Archive of Our Own ^beta

Here’s a little known secret: Jon doesn’t like kissing.

Or rather, it’s more accurate to say he hates it, as an immutable fact of the universe. The earth revolves around the sun, Oxford is filled with elitist pricks, and Jon hates kissing.

The realisation doesn’t come with the first uncoordinated knocking of teeth he suffered through - under a wilted mistletoe at the entrance to the only party Jon ever went to, desperate to say he had at least one normal college experience. From what he heard until then, first kisses were always an awkward mess, and his was no exception.

No, that little discovery comes later in the evening, when Jon’s just about decided to leave the loud, crowded affair behind and a girl tugs on his arm as he stands up, her smile aimed firmly at his mouth. And he’s never thought of kissing anyone, but she’s sweet, fumbling like him, and they’re both drunk, so why not?

It’s wet, and there are these noises , and in the back of his mind Jon can’t help but think of saliva, the plaque on the woman’s teeth. There’s a hollow, brittle feeling in his chest that grows with every second he spends trying to focus on anything other than the slide of mouth on mouth.

The kiss lasts only a few seconds.

When they break apart, the woman stares at him, hazy eyed. “That was…” she trails off, licks her lips, looks to the side. “That felt…nice.”

All Jon feels is shame and disgust. There are tears building in his eyes, a harsh sting and a threat all at once. His first actual, proper kiss, and he can’t appreciate it. Can’t do this one, simple thing. He’s ruining the moment.

“Hey, don’t look like that,” She reaches up to cup his cheek, and her long nails prick his skin. “You need some practice, but you’re a good kisser…er…”

“Jon.” He says on autopilot. Practice, right. All he needs is to try a little more, and then he’ll get over the shuddering cold that rushes through him at the thought of doing that again. He’ll just have to learn to like it, is all.

She smiles, leans in for another kiss, and Jon lets her.

Georgie is wonderful, kind and brave and all too perceptive, and Jon fears the moment she discovers he doesn’t love her right more than anything else. 

They don’t do much of the sort, especially later on, but Jon lies awake and imagines it, the next movie night or whispered joke that leads to pecks on the lips that lead to sloppy makeouts on the couch that bring the familiar pain in his chest that he will ignore and not draw away from because he should want this.

He imagines Georgie stopping, that furrow in her brow that always appears when she gets concerned or angry at him, and demanding he explain himself. He pictures her leaving.

Sometimes those flashes of pained anxiety lead to other thoughts, of sliding a knife between his ribcage and finding only a hollow echo chamber. Of slowly chipping away the skin and muscle in a vain attempt to find the feeling he’s missing, until he’s bare for the world to take and tear and ultimately throw away.

He never does learn how to like kissing.

Instead, he discovers that despite liking both men and woman, he doesn’t want to have sex either. Instead, he learns about asexuality.

(He tells her about it, once he knows. But by then the cracks in their relationship had already started to form. Their breakup later isn’t because of his repulsion, not exactly, but his attempts at pleasing her despite that and then avoidance of situations where he'll have to didn’t help. The “I’m fine” ’s and the “it’s alright” ’s pile over violent disgust and simple disagreements alike until-

One day, Jon wakes up to find Georgie standing in front of her wardrobe with a few cardboard boxes at the ready. “I love you, but it feels like you can’t let yourself do the same,” She tells him in that last moment before going to pack her things. “You can’t keep setting yourself on fire to keep others warm. I won't stand by and watch you do that.”)

“Martin, I’m asexual.” They’re sitting on Daisy’s old, worn couch, a fair space between them. Jon twists the throw blanket in his hands and does his best to not look up while he’s talking. The thought of scaring Martin away when he has nowhere else to go is terrifying , but if they’re going to do this…be together, then if he doesn’t get it out now it’ll hurt Martin more later on. “And regardless I don’t always want to be touched, especially not since-” Jon cuts himself off, takes a few deep breaths, continues. “I understand if this is a dealbreaker, but I won’t compromise on this, I’m-” 

“Oh don’t worry, I already know.” The response is almost flippant. “And I don’t mind that you don’t. ”

Jon twists to meet his eyes. “I- what?” How? Is the unspoken question.

Martin doesn’t look tense or pitying. He’s curled on the couch, one leg pulled to his chest and the other tapping a rhythm on the wooden floorboards. There’s a softness in the way he looks at Jon, so calm, still smiling. But that doesn't make any sense .

“Melanie.” he answers before Jon can delve too deeply into his own head. Martin frowns as he considers his next words. “I know it’s shitty, and I’m sorry, but I overheard her on the tapes, and got curious, I guess? I asked her, then looked it up to see what she meant. Don’t think either of us wanted a repeat of the Great Cop Snog rumor of 2016 .” He adds with a slight chuckle, wiggling his fingers in the air. 

" Ah . that." His outing. It's not that it isn't frustrating. It's that there's nothing to be done. “How much do I have to explain, then?” How much did Georgie tell? He can’t imagine she went into detail, but nowadays he can’t be sure of anything regarding his privacy, or lack thereof. 

“Hmm, not much. I know that you’re ace, and you told me about touch.” That's…actually a relief. He hates having to say the words himself. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do.” He says it like it’s easy, like nearly every relationship he had before didn’t fall apart because of his preferences towards certain romantic activities . 

“You're not disappointed?" Jon tries one more time, tentative. He has to know. 

The indignant expression that appears on Martin’s face would be cute if it didn’t take his breath away for an entirely different reason. “I’m not going to leave you just because sex isn’t on the table, Jon.” 

“But-”

Martin shakes his head, and opens his arms. Jon is shocked frozen for only a moment before diving into the hug.

From then on, Martin always lets Jon initiate. He asks silently, with an outstretched hand or a tilt of his head, letting Jon guide the interaction from there. When Jon flinches from intimacy, when the feeling of skin on skin reminds him of gripping plastic hands rubbing lotion into his flesh, a knife held against his throat, burning and stabbing and breaking and scars-

Martin is there for him. Always.

He never tells Martin the full extent of his repulsion, but Martin never pushes once.

It’s…nice. 

Then it's not, and all they have to cling to is each other as the sound of the world’s eternal death rattle pours itself into Jon’s ears and eyes and brain and forces upon him a bliss too sick to bear.

(In a nameless place, someone just like him is thrust into a thousand desperate mouths and eaten alive.)

They trudge through hell, and Martin doesn’t touch - unless he has to. Jon gets lost sometimes, snagged on some horror he can’t escape on his own. The sudden sting - and sometimes revulsion - helps in an odd, alarming way. It makes him fit in a body that feels too small for what it contains. 

(In another nearby nowhere someone else is stabbed repeatedly by a faceless man, who says this is for her own good.)

Of course, there are other touches not born of necessity. Held hands between domains, wiped tears and hugs that slowly gained a careless teasing to them as the tower grew closer and closer. They hug a lot in the apocalypse. After all, all they have is each other. 

(Their spoken, vicarious pain is the joy of the warmest embrace. it tingles on the exhale.)

(Is this what kissing feels like to other people?)

There are other moments, too - arguments, he calls them in his less generous moods - where it becomes too tense too much and they snap together, snap apart. 

This one is about - nothing really. How many times has Jon insisted he has no way to fix even a little of what he has broken, and how many times has Martin disagreed loudly, vehemently? Hoping even when it’s blind and meaningless and painful? How many times will he smite and scream and change nothing?

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t .

“Why are you so - ugh !” Martin puts his hands in his hair, dragging them down his scalp. His expression is pinched in the way he used to get after two hours on a sudoku puzzle, and at any other time Jon would think it cute, would like to press his finger to Martin’s nose and watch the creases fade away as he went cross-eyed.

Jon's also far too tired for this, but that doesn’t stop him from snapping back, “Because I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I – I don’t know! I’m not the one who’s supposed to know everything, alright? Just- use your power. Try to help them. There must be something we can do to make things better!

“There is no better anymore.” There’s a bitterness at the tip of his tongue, a want to say more, but he holds it back. 

A terse pause, then Martin sighs and deflates. “Right. Right of course, obviously. Great.” He lowers his hands from his hair. “Let’s just- Let’s just move on.”

And that’s it, that’s the end. Or it would be, usually is.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Martin reach for his sleeve - to take him away to steal kidnap mark him - and withdraws too late to stop Jon’s flinch, then Martin flinches at that , and they both step back. Jon pants, can't quite catch his breath through the panic. What a mess he’s made. He’s almost tempted to reach out again, if only to ease the tension between them. 

(His arm prickles with sweat soaked adrenaline and the echo of touch, like a cattle prod held to his skin.)

They're at a standstill, then Martin, shaking, remembers himself. Opens his arms and waits.

Jon’s mind skims over Martin’s like a skipping stone and he can tell how much Martin thinks about it, needs the comfort as much as he does. (“ Don’t trust comfort ” Jon told him once, in a house that rotted them from the inside out.)

And Jon, staring, feels the buzzing under his skin and the dual sensation of hurt and the realisation of I can’t and the desire to do it anyway. The hollow, brittle cage in his chest yawns open and Jon...tries to listen to it.

He can pinpoint the exact moment Martin’s face falls when Jon walks ahead of him, before he can school his expression and his thoughts. Despondency and bitterness. But that doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t have seen it without his patron anyway.

It’s fine. They’re fine. They will be fine, even if Jon can barely hold enough hope in his hands for Martin, let alone anything else.

Jon is not a brave man. 

The whole time he climbed the tower Jon had thought Martin’s going to hate me for this , and for a moment, watching his face fall as he stares down at Jonah’s corpse and up at the the leftovers of Jonathan Sims, Jon thinks that maybe he does.

(That’s alright, everyone does in the end, and it didn’t change what he had to do. He was the lynchpin, and if they needed to overhaul his choice that badly, well. He was ready to die for a while now.)

Martin would be right to hate him. After all they’ve been through together, Jon turns on him, spits in his face one last time. The worst betrayal he could’ve done, and for people he will never see. But he can’t compromise a million, billion, single world for the love of his one, singular monstrous life. He can’t .

(Martin would never betray him like this. That’s all on Jon, Jon The Archivist, Jon the monster, Jon, the man in the nightmares of every person soon to die at his hand.)

It’s better this way. They’ll kill this infection at the source, and then they can be alone together - Jon , floating far above Martin, looking for all the world like the arrogant untouchable monster they all see him as -  for the rest of their short eternity. 

(It’s not enough, he knew it wouldn’t be enough ever since he curled beside Martin that one final time, eyes open and secretly aware. Now, facing Martin’s anger and grief, Jon knows he’s shattered something he can’t ever repair.)

It has to be done.

But Martin, sweet Martin, lovely Martin, clever Martin who always searched for hope even in hell, was never going to give up that easily. He was always the better planner of the two.

(There is a moment, the last moment of Jonathan Sims The Archivist, with reality unspooling around him, where he will regret, and he will wonder; What made him do it? What else did he do wrong? What happened so that he’d-

That he’d actually-

It is mere seconds long, yet it makes all the difference.)

Jon just needs to hold on - 

The Panopticon is crumbling around him and he can barely think over the squeal of metal bending, the rush of air, Martin’s sobs, the fear raging in his mind as Jon struggles to stay tethered to his frail, human body and Martin tries to move a mountain - 

Hold on.

From a different perspective, he could see this being the scene for a happy ending. Him and Martin, kissing over Magnus’s corpse as they hit the button that’ll fix the world and make everything right. 

They’re falling, the button is a knife and fixing their world will doom all others. There’s no kissing, at least. 

Hold on…

He’s going to lose Martin. Whatever lands on the rubble of the Panopticon won't be him anymore, and he won't let Martin see that. He won't let himself be that.

There’s no way out that allows Jon to enact his plan, no way to know what releasing the fears with no outlet will do to him - to the world. And Martin’s still here . 

He can’t hold on. (Martin can’t die like this.)

The knife is right there. (He wonders if Martin knows what he’s to do now.)

There’s nothing for it, then. 

When it all crumbles - The Panopticon shaking, Jon breaking - and all other options have been stripped away, Jon tugs Martin close and tries to hope.

And he can't ...he can't doom another world. But it seems the choice was already made for him.

If there’s another Jon (a Tim, a Sasha, a Martin ) somewhere else, years down the line, who was twisted into a key from birth, only knowing the moment they’re forced to retch out the apocalypse like bile that their suffering is the result of Jon’s selfish, selfish attempt at happiness - he hopes they can forgive him.

“Are you sure about this?”

“No, but I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Here it is. Here, it’s coming.

At the end of everything, Jon begs Martin to kill him. And there, hand shaking, desperate, grimy tears slipping onto Jon’s face, Martin surges forth- and kisses him.

There is that wetness, there is that shock, there is that little nagging voice that whispers ‘I deserve this’, and the rest of him that is yelling in agony.

Then the knife slides home.