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Warnings: depression, self deprecation, trauma, self esteem issues, repression, crying, anxiety, baby distress, angst, Marc is a bad host (DID)
Words: 3k
Rating: T
Summary: You and Marc head home a day early from vacation and get caught at night in the snow, exacerbating the fight that led to the calling short of your one year anniversary.
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This is a continuation of an AU that first appeared in this work!
AU where Marc never left Chicago. He’s twenty-three here and things played out very differently after he left home
AO3 Link
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January 11th, 2011, 4:26am, Chicago, Illinois
“Hey, hon?”
“Mmn?” You blink, glancing over at Marc.
“You alright?”
“Actually. Can you take over, I’m getting spotty over here.”
Your car was crawling along the snow covered highway. Everything just looked gray. It had for hours.
“We’re not going to make it back tonight, are we?”
Marc leaned forward against his belt, peering through the windshield wipers making furious Sisyphean progress against the onslaught of fluffy white clumps covering your car.
“Mmm. Uh-uh. I am exhausted, can you take over or not?”
“I… do I have to?”
Rebekah cries once from the backseat and you pull off the highway and unbuckle.
“I would really like it if you could, please. I’m tired.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Marc gets out and trudges around. You climb over into the passenger seat.
He shuts the door and puts his hands on the wheel, takes them off, puts them back again.
“It’s still in park.” You point.
He looks at it.
The whole car sits, heat off, lights on.
He puts it in reverse.
“Marc do you not know how to drive?”
“No. I just need a second.” He stares down at the pedals.
“You don’t know got to drive.” You knock your head back against the headrest.
So much made so much more sense. How everything’s been arranged to avoid this.
“I don’t know how to drive.” He admits, resting his hands at three and nine. “He usually does that stuff.”
“Okay, get him.”
Marc’s brow knits tighter.
“Or not. Talk to him, then.”
“I’m not gonna talk to him.”
“We don’t have any place to stop tonight.”
You look out through the dark trees. Your reservation was left with a night back there, the one you were having here instead.
“I’m not talking to him.”
“Marc you already ruined this vacation will you stop acting like a damn child!”
You baby cries again, louder, and you unzip your coat, maneuvering around to free her from her blankets and seat and get her into your lap, rubbing her back. She seems to have noticed the lack of heat, and seems much more content buried against you under your coat, up on your chest. After a minute or two of cuddling, she settles.
“Can Steven—”
“Don’t bring Steven into this!” He snaps.
“Can Steven drive, Marc! Jesus, can he drive?”
“No, he says he can’t.”
You scrub your forehead.
“Marc.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you see we’re a little stuck here?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to say anything else?”
“What should I say?”
“You should get him.”
“Other than that.” He says. “I’m not doing that.”
“You should know how to drive, Marc!”
Marc flinches, his grip tightening.
“What?” You say, bouncing your knee.
“I’m afraid… afraid every time you get that voice, I upset you, that you’re going to break up with me.”
“Oh, good God…” you take a deep breath.
“Say it. Call me pathetic. I know how it sounds. I don’t care. It’s what’s real as far as I know and that is all I know. I didn’t choose this, okay?”
“I know Marc. I know.”
“I should have myself together. I should be better. You deserve that. I keep thinking that.”
“You know what I think?” You huff and your breath trails from your mouth in the dim light.
“I think I don’t deserve someone so patient, careful, selfless, and gentle. Who puts his whole heart into everything he does no matter how hard it is. Who stepped up to this. You take such good care of her. You know that? That’s not a guy I’m leaving.” Your working against the aggression, fighting your own frustration.
“You never think you want to?” He sniffs. “You think about– breaking up?”
“Rarely. And I mean rarely.”
During stuff like this.
“But you do.”
“Do you?” You ask.
“Of course. It’s just… it’s not something I would ever do to you. Things would have to be bad. Really bad.”
“You see.”
“Are things not really bad for you?”
Bekah is rooting through your shirts, trying to get to your breast, tapping her finger on it, and you don’t have an answer for him that he won’t refute, so you work on untucking and loosening your clothes.
Marc pulls down and stares at his reflection in the sunshield and shakes his head, flipping it up.
“What is it like an hour or more into town? Are we just staying here?” You say.
“Looks like it.”
“Fine. I didn’t wanna be home yet anyway.”
You finally pull up your inner shirt, get your nursing bra open, and latch your daughter on. She hasn’t breastfed since you picked her up.
Marc watches, detached.
That kid in your arms was the reason you were married at all, this, all this, was him trying to do right.
As scared as he was to have this kid and marry you he was terrified of it all ending.
You being somewhere else, being someone else, raising a kid he didn’t know.
He just wanted this baby. More than anything, he wanted that kid to have both her parents.
His family.
You yawn. “Talk to him, Marc. Please. I know you can.”
He doesn’t answer.
That family sleeps on the side of the road the rest of that morning, till dull sun raises over heavy pines and fills white, a snowglobe left in the window, settled, the stretch of highway untouched, empty except for your secondhand black Honda Odyssey.
Marc’s already woken up when you start to.
“Hey, baby,” he whispers, kissing your temple and the baby at your chilled breast.
“Did you talk?” You rub your eyes.
“Yeah. We talked. I’m sorry I ruined our anniversary. Let’s just go.”
“If you talked can’t he drive?”
“He said no. Let’s just go. Please.”
You sit up, fixing your clothes and passing off the baby so you can clamber around to the backseat and he can get into yours, so you can climb up into the driver’s.
Marc shushes his daughter softly as she adjusts around the switch up, getting her a quick fresh diaper from the bag in the backseat and buttoned back up, sitting up in his lap.
You turn the ignition and it stalls. You curse under your breath and try again. It stalls again.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No shit, really?”
“What?”
You sigh. “Buckle her in. Help me clear the snow.”
“Is that gonna help—”
“You need to learn how to drive, Marc!” You slam your palms against the wheel, shouting in frustration.
“You need to— learn how to talk with each other, you can’t do this!”
Marc opens his mouth then closes it again, nodding.
“What is going on with you?”
“I’m… I’m waiting for you to figure out what a big mistake this was.” Bekah looks up at him with big penny brown eyes. Marc can tell she can tell he’s upset. The way she looks at him.
She’s so big already. Sixteen months old, pulling herself up and starting to throw things.
“What. All this?” You say.
“All this.” He says.
You stare ahead. Your nose is running, more than a little.
“Do you want this to work out?” You ask slowly.
Marc breathes, feeling his throat and chest get tighter.
“Yes.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
“No, don’t lie to my face.”
“I—”
“Don’t sabotage yourself so you can prove to me I shouldn’t have married you. I wanted to!” You try to keep your voice down. “I wanted to marry you!”
“You haven’t been seeing it!? You’ll just work later or get a babysitter to stay up with my bullshit and it’s terrible. I’m terrible for you!”
You want to scream.
“You even consider, Marc, does it go through your head when I tell you I do these things because I want to, I mean that I want to?!”
He doesn’t look at you, and even knowing his thing with eye contact you wish he would tell you he’s listening, that you don’t have to search him for it.
“It’s work, and I wish it was easier, sure, but I signed up for this. You did too. Not just to help me, not just for the baby, but to let me, help you.”
It goes quiet. Really quiet. Bekah sneezes. Once. Twice. Third time she exclaims like it surprised her. She’s tired.
“They’ll be through to clear the roads within a day.” Marc says, wiping her face.
“What’s going on with you and him?” You ask.
“We don’t need him.”
“We do need him! He is the one who can drive, who knows where everything is, pays the bills, writes the grocery lists, knows how to fix the damn car, unless you figure out how to do those things on your own, we need him!”
“You should just marry him then!”
You put the car back in park.
It’s silent, the only sounds your baby fussing, annoyed at all the shouting.
“Marc, I don’t know how this is supposed to work. I don’t think anyone does. I just know that we all need each other. You don’t have to like him. But you need to do what the books say, talk, write notes, I don’t care what! You just can’t fight like this!”
“I wasn’t—” he wasn’t trying to fight. When he told you it was because you needed to know, his system was broken, you didn’t know what was going on. But he didn’t tell you. Steven did, because he couldn’t.
“I wasn’t ready. To be– a dad, because I can’t. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to work with them. I wasn’t ready.”
“I know.” You sigh. You’re getting a sinus headache of some kind.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have married you, maybe I was just being selfish, but I— I wanted to feel like I was doing the right thing, for once.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” You grumble, rubbing between your eyes with cold fingers.
“Frick.” He sniffles, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.
“I like you. Love you, even. I love our baby. That’s… married is what I wanted. I love you more than I love myself.”
“You know, Marc, I think that’s the biggest problem we have.”
He shifts up in his seat, fingers pressed to his upper lip. “I have something I gotta tell you.”
“What?”
“Are you chill or are you gonna freak out about it?”
“I’m chill, Marc! I’m freezing, tell me what it is!”
“I didn’t talk to him.”
You groan hard and try to keep in to your chest.
“Marc, I know—”
“No, I haven’t been talking to him, I haven’t been letting him around at all. I’ve been pushing him down on purpose and lying about it.”
You breathe a sigh.
“Marc, you’re not a native Spanish speaker. You’re high school level. I can tell.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I needed you to tell me. I need you to do that work. Don’t you get that? Yes. Yes, I’m tired, and yes, this has been hard, but I have seen how good you take care of Bekah and how happy we are when things are going well. You could make it so we have more of that.”
You inhale and rub your dry nose, checking the glove compartment for some chapstick or something. Just a bunch of expired coupons, nicotine gum, an extra pair of gloves, a tiny flashlight, backup batteries and a newsboy cap.
“It’s true that I can’t just take care of everything indefinitely.” You click it shut.
“I mean look at where we are. That’s where I need you to put in the work, so we can work.” You say. “You do want to work out, right?”
“Yeah. I want that.”
“Act like it.”
He shuffles his legs to get some feeling back into his toes. It is really cold.
He takes a deep breath.
“He wants to cheat on you.” He says, feeling like he’s falling to pieces with the words, that this is it, him ruining what you put together.
“He– what?” You don’t think you heard right.
“It’s been two years, since the– since that night, how we said we were gonna break it off, that we messed up, th-then the positive pregnancy test, and he hasn’t done anything, since, he hasn’t and I know he hasn’t, I know he wouldn’t, but– but he wants to date.”
“Like…?”
He doesn’t get it, how unaffected you sound.
“Like date, like, go out.” He doesn’t want to spell it.
“Like we do?”
“Mm-hmn.”
You think for a second.
“With me?”
You don’t know if you should bring back up the flirting right now, that kiss.
He looks like he’s about to start crying.
“Are you enabling me?” He says.
“Huh?”
“Is this one of those relationships where the husband can’t do anything and the wife just– she just has to manage; everything.”
You look out across the dashboard.
“I don’t do the laundry.” You say. “I don’t clean, I don’t think I even know where thermostat is. You seriously think you don’t do anything??”
“I mean…”
“Bekah, Marc.” He holds her a little tighter, like you’ll take her back and he isn’t ready for you to yet. She’s practically asleep, curled against his stomach, holding on. It’s the biggest comfort he has right now. That she’s okay. Too tired to care.
“I’m supposed to.” He says, watching her breathing. “That’s not…”
Bekah was his daughter. One he wasn’t going to let stay an ‘accident’. He knew what not to do. What she needed. Sometimes it felt like there was nothing else. That if he was just good enough at this, nothing else mattered.
And then she wouldn’t be there, and he would wonder why the hell you even liked him, how you could put up with it.
“Marc, you’re mentally ill. I know you are, you know you are, we know that going to someone–”
His whole body locks up, for a moment breathing stuffs his head, you don’t fail to notice, but you know addressing it won’t help at all, that he just needs to hear it more so it isn’t like this every time.
“Could make things a lot, lot worse.”
He couldn’t pretend it wasn’t that bad, or that it hadn’t taken years of his life when you brought it up. Getting out of there had been so much most days he didn’t even remember Putnam Medical Facility existed, much less that it did anything to him.
He had forgotten to tell you go out of your way so you wouldn’t pass it on the way out of town. It was in the back of his head the whole trip, what they said, that he belonged there.
“So sure, I’m enabling you. Trying to enable you to participate in this in a way that hurts you and me the least.”
The least. Not none. It would never be none. No matter what he did.
“He was there. All that shit.” Marc said. He couldn’t act like he went through that, either. “We’re only here because of him.”
“Yeah.”
“Am I getting worse?” He says softly.
“You’re not getting worse, baby.” You gently touch his coat arm, rubbing into his shoulder. “You wanna talk about that now?”
“No.” He lets his eyes shut. “I just wanna go home.”
There was so much. All Marc’s life, no one really talked to him about it safely. Everything he said seemed to be used against him. How he felt, lived, tried to cope, when you met him he was in one room shut off from the house of his pain in all these compartments, a place he did and didn’t want out of. And a pregnancy burst down that door, but he still went back there. Still needed it.
“All this is conversations, Marc. We’re gonna do this five hundred thousand more times. Do you want to keep doing this, for every thing, for the rest of our lives?”
“I like talking with you.” He says gently, thinking of all those times you make him feel real, even when that reality is small, and it hurts, it’s enough for the him he knows exists to anyone else.
“I do.” He says.
“I do too.” You say. “So talk to him. Work through this. And we can work on something else tomorrow.”
The snow falls.
That was something he could do. For both of you. Even if he didn’t want to.
“This was supposed to feel good. We made it a whole year. This whole year, with everything, I mean, we were already living together but it really… it changed.”
“Did you think we weren’t going to make it?”
“I did. Until you– until my parents.”
You put your hands behind your neck and pull, stretching.
“Talk to him, Marc.”
“Okay.” He lets out.
He sets Bekah carefully back into you, against your front, zips up his coat, forces the frozen driver’s side door open, and steps out into the cold, knocking some of the snow off when he throws it shut.
You watch him straighten his back and stare down the side mirror with a deep frown on his face. He shouts a little, something about you being his wife, how nothing is ever just his, then he sighs, holds his face in his hands.
You think you might want to intervene until he pulls his head up and cracks the hood of the car. He trails around to the trunk, gets something out, comes back around. He pops the door and turns the ignition, keeping turned from you, focused. You think he jumpstarts it.
You take the time to get sleepy Bekah buckled back in her seat and comfy with a blanket canopy, and you back into the passenger side, sunlight and lack of wind helping some against the temperature.
You hear some shoveling, some Spanish, a few minutes pass, and then he gets back in the car, stomping snow off his boots and tapping it off the scraper.
“Guay de mi, siento.” He gives you a smile and straps himself in.
He shifts the gear, then pushes back in his seat, tugs his glove off, and puts his hand out to you on the center console.
You look at him, then his hand, then take it in your own, palms flat together.
Summary: The second time around, reevaluated, Poe proposes properly. Almost.
Request for persephoneepeone on the archive and sequel to Unproposed
I won’t lie to you. I might like this one a little bit more than the first one. Makes me a little mad that the one that took me over a year to complete maybe isn’t as good as the one I popped out in a week on a whim
AO3 Link
Poe smoothed his fingers over the wide scars covering his stomach. He could feel the grafts, the seams, the difference.
It was a big difference.
I’ll propose at the perfect time on this date. I’ll propose as soon as I can get discharged. I’ll propose right after this round of therapy. And so on.
Recovery became Poe’s life.
It had been so fast, all the ambition, the drive, the energy, hit a wall, shattered, and every time he so much as thought about picking back up he fell harder in this broken slog that just. Took. Time.
His body felt second hand, like he had gotten it back again and forgotten how to use it.
Everything was working, it was just so, so much less than he was used to. He had nothing but gratitude to the trauma team that cut and stitched and wrapped him back to functionality, but if he didn’t know any better, he’d think they put him back wrong.
He was back, though, now. He was. Everything physical.
That was the one thing Poe couldn’t tackle.
He could walk again. All his organ function was above average. None of that was that hard.
Nothing came close to as hard as what he’d been told.
You need to forgive yourself for needing this.
He couldn’t forgive his body for this.
The ejection failing, the engine catching fire, the nose crumpling against the rock, all those things he could forgive. They happened.
But taking the hit, not seeing it coming, pulling up as hard as he could but clearly not nearly hard enough, almost being destroyed, getting burned and crushed, he couldn’t forgive himself for it because he did all that to you.
Every second he was getting surgery or unconscious or having a bad time or going back in you were there, working on top of it all.
Poe wasn’t an emotional irregulated person. He wasn’t out of touch with his feelings. He loved everyone and he let everyone love him and he wasn’t shy about it.
But those times he wasn’t himself, when he was detached and agonized, he didn’t recognize it in himself, he couldn’t, but he saw the after of it in you.
And he hated the way it looked.
He didn’t, he couldn’t ask it if you. Which scared him. He didn’t think before that’s what he was asking. Two words, both ways.
Marry me.
He would be honored to be what you’d been for him but it broke his heart to think he had and was taking it from you. That you freely gave your time, sleep, sanity, to him, because you loved him. Well, it was egocentric for him to think only he could love you that way. Maker willing you would never need him like he needed you, but what was done was done.
He dropped his shirt, then tucked it in.
He stared at the ring on his desk. He had been so sure, so certain, and now most days he couldn’t tell if he even knew you well enough to ask. He felt so much older before, but now it was all he still had his whole life ahead of him, he would be so young to go out like this, now he was fresh and accomplished again, ready to get back out there. And maybe finally complete the first part of one of the biggest decisions he would ever make.
You had already said yes, you had asked him, but that was so long ago Poe didn’t even know if it still meant anything. He knew it did, intellectually, of course, but he had changed. He’d been told injuries like this could change a person a lot. Well, he barely hurt his head, it was really his chest and side that took the whole inside of the chassis. So he was still himself. Just thinking about it, the crash, makes him feel weightless, burning, barely breathing.
He didn’t want to go back there.
He sighed a breath out and plucked up the ring, rolling the wrought metal between his fingers before throwing the chain over his head and slipping it under his shirt.
He couldn’t waste another second. He couldn’t stand with letting this question of how you’ll continue your lives now keep sitting.
He knew in his heart what he wanted. He knew it was what you wanted.
He just had to go through with it already.
“Hey, starstuff,” Poe called, giving you a wave.
“Blackbird! Or should I say commander. I haven’t seen you up here in a minute.”
“Yeah, well. Been indisposed.” He joked, leaning on your work surface.
“Need something?” You said.
“Just you. You ready to go?”
“Ten minutes, need to finish up.”
Poe checked the time.
“Could it be like six?”
“I’ve got to get through these orders before I go. You can sit. Just as soon as I’m done.”
He nodded, pulled up a crate, and sat beside you.
People passed, carrying pads and boxes and turning in for their shifts, your secluded corner stuffed with screens is hardly as private as an office should be, which Poe thinks is weird, considering no one on base got new socks or floss if you didn’t put in.
He watched you work, cross referencing, checking items off.
Twenty-three minutes later, after no less than two interruptions of last minute requests, you closed up your pad and shut down your station.
Some of that brightness in your features has been lost since he’s known you. Now, there was never a time he didn’t see you tired. Stretched thin.
You grabbed dinner from the nearly empty mess hall, Poe knew the guy on shift and got you a little extra of everything, a bottle and a dessert.
You didn’t think anything of it. It was so nice to see his smile, watch him stride like he isn’t afraid he’ll pull something and start bleeding internally and need to be rushed into surgery immediately with no time to even understand what was wrong except that if they didn’t act immediately Poe would bleed out, grip your hand in his.
You climbed up to the roof and sat out on the meticulously carved moss covered rock, crisscrossed and finally to yourselves.
You ate and chatted and caught up on the little things, sharing straight from the bottle.
As it deplenished, he felt looser, less distant.
You finished everything and laid in the comfortable quiet. Quiet that meant his opportunity. His moment.
“So uh, I had something I wanted to ask you today.” He got up, straightened out his clothes. “It’s been a long while since we talked about it.”
You looked up at him. The dinner, the seclusion, dessert.
“I haven’t gotten to ask properly, really… finalize it.”
He reached for his necklace chain.
Oh. Oh.
“You’re doing that now.” You nodded, sitting all the way up. “Shit.”
He looked at you.
“That’s um…” not the response he was expecting. He held the chain clasp, mortified.
You pulled yourself to stand. “Poe I’m leaving.”
His heart sank even deeper.
“What?”
“My parents, they’re losing so much with the First Order’s spread. They need to move. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“When– when are you going?” He asked, derailed. Off course.
“Two weeks.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
So much outside his control. Outside the loop. He feels like he’s being swallowed by this information.
It was so messy. He couldn’t predict or change things, wasn’t a Force user or a general or anything but a lovesick, recovering pilot.
He could’ve been single or comatose or without use of his legs.
He could’ve been dead.
But he wasn’t. And it wasn’t up to him.
He didn’t want you to feel like it was your fault you were needed, that you had to go.
Both ways.
That was the only way this worked.
“I was going to give you this before I left,” you were still speaking, Poe had to sweep his thoughts aside. “Tell you. But I wasn’t sure, I was going to talk to you about it today.”
You pulled out a plain silver wedding band from your pocket, and Poe felt faint.
“I’ve been so scattered, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know if you were still so sure, I mean it’s been so hard—”
“Again.” He said.
“Huh?”
“You did it again,” he cried.
“Did what again?”
“You asked first!” He said, laughing. “You beat me to it a second time!”
You barely remember. The takeaway, yes he wanted to marry you, but not who asked who or how.
He hugged you around the waist and pulled you close, rubbing his hand up your back.
“Was I not supposed to?” You asked, genuinely uncertain if this was a hug of delight or defeat.
“No. No you’re the best. No one’s ever been ahead of me like you are. It drives me. It keeps me. I don’t know where I’d be without it.” He cupped the back of your head. “Without you.”
You hugged him back tight and buried your face in the scent of him. “Poe. Me too. You’ve no idea.”
“Next time you tell me. I don’t care what’s going on. You tell me what’s happening.”
“I’m going to.”
When you finally space he extended his hand to let you slide the ring onto his left fourth finger. He turned it in the light and see the way the well toned metal shimmered, a spectrum of colors.
“Poe Bey Dameron,” you tilted his face up. “Would you marry me?”
“I would.”
He did the same, finally putting his mom’s ring where it belonged, glad he got it fitted and it fitted perfectly.
“We can make this work.” He nodded, then looked to you. “I’ll go with you.”
“Go with me, Poe, you’ve spent so long getting better, you don’t have to—”
“Your parents work in distribution. I work in recon. You’re the perfect cover. Where and who is being driven out and why is invaluable. It’s best I’m not back in a ship yet.”
“I– yes, but…”
“I need to be with you and we need to talk so much more and I can’t do that if you’re away. I just got me back. Please don’t let me lose you. There’s still so much I want with you.”
“You wanna meet my parents?”
“Yeah, I do,”
A smile pulled at your lip. “Then you’re serious, because no one wants to meet my parents.”
“Did I miss something.”
“Oh, Poe.” You put your arms over his shoulders. “You still want anything with me by the time we get back, it’ll be a miracle.”
You took a deep breath.
“I haven’t told them a thing about you.” You whispered into his shoulder. “They’re going to be so mad. They’ll think you’re too good for me.”
He hummed. “Well, I’ve always been an overachiever.”
“No. They know your parents, Poe. As in they heard about them. When I was a kid. My dad used to say ‘that Shara Bey never missed’.”
“She definitely missed.” Poe said. “My graduation. Which you know I guess wasn’t her fault; she was dead.”
You stifled a laugh against his clothes.
“I’m sorry.” You inhaled slow and exhaled heavily.
“No, it’s okay, I wanted to make you laugh. And I don’t want to wait however long it is to hear it again”
“Alright then.” He doesn’t think he’s ever seen your eyes so clear.
“It’s still gonna be a while before we really get this.”
You felt a buzz in your stomach, maybe the carbonated drink. “Yeah?”
“But we’re maybe halfway there.”
“Definitely.”
You rubbed your nose against his and held each other till the sun started to set, finally feeling certain, engaged.
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Summary: Steven and Layla head for Egypt on the Scarab, and their relationship deepens with their understandings of each other and their mission as they are pursued.
Crunch was unreal I’ve been working kind of nonstop on this for days but I got it in before the end of mermay, this and chapter five kind of split right in the middle so the next should be done pretty soon it’s already mostly complete
AO3 Link
He sounded so, so desperate.
Layla had never heard Marc beg like that.
For her help, when she wouldn’t caved otherwise, she guessed she shouldn’t have been shocked under the circumstances.
Then she had saltwater on her pants and bike seat, a big sad looking goldfish in her sink, and a mythical creature in her bed.
The sitting area was silent.
Well. She certainly wasn’t going to be sleeping in her bed.
Her fiancé was back, in a way, and it didn’t feel at all like Layla thought it would. She thought she would feel relieved, like having weights pulled out of her body, but she just had more and more questions and with them anger that they remained unanswered.
This Steven felt unsafe. She made it so he could rest, so, she was doing her part as far as she was concerned. She would roll out the sofa bed and try to get some sleep herself.
Things would make more sense once they could talk.
“They got away, sir.”
The building was tall, piled with boxes and crates of goods.
Arthur Harrow sat on one of them, crisscross, the head of a short staff in hand, female bust with the head of a snake on one side of the head, male with a beard on the other. Like a coin. One of the few relics pertaining to his god.
“So I heard.” He had been mulling over the events in his head. The easy capture. The ignorance. The delay of his escape. It was as if he only tried once his life was in immediate danger.
Only one thing pointed to sense in it. This Marc was far more broken than he previously thought.
He could use that. This personality was calm, neurotic. He wanted to be listened to. Heard. He could use that.
“They’re still here in the city.” Bobbi continued. “They were seen heading for an apartment. We found the Scarab at dock.”
“Layla’s ship.” He murmured.
“Should we board it?”
“No. Don’t touch it.” Harrow put the staff upright, twisting it, feeling the ancient metal heavy in his hand. He took the woman’s hand as she offered it to help him down. And to his gratitude, as his bad leg caught in a crack in the concrete and he buckled, quickly righting himself with her assistance.
“There’s only one reason they wouldn’t be halfway across the world already.” He said, patting her arm. “Let them leave. Prep ours. We depart at sunset.”
Bobbi nodded and turned on her heel, leaving the warehouse and Harrow standing quietly in the middle of it.
“I can’t believe he hid it in my favorite book. What, does he think I’m that dense?”
Out on the Scarab, Layla was still grappling with the fact she couldn’t leave Steven, or Marc, or whoever one of them he was, alone for even a minute.
Bounty hunters and other pirates had been after him before and he knew Marc could handle them, but Harrow’s gang was another whole problem. She was just glad he had the sense to call her.
“At least he kept it safe, yeah?” Steven tried.
“Sure. Safe.” Steven’s hands weren’t what Layla would call safe.
Arthur Harrow had crossed paths with Marc and by extension, Layla, many times. He was not only some kind of fanatic, obsessed with the power the gods and sea beheld and believing he alone could wield it justly, but a formidable pirate captain. He used to be what Marc was, some sort of warrior or protector. Layla clearly voiced her distaste in that every time it came up, and refused to get into it.
They were working together, in close quarters, and every time she met his eyes less than a foot from his face for more than a moment Steven felt the urge to kiss her.
He felt as if he already knew her. They were so close. She touched his shoulder and arm and steadied and shadowed him so easily, more intimate than he’d ever been with any mer. And yet he knew not one thing she did.
The sun warmed his skin so much faster out on the deck, Layla had slathered him down in sunscreen before he could find out firsthand what sunburn was. There was no sail, this ship was motorized, all the switches and controls far beyond Steven’s understanding.
She taught him the basics of the sea, how to tell direction and steer, starboard, port, stern, bow. Steven tried to pay attention, it was fascinating, but truly what he turned their conversations to was things he wanted to know about humans. Stories, history, culture, behaviors, beliefs.
Like the Egyptian gods. The Ennead.
Her job. Swashbuckling archeologist.
Sleeping under the stars, in what Layla aptly called a sleeping bag, one of the most comfortable things Steven had the pleasure of putting himself in, he had awoken to a great fright of a towering falcon skull headed being. The other voice.
Layla asked him what the hell was wrong and if he could keep from screaming in the middle of the night, and Steven had pointed only for Layla to tell him there was nothing there.
Steven began to doubt his own reality again, if anything was real until Layla told him it was probably Marc’s business, some god named Khonshu who granted his ‘not dying and stuff’.
The sun began to rise, Layla returned to the cabin, and as Steven watched the figure come into the light and stride the length of the deck, found he wasn’t nearly as scary as he thought.
“What exactly are you?” He asked quietly, as not to alert his sea partner.
“The god of the moon!” Khonshu boomed, stamping his staff. A gust from his feet.
“God of the what? What?” Steven flinched, then straightened, scrunching up his nose. “‘The god of the moon’? That doesn’t make any sense.”
He has expected him to say death, or taxes, or something. But if there was one thing he knew it was that there was no god of the moon.
“Mers worshipped the moon, but not the god of it, there’s no such thing, they prayed and gave offering to the moon itself; herself. Luna. The measure. The tide giver.”
“Blasphemy.” The god sneered. “You know not what you speak of.”
“I do, actually.” Steven shrugged. “When I don’t understand something I open a book.”
“I do not find your insolence amusing, flounder.”
“Goldfish.”
“Guppy.”
“Merman.”
“Fishboy.”
“Steven.”
The god huffed.
Steven puffed his chest. How much easier could he be to bait?
“Hey, Layla!” He called back.
“Kinda busy right now!” She answered. “What is it?”
“Does he ever shut up?” Steven side eyed him as he spoke, a small smile on his face.
Khonshu bristled.
“Not as far as I know.” Layla said.
“You jest at such a dire hour? Useless. Fool.”
“Can you seriously not hear him?”
“Nope. That’s all Marc. And you, I guess. Just ignore him.”
Steven nodded and pushed off the railing, standing up straight, looking out over the open water.
The Scarlet Scarab swayed on the waves of the Mediterranean Sea. Layla had cut the two week trip from the British coast to the shores of Egypt in half working through the night to get their ship along the quickest route, and they were now just a few days out from the Nile.
And she was looking exhausted.
The amount of coffee she consumed frightened Steven. He didn’t know if it was his place to say anything.
Between deciphering the map and navigating and sating Steven’s curiosity about the mundanest of things as well as the most complex and fantastical, things she had wanted to talk with someone about her whole life but had never found in Marc and never had time to find in anyone else.
She wasn’t confused with the way he was looking at her. The tension was becoming palpable. If she had to keep it all to herself much longer she was going to lose it. She had felt the want to lick his fingers while they were eating. She almost did. And then he did, and she cleared her throat and put her calf into her lap, unnoticed by Steven.
She hadn’t seen Marc, and that part of her was glad for it.
Everything Steven said of his life painted this lonely outcast bookworm Layla couldn’t pretend she didn’t fancy. But it was too weird. He was Marc, somewhere in there, and she still wanted to rip into him. If she was going to get anymore friendly with Steven, she would have to break it to him they were going to split. Which pained her. But Steven was already homesick, she could see it. She couldn’t keep him from that.
Off the stern, Steven wished he could see below the surface. The waters rushing back from the cut of their ship. He thought of all the mers they passed, hidden away, under all that great endless teal.
“I wish I could pop down there.” He thought aloud. “Feel some water in my fins. These legs are nice but I’ve never missed swimmin’ so much. Probably do some good for you to, ’f we had time to stop.”
“I can’t swim.” Layla yawned, scratching her scalp through her frizzy curls, joining him.
Steven did a double take.
“You can’t– you can’t swim??”
“Nope.”
“Why’re you on a bloody boat if you can’t swim!”
“Sailing?” She raised a brow.
“Shouldn’t you be wearing one of those– those preservatives?”
“Life preserver?” Layla stood up straight.
“That! Yeah!”
“I am wearing a life vest. Well, usually.” She looked at herself. She had taken it off a while ago now.
“How do you… get here, not knowing?”
“My parents didn’t like me getting in the water, so I never learned.” She shrugged. “I don’t see the big deal.”
“That’s bloody bonkers. I can’t imagine not knowing how to swim…”
All life Steven remembered living happened in and with water. People going their whole lives never even being submerged in it shocked him. That there were humans walking around who hadn't been weightless since the womb.
“I could… I could teach you, maybe?” He offered.
“You? Teach me how to swim?”
“Yeah.”
“Not with that foot of yours, I don’t think. How did you get that, by the way?” She changed the subject so smoothly Steven hardly noticed.
“My fin?” Steven curled his remaining toes in Marc’s modified boot he’d been wearing. It helped a lot with the walking. “Oh. I’ve had it forever.”
“Yeah, I know. Marc never told me how he got it. I was thinking if you remember things he doesn’t maybe you—”
“I dunno! I had some sort of accident or something when I was a child.”
Layla stared at him.
“’S not– ’s not important.” He said. “Sorry.”
Waves splashed against the hull, turbulence.
“I’ve no idea.” He said quietly.
The scarring had always suggested he lost it, but Steven didn’t have a good reference for so many of these things, and he wasn’t sure about much of anything having to do with himself since he’d been impaled. Marc could have cut it off for all he knew.
“Well. That’s good to know.” Layla pushed off and headed back into the cabin.
“Layla—”
“No, I get it. I tell you everything you want to know about my life, all the stories I grew up with, what I do, what a taxi is, and you don’t want to answer even one thing about yourself. You don’t remember. It’s fine. You don’t remember anything.”
Layla looked past Steven’s shoulder to a speck on the horizon, hackles raising.
“Oh, shit.”
“What is it? What’s wrong.”
“We’re being followed.”
Layla pulled out a spyglass and climbed up the outside of the cabin, leaning off to get a good look.
Gulls cried overhead, their screeches like a warning for what was coming. If only they could have been a little earlier. There wasn’t a thing on the radar, and she’d been monitoring it since they cast off.
“They’re going to catch up to us.” Layla huffed. “If it was just the one I’d say we could take them but I spot Harrow’s boat and some not friends of yours.”
“Bounty hunters,” Steven inhaled, touching his chest through his shirt. “They’ll try and kill me.”
“Get Marc. We need his suit.”
“His suit?”
“The suit! The robes, the armor.” She climbed down and gave him a look.
“No.” Steven said. “No I’m not letting him. I’ll figure it out.”
“Steven he knows how to fight and this is going to be a fight. We can’t let them get the map.”
“She’s right, for once.” Khonshu folded his legs where he sat atop the cabin, looming over them. “Give Spector control.”
“You keep it.” Steven said, picking up and tightly wrapping the paper, setting it in her hands. “I can do whatever it is he can. Don’t make me go away, I don’t know if or how I can come back again. I can’t lose this.”
Layla met his eyes.
“You can summon the suit?”
Steven nodded.
“I can see him.” He looked up at the god, skull tilted down at the both of them. “I don’t see why not.”
“I really hope you’re right.” She said.
“Fool of a trout.” Khonshu sighed.
“Goldfish...” Steven muttered, pouting to Gus in a small tank fastened into the seat at the console.
Arthur Harrow let down the shroud of mist concealing the ships. He didn’t care for working with such characters, and he could live with them having Marc’s heart if he got the one he was after. He was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
His own hurt from holding the magic so long, his connection to his chosen patron god still weak at best, a familiarity, the traces of its magic by nature unpredictable.
He would let the hunters approach first. They were not to be part of his new world anyway.
They sent a harpoon into the side of the Scarab, winch winding with a loud whir.
Steven and Layla turned to where the sound of metal piercing metal rang loud through the air, the bounty hunters’ ship still at least a thousand feet out.
“You’re going to want to hang on to something Steven!”
“I’m going to want to what?”
Four bounty hunters zip lined across, boarding the ship, and Layla swung the wheel, sending them starboard and turning the deck to a forty degree angle.
Steven tumbled into the console, securing the lid to Gus’s tank with his foot as it sloshed dangerously.
“Now would be a great time for that suit!” Layla called.
“What do I say suit?” Steven asked.
“Summon the suit!” Khonshu bellowed in his head.
“Come on Steven let me,” Marc demanded. “You’re not up for this.”
Steven pressed his hand into his head and staggered out onto the deck as the boat righted itself.
He dove out of the way as a pirate lunged for him, and Layla hit the attacker up the head with the back of her rigging knife, taking his cutlass and slicing it across the chest of the longer haired one next to him, throwing the one that tried to grab her from behind forward onto the first, and finally clashing swords with the last.
“Really, really great time!” Layla said, louder.
Steven pulled himself up and narrowly avoided Layla’s backswing.
“I don’t know how!” He cried, terrified and awed as he watched Layla’s swordplay and her dirty kick to her opponent’s shins that landed her enough height to smash his nose into her knee.
She kicked pirate number four hard in the chest as pirate number two went for her wrists, trying to wrangle the sword from her grip.
The third got up and made for Steven.
He was only a child. Couldn’t be more than twelve.
Steven backed up towards the railing.
“Please don’t hurt me.” He shook his head. “Come on I can’t be worth this.”
The boy brandished a knife and made a stab for him. Steven stumbled back on his feet, blinking. He was on the opposite side of the deck. There was blood on his fists. The kid was face down in the deck. Layla was getting the upper hand against the bounty hunter.
Steven hoping the blood wasn’t the kids and having been paying some attention to his surroundings the last few days threw a toolbox over one of the pirate’s backs as he started to get up, regretting it as he turned and put his cutlass to Steven’s throat, nose bleeding down his chin.
“No, wait wait wait!” He screwed his eyes shut and his back hit wood. He was on the bounty hunters’ ship, against the mast.
Several crewmates were unconscious under him. He was holding a knife he dropped at the sight of blood trailing down his arm. One of his wrists was in a shackle he spotted the key for on one of their belts. He got to his knees and hastily freed himself with shaking hands.
“Jesus, Steven…” Marc tsked as he looked over the carnage.
“What…? I didn’t– Aren’t you doing this?!”
“No! You won’t give me the body! You think I fight like this?”
“Then who the hell…?”
One of them started to get up, and he had a gun, a pistol just inches from their face.
“Don’t shoot.” Steven immediately put both hands up. “I’m sorry, please don’t shoot me.”
He heard the trigger click and fell on his face, back on the Scarab. He pulled himself up, spinning, looking around in disbelief.
Layla threw a body over the railing into the water, the boat accelerating unevenly a moment later.
“We you stop standing around and do something to help!? Suit up, come on!” She shouted, dragging the next up.
“This is mental.” Steven panted. His whole body was lagging, it felt like, or maybe just him, trying to catch up with where he was.
The kid made a grab for him, baring his teeth, and Steven only just got out of the way.
“Stop him, idiot!” Khonshu bellowed.
Steven got ahold of his jacket, holding him to the railing. If he could knock all these people out he could hold a child till they could get him back to land and to his parents. He was stronger than him.
“The Watery One returns!” The boy spat in his face.
“Hey, what–?” Steven didn’t get to finish his sentence.
The kid kicked off his ribs and sent himself hurtling over the edge, not just into the water, but the propeller of the boat.
Steven covered his mouth with both hands, crumpling back into a crate.
He couldn’t do this. He was going to be sick.
“Who’s the Watery One? What is Harrow even planning on doing with this heart he’s after!?” Steven cried. “This is bloody ridiculous!”
“Harrow plans to attempt to summon Nun, the primordial chaos. We cannot let this occur.” Khonshu said.
“Oh carp, which one was that!?” Steven pressed his temples.
Layla called his name, and hurried back to the cabin where she was.
She put his arm around her where he held tight, then spun and spun the wheel, skirting capsizing as she drove the boat in the direction opposite the bounty hunters’.
She quickly realized the tether they had used to board them was still attached.
“I need you to hold the wheel, hold us on course.” She said, putting his hands at ten and two.
“O-okay?!” Steven looked at her and than as where Gus was duct taped into his tank, breathing hard.
Layla pulled a knife from her belt and slid to the railing, but before she could cut them loose the rope pulled taught between the ships and the whole deck lurched.
Steven was thrown through the window towards the water and only just caught the railing, boxes and glass and supplies splashing behind him till he was submerged. The deck took on gallons before buoyancy won over and pulled them back.
He wretched himself over and fell into his shoulder on the deck, gasping as he tried to breathe water and air and once and just made himself sputter. The sounds of the engine had stopped. He couldn’t see Layla.
Harrow’s boat sidled up to theirs, easily twice the size. A plank was lowered, bridging them.
Harrow had watched, deducing. Steven, Marc. It was remarkable. The shift in him was enormous, instantaneous. He needed to remain vigilant against whatever he could be.
He took each step slow, peg hitting wood and then a thin layer of water as he stepped right onto the deck.
“Poor thing.” Harrow plucked an unmoving Gus up. He pressed his chest with his thumb, then flung the body into the sea.
Steven blinked up into the double lights, shifting a box as he tried to lift himself. That goldfish. No.
“Seize him.” Harrow commanded, sounding almost bored.
Billy and Bobbi both took one of his arms, dragging Steven up to him.
“You remember me?” He requested, leaning his head low to look at him.
Steven kept his head down, staring at the flooded deck, his tail making any kind of resistance up here impossible.
“No? Very well. This is Victor. He makes soup.”
Victor, as introduced, gripped Steven’s shoulder and punched him so hard in the gut bile lurched up the back of his throat.
He hit him, again, and a third time, and then Harrow put his fist up, signaling for him to stop.
He didn’t know why he wasn’t blacking out, now, he needed it, his body hurt as bad as his heart, pain fill him completely, he couldn’t believe Gus was gone.
“You killed my fish.” Steven voiced, high and broken, breaking into a fit of coughs as soon as the words were out.
“There you are.” Harrow said.
“He was my fish, he was, I took care of him.”
“He’s food, now.”
“I’m vegan.” Steven breathed.
“Oh,” Harrow nodded, hand over his chest. “Me too.”
Steven glared at him through his curls. “How could you?”
“It was just a fish– what did you say your name was?”
“Steven Grant.” Steven said.
“Steven,” he repeated. “Arthur Harrow. It’s good to meet you.”
“You tortured me.” Steven pulled up defiantly, fin curling.
“You must forgive that. I didn’t know I was talking to you. You look just like him. Marc. You can understand my confusion.”
“You’re not confused; you’re sick. You’re a horrible, sick man.”
“It’s the world that is sick, Steven. You can let go of him, he’s no danger.”
The two goons set him gently on the deck, releasing him.
“I apologize how I treated you our last meeting. My attempts at reasoning were disingenuous. I did not realize you could truly be reasoned with.”
He crouched in front of him so they were eye to eye.
Reason, Steven thought. Something he could pick out in the pandemonium thus far. Metal. Blood. This could come to a reasonable end. No one else had to be hurt.
“What is it that you want this for? This power. The heart. Khonshu said you wanted to summon Nun. What for? What does that mean?”
“I take it your familiar with the Great Flood, an account in many religious texts.”
Steven practically scoffed.
“Of course. It’s merhistory.”
“Well. It was but a taste of the waters of creation. I think it’s about time for another.”
“So wait. You want to punish humans. That’s not very original.”
“No, Steven. I want to bring back the age of primordial chaos.”
“That would kill most of the merlife as well.”
“It would. The worthy and fortunate would survive to bring about a new world.”
Steven’s eyes searched him like the page of a book. Reason his tail. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You’re talking about killing billions of people!” He cried.
“So that billions more may live. Think, Steven, think! I can tell you’re well read, act like it. Do you think change comes from mer swimming in their schools and courting and dying from pollution or starvation, or does it come from rising up against the powers that threaten us?”
“This is not what that means…”
“Captain Harrow—” Steven said.
“Arthur.” He corrected.
“You can’t be bloody serious! You can’t just murder all humans!”
“Murder implies I’m killing them, and they’re people. Neither of which are true. Think of it as cleansing, Steven. You would let vermin infest your garden.”
Steven stared at him, appalled.
“Didn’t think so. Find her.” Harrow instructed Victor, standing. “She couldn’t have made it far. We need that map.”
“You want this? Harrow?” Layla stood atop the cabin, half soaked, pearl inlay in her raised hand catching the light, sword at her side.
Harrow looked up. “Give that to me, now, and I will let both of you live.” He held out his hand.
“Go and find it!” Layla pitched the flat wooden box far out over the water, where it unceremoniously fell into the ocean with a plop! and began to sink.
“Do not let them make an escape!” Harrow called, rushing to the port bow, hair whipping in the salty wind, trying to pinpoint it in the water.
“You will regret that.” Harrow glared back at her before hoisting himself up and across the plank back to his ship, Bobbi following close behind.
Two pirates. Their swords flashing.
Layla drew hers.
Steven needed a suit. He had to help her.
Like Marc. Just like Marc.
He took a deep breath, pressing his eyes shut. He could do this. He needed to. He couldn’t let anyone else get hurt, or killed— He threw himself onto his front.
He opened his eyes, looking at his reflection in the water over the wood. A cowl and hood concealed his face, wrappings surrounding his body, his hands, his forearms. Gold armor shone on his chest, a crescent moon. He had two knees braced against the deck, a loin cloth and cape trailing in the wet.
He got to his feet, balancing easily in the boot fitted perfectly to his disability.
He landed a right hook clean across the larger male pirate’s face, quickly apologizing before realizing he’d knocked him right out.
Steven blinked, but nothing changed. He did that.
Layla jumped down and joined him.
“Marc?”
“Steven!” As he spoke the hood pulled away from his face.
“You did it!” She exclaimed.
“I did!”
“Look out!”
Steven caught the swing from Victor, throwing him to the deck where Layla stomped his lights out.
She took one of the discarded swords and cut through the harpoon, then tore into the cabin and got the motor back on, sending them speeding away from the two boats.
“We lost the map,” Steven cried. “We’ll never find the tomb in the kingdom of the lost ocean without it.”
“This map?” Layla pulled a damp wad of paper out of her chest pocket.
“What? How did you–?”
“Shit, I thought it had that thing on it?” She grit her teeth, inspecting the smudged ink.
“Spells break if the object is broken or torn– you didn’t let them have all of it!”
“Of course not.”
She carefully laid it out. It was legible. The important parts.
“He has the outer part but all we need is the exact location.” Layla said. “Without this he’ll be gallivanting all over the desert searching. We get there first, we find it, we win. And I know where this is.”
“Oh my gods I can’t believe it. We might actually make it out of this in one piece.”
“We just need to get to shore—”
An explosion rocked the ship. Then another, harder, closer.
Steven held tight to her, terrified.
They both hurried out to the deck. They were sinking.
Another torpedo hit, this one practically under their feet, and sent them flying. Steven hit the deck, his ears ringing, and he heard Layla yell, and then a splash.
“Layla!” Steven screamed. He forced himself up looked over the side to no sign of her. He spotted her life vest floating amongst the ruined cargo of the Scarab.
She couldn’t swim, she couldn’t breathe. So much had happened so much faster than Steven could possibly understand, but he knew one thing: Layla would be dead in minutes if he didn’t do something.
He dropped the armor, threw himself over the railing, and dove in after her.
Worlds Apart - goldfish merman!Steven Grant x pirate!Layla El-Faouly | Chapter Three
Warnings: awkward nudity (mentioned), angst, dry boarding, more mentions of violence and fictional genocide, skin irritation
Words: 3.7k
Rating: T
Summary: Steven goes on land and sleeps in Layla’s bed, avoids Marc’s relationship issues, meets one of the enemies hunting them, hears a new voice, and uncovers what Marc’s been keeping close to his chest that everyone seems to want.
Happy MerMay everyone! I was finally able to come back to this and many other projects after a long period of kind of actually nonstop difficulties. I hope you enjoy and as always my beta is asleep
I didn’t reread the first two chapters before I finished the third of this so I dunno if it’s inconsistent I’ll fix it later
AO3 Link
“…Take me with you.”
Steven had only seen the outskirts of land civilization, the bits and pieces near the shores and piers and beaches, the occasional car on the highway. He had never seen the city, filled with crowds, towering buildings, and traffic, and people, so many human people, his heart was racing and his ears were pounding as he clung tight to Layla’s waist on the back of her Vespa.
It’s smooth and mostly consistent movement would have put Steven to sleep if he weren’t so enamored. Every little thing. Above the surface was so much more than he’d ever imagined or seen in books and the few movies he watched. Bricks. Weeds. Ladders and doors. Tiny short grass.
He felt as if everyone could tell how out of place he was. Even when he could confirm for himself by looking down that he was as unremarkable and ignorable as any other human, he still felt as if all eyes were on him, that they were silently picking him out and apart.
He buried his face against Layla’s back and breathed deep, his helmet knocking against hers whenever they hit a bump.
Layla, contrastly, did not have time for this.
Still soaking wet from having to get down to help drag Steven up the cliff, she was in far from a good mood.
The more she heard Steven speak, the more clear it became this was much larger and deeper than a simple lapse in memory, an identity crisis, or some kind of head injury.
He was a different person.
She parked close to the entrance and helped him up.
He followed close behind her, into what she called an apartment, clinging tight to her arm to make it up the steps.
He hung back on the handrail in the exterior corridor while Layla dug out her keys to unlock the door, and in his tired absent state he turned his head out, over the courtyard.
The last of the sun was setting out over the south London skyline, hundreds a buildings. The wind whipped through his crusted curls.
He was overcome with a wave of vertigo at the height, shuddering at the lack of density and buoyancy he realized would make a fall from there nothing less than maiming.
Before he could dwell much longer on just how very many ways and times he had nearly died in just the last week Layla took his hand and waist and helped him inside.
“This is amazing. This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I’m glad. Could you get the door?”
Steven pushed it closed, cutting off the last of the setting sunlight from the apartment.
Layla let out a long sigh and flipped on the light, leaving Steven squinting.
“Is there any place for a fish, a proper fish, Gus?” He asked as Layla set him in a chair and wrestled off her boots.
“God no, but I can– I’ll figure out something.” She’d seen his little friend while she was helping him get his pants on again.
Steven pulled him out of his bag and checked he was good, still swimming, and watched as Layla put the plug in and filled half the kitchen sink with water. He handed Gus over and she carefully slid the anxiously flapping fish out of the bag and into the temporary home, setting a cutting board over him.
“Satisfactory?” She asked.
“It’ll have to do.”
“Yeah.”
“‘Kay so um… sorry, but I don’t think I’ve slept in three days. Is there like, could I just—”
“Yeah, sorry, back there.” Layla pointed.
“Oh, merci, thank you.”
She supported him less than before into her room and left the door cracked, going on take care of whatever else while Steven without another thought flopped back and let the bedcovers consume him.
The weight was strange, he was so used to the pressure and support the water gave, he felt heavy and untethered in the flat, dry bed. It didn’t even matter, it was soft and as soon as Steven got the covers wrapped tightly around his legs for security he was out, soundly and dreamlessly asleep.
He groaned and turned himself over, stopping when he felt he wasn’t in his cot, and was most definitely not in Steven’s underwater bed.
“Shit,” Marc sat up and started to get up, and nearly fell on his face, not realizing his legs were bound up in the sheets like he’d been tied down.
He slipped one foot out and then the other, stumbled out of bed, straightened, and then stopped, anchored in place.
Layla’s wedding dress.
He hadn’t seen it yet; he wasn’t supposed to.
Shit, she still had it. She still had the dress like they were still going to be getting married.
He reached out and his fingers glode along the silken fabric, the delicately stitched details, golden lace shapes with glass beads sewn in along the edge, matching the veil hung with it. He pulled his hand back. His eyes stung. It didn’t feel real.
He dug around till he found some of his things tucked to the side of the closet, then dressed in a pair of dark gray canvas pants, a navy tee shirt and burgundy button up left unbuttoned.
He opened the door and headed down the hall to the kitchen, standing in the doorway.
He watched her for a moment, till she noticed and looked up at him. He straightened his posture and held his breath.
“Marc?” Layla said.
“Yeah.” Marc sighed.
“You asshole!” Layla not so gently threw down her coffee, storming the few feet between them and shoving him. “You lying, lying asshole!”
“Yeah.” Marc closed his eyes. “I lied. I am an asshole.”
“If you didn’t want to get married, you could have just told me, if you were scared of being hunted for— for being this, I would’ve protected you.”
“That’s kinda the problem!”
All the things he’d dreaded about having to face her again were piling up one by one.
“You don’t have a suit, Layla. Just one bullet, one goddamn thing goes wrong and you’re dead.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”
“You wouldn’t have understood.”
“I am probably the only person who could have.” Layla pinches her brow, taking in a long breath and releasing it. “I was so scared for you, Marc, God.”
“You shouldn’t have been.”
“What was the plan for the heart? You took the map,”
“I was going to find it before they did.”
“Right. Without me.”
Marc hesitated. “Yes.”
“You are a real piece of work, Marc.”
The small kitchen is still.
“So about this… Steven. What’s that about? Who– who the hell is he?” Layla said.
Marc sighed and dragged his hand down his face. “Steven,” he said slowly. “He’s, just— look it’s not important.”
“I’m sorry?” Layla deadpanned. “You showed up on the bottom of the Thames as a mermaid with no memory of ever even meeting me, but that isn’t important?”
“It’s not!” Marc snapped. “Stop– goddamnit, I don’t want to discuss this.”
“Clearly. Why don’t you go on ahead and tell me what is important to you, Marc?”
You, Marc so desperately wanted to say, but he just pressed his jaw.
“Hey. If you’re like…” Layla gestured to her head. “That’s not your fault, you know. It’s not wrong. You don’t have to hide that. Not from me.”
“I’m not crazy, okay?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You meant that.”
“I don’t know, Marc! I don’t know what this is! I just– I want you to be okay.”
“I am fine. I’ve– I am not crazy. I have this under control.”
“You do not.”
“I do!” Marc shouted.
It got quiet.
“Asshole.” Layla shook her head.
Marc sighed and wiped his face with his thumb.
“You should get rid of the dress.” He said, gesturing back to the room. “Won’t be needing it.”
“I don’t think you’re in any position to be telling me what to do.”
“Oh so you’ll listen to him but not me.”
“Marc, all this shit, I want to end it and be with you again! This sucks and I miss you so damn much every single day!”
It was all Layla had to not sob.
“Please, talk to me, work with me, we can figure this out, we can try, please, Marc!”
She was not supposed to want to be with him anymore. Marc thought he had made sure of that. Just complete cutoff, no matter how much he wanted to pick up that phone and hear her voice and beg her to take him back he hadn’t done it.
“If you and Steven—”
“No, frick you, frick Steven, frick all of this! We’re done.”
Layla grit her teeth.
“You can’t keep that map from me.”
“It’s not yours.” Marc spat.
“It’s what my father worked his whole life for. What he died for.”
Marc froze. His gaze drifted behind his eyelids and Steven fell forward on his bad foot and exclaimed loudly in alarm.
Layla only just got ahold of him before he fell on his face.
“Oh my God, are you okay?”
“Ah, great scallops.”
“Steven?” Layla said at the tone and choice of words.
“Whoa, that—” Steven blinked, now wide awake. “That was weird. How did I—” he looked behind him to the hall and then to his clothes. “No you know what actually nevermind.”
He dabbed at the tears on his cheeks in confusion and shook his head.
“I didn’t know you would just…”
“You were talking to Marc.” Steven said slowly.
Layla sighed. “I was.” She said.
He looked her over in silent worry for a moment. She looked numb.
“Where’s the um… the… where you pee and stuff?”
“Bathroom’s in the hall.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
He was slowly, almost maybe getting a hang of the walking thing. It felt more natural, now, he just imagined he was Marc out on the deck of one of those ships or in the streets.
He combed out his hair, completely obsessed with how very fluffy his curls were dry, how they framed his ears and face.
That odd wrongness he’d always felt at his appearance, it made more sense now. He was meant to be someone else, he had been someone else. It wasn’t just him he was seeing in the mirror all those times he loathed his always droopy eyes or his too big nose.
It was Marc.
The clothes felt off, but he sort of looked good. Like one of the Spanish pirates from the illustrations in his books. The context that was very well what he was made Steven’s head spin a little.
He was still a mer. That was still real.
He experimentally took a cupped handful of water from the sink, hiked up his cargo pants, and spread it down his thigh, watching the golden orange scales of his fishtail appear everywhere it touched.
“Oh thank goodness.” He sighed, twisting his leg to inspect them, the way they sparkled in the sunlight from the high frosted shower window.
“Wicked.” He murmured, grabbing the hand towel from the hoop by the sink and dabbing them away.
Steven finished up, left, and found Layla sat on a stool in the kitchen scratching harshly at the shiny scarlet patches scattered down her legs.
She looked up, then stood. “Wow.” She shook her head. “You look great.”
“What?” Steven said. “You think… you think I look nice?”
“Of course I do.” Layla smiled and cradled his ear for a moment and Steven was sure he was having palpitations.
“Um. Wassat?” He inquired, clearing his throat.
“What’s what?”
“On uh… on your legs.”
Layla tilted her leg out and looked at it.
“Oh, it’s just my skin condition. Eczema. It’s always bad after I get saltwater on me. It’s fine.”
“No, I mean that.” He looked down and pointed.
Layla followed his gaze. “My leg hair?”
“Leg hair. That is wild. That is so cool.” Layla quirked a brow but said nothing, rolling down her pant legs.
She crossed to the fridge and opened it.
“You hungry?” She asked.
“Very.” Steven said.
“Great. I’ll make an omelette.”
“What’s… what is that?”
“Thought you’d know, it’s French. It’s just eggs and– stuff mixed in.” She rattled some old condiment bottles as she dug through takeout containers.
“Oh, um, I don’t eat– I’m uh, I’m vegan.”
“You’re a vegan mermaid?” Layla turned to eye him, trash in arm.
“Merman. Yeah.”
“Huh.” She closed the fridge, tossed the weeks old containers in the garbage.
She looked him up, then grabbed her keys. “Let’s go out then.”
She didn’t want to stay here anyway.
“So wait, are you also kosher? What, is there fish Yahweh?”
Steven and Layla walked down the London sidewalk, close, avoiding crowds. One foot after the other. Easy.
“I mean, it’s all the same history and culture, just cut off from yours now. I don’t think I’ve met a Jewish mer, but they definitely exist.”
“This is mind blowing. I would’ve thought your entire culture would be different. You’d have your own language, languages, religions… but we understand each other. Mostly.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Us fish aren’t too different, in some ways.”
Layla stopped them in front of the cafe.
“We do have some of our own religion. I could tell you all about it if you like.”
“Some other time.” She said against her better curiosity.
“Of course. It’s a little… busy?”
“Uh-huh. Alright, wait here. Don’t stare at anyone and don’t wander off.”
“Yeah. Yep.”
The door jingled as Layla stepped inside and Steven sat in the metal chair under the overhang.
He breathed in. He didn’t think he’d ever get enough of it, the scent of Earth and plants and cars. Land. He was falling even more in love with it.
He didn’t know yet what he was going to do with being a landwalker. He would figure it out after breakfast. He wanted to see more. Do more.
He didn’t care what Marc said.
He looked in the window and spotted Layla’s vest, standing in line. A few people passed. Steven kept his eyes down to his folded hands. He got a strange prickle in his neck, and ignored it.
All at once there was a hand with a cloth around his mouth, a scream not leaving his throat as he inhaled and the sunny patio faded in an instant.
Consciousness seeped in slowly. He was in a chair, tied to it. There was light, but he felt a blindfold and his eyes were heavy to open. He lifted his head, and heard shuffling. Everything spun.
“Marc Spector.” Came a voice. “You are not yourself, are you? So easy to capture. Please, untie him, there’s no need.”
The blindfold was tugged from his face and Steven blinked his eyes open, met with a frail, sharp looking man. His disheveled, cropped silver hair was tucked behind his ears. A checkered scarf was secured around the crown of his head, all the same leaving some in his eyes.
Steven noticed his foot appeared to be wood. It clicked against the floor with every other step.
Two other people similarly dressed were on either side of him. He recognized them. They had walked past the coffee shop. They undid the binds around his wrists.
The man leaned against the wall of some soft of office, wood panels, windowed door, where, he had no idea.
“Last we met you had the suit. What, have you broken free of that service?”
“Service?” Steven pulled at his ropes still binding his legs. Dead tight. They didn’t budge.
“To Khonshu. Don’t be recalcitrant. You never win this game, only prolong it.”
“I thought you were going to untie me?” Steven noticed he was keeping distance.
“I’m not foolish, Marc.” He said.
“I’m sorry, but I’m not Marc Spector. I mean I am, but I’m not. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“‘Not Marc Spector’.” He chuckled. “That’s your best yet, marauder.”
He slowly began to circle his chair.
“Marauder,” Steven repeated. “No, you have it wrong.”
“A hunter of our own kind. Ruthless. Vengeful.”
Steven chilled down to his bone. “My own kind? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t think I don’t know what you are.”
His voice got loud behind him as he read, quoted.
“‘Fresh’, well, I’m sure they were fresh, ‘real mer hearts; eyes, bone, scales, flesh, and sinews, price– negotiable’, isn’t that nice.”
“What—”
“The six half and full mer you murdered. Can’t stand the idea anyone gets to have what you haven’t, can you?”
He held up a phone to his left open to photos of butchered mer parts, organs and muscles and limbs. It looked like a shop table.
Steven’s stomach riled. “No. No, there’s no way Marc would do that.”
He didn’t, he couldn’t believe it.
The man put the device away, standing in front of him.
“It doesn’t matter. I believe you have something that rightfully belongs to me. Tell me what you did with the map. I don’t want to hurt you, Marc. I really don’t. I don’t believe in what you do.”
“Don’t you dare tell him, flounder.” A guttural voice stung his ears.
“What?” Steven blinked, trying to turn his head to the source, but it seemed to be all around him.
“Give control back to the sharp one. You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“No, I don’t.”
The blond gave a displeased hum. “What is happening? Who are you speaking with?”
“I don’t know…”
“So desperate, to resort to random bullshit?”
“I’m not bullshitting you, this is the second voice I’ve heard this week, I don’t know about it either.”
“Khonshu.” He muttered. “Who else?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Marc.”
He shed his coat and sat back in his seat across from Steven, his cheeks pushing his eyes up in scrutiny, bare arms across his chest.
“Get started.” He said with a sigh. “Don’t be gentle. I have a feeling he doesn’t remember the last time.”
He stood and left the room with a dull thunk of the heavy door and Steven was left alone with the two humans, their hands on him in an instant, securing his arms.
Steven’s already shallow breath started to punch frantically out of his chest, he pulled, they held him down, his head back, his legs still restrained to the chair frame, he struggled as they stuffed a dry rag into his mouth, gagging when it brushed his palate.
One of them pulled a long strip of tape, snapping it and fixing it over Steven’s mouth and nose, almost completely cutting off his breathing.
Steven really started to panic, already starting to get lightheaded from lack of oxygen, not salivating nearly enough to do anything to the dry cloth in his throat, adrenaline flooded his system and overtook his senses, he screwed his eyes shut tight in a pounding fit of desperate breaths and when he opened them again, he was in the middle of the street.
Stumbling to his knees, momentum told him he’d been mid jog, despite sitting less than a fraction of a second prior. He blinked, feeling his heart race, and looked up, then behind him.
Pirates.
He heard wheels screech up ahead.
Layla.
“Come on! What are you stopping for!?”
She tossed him his helmet he only barely caught and got it on his head before Layla pulled him behind her and took off.
“Broad damn daylight!” Layla snarled, her knuckles pale on her Vespa’s handlebars.
Steven buckled his helmet with one hand and clung for dear life.
“Did you give the map up?” She asked.
“The… map? What map?” Steven cried over the roar of the motor. “What is all this about a map?!”
“I’m talking to Marc!”
“He’s not— I don’t know where it is, I don’t know where he is!”
“We need to get out of here. I have a copy of Marc’s passport. Somewhere like Turkey maybe—”
“Wait!” Steven shouted.
“What!?” Layla peeled to a stop, and Steven clutched her tight around the waist as they slid, his eyes screwed tight.
“We need to get Gus!” He said as soon as they stopped moving.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” Layla took a deep breath and revved the engine, screeching off in the direction of the apartment.
Steven got Gus, gently put him back in the bag with a few bits of cracker he found in the pantry, apologizing again and again for dragging him every which way. He got his clothes, his fish, that was everything he came with. Except the book.
He turned her room upside down for it, it had been dark last night, but now he could see and he didn’t let his attention linger on the wedding dress.
“Do you have everything? Come on.” Layla called from the hall.
“There was a book, I had. A French poetry book. I need it.”
“Did you check the drawers? We don’t have time for this!”
Steven stood back as she pushed past him and started to sway and carefully let himself down onto the carpet, rubbing over his heart.
His eyes drifted to something hidden, tucked between the edge of the door of the closet and the frame. He blinked, not believing it was real. He hadn’t put it there. He took both hands and jostled the closet door to pull it free.
Desbordes-Valmore, Les Pleurs. The sillohuete of a woman in profile with two children playing with lanterns in the flower filled grass in the positive space. Steven wasn’t sure how the title escaped him so many times, it was almost as if he was looking at it and only now seeing for the first time.
When he turned it over, it fell open to something tucked in the pages, an impossibly thin wooden box with layers of thick papyrus folded into it, like a frame, the bottom side was carved into to make a circle with four supports to each side, and inlaid in the middle was a flat irregular pearl cross section, its iridescent full spectrum of colors flashing in the sunlight.
“Layla?” Steven said, carefully lifting the delicate thing out, half the parchment unfolding and spilling into his hand as he did.
Layla slid the drawer shut with a rattle and turned to him, sitting back on her haunches. She looked first at him and then at his hands, her eyes going wide.
Sorry, Habibti - Bassam (Body of Lies) x reader | Chapter Two
Warnings: cursing, lies, gun violence, more heated arguing, indirect child endangerment, killing, general angst
Words: 2.6k
Rating: T
Summary: You work closer with your husband than you have in years and find his old work is hardly over when your already packed day is interrupted.
I swear to fuck no one fucks with Bassam like I do
At last! It has returned! I actually got this ass movie on dvd just so I can enjoy him anytime
AO3 Link
Bassam got the breath knocked out of him all at once as his daughter jumped on top of him with all the energy and force a hyper kid possessed by a wild cat.
“Baba!”
Bassam sputtered, coughed and groaned, and as he started to roll over, wakefulness hit him like a brick, his arm catching, twisted awkwardly behind his head, barely keeping the soft tissue in his daughter’s head from colliding with the floor.
“Hana, Christ, stop– climb back, baby.”
She hit him in the gut as she hopped backwards, leaning across his stomach.
“I’m hungry.”
Bassam let out a long sigh, but smiled, rubbing her stomach.
“I haven’t eaten anything proper in days. Oh, tell me we have food in the fridge, I’ll be glad if there’s even one bit of egg or bread.” He shuts his eyes and his head slumps, imagining the kitchen he had of good things he hadn’t had the likes of in what felt like an eternity.
“Baba!” Hana shook him and he startled, nearly dozing in just the seconds it had been.
“Right! Breakfast, my love, you need it now?” He was still exhausted. If it were up to him he’d stay here for another day or more.
She nodded vigorously.
“Then now it is.” He forced his tired body up, scooping her into his arms and carrying her into the kitchen.
Bassam had been having a good day, the best he could’ve hoped for after losing the thing keeping himself and his family afloat through all this instability and recession, his only source of income.
He had been hopeful and upbeat and looking forward to spending time with you, glad you weren’t nearly as angry with him as he felt he deserved, delighted to see his daughter again after so many days, when he’d had to reconcile with himself he may never see her again.
Now the one beer didn’t feel like nearly enough to even get to the shops.
It was crowded, as to be expected.
You and Bassam hadn’t been shopping together since early in your marriage, before Hana was born.
It felt a little strange, because it was like back before he even started his no longer current job as a freelance informant, when you were newly married and still working out your lives, who did what, the responsibilities you shared and shouldered. They had all been shared up until you’d divided them up.
It was like you’d gone backwards.
Reading prices aloud to you while you held the basket and read the off the items on the list, synergistically working one item at a time.
“Did we not get last month’s check?” Bassam asked after you made him put back the more expensive tea.
“No.” You shook your head.
“Shit! I didn’t– I didn’t get any severance, we don’t…”
“They didn’t pay you anything for cutting you off and making it so you can’t work in your industry after six years?” You scoffed. As if there wasn’t insult enough piled on injury.
“Yeah, well.” He sighed, shrugging. “That’s Americans for you.”
“There has to be some sort of legal recourse for you to get what you’re owed.” You said.
“Not when I already signed my silence. I signed everything.” Bassam groaned. “They shredded my contract. I was just trying to get back home, and be put down.”
You took a deep breath, then reached out and touched his arm.
“Hey. It’s alright.” You rubbed up and down his shirt sleeve.
He turned out of your grip.
“I’m sorry.”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry I– sorry I just left you there like that on the street corner. That was shitty. I was just so overwhelmed. I can’t feel– I was almost happy, for a second, everything was not so bad, and now it’s like I don’t know what I’m feeling or if it’s even okay or I can—”
“Bassam, baby, shhh. You had it in the first half.”
“I am not angry with you. This isn’t your fault. If it’s another kid I know I’ll love it. Promise. I won’t– I’m not angry.”
“I know you will. I know. One thing at a time.”
“Two things at a time. Or I will start to panic.”
You rolled your eyes a little but nodded, standing up straight.
“How are we on rent?” He asked.
“Clear to next month.” You said. “We’ll ask for help. My sister. We can ask her. She understands what a mess this is.”
Bassam picked his head up, the worst kind of revelation flashing behind his eyes.
“Did— did you tell her I was going to go to Balad?” He asked slowly.
“Yes.” You looked at him.
“Oh shit….”
“What is it?”
“You were not supposed to tell her that! Fuck… What possessed you!”
You blinked, glancing at the few other patrons in that part of the shop.
“I just said you were headed up and that’s why you couldn’t come to her party.” You replied lowly. “I didn’t know it was spy stuff!”
Bassam rubbed over his brow hard, like he was trying to wipe his brain out of his head completely.
“You told her when you were working up farther north for the week last year,” you said. “I just thought…”
“That was not fucking sensitive information.” He snapped.
“Bassam, do not speak to me that way. Do not curse at me.”
Yes, maybe you had screwed up, but things like this had never once been a problem before. You could name one time total you had even talked about it before today.
Bassam swallowed the embarrassment of being commanded by his wife in public, keeping his focus to the most pressing things at hand.
“Her fiancé told them where Ferris and I were going to be and that’s why it was cleared out when we got there and why I don’t have a job anymore fuck! I knew I hated him!”
That irritation that made you slap your spouse of eight years for the very first time rose in your chest again and you bit your tongue to not tell him off while he was down, seeing your part in everything and feeling ashamed as well as annoyed.
“He’s so fuckin’…” he growled, then hummed hard, breathing in deep through his nose, his arm on the aisle shelf.
You opened your mouth to speak but didn’t get to.
The glass of the store’s front windows shattered, suddenly finding yourself on the ground with Bassam on top of you, scanning the front part of the store with wide eyes. It took a second before the other patron’s screams registered in your ringing ears.
“Bassam what in the name of—”
“Nothing good, I need you to get down and stay down!”
He crouched back and pulled you to your knees, all but shoving you behind the nearby shelf.
“I– what–” more glass shattered and you tucked your head into your arms.
“Get out the back door, I will meet you in the alley.”
“Bassam I—”
“Now, I will meet you, go!”
You looked to him and than to the feet between you and the exit and when he pushed you again you ran for it.
You burst out the door into the shaded afternoon sun, heart racing, feeling like you needed to throw up. You didn’t even realize there were tears streaming down your face till you wiped it and felt your shirt wet. You let the brick wall opposite the store hold you up as you took deep breaths and tried to pretend the gunshots you heard inside were just the clatter of shelves and bottles.
More crashed. Glass. Groceries. Gunshots. You stayed put.
Bassam appeared a minute later from the same door you came out of, anxiously pulling at his loose hair, breathing hard.
“What is going on?” You demanded.
“Yalla, habib.” He hurried up to you. “We have to go, c’mon.” You tore your wrist out of his grip.
“Bassam we were just shot at I am not going anywhere until you tell me what is happening!”
“I don’t know!” He screamed. “I don’t fucking know but I cannot keep you safe here!”
You saw what looked like blood on his sleeve.
“We need to stay off the streets, out of sight, get back home and figure out what the hell we’re going to do. Now, come on.” He held out his hand.
You stared at your knees. Your chest hurt, the alley was spinning. You had milk on your clothes. You hadn't even noticed the floor in there was wet with it.
“Habibti. Come on. Please. Before someone else shoots at us.”
You raised your head and hesitantly took his hand. “What kind of trouble are we in?” You asked softly.
He shook his head.
“A lot of it.” He said.
Bassam pushed the bed out from the wall and tore the wallpaper back, pounding by the baseboard in intervals until a panel popped open. He pulled a thick tactical duffel bag out, set it on the bed, then spread out and started assembling a shotgun.
Your gaze dragged over the spread, your breathing increasing as you processed that everything in front of the both of you had been in your home. For years.
“Habibi you said you cleared all the guns out the house when Hana started walking!”
Bassam’s eyes flicked to yours, but only just; his focus was on the gun pieces in his hands.
“Yeah, I lied.”
You took a deep breath, dragged your palms down the sides of your face. You almost wished he hadn’t come back.
That terrible calm over his features, that mask, it was a character, and not one you had seen in a long time. You hated it, because it was not the man you married, and not one that belonged in your home.
You wanted him to snap out of it, but at the same time you knew you needed him on full alert and at his professional best. For both your safety. If you had any hope of getting out of this alive.
Bassam finished assembling the shotgun and then loaded it and the pistol in the pouch of the bag, tucking it into the back of his waistband.
You were about to ask him what you should do when he shoved you behind him, rushing forward and colliding with some stranger somehow in your doorway. Two bullets hit your wall.
A shotgun hit the intruder.
You husband rushed out into the hall and you heard struggle, more shots. A man crashed back through the doorway, hitting your dresser and sending clothes everywhere.
Bassam kicked him in the head before he could get back up, pulling the pistol from his back and shooting him in the face, splattering blood across your bedroom carpet.
He loomed tense over the body, his brow knitting. He crouched and opened the assailant’s jacket.
“He’s American.” He said.
“What?” You couldn’t look.
“He’s an American contract– oh fuck.”
He quickly stood, dropping the wallet and turning to you.
“Habibti we need to get out of Iraq as soon as possible.” Before you were even quite sure what he had said he was wrenching you up and all but dragging you over to the closet.
“Only what we need, hurry, we do not have time. None at all. I don't know how soon there’ll be others.”
“I don’t understand, I thought you said you can’t leave the country–!”
“It doesn’t matter, if we stay here we are dead, not a matter of if, just when. We will be dead.”
You met his eyes, dark.
“We have to leave.”
“Hana.” You said.
“Tell her it’s an emergency but she needs to stay calm, she needs to get Hana across town, she’s going to have to stay with your sister.”
You nodded, catching the phone he tossed to you and taking his hand. He pulled you up.
“Tell her no matter what she cannot bring her back to the apartment.”
You glanced down to where her room sat through the wall.
“For how long?”
Bassam swallowed hard didn’t meet your eyes. Your heart dropped.
“Oh God.” You murmured, fighting to keep the tears down.
“Hey, we will see her again, I promise, I just don’t— she will not be safe with us. But we will sort this out and come back.” He put a hand on your arm soothingly and pulled out another of his many burner phones, shaking it for emphasis.
“Ferris gave me a contact, I know a guy, he can get us out of dodge and from there I call Ferris and he can stop whoever the hell is out to get us.”
“Okay,” you nodded weakly, trying to keep it together. “Hana’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
“Yes, come.” Bassam pulled you alongside him.
You gripped the strap of the bag you’d filled with only your most important possessions, as well as two changes of clothes and a first aid kit.
The woman down the hall from you with three small children. One of them was clinging to her pant leg, his wide eyes fixed to the glint of your husband’s shotgun as you left your apartment.
“Go inside. Don’t come back out.” Bassam instructed.
You stuck close behind him down the stairs, hardly feeling your legs move.
Bassam halted when you reached the bottom and checked around the corner before gesturing down the street you were going to take.
You breathed in measured silence between paces, moved careful, close steps from each point to the next, through doors, down stairwells, along halls and alleys and roofs, until you finally with a pounding heart and aching ankles made it past the curfew guards and out of town.
The sun was setting as you left the complex, and now it was dark, the last unpaved street past the last few scattered buildings was open desert, dark and wide and full of stars. You kept low along a ridge out of sight of a convoy heading into town and settled beside a gravel slope leading to the road.
Bassam made a call, and you crouched there hand in hand in silence for what felt like hours, your jacket only just keeping the chill off your skin and the rocks from digging into your back, before headlights blinked on the horizon and a truck stopped off the road up the ridge.
He conversed briefly with the driver, and then you both clambered into the backseat, adrenaline having worn off, you finally let yourself breathe properly, in and out.
Bassam felt you over for injuries and even though you knew you hadn’t been shot, the shock in your bones and the unpleasant buzz of every nerve makes it feel as if you have. You close your eyes and press your head into the seat, trying to let the dark seep deep enough for you to rest, but it doesn’t want to come.
“I am so sorry, habibti.” You open your eyes. In a strange way you had almost forgotten he was with you. He’d been so quiet, so focused. Like an instructor rather than a guide.
“This was never supposed to involve you, our neighbors, Hana–”
“I knew what I was getting into when I married you, habib.” You reached to hold the back of his neck tight and pulled his head against yours.
“Did you?” He whispered.
The car rumbled over rocks. You held your husband and hoped your baby was okay. Both of them, if you had another now.
If you all survived and made it back together it would be enough.
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Warnings: Marc is so autistic he may give secondhand embarrassment, canon typical violence to open, Steven and Jake are here but not here
Words: 1.2k
Rating: T
Summary: Marc barely makes it in time to save your relationship, only to find nothing needed saving.
Imagine and pretend with me I finished this when I started it in February
AO3 Link
The blade sinks straight through to the pavement, lodging in the composite like cold butter.
He thrashes, one last feeble grasp at self preservation, then falls limp, dead, against the icy sidewalk.
Marc breathes a sigh, as much relief as anguish. The guy had a closed up piercing in his left ear, like all the older kids were getting when he was in school. He’s not gonna forget this one anytime soon.
He frees his weapon, stands and catches sight of the moon through the clouds. It’s moved much, much more than it should for the time of night it is.
He makes off down the street, panicked. He’s super late.
For a moment Marc has no clue why the cashier is looking at him like that —he hadn’t even been talking to himself in the store— but as soon as they hand the bag over and he reaches to take it he cringes at the white of his wrappings, holding his breath till he’s down the street and can drop the armor, let it peel and pull away, leaving him in his meticulously picked street clothes touching everything. Everything.
He smooths his curls back and paces out his steps like bullets in a magazine, loudly venting criticisms under his breath even though he’s pretty sure Steven isn’t around. Terrible, inconsiderate, incapable.
He gets to your building and is about to ring the buzzer to your apartment when he stops himself, checking his reflection in the metal plate by the doorbells. Jake rolls his eyes back, teasingly.
He looks really. Just too much. Tired. He tilts his head. Good enough? Sí. Good enough.
Good enough.
He presses the button.
“Hello?” Your voice answers a few seconds later.
“It’s Marc.”
The door clicks and Marc opens it, striding up the stairs, leaving degrees of February chill behind with each step till he’s to your floor.
“Hey,” he says when you open the door wide awake in your pajamas before he even knocks.
“Are you okay?” You ask in a serious tone above a whisper and below speaking, concern piercing his chest.
He doesn’t answer. He holds up the bag. “I promised you we’d do something for Valentine’s Day, so, here’s something. I’m sorry it’s so late.”
“Huh?”
Marc inhales, lets his lungs fill and his expectations empty. “If… if this is it, I get it. It’s fine.”
He won’t plead, or try and make any promises, he’ll just leave.
“Marc, what are you talking about?”
“You told me if I blew you off one more time we were done.”
You stare at him.
He shifts on his feet.
“We didn’t have plans today.” He says.
“No. We didn’t. You told me you had work.”
“I did??” Now all Marc can think about is how that guy didn’t have to die, how Steven is overstepping and getting involved in his relationship, unless he just forgot—
“You are so weird. You want some popcorn?”
He stops mentally reading back through your texts, interpreting words, and just nods.
“Yeah.” He says shortly.
You push the door open and he follows you inside, shedding his jacket.
“If it wasn’t you, this time of night, I would’ve thought someone had died.”
He sets his shoes a bit away from yours and rubs his ear.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” you stretch your back, “I’ve been up.”
“I can see that.” He murmurs, dragging his mind along. He takes in your den, the blanket spread on the couch in front of the TV.
“Your roommate?” He asks.
“Out.” You say.
“Right.” He sets the bag on your coffee table.
“Oh. You didn’t have to get me anything,” you start, and quiet immediately as you open the bag to no less than three big slices of convenience store cake. “Never mind.”
Marc softens, glad something simple enough for him to get down was enough to get a smile. That’s all he wanted.
“Hold on, I’ll get some forks, put on some tea.”
You pad into the kitchen and Marc feels you leave in his bones, it’s like the temperature drops, it gets dimmer.
“Don’t just stand there,” you call from the kitchen, not even having to look. “Sit down.”
He smooths his shirt out and sits in the far corner of your couch. He doesn’t touch the big bowl of popcorn in your spot.
You come back a minute or two later with two mugs of tea, matching tiny plates, and silverware.
You dig through the plastic and pop the red velvet’s clamshell case open, roughly split it with your fork, tilting half onto the plate closest to him.
“Uh, I got it for you. I wasn’t really—”
“Baby eat some cake with me.” You eye him with an annoyed smile on your face.
You’ve never called him baby before.
You cut the chocolate heart on top in half and set it next to his piece, seeming to forget you brought a second plate and putting a big bite of crumb and frosting straight from the container in your mouth, humming contently.
It contrasts.
Marc eats as you do. Takes when you offer. Thinks with every action.
The snow falls. The diffused dark lessens. His fingers get salt and powdered sugar on them. You turn the show back on. Sounds flatten and fill.
He drinks his tea, lightly sweetened clean against the taste of preservatives, butter flavor, and cheap cocoa lingering on his tongue. Theobromine and sucrose cling to his system like sticky weights. The back of his throat goes from clear to thick while his head does the opposite.
Thinking less.
“You need another pillow?” You ask, nearly startling him. On his face he just looks on the edge of sleep. He isn’t.
He processes the room again. You again.
The episode has ended. Or maybe you closed it. It’s quieter.
“No, I’m gonna go.” He glances to the window, exhales, starts to get up.
He didn’t notice your knee was against his thigh, now he’s stopped, staring at your hand on your leg nearly on his.
He doesn’t know if the two of you are this close. He can’t remember if you’re touchy or reserved or if you expect something more than he’s been doing, if he’s already screwed something up.
Your eyes say no, but he’s been wrong before.
“Sun’s gonna be up in like two hours. It’s freezing cold. Just stay here, it’s fine. Please stay.”
Marc doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to go back out there. But this was your home and your things and he’d already overstayed without appointment, showing up this late, taking your time and attention, letting himself lose track.
“Just– not my bed.” You say, pulling comfortably away from him. “Have the couch.”
Thank God. A line. Tangible.
Something he can work with. Comprehend.
“We’re not there yet, it’s good we’re not there yet.” Marc rattles off a little anxiously. “I’ll stay on the couch.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Always so much pressure. I’ve got secrets in there, man. ’Night!”
“’Night.” He sighs.
It’s so fast, you stash the few things away, dishes, trash, turn out the lamp, and disappear into the hall.
Marc waits for your bedroom light to go off, as long as that takes, he waits, then he lays flat on his back in the warmth your body left, eyes lidded to the ceiling, his breathing even, his clothes unbunched.
Calm.
Tepid.
Alone.
The blankets smell like you.
And he feels safer, no stakes, no danger, no complex signals, nothing to navigate, away from everything cold and severe, safe falling asleep.
One arm over his forehead, the other across his stomach.
One date at a time, he could allow himself this. He could.
Warnings: embarrassment, fluff, possibly insensitive jokes, Marc isn’t in the relationship but he’s in the relationship, kissing, a little dirty
Words: 1.2k
Rating: T
Summary: Steven finds a lot of people liked your wedding photos for a reason he didn’t notice.
AO3 Link
When you walk into the apartment Steven is at the table with his mouth in his hand.
Spread across the table is three thin envelopes. Your confusion turns to excitement turns to concern when you realize what they are.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” You tug off your coat and ask.
“Mn? Oh. Nothing, love, nothing.”
“These the prints?”
“Yeah,” he nods. “There’s the… they really got the sunlight, nice, and your dress, just brilliant.” He pushes a couple more out, absently tapping the table.
“What is it?”
“They look really great. She did amazing, she did.”
“What’s this then with your…?” You gesture to him, all of it.
Steven takes in a long breath and slides one photo to you.
You warm instantly. It’s one you want to frame, for sure. Really simple, elegant, big, genuine smiles, almost laughter, both of you in profile embracing each other.
“Oh, that’s a nice one.”
“It looks like I’m feeling you up!” Steven exclaims, rubbing into his eyes. He adjusts in his seat. “These are all over your and her page and no one said a thing!”
He pulls out, opens, and holds up his phone, and you squint. You tilt the screen up and try to decipher what’s happening with the UI amongst huge text boxes. You have no clue how he navigates apps with it.
“Uh, Steven, the comments are down here.” You say, tapping them open.
“What?” He takes and looks at it, breathes in, then stops. “Hold on does that say 4,6k as in four thousand??”
“Yeah. I told you. People really loved our wedding photos.”
“Four thousand people liked it!?”
“Well, lot are probably bots.”
“Oh my God, how many people noticed—”
You show your teeth. “Looks like a lot?”
Steven shuts off his phone and dumps it one the table. “I’m gonna die. Oh God, that couldn’t possibly be any more embarrassing. Why are that many people following her! I mean great for her, really great…”
You pick up the photo off the table. It really isn’t obvious until you give it a good look. What draws the eye is your faces, the light. The boob grab is tertiary.
You remember why it happened. Steven had been holding you around the waist, a little too close, a little too uptight, continually glancing into the camera.
“I’m ruining the photo.” He murmured, reaching and tugging at the tab at the back of his shoe, tapping his heel in like he had done a hundred times.
“It’s okay.” You said.
“It’s not okay…”
“Just relax.”
“You know the word relax is like designed to stress you out as much as possible.”
You thought a moment, staring at his lapel, lifting your eyes to his and tucking a curl off his face beside his kippah.
“Maybe we should stress you out as much as possible.” You said. “Do you think we could get Marc to object in the middle of the ceremony? Just object, and start a big fight with you, right before it happens, right in front of everyone.”
Some of your friends knew Steven had some sort of disorder, that he was neurodivergent and all around atypical, but not a soul other than you and Layla knew he was more than one person, and he wanted to keep it that way.
The sheer absurdity of what could be the most important day of his life being completely ruined, so irrevocably and spectacularly, by his alter at the altar, punched a nervous laugh from his chest, first pulling away from you, breaking that forced, uncomfortable performance, then moving back in with a fond smile.
It was an instant, just a snapshot, where his hand brushed across the top of your breast, ending up on your shoulder, then cupping your face while he responded discreetly, teasingly, how he would seriously, never in his life forgive Marc if he did such a thing. The prospect he even would was so ridiculous, it stopped his spiral in its tracks.
Disconcerted, sincere, calm.
Unintentionally candid, three clicks.
And it wasn’t only the best one, it was really a perfect photo. Right in that second, all Steven’s anxiety disappeared, knowing he was so loved and his trust was so well placed no such thing could never happen, being with someone who knew him well enough to joke about it and not even feel bad, the rest were fine, right after was a little sappy, before he looked freaked out, but just between, you were smiling wide and confident, and Steven looked just about the absolute happiest he could be.
It was weird to think none of the hundreds of people liking the photo could see or know that, why he was really happy, the joke you were sharing, how his laughter shifted through a Rolodex of emotions as varied as his identities.
It was why you picked it to post. You, him, and Marc had all looked at that smile and said yeah, that’s him, that’s Steven.
“I think it’s sweet.” You say. “It was a complete accident. You were having such a hard time relaxing, and, well, you got very relaxed.”
Steven groans and leans his head back.
You shrug. “It’s not a wardrobe malfunction. It’s not even really inappropriate. Just an accident. Kinda funny.”
“It’s raunchy.” He takes it, gives it a disapproving look and sets it face down. “May as well be up your fanny picking berries out of frame.”
You snort.
“It’s not funny!”
“Sorry,” you drop your smile and yourself into the seat next to him. “What do you want me to do?”
He sighs. “I dunno. I’m just sorry I didn’t notice it sooner.”
“I think it looks fine. And I’m not just saying that.”
“Doesn’t make me look like a pervert?”
“No,”
“You’re sure like, ‘cause I’m only seeing how naughty it looks. People were saying…”
You stop his hand before he can reach to pick his phone back up.
“Steven, we were married like two hours later. You weren’t doing it on purpose. No photo could ever look just right because nothing is that perfect.”
You brush his fingers one at a time till you get to his ring.
You lean in. “But you know, later that night you sure were.” You sneak a kiss under his earlobe and he folds like you’re hot to the touch, practically whining.
“Love!”
“No one saw any of that except Marc, huh?”
He’s fully flushed now, shading his face.
“He helped you lose your virginity.”
He puts a hand up. “No, not directly, he minded his own business during, he did.”
“And his business after.”
“No, stop!” He laughs. “He didn’t. He did not!”
“He can handhold as much as he wants.”
He clears his throat.
“He might’ve, a little,” Steven mutters. “Like we said would be fine.”
“I’d be disappointed if he didn’t. Like, what, he doesn’t want you to do a good job?”
He shakes his head. Your back and forth with Marc was possibly his most favorite thing. It just clicks. “I love you.”
“I love that smile we got in this photo.”
Steven’s eyes lower. “Yeah, all right.”
“All right?”
“Yeah. It’s er… it is really pretty.”
“You sure are.”
You press a kiss to his lips, just a soft peck against his labrum, and he tilts his head to smooth the two of you together, shoulders hunched and pads of his fingers trailing your jaw.
You break apart and Steven’s eyes follow you with affection as you pull your chair up closer and gather up the rest of the photos to start sorting.
Warnings: serious injury, near death, whump, low angst, proposal disappointment (you do get engaged! Sorta)
Words: 1.3k
Rating: T
Summary: Poe’s plans are ruined when you ask him first, but he can hardly complain.
A short oneshot from way back when that I completed
We are not fans of hothead Poe here this is workaholic Poe that just wants his engagement to be perfect. Someone tell him you usually talk about getting married before you propose
AO3 Link
Miraculously, he was alive.
His X-Wing had been shot down, controlled crashed through the trees into a pit of underbrush.
He had been suspended from his safety belt, half the control panel lodged against his left side. Multiple things had ruptured, he was bleeding internally, bones were compounded, skin was missing.
There was so much blood, the smell of burnt flesh.
He was conscious, blinking mutely up at the bright lights when they brought him in, breathing shuddering, shallowly, painfully.
It was the worst pain he’d felt in his life. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere, it was inside, outside, all of him. When he looked down he could see nothing but red and char, he tasted blood and sick, and there was so much noise, but between the ringing and oxygen over his face it was all muffled and sharp in the sides of his head, no words, just stabs of shouts and hurried crashes of back and forths.
He recognized the colors of medical droids and doctors, the real and artificial voices overlapping. Why he wasn’t unconscious, he had no idea.
“Get him a sedative and prep anesthesia, we need to operate stat!”
Sedative, was all he could latch onto. Please.
He wanted to sleep.
Ever so slowly, his eyes opened just enough to take in the room. He could see, that was good. He was back at base, on D’qar, he recognized the stone.
His eyes landed on you, curled in on yourself, in a seat to his right.
It took him a minute to speak, like he had to find the parts of his body inside himself one by one and reconnect them.
“Hey. No cryin’ over me. That’s not allowed.” He rasped with a smile on his lips.
“Poe…!”
He could see the smeared teartracks down your face, how tired you looked. His body still hurt, but not nearly as much as knowing how bad you must have been hurting seeing him like this.
You’d been together months on at this point, serious stuff, dancing, cuddling, after meetings together, late night rendezvous with smuggled games or snacks.
He was so happy to see your face again.
“Starlight.” He couldn’t feel, much less move his arms, but he so much wanted to hug you.
“Poe,”
“Why am I breathing weird?”
“There’s a… there’s a tube– your left lung, it was punctured, collapsed, there was bone in it, they had to get you oxygen.”
“There’s a tube in my lung?”
You nodded.
“Like a straw. Real high tech stuff.” He joked flatly and coughed a couple of times.
His chest heaved stutteringly.
“Everything fucking hurts.” He wheezed, wary to shut his eyes, genuinely afraid he wouldn’t have the energy to open them again.
“I am so sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?” He teased. “That was me. I’m alive. I am alive, right?”
You tapped your fingers over the readout from his heart monitor. “Yep. Still alive.”
He hummed. “Can’t complain then.”
You smiled and hummed, wiping your nose.
“They said you might not remember what happened. Well they said you might not remember anything at all.”
“I crashed,” he groaned. “I remember that much.”
“You don’t remember waking up before now?”
“Nope.”
“You were awake a couple times. Weren’t really here. They upped your meds.”
“Didn’t say anything weird, did I?”
“Nothing weirder than usual.” He sneered playfully at that, ignoring the pull on the tubes down his face.
He glanced at the food packaging and trays on the table beside you, which confirmed what he already thought.
“You’ve been here since I was brought in.”
You nodded.
His heart clenched.
“And how long has that been,” he said, softer, making your skin prickle.
“Ten days.”
“Grief,” he sighed.
“You’ve been grounded through the year.”
“What?” He alarmed himself and grit his teeth around the pins erupting through his skin.
“General’s orders.”
“Oh that is such bull—”
“Poe that’s the soonest you’re going to be able to see if there’s going to be lasting damage to any of your organs. It’s not gonna be for another month you can even try to walk.”
“I don’t need to walk to fly a ship.”
“You have got to be kidding.”
“I’m gonna talk to her.”
“Yeah, you know, as soon as you can sit up.”
Hearing you say it made it sound a little ridiculous. In a few weeks, though— no. This wasn’t that easy.
“I’m sorry. You know, maybe some time down will help I… I forget other things are important.”
He’d taken this mission and blown right through his date, nearly lost everything.
“You are so fortunate, you know that? It doesn’t seem like it, but you were really almost gone there.”
“It doesn’t feel real.” He said. It didn’t feel like almost two weeks ago. It could’ve been nothing and he wouldn’t feel any different, at least he doesn’t know how he could be more numb.
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
You took a deep breath and sat in the quiet of the recovery room.
“I won’t go back up.” He said. “Until this… healing, passes.”
He didn’t like saying it, acknowledging it, but he meant it. He needed to slow down. This was the softest warning he could get that would really change his mind. He couldn’t risk not being here.
“Thank you.” You said.
“Don’t mention it. Please.”
He would need to find other ways to contribute or he would drive himself nuts. One thing at a time. You were exhausted.
“Hey, as much as I love having someone to talk to, for the love of all that is good get a walk, get outta here. I’m fine, I’m like ninety-five percent sure.”
“You’re lucid and you want me to leave?”
“I can tell just looking at you. You’ve done way more than anyone should have to. You look awful.”
“You can’t see yourself right now.”
He raised his brow and sighed. “Not wrong there. I’m sure it’s not so bad. Come on, don’t make me—”
“Poe I want to get married.”
Poe was sure he hadn’t heard you right.
“You don’t have to answer. I just spent this whole time so scared I was going to lose you and I don’t—”
“You haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
There went his plans like the wreck of his ship. You were tired, you couldn’t mean it.
“Poe, it’s fine if—”
“Of course I’ll marry you.” He chuckled. “If, and I mean if, you walk, right now, get air, some sleep.”
“Are you serious. I’m sorry, I know you need to rest, you don’t have to say.”
“I am. I said it. It’s okay. I’ll be here.” He smiled, cherished your face with his gaze. “I’ll marry you.”
You lit up.
“Was there a necklace, a necklace I was wearing when they admitted me?” He asked seemingly out of nowhere.
“I– I don’t know, you went in to surgery, I didn’t see anything.”
“Shhhit.” Poe inhaled. He took that at face value. He’d lost it. He’d known it was a risk, wearing is everywhere. What mattered was he was still here. That he could still get married at all.
“Though there was this bit of metal that was with your clothes, there was this.” You dug around between the things of flowers beside his bed and held up a little loop of steel.
“Oh, thank goodness!” He laughed, relieved, not truly realizing how much he needed it. Proposing to you without it wouldn’t feel right. Though, he would need his hands for that. Standing wouldn’t hurt either, or, well, it would for a while, rather.
“You keep that. Keep that safe.” He said.
“I got it.” You nodded. “What is it?”
He was still going to do it properly. It wouldn’t be perfect, it didn’t need to be, but Poe was nothing if not a listener to his heart.
“I’ll tell you later.” He said, and his eyes crinkled with felicity. “Go.”
You pressed the lightest kiss to his temple, stroking his exposed fingers, and left to go find a bed with the ring clutched tight between your own, your mind finally restful enough to sleep, but your heart pounding with joy.
Just Like Gardening, Just Like Piloting - Poe Dameron x reader
Warnings: childbirth, pregnancy, survivor’s guilt, angst, bittersweet, crying, the Hosnian Cataclysm, mentions of pee blood and amniotic fluid, male fertility issues
Words: 5k
Rating: M
Summary: Poe just barely gets you and his unborn child off the planet before it’s destroyed, but it puts you into labor.
or
In a galaxy far, far away where Poe never went to pilot academy, never joined the Resistance, and instead settled on one of the safest planets you could find to start a family with the love of his life.
Happy May The Fourth!
This came to me as a way of dealing with excruciating period cramps, and it worked, and now you can read it too.
AO3 Link
“Coming through!”
Poe pushed past you into the house, a large gnarly plant in his hands.
“I was just going to get you!” You called across the sunroom into the kitchen.
“Do you know if we’re going to have rain soon?” He called back, setting the huge bulb into the ‘garden sink’ and peeling off his gloves.
“Why would I know that?” You walked over to him, leaning over to get a look at what he was doing.
“Look, see? I told you. Something is in that soil eating at my perennials.” There were two tiny little bite marks.
“Poe, are you all done outside?” You chuckled, rubbing his shoulder.
“Yeah. Just a sec, I’m gonna check the weather, I need to see if she’s staying overnight; I don’t want her to get too much sun in here.” He nudged his head to the big sunroom windows streaming midday sun in.
“You don’t think about anything else, do you.”
“Nope. Except for you and our little one.” He pressed a quick kiss to your lips, finished drying his hands and rubbed the swell of your very pregnant stomach.
“Who’s coming real soon.” He added softly with an assuring nod. Not that you need it.
It would be so soon, so close, now, finally, after four years, that you would birth your first baby.
Poe worked as a mechanic, and a damn good one at that, but his heart wasn’t in it. Said it reminded him too much of his mother, and so he mostly took on speeder repairs, sold and installed parts, and spent every other minute at home and in the garden.
Getting your home ready. The third seat at your table, the bedroom down the hall, the chest of toys in the living room, the space between the flower beds in your yard.
Your family, everything you had been working towards.
“Shut that off.”
You reach behind you to the knob in the nightstand, cutting off the reporter’s voice.
Late morning sunlight spills in through the curtains on both of you still in bed, wrapped up in each other.
“You think you should’ve joined the Resistance.” You say, twisting that curl that won’t stay off his face around your finger.
“That First Order nonsense, it’s just that. The Empire fell.” He pulls his head back and smooths his hand down your front.
“What we have here,” he says.
“Back pain.” You deadpan.
“The other thing.”
You give him a look.
He curls his fingers sideways against your belly. “Right there, our baby.”
You reluctantly make a heart with his hand and he leans back, looking right into your eyes.
You spread your fingers to thread them with his and press your palms flat. You feel a little pressure moving laterally against your hands, a gentle greeting.
“That’s a lot better. I am so happy we made that. ’Stead of running off and doing somethin’ stupid.”
You shift your body up, perturbed. “You hear the things they’re saying.”
“Who’s saying?” He shrugs, a frown on his face.
“Everyone, Poe.”
“That was my mom’s war. They won it so I don’t have to leave my baby. What. You don’t want me to leave, do you?”
“No.”
“I don’t want to throw years of my life away just so everyone can say it was fine, the New Republic was strong all along. You want me to go and risk my life?”
“Not even a little bit.” You shake you head hard.
“Me either. I’d make a terrible lieutenant.” He sighs.
It hadn’t been easy to have this family.
Poe had a low sperm count, through no fault of anyone. Conceiving took time. And patience. And a lot of love.
He wasn’t going to put that off for some far off threat. Not when it took so much to build. As sure as he was since the minute he met you, knowing more each day was his journey. Not giving up.
He was a decent, maybe even great pilot, but it wasn’t his calling. This was.
The unrest felt everywhere, it would continue with or without him.
The Galaxy would spin on.
“It’s nuts out there. I love being here.” He says. “With you.”
You settle back against him, smiling with a wistful sadness behind your voice. “Me too.”
Poe pins down your upper half with his body, kissing you deep, clambering over you.
You break the kiss, breath stolen. “Watch out for the– baby, Poe!”
“What baby? Are we having a baby?”
He trails deep kisses down your neck to your tender breast.
“Oh, this baby.” He lands on your belly, stroking it. “Five years in the making. Two weeks throwing up. Three months making you wet yourself four times a day.”
“Oh it’s barely down to once a day.” You slump back.
“You sure about that?”
“I don’t count leakage, only what doesn’t get caught by the pad.”
“Oh so it’s actually more?”
He pinches your breast through your shirt.
“Poe!” He bites playful marks to your chest and neck, and you laugh till you’re nearly in tears until he eases up, rolling over to snuggle and spoon you with his chin fitted to your shoulder.
“So mean.” You reach around to keep playing with his curls. “You always been like this?”
“Well, when I was about ready to propose, and I looked at you, and I said I want a baby, I want a baby more than anything else in the entire Galaxy, if I marry you can we have a baby? And you said yes, Poe, yes, I wanna have your baby so badly, you should put your weak little sperm in me right now, that’s such a great idea—”
You jab him in the stomach and he breathes stifled laughs into your bare skin.
“I was about the same.”
You were glad he could joke about it now, for months and months he felt so awful about it.
“I put my mom’s ring on your finger, we had the most beautiful, beutiful wedding, and then we failed to conceive for four years, three months, nine days; until eight months ago, when you showed up at the shop with a positive little test.”
“That was a nice day.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“You did that. Even though your sperm weren’t their best.”
“Only needed one. Only one needed to be good enough. To get accepted.”
“I am sorry my eggs are such little primadonnas.”
He hums.
“It’s good they are. It’s how we got such a strong baby.”
“Oh, don’t remind me.” They were settled right now, but the kicks….
“Thank you for not making this,” he gives his head a tilt. “A fight again.”
“It’ll be okay out there.” You say, leaning into him. “There’s many other pilots.”
“Yeah. Tons.”
He starts to drift back off and you concede this will be a nothing getting done kind of day, which you were more than happy with if Poe was.
He opened up the console in the hall and sighed, scrolling through the notifications. He paused, staring at the satellite readout. The weather was gorgeous, clear for days. There was nothing to worry about.
And yet a terrible sensation filled his chest.
He threw open the closest window and looked up. There was nothing, but the feeling only grew by the second.
“What is it?” You asked, stepping into the hall where he was.
“We need to go.” He murmured.
“What?”
“We need to go right now.” He grabbed his jacket, threw it over your shoulders and ushered you out the back door.
“Poe what’s happening?”
“I don’t know, just trust me.”
“Shouldn’t we—”
“There isn’t any time!”
He took your hand and you followed him as quickly as you could with your pregnancy weight as he nearly dragged you out to the speeder.
On the way to the shop all the online systems in your home and every other went off, sirens blared, a wall of sound and confusion. Crowds were forming, watching the skies, people were running all ways, panicking. You heard fragments of announcements, contradictions, Starkiller Base, warning shot, false alarm, First Order, test, already fired.
Poe climbed up into his family ship and helped you aboard, hurrying to the pilot seat, powering everything on.
Red light filled the sky.
You got ahold of the passenger seat and strapped yourself in just as Poe hit the propulsion and you lurched back, clutching the seat.
The ship rumbled the whole way up.
Moments after you broke orbit the planet blew to pieces, sending your ship hurtling into space where Poe wrangled with the controls to keep the ship steady enough to not smash into any of the huge chunks of rock flying past.
He threaded through speeding debris like water to the lowest point, barely breathing till you cruise to the edge of the solar system.
You looked out at the remains of your home with wide eyes.
Seconds.
By the time anyone could see anything it was too late.
If it had been just seconds later, you, your husband, and your baby would all be dead.
Neither of you could look away. It was everywhere.
You both startled as an alarm went off.
“I’m going to get us into hyperspace, we’re not safe here.” Poe’s voice barely escaped his throat.
It was so fast. You couldn’t think.
He prepped to make the jump and the thing that brought you back was a deep, harsh pressure through your back and abdomen.
“Poe—”
“One minute,”
You shut your eyes and braced against the front of the console. The ship jostled and you bit your jaw shut around groans of pain.
“Shit. What is wrong with that damn hyperdrive…!”
You dropped out of hyperspace and Poe started a diagnostic, flipping switches and dials.
“Poe!” You shout, nearly in tears, fist curled in your shirt.
“What is it?”
“I was going to get you to tell you,” you splayed your fingers over your abdomen, rubbing deep circles.
“You…” he looked down at your stomach.
“Oh, no. How long?”
“Since last night.”
“Okay.” His brow drew. “Okay how close together are they?”
“They just ramped up, I couldn’t tell if they were false or not and I didn’t want to drag us to the hospital again, I thought we had time. I just wanted you to be able to finish in the garden—”
“Just tell me how far apart they are.”
“I don’t know, I was going to get you to help me time them.”
“Roughly how long are they lasting?”
“F-forty? Forty seconds.”
Poe slicked his hair off his face, took your hand and brought up a star map.
“Closest planet with medical facilities… ten hours from here. Don’t even know if it’s there, I’m not picking up anything, there’s so much noise.”
He was shaking.
“We’re on our own for now. Let’s just see what supplies we have.” He said. He helped you up and when he did you both saw the passenger seat and the floor under it were wet.
Poe set you in the bunk across from storage. He was still dressed in his muddy boots and garden clothes, his overalls.
He set a heart monitor to fetal and placed it below your belly button.
Your doula was dead. Your OB-GYN was dead. Everyone at the birth center. Poe’s flowers. Whatever had been eating at them. The nurse that took first images you kept copies of in the little box under your bed.
“Poe, your dad—”
“I need to focus, starlight.” He said.
You inhaled and tried to keep it together.
You had no idea how many attacks there were, if the other Republic planets were safe, if anywhere was safe.
Another contraction interrupted you and you breathed through like you’d worked on with Poe at your classes.
“Breathe, just breathe.”
“Mmm-hm.” You hummed.
You thought back to last night as you’d laid breathing through what you thought were false labor cramps, not wanting to wake Poe up for the fourth night in a row when he was such a heavy sleeper and already so exhausted from everything the last few weeks. Your constant discomfort. He was gardening more to try and keep his stress down.
And as they started to get more intense around sunrise, you convinced yourself you were imagining it, to get back to sleep, and let Poe rest from the endless worry.
“How long was that?” You asked.
“Sixteen minutes since the last, forty-nine seconds. Okay, we might have to deliver the baby here.”
“I am so sorry,”
“You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“I should’ve said something.”
“You did say something. There wasn’t time for anything else.”
He helped you out of your bottoms and you flushed everything from the last few days out in the refresher along with some more mucus and waters from the amniotic sac.
As much as you didn’t want it to be happening your baby was coming today.
Deep squats, stretching, pacing. The next few hours were quiet, inconstant labor. Anticipation hung you both.
“Deep breaths, nice and easy.” Poe held you under the arms, swaying with you, humming songs he knew from his childhood like you’d planned to handle the first stage.
If you just kept your eyes shut and moved with him you could pretend you were at the birth center, or in your living room.
“Lean on me, I can take it.” All you could hear was Poe and your own breathing. Just trying to stay calm, keep getting your cervix ready. It was so heavy, where you were supposed to be excited replaced with dread.
You weren’t going to get to anyone in time, there was nothing but endless space surrounding your tiny ship. All you could do was keep at it and hope for the best, whatever that was.
You find Poe out in the nursery, sitting against the wall in the dark.
“Hey,”
“Hey.” He looks up at you as you sit beside him, discreetly wiping his face.
“You doin’ okay?”
You had gotten the second, more comprehensive test results back. Low everything. Something with his testes.
“I’m doing great, why wouldn’t I be?”
You don’t respond.
“It’s that stuff they were saying,” he breathes through his nose. “There aren’t that many. They swim weird.”
He feels his forehead and looks at you.
“Starlight, what if I can’t have kids?”
“We can find some other way.”
“No, what if I actually can’t get you pregnant?”
“Well, we don’t know that.”
“I don’t want to do any of that other stuff, I don’t want to get into this– chasing it thing, I just want to have sex with my wife and make a baby, why is that so hard‽”
You flinch.
“I’m sorry.” He murmurs, sighing. “Garden’s more fertile than me.”
“It’s fine, Poe. I don’t know why. I don’t.”
“I mean it is me I am to blame everything on your end is good, it’s me—”
“We’re a team. This,” you held your ringed hand up. “Means it’s both of us. We’re struggling to have a baby.”
“We’re struggling because of me.”
“No, you didn’t do this, did you?”
“No. It’s what I didn’t do.”
“What could you have done that you haven’t?”
He opens his mouth and closes it again.
“I don’t know.” His voice breaks.
You slide an arm around him and pull his head to yours.
“If it’s possible, it’s gonna happen for us, okay? Because we did it.”
“Is it? Possible?”
“There’s a chance. If you can’t take all the credit, you don’t deserve any of the blame.”
“I can’t take any credit, that’s nothing. I mean it’s everything when you can’t, but after, it’s just– it’s all you. I’m just here to help.”
“Until then I’m here to help you, too.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s okay. You’re still my husband, Poe. Baby or no.”
“Baby, please.” He holds your hand, you thumb his cheek and press kisses to his crown and face until the tears stop.
Three weeks later you wake up achey all over. You had missed your period but hadn’t tested, didn’t want to get ahead of yourself.
Poe was working so you got an appointment in on your own, same day, and met him at the shop right after with the news.
“You’re sure?” He has grease smeared across his cheekbone, his hair is a mess.
“See for yourself. I asked them to triple check everything. I got all the tests. It’s just sixteen days old. Do you wanna know the sex when they get full results?”
He takes the test in his hands with wide eyes.
“No, I wanna keep it a surprise, I just, it’s good, it-it-it’s healthy, it’s not abnormal or going to miscarry or—”
“No so far it looks good. It all looks good.”
“It looks good…!” He rubs your arms and dirties your clothes, but you don’t care.
“Oh, baby.” He says, hugging you and burying his face in your hair.
“I was going to ask you, I was looking if we should do treatments, hormones, that stuff, I didn’t know, I was starting to feel like it wasn’t gonna happen.”
He pulls back.
“There’s so much we need to do I mean you’re taking the supplements, we gotta make sure…” he shakes his head.
“We will but it can be anything at all, I’ll love it. I love it. It’s perfect. Thank you so much.”
“You’re happy?” You tease, smiling wide.
“I am so happy!!!” He squeezed you, nearly lifting you off the ground, pressing kiss after kiss to your face.
“I’m a dad! We have a baby. We actually have a baby! I don’t know if anything’s ever gonna begin to outdo this.”
“Maybe when it’s born.” You say as he finally rests his hands on your waist and you rest yours on his.
He nods. “I hope so.”
It dragged on, the unceasing aches building in intensity and frequency.
“Poe, Poe, I need to sit down.”
Another contraction came and you gripped your husband’s arm for dear life. He sucked a breath through his teeth and eased you onto the bunk, checking the chrono.
“That’s really close.” Poe said, gently spreading your legs.
You couldn’t respond, every bit of your body was overtaken with the tight, overwhelming pressure. Your baby was settled into your pelvis and it was harder not to bear down than bear down. Hard to move.
The contraction ended and you whined, pressing your face into your husband’s chest.
He rubbed your back and shook his head.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” He said. It wasn’t often he felt so, so helpless. “Someone who does was supposed to take over by now. Are you fully dilated, are you not fully dilated? Is it facing the right way? Is anything right? Of course not. I don’t know.”
“It’s coming either way. Did you finish reading what I gave you?” You asked, your voice shaky.
“Yes, but that—”
“It’s going to have to do.”
Poe took a deep breath and put a hand on the back of your head.
“If I can pilot a ship I can deliver a baby, right?”
“Yes. I can’t do it by myself.”
He pressed his eyes shut.
“Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. We’re having a baby. We’re having a baby. I can pilot anything. I can do this. You can do this.” He looked up at you, taking your hand.
“We’re gonna do this.” He said gravely.
You nodded. He gave your hand a squeeze.
“Okay.” He exhaled. “Let’s do this. What position do you wanna push in?”
“Can you get that box?”
“Of course.”
You pulled yourself to standing with it and rocked your hips back and forth, trying to find a balance that aligned things the most comfortable.
“Right, gravity, good.” Poe said, nodding.
He grabbed the last few blankets from the storage cabinet and padded the floor under you.
The box shifted forward and you bit out a curse, grabbing a smaller box and putting it between the larger one and the wall.
“People have done this for forever, all over the Galaxy, this isn’t any different. We just need to make sure nothing goes wrong. Easy. Like piloting a ship. Just like piloting.”
He undid his overalls, rolled his sleeves up, and took a knee.
“You need to only push with the contractions, you got that? With the contractions.”
You nodded.
“Right. Alright. Get it together.”
“This is as together as I’m getting.”
“No, no no no, I’m talking to myself. I put this baby in you and I’m gonna get it out of you. We’re gonna get it out together. Okay? With the contractions. On your mark,”
“Right,” you tried to relax, to center your body on this, just this. Like he said, you could do this.
Poe was on top of it, around, down, over as they came. Holding your hand, holding you everywhere you needed him when the next came and with them grunts that became vocal screams. It burned.
“I can see a head!” Poe exclaimed.
You pushed and pushed and the contraction ended. It felt like the baby moved back.
“Breathe, baby, you aren’t breathing—”
“Stop telling me to breathe– I’m trying!” You snapped, gasping around the awful stagnant sensation. You didn’t know if you were doing something wrong.
He rubbed your thigh.
“Okay, we need to rethink this. Can you put your foot up here on my leg? We need to get this open, it’s moving but not enough, not the way we want.”
You panted, humming to yourself to try and distract from how overwhelmingly stuck it felt.
“Sweetie, your leg, can you—”
“Yeah, yes.”
He hoisted your left foot up on his leg.
It felt a little better.
You kept breathing, kept rocking.
The pressure hit you again and you pushed with everything you had.
The baby’s head crowned, Poe shouted, and by the end of the contraction with all your effort popped out. You felt it. That meant you were almost done, right?
He was breathing ragged.
“I promised you I wouldn’t be sick.”
“What?” You opened your eyes.
“It’s fine, I’m good, you focus.”
“Does it look bad?” You asked.
“No. No I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything, it looks fine it’s just bloody, not a lot, it’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s just a little blood.”
The next one snuck up on you, it was so little reprieve, you tried to push and you did but it was broken, you couldn’t make any progress by the end of it.
Poe shushed your crying, offered as much as he could, comforting you.
“Next contraction I need you to keep pushing, keep pushing, get the shoulders out, and I can pull ’em the rest of the way. You hear me? You’re doing so good. You are so close.”
“Poe…”
“This is the one as soon as the next contraction comes, you push as hard as you can, keep breathing. It’s almost over.”
“It hurts so bad.”
“I know if I had anything to give you I would. I would in a heartbeat.”
“Do you think it hurt?”
“What?”
“The planet, the whole system, Poe, everyone—”
“No, no not now. You have to get through this. Just get through this. We can talk after but right now you need to push, okay?”
“I’m doing good?”
“You are doing so good. Best I’ve seen.”
You managed a little of a laugh and he pressed his forehead against your hip.
“You keep it up, okay? This is it.”
You shuddered and lifted yourself off your elbows, seeing marks and dents in your skin from all the ridges of the box.
You pressed your head forward, filled your lungs.
“Can you keep this leg up? I’ve only got two hands.”
You nodded and Poe dragged his toolbox under your foot, getting up off his haunches.
You bore down with the contraction, braced and hummed and pushed hard till it ran out, leaving you pulling breaths in and dropping them.
“There’s a hand, we got a hand, just a little more, keep going.”
“I wanna stop…!”
“You can’t, baby, you gotta push.”
You weren’t trying to give birth in the dark quiet of space. You were home and safe and in the trained hands of your trusted birth workers you’ve gotten to know over the last few months. You needed to push and you were more than capable, you hadn’t just lost everything, you weren’t cut off from all the resources you needed in case you started to lose this baby or your life.
“And let go, don’t keep pushing! Don't keep pushing after the contraction, just rest.”
You breathed out hard.
“This time, this time.” Poe said, cradling the baby’s head. He was so gentle. “You are so strong, I know you can do this. I’m right here.”
“I don’t think I can,” you cried.
You were alone with this except for him, but you did have him. He had both of you.
“You know you’re the strongest person I know, it’s why I married you. You’ve got this. Please. Do this.”
You forced your shoulders and jaw to loosen, relax. You and Poe synced your breathing.
You gave it all you had, everything, pushing, engaging your whole body.
Poe caught the rest of the baby in his hands, securing it close to him.
“Ah! It… it’s a boy!”
Sudden lightness.
Poe turned him over and rubbed his back as he took his first breaths in and started to cry, small, warbled, shrill, full of mucus, a sound that brought a wave of relief washing over both of you. Those were healthy little lungs.
“Happy birthday, buddy! Oh, sweet bebé.”
His laugh made you weak and this was no exception.
He covered him against the open air with a clean rag and put his arm around yours, helping you back into the bunk.
Poe’s arms and chest were smattered in blood, sweat, and fluid, cradling his squirming, still blue newborn close to his chest.
The umbilical cord tugged and Poe hunched closer to help get your shirt open for skin to skin, putting the baby on your chest.
He was bigger than he felt, you could hardly believe you actually fit him through your hipbone. He was warm. Covered in vernix. His skin was squishy. He had a big nose and doey eyes just like Poe. He looked stunned, like a little bird. You could look at him forever.
The placenta came with considerably less effort a little while later, in one piece, and Poe checked your blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate all over again.
All normal.
Baby had all his fingers, toes, good lungs, good grip, good color, and was kicking as much as he had been the last few months.
Healthy, good.
Once it faded to a dull white, Poe tied the cord with a sanitized cable organizer and snipped it.
He cleared up, got a washcloth, carefully avoided your parts, got his front and your face and legs clean of everything, put a cloth under you for the bleeding.
He pulled his boots off, sat and nestled himself next to you, held his little boy’s hand in his own.
“Thank you, Poe.”
He broke down, a flood, he held you so tight it hurt and cried, and cried, and cried.
You would have too if you had the energy.
“I was so afraid.” He said softly after a good long while, your baby sleeping soundly. “I just knew I needed to get you off that planet, I couldn’t think about anything else, but then the baby wasn’t moving and I was sure I was killing both of you and there was nothing I could do. Oh hell, I think I tore you, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m okay.” You managed.
“I know you’re okay but you almost weren’t. You almost weren’t and I couldn’t do anything about it. Shit,”
He pressed his head back to the hard paneling.
“I don’t know what that was. I just had this feeling, like a voice, it wasn’t saying anything, it just was, but I just knew it said I had to get you out of there. I had to.”
He looked at you, lightless.
“I’m so sorry I was right.”
Poe walked the baby, swaddled in threadbare blankets. You hadn’t wanted to leave him with his thoughts, but sleep came, and he put his jacket over and let you.
A ship picked up your distress signal and got you to the nearest inhabited planet.
Poe covered the baby’s eyes and ears as you limped a little down the bay and across the airfield to a med team.
You got stitched up and the baby weighed and measured, vaccinated, all the things he needed, and a fight to keep them from doing anything unnecessary, which took both of you as you were still so exhausted, and truly, the adrenaline was wearing off. It was being replaced with guilt.
There were so few refugees, you were three of tens. Tens. Out of over a hundred and fifty billion.
Hundreds had made it to the ships; almost none had escaped the debris.
You had been so prepared.
Poe just tried to secure your funds and a place to stay, go through the hoops of his son’s birth certificate even though he wasn’t born on a planet.
It was all he could do to distract from it.
You had almost nothing. Everything you owned, everyone you knew, was destroyed.
Except for Poe’s father, Kes Dameron.
He was safe on Yavin 4, so that’s where you got transport scheduled to as soon as was safest for a newborn to light travel.
You knew Poe could barely live with it. That he hadn’t done something. No matter how much you assured him it couldn’t have made a difference.
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If you care about people with trisomy 21, listen to them. Read about them. Talk about them. Bring them up. They are neurodivergent and disabled. They are ignored in conversations about neurodivergence and disability. An extra chromosome is frequently an extra helping of bullshit from the moment you’re diagnosed, even from your own community. Celebrate and adore and be angry for and grieve with people with trisomy 21 the same way you do for people with other disabilities.
Drop the hard r from your vocabulary along with slow, stupid, and idiot. Don’t joke about institutionalization. Wear some fun bright socks. Understand what health issues they deal with. Tell other people about what health issues they deal with. Above all, acknowledge they exist and are worthy, capable, and common kind of human. Don’t keep them buried in your advocacy, bring them to the front. From my family to yours, have a great day >>>
