Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Martin spots it between some branches when he’s trimming the topiary. There was a light rain last night, and the strands of the spider web glisten with lingering raindrops, catching the faint morning light. He stops for a moment to admire it. 

It doesn’t really matter if he’s a bit slow with his tasks. The Lukas grounds are large, he has to admit, and it adds up to a lot of work for just one gardener to keep up with, but it means that he doesn’t have any coworkers or superiors to get annoyed at him for getting distracted for a bit. Not even the Lukases themselves are going to notice-- he’s worked here for years now, and the number of times that he’s seen the inhabitants can be counted on one hand. He doesn’t really interact with the staff that takes care of the inside of the house either, so it’s basically just him. 

Which is fine. It’s… peaceful. 

He peers between the branches at the spiderweb, gently pushing some away to get a better view. He wonders what kind of spider it is, if he can catch a glimpse of it. There aren’t that many types in England, but-- 

Oh. He doesn’t spot the spider, but there’s something else trapped in the middle of the web. A large moth, its wings splayed helpless and immobile. As he watches, he sees its legs wriggle ineffectually in the air. It’s a surprisingly pitiful sight, making Martin’s heart unexpectedly wrench a bit for the poor thing. 

Well, that’s… it’s natural. The natural cycle of life and death. Spiders are important to the ecosystem. They need to eat bugs, and it’s good that they eat bugs, it’s what they’re for. He’s just… being sentimental. The quiet’s getting to him a bit, that’s all. 

“Sorry,” he can’t help but apologize to the thing, as silly as it is, and he moves to let go of the branch he’s holding, to go back to work. But then he finally spots it: the spider of the web itself. It’s a big thing, just a little bit bigger than the moth itself. It steps delicately onto the web, and slowly begins to crawl towards the moth, as if it has all of the time in the world. And it does. The moth is stuck, isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The moth seems to realize what’s happening somehow, some animal instinct kicking in. Its wriggling legs and its attempts to flap its trapped wings grow more frantic and hurried at the spider’s placid approach. Desperate. 

It’s natural. The cycle of life and death. Like a cat eating a mouse. Like a lion eating a gazelle. Martin likes spiders. It’s not doing anything wrong. It’s just doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s not like he needs to stand here and watch while it happens. He should leave, get back to work. It’s just a moth. 

… The poor thing is clearly so scared. As scared as any bug can get, he supposes. 

“Oh, screw it,” he says, and impulsively reaches out and plucks the moth out of the web before the spider can reach it. He tears about half of the web to shreds as he does it, and he does feel bad about that, he does. But it can rebuild its web, can’t it? And it can find something else to eat.  Something that Martin hasn’t laid eyes on and formed a stupid little emotional attachment to. 

He opens up his hand, and looks down at the moth laid out on his palm. It’s still panickedly twitching and squirming, some lingering strands of web tangled in its wings. It’s a big but plain thing. Brown, mostly. 

“Shh,” Martin says, as if that’ll help anything at all. “Calm down. You’re out of the web now. Let me just-- yeah, there we go.” 

He reaches out with one careful finger and pulls at a trailing strand of web, and manages to pull most of the rest of it off along with it. The moth flaps its wings, and that gets rid of the rest of it too. It stays seated on his palm for another long moment. Martin lifts his hand up a little bit, as if to give it a boost up into the air. 

“Come on,” he says encouragingly. “What are you waiting for? Don’t you have… moth things to do?” 

Another moment. Martin worries for a moment that maybe its wings are damaged-- and then it lifts off, its wings fluttering as it leaves Martin’s palm, up into the air. 

“There you go,” Martin says, smiling, feeling absurdly accomplished at himself for doing something so little, so insignificant. 

Well, he’ll take his accomplishments where he can get them. The moth flies off, and Martin gets back to work. 

Chapter Text

Martin technically doesn’t live on the Lukas family’s property, but there’s nothing else for miles around that’s closer. If he’d moved into the closest possible village to Moorland House, he’d have to drive for over two hours each day, going back and forth at the beginning and end of the day. It’s just easier and cheaper to buy a small house tucked away out of sight in a little wooded area that’s about a twenty minute brisk walk away from where he works, and go down into town about once a week for groceries and such than to actually live there. It was a practical decision. He doesn’t regret it. 

Even if it would be nice to hear neighbours getting up to face the day in the morning through the walls as he does the same, to see other people in the distance as he goes about his business. To wave a greeting at someone as he passes by, or smile at someone he accidentally makes eye contact with. 

He’s being stupid. He used to live in London, for god’s sake. He’d hated it, after a few years. Or, not hated, exactly. He’d just felt a bit like he was drowning. Surrounded by so many people, and yet still all alone. He’s letting nostalgia fool him, if he lets himself forget that. The mere presence of other people isn’t some sort of miraculous balm, no matter how much he’s currently looking forward to making small talk with the cashier next Saturday when he pops down to the village to replenish on necessities. It’s better to be alone and surrounded by no one, than to be in a crowd and feeling just as stranded. At least this way, he doesn’t feel like he’s just making all of it up in his head. 

Also, the house that he can afford out in the country is far better than the flat he could afford in London. No mold, for one thing. He’d used to call his flat cozy, but his house actually is cozy. Small, but not enough so to feel suffocating. It’s a comfortable, picturesque little thing, and he’s got it decorated just the way he likes it, with thick, soft quilts tossed over bed and sofa and armchair, and cute little knickknacks that cover shelves and window ledges. It’s a chilly spring, but inside the safety of his home, the sunshine streams in warm and soft through his window panes. 

Martin dozes comfortably in that pleasant sunshine, content in the knowledge that it’s not a work day, and that his sheets are warm and toasty, the body curled up in his arms breathing soft and steady. It’s a perfect morning. He could spend hours like this. 

If it just weren’t for the rising, niggling sensation in the back of his head that something’s wrong. Did he… forget to lock the door last night? Why the hell would that matter? He has no neighbours. Maybe he forgot to turn the stove off before going to bed. That would be a bigger worry. 

The ‘something is wrong’ feeling isn’t going away. He really should get up and go and check on the stove. Out of his nice warm bed, with the nice warm sheets, and the nice warm body. Martin gives a sleepy, annoyed whine of protest, nuzzling further down into his bed. He doesn’t want to. He squeezes his arms tighter around the-- around-- 

There’s a small, surprised exhalation from someone that isn’t Martin, and the distant, nagging sensation very, very quickly turns into shrieking alarm bells. His eyes spring open. 

Only inches away from his face there’s another person already staring directly into his eyes. Male, brown skin, long black hair pooled out on the pillow underneath his head, an expression on his face like he’s been looking at Martin for a very long time now, who the hell is this-- 

Martin makes a deeply undignified noise-- something like “YACK!”-- and recoils so violently that he falls right out of his bed, onto the floor. He blinks rapidly up at the ceiling, his head spinning, his heartbeat thundering in his chest. He went from comfortably dozing to a vicious spike of terror in the span of five seconds, and he’s reeling from it. What the fuck just happened? 

Before he has the chance to even begin to convince himself that he just had some kind of weird dream, the strange man pops his head out from the side of the bed, looking down at Martin with a furrowed brow that looks like it could either be from concern or confusion. 

“What are you doing?” he asks in a deep voice, as if Martin’s acting very strange right now. 

“What-- what am I-- who the fuck are you!?” Martin demands, his voice rising hysterically like a spiking line on a seismograph. 

The man blinks once, as if it’s an absurd question. 

“Your… husband?” he says, an uncertain tinge to his tone not like he’s unsure of the answer, but like he doesn’t know why Martin even needs to ask the question. 

Martin takes a deep breath to shout some more, and then he takes another deep breath, and another. The man stares at him the whole time, still like he’s being the weird one. Martin closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see that expression, because he is not being ridiculous. 

His heart is still going a mile a minute, but he tells himself to--despite all current circumstances--to calm down. Calm down, and think. He can do that, because the man… isn’t lunging at him. He isn’t waving a weapon around, or shouting, or even approaching him. Whatever the hell he’s doing here, he clearly isn’t immediately dangerous. 

Even though breaking into someone's house and then sneaking into their bed is absolutely insane. Because god, that must be what happened, right? It’s not like Martin got blackout drunk last night and brought home some one night stand. This isn’t London, where a guy can take another guy back to his place and it isn’t that big of a deal, and Martin’s never been one for getting blackout drunk either. Or for one night stands, really. No, he was dead sober last night, and he thinks that he would’ve remembered if he’d gone to bed with someone else. He doesn’t even know who this is. Christ, there isn’t even anyone else living around for miles! 

Martin gets that some people do that sort of thing-- breaking into people's homes and beds. A very, very few and strange people, but he gets it. Creeps and perverts are a thing. But he lives out in the middle of nowhere. He can’t even get mail out here, he has to go visit the post office down in the village. So for this guy to end up in his bed-- it makes no sense. He’d have to have specifically targeted Martin beforehand, premeditated. And Martin’s just… well, he’s a gardener with nothing much else going for him. He can’t really imagine anyone becoming stalkerishly obsessed with him. It’d be like being fascinated with a plain brick wall. 

So, no, this probably isn’t just some random pervert. It’d be really, really weird if he was. Not that anything about this isn’t weird. 

It’s insane. This whole situation is insane. 

“Did you fall back asleep?” 

Martin opens his eyes. The strange man is still looking down at him, peeking at him over the edge of the bed, leaning on his crossed arms. 

It is an insane situation, isn’t it? As in, something only an insane person would do. What had the man said, earlier? That he’s Martin's husband? 

“Do you… know where you are?” Martin asks, his rabbit quick heartbeat slowing a bit as he starts to grasp at an explanation. One that isn’t that some dangerous stranger has invaded his home, far away from where anyone could possibly hear him scream for help. 

The man tilts his head at him. “In bed,” he says, in a duh sort of way. 

Martin gets up. “I-- okay, that’s not what I meant. What’s the last thing you-- ohmygod.” 

When the man had been looking down at him from the bed, Martin had seen his bare shoulders, known that he was shirtless. It doesn’t occur to him until he’s standing and sees the sheets draped over his hips, just barely covering-- covering what’s necessary, that the man might not be wearing anything at all. 

The man blinks up at him, guileless and casual, like he isn’t naked and uninvited in Martin’s bed. Martin’s struck with the stray, hysterical thought that he’s beautiful, actually. He doesn’t look like he belongs in Martin’s bed. He looks like he should be a painting, a study on the way dappled sunlight hits soft brown skin and shines against long dark hair. 

“What?” the man asks, and yep, he’s definitely crazy, or unstable, or mentally ill, or whatever Martin’s supposed to call it. Confused. He’s confused. 

He’s confused, so Martin really shouldn’t be staring like this, pole axed and wide eyed. It’s-- it’s taking advantage. Or something. 

Snapping out of it, he leans down and quickly tugs the sheet that’s on its way to slowly sliding that last precarious inch down the man’s hips up, covering him more modestly. 

“Clothes first,” Martin says tightly, very aware of the fact that he’s just wearing some soft boxers and a tee, and the man not even that. “Then we can talk.” 

“Why can’t we talk now?” the man asks. 

Martin’s already turned away from his bed though, and has started scanning his room. “Where did you put your clothes?” 

“I don’t have clothes,” the man says, sounding annoyed and bewildered. 

That’s ridiculous. He can’t have been walking outside naked, not at night, not in these temperatures. His clothes must be somewhere. Martin keeps looking. 

“You’re strange,” the confused, naked man says after a moment, watching him search. 

“Did you really come here wearing nothing?” Martin asks, distressed at the very idea. 

“Yes,” the man says. “I didn’t need clothes before. I suppose that I get colder easier like this. That must be why you people are always wearing the things.” 

Martin has no idea what you people is supposed to mean, and he kind of doesn’t want to know. 

“You can borrow some of mine,” he eventually says in defeat, and starts rifling through his wardrobe for some clothes for the both of them. 

“What is mine is yours,” the man says. “It… doesn’t really have to go the other way, though. Considering the circumstances.” 

“The circumstances?” Martin asks, in the middle of pulling on some trousers. 

Very earnestly, the man says, “You saved me.” 

Martin has never seen this man before in his life, and the closest he’s ever come to ‘saving’ someone before is paying his mum’s bills. Not that that wasn’t hard, but the way this man intoned the words, it almost sounds like Martin bravely dived into a raging storm and then after dragging him onto shore administered CPR on him. Not exactly the same thing. 

He finds the smallest sweater and trousers he owns, some clothes that he hasn’t quite been able to fit into since he gained a few extra pounds some years ago, and yet still hasn’t gotten around to throwing out yet, like he’s ever going to shed those pounds again. They’re still going to be too large on the man. Better than nothing. 

When he turns around to give the man the clothes, the man has his back turned to him, looking curiously around at Martin’s small, cluttered little bedroom. Martin stops and blinks. The man has a tattoo. A piece that covers his entire back, a pair of folded up wings. Not angel or bird wings, no feathers-- they look like they’re supposed to be the wings of some sort of insect. 

He’s entranced for a moment-- it’s beautiful work, despite how simple the wings are. They have a depth to them. Seeing that man’s face, having briefly spoken to him, Martin somehow hadn’t expected for him to have a tattoo, especially not such a large one. It feels a bit like finding an elaborate stained glass window in an incongruous, unexpected place. 

Then he realizes that he’s staring at a naked man, a stranger, and he flushes and tosses the clothes onto the bed, turning slightly away. The man turns to cast an askance glance at the clothes on his lap, looking terribly a lot like an ungrateful, disgusted owner when their cat brings them a dead mouse as a present. 

“Put those on,” Martin says, voice firm with how desperately he needs for this man to be dressed already. And out of his bed. And if he could stop being so pretty for five minutes, that would be really helpful as well. This whole situation is stressful enough as it is without Martin constantly being caught off guard by how attractive he is. “Please.” 

“Very well,” the man says reluctantly, as if he’s agreeing to something distasteful. 

The sheets rustle as the man gets out of the bed, and Martin catches a glimpse of even more bare skin out of the corner of his eye-- he inhales sharply through his nose and turns firmly all the way around. His face feels hot. 

It’s too early in the morning for this. He’d been planning on sleeping in, for god’s sake. He squeezes his eyes shut and listens to the man dress himself. It’s fine. It’s going to be fine. This is a weird situation, but one with a solution. He just has to find out the man’s name, his address, and finds his family or his caretaker or wherever the hell he’s supposed to be. If he’s this delusional normally, then that means that there must be someone who takes care of him, right? Or maybe this isn’t his normal, and he’s just having some sort of breakdown. In which case, Martin still needs to get him help. 

Behind him, he hears an annoyed grunt, and the continued rustling of clothes. The moment is starting to drag out weirdly long. 

“You done?” Martin asks, not turning around. 

“No,” the man says, his voice short with irritation. He hears a little thump, like the man had just hopped on one leg or jumped or something. Martin had handed him a loose sweater and some drawstring trousers, no buttons or zippers or fasteners. Nothing complicated. It really shouldn’t be causing him this much trouble. 

“Are you…” Martin says, his voice trailing off mid sentence like a flickering lightbulb. Behind him, he hears small noises of exertion and irritation, as if the man is battling the clothes or something. He takes a deep breath, and forces himself to say it. “Do you need help?” 

“I can figure it out!” the man snaps. “I’ve seen people change, it’s easy.” 

“You’ve… never dressed yourself before?” Martin carefully tries to keep his tone neutral, credulous. He’d had to help his mum get changed almost every morning for years, but she’d been very physically ill. This man doesn’t seem stiff and pained the way she had been, but-- but there’s different kinds of ill. Obviously, the man has something mental instead of something physical going on. Martin isn’t really used to that, doesn’t quite know how he’s supposed to handle this. His mum had always been sharp as a tack, despite everything else. 

Maybe he shouldn’t be comparing his mum and this man so much, if their illnesses are so different, but she’s his only experience with this sort of thing. He can’t stop his mind from going there. 

“No,” the man says simply. 

“I’ll help you,” Martin says, a declaration instead of an offer. 

“Fine,” the man bites out, sounding a little muffled now. 

Martin still hesitates, but he makes himself turn around in the end. He’s relieved for a split second to see that the man at least managed to pull the trousers all the way up on his own, although the drawstrings are loose, putting the trousers at terrible risk of simply sliding down his narrow hips. Then he registers what’s going on with the sweater, and he can’t help but make a small, surprised choking noise. 

The man’s head and arms are completely tangled in it like it’s a loose ball of yarn, his hands forced up over his shoulders, his eyes blinded. It looks like he’s become terribly lost on the inside of the sweater, unable to determine which limb is supposed to go out of which hole. 

“Oh, just-- hold still for a moment, wow,” he says, and gets to work straightening that whole situation out. The man holds obediently still, and Martin manages after a moment to pull the sweater down over his head, and the man quickly figures out after that how to get his arms through the proper holes. 

“The trousers were easier,” he says, looking mulishly embarrassed at having needed help. “I had to do the blouse blind.” 

“It’s a sweater,” Martin corrects, hands hovering awkwardly as he tries to work up the force of will to tighten and tie off the drawstrings for the man. 

The man makes a dismissive, disdainful noise. “Why do you have a dozen different words for articles of clothing that are barely different from each other?” 

“I guess they both go on the top part of the body,” Martin says skeptically. He takes a deep breath like he’s about to plunge underwater, and he makes himself quickly tie off the man’s trousers. It feels like something far too intimate to do with a stranger, but he really can’t handle the thought of them just sliding down midconversation. 

“Exactly!” the man says with righteous indignation. “It’s needlessly confusing, and inefficient.” 

He really isn’t particularly incoherent, for someone who’s so delusional. Like, a lot of the stuff that he says either doesn’t make sense or is just very weird, but it’s unexpectedly consistent. Maybe that’s just a sign that Martin’s seen too many poorly written mentally unstable characters on television though, instead of actually talking to one of them. 

“There,” Martin says with great relief. “You’re clothed. Let’s-- let’s go downstairs, okay? And we can have a cuppa while we talk.” 

He’s a bit eager to get this man out of his bedroom. It’s just-- it’s a nerve wracking setting to have him in. Maybe Martin will stop noticing every two minutes how lovely he looks if he can just get him out of here and into the living room, or the kitchen. Those are very-- very sexless and unarousing places, right? 

He’s making zero sense. 

“If you say so,” the man says. He’s… very agreeable. He does what Martin tells him to do. Perhaps he’s used to being told what to do, if he has a caretaker who often has to make decisions for him? 

They go downstairs. The man stumbles once and has to catch himself on the bannister, which makes Martin’s heartbeat spike with panic for a moment. 

“I usually just fly,” the man says defensively. 

“Right,” Martin says. If this man is taking any medicine, then he’s probably missed a dose or two by now. He watches him more closely the rest of the way down, ready to reach out and catch him if he slips again. 

He draws out a chair at his kitchen table for the man, and then busies himself filling up a kettle and setting it on the stove. He’d debated with himself whether or not to buy one or two kitchen chairs when he’d first moved here-- it would be a waste to get two wouldn’t it? It’s not like he was going to be having any visitors, and it would be depressing to see the second chair just stand there unused, gathering dust. But he’d decided in the end to get two anyways. After all, what if he did end up having a visitor? It would be inconvenient if he only had the one, then. Said visitor would probably just be some random stranger whose car broke down near his house or something like that, but he’d grasped at the excuse. He hadn’t wanted to just have one kitchen chair. It had seemed like such an overwhelmingly sad and pathetic thing to do. 

Well, now he has a visitor, and he has two chairs. Admittedly they could just go and sit on his squashed living room couch instead, but he stands by his earlier decision. He’s been vindicated, even if it’s in the strangest possible way. 

“S’cuse me,” he says after he’s set the kettle to boil, and he does a quick lap of the first floor of his house. 

Both the front and back door are closed and locked. All of the windows are unbroken, firmly closed and locked as well. 

That… doesn’t make any sense. How the hell had the man gotten in? 

… Maybe Martin forgot to lock the door after himself after all, and the man had just locked it behind him when he came in. Yes, that has to be it. 

The kettle starts to shriek, and Martin startles, realizing that he must’ve gotten lost in thought, just staring at his locked front door with a slight frown to his face. He hurries back to the kitchen, where he finds the man rummaging through his cutlery drawer. He stops short, his eyebrows jumping up. 

“I don’t have any silverware, you know,” he says. Nothing worth stealing. Almost all of his kitchen stuff is second hand, really. Cheap. 

“Good,” the man says, with a weird amount of conviction. “Disgusting stuff.” 

He doesn’t jump guiltily or stop rifling through Martin’s drawer, even as Martin just openly looks at him. As Martin watches, the man picks up a pair of scissors, opens and closes them several times while intently staring at them, and then puts them back down with apparent satisfaction, before moving onto a little plastic and metal thing that Martin had gotten for free at the grocery store a long time ago. You’re supposed to put it on top of an apple and then shove it firmly down, neatly cutting the apple into perfectly even slices and removing the core all in one motion. Martin thinks that it must be mainly intended for people who can’t reliably hold a knife, but hey, it’d been free. The man turns it over and over in his hands with all signs of genuine curiosity and fascination. 

Martin makes himself go and remove the kettle from the stove to shut it up, and starts going through the familiar motions of making a cup of tea. No, two cups of tea now. That’s new. Refreshing. Embarrassingly exciting. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, as he goes through the little ritual. 

“I was bored,” the man says. “What’s this?” 

Martin looks. “It’s a cheese grater.” 

“I see,” the man says, looking at the grater from another angle. “I’ve never actually seen one before. The image I had in my head was quite different.” 

Martin honestly doesn’t know how to respond to most of the things this guy says. 

“What’s your name?” he says instead of trying to figure it out. It really is about time that he knew it. He’s going to need it to help him, and also it just feels weird to not know the name of a guy that was naked in bed with him. 

“Jon,” the man says. “J-O-N.” 

“That’s a nice name,” Martin says, because Jon sounds proud as he says it. 

“I read it in a book,” Jon says, puffing up smugly. 

Martin is now unsure if Jon is actually his real name. People change their names for various reasons, he supposes. He just hopes that it was done legally, so that it can be actually useful for tracking down where he’s supposed to be. 

“I’m Martin. My… parents named me?” 

“Fairies don’t have parents,” Jon says, closing the drawer, having apparently explored it to his satisfaction for now. “So we have to come up with our names on our own, or else someone else might name us, which would be bad.” 

Martin remembers Jon saying I usually just fly. His tattoo. Okay, so he outright, literally thinks that he’s a fairy. Okay. Okay! 

“Do you have any siblings?” Martin asks instead of making the decision of whether to play along with Jon’s delusion or try and point out reality to him. He doesn’t know which one would be the right move to make, which one might make things worse, distress Jon. 

“No,” Jon says, and casts a look back at Martin like that was a strange question. “You don’t know much about fairies, do you? I was born in a flower.” 

So no parents, and no siblings that Martin can reach out to. Damn. 

“Any other family?” he asks a little bit desperately. “Friends?” 

“I… don’t tend to get along all that well with the others. They’re more interested in pranks and playing in the woods and such. I prefer books.” Jon brightens. “The big house has very many books.” 

“The big house,” Martin says, grasping at the detail like a lifeline. Is Jon talking about where he lives? A mental institution or something like that? “Is it called something? Do you know the address?” 

“I’ve overheard people call it Moorland House.” 

Martin freezes in the process of pouring out the tea, and only starts moving again when it threatens to spill over the edge. 

Moorland House. Jon has been staying at Moorland House? That makes no sense, but also some sense at the same time. Martin’s home is the closest building for miles around to the Lukas estate. If Jon came from there, it suddenly makes sense that he stumbled into this place of all places. But while Martin has rarely ever seen the Lukases, he has seen them enough to know that they… don’t look like Jon. They’re much paler. He can’t be related to them. Probably. Could he be a guest? That seems unlikely too, just from the way the Lukases act. They seem to disdain human company entirely, to the point of being willing to only hire a single gardener, for example. Is Jon a staff member for the inside of the house? That seems even less likely. The man needed help putting on a sweater, Martin can’t even imagine him using a vacuum. 

… Has he been squatting at Moorland House? 

That’s ridiculous, is his first thought, immediately followed by but maybe… 

Moorland House is, after all, a very big building. He hasn’t really been given a tour in there before, or even let in further than the opening lobby by the housekeeper who writes out his checks for him with a pinched mouth, casting distasteful glances at his boots and his hands like she thinks he’s going to track mud in or start fondling vases and furniture and smudging it. But he got the sense that it was the kind of place with over a dozen guest and sitting rooms that never got used, just there because something had to be done with the rooms, so they might as well put a nice, expensive bed or sofa in there to do nothing but gather dust and look pretty. Lots of places to hide, in other words. And Martin doubts that the Lukases decided to hire more than the bare minimum amount of people necessary to keep the place in a decent state while they’re gone, which is most of the time. 

So, it could technically be possible to squat inside of Moorland House, even considering the staff that cleans the place every day. Or close to every day-- he’s not sure of what their schedule is. 

Somehow, Martin hadn’t stopped to consider the possibility that Jon doesn’t have anyone or any place that’s supposed to take care of him, even a facility. That’s… that’s very bad. What is he supposed to do? 

“Where do you live?” he asks, dearly hoping that he’s just misunderstanding the situation. 

“Here,” Jon says. “With you.” 

“But where did you live before,” he persists. 

Jon looks at him very seriously. “It doesn’t matter where I lived before. You’re my husband. I’m supposed to--” 

“It matters!” Martin snaps, his voice cracking with stress, and only realizes that he’d raised his voice when Jon flinches, surprised. Guilt rises up his throat like bile. He makes himself slow down, take a deep breath. He grabs both of the mugs and carries them over to his little kitchen table. Sits down. After a moment, Jon tentatively sits down with him, his hands settling around the mug but not lifting it. Martin takes a fortifying drink of his own tea. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally says, after his heartbeat has slowed down a bit. “I didn’t mean to-- I’m just trying to figure this out.” 

“What is there to figure out?” Jon asks. 

“You,” Martin says, giving up. He’d wanted to be calm and reasonable and fix this whole situation on his own without alarming Jon, but it’s difficult to try and deal with a problem while acting like there isn’t a problem at all. “Where did you come from? Why are you here? What am I supposed to do with you? Just-- how? Why? What?” 

“... You don’t know?” Jon asks him, incredulous. 

Martin throws his hands up. “Why would I know! You just showed up in my bed out of nowhere, no explanation!” 

He thinks, irrationally, that he’d really appreciate an instruction manual for dealing with this exact, specific situation, actually. 

“Can’t you feel it?” Jon asks, bewildered. 

“Feel what?” 

Jon blinks at him, like Martin’s being absolutely absurd. Martin’s getting a little bit tired of that look, especially when it’s coupled with the fact that he still has no idea what’s going on, what he’s supposed to be doing. 

“I… didn’t realize that it’s different for you,” Jon eventually says, awkwardly. “I felt it so vividly when it happened, so I just assumed…” 

“Assumed what?” Martin asks impatiently. 

“That you felt it when we were married,” Jon says. 

“We’re not married,” Martin says. He still doesn’t know if just outright rejecting Jon’s delusion is good or bad right now, but-- he’s tired. And confused. And is supposed to still be dozing in bed, enjoying his day off. 

Jon frowns at him, like Martin’s denying objective reality, and it’s frustrating him. 

“Yes we are,” he says. 

“No, we aren’t,” Martin says. “I think I would’ve remembered something like that, Jon.” 

“It happened only yesterday. You saved me, remember?” Jon urges him. 

“I’ve never even seen you before!” 

Jon looks very indignant at this. “Yes, you have! You held me in your hand, for goodness sake! You rescued me from that dreadful spider.” 

Martin’s about to reply that Jon’s making zero sense right now, and then he remembers-- the moth, the spiderweb. He stills. 

“... You saw that?” he asks, feeling abruptly uneasy. He hadn’t told anyone about that, doesn’t have anyone to tell things like that to. And he’d been completely alone while that happened, he’s sure of it. Even if Jon had been watching him from one of the windows of Moorland house, there’s no way he would’ve been able to make out the details. 

He remembers the locked doors, the closed, unbroken windows. No way for someone to have gotten in. He’s been trying to make this whole, weird situation make sense in his head all morning, but there are small details that keep not fitting. It’s disconcerting. 

“Of course I saw it,” Jon says, upset. “I-- didn’t you realize? I’m the moth you saved.” 

“No, you’re not,” Martin automatically denies. 

“I was disguised,” Jon goes on, picking up steam. “I’m a fairy, I can do that sort of thing.” 

“No, you’re not,” Martin repeats himself. 

“You didn’t even know that?” Jon cries. “Oh, good lord-- here, let me show you.” 

Martin’s about to respond, to say something stupid and childish and stubborn like you’re wrong, as if arguing with someone who clearly isn’t in touch with reality is productive in any way-- and then Jon changes. 

It’s like a trick of the light. Like the sunlight hitting something metallic at the wrong angle and hitting his eyes, blinding Martin for just a moment, filling his vision with spots that he has to blink out-- and by the time he’s seeing clearly again, Jon isn’t there any longer. Or, no-- he’s there, but he’s small. A figure with fluttering wings flies from the other side of the table to land in front of Martin. Standing next to his tea mug, it’s bigger than him. Jon puts his hands on his hips and looks up at Martin, with plain, brown wings attached to his back, his clothes gone-- they’d crumpled onto the chair he’d been sitting on a moment ago, he realizes, empty and abandoned. 

“There,” Jon says, his voice small but triumphant, like he’s just won the argument. Some distant part of Martin supposes that he has. “Do you see? I’m a fairy, and you saved my life yesterday from the spider. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?” 

Martin opens his mouth to say something. Nothing comes out. 

“... Martin?” 

“I,” Martin finally manages. “I… I have to go and lie down.” 

And he gets out of his chair and lies down on his kitchen floor. Jon makes some concerned noises, but Martin stubbornly doesn’t listen to him and squeezes his eyes shut instead. He needs a moment. He needs several moments. 

It’s his day off, after all. He’s supposed to get to sleep in today. 

Jon digs his heels into Martin’s neck and pulls at a lock of his hair as hard as he can, his wings flapping hard to give him more leverage. Maybe that’s not the sort of thing that he’s supposed to do, as a devoted husband and such, but Martin has been lying on the floor for a long time now and he’s starting to get… worried. Also bored. Martin’s head doesn’t budge so much as an inch, and he just makes a faint grumbling noise at Jon’s efforts. He has, at this point, turned onto his side and sort of curled up into a ball, hiding his face in his hands. 

“You can’t just stay here on the floor all day,” Jon says. “You’re overreacting.” 

“I am not,” Martin says, which makes Jon stop pulling ineffectually at his hair. A response! He’s making progress. “And I can. It’s my floor, and it’s my free day. I can do what I want.” 

Jon struggles for a moment to find a response to that, because he’s not wrong. Who is Jon to tell him what to do? If Martin truly wants to lie on the floor all day, there’s nothing that Jon can say or do to stop him. It’s not his right. 

He can’t seriously actually want to lie on the floor all day, though. Who would? 

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Jon says. “You’re acting like this is a bad thing.” 

Being rewarded with a spouse is, everyone generally agrees, a good thing. It’s different from an agreed upon marriage. Jon has obligations to Martin, but Martin doesn’t have obligations to Jon. It’s all of the benefits of marriage, with none of the downsides, no new responsibilities. Martin could even still go ahead and marry someone else as well, if he wanted to. It’s a great boon, if you’re clever, lucky, or kind enough to earn it. 

It’s a great sacrifice, if you’re foolish, unlucky, or cruel enough to be obligated to give that sort of gift to someone. But Jon is just a simple fairy. He knows how to read, and he knows more about humans than most fairies, and that’s about it. He didn’t have anything else to repay him with. Especially for something as momentous as what Martin did for him. 

He’s very, very grateful that Martin earned this marriage by being kind, instead of lucky or clever. Not that it necessarily guarantees that he’ll be a benevolent husband, but it’s promising, isn’t it? 

“It’s-- it’s not a bad thing,” Martin says, and he looks up at Jon from behind the shield of his hands. “It’s a really weird, overwhelming thing. Fairies are real. What else is real? What? For how long?” 

“For always,” Jon says blankly. That’s still hard to wrap his head around. That Martin doesn’t know. Doesn’t know about their marriage, about Jon, about what he did, about fairies or magic or anything. 

Jon knows that plenty of such people exist, of course. That most humans don’t know anything. That’s why he wears his disguise, after all, why he flutters away to hide when one of the people living in the big house comes into the library. But he’s never actually talked to one before. It’s weird. He only realizes now that he’s never before actually fully comprehended how strange it is that some people know so little about the world. That so many people know so little. 

It’s even weirder that Martin doesn’t know. He’d felt the moment that the marriage between them had snapped into existence like a noose tugging harsh and tight around his neck, snug and inescapable, his fate sealed. He can still feel it now, a bright vibrant bond between them, almost tangible with how strong it is. Invisible, impossible to touch, but still there. 

The idea that Martin can’t feel it even though it’s right there, so vivid and unmistakable, is… difficult to comprehend. It’s still sinking in. 

It occurs to him that that must be what Martin’s doing right now. Trying to make all of this sink into his mind, to comprehend it. He feels slightly more sympathetic towards him and his hysterics. 

He’s going to have to try and keep in mind how little Martin knows. He’s been… making some assumptions, until now. 

“How can people possibly not know that-- that fairies are real?” Martin asks. 

“We hide,” Jon says simply. 

Martin sits up on the floor, and Jon hurriedly flies out of the way, landing on the seat of a kitchen chair so that he’s at eye level with him instead. 

“If I could find out that fairies are real, other people must have done it too,” Martin says. He says I in a tone of voice that implies things: even I, me of all people. 

“Well, yes,” Jon says. “Some humans know about magic, it’s true. Now including you.” 

“But how could they have possibly kept the secret!?” he bursts out. Jon leans back a bit in surprise. Martin goes on, gesturing expansively with his hands as he talks. “If finding out about magic is as easy as, what, accidentally saving the right insect, then hundreds-- thousands of people should already know about magic, right? And the more people know something, the harder it is to keep it secret. Especially when it’s a secret like this. The whole world should already know. It doesn’t make sense!” 

He sounds confused, high strung, upset. Jon understands being upset about not knowing something, about not having the vital puzzle piece that makes something baffling make sense. It just feels strange, to be faced with someone going through such a familiar experience, but over something so obvious. He tries to find the right way to explain something that feels as natural to him as the sun rising and setting every day. It’s something that he’s barely ever even thought about, because of how much of a simple fact of life it is. It’s like questioning why rain falls. 

“Some humans find out that magic exists,” Jon says slowly, putting the words together as he talks. “They do it in different ways. Some, like you, happen to interact with the right creature in the right way. Others stumble across an object that serves as a gateway for them to the world of magic. Others are deliberately invited into the secret. There are many ways, and so yes, there are many humans who know. But the reason that the secret hasn’t been spread far and wide until it’s just common knowledge is that there are restrictions to what they can and cannot say.” 

“What sort of restrictions?” Martin asks. He leans forward curiously. Jon’s pleased to see that his ready answers seem to be calming him down somewhat. 

“Since I am the one who revealed the existence of magic to you, you would need my permission to be able to tell someone else,” Jon says. It’s basically the only thing that Martin needs his permission to do. Not even a marriage of obligation would dare to put such an important law at risk. If Martin were able to exploit it to his heart's content, it wouldn’t just hurt Jon, it would hurt everyone. 

“... What would happen to me if I did it without your permission?” he asks warily. 

“Nothing. That’s rather the point.” 

Martin’s brow crumples up with confusion for a moment, before it quickly clears. “Oh. You-- you mean like I wouldn’t even be able to.” 

“Precisely,” Jon says. Precisely. There is a thesaurus standing open on one of the lecterns in the library of the big house, the pages light enough for Jon to be able to turn them with some effort, and he adores it. He’s found all of his favorite words in it. 

“I suppose that’s better than having my tongue burned out of my head,” Martin says. 

“Having your tongue what?” Jon asks, horrified. 

“Um, just-- just something from a Polish fairytale. Sorry.” 

Jon tries to visualize the process of someone actually having their tongue burned out, and makes a noise of disgust. 

“Only fae would ever be that elaborately cruel,” Jon says. “And even then, only a few of them.” 

Martin perks up at that. “Aren’t you fae?” 

That is the dumbest question Jon has ever been asked in his life. “I’m a fairy,” he repeats himself. “Not fae.” 

“They aren’t basically the same thing?” Martin asks. “Like rabbits and hares?” 

“Rabbits and hares are two very different species,” Jon says authoritatively. He’d read the entire big book about animals that he found, with big glossy pictures and latin names and informative descriptions. “No, fairies and fae are not the same thing at all. You should be careful of who you say those sorts of things around, honestly. A fairy would laugh at you for it, but a fae might gut you over it.” 

And then use his entrails to craft a beautiful harp, if it were one of the more gruesome ones. 

“The fae would be insulted?” Martin asks, ever so naively. 

“Yes,” Jon says dryly. “Yes, they would. Fae are ancient, immortal beings that spend thousands of years carefully cultivating a patch of forest to be a perfect artwork that they know every single inch of, or engineering an impossibly intricate social situation with over a dozen different oblivious pawns involved to create their very own real life play, or creating and mastering a song so beautiful that it would drive any mortal who hears it to madness. Hundreds of fairies are born every spring, and about half of us get eaten by perfectly ordinary birds. Or spiders.” 

“Oh,” Martin says. And then he pales, very dramatically. Jon eyes him warily, wondering if he’s about to keel over with a case of the vapours. He’s read about the vapours, but he thought that only the human women got them? And only when they wore corsets. 

“You said--” Martin says, and then he chokes off mid sentence. 

“I said what?” Jon asks when Martin doesn’t immediately continue. 

Martin swallows thickly. “You said that we’re-- married?” 

“I’ve said that several times now,” Jon says. “But yes, we are.” 

“I-- I didn’t agree to that!” Martin says, his voice gradually lilting further upwards in octave as he goes. 

“I didn’t either,” Jon says. “It doesn’t really have anything to do with that. You saved my life. The only way I can repay you is by giving you the rest of my days.” 

“That’s really not necessary! Really, it was no trouble for me, I barely even paid it any mind. I don’t need for you to pay me back, I-- I wasn’t expecting to get anything back from saving a moth from a spiderweb anyways.” 

“If anything, it makes it worse that you did a kind, selfless thing with no expectation of payment or reward.” 

“I-- Jon, no.” Martin takes a deep breath, and then gives Jon a firm look. “Look, I-- I appreciate it, that you’re trying to pay me back. But I don’t want to make you marry me just because you feel obligated to me, or something. It’s okay. I’d rather just have nothing.” 

Jon frowns for a moment, before he reminds himself: Martin knows very little. 

“I don’t feel obligated,” Jon says, trying for patience. “I am obligated. It doesn’t matter if either of us wants this or not. You performed a kind, selfless deed and saved my life, and I must repay you to the best of my ability. This is all I have, so it’s what I’m giving you. I didn’t get a say.” 

“Then who did get a say?” Martin asks desperately, like a man searching frantically for a loophole. “Was it-- is there some sort of fairy church or government or-- or just some magical higher authority that we can appeal to? Who enforces this?” 

Jon just told himself that Martin doesn’t know about any of this, that he’s new to it, but good lord. He takes a moment to try and find the right way to say this that isn’t just what the hell are you talking about, you dimwit. 

“That,” he says slowly, “is like asking who enforces gravity. There isn’t some nefarious gravity wizard hiding somewhere, making everyone fall down for his own amusement. There’s no one to ask to get rid of it. It just is.” 

“There must be some way to break it off,” Martin cries. “Like-- like a magical divorce or-- something!” 

The first time Jon had read about a character in a book breaking a promise, he had been deeply confused and also a little bit disgusted. It had been done so casually, and there had been no repercussions afterwards. It had taken him a long time to realize that that is just how promises work for humans. That there is nothing there to make them solid or tangible, inevitable. There is nothing stopping them from ignoring them. It is entirely optional. 

He’s fairly certain that any other fairy in his position would either be incredibly confused or mortally offended at what Martin just suggested, but he understands. He knows how promises work for humans. 

But Jon is a fairy, and it doesn’t work that way for him. 

“Oaths are unbreakable things for magical creatures,” Jon says. “And marriage is just an oath between two people.” 

“Neither of us have said any vows,” Martin argues. 

“Our vows were made in action instead of word. Your part was saving me, and my part was being saved by you.” 

“You didn’t ask to be saved,” Martin says fiercely. “You didn’t ask for my help!” 

If Jon had to choose between being eaten by a spider or being married to Martin, he would choose the latter. That’s not the point, though. Even if he would have prefered the spider, he would have ended up married to Martin regardless. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he says simply. He needs for Martin to at the very least understand the situation that they’re in. “You saved me, it had to be repaid. Marriage is all I have to offer, and so we are married. There’s no changing that now.” 

Martin makes a distressed sound at that. He looks genuinely upset. Jon doesn’t understand. Martin has no obligations to Jon. He can order Jon to do anything that is within his power to perform, and Jon will have to do it. Even if Martin may not be excited about it (which makes some sense, as fairies are weak, unimpressive creatures, a dime a dozen), he shouldn’t be actively upset about it. He has lost no opportunities, no freedom. He can still marry someone else as well if he wishes. Jon has heard of some powerful creatures with dozens of bride-slaves, a testament to their clever cunning. 

“I need to-- excuse me,” Martin says. And then he neatly takes his glasses off and sets them aside, before putting his face in his hands and screaming. Jon startles so badly he nearly falls out of the chair. The sound is muffled into Martin’s palms, but it still took him off guard. 

Jon stares as Martin screams, and then for a long beat after he’s stopped, but still has his face in his hands. 

“Is everything… alright?” Jon eventually asks hesitantly. Literally screaming usually indicates negative emotions, so no things probably aren’t alright, but he doesn’t know what else to say right now. 

“Mhm,” Martin says, high pitched, nodding his head without moving his hands away from his face. 

“You seem upset,” Jon attempts. He feels like it’s a reasonable observation. 

“I just-- I just need a moment to process, thanks.” 

“I thought that that was what you were doing when you curled up into a ball on the floor earlier.” 

“That was me processing magic. Now I’m processing you.” 

Jon mulls this over for a moment. No, that doesn’t seem right at all. 

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” he says. 

“Jon, please,” Martin groans. 

He didn’t say please what, so Jon technically doesn’t have to comply. 

“I really don’t,” he persists. “What is the problem, exactly?” 

“What’s the problem? Oh, I don’t know, that yesterday I wasn’t married and now I am? To a complete stranger?” 

“Humans have marriage as well,” Jon argues. “I know you do.” 

A lot of the books he found were very preoccupied with the subject, in fact. Who was going to marry who, and when and how and why. 

“The-- that’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s not just supposed to happen. On its own! Without either of us wanting it!” 

“What of arranged marriages?” Jon asks. 

“That-- it’s not the same! Our parents didn’t set this up. You don’t even have parents! Arranged marriages don’t happen any longer either. Or-- or not in this part of the world, at least. It’s not a thing.” 

Jon… mulls that over. 

“Humans can’t just… get married by accident? Or by poor fortune?” 

“No-- well. There’s getting drunk Vegas married, but I’m pretty sure that that’s just a TV joke, no one would actually marry you while you’re obviously drunk. And then there’s shotgun weddings-- that’s, um, that’s when you fool around with someone and then you get unexpectedly pregnant and have to get married in a hurry. That one’s sort of old fashioned, though, I think. What with condoms and pills and abortions and stuff. That one couldn’t happen between the two of us, anyways.” 

“Because fairies don’t procreate in that manner,” Jon says, nodding. 

“Um. Sure. Yeah, that.” 

Martin has stopped cradling his face in his hands, and Jon is warming up to this new direction of conversation: him asking Martin questions, instead of Martin asking Jon. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that he now has something he’s found himself wishing for countless times before-- the opportunity to ask a human what the hell do you mean by this? Books can’t elaborate or clarify, after all. What’s written in the book is what’s there, and you’re not getting anything more. 

He hadn’t really thought to try and search for silver linings, he supposes. Too nervous for it. He still is, a bit, can’t help but be. Just because Martin hasn’t done something terrible yet doesn’t mean that he won’t in the next hour, the next day, the next week. But that doesn’t stop his curiosity. 

He’s never stopped to consider what questions he might have for a human if he had the opportunity before, because he never thought that something like this would happen. It takes a considerable amount of power to invite a human into the know on purpose, power that a fairy simply doesn’t have access to. It’s the circumstances, the marriage, that welcomed Martin to the wider world. He wishes that he’d thought of it before, though, that he’d made some sort of list of descending priority. As it is, about a hundred questions and yet none at all immediately come to his mind. He has no idea of what to ask first. 

Before he manages to just choose one, Martin’s face abruptly goes bright red and he averts his gaze to the wall over Jon’s head. 

“You’re naked,” Martin says stiffly. 

“Yes?” Jon says. “I have been for this entire conversation.” 

“Yes, but-- but I was distracted and you’re very small like this and-- I didn’t notice until now!” 

“You seem very bothered about me being naked,” Jon notes. “It’s silly.” 

“It’s not silly. Humans have a-- a nudity taboo, okay?” 

“I know that. But we’re married. Aren’t spouses supposed to be an exception?” 

“I met you this morning.” 

“You met me yesterday.” 

“You were a moth, don’t be pedantic. Please put something on.” 

A request is an order, coming from someone that Jon has been married to, to repay his debt. 

“Fine,” he grumbles, and turns big again. He’d sort of forgotten that he can do that now, when he’d been pulling at Martin’s hair, trying to get him to stop just lying there on the floor like a useless lump. He’s still new to it. 

His wings go away, folding neatly out of existence, and he misses them, misses being able to move freely in space in all directions, but the world gets small in exchange, and that’s very interesting. He’d found a large, dusty doll house in the attic of the big house once, and it feels a bit like flying through that. Like the world is sized for him, instead of him being a small creature trying to hide and survive inside of it, to remain unnoticed. He’d spent about an hour just marveling over it and adjusting to it last night, before he’d gotten into bed with his husband, where he was supposed to be. He’d been unexpectedly cold in his new size, but underneath the covers everything had been warm and soft. He’d been planning on remaining awake, to see what his new husband was like as early as possible. He’d fallen asleep before he’d even realized it was happening. 

Martin makes a funny squeaking noise once Jon goes big, but Jon focuses on putting the clothes Martin had given him back on. This time he’s going to manage it on his own, definitely. 

He’s got his neck bent, glaring down at the knot on the strings connected to the trousers that he’s trying to pick loose because it’s making the waist of the trousers too tight, when Martin makes a new noise. 

“What?” he asks, turning his head over his shoulder to look back at him. Martin’s staring wide eyed, like he’s seen something on Jon’s back. 

“Your tattoo just moved,” he says. 

“My what?” Jon asks. 

“On your back,” Martin says, and Jon immediately tries to crane his neck more to see. He doesn’t quite manage it, and it’s frustrating. 

“I can’t see it,” he complains, twisting in a little circle as he tries to turn his head enough to get a good view. 

Martin bursts out into a little burble of laughter, and Jon turns to glare at him, confused why he’s even laughing. Martin has his hand raised to cover his grinning mouth, amusement crinkling up the corners of his eyes. The thought that he looks much better like this than when Jon had impressed upon him just how permanent this marriage is and he’d been upset rises up from seemingly nowhere. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Sorry, sorry, I just-- you reminded me of a dog chasing its tail for a moment.” 

Jon’s read that phrase before. From context, he’s come to the conclusion that it effectively means ‘an exercise in futility by a moron.’ He narrows his eyes at him. 

“Sorry,” Martin says again, but he’s still smiling a bit. “Here, hang on a moment, I can take a picture of it for you.” 

Martin goes and fetches a flat, thin rectangle, aims it at Jon’s back, Jon obligingly moving his hair out of the way because he is curious, and then there’s a shutter noise. 

“I thought cameras were bigger,” he says thoughtfully. 

“It’s not-- we can get into that later. Here it--” Martin cuts himself off before he hands the camera over to Jon. He’s staring down at the rectangle, like he’s seen something very startling. Jon, impatient, crowds close to his side to peer down at the camera. 

It’s a picture of him, his back turned and exposed. 

“I don’t see a tattoo,” he says. 

“But it-- it’s there,” Martin says plaintively, turning to look down Jon-not-in-the-picture’s back. “It’s a pair of wings. Moth wings, I think, actually.” 

“Oh,” Jon says, understanding. “So that’s what you got from me.” 

“Got?” 

“Marriage often comes with boons,” Jon explains. It sometimes comes with banes as well, depending on the circumstances and the spouses involved, but he hasn’t noticed any banes so far, so. And it’s an obligated marriage born from kindness, and they’re just a fairy and a human. They’re probably fine. “If you had married a mermaid for example, perhaps you would have become a strong swimmer, or you would be able to hold your breath for longer, maybe even indefinitely. Or if you’d married a winter creature, maybe you’d be able to withstand the cold for longer. The point is to make you more compatible. It looks like your marriage to me has gifted you with the Sight. The tattoo isn’t actually there. A human not in the know wouldn’t see it. It’s just supposed to be a hint towards my true nature. You’ll be able to see these sorts of hints now. Fairies disguise themselves as insects most of the time, and I think you’d be able to see through that now, for example.” 

“Oh,” Martin says. “That… that’s good, I guess. I wouldn’t want to accidentally squish a fairy instead of a fly.” 

Yes, that was a big part of why Jon hid away from the people who walked around in the big house, even though all they would have seen was a moth. 

“What did you get from me?” Martin asks, as if it’s a given that Jon must have gotten something as well. He did, but it really isn’t a given, considering. 

“This,” Jon says, and gestures down at himself. “I can change to be your size now.” 

Jon is supposed to be the present in this marriage, the one who has a debt to pay. The boon he has received isn’t for his benefit, even if he is finding that he enjoys it. It’s for Martin’s sake. His spouse should be compatible with his size, shouldn’t he? It only makes sense. It would be inconvenient to have a spouse that’s too small, too weak, too helpless. Useless. This way, Jon won’t get eaten by a cat or a bird if he turns his back on him for too long, and he can better follow orders, perform more duties. Whatever those duties may be. 

“Ah,” Martin says. “That-- that makes sense, yeah. I was wondering why you didn’t just change your size while you were in that spiderweb.” 

“It would be very foolish of me to let myself be eaten when I could simply do that,” Jon says, a little bit derisive that Martin would even think that, what, he’d just forget that he could do something like that? When his life was on the line? 

… Nevermind that he’d forgotten it only some moments ago. That’s different. 

“Yeah,” Martin agrees, flushing a little at Jon’s tone. 

Jon finishes getting dressed. It feels constricting, unnatural. He doesn’t like it. He can’t shake the feeling that his wings are obstructed, even though he can’t bring them out when he’s like this anyways. 

“... Breakfast?” Martin asks. “Wait, do fairies eat?” 

The rest of the morning passes in much a similar fashion. 

Martin is doing his best. Currently, his best looks like boiling some eggs and making toast. He’s pretty sure that if he tried anything more complicated, he’d mess it up with how distracted he is. 

Magic is real. He’s married. Magic is real and he’s married and he’s married to a fairy and he’s a really handsome fairy and he has no idea how to handle a situation like this. He doesn’t know which one of these facts is more shocking, but he’s definitely shocked and, uh, processing. That is a thing that he’s trying to do. He’s curled up on the floor, he’s screamed into his hands, he’s hysterically asked question upon question-- he’s tried all of the tried and true tactics of learning unbelievable information. It didn’t quite work the way he hoped it would. He still feels a bit like he’s dreaming, like this shouldn’t possibly be real. He feels like if it were, he shouldn’t be rooting through his fridge for butter and juice. That’s what he does every normal, mundane morning. 

But it turns out that even on absurd, unbelievable, strange mornings, he needs breakfast. And Jon needs breakfast too. 

“--and how do televisions work exactly? None of the books ever stop to actually explain it.” 

“Um,” Martin says, in between deciding whether today is an apple juice or an orange juice day. Jon’s been rattling off questions for a while now, and they’ve been unpredictably bouncing between ridiculously easy to answer (does England still have a monarchy? What is the average modern life span of a human? Is teleportation real or is just a fictitious invention?) and basically impossible for Martin at least to answer (how do magnets work? Where does electricity come from? What makes cars move?) without just resorting to googling it on his phone. And he’s getting perilously close to running out of his monthly allotted data.  “I think it's… airwaves, and uh, stuff.” 

He winces at hearing himself, and quickly goes on as he deposits juice and glasses on the table, bustling over to butter the toast. “Listen, Jon. If-- if you’re going to live here for now--” he has to tack on the for now part because he really needs longer than just one morning to absorb the fact that this whole situation might actually be a lifelong thing, “--then that means that you need some things. A toothbrush, hairbrush, your own clothes… stuff like that.” 

Not that Jon doesn’t look-- nice, in Martin’s clothes. He looks very nice, actually. Too nice. It’s a problem. The sweater he’s wearing slipped off his shoulder five minutes ago, and he still hasn’t bothered to pull it back into place. Martin itches to reach out and adjust it himself, but that would be a way too casually intimate gesture. Even if the image of his sweater casually revealing one of Jon’s shoulders and a lot of his collar bone is kind of driving him crazy. 

“I’ve never needed any of those things before,” Jon says skeptically. 

“Just because you’ve never had them before doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have them now,” Martin argues. The idea of Jon not having a toothbrush is making him kind of sad. He reminds himself that it’s only because Jon’s some sort of magical fairytale creature that apparently doesn’t need to clean his teeth. It’s not depressing. Just… weird, and Martin isn’t entirely sure if it’s okay or not. He doesn’t know enough about fairies to say one way or another. Do fairies need to brush their teeth? 

Well, it probably can’t hurt to do it, he decides. Better safe than sorry. 

“That argument doesn’t make any sense,” Jon says stubbornly. 

“You’re getting a toothbrush,” Martin says firmly. “And-- and a hairbrush, and some other necessities. That’s nonnegotiable.” 

Instead of continuing to argue, Jon falls silent. Martin peels the freshly boiled eggs in the sink, cuts them into even slices, arranges them on the buttered toast, sprinkles a bit of salt on top. There. That’s just going to have to do. He sets the plates down on the table, takes a seat. Jon’s glaring down at the tabletop. 

“Jon?” Martin asks. He can’t be that grumpy about him insisting on getting him some things, can he? 

“When do I need to get them?” Jon asks. 

“What?” 

“The toothbrush, the hairbrush, and the necessities. Is there a certain time I need to get them by? And what exactly are ‘necessities’?” 

“Oh, no. I’ll go and get them for you, it’s fine. I-- I’m assuming that you don’t have a credit card to pop down to the shops with. It’s okay, some small stuff isn’t expensive at all.” 

Jon blinks, looking entirely caught off guard by this. Martin wonders what he’d been planning to do. What do fairies use as currency? Berries? Gold? Favors? Do fairies have currency, or even an economy? Or had he just been planning to steal it? 

“... Very well,” Jon says slowly, as if he’s looking for a trap hidden in the offer. 

Martin tries to give him an encouraging smile, and then eats his toast.

Chapter Text

“I’ll be gone only an hour or two,” Martin assures him for the third time. “Don’t-- don’t mess with the knives, or anything sharp, or the oven, or anything electrical. Don’t start any fires.” 

They’re standing in the small gravel driveway in front of Martin’s home, Martin nervously fiddling with his keys, hovering over Jon. 

“Martin,” Jon says dryly. “I am not a stranger to knives, or sharp things, or fire. And I’ve been in human homes before, without burning them down, miraculously.” 

He wishes Martin were taking him with him to the human village. He’s never been in a large human settlement before, only isolated country homes, and sometimes tents. He’s very curious about what it must be like. He hasn’t quite been willing to go through with the sheer risk it would entail, to explore such a space. Yet. But Martin had said that he would go and get the items for Jon, and so Jon will not be coming with. That is all there is to it. 

He supposes that that’s better than what he’d thought had been happening, which was that Martin was demanding that he find a way to procure said items on his own. 

… He still doesn’t see the point in having brushes for his body parts. They do perfectly well without them. But Martin had said that it was nonnegotiable, so he can’t really voice the argument. 

“Right,” Martin says sheepishly. “... But you’ve never been big enough to pick up knives before, or operate a stove, so-- so please, just don’t, even if you’re curious. Please.” 

There’s been a notion growing in the back of Jon’s mind this entire morning, and at that request it grows bigger. He doesn’t turn his attention on it yet. 

“I won’t,” he assures him. 

“Okay,” Martin says, still sounding a bit worried at the prospect of leaving Jon alone in the house. But apparently the idea of taking Jon with him down to the village is even more worrying, because he finally turns around and gets into his car instead of continuing to fuss. 

Jon’s seen cars before, at a distance, and even a bit more closely sometimes, when they’re parked and the humans are some distance away. They can move even faster than he can fly, and he very much wants to know what it would feel like to move that quickly. Martin’s car is… small, the color of it pale and washed out. When Martin gets into it, its frame sways and creaks a bit. It takes him two tries to properly close the door, and the motor sputters in stops and starts like a rusty chainsaw being revved before it steadies out into a consistent growl. Martin steers the car out of the driveway, gives a last wave to Jon, and then drives away. It’s not as fast the cars Jon’s seen in the distance on the road before. 

Jon looks at Martin’s car slowly shrink away in the distance, until it takes a corner and disappears behind a hill. He can still hear it puttering faintly in the distance. And then that fades away too, the weak wind drowning it out. 

He goes inside. He looks at his surroundings, this time more closely and deliberately, instead of letting his attention get snagged by the first strange and interesting thing his eyes land on. 

He’s just a fairy, but he’s been living in the big house on the hill for a long time now. If he compares that to this place, Martin’s home is… humble. Small. But strangely warm, despite that. There are no broad, open, empty spaces. There are colorful little art pieces and pictures and posters hung on the walls, the furniture plush and worn and crowded in close together, somehow managing to make the place seem personal and lived in instead of claustrophobic or cramped. Jon has never much liked open spaces. It makes him feel like a predator might swoop down at any moment to grasp him in its talons. This place feels enclosed and private in a safe sort of way. Hidden away from danger. Safe harbor. 

Martin had told him not to mess with the knives, the stove, or anything sharp or electrical in general. He had not said that he wasn’t allowed to mess around with everything that didn’t fall into that category. 

He goes through Martin’s collection of books. He’s thrilled to see that he has one, even though it’s pitiful compared to the one in the big house. The library there has more books on a single bookshelf than Martin has, all of the books crammed in together on a narrow bookshelf squashed into a corner in the living room. He’s dismayed to see that almost all of them are about the same thing-- poetry. Poetry is one of Jon’s least favorite genres. Poetry never explains itself, or contains useful or interesting knowledge. It just… is. 

He goes through all of the drawers in the house. He finds a few more books, some notebooks with what looks like more poetry scribbled in them, stray pens and pencils and erasers and rubber bands and paperclips and a hundred random odds and ends. He finds pills in the bathroom medicine cabinet labeled things like ibuprofen and paracetamol, bottles of clear liquid and balls of cotton shoved into a plastic bag, boxes of band aids. 

In one drawer, shoved into the very back like a secret, face down, he finds a framed picture. It’s of a woman, tired but smiling slightly, with a hand on the shoulder of a young child. It leaves dust on Jon’s hands when he touches it. He carefully puts it back where he found it. 

What does this tell him about what sort of person Martin is? 

That he has poor taste in literature, he supposes. 

“You can do better than that,” Jon mumbles to himself, frowning off into the distance. What sort of person has he gone and gotten himself married to? What is Jon in for? 

Martin’s grand total of orders for Jon so far have been: put some clothes on, eat some food, accept the gifts I think you need without argument, and don’t get yourself hurt while I’m away. 

There is a lot to fear, when you’re unlucky enough to land yourself into a marriage of obligation. Your life is no longer your own. It has been forfeited, surrendered, stolen, gifted away. Some husband-masters are better or worse than others, but it’s generally agreed that it’s not good to be in the position of a bride-slave, no matter who is on the other side of the equation, or how merciful they may be. When the best you can hope for is to be met with mercy, it means that things aren’t going well for you. 

But what is done is done, and now all Jon can do is try to make the best of things. Or at least brace himself for whatever may be coming. 

And the thing is, Martin has been very merciful to him so far. At worst, his orders have been annoying. And when Jon considers it, they’re almost… kind orders. Orders that show concern, care. It’s promising, isn’t it. Jon may be in a marriage of obligation, but at least the person in charge doesn’t seem to be terrible. He seems to be nice, even. 

Too nice. Something isn’t right. 

Martin had repeated himself, when he’d told Jon not to play with fire or sharp things while he was gone. He’d said please, like whether or not Jon would listen would be up to how generous and considerate he may be feeling at the time. 

Martin had known so little, when he’d spoken with Jon that morning, asking stupid, ridiculous, obvious question after question, showing absolutely no knowledge in the most basic of things. He doesn’t know about magic. He doesn’t know anything about magic. Human marriage doesn’t work like magical marriages. 

Humans, Jon realizes slowly as he puts puzzle piece after puzzle piece together in his head, don’t have marriages of obligation. They don’t know what that is. Martin doesn’t know what it is. And, if Jon doesn’t tell him? He might never know. They live far, far away from the magic soaked woods where Jon had been born and lived the first few years of his life, after all. And why would a human know any magical creatures? The only one Martin knows of is Jon. 

It’s an absolutely absurd situation but… somehow, Jon has managed to be unlucky enough to have to surrender his hand in marriage, and lucky enough to get a husband who has no idea how much power over Jon he holds in his hands. Martin doesn’t know that he can order Jon around. All of the orders he’s given so far have just been accidents. 

If Jon tells him, the accidents will stop. And the deliberate orders will begin. 

Martin is a kind, generous person. He saved what he thought was a simple moth from a hungry spider, for no reason at all, with no expectation of reward. He fed and clothed a strange man that he woke up to find in his bed. He has offered to go and buy what he considers to be essentials for the strange, unexpected husband he has found himself saddled with. 

But how kind and generous can any person be when they know that they have someone completely at their mercy? 

If Jon just… doesn’t tell him what power he holds, then he won’t be able to use it on purpose. He won’t think about the many things that he can do to Jon, the things he can make Jon do, and face no repercussions for because it’s his right. 

Martin saved his life. It’s Jon’s duty to spend the rest of his days trying to repay that debt, to find small and big ways to make up for it. A good bride-slave, a proper one, would fill in the holes of his knowledge, would inform him of what he can do. 

But Jon hasn’t been told to do any such thing, so. He technically doesn’t have to. It’s not his fault if Martin has no idea how anything works. 

Jon sits in the sunlight shining in from the window, and basks in the nerve wracking, thrilling feeling that he’s getting away with something that he really, really shouldn’t be. 

Martin parks his dinky car at the edge of the village, and heads straight for the general store. There are less than a dozen shops in town, and the general store makes sure to try and cover all of the bases that the other shops aren’t. Even with that, Martin still has to occasionally order stuff online and wait a few weeks or months for it to arrive in the mail instead, but it’s fine. It works. 

Whenever he does make his weekly shop run, he tries to drag things out as much as he reasonably can. It’s pretty much the only time he ever gets to interact with other people, not counting when he’s handed his monthly checks from the disapproving housekeeper, so. He tries to make the most of it. He meanders. He takes the scenic route. He stops to pet any stray cats he sees. He window shops, carefully looking over all of the wares in the stores instead of just the ones he’s there for. He chats with any other customers there if they seem amenable, he makes smalltalk with the cashier while they ring him up. He tries his best to be pleasant. He feels massively pathetic and obnoxious every single time, but he does it anyway. 

Considering that he’s buying for only one person, though, he’s usually only down here for less than an hour before he’s off again. He can only justify lingering so much before he starts to feel like a-- before he starts to feel bad. 

For once, though, he’s in a rush. He really doesn’t want to leave Jon alone unattended for too long. He’s only just met the man, but the amount of times he’s said ‘what is this’ and ‘what does this do’ makes him feel very nervous about leaving him unsupervised for any length of time. He’s like… a toddler with adult intelligence and reach, which is an incredibly frightening concept to consider. Well, a short adult’s reach, but still. 

“Hullo, Martin!” a familiar face, one of the villagers, greets him as he quickly walks towards the general store. 

“Oh, um-- hi!” Martin says, and waves at him but keeps walking. He’s usually the one that’s greeting and waving at people, it feels weird to have it flipped on him. Not that people ignore him when he does that, but he’s normally the one that initiates it. 

“Hey,” says another familiar face as he walks on. He gives them a quick, distracted, polite smile, but keeps walking. Again, he’s in a hurry. Normally he’d stop to chat with someone who’d go so far as to greet him first, but Jon… 

It happens a couple more times on his way, which is weird, but maybe he’s just overthinking it. Maybe the reason people haven’t been greeting him first all of this time is because he hasn’t been giving them the chance until now, being so quick on the draw before. Overeager, his mum used to call him. 

He shakes the thought off. Focus. He has to be in and out, quickly. The bell over the door tinkles as he enters. 

“Welcome to Rosie’s General Store,” a familiar voice calls out. And then, “Oh! Martin!” 

“Yes?” Martin asks, stopping. Rosie’s looking at him as if she’s seen something very startling. A terrible idea occurs to him-- that everyone’s been paying so much attention to him this morning because there’s something on his face. Oh god, Jon had said that he’s got the Sight now, hadn’t he? Does that mean that his eyes look different? What’s wrong with his eyes? 

“I just wasn’t expecting you,” she says. “You’re supposed to come in tomorrow.” 

“I am?” 

“Well, yes. People can set their calendar by you, you know. Oh, Martin’s come down for some shopping, it must be Saturday again. Is something the matter? An emergency?” 

Is that why people have been looking at him so much? Because he came a day earlier than usual? The idea that the people of the village know his routine-- it’s weird. If he’d had to guess earlier, he would’ve said that the villagers barely think about him at all, most of them not even knowing his name. But apparently he’s been more consistent than he thought. It’s… the idea that people know and recognize him is nice, but also startling and uncomfortable, and is he really that predictable--

He’s taking too long to answer. 

“I dropped my toothbrush into the loo,” he says, and immediately internally winces at the lie. Sure, it’s believable, but gross. 

“Oh,” Rosie says, looking a bit disappointed at his answer. Had she been hoping for a more dire emergency? 

“‘Scuse me,” he says, and makes a beeline towards where the toiletries are all crammed in together on a single shelf. He grabs a toothbrush, dithers for a moment about whether or not he should get Jon a hairbrush too, and then makes up his mind when he remembers how thick and long his hair had looked. No way Martin’s dinky little comb would be able to stand up to that. 

He wonders what Jon’s hair feels like. 

No, stop that. This whole situation is weird and complicated enough as it is. 

It occurs to him to get a razor as well, because sharing those is kind of gross, depending on where you use it. Then he decides to get a towel as well, because Martin really doesn’t have a whole lot of them, and some deodorant too because why not? And then he does his usual grocery run too, just as long as he’s down here, piling canned food and bags of vegetables and fruit and rice and pasta and toilet paper and toothpaste and shampoo into his tote bag. 

He brings his haul over to the counter, and Rosie starts to ring him up. 

“Drop your hairbrush into the toilet too?” she asks casually. 

“Just saw it and thought it might be time for an upgrade,” Martin says, almost on reflex. He gives a friendly, crooked smile. “It’s kind of, uh, falling apart on me. I probably should’ve replaced it awhile ago.” 

She hums agreeably. “New towels?” 

“The old ones are starting to get kind of thin and ratty.” 

“Ah,” she says, and yep, that’s definitely disappointment he’s hearing in her voice. It occurs to him that oh yeah, that’s right, Rosie is the town gossip. She’s always happy to talk to him whenever he comes down here, but it’s mostly just to excitedly share the latest little scandal that he’s missed. She likes having a fresh audience, he guesses. She also keeps occasionally trying to ask questions about the Lukases, like she’s hoping that he’s finally learned something about the eccentric rich family that live outside of the village and that he’ll share with her. He always has to disappoint her on that front. “Will I be seeing you tomorrow?” 

“Probably not,” Martin says. He’s already bought his groceries. 

“My whole week is going to be thrown off,” she says jokingly. “Like when we do daylight savings.” 

Martin dutifully chuckles, says his goodbyes, and grabs his bag and goes. Instead of going right back to his car though, he stops by in one of the few other shops in the village instead. The clothes shop. It’s a strange eclectic mix, half second hand donations like a thrift store, and half bulk orders of the same article of clothing, like the clothes section in a walmart. He grabs a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that look like they’ll probably fit Jon-- at least it’ll fit better than what Martin’s already given him, which isn’t a high bar at all, honestly. 

It’s not expensive. It’s fine. Martin’s not swimming in money, he never will be, but he’s much, much better off than he used to be. Paying mum’s bills, supporting her, and living in London of all places-- even after having bought himself a whole house and a car, he’s still got more comfortable padding in his bank account than he used to. He can afford to buy some necessities for his… surprise fairy husband. 

God, no. He can’t think of him as his husband. Even if he is. 

Stop. No he’s not. Not in the way that matters, in the way that Martin’s wanted ever since he learned that every marriage isn’t like his parents. Watching the prince and princess kiss at the end of the movie and get married and live happily ever after, reading sappy tender unapologetically romantic love poetry and feeling like he’d melt from how sincere and open and real it was. It had been a revelation, the moment when it had sunk in that it didn’t need to be like that, it didn’t need to be venomous, hissing arguments heard through thin walls and then a sudden gaping, aching absence. It could be sweet, and soft, and kind. 

Maybe that’s why he’s still alone. That he somehow managed to lift his expectations that high, wanting every single thing that his parents weren’t. 

God, he doesn’t want for this to be like his parents. Should he have gotten Jon more things? He’ll come back and buy more things if it turns out it wasn’t enough. For now, he carries his haul back to his car, his arms aching with the strain. It takes five tries to get the motor purring steadily instead of stop-starting, and he starts driving home to his not-husband. 

“I’m home,” a familiar voice calls out, followed by the sound of a door being slammed closed a bit too hard, probably via hip check or a clumsy kick. 

Jon grumbles, unwilling to call out a response or open his eyes. He’s very comfortable right where he is. 

“Jon?” Martin calls out, anxiety quickly lacing through his words. The rustling of bags being put down, floorboards creaking underneath footsteps. “Are you there?” 

“Yes,” Jon answers grumpily, and tries not to let it wake him up from his comfortable doze too much. 

“Oh, good--” he says, his voice drawing nearer and then abruptly cutting off, like his sentence has been bitten in half. Jon turns over and squints an eye open in his direction, curious to see if something interesting has happened. The colors of the world are all washed out pale from the warm sunlight shining through his closed eyelids, but he can see that Martin’s staring directly at Jon. Martin makes a choking noise when Jon turns over towards him. 

“What?” Jon asks. 

“I told you to put some clothes on,” Martin says, very quickly going red faced. He turns his entire face away from Jon’s direction, the movement jerky and abrupt. 

“And I did,” Jon says nonplussed. Martin’s continued weirdness about this still doesn’t quite make sense to him. “And then I took them back off.” 

“Why?” he asks in tones of plaintive agony. 

“Well, I was exploring the house,” he explains. “And then I ran out of things to explore. You should have more interesting things in your house, Martin. It went far too quickly.” 

“And then what? You got bored and took your clothes off?” he asks, his voice going high pitched with indignance. 

“I got bored and decided to take a nap,” Jon corrects him. A nap in the patch of sunlight shining in through the living room window, to be exact, right on top of a fluffy, soft rug. Going around nude has been a bit uncomfortable in this form, the cold nipping away at his bare skin, but while lying in the sunshine? It’s just perfect. “The clothes were uncomfortable.” 

“Well, that-- maybe I can help with that. Excuse me,” Martin says, and then beats a hasty retreat from the doorway like he’s under some sort of attack. He’s such a strange man. 

He supposes that the nap is over now. He sits up on the rug, cross legged, and listens to Martin rummage around in the hallway and then come back with one bag. He’s still got his face awkwardly averted from Jon like he’s not allowed to look. He really doesn’t know anything about marriages of obligation, does he? There’s nothing he isn’t allowed to do with Jon. 

Jon won’t disabuse him of the notion, though. 

“Here,” Martin says, and digs out some clothes from the bag. “These should fit you better than my spares, anyways. Try them on?” 

A request is as good as an order. Jon sighs, put upon, and accepts the offered clothes. 

He manages to put them all on his own, of course. He’s quickly becoming very adept at this whole dressing thing, even if he’s not particularly a fan of it. By the end of it he looks down at himself, his arms spread out. He frowns. 

“Why are they worse?” he asks. It would make sense for his husband-master to not go out of his way to put in the effort and resources to get him something nice. Some dress up their bride-slaves in luxurious finery, using them as decoration, as a canvas to display their wealth upon. Others neglect them, only using them in the most utilitarian of ways. But Jon is starting to get the sense that Martin isn’t the type to use someone else as an accessory, and he’s acting like this is supposed to be some sort of improvement, so. What gives? 

Martin splutters. “They’re-- they’re not worse. Look, these are actually your size! Or closer to it, anyways. They don’t hang off of you like flags.” 

“They’re tight,” Jon complains. He’d thought the old outfit was bad, but it was practically breezy compared to this. “It’s like they’re trying to strangle me.” 

“They’re at least one size too big on you!” 

“It’s so stiff. Isn’t cloth supposed to be soft?” 

“It’s-- that’s just because they’re new, Jon. They’ll soften up after a few washes, you’ll see--” 

Jon starts taking the trousers off. 

“Oh, god,” Martin says, and then rushes forwards and grabs Jon’s hands before they go any further. “Please stop.” 

Jon freezes. 

“Oh,” Martin says, surprised. “Thank-- thank you. Um. Listen, Jon, I get that you’re not used to wearing clothes, that you don’t like it, but-- can you please just at least wear these trousers? You can borrow my shirts if that's what you want, but my trousers are too big on you, they keep slipping down your hips and I can’t handle-- just. Please?” 

Jon had come to terms with this, while Martin had been gone. He’d accepted that this sort of thing would occasionally happen, and he was willing to deal with it, to take it over the alternative. Accidental orders. 

It really is annoying though, that he’s going to have to wear these stupid trousers now. 

“Fine,” he says, as if he has any say in the matter. And then, “How often?” 

“What?” Martin asks. 

“How often do I have to wear--” he gestures down to the trousers with disdain, his hand slipping out of Martin’s, “this?” 

“Oh, well-- whenever you’re wearing clothes, I guess? Which-- which, um, people normally only get naked in the bathroom or the bedroom. Absolutely while you’re out of the house, though. Please. You'll get arrested if someone sees you and I don’t know how to handle that. Do you even have a social security number? No, of course you don’t.” 

“What if I’m out of the house and a fairy?” Jon wheedles. “I don’t have any clothes that would fit me then.” 

“I-- I guess that’s fair,” Martin says, his voice going thin at the concession. He seems to be having trouble looking Jon in the eyes. “It’s not like anyone but me could see you then, so-- yeah, sure.” 

Jon feels the order falling down around him, and he feels it out in his head. He is absolutely not allowed to be naked outside of the house, unless he’s in his fairy size at the time. If he’s wearing clothes, he needs to wear these trousers. 

… Nothing else. Good. It could be worse, he supposes. 

“I bought you other things,” Martin says. 

“What things?” Jon hopes that they won’t be as annoying as the trousers. Martin goes digging through the bag again. Jon takes the opportunity to disdainfully take off the too-small, too-constricting shirt, tossing it onto the floor. Reluctantly, he puts on the sweater Martin had given him earlier, the one that hangs loosely on him. If he isn’t careful, Martin might give him more orders. 

“A hairbrush,” Martin says, holding it up in demonstration, and then holds it out to Jon. After a moment, Jon takes it. The handle fits neatly in his hand. He squints at the bristles doubtfully. “You’re going to have to have one with hair that long. What were you even doing before, to keep it from getting all tangled?” 

“Fingers,” Jon answers, experimentally petting the bristles. They’re firm, a little bit flexible. He’s glad that they’re not made of metal or something like it. That would probably hurt. 

“Really?” Martin asks, disbelieving. “Your hair looks like silk-- um. Towels!” 

Martin shoves a square of folded cloth at him. 

“I know these. They’re supposed to dry you after you get wet.” He strokes one hand across the fabric, and wrinkles his nose in distaste. “Why are they so rough?” 

“I don’t know? I-- I guess that fabric’s more absorbent or something.” 

Jon carefully sets the towel aside on the floor, dubiously setting the hairbrush on top of it. 

“A toothbrush,” Martin says, and holds it out to Jon. It’s purple. “Do you know what that is?”

“I’m guessing that I’m supposed to brush my teeth with it,” Jon says drly. 

Martin gives a sheepish little chuckle at that. “Uh, yeah, sorry. At least once a day, and with toothpaste on it. I-- I can show you how, later. It helps keep your teeth clean.” 

Jon’s teeth have always done a perfectly fine job of staying clean on their own before, but he bites the complaint back. He sets the toothbrush down next to the hairbrush. 

“Stick of deodorant. You take off the cap, and, um, smear it around on your… armpits, and it makes you smell better.” 

Jon gives Martin an incredulous look. 

Martin flushes. “Well, of course it’s going to sound silly when I have to-- to spell it out like that! But it works! And lots of people do it.” 

“Do I smell bad?” Jon asks. He takes a moment to sniff himself. He just smells like… himself, for the most part. 

“No--” Martin says, and then seems to bite his tongue. “It’s just-- it’s just something people usually have. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, just. If you want it, you have it.” 

Jon looks at the deodorant. It has a picture of lemons on it. Is he supposed to smell like lemons instead of himself? He knows what perfumes are, but that tends to be sprayed or dabbed on the neck, not smeared on the armpits. He sets the deodorants on top of the growing pile of objects. 

“And this is a razor,” Martin says, handing him the last object. “For if you don’t want to be, um, hairy, I guess. God, you’ve probably never used one of these things before, have you? You should be careful with it. It’s sharp.” 

Jon turns it over in his hands. 

“I’m sure I can figure it out,” he says. He’s not an idiot, of course he can. 

“Okay,” Martin says. “If-- if you ever need help with it though, just tell me, okay?” 

Something about that offer seems to be making Martin very, very red faced. 

“Sure,” Jon says, and sets it down on the rest of his bounty. That seems to be the end of it. He looks over his new possessions. 

… He’s never owned this many objects before in his entire life. Most of it is useless, or strange, or he doesn’t know how to use it or even want it. But it’s still the most that he’s ever had before in his life. 

Technically, it’s all Martin’s. Everything Jon owns is his. But Martin already owns all of these things, presumably, a razor and a towel and a toothbrush of his own, and so on. He got these for Jon, so that he could use them. 

He hadn’t had to do that at all. Even Martin should know that, but he’d done it anyway. 

“Thank you,” he says, trying out the words. He hasn’t had many opportunities to thank someone else before in his life. Or maybe he just didn’t notice when it was happening, until it was too late. 

“It’s no problem,” Martin automatically responds. Jon doesn’t know whether it’s a lie or not. He knows that it must have been, at the very least, an inconvenience. A hassle. 

For lack of anything better to say or do, and a strong urge to not sit in heavy silence with Martin, Jon uncaps the stick of deodorant and takes an experimental sniff. 

“That’s not what lemons smell like,” he says indignantly. He knows, he’s found some before in the big house’s kitchen. 

Martin grins. “It’s not lemon scented.” 

“There’s a picture of lemons on it!” 

“I think that’s just supposed to show that it smells, I don’t know, fresh?” 

“And what, exactly, is fresh supposed to smell like?” He scowls at the deodorant which has clearly blatantly lied to him, and then curiously sticks his tongue out and-- 

“Don’t eat it!” Martin yelps, smacking it out of his hand. 

“I wasn’t going to eat it!” Jon says, wounded, cradling his hand to his chest. It doesn’t hurt, but he hadn’t expected it. “I was just going to see what it tasted like!” 

“Why!?” 

“I was curious!” 

Martin gives him an incredulous look, and then abruptly bursts out into laughter. It has a tinge of hysteria to it, tears spring to his eyes as he hunches over where he sits. It’s slightly worrying. 

“This is ridiculous. My life is ridiculous now,” Martin says, almost to himself, still giggling a little bit between words. Then he takes a deep breath, seemingly steadying himself. “D’you want to help me make dinner?” 

Martin eats a lot of canned foods. Simple, preserved stuff that doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to turn into a decent enough meal. He doesn’t really know why. It’s not like he has much of an excuse. Back in London, sure, he’d get home and be dead tired at the end of the day and just quickly scarf something down so he could finally relax. But it’s not like being the gardener of a property where the owners barely ever show up is a high paced job. It can be a pain in his back sometimes, sure, but he can take it slow and easy if he wants to, and no one really notices if he’s a bit sloppy for a day or two. He has enough energy when he comes home to take the time to make himself a proper dinner, if he just puts in the effort. It’s not like he can just order take out instead, not here. 

But he barely ever does. It’s easier this way, he supposes. It’s surprisingly hard to cook for just one, without having to eat the same thing for three meals in a row. 

But now he’s got fresh groceries, and he apparently wasn’t thinking super clearly while he was getting it, because he bought food like he thinks he’s going to have to make a full dinner every day of the week. Pasta and rice and flour and fresh fruits and vegetables and more. He was distracted, he guesses. Well, he might as well make the most of it, right? 

And it would be a shame if Jon’s first introduction to human cuisine--not counting Martin’s boiled eggs, because he’s not counting that--was just brown stew in a can heated up on the oven. 

“You don’t need to hover,” Jon says, cutting up the cherry tomatoes. His technique is technically correct-- Martin had been very careful and thorough when showing him how to safely hold and use the knife, and to his credit, Jon had paid very close attention. He’s also moving very, very slowly though, which is good, but it also makes it so that Martin can’t help but remember that Jon only first learned to do this five minutes ago. 

“I’m not hovering,” Martin says, as he does nothing but stand next to Jon and watch him cut tomatoes. It’s fine, the pasta is boiling, it doesn’t need his supervision. He belatedly realizes that he’s got his hands slightly outstretched, like he’s spotting Jon, which is ridiculous. The danger here isn’t that Jon might suddenly swoon and fall. He makes himself put his hands down. 

If Martin were just making canned stew, he wouldn’t have to worry about Jon potentially cutting one of his fingers off. Food preparation would also be over in under ten minutes, though, and-- well, Jon sort of looks like he’s enjoying himself, underneath all of the eye rolling. 

Martin might be enjoying himself a little bit too, underneath all of the fussy anxiety. Maybe. He can’t remember the last time he made food with someone. Probably not since he was a little kid. Well, maybe not even then. He vaguely remembers his mum shooing him out of the kitchen, scolding him for stepping on her heels, getting in her way, knocking something over-- he can’t quite remember what. 

“I found a picture of a woman and a child in a drawer,” Jon says, absolutely out of nowhere. 

“What?” Martin asks, uncomprehending. And then a moment later the thought connects. “What were you doing going through my drawers?” 

“I said that I went exploring while you were gone,” Jon says. “I was bored.” 

“That’s not exploring, that’s snooping.” 

“Pedantry,” Jon says dismissively. Martin makes an indignant noise, but he continues. “Who were the people in the picture?”  

“I-- that was me and my mum,” he says, because why would he lie about that? What would he even say? That he just has a picture of a woman and a kid that he’s in no way related to shoved shamefully away inside of a drawer for no reason? 

He’d used to have it sitting out, when he’d been living in London. He’d been intending to set it out on a table or a mantelpiece when he’d packed it up for his move, but-- somehow, it had ended up inside of a nondescript drawer instead. He’d used to take it out a lot, look at it. Think about clearing some space to put it down. And then he’d not do that, and just put it back in the drawer. He’d do that several times a day, during the first few months that he lived here. He can’t quite remember the last time that he pulled it out and just sat and looked at it, time slipping away from him as he stared. He’d lose hours that way, sometimes. He hasn’t done that in a while, now that he thinks about it. When had that happened? 

“Aren’t you supposed to hang pictures on walls?” Jon asks. 

“There’s no good spot for it,” Martin blatantly lies. There are plenty of open spots on the walls, and it’s plain to see. He corrects himself. “That is-- I, I moved here from London after my mum… Do you know what London is? It’s a place--” 

“I know what London is,” Jon says. “I do read, Martin.” 

“Sorry,” Martin says, even though Jon doesn’t know what a cheese shredder looks like, and has never used a toothbrush before, or know what deodorant is. “The holes in your knowledge are soft of random and, um, unpredictable.” 

“Authors are very annoying in that way,” Jon says. “They assume that the reader knows what every single word and term and phrase that they use means, and never slow down and stop to explain themselves.” 

“Sounds obnoxious,” Martin says, doing his best to relate to a person who literally isn’t the same species as him. He’s glad that they seem to be moving on from the topic of his mum, at least. It’s a bit… heavy. In a way that makes people feel awkward and uncomfortable. No one ever wants to hear about it. 

“It is,” Jon says emphatically, and chops the last tomato in half with one harsh, firm motion, instead of the smooth slicing movement that Martin had shown him earlier. Tomato juice splatters onto his shirt. It manages to startle a surprised little laugh out of Martin, and the oppressive weight of thinking about his mum--about the awful, draining months after her death--dissipates like morning dew underneath sunlight. 

“Here, let me get that for you,” Martin says, and Jon holds obediently still as Martin dabs at his shirt with a damp rag. 

It ends up being the best meal he’s had in years. 

Martin starts doing a lot of restless pacing as the sky begins to darken, Jon notices, looking up from the poetry book he’s been doing his best to read for the past hour. 

It turns out that having a human around to ask questions to does not magically make poetry make sense. Martin’s best attempts at answers to questions as simple as ‘but what does this mean’ are long and vague and meandering, and often end up in the vicinity of ‘it’s supposed to be subjective’ and ‘I think it means what you take away from it’. 

Nonsense. Utter nonsense. 

It gets to a point that abandoning the book of poetry in favor of watching Martin aimlessly fret about is the more favorable option. It’s when Martin runs up the stairs and then comes back down carrying an armload full of duvet and pillow that towers over his head, blinding him and leaving him tentatively making his way down the stairs with slow, exaggerated, cautious steps, that Jon finally decides to speak up. 

“What are you doing?” 

Martin totters into the living room, clipping the doorway on his way in, before unceremoniously dumping his bounty onto the sofa. 

“It’ll be time to go to bed soon,” he puffs, and starts straightening out the duvet and pillow from its messy bundle. 

“That’s not a bed,” Jon can’t help but point out. He can’t imagine that this has escaped Martin’s notice, but he would appreciate an explanation. 

“Yes, well,” Martin says. “Since-- since you’re the guest here, you should get the bed. I don’t have a guest room, so I’ll just sleep here.” 

Jon is very much not a guest here. That is honestly giving him far too much credit. It would be more accurate to call him property. He doesn’t correct him. Instead, he tilts his head and squints at the sofa, at Martin, back at the sofa. 

“How would that work?” he asks doubtfully. “Can you fit on that thing?” 

Martin flushes. “Course I can. It’ll just be a bit of a squeeze.” 

“No, but I really don’t think that you can. You can sit on it, certainly, but lying down?” Simply looking at the man and then the sofa, the math makes no sense. 

“I can handle sleeping a bit uncomfortably for one night. When I first moved to London, I slept on a crap spring mattress on the floor for the first two months until I could afford a proper bed.” 

“Lie down on it,” Jon says. “Right now. I want to see how exactly this is supposed to work.” 

“It’ll work, Jon,” Martin says peevishly. 

“Then show me.” 

Martin huffs at him. Jon crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. After a moment of extended challenging eye contact, Martin does lie down on the sofa. Or at least, he tries to lie down on it. His first attempt sees him almost toppling onto the floor. His second, he tries curling his knees up to his chest, but this clearly isn’t a position that suits him well. His third, he hooks his knees over the armrest, letting his legs drape over the side. 

“So that’s how you’re going to sleep?” 

Martin sits up, flushed and grimacing with defeat. 

“Okay, so-- so maybe it’s a really small couch. I got it for free, okay?” 

Jon makes a disapproving noise. “You can’t expect to get anything but useless garbage at best or malicious traps at worst when someone is willing to give you something for free.” 

“I’m pretty sure the previous owner just didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of having it properly thrown out, Jon. It works just fine as a couch.” 

“So you admit that you can’t use it as a bed,” Jon says, jumping on the chance to win an argument. 

“I just-- I need to sleep somewhere,” Martin says. “The couch is the best thing I’ve got. I’m not going to spend the night curled up on the rug.” 

Jon, who is currently quite comfortably curled up on the rug with a book in his lap, doesn’t comment on this. 

“Why can’t you sleep in the bed?” he asks. 

“Because you’re sleeping in the bed,” Martin says, like this is a foregone conclusion. Martin is seriously considering sleeping on a couch whose length is a bit over half of his height, and briefly mentioned the rug as a contender, but the fact that Jon will be sleeping in the only actual bed in the house seems to already be set in stone. 

Jon hadn’t ever slept in a bed before last night. He’s slept in abandoned birds nests during winter, and underneath the cover of flower fields and bushes in the summer, and after he left the forest to go and find new, interesting things he’s slept in back of a bookshelf behind all of the books, and in the small gap of space between a pillow and the back of an armchair. He sleeps in small, hidden spaces where he’s reasonably sure that no predator or human may stumble across him. 

He’d gotten into that bed because it was where he was supposed to be. He’d felt it, felt the bond pulling him there. It had been… surprisingly comfortable, once he’d gotten settled. Warm. Not cramped or cold or hard, the way some of the places he’s gone to sleep in before have been. It’s nice, sleeping in beds. No wonder humans do it all of the time. 

He and Martin had been perfectly able to share the bed last night. Martin had unconsciously made room for him as Jon had climbed in, had tossed an arm over him and drawn him in closer. There had been enough room. 

“I could sleep on the couch,” Jon says, instead of all of that. It doesn’t matter what the bond between them is making some part of him want. This is good. It’s good that Martin doesn’t want to share a bed with him, for whatever reason. “I believe that I would have a better chance of being able to stay on it without contorting myself.” 

“Oh, definitely not,” Martin says. “It would murder your back, even if you manage to fit.” 

Wouldn’t it murder Martin’s back as well, then? But that doesn’t seem to be a consideration, apparently. And now he’s forbidden Jon sleeping on the couch anyways, so it’s not even an option any longer. 

“We could sleep in shifts,” Jon suggests. 

“What? No. What? No. I have work tomorrow, and-- and I’m not going to make you stay up for another eight hours just so we can take turns using the bed. We can just… we’ll…” Martin looks around his living room helplessly, as if it’ll turn out that there’s been a four poster bed here this whole time, and he’d just missed it behind a doily until now. Jon watches as his shoulders slump with resignation all at once, a defeated sigh leaking out of him. “I guess we’ll have to share the bed tonight. I should’ve thought of this while I was down in the village and bought something then, but everything’s going to be closed by now… This is what I get for living in a place where everyone goes to bed before ten.” 

Everything went well the last time they shared a bed together, Jon reminds himself. Nothing bad happened. 

Martin had also been asleep and unaware of Jon’s presence until morning, the last time they shared a bed together. There hadn’t been an opportunity for anything bad to happen in the first place. 

It’s fine. Martin doesn’t know how much of a right he has to take what he wants from Jon. He won’t know what he’s allowed to do. It’s fine. 

It’s fine.  

“I’ll be up for a bit longer,” Jon says, and decides that he’s not done trying to decipher the poetry book after all. 

He ends up reading the entire thing cover to cover. When he closes it, he can’t recall a single poem. A stray line about… longing, or hands, or some overly sentimental nonsense like that. It hadn’t even rhymed. That’s one of the few things that Jon knows about poetry, and apparently it’s not even a consistent rule. He puts the book down. 

The house is quiet and dark. He can hear a faint wind blowing outside, the creakings of the old building settling. Martin had gone up to bed at some point while he was reading. Jon had been trying so hard to ignore him that he doesn’t know how long ago that was. Long enough for him to have already fallen asleep? He hopes so. A part of him wants to stay down here for another hour, maybe two, three, more, as many as it takes to make sure that Martin won’t be awake when Jon joins him. 

But Jon has to avoid Martin accidentally giving him any orders. Having spent a day with the man, he is now fairly certain that if he procrastinates going to bed for too long that Martin will sternly tell him to go to bed at a reasonable hour from then on, not knowing that Jon will have no choice in the matter after that. 

Reluctantly, he ascends the stairs and enters the bedroom. 

Martin is sitting up in the bed with pillows propping him up from behind, a lamp by the bedside casting yellow light, wearing reading glasses and reading a book. He looks up as Jon enters and smiles. Jon’s stomach sinks at the sight. 

“You didn’t have to stay up for me,” he says. I wish you hadn’t. 

“I wasn’t,” says Martin. He contradicts himself almost immediately by bookmarking the current page he’s on, and taking his reading glasses off. He starts shuffling pillows around, preparing himself to go to sleep, leaving the lamp on for now, presumably so that Jon won’t have to blindly fumble his way towards the bed. Very considerate of him. 

Jon feels vaguely nauseous as he gets into the bed, Martin scooting out of the way to let him have a side of the bed. 

“I’m not-- not used to sharing a bed with someone,” Martin says, with a sheepish smile. “So I, um, if I’m a snorer or something just wake me up and I’ll turn onto my side.” 

“You don’t snore,” Jon says. He hadn’t last night. 

“Okay,” says Martin. “Good to know.” 

And with that, he reaches out and turns the lamp off. The room is instantly cast in darkness, before Jon’s eyesight adjusts. In a few moments, the room seems perfectly well lit despite the darkened lamps. The curtains are drawn open, letting in star and moonlight. It’s a clear night sky. It lets Jon see Martin well enough. The man has his back turned to him, resting on his side. Jon can’t make himself turn his back on him as well, or close his eyes. 

Martin doesn’t know the sort of things he’s rightfully owed, if he wants them. But if he thinks to reach out to try and take them anyways, if he lays a hand on Jon, if he pulls his legs open-- Jon doesn’t think that he’d be allowed to push Martin off, to say no. Even if Martin doesn’t know this. It’s his marital obligation, after all. His duty. One of the things that he’s for. 

Jon lies very, very quiet and still, his eyes fixed on Martin’s back. Waiting for movement. Braced for it. If it happens, there is nothing that he can do to stop it. So he might as well sleep, right? 

He can’t make himself look away anyways. 

When Martin turns over onto his back, Jon flinches with surprise at the movement, and belatedly squeezes his eyes shut before he gets caught staring. 

“Jon?” Martin asks quietly, like he’s testing to see if Jon’s awake or not. 

“Yes?” Jon says, before it occurs to him that he could have taken the opportunity to pretend to already be asleep. 

He opens his eyes, and he can see Martin’s face in profile, lit up with the faint, gentle moonlight. His eyes are locked on the ceiling above him, his fingers laced together over his chest, his brow furrowed with some sort of preoccupation, like he’s trying to solve a math problem in his head. 

“There’s-- there’s something I can’t stop thinking about,” he says, sounding almost bothered. “You said that you’re-- that fairies, that you guys are born from… flowers? How-- how does that work exactly? Do you pollinate them or something?” 

Jon blinks, taking in the surprisingly innocuous question. He feels something rigid in his back untense slightly. He’d much rather answer basic questions about magic than lie here in tense silence that weighs down on him like a leaden weight. 

“No,” he says. “Fairies aren’t particularly involved in the process in any way, really. We’re sort of an… environmental factor? We’re made of cast off magical energy. The few sparks that spill over when a witch uses a spell, the stuff that unicorns exude just by existing in a place, and so on. If enough of it gets thrown around in an area the flowers there will soak it up, and come next spring when the flowers bloom, fairies will fly out of them.” 

The way Jon had had it explained to him, by a fae famed for his treasure trove of secrets and knowledge who was feeling indulgent that day, fairies are effectively the refuse of the magical world. Made from discarded energy that only went unclaimed and ignored because it was such a small, paltry amount that it would have been a waste of time to take it. Like bending down to pick up a penny. Not worth the effort. It would look rather pathetic, wouldn’t it, to go pawing through the grass and flowers on hands and knees for other people’s trash? For an amount of magic so small that the only thing it’s good for is to create a fairy, the world’s most expendable creature? Desperate. Weak. 

Jon had been rather excited that a fae, much less a fae known for his wealth of knowledge, had decided to deign to share some of it with Jon, and only for some small little favors in exchange too. He hadn’t felt like asking any more questions after that one though, his eager curiosity going strangely dull and blank. 

He had moved from the forest shortly after that. 

“That’s beautiful,” Martin says, his voice hushed and soft like he’s picturing something wondrous. 

Jon tenses. He’d forgotten for a moment there that he’s in the middle of a conversation, that he was answering a question. He looks at Martin. Martin’s crumpled brow has smoothed out, and there’s a look of gentle awe on his face now. 

“Is it?” Jon asks doubtfully. 

Martin turns his head to the side to look at Jon. 

“Um, yeah,” he says, like it should be obvious. “Are you kidding me? Twenty four hours ago I didn’t even know that magic existed, and now you’re telling me that fairies bloom from flowers if there’s enough magic in the air? That’s amazing. I could-- I could write a poem about that, wow.” 

He sounds terribly sincere, his eyes wide and earnest. 

Jon reminds himself that he hates poetry. And this-- this makes sense. Martin’s right, he didn’t know what magic was this time last night. He has no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t know how common fairies are, how weak, how unexceptional. 

(He’s never been called amazing before.) 

“If you say so,” he says, and he makes his voice dry, unimpressed. “Did you have any other questions?” 

“Well,” Martin says, and his tone goes light and casual, uninterested. He turns his gaze back onto the ceiling, like what he says next doesn’t particularly matter to him. “So-- so if fairies don’t have to do anything to make more fairies, I guess you guys don’t do sex, right?” 

Jon freezes. 

“What?” he manages, belatedly. 

“Since you don’t need to have sex to procreate,” Martin says. “I mean, I know humans don’t only have sex to procreate, definitely not, but that’s sort of a byproduct of the intended function, you know? The-- the human body makes it feel really good to encourage the humans to do more of it, so that there’ll be more humans, so the species have a bigger chance of surviving. But if sex was never needed in the first place-- would it even feel good? Is it even a thing for you guys?” 

They’re talking about the one subject that Jon had desperately been hoping to avoid. And they’re talking about it in the strangest, most unexpected way possible. He has no idea how to respond, how to skillfully handle the subject in a way that won’t doom him or tip his hand in any way. 

Fairies don’t have sex, he imagines saying. Let me show you how it’s done, he imagines Martin saying. 

Fairies have sex, he imagines saying. Then let’s have some, he imagines Martin saying. 

In the end, Jon does what he usually ends up doing, and he sputters out the truth. 

“It’s-- it’s a thing,” he says. 

“Oh,” Martin says, voice small. He doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t look away from the ceiling for a moment. His eyes are very wide. 

“We do it for fun,” he says. The we sounds wrong, but he’s talking about fairies, and he’s a fairy, isn’t he? “Lots of orgies and such. It helps pass the time, and it’s entertaining enough.” 

“That’s-- nice,” says Martin. 

“I never joined in though,” he can’t help but add compulsively, the words simply rising out of his throat and mouth with none of his say so. “I-- I never saw the appeal of it, myself.” 

It wasn’t the reason that he never really fit in with the rest of them. It was a reason, but not the reason. It was, perhaps, all of the many little reasons all rolled up together that was at fault. 

I can help show you the appeal, he imagines Martin saying. He’s messed up. 

“Okay,” is what he says instead. “I’m, um, a fan of it myself-- pretty big fan-- but everything isn’t for everyone! I don’t like peanut butter. It’s-- it’s the texture. Too sticky.” 

Martin cringes as soon as he finishes speaking, as if he hates the words that just came out of his mouth. Jon looks at him blankly. 

“Shouldn’t have brought this subject up while we’re lying in bed,” Martin mutters, seemingly to himself. And then he rolls over so that his back is facing Jon again. “Night!” 

“... Good night,” he responds, still processing what just happened. He waits for Martin to pick the conversation back up, to ask for details, to ask more questions, to pick away at the topic until he’s satisfied. To do something. 

He doesn’t do anything. And he keeps not doing anything. Jon realizes after several long, unending moments, after he’s noticed that his eyes have gone dry and itchy because he forgot to blink, that Martin’s breathing has gone soft and deep. He’s asleep. 

He is, apparently, not going to do anything for the whole night. 

Jon lies there, not quite knowing what to do with himself, all of his fear and anxiety thwarted and spurned, fizzling out impotently, unfulfilled. 

He’s supposed to sleep now, he supposes. Nothing better to do. 

He wonders what peanut butter is.

Chapter Text

In the past, whenever Martin has slept somewhere unfamiliar it always startled and confused him when he woke up, until reality bled back in. When he first moved to London, it took him a whole week before he stopped waking up disoriented and bewildered, wondering where the hell he was, why he wasn’t in his bedroom. The process repeated itself when he moved here, out to the country. His body likes its routines and familiarities, apparently. 

It was sort of like that whenever he shared a bed with someone too. He’s only done it a couple times, relishing the chance to finally try some stuff out once he’d moved out to London and gotten enough time to properly breathe. He hadn’t dared to try anything while living with his mum, and the gay scene in Kent wasn’t exactly super active either. It had been a nice experience, taking a couple of guys home back then in his early twenties. He’d learned stuff. He’s glad it happened. But there’s a reason why it didn’t become a habit. It was nice while the guy was still there, in his bed, with Martin. But then inevitably he’d leave, and Martin would feel… emptier, somehow. Like the brief, fleeting company only highlighted the status quo, his default state of being. 

That, and it turns out that it’s really difficult to sleep while sharing a bed with a relative stranger. It is for Martin, at least. He gets all self conscious, stuck in his head. Trying to match up his breathing with theirs, forcing himself not to shift around for a more comfortable position for fear of bothering them, of waking them up. And when Martin does manage to fall asleep, it’s so easily ended. The slightest snore, or snuffle, or mumble, and he’s awake again. It doesn’t make any sense. He’d used to live in London for god’s sake, that place was never completely quiet. At least not where Martin lived. How could someone turning over in bed next to him be more disruptive than a cab driver laying on the horn just outside the flat building? 

He’d wondered to himself that maybe it was all down to that thing where he got all confused whenever he slept in an unfamiliar space. It took him time to get used to a new environment, a new mattress, a new sleeping schedule. Maybe sleeping next to a person was just something he needed a few days to familiarize himself with, and then he would be sleeping comfortably again like it was no trouble at all. 

He’s never been able to test this theory, because he’s never had someone to sleep next to for longer than one night. 

Martin wakes up slowly and comfortably, and when the warm weight of another person pressed up all along his front bleeds into his awareness, he isn’t confused for a single second. It’s just Jon. Of course he’s here. Why wouldn’t he be? 

Jon’s presence is such a non surprise, that it takes a long time to register for Martin that just how natural this feels isn’t right. Can’t possibly be right. This should still be new and unfamiliar, uncomfortable. Jon’s presence should’ve kept him up last night, should’ve woken him up repeatedly. Martin should be confused right now, in the light of dawn, wondering for a few moments just who the hell is in his bed right now, how they got here. 

It feels like they’ve been sharing a bed for years. 

It’s an eerie realization, and Martin sits up in bed to shake it off, the chill in the air prickling across the bare skin of his arms as the covers slip off his front. It’s not cold in his room, but it feels decidedly harsh and unforgiving compared to the warm and toasty nest that his and Jon’s combined body warmth have built up underneath the duvet. There’s a… significant part of him that wants to just lie back down and continue to bask in that warmth and comfort. Martin looks at the clock on his nightstand and swears, abandoning the urge in favor of jumping out of bed. 

Jon makes a whining, grumbling noise as Martin leaves the bed, most likely due to the fact that he’s now broken the seal that was the tucked in duvet, and now let the cold into the previously safe cocoon of covers. 

“Sorry,” Martin says automatically, as he starts fumbling for clothes. “I overslept, I’ve got to get to work now.”  

He can still get there on time if he walks quickly, instead of taking things at the comfortable amble that he prefers. Technically, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal if Martin doesn’t get there on time. He’d done it plenty of times during his first year here, his urgency lulled to complacency by how calm and quiet everything feels here. Nothing compared to the hectic pace in London, the constant crowds, the feeling of always being watched by someone. He’d done his job properly every day of course, figuring out how to garden as well as his CV claimed he could, but he’d sort of let himself slide into the mindset of ‘so long as it gets done, it doesn’t matter when I start, does it?’ There were no coworkers to coordinate with, after all. No boss to impatiently wait for him to get into work. No one to get into trouble with. What mattered was the results, and that was that. 

And then one day the housekeeper had noticed him coming in half an hour past when his work day should’ve started by pure chance, and she’d threatened to have him fired. He’d come up with some sort of wild apology about being attacked by a feral racoon on his way to work on the spot, but he’s had the nagging feeling that she’s been keeping an eye on him ever since then. At least during the mornings, twitching curtains aside to see if he’s on the grounds yet. Just to see if he’s coming in when he’s supposed to be coming in. 

That’s probably just his anxiety speaking. It was ages ago, and he’s been showing up like clockwork ever since. She’s almost definitely forgotten all about it, has given up watching him like a hawk to catch him slacking off or anything like that. He’s a regular now. He’s a part of the Lukas grounds, a familiar background character. 

He still can’t shake the lingering fear that the one time he comes in too late is the one time she’s checking to see if he’s there yet or not. 

“What happens to you if you’re late?” Jon asks after Martin’s hopped into some trousers and gotten a shirt on, hunting down the second missing sock. Martin turns to look at him, and freezes like a deer in headlights. Jon’s sitting up in bed now, and the sheet has slipped far enough that Martin can see that he’s not wearing a shirt, and just barely far enough down his hips too that he knows that he’s not wearing any pants or trousers either. 

“Where did your clothes go?” Martin asks despairingly. He distinctly remembers Jon wearing clothes when he got into bed. He also remembers basically spooning Jon five minutes ago, which he apparently had been naked for. 

Jon looks down at himself, raises his eyebrows, and then lifts up the sheet to peer down underneath it. Martin flushes and turns around, trying to focus on finding that damned sock. 

“It seems as if I undressed myself while I was asleep,” Jon notes. “Sleeping while clothed is uncomfortable. I can see why you might want to wear clothes day to day-- it can get rather cold. But the bed is warm. It’s completely unnecessary.” 

Martin finds the sock. He puts it on, takes a deep breath, and tells himself to stop being so-- so silly. He makes himself look at Jon as he talks to him. 

Jon is digging through the sheets to find the shirt and trousers that he apparently managed to kick and pull off himself during the night without ever even waking up. His hair is slightly messy from sleep, but still looks unfairly tempting to touch. Like-- like those pictures of metal so hot that it’s gone a glowing orange. It’s that same sort of urge to reach out and run his fingers through it. It isn’t allowed. It wouldn’t go well for him. 

He still wants to, though. A lot. 

“You really don’t like the clothes I got for you,” Martin says, and it isn’t really a question. Jon’s complained about it enough that he’s starting to catch the hint. 

“I’m not sure that I’d like having to wear any clothes in the world,” Jon says. He gets out of the bed, and starts putting on said clothes, a slight grimace of distaste on his face as he does so. “I think it’s one of those things that you have to grow up with to be able to tolerate.” 

Martin forces himself to not stare as Jon gets dressed, but also tries not to bashfully avert his eyes like a scandalized maiden either. Before last night, some part of Martin had wondered if maybe Jon was trying to hint at something by getting undressed over and over again where Martin would see. That it was some sort of unspoken invitation. It was a stupid thing to think. Jon isn’t-- he isn’t coy, he’s already grasped that. He still hadn’t been able to stop himself from nervously wondering, though. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

After last night though--and that comment just now, actually-- it’s become clearer. It’s completely guileless on Jon’s part. He’s not teasing or flirting, he’s not implying anything. He just… doesn’t connect sex and nudity in his head. Because fairies don’t do clothes, apparently. 

It’s weird how much easier it is to relax around Jon now that he knows this. See, Jon isn’t casually getting naked because he wants a particular thing, he isn’t impatiently waiting for Martin to finally catch up and do something. It isn’t a prelude to something else. Jon just… doesn’t like clothes, and doesn’t see anything wrong with being naked in front of people he’s only just met. 

It’s a strange relief to establish that sex is now officially off the table. Not that Martin doesn’t like sex, but the uncertainty and the tension and the wondering-- it had all been a bit stressful. It’s nice to have a concrete answer. 

“You’re going to have to wear clothes if you want to interact with any humans but me,” Martin feels compelled to point out. 

Jon sighs, aggravated. “I gathered as much.” 

Jon plucks once at his shirt, an annoyed frown on his face, and Martin makes a snap decision. 

“After work today we can go down to the village together,” he says. “That way you can help me find something that you might actually like.” Or at least not actively hate. 

Jon looks up sharply at that. He looks suddenly very, very keen. 

“Very well,” he says quickly. He doesn’t bring up his opinion that there probably aren’t any clothes in the world that he’d like again. 

It’s as Martin hurriedly making himself a packed lunch (just a saran wrapped cheese and ham sandwich), some bread in the toaster for a quick breakfast, that it occurs to him that he’ll be leaving Jon alone for eight hours, if not longer. 

It’s not that Jon created a huge mess the last time Martin left him alone. He snooped around a bit, poked at some books, and then took a nap on the floor. But that was for an hour, and this will be for much longer. Even if Jon seems to know better than to set things on fire or juggle knives, he is probably going to be terribly, awfully bored. Martin doesn’t get cable out here. The wifi is very, very spotty. Jon had not seemed terribly impressed with the selection of books available. 

“D’you want to come with me to work?” he ends up asking the man impulsively, as he slides him one of the slices of toast, jam spread over it. And then he thinks about how the housekeeper will react if she spots some strange man loitering on the grounds, much less a strange brown man, and he grimaces. “Um, or, maybe not. I guess you’d sort of stand out, wouldn’t you?” 

Jon tilts his head at him curiously. 

“Why would I?” he asks. “I’m a fairy. I’m very good at not standing out.” 

It takes a moment for Martin to parse that, and then he all at once remembers Jon turning into a tiny little fairy during his ‘oh god magic is real’ meltdown yesterday. Somehow, in the distracting rush of everything, he’d sort of let that part slip his mind. And then another thing occurs to him. Martin smacks his forehead with his hand and curses. 

“You could’ve just turned into a fairy and slept anywhere. You could’ve slept on a pillow, and it would’ve been like a queen sized mattress!” 

“Well, yes,” says Jon. “But you seemed very set on me sleeping in the bed.” 

“Because I-- oh, nevermind,” he groans, and focuses on scarfing down his breakfast without any more lingering. He really does have to get going soon. 

When Martin finally manages to leave the house, Jon turns into a fairy before he even crosses the threshold, contemptuously leaving his clothes piled behind him on the floor. Or, Martin supposes that he’s always a fairy, he just doesn’t always look like it. He watches as Jon flutters through the air as he walks, gravel crunching underneath his boots. Martin can apparently see through Jon’s ‘disguise’ now, because he doesn’t see a moth. But he’s so small that he really does have to look closely to realize that, hey, that is not a bug. At least while he’s in motion like that. 

Eventually, somewhere around the halfway mark of the journey, Jon starts to lag. 

“Do you need a break?” Martin asks, anxiety nipping at him. He has to get to work quickly, but he also doesn’t want to tire Jon out. Or leave him alone in the outside world, for that matter. The last time that happened, he was almost eaten by a spider. 

Well, Martin supposes that Jon could just change his size this time if something like that happened again, but still. He doesn’t want to just abandon him. 

“I just-- fairies aren’t really supposed to-- for long distances--” Jon says, voice straining. Martin holds his hand out, and Jon takes the out, descending in a bit of a wobbly way into Martin’s palm. He pants for breath there for a moment. 

Christ, Martin can literally hold all of him with one hand. He’d been too shellshocked the first time he saw Jon like this to really notice it, but he’s adorable like this. Tiny, in a way that inspires the terrible impulse in Martin to coo at him. He bites his tongue instead. 

After giving Jon a moment, Martin deposits Jon on his shoulder. 

“You can just hang on for the ride,” he says lightly. “It’s not like you’re heavy, I can handle it.” 

“If you insist,” Jon says with ill grace, clearly not thrilled about the whole situation, but also too tired to be pigheaded about it at the moment. 

When Martin arrives at work, no one comes storming out of Moorland House to scold him, so he decides to chalk up the morning as a victory for that. He gets started for the day. There’s a rose bush that’s in dire straits, because whatever idiot was in charge of the garden before Martin decided to plant a very fragile, delicate species of rose instead of a nice, hardy one suited to the local climate. He’s pretty tempted to just let it die already so he can start over again with an actually decent species, but at this point he’s saved it so many times that it’s become a bit of a point of stubborn pride. 

“What’s wrong with you now?” Martin gripes as he gets down on his knees. “Did someone cough vaguely in your direction? Did someone somewhere say something rude about you?” 

“Can it understand you?” Jon asks curiously, right next to Martin’s ear. And Martin starts with a yelp as he remembers that he’s not actually alone like he is every day. He flushes a bit as he realizes that he’s been caught out in one of his more embarrassing habits. 

“N-- no. I just remember hearing somewhere that plants are healthier if you talk to them, so-- I never actually bothered looking into it, it’s just one of those common sayings, you know? It’s probably bollocks or people misunderstanding correlation for causation, or some shite like that. Just a myth.” 

People also probably meant loving, fond encouragement, when they said that. Not scolding ribbings for being too finicky and fragile. 

“I don’t see why talking to something that can’t understand you would help it  in any way,” he says doubtfully. 

“I think it might be more of a tone thing. Like talking to someone who doesn’t share the same language, but they can tell that you’re trying to be friendly anyways.” 

Mostly, he just got into the habit because if he doesn’t talk to the plants, he can sometimes go a whole day without hearing another voice. He’d tried once to see how long he could go without anyone speaking a word to him, without hearing anyone speak at all. Just to see how long it would take. He’d made it all the way to his weekly shopping day before Rosie asked him if he wanted a second bag or not. 

It had been a strangely devastating experience. It had hit him harder than it should have. 

He doesn’t want to go through a whole week of silence again. So he talks to his plants. He doesn’t really want to explain that to someone else, though. It sounds a bit… pathetic. 

“They don’t have ears,” Jon points out. 

“Okay, yeah. I’m probably just being silly and only talking to myself, but-- it doesn’t hurt to do it anyways, right?” 

“I suppose so,” Jon says skeptically. 

They lapse back into silence after that. Martin feels a bit too self conscious to let himself fall back into mindless, one sided chatter when he’s got an audience, so he just focuses on his work. Jon eventually gets off Martin’s shoulder, but that’s only to flit about in the surrounding area, so he decides that it’s nothing to be concerned about. 

One of the roses has started to grow in a way that leads it away from the rest of the pack, standing awkwardly away from the rest of the bush, sagging in an unsightly sort of way with no support, gravity pulling it downwards. Martin could technically just use a trellis to help it along, but his job isn’t to nurture a healthy garden, not really. He’s supposed to curate a pretty one. The sort of pretty that the kind of people who own homes like this don’t really look at or notice. It’s the kind of pretty that they expect to be surrounded by, to have in the background. They’ll only notice something if it’s out of place, ugly, broken. 

So, Martin’s going to have to clip this bud off instead. It’s fine. Trimming comes along with the job. He gets his clippers, sets them to the offending stem-- and hesitates. An awful idea inserts itself into his mind, obtrusive and more than a bit horrifying. 

“Jon?” Martin calls out, voice going thin with uncertainty. 

“Yes?” Jon asks, flying over to him. “What is it?” 

Martin is remembering every single flower he’s ever clipped for this job. And hell, even before that, every single flower that he’s ever accidentally stepped on, or picked up just because he thought it was pretty and felt like taking it home. How many flowers does that all amount to? He has no idea, but it has to be a high number. 

“Does every flower have a fairy in it?” he asks anxiously, very desperately hoping for a particular answer. 

“Oh, no,” Jon says. “That truly would be a massive amount of fairies. No. Only flowers that soak up a lot of cast off magic bloom with fairies in the spring. Flowers that share groves with unicorns, or that grow by a witch’s hut, or near a fae court, for example.” 

Oh thank god. 

“And there’s none of that here?” he asks, just to be safe. 

“None. I haven’t noticed a single speck of magic, and I’ve been living here for months. It’s why I came here, in fact. I thought that it would be safer, to exist somewhere far away from any kind of magical predator or such. And then I was almost eaten by a common spider because I let my guard down,” he finishes bitterly. 

“I’m just happy to know that I haven’t accidentally been killing droves of unborn fairies while doing my job,” Martin sighs, and snips the rosebud off. 

“Oh yes, that happens quite frequently.” 

Martin fumbles and drops his clippers. “What?” 

“Not you. I seriously doubt that you have ever been in the position to unwittingly pluck a flower bearing a fairy in it before. But in general, you know. A lot of us die before we ever even get to bloom. There are plenty of animals that eat certain kinds of flowers, after all. And people and creatures don’t really think much of trampling a flower patch, if it’s in their way.” 

“But if they know that fairies are probably-- gestating? If they know that there are fairies inside of--” 

“Why should they care? They’ll probably just be eaten by a deer before they bloom anyways. Or by a bird once they’ve bloomed. Or they’ll stupidly try to play a prank on a creature larger and stronger than them and get squashed for it. Or they’ll get captured by a witch looking to use their wings for a potion. Or they’ll just get unlucky in another way. It doesn’t matter. I truly cannot stress enough how expendable we are.” 

Jon says all of this in a tone that would sound very casual and matter of fact, as if it’s nothing worth getting upset over, but he doesn’t quite manage it. He says it so… harshly, almost like he’s mad at Martin for not agreeing with him, for not acting like it doesn’t matter. 

Martin struggles for a moment to figure out how to put what he’s feeling into words. What he needs for Jon to know. 

“Even if there’s thousands of fairies, there’s still only one Jon,” is what he settles on. It belatedly occurs to him that Jon is an awfully common name, “Or-- one you, anyways. You know what I mean. Anyone who’d step on a flower while knowing that there could be someone inside of it is--” he almost says jerk, but that really is a gross understatement. “A horrible person.” 

There’s a long moment of silence after that. Martin fidgets with his clippers, before shooting a look at Jon, restless for a response. He’s starting to get the feeling that this is a sensitive subject, but-- expendable, really. No one should think of themselves as expendable. It’s not like Martin walks around thinking that he’s special and incredible-- he’d used to think very little of himself, actually. But he at least doesn’t talk about himself like it wouldn’t matter whether he lived or died. Not any longer. 

The plants would do badly without him here to take care of them, after all. 

(A gardener is entirely replaceable.) 

No, no. No other gardener would be able to keep this stupid fucking rose bush alive like Martin can, he’s certain of that. No other gardener would talk at them all day the way he does. 

It’s hard to read Jon’s expression. He’s so small, and he’s not even looking in Martin’s direction. 

“This is boring,” Jon says, and Martin flinches, more surprised than hurt. “There’s a library inside of the house. I’ll go inside and read until you’re done.” 

“Um-- okay? How-- how do I let you know when I’m done?” He’s definitely not allowed that far inside of Moorland House. 

“There’s a grandfather clock inside of the library. I’ve taught myself how to read it. Just tell me around when you think you’ll be done, and I’ll leave once the hour tolls.” 

For lack of anything better to do, Martin does. Jon flies off, and Martin watches him go. The bitter, familiar feeling of having said something wrong wells up inside of him. Of having tried to say something cheerful and distracting, something nice, and watching his mum go cold and quiet, clearly done with him for the day. Not knowing why what he did was wrong, and knowing he wouldn’t be told, that he wouldn’t know what to avoid in the future. That all he’d be able to do is guess and hope for the best. 

He takes a deep breath, and then vengefully cuts off another rose that he probably didn’t have to remove. He’s overreacting. The tight, upset anger in his chest is stupid and unecessary. 

Martin wishes that he could just make Jon let him know what he’d done wrong. Make him realize that he isn’t expendable, replaceable, unimportant. Make him stay, make him not shut Martin out. But people never really listen to him. Never have. 

He makes himself put the clippers away before he totally mangles the rose bush for no good reason at all. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. 

It’s fine. 

Martin talks to the plants. 

Jon resurfaces from the book that he’s been reading when he hears the grandfather clock toll out the hour again. He counts the strikes, and blinks at the number. Has it been that long already? 

He wishes that he could make time run slower. He’s reading a book that he’s been coveting for months now. It’s always been within his reach, silently mocking him with its presence. But it’s been too heavy to pick up. Until now, that is. It had only first occurred to him once he’d entered the library and seen it, flying past it as usual with a forlorn sort of annoyance. It had still been a bit challenging to procure it in the end, because the book is too heavy for him to lift when he’s in his small form, but too far up on the shelf for him to reach unless he has wings. It had involved some precarious… dangling, in the end. The less said about that, the better. 

An unexpected pleasure to this entire situation really is that he can turn pages now without it being a whole production. He can pick a book up, even, instead of hoping that one might already be conveniently lying out. He won’t have to risk his life to try and sneak words over someone’s shoulder as they read, cursing to himself whenever they turn a page before he’s ready. Something that he’s been foolish enough to only have done a couple of times, mind you. 

It’s a small consolation, considering everything, but it is a consolation. Oh, and also that things are no longer trying to eat him. Not when he’s big, at least. That’s a bigger consolation. 

Reluctantly, he puts the book away. Not into its proper spot-- he honestly has no idea how to do that without possibly toppling the entire shelf, leading to some sort of calamitous domino-esque disaster. He instead just hides it away underneath a couch cushion. No one but him needs to know where it is anyways-- he has gotten the very firm impression that literally no one besides him reads any of these books. At least not on a regular basis. It’s very, very strange. Almost like these hundreds upon thousands of dusty tomes are all just decoration, instead of precious information. 

Humans are ridiculous creatures. 

When he thinks this, his mind doesn’t immediately go to the mysterious owners of this home who have seen fit to accumulate an absolute treasure trove of literature, only to ignore and neglect it. He thinks of Martin, kneeling in the grass and the dirt and saying oh so earnestly that there’s only one Jon. 

It makes a strong, undefinable emotion well up inside of him like a kick to the chest. Right. That’s why he’s here, distracting himself with books. He’d needed to be alone. He’d needed to not be around for Martin immediately, because if he’d stayed then he would have had to continue to argue with him about how irreplaceable he may or may not be. And he had really, really not wanted to have to do that, in that moment. He would have won, of course, because he’s right. But who knows how long it would have taken him to drill an objective fact into Martin’s thick skull? It would have been tiring. Boring. Repetitive. Pointless. 

If Martin wants to continue to labor under the misapprehension that Jon matters, then… then that’s not Jon’s problem. It’s not like he tricked him into thinking so in the first place. He did that all on his own. He honestly doesn’t know where Martin had even gotten the idea from. 

He hopes that Martin won’t try to talk to him about it again. 

He flies out of the cracked out open window, and flutters outside. Eventually he spots Martin, who stands out from his surroundings very conveniently, actually. He seems to be dithering about, looking around himself as if searching for something. 

“What are you looking for?” Jon asks, landing on Martin’s shoulder. 

“Oh!” Martin says. “Christ, looking for you is like searching for a needle in a haystack, you know. Come on, let’s go home.” 

Jon stiffens at that. “I thought you were taking me to the village,” he says. Maybe Martin just forgot. He hopes so, because if he’s simply changed his mind then there isn’t much that Jon will be able to do to change it. 

“We’re stopping home first,” Martin says. “To get the car if nothing else. I’ll give myself blisters if I walk all of that way back and forth on foot.” 

Jon relaxes at that. Home is just a pitstop then, instead of a complete change of plans. He can deal with that. He sits on Martin’s shoulder on the way home, and waits for the man to bring up the… disagreement, from earlier. He never does, though. Jon is deeply, profoundly relieved, and only a little bit strangely disappointed as well. 

Martin darts inside to get his wallet and a change of clothes, and coaxes Jon into getting dressed himself. Somehow, Jon is surprised by this. Some part of him had just assumed that he would be staying small, disguised as a moth on Martin’s shoulder or hidden away in his hair as he went about the village. This… this is much better. It’s much more exciting, too. He’ll be able to interact with things. 

It’s his first time inside of a car, too. He’s seen bugs get flattened on windshields, and cars are usually locked up tight and secure when they aren’t in motion. 

“I know this car can’t really go above fifty without stalling out completely, but please put on the seatbelt anyways,” Martin says as he gets into his side of the car behind the wheel. “It would make me feel better.” 

“The what?” Jon asks. 

Which is how Martin ends up buckling Jon in, leaning in from the other side of the car. Jon tries to crane his neck to see what Martin’s doing, how he’s doing it, but it’s difficult with all of his bulk in the way. He hears something click home into place, and then Martin retreats back to his side of the car, his face flushed. Jon picks at the black strap of fabric that’s restraining him. It has a flexible give to it, but then goes tight and firm if he pulls on it too hard, too fast. It feels… mildly alarming. Like he’s been trapped. He remembers the cobweb. The mild alarm spikes sharply. 

“Is this truly necessary?” he asks, trying to keep his voice level as he grabs the seatbelt with both hands and tries to yank it as far away from his body as he can. It goes tight and firm immediately, not budging an inch. 

“Yes,” Martin says firmly. He straps himself in as well, which makes Jon feel marginally better. If the seatbelt is a bad thing then Martin wouldn’t be doing it to himself, right? “I know that it’s not comfortable but-- would rolling the window down make you feel better? There, the crank on the door there. It’s manual.” 

Jon figures the mechanism out. It’s a labor to roll the crank, but he’s used to having to put in an effort to move things. Usually, that’s because he’s a small creature living in a world that has been seemingly crafted for much larger ones. The window squeaks as it slowly sinks away, and he gasps in air when it’s finally gone down far enough to let in a brisk wind. He closes his eyes and feels the wind ruffle his hair. It almost feels like he’s flying. Almost. He focuses on that feeling instead of the constricting seatbelt. 

They eventually roll to a stop at a shoulder on the road just on the outskirts of the village, which is when Jon opens his eyes. Martin leans over and fiddles with something at Jon’s side, and then there’s an audible click and the seatbelt whips back away from him all at once, abruptly enough to make him yelp and flinch away from it. 

“It’s-- it’s not going to bite you, Jon,” Martin says. 

“I know that,” Jon says, without taking his eyes off the seatbelt. 

“Okay,” Martin says. “Sure.” 

He hears Martin get out of the car, and he fumbles to follow. He manages to figure out how to open the door before Martin has the time to circle the car and get the door for him, which he’s a touch proud of. He gets out and follows after Martin as he walks towards the village. He’s pleased to note that he’s faster than Martin when he’s in this form, at least. 

The first humans they pass are an old man and woman sitting out on a porch together, facing the street. They stare as he and Martin pass, and it’s a bit thrilling and nerve wracking all at once. Jon has long since become used to hiding away whenever people are near. Even before he’d left the forest that was so full with magic that it hung like pollen in the air during spring, soaking down into the roots in the earth, and tinging the river water so that you could taste it when you drank from it, he’d hid a lot when larger footsteps had come through. All of the smarter fairies that lived longer than one measly season did. But there’s no hiding here, not like this, and he doesn’t have to. 

He feels like he definitely should be hiding, as people turn to look at him wide eyed as they walk down the street, but he doesn’t have to, and so he stubbornly doesn’t. 

“Don’t worry about them,” Martin says to him, his voice low. “You’re a new face in town, that’s all. They’re just curious.” 

“I’m not worried,” Jon flat out lies. It’s never a good thing to be the center of attention, he knows that much. But they’re just looking. They’re just curious. 

If one of them suddenly lunges at him it’s going to be a different story, though. He keeps his guard up. 

“Who’s your friend there, Martin?” one of the people asks, a woman carrying a bag full of something propped up against her hip. “Haven’t seen them around here before.” 

“I’m Jon,” Jon makes himself say, because he’s not worried, he’s not hiding. 

Off to the side, a man groans. “Another one?” he asks, agonized. 

Jon blinks, not understanding. The woman laughs and says something to the man, but by then he and Martin are walking on, leaving the conversation. 

“Can’t stay to chat, sorry!” Martin calls back in a friendly sort of way as they go. “Got something waiting for us in the oven back home, so we’re on a schedule.” 

Jon is very sure that they don’t have something waiting for them in the oven back home, unless Martin had been incredibly productive during the two minutes that Jon had spent getting dressed. 

“What did that man mean?” Jon asks Martin. “Another one?” 

“Oh, just-- that was John Kelly. And there're three other people with some variation of the same name already living in the village, so with you as well that makes five Johns for one village. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is, considering the population size here. I think it’s sort of a running joke for everyone here.” 

Jon... doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all.

“Jon is a… common human name?” he asks. 

“I mean-- yeah, it’s really common. In this part of the world, at least?” 

“Oh,” he says. Common. 

He’d thought that his name was special, at the very least. He’d never met someone with a name like his before. That had been the whole point. 

“Is it not a normal name for fairies?” Martin asks, after taking a moment to look around and see if anyone is within earshot. 

“No,” Jon says. “No, it isn’t.” 

“What sort of names do fairies usually have?” 

Fairies tend to have short names. Small names for small creatures with little power. They simply can’t carry the weight and significance of a name that sprawls out across many syllables, demanding space and time on the tongues of others. They don’t have the right. Jon has seen fairies who tried to give themselves lengthy, important names, as if they would change to fit their names. Usually, it tended to go the other way around. Pieces of the ill fitting name would fall off, scattered and lost and forgotten, until only a single sound would be left remaining. It was a good way to end up with a silly, stupid name that didn’t make any sense. And that was the best possible result. In some of the worst cases, Jon had seen the beautiful, elaborate names not settle at all, and the fairy in question would be left with nothing. 

It is a very, very bad idea to exist without a name. It never ended well. 

Jon had kept this trend in mind while choosing his name, foregoing any of the longer ones he found in books, like Beauregard and Constantine and Maximillian and Antoinette and so on. He had very, very carefully chosen a name that he would be able to carry, a name that he was worthy of. And yet, one that he could still be happy with. He’d been very proud of himself when he’d managed it. 

There are four other Jons in this village. It’s a joke to them. 

Jon had been excited to get to go to the human village, but he is… distracted, now. 

“Lily,” he says. “Sky, Rock, Daisy, Cloud, Sun, Snail, Rain, Leaf.” 

“I’m… noticing a trend.” 

“Fairies tend to name themselves after the first thing they see, as quickly as possible. We’re born from magic, and so we know certain basic facts about the world even from the first moment that we’re born. Instinctual knowledge. We know that it is dangerous to remain unnamed for any length of time in the world.” 

There were so many fairies named after flowers. It was the first thing they tended to see, after all. What they bloomed from. Jon had bloomed from a rose. There had been more fairies who went by Rose in the forest than he could count. He hadn’t wanted to be yet another utterly interchangeable, forgettable Rose. He’d wanted a name that was his. All his. And so he’d gone and found one in a book that he’d never heard before, and had assumed that it was some sort of rare and precious treasure. Special. Unique. 

“Dangerous how?” 

“Creatures are supposed to have names,” he says. “If you don’t already have a name, it leaves you open to being named by anyone. And you’ll want to be the one who’s responsible for naming you, because if someone else manages to do it first then they have a greater claim on you than you do.” 

“What does that mean?” Martin, his husband-master asks. “How can someone else have a greater claim on someone than that person?” 

Martin has a greater claim on Jon than Jon does. 

He isn’t being charitable. It isn’t the same thing. A husband-master can bend a bride-slave to their will, can make the bride slavishly obey their every whim and order. But someone who has named you… 

It’s a greater claim than even marriage, that. More all encompassing and hopeless than one could possibly imagine. At least Jon will always, always have his thoughts and feelings. His Jon-ness. No matter what happens. 

“If you’ve managed to name a creature,” Jon says slowly, carefully. He keeps wanting to compare this to a marriage of obligation, but he’s not supposed to let Martin know the rules of how that works. He can’t. “If you’ve managed that, then you have a say in who they are. You can change them, body and soul. Shape them like they’re clay. They will be helpless to resist you.” 

Martin is silent for a long moment as they walk. 

“... How long did you go without a name?” he eventually asks. “You-- you said that you found it in a book. But you also said that you were born in a forest, and I sort of get the feeling that there weren’t a lot of books there?” 

“There weren’t,” Jon says. Writing precious knowledge and secrets down on paper, where anyone might get their hands on them and read them, where you might lose them or someone else might manage to steal them-- it is unheard of, where Jon is from. In the forest, everyone kept their tricks and stories locked up tight and hidden in their minds and behind their lips, and only shared them for a price. It was the only thing that some people had to barter with, after all. “It took me a few months before I managed to stumble across a book, and then properly settle on which name within it that I wanted.” 

“A few months,” Martin chokes. “You said that all of the other fairies named themselves seconds after they were born!” 

“I wanted to like it,” he says simply. 

Martin doesn’t have anything to say in response to that, but he looks very anxious, as if he’s retroactively stressed and worried for the Jon from years ago who hadn’t even been Jon yet, fluttering about the world without a single shield to protect him from the rest of the world, not even a name. Leaving himself so incredibly vulnerable out of sheer stubbornness. 

Jon thinks about how he’s not even the only Jon in this little village. 

“You know,” Martin says after a long moment. “Just so you know-- John Kelly spells his name with an H in it. And-- and Jon Peterson goes by his last name to avoid any confusion, and Jon Smith goes by Jonny. And everyone just calls John Rowling ‘Rooster’ instead-- it took me ages to learn what his real name even was in the first place. I think there’s some sort of story attached to it, but I haven’t heard it yet?” 

John, Peterson, Jonny, and Rooster. That… it’s still very similar, and they do all still technically share a name with him, but… 

It’s absurd, how that actually does manage to make him feel better. 

“That’s interesting,” he says mildly, as if Martin has just shared an irrelevant little fun fact with him that doesn’t affect him in the slightest. 

“I thought so too,” Martin says firmly. 

And then Martin walks into a small building with large windows that face out onto the street, old sun faded posters and pictures scattered across them, a bell tinkling overhead as the door opens, a weathered sign nailed over the door. Martin looks behind him at Jon, holding the door open for him. 

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s do some shopping.” 

Carol’s Clothing Store is more or less the only one in town, a hodge podge collection curated according to Carol’s whims and preferences, although requests can apparently be made. Martin secretly suspects that the store’s main function is to serve as a very large wardrobe for Carol herself, based on how many of the clothes she orders just so happen to fit her perfectly, and are also in her preferred style. But it’s fine. Again, requests can be made, and some people just donate any clothes they don’t fit into and don’t want to use any longer to this place, when they don’t just use them as rags. There are options. 

“There’s got to be something in here that you like,” he says, and then picks out a nearby sweater at random. “Like-- like this one, maybe? Are you a fan of… oh god, argyle?” 

Jon reaches out to take it, and then immediately lets go of it and recoils, his nose scrunching up with distaste. 

“No,” he says. 

“You didn’t even try it!” Martin cries. 

“It’s a bad texture,” he says firmly, and turns away to go and inspect the rest of the clothes. Martin frowns at the argyle sweater, and reaches out to rub at it experimentally. It feels… like a sweater. 

Martin really hopes that there’s something in here that Jon likes. He watches as Jon systematically goes through an entire rack of clothes, stopping to stroke at each piece of fabric. It reminds him weirdly of a sommelier tasting and evaluating glasses of wine, discriminating and turning his nose up at the slightest imperfection. Martin’s mouth twitches into a fond smile at that. 

Behind him, the bell above the door rings. 

“Who’s this?” he hears a familiar voice asks, and he turns around to see Rosie venturing into the store, peering curiously at Jon. 

“--Oh,” he says. “Rosie! I didn’t-- I thought you’d be working at your store, this time of the day.” 

“I’ve had two customers today-- Maggie stopped by to get toilet paper, and Rooster just came for some small talk. That was three hours ago. I think the store will be able to survive if I just pop out for five little minutes. Now, I thought that you wouldn’t be due to come and visit us for another week! Did you drop your toothbrush into the loo again?” 

He laughs sheepishly, and tries to think of a reasonable excuse. Maybe-- maybe that Jon’s his cousin come to visit, and his bag got stolen at the airport so he needs to buy himself some new clothes-- but they don’t look anything like family, maybe just old friends? Or what about-- 

“I want this one,” Jon says, and then there’s a bunch of fabric being shoved into his face. He sputters and takes a step back, until he can actually see what Jon’s holding up. 

“Jon,” he says, blinking. “That’s a dress.” 

“I know that much,” Jon says. It’s a long thing that would end somewhere near his ankles if he wore it, the color a soft salmon pink, no sleeves. It looks loose, breezy. “It’s soft. And I’m willing to bet that it’s far more comfortable than these awful trousers.” 

“Yes, but--” he says, and struggles for a moment to find the right way to say but it’s a dress and you can’t. 

Martin isn’t naive. He lived in London for years. He went to drag and burlesque shows, sitting alone in a corner with a drink, feeling a bit overwhelmed at all of the noise and the people, but quietly thrilled with how queer it all was. It was nice, just being in that sort of environment, even if he didn’t quite fit in with all of the other loud, confident people. At least he wasn’t strange or out of place there. He’s seen men in skirts, and trans people, and nonbinary people. He’s seen someone whose pronouns he had absolutely no idea of wearing a gold sequined dress and a gradient rainbow hued wig and flawless makeup with a full beard, sprawled out over the top of a piano and singing in a deep baritone. 

But that was there and this is here. The Kelly family’s daughter cut her hair short once, and for the next five times he went down to town, he heard about people wondering if maybe she was…? It would be fine if she was! But was she? 

Jon’s already an outsider, a stranger. For god’s sake, Martin can count the number of people in this village who aren’t white on one hand, including Jon. He already stands out. He already doesn’t fit in. Wearing dresses like that is only going to make it worse. Jon seems to know so little about humans, and he’s relying on Martin to answer his questions, to let him know when he does or says something strange and out of place. To be his survival instinct. 

He opens his mouth to try and convey any of this to him, and-- and he can’t quite manage to get the words out. Jon is looking at him so hopefully, as if he needs his permission for this, and he’s stroking his thumb back and forth across the fabric as he waits for a response. 

“Go and try it on in the fitting room,” is what he ends up saying. “See if you like it when you wear it.” 

“Oh yes, that’s clever,” he says, nodding, and heads off to do just that. 

Not everyone chooses their clothes to keep people from staring at them, to blend in. He has to remember that, that other people have other priorities. And they’re going to stare at Jon no matter what he wears, won’t they? After all, Jon is one of less than five not white people in this village. He doesn’t know how to act like a regular person. He’s brown and weird and a new face-- there isn’t anything he can do to fit in with everyone else, so why bother trying? Wearing a pair of blue jeans isn’t going to magically make him less of a novelty here. 

Mostly, Martin just hadn’t wanted to have to watch Jon’s face fall with disappointment, and he definitely hadn’t wanted to be the cause of it. That instinctive kick to shut it down, to get Jon to put the dress away, it had felt protective, anxious-- what would the rest of the village think? What would they say, how would they treat Jon for it? But the moment that he’d been gearing up to actually say you can’t wear that dress, you’re a man he’d felt like an absolute wanker for it. Who the hell does he think he is? He’s not this man’s parent. He can give advice, but he doesn’t have any right to tell Jon what he can or can’t wear. If the dress makes him happy then-- then that’s great. Fantastic. Lovely. He’s glad that he found some clothes that he likes, finally. 

“... Really, who is that?” Rosie asks, and Martin belatedly remembers that 1. She’s still here, and 2. She just saw all of that little interaction. 

Stiffly, he turns around to properly look at her. She’s still got her work apron on over her clothes, a handmade thing with Rosie’s General Store stitched onto the front in slightly wonky cursive. She’s not a particularly tall woman, and he’s a particularly tall man, so he towers over her, as always. He just barely stops himself from shuffling in between her and the direction of the changing room protectively. 

“That’s Jon,” he says. 

“Another one?” Rosie asks, a smile interrupting the blatant curiosity on her face, and that makes him relax a bit. He remembers, vaguely, that Rosie wasn’t born here. That she’d used to live somewhere far more urban, in the middle of a bustling city, and had moved here after a divorce that she hadn’t given a lot of details about. She’s a horrible gossip, can’t keep a secret for the life of her, but-- but at least she isn’t sneering or making any nasty comments, so that’s nice. 

“Jon without an H,” he says. “That’s very important.” 

“Oh, well in that case. Perhaps I could have a name tag made for him, to make the distinction clear.” 

Martin isn’t sure whether or not that would be breaking some sort of weird fairy rule, or if Jon would love it. It could go either way, he supposes. 

“I’ll ask him if he’s interested,” he says. 

“You know, I’ve never seen him around before,” Rosie says, a barely veiled prompt. Where did he come from? Why is he here? Tell me everything. 

Before Martin can come up with a lie on the spot, the curtains to the changing room are pushed aside, and Jon steps out. 

Martin hadn’t realized how light the fabric of the dress was until he sees it draped over Jon’s form, sees the way the end of the dress flares backwards as he walks. It’s light enough to flutter in the air just at Jon's casual walking speed, and the effect is strangely ethereal, elegant. He’s barefoot, Martin notices distantly. Wearing nothing but the dress. 

“It’s still good,” Jon says with satisfaction, curling his fingers into the skirt of the dress. 

“Do a twirl?” Rosie suggests. 

Jon shrugs, and then does so, twirling once. The dress flares outwards gracefully with the motion. Martin can very faintly make out the outline of his back tattoo through the fabric of the dress. 

He’s starting to feel a little bit lightheaded, he thinks. You look gorgeous, he imagines himself saying, and bites his tongue to make sure that the words don’t escape him while he’s distracted. He can’t believe he almost vetoed this. 

Rosie makes an approving noise and gives a little clap. “It looks very nice on you, dear.” 

“Thank you,” Jon says neatly, preening slightly as he does so. 

“I’m Rosie,” she says, and she takes a step forward and holds her hand out. Jon looks at it queerly for a moment, but thankfully seems to know what to do with it. He shakes her hand with only a moment of hesitation. 

“I’m Jon,” he says. “Without an H.” 

Rosie grins, charmed. “Martin mentioned. It’s a pleasure to meet you-- say, how do the two of you know each other?” 

“We’re married,” Jon says simply, before Martin has the chance to say anything else. 

Oh, fuck, he thinks. 

Rosie’s eyes first bug out with shock, and then quickly light up with glee. Martin looks on in speechless horror. 

“Really?” she asks, delighted. 

“Really,” Jon says, and narrows his eyes at her, as if he doesn’t understand her reaction. 

“That’s very interesting,” Rosie says. Martin can only imagine that it is, considering that he’s literally never once mentioned having a husband for the entire time that he’s lived here. Or being gay, for that matter. God, she’s going to have a field day with this. He’s pretty sure that they just made her whole month. “For how long? Who proposed to who? Legally? How did the two of you meet?” 

Jon blinks at the sudden deluge of questions, before clearly deciding to just focus on the last one, because he says, “Martin… helped me out of a tight spot.” He takes a beat as if to absorb what he just came up with, and then puffs up a bit, looking clearly pleased with himself for the phrasing. “Yes, that’s right.” 

“What sort of tight spot?” Rosie asks, borderline breathless with excitement at the tantalizing hint Jon has just given her. Martin can only imagine what kind of daytime drama plotline is running through her mind right now. Martin saving Jon from three muggers with his bare fists? He doesn’t want to know. 

“Well, it was nice talking to you, Rosie,” he says very firmly, cutting off Jon before he can say something else horribly incriminating. “But I think that I just saw someone enter your shop? And we’ve found what we came here for, and we’ve got something waiting for us in the oven back home, so I think it’s time that we cut this off short for now.” 

“Oh, I’m sure that they can wait,” Rosie says dismissively, ignoring her shop. 

“My oven can’t,” Martin says. “Terribly sorry.” 

Rosie frowns at him-- Martin couldn’t be more obvious about what he’s doing, but sometimes it’s just not possible to be subtle. He will leverage Rosie’s basic manners and stunted sense of tact with a crowbar if he has to. 

“Well,” she says, clearly reluctantly surrendering, before turning her gaze back to Jon. “You simply must come back to the village again some time soon. There’s no reason for you to hide yourself away, we’re very welcoming here. We have a lesbian, you know.” 

Martin’s sure that she genuinely believes that. Maeve Dancy is a local farmer, born and raised and lived all six decades of her live in the village, and is unapologetically and openly butch. She isn’t an outsider here, he knows-- she’s lived here too long for that. She is treated a bit like a proud badge of honor, though. Look at us, we have a whole entire lesbian. We’re so diverse. 

God, they’re going to start doing that to him, aren’t they? 

“What’s a lesbian?” Jon asks. 

“Nice catching up with you!” Martin chirps manically. “Ta!” 

He grabs the tag to see how much the dress costs, and then slaps down some pounds on the counter. There’s no sight of Carol-- she’s probably upstairs or in the back, taking a nap or something. He bundles up the clothes that Jon has left discarded on the floor of the changing room, grabs Jon by the arm, and hauls him out of the store in a quick retreat. 

“So I can wear this instead of the trousers?” Jon checks as they walk back towards the car. There is a lot, lot more staring this time. Martin’s pretty sure that this is the first time a lot of these people have ever seen a man in a dress. It makes him even more desperate to get Jon packed away in his car and back up to his home that is isolated and quiet and safe . 

“Fine, yes, sure,” he says, and is too distracted to notice Jon’s triumphant grin as he gives his permission. As if it’s something that he needed. 

“Can you not lie?” Martin asks him, as he’s working with something at his kitchen table. Jon doesn’t know what-- it seems to involve a shoe box, a plastic bag full of cotton fluff that he pulled out of his medicine cabinet, and some rolled up socks. Normally he’d be more curious, but Martin had given him permission to poke around on his ‘phone’, and it has been a very fascinating, frustrating, confusing thirty two minutes. Jon knows the time exactly, because the phone is also a watch. For some reason. 

“What?” Jon asks. He’s gotten onto the ‘contacts’ list, which he thinks might be a list of Martin’s allies? There’s not a lot of names on it. There’s Mum, Dave (gaybar cute), Cops, Matheo (gaybar jerk), Hospital, Housekeeper (ANSWER), and Creditors (DON’T ANSWER). There’s also one that’s just Martin’s own name-- so he can remember his own number, perhaps? Jon knows that you need someone's number to call their phone, and everyone has their own specific number. He wonders how people keep track of that and don’t accidentally give two people the same number. It happens often enough with names, after all. He’s distracted, as he’s trying to memorize the number-- it might come in useful someday, after all. Also, he sort of wants to take the first opportunity he can find to call Martin, because he’s never used a phone before and he very much wants to experience it at least once. 

“Back with Rosie,” he clarifies. “You just told her the truth. Did you have to? Can fairies not lie?”  

“Don’t be foolish,” Jon says. He’s managed to leave contacts, and he’s now on something called settings. “That’s fae. Think of it as... fae use tricky phrasing to technically tell the truth, saying things in a misleading sort of way, nudging you to draw all the wrong conclusions without ever actually outright lying to you. They deeply enjoy that sort of thing-- it makes them feel very clever. Fairies, however, can lie all they want, and do so often. Mostly for the sake of childish mischief.” 

“Then why didn’t you tell a lie?” Martin asks, and he sounds almost plaintive as he does so. 

“Well,” he says, and he feels a bit stiff and awkward now. He swipes and pokes at things on the phone without really seeing them. “Fairies do lie a lot. In general. I don’t, though. It’s… uncomfortable. I prefer to avoid it when I can.” 

Another way that he had been different from the others, hadn’t quite been able to fit in with the rest. He’d been so bad at playing along with the pranks and jokes. He was easier to deal with as a target than a co-conspirator, his peers had quickly learned. He had gotten tired of that rather quickly. 

There’s a sigh, which makes Jon look up from the phone. Martin looks… resigned, but in an accepting sort of way? 

“Okay,” he says. 

“Is it a problem that I didn’t lie?” Jon thinks to ask. He hadn’t thought that he’d said anything incriminating. He had neatly avoided any mentions of magic, hadn’t he? 

“No,” Martin says. “No, it’s not a problem really. It’s fine, I’ll deal. If they get weird about-- which they will-- I’ll deal with it. And they might have found out some day anyways… it’s fine.” 

Jon has absolutely no idea of what he’s talking about. He’s going to ask him to elaborate, but then he looks down at the phone and-- oops. 

“Martin? Why is your phone speaking a different language now?” 

Martin gets the feeling that Jon is very pleased with the purchase of the dress, with the way he keeps absentmindedly smoothing his hand across the fabric as he reads, and how he sometimes grabs a handful of the skirt and swishes it about to make the fabric flare with the movement. He’s put on one of Martin’s sweaters on top of it, because it really is more something one would wear during a warm summer than a bit of a chilly spring. It’s… an absolutely adorable ensemble, to be honest. 

Martin’s glad he bought it. For one thing, it’s a very good thing for his poor anxious heart that Jon isn’t constantly taking every single opportunity to prance about naked, but also it feels nice to make Jon happy. And, again, he looks very pretty like this. 

They eat dinner together, and do the dishes, and Martin goes and gets a load of laundry started while Jon pokes at his phone in curious fascination. He’s made sure to make it clear to Jon that he absolutely should not make a call on it. He’s still a bit nervous to leave him alone with it-- what if he accidentally calls the cops, or an ambulance? It’s not like Martin’s hiding drugs or dead bodies here, but it would still be a really stressful way to spend the afternoon. Or god, what if he calls one of the old phone numbers from his one night stand phase that he hasn’t gotten around to deleting yet? He’s pretty sure that some of those guys are married now. He’s had literal nightmares about drunk dialing one of them. 

Nothing would happen if he called his mum’s number, though. It’s out of service, and has been for a long time. Hell, even before she’d died, she hadn’t exactly been answering--

Martin focuses on doing the laundry. He reads a book until it’s done, an old favorite, the pages worn soft like a well loved t-shirt worn over and over again, the words comforting in their familiarity like a song that he’s heard a hundred times. He’s pretty sure that he could recite whole chapters of this book blind without stumbling over a single word. It’s good for turning his brain off, when he needs that sort of thing. The laundry beeps that it’s done. He hangs it up to dry. 

He looks at the clock. Yeah, it’s not too early. 

“Wanna go to bed now, Jon?” he asks. 

“One minute,” Jon says, not looking away from the phone for a single minute, his thumbs moving rapidly. He looks tense, intent, holding the phone close to his face. “I have to line up all of the colored blocks correctly or else I’m going to lose my last heart-- no!” 

Martin feels a smile tug at his lips at that. “You found the games, then? Any fun?” 

Jon looks up at him, cartoonishly dismayed. Martin can’t help but snort a laugh at that, which makes Jon huff and sulk. 

They go to bed. Or, to be more exact, Martin goes to bed. 

“What do you think?” he asks Jon, holding what he put together earlier this day out towards him. It’s basically just an old shoebox crammed full of anything soft and fluffy that he could find in the house, tucked underneath a scarf. 

“What is it?” Jon asks, a mix of curiosity and skepticism in his voice as he inspects the box and pointedly does not take it from Martin’s hands, as if he thinks it’s going to bite him, or something. 

“A fairy nest,” says Martin. “Or, um-- I don’t actually know if you guys do nests, just-- I realized that we don’t have to share the bed if you can just turn small and sleep somewhere else, so I made this for you. It’s okay if you don’t like it, but-- would you try it? See if you-- if it works?” 

“Oh,” Jon says. “It’s for me?” 

He says that the way Martin imagines a little kid in a hallmark movie who has never before received a Christmas present would. 

“Yeah,” he says, melting a bit. He’s not going to get tired of giving Jon things any time soon, he thinks. It’s so nice to be able to go out and just buy something for someone else. It feels different somehow, from striving and struggling to be able to afford treatments and housing for his mum. Less desperate and urgent, he supposes. This isn’t necessary. It’s just a little thing, to improve things in a little way. “It’s for you.” 

He sets it down on the nightstand next to his bed. Jon goes small, and Martin averts his eyes as he does so, because watching as he changes feels a bit like trying to stare directly at the sun. His precious dress and sweater pool onto the floor, and Martin reaches down to pick them up and fold them up properly, while Jon flutters down into the box. Martin tries not to watch closely as he experimentally settles down-- he doesn’t want to make him feel self conscious. 

“Any good?” he asks, after he judges that Jon’s had enough time to become familiar with his nest. He hopes that isn’t a demeaning word to use, like he thinks Jon’s a bird or something. It’s just the word that pops up into his head when he looks at the box. Somewhere soft and safe for Jon to nestle into. 

“Yes,” Jon says. “It’s good.” 

When Martin peeks over at Jon, he finds him curled up on the plush scarf covering all of the softest things he owns, his wings partially covering him like a blanket. He has his eyes shut, and he looks very, very relaxed. It’s so cute that Martin’s immediately seized by a powerful urge to take a picture that he can coo over forever. He resists it. 

“Good,” Martin says firmly, and gets undressed, turns the lights off, and gets into bed himself, alone. See, his plan worked out. Now things don’t have to be tense or weird or uncomfortable. Now they can both have their own space to sleep in, without having to share. Without having to lie so closely to each other that he can smell Jon all around him in the darkness, can feel his warmth even when they don’t touch. 

… Ah. He’d been hoping that Jon wouldn’t like it. Well. Tough shit. 

It’s much later at night when Jon tentatively breaches the silence in the bedroom. 

“Martin?” he asks in that quiet sort of way that’s meant to avoid waking any sleeping people. 

Martin should, by all rights, be asleep by now. But he isn’t. It’s been hours of lying down in his familiar, comfortable bed in his familiar, comfortable house, surrounded by the familiar, comfortable sounds of the countryside. 

But he can’t fall asleep. Sleep presses oppressively down around him, and there’s nothing he wants to do more than succumb to it, but he can’t. Something is refusing him that possibility, is keeping it out of his grasp. He’s so tired and frustrated he wants to cry, a little bit. Wants to toss and turn around, punch his pillow and shout into it. But he hasn’t, because he’s been trying to sleep, and he didn’t want to wake up Jon. 

But Jon’s awake too, it seems. 

“Yeah?” Martin replies quietly, like there’s anyone else for miles around to hear them. 

“I… I can’t sleep.” 

Me neither, he doesn’t say. 

“Is there something wrong with your nest?” he says instead, concerned. He doesn’t want for the gift he made for Jon to be bad. 

“No, not like that,” he says. “Don’t you feel it? It doesn’t feel right to sleep alone.” 

Martin had, in fact, been feeling exactly that. He’s been convincing himself that it’s all in his head for hours now. That he’s letting his loneliness get to him, that he’s imagining it, that he’s letting one little night with Jon in his arms affect him far too much. Two nights. Whatever. But he’s right. That’s what’s wrong with the bed. It isn’t too hard or too soft, too hot or too cold. There aren’t any itchy crumbs beneath the sheets, no stabbing springs. It just feels too wide and open and empty with only Martin in it. It’s never felt like that before, but now it does. Martin has slept almost every single night of his life all alone in his bed, and now it feels deeply and profoundly unnatural. 

It’s an unsettling realization, to put it mildly. 

“I think,” Jon says slowly. “I think I’m supposed to be in bed with you. As your-- your spouse.” 

He sounds like he almost stumbles over what word to use there, for just a moment. Martin doesn’t think much of it. He’s mostly distracted by the wave of exasperated resignation that’s crashing over him. 

“Alright,” he sighs. “Alright. Lemme move over.” 

He makes space in his bed for Jon, because sharing a bed with him while he’s a small, fragile little fairy sounds like a recipe for tragedy. There’s a faint glimmer of light in the darkness, and then the covers lift, and the mattress sinks and creaks ever so slightly. He smells Jon. He feels his warmth. 

It’s stupid, how comforting that is. 

Jon gets settled in the bed, and sighs with relief as he does so. Martin feels the muscles in his back unclench. Before, it had felt like something had been impossibly, massively off, but such a small thing that he couldn’t possibly put his finger to it. Like the entire world was tilted slightly off its correct axis. Now, the world rights itself. Everything feels right. 

It’s disturbing, how irrationally at peace he feels. 

“This is real, isn’t it,” he says, his words dropping into the darkness like pennies into a well with a bottom so deep that light doesn’t reach it. “The marriage.” 

“Yes,” Jon says simply, like this isn’t an earth shattering revelation. He supposes it isn’t, for him. He can feel their bond. He knows all about magic. For him, all of this is normal. 

“This is the first time it’s really felt like it,” he confesses. He met this guy, what, only a couple of days ago? And now he can’t even sleep without him. He’s wondered what their marriage means. What is a marriage, without a piece of legal document saying that it’s real and official? Or even without that, what is a marriage without love? They’re basically strangers, they can’t love each other. Martin finds his heart twinging for him several times a day, feels a stupid satisfaction at seeing him eat food that he made, wants to make him smile. But that’s just Martin being Martin. That’s just him being lonely and pathetic and easily infatuated by pretty men. What is a marriage without all of that? It’s nothing, isn’t it? But apparently not. Apparently, it’s something. 

Martin is married. 

Holy shit. 

“Hmm,” Jon hums, already drifting off. Martin can feel it too, sleep tugging on him more firmly than ever now that he has Jon in his bed with him, where he apparently belongs. He can feel how he could just let himself fall into it now. It would be fast, with how tired he is. 

Martin waits a beat in the warmth and the darkness. And then tentatively, in that tone not meant to wake sleeping people, he asks, “Jon?” 

Nothing. Just the slow, steady breathing of a man asleep. Martin stares blankly up at a ceiling that he can’t make out, even though he could so easily fall asleep now. 

“What am I going to do?” he asks the night. 

No one answers, of course. 

Chapter Text

“Jon,” a voice hisses urgently, and someone is shaking him awake. Jon’s eyes slit open. The room is dark. It is far too early for this, whatever this is. “Jon, please. I need to-- I have to ask you a question.” 

“What?” he grumbles. 

“I was sleeping and then I had a nightmare and then I woke up and I know that it’s really early and I should just go back to sleep but I have to know this immediately. Do you have the lifespan of a moth?” 

“What?” he says again, this time more aware and bewildered. He blinks, and yes, he is unfortunately waking up. 

“How long is the lifespan of a moth anyways?” Martin goes on. “It can’t be long, can it? Days, weeks, months? I’ve gotta-- hang on, I’m going to Google this--” 

“I’m not a moth,” Jon protests. “I just look like one, sometimes. I’m a fairy.” 

“Oh, thank god,” Martin says with profound relief. A beat, and then, “Okay, but what are the lifespans of fairies? If you’re going to be dead of old age by winter then I need to know, Jon.” 

He sounds very, very stressed about this possibility. Jon sighs, and determines that yes, he will in fact have to turn his brain on and give the man an actual, thought out answer to his frantic, worried questions. 

“Fairies are actually, technically, immortal,” he says. “We’re born from the ambient cast off dregs of magic, and we can keep soaking it up and going on indefinitely, so long as something else doesn’t kill us… which it often does. Most fairies that you’ll ever meet are only going to be a season or two old, statistically speaking.” 

Statistically. That’s another pleasing word that he found in a dictionary. He likes the staccato feel of it on his tongue. He focuses on that, instead of the meaning of his words. 

“Oh,” Martin says. “Oh, good. That means that you’ll outlive me, if anything.” 

Outliving Martin. It’s such a deeply strange and uncomfortable thought that he casts it off almost immediately. 

“The only other creature that I know of that technically has immortality are fae, actually,” he says, to distract himself, and to make Martin stop talking about that. “They… are not particularly pleased with the fact that they share this ability with fairies, of all creatures.” 

“You know,” Martin says philosophically, “the more I hear about fae, the more they sound like a bunch of jerks.” 

Jon muffles the inelegant noise of amusement that falls out of his mouth at that. 

“Don’t say such things,” he says, hiding his grin even in the dark. “If a fae were to overhear you…” 

“What, is there going to be a fae hiding outside of my bedroom window? Did they climb the pipe? Doesn’t sound very graceful and ethereal of them.” 

A giggle wants to escape him at that image, a fae dressed in silks and diamonds dangling from the window sill outside, eavesdropping with a scandalized expression on their otherworldly face. 

“Don’t tempt fate,” he says instead. It’s always best to err on the side of caution, when it comes to fae. Some of them can be… capricious. “And let me sleep.” 

“Fine, fine… Thanks for answering my stupid questions, Jon.” 

An unexpected twinge of fondness goes off in his chest at that. How many times has Jon wished that there was someone around to answer every question he has? There were people like that in the forest-- the fae who hoarded knowledge and secrets, who always asked for a price in return. Or the other fairies, who would snicker and tell ridiculous lies to see what he would be gullible enough to believe. But Martin always tells him the truth, and he never asks for something in return for it. It’s… it’s very nice. 

“Of course,” he says softly, and closes his eyes, ready to fall back into the warm embrace of sleep. 

A long moment passes. And then, just as Jon is on the precipice of falling back asleep--

“Hang on. If most fairies are only a season old, how old are you?” 

“Martin,” he groans. “Let me sleep.” 

Eventually, the sun crests the horizon, a new day dawns, and Jon and Martin wake up at a reasonable hour. It doesn’t feel reasonable, though; they spent far too long tossing and turning restlessly in bed last night before they realized that they had to do it together for it to take at all. But Martin has a job that won’t wait for him to feel fully rested, so he groans and gets out of bed and gets breakfast started. After a while, when the breakfast smells--bacon and eggs, nothing fancy--start permeating the house, Jon flutters downstairs, apparently done with hiding stubbornly beneath the covers if it means that he might miss out on food. He shifts into his human form mid flight, and stumbles and almost falls as his feet meet the ground. 

“Land before you change your size,” Martin scolds him. “You’ll fall flat on your face if you’re not careful.” 

Jon stiffens, a strange, unhappy expression flitting across his face for a moment. Wait, does he think that Martin’s genuinely mad at him? He was just being a bit of a well intentioned nag. 

“Very well,” he says stiffly, and then drifts towards where Martin is standing by the stove, making sure that nothing burns. “Can I…?” 

It takes Martin a moment to realize what Jon is getting at. 

“Of course I’m making some for you as well. You think I can eat this much on my own? But you should probably put some clothes on before you eat, just so you know. Trust me.” He had once decided to make himself some stir fry at the stove while shirtless, a bit too lazy to go and get properly dressed. The hot oil that had splattered onto his bare skin as the stir fry sizzled had been… unexpected. He’d had to sleep with a wet towel on his chest that night, and he’d still gotten, like, these disgusting blisters in the morning. It was like he had a bunch of tiny water balloons hiding just underneath his skin. 

Those are the dumb lessons that you learn as a bachelor that has newly moved into his own flat in London for the first time, he supposes. Don’t make or eat hot food without wearing clothes. 

Jon makes a grumpy noise at that, but retreats back upstairs and comes back after a moment in his new dress, one of Martin’s baggy sweaters slipped over on top. He’s going to have to get him more than just one outfit that he actually likes, he finds himself thinking. More dresses, more soft, breezy things that he can stand to wear. Because having only one acceptable dress just isn’t sustainable in the long term, is it? 

Because that’s something that Martin needs to think about now. How to handle this situation in the long term. Jon is still going to be here tomorrow, the next week, the next month, probably the next year. Probably the next decade, even. They’re actually, properly married, at least in a magical sort of way, and Martin can’t just keep trying to pretend like that isn’t a thing. He needs to get Jon a proper wardrobe, and-- and a national insurance number, maybe? He has no idea how to manage that. Should they get actually, properly married in the not magical way? With paperwork and bureaucracy. Should Martin get him a ring? If he does, it probably shouldn’t be silver. 

“Just checking,” he says. “You’re… allergic to silver, or something? I got that impression.” 

“It burns,” Jon confirms. “I found a silver chandelier once in the big house, and I tried touching it, and…” 

He holds up his hands in demonstration. Martin doesn’t get it for a moment, before it clicks-- now that he’s actually looking, the surface of one of his palms is… shinier than the other one. It’s subtle, subtle enough that he hadn’t really noticed it until now, but that’s-- 

“Oh, god,” Martin says, horrified and recoiling. He imagines setting one of his hands down flat against a hot stove top and shudders, his hands curling protectively around each other, pulled close to his chest. “Why would you touch it if you knew that it was bad for you?” 

“I was curious,” Jon says. “I didn’t know how bad it would be, or in what kind of way.” 

“That’s ridiculous but okay, but why would you touch it with your entire hand?” 

Jon looks a bit sheepish for a moment. “Admittedly, I could perhaps have thought it through a bit more before I took action.” 

Martin groans, and goes and gets two plates to split the eggs and bacon between. 

“I thought that it was cold iron that fairies couldn’t stand,” he says as he does so. 

“You’re thinking of fae again,” Jon says with an eye roll, as if this should all be obvious. To him it is, he supposes. 

“So fairies are the one who can’t take silver. Does everything have, like, a metal based weakness? Mermaids can’t handle tungsten?” 

“Of course not. You’re being ridiculous.” 

“Oh yeah, I’m being ridiculous.” 

They bicker a bit like this as they eat, and Martin thinks: this is fine. He had… he’d hoped that if he ever did get married, even though he could never really properly picture the sequence of events that would lead to something like that, that would lead to someone looking at Martin and going I want this one, that would lead to Martin being able to live with someone and love them and be loved by them and not somehow ruin it by not being loving or lovable enough-- if he ever did somehow manage to get married then he’d hoped, well… that it would be romantic. Mutual. Sweet. Sincere. 

Not some weird magical accident that forever binds him to a stranger. As weirdly charming as said stranger may be. Jon hadn’t had a moment where he went I want this one, I want you. He’d just had a bad day, and Martin had happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Anyone could have idly decided to save a moth from a spider. It was nothing more than a coincidence. 

But this is fine. Like he said, he couldn’t really picture actually getting married. Who would he even be getting married to? The handsome faceless blob of his imagination? Or one of the middle aged married straight men who live down in the village? When and how, exactly, might he meet someone who ticks off the bare minimum of boxes (vaguely decent human being, man, queer, and yes that’s honestly about it) while going through his days out in the middle of nowhere, often without talking to a single other creature besides his unresponsive plants? Other people seem to just sort of fall into marriage, as far as Martin can tell. There isn’t a how to guide out there for how to go from being a pathetic sad sack with no friends to suddenly being a husband-- well there is, there are a lot of them honestly. He’s read a few and they all seemed like a load of obnoxious nonsense to him. 

The point is: sure, he’d been sort of vaguely hoping to just suddenly trip over the perfect man one day and then just inexplicably get on great with him and then somehow manage to get a proposal out of it with no idea of how to make that happen, and then he’d live happily ever after with his perfect, loving husband that he can’t really picture, against all logic. But he’s not stupid. He knows that that wasn’t going to happen. Lots of people live and die without ever once having been married, or in a relationship, or loved. Despite not wanting for things to be that way. Martin is just… one of those people. And that’s fine. So if he never stood a chance of getting married in the first place, he might as well be married to Jon. It’s fine, see? He does actually like the guy. Likes his company, likes talking to him, taking care of him. It’s fine. 

It seems like Martin has finally become one of those people who ‘just sort of fall into marriage.’ More literally than is usually the case, he thinks wryly. 

“Better get going,” he says, and goes to set the plates away with the frying pan to soak in the sink. He’ll tackle cleaning them when he gets home. “Don’t want to be late.” 

Martin spends the day gardening, and Jon goes and reads in the library. He doesn’t know if that’s a routine that’s sustainable in the long term either-- is Jon going to have to get a job? How? Where? What sort of job? Could he even manage it? He waves the worry away to be mulled over later. 

“Hullo, you weak little bastard,” he says to his rose bush instead, on his knees in the dirt. “What’s wrong now?” 

Jon glares up at the books sitting on the tallest shelves with profound consternation. He can just read the books that are within arms reach, he knows-- there are certainly enough of them to keep him occupied for a long, long time. But the fact that he can’t reach these books makes him want them now. He wishes that he could just use the trick that he’d come up with yesterday-- fly up to them, go big while holding onto the top of the shelf with one hand, pull the book out with his other hand, and then fly back down and try to reach the ground before the book does. But he can’t. Martin had told him to land first before he shifts, so… he just can’t do it. 

He had resolved to himself at the start of this that he would bear the burden of any accidental orders that would be piled upon him. He would accept it as the price he would have to pay to have a husband-master who doesn’t know just how much power he wields over him. That it is worth it. 

It has only been a few days and they are already beginning to accumulate, though. They chafe, the restrictions that he can’t argue against, can’t call any attention to. Increasingly, there is a growing urge within him to just tell Martin what is really happening so that he can ask him to stop, to be more careful, to watch his words. 

That is sheer suicidal foolishness speaking, he tells himself. Weakness, idiocy, reckless naivety. Once he tells Martin, he won’t be able to untell him the information, even if he grows to regret it. He can’t. He simply can’t. He has to bite his tongue and keep silent, and bear any accidental orders that are laid at his feet. None of them have been too bad so far, have they? Only inconvenient and annoying at worst, really. It’s fine. 

Tell him, that stupid, stupid part of him says in the back of his head. Tell him, tell him, tell him. 

Jon ignores that voice firmly. He reads the books that he can reach. 

“... Do you want to see how the oven works?” Martin hesitantly asks later that day, and Jon instantly abandons the book that he was doing his level best to slog through. He’s been wondering if he could perhaps borrow some of the books from Moorland House, lately. Just borrow, not steal. He’d bring them back before they were ever missed, of course. The question is how he would do it, and he’s beginning to suspect that he’d require Martin’s assistance in the matter, which means that he has to bring the subject up carefully. 

He does want to see how the oven works, though. He knows that the dials are turned in a specific way to create a specific result, the conclusion of which is eventually hot food. He had wanted to experiment to see if he could figure out just which dial did what, but Martin has been very protective of the contraption until now. He acts as if he leaves Jon and it alone together for too long that one or both of them will be the doom of the other. 

“Do you want to see how the vacuum works?” he asks later. 

“Do you want to see which soaps are for what?” he asks after that. 

“Have you figured out how to use the shower yet?” he goes on. 

It’s as Martin is showing him the intricacies of the breaker box--a subtle cabinet set into a wall that when opened reveals a tantalizing and mysterious spread of various levers and switches--that Jon thinks to ask him what’s going on. Martin has always been forthcoming with information, but Jon usually has to at least ask first. 

“Why are you showing me all of this?” he asks suspiciously. “--Not that I don’t appreciate it, of course.” 

“Well, um,” Martin says. “I was sort of… you’re going to live here with me for a long time, aren’t you? So you should know these things in case I ever-- in case you’re ever home alone, and something comes up and I’m not here to help you with it. You should know how to use the microwave, or what to do in case there’s a blackout, and stuff like that.” 

“Oh,” Jon says. He has… no idea how to feel about that. Knowledge, independence, responsibility-- they all have an exciting air to them. But the idea of Martin not being there when he needs help feels unexpectedly sour. He’s never really had help when he’s needed it before, not until Martin saved him from that awful spider. It’s been-- nice. “I see.” 

Martin gives him a searching look for a moment, but turns his attention back to the breaker box. “Now this switch-- I actually have no idea what this switch does, so I’ve just, er, left it alone for the whole time that I’ve lived here? And it’s all been going fine so far, so I think the takeaway here is to never ever touch that switch. This one connects to the--” 

Martin gives a strangled scream and throws himself back from the breaker box. Jon flinches, instinctually goes small, and flits towards the first hiding spot that he can recognize without waiting for his thoughts to catch up to him. A porcelain cat hanging from a nail on the wall-- he lifts it and sees that it’s hollow on the other side, more than enough space for him to hide. He’s about to climb inside of that dark, hidden space when he remembers-- Martin. Martin isn’t small enough to hide. He’s big and obvious. He turns around, feeling quick and panicky-- what is he going to do, how can he fix this? 

He sees nothing, however. Nothing out of place, that is. No strangers or monsters or beasts are feasting upon Martin, or are anywhere near sight. Instead it’s just Martin, pressed up against the wall behind him like he wants to sink into it, his eyes wide and fixed on the open breaker box in front of him. Cautiously, Jon approaches him. 

“What is it?” he asks. “What’s wrong?” 

“I--” Martin says, and his voice gives out before he can say anything more. He doesn’t look away from the breaker box. Jon follows his gaze. He doesn’t understand, for a moment. It’s just a line of switches and levers, just like Martin had been showing him. And then he sees it. In the corner there, nesting in the darkness just out of sight, is a big, fat, dark spider with long, long legs, crouched and silent. Jon’s heart goes cold at the sight of it. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s big again, he’s reaching out, he’s grabbing the door of the breaker box, and he’s slamming it shut with all of his might. He keeps his hand pressed up against the door like the spider might open it from inside, his breaths loud in his ears. 

“What…” Martin breathes after a long moment, his voice shaky, “the hell?” 

“There’s a spider inside of the house,” Jon says, horrified and indignant. He knows that spiders often scurry and hide inside of houses, but-- not this house. It’s a nice house. He sleeps here. There shouldn’t be spiders here. 

“Of course there’s a spider in the house,” Martin says. “Her name is Bertha.” 

“What?” Jon asks blankly. 

“I-- I named her Bertha and I knew that she was there because I’m letting her stay here because it’s too cold outside for her species right now and-- why do I feel like this? What’s wrong with me!?” 

He sounds genuinely scared, asking that last question. Jon looks away from the breaker box, back at Martin. He has a hand clutched over his heart, like he’s trying to keep it in place inside of his chest. His face is very, very pale. 

“Martin,” Jon says. 

“I’m not sc-- scared of spiders,” Martin mutters, his eyes wide, not looking at Jon. “I’m not. I like spiders.” 

“Martin, calm down,” Jon says, and he steps away from the breaker box, towards Martin, his hands hovering useless and awkward in the air, unsure of what to do. Should he… pet his hair? No, likely not, but it feels like he should do something like that. He’s just not sure what, precisely. “I-- I think I know what’s going on.” 

Martin’s eyes snap towards Jon’s face with a desperate intensity. “You do?” 

“It’s our bane,” he says. 

“What?” Martin asks, blank and uncomprehending. Right. He doesn’t know anything. Not anything about marriages of obligation or fairies or magic, anyways. He knows seemingly a hundred thousand other things, like what soaps you should never mix with other soaps, or how to make bangers and mash. But not this. This thing, Jon knows. 

He had been hoping to not have to share this part. That it wouldn’t be necessary. Sometimes it isn’t, after all. Especially with fairies. 

“There’s… sometimes with marriages like-- like ours,” he says, stumbling over his words, “there’s a bane as well as blessings laid on the marriage. Think of it as… a curse. A very minor curse, at least in our case, it seems. It looks like you’ve been given my fear of-- of spiders.” 

That Martin likes the creatures--or liked, as the case may be--he can hardly understand. He knows that no one can hate and fear a creature as much as someone who is in regular danger of being eaten by said creature, but still. They’re ugly, foul beings. He doesn’t see the appeal. 

But with the way Martin is looking at him right now? It makes him wish that he could take the bane away immediately, forever, so that Martin can be left to adore spiders as much as he may see fit for the rest of his days. 

That’s not really how banes work, though. 

“Wh-- what?” Martin asks. “That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“Doesn’t it?” Jon asks, confused. Had he explained it wrong? 

“You had to marry me because I saved you,” he says. “Because I earned more than you could give. I mean-- that’s what the magic thinks, that’s what the rules are. It’s-- it’s supposed to be a reward right? Why does a reward come with a curse? Did I earn this or not!?” 

Jon opens his mouth and-- doesn’t know what to say. He knows why there are banes in marriages of obligation. They’re a small, vicious way for the bride slave to get revenge. Just one part where they get to punish the creature that has taken over their lives, even if only a little bit. 

Jon can’t explain that part without explaining all of it, though. And he can’t do that. He can’t. 

“I’m sorry,” he says instead. If he could take the bane away, he would. He doesn’t want vengeance against Martin. Really, he doesn’t. 

“Why didn’t you warn me about this?” Martin asks, bewildered, hurt. 

“I-- I thought that I wouldn’t have to. The weaker the-- the spouse who is in my role is, the weaker the bane is, sometimes to the point of not existing at all.” And he’s a fairy, the weakest creature of them all. It’s a part of why fairies are such a popular choice for marriages of obligations. It’s so, so easy to swoop in and save one from a predator, or trick one into enormous debt with some clever words. And their marriage had been one of mercy, Martin saving him out of the kindness in his heart. He hadn’t been tricked. Those were usually less likely to have banes, weren’t they? 

But there is a bane. Guilt churns in his stomach at that. Is it because of how fearful he’s been of Martin exploiting him? Is his own anxiety attacking Martin? 

“How bad can banes get?” 

Very bad. He’d heard once of a woman who couldn’t walk out into sunlight without it burning her like fire for the rest of her life. A man who was forced to eat a hundred knives every day. Someone who could only see horrific, maimed versions of everyone’s faces. Those were all extreme examples though, with powerful bride slaves who could give meaningful banes. It makes having a bride slave a dangerous, risky game. Unfortunately, fae love dangerous, risky games. 

“Fairy banes can only ever be minor inconveniences, really,” he says weakly. “Like-- like always pricking your thumb on a thorn of any rose that you touch. Cats distrusting your scent. Your favorite food tasting rotten to you. That sort of thing.” 

Or becoming scared of your favorite animal, as the case may be. 

He hadn’t meant to. 

Martin takes a deep breath. And then another. And another. Jon waits in tense silence, afraid that if he speaks up that-- he doesn’t know. He just knows that he should let Martin take his time and gather his words first. 

“What does us being married even mean,” he finally says. 

Jon blinks. “Pardon?” 

“What-- what does that even entail? We’re not in a relationship, there’s no paperwork involved, so… what? Do we need to interact? Do we even need to live together? Could you just go back to living in Moorland House’s library and it’d be fine?” 

Jon’s heart stops beating in his chest. Do we even need to live together? 

“--wait, no,” Martin is saying, moving on while Jon is still rooted to the ground at could you just go back to living in Moorland House. “We can’t sleep without each other, right. So we still have to-- but that’s just sleep. We could spend our whole days completely apart, and then you could just come here and sleep in my bed with me at night. We don’t have to live together, do we? Really-- what does it even mean that magic says that we’re married? You can change size, I can see magic, and also I’m cursed to be terrified of spiders, apparently. Is that a marriage? Is it? We don’t have to have anything to do with each other, do we?” 

He pauses, as if waiting for a response from Jon. Jon-- Jon realizes that he’s not breathing. He makes himself breathe. 

“Are you,” he says, and clears his throat because his voice doesn’t sound right. “Are you throwing me… do-- do you not want to live with me?” 

“Oh, Jon,” Martin says. “I-- I’m sorry, no, that’s not what I-- you can stay if you want to. But do you want to? We’re strangers. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with me just because, what, magic says so? To fulfill a debt?” 

The way he says it makes it perfectly clear what Martin’s answers to those questions would be. 

“Why don’t you want to be married to me?” 

Jon realizes that he was the one who just said that. 

Martin blinks at him. 

“Is it so bad?” he finds himself going on. He finds himself strangely rattled at Martin’s suggestion that they should just never interact with each other again. Act like the tether that Jon can feel between them simply doesn’t exist. Like ignoring a limb for the rest of his life. “Am I so-- is it really so distasteful?” 

Here is the thing: the entire point of having a bride slave is the slave part. And Martin doesn’t know about that bit. Jon’s made sure of it. So it makes sense for him not to be-- to be pleased or smug or what have you. He doesn’t know that Jon has to do every little thing that he says. But actively wanting Jon gone? Chafing at the marriage like this? It-- it’s shocking, how much it hurts. 

“Jon,” Martin says, soft in a raw sort of way. “Jon, it’s not that. It’s not because of you. I’d-- I wouldn’t want to suddenly find myself married for no good reason to anyone. It’s-- marriage is a big responsibility. An obligation. I want to be able to choose it, not just have it-- thrown at me.” 

“What responsibility?” Jon asks. “What obligation?” 

“What-- you’re my husband, Jon. I have to-- to take care of you. Be on your side, protect you, consider you. Think about the stuff you need to already know in case I suddenly get sick or go missing or drop dead. Need to get you clothes you like, to worry about any of the villagers being awful to you, to trying to figure out if there’s any way to get you a job if you end up needing or wanting one. It’s… it’s a lot.” 

“You don’t have to take care of me just because I’m married to you,” Jon says blankly. Martin has been doing all of that? Why? 

“Are you serious--” Martin cuts himself off, and runs a hand through his hair, leaving it looking wild and disarrayed.  “Is this how you felt when I said that you didn’t have to marry me? Because that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. We’re married, Jon. Of course I have to take care of you. That’s what a marriage is. People taking care of each other.” 

But we aren’t married, he doesn’t say. I’m married to you. There’s a difference. 

But he can’t say that. He can’t let Martin know. He has to keep this secret. It’s the one protection he has. 

“And it’s not fair to you,” he goes on. 

“What?” Jon asks. 

“You having to marry someone just because they saved your life. How is that fair to you? You didn’t ask to be saved, or to be in a situation you needed saving from in the first place. You didn’t do any of that on purpose, you didn’t deserve it. It’s not fair.” 

Martin looks so upset as he speaks, so sincere. Like he really means it. Like a part of why he doesn’t want to be married to Jon, maybe even a big part, is because he thinks Jon shouldn’t be forced to marry him. Furious on Jon’s behalf. 

Jon did not marry a cruel man. 

Trust him, that voice in the back of Jon’s head cries out. Tell him, tell him. 

“It is the definition of fair,” Jon says, feeling a bit distant from himself as he speaks. “Fairness isn’t kind.” 

Martin makes a deeply frustrated noise. 

“Fine,” he spits out. “Then I don’t want to be fair, I guess! I want to be nice. It’s not nice that this is happening to you. It’s not okay. Alright? That’s why I’m not thrilled about this whole marriage thing. That’s-- that’s all. It’s not because of you.” 

He doesn’t even know about the bride slave part yet, Jon thinks hysterically. 

Yet? 

Ah, he realizes. It’s going to happen, then. He’s going to tell him. Maybe it’s the worst mistake that he’ll ever make, but-- 

There’s a knocking sound. A firm, heavy knock, like it’s trying to take the hinges off the door. It comes so suddenly that the both of them make undignified, startled noises and spring away from each other. The knock doesn’t come again so much as it just doesn’t stop, one long, continuous BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. They both stare at each other, frozen and panicking. 

“I--” Martin says. “I guess I should go and answer that?” 

He sounds bewildered, uncertain, but the knocking is still coming, a steady, thundering BANG BANG BANG, demanding to be answered. 

Hesitantly, Jon nods. He’d been about to-- but that can wait. 

Tentatively, looking confused, Martin goes to answer the front door. Jon follows him, curious to see who it is. 

Martin has absolutely no idea who it could be behind the door. He has no neighbours. He lives a car ride from Moorland House, and the village. The way the trees are positioned, his home isn’t visible from the road that any cars might use. He doesn’t get visitors. This might honestly be the first time anyone’s ever knocked on his door. 

They’re still knocking. He’s standing in front of the door now, and he can see how the door shakes with each heavy knock, so much force put into each one. The rhythm is quick and unceasing, reminding him of factory machinery. If Martin doesn’t answer, how long would they keep knocking? Doesn’t their hand hurt by now? He can’t help but feel leery of getting closer to the door, opening it. Whoever might be knocking like that-- 

--is probably having some sort of urgent emergency. He’s being silly. 

Jon is hovering close behind him. He doesn’t like that, suddenly. They’d been in the middle of a really raw conversation, and Jon had looked so hurt, so vulnerable and-- he just doesn’t want Jon around someone that might be… not right now. 

“Jon,” he says firmly, trying not to sound as nervous as he feels. “Go and make some tea, yeah? For the guest.” 

He’d shown him how to earlier today. He’s pretty sure that Jon’s gonna mess it up, after only one quick demonstration, but that’s okay. He just wants to get Jon away from the front door for a bit. 

“... Now?” Jon asks, and sounds incredibly put out about it. 

“Now,” he says. “Please.” 

Jon makes an aggrieved noise, but he does as he’s asked, walking slowly towards the kitchen. Martin’s relieved that there wasn’t any arguing, but-- Jon never does that, actually. Never argues when Martin tells him to do something. He shakes his head, and focuses on the door, still rattling with the force of the ceaseless knocking. Once he’s sure that Jon’s in the kitchen, he reaches out and grabs the doorknob, and makes himself open it. 

He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it’s a stranger on the other side of the door. No one he recognizes even in a vague sort of way from the village, not a servant he’s seen from a distance at Moorland House. It’s a tall, scrawny man with shaggy gray hair and a wiry, messy beard. His clothes are dirty, like he’s worn the same outfit without washing it for a while now. His hand falls down to his side the moment that Martin opens the door, which is a relief, even if he still feels unsettled. Who is this, and what are they doing here? 

“Um, can I help you?” he asks. 

“Yes,” the man says. He’s got a raspy voice, like maybe he smokes too much. “Yes, you can help me. I was out on a walk in the woods, and got lost. I’ve been sleeping outside and wandering for days. I’m so, so hungry. Please, will you help me?” 

“Oh,” Martin says. That makes-- that actually almost makes sense. There are some dense woods some distance from here. They’re not exactly a popular hiking destination, but he could see someone getting lost in them. The man does look like he’s been sleeping outside. There’s a bitter, sour smell to him, and it would explain his outfit. Martin’s home is sort of detached from proper civilization, so it would make sense that it would be the first place someone lost might stumble across. “Yeah, I’ll--” 

He stops. As he spoke, the man had leaned forward slightly, swaying towards Martin on his feet almost eagerly, and where before the edges of him had been shrouded in the darkness of evening, there is now warm, yellow light falling on his face. 

The man is drooling. Not just drooling-- there’s thick strings of saliva dripping from the mouth down his chin, the man not bothering to wipe at or acknowledge it in any way, ignoring it. He’s slobbering, like one of those dogs that can’t properly swallow their spit. Martin’s never seen anything like it. It shocks him quiet mid sentence. 

“Can I come inside?” the man asks, drool dripping from his chin onto his shirt, which Martin now notices has a large wet patch on the chest. His eyes are very wide and very bright, fixed and intent on Martin’s face. “I’m so tired.” 

Maybe-- maybe it’s a disability. Martin shouldn’t judge. He shakes his head, tells himself to get a hold of himself. 

“Please,” the man says, and Martin realizes that he’d just taken the head shaking as a negation. “Would you really turn someone in need away? I need to eat.” 

“I…” he says, and his voice falters. He clears his throat. “Of course you can--” 

The man smiles. 

His teeth are very, very sharp. 

“No,” Martin hears himself say. “No, you can’t come in. Please leave.” 

At the same time that the man’s smile falls away to be replaced with something disappointed and angry, a voice behind Martin says, “I’ve put the kettle on, so-- good lord.” 

Martin tries to slam the door shut-- the man’s hand snaps out and grabs the door lightning quick, stopping it from closing. Martin grits his teeth and tries harder-- the door doesn’t budge. The man, who looks starved and weak, doesn’t even waver. The wood of the door creaks and whines with strain. 

“It’s rude to turn away wanderers in need,” the man says darkly. “Let me in.” 

“No,” Martin says. “I’m not going to, so just leave.” 

“Martin,” Jon says breathlessly. “Martin, don’t invite that thing in--”

“So that’s how you did it,” the man says, looking at Jon. Martin hates that. He doesn’t want this man looking at Jon, whatever the hell he is. 

“Go away,” Martin says tightly. 

The man frowns, and looks down at his feet, as if to think. He goes still. 

Martin looks down as well. 

Welcome, his doormat cheerfully declares. 

Oh, shit. Does that-- 

The man looks up, his smile now so wide that it distorts his face, inhuman. 

“Don’t mind if I do,” he says. 

It counts. 

Martin springs away, and the man casually steps into Martin’s home with his sharp teeth and his slobber and his bright, excited eyes. He does look terribly hungry. 

“Jon!” Martin says, and tries to block the way between Jon and the stranger. “You have to--” 

“Don’t--!” Jon shouts, desperate. 

“--run! Get away from here!” 

Behind him, he hears a sharp, pained intake of breath. And then there is the sound of footsteps running away, in the direction of the backdoor. 

Good, Martin thinks past the terror. At least Jon’s going to be okay. 

“Shouldn’t have done that,” the man says, and he takes a step closer to Martin. He looks absolutely gleeful. “You could’ve used your bride slave here. Your mistake.” 

It occurs to Martin that maybe he should be running too. But he doesn’t want to use the backdoor, doesn’t want to give this thing a chance to eat Jon as well, and it’s blocking the front door-- the man lunges for him, and Martin bolts for the kitchen. It’s a deadend, but upstairs would be even worse-- 

“I can’t wait to put my teeth in you,” the man snarls, giddy. 

Knife, Martin thinks frantically. He needs a knife, something, sharp, something-- 

He remembers all at once the playful argument that he’d had with Jon this morning during breakfast, and he ends up pulling the cutlery drawer open so hard that he pulls the entire thing out, cutlery clattering onto the floor in a crash. He bends down and desperately grabs at the first thing he can get his hands on-- a table spoon. Turning around, pressing his back against the counter behind him, he holds the spoon out like it’s a cross. 

“Back off!” he shouts at the man who looks an inch away from pouncing at him, his voice breaking. “I-- I’ve got silver!” 

It absolutely isn’t silver. 

The man-- pauses. Holy shit, is it working? 

“Now, boy,” the stranger says. “You don’t want to do anything reckless, trust me.” 

“Why-- why shouldn’t I? You’re going to eat me, aren’t you?” 

“Yes,” he says simply. “But if you don’t make too much of a fuss about it, I’ll snap your neck first. Much better than the alternative.” 

Oh, absolutely fucking not. Without taking his eyes off the stranger, or letting the plain metal spoon waver, he bends down, picks up a handful of random cutlery from the floor, and then throws it all in his direction. The man makes a yipping sort of noise, and throws himself out of the way. Martin sprints through the now open doorway-- up the stairs-- he swears to god he can feel something grazing his heels as he runs-- 

“You’re going to regret that!” the man shouts. 

Martin focuses on running. 

Jon runs. 

It hurts. He tries to stop running, and it hurts. Martin’s home is set on a small hill, and he tumbles down it in the dark, tripping on the length of his dress, his breath hitching and panting with desperation. He’s running in the wrong direction. He can help, he knows what to do-- 

Run! Get away from here! 

Jon keeps running. His feet are bare, and small rocks and twigs dig into the soles of his feet, but he keeps running as fast as he can. Distantly, he feels something wet on his face-- tears? 

Martin is going to get eaten. Jon knows what to do to stop it, but he has to run, he has to get away from here. 

He’d been afraid of what Martin might unwittingly order him to do. This isn’t what he’d thought to fear. He trips over a root, almost falls, catches his balance. Keeps running. There’s a sob caught in his chest, unable to come out from how harshly he’s panting. 

Far away in the distance, through blurred vision, he sees some faint yellow lights shining in the darkness of night. Houses. The village. 

Jon changes the direction he’s running in. 

“You’re not very smart, are you?” the stranger asks. Martin has managed to get a door between them. He doesn’t think for a moment that it’s going to hold him back, not with the strength he’d shown earlier. And he doubts that the man needs permission to specifically enter his bedroom, not after he’s already been welcomed into his house. 

But he’s got a plan. 

Outside his bedroom door, the stranger knocks. Not the same knock as earlier-- this is a polite little rap. 

“Are you decent?” he asks mockingly. 

“Just a minute!” he calls out, huffing, his voice thin with strain. 

“Are you trying to climb out of the window?” the man asks, sounding idly curious. “If you fall and break your legs, that would be very funny. Or are you stuck in the window?” 

Martin doesn’t answer. The stranger seems to lose his patience with his own little joke, and begins to break the door down with his bare hands. 

Martin finishes pulling up the ladder and closing the hatch to the attic just before he comes inside. 

Jon tries to open the door. It’s locked. He knocks on it, frantically. No one comes-- or not quickly enough, anyways. The streets are dark and quiet, everyone tucked away asleep in their beds. He considers the door-- it’s glass, mostly. He could break that, right? But he’d hurt himself badly, probably. Unless he has a rock? Is there a rock nearby? He searches frantically, and curses the dark of the night. 

Through the glass of the door, a light turns on, illuminating the contents of the room. Shelves of various items, both familiar and foreign to him. He knocks on the door again, louder and more urgently. He’s never been here before, but he can read very well. The sign hanging from the front proudly proclaims who owns this place. 

“Rosie!” he shouts. “Rosie, it’s Jon, please open the door!” 

A figure walks up to the door from the other side-- Rosie, wearing a bathrobe, her hair down and her face plainer somehow, her expression scrunched up with groggy confusion. 

“Jon?” she asks, bewildered. “Is something wrong?” 

“Yes!” Jon says. “Open the door! Now!” 

She unlocks the door. Jon tears it open that very second, and goes barrelling past her into the store. He looks around wildly-- gives a cry of raw relief when he spots what he needs. He storms towards the counter. 

“What’s going on? What’s wrong? You look terrible.” 

Jon ignores her, focusing on the phone on her counter. It’s not at all like Martin’s-- it isn’t a shiny little rectangle with a smooth surface. It’s more like what he’s read about in books, a receiver he can pick up, the numbers all set out neatly in buttons to be pressed. He immediately begins dialing the number he’s memorized. 

“Oh, god. Is it Martin? Is he having a heart attack? Oh my god. There’s no way an ambulance will get there in time.” 

“Pick up,” Jon mutters, listening desperately to the phone ring. “Pick up pick up pick up pick up--” 

“Rooster used to be a nurse!” Rosie says triumphantly. “I’m going to go wake him up!” 

“Pick up!” Jon shouts into the phone, as if he can just will Martin to answer. For Martin to still be alive to answer. Distantly, he hears Rosie run out of the store. 

The phone keeps ringing. 

Martin’s phone is ringing. He can hear the stranger jumping-- each time he lands the impacts are heavy, and at the apex of his jump he can hear something like claws raking against the attic door. Maybe he’d feel safer if the stranger weren’t sporadically laughing underneath his breath, like he’s having a very entertaining time. Martin clutches at his useless spoon, and tries very hard not to feel like a cornered mouse. He has no idea how long he’s been up here. It feels like it’s both been only minutes, and several long, torturous hours at the same time. The true answer is probably something between that. 

His phone keeps ringing. Feeling a bit distant from his own body, he pulls it out of his trouser pocket and checks it, wondering who it is. Perhaps it’s a telemarketer. 

It’s an unknown number. He imagines answering it, the exchange that will follow. Hi, is this So And So? No, this is Martin. Oh, sorry, wrong number. No worries, happens all the time. Bye. It’d be his last interaction with another human being, probably. 

He could ask for help. That’s something he could at least try to do. 

Martin answers the phone. 

“--PICK UP THE DAMNED--” 

“Jon?” Martin asks, the question falling out of his mouth before it even sinks in who’s shouting on the other end of the line. How the hell did Jon get his hands on a phone? 

“Martin? Martin! Martin, you complete idiot! Is the Fledgling Eater still there? Are you safe?” 

The monster jumps. This time, the wood of the attic door cracks. For a moment, he doesn’t drop back down to the floor. Then there’s the loud, splintering whine of breaking wood, followed by the familiar heavy thud of the monster hitting the floor again. This time, there’s a crack left behind in the middle of the attic door, a torn open hole not even large enough for Martin to stick his hand through. The monster laughs, raspy and excited. 

“No,” he says, and his voice comes out small and weak, as if he’s trying to hide. The monster knows exactly where he is, so that’s not really a useful idea. “I’m-- I’m not safe.” 

The monster jumps again. This time, Martin sees his fingers catch at the edges of the hole. They gain purchase for just a moment, before his full weight brings him back down, bringing more splintering wood tearing down with him. The hole yawns wider, larger. It won’t be long until it’s big enough that a full grown man who can jump a disturbingly long vertical distance could, in theory, drag himself through it, up into the attic. There’s nowhere else to run from here. He’s trapped. 

“Listen to me,” Jon hisses over the phone, his voice desperate and intense. Martin listens dumbly, unable to tear his eyes away from the widening hole in the attic door, frozen. “See it, name it, and then invite it to a meal.” 

The monster jumps again. This time, his hand manages to hook onto the inside of the door, and as gravity jerks him down his nails--his claws now, they weren’t that sharp before-- dig deep lines into the attic door. The wood creaks and groans, but it doesn’t collapse, and the monster doesn’t fall. He dangles and stays there. 

“What?” he asks blankly. 

“That’s what you have to do to stop it! It can’t kill you if you do those things, do you understand? Just see it for what it truly is, name it for what it truly is, and then invite it to a meal.” 

“What does that--” 

“Give it food! Or something to drink! Anything!” 

The monster’s other hand comes up towards an edge of the hole--still not quite large enough for a man to crawl through--and casually tears a chunk of the wood away. 

“I don’t know it’s name,” Martin says, his voice going shrill against his will. “And I don’t have any--” 

“Fledgling Eater! That’s what I bloody said, it’s a Fledgling Eater. You can already See it, the marriage gave you the Sight, you just have to--” 

With a loud, loud noise, a large hunk of wood tears away and collapses onto the floor below. The monster’s other hand comes up and digs into the wood. He begins pulling himself up into the attic. Martin sees his face-- his teeth long and sharp and bared in a wide smile, slobber running down his chin and his entire front, his eyes bright and excited-- 

“Fledgling Eater!” Martin shouts at him. “I know you’re a Fledgling Eater! That’s-- that’s what you are! I name you! I name you Fledgling Eater!” 

The creature-- stops. Then he starts scrabbling the rest of his way into the attic with renewed vigor, digging deep gouges into the floor with his claws as he goes. Martin frantically looks around, as if he’s going to find an abandoned tin of biscuits up in the attic all of a sudden. 

“--a meal,” Jon’s tinny voice is shouting over the phone. Martin’s not holding it up against his ear any longer, so he sounds small and distant now, even with how frantically he’s shouting. “--have to give it a meal--” 

Martin’s so terrified that he can hear a constant pitched tone whining in his ears, grating and insistent. And then-- 

--and then there’s a great heavy weight crashing into him, knocking the breath out of his lungs, flattening him to the floor. The phone flies out of his hand and goes spinning into the dusty darkness of the attic. Where’s his spoon? When did he drop it? 

“Caught you,” the Fledgling Eater growls, his smile wide wide wide. A long string of drool drips onto Martin’s face. His breath wafts hot and sour in the small space between them. 

That constant pitched tone. It’s not just in his ears, in his head. He recognizes it. It’s-- 

The monster lowers his head slowly, like he’s about to take a delicate bite out of a dainty appetizer, and he intends to savor it. 

“Do you want some tea?” Martin asks all in a rush. Downstairs, the kettle Jon put on continues to shriek, just like it’s been doing for a long time now. He gives the most manic, forced, terrified smile of his life. “The kettle’s all done boiling!” 

The monster just looks down at him for a long, breathless moment. And then it sits back on its haunches, no longer looming in Martin’s face like he’s a second away from tearing his throat out with his teeth. It’s shoulders slump, and it sighs. And then it gives Martin a smile-- just a regular, friendly smile, with the normal amount of teeth showing-- and says in a chagrined ‘you got me there’ sort of way, “Yeah, I’ll have some tea.”

Chapter Text

What follows is the most surreal tea party of Martin’s life. He pours tea into mugs with hands that shake so badly that about half of it ends up spilling onto the counter instead of getting in the mugs, but the inside of his head feels clear. The steps he needs to follow are laid very neatly out in front of him, easy and simple. Like his brain is focused on doing what it needs to do, while his body is left to do the panicking for him. Physical signs of terror with no accompanying internal feelings to match them. It’s weird. 

“Do you want anything in your tea?” he hears himself ask politely. “Milk? Sugar?” 

“D’you have any honey?” the monster that tore his bedroom door off its hinges in his eagerness to eat him asks. A vivid mental image of the monster fussily smearing honey onto his intestines flashes through his mind, and he has to swallow a hysterical giggle. 

“Yes,” he says. “I’ll go and get it.” 

He steps onto scattered cutlery on the floor as he does so. There’s a chill in the air-- both the front and back doors are still flung open, letting in the cold of the night. There’s spilled tea on the counter that he hasn’t bothered cleaning up. Upstairs, he knows, are the splintered remains of his attic and bedroom door. He should be cleaning those things up--or curling up into a ball on the floor to start hyperventilating--but instead he’s rummaging through his cupboards for the jar of honey. Because if he stops the tea party before it’s over then he might be giving the creature a chance to act like Martin isn’t following the magical rules that says that it doesn’t get to eat him for some reason, and then-- 

This is life now, he supposes. Nothing to do about it but be a polite host to the man eating monster that has invaded his home, and save the panic attack for later. He sets the tea, the honey, and a spoon down on the table. He gets his own mug and gets settled down at the table. He usually loads his up with milk, sugar, a bit of lemon-- but he drinks it black and bitter, now. He does not have the mental capacity to make himself good tea right now. 

The monster is frowning down at his tea, not touching it. A thrill of terror runs up Martin’s spine. 

“Is something the matter?” he asks, trying to keep his voice even, not tremulous. 

The monster points at the spoon Martin set down on the table for him, as if it has offended him in some way. “I can’t use that.” 

Martin blinks, and then his mind connects the dots. “Oh! N--no, it’s okay. It’s not silver, I bought that at a garage sale. I was just lying.” 

The monster looks at him for a beat--long enough for it to occur to Martin that he may have just made an awful, stupid mistake--and then he throws his head back and cackles. His laugh is hoarse and raspy, like he’s a constant smoker. 

“Oh!” he laughs. “Good one! Can’t believe I didn’t smell that it wasn’t silver… I really am getting slow in my old age. That trick wouldn’t have worked if I’d been hunting you down with my partner, let me tell you. She was made only a couple of centuries ago. Got a nose to put bloodhounds to shame. Lucky for you that she had to seperate from the pack to chase down a different scent, eh?” 

“Ri--” His voice sort of gives out mid word. He has to clear his throat to continue. “Right.” 

The monster unscrews the lid on the jar, and starts mixing honey into his tea. Martin sips at his without really tasting it. How long does this have to continue before he’s officially ‘offered it a meal’ and can ask it to leave? Can he just down his tea like a shot and go? 

Probably not. Probably he’s going to have to just sit here and wait until the monster has finished drinking his tea, at his leisure. God. 

“Why were you hunting me?” he asks. His body is still trembling with adrenaline, the urge to run or fight or hide or just do something making him feel jittery and restless. He can’t just sit here in silence, or else he’s going to lose his mind. “I-- I mean I’m no one special. What could I have possibly done?” 

“That,” the monster says, pointing at him emphatically, “is exactly it, son. You're no one special. I was made specifically to hunt down and kill people who aren’t special. I’m a Fledgling Eater, you’re a fledgling. That’s just how it is.” 

Martin stares at him in incomprehension for a moment. He feels his mouth open and close as he searches for the right thing to say. 

“What do you mean?” he ends up asking, plaintive, the edges of his words fraying with desperation, holding onto his composure by his fingernails. 

The monster just chuckles. That’s the most surreal, unsettling, infuriating part of this, actually. How amicable he’s being. He’d been literally drooling on Martin only a few minutes ago with how eager he’d been to devour him, and now he’s acting like a fond, indulgent uncle popping in for a visit. His demeanor had changed like a switch had been flipped, all at once. He’d actually almost prefer it if he was still snarling at Martin like he’s a piece of meat to be consumed. It would be less disorienting. 

“Let me explain,” he says warmly. “A fledgling is someone new to magic. New to its existence, the knowledge of it, the entire world as it truly is. I could smell it on you, even as far away as I was. Fresh blood, fresh eyes, fresh wonder. Mouthwatering. I’ve been doing nothing but running towards you for days now, not stopping to sleep or rest. I was so looking forward to eating you. But you’re a wily one, aren’t you?” 

That sends a shudder of disgust running through him. That during every single moment of the last few days--ever since he met Jon?-- this thing has been steadily drawing closer to him. Salivating at the thought of getting to sink its fangs into Martin’s flesh. 

“I… can guess what a Fledgling Eater is, then,” he says. It’s a very straightforward name, with that knowledge. A creature specifically evolved to purely eat people like Martin. Naive newcomers, awed and overwhelmed and confused by fairies and fae and-- and unicorns, and who knows what else. People who have no idea what they're doing. It seems… really, really cruel. Like a monster that exclusively eats defenseless children, or something. Hang on, this actually really helps explain why magic is such a well kept secret, if newcomers have to deal with stuff like this. “How many of your kind are there?” 

“Oh, hmm. A dozen maybe?” 

Martin stares. 

“A dozen? What, in England?” 

“The world. I don’t have an exact count. It’s not like we meet up for brunch, we mostly just focus on the chase. There doesn’t have to be a lot of us. We’re meant for a very specific purpose, and we’re tough creatures.” 

We’re meant for a very specific purpose. Earlier, he’d said that his partner was made a few centuries ago, not born. That clashes with the image that had immediately sprung up in Martin’s head at the creature’s description, of a monster that had evolved to fill a niche, to prey on a vulnerable type of person, ignorant and helpless. 

“And what is that purpose?” he asks. The monster seems to be happy to play along, to answer Martin’s questions. “Who-- who made you?” 

“Witches,” the creature answers simply. “Some sect located roughly in this part of the world about a thousand years ago got it into their heads that it would be very nice if there weren’t any other witches around that weren’t a part of their little club. They tried to handle this the old fashioned way at first-- murdering and driving out the competition from their chosen territory themselves. But the problem is that new witches kept popping up out of absolutely nowhere, even after they’d gotten rid of all of the old ones. Not well educated witches, not witches with resources or allies or experience, but they did keep appearing. The thing is that anyone can become a witch. It’s not some special bloodline that has to be kept pure and sacred or whatever. You just need the right knowledge. And any human being can gain that knowledge, given enough opportunity, determination, or sheer dumb luck. By stumbling across a cursed item, or an enchanted book, or--” a quick wry grin, far too sharp for comfort, “marrying in, as it were.” 

“I’m-- ex--excuse me, are you saying that I’m a witch?” 

“Can you cast a single spell? Do you know any potions, rituals?” 

“No--” 

“Then calling you a witch is a bit generous, isn’t it?” 

“But-- can I become a witch?” 

“You can become a lot of things. You could become an artist, or a marksman, or a warrior. It’s possible. The texts necessary for that are very closely guarded, though. I doubt you’d be able to get your hands on any of them without getting flayed alive by a possessive witch who already knows what they’re doing. But I guess you could, maybe, if you tried very hard and got very lucky. Which is what I’m here for. The sect of witches created the first Fledgling Eater to solve the exact problem that people like you made for them. I can smell you from days away. I’m strong, I’m fast. I don’t need to rest. I catch the scent of a fresh fledgling, and I’ll sniff them out and hunt them down for as long as I have to to get them into my belly.” 

The creature smiles again, and the heavy, thick drool constantly dripping from his chin makes an audible noise as it drips onto his kitchen table. Wordlessly, Martin reaches over, picks up a tea towel, and hands it to the creature. 

“Oh, thank you,” the creature says. He daintily dabs at his mouth, which barely cleans anything up at all. He casually tosses the tea towel onto his shoulder. “Such a thoughtful host.” 

“You don’t seem very difficult to defeat,” Martin says spitefully, as if he hadn’t come so close to being eaten that he’d felt the creature’s hot breath on his face. There’s a weird itch in him to annoy the creature, make it’s face twist up into a scowl. He doesn’t like how cavalier it’s being, while the aftershocks of bone deep terror are still coursing through his veins. “See you, name you, invite you for a meal-- that’s easy.” 

“Exactly,” the creature cheerfully agrees. “It’s easy-- if you know the rules. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? If you’re new, you don’t know the rules. You don’t know what I am, you don’t know that you’re supposed to invite me to a meal-- I’m guessing that you got the Sight as a marriage boon, congratulations. The sect wanted for us to hunt and kill all witches that weren’t a part of their group at first, of course. The trick for getting us to back down was a closely kept secret for years-- but it was found out by an outsider eventually, and then the information spread. And so our feeding pool shrank from ‘every single witch except for the ones in this one sect’ to ‘anyone who isn’t deliberately invited or born into this world’. Unwanted accidents, nosy intruders. Fledglings. That’s when we got our name, actually. Before that we were called… hmm. I can’t really remember. Ah, doesn’t matter.” 

“So, what you’re saying is that the magical world is just the world’s deadliest boy’s club? Anyone not part of the family or whatever gets eaten?” Christ, Martin feels tired. He thought that he wouldn’t have to deal with elitist pricks like that any longer, after moving out here. The Lukases don’t count, since they’ve never so much as spoken a word to him. 

The creature idly wipes away some more of the slobber with the towel Martin gave it, and grins at him, amused. “If it’s any consolation, the sect that first designed and created my kind is long dead now. They messed up the ritual once and didn’t manage to make the restrictions stick, so their last Fledgling Eater was allowed to hunt and kill them with impunity. It was pretty hilarious. She was taken care of eventually, but it was good while it lasted. The information for how to make us is still out there in some form though, because every few centuries or so a new one of us pops up.” 

“Great,” Martin spits out. “That’s just wonderful.” 

“I have to ask,” the creature says. “How did you figure out how to get me to back down? You certainly didn’t seem to know how to do it while I was tearing your doors apart.” 

He chuckles, like he’s relaying a charming anecdote from his past instead of referencing one of the most terrifying moments of Martin’s life that had happened about half an hour ago. 

“Jo-- my friend told me,” he says. He’s not sure whether or not giving this creature Jon’s name would be a good idea. He is keenly aware of how little he knows, right now. “While I was in the attic.” 

“With a spell?” the creature asks. 

“On the phone,” Martin says. 

The creature cocks its head curiously. Martin remembers that it’s-- Christ, thousands of years old, maybe? And that cell phones have only been around for a few decades. 

“It’s-- think of it as a spell that isn’t magical. Let’s people talk long distance.” 

“Mortals,” the creature says with a gruff sort of fondness. “Inventive little shits, aren’t you?” 

“... Thanks?” 

“This friend of yours-- was it that fairy that went tearing out of here when I came?” 

“Does it matter?” he asks sharply, defensively. It makes him want to bristle whenever the creature so much as mentions Jon. He doesn’t want it thinking about him, paying attention to him. 

“That’s a yes,” the creature says. It cocks its head at Martin, reminding him vaguely of a predator animal considering whether or not he’s worth eating. “Did he reach out to you with the information, or did you reach out to him?” 

“... Is that relevant?” 

“Well, if it’s the first one then it would be interesting, that’s all.” 

“He called me and told me,” he says slowly, warily, wondering if he’s wandering into some sort of trap. But if he is, he has no idea what or how. By all appearances, the creature is just… making conversation. Small talk over tea and biscuits. 

For the first time, it occurs to him that that’s strange. That Jon called him and told him how to defeat the Fledgling Eater instead of just-- just telling him. Why had he run away if he knew how to get it to back off? 

He has no answers for his own questions. No explanation that makes sense. 

“Fascinating,” the creature says. “I assumed he was trying to get you killed by not telling you about things like me, which is just typical of a bride slave, really. But then he reached out to you after you’d already made him go away and told you all on his own? Very strange. What’s he up to?” 

Martin opens his mouth. Closes it. Tries again. 

“Did-- did you just call him a slave?” 

The creature just looks at him for one long beat-- and then it throws its head back and roars laughter. 

“He didn’t tell you!” it crows. “He didn’t tell you anything-- because you don’t know nothing! He got away with it! Oh-- oh, that’s the best thing I’ve heard in decades. Two clever little bastards, the both of ya! Aren’t you a matching pair?” 

“Didn’t tell me what? Why did you call Jon-- that?” 

“Why call a duck a duck?” the creature says jovially. “Was just being accurate.” 

“He isn’t. He’s not my-- he’s not a slave, that’s disgusting.” 

“Bride slave. That’s what I said, and that’s what he is.” 

A memory flashes across the front of Martin’s mind. You could’ve used your bride slave here, the creature had said after it had forced its way into his home, after Martin had told Jon to run. Your mistake. 

This isn’t something he’s just coming up with. It’s-- it’s a term. It means something. 

“What,” he says, “the fuck are you talking about?” 

“How about you ask your bride slave?” the creature suggests with a shit eating grin. “Or how about you make him tell you? I’m sure you’d have a lot more success there.” 

Martin’s about to tell him to fuck off, to just tell him already, to stop calling Jon that-- but then he hears it. The faint sound of a running motor, of tires on gravel. There’s a car driving on the small path leading up to his home. 

“Well, that’s my cue to leave,” the creature says pleasantly. It holds out the tea towel Martin had given him, as if to return it. It drips with saliva, sodden and disgusting. 

“--You can keep it,” he says, recoiling slightly away from it. He doesn’t care if he could just wash it, he’d rather throw that thing in the trash than keep it. Burn it. 

“Such a generous host,” the creature says, still gratingly, off puttingly friendly and amicable. It grins wide and toothy, like it knows exactly how much it bothers Martin, and thinks it’s absolutely hilarious. It throws the towel back over its shoulder. 

Outside, the brightness of headlights washes through the windows at the front of the house. The car parks. 

“Oh--” the creature says after it gets up, heading towards the back door. It looks at Martin over its shoulder, as if some afterthought has occurred to it. “Where are my manners? I completely forgot to do introductions. I’m Trevor.” 

“Martin,” he says tightly. “Now get out.” 

With a last gravelly laugh, the creature slips out of the back of Martin’s house just as car doors are being opened outside at the front. 

Jon was told to run, to get away. He wasn’t told that he was never allowed to return, to be taken back. He sits in the back of Rooster’s car-- which is much larger than Martin’s, but the back half of it is exposed to the world, with no walls or doors to shield him from the wind or the cold. Rooster called it a ‘truck.’ Rosie sits in the enclosed front with Rooster. She’d offered to let him stay in her store while she and Rooster went to Martin’s aid, but he’d insisted on coming with. The wind whips at his hair and dress, and he huddles inside the jumper he took from Martin and clings to the side of the truck as Rooster swerves and races up the hill to Martin’s house. His car is much faster than Martin’s as well. Where Martin’s car often sounds like a dying, hacking, coughing creature, Rooster’s sounds like something large and roaring. 

He keeps his eyes trained at the point where he knows the house is. He can feel it in the tugging in his sternum, the direction where Martin lies. He must still be alive, if he can still feel the bond of their marriage woven tightly around him. Not that that means much. Jon has seen things move and struggle even as something more powerful is actively devouring their exposed organs. 

Why hadn’t he told Martin about Fledgling Eaters? A dozen excuses come to mind, and none of them are sufficient. He’s an idiot. 

Rooster’s truck brakes to a screeching halt at the front of Martin’s house--their home--gravel flying, and Jon jumps out of the back of the truck before it even comes to a complete stop. He loses his balance and falls, but it just stings, gravel digging into and bloodying up his hands and knees. He pushes himself up to his feet--those hurt too--grabs at the loose fabric of his dress, and sprints through the gaping, open doorway of the house, the door left yawning open like a wound. Behind him, he hears Rosie and Roster exit the car after him, slower and less urgent than him. 

“Martin!” he calls out. “Martin!” 

“I’m here!” Martin calls back, unexpectedly close. He isn’t screaming, his voice isn’t a strangled wheeze. Jon had been fearing the answering call of silence. “I’m in the kitchen!” 

Jon tears into the kitchen fast enough that he has to catch himself against the doorframe as he goes to avoid tumbling. And then he sees Martin, standing there, and he isn’t bloody and bruised and broken. He looks like himself. A sob lodges itself in Jon’s throat, and he throws himself at him and pulls him in tight. 

“--Oh,” Martin says, as if caught off guard. After a moment, his arms tentatively encircle Jon, and he gives him a gentle, careful squeeze. “It’s okay, Jon. I-- I’m fine.” 

“I’m so sorry,” he gasps out against Martin’s chest, raw and sincere. “Are you okay? Did it-- are you hurt?” 

And that’s when Rosie and Rooster come clattering into the kitchen behind him. 

“Where is-- what the devil?” Rooster says, utterly bewildered. 

“Martin! I-- we thought you’d had a heart attack!” Rosie’s tone is half confused, half accusatory. As if he’s wronging her in some way by not having a heart attack. 

“... Is that what Jon said?” 

“He, um-- now that I think about it, he didn’t ever really say--” 

“Is there an emergency or isn’t there?” Rooster asks. “I’d gone to bed before this.” 

“There was,” Martin says, “a burglary.” 

“A burglary?” Rosie asks sharply, all traces of accusation gone from her voice. A burglary is, apparently, a more than good enough replacement for a heart attack. 

“Yes,” Martin says, warming to this fabrication. “Some stranger with a gun-- look at how they’ve rifled through the place.” 

Martin gestures expansively at the kitchen, which does indeed look like a complete mess. Jon unburrows slightly from where he’s been pressing himself into Martin’s chest to see it properly, and winces. He hadn’t really taken it in the first time, too distracted by his overwhelming relief at Martin’s survival. There are things strewn messily across the floor, a chair overturned, a drawer pulled entirely out of the counter. There are two tea mugs neatly set out on the table, the single incongruous detail in the set up. Jon recognizes it for what it is-- the meal. Martin understood. 

“He interrupted me and Jon while we were having tea,” Martin says without hesitation or fluster. “Came knocking on the door and then leveled a gun at me as soon as I opened the door. I told Jon to run and go get help-- don’t worry, he’s gone now.” 

“Goodness,” Rosie says. “Did he take anything?” 

Nothing is missing from the house. Jon knows this without having to check. Fledgling Eaters don’t take anything but what’s given to them, if their prey follows the proper greeting procedures. This might make things a bit thorny; it wouldn’t make sense for a burglar with a gun to break in and then not manage to take anything with him. 

“Yes,” Martin says. “He-- he made me tell where everything important was. I had some family heirlooms up in the attic, he took them. Broke a lot of things in the process, I think. I stayed in the kitchen like he told me to.” 

“It’s best to do as they say when they’ve got a gun,” Rooster says approvingly. 

“He could have shot you,” Rosie says, half horrified and half delighted. 

“Can you describe what he looked like?” 

And so Martin proceeds to spin some wild tale about a fearsome burglar that forced his way into his home, waved his gun around, created a big mess, and made off with some precious family heirlooms that Martin had of course kept hidden and secret until then, disappearing into the night. His delivery is flawlessly organic, the details a believable mix of vague and specific. His description of the mysterious burglar is so artfully vague and unhelpful that Martin could almost be describing Rooster himself. Rosie dutifully gasps and makes sympathetic noises; Rooster nods gravely and claps Martin on the shoulder. Jon doesn’t let go of Martin’s arm the entire time. 

“We’ll pass the news onto Jeff for you,” Rooster says. “It’s damned late, and you two look exhausted. I’m sure you can wait to make a proper report to the cops until tomorrow morning.” 

“Thank you,” Martin says, the picture of tired gratitude. “I really appreciate that.” 

“Thank you,” Jon says to Rosie, and he means it. He’d needed Rosie’s phone. “You saved Martin’s life.” 

Rosie startles slightly at this, as if caught off guard by being thanked specifically, of Jon looking intently into her eyes as he says it. 

“Oh--” she says, and waves her hands in a flustered, dismissive way. “It really wasn’t anything, I was just doing what any neighbour would do.” 

“We’re neighbours?” Jon asks. 

“Well-- in spirit, perhaps.” 

“If you say so,” he says doubtfully. He’s fairly certain that that’s now how the concept of neighbours works. “Still-- thank you very much. I owe you a debt.” 

This isn’t the truth. He can’t feel any sort of weight bearing down on him, urging him to repay the debt between them. Magic has judged that he doesn’t owe her anything for her aid tonight. He has heard that it’s more difficult for bride slaves to become indebted to anyone but their husband masters; that might be what’s happening here. He doesn’t particularly care. Martin is alive and Jon is grateful and so relieved he wants to cry a bit, and if Rosie ever asks something of him, he will try to fulfill her request. 

“Very sweet of you,” Rosie says, a touch awkwardly. 

“Really, thanks again,” Martin says. “But it’s getting very late. The two of you must be wanting to get home and to bed…?” 

“We won’t overstay our welcome,” Rooster says wryly. He bends down and picks up a boxy briefcase with a grunt-- an extensive first aid kit, Jon realizes. “Goodnight you two. Er-- make sure to lock your doors. And don’t open them up for anybody for the rest of the night.” 

“We definitely won’t,” Martin agrees. 

Final goodbyes are said, and then Rosie and Rooster walk back out the car they’d arrived in. Doors slam shut, headlights turn on, the engine rumbles-- and they’re gone, the tires rolling over crunching gravel as they drive away. 

Martin firmly closes the door-- and locks it. 

“Thought they’d never leave,” Martin sighs. He can’t believe he’d managed to lie his way out of that mess. Except he kind of can. Lying has always been one of the things that he’s best at, unfortunately. 

Most people try to make themselves look better when they’re lying. Smart, courageous, kind, competent. Martin told Rosie and Rooster that a guy with a gun showed up and he meekly cooperated until he left. It doesn’t make him seem brave or clever or resourceful at all. It makes him seem a bit pathetic, if anything. That’s what makes it believable, what makes it work. It fits. People can hear that story, look at Martin, and nod to themselves in understanding. Yes, that’s the sort of thing that he would do, that’s the way he’d react and handle that situation. Who would tell a lie like that? It’s embarrassing. 

Not that the truth is much better. He ran, he hid, and then Jon handed him the solution right before he got eaten. And then he had an extremely anxiety inducing, confusing, infuriating tea party with the thing that almost just killed him. Not exactly heroic. 

The adrenaline is finally beginning to leave his system, and it’s leaving him feeling so tired and shaky that he just kind of wants to crumple to the floor where he stands and go to sleep right here. Except that would be stupid. He has a perfectly nice bed upstairs. He just has to hold out for a little bit longer, then he can sleep for as long as he needs to and… take care of everything else in the morning. 

Bride slave. The creature, the Fledgling Eater, Trevor. He’d called Jon that, like it meant something beyond just some sort of insult. Martin doesn’t like the sound of it. Not at all. 

He’s so tired. 

“Jon?” he says blearily, and turns around to see-- he blinks. Jon’s gone. It makes anxiety flicker inside of his chest for a moment, before Jon calls out to him. 

“I’m in the kitchen.” 

Martin shuffles to the kitchen, because he’s pretty sure that if he tried to properly lift his feet right now he’d just trip over them. He finds Jon kneeling on the kitchen floor, picking up spilled cutlery with his hands, gathering it up. He’s cleaning. 

“That can wait for until tomorrow,” he says. He really, really doesn’t have the energy to tidy everything up right now. 

“I know where these are supposed to go,” Jon says, his hands not pausing in their work. “I’ll just-- I’ll put them away. It won’t take me long.” 

Martin’s about to repeat himself-- the mess will still be there to be cleaned up tomorrow, it’s very late, they need rest--when Jon grabs one of the knives by the blade instead of the handle, and drops it with a hiss. Martin starts. 

“Jon! Are you okay?” 

Jon looks at his palm, and then picks the knife back up, by the handle this time. 

“It isn’t serious,” he says, continuing to clean. “I’m fine.” 

Martin notices for the first time that his hands are shaking as he picks things up from the floor. He feels frayed and foggy from everything that’s happened this evening, but he tries to clear his mind, to focus on the present moment. To try and see things as Jon sees them. 

The kitchen doesn’t look anything like it had earlier this day. It isn’t warm and sunlit, familiar and cozy. It looks ransacked, dark, messy. As he watches, Jon gets up--he catches a glimpse of his knees as he moves, scratched up and bloody like he’s fallen down hard at some point, and then the long skirt of his dress covers them up again--and he lets the cutlery he’s gathered up in his hands spill out onto the counter. He picks up the drawer that Martin had pulled out onto the floor earlier. Jon’s movements as he tries to align it properly to push it back in are a little bit too jerky, too frantic. His hands aren’t steady enough to manage it. 

Martin supposes he can… he can understand this. Wanting to clean the place up to make it look like nothing ever happened, there was never a violation, an intrusion. To make it at least look like it is and always has been safe. 

Jon won’t be able to clean up the gaping hole in the bedroom ceiling where the attic door used to be, though. This isn’t really doable. Not right now. 

“Jon,” he says, and he tries to make his voice soft, gentle. It mostly comes out sounding tentative and nervous. “Stop cleaning up. We’ll take care of it tomorrow.” 

Jon freezes where he’d been trying to shove the drawer back into its proper place. After a moment, he carefully sets the drawer down on the counter and scrubs his face with his hands instead. No argument, no ignoring him. 

How about you ask your bride slave, the Fledgling Eater had suggested with a nasty amusement in its voice. Or how about you make him tell you? I’m sure you’d have a lot more success there. 

Jon always listens to Martin, in the end. Even when he disagrees, even when he’s clearly frustrated and annoyed. 

There’s a sick, queasy feeling stirring in the pit of his stomach. He tries to ignore it. 

“I’m sorry,” Jon apologizes again. It was one of the first things he’s said to Martin, after he’d come back. Rosie and Rooster had burst in on the scene before Martin had been able to address it in any way. 

“What for? This isn’t your fault, Jon.” 

“I should have told you how to handle Fledgling Eaters before one showed up at your doorstep,” he says. “I know what they are, I know how to disarm them-- it was foolish of me.” 

“... Okay, I-- I’ve gotta admit, it would’ve been nice to already have had that information. But you didn’t tell me for a reason, right?” There’s a slight plaintive note in his voice at that. He remembers Trevor bringing up the possibility of Jon withholding the information on purpose, trying to get him killed. That can’t be true; Jon looks so upset. He can’t have-- there must be a reason. Even if the reason is just that he forgot to, Martin will take it. 

Jon clutches at his hair, almost cringing. 

“We’re nowhere near anything magical right now,” he says. “It-- it’s ridiculous that one would end up being here! They’re almost extinct!” 

“I don’t think it was near here,” Martin says. There’s a slightly hysterical edge to Jon’s voice that makes him want to soothe him, reassure. “It told me that it’s been sprinting in this direction for days without stopping to rest. It, uh, it’s apparently got a pretty strong sense of smell.” 

“I didn’t know that,” Jon says, voice small. “I-- I truly didn’t know that, Martin. I didn’t want this, it wasn’t on purpose. You have to believe me--” 

“I believe you,” he cuts him off, because Jon’s words were catching more and more speed with each denial, like he’s desperate for Martin to know that he hadn’t intended any of this. “You’re not omniscient, Jon. It’s okay if you don’t know about every single thing in the magical world.” 

He says it like this is an obvious fact, like something he’s known all along-- like it isn’t only just now occurring to him that Jon doesn’t know about every single thing in the magical world. He’s spoken with so much authority up until now, has always had an answer for all of Martin’s questions, even if the answer is sometimes ‘it’s impossible.’ 

“You were almost eaten,” Jon says, aghast. “That’s not okay.” 

“Well,” Martin says because, well. No, that’s not okay. He’s got him there. “I wasn’t.” 

“I’m sorry,” Jon repeats. His face is tear stained, his dress dirty, stained at the hemline, his hands and knees scraped up from stumbles. Martin belatedly notices bloody footprints on the kitchen floor tiles-- Jon’s feet are bleeding. He’d gone running outside without any shoes on. 

Martin had told him to run, and he’d gone without hesitation. 

How about you make him tell you?

There’s a question lodged like a stone in Martin’s throat. He opens his mouth to ask it. 

“Your feet,” he says instead. “They’re hurt. I need to wash them, bandage them up.” 

Jon looks down at his feet, as if surprised by this revelation. Pain twists on his face a moment later, like he hadn’t felt it until it was pointed out to him. 

“What about you?” Jon asks. “Are you hurt?” 

“Just some scrapes and bumps,” he assures him. He’d mostly done it to himself, during his frantic flight from Trevor, slamming up against and clipping things on his way. He can barely feel any of it, with how tired he is. “Please just… I’ll take care of your feet, and then we’ll go to bed. We can deal with everything else in the morning.” 

Jon does as he’s told without argument or complaint. A question burns away in Martin’s chest, but he never asks it. Because he’s tired, he tells himself. Because it can wait. 

Really, though, he’s just too scared of the answer. 

Martin cleans the scrapes on the soles of Jon’s feet carefully, kneeling on the floor as Jon sits on the closed lit of the toilet. He winds clean bandages around them gently but firmly. Jon bites his lower lip so that he doesn’t reflexively kick him in the face during the process-- he’s ticklish on his feet, as it turns out. When he’s done they almost stumble up the stairs to the bedroom. 

“Careful,” Martin says. “Splinters.” 

He kicks several ragged chunks of wood away to the side, clearing a path for them to the ceiling. When Jon finally climbs into bed he can’t help but feel, perhaps irrationally, that they’re finally safe now. Nothing is allowed to get at them now. They’re in bed. It’s warm and soft and private here, and the outside world isn’t allowed to intrude here. Every single muscle in his body unclenches all at once, and it leaves him feeling weak and ready to dissolve like bubbles in water. 

He opens his eyes, and sees a gaping torn open hole in the ceiling. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“We’ll take care of it in the morning,” Martin mumbles, rolling over, getting settled as the mattress squeaks noisily under him. “Somehow.” 

“Yes,” he agrees. How does one fix something like that? Are they just… going to put a sheet there or something? He tries to grasp for solutions in his mind, and it’s like trying to hold smoke in his hands. He’s very tired. He wonders what time it is. It’s dark outside. 

Tomorrow. They’ll take care of it all tomorrow. 

His eyes close. 

His eyes open. 

How long has it been? Why is he awake? What time is it? Disorientation leaves him feeling paralyzed for a moment. It’s still dark, but it feels like he’s slept. For how long? Why did he wake up? His body feels leaden, his eyelids heavy. 

The dip in the mattress where Martin’s body should be isn’t there any longer. His hand goes out to try and find him, but he finds only emptiness. There’s a lingering warmth there, so he can’t have been gone for long, but-- 

“Martin?” he calls out, anxiety twisting in his gut. He sits up, looking blankly out into the darkness of the bedroom, his eyes trying to adjust. Martin’s gone. Why did he leave? Why would he leave without saying anything? Where is he? 

There’s no answer. He throws the warm, sheltering sheets away and gets out of bed. He swears under his breath as he does, his legs unexpectedly aching with pain. Sore, from his desperate sprint earlier. He’ll be feeling that for some days. The soles of his feet throb dully underneath the bandages, but he ignores it and stumbles out of the bedroom. 

“Martin,” he hisses into the darkness. All of the curtains are undrawn, so he can see faintly by starlight, moonlight. 

“I’m here,” Martin replies, and something inside of Jon’s chest, his stomach, unclenches so he can take a full breath in. “On the stairs. Sorry, did I wake you? Was trying to be quiet.” 

“What are you doing?” he demands. “What time is it?” 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says. Jon remembers how dead tired he’d looked earlier, how he’d kept on insisting that they should go to bed. “And I just remembered something that I’ve got to take care of immediately.” 

“What?” 

“I’ll show you,” he says, and walks down the stairs, the steps creaking underneath his feet, and Jon can make out his dark figure moving now. Jon follows, holding onto the bannister as he goes. Martin walks all the way to the front door, unlocks it, and opens it, which Jon doesn’t particularly like at all. He wants to stay shut up in their safe house for a while, not opening the doors for any strangers at all. The outside night air is brisk and chilly. 

“You’re leaving?” he asks, incredulous. “Now?” 

“No,” Martin says, and then he crouches down and picks something up from the ground, right outside the door. He stands up, closes and locks the door, turns around, and holds it out in demonstration to Jon. 

Welcome, the doormat reads. 

“Ah,” he says, understanding dawning on him. 

“This,” Martin says with a certain amount of viciousness, “is going into the bin.” 

“Yes, that would be for the best, I think. Whatever possessed you to own such a thing?” A standing invitation to the entire outside world to enter his safe haven doesn’t sound particularly wise to him. 

“Well, I didn’t know that magic existed when I bought it, did I? I just thought it was kind of cute, in a kitschy sort of way.” 

Martin proceeds to roll the welcome mat up as best as he can, before shoving it into the bin in the kitchen in the cupboard under the sink. It sticks up, large and blatant. Martin closes the cupboard door with a firm disdain. 

“Okay,” he sighs. “We can go back to bed now. Sorry for waking you.” 

Jon catches a glimpse of the clock in the kitchen. It’s three in the morning. When had they first gone to bed? He doesn’t know. He thinks it was perhaps somewhere around midnight. Martin’s been lying awake in their bed for at least three hours, exhausted and unable to sleep. 

“Can we…” he says, thinking quickly. “Could we have some tea first?” 

“Oh,” Martin says. “I-- sure, yeah. That sounds good.” 

Jon goes and turns on the kitchen light. It’s a soft, weak, yellow thing that doesn’t sting in his eyes too much right now. The circles underneath Martin’s eyes are deep and dark. He starts puttering around the kitchen, getting some tea boiling. Jon goes and sits down at the kitchen table and watches him work. 

He watches the gentle slope of Martin’s shoulder. His slightly curling hair. The freckles at the back of his neck, his bare arms. 

He could have died tonight. Yesterday. Whichever it is. Watching him now, the thought makes a suffocating lump grow in his throat, makes his eyes sting. He’d almost died, and in such a preventable way. Jon had had the necessary knowledge, and he hadn’t armed Martin with it beforehand. He hadn’t prepared him. 

“Martin,” he says, and clears his throat in an attempt to get rid of the lump, as it’s making it rather difficult to speak. 

“Mm?” Martin hums, still dithering about with tea things, getting out mugs and additionals. 

“There are kelpies,” he says. “Who dwell in rivers-- I don’t know if there are any in any rivers nearby-- or if there are rivers nearby-- but they can shapeshift into many things. Horses, dogs, animals-- sometimes they even look like humans. Wounded people, unconscious people, drowning people, distressed people in need of rescue. You mustn't fall for it. They’re not allowed to take you unless you touch them without permission. They have to leave some hint of their true nature in their appearance to give their victims a fair chance, and you should be able to spot it easier than most due to your Sight, but--” 

“Are kelpies going to come and hunt me down too?” Martin asks, his eyebrows jumping up. 

“No, no. They’re stationary creatures. They don’t roam and hunt, they lie in wait in their rivers.” 

“O… kay? Then why are you telling me about them?” 

“I just-- just in case. Just if you ever happen to meet one. So that you’ll know what to do.” 

Martin looks at him for a moment, and Jon watches as his expression softens from confusion. 

“Okay,” he says. “I understand.” 

“And there are changelings,” he bursts out. Oh, if Martin didn’t know about changelings and then met one-- “They can be vicious creatures.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Martin asks. He pulls a chair out at the table and sits down with him, the kettle boiling at the stove. “Tell me all about them. Please.” 

He does. And then he thinks of another creature that can be quite dangerous under the right circumstances, and another one that can be terribly malicious towards humans, and another one, and another one. He tells Martin all he knows about every single creature he’s ever encountered or even just heard of, how to spot them, how to deal with them. Most of the time, the solution is just ‘don’t catch their attention’ or ‘run and hide.’ He is a fairy. Often it’s the best he can do facing larger and more powerful creatures than he. He talks and he talks and he talks, and Martin pours out tea for them, and then boils some more when the first batch goes cold. They’re both still very tired, but Martin can’t sleep anyway, and Jon suddenly finds that he doesn’t want to go to sleep either before this problem is fixed. 

The sun rises without either of them even noticing it. 

Chapter Text

The next day they’re woken up by a small army walking up to their door. 

Martin and Jon had stumbled up to pass out in their bed on top of the covers sometime after they’d realized that the sun was rising, and they wake up to the sound of a car horn being layed into in a playful, heart jarring rhythm. 

“Whuh?” Jon mumbles, his own hair caught in his mouth. 

“Shit,” Martin swears, rolls out of the bed and onto the floor, before staggering up to the bedroom window, pushing it open, and sticking his head out. 

Outside, there are three pickup trucks parked sloppily on his gravel driveway, unloading people like clowns in a comedy routine. He blinks with bleary incomprehension at the sight. 

“Martin!” one of the people calls out, waving their arms-- and oh, that’s Rooster. “We came to help out!” 

“With what,” he says to himself, too quietly for anyone down in the driveway to possibly hear him. 

“Whazzit?” Jon says, levering himself up into a sitting position in the bed. His hair and his dress are in a complete disarray, and there’s dried drool on one side of his face. 

“Our, uh,” he searches for a word, “neighbours are here. I’m going to go and see what they want.” 

He goes downstairs and unlocks the front door, opening it up. Almost immediately a woman springs forth and thrusts something into his hands. Sandra Something, he thinks? 

“You poor thing!” she says. “A burglary, here? What is this, the city? That sort of thing shouldn’t happen here, so shameful.” 

Martin stares blankly at her for a moment, and then down at what he’s holding. It's a large, thick porcelain rectangle, and there’s several layers of saran wrap on the top of it. 

“I made you a casserole,” she says. “You can’t be thinking about cooking at a time like this, after such a shock. How are you? How’s your-- your-- companion?” 

She asks the last question with an almost panicky uncertainty as she seems to desperately search for the correct word. 

“Jon’s fine,” he says, taking mercy on her. “Just a bit shaken up. Um, it was really nice of you to bring us food, I’ll make sure to come and return the form when we’re done with it.” 

He really doesn’t know why a single casserole necessitated an escort of three pickup trucks worth of people, though. Then again, this is probably the most exciting thing that’s happened here since Clark Cocker lost one of his fingers while fixing his tractor last year. He probably should’ve expected some lookie-lous. 

“So, what’s the damage?” asks a long limbed old man with an impressive collection of wrinkles. Martin recognizes him from his trips down to the village, always sitting in a rocking chair on his porch and chewing on or smoking something. “Rosie told us that the burglars broke stuff.” 

Burglars, not burglar. The story has, apparently, grown in size in some ways during the last few hours. 

“Oh-- just a door… and the ceiling. It’s-- it’s fine, we’ll manage somehow.” He hasn’t even begun to think about how he’ll handle it. He’ll have to hire someone to come and fix it up, he supposes. There’s no way he’s fixing it. He doesn’t exactly know his way around a hammer and nails. Or… whatever equipment will be necessary for that whole mess. God, how is he going to get someone to come all the way out here? It’ll cost a fortune. 

“The ceiling, huh? Did they fire off a warning shot or something? Well, we’ll see what we can do.” And with that, the old man pushes his way past Martin into his home in a casual, friendly sort of way. 

Martin, his hands full of some mysterious sort of casserole, his clothes and hair still rumpled from sleep, just stares at him, his mouth opening and closing a bit uselessly. About a dozen people all begin filing past him into his house, giving him comforting claps on the shoulder as they pass him. 

“My Auntie Bess got mugged once, when she was visiting the city,” Nellie Cocker confides in him. It’s a story that he’s heard at least twice before, each time he’s bumped into her at the general store. “Absolutely beastly, the way some people can act.” 

“I… yes?” 

And that’s how Martin’s house gets invaded. Again. Admittedly, an invasion of overly curious, helpful villagers is preferable to a literal man eating monster, but also there are now a dozen people inside of his house. There haven’t been that many people here since-- ever. They swarm over the place, commenting and remarking and cooing over decoration and furniture, pickup trucks driving in and out to go and fetch more equipment and lumber (“Why the hell did they break into your attic like that?” “Maybe they were… high on bath salts?”) women craning their necks up at his ceiling and men measuring the width of his broken down bedroom door with their hands, clicking their tongues about what a mess it all is and arguing about how to best fix it up. It’s a bit… overwhelming. 

“I mean-- this is very helpful of you but how much is it going to cost--?” 

“Cost? Don’t be silly!” 

“Martin?” Jon says, sticking his head through a doorway, interrupting the conversation before Martin can figure out a way to respond to that particular revelation. 

“Jon!” Martin rushes over to him. He’d forgotten about him for a moment, in the sudden rush of a dozen people all crammed into one small and cozy house. “How-- how are you? Is everything okay?” 

“Everything’s fine,” he says. “These people are… helping us?” 

“Apparently,” he says. “It’s very-- uh, kind of them.” 

It is kind of them. Just also very, very weird. He doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Does he owe them something now? How can he possibly repay them? 

“Oh, that’s good,” Jon says. And then, “Don’t you have to go and work at the big house today?” 

Martin freezes. 

“Shit,” he swears, and fumbles for his phone-- yeah, he should be at work right now. He should’ve been at work for a while. Goddamnit. If the housekeeper’s noticed-- “I have to go. Right now.” 

And then he looks around at his house, bustling with productive, eager acquaintances. Is he supposed to kick them out? He can’t just leave them alone here. Can he? 

Jon tilts his head at him. “Is there a problem?” 

Martin comes to a split second decision. “Can you-- will you stay home and, um, keep an eye on everyone? While I go and work.” 

Jon pauses, surprised. 

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I can. If I catch any of them stealing or sabotaging anything I’ll denounce them.” 

“Denounce-- what do you mean by-- oh, Christ.” A dozen different pleas run through his mind. Remember to hide that you’re magical. Try not to be too obviously weird. For the love of god, don’t take your clothes off. Be safe. 

Is this okay? Can he really leave Jon alone with a bunch of people for several hours without it going terribly wrong? Jon’s so-- so different, so strange and weird and fantastic. He can’t picture Jon having a single conversation with someone without coming off as, at least, a massive eccentric. Who was maybe raised in a secluded cave in the wilderness for the first thirty years of his life, with a completely random assortment of books as his only form of entertainment. 

“Have any of them done-- has anyone been mean to you? Done or said something that made you feel bad?” 

Jon frowns in consideration. 

“Someone asked me if I was a man or a woman,” he says thoughtfully, which makes Martin choke for a moment. He-- he supposes whoever asked that question was just clumsily trying to be nice. Jon is wearing a dress, and his hair is very long. “But that was more strange than anything. Can’t you just look at someone and tell?” 

Martin furtively looks around to make sure they aren’t being overheard. “Um-- no, humans can’t really do that. We just have to ask or guess.” 

“Oh, that sounds very inefficient. There must be so many mistaken assumptions.” 

“There-- yeah, there are.” There are a bunch of people inside of his house spiritedly debating whether or not they should just rip out his entire bedroom ceiling and lay it down from scratch, he only got a few hours of sleep last night and is pretty goddamn tired, he needs to get to work pronto, and he’s a little bit scared of what he’s going to come back home to at the end of the work day. 

He has so many very good reasons not to ask Jon what a bride slave is, what it means. To put it off for later. Later, when they’re alone and not so tired that he can feel it throbbing in his skull. Later. 

Excuses, some part of him whispers. They’re excuses. 

“Put this in the fridge,” he says, handing Jon the casserole that he’s been carrying the whole time. “I’ll see you later, good luck.” 

And he quickly leaves for work. Because he’s late, of course. No other reason at all. 

It takes a week for everything to be repaired. A week of a pack of strangers showing up in the morning with food and lumber and equipment and passengers all crammed into two to four cars, some people sometimes holding onto the sides of the car to make more room inside for people and coolers full of beers, and a couple of times an entire grill. They don’t exactly work like ants-- about half of the people present seem to be actually doing something at any given time. A lot of time is spent talking, or cooking. They go through a lot of toilet paper. 

Martin always leaves for work in the morning, and Jon is left behind to keep an eye on their guests for most of the day. He takes his duties very seriously. 

“So, how long have you and Martin been married?” one of the villagers asks him in a determinedly cheerful way. 

“I haven’t been keeping count,” he says. 

“Where did you meet?” Another of the villagers chimes in eagerly. “Was it back in London? Martin used to live there, he said. Ghastly place. So expensive. No wonder at all that he moved.” 

“We met in a garden,” he says. “Not in London.” 

“How romantic. How long did it take you two before you got together?” 

“It happened almost immediately.” 

“Oh!” 

He has a lot of strange little conversations like that. Everyone seems very curious about him and his relationship with Martin, as if it’s all deeply fascinating. He confusedly humors them as much as he can, cutting out all of the parts that are explicitly magical. He watches as they smooth out the rough and broken edges from the Fledgling Eater’s attack, fixing and replacing things so that it all looks nice and neat and tidy again, like it never happened. He likes that. He likes it a lot. No one tries to steal anything that he sees, and he keeps a very careful eye out for it. 

By the end of it, he’s almost certain that he knows all of-- half of-- some of their names. They all warmly shake his hands on the last day, and some of them dive in for tight squeezing hugs. It’s a little bit disorienting and overwhelming, but not bad, necessarily. 

“We’re having a cookout over at Kelly’s next month,” a woman that he thinks is named Sandra says warmly. “You and your husband should come and attend! He doesn’t need to keep you hidden away up here, you know. It’s very sweet and protective of him, but it’s not necessary. We can be very welcoming to odd ducks!” 

Jon looks at her uncertainly. 

“I’ll… inform him of the cookout,” he says doubtfully. 

“You’d better!” 

They all leave one after another, piling into their cars and leaving only tire tracks in the gravel behind as they drive away, back to the village off in the distance. Not that distant, of course. It’s only one frantic night time run away, as he’s learned. 

He’s glad they’re not too far away. 

When Martin comes back home, Jon importantly shows him all of the repaired pieces of their home. Martin takes it all in with an expression of almost confused relief. 

“I can’t believe they’re not asking for anything in return,” he says, somewhat in disbelief. 

“One of them said something about us pitching in if one of their homes ever burned down or something of the like,” Jon says. “So their price may be reciprocation in the future.” 

“Well-- okay, yeah, I-- we can do that. I don’t really know my way around a toolbox, but we could find a way to help out, probably… So, they’re all done now? They’re not coming back?” 

“They invited us to a cookout next month,” he remembers. 

“Oh. That-- that’s nice of them.” Martin looks at Jon with an expression Jon can’t disentangle the meaning behind. He looks… worried? Something like it. 

“Is something the matter?” he asks. He looks back at the repaired door, the ceiling. “Did they do a bad job?” 

“No, no. They did a great job, it all looks great. Just--” 

“... Yes?” 

“Nothing. Just tired. What do you want for dinner?” 

Martin is good at very carefully not thinking certain thoughts. At not noticing things he really doesn’t want to notice. At avoiding connecting pieces that he doesn’t want to connect. It’s a skill he developed, taking care of his mum. Not dwelling on some of the things she said, coming up with nice, soft, pitiable excuses for some of the things she would do, quickly averting his eyes from her face if it was twisting up with a particular emotion. Not letting himself speculate about how she might feel about him. Things were hard enough as they were. He didn’t need to go and upset himself by overthinking things that didn’t need to be thought about at all. He just had to focus on doing what he needed to do. 

He feels himself fall back into these little habits again almost without thinking, his mind drifting light and vague over certain topics, certain moments. 

“Jon,” he says, “could you pass me the remote?” 

Jon does. Why wouldn’t he? It's a small, simple thing to do. No reason to refuse. 

“Jon,” he says. “Don’t touch that, please. It’s sharp.” 

Jon stops touching it. But it was a reasonable warning. He wouldn’t want to cut himself, after all. 

“Jon,” he says. “Turn off the lights? I want to sleep.” 

Jon closes his book, turns off the light, and settles down into bed. He gives a bit of a sigh as he does it, like he wanted to keep reading, but he still does it without hesitation. It’s not strange. He’s just being considerate, polite. 

“Jon,” he says. And for a moment, he doesn’t know what he’s about to say. Give me your book. Get out. Hit yourself. 

He doesn’t want Jon to do any of those things. He just-- he wants for Jon to look up at him with confused consternation and say no, I won’t. He wants Jon to refuse something. Anything. He wants-- 

“Yes?” Jon says, tilting his head at him. Martin still hasn’t said anything. 

Martin is good at not thinking about the things he doesn’t want to think about. To avoid the thoughts that feel dangerous. He learned it from his mum. He’d used to do it all the time. 

He realizes that he doesn’t want to go back to living like that. 

“We-- we need to talk, Jon,” is what he finally says. He winces almost immediately afterwards, because god that’s such an ominous string of words to come out of his mouth. If Jon or anyone ever said that to him, it’d give him heart palpitations. 

“Alright,” Jon says, the cultural connotations of that phrase apparently sailing straight over his head. He closes his book, sets it aside, and shifts how he’s sitting on the couch so he’s turned towards Martin. He looks directly at Martin, in his usual slightly intense way. 

He has absolutely no idea of what to say. He feels drawn taut and frayed from repressed worries that have been simmering underneath his skin for weeks now, and yet he hasn’t allowed himself to think about this formless anxiety in any great enough depth to have words prepared. What exactly is he even so scared of? 

“You…” he says, struggling for the right thing to say. “You know that you don’t have to do everything I tell you to, right?” 

Jon’s eyes flare open wide, and he doesn’t otherwise move a muscle. 

“Right, Jon?” he asks, concern bleeding into his voice. “It-- it’s fine if you disagree or want to do something different or think you know better or-- I won’t mind. That’s-- everyone does that sometimes. Just because we’re married doesn’t mean that…” 

He slowly falters to a stop as he notices that Jon is frozen where he sits; that he isn’t even breathing. 

“Jon,” he says, “Are you okay? Breathe.” 

Jon breathes, immediately. It makes cold, sharp anxiety prick at something inside of Martin’s chest, instead of reassuring him. 

“I,” Jon says. “I know that, of course, of course I do--” 

“... Then why don’t you ever do it?” he can’t help but ask. A part of him just wants to accept Jon’s assurances, to be relieved and not worry about it any longer. 

But Jon is talking rapidly, his shoulders drawn in tense and small, his gaze skittering uncomfortably away from meeting Martin’s. He knows what Jon looks and sounds like when he lies by now. His terrible poker face. The way he rushes his words like he’s trying to quickly flash a fake badge at someone, hoping that they won’t pay too much attention to what he’s saying if he just gets it out of the way quickly enough before briskly moving on. 

“Well,” Jon stammers awkwardly, his eyes flicking from side to side like he’s desperately searching for some reasonable excuse lying around. “Well-- why would I? You only ask for reasonable things.” 

There’s a nauseous feeling of dread building sickly in his gut. Grimly, he says, “Why did you run away that night? With the Fledgling Eater.” 

“What?” Jon asks, looking at him wide, panicked eyes. 

“You knew how to deal with it,” he says. “You didn’t have to run. It would’ve been easier if you’d stayed, instead of running and calling from Rosie’s.” 

“I-- I wasn’t thinking,” he says. “I’d forgotten-- I only remembered later--” 

“Jon,” he cuts him off. “Can you avoid doing as I tell you to?” 

Jon hesitates. He hesitates for long enough that it’s an answer on its own, and Martin gets up off the couch and takes several steps away, hand pressed to his mouth. 

“I was going to tell you,” Jon says. “I was-- I was thinking about it, but then-- I got distracted and, and--” 

Martin’s trying to recall every single thing he’s ever told Jon to do. He can’t remember. 

“Do you,” he says, “have any idea of how badly that could have gone? I could have-- I could’ve told you to-- to jump off a cliff!” 

“It’s-- you wouldn’t have done that.” 

“You don’t know that! I would’ve just thought I was saying words, and I’d have no idea-- you should have told me.” 

Jon flinches. “I’m sorry.” 

“Why does it work like this? Why do you have to listen to me? The Fledgling Eater-- he called you a bride slave. What is that?” And before he can stop himself, he adds, “Tell me.” 

And Jon-- Jon tells him without hesitation. 

The explanation comes out of Jon like Martin’s reeling in a string, winding it up into a ball in his hands. It comes out sounding all wrong. It’s the truth but-- it’s not the way he was going to tell it. Not the way he planned it-- the way he would have planned it. He’d… the Fledgling Eater had knocked it right out of his head, and then-- and then-- 

It had been so easy to just let things continue as they were. So nice. Martin gave him orders sometimes, but they were never terrible things. He could tolerate it. He could just keep putting it off until… until Martin discovered it on his own, apparently. He hadn’t realized that that was a possibility. That doesn’t seem fair, somehow. He hadn’t known that there was a time limit. He hadn’t known. 

As he talks, Martin’s lips thin, his expression growing more upset with each word. Jon wants to stop talking, to backtrack, to assure him that it really isn’t that bad-- but his mouth keeps going on ahead of him, laying things out in their entirety. 

When he finally winds down to a close he feels breathless and a little dizzy, and Martin looks grim, his cheeks blotchy red with upset.  

“We have to find a way to break off the marriage,” he says, and Jon feels like he was just hit in the gut. “This-- we can’t do this. No.” 

“I-- I already told you that there isn’t--” 

Martin swipes a hand through the air in furious negation. “We’ll find a way! Come on, Jon, this isn’t acceptable. Are there any ways you’ve heard off that could get us out of this?” 

Jon should’ve known that Martin would be furious. He had been, when he’d found out about the bane. He’d been angry that Jon hadn’t told him. He’s kept yet another terrible secret from him, and now that he’s found it out he doesn’t even want to stay married to Jon any longer. He wants him gone. 

He’s never heard of a bride slave who was just… tossed away before. Their lives are often terrible, but uses are always found for them. But not for him. Not even that, for him. 

It’s-- difficult to breathe. He restrains himself from saying something pathetic, like please don’t be mad at me or I want to stay. 

“There’s,” he says, and clears his throat before continuing. He tries to think. “The-- the marriage of obligation took place because you did such a great favor for me that I couldn’t possibly repay you for it with anything but the rest of my life. Perhaps if another way could be found to repay the debt… I’m your-- your bride now, which means that even if I were to find some tremendous treasure, I couldn’t really give it to you. Everything that is mine is already yours. Perhaps if I were to… save your life?” 

“Would that do it?” Martin asks intently. 

“I-- I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of stories that… usually, when a bride slaves sees their husband master in life ending danger they just-- let it happen. If their husband master dies, they’re freed. I haven’t heard about a story where the bride slave saves them without being forced into it.” 

If possible, Martin looks even grimmer. Then a light flashes in his eyes, and he frowns with confusion, consideration. 

“Didn’t you already save my life?” he asks. “With the Fledgling Eater. If you hadn’t told me what to do, it would have eaten me.” 

“That-- no. I was the one who made you a fledgling in the first place. It would be like if you’d put me in the spiderweb yourself before you saved me from it. It wouldn’t have counted-- and this doesn’t either. I could have told you about how Fledgling Eaters can be turned away before you were in life or death danger. There are… precautions put in place, to make it so that people can’t just put someone in danger and then swoop in to save them and claim them as a bride slave.” 

Not that those precautions are entirely foolproof. If anything, they’ve encouraged certain faes to see gaining bride slaves as an elaborate, cunning sport. Nothing is more impressive to them than being roundabout and manipulative enough that it fools even magic itself. A fae would probably know how to plot and scheme their way out of a marriage of obligation like this. A fae would also never allow themselves to be placed in a situation like this in the first place. 

“Damn it,” Martin spits, running a hand through his hair in agitation. Disappointed, because he hadn’t found a loophole to cast Jon off. He feels himself wilt. 

“It’s really not that bad,” he hears himself say, almost feebly. 

Martin looks at him incredulously. 

“Do you think that this is okay?” he demands. “That you’re married off to some stranger with absolutely no say in it, that you have to listen to every little thing I tell you to do and you’re completely at my mercy, just because I happened to save a moth from a spiderweb?” 

“It-- it’s not great. No one wants to be a bride slave… but it isn’t wrong to be a husband master either. You earned me. Whether it’s by cunning or mercy or luck, every husband master fairly earns their bride slave. Magic says so.” 

Martin makes a noise of disgust. “I don’t care what magic says! It’s some-- some thing that just randomly makes massive decisions for people, apparently, but that doesn’t mean that it’s objectively right about everything! Do you just shrug your shoulders and go along with everything it decides? Don’t you ever think that it’s awful, or stupid, or wrong? Don’t you make decisions of your own?” 

He opens his mouth to reply-- magic is an inherent force of the universe, like light or time or gravity, and claiming that it’s wrong about something is like saying that the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, or that the sun chose the wrong time to rise. It’s nonsensical. But then he remembers Rosie. He remembers deciding that even if magic wouldn’t make him owe her a favor, he owed her one anyway. That he’d repay her for what she’d done for him. 

“Ignore what magic says,” Martin goes on as Jon hesitates. “Be-- if you’re being honest with yourself, are you okay with this? Do you seriously want to stay married to me?” 

He asks the question like the answer is a foregone conclusion. Like he already knows it. 

Jon is very old for a fairy-- twenty seasons. Twenty seasons of being cautious and lucky and always hiding. Most fairies don’t even live past their first spring. In all of that time, he’s never had an ally in this way before. Someone who shares his food and shelter with him, who looks after and protects him. Someone on his side. He’s never not been lonely before. He was so used to the feeling that he didn’t even recognize it for what it was until it slowly faded away. Until now, with Martin talking about finding a way to break their marriage, to get rid of Jon, and all he can feel is panic at going back to the way things used to be. 

He doesn’t like being controlled, or helpless, or powerless. He doesn’t. But… 

“I don’t want the marriage to be gone,” he says. “I just want the bad parts to go away.” 

It’s such an immature thing to wish for. He’s never wanted something more intensely in his life. 

Up until now, Martin’s been clearly agitated, upset. He stops short at Jon’s answer, his expression going clear and open with surprise, almost bafflement. 

“The bad parts,” he repeats blankly, close to a question. 

“If it only weren’t a marriage of obligation,” he says, and he can feel his face go hot at that. What is he saying? If only it were a marriage of equals? What creature in its right mind would ever tie themselves like that to a fairy? They’d be lowering themselves, hurting their status, while getting nothing in return. A pointless trade. “If only I didn’t have to obey you, then--” 

Then everything would be perfect. 

“... What are the good parts?” Martin asks. He’s looking at Jon like he’s-- like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing, and has to listen very closely to make sure that he gets it right. It feels important, somehow, to have a good answer. An answer that Martin will understand. 

“I like your house,” is the first, stupid thing to fall out of his mouth. Martin blinks, and Jon hurries to continue. “And-- and our bed! And the books-- you bought more, thank you. I like-- I like how you go out of your way to do things like that. Buy me books, because you know I like them. I like the villagers-- they’re very strange, but they’re nice enough. And I really do like the house. It’s-- it feels safe. I’ve never had a place that feels safe before… I just realized that that’s a foolish thing to say, considering that you were nearly eaten alive here, but I’m certain that something like it won’t happen again. Since you threw out the mat. And--” 

“Jon,” Martin says. 

“And I like you,” he blurts out, because it’s important that he gives a good answer. “I like being around you. I like talking to you. I like being married to you. Despite everything, my life has become-- better, since all of this happened. That’s never really the case, when someone becomes a bride slave, so that-- that’s very remarkable, actually. And--” 

Martin holds up a hand and Jon has to bite his tongue to stop himself from continuing, like this is a debate that he has to win, like he has to cram in as many sound arguments as he can before it’s Martin’s turn to speak and he starts dismissing them one by one. 

“You have to-- if you don’t stop right now I think I’m going to cry,” he says, and Jon notices for the first time that his eyes are shiny, his face flushed. His voice wavers faintly as he speaks, like a tightrope walker in the process of losing their balance. “And that would be really embarrassing.” 

Jon stops talking. Martin sniffles once, takes a deep breath, and clears his throat. 

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” he says. “That’s… okay. I guess we’re not going to break off the marriage, then. Not that we even know how to do it.” 

Relief dawns like the sunrise. He can hardly believe it. Martin had seemed so dead set on it, and now-- he hadn’t thought it would be so easy. “Really?” 

“Really,” he says. “If you don’t hate-- if you’re fine with being married to me, even with all of the messed up magic stuff, then… God, I feel like I need to go lie down and just think about all of this. It-- it’s been a lot.” 

If you’re fine with being married to me, he says. Like his entire preoccupation with breaking their marriage was based on an assumption that Jon wanted it broken, when he’d never said anything of the sort. Like he didn’t want to never see Jon again, like he wasn’t furious at him for keeping even more secrets, for lying. 

“Martin,” he says, before he can leave. He suddenly very much needs to know this. “Are you fine with it? The marriage.” 

Martin stops and blinks at him. He looks surprised to even be asked the question. 

“Well,” he says, “it’s… kind of the most screwed up marriage on earth? Sorry. But so long as it’s with-- I mean, if you don’t want to get out of it, then-- then--” He breaks off to clear his throat awkwardly, red faced. “I like being around you too, so. It’s not bad. If you don’t hate it.” 

I like being around you too. It is, somehow, the most thrilling string of words he’s ever heard in his life. He wants to ask Martin to say it again, for some absurd reason. He wants to put it into a music box so he can open it up and listen to it again and again whenever he wants to. 

“I don’t hate it,” he says honestly. It’s not perfect, but he doesn’t hate being married to Martin at all. He doesn’t hate Martin. 

“Okay,” Martin says, and then turns around and walks out of the room. Jon stares at the wall for a long minute, turning the conversation over and over in his head. What does it mean? What did Martin mean-- 

Martin walks back into the room. Jon, who hadn’t really expected to see him for the next few hours, jumps. 

“Just one more thing,” he says. “You aren’t keeping any other super important secrets, are you?” 

“No?” he says, bewildered. 

“Are you sure?” he asks. “I promise I won’t get mad, I’d just really like to get them all out in the open now, if there are any left. Is-- I don’t know, am I going to die if you die? Do you have a nemesis who’s going to come to hunt you down someday? Do you transform into something dangerous during full moons?” 

“Martin,” he says, “those examples are absurd.” 

“Oh, sure!” Martin says, smiling a touch manically. “Any of that actually happening would be silly, of course. Everything else up until now has made perfect sense. But is there going to be anything more? Be-- please-- ugh.” 

Be honest, he’d been about to say. Please what? Please tell me? But he’d cut himself off, his face twisting up with frustration. Dodging giving him an order, a request. 

A part of Jon has been convinced, against all logic and evidence, that as soon as Martin learned about Jon being a bride slave and what that means that he’d just… suddenly transform into someone completely different. Someone cruel and selfish. A typical husband master, enjoying his rightful spoils for what they’re worth. 

Jon feels a part of him melt, as that doesn’t happen. Martin is still Martin. 

“I don’t have any more secrets,” he tells him honestly. The life of a fairy is often fleeting and insignificant, the majority of their existence taken up by hiding from predators and danger, and enjoying what little time they’ll have with various… activities. There aren’t many opportunities for intrigue, for collecting secrets. Jon is officially all out. He’d only really had the one. “If there are any more, er, incidents then it will be because it didn’t occur to me to tell you something, or I didn’t know it myself.” 

“Right,” Martin says. “Okay, yes, that’s-- good, I guess. I’m gonna go and… lie down. Bye.” 

“Bye,” he says, and Martin leaves, walking up the stairs to their bedroom. He waits for a few minutes, but this time it seems that it’s for good. 

It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to not order Jon around. He hadn’t noticed how many casual commands are in his daily vocabulary before he began trying to cut them out. Pass me those, give me that, do this for me. And to make it even harder, even requests count, apparently. Because this wasn’t hard enough already, clearly. He finds himself cutting off mid sentence more times than he can count, just barely stopping himself from giving Jon an order. 

And sometimes, he doesn’t catch it in time at all. 

“Martin,” Jon says. 

“Shhh,” he mumbles, eyes closed. “Five more minutes.” 

There’s a beat of silence. Martin dozes peacefully, basking in his day off. 

And then Jon hits him. Flat palmed, through his thick duvet. It doesn’t hurt at all, but it startles and baffles him enough that he squawks and sits up, blinking rapidly. 

“What was that for?” he demands. 

Jon, sitting at the edge of the bed, points at his mouth indignantly. He doesn’t say a word. It takes Martin an embarrassingly long moment to realize what’s happened. 

“Oh, god,” he says, horrified. He’s accidentally given Jon an order five times (six, now) since he found out that that’s something he can even do, but this is hands down the worst one so far. “I am so sorry. You-- you can talk if you want to. Crap. Does that fix it?” 

Tentatively, Jon opens his mouth and says, “Yes?” 

Martin’s shoulders slump with relief, and Jon makes a pleased noise. He’d only said ‘five minutes’, so it wouldn’t have been too terrible if he hadn’t been able to undo it, but-- it wouldn’t have been fun. He doesn’t like that he even has the option to mute Jon whenever he wants to, like he’s a television or a radio. He should at least get to talk. 

“I made breakfast,” Jon says. “I thought you should know, before it gets cold.” 

“You-- really?” 

So far, Martin’s been the one making breakfast, and doing the chores in general. Jon’s been helping here and there, learning along the way… but Martin’s always been there to help and supervise. The idea of Jon alone in the kitchen, where the stove and the knives are, fumbling his way through making breakfast with zero instructions or assistance is-- 

“Really!” Jon says with poorly disguised pride. “You always do it, so I wanted to try it myself.” 

“Great!” Martin says brightly, making himself smile. It’s-- it’s sweet of Jon to do that. He can’t remember the last time someone made breakfast for him. He must have been a kid. He’s not going to be ungrateful. And it’s probably a good thing that Jon’s starting to get comfortable enough with the house that he’s taking the initiative like this. “Let’s… see what it is.” 

It turns out to be spaghetti with meatballs. 

“Oh,” he says. “Oh, wow.” 

He supposes that this… makes sense, in a way. Martin had made this with Jon last week, so it’s something that he knows how to make, and they already had all of the ingredients. It’s one of the simpler meals to cook. 

“Did I do it right?” Jon asks eagerly. 

“You--” he says, and then he briefly imagines trying to explain to Jon that there are certain foods that are meant for dinner and some that are meant for breakfast, and that also those divides are extremely arbitrary and are mostly based on a ‘feeling.’ 

“It looks great,” is what he ends up on. He just doesn’t have the heart or the strength to take any other route. 

Jon beams. Martin is helpless to do anything but sit down and have a heaping plate of spaghetti and meatballs at eight in the morning for breakfast. 

It is, at least, actually pretty good spaghetti and meatballs. Jon had been paying attention. 

Halfway through their incredibly strange meal, Jon speaks up. 

“I’m going down to the village today,” he says. He says it in a firm, vaguely rehearsed sort of way. 

“What?” he asks, in the middle of twirling some spaghetti around his fork. “What for? Do you need something?” 

“I’m going to go and talk to Rosie,” he says. “I owe her a debt, and I’m going to see if she has any tasks I can do for her.” 

“Oh,” he says. “That’s… nice?” 

Jon nods. “I don’t know how long I’ll be, but I’ll try to be home before dark.” 

“--Wait,” he says. “You’re going without me?” 

“Well,” Jon says, and the rehearsed quality is back in his voice. Like this is a part of the conversation that he’d practiced for beforehand. “My business with Rosie is my business alone. While the favor she did me did allow me to prevent you from being eaten alive, that doesn’t mean that you owe her a favor as well. No one--not you, not Rosie, nor magic--has made that claim. You don’t need to come with me if you don’t want to.” 

Martin… does not like this idea at all. He’d left Jon alone with a bunch of the villagers for several hours a day while the house was being repaired last week, out of necessity more than anything else, but it had gone surprisingly well enough. Jon never seemed stressed or upset when Martin would come home at the end of the day, and no concerned villagers have come to talk to him about Jon possibly not being a human being. But it seems different somehow, to leave Jon behind in his nice, familiar house with a dozen overly helpful volunteers, and to just… let him wander out into the world, where he could run into anyone, where anything could happen to him. 

Jon, he realizes, isn’t eating any longer. He’s moving the food with his utensils--he’s gotten much better at using those--but he’s not eating any of it. He’s carefully looking at his own plate, not Martin. He’s trying very badly to look casual as he waits for Martin’s reply. 

Let him wander out into the world. Let him. Because that’s what’s happening here; Jon is waiting to see whether or not Martin will let him do this. He could very, very easily stop him. Tell him no, he can’t go. Tell him that he has to bring Martin along with him. He wouldn’t even have to word the demand harshly, forbiddingly. He could just make a very polite, reasonable request, and then that’s what would happen. If Martin insists, if he argues-- then Jon will have no choice but to instantly cave. 

This is the part that he hates most about… about the bride slave thing. That he is genuinely tempted by it. How many times had he wished that his mum would just listen to him, that he was just trying to take care of her? If he’d had the ability to make her take her medication when she was supposed to even when she was feeling stubborn, make her eat when she was supposed to even when she didn’t have an appetite, to not try and do things that she knew were risky and dangerous on her own when he wasn’t around to help if something went wrong just because she was feeling prideful-- 

Would he have used it on her? If he’d had the ability, and he was tired and exhausted and she was refusing to cooperate? 

He doesn’t know. He… doesn’t really want to consider it. He does know that he would’ve been very, very strongly tempted, though. And he hates just that. He hates that a part of him even wants to tell Jon that he has to bring Martin with him if he wants to go down to the village. That it’s something he could do, if he decided to do it. That the only thing lying in his way is him trying not to be a complete bastard. That’s terrifying. It’s absolutely terrifying because he is a bastard sometimes. He gets tired, and sad, and lonely, and frustrated, and he has bad days, and he knows how to rationalize doing bad things for good reasons-- like nicking wares from some of his old jobs whenever he got the opportunity, to help make what little money he had on his account last longer, count for more. 

He’s ordered Jon to do something six times after he found out that it was something he could even do, in the last four days. Only five of them were accidental. The first one-- when he’d told Jon to tell him what a bride slave was-- he already knew what he was doing, at that moment. That Jon would have no choice but to do as he said. It had been in the heat of the moment, he hadn’t thought it through, he’d been tired in more than one way, he-- 

He’d still done it. 

He doesn’t want to have this option available to him. But it is. 

“Okay,” he says. There’s nothing for it but to try not to be a bastard. 

Jon looks up from his plate and-- beams. He looks delighted. Going down to the village just to try and repay a debt to Rosie can hardly be that fun, that exciting. Martin knows what he’s really pleased about. 

“Good,” Jon says happily, and goes back to eating his ridiculous breakfast. 

As they’re cleaning up together after the meal, Martin speaks up again. 

“It’s a long way down to the village, you know,” he says. 

“I know,” Jon says. “I’ve gone there before.” 

When he’d been running because Martin had made him run, he means. When he’d been racing to save Martin’s life. 

“And you cut up your feet pretty badly,” he reminds him. “You’ve only just gotten the bandages off. If you’re not going to wear shoes…” 

“I won’t be,” Jon says with prim distaste, like a nobleman being presented with common cuisine. Martin’s been able to find him enough acceptable clothes to succeed in his quest to get Jon to spend the majority of his days fully clothed, but he still has a passionate hatred for shoes of any kind. Whenever he reluctantly tries a pair, he ends up reminding Martin of a cat being forced to wear little booties. Highly offended by the experience. 

“Right,” he says, because he’s not going to force Jon to use shoes, even though it would be really nice if he did. “Well, in that case, if you want to avoid hurting your feet again so soon, I was wondering if… would it be okay for me to drive you down to the village? And then you could call from Rosie’s phone when you want me to come drive you back home?” 

He phrases the question very, very carefully. It’s not a request, it’s not an order. It’s an offer, for Jon’s benefit. He’s welcome to accept or reject it as he sees fit. 

It’s… really tiring, always having to be so careful of the way he talks. But it’s what he has to do. 

Jon pauses for a moment in consideration-- no, Martin realizes. He’s waiting to see if he has to say yes or not. 

“That,” Jon says slowly, and then smiles as he presumably confirms that he can pick his own answer, “would be nice. Yes. Thank you, Martin.” 

He looks… so nice, when he smiles. He always does but-- but especially when he smiles. 

You’re worth not being a bastard for, he thinks. 

“No problem,” he says.

Chapter Text

Martin is determined to not spoil Jon's day out. He’s not going to come running down to interrupt it just because he’s a fussy worrywart. He’s going to be respectful, reasonable, and level headed, and he’s going to calmly wait until Jon calls him to come and fetch him, and not bother him even a moment before that. He’s making a point. He’s showing Jon that he can do what he wants without interference, even if it’s something that Martin isn’t one hundred percent comfortable with. 

He cracks and loses his resolve after five hours have passed without a word. In his defense, he doesn’t rush down to the village in a panic. He calls Rosie’s phone number, which he still has in his call history from that night, which he thinks is a perfectly measured response to five hours of complete radio silence. 

He waits in tense silence as the phone rings, rings, rings-- 

“Hello?” 

“Jon!” Martin says. He’s somehow surprised to hear his voice. To him being the one to pick up Rosie’s phone. “Is everything okay?” 

“Yes? Is something wrong, Martin?” Jon’s voice lowers with urgency. “Are you in danger?” 

“I-- no, Jon. I’m sorry for calling, I just-- I got worried, I guess. Sorry. You’ve just been gone for so… longer than I was expecting. Is everything going well? I’m guessing Rosie found something for you to do?” 

“She did,” Jon says, sounding very pleased with this. “I know I’ve been gone for a while, but I’ll be ready to leave in three hours.” 

Three hours? What task could Rosie have possibly cooked up for him, that it would take eight hours to accomplish? He assumed that she’d just push her daily chores on Jon to satisfy him. Apparently she found something a bit more intensive than that. What, is he repainting her house for her or something? 

“She’s not… making you do something, er, unpleasant, is she?” he asks. He has a vague sense in his head that it’s his duty to make sure that Jon isn’t taken advantage of. 

“No, it’s very interesting,” Jon says. “I think I finally understand how the cash register works now.” 

Martin blinks. “What?” 

“She’s shown me where everything is supposed to go, and what buttons to push.” Jon’s voice grows slightly more distant, as if he’s holding the receiver away from his mouth. “That will be… three pounds. I think.” 

“Jon,” he says, “are you… dealing with a customer right now? Hang on, did Rosie give you a job?” 

“Well, of course I’m dealing with a customer, I’m in the store. I can talk to you at the same time, though.” 

“You-- how about I hang up and you call me back once they’re gone?” 

“Martin, that’s not going to happen. There’s always customers who need my help.” 

“Are there?” he asks skeptically. Rosie’s store may be the only general store in town, but it still isn’t ever exactly bustling. 

“Of course,” Jon says. “It’s interesting what sorts of things people come here to buy. The woman I’m ringing up came here to buy a single roll of toilet paper, and the man before her only bought a stick of gum.” 

“Ah,” he says. “And I’m guessing they’re all pretty talkative? Very curious and friendly?” 

“Yes, they are.” 

“Got it.” Rosie’s store, Martin surmises, has never been doing better. Probably half the village has suddenly ‘remembered’ that there are a few odds and ends that they need to go and pick up at the shop. “So… you’re working at Rosie’s store to repay your debt? For free?” 

“Yes, that’s right.” 

“And how long are you going to have to work there to restore your debt?” 

“I tried to convince her that ten days and ten nights would be fair,” he says, “but she insisted on just a week, and only for eight hours per day.” 

“I see.” 

“She said that if I did a good job and I liked it, maybe I could keep working here afterwards,” he goes on. “Part time, whatever that means.” 

“That’s… exciting,” he says. “So-- so long as you’re happy?” 

“I am,” Jon assures him. 

Martin feels himself soften a bit at that. Yes, so long as Jon’s happy… that’s all that matters. 

“Well then, I won’t bother you anymore. Call me when you-- when your shift is done, and I’ll drive down and pick you up. Have a… good day at work.” 

“I will,” Jon says, and hangs up. 

Setting the phone down, Martin stares at the wall for a while, processing this new state of affairs. 

“Huh,” he says to himself. How about that? 

Living in a home in which both of the occupants are terrified of spiders can be… challenging, at times. 

“It’s just a spider,” Martin says. His eyes are very wide as he says this, and he’s clutching at a broom like he expects to have to fight for his life with it. 

“Just a normal house spider,” Jon agrees. He’s fidgeting where he’s standing, fighting the urge to outright hide behind Martin. 

The spider crouched in the corner of the room twitches forwards an inch. Both Jon and Martin recoil backwards, yelping and squeaking respectively. Martin has his broom up in a defensive position, and Jon is now fully hiding behind him. After a moment, Martin embarrassedly lowers his broom, and Jon bashfully steps back out from behind Martin, smoothing down his skirt self consciously. 

“We’re both so much bigger than it,” Jon says, making his voice firm. “It can’t hurt us.” 

“One hundred times bigger, at least!” Martin agrees. 

“We can very easily kill it.” 

“What? No! We’re not going to kill it, just put it outside!” 

Jon gives him an incredulous look. “Do you think that it would show us mercy, if our positions were reversed?” 

“Jon, that’s-- no. You’re being ridiculous.” 

“Do you want to try and catch it?” 

Martin visibly blanches at the suggestion. 

“Oh, god,” he says. “What’s wrong with me? I used to be able to pick them up with my hands and take them out.” 

Jon looks at him with horror. “You touched them? Why?” 

“Some of them can’t even bite humans!” Martin cries. “And they’re not venomous! It’s fine. It’s not dangerous! This isn’t a big deal!” 

The spider suddenly skitters several inches forward. Jon and Martin shriek, and Martin backs up so abruptly that he bumps into Jon and bowls him over. Jon moves without thinking. 

“Jon?” Martin asks, his voice going confused and fearful. “Where did you go?” 

Jon opens his eyes, blinks, and realizes only after a solid moment that he’s-- 

“I’m in your hair,” he says, and he stands up. Martin’s hair is thick and curly enough that he can, apparently, successfully hide himself inside of it if he lies down and curls himself up small. He’d turned himself into his smaller, more familiar form on terrified reflex, and dove for the first hiding place that felt safe to his fairy hindbrain. A foolish instinct under the circumstances, really. He’s much safer from the spider in his larger form. Clearing his throat embarrassedly, he flutters back down to the floor and turns back into himself. Without taking his eyes off the spider, he picks his dress back up from the floor and pulls it on. 

“Maybe,” Martin says, “we should call Rosie? Just… ask her to deal with it?” 

“Would she go along with that?” he asks eagerly. 

“... No. No, almost definitely not. That-- it’s a stupid idea, nevermind.” 

“Perhaps a controlled fire,” Jon suggests. 

“No.”  

“I said controlled.” 

“This is ridiculous. We’re being stupid. It’s harmless! We can take it out of the house, easy.” 

Neither of them make a move towards the spider. 

“We could just… leave it,” Jon says. “Lock the door and never open it again. It’s the spider’s room now.” 

“Jon, that’s the only bathroom in the entire house.” 

“How necessary is it really? Animals can just use the woods.” 

“I’m going to act like you didn’t just say that. Watch the-- I’m going to go and get a cup and paper. I’ll be right back.” 

What proceeds are the most stressful twenty minutes of his life, barring that time he was literally trapped helplessly in a spiderweb waiting to be eaten. (And that first night he shared a bed with his husband master, a stranger, an unpredictable unknown.) There is screaming, swearing, a great deal of fumbling and panic, and by the end of it Jon is stubbornly hidden in Martin’s hair again, small and clutching onto the locks with a white knuckled grip. 

“Get it out, get it out get it out--” 

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” 

“Don’t let it get free again!” 

“I’m not! I won’t-- oh, Christ!” 

“Don’t drop it!” 

“I’m not-- I didn’t! It just suddenly jumped up against the side of the cup and startled--” 

“Don’t tell me, I don’t want to see--” 

The spider is eventually deposited outside, the door frantically slammed behind it. Martin hurriedly locks the door, as if the spider might possibly open it up otherwise. 

“There,” Martin says, his voice high and frayed with forced cheer. “That-- that wasn’t so hard, was it? No big deal.” 

Jon doesn’t grace this with a response. 

“Jon,” Martin says. “It’s out of the house now. You can get out of my hair-- if you want to.” 

He keeps doing that. Quickly cutting himself off and changing his wording, or tacking something onto the end of his sentences to avoid having them be orders. He doesn’t always quite manage it, but-- the show of effort makes the times that Martin actually slips up not feel as… heavy, somehow. Softer, lighter, duller. It’s hard to explain. He just knows that every time he hears Martin catch himself on his own and rephrase his words, it makes some part of him warm up. Makes him want to find an excuse to sit closer to him, to touch him. 

“I’m perfectly comfortable, thank you,” he says neatly. 

There’s a beat. 

“Okaaay,” he says, drawing the word out in a way that clearly telegraphs that he thinks that Jon’s being strange, but that he’s willing to play along with it. And then he goes about his day. They’d discovered the spider when they’d gone to the bathroom to brush their teeth, and Martin goes to do just that, the interference dealt with. Jon decides that he can brush his teeth later, and stays right where he is. 

He stretches himself out a bit on Martin’s hair, not curled up into a small, panicked ball any longer. He flicks his wings. The movement feels good, cathartic. He hasn’t been in his smaller, winged form in over a week, he realizes with a jolt. He’d just… let it slip by him. It’s easier to be in his larger form. Easier to be too big to be caught in webs and eaten, easier to be big enough to pick up books and turn the pages. His small form is… weak. Vulnerable, fragile. It’s better to be large. Safer. 

He still feels safe now, though. Nestled in Martin’s hair on the top of his head as he brushes his teeth, small and delicate enough that he could simply wrap his hand around Jon and squeeze, and he’d be done for. He wouldn’t even have to exert much strength. He wouldn’t even have to try and catch him. He could just tell Jon to stay still. 

He’s not going to do that, though. He doesn’t think that he will, not for a moment, not even a little bit. That just isn’t Martin. 

Martin spits into the sink and rinses out the foamy toothpaste from his mouth, from his toothbrush. 

“You going to brush your teeth?” he asks. 

“Later,” Jon says. 

“You going to go back to your human size?” 

He wrinkles his nose at the phrasing. He’s not a human, he’s never human. He’s a fairy when he’s big too; his wings are just tucked away, and he’s large enough that birds can’t eat him any longer. That’s all. 

“My big size,” he corrects him. “And later.” 

Martin makes a muffled noise of amusement. 

“You’re barely over five feet tall,” he says, a smile in his voice. “That is not big.” 

“The only reason that you say that is because you are unnaturally large, even for a human. Are you certain that there isn’t any giant blood in your ancestry?” 

Martin snickers at this display of waspishness, unoffended. 

“I’m going to go and read in bed for a while,” he says, “You… you can hitch a ride if you like, or do whatever you want.” 

“I will,” he says. He’ll do whatever he wants, because that’s something he can do. Only because it’s been allowed to him, because he’s been given permission, but it’s still something he can do. He will take that option every single time. 

Martin goes to bed. He reads, propped up against pillows piled up by the headboard, the bedside lamp casting soft, warm, yellow light. A tiny mothish part of Jon wants to flutter towards it, but he shrugs it off easily. He may be the weakest magical creature in existence, but he’s not a literal insect, thank you. He can control his instincts. 

Martin reads, and Jon just… basks in being able to feel like this. To be small and breakable, but to feel completely safe anyways. Martin wouldn’t do anything to him; Martin wouldn’t let anything happen to him. He realizes that he’s never felt anything but wary around others in this form before. On his guard, cautious, ready to fly away and hide at the first sign of trouble. 

He used to think that he despised being so small, but he feels perfectly comfortable now, like this. Apparently, he’d gotten confused. He’d mistaken which part of the experience that he hated. 

He drifts off into sleep without even meaning to. It’s a peaceful doze more than anything, consciousness lingering distantly at the edges of his mind as he nestles into Martin’s hair like he’s found the perfect nest to hide in for the night, soft and comfortable and out of sight, safe from predators. He only comes back to himself when Martin gently speaks up, breaching the silence. 

“Jon?” he says. “Are you awake?” 

“Mmph,” he mumbles. 

“I’m done reading now,” he says, softly fond and amused. “So-- I’m going to sleep now. You can stay like you are if you want to, but-- I’d be kind of worried about, um, squashing you.” 

Grudgingly, he has to admit that this is a fair point. He’s woken up more than one morning pinned beneath the grounding weight of Martin’s body. There’s a pleasant quality to it, but it would probably be a bit too much for him when he’s like this. Reluctantly, he changes back to his larger form, tumbling onto the bed. 

“Oof,” Martin says. Jon is now sprawled on top of his chest, over the covers. Martin’s hands have come up to encircle him, as if on reflex. A smile flickers over his face, as if in greeting. And then his eyes flick downwards-- and he flushes and quickly averts his gaze. 

“Would you… like for me to put something on?” Jon asks. Martin seems less wildly uncomfortable with him not wearing clothes nowadays, but it’s also happening less often in general. The old awkwardness seems to resurface with a vengeance though if Jon does it while he’s in his larger form and close to Martin, as if size and proximity have something to do with it. This is why he makes himself wear clothes even to bed, despite it feeling utterly unnecessary and borderline stifling. Most mornings, he wakes up to find that he’s somehow managed to shuck his clothes off during sleep. But if Martin can make concessions for him, being careful with his words, Jon can make concessions for him. Even if they’re strange ones that don’t quite make sense. 

“Um,” he says, still looking off to the side. The flush is slowly spreading across his face, covering more and more skin. It’s a gentle pink color. “You don’t have to-- you can do whatever you want--” 

“I don’t have to,” he says, “but should I? Does it upset you?” 

“Ummmmm,” Martin says. He briefly peeks at Jon, reddens further, and then squeezes his eyes shut. Throwing his head back into his pillow, he groans. “It-- it’s not that I don’t like it. It’s more like I like it too much?”  

Jon tilts his head. “And that’s… a problem?” 

“Well-- yes? Kind of? It’s not like you’re doing it to-- to get a reaction out of me, or anything. You said you don’t like-- that sort of stuff.” 

“Sex,” Jon says. 

Martin sets a hand over his eyes. His mouth twists into a strange shape that looks like it can’t decide if it wants to be an endeared smile or an embarrassed grimace. “Yeah. That. You’re just… getting comfortable. And I’m being all weird about it.” 

He furrows his brow, considering this. After a moment, he reaches out and pokes a finger at Martin’s cheek. Martin startles slightly, pulling his hand away, blinking up at him. 

“I like this,” he says. “When you get all red. It’s… endearing.” 

Martin’s eyes flare open wide. Satisfyingly, the blush travels further down. Jon can see it poking out of the neck of his shirt, spread down to his chest. 

“Oh,” he squeaks. “Uh. Thank you?” 

“You’re not being weird,” he says. “You just flush and trip over your words and avoid looking at me. If you’re not uncomfortable, then I’m fine with that. It’s not like you’re doing anything. You aren’t uncomfortable, are you?” 

“Well,” Martin says. “Not in a bad way?” 

Uncomfortable in a good way? What does that even mean? 

“... So long as you’re not unhappy, then,” he amends uncertainly. “You’re allowed to think things, and I’m fine with you seeing me. There isn’t anything wrong with just wanting, is there?” 

“Yes,” Martin answers immediately. 

Jon blinks. 

“I mean,” Martin hurriedly continues, wincing, “there’s-- I mean, I shouldn’t want something you don’t want, right?” 

“I don’t see why not,” Jon says. “So long as you don’t do anything about it, why would it be wrong? It doesn’t hurt anything.” 

“But--” he says, his face twisting up with doubt, but he can’t seem to come up with an actual argument. Because Jon’s right. 

“If it bothers you that I distract you so much, then there’s a simple solution for that,” he says. “If you get used to seeing me without clothes, it will have less of an effect on you. Yes?” 

“That,” Martin says, “is… a theory.” 

“If I begin regularly sleeping without clothes, you should become inured to it eventually,” he says, warming up to his idea. Martin will become used to something that currently flusters him, and Jon won’t have to sleep while wearing clothes! It’s brilliant. 

Martin makes a strangled noise, like he’d coughed and then choked on his spit halfway through, and is trying to muffle the entire sound. 

“... Or not?” he asks, some slight doubt creeping in. If Martin doesn’t want to… 

“It,” Martin says, his voice slightly strained. “If you-- it’s not a-- I mean… yes. Sure. Okay.” 

“Okay?” 

“Yep. Why not! No big deal! Just-- yeah. Get-- do you want to get under the covers?” 

Jon gets under the covers. Martin turns off the lamp, and they both get settled. The bed is large enough for two, but not sprawling. Trying to lie in it without risking touch makes it feel cramped, uncomfortable. Jon doesn’t try to avoid touch. Martin wears a t-shirt and boxers to bed, so the only bare skin he feels brush up against his own is that of Martin’s arms, his legs. Martin lies still and quiet, his breaths even and steady. The only reason that Jon knows that he’s tense is because he knows that Martin doesn’t like to sleep on his back. He’s too still and quiet. The silence is heavy and tense, instead of soothing and peaceful. 

“Are you afraid,” he whispers into the dark of their bedroom, “of accidentally brushing a hand against my buttocks?” 

The noise Martin makes could almost be described as a sportle, a sprufle, a snork. A deeply undignified spurt of laughter shocked out of him. 

“Does it scare you, to think of mistakenly touching my…” he searches for a suitably silly term, “nether regions?” 

Martin squawks. 

“Jon!” he gasps out. The room is very dark, but Jon can just catch the white flash of his teeth, his eyes, horribly shocked and amused. 

“Is the thought so terrible?” he asks solemnly. “Does the possibility of it haunt you, to the point that it keeps you from your sleep at night?” 

“Oh my god,” Martin hiccups, laughter bubbling around his words. Any nervous tension that had been there before has been thoroughly smashed to pieces. Jon is terribly pleased with himself. “You’re so-- christ.” 

“You’re allowed to touch me when I’m naked, you know,” Jon says while Martin’s still giggling with little aftershocks. “The way you normally do.” 

“Okay, okay,” he says, instead of squeaking or freezing up like a panicked deer. Traces of humor still linger in his voice, coloring his words. “I will.” 

Reaching out, Martin hooks an arm around Jon’s middle and pulls him in closer to him, into his usual position. Sharing a bed with each other has been second nature to them before they even had their first conversation, but the familiarity of it doesn’t feel unfamiliar any longer. They slot together like puzzle pieces, and that feels natural and right and correct, instead of strange and uncanny and vaguely disturbing. Martin had been especially put off by it, at first. 

Not any longer. Jon nuzzles into the space by Martin’s collar bone, and sighs with satisfaction. Martin affectionately squeezes him once, and then relaxes. 

It’s a quick trip to falling asleep from there. 

“Maybe,” Martin muses, “we should get a cat.” 

Jon, who is washing the dishes--he’d insisted, as Martin had made dinner-- startles badly enough to drop the plate he’s holding back down into the soapy water. He turns from the sink, suds dripping from his hands, and gives Martin a horrified look of betrayal. 

“A cat?” he asks, as if he’s maybe misheard. 

“Yes?” he asks, bewildered. “Are you-- do you prefer dogs?” 

“Why would you want a cat in the house?” Jon asks, aghast. 

“Well,” he says. He honestly hadn’t expected to be interrogated this intensely on the subject; it had mostly just been an idle idea, a casual what if. “It’s just-- we’re both really scared of spiders now, and it’s kind of a whole ordeal whenever we spot one that we’ve got to remove from the house, so… I feel bad about it, but maybe we could get a cat? They like eating spiders.” 

“They like eating fairies too,” Jon says with a shudder. 

Martin blinks. “Oh. Oh, Jon, I’m sorry, I didn’t even think of that. Have you ever seen a fairy get eaten by… in front of you?” 

“No,” Jon says. “But there have certainly been attempts.” 

“Ah,” he says. He feels less terrible now, knowing that Jon hasn’t had to watch the grisly horror of a cat eating one of his fellows before his very eyes. He’d been pretty worried about that for a moment there. “You… do know that a cat can’t eat you the way you are now, right? Cats don’t eat humans. Well-- alive humans.” 

“Cats are awful, cruel beasts, and I would not like for any of them to be in this house,” Jon says firmly. 

“We don’t have to get one. It was just a thought,” he reassures him. An idea occurs to him. “... Hey, can I show you a video?” 

Martin’s shown Jon a number of Youtube videos so far. Most of them have been educational ones, explaining certain things way better and more articulately than Martin could manage himself. A lot of cooking videos, on Jon’s request, who has decided that one of his favourite things is coming up with increasingly elaborate breakfast surprises for Martin. He had crème brûlée yesterday. He’d wondered what Jon had wanted to buy that blowtorch for. 

Getting out his phone, Martin searches ‘cute cat video.’ Jon comes over to curiously peer over his shoulder after the ad finishes playing. It’s one of the ones where a cat warily bats at a cucumber that it thinks is a snake, the fur along its back standing on end to puff itself up, back arched, ears pinned back and tail raised, trying to intimidate the inert vegetable lying on the floor. Jon, who does know that things can’t touch him through the screen, flinches back at the first bat of the cat’s paw. 

“Maybe a different one,” Martin hastily decides, and clicks on one of the related videos listed to the side of the playing video, this one with a thumbnail of a close up shot of a cat’s face with its eyes shut, sunlight shining on it. That one’s much more relaxed, with much purring and petting involved. Jon, he notes, watches it intently, as if he’s expecting a jumpscare at any moment. It never comes, of course. 

They lose about ten minutes to several more cat videos like that. Eventually, Martin passes the phone over to Jon who accepts it wordlessly and keeps watching, and he goes to finish washing up the dishes. Jon doesn’t seem to notice. The way his brow is furrowed with concentration, he looks like a serious academic translating an ancient text for study. On the phone, a cat meows. 

Grinning, Martin turns to focus on the dishes and leaves Jon to his research. 

Humans, Jon notes, have a tendency towards thinking that they’re talking much more quietly than they actually are. Either that, or they think he must be half deaf for some reason. 

“Maybe he was just born that way?” a woman with a massive head of red curls says to her companion speculatively. They’re standing at the other side of the store, by all appearances avidly perusing the shelves of wares, but it’s a small store so he can still hear them quite well. 

“Or he’s a foreigner who’s really good at accents,” her companion suggests. Whether he’s a family member, a spouse, or a friend, Jon truly couldn’t guess. He’s tried a few times now, and nine times out of ten, he’s been wrong. A mother had come in with her child the other day, and she was apparently under the impression that her son was her daughter. He hadn’t known how to respond to the situation, and so he’d just made an excuse and left. She’d looked quite baffled by the interaction. “Foreigners, they can be very strange, you know.” 

“Just because he looks different doesn’t mean he’s a foreigner, Jimmy,” his friend chides him. Cheerfully, she goes on. “Or maybe he just got hit on his head early on in life.” 

“Oh, yeah. That happened to the cousin of a guy I know. Bit of a funny fellow for the rest of his life. Eccentric, you know.” 

“He seems very nice, though,” the woman hurries to add. “Very nice lad.” 

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. Naturally.” 

Is Jon nice? Because that would be news to him. He’s never thought of himself as particularly nice. People here keep saying it, though. He wonders why. 

“That gardener chap,” the man goes on, “I never would’ve thought it of him, you know? That he’d be a-- that he’d have a-- not that there’s anything wrong with that! Just didn’t see it coming at all. He seemed so, well, normal.” 

“Jimmy,” the woman chides. 

“Well, I’m just saying. I guess that goes to show that you can never really know, you know? I mean, it’s not like he’s ever acted like--” 

“Can I help you find anything?” Jon calls out. The two of them startle guiltily, their heads whipping towards him. “You’ve been standing there for a while.” 

“Just browsing, dearie!” the woman calls back, smiling widely. 

“Oh, there it is,” the man says, and reaches out and plucks an item off the shelf in front of him. “A-- a… toilet plunger. Just like we wanted.” 

“So much nicer than the old one,” the woman agrees fervently. “Long past time for a change. Don’t want a worn out toilet plunger.” 

“They wear out?” Jon asks. “How quickly?” 

No one actually answers his question. The pair pay for their brand new toilet plunger, smiling all the while, and the man reaches out across the counter and companionably slaps him on the shoulder once, and then immediately makes an expression like he profoundly regrets the gesture. Jon isn’t sure of how he’s supposed to react-- is he meant to slap the man back? Before he can decide one way or another, they’re out the door, the bell tinkling after them. 

“You’ve very good for business,” Rosie remarks. Jon turns to see her standing in the doorway that leads to the backroom, where mostly collapsed cardboard boxes reside. 

Jon has also noticed this by now. Everyone wants an excuse to look at and talk to him, apparently, and the best excuse they can come up with is to go and buy things at the store he works at. It is, honestly, mostly just ridiculous. 

“My novelty will likely subside after some time,” he warns her. He’s strange and conspicuous; he knows it. There was never any chance of him blending seamlessly in with the rest of humanity. He isn’t a changeling. Honestly, he’s terribly pleased with himself that everyone seems to be reading him as an eccentric human, instead of outright inhuman. He doubts that any of the fairies back in the forest would be able to pull that off. They couldn’t get through even one simple mischievous deception without smirking or snickering. 

“And by then you’ll be a finely trained employee in your own right,” Rosie assures him, waving the warning away. She hesitates. “It doesn’t-- bother you, does it? The way people treat you? I know that the people here can be a bit… they don’t really quite know how to just treat a gay person like they would anyone else, even when they’re trying to be nice.” 

Gay. He’d run into the word a couple of times while reading books, but it had never really been explained. Within the context, it usually seemed to be some sort of insult. The dictionary definition that he’d found claimed that it meant ‘happy’, which he somehow doubted was what those books meant. Martin had explained it to him last week, awkward and stilted and red faced. Gay is a thing that Martin is. Gay is something that people are going to think that Jon is, whether he is or isn’t, because of his relationship with Martin. 

He’s still not quite sure that he entirely grasps the concept. Having a word for who likes which gender, in relation to their own gender, seems absurdly unnecessary to him. 

“It doesn’t bother me,” he assures her. To be treated like something strange and unusual, something not quite a part of the group-- he’s been treated like that his entire life. He’s used to it. Besides, he’s fairly certain that he’d be treated like a strange thing even if they didn’t think he was gay, considering that he’s a magical creature doing his best to pretend at humanity and quite often stumbling across unexpected pitfalls along the way. He is strange and unusual. 

Besides, it’s Martin that he lives with. It’s Martin who he goes home to at the end of the day, who he eats meals with, who he shares a bed with. And Martin treats him more like he’s marvellous than like he’s strange. That’s a novelty. 

No, he doesn’t mind being talked about in that way. But he has a creeping feeling that Martin would mind, hence his interruption. 

Rosie has a moment to look relieved, and then the bell above the door rings again. Jon turns to face the new customer-- 

“Martin,” he says, smiling. He saw Martin only this morning, sees him every single day, and yet he’s noticed that to see him in a place he wasn’t expecting to see him always feels like a delightful surprise. Like a wonderful chance meeting. “Is it that late already?” 

“Yep,” he says. “Hullo, Rosie.” 

“Hello, Martin,” Rosie greets him back. She lingers in the doorway, as if she’s maybe hoping to see or hear something interesting, pleasantly smiling. Jon imagines just outright telling her that he’s a fairy, that Martin saved his life and thus the rules of Magic ruled that he had to offer Martin his hand in marriage to repay him. He has a feeling that if he did it matter of factly enough, it wouldn’t even occur to her that he was being serious. She’d just roll her eyes at him for his cheek, probably. 

“Had a nice day at work?” Martin asks him, tolerantly ignoring Rosie’s presence. 

“It was interesting,” Jon says, which is his usual answer. It is interesting to get to interact with so many humans. They do and say such strange things, and it’s fascinating to get to witness first hand. It turns out that some things that he was attributing to being human things were actually just Martin things, so it’s good to have a larger sample size. 

“That’s good,” he says. “Are you ready to go?” 

He looks over at Rosie, who smiles and shoos them away good naturedly. 

“Go on,” she says. “I’ll find some way to fend for myself against all of these rabid customers beating my doors down.” 

They leave the store together, making the walk towards the edge of the town where Martin usually parks his car. 

“You know,” Martin says. “Once it starts getting colder, you’ll be in danger of freezing your toes off if you don’t have any shoes on.” 

“Your opinion is noted,” he says archly. 

“It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact--” 

They bicker like this as they walk, the argument toothless and petty and quite honestly rather enjoyable. He likes arguing with Martin, when it’s meaningless little arguments like these. It’s fun. Activities with Martin generally are, merely due to his presence. 

That’s an odd thought to have, a voice inside his head points out. He blinks, strangely disoriented by the realization, as if he’d expected for there to be one extra step on a flight of stairs. It is an odd thought to have, but it had felt utterly natural and matter of fact in the moment. It had almost passed entirely without any notice, so normal and unremarkable had it felt. 

But why is it odd? Martin does improve things, just by being there. The trip home is better for his company, making meals is easier with his assistance, and falling asleep is warm and comfortable thanks to his presence. The gentle rhythm of his breathing, the reassuring dip in the mattress from his weight, the reassuring knowledge that he’s there. Martin does make everything better, easier, lighter. His days and his nights and his life. Everything. 

Maybe that’s what’s odd, he thinks. Not the fact that he thought it, but that it’s true. 

“Jon?” Martin asks, and Jon blinks his way back to the present. They’ve made their way back to the car by now, and he’s apparently walked a few feet beyond it without really noticing or registering it. He’d gotten too distracted. “Everything alright?” 

Jon looks over at Martin, whose brow is slightly furrowed with gentle concern. As if Jon’s well being truly and deeply matters to him. 

A new crop of fairies come in every spring. They are weak little things, and they often don’t last long. They aren’t important, or precious, or special. But sometimes, Martin looks at Jon like he’s all of these things. It makes him want to convince him that he’s wrong, because it makes him prickle with guilt like he’s told a lie. Because he doesn’t want to watch as Martin slowly realizes it on his own. It would be the most painful in the world, he thinks. 

“Oh,” he says, realization dawning on him. Then he feels a bit like an idiot, because it suddenly seems very clear and obvious, and he should have realized it sooner. 

“Oh?” Martin parrots him, raising his eyebrows in query. 

His mouth has abruptly gone dry. He knows something now that he hadn’t before. He doesn’t know what to do with it. His first instinct is to hide it, as the raw, vulnerable weakness it is. Hide it, and don’t let anyone ever know about it, and no one can ever exploit it, can touch it, can hurt him with it. 

Like he’d done when he’d realized that Martin didn’t understand what a bride slave is. 

He shakes his head at himself. Right. That hadn’t exactly gone swimmingly. And besides-- 

“You asked me if I had any more important secrets left,” he says. 

Martin tenses, wary. “Yeah. Is there… something you haven’t been telling me?” 

“Yes. No. I mean-- I didn’t have a secret back then. I was telling the truth at the time. But I got a new one. Just now.” 

“While we were walking?” Martin asks dubiously. 

“Yes,” he says, and then struggles with himself to find the right words to express what he just discovered inside of himself. It’s more difficult than he’s anticipated. Finally, he grasps for the simplest words that feel utterly underwhelming, inadequate. “I like you.” 

“Um,” Martin says, and then he smiles, happy in an awkward, crooked sort of way. “I-- I like you too, Jon.” 

“No,” Jon says, frustrated. Martin blinks in surprise. “Not like-- you don’t-- I’m not properly getting myself across-- ” 

He takes a deep breath, and then strides towards Martin. He sways backwards slightly, like his first, stifled instinct is to take a step back from his approach. Jon stops in front of him, glares up into his (round, freckled, lovely) face, and then makes a snap decision. Reaching out, he snatches up Martin’s hand in one of his own. Martin squeaks, surprised. Jon hesitates, and then very deliberately gentles his touch, trying to make it soft and tender instead of harsh and abrupt. Slowly, he brings Martin’s hand up to his face-- and making direct, unblinking eye contact with him, he brushes his lips against his knuckles. Martin stares back at him, frozen and wide eyed. 

A kiss on the hand. It is an undeniably romantic gesture. He’s read about it in books. He has seen, spying through the leaves of a tree, as a witch performed the gesture for a dryad. The dryad hadn’t killed her. This has to make his intentions clear. 

“I like you,” he repeats, softer. Raw meaning in the words. 

Red floods Martin’s face all at once. Jon watches, fascinated, as the color spreads and darkens. He otherwise doesn’t move or make a noise, looking rather rooted to the ground where he stands. 

“Martin?” he eventually asks. 

“Yes?” Martin asks, his voice an octave higher than normal. 

“Is that okay? That I like you.” 

“Ahhh-- um, that, that’s, ye--ees? It’s-- it’s okay. When did-- when did that happen, exactly?” 

“Just now,” he says. 

“Just now,” Martin repeats. “While we were arguing about shoes.” 

“Well,” Jon amends. “It most likely happened before that-- gradually, over a span of time. I only just noticed it while we were arguing about shoes.” 

“Right,” Martin says. “Of course.” 

There’s a beat. 

“Well!” Martin says with bright forced cheer. “Time to go home, then.” 

And he opens the car door, gets inside, closes the door, puts on his seatbelt, and sits there. Waiting for Jon to get in the car as well, presumably. His eyes are fixed woodenly ahead of him, not looking at Jon out of the window. He’s still fairly pink cheeked and wide eyed, but there’s a strained smile on his face now that gives him a bit of a manic air. 

Jon… doesn’t know that this is the reaction that he’d been expecting, and is also unsure of what this reaction even means. He hadn’t expected any kind of reaction at all, actually. He’d acted too quickly to give himself the time to expect anything. The realization had simply occurred to him, and then he’d blurted it out. 

He hesitates for another moment--a moment in which Martin simply continues to silently sit in the car without looking impatient or confused by Jon’s delaying--and then he gets into the passenger’s seat. Martin had said, after all, that it was okay for him to like him. So that must mean that it’s okay. He hopes. 

Martin drives them home. 

Martin may or may not be losing his mind. Three words have been looping on repeat inside of his skull for the last few days. I like you, I like you, I like you. The knuckles of his right hand intermittently prickle with something that feels like static electricity, as if the touch of Jon’s lips persistently lingers there, a ghost of a kiss. The heated, piercing look Jon had given him as he’d brushed his lips against his hand haunts him, vividly flashes in front of his mind’s eye at random moments in the day like a jumpscare that makes his stomach swoop with dizzy, fluttery warmth. 

And Jon is just acting like nothing happened. He reads his books, tucked up into the corner of the sofa in what has become his regular spot. He learns how to use the vacuum on his own with a vicious determination. He makes meals with Martin, sometimes on his own, sometimes letting Martin do it. He goes down to the village three times a week to work at the general store. Sometimes, he follows Martin to his job at Moorland House, and he pokes around in the library while Martin tries to wrangle the garden into submission, or he flutters around in Martin’s general vicinity, as if he’s doing anything even vaguely interesting. 

He doesn’t look at Martin differently. He doesn’t talk to him differently. He doesn’t act differently around him. He’s just… Jon. Martin can’t imagine acting so casually around someone he’s confessed his-- his-- some kind of feelings to. Some irrational part of himself wonders if maybe he’d just… had a particularly vivid sappy daydream, and had somehow gotten confused and convinced himself that it had really happened. That would be so much more plausible than that actually happening, right? Everything would make sense, then. Jon acting like nothing has happened, because nothing did happen. 

Except for how it definitely happened. 

They’re unpacking Martin’s weekly grocery run, when his strained grip on his composure finally crumbles all at once. It’s not even for any particular kind of reason. It just abruptly snaps, while he’s in the middle of putting the biscuits away in the high up cupboard, Jon putting cartons of milk away in the fridge. 

“Why did you say that?” he asks, the words out of his mouth before he even realizes that he’s going to say them.  

Jon looks over at him with curious incomprehension. “Say what?” 

“That you-- by the car. Four days ago.” 

“Oh,” Jon says, understanding. “When I said that I like you?” 

Martin’s stomach does a little flip at Jon saying it again, like there’s nothing wrong or difficult or momentous about it. His palms start to sweat. He wonders, half insane for a moment, how many times he could get Jon to say it. Over and over and over again, until the words wear a groove into his brain, so that he can listen to them without being overwhelmed. 

“That-- yes. Mhmm.” 

“Because… I like you?” Jon says, tilting his head to the side, in the way he does when he thinks that Martin’s being confusing. 

Another flip in his stomach. He’d said it again. Martin turns his attention back to unpacking the groceries, putting tea bags away in their appropriate spot with razor sharp focus, his eyes fixed on his hands. 

“I mean,” he says, “why would you say that even-- even if it’s true? Why would you say it?” 

Out loud? Where someone could hear him? Sheer madness. 

“Well,” Jon says, and he stops to actually consider this, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him to wonder before now. He speaks up. “I didn’t like the idea of keeping another important secret from you. It didn’t go so well the last time.” 

“You know, it’s not like you’re not allowed to keep secrets from me. I just wanted to know all of the ones that could potentially, um, get one of us killed.” 

“It’s an important secret,” Jon says firmly. “It’s important that I like you.” 

He said it again. Martin can feel his cheeks, hot and red. He’s not even trying to lead and coax Jon into saying it, he’s just doing it on his own. 

He has to clear his throat before he can speak again. 

“So you just wanted to tell me because you didn’t want to keep a secret.” 

“I suppose so,” Jon says uncertainly. After a moment, he adds, “And because I just wanted to share it with you, I think.” 

Martin doesn’t understand that impulse. He’s had about a dozen crushes in his life, and he hasn’t confessed to a single one of them. He’s kept them secret and clutched close to his chest, something private just for him. He barely even spoke to about half of them. He can’t imagine just-- telling them. He can’t imagine that it would have gone well, in most cases. At best, he’d probably just get an amiable rejection, an awkward I’m flattered, but. He never saw the point in putting himself through that, for the sake of something hopeless. His feelings could just be for himself. That was fine. There was no need to go and make himself anymore vulnerable than he already was, rolling over and revealing his soft underbelly to be cut open. 

The idea of being hurt doesn’t seem to have even occurred to Jon as a possibility, much less a consideration. 

“But--” he says, and stalls out. There’s so many protests and arguments inside of him that his chest feels packed tight with them, like he’s about to burst, like he has to be careful and deliberate to speak them coherently, instead of letting them spew out in one big tangled mess. 

“But?” 

“But doesn’t it bother you?” he demands, his voice going thin and frayed at the last two words. 

“That I like you?” Jon asks, baffled. 

He said it again. 

“That I didn’t say anything back!” he says. “I-- I didn’t say that I like you back--not like that--and I didn’t even say-- you’re just fine with that?” 

Jon looks at him like he doesn’t understand what the problem is. Martin feels a sharp, irrational spike of defensiveness. He’s not the one being weird here. He’s being perfectly reasonable! 

“The way I feel is the way I feel,” he says. “Why would that change depending on the way you feel?” 

“But--” He’s just not getting it. Martin struggles for a way to make Jon understand. “Jon-- okay. What-- what reaction were you hoping for, exactly, when you told me that you-- when you told me?” 

“I wasn’t… Well, I suppose that I didn’t want a negative response. Is this… you said that it was okay, is it-- is it not okay, after all?” 

“No, that’s not what-- it’s fine, Jon, really. Just-- weren’t you hoping that I’d say that I feel the same way? If you got to pick my reaction, the most ideal way for it to go?” 

“... As I said, Martin, it all happened rather quickly. I didn’t stop to hope for or expect anything.” 

“But aren’t you disappointed?” he presses. “Hurt? Let down? Why are you just-- you’re acting like it’s fine.”  

“Isn’t it fine?” Jon asks. “We’re still on good terms, aren’t we? We’re still married, we still live together. I’m happy like this. Are you… not?” 

“No!” he bursts out, and then quickly clarifies at the startled, dismayed expression on Jon’s face. “I mean-- yes, of course I’m happy, Jon, but that’s not the point!” 

“You don’t seem very happy,” Jon says skeptically. 

“Well, I am!” he snaps at him, the picture of happiness. “You’re just-- you’re really fine?” 

“Would you… like for me to not be?” 

“No, of course not--” 

“You don’t seem to like that I’m fine.” 

“No, that’s not what I’m trying to say here, okay, you just-- you--” 

Like a man settling down to watch someone drown, Jon doesn’t interrupt or save Martin from himself. He just waits and listens, watching, looking at him. Martin’s tongue twists on him, betraying him. 

“Yes?” Jon gently prompts him, after he takes too long to continue. 

“You’re not making any sense,” Martin gets out. 

“I’m not making any sense?” 

He says that like Martin’s being absurd, but he isn’t. Jon’s being weird. He is. He’s walking around like he wasn’t rejected, and like rejection isn’t like a knife to the gut, something to send you crawling to a quiet, hidden place to lick your wounds in peace until you recover enough to put a fake smile on your face and go back out into the world, except this time just a little bit more quiet, a little more drawn into yourself. It’s driving Martin crazy. Isn’t he hurt? Didn’t Martin hurt him? 

It’s almost like Jon hadn’t even thought to hope for or wonder if Martin reciprocates. Like that wasn’t relevant to the moment, to his secret, his confession. His feelings for Martin exist independently from how Martin might possibly view those feelings, how he might react to them, how he might treat Jon for having them. Like they’re not deeply entangled together, impossible to separate from each other. 

… Martin gets the sinking feeling that he might actually be the weird one here, at this moment. 

“I,” he says. “I’m… sorry.” 

Jon stops short, clearly caught off guard by his sudden deflation. 

“You are? For what?” 

For being damaged enough that he can’t even understand how Jon can act like this, can be fine with this. For still not really getting it, even as he’s accepting that Jon’s not harboring some secret heartbreak behind his back, as if he’s at all a skilled enough liar to pull something like that off. Jon is actually fine and that’s… he doesn't get it at all but-- but he supposes that that is good. He’d be able to understand it better if Jon were avoiding being in the same room as him, if he looked like a kicked puppy every time he looked at him. It would make sense to him. So… maybe it’s good that it doesn’t. He does want for Jon to be fine. Always. 

“For-- for not making any sense. You’re right. Sorry. I’m-- being weird.” 

Jon looks at him warily, clearly not understanding what this entire conversation has been about. Then after a moment, he softens and reaches out and kindly pets Martin’s hand. 

“It’s okay,” he says sincerely. “I forgive you.” 

It’s incredible, how Jon has such a gift for casually finding the exact right combination of simple words to knock the wind out of him. 

Martin has been acting very strangely lately. It seems like Jon’s little confession has… unbalanced him more than he’d anticipated. Alarmed him. He shoots glances at Jon when he thinks he won’t notice like he’s a profound mystery, an inexplicable creature with unpredictable behaviours rummaging through his fridge for the orange juice, squinting at the paper that he buys down at the general store with his own money solely for the crossword section, or sorting out the laundry. (He has found that it is immensely pleasing to sort things into categories, such as darks and lights and colors.) 

“Okay,” Martin says one night as they’re laying in bed, less than a minute after he’s switched off the bedside lamp, as if he was waiting until they were blanketed in darkness to initiate conversation. “I get that you’re fine, everything’s fine, that’s great-- but why do you like me?” 

“Can’t I just like you?” he asks. 

“People have reasons for liking people. Even if it's for silly reasons, like they’ve got a nice jawline.” 

Jon frowns. “What does that have to do with-- that makes no sense. I’d like you no matter what your jaw looked like, Martin.” 

“That’s-- very nice of you to say. I get that you don’t like me for my looks, that goes without saying--” 

“Why does it go without saying?” he asks sharply. Just a moment ago, he’d thought it absolutely ridiculous that anyone would ever like someone specifically for their appearance. Now, he feels oddly offended and defensive at what Martin’s implying. 

“Well-- I’m not… it’s not really my strong suit. But that’s not what I’m trying to talk--” 

“I like your looks,” he says firmly. Martin chokes a bit on his words in the darkness. Jon goes on. “I like your hair. I like your freckles. I like your eyes. I like your hands. I like your nose. I like your teeth--” 

“My teeth,” Martin repeats, sounding mildly horrified. “That-- that sounds kind of creepy, Jon, I’m sorry. That sounds like you want to rip them out and keep them in a jar.” 

“That would be dreadful,” he says, aghast. “And entirely against the point. I like them because they’re your teeth. They’re good teeth because they’re a part of you, and you’re good. And they-- they do what teeth are supposed to do, and that’s good. Everyone needs teeth. Except for people with beaks.” 

“I feel,” Martin says, “like we’ve gotten a little bit sidetracked and lost track of the subject, here.” 

“Perhaps,” Jon grants. “What was the subject, now again?” 

“Why do you like me?” 

“Oh. Well, I don’t like you because of your teeth. I like your teeth because I like you.” 

“Can we please stop talking about my teeth?” 

“I suppose…” he says, searching for words. He frowns with frustration up at the ceiling that he can’t properly see. “It’s difficult. It’s like trying to describe why you like a particular dish, or a song, or a smell. You’re just… lovely.” 

“Lovely,” Martin repeats, his voice slightly strained. He clears his throat, and continues. “Can you try? Please? I-- I want to understand.” 

Privately, Jon doesn’t get why Martin can’t just understand that Jon likes him because he says he does. But he had said please. And-- he’s not sure that he even has the option not to. Requests are as good as orders. Furrowing his brow, he tries. 

“I like every part of you,” he says. 

“You can’t like every part of me,” Martin says. “No one likes every single part of someone. Everyone’s got annoying little flaws. You don’t think I’m perfect, do you?” 

“No,” he says defensively, mostly because Martin asks the question like that’s obviously the answer. Of course Martin isn’t perfect-- who is? Yes, he has a point, there must be parts of Martin that he dislikes. He tries to think of one. 

… He’s having trouble thinking of anything. Anything that occurs to him that is even a touch irritating is ludicrously minor, and easy to forgive, and Jon has worse qualities than that himself, and it seems so very petty to hold grudges over-- over Martin forgetting to put the milk back in the fridge once, so it spoiled overnight and they had to pour it out. It was one milk carton. It’s one of the worst things he can think of, when it comes to Martin, and he honestly can’t bring himself to care. He’d just wrinkled his nose at the smell and then opened a window and proceeded to forget about it. 

Martin does still give him orders sometimes--rarer now, he’s getting into the habit of being careful with his words, but there are still occasional slip ups. There likely always will be. Yesterday, he’d made Jon help him change the sheets on the bed. ‘Help me,’ he’d said, and it had been intended as a request, as something Jon could refuse if he wanted to, but the curse had turned into an unyielding command. Jon would’ve done it even if the curse hadn’t made him. It was a small, reasonable request. They both sleep in that bed, and fresh clean sheets are nice to sleep in. But he’d felt the leash of their marriage tighten around him anyway, closing off all of the other options that he hadn’t been going to take. 

Martin hadn’t noticed, in the end, and Jon… hadn’t brought it to his notice. What would have been the point? He would have changed the sheets either way. All he would manage would be to make that crestfallen, guilty look flash across Martin’s face. It wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t needed. He’d wanted to just move past it, ignore the small blip, and go back to enjoying their cozy, quiet afternoon. It would be harder to do that if he pointed out what had happened, if Martin had to carry yet another mark of failure, of letting his guard down. Jon wants for Martin to be able to let his guard down around him. He wants for him to be able to ask Jon for help with the small chores that are necessary for taking care of their mutual home. 

Sometimes, it’s just easier to act like nothing happened. 

But that isn’t Martin’s fault either. It isn’t one of his flaws, a part of him to dislike. Like he had said: he hadn’t asked for any of this. He hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t been able to even anticipate it, innocent in his ignorance of the reality of the world of magic. It isn’t something that Jon can, or even wants to, hold against him. Martin always tries so hard, so sincerely to avoid it. It doesn’t count. 

So, all he has is a slight bad habit of sometimes forgetfully leaving food outside on the kitchen counters, instead of immediately putting it back inside of the fridge. Not much, that. 

“So?” Martin prompts him. He’s been quiet for too long, thinking. 

“You’re the least annoying person I’ve ever met,” he says truthfully. “I’m having a difficult time thinking of anything substantial.” 

Martin makes a dissatisfied noise, as if Jon being unable to rattle off a laundry list of his sins and imperfections is somehow… frustrating? A failure? Does he want Jon to criticize him? 

“There is one thing,” he says, managing to grab onto something as it flits past him. 

“Yes?” Martin says. Finally, there it is, his tone seems to say. I knew it was there. I knew it. 

Moving quickly, he leans over and clicks the bedside lamp on. The yellow light snaps into existence, breaching the darkness, revealing them to each other. Martin blinks owlishly at the sudden light, wide eyed and startled. 

“You seem to find it utterly unbelievable that I could actually like you, no matter how many times I say it. That,” he says, and he makes sure to lean in towards Martin in emphasis, giving him an unamused look, “is annoying.” 

Martin stares up at him, looking like a deer caught in headlights at suddenly having the lights turned on, at being confronted with Jon’s unblinking stare. 

“But,” he continues magnanimously, “I forgive you. I’m sure I do annoying things occasionally as well.” 

Martin opens his mouth to say something, his eyes still wide, but nothing comes out. After a moment, Jon wordlessly turns the lights off. He rolls over to settle into the freshly changed sheets, satisfied with the warm glow in his chest of having won the argument. 

Jon hadn’t actually managed to come up with a proper, convincing argument for why he likes Martin, in the end. No satisfactory explanation to help the whole thing go down easier for him, to help it all make sense in his head. He’s simply been handed the fact that Jon likes him, apparently, and he’s expected to find a way to readjust his world views to accept this, with zero help. 

He doesn’t know why it had been easier for him to accept that magic exists than the fact that Jon has feelings for him, but that seems to be how things are turning out. It makes him feel faintly ridiculous, but there it is. 

“He could be lying,” Martin tells himself. He’s at work in the Moorland House garden, busily uprooting a small patch of weeds that have been growing unchecked for what seems like a few weeks, hidden away in a blindspot he’d just happened to stumble across this morning. Jon is off in the library. “It would make more sense for him to be lying. He can lie.” 

Except for how he’s a terrible liar-- and why the hell would he lie about this? Jon isn’t cruel, and Martin had already promised to try his best to not take advantage of the whole gross bride slave thing, so there’s no reason for him to try and… what, endear himself to Martin? Seduce him? Seduction is a concept that fits poorly on earnest, sincere Jon, who is lovely and wonderful but also not even a little bit coy or flirtatious. He can’t see it. 

“He could be lying,” he argues feebly. With a firm tug, he pulls yet another weed up out of the earth. He could just spray it with weedkiller, but he needs something physical and time consuming to do to keep his brain from devouring itself while he pulls this problem apart in his head. And it’s not good for the insects, anyways. Shouldn’t use it unless he has to. 

Jon could be lying. Technically. In some version of reality. It’s possible, in the same way that most incredibly unlikely things are technically possible. 

“But he isn’t,” he mutters in resignation. Viciously, he uproots another weed. 

Like a man desperately grasping at straws, he searches for an explanation that will make this all make sense, that missing puzzle piece that will make the whole picture snap together into something comprehensible once it's put in its proper place. Because as it stands, it just-- doesn’t. Make sense. 

And Jon’s clearly pretty exasperated by his pestering already, so. He has to figure it out on his own. 

“Maybe he only thinks he likes me,” he says. Having voiced this tentative theory, it immediately sounds more plausible than the last one. He brightens. Yes, that could be it. He doesn’t know how old Jon is, but he gets the impression that he is at least inexperienced. Not in sex-- or not just sex, but just… in general. Like he hasn’t gotten the chance to live a lot, to experience events or milestones. The way he describes it, it sometimes seems like most of his life prior to meeting Martin consisted mostly of hiding from humans, predators, and everything and everyone who might want to do him harm while he constantly searched for more information, more knowledge. So-- this might be the first time he’s ever lived with someone. Hell, this might be the first time he’s ever even spent this much consistent time with one person. Maybe he just got… confused. Maybe he made a misunderstanding. He doesn’t like Martin; he thinks he likes Martin. 

“He said so earlier,” he says, tossing another weed into the bucket next to him. During that incredibly stressful, emotional, draining argument, when Martin had found out what ‘bride slave’ actually means. It had somehow led to Jon launching into a list of all of the things he likes about Martin, to prove to him that he didn’t hate being married to him, despite all circumstances. Martin had been able to accept it at the time, although it had felt intense enough to almost make him burst into tears. It hadn’t been the same sort of like that Jon’s talking about now. That like had been practical, platonic, reasonable. This like is… intimate. Romantic. Entirely focused on Martin, as if he’s the most special person in Jon’s life. 

Martin’s never been anyone’s most special person in his entire life. The idea of it happening now, after all of this time, is just-- it’s ridiculous. He can’t really bring himself to believe it. Something else must be going on here. And he’s got it. 

Jon had gone off on a rant about all of the things he liked about Martin, back then. And he’d mentioned Martin’s belongings that he shared with him, the things Martin did for him, the things Martin got for him. It had been an entirely practical and believable and tangible list. Like putting coins into a vending machine. Martin put effort into taking care of Jon, providing him with what he needed and wanted; Jon appreciated his efforts, was grateful. 

It must be the same thing now. It must be the same list. Jon doesn’t like Martin, despite literally saying those exact words over and over again. He likes what Martin has and does for him. And that-- that’s much more believable. Much more understandable. And thus, much more comforting. The world makes sense, with that explanation. Everything slots neatly into place. It works. 

“He doesn’t like me,” he says out loud, almost reassuringly. Just to hear the words. “He likes my stuff. He likes that I do things for him. That’s all.” 

Yes. He can let himself believe this. 

He kneels there in the dirt and feels satisfied and pleased with himself over solving the mystery, the puzzle, until he realizes-- he’s smiling, an almost flustered happiness tugging at the corners of his mouth. His face is hot, tingling, flushed. There’s a warm glow lodged somewhere in the center of his chest. 

No one’s ever appreciated the things he’s done for them before. No one’s ever liked him for the effort he’s put into helping them. 

He’s not even just thinking about his mum, is the thing. He’d done his best for her, for years and years and years, until it felt like he’d been scraped empty and hollow and exhausted, and then he’d just kept going. He’d kept going until the day she died. Every single part of him had been desperate to stop, but he wouldn’t know how to even begin to stop if he tried. He took care of his mum. Always. No matter how little she wanted it, or appreciated it, or loved him for it. 

But it’s not even just her. There was the boy in his class back at school when teenage hormones were only just beginning to light up in his brain. He’d used to do his English homework for him, the only subject that Martin was really good at. He’d lent the boy his pencils every single time he asked, even though he knew that he’d never give them back. He smiled every time the boy spoke to him, even though he knew that he wouldn’t invite him to come and visit his house, or sleep over, or anything. He’d kept doing the boy’s homework for him, and he’d kept lending him his pencils, and he’d kept smiling at him every time they talked. The boy hadn’t ever publicly admitted to even being his friend. They were shuffled into different classes when they went a grade up one year, and the boy stopped asking him for help with his homework. They never really talked to each other again. 

There were his coworkers at the library in London that he’d managed to scam his way into working for. His first time with what felt like a real adult job where he got paid decently enough and everyone around him wasn’t so exhausted that socializing was out of the question. He’d tried to reach out, to connect. Cheery smalltalk in the breakroom about weekend plans, offers of help with tasks, asking if they wanted to eat lunch together, remembering everyone’s birthdays and the names of their kids and partners and pets, brewing them cups of tea. He’d been friendly. He’d tried. He really had. But no one had been interested. They smiled at him and responded with their own smalltalk, answered his questions, accepted his help, ate their lunch with him, and drank his tea. But that was all it ever was. Shallow, polite interactions between coworkers. Friendly acquaintances. He’d tried. He had. 

He’d tried dating apps. He’d tried gay bars, even though he’s really not the ‘go out for drinks and dancing and flirting with strangers’ kind of guy. He’d tried, he’d tried, he’d tried. Really. He’d put himself out there. He’d reached out. He’d done his best. 

But no one had appreciated the things he did for them. No had wanted what he had, what he was willing to share, what he was offering to share. He got bland thank yous and vague smiles, and that was it. 

Jon likes what Martin does for him. Jon likes what Martin has. 

And that, unfortunately, means something. It means so much that it’s making his eyes sting and something like a rock lodge inside of his throat, as the realization sinks in. 

This was supposed to make Jon’s confession feel smaller, less significant, more distant. Something that he could handle. Instead, it somehow did the opposite; he’d made it just believable enough for him to be able to swallow it, but it’s still deadly. Blindly, he reaches out, but his hand doesn’t find anything to hold onto. Blinking, he looks down. 

There aren’t any more weeds left for him to pull. 

Jon is lost in the self indulgent haze of a good book, entirely absorbed in the words on the page, when the sensation of pleasantly warm porcelain is pressed into his free hand. He automatically curls his hand around the familiar shape of a mug without startling or looking away from his book, and keeps reading. 

“Thank you, Martin,” he says reflexively, his brain not really consciously making the decision to say them, or to register that he’s been given something. He’s at a very interesting part in the story. Martin may or may not say something back; if someone were to ask him later, he really wouldn’t be able to say if he had. Completely on autopilot, he drinks from the mug. He hums with approval, the taste almost piercing through his trance. It’s warm. Tasty. Martin makes the best tea. 

Over the course of… some amount of time, he slowly begins to grow aware of a niggling sensation. The feeling of being watched. For most of his life, this realization would have sent him freezing, bolting, hiding, but here and now it’s merely an odd unease that sits at the back of his head like the lingering conviction that he’s forgotten something of middling importance, like his cardigan at Rosie’s store last week. Not urgent, not dangerous, just… out of place. 

He blinks, and finally looks up from his book, distracted from the gripping narrative. Martin, sitting on the other end of the couch, holding his own mug of tea, starts guiltily as Jon’s gaze lands on him. His eyes are wide, and he looks startled, as if a character in a painting that he’d been appreciating had suddenly turned to look back at him. 

“Martin?” Jon asks. “Was there something?” 

“No! God, uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to stare. I just got lost in thought, and happened to be looking in your direction when it happened.” 

He says this very sheepishly, very naturally. It feels almost silly to believe that that wasn’t what had happened, the way he says it-- but Jon distinctly remembers the sensation of being watched. Not of having someone just happen to be looking in his direction, but of being scrutinized. 

Martin, he remembers with a sudden flare of suspicion, is an excellent liar. He’d seen it in action, him spinning that tale of robbers for Rosie on that night. 

“What were you thinking about?” he asks, trying for casualness. He closes his book and leans towards Martin, watches his reaction intently. 

“What we should have for dinner tomorrow,” he returns promptly. Too promptly? Jon can’t tell. 

“Lasagna?” he suggests hopefully. “One of my customers mentioned that she puts cauliflower in hers, which sounds… interesting. I want to try it.” 

“We had lasagna last week,” Martin says, smiling. “And it always ends up being way too much for the both of us. We had to eat lasagna for half of the week.” 

“How about next week?” 

“Okay, sure. But that still leaves us open for tomorrow.” 

Jon hums, frowning. He’s right, they still have to think of something-- 

Wait. 

“You’re trying to distract me,” he accuses. 

“From what?” Martin asks. 

“From what you were thinking about!” 

“I really wasn’t thinking about anything in particular--” 

“I thought you said you were thinking about dinner,” he retorts. 

Martin's expression flickers with a brief grimace, but it’s quickly gone. 

“I was,” he says. “Just idly. Nothing important.” 

Martin is an excellent liar. He’s certainly far better than Jon. He has a way of being able to say things in such a natural, unaffected manner, like he’s not painfully aware of how the words he’s saying aren’t true. But Jon knows him. He knows he’s a good liar, and he knows that for the last week, there’s been one singular thing that has consistently been on Martin’s mind-- 

“You’re fretting about my feelings for you again,” he says, not a question. 

There’s a beat of silence, as Martin presumably considers his options. It’s enough of an answer on its own. 

“Unbelievable,” he says. 

Martin shifts guiltily. “I wasn’t going to bring it up,” he says defensively. “It was just-- on my mind.” 

“I don’t know what it is about the concept that makes you so incredulous that you can’t just accept--” 

“Well, excuse me for getting a bit obsessed over the fact that my husband confessed his feelings for me!” 

The proper term for what Jon is is a bride slave, not a husband. He doesn’t protest it. 

“I didn’t realize that it would be such a monumental discovery,” he says, a touch sullenly. He hadn’t stopped to wonder at Martin’s reaction, if perhaps the revelation would change their dynamic in any way. But if he had, he imagines that he would picture things going on exactly as they had been, only with an added piece of knowledge between them, freely shared and acknowledged as just another part of their life together. He is, he realizes, a bit bitter that it instead turned out to be something so unimaginable that Martin would need to go through the five stages of grief to process it, apparently. 

“It’s just--” Martin says, but cuts himself off. 

“What is it now?” Jon asks. It goes without saying that Martin has found another angle to be bothered by this. He’d decided to leave Martin to grapple with it on his own, but… it’s been a couple of days now, and he’s still grappling. So he might need the help after all. 

“The power dynamic,” Martin says after a moment of hesitation. 

Jon blinks, taken off guard. “The… power dynamic?” 

“Wouldn’t you… isn’t the idea of-- of being in a relationship with someone who can literally control your every action… scary? That could go badly in so many ways. Really badly.” 

“Who said anything about a relationship?” he asks, mystified. 

“You confessed to--” 

“Yes, but what does that have to do with it? A relationship is already out of the question. It’s not as if you return my feelings.” 

There’s a long, long silent moment. 

“Martin,” Jon says. 

Martin doesn’t say anything. 

“Martin,” Jon repeats, aghast. “You can’t mean-- good lord.” 

“It’s not…” Martin protests weakly, but can’t seem to even get through the entire sentence without trailing off sheepishly. 

“You,” Jon says, “you have been grappling with the revelation that I like you as if you’ve learned the mystery of what lies beyond the veil between life and death, you have been interrogating me and worrying and nitpicking and fretting and pondering and philosophizing-- and you like me back? It’s requited?” 

“I’m,” Martin starts, as if to defend himself, and he stops and winces at the look of sheer disbelief Jon levels at him. “I’m sorry?” he finishes. 

“Why,” he says. This had been ridiculous before, back when he’d thought his emotions had been a one way street, an unanticipated shock. Now-- now he doesn’t know what this is. “Why have you been agonizing over this for-- for over a week now? It’s one thing to-- to--” 

“I just wanted to understand,” Martin says, his gaze slinking away from meeting Jon’s. 

“What is there to understand?” he asks. “If you can like me, then what’s so unbelievable about me liking you? Shouldn’t you already understand?” 

“It’s not the same,” Martin says. 

“Yes, it is,” he says, indignant with confusion. 

“It really, really isn’t,” Martin says. Before Jon can open his mouth to argue further, to declare that he’s being frustrating and obtuse and not making sense in the slightest, he goes on. “You’re… you’re amazing, Jon. I’ve never met anyone like you. And I don’t even just mean that you’re the only magical person I’ve ever-- well, the only fairy I’ve ever met. You’re just so-- so, so genuine? So kind? So ridiculous? So you? Of, of course I’d fall-- of course I’d end up liking you. Anyone who wouldn’t is just… not someone I could ever understand. You’re great.” 

Jon stops. In the rush of exasperation, he hadn’t truly taken in the fact that Martin likes him, but it rises back up now, stealing his breath away. Martin’s eyes are shiny and looking directly at him now, his cheeks flushed with sincerity, and he looks like the most beautiful creature Jon’s ever witnessed. 

He likes me, he thinks, and the words are traced through with wonder and disbelief and sheer happiness. 

“And you’re not?” he asks him. 

Martin had sat with a very straight spine during his little speech, his shoulders squared boldly, his jaw set almost mulishly, like he was prepared to die on the hill of Jon’s apparent lovableness. Like he’d fight for it, and fiercely. It’s thrilling in a way that sets Jon’s heart racing. At this, though, he wilts back into something more uncertain and dampened. 

“Well,” he says. “That’s… You know, I’m not…” 

Jon stares at Martin as he flounders for words. It’s clear that the only reason that he isn’t saying that he’s-- that he’s unremarkable or some other such rubbish is simply because he’d find it too embarrassing to say it out loud. As if it should go without saying. Martin, Jon realizes with a dawning, incredulous comprehension, does not think very much of himself. He thinks very little of himself, in fact. Much, much less than he deserves. 

Well, he thinks. This won’t do at all. 

“I like you,” he says firmly, interrupting Martin’s pained attempts at an answer. Martin twitches, and Jon notices now the deeply alert way his eyes dart towards and fasten onto Jon’s face as he says it. Centered on his mouth, like he wants to watch his lips shape the words. Has he been doing that the entire time? Every single time he’s said it? How could he not have noticed? “I like you because you’re wonderful, and I enjoy being around you and talking to you very much, and you’re my most favorite person I’ve ever met in my life. I may be capable of lying, but I don’t, as a general rule. So you’ll just have to take me on my word and trust that I’m telling you the truth, as difficult as you may find it to believe.” 

Martin’s mouth opens, closes. While Jon had been speaking, his face had grown steadily pinker and pinker. He looks at Jon now, avid and bright eyed. Jon does his best to look firm and forbidding, like someone who won’t brook any argument. 

“Okay,” Martin breathes. 

“Okay--? I, I mean, yes. Of course. Good. I’m glad that you see it my way.” He takes a breath, and continues. “We both like each other.” 

Martin’s eyes widen. 

“So,” he forges ahead ruthlessly, feeling his face heat. “That means--” 

“But the power dynamic!” Martin interrupts, his voice rising in pitch with alarm, as if he has to cut Jon off before he can finish. “That’s-- that’s a-- we can’t just--” 

“There’s already a power dynamic,” Jon says, disgruntled but trying to be cool and calm and rational. “And we already have a relationship, even if it’s not romantic-- yet. We live together. We sleep together. We make our meals together. We spend a considerable amount of time with each other. All of this, we somehow manage with a power dynamic hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles. If it’s not a problem now, then I don’t see why it should suddenly become one, even if we--  if we change the relationship.” 

Martin’s blush deepens, presumably as it flits across his mind what some of those changes might be. Changes that involve fingers intertwined with each other, lips brushing against lips. Jon curls his fingers tightly inwards at the thought. 

“But it is a problem now,” Martin says, hushed. 

He has a point. 

“Then it’s one that we can already bear,” he says. “We should be able to keep bearing it in the future.” 

“We might not,” he says. 

“We might also be eaten by bears tomorrow.” 

“Bears aren’t actually local to this area--” 

“Martin!” 

“Sorry! Just-- they’re not!” 

“We might be eaten by some local animal tomorrow, then. Anything may happen. Can’t we simply… deal with that when it happens? If it happens? We have more than enough to deal with without dreading things that might happen in the future. Let’s just… enjoy our happiness together while we have it? We could end up having it for a short time. Or,” and, he decides internally, this is the one that’s going to end up being true, “we could have it for a very long time. Either way, there’s no sense in just tossing it aside.” 

Jon looks at Martin intently, willing him to see reason, to admit that he’s wrong and Jon’s right, that the only logical, reasonable, correct thing for them to do is to be together. Jon can do this for as long as it takes; he will find a counter to every single one of Martin’s protests, arguments, and denials, because he is right and he will win and he wants to kiss--

Martin gives a little disbelieving, self effacing laugh. Jon blinks, unprepared. 

“Sorry,” Martin says, “it’s just-- I feel like I’m trying my best to stop someone from-- from giving me a million pounds, or a new car, or… I’m being kind of ridiculous right now, aren’t I?” 

“Yes,” Jon says. “Yes, you are.”  

“It’s just really hard to believe. Feels too good to be true. Doesn’t feel like it should be allowed to happen, you know? I’ve got to be doing something wrong, for this to be happening. Tricking or stealing or lying, or-- something.” 

“You’re too good to be true,” he says doggedly. “And you certainly haven’t stolen me, or tricked me or lied to me.” After a beat, he adds, “Well, not in a sinister fashion.” 

Martin does have a bit of a habit of slipping in little white lies, he’s begun to notice. Letting people assume what they want to, playing into it. Nothing drastic, but… 

“I kind of stole you,” Martin says, but he’s smiling wryly as he says it. He looks fond and a touch tired, like he’s been wrung out by all of his emotions. 

“From the mandibles of death,” Jon says. “Under the circumstances, I hold no grudges. In fact, I appreciate it.” 

“Well,” Martin says, clearly searching for a suitable response. “Good.” 

“So you surrender to my argument?” Jon asks eagerly. “You’ll admit that I’m right, and we should be together?” 

Martin laughs again, this time more from the chest. “Am I going to surrender-- Jon, you’re talking like this is some kind of debate that you have to win. That’s not how relationships work.” 

“So we are in a relationship?” he persists. 

There’s a brief beat and then softly, as if with realization, Martin says, “yes.” 

Jon beams. Reaching out, he snaps up one of Martin’s hands and squeezes it between his own. It’s warm and broad, calloused from his work in the gardens. The same hand that had so carefully plucked him out of a spider's web months ago now, cautious and delicate with his thin wings, his frantic struggling. Shh, he’d said, comforting, encouraging. Calm down. You’re out of the web now. 

He has kind hands. Jon’s always liked them. And now he gets to hold them, whenever he wants to. He rubs his thumb in a circle over the back of one of them, entranced. 

“Jon?” Martin says, something vulnerable and raw in his voice that makes Jon look back up at him. Martin’s face is red, his eyes bright and fixed on Jon’s mouth again. “Can I-- I want to kiss you.” 

“Oh,” Jon says. After a moment, he says, “I want that too.” 

“It’s-- it’s been a while since I-- for me,” Martin says. “Just so you know. Might need a moment to…” 

“No, you won’t,” Jon informs him. 

“Really, you shouldn’t get your hopes up,” Martin says. 

“No, you don’t understand. We’re married. You know how to kiss me, just like how you know how to share a bed with me. It will come naturally to you.” 

“... Seriously?” 

“Yes.” 

“That’s… wow, okay, god. This whole bride slave thing is really ick, the more I learn about it.” 

“Don’t overthink it. This is a kiss we both want, so… it’s fine. Your body knows we’re married better than your mind does. Listen to your instincts. Just--” 

Martin leans in, and he kisses Jon. There’s a flash of hesitance across his expression, of trepidation and nerves, but then he must listen to Jon. His eyes close, but his lips find Jon’s without any issue, as if they’ve practiced this. He tilts his head slightly to the side so that they won’t bump their noses together, and Jon automatically moves to do the same. One of Martin’s hands comes up to the small of Jon’s back, steady and soothing, and its presence feels almost expected, the way you expect for the floor to be there when you get out of bed in the morning. Jon’s arms come up to wind around Martin’s neck, and the motion is smooth and unconscious, thoughtless. 

They kiss, and it’s an easy, familiar kiss, their bodies slotting together perfectly. Like this is something they’ve done so many times that they’ve lost count, until it’s a movement that’s been carved into them in the same way that a river carves the landscape around it. Something as natural and easy as breathing. 

It’s their first kiss. 

Their lips part, and then they just breathe against each other for a moment, before Martin speaks up softly, as if they need to be careful not to shatter the quiet. 

“That’s really weird,” he whispers. 

“But not bad?” 

“No,” Martin says. “Not bad. Just…” 

“Strange.” 

“Yeah.” 

“... Perhaps we should kiss some more, until it stops feeling strange?” 

“That,” Martin says, “is a really smart idea, Jon.” 

Squeezing his arms around Martin’s neck, he grins into his throat, proud of himself and giddy. He did it. He got Martin to kiss him. Martin giggles above and around him, probably because Jon accidentally tickled the delicate skin of his throat. 

“Of course it is,” Jon says, happy enough that he can’t even get the smile out of his voice as he tries to sound haughty in the way that always makes Martin roll his eyes and grin at him. “I only ever have smart ideas.” 

“You were really the right one here, so I won’t argue,” Martin says warmly. 

They kiss again. And they kiss, and they kiss, and they kiss, until eventually the familiarity begins to feel familiar. And then they keep kissing some more after that, too. 

Surprisingly, their life together barely changes at all, except for how it changes completely. They still sleep and wake up in the same bed, they still eat breakfast together, they still go to their respective jobs, they still tidy up and keep their home nice and neat for themselves and each other, and they still putter about for a few hours down in the living room before going to bed each evening, entertaining themselves with whatever is at hand. 

But now, when Martin wakes up in the morning and he finds that he’s curled around Jon, his front to his back, he can reach down and press a fond kiss to the back of his neck and linger there in the warmth and comfort underneath the sheets for several minutes without feeling guilty or strange for it. When they eat breakfast he can reach out across the table and squeeze Jon’s hand if the urge ever strikes him, instead of pushing the impulse down, ignored and unacknowledged. When they part ways, on the days that they part ways (there are some where they don’t, where they stay attached to each other from sunrise to sunset) for their jobs Jon will squeeze him, firm and tight in his arms, and very seriously informs him that he should have a good day, and that Jon will be missing him. When they do chores they bicker toothlessly and good naturedly (Martin, Jon will gasp theatrically, holding up a long strand of black hair that could only be from one of them, Martin you have to stop shedding everywhere, it’s disgusting), working around each other, turning boring drudgery and obligation into something that Martin can laugh his way through. 

And nowadays, in the evenings when they while away time before they go to bed, what they entertain themselves with is often each other. Not even just kissing-- though they do a lot of that, and it’s very, very nice. Martin’s spent hours with Jon curled comfortably underneath his arm, snugly up against his side, or sat in his lap while reading a book. He’ll idly play with his hair with one hand, or be rubbing his thumb in regular soothing little circles into the bone of his hip, or have a hand shoved up the back of his shirt, comfortingly scratching at the skin there with his blunt nails in repetitive motions that Jon arches his back into like a pleased cat, humming his approval at the attention. Hours and hours spent with skin pressed up against skin, soaking in each other's warmth, matching their breathing to each other. Martin has honestly never felt this consistently content in his life. 

Today, however, Martin’s tucked away on the couch rereading his favorite poem anthology while eating clementine wedges, and Jon’s off in the kitchen, sat at the table with Martin’s phone. He could be playing around with Martin’s phone here in the living room with him, but he isn’t. That, Martin knows, means that he’s almost definitely furtively indulging in his newest guilty pleasure: cat videos. 

It’s honestly hilarious. Martin knows he’s been watching them, because that’s all the Youtube algorithm is recommending his account nowadays. He’d probably be able to see all of it in the browser history too, but he’s trying to let Jon have some privacy, even if it’s really obvious what he’s doing with it. He can hear him sometimes give startled, muffled gasps from the kitchen, probably whenever the cats in the videos move too quickly for comfort. Jon’s still jumpy, when it comes to cats. But they’re also really obviously growing on him as a species, at least from the safety of a screen. 

If Martin had to guess why Jon’s only watching cat videos in secrecy, like an embarrassed teenager trying to watch porn on the sly without being painfully obvious about it, then he’d have to say that it probably has something to do with Jon’s earlier impassioned rant about how cats are terrible and he’ll never tolerate one in the house, ever. Might be a bit embarrassing to backpedal from that one. Martin, fond and indulgent, pretends not to notice and lets Jon have his little secret. 

It’s a very, very cute secret for him to have, though. 

Martin can’t focus on the poems. Not in a bad way, where the words on the page seem dull and meaningless and pointless, pretty empty words written by people he’ll never meet and has nothing in common with. It had been that way for a long time, after his mum passed. It’s more like he’s just-- distracted. Having a hard time focusing. 

It’s only been a couple of weeks since they’ve become more than just two people trapped by coincidence and misfortune in a marriage against their will and trying to make the best of it. Since the kiss, as Martin thinks of it in the sappy, sentimental privacy of his mind. It’s only been a couple of weeks, and he still can’t quite bring himself to believe that this is his life during the quiet moments when he’s left alone with his thoughts. 

It wasn’t so long ago that he’d lived in this house alone. It had been peaceful-- and quiet, and lonely, and boring. It had been passing the days and weeks and months like he was just ticking the boxes and killing time until… for the rest of his life. He’d eat, go to work, sleep. Eat, go to work, sleep. Repeat. He’d fill in the empty hours with chores, or reading the same books over and over again, or mindless TV that he wouldn’t remember the next day, or whatever he could work up the energy for. He’d go down to the village once a week-- but only once, only for as much as he could justify to himself. It felt… stupid, somehow, to go down there just for the sake of being around people. Stupid, and silly, and embarrassing, and pathetic. Not allowed. So he didn’t. 

And now Jon’s here, and even when he isn’t in the same room as him Martin can feel his presence in the house. The way he fills it up with life and warmth and breath, turns it somehow from a building to a home. He doesn’t feel like he’s just going through the motions and killing time. Like he could die in his bedroom one night and it would take people days, maybe even weeks, to suspect something. Maybe longer. 

Bit morbid, that. He's glad he doesn’t feel that way any longer. It’s still just… incredible, though. How so much has changed so profoundly, in such a short span of time. He never would’ve been able to predict a single part of this. Not just magic, but that Jon lives with him, that Jon wants to live with him. That he wants for Martin to hold him, and kiss him, and to hold his hands and murmur stupid jokes and shy endearments to him. That he wants to return the favour. 

He really can’t understand it, not even now. He still doesn’t understand how Jon could-- but maybe it doesn’t really matter that he doesn’t understand. Maybe it’s one of those things that’s true whether he understands it or not. Like magic. Or even more mundane things like-- like magnets, or rocket science, or how to make a hollandaise sauce without messing it up. All of those things are possible and exist out there, even if he couldn’t begin to explain it himself. It’s just… another one of those strange, incredible things about life. Another one of Jon’s little oddities. 

They’d gone down to the village for a cookout, yesterday. They’d been invited as a couple. Specifically, Jon had been given an invitation, and he’d passed it onto Martin and he’d looked at him expectantly for an answer. Whether or not he’d go. If the invitation had been made to just Martin, if Jon weren’t here-- he knows that he wouldn’t have. The invitation was only made out of polite obligation, he’d tell himself. He’d only make things awkward by taking them up on it. He wouldn’t fit in, he’d stand out, he’d be awkward and boring. Best for everyone if he just… didn’t. Easier. 

But Jon was invited too. And Jon isn’t like Martin. He can’t just go for years and years while barely speaking to anyone without it affecting him. He acts like it doesn’t, but-- whenever Jon talks about his life before he met Martin it always seems so… so sad, and lonely, and empty in a way. No friends, no allies, no loved ones. Jon deserves better than that. He deserves to get to go to cookouts if he wants to. And he probably wouldn’t go if Martin didn’t come with, and if he did go without Martin he’d probably spend the whole evening fretting anway-- 

So they went. Martin had spent the entire time feeling vaguely stressed out and nervous-- but he thinks he enjoyed himself too? It, it was honestly kind of fun. Just also really tiring, in a way that had him collapsing into his bed at the end of the day. And more importantly, Jon had seemed to enjoy himself too, so. It was worth it. 

His eyes move across lines of artful words that he’s read more than a dozen times before, the poems as well worn in his mind as the pages of the book, without really taking any of them in. It’s a love poem, he thinks. A woman talking about her wife, how she’d do anything for her, and how she knows that her wife would do the same thing for her. The security in that knowledge. 

Jon would do anything for Martin. He’d set himself on fire, if Martin asked. He wouldn’t have any choice in the matter. Not… not as romantic as the poem. 

He’s really strongly considered engineering some sort of elaborate scenario in which Jon has to save his life, while lying awake at night. Balancing the scales. He’d told himself the whole time that he wouldn’t actually do it, of course. It’d be stupid, dangerous, risky, and probably wouldn’t work anyways. Martin isn’t some sort of diabolical chessmaster or a machiavellian genius. He wouldn’t be able to pull it off. At best, it wouldn’t end in serious injury. But he’d still thought about it. 

He just-- he wishes it weren’t like this. They’re so happy together, but sometimes-- sometimes, it feels like Martin’s got a knife to Jon’s throat, always. And because it’s always there, sometimes they forget about it, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still there. It just means that he gets careless, and Jon gets cut again. He’s tired of messing up and cutting Jon. Even when it’s just small papercuts, it hurts. Makes him feel like an awful person, an awful partner, to remind Jon of just how helpless he really is. How much his freedom is because Martin’s letting him have it. 

But there isn’t going to be some sort of magical fix to the problem, no button to push to make it go away. He can’t rely on some freak miracle making everything okay. He wishes there was a way to make this magical binding between them into something mutual, something equal, but if there’s a solution then he doesn’t have it. It’s just… there, and they just have to deal with it as best as they can. 

Martin puts his book down, looking in the direction of the kitchen door, where Jon is. Their situation is weird and messed up and kind of upsetting sometimes, but-- screw it. Screw capital M Magic and what it thinks his relationship with Jon should be, screw the concept of bride slaves especially. Screw all of it. Everyone and everything else is wrong. Magic is wrong. Jon… he loves Jon. He loves Jon, and they’re married, so-- so they’re equal partners. 

If Jon is his husband, then he’ll be his in return. As long as they both shall live. He’s decided. 

There’s a sharp, undignified yelp followed by the clatter of something falling heavily to the floor in the kitchen, firmly derailing Martin’s train of thought. A chair? 

“Jon!?” Martin calls out, standing up from his chair, his book falling to the floor ignored. “What--” 

There’s a frantic scrabbling noise from the kitchen before Jon appears in the doorway, catching himself on the doorframe almost as if he threw himself at it. His eyes are round and wide, something wild and shocked in his expression. 

“Martin,” he says with an incredible intensity, “what did you just do?” 

“Nothing!” he says, his hands going up as if to show that he’s not holding any weapons, or there’s no blood on them. “I-- I was just sitting here! What-- what’s wrong? What are you--” 

“Can’t you feel it!?” Jon demands, and gestures at the air between them, his hands curled up into claws. “No-- of course you can’t--” 

“Feel what?” Martin asks, exasperation rising. Jon’s acting like the house is on fire or something, but he won’t tell him where. 

“You must have done something!” Jon shouts. 

“Done what?” 

Jon reaches up to pull at his hair, looking deeply, profoundly overwhelmed. Martin hears himself make a concerned noise in the back of his throat, taking an automatic step closer to Jon, his hands held uselessly up in the air. 

“Jon--” 

“Tell me to pick that up,” Jon says, pointing at the book Martin had dropped to the floor. 

“What?” he asks, stopping, bewildered. “Why?” 

“Just do it!” Jon insists. He looks borderline manic, every inch of him shivering with energy. 

“I…” he says, hesitating. Okay, fuck it. “Jon, please-- please pick that book up for me.” 

“No,” Jon says very deliberately. They both stand there and hold their breaths for a moment, as if waiting for something. But nothing happens. The two of them just stand there-- Jon just stands there-- 

“Oh my god,” he says, feeling his own face go slack and wide eyed with realization. “You’re not picking it up!” 

“I’m not picking it up!” Jon agrees, nodding vigorously. 

Bubbly with a sudden urgent energy, Martin looks wildly around the room. 

“That,” he says, pointing at a couch pillow. “Pick it up.” 

“No, I won’t,” Jon says. 

Martin laughs with incredulous glee. 

“Throw-- throw that lamp!” 

“No! I refuse!” 

“Jump!”

“Absolutely not!” 

They keep going like this, and with each firm no Martin smiles harder, laughs more, feeling light and bubbly and almost dizzy. Jon is smiling now too, the laughter infectious, even as confusion and incredulity bleeds through at the edges. Awe and excitement and bewilderment all mix together into a weird, disorienting soup. 

“I don’t understand,” Jon breathes, once Martin’s run out of ideas for orders that Jon can simply refuse. “I don’t understand. I’m not your bride slave any longer. How? It’s not something you can just shake off. What did you do? You must have done something. You must.” 

“I don’t know!” Martin replies, still feeling disbelieving and wildly delighted. “I was-- I was just sitting there and reading-- and thinking of you…” 

“Thinking of me?” Jon says, latching onto this. 

“Yeah,” Martin says. He’d almost forgotten about it, in the sudden hectic rush of confusion and happiness, but-- “I was thinking about how-- I decided to be your husband too. That we’d be equals.” 

Jon stares at him in silence. 

“Can that have been it?” Martin asks. “It-- it can’t seriously have been that easy, could it? I was just thinking it. I just made a decision. Anyone could do that.” 

It feels too simple, too easy-- and yet. And yet it would be impossible to trick a husband master into doing it, he realizes. It’s something that could only ever possibly happen on purpose, intentionally, deliberately. It’s nothing but will, intention. A decision. 

He wonders how often it happens. It might, he thinks, be very, very rarely. 

“Why would you do that?” Jon asks, and he snaps back to the present moment, to this room. Jon’s looking at him like-- like he can’t understand him in the slightest. “Why would you lower yourself to--” 

He cuts himself off. 

Jon suddenly looks very small, in a way that makes Martin’s heart hurt. 

“Lower myself?” he asks. It’s an antiquated, almost ridiculous phrase, like he’s a lord condescending to a serf. Except that Jon says it seriously, sincerely, as if he really means it. “To what? You?” 

“I’m just a fairy,” Jon says, as if that explains everything. 

“Jon,” Martin says. “I’m just a gardener. I’m really, really not important, or powerful, or special. I’m just-- I’m me. And me properly marrying you doesn’t lower me in any way, alright? You’re amazing.” 

“Everything is above a fairy. We’re at the bottom.” 

“You’re not just a fairy,” he says doggedly. He’s said this before, and he’ll say it as many times as it takes. “You’re Jon. And I-- I think that counts for a lot, alright? I really, really, really like Jon. I want to be your husband more than-- more than anything in the world.” 

Jon just looks at him for a long moment, his chest visibly rising and falling, his eyes shiny. Martin itches to take a step forward and sweep him into his arms, but-- there’s something he recognizes, in Jon’s face. Something familiar. 

“I know that you don’t understand it,” he goes on, more gently. “Maybe you can’t. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. I… I love you.” 

There’s a long moment-- and then Jon nods. A tear slips free with the motion, and he hurriedly wipes it away with one wrist. 

“Alright,” Jon says, his voice is rough with emotion. 

“Alright?” Martin asks, tentative and encouraging. He takes one step closer, and Jon leans closer towards him, as if succumbing to gravity. Martin takes it as permission to close the rest of the distance between them, his arms coming up around him, pressing him close up against his chest. Jon’s breath huffs out against Martin’s neck, wetness on his face. 

“Yes,” Jon says, melting against him. Martin smooths a hand down over his back, tracing the tattoo lines of his disguised wings. “I love you, too.” 

There’s nothing Martin can do in the face of that but kiss his husband, and so he does. Thoroughly.