#pwc17

Marcus, for me, is someone who carries everything silently on his shoulders. All of his responsibilities, his grief, his regrets, his pain, all piled one on top of the other, and he is not someone who is going to complain to much. He might grumble a bit, but outright complaining about his lot in life? Not his style.

But that can be so hard on a person, super hero or not.

The paperwork is significant for Marcus because he knew it would be coming and he had been putting it off. You know how you have a deadline for something annoying and you just don't want to deal with it, so you ignore it? Pretend it doesn't exist?

That's what Marcus did with those papers, and now they're sitting in his girlfriend's lap and he's feeling a lot of emotions: He's mad at himself for putting them off, he's mad at Granada for being the one to bring them up, but mostly he's frustrated that it has to be a conversation at all. If he wasn't powered he and Techie could just be two people, in a relationship, no waivers, no NDA's, no insurance forms. All of this is going through his head while Sarah is peppering him with (reasonable) rapid fire questions, and so he snaps.

I wanted to really display this very human moment for him, because no one is perfect, not even a superhero. I also wanted to show that these two as a couple still have their flaws, especially as they start to move away from that honeymoon phase. Couples bicker, they fight, and it's what comes next that makes or breaks the moment.

In this instance, it's Marcus who comes back to Techie. Again, this was intentional for me. He knows, immediately, that he shouldn't have yelled and the guilt and regret he feels is enough to knock the wind from his sails. Techie, for her part, is almost passive in that one single moment. The kiss even is described as being done by Marcus- he cups her check, he pulls her in. Our girl is not the best at confrontation (as demonstrated on Christmas with her dad) and her slightly wilting in this moment was intentionally meant to mirror those moments from chapter 15.

Thank you so much for the ask Miley and thank you for loving my two idiots! <3