#idk if i'm just losing my marbles but it looks like they managed to find a kid who looks like two different species of animated characters

[monsieur-kazzle-dazzle]

my heart can't take it anymore

[bibliocratic]

So I'm binging tma and I just realized... Martin loves spiders, known havers of many eyes, and Jon is also a known haver of Many Eyes. This is probably an old take but I needed to share my epiphany with someone, and I love your writing, so here we are. Hope you have a good day today!

OP that is some galaxy brain right there, you’re doing the lord’s work. 

jonmartin fluff, or: Martin ‘Known-Eyeball Admirer’ / Jon ‘Known-Eyeball Possessor’

(If you're not a fan of eyes for any reason, this fluff might not be up your alley. Body horror, but like TMA-brand fluffy horror? idk ymmv)

“Let me have a look then?”

“Would you get – the dishes, you'll chip them!”

Jon's exclamation is weathered by endearment. Arms bind round him like a loose aperture, a sudsy grip pulled out of their small kitchen sink.

There's stubble against the nape of his neck.

“I just want to see,” Martin mimics petulance and Jon huffs a smirk.

“They are my eyeballs,” he responds primly, putting down a dry mug and picking up a plate to towel off.

“What's the point of having horror-bestowed physical improvements if you don't show them off?”

“I wouldn't call them physical improvements,” Jon harrumphs, but Martin butts the back of his neck with a scruffy scratch of his chin in an obvious now stop that.

“And I disagree,” Martin says, kissing the skin he's reddened. “I think they're cool.”

Jon makes another scoffing noise but Martin sees him preen. This is Martin's rather transparent master-plan. Since coming to the safehouse, Jon's tightly wound control has become a loose, slid-shod thing, and he doesn't always notice that the his eyes have begun to replicate, double or triple on his face. Martin will murmur to him after a nightmare, Jon scooped into the tight closure of his arms, and watch the faint moonlight glint off the wide and rounded robs that wrap around his face like a crown. Will slyly, carefully and discreetly watch a marble-shaped circle rise like an island resurfacing from the depths on his scarred cheekbone, its brother slowly mirroring it on the other cheek when Jon tries to peek at Martin's poetry, more flocking to his face as Martin pushes him away and Jon tries again and a minor tussle is had, boyish and giddy with ease. The way they erupt on his face like water boiling when he's frustrated, angry.

It's knee-jerk, a side-effect of the being he is now. But Jon doesn't like it when Martin looks. Locks himself in the bathroom when he knows they've manifested, going quiet, asking to be excused, dealing with them like some sort of secret shame.

Martin doesn't want that. Not here. Not when they're both getting used to the fact they might finally be safe after everything.

“Not right now then,” Jon says, trying to gesture at the dishes, implying that Martin has a duty he is neglecting.

“I'm in no rush,” Martin says agreeably, and scrubs the growth on his cheek against Jon's neck one more time just to see him squirm and complain.

He gets his chance later. Jon, absorbed in an incredibly academic documentary about Ancient Mesopotamia, has all his eyes speckling open on his face, wide as owl pupils. Martin finds it entirely adorable, as Jon makes an appreciative 'hm' as some fusty woman in a suit-jacket and book-handling gloves drones on about particular pieces of craftwork found from archaeological digs, and two more eyeballs float up to the top of his head apparently so he can better appreciate the ancient pottery.

None of this is Martin's interest, and Jon's leaning on Martin's arm so he can't exactly read, so he takes the furtive opportunity he's been granted to count Jon's rounded black-shot eyes as he sits attentive and entertained.

The two at the front are where human eyes might sit, flanked by decreasingly smaller shapes like a royal coronet. Two squatter ones sprout under the biggest ones, half-lidded like half-moons. That's – six, seven, eight – he can see but he's pretty sure he can see the glint of some crouched by Jon's hairline like little led bulbs.

He innocently tries to play with Jon's hair on the pretence of pushing it away from his face.

Jon swivels around, clearly having none of it. All his eyes mould back into his skin like flattening plaster against a wall.

Martin groans.

“Now I have to start again,” he tsks, and Jon cocks his head. Martin's suddenly regained the entire focus of his attention, and it's a little bit like being caught in sudden, glaring unblinking sunshine finally peeking out from behind cloud.

“Are you counting again?” Jon asks. Martin can't tell if he sounds put-out or not.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you won't let me normally. And I like looking at them!”

Jon makes a face. His martyr-for-the-cause face. Martin takes great pleasure in displacing that expression as efficiently as possible.

“You don't think they're a bit... you know.”

“What?”

Jon sighs, as though irritable that Martin is not psychic. An eye pops up cheerily at the corner of his mouth. Jon grits his teeth. The eye winks out sharpish.

“Spooky,” he says finally, imbuing the word with the venomous distaste he feels it deserves.

“I think they're neat, honestly.” Martin says, treading carefully. He doesn't use the word cute. They're cute in the way spiders eyes are cute; a little bit unnerving, a magnificent piece of adaptation, just really nifty. Jon would not appreciate being called cute.

Jon pauses. Martin watches an extra cluster of eyes like conjoined freckles cautiously float to the surface of his skin.

“Fine,” he sighs out, and dutifully turns around so Martin can get a proper look at his mildly tense, oddly open expression.

Martin beams delighted.

He counts them out loud, starting at the larger ones that huddle near his forehead and upper cheeks, moving to the smaller slitted ones that ring round like those Christmas paper chains.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

Wait.

Martin frowns. Goes back. Jon sits placidly and waits. His multitude of eyes all focus on Martin expectantly.

He recounts the bigger ones.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen...

That one. The one cresting Jon's right cheekbone. That wasn't there before, he's sure of it, but he couldn't have missed it twice.

Jon makes sure Martin has sat back, grumbling and puzzled. Smirks.

Martin watches the eye adorning his cheekbone dip cheekily out of view and then resurface on his throat.

“That's cheating!” he says.

“You were up to thirteen,” Jon says as though he hasn't heard him, a schooled, butter-wouldn't-melt expression. He deliberately and wantonly loses two eyes only to replace them with a gleaming five more. “Chop, chop, Martin, I'm a busy man, can't sit here all day.”

Jon's eyes flex in and out in a mannerism almost like a wink.

“Come on!” Martin says, laughing at the absurdity of this man flashing his eldritch eyeballs at him, trying to hold Jon's face in his hands so he can properly count them out. “That's cheating, come on, let me!” He makes a laughing exclamation of “Jon, that's nasty!” when Jon's eyes wilfully roll under his fingertips and he gets the gross sensation of touching them, the sensation similar to  hot and slightly damp marbles.

Jon's laugh is high and pleased with itself, and almost a giggle as Martin, disgruntled, wipes his fingers on his shirt, and then he's scrabbling back as Martin surges forward, making a face  as though he's trying to kiss them. More eyes pulse delighted and happy out of his skin as he squirms and squeaks and tries to push Martin's face away.

“Martin! Martin! That's disgusting, honestly, who raised you – H-ha! Martin!”

Martin never does manage to count them all.