He barely has time to berate himself for coming apart, so soon after thinking he'd pulled himself together; barely has time for anything before John's hand is moving across his back with greater directional purpose, before John's weight shifts, before John's arms are both around him. He has no time even to freeze up before his body is betraying his own lingering sense of mortified propriety. He's already leaning into it, accepting the gesture and the spoken invitation, a small sob escaping as he does. Pathetic. He's pathetic. But there's John, John, drawing him close without hesitation, murmuring reassurances just as he did when Martin first — or first as far as he's concerned — woke up here.

It's too much. It's obscene. The sudden awareness of John, the shape and feel of him, the subtle smell of him — he shouldn't know this, this is for some other Martin, not him. But it's there, offered freely, and he can't turn it away. He doesn't have the fortitude or the self-control.

So he crumples into it, his shoulders shaking as he struggles not to cry, struggles to pull himself together before this becomes truly appalling. But he can't straighten himself out while just sitting there, helpless and inert. He has to do something, anything, even if it feels unthinkable.

He's already doing it. He is desperate for it, for contact, to signal that he accepts this, that he likes it, that he wants and welcomes and needs it, and his trembling hands are already rising to reach around John's back, to settle there, ginger and tentative, to hug him back.