#*laugh*

Jon lets himself be persuaded. Martin’s right: it is beautiful outside, and he supposes he can always keep an Eye out (or several) for anything approaching with ill intent. They pack a lunch of sandwiches and a thermos of tea and head out into the pleasantly mild summer’s day, finding a good spot about half a mile south of their cabin, halfway down a green hillside with a rather spectacular view of the Scottish landscape rising and falling around them. The light breeze makes the stretches of grass bow and ripple like waves on a surface of water. A clump of highland cows graze nearby. 

“I’m gonna go say hello”, Martin announces brightly, as soon as he’s laid down the blanket on the grass. 

Jon quirks a skeptical eyebrow toward the shaggy beasts and their not-inconsiderable horns.

“Are you sure that’s... wise?” he asks.

Martin huffs: “Obviously I’m not going to be an idiot about it and scare them. I just want a closer... ooh, look, there’s a calf!” Annnd he’s gone. 

Jon settles down on the blanket with a contented grunt, watching Martin - his boyfriend, how about that? - practically bounce down the grassy slope toward the little herd, and he feels a jolt of joy at the sight, the feeling still so new and unfamiliar and precious he scarcely dares to examine it head-on. Something to keep in the corner of his eye for now, letting it warm him as he slowly allows himself to grow accustomed to its presence. 

Cows sufficiently marveled at, Martin soon comes back up the hill again, a beaming grin on his face even as the climb makes him huff and puff a little with the exertion. Jon can’t help but smile back, patting the spot to the right side of him on the blanket and making room.

“What is it with you and unnecessarily hairy animals anyway?” he asks as Martin plops down cross-legged beside him.  “Spiders, highland cattle...”

“I just think they’re cute”, Martin says, reaching over to ruffle his fingers through Jon’s own - admittedly fairly shaggy - mane.

“Oh, please,” Jon snorts, but leans into the touch just the same. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.”

After they’ve finished their tea and sandwiches, Martin lies down on his back and rests his head in Jon’s lap while Jon brings out one of the half dozen paperback novels he bought at a petrol station on their long drive to Scotland. He begins to read silently to himself, but before long is interrupted by a hand tugging gently at his sleeve, Martin’s up-side-down expression open and hopeful:

“Read to me?” A pause, then adding: “...it’s not a horror, is it?”

Jon laughs, and maybe the laugh is just a little bit grim, but he doubts Martin will hold that against him. 

“It is not. Some kind of Nordic noir, I think? I didn’t really look too closely, I just grabbed a bunch of them on a whim.” 

“Sounds good to me. Take it away.”

Jon does. At first it feels odd (tastes bland?) to read something aloud and not fall into that trance-like state he’s come to associate with reading statements; there’s no sense of feeding or being fed upon, no disconcerting, intoxicating blurring between his self and the person whose words he’s lending his voice to. Just a story of a jaded Norwegian detective (whose name Jon is pretty sure he is butchering, polyglot Beholding powers or no), struggling to balance her troubled family life whilst investigating a string of bestial murders. Your standard crime fiction fair. Despite this, and to his surprise, Jon soon finds himself relaxing into the narration, settling comfortably into the voices and flow of the text.  

That is, until he notices Martin starting to sniffle softly every minute or so, and suddenly it’s taking all of Jon’s concentration not to stumble over his words, let alone register what it is he is reading. 

Martin, meanwhile, appears completely oblivious to his boyfriend’s plight. Apart from the occasional sniffle and crinkling of his nose he seems perfectly content and relaxed where he lies, eyes closed, hands resting with fingers interlaced on his belly. Jon finishes the first chapter and, with a quick glance down, decides not to tempt his fate any further. He closes the book.

“To be continued.”

Hearing this, Martin opens one eye and peers up at him.

“You’re really good at reading aloud,” he says, and Jon isn’t sure what makes him blush more: the earnest admiration in Martin’s voice, or the hint of growing congestion accompanying it.

“Th-thank you. I’ve had a lot of practice of course. Comes w... hrm. Came with the job.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean, you’re amazing at doing the voices. You make them sound so natural, and easy to tell apart.”

“I, um... I used to do a bit of am-dram at Oxford,” Jon admits, cringing slightly at the memory.

A disbelieving, laughing exhale: “You’re kidding?”

“Afraid not. If I’m honest I was pretty rubbish at it, but it was a surprisingly effective way to blow off some pre-exam tension. Incidentally that’s also where I first met Georgie. We, uh...” Jon trails off, tensing and staring straight ahead as the sound of Martin sniffling and fussing with his nose drifts up from his lap once again. 

“Ah, sorry. -snff!-  Got a bit distracted there. You were saying?” 

Jon forces himself to meet Martin’s gaze, petrifying embarrassment and warm, glowing affection both fighting to stick his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Once he manages to pry it loose, what comes out is:

“I... I can’t remember what I was saying.” Let’s hear it for honesty! 

“What, seriously? I know you got this whole ‘old man’ image going on, but... ” Martin starts to laugh, then a dawning understanding makes his eyes go round and he stops. Knuckled forefinger still pressed to his septum, he looks up at Jon, blinks twice, and lowers his hand slowly, revealing a smile that’s hesitant at first but quickly widens into something more mischievous. 

“Oh. Ohh. I see. Sorry. I forgot.”

“It’s fine, I didn’t mean to... Never mind. It’s fine. Ignore me, please.” Jon hides his face in his hands, as if that’s going to help anything. 

“Well, I guess I could do that, if that’s what you really want,” Martin begins, his eyes twinkling in a way that’s somehow both kind and distinctly worrisome at the same time. “But I mean, it just seems like a bit of a waste? I honestly thought I’d be okay coming out here since my allergies have been pretty mild today, but maybe spending an hour downwind of a massive grassy field wasn’t the... -snf- ...w-wisest choice ever.”

“You think?” Jon groans, but can’t resist peering between his fingers as Martin scrubs the palm of his hand against his nose with quick, urgent little movements, a subtle pink hue already noticeable around the rims of his nostrils. 

“Ihh-it’s becoming clearer by the minute.” The last word comes out as “bidute” and in that moment Jon isn’t sure whether he’d rather sink beneath the earth Buried-style or just fall into the sky and revisit the Vast.

“We can go back inside,” he offers weakly. “You still got your meds back at the cabin, right? This was supposed to be a pleasant picnic, not... I don’t want to see you uncomfortable. It looks... uncomfortable.”

“I’ll be fine,” Martin assures him. “It’s really not as bad as it looks. Just very... -snff!- ...tickly.” 

“You will tell me if it gets too much?” 

“Promise.” A reassuring smile, turned slightly crooked as Martin wiggles his nose again, nostrils flexing with yet another sniffle, decidedly wetter than before. “I can’t promise for certain that I’m actually going to sneeze though. I get like this sometimes, when everything just itches like crazy but it’s as if my nose has gone on strike or something? Really annoying. Oh, and I guess it’s going to be doubly as annoying now, with the two us waiting instead of just me, huh?”

It really isn’t fair, Jon thinks, that Martin should be able to talk about these things in such a casual, carefree manner. As for Jon himself, he’s fairly certain he’s more blush than man at this point. He sneaks a look at Martin again and catches the other man grinning up at him, blue eyes red-rimmed and damp but twinkling more than ever.

“You’re doing this on purpose,” Jon grumbles, and immediately he can feel Martin’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter against his thigh.

“Nooo, how’d you figure that? Of course I am! I thought that was rather the point.” 

“I... I just... hrm.” So eloquent. 

“This is what you get, you know. You can’t just hand me a nugget of knowledge like that and then expect me not to use it.”

“Alright. Alright. Point made.”

“At least now I doh - h! - hhon’t have to suffer alone.” Another sniff and nose scrunch, followed by more vigorous rubbing. “-snrf!- Thought I had it for a second there. No...? H-hang on, maybehh... heh...hh...!?” One, two, three seconds pass, and then - “...ugh. Nope. Lost it. Sorry.” Sighing in frustration, Martin plucks his glasses off his face so that he can reach to wipe the tears that have started to gather in the corners of his eyes. His fingertips linger for a moment, pressing on his closed eyelids in an attempt to soothe the stinging irritation there.

“Don’t. You’ll hurt your eyes,” Jon mumbles, clumsily grasping Martin’s wrist and pulling the hand away. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a bit, ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. Sometimes, when it’s really bad, I have to literally sit on my hands to stop myself from rubbing. Which is really inconvenient when you’re supposed to be doing admin. It’s really... q-quite... hh- ihh- ...hihh - ! “

Again, Jon can feel Martin’s shoulders shudder against the side of his leg, this time with a string of shallow, quivering gasps that seem to rise in pitch and urgency with each new inhalation. Heartbeat hammering away, toes curling on their own volition inside his hiking boots, Jon tears his eyes away from Martin’s flushed, increasingly desperate features to stare out across the valley instead, but it’s no use, he can still See it clear as day, and what’s worse, he Knows what it feels like, and his own sinuses ache faintly in sympathy. 

“hh’h - h-h-hh---! ...”  Annnd again, it peters out into nothing. Martin lets out his gathered breath in a rush of air, part laugh, part groan, and proceeds to pinch his nose between both hands, hard enough to leave pale, fading finger marks on the otherwise angry red skin. 

“Ugghhh. Help.”

“Y-you okay? Maybe we should go back. It’s only going to get worse if you...”

“Jon? I said I’m fine.” Martin’s voice is patient but firm, even with his n’s and m’s eroded beyond recognition. Sniffling uselessly against thickening congestion, he blinks the latest flood of tears from his eyes and reaches up to cup Jon’s jaw, running a thumb through the Archivist’s dark beard. “I’m enjoying this, believe it or not. I haven’t seen you this red since I accidentally walked in on you in the office without my trousers on. It’s very cute.”

“If you say so.” More grumbling. 

“I do. I really could use some help though.”

“What?”

“Some help. With this.” And with that, Martin moves from cupping Jon’s face to grasping his hand instead, guiding it down, first to his lips for a light kiss on the burn-scarred knuckles, and then - What? What? - a fraction higher to nudge his nose against Jon’s suddenly rigid fingertips.

“Sorry, is this...” Martin pulls back, hesitates for a moment, “is this okay? I’ll stop if you’re not...”

“N-no, it’s -” Christ, is that his voice? That pubescent piping squawk? Jon clears his throat with some difficulty and tries again, admittedly with only marginal improvement: “It’s fine. It’s - it’s good. You can keep... going.” Famous last words, he thinks dizzily, and focuses on controlling his breathing as Martin proceeds to nuzzle his nose into Jon’s hand once again. Gentle at first, the soft, round tip bumping and brushing against the palm in an almost cat-like manner. Each touch sends a ripple of goosebumps up Jon’s arm, a buzzing electric current of sensation effectively short-circuiting his brain. 

“Martin...” It’s little more than a breathless whisper.

“Hmm?” At least that’s the sound Jon assumes Martin intended to make; trying to hum through a solidly blocked nose doesn’t exactly... work. What it does do, is make Martin pause in his nuzzling for a moment, turn his head to the side with a small cough, snuffle ineffectively, then turn back with a somewhat sheepish expression, eyes heavy-lidded and vaguely glazed over. “Sorry. Wow, I really can’t breathe through my nose at all.”

“You don’t have trouble breathing, getting enough air I mean?”

“Nah, I’m good. Thank you for checking though.” 

“S-sure.”

Martin makes another frustrated little noise, almost a whimper, and scrunches his face up in an itchy grimace, eyes squeezed tightly shut, upper lip pulled down and around to stretch his nostrils wide for a second. Jon swallows, then sucks in a hissing breath as Martin brings both of their hands back to resume where they left off, no gentle prodding this time around but purposefully and repeatedly working the warm bulb of his nose against the bony ridge of Jon’s knuckle. Jon can feel the faintest trace of cool dampness being left on his skin and for a flashing, white-hot moment he completely forgets how to breathe.

“Oh god, no, that’s... -snf- sorry. That’s gross. Juhh - j-just give me a sec,” Martin mutters, pushing himself up into a sitting position and fishing a travel packet of tissues out of the front pocket of his hoodie. He clamps two of them over his nose, blows with a tight, wetly crackling sound. As if pulled magnetically, Jon finds himself practically melting forward and sideways so that he ends up leaning against Martin’s back, one arm going around his boyfriend’s middle, the other reaching up to plunge greedy fingers into the soft curls of his hair. 

“Not gross,” is all he can think to say, muffled into Martin’s shoulder blade.  

“Look at you all clingy all of a sudden,” Martin laughs. He gives his nose a final swipe with the tissues before pocketing them and turning back to Jon, expression way too smug for someone who, by the looks of things, is getting his arse soundly handed to him by a field of highland flora. 

“Oh shut up.”

“I think you'll hahh--hhave to make me.” 

Okay, that is it. 

"Fine. Have it your way."

Jon kisses him. For all his teasing up to this point, Martin actually gives a small “mph?!” of surprise at this and Jon can’t stop a pleased grin tugging at his mouth as he presses closer. Closer. Arms around him. Warm. Soft. Smell of tea. Taste of salt -

“Jon, please, I cad’t... -hff-, -hhf-, ...you gotta give beh sobe breathi’g roob here...” 

“Oh, right.” Jon pulls away again, but only so far that the tips of their noses still brush against each other. Just the lightest of touches. Still he Knows it’s more than enough to make the itch in Martin’s sinuses spark to life with renewed fierceness. Oh dear. Time they actually did something about that. Jon might have to tap into some of that less-than-impressive drama experience and step into the role of a more confident man (or at least a less cripplingly embarrassed one), but if that’s what it’s going to take to finally snap them both out of this torturous limbo, so be it. 

“You still want my help with that?” Jon asks, voice as low as it will go. He sits back on his knees and plucks a long blade of grass from the ground beside the picnic blanket. Holds it up, slowly twists the light green stem between thumb and forefinger. Looks down at it briefly, inspecting the sharply pointed tip, then back up at Martin again. Raises his eyebrows in a silent how about it? 

Martin hesitates for a second, then nods:

“O-okay. Yehh-yeah. Go for it.” Finally that nervous little laugh is back, the one Jon can remember grating on his nerves back when Martin first joined the Institute. Somewhere along the way that laugh stopped being annoying. Became something familiar. Comforting. Endearing. So much has changed since then, most of it not for the better, but that laugh... these days it never fails to make Jon’s heart feel all tender, fluttering against his ribs like a caged bird. Speaking of which...

Jon curls his free hand around the back of Martin’s neck and slowly, experimentally lets the blade of grass trace the outer edge of one pink nostril, then the other. Martin sinks his teeth into his lower lip, hard, clearly biting back a groan as his nose gives a pronounced twitch, nostrils flaring into perfect, circular o’s. “Jon, please...!”, he gasps, and Jon neither has the heart nor the patience to drag things out any longer. He knows it won’t take much, not with Martin’s control already balanced on a hair's breadth.

Fingers trembling just slightly, breath withheld, Jon slips the tip of the blade of grass up and out of sight, gives it a twirl just around the inner rim of Martin’s right nostril. The reaction is immediate. Martin’s eyelids drift closed, eyebrows arching high, mouth falling open:

“- h - ! “

Just one short, sharp intake of breath, unmistakably laden with near-panicked, ticklish need, and Jon barely has time to withdraw his hand before Martin snaps forward into their half-embrace, making it a full one as he buries his face in the curve between Jon’s shoulder and neck.

“hd’tshTshTshh!”

The first three sneezes, long-delayed and all the more desperate for it, follow so fast on each other’s heels it’s like they’ve been strung together into one single release. They don’t sound nearly forceful enough to bring any sort of relief though, and sure enough, Jon can feel Martin’s arms tighten around him as he shivers with another, equally frantic triple mere seconds later, sound dampened by Jon’s shirt.

“heh’dshiuh! hptSChih! ...hh! -hH’TSCHiuh!”

Three short blasts of hot, damp breath against his skin through the fabric. It tickles, and Jon gives a hissing (possibly slightly deranged) giggle, hugging his boyfriend even closer, head swimming with endorphins. So ridiculous. So wonderful. Ridiculously wonderful.

“Oh, yhh-you think this is... hh - ! -dtSCHih! ...this is funny, do you? heh’PSCHiew! -tshiuh!”

“Yes.” Still giggling.

“You’re ah - ah-ahh-- aaTSCHiuh! ...a strange man, Jonathan Sims.” Relaxing his bear hug grip, Martin raises his head and draws back to give himself room to wipe his nose on the back of his hand, expression still flickering between fondness and hazy, allergic anticipation.

Now there’s an understatement.

“Lucky for me you like me anyway,” Jon says, and Martin’s laugh once again dissolves into wildly hitching gasps, his sweet, round face tear-streaked and flushed, tilted back toward the midday sun, pudgy button nose bright red and quivering like that of an anxious rabbit.

“hhih... hh’h’h’h -?” To Jon’s ears, those stuttering breaths sound suspiciously shallow and indecisive, as though Martin’s nose it about to go on another unhelpful strike. Not on his watch. Pulling Martin closer again, Jon presses a kiss to the tip of his nose, quick but firm. It works like a charm. Or, indeed, like pushing a button -  

“Oh, that w- ah-! HAH’TSCHiuh! -ptSHHIWH! -dtSHIEW! -tdjSCHiu!”

This goes on for a good while. When the fit eventually slows and then stops entirely, they’ve both long since keeled over and are lying curled up on their picnic blanket, arms still around one another, Martin sniffling into a fresh handful of tissues, Jon spent and buzzing from what could only be described as a pleasurable sensory overload.

----

“I realize this doesn’t even begin to cover it but... bless you. And thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How... how are you feeling?”

“I’m good. Completely knackered, but good. I could definitely use a Claritin or two though. I don’t trust this thing -” and he rubs his nose gingerly with the crumpled ball of tissues, “- to behave itself for long otherwise.”

“Alright. Back to the cabin it is, then. I’ll make us some more tea, if you’ll entrust me with the task.”

Jon is first to his feet, holding a hand out to help Martin up.

“So,” Martin says, as they begin to walk back toward the safehouse, “how’s that for a romantic picnic?”