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Marc pushes his fingers into the warm sands, feeling the grains yield just enough to cradle him. Sand is… reliably unreliable. You can work with it, but you can’t fight it. Zig-zagging steps and careful movements. One moment a quiet hush, a serpent’s hiss; and the next a thunderous thud betraying your every movement to the whole world.
It also lingers, long after you’ve gone. Traces that you find in things you’re sure never touched it. Flecks that rub your heels smooth or your eye sharp.
He hears in the rustle the echo of wind through reeds, and his hand stops moving.
“I guess I should say ‘thank you’.”
Marc’s brow wrinkles at that. Steven is - even now - the most familiar and foreign to him all at once. “What?”
“You know.”
“...right.” If he stops and pretends he does know, Steven might leave it at that.
“The whole… protecting me thing. Over the years. I know it can’t have been easy, and… you didn’t even think I’d ever know in order to thank you, but I do.”
Steven does not, it seems, ‘leave it at that’. Ever. Even when Marc wishes with all of his being that he’d just have the British decency to demur or something. “Nope. Not biting.”
“Not… Marc, I’m serious. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’ve been thinking.”
When do you not, Marc butts in, but only internally. One boot presses deeper into the sand, and it slowly starts to swallow his boot.
“You… you let me have that life. The one you wanted. The one you deserved. I got to grow up thinking I had a mum who loved me. I had a pretty nice - if lonely - life. I got… I got what you wanted.”
You can’t thank someone for something they’re envious of, Marc is sure.
“It wasn’t true. It wasn’t real.”
“It was… to me.”
Steven’s voice is too soft. Too kind. Too understanding. Too nice, and pure, and Marc is none of those things. Never was any of those things. Just wished he could be.
“Yeah, well. You’re crazy, same as me.”
They are. Crazy. A ‘coping mechanism’ for a mind put through too much to bear. Splintered as the only way to contain the amount of distress, fear, pain and anger. A daydream made almost real, and a lie to himself for so, so many years.
And yet…
Marc had envied Steven. Envied the blissful ignorance. Envied the glimpse into what could have been.
But Steven doesn’t understand, and Marc is being as selfish as ever.
“You never think maybe it’s you I should be thanking?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.” Even saying it has his throat closing, and his body remembers sensations, responses that threaten to drag him beneath the sands. Buried in the bottom of the hourglass, never able to break the surface.
“Me? I… ran away. I guess I pretended all the bad things didn’t happen? Or you pretended they didn’t, for me… seems pretty… dodgy to me, Marc.”
“That wasn’t how it worked.” Marc’s surprised that he, too, can sound soft. “I ran away. I hid. You… came out to save me.”
Steven seems to think that through, biting his lip in a way only he does. “Huh.”
“You… you were brave. You could be there, when I couldn’t. You were there… to protect me.”
“Oh. I didn’t think of it like that.”
“Me either,” Marc admits. “For a while. Took a lot of… work. To get to where I knew what was really happening. Or, I thought I’d made it.”
Until Mom. That had shattered what delicate control he’d had. And yet again, Steven came to help him. When he needed a friend most, when he needed someone to step in, he’d always had Steven.
“I was like your big brother, yeah?”
“Yeah. Kinda. Like… like I should have been.” Brave enough. Smart enough. Able to fight for those who needed it. Ready to fight for those who needed it. Kind. Selfless. All the things Marc was sure he couldn’t be.
Someone Marc should have been able to trust, from the start. But if he’d just managed to keep his dirty little secrets hidden, then Steven wouldn’t realise how much of a monster Marc was. And maybe he’d get to live that happy life.
Maybe he’d get to be the person Marc wished he could be, but was sure he didn’t deserve.
“I’m… sorry I didn’t help more.” Steven drops his head, and his hands fall into the sand.
Too far. Too far. Marc doesn’t want to lose him, and he knows that flailing only makes it worse. He tugs his fingers together, and wipes his palm over his thigh. “You helped enough. We were… we were kids. You couldn’t do anything more. Neither of us could.”
For all Marc had wanted Steven to be able to scoop them up and take them away, he couldn’t. Even an adult in a child’s body wouldn’t make it, not fully. “You helped plenty,” he insists.
“Then… then you have to realise it’s true. All of it.”
“What?” Marc frowns at his other, not sure he’s ready to know. Wanting. Wanting so badly, even if it hurts like nothing he can remember. A different kind of pain, though.
“If… if I did help you all I could… then you did, too. I saw what you did. I saw what happened. She made you feel like you were a monster, but if you were, why would you call for me to help?”
“Even monsters can--”
Steven shushes him, clucking in a weirdly maternal way. “No, Marc. You were a kid. And you did make a mistake. But that doesn’t mean you were any of those things she said. It doesn’t. Monsters are… monsters are the people like her. People who want to hurt. You punished yourself to try to help me, because I’d helped you. I looked after you, then you tried to do the same for me.”
“Didn’t work out so well, huh?”
“Dunno. Think we did a pretty good job, considering. Not a bad show for a kid who didn’t get the life he deserved. You could have turned nasty… you could have done what she done. But you chose to help people, instead.”
“Not quite how I would say it.”
“Yeah, well, listen to your older bruv, right?” Steven even makes the accent worse, if it was even possible. Drives the line almost to absurdity. “You helped me. So: thank you. And I helped you, so: you’re welcome.”
“Does that… make us even?”
“Even Stevens?”
Marc growls at the terrible pun. “I could forget I like you.”
“But you do like me.”
Goddamn insufferable little shit. Always so positive. Always so good and decent and ready to be there and take a beating and fight the monsters and just… help.
“Look. Maybe I did help you. Guess a bit of you rubbed off on me. What can I say?”
“You could say ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’ more often.”
“It was not a literal question, Steven.”
But it does feel lighter. The bastard does it every time, in the end. Comes swanning in, takes the battering, and helps him… helps him see. Letting Steven be happy, letting him have his ‘world’... it was right. Because Steven deserved it.
Maybe Marc does deserve at least some of that, too. After all, Steven had an excellent upbringing. Had all the love he wanted. Was brought up to be kind, caring, protective, loving, smart, and generous. He had always been the best part of Marc, or the things Marc desperately aspired to.
And if Steven can do and be those things, it means some part of himself, can, too. And if Steven thinks he’s worth loving, worth forgiving…
Yeah. Steven’s still saving him. Maybe they’re saving each other.
Marc doesn’t use words to reply, but he closes his eyes and takes a slow, calming breath.
The switch is painless, and then Steven is hosting. Marc surrenders because he knows Steven won’t lock him out, and because it’s time to be Steven for a while. Time to be kind, even to himself. Time to do a little more of that good to balance out his scales.
Steven won’t hide what they do. He trusts him.
That… feels… right.