Work Text:
Sometimes Marco likes to play this game. He calls it: What Would I Be Doing Right Now If I Wasn't Busy Being Torn Apart By Mind-Controlled Monsters From Outer Space.
Often, the answer is: sleeping. Other times it's playing Mario Kart, or having dinner with Dad, or even sometimes (horror of horrors) writing that paper that's due tomorrow.
So that's his life. Daydreaming about homework while, well, being torn apart by mind-controlled monsters from outer space.
"Do you ever wish," he says once, then stops, because what he was going to say was stupid and obvious and would probably earn him one of those awful, exhausted, crumbling Looks. There's no mission tonight, just Marco and Jake and Jake's bedroom, pretending to play video games when they're really just— Marco doesn't know what they're doing. Existing? Trying to catch their breaths, maybe.
Jake inches his head around on the rug until he's looking at Marco out of the corner of his eye. "Do I ever wish what?"
"Nothing. It was stupid." He's been hanging off the edge of Jake's mattress, half upside down, and his head feels heavy and thick, and maybe that's why he starts again, "Do you ever wish everything was exactly the same?"
"The same as what? Before—" A pause, a brief flicker of the eyes to the door. "Before you-know-what?"
"No. No." Marco's tongue feels as thick as his head and the words aren't right and he barges on anyway. "Like—if we were in a movie, or a video game or a comic book, or whatever. And it was all the same. But we'd know it would all turn out okay, because it's not real. And you can't set your characters up to lose. So it would be okay."
There's a long silence that seems to stretch on and on, and Marco's already resigned himself to having hit Jake's threshold for babbling bullshit when Jake says, "Would we know we weren't real, though?"
"Urgh." Marco swings his upper body back onto the mattress, relishing in the lightheadedness. "Okay. But it would all turn out all right, even if we didn't know it."
"Sure, Marco." Jake sighs, all war-weary and shit, and shuts his eyes. "I guess I do wish that."
"Yeah." One of Marco's arms is dangling off the bed, and he doesn't think about how close Jake's hand is to his. "Yeah. Me too."