Work Text:
The park near Stellis University is usually empty past 11 pm.
I live in the same world as Caroline Argall, Jun Choi, and Irene Burke.
It’s near tranquil, and any rustling of the foliage could either be attributed to the nocturnal wildlife foraging in the area, or the wind. Even the giant lake in the middle of the park is lifeless when the water is usually rippling from all the ducks that swim unperturbed during the day, and the seeds that are tossed from human hands.
It’s here that Marius sits, propped elbows on bent knees, turning the small stones he’d collected from the lake’s bank between his fingers. He’s amassed a small pile between his legs from when he’d first arrived, but his stock is slowly dwindling with every rock that he gently tosses into the water.
But I’m more fortunate than they are.
It’s nearing midnight, and it’s well past being dark. There’s several lampposts around, woven around the meandering paths, but they’re stationed fairly far apart, only illuminating discrete sections.
Marius is afraid of the dark, so it’s with just the slightest bit of trepidation that he flicks the rock he’d been rolling over his knuckles back into the lake with his thumb. He misses, and he sucks in a sharp breath, watching with squinted eyes as it rolls back among its brethren along the lake bank.
I have a father and a brother who love me. I have a happy family.
Marius is afraid of the dark for several reasons.
That fear may have first arisen during his childhood, but every reason for his phobia thereafter has come from something else or another. Betrayal, abandonment, loneliness, inadequacy, the list goes on and on.
But he presses on.
He has to, because while Copernicus may have been correct about his heliocentric model of their solar system, when it comes to macroeconomics, the world actually does revolve around them—him. Marius specifically, at the moment, while he still occupies Pax Group’s head seat.
Forever trapped within a gilded cage.
But everything I have now is still built on the back of Pax and the von Hagen family.
Marius breathes in deeply, inhaling the air that’s just starting to crisp from the dip in temperature, and picks up another rock.
Because the von Hagen family is at the top, there will never be any problems.
Perhaps the largest portion of his fear of the dark though, at his current age of twenty-one, can be attributed to the fact that he’ll forever remain in it. Unlike Artem, who works tirelessly to keep his own flame kindling, driven by his own beliefs. Or Vyn, who lights his own candles with matches of his own design, holding fast to his own convictions. Or Luke, who fuels his own blazing stars, burnt half as long just to shine twice as bright.
Unlike Rosa, who glows intrinsically, eliciting the smallest tendrils of hope from even the most cynical of criminals.
Irene’s hysterical laughter still echoes in his ears, the crescendo of her voice mutilated by the years of abuse she’d suffered, the chains that had clasped themselves around each of her limbs.
But what if one day, all of that disappears. Will I still be so fortunate?
Marius squeezes the rock in his palm, just hard enough to feel the jagged edges, before loosening his hold and flinging the rock forward, this time with slightly more force.
Even in the dark, if you can find just one beam of light, no matter how dark it is…it can still light up the darkness.
The rock bounces across the bank once.
You have your own light.
And splashes weakly into the water.
I don’t give off my own glow. I’ve also found the light that can illuminate my life.
“That’s not how you skip rocks.”
Marius flinches, muscles tensing as he scrambles to twist his torso around, accidentally scraping his palm across the jagged blades of grass before he manages to steady himself with an arm braced behind him, the other falling from his knee. It takes a millisecond longer than usual for his wits to come about him, and he’s realizing that he recognizes that voice all too well, far too late.
At the very top of the shallow hill, where the path around the park meanders, stands a bespeckled girl with a bike perched against her side, hands grasping at the handle bars with a crossbody satchel nestled against her other hip. The wind sifts gently through her thin pigtails, a hairstyle that hasn’t changed since he met her.
He hasn’t seen her in a while.
Though, he supposes he doesn’t really have many opportunities to, now.
The last time he’d seen her was probably a month ago at one of the campus’ bookstores when she’d waved at him from across the shelves, but their paths can only intersect so much now that he’s pursuing his masters, and his coursework consists mainly of seminars. He’s always huddled into the individual classrooms in the humanities building now due to the smaller class sizes, and she’s sequestered within the data labs all the way across campus.
“Yan Yan,” he breathes through his shock, tentatively loosening his shoulders as she carefully rolls her bike down the grass. When she reaches the bottom, she quickly kicks down the stand to make sure her bike won’t fall over, before bounding her way over to him. Her pigtails bounce when she drops down beside him, crouched into a ball with her hands on her knees.
“I didn’t expect to see you at the park so late at night.” Lillie smiles, crescent-eyed as she dips her head forward to meet his eyes. “It’s been a while.”
Marius instinctually quirks his lip, and it’s with dismay that he realizes his smile isn’t instinctual because it’s Lillie, but because she’s another person he’ll have to entertain. He immediately feels guilty at the thought. “Fancy meeting you here, yeah. Do you take this route home every night? It’s pretty dangerous if it’s this late.”
“Only when I’m staying late to tutor the elementary kids,” Lillie says, before she perks up, and she’s digging through her dress pocket. “Oh but don’t worry! My friend gave me a bottle of pepper spray!”
Marius watches as she pulls out the small tube and shows it off with an exaggerated flourish, reminiscent of their younger summer days when she’d catch a wild cicada in his backyard, her cheeks flushing lightly. He exhales in amusement, returning his elbows to his knees and interlacing his fingers, before shaking his head.
“Still.” Marius glances at his digital watch. It lights up with a quick flick of his wrist. “If you’re always going home this late, then call me. I’ll take you home.”
“Oh.” Lillie parts her lips in surprise, before shaking her head vehemently. “Oh no it’s okay!” Her unruly bangs sway wildly with the movement, and Marius locks his fingers to refrain from smoothing the strands down. They’re not that close anymore. “I know you’re busy! Besides, I’m usually home earlier than this.”
Marius smiles softly. “I’m not so busy that I’ll abandon my friends, just call me. If I can’t make it, then I’ll get one of my drivers.”
Lillie smiles sheepishly. “It’s really okay.” She tucks the pepper spray back into her pocket, before grabbing the strap of her satchel. She’s still looking at him, and he can’t find it within himself to draw his eyes away either. “Besides, it’s late for you too.”
Marius snorts. “I actually sleep pretty late. This is still considered early.”
“Early? It’s past midnight! That’s not healthy at all!” Lillie scolds.
Marius whines pitifully, pouting at her with his signature puppy eyes.
Her glare only sharpens, indignation that Marius reads too easily as protectiveness. She always was too concerned with his well-being. Still is, most likely. The guilt from earlier weighs even heavier in his stomach now. “That’s not going to work on me! You should sleep earlier. It’s not good for you if you sleep this late all the time.”
“Yes yes, so I wonder who it is that I’m talking to who’s also out this late.” Marius smirks at her. “Care to name her?”
“I just—!” Lillie flinches, clearly taken aback by his response. Her younger sisters have probably used that exact same comeback, but Marius is the same age as her, so it holds more water. She clears her throat, and continues with the most diplomatic voice she can muster, “This was just a one time thing. I’m usually in bed by ten.”
Marius guffaws. “Rather than jiejie,” Marius wheezes in between fits of laughter, “shouldn’t I be calling you nainai?”
Lilllie shouts, her entire face bursting into flames. “Ten o’ clock is a perfectly reasonable time to sleep! It lowers your blood pressure and your risk of cardiovascular related diseases! Not to mention that most of your body’s restorative functions happen during the night when you sleep! You know it also resets your metabolism, and regulates your blood pressure, and—”
And she keeps on going. Marius listens, content in letting her ramble and watching as she gesticulates emphatically with each point she makes.
Marius waits until she finishes before snickering. “Whatever you say, nainai.”
Lillie punches him, but she lets her fist linger on the meat of his arm, ardor softening into a contemplative frown as she slowly draws her arm back. “I worry about your health, you know. Since you always seem so tired whenever I manage to catch you from across campus.”
When she catches him from across the campus, huh? He wonders how often, because he’s already memorized her schedule and made it a goal to always go the opposite way.
Marius huffs, the corners of his lips pulling up helplessly. “I’ll try.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“I’ll try for you.”
“You should try for yourself!” Lillie leans forward, her expression imploring. “You deserve to treat yourself well.”
Marius breathes out slowly, his chest constricting weakly as he focuses his gaze and, for the first time in a long time, truly looks at her. Takes her in, and realizes that the only thing that’s changed is her appearance. Nothing else has. She’s always been round-faced, so she wears an innocence that easily leads to manipulation if seen by the wrong person, but it’s also what makes her earnestness that much more soul-crushing.
Because she means every word that she says. Fatally honest and open, in ways Marius can never be.
He swallows thickly, lowering his voice until it cracks from the lie she’d managed to convince him of before, once upon a time. That he deserves to be treated well. “I know.”
“Marius—“
“I know,” he interrupts with more conviction. He can feel the shadows underneath his eyes pronouncing, but he—for her sake, he’ll mean it. Because he’d believed it once. She’d made him believe it. And if it’s for her, he can do it again. “I know.”
Lillie blinks rapidly, searching his eyes for any trace of the lie he’d let slip, before her shoulders loosen, seemingly satisfied. “Good.” She nods in determination. “Good.”
The corner of Marius’ lip ticks, and Lillie giggles softly with him, probably more in consolation than anything. He turns back towards the lake at the twinkling sound. Lillie’s voice has always been soft, but she still makes her presence known at the best of times. Probably—beginning from when Marius had met her—when he’d needed her most.
She has this uncanny ability to show up whenever he least expects it.
Always, always at his worst.
“So you’re skipping rocks?” Lillie asks brightly.
“Clearly not by your standards.”
“Well that’s because that was not skipping rocks,” Lillie retorts. “You were just tossing them! Didn’t we learn how to skip rocks together? Did you forget?”
He smirks impishly. “Maybe. It’s been so long since we’ve done it.” Their last summer together, before he’d left for Florence. “Wanna teach me again?”
Lillie huffs, before the edges of her smile fall. “It has been a while, hasn’t it,” she remarks quietly, laced with a melancholy Marius can almost pinpoint the source of.
Falling out of touch after high school had been inevitable, but reconnecting hadn’t been a priority after his return to Stellis. During the short year he’s been back, they’ve probably only had two full conversations total. Once, when he’d asked the admission’s office about one of his courses two weeks after his return and she’d coincidentally walked in just as he was about to leave; and the other during his belated birthday dinner that she’d taken him to, several months ago.
Their first conversation had lasted half an hour, filled with superficial pleasantries that made his skin itch, and the second had lasted even less than that. An important call had stolen him away, forcing him to reluctantly leave her behind in the middle of the restaurant. He’d made it up to her by granting her special access to one of Pax’s labs for her satellite data interpretation, but it’d still left an acrid taste in his mouth, spying her lone figure at their table as she waved a waiter over for their bill when he’d sped out of the parking lot.
She’d hadn’t even let him pay.
He doesn’t know how she feels, but the distance between them just keeps widening, the edge of their faults diverging with each scarce greeting, each brief interaction, and each superficial parting. He doesn't know how to return to the easy friendship they’d had before, and if he’s being honest, he doesn’t know if he could shoulder it, either.
He hasn’t been the same since his brother disappeared, and he’s driven himself into a corner.
She…is one of the few things he’s had to turn his gaze away from.
The darkness that enshrouds him, the hands that threaten to drag him under, they’ve only magnified since his return to Stellis. To her, who stands at a safe distance from all this morbid tar he’s sinking into, he doesn’t want any of it to touch her.
He’s already sunken as far as his knees. He wouldn't be able to bear it if his world—the one he shares with Jun Choi, Tyson Turner, Caroline Argoll—mires her too. He’d loathe himself, more than he already does.
He hasn’t seen her in a while. Yes, from their current circumstances, but also because he’s taken it upon himself to never look.
“Marius, do you remember what I promised you a few days before you left?” Lillie asks, lowering her eyes.
She’s changed out her stud earrings from when she was younger. The earrings she wears now have small, ornate planets dangling from them.
Marius swallows, and subconsciously reaches for the pile of rocks still sitting between his feet for comfort, utterly unassuming. “Vaguely.”
He remembers in vivid detail.
He needs to let her go.
Lillie nods, before she lifts her head and pastes on a gentle smile. Understanding and patient. Waiting for him, always, no matter which fork in the road he chooses. “What’s wrong?”
Marius exhales shakily, and internally debates how much to hide from her in the short time that he does. She’s not like the rest of NXX, entrenching themselves into the macabre psychs of criminals that the common citizen shouldn’t be subjected to. He’s never been common, but the rest of the NXX had been at some point, and if he looks at Lillie now, she might still be.
She has the chance to be spared, to be kept safe.
He looks at her, and resists the urge to cup her cheeks in his palms. Hold her with their foreheads pressed together, until her comically large glasses dig uncomfortably into his cheeks. Not in an effort to assuage her worries, but to quell his own internal strifes. He’s been more genuine with her than anyone else; not because she’d known him longer, but because she had known him once, and had taken every painstaking effort to.
“Marius,” Lillie prompts, twisting to turn more towards him. “Take your time.”
Knows him still.
Marius smiles gently at her. “Don’t worry, I was just hung up about what a friend said to me earlier today.” And decides to tell her nothing.
Lillie blinks, and Marius wonders if she’s seen through his façade, before she nods. Marius lets out a bated breath, watching as her features soften. If she’s seen through him, she’s gracious enough not to press him. “What did they say?”
Marius looks away and chucks the pebble he’d plucked from his pile into the water. It splashes a good distance away, disturbing the tranquil surface of the lake with hardly a single bounce, rippling small waves that ebb. “She said I glowed.”
Lillie hums.
“But I disagreed.” Marius leans back on his arms and kicks his legs out before him, tilting his head back to look up at the stars. He keeps his voice nonchalant, betraying little of how much those words had actually affected him. “I think I just reflect the light that already illuminates my life. You know, Pax, my family, my friends.”
Lillie hums again, but this time there’s a chuckle lacing her voice.
Marius’ smile broadens subconsciously. “You think it’s funny?” He tilts his head towards her, raising an eyebrow with a smirk. “My skincare routine isn’t cheap, you know. I better be reflecting enough light to rival the brightness of the sun.”
Lillie nods in assent, her own smile going crescent-eyed. “I think so.”
Marius brings his hand up to his chin smugly, his index and thumb creating a v-shape. “I knew you would. You’re my biggest fan, aren’t you?”
It’s a running joke between them, because she hadn’t known who he was initially. He remembers cackling hard enough to choke up a lung when she’d told him, that she’d thought he was going to use his family’s influence to run hers into the ground when she’d scolded him for skipping class. He remembers that they’d been paired for a project in their political economy class, but that was one of the classes he’d racked up a skipping streak for, so she’d had to scour half the campus for him before finding him in the art room.
She had chastised him and still apologized for it later, even though he’d been the one in the wrong.
In actuality, he’d been grateful. That was the first time someone outside of his family had scolded him in a way that meant well. Not because they were paid to, or because he’d personally wronged them in some way, but because she had genuinely, inexplicably cared for his well-being.
She had worried for him, even though he’d practically been a stranger.
Kindness that wasn’t obligated, that didn’t have to be earned. Freely given, to someone who didn’t deserve it.
“Your biggest fan who you still haven’t given your autograph to yet!” Lillie elbows him, and he playfully nudges her back. “Think about the fortune it would make me!”
Marius snorts. “Why go through the trouble? I’ll write you a check right now, how many zeros do you want?”
Lillie shoves at him with both hands, but Marius laughs, exaggerating his stumble as if she had actually managed enough strength to displace him. “Don’t even joke about that one!”
“Just think of me finally returning the favor.” He actually means his next words when his voice softens. “For all the snacks you bought me during high school.”
A whole convenience store’s worth, bringing a new kind to every homeroom class they shared together during their second year. Even ones she hadn’t tried herself yet, using her meager pocket money when Marius’ endless allowance was right there.
“Never!” Lillie laughs, pushing up her glasses that had begun sliding down her nose. “Still, it’s been a while since I’ve heard that one.”
Marius falters. It has. And it would be his fault.
He debates apologizing, but he knows she would never accept it even if he means it. Lillie, as Marius had come to begrudgingly learn during that first turbulent year of meeting, values honesty more than anything. But even more than that, she values people at their core, empathizing with those who wouldn’t do the same for her, privileged in a way he envies.
It’s childish at best, foolish at worst.
But she still does it anyway.
He admires her for it.
“But is that it?” Lillie asks gingerly.
“Hm? Oh.” Marius hums. “Yeah. See? It really doesn’t sound as bad when I say it out loud.” And then he shrugs nonchalantly, thinking he’d successfully negated the issue given how inconsequential he’d made his words sound. He draws into himself, ducking his head as he moves to push himself up. “Oh, since we’re both still here, why don’t I—”
Lillie springs up and snatches at his wrist before he can step away.
Marius stiffens, woodenly turning to face her downcast gaze. His heart skips a beat, spiking with his anxiety. A plethora of placations immediately enumerate themselves in his head, his mind frantically parsing through each one in order to pick which bluff could be used to reassure her best, but they all get stuck in his throat.
He wants to hide. He’s already debilitated too much of his mental fortitude trying to keep her away.
Lillie’s grip on his wrist tightens.
Because he knows—
“I,” Lillie’s voice trembles, barely audible as she hunches her shoulders up to her ears, “still think that part of you is frustrating.”
—he’d give up his whole kingdom of lies he’d raised from the bottom up if she so asked.
Lillie inhales, before she snaps her head up, glaring at him. “Marius, I’m your friend, aren’t I?!”
Marius swallows, shrinking back slightly. “You—you are.”
Lillie nods sharply. “And you are a precious friend to me! So I don’t like it when people talk about my friends as if they’re less than what I think they are! Because I think you’re amazing, and even if you’re the one saying it, I don’t like it when you sound as if you’re putting yourself down.”
Marius parts his mouth, but his throat goes dry at the way she looks at him. Searching, reaching her hands out through the vast emptiness of space for just the small chance that she might catch him. Save him from drifting off, lost to the void.
Lillie thins her lips, before she shakes her head, softening her voice with the sadness he harbors so close to his chest. “Celestial bodies still exist even if there’s no light reflected against them. We’ve named every moon in our solar system, every planet, asteroids, and even those outside of our own galaxy. None of those things undergo nuclear fusion like the stars, so they don’t glow either, but they still make up our universe in an irreplaceable way.”
Marius’ fingers twitch, before he curls them into his palm to stop them from shaking. Lillie takes a step closer to him, and he clenches his jaw until a headache pulses behind his eyes.
“I’ve never met a single person who doesn’t look up at the sky in wonder.” Lillie hovers her other hand over where she’s grasping his wrist, before seemingly thinking better of it and pinching the cuff of his sleeve instead. “We wouldn’t even be alive if this planet didn’t exist in the first place. Even our own moon is important to us! It controls the tides, our rotation, and it’s because it works together with the sun that we’re able to survive on Earth!”
“A’ Yan—“
“Humans!” Lillie shouts over him, and her voice quivers with the effort. Her voice has always been soft. “In the first place, can only see each other because we all reflect light!”
He looks at her, at the way she continuously gives, and is reminded of why he’d ever let her step over his defenses in the first place. Lowering the drawbridge to his heart of his own volition, inviting her into a kingdom he’d built with glass, showcasing just how fragile he truly was.
“So what I mean is, whether you produce light, or reflect it, you still exist, and your merit isn’t diminished because of it.” Lillie swallows, drawing her eyebrows together desperately, begging him to understand. “I’m sure, that the light that illuminates your life, is only able to do so because you’re there to reflect it. Because you exist, regardless of everything that’s defied you.”
Regardless of everything that’s defied him.
Marius never stood a chance.
“If there’s only light, and nothing there to reflect it, then we’d have nothing. The things we hate, the things we love, the things that make us smile, or the things that make us cry. The things we all live for, and the things that make this world beautiful. You—you’re one of those things to me. Because I…think that this world is beautiful,” Lillie’s voice breaks, even though it’s Marius who wants to cry, “so long as you are in it.”
The last day Marius saw her before their last year together ended, was in the middle of a scorching July. Rather than going to the beach like the rest of their classmates, they’d spent the day biking through Orchidshine, riding up and down the slopes with Marius perched on the luggage rack, and Lillie suffering through several asthma attacks as she’d tried to pedal them the rest of the way back to his estate.
He’d offered to take over several times, having already biked them halfway beforehand, but she’d stubbornly declined each time. He hadn’t known why until later when they were sitting in the forest near midnight, where the only light illuminating their surroundings were the rays of moonlight streaming in through the gaps of the leaves, and the flickering fireflies that danced around them.
‘If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s able to see it, does it mean that it hasn’t fallen?’ She’d asked, as Marius was carving their caricatures into the dirt with a twig.
‘If a star explodes, and no one’s able to feel it, does it mean that it never existed in the first place?’ She’d continued, as Marius drew the hands on their figures a hair’s width apart.
‘Just like if you cry, just because no one’s around to hear it.’ She’d smiled sadly, as Marius buried his face into his arm, finally sinking into the realization that he was going to lose one of the only good things he’d come to earn with his own merit once he stepped onto that plane by next week. She doesn’t belong to him, in any capacity. ‘It doesn’t mean that you’re not suffering.’
Because if Lillie finds this world beautiful so long as Marius is in it, then Marius finds that this world’s beauty only peaks when it’s reflected back at him through Lillie’s eyes.
“I promised you before.” Sworn with their pinkies intertwined, and Marius had promised himself in turn that he’d never drag her down with him. “If something’s wrong,” Lillie smiles, softened by the warmth she’s always letting Marius bask in, with not a single stipulation attached. “I will find you, and come to you. In a heartbeat.”
Marius ignores the way his throat twists closed, his Adam’s apple scraping against his esophagus in a way that threatens to cut him open, and grins weakly at her. One that is so heart-wrenchingly genuine, because it guts him from the inside out, shattering the lonely throne he’d built to protect himself. Lillie is not the princess who will save him by any means, nor is she the knight that has sworn herself to protect him.
She’s simply the reader of his story, trailing her fingers underneath the words as she navigates him towards his next page, and the next and the next.
She’d promised to bring him to her hometown someday, on the day they parted. The stars are brighter there, she’d said, but Marius had been too busy admiring the stars that shone on her cheeks, connecting the constellations that formed from the pale freckles. They’ve nearly faded now, the specks of light in her irises glowing brighter in turn.
He wants to follow her until the very last page of his life.
“Okay?” Lillie asks.
“Okay,” Marius croaks, and it’s agonizing. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” Lillie shakes her head and lets him go. “We’re friends, that’s not something you have to—”
Marius immediately snatches her hand back, and she flinches in surprise, staring owlishly at him as he intertwines their fingers. Lillie gasps when he slides his scratched skin—courtesy of the stiff grass from when she’d first caught him unawares—over hers. She immediately seizes his hand to hold it palm facing up, frantically scrutinizing the superficial abrasions. They don’t even hurt.
“Your hand!” She exclaims, before letting go to dig through her bag. “Wait, I have an antibacterial spray!”
Marius smiles. “I’ll take you home.” In lieu of an actual response to her worry.
“I said it’s fine! Now give me—”
“I want to,” Marius interrupts. He ducks his head when Lillie snaps her own up, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I barely see you anymore, so we should talk about when our schedules can line up.”
“Marius you,” Lillie clicks her jaw shut, before directing him to keep his hand aloft. She’s thoughtfully quiet as she spritzes the alcohol, carefully wiping away the dirt with a tissue. “If—if you’re free, then I’ll take any slot you can squeeze me into.”
Marius laughs, flexing his fingers to stave off the itch of the sting, before clasping their hands together again to drag her towards her bike. He hasn’t ridden a bike in a while, never having a reason to since he has every vehicle under the sun from a helicopter to a car, but he finds that he misses the simplicity of it. “Why would I fit you into available slots? I’ll clear my schedule for you.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“I won’t let you!”
“You can’t make me!”
Lillie punches his shoulder again, and Marius snickers, pulling both Lillie and her bike up the slope. Her bike should fit in his trunk, but maybe he can trick her into getting a late night treat with him instead of taking her home immediately. “You know I saw a new dessert shop open in CBD.”
“Is it Lover’s Luck?” Lillie asks, furiously marching up the slope from behind until they’re side by side. She offers to take the bike back from him, but he petulantly shakes his head, even going as far as to shoulder her aside when she insists. “I pass by it everyday when I go to the Shop N’ Go.”
Marius blinks. “Why are you going there everyday?”
“Uh!” Lillie’s eyes immediately start shifting, and Marius narrows his own, suspicious. “I’ve uh, been eating more snacks lately.”
Marius raises an eyebrow. “Healthy ones?”
Lillie laughs abashedly, fiddling with her satchel strap as she looks away guiltily. “…not exactly.”
Marius chortles. “Who’s being unhealthy now?”
“I-I also share them with the kids!”
“Sure,” Marius drawls, but the roll of his eyes is playful. He squeezes her hand, mentally calculating how long he can realistically hog her time as he leads her down the path towards the parking lot.
The night’s about to end, but their days ahead have only just begun. Once again, from the very beginning, resuming from the summer that they’d parted, and the autumn where they’d reunited.
It’s a few days after Rosa successfully exposes Irene Burke in court that Marius’ schedule finally calms down enough to invite Lillie out for a quick dinner. He has an hour and a half gap, but he makes sure to keep that block in his schedule reserved solely for her, resolving to complete all his tasks, phone calls, and memos beforehand. He’s not going to leave her alone in another restaurant, and if he can help it, he’ll never let it happen again.
The sun’s about to set, but he still has one more meeting for next week to prepare for, and then he’ll be done for the afternoon until he needs to return to the office after their dinner. He thanks every deity he can name that he doesn’t have any lessons with Vyn tonight.
He sighs when the elevator dings, but he doesn’t make it five steps into the third floor lobby before someone is bolting out of one of the conference rooms and crashing into him. He manages to catch her by the shoulders before she can fall over, but he can’t save the mesh box she’d been carrying, wincing when he hears the metal clattering across the floor, accompanied by the fluttering of cards as a plethora of them scatter like confetti.
“Mr. von Hagen!” It’s one of his collaboration department heads, a woman who’s in her late forties with a family of five. Ada Moore.
“That’ll be me,” Marius greets genially, immediately retracting his hands so as to not offend. “Are you okay?”
Ada laughs, brushing him off with a wave. “I’m okay, but are you hurt, Mr. von Hagen?” Before kneeling to pick up the mess they’d created from their collision.
“I’m fine but,” Marius crouches down to help. “What’s all this?” The cards are relatively small, about half the size of his business cards and childishly decorated. They’re in a variety of different colors too, probably in every color from the tertiary color wheel.
“Ah these,” Ada sighs, sweeping the cards into a small pile before picking them up in jagged chunks. “It’s part of our collaboration with the observatory. I don’t know if you remember, but we’re funding a new exhibition for the children’s event tour.”
“I see.” Marius looks over the cards he picks up, flipping them over before handing them back. The front of each card is fairly nondescript, decorated with a rudimentary illustration of their solar system and the name of the observatory scrawled across the bottom in curly font, but the back is varied with different handwritten messages. “I think I might’ve remembered that coming across my desk a couple weeks ago.”
“These are the raffles,” Ada explains, bowing her head in thanks every time Marius hands her one, even though she’s already scooped up a majority of them. “Since Earth’s moon doesn’t really have a name, the observatory’s letting their audience decide on a complimentary one.”
Marius smiles sheepishly at her before actually concentrating on picking up the cards, surreptitiously flipping each one for only a cursory glance just to satiate his curiosity. The names are kind of funny. He snorts at the ‘hamburger steak supreme with mashed sweet potatoes on the side — Tina Hart’, before passing it over to Ada.
Ada reads the cartoonishly large hand-writing with an amused quirk to her lips, before tossing it back into the basket. “Yeah, you’ll probably find a lot of those types of names. The raffle cards were packaged with many of the children snacks sold in the convenience stores around CBD, since it’s a children’s event. You know, candies, haw flakes, ball cookies—”
Marius lets her drone on, half-listening. Ada is a mother to three children, so he knows she would’ve bought enough of those snacks to rival an entire shipping container’s worth. He didn’t get to eat many of those growing up since his diet was curated for his health, but the few times that his brother indulged him were his favorite. Even later on in his life, when Yan Yan—
Marius freezes, eyes slowly widening at the card he’s just picked up.
Ada’s still talking, listing with her fingers now, but her voice is drowned out by the words he finds scrawled across the card. The hand-writing is what most people would describe to be messy at a glance, but if the time was taken to really scrutinize it, then they would find that there’s a charm to it, in that every stroke is written with care.
Delicate.
Little Prince — Lillie Green (For a precious friend, who I want to treasure even after the sun burns out)
‘I’ve been eating more snacks lately.’
Marius sucks in a sharp breath, feeling his eyes burn, before he scrambles to snatch up several more cards from the diminishing pile on the floor.
‘Healthy ones?’
He has to shuffle through a few more, but he finds another card that displays the same words. One, two, three, and if he rifles through the basket Ada had been carrying—subsequently stifling the rest of Ada’s spiel in his frenzy—he can find about five more just near the top of the pile.
‘...not exactly.’
Ada blinks in curiosity, before leaning over to spy the cards in his hands. “Oh that one! That’s one of the cards I find the most of, even in such a large pool.” She laughs. “I think it’s cute. Whoever that child is, they must’ve really wanted the moon to be named that. It’s nice that they have parents who are willing to indulge them.”
Marius pulls his eyebrows together, reluctantly lowering the cards back into the basket while keeping one pinched tightly between his fingers. His eyes never stray from the words, reading them over and over again until he can feel heat build at the back of his nostrils, moistening his eyes.
“Did she win?” Marius manages to choke out, his voice relatively level. He’s always been good at keeping a suave face.
Ada frowns, reclaiming the basket. All of the cards have been picked up now, and she heaves herself back up to her feet. “I don’t think so.” She sighs pitifully. “I can’t imagine how she must’ve felt, after going through all that trouble.”
Marius cups the card in his palms, before clasping his hands together, lowering his head until his thumbs touch his forehead. He doesn’t sniffle, forcefully swallowing the lump in his throat as he blinks rapidly into his forearms, clenching his jaw. He doesn’t cry.
It hurts, having a weakness he hasn’t displayed in years resurfacing against his will, when he’d been so sure he’d learned to cast it away at an early age. Because it only made him more susceptible to the cruelties of his surroundings.
—if you cry, just because there’s no one else around to hear it, doesn’t mean that you’re not suffering.
“Mr. von Hagen?” Ada asks hesitantly.
But if something’s wrong.
“I’m fine,” Marius reassures, even as his chest caves in on itself. He inhales deeply, expanding his lungs until they bruise his ribcage. “Can you contact the observatory for me? I have a proposition to make. Let Vincent know when you get through.”
I will find you.
“O-oh,” Ada stutters in palpable surprise, before she straightens up with an audible click of her heels. “Oh, of course! Let me get on it right now, I’ll redirect the line to Mr. Kim as soon as possible.”
And come to you.
Marius opens his eyes, straining his ears to his surroundings.
There’s people stepping around him—some murmuring, others clearly falling silent so as to not offend their acting CEO. There’s the sound of keyboards clicking, distant talking, laughing, singing, humming, whispering.
The sound of a telephone being picked up, the sound of a zipper locking.
He exists.
The fluttering of paper as it’s leafed through.
He’s alive.
The tapping of stylus pens against glass screens.
Despite everything that’s defied him.
The sharp corners of the cardstock dig into his skin.
In a heartbeat.
And in the darkness of the park, illuminated by the scant lampposts, the residual fireflies, and the hundred-thousand year old light waves that reflect off the moon, is a girl who smiles warmly at him, her eyes shimmering from the light that refracts from her glasses.
Because I think that this world is beautiful.
—
Outside of Pax headquarters, two individuals run along opposite sides of the street, phones pressed to their ears as their breaths stagger. Eight lanes of traffic and a raised median separate them, but he still manages to catch her first, halting in the middle of a bustling crowd to frantically throw up a waving arm, making himself a spectacle in front of the many eyes that will judge him, degrade him, and scorn him.
She skids to a stop when she catches him, pigtails flying with her abrupt stop and nearly bowling over a child, who she bows and apologizes profusely to.
He laughs, scrunching his eyes closed until his sides grow stitches, elation singing in his veins. When he hears that she’s finally stopped apologizing from the receiver, he opens his eyes to see the abashed grin that graces her lips, face flushed from embarrassment and exertion, sweat matting her bangs until they stick to her forehead.
Even with the myriad of cars and bicyclists that speed past, he’s tall enough to keep his eyes locked on her face, his chest swathed in a warmth he doesn’t know what to do with.
So long as you are in it.