cheek, feeling the texture beneath it.

His skin feels soft. That’s what throws him off. That’s what throws him off because Jon knows he has notoriously dry, rough skin, and knows even more that he is not, in fact, touching skin. That’s hair. That’s hair, and yet Jon knows he doesn’t have hair there, should have hair there, up beneath his eyes, nor on his nose as his hand explores further, nor his forehead, nor his neck and down to his chest—

Jon looks down at his hands. The left still looks about the same — a bit more hair than usual, nails caked in hours-old dried blood, calloused and scarred from years of flipping through books upon books upon books — but the other...

Fingers shouldn’t stretch like that. Fingers aren’t supposed to stretch like that, nor are they supposed to bend like that, nor are they supposed to have that much hair on them, or between them, or any sort of where on the human body.

“Oh,” Jon hears himself say distantly, as he feels something...something twitch, some extension of himself that he doesn’t recognize, so alien and so foreign and god he’s going to be sick— “Oh. That’s...”

The adrenaline falls out of him all at once, and Jon feels himself sway, slip to his side, and then the world falls away.

“I should have left you to deal with her yourself.”

“I know.”

“I should drive you out into the woods and make you dig your own grave. Fucking hell, Blackwood.”

A rough swallow. “I know,” comes the voice again, much softer this time.

Jon can’t parse who is speaking. They sound familiar, like he should know their sources, and yet he can’t seem to put them to any one person’s image. He can’t seem to put anything around him to anything, really, the world too formless and fuzzy outside of his limited peripheral for him to find the words. His limbs feel heavy. His mind feels heavy, like it’s filled with cotton. He’s very warm, and it takes him a few moments to realize it’s because someone’s got their arms around him. Huh, that’s quite nice, actually. He’d snuggle closer, if he could, but nothing about his body wants to respond right now. That’s fine, he supposes. He’s not particularly bothered by the arm around him nor the hand that lands on his head, rubbing gently behind his ears.

Something rumbles to life. A car, maybe. Is he in a car?

“It’s okay,” says the voice closer to him, sounding more like they’re trying to reassure themselves as opposed to reassure him. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay, Jon.”

Jon doesn’t know why he needs the assurance. Of course he knows it will be okay. Everything’s so nice now, so soft and formless, he can’t even fathom what he’s been so stressed about. Has he been stressed? He’s not sure, anymore. He’s not sure of anything other than that he’s safe, and that he’s warm, and the hand on his head feels very, very nice, and that the voice that sounds like it’s struggling to keep its footing doesn’t need to worry. It’s quiet here. It’s quiet and it’s warm. It’s quiet, it’s warm, and Jon—

Jon—

Jon feels something rough rub against his cheek.

Something itchy. An unpleasant, ratty texture that instinctively brings up his hand to rub away — which is difficult to do so, he finds, when he’s laying his head on it. Jon blinks his eyes open. Jon immediately scrunches them shut a moment later as the harsh light of the lamp is near blinding against his dilated pupils.

And then he tries again. Blinks twice. The world’s blurry from where he sits, his glasses long gone to whatever ether lies outside of his limited perception, but he can just make out the shapes of the things around him. The old bookcase acting as a television stand. The coffee table with a chip in it where he’d fallen and nearly broke his elbow on it. The ratty pillow underneath his head, still stained, and the couch underneath that, and the blanket on top with little birds on it that Georgie had gifted him for his birthday—

He’s in his flat. That much is certain. That much is certain, except for the fact that Jon has no recollection of how he’d gotten there, no possible explanation other than the rest of the evening must have been a dream. Was it a dream?

The sound of shifting fabric yanks him from his haze, and Jon follows it over to the piercing lamp light.

He blinks twice. Just to make sure he’s really seeing it.

Martin’s sitting in his armchair. He hasn’t looked up. He’s too busy focusing on sewing something in his lap — his flannel, judging by the pattern — face pinched in concentration and tongue just barely poking out of his lips. There’s another wad of fabric thrown over the couch arm (Jon’s trousers, it seems, given they're the same color as the ones he’d torn a hole in last month and Martin had promised to fix) and a whole slew of pins strewn across the coffee table. Jon’s eyes fall down to the shirt he’s wearing, purple and worn and looking very soft.

“Is that my shirt?” Jon finally says, cringing at the rawness of his own voice.

Martin jumps like a startled rabbit, sticking himself in the process with his needle. Ah. Whoops. He looks down at the small bead of blood on his finger, then over to Jon. Then back to his sewing. He sticks his finger in his mouth to lick it away before continuing. “Pretty sure it was mine first, considering it’s a double XL.” Martin answers, swallows audibly. “I-I’ll give it back, once I...” He gestures lamely to the project on his lap, but doesn’t look up.

“It—” It’s okay, it looks better on you, Jon starts to say, but stops himself. Even if it’s the truth. Even if Jon finds Martin to be devastatingly handsome in anything he wears, he’s afraid that any words he can bring to the surface now will only come out muddled and wrong.

Martin clears his throat, sparing him of the chance to embarrass himself. “How’s your wrist?”

“My wrist...? Oh.” Jon looks down at his left hand, then holds it up to inspect.

The bandages are gone, for one thing, and so is most of the blood. Like it’s been carefully wiped away and replaced by a handful of small plasters wrapped around his nails. His nails that he can see poking over the edge of the latex, bone-white and sharpened to fine points. At least they aren’t falling out anymore, he thinks. Even if they shouldn’t have grown back that fast. They shouldn’t grow that fast, right? The panic he’d felt earlier at such a revelation is only a dull simmer in his gut now, too tired to think on it further.

His wrist doesn’t hurt though. It’s got an awful bruise around it where Julia’s hand had landed, but he rolls it experimentally and finds everything intact. That’s good, he thinks. That’s good, even if broken bones shouldn’t heal that fast — and something definitely was broken by the sound of it, by the memory of pain he can still distantly feel.

“It’s...it’s fine,” Jon says finally, pushing himself up to his elbow as he fumbles around over his head to the side table for his glasses. His hand finds them after a moment of blindly groping, and he puts them on. “Not broken, I think. Just— just bruised.”

And then he catches his reflection in the darkened television screen, and his stomach churns.

The rest of him doesn’t seem to have fared as well. There’s a deep, ugly bruise around his throat in the vague shape of a hand; his left eye is blood red from a burst capillary. Jon gingerly traces the bruise, frowning. God, he's going to have to make up some sort of story for this. He got into a bar fight, maybe. No, Tim would needle until he eventually spit out the first name that came to mind and then try to settle some score that didn't exist with one of the patrons. He got mugged? No, Tim would probably pick a fight with a police officer for not doing their job. He got attacked by a deranged woman who was convinced he wasn't human and then got saved by a bloody werewolf — which, hey, you remember Martin, right? The ex-boyfriend who ghosted him? Well, funny story—

Jon’s hands instinctively tighten on the blanket. Right. That...that had really happened. That hadn't been a dream, right?

Jon looks over to Martin, just to make sure he's still there. Martin, pointedly, refuses to look at Jon.

“How did we get here?” Jon says to finally break the silence. It's a neutral enough question.

Martin gives the needle a tug, pulling the thread taut. “Got a ride from, um. F-from someone I know. I, uh, had to borrow your keys from your trousers though, sorry.”

“And...and Julia...?”

Martin’s mouth presses into a tight line. “Not currently an issue.”

Well. That— it's probably worrisome how calmly Jon is taking the news that his boyfriend might have murdered someone as opposed to the vague, abstract suggestion of such a week ago, but he can't find it in himself to self-reflect on that at the moment.

Former boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Whatever.

Jon swallows as he looks over to Martin. “So you weren’t lying, then,” he says finally.

Martin’s hand movements stall. Stutter. The needle slips from his fingers and into his lap, and all Martin can do is stare at it.

“You know,” he says slowly, “I...I actually had planned on telling you? After our date. Figured...figured that secrets aren’t worth keeping in relationships, even if I didn’t think you’d believe me.” He smiles at Jon, a wobbly, weak thing that looks like it’s barely clinging to his face. He looks back down to his lap. His expression wavers, quivers. “Never thought I’d fuck up this badly with the reveal.”

Jon doesn’t say anything. He can’t find any words to say. Martin isn’t human. Martin is a— a werewolf. Martin is something that he didn’t think existed earlier today, and that means Martin... and that means Jon...

Jon’s fingers go to his lip on instinct, grazing over the little scar on the corner of his lip. It’s barely even noticeable if one isn't looking for it — just a small pink line with a barely worth-mentioning story, unimportant, harmless.

He looks back up to his reflection, to his scruffy beard, his hands, his teeth.

Maybe it’s strange to find relief in the fact that his illness had a clear, definable source all these weeks. Even if said source is the last thing he’d ever diagnose himself with.

“I’m sorry.”

Martin’s voice is barely above a whisper, and it’s only now that Jon really gets a good look at him. His eyes are bloodshot. His cheek is bruised. His hands can’t seem to still no matter how concentrated his focus, a slight tremor running through them like a ticking clock. He looks...exhausted, for one, but even more so than that, even more than just the late hours finally taking their toll on the both of them, he looks...hollow. Like someone’s dug in a spoon and scooped out all the soft bits inside. Jon’s not sure he’s ever seen Martin look like that before.

Martin flexes his fingers into his trousers. “I’ve been...sitting here, trying to think of— of what to say to you. Of what I could possibly say to you, when— I mean, christ, ‘sorry for ruining your life’? ‘Sorry for— for changing you’? ‘For taking away that choice’? There isn’t— it all just kept coming out like I was making it all about me, but it wasn’t about me. It was...it was about you, about someone I-I love and care about, and what I did to you and what I can’t undo to you—”

Jon’s heart thumps against his chest at the words, reminding him of its presence. Oh, Martin...Martin cares about him. He doesn’t... Jon wets his lips. “Martin—”

“A-a-and that’s the thing, isn’t it? I’m— I’m Martin Blackwood, I’m the guy who fixes everything, I’m the guy who’s supposed to go around and make everyone feel better except this isn’t something I can fix. It’s not— not something I can...put a plaster on and say some encouraging words because i-it’s not just about me, it’s you, and I—”

“Martin,” Jon says softer.

“And I hurt you, I hurt you, and now— now what? What do I do to even begin to make up for that? What do I do to give you that piece of you back when I’m the one who took it away in the first place even though I don’t know how to—”

“Martin,” Jon says again, more firmly, more certain of himself. “I love you.”

He’s not thinking about what he’s saying. He’s not thinking about what he should be saying, what he deserves to hear, what he’s been wanting to say for three weeks after everything that’s happened. That doesn’t matter right now, because above everything else, above all that’s simmered so long in his chest that it’s become indistinguishable from the rest of him, Jon knows what he needs to say. What he needs Martin to hear right now, after everything.

Martin can only stare at him, slack jawed and eyes wide. His mouth twitches. His fingers twitch. He seems to be holding his breath, only remembering to release it when he lets out a soft, almost inaudible, “What?”

“I...” Jon begins, his tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. Okay, he's doing this. He's really doing this. Jon takes a deep breath. “I just— um. E-earlier, you brought up Elias’s office, and I— I-I don’t know, it just reminded me of when you asked me if I ‘dated men.’” Jon feels his mouth twitching into a smile, in spite of himself. “And it was like, literally two days after I told you and Sasha that story about the guy I went out with in college with the parrot? And I-I just remember thinking, ‘god, I love this ridiculous man,’ but, ah...well. G-Georgie always told me I was too quick to say it, so I thought: ‘well, I’ll wait until we have the proper boyfriend talk, and then I’ll let him know.’” He looks down to his lap, folds his hands over one another. His normal hands. His human hands, the ones he recognizes, the ones that feel like his. “And...I don’t know. Guess I’ve just been waiting to say it since then.”

Martin is quiet for a long moment, like he’s forgotten how to speak. Maybe he has. Maybe that’s okay, though, because Jon can do the talking for the both of them.

“I left you,” Martin finally says.

Jon nods slowly. “You...you did.”

“I hurt you. I— you should have gotten a say. You shouldn’t have had that choice made for you.”

“I know,” Jon answers softly.

“It’s not—” Martin starts. Stops. His voice strains at the edges, the seams worn thin as he struggles to pick his words, struggles to convey his thoughts without falling apart. “You can't— you can't just forgive something like that.”

“Maybe,” Jon says, but he’s not talking about forgiveness right now. That can come later. That can come weeks or months or years down the line, when it isn’t nearly five in the morning, when they aren’t sitting in Jon’s living room on his old secondhand furniture with their wounds still bloody and bare for both to see. The forgiving part isn’t what’s important right now. “But I’m saying that I love you.”

He hears Martin take in a sharp inhale. Jon looks up. He looks up to Martin’s wide eyes, his tense composure, his mouth pinched in a soft little “oh” that hangs between them, and then—

And then, and then, and then—

It just takes the one drop. It just takes the one drop that spills over the edge of his eyelid before the methodically built composure begins to crack, strain, crumble before him. Martin’s breath hitches. Martin’s fingers tremble. Martin’s glasses get pushed to his head, and his hands to his eyes, and his sleeve to his mouth to muffle the sob that spills out of him as he folds forward into himself. Jon only watches, silently. He thinks he should cry too. He wants to. There’s a knot in his throat, a tension in his jaw that’s making his face feel warm, and yet nothing comes to the surface no matter how long he sits with it. Like he’s let grief stay too long, and now it doesn’t know how to leave. Like he’s cried out all his tears already, and now there aren’t any left to show for it.

So instead, Jon puts his feet underneath him. His normal feet. His human feet, which feel strange as he flexes them, skin too tight and muscle too large all at once, and pushes himself upright. He moves over to the armchair. He sits down on the arm of it, puts one arm around Martin, and pulls him to his chest as he cries. Martin holds him back like he’s clinging to a lifeline. Jon holds him like he’d never forgotten what it felt like to do so in the first place.

Martin cries. He cries and he cries and he cries while Jon holds him. He cries until he can't seem to cry anymore, and then he sniffles. He chokes on a rough, watery cough as the emotions seem to boil down into a trickle. He sits with his face pressed into Jon’s chest for a long, long time, just breathing in the feeling of him in stuttery gasps, hands knotted tightly in the back of his hoodie that was probably originally Martin’s too, but that will stay his secret. Jon loves him, he thinks. He doesn’t know how he ever doubted that.

His fingers card through Martin’s hair, knotted and curled tight from the night air’s humidity. “Do you want some tea?” he asks, finally breaking the silence.

Martin is quiet for a moment. And then he nods slightly, and Jon takes a deep breath before slowly untangling their limbs and tottering off to the kitchen.

He sets the kettle and digs out a pair of clean mugs on autopilot. It’s only on his feet now that Jon realizes just how exhausted he is. He supposes it makes sense. His body had...done whatever it had done back there, for one, and the most sleep he’s gotten tonight has been a measly two hour nap rudely interrupted by his own biology revolting on itself. God, what time is it anyway? The clock on the microwave blinks uselessly at 12:00, never having been able to figure out how to set it, so Jon fumbles around for another source — a watch, his phone, his laptop...ah!

Jon finds Martin’s phone tossed haphazardly next to his key bowl on the counter, clicks it on, and—

Jon’s thoughts fall off as he looks down at the screen.

Oh, Jon thinks as he stares down at the bright glass, that’s...that’s him. That’s him staring back from Martin’s lock screen — an awful, blurry, completely unflattering photo of him with his shirt untucked, his hair a mess as he attempts to coax what appears to be a cat out from under a car. He doesn’t...he doesn’t even remember when this happened. He doesn’t remember Martin taking this photo, and yet here it is, in all its terrible glory, plastered proudly under the big 5:06 displayed at the top of the screen. Had Martin taken this? He must have. He must have taken this and set it as his lock screen god knows how long ago and left it all the way up until now, which means...which means...

Jon feels something streak down his face when he blinks. Reaches up to catch it, then feels another. And another, and another and another and another—

It takes him a few minutes and an embarrassing amount of paper towels before he feels put together enough to bring the mugs back to the living room: the one covered in paintings of bees with too much sugar, and the other printed in highland cows that he’d picked up in Glasgow with just a splash of milk. Jon holds out the cow mug for Martin. Martin takes it gratefully, having at least wiped his face away from any offending gunk and adjusted his glasses in the time he’s been gone. If he notices Jon’s own red eyes, he doesn’t comment on them.

“Thanks,” Martin says, voice only a little rough around the edges. His eyes linger on the bruise on Jon’s wrist as he settles back onto the couch, then drift up to his neck. “That looks pretty bad.”

Jon lets out a weak huff. “Seems she uh...did quite a number on me.”

“Could...could I...?”

Jon leans over, allowing Martin to reach out, for his fingers to ghost over the outline of the mark on his neck. The feeling is familiar, in a fuzzy sort of way.

“Does it hurt?” Martin asks.

“Not...particularly?” Jon says. It’s a little sore, sure, in a dull, aching way, but it’s nothing like it was when it first happened. Hell, it’s nothing like the rest of his body has felt for the past few weeks, which, now as he takes stock of, he realizes is surprisingly absent of pain. It’s strange, realizing just how awful everything had hurt only now that it’s gone. “It’s a little sore,” Jon continues, “but...but I actually, ah, I actually feel good? I think?”

“Oh,” Martin says softly, his expression some twisted mix of relief and suspicion. “Yeah, that...that usually happens? After...” he makes a vague gesture with his free hand, “you know. Um. Lots of endorphins, I think.”

“Huh,” Jon says. He supposes that makes sense, though trying to piece together something completely supernatural through a scientific lens only makes his head feel like it’s full of cotton. Well, maybe being up for over twenty-four hours has a part in that too, but.

Martin takes a slow sip of his tea. “Your tea’s still shit,” he says, smiling lopsidedly at Jon.

“And I’ve missed your tact,” Jon says. He takes a sip of his own, equally awful tea, and smiles. “And you, of course.”

Martin’s face softens as he lowers his mug back to his lap. “Yeah, I’ve...I’ve missed you too Jon,” he says softly. Smiles. Closes his eyes to keep his voice from wobbling as he continues. “God, this whole thing sucks.”

“Yeah,” Jon agrees. He’s not denying it. He's bloody terrified about all the unknowns that sit in a formless, shapeless mass between them, and if he had the chance to do it over, to fix things, he’d take it in a heartbeat. But he knows scenarios like that are simply science fiction and not worth entertaining further. Well, more science fiction than the present science fiction. Science fictioner fiction vs science factly fiction. “But we’ll figure it out.”

Martin holds out his hand. Jon takes it, gives it a squeeze. Martin’s nails are like his, he notes, filed to sharp points, and Jon wonders if they’ve always been like that, if he’s just never noticed.

They sit like that for a while, in the company of each other’s hands and each other’s heartbeats, unwilling to break their grasp on one another. Jon hadn't realized how much he'd missed something so simple. He can't...he can't remember the last time he held hands with someone. Huh. That might make him sad, if he thought about it further.

Martin finally clears his throat. “You should, um, rest. What time is it even...?”

“A little after five.”

“God, no wonder I’m tired,” Martin says with a chuckle, pushing his glasses up atop his head to rub his eyes. “Um. I-I can clean up this, if you want to lay down. I know I should have a key to lock up when I’m done around here somewhere.”

Oh, Martin’s leaving. He supposes that makes sense. He supposes Martin probably has things to do tomorrow that aren’t conditional on whether or not he has to fight off some deranged woman in an alleyway at three in the morning, but Jon isn’t thinking of that right now. Jon’s world at the moment is only confined to corners of his flat, to the back of his front door, to the scratchy fabric beneath him, to the warmth of Martin’s hand in his own, steady and firm and real. Jon gives it another squeeze, swallows, and starts:

“You could...”

Martin looks up.

“You could stay,” Jon says, fighting hard to keep the wobble out of his voice. He takes a deep breath and meets his gaze. “It’s a long way back, a-and there’s the morning rush to contend with, and—” And I want you to, Jon takes a deep breath, “and the bed has plenty of room.”

Martin releases his breath like he’s been holding it for a long time. “...Yeah?”

“Yes,” Jon says.

Martin sighs through his nose, then nods to himself. “Okay,” he says softly. Seems to think for a moment as if confirming something to himself, then nods again, and repeats more firmly, “Okay.”