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The first time Jon hears it it sounds like complete nonsense. He doesn’t know, yet, and counts whatever noise Martin’s making at the printer as a generic grumbling. It makes sense, low on ink and decent wireless connection as they are.
It’s only when it happens again next week and comes out quick and throaty that he cautiously offers a ‘bless you?’. It makes Martin laugh a bit at first, which is surprisingly nice, until he realises Jon’s curious frown is serious, at which point Tim takes over laughing at his splotching flush. Jon leaves them to it, confused and a little worried he’s said something insulting. And a little worried that that bothers him.
Down the pub that Friday afternoon (he’s been dragged there and made to promise he’ll string more than five words together), Tim raises a toast to the health of their dodgy printer, and to the illness of the boss who won't spare them the cash for a new one.
‘Sláinte,’ he grins, pint held aloft. He’s looking at Martin, who smiles back and says:
‘Sláinte romhat.’
It’s then that Jon gets it, all at once and so fast it’s embarrassing, considering how slow he’d been before, knocking him back a bit in the booth.
‘Oh,’ he jolts, making the rest of them pause, lips dipped in larger head. ‘Sorry,’ he says to Martin, going a bit warm and wishing now that he’d drunk more to excuse it. ‘I didn’t realise you, um.’
‘Oh, no, don’t worry,’ Martin hurriedly assures him. He’s far too nice really. It’s annoying. But quite a relief now. ‘Honestly, it’s fine, really.’
Tim rolls his eyes at Sasha, smiling exasperatedly over their hopelessly awkward colleagues in a way that only makes Jon scowl and stammer over his second apology.
‘I didn’t know,’ he says again. The words taste worse than the dregs of his last glass in his mouth. It’s got to be his least favourite thing to say. After ‘ I’m sorry’, and ‘ I was wrong’ .
‘It’s fine,’ Martin promises, putting his glass down with a wobble. Then he smiles a little shyly. Tries what Jon assumes is a joke. ‘Is cuma liom.’
The sounds are so different, a bit jarring still, but they make sense in his mouth after Jon thinks about them, gets used to them. They have the lilt in them but it’s not a parody of something else; still Martin. It’s nice. It’s fine. Then:
‘Gesundheit,’ Tim grins, knocking Martin’s elbow.
The spell is broken then. Martin knocks his back, splashing foam into his lap and Tim yelps and Sasha sighs and Martin says sorry, sorry, sorry! as she goes to find blue roll.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sasha is saying, ‘I’m really sorry, I think it’s the line.’
She pulls the landline away from her ear, covers the mouthpiece and mouths widely ‘back up, now.’
Martin puts his pen down. Tim is up, of course, and over at her desk in a few strides. ‘What’s up?’
They put their heads together over the receiver to listen. It’s an older woman, sounds like, in distress and frustrated and talking quite fast and throaty.
‘No idea,’ Tim says, ‘sounds... I don’t know.’
‘Well it’s not English,’ Sasha rolls her eyes, ‘but I didn’t want to be rude.’
Tim puts the phone on speaker. ‘Hello? Hi there, can you hear me?’
From the corner of his eye Martin watches Jon’s office door open a crack, watches his slight boss slip through and lean curiously on the doorframe. He’s frowning, as always. Poised to tell them whatever they’re doing is unprofessional or something or other. He will try very hard to look uptight when he does and it will be cute.
‘Listen, I’m really sorry,’ Tim is saying.
Martin drags himself back to listen. He can at least try to be helpful rather than wasting his time thinking about... unhelpful things.
‘You don’t speak any English do you?’
She says no, so she clearly knows that much. But she goes on and the line is bad and she is fast and Martin doesn’t know every word but he recognises it. He catches something about a monster and his ears prick up a bit at the chance to be useful.
He doesn’t love the audience but he knows she is saying please. So. He clears his throat and wheels over to Sasha’s desk, hyperconscious of her and Tim’s double takes at his inserting himself into a task. He doesn’t normally volunteer when something requires a skill.
'Dia dhuit,’ he says into the phone, not looking at his colleagues, definitely not looking at Jon in the corner. ‘Conas atá tú?’
The woman on the phone goes quiet for a second, then laughs with relief.
‘Do you speak Irish?’ She asks him.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘a little. Please be patient.’ (He doesn’t know enough to be as polite as he’d like.) ‘Do you want to tell us something?’
She launches into it then, and he scrabbles about for a pen. Sasha pushes a notepad under his elbow and he thanks her with a mumbled ‘go raibh-’ that throws him for a loop, his brain busy tumbling about to remember his grammar. He turns it into his usual shy ‘ta’ and she lets it slide with a smile.
Jon is looking at him like he’s walking on the moon or something, jaw locked open. It’s quite nice though, actually. His eyes have something that, if Martin were giving in to wishful thinking, he might call appreciative in them, as he watches Martin’s pen move over the paper, scrawling the messy English he can take from it.
Of his work, no doubt. Appreciative, that is. Of his work. Which isn’t disappointing. Martin still gets mostly scowling round the office. There are the rare smiles over lunch sometimes, too. But not this, that almost might be impressed.
Martin tries very hard to ignore him and focus on the poor woman down the phone. It really sounds like something awful, the bits of it he’s getting, and he hums and gives her sympathy and the best of the blessings he remembers from junior school mass.
But then Tim pats his shoulder and returns to his desk, and Sasha follows him, giving up her space. And then it’s just Jon, still watching him. And then there’s chair legs scraping and Martin misses a whole sentence as Jon sits down at the short side of the desk. Too far to be inappropriate, or even friendly, but tilting his head adorably to squint at Martin’s notes.
When the lady is done she asks him something about money and he assumes she’s calling from a payphone. He takes her address (she doesn’t have an email) and promises, or hopes he does at least, to send her the couple of euro she’s spent. She wishes God be with him and he wishes her Our Lady and All Saints and promises to put their best man onto it.
When he hangs up he lets out a long sigh he didn’t realise he was holding and finally looks back at Jon.
‘I didn’t get everything,’ he starts, because he can’t let that face down and the staring is making his ears pink. ‘Definitely not sure about the details, but I think I got the gist.’
‘So you really do speak Irish.’
‘Bit, yeah. Catholic primary. Grandma.’
He doesn’t go into anymore. No need really. To say it was his dad’s side, and that the generic state he’d moved to once his dad was out of the picture was all English CofE assemblies and shoving of anyone who tried to even speak one language properly. To say that he’s not been allowed a photo, so the perhaps invented memory of a ‘leanbh’ now and then is something he clutched to. To say he takes his occasional Duolingo sessions embarrassingly seriously when he does get round to them.
‘It’s not that much,’ he rushes to say again as Jon fixes him with his fixed curiosity.
‘But you know what she was saying?’
‘Ish,’ Martin shrugs. He pushes his notes over the table, pointing out bits as he babbles. ‘Something about a dark woods and a tree stalking her I think. You’ll probably think it’s just normal stalking but-’
‘But that’s... I mean that’s quite...’ He can’t bring himself to say whatever it is.
‘I think the word you’re looking for is ‘impressive’, boss,’ says Tim’s voice from behind them. He claps his hand down on Jon’s shoulder. ‘Should’ve guessed. Bilingual kids are always the clever ones.’
Martin would protest that he’s not remotely close to bilingual but -
‘Yes. Well. Indeed,’ Jon says. Then he clears his throat and they both turn to look at him, confused, suspicious, astonished even, to see a dark raspberry creeping up his neck. ‘Thank you for that.’
He pushes his chair back and stands next to it awkwardly.
‘Yeah,’ Martin says, a bit too breathy. He coughs it off. ‘Course. No problem.’
Behind him he can feel Tim’s urge to take the mick radiating off him. Whether it’s going to be aimed at him or Jon he’s not sure. Probably him. God knows he deserves it, stammering in two languages now over one hint of a compliment.
‘Could you type that up?’ Jon asks, and his voice is dropped back into professionalism.
It is a bit cute, like it is every time now Martin knows it’s feigned skepticism, knows he has no idea what he’s doing half the time. Tim snorts into his hand and Martin kicks him under the desk.
‘Yeah,’ he promises. ‘Okay.’
At some point, amongst all the other things that are so ridiculous if he stops to think about it, really think about it through the pain, it turns out Jon can understand languages. First the French, then somehow Mandarin. He pokes about for more international statements to test how far this goes, and apparently there’s no limit to it except that it gives him a stonking headache every time.
Which is probably why he’s in such a terrible mood before the cat, and probably why he doesn’t think Martin until he’s hearing it.
He’s outside having a post-nap smoke break when the noises float over to him.
A meowing, high over the traffic. Then an irritating little ‘aww’.
He taps off ash with an irritated finger. Following the sound, fully prepared to be well and truly ticked off, he sees Martin kneeling by the railings with what must be a neighbour’s cat.
It’s not where he should be. He should be working. Instead he’s cooing and petting the little thing’s ears.
‘A stór,’ he’s saying gently, voice pitched up. ‘Aren’t you sweet? A pheata.’
It’s only when Jon’s stubbornly not analysing why it’s so irritating to him, that Martin’s going round being friendly to someone else’s cat, calling it a treasure of all things, that he realises - that wasn’t English.
He’s not sure how he feels about that but it makes him drag longer on his cigarette. It’s not as terrible as understanding French and Russian. It feels personal. Maybe that’s worse. He decides not to mention it.
It’s nice enough to see Martin happy, he supposes. Everyone’s been miserable at the moment. Well, miserable at best, furious at worst.
A week later he hears the same thing under a firmly closed door and it doesn’t sound happy at all. Tim is whispering hoarsely, bitterly like his voice has been forced there, torn from shouting.
‘I know,’ Martin is soothing, ‘I know, a chara...’
From where he’s stood outside with his back to the wall, Jon can hear the susurrations of fabric smoothing up and down. Tim’s grumbling turns to a muffled sigh.
‘I know, a stór, but you need to talk to him-’
That kicks Tim off again - he groans loudly and starts demanding they don’t do this, don’t do this now, Martin, it’s not fair.
His voice gets louder, then quieter in anger as it’s hushed, so Jon takes his cue to leave. He ignores it once he’s out of earshot and it’s possible, but all the way down the corridor he finds his brain going over it as repetitive as footsteps. Friend. Dear. Treasure. The fact he can somehow understand an ancient, dying language is one thing. Add to it that he can somehow understand Martin’s language, and the fact that he apparently says things like... that. To people.
He goes straight to his office and locks it, ignoring Melanie looking up with pinched, irritated eyes, from her laptop. For some reason, even as he’s pulling out the tape recorder, which always reminds him of how much Tim hates him right now, he finds himself thinking about a stór more than he thinks about work or Tim or the weird headache he gets from translating. Finds himself thinking, as he shuffles his papers and slots the tape in, more about how it sounds - a chara, a stór , out of Martin so it’s gentle, but not small, even through the door. Even more actually than he thinks about the implications of it. He’s not thinking about the implications of it.
He jabs the play button a bit too hard.
Shoes rasp against the old tarmac as they trudge to the car. Suitcase wheels rattle. Daisy hauls two duffle bags.
Martin is the only one with empty hands and he clearly doesn’t like it. He’s shoved them deep into his pockets.
They stop in an awkward triangle out of the way of the boot as Basira and Daisy load up, listening to the sounds of their luggage and wonder who will go first.
Martin does, obviously, but he starts half over his shoulder in a language they don’t speak. Jon wonders if it’s a wall for him or if it’s supposed to be more genuine.
‘Slán libh,’ he says quietly, ‘go safe, all of you, please?’
‘Sláinte,’ Tim quips back, which is weird. He hasn’t made a joke in a long time.
Martin pulls him down into a crushing hug that’s a bit longer than it should be if they’re pretending this is all still fine. Jon spends the whole time wondering if he’s going to get one too.
He does. It’s not as tight, or as public. The others are all off clicking their seatbelts on, and he’s going to join them when Martin catches his wrist and pulls him back into his chest.
He’s all jumper and fear, arms not crushing but definitely holding. Not an inch of wiggle room to be had in a way that isn’t frightening.
‘Sorry,’ he breathes against Jon’s temple, ‘couldn’t not.’
Jon’s going to say it’s alright but whatever mumble he starts is lost to the wool. Martin is still talking, more to himself than anything, the shape of it ruffling through Jon’s hair with so little volume it must be unconscious. Or consciously performatively unconscious. It’s not English. It might be crying a little.
‘ Come home, ’ it whispers like a worried hiss, ‘ please come back to me. Bí curamach, mo rúnsearc. Please. ’
Then he lets go, and Jon says nothing. Because he’s struck dumb with it and because it seems far too personal and what would he even... what? He’s not sure he was even meant to hear it, so he just squeezes Martin’s hand once lamely before wheeling his little suitcase with him the last two meters to the car.
‘Bye,’ he says weakly as he closes the door.
He thinks about it over the drone of the engine all the way up to Yarmouth. Be careful, it rattles up from the dashboard through his elbow into his hand and cheek, be safe. And something he can’t find the translation for but knows, because he Knows things now, what it means. It had felt warm and... a lot. Passionately warm. That rattles him the loudest.
He’s sure it’s supposed to be a secret.
It’s chancey, yes. Maybe a bit bold. But Jon hadn’t seemed to notice before, used to look at him like he was spouting nonsense, stunned quiet. Plus, Martin is tired by the time he gets up to the library, late enough it’ll be empty, and he hasn’t spoken a word of English in three days. He needs to say something, the need to is bubbling up under his resignation to the fog, but maybe it's better if it doesn’t count.
And it’s only little really. Only a small thing.
The library is empty, except that he rounds a corner and Jon is there, passed out like a light over a pile of books and papers on a desk that doesn’t look like it’ll do his neck any good.
They’re not supposed to be running into each other. And he turns on his heel on instinct. Looking without looking away and back again, after weeks of nothing, is like looking into the sun. Or into someone’s eyes with a guilty secret. Still, he hasn’t left yet. And Jon isn’t snoring but he is breathing slowly, deeply. Properly sleeping.
So Martin turns back again and watches him for a moment. The desk lamp is a horrid tungsten but it puts a glow through the hair that's falling over his forehead and crossed arms. His collar is rumpled and pulled by the back of the chair, exposing the curve of his neck where it's relaxed forward, the slight squish in his forever getting gaunter cheek against his sleeve. He’ll push folds into his face like that.
He’s dreaming, no doubt, but he looks peaceful. He doesn’t twitch or anything. Just breathes up and down.
‘Go hálainn,’ Martin thinks. Then he realises he’s said it out loud.
He looks around but the earth isn’t moving for the rest of the room. Still no one there. Just dust and quiet. Lonely, still. But his jaw isn’t locked anymore and something dangerously like feeling, like care, is flickering in his chest. It’s not meant to be there, and he’s promised not to stoke it but it’s something and it’s warm. He clutches it close and says it again.
‘Beautiful .’
Peter won’t understand it anyway, he hopes. It’s been his own bit of invisibility around here for far longer than the actual fading has been. It’s just for him.
He’s going to go then. But the cardigan is right there over the back of Jon’s chair. It would be harder to just leave it.
So he drapes it gently over Jon’s shoulders, not letting his knuckles brush anything and listening all the while for changes in breathing. Nothing happens. He lets go, and his hands, out of practice now flooded with the feeling of wool full of someone else’s warmth, miss holding something.
On a whim he brushes some hair back, tucks it behind Jon’s ear. So it doesn’t get in his mouth, he reasons. Not selfishly.
‘Sleep tight,’ he murmurs. The third word in as many days, and the last for another four.
Up in Scotland, now together and finally understanding each other, Jon had thought he might hear it more. He’s been paying attention in case he misses it in the ease of taking it for English. But they’ve said it all now, had The Conversation with many tears and all that. And they’re sharing the bed. And the bathroom. So there seems very little to hide. Maybe that’s why Martin hasn’t fallen back into it.
One night he’s half out of a nightmare and the comforting murmurs against his forehead seem to be shaped differently. But he doesn’t catch it. Just feels the breath lull him back to the sleepy half-awake he prefers to actual sleep.
But the memory of it comes back, comforting and warm on another night. The night, as he’ll think of it in the future.
The sheets are coming a bit loose from his twisting them. Naked and vulnerable and a little out of breath - but trusting. Wanting, as he doesn’t often, more than going along because it’s sort of nice. This is better than sort of. Being held and prized and trusted too, Martin's weight on top of him, skin on hot skin. It’s been a long while, not just since the sensations but since the trust, the openness.
He’s sighing and almost doesn’t hear it the first time, quiet into the soft hair behind the shell of his ear.
Tá mé i ngrá leat.
He knows it as a feeling first, a washing wave of easy, loyal affection. Can’t translate the words as a simple exchange, but knows the meaning in the way it sounds familiar.
Then Martin whispers it again, as his hand coddles gently over Jon’s hip -
Tá mé i ngrá leat.
And again, again and Jon hears what it means the last time. The shape against his earlobe is beautifully different, but he knows. It feels good breathed into his neck, shoulder, chest.
They’ve said it before, in a confessional sense, but it hasn’t got casual yet, hasn’t settled in. He thinks it’s supposed to be a bit clandestine, this murmuring. He’s not meant to know. It’s... well of course he feels a little guilty but it isn’t half thrilling to think.
The spell might be broken if he says something, but before he can over analyse saying it Martin is squeezing his hand and turning the back of it over between them to kiss it so he says -
‘I love you too.’
It comes out very easily, like it's the fiftieth time rather than the second.
Martin looks up from their clasped hands. Stares up, really. ‘Oh,’ he says, stunned but quickly catching up. ‘You-?’
‘I understand now, yes,’ Jon looks away from his bright eyes, looks around embarrassed as he always is by all of this non-human stuff. ‘It’s... it’s a thing I can do.’
He settles his gaze on Martin’s chin where it’s resting, squished a bit, on both their hands, rising and falling on his chest.
‘Ohhh kay,’ Martin says slowly, a half laugh in his voice and a half frown on his forehead. ‘How long..?
Jon sighs. ‘A while,’ he admits. ‘I'm sorry, I should’ve said, I know. But I just... um. I didn’t want you to think you had to say it in secret?’
He chances a look up when he catches one corner of Martin’s lip slip under his teeth - he’s smiling, or he’s sweetly biting his lip trying not to smile too much in the middle of an explanation. It makes Jon’s words come out bumpy as it always does.
‘And I do, uh. I feel the same,’ he says, wondering why it doesn’t feel embarrassing even as he’s fumbling for words around it, ‘so i-i-it’s nice. To hear it.’
Martin hums a small, contented hum. He frees his hand and splays it out, warm over Jon’s chest, settles the span of it over his heart. ‘I’ll tell you in English then,’ he says, a bit teasing, a bit giddy.
Jon frowns. ‘No, I don’t mind. It’s nice. I just don’t want you to think it’s- to hide anything. Would be a bit unethical, really. Also. And I think. Um. We can say it not-secretly now, can’t we?’
‘Yeah, we can.’ Martin says.
He has his fond happy for you smile on, but the way he’s smiling it into Jon’s chest, dopey and coy, is a little more selfish in a way Jon loves seeing on him. His happy for me smile. It’s always a little more inward, corners of his mouth pulled back to his molars, into his cheeks. But just as bright. Maybe brighter, but Jon’s biased.
He guides it up to kiss it and Martin kisses him back, happy, as his hand wonders up and down and down more. Readily and slowly and gently and maybe just a little possessive in how it gives. Jon arches into it, his hands, his mouth.
‘God, I love you,’ he manages, half choked through trembling that doesn’t embarrass him. He clings desperately, one hand in Martin’s hair, the other tight in the soft of his shoulder.
Tá mé i ngrá leat comes the answer against his neck. It’s a little damp, mouth open, eyes wet. He hears it properly now, sees it with the cliched sparks. The in of it. I’m in love with you. Even here. Especially here. He’d say it back if he had anything but bitty gasping moans. I’m in love with you.
The big supermarket is busy on a Sunday, and they need a big shop so they’ve paid their quid for a big trolley. (Martin’s annoyed they’ve changed the shape and he can’t use his keyring as a placeholder - he never trusts the trolley to give him his money back. Guilty till proven innocent, those things are.) Standing in front of all the aisles is a little daunting, as running big errands always is. A long couple of hours stretching in front of them. A Task.
He’s never quite got over the sometimes good-productive but mostly pressurising feeling of facing it all with the biggest, deepest trolley. A void of wire that needs filling. There’s always something to go wrong, something he’ll forget, and he hates forgetting... He’s mostly over it, though. And now he gets to do it with Jon and they have their own routine it’s quite nice. They can laugh, he reminds himself, somehow, as they forage around. He’d always seen people doing that and not understood how they couldn’t be worried about the prospect of filling the fridge, of choosing an alternative when the right brand is out, of whatever number (too high, always too high) would show on the till. Couples never seemed to worry about that stuff.
He knows now that was childhood idealism. Realistically he’s still going to worry a bit and snap a bit and they’ll argue over whether to get Special K with almonds or without almonds. But now he only has to hold half the trolley. Stands to the side of it with his hand on the thin metal rather than behind it, looking up over the handlebar.
He’d never be as cruel to Jon as he was to his teenage self over the colour of milk bottle caps. But it’s still not his favourite thing to do. He still always brings -
‘List?’ Martin says, holding out his palm.
‘Urm,’ Jon says.
‘Don't tell me you forgot it? Oh for... you know everything but you forget the list?’ Martin shakes his head, irritated at just how little he’s actually irritated and mostly just whining in a fond way. ‘I swear, a chuisle, you are the most ridiculous -’
Jon doesn’t immediately snap back at him and the trolley stalls a bit in its wobbly rhythm. Martin’s brain catches up with his sappy, too much mouth and as he realises what he’s said, and realises again and Jon knows what he’s said, there’s a second-long lurch of worry in his stomach.
Then Jon’s retort comes as usual like nothing’s happened. ‘I’ll remember what we need,’ he insists with his childish stuck-up tone that always makes Martin laugh.
‘You never do, hence the bloody list-’
‘I will, I promise. We need milk, and bread-’
‘Easy guesses.’
‘And biscuits.’
‘As always.’
‘And four onions and you’ll want red ones even though the recipe says white.’
‘Alright fine,’ Martin smiles as they head down the vegetable aisle and Jon proudly holds up a bag of onions.
He doesn’t worry as they rattle into the trolley. Somehow he doesn’t worry that they’ll bruise or that it’s too many or not enough or that... anything.
‘Fine, you can be my list,’ he says fondly.
Jon taps his forehead like he’s guarding the greatest treasures and Martin laughs at him, threatens a wagging finger.
‘But if we miss one thing...’
They wander round the aisles, only roughly following Martin’s up one down the next strategy as Jon strides ahead or whips back to grab bits like a magpie only for... Werther’s Originals and custard apparently. And rhubarb?
‘What are we gonna make with rhubarb ?’
‘Rhubarb and custard,’ Jon says, holding them up like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
‘You’re gonna cook that yourself?’
He nods again, like of course he is.
‘Really ? Don’t tell me you know how to stew rhubarb?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Ugh, God, you’re such an old man! ’
Jon scowls through a laugh and runs the trolley over Martin’s foot.
‘Oi!’ Martin yelps at him, aware they’re being that couple he always tutted at and got awkward around and secretly wanted to be. Jon is laughing at him far too loudly for the bright dairy aisle. ‘Do that again and I’ll-’
‘You’ll what? Call me something else?’
Everything suddenly goes very quiet again. But not icy, even with the chill of the open fridges. He feels his ears warming with Jon’s little smile. So he did hear. He does know. ‘Do you mind?’
‘What? No, I don’t mind,’ Jon scoffs, but he’s still smiling. ‘Unless you’re calling me something terrible.’
‘You know I’m not.’ Martin says quietly, barely a murmur above the low humming of the fridges. He’s aware it’s his woah voice, his gentle reverential voice. He’s probably staring quite a lot because Jon coughs and shyly drops his gaze.
‘Oh. Milk.’ He says. The back of his neck is dark pink when he turns around to reach for it.
Later, when they’re cooking, Jon has almost forgotten about it.
Almost. He’s pushing peppers round the pan and concentrating, trying to concentrate because Martin is watching him concentrate, leaning against the counter and humming on the six o’clock breeze. He breathes in the heather and the cumin, absently strokes Jon’s hair back behind his ear.
‘Nice this,’ he grins, ‘having a personal chef. Not used to it.’
‘Well, don’t get used to it,’ Jon warns him. ‘I can really only do about four things.’
He chucks the knife and chopping board over into the wet sink, which he always does even though Martin always reminds him he'll want them later and tut at himself as he pulls his third knife out of the drawer. He still does it though. Too late now.
Martin shakes his head fondly and goes to turn the tap on. ‘I’ll wash up then, shall I, a chuisle?’
There it is again. It makes Jon still like it did the first time and he puts the wooden spoon down with a small clatter. He stares at Martin, vegetables abandoned, and the mouth that’s calling him - what? He Knows but can’t quite get the full picture. It can’t be right. Can it?
Martin catches him looking and his eyes screw up like he’s been caught in a lie. He runs the cold tap over his flushing hands and starts squirting fairy liquid onto a beaten up sponge, squeezing it like a stress ball.
The shuffling could be the fun kind of embarrassed. In which case a joke would do it. Either that, or he’s worrying. Which would mean either he’s worried he’s overstepped something, or, worse, that what he said doesn’t mean what Jon thinks it means. Then again if it does mean what he thinks it does... Well. He’s never been in that position before. It’s a nice kind of frightening, but still. The thrilling of being on the edge of something is still, well. High up.
He’s not making a lot of sense ruminating on this.
Instead he turns the hob off so they don’t burn dinner while he tries to suss out how light the situation is.
‘What does it mean?’ He asks, as gently as he apparently can do now because he can’t exactly just launch into why are you worried? That is a whole nother minefield.
Martin wraps the sponge around his knives from earlier. His sideways looks are less guilty, more embarrassed, less suspicious, more defensive. ‘I thought you understood now?’
Jon shuffles closer. He reaches over to turn the tap off and tries a smile, teasing but the kind sort, when Martin looks up from the cutlery into his face.
‘I like your translations better,’ he says.
It’s much truer than explaining all the complications of how he Knows but can’t translate a perfect match. He feels he knows it but he wants to hear it, still.
Martin puts the cutlery and sponge down with a flop and a small clatter. He’s actually smiling a bit too. Fun embarrassed, Jon thinks is fair to call it now.
‘It’s like,’ Martin starts, sighs, bites his lip round a coy twitch. ‘Like 'pulse’, like a heartbeat I guess. Beat of my heart. Or something.’
Jon grins, chest blooming. ‘Or something?’
Martin rolls his eyes but checks (always checks): ‘Is that okay?’
‘Of course it’s okay,’ Jon rushes to reassure him.
The beat of his own heart has been trying to soar since the first moment he’d heard it. And now knowing what he’d Known was right when he’d never have expected...
‘It’s...’ he says, hand searching for something adequate in the air. ‘It’s nice.’
Martin flashes him a teasing smile now. ‘Nice?’ He asks.
Jon sighs. He’s getting better at this but it’s still a trial and he can feel his ears going red and Martin is very bad at trying not to laugh at him when he struggles with this sort of thing. Martin would laugh at him for calling it this sort of thing.
‘I’ve not...’ he starts, sighs, tries again. ‘I’ve not done this before. Endearments.’
Not properly anyway. Maybe his parents had - if he tries he can imagine a ‘darling’ carried in from the car - but if he’s being honest he doesn’t remember. His grandmother had thrown in a ‘dear’ every so often, but she did it with everyone younger than her. Did it with the milkman. It didn’t mean anything really. Especially when it was so often exasperated. (‘really, dear, I put both the bottles out.’, ‘Jonathan, dear, you don’t need a light on all night, it’s a waste.’).
Georgie hadn’t gone in much for it either. She’d just called him ‘Jon’ and that was more than enough for him coming from her. She’d even waited until he’d asked her to, rather than reading ‘Jonathan’ on his name tag and assuming shortening it was fine like everyone else did. She got that kind of thing. She hated PDA - they were a good match in that regard - and a soft ‘oh, love’ was reserved for private bad moments that made her sad when he could hardly bear sympathy. He’d called her ‘Georgie’, ‘Georgina’ when he was pretending to be cross. ‘Georgiana’ once as a joke that earned him a slap with the loose of her sleeve.
He’d always been happy with just names. Hadn’t really considered what he might have been missing. To be honest, he probably couldn’t have coped with it at twenty-two, hard as it was being loved anyway. Not bad but. Holding Georgie’s hand had been enough to make him stammer or retreat into snapping then. He’s not sure he’d have survived being called sweetheart or something else far too adorable. It would have beneath him and too much and he wouldn’t have suited or deserved it.
He couldn’t have been beat of my heart and not died on the spot.
‘But it’s nice,’ he says truthfully.
He thinks he can do it now. As much as it’s a bit embarrassing, it’s also the most wonderful thing he’s ever been called.
‘Yeah,’ Martin smiles, ‘I think so too.’
There’s a happy beat of the contented exhales as they keep smiling, cheeks starting to get achy, and sway, knocking shoulders. Almost too sweet.
‘Honestly,’ Jon says, poking Martin’s shoe with his toe, ‘I was just worried you were going to try and call me ‘duck’.’
‘Bloody cheek!’ Martin gasps. He flicks cold water into Jon’s face, ignoring his yelps, and ends up chasing him onto the sofa with soapy hands. ‘I will now just ‘cause you’ve said!’
It is a few relaxed weeks later, and many a ‘ pulse’ and ‘ heart’ and ‘ love’ later, sipping wine on the sofa under a thick blanket and one of Martin’s cardigans he’s nicked, that Jon asks ‘what can I call you?’
‘As gaeilge?’
He nods, putting his glass down and shimmying closer. He has the keen human curiosity in his eyes that he gets when he really means to try.
‘What would you call me in English?’
He falters, frowns a little. ‘I, uh. I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m very good at it all, that’s why I asked what you like.’
Martin’s still not very good at what he likes, though he’s getting better. And when he sees the little lines of thinking hard on Jon’s forehead his instinct, still, though he thinks it’s a nicer one now, a strong one now, is to try and solve the problem. To relieve them and make his eyes crinkle instead. If doing that means doing for himself it’s a roundabout way but it works. The best of both worlds.
He thinks about it. And thinking about it... this time around that he’s allowed to and it doesn’t hurt... it really hits. It makes him fiddle with the blanket to think he’s going to get to hear the things he’d read and heard and fantasised just a little about hearing at the altar out of Jon’s mouth.
There’s no way around it now, really. So he’s going to have to get what he wants even if it is a bit embarrassing. The corners of his mouth pull up a bit as he thinks and at some point smiles.
‘I, um. I suppose I like ‘Mo ghrá’.’
‘Mo ghrá,’ Jon repeats slowly, trying out the shape of it.
The pronunciation isn’t perfect but it sounds like him and the effort is worth more to Martin that the vowels are. It tightens something, happy and incredulous, in his chest. He nods encouragingly, words failing him in any language,
‘ My love ,’ Jon says again, getting closer still. ‘My love,’ he says in English when he understands it, and his eyes are smiling in the fire’s glow.
‘That’s nice too,’ Martin just manages. ‘If you forget. Wouldn’t mind that either.’
Jon kisses his forehead before his mouth, closed-lipped with smiling. ‘I won’t forget,’ he promises.
It becomes more normal after that.
‘A chroí,’ with a kiss into Jon’s neck while he’s brushing his teeth.
‘A leanbh,’ is one Jon picks up and tags after a thank you when Martin cooks without the microwave. He says it seriously when Martin had always been half teasing, and it sounds different with a kiss instead of a hair ruffle.
Round the fire, with the credits rolling on one of Daisy’s crap old ripped DVDs, they challenge themselves to the sappiest stuff without fearing it or cringing. Getting serious without laughing or looking away. Something they both want to be better at. It helps very much to not be so English about it.
‘A ghrá mo chléibh,’ they take turns saying, holding hands over the dinner plates. ‘Cara cléibh,’ even if they don’t really believe in soulmates. They’d both shaken their heads, they believe in work. But it’s a nice thing to say, isn’t it? A nice thing to hear. If they can say this they can share anything, right? Cheesy but it works.
‘A ghrá geal,’ in the post office, which causes the old woman who runs it to prick up her ears, smiling as she tells them nothing yet today.
(She will gossip about them later, Jon says on the way home, twirling the cord of her landline. Nicely, he says, or I’d have said something. They’re the only gays in the village, Martin points out, grinning. She thought you were very sweet, Jon tells him and Martin tells him he’s just making stuff up now.)
‘A stór,’ Martin calls the fluffy calves that sniff his gloves through the fence as their mother watches. ‘A stóirín,’ he teases Jon, pinching his wind-pink cheeks till his hand is shoved away with a laugh.
‘My love, ’ Jon keeps calling him, since he’s said he liked it.
It doesn’t lose its power as they get more used to it. Just gets nicer in a different way. It still makes Martin smile inwardly, every time, and he comes back with the soppiest, sappiest words he can to shrug off just how silver-screen loved he feels. Not that they don’t both know it.
Tá mo chroí istigh ann, he thinks every time. Hears it from the kitchen, looks over at Jon packing shopping away. I love him to bits.
‘Go hálainn,’ he says a lot more too, in English, in Irish, whenever the Scottish light is perfect in Jon's eyes, through his hair. Fresh out the shower, wet tendrils dripping on the wood. Waking up on Martin's chest with drool stuck to his cheek. On the chilly walk back from the corner shop, autumn-blue sunset behind him. Beautiful.
He says it in bed too, gradually builds up the nerve to. With pyjamas on, with nothing on. In the throws of sweaty love, groaning it out - God, you’re beautiful. ‘A chroí’ he manages sometimes as he’s coming, but mostly it’s just ‘Jon’. Oh fuck, Jon with his toes curling, fingers curling into hair and tangeling it carelessly. He’d feel bad if it felt like anything other than love, than everything in his mouth. And besides, Jon says he likes it.
‘I like the way you say it.’
‘We say it the same!’ Martin laughs, ‘You’re gonna tell me I say that wrong too now?’
‘It’s not the same,’ Jon mumbles, ignoring the joke. ‘Sounds different when you say it.’
‘Different how?’ Martin asks.
He thinks he maybe knows, because he knows how it sounds, how it feels in his chest hearing his name, with or without the T, the way Jon says it. He asks anyway because it’ll be fun when Jon gets too shy to answer and he has to tease it out of him.
Jon just shrugs, but he doesn’t look at the floor. ‘Sounds like you love me.’
‘I do.’
‘I know.’
It’s the kind of small thing that could easily not matter anymore after those weeks curled up on the floor with a storm of everything that’s ever been frightening outside. (In those weeks it had almost gone backwards, Martin going back to using it secretly to say the things Jon couldn’t yet have beared to hear in English. It’s not your fault. I love you. We need to leave. It’s not your fault. )
But out of the cabin, out in the new world, they are still them again, and the sense of normalcy, of something small just for them, is the something that matters the most. Jon learns a bit more so they can talk in front of monsters. Learns ‘sorry’ so he can always say it twice.
They don’t need to stop, or to sleep. But a night in a crappy tent is one of the few moments they’re snatching. When it’s just them together with each other and two languages. Warm with only their own body heat against the outside cold. Crammed into two sleeping bags they’ve unzipped to the waist so they can stay curled together. Here, endearments are the driftwood they have to cling to. The tent flaps and the wind howls and Martin’s hand is sleepy carding through Jon’s hair.
‘I wanted a life with you,’ Jon confesses into the bit of fleece and throat that’s next to his mouth.
Martin hums, and Jon knows he feels the same but he just sighs, shifts a bit on the loud airbed. ‘You still have me in this one.’
Jon shakes his head into Martin’s collar, lets the zip knock his eyebrow a bit. ‘A proper one,’ he says, and his voice comes out a bit hoarser and more aching than the bitterness he’d planned. ‘Not a... fear hellscape wasteland-’
‘Yeah,’ Martin sympathises. He sounds a bit flat and probably doesn’t want to hear it but Jon hurts, breathing in his throat and wishing it were a proper bed somewhere, anywhere he didn’t already ruin.
‘I wanted a flat,’ he says quietly. ‘A kitchen. I’d cook and we’d have... herbs. Windowboxes. We’d work somewhere else and-’
‘A chuisle mo chroí,’ Martin sighs, because it always manages to shut him up with its weight. ‘Let’s not talk about it?’
He sounds sad so Jon agrees, and the sleeping bag rustles loudly, zip catching yet again as he crawls up and in even closer. The pillows are flat and old so they double them up and share. When the awkward shimmying is done they are forehead to forehead. A bubble of breath between them, loud enough, hopefully, to block out the outside.
‘ My love ,’ Jon whispers. The canvas flaps over him so he goes on. ‘Mo shíorghrá,’ he says, which he hasn’t said before.
It makes them both breathe in with the weight of it. It’s not very human of him to just Know it, but the moment is. Human. He feels it when Martin’s arms tighten around him, palms sliding up his back under his fleece.
‘Mo chéadsearc,’ Martin murmurs against his cheek, and he knows what it means from knowing and from feeling it.
My first love. My truest love. My one and my only.
This will be just theirs. The world will flail, maybe it will dash itself. But they will always have the words.