i love demisexual martin. jons ranting about how weird the concept of sexual attraction is to him and martins like "hmmm. normally i would agree but i think ive just cracked the code"
Jon wears a black ring around his middle finger, ever since Uni he has. He’s found it as a good sign of solidarity and pride with others and its small enough to be ignored by those who don’t know. He doesn’t expect people to know, but when people do, and they share a knowing look, he does feel more at ease.
One day, when Martin comes in to his office with a cup of fresh tea, his hand clicks against something. He turns to the sound and sees Martin has a black ring around his own finger. And then they meet eyes and suddenly Jon feels things shift in place. A line of solidarity between the two that he subconsciously latches onto. Martin sees the recognition in Jons eyes and gives a shy smile before leaving.
Later when Jon is at the archive way too late to catch the tube, and dutifully Martin stays behind, Jon actually does take up his offer to a reheated Chinese and finds he actually never got to know Martin over conversations that pull them well past the night and into the morning. He finds, he actually quite likes Martin.
An asexual Martin struggles with his identity and learns that he and Jon have it in common.
on AO3
Nothing about Martin’s identity has ever been simple, ever been easy to explain to others. Not that it was a surprise, really; nothing in Martin’s life ever seemed to be simple or easy, so why should this be any different?
First off, there was him being a boy--a man, really, but he’d started as a boy, and it had taken some years for him to figure even that much out after being told otherwise all his life. Coming out to his mother had been... a struggle, but she did call him Martin now at least, even if there always seemed to be a sneer on her face when she said it, even if her eyes went cold every time she looked over him.
And not only that, Martin was a boy who loved other boys, and soon enough a man who loved other men. Before any of it came out, it was easy enough for him to talk to others about his crushes, to be assumed just another schoolgirl with a crush on some boy that was probably out of her (out of his) league, but after... after was more difficult. Martin never discussed that part of his life with his mother, never had her meet any of the men he dated, though sometimes he feared she knew his orientation all the same and was judging him all the more for it.
Just that would have been tricky enough. Just that was tricky enough, really. It was hard enough navigating his love life with that information in mind, remembering what he could and couldn’t tell his one remaining relative about any relationships he might have, trying to find other men who would see him as one of them and love him just the same for it.
But that wasn’t all that made Martin’s love life difficult, truth be told.
There was... something else going on there. Something he was missing that everybody else seemed to have: being drawn to others on a physical level, wanting to end a perfect date by going to bed with the other person. Something about the idea of himself having sex made Martin’s stomach queasy, though he had no problem with it when it was anyone else involved. Even kissing was hit or miss for him--what was the appeal of French kissing supposed to be, anyway, were you supposed to like swapping saliva, potentially exchanging diseases, rubbing tongue against tongue and tasting the scraps and tartar in the other person’s mouth?
Was he broken? He must be, right? Part of him was gone, missing, lost to the abyss, and that part seemed to be so important to most of the men he dated that Martin began to feel its absence by proxy himself. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been loved properly as a child, because his mother had never talked to him about bedroom matters, because he didn’t see how anybody could fancy him that way... or maybe he’d just always been broken, from the day he was born, and nothing anybody did could fix it.
Martin’s mother probably wouldn’t mind that part of him so much, but he never dared to breach the subject, not when he could barely understand it himself.
When Martin got a crush on Jon, a crush that proved to be a lot more long-lasting and resilient than he had expected, that missing piece was just another reason Martin knew it would never work out. Even if Jon was up for dating an employee, dating another man, dating a trans man, dating Martin... he’d want what all Martin’s past crushes ended up wanting, and that was something that he just couldn’t bring himself to supply.
When Martin began to fall to the Lonely, he wondered if perhaps the Lonely had always been a part of him, deep down inside, that perhaps it had taken the place of that missing piece before it could ever form in the first place. At least that was one less thing to lose along the way, he supposed...
And then Jon saved him from the Lonely, brought him to the safehouse, and he seemed interested in Martin, interested in a way that wasn’t simply platonic, and Martin knew, Martin knew that that interest would lead to a discussion that would break his heart all over again...
That discussion came soon enough, five nights into their time at the safehouse. Martin and Jon were together in the place’s lone bed, ostensibly trying to get to sleep but both more focused on furtively glancing at one another when each thought the other wasn’t looking. They weren’t quite touching, but they were close, and Martin kept wondering when the other shoe would drop, when Jon would bring up the elephant in the room, when he would ask for something Martin couldn’t give him...
“Martin, I... there’s something I want to tell you.” Jon’s voice was barely above a whisper, but Martin heard it clear as day, his heart sinking as he processed the statement and its implications.
“R-right. Go ahead.”
“And it’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong or anything like that-”
Oh. That talk. Well. At least they were getting it out of the way now, Martin supposed. At least Jon was breaking things off before Martin could mess them up any further.
“It’s alright, Jon. I... I understand.”
“No, I...” Jon let out a sharp huff, the warm air from his nose tickling Martin’s chin. “Not like that... hopefully not like that, anyway, that’s, that’s up to you I suppose...”
Martin tried to unclench the pit that had formed in his stomach, but with little success. “What is it, then?”
“I, er. I’m not interested in sex. Not with you, not with anyone. I’m asexual.”
The pit in Martin’s stomach evaporated without him even noticing it, replaced with butterflies and a faint, fervent hope.
“Asexual?” Martin echoed.
“Right. It means not feeling sexual attraction, not being interested in that kind of physicality... but that doesn’t mean I’m not romantically interested in, in you, because I very much am, I’ve just always been this way, and I don’t want you to-”
“There’s a word for it?”
Martin’s voice was under his breath, but he could tell that Jon heard it just the same, could feel the weight of Jon’s gaze falling upon him.
“There is, yes. So you, uh...?”
Martin let out a soft, shaky laugh. “Yeah, I never heard the term before but I, I think I must be asexual too. That all sounds like- like me.”
“Oh!” Another soft, warm exhale from Jon. “I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t either. About you, I mean. Or the term, I suppose, but I’d never known anyone else who was...” Broken? No, Martin could accept that word for himself, but not for Jon, not for the man he loved. “...like me in that way.”
Jon shot Martin a small smile. “Well, now you do.”
“Now I do.” Martin said with a nod.
A brief pause, then: “...tell me more?”
Jon nodded, his grin growing as he began to speak.
