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Four AM is a shit hour. Two AM, yeah, great, not too bad: there’s sometimes some batshit horror film on if he goes scrolling through the channels. Three AM, pushing it a bit, but there’s take-outs open that know him by name, and the pizza isn’t too cold by the time it gets to him. Then four AM shows up and it’s a fucking drain. Everything shuttered up, the roads mostly clear of cars except for taxis, and there’s a bunch of drunk fucks caterwauling outside. The next time Jake has to hear some asshole leading his friends in a strained rendition of Sweet Caroline, he is going to break the hinges on their window and start using Steven’s dense historical tomes as bludgeoning projectiles.
Sleep isn’t coming, and that means now he’s bored out of his skull. He caved and tried one of those sleeping podcasts, but all that low-pitch ASMR murmuring about breathing and imagining the sound of waves just pissed him off. He’s vetoed having a rushed and unsatisfactory wank in favour of reading to quiet down his mind. He’s still getting used to this. Existing, fully-fledged and three dimensional. Outside of a back-up plan, the thrown switch of an emergency brake. A person, rather than a last resort, who gets to be bored and hungry and tired. They unsettle him still, the hours where there’s no expectation for him to do anything except be.
The book is dumb as rocks, ambling on at a fairly stupid, predictable pace that he appreciates. Every so often, he leans over to the plate on the bedside cabinet and takes an unenthusiastic bite out of the grilled cheese he’s rustled up.
<If you’re listening, Stevie,> he thinks idly in Spanish, turning the page, <this vegan cheese is shit.>
A static spark of contact that evidences attention, a flutter of connection. There’s a brief unfurling of amusement that pools with him before withdrawing.
What with everything, that’s all Jake’s come to expect. Marc’s all fussing about it, nudging Steven to engage and come out from under his metaphorical rock, failing not to be hurt when he doesn’t respond, but Jake knows the kid needs the time to collect himself from the pieces they got left with. As long Steven hasn’t off and fucked completely, as far as Jake’s concerned, he can take as long as he needs.
It’s a surprise then, when the mirror that directs inwards towards their bed is suddenly occupied. Steven inching into vision awkwardly, sliding into view with the same self-conscious demeanour as someone arriving late to an appointment. Skittish, his hands held clenched and cramped against his chest.
“Hey, kid,” Jake greets him by waving the remaining bit of his sandwich at him. “You good?”
<Yeah, I’m – I’m ok.>
“Uh-huh.”
Steven wilts under Jake’s unimpressed expression.
<…I’ve bin better, t’be honest.>
Jake hums at Steven’s confession.
“Figures. You ain’t exactly looking like a million bucks. Wanna take over for a bit?”
Steven’s already shaking his head, because of course it was the wrong fucking thing to say. Course he doesn’t. Look what happened last time.
<I… n-no. I should… well, pro’ly let you, y’know, get on with whatever it is you’re doing.>
“What, this?” Jake gestures at the book with deliberate casualness. Whatever will it’s taking to keep Steven out in the open is fickle and fragile at best. “Eh. It passes the time. Some good bits. ‘s about this detective, yeah, an’ he’s tryin’a solve these murders. Only now, turns out he’s been framed by someone on his own squad, so ‘course he’s gotta go clear his name an’ all that.”
<Sounds… interesting?>
That’s Steven-code for ‘it’s absolutely not my cup of tea thank you and goodbye’, because he’s been cursed by being British as well as tragically fucking polite, but Jake can work with this.
“There’s this whole murder at a museum bit where a security guarded gets shanked, you’d hate it, bet they got everything wrong. Where was – right, hang on, listen to this…”
Steven, predictably, hates the book. And the list of things they got right is, from Steven’s point of view, criminally short. Jake gets an hour of fussy corrections and puffing outrages of the most minor shit, and one hundred percent sees it as his personal duty to stoke the fires by talking shit so Steven can retort waspishly.
By the time Jake starts slipping off and Steven waves a meek goodbye from the mirror before making his exits, the book has been roundly eviscerated.
Steven looked better, he thinks. Less of a jitterbug standing in his own bones, words and sentences smoothed out from their stammer.
“Kid showed up last night,” he tells Marc as he roots around in the cabinets for coffee filters.
<He ok?>
“Getting there,” Jake replies, hoping it’s true.
Jake surfaces flashbang with the sure knowledge that something has gone very very wrong.
In itself, this is expected. His moments of awareness come in a riptide of surging panic, the slam of a cold-water shock. He is dragged forefront when Steven’s thoughts are too snarled in panic for action, when Marc is fettered by exhaustion, overwhelmed and outgunned. When he needs to do what they can’t, so he can push them aside and away and make sure they all survive the night.
He’s pulled from dormancy to awareness with all the subtlety of freefall. But for the first time, he isn’t alone in their body, finding himself shotgun to whoever’s in the driving seat. Riding passenger means sensory input rather than numb visual confirmation through reflective surfaces, but at the end of the day, it’s a muted acclimation to their body, everything remaining at a slight disconnect while some other schmuck gets to drive.
He quickly translates what they’re feeling through the barrier of distance.
Their vision is impeded. A biting band of pressure clamped around the eyes and around the back of the head. Their mouth is tacky with copper and bile, drying up from where a loop of fabric parts the lips. A dull-thump ache spidering like a cracked window across the jaw. Their palms spark with an uncomfortable white-noise static sensation, dialling down to numbness when it reaches their fingers.
Restrained then. Blindfolded, gagged.
His – their breathing is overfast, dog-panting. Panicking. A rapid in-and-out as their lungs work overtime, their restricted vision swimming with a buffeting dizziness.
<Calm the fuck down,> he snaps as nausea rises in their throat and the dark feels like it’s spinning. He’s not in control, and he can’t speak per se, but he’s clearly in that vague fucking mindspace where he can communicate while in the backseat, which he goddamn hates.
<What the bloody hell do you think I’m trying to do??> comes the flustered, near delirious response, sent back through thought rather than spoken. <Right, right, gosh, ok… come on now, easy does it… in and out, that’s it, in and out, there you go.>
It can only be Steven.
<What the fuck is going on?>
<Beats me if I know, mate,> Steven’s internal self-pep talk, counting in-and-out in encouraging mumbles, continues for a few more seconds as he wrestles their breathing into something approaching normalcy. <Wait. H-hey, wait just a minute. You’re… you’re not Marc, are you? Marc doesn’t speak Spanish. Or, well, I suppose think Spanish, in this case, heh, never been entirely sure meself of how all this shared mindstuff works…>
<Give me the body,> Jake orders, shoving his way forward because someone’s going to have to get them out of whatever this newest fuck-up is and he doesn’t have time for twenty questions.
Or at least, that was the idea, to take control and push Steven back into that nebulous place of unconsciousness where he won’t have to see what happens next. He slams into something solid and unyielding, and Steven gives a vocal groan that pairs with an indignant offended yelp as they both get caught in the ice-pick crosswind of wrong that rachets across their shared mindspace.
<Oy! Warn a guy, would you! That bloody hurt!>
<Stop playing games!>
<That wasn’t me! I don’t know what’s happening! A-and anyway, just who do you think you are, ey, elbowing your way in here all gung-ho and macho a-and – …>
<Give me the body!>
<Not bloody likely, mate!>
<Then hurry up and tell me where the fuck we are so I can get us out of this!>
<I don’t know, all right! I – >
A creak of a door opening inwards disrupts their argument.
<Steven? What’s happening?>
<… Someone’s in the room with us.> Steven’s tone trembles like shook water. He holds their body still as ceramic.
<Who?>
<I don’t know! I can’t see, can I, I don’t – !>
A sickening cocktail of terror floods their system, seizing their muscles up with a painful tension. Jake is shoved outwards and away from conscious experience.
A long time passes.
Marc, Jake has come to the conclusion, only surfaces to the forefront to be a raging bitch about everything.
<You need to clean the tank,> the asshole in question speaks from the reflection on their fridge door, his ear partially obscured by a magnet of a sandstone statue of a pharaoh that Layla sent them (but mostly Steven) from the Abu Simbel Temples. Jake dubiously sniffs at the carton of milk he’s holding. <Also don’t drink that.>
“Don’t you have fucking someone else to bother?” The milk is a day or so out but it smells fine, and expiration dates are more of a guideline anyway right, so Jake drinks it straight from the carton because he knows that Marc hates it when he does that.
<The fish tank needs cleaning,> Marc replies as though he hasn’t heard Jake. Arms folded, a disapproving angle to his eyebrows that might work on Steven but just pisses Jake off. It’s one of the many things that Marc does that drives him right up the goddamn wall.
“Ain’t my fish.”
<No shit, genius. They’re our fish. If it’s so difficult, give me the body and I’ll sort them, how’s that?>
“I can keep two fucking fish alive, cabrón.”
<Then do it, if it’s so easy.>
Jake calls Marc the most outlandishly offensive swearwords he has in his arsenal, knowing with some satisfaction that unlike Steven, Marc can’t understand a lick of Spanish. For extra flair, he slams the fridge door closed with a bang.
<Nice job, buddy, real mature.>
“I’ll clean it, alright! Jeez.”
Jake casts a furious gaze around for whatever the hell he needs to use to get Marc off his back. He’s never cleaned the tank before. It hasn’t exactly been high on his list of priorities so far in life, and Steven’s systems of organising the piles of shit in their apartment doesn’t lend the answer to be overly obvious.
From the mirror, Marc raises a single eyebrow.
<Need a hand?>
“I can do it!” Jake snaps. “Go fuck off and bother Steven, would ya?”
Judging by the empty reflection when Jake next glances over, Marc has actually listened to him for a change.
The world is permitted him in fragments. The inconstant plane of a mirror, speckled with condensation like freckling black mould. Witnessing from a glint in someone’s glasses, smeared with the smudge of fingers. The refraction of light on a watch face. The curve of a bare bulb illuminated.
He sees Steven. Always Steven.
Steven, head lolling, blood drool staining his chin.
Steven, a manic pitching shriek as something blunt snaps over his kneecap and the bone shatters.
Steven, his right eye puffed and fattened with a blackening swelling, babbling and pleading and crying as they hold his head down flat and blanket his terrified expression with cloth.
<Tell them!> Jake remembers screaming. Steven chokes and splutters as water soaks quickly and steadily into the fabric. <Whatever they want to know, they’re going to fucking kill you, tell them!>
Steven moans and bucks weakly and drowns and drowns and drowns, and Jake can’t do a fucking thing.
He cannot break through, though that hasn’t stopped him from trying. Held apart from embodiment, he’s able to observe and communicate but not take over. The fact of it has him raging, kicking and snarling at the divider placed between him and control. Because this was why Marc made him, wasn’t it? For all the times he couldn’t handle the man he was, the things he’d done and the people he’d hurt to do it. Jake was all the shit they’d shovelled, allowed to think all the thoughts Marc was too ashamed to own up to.
It was different with Steven. He existed to be coddled, a gilded-cage half-life of mundanity and bills and missing the bus. Steven thought their piece of shit mother still loved them, Steven cared about his stupid fucking one-finned fish that didn’t have the brain-cells to return the sentiment. Jake wasn’t precise about when he’d come to exist exactly, but one of his earliest thoughts was looking at the welt slashed and reddened across their arm and knowing that he hated their mother enough to want her dead.
<Steven, fucking tell them!>
Steven, sputtering and choking, whose words when audible drain dry into hitching moans. Steven, struck feverish with agony and whatever shit they’ve pumped into his arm, whose rolling eyes catch Jake’s, whose spit bubbles bloody as he strains his neck upright and begs don’t look don’t look Marc get out of here you can’t help please don’t look
“Who are you talking to?”
A hand wrenches Steven’s sodden hair back down and Steven wails, and Jake knows that when these men die, he will not make it quick but he can’t break through, he can’t, Steven won’t let him even though this is what he’s for, all he’s good for, and Steven’s whimpering nononono as his face is covered again, and Jake’s grip slips as he’s shoved away from viewing –
Him and Marc might be reaching some form of stalemate. Because the situation is this: the universe fucking hates them, probably, and because Steven’s off hiding in some closet at the back of their mind, their fucked-up brain keeps dragging Jake out to the front instead of letting Marc manage their body solo.
It is the fucking worst. Marc will be in the middle of strolling down through Borough Market or picking up a carton of eggs at Tesco Express or glancing thoughtlessly through the window of an H&M, and then bang, Jake’s at the forefront with a whiplash shock. He sure as fuck doesn’t want to be, and Marc definitely doesn’t want him to be, judging by his confrontational accusations every time it happens. Marc still half thinks that whatever went down with Steven, Jake has something to do with it. Marc can think whatever he fucking wants. But swapping back isn’t as easy as passing the remote over, so as much as it sucks, if they want to get anything done, they’re going to have to play nice until things go back to normal. If they go back to normal.
For the moment, if Jake turns up in the middle of the grocery store, Marc will hang around to interrupt with their list of required necessities before lurking back with a frosty unimpressed vibe that Jake literally couldn’t give a single fuck about. And if Marc drops in while Jake is trying to watch the game, Jake will only kick up a fuss if Marc tries to change the channel, letting him interject with his own uninformed opinions about football over the commentators because Marc likes fucking soccer, so what does he know.
<Why do we got this piece of shit TV anyway?> Jake asks when the signal trembles fuzzy for the second time while someone’s going for a touchdown.
“Steven bought it.”
<So why didn’t you tell him to get a better one? Seriously, this brick was probably hanging out with the dinosaurs.>
“Didn’t you tell me I should keep my talking to a minimum ‘til half time?”
<Eh. Jets are playing shit tonight. Figured I should play nice and get to know the neighbours. So?>
“So what?”
<Why do we have this fucking relic from the dark ages when we could have at least bought summin’ with HD?>
“Me and Steven hadn’t… it was before we started talking to each other. He didn’t know about the other bank accounts, and the museum doesn’t pay that well.”
<Oh yeah. With Donna, right?>
“You know Donna?”
<I’ve had the pleasure. Woo, what a bitch>
“You said it, pal.”
<Hey, I always wondered. How’d that date go?>
“What date?”
<You know. The date with the chick at the museum. Dylan, or summin’. Stevie really liked her, figured I’d help him out a bit.>
“We missed it. Well, he missed it really. Because of me.”
<Fuck.>
“Yeah, he was pretty broken up about it.”
There’s a short-lived pause as one of the team captains slide tackles into another player.
“So,” Marc says slowly, his attention completely off the game by now. “Jake, huh? Where’d the name come from?”
<Short for Jacob, dumbass. What d’ya think?>
“Yeah, but Steven got his name from an old movie that we… hey, wait a minute. You too! Haha, no way!”
<What?>
“That guy! The guy from the – what was his name… Doctor Jacob… Heinrich? Hauptmann?”
<Hausmann.>
“That’s him! The fucking villain from Tombusters, the arch-nemesis guy with the stupid European accent and the moustache, that’s where you got the name from?”
<Hey, that ain’t on me. You made me up, it’s not my fault you’ve got no imagination.>
Marc is still smirking through the aftermath of his delight and Jake is trying not to get all riled up, feeling oddly defensive about the attention. He sullenly diverts his attention back to the game.
“… You aren’t Jake Hausmann though,” Marc picks up after a while. “Where’s Lockley from?
<… It was meant to be Locksley.>
“What?”
<Locksley. They messed up when I sorted out the separate IDs, dropped a letter, and it was too much of a hassle to correct them, so it ended up sticking. But it was gonna be Locksley.>
“Like… from Robin Hood? That Locksley?”
<Fuck off, man.>
“I like it.”
<Fuck you.>
“I’m serious!”
Jake doesn’t know what to do with that. He watches some greenhorn fumble with the ball before he manages to respond.
<Yeah… well. Thanks, I guess.>
“How come we’ve never met before?” Marc asks. “Like, even when Steven wasn’t around, I knew he existed, y’know?”
<Haven’t needed to. I dunno. I just show up when I do, ain’t no grand conspiracy.>
“It was you with Harrow, right? He was going to kill us. We were losing. Would have lost. And then we woke up, and we’d won. … You did that?”
<…Yeah.>
“… Thanks.”
<Ain’t we all just full of gratitude tonight,> Jake mutters. He barely knows how to handle Steven’s painfully earnest brand of sincerity, never mind Marc’s.
“So that’s how it works then? You exist just to swoop in, beat the living shit out of bad guys like some sort of violent tornado, and then what, go right back in your box?”
<Summin’ like that.>
“…Sounds shitty.”
<‘s what it is.>
Marc submerges into a thoughtful silence for a moment, stewing over the commentator’s discussion of a foul.
“It doesn’t…” he starts, before he hums, bites back his words, and tries again. “You know it doesn’t have to be like that? We’re all in here together, the three of us. You’re not… you’re not an afterthought.” Another heavy sigh. “I knew there was someone else in here. And I didn’t want to question it, didn’t want to find out more. I was scared, probably. No, definitely. Coming to terms with Steven was a lot, but he was a known quantity, yeah? And you were… complicated. You scared me. And I’m sorry I never tried to reach out and get to know you, and that’s my own toxic shit I gotta work through. It must have been… kinda lonely. W-what I’m saying is… I don’t know what I’m try’na say. Just that if you ever wanna take up more room, well, that’s cool.”
<…I’ll let you know,> Jake replies. He feels brittle, overbright, but he means it.
Marc nods, and they go back to watching the game.
– breathing, a sticky inhale full of blood.
<Steven! Joder, fucking talk to me!>
The vantage point of a wide puddle of splashed water allows him various angles of assessment. Steven’s curls are flat with water, dripping sluggish rivulets down his face. His muscles taken up by the task of sending minute tremors through his nervous system. Jake can barely see because wherever they are, it’s shrouded in dark, a scratch of light bleeding through from some boxy monitor on the wall.
<Answer me, kid, come on.>
“Hmm?”
Steven doesn’t raise his head. Shifts in the seat he’s strapped to, and even that blip of motion makes something in his ribcage crunch. Jake’s gonna take that as acknowledgement enough.
<Steven?>
Steven’s eyes are glassy when he eventually angles his head up. His panting is visible on the air in wispy puffs of white. The puddle of water Jake is currently occupying is crinkling to ice at its thinnest edges. Wherever they are, it’s fucking freezing. Steven’s not even wearing socks.
“Hmm? M-Marc?”
<Do I look like fucking Marc?>
Steven doesn’t answer. His head tipping down stringless to his chest, shivering and mumbling something to himself that Jake can’t catch.
<Stevie, why don’t you give me the body, huh? Let old Jakey have a go?>
“Jake…”
<Yeah?>
“‘s a nice name.”
<…Chose it myself.>
“Mine… ‘s from a movie.”
<I know. Mine too.> Jake considers, then figures a different approach wouldn’t hurt. <Say. You look tired, kiddo. Why don’t I take over for a while?>
“Can’t.” Steven groans. “They gave… gave me summin’. Think it stops…stops…” He trails off.
<Stops what?> Jake prods, but Steven’s expression has slackened again, his concentration waning.
“… they took my shoes,” he mumbles after a while.
<I can see that.>
“I miss Marc,” Steven’s glassy eyes manage to meet his own even as his gaze grows hazier.
<You’ve got me though. I’m just as good, trust me. Far better at parties.>
The paltry excuse for light in this place draws Steven’s face in gaunt, skeletal lines, interrupted by a damp-squib smile. There are ice crystals forming in the straggles of his hair.
<Looks like you’re turning into a popsicle.>
“Y’ mean an ice lolly.”
<Sure, whatever.>
“…Jake?”
<Yeah, kid?>
“Wish we hadn’t met now. That we’d… talked earlier. It’d have bin nice, ‘s all I’m sayin’.”
Jake doesn’t have an answer to that. Steven’s words dry up, his eyelids drooping shut.
His shivering is getting worse.
<C’mon, kid. Thought you were supposed to be the great conversationalist amongst us, huh? Tell me bout yourself.>
“L-like what?”
<I dunno. You like Egypt. Usually can’t stop you banging on about those pyramids and pharaohs. Or your favourite movie or summin’.>
“… you… you tell me yours?”
It’s taking longer for Steven to push the words out through his chattering teeth. Jake’s watery reflection is gradually sharpening to ice on the chilled floor of what he has the horrible fucking suspicion is some sort of walk-in freezer.
<Don’t have one.>
“… ‘s bollocks. Y’… y’ must’ve.”
Jake doesn’t. He’s watched one movie in his interstitial version of a life. He wasn’t made for downtime, or going to the movies. He’s never sat down and ate popcorn and experienced a wedge of time where he wasn’t required to try and stay alive before he slithered back into his proper place.
But if it keeps Steven awake, then he’s all for dredging up whatever memories he has to occupy the time.
<Alright, I’ll tell ya. But you gotta keep listenin’, kay. No droppin’ out on me.>
Steven nods and breathes out wisping clouds of condensation. And Jake talks and talks and talks.
Another four AM. Shitty fucking weather of the kind this country tends to, a grey indecisive sky all day finally coming down in vengeful sheets of lashing rain come nightfall. Jake’s working on another book from his modest but growing pile. Its plot so far is managing to balance a fine line between entertaining if unrealistic and insufferably ridiculous. It’s Jake’s indignity at its swan dive into the latter that has Steven coasting into awareness, blinking and cautious in the mirror.
“Can you believe this shit?” Jake waves the paperback in Steven’s direction on noticing his arrival.
<I tend to avoid Dan Brown myself, t’be honest.>
“Wish I had.” He puts the book down and gives Steven a longer once over. He never gets over how distinct they are. It’s one thing, lurking from the side-lines and watching as two people so unlike him live lives in their shared body. It’s altogether another to watch a separate man wearing his turtleneck sweater and jeans and yet seem to inhabit them so differently, fulfilled by individual mannerisms, marked by turns of phrase and manners of motion he simply doesn’t have within himself.
“Haven’t seen you in a minute. Where’ve you been?”
Steven squirms guiltily. He tugs at his sleeves until they’re loose enough to dangle over his wrists.
<Jus’ busy I guess.>
“You’re never here when Marc is. You ain’t avoiding him are you?”
<What?! No – I – Is that, is that what he thinks?>
His face radiates misery at the prospect.
“He’s worried, is all, kiddo. We both are.”
<… It’s been… a lot.>
“You wanna talk about it?”
Steven pauses. Gnaws at his fingernails, worries his lax sleeves, shifts weight from one leg to another.
<… I lied. A bit. Back there.>
Whatever Jake had expected Steven to confess, this hadn’t been high on his list.
“What about?”
<The stuff that they gave me. It must have been a sedative or something, I dunno. I’m not exactly an expert in being kidnapped, am I? It stopped you from taking the body from me. Couldn’t give it away, even if I wanted to. But I… if I concentrated, I could, sort of, push you away? So you couldn’t be there. Couldn’t watch. A-and I did that to Marc. Pushed him away, I mean. I made sure he wasn’t there for any of it, that he couldn’t see any of it. That he’d wake up like I used to, without knowing where he was or what was happening.> Steven goes quiet and fidgety again. <He must have been scared, when he woke up. I feel… kinda bad about that.>
Marc woke up confused and spitting nails and ready to fight everyone just to know you were OK, Jake could tell him, but that doesn’t seem to be the most useful divergence right now.
“Why did you do that then?” he prompts instead.
Steven rumples his hair with his fingers. Sits instead of standing, legs crossed to try and stop the jittering that’s started up. Jake isn’t made for patience, but he’s learning a hell of a lot of lessons these days, so waits.
<… The people who… who asked me questions,> Steven finally responds with careful words. <They thought I was Marc. They were asking about Layla.>
“Layla? Why?”
<She’s the avatar of Taweret, isn’t she? And all the stuff she’s doing back in Cairo, being a proper old superhero… ‘s amazin’, all the people she’s helping.> He stares down at their socked feet. <It makes sense, I suppose. If you don’t like what some magical Avenger-type is doing, to look up and find out she’s got a husband, an’ then go ask him to spill the beans instead.>
“They asked you about her then? Location, hideouts, contacts, weaknesses, stuff like that?”
Steven nods miserably.
<I didn’t know anything really. Barely know where my keys are, most of the time. But Marc. Marc would have.>
“That’s why you didn’t let the guy in? You think he would’a given her up?”
<No! No, course not! But if… if Marc could see what – if Marc had to watch, well, he’d have to choose, wouldn’t he? Watching me get….o-or telling me what they wanted to know. And… look, mate, I’m not… I’m not like you, yeah? I’m not brave or nuffin’ like that. If he told me, I don’t know that I wouldn’t have said something just to make them stop. Dunno if I coulda lived with myself, betraying her like that.>
“I dunno,” Jake says, softer than he expects. “I think you’re pretty brave.”
Steven doesn’t reply to that. Maybe he’s not sure how to. He sniffs and rubs at his face.
<… I’m sorry you had to see… all that unpleasantness. Must have looked a right mess. I… I tried, but I couldn’t keep you out all the time.>
“I’m sorry too.”
Steven looks up.
<What’re you sorry for, mate? Wasn’t you that was enough of a numpty to get us captured like that. Couldn’t even escape properly, could I?>
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you,” Jake says. Honesty burns in his stomach but he pushes through because it’s suddenly the most important thing in the world that Steven understand. “I’m sorry you went through that on your own. That you thought you had to.”
Steven’s breathing has gone wet and shivery. He doesn’t reply.
Jake reaches out to the mirror. Awkwardly splays his fingers, plants his palm against the glass.
“Don’t leave me hanging, man, ‘s rude,” he jokes uncomfortably after a moment, and Steven chuffs a damp laugh. Returns the gesture, their identical hands separated by a thin film.
They sit without speaking for a long time while Steven collects himself. While Jake tries to tamp down the urge to break things at the unfairness of it all.
Eventually they find a drained equilibrium. Neither of them are much up for sleeping, and Steven doesn’t want to vacate his company just yet, so Jake brings up a podcast app and lets Steven choose something non-fiction. It is, predictably, about Egypt.
Jake’s eyes dip closed and dozy after about ten minutes of companionably quiet listening. Some historian is waxing lyrical about the mortuary temple of Rameses II at Medinet Habu. Steven’s no longer visible in the mirror, but Jake can still sense him on the periphery, can almost hear him breathing, tiredly muttering corrections or additions to what the historian is expositing.
It’s… nice. Having him there. Like falling asleep next to someone.
As he’s dropping off, there’s a subtle shift in his mental landscape.
‘Stevie’s put a podcast on,’ he thinks to the newcomer. ‘Don’t you two stay up too late gossiping.’
<Go to sleep, asshole,> is the last fond thought he hears before sleep finally takes him.
Jake comes to occupying the blood-slick sharpness of a broken glass shard.
The intake of his reality is practised, if slapdash. Their body has collapsed, crumpled and disordered, on their hands and knees on some unremarkable corridor. There’s a body next to them. Definitely dead, painted in streaks and gouts of red. Messy and frenzied rather than orchestrated, little expertise in the act.
<Steven? ¿Qué pasa?>
“’m escaping,” Steven says blearily, attempting to drag himself upright from off the floor. “God… that was disgusting… I think I stabbed him in the eye?”
One of the halogen strips over them strobes unsteadily before settling. It paints a ghoulish picture. Steven’s skin is scuffed with blood, his curls matted. The flesh of his right palm is scored and split, stinging as he clutches an elongated glass shard as a makeshift knife, which has very obviously just been used to shish-kebab a man to death.
In the distance, footsteps moving closer.
<Stevie, gotta get a move on, hurry up.>
“I’m… I’m trying…” Steven attempts to straighten upright. The movement ignites a laundry list of agonies inside him, for he sucks in a fragmented gasp and capsizes again, smothering a wail.
< Ellos estan regresando, joder, you gotta move!>
A flickering sensation, and then another presence elbows to the surface with a bullish intensity.
<… Steven? Steven, what the hell’s going on…?>
A colour wash of relief tainted with anxiety floods their body through Steven.
“Marc!”
<¡Steven, arre!> Jake snaps, <not the time, focus!>
<Give me the body, huh?> Marc says. His tone is clamping down on some of his panic, but Jake loses his patience when he tries to front and Steven collapses again as all three of them experience that wincing dagger-punch of pain at the attempt.
<He can’t, estúpido cabrón!>
<And just who the fuck are you supposed to be?> Marc snarls at him.
“ ‘s Jake,” The words slur ill-shaped in Steven’s mouth. “ ‘s nice, y’shud say hi.” The corridor they’re on is bookended by the unremarkable grey doors of a service elevator. Their body still feels sluggish, drugged to the goddamn gills, Steven limping. He can’t put any weight on his right knee at all.
<Who the hell is Jake?!>
<You a fucking idiot? We don’t have time for this, we gotta…>
Something sharp and barbed whacks into the meat of their shoulder, and then there’s a lancing, biting, frostbite kind of pain that sends Steven groundward and Jake isn’t sure which one of them is screaming and –
– arching back as his throat seizes around a howl –
– the juddering ticktickticktick of electroshock and there are arms tugging him upright –
– Jake feels the moment when Steven’s grip untethers. When his own consciousness crowds through to fill the gap.
Khonshu is there. Watching impartial as Jake binds their tormented body to their armour, arms outstretched to receive their armour. Their suit embraces as a second skin, the compressing wrappings of bandages, the sturdy peak of their cowl. Strength flowers in his limbs, twining with a giddy sort of rage as every hurt inflicted on their body melts away like spring snow. His justice will be terrible. He knows of no other kind he can give.
He tugs the taser prongs from the skin by his shoulder, his knee popping back into place as he reaches up, twists in a sharp turn until his assailant’s neck snaps.
His vengeance takes him. He is meticulous in the arts he has perfected, and he makes good on his promise that he shall not allow it to be quick.
Eventually, all is silent. Except for him and his god.
I have rarely seen you so singularly minded. Such butchery from my disciple, you’re to be applauded.
“Where the fuck were you?” Jake snarls. His hands are dripping red. “Why you only showing your ugly beak now, huh?”
I was not requested. Khonshu tilts his skull as though this is an obvious fact.
“The fuck does that mean?”
I arrived in aid of my Moon Knight, to bestow the suit so you may enact your vengeance. Neither Steven Grant nor Marc Spector hold that title. I am not beholden to their well-being.
“They fucking tortured him. And you did nothing?!”
I owed him nothing.
For a carved-out moment, Jake hates Khonshu more than ever before. From the god’s quirk of the head, his smug hum of satisfaction, Khonshu knows it.
It was only a matter of time, until either Marc or Steven found out about Khonshu. And Jake’s big enough that he’s able to own up to his mistakes.
He could have absolutely played it cooler than he had.
Except he didn’t.
Meaning now him and Marc are scrapping like children, tussling over control of the body in a way that is giving them both a sickening sense of nausea as well as making them one hundred percent more pissed off.
<How dare you?>
Marc brings their fist up and round, aimed squarely at their jaw, and Jake easily dodges by throwing their body backwards and out of the way. Marc attempts to move them one way and so Jake tugs another, and that culminates in them doing some stupid clumsy dance and toppling one of the chairs around the kitchen island.
“I did what I fucking needed to,” Jake snaps before Marc shoves him out of control and surges into the front seat.
“Bullshit. You did what you wanted to.”
<Oh, get the fuck off your high and mighty tower, I ain’t the first of us to keep secrets.>
“You had no right to make that decision!” Marc screams into the mirror by the oven.
<I had every fucking right!> Jake rages back. <Or is that all I’m good for to you, huh? A backup plan for when you can’t fucking handle it. Deja de hablar como un niño mimado. It wasn’t you that got us outta there, was it? No, as usual, me. Cleaning up after your mess. Didn’t see you stepping in to lift a fucking finger while Steven was getting tortured, but I guess that’s the point of both of us, isn’t it? A fucking shield against the world because you can’t handle it.>
It’s unfair. Even as he spits the words out he knows it. It doesn’t stop him from slamming into the body as Marc throws a cup at his image so hard it cracks the oven window.
<You’re a fucking traitor,> Marc snaps from the shattered spiderweb of glass. <That bastard’s manipulated us from the start. And what, now you want to just let him so you can get your fucking rocks off punching people in the face, you fucking asshole!>
“Steven would have been fucking dead if I hadn’t been there. We’d all have been fucking dead!”
<And there’s another thing, why the hell were we there? Jesus, of course if you’re going round, sneaking out at night to play vigilante, no wonder someone noticed! That’s why they took us!>
“They kidnapped us because of your fucking wife!”
Marc’s punch slams their body backwards. Their knee clipping the table leg with a discordant twang of pain before Jake wrestles back control, his jaw aching.
<Don’t you fucking bring her into – >
Marc’s fury punctures so fast that Jake’s dizzy with the shift.
<waitwaitwait>
Jake freezes. He doesn’t stop Marc as he raises their hand up to their cheek. Wiping away wetness. Their hands are shaking like an addict’s.
“Steven…?” Marc murmurs softly. Their breath hitches, and the last of Jake’s rage burns out as he takes stock of the tangled mess of their mindscape, all three of them wrapped up in the other. Steven’s presence declares itself in roiling sparks of panic that filter through their body into a wheezing intake of air. “Hey, bud, you gotta breathe for us now, yeah?”
Marc nudges their breathing slower. Jake uses the sleeve of their shirt to wipe at their eyes, leaking tears and rendering their vision blurry.
<Sorry, kiddo. Things were getting a little heated out here. We didn’t mean to scare you.>
“Yeah, he’s right. We got a bit angry is all.”
<’m sorry,> comes the wash of miserable embarrassment, shamed and self-recriminating. <’m sorry, I didn’t mean…>
The tears fall hot and fast on their face. Their knee hurts. Khonshu healed every bruise and broken bone on their body but they still stand paralysed by the recollection of it. Jake doesn’t think Steven means to – thinks it’s probably one of the reasons he’s taken to hiding back away from the both of them, to avoid any sharing of recollection – but his thoughts are so loud and tangible that they’re all jolted in a messy twist of sense-memory as Steven flashes back to that room, the agony of his shattered kneecap.
<I thought we were going to die.>
<Hey, kid, shh, it’s ok – >
<’s not though is it? I-it’s not alright, how can it be… We were gonna die, a-and I couldn’t… I couldn’t do – I couldn’t stop – >
Marc is sitting their body on the couch. Jake brings their knees up and their arms around, making a cocoon of their body as Steven fails to reign in the tears.
“Let it all out bud, it’s ok. You did good. We got you.”
Marc tightens their arms around their knees. The closest they can manage a hug. Their body shakes and falls apart and it’s impossible to tell who is in control, if they all are.
“We got you,” Marc repeats. “I – Both of us. We’re here.”
Four AM. Steven cleans the fish tank because they’re not doing it to his standards. He coos and natters at their small shoal of three. His sleep, when it does come, is getting better, nightmares diminishing in severity. At being reminded, he tends to Jake’s sole addition to the decor of their flat, a squat cactus in a red pot. Steven, ever optimistic, thinks it’s gearing up to flower soon. Marc thinks he’s probably going to drown it first.
Four AM. Jake’s arm swings out, catching a man across the side of the face as the crescent of a waning moon filters light through cloud cover. Steven puts forward a satisfied cheer, even if he still mostly stays out of the fighting. Marc doesn’t interrupt but he nudges their posture enough that Jake gets the hint, curling out of the way of a heavy swung punch before aiming his curved blade and striking true.
Four AM. Marc leans over a satellite map. His gestures expansive, interjecting to respond to Jake’s suggestions, streamlining their plans into a taut, ruthless efficiency. Steven’s put some mellow music on in the background, but strangely, it doesn’t sit incongruous as part of their scene.
Four AM, and just sometimes, the three of them fall asleep in tandem to the city sounds below.