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grahamfolgersdeliciousnotebooks · 9 months ago

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I'm back with another oneshot - this one's about Jon's relationship with Daisy, Martin, and his own humanity in season 4. (And also about Jon having a Terrible haircut experience.) Loosely inspired by this amazing fic by @saintbleeding! Check it out on AO3, or read below:

(content warnings for this fic include: -blood -panic attacks -statement hunger/addiction -mentions of past gun violence -mentions of death -references to suicidality)

Jon didn’t like seeing Daisy with a knife in her hands.

It was his own fault, though. He was the one who’d placed it there, who’d asked her to do this, who had assured her – multiple times – that no, really, he was sure, this was fine, and then turned away to expose all the vulnerable veins and tendons of the back of his neck to her discretion, so he really had no one to blame but himself.

But the fact was, he needed a haircut.

He’d known he would need one since he got out of the Buried. From the second Hell spat him out on the dusty floor of his office with mud clinging to his every pore and several intractable mats in his hair that hadn’t been there when he’d gone in, he knew that this was a problem a hairbrush couldn’t solve. They would have to be cut out. He’d known that, but there hadn’t really been time to think about his hair until now. He’d had to go running off almost immediately to Ny-Ålesund, and then to Oxford, and he’d barely had a chance to catch his breath, let alone cut his hair.

He could have tried to do it himself, but the angle was more than a little awkward, and ever since he’d stopped taking live statements, he’d developed an intermittent tremor in his right hand that reminded him unpleasantly of the first time he’d tried to quit smoking and made him nervous about handling knives around his own neck. And anyway, he didn’t much like looking in the mirror these days. He wasn’t fond of what he saw looking back.

His other options were limited. Melanie wasn’t speaking to him except when strictly necessary, which was more or less to be expected as a consequence of unannounced and unanesthetized workplace surgery. And Jon wasn’t exactly her biggest fan at the moment either. Sympathizing with her reaction did nothing to soften the sting of her knife in his skin.

Martin was… not an option. They hadn’t spoken since Martin had left that tape for Melanie and Basira. He had already been avoiding Jon even before one of Jon’s victims had walked into his office and described to him the worst thing Jon had ever done in all its awful detail, so now Jon considered that bridge well and truly burned.

He was trying not to think about it.

He could have asked Basira. He knew that. She also wasn’t thrilled with him of late, but he could have asked her, and she would have said yes. She would have given him a quick, efficient haircut that didn’t leave him shaking with the memory of perhaps the worst night in his entire grand catastrophe of a life. He would have felt safe. But to ask her, he would have needed to look her in the eye, and he couldn’t do that. Not now that she knew what he was.

Daisy was different. Daisy didn’t judge. She couldn’t, when she’d done as much as he had, and more. And he trusted Daisy. He’d made the decision to trust her months ago, and she hadn’t done anything since to make him reconsider that trust.

He only wished he could convince his nervous system of that fact. His heart was a jackhammer, pounding against the walls of his chest with such force he was surprised Daisy couldn’t see it. He dug his nails into the skin of his arm to try and suppress his shakes, and gritted his teeth against the twinge of phantom pain in the scar on his throat.

“You sure about this?” Daisy asked, once again, and once again Jon nodded.

“I can’t make it pretty.”

Jon laughed. “It can’t look any worse than it does now.”

He would miss his long hair. He’d always liked the way it looked. It seemed to soften his features, and he needed that more than ever now. The dark circles under his eyes were a permanent feature these days, and the one-two punch of his coma followed swiftly by his time in the Buried had left him looking unsettlingly gaunt. He doubted his new haircut was going to suit him.

Daisy’s suited her. She’d chopped it all off as soon as she got out, cutting away the hair she’d grown in the Buried and then some. It was a far from professional cut (and didn’t speak wonders for how Jon’s hair would look) but it set off her sharp, angular face quite nicely.

She took a lock of Jon’s hair in her hands. He heard her hmm quietly to herself, considering her approach, before she tightened her grip and began sawing through the hair just above the largest knot.

She didn’t speak. That was something Jon always liked about Daisy. She didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. They’d been spending a lot of time together since the Buried, and most of the time they preferred to just exist in the same room together, keeping each other sane with proximity alone. Basira had once described Daisy as a rock, the one solid thing she could always count on in a universe of chaos, and Jon was beginning to see why. In spite of everything, Daisy could be a reassuring presence, most of the time.

Jon sat in the silence, and tried to focus on the clumps of grey-streaked hair that were falling in small piles at his feet.

She worked carefully. Jon wouldn’t have guessed, a year ago, that Daisy was capable of being gentle, but she was. As more and more hair was cut free from the impossible mats, she teased out what tangles could be salvaged with deft fingers, and the knife skills she must have honed through entirely less wholesome means made her very adept at her work.

But not quite adept enough.

The pain only lasted a second. It was only a minor nick – a brief, sharp, spark of pain – but it was enough.

Jon squeezed his eyes shut against a wave of nausea and fear. He was safe. Daisy wasn’t going to hurt him. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to take that knife to his throat (the same dull pocket knife, because it was the only thing Jon had on hand) and finally finish the job she’d started all those months ago. She wasn’t going to do that. He trusted her. He trusted her. He wasn’t going to collapse into a trembling heap just because a friend was doing exactly what he’d asked her to.

He expected Daisy, for her part, to apologize and move on. Maybe grab a bandage if she was feeling fussy. Instead she stood still and silent for a long moment. When Jon turned around to investigate, she was pressing her eyes closed and taking long, deep breaths.

“Don’t listen to the blood, listen to the quiet, don’t listen to the blood–” she murmured to herself. Then she said to Jon, haltingly, “I’m— sorry. I’m still— no good around blood.”

She dropped the knife. “Sorry,” she repeated. “I— need to go.” Then she stumbled out of the room, leaving Jon bleeding and alone, with half his hair cut.

Daisy leaving the room should have eased Jon’s anxieties. Picking up the knife should have eased his anxieties, too, but there was a tiny red smear of his blood on the blade, and that made things worse. He snapped the knife shut and squeezed it in his palm, trying to ground himself. Being trapped in the Buried hadn’t scared him like this. Staring into the Dark Star and nearly dying hadn’t scared him like this. But getting a haircut, apparently, that was where his nerves drew the line.

He stepped into the hallway.

“Daisy?”

There was no sign of her. Jon wanted to find her, to make sure she was alright, but his scalp was still bleeding and his instincts were still screaming at him that she was going to leap out at him from the darkness and slit his throat, and he knew neither of them would be a calming influence on the other at this moment.

His heart was still beating too hard and his breath was still too shallow and too fast. He squeezed the pocket knife in his hand tighter, but it didn’t help. He’d had enough panic attacks in his life to know what one felt like and know that they weren’t actually fatal, but that did nothing to dispel the familiar certainty that he was going to die. He was going to die right here in this hallway, without ever getting any answers, and he wouldn’t be mourned.

He didn’t even notice where he was going until he was already there.

The door to Martin’s office swung open. “Jon, I told y–” Martin started to say when he saw Jon standing there, but he couldn’t finish the sentence before his jaw dropped. “Je–e–sus, what happened?” He pulled him into the office before he had a chance to answer. He steered him into the seat across from the desk and immediately began grazing his fingers in frantic patterns across Jon’s head and neck and shoulders, turning Jon’s face this way and that, looking for injuries.

“Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“It’s only a scratch.” Jon lifted his hand to the wound and was surprised to find it slick with blood. He’d always heard that scalp wounds bled excessively, but he hadn’t realized how true that was. When he drew his hand back, his fingers were covered in the stuff, red and wet and sticky. It dawned on him suddenly how rough he must look – bleeding, half-shorn, and on the edge of a panic attack – and he tried to explain. “I asked Daisy to–”

“Daisy?” Martin asked sharply. For a moment his whole demeanor changed into something prickly and protective and piqued, and then seemed to make a conscious effort to be more calming. “What did she do?” he asked, with an unnatural evenness in his tone.

“I asked her to cut my hair. Her hand slipped.”

Martin relaxed, but only slightly. “And she just let you bleed? She didn’t think to help?”

Jon shook his head. “Can’t really handle blood right now.”

“It never seemed to bother her before,” Martin muttered, and Jon felt the need to stick up for his friend.

“She’s actually been a lot better recently.”

“What? She hasn’t murdered someone in a week?” he asked, then added in a bitter, sarcastic drawl, “Hooray. Let’s throw a parade.”

And that wasn’t fair; Martin hadn’t even been there. He wasn’t the one who’d watched her kill someone. He hadn’t dug the grave. He hadn’t struggled to keep his grip on the shovel, struggled not to look at the corpse, struggled not to think about how he would be lying dead on the ground, too, any minute. And Jon had moved past it. He had, even if he still smelled the gunpowder in his nightmares some nights, so why couldn’t Martin move on, too?

“She’s trying.”

“Yeah, well, she’ll have to try a lot harder if she wants me to forget what she’s done.” He stepped away for a moment and began digging around in the bottom drawer of his desk until he tracked down a first aid kit. He brought it back, pulled out an absorbent bandage and began mopping up the blood on Jon’s scalp. “Do you honestly forgive her?”

Martin caught his eyes, and Jon felt compelled to answer honestly. “No. There are some things you can’t just forgive.” He looked down at his lap. The tears that had been building behind his eyes since he handed Daisy the knife threatened to spill, but he blinked them back down. He looked back up at Martin. “But she is trying.” His voice broke. “What else can she do?”

Martin held his gaze knowingly, mercilessly, and this was exactly what he had been trying to avoid: talking to someone who knew what he was, and having to look them in the eye.

He stood up and made for the door.

“I should go. I-I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and I– I wasn’t trying to–”

“Jon.” Martin grabbed his arm and held him back. “At least let me bandage it.”

Jon let himself be guided back into the seat and sat still while Martin dabbed carefully at the blood. He could feel the breeze on that side of his head, now that most of the hair had been cut away, and it made him feel uncomfortably exposed.

The pocket knife was still squeezed tight in his fist. He reluctantly unfurled his fingers when he remembered it was there and let it sit, heavy and smooth, in his open palm.

“What are you going to do about your hair?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said. He’d probably have to do it himself in the end, but he wasn’t looking forward to it.

Martin pressed a bandage onto the cut and smoothed out the edges with his thumb. Then he glanced down at the knife in Jon’s hand, and whispered, “I could cut it, if you want. I mean, I couldn’t do it well, but I could do it.”

“Alright,” Jon replied instantly. He thought they were both a bit shocked at his eagerness.

Martin took the knife from Jon. He stepped behind the chair and ran an exploratory hand over Jon’s hair.

“Do you want me to take all of it off, or should I try to keep it as long as I can?”

“Up to you,” Jon said. “It doesn’t really matter how it looks.”

“I’ll try to leave it long for now,” Martin said, “I can always cut it shorter if we need to.”

Martin’s fingers ghosted through Jon’s hair, sizing up his task. His hands were colder than Jon remembered, but it was still nice to be this close. They hadn’t spoken in so long.

It was awkward. The blade was dull, and Martin wasn’t as skilled as Daisy was with a knife. There were a lot of whispered apologies as Martin tugged painfully at Jon’s scalp by mistake. But it was still nice. Jon’s galloping heart finally started to calm, pulse slowing to match the steady, rhythmic shhhhk, shhhhk, shhhhk of the knife passing through the hair by his ears.

“I miss you,” Jon whispered.

“I’m right here.”

“For now.”

Martin sighed. “Look, Jon, I–”

“Have a very important and very secret plan that relies on avoiding me,” Jon finished for him. “I know. I really wasn’t trying for a guilt trip. I just… miss you.” He cleared his throat. It wasn’t intended to give Martin space to say I miss you, too, but he still noticed that Martin didn’t take it. “I’m, uh.” Another cough. “I’m surprised you’re doing this. You don’t have to, if it’s going to spoil things.”

“I can probably be in a room with you for ten minutes without ending the world,” Martin said, but there was something calculating in his voice, like he was actually weighing the probability.

Well. If this was the last ten minutes Jon was going to get in a long while, he may as well address the elephant in the room. They hadn’t spoken since Martin had left that tape.

He opened his mouth. He needed to say something. But what was there to say? I’m sorry? Martin wasn’t the one who Jon owed an apology, at least not about this. I haven’t compelled anyone in a month? A pathetic thing to brag about, worse than saying nothing at all.

As if reading Jon’s mind, Martin whispered, “Why did you do it, Jon?”

The words stuck in Jon’s throat. What was there to say?

“Was it… was it you?” Martin asked.

Jon knew what he meant. Basira had given him the tape, probably assuming – correctly – that the guilt would help keep him in line, so he’d heard Martin’s reaction.

I mean, it’s not him, is it? Not – not really. It’s – what, addiction, instinct, maybe mind control, something like that?

“I thought it might have been the Web,” Jon replied, voice hoarse. “I think… I think I hoped it was the Web. But… I think this is just who I am now.”

The words trailed off until they were almost inaudible, Jon’s throat closing in a self-protective rebellion about what he was saying, but they were true. Little as he wanted to say it, little as he wanted Martin to hear it, the part of him that at this very moment wanted to pry open Martin’s skull and dig out all of his worst traumas was as real as all the parts of him that were horrified at the prospect.

“But you’re trying. Aren’t you?”

Jon nodded. He didn’t think he was succeeding, most days, but he was trying. He didn’t think a person should have to try so hard simply to not hurt people, but, well, he wasn’t exactly a person anymore.

“Well, there you go. It’s like you said” Martin said. “That’s all you can do.”

He fell silent as he sawed through one of the bigger knots. Salt-and-pepper hair drifted to the floor, curling like so many quotation marks.

“And anyway,” he muttered after a moment, “Trying to be better is a lot more helpful than trying to get yourself killed.”

“I–” Jon stuttered, caught out. “I-I–”

“I know what you’re doing–” Martin said, voice slowly growing high-pitched with indignance. “The Buried, Ny-Ålesund – and that’s – that can’t be how you deal with guilt!”

“If I’d stayed in the Buried,” Jon muttered before he could stop himself, “I never would have compelled Jess Terrell.”

“Don’t.” Martin’s voice was sharp, sharper than Jon had ever heard it, and he dropped his hands from Jon’s hair. Even though Martin’s hands were cold, Jon’s skin felt colder when they were gone. Martin repeated, icily, “Don’t.”

“Martin, I–”

“Don’t you dare think like that, because if you get trapped, or killed, or, or I dunno– shot into space, or whatever you get yourself into next, then everything I’ve done will be a waste. This secret, important plan you hate so much is only worth a damn if you’re safe at the end of it.”

His words stirred an itch under Jon’s skin, a deep and urgent need to know. Martin had more information than he did about this – did he know something Jon didn’t about what The Archivist was meant to be? Was Jon going to be responsible for the fate of the world again?

He wasn’t going to compel Martin – he was still just in control of himself enough to resist that – but he prompted him, lightly. “Because…”

“Because I love you! Obviously.”

Oh. Jon had heard the gossip, of course, and he wasn’t quite so oblivious as to never suspect, but, well… a lot had changed. But Martin knew all that, and he said love anyway.

Love. Present tense.

“Martin, I–” Jon murmured, but Martin cut him off.

“Whatever you’re going to say, don’t say it,” he whispered. “That would spoil things.”

“Alright,” Jon said. He could follow instructions for once. But Martin had said nothing about nonverbal communication, so he leaned back until his head came to rest against Martin’s sweater, and nuzzled into his chest. Martin reached a hand up to cup Jon’s cheek, and Jon grabbed it and held it in place, just for a moment.

He hoped his meaning was clear. Even if the stakes were as high Martin said, even if this ruined everything – he needed Martin to know.

Martin pulled away. “Come on,” he huffed affectionately, “Your ten minutes are almost up.”

It had definitely been more than ten minutes, but Jon wasn’t going to correct him.

Martin made quick work of the rest of the knots. He hmm ’ed quietly when they were all out, then took a pass at trying to even out the length of what was left. Judging by the noises he made while he worked, it didn’t go quite smoothly.

“There,” he said eventually, “I think that’s done.” He ruffled the short locks. “There’s a toilet down the hall, if you want to look in the mirror.”

Jon shook his head. “I trust you.”

Martin flashed an apologetic grimace. “You shouldn’t. It looks… Well, you shouldn’t have to deal with knots for a while, I don’t think it’s long enough.”

“Thanks.”

“Any time,” Martin said, and Jon knew it wasn’t true, but it still felt nice to hear.

Jon forced himself to walk away. He wandered back to the Archives, but his mind stayed in the office.

Daisy was in the break room. She looked a lot calmer, standing by the couch doing the stretches her physical therapist had recommended to make up for the muscle atrophy she’d suffered in those long months of entombment.

She nodded approvingly when she saw him. “I like your haircut.”

Jon pushed a self-conscious hair through the startlingly short strands of his newly-shorn hair. “Thanks.”

“Get your head patched up?”

“Yeah.”

Another nod. “Good.”

She didn’t ask who’s done it. Jon had always liked that about Daisy. She didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. Jon fingered the edge of his bandage, and remembered the feeling of Martin’s hands on his skin.

She finished her stretches and walked over.

“I was thinking about ducking out and grabbing a drink. It’s been a hell of a day. You coming?”

He hesitated a moment.

“Sure. Just let me grab my coat.”

Then he set off, to grab a drink, and to think about Martin, and to sit in comforting silence with the friend he loved but could never forgive.

(view this work on AO3)

#reblogs are very appreciated!#i'm honestly kind of proud of this one so any attention you want to give it - rbs likes kudos comments replies etc - would mean a lot #tma fanfic #tma fic #jonmartin fic #jmart fic #do not archive #jonmartin fanfic

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