Work Text:
Layla moves to London, after everything. She's never been able to keep a steady job anyways, neither has Marc, so they concede to Steven's (unspoken and yet so obvious) plea to stay there - there where he’s made a life for himself.
So she moves into Steven's little flat. It's a one room apartment, the smallest place she's ever stayed in permanently, but it's not so bad. She has the place to herself when Steven and Marc are off at the museum for work.
She spends most of her time alone perusing his large collection of books.
Most of them are educational - textbooks, poems, big historical and archeological studies. But every now and then, after sweeping aside a couple dozen lengthy books, she'll find something of fiction, and she'll spend the rest of the day alternating between that and the television.
She teases him for it once, a little "how do you find anything in this mess," as he restacks the books she'd pushed aside the night before. He laughs it off awkwardly, does the few dishes in the sink, and then they sit together with their cups of tea before he leaves for work.
After work, Steven will come home, or sometimes it'll be Marc, and they'll have dinner together and talk.
When it's Marc, they end the night with board games or TV or, if Marc is lucky, with a frisky activity in bed.
When it's Steven, she watches as he cleans.
First, she sees him pack away several boxes of books, until one wall is completely clean of them. It opens up the space, and yet at the same time, it seems like a bit of a loss.
The next day, another few boxes of books are shoved into Marc's storage garage, until the only ones left are the ones on the bookshelves. He leaves Desbordes-Valmore. She misses his copy of Sherlock Holmes .
The morning after that , she and Marc wake up to a complete lack of museum nicknacks covering Gus' tank and the surrounding tables.
"Woah," Marc mutters, trudging to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. "Weird."
Layla raises her eyebrows. "Just 'weird?'"
Marc shrugs, reaching into the cupboard for a skillet. He's making eggs. "Yup."
Layla crosses her arms, leaning against the counter to watch his work. "You don't think there's something wrong?"
Marc pauses, continuing cautiously. "What would be wrong?"
"I don't know. You don't think it's worrying? That he's packing everything up?"
Marc steps back to let the eggs sizzle. He turns to Layla, stepping forward to bring her into his arms. He sighs, laying his chin on her head. She wraps her arms around his waist, cheek on his chest.
"I don't know what goes on in his head," he whispers, as if he's afraid Steven will hear. "I think he's afraid of something though. He gets tense. It doesn't go away when we switch."
"What's he afraid of," Layla whispers back.
Marc just shakes his head.
Layla thinks about that, when Steven bids her goodnight and lays on the couch to sleep that night. She hates that, really, but Marc says he had no part in Steven's decision to do so. Even if he prefers it that way anyways.
"Steven," she calls. His head pops over the backrest, hair mussed. "Why don't you come sleep on the bed?"
He shakes his head emphatically. "No, no, I'm a restless sleeper, I'd keep you awake…tossin' and turnin'. No, I think I'll stay here."
Layla frowns, but she doesn't fight it. There's no point to it. "Alright," she concedes. "It's your bed though."
Marc wakes up the next morning, and he and Layla decide to see a movie. In an actual theater, for once. Marc says Steven whines when he buys a hotdog, and that he says the movie selection is distasteful. It's a backseat driving kind of day, apparently.
But, Marc says, he sticks around for the full movie and insists that they see it again when it's streaming.
He doesn't take the body though, not even as Marc insists on a hamburger for dinner. Not when Marc and Layla get playful on the taxi ride back to his flat, though Layla can tell he's uncomfortable with it from the way Marc's mouth pulls into a half frown. He seems to be sleeping, or at least not present with Marc when they climb into bed for the night together.
Hours later, she wakes to the sound of rustling. She cracks her eyes open, squinting as the soft light of a lamp breaks the darkness. "Marc?"
"Ah, Layla." The accent betrays the truth. "You should go back to sleep. It's awfully early."
She snorts; checks the alarm clock beside the bed. Only one sixteen in the morning. "Speak for yourself. What are you doing?"
He pauses, looking around as if he's just realized the absurdity of the situation. "Just - just tidying up a little." He holds up a trash bag. "Going through some old rubbish. 'S been layin' around everywhere I just thought…spring cleaning."
Nevermind that it isn’t spring.
Layla pushes herself out of bed. In several long strides she's at Steven's side, snatching a paper from his right hand and a half full trash bag from his right.
The paper's an old poem, written in chicken scratch and signed with Steven's name. She dumps the contents of the trash bag on the floor, ignoring Steven's distressed hum and outstretched hands. He gingerly, and yet strangely urgently snatches the bag back, but Layla already has several handfuls of papers, varying in age. She reads them even as he sets to throwing the rest back in the bag.
A hyper-realistic drawing of a double decker bus, signed Steven.
Another poem, this one written on the same page as expressionist charcoal drawing of a mirror, signed Steven.
…A tear-stained letter to Wendy Spector, signed Steven.
She clutches it tightly in her fist.
His hand pauses halfway to hers.
"What's wrong?"
Layla scoffs, reverently smoothing the papers out on her knees. Except the letter. That, she can't seem to uncrumple from her white knuckled grip. "What's wrong with me? I'm worried about you !"
He swallows nervously, shaking his head. "Oh don't be worried about me, there's nothing to - to worry about! "
She shakes her head. "You've been throwing everything away, Steven. I don't want you to get rid of everything just because I've moved in."
He bites his lip nervously; tilts his head toward one of the mirrors around the house. Marc must've said something.
He sighs. "It's not you. I don't know what it is. It's…Marc thinks it's a reaction. To learning the truth."
Layla tilts her head down, meeting his downcast gaze despite the clear efforts he's taken not to meet hers. "The truth?"
"About my mum."
Layla sighs. "I'm sorry Steven. I don't think you were ever supposed to know."
He laughs bitterly. "That's the problem, innit? I remember bits now. Tidying up my room before mum got home so she wouldn't be angry with me. But that's not how it went at all, apparently. She was already angry with me. I just don't remember the rest. And I - I can't. I can't believe that she'd do something like that."
Layla rests her hand - the one free of any papers - on his knee. "You still love her?"
He nods. "I hate it. What she did to Marc. But I still love her. I feel terrible."
"You're allowed to love her, Steven. You just have to know that your reality is different to Marc's."
This doesn't seem to satisfy Steven. Layla shuffles closer.
"Steven." She waits until his eyes meet hers. "You threw yourself away for her. Subconsciously, you threw yourself away," she shakes the drawings for emphasis, "for her because that's what Marc needed you to do. Maybe that’s why you’re not letting yourself have this. But that's not what he needs anymore. And that's not what either of you want. That’s not what I want."
She pauses, waiting for it to sink in.
"I don't know what happened with her, really. But I'm not going to tell you what you should think, and Marc won't either," she looks pointedly at the mirror, hoping that maybe Marc is looking back. "And we're not going to let you get rid of everything you love because that's what she would've made you do. Even if you never realized that’s what was happening."
Steven is blinking back tears by the time she finishes. His heavy, stuttering breaths punctuate the silence of the flat, but Layla hardly hears it as she pulls him closer. He sobs silently into her shoulders - silent, she thinks, because if he'd ever been loud it would've earned both he and Marc a belt buckle to the face. She stares into the mirror, and imagines Marc there on the other side.
He falls asleep there, head nestled into her neck.
Marc wakes up the next day. By noon, he's recovered all of Steven's things from the storage facility, leaving them stacked by the goldfish tank for Steven to do with as he wishes.
By dinner, Layla's organized all of his poems and drawings - and the letter - neatly in a binder, left on the kitchen table where he'll find it when he finds it. So Layla doesn't have to say anything.
When he next fronts, his tears don't seem like sad ones.