i was just a kid ; marc spector.
track one of BROKEN MACHINE.
pairing ; marc spector x vigilante!gn!reader
synopsis ; khonshu wanted you dead. marc just wanted you.
words ; 6.6k
themes ; action, mild angst/fluff, vigilante au, thief au
warnings / includes ; blood/injury, cursing, mentions of human trafficking/sexual assault but not at all graphic, marc is basically chasing after reader for half the fic, we're traveling the world in this fic baby !!! khonshu being Annoying, reader doesn't know marc has DID and thinks he's crazy, a steven cameo !! and one (1) mention of spider-man and daredevil <3
main masterlist.
NEW DELHI, INDIA.
The street market was crowded, bustling with chatty tourists, loud salesmen, and traveling vendors. The air was heavy with the sweet, saccharine smell of fresh mangoes, intertwined with the faintest trace of turmeric, ginger and garam masala from other stalls you hurriedly passed by. You would’ve given anything to stop and try some of the food, if not for the terrifying white-suited fucker hunting you down.
The bleeding cut on your cheek he’d given you from when he threw his crescent-shaped boomerang in your direction throbbed. You’d barely been able to duck away in time. At least here, in the busy street, he couldn’t risk hurting anyone else by striking you long-range.
At least, you hoped so. You weren’t entirely sure how far this bastard was willing to go to get you. Sure, you’d made a lot of enemies in the past, but, to your recollection, you’d never met any moon-caped supers keen on taking your life before.
You were quick to duck through the tight-knit throng, panic setting in when you realized the market was thinning away—you were near the end of the street, and you no longer had the advantage of cover on your side.
With agile steps, you sprinted into an alleyway, glancing up the side of an apartment.
Then, you began to climb. You scaled the small grooves in the bricks, expertly balancing your weight just right so you wouldn’t fall. You’d done this a million times before, with much smoother surfaces to climb—after all, that was the bare minimum required of a thief.
You hauled yourself onto the rooftop, laying low so he wouldn’t be able to spot you from ground level.
Only—he wasn’t on ground level.
A shadow loomed over you just as you crouched by the rusted air conditioning unit, and you had but a millisecond to roll out of the way before his foot came crashing clean through the metal.
Well, fuck me, he can fly, you wryly thought.
“Glide!” the man behind the mask gruffed as he grabbed your arm and shoved you against the crumpled AC unit, the searing hot metal digging painfully into your skin. “I glide, I don’t fly!”
“I said that out loud?” you panted with a hoarse chuckle, before quickly twisting and kicking his knee, brandishing a sharp dagger from the utility belt loosely secured around your hips. Up close, his suit appeared to be fashioned from a multitude of bandages, not unlike the cheap mummies from old nineties halloween movies. “Sorry, would it be weird for me to ask why a toilet paper cosplayer is trying to murder me?”
The man offered you no response, only diving forward and landing a good punch to one side of your jaw, which made your vision go blurry with disorientation for a moment.
There was no way you could best him with strength—you needed to get away from him.
With quick, nimble fingers, you pulled two smoke bombs from your belt and threw them onto the ground. Large plumes of ashen white immediately ate up the space between you, and he was left blinded for a couple of seconds. You tugged a grenade out a moment later, pulling out the pin with your teeth before tossing it in his general direction and throwing yourself off the opposite side of the building, where you’d spotted a plastic-woven tarp over one of the stalls by the edge of the market.
You’d crashed straight through their booth, fruits and drinks spilling all over the street’s asphalt. The vendors started cussing at you in a language that was foreign to your ears, but you knew they were saying foul things nonetheless. With a groan, you pushed yourself up, ignoring the searing pain that ran down your leg and began running back into the crowd.
The explosion on the building had blown Marc back several meters, and he cursed beneath his breath as he pushed himself back up. Just as he was about to set back off to track you down, Khonshu’s bellowing voice made him halt in his motions.
“Let them go,” the God rumbled. There was an undertone of mild disappointment that laid stagnant beneath his voice, as if he’d just lost a game rather than a target. “We have more pressing matters at hand. Ammit’s followers are stealing more souls in Cuba.”
Marc’s brow furrowed. “Let them go? You want me to go to Cuba? That’s halfway across the world! I can finish the job, they can’t have gotten too far—”
“We have more pressing matters,” he repeated himself, this time with an edge to his voice. A headache pulsed angrily through Marc’s temple.
“Why’d you want them dead so bad? This target—that person, were they a follower of Ammit? Huh?”
Much to his frustration, Khonshu ignored him completely, merely brushing past his avatar. “Go to Havana,” the bird-skull rumbled over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”
And with that, he disappeared.
ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN.
A final stream of smoke fell from Elena’s lips as she pulled the cigarette away, dropping it into the floor to stub with her boot. She fixed you with a neutral expression as you made your way to her, though the unmistakable affection in her molten brown eyes gave her away.
“Took you long enough,” she said, glancing at the large black cloak you were wearing. Her demeanor gradually shifted into one of a more somber variety. “Verdict’s been decided. The court decided not to charge—all those police that beat my friends to death… they’re walking away free of consequence. The government’s gone to shit. Everything is more expensive now—riots are breaking out over fuel prices, which means more people are getting killed. Nobody is willing to help anymore.”
You nodded grimly. “What can I do?”
There was a dark glimmer to her eyes as she squared her jaw. “You’re going to help me burn down government buildings. I don’t know how many, but… as many as it takes for them to change.”
A hint of a grin graced your lips as you regarded your past-lover with a nostalgic kind of fondness. “It’s the first time I see you in years and you’re already throwing me headfirst into war.”
She offered you a shrug and a wry smile. “Don’t kid yourself. You live for this kind of shit.”
“Yeah, I guess I do,” you hummed distantly. “Where do we start?”
It was pandemonium.
Everybody was yelling—the protestors, the police, the civilians watching from the sides, the sparse firemen as they tried to put out the massive, roaring flames that were greedily swallowing the government building in its entirety. You had to admit, you were rather proud of your handiwork—absentmindedly wondering if Elena would be happy with it, as well.
Before you could dwell on it any longer, a foreign hand tightly seized around your wrist and began to drag you back away from the crowd. Your gaze wildly swiveled around in confusion to the man yanking you along, noting his heavy-set furrowed brows and his frustrated scowl. With as much strength as you could muster, you dug your heels into the ground and halted his motion, pulling against him with all your might. He didn’t relent, only staring you down with dark eyes that held the warbling reflections of the fire you set behind you.
“Who the fuck are you?!” you barked, starting to get more frantic as you fruitlessly attempted to get him to let go of you.
And when he spoke, it finally dawned on you.
Well, fuck me. It’s that bitch that chased me down in New Delhi. Wonder why he isn’t wearing his super suit… probably not to attract attention like last time. The news was all over him.
“You’re just getting more people killed,” he husked, clearly talking about the fire you’d caused, before brandishing a dark karambit knife, one that you swore gave you a cut just by looking at it. “No wonder he wants you dead.”
Fear wove down your spinal column when the blade poked your lower stomach in warning. “I’m sending a message,” you growled in reply, lips curled over your teeth in a snarl as you bristled. “And what about you? You’re gonna fix the problem by killing me? I don’t even know you! Some hero you are—those people protesting out there? They’re better than you will ever be.”
For a moment, his pupils darted back to the rioting crowd, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his features, and you used the short-lived distraction to your advantage. You expertly kicked the knife out of his hand and landed a quick blow square in the center of his face, feeling his nose break beneath your knuckles.
Not wanting to push your luck—you remembered how fast he was during your last encounter—you gave him one final shove, sending him sprawling into a trash can with a groan and a muffled curse.
By the time he forced himself back onto his feet a second later, you’d already disappeared into the shadows.
Fuck. Khonshu was gonna kill him.
PODGORICA, MONTENEGRO.
Marc still wasn’t sure why Khonshu wanted you dead so badly. Then again, he wasn’t sure about anything when it came to Khonshu.
But he knew one thing for certain—if Marc truly wanted you dead, then you would’ve been six feet under weeks ago. Which meant… he wasn’t actively trying to kill you because he didn’t actually want you dead. All the others that he’d killed for Khonshu felt like they’d deserved it—rapists, abusers, pedophiles… and though Marc didn’t know you very well, he knew you weren’t anything like the people he’d killed before.
Marc didn’t know what he was doing.
Jaw clenched, he pulled the cap lower down his face, shoving his fists into the pockets of his jeans. He followed not too far behind you, silent as a wraith, watching as you merrily strode down the streets of Podgorica.
Finally, when you stopped by a little coffee truck to order an iced latte, Marc stepped forward to stand beside you.
For the first minute, you idly tapped away on your phone, smiling down at the screen briefly before pocketing the device. You glanced at him, thinking nothing of the person beside you, assuming they were just another civilian—
Then you froze.
You knew that face.
After all, you’d broken that very same nose less than a week ago. Strange, it looked just fine now.
Immediately, you hunkered down into a defensive position, backing away from him with quick steps. Then, you ran, sprinting away so quickly that Marc could’ve sworn a trail of dust kicked up beneath your feet.
The man in the coffee truck incredulously yelled out after you, followed by a string of what Marc could only assume was a creative litany of Montenegrin profanity.
Dropping a few shillings onto the truck’s counter, Marc grabbed your coffee and ran after you, shocked at how far you’d managed to get in such a short amount of time.
There was no denying that you were a fast runner—but as the old tale went, the quick hare would always get overly confident. You slowed down to a moderate jog when you glanced behind you, Marc nowhere in sight. With a relieved sigh, you turned the corner and slumped against a building, wiping the sweat from your brow with the back of your hand.
Damn, you’d kill for that iced coffee right about now.
As if on cue, Marc rounded the corner, catching you by surprise. You were just ready to turn tail and run away again, but his hand shot out and held onto your wrist, not unlike he did in Astana.
You spewed out a myriad of curses, ranging from calling him an ‘insufferable cucumber-dicked motherfucker’ to ‘smooth-brained, butt-faced swine’, wildly trying to get him to let go of you. If you weren’t violently bucking against him with all the grace of a panicked mare, he would’ve laughed at the creativity of your insults.
“Stop, I just want to talk!” exclaimed Marc, dodging when you pushed yourself forward to try and wrap your hands around his throat.
“Last two times I saw you, you tried to kill me!” you breathlessly spat. “Sorry if I don’t quite trust you now!”
“I’m unarmed,” he gritted out, stepping back slightly to allow you to scan your gaze over him. Though you didn’t want to admit it, you knew that if Marc really wanted to kill you, you would’ve been dead long ago. “I just want to ask you a couple things. And look—I brought your coffee!”
A low hiss fell from your lips. “I’m not answering jack shit.”
With that, you lunged forward and shoved him hard—so hard that he stumbled into the jagged brick wall behind him with an oomf. The iced latte sloshed right out of its cup and spilled all over his chest. His head struck painfully against the stone and his vision went blurry for a moment, expression faltering.
You stepped away, watching him with cautious, narrowed eyes.
After a long, pregnant pause, the man blinked in a dazed fashion, seeming confused.
“What? Where am I? What’s going on?” he said, accent suddenly… British. He fixed you with a genuinely miffed gaze, appearing slightly frightened at your withering glower.
You didn’t stay to answer his question.
As you were turning on your heel to run away, you faintly heard him mutter to himself, “Where the bloody hell am I?”
Crazy bastard.
VALENCIA, SPAIN.
Your knuckles were split. Blood dribbled down your fist, a mixture of yours and the man whose face you were caving in.
One of your hands was bunched into the collar of his shirt, holding him down as you rained punches on him. The sickening sound of his bones giving way with your strikes didn’t deter you, and you only snarled and hit him again as he blubbered out prayers in Spanish. Blood-flecked spittle dripped from his busted lips.
“Who are you praying to?” you hissed, releasing his collar in favor of wrapping your hand over his throat, squeezing tight. The dull green of his eyes flashed with panic, legs flailing weakly. “The gods will not listen to the likes of you—I’ll make sure of it.”
A strangled wail erupted from him.
And just as you were about to land another punch, you found yourself being shoved away from the man, and promptly lifted off the floor with the scruff of your shirt collar, shoving you against a wall. You began kicking and twisting blindly, cursing furiously when you saw the man you were beating up scurry onto his feet and haggardly sprint away.
Your struggling was of no avail, and you weren’t at all surprised to see the same person that’s been trying to track you down for months now.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snarled, brows heavily furrowed and dark eyes stormy with anger. “You were about to kill that guy!”
“He deserves it,” you bit out, glaring back at him with just as much intensity. “The fucker’s been stalking a friend of mine and sexually assaulted her daughter.”
There was a beat of silence. Marc’s cross expression seemed to drain away, but he still bore a stern face as he slowly let you go. You slid down the wall and got back onto your feet with a wince.
“Why have you been following me?” you huffed, dusting off your pants. “You think I don’t know that if you really wanted to kill me, I would be dead by now?”
Marc squared his jaw and leveled his gaze on you. “Someone… close to me wants you dead. I want to know why first—he won’t tell me.”
“Sounds like you shouldn't be all that close to him, then,” you snorted derisively.
“Not for a lack of trying,” the man dryly replied.
With a scoff, you stepped forward and wiped your bloody knuckles onto his shirt, leaving a damp trail of darkening crimson. “There’s way too many reasons a person would want me dead,” you whispered, one hand patting his chest. The other trailed down, down, down…
To the high-rise potted plant beside you. You grabbed a fistful of dirt.
“See, he’s not exactly what you’d call a person—”
Before Marc could finish his sentence, you chucked the dirt straight into his face. He inhaled some of the soil and doubled over, pounding on his chest as he coughed it out. With a growl, he frustratedly swiped the remaining flecks of dirt out of his eyes, blearily looking back up. And, to none of his surprise but much of his dismay, you were already gone.
OSLO, NORWAY.
“Why aren’t they dead yet, Marc?” grumbled Khonshu in that grating, gravely tone of his. Even though the God had no eyes, Marc could still feel his stare burning straight through him.
With a frown, Marc was quick to respond, “Because you haven’t told me why yet.”
“You’ve never needed a reason before—always blindly following my orders,” the bird-skull crooned. “What makes them so different?”
There was a bitter taste to the back of Marc’s throat. What made you so different?
“Because I don’t know if they deserve it, alright?” he retorted, crossing his arms to glare up at the tall figure. “You can’t just expect me to kill everyone who mildly inconveniences you.”
Harrumphing, Khonshu snapped back, “They are naught but an inconvenience—they are a disruption to the very balance of nature. Y/N has taken justice into their own hands, and that is a very dangerous thing for a simple mortal to do.”
Marc cast his gaze away in frustration, pacing back and forth. “But that’s exactly what you make me do.”
“Yes, because you are my avatar,” deadpanned the God. “And Y/N is not. Though, they might as well be because you are being a fool.”
He could feel one of his eyes twitch. There wasn’t ever a conversation Marc could remember where Khonshu didn’t insult him.
“They’re doing what they think is right,” defended Marc. “They’re not hurting people just for the sake of it.”
“That is not for them to decide!” bellowed the God, which made him step back just a bit. “They have done terrible, unimaginable things in the past—though mistakes some may be—and they will continue to make them. Take a look for yourself.” With that, Khonshu swept his arm out, gesturing to the large bank across the street, large windows giving him a clear view of what was going on inside.
His heart dropped down to his stomach when he saw you.
You were wearing a mask that covered the entirety of your features, except for your eyes and your mouth. The rest of your body was shrouded with simple, dark clothing, suitable for running.
And, most notably, you had a gun in your hand, pointing straight at the trembling woman working behind the counter. Your mouth was moving and you gestured with lax, calm movements, despite the explicit terror written across the woman’s face.
Marc’s brow furrowed. Damn it.
He watched as you snatched the bag of money the woman slowly slid over, and hightailed out of the bank with the gun still gripped tightly in your hand. You ran the opposite way, before disappearing down another block. Glancing over at Khonshu, only to see that he was nowhere in sight, Marc huffed out a sigh and began sprinting after you.
One downside of Oslo was that their buildings weren’t exactly the easiest to climb—which meant that you had to stick to the ground and trust your speed.
Marc wasn’t as fast as you without his suit, that was for certain. But with his suit—he could glide.
And so that’s how the white-caped figure dropped straight down in front of you out of seemingly nowhere, which elicited a shriek of surprise from you, nearly dropping the bag out of shock. You had pulled your mask off long ago, shoving it into the knapsack shrugged over your shoulders, along with the gun.
This clearly wasn’t your first time doing this.
“You,” was what you incredulously breathed out, eyes wide. “You must be obsessed with me or something.”
Not in the mood to play around, Marc growled out, “Why are you doing this? Give the money back. It’s not yours.”
“Who said it was for me?” you countered, upper lip curled in contempt. You tilted your head at him, eyeing his suit with interest, before returning back to your scathing disposition. “Not that it’s any of your business, but this money’s for the small orphanage a couple miles from here. They’re barely getting by with the money the government gives them. I have a kid there I know.”
With bated breath, Marc willed the suit away, leaving him in a dark sweatshirt and a pair of woolen pants. He eyed you suspiciously, still not too sure if he should trust you.
Sensing this, you rolled your eyes and unzipped your bag. “If you don’t believe me—check my gun. It’s blank.” You fished out the small weapon and handed it over to him with the end pointed towards you so he wouldn’t think you were going to shoot him. “No bullets.”
Marc didn’t need to check it—by now he knew you were telling the truth. But he looked into the chamber anyway, finding it void of any ammunition.
“Can I go now? We both know you’re not going to kill me. The cops will be looking,” you said, voice a bit more gentle than before. He noticed that the anger on your face had melted away, leaving only urgency and another tumultuous emotion that he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
When he offered you no response, finally relenting, you nodded once to him, a glimmer of gratitude behind your irises. And with that, you began running again, effortlessly disappearing into the shadows.
“Fool,” thundered a rumbling growl from somewhere above him. Marc looked up, but the bird-skulled God was nowhere to be found.
COLUMBUS, OHIO.
Damn. Nothing hit harder than classic, greasy, American cheeseburgers with a side of curly fries and a milkshake. You shifted eagerly on the sticky red leather of the booths, shooting the waitress who’d handed you your food a flirtatious smirk and a ten dollar bill, which she took with an equally salacious wink.
You grinned down at your food before taking the first bite into the burger, a muffled noise of content falling from your throat.
“Am I interrupting something?” said a frustratingly familiar voice, the man sliding into the seat across from you. “It sounds like you were just about to have the greatest sex of your life—with a cheeseburger.”
You pointedly glared at him, though it lacked any true heat. After about a dozen deliberately slow chews, you finally swallowed down the food. Marc looked like he wanted to say something else, but you merely held up a finger, slurping on the paper straw of your milkshake. He pursed his lips with a mildly aggrieved look.
Finally, you tilted your head at him.
“Is there something you want from me?” you asked him casually, reaching to the end of the table to grab a napkin and wipe at the corner of your lips. “Because I’m not in the drug business anymore, if that’s what you’re looking for. Or is it something else, hm?”
It seemed that Marc hadn’t completely thought this through. Sure, he’d planned out what he roughly wanted to say to you, but now that you were right in front of him, he found his tongue running dry. He fumbled for words, fists clenching and unclenching by his knees.
“I don’t want to kill you. Or hurt you at all, for that matter.”
You scoffed, remembering the instances in which he’d hurt you plenty.
“I just… I want to know your side of the story. I want to know why you do what you do,” he said, a bit quieter.
For a moment, Marc thought you’d just tell him to piss off. But there was a gradual shift to your features, going from obvious irritation to gentle curiosity.
“Alright. I’ll cut you a deal,” you said, popping a curly fry into your mouth. “I tell you about my tragic backstory, and you tell me all about this… thing that’s been wanting to kill me. And before I start—I’m gonna need your name. I can’t keep mentally cataloging you as the toilet paper man.”
And for the first time since you met him all those months ago—Marc laughed. It was deep and gratingly genuine, coming from the very bottom of his chest.
“Well, first of all, it’s not toilet paper. It’s the ceremonial armor of Khonshu’s temple. And second, it’s Marc. Marc Spector.”
“Ceremonial armor of whose what now?” you balked.
A hint of a smile graced the corner of Marc’s lips. “Khonshu—Egyptian God of the moon. I’m his avatar. He’s the one that wanted me to kill you. He called you a disruption to nature—said that you were wrongfully taking justice into your own hands.” As he spoke, the smile began to wane away, and he regarded you in a more serious light. “I want to know why he thinks that.”
You stared down at your plate of fries, stunned. An Egyptian God wanted you dead? You knew you pissed people off, but Gods too?
“And if you don’t like what you hear?” you quietly asked, lifting your gaze to meet his. “Will you drag me out of the diner and strangle me to death?”
Though you could tell he didn’t like saying it, Marc’s face was set in stone when he leveled with you. “I’ll give you a head’s start.”
Another beat of silence. You picked up another fry and popped it into your mouth. The plate slid across the table as you nudged it towards him.
“Alright, Marc. Settle in, have some fries, order a milkshake—it’s a long story.”
And you told him everything. You told him about your childhood—rumbling stomachs, nimble thieving hands, falling off of buildings when running away from cops. You told him about your teenage years—pulling off heists, brokering deals with gangs, breaking nearly every bone in your body being reckless. You told him about your early adult years—falling in love with Elena, getting more comfortable as a vigilante, as you liked to call yourself, meeting other superheroes and helping out on occasion. Marc seemed to recognize Spider-Man and Daredevil’s names when you mentioned them in passing, his eyebrows arching up closer to his hairline.
You told him that you now spend your days traveling around the globe helping people.
By the time you were done spilling your entire life story, your fries and burger were cleanly polished off.
Marc was silent for a long time, as if unsure what to say.
“I was in love once, too,” he said in a tentative manner, gaze trained on the table. “Her name was Layla.”
“Oh, yeah?” you curiously said, sipping on the last frothy remnants of your milkshake at the bottom of the glass. “And how’d that work out for you?”
There was a sad glint to his eyes. “Not so good. We’re divorced now.” He cleared his throat before you could press him about it. “What happened with you and Elena?”
It was now your turn to stare out the window in a despondent manner. “Same as you. Except we were never married. My lifestyle was… too much for her.”
Marc nodded in understanding. “Yeah, me too.”
The two of you stared at the glossy table in silence.
“You still in love with her?”
You lifted your gaze to meet his. “I love her, yeah—I always will. I’m just not in love with her anymore.”
The man across from you hummed. There was a newfound understanding between you two—unspoken, but the both of you could feel it.
“Do you still love Layla?”
A ghost of a smile graced his features, but it was gone just as quickly as it came. “Not in the same way I used to. But I do.”
With a final slurp of your straw, your drink glass was emptied. “Seems like we’re a lot more similar than first meets the eye, huh?”
Marc fixed you with a loose, awkward smile. Without another word, he pulled the bill of his cap lower down his face, and slid out of the booth. It seemed that he wasn’t going to be strangling you tonight.
You didn’t look back when he walked out of the diner, the bell hooked by the doortop tolling with his departure.
YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA.
The bird skull was saying something. His bony beak was moving. You could feel the vibrations of his thundering voice beneath your feet. And yet—you had no fucking clue what he was talking about.
You blinked up at the God with wide eyes.
“Could you repeat that?” you winced out, having not picked up a single word Khonshu had said in the past three minutes. The God grumbled, and somehow glared at you despite having no eyes within his bony skull. Beside you, Marc let out a muffled snort.
“You insolent buffoon,” the bony figure snarled. “Have you not been listening?”
Despite the bristling God in front of you, you found the entire situation to be amusing. “Sorry, it’s just… your head’s really big. It’s kinda distracting. Just paraphrase yourself—I don’t need all the terms and conditions.”
Marc’s shoulders shook with silent laughter, but he immediately sobered up when Khonshu rounded his pointed beak to him, back straightening.
“This is a gravely serious matter—!”
“You know what else is serious?” you snapped, pulling your thick woolen coat closer to your quivering body. “Catching hypothermia! Did you really have to pick Russia of all places? We couldn’t have met on a warm beach in the Caribbeans, or something?”
If Khonshu had eyelids, you were sure they would’ve been twitching with repressed agitation by now.
A deep baritone of a sigh fell from the lanky God. He leaned his weight against his crescent-tipped staff, as if willing his own patience to hold steadfast.
“I said—” he started again, watching you cautiously, “—that I will be letting go of your past sins. But only because my avatar is so keen on you, and because you show a consistent effort to rid the world of evil. However, if you slip up so much as once, I will personally see that to an unkind descent into the afterlife. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal!” you harrumphed, tucking your frigid nose into the collar of your fur coat. “And I did those things to people who deserved it—which is exactly the same as what you do, you bony hypocrite! Can we go inside now?”
The God grumbled something unintelligible, though you suspected it had something to do with your impertinence, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“You’ll get used to him,” assured Marc, placing a hand on your back to lead you back inside. “He doesn’t get any better but—you’ll get used to it.”
“That’s reassuring,” you dryly responded, teeth beginning to chatter. As soon as the two of you started to walk back to the small little city hotel, you elbowed his side with a playful grin. “So… you’re keen on me, huh?”
Marc gave you an unimpressed look. Snowflakes danced with the wind and landed in his neatly-combed curls. “Khonshu had to believe that I liked you—the last thing he’d want is a sloppy, grieving avatar.”
“Mmh, I don’t know…” you said, tapping your finger against your chin in thought. “He’d probably like that, considering he’s one manipulative son of a bitch. Maybe he just secretly likes me and wants to keep me around.”
“Yeah,” snorted Marc. He halted in his tracks, forcing down a smile. “That, or I blackmailed him.”
Your eyes widened, frost clinging to your lashes and brows. “You blackmailed an Egyptian God?”
“Let’s just say that he’s had a sticky romance with the Egyptian Goddess of love—ironically, she’s one of the few beings that he’s genuinely terrified of. I threatened to get in contact with her avatar if he didn’t absolve you.”
You kicked at a small build-up of snow by the sidewalk, an excited gleam to your irises. “Crazy how even the Gods have petty dating drama to gossip about,” you commented, turning to him. His nose was tinted a faint shade of red from the cold, bits of white frost freckling his hair and his clothes. “Thanks for not killing me, by the way,” you added as an afterthought, fixing him with a warm smile.
“Just keep out of trouble,” he gently reminded, mirroring your soft grin. The two of you were now standing in front of your dingy little motel—and Marc apparently had something to attend to halfway across the world in Cuba.
So this was goodbye.
For now, at least.
Without thinking, you leaned forward to press your cold lips against the warmth of his cheek, the tip of your nose grazing his cheekbone as you laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Thanks,” you whispered when you pulled away slightly, breath misting into an opaque fog. Marc was regarding you with an expression that bordered on fondness, which was certainly a new look that you found yourself craving for more. “I haven’t really properly talked to anybody in ages so… this was nice. Goodbye, Marc.”
With that, you turned on your heel and headed into the hotel, grateful for the blast of warmth from the overhead heater, though you could still feel Marc’s burning stare bore holes into your back, even as you turned the corner and disappeared from his sight.
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA.
Blood, everywhere.
Gunshots in the distance.
Snarling men rounding the corner—human traffickers.
Your dagger glinting beneath the hot Ethiopian sun.
A man screaming as you sliced his throat.
Gurgling.
Red on your hands. On your clothes. On your shoes.
Two successive punches—one to your stomach, and the other to your face.
Pain blooming beneath your skin.
A fist around your throat.
Squeezing.
Choking.
Dark spots dancing about your vision.
Your nails clawing into their eyes.
Air.
Gasping for breath.
Wheezing.
You desperately parried away another assailant’s knife.
A song of steel against steel.
More gunshots flying every which way.
You dove behind large metal crates.
Sand in your shoes.
Copper on your tongue.
Crashing. Yelling. Cursing.
Your fingers flexing around the hilt of your dagger.
Bated breath.
You looked around the crate.
Marc fucking Spector.
A ghost of a smile on your lips.
Your name being called out—surprise in his tone.
“Fancy seeing you here!” you shouted.
Marc’s fist curled into one of the traffickers’ collars.
“It’s been a while!” came his mildly amused reply.
A grunt. A punch. A groan of pain.
His white cape fluttered with the wind.
“You down for a burger or something later?”
You spoke calmly, as if you weren’t currently strangling someone with a long power cord.
The man fell limp in your hold.
“Sure—I could go for a burger,” he called out,
Blood trickled down your nose and grazed your lip.
You wiped it away with the back of your hand.
The last of the traffickers was struck down with Marc’s crescent boomerang.
A breath of relief.
Drenched in blood (most of which was not yours), you made your way to Marc.
“You clean up nice,” he joked.
A roll of your eyes.
“Oh, shucks, Marc,” you simpered with a mischievous grin, dragging a bloody hand down his face once he retracted his mask.
He grimaced in disgust, but didn’t push you away.
A laugh fell from your throat, hoarse and echoing.
You looped your aching, bleeding arms with his.
“Let’s go get that burger.”
LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND.
“Ow—ugh, Marc, could you go any faster?” you barked through the dirty cloth wedged between your teeth, glaring up at him with watering eyes. You’d endured pain far worse than this, sure, but Marc was taking twice as long stitching you up than when you’d do it yourself. Though, admittedly, whenever you had to patch yourself up, it was a rather shoddy job and often left a much larger, gnarled scar than it would’ve, had you properly taken care of it.
The man above you shook his head, dark curls hanging loosely over his forehead. “Stop moving and maybe it’ll hurt less,” he replied, the tip of his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth as he worked on your stitches. “You know, just because we work together now and I heal quickly doesn’t mean you do, too.”
With a grimace, you tore the cloth from your mouth, chucking it somewhere across the small motel room to freely speak to him. “It was just a mistake,” you replied, nearly doubling over with a strained groan when he punctured the skin of your abdomen with a small needle, where the deep gash resided, one last time. “I timed myself wrong. Happens sometimes.”
Marc let his eyes roam over your exposed skin, brows divoting ever so slightly upon seeing the multiple other scars littering your body. They were memories of your past, and you weren’t ashamed of them.
“Doesn’t look like it only happens sometimes,” he murmured, tying off his sutures and cleaning off the last bits of flaking, dried blood on your stomach before binding the open wound with thin bandages.
“You worried about me?”
Marc didn’t spare you a response. He busied himself by putting away the medkit and tossing the discarded, bloodied clothes into the bathroom sink. When he came back to sit on the bed beside you, you had gingerly moved positions so that you were propped up against the creaking bed’s headboard.
“How are you feeling?”
“Shitty,” you whispered. “England fucking stinks.”
Marc chuckled, a small smile curling his lips upwards, though you noticed that it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
The two of you sat in silence for a while.
“Thanks for stitching me up,” you told him.
“Thanks for not dying on me,” he replied. His hand sought yours and your fingers laced with his. “I know we’ve only been working together for a month by now, but I’m starting to really like you.”
With one last painful shift, you moved so that your faces were only inches away. You paused when your lips were just a hairsbreadth from his, giving him time to yank you away if need be.
But he didn’t.
His lips met yours with a tender sort of sadness, pouring months of frustration and anger into the embrace. A warm hand came up to cradle the back of your head, angling you closer, wary of your newly-stitched wound.
Forehead resting against his, you gently pulled away, finding solace in the fact that he chased after your lips just a bit, before cracking his dark eyes open.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he mumbled, gaze darting back down to your parted mouth.
“Okay,” came your broken reply.
And despite it all, he threw all caution to the wind and kissed you again. Again, and again, and again—far into the night, until the two of you passed out on the stained sheets of the motel bed, limbs intertwined and your nose pressed against his throat, where you could hear the soft thrumming of his heartbeat.
Unbeknownst to the two of you, Khonshu was hovering on the rooftop, finding himself rather glad that his avatar had finally found someone he could trust—even if that someone was the very bane of his existence.
“I need a new avatar,” the God harrumphed to nobody but himself, knowing full and well that he wasn’t letting go of Marc Spector and his… counterparts any time soon.
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