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Marius—from the future, if he’s not some uncanny doppelganger at least—looks the same. Different in all the ways that matter, but largely the same. Smile lines that are so prominent, crows feet at the corners of his eyes, and a thin silver scar that cuts just the slightest bit across his cheek. An ease about him that was almost nonexistent in his twenties—an ease, a comfort, a contentment, in the way he moves, the way he speaks.
Luke is currently twenty-five, halfway to twenty-six, and ever continuously running out of time. It reassures him that even if this is all a hoax, that there’s a possibility that Marius, at the very least, lives far, far into the future.
Marius is currently thirty-six, a whole eleven years older than the current Luke, and twenty-two year old Marius is nowhere to be found. But this thirty-six year old Marius knows everything twenty-two year old Marius does, and most definitely even more, but he doesn’t divulge anything past the events of today. He’s very tight-lipped, easily brushing off anything that could be incriminating, and even though it should, it doesn’t surprise Luke in the slightest.
“If anything, this is a supernatural phenomenon. There isn’t any modern science that would be able to give reason to your appearance," Vyn says.
Marius shrugs with an easy smile, one corner of his smile rising higher than the other in resignation. He’s accepted the situation easily enough, so he must be confident that he’ll be able to return soon, and this whole situation will rectify itself. Luke is glad this whole situation transpired at NXX headquarters at least. He doesn’t think the public would immediately jump to time travel if they saw Marius in public, but it’d still be unfortunate if the government caught wind of it.
The NSB runs very tight surveillance on its collaborators, and as much as Luke has tried to redirect that attention away from Rosa, he couldn't procure the same level of clearance for everyone else.
“It wouldn’t hurt to check what we have on file, Big Data Lab or otherwise," Artem suggests.
“I guarantee you you won’t find anything, but feel free to check.” Marius jerks his head towards the door. “Even I don’t think this is scientifically possible. It’s probably like a, hmm, ghost of Christmas Eve type of situation.”
Rosa frowns. “But then who would you be here for?”
That stalls the smile on Marius’ face, and he mirrors Rosa’s confusion. “Yeah I’m gonna be totally honest, I don’t even know. I was specifically instructed that if anything like this happened, I wouldn’t say anything.”
Luke crosses his arms. “Instructed by who?”
“Oh.” Marius purses his lips, meets Luke’s eyes, before flicking them away. “My uh, roommate.”
Luke scoffs. “Your partner, you mean.”
Marius winces, immediately covering his left hand with his right, where a gleaming silver band settles snugly on his ring finger. It’d been the first thing Luke had noticed about him, and it’s the only thing that continued to stand out about him. It’s the only fact that stuck, the only thing that managed to stir something unpleasant within Luke for reasons he can’t fathom.
Jealousy, perhaps, at the knowledge that Marius already knows so much about Luke after only a year and a half of meeting, and he will only continue to surpass Luke in every aspect of life.
Luke wanted to be happy too. He wanted to grow as old as Marius is now, marry the love of his life like Marius clearly had, and be…be—happy. He daydreamed about it so many times. A winter date, a spring wedding, a summer child, an autumn home.
“I’m surprised anyone said yes,” Vyn deadpans.
But instead of quipping back, Marius only snorts. “So was I.” Marius chuckles, leaning against the cushions to drop his head back, smiling softly at the ceiling. “So was I. You don’t age well by the way.”
Artem coughs, immediately whipping his head away, and Vyn clicks his tongue in annoyance. “I see your insolence hasn’t changed.”
“Never.” Marius grins sharply. “Anyway, don’t you have a job to do? Checking the archives?”
“I don’t think it’d be wise to leave you by your lonesome,” Vyn says.
“Then how about the Miss–”
“No,” Artem immediately interjects.
“I’ll stay,” Luke says at the same time.
Rosa blinks, looking between the two men. “I think it’d be fine. He’s already proven himself, hasn’t he?”
He’d answered each of their interrogations perfectly, with truths that only the real Marius would know. Rosa, in particular, had been the first to accept him, even with all her instinctual skepticism. He’d whispered something in her ear, an inside joke between the two of them, and when he pulled away her smile was incredibly soft. She knew him, and even through time, that was her Marius.
“We still don’t know what’d happen,” Artem cautions. “If he’s here, there’s a possibility that the phenomenon that brought him here might work both ways.” He winces after he says it, like he can’t believe he’s believing in the supernatural and rationalizing in it.
“Then by all means I believe no one should be left alone with him,” Vyn says.
“Then we’ll lock him in here,” Luke suggests.
“But that’s—!”
“I don’t mind.” Marius smiles softly at Rosa and shakes his head. “Besides, maybe I'll disappear if no one is watching me. You know, a pot never boils if it’s watched or something? I’m just as eager to get back home.”
To my life, is left unsaid.
Rosa pouts, but nods. “Then we’ll leave and scour the archives for an hour, and then come back.”
Marius nods. “Hopefully I’ll be gone by then. I’m praying. There's ah, stuff I need to take care of at home. Urgent stuff.”
Vyn rolls his eyes, and he’s the first to leave the room, followed by Rosa and Artem, and then Luke. He follows them to the archives, roams past the first shelf as he lets their speculative conversation wash past his ears, before doubling back. He’s being nosy, he knows, but out of everyone, Marius is…Marius is the only one who knows about him. What he is. He doesn’t—he doesn’t necessarily need to know, but he also…
Marius doesn’t seem surprised to see him when the door to their meeting room slides shut behind Luke.
“What did I just say about a boiling pot?” Marius smirks, tilting his head. His hair is slightly longer than Luke usually knows it to be, so his bangs sweep dangerously into his eyes as he does so. “I’m not going to answer anything you ask me.”
“Then keep it vague.” Luke sits in the loveseat across from Marius with his arms crossed. Before he realizes that might make him look too tense, and he settles for gripping his knees. And then he realizes that his elbows are locked and his shoulders are hunched up to his ears, so he forces himself to relax his joints.
Marius’ smile softens. “What are you so nervous for?”
Luke stiffens again. Marius could always tell whenever something was off with him, and it seems that even in the future, that skill hasn’t dulled. It still pisses Luke off, unnerves him even more. He’s not used to being seen, and he hates it. It renders all his training, all his feigned indifference, useless.
“Are you happy?” Luke asks. It’s a stupid question, one that he already knows the answer to. He’s a detective, he has a trained eye. All the little details that Marius wears, he’s already parsed through them all. He just needs one final confirmation, to corroborate the answer he dreads.
“Yeah. More than.”
“And your partner?” Luke asks.
“They are too.”
“You sound sure.”
“I’m not one to speak for others,” Marius shrugs, “but I’m sure. I wouldn’t settle otherwise. Their happiness is the most important thing to me.”
Luke thins his lips. “It’s not Rosa.”
Marius bursts into a fit of laughter. It takes a while for him to come down from it, wiping a stray tear from his eye. He looks like he does that a lot. His laughter is so boisterous, so unrestrained, and he wonders if it’s a habit he’d picked up from his partner. Marius doesn’t usually laugh like that. “How’d you guess?”
“You don’t…look at her like,” Luke trails off. He doesn’t know how to describe it, but he knows what it looks like. He knows what it feels like too, because it’s the natural shape his facial muscles take whenever that look comes across his own face.
“I get it.” Marius hums, seemingly contemplating something. “It’s not her, but I can’t tell you who it is.”
Luke swallows down the ‘why’, even though it’s none of his business. Even though he shouldn’t care. They’re friends, undoubtedly, with some banter and rivalry thrown into the mix, but ultimately, Luke is no one close to Marius, and he knows—he knows, there’s a slim chance of them being any closer than this. Whether it be Luke’s fault, always his fault, or just their circumstances.
“Did they tell you not to?” He settles for instead.
Marius winces. “They get…paranoid. About me, about us.”
“Why?” Who could ever doubt Marius? “Shouldn’t they trust you?”
“Not like that!” Marius looks alarmed, and then forlorn. “It’s…guilt. Totally ungrounded by the way, but it won’t leave them either, no matter how much I try to reassure them or how much I say otherwise. We’ve moved past it, but I think, it will always be a weakness to them.”
Luke swallows, tucks his hands underneath his thighs and clenches them into fists. Why he’s talking about Marius’ love life, he doesn’t know. “Why?”
Marius sighs, and when he lowers his eyes to the floor, his eyelashes fan across his cheeks. He’s always looked otherworldly, and even being a decade older than Luke now, he’s only aged into someone more refined. “It took a while for us to get together, so many hurdles that they think could’ve been avoided if only they’d stopped being so…narrow-minded? They think they’ve wasted our years, my years, but I would’ve waited until my next life if I had to.”
“And they think that if you say anything, that’ll change?” Luke asks, his throat constricting. “That after all the time it took for the two of you to get together, if anything else changes, you guys won’t get together at all?”
Marius quirks his lip. “You know too much.”
It’s more like Luke shares the sentiment. That line of thinking is, or would be, similar to his own if he could ever get to where Marius’ partner is. Not with Marius himself, but with Luke’s own partner of choice. He’s already wasted all his chances, thrown away all his hopes and dreams, and now he’s running on borrowed time.
And this next question stings. “Does it ever annoy you?” Hurts him more than any physical wound could, itching his throat raw and burning unshed tears behind his eyes. Yes, doesn’t it get annoying? Bringing up the same old insecurities, restarting the same old arguments, walking the same fine lines and never—
“He’s changed.”
Marius, always well-meaning, always defensive of his loved ones, would of course deliberately reveal his partner’s pronouns. And now, now Luke knows it’s a man, and the jealousy that turns his stomach disgusts him.
When Luke meets Marius’ gaze, he’s frowning with his eyebrows pinched. Serious, with just the slightest bit of defensive anger simmering underneath.
“He’s trying his best, I just know too well where his mind goes. He’s, Luke you don’t even—he’s trying so hard,” Marius’ voice staggers, and he has to blink rapidly to dispel the mist that clouds his eyes. “I promised him my life, and he’s doing everything he can to prolong his own. For me. He’s so scared of leaving me alone, even though I married him knowing that he would one day. I can’t even begin to fathom half the things he’s sacrificed, the things he still restricts himself from, just to be there.”
“You love him,” Luke concludes, and the words are wretched being forced from his mouth.
Marius only nods with a soft smile. “I love him.”
“How long?” Indulge him. Indulge him this one last time, before Luke loses him altogether. Nothing can ever be his, and nothing ever will be.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Give me a vague answer,” Luke negotiates.
Marius frowns at him, before sighing and shaking his head. “Who would I be if I could say no to you anyway?” He murmurs. “Alright, these are his exact words, not mine. It’s not my timeline either, but I’m sure you’ll understand at some point. He met me when he was twenty-four, lost me at twenty-seven, and loved me at thirty.”
And Luke wonders what that means. Anyone could meet Marius at twenty-four, and it wouldn’t even matter what age Marius is when they meet him. Older, or younger, they’ll still end up loving Marius at thirty, and Marius…could be any age.
Marius smiles one last time. “Does that satisfy you enough, detective?"
It doesn’t. It doesn’t it doesn’t it doesn’t and—
Luke wakes up to see the rest of the NXX team looming over him.
Marius is the first to smirk, and for some reason Luke sees the phantom wrinkles he would have if only he were older. Which is odd, because the image of him like that has always been vague to Luke’s mind even though he pictures it sometimes. He’s pictured all of them older at one point, and wondered just how far into each timeline he’d be able to see before they stopped aging in his eyes, because he would’ve stopped as well.
“Well well well, looks like you’re giving Vyn a run for being our resident sleeping beauty,” Marius quips.
Luke clicks his tongue, and pushes his face away as he sits up. Marius laughs against Luke’s palm, and Luke resists the urge to slap him.
Sometimes it comes back to him, though he can never recall the origin of those words. Like a fleeting thought, the grains of a memory sifting through his bony fingers.
’He met me when he was twenty-four,’
I met you when I was twenty-four,
“And the last and final member of our new investigation team is—”
Luke doesn’t even pay attention to whoever’s speaking, too busy zeroing his gaze onto the absolute last person he wanted to see in this room. He was expecting a small group of people way too in over their heads with too many personal connections to this case, effectively rendering their usefulness null besides being able to pass insider information off to Luke.
He wasn’t expecting Rosa, the very reason he’s doing all this for.
“Well,” the previous voice scoffs, “looks like he doesn’t need an introduction at all.”
“Luke?” Rosa asks, wide-eyed and just as beautiful as the day he left and met her again, one of his own volition and one against his will.
It’s then and there, that Luke decides he could care less about everyone else in this room.
No matter how tightly he cups his hands either, the grains keep sifting, squeezing past his inadequacies and leaving him all the same. It pains him most days, when he can’t remember, but he’s sure that it would hurt him even more if he knew.
’Lost me when he was twenty-seven,’
Lost you when I was twenty-seven,
It’s thundering, and Luke is bleeding out. But it’s fine, because he didn’t have much time left anyway. It’s better like this, dying to protect someone he cares deeply about, over keeling over one day and suffering with no meaning to end his fruitless life.
Marius hovers over him, determined eyes narrowed at the constant pressure his hands apply to the wound on Luke’s stomach with his jacket, using it as makeshift gauze.
It’s his favorite jacket.
Luke got him that jacket. It’s a pair, and Luke had lost his own in an ambush five months ago. Marius is going to lose his now, with how he had torn it apart and tied the strips around Luke’s other miscellaneous open wounds.
Marius is strangely calm, but he has to be. He’s gotten notably better at first-aid, the best out of their whole group actually. He could be a certified medic if he really wanted to be. He carries enough supplies to be a transport medic anyway.
There’s blood oozing from a laceration on his cheek, one that Luke couldn’t save him from, and when he lifts his hand to cup Marius’ cheek to turn his piercing gaze towards Luke, he finds the matching half of the laceration sliced through his own hand. He couldn’t protect him, but at least he saved Marius from having half of his face marred.
They’re both incapacitated. Everything hinges on Vyn, Artem, and Rosa now. They’re so close. They’re almost there.
He doesn’t say thank you. Marius hates it. He only accepts it after Luke recovers whenever something like this happens. It sounds too much like a goodbye.
“Where do you picture us in the future?” Luke croaks.
Marius’ expression, one that had been so frigid in concentration before, is quick to crack. His breath hitches, and his eyelids flutter as his eyes slowly rim themselves red. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
Luke grins, and it’s so easy that it aches. The pressure on his stomach doesn’t change despite how Marius’ emotional state wavers. He’s always had steady hands.
“I picture you happy.” Marius sniffles, hanging his head between his shoulders as his voice breaks. His shoulders tremble, tears dripping from his eyes and splashing onto the back of his hands. Their blood continues to ooze, mixing and dribbling down Luke’s wrist. “I picture you happy—fuck please. Let it end. I just want this investigation to end.”
“And you?” Luke asks instead. His vision is starting to blur.
Marius chokes, lowering himself until his forehead hits Luke’s shoulder. His answer is barely audible, voice small through his sobs. “I’m happy too. I’m happy.”
Luke closes his eyes, and he has trouble swallowing around the lump in his throat. He’s crying too, and for the first time in his life, he lets it all go. He cries and sobs and it aches and this is nothing like the life he envisioned. He’s lost and loses and just keeps losing and it still feels as if things are still being taken from him.
When will it end, when will everything that he has run dry. He wants to know, only for some peace of mind. And yet, he’s scared of the loss of losing, because hurting like this, proves that he’s still human.
He’s still alive. And he—
He knows he’s right.
’and he loved me when he was thirty,’
and I loved you when I was thirty.
’Come with me.’ Spoken with resignation then, Luke now realizes, because Marius had always known what type of person Luke was.
Luke is someone who has trouble letting go; of things that he had known, of things that he had grown attached to, of vices and addictions. He doesn’t know who else he is if he doesn’t hold on to everything that’s made him who he is up until now. He’s a broken record, replaying the same things that he’s come to be, the same things he’s come to hate.
Those words still haunt him. Not the words that Marius had said to him in that hospital room while Luke was still recovering, but the words that Luke had said in response to him.
’I…can’t. I’m sorry.’
Luke didn’t want to change then. At twenty-seven, he was nearing the end of his life span and then told that he might have a chance. At twenty-seven, he had been proposed to by a man that Luke might only have the next week with. At twenty-seven, he didn’t want to change, couldn’t fathom it, and hurt not only him, but himself for the next three years to come.
At twenty-seven, he could’ve been processing expedited marriage papers with the man he’d come to know too well and love so easily.
Instead he was in the hospital and going through a rehabilitation program that everyone he’s ever loved and thought he lost supported him through. Instead he was having to go through too many rounds of therapy, physical or otherwise, medication, and restricted diets that he will have to carry through for the rest of his life. At twenty-seven, the life he’d known was suddenly foreign to him, and he’d never felt more lost.
At twenty-eight he could’ve been coming home to a newly bought penthouse that he would’ve insisted on paying a third of, only to discover the abysmal price and yell at his husband for it.
Instead he was only just moving back into his apartment above his antique shop and getting transferred to the Information Division in the NSB due to his debilitating injuries and difficulty moving most days. Instead he debates quitting his job at the NSB altogether. Instead he debates becoming a consultant detective instead. Instead he hears that Marius is going on sabbatical and Giann is finally well enough back on his feet to retake the helm.
It might be a permanent transition.
At twenty-nine he could’ve been—he could’ve been—.
At twenty-nine, he misses Marius even though they all text every few months. At twenty-nine, he thinks about going back. At twenty-nine, he thinks of all the choices he’s made and all the chances he’s missed. At twenty-nine, he thinks about saying yes. At twenty-nine, he daydreams about having said yes, about where they’d be now. At twenty-nine, he’s gained the additional years he’d never thought he’d had, and realizes that he’s still losing.
At thirty, Rosa bursts into his apartment with snow littering her hair and melting on her lashes. Her eyes are wild and frantic, and she doesn’t even bother taking her boots off before rounding the couch to crouch at Luke’s feet so that they’re eye-level.
The light in her eyes is brilliant. ‘Marius is back.’
At thirty, Luke aches and aches and aches, but he also loves and loves and loves.
He knows he’s right in that it would hurt him if he knew, but he’s still unprepared for how much it does.
“Pa.”
“Ba.”
“Pa.”
“Ba.”
“Papa!”
“Ba-ba!”
It bowls into him, too fast and too much all at once, and he wheezes against the door to their home just as he’s about to unlock it. Marius always did know too much about him, even the things Luke never explicitly says. He doesn’t know why he’d expected anything different. All his insecurities, the ones that left and the ones that stayed, of course Marius would know.
’He’s trying his best, I just know all too well where his mind goes.’
He hears Marius giggling behind him, and in his haste to turn around, he just barely catches Marius chomping down on their baby’s cheek between his lips. Their daughter shrieks with laughter, wriggling in Marius’ arms in an attempt to wrap her arms around his head. Marius only relents because he knows she’s trying to bite him back, but Luke’s finally got the door open, so all their daughter accomplishes is smacking her wet hands against Marius’ cheeks when he lifts his head.
She flops straight for his shoulder instead, drooling over his shirt from her open mouth with satisfied gurgles. Marius wrinkles his nose, but he lets her assault his designer clothing as he turns towards Luke.
“Just gonna stand there looking pretty while I’m mauled by this ferocious beast?” Marius teases, stepping forward to close the distance between them. He smirks down at him, their height difference only growing with the limp and crooked angle to Luke’s knee. That, along with all the other health issues Luke is battling with most days, is one of the things he’ll have to live with for the rest of his life.
Dull aches that will always persist, nothing he can change.
Luke chokes, before looking into Marius’ eyes proves to be too much and he’s bursting into tears. Marius’ smile immediately drops, and he bolts forward to wrap an arm around Luke’s shoulders to pull him close. “Wh-what happened? I was joking! I don’t care that she drools all over me, she can drool all she wants! It’s a new fashion trend anyway.”
Their daughter gurgles in agreement.
Luke wraps his arms around Marius’ waist and sobs, burying his face into his shoulder. “I love you. I love you so much.”
“I—I love you too??” Marius frantically rubs his cheek into the crown of Luke’s head. “I love you too! Did I do something to make you doubt me? Are you doubting me? Don’t doubt me.” Marius’ voice softens, until his lips are moving across Luke’s scalp. “I love you so much, I think I’d die without you.”
Luke shakes his head. He could never doubt Marius. “I just needed you to know,” Luke rasps, voice still thick with tears.
“Oh.” Marius sighs, but Luke can feel the soft smile on his lips. “You let me know plenty. I know. I’ll always know, okay?”
Luke squeezes his eyes shut, before he nods.
At thirty-three, Luke marries the man he took too long to love.
And at thirty-six, he has a husband and a daughter he'd do anything to live for.