Chapter Text
Marcus was once and is still a lot of things; Quidditch player, pureblood, danger addicted, too quick with sharp words and too permanently angry with the world for gentleness to move him. Liar, liar, liar (it merits repeating), very rarely a lover, mostly a fighter because he doesn’t know any other way to be. It takes years for anyone to teach him that it can be different.
But the one thing he is that no one knows about, that no one else can know about, holds one of the most bitter ironies of all.
Secret-keeper.
In the midst of war, every tender thing is on the verge of being peeled back from his bones and turned into a weapon against him; that’s why he does it to himself before anyone else can; strips himself bare of feeling. His mind is splayed open and picked through at will, people trying to stare into him like he’s the carrion they’re going to feast upon. Legilimency becomes the thing that he fears the most, because even inside his own head there’s nowhere to hide any more, no place of safety. He’s left dizzy and disoriented and deprived, touch-starved until he’s sick. He didn’t know that he could crave physical contact that isn’t violence this much. It wasn’t something he ever wanted to learn, it was so much easier to be violent when he didn’t know. His lungs don’t quite work the way that they used to when he tries to draw breath, like copper wires have pierced through them, strings to hold that part of him up when he’s got no will left. His heart never worked right in the first place, so he can’t trust the mess that’s become either. He’s strung out thin between the alliances he should be making and those that he already has. No one’s caught him out yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
All he has to do is tell the truth, and it will be over, because one side or the other will finish him off. Not quickly, perhaps, that’s unlikely at this point because he’s played as many angles as possible (once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin). But the fact is that he has the key to two secrets, and both are locked within him, securely intertwined. He can’t give up one without revealing the other, and that’s not an option.
The second secret is a location, a small house on the coast that is completely commonplace, except for the fact that to most, it’s not there at all. Shell Cottage, the home of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour, only visible to him because of the person he held in his arms and carried over its threshold based on a delirious murmur. The place where he’d struck a bargain to save a life.
The first secret is a man who was once a boy with laughing brown eyes, who gave him some bruises to remember when they were still at school. This is the most dangerous secret he’ll ever bear, because there’s a name attached to every last drop of the blood in his veins, singing through every lie he tells, and if he has to spill it all to keep him safe, he’ll do it without hesitation.
The other has no idea, doesn’t even know it, wouldn’t return the feelings if he did. They were allies, barely tolerant, because they’re Flint and Wood and they’re splinter and burn and all they’d ever do is break each other, because that’s what they’re designed for. The fact that Oliver is still alive is the first and most important secret he’ll ever conceal from anyone, buried deep within him, sealed by words of enchantment far below the surface. He waited until Oliver was asleep and safe before he left Shell Cottage after a short conversation with Bill Weasley about why he’d done what he did; a request made, a charm cast. He hadn’t known how to answer except with the truth. I couldn’t leave him. Don’t ever tell him.
Sometimes, he dreams of how he’ll die. Alone, with Oliver’s name on his lips, his face etched on the back of his eyelids. He dreams of betrayal, of giving up, and he wakes drowning in his sheets and terrified from the sensation of Oliver’s cooling, blood-stained skin beneath his fingers before he realises it’s not real, not real, not real.
The connections between nightmare and reality are stuttering, tenuous threads, and his mind frequently stumbles for a few moments when he wakes with a start and tries to grasp them. The longing he feels is the only counterpoint he has to misery, and it’s not reciprocated.
One night, the Battle of Hogwarts, he isn’t careful enough about hiding the fact that there’s no side he’s really chosen apart from his own. That means keeping people safe, people who don’t deserve to die, because at the heart of it, he doesn’t know if he can live with himself anyway any more. There’s a blinding second where he shields someone else, the complete opposite of self-preservation, and suddenly, it’s not a dream or a nightmare at all. His lungs are flooding; he’s choking on his own blood, washed downriver on the tide of his own body, held there like a prison, and this is reality.
“Flint?”
Figures that he’d hallucinate at death’s door. He tries to speak, but he can’t. Instead he closes his eyes. The frantic note to the repetition of his name isn’t something he hears. He doesn’t hear the way that Oliver says his name, or feel callused hands passing over him.
When Marcus opens his eyes, it’s to piercingly bright, painful light and his chest feels as though it’s full of knives. “I thought dying would hurt less,” he grumbles out loud. He knew he’d probably have to pay for his sins, but come on, really?
“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Flint, but you’re not dying.”
Every muscle locks with the surge of absolute panic. His next response is probably utterly inappropriate.
“Shit.”
Because if he’s alive? That means he has to deal with the consequences; because there’s no way Bill Weasley actually kept his mouth shut. It’s confirmed about ten seconds after that. He focuses on that because he wasn’t supposed to be here, to survive, because he shouldn’t be.
“You saved my life months ago, I saved yours. No debts owed.”
Fucking Gryffindors.
Some things don’t change. Marcus still lashes out when he’s uncertain, when he’s scared, and Oliver Wood inspires both of those things in spades, amongst other emotions he can’t deal with right now or at all. “If we’re even, then go away and leave me to lick my wounds in peace, Wood. Just go away and leave me alone.” When the blinding sharpness of the light eventually recedes enough for him to actually see, he gets a good long look at Oliver, straight up into those damned eyes staring down at him, apparently from his bedside.
Marcus doesn’t give him a chance to speak, forces himself upright into a sitting position even though it causes him a lot more pain and pushes him back with one of his hands. “You weren’t supposed to know that I did anything,” he bites out. “Figures Weasley told you anyway even though I explicitly asked him not to.” What he’s doing is probably dangerous, judging by the noise that some spell monitoring him is currently making, but he couldn’t care less. Instead, he casts his gaze about. “Where are my sodding clothes?” Angry, yes, it’s so much easier, wipes everything else out the way that it has been for months.
“They were covered in blood; I reckon they must have put them aside for cleaning. I don’t know if someone’s contacted your family…” Oliver’s voice trails off, because Marcus gives him the shittiest look he can muster and even under the circumstances, that’s not inconsiderable. A petty part of him is pleased by the fact that it hasn’t lost effect. “Are you honestly stupid, Wood? No one’s going to come.” The words are rawer than he wants them to be. “No one’s coming. I’m leaving even if I have to transfigure myself clothing from the bedsheets.”
Oliver immediately blocks him. “You’re not going anywhere in the state you’re in. You took a serious curse at close range, you should be dead. The minute you pull out the stuff they’ve got you hooked up to, you’re going to collapse, Marcus.” The responding anger in his voice does what it always does; makes Marcus’ blood hum, but it’s worsened by the fact that Wood used his first name. It’s pathetic and everything in him positively crawls toward it. He wouldn’t want you if you told him.
Instead, he takes a minute to take inventory of himself. The spell he set off earlier was a heart-rate monitor of some kind, an indication of how bad it’s been. He can feel something padding his chest, so the feeling of knives is probably from that. It prompts a sharp response that’s intended to be sarcastic but comes out as truthful. “You don’t have the first clue about how right you are.” Looking down at his left arm, he’s got not one but three needles running on different lines, going into bags of potion nearby. Only one is currently active, something he assumes is there to take the edge off the pain. “How long was I out?” he asks brusquely, not meeting Wood’s eyes.
“About four days.” He can feel the pause. “I stayed with you.”
I’d rather risk collapsing than have his pity or anyone else’s. Abruptly, he reaches towards his arm and removes the medical tape holding the needles in place. One by one, he extracts them, is about to go for the last one when a hand clamps over his wrist to stop him. “You don’t even have your wand, so stop. Please.”
The panic that those words induces is on a far larger scale, because he can’t get away if he doesn’t have his wand, and he doesn’t think Oliver realises that he’s said exactly the wrong thing. The fear wells up in his throat until it nearly chokes him. Marcus is rigid where he sits. His wand has been his lifeline and his only protection for months now, and not having it is terrifying. He wants to ask why Oliver stayed. Instead, he lets his wrist go slack until Oliver lets go, and rips the last needle out anyway. It’s a futile act of rebellion, one that he knows he’ll regret, one that will hurt no one but himself, but it’s all he’s got as a means of reasserting some control over the situation. At least if he’s unconscious again, he can’t have a full-scale panic attack with an audience. Without another word, he turns his back on the man with the brown eyes that have haunted him for months; gets back into bed and shuts his eyes. “I’m tired,” he says, and as with most of his lies, it holds such a large grain of truth at the centre that it’s difficult to tell where the deception actually rests. I’m so tired.