Jonathan Sims

It helps that John softens so immediately, the gentle, reassuring quality of his voice and the squeeze of his hand telling Martin at once that he needn't have worried. John guides him into the bathroom and turns off the tap, and then comes the question whose answer Martin still doesn't know. He shifts his weight and fidgets a bit, not quite managing a shrug. If John's asking, it likely means he doesn't have a particular preference or hangup himself, which would only make too much sense. Very often, Martin has found his expectations of John's boundaries or discomfort to be mere projections of his own. But that hasn't always made it easier to push past them, or to deduce which ones are worth keeping and which are simply the results of long-borne shame.

Finally, he draws a breath and lets it out as if excising all his latent anxieties at once. He is tired and overheated and his bloody skin aches; he wants to get in the bath and have done with it.

"I-it's okay," he says, and lifts his eyes to meet John's. "I don't mind you seeing me."

And there isn't anything special about it, anyway. It's not like he's stripping, or... or there's any expectations. It's not as if John is going to be weird about his body; John has already proven time and time again that such judgments elude and anger him. Martin has gotten used to being touched and seen in casual states of partial undress; this is just going a little further. They're adults; they're partners. He wants company, and that's the end of it.

So, feeling a little emboldened, he starts to raise up his shirt, and almost instantly gets stuck, sucking in a little breath of discomfort over his sore joints and over-sensitive skin. He winces and looks at John. "Erm," he says, "actually, could you help me with this?"