let me show you what you're worth

[loficharm]

September 23rd, 2021


"The bloody arrogance," Martin snaps as he shuts the door and locks it with a sharp flick of his wrist. He has contained the rising boil of his fury, if barely, for the entire walk home from the thoroughly unpleasant encounter with Sylvie; limited it to silent (if practically visible) radiation until now, as they enter the relative privacy of their flat, and not a moment longer. "The sheer fucking — god, what is it about us that we attract the exact same type of magical arsehole every time?"

He stumbles out of his shoes and yanks off his coat and practically throws it over the back of the couch as he moves through the flat on a direct line for the kitchen. He grabs the kettle and starts filling it with the water at full blast. "It's always our fault for not just deferring to their ideas about how things work. Like they're so fucking superior and we're these funny little — i-insects she found on the sidewalk and decided to poke with a stick for a while. Talking to me like I'm a bloody child."

As angry as he is — he hasn't felt this angry in a long while, and he's not even totally sure why — it's starting to feel weird, swearing so much. He shuts off the water and sets the kettle on the stove as gently as he can manage and flicks the burner on before pressing a hand to his forehead and forcing himself to breathe.

"Sorry," he says, his tone still terse, his jaw still clenched. He drops his hand and finally looks at John. "I just hate it, I hate when people — when they act like that, and the way they talk to you, like they — like they know you, like they have any idea—"

He cuts himself off again, his gaze shifting quick and hot to a dusty corner of the floor. It takes him a moment to push out the unwelcome memory of Jacob Riggs, hand around his throat while he spewed all his ignorant assumptions. He shudders slightly as he forces it away, drawing another breath through his teeth.

"Not like it's even new," he says bitterly. "Everyone did this back home, too. They all reduce you to this, this title, this idea, like what happened to you was... like it's the only thing worth knowing, like everything else is just—" He gestures, a vague flap of his hand, frustration over the struggle to find his words. He can't keep up with his own anger, moving faster than he can speak, and yet he can't stop now that he's started. "Just details! Just a bunch of awful little footnotes nobody bothers to read. What are you, like it's — like that's the most interesting thing about you when it's not, and it never has been. Christ."

He stares balefully at the kettle, wishing it would get on his level, knowing he filled it too much and now he's bought himself an awkward amount of time to just stand there ranting. He needs to stop, but he doesn't know what that would even begin to feel like.

"Well they don't get to know," he snaps. "They don't get to know that you— you hum to yourself when you do the dishes and you have this very specific system for putting the mugs back in the cabinet. Or that you did improv in uni, or that you have a bunch of random bits of Shakespeare memorized, or that you know a frankly weird amount of facts about emulsifiers, or — or that you're funny, like really funny in the most ridiculous ways when you have the chance to show it. They don't know how much you hate auto-tuning, or that you're an incredibly pleasant drunk, or that you have this particular voice you use when you talk to cats. What you sound like in the morning, how good your hair smells after a shower. They don't get any of it, and they don't deserve it. Those things are mine."

He stops short, drawing a shaky breath and feeling a bit like he might be about to topple over. The kettle finally starts to work toward whistling, and Martin moves to switch off the burner. He stares at it for a moment, trying to imagine himself getting down cups, putting tea together, having a sit down and a cuppa like that might fix him right now. Then he breathes out slowly and turns back around.

"That's what you are," he says, making some effort to slow down, to soften. "All the messy little human things. Not what happened to you. Not what was forced on you and not the choices you had to make. And it's everyone else's loss."

Enough. Stop. He looks at John, blinking, breathing, not sure where things possibly go from here and unable to regret it.

Comments

[statement_ends]

Martin spends the entire walk home seething. His anger is so potent that John has to make a point of not hearing it, as if Martin is simultaneously walking in resolute silence beside him and muttering furiously on the other side of a door. Minding his own business requires energy that John wishes he didn't have to expend; he is already tired, thrice depleted by the fraught encounter with an angry god, the unpleasant conversation that followed, and the healing of his own leg. The prospect of weathering Martin's impending outburst, even knowing the anger won't really be directed at him, serves only to preemptively exhaust him further.

Which probably makes him ungrateful, or something. He can imagine the shape of Martin's anger even without overhearing it; he knows that Martin wasn't just personally insulted by Sylvie's impressions of them both. But her impressions of John weren't wrong. Bluntly put, perhaps, but not inaccurate. And he can't quite convince himself that he's allowed to feel insulted when all she did was remind them that the comfortable little life they've built for themselves can only give the impression of normalcy. That there is something distinctly Other beneath the surface, and that it can't be hidden from everyone.

As if he has any right to object to being seen.

Christ, he just wants to lie down.

But that isn't an option. Martin is off to the races the moment they step inside, all of that barely-withheld frustration and annoyance bursting out of him at last. John sighs softly, divesting himself of coat and shoes with slow deliberation. He hears Martin's words at some slight, impersonal distance: they land like hailstones on the pavement outside, hard enough that he might wince over the damage they could do to his car, if he had one, which he doesn't. A problem, but not necessarily his problem. A part of him wants to just proceed to the bathroom as if Martin's rant isn't even happening, to rid himself of another ruined pair of trousers and mop the dried blood off of his leg, to do only what is strictly necessary before crawling into bed and trying again tomorrow. Old habits. Instead, he finds himself toeing the line where hardwood meets the kitchen tiles, watching Martin's aggressive tea preparation with a small, wary furrow between his brows.

It is only when Martin meets his gaze and apologizes that John feels entirely present, and he blinks, swaying a fraction as if he'd been physically shoved back into his own body. He listens more attentively, almost marveling at Martin's continuing ire: that he has the energy to keep venting steam over the idea that strangers might find John's abilities more interesting than anything else about him, that he finds that prioritization irritating instead of inevitable. John isn't sure he agrees with him — he is certain that he lacks the energy or inclination to begrudge anyone who doesn't know him such low-hanging fruit — but there is something undeniably bolstering about the reminder that to Martin, at least, it is the smaller things that matter more.

And that's all John needs, really. He doesn't expect some unusually perceptive god or warlock or whatever to get some sense of his patron and ignore it in favor of inquiring about his bloody hobbies. He doesn't need random strangers to care about the things that only Martin is in a position to notice, let alone value. That discrepancy doesn't feel like a problem, or a shame, or 'everyone else's loss.' It feels natural, correct, that the person he kept his humanity for would love every tattered scrap of it with such stubborn ferocity.

Ferocity is still more than he has the energy for, and John's movements are still a bit cautious as he steps forward, his palms lighting on Martin's shoulders and then sliding down to rest just above his elbows. "Okay," he murmurs, both assent and reassurance. "It's okay. I mean, it doesn't— I don't care if random people don't... don't see that. As long as you do."

He rubs Martin's arms for a moment before giving the kettle a rueful glance. "Maybe the tea can wait? I just want to..." he breaks off with a weary huff, nodding down at his leg. Lifting his gaze back to Martin, he hesitates for a beat before setting aside his own instinctive embarrassment. Too tired for that, as well. "Come with me?"