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Ever since Marc finished watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, he hasn’t been quite the same. He’d watched the first episode after Layla had made an offhand comment joke about the leaky showerhead ‘not sparking joy’, and he’d confessed that he had no clue what on Earth she was referencing. She had placed her laptop on his lap, Marie’s show already pulled up on Netflix, and slid a pair of headphones on him. ‘Maybe you can pass some tips onto Steven’, she’d joked, ‘Since you disapprove of his living conditions so much.’
If only she’d known the repercussions of what she was saying.
“Puta madre!” Jake hisses one evening, pacing the flat like a hurricane. “Dónde está?”
Marc pinches his nose bridge and calls to him from the mirror. “Jake, what are you looking for?”
“My bowtie! I always have it hanging on the door hook, but now it’s gone.”
“Oh, that? You never use it, so I put it in the cupboard with Steven’s winter clothes.”
“Well, I need it now,” Jake snaps, bristling. He storms over to Steven’s wardrobe, raking through the piles of neatly-folded jumpers and scarves until he finds what he’s looking for. As he hurries out of the flat while slinging his bowtie around his neck and haphazardly tying it, he turns around and shoots at the mirror, “No toques mi mierda.”
***
Marc, like the stubborn bull that he is, does not no toques anyone’s mierda.
Steven’s soul almost leaves his body when he wakes up and finds every pile of books in the flat rearranged and shelved away. “No… no, no no no, Marc, what are you done?”
“I cleared up space on the tables. Now you actually have space to use your laptop at the desk, instead of using it on the bed and curling up like a shrimp.”
“I had a system!”
“Yeah, well, I’ve given you a better one. I’ve arranged the books alphabetically, by their authors’ surnames. Y’know… like how most places do it.”
Steven huffs, “I can’t believe you… you’re a right tosser, you are.”
“You’re welcome.”
***
Harrow was right — it is possible to create Heaven on Earth. His daily cup of coffee tastes best with peace and quiet. He looks around the flat, pleased with his own work: every book has been put on a shelf, where books should go, every blanket has been folded, every pillow fluffed, all the receipts and cereal bar wrappers that Jake keeps leaving on the floor now thrown away, the furniture straightened and the laundry folded away. Even the fishtank has been scrubbed. It’s no IKEA showroom, but at least now it feels like he has enough space to breathe.
(He doesn’t blame them, of course. It’s not like they were around when mom got set off by his piles of unfolded laundry, or the exercise sheets on his desk that he hadn’t filed away. It’s not like they had their favorite action figurines thrown out just because they didn’t put it away as soon as they were done playing.)
“Morning, baby,” Marc says when he notices the blankets shifting. After another moment, Layla sits up and stretches lazily, like a cat.
“Morning, dearest— whoa, the flat looks different.”
“Right?” Marc says triumphantly, taking a sip of coffee. “Steven and Jake hate it. Which means that they’re refusing to front. Which means that I get the whole weekend to myself. We could go somewhere nice; I heard Bath is great for overnight trips.”
“Oh, of course, I’d love to,” Layla replies with a smile, which Marc can immediately tell is forced.
“What’s wrong?”
“I…” she bites her bottom lip and frowns. “Shouldn’t you have asked them first? Steven only stops fronting when he’s absolutely seething. And you know how Jake gets when he disappears for a while.”
Marc tries to push through the topic at first; the muscles in his face tense, ready to scowl or force a smile or deflect. As much as Steven has gotten used to being in the headspace, and as much as it calms him down that Marc or Jake are usually there with him when he’s on the inside, he’s still the one who fronts the most — it’s mainly because he’s the one with the full-time job, but also because out of the three of them, he’s the one least tired of interacting with the world. Then there’s Jake. Not so much a deer in the headlights as he is a battering ram. The longer he goes without fronting, the more wired he is when he does return, like a slingshot being pulled taut, waiting to be released.
He rakes his hand through his bedhead, grumbling under his breath. Takes another sip of coffee. Heaves a massive sigh.
Then he turns to the mirror and says, “Alright, fine. Gentlemen, come out and voice your grievances.”
The response is faster than instant.
“Gilipollas! Le dije que no tocara mis cosas! Puta madre!”
“You’re such a proper dickhead! I had all my shit where I needed them to be, and now it’s ruined!”
Marc likes to think of himself as the relenting one. Since Steven is a massive pushover and Jake is too emotionally stunted to ever voice his needs, Marc tries to concede to them wherever he can: ‘fine, I’ll try the whole vegan thing’ , ‘you can keep smoking, just not in the flat’. And now, of course, the one time he wants to improve their living quarters, they flip out on him. He scoffs, a sound as bitter as the coffee he’s sipping on (must have burned the coffee grounds by accident), and murmurs under his breath, “Yeah, sure, because who cares that it makes me anxious coming home to a mess?” He avoids eye-contact with the mirror as he speaks.
Layla, sensing an argument brewing from Marc’s tone alone, quickly hops to the bathroom to get ready.
“And why’s that, Spector?” Jake shoots back equally as sharply, not backing down. “It was just a few receipts and tidbits. And you’ve put away all my jackets and hats. Just say it out loud, if you hate seeing traces of me in the house so much.”
Marc scoffs. “Tidbits? You mean the trash you kept leaving around?”
“I was saving them!” Jake bursts out. “Is it so unforgivable that I’ve never had a fucking granola bar before, and I wanted to remind myself of the brand!?”
The retort that Marc had readied on his tongue wilts. His eyes fall to the ground. The moment he starts going through recent memories, his face flushes with shame and he wants to punch himself. Jake is always asking them what’s for dinner, always bringing back tiny desserts that he sees in Sainsbury’s. He keeps bags of snacks around the flat, wedged between the bookshelves here, tucked between the couch cushions there. Marc had always assumed it was because he didn’t wanna get slack for eating junk food; it never occurred to him that Jake was savoring each moment of being able to eat, after a whole lifetime of experiencing food as lingering aftertastes, at most.
“I’m… sorry.” At first, those are the only two words he manages to get out. He exhales slowly and tries to mull over his next words without chewing on them, or his tongue, or the inside of his cheek. “I just… clutter sets me off. It set mom off. I mean— Steven, you’ve seen how I arranged my things in that storage unit.”
Steven takes the body’s right hand and places it over Marc’s left hand. He says quietly, “I’m sorry, Marc. I didn’t realize the mess was triggering you.”
“It’s fine. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll put your stuff back to how it was before.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll… I’ll be able to find my things again; they’re still in the flat, after all. I just don’t do well with people reorganizing my things. There’s a method to my madness, even if that’s all it looks like to anyone else: pure, unadulterated, mega-nerd level chaos.”
Marc chuckles softly. He’s seen the annotations in Steven’s books; wild handwriting scribbled in the margins, like Steven can barely contain himself as he writes down his attempts to translate the hieroglyphs on entrance to the tomb of Wahtye; yellow highlights that wobble right off the page, when Steven was probably dozing off with the highlighter still in hand. Had their life been slightly less turbulent and slightly more linear, Marc imagines that Steven would probably have become a beloved, maybe even renowned, professor in Egyptology.
“Just…” Steven sighs, but his smile tells Marc that he’s not mad anymore. “Let’s discuss with each other before we move stuff that isn’t ours, alright?”
Marc nods compliantly, like a puppy being told off.
Jake shifts his weight from side to side, trying to work himself up to an apology. “Marc, sorry I called you all those nasty names, even if you probably don’t understand what I said.”
“No, Jake, I understood you. I just choose to reply to you in English.”
“Oh… oops. Well, extra sorries for that, then.”
“It’s fine,” Marc says softly. “I’m sorry I threw away your things.”
“Okay, now that’s too many sorries… I don’t do mushy shit like this. I’m out, idiotas.”
Steven and Marc watch Jake saunter out of frame; Steven chuckles, and Marc shakes his head. Eventually, Steven brings the coffee up to Marc’s lips with their right hand. “Alright, now finish up your cuppa and go get train tickets to Bath for you and Layla. Take lots of photos for me.”
“Aye aye, big boss.”