Chapter Text
It was Marc who picked her up from the airport, and she knew it was him at once. It was the way he held himself, leaning against his sleek BMW with his hands in his pockets; the way he made eye contact with her when she walked toward him through the crowd of fellow disembarked travellers. It was his outfit, too, plain solid colours and jeans. They both tended toward layers, but Marc had on a black t-shirt and a grey jacket with the sleeves casually pushed up, clean and minimalist. He detached himself from the car as she approached.
“Hey, Marc,” she said, and paused, searching his face. “And Steven. If you’re in there.”
He shook his head. He looked tired and tense, but he managed a wan smile. “Just me right now. Not sure what he’s afraid he’s gonna see.”
She put her suitcase down and just looked at him, and after a moment he softened visibly and pulled her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and resisted the urge to curl her fingers into the smooth fabric of his jacket. He briefly pressed his nose into her hair. Then he was pulling away, picking her suitcase up. “Come on.”
He tossed her suitcase into the back seat, and she settled into the passenger seat. Marc took a good long look in the rearview mirror before he carefully peeled away from the terminal.
“Actually, I don’t think Steven likes co-piloting that much,” he admitted once they were on the motorway. “I think he’ll get used to it. It’s all just a big adjustment for him right now. I try to step back most days so he can feel more … normal.”
She ran her fingers along the clean interior panel of the door. “What did he think when he found out he has a car?”
“I have a car,” Marc corrected. “Steven doesn’t even have a license.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not sure if that’s a lack of time thing, or an anxiety thing. I’ve offered to teach him.”
“Maybe it’s just a Steven thing,” she suggested, and she got to see how the lines around his eyes softened again.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said.
They made small talk for a bit – what she’d been up to in Cairo, how he and Steven were managing life without Khonshu. Once they were in London proper she tilted her head while he was talking and looked out the window. The sky was streaked with orange; street vendors selling umbrellas were packing up their wares after a brief shower. If Marc turned left in a few blocks, they’d be headed in the direction of their old flat.
She wondered if she could live without Marc Spector in her life. It was a difficult question to answer, one she’d been debating for days. She could if she had to, she had proven that over the past few months. Did she want to? He was her best friend and her partner in every sense of the word. He was the person she still, despite everything, trusted over anyone else with her life.
She thought of a coffee she’d had with a friend from university, and the way her friend had shrugged and said “We grew apart,” when Layla asked about her husband. That wasn’t her and Marc. She couldn’t have been more shocked by the divorce papers when they arrived, because that wasn’t them. They hadn’t gone into this lightly, on a whim. He was a private person, she knew that – she was too – and she had always known there were things that were too painful for him to talk about, but he’d never been deceptive. They talked about things, even if that sometimes led to loud fights; those usually led to even louder sex, and there wasn’t a single minute of it that she hadn’t loved. Right up till she’d been standing in her rental flat holding the sheaf of papers that blared Divorce Proceedings across the top, she’d thought he’d felt the same.
She looked at him in the fading light, tired, probably sleep-deprived, telling her that Steven had started to see a therapist that week, and it was nothing to do with him, but he thought maybe it would be good for them both, in the end. There was something about him, just then, that made her want to grab on and hold him; not the tepid hug they’d shared at the airport, but really hold onto him and not let go.
She had to blink hard, and she looked at the street again. When he fell silent, she said, “I don’t want to fight with you, Marc.”
From the corner of her eye she saw him look away from the road to glance at her quickly, surprised.
“I thought that’s why you were here,” he said warily. “To flagellate me for my choices.”
“Not really. Though we could do that some other time if you’re into it, maybe.”
She saw his lips pull into a smirk. It was always like this with them, familiar and easy. The rough edges that had initially existed between them had long since been worn away through years of companionship and banter. They fit together. Until recently, she’d have said she understood Marc perfectly.
“I don’t want to talk about my father,” she said. It was one of the things she’d meant to bring up, but she knew there was nothing more to say. Taweret said her father was at peace. She had to find a way to be at peace with this, too. “You tried to tell me what happened back there and I didn’t listen. I came into it too angry to listen.”
“I should have told you a long time ago. I kept trying to find the words …”
“What good would it have done?” she asked tiredly. “I already knew how he died. I know that – that you wouldn’t have gone along with a plan like that, if you had known about it. I know that you tried really hard to stop it. That’s what matters.”
He was silent, and she could tell that he didn’t know what to do with this unexpected grace. He didn’t expect her forgiveness, she thought, because he didn’t forgive himself. She wasn’t even sure if “forgiveness” was the right word for what she felt. But if she could acknowledge that it wasn’t his fault, wasn’t that the same thing really? It had to do, or the deep hurt she still felt over her father’s death would never fade. She wanted to heal.
When they had both been silent for a minute, and she was starting to recognize the fringes of Steven’s neighbourhood, she spoke again. “While I’m here. I want us to have ground rules.”
She could feel him looking over at her again. “Like honesty?”
“I’d call that number one, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded, with a rueful half smile.
“I’ve got another one,” she said. “I know you don’t handle direct questions all that great. And I know there’s subjects you can’t really get into without starting to … drift.” Marc was very pointedly not glancing at her now. “I don’t want to end up talking to Steven because I pushed you too hard to talk about something you couldn’t handle. So if I’m getting into that territory, if I’m coming up on an emotional red flag, let’s say, I want you to tell me. Okay?”
Marc was silent for a long minute. Finally he cleared his throat and said tightly, “Yeah. Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna do my best,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I have one,” he said suddenly, a minute later, when he had pulled onto a side street and started looking for a place to park. “Not really a hard rule, I guess. But I’d prefer if you don’t ask Steven a lot of questions when you talk to him.”
She stared at him, feeling the old disbelief and frustration making a return. “Are you serious? You think I’m going to try to weasel information out of Steven instead of talking to you? That’s how little you think of me?”
“No, I –” He glanced over at her, and she saw his nostrils flare and the lines around the corners of his eyes tighten. Then he was turning away again and focusing on backing his car into an open space next to the curb, his mouth set in a hard line. He parked smoothly, shoved the gear shift into park, and sat there. “Steven is having a hard time with things. And he’s always had a patchy memory, but now he actually understands why. So you could ask him something that seems innocent … like how old we were when he started popping up. And he won’t know, and it’ll upset him.”
She sighed. “Okay. Fair.” Then she added, “Guess you can’t blame me for not assuming you always have Steven’s best interests in mind.”
Marc took a deep breath. “This is all going to be easier if you just understand that everything I’ve done lately – whether it was right or wrong – was to protect you and him.”
Then he was getting out of the car. She soaked that in for a moment. Then she slid out and joined him as he was pulling her suitcase out of the backseat.
This was right near where she had parked her Vespa when Steven had brought her here. She turned and looked at the side of the building – Steven’s building, Steven’s flat. It reminded her too powerfully of the last time she’d been here – relieved and bewildered and furious, not understanding the game Marc was playing or how this Steven character figured in. She knew Marc’s body like she knew her own, maybe even better: the breadth of him, the reassuring heat and smell of him. And the scar – the faint white tick just under the corner of his mouth that had convinced her she wasn’t crazy, that it wasn’t possible Marc had some estranged identical twin who’d been raised in Britain and gotten hold of his burner phone, not with the exact same scar in the exact same spot. She knew Marc. And yet, every time her husband had opened his mouth: the same jarring sensation as going for a step that wasn’t there.
She remembered the shock and hurt in Steven’s face when she showed him the divorce papers, a neat mirror to her own feelings, and it had made her angrier, because the hurt had come from him. She wondered if the papers were still up there, probably not where she’d left them right by the door, but off to the side somewhere, waiting to be signed.
Marc was waiting for her. She turned to him.
“Do you want to get a divorce?”
His reply came immediately. “No, Layla. God.”
“Okay.” She nodded, chewing her lip. When she blinked a tear snaked its way down her cheek, and she brushed it away quickly, angry with herself for the rush of relief that had just poured into her chest. She could live without Marc Spector, but she didn’t want to. “Okay. That’s good.”
“Layla,” Marc murmured, and putting her suitcase down, he pulled her into his arms and held her tight. His hand came up to the nape of her neck in its familiar spot, and this time they fit together perfectly, the way they always had. She had known … she had been pretty sure … that Marc didn’t really want a divorce. But she had really needed to hear that.
She clung to him so tightly they swayed together on the sidewalk. She wanted to call it off, she wanted to say he was forgiven, she wanted to go back to four months ago when everything had seemed okay and he hadn’t put her through the worst time in her life. She wanted to hold him accountable. She wanted to forget it had ever happened. She didn’t know what she wanted, except for this, just holding him.
“Come on,” Marc said finally, disentangling himself from her gently. He picked up her suitcase again.
Once they were in Steven’s flat, he stood back and watched while she explored the cluttered space. Books upon books upon books. She trailed her fingers down the spines of them, her mind reeling. She should have realized, before, because Marc would never, ever allow any living space of his to become such a mess. She wondered why he hadn’t tidied all of Steven’s clutter now that they were cohabiting. She decided Steven must like it this way, and Marc wanted him to be happy in his space. It was a strange thought, oddly generous, and yet she was certain she was right.
She stooped down to look into the fish tank. “Wasn’t there one fish before?”
“They’re Steven’s fish,” Marc said behind her. “He says they’re social.”
“Uh-huh.” She straightened up and turned around. Marc was watching her like he was waiting for her to pass judgement. “Is this really your mom’s place?”
“No,” he said. “I paid for it. Steven –”
“Filled in the gaps,” she finished for him. He shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded.
There were a couple changes that she noticed from last time. Notably, a pull-up bar hanging from the ceiling, and an empty bottle of bourbon in the kitchen sink. She wondered if it was from today. There was still ancient Egyptian memorabilia absolutely everywhere, though, including in the fish tank. She wondered if it had driven Marc crazy, that Steven insisted on bringing both their work home with him. She smiled.
When she was done exploring, she sat down on the couch. After a minute, Marc joined her.
“Did you listen to any of the messages I left?” she asked. “Before your voicemail box was full?”
He let go of a hissing breath. “Thought you didn’t want to fight.”
“Just tell me.”
“Some,” he said quietly. “Yeah. Some.”
“So you knew I was in absolute hell over you?”
He dropped his face into his hands, raking his fingers through his hair. “Layla …”
“I know,” she said. “You were ‘protecting me’.” She gave the words as much disdain as they deserved. “You know, one of the reasons I fell for you in the first place is that you always trusted me to handle my own shit. It was always a partnership with us. That’s why we got married. We were a team.”
He was shaking his head before she even finished talking, angering her even more. “This thing was bigger than both of us, Layla. There was no other way.”
“No other way?” She got up off the couch, glaring. He wouldn’t even look at her. “I thought you were dead, Marc. For weeks. I cried, every day for you. And the first sign I get that you’re alive is – is divorce papers in the mail via one of my contacts. What the fuck was I supposed to think?”
“You were supposed to take the hint and stop looking for me,” he growled into his hands.
“Stop looking for –!”
“Khonshu promised me one last mission.” Finally he was looking at her, with helpless anger. “And after that, he was gonna move on and use every trick in the book to win you over. You think I could stand to let that happen? You’ve seen the things I’ve done in his name. You’ve seen me break bones and get shot and stabbed and burned in that suit, and have to shake it off and keep going. You think I don’t feel that stuff when it happens? You think I could bear to think about that, any of that, happening to you?”
“I would have said no.” Her throat felt so thick, the words came out strangled. “The answer was always going to be no.”
“I know. You’re smarter than I am.” He reached out and grabbed her hand, and she squeezed back hard, fiercely. She could see how much this conversation was costing him. “But he’s smart, too. He’s thousands of years old and he knows exactly what to say to get under your skin. If he knew how to find you, if he knew I knew where you were … or if he thought Steven knew… And you think it’s easy to say no, you think it’s as easy as that, but he’s patient, and if he came to you during – during the worst time of your life, and told you he could make things better …”
Newsflash, Marc, she wanted to say. He did ask me in the worst moment of my life. I had just watched you get shot and die. It doesn’t get any worse. But she knew he would say it was more complicated than that, and maybe he was even right – she’d only had the one conversation with Khonshu, after all, and Marc had had ten years to become intimately familiar with the bird’s ways. She had been on the outside, only knowing what he decided to share, and she’d known that Khonshu was bad for Marc; but then, too, Khonshu had helped them out of scrapes in her own line of work numerous times.
What if Marc actually had died on a mission, and Khonshu had promised her vengeance on his killers? To protect her so that she could continue the good work she was doing – her father’s work, acquiring artifacts and restoring them to their homes – without needing Marc as her back-up? Would she have considered it then? She wanted to say no, but – because she believed it, or because she wanted so badly for Marc to be wrong?
“I’m sorry,” he said presently. All the fight had gone out of him. “I’m sorry for putting you through that. I really am. I just – really want you to believe me that if I had thought there was any better way to keep him away from you, I’d have done it.”
The fight was leaving her, too, trickling away along with her energy. It had already been a long day. She dropped back onto the couch beside him, and without a second’s hesitation his arm came up and wrapped around her shoulders. She felt him falter a second later, and she reached up and stroked his hand, keeping him there.
*
They ordered Chinese food, and Marc went downstairs to get it when it arrived. He let Layla pick out her food first, and she piled a few things onto her plate and withdrew to the small kitchen table, gingerly pushing a decorative sarcophagus aside. Marc took his time collecting his own food. She noticed, belatedly, that he’d pulled a third plate out and he was putting food on it: steamed tofu bao buns, vegetable chow mein, fried rice, noodles with peanut sauce. He quickly wrapped it and put it in the warming drawer of the oven, to keep it from going cold, before grabbing his own plate, which contained only a small portion and absolutely no tofu. She was still staring at him when he turned around, and he halted. She saw at once that he had put the second plate aside without thinking about it, and felt he’d been caught doing something distasteful and odd.
She smiled and shook her head. “I just have so many questions.”
This didn’t relax him. It was a moment before he joined her.
“Just reminds me of the last time people in my life knew about Steven. Didn’t go so good.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He hesitated for a long moment. She could see his tension in his hands. She reached over and covered one with her own.
“Emotional red flag?”
He brought his head up quickly. “Ah… Yeah. Sometime, maybe, though. I’d like to.”
She pulled her hand away, and they ate. In between bites, she said, “Guess I’m still amazed you never mentioned Steven to me. Didn’t it occur to you that I could have helped you? What if he’d started fronting during one of your missions –”
“Fronting, what’s this fronting?” Marc snorted, interrupting her. “What, you did some research, you’re an expert now?”
“– I could have kept him calm, I could have told him where he was and kept him safe till you got control back. And wow, I know deflection is your first language, but that’s a hell of a choice, Marc.” She didn’t like the weird, hard stare he was giving her from under his eyelashes. “Of course I did research. You don’t know the terminology for your own disorder?”
“I had it under control,” he said, shrugging one shoulder, flippant again. “There was no reason for you guys to know each other.”
She sighed, but didn’t push it. After all, she didn’t know for sure how she’d have responded back then. She might, she had reflected uneasily while she’d been pondering this very question recently, have even taken it for a joke at first – might have even laughed at him – and then where would they be now?
When she was just pushing the last few bits of rice around on her plate, she said, “It’s going pretty well, though? You and Steven, I mean?”
“Yeah.” Marc had relaxed, and he smiled. “He’s … he’s adjusting. Like I said. But it’s been good.”
“Good. I like Steven.”
“Oh yeah?” he said, feigning a casual tone.
“Yeah,” she said, grinning. “I think he’s charming.”
Marc rolled his eyes. “Charming. Sure. He’ll be thrilled to hear that.”
Layla laughed, and patted his shoulder when she got up and took both their empty plates to the sink. “It’s nice, though. That you’re getting along, I mean. Felt like I was navigating a hostage negotiation half the time in Cairo.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“I hope you’re being nicer to him now.”
“Nicer?” Marc scoffed. “When was I mean to the guy?”
She turned back to him, resting her elbows on the counter. “How about promising him you would disappear from his life if he just let you get your shit done?” she said. Marc blinked, and his expression became shuttered. She went on, “He’d have been happy to help, I bet. You didn’t have to lie to him. Felt like you were just telling him what he wanted to hear so he’d shut up and get out of your way. You can’t treat him like that, you know.”
Marc watched her while she said all of this, and at the end of it, he cut his gaze away. He had no defense, she thought, he had been playing Steven. But when the silence dragged on, unease began to set in.
“Marc,” she said. He looked at her from the corners of his eyes, without turning his head. “You were lying to him. Because that isn’t possible, is it?”
“Layla, just … give me a minute.”
“Marc.” There was a weird prickling sensation all down her spine, and a black haze was creeping in at the edges of her vision. She straightened up, keeping her back pressed to the counter, to ground her. Was this how Marc felt before a black-out? “You were – you seriously –”
“Don’t say it,” he said hoarsely.
She thought of that moment in the car when she’d looked at him in the failing light and felt that inexplicable urge to grab onto him and not let go. The divorce papers forced their way into her mind again, unwarranted, unwanted, utterly unexpected, and she saw with sudden clarity that he had never wanted a divorce. He had wanted to give her some tangible form of closure for when he gave his body over to Steven, and let himself cease to exist.
She could hear how high and strangled her own voice had gotten, and she had to force the words out: “Those papers were your goddamn suicide letter.”
His face twisted, and he put his head in his hand. He was crying, she realized. The tears that were brimming in her own eyes spilled over. She’d seen Marc cry after a nightmare, once or twice – sitting up in bed with his knees hugged to his chest like a child, unresponsive and far away from her until he snapped out of it all at once. And she’d seen a few tears of pain involuntarily seep out when he’d gotten particularly gruesome injuries doing Khonshu’s work, and the sky not dark enough yet for the suit to do its magic quickly.
This was different. He hadn’t cared, before. Now he didn’t want her to see. He was ashamed of this.
“What were you thinking?” she asked him hopelessly.
“I did want him to shut up,” Marc said, his voice hitching, muffled into his hand. “I downed half a bottle of whisky and it didn’t shut him up. You know what he was telling me, while he was fighting me every second for control? That I was a parasite. That I had ruined his life. That I ruin everything I touch. It’s fine,” he said, bringing his other hand up to his chest. It wouldn’t occur to her until later that he was directing this last part at Steven, kicked to alertness by his body’s sudden overwhelming agitation. “It was all stuff I already knew. I had known it for a while.”
“You save people!”
“I kill people,” he corrected, dropping both hands to the table. He looked so – tired. It scared the hell out of her, how tired he looked then. “And it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, and once Khonshu was done with me – what the fuck would I be good for?”
“You’re good for me!” she said. He was shaking his head, so she crossed the kitchen and grabbed his shoulder. She didn’t know whether to scream at him or sob. “Why couldn’t you just tell me?”
“I couldn’t,” he said, “I couldn’t put that shit on you –”
“That’s why we’re married!” she shouted. “So we can be there for each other!”
“I was in a bad place, Layla,” he said bleakly. She pushed his shoulder, hard, to make him look up at her.
“Harrow said you were in agony. More pain than anyone could bear.” There were more tears streaking her face. She dashed them away furiously, and said, “How could you ever have thought I wouldn’t help you bear it?”
“Layla –”
“You are so stupid,” she said, and then she was kissing him, and he made a soft, shocked sound into her mouth. In a moment he had recovered, and he was surging up off his chair and grabbing her, pressing her back against the table. His hand buried itself in her hair, finding its place at the nape of her neck, and when he tightened it she gasped. His other hand grabbed a fistful of her shirt, tight. Clinging. The tension in him was threading away, leaving him shaky in her hands.
“I know,” he murmured against her mouth, “I know, I’m sorry, Layla–”
She kissed him fiercely, angrily, shutting him up. She needed to touch him. She needed to feel that he was there, alive, with her. She was furious with him – in pain for him – she had missed him so much. She was reeling with all the things she felt for him then, but above everything else she just needed him here, under her hands, crushing her against him.
He devoured her in turn, and she knew he had missed her, too. He had never wanted a divorce. It was wrong to feel relieved, perhaps, given the circumstances, but that alone could have made her cry all over again. Khonshu had broken him so badly, but Marc still loved her. He still loved her. He had never stopped.
She would never let him go again.
His hand slid up under her shirt, settling lightly on her waist, and he didn’t seem in a rush to move it. Impatient, she bit his lip, then grabbed his wrist and guided his hand higher, up her ribs, up to the cup of her bra, and she felt him slide his calloused thumb up under the lace like he knew she wanted him to do–
He stopped and went rigid, abruptly. Took one sharp inhalation of breath. She hesitated, about to pull back and check on him, but before she could he gave a full-body flinch and then he was wrenching his mouth away from hers, twisting out of her hands.
“No, no-no-no, sorry, but no!”
The empty space in front of her almost gave her whiplash. A second ago he’d been covering her with his body, a familiar, pressing heat, and now he was gone. She gasped for breath, realizing.
“Oh my God, Steven.”
He’d backed right up to the stove, shaking his head. He seemed flustered, not quite sure what to do with his hands. But the look he gave her was stubborn.
“You were shouting at him two seconds ago!” Steven said shakily. “And now you’re necking like teenagers. You haven’t resolved anything!”
She shut her eyes and focused on catching her breath for a moment. In and out. Her blood was still fizzing. By now she and Marc should be–
“It’s kind of what we do, Steven,” she finally managed.
“Well, I don’t think that’s healthy.” He’d settled for wrapping his arms around himself, mulish. He looked incredibly out of place in Marc’s expensive clothes, almost lost, standing there across from her. He had thumbed the sleeves of Marc’s jacket down over his hands as far as he could. “Yeah? Because it’s not.”
They stood on opposite sides of the small kitchen for a minute. Layla kept waiting for Marc to force his way back through to her, to finish what they’d started. But it was just Steven, looking over at her warily like he expected her to launch herself at him breasts-first. She took him in, the softness around his eyes and mouth, the nervous way he stroked the hem of his sleeve with one thumb, and wondered how she’d ever believed he was really Marc.
Finally her heart rate had slowed down, the shock had subsided, and Steven looked calmer, too, not quite so knotted up.
“How’s Marc doing in there?” she asked.
Steven smiled ruefully. “Spitting mad, I expect. He’s gone quiet now. Had some choice words for me though. It is really lovely to see you, Layla.”
She laughed weakly, because there wasn’t anything else she could do. “It’s good to see you too. Wish I’d had a little warning.”
“Right, yeah. Sorry for muscling my way in there. Not my usual style. Bit smoother normally.”
He’d forced a switch on purpose. For a minute she’d been afraid she’d pushed Marc too hard, made him want to go away. But it had just been Steven, stopping them from moving too fast.
In the past few weeks she had talked to both of them on the phone – usually Steven answered, and let Marc take over once he’d said hello and chatted for a few minutes. His bubbly enthusiasm always made her smile. Over the phone, it was easy to forget they weren’t one person. One could almost pretend Marc had an excitable British roommate. She didn’t pretend – she knew Steven was not a roommate, and she had in fact done some research on dissociative identity disorder, trying to figure out just what was happening in Marc’s brain; and she’d never forgotten how it worked, not really.
But there was something very unsettling about standing in a room that had contained her husband one second ago, and suddenly contained someone wholly different. There was one second, only one, where she tried to wrap her head around this, and wasn’t sure if she could do it. If they were not getting divorced, this was what marriage to Marc would look like now: the constant possibility that he’d be forced out if things got too heavy, replaced in a second with someone who was patently not her husband, any time a difficult topic of conversation came up; or even if Steven just wanted to put himself between them for any reason. Distantly she heard herself think the actual words, I don’t know if I can do this.
She took a deep, steadying breath, and in a second it had passed, her only moment of doubt. It passed, and she felt a deep certainty.
“Please don’t do that if you can help it,” she said.
“Sorry.” Steven ducked his head. “It’s a bit hard to control sometimes... Marc’s a lot better at it. But you shouldn’t have done that, Layla,” he added, reproachful. “He’s upset, and that wouldn’t have helped.”
“Are you going to let him out of time-out to finish our conversation if I promise not to kiss him again?”
Steven just looked at her, and there was a little edge of steel in him she wasn’t sure she’d seen before. “He’s upset,” he said again, slowly. “Give him a few minutes.”
She had not expected pushback, not from Steven. She was actually a little impressed.
“Okay,” she said. Forcing the issue, she knew, would definitely not help. Maybe this too was what marriage to Marc would look like: accepting that sometimes, Steven knew what he needed better than Layla did. She had known Marc longer, but Steven had been doing this for him almost his whole life. Even if he hadn’t known he’d been doing it.
She pushed herself away from the table and walked over to Steven, and he brightened visibly and rocked forward onto the balls of his feet right before she hugged him. He was not Marc, and there was no finesse to it, no familiar hand cupping the back of her neck. He just held her and squeezed her happily. There was nothing complicated about Steven’s affection for her. He was refreshingly uncomplicated.
“Marc kept a plate warm for you,” she said, pulling away. “In the oven.”
Steven looked around, noticing the takeout boxes for the first time. His eyes lit up. “Oh! My favourite.”
He ate leaning back against the counter, still watching Layla like he wasn’t sure what she would do. She sat back down at the table with a sigh, wondering if Marc would even make a reappearance tonight, or if she’d pushed – if he’d pushed himself – too hard.
She was being rude. She only took another minute to collect her thoughts, then she asked, “How are you doing?”
“Me?” Steven sounded startled. “Fine. You know, aside from … recovering from actual-death experience, discovering my life and existence have been a lie, and losing my job. Aside from that, yeah, aces.”
“How’d you lose your job again?” She couldn’t remember if he’d said.
“Smashed up a loo,” he said. “Proper criminal I am.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s about the worst crime I can think of.”
“Innit though,” he said darkly, and now she laughed for real. It felt good. Steven, still leaned against the counter holding his plate, looked surprised and pleased at this reaction.
When he’d finished eating, he put his plate in the sink and sat across from her, where Marc had been sitting before. He fiddled with his hands, uncertain.
“I missed you. I’m glad you’re here,” he said quickly, all at once, like he’d had to work up the nerve to say it. She smiled.
“I missed you both too.”
“But I don’t think you should stay over,” he finished in a rush. “And I think probably Marc wouldn’t want me to say this, but he said I can tell you anything I feel comfortable telling you, and I feel comfortable telling you that we’ve been a bit stressed out about the black-outs in Cairo. We even did the ankle restraint thing, for the first couple weeks home, and it seems like everything is good, but I would just hate for us to have some sort of – of violent episode while you’re asleep here.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Neither of you said anything on the phone about this.”
“No, well, Marc doesn’t seem to think it’s a very big risk. He said he’s had black-outs in the past, when he’s been in real serious danger, and he doesn’t think it’s going to happen when we’re sitting at home in our flat watching Coronation Street, and he didn’t want you to think he was worrying about that. But I think he is worried, a bit. He hasn’t said much, but I think he is.”
“Okay.” Layla nodded. Processed this. “Thanks for telling me.” Steven smiled, relieved. “I have a hotel room booked and I wasn’t planning on spending the night anyway. But,” she added, “just so you know, I prefer to assess risk for myself. And in case you forgot, I have some pretty godly protection on my side. If you guys are worried about getting up and wandering around at night, I’d probably be the best person to have over.”
There were spots of colour in Steven’s cheeks. “Oh. Yes, yeah, of course.”
“But if you’re not, I think there’s still a lot to figure out before we get there,” she finished. “I think you’re right, and it’s probably wiser if Marc and I take things slow, and don’t … rush into our old patterns.”
Steven nodded quickly. He was still blushing.
“I can’t take credit for the loo-smashing,” he admitted suddenly, as if there was only so long he could try to contain the truth before it burst out of him. “That was Marc.”
“Of course it was.”
“Saved my life though,” Steven added.
She closed her eyes, thinking about Marc again, Marc wanting to disappear, wanting no more of life, with a wave of pain.
“Tell me the truth, Steven,” she said. “What Marc and I were talking about before … when he promised you he’d disappear. Is that even … possible?”
“Oh,” Steven said, uncomfortable. “I – I haven’t really thought about it. Guess I thought what you did, that he’d probably just been saying it to shut me up.” Carefully, he said, “He is very good at putting up walls when he wants to. I suppose he just intended to … put one up permanently.”
“And do what?”
Steven shrugged, not making eye contact. He fiddled with the hem of his sleeve. “Go to sleep, I suppose.”
She tipped her face into her hands, because she didn’t want to cry again, and she didn’t want Steven to see if she did. She focused on breathing, not thinking. Steven didn’t talk, and a minute later, the knuckles of his hand brushed her cheek gently. She let her hands fall to the table, and looked at her husband. Marc’s gaze was slightly unfocused, his eyelids a little droopy. The switch had taken something out of him, she realized. She brought her hand up to clasp his and hold it against her face, and he blinked, and smiled at her.
“Hey, honey,” he said softly. “Sorry. We’re working on boundaries.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s what he does, right? He looks out for you.”
Perhaps Marc had expected her to be angry, not to understand; probably he’d had way worse reactions in the past, from whoever had seen him switch before and left it so that he couldn’t even talk about the people who’d known of Steven. The relief on his face now made her hurt for him.
“You okay to talk about it now?” she asked.
He shook his head. Not a big surprise. Then he hesitated, and amended, “Just a couple things. I don’t feel like that anymore.”
“Okay.” Would he tell her if he did? She wasn’t sure anymore.
“Things looked a whole lot … darker when I thought I’d never have Khonshu out of my life, or yours. And I didn’t think I’d ever actually be rid of him. Having him gone, not having his voice in my head anymore, after ten years … I can’t tell you what it’s like. Like I’ve been exorcised of a whole lot of demons. Or one really big one.” He breathed out slowly, flexing one hand. “I feel … light.”
She nodded.
“And I didn’t tell you we were worried about the black-outs because I was pretty damn sure there was nothing to worry about. That stuff is … normal, PTSD shit.” The fact that he considered his PTSD normal spoke volumes about his mental state, Layla felt. “It only freaked me out that it was twice in two days, and knowing for sure that Steven hadn’t taken over. But I know it only happens when things get … violent. I’m not worried, and you shouldn’t be.”
She nodded again.
“And,” he said, with an air of finality, “I do not watch Coronation Street. I just want that on the record.”
“So noted,” she said.
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. He was gazing at her, and his eyes had softened in a decidedly Steven-like way. “I can’t tell you what it means,” he murmured. “That you’re still here, that you haven’t … run like hell in the other direction. You’re something else.”
“We’re married, Marc,” she reminded him, yet again. “That means we deal with our shit together. And it means you don’t ever abandon me like that again, no matter what’s going through your head. You tell me about it first.” Her grip on his hand tightened so fiercely, her hand almost shook. “You promise me.”
“I promise,” he said. “Never again.”
“I want to believe you,” she said. “I want to trust you again. But …”
“I know.” He kissed her hand again. “It’s gonna take time. But I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then I’m not, either,” she said.