tied up with string

Apparently there's a reason for that. Halfway through university, he goes in for what he thinks is overwork, carpal tunnel maybe, and they draw blood and then call him back in and tell him it's actually arthritis, of all things. And anemia, they add, almost offhand. Probably caused by the arthritis.

It’s almost convenient, really, how it all ties together, wrapped up and squared off with a neat little bow.

Almost. Mostly it’s just irritating. Ooh, look, it’s all got a name, lovely. Doesn’t make any of it less obnoxious.

Although. Privately, it is rather a relief to learn that it's not actually a personal failing. Not just a sign he doesn't know his own limits, or is too stupid to stretch, hasn't had enough supplements. Except the iron, he supposes. Georgie may have had a point there. Not that he'll ever admit it out loud.

Apart from that...he supposes it is theoretically nice that there are things he can do about it now. Guidelines to follow. Hand exercises and things, even if Georgie does nag worse than his grandmother sometimes.

It’s just...well. They're generally less immediately useful than the things he’s already figured out on his own?

Like opening things with his teeth when no one’s looking. (Simple, quick, painless, though not the most...subtle.) Or shaking out his hands when no one’s around. (Deeply embarrassing with an audience, but effective and oddly satisfying besides.) Or holding things a bit weird. (Gets a few raised eyebrows sometimes, but infinitely better than dropping his pen every five seconds.) Or sticking his hands under hot running water for a few minutes. (A bit hit or miss, really, but usually at least distracting.)

So, really, on the whole, Jon’s own methods are perfectly fine and the recommended nonsense is mostly just that.

Mostly. There are exceptions.

Canes, Jon has been told (by two doctors and well over a dozen internet articles), can be very helpful. And they probably are, he tells himself, for other people. With shittier joints, worse flares. He's fine. He doesn't need one.

He gets one anyway, several months on, just for the especially bad days. He's sure he'll never really use it.

But he does. And has to admit, begrudgingly, that it does help. With balance if nothing else.

Knitting, Jon has been told (by one doctor, two internet articles, and one very irritating old woman in a shop), is a good way to exercise his hands.

It is, he tells Georgie, a load of garbage. Not even his grandmother had been dull enough to waste her time with knitting, and he should really be resting his hands more, anyway, at least until the pills begin to do their job.

But she tells him to just try it and see, and adds, in that infuriatingly reasonable tone she has, “If you really hate it, you can just stop.”

So he does, entirely to say that he has and it hasn’t worked and he hates it, and wow what a surprise, using your hands for so long at a time makes them worse, Georgie, who could have predicted—

Except. It doesn't make them that much worse, it turns out. At least no more than typing out an essay that should've taken at least a week in just over three hours. Not when he's careful and doesn't go overboard.

...Which, much to his chagrin, he does rather often, the first few weeks. Because—unfortunately—he actually kind of enjoys it.

The motions are nice, the visible progress satisfying, and the soft clack of the needles is easier to tune out than expected. And seeing Georgie wear the scarf he makes her (even though it's objectively a bit terrible) is nice. As is the way she sometimes runs her fingers over the stitches absentmindedly and smiles.

So he keeps going.

Slowly grows more invested. Learns new stitches, finds new materials. The first time he gets his hands on something non-acrylic—a simple wool blend from the bargain bin, dyed blue, a little rough but not in a bad way—he’s hooked. (The first time Georgie buys him a really nice skein—merino, hand-dyed in a self-striping pattern, for his birthday—he’s irrevocably in love.)

A little over a day after his breakup with Georgie, ten rows away from a completed shawl, it occurs to him that he has no reason to finish it. He stops mid-row and puts his knitting bag up in the closet.

Nearly three months later, he pulls it out again. Unravels it entirely, rewinds the now-scraggly yarn into a ball, searches up new patterns. He finds one for a blanket with intricate cables, and sets to work.

In between rows, he contemplates the remaining project. A scarf, impossibly long, with a fun pattern. Lots of different colors. A bit of an eyesore, really, but interesting, and fun. He considers unraveling it like the other one, making something more sensible, with fewer clashing colors.

He doesn’t. He finishes it.

And when it’s all done he tucks it in a box. And when the blanket’s finished (considerably later), that goes in the box too. And they sit there, for weeks, burning in the back of his closet, until finally he pulls them out, brushes them off, and takes them to the nearest donation center.

And then walks back to his flat, contemplating new patterns. They can always use socks, the woman said, and there’s that new cable he’s been meaning to try….)

After uni, with less time on his hands, knitting falls a bit by the wayside, but Jon never drops it entirely. When he joins the Archives, he's midway through a rather ghastly pair of socks, using up old scrap yarn he can't bear to toss and can't bear to use on anything nice. A good weekend project, out of sight the rest of the time.

Or. Mostly out of sight. There are occasional binge-evenings during the week, which probably isn’t strictly advisable, but can’t really be helped. After all, late-night binges are about the only chances he has to get anything done, craft-wise. He keeps needing the weekends to crash.

There's his lunch break, in theory, but it's not worth the teasing. They already think he’s so old, between the hair and the sweater vests and the cane.

No, Jon thinks. No, best keep it to himself.

He tries to keep all of it to himself, at first.

Well. Most of it, anyway. He's not hiding the cane, obviously, but as to the rest...his coworkers don’t need to know all the details. Particularly not ones that might crack the veneer of professionalism, like if one of them—just for example—saw him rip the lid off a pen with his teeth and splatter ink all over his desk and sweater in the process. (A purely hypothetical scenario which has never once happened to him in reality, ever, and is most certainly not on the list of reasons he hates Martin Blackwood.)

Jon can imagine the aftermath, if, hypothetically, that were to happen. Martin would do a very poor job of pretending not to grin and then do something awful like walk over and try to help clean things up. Sasha would try not to laugh and probably not succeed. And Tim wouldn't even bother with pretenses, and just laugh himself silly. And then Jon would probably die on the spot. Or resort to murder. Or possibly arson.

None of which are terribly pleasant options, so Jon tries not to do that sort of thing at work. And when he has to—when it’s that or stoop to asking someone to help him with a goddamned pen—he makes sure his office door is closed all the way first. Just in case.

Meanwhile, as Jon rigorously maintains strict levels of personal discipline—

Martin is a disaster. He keeps doing things.

He lets a dog (a dog!) in the Archives (in the Archives!) right off the bat, and then doesn’t know how to perform basic tasks, can't even cite things properly, and his handwriting’s awful, and he keeps losing things and dropping things and he’s broken four mugs and he works at a snail's pace and he’s always bumping into people and then talking to them for several minutes and it’s extremely irritating and unprofessional and he’s incompetent and the worst thing to happen to this department since—

And then Jon sees Martin shaking out his hands one day with a familiar grimace. He watches the embarrassment settle in when Martin spots him looking, watches the way his shoulders duck in when he turns away, the way his hands go very, very still, and Jon thinks—

Ah.

And Jon thinks—

Hm.

And he turns around and walks away, the task he’s been meaning to ask Martin to take care of slipping entirely out of mind. In its place, a number of things tumble round. Chiefly, the image of Martin, handing over a file. His fingers slightly crooked. Knuckles a bit knobbly, a not-quite-mirror to Jon’s own. Not swollen, that he's ever noticed, but perhaps....

And—other things, now that he's really thinking about it. Broken mugs, dropped tape recorders and files and bits of food, bad penmanship...even the slow turnaround times, Jon suspects—if he bothered to look over those assignments, they probably all involved writing by hand. A half-dozen little annoyances, all tied up with string.

By the time end-of-day rolls around, Jon’s pretty sure that he has, in fact, been a bit of a bastard. And a hypocrite. Among other more unpleasant things.

He resolves to stop complaining about anything that might pertain to Martin’s hands, and then puts the matter out of mind. No sense dwelling.

So he doesn't dwell.

But the resolution takes a bit of effort. A lot, actually. Even knowing what he thinks he does about Martin’s reasons, some habits are just...hard to break. (And anyway Jon is managing just fine, so obviously Martin should also be able t—)

Jon scowls so hard his jaw hurts.

He doubles down complaining about Martin’s other fuckups instead. The presumably-unrelated ones.

His preferred citation method, his dilly-dallying over field research, his frequent tea breaks, his occasional nips upstairs to talk to Rosie on company time, his ten thousand nonsensical mistakes—

Jon complains about those instead, and doesn’t apologize for before.

He isn’t terribly sure Martin even knew about his earlier criticisms, is the thing. It’s not like he ever really said them to his face, and the man’s far too incompetent and too lazy to actually be listening to every single tape Jon records, so unless the others have been telling him what Jon’s been saying on the sly the odds are rather good that Martin doesn’t even know.

And, if this is the case, apologizing could actually create a problem where there isn’t one currently. So it’s better that he doesn’t.

So he doesn’t.

Jon doesn’t bother examining that thought process any further.

One very cold morning, Jon wakes up with curling hands.

He pulls a face and slips carefully out of bed, goes about his morning routine. A few minutes before he’s due to head out the door, his fingers are still being a bit stupid, so he pulls the gloves Martin gave him over the holiday out of a drawer instead, pulls them on. Compression has never done him much good, the seams never worth the minimal relief, but at least they should be warm.

Midway through the morning, he realizes he's forgotten to take them off. Elects to leave them on. They're not scratchy, and at the very least, the extra grip is helping.

That night, when he arrives home, he still doesn’t take them off. Just pulls out the scarf he’s been experimenting with and sets to business.

When he finally puts it away, three hours later, his wrists hurt, but he thinks his fingers might be a little quieter than usual, maybe. He peels off the gloves with a quiet hum.

Still, as time wears on, Jon finds himself knitting less.

He’s getting home later, leaving earlier. There’s simply less time. And even when he has a moment, it’s hard to tear his mind away from the finicky details that don’t add up, and the Leitners, and Prentiss, and the awful feeling of being watched, and everything else. The latest pair of socks (knee-high, muted colors, made from alpaca because some poor unfortunate souls can’t do wool) sit in their bag on the kitchen table for weeks, half-finished. And then months.

Sometimes, the glint of lamplight on the end of a needle catches his eye. He has the vague impression that it's mocking him. He ignores it.

Until he arrives home one evening, tightly wound, and the flash of light is all at once too much. He throws the bag in his closet and storms into the bathroom, ignoring the light switch, and turns on the shower and sits on the floor and scratches his legs through the fabric of his trousers, up and down, up and down, up and down, until he stops wanting to rage at the walls.

Then he goes to bed.

He doesn’t touch the bag for months. It continues to mock him, but he ignores it. (And ignores it, and ignores it, and ignores it, and—)

And then Sasha shows up with a still-bleeding wound and a statement and Jon goes home and fishes the bag out of his closet.

He messes up several times, doesn’t notice until it’s much too late, has to rip back row after row after row and begin again. It’s infuriating and before he knows it it’s been six hours and his hands are protesting like he’s been typing up old handwritten statements all day and he hasn’t but it’s fine. Because he got it right, finally.

He sets the project back in the bag, as satisfied as he is tired (and small wonder, it’s well past two in the morning), and pulls the blanket from the back of the sofa and settles down and closes his eyes then and there.

He’s asleep in minutes.

Jon starts knitting again, in bits and pieces.

He finishes the socks, starts another pair, bouncing back to wool (Romney this time, not as soft as he’d like but not completely terrible). And then another, before he’s finished (with a brand-new stitch thrown in the mix just to liven things up), trading back and forth between the two.

It’s...good. Some days he can’t manage more than a row or two and has to watch something inane on his laptop instead, but that’s not entirely new, and doesn’t happen terribly often, so it’s fine. It's still something to do. A little bit of quiet in the day.

And then there’s Prentiss, and there’s no time anymore.

Or at least, very little, between his recovery and the investigation and his actual job, the last of which eats up nearly all of his time and energy, with the other two fighting for scraps. (The investigation usually wins out, and that’s fine. That’s right, and as it should be.)

And even that aside—it’s always been difficult to knit on days when his whole body hurts, and lately he’s been having more of those. And on top of that, it turns out that it is, actually, in point of fact, rather difficult to do handicrafts with worm bites through his palms.

Wow, what a surprise, he thinks scathingly, as he puts the needles back in his bag. As he tucks the bag in the back of his closet, grumbling under his breath who could have predicted, he finds himself, for the first time in what feels a very long while, trying very hard not to think about Georgie.

His projects fall by the wayside, after that.

It’s fine. For the best, really. There’s so much else to do, and he’s so tired. No sense making it worse, carving out time and energy where there’s none, like—like digging for water when the well’s run dry instead of just drinking from the bottle in his pocket.

Stupid. Senseless.

So he sleeps instead of knitting, when there’s time.

Michael stabs Jon in the wrist. (It feels like through it, but when Jon looks, after, the wound’s only on one side. But that's Michael for you, he supposes. Confusion and no exits.)

Needless to say, the stabbing doesn’t do the joint any favors. Or the hand attached to it. Or the fingers attached to that hand.

Of course, Jon isn’t precisely sure it actually makes them any worse either, strictly-speaking, function-wise—it might do, but he’s never really been the best judge of this sort of thing; past a certain point it’s all just sort of shitty—but it certainly doesn’t help, in any case, and that’s more the point. And also there’s the added pain, which isn’t fun regardless.

And the having to let it rest while the wound heals properly, which is his least favorite part of the whole thing. For a number of reasons. Like having to use his non-dominant hand for everything all day. It's weaker and tires more easily and makes everything even more a hassle and it’s terrible. And on top of that it means he can’t knit at all at the moment. Which is—is—just—

It’s one thing when he’s choosing to not to, and entirely another when he’s physically incapable.

He hates it.

He shoves his knitting bag in the closet three days in.

Martin keeps dragging Jon off to lunch. (Not every day, but more than just occasionally.) Jon keeps letting himself be dragged. (First because Martin’s logic-trapped him into the inability to say no, and then because it’s just become sort of routine to duck out with him once or twice a week.)

It’s the little Chinese place today, and while the food is excellent as ever Jon wishes Martin had chosen something else. The greasy sandwich place, maybe. Or the chip shop. Or literally anywhere that doesn’t use chopsticks, because for the first time since they’ve started this little habit Martin’s hankering for Chinese has lined up with a day Jon’s hands simply won’t cooperate.

And, even more gratingly, it seems Martin notices, because he tries to convince Jon to embarrass himself by asking for a plastic fork he doesn’t actually need, like some kind of, of—uncultured swine. And then when Jon refuses, rather than letting it drop, like any sort of polite normal person, he just. Pulls a plastic fork out of his bag. And sets it on the table by Jon’s plate. And smiles like he’s won.

Jon stares at it for a solid twenty seconds, completely befuddled. Then asks Martin was he just carrying this around and for a split second believes it when Martin says he stole it from the next table over, and is weirdly touched by the gesture until Martin clarifies that he’s joking. At which point he’s a whole mess of things—weirdly disappointed, though he shouldn’t be condoning acts of thievery not undertaken in the line of research, and angry that Martin somehow knew he needed to clarify, and grateful that he did anyway, and still a bit confused—but mostly terribly embarrassed. So he picks up the fork and turns it round in his hands and makes a scathing remark to cover it all up.

And starts eating, and is almost annoyed at how much simpler it is now. And, abruptly, very jealous. (Why hasn’t he ever thought about this? About just. Carrying one round, just in case. A much better solution than just packing up his meal and taking it home, where he’ll inevitably forget to eat it.)

After a few minutes, it occurs to him that Martin probably brought the fork for himself. For his own use. Because he also has rude hands. Which Jon knows, of course, else he wouldn’t have accepted the fork in the first place. (If it had been, say, Tim—)

But he hasn’t thought about the implications of that. The fact that Martin may need it himself. That maybe Jon’s just taken the option from him. That maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so quick to accept. That, possibly—

...No. No, that’s stupid. Martin’s offered, and doesn’t seem to be having much trouble, and Jon’s accepted and thinking about it any further is stupid. So he’s not going to.

A few minutes after that, it occurs to Jon that he’s forgotten to say thank you.

So he says it. Probably rather awkwardly (it...feels awkward, certainly). And goes back to eating.

He feels more than sees Martin nod, and they finish their meal without another word passed between them.

It’s...nice, he thinks. Quiet.

Jon grips the axe so hard it hurts.

His hands buzz when he drops it, when the table’s smashed to bits, and his shoulders protest, but he stops noticing in seconds. The NotSasha is so much louder.

Jon grips the pipe so hard it hurts.

His hands buzz when he lets go of it, and then so do his arms, and his legs, and his chest, and it’s a good thing he’s left his cane here because he needs it, when he excuses himself. When he goes for a cigarette. (God, he needs a cigarette.)

He leans uncomfortably against a wall and fumbles with the lighter. It won’t click. Once, twice, and the third time isn’t the charm but the fourth is and his thumb hurts and his hand hurts and then he’s lit up and there’s that to focus on instead and—

And—

Jon finishes the cigarette, puts it out, pushes away from the wall, grimacing, and heads back inside, ignoring the prickling at his fingertips, planning an apology inside his head.

Jon holds his breath and knocks on Georgie’s door. He exhales, after a few moments, and knocks again, louder.

Footsteps.

He drops his hand to his side, ignores its buzzing.

Jon stands in front of Georgie’s bathroom sink and scrubs his hands for twenty minutes straight.

The water runs clear the entire time, and for a few minutes after that, as he watches it pour over his raw, aching fingers.

The buzzing starts again after a while, louder than before, until it hurts. The hot water only makes it worse, makes it too much, makes him want to bite his fingers so he turns it off and flexes them again and again and again until they wake up and the wanting goes away.

They do wake up, eventually. The buzzing fades.

The wanting doesn’t.

Jon washes Georgie’s dishes and scours her counters and reorganizes her shelves and his fingers and wrists hurt from all the scrubbing and his shoulders hurt from all the reaching and his legs hurt from all the standing but he doesn’t stop.

He starts cleaning the living room instead.

Georgie returns from shopping one day and tosses a bag next to Jon on the couch, tells him it’s for him.

He prods it suspiciously, frowning, half-expecting clothes so he’ll stop stealing hers (because she’s not said much about it but she’s been rolling her eyes in what he’s only somewhat sure is fondness), and half-expecting trail mix so he’ll actually eat something during the day (because she’s been asking most evenings if he’s eaten in that tone that means she knows he hasn’t and lying is pointless, so he hasn’t bothered lying).

When he peeks inside, he does indeed find trail mix, and is preparing to thank her while rolling his eyes to hide the rush of gratitude and fondness when he spots, underneath the pack—

Two skeins of yarn, both the same ocean blue. And a set of simple wooden knitting needles, circular.

Jon’s wry thanks dies on his tongue. He wonders what the yarn is made of, what gauge the needles are, and why in the world…?

He pulls the gifts out of the bag wordlessly, sets them in his lap, and tentatively runs his fingers over one of the skeins. It’s soft. Very soft. He finds himself stroking it, absentminded, without bothering to check either its label or the needles.

A small laugh—Georgie, amused, fond—breaks the quiet bubble, and he wants to scowl up at her through the resulting embarrassment, but he’s a little busy trying to fend off a sudden swell of something in his chest and pricking at his eyes, so he keeps his head ducked instead.

“I wasn’t sure you’d like them,” Georgie says, after a moment, and Jon does look up at that, scandalized. “Wasn’t sure you kept it up.”

Ah. That’s fair. Must’ve been at least two dozen hobbies he tore through while they were together. No reason to expect this one to be any different.

“I,” Jon starts, and has to start over because the words stick in his throat. “I almost didn’t.” He nearly tells her why, like an idiot, like an asshole, then thinks better of it. “But, uh. Then I did. So I, I, I do like them.”

“Can see that,” Georgie says, and and there’s amusement in that look, in the corner of her mouth and the quirk of her brow and the set of her shoulders, and it’s at that precise moment that Jon realizes he’s still stroking the yarn.

He stops abruptly. “Yes, well. It’s—it’s very soft.” No, those aren’t the words he wants. Too defensive, not explanatory enough. “It’s—you chose well.” Still not it. More explanatory, yes, and closer to what he meant, but now that he’s said it, too much like praise, not enough like gratitude. “I, uh. I appreciate it.” Still a bit off. Too formal. (It’s Georgie, though. She’ll understand.) “I….” (It’s Georgie. She deserves the effort.) “Thank you.” (Still missing something, but closer.)

Georgie smiles, and there’s a moment where it softens, and she hesitates, and he can tell she’s about to shift gears and his chest squeezes because the yarn is so much already, anything else and he’s going to lock himself in her bathroom and climb in the shower fully-clothed and turn the damn thing on. (Because it’s that or completely fall apart in front of her and yarn or no, years of distance to put things in perspective or no, he’s still as unwilling to do that as he’s ever been.)

Maybe Georgie realizes, because all she does is smile wider, and shrug, and joke that he should make himself a sweater so he’ll stop stealing hers.

Jon laughs, and tells her maybe he will, and they both pretend they don’t know he’s lying through his teeth. (If she calls him on it, he will point out that she hasn’t bought him nearly enough yarn for a sweater. But he doesn’t expect he’ll need to.)

(And he’s right.)

Jon googles scarf patterns.

It takes a while to fall back into the swing of things. (With knitting and with cohabitation.) His hands are less cooperative than he’s used to. (Georgie is less predictable than he’s used to.)

But he manages. (She doesn’t kick him out.)

Jon goes back to Georgie’s, after Jude Perry, and bandages his hand as quietly and unobtrusively as possible.

He does a terrible job, one-handed. The meeting with Michael has given him a little practice relying on his non-dominant hand, but not nearly enough. Particularly because he’s never needed to bandage a wound quite like this one before.

Georgie spots the bandages later, because they’re impossible to hide even with her sweater sleeves most of the way down his palms. And she gets that look, and she sits him down, and she helps him fix it.

When they’re through, Jon thanks her, and peels away for the living room before she can make him talk about it. He wants to work on the scarf. He wants, he wants—

He can’t. He’s down a hand.

He starts searching for Michael Crew instead, typing clumsily with his left.

It is difficult, on the best of days, to wield a shovel with arthritic hands. It is, it turns out, even more difficult to do so on chilly afternoons when one is rife with burns that haven’t fully healed.

Jon grits his teeth and digs anyway. He doesn’t have any other choice.

Jon returns to work and is dimly grateful that the tapes turn themselves on. It saves him the (admittedly minor) trouble of pressing the button and feeling spikes shoot up his fingers.

Martin mentions he’s re-stocked the first aid kit, added some new things.

Jon is vaguely affronted and vaguely appreciative, but mostly not paying attention.

Jon’s hand heals enough that he feels reasonably justified in picking up the scarf again. (It’s a bit early, but he’s already waited ages. He’s earned a little impatience.)

His left hand hurts about as much as it always has, while working, and his right—about the same, really. It doesn’t hurt worse. It actually hurts a bit less in some places, even, with the nerve damage.

It just also tugs in new and unpleasant ways and is terribly out-of-practice at being used at all, much less for as demanding and repetitive a task as this.

Overall, uncomfortable. Unsettling, even.

He keeps knitting anyway. Works in fits and starts, taking more breaks, though he doesn’t want to, actually actively hates to. And often gets so caught up in his fifteen-minute-break activities that he forgets to return until hours later, which he hates even more.

It’s irritating, the start-and-stop and the resulting lack-of-progress—but better seething than in so much pain he starts debating the merits of just chopping the damn things off at the wrists.

Jon goes to snag pain meds from the first aid kit one particularly terrible day and finds aloe.

It helps, a little.

The meds help more.

The scarf’s about halfway done. Jon’s added a few accent colors and begun to allow himself to think of it as Georgie’s. (It’s a little weird, a little too familiar, but also just familiar enough.)

He’s not actually going to give it to her, of course. (That would be far too weird.) He’s going to shove it deep in a drawer somewhere, claim to have donated it if she asks after its absence, feign ignorance if she finds it and calls him on it, which she won’t, because she hasn’t thus far and why would that change? (So much has, but not this.)

So it’s fine. It’ll be fine. It’s a good, solid plan.

He’s kidnapped with precisely twelve rows to go, the almost-scarf lying on the arm of her couch, visions of blocking the thing on the back of her sofa fading to wisps before his eyes.

Jon thinks about it a lot, as he sits there. Mentally tweaks the pattern.

Not terribly great, as distractions go, but passable.

Jon puts the scarf away when he returns. Buries it not in a drawer but a closet, still twelve rows from done.

(It’s for the best, he thinks, as he bounces from place to place on Institute business. There’s no time for it anymore.)

Jon thinks he’s having a flare, at first, when he starts feeling weak while he’s away.

It isn’t until he finishes reading the statement and the headache and the exhaustion and the various other pains all fade away that he realizes he’s thought wrong.

Jon wakes up feeling awful and drags himself to the Archives to read a statement.

It doesn’t help.

Or. It does, kind of? In that the funny pulling goes away, and he’s marginally less tired.

But he’s still weary and chilled and can’t stop thinking of Michael and Helen every time he moves or touches anything because there are sharp stones where his hand-bones should be, and the statement hasn’t lessened any of that. Not a single bit.

Flare, then, he thinks. Great.

Jon checks the first aid kit for pain meds and finds the aloe again.

He stares at it for a moment and then closes the box with the acetaminophen still inside and puts it away.

Burning Gerry’s page is hard.

Clicking the lighter on is trickier than it has been since—well, since Leitner. And actually setting flame to page is even moreso.

When it’s entirely ashes, Jon has to lie down.

Jon wakes from his coma very weak and very stiff.

The statement helps quite a bit. He feels much better, almost good as new.

But his throat is still awfully dry, and the stiffness in his hands lingers, radiates all the way up to his wrists.

Tea, he thinks, might help with both. A nice mug, faintly steaming.

But Baisra just brings the water he’s asked for.

And it’s. He appreciates it, it’s kind of her to fetch anything for him at all, she’s under absolutely no obligation to do so. And it's refreshing enough.

It just. Also very cold.

He drinks it anyway.

Jon grips the scalpel tighter. It won’t do to lose hold. He needs to get this right, for Melanie’s sake.

The knife enters Jon’s finger, and it exits, and nothing happens except a lot of pain and a bit of blood and wounds that disappear as soon as the knife’s gone.

Which. It figures, really.

All those years swearing up and down he’d like to just cut the damn things clean off, and the one time—he can’t help the soundless half-laugh—the one time he actually tries—

Jared Hopworth takes two of Jon’s ribs.

A garbage deal, Basira says, in more colorful words that he barely registers.

But really, Jon thinks dazedly. That’s. When you think about it. That’s two fewer to bitch at him. Four favors in total, for a couple measly ribs. Clearly he's got the better end of things.

...Or perhaps not. Maybe there’s complications, long-term?

Hard to say. There’s not really a manual for it, not really a blog he can search up online, with lists of things you can do if the servant of an eldritch flesh-god rips some of your bones from your body without leaving behind so much as a scar. No little old ladies in supermarkets to offer unsolicited advice on how to build up strength in your organs or, or whatever.

Doesn’t really matter, though, in any case. It’s not as though he’ll be dealing with any fallout.

Daisy’s hand is callused in his, dotted with scars.

It squeezes, from time to time. Sometimes sharp, sometimes soft.The rest of the time it’s just—there.

It hurts, after a while, but so does everything else. At least this is—

Daisy squeezes again, sharp. Jon squeezes back with as much force as he can muster.

At least this….

Jon hurts, after the coffin. His hands are encrusted with dirt, aching, and very empty.

Washing them will help, he thinks, so he scrubs them in hot water until they’re raw, and doesn’t think about lotion or mold in drains. By the time the water runs clear, it’s ice cold. He turns off the tap with shaking fingers and wonders, vaguely, if Daisy likes tea.

Jon hasn’t bothered much with hiding his various workarounds in what feels like forever—but is, he thinks, really only since Jude Perry, and only properly since he woke up from the coma—but in the days after the coffin he stops entirely. (It’s a vaguely conscious decision.)

They’ve seen him in various states of indignity for years now, the lot of them, and now they’ve seen him emerge from a coffin absolutely caked in mud and dust, missing two ribs, clothes ragged and torn, out of breath, clinging tight to the hand of a woman who has more than once professed the extremely sincere desire to murder him in cold blood.

Seems a bit stupid to pretend, at this point, even just occasionally, that he’s not the sort of person who’d open a water bottle with his teeth, or stab a bag of crisps with a fork, or wring his hands like an overly worrisome sidekick in an overly dramatic novel. (Seems a bit stupid, when he was expecting—when—)

So he just doesn’t, anymore. With any of it.

Maybe it should be sort of freeing. (Lord knows the pretense was uncomfortable at times and exhausting others. Letting it go should be a relief.)

It isn’t.

It’s not anything.

Jon’s hands ache fiercely on the way to Ny-Ålesund. Something about the cold, he thinks, or the breeze, or all the moisture in the air.

(Or maybe the way he can’t seem to stop twisting his fingers, cracking his knuckles, keeping the damn things in constant motion. Hard to say.)

The statements—from Floyd and then Manuela—slake his hunger, but as ever do nothing for the pain.

Jon is more restless than he knows how to cope with, after Annabelle Cane. He shakes out his hands a lot, when he’s alone or with Daisy or distracted, but it does nothing to burn off the energy. Just makes his wrists hurt, after a while.

Three days after Annabelle Cane’s statement, Jon goes to the store (with Daisy in tow, because he’s not allowed to wander off alone and no one else will go with him and he doesn’t particularly want Melanie or Basira there anyway) and looks at yarn.

He doesn’t dither over options as long as he wants, because the store is crowded and Daisy is watching, but he still manages to find seven skeins and a three-pack of circular needles he’s decently satisfied with, and a small circular loom, on a whim, so that’s fine.

He pays, and they leave, and Daisy doesn’t comment until they’re back in the Archives, in his office, and she’s sitting on the floor in the middle of the room.

“So,” she says, and he braces himself.

(Yes, of course, here it is, the teasing, the grandma jokes—)

“What are you going to make?”

“Uh.” Jon pulls a skein from the bag, to buy time, and frowns. “I don’t know yet.”

Daisy nods, like that makes perfect sense, and says nothing further.

Jon casts on for a pair of socks on autopilot, and when he realizes this he stares down at the work in his hands, the yarn pulled not-quite-taut, ready to shape into another loop to add to the greater work, and though the string is blue-and-brown and not white still he thinks, sharply, of spider-silk.

And puts the project down and walks away.

He returns to it two days later. He tweaks the pattern he’s chosen, and then tweaks it again and tells himself that makes a difference. (Then tells himself he’s being stupid, there’s probably no difference to make in the first place, it’s probably just a goddamn pair of socks.)

And sets to work without tweaking it a third time, casting on methodically and resolutely ignoring the twin impressions of web and puppet strings.

Jon starts a few other projects soon after and begins to cycle through them. It’s...familiar. Almost like the old days, bouncing between two vastly different projects to keep the tedium at bay.

Almost.

He does, after all, have rather more than two projects running at any given moment. At the outset, there’s a pair of gloves, a sweater, and a shawl. Then he adds another pair of socks to the lineup. (Just in case.)

Jon knits a lot, in empty hours between written statements and research. Not constantly, not by any means, but more frequently than he’s done in—ever, maybe. And it’s.

Well, it’s not probably not his best idea. There’s exercise and there’s overuse and while Jon’s crossed the line between the two a thousand times before, this is sort of more. Plowing right through it, and then fleeing onward as though from the scene of a crime.

But knitting keeps him busy. Keeps him still.

So he keeps doing it.

(And when he can’t, he just—sleeps, usually. And when he can’t do that, he listens to The Archers, or an old statement, or just a song. Anything, so long as he’s occupied.)

Jon finishes the socks in no time at all, and it’s….

Well, they’re finished.

He sets them aside neatly, selects another skein (different fiber, different color), fishes the end from its middle, and begins to cast on for another pair of socks. Different size, different pattern (though still one he’s already made, because he can’t be bothered to search up a new one, and it’s not as though it matters).

He knits two rows and then sets them aside in favor of the gloves. (Which he promptly trades after only twenty minutes for the sweater.)

He catches Melanie, midway through the afternoon, and asks a favor.

She scowls at him, and then pauses for a very long moment before asking what the favor is.

He asks if she can drop something off for him, and she wants to know what it is, and he’s maybe a little cagier than he needs to be (just something he’s been working on) and she narrows her eyes and raises her voice and Jon’s pulse skyrockets and he drops pretenses and tells her he’s recently taken up knitting (omits the word again because she’ll only laugh) as a way to pass the time and has made some socks and would like to donate them.

He can tell from the way Melanie goes very still that there’s no need to explain why he won’t simply go himself, with an escort. No need to share the statistics running through his head, the likelihood that if he shows up in person—

So instead he tells her that it’s fine and he can ask someone else (he can’t; Daisy should steer clear for similar reasons to himself, and Basira is...busy)—or just mail them, actually, or—

She shakes her head and he shuts up.

She’ll take them, she says. There’s a place between here and her therapist’s office, so it’s on her way. Might as well.

And she tells them to give them to her tomorrow and walks away before he can even agree, much less thank her.

Jon switches to the scarf the following evening, for a few rows, and then goes back to the socks.

Daisy is there a lot, when he’s knitting.

Sometimes he’s got The Archers on. Sometimes music. Sometimes just silence.

It’s nice.

Sometimes, at night, when everyone else is sleeping and Jon’s busy doing anything but, he bounces between research and filing and vague, haphazard bits of tidying.

Other times, he grabs his spare knitting bag and bounces between the gloves and the sweater and whatever other small project he’s most recently added. A few rows here, a few rows there, some pausing, some shaking out his hands, some unraveling, some redoing.

And so on, over and over, until he can’t, anymore, at which point he’s generally tired enough to crash, if he’s lucky.

(And when he isn’t—well. There’s always The Archers.)

One day, fairly early on, when it’s just the two of them—

Daisy asks if he’ll teach her to knit.

He’s—terribly surprised, but he nods, and smiles, and agrees. (And, as he adjusts to the idea of someone else actually being interested—the surprise melts away. The picture of Daisy he’s got in his head is still terribly patchwork, there’s a lot of fuzzy spaces and guessing, but this...this makes sense, within it. Especially, he thinks, given the circumstances.)

He warns her, after a moment, that he’s not sure he’ll be a terribly good teacher.

She reassures him that that’s fine, and offers a warning of her own: she’s not sure she’ll enjoy it much.

He reassures her that that’s perfectly fine, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But he does have a couple new skeins, if she wants to try a scarf…?

She does want.

And so they begin.

Jon explains the basics as best he can, and Daisy listens, and watches, and copies.

And takes to the whole thing far more than either of them expect.

She’s not quite as enthusiastic as Jon is, of course, and not nearly as enthusiastic as he used to be, back when he first began, and she’s not got much in the way of natural talent, to put it bluntly—

But she doesn’t hate it. Even genuinely enjoys the process, some. And likes passing out her terrible, terrible creations: the first scarf for Basira, another, less shitty scarf for Melanie, and a truly awful hat for Jon, which he wears almost daily. (It’s one of his favorite articles of clothing, second only to the very old and very soft sweater vest, which wins out only because he’s owned it longer.)

After a while, Daisy asks if Jon can make her something too. Sort of a trade.

Jon thinks of the soft brown sweater sitting half-finished at the bottom of his spare knitting bag. (Destined, he’s thought, for a drawer in his desk. Or maybe a donation bin somewhere. Or the Institute lost-and-found, at absolute worst. And it may end up there yet, but—)

Jon nods.

He considers starting the sweater over, or making her something entirely new, something smaller, faster—but decides against it for the same two reasons he started making it in the first place: because she always looks so cold, and because he has so much time on his hands.

It doesn’t take him very long to finish it, all things considered, even with the intricate cablework. He really does have a lot of time on his hands. (Too much, really. But that’s what the knitting is for.)

It does take him a while to hand it over, though. He doesn’t tell her it’s done for over a week, and then when he lets it slip hastens to explain he hasn’t blocked it yet, and then puts off blocking it, makes excuses about missing the right materials, not enough pins, hasn’t made something this big since picking the hobby up again—

But eventually he gets over himself and gets it done and gives it to her.

She thanks him, runs her fingers over the stitches, the cables, the collar, the pockets. Puts it on with a faint smile, tucks her hands in.

“You like it?” he asks, before he can stop himself, twisting his hands behind his back, crossing them over and over and over each other, ignoring their protests.

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s warm.”

Jon’s chest does something funny at that, and his eyes feel stupid-hot, and he twists his fingers a little sharper to make them stop. Then nods. “I, uh. Good. I’m glad,” he says, and registers a beat later that it’s more stilted than he meant it to be.

Daisy gets a—look, of some kind, for a second, and for a horrible moment Jon thinks she’s going to ask him about whatever stupid look is on his face—

But all she does is pluck at her sweater, tap the cables. “These mean anything special?”

Jon blinks in surprise. And then again, a few more times, because something about that question makes his eyes sting—embarrassment, probably, about the fact that the answer is unfortunately yes, and, and a little more, maybe, about having apparently rambled so much about patterns that she even knows to ask this question and—

Jon clears his throat. “Um, er. Well. Yes, actually. Sorry, uh.”

“Care to share with the class?”

“Sorry,” he says again. “Yes, uh. Well? That one there is a variation on….”

Daisy wears the sweater the entire rest of the day, and off and on for the next week after that. And after that. And after that. And.

She wears it a lot, actually. Far more than he expects.

He thinks maybe he feels something about that. It’s familiar, and unfamiliar, and altogether too large to bother with, so he shoves it away.

And starts on a new project. (A hat, this time.)

Jon sets down the scarf—nearly finished, now, with delicate stitchwork he’s almost proud of, and it’s almost a shame it’s destined to gather dust with his rib in the lowermost drawer of his desk—and wrings his hands, scowling.

Daisy stands, one hand braced against the wall, and he’s vaguely aware of her stretching but more focused on his bastard knuckles.

A bit more wringing, a lot more scowling, and then he’s back to the scarf. And then putting it away in favor of the latest pair of socks (he’s long since lost count).

He’s in the middle of counting stitches and contemplating the relative merits of paying for some really nice cashmere with Institute funds when a small rattling clack makes him flinch and drop his needles. He curses, looks up, and there’s a bottle of painkillers on his desk, and Daisy, clearly having just set them there completely unnecessarily loudly.

“For you,” she says, also unnecessarily loudly.

“...Thank you,” he says, and picks them up and tries not to notice that they’re the only brand that’s been doing anything for him lately, or that the safety lid’s already been set so the arrows line up. (He notices anyway. It’s impossible not to, obvious as it is, routine as it’s become.)

“Mm,” she says, and goes to sit back down.

Jon pops the lid open with a grimace, shakes out two pills, and then grabs his mug and downs them both with a swig of tap water. (He’s given up making tea. It’s a lot of effort for something that inevitably goes cold before he remembers it exists, and never tastes right anyway. This is just—easier. Not as nice, he thinks vaguely, but. Easier.)

He goes back to knitting.

Jon finds himself thinking of tea again, the next time she suggests painkillers. (Actually just tells him, unprompted and without looking up from her phone, that there’s some in his top drawer.)

She never brings him any, even when she sets painkillers down loud enough to rattle his brain. Water, sometimes, if he’s forgotten to keep any to hand (and he often has). But never tea.

And that’s….

Tea would be rather nice.

...No. That’s not quite it, isn’t it? Certainly it’s true, he does like the idea of it—but he doesn’t want her to bring him any. (It wouldn’t be right.)

No, it’s. It’s….

Jon thinks about tea a lot, after that.

To be fair, he’s sort of thought about it a lot in general, since the hospital. But he dwells on it a bit more now, and he thinks perhaps...perhaps he sees a pattern.

Rather obvious, in hindsight. The timing of it all.

…Actually. He wonders if perhaps there were actual timers involved, some of the time? (Then stops wondering. He doesn’t want to Know.)

It would, he thinks, before he shuts down the line of thought altogether, certainly explain the obnoxious predictability of all those damned tea breaks.

After hearing Eric Delano’s statement, after talking to Martin, after blinding himself is thoroughly off-the-table, Jon has time to think. And he does, about a lot of things.

One of them (just one) is muscle memory—how readily knitting might have translated, if circumstances were different.

Jon thinks, occasionally, that it really does figure that becoming an avatar of the Beholding has given him supernatural powers and supernatural healing and possibly the inability to die a mortal death, but has done absolutely fuckall for the pain.

Which figures, really. The Beholding’s keeping him alive, keeping all his limbs attached, but it can’t be bothered to do anything to make the experience more pleasant. Because of course not.

Like he says: it figures.

Jon doesn’t think on it terribly much, after that.

It’s annoying, it’s exhausting, that it’s let him keep this, much as it is for all the emotions it’s deigned to let him drown in—but there are more pressing things.

(There are always more pressing things.)

It’s freezing, in the fog. Jon’s hands ache with it, and his hips, and his knees.

He ignores all three and keeps moving, keeps following the thread.

(There are more pressing things.)

There is no time to gather much in the way of supplies before they run, after the Lonely. They leave behind a lot: various toiletries, painkillers, spare trousers. Statements. Martin’s notebooks. A rib, a scarf, and a shawl, all tucked in the same drawer, the latter two neatly blocked and folded flat. A pair of fingerless gloves, beneath them all, never finished.

Jon itches to turn back round and run straight back to the Archives and pull the gloves out and take them with—

But he doesn’t. (There are, as ever—)

The train ride stretches impossibly long and Jon’s knees ache from all the sitting. He wishes he had something to work on—the gloves, ideally, but even socks would do.

He squeezes Martin’s hand at odd intervals instead. (There are—)

The safehouse feels like a bubble. Like a pause button.

No, that’s not right.

The safehouse is like—they’ve hit play, sure, but at seventy-five percent speed. There are things to do, yes, and they are moving forward as ever, inexorably—but there is time, now. A little extra time.

Jon spends most of it trying to find the right balance between too close to and too far from Martin’s side (it varies, day to day and hour to hour), and learning how Martin takes his tea (an impossible task, it seems, no matter how carefully Jon tries to replicate the process he sees every morning), and learning how Martin sleeps (fitfully, most of the time, often on his front, and generally with one arm sprawled over Jon’s shoulders).

He spends a lot of it cleaning the little cabin, and weeding what might someday soon be a garden, and discussing the relative merits of cows versus sheep.

He spends some of it in the fields, and on old dirt roads, and in the little local shop, occasionally bumping shoulders with Martin, without looking. Occasionally being bumped back, which is—so surprising and so nice it’s a struggle not to laugh.

And he spends a bit of it knitting. (Because there’s a small selection of yarn in that little local shop, and Martin sees him staring and tells him to pick something out and won’t take no for an answer, no matter how much Jon mumbles about saving their limited funds, and Jon crumbles rapidly and they go home with two skeins of a worsted merino-and-alpaca blend under the tomatoes.)

But—

It’s only a bit, is the thing. A few hours a week, at most. Sitting there on the sofa beside Martin, as they talk, or as Martin reads and Jon knits idly.

Just idly.

Just because.

He starts with a small scarf, because they’re easy and Martin hasn’t stopped looking cold since they stepped out of the Lonely.

He’s terribly impatient, wants to just—just finish the damn thing and give it to him already. Wants to throw at it him the next time he goes out the door, or maybe help him put it on (which is of course thoroughly unnecessary as Martin is perfectly capable of doing so himself—but the idea keeps drifting through Jon’s mind anyway, stupidly, feeling vaguely similar in concept to helping fix Georgie’s tie, the one time they went somewhere in fancy dress, though he’s not sure it’s...entirely the same, or that either would appreciate the comparison, but—whatever).

The point is he wants to hurry up and finish and cast off and find some pins to block it with and get it dry and give it to Martin already because he’s still chilled, all the time, and sometimes when he’s very quiet his breath fogs over even though Jon’s doesn’t, and—

Martin could use it, is the point. So Jon wants to knit the whole thing at top speed, be done, and hand it over, and move on.

But.

He doesn’t, though. (Something in it feels cruel, and he examines that very seriously the first night, because, historically, ignoring feelings like those has not gone well, and particularly not in Martin’s case. But he comes to the conclusion, at the end of that examination, that it’s probably not too horribly cruel to take his time with a gift Martin has not specifically requested. Especially not if he leans against Martin to provide warmth while he works. So—)

Jon takes his time.

He begins by lighting a fire in the fireplace, and then retreating to the couch and pulling out the jewel-toned skein, with its deep reds and rich purples interspersed with occasional splashes of blue and green and gold, and turning it over in his hands for several moments, considering.

Then he pulls the loose end from the middle and begins winding it into a ball. The motions of it are odd, tug funny at his shoulders, and that jars him. The awkwardness, the unfamiliarity of this thing he has done so many dozens of times before (though not, he registers, in quite some time; it’s seemed too impractical, not worth the hassle).

But he finds a rhythm, before too terribly long, and before he knows it the skein is gone and there’s a decent-sized ball in its place.

As he stares at his handiwork, it occurs to him that the last time he held an actual ball of yarn was in Georgie’s flat. When he tried to make her that scarf, all that time ago.

He never finished, he remembers fuzzily. Couldn’t look at it, after. Put it away.

He wonders what happened to it. If she ever found it. If she threw it out, or if it’s still—still there. Unfinished.

And then stops wondering, because he doesn’t want to Know, and then thinks sharply, instead, about the bottom drawer in his desk, and its contents, because not wanting to Know, being afraid of the answer—it feels uncomfortably like an invitation. So. Bottom drawer, his rib, his projects, both finished and not. (What will the police think, he wonders, considerably nearer to the halfway point between morbid curiosity and amusement than he is to the worry he knows should probably be in there. What will their faces look like, if and when they find the rib? What conclusions will they draw, after opening that drawer? Or have they already?)

Jon thinks about the top drawer of his desk, then, unbidden. The bottle of painkillers in it. Is—?

Jon begins casting on.

Double-counts the stitches, then, and then at last begins to knit.

It’s rapidfire, at first, as he tries not to not-think, and realizes it’s quiet, and tries even harder—and then pauses to lean sideways and bump into Martin, and then back away again.

He knits slower, after that. Not at a snail’s pace, of course, because he’s no desire to drive himself completely round the bend, but. Still slower than he has in—not months. Well over a year, now, actually.

And—more methodically, too.

And a new rhythm develops.

It’s...nice.

He puts the scarf away after a few dozen rows, and that’s—well, it feels awful, actually, twisting and, and. Things.

But he leans on Martin for a few moments, after, and that’s. Well, that’s quite nice.

Jon takes more breaks, in the scattered hours he spends working on the scarf.

Not just putting the whole thing away after ten or twenty rows, but setting it down for a moment. Sometimes stretches his legs with a short wander round the living room (sometimes because he’s restless, others in an attempt to offset some of the stiffness). Stretching his hands, putting the old exercises to use. Sometimes just rests them.

And sometimes he just...rests.

Leans sideways against Martin for more than just a moment or two. Closes his eyes. Listens to him breathe, lets his mind wander.

Sometimes he falls asleep like that.

Sometimes he doesn’t, and stirs after five minutes, or ten, or twenty, and goes back to knitting for a little while. Slow and steady. Before stopping again, either for the night or just for a bit.

Not because he’s tired or bored, particularly, but just because he can.

He finds himself wondering at that more often than he’d care to admit. The fact that he can.

Martin’s on a similar wavelength, Jon knows, because he starts writing poetry again. (In fits and starts, yes—but all the same. All the same.)

The first time Martin picks up the little notebook, the first day in the safehouse, he looks terribly blank. And he explains, in a blank voice that doesn’t quite manage to be embarrassed, that he packed this emergency bag well over a year ago, when he still spent a good ten minutes out of every morning and every evening checking his own flesh for worms. He’d forgotten it was even in there, he says, and he sets it back down.

The second time Martin picks up the notebook, he leafs through it, and sets it back down.

The third time, he picks up a pen as well, holds it poised over the page for a long time, and then sets both back down.

The fourth, it’s the same thing.

The fifth, though—

The fifth he sets pen to paper. He crosses out more than half of what he writes, with lines so savage Jon wonders (while pretending not to watch over the top of his book) if he’s actually scored a line straight through the page—but he does write.

Not terribly much, though, from what little Jon can see. It seems like mostly he’s just. Gripping his pen very tightly, frowning a lot, and occasionally scribbling something down. And then usually crossing it out.

Occasionally, in the midst of this process—which lasts well over an hour—Martin sets his pen down and wrings his hands, or cracks his knuckles, or does the little one-handed shake Jon remembers so clearly. (There’s a small pang of guilt. Jon remembers, vaguely, when Martin first dropped from two hands to one. Remembers it was after Martin saw him seeing. So it’s probably his fault. He should probably say something. Apologize. Probably. But not now. Martin is busy right now. This is important. Martin is—)

Wringing his hands again, with a very small crease between his eyebrows that Jon wants, very stupidly, to smooth away with his thumb.

Instead, he sets his book down quietly, wanders off to the kitchen, and proceeds to make a mug of very terrible tea.

It’s finished and (luckily) still steaming when Martin finally closes the notebook, so Jon brings the tea over quietly, sets it beside him, bumps his shoulder gently, and slips away again.

Martin says nothing, save a small, distracted thanks, and when Jon ducks back in a few minutes later, his chest tied in knots, Martin is holding the mug, staring off into space, and doesn’t appear to have had a single sip.

Jon gets his attention as gently as he knows how, and Martin starts a bit, smiles, and appears to notice the mug properly for the first time. He raises his eyebrows, takes a sip, and pretends very valiantly to be something other than disgusted.

He’s very obviously fucked up the tea again somehow. But the knots in his chest ease anyway, like Martin’s gone and cut the binds.

Jon will get the brewing right eventually. For now, it is enough that Martin looks present again. (And that, when he sets the mug down after a second, and indeed a third very polite and mildly pained sip, he doesn’t immediately wring his hands again.)

(At least, Jon hopes it’s enough.)

(He hopes.)

A little later, there’s a conversation.

Jon’s just talking, just filling up the silence, because that’s what he does, now, because he can (because when he doesn’t sometimes they both go a bit gray, Martin in the Lonely way and himself just because it’s a bit hard, sometimes, to forget whose house they’re staying in), and he makes an offhanded complaint about the cooling weather, and a less-complaint-more-observation about its effects on Martin’s joints, and definitely-complaint about its effects on his own—

And Martin goes a bit weird. Seems—confused?

And Jon can’t fathom why until abruptly—he can. Not because the Eye’s told him—it is, for reasons Jon doesn’t particularly care to fathom, particularly keen that he know the precise measurements of the average grand piano—but because a dozen things he knows about Martin or otherwise remembers seeing him do or say all click together at once and. Oh.

Martin doesn’t actually know. About—any of it, really. Or. He does, obviously, but he doesn’t know what it means.

...Of course he doesn’t, Jon thinks. Of course. (He is, for a very jagged three seconds, furious at Martin’s mother and even more furious at himself.)

He takes a breath and shoves that in the back of his head and pulls forward his presentation voice. (Unused since his interview for the Institute.)

And he gives Martin a series of observations and possible explanations, as simply-put as he can. They still wind up a little more academic than he intends and a lot more detached than is strictly necessary or strictly advisable, but it’s all he can manage on such short notice, so it’ll have to be enough.

It’s not enough.

Martin interrupts, and he doesn’t shout but he does snap, and he clutches the hem of his sweater in a way that makes Jon think he’s trying very hard not to outright form fists, and Jon tries to apologize, explain himself better, but Martin’s having none of it and he snaps again and then leaves the room.

They don’t talk for a bit, after that.

A day passes. They exchange a handful of words. When Jon tries to apologize, Martin shuts him down and changes the subject.

Two days pass with more of the same. Coexisting, but talking considerably less, and never with any real depth.

Jon pretends it’s okay.

Because it should be. Because sometimes people need space. Jon knows that, has given it to him before, and can do it again. (It doesn’t matter what happened last time, because what happened last time ultimately led to them being here in this place away from things, so actually it turned out fine, actually, and therefore Jon can do this. Really. Honestly.)

It’s okay. (Martin will be okay. And if he isn’t—)

(He will be.)

They talk again, properly, on the fourth day.

And Jon is. Less academic about things, less detached, by sheer force of will. Because that, he thinks, is probably where he went wrong before.

So he starts by apologizing for that. (Though he’s careful to make it clear that he’s not saying he isn’t still concerned—just wrong in how he expressed it.)

Martin nods at that.

Jon mentally crosses his fingers and then segues into also apologizing for the way he behaved in the Archives those first few months. For the comments about Martin’s handwriting and clumsiness and all the rest of it. (He still isn’t sure it’s a good idea, strictly speaking, but it’s—Christ, apparently it’s necessary, given all the, the givens.) He admits that he really should’ve known better, and really should’ve said something sooner.

Martin shrugs. Jon has no idea if that’s good or bad. And no idea how to proceed, without any sort of feedback. (He’s got plans for what to say if Martin tell him it’s fine, and what to say if Martin tells him to fuck off, but nothing for if Martin just shrugs at him.)

He flounders for a moment and then just—repeats what he said before, about having gone about things wrong. Asks if he can try again. (Wills himself to accept a no.)

But Martin says yes. (He qualifies it, says he’s not promising to agree. But he'll listen.)

So Jon offers some stories from uni. Not terribly many, and not in terribly much detail, because he doesn’t want to draw this out or, or make it about himself—but he doesn’t know any other way to say what Martin seems to need to hear. (Or any other way to say what he means.)

So he just. Does his best to be brief about it. Keep the stories short, sparse, heavy on humor. Steer clear of too many direct parallels.

He isn’t sure how well it works, but Martin at least seems to be listening, and somewhat less angry this time, and that’s something.

He does seem tired, though, when he thanks Jon for the clarification and concern, and as they tentatively confirm that they’re okay. Seems like maybe he’s...absorbing, still.

So Jon lets it drop. And lets it stay dropped. (Martin will bring it up again, if he wants to. And if he doesn’t—well. Fair enough, Jon supposes.)

For upwards of an hour, that night, Jon lies awake and wonders if he should stop making tea after Martin writes. If Martin will be angry about it, maybe.

He decides not to. If it bothers Martin, he can say so. Or just...stop accepting the tea. Pretty clear message there. No conflict required.

Martin does not stop accepting the tea.

But he does, after a while, start getting a softer smile as he takes it. Start letting his fingers brush against Jon’s as he does so.

It’s...nice.

Even if Martin does continue to fail to fully hide the face he makes with each sip. Every time.

(Jon still has yet to get the tea right.)

He keeps trying, though.

After after writing sessions, and cold morning walks, and hours spent in the will-be garden, and nights when Martin slips out of the bedroom and scrubs the bathroom top to bottom.

Jon ducks into the kitchen, again and again, and tries to make tea that doesn’t taste like dishwater.

When he manages, he thinks. Martin will make a face then, too. Surprised, appreciative. Soft.

He’s looking forward to it.

Jon finishes the scarf after two weeks and three days, and maybe seven hours in total.

After he casts off, he blocks it, using the sink and some towels and the pins he bought last week and the sofa, requisitioned for the night.

And then in the morning when it’s dry and set and properly finished he frees up the sofa and puts away the pins and, after a long, long moment, folds up the scarf and puts that away too.

Jon wrestles with himself over the next twenty-four hours. He can’t decide how to give Martin the scarf, what to say as he hands it over.

He’s—being very stupid, of course.The best way to do it is to do it casually, give it to him like it’s nothing, because it is, really, and say—say it’s for him, if he wants it? Say he hopes he likes it?

Those seem like reasonable things to say. It’s just. They also seem stupid. And maybe emotionally manipulative. And.

And.

And it was stupid to make him anything at all, he’s realizing now, he hasn’t even asked, he should have asked, and. Maybe Martin will feel obligated, now? Because he’s just sat there and watched Jon work on this for two weeks, because Jon decided to be stupid and take it slow, and if he’d just gone at the usual pace, maybe worked some of the times he kept waking up in the middle of the night, he could’ve been done in two days and then it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal and—

Maybe Jon just shouldn’t offer it to him at all.

...No, he thinks, before turning in that night. No, that really is very stupid. There’s—there’s no harm in offering. He should just—hand it to him.

Tomorrow. In the morning. Probably with a smile.

Jon doesn’t hand him the scarf in the morning. But he does leave it on Martin’s pillow midway through the day, folded up neatly, with a note on top that just reads for you in blocky capitals. And then flees to the kitchen to get an early start on dinner.

He’s been thinking pasta. Maybe bread rolls, to go with. And yes, sure, maybe they bought some in a little pack last week, but those taste like plastic and they also bought flour (for Martin to make cookies with, yes, but there’s enough to go round) and they already had eggs and butter and milk and sugar and Jon’s pretty sure they have salt somewhere, probably, so—

Jon pulls everything out of the cabinets and sets it haphazardly on the counter, and, okay, okay, so they don’t have measuring cups, but that’s fine, surely, he’s done this enough (he hasn’t done this in years), surely he can just eyeball it, if—yes. Yes, he can just—

He starts lining everything up, shoving the nagging sense of not right to the back of his head where it belongs.

He can do this. It’s—it’ll be fine. He just has to—

“Goddammit.”

“What’s wrong?”

Jon jumps, a little, and ducks his shoulders guiltily, very aware of the (admittedly organized) mess he’s made of the kitchen for apparently no real reason. “Nothing,” he says, without looking up, and starts to put everything away again.

“Jon.”

“Noth—” The word dies on his tongue as he glances up, because.

Martin’s got a worried sort of look on his face, and he’s fiddling with the end of his scarf. Which he’s wearing. Already. He’s wearing the scarf.

Jon feels his face heat up and curses himself for not having started with the pasta, because if he’d been leaning over the stove for the last however-long he might at least have an excuse for that. As it stands—

“You, um. You look nice,” he says, and wants to slam his head on the counter, because that was embarrassing, and it probably sounds a little vain, and Jon has never been. Good at this. (Flirting or complimenting people wearing things he’s made them. Which is why previously he’s been sparse on the former and completely avoided the latter.) “And, and it really is nothing. I just, um. I was going to—I was thinking about baking? But, uh. I just realized we don’t have any, any yeast, so.” He gestures expansively. “Pointless. Clearing up.”

“Oh. Right,” Martin says, and—is he blushing?

...He is. It’s.

Jon can’t cope with that, on top of the scarf, so he turns round and puts away the milk. And then the butter. And then—

“Um. Jon?”

“Yes?” Jon looks up again.

Martin is fidgeting more with the end of the scarf, but no longer blushing. “We could just...go to the shop again. Buy some yeast.” A pause. “If. If you wanted, I mean. I wouldn’t mind.”

“...Let me get my coat.”

They hold hands on the way back from the shop. Martin’s are very cold, and Jon knows, as he runs a thumb over Martin’s freezing red knuckles, that he’s found his next project.

Martin sheds his coat when they get back inside, but he keeps his sweater on, and his scarf.

He sits nearby, resting his head on his arms, as Jon begins preparing the dough. He talks, some, laughs and offers responses to Jon’s inane chatter during the kneading process, but by the time the dough’s ready to sit there a while he’s gone mostly quiet.

Jon keeps talking as he cleans up the space, starts gathering materials for the other parts of dinner (incredibly prematurely, but better to be ready ahead of time). He’s not really sure what else to do, and not entirely sure that Martin will tell him to shut up if he’s talking too much, and not entirely sure he actually can shut up, at this point (though he’ll certainly try if asked, and maybe go outside to mutter at the returning weeds in the will-be garden).

After a while, he runs out of even mindless things to say, but still the quiet fits awkwardly, too loose round his shoulders, and so he settles into humming.

When the dough is ready, he makes short work of shaping the rolls and tucking them in the little oven and going to wash his unbearably sticky hands, still humming.

“—y, Jon?”

“Hm?” He shuts off the sink with an elbow, turns around.

Martin’s taken off his scarf at last, and is holding it, rubbing a thumb across one edge. “Thank you,” he says.

So you like it, then? Jon wants to ask immediately, and so it was okay, then? But. He holds his breath instead, for one second, two. And then says, “Of course.”

“I mean it. It’s—” Martin frees one hand from his scarf long enough to run it through his hair. “I know it took, it was—” He runs his hand through his hair again, then buries it in the scarf. “Just...thanks.”

“Of course,” Jon says, softer. He doesn’t understand what’s going on here, what Martin’s getting at, but he can tell it’s something, and it matters. And that’s the important bit.

“It’s lovely,” Martin says, and even though it’s the exact same topic it feels like changing the subject, somehow. That’s probably important, too, so Jon files it away to examine later.

“Of course it is,” Jon says, imbuing his voice with as much arrogance as he can muster. “I made it.” He just barely stops himself from adding for you, because that would be—too much. And would also imply that Jon has, for other people, made ugly things. (He very much has, but Martin doesn’t need to know that—at least not at present. Stories for later, perhaps.)

Martin laughs, and he says something, but Jon doesn’t quite catch it. He’s too busy trying not to shake his hands like mad at the sound of that laugh, at having managed to make Martin laugh, at the sunshine fuzz of this stupid-simple moment. (Even looking silly aside, he’s still dripping water, it’d go everywhere, and Martin might laugh and he’d be more fond about it than annoyed, probably, but Jon would absolutely still die of embarrassment. And also if Martin does laugh there is the risk that Jon might end up shaking out his hands again, and he’ll have to die twice over. And also on top of that Martin will fall in the splash zone, and he struggles with the lingering chill enough already, so—)

(Oh.)

“Martin,” Jon says, after a few moments, when he’s sure he’s not interrupting. “I’m curious about something.”

Martin goes very still, as he does nearly every time Jon announces this, then smiles hesitantly, and begins fiddling again with the scarf. “What is it?”

“Nothing major,” he says hastily. “Just, uh. I, I picked wool-and-alpaca, for the scarf. Because it’s, it’s, it’s warm? It’s. Supposed to be warm. But, um. It’s not just the wind, for you, so I.” He makes a vague gesture of confusion. “Maybe a bit, um.” He doesn’t want to say pointless. “Silly.”

“...Oh.” Martin looks—something, before he hides it, and that’s probably not good. Doesn’t bode particularly well, regardless of what the answer to his not-question is.

“Sorry.” A pause, as he tries to work out what upset him, because—he must be upset, surely? It’s not as though Martin makes much effort to hide other, more positive options—relief, amusement, scorn, fondness, all that sort of thing. “I, um. Maybe that sounded—I, I don’t think making something for you was silly. I’ll be doing that again anyway, I’ve had some thoughts, I’m—I’m getting off-topic. Right. Um. No, just, um. My, my assumptions. About the effectiveness of the material. That’s all I meant.”

“No, I got that, thanks,” Martin says, a tad impatiently, but he does loosen his hold on the scarf a little, so that’s probably something. “Just—give me a minute.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know. A minute, please.”

Jon nods. His hands are still damp. He wipes them on his shirt and doesn’t meet Martin’s eyes.

“It...did help,” Martin says, after precisely forty-seven seconds (Jon’s been counting).

Jon looks up.

Martin’s staring at the scarf again. “But, um. I. Well, I was still….”

“Cold.”

“Yeah.”

“Just a bit less,” Jon guesses, because guessing isn’t the same as asking.

“Yeah. Or, no. Or. Yes? I.” Martin untangles his hands from the scarf, taps them on the counter. “It’s complicated.”

Jon makes an understanding noise.

“It was like usual, maybe minus the wind?”

Windchill without the wind. That’s fun.

“But, you know. It’s. You made it for me. I was wearing it. So.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I see.” Jon mulls that over. It’s good to know. It’s nice. It’s making his chest do stupid, uncomfortable things, and making him want to offer a hug he’s not entirely sure it’s the right time for. “So what I’m hearing,” he says, faintly amused and more than faintly full of other stupid feelings and trying desperately to hide the lot, “is that the material doesn’t matter. I could make you something—” He casts about. “—acrylic, or with eyelash yarn, and it’d be about the same for you, at this point.”

“In theory,” Martin says. “But I will actually pay you not to do that.”

Jon snorts, despite himself, and cracks a grin. “Commerce seems a bit antithetical to the point here, might negate the effects.” A pause. “But in seriousness I would never do that. Novelty yarns are—”

“A fiber crime?”

Jon rolls his eyes at Martin’s pun voice, but doesn’t drop the grin. “Yes. But, um. Plain wool, maybe? Or cotton? Or wool?”

“Acceptable,” Martin says. Then, “Though I can’t help but notice that was wool twice there. You got a favorite?”

“Shut up. It’s—it’s just better.”

“And why’s that?”

There are a million-and-one reasons Jon could give him right now, but what comes out of his mouth, promptly, without his say-so, is “Fire-resistant.”

Martin laughs.

After a beat, Jon does too.

That night, after dinner, Jon asks if Martin would mind if he made him some gloves.

He doesn’t say why, but Martin seems to know anyway, because he looks irritated, before he closes off his face, and then he goes quiet for a few moments.

And then he says he wouldn’t mind, no. But he has a different request first, if that’s okay.

Jon tries very hard not to think about the last time someone made a knitting-related request of him. He doesn’t succeed, and hopes, with a sick feeling in his gut, that Martin isn’t about to ask him for a sweater. Or—worse—for Jon to teach him.

Because he would, is the thing. Either of those things, if Martin asked, he absolutely would.

But it would be—

It would be—

“How about a blanket,” Martin says.

Jon laughs, a little. Then, to try and cover for how weak the sound is, how almost-dizzy-with-relief he feels, how sick, he agrees, but warns Martin that they’re going to need a lot more yarn, and it’ll take much longer than the scarf did. As soon as the words leave his mouth, he has the distinct impression that Martin already knows. That that’s on purpose.

Martin’s answering shrug does nothing to dissuade him from this theory. It’s fine, he says. They have money, and they have time.

Jon nods. Then, after a beat, says that he’s curious if Martin has a preferred color, or colors.

“Not gray,” Martin says immediately. “Or white, or beige. Or neon, I suppose.”

Gray, white, and beige all make sense, but that last is puzzling. “Why—er. I’m curious if there’s a reason. For the neon.” Not that he’s complaining, of course, it’s hideous, but—

“You hate it,” Martin says matter-of-factly.

Jon blinks at him. “Right. Anything else goes then, I suppose.” At Martin’s nod, he says, “Okay. Er. As to materials—”

“Yes, Jon,” Martin says, though Jon definitely has not asked a question. “You can use wool. You have my blessing.”

Jon scowls as though his heart isn’t swelling three sizes at the sight of Martin rolling his eyes.

The next day, Jon casts on an ungodly number of stitches.

His hands gripe about it by the time he’s through, and so do his shoulders, so he doesn’t bother working any further, just sets the not-yet-blanket aside and stands, thinking vaguely of running hot water over his fingers for a minute or two or three or five.

When he gets to the kitchen, Martin is already there, hands wrapped round a steaming mug of tea he decidedly isn’t sipping from.

Another mug sits near him. Jon sits down and takes it, and doesn’t drink.

As he sits there, he thinks, mulishly, of dropping temperatures. Blankets he’s only just begun. Gloves he hasn’t even started. (Gloves he never had the heart to finish.)

That’s okay, though, he thinks, as he sits there beside Martin, letting the heat leech the bastard from his bones. That’s okay.

It’s not winter just yet, and things are different now. (Martin is no longer tangled up with Lukas. Jon is no longer stuck in his office. They’re both here, now, in this little safehouse away from it all.)

They’re together.

They’ve got time.

Notes:

thanks for reading! & as always i'm findable on tumblr at arodrwho

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