Chapter Text
It was a quiet evening, the night everything began to go wrong.
Nathaniel finds himself sitting on his bed again, papers spread all around him in no discernible order. The beige bedding beneath it is practically invisible, beneath the piles of overlapping scribbles of character designs and bullet points. The handwriting marking the papers varies; Nathaniel’s own sharp letters stark beside the rather large, loopy and barely readable words Marc had written over everything with.
Nathaniel glances at his phone as it lit up with a notification, deftly ignoring it when his eyes caught on the time. He hasn’t even noticed it’s so late; the light blinds him just a bit as he blinks, looking up to the room shrouded in darkness. The pencil slips out of his hand, landing soundlessly on the sheets as he slides off his bed, walking over to the light and flipping it on. He stands still, for a moment; there’s no sound from outside or his parents- not that there should be, at this hour of night.
He glances back towards his bed.
The sound of pencil scratching against paper is only damning if he lets it be.
It’s the only thought that passes through his mind as he drifts back to the bland bedding completely conquered by colours- life, Marc probably would’ve described it as, and Nathaniel’s lips quirk up in amusement at the thought alone, a moment of weakness spared only for the darkness of the night.
He sits back down amongst the ruckus and mess, exhaling lightly; it feels more at home than granite countertops and abstract art ever have.
The sun creeps up infinitely quietly behind him, the sound of the automated washing machine turning on, a soft hum. The artificial fluorescent bulb competes with natural light as Nathaniel finally leans back, letting his head hit the headboard. He winces, slightly; the headache hits him as suddenly as the reminder of, oh, he hasn’t eaten in hours, does. There is a sense of accomplishment curling in him, though, as he looks down at the papers he’s drawn sketches all over. They’re nowhere near done- no colours or clean lines, just mapping out a comic’s worth of scenes.
The only truly rendered page is the final one. It’s something Nathaniel had lost himself in accidentally; line after line and a couple more than that; getting up to grab another eraser and taking the pot of pencil colours with him. It’s not good; Nathaniel is a perfectionist, and a first draft is nowhere near it, but there’s something infinitely natural about it. Each stroke is intentional, a gentle shading in the corner to add the tiniest bit of dimension.
Maybe he’s losing it a little bit. It’s a toss-up, really; Nathaniel gets why they called the famous painters crazy. The act of partaking in creation drives someone insane; a flame to hold carefully and away, despite how cold the night is.
Could you blame an artist for holding the fire close? Cradling it to his chest, burning up with the wax and watching in reverence as history calls the smoke art.
Nathaniel’s headache really hurts. But his alarm goes off regardless; shrill and loud and muted almost immediately with a heavy sigh and a blindly reaching hand. He mentally prepares himself for a moment; collecting his thoughts and papers, leaving behind those of burning up in the act of creation.
The familiar footsteps of his mother, coincidentally, occur only as Nathaniel has barely finished stuffing the comic pages into his bag. Those, he hadn’t cared about; he threw them in haphazardly, uncaring of a crinkle or two. The only page left on the bed was the last one.
The sound of pencil scratching against paper is only damning if he lets it be.
“Nath-” His mother cuts herself off from whatever she had been saying, eyes catching on the page. “Nathaniel.”
It’s not what you think it is, he wants to say immediately- except when it is exactly what she thinks it is. What she hates . It sits innocently, stark in the bland room, a dot of life in a mausoleum, red string in black and white pictures- it doesn’t take a detective to put the eyebags and full backpack when his binders are right there and the final page together.
“Were you up all night drawing this- garbage ?” She curls her lip in disdain, lines of age deepening on what was surely once flawless skin. There’s a scowl gracing her face now, a minute shaking anger.
No. Nathaniel wants to lie. No. No. No.
The silence betrays him all the same.
“We talked about this, Nathaniel,” She says, taking a step closer as she reaches out for the page; and he knows, intuitively and all at once, what she will do. He wants to move, take it before she can, he’s closer, he just needs to reach out, stretch out his fingers and grab it-
He doesn’t.
His mother takes it first with no competition at all, the paper crinkling beneath his tight grip. “This will get you nowhere. We were over this. Comic books are for kids. It is as much of a profession as none at all, and I won’t be having my son be degraded to something as humiliating as this.”
It’s always been about the name, to her; Kurtzberg , neatly written in the corner of hundreds of architectural designs.
It’s a brand and a title; and a child is a legacy. One that cannot be tarnished, under any circumstance. It’s reason for the beautiful home, towering ceilings and wide open space and necessities to raise something that will follow in her footsteps and nothing more.
It’s a slow, dawning realization. Nathaniel is, and always has been, a living, breathing inheritance. A way to carry the name past death, because the cold stone buildings won’t ever hold it.
There is no one else. It’s only him. It’s his responsibility to carry; his burden and his legacy. It’s what he was made for.
“I will not have the Kurtzberg name-” His mother starts, but Nathaniel cuts her off, because he knows. He knows it as innately as the bones in his body.
“-tarnished by something as useless as comics.” He finishes, a dead ounce of emotion behind his voice.
His eyes don’t even stray from the ground.
“Correct.” Her voice is as sharp as a ruler, tongue clicking disapprovingly before he turns heel and walks briskly out the door. She was almost in the hallway before she paused, hand on the doorframe and half a glance back.
“I am doing this for your good, you know.” She says softly; and for a moment, Nathaniel is reminded so vividly of all the nights he spent as a kid, tucked in her arms as she gently lulled him to sleep. Nightmares and sicknesses carefully treated with medicine and a hot meal.
“I know,” he responds faintly, a lie to his own ears. She nods once, hesitating like there was something on the tip of her tongue before shaking it off and closing the door lightly behind her.
She leaves Nathaniel in the steadily lightening room, a missing splash of colour on his bed and a heavy realization in his stomach.
Well, either way, now. He can only disappoint the same people so many times.
“I can’t do it.”
It’s the first words that stumble out of Nathaniel’s mouth- no ‘ hello , how are you’ , courtesy or compliment on how nicely Marc had styled his hair that day; which was nice , and incredibly distracting for something so important that Nathaniel had to be focusing on.
Marc’s face slowly morphs into something more of shock- then concern, because Nathaniel never outright declined a draft. Edited, modified, hesitated- sure, but to decline it outright, certainty strong enough to shatter stone-
It wasn’t him.
“That’s fine,” Marc responds almost immediately and- it almost startles Nathaniel out of the warpath his mind has been on since his mother that morning. The weight of a single paper is nothing in the backpack on his shoulders, but it weighs infinitely heavier on his chest. It’s… almost hard to breathe, knowing what he’s doing.
Living up to the Kurtzberg name.
Nathaniel swallows his guilt and the bile rising in his throat, lifting his chin just a bit. It’s so unlike him; he just wants to sink into the ground, really, but his mother stands like that. He is meant to be his mother’s son.
“It’s fine,” Marc repeats, looking down at the script that Nathaniel shoved into his hands moments ago, his eyes flicking from the pristine paper and Nathaniel’s uncanny straight gaze. “But- are you sure?”
Nathaniel falters for a moment. “Of course I am. It’s- I’m supposed to be serious now, Marc.” he keeps the crack out of his voice, but it lingers, sits around the edges and waits for a moment to slip in. “Comics books won't get me anywhere.”
Marc’s fingers tighten around the papers; crinkles ripple through the parchment, and Nathaniel almost winces at the indent. His gaze fixes on it; the butterfly effect is a phenomenon where the smallest actions can lead to enormous consequences, and Nathaniel can’t help but wonder what these would be. Maybe Marc would scream at him right now, tell him what an awful person he is for leading him on for a volume and snatching it all away, maybe his mother will walk in and tell him he’s a disappointment - because it’s true, and just because she hasn’t said it doesn’t mean she doesn’t believe it.
Maybe Marc would rip it all up right now, call his art garbage because it's what it is, he doesn’t deserve it and comic books will get you nowhere nowhere nowhere no-
“Are you okay?”
Nathaniel drops the pencil in his hand.
It rolls to the ground, clattering only briefly and horrifyingly unimportant in the rapidly busying hallway, and Nathaniel looks up at Marc, dulled blue meeting green- the emerald shades are so brilliant, lively enough to bring a graveyard light. Nathaniel’s are dull in comparison; dark, eyebag-riddled things.
The words catch in Nathaniel’s throat.
He doesn’t want to say it- lie, and say everything is fine, because it’s not and it's Marc and he can’t lie, not to the concerned green gaze and worrying little crinkle in his brow and the little frown at his lip-
Nathaniel looks away, pursing his mouth closed and refusing to let anything at all slip past. Without missing a beat, Marc slides into view again, going to grab Nathaniel’s shoulders; a familiar motion, one that he jerks away from all the same.
Marc recoils instantly like he’s been burnt. Guilt instantly washes over Nathaniel as a tiny exhale escapes the confines of his chest, desperate and apologizing and everything he didn’t say.
“Nath?” Marc asks softly; he’s so gentle, the careful motions and hands hovering close enough to lean into but far enough to not force it. It’s intentional- it’s so intentional, the way his hair falls just a little bit into his eyes, green piercing into his very self to find nothing behind Nathaniel’s shell of a body. He’s hollow inside, and with the desperation of a starving cornered animal, he doesn’t want Marc to see it.
It’s simple, really. Nathaniel doesn’t want Marc to see him like this.
Being a Kurtzberg, or being himself. He can’t have both, and Nathaniel desperately doesn’t want Marc to see the painted, sculpted version of himself that follows the name.
“I’m sorry.” He murmurs, back, soft and bordering tears he doesn’t dare let fall. “I’m sorry.”
Before Marc can say anything else, Nathaniel pushes away from his careful outstretched hands, weaving away and getting lost in the rapidly crowding hallway.
It almost feels like he’s left a part of himself back next to Marc, in the papers held beneath his grip.
The day passes by horrifyingly slowly. He sees Marc everywhere, a little concerned furrow to his forehead permanently marring his face. Nathaniel tries ignoring it, pushing past Marc and avoiding any questions by burrowing his face into his sketchbook. It feels painfully wrong, the random architectural sketches he’s forced himself to draw on the flipside of a paper full of comic doodles. Every stroke feels like dragging his hand through wet concrete, signing even the worst ones with Kurtzberg, printed carefully with no hint of the familiar, loopy Nathaniel.
It was a futile effort to try to stay away from Marc. Or- rather, get Marc to stay away from him. The writer cornered him as Nathaniel attempted to slip out of the library, planting his feet directly in Nathaniel’s way with a little frown tugging at his lips.
“What happened?” He asks; straight to the point, no skirting around the bush.
“I told you, Marc.” Nathaniel begins, the words slipping out of his lungs like a dying man’s breath. Please don’t push. Take my excuse and let me suffer alone. “I’m making things right.”
“This isn’t you, Nath,” Marc presses a little bit, half a step forward and his fingers wringing together just a bit, like a nervous tic.
I know. Nathaniel wants to plead, break down in front of him and tell him everything. I know. “I’m fine,” he says instead, because I know, requires a vulnerability he doesn’t have, one that the Kurtzberg name doesn’t hold it to
It’s a sudden realization- that Nathaniel has never seen his mother cry.
“Don’t lie to me,” Marc begs; begs, pleading and desperate, and the guilt that crawls up Nathaniel’s chest is all-consuming. “Nath. Please. ”
Slowly, Nathaniel takes a shuddering breath.
“I’m not lying,” he says, and it sounds fake to his own ears. “I have to do this.” There it is- that strange, inexplicable urge to reach up and hold Marc’s cheek softly, watch the splotchy red flush his face impossibly perfectly.
If it’s any consolation, he doesn’t say, the words stuck in his throat. I would’ve loved to grow old writing comics with you.
In another world, maybe it would’ve been true.
In this world, it’s merely a thought as Nathaniel brushes by Marc with tears budding on both of their eyes.
”I’m sorry,” Nathaniel whispers beneath his breath, gone too far for Marc to hear it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Every step away feels like betrayal; like death, like regret and grief- what could’ve been, and what became.
The walk home is plagued by two words, repeating over and over in his mind.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I'm sorry.
I love-
I’m sorry.