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Entry tags:
Wake // for John
[CW: implied extreme violence & death, excessive blood, related trauma]
October 31st - November 1st, 2019
This has taken him far too long already.
Martin sits at his desk in his office, the door shut and locked as it's been most of the time for the past month, staring at his phone, at the open history of his texts with John. The last message exchanged is dated the 19th, John asking with exceptional care if he was planning on being in that day, forcing Martin to reply very briefly that he had in fact been there for several hours. No response. Before that, only scant business-like exchanges. He knows, and he'd known then, that John was testing the waters, trying to get a sense for what was going on. But he hadn't needed to delve much further. For better or worse, the message had been received.
The phone's screen dims, and he absently taps his thumb against it to wake it up.
Three days ago he'd made a decision. Twenty-two days before that he'd made another: to reacclimate himself with the Lonely, to give up all his tentative progress toward the recovering warmth of social connection and to return to the path on which he'd been set. The justifications were many, and they were easy: because he'd seen firsthand what form the Extinction might take, and even if it wasn't his world it felt too awful to ignore; because the Lonely is still here, breathing down his neck and threatening John in his dreams, and even if those threats are empty they still burrow deep into his heart; because none of this feels real or permanent and he ought to know better than to allow himself something nice when it will only get taken away, just like everything else. Because he wants to be ready, because he wants to be useful, because he wants to keep John safe.
The 19th, he realizes, had been the day Luke came. So they had in fact seen each other briefly; Martin had seen John with him, how different he'd been. Kind and gentle, comforting this little boy who seemed, impossibly, to have become close to him. It had hit Martin in ways he hadn't expected; it was like he was missing something he didn't know was there.
That had hurt, even more than the rest. It all hurt, it hurt so much, and he'd hated it. He'd gotten a cat to cope with the suffocating emptiness of his flat, and that had helped, but not enough. He'd justified it all to himself in a thousand different ways, and each time he had the conversation it felt emptier and more circular, like he couldn't quite keep track of all the threads of it. He'd tried to sink, but he couldn't, he can't, not here. Here the water is different and there is not enough to drown him.
He hated it and it hurt, but that wasn't enough to stop him. Not even seeing John with Luke was enough, not on its own. Maybe nothing would have been enough; maybe he'd have found a way to drown himself anyway, to disappear into the cold dark embrace that clutches him every night. Maybe that would have been it, if Kat hadn't forced it. Needling into him with questions and counters too precisely on the point of it. Promising that he was making John miserable.
That was far more than three days ago, but it took that long for him to arrive at a conclusion. It took him so long to decide, enough. He is tired. He is lonely. And whatever purpose this might have held feels so far away it's like he can no longer see it clearly at all.
So he stares at his phone. He'd meant to catch John before he left for the day, but they've become good at avoiding each other even in this small space. And it's become difficult. He'd allowed it to become difficult. He makes so many false starts and deletes them all, jiggling his knee with nervous, manic energy. He just doesn't know what to say. What can he say? What can he possibly say after all this?
He's sorry?
He is, it just doesn't feel like it'll ever be enough.
But he can't keep sitting here and staring at his bloody phone so he finally just starts somewhere.
It's easy to assume, at first, that the lack of response is simply John giving him a well-earned cold shoulder. It doesn't seem particularly like John - for all he was once rather unkind to Martin, he has never been petty - but Martin tries to content himself with that assumption. He tries as he keeps sending messages, as he locks up the Archive and heads feverishly toward the Bramford. The sun has set already, the earlier darkness still catching him off guard, as does the realization that it's Halloween. He'd forgotten, sequestered as he's been. Not that it matters. He's halfway to the Bramford when he tells John he's coming over; and when he arrives at the front door, there has still been no word and he's beginning to feel a tightness in his chest, a certainty that something is wrong. He just wants an answer, anything - John can be as angry as he likes, John can hate him, just as long as he's okay.
But there's no answer, and the longer Martin stands on the stoop, waiting for anyone to pass through, the sharper that sense of dread grows. He's starting to consider doing something genuinely stupid, like scoping around the building for an open window or something, when the door clicks open.
Martin stares at it, uncomprehending. It opens slowly, with a soft creak and all on its own, which is impossible; reaching out to catch it, he feels the weight of it, how this could not be caused by wind. Someone would have to push it open.
"H-hello?" he asks, feeling a bit foolish, but the only answer he gets is a chilly breeze and the distant sounds of trick-or-treaters and those who've gotten an early start on the drinking.
Well, no time to wonder about it now. He steps instead, letting the door fall shut behind him, and heads quickly down the hall to John's flat. He's reaching out to knock automatically when he realizes the door is open, cracked just barely ajar, but open.
It should not be open.
"John?" He pushes it the rest of the way and takes a few short steps into the entryway, startling for just a moment as he thinks he sees a person, pale and slight with very long hair, standing there at the end of it, but it was such a brief impression, like an afterimage on his eye, he scarcely gives it a moment's thought as he steps further into the room and
and
"No," bursts out of him, breathless and already halfway to a sob. "Oh god, oh god, no, no, no, John, John-!"
There is so, so much blood, and it is everywhere, an arc of arterial spray across the wall and spatter from what may have been a struggle and mostly pooled thick and already drying on the floor around the body, around his body, around John's body.
Martin doesn't remember moving forward, only realizes there's dull pain in his knees as he hits the floor and leans over him, grasping desperately at his shoulders as if this is something he can simply wake up from. There is a knife in his chest, stuck into his heart, and Martin can only stare at it, his breath hitching frantically as he begins to hyperventilate, tears spilling hot and startling down his face.
"Nononono," he moans feverishly, his hands trembling as they brush through John's hair like he's trying to smooth it back. His face is still, relaxed, but not peaceful. He thought people were supposed to look peaceful. "John, no, no, no, please, I - I can't, I can't lose you, I- I said I wasn't gonna let this happen again, I said, I - you can't, I need you, I-"
The words are already pouring out in an incoherent mess, but he can't maintain even that as he gives way to outright sobs, crumpling over him, his head pressed against John's unmoving chest. He was too late. He doesn't understand why this happened, what's even happened, but he was too late, he drifted away and he left John alone and now he's - now-
What bloody good is protecting John when he wasn't here to protect him?
"John," he whispers, shaking so badly he feels like he can't breathe, like he's going to be sick. He lifts his head to look at John's face, as if he'll see any sign that this isn't real, and instead his eyes fall to the scar across his throat.
That wasn't there before. That is new; more to the point, it's fresh. Just a thin neat slash across his throat, his neck and shoulders stained with the blood of it. And it's healed.
"What-" He sits up, reaching out delicately to touch the scar, not quite able to bring himself to do so. He pulls back, blinking through tears as he tries to cobble together some sort of understanding. His thoughts are racing as much as they feel frozen; like he exists in two states at once, panic and surrender. Some part of him, the stubborn part that needs made him a target for the Eye in the first place, the part that needs to understand, struggles against the tide of despair until it reminds him suddenly, simply: again.
He said he wouldn't let this happen again.
Nobody could explain how John woke up from that coma. Nobody could explain how he'd managed a coma and not death to begin wtih. Martin hadn't questioned it; it didn't matter. But it matters now. It matters more than anything's mattered in his life.
Martin lets his fingers move slowly from John's hair down the sides of his face, tracing the trail of little round scars down his neck to his shoulder, letting his hands drift back over John's chest. There is nothing intentionally reverent in it; he is moving slow because he can barely control his body, and because he is afraid.
He wraps his shaking hand around the handle of the knife, his lips moving wordlessly in a prayer that is not a prayer - perhaps just please please please please please - and with a strained grunt he yanks the knife out of John's chest.
It clatters to the floor beside him, and Martin sits there with his blood-stained hands curled tight into the fabric of his trousers, staring, waiting, begging. Please, John, please be okay. I need you to be okay. I need you to be here. I need you.
He waits and watches and prays to whatever horrible intelligence is listening, and for the longest sprawl of red seconds, nothing happens.
October 31st - November 1st, 2019
This has taken him far too long already.
Martin sits at his desk in his office, the door shut and locked as it's been most of the time for the past month, staring at his phone, at the open history of his texts with John. The last message exchanged is dated the 19th, John asking with exceptional care if he was planning on being in that day, forcing Martin to reply very briefly that he had in fact been there for several hours. No response. Before that, only scant business-like exchanges. He knows, and he'd known then, that John was testing the waters, trying to get a sense for what was going on. But he hadn't needed to delve much further. For better or worse, the message had been received.
The phone's screen dims, and he absently taps his thumb against it to wake it up.
Three days ago he'd made a decision. Twenty-two days before that he'd made another: to reacclimate himself with the Lonely, to give up all his tentative progress toward the recovering warmth of social connection and to return to the path on which he'd been set. The justifications were many, and they were easy: because he'd seen firsthand what form the Extinction might take, and even if it wasn't his world it felt too awful to ignore; because the Lonely is still here, breathing down his neck and threatening John in his dreams, and even if those threats are empty they still burrow deep into his heart; because none of this feels real or permanent and he ought to know better than to allow himself something nice when it will only get taken away, just like everything else. Because he wants to be ready, because he wants to be useful, because he wants to keep John safe.
The 19th, he realizes, had been the day Luke came. So they had in fact seen each other briefly; Martin had seen John with him, how different he'd been. Kind and gentle, comforting this little boy who seemed, impossibly, to have become close to him. It had hit Martin in ways he hadn't expected; it was like he was missing something he didn't know was there.
That had hurt, even more than the rest. It all hurt, it hurt so much, and he'd hated it. He'd gotten a cat to cope with the suffocating emptiness of his flat, and that had helped, but not enough. He'd justified it all to himself in a thousand different ways, and each time he had the conversation it felt emptier and more circular, like he couldn't quite keep track of all the threads of it. He'd tried to sink, but he couldn't, he can't, not here. Here the water is different and there is not enough to drown him.
He hated it and it hurt, but that wasn't enough to stop him. Not even seeing John with Luke was enough, not on its own. Maybe nothing would have been enough; maybe he'd have found a way to drown himself anyway, to disappear into the cold dark embrace that clutches him every night. Maybe that would have been it, if Kat hadn't forced it. Needling into him with questions and counters too precisely on the point of it. Promising that he was making John miserable.
That was far more than three days ago, but it took that long for him to arrive at a conclusion. It took him so long to decide, enough. He is tired. He is lonely. And whatever purpose this might have held feels so far away it's like he can no longer see it clearly at all.
So he stares at his phone. He'd meant to catch John before he left for the day, but they've become good at avoiding each other even in this small space. And it's become difficult. He'd allowed it to become difficult. He makes so many false starts and deletes them all, jiggling his knee with nervous, manic energy. He just doesn't know what to say. What can he say? What can he possibly say after all this?
He's sorry?
He is, it just doesn't feel like it'll ever be enough.
But he can't keep sitting here and staring at his bloody phone so he finally just starts somewhere.
It's easy to assume, at first, that the lack of response is simply John giving him a well-earned cold shoulder. It doesn't seem particularly like John - for all he was once rather unkind to Martin, he has never been petty - but Martin tries to content himself with that assumption. He tries as he keeps sending messages, as he locks up the Archive and heads feverishly toward the Bramford. The sun has set already, the earlier darkness still catching him off guard, as does the realization that it's Halloween. He'd forgotten, sequestered as he's been. Not that it matters. He's halfway to the Bramford when he tells John he's coming over; and when he arrives at the front door, there has still been no word and he's beginning to feel a tightness in his chest, a certainty that something is wrong. He just wants an answer, anything - John can be as angry as he likes, John can hate him, just as long as he's okay.
But there's no answer, and the longer Martin stands on the stoop, waiting for anyone to pass through, the sharper that sense of dread grows. He's starting to consider doing something genuinely stupid, like scoping around the building for an open window or something, when the door clicks open.
Martin stares at it, uncomprehending. It opens slowly, with a soft creak and all on its own, which is impossible; reaching out to catch it, he feels the weight of it, how this could not be caused by wind. Someone would have to push it open.
"H-hello?" he asks, feeling a bit foolish, but the only answer he gets is a chilly breeze and the distant sounds of trick-or-treaters and those who've gotten an early start on the drinking.
Well, no time to wonder about it now. He steps instead, letting the door fall shut behind him, and heads quickly down the hall to John's flat. He's reaching out to knock automatically when he realizes the door is open, cracked just barely ajar, but open.
It should not be open.
"John?" He pushes it the rest of the way and takes a few short steps into the entryway, startling for just a moment as he thinks he sees a person, pale and slight with very long hair, standing there at the end of it, but it was such a brief impression, like an afterimage on his eye, he scarcely gives it a moment's thought as he steps further into the room and
and
"No," bursts out of him, breathless and already halfway to a sob. "Oh god, oh god, no, no, no, John, John-!"
There is so, so much blood, and it is everywhere, an arc of arterial spray across the wall and spatter from what may have been a struggle and mostly pooled thick and already drying on the floor around the body, around his body, around John's body.
Martin doesn't remember moving forward, only realizes there's dull pain in his knees as he hits the floor and leans over him, grasping desperately at his shoulders as if this is something he can simply wake up from. There is a knife in his chest, stuck into his heart, and Martin can only stare at it, his breath hitching frantically as he begins to hyperventilate, tears spilling hot and startling down his face.
"Nononono," he moans feverishly, his hands trembling as they brush through John's hair like he's trying to smooth it back. His face is still, relaxed, but not peaceful. He thought people were supposed to look peaceful. "John, no, no, no, please, I - I can't, I can't lose you, I- I said I wasn't gonna let this happen again, I said, I - you can't, I need you, I-"
The words are already pouring out in an incoherent mess, but he can't maintain even that as he gives way to outright sobs, crumpling over him, his head pressed against John's unmoving chest. He was too late. He doesn't understand why this happened, what's even happened, but he was too late, he drifted away and he left John alone and now he's - now-
What bloody good is protecting John when he wasn't here to protect him?
"John," he whispers, shaking so badly he feels like he can't breathe, like he's going to be sick. He lifts his head to look at John's face, as if he'll see any sign that this isn't real, and instead his eyes fall to the scar across his throat.
That wasn't there before. That is new; more to the point, it's fresh. Just a thin neat slash across his throat, his neck and shoulders stained with the blood of it. And it's healed.
"What-" He sits up, reaching out delicately to touch the scar, not quite able to bring himself to do so. He pulls back, blinking through tears as he tries to cobble together some sort of understanding. His thoughts are racing as much as they feel frozen; like he exists in two states at once, panic and surrender. Some part of him, the stubborn part that needs made him a target for the Eye in the first place, the part that needs to understand, struggles against the tide of despair until it reminds him suddenly, simply: again.
He said he wouldn't let this happen again.
Nobody could explain how John woke up from that coma. Nobody could explain how he'd managed a coma and not death to begin wtih. Martin hadn't questioned it; it didn't matter. But it matters now. It matters more than anything's mattered in his life.
Martin lets his fingers move slowly from John's hair down the sides of his face, tracing the trail of little round scars down his neck to his shoulder, letting his hands drift back over John's chest. There is nothing intentionally reverent in it; he is moving slow because he can barely control his body, and because he is afraid.
He wraps his shaking hand around the handle of the knife, his lips moving wordlessly in a prayer that is not a prayer - perhaps just please please please please please - and with a strained grunt he yanks the knife out of John's chest.
It clatters to the floor beside him, and Martin sits there with his blood-stained hands curled tight into the fabric of his trousers, staring, waiting, begging. Please, John, please be okay. I need you to be okay. I need you to be here. I need you.
He waits and watches and prays to whatever horrible intelligence is listening, and for the longest sprawl of red seconds, nothing happens.
Re: November 1st ~ 8:00 AM (for Eliot)
John was resting, he'd said, and Martin needed help with cleaning. He’d been attacked. Martin's been so distant of late, it’s hard to read anything from him other than just overwhelming stress. He’d thought Martin and John were barely even talking, with whatever’s going on between them. This must have been serious. So his mind only races from thought to thought, increasingly dire explanations, what if the entity John's attached to has somehow...infested the place, what if there's something like a demon trapped in the apartment, what if more ghosts and this time they’re hostile.
But the building is quiet, everything appears normal. Eliot can't sense much in the way of magic, even. As they reach John's door there's a similar heaviness to the air that he feels in the Archive, but that's not entirely surprising, given what he's been told about the nature of John's bond with whatever power sustains him.
Martin turns to him, and warns him, looking so stricken that for a moment Eliot can only nod. "Okay," he answers, solemn.
When Martin opens the door the smell is the first thing Eliot registers. Even this long after...whatever the fuck happened here, with the apartment closed up the smell of blood still lingers. Blood and wood.
Eliot's hand shakes as he closes the door behind him, and he says nothing, only looks at the horrible tableau and tries to breathe through his mouth.
There have only been a few times Eliot's seen this much blood in one place, and he remembers them vividly. There is the wide dark stain on the floor; there had been so much blood on the pier where Benedict fell, where he'd lay with hands curled into claws stained black, the arrow stuck in his throat. No one had known, was the horrible thing, they had all been so focused on the battle at the island, it had felt like such a victory, and Eliot hadn't known the true cost until it was all over.
He clears his throat, and looks at the arc on the wall, looks at Martin in John's clothes. He remembers kneeling on the ground in Ember's Tomb, for what seemed like hours. Trying to maintain a barrier on Quentin to keep enough blood inside him, to physically hold him together until help came. He'd felt as exhausted then as Martin looks now.
Eliot sniffs; his eyes are stinging and he wipes at them hastily, and frowns. Martin brought him here because he needed help, he needs to be able to do that, to be helpful. He needs to focus.
"What happened, Martin?" he asks. His voice is rough but steady, and his hands do not shake. "What happened to John?"
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The question comes before he can think what to say, if there's anything to say. He hesitates before answering. It's the right question, as if Eliot just knows how to ask it - he'd said John was attacked, but all this blood goes beyond that. But Eliot hasn't asked what happened, whose blood this is. He's asked what happened to John.
And there is an answer. He hadn't wanted to give it, but there is no avoiding it now, and Eliot deserves to know.
Martin clutches at his arm and stares down at the stain on the wood, feeling miserable that he brought Eliot into this without any regard to how it might affect him. "He was-" His voice cracks, Christ, and he clutches himself tighter but he can't stop the spill of tears, as tired and dehydrated as he is; there are still more.
"I found him here," he says, his voice quavering horribly. "Dead. I- someone got in here and tried to kill him. H-he's survived through something that should have killed him before, because of his whole - his connection to the-" He waves a hand, frustrated at having to find the words for this. Eliot probably understands what he's getting at. "So I, I just had to pull the knife out, and he came back. He came back."
He repeats it like he's trying to convince himself. Being here again, reliving the experience of first stepping in to find John on the floor, has brought that fear, that horror of losing John forever, rushing back like it never left.
"I - I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought you here, I-" He covers his face, shaking, hating himself for it, for all of it. "I'm just so tired, and I don't, I don't want him to have to look at this, not ever again, and I didn't know what else to do."
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He stays quiet as long as he can, one hand halfway reaching toward Martin for-what? what kind of comfort can he offer for this? Eliot tries to register what Martin's saying, tries to think about it analytically, what this might mean about John's nature, the thing they've tied themselves to. But it doesn't stick. He doesn't have the heart to be curious now, the only thing that matters is that something truly horrible has happened and Martin, bless him, has been alone with it.
Eliot can't help the lump in his throat as he sees Martin crying, and he swallows, trying to speak, to do anything.
"No," he says finally, his voice a cautious whisper as he takes a step towards him. "Hey, no no it's okay, you don't need to apologize, Martin--" He huffs, frustrated that Martin's had to deal with this, and enfolds him in a hug. Eliot doesn't even think about it, just puts his arms around him and rests his chin on top of Martin's head and lets him cry. "It's okay," he murmurs. "We're going to fix this."
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There's a whole other layer of shock to it, not just that it was unexpected. Apart from the twice desperate occasions that he pulled John to him in the past twelve hours, Martin has not touched anyone - and especially not been touched like this - in nearly a month. Before that it had still been rather few and far between - he'd been acclimating cautiously to receiving affection from Greta and Saoirse and Blue, exchanging occasional light contact with John, but... it had all been few and far between. And after how quickly he sank back into the depths of the Lonely, this feels - it's different from hugging John. It isn't as fraught for a number of reasons, and it isn't something he chose to do. It is something being given to him because he needs it.
Eliot tells him that it's okay and that they'll fix this, his chin resting comfortably on Martin's head, and for a moment Martin can only shiver and cry softly. It's so pathetic, but it's good, the feeling of another body, of reassurance given. He holds on a little tighter, aware that Eliot needs this, too.
By the time he finally pulls away, his tears have died down again and he feels only vague, belated embarrassment. "Thank you," he says a bit raggedly, and sniffs. "Erm..." He looks over at the stain, trying to put himself back into a problem-solving state of mind, but he's rather tapped out. "I... I did my best last night, but... John doesn't have a lot of, erm... I mean we need just. A ridiculous amount of hydrogen peroxide, or something." He shrugs haplessly.
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It's certainly not the same as what Martin's gone through--what he'd already been going through before this gruesome scene. And obviously Eliot can't just replace one of the most important people in his life with someone he only met a month or so ago. But he understands feeling lonely, and bereft, and Martin needs this. Martin needs to be hugged more, and Eliot needs to be a better friend to him.
He only sniffles a little when Martin finally pulls away, and the loss of that comfort (Martin's so soft) is replaced with relief, as he seems to be...well. A bit less on the edge of a breakdown.
Eliot clears his throat when Martin finishes speaking, and looks over the stain. He's starting to see a clear course of action, and it helps; he can almost look at the blood without wincing. "Well I think," he says slowly, looking at the color of it as he edges toward the kitchen, "it's probably sat too long for me to just...whoosh it away, you know." That and it's a whole person's worth of blood.
"Peroxide, though, that's actually very doable." He even manages a tiny smile as he hangs his coat up and starts to roll up his sleeves. "How about you start filling up the sink, and then I can rearrange some molecules."
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"O-okay," he says, allowing himself a bit of optimism as he follows Eliot to the kitchen. As he goes, he spots the knife on the floor, exactly where he'd left it. His stomach turns a little at the sight of it, but he also realizes grimly that he's glad it's still there. He's going to need that.
Not just yet, though. He follows Eliot and does as he advises, closing the sink drain and filling it with water.
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"Right," he says, mostly to himself. "Where to start."
The wall is the obvious choice, of course, the most telling evidence of violence. Eliot never cared for crime procedurals but he picked a few things up from questing for the keys, fighting beside Bingle. His eyes follow the arc of what he knows is arterial spray and he absently brings a hand to his throat. It's hard to think of John going through that, and even harder to imagine why someone would do such a thing. But it doesn't help to wonder, when there's work to be done. Eliot rolls up his sleeves and walks over to the wall and starts to draw a containment grid in chalk.
"I think what we'll have to do is keep it agitated inside the field," he explains to Martin, though it's really just helping order his own thoughts. "And I'll have to make more peroxide after the first batch so if you're all right on sink duty that would be optimal, and just keep an eye on the stain and let me know when it's starting to come off."
He looks back at Martin to see how he's doing, if he's gotten lost in his grief again. "If you still have your clothes here I could probably do them at the same time? At least get them good enough to go in the laundry."
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Christ, he'd almost forgotten. John's clothes are still in a bag by the door, and he'd been planning to toss them out, but his are still piled on the floor of the WC. Wouldn't that have been lovely, if he and Eliot cleaned up the whole mess only for John to find Martin's bloody clothes next time he goes to the toilet.
It would be nice to get back into clothes that actually fit. He's been in these long enough that he'd almost managed to grow used to them, but now that he's thinking about it again, he becomes aware of how uncomfortable they are.
"Right, I'll - one second." He shuts the water off and heads down the hall toward the WC, where he finds his clothes where he'd left them, the blood gone all dry and sticky. He grimaces as he picks them up. Now that last night's urgency is distant, it's much more difficult to be cavalier about it.
He carries them gingerly out to where Eliot's still focused on making his chalk grid. "Here," he says, feeling aimlessly sheepish, as though he ought to be embarrassed about the state of his things. He sets them down where Eliot indicates, in a heap on top of the existing stain, and steps back a bit too quickly. Of all the times to get squeamish.
"I'm... gonna wash my hands," he says haltingly, and turns to head back to the WC's unoccupied sink. As he does so, glancing back to confirm Eliot is still distracted, he bends down to pick up the knife. He takes it to the WC and studies it for a few moments. John's blood remains, staining the steel with that awful rust color. He considers trying to clean it up as well, but stops himself. He knows what he means to do with it, and he thinks he wants the blood on it still, for effect if nothing else.
So he fetches an extra washcloth, something he's fairly sure John won't miss - and if he does, he can call it a casualty of cleaning up the blood - and wraps the knife up, tucking it into a drawer. He'll come back when he needs to change into his clean clothes, and he can pick it up and slip it in his coat pocket then. Tidy.
Perhaps it's odd that he's taking such pains to hide this from Eliot in addition to John, but Martin thinks it's best if nobody knows. He has no interest in anyone trying to talk him out of this, and he certainly doesn't want Eliot getting any further involved than he is already. John is, understandably, unwilling to remove the necessity of sneaking around - Martin does understand it, he just refuses to accept it. He's not going to sit and wait this out, so: this is his issue to deal with, and his alone.
Knife hidden, hands washed, he comes back out and resumes his post by the kitchen sink. "Okay," he says, only a little shaky. "Erm... ready if you are."
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"All right then," he says, rubbing his hands together when Martin returns from the bathroom. The first part, the transmutation, is easy enough and doesn't actually look like anything. Just a shuffling around of molecular bonds. Moving it from the sink to the wall is only slightly more effort, he's always had a knack for telekinesis, and there's something morbidly satisfying about seeing the solution bubble up on contact with the stain.
In the end it feels rather like conducting a symphony, Eliot imagines. His arms start to have that familiar lactic acid ache and he loses track of how much time is passing, but it's good. He feels like a real working magician again, and seeing the stains gradually fade from the floor and the wall feels like confirmation that his skills actually serve a good a useful purpose.
And once it's done, he stops the magical assembly line with a sigh, evaporates the peroxide, and looks around.
"I think it's passable," he says, looking over the room. There's no way anyone walking in would be able to tell what happened here. And that's how it should be.
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More important, it's working. Martin feels the tension slide out of his shoulders as the stains disappear from the wall and the floor, as his clothes return to their natural state. It doesn't quite feel right to say it was all erased—he'll always know it was there, and he knows John will, too—but Christ, it helps not having to see it anymore. It helps him breathe a little easier, knowing this step is finished, and now all that's left is to see to John.
For that, he wants to get back as soon as possible. As soon as Eliot finishes up, proclaiming it 'passable,' which seems like a massive understatement, Martin nods and drains the sink, stepping out from the kitchen.
"Thank you," he says as warmly as he can manage. "This was—this was extraordinarily helpful, Eliot. Thank you."
He reaches out to press a hand to his arm, a bit of gentle pressure to show his gratitude, before he scoops up his clean, dried clothes.
"I'll just go and change, and—and we can get back," he says, heading back toward the WC. He'll get back into his own things. Take the knife. Throw John's clothes out on their way down. Head back. Get to John. Get back to John. He slips the knife into his coat pocket, a telltale weight, a reminder of what's still to come. He pushes it from his mind. Later. Later.