Beastly Behaviour

by Prim_the_Amazing

Summary:

“You need to learn a lesson,” she says, and there’s blood speckling her lips now. She’s overstraining herself. He needs to stop her, calm her down. “And until you learn it you will suffer, just like you’ve made me suffer.”

“Mum, I think you need to--”

It turns out that when his father had called his mother a witch, he had meant more than Martin realized.

Chapter 1: witch

Summary:

Martin’s mother gets sick, and he takes care of her.

Martin’s mother gets sick, and he takes care of her. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? That’s what a good son would do, and that’s what he wants to be. He takes care of her, even if it’s hard. Even if he has to do it alone. Even if she doesn’t want his help. 

She really doesn’t want his help. 

“I want to be alone,” she says, voice weak with pain. 

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that we don’t have the servants any longer, then,” he says, smiling awkwardly, as if the fact of the matter isn’t that the reason that they don’t have servants any longer is because his father took them with him when he left them. And never came back. Acting like he doesn’t realize that she means him, not the servants that haven’t even been here for years now. 

“Leave me alone,” she says the next day, too tired to even glare at him. 

“I made chicken soup,” he says, pretending not to hear her. 

“Leave,” she says the day after that, eyes closed with exhaustion. 

“Is there anything I can get you?” he asks, because he wants to be helpful, he wants to make her feel better. But he isn’t going to leave her here, alone, so, so sick. She needs for him to be here. 

For the first time since she took ill (for the first time in so long, before even that), she opens her eyes and looks right at him, really seeing him. A thrill goes down his spine, and he doesn’t know if it’s good or bad. 

“You’re such a cruel boy,” she says, very clearly. She’s lying in the sheets he washed for her, with the cool cloth that he wetted for her draped over her forehead, with the cup of tea he made for her at her nightstand. “You’re just like him. You’re worse. At least he afforded me the dignity of leaving me be after he broke my heart.” 

Martin opens his mouth, and no words come out. 

“I’m giving you one last chance,” she says, and she looks pale with the effort of speaking so clearly, for such a long stretch. But she keeps going. She’s stubborn like that. “Leave. Now.” 

“Mum,” he says numbly. “You shouldn’t be talking so much. You’ll hurt your throat.” 

He really, really wants for her to stop talking. 

He doesn’t get up from his chair. He doesn’t so much as glance towards the door. 

Her face curdles into an expression of utter disdain, one that he knows on sight will haunt him for the rest of his life. He smiles at her, almost reflexively, as if he just acts quickly enough to pretend like that sneer isn’t there then she’ll drop it immediately. 

“You need to learn a lesson,” she says, and there’s blood speckling her lips now. She’s overstraining herself. He needs to stop her, calm her down. “And until you learn it you will suffer, just like you’ve made me suffer.” 

“Mum, I think you need to--” 

It turns out that when his father had called his mother a witch, he had meant more than Martin realized. 

 

Martin doesn’t stop taking care of her. He washes her sheets and changes clothes and helps her bathe and makes her food and feeds it to her and brushes her hair and pretends that he can’t hear her curses and damnations through all of the coughing. He takes care of her until the day she dies, and the curse doesn’t end when she does. He’s just alone now. 

How could faithfully taking care of his mother until her dying day no matter how difficult it was not be his lesson? 

He digs her grave in the rose garden. It’s easier to just use his claws than to try and hold the shovel.

Chapter 2: the most beautiful

Summary:

Jon’s grandmother gets sick, and she mostly takes care of herself.

Jon’s grandmother gets sick, and she mostly takes care of herself. He isn’t surprised. They’ve never been a particularly warm or close family, the two of them. She never really doted on him while he was growing up. But she made sure that he always had everything he needed. Three meals a day, clothes that fit, a bed, a bath, a roof, and all of the books she could get her hands on in their small town. She was undeniably decent to him throughout his childhood. 

So of course he’s going to return the favor, now that time has taken its toll and reversed their positions, she the one in need of support and he the one able to give it. It’s only to be expected. He doesn’t dote on her, just like how she didn’t dote on him. She wouldn’t like it, and he wouldn’t even know where to start when it came to doting even if he wanted to. He makes sure that she has what she needs. 

What she needs is medicine. That’s such a reasonable thing for a sick person to need, and it’s as important as ‘three meals a day’ or ‘a roof’. It’s the bare minimum of what he should be able to do for her, after everything she did for him, even through her old age and grief. He should be able to get her medicine. 

A weeks dose costs more than he makes in two months, at his book shop. He buys it anyways, and he keeps buying it, his meager funds bleeding away. This is the bare minimum. She asks for so little. She gave him a decent childhood. It’s his turn now, to give her the gentle retirement that he took from her, that he made her wait so long for. He should be able to do this. 

He runs out of money. This is when Elias Bouchard proposes to him. 

Elias Bouchard is the richest man in the town. Jon only ever sees him whenever he gets the rare new shipment of books in, at which point he stops in to see if there’s anything that piques his interest. He’ll make pleasant, idle conversation with Jon, shake his hand whether he makes a purchase or not, and then leaves. He’s… fine. Jon has no particular opinion on him. 

This is why he doesn’t respond at all at first, after Elias comes into his store despite there being no recent deliveries, exchanges greetings with him, and then asks him to marry him with a smile that doesn’t say that this is all just some-- some sort of joke. 

“Excuse me?” Jon eventually manages. 

“Will you marry me,” Elias repeats himself, words carefully enunciated. 

“... What?” he says intelligently. Elias chuckles. 

“I realize that this must come a bit out of nowhere for you, Jonathan,” he says with warm understanding. 

“Jon,” he corrects him reflexively for what must be the tenth time. “I-- yes, it is coming out of nowhere. Why do you want to marry me?” 

Elias raises his eyebrows at him. “There’s no need to sound so incredulous. Why wouldn’t I want to marry you?” 

Jon bites back the urge to gesture at himself and say ‘my entire personality.’ Maybe he could go and find Georgie and ask her to repeat everything she said during their last argument together as a couple. Surely that would make his point well for him. “We barely know each other,” he says instead. 

“I know enough,” he responds without hesitation, as if about two or three brief conversations a year is enough to build a marriage on. “You comport yourself well enough, you have a respectable if small business, and a dignified reputation. That, and you’re the most beautiful man in all of the town.” He serves Jon a charming smile at this last bit. 

The thing is, he has actually heard this before. Not the ‘marry me’ part, but the ‘beautiful’ part. From Georgie when things were better, from a few sloppy drunks, from peers who would follow it up with ‘such a waste, really’. He doesn’t really see it himself, but hearing himself described as exceptionally beautiful isn’t new and isn’t a surprise. 

“Well,” he finally says, feeling still very caught off guard by the whole situation. “I’m flattered? But--” 

Elias holds up a forestalling hand. “Before you give me your answer, I’d urge you to consider your current financial situation. You would gain from this marriage as well, you know. I wouldn’t have offered if that weren’t so.” 

The first thing Jon does is wonder how the hell Elias knows that he’s out of money and urgently in need of it. The second is to dismiss that with the answer of ‘money.’ The third is to think about his grandmother. 

She always gave him everything that he needed, even when she was tired and sad. Now it’s his turn to give her everything that she needs. And what she needs is medicine. Medicine that he cannot currently afford. Is he really going to let her down like this, when the solution to the problem is right in front of him? 

He had never imagined marrying like this, so practically. But he’d also given up on the idea of marriage at all years ago, so… what will really be lost? 

“Yes or no, Jonathan?” Elias looks completely at ease, as if the bookstore is his own office, as if he isn’t the one proposing and waiting for an answer. 

“Yes,” he answers simply. Some (Georgie) would call it reckless, but what other answer could he have possibly given? 

Elias grins.

Chapter 3: monster

Summary:

Johanna Sims lives until summer, well taken care of, slipping peacefully into a drugged painless sleep that she never wakes from. Jon and Elias are supposed to marry in spring.

“You did sign a contract, Jon,” Elias reminds him, gently chiding.

“I am aware,” he snaps, because that’s true.

There’s a contract and everything. Guaranteed financial support and medical assistance for his grandmother, in exchange for his hand in marriage. Jon signs it. And Elias, to his credit, does exactly that. His grandmother gets everything she needs. Food, clothes, medicine, the attentive care of a nurse that she regularly snaps at for being too overbearing. Jon’s guilt eases, and he doesn’t tell her how he managed it. Just says that his business is doing unexpectedly well. She doesn’t pry. That’s just what their family is like. 

Johanna Sims lives until summer, well taken care of, slipping peacefully into a drugged painless sleep that she never wakes from. Jon and Elias are supposed to marry in spring. 

“You did sign a contract, Jon,” Elias reminds him, gently chiding. 

“I am aware,” he snaps, because that’s true. He signed a contract that he read thoroughly beforehand, and he has absolutely no excuse at all to break the engagement off. Elias performed his part of the deal perfectly, and now it's his turn to do so. It’s not his fault that she died so quickly anyways. Old age is old age. Everyone goes eventually, no matter how much care they’re given. At least she went out relatively painlessly. It was, as far as these things go, a good death. He made a promise. Signed a contract. There’s no backing out now just because his grandmother is dead. 

He has no excuse, he reminds himself, over and over again. 

 

It turns out that Elias is the sort of person who likes to touch the things he owns. The beautiful things he likes to collect. 

Jon runs away in the fall. 

 

He has rucksack with food and water in it, he’s wearing his warmest clothes along with a cloak, and he has a map of the surrounding area. He realizes a bit too late that while he technically knows how to read a map, he has never had to do so practically and the map is very small and not detailed at all and every tree looks the damned same, and it’s difficult to tell North from South when the sky is covered in clouds. And that three days worth of food doesn’t stretch out very well at all. And his warmest clothes aren’t as warm as he thought they were, once it starts raining and doesn’t stop. And he may or may not be horribly lost in the woods during a frigid rainstorm with no food and no shelter. 

He could, perhaps, have planned this a little bit better. His abrupt flight from the town he’d grown up in his whole life may indeed have been a bit… impulsive. Reckless. He’d just… not been thinking, really. He’d just needed to get out, as far away as possible. 

If this is how he dies, well… it will be pretty embarrassing. Death of poor planning, honestly. He’s guiltily relieved that his grandmother isn’t alive to hear about this. 

The rain is coming down so hard that he can barely see the dark woods around him. He has his arms tightly crossed, hands tucked away as if that will keep them warm, when it feels like the wet and the cold has seeped into his very bones by now. He steps onto something, he doesn’t even know what, a root or a rock-- and he falls. Hard. 

After a long moment, he gets up, teeth clenched. His hands sting like he’s scraped them up badly. There’s now cold, heavy mud smeared onto his cloak, delightful. He hisses with pain after his first step, almost falls again. Twisted ankle. Fantastic. 

Jon decides that he despises the woods. And that he misses his book shop, so sharply that it aches in his chest. 

His eyes start to sting, and he retreats back to his anger and frustration. Lightning flashes. 

“Oh, as if the night couldn’t possibly get any better!” he snaps to himself, alone in the drumming rain. Talking to yourself is a silly practice, and probably not a smart thing to do in the woods where animals roam. But his life is in ruins and he’s covered in mud and so he swears to himself as he trudges through the forest, trying not to fall again, to be careful with his twisted ankle that throbs painfully with every step anyways. 

He’s cold and trembling so hard that his teeth are chattering, that his muscles ache with it, and he’s losing all feelings in his fingers. He’s so tired. 

Had he made a mistake? Is he going to die here? Maybe he should’ve just stayed-- 

Lightning flashes again, enough for him to see a lonely building off in the distance. Jon immediately breaks off into a run for it. He falls twice before he makes himself slow down, eyes desperately fixed on where he’s sure he saw it during that brief moment of light. He’s hurt, he’s cold, he’s fairly certain that he’s bleeding, but there’s a building. Somewhere to get out of the storm. 

Finally, he gets close enough to actually see it. It’s a mansion. It’s hard to see any details, in the dark and the rain. There’s an iron gate, tall and dark and imposing, but open. He limps through, up along the long driveway, past the fountain, up to the front doors. The freezing wind grabs at his cloak, makes him squint through the lashing rain, and he knocks as hard as he can with his numb hand. 

No one answers. He knocks again, huddles as close as he can to the door. No one continues to answer. Maybe, maybe they just didn’t hear him. The storm is very loud. He needs to get in. He’ll apologize later, they’ll understand. Desperately, not daring to hope, he tries to open the doors himself. For a moment he thinks that they’re locked. But then, so slowly, it starts to creak open. He pushes his entire weight into it, and pushes and pushes the heavy door until there’s a crack large enough for him to slip in through. Quickly, he darts in through, and hurriedly closes the door behind him, shutting the storm out and away. 

The first moment of not being rained on is such a relief that he sags back against the door. And then he looks around. The foyer he’s in is dark and… dusty. Very dusty. He might have gone unanswered simply because there was no one in the mansion at all, rather than them just not hearing them. Well. He can work with that. Tentatively, he steps out into the foyer, looks around. 

The place looks like it’s been abandoned for years. And there are very clearly no lit fireplaces in the building. He shivers, and tucks his hands back underneath his arms. At least there’s no wind in here. It is warmer, comparatively. After a moment, he drops his useless rucksack and soaking wet cloak onto the floor, breathes hot air onto his hands. He should explore the place, see if he can’t find a fireplace with some firewood against all odds, or maybe even some abandoned dry moth eaten clothes-- 

Jon thinks he hears something, a noise that isn’t the howling wind or drumming rain outside. He whips around, trying to see the source. Are there wild animals in here? Possums seeking shelter from the rain in a long abandoned home? Something… bigger? 

“Who’s there?” he calls out, trying to sound stern instead of scared. 

He sees light glint in the darkness, the way a predator’s eyes gleam when they catch some small amount of light. He takes a step back, heart in his throat. Those eyes are very high up. Could it be-- a bear--? 

Lightning flashes and Jon sees what is standing in the doorway teen feet from him. After a too long moment of paralyzed fear, the monster takes a step towards him, and Jon’s brain restarts as he flinches away. He makes some sort of awful, fearful noise, and then he turns around to run away. 

He steps onto his twisted ankle and falls almost immediately. He swears in pain and panic, scrambles to get back up-- the monster’s large clawed hand goes to his shoulder and turns him onto his back with a terrifying, easy strength, and Jon is fighting back a scream as it leans into his space, looks into his face, his eyes. It has tusks and fangs and-- 

“Are you real?” the monster asks softly.

Chapter 4: All alone

Summary:

The man walks further into Martin’s home, and his heart sings with it.

It didn’t even occur to him to leave his home and find other people, when his mother was still alive. Not when he looked like that. It was completely out of the question. Plus, he couldn’t leave her. She was sick. And then she died, and he was all alone, and it was still as little of an option as before… but then he kept being alone. And it didn’t stop, and there was no end in sight. He prayed and he made promises to and even shouted at her grave, but nothing changed. 

She died in the fall. Winter came and went, spring passed him by, summer, fall again. He realized that an entire year had passed, all alone. He didn’t care any longer that leaving to go and find new people could only result in disaster, in crossbows and screaming. He went to leave. 

And he was stopped. He could be in his home, the garden, even the grounds around that, enough to be able to reach a river to fish in and the immediate woods where some unsuspecting woodland animals roamed. Enough to hunt to feed himself. He could live on the fruit and berries that grew in the garden and the animals that roamed the woods near his home, but he couldn’t reach the road. He couldn’t go where people were. He just… froze. His (cursed, disgusting, not his) body wouldn’t allow him to take a single step further, after a certain point. 

He was trapped in here. All alone. 

Snow fell and melted, flowers sprouted and bloomed, leaves fell. He tried ripping the curse away, digging in with his claws and tearing the wrongness away. All it did was stain a perfectly good carpet. 

He read books to make the time pass. It was almost like being with people. But then, one day, it was suddenly nothing more than scribbles on paper. Meaningless. He locked up the library and didn’t go back. 

He came up with poetry, speaking it out loud to himself as if he were having a conversation, as if there were anyone there to hear. But then it turned into nothing but… words. Just words with no substance to them, no significance, no feeling, just empty noise to fill the silence. 

He talked to his mother’s grave, until it turned into just another patch of earth, grass and roses devoid of meaning, even if he knew that her skeleton was down there underneath the dirt. He might as well be speaking to any other patch of earth in the garden for all the good it did, for all it meant. He might as well not be speaking at all. 

So he stopped speaking. He slept, and he paced, and he ate, and he hunted. 

He did that for a very, very long time. 

 

There’s a storm, so he’s inside his home. (His prison.) He doesn’t know how long he’s been like this. Years. It’s difficult to count, to keep track of numbers. He’s inside, listening to the howling of the wind and the drumming of the rain on the roof and trying to let those sounds empty out and fill his mind, replace all thoughts. It’s easier than it should be. 

Wind. Rain. Knocking. 

Knocking. 

It must be a branch, being knocked into the house by the wind, over and over again. It must be in his head. It must be anything but what he thinks hopes prays it is. 

He runs on all fours towards the sound anyways. It’s coming from the entryway (the front door), and he runs so quickly that he has to halt his momentum on the bannister to stop himself from pitching over and falling down and breaking some bones. He gets there just in time to see the doors open. They aren’t blown in by the wind; the open outwards. The door handle goes down, the hinges squeal, and a person slips in through the crack in the door. His breath leaves him all at once as he watches the first person he’s seen in years (how many years, how many?) quickly shut the door behind him. 

He leans his back against the closed door, looking around the foyer. He clearly doesn’t notice Martin (that’s it, right, that’s his name, he hadn’t forgotten, he hadn’t lost it, he just hadn’t thought of it for so long). His night vision clearly isn’t as good as Martin’s, and the world outside is dark with storm and the inside dim, not a single candle lit. And Martin is standing a story above him, looking down. Somehow, he’s glad for it. Just a moment to let this sink in, to adjust. 

The man walks further into Martin’s home, and his heart sings with it. 

The man makes a pained noise, and the walk turns into more of a limp. Wounded prey, thinks the animal part of him, which has been growing larger and stronger and more as his human part has withered away in solitude. 

Before he knows it, he’s descended the stairs, and is lurking in the darkness where the man can’t see him, stalking like a predator waiting for the most opportune moment to strike. He shakes his head violently. He’s not going to eat a person. If he’s even really there. Maybe it’s just in his head-- 

Lightning flashes, and the man spots him, freezing like a rabbit. Slowly, as if it might break the spell, make him fade away like a mirage, Martin takes a step forward. 

The man flinches and runs. Martin’s leaping after him before he’s even fully made the first step, which falters (wounded prey), sending him falling to the floor, hard. He stops himself from outright pouncing on him, and instead reaches out to touch him. His hand doesn’t go through him like mist, and a painful noise scrapes out of his throat. He turns the man around to look into his wide, terrified eyes. He’d used to be so scared of people being horrified by him, but he’s long since discarded that for the fear of never seeing people again at all. 

“Are you real?” he asks in an almost hushed, awed whisper, still barely believing to hope, and the man gapes up at him. 

“You--” the man chokes, and he talks, he just talked, he has to be real and is Martin having his first conversation in years? He is! He smiles, and a small bitten off noise of fear escapes the man. Right. Fangs. He tries to stop smiling, but fails pretty hard. He’s just so happy. 

“I’m real too,” he says, because that’s what people do in a conversation, they respond, they do a back and forth. He remembers. 

“Oh,” the man says weakly, and Martin beams. He responded! They’re really, really talking. “Are you sure?” he asks, like Martin might change his mind. 

“Yes,” he says. 

“Oh,” the man says again, and faints.

Chapter 5: No

Summary:

Jon wakes up slowly, confused and disoriented. Wherever he is, it isn’t home. The ceiling doesn’t look right and this doesn’t feel like his bed. Where—? 

“You’re awake,” a voice says, too close. He gasps, flinches away from it, looks. There is a monster crouched by the bed he’s lying on.

Jon wakes up slowly, confused and disoriented. Wherever he is, it isn’t home. The ceiling doesn’t look right and this doesn’t feel like his bed. Where—? 

“You’re awake,” a voice says, too close. He gasps, flinches away from it, looks. There is a monster crouched by the bed he’s lying on. The monster. A high, panicked noise escapes him as he remembers, and he scrambles to the other side of the bed without turning away from the monster. It’s so close, if it lunges for him— 

It reaches out and takes hold of his arm without needing to lunge, without even needing to get closer. It’s big. It’s hand encircles his wrist easily. An image of it digging in its claws and pulling the skin at his wrist open flashes uncontrollably in front of his mind. He immediately tries to tear his hand away, but the monster’s grip on him is as firm as a shackle. The monster even pulls him a foot closer, easy and effortless. 

And then it lets go, hand going back to its side. Jon breathes heavily, heart hammering from an interaction that lasted no more than five seconds. He’s been awake for less than a minute and he’s already been manhandled by a beast. 

“Sorry,” it says, its voice incongruously that of a man. He could hear that voice from a baker, a salesman, a butcher, any regular person, and he wouldn’t blink. It makes the whole situation feel surreal, that every word it says isn’t edged with growls. “I just— you were about to fall off the bed, is all.” 

He has no idea how to respond to that. To any of this. 

“You weren’t out for long,” the beast says after a long moment in which Jon doesn’t say anything. “Just a few minutes. Are you okay?” 

“Am I okay,” he repeats in disbelief. 

“Well, you did faint.” The beast’s lips peel away to reveal large, sharp fangs, and Jon freezes, goes tense. After a moment, the beast stops baring its fangs at him, which is when he realizes that it had been smiling at him. For what? Speaking? 

No, it must have been for a far more ominous reason than that. 

“I’m… fine,” he says warily as the beast keeps expectantly waiting for a response from him. “I was just—” horrified, terrified, shocked, “surprised.” 

It seems like a good idea to try and not be actively rude to this… thing. He’s never had a talent for politeness, exactly, but he is certainly going to try. 

The beast nods, and continues to stare at him in a breathless sort of way, like Jon is the most fascinating thing it has ever laid eyes on. It’s deeply unnerving. He keeps expecting it to suddenly pounce, and it keeps not doing it yet, and he feels as tense as a strung wire. 

“Well,” Jon says eventually, heart still hammering in his chest. “Thank you. For your hospitality. Very kind of you. I’ll just. Get out your… hair, now.” It has fur, not hair. He bites his tongue and moves to get out of the bed without turning his back on the monster, as if it’ll do him any good if it decides to attack him. 

“No!” it says, too sudden, too loud, too intense. Jon freezes, halfway out of the bed. The beast takes a deep breath, and then repeats, more composed, “No. You shouldn’t.” 

“Why?” Jon asks, just barely managing to make his voice not waver. He can see the door out of the bedroom from the corner of his eye. Could he make it there before the beast, close the door? Could the beast knock the door down? 

“There’s a storm outside.” 

He can hear it, distantly, muted through the walls. The wind howling. He wishes he was still out there, in the freezing, wet night. 

“I’ll manage.” 

“Then why did you come to my home for shelter?” 

“I was just curious.” 

“You can see my whole home, if you’re curious.” 

“That’s alright.” 

“Your ankle is hurt,” the beast rallies, changing tracks. “I saw you limping. You shouldn’t travel through the woods like that.” 

“It’s not that bad.” 

“And you’re soaked. You shouldn’t leave in wet clothes. You must be cold.” 

“I’ll be okay.” 

“When was the last time you ate?” 

“This morning.” His stomach aches with hunger. 

“Do you even know where you are?” 

“I have a map.” That he doesn’t know how to read. This place certainly wasn’t on it. 

“Are you prepared for a trip through the woods?” 

“Yes.” He’d thought he’d been. 

“You look tired.” 

“I’m not.” He’s so tired, even as fear jitters through his veins. It turns out that being scared doesn’t make the exhaustion go away; it just makes you horribly awake even as you’re weary. 

For a long moment, the beast very clearly searches for another excuse to make Jon stay in its territory, as if he’s foolish enough to choose to feed himself to a monster. Because that’s what it doing, isn’t it. It wants for him to stay so that it can eat him fresh when it's hungry. Nothing else makes sense. 

“Please don’t go,” the beast finally says. “I’m so… so lonely.” 

Its voice sounds so painfully earnest. Jon doesn’t trust it for a moment. It’s another lie, another excuse. Trying to make him feel sorry for it, make him trust it. 

“I promise I’ll come back,” he says slowly, the lie falling unnaturally from his mouth. He’s not used to lying. He’s never been good at it, never been comfortable with it. But now is the time to try it. The beast can’t be intelligent enough to see through him, can it? It’s own bargaining and deceptions are utterly transparent, after all. “I’m visiting my grandmother. She’s waiting for me. I need to go and see her. I’ll bring her back with me and then she can meet you as well, even,” he adds in a fit of inspiration. The beast will have to let him leave now, if it thinks it can get even more food out of the deal. Right? 

“... No,” it says. 

Jon’s heart trips in his chest. “What?” 

“No. You’re lying to me. You’re not going to come back.” 

“I—” 

“And you are hurt, and cold, and wet, and tired, and hungry, and lost, and unprepared. You can’t go back out there. You can’t take care of yourself. You’re going to die, and leave me all alone.” 

Every single thing it’s saying is the truth. He backs up a step, away from the beast, in the direction of the door. He might die out there, but it’s better than staying where he is and dying inside this place at the hands of a monster. 

The beast moves, so quickly that Jon doesn’t get any time to react, and it’s by the door before he can even take another step towards it. 

“You’re not leaving,” it says, and leaves the room with Jon still inside it. 

With a click, the door locks.

Chapter 6: name

Summary:

"Monsters have names?” he asks, incredulous.

The man that Martin has trapped in the master bedroom, is really good at shouting. And banging on the door. It would be upsetting if it weren’t so reassuring to have the ongoing reassurance that he was real, that he hadn’t evaporated into thin air or dropped dead the second Martin took his eyes off of him. 

He sounds really mad, though. In the way people do when they’re actually scared. 

Martin hadn’t meant to scare him. He doesn’t want to scare him. It’s just that he was trying to leave him, and his promises to come back were all so hollow. Martin has lost count of how long he’s been alone, but he isn’t willing to wait so long for the next person to wander by his falling apart home. Chances are that by the time they do, he’ll be nothing more than a snarling, mindless, miserable beast that’d eat them right up. 

This is for the man’s own good as well, he reminds himself. He obviously has no idea how to survive out in nature. He could’ve died of hypothermia, or blindly tripped over a root and broken something in the dark last night. It was sheer luck that he’d found Martin’s home. 

With a heavy thud that makes the door rattle and Martin wince, the man throws something at the door. The nightstand, most likely. He does not sound like he thinks that he’s lucky. 

His fear and his anger makes Martin feel… uncomfortable. Like he’s doing something wrong. But he’d die out there all on his own, doesn’t he see? (Martin would die in here all on his own.) 

Martin just needs to give him time to calm down. It’s going to be okay. There’s another person here now. Everything’s going to be okay. 

He quietly sits there for a long time, eyes closed, listening to the shouting of a stranger like it’s the sweetest lullaby. 

 

Martin falls asleep eventually, lying by the door. He sleeps without dreams. Then he wakes up. For the first moment that he’s awake, he doesn’t understand why he went to sleep in such an uncomfortable place. And then he remembers, and he’s awake. And then he’s panicking, because the man isn’t making noise. Did he disappear? Did he die? Did he run away? Was it all just a dream? 

Martin unlocks the door, the key so small in his large hands. He ducks down through the door as he opens the door, looks. His breath leaves him like a punch to the gut, so deeply relieved that his knees almost wobble. He’s still there. Just asleep on the bed now, all small and curled up on himself over the covers, a faint distressed frown creasing his face even in sleep. Martin drifts over to him without even thinking about it, until he’s close enough to see the subtle rise and fall of his chest. Alive. Alive and real. He isn’t alone. 

He relishes in the giddy, euphoric rush of it for a long, quiet moment. Just listening to the man softly breathe. 

He’s so beautiful. 

This is when the man springs up and pulls a jagged piece of splintered wood--from the broken nightstand, he realizes-- on him, driving it at his face. Martin recoils from it before it can strike, and the man leaps out of the bed, sprinting towards the door. Martin stares for one stunned moment as he darts out of the room, and then something shifts in his brain and he chases. 

The man is small and light, fast and panicked. Martin is large and heavy, builds up speed more slowly. But then he keeps building speed, running on all fours, ripping up carpet and gouging wooden floorboards with his claws as he goes. The man lasts until he reaches the stairs down to the foyer, at which point his foot sinks right through the soft wooden boards. This place is falling apart. The man falls to one knee with a shocked, pained cry, his other leg trapped in wooden splinters. Martin smells blood in the dusty air. A growl is steadily ripping out of his throat. 

He just barely comes to a stop over the man, instead of leaping on him and through him. That would have broken his trapped leg at the very least. He pants and tries to swallow his excited growling. 

The man is making frantic, panicked noises as he desperately trying to pull his leg out of the floor. The jagged splinters rip through the fabric of his pants and dig into the flesh of his leg. 

“Stop,” Martin says, voice still too gravely. He lays a hand on the man’s back, who freezes like a mouse. “You’re hurting your leg even worse.” 

He’d run all that way and so hard on a twisted ankle as well, he realizes. Sharp concern lances the hot fog of a chase away from him more effectively than a bucket of cold water could. 

“Stay still,” he says. “I’m getting you out of there.” 

The man stays still, even as he pants with pain, adrenaline, barely restrained panic. Martin digs his claws into each of the floorboards that are stabbing and trapping him, the backs of his furry hands brushing against his blood, his warmth. I’m touching him, a deliriously, incredulously overjoyed voice in his head says. I’m touching a person. 

He has to crouch close to the man to do this. His hot breath washes over the nape of his neck. He can smell his scent, so warm and human and alive alive alive. So different from the dead air and the smells of basic animals. Martin had tried to keep pets to stave off the loneliness, animals that he caught, instead of eating them. It never worked. They were all terrified of him. 

The man whimpers, a scared noise that’s more breath than actual sound. Martin’s sharp ears catch it anyways. He’s terrified of him too. But he’s a person. He can be convinced that Martin doesn’t want to hurt him. It’s just going to take a bit of time. Demonstrations, evidence. 

Abruptly, with one strong movement Martin tears the floorboards trapping the man away and into pieces. The man yelps and scrambles not to fall into the larger hole. Martin helps push him onto more stable flooring. The man turns around so that his back isn’t to Martin any longer, and pushes himself away with his hands, eyes wide, face ashen. 

He leaves behind a trail of blood. Martin watches his wound keenly. Doesn’t like how quickly that patch of red spreads on his pants, doesn’t like how many large splinters of wood are left behind sticking out of his flesh. He leans forward and grips his ankle so that he’ll stop moving away from him. A protesting noise escapes the man’s throat even as he clenches his jaw shut. 

“We need to get the wood out your wound,” Martin says, feeling oddly calm. He knows what to do. The road forward is suddenly very firm, very solid. 

“Let go of me,” the man says. 

“It’ll get infected,” Martin says. 

“I’ll take care of it myself.” 

The man’s eyes are bright, almost feverish. His hands tremble where they’re pressed against the floor. Martin doubts he has steady hands right now. 

“I insist,” Martin says. “You’re a guest, after all.” 

The man barks out a surprised laugh at that, a sardonic ha! 

Fair. 

The incredulous smile dies on the man’s face as Martin comes closer, looms over him. He reaches down and neatly rips away the fabric around his wound, just above the knee. The man makes a pained noise as it pulls at the large, wooden splinters driven into his leg. Matter of factly, Martin reaches down and plucks one of the splinters away. The man twitches with pain, sucking in a sharp breath of air. Martin reaches down with his other hand and pins the man’s leg down to the ground to keep it still for when he pulls the next splinter out. And then the next, and the next. 

After a while, the man reaches out and grabs at Martin, as if to steady himself, to hold onto anything as Martin pulls out slivers of wood as large as a finger and sometimes longer out of him. He makes choked, bitten off noises of pain. Martin’s chest aches with sympathy, with how much he doesn’t want for him to hurt. It’s okay. He’ll fix this, and then the man will know that he doesn’t have to run from Martin. 

When he gets all of the wood out, the man’s hair is starting to stick to his face with the pain sweat. The pool of blood is not insignificant. Martin rips off more of the fabric of the man’s pants, and ties it around his wound. A pained, ragged noise leaves him at that. 

“There,” Martin says quietly. As gently as he can, he picks the man up in his arms. He’s a large beast and he’s a small man, so it should be easy, but he tries very hard to be careful not to move his leg. The man’s breathing is quick and shallow, unsteady. The breathing of someone in pain, or of someone who’s scared. That starved, lonely part of him won't stop thrilling at touch, person, close. 

Martin carries the man back to the room he had just escaped from, and lays him down on the bed. It almost hurts to pull away, to stop touching him. 

“You should sleep,” he says. “For real, this time.” 

The man looks up at him through half lidded eyes. He looks drawn out, weary and exhausted and weak. Martin hadn’t meant for him to get hurt. He hadn’t done it, but maybe if he hadn’t chased him then-- 

Martin cuts that line off thought off. 

“... You know, you never told me your name,” he says instead. 

“How rude of me,” the man croaks eventually, an absolutely unbelievable amount of dry sarcasm in his words. Martin can’t stop himself from smiling, even though it clearly isn’t the time, and his smiles look bad. But either the man is too tired to flinch at his mouthful of fangs, or he just doesn’t care any longer. 

“I’m Martin,” he volunteers. 

The man blinks slowly, looking actually startled at this, past all of his exhaustion. “Monsters have names?” he asks, incredulous. “Names like Martin?” 

I was a man once, he thinks and doesn’t say. Like you.  

It’s too painful to admit, to say the words out loud. What if his face twists in horror? Or worse, what if he doesn’t believe him? 

“What did you expect?” he asks. “Lucifer? Grog?” 

The man’s lips twitch upwards with amusement, almost against his will. He scowls afterwards, as if to make up for it, as if annoyed at his slip up. 

“What’s yours?” Martin asks, trying to tamp down on the hope in his voice, the need. He feels like if he makes it too clear how much he wants this, that the man won’t answer him. 

“... Jon,” he says, and he blinks slowly. Blinks again, his eyes remaining closed longer this time. The next time he blinks, the eyes stayed closer. He looks lax, limp, his breathing slow. Martin is pretty sure it isn’t a lie this time. Reeking of blood and pain and fear and exhaustion and sweat, he still looks unbearably beautiful. Martin doesn’t want to stop looking at him. 

He brings anything that he thinks could be used as a weapon before he locks Jon inside the bedroom, this time. 

Notes:

The first illustration was done by linecrosser! Check their stuff out!

The second illustration was done by wiesenphilosoph! Check their stuff out!

Chapter 7: better than nothing

Summary:

“I brought you food,” he says, almost shyly. 

Jon wakes up because something touches his face. A light touch, barely there. He blinks his eyes open, brushes it away--

It’s a spider. 

He immediately throws himself out of the bed and onto the floor, and has the breath knocked out of him by sheer pain when he lands on his leg. A choked noise of agony escapes him and he moves to see what he impaled himself on-- but there’s nothing. Just bloodstained fabric tied around his thigh, his pants leg a tattered and torn mess. 

Yesterday comes back to him. He closes his eyes and breathes carefully through the memories, and the very present pain. He opens them in time to see the offending spider skitter off his sheets and onto the floor. He immediately pries his shoe off his foot and viciously flattens it. For ruining his morning, for what is sure to be another terrible day in a long string of terrible days. 

He takes stock of his surroundings. There’s a faded painting on the wall, a moth eaten tapestry, a dismaying amount of cobwebs in the upper, a window with weak sunlight shining through it--

Jon lurches up onto his legs, and then crumples back down again almost immediately as he puts weight on his wounded leg. He hisses swears to himself for a minute, before he tries again, this time limping heavily. Hesitantly, he tries to open the window. For a moment, he thinks that it won’t, that it wasn’t made to do so-- but then all at once he manages to pry it open so hard that he almost falls out of it, almost lets the window panes bounce against the walls and shatter. He breaths shakily, straightening, holding on very tightly to the windowsill. 

He hadn’t been able to see much of the outside of the mansion, last night, in the rain and the dark. It turns out that the surrounding garden is in as much disrepair as the house is. He can see wild roses and overgrown bushes and grass long enough to go up to the knees, and a stray fountain. He can also that it’s about thirty feet down the ground from his window. Looking at the outside of the wall, he sees no convenient climbing ivy, although the mansion is of the style with many unnecessary crenellations and jutting decoration. Crumbling, however… but still perhaps climbable. 

If he hadn’t seriously harmed his leg last night, that is. He curses himself bitterly. His grandmother had always scolded him for being headstrong, reckless and foolish. She had had the right of him, hadn’t she. 

Hesitantly, he closes the window. He doesn’t want for the escape route to occur to the beast as well. Maybe if he’s still alive when his leg is better, he can try it. 

And most likely fall and break his fool neck. He sighs, and limps back to his dusty bed to sit on. 

The beast. Or Martin, as it had claimed. What kind of name is Martin, for a monster? How did it get it? Did it have a, a, some sort of parent? That named it Martin? Why? Or maybe it just… decided to name itself, in the style of humans. It could have even taken the name from a former victim. 

He imagines the monster introducing itself as Jon to the next hapless stranger to wander into its lair. He shudders. He shouldn’t have told it his name. Nothing good could come of it. He… hadn’t been thinking clearly. Dizzy with pain and blood and exhaustion and the fading dregs of adrenaline. Put off kilter by Martin’s smile and gentle chattering. 

The beast’s smile. Christ. 

He hugs himself, arms around his middle, hunching into himself. He doesn’t know what to do. He knows without having to check that the door is locked; the beast would have to be a fool not to do so after Jon’s tragic little escape attempt yesterday, and Jon isn’t lucky enough to get a fool of a captor. It has proven itself to be clever. Clever enough to see through Jon’s lies, at the very least. 

He can’t leave through the door. He can’t leave through the window. He can’t call for help with anyone but the monster hearing him. His leg hurts. He’s hungry. There is nothing he can do to fix any of these things. 

Jon hasn’t cried in a long time, largely because whenever the urge struck him, he’s gone and done something reckless instead. Like agreeing to marry a rich stranger, or throwing together a pack and running away from said stranger without properly thinking it through, or faking sleep and then fleeing a monster in a dark and falling apart mansion with weak floorboards. He doesn’t like feeling helpless. Doing something is better than nothing, even if doing so has, in fact, done nothing but land him in deeper and deeper trouble. Maybe nothing is better than something. 

His jaw is clenched tightly enough to hurt to stop any noises from escaping him in painful hitches from the chest, and he swipes roughly at the hot tears on his face. 

Doing nothing doesn’t feel better at all. Doing nothing feels like garbage. 

Jon doesn’t want to die here. 

The lock clicks open. He inhales sharply and scrubs frantically at his face, and then feels foolish. Why is he embarrassed to be caught crying by a monster? It’s not like being caught by Georgie or grandmother or a customer. It doesn’t mean anything. 

He still keeps his face averted from the door, as if to buy himself some meager time to compose himself. 

The door creaks open and he hears the footfalls of the beast. He feels like they should be heavier, for how large it is. 

“Good morning, Jon,” Martin says in that disarmingly human like voice. It’s made even worse when Jon isn’t looking directly at him, reminding himself of what he-- of what it is. 

He cannot believe that the monster keeping him captive just wished him a good morning. He swallows back a sardonic chuckle. How is he even supposed to respond to that? 

“Good morning,” is apparently the answer, what falls out of his mouth when he opens it. His voice sounds raspy, and he knows that it’s from the suppressed tears. He hopes that Martin-- that the beast doesn’t notice. 

He supposes that it is easy to think of what to say in reply to empty pleasantries. That’s the point of them, a polite and hollow script to follow. He imagines himself having a very well mannered tea party with the beast and has to bite his tongue on a little hysterical bubble of laughter in his chest. 

“I brought you food,” he says, almost shyly. 

Jon looks and-- yes, that is definitely still a monster. He hasn’t seen it in the light of day until now. It had looked frightening in the shadows, like a nightmare. Now it looks like something terrifyingly real instead, so solid in the light. Fur and fang and claw and so, so large. 

It is holding out a fish on a fine porcelain plate to him. It looks burned. 

“I usually just eat them raw,” the beast says, sounding apologetic. “I’ve, um, lost the hang of properly roasting them. But I’ll get better at it, I promise.” 

It isn’t like the beast needs to poison Jon to get him at its mercy. And he is very hungry. 

“Thank you,” he says flatly, and it still feels very surreal to play at polite manners with this thing that held him down and pulled wood out of his flesh last night as he strained and struggled fruitlessly. But that is apparently what it wants to do for now, and Jon supposes that there are worse ways that it could be playing with its food. 

He picks at the fish. It’s hot on his fingers, and is a bit tasteless. But it’s filling, and he eats as much of it as he can. 

It would almost be enjoyable, if the beast wasn’t watching him so intently throughout the entire process. As soon as he sets the plate down, it immediately speaks up. 

“Did you like it?” it asks. 

“It was fine.” 

“Do you feel better now?” 

Annoyingly, he does. A meal really does help with one’s mood, apparently, even if you’re trapped, hurt, and doomed to die horribly in the imminent future. 

“Do you have cutlery?” he asks instead of admitting to that, and only realizes afterwards that this may be interpreted as rude. Presumptuous, demanding. 

Jon was raised to respect manners. And he genuinely, really does try to be polite. It’s just that so often his words come across as brusque and impatient instead. Probably because he’s brusque and impatient. Normally, the worst consequence of this is a dead social life. Right now though, it could be what makes or breaks him having his entrails torn out of his stomach. He freezes. 

“Oh!” the beast says. “I forgot, I’m so sorry. I normally just-- with my hands? God, I forgot all about cutlery being a thing. I’ll get you some next time.” 

Next time. So he’ll live long enough to eat at least one more meal. Well, that’s something. 

He looks over at the beast, only to see that it’s staring down at his wounded leg. He feels suddenly like he’s waving a raw steak in front of a hungry dog, except he’s the steak, and the hungry dog is eight feet tall. Without thinking about it, he grabs at the bedsheet and pulls it so that it covers his leg. 

“Oh, ah,” the beast says, and it averts its gaze awkwardly, looking out of the window instead. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to stare. Just… you need new pants, huh.” 

“I forgot to pack a pair,” he says with perhaps a bit too sharp sarcasm. 

“Right. Right. I’ll just… go, then,” it says. After a moment, it does get up. And then very slowly, it leaves the room, like it very, very much would like to stay instead. Jon watches it go until the door clicks shut. He doesn’t hear retreating footsteps, but the beast is far too quiet on its feet. 

He remembers the terrifying, not quiet at all thud of its pursuit of him last night, chasing him, chasing him. The horror as he fell, the panic as he was trapped. The feel of its hot breath on the back of his neck. The pain. 

Belatedly, he starts to shake. 

“Get ahold of yourself,” he mutters to himself, quiet and angry. He just sits there and shakes, scared and frustrated. 

Jon hates having nothing to do. 

Chapter 8: crying

Summary:

Martin looks at Jon. Jon doesn’t look at Martin. He’s looking away from him, at a painting on the wall as if it is deeply fascinating. It just so happens that this means that Martin can’t see his face. 

Oh fuck, Martin’s interrupting Jon while he’s crying again. Shit. 

It’s been a long time since Martin’s made food for someone else. He feels like he’s doing sort of a bad job, but his access to vegetables and fruit is very limited at this time of year, and the kitchen is in disrepair. There is a greenhouse that he could conceivably grow some greens in, if he just patched up some of the broken window panes and found the seeds in the shed and did the right things. It’d take a few months, but Jon isn’t purely a carnivore like Martin. Martin wants to take proper care of him. 

The kitchen is in disrepair too, dark and dusty. But he thinks he might be able to fix it up some, with the tools available, if he just fumbles around a bit. He’ll be able to stop roasting fish and meat over small campfires in the garden for Jon. 

Martin does all of these things, and it’s invigorating. It’s not being with another person, but it’s doing something for a person, and that’s comfortingly close. It’s doing things that have an actual purpose. It’s doing things that matter. He hasn’t had that in such a long time. 

He does these things, because it’s something to do that makes him happy that isn’t spending time with Jon, because Jon doesn’t want to be near him. Jon is always unfailingly polite when Martin comes to visit him with his meals, but he can tell. He can tell by how stiff and tense he is, how curt and clipped, how he always tries to maintain a distance. 

Martin tries to respect that distance. He does, he really does. He wants for Jon to be as comfortable as possible. He wants for him to relax, to feel safe, to know that Martin isn’t dangerous, that he won’t ever, ever hurt him. All Martin wants to do is help him. (And keep him close.) 

He falls into a pattern, a routine. Try and get the greenhouse set up, try and fix the kitchen, get a meal ready for Jon, give it to him, watch him eat it while feeling every single inch of distance between them intently. Force himself to leave. Rest outside of his room for a few hours, ears pricked, just trying to catch the sound of him pacing, breathing, occasional snatches of indistinct words as he mumbles to himself. Above anything else, Martin loves listening to Jon talk. It’s the sound of a human, a person. And he has a lovely voice. 

He wishes Jon would talk to him more. But Martin wishes for a lot of things, and he’s used to not getting most of them. But this is enough, even if he desperately wants more. He has to remember, just this is amazing, incredible. Just having another living human being in his home is so much. He should be grateful, and he is, he is. It’s just that he can’t stop himself from wanting even more. He wants everything. 

Martin tries to restrain himself, which he hasn’t done for some years now. It feels unfamiliar, a rusty skill that requires so much more effort than it used to, surely. He tries a lot of things. 

Martin tries to sew. Jon needs new pants, after all. The ones he has are bloody and torn and dirty. His shirt isn’t doing so great either. Martin definitely can’t talk, considering the rags that he’s been wearing, but he wants for Jon to have good, clean clothes. He thinks Jon wants that too, and Martin really wants to give Jon something that he actually wants, instead of just dusty locked bedrooms and subpar food made over campfires and frightening company. 

Jon can’t wear any of Martin’s old clothes, since they wouldn’t fit. He would most likely not enjoy any of his mother’s dresses. His father took all of his clothes with him when he left. But some servants left their uniforms behind, and one of them would fit Jon perfectly if Martin can just fix up some moth eaten holes. 

He thinks he can vaguely remember doing this, before. It’s much harder now, with his large, clawed hands. The needle is so tiny, the thread even tinier. But he works on it every single day, along with the greenhouse and the kitchen and the hole in the floor where Jon fell through and hurt himself and some broken windows and some holes in the wall that may not be the result of rotting wood and time but some of Martin’s weaker moments. He fixes things that he could have fixed all along, or even maintained so that they didn’t need fixing in the first place, because there is a reason now. He isn’t alone, and life is better. It isn’t perfect, but it’s something. He’s struggling to solving problems now, but he at least has something to struggle for at all, unlike before. Before, he was just slowly drowning. 

Martin works on it every single day, and eventually he has a white button up shirt and a pair of black slacks for Jon that should fit him. They’re nice and whole, and he’s so proud of himself. 

Martin could give them to Jon while he’s giving Jon one of his meals for the day. Or, he could give them now, and get to have one more visit with Jon today. 

It’s not an imposition, is it, if he’s only doing it to give him a gift. Right? 

He leans his head against the door, and listens. He just doesn’t want to interrupt, is all. If he listens very intently, he can perhaps hear the faint sound of Jon’s breathing. Or he’s imagining it. Martin has imagined some sounds, in these years. But that’s over now, he hopes. There’s no reason to imagine things any longer. There are real sounds in this mansion now that aren’t just him. Jon sounds. His quiet breathing through the door. 

A few minutes pass by, and then Martin knocks on the door, because he remembered after a while that that is the polite thing to do. He had sort of forgotten for a bit, there. He had startled Jon quite badly. But maybe he won’t be so tense, once he accepts that Martin won’t just barge in without knocking. He won’t have to be on guard all of the time. He’ll just have to listen for Martin’s knocking. He wants for Jon to feel safe in his home. He works on it, every single day. 

There’s a sharp intake of breath as Martin opens the door, and Martin belatedly remembers that waiting to hear come in is also an important part of the knocking process. Damn it. 

Too late. The door is open. Martin looks at Jon. Jon doesn’t look at Martin. He’s looking away from him, at a painting on the wall as if it is deeply fascinating. It just so happens that this means that Martin can’t see his face. 

Oh fuck, Martin’s interrupting Jon while he’s crying again. Shit. 

“Hi, Jon,” he says brightly, like he hasn’t noticed anything amiss. 

“Hello,” Jon says thickly, his voice quiet in that way that it is when he’s crying and trying to hide it. Shit, shit, shit. 

The thing is, Jon is a quiet crier, so Martin can’t hear it through the door and just leave Jon to his privacy. Martin doesn’t want to leave him to his privacy. Leaving people when they’re in pain doesn’t feel natural or good at all. But he can tell, he knows, that Jon doesn’t find his presence remotely comforting. That being alone is better than being with him, for Jon. Martin doesn’t want to make Jon miserable. All he wants is to keep him close. He wishes those two things weren’t in conflict, wishes he didn’t have to choose between the two so often. 

Jon is a quiet crier, enough so that Martin doesn’t know that he’s doing it until he walks into the room, but he can always spot it as soon as he does, because Jon is a bad liar. He’s so painfully obvious about it. He averts his entire face from Martin, and speaks with brutally careful forced steadiness. 

Martin has caught Jon crying again. He has only done so twice, even though Jon has been here for a week now. Both of those times were during Jon’s first two days here. It only occurs to him now that that may not have been because Jon adjusted, but because Jon fitted it into Martin’s new routine that he’d been so happy to make. Because Jon got used to Martin visiting his room once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and once in the evening, and adjusted only by timing his crying so that Martin wouldn’t catch him at it any longer. 

“I made you a gift,” he says, and he doesn’t feel any of the pride or hope or happiness that he’d expected to feel at the words only moments ago. He’d been looking forward to this, had been working towards it every single day for a week now, spent hours and hours. He is only now realizing that it doesn’t matter if he’s gotten Jon some clothes. He’s Jon’s captor. Had he forgotten, or something? He had to unlock the door from the outside to get in. 

While Martin has been hoping and working and making a routine and being productive, Jon has been locked inside of here, crying. He is a monster. Had he forgotten? His claws are right there, on his hands. He just has to lick his teeth to feel the sharpness of them. Jon’s suffering is his happiness. 

He doesn’t feel happy now, though. 

“That’s nice,” Jon says, still not looking at him, as if that’s not strange or suspicious at all. Martin walks forward and drapes the shirt and pants on the bed. 

“They’re new clothes. Without, you know, tears and blood on them… I could probably wash and fix the stuff that you’re wearing now, now that you can switch between outfits.” 

“Thank you,” Jon says politely, not looking at the clothes, not sounding particularly grateful. Because he would rather be left alone than have to be with Martin. 

About a year after his mother had died, the sharp emptiness inside of himself had dulled. It had gone from being a tearing blade lodged inside his chest to an all consuming, overwhelming fog. Something he could drown in, something that he could get lost in, something that he could live in. Not a small aching thing inside of himself, but something bigger than himself that he inhabited. Cold is sharp and hurts at first, but if you’re cold enough for long enough, it stops feeling like anything at all. Maybe it's not good news when you stop shaking from the cold, but it is a relief. The pain is gone when you’re numb. 

Jon is here, and Martin is still alone. It’s just that it hurts him now, instead of numbing him. The loneliness has shrunk enough to be painful again. 

He doesn’t want to be alone. He doesn’t want for Jon to hate him. He doesn’t want for Jon to be miserable. Why do these things have to be in conflict? 

“How’s your leg?” he asks. 

“It is healing well.” 

“You haven’t noticed any sign of infection?” 

“No.” 

“It doesn’t hurt?” 

“Not as long as I don’t put any weight on it.” 

Martin hears Jon pacing, sometimes. Putting weight on it. Swearing to himself. 

Martin has been happily productive for the last week, and Jon has been crying inside of his room. 

No, be honest. His cell. His cell with a very nice bed and a window and an adjoining bathroom, that he is never allowed to leave. 

Martin gets an idea. 

“... Do you want to go on a walk?” he asks, and Jon finally, finally looks at him. He whips his head around to look at him, forgetting to hide his face. His eyes are rimmed with red, still a little shiny, his eyelashes dark with shed tears. He looks very wide eyed, very intense. 

“Yes,” he says. He clears his throat. “I mean, yes, that would be good.” 

“Just inside of the mansion,” Martin hurries to add. “And perhaps in the gardens.” 

“Yes,” he says again, eager. 

“And,” Martin says, adding the part that isn’t for Jon but for himself, because he is just lonely enough for it to hurt, “you’ll have to lean on me. Because you shouldn’t put any weight on your leg.” 

“... Yes,” Jon says, much less enthusiastically this time. “Of course. Naturally.” 

Martin watches the sinking realization that he won’t be able to use this as an attempt to escape wash over his face. He watches him set his expression in stubbornness, very visibly deciding to keep his eyes peeled for future, better opportunities. 

Jon doesn’t even need to talk to be a bad liar. It’s sort of fascinating. 

“But first, put on your new clothes,” Martin says, because he has been working on patching up that outfit for a week and he was rather proud of himself this morning and he still wants to see Jon wear it. 

Jon looks down at the clothes for the first time, rather critically. “Fine,” he says, apparently finding them to be tolerable. 

They both just sit there for a while, looking at each other expectantly. 

“Not while you’re looking,” Jon says eventually, sounding angry. 

“Oh! Right, sorry, I forgot--” 

“You forgot that that was a thing that humans do. I understand,” he says impatiently, and waves at Martin in a shooing motion. For a moment, Martin is frozen with the realization that he was just anticipated, understood. That Jon recognized a habit in him, a trend. He hasn’t felt quite so solid since the last time his mother looked at him, as if he isn’t entirely real unless he’s being observed. He is known, because he is interacting with another person. He is someone to someone. He is not a forgotten ghost trapped in a crumbling mansion. He has never felt so acutely seen in his life. 

Martin hurries out of the room because Jon just managed to overwhelm him with one little innocent sentence. When Jon comes out, he does not notice if Martin had taken the moment to maybe cry a little, because Martin is a good liar. Jon is wearing the clothes that Martin fixed for him, and they fit perfectly. He did a good job. He helped in some small way. (Even though he is the reason that Jon is miserable in the first place.) 

(You’ve made me suffer, his mother had spat at him. He had just wanted to help her. And not be alone in a home that suddenly felt so hollow, without his father and all of the servants in it.) 

Jon is excitedly looking around the tarnished hallway as if is entirely new, unexplored ground, and perhaps it is, for him. He had been unconscious the first time Martin had carried him up here, and then he’d been running in a blind panic, and then squeezing his eyes shut with pain as Martin carried him back a second time. This is the first time Jon has gotten to see this hallway while not either terrified, in pain, or unconscious. 

It’s not a particularly exciting hallway. 

Martin holds his arm out for Jon. After a long, badly hidden moment of apprehension, Jon very lightly takes it. Their heights are disparate enough that it isn’t perfectly comfortable. Maybe if he was still a human, but-- it’s no use thinking about that. It’s a bad path to walk down, if only I was still a human. Bad and pointless. It’s never going to happen. He knows that, which is what makes it such a miserable path. 

Jon is not comfortable, but he is willingly touching him. There’s a part of Martin’s mind that is purely dedicated to just marveling over that, as he fills the air and Jon’s silence with nervous chatter. 

Martin walks slowly so that Jon can limp and lean on Martin as he looks excitedly around the mansion that they slowly walk through, and he looks eager and bright eyed and interested, engaged. This is probably the most exciting thing that has happened to him since his injury, that hasn’t just been either dread or nightmares. A leisurely walk through an empty mansion, exciting. 

Martin has not been good to Jon. He’s been trying, but he’s forgotten a lot about what it’s like to be a human. He needs to be better. And he can do this for him, at the very least. He can take Jon on a walk every single day. 

It’s not like Jon will be able to run away from him, after all.

Chapter 9: the Door

Summary:

It doesn’t occur to him for the first two weeks to wonder about what has happened to the original owners of this mansion.

It doesn’t occur to him for the first two weeks to wonder about what has happened to the original owners of this mansion. Perhaps he only starts to do so in the first place because he starts to see traces of them once Martin starts taking him out on daily walks, like he’s a dog that needs an airing. A wedding portrait of a small woman with red hair and a tall, large man with brown hair and a beard. Another painting, but now the woman is holding a swaddled infant in her arms. 

Wherever they are now, they aren’t here. And they left all their belongings behind, left the windows unboarded, the curtains drawn open. A monster lives in their abandoned home now. 

It makes Jon a little bit nauseous to think about the clear implications there. He wishes that he hadn’t learned what their faces looked like. Wishes that he didn’t know that there had been a child. 

He wants to demand the beast tell him what exactly he had done to the family that used to live in what is now its lair, but he holds his tongue. He has only just earned the privilege of leaving his room. He doesn’t want to lose it so soon over a question with such an unpleasantly obvious answer. 

The beast takes Jon on a walk once a day, and he tries not to look like he isn’t using all of his focus to memorize the layout every time he does so. To try and remember every door and window, every possibly exit and deadend. He will try and escape again. He’ll be more prepared, this time. He’ll succeed. He’ll be patient, even as he jolts awake every night at the slightest noise, convinced that the beast is done waiting now, is going to end this farce and eat him. 

It is on the third day that Jon is allowed to leave his room that he notices the Door. It deserves a capital D, because it is unique in that it is the only room that is… barricaded. There is a chaise lounge, a grandfather clock, and various other furniture sloppily piled up in front of it. They walk straight past it, without Martin pausing in his slow pace that allows for Jon with his limp to keep up. On the fourth day they walk past it again, and Jon wonders very, very curiously what could possibly be behind it, why Martin would feel the need to barricade that specific Door above all others. On the fifth, he decides that he has to know, and asks him as casually as he possibly can. 

“What’s in that room?” he asks, glancing at the Door as they pass it and then away, as if it doesn’t interest him terribly much. 

Martin looks at the Door and the small pile of furniture in front of it as if he honestly hadn’t noticed it until now, which is utterly ridiculous. 

“Oh,” Martin says, and furrows his brow, as if thinking very hard. “Hmm… what was in that room now again?” 

Jon stares at him, astonished and spurned in equal measure. “You mean you don’t know?” he says, exasperated and disparaging. “Aren’t you the one who barricaded the place? Or do you mean to tell me that it was just like that when you found it?” 

He bites his tongue as he realizes that that last question just came dangerously close to broaching the subject of how the beast obtained this dusty mansion as its lair in the first place. The idea that it just wandered in from the forest and found it like this, all conveniently nice and empty is… too comforting to be true. 

“Well,” it says sheepishly, and it truly is surreal to see such a large monster wear ‘sheepish’ so naturally, “it’s more like I just don’t remember. It’s, it’s been a while since I was in there. Or even thought about that room. I think… I think it upset me?” 

It upset him, and so he barricaded the Door and didn’t enter the room or even think of it, to the point that he entirely forgot what was behind it in the first place. Unless he’s lying to Jon, of course. 

A curiosity that had been a simmering pot until now sparks and becomes something far more attention grabbing. His mind runs wild with what could possibly be behind that Door. Naturally, most of them are terribly ominous. 

… the bones of the family that used to live here, picked clean of all meat… 

“Let’s move on,” the beast says, and it tugs gently at Jon’s arm to get him moving again. That is when Jon realizes that he hadn’t really noticed that he had been holding onto the beast’s arm the whole while. 

It is one of the beast’s prerequisites, for letting Jon out of his room. The farce is that it is to help Jon keep his footing even with his injury, but it is very clear to him that it is no more than a shackle. A security measure. He had forced himself to endure it for the sake of gathering information, for seeing the layout of the mansion, for lowering the beast’s guard with good behavior and perhaps gain even more slack on his leash in the future. He had forced himself to take the beast’s arm and not to let go, even as his heart raced and he was hyper aware of how close it was to him. 

He had forced himself to do it, and he had endured. It has only been five days of these walks, and he already doesn’t need to force himself, doesn’t need to endure in tense, silent fear. He can forget, even as he touches it. He can let it fall to the back of his mind, like it’s nothing, like it isn’t dangerous at all. 

The only reason he isn’t in his room is because the beast gets to stay close to him to make sure that he can’t run away. Because he is being kept here against his will. As some sort of strange, sadistic game that he doesn’t understand the rules of, because the beast never saw fit to share them with him, because he is meant to lose the game and die, just like the people who used to live in this mansion died. They’re dead, and anything else that Jon might try to tell himself are just pretty lies to comfort himself in his weaker moments. His leg throbs painfully. 

There is a boarded up Door with some ominous secret lurking behind it, and the people who should be living here are gone, and Jon is a prisoner. He is trapped here with a monster. He shouldn’t let himself forget that for even a moment, oh so generously granted walks or not. His life depends on it. 

“Watch your step,” the beast says fussily, like it cares about him being hurt. As if Jon’s lack of mobility isn’t a nice little stroke of good luck for it. “The floorboards are weak here, because of the hole in the ceiling.” 

He had been thinking of the beast as a he, earlier. As Martin. 

Jon makes a decision: he needs to get out of here, and as quickly as possible. Risks be damned. 

“I’ll be careful,” he lies.

Chapter 10: climb

Summary:

Jon is the only person Martin has seen in years, the only person he’ll most likely ever see in his life again, and isn’t it just so fortunate that what’s good for Jon is for Martin to keep him here, no matter what he wants? 

Martin knows just how precious Jon is. He knows. He’s been trapped here for so many years that he’s lost count, and in all that time only one human has wandered into his home. Only one. Jon. He can’t afford to lose him. There might never be another in his lifetime. Or at least, not as long as he manages to hold onto what little humanity he has left. 

He knows that Jon doesn’t want to be here, is terrified of him, but it’s not like he has the skill to survive in the wilderness on his own, does he? He already almost died there once, shivering and lost in a storm. And it’s not like Martin can follow him out into the forest to escort him back to his home, either. He’s trapped here by his mum’s curse. There is no way for him to contact anyone who isn’t magically trapped here to help Jon safely leave. Keeping him here is simply the only choice available to him that doesn’t see him dead, whether he wants to accept that reality or not. He’s safe with Martin. He’ll be as gentle and kind with him as he can be, and eventually Jon will stop being so scared of him and then he won’t be so miserable to be here any longer. He’ll just be safe. With him. 

Jon is the only person Martin has seen in years, the only person he’ll most likely ever see in his life again, and isn’t it just so fortunate that what’s good for Jon is for Martin to keep him here, no matter what he wants? 

He hears that sharp, pointed question in his mum’s voice. 

He’d never used to throw tantrums when he was upset, before when he wasn’t a monster. He didn’t break things. He just stuttered and went quiet and apologetic, disappeared out of sight for a while and tried to do some chores to make up for it. Smiled like nothing had happened afterwards, bright and cheery and friendly, like if he did it convincingly enough then he could convince them that they hadn’t been mad at him at all, it hadn’t been serious, they could just go ahead and forget about the whole thing already. 

Now, he rips up a solid patch of the roses growing over where he buried his mum, clawing them up with large swipes of his claws, snarling at the ground as if she can hear him.  Like a beast. 

“It’s true!” he shouts down where he’s certain, fairly certain, almost entirely sure that he buried his mum years ago. “What am I supposed to do!? Send him out there with no directions, no experience, no help? He’d die! I am keeping him safe. I am helping him. You’re just-- you’re twisting everything, making it sound as awful as possible!” 

He’s shouting at a patch of dirt like it can answer him. Old habits. Tired shame washes over him. 

Afterwards, he smooths out the earth that he’d torn up. Like tidying up a broken plate. Clean away the mess, and it’s almost like it never happened. 

Such a good liar, his mum’s voice sneers, mock cooing. 

He ignores it. He shouldn’t listen to voices in his head anyways. He doesn’t need to, any longer. He’s not alone anymore. Jon’s here. 

It isn’t meal time, or the time of day when Martin comes to take Jon on a walk. He doesn’t have an excuse to go see him, except for how he needs to see him right now, immediately, or else he’s going to break something. And he’s been trying so hard to fix the place up, so that there aren’t any rotten floorboards for Jon to fall through while they’re walking, nothing broken or sharp or dangerous to hurt him. He’s been trying as best as he can with what he has available to him. It would be a shame to break anything. Now that Jon’s here. 

He doesn’t really like seeing Jon, even as it makes him desperately glad. They’re never really pleasant interactions. At best, they’re tense affairs, Jon quiet and curt and drawn in on himself while Martin determinedly acts like nothing is amiss. At worst, Jon throws furniture at him, makes a run for it, and gets injured in the process. He doesn’t like seeing Jon, because Jon hates seeing Martin. But there’s a part of him that can’t help but hope that if maybe he just keeps seeing Jon then that fear will wear off, like exposure therapy, like forcing yourself to pet a large, intimidating looking dog over and over again until the certainty that it won’t attack you finally sinks into your bones. 

Martin wants to see Jon more than he wants to breathe, even though he has no excuse to do so at this moment. Which means that Jon won’t be expecting him. Which means that he’ll scare and startle him, yes, but… Martin will also be able to check if Jon is still crying when he thinks Martin won’t be there to see. He’ll be able to see if the walks are helping or not, whether or not Jon’s adjusting yet. 

He’s just worried about him. He’s just trying to take care of him. But there is, perhaps, a tiny bit of self flagellation there, in making himself see the upset that he’s causing in his captive with his own eyes, instead of conveniently avoiding it. 

Martin’s doing what’s necessary, but that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t feel bad about it. 

 

Jon tries to think of how long it has been since he injured his leg, and realizes that at some point he’s lost track of the days. There’s nothing to differentiate them, here. It’s like the mansion is it’s own little world, isolated and cut off from all other human contact, he and the beast the only two inhabitants. The days smear into one another in a fugue of boredom and terror and frustration. 

He decides that it has been more or less two weeks since he wounded his leg. His twisted ankle is more or less alright, but the deeper injuries from the rotting, stabbing floorboards… He experimentally tries to put all of his weight on his wounded leg, and has to sit down and just carefully breathe for a while until he doesn’t feel like he’s about to be sick from the pain any longer. 

But it’s not as bad as it had been. Considering the circumstances, it’s good enough. It has to be. 

He opens the window and looks down. It’s a long way down to the ground, enough to make his stomach swoop with vertigo as he leans out of the window to look. His hand clenches down on the windowsill, as if to save himself from tipping over and falling. He makes that hand let go, though. The intention is to go through the window on purpose, after all. It’s risky, very risky but… he might just manage it, if he tries very hard and is as careful as he can be. He just has to be slow, meticulous. Not let his grip slip. Not let the pain from his leg overwhelm him. He just has to keep a firm hold on the jutting stone decorations on the outside wall and steadily inch his way downwards. He just has to not fall. 

He can do that, can’t he? It’s such a small, simple thing. And he has to do it. His freedom depends on it. His life. 

He sucks in a deep breath, and painstakingly swings his bad leg over the ledge of the window so that he’s straddling the sill. The wind blows, a light, cold breeze that couldn’t possibly be strong enough to be responsible for knocking him off the wall, but it’s intimidating feeling it ruffle his clothes and hair. He picks up his other leg, and moves so that he’s sitting on the ledge instead of straddling it. 

He can’t stop himself from looking down again. It’s so far to the ground that it feels like that vast, empty distance is almost pulling at him, like the current of a river, trying to drag him down into freefall. His heart is in his throat. 

But he can’t sit here, frozen forever. He’s wasting precious time before the beast comes to visit him, to see that he’s behaving and hasn’t escaped somehow. That urgency is enough to cut through the cold, paralyzing fear and make him move, albeit with slow, glacial caution. 

He needs to do this. It’s either trying to escape and probably dying, or staying put and definitely dying. That isn’t a choice at all. He has to. 

Terrified, but quietly burning with icy determination, Jon starts to climb downwards.

Chapter 11: Don't fall

Summary:

Upwards, Jon hears a noise. Like a door opening. He inhales sharply, and then doesn’t exhale. Tries to press himself flatter against the wall than he already is, fails. Shakes, grits his teeth. His leg hurts so much that it brings tears to his eyes.

The beast is in his room.

Notes:

The illustration in this chapter was done by wiesenphilosoph!/ Check their stuff out!

Jon had not approached his latest escape attempt frivolously. He had known that it would be deeply dangerous. He had known that it would be hard. He had accepted it. He had kept it in mind. He had been scared as hell. He hadn’t been taking it lightly. 

Somehow, though, he still hadn’t been braced for just how awful it would be. He’s a significant length away from the window he’d climbed out of now, enough so that he can’t just change his mind. Which is good, because he needs to do this. But it’s cold. He hadn’t really stopped to consider how cold it was before he made the decision to do this. While he was sitting at the windowsill, it hadn’t seemed like a factor. It isn’t that cold, after all. It’s still fall, not winter yet. But he’s halfway down the wall now, and he’s desperately clinging to far too shallow, crumbling handholds and his fingers feel numb. 

Don’t fall. 

He desperately wants to look and see how far he has left to go to the ground, how much longer until he can just safely let go and fall the rest of the distance, because this is horrid. But his position is so precarious that he can’t even risk the movement of turning his head. It’s unnecessary movement, anyways. All that matters is keeping his grip and steadily inching his way downwards. 

Don’t fall. 

His leg hurts so much it’s difficult to breathe. He can’t afford to shift an inch to try and relieve the pain. But that’s fine. That’s okay. Breathing feels dangerous right now anyways. The rise and fall of his chest might be enough to push him down, at this point. Best to keep his breathing shallow. 

Don’t fall-- 

Upwards, Jon hears a noise. Like a door opening. He inhales sharply, and then doesn’t exhale. Tries to press himself flatter against the wall than he already is, fails. Shakes, grits his teeth. His leg hurts so much that it brings tears to his eyes. 

The beast is in his room. Had he really spent such a long time climbing such a small part of the wall? He knows he’s been moving slowly, but-- 

“No,” the beast says, and Jon barely hears the word beneath the whistling of the wind, the distance, and the ragged punched-gut weakness in the beast’s voice. 

It almost sounds vulnerable. 

But then there’s a loud crash from what used to be his room. If he weren’t so frozen with terror, he would have flinched at the noise. His mind scrambles to conjure what it could have possibly done to make such a deafening noise, and he can only picture the beast flipping over the entire heavy, solid four poster bed, as if to find Jon hiding underneath it. 

“No,” it says again, louder, more urgently. He can hear its footsteps thudding towards the small adjoining bathroom to the bedroom, the door slamming open against the wall, even though Jon is fairly certain that he left the door ajar. 

His heartbeat is so, so loud in his ears. The beast is realizing that he isn’t where he’s supposed to be, that he’s gone. It’s getting angry. 

Jon has not made the beast angry before, even if he’s imagined it many, many times by this point. It sounds just as horrible as he’d thought it would. He cannot let himself be found. 

The beast roars. Jon desperately tries not to make any noise. His leg hurts. He can’t feel his fingers. He-- 

The jutting piece of decoration that his right hand is clutching at snaps off all at once, and he screams as his stomach plummets with mindless panic as he just barely avoids losing his last remaining grip on the wall, and pain as a significant portion of his weight falls on his left hand, his legs-- his injured leg. He bites it off as quickly as he can, snapping his mouth shut so abruptly that his teeth painfully clack. He squeezes his eyes shut, every muscle locked up with dread at the thought of his remaining handhold and footholds crumbling underneath his total weight. 

The crashing and banging from up above had been frightening. The sudden silence is worse. 

“Oh my god,” the beast finally says, and Jon knows without looking up that it’s looking down at him from the window now. It heard him. It’s looking at him. It found him. 

It’s over. He failed. Even if he manages to make the rest of the way down to the ground, all the beast will have to do is wait for him down there. All because he slipped up and screamed. Jon presses his forehead against the cold stone of the wall, shaking with the deepest frustration he’s ever felt in his life. 

“Jon,” the beast says, and it sounds tense now. Scared, almost, except Jon isn’t going to fall for that. He’d heard it, earlier. It’s mad. It’s mad, and there’s nothing Jon can do about it. 

He’s so tired of this, of trying every little desperate, risky thing he can think of, and it failing over and over again. His grandmother gets sick, so he agrees to a reckless marriage to a relative stranger to get her what she needs. She dies before the year is over anyways. He really, genuinely tries to have an agreeable, tolerable relationship with said stranger. His fiance enjoys him best when he’s afraid. He runs away from his fiance. He runs away to this. A new trap, with an inevitable death instead of a miserable life as his lot. He tries to run away, again and again. 

He fails, and he makes the monster furious in the process. 

“Jon,” the beast says again, voice tight with tension. “Can you climb back up?” 

He doesn’t want to climb back up. He’s lost track of the distance that he has left, but he’s fairly certain that it’ll take him longer to climb down than up. And the beast will be even angrier if he ignores it, and it’ll all be for nothing anyways. It just has to go down and wait for him to reach it. It’s pointless, doing anything but what it says. But he doesn’t want to climb back up. He spent so long to get as far as he did, it hurt so much. And the beast is waiting for him there, and he doesn’t want to get within arms reach of it right now. He held its arm yesterday as they walked through the mansion, but that wasn’t immediately after it caught him trying to escape again. It was calm, yesterday. It isn’t calm now. 

Climbing down won’t do anything but make his situation worse, and climbing up is… it’s the same. He’s barely holding on and his hands hurt and his leg hurts and he feels like he’s been on the verge of falling for the last fifteen minutes now, but at least the beast can’t touch him where he is. 

It isn’t anywhere close to a sustainable answer, but he freezes where he is nonetheless. It’s hardly even a decision. His body refuses to move. 

“Okay,” the beast says, like Jon just answered it. “Okay, okay, okay… Just, just stay where you are. I’ll-- I’ll take care of this.” 

There’s a noise so strange that he can’t put an image to it in his head. It repeats. Again. Again. It gets closer. Slowly, ever so slowly, he tilts his head up enough to look. 

The beast is climbing down towards him. Instead of relying on the same shallow handholds that Jon had had to use, it’s digging its claws into the stone with sheer strength, rubble clattering down across the face of the wall. 

This might as well happen, is the only thought he can muster. 

The beast continues to descent, much more quickly and smoothly than he had managed in half the amount of time that it uses. Jon is still frozen exactly where he is. Eventually, it reaches him, its fingers buried into the stone right next to him. He can feel its body warmth. He can’t move. 

“Don’t let go until I say it’s okay,” the beast says, voice low and steady, like it’s talking to a cornered animal. It pries one of its hands out of the stone, and fine cracks web out from its remaining handhold as it takes all of its weight. It curls its now free arm around Jon’s side. It’s arm is large enough that it can completely wrap around his ribs. 

“Now,” it says. With a little tug, it dislodges Jon’s tight, desperate grip from the wall like it’s nothing, and he unfreezes with a yelp, convinced that he’s going to fall, he’s going to fall. 

He’s not falling. He’s breathing quick and loud like he is, but he isn’t. He opens his eyes, sees brown fur. He’s holding tightly onto the beast now, the beast having tucked him into its side. The beast is holding him securely, keeping its grip on the wall with one hand, seemingly effortless. 

It is such a dizzying relief to get his weight off of his hurt leg that he almost goes limp in the beast’s arm, but no, no. If he loosens his arms around its neck then the only thing keeping him from falling will be the beast’s one arm. 

“Hold on tight,” it says, and Jon can hear the way its voice rumbles in its chest with the way his ear is pressed up against its chest. 

After the terrifying cold wind, the beast is so, so warm. 

It starts climbing back up. Jon’s descent had been slow, painstaking, painful. The ascent requires zero effort from him, except to wrap his arms that feel shaky with exhaustion around the beast’s thick neck and keep them there. And it is much, much faster by comparison. In what feels like only a couple of minutes, the beast is climbing through the window and into the room. Carefully, it sets Jon down on his feet on the floor. 

Jon immediately crumples to his knees with a small, pained sound from the back of his throat. 

“Oh!” the beast says, and crouches down by him. “Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?” 

“My leg,” he gets out from between grit teeth. 

“Your-- oh god, your leg. Jon, why-- why would you do something like that!?” 

“Why would I want to escape?” he bites out. In the wake of all the terror, he feels on edge. The beast should have done something to him by now, but it’s still staying its hand for some reason and it’s driving him crazy, waiting for it. It has to happen eventually. He feels like he’s been bracing himself for a blow that he knows is going to come, but not when, for weeks now. 

It flinches, like Jon’s words mean anything. Like he can impact or change the situation he’s in in any significant way at all. 

“I… that was really dangerous. If you’d lost your grip--” 

“I wasn’t going to lose my grip,” he lies. He looks away to the side. He sees the broken remains of the bed. The beast had turned it over so violently that it’s pieces are lying by the wall now. His heart goes cold at the sight of it. He looks at the bathroom door, and it stands crooked on its hinges. 

“I was… I panicked,” the beast says weakly. 

All at once, Jon is done with this game. Running away isn’t an option. Lying his way out of this place isn’t an option. Fighting his way out of this clearly isn’t an option. There is no world in which he wins this, in which he gets out alive. He’s tired of being scared and bored and trapped and waiting for his death. If he can’t live, then he’ll at least die while he’s braced for it. 

“Enough!” he shouts, right into the beast’s face, looking it in its beady, dark eyes. It recoils from him, and he doesn’t let it. Without even thinking about it, he grabs at one of its jutting tusks and reels it back into his face. It would be impossible for Jon to move it if it just braced itself, but it looks shocked. Wide eyed, ears flicked back against its inhuman skull. 

“You can just give up this idiotic little facade of being my kind caretaker and not the monster that’s keeping me trapped here for your own amusement. We’re the only two people here. I know you’re going to kill me eventually, and so do you. You’re not fooling anyone, so just stop! It’s pointless!” 

“I, you, I don’t--” the beast stutters. 

Jon shakes its head by its tusk, which he’s still holding tightly with one hand. He has to reach up to be able to grasp it, the beast is so much taller than him even when they’re both sitting on the floor. 

“Don’t!” he barks. “Stop lying to me. It’s the least you could do--” 

His voice breaks, a crack of weakness in the fury and fumes that he’s riding on, and he has to stop for a moment to breathe, regain his momentum. The beast takes the opportunity to speak for itself. 

“Jon,” it says, and its voice sounds raw and fragile and tired and how dare it sound like that? “I’m not… I really, really don’t want to hurt you. I swear. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” 

He bristles. “Oh? Then what happened to the people who used to live here?” he asks sharply. 

The beast goes tense, like he’d just slapped it out of nowhere. “What?” 

“The people who used to live here. This clearly once used to belong to a human family, and not so many years ago, or else the place would be completely ruined. Did you politely ask them to leave? Did you legally purchase the land from them? Or did you kill them--” 

His voice starts to rise from seething accusations back to furious shouting, and the beast shakes its head, dislodging his hand from its tusk. 

“No, no, no, no,” it says. “You’ve got it all wrong, I, I didn’t. He left us--” 

“A lone man lived here? In this large of a mansion? This place would require at least a dozen servants, and I’ve seen the paintings on the wall. There was a family! There was--” a boy, there was a child, you monster. 

“He took all of the servants with him,” the beast says tightly, interrupting him. “And he never came back. It was just, it was just me and mum left. And then she got sick and…” 

The beast’s breath hitches in a sob. Jon stills, shocked. 

It hadn’t even occurred to him that a monster can cry. 

The beast reaches up to its face and wipes roughly at its eyes. “My mum died and… and she left me like this… and now I c-- can’t leave.”

The beast is a large thing, bigger than any human being could possibly be. It’s covered in brown fur, has hooves on the ends of its feet, and claws on the ends of its hands. Its tusks are as sharp as its messy, jagged fangs, and its head is that of a boar. It would look more natural on all fours than towering on its two legs. 

This cannot possibly have once been a human. It doesn’t make sense. No one could be twisted and warped to such a nightmarish degree. 

“She left you like this?” he asks, and his voice comes out far too soft, all of his rage and vitriol dashed and gone. 

The beast’s shoulders shudder, as if with the force of bitten back noises of anguish. It nods. 

“She,” the beast says, and has to stop to take a deep breath. “She was m--mad at me so she… she cursed me. And she didn’t undo it before she died.” 

Jon, stunned, doesn’t know what to say in response. What could he possibly say? 

After a long moment of silence filled with nothing but Jon staring and the beast trying to control its breathing, it abruptly gets up onto its hooves. Taken off guard by the sudden movement, Jon flinches away from it. The beast momentarily freezes at the motion, shoulders curling inwards. And then it walks over towards the window and firmly closes it. And then it snaps the bronze handle off with a quick and simple tug from a single one of its hands. 

“Don’t do that again,” it says. “Please.” 

And then the beast leaves. It locks the door behind it, like always. 

Chapter 12: open

Summary:

He wants to hide away from Jon for the rest of the day, which he knows is wrong. He’s the one that brings him his food.

He wants to hide away from Jon for the rest of the day, which he knows is wrong. He’s the one that brings him his food. He can’t starve him just because he’s feeling-- fragile and too seen. Hadn’t he wanted to feel seen, after no one laying eyes on him for years? Isn’t it a good thing that Jon knows more about him, knows that he was once a human? 

For some reason, it doesn’t feel like that. He feels flayed open, all of his weaknesses left bare to poke at. Is Jon going to press down on the bruises the next time he sees him? Sharp words are pretty much the only thing Martin has left him. He hadn’t anticipated just how sharp Jon could make them. He hadn’t been braced for it. 

He’s being-- he’s wrong. After everything Martin’s done to him, the least he deserves is to get to shout at him as harshly as he wishes. He scared him witless enough to try and climb out of the window.  

He makes himself ready Jon’s last meal of the day, and slinks quietly up the stairs, down the hall, towards the door to Jon’s bedroom. 

Whose bedroom had that been, before? His? Mum and dads? Or was it simply a guest room? He can’t remember. There are so many things that he can’t remember, things that had seemed so trivial and matter of fact that it hadn’t even occurred to him that he could lose that knowledge, that he had to make an active effort to cling onto it if he wanted to keep it. He just picked it for Jon because there weren’t any holes in the roof, no obvious flaws. He really should’ve stopped to consider that Jon would be desperate enough to use an escape route that would almost certainly mean his death. 

Tentatively, he knocks. 

And he waits. You’re supposed to wait after you’ve knocked, he’s remembered. 

He waits for a long while. He wonders if maybe the sound was too quiet, if Jon’s asleep, or-- or maybe he won’t call for him to come inside at all. 

Jon needs to eat. He needs to eat. But Martin doesn’t want to come into his room if Jon doesn’t want him there. And of course he doesn’t want him there--

“Come in,” Jon softly calls, and he startles and then tries to open the door slowly, in a very unthreatening manner that hopefully won’t alarm him. 

He walks in and says, “Oh.” 

Jon had been trying to sleep, he can see from the way he’s sitting up with slightly mussed hair and the blankets pooled into his lap. He’d had to drag the mattress out of the broken wood frame against the wall towards the middle of the floor. The door to the bathroom still hangs jagged and broken. 

Yes, he’d done that too, hadn’t he. He’d broken Jon’s bed and his door in his frantic search for him, while Jon had been quietly hiding like a terrified mouse, hanging onto his grip on the wall by the edge of his fingers. At the time, he’d been overcome with a terrible conviction that Jon had just-- vanished into thin air, like a fairy, or a dream. It’s a bad dream that he has a lot, now that he has something to lose again. 

Someone to lose again, he means. 

He’d broken Jon’s bed and then just left him to sleep in the wreckage. His heart hurts. 

“Hello,” Jon says, and Martin has no idea what his tone even is. Is he tense, scared? Angry, contemptful? Disgusted, horrified? 

He’s looking at Martin very intently, like he can peel the layers of fur and muscle and fat away with his sight alone to find the human buried deep within. Martin had thought that once too, delirious and desperate, that his real self was just underneath all of the monster and he just had to get past it to be free. 

That hadn’t worked out. He’d gotten over the idea, eventually. This is the new real him, now. Just because he doesn’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth. In fact, him not liking it makes it far likelier to be true. That’s just how life works. 

“Hi,” Martin says, and then, “Sorry.” 

Sorry for breaking everything and trapping him and terrifying him and for still insisting on being here. 

But Jon needs food. 

(The only reason he can’t get it for himself is Martin.) 

“I brought you,” he says, and then he just lifts up the tray he’s holding in demonstration. He’d remembered plates and cutlery and a glass and everything. He found some seasoning deep in a cupboard, untouched by time in their sealed jars. He hopes he didn’t overdo it or anything, it’s been a long time since he’s eaten anything but fresh meat. He hopes this makes the meal better for Jon. 

“... Thank you,” Jon says, not with barely veiled resentment, but caution, as if he doesn’t know where it’s safe to tread. 

Jon thanking him, at all, ever, for anything really does feel like too much. 

“You don’t have to be nice to me,” he says all in a rush, even though Jon being nice to him, liking him is sort of a wild, fevered fantasy of his. Jon feeling forced to be nice to him isn’t pleasant at all, anyways. It makes him feel even more monstrous than he already is. “If you don’t want to--” of course he doesn’t want to, “--you know what, I’ll just leave this here.” 

He sort of always wants to be closer to Jon, to be looking at him, talking to him, touching him, reassuring himself over and over again that see, he’s not alone any longer, there’s someone else here and they’re real. But at the same time, drawing closer to Jon and watching him go tense and badly try not to give it away sounds unbearable right now. He’s scared him enough for one day, he can’t stand to do it more. He crouches down to set down the tray on the floor and turns to leave--

“Wait!” Jon says. 

Martin freezes. He turns around and looks at him. He can’t imagine what more Jon wants of him, if not as much distance as possible. Is he going to demand more answers? 

A horrible thought occurs to him: did he not believe Martin’s story about being a part of the family that lived here once? Is Martin going to have to argue with him about it, listen to him refuse to believe it straight to his face? Nothing sounds more awful. 

“Bring the tray over here,” Jon says. 

Martin blinks, surprised. Jon grimaces and looks away, as if admitting to something that he’d rather not. 

“I strained my leg further while I was moving the mattress,” he says resentfully. “I don’t think that I should put any more weight on it for the rest of the day.” 

Oh. Oh, no. Martin made him have to move that huge mattress while his leg was-- 

Martin picks up the tray and brings it to Jon. His shoulders don’t curl in at his approach the way they normally do, but he’s looking away from Martin too, and he can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment over his current infirmity or fear. He places the tray down on the mattress where Jon can easily reach it, hesitating to put it in his lap, not sure if putting weight that high up on his leg might hurt him or not. Jon nods once, tightly, arms crossed. 

Martin sort of can’t help but take a moment to just look at him now that he’s this close, drinking the sight of him in. He keeps waiting for that habit to die away with time, as Jon keeps being here, but it just isn’t happening. He wonders sometimes if Jon really is beautiful, or if he’s just so lonely that anyone would look gorgeous to him. 

He thinks it’s probably the first one. There’s no way that most people look like Jon. He’s almost certain of it. 

“Does it hurt?” he asks hesitantly, wrenching his mind away from that well worn track. It’s inappropriate. 

“Not much, so long as I don’t move it,” Jon says. 

He opens his mouth to say I guess we shouldn’t take a walk tomorrow, then, and closes it as he remembers that Jon already feels so trapped that he risked his life to escape, today. Taking walks away from him seems-- terribly cruel. 

Not that one brief monitored trip out of his rooms a day had been enough to soothe his misery. 

Martin starts to realize what he has to do. There’s a part of him--a large part of him-- that balks at it, that wants to do the opposite. He almost lost Jon today, the worst thing that could possibly happen. He could have fallen down and broken every single bone in his body. (He could have gotten away.) Martin wants to find a room with no window for him to try and climb through, no fireplace, no nothing. He wants to keep him close, safe and his sight forever and ever. 

But that would do the opposite of good. Jon is suffocating in these rooms, going stir crazy enough to pull off reckless stunts like that. Martin needs to give him more freedom, not less. 

“You shouldn’t go on a walk for a few days,” he says slowly, carefully, and Jon stiffens at once, but then he carries on with the rest of his idea that makes him feel a little bit panicky and nervous even to contemplate. “But I won’t lock the door, once I leave. I’ll even leave it open, if you want. You can… you can wander wherever you wish, inside of the mansion. But tell me before you go down to the first floor.” 

Jon turns wide, incredulous eyes on him, as if he’s been given more than he can possibly trust. “Seriously?” 

“Yes,” he says. “So please, for the love of god, don’t go out of another window.” 

“Deal,” he says hurriedly, as if Martin might retract the offer if he waits too long to agree. It’s a good thing, because Martin had honestly been horribly tempted to do so. Jon has been able to raise enough chaos with only access to one room, he almost doesn’t want to imagine how much damage he’ll be able to do to himself with a whole mansion at his hands. 

Martin will be keeping a very, very close eye on him. And he’ll go and start permanently shutting all of the other second floor windows, just to be safe. 

“You should eat your food before it goes cold,” he says, and leaves to go and do just that. 

With a conscious, deliberate effort, he doesn’t lock or close the door behind him. 

Chapter 13: bad dreams

Summary:

“Sorry,” Martin says, speaking quietly like there’s anyone else around that they could wake up. “You were, just. You were having a bad dream, so…” 

With the revelation that Martin is a cursed human and not a born and true monster, Jon starts to consider the possibility that he really might in fact be keeping Jon captive simply because he’s lonely. 

He tries to picture Martin coming to Jon’s village one day with no warning. No roaring, no charging, awkwardly, hopefully smiling with all of his very sharp fangs and tusks. He can’t imagine it going in any way but screams and pitchforks and thrown rocks, not even giving him a chance to speak. Hell, Jon himself might’ve been part of the mob. 

He tries to picture Martin approaching a lone stranger on a road, trying to look as unthreatening as possible even as he looms. He imagines how he’d react to that. There’d probably be rumours of the beast that eats children and cattle while your back is turned very quickly after a few failed encounters like that, even though as far as Jon can tell he just eats wildlife. There’d probably be a prize, cocky hunting parties, rifles and crossbows and hunting dogs… 

He tries to imagine Martin having a single successful social encounter after being cursed, and he can’t. How long has he been cursed for? This mansion looks like it hasn’t seen proper maintenance for, heavens, somewhere around a decade, maybe? 

Jon has never been good with people. He gets overwhelmed by too many strangers at once, which was easy to avoid with how slow traffic was in his shop. One decent conversation a day was enough to make him feel how he imagines people feel after attending an hours long large, loud party. Satisfying, but tiring. Any more than that, and it was just exhausting. He can go for days, even weeks at a time without feeling lonely. 

He’s so uncharismatic, however, that he hadn’t even managed the bare minimum of social interaction that he himself craved. Not consistently. Often, he had felt a bit… starved. Adrift. He got through it. Being lonely isn’t the worst thing in the world. 

He imagines that much loneliness might make him change his tune, however. It must be so much worse for someone who isn’t like Jon, who doesn’t take to isolation easily. 

He had been so certain that Martin was a strange, malevolent, lying beast that was going to kill him one day. Being held captive against his will strongly reinforced that conviction, and he’ll stand by that that was only reasonable of him. But he really might just have been a warped human all along, mad and desperate with loneliness. He… doesn’t know what to feel about that. Pity, he supposes. 

He doesn’t want to feel pity for the person who’s keeping him trapped here. He wants to be angry and indignant on his own behalf. He doesn’t want for Martin to suffer, but he wants to be free. 

He’s only been here for a few weeks now, but he hasn’t been free for months. He rubs at the spot on his left ring finger where his engagement ring had been. Rationally, he should have kept it to pawn it off in the next village he happened upon. 

He left it behind anyways, though. He hadn’t wanted to bring anything that Elias had given him, as if that could possibly persuade him not to look for him. Maybe it had worked. Maybe he’s found a new fiance by now. He feels a twinge of guilt at that, towards a stranger that he’s never met. He hopes they’re okay. 

… He doesn’t want to think about Elias any more. He wants to straighten out his messy feelings about Martin until he knows how he’s supposed to feel now, after these revelations. 

And then Martin knocks on his door before he’s got things settled in his head, and he waits until Jon tells him to come in. He apologizes, and gives him his meal, and turns to leave without watching him eat it first. Jon makes him stay, if only to bring his meal closer to him. 

Martin leaves the fucking door open. 

He stares at the open doorway, overcome with disbelief. He’d climbed out of a window today, and now the door is just open. He almost can’t believe it. He keeps looking at it, keeps waiting for Martin to change his mind and come back and close it. It keeps not happening. It’s still open, still unlocked. He can just walk through it at any moment, whenever he should wish to do so. He-- 

--hisses with pain as his arms buckle from the sudden wave of agony from his leg as he moves to stand up to do just that. He falls back into his bed (his mattress) with a pained grunt. He breathes heavily for a moment, staring blankly up at the cobwebbed ceiling. 

The door is open and unlocked, and he has permission to go through it (so long as you don’t try to leave, so long as you ask before you try to go down to the first floor). The door is open and it’s right there, he can see it. And he can’t walk though it anyways, because he hurt his leg too badly during his earlier failed escape attempts. The irony hurts so sharply that he has to huff a shaky laugh to himself so that he won’t cry or swear very, very loudly. 

That’s just typical, isn’t it. 

Is that why Martin chose now to give him this new limited freedom? Because he knows that Jon can’t use it in the first place? Is this a taunt, a trap, a test, a lie? 

He’d just allowed himself to consider the possibility that this hasn't just all been some strange malicious lie on Martin’s part, and only an hour later he’s already worrying about mind games again. (It had always been mind games, with Elias.) 

He’s so tired of this. He just wants… 

Jon falls asleep. 

 

All of the doors and windows are open, but he can’t reach any of them. The ring on his finger has a long chain attached to it, which trails from him and connects to its partner, a matching set. He can’t get the ring off his finger no matter how hard he pulls. It’s stuck. Panic scrabbles and skitters inside of his chest like a bird trapped in a box. He has to get it off, he has to get it off! 

The chain rattles as the ring on the other side of it moves. 

“You made a promise,” he is reminded pointedly. 

“I know,” he says. Maybe if he finds a knife, he can cut his ring finger off. If he just leaves everything behind, maybe he can get away. 

“You’re not going to leave, are you?” 

There’s more slack in the chain now, which means that the ring (the person) on the other end of it has gotten closer to him. He immediately uses the little slack he’s been given to strive and struggle a few inches closer towards the open doors and windows, drawing the chain taut again. He still can’t reach them. 

“Of course not.” 

“Jon.” Thinly veiled amusement, fondness. “Are you lying to me?” 

A question asked, when he clearly already knows the answer. 

“No.” 

“You’re mine.” 

“I know.” 

“You signed a contract.” 

“I did.” 

“You sold yourself. That was the deal. I upheld my part, and now it’s your turn. I bought your entire life. It’s only fair.” 

“Yes.” There has to be a knife here, somewhere. 

The taut chain jerks, and he’s pulled off his feet as the chain reels him in like a fish on a hook, fast and powerful and dragging him across the floor towards what’s (who’s) on the other side of the chain. He feels like his finger is going to fall off but it won’t the ring won’t let him go and please no-- 

 

“Jon,” someone says, and his name isn’t spoken in a smug and smooth and self assured voice. It’s high and nervous and upset. 

Jon opens his eyes. Looming above him is a monster. The beast has fangs that could rend through flesh with ease, tusks large enough to gore a full grown man, a bulk that would dwarf the largest man in Jon’s village. 

It’s disorienting how relieved he is to see that and think oh it’s just you. 

Utterly illogical. Martin may not be plotting to kill him (probably), but he’s still his captor, is still fast and large and strong. Jon is scared of him. He just… isn’t feeling it, right this moment. 

He looks out of the window that he now can’t open. It’s dark outside, a starry night. Not time for breakfast. He pushes himself up on his mattress, and Martin edges away from him, nervous or sheepish or apologetic or what. Jon’s never been too good at reading people, and Martin’s features definitely don’t lend themselves to easy interpretation. 

“Sorry,” Martin says, speaking quietly like there’s anyone else around that they could wake up. “You were, just. You were having a bad dream, so…” 

Jon has been having bad dreams for every single night since he got here, except for the first one when he was so exhausted that he slept dreamlessly. If he wasn’t making noises loud enough to spurr Martin on to wake him up then, he doesn’t see what could have changed now. 

Well. He looks at the gaping, open door. Things have changed recently. But that’s a positive change. Why should it make his dreams worse? 

“Right,” he says, not sure if he’s supposed to apologize for causing a scene or thanking him for waking him up or something else. He’d never had to have this conversation before. His grandmother had never noticed his nightmares. Or at least, she’d never come into his room or made comments about them, so he assumed that she didn’t notice. He can’t really remember having nightmares in those hazy, early memories of living with his parents, which seems strange and unreal to him now. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” he finally settles on, because that’s true. He’s not sure if it’s a thanks or an admonishment. Martin can decide that for himself, as Jon’s too tired for it. 

“Y--yes, sorry, I’m sorry if I made it worse, I just… you sounded so--” 

“How could waking me up make my nightmares worse?” he asks skeptically, giving Martin a queer look, and then belatedly bites his tongue. They’d been dancing around the word a bit, its presence obvious, but it still feels so childish to admit to something like that. Nightmares. Like that’s something to be upset about, and not brushed off and forgotten as inconsequential. 

“Well,” Martin says, and then is silent for a while. Jon is just about to impatiently prompt him to finish his sentence, when he continues. “I imagine it would be upsetting to wake up to see the thing that you were having nightmares about. S--so, I’m sorry, about that.” 

Jon stares at Martin, who’s determinedly avoiding eye contact and endeavoring to look as small and hunched in as a hulking beast can, and says, “It wasn’t about you.” 

“Okay,” Martin says, like he doesn’t entirely believe him, but Jon’s telling the truth. He’d been having a nightmare about rings and a smug voice, not a beast and a broken down prison of a mansion. 

It’s the first time that he’s had a bad dream about that whole situation since he got here, in fact. Something about feeling hunted, trapped, and up on the chopping block had felt so urgent and distracting, so present. It had been hard to think of anything else at all, beyond escaping and surviving in the short term. No thought for the future, barely any for the past. 

It’s like the second he began to accept that Martin isn’t going to kill him, that this isn’t a life or death emergency, he regained his ability to think about other problems. He’s surprised to realize that he doesn’t particularly like it. 

He’s being irrational, Jon concludes. He’s being foolish and irrational, and it’s time to stop worrying about bad dreams. 

“Thank you for waking me, it was unnecessary, sorry for the bother, good night,” he says firmly, partially to Martin and partially to himself, going over the obligatory trite little social niceties. He lies back down and tugs the covers back over himself pointedly, eyes closed. 

“R--right. Good night, Jon.” He hears the sound of Martin walking out of the room, the sound of hooves on floor distinctive, but not as loud as it should be, in his opinion. The door creaks. Against his will, he tenses. But the door doesn’t click shut, locked, or closed. He leaves it open, just like before. 

“Sleep well,” Martin whispers, very quietly, and very sincerely. 

Jon tries, but it takes a long time for him to fall back asleep at all. 

Chapter 14: new room

Summary:

Martin really can’t leave Jon in that room any longer. With the bathroom door broken and slanted, the bedframe in splinters, the mattress on the bare floor. It makes a wave of hot shame wash through him whenever he sees it. So, he starts cleaning out another one of the bedrooms out for him. 

He picks one without a balcony, because that seems like asking for trouble. 

Martin really can’t leave Jon in that room any longer. With the bathroom door broken and slanted, the bedframe in splinters, the mattress on the bare floor. It makes a wave of hot shame wash through him whenever he sees it. So, he starts cleaning out another one of the bedrooms out for him. 

He picks one without a balcony, because that seems like asking for trouble. 

He dusts the room, he nails windows shut with some rusty tools he found in an overgrown garden shed, he mends Jon’s old change of clothes so that he has something to switch between, he makes meals, he does repairs, and he has very shallow conversation with Jon that desperately tries to avoid the glaring fact that Jon is, in fact, quite literally and objectively, his captive. 

Martin imagines (fantasizes) about a world in which he could meet Jon not as someone to be feared. Not as someone desperately, intensely lonely, terrified to let anyone go. He would have to be human, for any of that to be true. And Martin isn’t supposed to daydream about being human any longer. It didn’t go well, the last time he let himself think about it too much. 

He does it anyways. 

Would things be different if he were human? Would Jon like him? He’s not sure. Maybe not. Probably not. But he wouldn’t hate him, and that would be… that would be so lovely. 

It’s impossible and stupid and useless to wonder about, and he tries not to. 

He has shallow conversation with Jon. Any conversation is more than enough for him nowadays, even if he still craves more. He’s always going to want more than he has, from now on, he thinks. He’s been starving for so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like to not want. 

“It’s fox today,” Martin says. “And I found some nuts!” 

He’s always enthusiastic about finding anything for Jon to eat that isn’t fish or meat. The time of year isn’t great for foraging berries and vegetables and such, and Martin’s a bit worried that he’s not getting Jon a varied enough diet. 

“Mm,” Jon says, accepting the plate. 

“Lovely weather today,” Martin says, because it had been. Sure, a bit chilly, but no rain or sleet, and the breeze had been relatively mild. 

“If you say so,” Jon says dryly, which is clearly a little jibe at Jon’s restricted access meant to fluster him, but it’s subtle enough that Martin doesn’t have to acknowledge it. 

It does fluster him, but it also strangely makes him a bit… happy? Jon’s been crankier lately, dropping bitter little comments here and there whenever there’s an opening, and perhaps Martin should mind that Jon’s grown more hostile, but. But. 

Jon’s shoulders aren’t tensed up, even as he sharply references the unfortunate situation. He looks like he didn’t even put any particular thought into it, and has already mentally moved on, cutting into his dinner. He isn’t afraid that Martin’s going to go into some sort of horrible rage (the broken bed, the door) at the slightest sign of anger. He isn’t scared silent and stiffly polite. He feels safe enough to insult him. There’s something a bit wonderful about that, like Martin’s gone up a peg on some sort of list. Not on the rock bottom any longer, not a murderer, not a complete monster. Not good, but not the worst either. 

It really, really shouldn’t make Martin melt a bit every time Jon says something scathing, but it sort of does anyways. 

“I, I got a new bedroom ready for you,” he says. “One with a proper bed? Do you think you’re ready to walk to it?” 

Jon pauses. “How far away is it?” 

“Umm, on the other side of the mansion.” 

“Probably not just yet, then.” He looks cross at having to admit to limitations, and fond amusement bubbles inside of his chest. 

“I could carry you,” he offers thoughtlessly, because he’s already done that a few times, hasn’t he? 

Jon looks at him with his dark, too piercing eyes and it occurs to him that this is the first time that he’s offered it instead of just done it. Oh, dear. He feels that familiar wave of hot shame again, and the flustered panic of having put his foot in his mouth. Also a familiar feeling. 

“No,” Jon says after a long moment, in an odd tone, like he’s trying the word out for the first time in his life, cautiously tasting it. 

“Okay,” Martin says, trying not to squeak. 

Jon looks at him for another long, long moment, seeming to see more than he should with just his eyes, and Martin tries desperately not to fidget underneath the weight of his stare. 

Jon finishes his meal. Martin feels a bit too off balance to continue the conversation, but does so anyways just to fill up the silence, letting himself ramble about nonsense in a way that probably makes him look sort of dumb. Jon arranges his cutlery neatly on his now empty plate, which is Martin’s sign to take it away and leave him alone. He moves to do so. 

“I changed my mind,” Jon says, and Martin twitches a bit and almost lets the plate slip. 

“Wh--what? Sorry?” 

“You can carry me to my new rooms,” Jon says simply, with no fanfare. Martin stares at him, because he can’t imagine that any of the nonsense he prattled earlier on could have possibly changed his mind about this. 

“Oh,” he says dumbly. “Great? I mean, that’s great! Uh, ah, now?” 

“If you don’t mind,” Jon says, in a way that says yes now, idiot. 

The tone is scathing. Martin melts, just a bit. There’s definitely something wrong with him, but that’s old news. 

“Okay,” he agrees helplessly, feeling like he’d give anything to Jon that he possibly could, which is admittedly not much. 

Except for his freedom, of course. He could give him that. Jon wants it. 

Martin cuts the train of thought off by putting down the plate and scooping Jon up in his arms. They both weigh about the same, to him. There isn’t any discernible difference. 

“Christ,” Jon hisses, throwing his arms around Martin’s neck, as if he’s about to drop him. 

“Are you okay?” Martin asks, concerned. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” 

“No,” Jon snaps. “Just-- just go.” 

Martin does. He walks through the halls, and Jon cranes his neck to look like he always does when they go through a part of the mansion he hasn’t seen before, and Martin tries not to think too much about how much he likes having Jon in his arms, close and cradled to his chest and-- 

“Here we are!” he says with slightly manic chipperness. He hastily, but carefully, deposits Jon on his new, superior bed. 

“Did you nail the window shut?” is the first thing he asks, looking at the clearly nailed shut window. 

“Let’s-- we don’t have to focus on that,” he says plaintively. 

“Just because I climbed through one window doesn’t mean that I have some sort of irresistible, insatiable craving to throw myself out of every single one that I see, Martin,” Jon says. 

Martin loves the way Jon says his name. There isn't a tenderness there, but-- god, the fact that he says it, that anyone at all says his name. 

And he has a cute accent, too. 

Martin clears his throat. “Better safe than sorry?” 

Jon sighs, pointedly. Martin can’t help but fidget. 

Martin looks around at Jon’s new bedroom, with Jon now in it. He doesn’t look out of place in it. More importantly, Jon has never tried to escape from him inside of this room. Martin has never broken any furniture inside of this room. Jon hasn’t shouted himself hoarse through the door in this room. Martin hasn’t locked him inside of this room. Jon hasn’t cried inside of this room. 

Martin really, really wants to keep it that way. It feels a bit like a fresh start, this new room. 

“Do you like it?” he asks. Shallow talk, except for how he really is interested in the answer. He’s interested in every single possible question about Jon. He wants to know his favorite color more keenly than probably anyone should care about that sort of stuff. He wants to know everything about him. 

Jon looks around, and Martin wonders if ‘judgemental’ just comes naturally to his face. “It’s fine,” he says, which is fair enough. It is his cell, sort of, except for how Martin won’t be locking the door. The cell has been expanded to the entirety of the second floor for him. How generous. 

“Great,” Martin says, the only thing he can think to say. Shallow talk. 

Shallow talk is still more talk than he’s had in years, however. And he really does mean it.

Chapter 15: disagree

Summary:

Jon has been experimenting with the word no. 

Jon has been experimenting with the word no. 

He’d tried to be a good grandson when he’d been a child. He’d tried to listen to his grandmother. Mostly. He got bored and restless and curious a lot of the time, and it seemed like all she wanted in the world was for him to sit still in one spot and not do anything, neatly avoiding getting into any trouble at all. So, he didn’t always do exactly as she told him to, even if he wanted to be good. But he wasn’t upfront about it. She wouldn’t have accepted a no I don’t want to, after all. She just gave him a sharp look whenever he whined or complained, which effectively chastened him every single time. 

The idea of saying no to Elias would be laughable, if the memories of the few times he’d tried didn’t make him feel sick. He avoids thinking about it. 

He had assumed, naturally, that telling the beast keeping him captive in its dilapidated mansion would be a waste of air. Except it turns out that said beast’s name is Martin, and he’s a people pleaser, of all things. It clashes strangely with the undeniable fact that he is also very firmly imprisoning Jon against his will. 

“Do you want this sweater?” Martin asks, holding out something soft and blue that it must have taken him a while to repair, or at least find. 

“No,” Jon says simply and firmly, even though it’s getting colder now, winter approaching, and the mansion is quite drafty. 

“Oh,” Martin says. “Okay.” 

And he takes it with him when he leaves, instead of trying to press the issue. It makes Jon feel strange. He tries to pin down the feeling, and defines it as mostly confused. Because why is Martin trying to-- why is he listening-- he doesn’t have to. He has all of the power here. He can do whatever he likes, and there’s nothing Jon can do to stop him, as has been thoroughly proven by now. 

He doesn’t make any sense. Jon could understand it if he was like Elias, always making sure that he got what he wanted. Or if he was like Georgie, principled and kind, always making sure that everyone's needs and wants were respected and considered. But instead, he’s like neither. He listens to Jon when he says no, sometimes. He takes what he wants, sometimes. He isn’t consistent. He isn’t all or nothing. He has rules and limits and Jon needs to know precisely what they all are. They are, after all, highly relevant to his current situation. 

How far can Jon push his current boundaries? What can he get away with? What will it take for Martin to say no? He knows that he’s allowed to say no to a new sweater and being carried, and he isn’t allowed to leave the mansion, but there’s so much gray area between those two extremes. He needs to narrow it down. 

… He really is quite bored. He’s more or less bedbound, being able to limp for only short distances before he has to grit his teeth and lie back down. The new room was interesting for about five minutes. Martin still only visits three times a day. He’s still not well enough for his walks. There’s still nothing to do. The fact that he isn’t fearing for his life has only drained the little tension there was left out of his daily life, and now he’s just left with ravenous, unsatisfied curiosity. 

“Do you want for me to close the door?” Martin asks one evening after supper. 

Jon gives him an incredulous look. “No.” 

“Okay,” Martin says, like he has for the last dozen refusals Jon has given him just for the sake of refusing. “It’s just-- it’s letting the draft in. And it’s getting colder.” 

“Leave it open,” he orders, as if he has any leverage here. 

“Okay,” he says again, and does. “Goodnight.”

Sometimes, Jon just wants to snap and demand that Martin give him a highly detailed and thorough essay on just how far Jon can push him, just how much he can say no. Testing it out like this, over and over again, is a bit nerve wracking. And tiring. He just wants to know already. 

The door is left open, and Jon doesn’t wear the sweater Martin scrounged up for him. When he wakes up in the morning, every muscle in his body is sore from how hard he’d had them clenched all night against the chill. He doesn’t care; having the door open is worth it. 

“Good morning,” Martin says, and places the tray of breakfast down. 

“Morning,” Jon replies, and then something occurs to him. A thing that he can say no to, that it hadn’t occurred to him to do so with before. 

He pushes the tray away. “No thank you.” 

Martin startles, leans down towards the tray as if inspecting it for flaws. “What’s wrong with it?” he frets. 

“Nothing,” he says. “I just don’t want it.” 

“You don’t like rabbit?” 

“It’s fine. But I don’t want it.” 

“Are you sick?” he asks anxiously. 

“I feel perfectly fine.” 

“Aren’t you hungry? Did you lose your appetite?” 

“No. I don’t want it,” he repeats himself. 

Martin’s worried questions stall, and he looks at Jon for a long moment. 

“... Jon,” he says, in his light fluttery voice, except there’s something behind it now. Like he’s determined to say what he’s going to say, no matter what. “You don’t have to-- please. Please just eat? Please don’t starve yourself just to see if I’ll listen to you.” 

Jon feels himself go tense. He knows? 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lies hastily. 

“I know this is my fault,” he goes on, and he sounds a bit wretched as he says it. “And you can say no to me as much as you want, of course. I’ll always listen to you, as long it won’t hurt you. But not eating counts as hurting you, so… please eat.” 

His voice is firm and steely at those last words. Stubborn. He won’t budge on this. Jon’s finally bumped up against a limit, and he’d be interested in that, trying to make it fit into the grand puzzle that was Martin and try and figure him out, get a solid read on him so that he’ll start making sense, except what he’s said is utterly distracting. 

Martin has posited that his criteria for which part of Jon’s wishes he actually listens to is very simple and straightforward, with only one basic prerequisite to satisfy: will it or will it not hurt Jon if he allows this? Except that doesn’t make any sense, because-- 

“Then let me go,” he says at once. 

“That counts as hurting you,” he says. 

“Excuse me?” 

“You’d get lost and hurt in the woods. You could die. I can’t let you go alone out there… You’re safest here.” 

He stares at Martin, and wishes that his strange face were easier to read. He can’t tell if he’s being sincere or not. 

Then again, he’s always been bad at telling if people are lying to him or not, no matter what their faces looked like. 

“My getting lost in the woods and dying is not inevitable,” he says, indignance rising. Sure, he’d gotten lost in the woods once, but that was during a dark and disorienting storm. And it was his very first attempt! It isn’t an indicator for every single nature outing he’ll ever have in his life. 

“It’s safer if you stay here,” he says. 

“I disagree.” 

“Fine! Disagree all you like, I’m not letting you--” Martin’s teeth clack closed abruptly, as if he’s shocked by his own words or something. 

“I’m not eating this,” he says stubbornly. 

“Don’t ignore your own health!” he says heatedly. 

“It’s my stomach and I’ll decide when I’ll put something in it.” 

Martin makes an animalistic sound of frustration (Jon’s heartbeat spikes), pushes the tray towards Jon, and then stands abruptly up. “You better eat that!” 

And then he… leaves. He storms out. Jon deflates. He isn’t sure what he was expecting there. He’d found a limit, and he’d pushed it and ignored it and… Martin had just left. 

What had he been expecting? To be force fed? For Martin to make him eat on pain of violence? They hadn’t agreed. Martin hadn’t caved, hadn’t compromised or given in. Jon had to eat, he’d insisted. Except he didn’t do anything to enforce that, except to argue. 

Following that logic, one could almost be fooled into thinking that Jon can do whatever he wishes, whether or not Martin allows it. Except, of course, he can’t leave. Martin is perfectly fine with chasing him down and carrying him back to his room if he attempts that, he’s proven more than once. 

Jon’s tired. He just wants some goddamned firm rules that he can see and understand and keep in mind. He wants to know the consequences he’ll face if he breaks them. He pushes and pushes, risking punishment just so that he can have the comforting security of at least knowing, but instead it never comes. 

It is seeming more and more likely that Martin just... wants for someone to live with him. It doesn’t matter to him if they’re rude or disobedient or not, ultimately. He wants for Jon to be here, and to be reasonably healthy, and that seems to be about it. He just wants… company. A presence. 

Jon is, of course, not giving that willingly, but… it’s not so terrifying, having only his presence demanded of him. It’s not so trying, not so horrible. Elias certainly asked more of him, worse of him. 

Jon frowns. He doesn’t want to forgive Martin for keeping him captive, just because it could be worse, just because he could be cruel about it. 

Annoyingly, he can’t find it in him to hate him any longer despite that. 

He stubbornly doesn’t eat his breakfast, and Martin makes disgruntled noises when he comes up with lunch to see the still full plate. Jon’s stomach aches sharply with hunger, enough so that he haughtily accepts his lunch, but Martin doesn’t really do anything about Jon directly disobeying him, beyond getting a bit passive aggressively snippy. 

That makes him feel warm. It truly is annoying. 

Chapter 16: I want

Summary:

Martin is beginning to sense a pattern. Jon stopped saying no to every possible request a few days ago, apparently reluctantly satisfied that he’ll be listened to in all (almost all) cases. 

Now, it seems, he’s experimenting with ‘I want’. 

Martin is beginning to sense a pattern. Jon stopped saying no to every possible request a few days ago, apparently reluctantly satisfied that he’ll be listened to in all (almost all) cases. 

Now, it seems, he’s experimenting with ‘I want’. 

“I want deer for dinner tomorrow,” Jon says bluntly, looking at him challengingly. And, well, considering everything, going out of his way to catch a particular animal for him to eat is the least Martin can do for him. It takes him a while, but he does it. He gets Jon deer for dinner tomorrow. 

“I want a book,” he says, and Martin looks through the whole building for books, opening every cupboard and peering beneath every bed. When he tells Jon that he couldn’t find any, he looks disappointed enough that Martin realizes that he’d actually wanted a book, unlike when he asked for deer just for the sake of seeing if Martin would procure it when asked. It makes him feel terrible enough that he searches the whole mansion one more time, trying to be even more thorough this time, but nothing. 

“I want to take a bath,” Jon says, which somehow startles Martin enough to make him squawk, “Sorry?” 

“I said I want a bath,” Jon repeats himself with a stubborn frown, although he’s notably avoiding eye contact as he says it. “I haven’t had one for the entire time I’ve been here, and it’s intolerable. I’m disgusting.”

Martin stammers for a while over this, because ‘disgusting’ is the last way he’d describe Jon, and he’s also realizing now all at once that it hadn’t even occurred to him that Jon might need or want something like that. Because he’d forgotten that baths were even a thing that people do. 

God, Jon keeps casually reminding him of entire swaths of human experience that he’d once taken for granted and has forgotten completely without even noticing. It keeps feeling just as startling every single time. 

“Well?” Jon asks tensely, and Martin realizes this is another one of those things that Jon is asking for not just because he’s testing Martin, but because he really wants it. 

“I’ll-- I’ll try and set something up,” he promises recklessly. 

Thus starts Martin’s quest to find a viable tub, viable firewood, and a viable bucket. There’s a claw footed one on the second floor that doesn’t have any cracked porcelain, which he wipes clean of dust before carrying it over to Jon’s new room. 

“What?” Martin asks after he catches the look on Jon’s face as he carefully places the tub down on the floor. It was easy enough to lift, if a bit challenging to maneuver through the doorway. Jon, for some reason, looks like he just saw something astonishing, wide eyed and staring. 

“N--nothing,” he says, whipping his head away. It’s very clearly not nothing, but Martin decides not to try and press him on it. 

Next is chopping up firewood. After a certain point, just tearing the logs apart with his claws is easier than using the axe, the handle fitting uneasily in his inhuman hands, but he thinks he manages to make enough. Then he finds a bucket without a hole in it, and then he sets up a fire, and then he warms up the water… 

The whole process is… unexpectedly time consuming. Martin doesn’t remember baths taking this long, now that he’s regained some hazy recollections of them. But then again, when he was a child all of the servants took care of the hard work, most likely. And he mostly just remembers heating up a kettle of water, letting it cool until it was safe to touch, and then using that and a cloth to clean his mother. He can’t really remember what he did for himself, but his memories are spotty, so. 

But Jon asked for a bath, and so he’s getting a bath. That’s all there is to it. He’s determined to be able to at least give him this. 

It ends up being an hours long affair, but finally there’s a tub of gently steaming hot water in Jon’s room. Martin looks at it with great satisfaction after he pours in the last bucket full and the waterline finally looks like it’s at a reasonable level, tired but happy that he succeeded. He looks at Jon, who’s been bemusedly watching him run in and out the room with a bucket for about an hour now, and tries to not be too obvious about searching his expression for any evidence that maybe he feels satisfied or happy about this as well. 

Jon is eyeing the tub with a look of bare, unveiled want, like a starving man being given a meal. Martin didn’t realize that baths were that serious, but he beams, and tries not to beam. Sharp fangs and all. 

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says, and it’s not warily polite or thoughtlessly obligatory manners, it’s sincere. Martin’s given him something he actually wants, instead of something he needs. He feels absurdly accomplished, like he could float right off the floor. 

Jon gives him a look, and Martin realizes that he hasn’t been responding. “You’re welcome! No problem! No problem at all!” 

“Martin,” Jon says after another moment, dryly but not sharply. “Baths are a thing that people do alone, in case you don’t remember.” 

Martin actually distinctly remembers bathing his mum, but-- all of a sudden he can recall the tight, tight way her jaw clenched throughout the entire process, quietly furious at needing his help with this task. He’s not certain how he managed to forget that part of it, for how only the memory makes his stomach twist unpleasantly. . 

“Right,” he says. “Yes. I-- I knew that. Bye! Good luck!” 

He quickly makes his departure. Good luck? Like he’s going to drown in the tub or something? The water will go up to his chest while he’s sitting upright, at most. He buries his face in his hands and groans quietly for a moment. 

And then he far too vividly imagines Jon actually somehow drowning in the tub, and he has to silently sit to the side of the door to Jon’s room just in case he hears thrashing in the water. Because he’s a fucking mess. 

He sits, and he rests, and he listens. The faint rustling of clothes, movement, creaking floorboards, and then-- a bitten off grunt. Martin straightens. After a long moment, there isn’t the sound of someone getting into a tub of water, but instead the sound of floorboards creaking, and then a mattress, and then some rustling of fabric. 

“Martin?” Jon calls out tentatively through the door. 

He gets up and opens the door, without thinking about maybe waiting a minute so it won’t be completely obvious that he’s been waiting just outside of the door like a creep. 

Jon’s sitting on the bed, his chest bare and sheets drawn up to his stomach by a clenched first. He gives Martin an embarrassed frown, looking a bit like he’s bitten into a lemon. 

“What’s the matter?” he asks at once. 

“I couldn’t,” Jon says haltingly, like it’s paining him to say the words out loud, “get in. On my own.” 

“What-- oh.” 

Martin had gone through the whole hassle of carting the tub over to Jon’s room in the first place because Jon still isn’t healed enough to walk for extended periods of time, and he’s pretty sure that Jon prefers to not have to be carried if he can avoid it, with the way he clutches at Martin whenever it happens like he’s afraid that he’s going to be dropped. It hadn’t occurred to him that the act of just climbing into the tub would be beyond him at the moment. 

The lip of it is higher up than the bed. And it’s not exactly a soft mattress that he can mostly just collapse onto. 

“Right,” he says. “Right, right, right. Of course! I’m sorry, I should’ve realized--”

“Martin,” he interrupts in the aggrieved tone he takes when Martin’s started rambling and he isn’t in the mood to just wait it out. “Would you just… please help me?” 

The sentence starts off terse and a little angrily embarrassed, but starts edging off into sheepishly plaintive and just plain embarrassed towards the end, as if he’s remembering mid speech that he’s technically asking Martin for a favor. 

Martin wants to be able to fulfill every single one of Jon’s I wants. Because Jon doesn’t want to be here, and Martin’s making him do it anyways. Because he’s miserable, and he wants for him to be content. Because he’s Jon, and that’s all. Helping Jon into the bath he prepared for him, because the leg injury he got trying to escape from Martin is hampering him, is such a small, easy thing to do for him, such a simple and reasonable I want. 

Martin has no idea why his heart is hammering and his hooves feel frozen to the floor, why it feels like he’d be doing a bad thing by fulfilling that I want. He hadn’t even realized that baths were private things until yesterday. 

She’d resented him so much, for needing his help to just get clean. For having no choice but to let him give it to her. The memory of it is so sharp and vivid, all of a sudden, and he really, really doesn’t know how he managed to forget it in the first place. He’d like to know, so he can do it again. 

He doesn’t want for Jon to hate him. Sure, he doesn’t like Martin, but it’s still different from the way her face had twisted every time she looked at--

“... Martin?” 

He snaps out of it. Smiles brightly, and says in perhaps a bit too high of a voice, “Of course, yes.” 

Jon is looking at him, brow furrowed. Not angrily, but in an uncertain, uncomfortable sort of way. It still makes his stomach twist. 

Martin’s mind races, and he steps forward. It’s okay, he can figure this out, it’s just a simple little problem, not a big deal, nothing to panic about. What were the parts that she’d hated the most? 

Being seen like that, he thinks. 

“Okay so,” he says, a little bit manically chipper with how desperately he’s hiding his sudden nerves. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You keep the sheet around you, I’ll help you towards the tub, and then I’ll lift you up by your arms and seat you on the rim. And then I can go and you can get into the tub the rest of the way on your own, right? Do you think that’ll work?” 

“Ah,” Jon says, that anxious frown clearing with surprise, before a thoughtful expression replaces it. Martin’s heartbeat starts to slow down. “Yes, I think so?” 

“Great!” 

He takes Jon by the elbow, and helps him stand up. Jon leans on him as they take the few steps to the tub (he still needs to lean him on him so much, Martin doesn’t want to think about how it must hurt for him to walk when Martin isn’t there to help, when he goes to the loo or perches on his window sill to look out at the world), and Jon keeps his hold on the sheet so it keeps covering him. Martin lifts him up, and Jon really doesn’t need to go all stiff like that whenever he does so because he’s light, worryingly light. It’s downright easy to lift him high enough that he can bring him over the edge of the tub, and lower him so that he’s sitting on it, his feet in the water, the sheet trailing behind him so that it’ll pool onto the floor when he lets go of it. Martin lets go of Jon, takes a step back. 

“Oh!” Jon says. “Oh, that’s very warm.” 

“Good!” Martin says, because it really is good that all of the warmth hasn’t leached away while they were figuring this little conundrum out, and also because Jon doesn’t sound bitter or angry in the slightest, even though he had to ask Martin for help to get into the bath. The relief that cracks open in his chest like an egg is far too dramatic for the occasion, but he still lets out a relieved sigh of air. “I’ll, I’ll be leaving then. Enjoy your bath.” 

Jon looks at him over his shoulder, and for some reason the motion reminds him all over again how terribly beautiful Jon is, like he’s just as inhuman as Martin, only a fae instead of a beast. 

And Jon smiles at him, small but genuine, and it literally takes his breath away. 

“I will,” he says. “Thank you for the help.” 

Martin just nods at that, because if he speaks then it’ll be obvious that he’s got no air left in his lungs. 

He rushes out. From inside Jon’s room, he hears the soft sound of water as Jon gently levers himself into the tub. There’s a quiet, happy sigh through the door. 

Martin wants to give Jon every single thing that he wants. Giving him what he wants the most is the last thing he wants to do. He hates that both of these things are true at once. He starts to frantically think of other things that Jon might want, things that won’t ruin Martin to give him. 

And he sits down next to the door to make sure that Jon doesn’t drown in a few feet of water that he can escape by simply sitting up. Because he's a mess. 

Chapter 17: good mood

Summary:

"You're in a good mood today."

The bath helps Jon feel less disgusting, dust and sweat washed off, his hair no longer greasy. What he hadn’t expected was how it would make him hurt less as well. He hadn’t really thought about how tense he’s been ever since he got here, especially at the start. The warm water soothes his muscles, and for the first time in a long while, his leg doesn’t bother him when he’s lying or sitting down, just when he’s standing on it. 

It’s almost enough to make up for the fact that he’d needed help getting out of the bathtub as well. Well, Martin had at least very clearly avoided looking at… anything. Or touching anything. 

He falls asleep quickly, easily, the warmth of the bath still lingering in his bones, and he sleeps well. When he wakes up there’s sunshine coming in from the window, one of the last bright days of the year, most likely. When he limps over to sit by the sill and look out at the overgrown gardens and wild woods, he doesn’t have to grit his teeth through the process. He’s not sore, he doesn’t ache. Instead of bored and listless, he feels relaxed and calm. And a little bit bored. Watching scenery isn’t that stimulating. 

Luckily, by the time he’s resorted to trying to count all of the trees he can see from his vantage point (answer: a lot) there’s a familiar knock at the door. 

“Come in,” he calls out. 

“Good morning,” Martin says, opening the door and ducking down a little bit to dodge the top of the doorframe. It’s not a grand double door affair that reaches almost the top of the ceiling, like the doors to his last bedroom had. This one has a normal door, about seven to nine feet high, he’d guess. He suspects that his former room was some sort of master bedroom, while this is a guest room. 

He prefers this. Being stuck in that large lavish, tarnished room hadn’t been… a great time. It had felt eerily similar to his room at the Bouchard estate, even though it was nowhere near as polished and perfect. This room reminds him slightly more of the one he’d had before he’d gotten engaged and moved, even though it’s simultaneously in a worse and better state than his old place. He’d had a humble home, but it hadn’t been neglected, at least. 

“Good morning,” he replies with a smile. He notes that breakfast today seems to be boiled eggs - quail, he thinks - and some sort of fried meat. 

Jon realizes that Martin isn’t approaching any closer with his breakfast, stalled out awkwardly in the middle of the floor like a frozen animal. He gives Martin a confused and annoyed look, which seems to snap him out of it. 

“Er, sorry! Just, um, um-- it would probably be too precarious for you to balance and eat from your plate sitting on the sill! Yes.” 

“Oh, you have a point,” he says, and gingerly stands up to limp back to his bed. He’s very pleased to note that it still doesn’t twinge as much as it had yesterday. The miracles of a good bath, apparently. 

It’s still a relief to get to sit back down, though. 

He inhales his breakfast, his appetite more voracious than it’s been in a while, and it’s tasty.  

“Did you find some more spice jars in a cupboard?” he asks in between bites. “This tastes good.” 

“N--no, I didn’t find any-- but thank you!” Martin seems startled by the question. Jon supposes that he doesn’t really make much small talk during meals. Or in general. He hasn’t been feeling chatty lately. 

He finishes the last of his breakfast, setting the cutlery neatly on the plate. “Thank you for the meal.” 

There’s a long pause before a belated, “You’re welcome! It, it wasn’t any trouble,” tumbles hurriedly out of Martin’s mouth. And then, a little bit tentatively, curiously, “You’re in a good mood today.” 

“Am I?” he asks, and then he considers it. “Perhaps you’re right. A good bath can do wonders for morale, I suppose.” 

There’s a brief moment where the memory of Martin lifting the tub back up after Jon was finished with it floats back up to the surface of his mind. He’d done it slowly and steadily instead of casually tossing it over his shoulder like before, because it was half full of water. There had been no sign of strain in him though, just focus so that he wouldn’t spill water onto the floor. 

Jon clears his throat, feeling uncomfortably hot, and looks in the direction of the window. It really is a nice day out. 

“Do you want another one?” Martin asks, which makes Jon flick his gaze back to him. He looks perfectly sincere in his offer, almost eager. 

“Today?” Jon asks. Martin nods vigorously. Jon huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “No, thank you. That seems like a lot of fuss to go through every single day.” 

“It’s no trouble,” he insists. 

It very much did look like trouble, from where Jon was sitting yesterday. Hours upon hours of hard effort, all for something Jon enjoyed for perhaps forty minutes. He does feel unexpectedly refreshed now, but still. It seems wasteful and extravagant, having a bath every single day. 

“Once a week is perfectly fine, Martin.” 

“Right,” he says uncertainly. 

“A week is seven days long,” he adds, suspecting that Martin perhaps doesn’t know this. He’s noticed that Martin seems to have a very patchy memory for basic concepts and things, such as baths or cutlery or basic privacy. He doesn’t know if that’s a ‘cursed to be a beast’ thing or a Martin thing. It doesn’t really matter, he supposes, as the result is the same. 

“I, I know that!” Martin says. “I just, it’s sort of hard to keep track of the days here, you know?” 

That is valid, now that he thinks about it. He’s long since lost track of how many weeks he’s been here. It might even be over a month, for all he knows. 

“Then I’ll just ask you for a bath whenever I want one,” he decides practically. 

Martin smiles. Now that Jon’s seen it enough times, it’s easy to see it for what it is, instead of a threatening baring of teeth. “That sounds, yeah. Good idea.” 

Jon sets the plate aside, sparing a moment to be pleased when his leg doesn’t twinge at the small movement. His leg obviously isn’t miraculously recovered, but-- he’d gone on walks when it was hurt before, hadn’t he? To stop himself from going mad with boredom. It’s good enough to put some weight on now, isn’t it? He can lean on the walls as he walks. Or he can just take a walk while letting Martin support him. The idea doesn’t make him anxious in the same way it used to, just a touch frustrated. 

He’s opening his mouth to voice these thoughts, when Martin springs up so abruptly that he yelps with alarm at the sudden movement. 

“Sorry!” Martin says. “It’s just, I just remembered that I have something! For you. I almost forgot.” 

And then he rushes out of the door before Jon can ask him any questions. He stares at the open door that Martin’s left through, bewildered. But Martin doesn’t take long to come back. And in his hands he’s holding-- 

“I, I started making it yesterday. I mean, it’s pretty simple, it’s basically just a fancy stick-- I’m sorry I didn’t think to make it earlier, it only occured to me-- I stayed up all night-- what I mean is--” Martin takes a deep breath, visibly steels himself for what he’s about to say. “You can go on walks again. On your own, now. Alone. By yourself. Just on the second floor, though!” 

It’s a cane. It looks small and thin and fragile in Martin’s large hands, but polished free of splinters and perfectly straight. 

“Your leg seems to be doing better, too,” he goes on, as Jon doesn’t say anything. “So, so I think with this you’ll be fine to--” 

“Martin,” he says, “Give it to me.” 

Martin shuffles over and gives it to him. It looks less thin and fragile in Jon’s own hands. It looks perfect. He sets it down on the floor and stands up, leaning some of his weight on the cane. It doesn’t waver or break, and his leg doesn’t hurt. 

“Do you like it?” he asks anxiously. 

“It’s lovely,” he says honestly, and his voice comes out far too soft through the smile he feels pulling at his mouth. Martin isn’t taking every advantage and excuse to keep him in one place for as long as possible, easy and safe to keep track of. He made him a cane, and Jon didn’t even think to ask for it. 

Recklessly, without thinking about it, he reaches out to Martin and squeezes his arm with his hand gratefully, almost a sort of hug. He doesn’t notice that it’s the first time he’s ever touched the beast without it being for the sake of necessity. 

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says warmly. 

“It’s no problem,” Martin chokes out, as if he’s had the wind punched out of him.

Chapter 18: what’s behind it

Summary:

“I want to see what’s behind the Door.” 

After all of this time, all of this constant trying and hoping, Jon actually seems to be… warming up to him, to some degree. He doesn’t grow tense and flinch around him, isn’t terse and cold when they talk. He seems to finally be accepting that he’s at least safe around Martin. Sure, Martin’s keeping him trapped here whether or not he likes it (he doesn’t), but he’s never hurt him, and he’s never going to, and he’s going to try and give him everything else that he wants that is within his ability to give, and isn’t that good enough? 

You can just give up this idiotic little facade of being my kind caretaker and not the monster that’s keeping me trapped here for your own amusement, Jon had shouted into his face, having dragged him down to his level by a grip on his tusk, loud and furious. After he’d climbed out of that window and Martin had taken him back in before he could fall. (Before he could get away.) 

Martin makes himself stop thinking about that. He has to focus. He has to focus on being quiet, and following, and listening. 

Whether or not Martin deserves it, Jon finally seems to be warming up to him a bit. Or he doesn’t see him as a terrifying threat any longer, at least. Which is wonderful. Martin loves not scaring Jon. He’d really be an idiot to do anything to endanger that progress. 

Such as stalking him through the halls of the mansion the way he does animals in the woods that are soon going to be dinner. 

Martin’s hearing and sense of smell are sharper than most beings, so it’s easy to follow the scent of Jon, familiar from the sheets and clothes he washes in the cold river nearby and carrying him or letting him lean on him or, or, or-- 

His walking is a distinctive sound as well. One light footstep that he can barely hear, followed by the heavier clunk of his cane. He strains his ears and he listens, and he rounds the corner of the next hallway. Never in the same hallway as Jon at the same time, because that’s the whole point of giving Jon free run of the second floor, right? Increased freedom, without him having to depend on Martin for it? 

Jon would hate it if he knew Martin was following him so intently, unseen and unheard. Which should mean that he shouldn’t be following him at all, but actually means that he is being very, very careful to not be caught. 

Martin would love to let Jon have this freedom with no strings attached, of course. He’d love to let him have all the freedom he wants! He wants for Jon to be comfortable, to give him what he wants, without any lies or conditions. The problem is that he can’t do that without being sure that he won’t just use it to leave. And he would, if Martin gave him full freedom. And even with this partial freedom, given the range of the second floor, even with all of the windows nailed shut-- Martin can’t trust for a moment that he won’t try and use that.

Jon tried to climb down a window with an injured leg for fuck’s sake. He can’t let him get away. 

He hates thinking like that. Like a possessive monster, treating Jon like the most vital thing about him is whether or not he’s with Martin, and ultimately nothing else matters as much. That’s not a way to treat people. Human beings. 

He’s seen Jon smile. He’s heard him cry. Woken him up from a nightmare. Seen him desperate, furious, terrified, relaxed, calm, something that almost borders on content, happy. He knows that he’s impatient when Martin takes a long time to get the point, and that he can ask questions about something for hours without tiring, genuinely curious the whole way, until they’re far enough down the chain of why how when that Martin finally awkwardly runs dry of answers. He eats his meals fastest when it's veal. He yelps and demands Martin remove any spiders that he notices in his room post haste. The birds singing wakes him up every morning, and he always looks a bit cranky about it. He’s always beautiful, but he’s breathtaking when Martin manages to do or say something that makes Jon look at him like he’s seeing something new, and that he’s surprised to see that he likes it. How soft his voice can get sometimes. 

The point is, Jon isn’t just a random person who’s had the beautiful, wonderful, fantastic horrible bad luck of walking into his manor without knowing what he was getting himself into any longer. He’s Jon. 

And that’s made Martin even more terrified of losing him. The more he gets to know him, the longer he stays, the yawning black pit of desperate dread inside of his chest gets deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Colder and darker. 

Of course Martin wants to be kind to Jon and let him be free, let him have everything he wants. But he needs to cling onto Jon tight, tight, tight, and never ever let him go. If Jon leaves (and he wants to, he will if Martin gives him the chance) then Martin won’t… 

Martin won’t. 

You can just give up this idiotic little facade of being my kind caretaker and not the monster that’s keeping me trapped here. When Jon had snarled that into his face, he had looked bigger than Martin. Wide eyes, his pupils narrow pinpoints, his hand on his tusk keeping him right where he was. 

Martin makes himself stop thinking about that. Jon is making some odd noises, up ahead in the hallway where he can’t see him. Like he’s throwing stuff around. Huffing with the effort of it. Martin hopes he isn’t straining his leg again. 

“Martin!” Jon calls out, and his heart goes up into his throat for a moment because has he been caught? Did Jon notice him? Is he going to shout at him, be furious at him, the little warmth he’s so carefully kindled between them so far going out like a poorly built fire? “Martin, come here!” 

Martin freezes. After a moment Jon huffs, and starts stomping down the hall, back the way he came. Martin takes a deep breath and makes himself move before Jon can see him … lurking, just out of sight. 

Jon is marching as well as he can with a determined frown on his face, but he falters to a stop once Martin rounds the corner, his face going clear and surprised. “Oh, there you are.” 

“Y--yeah, here I am,” he says, put off balance by Jon being put off balance. He’d been bracing himself for this interaction to be, well, unpleasant, and it’s already not what he predicted. 

“Well, good,” Jon says, rallying, his determined frown sliding back in on his face. “I want to see what’s behind the Door.” 

Oh, so he’s still not done with the ‘I want’s. Pushing at boundaries, seeing how much power he has if what he’s asking for isn’t his freedom. Martin really hopes that the answer ‘anything else I can give you’ is going to sink in soon. 

“The door?” he asks confusedly. 

“Yes, the Door!” he repeats himself impatiently, as if Martin’s being daft on purpose. 

“Um… which door?” 

“The Door!” 

“Jon, I don’t--” 

“You said I can go anywhere on the second floor,” he continues stubbornly, as if they’re having some sort of argument. Martin would dearly like to know what the hell it is they’re talking about. “Well, the Door is on the second floor, and I want to see what’s behind it, but I’m having trouble removing all of the furniture you shoved in front of it away on my own. Help me remove it at once. … Please.” 

“Oh,” he realizes. “That door.” 

“Yes, of course that Door! Which other one would I mean?” 

“Well, I just-- I don’t know. I guess it didn’t occur to me that you’d want to see inside that room!” 

“Of course I want to see inside that room! It’s the only one I can’t go inside. You didn’t even bother putting that much security into barring the way to the one room in the house that’s just full of all of the mansion’s mirrors. Which was pretty disturbing to stumble upon, let me tell you.” 

“The room that’s full of what?” 

“Dear lord, your memory truly is awful. It’s two left corners away, the third door to the right.” 

“I-- okay. I’ll trust you on that. I don’t need to see it.” Now that he thinks about it, he really can picture himself doing something like that all too well. He doesn’t like his body, it makes sense that he wouldn’t like his reflection either. 

“How can you forget about a whole room in the home you’re currently living in? Do you just sit in one place? I don’t know why you would, it’s not as if anyone’s making you.” 

You can just give up this idiotic little facade of not being the monster that’s keeping me trapped here.

Martin winces. “Sorry,” spills out of him reflexively. “I just-- I guess I don’t really see the point of exploring a place I’ve lived in all of my life. It’s easy to fall into a routine. I, I didn’t really notice stuff… fading away.” 

Jon softens. Huffs, looks away uncomfortably. “Well, alright then. Would you just help me with unbarricading the Door, already?” 

“Okay,” he agrees a little bit desperately, eager to change the subject. And then, “You’re adding a sort of weird inflection to the word door, did you notice that?” 

“Martin,” Jon says, in a way that he realizes with a little thrill sounds familiar. Jon is starting to sound familiar to him, small words and phrases and habits becoming known to him. Jon has a particular way of saying Martin when he’s gently annoyed with him. He has habits for Martin. 

“Yeah, right, sorry,” he says, smiling stupidly down at him. 

Jon frowns up at him as if he’s being confusing on purpose, and then turns to walk away, towards the infamous door. Martin sort of loves watching him walk with the cane he made for him. 

He especially loves that Jon sought him out for help. This is Jon’s first chance to be out of his room without Martin either carrying him, supporting most of his weight, or outright chasing him down. Instead, he decided that he’s okay with Martin being here. It’s definitely much, much better than silently stalking him through the halls, hoping that he won’t be noticed, hyper aware of how close Jon is to a stairway leading down, or perhaps a window he could break despite it being nailed shut. 

You can just give up this idiotic little facade of not being a monster. 

Was that what Jon had said? It wasn’t, was it? He tries to remember what it was he’d said, exactly, but he can only picture him saying those exact words. 

“Martin, come on,” Jon says as he just stands there, and Martin stops thinking about it and follows. 

At first Jon helps him with moving the furniture out of the way, but soon it becomes apparent that things will go faster if he just stands out of the way while Martin shoves things aside. It still takes him a while, because he clearly made this barricade to dissuade himself from entering, so there’s quite a bit to move. It’s just time consuming, however, just a bit of heavy lifting. Nothing particularly difficult to get past, if he ever had half a mind to do so. But clearly, until now, he hasn’t. The furniture is covered in cobwebs and dust. For years now, he’s just been ignoring a room he’s shut himself out of, even though he can’t remember why he did so in the first place even when he tries to recall it. 

That makes sense. Martin only hides things from himself when they upset him, and why would he want to upset himself any more than necessary? The piled up furniture was a more than good enough warning and deterrent to stop him from idly opening the door to a room that has something that he doesn’t want to see, apparently. Past a certain point, he just stopped registering it entirely, like his own snout and jutting tusks in front of his eyes. Until Jon pointed it out to him. 

If Jon wants to see what’s inside the room, then Martin will unbarricade the door and help him see it. It doesn’t matter whatever’s inside it; he’s certain to his bone marrow that he’d do quite a lot to make Jon happy, and that includes confronting unpleasant things. 

With a heave, he moves the last sofa loaded down with cupboards and candlesticks and any possible thing to help weigh it down more. Jon moves closer, eager to see inside just because he wasn’t able to before. There’s a fond twinge inside of Martin’s chest, which help him overcome the lurking dread of what’s in there what’s so bad, and he reaches out to open the doors. It’s good that he did it, instead of Jon, because it takes a bit of a push even from him, with the doors having been closed for so long, undisturbed. 

The doors open. Dust swirls. Jon inhales sharply. 

“Oh,” Martin says. “That makes sense.” 

It’s the library.

Chapter 19: library

Summary:

Jon is in love.

Jon is in love. 

He’s never seen a library this extensive in his life. Before this, the largest collection of books he’d seen had been Elias’, which he’d been impressed and delighted by until he’d realized that the majority of them were about the same things, studies and speculations and essays on the inner machinations of the human mind, Elias’ apparent favored subject. There were few deviations. Jon needed variety in his reading, for it to keep his interest. That was the embarrassingly indulgent reason that he’d told no one save Georgie about that he’d started running a bookshop in the first place. It gave him an excuse to own a large collection of books with a wide range of subjects and themes and styles, without completely bankrupting himself. 

But this. This collection is the largest he’s ever seen, dwarfing even Elias’ library, much less his own bookshop. Towering bookshelves that one needs a ladder to properly scale, stairs to a second level full of books, the shelves covering all of the walls from floor to ceiling and then some more stacks to turn the place into a dusty labyrinth of literature. And there’s so much variety, so much sheer quantity, Jon thinks he could perhaps spend the rest of his days here without ever having to read the same book twice. 

He immediately settles down to give it his best try. There’s a small reading area with two armchairs and a rug right by a large window that lets in daylight that he can read by. He picks out a hefty, broad tome on sea creatures of all things, he’s never read a nonfiction book on sea creatures before, and every other page is an incredible detailed illustration of whatever being it is currently describing. Whales, that he’s heard of before due to the use of their fat, but had no idea were quite so large until the size scale in the book showed him the drastic difference between a man and a whale. Narwhals, large fish with a singular horn like a unicorn. Dolphins, creatures that have helped bring drowning men to shore, showing an uncanny intelligence in the act. 

He consumes all of the text ravenously, and marvels at the illustrations until he notices that he has to squint to do so. With surprise and offense, he looks up to see that the sun is setting, taking its light with it. 

Luckily, after some quick rummaging he finds a candle and some matchsticks laid upon a desk nearby in the library, so the darkness does not call an end to his reading. He is not ready to stop any time soon. 

He settles back in the armchair, now with a flickering yellow candle and two more books he picked up along the way that looked rather intriguing. And he reads. 

And reads. 

 

“Jon.” 

The princess is bargaining for her soul back from the devil she was tricked into selling it to. Jon has never read this story before, and the style is fascinating. 

“Jon?” 

Inexplicably, random parts of the text are written in entirely different languages, but that’s just an interesting puzzle, because as it turns out there’s an entire shelf here dedicated to painstakingly written translation dictionaries. 

“Jon, can you hear me?” 

And for some reason the German translation book is from German to Spanish, which means he needs to use the Spanish translation book to parse the German passages third hand, and somewhere along the way it all becomes rather garbled, but that’s only fascinating to try and parse in a very frustrating sort of way. 

“I’m… going to touch you now, okay?” 

The princess has resorted to lancing her eyes out of her own skull to try and get out of her deal with the devil, and now it’s veering off into latin except he knows latin although he isn’t exactly fluent but--

A large hand lands lightly on his shoulder, and he yelps. He fumbles the book and it tumbles onto the floor, and he winces, hoping that he didn’t tear a page or anything as terrible. 

“Um!” Martin says. “Sorry! I, I did try to warn you…” 

Jon leans down from his seat to try and pick the book up from the floor, but doesn’t manage to even get close. He has to clench his jaw down on a grunt of pain as his back complains at the movement, stopping him short. 

“Are you okay?” Martin asks anxiously, kneeling down to pick up the book for Jon. Much to Jon’s dismay, instead of handing it right back to Jon, he just holds it to his chest as he stands back up. 

“Fine,” he says, holding his hand out for the book, prompting. 

Martin does not immediately hand over the book. 

“Martin,” he says threateningly, narrowing his eyes at him. 

“Before I give you this book back,” he says, clutching it to him like a hostage, his voice wavering and yet somehow resolute at the same time, “you have to promise that you’ll finish having this conversation with me and not immediately get distracted and start reading it again.” 

“I wouldn’t just ignore you,” he says peevishly, offended. 

“See, that’s what I thought at first too, but I’ve talked to you several times during the last few days now, and even the times you actually responded, I don’t think you actually really took in anything that I said? You just made agreeing noises.” Martin puts on a posh, deep voice that is apparently supposed to be some sort of imitation of Jon. “Yes, Martin. Mmh, yes. Quite. Of course. Yes, yes. In a minute.” 

Jon remembers zero of these interactions. He flushes, embarrassed and indignant, and crosses his arms. “I won’t ignore you, so if you would so kindly just give me the book back already.” 

Martin sighs, and gives him the book back. Jon doesn’t miss the way he looks at Jon very carefully, like he expects for him to immediately crack the cover open and start glancing at the pages on the sly. Jon very pointedly puts the book down his lap, closed, looking attentively back at Martin with his full attention. 

“Thank you,” Martin says primly, in a way Jon suspects is not all that sincere. He tries not to bristle at it. 

“Well, say your piece then,” he demands, eager to get back to that latin passage that had looked rather interesting. 

“I have food, and I refuse to leave until you eat it,” he says after taking a deep fortifying breath, and he gestures towards the nearby table where he has indeed cleared a space to set down a tray of food. 

“That’s what all the fuss is about? Martin, I know how to eat!” 

“You could have fooled me! It’s been a complete coin toss whether or not you’d eat any of the meals I’ve brought you the last few days. It’s not healthy to eat only once or twice a day, Jon. Also, after that, please go take a rest? I haven’t seen you go to your room in two days. You need to sleep.” 

He flushes, and snaps defensively, “I’ll have you know I took a quick nap right here only some hours ago! I have rested.” 

“In the chair?” Martin asks, aghast. “Jon, your back!” 

“I’m not an old man!” 

“I saw you try and fail to pick up that book from the floor just now, you know.” 

Not knowing how to deny reality that had happened only moments ago right before their very eyes, Jon resorts to making various wordless indignant noises for some moments. Martin nudges the tray of food closer to him, raising his eyebrows as much as he can on his boar-like face. 

“I… very well, I’ll eat,” he concedes with resignation, and doesn’t miss the way Martin’s right ear flicks with satisfaction as he reaches forward to place the tray on his lap. 

He hadn’t noticed Jon not surrendering to the idea that he needs to go and take a rest in his bedroom, then. 

He eats his meal, and Martin watches him do it in attentive silence, reminiscent of some of their earlier days together, when Martin was more prone to unblinkingly tracking every little one of Jon’s movements no matter how tense and anxious it made him feel. It more just makes him feel self conscious and strange now, to be studied so intently while he’s doing something so unremarkable, which is a difference he decides not to dwell on. Instead, he wonders at the return to old habits for Martin. 

“What?” he asks. “Do I have something on my face?” 

“What?” he asks, as if he hadn’t heard him. Jon gives him a look, puzzled and annoyed at being puzzled. “Er, sorry, I wasn’t listening…” 

“So I gathered,” he grouses, mostly because it feels like the part of the conversation in which he should grouse. He feels a strange sensation of concern over Martin’s behavior, instead of paranoia or suspicion. “You’re staring.” 

“Oh! Sorry, I’ll, um…” 

“You said you weren’t leaving until I’ve eaten my food,” he points out, gesturing towards his half eaten meal. He finds that he doesn’t want for Martin to leave, whereas he’d been so eager to get rid of him only moments before, to get back to the reading he hadn’t had the opportunity to indulge in since he came here (and before that, not the peace of mind). He just knows that if Martin leaves now, he won’t be able to focus on the words on the page, driven to distraction by not knowing why Martin’s so off today. 

Martin blinks. “Yes. I did say that.” He settles down on the floor next to Jon’s chair, and smiles. This way, they’re at eye level for once. “Is it good?” 

“Yes, Martin, as always,” he says. The day Martin had figured out the appropriate amount of salt for a meal had been a good one. He squints at him suspiciously, and abruptly gives up on trying to subtly suss out whatever’s going on inside Martin’s head on his own. He’s never had any talents for such things, and he doesn’t see why subterfuge is necessary in this case. It’s not as if Martin will-- 

“What’s bothering you?” he says, the question almost accusatory from how bluntly he asks it. He winces a little, and tries to belatedly soften it, “I mean, you’re behaving strangely is all.” 

Martin doesn’t hesitate a moment before answering. “It’s like I said, Jon. You’ve barely been eating or sleeping since you found this place. I’m glad that you’re happy, and I’ve been trying to give you the space to enjoy the library in peace, but-- I’ve just been worried, okay? You need to take better care of yourself. The books will still be here if you take a break.” 

Jon clutches at the book of fairy tales protectively without thought, as if may be about to be ripped out of his arms. He’s opening his mouth to say something about how he doesn’t need to worry and he’s perfectly fine, when something finally occurs to him. 

“Is it the library? Is it… upsetting for you to be here?” He can’t imagine why it would be upsetting to be surrounded by a veritable treasure trove. He can’t even begin to imagine why Martin would close himself off from such a wonder in the first place. Especially in his circumstances, trapped all alone for years with nothing but books for company. The more he thinks about it, the less sense it makes. He’d never asked for an explanation after they’d gotten into the room and Martin had seen what he’d forgotten, had he? 

Oh, that makes sense, Martin had said after he’d seen the rows upon rows of shelves teeming with books, and Jon hadn’t even thought to press him to elaborate. He’d been far more distracted by the absolute goldmine before him; everything else had instantly fallen away as irrelevant or to be dealt with at a later date. He starts to feel a faint prickling of guilt over that, now. For all he knows, perhaps the reason this place upset Martin is that someone he loved died in here, or some such other tragedy. Has he been a tactless bastard without noticing again, making Martin come in here to give him his meals? 

“Oh,” Martin says. “Uh, no. Or at least, not any longer. I just… okay, I haven’t just been worried, I guess. I’ve been-- trying not to spoil this for you, bothering you while you’re reading, but. With you being here every hour of the day, always reading and distracted I just… miss you, I guess? Which I know is dumb-- you’re right here, I can see you any time I want-- I know it’s stupid, sorry. Don’t mind me.” 

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that. Being missed by someone, just because he spent a few days with his nose buried in a book seems… the idea of it just doesn’t fit, not on Jon. His grandmother liked him out of sight and mind, Georgie had plenty of other friends to spend time with whenever he forgot that a world existed beyond his pages, and Elias-- well, when he wanted Jon’s attention, he took it. 

But then again, this isn’t that, is it? Martin doesn’t enjoy being alone like his grandmother, doesn’t have other friends like Georgie, and doesn’t seem to feel comfortable demanding things from Jon unless he feels he has to, when he’s already keeping him captive. In fact, he has no one to talk to or spend time with besides Jon at all. That’s the entire reason he’s keeping him here in the first place. To not be completely alone any longer. 

Jon already knew all of this. He just keeps forgetting it, in small ways. It’s difficult to… fully comprehend, someone being so achingly lonely for so long. 

And here he is, inadvertently ignoring Martin for days on end when he has no one else. He feels guilty. He’s angry at feeling guilty. What, is he supposed to carefully make sure that he socializes with the man for a certain amount of time every single day? Meet a quota? What is he, a pet? He didn’t ask for any of this. 

Martin didn’t ask for that either. He left Jon alone with the books, and has only intervened to try and get him to eat and sleep. He reminds himself of this firmly, and bites his tongue at a sharp retort that may be undeserved. He’d certainly later feel like a heel over it, anyways. 

He works on finishing his meal. Martin watches on, periodically casually glancing away to look at the dusty shelves surrounding him, so as to not stare, as Jon had earlier pointed out. Jon counts inside of his head, and notices that Martin looks away every thirty seconds like clockwork. He stops counting and tries to focus on his food. 

The man doesn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that Jon had nothing to say to his confession of missing him. It bothers Jon though, feels like an awkwardly hanging loose thread, something that begs to be tied off and resolved. What should he say? 

He’s never had good instincts for these sorts of things. But it feels like he should apologize for neglecting Martin, make an offer to spend more time with him, make amends and correct his behavior. 

That anger rises back up inside him, sharp like bile. No, he should damn well not do any of those things. Just because he’s the only one who can keep Martin company doesn’t mean that it’s his duty. He thinks. The idea of it rankles, at least. He didn’t ask for this. 

“Jon? I thought you, um, liked the food? Is there something wrong with it? Did I leave an eggshell in again?” 

Jon starts as he realizes that he’s finished his meal, and has been glaring furiously at the empty plate for some time now as he’s been internally debating with himself about how to best proceed, apparently. 

“No, there’s nothing wrong with it,” he dismisses brusquely. He looks up at Martin, who’s peering at him anxiously again, and comes to a snap decision. “I’m not ready to leave this library yet, so if you’re lonely you could perhaps read one of the books. I did that often, as a child. Books are far easier companions than other children.” 

There, that’s a good compromise, isn’t it? Showing some sympathy to Martin and offering a solution without immediately flinging away his reading material to go and entertain him. 

“Is that what you’re scowling about? Jon, I told you, you don’t need to mind me just because I’m feeling a little-- I always feel-- anyways, I said that I don’t want to bother you when you’re enjoying yourself. And you really should leave the library to at least sleep in your bed at night--” 

“Your mere presence doesn’t bother me,” he says. 

“Oh,” Martin says, like he’s said something terribly flattering. Jon frowns. Had that not been obvious? Well, he can admit that hadn’t always been the case, but-- he’s getting distracted. 

“We can both be reading in the library at the same time, it’s fine.” 

“That’s-- I’m glad to hear that, really, but, no. That’s not an option.” 

“Why not? You said that the library doesn’t bother you any longer.” He also hadn’t said why it ever bothered him in the first place, and that curious mystery is going to kill him, but the memory of his grandmother chastising him for asking Mr. Sanders at church why he only has one leg is suddenly at the forefront of his mind. He does have a habit of asking remarkably tacless questions. He should try and… restrain himself. Mind his own business. He should. 

Martin looks casually off to the side again, like he’d been doing when he’d been carefully not staring at Jon as he ate, except this time his gaze doesn’t eventually wander back. “It doesn’t bother me any longer,” he says carefully, “because, um, I’m doing better? But the, the main issue is still there.” 

And just like that, his restraint snaps in half like a cheap piece of ribbon. In Jon’s defense, Martin shouldn’t be going around dropping cryptic, intriguing half answers that beg to be filled in and completed like that. 

He picks up the tray and sets it down on the table hard enough to make the plate, glass, and cutlery rattle. Oops. He turns to Martin abruptly enough to make the man flinch, as if he could ever possibly hurt him. 

“Oh, that is it,” he says, as if this is information that he’s entitled to, and he knows, he knows he’s being irrational and too intense right now, but he’s too caught up in the storm of his own livid curiosity to stop. “Why does this place upset you? Why did you board the library up? Why won’t you stay and read here, when you clearly have nothing else to do? You’re not making any sense!” 

“I don’t know how to read,” he says, and his eyes go as wide as Jon’s at his answer. He had apparently been stunned enough by Jon’s outburst to just answer him honestly. 

“What,” Jon says, in a terribly typical display of his usual degree of tact and social graces. He flushes, hot and mortified by himself. 

“I said-- well you know what I said, I’ll just--” He moves to stand up and leave, and Jon immediately lunges for him, grabbing at his arm. He almost falls out of his chair in the process, his back and his leg twinging at the abrupt movement, and his hand looks terribly small, trying in vain to wrap around Martin’s forearm, clutching at his fur. He absolutely cannot stop Martin from leaving if he wants to, just like he can’t stop him from doing anything he wants at all, when it comes down to it. Jon can only guess that he freezes because he knows that Jon is too stubborn to let go, and he’ll drag Jon right onto the floor if he continues. And Jon knows that Martin wouldn’t want to-- 

“But that doesn’t make any sense either,” he argues. He knows that he shouldn’t be arguing here, he should most likely be apologizing, or let Martin retreat, but it doesn’t make sense. “You said that you grew up here, back when you were,” even he knows better than to use the clumsy phrasing back when you were human, “when you weren’t cursed.” 

He gestures to the sheer opulence surrounding them, as long neglected as it may be now. Once, it wasn’t. Once, this large building full of portraits and large canopied beds and arches and marble belonged to Martin’s parents, who had servants. A boy raised in such privilege simply couldn’t get away with not being tutored thoroughly on his letters, along with a vast number of other subjects. 

It may occur to Jon to be jealous of him in some way, if it hadn’t all clearly ended so poorly of him. Cursed and alone, driven to do something as desperate as keep a stranger against his will in his estate. He’s managed to encounter the one man who has a strong case for having a worse life than Jon. 

Martin takes a long look at him, the stubborn burning hungry curiosity no doubt plain on his face, and sighs, resigned. Jon feels some shame for that, but he pushes it down and away. 

“Don’t fall out of your chair,” Martin says, and he comes closer to move Jon into a less precarious position in his chair, his hands going around his waist to easily and quickly lift him and set him down, as easy as picking up a book. Jon chokes with surprise. Martin snatches his hands back, like he’d touched a hot stove. “Sorry! I, I wasn’t thinking--” 

“It’s fine,” he says, along with a flustered dismissive wave of his hand. Martin’s habit of thoughtlessly manhandling him certainly isn’t appropriate, but far from one of his most pressing issues. He doesn’t want to get sidetracked. And honestly, talking about it may very kill him via sheer mortification. “What’s the real reason you can’t--?” 

“That is the real reason, Jon,” Martin says, sounding tired all at once. Guilt climbs slowly up the back of his neck, and he tries to ignore it. It feels strange, feeling guilt over saying or doing something rude to Martin. It had been easier, in a way, when he had just hated and feared him. It had at least been simpler. He isn’t supposed to feel any sort of obligation towards his captor, is he? He’s doing something wrong, isn’t he? He’s messing up being a captive, of all things-- “I just… alright, yeah, it’s a bit more complicated than that.” 

“How so?” he asks, very eager to keep his mind focused on this one small mystery instead of that whole mess, for the moment. 

“I did know how to read before.” He doesn’t have to say before what. Some things are so obvious not even Jon needs them pointed out to him. “I even managed it for a while afterwards. But it-- it started to fade, you know? I don’t know. I was reading every single day, trying to stay sane. But it just turned into random scribbles for me, eventually. I think it may have been part of the curse? It must have. I tried really hard to remember how to read. I could tell that I was losing it. But I lost it anyway. 

“B-- but you know what was worse? After a while I’d forget that I’d forgotten how to read, too. So I’d go into the library, pick up a book, and realize all over again. It was… a really nasty shock, each time. It was upsetting. So I locked and barricaded the door to the library, to break the cycle. Let the existence of the whole room fall out of my head, through one of the holes that keeps appearing in my memories.” 

He looks at Jon, and startles out of the faraway expression on his face, as if reminiscing over a particularly bitter memory. He smiles wanly down at him, making a poor but valiant attempt at lightening the mood. “But my memory problems have been much better since you got here,” he says, conciliatory. As if Jon is the one who needs comforting, here. 

It’s most likely because of whatever no doubt horrified expression he’s making right now. “Oh, Martin,” he says, aghast. “I’m so sorry.” 

Martin gives a surprised bark of a laugh, and it actually sounds genuine. He can’t imagine what he could possibly find to be amusing about any part of that terrible story. 

“You look more horrified than when I told you my own mum cursed me,” he says, almost teasing. “Losing the ability to read definitely wasn’t fun, but I wouldn’t say that it was the worst part of this whole thing for me.” 

“What kind of sadist would do such a thing to her own son?” he demands, perhaps a touch hysterically, going off of the stunned look Martin gives him, as if he’s said something absolutely astonishing. 

He may be right. Jon may be a bit touch biased here, seeing as Martin just described a scenario that he had never imagined before but is nevertheless his new worst nightmare. And it happened to him, it was done to him. It somehow feels more real than all the rest. Having his body transformed into something beastly, being alone for so many years that he began to forget vital things, desperation and loneliness overtaking him. Somehow, he can imagine losing the ability to read far too well, and it’s viscerally upsetting. 

Oh, and there’s the familiar dawning sensation of realizing that he’s acted like a damned cad.  

“Martin I-- I’m sorry for pushing you for an answer,” he says, because he is. Sure, he’d been burning with curiosity, but when doesn’t he? And this isn’t like pushing to see how much he can ask for before Martin snaps, demanding to know what he will and will not allow. This honestly just… had nothing at all to do with him. Not relevant to his safety or future. In other words, not his business. He can feel his face burning, hot and uncomfortable at mistepping in such a well trod way. 

This very tendency may or may not have been one of the things that had been loudly brought up in his last fight with Georgie, before they’d summarily stopped being Jon-and-Georgie. 

“Um,” Martin says, sounding high pitched and utterly baffled by the turn their conversation has taken. “N--no, it’s okay, I know I was acting really weird and suspicious. But, ah, about my mum-- sadist might be a bit harsh, don’t you think?” 

“A bit harsh?” he repeats incredulously. “You don’t think cursing you so you can’t read wasn’t a bit harsh?” 

“A--again, I don’t really think the not reading thing is the main point of the curse, it’s more of a side effect? And y’know, she was really sick when she-- she wasn’t thinking clearly.” 

“Who curses their child when they’re disoriented? What, is it that easy? Like tripping, or accidentally putting something away in the incorrect place?” 

“Um, well, no-- it was deliberate, yeah, but--” 

“Why are you defending her!?” He’s so confused, and horrified, and angry. Angry, on Martin’s behalf of all people, and he’s so swept up in his indignance that he can’t even take the time to feel strange about it, because who would do such a thing? Take the meager comforts someone has away from them-- 

(Elias, selling off his bookshop, because it’s his property now, isn’t it? What’s yours is mine, isn’t it, dear? You don’t need to work for a living any longer, do you? You don’t need all of those books, right? And you shouldn’t stay cooped up in the estate’s library all day, don’t you agree? You shouldn’t--) 

“Jon,” Martin says, his hand on his shoulder, the pressure feather light, tentative. His voice is small and careful. “Are you okay?” 

He notices all at once that his eyes are stinging terribly. He scrubs at his face as quickly and furtively as he can, with Martin looking directly at him. Yes, he has indeed wept a few tears out of sheer rage. Right in front of Martin, who should by all rights be the one who’s upset here. Ugh. 

“I’m fine,” he bites out hoarsely. He doesn’t know why this conversation has shattered his composure so utterly. Certainly, they aren’t talking about something pleasant, but still. This is happening to Martin, who is taking this far better than Jon who’s only hearing about it. 

“We can talk about something else,” he offers. Jon is fairly certain that this is the part where he’s supposed to tell Jon not to be so damned nosy. He has the irrational urge to correct him, the way he does when Martin doesn’t realize that Jon wants cutlery, or baths, or to be left alone to change clothes. The way an interaction like this should end seems to be yet another thing that’s slipped his mind during the years of his solitude. 

“Yes,” he agrees feebly instead, grateful to just… put the entire matter to bed and never return to wake it again. He feels like garbage, hot and humiliated and upset to an unreasonable degree. He can only assume that Martin didn’t get anything positive from this disaster of a talk either. 

“Um,” Martin says, gaze wandering around the room, visibly searching for a new topic. His eyes finally land down on Jon’s lap. “What are you reading? Is it any good?” 

Jon looks down, where he’s clutching white knuckled at the book that Martin had earlier taken away from him in exchange for him eating a full meal. He’d entirely forgotten about it. He struggles for a moment to remember what it was about, even as consumed as he was with it before he was interrupted. Fighting past the emotional fog in his head. 

“It’s a fairytale,” he says dumbly, fumbling for a rambling summary of the plot so far in his mind. He’s not used to answering that sort of question. Grandmother hadn’t cared about what he read so long as he read it, and when Georgie was curious she’d just peek over his shoulder-- 

An idea occurs to him. He whips his head up to fix his eyes on Martin. “Of course!” he exclaims. 

“What?” Martin yelps, clearly startled by his sudden invigoration. 

It’s perfect, an even better compromise than his earlier idea of him and Martin quietly reading in the same room, company for Martin and books for Jon. This will be actual social interaction to help Martin, still without taking Jon away from his reading. He beams as he rapidly warms to the idea, pleased at having found a workable solution to the problem at hand. (One of the problems at hand.) 

“I’ll read it out loud to you,” he says with great satisfaction. 

Martin looks at him, not answering for long enough that the second thoughts belatedly catch up to Jon’s racing mind. Is it too condescending of an idea? To be read to like a child-- 

“Okay,” Martin says, just as the panic is truly starting to rise inside of him, stuttering apologies and backtracking building up like steam in his chest. 

“Really?” he asks, surprised by the agreement that he’d expected so unquestioningly only moments before. “I mean, yes, alright. Good. Yes. I’ll begin.” 

Martin settles himself more comfortably on the floor, and looks at Jon expectantly. Jon clears his throat awkwardly, wondering at himself how he could have so boldly suggested this course of action without taking into account how Martin would obviously stare at him as he reads aloud, an attentive audience of one. It’s somehow more nerve wracking than being stared at as he eats. 

He opens the book and buries his face in it, replacing Martin’s face with the pages. If he just focuses very, very hard on the words, then that should help, right? 

“Once upon a time,” he says stiffly, self consciously. He’s never read a story to someone before. He feels silly and a little bit embarrassed, and like he’s definitely doing it wrong in some way. He tries to cast his mind back to when someone did this for him, when he was a child. Grandmother hadn’t been the sort. 

But his mother had been, hadn’t she? He can’t even remember what the story was, but he very, very faintly remembers her long hair brushing against him as she leaned over to show him the worn, faded pictures so he wouldn’t have to stir in his bed. How he’d stifle his bubbling laughter when she put on the silly ogre voice. 

Voices. Right, he should be doing voices, that’s what people do when they’re telling stories. He takes on a more foreboding tone for the narrator, an all knowing voice relaying a tale with a tragic ending only he can see. Something low and delicate for the princess, snarling and malicious and smug for the devil. 

He does end up getting lost in the story again, despite his dislike for rereads. Acting them out is-- it’s a little bit fun, surprisingly. And then he finally passes the point where he’d been interrupted, and he gets even more drawn in, as new to the story as his audience, even as he plays out every role of the story himself. 

“The princess plucked out the devil’s eyeballs for her own, so she could see her kingdom herself. And the devil smiled as soon as she turned her back on his broken body, satisfied that he’d won, even if she didn’t know it yet.” With a deep breath, he finally closes the book. “The end.” 

He looks up, and the first thing he notes is that the sun has set again while he wasn’t paying attention. He should relight the candle. 

The second thing he notices is that Martin has fallen asleep at some point during the tale, right there on the floor. Now that Jon’s own voice isn’t ringing out in the silence of the library, he can hear his quiet snores. He has no idea when Martin fell asleep, and he isn’t offended so much as surprised, and unsure of what to do. Leave him to his sleep? Wake him up? Surely he doesn’t want to sleep on the floor-- but where does he sleep, exactly? In a bed, right? The mansion is full of them, he must-- 

Leave quietly, he thinks, and never come back. Escape. 

He freezes as he realizes that yes, this is in fact the best opportunity he’s going to have to make a break for it. He knows for a fact that Martin is asleep, deeply enough so to sleep through Jon narrating an entire book. There will be no chase, no violence. He just has to walk up and leave through the door, down the hall until he reaches the stairs, down the steps, past the foyer, through those doors he’d stumbled through so many days ago now. And then he’ll finally be free. 

His hand settles on the handle of the cane. The cane Martin had made for him. 

He does not get up. 

He looks at Martin. Martin, the terrifying beast that he’d fled from so desperately that first night, to the point that he’d injured himself in his haste. Martin, who wouldn’t have actually hurt him if he’d caught him before Jon went and trapped himself in the floorboards. 

He’s been trying to avoid thinking about it, oddly uncomfortable with the simple fact that he completely trusts that no matter what, Martin won’t try to hurt him. Won’t kill him. Won’t do anything for the sake of upsetting him. It simply wouldn’t be like him to want any of those things. He knows that he isn’t in danger, even if he’s captive. 

Now that he actually has an opportunity for escape in front of him, now that he knows that Martin’s motives and intentions are honest, even if somewhat twisted, now that he isn’t terrified for his life and safety-- 

He has to consider the fact that he has nothing to run away to in the first place. He never did. But he’d run anyways, because what he’d had was worse than any other possible fate he could imagine, and risking his life and limb to try and get something better had been worth it. 

But this isn’t the worst possible fate, is it? It’s not ideal, certainly, but at least here he has food, and shelter, and books, and safety. He’d had all those but the last two with Elias, so he’s already doing better. 

Martin snuffles in his sleep. It’s a ridiculously adorable sound. 

And company. He has company, here. Far more pleasant than what he’d had, as queer as it seems to find a literal beast to be more likeable than his own fiance. 

The realization that he doesn’t actually want to get out of the situation he’s been stubbornly trying to escape from until now is-- surreal, honestly. It sits strangely in his head, absurdly. That’s not the appropriate conclusion to draw, surely? He’s a captive, he should want to escape. Anyone from his village would call him a madman for willingly staying, if he has any possible chance of escaping. 

But no one from the village is here to call him anything. And, going over his logic for this decision again and then twice more, he can only conclude that his reasoning is objectively rational. Like carefully following a mathematical formula, obeying every rule to the letter, and somehow coming up with the answer yellow. 

Jon’s life is as absurd as a morbid fairytale, because he gets up out of his chair, and instead of sneaking away from the beast keeping him captive, he settles down on the floor along with him, leaning against his warm bulk. His fur is bristly, coarse, but not uncomfortable. He closes his eyes. He’s been neglecting his sleep as of late, after all. 

Martin’s soft snores help lull him to sleep faster than the pattering of rain on a roof.

Notes:

The illustration was done by snail_drop! Check their stuff out!

Chapter 20: cold

Summary:

Martin has been awake for about an hour now, and he hasn’t moved a muscle since he noticed the warm weight pressed up against him.

Martin has been awake for about an hour now, and he hasn’t moved a muscle since he noticed the warm weight pressed up against him. Half of him thinks he must still be dreaming, and wants to stay asleep, because this is far more pleasant and relaxing than most of his dreams. The other half suspects that he’s awake, and doesn’t want to disturb Jon’s important rest, doesn’t want for him to wake up and move away. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep here on the library floor. He’d been so tired, after days of fretting over Jon, trying to stay awake along with him. His last memory was of Jon’s voice, captivating and emotive and intent, as he recited a story so sincerely that it almost seemed like something he’d lived through himself, something that was important, something that really mattered. He had a lovely voice, Martin’s always thought so, but it’s even lovelier when it isn’t tinged with exhaustion or anger or fear. He could happily listen to Jon reading stories for the rest of his life, it feels like. 

He could, he thinks with a little bit of incredulous hysteria as he realizes that yes, maybe he actually can listen to Jon reading stories for the rest of his life. He’s never going to let Jon go, after all, and Jon seems to find the library absolutely delightful, which is good, which is fantastic, Martin is so incredibly relieved to have something that can make Jon’s trapped misery go away that isn’t letting him go. He can just keep Jon, and Jon can be content with that, he can be bribed and resigned and slowly brought around to being happy here, and isn't that good? Once upon a time a beautiful man was captured by a terrible beast, and he was never let go and he never escaped. And eventually he had no choice but to give up and make the best of it, and they lived happily ever after. Martin shakes his head. No, no, he--

Jon stirs. The window shaped square of sunlight that’s been slowly traveling across the floor all evening, revealing the drifting dust in the air, has landed on his face while Martin wasn’t paying attention, stinging his eyes. Martin wishes irrationally, intensely, that he’d drawn the curtains last night. 

“Mmn,” Jon grunts, and that’s when all of Martin realizes that yes, this is in fact real, Jon really has settled down on the floor with Martin for the night for some incomprehensible reason. Martin doesn’t understand him, and it’s a little bit frightening, but also a lot thrilling, after being trapped in this crumbling mansion for so long with nothing but the inside of his own head for company.  

“Morning,” he says, high pitched and wavering with sheer nerves. Jon’s eyes are going to pop open and he’s going to cry out in shock at Martin’s monstrous face being the first thing he sees, he didn’t lie down with Martin on purpose at all, he tripped over the rug in the night and hit his head, he-- 

Jon looks at him, blinking with fuzzy confusion. And then his expression slowly sharpens with awareness, but not fear or panic. “Good morning, Martin,” he says, his voice still soft with sleep, and Martin tries not to let his heart combust inside of his chest. 

“Erm,” Martin says, because this absolute bewildering behavior is sort of killing him even though he doesn’t want to question Jon’s choices at all if it might mean that he won’t do something like this again, but-- “not that I mind, but… is there a… reason, you went to sleep on the floor? I, I mean it was an accident, for me, personally, no judgement though-- I just don’t think it’s all that good for you? Jon?” 

By the end of his stumbling inquiry, Jon is steadfastly avoiding eye contact. 

“You told me not to sleep in the chair any longer,” he points out oh so reasonably, as if Martin’s acting daft by finding anything at all odd in his choices. There’s something sort of theatrical and over the top to his ‘you’re being ridiculous, Martin’ tone of voice. 

“Your bed,” Martin says, exasperated enough to overcome his flustered nerves over Jon touching him. “I meant you should go and sleep in your bed, not the floor, how is the floor supposed to be better than the chair!” 

“I’m not just going to leave the--” Jon cuts himself off. Visibly strains for the correct words for a moment. “I-- I don’t want to, to be away from the books. I want to be close to them.” 

Like they’re going to disappear if he lets his attention stray away from them for too long. The way Martin feels about Jon, so often. 

“Take some books with you to your bedroom, then,” he tries. 

“... Oh,” Jon says, and Martin brightens. It sounds like that will work, then. 

 

Jon reads a story to Martin every day, after that. It’s heaven. Martin didn’t even have to ask, Jon just shyly offers it one day after Martin comes with lunch to the library, and he happily accepts, almost stumbling over his words in his eagerness. Jon gets less shy and more matter of fact about it, as he keeps offering, and Martin keeps accepting, every single time. Why wouldn’t he say yes? Why wouldn’t he want to listen to Jon’s voice? 

Well. There is one reason. 

“Jon,” he says, forcing himself to interrupt the man. Jon looks up from the pages, looking almost startled about there still being a world outside of his book. Martin swallows down a yawn. “I’m tired. Let’s go to sleep?” 

Jon looks out of the window, towards the dark night sky. The sun is setting early now, with how late it is in the year. 

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed-- yes, of course,” he says. And he takes his cane with one hand, and bundles up three books in his other arm. Martin grabs about half a dozen other books at random, which earns him a smile from Jon. He tries not to be too obvious about being incredibly pleased about that. They make their way to Jon’s bedroom together. 

Jon’s reading voice is one of the sweetest sounds in the world. One of the easiest sounds in the world to fall asleep to, in fact. Martin can’t let that happen. It had occurred to him, days after the first time he let Jon’s reading lull him to sleep, that he could have woken up to Jon not pressed up against him. He could have woken up to Jon not being in the library, not in his room, not anywhere he could find or reach at all. 

If it had occurred to Jon to take that opportunity to escape, Martin may have really lost him. It’s a cold sort of realization, leaving him tense and shivering with what-could-have-been when he thinks about it. Martin still has him because of sheer dumb luck. He can’t let his guard down like that again. So, he makes sure to interrupt Jon and drag him to his bedroom once he starts to feel too tired to keep his eyes open, as much as he wants to just bask in the sound of his voice. 

They reach Jon’s room and Martin sets his load of books down on the night table. Jon puts a book underneath his pillow, one at the foot of his bed, and he just hugs the third to his chest like a stuffed animal. It looks uncomfortable, but seems to reassure him. It’s also ridiculous and adorable. 

“Sweet dreams,” he says. Jon truly seems to be settling down to sleep, instead of continuing his reading in a different location. Martin’s been surprised to learn that all Jon needs to relax is to just have some books within arms reach. He doesn’t need to be constantly reading them, he just wants for the option to be open to him. 

“Yes, Martin, you as well,” Jon returns absent mindedly, tugging the sheets up over himself. 

“... Do you want for me to close the door?” he asks. He already knows what the answer is, but-- it’s starting to get cold, and the mansion is so dreadfully drafty. He worries. 

“No,” Jon says, not even bothering to open his eyes, just like he always does, just like Martin had known he would. He tries not to sigh, and goes. 

He plans to sleep somewhere close by, where he will hear the creaking of floorboards if Jon decides to try and creep away when he’s supposed to be asleep. Like Martin usually does. But he’s stopped by the sounds of the creak of a mattress, of shifting sheets, of Jon going, “Wait.” 

He turns around. The candlelight has already been snuffed, but the moonlight is shining in through the window, and Martin’s night vision is that of a predator. He can see Jon’s earnest expression clearly. 

“Yes?” He doesn’t know why his heart is beating quicker. Jon looks so serious. 

“Do you want for the door to be closed because you still think I’m trying to--” Jon stops himself. Martin waits for a long moment for him to continue, but he doesn’t. 

“I… just want for the door to be closed because I’m worried about your health. It’s getting to be winter, you know.” 

“Right,” Jon says. 

“Do you want for me to close it?” He can’t help himself from at least trying. 

“Still no,” he says firmly, no hesitation. Martin… gets it. He wishes he didn’t, but he does. After having the door shut for so long against his will, Jon seems to have grown some sort of aversion towards closed doors, even if it lets in the chill. Every single door he comes across is left gaping open, and Martin can’t bring himself to close them. 

“Okay,” he says, accepting it. “Night, then?” 

“... Night,” Jon replies, and lies back down in his bed. Martin stands there for another moment, waiting to see if Jon has anything further to stay, but he stays down and quiet this time. Eventually, he leaves. 

Not far, of course. 

He wonders how Jon had been intending to end that sentence. 

 

What kind of sadist would do such a thing to her own son? Jon had said with such moral outrage, such visceral disgust, real shocked anger twisting his face, as if what Martin’s mum had done was absolutely unthinkable, outrageous, preposterously cruel. 

Martin generally… tries not to think about it, as hard as that is. His mum had been weak before she’d cast the curse, and so much weaker afterwards. She’d only ever slurred or painfully rasped a few words at a time after that, nowhere near enough to answer questions or offer up explanations or justifications. She’d only lived a few more months after she’d… changed him, and she hadn’t seemed entirely lucid for a single moment of it. 

Angry, sure, but not lucid. 

So, Martin had been left to figure it out on his own, for the most part. Draw his own conclusions about why she’d done it, what the point was, how intentional it was. He’d opted towards the kinder answers every single time, because it made it hurt less. She’d done it because she was sick and confused. The point was… something, something he was too stupid to understand. It wasn’t intentional at all, she wouldn’t have done that to him if she’d had all of her faculties. Surely not. Surely. 

Why are you defending her!? Martin hadn’t been able to tell if Jon was angry at Martin’s mum, Martin, or himself for some reason. All of them? Jon had gotten so emotional about it that he’d cried, and pretty much everything had fallen out of Martin’s head in his urgency to distract him and soothe him from his hurt, help him not be so upset. 

Upset, on his behalf, because of what his mum had done. 

Oh, Martin, I’m so sorry… His first reaction, soft with shock and horror. 

All Martin wants is for Jon to be (close) happy, content with his life here. So why does the memory of Jon being upset (for him, for Martin) make him feel like this? Why does Jon talking about his sick, dead mum that he took care of for so long with such obvious vitriol make him feel like this? 

Warm, in such an intensely uncomfortable way. Like hot cocoa and bees in his stomach all at once. 

 

When winter really comes, it comes all at once. Overnight, the outside world is blanketed in snow, and there’s always a cold wind howling outside (and honestly, through) the mansion. 

Normally Martin would view the changing seasons with utter apathy, nothing but a bleak reminder of the passage of time and how nothing changes despite it. But now, of course, something has changed, and it’s Jon. Jon, who swears and hobbles like an old man on his cane the day after it truly becomes winter. 

“The cold is making it hurt worse,” he grumbles crankily after Martin asks him what’s wrong, has he put too much weight on his leg again, did he stumble and hit it on something. “Christ, I feel like my grandmother.” 

(Oh, so the grandmother is real, then. Martin feels… strange, about that. Jon hasn’t mentioned having anyone else ever since the first time Martin shut him down. He’d sort of assumed that that meant that Jon didn’t have anyone else. He didn’t want for Jon to have had no one else, but-- he’s horribly, guiltily disappointed anyways. Because wouldn’t that be convenient, if Jon had no friends or family to worry for and miss him? Martin wouldn’t be causing any unseen strangers grief and pain over Jon’s absence, then. He’d only be hurting the one person. That’s better, right? Acceptable? Right?) 

Martin offers the sweater again that Jon had once refused just to see if he could get away with it, and this time Jon accepts it. And he steals the covers from another one of the beds in the mansion, so that Jon has more of them to pile up over himself while he sleeps. And then he takes some from another bed and relocates them to the library, where Jon likes to spend most of his time, so he can swaddle himself in blankets and sheets where he sits in his chair. He arranges for a hot bath for Jon every three days instead of every seven. There’s a fireplace in the library too, so Martin gets acquainted with the axe in the gardening shed and does his best to keep it lit at all hours of the day. 

There isn’t a fireplace in Jon’s bedroom, though. A terrible oversight. He even asks Jon if he’d like to change rooms maybe, sure this one is a bit smaller, but it’s got a fireplace, isn’t that nice? 

“It’s further away from the library,” Jon says. 

“I can bring you books from the library,” he tries. 

“No. I want to be able to go there myself.” Unspoken goes the fact that Jon’s leg is causing him enough pain nowadays that making the trip there last five minutes instead of two is in fact enough to keep him from being able to go there himself. He almost offers to just carry him there each day if he wants, but manages to bite his tongue. Jon likes being able to walk on his own. Martin’s not going to take away something Jon likes just because it makes him deeply anxious to see Jon shivering, curled up into a tight ball underneath all of his blankets to try and conserve warmth, having to try and stroke a painful cramp out of his leg each morning before he gets out of bed. 

He’s not going to, but god does he want to. So, Jon keeps the bedroom he already has. 

One night when he’s saying goodnight to Jon, when it’s especially frigid, to the point that Martin can almost imagine that he can see his breath misting in the air, Jon says, “Martin.” 

“Yes?” He stops where he is in the doorway. 

“Can you…” Jon hesitates, reluctant, as if he’s about to say something that he very much does not want to say. “Can you close the door? To keep the draft out.” 

“Oh. Oh, yes, of course! Yes, definitely, I can do that, yeah.” He smiles at first, some of the anxious tension that’s been residing inside of his chest for the last few days ever since the first snowfall receding a bit. Jon won’t be as cold if he just sleeps with the door shut, that’ll help some, a little bit, there’s no holes in the walls or ceiling or floors in this room, he’d made sure of it-- 

But then the way Jon’s shoulders are tightly hunched registers for him, the furrow in his brow, the thin resigned and determined line of his mouth. Jon really, really doesn’t like having the door shut. There’s a reason he’s held out for this long, even though it’s been so miserably cold all week. 

The smile goes away, replaced guilt, concern, the helpless desire to just fix this, as if he could somehow make winter go away early this year. 

Before he can really think it through and start second guessing and talk himself out of it, Martin closes the door. 

“... Martin?” Jon asks, looking at him with confused curiosity. Martin had, after all, not gone through the door before he closed it. 

“I, I thought maybe we could sleep in the same room tonight? It-- it helps build up heat, having more than one person in the same closed room-- only if it’s okay with you, of course, this is your room--” The more he tries to explain himself, the dumber it sounds. The more it sounds like he’s just making up excuses to be close to Jon, which-- yes, of course being close to Jon is great, always, but he really does just want for him to not be so cold. He’s caught him chattering his teeth more than once. 

And maybe, maybe having Martin here in the room with him will make it different enough from all of the long hours he spent locked up in here alone, with nothing to do but mull over his fear of the beast that had put him there. Yes, of course having said beast inside the room with him will make it so much better, Martin you idiot-- 

“That’s… not a bad idea, actually,” Jon says cautiously, interrupting him. “Alright. It’s worth a try.” 

“Alright,” Martin repeats, feeling a bit lightheaded with how abruptly his rapidly rising anxiety had been punctured with a simple word. Jon has a bit of a talent for that. Both for kicking his nerves into gear like casually punting a hornets nest, and for then just as quickly bringing it back down. He doesn’t seem to notice when he does either. 

Jon had been fine with sleeping leaning against Martin, that one time in the library when Martin let his guard down and let himself fall asleep before Jon. So clearly, Jon didn’t mind being asleep around him. At least, that’s what he thought it meant. Hoped. Enough so that he had the courage to propose this plan at all in the first place, anyways. 

“I hope you sleep well, then,” Jon says stiltedly after a prolonged moment in which Martin doesn’t really know how to proceed. 

“Yes,” Martin says, just as stilted. “You too.” 

Jon lies down in his bed, shuffling deeper into his many sheets and blankets. Martin settles down on the floor, curling into a bit of a ball. He has no idea how he’s going to sleep. Is he going to be too conscious of Jon’s sleep slow breathing, or is having him this close actually going to be reassuring? He--

The mattress creaks, and Martin opens one of his eyes to see Jon sitting up in his bed, looking down at him. 

“What are you doing down on the floor?” he asks, sounding so perfectly baffled that Martin is immediately overcome with the sensation that he’s doing something wrong, even though he has no idea what that could possibly be. 

“Um, sleeping?” What else was he supposed to do, stay up all night, keeping a watch? He’s pretty sure Jon doesn’t like that. He’s very sure, in fact, that Jon very much does not like waking up to Martin watching him sleep, to the point that the man would clutch at his chest and then swear about it until he’d calmed down. So he’d stopped doing that. 

“... Do you always sleep on the floor?” 

“Er.” He shifts uncomfortably, as he slowly realizes that he may be doing something weird that only someone who has been cursed to be a beast for so long that they partially forgot how to be a normal human person would. “No? I mean, yes. I mean--” It’s not a matter of sometimes. He’d used to always sleep in a bed, but, he realizes, he’s fallen out of the habit so gradually that he doesn’t do it at all any longer. He hadn’t even really noticed, the change had been so slow. 

Jon tilts his head at him. “Can the beds not support your weight?” 

“N--no, they can. Some of them, anyways.” The truly large ones, meant for family or important visiting guests, all polished sturdy wood that still hasn’t gone rotten and weak. “It’s not that I can’t, or that I forgot to. It just seems… unnecessary? I’m about as comfortable on the floor as I am on a bed anyways.” 

“You don’t get cold?” 

He runs a hand down one of his arms, indicating his fur. “Never.” 

“Hmm.” Jon seems to mull this over for a moment. “Neat,” he eventually concludes with great decisiveness. “I have to admit, it would be nice to have a fur coat of my own, considering the current weather.” 

“That’s-- yeah, I guess that’s a positive. Yay for silver linings?” 

“Oh--” Jon says in that exact way he does when he realizes all at once that he’s said something that may be rude or hurtful and he’s very dismayed about it. It’s so cute that Martin can’t help but laugh, which stops Jon from fumbling for an awkward apology. “Well,” Jon huffs eventually, as Martin tries to stifle his giggles, sounding embarrassed and annoyed in equal measure, in a harmless sort of way, “I’m glad you’re amused.” 

Something occurs to him, and before he thinks it through, he asks, “Wait, so where did you think I was going to sleep?” 

He comes to the obvious conclusion as soon as he’s uttered the question, and then he just sort of wants to disappear. 

It’s that hot cocoa and bees sensation, again. Warm and intensely uncomfortable. Good in a panicky sort of way. He doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“Well,” Jon says, and he sounds just as uncomfortable about having to spell out his own expectations as Martin currently feels, even though he’d apparently agreed to the idea of Martin-- “sharing body heat for warmth is-- it’s common sense, isn’t it? Staying warm is what we’re trying to do here, right?” 

“Right,” Martin agrees, partially because that is in fact what they’re trying to do here, but mostly because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“So,” Jon says, still sounding a touch wooden and uncomfortable, but stubbornly forging onwards anyways, “get up in the bed already. It’s big enough for the both of us, there’s no reason for you to sleep on the floor.” 

And he holds up a corner of his many blankets, an invitation for Martin. 

Martin gets up and gets under the blankets entirely on mindless autopilot. Jon shifts over to give him the space to lie down without squashing him, and then they’re just. Lying in the same bed. Like that’s something Jon’s fine with. 

Jon had been pressed up against him when Martin woke up in the library. He had been sitting in his armchair reading when Martin had fallen asleep. Meaning that Jon had walked over to him, sat down, and leaned his weight against Martin’s bulk, falling asleep there entirely on purpose. Meaning, Jon didn’t just not mind being asleep around Martin, he didn’t mind touching Martin. 

What gets him is how unnecessary the whole thing was. There was his bed, the armchair, other patches of floor, anything. But he chose, out of everything, to go and sleep pressed up against Martin, even though he didn’t have to even a little bit. Which means, which means, that he did it because he wanted to. 

That makes zero sense to Martin. He still doesn’t know what to think about it, because of how little sense it makes. He’s been trying not to lose his mind trying to find some sort of reasonable explanation for the whole thing, to not sit Jon down and interrogate him about his motives and thought process. Don’t obsess. Nothing good ever comes from him obsessing. 

So he’s been mostly trying not to think about it all, as impossible as that’s been. It’s even more impossible now that it’s happening again. Right now. And he’s awake for it this time. 

At least this time, he frantically assures himself, there’s a reason that makes sense. Jon is very cold. Sharing body heat helps. It’s practical. It’s amazing that Jon would be willing to, to-- to share a bed with him, even for a practical reason, but it’s still an explanation that makes sense. 

Jon rolls over, makes a slight noise. 

“Jon?” Martin whispers. 

Jon doesn’t reply. He’s asleep. 

Jon rarely falls asleep quickly, and Martin seriously doubts that him being here helped with that at all. Martin must’ve been chasing his thoughts in circles for a while now, not noticing the gradual change from tense and nervous to lax and asleep in Jon, even with the man lying right next to him. Martin himself is still very much in the tense stage. He tries to change that. 

Jon shifts, makes another sound. Barely more than a breath. A noise of dissatisfaction. His arm wraps itself around Martin’s, clutching it to his chest like a pillow. 

Oh, god. Martin holds his breath and doesn’t move an inch. Jon continues to hold onto his arm in his sleep, the slight frown on his face slowly easing away until nothing but a blank peaceful expression is left. Martin eventually has to breathe again, even though Jon hasn’t let go yet. Oh god, oh god. 

It must be the heat. Jon must be cold, must be subconsciously gravitating towards Martin’s warmth. Nothing more than that. 

That doesn’t help calm him down, oddly enough. The idea that he’s bringing Jon any sort of comfort is almost as overwhelming as the thought that he might just be nuzzling up against Martin because he’s a-- a cuddler-- 

Martin loses sight of Jon’s expression, because the man presses his face up against Martin’s fur, curling up a little bit, hiding away from the cold air. He sighs again, a noise of contentment this time. 

It takes a long time for Martin to calm down enough to fall asleep as well. A long time. 

 

This time, there is no waking up first and then lying very still for a long time in a bid to not wake up Jon, so that the spell won’t be broken and the man move away from him. Jon is shaking him awake before he even knows where he is, before he can remember what happened last night that led him here. 

“What?” he asks, terribly confused. He’s lying in a very, very warm bed, and someone is touching him. He is immediately hopelessly disoriented. 

“Martin, move,” Jon says, sounding like he can’t decide if he should be impatient and annoyed or quiet and soothing, like he doesn’t really want to wake Martin up. “I’m stuck.” 

Martin turns his head, and there Jon’s face is, so incredibly close to his own. His hair sleep mussed, and his expression crossed between sheepishness and frown. 

“Huh?” Is this a dream? Yeah, that must be it. He’s dreaming. 

“You’re lying on top of me,” Jon says waspishly. “And while it is certainly warm, I was hoping to do more besides lie around all day. Go to the loo, perhaps, if I were feeling ambitious.” 

Jon generally doesn’t talk about the loo in his dreams. Rapidly, wakefulness is returning to him. He inhales sharply as Jon’s words register, and he levers himself up onto his arms so abruptly that the mattress bounces a bit with it. 

“Oh god, Jon,” he says, aghast. “I didn’t hurt you did I? Your leg!” 

“My leg is fine,” Jon says, and starts squirming out from underneath Martin without waiting for him to move more out of his way, his cheeks a darker brown than normal. 

“I-- I’m really sorry,” he squeaks, mortified. How long had Jon been trapped underneath Martin, exactly? He’s too scared to ask. Surely Jon hadn’t hesitated to wake him up, right? God, he must’ve been crushing him. 

Jon flaps his hand at him over his shoulder dismissively, grabbing his cane where it's leaning against the bed and heading towards the adjoining restroom. Not a big deal, no need to make a fuss or talk about it, his hurried purposefully casual retreat seems to say. The restroom door closes. This gives Martin some time to digest the current circumstances, and also take some deep breaths. 

He belatedly realizes that he’s taking those deep breaths directly into Jon’s pillow--which smells so much like him--at which point he rushes to sit up straight, because surely that’s one of those things he’s not supposed to do. He thinks he can vaguely remember, in a memory disconnected from all surrounding context, some maids--back when they’d had maids--whispering to each other about the one unsettling house guest that always inhaled so deeply when he embraced them in greeting. Martin had overheard. Creepy, they’d called him, in tones of deep disgust, fear and disdain. 

Martin doesn’t want to be creepy. That’s the last thing he wants to be. So, he tries to work on that as much as he can before Jon comes back. He lies on his back instead and takes some deep breaths like that, and reminds himself firmly that this was all for a Practical Reason, which makes it all okay and not strange at all, and also Jon had been the one to invite him up into the bed, even though Martin had been the one to stay in his bedroom, and he still can’t believe that he’d actually worked up the nerve to do that--

Jon comes back. Martin sort of wishes that he’d gotten more time. Jon walks over and sits down on the bed, setting the cane in his lap, which somehow surprises Martin. He’d… sort of been expecting for Jon to go ‘I shall depart for the library now, good day’, or something like that. 

“It snowed a lot, last night,” Jon notes, looking in the direction of the window. Martin looks. Oh, he’s right. Even by the new standard set by the last week, that’s a lot. Even Martin’s going to have to put an effort into wading through that. It might be as tall as Jon’s entire height. “You don’t need to worry, then.” 

“What?” Martin asks. 

Jon is looking at him out from the corner of his eye, but his gaze flicks away back to the window as soon as Martin looks directly at him. He’s such a terrible liar. 

“I won’t be able to get anywhere with the snow piled that high,” he says. “So you won’t have to keep such a careful eye on me, since I’ll be stuck here anyways.” 

He’s still trying to get away. The thought is so cold and immediate it doesn’t feel like it came from his own head. It’s difficult to think through the sudden bolt of panic, like he’s spotted Jon trying to climb down a vertical surface again, but-- it doesn’t make sense. Sure, of course Jon must still be looking for opportunities to get away, would want to get Martin off his guard-- but wouldn’t it be better to wait until winter has passed before trying again? And Jon’s right, he won’t be able to get anywhere with the snow piled that high. 

Is he going to try anyways, in conditions this unfavorable? Does he think he needs to make his next escape attempt that reckless, that unpredictable? 

Whatever is going through Jon’s head, Martin knows this: Jon doesn’t have the self preservation instinct to quietly decide on his own that he won’t try and make his own way through the wilderness in the heart of winter even if he gets the perfect opening. And the idea that Martin can just relax and not have the worry of Jon getting away constantly lowly simmering in the back of his head for just a few weeks, a few months, until spring comes-- 

It’s too comforting to be true. It’s all too comforting to be true, he can’t believe in any of it, he can’t let himself be fooled, tricked, he can’t let his guard down, he can’t let Jon go, he has to hold on tight--

“Martin?” Jon asks, sharp with confusion and concern. Martin realizes that he’s holding Jon’s wrist, and he quickly lets go. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Um, sorry, I don’t-- excuse me.” 

He goes. 

(And he keeps a careful eye on Jon and all of the exits for the rest of the day.) 

Chapter 21: vicious

Summary:

A curse was cast.

A curse was cast. It was cast with every last bit of strength and conviction left within the dying witch who cast it. It was a powerful curse. It sunk into the son’s flesh and blood and bones, his heart and his soul and his mind. It got its teeth in him. 

And it was a vicious curse; just as spiteful and cruel and bitter as the witch who made it. The curse threaded its way through the son’s very veins, like thorny vines digging in deep. And it twisted. The son’s flesh and bones twisted along with it, helpless. It broke and malformed and remade him until the son was no longer a son, no longer someone with a face that anyone could recognize a parent in. It turned him into a large, terrifying, inhuman beast. 

It made him suffer, after all. That was the curse’s purpose. To make this disgusting thing suffer for what it had and hadn’t done, for what it was. The stupid, ugly, callous beast would stubbornly never learn its lesson, no matter how clear it was, no matter how much the curse made it hurt. It deserved this. 

And the curse hated its face, more than anything else. It had to go. 

The beast sought out things to soothe its suffering, of course. Dutifully, the curse took those things away from it, one by one. Reading brought it a painful longing at first for the people and friendships in those books, but soon they were a soft balm to its loneliness more than anything else, so it took the letters away, twisting them to incomprehension before the beast’s eyes. 

The curse took away the beauty of a particular turn of phrase from it, the appreciation of poetry. It took away the significance and sentimentality of a mother’s grave from it, a faint shade of company. It took and took and took, until finally there was nothing left for the beast but to stew and suffer like it was meant to, for its sins. It twisted through the beast’s veins and witnessed, delighted, as it slowly went mad with solitude and misery. 

And then one day, a beautiful man appeared. 

The beauty’s presence made the beast suffer. The beauty made the beast boil over with the terrible hope of being loved, the unbearable guilt of hurting someone so precious, and the obsessive dread of one day losing him no matter how tightly it clutched onto him. 

For this, the beauty was allowed to stay. He was tolerated. Even sometimes admired and appreciated, for how effectively he could make the beast’s heart break. But day by day, all of that misery is slowly melting like snow thawing in spring sunlight. The beast is coming to find more comfort than anguish in the beauty’s presence. 

And that won't do at all. 

The curse reaches out. 

Chapter 22: rule

Summary:

Jon wakes up, feeling utterly peaceful. He’s trapped underneath a vast, warm, furry weight draped over half of his body, gently rumbling with soft yet deep snores.

Jon wakes up, feeling utterly peaceful. He’s trapped underneath a vast, warm, furry weight draped over half of his body, gently rumbling with soft yet deep snores. He is not in the slightest bit disoriented, since this is how he’s been waking up for the past five days now. And the firm pressure of Martin’s weight on him is somehow deeply reassuring, even though logically, it should probably only be eliciting feelings of panic in him. 

He lies like there for a long time, slowly drifting in the pale sunlight starting to shine through the window and the sound of Martin’s deep sleep. There’s no hurry, here. No shop to open up. No breakfast to get himself ready for. 

That memory leaves a bit of a sour taste in his mouth. Elias’ routine, his schedule that Jon had had to shape his own life around. 

Elias hadn’t let Jon have his own bed. Of course he hadn’t. It had taken him by surprise that first night after he’d moved into Elias’ estate at his urging, and Elias had given him this look at his stammering that had immediately made him feel daft for ever assuming that them sharing a bed wouldn’t be the case. 

We’re to be married, Jon, he’d said, sounding almost amused. Why wouldn’t we share a bed? 

And he hadn’t been able to think of a single argument that didn’t sound silly or childish, in that moment. So, they’d shared a bed with each other every single night until Jon eventually decided that he didn’t want to share a bed with Elias, actually. Even if they were engaged. So, he’d left. 

Sharing a bed with yet another man keeping him captive should probably not feel this… nice. But it’s different. It just is. Willingly and happily trapped underneath Martin, he tries to figure out why that is. To put it into words that would sound reasonable spoken out loud, like he’d used to while he’d been living with Elias, brooding for hours on end when he was alone, trying to put all of the things that felt wrong into words that Elias would understand and accept. He’d never managed that, no matter how hard he tried. Elias always had a point that Jon hadn’t taken the time to consider first. 

Perhaps that is it. Martin hadn’t debated his way into Jon’s bed. It had been Jon’s idea, Jon’s suggestion, and Martin had seemed perfectly shocked by it when it came up, as if the concept hadn’t even occurred to him. He’d been almost arguing against it, nervously offering up chances for Jon to change his mind along the way. It helped it all feel… safe. 

Eventually, Martin stirs, and Jon tries not to grumble about the loss of his grounding, comforting pressure and warmth. Yet another day begins. 

 

Logically, Jon knows that he came to the conclusion that he actually wants to stay here with Martin, even if given the opportunity to leave, rather, well… abruptly. Or, that doesn’t sound exactly right. The idea had been percolating in his mind slowly for a long time without him noticing. Every small gesture of kindness and decency from Martin had slowly built it up and up, until when Jon finally turned around and brought his attention to the matter, his choice seemed rather absurdly obvious. But that had all happened inside of his head, and Martin is no mind reader. And so naturally, Martin wouldn’t know that Jon no longer wants to escape from this place. That is only reasonable. 

It still feels strange though, that Martin is lagging so far behind him on the subject. That both of their pictures of the same situation are so starkly different, like they’re reading two entirely different books that just happen to share the same character names. 

He hadn’t known how to clear up the misunderstanding in a way that didn’t feel like some sort of conspicuous attempt at getting his guard down. After all, how believable does ‘I want to live with you, Martin, it’s better than the life I had before or the uncertain future ahead if I leave, and I know in my heart that I’m safe here with you, and you’re really growing on me, actually, forced captivity aside’ sound? It still sounds a touch ridiculous even to his own self. 

So, he’d tried to be… clever about it. Yes, yes, he feels like an utter fool for thinking he could pull something like that off, he knows. He’s certainly well read and educated, but cunning? That has never been his forte, unfortunately. If he couldn’t say ‘I don’t want to leave’ in a believable manner, then perhaps he could say ‘I can’t leave’ in a way that Martin would find convincing. Or so had been his thinking at the time. 

Clearly, his poorly thought out ploy has not had the desired effect. As evidenced by this misadventure: 

Jon woke up. After some time spent dozing (a new hobby he’s picked up for the first time in his life since finding himself in this mansion), Martin wakes up as well, which signals the start of the day. Jon reads. Martin arrives with breakfast three chapters later. It’s bath day, which is nice. His leg is starting to heal up nicely, he thinks, thanks to the cane (which he maybe doesn’t need any longer, but it still helps, and there’s no one to see except for Martin so… why not just keep using it?), but it still twinges in the cold that permeates the drafty mansion. The warm water helps soothe his aches. And then it’s back to the library. 

Two more chapters in, a feeling he hasn’t felt in a long time time comes over him: restlessness. Or, well, he’s felt plenty restless lately. But he’d almost begun to think that he’d lost the ability to feel that way while reading, after having the opportunity to do so at all taken away from him for so long. He thought he’d be ravenously grateful for every word for the rest of his life. But he’s spent a rather lot of time reading as of late, and he feels the urge to go and do something else for a while, if for variety if nothing else. 

Not that there’s much to do here in the first place. He looks up, searching for Martin, thinking that he might converse with him on this, interrogate him on what he does for entertainment-- everything the man does seems geared towards either tending to Jon or slowly fixing up the dilapidated mansion, but Jon wasn’t always here and he clearly wasn’t maintaining the infrastructure before he came here either, so what has he been doing? It must be something, surely, even though it also clearly wasn’t reading either, considering his… troubles. 

But Martin isn’t there. He blinks at the empty space for a moment, before he realizes: Martin must be down in the kitchens, preparing lunch. It is that time of day, isn’t it? So he’s alone then. He puts his book down, bookmarking it, a touch frustrated. If he’s not in the mood to read then he must find something else to do until his temporary bout of restlessness leaves him. He must be able to think of something, he’s a grown man who can entertain himself perfectly well. Plus, he isn’t confined to a single room any longer. He has options. 

He recalls that he never did finish exploring the mansion, did he? He’d been dead set on getting past the ever mysterious Door, and once he did he was thoroughly distracted. Well, now is as good a time as any. Grabbing his cane, he gets up and sets out to map out every room in this new building he’s tentatively started trying to think of as ‘home’ in the privacy of his mind. 

The place really does have an utterly unnecessary amount of guest rooms. Who would ever even want that many people over at once? Mealtime alone would be like trying to feed an army. A posh one that used salad forks, but still. But then again, maybe if this is the sort of place that has a ballroom that the residents would throw large, lavish galas in, then perhaps it makes some degree of sense. One can’t exactly throw a small, intimate garden party in one of those large, cavernous spaces. Elias had had one, and his voice had echoed in it when he spoke. Like a cave. 

Jon goes to see if this place has a ballroom. Going down all of those stairs takes quite some time. It’s his first time walking down any since his injury, actually, he realizes. It takes him a bit to figure out a technique that won’t see him tumbling down the steps, and also doesn’t twinge painfully at his calf. It’s a bit infuriatingly slow, but he’s working on growing accustomed to that. There isn’t any rush. He has all day. Cut off from society in general, even more so than he had been while living with Elias, that feels true for the first time in his life. It’s a strange thought to hold in his head. No rush. Take your time. 

He successfully traverses the deadly and capricious stairs and sets out to unveil any remaining secrets this building may still hold from him, and that’s about when things start to go wrong. 

“Jon?” he hears, muffled by walls and distance. In the direction of the library, where it would only be reasonable to look for him, he thinks. 

“Over here, Martin!” he calls back out. 

“Jon!” 

He stops at the tone, loud and panicky, and concerns keeps him where he is. 

“Martin, is something the matter?” he shouts back. 

And that’s when Martin comes barreling down the stairs on all fours, eating up distance that Jon had crossed slowly and laboriously in a matter of moments, and Jon flashes abruptly and vividly back to being chased through the halls by him during his first thwarted escape attempt. His leg throbs more painfully than he’s felt it in weeks. He can’t help recoiling from him. His cane slips, his wounded leg crumples as weight is suddenly put on it-- Martin swoops in and tosses Jon over his shoulder as effortlessly as if he’s a sack of potatoes. 

Without a word, Martin turns right around and starts hurriedly climbing the stairs, carrying Jon with him. 

“Martin!?” He levers himself up as much as he can by putting his elbows on Martin’s back, trying and failing to twist around to see Martin’s face. “What the devil-- is something the matter?” 

Martin doesn’t slow in his pace, even as he responds, his voice high and tight. “Is something the matter?”

“Well I assume it is, considering your behavior!” What even could go wrong here, cut off from the outside world and all of its threats? Did Martin accidentally start a kitchen fire? No, in that case he’d be going the opposite way, out and away from the building. Did a wild animal get inside? What-- 

It clicks. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“I said you can’t go down to the first floor without telling me first,” Martin says, voice wavering like he’s trying not to be loud, but he’s too upset to quite manage it. “I need to be with you, Jon, you can’t be alone.” 

Jon has been feeling a bit better about his situation, now that he’s had the choice to either stay or leave, and chose to stay. This wasn’t a captivity he was suffering, but merely his new abode and roommate. Or, well, it had been easy to think of it that way, at least. More comfortable. But that isn’t true, is it? It’s… both, somehow. He’d let himself forget that he was trapped, and the unpleasant reminder that he is feels like a slap to the face. A nasty surprise, that he somehow feels idiotic for not seeing coming. 

Martin sets him down in his familiar chair in the library. Martin takes a step back, another. Giving Jon space. He crouches there on his hooves, not looming quite so much, and he closes his eyes and just breathes for a while. 

“I forgot,” Jon blurts out. “I forgot the rule, I wasn’t attempting an es--” 

“Jon,” Martin says tightly. He takes another deep breath. Deliberately relaxes his shoulders. Opens his eyes. He looks like he’s badly trying to hide how shaken he is by the ‘close call.’ “I’m… sorry for just picking you up like that. But I had to. You were trying to get away.” 

“I wasn’t--” 

“It’s fine. You’re trapped, so-- so it’s only fair that you’re trying to escape. Natural. But I’m going to stop you anyways. And it’s-- it’s not safe to do that at this time of year, Jon! It's too cold, you’re not wearing enough clothes. At least try and wait until spring. Please?” 

“Martin,” he says, a helpless sort of frustration flickering to life inside of himself. He’s telling the truth and Martin isn’t believing him. “Of course I wasn’t trying to get away. I called out to you when you called my name, remember? Why would I do that, if I were trying to sneak away while you had your back turned to me?” 

“It’s okay,” Martin says, and Jon can see the residual panic still lingering in his eyes. He isn’t listening to him. “I’m not mad, Jon, I’m not going to get mad. It makes sense that you’d try to-- I just don’t want for you to get hurt. That’s all. Alright?” 

There’s a hollow, cold feeling opening up in the pit of his stomach. It’s far too dramatic, too intense, and he doesn’t really know what it is except maybe angry or sad. This is going the exact way he’d pictured it would, when he’d considered telling the truth, saying that he didn’t want to leave anyways, so Martin could relax. Utterly predictable. He doesn’t know why it’s so upsetting. 

“Alright,” is all he can think to say. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He doesn’t want to read. He doesn’t want to explore the mansion any longer. He just wants to… he doesn’t know. Something he can’t have, apparently. 

So he just sits there, and Martin watches him like a hawk for the rest of the day, like he'll dissappear into thin air if he looks away for even a moment. 

Chapter 23: fiance

Summary:

Elias miscalculates.

Notes:

Warning: some aphobia, references to past rape and abuse, etc. since you know, elias.

Elias miscalculates. 

He decides to give Jon some space for just a day after their most recent step forward in their relationship - just enough for him to come up with whatever clumsy arguments he wants. And then he’ll of course take care of those, and set him on the right path, show him how he’s supposed to view what happened. 

Clearly, he realizes as he comes home to find their bedroom looking a ransacked mess and with no Jon in it, he has made a mistake. 

That stings, a bit. He thought he’d gotten a handle on Jon, learned the ins and outs of how his mind worked. It had been easy to persuade Jon to talk about himself, even if the man never seemed entirely comfortable with it, and continually needed prompting and pushing. A fiance should want to know more about their beau, right? And he really does. He wants to know everything about Jon, until he can reliably make him react the way he wants to every single time, like clockwork. 

He’d thought Jon was ready to be intimate with him. Of course Elias had initiated, of course he’d kissed Jon’s protests away, but that was because he was confident that he could convince Jon that he was wrong about this. Sure, he may still have lingering reservations later, but if only Elias could make Jon feel good enough, it would be easy to wave those concerns away. You liked it, he’d be able to say. And it’s only natural for people who are engaged to marry to do such things with each other. 

And Jon would flush and be unable to argue, because both of those things would be true, and he always gets so endearingly embarrassed when it comes to the subject of sex. Tongue tied. And then Elias would have successfully tied Jon even closer to him, and had a wonderful time besides. 

But that’s not how it happened. Or it is-- right up until this point, where he’s standing in his empty bedroom with the wardrobes drawers flung wildly open and left a mess. 

Elias doesn’t know how, yet, but he’s miscalculated. Missed something. 

He does not panic, however. No. This can still be fixed. Everything can still be in its proper place, Jon included. This is just a little hiccup to be corrected and smoothed over. 

He writes some letters, and calls a particularly loyal and tight lipped servant. He hands the letters to them for distribution, and they go off at once. This has to be handled, quickly, discreetly. Even if he comes up with an excuse later, his fiance running off would be quite the scandal, and he honestly just doesn’t want the attention. If he first calls scrutiny upon himself, then it may see other things that he’s done and kept so well hidden until now as well. 

Elias is a man who always does what needs to be done to protect himself and his own interests. That can be bloody work, sometimes. 

The letters go out to contacts he has in all of the surrounding villages. They contain a detailed description of Jon, and zero justifications or excuses for why he wants him hunted down, trussed up, and delivered uninjured to his doorstep post haste. Wonderfully competent as they may be at their chosen fields, they’re not the sort of people who he cares about keeping his image untarnished for, and they won’t care besides. His gold is good. 

Not that all of this is going to be necessary, most likely. In all likelihood, Jon will come slinking back within a night or two, dirty and tired and so deeply apologetic and ashamed. Jon is a lovely man, in his own way, but not a seasoned traveler. Elias is just being thorough. 

This might be a good thing, really. It does grate that he’d botched his handling of Jon, but having Jon run away from him like an upset child, and then return? Oh, that is going to give him leverage. 

Thinking rather optimistically of this, Elias turns his attention towards his work. Texts on the finest new psychological theories and essays, fascinating and intriguing things. Behaviouralism, classical conditioning, gaslighting… all very interesting theories. The only way to know whether or not they have any merit, of course, is to turn it from theoretical to practical. Jon is so useful for that. 

He already misses him. He’ll make sure to let him know, as soon as he has him back. 

 

Three months later, and Elias has a persistent headache. 

Jon did not come slinking back after a single night. One of his contacts did not find and retrieve him in one of the surrounding villages. None of them did. He hasn’t even heard word of him, much less gotten him back. Against all logic, it would seem that Jon has slipped the net and skillfully avoided being seen or caught by anyone that may pass word to Elias. 

This is wrong. Jon isn’t competent enough for this. He knows this about him. 

Like you’d known he was ready for sex? a critical voice jabs at him inside of his mind. Sourly, he takes a long drink, emptying his tumbler of bourbon. He really shouldn’t be tossing back something as finely aged as this like it’s cheap whiskey, but he’s annoyed. That wasn’t fair. How had he been supposed to know that Jon, apparently, ‘doesn’t do that?’ Whatever the hell that means? Everyone does that, it’s a law of the animal kingdom. And what is man but yet another animal? 

If he had found that little tidbit out before Jon had flown the coop, he would’ve been fascinated. What did it mean, exactly? What were the parameters, the limits? And how far could he push those limits, if he was patient and methodical? Did the disinterest have some sort of source that he could find? He could write a paper on it and be published. It would have been interesting. 

But he didn’t find it out in time, did he. Because that’s the sort of thing people are quiet about, their predilections and preferences. Especially Jon, surly and withdrawn from general society. He had had to dig far to find it out at all, and he’d only found it because it was the specific bit of information that he was searching for. No details, of course. Just ‘he doesn’t do that.’ 

He hadn’t miscalculated so much as made a move without having all of the essential information, then. Gotten impatient and boiled the frog too fast, as it were, and made him bolt. 

Well, the frog had to be caught again soon. It doesn’t matter if he hasn’t found any trace of him yet, he has to. It will be spring soon. The date at which he very publicly declared their wedding. It’s going to be open to the general public, food and plentiful seats set out in the garden. A town affair, a celebration. He had intended it as an opportunity to gain some easy points with the townspeople, and to help put some extra pressure on Jon to not flee the altar should he get cold feet at the last moment. 

What had been a day to look forward to has turned into a looming deadline. He could cancel it or push it back, but that would absolutely earn him more than a little attention. And that is all it will take to get someone to wonder aloud ‘say, now that I think about it, I haven’t seen Jonathan Sims since autumn, isn’t that strange? Has anyone else seen him? Anyone at all?’ 

And then they would mutter and gossip with each other, and show up at his doorstep with smiles and well wishes and innocent questions, asking if they could talk to Jon, they used to be friends you see, and they’d just love to talk to him, it’s been so long. 

And Elias would be unable to present him to soothe any simmering suspicions. He could deflect, make excuses - but each time they would come back with less smiles and more people in their numbers, and each time he would be unable to show them his dear fiance, see, still alive and everything, nothing to worry about. 

… It probably would be for the best if he just made an official statement before a mess like that could take place, cut things off at the pass. Say that he had run away with one of the maids or some such. That would be the smart thing to do. What would preserve his reputation and standing the most. 

The very idea of it burns with humiliation. It would be a surrender. Losing. Elias Bouchard is not accustomed to losing, and does not appreciate the sensation in the slightest. 

He goes to sleep in his empty bed, stewing over possible solutions. Perhaps he could announce that he’s been kidnapped, and set out a reward for his return? He’d have far more eyes on the ground looking for him, in that case, but that solution presents its own unique issues… 

He falls into an uneasy sleep. 

Something turns it deep. 

He’s in a forest. He tries to look up towards the sky, as he could possibly figure out his precise location via the stars, but he’s barred by tree branches, so thickly clustered over and between each other that he can’t even see a single sliver of moon or stars. And yet, he can see. It’s gloomy, but the darkness isn’t impenetrable. He walks forward through the trees, aimlessly. 

This is an interesting dream. 

He’s dreaming. He’s conscious of it. He feels terribly conscious in general, the air cold and sharp, all details fine and consistent, time and distance proceeding in a linear and logical fashion. But he clearly remembers going to bed. This is unlike any dream he’s ever had before, but there’s no denying that it is one. How fascinating. 

“You’ve lost something,” a woman says, and he doesn’t even startle. It’s a dream, after all. He looks to the side, and there she is, hunched over in the shades of the trees. A woman wrapped in thorns, her eyes glinting in the darkness like a predator. 

She looks more like a monster than a woman, really. 

“I have,” he agrees. “My fiance. It’s rather… stressful. Perhaps that’s why I’m having strange dreams?” 

“Not just lost him,” she says, her voice a harsh rasp. “Stolen. A beast has taken what belongs to you, like a greedy thief in the night. Jealously hidden the beauty away from your prying eyes, where you can’t find him.” 

She approaches him, and the unnatural way her joints move finally convinces him that she’s more of an it. He stops himself from flinching away as it reaches out and sets a hand on his face. Its hand is cold and sharp. 

“Are you just going to let that stand?” it asks. Every single one of its words is brimming over with barely restrained emotion. Seething, hateful disgust. Intensity. “Take back what is yours.” 

Elias snaps awake, his heart thundering in his chest. The side of his face is cold. 

 

Winter is just starting to thaw into the beginnings of spring, when Elias starts to feel settled inside his own skin again. Jon getting so completely and thoroughly away from him simply doesn’t make sense. He hadn’t been able to reconcile it in his head. But, there is one possibility that he hadn’t considered. One that makes the world make sense again. 

One of his servants opens his office door, showing a woman inside. She’s a lithely muscled thing, her walk more of a stalk, with visible scarring on her face, and trailing down her throat into her shirt. She scowls at him where he’s sitting behind his desk. 

“What?” Alice ‘Daisy’ Tonner demands of him. 

“Right to business, I see,” he says. “Miss Tonner, I would like to make use of your services.” 

“I’m not for hire,” she says. “I hunt down big game, I bring it back into town, I sell it to the butcher. If you want some fancy pelt, go and see the tailor. Heard he’s got a new fur coat for sale.” 

“I don’t want a pelt, Miss Tonner. It’s something far more dire, you see. My dear fiance… he’s gone missing. Gotten himself lost in the woods.” 

There. That’s what has gone wrong. He had overestimated Jon, and automatically assumed that he’d at least get all the way to one of the other towns. But what if he’d combined his particular brand of cleverness and reckless stupidity, and anticipated that Elias would easily be able to find him in one of their neighbouring towns, and so he’d decided to forego paths and roads entirely? 

What if he’d never made it out of the surrounding woods in the first place? That vivid dream that had been set inside of those dark impenetrable woods-- that was what had first sparked the idea inside of his mind. How easy it can be to lose one's way inside of a forest, especially for someone as inexperienced as Jon. 

“Not my sort of thing,” she says. “Humans ain’t good runners. Makes for boring hunt. Just get the village to comb through the forest in a chain, they’ve done it for lost children before.” 

“Oh, it’ll be a challenge, don’t worry about that. It took me a while to consider that it may be the woods that I’ve lost him to, you see. The trail has gone rather cold by now, I’m afraid.” 

“Not my problem,” she says again, not even taking a moment to consider it. “Still not my thing. Finding a corpse isn’t any more exciting.” 

“I could compensate you very fairly, Miss Tonner,” he goes on. 

“No,” she says, uninterested, and turns to leave. “Find someone else.” 

“I won’t. You’re the best huntswoman around, everyone knows that. You’re the only one that will do.” 

She ignores him and moves to open the door. It rattles, but doesn’t open. Locked. Good. His servants are obedient. She swivels around, her air of bored indifference turning sour and hostile. She takes several long steps towards him. He doesn’t move. 

“I’m not going to go and hunt down your fucking fiance for you,” she spits. “That’s not the kind of prey I like. Bet he isn’t even lost. Bet he just got sick of you. Now let me out, or else I’ll make you scream until your servants come rushing in to save you.” 

Without changing his expression or looking away from her, he opens a drawer in his desk. His hand finds what he’d laid there before he’d ordered his servant to go and retrieve Daisy Tonner from the pub. He sets it out neatly on his desk without a word. 

Tonner looks down at it, and freezes. She picks the carefully folded piece of fabric up. It unfolds into something that could be mistaken for a long, colorful scarf. She presses it against her lower face and inhales. Her hands go tight and white knuckled as she clearly recognizes the scent, clutching at the hijab. Her eyes snap open, and fix on him. He sees furiosity and terror in her eyes, and triumph swoops low in his gut. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to accept my request?” Elias asks. “I could give you something that I imagine you want very much.” 

“Where is she,” she says, her voice almost a growl. 

“I don’t pay in advance.” 

For a long moment, it seems like she’s on the very edge of lunging across the desk and trying her level best to rip his throat out with her teeth. 

But she doesn’t. He sees her swallow back her murderous intent like a jagged rock, sees her force herself still. Twisting the hijab in her hands like a talisman, a reminder. Like she wishes she were wringing his neck instead. 

Elias hadn’t miscalculated. He smiles. 

“How cold is the trail,” she asks, the surrender doing nothing but making her glare all the more hatefully at him. 

“Happy to be doing business with you, Miss Tonner,” he says graciously. 

Chapter 24: scars

Summary:

From then on, Martin brings Jon with him to the kitchen while he cooks.

Notes:

I've changed the works title from 'beastly' to 'Beastly Behaviour.'

From then on, Martin brings Jon with him to the kitchen while he cooks. There aren’t really any chairs in there, so he just lets Martin help him up onto a counter, and then he sits there and bemusedly watches Martin bustle around preparing him his meals. Martin’s hands are fascinatingly deft and practiced with the knives that, frankly, look too small in his clawed hands. Watching him butcher the freshly caught animals is a bit sickerning, though, so he makes sure to bring a book so that he can divert his attention while that part happens. He prefers for his food to look like meat and not animals, thank you very much. Just because he knows about the process doesn’t mean that he wants to see it happen. 

The… noises aren’t quite as easy to tune out, though. His fingers clench at his book, and he stares sightlessly at the pages, not reading the words. It’s rather hard to focus. He thinks he hears the unfamiliar and yet undeniable haunting sound of skin being peeled off flesh, and just barely manages to swallow back the rising bile, hand going to his mouth. Oh, he feels queasy. 

“So, um,” Martin says, high and a bit too loud, almost so much so that it drowns out the grisly, practical sounds of a corpse being turned into something edible. Jon tries to focus on Martin’s voice instead of the other noises, not looking up from his book. “You-- you said that you have a grandmother? What’s she like?” 

He actually looks up from the book he hasn’t been reading for the last five minutes, at that. He sees Martin wincing, like he’s said something clumsy and regrettable, which Jon supposes he has, considering that he doesn’t have a grandmother any longer. Not that Martin knows that. He’d lied about that, hadn’t he? Oh, please let me go terrible monster, my poor sick grandmother needs me. Or something like that. He can’t quite remember the details of the desperate lie. 

Maybe he’s just wincing because he thinks he’s gone and reminded Jon about the family that he can’t go and see any longer. Ever. 

And that’s when he catches sight of Martin’s hands, covered in blood and gristle, and Jon blanches and hides his face behind his book again, feeling nauseous. 

“She’s dead,” he says bluntly. He’d felt cut off and adrift after he’d first learned it, for days and weeks afterwards, but that’s over now. It’s been months. Feels like longer, with how much has happened since then. It’s fine. He can talk about her without emotion overtaking him. 

There’s a sound like a knife hitting its mark and digging into wood instead of bone. Martin hisses a swear. “Sorry, what?” 

“I lied. When we first met. She didn’t need me to go and visit her. I mean, you could obviously tell that I was lying about that, but she wasn’t even alive any longer. She succumbed to illness some months ago.” 

“Oh. Oh my god, Jon, I’m so sorry.” He sounds so sincerely sorry and horrified on his behalf that it makes a strange feeling shudder through him. An echo of what he’d felt when he’d first been told of her passing. He swallows thickly. He doesn’t like that. It’s-- he’s done grieving, he’s put that behind him now. He has so many other problems to deal with, more pressing and urgent. Shedding tears for her months after the fact, after being so thoroughly distracted by other things, just doesn’t make any sense at all. 

“It’s fine,” he says. And then, “I mean, not fine, of course, but--” 

And he stammers to a halt, biting his tongue, feeling clumsy and raw. He hasn’t talked much about it at all. Right after it happened, Elias had, of course, and that-- that had somehow made it feel so much worse. He can’t remember a single word either of them spoke now, that whole day blurry and vague in his memory, but he’s certain that Elias had been gentle and understanding. His tone had been, at least. Jon had just wanted to sit there in stunned silence until the new reality had sunk in, but Elias had insisted that he needed to talk about it, that it would be better for him. He remembers holding tightly onto his composure with a white knuckled grip before Elias placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, and then somewhere along the way he had lost it, a terrible shattering like smashing fine chinaware on the ground. 

It had not been cathartic. It had made him feel… out of control, in a terrifying, helpless sort of way. 

Elias had continued to be gentle and understanding. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, putting steel into his words so they won’t waver. 

“Okay,” Martin says softly. “Of course.” 

It takes him a long moment for the easy agreement to register. He blinks rapidly down at his book as he realizes that he’d been braced for an insistent ‘no Jon, you can’t just ignore this, we have to talk about it.’ He looks up at Martin again, feeling… stunned, he thinks. 

Martin isn’t looking at him. His eyes are on his own hands, because he’s holding a knife and cutting into things, and is preparing them a meal. It’s proper form to keep your attention on your hands, when you’re holding something sharp. Jon waits in almost baited breath, waiting for Martin to say something, to pick the topic back up, to prod at it, try a different angle. 

“I think,” Martin says, “that I’ll pan sear this. I think bird tastes best that way. Or, well, I like them best raw, honestly, but that’s-- that’s definitely just a me thing. A curse thing.” He laughs a bit nervously, an awkward little titter. 

He’s really going to just drop it, Jon realizes, and for some reason he wants to cry. He buries his face back in his book, like a shield. 

“Yes,” he says shortly, because if he says anything longer than a syllable then he doesn’t think that he will be able to bear it. 

Martin carries the conversation on his own, of course. He can be with Jon in comfortable, silent company, but not when the mood is tense. So he fills the air with mindless chatter, that just so happens to drown out the noise of butchery. Jon lets the empty noise of it wash over him, and breathes, and keeps his eyes on his book until Martin has washed the blood away, and his eyes don’t prickle and burn. 

His grandmother is not brought back up again even once. 

 

Jon wakes up. As usual, Martin is at least partially draped over him, a heavy, unconscious weight, keeping the cold at bay. As usual, he just dozes and basks in the comforting pressure and warmth for a while. As usual, Martin eventually starts to stir himself. Once he properly wakes up, he’ll move away from Jon, flustered and retreating. 

Jon isn’t ready to let the next step of the routine play out. He wants to dwell and linger in this soft warm bubble of a morning for a little longer. He doesn’t have to think, here. He digs his fingers into Martin’s fur, and grumbles, “stay.” 

Martin goes still. 

“Okay,” he eventually says, very quietly, like he thinks he needs to avoid waking Jon up. Tentatively, he settles back down. Jon sighs, letting his grip on the man loosen a bit. 

Idly, he strokes his fingers through Martin’s fur. It’s thick and bristly, oddly satisfying to dig his nails into. Martin shivers so slightly that he wouldn’t have noticed it if he weren’t pressed up against him. 

“Bad?” Jon asks, not opening his eyes. 

He feels Martin shake his head. “It, it’s good. No problem.” 

Jon hums, and keeps doing it. Eventually, Martin seems to almost melt into it. It’s nice. Relaxing. 

After a while, though, Jon starts to notice something odd. There’s… bumps and divots underneath the fur, irregular dips and rises with a weird texture. His brow furrows as his attention gradually snags on it, his fingers seeking them out, trying to figure out what it is, his movements growing exploratory rather than soothing. 

“Um,” Martin eventually says, and Jon realizes that he isn’t a melted, boneless puddle any longer. He takes his hand away, as if scalded. 

“I-- I apologize,” he hurries to say, opening his eyes. Martin moves away a touch, enough so that Jon can actually see his face if he turns onto his side. At least he doesn’t get out of the bed. 

“It’s fine,” Martin says, “I sort of forgot that they were there. I guess I kind of do that with everything I can’t see any longer. Out of sight, out of mind, huh?” He laughs uncomfortably. “Bad-- bad habit.” 

“What are they?” he asks, firmly curious and awake now. 

“Oh, just-- scars.” 

Jon blinks. Things recontextualize in his head. Right, yes, that makes sense. Nothing else does, now that he thinks about it. That texture, that was old scar tissue he was feeling, all hidden underneath Martin’s thick fur. And those divots-- missing bits of flesh? 

Jon frowns, feeling oddly concerned. Clearly, whatever wounds Martin has suffered are all healed now, but-- that must have been a truly awful injury, when he’d gotten it. He looks more intently at Martin, as if he can suddenly see it now that he knows that it’s there. He tries to picture how large it is, how much skin it covers, what could have possibly caused it. He can’t think of anything solid or concrete. It itches at him, not knowing exactly how bad it is. 

“What was it--” Belatedly, he remembers himself. Have some tact, Jon, he distantly remembers Georgie saying to him once, after he’d asked a friend of hers a question that had sent her out of the door while making excuses for her sudden departure all the while. Apparently, it had been rather rude and invasive of him. He doesn’t see why she hadn’t just said that she didn’t want to answer the question and moved on, why people can’t just do that when asked about things they’d rather not talk about. That would be simpler than relying on people to know exactly what not to ask, right? The rules for avoiding awkward subjects have always seemed so fluid and murky to him, impossible to learn and memorize. It turned conversations into a desperate, internal guessing game, instead of a simple exchange of information. 

“I mean,” he corrects himself anyways, because just because he thinks that the world should work this way doesn’t mean that it does, “does it still hurt?” 

Is that a more appropriate question than ‘how did you get that scar?’ He honestly doesn’t know. He thinks it might be better? It shows that he’s concerned, doesn’t it? 

“No,” Martin says. “No, it’s an old injury. I think. Time was… it felt weird, before you got here. Felt like I’d blink and suddenly the seasons had changed again, while every moment felt like an eternity at the same time. It’s healed, though. Happened a while ago, I’m pretty sure.” 

“Did an animal fight you?” Jon asks, and bites his tongue as he belatedly remembers that he’d come to the conclusion that he’s not supposed to ask how he got his scar. 

He’s so very curious, though. 

“... No,” he says, and the pause before he says that tells him that he was right, he wasn’t supposed to ask that. At the same time, his imagination runs wild. If the scars aren’t a past hunting trip gone wrong-- what could have possibly hurt Martin, living out here completely alone? 

“You don’t have to tell me,” he makes himself say anyways, because Martin really does look uncomfortable all of a sudden, his muscles tense where he’s still touching Jon. “I apologize for asking, that was rude of me.” 

“No, it-- it’s fine, don’t worry, Jon. I just… before you got here, a long while ago. After my mum died. I think I was sort of hoping that if I took good care of her and she got better, that was what was going to break the curse. Or if not that, then her dying would make it stop. Which is awful, I know, I wasn’t hoping for her to die, of course! But… she died, and it didn’t stop. I was still stuck like this, and the person who could’ve fixed me, or told me how to fix myself, was gone forever. I sort of… panicked.” 

“Panicked?” Jon says after a long silent moment of Martin not continuing to explain. He feels like he doesn’t want the full answer now almost as much as he still really, really does. 

“I-- I got this weird notion, this idea--” Martin takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a self-deprecating laugh. “I got snagged on the thought that the real me was buried at the core of myself, underneath all of the fur and tusks. Real, human Martin, trapped like a seed underneath the earth. I just had to… peel the monster off, and I could be me again, without the big, heavy, ugly pelt on.”

An image starts to form in his mind. An awful image. 

“You don’t mean--” he says, wanting very much to be jumping to the wrong conclusion. 

“I hurt myself,” Martin says. “A bit. With my claws. Tried to… tried to claw my own skin and flesh off. There wasn’t anyone around to stop me, so… I got in really deep, at every part that I could reach. It didn’t work the way I was hoping it would, of course. Thank-- thank god I’m so hardy like this, at least. I healed up just fine, in time.” 

Jon finds that his hands settle back in Martin’s fur again of their own accord, and they hold on tightly, as if something bad might happen to him if he lets go. Irrational. 

“I see,” he says, because nothing else comes to mind. 

“Sorry,” Martin says, and Jon should be the one apologizing, shouldn’t he? For reminding him of this, making him talk about it. “That was-- I overshared, didn’t I? It’s okay, Jon, I’m not going to do anything like that again. I’m… sane. You don’t need to be scared. I’ve never wanted to hurt you.” 

It’s more challenging to breathe, suddenly, his chest and throat feeling tight. “I’m not scared,” he says. He realizes that it’s a lie. He is scared. Not the way Martin seems to have assumed that he is, that he thinks Martin is dangerous and unstable to be around. Thinking about Martin digging his claws into his own flesh, all alone with no one to help him stem the bleeding-- it’s a miracle that he hadn’t died. It must have happened years ago, and yet he still feels the fear of it, like it’s something urgent that’s happening in the present. 

He’s concerned for Martin’s wellbeing. His health, his sanity, his life and happiness. That surprises him, somehow. When had this level of care for his captor snuck up on him? 

“Alright,” Martin says, easily accepting Jon’s lie as an answer, dropping the subject. 

He always does that, doesn’t he? Answers all of Jon’s burning, fervent questions, no matter how much hurt they dredge up. And then he doesn’t demand the same in return. He doesn’t poke and prod at Jon’s past or his true thoughts and opinions. He accepts what Jon chooses to share with him, and asks for no more. Maybe it’s because he’s Martin’s captive. Maybe he doesn’t want to take even more than he already has, after claiming Jon’s freedom for himself. 

That hadn’t stopped Elias, though, had it. 

Martin doesn’t even know that Elias exists. 

That is a strange, strange thought. He hasn’t seen or talked to Elias in so long, and yet it feels like his looming shadow has tainted every single moment since he last saw him, even before he was ready to let himself think about him in any depth. Maybe even… biased him, in some ways, when it came to interacting with Martin. And yet, Martin has no idea. Because Jon didn’t tell him, and Martin hasn’t tried to pressure him into being more forthcoming about himself. Knowing every single thing about Jon hasn’t been his priority. Jon’s happiness and safety was. 

Right after keeping him in his life at any cost, of course. It’s still better than Elias, who wanted every single part of him, with no exceptions. 

Jon knows all about Martin’s past, no matter how painful. Martin knows nothing of Jon’s. It feels so… one sided, it makes him tense up with guilt. Which is ridiculous, the thought that their relationship is in any way unfair in Jon’s favor. But still, he feels that way. 

… Should he tell Martin about his past? About Elias? 

His immediate, overwhelming gut instinct is fuck no. It feels better, trying to forget that the past ever happened. In his experience, talking about painful things just makes it hurt more. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and Martin isn’t pressing him to do so, so-- he won’t. He can’t. 

That day, the day Jon had decided that he needed to leave immediately, terrible weather and hasty preparations be damned, he had had options. He could’ve gone to Georgie. They may have parted on poor terms, but she’s a good person. She would’ve hidden him. She could’ve helped him leave the village quietly, safely. But he had imagined her asking him why do you need to hide, what happened and he had been terrified. Almost as terrified as he had been when it came to the possibility of staying. 

Talking about it felt almost as bad as letting it happen again. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Risking his neck and life in the woods in the middle of a storm had been better, a more appealing option. 

There is still a lingering feeling of strangeness about it, but damn it, no. He won’t be telling Martin about Elias. That chapter of his life is behind him, the book firmly shut and discarded. It’s different now. There are similarities, sure, but once one looked closely, the situation couldn’t be more different. He’s safe here. From controlling words and unwanted intimate touches and poking and prodding questions and all of it. 

He is safe here, and he will never leave this place. So Martin doesn’t need to know. No one needs to know. A secret to be taken to two seperate graves. 

He makes himself breathe in, out, his fingers nestled into Martin’s warm fur. It’s okay. It’s okay. He doesn’t need to talk about it, so he won’t. 

It’s not like it’s ever going to be relevant again, besides. 

 

The realization washes over him gradually. Not all at once. There isn’t one single moment. It’s just… a slowly dawning awareness of new knowledge, a simple objective fact that was lying there all along like a rock on a path, clear to see and matter of fact. 

Waking up in the morning with Martin’s warmth bleeding into his cold and aching bones. Martin gallantly helping him into the bath he’d arranged for him, averting his gaze. Martin asking how his newest culinary experiment tastes, with a sort of anxious hopeful curiosity. The way the handle of the cane Martin had made for him feels like a perfect fit in his palm. Looking up from reading his book to see Martin sprawled on the rug, curled up into a loose circle, just barely keeping his eyes open. Martin’s snorting giggles at some idiotic joke. 

The knowledge that Jon loves him sinks into him like a cloth slowly absorbing water. No one single moment. It all just… adds up, eventually. It permeates him so gradually that he’s not even surprised, once he’s fully comprehended it. 

They’re sitting in one of the first floor rooms, eating dinner. It had been Martin’s suggestion. The wall that faces the outside world is more window than wall, really, and it lets the pale winter light in so well, and it feels so open. It’s almost like being in the outside world again. 

The window is also cracked, with several holes in it, letting the cold in. But Jon is bundled up in several layers, with a blanket wrapped around himself to boot. They’re sitting by the fireplace, which Martin has lit. The food is warm, to the point that he can see the heat of it drifting up into the chilly air. It’s… nice. Sort of like a winter picnic, except indoors. 

Jon looks at Martin, and considers letting him know that he loves him. It is the truth, after all, and there’s suddenly a strange ache in his chest that wants for Martin to know that he loves him. 

Martin is watching Jon closely, despite the fact that he is sitting down, despite the fact that he is within arms reach, despite the fact that he needs a cane now to walk with ease. Because they’re down on the first floor, and his recent ‘escape attempt’ clearly still weighs heavy on his mind. Jon had told him that he hadn’t been trying to escape, and he hadn’t been believed. 

If Martin couldn’t trust something as simple as that, how could he trust this? 

“Everything okay?” Martin asks. “You didn’t find a bone in the fish, did you? I tried really hard to get them all out, but they’re so small…” 

“No bones yet,” Jon assures him, instead of saying any of the things that so desperately want to come out. “I think you got all of them.” 

Jon… hates this. Hates this dynamic they have, wherein at the end of the day, Martin is keeping Jon here against his will, and so there can never be true trust between them. Jon can’t tell Martin that he wants to stay or that he loves him without Martin having to assume that it’s just a lie to get his guard down. He can’t risk letting Jon get away. 

I don’t want to get away, he wants to shout. Stop being so scared and tense and miserable, stop holding onto me so tightly. Just trust me. 

If only it could be so simple. But it isn’t. Martin has… he’s been through hell, really. That is the honest truth. He was cursed to suffer by the person he loved most, and then left like that to molder in his misery, all alone, for years and years. Of course he’s affected. Of course he’s… damaged. Making poor decisions and choices, all a desperate, flinching reaction to being isolated for so long. Jon thinks he might understand, in a way. In his own way. He went through something similar, despite how different it was. And it has affected him. He’s starting to see that, now, with the safety of some distance behind him, despite how it still hurts to think about it for too long, too closely. 

Maybe that’s what Martin needs too. Just some time and distance, until he can think more clearly. Maybe then Jon can try talking to him more honestly again. Maybe then everything will be okay. There’s no one here to hurt them but themselves and each other, after all, and neither of them wants to hurt the other. He’s confident about that. Now they just have to work on the not hurting themselves bit. 

Jon wants to be here for Martin until it sinks in that he won’t leave the second Martin lets go of his white knuckled grip on him, that he can relax and give Jon freedom… so that he can stay out of his own free will. It bothers him that he can’t stay purely because he wants to, that it has to be an uncomfortable, forced thing. But he’s going to be patient, because Martin isn’t being malicious, he isn’t doing this on purpose. He’s just… scared, and hurt, and lonely. Jon can be patient for him. He can give him some more time to heal, to catch up to Jon. 

He loves him, after all. 

“Ack,” Jon says, and spits onto the floor. “I believe you missed one after all.” 

“Oh no,” Martin says, leaning over to peer down at it. “Sorry.” 

“It’s fine. No harm done.”

Notes:

AN: In light of the last chapter and the response to it, I’d like to take the time to teach some people that might not already know this that Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, which this fic is tagged with, means that this fic could at any moment contain Graphic Violence, Character Death, Underage, and Rape/Noncon. If any of those topics could potentially trigger you, you shouldn’t be reading this fic. Take care of yourself.

Chapter 25: butchery

Summary:

He’s entertained the possibility of bringing Jon with him on his hunting trips, but… no. Jon gets ashen enough during just the butchery in the kitchen. Martin doesn’t want to subject him to the actual killing blow. (He doesn’t want for Jon to see him kill something.) Plus, it could be risky, having Jon out in the open where anything could happen to him. He could wander off if Martin got distracted, or an animal could slip past Martin and hurt Jon. Martin doubts he could stay focused on a hunt with Jon right next to him anyways. He’d be too distracted keeping an eye on him. 

So. Bringing Jon along would just be begging for trouble, in so many ways. Sneaking out of the bed at night and trying to take care of business before the sun rises is the best solution. It’s worked for him so far. 

It works for him until it doesn’t. 

Martin is winning. 

There was that one, terrifying episode in which Jon had almost gotten away, wandering out of the manor while Martin was preoccupied with cooking. He’s just gotten so used to setting Jon down with some books, and finding him in the exact same place some hours later. He’d let his guard down. 

That won’t be happening again. He keeps a close eye on Jon. He takes him with him to the kitchen when he cooks, now. He makes sure to make his hunting trips during times he’s certain that Jon is asleep, to make it as quick as possible. Jon won’t be getting away from him. He can’t. Martin wouldn’t survive it. He’d been reminded of it so, so sharply, when he’d poked his head into the library to see no Jon there, no Jon in his bedroom, not anywhere that he should be. It had been terrifying. It had felt like death. 

Even just thinking about it now makes his breath go shallow and shaking. It’s okay, he tells himself. He caught him in time. He noticed, before it was too late. Before he’d even left the manor. Jon had called back out to him, giving the attempt up, trying to act as if he hadn’t been doing what he’d been doing. It’s what Martin would’ve done, if he realized that he’d failed. Trying to salvage the situation, do damage control. 

It’s not going to happen again. He won’t let it. Anything else just isn’t acceptable, so. It’s not going to happen. 

Martin can tell that he’s winning. Jon had tried to take an opportunity when he saw it, and he’d been stopped before he even set foot out of the manor. But that was all that it was, an impulse decision. It couldn’t have possibly been planned, because Jon hadn’t even been dressed for it. He hadn’t squirreled food away in preparation. He hadn’t been brimming with nerves and anticipation for days before, Martin would’ve noticed that. It was nothing more than Jon trying to take an opportunity that he saw, and Martin had shut it down. 

Jon is giving up. Quietly, slowly. In small ways. He’s getting used to things. He doesn’t glare every time he sees Martin, with fear or anger or resentment. He smiles at him sometimes, and sometimes Martin even imagines that he sees a look in his eye that-- 

That can’t possibly be real. Jon may be giving up, but he’ll never… he’ll never feel the way about Martin that Martin feels for him. He knows that. He’s not delusional. 

But the fact remains, that Martin is winning. Jon is gradually giving up. Martin is going to get to keep him, for the rest of his life. He’ll take good care of him, the best that he can offer. He’ll never have to go through the terror and devastation of losing him. He’s getting exactly what he wants, and Jon will get used to that eventually. 

Martin is winning, so why does that feel bad? 

 

Martin has been learning how to better preserve meats lately, so he doesn’t have to leave Jon alone as often when he has to hunt. He hadn’t told Jon that this was why he wanted for Jon to read those books about smoking and drying fish and meat out loud to him. He’d just said that it felt bad to waste so much meat, and he’d been believed. Jon probably wouldn’t have helped, if he’d known that the main goal was to give him less opportunities to get away, after all. 

Now that Jon trusts that Martin isn’t planning on eating him or something eventually, it seems like it never even occurs to him that Martin might be lying about something, that he may have ulterior motives. He just assumes that he’s being talked to in good faith. 

It makes Martin feel even worse about lying to him than if Jon were actually suspicious, or seemed to ever doubt him, even a little bit. It’s… too easy. What has Martin done to deserve this sort of trust? Just not be as terrible as he can possibly be? 

Jon is too easy to trick, and it makes Martin feel terrible for taking advantage of that. It also makes him want to do whatever it takes to keep him even more, because if Jon is this easy to take advantage of, then he absolutely doesn’t trust the rest of the world to not exploit that. Sure, Martin’s using Jon’s trust against him, but… 

But. 

It doesn’t matter. Martin isn’t letting Jon go. 

Martin has been learning how to better preserve meats, so he doesn’t have to go out hunting as often, leaving Jon windows of opportunities to get away, if he only notices that he’s alone. But he does still have to occasionally go. He carefully tries to time those occasions, creeping out in the middle of the night when Jon is fast asleep. This has gotten more challenging lately, considering that he’s now sharing a bed with Jon. Both in that waking Jon up is a risk, but also that… it’s just really hard to leave a bed that he very much doesn’t want to leave. 

He’s entertained the possibility of bringing Jon with him on his hunting trips, but… no. Jon gets ashen enough during just the butchery in the kitchen. Martin doesn’t want to subject him to the actual killing blow. (He doesn’t want for Jon to see him kill something.) Plus, it could be risky, having Jon out in the open where anything could happen to him. He could wander off if Martin got distracted, or an animal could slip past Martin and hurt Jon. Martin doubts he could stay focused on a hunt with Jon right next to him anyways. He’d be too distracted keeping an eye on him. 

So. Bringing Jon along would just be begging for trouble, in so many ways. Sneaking out of the bed at night and trying to take care of business before the sun rises is the best solution. It’s worked for him so far. 

It works for him until it doesn’t. 

Martin’s killed a boar, of all things. He always feels a bit weird about that, considering that he now shares a face with them. But he’ll take what he can get. He goads it into charging at him, wrestles it onto its back, and snaps its neck, its ear splitting squeals ringing in his ears. Business as usual. He tosses it over his shoulder, trudges back home, and tosses it into the cold room to deal with later. For now, it’s time to sneak back into bed, before Jon notices that it’s emptier than when he drifted to sleep. 

Quietly he goes up the stairs. Quietly, he walks through the hallways. 

“You have to leave,” he hears Jon say, and he stops, not understanding. 

He can’t see Jon yet. All he needs to do is turn a corner, and then he’ll be in the hallway that leads to Jon’s bedroom door, but-- the sun hasn’t even risen yet. What is Jon doing out of bed? Out in the hall? Did he wake, and see that Martin wasn’t there? Is he talking to himself? 

You have to leave. 

Martin understands what’s happening. Jon has seen another opportunity, he’s psyching himself up to grab at it. Martin needs to stop this--

“That’s the idea,” Jon says--

Except that’s not Jon’s voice--

“Now,” Jon says urgently, and it starts to fully sink in that Jon isn’t talking to himself. He’s talking to someone else. Another person, someone who isn’t Martin. There’s a third person in Martin’s home. 

He freezes up. 

“I mean it, this isn’t-- this isn’t safe shelter, if that’s what you’re looking for, I’m sorry. I know it’s cold outside, but if you stay you won’t be able to leave again. You’ll never see your family again.” 

Martin was so unprepared for this that it takes a long moment for him to be able to just start thinking again. There’s a third person in his home. Another one who has wandered into his home by accident. It seems so unlikely that something like that should happen to him twice that he can hardly bring himself to believe it, but he can hear it, he can hear her. 

For some reason, he doesn’t feel any of the exhilaration that he felt once it sunk in for him that Jon was real, he wasn’t just some dream or hallucination. Which seems ridiculous. Irrational. Of course even more people should be a good thing. Less loneliness. 

He’d been so broken down, and then Jon had found him, and everything had become better. Hard and complicated, but better. He’s been so much happier now, and now yet another person has found him and… what if she somehow ruins everything? Martin doesn’t want for things to change, now that they’re finally good. Before Jon had found him, things could only become better. Now he finally has something to lose. Change could be bad. 

“I don’t have a family,” the woman says. 

“Your friends, then,” Jon says, and Martin’s heart twinges at the desperate warning in his voice. Selflessly trying to spare someone else from his own fate… like Martin is something terrible to be saved from. Of course he is. He knows that--

“Come on,” the woman says, and her voice is hard, stern. With a bolt of pure terror, Martin realizes what’s happening. Still, he’s frozen where he stands. 

“I don’t--” Jon is cut off by a pained gasp. “Let-- let go of me. That hurts.” 

That’s what helps Martin finally move. He sees red, and he throws himself around the corner. Someone’s trying to steal Jon away from him, and she’s hurting him too, how fucking dare she--

--and there they are, Jon with his hair sleep tousled and his eyes wide, the woman looming over him, scarred and gripping him too tightly, get her hands off of him, now--

“Huh,” the woman says, not sounding at all like a beast more than twice her size is charging at her. She sounds intrigued, and pleasantly surprised. “Not so boring after all.” 

She shoots him. 

Her gun roars like thunder, gunpowder flies in the air, and his shoulder hurts. Jon screams. Martin gets back up, feeling almost mindless with threat enemy predator kill it. 

The woman throws her gun away instead of bothering trying to reload it, shoves Jon into a sprawl on the ground, and meets his charge. He doesn’t notice the knife in her hand until it’s too late. It goes up under his ribs, so smoothly that it takes a long moment for the pain to even register. When it does, it feels like he can’t even breath. 

“Hm,” the woman says. “I’ll need a bigger knife to get at your heart.” 

He growls, and god that hurts, and he tries to bring her down to the ground. She fixes her stance, stands firm if strained. With the hand not holding the knife, she reaches out and presses her fingers into the hot throbbing ball of pain that is the hole in his shoulder ripped out there by her gunshot. His knees buckle with sheer agony. The air is thick with the scent of fresh blood and gunpowder. 

Jon’s hands curl into the woman’s shirt from behind, white knuckled and trying to pull her away. 

“Stop it,” he says, voice shaking. “Just stop it, please.” 

Martin has to kill this woman. 

“I’ve almost got him,” she says, and twists the knife inside of Martin while looking steadily into his eyes, a hungry light in them. He chokes, grips at her so tightly that he hopes her bones break. “Then we can leave.” 

“Please don’t kill him,” Jon begs. 

“You don’t have to look. It’s almost over.” 

“He’s not dangerous, you don’t have to do this!” Jon reaches out to grasp at the woman’s wrist, trying to stop her from pulling it out and plunging it back down into Martin, this time somewhere more lethal. 

“He’s keeping you here, isn’t he? Your fiance sent me to come get you.” 

Fiance. 

Martin searches Jon’s face for confusion. He sees only terror. 

“Oh,” Jon says. “Oh. Oh.” 

You never told me you had a fiance, he wants to say for some reason, a whining, wounded accusation. He’s feeling dizzy and light. Maybe this is all just a nightmare, despite the searing pain in his shoulder, and where the woman still has a knife plunged inside of him. 

He doesn’t have the breath to say anything at all, though. 

“Let go of me so I can finish the job,” says the woman. 

“I want to go,” Jon says. “Now. Right now. You don’t have to kill him, he’s already… Let's just leave. I want to go back to my fiance. If you kill him I’ll-- I’ll be uncooperative.” 

For a moment, the woman’s face twists as she looks at Martin. Murderous revulsion and anger, like she’d want nothing more than to ignore Jon and slit Martin’s throat. But then her hand that had been digging into his gunshot wound goes to her own throat, almost but not quite touching her scarf, a colorful silk thing that doesn’t match the rest of her outfit at all. 

“Fine,” she says shortly. “He doesn’t matter. Let’s just go.” 

Jon lets her wrist go. The woman takes her knife out of Martin with an awful noise, and she doesn’t put it back inside of him over and over again until he stops moving. Martin falls. Jon bites off a word on the first syllable, so Martin doesn’t know what he almost said. He blinks, watches the blood pool on the floor around him. 

“Come on,” the woman snaps. 

Martin gets back up. He doesn’t know how, but he does. She’s going to take Jon away. He’ll die if she takes Jon away. Worse than die. 

The woman, who’d been dragging Jon away, stops. Turns to look at Martin, her bloody knife still in hand. Her eyes are bright and keen. 

“You gonna force the issue?” she asks, like she’s hoping that he very much will. 

Jon steps in front of her. The sheer fear in his face freezes Martin on the spot. 

He’d almost forgotten what fear had looked like on Jon’s face. When had that happened? 

“Let me go,” he says. “You said you couldn’t let me go because I couldn’t find my way back home on my own. Now I’m not on my own. I have help. I want to leave. I want to go back to-- to my fiance. I want that. So stop. Don’t do this. Don’t get yourself--” 

Jon stops talking. 

Martin had said that, hadn’t he? When Jon pushed him, really pushed him, he always said that he couldn’t let Jon go because he had no safe way out of the wilderness, since Martin couldn’t guide him out. Martin even said that to himself, when his thoughts circled each other and he was desperate to find a way to prove to himself that he isn’t the worst thing to have ever happened to Jon, this isn’t purely selfish, this isn’t all for himself. He’s not hurting this beautiful, wonderful man just because he’s lonely. It’s for his own good too. See, he’s not completely monstrous. He’s taking care of him. Even if Jon doesn’t want to be taken care of. 

Now, that problem is fixed. This woman clearly knows what she’s doing. She can, and she wants to, take Jon back to his home, safe and sound. 

Every single fiber in Martin’s being wants to clutch onto and keep him anyways. It had been an excuse. The best sort of lie, where it’s true, so no one can prove him wrong. Not even himself. But he’d never kept Jon just to keep him safe. He’d just wanted to keep him. Even if Jon had had a guaranteed path of safety out of this forest the whole time, Martin wouldn’t have let him go. He can’t deny it any longer. 

He’s a beast. Martin isn’t what’s best for Jon, he’s what’s hurting him. Look at the fear on his face. He has a fiance. 

Jon looks up at him, scared and begging to be set free. The woman stands behind him, blood dripping from her knife. Martin hurts so much. He feels like he’s dying. 

“Okay,” he says, voice small and ragged. He sits down. He feels like he’s just signed his own death sentence. Jon’s shoulders sag with relief. 

“Thank you.” 

The woman grabs Jon’s wrist and pulls him away. Martin watches them disappear around the corner. He listens to their footsteps until they’re inaudible. 

He can still change his mind. He can still get up and chase them. They’re not past the boundary that Martin’s curse will not allow him to pass yet, he can still fix this, he can still keep Jon, it doesn’t have to end like this. 

Martin grits his teeth and stays where he is. He’s going to regret this. He’s going to regret this so much that he’ll ache with it, but that doesn’t matter. He just has to stay strong until Jon is out of his reach, until he’s saved. 

The beast isn’t supposed to keep the beauty. That’s not a happy ending. That’s a tragedy. Jon deserves more than a tragedy. He deserves to be rescued, and to marry the person he actually loves. Martin can do this for him. He can. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how terrifying it is. He can try and not be a monster for just long enough--

Martin knows the exact second that Jon is truly out of his reach, across that impassable, invisible boundary, because his heart breaks. Dawn breaks along with it, the sun spilling across the horizon.

Chapter 26: cooperate

Summary:

Jon had promised to cooperate, so he cooperates. 

Jon had promised to cooperate, so he cooperates. 

The huntswoman -and that is undeniable what she is, with her hunting rifle and sharp knives and lean muscle and the way she stalks across the undergrowth, silent as a passing gentle breeze- leads him away from the mansion at a brisk clip. He wants to look back behind him as they go. He doesn’t want to go at all, a sharp pang in his chest tells him. Without him even noticing, he’d started to think of his one time prison as his home. Worst of all, Martin is still inside it, hurt and bleeding. He needs his help. 

But Jon had promised. He keeps walking away. He doesn’t look back behind him, because with how quickly the huntswoman is moving, he has to keep his eyes on the ground in front of him to make sure that he doesn’t trip over something and lose his balance. At least he’d thought to grab his cane when he’d woken up in the night to a cold bed, Martin missing. 

When he’d heard a creaking outside of his room he had thought-- he’d called out to him, but. It hadn’t been Martin. It had been a stranger. He’d been shocked, scared, as if it should be impossible for anyone to stumble across Martin’s run down, falling to pieces mansion the same way he had. It hadn’t been the intense relief he’d imagined at seeing another human face, back during those first few tense weeks he’d been held captive by an unpredictable beast. 

He’d quickly swallowed all of that down, though, in favor of convincing the stranger to leave quickly, before Martin came back from wherever he’d gone. He might decide to keep her as well. Just because Jon had decided to choose that life, just because he could be happy living in an isolated mansion alone with Martin, that didn’t mean that the stranger would as well. She might have a family, loved ones that would miss her keenly, and that she would miss as well. 

Everyone Jon loves is either dead, or have moved on from him already. It had been no loss for him to stay, once he’d decided to trust Martin. Most people don’t have lives as empty as his, though. Most people aren’t running from something as awful as Elias. 

She hadn’t been a hapless traveler who had stumbled across the mansion the way he had, though. She had known exactly what she was doing and where she was going. 

And now Martin is alone and bleeding, left the worse for wear for ever having met Jon. He swallows, his throat clicking. All of that red. He feels nauseous. 

“Hurry up,” the huntswoman says impatiently. 

“I’m trying,” he says, and he already sounds breathless. He hasn’t been very active lately, not that he ever has been in the first place. 

“We have a deadline,” she says flatly. “If we don’t make it, you’ll be paying for it as well as I. I’ll make sure of it.” 

He grits his teeth at the threat in her voice, the way her hand drifts to one of her knives. It does that as often as she touches the colorful scarf at her throat, her touch almost absent minded. 

He remembers how deft she was with that knife. It’s the one she sank into Martin’s flesh. He’s kept track of it, like it’s different from the other knives. Like it’ll cut him worse. Can’t stop his eyes from gravitating to it, over and over again. 

He’d thought that Martin was invincible. He’s seen him curled over himself, tears dripping down his face at Jon’s harsh words, or a painful confession of his own. But he’d never thought that he’d see him cut and shot down like that, like he was just another animal that could be bested with blades and bullets. He didn’t think that he could be beaten. It had been lamentation at the start, an obstacle to get around. It had come to be an almost comforting certainty, lately. Martin would always be okay, at least in one way. 

And then the huntswoman had proven him wrong. She had never looked scared of him for even a moment. 

It had been terrifying. It had almost been as terrifying as leaving Martin, the idea of going back to Elias. But in the end, nothing had been more horrifying than the idea of watching Martin die. Apparently. He’s here, after all. Willingly walking towards the worst possible fate he can imagine. He’s surrendered, trading his compliance away like a bargaining token in exchange for Martin’s life. He hadn’t even needed time to think about it. He hadn’t thought about it. His body had practically moved on its own, the words pouring out of him like so much blood. Things became so clear, when the clock was ticking and it was all or nothing. His own priorities became obvious to himself. 

Keeping Martin from dying came first before anything else, even staying out of Elias’ clutches. That is something that he knows about himself now. He wishes that he hadn’t had to learn it like that. 

“Faster,” the huntswoman says, touching her scarf. 

Jon tries, despite how little he wants to reach their destination. He’d promised. 

 

They started walking when dawn was breaking. They keep walking as the sun travels across the sky, until Jon’s leg is throbbing with pain. His leg doesn’t normally hurt any longer, not in a way that bothers him. He just has to avoid putting weight on it for prolonged periods of time. That’s easy to avoid, with his cane, and he’s never had particularly active hobbies anyways, not since he was a young child that wanted to explore every nook and cranny that he could get his hands on. He’s been walking for hours now, though. He hasn’t strained himself so much since he first ran away, running and stumbling blindly through the forest on his own. 

He almost stumbles and falls, and he hisses with the pain of it. 

“I need a break,” he says. 

“No,” says the huntswoman, not slowing down. 

He tries to keep up with her, because he’d promised his cooperation. He grits his teeth and walks. He thinks he lasts an hour longer before he stumbles again, except this time he doesn’t manage to catch himself before he falls to the ground. 

The huntswoman stops after taking several more steps. Turns around. Looks down at him. She doesn’t look amused. 

“I need,” he repeats, not even wanting to think about trying to stand up right now, “a break.” 

She’s glaring, now. “We have a deadline.” 

“We can’t get to the village without stopping a single time.” 

She looks at him for a long moment. She has a gun. She could just point it at him and make him continue. He hopes she doesn’t. 

“You’re useless,” she finally says, and sits down on a nearby rock. 

Jon hadn’t been able to stop her from shooting Martin. From stabbing him. 

“I know,” he says. 

She rolls her eyes and snorts. “If you’re going to have a pity party, do it quietly.”  

He flushes, and bites back a retort. That seems rather unfair, considering that she insulted him first. He was just… agreeing. 

He sits, and tries to focus on the throbbing pain in his leg and not further agitating it, instead of thinking about how much of Martin’s blood there had been on the floor. 

He still can’t believe that Martin had actually let him go. Everytime his thoughts even brush up against it, his eyes start to sting. He wishes he hadn’t. He’s so touched that he did. He wants to be back home with Martin, where no one and nothing is a danger. He’s so grateful that he’s not there any longer, where he can be a danger to Martin. He always was a danger to Martin, apparently. Drawing a hired, armed hunter to him in the dead of night to retrieve him, cutting through anything and anyone that got in her way. 

Elias hired an armed hunter to retrieve him. He hasn’t stopped thinking about him all of this time. Jon had thought… he’d somehow just assumed that Elias would lose interest after a few weeks or months after no sign of him. He can’t be that fascinating, can he? What’s so special about him? Why won’t Elias leave him alone? 

Knowing that Elias has been thinking about him all of this time, looking for him, while Jon has been trying to forget him… it makes his skin crawl. He doesn’t want to be important to someone like him. Elias’ attention is not a good thing to have. 

A water skin is thrust at him. He blinks, knocked out of his spiraling thoughts. 

“Drink,” she says. “And then we continue. No more breaks.” 

Jon thinks about how he’s already broken one promise in his life. The one he made to Elias. That he’d stay, that he’d be a good husband. He’d reached a limit, and he’d run away. 

He could break the promise he’s made to this huntswoman. Get away. 

On his cramping, pained leg, in the middle of unfamiliar wilderness with no supplies. While she seems to be in top form, perfectly comfortable with her surroundings, and has a gun. 

He accepts the waterskin, drinks. Slowly, painstakingly gets up. Starts following her as she continues walking. 

He cooperates. 

 

Eventually, the huntswoman leads him to a road, cart tracks pressed into it. They had started walking at dawn, and now it’s nearly dusk. He’s exhausted, physically and emotionally. He aches, physically and emotionally. They walk along it until Jon slowly starts to recognize the outskirts of his own home village. 

His breathing starts to grow tight, shallow. 

“I need a break,” he hears himself say. He doesn’t sound like himself. 

“No,” says the huntswoman. “We’re almost there now.” 

He stops. He’s made a promise to cooperate. He made a promise, and more importantly, he doesn’t have the power to break it. He needs to start moving again, before she decides to find a new way to motivate him, now that she doesn’t have Martin at hand any longer to threaten. 

He can’t make himself take another step closer. He thinks he can almost see the estate now, up on the hill overlooking the village. 

The huntswoman stops, looks at him. Her hand is her on her knife. 

“Move,” she says. 

Jon opens his mouth to say something, anything that could persuade her to let him go. Maybe it would be easier, if this was something he’s said out loud before a single time in his life. But he hasn’t. He never wanted to. “I… he’s…” 

Her eyes flick over him, inspecting. 

“I look after me and mine,” she finally says, cutting through the thick silence. “You’re not mine, so… tough. I know I’m not saving you. I don’t care.” 

He closes his mouth. Tastes the mingled relief that he still doesn’t have to say it, and the bitter realization that there is nothing he can say to make her let him go. 

What a familiar feeling. 

“Come on,” she says, and he still can’t make himself move. It’s like his feet are rooted to the ground. She sighs, short and impatient, and then moves forwards. He doesn’t try to backpedal away from her, doesn’t have enough energy left in him for it, and she-- 

“Unf,” is punched out of him as her shoulder digs into his stomach. She’s thrown him over her shoulder. He just barely doesn’t drop his cane. 

“We have to get there before the village wakes up properly,” she says. “Scumbag said not to make a scene.” 

That’s Jon’s cue to start screaming and shouting, probably. He can’t help but feel like that would not end well for him, though. Her knife had gone into Martin like there had been no resistance for her. She hadn’t hesitated. 

He hates how vividly the image flashes before his eyes every time his thoughts so much as brush up against it. 

The huntswoman marches towards the Bouchard estate and Jon… 

Well, does it ever matter what Jon does? 

 

His resolution to remain listless and numb, resigned and unresisting, lasts less than an hour. Until the exact moment that the huntswoman crosses a threshold in fact, and he hears a door click shut behind them, and it sinks in for him that he’s back. He’s inside the Bouchard estate, the place he’d vowed to himself to never ever see again--

He scrabbles and struggles like a frantic animal, and the huntswoman grunts and swears at him. 

“Stop struggling before I put a knife in you,” she hisses at him, and he tries to bite her. 

“I would advise against that,” a horribly familiar voice says, and Jon freezes. “Or at least nowhere visible, please. Not with our special day coming up so soon.” 

The huntswoman sets Jon down on his feet. The dull, aching pain in his leg flares, and he almost crumples, falls. She catches him, holds him up. 

“You didn’t hurt him, did you?” Elias asks, talking to the huntswoman even as his eyes travel over Jon, as if inspecting precious cargo for damage. Jon stares back at him. 

Elias looks exactly the same as when Jon last saw him. Pale blue eyes, neat graying blond hair. A sharp suit, his posture perfect. His eyes flick up to meet Jon’s, and he flashes him a smile. 

Jon has to get out of here. He has to get out. 

“No,” the huntswoman says. “He had that injury when I found him. Where’s Basira?”

“Where did you find him?” Elias asks, taking a step closer towards Jon. He instinctively flinches backwards, but the huntswoman holds him still. Elias starts circling him, as if inspecting him from all angles. Even when he’s out of Jon’s line of sight, he can feel his eyes on him. 

“Hiding out in some abandoned building in the woods. My payment, Bouchard.” 

“In a moment, Ms. Tonner. Was anyone hiding with him? Was anyone else aware of his location? I may have another task for you, if so. It really is for the best if this is all kept between the three of us.” 

Jon has barely time to register the terrifying direction the conversation is taking before the huntswoman -Tonner- snaps off her answer without hesitation. “No. He was alone.” 

For the first time since she dragged him here against his will, he turns his focus from Elias to her. Her mouth is set in a flat line, stone faced. He bites his tongue so he doesn’t blurt out why? 

He had promised to cooperate in exchange for Martin’s life, hadn’t he. He’d faltered in the last moments but… she’s holding up her end of the promise anyways. Should he be so shocked by that? 

He is. He tries to hide it before Elias finishes another slow, lingering circle around them, looking away from Tonner, burying the raw relief so he can’t see it. Elias has always been too good at reading Jon. Any weakness, any doubt or resentment or anything at all that he wants to keep secret. He always sees it in the end, he points it out, and they talk about it. Whether Jon ever wants to or not. Things that he’d like to clutch close to his chest are dragged out into the open, over and over again. 

This is a secret that Jon can’t afford for Elias to discover, or else this will have all been in vain. He’s sacrificed the entire rest of his life. He’s still wrapping his head around that, but this has to work. 

“Good,” Elias says, and then he reaches out and takes Jon’s chin. 

Jon hasn’t been touched by Elias since fall. The plan had been for it to never happen again. Spring is just beginning, now. 

“Let go,” slips out of him, raw and ragged. He knocks Elias’ hand away with his own roughly, sloppily. 

Elias’ eyes are very, very cold on him. Jon wishes he had any idea what is going on behind them, so he could brace himself for it at the very least. But predicting people has never been his strength. 

Jon broke his promise to Elias. He ran away, reneging on their contract, even though Elias paid for the care of his grandmother. Now that Elias has him again, there will presumably be a punishment for this. He has no idea what that might be. 

The thing is, Elias has never punished Jon before. Nothing that he suffered under this roof were punishments. Losing his shop, his freedom, his privacy, his agency - all of those things had simply been the natural order of things, of being engaged to Elias Bouchard. The status quo. He has no idea what a punishment from Elias looks like. He desperately doesn’t want to find out. 

Elias smiles again, but his eyes remain cold and fixed on him. “It’s so good to see you again, dear. I was worried.”

That, somehow, burns the way no other insult could. He’s lying, and it’s for no good goddamned reason. Not a single person present would ever believe that Elias Bouchard was worried for him. 

He’s just mocking him. 

“Fuck you,” he spits. He’s so angry that he’s shaking, he realizes. Most likely shaking for other reasons as well. 

“I see that our little… separation has not done your attitude any favors. Like a domestic cat gone feral. You do realize that you can’t act like this during our wedding, yes? As your husband to be, I really can’t let you embarrass yourself like that. For your own sake.” 

“You could hold me at knifepoint throughout the ceremony,” he says severely. The emotion in his chest is too big, too bright, too hot for him to properly breathe past it. He feels like a container that’s been given more than it can handle, like he’s cracking at the edges. His hands are curled into tight fists, his nails digging into his palms. “Perhaps that could make me behave.” 

He hates this man so much. 

(He’s so scared.) 

“A charming suggestion. Your advice is always so quaint, love. Simple minded, direct. I missed you, I really did. But no, don’t worry. We still have a bit before the festivities. That’s enough time to… calm you down, without having to resort to crass measures in public to make you behave appropriately in front of everyone.” 

Every single word out of his mouth puts Jon’s teeth on edge. It feels like the cold from Elias’ eyes is sinking into his chest deeper and deeper with every single moment. 

“I won’t,” he says, but he doesn’t like the implacable calm confidence he can see in Elias. 

“It really is a pity that we haven’t seen each other in so long. You were progressing so well, so smoothly. This little break of yours has undone all of that. You’re even worse than when I first got you. But don’t let it be said that I can’t appreciate a challenge.” 

He’s talking as if he’s discussing the housetraining of a particularly unruly pet. 

“I--” he starts furiously, not knowing where or how his sentence is going to end. 

Tonner steps in front of him, interrupting. 

“Cute romantic reunion,” she says, unamused. “Bouchard. Tell me where Basira is right now, or else I’ll cut your pretty bride’s face open before the whole village comes to see it.” 

“Oh, I truly wouldn’t advise that course of action, Ms. Tonner,” Elias says, turning his focus back to her. “You wouldn’t like what would happen to Ms. Hussain in return.” 

“Where. Is. She.” 

After a moment, Elias smiles at her. His teeth are very white, and his eyes crinkle in a way that tells Jon that he’s actually enjoying this. “She’s safe,” he simply says. 

“That’s not an answer.” Tonner’s voice and posture are growing more tense by the moment. Jon takes a clumsy step away from her, hobbling on his bad leg, leaning heavily on his cane. He’s her hostage. He doesn’t have any allies here. 

“You know,” Elias says, “I did imply that I would be giving her to you if you got my beau back for me, didn’t I? But I’ve been thinking… that wouldn’t be very wise of me, would it? As if you wouldn’t seek out revenge, once you assured yourself of her safety and hid her away somewhere? No, no. A hopeless romantic I may be,” he shoots Jon a slick grin that makes him bare his teeth at him, “but a fool I am not. I have an alternate proposal.” 

“No,” Tonner snarls, hand going to one of her knives. 

“How about I keep your dear Basira,” he goes on, ignoring her, “and my Jonathan and you? Stay here and work for me, Tonner. Make sure that my bride doesn’t pull another disappearing act while I work to bring him back to heel. Protect him from his own bad decisions. I’ll pay you handsomely, not just in threats. And in return, you will receive a letter from Ms. Hussain every week, assuring you of her continued survival and wellbeing. I’ll take good care of her, I really will. You just won’t get to see her, or know where she is. As a safety measure. It’s only reasonable.” 

She unsheathes her knife, looking more murderous than when she’d been actively stabbing Martin in the chest. 

“No deal.” 

“Oh, that’s a pity. Well, go ahead then. Stab me. Cut my fiance. See what happens to her. You don’t know where she is, do you? Not the slightest idea of where to even begin to look. Do you think you can find her before my servants realize what you’ve done to me, and carry out the orders I gave them for these exact circumstances? Do you think I didn’t prepare for the most obvious result?” 

She doesn’t lunge at him. She stands there and visibly trembles with how much she clearly wants to throw herself at his throat. But she doesn’t. She holds herself back. 

Jon knows personally just how far people are willing to go for the people they love. 

“Wonderful! I’m glad we’re all on the same page,” Elias says with the pleased smile of a man whose life is going exactly as planned. “That’s very good. We have a wedding to prepare for, after all.” 

Chapter 27: saved

Summary:

Jon is rescued.

The end.

Jon is rescued. 

The end. 

Right? That’s what this is. The happily ever after. Jon got lost in the woods during a storm, taken captive by a possessive monster for months, and then finally saved by a brave huntswoman and brought back home to his true love, his fiance. 

What happens to the monster, the villain, afterwards doesn’t really matter. It’s a bit weird that he wasn’t killed, he thinks dully. He’s pretty sure that that’s wrong, unusual. The huntswoman should’ve gutted him. Or Jon should’ve found a clever way to trick him into his doom. That’s how the stories usually go. 

He’s not important enough for that, he supposes. The beauty was saved from him, and that’s all that matters. He’s fulfilled his purpose, and he’s no longer an issue, a problem. He can stay in his empty home and rot now, a distant and unpleasant memory for everyone else. 

Back to normal. 

And they all lived happily--

The sun spills across the horizon. Jon crosses the boundary. Martin’s heart breaks. 

Martin’s bones break. 

He starts to scream. 

 

Martin’s memory is full of holes, like an old moth eaten blanket, washed thin and ragged, fraying. So much missing. 

He hadn’t wanted to remember most of it anyways, so he hadn’t tried all that hard to hold onto it. 

 

Martin is a kid, and he doesn’t know why his dad has left. No one has told him. He misses him. More than that, he misses everything his dad took with him when he went. It’s like he took all of the noise and life with him. All of the people. He only left Martin the house and mum, and the house isn’t the same without all of the people in it, big and empty and unfamiliar. 

Mum’s different too. He doesn’t know how to say it, but she’s different. He misses her, but she’s right there. 

He misses his parents. 

“Mum,” he says, “is dad coming back?” 

He doesn’t know how to say ‘is dad going to give everything back? Is he going to make things normal again?’ 

“No,” she says flatly. 

His eyes sting with tears at that. It’s not fair. “Why not?” 

“Trusting people is a mistake,” she says. “Letting someone see all of you is a mistake. You think they’ll accept you, love all of you. You’re wrong. No one wants all of you, because there are ugly, scary pieces.” 

“What?” 

“Your father… he saw me. He didn’t like it. Fine. If he doesn’t want me, then I don't want him either. Good riddance.” 

He doesn’t understand. Dad’s always seen mum. She’s not making any sense. 

“I wish he was still here,” he says. 

She gives him a severe look, enough to snap him back from tumbling over the edge into crying. 

“No,” she says. “He made the right choice, Martin. Sometimes--” 

 

Martin’s a young man, and that’s putting it generously. Dad and all of the servants have been gone for a while now, and he’s still figuring out how to take care of the house on his own. There’s so much that he doesn’t know. He burned his hand on the oven last night, fumbling with it, trying to figure out what’s wrong with it now, and he doesn’t really know what to do with the burn. For now he’s just… ignoring it. It’ll go away on its own after a while, right? Even if it hurts. It’s just a little burn. 

And his mum needs him, after all. If he doesn’t make sure that she eats, she won’t eat at all. 

Her mouth curls once he enters the room with her meal. He looks away, and approaches anyways. She needs to eat. 

He knows that she’s prideful, stubborn. That she hates having to rely on her own son like this. That being sick all of the time gets to her. She doesn’t hate him, she’s just tired and in pain. 

Tired and in pain. That’s all. 

“I made oatmeal,” he says. “Again, I know, sorry. It’s been a bit harder to buy food lately--” 

“I’m not hungry,” she says, looking away. 

She really does need to eat. 

“I--” he says. 

“Go away.” 

His mum needs help. She needs help just to get through the day, nowadays. After dad left, she just started… wilting. She’s a little bit weaker every single day. She hates that. She has no one but him, he’s the only here who can give her that help. She really hates that. She’d rather be helpless and alone, than having to rely on anyone. He knows that about her. She hasn’t tried to hide it. 

He loves her too much to let her have what she wants, when it comes to this. She needs help. His help. 

“I’ll go away after you’ve eaten,” he says coaxingly. 

“Leave,” she hisses. 

He presses a thumb into the burn on his palm. It’s not a big burn. Just shiny, red. Stinging. Burns are the worst sort of pain, he thinks. 

“Please, mum, I love--” 

She looks at him. She’s good at making him go quiet with just a look. 

Venom in her voice, she says-- 

 

Martin can’t remember how old he is any longer. It’s hard to keep track, when you’re a monster. Maybe it’d be easier if he could talk to people, but the only person he can really talk to is his mum, and she…

She hasn’t been the same since-- since he changed. 

He cleans her. He’s gentle, careful not to prick or scrape her with his claws. She doesn’t seem to notice him, staring right through him. 

He talks to fill the dead air with silence, to cover the sound of her, ragged pained breaths. 

“The weather’s been really nice, lately. I could take you out to a chair in the garden today, I’m thinking. Some fresh air could be good for--” 

“Martin?” she says, and he stops, looks at her. She’s looking right at him. His heart soars. That happens so rarely nowadays. 

“Mum,” he says, and there’s so many things he wants to say while she’s lucid that they all clog up his throat, trying to get out all at the same time. 

“You’re still here,” she says. 

“I am,” he says. “I promise, I’ll-- I’ll never leave you, okay? I’ll take care of you.” 

“No,” she says. “No, you don’t understand. You still don’t understand. How many times do I have to tell you, you stupid boy?” 

“What--” he says, but she cuts him off. Her voice is so much weaker than his, so much quieter, but he shuts up as she speaks. 

She says-- 

 

“The kindest thing you can do for the people you love is to spare them from having to suffer your presence.” 

 

Martin gasps in desperate lungfuls of air. There’s blood on the floor. He holds up one trembling hand to the weak dawning sunlight. 

No fur. No claws. It’s just a hand. 

She’d been telling him the answer the whole time. 

 

Martin has imagined this happening so many times that now that it really is happening, it doesn’t feel real. It’s just another fantasy, another dream. He knows it isn’t, but he doesn’t feel it. 

He gets up. He falls back down. This happens a few times, until he finally manages to keep unfamiliar balance on two flat feet, balanced on knees that go in the wrong direction. No. The right direction, now. 

He hadn’t imagined the clumsiness, every time he’d thought about this. He’d thought of it as a return to normalcy, slipping on a jacket that fit perfectly. It’s all strange to him again, now. The way he’d been for the first weeks of being a monster. A body that he doesn’t know how to use. 

None of the wounds the huntswoman gave him are there any longer. The blood is dry on the floor, brownish red, but his skin (his skin) is unmarred. He runs trembling hands over it, marveling. It’s amazing. Incredible. 

He feels like he’s wearing the body of a stranger. 

He goes to the room where he’d stored all of the mirrors, to try and fix that. Maybe if he can just see his face, his body will feel like his own again. It’s only as he’s looking at his reflection (and his reflection’s reflection, and on and on) that he realizes that he’d forgotten his own face. Even the family portraits hadn’t been able to help him with that. They’d all been done from when he was a child. His parents hadn’t wanted to sit down together for portraits in the last few years before his dad left. 

He stares at himself and thinks: that is a man. A human. A person. He feels zero attachment to the reflection, even as he sees its face twist as he moves it, mirroring him. 

He thinks: that man is only wearing his pants. His holey pants. 

Martin tries to figure out clothes. That’s a thing that he should do, right? That’s a practical, reasonable thing to do. It’s early spring. It’s cold. Humans wear clothes. 

Ironically, sewing is somehow harder now than it was before, when his fingers had been large and clawed. He’s not used to using these hands. But he tries his best. He’d managed to scrounge something together for J--

For--

Martin fixes himself up some proper clothes. 

 

Martin goes out to the border of his property, wearing his new-old clothes and a pair of shoes that don’t quite fit. Then, he takes a tentative step forward. Another. Another. 

Nothing stops him. There is nothing stopping him any longer. He could just keep walking, and walking, and walking, and there would be nothing in his way. He could go to a village. See people. 

(The kindest thing you can do for the people that you--)

He turns around and walks back home. 

 

Martin doesn’t think about him. 

He doesn’t think about waking up to him in the morning curled up close against him. He doesn’t think about how loose and content he’d look after a hot bath. He doesn’t think about how intently he’d stare at a particularly gripping book, eyes alight with excitement. He doesn’t think about the lovely way he’d say his name. 

He doesn’t think about his rescue. 

He dreams about it a lot, though. 

 

Martin has a knife buried in his chest and a growl snarling out of his mouth and an intruder-thief-predator to kill and Jon’s hands are twisted in her shirt, arms thrown around her from behind, almost like a hug. 

“Stop it,” he says, voice shaking. “Just stop it, please.” 

His eyes are fixed on Martin’s face. He’s begging Martin to stop. He’s begging Martin to stop hurting her. 

(That makes more sense than the alternative, doesn’t it?)

Martin is stabbed and shot and bleeding on the floor but he gets back up anyways because the only thing in the world that matters is being taken away from him and if he lets her steal him away he’ll die, he’ll die, he’ll die. He’ll worse than die. 

“You gonna force the issue?” the huntswoman asks, a hungry glint as sharp as her bloody knife in her eyes. 

Jon staggers behind her, away from Martin, terror clear in his eyes, and Martin freezes, gutpunched by sheer guilt. 

(That… was that what happened? Hadn’t Jon stepped in front of her, not behind? But why would he do that? He must be wrong, he must be mistaken, misremembering--) 

“I’ve almost got him,” the huntswoman says cooly (and wait, isn’t this all out of order? Shouldn’t this have happened earlier?) “Then we can leave.” 

“Please kill him,” Jon begs, and Martin stops. He doesn’t hear what the huntswoman says next. It’s not important. 

“He’s dangerous,” Jon goes on. “You have to do this.” 

That’s--

That’s not--

(But doesn’t it make more sense this way?)

But Jon wouldn’t--

 

Martin wakes up. Again. 

He’s not used to waking up in a cold sweat, any longer. 

He gets used to it. 

 

He knows that the dreams are disjointed. Out of order, warped. That wasn’t the way it had really happened. He’s sure of it. Almost sure of it. Almost, probably, maybe. No, the dreams are wrong. Jon wouldn’t beg for the huntswoman to kill him. He hadn’t. If he was pressed for how it had gone down, for what happened and what was said when, he wouldn’t be able to recount it confidently, accurately. It all feels muddled in his head, dark and tangled, further tainted by the dreams, confusing everything. 

But Jon hadn’t wanted for him to die, had he? He’d begged for the opposite. He’d asked the huntswoman to spare him, despite everything. Because Jon is decent. Jon’s kind. 

Martin had seen a beautiful man, and his first instinct had been to keep him. Jon tried to escape, and Martin chased him down. Picked him up, carried him back to captivity. Like he was an escaped animal, a rogue pet or livestock that had to be kept indoors for his own wellbeing. 

It feels like a fog inside of his head has lifted. It had been nagging, persistent guilt before, something he’d tried so hard to look away from. Now-- it’s the difference between seeing blood welling up beneath the floorboards, and actually prying those floorboards open and being confronted by the corpse there. There’s a screaming horror inside of his head that he doesn’t know how to deal with, how to hold or handle. 

How could he have done that? How could he have justified it to himself? He remembers everything. He remembers the fear, the absolute terror at the idea of being all alone again. The rationalizations, the starving desperation to have just one person, the only person in the world. But still, how could he have done that? How could he have done it to Jon? 

He doesn’t recognize his own face, and he doesn’t recognize his actions either. Actions he’d taken, actions he’d stayed up at night justifying to himself. 

His home is so large and empty, but the inside of his head is loud. Painfully loud, crowded in with guilt and horror and confusion and loneliness and longing and heartbreak and--

(The kindest thing you can do for the people--) 

Martin doesn’t think about him. 

Except for how he always does. 

Martin has lived for years on his own. He was a young man when he was cursed. Barely a man, really. Judging based on his reflection… it’s definitely been years, yeah. He’s lived for years on his own, so being alone again shouldn’t leave him feeling so… adrift. So lost. This is just a return to normal, really. 

Still, he doesn’t know what to do with his time. There’s no meals to prepare for Jon, and without that motivation, the meals he prepares for just himself are simple, easy, lackluster. There’s no baths to prepare for Jon, so he just cleans himself with a wet cloth now and then. There’s no Jon to talk to him or read him stories and… 

He could read his own stories. He probably could. He could go and read a book all on his own. The words wouldn’t be narrated by Jon’s voice, the characters lines won’t be intoned by a man determined and ready to do a dozen different voices and accents, but he’d be reading it on his own. 

It sounds deeply unappealing. Everything does. Eating is unappealing, sleeping is unappealing, being is unappealing. 

Martin had had a life before he met Jon. And it had been miserable. Before he’d even been cursed, it hadn’t been particularly happy, had it? Being with Jon hadn’t been easy and cheerful, not with the way guilt was slowly gnawing its way up inside his chest towards his heart, but. But. It’s the happiest he’s ever been. 

He’s never going to be that happy again, is he. 

Even self pity is getting tiring, as true as it is. 

Martin tries to keep himself busy. He gets reacquainted with his body. He learns how to walk without falling, how to hold a needle without pricking himself, how to catch his reflection out of the corner of his eye without flinching. He makes himself read a book. He makes himself eat. He makes himself sleep. He doesn’t leave the grounds to go to a village, even though nothing is stopping him any longer. 

He wanders inside of his home. 

It’s strange, what has been given back to him and what hasn’t. For so long, he was unsure which parts that were wrong with him were because of the curse, because of the isolation, or just because he’s himself. He’d worried at those questions for a long time, fruitless anxiety buzzing around his skull. 

Now that the curse is gone, the answer is: it’s still a confusing, muddled mess. His body is his own again. He still doesn’t feel right in his body, but he’s hoping (hoping) that that goes away soon. His memories still try to turn into something uglier each time he obsessively runs past them over and over and over again, like compulsively picking at a scab until it turns into  an actual wound. He still hears his mum’s sharp voice in his head sometimes, criticizing him. He’s horrified by what he did, but he’s not sure that he only did it in the first place because of the curse, not beyond the circumstances that it put him in. That might just have been… him. He might just have done that because he’s Martin, and he was terrified of being alone. 

His memories, however, are better now. That was the curse, apparently. He thinks. 

He wanders through his home and remembers things. That’s the window seat that his mum liked to sit in while enjoying a cup of tea before she got sick, looking down at the garden. Those are the stairs he fell down and twisted his ankle on when he was a kid. That’s the corner he’d hid behind when he’d heard his parents raised voices, the first time he caught them arguing. The first time of many. 

That’s mum’s bedroom. The one she’d insisted on moving into when dad had left, and she hadn’t wanted to keep sleeping in the same bed. The one she’d been sick in, the one she’d lied in while he fed her and took care of her. The one she’d died in. 

It’s the first bedroom Martin put Jon in. 

He hadn’t even realized. He’d just… he hadn’t thought about it. It had felt natural to put Jon there. Martin stares into the room, with its broken bed and its broken door, and doesn’t know what to do. His chest feels tight and achy and it hurts and--

A choked, broken noise slips out of him like broken glass, and he cries for the first time since… since Jon shouted at him? In this exact room. God. He buries his face in his hands to muffle the ugly noises dragging themselves out from deep within his chest, to try and stem the flow of tears from his eyes like there’s anyone here to see. 

There’s no one here to see. He lets himself slide down the wall to the floor, feeling weak in the legs. Feeling weak, period. He lets himself cry, loud and ugly and jagged, until the noises and tears and misery eventually runs dry. He wipes at his wet, blotchy face and sniffles. 

He feels raw and drained but… almost in a satisfying way. Like he’s been balancing on a thin rope for a long time, and he’s finally fallen. He can stop being so tense, stop trying to avoid losing his balance. It’s already happened. He can relax. It’s too late. He’s lost. 

“That was pretty stupid of me, wasn’t it?” he asks himself, his voice creaky from crying or disuse, or perhaps both. He laughs to himself, wet and self deprecating. 

That had been stupid of him. Keeping Jon. Not just cruel and unhinged and selfish, but stupid. What had he honestly thought was going to happen? That there was going to be any sort of happy ending for him that way? 

There was no win condition in which Martin would be happy. Letting Jon go would be terrifying, heartbreaking, lonely. It would ruin him. But keeping him forever wouldn’t go anywhere good either. Watching Jon slowly give up in increments, making himself or letting an acceptance, a resignation, of his circumstances sink into him had been painful. Martin had been so twisted up over that, over denying it, trying not to see it, to understand it, but-- it had been awful. He hadn’t wanted to beat Jon. He hadn’t wanted for Jon to lose, to be stuck with him, for him to have to try and find the silver linings in an objectively terrible situation. For Martin to get exactly what he wanted. 

Martin was miserable if he lost, and just as miserable if he won. So, if that was the case, then Jon should get to win, right? At least one of them should get to be happy. That’s nice, right? Martin can try and find some comfort there, in the idea of Jon somewhere else, free and happy. With his fiance. 

Jon has a fiance. 

The gut wrenching loss of losing him has been overwhelming enough to totally eclipse that revelation, but Jon has a fiance. He’s had a fiance this entire time. Someone who loves him. Someone he loves. Someone who must’ve worried for him, searched for him, sent someone to find and save him. Someone Jon must’ve missed. 

Jon hadn’t mentioned them a single time, for the whole while he was here. And why would he? Martin was always just the monster keeping him captive. Letting him know that someone would be looking for him would just be asking for trouble. 

Martin had worried that Jon had family out there, friends, loved ones that missed and worried for him, that Jon missed in turn, that the suffering Martin was creating was so much greater than just one (beautiful, wonderful) person, but somehow he’d just never thought to think that he might have someone like… someone that he loves like that. It’s weird. It feels weird. Bad. 

It shouldn’t be bad, that Jon is loved. He deserves it. Just because Martin has some sort of twisted, sick, possessive affection for him doesn’t mean that he should have to be lonely because of that. Just to soothe Martin’s feelings. Ridiculous. Stupid. Ugly. Martin’s done enough bad here without being upset over the fact that Jon has someone better than him. 

Jon is free, and he has someone who isn’t a beast. Someone who’s never done the awful things that Martin has done to him. And Martin is alone and that’s… that’s fine. He was never supposed to be with Jon, or to have a happily ever after. His curse has been broken. That’s more than he ever could have hoped for, but hoped sickly, desperately for anyways. He’s human again. 

He is abruptly sick of this building. Of it’s long, empty, silent, broken hallways. Of all of the memories here, the ugly and painful ones, and the ones filled with so much yearning longing that it was only a more bittersweet pain. Even the happy ones. The way his dad would ruffle his hair. The way his mum would play hide and seek with him. The way Jon’s smile would go crooked and soft sometimes, when he was tired but still pleased over something anyways. All of those people aren’t here any longer. 

He needs to get away from this place. From the empty, the quiet, the solitude. 

Martin sniffs, wipes roughly at his face, and gets up. 

 

He walks to the border of his property. He takes one step further. Another. Another. 

And he just keeps going like that. Nothing and no one stops him. 

Martin leaves home. 

 

He prepared, of course. He found a rucksack, and he filled it with some dried food, some jerky he’d figured out how to make. He dressed as well as he could. It’s not far to the nearest village though, he knows. He remembers this. He’d been taking care of his mum for years before she cursed him, and he couldn't leave the house any longer. After a while she got so sick that he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone for two to four days while he went and bought supplies, but for a long while before that, he could leave and buy things. He knows the way to the closest village, even if the path from his home to the proper road is overgrown and neglected now. 

He walks for about a day on the proper road, sleeping in makeshift lean tos next to it during the night because he doesn’t have the money to buy a room in one of the inns that exist along the road. The first time he sees another human being, a man driving a cart, he stops in his tracks and just stares until the man passes him. The man gives him a glance, but quickly loses interest. That, more than anything, sets his heart thundering. Being seen. He exists. He’s real. 

That keeps happening. As he travels to the village, he crosses more and more people, and they keep looking at him. Not staring, but they’ll glance at him, note him, maybe move out of the way if they’re traveling in the opposite direction. He sees more people than he has in the last decade, in just a couple of days. It leaves him feeling… shaky? Strange and wide eyed, at least. He can’t stop thinking about it, running his fingers over the fresh memories of people walking around him, past him, acknowledging him, with an overwhelmed awe. 

Martin reaches the village. It’s exactly as he remembers. A simple place that must house less than a thousand people, all bustling around and chattering at each other, hundreds of different people living their own lives, headed in different directions, bumping into each other along the way. 

It’s amazing. 

It’s deeply overwhelming. People keep brushing up against him, bumping into him, tossing casual apologies at him as they hurry past. Was it this busy the last time he was here, or is the stark difference just in his head? This is everything he’s wanted for so long, but there’s also a not insignificant part of him that wants to find somewhere quiet and empty where he can hide for a while and just focus on breathing carefully. 

Why had he come here, again? 

Because his home is large and empty and deafeningly silent. Because he doesn’t want to just rot there any longer. But now that he’s here he feels like he’s at a complete loss. Packing his bag and taking one step after another had been a simple, concrete plan. He doesn’t know what the next step is, now that he’s here. 

Obviously, he doesn’t want to be alone any longer. He wants to have someone, without keeping them by force. So, he had to go where there are people. And there’s plenty of them here. One of them might want him, right? He just has to… befriend them. Get to know them. Introduce himself. 

Now that he’s thinking about it, he’s never had an actual friend in his life, actually, and has no idea of how to go about changing this. 

“Um--” he chokes out in someone’s direction, but they just walk right past him. Right. The first step towards befriending someone is talking to them in the first place, which sounds simple but is… very hard. Because why would someone stop to talk to him, a stranger? 

Everyone looks so busy. He doesn’t want to bother them. 

“Baby steps,” he mumbles to himself, and yeah, yes. He doesn’t have to find someone right away, right? He can’t just… jump into the deep end of the pool. He should get used to just being around other people without feeling like he’s going to fall apart from sheer overwhelmed feeling before he progresses to trying to talk to them. 

Martin walks through the village. People keep brushing up against him. He takes deep, steady breaths, and just tries to… stay calm. Take it in. Like dipping your toe into the water to get used to the temperature. Eventually, he starts to take in some of the words flying around him, instead of all it just being one large incomprehensible rush. 

“-- going to be free drinks--”

“--who are you going with?” 

“--can’t go dressed like that, it’s supposed to be fancy--” 

“--so romantic, I wish I’d get swept up by a rich--”

He starts to get the impression that there is actually a reason that everyone’s so busy, and it isn’t just him being overwhelmed after years spent living very silently. There’s some sort of event going on, a party. Everyone’s rushing around excitedly, getting ready, talking about how fun it’ll be. 

An event. That sounds like a lot but… he’s trying to get used to humanity again, isn’t he? A party could be just the thing. An excuse to be around a lot of people, with no one wondering why he’s here in the first place. He can just… watch. Listen. Take it in. 

It’s not hard to figure out where the party’s going to be held. After a while, everyone starts to head in the same direction one after another. It’s easy to let himself just be carried by the current, following the flow of the crowd. They’re all walking towards the same place, a large sprawling estate set on the top of a hill overlooking the entire village. 

It doesn’t look overgrown and dilapidated the way Martin’s home does. It looks nice. Cared for. It must be filled with servants, dozens of people who sleep and eat and live there, tending to it and keeping it neat and orderly every day. It sort of makes his heart pang, seeing something that can only exist the way it does thanks to the work of many people. He’d tried to take care of his home at the start, after everyone left. He really had. But dust and cobwebs and small damages had accumulated faster than he could clean and fix them all on his own, especially while taking care of his mum, and in the end it had been easier to just… give up. It had felt like trying to brush a desert into a dustpan. Pointless. 

The party itself seems to be held outside of the mansion. It’s a sunny spring day, and there are tables holding food and drink on the lawn, along with servants bustling in and out of the mansion, carrying out chairs for the rapidly growing crowd and hot, steaming trays of fresh food. Everyone seems very enthusiastic about this. 

“--is it going to happen?” he hears someone say. 

“Don’t know. Must be soon, at least. They’ve even already brought out the wedding cake.”

The wedding cake. Martin freezes up at that. 

A wedding. He’s at a wedding. But no, it can’t possibly be--

A wave of noise goes through the crowd, peoples voices going hushed and yet louder at the same time, excited whispers as they all spot something one after another. Martin turns his head in the same direction everyone else is craning theirs. 

It’s Jon. 

His dark streaked with gray hair is down, brushed and shiny, with a few elegant white flowers placed in it in a way that looks natural and artful all at the same time. He’s wearing clothes that look expensive, silky. Not the practical clothes Martin had first met him in, or the threadbare utilitarian outfit Martin had scrounged up for him later. 

He’s just as beautiful as he remembers. He thought he’d exaggerated it in his memory. 

The huntswoman is walking three steps behind him, solemn and flinty eyed like she’s at a funeral instead. 

And holding Jon’s arm, supporting him down the stairs from the mansion to the lawn, is a smiling, handsome man with pale blue eyes. 

People rush forwards to admire their outfits, to wish the couple their congratulations, to shake hands. Martin says rooted where he is, staring, until Jon is hidden from his sight by the crowd again. Only when that happens does he inhale, and realize that he hadn’t breathed for that entire, endless moment. He takes a shaking step back. 

(The kindest thing you can do--)

Another. Another. 

He turns around and goes. No one and nothing stops him. 

 

Martin knows mansions. He’s lived in one his entire life. He knows how to spot a servant's entrance, subtle and unassuming. He circles around the mansion until he finds one, and slips inside to go and hyperventilate in a dark, unseen corner for a while. 

Of all of the luck in the world, the first thing he does when he decides to move on, to try and have a life that isn’t quietly rotting away in solitude or trying to desperately escape said solitude by forcing an innocent man to suffer his presence, the first thing he does is crash Jon’s wedding. He hadn’t meant to! He isn’t doing this on purpose! This isn’t fair. He’d resolved to let Jon go, to leave him alone to live his life, he’d decided. It had been too little too late and it had hurt, but he’d done it. 

It’s not fair of the universe to give him the chance to go back on the toughest choice of his life. He doesn’t want to be weak, to let himself and Jon down again. He also desperately wants to see Jon again, just one more time. And another after that, and another, and another, and another. One more last time, over and over again for the rest of his life. 

He shouldn’t do that. Obviously. 

But what would it hurt? Just one more time? 

It won’t just be one more time. 

But what if it was? What if Martin swears to himself that all he needs is one last look, just from a distance, and then he’ll leave? He hadn’t been able to take it in, just now. He’d been frozen in a strange sort of terror at suddenly being confronted by Jon again, when he’d been working on coming to peace with never seeing him again. And the time before that, he hadn’t been able to linger in it at all. To try and burn the way Jon looked in his mind. Jon had looked terrified. Everything had happened so quickly, so horribly. 

What if the last time Martin ever sees Jon, it’s on his wedding day? Happy and safe. 

He wouldn’t feel so happy and safe if he knew that Martin’s here. 

From a distance. Jon’s never seen Martin… seen him like this. Like a human. He doesn’t know what he looks like. He could look straight at him, and recognition wouldn’t so much as flicker in his eyes. His heart twinges at that idea, painfully, but no, that’s good. He just has to avoid speaking. His voice is the one thing that has stayed the same, in both forms. Jon might recognize it if he hears it. So Martin has to keep his mouth shut. That’s fine. He feels struck dumb and silent every time he goes outside, with how many people there are. 

It’s okay. He can do this. See Jon one last time, not covered in Martin’s blood or scared, not held captive by him. He can make the last time he sees Jon be a good moment, a moment that Jon isn’t miserable.  

(He can see if his smile now is different from the way he’d smile back when he lived with Martin, contrast and compare, see if any of those brief moments of joy that he felt so proud and reverential of were even true.) 

And then he’ll walk away. He’ll go before the groom kisses Jon. He won’t ruin this day. He’ll just… see Jon. One last time. 

He gets up to go back out there. 

Martin realizes that he’s lost. 

He’d staggered away from the crowd, the party, Jon, in a blind, panicked rush. He absolutely had not been paying attention to the twists and turns he was taking. Or the stairs. Had he gone down some stairs? He thinks he did. It was a warm spring day, but it’s chilly where he is, he realizes. He must be underneath the ground. In the basement. Possibly a sub-basement. The walls are stone, the hallway he’s in narrow and dark, with barely any light to see by. 

Well. The only way out is through. He’s bound to get back out if he just keeps walking. This place may be big, but it’s still just one building. If anyone finds him, then… he can claim to be a guest who got lost. It’s not even a lie, technically. Which makes it the best sort of lie. 

Martin walks. 

Every single part of it all looks the same, no helpful signs or paintings or memorable landmarks to let him know if he’s just going in circles. It’s just gray and gray and gray. The servants must have had to memorize these hallways through sheer practice to be able to navigate them. Eventually, though, he notices something: there is a slight downwards slope to the floor. It had appeared so gradually that it had taken him until now to notice it. 

Great. So he’s been walking in entirely the wrong direction for a while now. He moves to turn around-- 

There’s a bang noise right next to him, and he screams, flinching away from it. Wild eyed, he looks at-- the wall. 

No, wait. It’s… a door. A subtle one that almost entirely blends into the wall in the gloom of these dark hallways, but a door nonetheless. 

“... Hello?” someone says through the door, their voice muffled. The voice sounds feminine. He blinks rapidly, still too stunned to reply. “I know you’re there. I heard you scream. Are you a new servant?” 

“Um,” Martin says, and makes a split decision. “Yes.” 

There’s a moment of silence, and then the person behind the door speaks up again. “I work here too. I accidentally locked myself in here. I’ve been trying to get out for hours. Help let me out.” 

“Oh!” he says. “I-- I don’t-- I’ll go and get help!” 

“No,” the person behind the door says firmly, so stern and forbidding that he freezes at the sound of it. “No, you don’t have to do that. There’s a key just outside of the door. You can let me out now.” 

He looks around for said key wildly, but he sees no hook on the wall holding a ring of keys, no vase or any container that could be holding it. The hall is very… spartan. 

“I don’t see it,” he says. “Are you sure?” 

“I’m sure,” she says confidently. “There’s a key to this door somewhere outside of this door, close by. I’ve heard-- it might be hidden. Can you see any loose stones in the wall?” 

“I can’t see anything in this damned light,” he mutters to himself, fruitlessly scanning the walls around him, as if the loose stone might suddenly appear to him. Something occurs to him. He stops, narrowing his eyes. “... Wouldn’t you know where the key to the door is, if you work here? How did you even get in there in the first place, without the key?” 

“Wouldn’t you have brought a torch or a gaslamp with you if you work here?” she challenges him right back. 

There is a long, tense silence at that. It feels strange to have a stare off with a door. 

“Okay,” he eventually says, giving up. “This is silly. I think it’s pretty clear that neither of us work here or are supposed to be here, so we’re on the same page about that, at least.” 

“... Yeah, okay,” she agrees. “I’m really not supposed to be here, though. The owner, Bouchard, he’s been keeping me captive here for weeks now. I don’t care if you’re here to rob him. If you let me out, I’ll help you carry as much stuff as you want out of here.” 

“I--” he says, blinking rapidly. “No? What? Bouchard, is that-- is that the man who’s marrying-- who’s getting married today?” 

“Oh, so the groom didn’t manage to escape a second time? Too bad. Daisy would just have to chase him down for Bouchard again, though.” 

“What?” He sets a hand on the nearest wall, feeling like he needs to keep his balance just from how abruptly he’s lost control of this conversation. “What are you talking about? Why is the-- Bouchard? Why would he be keeping you captive in his basement?” 

“I’d call it a dungeon,” she says dryly. “And he’s been keeping me here to get my… partner to do as he says. She’s the best hunter in the village. No one else would’ve been able to find and bring his fiance back in time for the wedding. He’d been missing for some time, apparently.”

She sounds awfully calm for a woman being held against her will. 

“No,” he says. “No, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Bouchard and Jon-- they’re in love. He’s a good man. They’re going to get married and he’s going to make Jon happy and treat him well--”

He cuts himself off as he hears his own voice rising with hysteria. 

“... I don’t know what things are like between Bouchard and his-- and Jon. I’ve never really met Jon before, beyond buying a few books from him before he got engaged to Bouchard. What I know is this: Bouchard is the type of person to keep someone trapped in his dungeon for an indefinite amount of time just for the leverage that it gives him, and that he had to blackmail someone to hunt down his fiance for him because he ran away before the big day. I’m not just coming up with this on the spot. Daisy has been allowed to send me some letters, I’ve got them all here. You can read them if you like.” 

This has to be a lie. This can’t be true. Martin just let Jon go. It had hurt so much to do it, but he’d done it, because it was the right thing to do in the end. Jon had begged him to let him go. He’d said he’d wanted to go back to Bouchard. 

Martin had also been bleeding out, and losing a fight very badly until Jon convinced him to surrender. 

Jon had never mentioned a fiance before the huntswoman came. But that’s not strange, right? There’s plenty of things that he hasn’t told Martin. He barely talked about his past at all. Protecting a part of himself from the beast keeping captive, right? 

Or like he didn't want to dwell on it, like it was something ugly and upsetting that he wanted to forget. 

He shakes his head, even though no one can see him. His heartbeat is thundering in his chest, and the cramped hallway feels smaller, claustrophobic. He doesn’t know what to think. 

“Jon can’t be in danger,” he says numbly. “It’s supposed to be over for him now.” 

He tries to remember how Jon had looked, when he’d glimpsed him out in the garden. Had he been smiling? Had he looked relaxed? Comfortable? He doesn’t remember. All he’d taken is was how beautiful he looked, and the way Bouchard had been holding his arm, gallant and nestled in close to his side. 

“Listen,” the woman says, intense, coaxing. She sounds like she’s pressed up close to the other side of the door, like she’s talking to a tense, hissing animal that may be liable to bolt at any moment. “My name’s Basira. What’s yours?” 

“Martin,” he says blankly. 

“Please, just help me out of this room, Martin. I want to get out. I haven’t seen the sun in weeks. Bouchard may keep me here for years, if he gets his way. You seem like you care about Jon. You don’t have to believe me about Bouchard, to take me at my word… just consider it. For Jon’s sake.” 

“I--” he says, and that’s when a servant holding a gaslamp rounds the corner. 

They both freeze for a moment, looking at each other wide eyed, before the servant drops the lamp and screams. Glass shatters, and Basira shouts through the door,” Get them! Before they alert--” 

Martin lunges for the servant. He manages to get his arms around her before she can even properly turn around, and she screams again and struggles. He presses a hand over her mouth, a rush like when he used to run animals down in the woods going through him, along with a faint tinge of guilty, horrified nausea, this time. 

“I’ve--” he stammers, holding her firmly. “I’ve got her.” 

“Good,” Basira says firmly, approvingly. “Get her to tell you where the key is.” 

The servant is whimpering against his palm, straining against his arms. 

Monster, his mum’s voice hisses. 

“She-- she knows?” 

“Who do you think has been bringing me my meals? Bouchard doesn’t stoop to that sort of dirty work.” 

The servant has known. She’s been helping Bouchard keep Basira captive. If-- if what Basira’s saying is true. He doesn’t have to feel like a beast for holding her down like this. She’s a bad person. Someone who keeps people against their will. 

Like him. 

If what Basira is saying is true, is Martin any better than Bouchard? 

No, mum’s voice says. 

He shakes his head harshly. So what if he’s no better than Bouchard? He’d decided that he didn’t deserve Jon, that Jon shouldn’t have to be stuck with someone like Martin. If Martin’s no better than Bouchard, then that means that Bouchard’s no better than Martin. Jon shouldn’t have to be stuck with him either. 

“Tell-- tell me where the key is right now,” he says, his voice far too tremulous for a threat. Hopefully, his firm solid hands are making up for that. “Or else I’ll snap your neck.” 

The servant tells him where the key is. He keeps an arm around her, pinning her arms to her sides as he uses his other hand to wriggle one particular stone in the wall loose. In a small hollow place behind it, there is indeed a key. 

“Please,” the servant begs. “Let me go. I was just doing my job--” 

“I’m not going to kill you if you do as I say. Stop talking.” He’s really hoping that she doesn’t test that. He’s never killed a human being before. He doesn’t know if-- would he have to-- 

He puts it out of his mind. He’ll cross that bridge when he gets to it. For now, he focuses on grabbing the key and pushing it into the lock. He turns it with a twist of his wrist. 

The door is pushed open. 

Basira is a stocky woman. She’s wearing a hijab that looks a bit like it was made of torn fabric, the edges of it ragged like she decided to tear up some sheets to improvise. She’s holding a solid chunk of wood, the end of it long and pointed. A shiv, presumably made from some piece of furniture inside of her room. Her cell. 

Her eyes go up and down him and the servant, and she nods once, approving. 

“Let her go,” she says. 

“Are you--” 

“Yes. Trust me.” 

Reluctantly, he lets the servant go. She doesn’t get the time to run before Basira grabs her arm, twists it in a way that makes her yelp, and before Martin knows it she’s shoved the servant into the room she was just let out of. She slams the door shut. 

“Lock it,” she says. 

“Oh,” he says, surprised and relieved. Yes, that’s much smarter, actually. “Sure thing.” 

He locks it. The servant starts hammering on the door and shouting. 

“The people who use these tunnels are used to ignoring the sounds of a woman shouting behind this door,” Basira says, and he thinks he detects some amount of satisfaction in her words. “We’ll have plenty of time.” 

Plenty of time. How long has he been down here? How long since he’d glimpsed Jon? Is he married to Bouchard yet? It feels urgent, suddenly, to see him again before that happens. To see if this is all real or not. He’s got the sinking dread in his stomach that it probably is. 

He has no idea what he’s going to do if it is. What he can do. But it has to be something, right? Jon doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s captive. 

“Right,” he says. “Let’s go.” 

They run. They go in the right direction this time, following the upwards slope of the floor, and soon they’re climbing stairs, taking dizzying twists and turns, and then-- 

Basira flings a door open and they’re back out in the sunlight. A nearby servant carrying a tray of food shrieks and drops it onto the lawn. 

“The-- I think it’s happening on the other side of the house, come on!” 

“What-- the wedding?” Basira asks, following him. “What, are we going to ‘object’ or something?” 

“Yes!?” he says. “I mean, if what you said is true then Jon can’t get married to Bouchard! What did you think we’re doing?” 

“I don’t know what you’re doing,” she says. “But I want to get Daisy and get out of here.” 

“Daisy’s the huntswoman, right? She was with Jon and Bouchard earlier. If you want to find her, you have to go to the wedding. And-- and it’s a good opportunity to reveal what Bouchard’s done to you! Basically the whole village is here. They’ll all hear you.” 

“It’s our word against his,” she says grimly. “I don’t--” 

That’s when they round the corner, and yeah, that’s a wedding, alright. The crowd is gathered, all trying to be quiet and looking on at Jon and Bouchard standing before a priest. 

The first thing Martin notices is Jon. Just Jon. He’d thought that maybe the reason he was so breath taken with him, the reason he was so unbelievably beautiful to his eyes, was because he was the only person he’d seen in years. The only person in the world, effectively. Martin would be just as ecstatic and grateful and admiring of any other human being, so long as they existed in his vicinity. 

But no. Jon is surrounded by more people than Martin can count, and he’s still the most wonderful one of them all. Martin’s eyes gravitate towards him helplessly, like he’s the center of a painting, every single brushstroke pulling his gaze towards what is clearly supposed to be the focus, the main event. 

His feelings for Jon aren’t just because he’s the only person he’s seen in years. It’s because he’s Jon. 

The second thing he notices is that Jon doesn’t have his cane with him. Has he put it away, just for the vows? But no, had Jon even been carrying the cane when Martin had seen him earlier, descending the stairs into the garden? He hadn’t, now that he thinks about it. Bouchard had been holding his arm for him, and that had been about it. 

Maybe Jon just hadn’t wanted any reminders of Martin. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to keep a gift from him. 

Bouchard should have given him a new cane, if that was the case. What about his poor leg? How long has Jon been standing? How long--

The third thing Martin notices is the look on Jon’s face. 

He doesn’t know how that could have possibly not been the first thing he noticed. He noticed how pretty he was before he noticed the look in his eyes. 

He doesn’t know how anyone here isn’t seeing the look on Jon’s face. How they’re smiling and looking excited and carefree, how they’re just acting like everything’s normal and letting this go on without-- without at least asking him what’s wrong. 

Because something is very clearly wrong. 

He steps forward. 

(The kindest thing--) 

“Jon!” he shouts, ignoring her. He’s ruining the wedding, he’s forcing his presence on Jon, he’s assuming he’s wanted or needed when he isn’t--

Either Martin is completely delusional, or he sees hope bloom on Jon’s face as he hears his voice, covering up the terrible blank, numb look from before. Jon turns away from Elias, looking towards the crowd, searching it for-- for something. His eyes land on him and flick right past without pausing a moment, not recognizing him. For a moment, he feels more like a ghost than he has since… since Jon looked at him, saw him, proved to him that he wasn’t just some dead beast haunting an empty, rotting mansion in the woods. 

He shoves the feeling away. Not now. 

Heart thundering, he takes another step forward. The crowd around him draws back, staring at him for committing the enormous social faux pas of speaking during the vows, for shouting during the vows. They look either massively disapproving of him or absolutely delighted by whatever drama is apparently about to unfold before them. 

“Jon,” he says again, softer, and this time when Jon’s eyes go towards him they stay there. They go wide and disbelieving. 

“Martin?” he says incredulously, like he can’t believe it. 

“Hi,” he says, voice a bit small. Jon’s attention in this moment feels about twice as overwhelming as that of the entire crowd. “It-- it’s me. I’m… I got better.” He laughs nervously at his own choice of words, the understatement. “Are you--” 

“You’re interrupting,” Bouchard says. He doesn’t sound furious or shocked. Martin tears his gaze away from Jon, to Bouchard. It’s not a long journey-- they’re still holding hands. Subtly supporting Jon’s weight, he realizes. When he looks at the thoughtful expression on Bouchard’s face, it clicks. He sounds like someone who’s carefully considering how to solve this problem, except Martin's the problem. What to do with him. To him. 

“Jon,” Martin says urgently, before Bouchard can-- call guards on him? Are there guards here? Does he have guards? Before Bouchard can do whatever he’s about to do next, at least. He just needs to know. “Are you-- are you okay here? Are you fine?” 

“I--” Jon says, eyes still wide. Martin had needed to hyperventilate in a dark corner for an indeterminate amount of time to recover after he’d suddenly been confronted with Jon, when he’d thought that he’d never see him again. Jon isn’t getting that time to come to term with things. 

“Miss Tonner,” Bouchard says. “Escort this man from the premises and take care of him.” 

“No,” Jon says, turning to look at Bouchard, face twisting into an expression that reminds Martin of that night that Jon had begged for Martin’s life from the huntswoman. Daisy, Basira had called her. What was her last name? She’d left him bleeding on the floor so easily, and that was back when he’d been a beast--

Martin realizes that he’s forgotten about Basira at about the same time that Bouchard frowns as a Miss Tonner continues not to appear from thin air to ‘take care’ of Martin. 

Martin looks behind him, around him. He doesn’t see Basira. He doesn’t see the huntswoman. 

They’d taken advantage, while Martin had unwittingly given them the perfect distraction. They’re gone. That’s… well, neither of them had ever pretended to care about anyone but each other. At least they hadn’t fought against him, beyond as much as Daisy had needed to. It would be nice to have the backup now, but it looks like he’s just going to have to make do. 

“Miss Tonner,” Bouchard says sharply, like calling a dog to heel. A little flare of hatred goes off in Martin’s chest at that. He’d been making her do as told, because he’d had Basira stored away in his dungeon. That’s not okay. That’s not the sort of person that Jon should be married to, til death do them part. 

“Is he good to you?” Martin asks Jon, leaving Bouchard to figure out that his forced guard dog won’t be coming to do his bidding any time soon. “Does he-- does he treat you well? Better than I did? Please, you can tell me the truth. I just want to know that you’re okay.” 

“How is this possible,” Jon breathes, turning his attention back to Martin as Daisy continues not to appear. There’s disbelief and wonder in his expression, along with some sickening traces of terror lingering at the edges. From the threat of Daisy? From Bouchard? From Martin? Which is it? 

“What did you do,” Bouchard says to Martin, and oh, there’s the anger. It wells up dark and foreboding in his voice, his face, his frame. He doesn’t look like a Prince Charming any longer. He looks dangerous. 

He lets go of Jon’s hands. Jon flinches as he has to shift his feet to keep his balance, bites back a noise of pain. Bouchard doesn’t look away from Martin for a moment. 

Ah, Martin thinks coldly, distantly, there it is. Confirmation. Good enough for him, at least. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s true if Bouchard kept Basira in his dungeon or if Jon really tried to escape him once before. This man isn’t fucking good enough for Jon. 

“You’re going to have to tell me if you don’t want for me to kill him, Jon,” Martin says. The crowd around his gasps at this, excitedly repeating what he’s said to each other, spreading the words through a ripple of whispering so that even the people at the very edges can keep up with the drama. At some point, the crowd has drawn away from them all in a circle, given them a wide berth. Almost like a stage. 

“Are you a rival suitor, then?” Bouchard asks, almost mockingly. “Cutting it a bit closely, aren’t you?” 

“You can’t,” Jon says. 

“I can,” Martin says, willing it to be true. “Do you want for me to do it?” 

There’s a moment of hushed silence, the tension like a thread set to snap. 

“Yes,” Jon says. 

Bouchard’s eyes go cold and sharp at that, no amusement left, and the crowd explodes into fevered murmurings (“He said--!” “No, you must have heard wrong, he said--”). 

Bouchard draws a knife from his sleeve and steps forwards. Jon reaches out to try and hold him back (the way he’d stayed the huntswoman’s hand, stopped her from stabbing Martin again), but Bouchard shrugs him off harshly, almost knocking him to the ground. 

“You think you can come here and scare my bride into running away with you? Your threats don’t frighten me,” he says, projecting his voice, clearly enunciating every word. He’s steering the story, Martin realizes. Nudging the proper narrative into place with a few flimsy words before he stabs Martin to death in front of all of these people. And it’ll probably work, because Martin’s a stranger and Bouchard’s the richest man in town and he has a knife and Martin doesn’t--

For a strange, jarring moment, Martin almost misses his monstrous self. The fangs, the claws, the bulk and the strength. He’s not a small man now, he’s realized as he’s continued to meet people that he towers over, even if he feels small compared to how he’d been. But he doesn’t have the kind of strength that he could use to tear this man in half. More than anything, that’s exactly what he wants right now. 

The knife glints in the sunlight as Bouchard approaches. Someone in the crowd screams with horror as they realize what’s about to happen. Jon shouts something, raw and vulnerable like exposed intestines. 

Martin has to win this. He doesn’t have a knife. He doesn’t have any claws. What does he have? He has to understand--

“Die,” Bouchard says, and snaps the knife towards his gut--

 

When Martin had been young, his dad had left, and he’d never come back. He’d hoped for a long time that he would, but he hadn’t, in the end. 

Martin had noticed when his dad was leaving for the last time. It had been impossible not to. He’d been taking every single other person that lived on the estate with him, after all. Every single one except for Martin and mum. He wanted to bring all of them, but not his wife and son. It had, in other words, been a bit of a commotion. 

Servants had been running back and forth throughout the entire mansion, hurriedly packing up their things, and whatever his dad decided to bring with him. It had been loud, and hectic, and no one would tell Martin what was going on. Mum had shut herself inside of her bedroom, and she wouldn’t open the door or even say anything when Martin knocked on it. 

So, he’d gone looking for his dad. 

He’d found him down in the lounge, pacing in front of the door, wearing his coat and snapping at servants to hurry up, quickly. 

“Where are you going?” Martin had asked, because it was clear that his dad was going somewhere. His luggage was already packed and stacked right next to the door. 

They’d all eaten breakfast together this morning. It had been normal. Dad hadn’t said anything about needing to go somewhere, and now he’s acting like he can’t wait to get away. 

What had Martin missed? 

His dad had flinched at the sound of his voice, and looked at him like he was seeing him for the first time. “Elsewhere,” he’d answered, curt. 

“When are you coming back?” 

“I won’t be coming back.” 

“... Are me and mum coming too? Are we moving?” 

“No. I’m moving. You and that-- that witch, you’re staying here.” 

He hadn’t understood. He’d been confused, scared. Tears had started to well up. “You’re never ever coming back?” 

“No.” 

And Martin-- Martin loved his mum. He’s always loved his mum, but back then it was so easy, so simple to love her. It hadn’t hurt. He hadn’t wanted to abandon her or anything. He just… he’d been a kid, and his dad was leaving, and he hadn’t wanted for him to go, to never see him again. 

“Can I come with you?” 

And his dad had looked at him in a way he never had before. It was the first time anyone had ever looked scared of Martin. He was eight. 

“No,” he’d said. “I can’t trust her child.” 

Martin hadn’t understood. 

 

Martin understands. All at once, he understands. 

His hand snaps out and grabs Bouchard’s wrist, stopping the point of his knife just from sliding into the flesh of his stomach. 

“Surrender,” Martin says, and he feels something thrum inside of him at that. He’s never done this before. Never even considered it. But this is how it goes, he can feel it down to his bones. (I’m giving you one last chance, mum had said, and Martin had ignored her.) He has to give him one last chance for this to work. “Give up, stop lying and being selfish and ruining lives for your own gain. Let go of the knife.” 

Bouchard does something, twists his wrist in a way that gets it out of Martin’s grip, and he slices Martin’s palm open as he jerks himself out of his grip. Blood flows hot and painful down his hand. 

“No,” Bouchard says and he raises his arm to stab at him again, and the potential that’s been blooming in the air like pollen floating heavy, or a bud threatening to blossom, snaps closed on him all at once like a bear trap closing. It feels like Martin’s been struck by lightning. Like it’s flowing through him. 

Towards Bouchard. 

Martin curses Bouchard. He doesn’t have fangs or claws any longer, but he has this. Something he’d never realized he’d gotten from his mum until this exact moment. They crackle, untrained, barely controlled, but he forces them to do what he wants through sheer force of will. Through hatred. Through love. Through bloody minded stubbornness. 

Martin’s magic twists around Bouchard, through the very being of him, ephemeral and untouchable like mist, and Martin feels the next step, the next necessary part fall into his head like knowledge from god. Like magic. 

It has to be fair. There has to be a way for Bouchard to free himself from Martin’s curse, a win condition that he can fight for. It doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s right or kind or just, it just has to be possible. It just has to be there. The curse will refuse to settle, otherwise. 

His mum hadn’t given him a way out from the curse out of mercy. She hadn’t even done it to teach him a lesson. That hadn’t mattered to her. She’d just… had to give him the option, to be able to curse him in the first place. She did it because she had to, to be able to punish him. She hadn’t cared if he’d ever learn, if he’d ever be himself again. She hadn’t wanted that. She’d just wanted for him to suffer. The lesson, the solution… it was simply the first thing that came to mind for her. It wasn’t objectively correct. It might as well be arbitrary. 

(The kindest--) 

Martin screams to drown it out, furious and hurt. 

Bouchard screams too, in an entirely different way. 

A lot of people might be screaming, honestly. 

Martin lays out the conditions then, when Bouchard is too blinded by agony to hear him, when no one can hear him over the chaos. 

“If you ever feel guilt for your actions, you will be free,” he says, and in a way he’s being just as cruel as his mum had been, in this moment. Because he is certain that while Bouchard can do this, is capable of it… he won’t. He never will. Martin is condemning him to this curse until death. 

The curse doesn’t care. It finds his conditions to be fair, suitable. The magic goes from a rushing roar that’s tearing at peoples hair and dresses to something quiet that settles down into Bouchard’s bones, silent and invisible, nestled deep inside where Bouchard will never be able to tear it out with his own hands. 

“What--” Bouchard says. 

Thorns explode from the ground at Bouchard’s feet so suddenly, so violently that they tear the dirt up and the grass along the way, and wind around Bouchard’s flesh eagerly, almost hungrily. Bouchard screams again, trying to tear himself away from them. More thorns rise up from the ground, lashing him down to kneel on the ground, overpowering him. Bright red blood runs down the stems, the thorns, perfectly matching the roses rapidly blooming alongside the sharp, wicked thorns. 

There’s almost a sense of satisfaction from the thorns, the roses. Bouchard’s blood will water them, his flesh and bones their trellis. They will never let him go. Not if they can help it. 

This isn’t what Martin had had in mind. He hadn’t had anything in mind, really, beyond just-- trapping him. Punishing him. Turning him into something that wasn’t a threat to him or Jon or anyone else ever again. 

There’s a long moment of horrified silence all around him, and then--

“He’s a witch!” 

There’s a lot of screaming and running after that. Martin just stands there and stares as the crowded garden quickly becomes very, very empty. 

It’s just him left, now. And Bouchard, trapped and breathless with fresh agony that he hasn’t become accustomed to yet. 

And Jon. Staring at Bouchard, at Martin. 

So much for not scaring him, Martin thinks. 

“I didn’t know I could do that,” is the first thing Martin says, in a nervous rush to fill the unbearable silence. “Until just now. Just-- just so you know.” 

“Ah,” Jon says blankly. “I see.” 

A moment of silence. Martin has no idea what to say, except perhaps to apologize? He’s not quite sure what for, except for actually now that he thinks about it, everything. For keeping him captive. For terrifying him. For not listening to him. For--

“Is that how you uncursed yourself?” 

“Uh,” he says. “No, not really. I-- it’s sort of complicated? But it turns out that letting you go was sort of supposed to be a-- a lesson for me, or something.” 

“Oh,” Jon says. And, “Can we leave? I-- it’s very good to see you again, Martin, but--” 

Bouchard makes a strangled noise of pain. The thorns around him wind around him even tighter, almost shivering with delight as the thorns tear into him as they move. 

“Right,” he says. “Yes, of course, let’s-- let’s leave.” 

Can we leave. Jon wants to talk to him. Jon wants to be around him for a second longer than he has to. Martin feels almost dizzy with incredulous delight, and also disgusted horror at what he’s done to Bouchard, along with a not particularly pretty twist of vicious satisfaction, and also a deeply wounded hurt at what he’s learned about his mum, and wonder and disbelief at what he can do-- 

And an exhaustion so profound that he doesn’t understand how he’s still standing, once he notices it. 

Martin collapses. He hears Jon cry out, just before everything goes dark and quiet. 

Notes:

Just the epilogue left now.

Chapter 28: ever after

Summary:

This is… not the way that he’d seen the day going.

It takes Jon a long time to get Martin inside. He doesn’t know where Elias put his cane (if he didn’t just have it used as tinder), and Martin’s heavy even as a human, and there’s no one around to help him drag Martin inside, away from the-- 

Jon spends a long time just staring at what was supposed to be his husband, after he assures himself that the strain of casting magic hadn’t somehow killed Martin. 

He doesn’t feel satisfaction, despite everything. He’s mostly just horrified. There’s no way that Elias should even still be alive, except for, well… magic. He looks like a nightmare. 

He’s grateful that Elias is too insensate with pain to talk to Jon, anyways. To beg or cajole him for help, for mercy. He just focuses on getting Martin inside, away from-- from that. It’s slow going, and he’s sweaty and exhausted afterwards, the decorative flowers in his hair long gone or just barely holding on, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Ruining his wedding outfit. 

Good. 

This is… not the way that he’d seen the day going. Not even remotely. He can’t put into words just how relieved he is, but also his heartbeat is still thundering in his chest, and he feels a bit like he might be having some sort of vivid dream, and he’s going to wake up any moment now to a fond press of Elias’ lips to his forehead. 

Jon sits down on the nearest chair. He dragged Martin as far as he had to go to stop being able to hear Elias screaming, but he won’t be going any further. So Martin is stretched out across a chaise lounge instead of a bed, and that will simply have to suffice. Jon is not braving the stairs for him when there’s a perfectly good couch right there. 

Jon’s leg throbs like it’s admonishing him for the physical exertion. He’s almost grateful for that too, the way it assures him that this is real. 

He looks at Martin. Takes him in. He’s here. He’s real. 

He doesn’t look like himself. Or, Jon is seeing his real face for the first time, actually. It still feels strange, seeing him like this. Nothing familiar for his eyes to latch onto. No tusks, no fur. Jon wishes that he’d wake up, so he could speak and Jon could listen to his voice which hasn’t changed at all. Have something to latch onto, connect to him. And so he could ask Martin a hundred questions. 

Martin snuffles a little bit, still unconscious, and that’s so familiar that a shaky, breathless laugh falls out of Jon, helplessly. It’s not just his voice that’s the same. He’s seeing it now. The way he curls in on himself a bit in his sleep. He can almost see the space that’s carved out for him, that he knows he could nestle into perfectly. 

God, he thought he’d never get to see Martin again. He’d thought that Martin would be cursed and alone and hurt and that Jon would never ever get to see him again, to see if he was okay. He blinks his stinging eyes rapidly, his breathing going shallow and unsteady. 

His hand twitches towards his aching leg, to curl his fingers tightly into the hurt there and make it flare until he can compose himself, regain control of himself as quickly as possible before Elias can see-- 

But Elias won’t see. And if he does it… doesn’t even matter. He stays his hand, and feels at a loss for what to do. 

For weeks now, he hasn’t been alone for even a moment. Even when Elias was gone, Daisy was there. Silent and in the background if he let her be, never demanding attention or conversation, never even really threatening. Just… stopping him from doing anything. From running, from hurting himself. He’d gotten the idea into his head after a few days, the way Daisy had threatened to cut up his face before the wedding, so his wounds would cause a fuss and a scandal. But Elias had been very clear about what would happen to Basira if Daisy let him do anything of the sort, and so she hadn’t. Quick reflexes. It was as impressive as it was inconvenient. 

But Daisy isn’t here. Elias isn’t here. No one is here, except for a sleeping Martin. And Jon hasn’t felt unsafe around Martin for a long time now. 

After a while, he wipes roughly at his face. Takes some shuddering breaths, until they even out. 

Those had been some awful fucking weeks. But they’re over now. It’s over. He can hardly believe it. 

“Jon?” he hears Martin’s (thankfully, wonderfully) familiar voice croak, and he straightens where he sits and looks at him. Martin’s blinking his eyes open, and oh, Jon is very relieved. He hadn’t known whether or not he’d actually wake up, or if it would be an ‘eternal slumber’ sort of thing. He doesn’t know much of anything, when it comes to magic. 

“Martin,” he says, and his voice goes soft and tender without him telling it to do so. He can’t bring himself to care. “How are you feeling?” 

“Like someone drained all of my blood and replaced it with something much heavier,” he says. “How are you?” 

“Fine,” he says, and hopes that it’s not too obvious that he’s recently cried. 

“Right,” Martin says, and he tries to sit up. He gives up with a bit of a huff. “I-- you know, I wish you’d told me that you had an evil fiance. That feels like-- like useful information to have.” 

That shakes a laugh out of him, like startling a bird into flight from a tree. 

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says, grinning. “I’ll make sure to inform you the next time I have an evil fiance for you to worry about.” 

“See that you do,” he says mock curtly. 

It feels so strange but also deeply hilarious to make fun of this. It reminds him of him and Georgie whispering terrible jokes to each other at a funeral of a person she was too distantly related to to truly care about, desperately biting his tongue as she silently made eye contact and raised an eyebrow at him, just daring him to break and laugh in the middle of the somber crowd. 

Inappropriate. That’s the word he’s looking for. Too soon, for something that’s still technically happening. Or ended only moments ago, at the least. 

That just makes it more hysterically funny, though. He has to bite a smile back, and he sees Martin’s shoulders faintly shake from repressed giggles, which makes him have to hide his face in his hands for a bit.  

“Maybe you could just get a not evil fiance,” Martin eventually says, laughter still clinging to the edges of his words. “Just a thought I had. A fun idea.” 

Jon stops hiding his face so he can pull a skeptical expression at that. “That doesn’t sound right at all. Why would I do that?” 

Martin outright laughs at that, and it’s a wonderful sound. Jon tries to remember if he’s ever actually heard Martin laugh before, and fails to grasp at any concrete memory. That’s wrong. That doesn’t feel right at all. He should’ve heard this before. He should’ve heard it often. 

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, and Martin stops laughing. “I should have told you that I was hiding from someone dangerous. You got hurt because of me.” 

“Don’t-- don’t be ridiculous, Jon. You apologizing to me-- that’s the most-- the wrongest thing that’s ever happened. Stop it. I’m sorry. What I did to you was awful. I shouldn’t have ever kept you against your will, or chased you down, or given you rules--” 

“Martin,” he cuts him off, because it sounds like he’s only gaining steam instead of trailing off, and he doesn’t want to see Martin looking wretched or upset. Even if it is nice that Martin apparently doesn’t want to keep him captive any longer. Very nice. “I forgive you.” 

Martin makes a punched out noise at that, and blinks rapidly. “You don’t have to--” 

“I want to.” Martin can’t take this away from him. Jon has been looking forward to getting to forgive Martin for a while now. Now that the moment is finally here, nothing’s going to take it away from him. “And thank you. You saved me.” 

He really had. Jon hadn’t known how he was possibly going to survive what was in store for him. A lifetime dictated by Elias Bouchard. The overwhelming weight of years and years and years of a future with no apparent possibility at escape. He doesn’t think that he’d have ever given up, he certainly wasn’t planning on it, but-- it wouldn’t have been pleasant. 

But none of that is going to happen now, because Martin saved him. He didn’t have to find an opportunity himself. Martin found it for him. 

Martin looks closer to tears than anything else now, but not in a bad way, he thinks. He hopes. “You saved me,” he says. “I would’ve-- Jon, I’m so lucky that I met you, even though it was the opposite for you. So-- you don’t have to feel like you owe me anything, if that’s what this is about. Why-- why you’re being so nice to me, despite everything. You’ve got no obligation to me, I’m fine, I can look out for myself--” 

Jon can’t take it any longer. He kisses him. 

Martin stops talking. That’s nice; he was saying a lot of nonsense that was making Jon’s chest hurt, before. He closes his eyes and just basks in this, for a moment. 

He’d never imagined what it would be like to kiss Martin, before now. It had felt like a dangerous line of thought, fraught. He’d mostly imagined being able to be honest with him and be believed. To be held softly instead of clung to like he was going to try and weasel his way out of an embrace and run if he was given the opportunity. For Martin to be able to talk to him without a shadow of apologetic guilt, or fearful possessiveness in his eyes. Things just being light and happy, without anything darker to complicate it. 

If he had imagined it, then of course it would’ve been different than this. More fur, more tusks. Perhaps more slobber, as the construction of Martin’s beastial mouth seemed a bit impractical at times. But this is just… easy. Warm and firm and Martin.  

Jon feels something strange, and opens his eyes. He pulls back. 

Oh. 

His hair is floating, like he’s underwater. His clothes, Martin’s clothes and hair… he feels almost weightless, the giddy feeling in his chest made manifest and tangible, literal. 

Martin opens his eyes, and gravity reasserts itself. Jon laughs, feeling an almost childlike amazed wonder at it. 

“Did I just…?” Martin says. 

“You cast magic! Again! Without even intending to? Martin, that’s amazing. If it’s this easy, how is this the first you’ve noticed of it?” 

“I don’t know,” he says, and he looks dumbfounded, wide eyed. “Maybe the curse was doing something… Jon. Jon, you kissed me.” 

Hearing it stated so bluntly is-- well, it pulls him back down to earth a little, despite the amazing discovery. He clears his throat and averts his eyes, a touch embarrassed. 

“Yes,” he says firmly anyways, because that was his decision and he’s going to stand by it. “I did.” 

“Why?” he breathes. 

“Why do you think?” he responds a little bit waspishly. Is he really going to make him say it? “Why do people usually kiss each other?” 

Martin laughs, and it almost sounds manic, instead of joyful. Jon frowns, worry beginning to niggle at him. 

“I didn’t even know you wanted to be around me out of your own free will,” he says. 

“Well,” he says, “I do. I have for a while, you just haven’t given me the chance to make the decision on my own until now.” 

Martin gives another one of those not quite happy sounding laughs, and hides his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking. Jon’s concern sharpens. 

“Did…” he says hesitantly. “Did you not want for me to kiss you?” 

The thought occurs to him only now: that Martin only ever wanted him, only ever seemed to like him, because Jon was literally his only option. He was stuck in an abandoned mansion in the woods with only Jon for company. He was cursed to be a beast. He couldn’t exactly take a trip to the nearest village and go and find someone else more-- more pleasant, more fitting for him. 

The thought is unexpectedly nauseating, and he doesn’t know how it didn’t occur to him sooner. Is he a self important fool? Has he kissed Martin, even though he didn’t want to be kissed? Jon doesn’t ever want to touch anyone in a way that they don’t want, especially Martin--

Martin takes Jon’s hands in his, his grip tight. His eyes are a bit teary, but he looks intently at Jon. 

“I want everything you’re willing to give me,” he says firmly. “No more, no less. I-- I love you, Jon. So much. I was just taking a moment to feel like an idiot, that’s all.” 

“Oh,” he says, a profound relief going through him. He smiles at Martin, tentative but real. “Well, stop it.” 

“Okay,” he agrees, and smiles back. 

Jon has no idea what’s going to happen next, what his life will look like. His old home and bookshop from before he was engaged to Elias are both gone and sold, and he can’t imagine wanting to ever live here, where he was held a captive by his fiance. If Martin would ever want to live in his old home, where he was trapped for so long, and recently almost murdered by Daisy. He has no idea what the future holds for him, and that’s a touch terrifying, but. Having just had a taste of seeing and knowing exactly what his future had in store for him, every single day for the rest of his life terrible and inevitable-- maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world. 

And he’s going to have Martin with him, to figure it out with. That will be a large help, and not just because he’s a witch, apparently. 

Maybe he can start selling books again. Take all of the books from Elias’ and the Blackwood family’s libraries and be the most well provided bookseller for miles. Start somewhere new and fresh. 

He curls his fingers into the collar of Martin’s shirt. “Do you… would you like to do that again?” 

“What-- oh,” he says, and grins. He leans in, meeting Jon for another kiss. And another. Another. 

One more kiss, over and over again for the rest of their lives. For ever after.

Notes:

It took me a whole freaking year, but it's finally over! Thank you so much for all of your comments along the way, it was so much fun to write this.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of crumbling mansions and the people trapped in them