[fic] the eagle - never meant you harm (2/2)
________
“There is no excuse,” Roland says as he gets into the front seat of the van. He doesn’t look at Marcus as he closes the door. Marcus doesn’t know if he’s even allowed to get into the van with the way that everyone is glaring at him. The woman from earlier shoves him towards the door and shakes her head at him and he figures that means he’s at least allowed a ride back to civilization.
He keeps thinking about Esca, the way he had barely flinched when the electricity had crawled over his skin. He wishes it hadn’t been so dark, that he could have taken the time to rememorize Esca’s face, ask him why. But the mission isn’t over, Esca is gone, and there’s no use trying to cling to what might have been.
“You really fucked up,” the woman tells him as he opens the door. He doesn’t say anything in reply, just climbs into the van.
They drive in silence for a while and Marcus doesn’t know how to apologize. He keeps gearing himself up to say something, then backing down just as he’s about to open his mouth in fear of saying something wrong. They pass by a sign that tells them that they’re in Fairplay when the woman speaks again.
“First time in years we get a clear shot?”
“Quiet, Michelle.”
She snorts and looks at Marcus like she would rather spit on him.
They stop at a motel. Marcus is half expecting to have to pay for his own room when Roland hands him a key.
“They teach you to kill in the army, don’t they?”
Marcus looks straight ahead, posture stiff-a yes, sir doesn’t seem right.
Roland turns, “I’ll let you know in the morning if you have a flight out.”
“Sir,” Marcus calls out, “It won’t happen again.”
Roland pauses for only a moment before he’s gone through the lobby doors.
________
The water runs down his shoulders and it stings when it slides across the broken skin over his collarbone. It hurt like fuck to peel the cloth and dried blood off his skin and his body is covered in bruises from being thrown around so many times. His shoulder still aches from where he landed on it.
He presses his forehead to the tiled wall and is too tired to care about how dirty the bathroom might be. He spent two weeks during the summer in Iraq without changing his clothes. This is nothing.
He’s too tired to think about anything and he wants to just sleep for a few consecutive hours without having to think about anything. Maybe he can make more sense of things in the morning-maybe he can make his case to Roland in the morning when he’s not shellshocked by the fact that Esca has been lying to him, possibly all of his life.
He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror as he spits toothpaste into the sink and hopes that he packed a soft shirt in his duffel as he opens the bathroom door.
Esca is sitting in the armchair across the room.
“What are you-?”
Esca gets up-and he’s immediately next to Marcus, eyes on the ugly red welt on his collarbone, his fingers hovering barely an inch from Marcus’s skin. He looks up at Marcus and his voice is faraway, “I did that.”
“You shouldn’t be-Roland’s in the next room.”
Esca isn’t listening-he’s tracing the outline of bruises across Marcus’s chest without touching his skin, close enough that Marcus can feel the heat and his body doesn’t seem to be getting the impending danger because he’s leaning in towards Esca like nothing has changed. His breathing shallows as Esca touches his side, feather light, and he wants to grab the other man’s wrist-what is this, what are we, why?
“You can’t,” Esca says, his voice breaking again and Marcus wants to curl up around him, shield him from the bright hurts in this world-he wants and wants and can’t have, what are we Esca? “You can’t be one of them.”
Marcus laughs and keeps his hands fisted in the towel across his waist because he wants to touch this man so badly but he won’t give in, this isn’t a game he can keep playing forever.
“You lied to me,” Marcus says and it takes all of his willpower to step back, to look in Esca’s face and see the pain written in the line across his forehead, “You lied to me for all twenty years that I’ve ever known you and you think you can fucking walk back into my life like it’s nothing?”
“Marcus,” Esca says and he sounds scared, looks terrified in the way that he’s hunching in on himself. In the brighter light, Marcus can see a scattering of faint scars along Esca’s temple, a twisted mess of skin underneath his jaw.
“Tell me,” Marcus says.
“When I left,” Esca says, “The fire that burned down my apartment complex. That was them, Marcus, they knew already. They killed my family and they left me for dead.”
“You could have told me. You could have trusted me-I would have protected you.”
“What would you have done? You can’t throw money at everything and expect it the problem to go away. You don’t know these paladins, Marcus.”
“I am one.”
“You can’t kill me,” Esca laughs on a faintly hysterical note and he steps closer, “You’re not a paladin.”
“You don’t even know me.”
Esca presses a knife into his hand, grabs his wrist and presses the blade to his own throat. He holds Marcus’s wrist steady and his eyes are on Marcus’s face, “Then prove it.” A sad smile breaks across his face, “I’m too much of a coward to do this myself-end it for me, Marcus.”
Marcus doesn’t move his hand but Esca moves closer, blood beading onto the blade as it cuts into the pale skin. Marcus jerks the knife away, throws it on the ground.
“I thought,” Esca said, “I thought that once I killed enough of them, I could safely come back to you.” He touches Marcus’s face, a sweep of fingertips across his jaw, “I never meant to make you wait. I never meant to leave for good.”
“I would have come with you.”
“You were seventeen and stupid. I wouldn’t have let you thrown your life away.”
“Esca,” Marcus whispers and he closes the distance between them, reaching up with both hands to cup Esca’s face, not caring that his towel in danger of slipping. Esca breathes, his eyes slipping shut and Marcus presses his lips to the scars at his temple, butterfly kisses along the arch of his cheekbone and Esca is shaking beneath his hands.
He pulls Marcus closer, and they tumble onto the bed, his fingertips tracing up the outline of Marcus’s ribs as he murmurs, “I never meant to string you along.” Marcus feels the sweep of lashes against his cheek as Esca opens his eyes-presses a kiss to the corner of Esca’s mouth, asking for permission until Esca turns his head and slides his hand carefully into the hair at the back of Marcus’s head, begging silently for forgiveness. It’s strange how familiar the kiss is despite all the years-Esca kisses him like he’s trying to memorize the shape of Marcus’s mouth, rediscovering the wet slide of his tongue, the way that he catches Marcus’s lower lip lightly between his teeth, the steadiness of his breathing. Marcus’s hands slip down, thumb tracing over the puckered scar on his neck as Esca shudders.
Marcus slides his lips along the line of Esca’s jaw, following the path that his fingertips have laid out, feels the pulse of Esca’s rapid heartbeat against his lips as he kisses the broken skin where the blade had cut. Esca threads his fingers through Marcus’s hair, keens low in his throat.
“You never replied to my emails,” Marcus murmurs against Esca’s throat.
“I thought it would be easier,” the words register more as a vibration against Marcus’s lips than sound.
“Was it?”
Esca catches Marcus by the back of the neck, pulls him up, “No.”
There is a knocking at the door. Marcus freezes-suddenly remembers where he is and why he is there. He stares down at Esca who touches his face once and disappears.
He can’t-he’s caught between two worlds and doesn’t know how to even begin to reconcile the two. Already Esca’s words are beginning to feel like a vivid dream, one that he’s just having a hard time shaking and he doesn’t know which part of his life is more real.
There’s another knock at his door. Marcus pulls on a pair of boxers and goes to answer it.
It’s the woman paladin-Michelle. She doesn’t even look at him, “You sure took your damn sweet time answering.”
“Sorry.”
“Roland’s decided that we don’t have time to recruit backup. We’re debriefing at four-hundred in room 206. You’re expected.”
Marcus doesn’t want to go, “I’ll be there.”
“If you let us down again, I swear to god you’re going to wish the Griffin had got to you first.”
Marcus closes the door.
________
When Marcus wakes up, it’s still dark outside. He fumbles a moment for his watch on the nightstand-it’s nearly three-fifteen. He can either go back to sleep for another half hour or just get up. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling and breathes through his nose. The air conditioning vent is aimed at the bottom of his bed and causes currents in the air. It’s quiet-something that he’s not used to when sleeping with four other men in a shallow trench for a vast majority of his recent life.
He closes his eyes again and thinks about Esca. Almost nine years on the run, nine years of lying to Marcus-nine years of being hunted and hunting in return. Marcus wonders where Esca sleeps. He wonders if Esca has friends who are jumpers, hopes that he does. He thinks about the way that Esca had pressed himself against the knife.
He opens his eyes and sits up, suddenly angry. Why hadn’t Esca told him? Marcus would have believed him-he could have helped him-why had he kept silent for so long? He didn’t have to run-no matter what Esca thought, Marcus could have had the resources to fix it, to give Esca a new identity. He would have helped Esca hunt down the people who-
-the people with whom he was meeting in less than an hour, with whom he had to fight side by side to retrieve the delivery that he had lost to the seal people. The same seal people who had killed his entire convoy, who had rigged bombs and thrown him at the ground, expecting him to die. Was Esca working with the seal people? Was he one of them? Would he stop Marcus from taking the Eagle back?
He leans over to turn the light on just as his alarm clock starts to ring for three-thirty. Esca’s not here and there’s no compelling reason for him not to finish the last of this mission. He’s still a soldier first and he has duties to fulfill.
________
Roland stops him from leaving when they finish the meeting and Marcus keeps his eyes straight ahead, not looking at the paladins who are filing out of the room. Roland shuts the door after the last of them and stands in front of it, out of Marcus’s frame of view. Marcus knows that it’s to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible, he has no illusions about Roland’s anger.
“What I don’t understand,” Roland begins, “Is why he stopped for you in the first place. Griffin isn’t capable of sloppy moves-and he certainly wouldn’t have revealed himself before a pack of paladins.”
Marcus fixes his eyes on the window, counting the number of slats in the blinds.
“So this suggests to me that perhaps there’s more to you than I had initially expected, Aquila.” Roland actually steps into view now, moving around the table so he’s across from Marcus. He puts both hands on the table, leans in, “How do you know the Griffin?”
“I have never had prior contact with him.”
“Bullshit,” Roland says, “What’s his name?”
Marcus schools his face into a confused expression, “Griffin?”
“I’m not a big fan of people who pretend to be more obtuse than they actually are.”
“I honestly don’t know what you want me to say,” Marcus replies, “I’ve never met the man before in my life. He must have mistaken me for somebody else.”
“So then, the reason you didn’t pull the trigger was?”
“I’m ashamed to admit that I was surprised,” Marcus says, “You’ve been fighting jumpers for years. This has only been my second time. I swear that it won’t happen again.”
Roland looks at him. Marcus tries to maintain eye contact-he’s never sure how well he’s capable of lying.
“I don’t think you fully understand the importance of this mission to our organization.” Roland straightens and crosses his arms across his chest, “I’m putting a lot of trust in you, Captain.”
“I will do my utmost to fulfill this mission. Your trust is not misplaced.”
________
The sky is lit with a predawn glow, barely illuminating the branches of trees that are whipping past. The driver is a skinny kid who barely looks out of college-he keeps fiddling with the radio in attempt to get some station that isn’t overrun with static. Roland is talking quietly on the phone and Marcus only hears snippets of conversation: no, yesterday morning, added threat of the Griffin, no not confirmed that they’re working together. Michelle sits next to him, sharpening a knife with a stone. He wants to tell her it’d be easier and cleaner to use a gun but keeps his mouth shut.
They stop in the middle of the woods and get out of the van. Roland heaves a silver box from the trunk and nods towards a faint path in the trees. Michelle leads the way, moving silently over the dead pine needles until an encampment comes into view.
They’ve gone over the plan: the machine moves in to the center of the encampment to draw the jumpers into a fight while Marcus figures out where the Eagle is stashed and steals it back. He was the only one out of any of them who had training or experience in recon or retrieval missions.
Roland ushers the man carrying the silver box forward. Marcus had asked what it did and Roland had answered with a vague answer about preventing jumpers from jumping out within a certain radius of its effect. It’s new technology and one that Roland doesn’t seem particularly interested in explaining to Marcus.
Marcus watches a team of three jumpers move forward, silver box gleaming in the strengthening dawn. They climb down to the outskirts of the encampment, and then they meld into the shadows, grey outfits melding into the monochromatic tents. He touches the taser on his belt, the handgun holstered across his shoulders, just to make sure they’re still there. No rifle today-too conspicuous and bulky.
Roland waves forward the second team and they creep down the pathway, single file. It’s just him and Roland now.
“Everything rests on you, Captain,” Roland says, pulling out his own taser. Marcus nods and watches Roland follow his men down.
He gives them a few minutes head start, eyes fixated on the center of the encampment as he checks his ammunition. Ideally, he wouldn’t have to shoot a single person because ideally he wouldn’t encounter anyone-but he’s been on more than enough missions to even hope for the ideal. He pulls the taser out and waits for his signal.
It’s another two minutes before shouts from the encampment drift reach him through the still morning air. Marcus rises and starts making his way down, staying low to the ground and close to the trees. The closer he gets, the more aware he is of a buzzing sound, a combination between a high pitched electronic whine and the crackle of naked electricity. It’s probably the machine and not of his concern-he has to find the Eagle.
He makes a calculated decision to check the biggest tent at the far end of the clearing, farthest away from the center of the encampment. Just as he sidles up along the thick canvas to the flap in front, someone runs out towards the fight. Marcus stops and retreats briefly a spot behind a barrel, listening to make sure nobody else is inside before he slips into the tent.
There’s a makeshift table inside-just a huge board settled on top of a few barrels-scattered with maps. Marcus doesn’t bother with them, makes a clean sweep of the tent and doesn’t find the box.
Well. This would be tricky. He tucks the taser away in favor of his handgun and slips out again. There were still maybe a dozen other tents to check and he doesn’t know if all of the jumpers have been drawn out by the fight. Next most likely candidate: a tent half secluded in the woods, camouflaged beneath the branches.
He pauses outside the tent and listens for any signs of movement inside. When he doesn’t hear anything, he flicks open the flap and points the gun in-peering inside.
What he doesn’t expect is the hand that grabs his wrist and attempts to jerk him forward-and at the same time he feels the ground dematerializing. He’s ready though, and manages to twist the overbalancing momentum on his attacker-slams the jumper on the ground. The jumper has a vicelike grip on his wrist and they disappear again-rematerialize a couple feet in the air and the jumper uses the force of gravity to smash him into the trunk of a tree.
There’s blood running down the side of his face when he struggles to his feet-he’s lost his first handgun but he has another strapped to his leg and the taser still in his belt. He can hear the harsh breathing of the jumper as he fumbles for the taser. He hears the click of a gun and-
“I wouldn’t do that, Marcus.”
Esca is pointing the handgun that he had lost at his face and he’s wiping away blood from his lips with the back of his hand.
Marcus lifts his hand off the taser because Esca’s shoulders are squared and his jaw is set-he’s someone different from the Esca who showed up in Marcus’s room the night before and Marcus suddenly isn’t so sure that this Esca wouldn’t pull the trigger.
The sun is slanting through the trees, drawing long shadows against the ground and casting half of Esca’s face in shadow. Marcus finds that he can’t read this Esca at all-this isn’t his Esca, this is the Griffin who had hunted and killed countless paladins.
“You work with the seal people.”
“Not on a regular basis,” Esca says. He takes a step forward, eyes fixed on Marcus’s face. Marcus figures that if Esca was really going to kill him, he would have done it by now.
“The thing they stole from us,” Marcus asks, “Do you know where it is?”
Esca doesn’t answer.
“Do you know what it is?”
“It’s a tool to make it easier to kill jumpers.”
“It’s a tool to stop future jumpers from being found.”
“I know what it is, Marcus,” Esca’s almost close enough to touch now. The barrel of the gun touches the uniform over Marcus’s heart. Marcus can see the pale blue halo of iris in the strong light of the sun, the fine trace of stubble over Esca’s jaw. “I know it’s something to stop jumpers from jumping forever. No one will ever have to face the temptation again, the paladins can be disbanded.”
Esca moves the gun up, the metal rasping over the coarse fabric of his jacket until the cold steel touches the skin of Marcus’s neck. It traces up, follows the path of his jugular and rests underneath his jaw-Marcus can’t help the way that his breathing has become shallow: the way that Esca’s looking intently at him, the way that he’s half leaning forward towards Marcus like he can’t help himself either. Marcus knows that the smart thing to do would be to jerk the gun out of Esca’s hand and whip the taser forward and catch him in this unsuspecting moment but Marcus is frozen, pinned more by Esca’s eyes than the gun against his neck.
“If you think for a moment that Roland’s not going to stop hunting us, you would be wrong,” the words come out as a low murmur, “And it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel, Marcus, hunting down jumpers who can’t jump.” A bead of blood trickles down Marcus’s temple and the metal of the gun is warming against his skin. “Does this make me selfish, Marcus? That I’m condemning an entire generation of jumpers because I want to live a little while longer?”
Marcus thinks back to last night, a knife pressed to Esca’s throat, Esca’s eyes daring him to just do it.
“I know Roland,” Esca says, “I know he won’t rest until every last one of us is dead.”
Marcus swallows. His eyes are on Esca’s face. “You can’t kill me.”
Esca looks at him, then lifts the gun away from Marcus’s neck. “No,” he agrees, “You’re not a paladin.”
A flicker of movement and Esca’s a few yards away, tucking the gun into his pocket. Marcus thinks about how easy it would be to use the taser. Esca trusts him more than he should.
“How do you destroy it?”
“You can’t,” Esca says, “Don’t think we haven’t tried already. The box requires a retinal scan and a fingerprint to open, both Roland’s. There’s a tracking device inside that we can’t turn off until we open it.”
“Where is it?”
Esca doesn’t say anything, just looks at him.
“Do you trust me?”
________
Marcus sets off the flares to signal the paladins to retreat. Esca drops the Eagle onto the hood of the van and watches the twin lights rise, brighter than morning light.
A flicker of movement and Esca is standing next to Marcus, closer than he’s been all day. He reaches out and touches the dried blood on Marcus’s temple. His voice is soft, “Sorry.”
Marcus covers Esca’s hand with his own and looks down at the other man, “You should go.”
Esca turns his hand, closes it around Marcus’s fingers. He draws the hand towards him, presses a kiss against Marcus’s wrist. His lips trace out the shape of words against Marcus’s skin, “Good luck.”
Marcus has words half formed at the back of his throat, he wants to say things like what does this mean for us and I love you-but it’s not the time. Esca looks at him and there’s a half smile on his face before he disappears.
The paladins show up within a few minutes, climbing into the van almost immediately. Roland grabs the Eagle off the hood of the van and claps Marcus on the shoulder before he gets into the front seat. Marcus gets into the seat behind him. Michelle leans out the window and shoots at the jumpers who get too close as the car starts up and they start moving, spraying gravel behind them.
It takes a good fifteen minutes of tearing through the woods on unpaved roads before they manage to shake the seal people. Michelle turns and breathes through her nose before she looks at Marcus.
“Nice going. I was half expecting you to bail.”
“It seems as if I should apologize, captain,” Roland says, “My trust was not misplaced after all.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” Marcus says and looks out the window. They still have a few minutes before they reach the paved highway.
“You’ve recovered the most important artifact to this organization,” Roland taps the box, “This may well change the tide of the fight.”
“It was my duty,” Marcus says. He glances over at Michelle who is looking out the window before he slowly unlocks his door. He’s been palming a grenade in his pocket for the last five minutes.
“Sir,” Marcus says, “It occurs to me that I found the Eagle near a bunch of electronics and a schematic for the box, including the retinal scanner. Do you think they were able to open it?”
Roland regards him in the rearview mirror and Marcus wills himself to stare back, tries to keep his face as neutral as possible. “Well,” Roland says, “It would be a shame if we needed to go back.”
Marcus tightens his grip on the grenade. Roland lifts the box to his eye and Marcus plucks the pin out. The box beeps and the locking mechanism clicks. Marcus drops the grenade and swings the car door open in a swift moment, rolling out with practiced movements just as Roland opens the box. The car makes a sharp turn just as the grenade explodes and sets off the other rigged explosives in the trunk and hood. Marcus comes to a stop yards away and looks back, shielding his eyes from the bright illumination. In a moment, he realizes that the force of the explosion with the turn of the car is sending it rolling, straight at him-
He hears his name being screamed just as he thinks he’s about to die, burning shrapnel and chunks of twisted metal are dropping around him, the bright burning car looming over him-
________
These are the things he thinks he remembers:
He’s playing poker with Nick who keeps telling him that he’s lying, that Marcus doesn’t have the jack of spades even though it’s right there in his hand. Nick throws his hand down one moment and the next he has a new hand and none of them are ever and good and he just wants to know, what gave Marcus the right to think that he has the jack of spades and he never pulls the card out to show Nick, at all.
He’s laying in the sunlight in the woods behind his home and Esca is pressed up against his side and reading from a book. He’s long forgotten what book but he has a hand on Esca’s chest, his wrist pressed against the curve of ribs and he can’t remember ever feeling at peace like this before.
He’s in Afghanistan and it’s raining with the sun out. The raindrops hit the roof of his humvee and makes him think of windchimes and the hiss of cars over slick pavement. It’s over in a few minutes, the spots of water in the sand already drying up and Nick says, well that’s a pity.
He’s ten and Esca’s mom is fixing his tie. He doesn’t want to go to his father’s event but she insists that it’s important, touches his hair and smiles at him. Esca is sitting at Marcus’s desk grinning because Marcus has already made plans to escape and they’re going to sneak into his father’s downstairs theater to watch movies for the rest of the night. His father won’t even notice anyway-he’s always too busy talking to important people. Esca’s mom smoothes out the lapels of his jacket and he hugs her and says thanks Ms. Cunoval but all he really wants to do is call her mom.
He’s fifteen and terrified and Esca has his back turned to him and he’s saying things like, this isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Marcus, we can’t and Marcus is trying to keep his voice steady when he says why, why not, it’s you Esca, it’s always been you and maybe they can blur the lines between expectations and forget about four generations of military leaders and the way that his father’s lip curls when he says the word gay.
He’s nineteen and on a date with a girl in his Negotiations class and the way that the candlelight in the Italian restaurant illuminates her eyes reminds him of Esca and he can’t, he can’t-
He remembers Nick laughing and saying bro, special ops-are you excited? like it’s all they’ve ever aimed for and Marcus manages to forget, just for a moment between phone calls and emails.
He thinks he remembers:
White white white, hazy faces blurring in and out of focus, a touch of lips on his forehead.
Beeping.
________
When he opens his eyes, he realizes that he’s in a hospital room. He’s not a stranger to the smell of antiseptic but the tube running down his trachea is an entirely different matter. He grips it, trying not to gag, and pulls it out of his mouth, coughing as it comes up.
“Dude.”
Marcus drops the tube onto the bed, already exhausted and turns his head. Nick is looking at him with a grin.
“Hey sleeping beauty,” Nick says, “Except you know, the whole beauty part. Your face is still ugly as hell, man.”
“Fuck you,” Marcus says, and then coughs.
“Jesus. You know, you’re one lucky son of a bitch to still be alive right now.”
Marcus wants Nick to go away so he can go back to sleep.
“I’m calling a doctor,” Nick informs him.
“Whatever,” Marcus mumbles and closes his eyes.
________
When he wakes up for real, the doctor doesn’t have anything good to tell him.
“We managed to get the big pieces out of you, but I’d advise against MRIs in the future. I don’t think that the small pieces still in there are going to cause you any trouble.”
Marcus tries to look at the doctor but his eyes keep slipping to a place over the doctor’s left shoulder. He already knows the extent of the damage-he can feel where parts aren’t responding as well, the twinge of pain even through whatever painkillers they have him on.
“The greatest damage was done to your left leg,” the doctor says, “From our understanding, it was partially crushed by a piece of falling debris. We got you into surgery as soon as possible. With some physical therapy, I’m very optimistic that you’ll be able to walk again.”
“Great,” Marcus says.
Nick gives him a look of warning.
“Thank you,” Marcus adds.
“I’d like to keep you under supervision for a few days, since you’ve been unconscious for so long. We could probably get you out of here by Monday.”
“Thanks,” Marcus repeats, and the doctor leaves.
“Hey,” Nick says, “It could be a lot worse. They could have had to amputate.”
Marcus doesn’t look at him. He looks at the heart monitor instead. “So when do I get my discharge slip?”
“Marcus man, you don’t have to leave.”
“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life sitting at a desk pushing pencils at HQ and kissing ass for clerical promotions.” Marcus wants the words to sound angry but they come out as tired instead.
“Bro,” Nick says, and then stops. Marcus doesn’t blame him-he feels bad for putting Nick on the spot.
“I’m going to sleep,” Marcus says. Nick takes it as a dismissal and shuts the door quietly behind him.
________
They give him a purple heart with the discharge letter. Marcus doesn’t know what to do with it so he puts it with the rest of his junk on the kitchen counter. He has seventy-two new voicemail messages because he hasn’t been back to his apartment in Boston for months.
He hobbles through the hallway on his crutches and doesn’t bother to change the dusty sheets or shake out the comforter. He leans the crutches up against the nightstand and eases onto the bed, trying not to disturb the stitches in his leg. It doesn’t take long for him to get to sleep.
He only wakes up to take more painkillers and goes back to sleep.
The third time he wakes up, there’s someone curled up next to him on the bed. The breath catches in his throat and he struggles to sit up, trying to make out the intruder in the dim streetlamp light filtering through the closed curtains. He thinks he knows-
“Marcus?” it’s Esca’s voice and Marcus eases back down onto the bed, moving closer to the other man. Esca curls a hand behind Marcus’s ear, fingers threading through his hair, and presses closer. Marcus closes his eyes and falls asleep to fingertips stroking along his back, steady breathing against his ear.
When he wakes up again, the sun is setting through the half opened curtains, lighting the entire room in a haze of gold. It smells like cooking and Marcus is suddenly aware of how hungry he is.
He can’t sneak up on Esca because the crutches click against the hardwood floor. Esca doesn’t turn as he pauses in the doorway of his kitchen, watching Esca move about the stove. This scene feels surreal.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Esca says, setting the cover on one of the pots. He washes his hands as Marcus takes another step into the kitchen. He wipes his hands on one of the dusty dishtowels as he turns around to face Marcus.
“I didn’t know you cooked,” Marcus says.
“There’s probably a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
Marcus takes another step closer.
“So what now?”
Esca’s smile is bright and familiar as he looks up at Marcus, “You decide.”