#depends

She isn’t wearing her headphones or goggles, so he ducks back inside to grab them from the desk. A blanket too, just in case she doesn’t want him touching her without another layer in between, and…what else…The gloves? He stuffs those in his pocket, and zips back outside.

What he really wants to do is immediately hug her, but he doesn’t know if that’ll help this time.

It does sometimes. It can be frustrating trying to guess, getting it wrong and feeling awful about it. But it’d be worse to give up or not try at all, and she’s told him that he helps. So Mark will keep doing it instead of leaving her alone, like he used to worry would be the better option.

“Hey,” he says softly, sitting down next to her, but not touching yet. She doesn’t flinch at the sound of his voice, and her foot stops tapping, which is a good sign. “I’ve got your headphones. Do you want them on?”

He waits, gnawing on the inside of his cheek and being careful not to fidget.

She says when she gets overwhelmed, and her senses go haywire - worse than usual - she’s extremely aware of any movement near her. Like, even with how she’s hiding her face now, she’ll be able to feel all his atoms and stuff shifting about, so. The least he can do is sit still.

Finally, her fingers loosen the grip on the sleeve, and her index finger taps twice.

“Okay, that’s a no to headphones,” he says lightly, keeping his voice down but now he knows she’s good with him speaking - wants to hear him talk, even - he feels a lot more confident. “What about your goggles?”

It’s dark out, the sky too cloudy for many stars to make it through. Yesterday they spent ages messing with the clouds. Mark can’t, like, manipulate the water molecules and create whatever shapes he feels like, but he can fly around until some weird and cool clouds form, which is almost as good.

(It’s nowhere near as good, but Eve clapped for his efforts. He accused her of being sarcastic, but she- set him straight on that. Thoroughly.

Mid-air makeouts are super convincing, and they’ve done it enough times that he doesn’t really think much about catching himself early when they drop anymore. Eve’s right; it’s a thrill to be dumb and reckless with it, playing chicken on who’ll actually grab them out of the fall in time.)

It’s maybe a minute or so before Eve’s arms pull back from over her head. Mark takes his cue, loosening the strap of the goggles so they go easily on, and when she lifts her face up from her knees, he guides the lenses over her eyes.

It’s actually more of a visor, the material looking metallic even though it’s made of this soft, flexible stuff Eve invented because she’s a genius. They don’t block her powers like he used to think; this one just adds some ‘white noise’ over how she sees atoms and everything, so it doesn’t bother her as much. Uh, ‘dulls the temptation’, she said.

Maybe he should be more freaked out that Eve could take him apart down to his, like, electrons. But she told him about all this back when they first started dating - claimed he deserves a fair warning, like he wasn’t so gone on her it isn’t even funny (except to their asshole friends) - so it’s just their normal, really?

And, y’know. Kiiiind of sexy.

Especially when he knows he’s her favourite structure. She explained that part when they were friends - said he’s interesting, special, and no wonder he got a crush so fast (he was already crushing by then). He’d just noticed her staring sometimes, and it was probably weird to be more flattered once he knew the real reason why, instead of less.

Today’s obviously a day she needs to not see anything, even him. So he quickly but carefully tightens the strap up to hold the visor in place. He wants to move her hair out from under the sides, but he isn’t sure yet how okay she’ll be with touch. Yeah, she let him put the goggles on, but there’s stages and backtracking and, it isn’t the same every time. He won’t rush her.

But he can’t deny feeling really fucking happy when she scoots closer to him on the roof, and grasps onto the front of his shirt.

It’s a definite go ahead to wrap his arms around her and Mark doesn’t waste time. He pulls her onto his lap too, because she’s said before that when she does want contact with him, it helps not touching other things - like the roof. Holding her this way means it’s just him, and when she presses her cheek to his chest - over his heart - it lets him know this is the right move.

It means he can fix her hair too, at least on one side. It’s a little greasy, probably made worse by Atom Eve being so busy today. She likely won’t want a shower on a night like this, but there should be a new bottle of the dry shampoo in the bathroom if she’s feeling gross from it. At least, he’s pretty sure he grabbed some when they went grocery shopping last week.

He talks quietly about that - and whatever else comes to mind, from the Seance Dog figurine he really needs her to talk him out of buying since it’s definitely overpriced, to their plans to meet with the Guardians tomorrow for team training - until she’s ready to go inside. If it takes all night, it wouldn’t be the first time and…