#Marc Spector the man that you are | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

whatthefishh · 2 years ago

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Azizam I am crying at 3am what the ever loving fuck what crack did you put in your writing

The CODEPENDENCY?! oh my lord. My heart. This whole thing, tbh I didn’t read part one or three yet but a girl needs a break from having her heart broken because Marc isn’t mine and I desperately need him to be.

Steven shielding the sun away from her face and Marc waiting out her stuttering and gathering her thoughts… i pine I perish.

Just. Gimme a minute to recover.

Rare Hearts - Oneshot

Pairing: Marc Spector x Reader, Steven Grant x Reader

Word Count: 8.8k

Summary: Marc takes you to the beach, and rocks your world and your relationship with him in the process.

Warnings: talk of sex, birth control, conception, doctors, and a brief mention of Marc's childhood

A/N: This is a second part to The Dress, which takes the night before this oneshot. It can be read on its own, the first part may provide some context. I've quoted the lyrics from Rare Hearts by the Growlers as well as stole another quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince.

I don't own photos, dividers or characters.

Marc’s lips are stained pink. The breeze from the ocean and the humidity in the air serve to ruffle his curls and make them more unruly than what they usually are in the city. He’s wearing the sunglasses you’d gotten him as a gift a few years back. All-in-all, it’s a nice domestic look on him, with the book he’d been working through propped open in his lap, pages turning backwards and forwards in the story until you’re sure his page is lost into the ether.

There’s a cup of ice cream in his hands, a small spoon with the face of an elf on top of it, comically grasped between his fingers. He’d gotten four scoops of dark chocolate, not budging when you’d told him that strawberry would go with the chocolate really well. Steven may have been the one on your asses about the smoking, but Marc was always nagging you and Steven about your ridiculous sugar habits. Marc would often front after the grocery shopping was through, holding up packets of cookies and chocolates with a glare and a scoff, silently asking you to explain yourselves. You wouldn’t. Instead, you’d lean up and kiss him senseless.

So, he’d gotten the dark chocolate, and looked at your pineapple and mango flavoured scoops with an upturned nose. Though he disapproved, he was never as vocal about it as Steven was, probably thinking that with his nicotine habit, he wasn’t one to judge.

After he’d paid, and was heading back, you had sneaked in another order for strawberry. And though he’d complained and groaned at you the whole walk back to the sandy ocean, he’d plopped the extra scoops in his own cup and swirled them together as they rapidly melted and morphed in a brown and pink myriad.

You weren’t sure what exactly had been put in the ice cream, but there must have been a food dye. The colour had latched onto Marc’s mouth and teeth worse than your lip stain did, and no matter how much water he drank and swirled around in his mouth, it wouldn’t go away.

It’s only once you reassure him that it’s not that bad, and yes you’ll stop laughing at him, that he relented, stealing a heaping spoonful of your ice cream and grinning wickedly, his teeth an unnatural shade of synthetic pink.

You realise too late that you’ve been staring for too long, too lost in your thoughts to realise that he’s no longer looking out at the water, his shadow casting over you and protecting you from the sun. Marc looks down at you now, brows furrowed a bit, trying to read you. You’re lying down beside him, propping up your head using your elbow. The breeze that’s fluttering his hair is playing around your dress.

“Hm?” He’s been talking all this time and you’d been too preoccupied in the slope of his shoulders to notice. Marc tilts his head down to look at you better, precise in his motions to make sure the sun doesn’t fall in your eyes. “What is it, baby?”

All that sugar had gotten to you, so you blink up at him slowly. Finally with a sigh, you hold your arms, a silent plea for something that you both need.

Marc moves without complaint. He leans down so his nose brushes yours, tilting his head moments later to brush your lips together instead. Sneaking your arms around his neck you pull him down, impatient and needy, so you can kiss him properly.

He moves so pliantly against you that it makes you doubt whether this really is Marc, and not Steven practising his American accent. The thought makes your skin crawl and you push it out of your head, deciding to trust Marc and the bits and pieces of himself that he seems willing to hand over to you today. The ocean air seems to have done plenty to better the both of you, the ever present frown and hunched shoulders disappearing from his body, your soul at ease.

It’s when you whine and shift towards him, begging for his hands, one currently resting at the side of your head farthest from him, the other cupping the side of your face, to move further down, that Marc moves away. He pulls back and murmurs, “Wanna tell me why you were starin’ at me like that?”

“Like what?” Your eyes flick down to his ridiculously-coloured mouth, tracing his bottom lip with your thumb. Frankly, you want to kiss him again, push him down and keep going until you can’t get off his lap without pressing a towel to cover up what you’d done to him. To prevent your thoughts from getting worse, because he can see you right now, can see the way your pupils will blow to the size of quarters, your gaze flicks back up to his and your breath stops momentarily at the pretty sight above you.

Your fingers drift up to trace his eyebrows, the sides of his nose, and you say exactly that, “Marc, you’re so pretty.”

Underneath your fingers, his face twitches. It does it so many times that you think this is what it takes to make Steven front. No mirrors around and the ocean a good walk away from you. You want to apologise, to say that you didn’t mean it. But that would all be wrong. You did mean it, and you’d never apologise for something you meant, particularly when it came to Marc.

So, instead, as a sort of compromise, you pull your hands away from him. A silent apology for going too far. But Marc shifts suddenly, putting his weight back onto his legs, freeing his hands that come to clasp yours, keeping them where they are. He doesn’t say anything else, his mouth, eyes, still occasionally twitching, the lingering embers of a dead fire, threatening to come to life and wreak havoc.

You take it. It means the worlds coming from him. Marc who would usually bring out Steven in the blink of an eye, and Steven, who’d sit there bashful and ashamed, trying to pick up where Marc had left off. It’d never be the same, the three of you knew that. Words that were meant for Marc were never as sweet going to Steven. Steven had once confessed to you that in those moments, the sudden shift from the loving to the defensive, that he felt like an intruder on you and Marc.

Regardless, Marc doesn’t do that now, battling through it in front of you and so, you push it to the side, not bringing it up again. “You enjoyed the ice cream?”

It must catch him off guard because never in your life had he ever admitted to enjoying sugar, even if he really did, because he says, eyes dark with gratitude focussing back on you, “Wonderful. Great idea. The strawberry and the-uh-” he clears his throat, he’s so close to you that you can feel the vibrations in your chest “-the chocolate. Really good.”

You only grin back at him, eyes glowing as much as your chest does at the thought that he liked something you suggested. Liked it so much in fact that he told you. In stuttering fragments of sentences, but he did it nonetheless.

It’s one of those thoughts you treasure away for the nights when he wakes up panting, pushing you away and stumbling out the door, only to come back a few hours later with coffee and a shameful expression. The mornings afterwards were the hardest, where he’d take your hands in his and pepper kisses all over them until you cried. Sometimes, the worst times, Steven would front then, and Marc would hide away, sometimes for days.

He’d often tell you that making you cry was the worst thing his hands had ever done. And you weren’t sure what to make of it.

Marc’s fingers are now tracing your lips, mimicking your actions from moments ago, tugging them out from between your teeth. His gaze goes back up to yours and flicks down to your lips again. You nod imperceptibly and he takes the hint, swooping down to kiss you.

You’ve always loved the way he kissed you. Devouring you whole and as intimate as if your souls had already done this for millenia. He makes your head spin and your heart beat erratically against your chest.

Marc’s hand now goes to your chest, right on your heart and he feels its indecisive tempo. You can feel him smiling against you as he says, interrupting himself with small, butterfly kisses, “My little hummingbird.”

The only thing, the truth, that you can tell him now is, “Yours. Yours.”

It’s codependent and needy. But you want him to know, want Steven to know as well. That you’ll be theirs for as long as they have you, that getting rid of you might be a problem, especially if Marc doesn’t stop kissing you like you’re life itself. You hope he won’t, hope he’ll want to keep doing this for forever and a day or two more. He shifts and lays down, his lips never straying from yours.

Ever attuned to your body, he pulls back suddenly and murmurs, “You getting horny on me now?” You whine and shrivel up like a flower in his arms, pulling away from him and hiding your face behind your hands. He hums, smoothing his hand down the side of your head, you can see how soft his eyes have gotten in between the gaps of your fingers, “I don’t mind. Fuck you real good when we get home.”

You purse your lips to the side, stretching your arms above your head, “Promise?”

Something flicks over his eyes, a fleeting thought that’s too quick and foreign for you to notice. “What if I knocked you up tonight?” His words. His eyes. You love them with all your life and right now they’re hurting you too much. Clasping your hands behind his head, you bring him down to your chest, pressing his forehead to your sternum. “Just a thought,” he murmurs.

You don’t know what to think of it. Of both the fact that he wants kids and that he’s been thinking about having them. That this isn’t some whirl-of-the-whim fantasy of his that he’s created on the spot to get you talking. You wonder what else he’s thought about. Maybe. There’s never knowing what goes on in Marc Spector’s thoughts, but you feel like you’re qualified enough now to make semi-accurate guesses.

A house in the suburbs. Baby names. Dog breeds.

Diamond rings.

You wonder what Steven has thought of it, if he was the one who had suggested these things into their mind in the first place.

If, by some turn of fate, it did happen, Marc would truly have to quit smoking, Steven would need to start buying healthy things, fill the fridge with protein, the pantry with medications and gummy vitamins. The whole flat would need a good scrub down, the thousand and one sharp corners rounded out. Steven’s book collection would have to go into storage, if you were to stay in the city. Otherwise, there’d be no room for a crib.

It’d be a lot of work, doubt and worry. And it seemed so far away from where you were with the both of them at the moment. Surreal. A future that could happen, but didn’t have a set timestamp. Like that one stack of mismatched books that will get cleaned up eventually, at least, that’s what you’ve been promising Steven for the past year. That you’ll get around to it, you’re just not sure when you’ll get the time to. And now that so much time has passed and there’s been yet another Ikea bookshelf filled to the brim, the when has turned into if you’ll get the time to.

There was so much to consider, fertility, genetics, Steven and how on board he would be with the idea. God. You’d need to schedule an appointment with the doctor, the dentist, and a gynaecologist. You’d have to find that last one first. One that both Steven and Marc approved of, two people who’d quipped back and forth about pizza toppings for three hours once.

“Hi, love.”

Your eyes flit down to his head, and you let your hands go, “Hi, Steven.” Steven props the upper half of his body up, support coming from his elbows, his nose hovering a few inches away from yours.

It had been too long. No response from you had left both you and Marc too long in your thoughts. Too long considering what ifs and and thens. A dangerous combination. And now, Steven was here to coax you out of it gently, with a wary hand, while Marc took a breather.

Were you even on board for a baby?

Steven’s voice calls you out of your head again, a lifeboat in the middle of the storm, “Don’t you mind Marc, alright? He just festers in his mind for so long that he can’t control a bloody thing that comes out his mouth.” He pushes up the sunglasses that Marc left on, to the top of his head. You comb one of his curls into his hair, heart delighting when it jumps back to where it started.

“M’know.”

Steven’s heart is tender in places where Marc’s has gone hard. He sees things that his alter can’t, knows what to do about them, how to make them better and when it’s time to let go, not push you on it when it’s still too soon. “I like the strawberry, really liked it. It left a splendid aftertaste in my mouth n’all.”

You smile, cupping his face and closing the few breaths left between yours. “That’s good, m’happy ‘bout that baby. Know you don’t like it when Marc eats dark chocolate,” you kiss his pink mouth then. Gentle and mellow. Marc’ll probably have your head for that comment, probably claiming that, unlike the two of you, he’s trying not to dig himself an early grave, what with his alter’s insistence on consuming sugar with sugar, and the least you can do is help him with that.

Pulling back moments later, you smile and tip the edge of your nose to brush against his. Being with Steven is like being wrapped up in cashmere blankets, fuzzy and cosy, the inside of your chest warming up to the point that it’s fit to burst. “Steven,” his eyes had wandered away, to the ocean, your dress. At the sound of your voice it falls back on you, and you pause for just a brief moment before murmuring, “I love you.”

Marc’s sensitive about how often you tell him you love him, often sent spiralling as he tries to summon up the courage to repeat it back to you. It hurts him, you know it does, when you tell him so. Though you have no doubt about the sentiment being returned, you still want to tell him, no matter if he wants to say it back.

Steven, on the other hand, loves it. Steven loves love, loves it more than you do. So, his eyes crinkle, and he repeats it back. “You know, love,” like Marc, his hand smooths down the side of your head. “I don’t think it’s bloody fair you two went and got ice cream without me.”

You giggle at that, at the glare that’s settled in the back of his eyes, “And what do you want me to do about it, Steven?”

“Apologise first of all,” he quips playfully, rolling onto his side and turning you with him. Eye contact is never broken. He sees you squint as the sun blares down into your eyes and he cups his hand beside your eye. You want to cry. But that would seem out of place right now, breaking down into tears over a seemingly inconspicuous conversation about nothing at all. What’s more, Steven will get worried, and you haven’t seen him this relaxed in months; the city seems to have gotten to the three of you bad. “And get me a cone all for my own, none of that cup business and certainly none of that sharing with Marc now, alright?”

Sighing, you push his sunglasses down for him, tracing his hairline and the edge of his jaw as you smile, “Well, I’m sorry, for not letting you know, and-” your hand falls down to his shoulder and you squeeze affectionately “-I’d get you a cone right now, but I’m not on the best of terms with Marc at the moment, and he’s gonna have my head for sure.”

With a groan and a grumble, Steven rips the sunglasses off, turning them around to face his reflection. His hand is gone from the side of your face, and your lungs constrict in the bad way.

You turn on your stomach, to keep the sun out of your eyes.

Steven calls out Marc’s name a few times, daring him to explain himself, but he gives up about a minute later with a tsk.

“No luck?”

“Sorry, love, none.” Your mood darkens before you have the chance to control it. Steven comes to mirror your position, propping his chin up on top of his stacked hands. His eyes fall on you, you can feel them, but you’re already wallowing in quite deep in your emotions, bubbling up from inside of you and you can’t bring yourself to look back at him. “You know, you shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened, you weren’t supposed to find out like that.”

You ask him what, and you hear a faint smile in his voice, “Marc and I have been thinking about it for a while, really we have. Ya know, it all started this one day where he was in the park with you, and you kept holding those babies.” You spare him a glance then, and his eyes are on your dress. You’d known Marc liked that dress, seen the way his eyes glowed the day in the park. You hadn’t known of the association he’d made with it, what it meant to him now.

Things start to fall in place like puzzle pieces, why he’d asked last night for you to wear it today, his semi-confession today. You hope it was deliberate. That he was truly planning on revealing this to you, and not the other way around. That he’d seen the dress and hadn’t blurted out the first thing that had come to his mind.

“He didn’t really tell me anything about it all either, the bastard,” he glances back to his reflection in the sunglasses. “But I picked up on it, ‘course I did.”

You don’t know what to say to him, an overwhelming sense of homesickness washing over you as you yearn for your bed, for Marc and Steven in it. The safety of the shadows and rooms lit only by candles and laptop screens. The looming threat of the future gone, tucked safely away in a room, the door bolted and locked.

A baby.

A little human, half you, half them, and yet, entirely it’s own being, with a separate will, that will, hopefully, grow up to have hopes and dreams and goals, all on its own and nothing to do with its parents.

You’re not sure you can take that, the going away, you, Marc and Steven left behind to grow old and frail, forgotten by the rest of the world. The passage of time.

“What do you think about it then?” You turn your head to get a better view of his face, and he, like a sunflower to the sun, follows.

“I think it’s lovely, always wanted kids, really,” he winks and smiles at you, taking one of your hands in his, kissing the back of it. Steven and Marc may be opposite sides of a coin, but they’re still the same coin. The love behind their actions is always the same, even if they are executed differently. “And there’s no doubt about who’ll be the favourite parent. You.”

Even if you don’t want it to, heat rises to your face as you mull over the fact that Steven’s gone as far as to picture the life after the baby’s come, where the both of them are fathers, you a mother. It doesn’t bother you as much as you expect it to.

“...so, of course, I’m on board for it all. Whatever you decide to do, of course,” his gaze flickers down quickly and up. “It’s your body, and you know, you’re doing all the hard work-”

Fear clutches at your throat, “You’ll be there to help, though?”

“Oh, lord, yes, yes, love!” Steven’s eyes are wide, shock evident in his features. Usually when he’s with you, he talks slower, takes his time in choosing his words and accommodates the silences in the conversations. Now, he races off, miles ahead of you “I-of course, we’ll be here through it all, if you decide that’s something you want. Oh, bollocks,” he smacks his forehead, and with a small whine, you stop him from doing it again, soothing over the spot immediately with your fingers. “‘Course I manage to make it all jumbled up, like I always do. I just meant, just meant that-” he stops and takes a breath “-just don’t want to pressure you. Ya know, there’s enough pressure from society n’all, don’t let Marc’s brooding get to your head alright? He cares about you more than he’ll ever admit, and you’re always more important to him than any other bloody baby.”

His spiel ends, and his face cringes, words echoing back through his mind. The top corner of his upper lip curling he looks at you exasperatedly, “Don’t let me go on like that again, alright? I always manage to muck it up. Think I do more harm than good.”

“You know you could never do that Steven. Never.” You wonder if Marc is listening and add on, “Not even Marc.”

“Regardless,” he sees the way your eyes drop at the thought of him, and he tries to lighten the mood, nudging your side affectionately until you look at him again, really look at him, and smile, even if it is a little forced. “Doesn’t hurt to tell me to quit yacking all the time, give you a bit of a break every once in a while.”

“I like your yacking,” you sit up and reach for your bag, pulling yourself out of your overthinking and determined to make the most of the rest of the day. There’s a bottle of sunscreen and it’s cooler to the touch. You also take out a thermos of water, condensation forming on its sides. “And it hurts me very much when you call it yacking.”

“Then what should I call it, love? It’s not like it’s really very any good, now is it? Just noise,” his voice goes even more high pitched. “Squack, squack, all day long.”

He’s relatively covered, shorts and a short sleeved button down on top of a cotton singlet. But his ears and neck, calves and forearms and face are exposed. Though he doesn’t burn, cancer is always a risk, and you try to keep yourself accountable and stay on top of sunscreen today. “Hold still, ok?” He nods and you get to work, rubbing in the lotion.

There had been struggles, lots of them, that arose when you had started dating Marc, and subsequently, Steven. Difficult conversations, tears sometimes. But one of the only problems that never arose between the three of you, was the love for touch. To see that they both craved it as much as you did, that they didn’t mind the way you’d want to simply lie in bed and trace shapes on their chest, sometimes for hours on end, made the rest of it, the harder troubles, easier. Worth it.

So, he doesn’t mind when you reach underneath his shirt and spend a few minutes working on his shoulders, always sore from the way the two of them hunch over all the time, tense and anxious. He thanks you multiple times, telling you to go to the left or right, harder or softer. His voice is going sleepy, almost foggy.

As you start on his arms, he starts humming, murmuring lyrics underneath his breath. When it seems clear that he’s not going to sing louder, you ask him, “What are you squawking about now, you little bird?”

“So give the stars to the lonely city, give the ocean to the country,” he sings louder, his accent always fading away when he sings to himself, instead mirroring the original recording. “Ain’t seen anything so pretty, than a girl who gives me all her lovin’.”

The words are sweet, the crash of the waves, the seagulls matching well. You wonder if Marc will come back at all today, if he might take you in the water. You’re sure Steven would only go so far as to get his toes wet, averse to water like a cat. It’s been a point of contention a while with him. Since he has two fishes, you claim he should be nothing if not a water-lover. He only shudders at the thought of the ocean, the pool, the river, claiming he’d much rather stay dry.

Besides, the water is always so bloody cold.

Because of both Steven’s worries, and Marc’s protective nature, you’d rented out wetsuits for the day, and had bought the two of you swimming caps so your hair wouldn’t get wet. It doesn’t seem likely that you’ll use them, but you wanted to hold out a little hope.

You wonder then that even if Marc fronts, if he will be in any mood to deal with you. Maybe he just wants the body, his will back in the palm of his hand, and he doesn’t want to talk to you. There’s no way in knowing what he interpreted your initial silence to be, when he brought up the matter.

The baby.

You suppose you should get used to saying it.

The thoughts aren’t settling well with you, and you focus back into Steven, the feel of his skin against yours. The coconut-scented sunscreen that you know Marc will grumble about, even if he loves the smell, “S’pretty. Where’s it from?”

He doesn’t respond and he seems to have nodded off. Glad that he’s at least face down, that the sun can’t get to him that badly, you place a towel on his head, for a little shade, and finish up his legs, working the muscles with your knuckles and getting them to loosen.

Content with your work you’re about to clean your hands and get your book, when Steven shifts around, his body suddenly is much more tense. He takes the towel off and you catch his eyes, your hands tangled in a cleaning wipe.

Your heart knows that’s not Steven. But, for a few seconds, you don’t want to acknowledge Marc right now, at least explicitly. Want to keep living in this little bubble of coconut and sun, no hard conversations and babies to be had.

“C’mere, I need to touch up your face.” You wonder when Marc had fronted, if he was there the moment Steven had gone silent. He moves silently, eyes downcast and only giving you brief, wary glances. Your eyes fall down, back to his pink mouth and reach for the wipe first, finding a clean corner and working at the ice cream stains.

An hour or so ago he’d claimed that he didn’t mind, had laughed along with and encouraged your teasing, but you know it bothered him. Even if it didn’t, the sticky, sweet layer hanging on his skin couldn’t have been comfortable.

The stains come off easily enough, “You’ll have to brush your teeth for it to go away completely, I think.” He nods, sitting up crossed legged in front of you. One of his hands goes forward, shaking almost imperceptibly, hovering above your knee. You nudge your knee forward, encouraging him. His palm falls down on your skin and you sigh audibly, the pit forming in the pool of your stomach melting away.

You dab little streaks of sunscreen around his face. His forehead, his nose, cheekbones and his chin. The remaining you rub into the tender skin behind his ears. His eyes are on you now, his hand still on your knee. He’s looking as if he can see into the very recesses of your mind, see the thoughts in there that you don’t want to think about at the moment. You wonder what he makes of them, if there’s anything in there to offend him.

For a breath you consider leaving the sunscreen where it is, giving him possibly the worst tan ever.

It’s a petty, low thought, and you throw it away when it comes to mind. Instead, you focus on Marc, on massaging his face as the cream gets worked in, bringing him a little pleasure as he first goes slightly cross-eyed and then slowly closes his eyes.

He picks up the melody from before, humming quietly. Your hands are on his neck now, applying another layer for good measure, and you can feel the vibrations of the song. It’s not the same as hearing him talk, one ear on his chest, so you can hear both his heartbeat and his muffled voice at the same time.

It’s different. Another moment where you find something you like about him, like doing with him, and you fall in love with him even more. You’re done a few seconds later, and close the sunscreen, tucking it away and handing the water bottle over to Marc, his mouth always going dry after something sweet.

He stops the song and murmurs his thanks, taking a break to drink probably half the water inside it. You take this time to lie down, on your back, closing your eyes so the sunlight hits your eyes and all you can see is red.

“Ain’t seen anything so pretty,” Marc’s fingertips are cold from the bottle, as they trace down the bridge of your nose to your top lip. “As a girl who gives me all her lovin’.” The words are familiar from before and they make even more heat rush to your face.

Steven’s called you pretty millions of times, Marc a million times on top of it, his eyes speaking for him when his words fail him. Still, it lights you up inside, to think about how Marc and Steven had listened to this song, cherry-picked lyrics that reminded them of you. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that you’re on their mind, maybe not as much as they are on yours, but close.

The red passes away from your eyes, and you open them to see Marc leaning over you again, his face soft with worry. You’re both in the same position you were at the beginning, and yet, everything seems to have changed.

“Been so since the beginning,” he tilts your chin up, making sure you’re truly looking at him. “She stopped my world from spinning.”

You suppose there’ll never be a ‘good time’ to talk about this, if there ends up being something to talk about. Maybe he’ll just chalk it up to the sugar, to the cigarettes, to the dress or to a thousand and one other factors that could have led him to make a statement like that, with such a heavy implication behind it that still sent your mind reeling whenever you thought about the way his eyes had darkened at the thought.

You wonder if Steven had forced Marc to front, that maybe he felt like you two needed to talk about this before anything else. Maybe Marc decided all on his own.

“Marc,” the melody stops and he looks almost ashamed. You cup the side of his face in your hand, hoping he knows that you’re not mad, that doesn’t need to create a non-existent blame out of nowhere to only place it on his shoulders. “We need to talk about this.”

“Is it too much to dream, that we can forever be-”

“Marc.” Your voice is a little harder, a bit harsher than you want it to be. You’re wired and strung tight right now, and frankly, you’re not sure if you want to talk with Marc, or even Steven if they just don’t sit down and talk about the inner workings of their minds and hearts.

“Rare hearts that never disagree.”

Guilt wracks your soul in a heartbeat, a bucket of ice water poured on top of you. You’ve been too caught up in your own head, spiralling down your compulsive thoughts, to notice Marc, Steven, and the fear laced into their body. The fear, that in a second, you’d take off and flee away from them.

Because dating Marc and Steven was alright. There was always an out for you, even if they were torn apart in the process. But giving them a baby, a years long commitment that required that, at the very least, you see them twice a week, if not anything else. Recitals, sports games and graduations aside.

“Oh, Marc,” you sit up and push your forehead against his. Your eyes fall closed together. “Marc, we need to talk about this, I need to think about it a little more. But I still love you all the same, whatever happens.”

“But you’ll think about it?” He’s not sure why that comforts him so much. To know that your initial reaction hadn’t been one of immediate rejection but shock. Steven had been swearing at him in his head when Marc revealed his little dream like that. Something along the lines of him not knowing how to break news to people that he was worse than a cold, emotionless slug. He wonders what you would say to Steven if you’d heard that, whether you would agree, or if it would make you laugh. He’d happily take the short end of the stick if it meant he could make you laugh.

It doesn't cross his mind that you would defend him and claim that he was the sweetest man you'd ever meant, even though you'd warded off Steven's teasing multiple times before.

He must have fallen silent for too long, and at a crucial time, as you abruptly change the conversation topic again, “Remember our first date?” Sometimes it seems like you don’t know that he knows you do it on purpose. Sometimes, like now, there’s a level of understanding between you two as you accommodate him and his peculiar whims and needs beyond what he thinks is reasonable.

Sushi. He’d taken you to a sushi place. Had bought you tulips beforehand because he wasn’t sure if roses would be too much for the restaurant you’d suggested. Marc had checked it out before the date, scoped out the kitchen for any severe health regulation violations, and was pleased when he saw each one was met.

The food there was good, no doubt about it, but there were no white tablecloths and no dim, candle-lit nooks.

It wasn’t exactly first date material. It was jostling, bustling with energy and life. It reminded him of you, though most things usually did.

He felt himself anticipating the date, thinking and rethinking through his lines with Steven, what to say, how to say it, how to kiss your cheek at the end of it and what to say right afterwards, when a sudden stake of fear pierced through his heart, moments before he headed out the door for the flower shop.

Maybe you weren’t being serious about this, were just trying to test the waters, maybe get a free dinner out of it, at the end of the night. The walls had shot up around his heart in minutes, and he stopped the florist from taking out a dozen long-stemmed roses, as he went for the safer option as well, the option that didn’t make him look like a fool at the end when you inevitably reached inside his chest and crushed his heart. Tulips.

“Yeah,” a lot went down that night. For one, waves upon waves of guilt and shame as he got to know you better and realised that you were just as much falling for him as he was for you, and that he should have gone with the roses, just like Steven said. Then the panic, where he thought that you would think that he wasn’t serious about this, that he was just testing the waters and trying to get a lay at the end of the night. “What about it?”

Which was why he got you the roses as well, and didn’t even kiss your cheek good night, barely touched you until five dates in.

“You were so nervous,” there’s a smile in your voice, pained and nervous, but there. Marc doesn’t need to open his eyes to see it. Like that quote you were always mumbling to him. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. “I thought you’d gotten food poisoning or something.”

That was probably why you kept asking him if he was ok, if he was feeling alright. For a brief moment, he ponders telling you the truth, and he does it. “I was nervous,” he swallows and breathes in and out once. “I…I thought you weren’t serious about me-”

“Marc-” you sound shocked, as if three years hadn’t passed since that date, and you hadn’t proven to him, over and over again, that you were in it for the long haul.

He shakes his head, still pressed against yours, “That’s why I got you tulips first, then roses. Wanted you to see. I was serious too. Still am.” You sigh and it sounds like what am I going to do with you Marc? He wants to tell you that all you have to do is keep him forever, that whatever way you want him, he’ll give himself over to you. Just as long as he was yours.

On the way back from the restaurant, he hadn’t just bought you roses. There was an art fair set up shop a few streets away, and there he had bought you a poster and a CD too. The poster had caught your eye, the CD was one of Steven’s favourite bands that Marc had passed off as his own. He bought both for you. The poster still hangs on your room wall, and Steven has bought you the rest of the band's discography.

But the roses were from him. Truly from him.

Truth be told, it’d been so long since Marc had listened to music that he wasn’t sure what it was he liked anymore. Even before the military, the majority of his childhood was spent in silence. Whispers and tiptoes around the house. He’s not sure if he can really enjoy music anymore, if his singing earlier had truly been singing or just off-key mumblings that you’d accommodated for his sake.

He just knows that he hears things sometimes. Pretty sounds. On the radio, passing through stores, something that Steven had stuck in his head when he took the body. He hears lots of things, but it’s only the ones that remind him of you that stick with him.

As if by magic, you can tell when he’s done thinking, if that was even possible for him. At the very least, you can distinguish between his trains of thought, when they change tracks and when they stop. Because you pull back and look into his eyes, “You want me to have your baby?” You stop him from getting lost in his own head.

He loves you. That much he knows for sure. He also knows that, “Yes. I do want that.” Steven’s voice rings through his head, and he adds on, “Only if you want it too.”

The corners of your mouth twitch upwards, a light is lit inside your eyes, “You want me to have your baby.” He likes it when you say it like that. Like it’s a fact just waiting to happen.

In reality he’s not so sure about the waiting to happen part. But it doesn’t matter. All he wants at that moment is to record your voice and set it as his ringtone. To take your phone and call himself over and over again, just to hear those golden words repeated back to himself as much as he wanted, without seeming needy and having to ask you over and over again.

“Yes,” his hand comes to rest on top of your stomach, the other at your lower back. “I do want it, if you want that too. Do you want it too?” He knows Steven must have talked to you about it as well. Must have told you that they were both on board with the idea, that Marc had been suffering from baby fever for more than a year.

“We’re going to need a house,” you muse, twirling one of his curls in your finger and letting it go, letting it spring back to where it was. You move on to the next one. Marc has spent hours, with his head on your chest as you went through each and every one of his curls one-by-one. “Maybe we could go back to the States. Could get a transfer to our-”

“No,” that part’s decided. He knows you think it is because of the past, the nightmares that still haunt him. It’s not. Marc knows that if were to go back, with you, with Steven and with a baby, he wouldn’t mind it in the least. But he’s read too many articles, looked at the statistics and mortality rates during childbirth to say, “No. They’ve got shit healthcare.”

It’s said so morbidly that you can’t help but smile at him, the gruff tone of his voice. He knows you’re taking him seriously, that you agree with him as well, spending hours debating the matter with Steven, devouring sociology books about women’s rights alongside him. But he’s not sure you know just how serious he is about this. That he doesn’t need to read the books and watch the interviews.

He wants to be in a country where your health isn’t compromised because of the expenses at the end. He’s already lost too many people to lose you to a fucked up system, a system that can be easily avoided.

There were many reasons he decided to move to England.

“How about the countryside then? Someplace up North?”

“I’ll see if Steven knows any estate agents, we can let out the flat.” Steven cries out in protest, throwing another insult his way. Marc knows, however, that if it were you the one asking him to give up the flat (which frankly, is quite unlikely, given the way you are pouting at him right now), Steve would do it in a heartbeat.

It’s a wonder the three of you manage to get anything done.

Marc can’t stand another minute with you like this. With so little of your skin touching his, when you’re sitting there look as pretty as a picture, wearing the dress he wanted even when you should have done anything but. Softly, he takes you in his arms, folding your legs to your chest like a little ball and places you on his lap. His nose nudges the side of your temple and kisses the spot right afterwards. Nothing can compare to holding you like this. Nothing.

Maybe holding you like this, in bed. Where he wouldn’t have to police his hands to keep them in public-appropriate places.

Just as he’s about to suggest applying a layer of sunscreen on you, a guise for touching the non-public-appropriate curves of your body that he loves, a guise that you’ll see straight through let him do so regardless, you shift a little and look up at him.

“I…Marc, I-maybe if we…” There's a crease forming between your eyebrows and Marc is quick to press it away with the pad of his thumb, sealing it with a kiss a few moments later. You start again, and it’s not much better than before, “I know that…Steven n’all and really, I-I don’t know.”

He smooths his hand over the top of your head, letting it rest at the back. Your stuttering tone is all too familiar, the panic radiation off you hitting him straight in his chest, “What is it, baby? S’just me.”

“Well that’s the problem now, innit?” you mumble, hiding your face in his chest, in what he supposes to be a poor rendition of Steven’s accent. His stomach drops. Maybe this is your subtle way of asking for Steven. He pushes the thought out of his mind, wraps his arm tighter around you, gently patting the back of your head and tucking it underneath his chin.

He’ll let Steven front if that’s what you want, what you ask of him. But until then, he won’t ask for him to show up, will try to see if, like last night, he can handle things on his own. Not as well as Steven, but maybe like him.

By now, Steven would have already gone off at a mile's worth of words a minute. Chattering and making you laugh, distracting you momentarily from the topic at hand until you were able to come back to it. Marc often did that with you. You often did that with Marc.

But there are no jokes that can come to his mind, Steven gone quiet for the first time in decades. He can’t think of anything more important right now than the matter at hand, what it means to him, what it, potentially, might mean to you.

So, he stays quiet. Kisses along your hairline and then the crown of your head, going back to humming his song. It’s a break, a pause in a game of jeopardy where the music plays and you’re given time to think of an answer.

Except this is different, so much more different than the game. If you wanted it, Marc would give you the whole day, months or years to think about your answer. There was no one watching at home, screaming out the correct answer for you. It was just you and him, you and Steven, Steven and Marc. Simple as that, and as complicated as that. Because having a baby wasn’t some random trivia fact about the 29th president.

“I…” he looks down at you, but you’re struggling to look up at him so he looks away. Does what you do for him when his thoughts become too much. “There’s a lot to consider, we can’t jump into buying a house right away.” He murmurs his agreement, and runs his hands up and down your arms. “I need a gynaecologist, at the very least, before anything.”

“You don’t have one?” Concern rips through his body at breakneck speed.

He feels you shake your head against him, “No, never got around to it. Never thought it was necessary either.” He bites down the urge to scold and chastise you, demand why you hadn’t been sooner, why you hadn’t been keeping tabs on your health. “Also gotta see if I’m healthy enough, and then there’s the-” you pause and catch his eye “-Marc this…it’s a lot of work. From all of us.”

Nodding, he searches your face with his eyes and wonders if it’s possible to love someone as much as he does in that moment. “I know. Whatever you need, whatever you want. You tell me, ok? Steven and I’ll sort it out, arrange it for you. We’ll-”

“Marc, I want to wait a little,” he sees you cringe, as your eyes fall back to your lap again and your muscles tense. As if he’d kick you out of his arms, and you’re getting ready before the demand. “I-” you run your hands down your face “-I need to think about this more, need to think about my job and fertility and we need genetic screenings and…I just don’t want you to be disappointed if this falls through.”

It feels like, still, you haven’t answered his question. You’re talking about this like it’s something you want to give to him, like wearing a dress he likes, making him a cup of coffee. Pushing past the lump in his throat, he hopes that he makes this sound as genuine to his feelings as possible. “But, sweetheart, is this something you want?” You’re about to answer, before he hurriedly adds on, “Because if it’s not, even just a little, I don’t want it either, not even a little bit.”

There are tears filling your eyes, and he’s already threatening Steven to show up before he never lets him take control again, when suddenly, all his thoughts come to a screeching stop like they always do when you smile at him like that. “You mean that? Really?”

“Yes, yes,” he swallows, keeping your eyes on him. “I love you. And that’s enough for me.”

“Oh, Marc,” your voice cracks and you lean up, hiding your face in his neck. Steven murmurs a Knew you had it in you in his ear. “Marc, I love you too. And, and-” you pull back, playing with his hair between your fingers, pushing it behind his ear “-I just need time, some more information.”

“Take as long as you need,” he says it so simply because it’s the truth. It passes out his mouth like water. Essential and vital for you, for the love you share with him without qualms or conditions. A love he’s never truly had, “We’ll go to all the doctors’ offices in the country. If you change your mind,” he pauses, chooses his words carefully. He likes this feeling, of having so much to say, but trying to decide what to say, “I’ll still be here. I’ll never go, unless you want me to.”

You shake your head fervently, “Never. Never. I’ll never want that.”

The conversation has taken such a turn for the serious it feels wrong to have it here, on a beach full of people, the sun shining. So, he teases, lifting up a corner of his mouth, “Offer still stands though. You’re free to sack me whenever you want.”

“Spector.”

Your tone is reprimanding, laced with love, and back to the sarcastic quip he knows it to be. There’s much more to be talked about, he knows that if anything. Steven needs to sit down with you seriously as well.

The house up North should be the last thing on his mind, but he hopes blindly that there’ll be a skylight, so you can see the rain falling at night, that there's a yard big enough for a puppy, an empty wall exactly the size of the fish tank.

But, for now, he’s promised his girl a day at the beach, and he’ll give it to her, if it’s the last thing he does.

So, he stands up with you, smothering sunscreen all over your face and helps you into the wetsuits and swimming caps. He’d seen the way you’d been eyeing the water, when Steven had been talking with you, he knew what was on your mind.

Your hand in his is a familiar, comforting weight as the two of you run along towards the edge of the water, not stopping until you’re waist deep.

There, breathless from the cold and the run, Marc turns to you and kisses you hard, the way you like it. Reminding you of his promise to fuck you good tonight, with a condom.

“Is it too much to dream,” you sing softly, still breaths away from his mouth. “That we can forever be, rare hearts that never disagree.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, and he only kisses you again, hoping that you end up being so breathless that you can’t manage to say things that make his heart go haywire and all the blood in his body to rush to his face.

But you do it again, when you pull back, and say, another wave threatening to tear the two of you apart, “Marc, Marc, you’re pretty. So pretty, it makes my heart hurt sometimes.”

“Well,” a smirk forms and he cups the sides of your face. “How can I help with the pain?”

This time, you lean up and kiss him. You kiss him and you breathless. He’s happy to stay like this forever, even if his feet are already going numb from the cold water.

He would have stayed like that, kissed you until the sun went down if Steven hadn’t interrupted. Marc frowns, grumbling something underneath his breath and subsequently rolling his eyes. A wave crashes into the two of you, but his grip on you is strong.

“What is it?” you grin up at him. He looks good in the sun, droplets of water running down his nose and neck. “Steven jealous?”

He shoots you a look that sends you into a fit of giggles, “Same shit, different day.” He thinks you’re glowing, he wants to cover up the sun because there’s too much light in the world, that people will surely get blinded. There’s nothing you can ask of him at that moment that he won’t tear apart the world to give to you.

It scares him a little that you seem so oblivious to the fact, as if it were reversed.

Marc can’t imagine asking anything of you.

Just your love.

You take his hand in yours and wade back to the shallower bits, where the water laps at your ankles, occasionally at your calves with a stronger wave. It’s obvious what you’re doing, what’s happening and Marc complies accordingly. He turns you around and presses your body into his, warmth radiating into you from both inside and out.

“Hi again, love.”

You smile and close your eyes.

You’re not sure who kisses you. But you know things are going to be ok.

And that you love them and their rare hearts.

Part 3 here!

Thanks so much for reading and a special thanks to everyone who interacted and commented on the original post. I saw each and every one of your comments and they warmed my heart!

If you liked this please consider leaving me some feedback, I obsess over it constantly!

Part Two Tags: @elliaze, @whats-belay

#marc spector #Marc Spector the man that you are #marc spector fluff #marc spector fic

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