There is more John wants to say, but he waits. He wants Martin to calm down a little, first, not just because his weeping is heartbreaking, but because what John has to say is too important for him to risk it falling on deaf ears. So he just holds Martin close, curled around him as if to shield him again, albeit from something more nebulous and metaphorical than a bolt out of the blue. It isn't until Martin turns his head and ejects a painfully bitter retort that John lifts his head a little.

"Yes," he answers plainly, no longer muffled in Martin's hair. "I... Christ, I wish I'd woken up while you were there, I wish I'd heard you, I-I don't—" he pauses, puffs out a sigh. The why of all that is a mystery he's never going to crack. It doesn't matter. "But when Oliver Banks came to me at the hospital, and told me what my, my choices were, I... I didn't wake up because I was afraid of dying. I woke up because I was afraid of what would happen to you if I didn't, because I needed to—I needed to know you were okay."

He keeps one arm curled tight around Martin's shoulders; the other loosens just enough for John to rub his back. "You're the reason I made it out of the Buried," he continues. "You brought me back after Riggs—" he cuts himself off, not wanting or needing to go into detail. "You've bloody refused to see me as a monster. You've always believed that I'm... that I'm better than what the Eye would make of me."

His voice thickens around the lump in his throat, and John exhales unsteadily, bowing his head to tuck back into Martin's hair. It's so much easier to just bask in what Martin is to him than it is to articulate it; he can't extoll the virtues of the balm without acknowledging the severity of the burn, and just how much it hurt.

"You're my anchor," he insists, the words only coming as easily as they do because they're true. "You always were."