For an awful moment Martin wants to resist the pull toward John. He feels like a live wire, too frayed and sharp to be touched. But he has no real willpower for it, no deep desire to reject John's embrace, and he pitches forward instead, practically collapsing against John's shoulder where he continues to weep, muffled but no less pitiful. He can still detect the faint burning smell, though he's not sure if it's more a sense memory at this point. It doesn't matter. John is warm and close and alive, holding him and murmuring the beginning of a reassurance that Martin feels hopelessly unable to accept.

He huffs once, struggling to pull himself together. A part of him wants to lean harder into his own petulance, his own self-destructive desire to be as wretched as he feels, to justify all this with this own lack of worth. He knows he has saved John just as much as the reverse; he knows what they are to each other and he can guess the shape of some of the things John might say. But he wants to deny them; for a moment, he really wants to deny it all.

It isn't enough, however. John soothes him as well as he can under the circumstances, and Martin can't imagine pushing him away now, if only for his sake. He waits until he's settled a bit, turning his head to the side and breathing out slowly.

"Have I?" is the best he has to offer, not really fishing for anything but needing something to say that isn't an outright rejection.