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Jon wakes. He’d like to say he wakes slowly, but he’s always been the kind of person who is asleep one moment then awake the next.
He’s comfortably warm, stretched out on his back with the duvet tucked snugly up to his shoulders as it had been when he’d fallen asleep. The line of heat running along his stomach and curling up his ribcage is new, though. He opens his eyes and finds he’s turned his head to face Martin during the night. He winces slightly when he feels the imprint the pillow has made on his cheek.
The weight across his middle, of course, is Martin’s arm. His hand is splayed against Jon’s ribs, over the strange divot in his skin where he knows two of them are missing. Jon wonders how Martin’s hands would feel against the bare skin of his torso, without the barrier of his thin cotton shirt. Martin’s other arm is tucked in close to his body, his hand loosely curling underneath his pillow.
The moment feels... heavy. Not the kind of heavy that compresses Jon's diaphragm, crushing his breath before it can leave his throat, nor the kind of heavy that weaves itself between words and makes Jon think too much about his emotions. No, this is the shroud of a thick duvet, the tentative but solid press of a cat curling up on his chest, its purrs shuddering quietly through his sternum. The simple comfort of pressure.
Jon feels held by the very air of the room, as if love has diffused from their bodies and hangs in the air, suspended like particles of dust that turn his stomach to butterflies when he breathes them in. He lies there for a handful of minutes, letting his body soak in it under the thin, pale light of the morning. He’s almost nodded off again when Martin’s arm squeezes him slightly. A huff of breath skates across his cheekbones, and Jon opens his eyes again, not realising he’d closed them.
Martin's face is smooth, the remnants of sleep lingering and flattening out his worry lines. His eyes are open now too, and Jon's gaze drifts to them. Once they had been a deep brown, but the Lonely had sucked the colour out of them until they were a dead grey. Now, Martin's eyes are an indescribable shade, a mix of brown and blue and grey as the fog of the Forsaken fades, its miserable grip on Martin loosening slowly.
But as it stands, Jon doesn't care much for the colour of Martin's eyes, but for the glimmer of unfiltered happiness he finds there that he knows is reflected in his own gaze. He flops onto his side, drawing closer to Martin. His hand comes up to cup Martin's face, thumbing the handful of freckles scattered on the apple of his cheek, which rises slightly when Martin gives him a sleepy smile.
"Jon," Martin breathes, and Jon's heart swoops for the countless time. He wonders how Martin is capable of making a simple greeting sound so full, so reverent. Emotion sticks in his throat, so Jon simply hums in response before wiggling forward into Martin’s chest. He fits his head under Martin's chin, nosing at his collarbone as the man brings both arms up around his back. Jon's hands end up sandwiched between both their chests, and his fingers start to trace slow, idle patterns against Martin's shoulders.
Martin sighs into his hair, and Jon melts a little more under the steady comfort and the recognisable almost-scent of heat radiating from him. They lie like that, curled into each other for a long moment.
“Wh’time’s it?” Martin asks.
“33 minutes past 9,” Jon mumbles without shifting an inch away from Martin to check the time.
“Mhm,” Martin responds coherently, “Y’hair. ‘Smells nice.” The kaleidoscope of butterflies churn and fold in Jon’s stomach as he remembers he’d used Martin’s shampoo the previous evening, having run out of his own. He makes a pleased little noise and— filled with trepidation— presses a quick kiss to the exposed column of Martin’s throat.
He jerks back slightly, startling Jon, but ducks his head back down to peck Jon on the forehead.
“Sorry, ticklish.”
They each settle back onto the pillows, now lying face-to-face again, so close that Jon almost has to go cross-eyed to focus on Martin’s amused expression. “You’re feeling cuddly this morning.”
Jon once again ignores Martin’s comment in favour of pulling him closer, this time wrapping him in his own arms and slinging a leg lazily over Martin’s.
“Alright, okay,” he concedes, taking Jon’s silence in stride and burying a hand in his hair, the pads of his fingers soothing against Jon’s skull. In a quiet, more serious tone, he adds, “Are you alright Jon?”
A moment passes before Jon realises Martin is concerned about him suddenly being the one to initiate the contact between them. Not that he doesn’t enjoy every moment he spends touching Martin; he thinks he’s the one who does most of the small gestures, reaching out to take Martin’s hand in his, pressing his palm to the small of his back as he shimmies past him in the cramped kitchen. It’s just usually Martin who starts the… cuddling (for lack of a less sappy term).
“Of course,” Jon reassures him quickly, “I’m just making the most of our lie-in.” It’s a half-truth, mostly because Jon doesn’t think he could put into words why he feels such an oddly insistent urge to bury himself in Martin’s chest.
The small knot of tension that had formed in Martin’s shoulders loosens. “Oh, yeah. Saturday. I keep forgetting what it feels like to have a day off.”
They both fall silent, content to bask in the warmth of each other's embrace as the sun continues to cast its weary beams through the worn glass window panes. The cloying atmosphere that had enveloped Jon had been begrudgingly lifting its weight as the last curling tendrils of sleep retreated, leaving him feeling slightly unanchored and uncomfortably aware of the itching impulse to get out of bed and make himself useful.
For once, he is unwilling to oblige in his admittedly unhealthy and overzealous work ethic, especially that given their current circumstances, his compulsion to do something worthwhile usually just ends up with him tidying the house for the umpteenth time that week. Jon doesn’t know why this particular morning had imbued him with such a desire, but he wants to be able to sink back into the pleasure of pressure, even if it was only the imagined sense of weight in the air that stemmed from his feelings of contentment rather than any physical mass.
It’s at this moment that an idea pops into his head; an experiment conveniently presenting itself alongside a convincing hypothesis.
Giving himself no time to talk himself out of it, Jon rolls onto his back, gently pulling Martin with him. With his arms already wrapped around Martin’s torso, it’s easy enough to shift Martin’s weight from the mattress onto Jon, Martin making a small noise of confusion. The effect is instantaneous.
Jon had hoped having the sensation of having something physically pressing down on him would be somewhat similar to the heaviness of the atmosphere he so sorely missed. What he hadn’t expected was for the comfort to increase tenfold. He feels tension he hadn’t even known to be trapped in his frame bleeding out, pooling on the mattress, and sucks in a huge breath as if up until now he’s only been using half of his lung capacity.
Martin, quite oblivious to Jon’s shocked euphoria, braces his forearms on either side of Jon and levers himself up a little. “Are you okay? I’m not crushing you, am I?”
“No, no,” Jon replies, “Come back.” But he notices the hesitation in Martin’s face and backtracks quickly, “Unless you don’t want to, of course–”
“Oh, no, I-I do but I– you’re sure it doesn’t hurt?”
Jon pauses, attempting to recall which injury Martin might be referring to.
“Your ribs, Jon.”
“Oh! No, no, they stopped bothering me a while ago,” Jon says, looking up into Martin’s murky eyes. He feels simultaneously touched that Martin is still concerned for the integrity of his ribcage and a bit silly that they’re having this conversation while Martin hovers awkwardly above him. “I’m okay, Martin. Really.”
“Okay, I trust you,” Martin says easily, and Jon can’t decide if he hates the fluttering response of his stomach to those words (he definitely doesn’t). “But you’ll tell me if it starts hurting.”
It’s not a question, but Jon hums an affirmative anyway as Martin shuffles back to rest on Jon. He lets his head rest against Jon's sternum, cheek pressed into Jon's shirt while stray hairs poke and tickle at Jon’s chin. Jon just relaxes, letting himself go boneless. The steady press of Martin’s body against his is grounding him, holding his body together. He gets the uneasy impression that without the combined efforts of the mattress beneath him and Martin on top of him his body might collapse in on itself, like a house of cards. The impression lingers like a nausea you know will lead to nothing, so with the surety of pressure and the knowledge that Martin won’t leave unless he asks him to, Jon pushes the feeling down, squashing it into the recesses of his mind and slamming the doors shut.
Martin, noticing Jon relax against the line of their bodies, huffs a little laugh, and says “You really like this don’t you?”
Jon flicks Martin lightly on the head, and they both laugh at Martin’s slightly indignant but mostly affectionate oi!
“It is nice though. I would’ve done this earlier if I knew you’d wanted to,” Martin continues after they’ve finished giggling (and Jon can hardly fault Martin for not knowing when Jon hadn’t known himself until about 2 minutes ago). One of Martin’s arms attempts to wrap him in a lazy embrace, but in the end, he only manages to tuck his hand against Jon's neck, his fingers tracing an aimless, skittering pattern over the raised scar tissue there. “You’re a good pillow.”
Jon laughs again, still marvelling at how easy it’s become to do that again. “A rather bony one.”
“Still my favourite.”
Their conversation trails off naturally, and Jon finds his hands have drifted to Martin's head; one curling lightly at the nape of his neck whilst the other rests on his cheek, cupping Martin’s face lightly. He wonders how he’d gone so long without this feeling; the absolute safety and security of being smothered by the person you love. Jon thinks he’d remember if he and Georgie had ever done anything like this, and any ither relationships had never got to the cuddling-in-bed stage.
Maybe it’s just Martin.
Jon loves him more than anyone, trusts him more than anyone even though it had taken him years and so many mistakes to get there. They’ve been through hell and worse together, and now they can finally stop running, even if it’s only for a little while, their bodies no longer strung high with adrenaline and the Fears no longer hanging over their heads like a death sentence. God, whether they only have the next 5 minutes or the next five years Jon will be damned if he doesn’t stretch each moment out as far as he can because he knows Martin is it for him. He’s carved out a Martin-shaped hole right next to his heart, and he feels him there with every beat.
Martin speaks, and Jon doesn’t need to hear the words rather than feel their vibrations trembling through his chest. “I can hear your heartbeat,” he breathes, cradling the words to their chests like a bird.
Jon is melting, Jon is expanding outwards like an exploding star a trillion light-years away, Jon is lying on a bed in a room of a quaint Scottish cottage trying not to cry into the hair of the man he loves.
“I love you,” he says, with the knowledge that it will always ring true. “More than anything.”
“You sap," comes the response. "I love you too.” Martin curls up in the space made for him next to Jon’s thudding heart and Jon’s soul sighs.