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Marc walks into a quiet apartment, and that’s not unusual. He knows he’ll take his shoes off by the door and stop to wash the blood off his hands in the kitchen sink before finding you curled up in your shared bed. He knows he’ll either find the room glowing from the soft fairy lights you’ve had in every apartment you’ve ever lived in together or it will be pitch dark and filled with the sound of your small and familiar snores. Either way, no matter which way he finds you, he’ll crawl into bed with you and hold you and everything will feel okay again. It’s his favorite time of night, the only reason he likes the darkness anymore.
He’s smiling as he catches the faint glow of the lights from around the corner, more than ready to have you in his arms but he stops in his tracks as he steps into the living room. Marc’s familiar scene has changed. The fairy lights in the bedroom are on, but you’re sitting in the dark on the couch with a throw blanket over your legs, and your eyes are puffy and red and your arms are crossed over your chest and Marc’s first thought is you’re hurt.
He crosses the room in a few short strides and kneels in front of you, tilting his head to the side as his eyes travel over your body, searching for any cut or bruise or anything really. When he finds nothing, he furrows his brows and sits back on his heels, his palms resting on his thighs. He takes a second to try and calm his racing heart, to try and get the panic to run from his chest down his arms and out of his fingertips. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again you still haven’t moved, your face still hasn’t changed.
His stomach sinks.
“Baby, what is it?” he mumbles, his voice softer than it usually is, less harsh. He clears his throat and gulps, trying to piece his walls back together just a bit.
You’ve seen him vulnerable. You’ve seen Marc Spector scream and cry and fall to his knees to curse every God he can name. You’ve seen him anxious and scared, you’ve seen that little boy who still flinches at the sound of leather and hates blowing out birthday candles.
But something about the look in your eyes tells him he’s about to lose something, and he needs to be ready for it. He can’t be that little boy, not now. Not when you’re sitting in front of him and he’s struggling to find a pulse.
You’re quiet. So fucking quiet. The silence is making Marc’s palms itch but he just waits patiently, almost obediently, like your silence is commanding him not to break it.
When you speak, he wishes you wouldn’t have broken it either.
“I think it’s time.”
He knows what you mean without needing you to clarify. He doesn’t want you to clarify. He doesn’t want to hear it. If he knew it wouldn’t solidify your decision, he’d let Steven takeover so he didn’t have to.
You think it’s time to end things. With him, with them. You’ve finally had enough.
Marc knew this day was inevitable—he wasn’t made to have good things, wasn’t made for a happily ever after and a ring on his finger. No, he was all cracked ribs and bloodied knuckles and war, and even the bravest soldiers never walked away unscathed—he never had before, why would this time be any different?
But he wants it to be different. He’s so entirely desperate for it to be different this time. So he pushes away the lump in his throat and prays that his voice will work.
It still cracks. Just a little. He hopes you don’t notice. “I don’t understand.”
There’s another stretch of silence that makes Marc want to rip his hair out but he knows now isn’t the time to lose his temper, to let his anger get the better of him and consume him until there’s nothing left but a pile of ashes. He digs his nails into the palms of his hands to try and keep himself in check, to keep himself from setting everything on fire. He always ruins things and he swore to himself that he wouldn’t ruin this.
But apparently he already had.
You look sick to your stomach as you shift just a little bit. Marc’s looking at your eyes but your gaze is fixed on your lap, on the blanket he knows you’ll start fidgeting with and sure enough, you start to rub the material between your fingers as a sigh leaves your lips.
“I know.” You sound tired. Marc hates that you sound so tired. “I know you don’t babe.”
He can’t get his voice to work. Doesn’t know how to get the words out, doesn’t know what they would even be if he could speak. Would he beg? Would he scream? Would his anger work to protect him or would his desperation outweigh his desire for safety?
There’s something in his silence that makes you finally look at him, and he hates that you do. He hates that you’ve lost that spark that set his heart on fire when you first met, he hates that you look at him with resentment and regret and your own anger. It’s subtle at first, barely there but he can see it growing, just a bit.
“You don’t understand but you’ve been expecting it, haven’t you?”
Marc swallows, tongue darting out to lick across his bottom lip as he finally breaks eye contact. He lets his head hang with no attempt to deny your words—he’d be lying if he tried and you’d see right through him, just like you always do.
He can’t bring himself to look at you again, not yet anyways, but he feels your anger growing and suddenly he’s ten years old again. Suddenly he’s back in that house in Chicago and he can feel his mother’s resentment and rage burning across his skin, can feel the wounds that never really fully healed being ripped open and he imagines the blood pooling where he kneels on the floor because he’d rather bleed out than face that anger again.
“Then why didn’t you say anything?” you snap, oblivious to what Marc’s mind is putting him through, oblivious to the fact that he’s forcing himself to stay at the front.
Marc doesn’t know what to say. Really, he doesn’t. But he knows you’re expecting something, anything, and again he knows you’d catch whatever lie he’d try to feed you so he settles for the truth. It takes him a second to get the words out, ten year old Marc so used to staying quiet because his words were never good enough and he knew this time wouldn’t be any different.
“I didn’t want to admit it.”
And you laugh. You actually laugh after a beat or two of silence. He still doesn’t look at you, he can hear the exasperation in your tone, he doesn’t want to see it on your face.
“Admit what? That this relationship has been killing me? That I’ve been dying in bed beside you every night for months now?”
He’s quiet again, his chest tight, a fist around his heart cracking his ribs. He’d known something was wrong, of course he’d noticed you pulling away from him and sinking into yourself. Marc isn’t oblivious.
But he didn’t realize it was this bad. He didn’t realize he had another body to add to his list.
“Say something, babe please say something.”
Marc just shakes his head, tears blurring his vision. He wants Steven, he doesn’t want to do this anymore, he doesn’t want to hear the disappointment in your voice and he doesn’t want to hear you tell him that it’s all his fault.
But still, he stays at the front. Despite the panic and the downright anguish rising in his chest, he stays.
Even though he knows you’re not going to. Especially when minutes pass by and he still can’t find the words you want him to say. He thinks you probably left a long time ago.
You scoff, and that’s when Marc knows it’s over. That’s the exact moment that he knows there’s nothing else he can do, the exact moment he realizes your heart won’t start for him again. The exact moment he realizes he’s lost you.
And Marc still doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand what he’s done to make you resent him so much, to make you so angry and he wishes you would give him a reason so he could rationalize it just like he did every time his mother picked up the belt.
But you don’t, and he can’t ask for one. He can’t.
And so he listens to your footsteps against the hardwood floors as you retreat to the bedroom, and as soon as he hears the door click shut, he stops fighting. He lets go and he stops fighting.
Steven sleeps on the couch that night, and even though he doesn’t want to see you go, he’s glad that he’s the one that has to watch you pack. He’s relieved that he’s the one to take your engagement ring and pawn it before Marc has a chance to find it.
Steven loves you, just like Marc.
But he knows that Marc doesn’t deserve the anger. He never did.
And Steven’s always going to keep the belt from striking.