Chapter Text
“Martin, darling, I do have to remind you that I’m outpacing you with a cane and a picnic basket!” Jon called over his shoulder, cresting over the top of the hill. Granted, it wasn’t an easy thing. When he got to the top, he paused to catch his breath. He could only be thankful that it hadn’t rained much in the past week. The ground was dry enough that it didn’t try to suck him in.
Martin was dallying at the bottom of the hill. Jon could hardly see him in the dark. He hoped everything was alright. The entire day, Martin had been in a jumpy mood. Even minor noises seemed to startle him; simple tasks seemed insurmountable. He’d gotten lost driving to pick Jon up from the university – a route that he’d driven every day for months now.
Jon suspected that it was a bad day, but he was not going to pry it out of Martin. There were bad days that warranted something to be done about it and bad days that were simply endured. Perhaps things were looking up. Martin had suggested this picnic, after all. Ample excuse to polish off the charcuterie (and the half-finished bottles of wine) from the party last week, along with the Swiss roll that Mrs. Abernathy had made for them.
And … it was nice. A beautiful, clear night. The stars were out. They’d found this hill months ago. From the top of it, they could see the meadow. They could see the village. The lights from their cottage twinkled like a lighthouse.
“Sorry, got distracted.” Martin came over the top of the hill and spread out the blanket, shaking his head. He turned on the electric lantern under his arm. Martin was sweating. “Doesn’t look like there’s loads of bugs out.”
“Getting too cold for them. I’ve come to think of bug spray as a sort of cologne. Shame.” Grateful to get off his feet, Jon spread out on the warm blanket and stared up at the stars. It’d been a full day of work, of class. He hadn’t realized that assigning books he liked and cared for would entail a certain emotional labor in class discussions.
His hair bunched uncomfortably underneath him. With a grimace, Jon reached for his hair band and freed it. It was growing out, stopping at the bottom of his chin, and Jon put it up more often than not. Given his head had been shaved twice for medical raesons Jon found a certain peace in keeping it long.
He had shaved his face, though. To hell with that. He kept giving himself accidental stubble burn when he rested his chin on his hand. Martin had sailed through the stubble stage with grace and now boasted something soft.
Martin thumped down beside him. He patted Jon’s knee appreciatively. “Is the light from the lantern blocking out the sky?”
“Mm, no. No, the stars are all out there.” Jon’s voice turned dreamy. “All lovely. This was a good idea, Martin. It’s going to get too cold for it soon.”
“Yeah. Shame.”
Jon leaned up to find Martin pouring glasses of wine and setting out little plates of food. “Oh, Agatha’s put little strawberry decorations on the outside. How sweet.”
He got no response. Was Martin not listening already? Good lord. Something really was distracting him. Jon raised his hand and ran it across the back of Martin’s jumper, startling him. “You good?” Jon kept his voice low, like they were going to be overhead way out in the middle of nowhere.
Martin spared him a chuckle and a smile. “Sorry, sorry. I’m here, promise.”
“Something with the shop? Driven it into the ground already?”
“Shop’s alright.” Martin deposited a plate of food into his lap. Jon picked up a carrot and crunched down on it, before passing Martin’s glass of wine over to him. “Just a cloudy sort of day up there, I guess.”
“Here, drink this and stare at the sky for a bit. See if it helps.”
At least that got a chuckle out of him. Jon preened somewhat when Martin slid an arm about his shoulders. The hand that was holding the wine glass gestured out into the meadow. “That’s where we woke up, you know. I looked at a map the other day. There’s nowhere else it could’ve been.”
Ah, perhaps that was lingering on Martin’s mind. Jon leaned against his shoulder. “It was such a blur that day. I couldn’t have remembered. Funny that we ended up settling a half kilometer away.”
“That makes sense. Believe me, I definitely wouldn’t forget waking up in a field next to my dying boyfriend.” Martin paused a beat. “You said you got it for me. Right before you passed out again, you said that.”
“Did I?” Jon’s memory went straight from Panopticon to hospital. “I – I was thinking of meadows and wildflowers right before … well. You know. Trying to keep myself calm. I suppose, if I thought I was about to die in that field, then I’d – I’d want you to end up in a place like that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Or maybe I was trying to make a joke. Or maybe it’s not worth it to assign meaning to the words of a man going into medical shock. I wish I could remember.”
“That’s not what I was wondering about. Even at the time, it was more ‘aaaaah, so much blood, oh my god there’s so much blood’.” Martin tilted his head to the side. “I was just curious. You thought of meadows, and we got put in a meadow. If you knew that was how it worked … where would you go?”
Oh, that was a thought, wasn’t it?
The first instinct, of course, was to stay in their original timeline. Except … no guarantee that that would have let them live, was it? Perhaps their destiny, if such a term was to be used, was to die in the original. Crushed underneath rubble.
What else could he have chosen, truly? A timeline where their friends had lived? A timeline where the Fears had been snuffed out before recorded time? A timeline where Jon had not been born at all?
God. He wasn’t half so intelligent as to claim that he knew best, there. Any possibility that he chose would have had an infinite number of conditional clauses – possible dangers. His thought of ‘meadows’ landing him there … sheer bloody luck. The only lucky break that he’d gotten in a long, long while.
Jon rested his head against Martin’s shoulder. “I don’t have any complaints about right here, Martin. It’d be greedy to want anything else. After everything that happened, this is … this is perfect.”
Not absolutely perfect, certainly. Jon still lived with pain. They still dealt with trauma. Their dishware didn’t match. But relatively? They did not have to live in fear. They did not have to leave under Fears. Martin was happy and healthy and in love. Jon had a purpose, and a love, and a sense of peace. It wasn’t settling when it was more than he had ever dreamed of.
“Read my mind. I wouldn’t pick anywhere else, Jon. I really wouldn’t.” A kiss was pressed against the top of Jon’s head. “I miss the others. But I think … I think they’re happy, wherever they are.”
“That little feeling in the back of your mind telling you that, huh?”
“It is.”
“I think so, too. That’s what they deserve. Happiness and peace. Same as we’ve got. Maybe we couldn’t have that if we were all together. That’s alright. It’s alright. Means this all worked out for the best.” Jon knocked back a large gulp of wine and picked up a bit of cheese from the plate.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t say for the best. Would have loved not to have to cart my dying boyfriend out of a meadow.” Martin paused a beat. “You know it was Wyatt who drove us to hospital?”
“Wyatt? The, uh …” Jon wracked his brain. “Oh my god, the man with the ferrets?”
“Yeah! I completely – I mean, I didn’t exactly catch his name at the time. He brought it up last month when he came around to the shop.”
“ ‘How’s your poor stabbed boyfriend doing?’ “
“Pretty much, yeah. I thanked him. Almost a year too late, but there it is.” Martin chuckled. “Seems like a different lifetime ago, now.”
“Right? You have a beard now. Madness.”
Martin let out a noise of indignation, but did tilt Jon’s head to the side so that he could get a rather furry kiss against his cheek. “You know what I mean, tit. And, you know, some things haven’t changed.” Jon gave him a questioning glance. “Like, you know. I love you?”
Normally, Jon would have teased. At least a little. It was such a soppy thing to say. But … he could make an exception. They were sitting on a hill, surrounded by stars, the only two wayward souls that really, truly understood one another. Jon found himself nearly overcome. “You know I love you, too, Martin,” he whispered into the night.
“I know. Except – except I love you more, now – or … or not more, as a measure of magnitude, because … because I’m going to be honest, Jon, when you offer to die with someone, that’s sort of – sort of the last stop on the junction. But I love you more … you know.” With his wine hand, Martin gave a large sweeping gesture towards the fields.
“Widely? In a thousand little ways. Ways that I never could have imagined before. I love how you look when you stay up too late reading, and I love when you stick dirty limericks in my lunch to make me laugh, and I love when you argue with acquaintances over nothing. I love when you allow me to help when you’re in pain and I love when you enforce your boundaries and – and I think that’s more important than loving you as a function of magnitude. Because I get to see those things every day. And – and we’re never, ever getting that desperate and scared again.”
If Jon hadn’t been so overwhelmed in that moment, he may have realized that Martin had clearly memorized at least a portion of this beforehand. And as a matter of fact, Martin had clearly applied product and combed out his curls before the picnic. And he was wearing his formal cologne.
But … he was trying hard not to let the pricking in his eyes turn into something wetter. “Ubiquitously,” Jon forced out. “You love me ubiquitously.”
“Oh, yeah. Nearly forgot. Definitely love the way you’ve memorized the dict – “
Jon had cut him off with a kiss. A good portion of Martin’s wine sloshed out of the glass and stained the blanket below.
It was almost ironic, in its own way. Jon had been able to compel beautiful, intricate statements out of people. He’d probably spoken more poetry than even Martin himself. But in terms of being able to provide it on his own … well. It was as if his brain just stalled. If only the Eye had any interest in drawing out statements of compassion, love, kindness.
Though perhaps the meaning of it came from its difficulty.
Thankfully, Martin had been able to put his glass down in the field before Jon completely tackled him. Jon laid on him, half-askew. By the time Jon finally rolled off to lay on his back, the care Martin had taken in styling his hair was well and truly destroyed.
Jon stared up at the sky, at the stars swept up in striking symmetry. He reached for Martin’s hand. “Martin, I’m so fortunate that I’m here with you. That I – that I get to have you in my life, that I have you as a … a companion, and a partner, and just – an example. A beacon of how stunning humanity can be. And me, I get the privilege of being with you? Of – Of being loved by you? After everything I’ve done, after – “ Martin was hushing him, at least a bit, but Jon plowed on. “After what my presence in your life has done to you? It’s too much to fathom.”
“Jon, I like who I’ve become. I like what I’ve had to make myself become. Not for what happened to me. That just made me … made me scared. Angry, selfish. But you being in my life, it’s changed everything. Made me realize what I could be. Made me realize it was worth being that, that who you are as a person, it. It matters.”
It was easier to stifle the tears when he was lying down and staring up, but Jon couldn’t completely suppress a sniffle. “I think you’re incredible, Martin. I really do.”
“Well, I think you’re incredible. So there.” Martin’s voice took on a teasing lilt. “Weepy.”
“Shut it.” But Martin’s lightness let him take a breath, his entire chest rising and falling. “At the height of what I could do, Martin, I didn’t think that anything would compare. I was … you know what I was. I was a god. But I’m letting you know, right now, that being a god does not compare to being earnestly known and loved by you.”
Martin did not have an answer for that, even as he heard Martin’s breath hitch. Jon appreciated the silence. His breathing was stunted by the emotional weight on his chest. It felt good just to hold Martin’s hand just then, content and alive.
Some days, of course, he missed it. The – the lack of shackles, the lack of restraint. Sheer, unbridled power. Sometimes the desire bridled in the recesses of his sleeping mind. Sometimes it was front and center, particularly when the pain flared up.
But that did not make it real. If Jon had a big button that he could press, giving him all his powers and the end of the world and everything back … of course he wouldn’t press it. He wouldn’t even dream of it.
Martin drew in a long, tearstained breath. “Well. Fuck me, then, eh?”
“God, I know.” Jon chuckled along with him. “I’m sure you didn’t drag me up here for me to get cosmically existential on you, though …” With his free hand, Jon gestured towards the stars. “I guess this brings it out in me.”
“That’s okay. Nice night for it.” Martin withdrew his hand from Jon’s own. For the best, Jon figured. His hand was sticky with hair product and he was getting hungry besides. Mrs. Abernathy’s Swiss roll sounded heavenly – or maybe the little pinwheels someone had brought in. “And is actually a really nice opening act, so, thanks for that.” Next to him, Martin stood and walked over towards the picnic basket.
Jon’s eyes had half-shut. He could hear insects chirping and whispering behind him. The same owl that had been there since the night they’d moved into the cottage, sounded like. “Hm?” Jon muttered. “Opening act?”
“Sit up, love?”
Jon opened his eyes and pushed himself up – only to be greeted by the sight of Martin, down on one knee, with a black hinged box in his hands. In that moment, Jon forgot how to breathe. He was only grateful that some of his bodily functions were done entirely unconsciously, because otherwise the blood would have stilled in his veins.
“Feels more like a formality at this point, ha.” Martin’s face had gone red. Jon couldn’t believe that after everything, Martin still looked shy. He flipped the box open. The ring was subtle, a simple black band with a silver gem inset. Jon could not conceive of a reality where he wouldn’t immediately take to whatever was in the box. It could have been a tiny toy elephant with a hole through it and Jon would have found it helplessly charming. That it was something beautiful, and clearly chosen with him specifically in mind, made it perfect. “But … well. Jonathan Sims, would you marry me?”
Jon was staring at the box. He was aware of what Martin had said, because it was certainly playing in a loop in the back of his mind. But he didn’t respond at first. His brain had stalled.
“Um.” Martin winced, shifting his knees. “They really don’t tell you how uncomfortable this position is, do they?”
Oh. Oh, hell. Jon rose his eyes, with almost frantically pinpoint pupils, and of course Martin was right. Of course it was just a formality, but nevertheless a formality with a great amount of societal weight attached, and the implications, and –
Jon didn’t throw himself at Martin again. His knees had had quite enough of that, for one night. Instead, he took the box out of Martin’s hands and looked at it. “I – of course I will, Martin, I. I’m not hesitating because I’m thinking about it, I just think …” Hm. “Heart attack, maybe?” Jon was joking, but he really couldn’t get a good breath in him.
Something about his tone must have implied that it wasn’t a joke. “Wait. Are you serious?” Martin’s tone saturate with worry, and he saw Martin leaning over to grab at his phone. “The side effects of your meds --”
“No! No, I’m. I’m good. Would be just our luck, though, eh.” Jon took the ring out of the box and put it on his finger. Of course it fit perfectly. Jon hoped that he would never get used to the weight of it on his hand. “It’s gorgeous, darling, it’s …” He raised his eyes to look at Martin’s face. “Most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, honestly.”
Martin’s face started to screw up.
Probably a miracle that they had staved off the tears for this long. When Martin sat back, Jon pulled himself into his lap. They cried happy tears between happy kisses for a long while, enough for the food to go cold and the lantern to go out.
Jon did not mind. They held one another in the dark, crooning loving, adoring words. Up above, they were lit by the infinite expanse of stars. They were wrapped up by the meadows and wildflowers, wildflowers and meadows that had welcomed them home so long ago. Old scars pulled and twinged, but they would never reopen.
And even after they would calm down, eat their dinner, share memories and tell jokes and tease – they would return to their cottage, where an opinionated cat would welcome them and demand explanation. They would return to their life, and – after being so certain that they could never – they would have the rest of their lives to live.