Despacito (Slowly)

Once Marc woke up, and Steven told him what had happened, he went into immediate denial.  

“There’s no one else here with us, Steven,” Marc said, the growl in his tone obvious even without Steven looking at him. “I’d know. After all, I always knew about you, and you…”

“I was in the dark, I know,” Steven agreed. “But neither of us speak Spanish, and I know what I saw and felt, Marc. This guy is one of us, the one in the sarcophagus… the one that we…”

Left behind, he wanted to say, but he didn’t. 

Because now, every time he thought about that closed sarcophagus back in the Afterlife, he felt sand in his mouth. It reminded him of the Duat claiming his consciousness, his sense of self, and how everything went gray until Marc, wonderful Marc, came back for him.

Marc had come back for him, but Steven had forgotten about their third.

Not just back in Taweret’s ship, but also when negotiating his and Marc’s freedom from Khonshu. Steven had condemned their unknown headmate to slavery under the cruel god, and even then… he serenaded them in their lowest moments. Trying to make them feel better.

Steven felt like the worst person in the world right then.

“Stop that,” Marc’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. This time Steven lifted his head to meet Marc’s gaze reflected in Gus II and Finny’s tank. Two fishes. Yet another reminder that Steven had only thought about himself and Marc. “I mean it, Steven. I can feel your self-hate engulfing us, but there’s no reason for it. There’s no one else but us.”

“We blacked out in Egypt,” Steven countered. He still remembered that particular fight between them, when he was ready to think the worst of Marc. The bodies strewn around them, the fear in the surviving Cult members. “More than once.”

“Khonshu must have taken over our body,” Marc replied, looking away. He seemed determined to ignore the evidence, in a way that made Steven frustrated. “He was the one who liked to kill.”

“We both know how it feels when Khonshu took over, Luv!” Steven raised his both a little, sighing and looking up to the ceiling, where no mirrors could let him see if Marc was as angry as he felt. Probably. Strong emotions bled through, and Steven was pretty sure that this kind of anger was not going to help to make the other want to come out and introduce himself.  “And this was not it. Besides, I don’t see serenades in Spanish among the things that Khonshu would do to get us back!”

A strange mental image of the ancient Egyptian god dressed like a Mexican mariachi rose to the forefront of Steven’s mind, and Marc, despite himself, also chuckled.

“Point taken. But if there was a third, we would have more evidence,” Marc countered. “Those were very short blackouts. And I remember pretty much everything you did since Mom’s… Since Mom.”

“So you were the one who arranged a blind date for me at a Steakhouse? The same weekend you were planning to travel to Austria to get the Scarab so we wouldn’t be back in time for it?”  Steven asked, curious. They had never talked about that particular event, because Steven had had a lot more to get used to than his head-mate trying to play wing man when they had a secret wife. Which also brought another question “Why would you get me a date when you were still married to Layla?! Did you want to cheat on her?”

“I’d never cheat on Layla!” Marc growled, raising the body’s fist towards Steven’s face, menacing. Steven chuckled, amused. He knew Marc wouldn’t hurt them. “What date?”

“So it wasn’t you,” Steven choose to ignore the threat and concentrate on the fact that Marc also had missing time. How his lover could be so willfully blind, Steven would never know. Even he had ended up admitting something was up the third time he woke up in the middle of London with no idea how he got there. Sure, Steven’s solution, the ankle restrainer, the sand, and the tape, hadn’t worked at all against Marc’s training. But Steven had accepted something was wrong. No, not wrong. Odd.

Before Marc could reply, their phone rang. It was Layla, calling them for their weekly facetime chat, now that they all had a better phone than Marc’s old one.

“We’re not telling her about this,” Marc warned as Steven answered the call.

“Yes, we are. We promised honesty, remember, Luv?” And yes, it was a low blow, but Steven was getting to the end of his patience rope.

“Is this a bad moment?” Layla asked when her face came up in the small screen. They hadn’t been talking out loud, but one of the things that made Layla so perfect for them was that she always seemed to know when they were talking inside their head.

“No, no love,” Steven assured, taking advantage that he was the one fronting still and Marc wasn’t angry enough to try and wrestle control during a call with Layla.  He took a deep breath and decided to take the plunge. “Uh… remember the fight with Harrow?”

Layla frowned, but she was still smiling. “Not going to forget that anytime soon, Stevie,” she chuckled. “That was when you finally learned to fight. What brought it up?”

“Steven thinks there’s another one of us,” Marc took over the mouth, mumbling a bit. But he was telling Layla the truth, so Steven took it as a good sign. Besides, he wanted Marc to open up more. It was part of the whole point of what they were doing.

“What brought this up? I mean, besides the fact that you insist neither of you almost killed Harrow?” Now Layla was all serious, all business. “Did… did something happened?”

They hadn’t told her about the mysterious song that they had been humming for the best part of a month because they had thought it was just an earworm out of the radio, so they had to start from the top, Marc telling her when he noticed Steven humming, Steven adding that soon Marc was doing it too, filling in the places Steven couldn’t quite remember, as if they both had heard the song separately. And Marc frowned as he realized that Layla seemed to recognize the situation, as if it was not news to her.

“I… I think I know him,” She said when the boys finished. “I just… I didn’t realize.”

She went silent for a moment, biting her lip in that adorable way Marc recognized well, when she was trying to put her thoughts in order before speaking up.

“You don’t speak Spanish, either of you… “ She finally said, looking up, straight at the camera, at them. “And I’m going to guess, Marc… you don’t play the guitar, do you?”

“Not even in Guitar Hero,” Marc admitted, confused. Steven shrugged in the mind space, as he really didn’t know anything about any instrument. “Why?”

“Because a month before you decided to make your disappearance act… I entered our apartment to find it filled with roses, and you sitting in the middle of it with a guitar in your lap,” Layla replied, sounding both exasperated and fond. As if now the memory had a different meaning, but it was still appreciated. “And started to sing in Spanish about how my mouth was the most wonderful thing, that you… you drank and breathed from it… That my kisses gave you life. I don’t remember all the words, my Spanish is not what it used to be but… it was… It was the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for me.”

“And it wasn’t me the one who did it,” Marc said sadly, taking over the body quickly. “Did I… did he…?”

Steven could feel Marc’s jealousy. It was like feeling a shock of electricity, and he remembered how angry Marc had been when Steven kissed Layla the first time. Of course, now Steven knew that Marc had been angry not over the kiss, but over the fact that he didn’t know who he was jealous off.

It was one of the reasons why Layla had stayed back in Egypt for now. They all wanted to be together, they all loved each other. But Layla had been right about Steven and Marc needing time to get to know each other, and her needing to know both of them, separately, all over again. Especially since when she had met Marc, Marc had been so closed up to everyone.

“He was a complete gentleman,” Layla smiled, blushing as she seemed to remember something about that night. “Which, now that I think of it, should’ve been my first clue that it wasn’t you.” She chuckled, which let them know she was teasing. “But he wasn’t as shy as Steven either. Even if… he didn’t actually talk to me.”

“What do you mean?” Marc asked, just as Steven also asked that in the mind space, where Layla couldn’t hear him.

“That night… he only sang to me in Spanish, that song. Kissed me on the forehead and left. I was very confused, but I guessed you would come back. But when you did… a day or so later, you didn’t even looked at the flowers I had put in vases. And we were following a lead on Harrow so I didn’t think about bringing it up again… “There was a bit of anger in Layla’s voice, but neither Marc nor Steven could blame her. Not if Marc had pulled a disappearance act after the other had gone all out to make Layla feel loved.  “Maybe I should have.”

“You couldn’t know, love,” Steven told her, taking over as Marc started to feel incredibly guilty about how he had treated Layla.

“So… you think… you think Khonshu still has him under his control? Have you been losing time? Layla finally asked, worried. “Do you want me to go back to London now? I… I’m almost done with my business here.”

“No, don’t hurry for us,” Steven said, feeling Marc’s spike of anxiety. “So far… he doesn’t seem to be in danger? And we don’t have any lost time. Not that we can tell, I mean.”

Of course, without someone outside the body to check? It was hard to be sure. Yes, Steven hadn’t missed any work days, but it was harder to tell with Marc’s non existent routine.

“You sure?” Layla pressed, and Steven really wanted to say no, that they needed her there, but he knew Marc wouldn’t forgive him if he was wrong. Or worse, if he was right, and their other was still under Khonshu’s control and it brought Layla back into danger.

Just because Harrow was powerless, Ammut trapped in his body, and their cult in disarray? It didn’t mean they were safe. Not yet. And, despite himself, Steven realized that he wished they had killed the man.

It wouldn’t have mean they were safe from the cult, but at least, they would’ve been safe from Ammut.

“Sure, Love. Marc and I can work with this,” Steven forced himself to smile and hoped, against hope, that their Layla would be fooled by the confidence he didn’t feel. “Besides, so far, all he has done is serenade us with a song. We don’t even know if he speaks English.”

Layla nodded at this, and suddenly her eyes brightened.

“You remember some of the words now, yes?”

“Yeah, he sang them out loud,” Steven nodded. “I don’t think he realized I was relaxed enough for him to control the mouth.”

“Well, why don’t you google it? Find what the song says!” Layla clasped her hands. She always loved a mystery. “Maybe he’s trying to tell you guys something!”