Meeting Steven is an accident.
You catch sight of familiar dark curls, the edge of a blue jacket disappearing around a doorway, ducking out of the tea shop and into a rain that falls in sheets.
It’s a Tuesday. You’d only gotten to London the night before.
And there’s a cup of tea in your hands even though you prefer coffee.
You catch the brief flash of dark brown eyes, like a coffee stain bled into cloth.
Surely not , you think, standing dumbly in the middle of the shop, memories long buried rushing at you.
But you shrink, your world vacuums down into nothing, squeezing into a tiny pinpoint. You are thrown back into the past, and you’re suddenly sixteen again watching Marc walk away from you for the last time.
Before you can stop yourself, before rational thought can spin it’s way into your mind, you slam down your cup on the nearest table, hot tea sloshing over the edge of the ceramic and scalding down your fingers.
You don’t feel the burn, the hot sting of tea against your skin, you don’t hear the curses from the patrons whose lunch you’d so rudely interrupted and ruined with your spilled cup.
The pavement is wet and slick, the rain sheeting down all the harder when you yank the door of the tea shop open and dart out.
You glance up and down the busy road.
Not here , that distant thought comes to you again. Not here , halfway around the world, four thousand miles away from home.
Marc flashes through your mind, the last moment you’d seen him, tears blurring the edges of him. The way he looked at you, like his heart was a shattered thing. The way you had had to stand beside his father and watch him walk away.
There .
You see the shift of his shoulders, the length of his body, turn a corner down the street.
He’s familiar to you, even after all these years.
You don’t hear the fall of your boots against the pavement, the slosh of the puddles that span like seas between you and Marc Spector.
You are thrust into the past, everything you thought you’d swallowed and processed and figured out years ago swimming up your throat, landing in the front of your mind.
Marc is supposed to be a thing of your past, your childhood friend, just someone that you used to know.
But all of those walls and years disappear the second you think you see someone that might be him.
“Marc!” You hear yourself shouting, your voice frantic to your own ears. You hear the desperation, the shiver and crack of ice and ocean and dirt and grit. “Marc fucking Spector!”
People turn and glare and you’re still running and running and running . And then you’re reaching out for the back of that jacket - when he turns.
And it's him and it's not him and the past and the present blend and fracture in your mind and -
Your body slams into his, nearly knocking him down as you fist your hands into the blue of that jacket. You draw him close by the collar and drive him back into the nearest brick wall. The rain slices down your cheeks as you blink at him.
The eyes that meet yours are the same umber you remember, the ocher that sends you back in time, sends you back to a Chicago neighborhood - that reminds you of late night sodas and squeaky pedals on a rusted bicycle, a boy that you had a crush on and the tears on his cheeks that made you want to burn the world down.
“Marc?” You ask again, less certain, fingers loosening on the fabric in your fists, brow knotting up on your forehead.
Because you are unsure.
His eyes are the same but the look in them is not.
The brows are tilted in a way you don’t recognize, the flash of fear and crest of panic and -
You release his jacket and step back, the look in his eyes reminding you of times better forgotten, of her , of pain, of -
“Not Marc,” you say, the rainwater rolling off the overhang above you dripping onto the back of your neck, rolling down your spine in a cold arc. “You’re not Marc.”
Steven .
Another flash of long buried memory -
Of Marc telling you about Steven, never meeting Steven because Steven only came out when she -
“No, no. No, sorry, ‘fraid not,” his voice is a nervous little buzz. His voice is a bit higher in pitch and definitely not the Chicagoan accent you’re expecting. Steven’s British accent is soothing, you feel your shoulders relaxing. “Sorry,” he repeats again, unsure. “Very much not Marc.”
You swallow, not sure what to say, how to ask about Marc, not sure how much Steven knows because the last time you saw Marc Steven hadn’t known anything .
He watches you, and then he says your name. “It is you, innit?” He repeats your name a few times, like he’s assuring himself he has it right. Something like shock bites down inside you, clamps itself over your heart and tightens until you can’t breathe.
“It’s me,” you breathe. “How-,”
“Marc’s told me all about you. And I…saw you. When-,”
Your mind whirls, the things you know and knew and could never forget about Marc.
The things Marc knew and knows about you that Steven might also know, what he might have seen .
You cut Steven off, before he can continue and talk about things better left in the past.
Saw you, saw you, saw you - where had Steven seen you? If he was aware of Marc now then the only place he could have seen you -
You force yourself to stop thinking about it, about him, about that time. Nothing good came from those memories.
You don’t have to guess - whatever memory Steven knows you from is undoubtedly a bad one.
“Yes. It’s me,” you repeat. “And you’re…Steven?” You ask quietly, just to confirm. “ Are you Steven?”
Steven’s already wide eyes go wider, like even though he knows about you, he hadn’t expected you to know about him . “You -,” he starts when he suddenly glances down, eyes tracking to a puddle near your feet. He watches the wavering, dirty water for a long moment before he shakes his head and murmurs, “Don’t be ridiculous, Marc.”
You suck in a breath and take a step back, sure you look absolutely insane to passersby. The rain has not abated in the slightest and the damp is starting to sink into your clothes, into your skin and bones.
When you and Marc were kids -
Marc’s face when he told you about Steven the first time darts through your mind. Fear and uncertainty and no one else knows and -
You hadn’t had a name for it then, what Marc was describing to you. But it had made sense, of course it had, because Marc was in trouble and he needed protecting. He needed someone to protect him from his mother and his memories and himself - that that person lived inside him hadn’t really phased you as a child. You were just glad that someone was there with him through it all.
You take another step back, your brain catching up with your heart, catching up with the absolutely stupid decision you’d made to follow this man down the street.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have-,” your voice trembles.
Memories from your childhood dredge up out of the pit of you without your permission. These are things you’d thought you’d put to bed, but maybe you’d only buried them, tucked them safely out of sight.
“Are you alright?” Steven is asking you, attention laser focused on you, eyes on your hands, his voice gentle and calm. “Bloody hell, looks like you’ve been burned,” and then he steps forward and your hand is in his, his thumb gently brushing your raw skin.
And it's the first time Marc is touching you in years. But it's not Marc, it's Steven. It's the first time ever that Steven is touching you.
“Spilled my tea,” you say distantly, watching him tilt his head over your hands, inspecting the damage. “You know about Marc?”
“Jake as well,” he says.
But you don’t know about Jake. You’ve never heard about Jake.
“Yeah,” Steven continues. “It was a right surprise to me.” His eyes are soft and round and easy to fall into. “You knew Marc before, didn’t you? You knew about me. Before.”
It’s not a question.
But you answer anyways.
“Yeah,” you confirm, watching Steven frown over your hands.
He smiles at you, “You better come along with me, yeah? Can’t leave your hand in this state. I’ll make you another cup of tea and all. To make up for your spill.”
And for reasons you can’t explain, you let Steven pull you along. You should refuse, apologize, and go back to your own life. Reentering Marc’s world would only open wounds for both of you. Wounds you thought were long dead and buried.
~
You’d always told yourself that if you saw Marc again, you’d be able to walk away, to leave him to whatever life he’d built outside Chicago and his childhood and your little world together. You should disappear, because maybe if Steven knows about Marc - and another alter called Jake - maybe Marc’d done some healing of his own. And maybe you reentering his life would do nothing but cause harm.
But for Steven to know you ? Know your name? Clearly Marc had spoken about you.
You wouldn’t have believed Marc still thought about you at all if it weren’t for the entirely earnest way Steven mentions it. Like maybe there have been memories and experiences shared. Like maybe you still meant something to Marc all these years later.
Steven’s flat isn’t the kind of place you would expect Marc to live, though there are clear signs of his presence. There are little pockets of organization and precision in the mess of the flat, some things stacked neatly instead of haphazardly.
There are coffee grounds in the trash can and you catch sight of things that don’t really belong amongst the French texts and ancient Egyptian mythology - books on the pattern of stars in the sky, puzzles you remember pouring over as a child, a shoebox of baseball cards that you recognize as your own.
It’s your shoebox. From your first pair of converse.
You hadn’t known Marc kept that stupid box, hadn’t known he’d taken it with him when he left.
Steven is kind, you discover very quickly. Friendly with a dry sense of humor and a nervous kind of disposition. He takes your wounded hand in his and carefully cleans the burn and treats it with ointment before wrapping it up. “Learned that from Marc,” Steven says, sounding only a little bit proud of the bandaging job, patting your skin gently. “He does actually know quite a lot of useful things,” he says.
“How long have you known about -,”
“Oh just a couple months now,” he smiles at you, and it's the smile you remember. And yet it’s completely different. “Does that feel better?” He asks, thumb tracking over the back of your bandaged hand.
You smile back at him and nod, “Yes. Thank you, Steven.” You don’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but you tell him anyways, gripping his hand back, threading your fingers through his. He’s a stranger and he’s not and you don’t care - you hold on. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” You swallow thickly, “We never met. Before.”
He smiles again but this time it's a rueful one, “I suppose that’s a good thing, yeah? If I never had a reason to meet you. Back then.”
You agree that that’s probably true, and for a moment you just sit with him - this person who is so much of who you are and yet a complete stranger to you.
Steven smiles and then looks down, very suddenly releasing your hands. “Sorry! Didn’t even realize I was just -,” he shakes his head. “I do wish Marc would tell me a bit more. This is all a bit alarming, really, innit? You showing up like this. Unexpected and all. Lucky you this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.”
You nod, “Sorry, I really didn’t mean to frighten you. Just - it was like I was a kid in Chicago all over again.”
Steven is nodding like he understands you perfectly. “I’ll make you some tea now,” he says, standing and crossing to the kitchen counter, like a cup of tea might solve all your problems. “Since I’m a bit to blame for you losing yours earlier.”
You watch the hunched shoulders of Steven Grant as he fiddles with the lid of a container of loose leaf tea. “How exactly d’ya know Marc? I know -,” he pauses and seems to think better of his words. “You were obviously mates, yeah? But he’s being rather shifty about you. How did you meet?”
You swallow, leaning your elbows on your knees, lacing your fingers together. “I was - Randall was my friend,” you quirk your lips up. “RoRo.”
Steven spins, his eyes wide when he meets yours. “Really?”
“Really,” you say with a small smile. “I only lived a couple houses down from Marc.”
Steven turns back to the counter, fingers tugging open a cupboard and flicking on the kettle. He pulls out two chipped mugs but doesn’t say anything and so you take it as a sign to continue.
“He was the only kid nice to me at school.” You shrug, “Of course it was even better when we figured out we were neighbors. We did everything together for the couple of months we knew each other. Marc was our minder a lot of the time. We were all buddies, of course, but-,”
But flashes of that time come back to you, of what that friendship would lead to - of Wendy Spector leaning down into you and gathering you up against her and absolutely wailing. Memories of a shiva for the only friend you’d ever known in your short life.
The crying. The yelling.
The quiet kind of grief that you were allowed. The brief kind of grief, like Randall was not a center point in your life.
The way Marc was not allowed to grieve, that he was only allowed to feel guilt and fault and hurt.
The guilt.
The guilt and shame are the things, the feelings, that stick out to you most about that time.
You remember the blood that pooled in your mouth, when Wendy tugged you close. “ You wouldn’t have let my baby boy die, would you have?” She’d asked you, the sharpness of her nails digging into your cheeks.
Telling you again and again that you would not have let RoRo die. Would you have let him die? Did Marc -
Hands, so many hands, tugging and pulling and trying to get her off of you as gently as possible, and when you looked up -
There was Marc watching the whole horrible thing, your cheeks wet with tears and then the screaming started again. This is all your fault.
But it’s your fault too, because you’d refused to go with them that day, refused to go further than the mouth of the cave, staring up at the blackened, rain heavy clouds as they bore down on you, as the entrance to the cave loomed in front of you.
I’ll stand watch - your own high pitched child’s voice traveling back to you over decades, a giggle following. I’ll be here when you come out.
It had happened so quickly. The wind had turned cold as death, like the shadows of bones had crossed you. The rain came next, fast and fast and faster.
Your parents - for years after that day telling you to get over it. Like you’d not lost your first ever friend in a tragic accident, like the adults around you had not made you feel it had been preventable by you and another child.
If only you were smarter and braver and quicker. If only Marc has been smarter and braver and quicker.
You heard your parents’ whispers.
You heard what the therapists said and that your parents didn’t listen to - that you had experienced an intense trauma at a very young age, that you could not be expected to simply get over it.
Your parents whispered too - about how you only knew him for a couple of months. Is it normal to be this affected?
And - wasn’t even there when it happened.
And - is there some kind of medication for this.
But-
He died, he died, he died, he died, he-
The only time you felt like the world made sense was when you got to be with Marc.
Batting baseballs to each other for hours on end just to be away from home for awhile.
Sitting in the back of Marc’s closet with your pinky linked with his, listening to him hyperventilate and not knowing what to do to help other than to be there.
Riding rusted bikes through familiar neighborhoods to corner stores where the clerks knew your names.
Kissing Marc once, just once, two weeks before he left you behind.
You and Marc and his father and a cake.
You and Elias standing on the street together as Marc walked away from you both.
He was finally eighteen and you couldn’t blame him for not sticking around. You couldn’t blame him for never coming back.
Feeling stupid because you hadn’t been there that day, not really.
You’d refused to go into the cave.
You should have gone with them.
So much punishment for something that was not his fault. That was not your fault.
Trauma.
So much trauma.
“Sorry,” you murmur, realizing you’ve gone quiet. Trying to remember what Steven had asked you, if he asked you something. What had you been trying to say? “Of course I knew about you. Marc was my best friend.”
Your mind feels messy again, like nothing is lining up properly.
It hasn’t felt like this in years.
You bow your head.
“And you were there?” He asks, though you know he must already know.
“Outside. I was outside. I tried to come in when the water started to rise and no one would answer me but-,” you cut yourself off, not sure how much you should say, how much was too much, what might trigger something in one or both of you.
Steven returns to the table with a steaming cup of tea, “Careful this time,” he reminds you, taking your uninjured hand to wrap around the warmth of the cup. “Don’t need you with another burn, do we? No.” Steven’s head turns to the side, watching himself in a mirror on the wall. “Marc…wants to know why you’re in town.”
“I…” you trail off, looking up into Steven’s eyes, imagining Marc present but not willing to speak with you. “I just moved here actually.” You square your shoulders and shake yourself mentally. “I just got a job here in London.”
When Steven doesn’t answer, you take your hand away from his and fold your arms across your chest and look away. “I wasn’t looking for him. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” And you’re horrified, because tears are pushing hotly at the back of your eyes.
Steven nods at you, reaches out to you kindly as he takes a seat next to you, folding your fingers together again. “‘Course not. But I’m glad you found us.”
~
You have a memory that your mind seems to linger on, one that creeps up on you when you least expect it.
It always punches you in the chest the same way - with claws and talons and a scraping against your bones.
The memory it’s -
Marc Spector standing on your doorstep with tears in his eyes.
You’d only been nine or so then, and you were on your third therapist that year. Your parents would inevitably find you a new one when they were told the same thing they always were - you were traumatized. You had lost your best friend in a tragic accident and it would likely affect you for the rest of your life. There were no quick fixes for that kind of thing.
Their response was always the same - what kind of medication could you be put on to at least stop the panic attacks, to stop the despair and self-hatred, so you could at least appear to be a normal nine year old.
Even if you weren’t.
“Marc,” you’d said, opening the door wider, so you could slip out and take his hand and drag him down the road before anyone realized what was happening.
Your bikes, rusted from rain and snow and all manner of Chicago weather, were hidden beneath a green tarp that you’d jerked up without preamble. You’d peddled and thought of RoRo and Wendy and the tears still drying in sanded patches on Marc’s cheeks.
You knew Wendy blamed Marc for the way Randall died, you’d been at the shiva, it didn’t take much guessing. You’d seen Marc every single day since. You walked to school together, pinkies linked, a sure and steady force if nothing else.
What you hadn’t counted on was everything else - the way you weren’t allowed to just be, not anymore.
And Marc had it worse.
You’d peddled to a park and dumped your bikes in the grass, wheels still spinning, and huddled together under the shade of an oak tree. Summer sunshine pooled in waving spots against your sneakers, and when Marc pulled up his shirt and showed you the bruises you’d wanted to deck the sun for daring to shine when he looked like that.
“Your mom?” You’d whispered, not able to understand. Your parents weren’t kind to you, weren’t understanding, but they’d never laid a hand on you. There’d been a split second where you’d thought maybe Marc made it up. Because what parent hurts their own child?
“Are you sure?” You’d asked and watched Marc’s face crumble, like the last vestiges of his strength were sapped by those few words, the edge of his shirt dropping from his grasp.
And then a wall came down behind his eyes, a steel that an eleven year old should not know. “You don’t believe me,” he’d whispered, eyes blank and unseeing. His voice had gone a bit strange, a weird pull at his vowels you’d never heard before. “You don’t. What am I supposed to do if you don’t-,”
You’d grabbed his hand, before that blankness could steal anymore of your friend away from you.
You’d lost one Spector, you’d not lose the other.
“No, no, Marc, I’m just confused. Why would she-,” you’d paused, not sure what to say, how to continue.
What would your therapist say? The one you’d actually liked? The one that had been smart enough to read your parents for what they were - people who wanted a quick fix for their troubled kid.
“She’s your mom, Marc,” you’d said gently. “Why would she want to hurt you?” You had taken his hand, laced your pinky with his, tugged him close to you where you sat with your back against the tree.
“Because I didn’t die . I should have died.” He’d looked away and down, but hadn’t pulled away from your hand. “It should have been me .”
“No,” you’d said because no , you couldn’t imagine your life without Marc. Marc was your world, he was where you felt normal. He was yours.
Did one have to die? For the other to survive?
No, surely not.
No .
One did not have to die for the other to survive.
“No,” you’d repeated, and thought about what Dr. Mendez had said before another therapist was hired to replace him - one more prone to prescribe medication, to make you normal again. “Bad things happen. They aren’t always our fault. It wasn’t your fault.”
He’d laughed a little, a tiny huff through the nose, his voice normal again. “Okay.” When he rested his head against yours, you knew he’d been seriously considering it. “Okay.”
“And Marc? I believe you. I’ll always believe you.”
~
Marc watches as Steven takes down your phone number, promising to call you, that Marc would call you.
He doesn’t want to call you, he doesn’t want to talk to you.
And yet that’s all he wants to do.
And it isn’t because of his mother or his brother or his fucked up mind.
It’s because of the way he left you - remembers you standing on their cobbled street next to his father - his father who was determined to protect his wife and not his son.
All you’d ever done was try to help Marc, to be what his parents and your parents could not be.
The only birthday he’d been allowed to really celebrate had been the one where you shoved yourself through an open upstairs window and settled yourself at the kitchen table beside him like you’d been invited.
He remembers his mother, drunker than usual, swaying in the doorway to the dining room, his father’s face flushed with an emotion Marc couldn’t name as he looked at you - sat in the middle of their family drama like you’d always been there.
“Hey, Mrs. Spector,” you’d said, smiling like a congresswoman, “I was just bringing Marc his birthday present.”
And you had, a stack of baseball cards passed under the table, rare cards you’d been collecting for a couple of months.
For him.
Wendy had wavered, glancing back and forth between her husband and you, before she suddenly lurched forward, “Of course. Do you want to stay for dinner? We were just about to celebrate.”
You’d curved your little finger around his under the table and squeezed hard. “Yes,” and your voice hadn’t wavered even a little.
And you hadn’t mentioned it, ever, that she’d laid a leather belt down on the side table before she crossed the room to pull you into a hug. “Of course, my sons’ best friend,” Wendy had said, settling herself across from you at the table as you squeezed Marc’s hand so hard his skin felt pinched and tight but good.
Wendy had stared at you - said, “Are you the one leaving flowers? At the grave?”
“Yes ma’am,” you had said, rather bravely Marc thought.
Wendy had nodded and said nothing the rest of the evening.
It’s still one of the best birthdays he can remember having. His mother was quiet and you were there and you’d shared a piece of cake with him.
He needs to call you, has to call you, he thinks as he watches from the backseat as Steven guides you to the front door and tells you goodbye.
He needs to call you, if only to thank you for that moment and all the others like it.
“I like her,” Steven says as soon as you’re gone.
~
Marc dials your number slowly, listens to that weird British dial tone he’ll never really be used to.
Steven nods at him from the mirror, quietly encouraging.
He nods back and turns away, wants this moment with you over the phone just for himself.
Jake has been quiet for a couple days, since you showed up and basically mauled Steven in an alleyway. The silence is eerie and it's hard to gauge how Jake feels about your appearance, if he remembers you at all.
The line clicks and Marc freezes.
“Hello?” you ask, your voice rough and clawed and older.
But it's still you.
Still exactly what he remembers.
He swallows, suddenly not sure what to say.
You clear your throat and he hears the shuffle of sheets. “Hello?” You ask again. “Anyone there?” And then, “Marc? That you?”
“Hey,” he forces himself to say. “Hey, yeah it's me. Steven - Steven said you wanted me to call.” He cringes, because it sounds like he doesn’t want to be fucking call you.
That sound echoes down the line again, like you’re getting up and out of bed. He glances at the clock - 10:34 AM on a Saturday. He figured it was a reasonable time to call - “Shit did I wake you up? I forgot about the fucking time difference and jet lag.”
You laugh and it's like he’s sixteen again and no time has passed and he’s calling you from right next door and -
His shoulders relax, the tension bleeding out of his spine.
“Yeah, Chicago is a good six hours behind London,” you groan. “It’s, like, four in the morning for me.”
“Sorry.”
“S’all good. I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t call. I told Steven but I’ll tell you too - I’m real sorry about jumping him in the street.” You swallow and he hears the sound of a bottle being opened, liquid splashing into a cup. “It was just like seeing a ghost. I thought I was over all that shit and then -,” you stop, a dangerous tremble in your voice.
He clears his throat, “Fuck, if anyone understands ghosts sneaking up on you, its me.”
You laugh again, and he knows you’re nodding and pacing and nervous. “I don’t want anything from you Marc,” you say. “I know it’s been a long time. I just - I don’t know. It’s good to know that you’re doing okay.”
The line goes quiet for a moment but he doesn’t speak because he knows you want to ask -
“What happened?”
He laughs, “Not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”
“I’ve heard some crazy shit recently,” you say. “With the snap and all. Can’t believe how much everything’s changed.”
“Were you -,”
“Yeah,” you swallow thickly. “I was. Just now getting my footing again. Came to in my old apartment with a new family staring me down.”
“Shit. I didn’t even know-,”
“Why would you? Not like we’ve talked since-,”
“You were basically dead -,”
Your voice is firm when you answer, “Don’t do that shit, Marc. There was nothing you could have done about it.” He hears you shuffling around again. Marc clutches the phone tighter, like it could bring him that much closer to you. “Anyways. Like I was saying, I don’t want anything from you. I just wanted you to know that I’m glad you’re okay.”
Marc tries to catalog that quickly - that you used to be two years younger than him, that you used to be Randall’s age and now the world had stolen that too. He tries to compartmentalize that you were now nearly a decade younger than him.
He suddenly needs to see you and so when he opens his mouth what comes out is not what he means to say, “Let’s get coffee.”
There’s a long silent pause, and he has to say your name before you answer.
“Really?” You ask. “I kinda thought you wouldn’t want to see me again. Thought we’d work out our schedules so we never have to accidentally see each other and be stuck on a city bus together or something,” you joke weakly, the sound of you picking at something reaching his ears.
Marc squeezes the phone, and clenches his eyes shut, wondering when and why and how things got like this. There was a time in his life - not so distant - that he’d have done anything for you, that he’d have done anything to stay by your side. “Yeah. I - got something I need to say to you in person.”
“Okay,” you agree, always willing to give in where it mattered. “Okay, but make it tea.”
“Fucking gross,” he says, just to hear you laugh again. “Fine.”
“Gotta adjust to the new environment’s cultural norms,” you joke, falsely chiding him. “No more deep dish I guess.”
You agree on a time for later in the afternoon, and when he hangs up, Marc finds himself looking forward to seeing you.
He finds himself smiling.
~
Marc meets you back at the tea shop you’d first seen Steven in.
It’s been a couple days since he spoke to you on the phone and he finds himself eager to sit down with you, see you again, despite the conversation that would probably happen.
Steven chatters at him from his wavered reflection in the front windows of the shops he passes, curious about you, about who you were to Marc.
“You already know. You saw,” he says to Steven, so he’ll go quiet for a moment. But Steven really only knows the beginning - of the loss that knitted you together like so many strands of fate.
But he can’t think about that day, about you standing out in the rain, your voice calling for him, for RoRo, braving the rising water to look for them when the downpour started.
He can’t think about everything that comes after that.
You’re already there when he pulls open the door, two cups on the table and a little ceramic pot between. The cups and the teapot have intricately painted flowers decorating the sides.
“Not in Chicago anymore, huh?” he asks, taking a seat across from you for the first time in years.
You blink, glancing up at him, eyes flicking over him before you smile. “Nope,” you affirm. “We really aren’t.”
A silence descends between you, but it's not awkward.
It’s a peaceful kind of quiet.
Eventually you reach across the table and lay a hand over his. Marc forces himself not to pull away from the warmth of your touch. Yours was a touch that had never burned him, not once. “What happened?”
He gives a dry laugh. “When?”
“After you left?” You pause and pat his hands before retracting your touch. “All of it? None of it?” You shake your head and cross your arms over your chest, and Marc looks at you all out of place in this dainty little shop. He remembers you best in hole in the wall pizza joints and arcades and on the street in front of his house with your foot up on one pedal of your bike.
Marc glances down into the tiny little cup on a saucer in front of him, around at the pastel pinks and blues and yellows of the tea room.
“How’d you end up here ?” he pries instead, not sure where to begin with his own life, with what came after his eighteenth birthday.
You take a breath and shrug, reaching out to tap a nail against the tea cup in front of you, seeming to mull over what to say. The shape of your hands, the curve of your nails and the show of tendon in your wrists and hands are the same as he remembers.
It makes him want to grab you, to crush you into him, so he can keep you, drag the comfort of you into him.
Gingerly, you pick up the little pot and pour yourself a cup and then fill Marc’s, smoothing your hands over the lace tablecloth after you take your first tiny sip.
“I did what most people do, I think,” you start. “I graduated high school and went to college and then I got a job. I got my Master’s while I was working. Then the snap happened and I decided to do something new.”
Marc leans forward, watches the way you don’t look up at him, your eyes on his hands. He wonders what you see when you look at him, at his hands. “What did you study?” He wants to know everything about you - a ghost he’d thought long dead.
The corner of your mouth quirks up. “At first? Social Work.” You don’t meet his eyes when you say it. “But I gave that up pretty quickly. Anthropology and Linguistics is what I ended up graduating with and so I ended up doing museum work.”
“Was it because of me?” He tries to keep his voice even. “Social Work?”
“Because of both of us,” you say with venom. “Nobody paid any attention to either of us and look what was going on -,” you quickly cut yourself off, the heat in your voice drained when you continue. “Sorry. I don’t like to think about it.”
“Me either,” he admits. “Fuckin’ hate it.”
You flick your eyes up and lean forward, elbows on the table in what Marc is sure is a serious breach of etiquette if the expression of the man who delivers a little tray of cakes and biscuits is anything to go by. “Steven knows about you now.”
Marc nods, plucking one of those little cookies up. He bites into it and it crumbles in his mouth.
There was one summer, when you were doing okay or doing a good job at pretending at being okay, and you were getting along with your parents because they thought the meds were finally working - that Marc basically lived with you.
He slept in the trundle bed in your room, stuck glow stars to the ceiling of your room so you could both count them to sleep at night. Some nights he’d climb in bed next to you and you’d lie there together in silence and everything would feel okay for a couple of hours. Those were the nights neither of you slept no matter how many times you counted the stars, because you didn’t want the okay feeling to drift away.
And your mom made cookies - chocolate chip ones that melted like butter in his mouth, gooey chocolate that oozed from the corners of his lips when he bit down. And there was always lemonade to wash it down with.
That was the best summer of his childhood - batting baseballs in the park, eating those cookies, watching movies late at night when you were supposed to be asleep, riding your bikes for miles around the neighborhood.
His dad had even taken the pair of you to a Cubs game, on one of the better days.
“How’d that happen?” You prompt. “It’s a good thing, right?”
“Definitely good,” he answers immediately, because it is. Because things are so much better than they were a few months ago. “Not sure you’d believe me if I told you. What brought me and Steven together.”
“Marc,” you implore, reaching over the table to cup your fingers around his wrist. “I want to know everything. I missed you.”
You look young to him in that moment, younger than you are and not just because the snap had made you five years younger than you were, and put the span of seven years between the two of you.
Marc wants to say that he’s missed you too, but he doesn’t.
Instead he tells you the honest fucking truth of his batshit life. You listen without emotion, nodding in all the right places. He tells you about everything. About the military and the dishonorable discharge, about becoming a mercenary and becoming Moon Knight, about Layla and Khonshu. About how his mother died and that’s when Steven’s life started to bleed into his.
“It’s fucking crazy and if you don’t believe me, trust me I get it -,”
“I believe you. I’ll always believe you,” You say, and he hears the echo of those words through the decades. “We live in a crazy world. I’ve heard more unbelievable things.”
He raises a brow, “Seriously?”
“I disappeared for five years with no knowledge of it,” you deadpan.
Marc rolls his eyes, “Yeah, okay.”
“And Jake?” You ask. “Steven mentioned someone called Jake?”
“Yeah, that’s…new.” Marc isn’t sure how to explain Jake, who mostly stayed silent and may or may not still be serving Khonshu. “Still figuring that out.”
You nod and Marc realizes you still have your hand over his, your skin soft against the knob of his knuckles. You twist your hand, hooking your pinky with his, and he’s taken back again, to all those moments he tried to forget.
He licks his lips, knows he needs to just say the words he’s dreading to speak. He’s never been good at this, at saying what needs to be said.
“I just -,” he pauses and tracks his fingers over yours. “I just wanted to apologize for - for leaving you there. Alone. And not coming back.” And then, steeling himself, prepared for the sting of rejection, “I’m sorry.”
You furrow your brow, ducking your head to catch his eyes, “Is that why you needed to see me? Marc, I don’t blame you for that. That - that was the best decision you could have made.”
He swallows and nods and looks away, at the spotless black and white checkered tile flooring. “I’m sorry anyway.” Then, just to move away from the feeling wriggling around in that back of his throat, he says, “Next time you see Steven make sure you tell him about the museum gig,” he says. “He’ll love that.”
There’s a long silence and Marc so hopes you take the thing he’s offering you, the olive branch.
“There’s gonna be a next time?” You murmur, and Marc’s heart shudders hard against his ribs, but you quickly recover. You might not say it, but he knows you had felt abandoned by him. “Yeah, hey, of course. I’ll make sure to mention it. Next time I see Steven.”
Marc decides not to let go of your hand and try the biscuit with the tea you poured into his cup.
~
Marc starts to dream about you, about that Chicago street you both grew up on.
In his dreams, he never goes inside his home. In his dreams, only the good things about home exist. Racing down streets paved with cobblestones, eating pizza outside a bowling alley, cups of lemonade shared on a fire escape, snowballs hurled at each other from behind garbage can shields.
The taste of the one kiss he’d ever stolen from you, his hand firm against the base of your spine, your body warm in his arms as the icy February wind tried its best to invade both of you. He’d only been weeks away from his eighteenth birthday, and he didn’t know how to tell you he’d already decided to leave.
In his dreams, he doesn’t have to leave. In his dreams, he gets to stay there with you.
But even in his dreams, he feels the looming presence of something else, the heaviness of that house as you pass it by, hand in hand. Your expression darkens, your eyes fade to gray. “Wake up, Marc,” you snap.
He gasps awake, fingers digging into the sheets, tearing at the clothes that Steven had gone to sleep in.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, picking up the cell phone laying by his elbow on the mattress. The time shows that it's 4:53 AM and when he unlocks the screen he sees that Steven’s last message to you had only been sent a couple hours before.
He locks it, trying not to intrude on whatever conversation you and Steven had been having.
His own phone is plugged in at the kitchen counter, and when he shoots you a message you reply in under a couple of minutes.
Early morning coffee run? You reply. Can’t sleep either.
He’s so thrilled to have you back in his life, glad that Steven is getting to know you and geek out with you over boring ass museum stuff.
You’re making up for lost time together, and while you remind him of his brother, of the horrible things that had happened to him, you also remind him of so many good times.
There are circles under your eyes when he meets you an hour later, the sky full of clouds and shards of sunshine. “Hey,” you say, handing him a travel cup of coffee. “Wanna go to the park? Supposed to rain all afternoon.”
“Don’t you have to work?” He asks as you loop your arm into his and tug him down the road towards Regent’s Park.
“It’s Saturday, Marc,” you say with a laugh, lifting your cup to sip at your own drink. “Jake visited me a couple days ago.”
“Oh,” Marc says, not surprised and yet also completely stunned. “He didn’t say he was going to.”
You smile. “S’okay. I get the sense that Jake does whatever he wants.”
“Pretty much.”
“I like him.”
“What’d he say?”
You pat Marc’s fingers, the graze of your skin against his lighting something strange inside him again, long buried feelings striking to the surface of him. “He loves you and Steven a lot. Think that’s all you need to know.”
“Cut the shit, what’d he really say?”
You smile, “Said I should watch myself. That you can’t handle having your heart broken again.”
Marc goes still, the length of his spine freezing as he carefully looks over at you. But you don’t look back, and Marc is left wondering if Jake had seen his dreams. If he’s seen all the dreams he’s been having lately.
“He said,” you confess, pulling him to a stop and down onto a nearby bench, “that I’m making you forget the bad parts of Chicago.”
Marc doesn’t answer, just hooks his fingers around yours. He doesn’t know how to tell you it isn’t so much forgetting the bad as it is remembering the good.
~
You become ingrained in Marc’s life again.
You slowly become friends with Steven and Jake - your buddies as you so affectionately call them. Jake takes you on drives around the city and Steven takes you to little known bookshops. Steven plays chess with you for hours on end and Jake teaches you to pick locks.
So, you become ingrained in all their lives.
Steven talks about you more and more often, more than he talks about anything else. Jake gets weirdly jealous when he doesn’t get to see you when he fronts.
And Steven may or may not be developing a little crush on you.
You’re always over at the flat, stopping by just to leave Steven a note about something you’d discovered at work that day, or to tell Jake about a conversation you’d overheard on the Tube and thought he’d find funny. You stop by with treats for the whole system sometimes - most recently you’d bought cupcakes on your way over. One for each of them in a different flavor and Marc doesn’t know at what point over the last several months you learned their favorite flavors for cupcakes, but you had.
Marc takes you to get coffee, Steven takes you to get tea, Jake always makes food a priority and takes you to get pizza.
And while Jake slowly stops worrying about how you might hurt them, it comes to the forefront of Marc’s mind. He tries to return all the little things you do for them, so they don’t turn into some kind of fucked up emotional burden, so that whatever is building between you and Marc doesn’t turn into a co-dependent nightmare.
But Marc can’t make sense of you, not really. He can’t make sense of why you aren’t angry with him, why you want to be around him and Steven and Jake at all. You should be mad.
You should be pissed.
You should probably hate him.
But you don’t - you say things like I would have done the same thing.
And - It’s the best decision you could have made at the time.
Marc remembers your silence that day, how his father had tried to get him to stay but how you’d just trailed along behind them both.
Like you were seeing him off and not trying to get him to stay. He’d seen the tears on your cheeks, the hand you’d laid on Elias’s elbow to tug him away, the little wave you’d given over your shoulder.
You’d been so willing to say goodbye.
All because it was what was best for him, like you weren’t stuck on that street and all the heaviness that came with it.
And maybe it makes him selfish but this time he doesn’t want you to let him go.
There’s no reason too.
And more and more often, he finds himself dreaming about a kiss he shared with you years and years ago.
He finds himself wondering if you’d taste the same as you had that night standing in the February bluster outside a roller rink.
Probably not - then you’d tasted like cherry candy, now he thinks you’d taste like coffee and buttercream icing.
~
“You know,” you say one evening. “I talked to your mother. After you left.”
You aren’t sure what makes you say it. But your mind is stuck in the past - had been for the whole horrible day and you know you should shut your mouth. That you should not talk about that day.
Marc turns away from the sink, his gaze calm, but his eyes flick toward the mirror on the wall, and you wonder who he sees there. Jake or Steven? Is Jake cursing at you or is Steven reassuring Marc that it's okay? Telling him that those are times long past?
“What?”
You're sitting at the table, fingers tight on the handle of a knife, a half chopped onion on a cutting board in front of you. You glance down, not really seeing the table or the knife or the onion. “I…my parents - they -,” you snap your mouth closed and shake your head. “Doesn’t matter. I visited Wendy because I had to and she just…she just kept going on about how - how good I’d been to RoRo and that’s why she always liked me.”
You shake your head and lay down the knife, trying to pull yourself away from the past, from the memories falling like leaves around you, stacking up, trying to bury you alive.
In your memories, the day Randall died was cold. A bone chillingly biting cold. Sometimes you wake up from nightmares shivering - the swirling pull of that water in a dark cave, Marc’s eyes staring at yours over the corpse between you, both of you drenched from head to toe, beads over water rolling down your cheeks as the water rose around you, up to your shoulders and neck and -
You could see it in Marc’s eyes then too - should we just stay here with him? Should we let the water swallow us too?
“But I told her, Marc,” you murmur at the onion because he needs to know. “I told her that even though Randall was my friend, so were you. I told her that you were my friend for a lot longer and that - that maybe she did lose her son but really she lost two. She abandoned you when you needed her. She still had a son, a kid that needed her and - all she had to say was that I was always too kind to you.”
You shake your head, and you aren’t able to meet his eyes, “I never went back over there. Nothing my parents said could make me. God I was flushing whole bottles of pills down the drain just so I could feel something, so I could be myself.” You shake yourself, “No. Not until her shiva. No, I couldn’t go back.”
A silence descends between you after that, the only noise in the flat the sound of your breathing and the patter of rain against the windows. You don’t want to look up at Marc, afraid of what might be in his eyes, afraid you might look up and find Jake or Steven looking back at you.
But then Marc sits down across from you and you can’t help but glance up into his eyes. His gaze is steady and heavy, brows drawn down over his eyes, the little divot between his eyes deepening by the second.
He doesn’t say anything as your shoulders heave and you try not to hyperventilate. “You did?” He asks eventually, chuckling weakly. But you can tell he means it when he says, “Then you’re the bravest person I know.”
You look at him, eyes wide and watering. “I’m sorry. For never doing something.”
“Say you’re mad at me for leaving you behind.”
Your mind whirls, the one-eighty taking you by surprise. “What? I’m not. You didn’t.”
“And you were just a kid. You couldn’t have done anything more,” Marc takes your hands across the table, littlest fingers hooking together in a promise. You can see how much effort it takes him to say these words, to stay present with you. “Neither of us could. Understand? How much we were at the fuckin’ mercy of the adults around us?” He says, the venom in his voice like the thread of Jake Lockley peaking out at you, the hook of a New York accent in his words.
“I get it,” you murmur. “Hey, Marc, I get it. Doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop being sorry.”
He licks his lips and you try not to think about it too hard as you stand and slip around the table and fit yourself against Marc, right into his arms.
He just curls his arms around you but you feel the change a minute later, the shift in the way he holds you. “I’m so sorry, love,” Steven confirms what you already know a few minutes after that.
But he doesn’t let go of you.
~
Wendy stares at you, her eyes watery and blank.
“You were always so good to my son,” she says. “Randall. I think you would have gotten married someday.”
Her voice turns sticky with hate. “Marc. You’ve always been too kind to Marc. How could you? When he killed my son. And now he left. Abandoned us.”
You tell yourself that grief broke her.
You tell yourself that she’s sick and she can’t hurt Marc anymore and that you should just leave it.
But you can’t.
Not anymore.
“Marc is your son too. You still have a son and he needed you then. And you betrayed him.”
There’s the sound of a clock.
Ticking in the silence.
“He needed you. He needed his mother. He needed his family.”
She doesn’t look at you, her eyes on the hem of her sleeve, her face sallow.
“I only have one son. And he died.”
~
You’ve been around for months.
And you don’t seem to be going anywhere.
You’d spent the day driving around with Jake, who decided to only speak Spanish to you to test how much you’d learned from him over the last few months. And you’re so beautiful it makes Marc’s heart ache.
He gets you for the evening - listening to you recount your day with Jake which he’d not been around for.
You’re smiling widely and wildly and you sound so so so fucking happy. You’re asking what he wants for dinner, what would he like for you to make, should you cook together?
And -
“It’s chilly so maybe we should make soup! Do you have the ingredients for -,”
It’s fall and the leaves are changing colors and Jake had insisted on getting you hot chocolate and so when Marc kisses you he’s surprised that you don’t taste like chocolate but exactly how he’d thought you might - like coffee and cream.
You make a surprised sound but you kiss him back.
It’s slow at first, like relearning something he’d never really known in the first place.
And then it's frantic and you’re kissing him like the world is ending or you’re drowning or you both are or the world is.
He supposes all of it’s true.
Marc wants to consume you, the press of your lips against his not enough, not close enough. Even when he juts his jaw forward and slips his tongue between your lips it's not enough .
“Baby,” he murmurs and you preen, drunk on him like he’s drunk on you. “Baby, can I?” His fingers are in the loops of your jeans, sliding down to cup your ass before he pulls back and takes your face between his palms.
Your eyes are wide, lips swollen, and you only nod.
You nod and nod and nod and whisper yes against his mouth, tucking him close to you.
Somehow you make it to the bed and shed clothes and its so fucking much and yet not enough.
It’s slow and Marc tries to tell you all the things he can never really say with words.
Your skin against his is like a balm and now that he’s had it, he can’t imagine life without it.
How had he survived without you - without this?
“Don’t fall asleep,” you say later, when you’re curled in his arms and the sweat is still drying on your skin. “Please stay with me.”
He nods and doesn’t dare let you go.
“We should put glow stars on your ceiling,” you say. “I don’t think Steven will mind.”
No, Marc thinks, kissing your temple and forehead and collarbone, he really doesn’t think Steven will mind.
~
“Fuck it, Marc,” you murmur, touching the back of his hand with two fingers, sliding your pinky around his hours later, still in bed. “You don’t have to see your father. Do you wanna go visit RoRo?”
He doesn’t look at you, eyes on your fingers where they’re tangled with his own against his chest. “It’s too hard,” he says eventually. “I saw him. The day of her shiva. I couldn’t face it. Everything that’s happened and I still couldn’t face her .”
“But you won’t be alone this time, Marc. I’ll be there. Jake and Steven’ll be there.”
There’s a long pause, Marc finally lifting his eyes to meet yours.
It’s just like when you were kids. Laying there in the summer heat shoulder to shoulder in your twin sized bed. Just you and him and the world that tried to swallow and eat and consume even when it had already taken so much.
You tug your finger against his and say, “Randall’s death wasn’t your fault. Just like it wasn’t mine.” You drop your eyes to your intertwined hands, “I know it's hard to believe. But it's probably true.”
“Probably?” He laughs a little. “ Probably true?”
“Only we were there Marc. I think only we know. Only we can forgive ourselves.” You meet his gaze again and he forces himself to hold it. “I’m sorry I couldn’t always be there with you. I’m sorry, for the things that happened when I wasn’t there.”
Marc turns, cups a hand against your cheek and strokes his thumb over your skin. You reach up to hook one hand against his wrist.
He feels your heartbeat in his bones. “Wanna visit home with me?”
“Yeah.”
He nods and leans his forehead into yours, bare skin hot against his, “You don’t have to be sorry anymore.”
You smile and lean forward to kiss him, your lips soft as satin and silk against his. “Neither do you.”
He almost contradicts you, but thinks better of it when you burrow into him, tucking yourself firmly against him, like you’re planning to be a permanent fixture in his life.
And so the last thing he thinks about before he falls asleep is not about his brother or his mother or his past.
The last thing he wonders before he drops off into a dreamless oblivion is where he might be able to find those glow stars.