My first entry for The Magnus Archives Hurt/Comfort Week: a short JonMartin safehouse ficlet.
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Rating: G
CW: past shame over a medical condition (early essential tremor)
Prompts: self-worth issues, pretend, shaky hands
Word count: 732
Jon jumps when the blanket touches his shoulders. Everything is still so new and raw after escaping the Lonely, and the Scottish peace and quiet is only just now starting to feel like a reprieve.
Two warm hands lay on his shoulders over the blanket, stilling him. “It’s just me.”
It’s never just Martin, but Jon doesn’t correct him. The weight of his hands is an unexpected comfort that ends too soon, but it can barely be mourned that Martin sits next to Jon on the old, musty couch, sinking in it.
The movement makes Jon lean in, as if pulled in by gravity, and he doesn’t fight it. This is also new.
They take a few moments to settle in, then Jon breaks the silence. “Why the blanket? I mean, thank you, but I wasn’t cold.”
Martin clicks his tongue. “I looked for tea, but there isn’t any. And you’re shaking.”
“Oh.” Jon looks at the familiar sight of his trembling hands and considers all the lies he’s told, the pretenses. He exhales them all away. Guilt has no place here. “I always do.”
There’s a beat while the meaning of his words sinks in. “What? Really?”
Realising that’s a lie, Jon shakes his head. “I have since my early twenties. Tremor. A hassle to explain, more than anything.”
“I never noticed it.” Now Martin sounds more hurt than surprised.
Holding the blanket closed with one hand, Jon reaches out with the other to cover Martin’s. Their fingers lace together as if it were their natural purpose. “I never wanted anyone to notice.”
They’re so close that Jon can feel Martin’s restlessness. “No, but I should have…”
“You couldn’t have. I was very careful.” He remembers how natural hiding his hands under his desk came after a while, or waiting until he was alone to drink Martin’s tea, letting it cool down enough to hold the cup with both hands.
And yet something slipped, of course. He thinks about Tim making fun of his handwriting. Or the times he decided he would look more unkempt with the shadow of a beard than with his face covered in cuts. Or how he got so used to hurting himself in the kitchen that the scalds and the injuries became par for the course, until Georgie noticed and bullied him into getting a diagnosis.
“It’s… easier to overlook a thing like that in a professional context, especially if one does his best to conceal it.”
“That’s not the point! And even if it was true, I… We've been alone with each other for days, how could I not have noticed?” Martin runs his free hand through his hair, which gets all mussed up.
Something inside Jon’s chest clenches with the ache to smooth it down. Then he remembers he can, so he does.
Martin flinches, surprised, but then lets out a shaky breath and lets Jon pet his hair. Jon leans in a bit more, letting the blanket fall from his shoulders. They are both getting used to contact, learning how to be around each other. “You noticed.”
“What do you mean?”
Jon’s smile is as delicate as the memory that elicits it. “You kept holding my hands.”
He watches as Martin remembers all the time he has taken one or both of Jon’s hands in his, apparently without realising it, on buses and trains, during the endless waits and the lulls in their journey.
A blush blooms on Martin’s cheeks, drowning out the freckles. Jon wants to kiss it, all of it, and he will, but right now the man is too flustered already, and Jon’s not entirely devoid of mercy. He lowers the hand that has done more damage than good to the state of Martin’s hair. “It’s alright.”
“Is it… Can I…”
“You can ask.”
“Is it painful?”
“No. It’s just… It gets worse when I’m nervous.”
Martin nods. They’ve both had plenty of reasons to be nervous in the last few years. Then he shakes his head. “Why are you hiding it?”
“I’m not anymore.” Jon inhales, straightens. He feels small and naked without the protection of his pretenses, and he wants to get used to it. “I thought it made me weak. That it meant I was weak. I was ashamed of it. I’m past that, now.” He scoffs. “My worst weaknesses lie elsewhere.”
“Hey.” Martin catches both his hands. “No trash-talking my boyfriend.” And he seals that sentence by kissing the palm of Jon’s right hand, blushing furiously and completely avoiding eye contact.
AU of jon actually going through with ‘quitting’ after martin rejects him
when jon does it all the archival staff Know - a ripple goes through the institute, the feeling of being Watched suddenly stops, or at least lessens, and martin topples his chair standing up, not even realising he had stood. he Knows he can quit now, whenever he wants, and the first thing he feels, before the realisation and the panic sets in, is dizzying, guilty relief. then he’s sprinting down to the archives, down to jon’s office. he bursts in, and lying on the floor is jon. horrible low moans are squeezing out of him, and the blood keeps steadily pooling around his curled up form. Daisy’s bloody hunting knife lies nearby. Martin is frozen for a moment. He never thought that jon would actually go through with it. he’d assumed it was a bluff. ‘christ Jon, did you tell anyone you were going to do this?’ Martin thought, dropping to his knees and fishing out his phone. with a jolt, Marin saw that Jon wasn’t healing. dialling 999, martin ripped off his work jacket and pressed it to Jon’s eyes. But who would jon tell? Melanie hates him, Basira barely tolerates him, and Daisy’s in no fit state to take care of anyone. with a pang Martin realises that Jon did tell someone. he told martin. and he’d laughed in his face.
martin is allowed into the ambulance when the paramedics arrive and bundle jon up. he still hasn’t woken up. he’s sitting in the hospital waiting area when basira, daisy and melanie arrive, demanding to know what happened, but martin doesn’t speak. doesn’t think he can. jon is in surgery for six hours.
finally, finally martin is allowed to see him. before he goes into jon’s room, however, he’s stopped by the doctor. asked if jon is suicidal. martin can’t answer.
jon looks peaceful. small and frail and pitifully human. bandages cover the top half of his head, and his scars stand out more than usual against his ashen skin.
it’s so terribly reminiscent of the last time jon was in hospital that Martin’s breath goes thin and reedy for a moment, before taking in the sounds of the heart monitor. this isn’t like last time. Jon is breathing, slow and steady - his chest rises and falls. it isn’t like last time, not at all.
Martin sits, and oh so delicately cups Jon’s burned hand in his. and he lets himself break, with no one there to See.
when Jon wakes up, there will be tears and yelling, and hushed apologies. Martin will take Jon back to his place, and together they’ll start Jon’s journey of relearning how to navigate the world - how to read Braille, how to use a cane.
I am a king of starting super intense fics and not following through - this one was a post S5(?) fic where Jon and Martin are mostly free of the Archives and have settled down. Only then, Sasha comes back, but she’s clearly still not free of whatever the Stranger did to her, and on top of that her memory is patchy at best, so the fic was trying to get her to remember who she was and what had happened while making sure neither of them died in the meantime. It’ll likely never get finished, so it’s free to be continued if anyone fancies xD
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Martin’s hands are on the table. Flat palmed. The salt cellar has been knocked over, rolled off onto the floor, and there are white grains speckling the creases of his fingers like early morning frost.
His hands down. Head down. Eyes down. He’s trying to clench his body, a closed fist of muscle and tension because he is ashamed of how much he is shaking.
Jon’s arms are cramping, held behind his head. A vicious ache in his shoulders that he wants to relieve by moving.
“Please,” he whispers.
“Shut up. I – I told you to – stop talking, just shut up.”
The fingers in Martin’s hair dig and twist hard, the motion delivered easy and brutal, in the same motion a gardener might yank up root-thick weeds. Martin’s hands on the table, spasming, scrabbling aborted gestures that twitch under his skin. Jon hears him trap the cry behind his teeth, squash it under his tongue, and his heart is an agony in his chest.
“Ok,” he whispers. “Ok. Ok.”
His hands held up like a white flag.
For a moment, all three of them are silent.
The woman pushes Martin’s head down harder into the kitchen table, scrapes the knife under his chin like a dry shave. She doesn’t fit her body easily, and she sways and the weight shifts off-balance as she leans on her heels, then shifts up onto her toes, then back to the balls of her feet.
“Jon,” she says finally. The word strung in her mouth like toffee, like tasting. “Your name is Jon.”
Jon nods jerkily.
“Do you know who….?” he begins. The hand tightens in Martin’s hair again, the knife scrapes up to below his jaw.
“Jon.” Martin breathes out, pained, higher pitched with fright and warning.
Jon closes his mouth.
The woman sways again.
“And I – I had a name?” The words form strange in her mouth, slightly slurred, like she hasn’t practised them enough. “I had a name?”
She repeats it again.
“I had a name.”
“Yes,” Jon replies, a desperate croak to his voice.
my dearest darling alec. would you give ur sweet reat some very much needed serotonin with a little b+h drabble. just a little something idk a late night drive together sounds nice. i would so very appreciate it
yes I will my darling reat!
-
"C'mon."
Breekon's voice is low as he shakes Hope awake, steadying the startled being when they come to.
"Can't fall asleep on me, we still have miles to go. You don't even need it anyways," Breekon says, his voice ever shifting in tone and varience.
Hope sighs and scratches at his face, righting the dropping skin that came lose from leaning on the car window.
"Pull over," he says. Breekon doesn't question it; he always follows what Hope says.
He stops in the middle of the road, not thinking about blocking traffic- it's the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. It would be romantic, if that was the thing they were looking for.
"Do you ever... get tired of me?" Hope asks, casting his eyes to meet Breekon's in the low moonlight. It didn't matter; Hope would always know and love Breekon, no matter if he was able to see or not.
"What? No, never," Breekon says quickly, his hand coming to automatically cup Hope's face. Hope leans into the touch, his eyes closing at the warmth the eminates from his lover's hand. It's the only warmth he's ever felt.
"I know," Hope teases, his tone light. "I just wanted to hear you say it."
At that, Breekon chuckles.
"Even after all these centuries, you still manage to surprise me."
ELIAS
[beginning to speak-sing] I wanna be...
PETER
Don't.
ELIAS
[singing] Where the people are... I wanna see—
PETER
Don't.
ELIAS
—Wanna.
PETER
[interjecting] Eli—
ELIAS
[continuing to sing] See. Them.
PETER
Elias.
ELIAS
[undeterred, with vile enthusiasm]—dancing! Walking around on those... [stops singing, gasps softly and with insincerity] What do you call them?
[THERE IS AN AUDIBLE AND UNHAPPY SIGH]
ELIAS
Feet, Peter. It’s “Feet.”
[IN THE BACKGROUND SOUND OF THE ROOM, A FAN CLICKS ON]
ELIAS
You’ve never seen The Little Mermaid, have you?
[THERE IS SILENCE EXCEPT FOR THE SOUND OF THE FAN]
PETER
Have you?
ELIAS
[laughs] No. No. Someone who came in last week though—had an encounter with The Dark, it was awfully stuck in her head. And now, seeing you. It came to mind.
Wrote a LonelyEyes fanfic, based on my own drawing lol.
Said Drawing: Link | Word Count: 623 | Fluff
The Tundra had been docked in one of ports in London. Though it didn’t happen very often, Elias would occasionally spend nights on the ship with Peter. The ship’s affiliation to the Lonely, and the fog of Silence that surrounds it always allowed him a brief respite from seeing everything. The only things he could see were within the confines of the Tundra, everything else was covered by a thick mist. In these brief moments, the Web, the Buried, the Vast, and rest of the world could fuck off- the night belonged to him and Peter. It wasn’t an indulgence that he often partook in but he savored the peace and clarity it provided, even if it was only for the evening.
When Elias woke everything was still dark with nothing illuminating the room save for the moonlight that slipped in through a slit in the curtains. Clutched in Peter’s embrace, the pair lay on the hard, wooden floor of the Captain’s chambers.
It isn’t that Peter’s room was unfurnished or that the bed was too small to fit them both. It was that, for all his grandeur and luxury, Peter rather enjoyed sleeping on the floor. His habit had started in his childhood- in the summer nights where he found he couldn’t sleep. For whatever reason, the bed felt too stuffy, too crowded- and the hot air of the summer night had certainly done nothing to ease this feeling. Even after he had kicked off all the sheets and pillows from the bed, he still felt like the mattress itself was crowding around him, suffocating him. He found a strange comfort on his bedroom floor in those evenings and very soon, it became a habit for sleepless nights.
Elias’s eyes slowly adjust to the dark room and Peter’s face comes into focus before him, his eyes are shut, brows furrowed in an intense look, seemingly in the throes of a nightmare. Elias feels the grip on his side tighten as Peter’s hand unknowingly clutches harder onto the smaller man’s waist. Elias quietly takes in a sharp breath before letting out a small chuckle.
“A little bit clingy for an avatar of the Lonely aren’t you.” Elias barely whispers. Peter’s grip tightens and his brows knit closer together. Elias feels the nails dig deeper into his skin.
“Let’s see if we can’t get rid of that, shall we?” Elias whispers, bringing his hand up to the sleeping captain’s face, gently stroking the other man’s cheek and he closes his eyes and looks into Peter’s mind.
Elias sees Peter in a room, surrounded by people, they are all looking at him, approaching him, all of them smiling far too wide, and speaking far too loudly. Peter is visibly tense, his shoulders are stiff, jaw clenched, hands curled up at his side, and he is stuck- unable to decide between standing taller to intimidate the crowd or shrinking in hopes they’d overlook him. He just stands there, frozen in place. Peter looks around, as if searching for something, he is unable to disappear as the crowd comes in closer around him. When Peter opens his eyes again, there is no one there, just a thick heavy mist. His body relaxes and the lets out a sigh of relief.
“There we are” Elias whispers softly. He continues to gently rub Peter’s cheek. Slowly, his grip on Elias loosens and his hard features soften.
Elias takes a deep breath and just stares at peter. He brings his head closer to Peters chest. He stills, listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. As he listens and counts the beat, he swears that he feels Peter’s embrace tighten around him. Slowly he drifts back to sleep, reveling in the captain’s warmth.
