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Whizzer is dead. Marvin is depressed. He won't leave the house, he just stays in bed and mopes around. The only thing he leaves the house for is to visit Whizzer's grave and whenever he does, he wears Whizzer's sweaters. The ones that are older and have kind of lost their shape, but are just so Whizzer it feels like the man himself is still wrapped around his shoulders. Or, if he feels the need to look presentable, sometimes he puts one of Whizzer's shirts on, buttoning it up and remembering how he used to do the exact opposite when the shirt was on his lover's back. He takes care with each button. As he works that one button that's ever so slightly, almost unnoticeably different into place, he smirks sadly as he remembers that time it had popped off in one of their mad frenzies to get undressed and into bed.
Marvin doesn't really do much when he arrives at Whizzer's grave. He reaches out and touches the stone with the tips of his fingers, imagining and longing for his lover's warmth again when now all he feels is a cold hardness. He stands, head bowed and hands clasped in front of him, for a while. He's never sure how long "a while" is, so eventually he sits. He crosses his legs like a child. Now that Whizzer's gone, he certainly feels like one. Vulnerable and dependent. He stares blankly at the stone for another vague amount of time before the silence doesn't quite hang right in the air anymore. There was never silence when Whizzer was in the room. He starts to talk, to the stone, to Whizzer, to no one in particular. He can never tell. All of this happens like a ritual he performs on autopilot, like everything else he does these days. He barely thinks, it's all just nothing to him. Visiting Whizzer's grave is one of the only routines that actually has meaning to him. He talks about his day, although that part of Marvin's rambling is always the shortest, he talks about Jason. He's growing up, becoming a man. Whizzer would be proud. He would've loved to see him grow and change as his world grows and changes around him. Marvin talks about when sometimes Jason has a baseball game. He never goes but Jason always comes over, sits cross-legged on Marvin's bed and tells him all about it. Marvin struggles to process Jason's enthusiastic chattering, but he at least tries to look like he's taking it all in. Marvin talks about anything else that's on his mind at the moment. Sometimes he reads poetry, sometimes he makes things up on the spot. It's always about Whizzer, of course. Sometimes he even sings. He never sang to anyone but Whizzer. He's not great, but Whizzer liked it and Marvin would catch himself warbling an undefined tune as he showered or watched Whizzer cook dinner. Sometimes all of this is overwhelming and Marvin finds himself crying. He only cries at Whizzer's grave, he's numb anywhere else and the tears won't fall. After he's touched, stood, sat, talked, maybe sung and maybe cried, Marvin stands again, touches the stone one more time and leaves. He goes straight home, as if the world outside and between the house and Whizzer's grave doesn't exist.
Trina and Jason try everything to make him get up and feel better but nothing works and Trina gets impatient. So it's a few months after Whizzer's death when Trina up and leaves, taking Jason with her. Marvin hasn't seen either of them since. After Trina took Jason and left, Cordelia and Charlotte started visiting frequently. They have their own key, they let themselves in. Cordelia comes over every morning, bringing food most mornings and making sure he's eating. He's getting noticeably thinner after everything that's happened. Charlotte tells him about patients at the hospital, about saving a kid's life and telling someone they're well enough to go home. She thinks it cheers him up a little, makes him feel better. It doesn't, it just leaves a bitter taste. If they could be saved, why couldn't Whizzer?
Cordelia is Marvin's favourite of his few visitors. Her coming into the bedroom each morning, tupperware in hand, telling him that she's tried making something new and that he's her most trusted second opinion is one of the only things to really make Marvin smile. But every time that door opens, a part of Marvin prays it'll be Jason. Hell, he even sometimes prays it'll be Whizzer. It never is. Neither of their bright voices echo down that hall.
Every morning, he hopes to open his eyes to Whizzer holding him and murmuring into his hair, "Shh, it was just a nightmare, its over. You're awake, everything will be alright."
Every morning, he opens his eyes to an empty bed and a photo on the dresser of a man he barely recognizes as himself next to a man he fears he'll forget.
Yes, there's the fear, but he knows he won't. He can't forget. He has reminders. He has the photo frame, which now lies face down on the dresser's surface. When it's contents was visible, every morning Marvin took one look and felt his heart drop to his feet and his stomach rise to his throat, so eventually it became too much and now it lies flat. He'll stand it up again when he's ready, when the time comes. He also has the phone. The answering machine, two voices alternating: "You've reached Marvin and Whizzer! We're not available right now, so leave a message after the-" Marvin talks, just like he does at Whizzer's grave. He sings, he reads poetry, he sits in silence holding the receiver to his ear with a shaky hand. He hangs up. Sometimes he repeats the process. Another one of those rituals.
These things are Marvin's entire life for months, almost a year until one day, Charlotte comes over alone. It's unusual, there's something wrong. She takes him to the hospital, tells him they need to go. She doesn't let him get out of it this time. Marvin hasn't even noticed anything wrong with him, but then again he doesn't notice much these days. They do tests, they monitor him and he's seen that look on her face before, only once before. Back then it came with news like a blow to the stomach. Marvin hurt. This time, Marvin smiles.
In the hospital, Marvin does what he did back at the house or at Whizzer's grave: he makes routines and rituals, alongside the routines the hospital already enforces on him. Tests, check-ups, visits from Charlotte and Cordelia too. (Her culinary experimentations still make an appearance often, but are far less needed now that there's a whole team of people being paid to make sure he eats.) Never anyone else, just like at home. He's almost given up on hoping for anyone else. The only other people he wants to see are either dead or out of touch. They wouldn't know he was here. Now, his rituals are a lot like they were. Except now he's been taken from their phone and he's being held captive from Whizzer's grave. Instead of calling, touching and even standing nowadays, he just talks to no one in particular, this time he knows. There isn't a phone, or a stone, or any other remanence of his lover to direct his aimless mumbling at - just white walls and empty space. Maybe sometimes Charlotte listens in from the hall, he wouldn't know. He's quickly running out of things to talk about. His days are all the same, he hasn't been around to see Jason grow and he's too sick to sing, so poetry becomes more and more frequent in his ramblings. He never writes it down like he used to, though, he just makes it up on the spot.
When he's not talking, he sits in bed silently and thinks. What else is there to do? He thinks, he talks, he sleeps. He thinks about his future, or what's left of it. He thinks about how it will all end. Whizzer used to talk as they lay together in his hospital bed about death being a man, rather attractive, whisking him away to wherever he was meant to go when he was gone. Taking his hand, kissing his lips, seducing him. Marvin, however, imagines nothing. Or maybe he doesn't know, he guesses he won't know until the time comes. He hopes he'll be with his Whizzer, there's nothing he wants more.