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Retail therapy is supposed to make everything better. You wander down the aisles of the thrift store on a Saturday afternoon. You had a couple of sweaters on your arm, but they didn’t fill the void like you initially thought. Maybe some decor? You look through some old framed posters, and wall art, but nothing catches your eye. Maybe there’s a quirky mug that will put a smile on your face. You look through, and most of them are faded sublimated mugs from cities you never heard of. You chuckle and see one with a frog wearing a cowboy hat sitting on top of a prickly cactus. That did not look comfy. You add that to your retail therapy pile, grasping it by the handle as you wander further down the kitchen section.
Something catches your eye and you stop. A broken deep blue teapot mended with gold, with two teacups to match. You set the frog mug down and pick up the teacup, tracing along the crack repaired with gold, examining the other teacup, you feel your eyes water. Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, accentuating the breaks that make them more unique and beautiful. You couldn’t believe something so beautiful was sitting on this shelf. You quickly walk around the corner grabbing a basket. You gingerly lay down the sweaters, wrapping up the teapot and cups, wiping your nose with the back of your hand.
“I’ve been trying to tell you I have Dissociative Identity Disorder! Steven is another personality. We’re learning to co-exist…but it’s difficult.”
“What do you mean!?!? Steven said you were twins!”
“Have you ever seen Steven and me in this apartment together? Have you ever wondered why there is only one bed?” Marc had asked with his arms crossed defensively, he pauses and you don’t say a word, “I’m not playing mind games with you!”
“Yeah, yeah. I think you are. You both led me on. If this is some fucked up joke -”
“You think my life is a joke to you? Do you seriously think this is fun for me? Do you think I want to do this with every person I meet? To live like this? I was ready to sit back and let Steven live his life, but then you walked into mine and gave me a reason-!” He had been pacing with his hands trembling in a way that wasn’t like anything you had seen him do before, ”This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you… But Steven-” You watched him run his hands through his curls, looking like he was at his limit, “He thought you’d be different, thought you’d understand! You know what? Just leave. Get out. GET OUT!”
You had gotten up off the couch as he shouted at you to leave, sick of watching him pace back and forth. You were too upset to understand the complexity, and he was upset that you reacted like everyone else. You grabbed your bag, slung it over your shoulder, and turned towards the door…
You felt his hand grip your wrist, and you turned to see Marc ruffle his hair. But the voice was Steven’s. His eyes were watering with sadness at having his heart broken in real time. “See…it’s me. Messy curls and all.”
You froze. It truly was Steven. You couldn’t explain how you knew, but the body carried itself differently. “No…” you pleaded, shaking your head. You were angry, but now you’re just scared. How could a body or a person go from seething anger to crying desperation so quickly? “No…What’s wrong with you? This is too much.”
“Don’t go.” Steven asks his hand tightening on your wrist, speaking your name softly, “Please don’t go.”
You looked terrified, shaking your head no, and backing up as he tried to step forward. You had refused to see and understand what was right there in front of you, “I don’t know what this is…but I can’t do this.”
“No, no no, please don’t go.” Steven pleaded, but his grip on your wrist loosened, letting your wrist slip through his hand as you told him it was over, not even bothering to zip up your boots as you tripped over his shoes and hurriedly left his apartment for the last time.
It had been a couple of weeks since Marc and you called it off and you walked out of each other's lives. It was mutual in the moment, so why did you feel like shit? You spent the first weekend in bed nursing your broken heart with Ben & Jerry’s. Then as time went by and you started to miss Steven and Marc. You couldn’t walk into a bookstore without looking at the history section for Egyptology books. You could care less about the Cubs, but you were still keeping track of their season to know how Marc was doing. When the museum had a new space exhibit, you knew that was something all 3 of you could enjoy, but you couldn't go by yourself. It confused you, you still referred to them separately even though they were one person. They were one person, right?
You sipped tea from the Egyptian mug that had once been Steven's favorite when he visited. The more you discovered about dissociative identity disorder, the worse you felt. You cried when you realized it was due to childhood trauma, not wanting to imagine what might have caused it. All you could picture was a scared little Marc or Steven, and it broke your heart. You learned some basics about different personalities and better understood why they seem to have memory issues. The next day, you tried to send them a lengthy apology text, but it wouldn’t go through. They had blocked your number.
This led you to the thrift shop, where you checked out the sweaters and the tea set. Cradling them in your arms with both hands, you went home and spent the night with the tea set on the table, internally debating whether you should show up at Marc and Steven’s door with your apology teapot. Would they even open the door for you? Steven might, but you can see Marc pretending he’s not home. Your chest is tight and you feel hot as you bury your face in your hands, paralyzed by indecision. That was until you decided if things couldn’t be fixed between the three of you, you could show them remorse, apologize, and wish them the best. Marc and Steven deserved some kindness. It was the least you could do.
You brace yourself for this conversation, taking a deep breath before finally knocking. Your heart pounding, you pick up the bag with the tea set in anticipation, not knowing what to expect on the other side. You hold your breath and look down at the foot of the door, looking for shadows from movement. Instead, there is deafening silence. You knock again, softer this time. “Marc? Steven?” You asked hesitantly.
Unintelligible whispering on the other side of the door prompts you to continue, “I can hear you. Marc? Steven? Open up, please?” You pause and the hushed whispering stops. “I know you probably don't want to see me again. I get it. I wouldn’t want to see me either. Just- Just hear me out? I promise you can slam the door in my face if you don’t like what I have to say. I promise I won’t come back. Look… I’m sorry about our fight. Can I come in and apologize properly?”
You nervously step back as you hear the locks being undone. Your anxiety was high, but now you feel like your heart is going to beat out of your chest. The door opens, and you briefly look him up and down before you guess, ”Marc?”
He propped the door open with his foot, and crossed his arms, “Yeah? What do you want? To apologize, or get those Extended Edition Lord of the Rings DVDs back?”
“It’s not about the- Oh, I forgot about those actually.” you pause and try to recall what else you had left before shaking your head, “I want to apologize…to the system.” you finish, the terminology still foreign on your lips even though you rehearsed this apology in the mirror the night before.
You see him uncross his arms and stand up a little straighter, his lips parting as his brow furrows slightly. He quickly steels himself and gestures to the gift with a tilt of his head to study your intentions. “And what about that?”
“It’s a gift if you'll accept it. I found it at the thrift shop, so if you boys hate it, don’t feel bad about re-donating it,” you explain as he eyes the bag hesitantly. Marc steps back to let you walk in.
“Sorry about the mess. I haven’t been picking up after Steven lately,” he mumbles. Slipping your shoes off, you realize the apartment has been neglected. Dirty dishes in the sink, take-away containers piled on top of the counter, clothes in random places on the floor. Steven always said he was messy, so you wonder if Steven had been the only one fronting for a while. The thought made you sad as you followed him through the small kitchen area to the living room.
Marc led you to the couch, and you both sat down on opposite ends. “How have you been?” you asked timidly, putting the gift bag between you on the middle cushion.
Marc is tense as he leans forward, scoffs, shakes his head, and gestures to the mess around you both. “I haven’t. This is all Steven.”
“You're just letting Steven have all of the time? You’re not…present?” you ask worriedly
“Look just do your apology tour and go, okay? I don’t need this, but apparently you do.” Marc said, crossing his arms again and looking at you impatiently.
“Marc, I'm asking because I care. Don’t try to push me away before I-” you cut yourself off before he does. You take a deep breath and let out a shaky sigh, looking down at your hands. “I’m sorry.” you start, flexing your fingers, your thumb pushing into your palm to ground yourself. “I obviously didn’t know about your condition. I didn’t want things to get complicated between us. What he had was simple in comparison. I didn’t want to listen, and I’m sorry about the hurtful things I said to you. I liked the idea of you and Steven as twins. Of course I wondered why Steven was British and you weren’t, or why there was only one bed in this apartment, I didn’t want to look past the answers you gave me. I wanted to believe the simplicity.” you look up at him, his expression is still cold, but you think he breaks for a moment as you wipe your eyes, “We were happy, right? I enjoyed having Steven around, even if you weren’t here. Things just got more complicated when I realized Steven was flirting with me…Then when you told me about DID- It just got a million times more complicated. I-”
Marc stays silent and you fumble with the drawstring of the giftbag as you remember the fight, “I was pissed, but as the days went by I still missed you. I missed Steven. My feelings for you both confused me, but I missed this system. I wanted to understand.”
“Understand why we’re so fucked up in the head?” Marc asks quietly, the edge to his voice disappearing.
“I wanted to understand why your mind does what it does.” You reach across to take his hand in yours, “You’re not fucked up.”
“And what bullshit are you going to spew to make yourself feel better, huh?” Marc asks, taking his hand away.
“Just…open the gift, please?” you plead, pushing it a few inches toward him, biting your lip nervously.
He raises an eyebrow as he takes the gift, rolling up his sleeves slightly to take tissue paper out, glancing at you again as he sees objects wrapped in old newspapers. He takes out the first thing and unwraps it. “A lid?” he sets it on his thigh, grabbing the next piece, unwrapping it, and turning it around in his hands, following the gold, “A tea set. You got us a tea set? This is Steven. This isn’t me,” he observed dryly and placed the teapot on the coffee table and unwrapped the next pile of newspaper.
“Do you know what Kintsugi is?” you ask quietly
“...no,” Marc confessed, holding the unwrapped cup in his hand
“Kintsugi, gold, fixing the cracks in the broken pottery. There’s beauty in mending what’s broken.” You watch him twirl the cup in his hand, looking at the gold seam. “Making the cup prettier and more appreciated. Knowing what the cup had to go through to arrive where it's at.” You take the cup from him, setting it next to the teapot. Surprisingly, he doesn’t resist when you take his hands in yours. “It reminded me of you. It helped me look at D.I.D. in a new light. Marc…your mind is beautiful.”
“...I don’t know if I deserve that.” he gulps, his voice barely a whisper as he looks at the teapot, avoiding your gaze. He looks like he was absorbing the metaphor, and slowly realizing that you did try to take the time to try to understand and do some research. It was more than most people. His walls were finally coming down and he whispered almost as if to himself. “It’s a struggle.”
“Baby…” you whisper tearfully, “I don’t know what happened, or who hurt you.” you look down at his hands, mentally kicking yourself for crying, “but you didn’t deserve it. You were just a little boy, right? No boy deserves what happened to you.” Marc lets out a little exhale and you see his hand tighten around yours. You close your eyes and shake your head, reaffirming, “Your mind is beautiful. Your trauma could have broken you, but your mind did what it could to keep you safe. Steven is your gold, and he's a part of you that I'll be forever thankful for. You're still here because of him. You’re a team.”
He’s silent and you look up at him expecting him to kick you out, but you can tell the analogy caught him off guard. The idea that Steven was the gold fixing his cracks, that together they both made something beautiful hit him hard. Marc’s voice cracks with raw emotion, “Kintsugi…I never thought of it that way…I-” Marc trails off, not knowing what to say.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper and hesitantly wipe away a tear from his cheek as his eyes search yours. The both of you had moved closer to each other without even realizing it, “For everything. I had no idea. I never came across this in real life. I want to understand Dissociative Identity Disorder. I want to understand YOU. I want to understand Steven. This system.”
He whispers your name, “I’m not good at this…I don’t know how to…” His hand covers yours, you can see how much this means to him.
“You’re beautiful…and so strong. I'm sorry,” you repeat softly and set the gift bag with the rest of the set on the coffee table.
To your surprise, he allows himself to be held, burying his head into your neck, his nose rubbing against you. Marc inhales deeply, remembering the sweet scent synonymous with you. His fingers clutch the fabric of your sweatshirt as he trembled. After a long silence you hear him mumble, his voice tinged with a pain you haven’t heard before as he murmurs against your skin, “It was our mom…after our brother died.” Marc didn’t say much more, but you continue to hold him. You tighten your embrace after his admission, trying to wordlessly convey your comfort with touch, rubbing his arm and occasionally running your fingers through his curls, desperately hoping this fragile relationship could be mended.
After a while, you hear Steven say, “You were his gold, too, you know.” He pulls back from you as you gasp. Marc's eyes are red from his silent crying, but Steven looks calm, sad, and composed. “Sorry, Steven again. Hi.” He waved awkwardly, as if he needed to reintroduce himself.
You quickly sniffed and wiped your eyes with the back of your hand. “You startled me, is all.” You shook your head, struggling to recover from Marc’s confession. “...but I'm not his gold. We broke each other’s hearts…Why did Marc go? Is Marc alright?”
“He’s a little overwhelmed right now, but he'll come around,” Steven admitted. Smiling, he looks over at the tea set and grabs a cup to examine, “Curious finding this in a thrift shop, but Gold, huh? Steven Grant, precious Gold keeping it all together? That's not just me, luv. We've both got a lot of cracks, but when you were here…” Steven paused musing, “The cracks didn't seem like they'd break us.”
“I just want you both to be okay.”
“We're trying. It's hard sometimes.” Steven set the cup down and hesitantly played with the delicate chain of the necklace you forgot you were wearing, eventually resting his forehead against yours. His fingers lightly run gingerly over your neck, causing you to shiver, “I think with you around we might just get there. Ya know? Find our balance.”
You could feel his nose brushing yours, his breath fanning over your lips, but you were still so hesitant, “Steven…I don't know how this is supposed to go.”
“I wish I knew. I…I don’t have all the answers,” Steven chuckled, caressing your cheek. In a hushed whisper, glancing down at your lips and meeting your eyes, he confessed, “It's complicated, but I know we both care about you a lot.”
Steven's closeness was intoxicating; he looked like Marc at the moment, but he was distinctly Steven. You couldn’t help but wonder what other ways he was different. With his lips just a breath away from yours, all you could think about is how different it would feel to kiss him, and how badly you craved those lips against yours once again. “Is this something Marc wants too?” You question, not wanting to cross a line Marc might’ve drawn in the sand if he was fronting.
“He does. We both do. We want this. We need you. I need you, luv.” Steven pleaded, “Every day you were the gold that helped keep us together—the constant in our chaotic lives.”
“Oh Steven…That means the world to me.” You murmur your fingers tracing his jawline as you pull back slightly. He misinterpreted you moving back as rejection, but you still held him close and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Can…Marc…is he able to tell me this himself?”
Steven’s posture sags slightly as he says your name, burying his head in your shoulder, “it's not that easy. We can’t control who fronts. Marc hasn’t fronted since you left, ‘cept for just now. Left me here to fend for myself. Come on mate, do us a solid for once.” he grumbles to himself before looking back up at you again.
“The both of you are a team…he can’t leave you like that. Can he hear me?” you ask, your voice cracking slightly at Steven’s admission that Marc hid himself away this whole time.
“Yeah, I’m sure he can hear you, love.” Steven sighed, feeling defeated with Marc’s lack of a response, until you gave in and pressed your lips to his. It was a gentle kiss meant for him as much as it was a kiss for Marc to try and draw him back.
“Marc…I don’t know if you can hear me, but I hope you can.” You start resting your head against Steven’s as his nose nuzzled yours. “I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. I just wanted to show you that I see Steven and you. Marc, please don’t feel like you need to hide from me.” Your fingers run through the messy curls, attempting to soothe Steven and coax Marc into fronting again, “I miss you. We don’t have all the answers, but we can take it day by day, right?” You search Steven’s face for any signal or change, but it was just the same puppy eyes looking back at you, “Anything?”
Steven sighs, shaking his head. He looks around the apartment for some sign in its Marc in a reflection, but all he sees is himself, “Nothing.”
The two of you sit on his couch cuddled up together, if Marc wanted nothing to do with you after tonight, you at least had this night with Steven. It was looking like he wasn’t coming back. You both had tried to relax and watch a documentary. Your head laid on his shoulder and he kept turning to kiss the top of your head, Steven had his arm wrapped around you as you curled into him, his hand resting on your hip, his thumb occasionally rubbing the small patch of exposed skin between your jeans and sweatshirt. You look up at him with a sad smile and heavy heart as the credits roll for the documentary, “Steven…this was nice…but…”
“It was…but…?” Steven worriedly echoed back to you. “But what?”
“I don’t think I can be with one alter, and be the ex of another.” You confess sitting up as he reaches over to turn on the lamp on the side table, “It would be too complicated, wouldn't it? Especially if he doesn’t want to see me again. I can’t do that to Marc.”
Steven gulped and nodded, looking at his reflection in the TV in desperation, then turned to you. He took your hands in his, afraid you were leaving him again. “Can you maybe just wait a little longer?”
You glance at the TV and only see your reflections as the credits roll over the black screen, you look at Steven and the tv again a little confused, “Steven, I-I must have really screwed up. I don’t think I can come back from that fight. He still hasn't forgiven me.”
“Just one more episode, love?” He tried to bargain, eager for you to stay, even if the both of you are in this weird cuddly limbo. “It’s late, but it’s not midnight yet. You can stay over. I’ll sleep on the couch. Maybe he’ll come ‘round in the morning.”
“I don’t know, Steven. I want to stay, but the longer I stay, the harder it will be to leave,” you say quietly, resigning that maybe this is the last time you see both of them, “Maybe he’ll unblock my number and text me if and when he’s ready…”
You feel him reach up to caress your face, holding the back of your head to gently prevent you from getting up, “Don’t go,” he whispers, “Don’t give up on us.”
You squeeze your eyes shut and feel like it’s the last time you left this apartment, Marc had made his choice and left you and Steven to deal with the aftermath when he retreated into the headspace, “He must’ve already made his decision. Please, Steven, haven’t we already cried enough?”
“Lemme say a proper goodbye this time.” He says softly as his fingertips trace your lips.
You purse your lips and finally nod as he leans in for one last kiss, and it’s passionate, desperate. Steven seems filled with an urgency that sends shivers down your spine. He’s gripping at your sweater, your hips, your thighs like he needs to memorize the feel of you, but never wanting to let you go. He’s trying to hold and feel every inch of you for the first and last time. You gasp as you feel his tongue and you’re gripping his curls, losing yourself in the moment, knowing it’s farewell, but wishing the kiss could last for an eternity. You’re both left breathless, knowing that this moment is both an ending and an unspoken wish for something more. You can’t meet his gaze as you reluctantly rise from the couch, wishing you could stay.
You feel a heavy ache in your chest when his hand wraps around your wrist, pulling you back into his lap, just like when you left the apartment last time. Except this time, you’re not scared by the two of them switching who fronts. It’s not Steven begging you for another kiss like you initially thought. “Marc?” you ask in confusion.
“I didn’t block your number just so you could waltz back into my life, hit me with some deep symbolic pottery. You really think I’d let you go after all of that? You’d send me cryptic gifts every other week until I finally get the hint.” Marc laughs dryly. Studying his eyes, you see a maelstrom of hurt, desire, and yearning behind those eyes that weren’t there with Steven moments ago.
“Marc, I-” he kisses you hard as he pulls you in. He groans as your hands slide under his sweater to feel the warm skin of his back, clinging to him like you could keep him fronting if you just held him tight enough. “-I didn’t know what you wanted” He silences you again with his lips as he lays you down on the couch with your legs draped over his lap, hovering over you as he deepened the kiss.
“I want this.” he exhales and murmurs earnestly, his lips still hovering against yours, “I don’t care if I don’t know how to do it right– I just want you. We want a real shot at this– no more hiding behind each other. We can find our way and pick up the pieces. Like Kint-watsit? Suki?”
“Kintsugi.” you smile, interlocking your hand with his, giving it a soft squeeze.
“Kintsugi,” Marc repeats.