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“Oh, Jon, I told you to wait!” Martin’s voice sounded distant and hazy to Jon’s ears, though still rich with the cutting, loving disappointment he was all too familiar with. Jon groaned softly, his forehead pressed against the table. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he could if he tried. Martin softened.
“Just wait it out, yeah? Just rest, it’ll be okay.” Martin slowly approached Jon and laid a hand gently on his back. Jon forced out a vaguely affirmative noise as his chest heaved for breath and his head spun. His entire being spun. He knew he was sitting there, hunched over with his forehead pressed firmly against the kitchen table, but to his mind and body, he was sure he was falling in twisting, dizzying spirals. He must have groaned again because Martin started rubbing soothing circles into his back.
“Martin–” Jon gasped out, not lifting his head.
“Shh, shh, don’t say anything. Just breathe. I’m here, Jon. I’m here.”
Jon shuddered slightly, but did as Martin said, focusing on trying to steady his hitching, shallow breaths. His lungs ached and screamed as his hands trembled violently where they lay atop the table.
It hurts, he wanted to say, but he knew he’d just be met with a loving but final: Shh, I know.
Vertigo swelled through him, the sensation of falling refusing to lift from his mind as he clung tightly to the table. Distantly, he heard Martin continue to murmur hushed reassurances, though his ears had begun to ring and Martin’s voice was reduced to a senseless warble.
Jon cursed himself in his head as he squeezed his eyes shut, willing the world to stop spinning around him. Martin had told him to wait, but he was foolish and impulsive and incorrigibly stubborn as ever, and when faced with the option of sitting there and waiting for Martin to take care of him like a child, or looking after himself, the option had seemed so simple. After all, the simple task of feeding himself had never reduced him to a shivering, dizzied mess like this before.
Martin’s hand was warm on his back, and Jon was suddenly aware of how cold he’d gotten. He removed his hands from the table, instead wrapping them tightly around himself in a feeble attempt to warm up from the sudden wave of cold that snapped him up and would not let him go.
Jon inhaled deeply, coaxing air into his parched lungs. He let it out on a choked sigh, trying to steady his airflow despite his body’s insistence that it must be dying. He shivered and shook beneath Martin’s steady, gentle hand, fighting a losing battle for control over his body.
“Easy,” Martin murmured, and Jon realized the ringing in his ears had faded enough to understand him again. Jon pushed back against Martin’s hand slightly, leaning into the warm touch.
“Martin,” Jon breathed again, his voice a little clearer this time. Martin squeezed his shoulder gently.
“It’s okay,” Martin said. “You pushed yourself a little too hard, Jon. Just take it easy.”
Jon choked out a wheezing, bitter laugh that left him gasping for breath immediately after. “I made a- a sandwich, Martin.” He paused, heaving for air. “It was just a–”
“I know. I know. But you need to be gentle with yourself, Jon. You know why.”
“I know,” Jon huffed, his forehead still pressed against the table. He knew he was lucky to even have survived being ripped away from the Eye. To be truthful, he’d been nearly certain he would die. He’d been more Eye than Jon by the end of things, and to have survived losing all of that had been unlikely to put it generously. He knew he should be grateful to even be alive, yet as he lay there, shaking and groaning in pain over the exertion of making a sandwich, he found it remarkably difficult to feel anything but suffocating bitterness and shame.
“Can I get you anything?” Martin asked. “Water?”
Jon shook his head against the table. “Just stay,” he rasped out, suddenly feeling very small. “Please.”
“Of course.”
Martin rubbed gentle circles over Jon’s back, running his thumb along his spine, tracing each vertebra where it jutted out awkwardly from beneath his skin. Jon melted into the touch, trapped firmly between hardwood and Martin’s gentle, loving touch. Steadily, he began to feel his breath and awareness slowly come back to him. The room steadily stopped spinning, allowing him to reign in his dizziness and vertigo until he almost felt tempted to try sitting up. He knew better.
Jon sighed in frustration, feeling the table dig into his face. “This is ridiculous.”
“Maybe,” Martin conceded. “But it’ll be worse if you fight it.”
“Yes, I think I’ve figured that out,” Jon said bitterly, his arms still clutched tight around his stomach.
“Well, maybe now you’ll remember to listen to me when I tell you to rest.”
Jon sighed again, then deflated a bit. “I’m sorry, Martin.”
“It’s– it’s fine. I know it can be hard to relax when–”
“No, I meant– I meant for all of this. That you… have to take care of me. I’m sorry, Martin, I never meant to put you in this kind of situation.”
“Oh. Oh, Jon, no.” Martin carded a hand through Jon’s matted, greasy hair. “Can you look at me?”
Jon groaned softly as he turned his head to the side, now pressing his cheek into the table, and looking up at Martin. Martin gently rubbed his thumb over Jon’s cheek, letting Jon melt into the soft touch.
“Jon, this– I like taking care of you. I mean, obviously, I don’t like that you’re hurting, but, I mean, I want to be here for you, Jon. This isn’t– you’re not forcing me into anything. I’m here because I want to be.”
“Oh,” Jon replied rather lamely. He looked away, resting his forehead back on the table. “Right.”
“Yes. Right ,” Martin said, gently rubbing the back of Jon’s neck. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
Jon sighed. “I know.”
“Then let me show it. Let me take care of you.”
“Martin, I-” John sighed again, feeling entirely foolish with his face pressed into the table. “I can’t ask this of you. This is too much.”
“You’re just a little sick right now, Jon. It’s not forever.”
“What if it is, Martin? What if this is all there is? For the rest of our lives? What then?”
“Then we adjust. We learn to live with it.”
“I can’t let you throw your life away to take care of me, Martin. You don’t– you don’t deserve that.”
“It’s not about what we deserve though, is it?”
“...What?”
“You don’t deserve to be sick. You didn’t deserve what Elias put you– put us through. You didn’t deserve to lose yourself to the Eye. You didn’t– you don’t deserve what you’ve been through, Jon. But it happened. And– and we can’t take it back. Any of it. We just– we have to make do with what we have. And– and you have me. And I’m not leaving.”
“Oh,” Jon breathed out. He slowly turned his hand over, reaching up blindly (he felt blind so often these days) to Martin. “Martin, Martin can I–”
Martin laced his fingers between Jon’s, gently kissing his knuckles and holding Jon’s hand tight as it went limp in his grip. Jon’s arm trembled uncontrollably until Martin brought it in close to his chest, steadying the shaking, withered husk of a man bent over the chipped kitchen table.
“I’m here,” Martin murmured. “Relax, Jon. It’s going to be okay.”
“No,” Jon rasped out, his voice thick. “It’s not.”
Martin hummed softly. There was a conviction to Jon’s words that even Jon himself hadn’t expected before they fell from his lips. It was stupid, he knew, to sound so sure of anything anymore. He’d never again know things the way he once had, and he wasn’t sure if the surge of emotion, threatening to turn to tears that swelled through him at that thought, was from joy or grief. He didn’t want to grieve for it. He didn’t want to care.
“Maybe,” Martin conceded. “But I’ll be here.”