#aspec martin week

[herbirdglitter]

Some aro headcanons for Aromantic Awareness week:

- Dean Winchester is demiromantic. I’ve never seen supernatural but it seems right. For starters, how many long term romantic relationships does he even have? Besides Cas? Whom he’s known for a very long time?

- Leo Valdez. Look I love calypso but I think it would have better suited his arch if he were aro. The vibes are there plus the whole seventh wheel thing? And he and Reyna could have bonded over there outsider/aspec status. And again, the vibes are there.

- Cartographe Mike of Cartographe Mike and the Pillpoppers. It only makes sense. He never dated and sure he might have been gay and or was the 70s but 2 of the Pillpoppers were gay so it wasn’t like he was in that hostile of an environment on a regular basis. I think it more likely he thought there was something else wrong with him that drove him to drown his sorrows in the cocaine

- Mycroft Holmes. As much as I’m a Mystrade shipper, realistically I think he’s probably aro…. And now I desire some aro Mycroft art

- Martín the Warrior. Sure Rose this, Timballisto that, the dude is arospec. I don’t know where but he’s on there. Possibly grey aro but the Martin, Gonff, Dinny trio were aro/bi/ace solidarity and no one can change my mind.

[cuttoothed]

Written for @aspecmartinweek, for the prompt “First”, for which I am overwhelmingly late. Featuring sex neutral ace Martin, sex averse ace Jon, brief discussion of sexual boundaries. and every first date cliché I could think to cram in. 

*

Jon brings him flowers, on their first official date. They meet at a little park not far from the Institute, and Martin’s been waiting there almost ten minutes when Jon appears, walking hurriedly towards him with one arm tucked oddly behind his back. 

“About time,” Martin is about to say, when Jon’s hand sweeps forward, and the words are lost in his throat. 

The flowers are bold white daisies, their heads nodding gracefully, with sprays of small yellow blossoms peeking out in between. Jon presents it to him with near schoolboy awkwardness, his cheeks red and scarcely able to meet Martin’s eyes. 

“They reminded me of you,” he says, obstinately, as if daring Martin to deny it. 

Martin doesn’t know what to say. Nobody’s ever brought him flowers before. In fact, he’s not sure he’s ever had flowers. There are a few succulents in his flat, and an aspidistra that he bought ironically during his Orwell phase and has been stubbornly keeping alive since, but he’s never had the knack for blooming plants. And he’s always been too embarrassed to buy cut flowers, as if the salesperson might know he was buying them for himself and judge him accordingly.  

There’s something charming and old fashioned and utterly Jon about the gesture, and Martin scolds himself as he feels tears start to sting his eyes. 

“What are they?” he asks as a distraction, lifting them to his nose. The blooms smell sweet, like honey, with an earthy hint.   

“Oxeye daisies,” says Jon, “And goldenrod. I—you don’t mind, do you? I know it’s a bit of a cliché. We can get rid of them—”

“No!” Martin is surprised by his own vehemence. “No, they’re lovely. Thank you. At least now I know why you didn’t want to leave work together—I thought you were trying to keep it off the Institute gossip vine.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Jon frowns, genuinely confused, and a tender warmth swells in Martin’s chest.  

*

Jon’s made reservations at an Italian restaurant. Once they’re seated, Martin places the flowers carefully down by his feet, and looks around. The place is cozy and intimate, the tables set with candles, warm lamplight and low music. 

“This place is nice,” he says, picking up a menu. “Have you been here before?”

“Oh, no,” says Jon. “But I’ve walked past it plenty of times, and I always thought it seemed like a date sort of place?”   

It is, Martin supposes. Most of the tables are two-person, and most of the other patrons appear to be couples, leaning close to each other in the candlelight, laughing and drinking wine. It’s all very traditionally romantic, and Martin is suddenly extremely aware that he and Jon are on a date. He feels a bit foolish, because of course he knew, but until now it’s been easy to think of it as just...him and Jon. Walking somewhere to eat, like they do for lunch a couple of times a week, talking about unimportant things. 

This isn’t that, though. This is flowers and a candlelit dinner, and all of this with Jon, and Martin has no idea what to do. He’s never been any good at dating. Relationships, sure—for a certain value of good—but the bit at the start, where you talk about interests and share details of your lives and gauge if this is a person you want to actually know better? Not his strong suit. Martin never knows how much to share, and when, and whether the first date is the right time to have the “so...about the whole ‘sex’ thing” talk or if he should wait for the third, and— 

“Everything all right?” Jon asks. 

“Yes, fine! Why?”

“You just looked a bit...wild eyed there. Like you’d seen a ghost.” 

“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?”

“It depends what you mean by a ghost,” says Jon, his brow furrowing seriously, and then he’s off explaining theories of psychic trauma manifestations in specific locations, which is entirely different from the concept of an actual human soul lingering in the world, his hands cutting the air to illustrate his point, and it’s just them again, and honestly Martin could listen to Jon talk like this all day. 

It’s lovely, after that. The food is tasty, and the glass of wine Martin drinks softens away any lingering nervousness, and Jon looks extraordinarily good by candlelight, the shadows sketching his cheekbones and jaw, the light sparking in the depths of his brown eyes. The only thing that Martin takes exception to is when Jon tries to pay for the entire meal. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Martin tells him, “We’ll split it.”

“I invited you, so I pay,” Jon persists. “You can pay next time.” 

In the end he gets his way, because Jonathan Sims is possibly the most stubborn human being Martin has ever met, but Martin wins the concession that he will buy ice cream afterwards. He takes them to the little ice cream shop a few streets from the Institute, and Jon looks flustered and pleased when Martin, feeling bold, places the order for both of them. 

“I can’t believe you remembered,” he says softly. His hand touches Martin’s as he takes his cup of rum and raisin, lingering for just an instant, and Martin feels his face go hot. 

“Of course I did.”

*

They walk along the Embankment as they eat their ice cream. The sun is beginning to set, the street lights flickering on, casting bright shards across the surface of the river, and Martin realizes it’s been over three hours since they met in the park. It feels it’s been no time at all, talking easily, sharing little pieces of themselves back and forth. It feels like Martin could stay like this forever.

He stops to toss his empty ice cream cup in the bin, the flowers tucked into the crook of his arm, and when he turns back, Jon is looking at him oddly. The way he looks at a document that he can’t quite figure out, intent and curious. 

“What?” he says.

“Could I kiss you?”

“Oh,” says Martin intelligently. “Yes, please?” 

Jon huffs a surprised laugh, and then he takes a step closer, his hand pressing to Martin’s cheek. His eyes are dark and depthless in the twilight. His lips brush against Martin’s, dry and soft and still tasting of sweet rum flavor. When he pulls back, Martin tries to remember how to breathe, Jon’s palm still warm against his skin.

“Was that—”

“Yeah,” Martin says before Jon can even finish. “That was good.” 

*

They get on the Tube together, since they’re in the same direction for a while. It’s busy, so they stand gripping the handrails, close together in the press of people. Martin holds his flowers against his chest, doing his best to protect them from jostling bodies. There are a lot of things Martin wants to say, things he wants to whisper in Jon’s ear or tell him while looking deep into his eyes, but this isn’t the right place, so he holds them against his chest as well.

The intercom scratchily announces the next station, and Jon clears his throat.

“Well, this is me,” he says. “I’ll...see you tomorrow?”

His voice is quiet and hopeful, as he starts to shuffle towards the door, and that warm feeling is filling up all the space behind Martin’s rib cage. He doesn’t want this to end yet.

“Hang on,” he says, as the train slows to a halt. He moves towards the exit as well, ignoring Jon’s startled glance, and when the doors slide open, he steps off onto the platform. “Coming?”

The doors shut behind them and the train glides away. They stand there for a few moments, while the other disembarking passengers disperse, and then Jon says:

“What are you doing?” 

“I’d like to walk you home,” says Martin. “You’re not far from here, right?” 

“But this isn’t your stop.”

Martin shrugs. “It’s not that much out of the way. And I want to. After you bought dinner, and brought me these,” he lifts his slightly battered flowers. “Maybe I get to do the cliché thing for this part of the date? If it’s okay with you?” 

Jon huffs a breath, and the look he gives Martin is halfway between defensive and apologetic. Martin knows that look, the “this was nice, but…” look, and god, he can’t have been so wrong about all this, can he? 

“I...this has been a—a lovely evening, Martin,” says Jon. “Truly. But I—I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, so I have to tell you now that I...don’t do the, ahh, the sexual aspects of a relationship. I’m sorry, I should have been upfront about this sooner—” 

“I know that,” Martin says. 

“Sorry?”

“I know, Jon. Or, well, not know, but there was some...office gossip?”

“Oh.” 

“Sorry, I should have probably said something earlier. I, umm, I don’t either? Not much, at least. I mean I can, if it’s important to the person I’m with? I don’t mind sex. But I’d just as soon not. So, yeah.”

“Oh,” says Jon again. He looks stunned. Martin gives him what he hopes is an encouraging smile.

“I really do just want to walk you home, I promise.”

“R-right. I see.” Jon still looks a little stupefied, but relieved along with it, the tension in his jaw relaxing. “In that case...thank you, Martin. I’d like that.”

*

They walk the quiet suburban streets towards Jon’s flat, meeting no one but a startled looking fox that bolts into the bushes. They don’t talk for a while, but it’s a comfortable silence. At some point, Martin feels Jon’s hand brush against his, and Jon’s fingers tangle with his own. He looks across, and Jon is smiling shyly at him. That warm feeling inside his chest surges, fizzing up and over and spilling out as a laugh of pure joy. 

“I can’t believe you thought I was planning to seduce you,” he says. “As if I’m anywhere near suave enough for that!”

“I happen to think you’re very charming,” says Jon with mock affront, frowning, while a smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. “I’m sure you could seduce someone if you put your mind to it.”

“I’ll keep that one in my back pocket, then, just in case I ever have to become an international man of mystery.”

“Good idea,” Jon says solemnly, twining his fingers further with Martin’s. 

At last they reach a three storey house with a little patch of garden in the front, and buzzers at the door for the different flats. 

“This is actually me,” says Jon. “Unless...you’d like to come in for a cup of tea?”

“Isn’t coffee the proper convention here?” Martin asks, and Jon laughs.

“Traditionally I don’t think the beverage is the point,” he says, “But if you fancy an actual cup of tea…?” 

“That sounds lovely,” says Martin. It sounds more than lovely, if it lets him spend more time with Jon; it sounds like the best idea in the world. 

Their hands are still clasped together as they walk to the front door, and Martin pauses, tugs on Jon’s hand to stop him too. 

“All right?” Jon asks with a tiny frown. 

“Just one more first date cliché I think we should respect,” he replies seriously. “The kiss on the doorstep.” 

He leans in, and Jon moves to meet him, and it’s just as soft and heart pounding as their first kiss on the riverbank. Jon gives him a little smile when they part.

“You know, the kiss on the doorstep usually signifies the end of the date,” he says, unlocking the door. “But in this case, I think we can break the tradition.”

“Sounds good to me,” Martin laughs, and follows him inside for tea.

[rosy-cheekx]

Peeling Labels

Aspec Week, Day 7: Something New-- @aspecarchivesweek

an exploration of Jon and demisexuality! As a demisexual mspec person, a lot of this is based on my own anxieties as an aspec person and not being “ace enough.” (thanks to @ombreblossom for listening to me try to parse out how being demi feels and how to word it for the fic.)

Rated T for reference to a sex dream, but no explicit language/smut words used!

-

Jon has a weird relationship with labels. Labels are good, they categorize and compartmentalize feelings, situations, states of being. An archivist’s dream, really. But when they are applied to Jon, either by himself or someone else, they feel non-Newtonian, as if holding onto the word for too long causes it to slip through his fingers.

Usually, it’s fine. He knows that labels don’t really matter, but they still feel good. It’s comforting to know that he isn’t broken or a liar or confused; there are people in the world who share a word with him. They are bonded under a flag of black, white, purple, and grey.

Jon had set the precedent quickly, with Martin, on the first night they had been in Jon’s flat, pressed against a doorframe and exploring each other with gentle urgency. “I-ah, Martin,” he had broken away from Martin’s lips, eyes shining with a mix of adoration and anxiety. “I don’t think I’ve told you before, but I’m asexual. Just-uh, well. Thought you should know.”

Martin had nodded, eyes soft and full of understanding. “Okay. Do we have a boundary I should know?” The answer was yes: anything below the belt was strictly off limits, to give or to receive. And that was that. Martin was the perfect gentleman, checking in constantly whenever they were in the heat of a moment. The rule remained and was never crossed. Rules have labels and that label was: asexual.

 Except, it wasn’t that easy. God forbid anything was easy for Jon. Labels are nice and they’re helpful to the part of Jon that craves structure, order. He’d found his ace identity while dating Georgie, after she gently asked him what was up after his third gentlemanly refusal of her advances. He had stammered out that he liked her, but didn’t want sex, at all, and he didn’t want her to be upset with him. And of course she wasn’t, because she’s Georgie, and she helped him find the word asexual, that glorious, blessed word that made so many frustrations and doubts slot into place.

Their romance didn’t end because of his aceness, far from it in fact. In fact, honestly, they were probably together as long as they were because their friendship was the strongest part of their relationship. But god, they were too similar to be in love. They were both too stubborn, too determined, unable to reach compromise when it came to the silliest things like movie nights (Jon found Georgie’s Lord of the Rings box set far too long and far too pretentious for his taste) or how their cupboards should be arranged. Their relationship was something they could win, and they were both determined to be the victor.

In the end, they both lost.

--

While Jon and Georgie had been a couple first, friends second, he and Martin had a foundation. There was friendship, shared trauma, a love that surpassed romantic and dug into something deeper. When they’re in bed and the dark is warm and heavy, limbs intertwined, Jon is reminded of the Greek myth of soulmates: a four armed, four legged being split in two, deemed to be too powerful by the gods. Sharing an essence, completing each other, making two halves whole. It makes Jon smile and kiss Martin’s forehead affectionately. They had been too powerful for the gods, hadn’t they? Unstoppable, really.

All this to say…what he has with Martin? It’s new. Something he has never experienced before. And it’s leading to a host of new, confusing experiences. He’s been in a relationship with Martin for nearly six months now. Jon really thought that at 32 years old, after battling down fear entity after fear entity in an apocalyptic hellscape, there were no new feelings he could experience. But here he was, lying awake, trying to trace patterns in the ceiling and understand the dream he had woken up from.

Not a nightmare. No, quite the opposite. Nightmares he knows how to deal with: slip out of bed, make a cup of tea or a glass of water, slip on the lamp by the bed, and cuddle into bed, reading quietly until sleep steals him away. But he does not know how to deal with this new dream of Martin, hovering above him, low voice stealing his breath and pressing kisses along his jaw, collarbone, shoulder as delicate, warm, strong hands brushed his body, dipping low with confidence. Jon woke up to a heat pooling in his core, tight and powerful, one he hadn’t experienced in such a way.

Jon has a libido, sure, but it’s always been a bodily desire, not a…what would you call this? Emotional one? He certainly never fantasized about another person, especially not someone he knew, that felt so invasive. He felt a flush heat his cheeks and chest as he pictured that image of Martin his subconscious has supplied him, above and around him with that concentration face he wears whenever he’s starting a puzzle or stuck on a particular difficult crossword, the one that always makes Jon grin and kiss his wrinkled forehead. But this one looked more heated, more filled with lust. And it… it affected him. Jon realized with a dawning that he liked it. A lot.

Jon glanced at the bedside clock and sighed at the blinking green 5:15 on the LED screen. Good a time as any to get a hot shower and let his feelings wash away with the soapy water. He extracted himself carefully from Martin’s warm arms and slipped into the ensuite, stripping to the sounds of water pounding from the showerhead and letting the steam and hot water envelop him. He scrubbed himself down harshly, watching suds rinse down his legs and down the drain, trying desperately to keep his mind off whatever that had been.

Once his skin was blotchy from heat, Jon decided he had enough. He slid into the flannel trousers he’d left abandoned on the floor of the loo and slipped back to bed, trying to do so without disrupting his sleeping boyfriend. Martin looked so lovely like this, auburn curls streaked with white plastered against the pillow and his forehead, mouth hung open and naked torso splayed so openly, so unguarded. He looked so lovely, the freckles smattered on his shoulders and stretch marks carving beautiful lines across his skin; the stars and the rivers below, a whole world in the work of art that is Martin Blackwood. How would he feel if he knew Jon had had that dream about him?

Jon’s staring, the lowercase-b-beholding of the man he loved was broken by Martin sleepily opening his eyes, a moment of confusion followed by focusing on Jon, who was kneeling on the edge of his side of the bed, captivated.

“Mmm. Hi there, love,” Martin mumbled, running a hand through his hair and sleepily glancing over at the clock. “You alright? Bad dream?”

Jon nodded; the spell broken. “Ah, yeah.” He couldn’t tell Martin, it was just a dream; he didn’t want to confuse Martin or worse, convince him he was a liar, that he wasn’t asexual, that it had all been to avoid-

Oh. Martin had spoken. He was staring at him expectantly, waiting for a response. “Sorry, say it again?” Jon asked meekly, sliding back under the covers.

“Do you want to talk about it, Jon?” The voice was patient, so patient. Jon shook his head and tucked himself into Martin’s side, tying up his damp, freshly brushed hair out of the way.

“I don’t really remember it anymore.” Lies. “It mustn’t have been that bad.” Martin’s hands were cool on his skin, still warm from the shower, as they brushed over the planes of his face in a slow way, stroking his nose and cheeks and forehead in the way Martin always did when he wanted Jon to go back to sleep. With some reservation, Jon let himself fall back against the pillows.

--

Jon thought about “The Dream” quite a bit in the week that followed. He wanted to understand it: why it had happened at all, but also, why it was still affecting him. Every so often, between emails sent and papers graded, his mind would drift back to the image of Martin, cheeks ruddy and eyes glassy, gazing down at him with such affection and Jon’s whole body would freeze up. Why was he suddenly attracted to Martin in such a new way? He loved that man with his whole being and yet, there was suddenly a new element, something unexpected, coming over the horizon. It’s been almost six months with Martin; why now?

The implications scared Jon. He had always identified as asexual; it was a core part of who he knew himself to be. Had it all been an unknowing lie? Had he just never been attracted to Georgie properly? Was it like when people get STIs; would he have to ring Georgie up and say, “hey, sorry to bother, I was never asexual, oops!”? He really didn’t want to have to do that. Would Martin be upset, angry that he had missed out on six months of potential sex just because Jon was…what? Prudish? Naïve? Afraid?

The worst part was that this…desire hadn’t come on all at once, he realized. He hadn’t even noticed the way his stomach would flip when Martin’s hands brushed his thighs, blaming his touch-based love language. It was in the way he stared at Martin when he couldn’t see it; eyes tracing his form and wondering what it would be like to feel every inch of him, in a way he had yet to experience. 

God he…had to tell Martin, didn’t he? He didn’t want to feel like a pervert in his own relationship, observing and imagining from afar without Martin’s knowledge. It felt…dirty.

--

Jon made dinner, nine days after the dream. Nothing extreme, tikka masala, rice, and garlic naan. Martin’s favorite. As he cooked, he vacillated between trying to plan out what he wanted to say and very-much-not-thinking about how the evening could end. The worst outcome, he imagined, was Martin storming out, betrayed and heartbroken. That…that probably wouldn’t happen. No, he knew Martin Blackwood. Better than anyone else in the world. That definitely wouldn’t happen. Lo-fi techno crooned through the speakers as Jon cooked and he let his thoughts float away with the music, trying to focus on the spices of dish he was making and not the knowledge that Martin would be home in ten-

Oh. Jon heard the shhlik of the door sliding against the welcome mat and felt his whole body tense up.

“Jon? You making dinner?” Martin’s voice was warm as he called through the entrance, he didn’t know yet what Jon was going to tell him, that it was all a lie-

“Yes!” Jon called back, determined to keep his voice light and casual. “Your favorite. Be ready in five, so get out of your work clothes.”

“Smells delicious,” Martin was behind him now, voice low against the shell of his ear. Jon felt a shiver run down his spine, to where his stomach and pelvis met and a ball of electricity crackled there, unbidden. Martin kissed the crook of his neck chastely and Jon froze, unsure how to reciprocate.

“You okay?” Martin’s chin was on his shoulder now, voice soft.

“Fine, fine. You smell like crayons. The cerulean one.” Jon nudged Martin away casually, trying to pass off a witty remark.

“Hazard of the job, I suppose. You know you love it,” Martin mercifully pulled his hands from Jon’s waist and retreated to the bedroom, and Jon exhaled in relief.

Jon plated the masala. Martin poured the wine. They sat down to dinner. Jon felt it all happen, was there for it all, but it passed in strange jerky stop-motion, and he couldn’t seem to slow it down. He couldn’t see to find the words, so elected for none at all, eating silently. Eye-contact would give away the anxiety brimming inside him, so he kept his eyes on his plate and the wine and the sleeve of Martin’s sweatshirt, anything but Martin’s warm hazel eyes that he knew so well.

“Jon.” He could hear it in Martin’s voice, the gentle prompting. He could hear the worry, the confusion. God, it was going to happen wasn’t it? He was going to tell Martin and what happened happened and he couldn’t do anything to change that. “How was your day?”

“I-ah. Martin.” He said, voice jerky, unable to find a rhythm that felt right. “I have something to tell you.” The words fell from his mouth in a tumble.

“Oh?”

“I. I had a dream?” Martin’s eyes widened and he set his fork down. “N-not one of the Eye’s dreams,” Jon reassures quickly. He really wished dreams weren’t such a theme in his life. “Not a statement dream, but a… different kind of dream.”

“I…I don’t follow.” Martin was confused, eyes searching Jon’s face.

“A dream…about you?” he tried, unable to add the words “sex dream” into his vocabulary quite yet.

“Oh. Oh!” Martin understood at last, eyebrows raised and forehead that adorable, confused wrinkle. “That’s, well, nice, I guess?” Jon’s face must have given way to his thoughts, as Martin tried again. “O-or maybe not?”

“Martin,” Jon steeled himself. “I…I think I’m maybe not asexual.” The words rang sharp in his ears, grating; they didn’t feel right. But it was true, wasn’t it? He didn’t know what sort of explanation there could be.

When Jon dared to look into Martin’s face, he saw an expression he didn’t know how to parse. Furrowed eyebrows, eyes searching Jon’s face, head cocked slightly. “Okay. Because of the dream?”

“Um-kind of? But also…” Jon felt blood rush through his cheeks, was certain the Desolation had picked now to tear its way through him, and was grateful. “I’ve been thinking a lot. About you. In-in ways asexual people shouldn’t. A-and I thought you should know, because I didn’t want you to think I was lying to you and I don’t want to be having those thoughts without you knowing because that feels rude, in a way? Like I set a boundary but have been crossing it in my head this whole time?” Tears stung the corners of his eyes.

Martin’s voice was even, level, hard to parse as he spoke. “Jon, can I ask you a question? Only because you seem upset and I want to try to help you.” Jon was frustrated. Why wouldn’t he have the decency to be upset? At a nod, Martin’s chair scraped backwards, and Jon found Martin kneeling him beside him, hands on his knees as Jon swiveled to face him. Taking his pockmarked hands in his own, Martin rubbed Jon’s knuckles slowly, tenderly.

“Have you ever felt those feelings before?” Jon shook his head meekly, certain the lump in his throat would betray him. “Have you had those feelings the whole time we’ve known each other? Like, since the Institute?”

This time, Jon shook his head. “Not-not until after we were dating. The safehouse, maybe?”

“This one’s gonna sound a little rude, Jon, but bear with me. Do you think you’ve ever been as emotionally close to anyone else as you are with me?” He squeezed Jon’s hands warmly, adding: “And I am with you?”

Jon shook his head. Of course not. Martin was something new to him, something untapped in the world. A treasure, a diamond in the rough. There was nothing that compared to their relationship.

“Jon. I don’t want to tell you how you identify, that’s not my place, but I, I think you’re still asexual.” Jon’s eyes snapped to meet Martin’s; it was his turn to furrow his brow. “After you came out to me, remember? I started looking into asexuality. I wanted to be able to impress you at Pride this summer,” Martin ducked his head, wincing at the cheesiness of his words. “But did you know there’s a bunch of subtypes of asexuality?”

What? This was news to Jon. There’s wanting sex and not wanting sex, right? He shook his head numbly and felt a comforting, grounding squeeze of his hands again.

“There was one I researched a little extra, because it confused me, and I wanted to understand the difference,” Martin continued, moving a hand to stroke Jon’s cheekbone, to guide his face to meet his. “Demisexual, Jon. It’s a subtype of asexuality, and it’s when-” Martin’s eyes rolled back in his head, as they were want to do when he was struggling to recite something from memory. “-you don’t even have to option to feel sexual attraction until an emotional bond is established. And it’s not, like, a one-to-one thing, either. There was a woman talking about her experience on a forum and she basically explained it like sex being a door, right? And the door has a padlock on it. Emotional connection opens the padlock, but you still have to open the door.”

Jon’s mouth was agape. He…there were so many things to parse out here. “You…you looked all this up for me?”

Martin’s cheeks pinked slightly. “I wanted to make sure I understood asexuality. It’s a whole subgroup of its own; it was interesting.” Martin had been a Researcher for a reason, Jon supposed dimly.

“I. I want to research for myself, but demisexuality?” He rolled the word in his mouth as he spoke. It felt nice, weighty. “And it’s still asexual?”

Martin nodded, vehemently, pulling out his phone as he spoke. “Yeah! Its flag is the same colors too, just arranged differently.” He showed him the white and grey flag, divided with a smooth purple stripe and a black triangle on the edge. “A-and, I mean, if you realize you’re not asexual, or you’re something else, you know I’ll still support you regardless, right? I don’t love you because of your sexuality, or your identity. I love you because you’re Jonathan Sims, and everything else besides that is bonus.”

Jon exhaled, feeling the Choke release the hold on his chest. “Demisexual. I…Thank you, Martin. For listening and believing me. I love you too.” He pressed a kiss to Martin’s forehead, carding fingers through the tumbled curls. “Let’s eat, and maybe you can show me that forum afterwards?”

[throwaninkpot]

The Mortifying Ordeal of writing British characters talking.

[morning-softness]

Because I love the idea of Jon confessing his feelings to Martin via PowerPoint, I’d like to remind everyone of this fic by @zykaben (also featuring Jon&Tim friendship and Aro Tim).

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28813998

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen, M/M

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims

Characters: Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood

Additional Tags: Friendship, Fluff, Getting Together, Canon Asexual Character, Aromantic Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Aspec Archives Week (The Magnus Archives), No Fear Entities (The Magnus Archives), It's just soft and cute all the way through

Language: English

Collections: Aspec Archives Week, Repulsed/Averse Ace Jon Archivist, tma is an office comedy - tma fics (read), Asexual Spectrum Sex-Averse Main Characters

Words: 4992

Chapters: 1/1

Summary:

Tim was out of his depth, but Jon was too. That was why he’d come for help in the first place. “Wait, hold on. I may not be an expert with crushes but that doesn’t mean I can’t help with it. We just need to do some research.”

(Or: Ace Jon and aro Tim solidarity as they try to find the best way for Jon to woo Martin.)

[gh0stlymoth]

[ID: digital drawing of martin and jon from tma. The two of them are sitting together on a greyish couch at night. there is a nightsky visible through the window and the entire drawing has a dark blue hue to it. Martin is a fat polish man with pale skin, short curly white hair and freckles scattered across his face and hands. He is wearing round glasses, a orange sweater with the picture of a bear on it, as well as greyish red weat pants. he is wearing a ace ring and is holding up a dark orange mug with a cat design. is other arm is slung across jons shoulders, who is stittin curled up into martins side, their heads softly pressing against eachother. Both have their eyes closed and are smiling softly. Jon is a slim british indian person with medium dark brown skin, long wavy hair with grey strands, pulled up into a bun, as well as scars across his face, neck, hand and leg. He is wearing rectangular glasses, a purple sweater some non-descript black sweatpants and dark red socks.  he is holding a dark blue mug in both hands close to his face, also displaying his acering. In the corner of the room is a painting in ace colors. end ID]

Happy ace week to all my fellow aspecs, have our two favorite aces cuddling up on the couch :] 

and a bonus because you can’t expect me to starre at the picture up top and not draw a lil forhead kiss:

[ID: a colorless sketch of jon and martin, similar to the picture above with the diffrence that martin is now pressing a kiss to jons forhead while jon is smiling widely. there are little cartoon hearts floating around them. End ID]

[dathen]

Rec List for TMA Fanwork Appreciation Round 2:  Event Weeks!

I got so overwhelmed by the thought of all the event fic I’ve enjoyed that initially I was just going to focus on reading and commenting on ones I missed, but I’m going to throw a VERY INCOMPLETE little list of gems I’ve found along the way.  I cannot emphasize enough how incomplete this is.  I will probably revisit this prompt later to add more.

All of these are small one-shots, so if you haven’t had time to dig into the longfics usually included in rec lists, these may be for you!

Semblance of Touch by @acemartinblackwood

Martin comes to terms with how he feels about touch in a relationship, a difficult task fresh out of the Lonely with an expectant Jon.

It’s so hard to narrow down recs from the Ace Martin Blackwood or Aspec Archives events, but I have such a soft spot for fics with touch- or kiss-aversion, and the intimacy and trust that can shine through navigating those boundaries.  Also I LOVE the way all this ties into Martin’s post-Lonely trauma and Jon’s dedication to trusting and respecting him.

library ghosts, or something like that by the_nerd_youre_looking_for

Sasha James was cursed a long while ago. . . . Sasha had needed to get used to it.  To break the curse, she has to be "truly seen.”  And she has no clue what that means.

I just found this one a couple days ago, and it’s such a delight to find works that focus on genuine Jon & Sasha friendship!!  Sasha is trapped haunting a library, and Jon takes it upon himself to find a way to break the curse.  

Perchance to Dream by @voiceless-terror

“It’s just…kissing. Lips. Ugh.” Jon smashes his fork rather violently into a dumpling, sending bits of food flying across the table, one of which hit Tim directly above his eye. “I eat with my mouth.”

In which Jon comes out to Martin. Twice.

Rye consistently writes some of my favorite S1 archives friendship fics, but this one just made me flail with how much I love a more-relaxed-than-usual Jon being candid and ridiculous and comfortable with the others.  Even just skimming it again to write my comments is making me grin.  

A Survival Received by @cuttoothed

Jon and Martin talk about their scars.

Give me any softness about Jon’s scars and I will just go to PIECES.  This one hits me right in the gut with Jon’s self-image issues and his worry that his own pain is a burden to others.  The way Martin’s response conveys so much love and acceptance can’t be put into words, so just read it!!

[symbioteteeth]

TMA Fanwork Appreciation Challenge - "Oh My God, They Were Office-Mates" or Martin Lives On The Archives Period:

@themagnuswriters

by @judesstfrancis (i know i already put one of his fics on the other rec list but her writing is great so here's another one)

jonmartin speedrun, enemies to friends to lovers, 9k

summary: Rose scented laundry detergent. Running into Jon in the breakroom. Running into Jon on his way back to his desk. Rose scented detergent. Running into Jon. Roses. Jon. Roses, roses, roses.

~~

this one was so fun to read because it's basically "what if at first martin fucking hated jon, actually?" and then jon starts being nice after prentiss and martin is like "wait. oh. oh no." and it's all very good

there's also some bed sharing and martin writing romantic poetry

please go read it

by @quantumducky

jonmartin (pre-relationship, kind of becoming friends), sickfic, hurt/comfort, 4k

summary: Martin gets sick while living in the archives. He's sure he can deal with it himself- just sleep it off, no need to make a big deal of it.

Jon, it turns out, doesn't agree.

~~

this is definitely one of my favorite season 1 fics (though to be fair the same could be said about the rest of this list)

it's actually very soft and there's a bit of angst but martin's unreliable narration caused by his brain being fried for being sick is absolutely delightful and the ending is very nice and left me smiling for a very long time

by @vigiloaudiosupervenio

jonmartin (pre-relationship), bonding over wine, feelings realization, 10k

summary: “Because you’re stressed. And so am I,” he replied. He twisted to reach into his satchel, then pulled out a corkscrew. “And I don’t know about you, but relaxing is all but impossible for me, so once in a while it’s nice to cheat and get some help with it. Usually I just sit and unwind with it at home, but I figured…” He reached out and offered the corkscrew to Martin. The universe’s strangest olive branch. “Unless you’re opposed?”

Jon’s question was not a challenge, nor was it laced with any suggestion of expectation. It was just clarification; an offer to back out if Martin truly was uncomfortable with the prospect of getting wine-drunk with Jon.

It's been about a week since Martin temporarily moved into the archives, and between the fear caused by Prentiss and the confusion caused by Jon suddenly being a bit nicer, he's been a bit flustered. This has not gone unnoticed by Jon, who is nothing if not someone who tries to take initiative.

~~

jon and martin get wine drunk in the archives

that's it that's the fic

it's great and it's funny and it's actually kinda angsty at some points but it's mostly fluff and two idiots drinking wine

what else could you ask for

by @stopitjon

jonmartin (pre-relationship), nightmares, hurt/comfort, >1k

summary: “Martin, I’m—” He broke off with a shiver, whether from cold or fear he couldn’t say. A search for his professional composure turned up empty, so he’d have to settle for ‘not completely deranged’ and hope that Martin would forget all of this by morning. “I apologize if I woke you.”

(JonMartin Week #1, combining the prompts "Comfy Jumpers" and "Nightmares")

~~

this is very short and very angsty but i have a soft spot for season one jon and martin late night companionship

featuring jon's terrible self care and martin exasperatedly taking the matter to his own hands

by @voiceless-terror

jonmartin (pre-relationship), late night conversations, ace martin, internalized aphobia, hurt/comfort (kind of), >2k

summary: “No, it’s- to be frank, I don’t think I’m cut out for all that.” Martin toyed with the mug in his hands, gazing into it like it held the answers he needed. “I’ve uh, tried to go on a few dates, meet people, that sort of thing. But they all expect something at the end and it just never feels right, I can’t explain it. Like there’s something missing. ”

In which Jon and Martin are more alike than they thought.

~~

i'll be honest every single piece involving ace martin has a special place in my heart

as an ace person, having jon as canon ace is incredibly important to me, and seeing people in the fandom not only making ace jon content, but also headcanoning other characters as aspec makes me indescribably happy

this fic is very sweet, and though jon and martin are still in that "not exactly friends, not exactly not friends" period, their conversation is very nice, and reading this really warmed my heart

i can't recommend this fic enough

[zykaben]

Words: 4.9k Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims Tags: Friendship, Fluff, Getting Together, Canon Asexual Character, Aromantic Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Aspec Archives Week (The Magnus Archives), No Fear Entities (The Magnus Archives), It's just soft and cute all the way through

Summary:

Tim was out of his depth, but Jon was too. That was why he’d come for help in the first place. “Wait, hold on. I may not be an expert with crushes but that doesn’t mean I can’t help with it. We just need to do some research.”

(Or: Ace Jon and aro Tim solidarity as they try to find the best way for Jon to woo Martin.)

For @aspecarchivesweek Day 7: Solidarity

[bluejayblueskies]

TMA Fic Rec List

I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite TMA fics right now! No real theme to this other than a slight focus on underrated/less popular fics.

List begins under the cut!

The Haunting of Blackwood House | jonmartin, rated T | Ao3: acetheticallyy (judesstfrancis) | tumblr: @judesstfrancis​

To Do List: 1. Find out what’s haunting Martin 2. Plan accordingly 3. (Ongoing) make sure Martin never feels alone

An AU where Jon, Sasha, and Tim are ghost hunters and Martin calls them to investigate his haunted house! Very sweet with a fair bit of mystery too. In progress with one chapter left.

Rewinding the Tapes | jonmartin, rated T | Ao3: a_suspiciously_large_pig (Queenie_D) | tumblr: @celticdragonmaster​

As Martin watched the pages burn, he felt his gaze being drawn to those few words that he could still see, unable to look away from them. In particular his eyes seemed drawn to one sentence that hadn't yet begun to blacken and curl; "I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself" He was only pulled away from the trance it had him under when he heard the sound of a body collapsing on the floor. - Martin prevents the end of the world, but not without consequences.

Martin comes back in time to stop Jon from finishing reading Jonah’s statement, but Jon loses his memories in the process. In progress with three chapters left.

the midnight hour is close at hand | jonmartin, rated T | Ao3: Athina_Blaine | tumblr: @athina-blaine​

“What am I even supposed to talk about?”

“We’re going to a Halloween party. On Halloween. With other people who, presumably, also like Halloween." Martin smiled. "You’ve already got at least one talking point baked right into the setting.”

Jon chuckled, haggard. “You always make it sound so easy.”

“Hey,” Martin said, touching Jon’s chin. He waited until Jon dragged his eyes back up from the pavement. “Worst comes to worst, we’re going to carve our little pumpkin, and we’re going to drink our hot apple cider, and we’re going to have a good time.”

-

Jon struggles. Martin tries to help.

A university AU where Jon and Martin attend a Halloween party, and things go awry. One of my all-time favorite fics! Multi-chapter and complete.

Mixed Signals | tim/omc, rated T | Ao3: WhyNotFly | tumblr: @apatheticbutterflies

There’s some sort of glittery streamer dangling down from the top of the doorway leading into the Archives.  Hot pink, with little hearts of different sizes swaying gently in the still air.  They hadn’t been there when Jon came into work this morning, he’s sure he would have noticed something so offensive to the eyes.  It’s garishly out of place in the properly somber decor of the Archives.  Jon reaches up, grasping the bottom of a tiny vinyl heart and rubbing it distastefully between his fingers.  Anyone could have put it up between Jon’s modestly too early arrival and now, but Jon would put money on the fact that it was Tim.

It would certainly explain the unusually high level of amusement in his grin when he came to deliver his report on the Wharton case.  Generally, in Jon’s experience, houses spontaneously burning down don’t tend to evoke a great deal of levity.

***

Tim gets an unexpected visitor.  Luckily, he has his grumpy old boss to back him up.

One of Tim’s police contacts makes romantic advances on him, and Jon’s there to stop it. Featuring aromantic Tim! One-shot.

moss on a stone | jonmartin, rated G | Ao3: Bloodsbane | tumblr: @lo-fi-charming​

They leave London holding hands.

Out of the Institute; down the rain-slicked streets; on the train. Martin’s hand is cold, but holds Jon’s very firmly, never letting go until he absolutely has to. And then, after, they find each other again like magnets, and Jon likes to think he’s the natural opposite charge that attracts that cold palm to his warm one.

A Scottish Safehouse fic centered around kiss-averse Jon and Martin! Very atmospheric and snapshot-in-time-esque. One-shot.

Hypothetically | jongeorgie, rated T | Ao3: rosy_cheekx | tumblr: @rosy-cheekx

This was it. Jon fiddles with the pale green collar of his shirt; eyes focused resolutely on the version of himself in the mirror that hung on the wardrobe in his student flat. Tonight’s the night I’m going to ask Georgie to…

He shakes his head to himself, wincing at the end of that sentence. He knows what he’s going to do tonight, what he wants to do tonight, what difference does vocalizing it make, even if it’s just to himself?

Takes place when Jon and Georgie are dating in university and features asexual Jon coming into his identity through his relationship with Georgie. One of my favorite works to come out of aspec archives week! One-shot.

Breathe in the Salt | jonmartin, rated T | Ao3: SqueeneyTodd

Martin Blackwood works in a lighthouse that echoes too much against a sea he doesn't care for.

The lighthouse isn't meant to have people in it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t put at least one selkie au on this list! Martin’s mother is a selkie and he works at a lighthouse that has some very strange happenings. Jon, Tim, and Sasha come to investigate. Lots of mystery, lots of cute moments! In progress.

The Best Things Come in Threes | jongerrymartin, rated T | Ao3: voiceless_terror | tumblr: @voiceless-terror

In which Martin and Gerry help Jon acquire a cat, among other things.

Martin and Gerry own a bookstore, and they look into getting a cat for the bookstore. Jon is, of course, enraptured. Very sweet and domestic! One-shot.

[bibliocratic]

I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are. 

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team. 

Some CWs apply, see tags. 

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family –  there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

--

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come  moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly,  and that is the end of that.

-

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

--

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.  

--

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw.  His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

--

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

--

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them,  and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

[cuttoothed]

Second fic for @aspecmartinweek, this time for the prompt “Family”. Jon/Martin, because it’s me.

I have many feelings about marriage as a societal convention with a...difficult history, and just as many feelings about marriage as an expression of love and devotion between individuals and also what makes a family so yeah. 

Tags/warnings: Incidental asexuality, sex averse ace Martin, sex averse ace Jon, mention of past break-ups due to sexual incompatibility, Martin’s relationship with his mother, Martin’s self-esteem issues.

*

Martin goes to his first family wedding when he’s five years old. He doesn’t really know what a wedding is, except that they go to sit in a church, and everyone is dressed up fancy, and his cousin Sarah is wearing the prettiest dress he’s ever seen. He asks his dad about it, while the vicar drones on.

“They’re getting married,” his dad explains in a whisper. “Because they love each other, and we’re all going to have a big party to celebrate that.”

That sounds pretty nice to Martin, and at the reception later he informs several of his older relatives that when he gets married, he’s going to wear his triceratops t-shirt, and the cake will be chocolate. 

Stuffed animal weddings become a fixture of Martin’s playtime, after that. He officiates over the unions, wearing his dad’s black suit jacket so he can be the vicar and with his mum’s day planner as the holy book of choice. 

“You know your dad and I are married,” his mum tells him one day, as he’s recounting the wedding of Fred the rabbit and Speckles the giraffe. 

“Really?” Martin asks, wide eyed. She laughs, and takes a photo album from the high shelf, and sits Martin down in her lap to show him the pictures of their wedding day. His mum is in a cream colored dress with flowers in her hair, and his dad is in a fine suit, and they both look so happy. 

Martin thinks that getting married must be the best thing in the world.

*

By the time he’s an adult, Martin has come to terms with the fact that he’s not the kind of person who gets married. Oh, he’s the sort who’d like to. Despite his dad’s piss poor example, he’s always been a romantic at heart. But he isn’t the kind of person that other people marry . 

He’s had a handful of relationships, few of which have lasted past the “wait, you don’t have sex?” conversation. Those that did, eventually fell apart for other reasons; he’s too needy, or he’s too nervous, or he devotes too much time and heartache to his mum.  

He still gets the occasional invitation to a family wedding, checks the RSVP boxes on the card and sends it back:

Yes, I will gladly attend!

No, I will not be bringing a guest

He’s not even sure why he goes, other than familial obligation. He wears his best suit, and sits through the service, the reception, the first dance, an observer to other people’s happiness. He braces himself for the inevitable questions from aunts and uncles and cousins:

Yes, he’s here by himself

Yes, his mum is fine

Yes, he knows they’ve legalized gay marriage now, lovely for all those couples, a real step forward for the country

After each wedding he writes his mum a letter to tell her about the service, and the dress, and the cake, and all the relatives who said hello and wished her the best. His mum never responds, but that’s not surprising. It’s barely even upsetting anymore. 

*

And then there’s Jon, and it’s...well, Martin’s never imagined being quite this happy. 

It’s not perfect, or even easy. There are mistakes and misunderstandings, the raw edges of their personalities sometimes rubbing up against each other in ways that hurt. But they forgive each other, and try harder, and they’re getting better at it every day. 

(In fact, the sex conversation is one of the easiest Proper Relationship Talks they’ve had, and there’s something kind of funny and fitting about that.) 

Jon is also not the kind of person who gets married, Martin knows, though in his case it’s by choice. Jon is pragmatic, doesn’t see the point in a lot of societal conventions and cultural traditions. He understands them—well enough to expound for over an hour on the classist implications of soup spoons one day—but he’s not much inclined to bend to them himself. 

They’ve never actually...discussed it, certainly not in relation to themselves, but Martin is very confident that it isn’t something Jon would want. And that’s fine. Jon loves him—he tells Martin so at least a dozen times a day, and he could never tire of hearing it—and that’s enough. More than enough.  

*

Martin gets an invitation to his cousin Paul’s wedding. 

He deliberates for a full day over whether to attend. He knows Jon won’t want to, and Martin doesn’t want to put him in an awkward position. But...there’s that sense of familial obligation again, and even though Martin is quite sure Paul wouldn’t even notice his absence, he’d feel guilty if he didn’t. He tells Jon about it quite casually, over dinner, trying not to put any hint of expectation into it.

“Right,” says Jon. “Do you want me to come?”

“Oh, I mean, if you want to? You don’t have to, though.”

Jon shrugs. “I’d rather spend the time with you than not. And I’ve never been to a wedding.”

“You’ve never—really?”

“I only had my grandmother growing up, and it isn’t as if I have old friends beating down my door to invite me to theirs. I was expecting Georgie’s to be the first,” he grumbles, “But she and Melanie are really taking their time about it.”   

“Okay,” says Martin, “Great!” He checks the RSVP boxes on the card:

Yes, I will gladly attend!

Yes, I will be bringing a guest.

*

The wedding is almost two months later, but Jon still ends up rushing out to buy a suit at the last minute because he forgot. He looks very handsome, though, and Martin finds himself smitten all over again. 

They sit through the service, and Martin nudges Jon to stand at the appropriate times. He does, politely, and afterwards at the reception, he politely greets Martin’s aunts and uncles and cousins as they approach, introduces himself and—diplomatically—answers questions about how he and Martin met, how long they’ve been together, what he does for a living. 

After a while he starts to look a little wild eyed, and Martin finally rescues him from great-aunt Susannah, towing him off into a corner to recover. 

“How are you doing?” Martin asks. 

“Your family are certainly...inquisitive.”

“Sorry, I know they’re a lot. If it makes you feel any better, they’ve been asking me about when I’m going to settle down and get married for the last decade.”

“Well, it’s nice that they’re concerned about you.”

“Nosey, more like,” Martin snorts. “Anyway, this is what my family’s weddings are like—what do you think?”

“It’s, ahh…” Jon glances around the loud, busy room, pop hits blaring from the DJ booth and fluorescent strobes lighting up the darkness. “It’s certainly something. I’m not sure I’d want our wedding to be like this.”

“Sorry, our what?” says Martin. 

“Oh,” says Jon. “I didn’t—I mean, not to assume or anything—”

 “You want to get married?”

“Not right this second!” Jon says hastily. “Probably not for a—a while? But I have thought of it. Potentially. For the future.”

“Oh, right,” Martin says, too stunned for anything else. The idea that Jon might want to actually get married, to him, is...well. A very new concept. 

“If you don’t want to, of course, we don’t have to by any means—”

“I want to,” Martin blurts, then feels his face go hot. “Not—not right now, like you said, but...I do want to. I want to marry you someday.” 

The words sound incredibly daring, coming from his mouth. Jon’s expression is relieved and delighted, and he grasps Martin’s hand in his. 

“That’s wonderful,” he says. “Martin, that’s....” He kisses Martin’s knuckles, fiercely, and then squeezes his hand tight. “Maybe we could have a...slightly smaller wedding, though?”

“You, me, a couple of witnesses and a registrar?” Martin grins at him. Jon smiles. 

“We can have some guests,” he says. “Once I don’t have your entire family to contend with.” 

“I think I can agree to that,” Martin laughs, and pulls him close. He doesn’t care who else is there: as long as he has Jon, Martin will have his family with him. 

[voiceless-terror]

TMA Fic Plans for Early 2021

Mostly making this for my own organization, but also so anyone who’s willing to yell at me via messaging or inbox can help me brainstorm and have some input on what they’re interested in! I will be finishing my long fic from this year, of course, but this is mostly for new work and continuations. It also doesn’t include prompts I have in my inbox, which I’ll be filling as the inspiration strikes me. This will be long, so I’m putting it under a read more. Without further ado, here we go!

Long Fic:

Archivist Sasha AU: Sasha gets the Archivist job. Martin and Tim are her assistants. Trouble is, it’s just...archiving. She has no experience, and Gertrude left no roadmap- honestly, she thought it would be a bit more sinister than this. Instead, she’s getting a crash course in archiving through various internet sites and filing away debunked cases. A nice pay raise, fairly boring work. 

But then she finds a tape.

Clearly the ravings of a madwoman, and yet...Sasha’s got her suspicions. She’s done time in Artefact Storage, she knows what’s out there. Maybe it’s time to look beyond the Archives.

Jon’s in this too, you know I can’t write a fic without him. But he’s just a researcher. A researcher they were friendly with, when he actually showed up. Always out sick, always looking worse for wear. Poor guy. And yet Elias always gave him the most interesting cases, all the special assignments. Sasha doesn’t know what he sees in him. Maybe he can help her out.

This is in the rough, early stages. I’ve been throwing it at several people just to order my thoughts while I’m figuring out where it’s going. If anyone is interested, I appreciate all of the brainstorming juice I can get, even if we haven’t spoken before xD A fresh pair of eyes never hurt!

Series/One Shots:

Ghost Hunt UK: Martin Blackwood needs a job. After more than a few failed attempts, he finds his answer in a shitty ad for a camera person/production assistant. He can fake that, right? How hard can it be?

This is the Jon and Melanie Ghost Hunt UK series I’ve always been threatening to do, but I’ve actually started outlining and writing a lot more. Jon, Melanie and Georgie all live together in a surprisingly workable arrangement. Tim and Sasha are their production crew. And Martin dives right in the deep end. Melanie/Georgie and Jon/Martin, with an eye towards Jon/Martin/Tim/Sasha.

ADHD Jon Adventures: Got a few more ideas for this one, mostly smaller in-universe one shots. Always appreciate anyone willing to talk headcanons for this one.

   - Early precanon snapshot, Jon and Tim and Sasha’s background in research, maybe looking into a case

   - Tim and Jon decide to make a new filing system for the Archives. What will  these two ADHD kings get up to? Pure, ridiculous chaos.

   - Martin and Jon early friendship/relationship! Getting to know one another, trying to navigate their new relationship. Might be multi-chapter.

Truth or Dare: Got one more planned in this series, unless inspiration strikes. Might cover the wedding if I’m feeling it.

    - Tim thinks Martin and Jon both deserve their own stag-do. Trouble is, they both want the other to attend. Cue shenanigans.

Prompt weeks/events: Last but certainly not least! I’m going to try to participate in, or at least plan a work or two for the following events! The prompts are available on all the tumblr event pages, but if anyone has any thoughts on their favorites, feel free to give me a holler.

  - Aspec Archives

  - Mspec Jon Week

  - JonPeter Week

  - Gerry Week (which I’m helping run with the lovely Zyka and Geo!!)

Other Ideas: Forgot to put these in the original! But I’m currently in the brainstorming phase for a Jon/Gerry/Agnes series, and also and Archives QPR.

Anyway, if you stuck around this long, thanks for reading. Quite a mouthful (eyeful? idk). This list is by no means a promise (thought I hope to do a lot of it) or complete. I’m sure I’ll get more ideas as the year goes on. But I like to throw out some feelers anyway, and I love making new friends, so here you go! <3

[cirrus-grey]

Ao3 Year In Review

I don't normally do these, but I'm really proud of everything I've written/posted this year (and utterly flabbergasted at how much of it there is) so I thought it would be fun to share! Format by @athina-blaine

Top Fandom: The Magnus Archives (55 works) (Yes, that's more fics than there are weeks in the year. No, I don't know how it happened either.)

Date of First Fic Posted: Jan 5, 2020 (1,000, 435 words) (Only fic that's not TMA)

Top Multi-Chapter Fic: Yesterday is Here (53,319 words) Written in ten weeks, posted in twelve, this was the first major multi-chapter story I'd ever posted and I cannot believe how much it took off. It was a purely self-indulgent outpouring of fluff, feelings, and love for TMA, and I never could have predicted how popular it would become. Seeing how much joy it has brought people has been one of, if not the, highlights of an otherwise stressful year, and I am so, so happy that I was able to share it with all of you.

Top One-Shot: Feels Like Lightning (6,065 words) Inspired by and written for the Aspec Martin Blackwood Week collection! My favorite thing about this one is how many people in the comments have told me it's gotten them questioning their own sexuality and possibly realizing they're ace.

Fic You’re Most Proud Of: Tied between A Matter of Diplomacy (57,758 words) and Unsent, but since Unsent also fits another category I'm going with AMoD here. Though 'Yesterday is Here' was the first multi-chapter story of this length I'd ever posted, 'A Matter of Diplomacy' was the first I ever wrote. I learned an awful lot about worldbuilding, balancing plot with character development, and constructing a consistent and engaging narrative through the process of writing it. I'm most proud, though, of the fact that I wrote it, at all. The main story took me a year to write, and the follow-ups added another several months onto that, and even though there were several times when I lost motivation and stopped writing entirely, I always managed to pull myself back and get started again. This was a marathon, not a sprint, and I'm very, very proud of finishing it.

Fic You Wish Got More Attention: Honestly? None of them. I have been absolutely blown away by the amount of hits, comments, kudos, and bookmarks my stories have gotten this year, and there aren't any I could point to as "wish they'd done better."

Fic That Challenged You The Most: Unsent (8,683 words) I spent hours staring at the wall thinking "what exactly is Jon's motivation and mindset here? What about Martin's?" and then used those hours to write a two-sentence text before starting all over again. I had the transcripts open in one window on my computer, and my draft open in another, analyzing single lines of dialogue from the show to figure out how they felt about each other, and how much of that they'd be willing to put into words. I pulled the timeline apart piece by piece trying to work out the order of events, and who knew what when. It is the single most in-character, canon-compliant story I've ever written, and it was hard.

Favourite Quote/Passage: (From In this harsh world, 1,132 words)

"How?" he chokes out, speaking the words into the crook of Jon's neck. "How can you expect me to go on without you? To be happy, without you there?"

"There'll be other things, other people, that bring you happiness. There always are."

"I don't want that," Martin says, and Jon takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I don't want to have to move on without you. I can't- I can't just let you go like that."

"Then don't," Jon whispers, and holds him tighter. "Moving on isn't letting go. Carry the memories. Keep me in your heart. Be the Horatio, to my tragic Prince Hamlet." He draws back, placing his hands on Martin's shoulders and looking him in the eye. "And in this harsh world, draw thy breath in pain to tell our story."

"Jon," Martin sobs.

Jon leans in, and kisses him. "There's no one else I'd trust more to do it," he says. "And know, with every day that passes, that I'm so, so proud of you for making it through."

Total Words Posted: 239,477!

[somuchbetterthanthat]

Probably too long for tumblr, un-betaed, written in one rush, utterly and completely self-indulgent. Have a little bit of touch-adverse/kiss-adverse Martin (with a good deal of denial and internalize prejudice to boot, so warning) for Aspec Martin Week.

It’s been a week, and they haven’t kissed.

It makes sense, Martin insists to tell himself, eager to find excuses for that one little discordant note in his otherwise perfect fairytale. What they shared in the Lonely had been -- much more powerful than that, for starters. And afterwards, there’d been the rush of getting somewhere safe, first to Martin’s flat, then to Scotland. They’d gone from stuttering at each other, exhausted and soft, blatantly trying to get over months of separation, to falling back in each other’s orbit with an easiness that made Martin light-headed when he thought about it too long.

So they hadn’t kissed. It just hadn’t -- came up yet. They’d gone so fast, so suddenly, it was nice to have that little thrill of anticipation. They were building towards something. They were building something, right now. There was no rush, was there?

After all, they’d hold hands, a few times. In the train to Scotland, fingers loosely intertwined, when Martin was still shivering from a coldness that had nothing to do with the rain pouring outside, and everything with the pervasive attraction of the sea that was still trying to drown out the beating of his own heart. They’d hold hands and it was warm and good and -- and well, sweaty, sometimes, when they kept at it for too long, but Martin had daydreamed of holding Jon’s hand for so long he could never make himself let go (and if there was an odd drop of relief wherever Jon let go first, at last, well, that was -- that was --)

Jon was affectionate, the way Martin had seen cats be when he fell into YouTube spirals, before. He hovered in Martin’s physical space, nuzzle his shoulder when he was sleepy, put his legs on Martin’s lap when they sat on the couch, and downright beamed and melted into his arms the first time Martin, filled with abrupt courage and stubbornness had decided to hug him, and every single time after that (this chased away the sound of the sea; if he kept Jon’s close enough, all he could hear was Jon’s voice and Jon’s heart and Jon’s breathing --)

(And if it get too much, sometimes, if he had to bite his tongue not to flinch when Jon’s hand brushed over his arms, his neck, his back, suddenly and without any apparent pattern, well, that was --)

They slept in the same bed, for heaven’s sake. They hadn’t even talked about it. The first night, tiredness had won over any potential flustering. Afterwards, it’d been easy, like everything else between them. Martin adored the intimacy of it in a way that was hard to describe properly. He loved it most in the morning, when the sun came in and he woke up before Jon, liked going to prepare breakfast knowing that he could come back whenever he wanted, and Jon would be there still, comfortable and vulnerable and in their bed, probably curled on Martin’s side, nose pressed against Martin’s pillow. He loved it most when they spent the evening there, still dressed, Jon’s reading, Martin scribbling in the small notebook Jon had bought for him at the London train station, cheeks flushed and eyes hopeful.

(They slept in the same bed, and Jon’s pajamas were too short, and his legs hairy, and his feet cold, and when he fell asleep he had a tendency to roll over and lean his legs against Martin’s, and Martin closed his hands into fists and breathed, breathed, and tried not to feel like he was trapped between suffocating in the bed, or disappearing into the fog to escape it all together. It was intimate. It was intimacy. It was what normal couples did, sharing a bed, and why couldn’t he enjoy it, he who’d dreamed of this his whole life? Intimacy. A relationship. Someone to love and to hold and fall asleep with, he who had been craving gentle, casual, loving touches his whole life, why couldn’t he ----)

So they hadn’t kissed; it didn’t matter, because Martin knew they would anyway. It was just that, out of everything, he had dreamed of kissing the most his whole life. When he was very young, the person hadn’t even had a face; he’d thought this would happen very officially, at his wedding. As a teenager, it’d slowly dawned on him he had no desire to kiss girls. Harder, he’d thought, but that would happen, he knew it could, Mr Anders had a boyfriend, everybody knew he had. Martin had imagined his first kiss with Louis who was two years older and played Rugby. Then it’d been with Tom, and Samir, and -- and then, there hadn’t been school anymore, but that was fine; he’d imagined his first kiss to be with an half stranger in a café, or in this bar where they hosted poetry nights.

It’d never happened, of course, but that was fine. That was fine. Who needed a relationship, anyway? Lots of people were single, and didn’t kiss people all the time, and if Martin sometimes felt icy envy when Tim used to speak of how easily he seduced people, well, that was easily pushed back down. (Martin had thought, once or twice, that he could ask Tim. Warm, friendly, easy-going Tim, who would never judge him for being inexperienced. He could have, but Martin didn’t want to kiss Tim. There was no pull, no attraction, no matter how charming Tim’s smile was. He wasn’t in love --)

And then there was Jon. The first time he’d daydreamed about kissing Jon, he was sleeping in his cot, and it smelled like his awful-but-not-quite-boss and safety-safety-safe-. Afterwards, there’d been million of other occasions. God, how much he’d craved, this past months, to go down the Archives, the hell with Peter, and to cup Jon’s face and to -- (and then he hadn’t wanted to anymore, and that was fine, too, it was easier, to stare at Jon and care in a pragmatic way instead of like a pathetic, lovesick fool. One of us should, he’d thought in his worst moment, and he loathed the man he’d been for those weeks so much -- there was a quiet dread in him that liked to murmur back to him Daisy’s words, that the entities didn’t force anything on them, just exacerbated what was already inside them, and every time, inevitably, he felt so cold again--)

So they hadn’t kissed. It was fine. They were going to. They were building to it. They just needed the perfect moment. First kisses weren’t just about the right person. They were about the right place, at the right time. Martin had wanted this for so long --

Tonight, Jon’s scowling at their puzzle like it personally insulted him, has been for the past ten minutes, and the light of the fire is reflecting in his eyes; he’s wearing Martin’s jumper and his hair is still wet from his earlier shower and Martin’s heart jumps at his throat as he thinks now. It has to be now.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he blurts out, filled with a sudden urgency. “Please? If -- If that’s -- if you want to.”

Jon looks up, startled, and it’s magic, the way his scowl disappears under his sudden flush and shy, happy smile. “Ah, yes,” he says, like he’s surprised. “Yes, I want -- I thought you might not --”

“No,” Martin says, “No I really really do --” “Well, then.” Jon’s lips curled into something that’s full of mischief, and Martin didn’t know it was possible to adore someone just as much as he adores Jon. “Come here, Mr Blackwood.”

“Oh I’ve got to work for it, have I?” Martin retorts, but he’s grinning, and already moving to Jon. They push the puzzle away, and Martin’s whole body is thrumming with nervous energy, abruptly, as Jon looks up to him, eyes dark and beautiful and soft. “I haven’t -- I haven’t actually ever done this,” he says, and is surprised to find he’s not embarrassed to say.

“There’s really not much to it,” Jon tells him, but he cups Martin’s face, tender as ever, and Martin thinks -- non sense, what is there more intense and intimate in the world than this? What else embodies love as much as kissing? -- and then Jon’s lips gently brush against his

-- and it’s good; for a few seconds, Martin feels electrified and so happy he could float; and then Jon’s lips are pressing back a little more insistently, and they’re a bit dry, and chapped, and his breath is hot against Martin’s face, and Martin’s knees are not wobbly, and the electricity has passed and all there is left is two bodies, pressed awkwardly against each other, skin and flesh and that odd, wet noise, and he wants to run, he wants to run so badly, this is ---

Jon moves away. Blinks worriedly, smile gone. “Martin?”

“No,” Martin says, his voice too tight, his hands trembling. “No, come back it’s -- sorry, i’m going to -- I’m just, i’m new to this? It’s got to -- It’s just -- I need --”

“Martin, breathe,” Jon snaps (he’s not angry, Martin has learnt to recognize the different ways Jon snaps over the years. He’s worried, and anxious, and probably thinking he’s done something wrong, the beautiful idiot --)

Martin breathes.

“Let me try again,” he stammers, after a minute.

“...Are you sure?” Jon tentatively asks. He’s so far away, careful not to lean too close while clearly yearning for it, and Martin forbids himself to start crying.

“Please,” he says instead.

“Okay,” Jon says. This time, he is so much more hesitant, so Martin is the one who crosses the distance between them, heart racing desperately in his chest. He tries to think of every movie, every story he’s ever watched or read or listen to; he puts one hand on Jon’s shoulder, and one hand on Jon’s hair, and Jon sighs, and their lips met and this time it’s right except, except it’s --

it’s all wrong, everything is wrong, and all that Martin manages to be aware of is how awkward and weird it all is; just like the hand-holding, when they do it too long, just like those little unexpected touches Jon offer at random moments, just like Jon’s legs in bed, and his damn cold feet;

Martin doesn’t remember breaking off the kiss; suddenly he is sobbing angrily -- at the lonely, at himself, at his childhood self who’s probably dreamed of this so much he’s ruined the reality of it all for themselves as an adult, -- and hides his face in Jon’s shoulder, apologizing like an idiot; he doesn’t even know what he babblers on. Stupid stuff, properly, because he’s an idiot, because he’s doing this horribly wrong, all of this, because he’s not feeling anything of what he should feel right now, because there is something ugly in him that refuses to be tamed even by love, and so what now? What now?

(Jon holds him. Jon murmurs it’s okay, it’s okay, we don’t have to, it’s okay, I love you, breathe for me, Martin, it’s okay, you’re okay -- and how is it, that Martin can love him so much and yet not be able to --)

“I want to,” he manages to say. “I’ve wanted to. All my life I just --”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, as if he is in any way responsible for this disaster. “Kisses are very much overstated, if you want my opinion.”

“But it’s not,” Martin argues, clinging to him harder. “It’s how you, you show love --”

“Is it? I never thought so. I like kissing just fine, I suppose, but It does get boring, especially if you do it for too long. Assuming we’re speaking of mouth kissing, of course.”

“How can you -- How can you say that?” Martin sputters, tearing himself away from Jon’s arms to stare at him. Jon is frowning, but he also looks so calm, it’s baffling.

“Easily,” Jon said, shrugging, a bit defensively. “Look, Martin, I told you four days ago I didn’t have sex. Ever. And you said it was fine, that you didn’t mind.”

“Well, yes, but --”

“How is that in any way different than kissing?”

“It’s, it’s -- I don’t know but --” Martin can feel himself tearing up again. Jon’s eyes soften, and he gently squeezes Martin’s hand.

“If you want to try again, at some point, we can,” he tells him, and it’s so impossibly gentle. “But it’s alright if it’s not -- something you enjoy. If we don’t kiss, ever, I won’t love you any less for it.”

“Maybe I just -- I just need to practice,” Martin says, quieter now.

“Maybe,” Jon admits. “But if it makes you this distressed every time, I might be the one who has to say no, here.”

Martin wants to argue some more, but something in Jon’s expression, stubborn and worried still, stopped him from doing so. “I love you,” he says instead, because that part is true, that part he trust; if he cannot control his body, at least he has mastered his heart;

Jon smiles. “I love you,” he says back, and he brings Martin’s hand to his mouth and kisses it gently.

Martin’s heart stops; his cheeks warm up abruptly; a shiver runs down his spine. He feels his breath hitch up his throat.

“Do that again?” he tries, voice trembling.

Jon raises his eyebrows. “This?” his lips linger on Martin’s knuckles, this time. Martin’s knees feel weak. Jon’s smile gets wider; warmer. “Oh, I can do this,” he nods, seriously. “Tell me if it’s get boring.” and he kisses Martin’s hand again; each finger, with a tenderness that makes Martin feel dizzy.

“I love you,” he repeats, because he thinks, he’s starting to understand what Jon was saying. “I love you so much.”

Jon kisses his wrist; his lips are a bit chapped and it’s slightly wet and Martin’s pulse is loud in his ears.

This. this is perfect.

There is no but; there is no quiet, shameful parentheses; Martin thinks he might have to talk to Jon about the bed, maybe, tomorrow; for now, his eyes fall back on Jon’s hand. He wonders what it’ll be like, to kiss it. He’s got a feeling it might be very pleasant, indeed.

[nyctolovian]

TMA S1 Archival Team Headcanons

A lot of sexuality/gender headcanons but also some misc headcanons that are somewhat related??? I'm writing this cos idk how else to celebrate ace week so I'm just plopping this down here.

Jon

Not a headcanon but AAAAAA I'm so happy he's canonically ace :""

Has no clue what the hell people are talking about when they talk about attractiveness

Used to think he was pansexual because "well, I think everyone looks attractive in the same amount" (turns out same amount is Zero.)

Now he knows he's a panromantic ace

Ace flavour: fluctuating between sex-favourable and sex-neutral

Quite enjoys sex (when he's in the mood)

But he *hates* kissing. Full-on kiss on the lips is gross

Hair kisses and hand kisses are very welcome though!!

That's why there is no kissing in The Magnus Archives (frankly, kissing sounds are gross to me so thank you rusty quill)

Nonbinary. Pronouns are probably he/him/they/them. But he doesn't rly talk about it because it feels like too much trouble

Skirts!!! Gosh! Long flowy skirts are his favourite. They're comfortable and he feels a little pretty in them

Martin

Idk he comes off as someone who doesn't want labels

Love is love to him.

Once he has a crush, he crushes H A R D

If you watch his ears, you'd see how nervous he gets around Jon. Cos they go red

Started painting his nails to stop himself from biting them (self-projection lmaooo)

Now he paints them for fun! His favourite nail polish is baby blue!

My HC for him morphs between trans and cis ;-; I can't decide ;-;

Sasha

Aromantic heterosexual (there are too few Allo aro rep out here so I'm making them myself!!!!)

Will beat you up if u call her straight (and so will I)

She and Jon bond over being aspec. Just constant jokes of "pffft sexual/romantic attraction? What's that? Can you eat it?"

She loves going on dates! They're fun!

Isn't too stoked about romance and falling in love... Esp how society seems to put them on a pedestal because it makes her feel left out

Also because romance looks unnecessarily messy

Really wants a QPR but is very specific about what she wants out of it

Incredibly specific about terminologies (let's face it, she's bothered enough by the calliope thing to barge into Jon's recording)

Specifically, she never wants to be "an item" or "couple" with someone. She doesn't like her status to be referred to with nouns???

Saying she's "dating" someone or "married" is fine.

Tim

Bi-con

Hawaiian shirts and finger guns

The most open about his sexuality of the gang.

Big Fat Crush on everyone in the archival team

"What were the requirements for working in this archival team???? Must be hot?????"

Biggest Fattest Crush on Sasha though

In No-One-Dies AU, I'd think the two of them will be in a QPR

They have a ton of conversations to clarify the feelings between them

Tim is super understanding of Sasha's discomforts and boundaries

((they marry))

S1 Polycule

I can 100% imagine this happening

After JonMartin and TimSasha marry, they realise it feels like a four-way marriage

So they just roll with it and now they're a polycule

Cuddlepiles and movies every Friday

So so much teasing and banter and also cuddles

They used to sleep separately (Jon/Martin and Tim/Sasha). Then they started mixing it up and swapping around based on mood

After a while they decided it was better to just push two beds together and just all sleep together

Sometimes if there are some steamy bedroom business going on, people who aren't in the mood (mostly Jon) take the couch until everything is settled