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catralogue · 4 years ago

Note

If you’re in the mood for a prompt I’ve been thinking about Jon getting hurt during the apocalypse and trying to hide it from Martin in a manner very similar to what he warned Martin not to do to him. I enjoy your writing very much! Have a good day!

I am always in the mood for some good old apocalypse hurt/comfort! Thanks for the prompt <3

jonmartin, series 5 adjacent but no spoilers, hurt/comfort

It's been a long two days.

Jon's breathing is hard-won, gravel-scraping up a dry and scream-torn throat. If he is sleeping, and Martin can't tell, even now if that's what to call it when the Archive's Eyes are closed, his head is mercifully free of dreams.

Martin's hands are sweat-lathered, muscles taut with a wired and overworked exhaustion. The scabs on his arms are itching from where Jon's blunted, gnawed nails dug and scored in a senseless panic, as the rest of his body convulsed, set upon some feverish pyre.

Martin doesn't even think Jon knew who he was. Doesn't know how long it will take for Jon to claw himself back.

It's been a long two days, but then days don't exist any more, so maybe he's getting the times wrong again. Martin shakes his shaggy head free from the dizziness building up, dust and grime clogging the smooth-running of him, adjusts his tremulous hold on the cricket bat, already soiled and discoloured dark along its edge. The sky hasn't taken on a night-pall since the world crashed sideways; it's the perpetual grey of an un-tuned station, studded with the great flexing, conjoining, bifurcating pupils that are now all staring at their beleaguered Archivist as he sweats and burns and cries out and whatever Martin can do for him, it is clearly not enough.

They'd thought it was the Hunt when it had attacked. Slaughter at a push. Jon had cast his face in a dissatisfied, pained expression, bemoaning his own slowness as Martin disinfected the snag-toothed wound of the now decimated beast, cleaning off the blood as thoroughly as possible, bandaging the area as Jon shook jittery with adrenaline and pain they'd no remedy for.

It was clearly sore to walk on. Jon had grunted as he stood, waved off Martin's fussing, trying to grind down any insurrection of his body even as they went mud-trudge slow across the vacant domain.

He'd grown ashen as his steps lost their stride and turned to shuffling. Martin had been the one to set his jaw and put his foot down, setting up camp in that nether-grey of something that would never be night again, shoring his spine with his own brand of stubbornness. Jon had agreed, but clearly not happy about their lack of progress, and they compromised on resting for a few hours, see if Jon's body would heal the injury on its own.

When Martin had asked Jon later if he was feeling better, Jon had said yes. Had said it was all healed up even as he shouldered his backpack, that they should really get moving. Martin had made a quip about Jon's super healing abilities and Jon had, he'd smiled like he was in on the joke, hadn't he?

Jon had said he was fine, and Martin believed him because he trusted him to tell him the truth.

They'd walked and walked through mire and moor and Jon had ploughed on, hadn't winced and stumbled. He'd been quiet, but then there were days like that for the both of them, that wasn't – should Martin have said something? Had the lines around his eyes been tighter, had he turned away from Martin as they walked, had there been anything he'd failed to see? As they walked, when they set up camp and Martin had helped Jon with the zip that was always getting stuck on their sleeping bag, when Jon had encircled his arms bodily around Martin and grunted a weary goodnight.

Martin had tussled free from the greedy, fog-banked maw of his nightmares to Jon panting and spasming next to him. Eyes all open, pocked across his body like boils, rolling sightless, his pupils shot wide in the damp frame of his skin, frothing spit at the corners of his mouth. His skin shiny, fish-scaling with sweat, his outward front of humanity losing ground as his flesh becomes more eyes than skin, his voice crackling like corrupted tape, his words, when they slicked garbled and gibberish from his lips, all stolen from other people's tragedies.

He throws his body around storm-wrecked and insensate, and he burns when Martin puts a hand to his forehead, and he won't wake, not for Martin's calls and shakes, not for anything.

When Martin goes to check, the wound on his leg has rooted from ankle to thigh, festering rot-black branches of something sludgy and swollen and varicose tracing the same lines as his veins.

The Corruption wars with Beholding upon the battleground of its Archive, and there is nothing Martin can do.

Their camp transitions to medical bay, but Martin is not a doctor. He tries to use the limited water they have to quench the fire-brand heat across Jon's skin; Jon flinching and fighting every pathetic gesture to comfort. Martin's mouth runs itself down shushing and failing to soothe his scalding delirium, Jon who sheds tears and pleads forgiveness and begs mercy for those he has lost. The dark lichen that is ensnaring the veins of his hip, his stomach grants him the cruelty of being able to see his burden of ghosts made material before him.

He cries at whatever Tim says to him. He tries to follow a phantom Sasha from the tent, struggles against Martin as he tries to keep him from walking out, from hurting himself more, Jon's slurring words barely understandable but for his moaning desperation that slips into anger for Martin to let go, it's Sasha, Martin, let me go, Martin!

He scratches and bites and Martin makes himself immovable, insurmountable. Jon's struggles always boil down to a grief-drowned sobbing eventually, and Martin can carry him limbless and half-collapsed back to bed.

Martin treats the yellow-weeping wound with what little antibiotic ointments they packed, cleans the swollen, reddened skin, and Jon wavers between the ghosts and shadows of his lying brain. Martin prefers the tearful, mourning Jon in some ways, because at least, there, in some ways, he at least remembers who Martin is, even if he might as well be as wraith-like as his hauntings.

It is better than Jon's terror.

When Martin looms large and unknown over him, Jon's legs scatter to push away. His eyes recognising nothing, staring up at him with suspicion. Jon's body has not been kindly used, these past years, and Jon won't let him touch his wound, kicks and pushes him away, tries to run even as his legs give under him. When every question is laced with the command of the Archive, and the compulsion tears answers Martin didn't want to give from his throat, the static in his head too much like Elias' violation and still Jon is panicking, asking his questions and not understanding the answers, and Martin dutifully retches up every horror Jon wants to be privy to, even if he's not sure it's only Jon asking, it's only Jon who wants to know any more.

Martin's body heaves up every unwanted honesty, peppering them with hysterical apologies of his own as he holds his hands over Jon's mouth to gag him, muffling the sound painfully as he presses his hands to clench Jon's jaw to immobile, even as Jon fights him, even as every eye stares and finds him wanting.

Martin is exhausted being a prison, of being so held as hated in the eyes of someone he knows loves him. But one of them has to be stronger now. Martin has never wanted to think of Jon as dangerous, but he watches the eyes grow rounded and alert as they feed on his dredged up horrors, the static ringing howling and hungry in his head. He's not entirely sure Jon will be able to stop himself from going too far.

When Jon calms, slips back into fever-dreams, there are bruises in the shape of fingertips around his mouth, and Martin can hardly bear to look at them.

The roots have receded their front lines, the puncture wounds puckered smaller when Martin checks again, and he can't look at that either.

It has been a long two days.

Jon's shivering has settled now. He rocks and frowns and breathes shallowly, but he doesn't bawl and sob names at the air. He doesn't try and ask any more questions. His fever broken, Martin thinks he's dream-walking again, for the roots continue their retreat steadily, the Archive feeding somehow.

Some pawing, creeping things have chanced their luck at an embattled, weakened Archive, and Martin's responsibility teeters between nurse and soldier. He's not a good fighter, but he's desperate for them both to survive this and that serves him well enough. There's blood scoring a bandoleer down and over his shoulder, a crest of viscera coating his shirt from some misbegotten creature of worm and want. He can't put weight on his right foot properly. He is so so tired, but still he sits, half folded, his grisly cricket bat over his knee, directly in front of the open mouth of their tent and the dreaming Jon, whose eyes scatter misted and blind under his eyelids.

Jon returns as Jon maybe a day later. Disorientated, groaning as he sits up, only two eyes in his head again. He calls out Martin's name, dry-throated, in his own voice again. He sounds sluggish and cautious. Not accusatory or betrayed or scared.

Martin kneels down by the sleeping bag, checking the untroubled skin of his calf is free from wound or infection. Jon's eyes are staring at him, nervy, over-bright, but he ignores them for the moment. Exhaustion has sanded down all his edges; he doesn't have the energy he wants for his anger, not yet, not when the worry has yet to pass from his system.

“How long was I, um, out of it?” Jon asks slowly. He looks uncomfortable. The tent is permeated with the unflattering smell of sickness and blood, both of which he has noticed if the slight wince in his expression is anything to go by.

“Three days, I guess,” Martin throws out, packing up the medical supplies now he's sure they won't be needed any more. “Not that time works any more, but you know. Estimate.”

“My leg...?”

Jon has the good grace to look guilty, and Martin feels a petty, digging stab of satisfaction. Good. Good that he knows he fucked up there.

“It got infected,” he replies shortly, shoving the supplies down to the bottom of his rucksack, kicking some clothes in a bundle near the mouth of the tent. He'll fold them separately in a minute; they're going to need to be cleaned at the next place they find water. “The thing that bit you, I think it must have already been aligned to Corruption, or whatever.”

“Ah. Right.”

“Yeah.”

“...Martin?” Jon's voice is low and tentative. He looks as weak as Martin feels. Martin closes his eyes, because he can feel what is coming, and he can't do this, not now, not with his thread-bare temper, the panic that's not unknotted from his bones. “Martin, why won't you look at me?”

Martin straightens from his hunch. Breathes out long and hard through his nose. Turns.

“Better?” he asks. He knows it comes out as a snap.

Jon's eyes go wide as they properly take him in, a blood-tainted furious wash-out of a man.

“You're hurt,” he breathes out, looking at the marks left by things Martin didn't kill fast enough, the little smarting wounds Jon dug in himself in his terror.

Martin wants to snarl at Jon to stop looking at him.

He doesn't.

“Yes,” Martin replies instead.

Jon's hands are taking on gestures of panic.

“Martin, will you – God, s-sit down, I-I-I'll get the medical supplies, take a look at them, make sure they're nothing – ”

“No,” Martin says. He's struggling to remain impartial, to remember how to be gentle to those he wants to treat gently. He breathes out another jagged exhale. “No. I'll sort them myself.”

Jon's pushing himself up to standing, staring critically at the disastrous image Martin makes, motioning to the rucksack.

“If you just let me – ”

“No,” Martin snaps. “No, I don't want you to help me, alright? What I want, ok, is to make sure you're all healed, and then I want as close to a bath as I can get in this bloody hellscape, and then I want to get some fucking sleep for a bit. That at the moment, that is the limit of what I am capable to wanting.”

There's a tense pause.

“You're angry at me,” Jon says in a small voice.

“Ten points there, Jon, really perceptive,” Martin snarks back. He can't look at Jon because he knows that would have stung, and he knows he wanted it to, wanted Jon to know a fraction of how much these last few days have hurt.

“Because I didn't tell you about my leg?”

“Oh, I'm not sure. Do you think that's possibly something I might be a bit upset about?”

“Martin...”

“If you're going to – to give me excuses, I don't want to hear them. Of course I'm upset! I'm furious actually. Because you told me it was fine. You told me it was healed, and I trusted you to tell me the truth, because unlike you, Jon, I can't read people's bloody minds, s-so trusting you is all I have to go on. Apparently that was asking too much from you.”

Jon flinches at that. Martin bites his tongue so hard it hurts, and tells himself that Jon deserves his honesty, not, never his cruelty. That this is not the man he wants to be.

“I am angry,” he repeats, deliberately quieter. “And we will talk about it later. But I – I cannot deal with it right now. Not without saying something I'll regret. So I want you to drop it, and just – leave me alone for a bit.”

Jon nods jerkily, looking cowed and miserable.

“Alright,” he says. “Alright, I'll – er, go, have a scout around for any water?”

It's as open an offer for space as Martin's going to get.

Martin must have collapsed onto the sleeping bag first before anything else because he wakes up with his shirt still starchy with blood what must be hours later. He blinks, turns over, groaning at his protesting muscles. Jon's eyes immediately swivel to him from the other side of the tent.

“You fell asleep,” he says quietly. He's clearly been sitting nearby, waiting for Martin to open his eyes. “I didn't want to – There's a stream, not too far, and I, um got water, if you want to wash... I've used some, so it's er, it's safe, and I've, er boiled it in case of, er bacteria and things. I'll – I'll get it and then give you some privacy....”

He's stumbling up. Martin reaches out a scratch-marked hand, and murmurs 'Jon'.

He doesn't know what he wants. He feels gross and sluggish and wrung-out empty, and the ashes of his anger are still embers he could stoke into expression.

Jon lingers. Looks from Martin's eyes to Martin's outstretched hand. He still has bruises the shape of fingertips near the side of his mouth, and he strikes an ill, frail figure in this light.

Martin's had enough of Jon looking scared of him these past few days.

Martin repeats his name.

Jon comes over. Kneels down where Martin has sat up so they're almost the same height.

Martin's hand settles on Jon's wrist, and he exhales shakily.

“Why didn't you tell me something was wrong?” Martin asks. This is not the question he wants to ask. The question sat poisonous behind his teeth is why didn't you trust me enough to tell me the truth? Neither of them can stomach that sort of question right now.

“I thought it would go away on its own,” Jon replies, shame coating his words. “I thought I could handle it. I didn't want you worrying.”

I worry anyway, Martin does not say. Does not need to.

“You were so sick,” Martin whispers instead. “You were so sick and you weren't getting better for such a long time, a-and there was nothing I could do but watch.”

“I'm sorry,” Jon says. “God, Martin, I – I'm sorry.”

“I know you are,” Martin replies quietly. “I know.”

Martin might offer up forgiveness if he wasn't so tired. His head so thick with all the things he is powerless against in this world.

“Let me,” Jon says, at Martin's side. His fingers hover over Martin's shoulder. “Let me, please.”

Martin nods.

Jon helps him strip out of the disgusting, blood-ruined armour he's been stewing in. His movements are faltering but methodical, light-fingered and exploratory. He soaks a cloth in water that's cooling down from boiling, dabs at every small mark scattered like anvil sparks across Martin's chest, his arms, the deeper wound at his shoulder that's begun to blossom with bruising. His eyes keep flicking to Martin's face, like he's double-checking something.

Martin, for his part, turns dozy and biddable, straining to keep conscious while Jon apparently tries to put plasters over every single mark on his body.

“What did this?” Jon finally asks as he presses gauze to the slash over his shoulder.

Martin blinks slowly, rouses.

“The usual,” he says. “Bunch'a monster things, wantin' to take a bite out of you.”

Jon hums.

“I saw what was left of the cricket bat,” he says. “Very gallant of you.”

Martin huffs a laugh. Jon continues wiping the grime and dirt down from Martin's arms, stopping every once in a while to soak and wring out his cloth.

“What did this?” he asks again, peering at the imprints where fingers wrapped around the meat of Martin's arm and tightened, the crescent curve dig of nails.

Martin thinks about lying, but he doesn't have the strength. He can't shoulder it, and neither of them should have to. Secrets have never served either of them very well.

“You,” he replies, lowly. “You were, you were feverish, you didn't know what was happening.”

“I didn't...?” Jon starts, but then he reaches up, touches his own bruise-marked jaw with a dawning realisation.

“I hurt you,” he says, slow and horrified.

Martin remembers every horror and honesty the Eye dragged from his unwilling throat to bolster the crumbling body of its Avatar, and murmurs: “You didn't mean to.”

He doesn't say that he thinks it helped. He doesn't say that if anything like this happens again, it'll be an option. He doesn't think Jon wants to hear that right now.

Jon pulls away as his mouth shapes another sorry, but Martin cuts him off, enfolds his arms around his scarecrow limbs and buries his face in Jon's throat. After a moment, Jon's trembling arms complete the circuit.

“You can't do this again,” Martin says, throat thick. “I can't – I can't do this on my own. I can't do this if you don't trust me.”

“I do,” Jon breathes in, damp and hitching. “I do trust you, I'm – I'm sorry. Martin, I'm sorry. You're not on your own. It won't happen again, I-I promise, it won't.”

They spend a long time holding each other up in that small, cramped tent, murmuring promises this life might not let them keep.

Martin crushes down the cynicism this world has tried to teach him, and chooses to believe in every single one.

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