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queer-and-fullof-existentialfear · 4 days ago

Text

cor cordium

summary:

in one's heart of hearts

phrase of heart 1. in one's inmost feelings.

(ao3 link)

(5,554 words)

It is the moment between one wildcard and the next.

The utter silence that settles around Scott is…unsettling. The stillness of the air feels wrong, too empty compared with the chaos from mere moments before. His life has been filled with nothing but movement and motion for the past eternity; it has been so long, so hectic, that he is not certain when he last had a moment to simply…stand. To sit and appreciate the sun as it rises over the horizon. To sit and watch as the world springs into life without looking over his shoulder every other moment.

Each second he stands here, unmoving, is another moment that is lost. There is beauty in the tranquillity of it all, something that he thought might be lost. Something that he still hasn’t regained, even with the apparent peace that follows.

He cannot help but glance over his shoulder, even as he misses the moment the sun peeks over the horizon line, turning from a soft glow into a full-on burst of sunlight when he turns around again. There is no longer a snail to dog his steps, to lurk around each shadowed corner and stalk him into submission.

He can feel the exhaustion tugging on the edge of his mind. Can feel the way his eyes droop with exhaustion, and still he does not sleep. Impulse had been the first to crash after the snails returned to wherever they came from, announcing abruptly that they won’t see him until the next wildcard is announced, and that anyone to wake him up before then would be meeting with the business end of his sword.

Cleo had laughed, but they had been the next to disappear as well. Scott hadn’t missed the way they’d looked at him, one eyebrow raised in question, lips tugging down into a frown �� he’d waved them off, dismissed them easily as he turned back to the stars and the lightening sky. They had waited beside him for a few moments, questions radiating off their posture before exhaustion seemed to win out there too.

It had been just him and Pearl, after that.

He wasn’t surprised. Pearl had stuck to her odd hours; he’s still not sure what’s wrong with her circadian rhythm, but she sticks to it happily, watching the stars slowly move over head. The moon had been at Scott's back as it set, and Pearl sat facing away from him to watch it descend, and, eventually, disappear.

No words had been exchanged between them – it’s still a little uncomfortable; each poorly timed joke feels as though it is a blade dragged over a scarcely healed wound, opening it back up for infection to sneak its way back in.

Scott can't see this ending well. Can't see any of this ending well – it never does, so why should this time be any different? He may have resolved his hurts with Pearl, may have taken a step forward with mending relations between them. He was almost eager to begin looking past the tattered memories of their soulbond, of being cast aside so callously, and of the hurt he delivered in return.

In the moment, he could say that it was justified. That he had a reason, a good reason to be reacting in such a way. Looking back, he cannot help but feel as though it was an overreaction, one driven by the cold and the fear and the pain and the hurt.

Pearl’s back pressed to against his own, a wall of warmth at his back (guarding him, some part of him whispered, keeping him safe. Watching his back where he himself cannot watch it – he was watching her back too, in a way), felt like an olive branch. Something extended in an offer of friendship; something held out in memory, a peace offering of remember how it used to be?

Scott takes it. Because he is a coward and because he misses it. Misses their house, tucked away in the forest, safe from most anything atop their tower. He misses the easy laughter and the friendship, the silent camaraderie that they had held and taken for granted; hates the silence that fills the moments between them now, how each conversation feels as though they're skipping around the delicate topics, wary of pushing the other too close to an edge.

Pearl had left with the setting of the moon, and Scott remained. Pearl hadn’t questioned his decision, hadn’t tried to cajole him towards his own bed. She simply stood, a whisper of cloth, pressed a hand to his shoulder, and then left him to it.

The trees begin to light up with the sun, smooth rays of light brushing over their leaves. They seem brighter today, unburdened by the shadows of the days that came before this. The days of fear and tension. Scott has never understood the feeling of a prey animal before now, and he doubts he will ever feel such a primal fear again. It had pushed him further than he likes to reflect on, had made panic gather in his throat and weigh heavy upon his chest.

His heart gives an odd little jump with the thought, lurching forward as though it might leap right out of his chest and land on the floor in front of him. He wonders if it would continue beating with his panic, pulsing in time with a body it is no longer a part of. He feels a little sick just imagining it.

“Scott oh Scott, can you let down your hair?”

Scott leans a little further over the edge of the wall, just enough that he can look down at Martyn below. He stands pressed up against the base of the wall, hands spread upwards and out, grinning. He looks a little worse for wear, hair mussed and the purple around his eyes indicating his lack of sleep. Scott doubts he looks much better.

“I wasn’t aware you needed permission.” He leans his chin into one hand as he speaks. “You normally invite yourself in.”

“Didn’t think it would be wise to sneak up on you today,” Martyn laughs. There is something nervous about it, something unsettled. His face is turned upwards, not glancing over his shoulder every few moments. Scott still notices the way his hands shake, how his shoulders twitch at the rustle of leaves as the wind rushes through the trees. “I've seen the weaponry you carry with you.” Martyn smirks, and Scott grins right back at him.

“If you can climb up, you're more than welcome to join me.” He calls back. He doesn’t ask where Ren is, nor does Martyn ask where the rest of his teammates are. Perhaps Ren is asleep too, has crashed after the stress of the snails and everything they entailed.

He is surprised to see Martyn here; seeing him alone is even stranger – he and Ren have been more attached at the hip than usual recently, so to see one without the other feels as though he’s only seeing half the picture.

Martyn hauls himself onto the wall from the ground, fingers digging into the gaps between the cobbles, leaning an elbow on Scott's dangling foot when he gets close enough. Scott kicks at his ribs, half-hearted at best, but Martyn swings away from the wall, almost seeming to slip, and-

Scott reaches forward, grabbing at the shoulders of Martyn's hoodie. The fabric bunches up beneath his fingers, his nails digging in too deep. He can feel the flesh of Martyn's skin beneath his hands, can feel the life that runs through him, still.

Martyn laughs. “Did you really think I’d fall?”

He still has a grip on the wall, Scott realises. One foot wedged into the cobbles, digging in deep enough that he stands there quite happily, Scott's hands fisted in the fabric of his clothing, uncaring or unknowing of how easily Scott could twist him around, leave him hanging upon the wall and finally retire to his bed.

He does not do this.

He continues to hold Martyn, continues to hold his hoodie even as Martyn pulls himself up. He does not react outwardly, tries not to, as Martyn skims a hand over his leg, up it, feigning difficulty reaching the top of the wall, fingers dancing across the stone teasingly as he searches for some purchase on the unyielding rock.

Scott releases him once Martyn is comfortably on top of the wall, one leg still hanging below, but secure enough that he won’t fall backwards and break himself on the forest floor.

(The drop is not a particularly large one, but he doesn’t want to test anyone’s limits right now. Not when everything seems so much more fragile, when exhaustion weighs at everyone’s bones and slows the mind, when one flailing motion could be the difference between life and death. Scott has seen enough death in the last few hours, has watched his friends get slaughtered by a slow, immovable force. He has stared death in the face several times today, and each time he walked away with shaking hands and a frantically beating heart.)

“You know,” Martyn starts, conversational, “I wasn’t sure you'd be able to catch me.”

“Hm.” The sun is higher in the sky. Everything seems so much brighter than usual to his overtired eyes. “And why wouldn’t I? Have you suddenly lost faith in me?”

“Certainly not.” Martyn shuffles to the side, shuffles closer until their shoulders are a whisper apart. A single movement threatens to press them together from hip to knee. Scott resists, but only barely. He can feel the warmth radiating off Martyn from here. “You’ve had a few changes this season, that’s all. Unless those eyes are purely cosmetic?”

He can feel Martyn's eyes on the side of his face, so intense that he suspects Martyn is reading his mind right now, peering into the depths of his brain and gathering the thoughts together to turn over and examine. There’s not really anything interesting going on in there, just thoughts of the sunrise and how tired he is and how close Martyn now sits next to him, and whether he can shuffle just a little closer, press them shoulder to hip to knee to ankle and play it off as a casual motion.

Perhaps Martyn really is reading his thoughts – or maybe Scott is just tired enough that his wants are written across every inch of his face – because he shuffles closer. Presses his shoulder to Scott's own, a line of heat along the left side of his body. He hooks their ankles together, their legs swinging back and forth together, as though they are one.

“They aren’t.” Scott answers, a little belatedly. The exhaustion makes him slow, makes the thoughts in his brain move like molasses and his tongue weigh heavy in his mouth. “I…well, I guess the forest took a little piece of me when we welcomed BigB in; replaced that missing piece with a little bit of itself.”

“Mm.” Martyn continues to watch. His gaze is warm on the side of Scott's face, watching, cataloguing. Scott wonders if his eyes glow in the light, if they brighten more, turning molten in the face of the sun. He feels warm and heavy beneath the gaze, slow to move, slow to react. He finds that he does not particularly mind. “Then why don't you freeze up when I watch you? You still move, your joints still bend, and your heart still beats.”

“I am not a creature of the forest.”

“But the forest is a part of you, is it not? It has changed BigB, and yet you remain the same, save for these.” The first touch of Martyn's hand to the paper-thin skin beneath his eye is careful, gentle. He touches Scott like he is something delicate, something precious.

He turns into it, leaning into the touch. It turns a little heavier, pressing into his cheekbone. He can feel the pulse of Martyn's thumb, the slow thump of a calm heart behind it. Scott wonders if Martyn can feel the way his own heart races, the way it rabbits in his chest.

His eyes begin to slip shut, half-lidded as he turns towards Martyn. Martyn watches him back, expression shuttered and hidden behind something unreadable.

“Do you like it?” Scott finds himself asking. It’s not what he means to say, and definitely not what Martyn expected him to say. It leaves the two of them just as surprised as each other; it’s just enough to chip away the first corner of Martyn's unreadable mask, leaving something a little more genuine beneath it; something a little more alive.

“I…yeah,” Martyn breathes. He swipes a thumb beneath Scott's eye again, before he shifts his hand to settle it fully against his cheek so it cradles his face; pulls him a little closer. The warmth of his hand threatens to scald the skin, to leave an imprint there; Scott worries, for a moment, that the shape of Martyn's hand will truly burn into his face, that he shall have to return to his teammates and explain away the sudden, hand-shaped marking on one side of his face. “Your eyes have always been my favourite part of you,” Martyn murmurs, voice low, as though this is some scandalous confession.

“I know,” he laughs, muffled, leaning in to keep this secretive air between them. They breathe the same air this close. “I've noticed.”

There’s a light flush of colour along the high of Martyn's cheeks, he notes from beneath lidded eyes. It is like the slow rising of the sun, a slight blush along the sky as it approaches, a precursor to the burst of colour that explodes outwards at the first hint of the sun truly rising.

In a similar fashion, Martyn's flush quickly travels down his neck and across his ears; he looks faintly embarrassed, abashed even as he continues to hold Scott's face within the palm of his hand.

He feels as though he could fall asleep here; simply lean his head a little further into the touch and close his eyes entirely. The skin on Martyn's palm is calloused, a little rough and torn around the edges, but each of the grooves and bumps are something that Scott knows, he has spent hours cataloguing each of the blemishes on Martyn's hands, studying the valleys on the palm of his hand, tracing the individual lines back and forth until Martyn relents and squirms away with a short it tickles as explanation.

Scott raises his own hand to Martyn's risk, encircling it within his own grip. He feels the way Martyn tenses fearing his hand being pulled away, before relaxing once more as Scott simple holds onto him. his fingers lay across Martyn's pulse point, though he does not press hard enough to truly feel it. He watches it instead, eyes on Martyn's neck as it thumps with the steady, hard beat of a heart.

Scott's own heart beats in tandem.

“Your pupils are so bright like this,” Martyn tells him. Scott knows, had spent several hours bent over a small hand mirror when the changes first settled. Had peeled back his eyelid to see how far the orange spread, whether it was the entirety of his eye of simply the most visible part. Even the colour of his veins had changed, glowing a bright gold beneath his skin rather than the usual blue. “I like it.”

“Well, I'm glad. I'm certainly stuck with this pair of eyes for the foreseeable future, until I can switch them out again.”

“Ugh, don't say it like that,” Martyn uses his grip on Scott's face to wiggle his head back and forth gently, chastising. “Makes it sound like you're just going to pop these eyes out and pick your next pair from some gross eye-shop.”

“Maybe I will. Some of the newer eye cybernetics are quite fascinating,” he jokes.

“Don't you dare,” Martyn laughs. “I wouldn’t be able to look you in the eye ever again if you did that!”

“Mm. You certainly wouldn’t be looking into these eyes if I did that.”

“Can't you just take a compliment? Why’d you have to make it all weird – I was being nice. I was being charming, even! And then you had to go and ruin it.”

Scott laughs at the frown on his face. “Poor thing, I've ruined it all for you now, haven’t I?”

“I was being all suave and flirting,” Martyn insists. Scott lets him have it, because he’s certain the awkward, stumbling way he delivered all of his lines was smooth in Martyn's sleep-deprived brain. He's lucky that Scott finds him so endearing otherwise it would have been painful to sit through it all. He strokes his thumb over the soft underside of Martyn's wrist.

“I know, dear.” He assures. “It was very sweet.”

“Thank you,” Martyn preens a little, leaning closer. “Don't you think I've earned a kiss? For all my hard work?”

“And what hard work would that be?” Scott asks, as he leans back just a little. He feels his lips twitch as Martyn frowns. Martyn can be so expressive when he wants to be, when he’s not locking his true thoughts behind a blank mask or hiding them behind an overexaggerated façade. Scott loves the small crinkle between his brow and the way his nose scrunches when he's annoyed, loves to brush those wrinkles away from his face with a soothing touch or a kind word.

“I walked all the way here from my base and climbed this wall to be next to you. That’s hard work, y’know.”

“Oh, yes. You do know there are stairs just behind us, right? Some that you could have climbed to spare you a little of that effort.”

“I prefer taking the more difficult route when it means someone like you is waiting at the end of it.”

“Flatterer.”

“Don't you know it,” Martyn grins. “C’mon, just a little kiss? A small peck, even?”

“When have you ever been content with just a small kiss?” Scott asks. His other hand, the one not currently curled possessively around a wrist, begins to slide up Martyn's side as he speaks. He can feel Martyn's hand at the small of his back, thumb resting just above his hip.

“When have you?” Martyn counters.

And, well, Scott simply shrugs because he has no good response to that. It’s true, certainly. He can think of several moments when their eagerness for contact, for hands upon each other, has been a detriment to themselves and those around them.

He can feel the warmth of Martyn's breath spreading over his cheeks, a ghost of a touch, before the distance is closed and Martyn presses his mouth to Scott's own.

It is a short touch, a press of warmth between the two of them, mouths close and perfectly respectable. Something that lasts all of a few moments as Martyn's hand abruptly moves upwards on Scott's side, slipping beneath his shirt.

He can feel Martyn's smug smile against his lips when they pull back just slightly, away from the moment of intimacy. A breath before a dive.

Scott is the first one to break free from the standstill, eyes slipping fully shut as he slots his lips back against Martyn's, mapping his body out with his touch rather than his eyes as he pushes forward, leaning further and further into Martyn's space.

The hand on his back shifts to his hip, fingers beginning to dig in; any harder and they’ll leave a bruise, Scott tries not to think too hard about that. He doesn’t have to try very hard for long as Martyn presses back at him, recovered from his momentary shock, lips parting as a tongue brushes over Scott's lips.

He sighs into the kiss, a short, breathy sound that he's embarrassed about for all of three seconds before Martyn is drawing the remainder of the breath from his lungs.

He melts forward as Martyn presses another kiss into him, deeper than the one before that, feels his heart stutter in his chest as Martyn bites into his lip, hard enough to draw blood to the surface. The taste of iron doesn’t sway him, if anything it only spurs him on further when they pull apart for a moment, both of their chests heaving from breathlessness and exhilaration alike, and Scott can see the gold of his blood on Martyn's lip, slowly trickling down to his jaw.

He wipes it away with one thumb, succeeding only in smearing it from the corner of Martyn's mouth. It looks like kiss-smudged lipstick and Scott finds that he likes it far too much to be parted from Martyn for much longer than is necessary, pulling him back in.

The heat of Martyn's hand travels up his back, steps over each of the vertebrae in his spine as the moments tick on, seeming to become longer and longer with each moment. Scott can feel the beating of his heart, can feel the thumping of it as Martyn draws a careful hand across the front of his chest, fingers tapping out a rhythm against his ribs.

That rhythm halts, interrupted mid-beat, as Martyn discovers the first protruding shard of bone.

Scott feels the moment he stills against him, all of his loose contentment evaporating as he draws a finger over the exposed bone once more, then again. Scott shudders at the sensation, the sharp drag of skin and nail over the bone travelling right through his body, short frissons of energy bursting out from the site of contact.

“I…what-?”

“You're telling me you’ve never touched a bone before?” Scott asks. “Come on, don't tell me that scares you.”

“It doesn’t,” Martyn insists, loud where he had been quiet before. Both of them wince at the volume and Scott barely represses the urge to glance over his shoulder, check that his teammates sleep on peacefully. If he had woken them, he would most certainly know it. “It’s just…does it hurt? I don't want it to hurt.”

“I don't think you could hurt me if you tried.” He says. Promises, maybe. It feels like the truth to him. Everything feels syrupy and slow, filtered through a haze of amber and gold as he stares at Martyn and Martyn stares back at him, seeking the truth in his honeyed eyes. He smiles as Martyn's face clears, a realisation clicking together in his mind.

“Is…no, nevermind.” Martyn allows himself to trail off, turning his face away.

“Tell me anyway?” he asks. Turns Martyn's face back towards his own with a gentle touch. Martyn doesn’t even feign resistance, all too willing to follow after him. Scott guides his face back towards his own with two fingers pressed to his jaw; Martyn follows behind, blind in his faith and eager to please as a loyal hound might be.

“Is your heart…exposed too?” Martyn asks. His words halting and steeped in hesitance. He refuses to meet Scott's eyes, perhaps ashamed to look at him after asking such a question. Scott does not mind.

“Mm. Why don't you find out?” he invites.

Martyn hesitates for a moment, then two, before he pushes his hand a little further, brushes over more and more of the rib bone, tracing along the curve of it with a reverence that should be reserved for something holy. Scott shivers under the careful attention, averting his eyes when he feels Martyn look upwards from where he's bowed himself over Scott.

The sun reaches higher into the sky, and yet the server is quiet. Scott cannot help but be thankful for this, unwilling for any of his friends to come across the pair of them like this. He cannot help but feel as though he is being laid bare beneath Martyn, even though his shirt hasn’t even come off and Martyn remains similarly clothed.

He swallows as Martyn's finger reaches the end of the bone, circling the point of it curiously for a moment. He feels an inhale catch in his throat, bubbling there as he tips his head back, facing towards the sky. He cannot bear to look at Martyn a moment longer, cannot bear to observe the source of the warmth that presses against his bones with such delicacy, as though they might snap beneath hands, as though Scott is made of delicately woven glass.

He is made of stronger, sterner stuff than that. Only, in this moment, he feels as though he is being unwound, spooled across the ground. No longer a single cohesive being but several parts that have lost communication with each other, sending sensations to his brain that only serve to muddle it further.

Martyn's hand dips into the cavity of his chest, feeling out the edges of it with his fingers, teasing at the skin there with a soft brush of his fingers before moving on.

“You know,” Martyn breathes, a laugh on his tongue, “I didn’t actually believe you.”

“And how are you feeling now?” Scott rolls his head to one side, peeking at Martyn from beneath one eyelid. Martyn finds his eyes anyway, seeking him out easily, as though he’s always aware of when Scott's eyes rest upon him. He can feel the heat in his face, can see it reflected back at him from Martyn.

“Curious.”

Martyn leans up, towards his face once more. The hand inside his chest is still, simply resting there. He presses a kiss to Scott's neck, whisper-soft, then another to the edge of his jaw. He cannot help the way he tilts his head backwards, tipping his chin back to expose more of his neck.

Another gasp shudders its way out of his chest when something brushes against the edge of his heart. He feels the way his heart spasms at the sudden contact, seizing in his chest at the new sensation. He feels the way it bubbles in his chest, expands in his throat until he can scarcely breathe.

He feels Martyn's eyes on him, can feel the way he's waiting for Scott's reaction until he makes another move.

“Are you going to leave me hanging?” He asks. Chokes out, really. Martyn's kind enough not to mention it.

“Just want to make sure your heart isn’t about to give out on us.” Martyn chuckles. “Might be a little awkward to explain to your teammates.”

“I’d leave that part to you.” Scott says. “Please, continue.”

“Only if you're certain, Martyn starts.

“I am.” He pulls Martyn closer, drags him up so he's close enough to kiss back into breathlessness. He shouldn’t be the only one that feels as though his heart is about to burst out of his chest, and Martyn's slow, careful explorations have left him feeling as though his nerves have been set alight. “Come now, don't you want to feel how my heart beats for you?”

That seems to do it. Scott's not quite sure what exactly it was; maybe the wording, or maybe the way he said it. Or maybe it was the small tug of Martyn's hair that spurred him into motion once more, resettled his confidence and allowed him to push through his uncertainty.

All he knows is that in the next moment Martyn's hand surrounds his heart entirely and he feels as though his world has whited out, leaving nothing but the sensation of Martyn's hand and the thumping of his heart behind.

It feels as though his entire being is cradled within the palm of a single hand; like his whole world has shrunk down to just those sensations, that warmth that coats his entire being. It is like being wrapped in a warm blanket, or the feeling of a warm drink travelling down your throat on the coldest day of the year.

He must gasp, or make some kind of sound, because the sensation is retreating just as quickly as it came, leaving him disoriented and near-crying with the loss.

He reaches out with an empty hand, grasping onto the first thing he comes into contact with. It is warm and solid beneath his hand and he curls himself towards it, seeking more of that warmth from before, missing how it had surrounded his entire soul so carefully.

The morning sun does little to battle the chill that settles over him, and he shakes even as a hand smooths over his spine, down his back. It leaves a trail of heat in its wake, but it is still not the same as before, not the same as that all-consuming warmth that he felt for a few moments and perhaps never again.

“Scott?”

He hums in response, feeling too tired to even open his eyes. The exhaustion from the past few days catching up with him, no doubt.

“Geez, man. You can't do that to a guy.”

“Don't call me man,” he mutters into a faceful of fabric. Martyn's shoulder, he's pretty sure now that some of his senses are returning. “You just had my heart in your hand.”

“I, yeah, all right, whatever.” He feels Martyn press his forehead against the top of his head. Feels the sigh he releases into Scott's hair. “That was weird, right? Not just for you but for me as well – I thought you were dying honestly, the sound you made was like a wounded animal.”

Scott snorts. “If this is your idea of being comforting, or even nice, you're missing the mark by a few miles.”

“I'm being worried.” Martyn retorts. “I thought I’d killed you just because I wanted to satisfy my curiosity.”

“Mm, quite the opposite, actually.” He can't think of a moment where he was more content than that one, with a hand around his heart, cradling him in warmth and safety and comfort. He doubts anything could recreate such a sensation, and he has no idea how to put it into words. “It made…hm. It was like being wrapped in the warmest blanket, ugh, no, that’s not right. It was…comforting? Something nice, or safe. Like the idea of comfort and safety bundled into one and then turned into a sensation.”

“Uh-huh.” Martyn sounds distracted, even as he nods against Scott's head. “Um, sorry to burst this little bubble you're in right now, but Cleo’s stood in your doorway glaring at us.”

“I can assure you, she’s only glaring at you.”

“I- ugh, you're insufferable, you know that, right?”

“So you keep telling me,” he uncurls one arm from where it’s wrapped around Martyn (when had that happened? Matter of fact, when had he ended up being cradled against Martyn's chest? Or in his lap?) and waves dismissively in the direction that he hopes Cleo is in. “And yet you continue to crawl back to me each and every time, grovelling at my feet.”

“I haven’t done that since the island!” Martyn yelps, far too loud that close to his ears. Scott still grins at the protest, mind full of the moments when Martyn had pulled himself around the pointless door and begged for sanctuary and allyship. “And I barely grovelled, I only called it that because you were my last hope for a teammate – I’d tried to kill everyone else at that point.”

“You really know how to make a man feel special.”

Martyn isn’t give another chance to defend himself as Cleo speaks up. “You boys all right up there?”

“Peachy.” Martyn calls back. “You can leave us be.”

“So the sound of a wounded, dying animal was someone else?”

Scott stiffens, and he feels Martyn lock up too. No response is forthcoming from either of them, but Scott can feel the way Cleo is staring at his back – she has a way of making her presence known, mainly so she can make fun of him when everyone else turns away. Here, though, it’s worry. Their relationship to Ren and Martyn hasn’t been properly defined, and none of them know where they stand.

For all Cleo knows, Scott could be slowly dying and unable to get a word out. Thankfully, he is not, so he manages to defend Martyn from Cleo’s quickly approaching wrath.

“I'm fine, we were just trying something out.”

“Ugh,” Cleo says. Then, “On the wall, really? Anyone could’ve walked past and seen you two…trying something out.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he tries.

“I don't really care. Or want to know.” Cleo interrupts him. “Go to bed, you're too tired to be fooling around on top of a wall, and if you fall off it and die I'm just going to laugh at you.”

Scott pauses.

“Martyn can come too,” Cleo offers, though the distaste in her voice is clear. “As long as it’s for sleeping and no more experimenting.”

“Well, who can turn down at offer like that!” Martyn goes to stand, only to realise that Scott isn’t going to make a move anytime soon. “Up and attem! C’mon, we've got a grand total of, ehh, ten steps? Maybe twelve? And then you can sleep in an actual bed, all nice and cosied up with me.”

Scott's pretty sure he hears Cleo gag, and that just about seals it for him. Anything to make his friends suffer.

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