Chapter Text
The only possible reason that Jon might not call it a relief is that that term is woefully insufficient to describe the all-encompassing, bone-deep assurance that, even though everything else may be crumbling around them, Martin is safe.
Not that proximity to Jon is particularly positively correlated with remaining that way, but it’s the principle of the thing. Probably some other peril will emerge sooner than later, but—much more importantly—Peter Lukas cannot threaten or manipulate or coerce him into anything, because he is thoroughly and comprehensively deceased.
If that’s not a silver lining, nothing is.
In fact, though Jon would generally count himself as above sinking to such comedic depths: Lukas can, and will, rest in fucking pieces.
He must have looked a bit deranged when they found Basira, because her first words were ‘calm down’.
All the blood probably didn’t help, to be entirely fair to her.
Nor did it help when Jon, slightly confused by her lack of enthusiasm—forgetting, as he must have, that it was, after all, Basira—looked between Martin’s face and hers, as though to demonstrate look, here he is, aren’t you delighted? Then, remembering himself, he swiped the back of his left wrist across his face, smearing the visceral detritus that Peter Lukas tried to pass off as a functioning brain as he did so.
Basira blinked.
“Hi, Martin,” she said, the picture of nonchalance, and Martin’s icy hand twitched where it rested in both of Jon’s.
He didn’t, however, reply, so Basira turned her attention back to Jon with a slightly curled upper lip.
“You’d better, um—” She paused, seeking an appropriate idiom, one eyebrow quirking when she found it. “Fuck off. Like, quickly.”
“Quite,” Jon said, and in fairly short order, they’d used the tunnels to do exactly that.
Or, at least, to start the process. They’re still in the midst of working out the specifics in Basira’s living room—Martin, still probably in mild dissociation, sitting on one end of the sofa, Jon hovering awkwardly nearby—afraid to drift too far, lest he evanesce again—and Basira, the lease-agreement-designated queen of all she surveys, leaning casually in the frame of the door into the kitchen.
“I’ve not been, myself,” Basira is in the midst of saying, “But the important thing is it’s, like, a twelve hour drive from here, so—well, you’ve got a better chance of a heads up if anyone comes after you.”
Jon sort of smiles, lifting one hand to uncomfortably rub at the back of his neck.
“Thank you,” he says.
Basira tosses her head to the side dismissively.
“Can I- I, um, I—I don’t- I don’t quite understand why you’re—helping. You aren’t obliged to.”
She exhales slowly, face set into a distinctly unimpressed expression.
“Well,” she says, standing straight, “You’re hardly any good dead, are you?”
Without waiting for a reply, she turns and goes into the kitchen, her abruptness suggesting that she does not wish to be followed.
Jon turns towards the sofa with a discomfited frown.
It’s clear Daisy must have spent a fair bit of time here. Things that are very likely not Basira’s—a boar-bristle hairbrush, a battered Walkman, and a hefty hunting knife in a dark leather sheath—are strewn about with little rhyme or reason, halfway between a junk drawer and a shrine.
Behind him, Basira grumbles to herself as she rummages through the kitchen cabinets.
“You gonna go alone?”
Jon’s been looking at the wall, so he’s only mostly certain that it’s Martin that said it. It’s the first sound he’s made in at least an hour, and—quite frankly—it takes a little bit of effort on Jon’s part not to flinch.
“What?” Jon says, though he’s quite confident he heard it correctly the first time.
“To- um, to the safehouse,” Martin says, his gaze fixed on his laced fingers, elbows braced on his thighs. “Are you just going to go by yourself?”
It does sound equally as absurd the second time.
“Wh- I- well, no, I certainly hope not.”
Martin doesn’t say anything for a moment, his eyes—still as pale and waxy as the rest of him—flitting from one of his palms to the other.
“Probably best,” he says eventually. “Guess Basira could be in as much danger as you.”
“What,” Basira says, sticking her head through the kitchen doorway.
Jon truly doesn’t intend to smile—it’s hardly an appropriate moment—but it strikes him that he is in a room with two people who do not want him dead or worse for the minute, which has been something of a rarity of late.
“W- well,” Martin continues vacantly, “I just mean—makes most sense, doesn’t it, if both of you go?”
Basira frowns mightily in Jon’s direction. He nods an acknowledgement and without further input she returns to her curmudgeonly scouring for whatever it is she’s attempting to find.
“Martin,” he says gently, because Martin seems to have followed his existing train of thought to somewhere unpleasant indeed, if the look on his face is anything to go by. Hearing his own name, he stiffens, not so much as glancing in Jon’s direction.
“I don’t think she’d go in for that,” Jon proceeds, carefully perching himself a calculated foot away from Martin on the sofa, which is about all the size of it allows for, anyway.
“Oh,” Martin breathes, his hands tightening around each other. “Who you going with, then?”
Jon reckons momentarily with the dissonance between Martin’s demonstrated—in fact, frequent—brilliance and acute, situational idiocy.
“You,” he says, as though it’s obvious, because it’s pretty bloody apparent.
To him, at least.
“I- I mean, assuming you—want to come, of course.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Basira says at full volume in the other room.
“Yeah,” Martin murmurs, as though unconscious of doing so. Then, inhaling sharply, he appends, “Like, I mean, I- I could probably help you out, with, um—with—”
“Respectfully,” Jon begins gravely, encircling his own wrist between his thumb and middle finger. “I don’t- I don’t really care.”
“But I don’t think I’d make a good bodyguard.”
“Again,” Jon insists, smiling, “I don’t—it’s- it’s not for utility. It- I’m not horribly keen on going right back to missing you.”
Basira at least has the common decency to enter the room before she begins heckling this time.
“Insufferable’s kind of a nice word for it,” she says, as close to cheerful as she ever gets.
Almost bashfully, Martin smiles, meeting Basira’s then Jon’s eyes for the briefest of moments.
“Well, if- if it’s going to save everyone that much trouble. Rude not to.”
“Your sacrifice is appreciated,” Jon says, more earnestly than he necessarily intends to, but to clarify that he was joking doesn’t seem particularly constructive under the circumstances.
It seems like it could be a good time to, perhaps, reassuringly squeeze his shoulder, or brush his hand, or something. But—simply put—it’s far too fraught a concept to consider seriously. Overwhelming him or making him uncomfortable after the day he’s already had would be downright cruel, but to oblige him to engage when he clearly isn’t particularly inclined would hardly be much better.
Despite his reservations, Jon finds his hand hovering, half-curled, in the air between them, as though he’s a novice reporter posing a question.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid.
“Found it,” Basira says, now standing in the doorway, and Jon strongly suspects she only does so in order not to bear irritated witness to his ineptitude any longer.
“What,” Jon says.
“Combination. For the key safe.”
He blinks three or four times before she speaks again.
“At- at Daisy’s?”
“Oh. Right. Yes.”
“Could you not just Know that?”
Jon narrows his eyes.
“Four,” he says, maybe a touch acidulously.
Basira glowers. “Four?”
The expression Jon’s face shifts into could reasonably be described as smarmy. “Yes. Four.”
She doesn’t dignify this with a response.
“Oh!” Jon continues. “You know, two plus two? I assumed that must have been immediately obvious. Given you had the answer, what other context could you possibly—”
“Okay, prick,” Basira interjects, lifting one hand to silence him. “Point taken.”
Jon relents, satisfied, and—quite without intending to—turns his attention again, of course, to Martin. His gaze is more lucid than before, and he meets Jon’s eyes briefly, one side of his mouth quirking upwards as though in silent approval.
There he is.
“So,” Jon says, clearing his throat obtrusively enough to change the subject, “It’s—it’s got a key safe, but, uh… where exactly is it?”
“Right,” Basira says, turning to disappear back into the kitchen for a surprisingly long moment. When she returns, she hands a haphazardly folded bit of notebook paper not—as he expects—to Jon, but to Martin, who stares down at it as though trying to remember what paper is for a good few seconds before he hesitantly takes it, careful not to touch Basira’s actual fingers in the process.
“Is it a secret?” Jon asks with a smirk.
“Last time I trusted you to find your own way out of something, you ended up exploded and in a coma for half a year,” Basira says curtly.
“I did it today!” Jon protests, perhaps a touch petulantly.
“And Martin’ll probably manage it without popping anyone’s skull like an overripe grape.”
“What?” Martin says suddenly, and in response Basira and Jon share a mutually chastising glance of discomfort.
“Very well, then,” Jon says hastily. “I expect you’re right.”
Basira hums, placing a hand on her hip as she frowns in contemplation. “Anyway, speaking of, you should probably clean up before you go. Can’t go in public looking like that.”
Jon glances down at the mess of blood on his shirt and coat, dotted here and there with flabby chunks of brain matter. It hardly constitutes passable date attire.
Not that that’s what this is.
Not that it’s not, either.
“And I’ll need your keys.”
“My what?” Jon says, though he’s already begun fishing through his pockets.
“Your keys. You still have a flat, technically, right?”
“Oh. Yeah. Yes.”
“You’re going to want at least a few changes of clothes. I’ll go. Give you two some- a—mm. Ugh.”
Jon strongly suspects that what she means is that she’d rather take her chances running some unpleasant errands than stay here and potentially projectile vomit at Jon’s embarrassing overtures in Martin’s direction, which—is fair, really.
Basira, depositing Jon’s keys into her trouser pocket, returns to the kitchen.
“Jon?” she says after a moment.
He anxiously inspects Martin’s face before rising, but he does appear stable, if still rather miserable as well.
Cautiously, Jon stands and moves to the doorway, obeying when Basira silently beckons him closer with a finger.
“Look,” she says hesitantly, “Is—d’you think he’s gonna be okay wearing some of my old clothes?”
He glances helplessly between Basira’s left eyebrow and the wall behind her.
“Um, I, I don’t—your guess is probably as good as mine?”
“Are you simple?” she snaps, but without any venom behind it.
“Y- yes?”
Exhaling, Basira turns her eyes to the heavens before she speaks. “I’m not the one who’s been erecting a shrine to him for the past two months, am I, stupid?”
Cringing, Jon steps forward and lowers his voice. “I’m- I haven’t—”
He falls silent in the face of Basira’s disapproval.
“I- I think it’ll be fine.”
“It’s going to have to be,” Basira says wearily. “I’ve got no idea where he lives.”
An uncomfortable silence descends between them.
“Basira,” Jon manages, fixing his eyes on his shoes.
Even without seeing it, he can hear the eye-roll in her voice. “God, what now?”
“Are- are you, um…”
Her voice returns to its usual volume. “If you ask me if I’m okay I will punch you in the face.”
Right.
“So… so no?”
“We’re not having this conversation. Don’t answer the door to anyone.”
Without any further instruction, she makes a detour to her bedroom, emerging a moment later with an empty kit bag, red eyes, and a scowl. She gives one more dismissive sniff and then is gone.
They don’t exchange a single word for at least half an hour. Eventually Jon returns to the sofa, but—when the blood begins to dry enough that it feels stiff and sticky in the fabric of his shirt—he rises again shortly after, shucking off his coat and electing after a small eternity of indecision to place it inside-out on the floor, lest he leave an incriminating stain.
He glances at Martin, who must have been running his hands through his hair. Whatever he’s been using to keep it so immaculately styled is gone, and it now sits in unruly curls. He looks more like himself, but with the change Jon can see how much more grey there is in it.
His heart twinges.
“I’ll—I’ll just be in the bathroom. If you need anything.”
Martin gives the kind of practiced, customer-service smile that’s probably more muscle memory than intent, and Jon decides not to pry.
For once.
When he does switch the light on in the bathroom, he’s genuinely a bit startled by his own reflection in the wall mirror. He looks less ‘tasteful offscreen gun violence’, and significantly more ‘elevator scene from The Shining’.
But—though this detail is, of course, less striking—he looks less gaunt and sleepless than he has in weeks.
Inhaling slowly, he removes his glasses and places them on the lip of the sink, then turns the tap to full hot and waits.
“You’ll want cold.”
Jon squares his shoulders, smiling at the sight of a shape in the doorway through the thickening fog on the surface of the mirror.
“Oh?”
The shape doesn’t move. “Something to do with proteins? It’s like how egg white stiffens when you cook it.”
Jon sets the water to cold.
“I can clean your glasses.”
“Oh. If you like.”
Martin materialises beside him, but he makes no move to reach to the other side of the sink for the glasses. Jon hands them to him with a sheepish smile which is not returned.
Fair. He’s hardly cutting a particularly reassuring figure at present.
Jon watches as surreptitiously as he can as Martin breathes on the lenses and, without hesitation, begins rubbing them with the cuff of his shirt. His brow is furrowed, but with concentration rather than something closer to despair. That’s good.
Jon turns his attention to rinsing his hands; they’d been in his pockets when it happened, so they’re relatively unblemished, but at least with them wet he can start on getting the gore off his face in the least undignified way possible.
“Oh, fuck,” Martin grumbles. Jon shuts off the tap and turns towards him again, mildly panicked.
Martin’s gaze is still on the glasses, but after a second, he looks up like a child petrified of admonishment.
“Um,” he says, looking down again. “F- I’m- I’m sorry, there’s this, um… I’ve been, um…”
He squeezes his eyes shut and lifts the glasses. One lens is mostly clean, but scored with deep, irregular scratches.
Jon frowns and takes them back to inspect them in the light.
“Oh,” he says. “Did—did you nick them with a button or something?”
Martin’s face turns red, sweat springing up over the bridge of his nose. “N- um, no, actually, it’s—”
He shakes his head.
“There’s just, like—sand? In- in my pockets and stuff sometimes?”
Jon focuses on breathing levelly, even if only because the object of his murderous fury is already dead, so indulging in the feeling itself can no longer do any good.
“Are you angry at me?” Martin asks meekly.
“No,” Jon says readily. “No, not at all. It- honestly, I- I don’t need them so much these days, I just—I’m used to them.”
To say it out loud makes it feel a bit more like a loss.
“But, um- look, I have another pair at h- er, at my flat, so I’ll- I’ll just give Basira a call—”
“Can I do it?”
“Hm. What? Um. O- of course.”
Luckily Jon’s eloquence remains as astonishing as ever.
“Cool,” Martin says, sounding genuinely pleased for the first time all day, turning to go back to the living room and digging in his pockets in search of his phone.
Jon is already in the process of designating his shirt a lost cause as he peels it off and balls it up in the sink, turning the tap back on in morose silence. Wearing an undershirt is a sensory hell he’d always fought until the Prentiss incident, at which point a second redundancy—on top of keeping at least one full change of clothes and shoes in the office—suddenly felt more practical than paranoid.
He’s rather grateful for it today.
Glancing briefly over his shoulder to ensure that Martin won’t see him being ridiculous, Jon bends and uses one of the now-sodden sleeves of his shirt to wipe the filth from his face.
Martin was correct, which is hardly revelatory in itself.
Jon has probably ruined more of his clothing than necessary via not having known about this.
Even less than revelatory, this is entirely as expected.
“She’s still—”
Martin pauses in the doorway, phone still in his hand, and his expression melts immediately into abject dismay at the sight before him.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Jon pauses, the sleeve lifted halfway to his face, and blinks.
“Why—why do you ask?”
The humiliation dies, because Jon is too busy feeling smug at having inspired the look of exhausted, bemused affection on Martin’s face.
“Because there’s a stack of flannels literally next to you, you idiot.”
“I thought I should minimise the, um- mess.”
Martin snorts.
“What?” Jon says, reaching casually for one of them.
“You didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Y- wh- I did too.”
“Right,” Martin says, crossing his arms and leaning his weight against the door frame. “Basira’s going to bring your spares.”
When Jon lifts his head again, filthy water still clouding his vision, it looks in the mirror like Martin might even be smiling.
“Thank you.”
Martin shrugs. “My fault in the first place.”
Taking responsibility for the shortcomings of his employers is probably such a natural impulse that to poke at it right at this moment might accidentally be an affront.
Not to mention that Martin, for all his good qualities, can be—well.
Probably about as stubborn as Jon is.
“Are you—” Jon pauses, wringing out the flannel. “I don’t- hm.”
Eyes wide with disingenuous attentiveness, Martin’s reflection nods. “True,” he says.
Jon smiles, exasperated. “I just—I’d like to be sure you’re not only coming with me out of obligation.”
Martin blinks, his expression growing suddenly distant. “Does it make a difference?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t see why.”
Jon takes a slow breath. “Because I imagine it’s been quite a long while since it mattered what you actually want.”
Martin stands straight again, spending an inordinate amount of time rolling his sleeves down and buttoning the cuffs.
“Well,” he says eventually, “What do you want?”
It sounds like an aspersion.
Jon turns the water off. “I told you, I want you to come with me.”
“Hm.”
Martin’s eyes narrow.
“Fine,” Jon continues, running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to at least somewhat get rid of the flakes of dry blood. “Technically I would prefer we weren’t also traipsing across the countryside because someone- because multiple someones want to kill me, again, but I’m not feeling particularly fussy about the specifics at the minute.”
His appearance has, at least, reached a point where the blood, where still present, is no longer the most immediately objectionable thing about it.
Back to business as usual.
“And, as masterful as that deflection was, please don’t think I haven’t realised you haven’t answered me.”
Finally, Jon turns to look at Martin directly, rather than in the mirror. Martin’s eyes widen and he looks down at the tile, face reddening.
“W- well,” he stammers, “S- so—m- me too.”
Jon positively beams.
“Good.”
“Yup!” Martin snaps. “Good!”
Chuckling, Jon goes towards the doorway, pausing when Martin backs into the frame of the door with a barely audible thud.
“D’you—”
“Shut up,” Martin says, turning around and walking back to the living room with his eyes fixed on the floor as he goes.
Jon waits to follow him until he’s managed to mostly suppress the stupid grin on his face.