statement_ends | (Reply)

Martin pulls John into his arms, one hand reaching up naturally to curl around the back of his head. This feels too familiar, holding him while he breaks down, only this time it isn't John who narrowly escaped death. This time, at least, there is nothing to stop Martin from burying his face against John's neck, from stroking his hair as much as he wants, from whispering against him, "I know. It's okay. It's okay."

This really is the closest they've come to losing each other in several months, which... would be much too recent by ordinary standards, but for them, it is significant. And those other times, they were both there — John to pull him from the Lonely's grasp, to save him from Riggs, to wake him up from countless awful nightmares; Martin to pull the knife from his chest. It was never like this. It was never so close. That it was so close this time and that it was so bloody ridiculous just feels unfair.

Martin wants to make it right, but he doesn't know how apart from simply being here, allowing John to hold him for as long as it takes to accept that he is here and alive and well, that the worst didn't happen. He doesn't know how to convince John that it isn't his responsibility to keep him safe. Not when he knows intimately how that feels, because he feels the very same.

"I'm here," he says again, softly, his other hand stroking slowly up and down John's back. "I've got you." He shifts a bit, lifting his head to press a kiss to John's cheek. He whispers, so his voice won't tremble: "You haven't lost me." He holds John a little tighter, a little more fiercely, and says, "You won't."

It doesn't matter that he can't make that promise, that it isn't one he can assuredly keep. That it is down to circumstance, or fate, or chance, or the apparent whims of this bloody city to decide what becomes of them. None of that matters because Martin isn't speaking for any of that; he's speaking for himself, and as far as he's concerned, that's the beginning and the end of it.