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Steven woke to the distinct feeling of emptiness. Chest a little hollow, mind a little too empty, setting him on edge. His face scrunched in confusion and discomfort as he rolled over to push himself further into the hotel sheets.
He reached out in his head, curious if the feeling was due to something Marc did while he was asleep. He was met with silence, so he pushed further, more intensely to get Marc’s attention. But where usually he felt Marc’s then-familiar presence, he found only emptiness. Where usually he heard his voice, he found only silence.
Steven sat up the moment he felt Marc’s absence, eyes wide and panicked as he tried again, to no avail, to feel for Marc.
His breaths came quicker as Marc’s vacancy was apparent. He felt confused and lost, unsure where to turn for an answer. He wasn’t sure what to do to fix the feeling, frightened at the prospect of Marc being somehow gone from his mind.
He stood, unsure of his direction, but knowing he had to do something. That something was lost on him, though. He paced the small space, turning the idea over in his mind as he tried to think where to turn to.
So, he reached out to the only god who had ever responded. He had never been one for prayer, but he knew the titles of the gods by heart. The words came slowly, a prayer to a lesser god harder to speak out.
“Konshu, embracer, pathfinder, defender, protector of the travelers of the night-“
He couldn’t finish his desperate prayer before the god appeared in front of him, clad in a brighter, less worn cloth as though the reverence within the words had rejuvenated him.
“What is it you seek, Steven?” The prayer must have surely garnered him some favor if Konshu chose to use his name.
“Marc, I can’t find him, he’s not…” Steven trailed off, gesturing to his head before running his hands wildly through his hair.
“What happened to Marc?” The words were bitter and disgusting in his mouth, the thought of anything happening unbearable, the idea of harm coming to Marc where he couldn’t reach painful.
Konshu tilted his head to the side silently, and Steven had to remind himself that screaming at the bird wouldn’t get him anything he needed.
“He is gone.” The words were simple and short, as though that would ever be enough. As though those three words would have ever been a good answer, something Steven could take and leave alone.
“Gone? What do you mean gone, where is he?” Steven could barely breathe then, standing on the edge of a precipice and pleading that his fears wouldn’t hold any weight. Begging for the worries his mind spun to be unfounded, for the god to tell him something good and silence them.
“He is gone,” Konshu repeated, “You won’t have to worry about him anymore.” And with those words, he vanished.
A pause, a breath, a moment to take in the words before his mind decided a direction.
Steven fell off that ledge, fell to his knees, and all the air was sucked out of the room. His chest stilled, lungs not moving, heart may as well have stopped with how it felt it was ripped from between his ribs.
Gone.
Surely that’s wrong, right? He misheard, he knew; Marc couldn’t be gone. Steven must not have been looking hard enough in his head.
But it was just as empty as before. Silent and void of Marc where he so recently filled every gap. Spaces between Steven’s thoughts too large, gaps where he used to rest cold as though he was never there.
Gone.
Marc was gone.
He couldn’t breathe. It had been minutes then, when his lungs were still and no air was pulled in. Maybe that’s why everything felt fuzzy and wrong.
Steven fell back into his body, shoved in angrily, and it felt like crashing back into that excruciatingly tight sarcophagus. Hard force against his back, unyielding wall before him, enclosed on every side and constructed into the body that felt too empty without Marc, too tight with the immeasurable grief that grew every moment the knowledge settled.
Marc was gone.
His chest burned, mouth dry, and felt like the sands he died in as he felt his limbs under his control again.
He took a deep breath in, air scraping against his throat like millions of razors going in, and it hurt just as bad when it left him immediately in a scream.
It was weak and quiet, the kind that came with disbelief laced into it and the smallest modicum of air to draw from.
He breathed again, the feeling finally coming back to him as he felt himself flood with every deplorable emotion he thought he could ever name and more.
He screamed. It clawed its way up from the pits of his stomach, raked its filthy nails through his throat, and tore his mouth open when it escaped.
He screamed, and screamed, and he was sure he would never have enough air in his lungs to draw from the depths he needed.
He needed the whole world to hear him. He needed the gods above, disgusting, wretched things they were, to hear his screams and he needed it to tear them apart. He needed the sound the grief ripped from him to shred every single thing, to destroy every person who heard him because Marc’s absence should be unknown by not a single soul. He stood, grabbed the closest thing to him- a lamp that sat on the bedside table- and smashed it against the wall. It shattered into thick shards he wanted to use to rip apart the very universe
that took Marc from him.
He grabbed the next thing his hands could find and threw it, too. Useless item after unimportant belonging crashed against the walls and broke.
They made dents in the walls, craters he wanted to dig his hands into and tear apart. Maybe he’d find Marc there, if he tore everything open he would turn up somewhere.
He looked to the mirror across from the bed, throwing his fist against the moment he saw his own broken face staring back.
He shrieked hysterically at the sight, eyes bloodshot and face torn apart and rearranged in misery and despair.
He hit it again and again, voice wrecked and useless as half-volume yells left him. Glass embedded itself in his knuckle, rained down upon his feet, and flew across the room with each blow. He kept hitting it. He didn’t want to see himself, couldn’t bear to see only his face where he had grown to find Marc.
He fell to his knees again, shards digging painfully into his knees, and let out another scream.
This one pained, raw emotion infused into each bit of air that left him, and he was sure no one else in the world could ever have felt this grief. Not like this. Surely nothing else could have been that painful, as to have half of his soul ripped from him and to know it was gone forever.
Misery and pain filled the crevices where Marc should be, tears welling up to fill the spaces left vacant. His heart was halved, left bloody and dripping where it lay in his chest, useless as far as Steven cared because what good was it when he didn’t have Marc?
A steady drip pulled him from his thoughts, the sound loud in the silence that followed his destruction.
He looked to the source, his bloody hands that dripped red to the floor. He looked down, to his knees then. Shards sliced through his pants, cut through to his legs and blood coated the fabric.
Sticky and red and painful, injured and ripped up. He thought, in some odd way, it fit. He looked around him, to the wreckage of the space that could never be truly destroyed enough for the carnage he sought from his grief.
It looked like Marc’s. He thought that was good, that he could still have a piece of the man even after he lost him forever. The room around him mirrored the disaster Marc created during their first night in Cairo. To match him in that moment choked him, the idea gripping his throat tight until it closed fully.
The thought made him sob. Immediately, tears coated his face, and fell to the floor to join the blood and make the mess worse. Desperate sobs wracked his body as he clutched his hands tight to his chest and rocked back and forth.
The sounds that left him were broken and wounded, painful as they dragged over the raw flesh of his throat and fell from his split lips. His voice broke with every cry, and his hands dug tighter into his jumper.
He screamed again, the sound immediately morphing back into sobs. No thoughts crossed his mind, nothing coherent left his lips, for hours while he sat and cried. The tears were only ever interrupted by quick anger, clawed hands tearing at the sheets, and teeth sinking into his lips, his tongue, his cheek when the sounds that left him sounded too disgraceful for him to bear.
He cried, and screamed, and tore at things, and sobbed harder every time he looked up at the wreckage around him, and he was sure that pain would never cease.
After hours and hours, he picked himself up, collected the broken pieces of himself,- not that it would ever be enough, missing such a huge chunk of his soul- plucked the glass out of his skin, and stepped out of the hotel room.
Somewhere in his muddled mind, he remembered he had a flight booked that took off soon.
If it were up to him, Steven thought he would stay on that floor sobbing until he turned to dust. As it was, Marc had booked the flight, and he clung to any reminder of the man he still had. He couldn’t take the idea of not taking one of the few things Marc left behind for him.
He had no luggage to take back, only having to carry himself through the airport onto the plane.
Marc was the one fluent in Arabic, not him, but he managed to get by with his rudimentary understanding of the language and the look on his face that made people avoid him.
He got on the plane, and he supposed he was grateful he was able to cry as much as he did because he felt scraped empty enough that he was sure he wouldn’t burst out sobbing on the flight home.
***
Marc woke immediately, the distinct sense of Something Wrong pervading all his senses.
He stood and looked around first, to the locked door and windows, the quiet flat around him, everything Steven put in place undisturbed.
He reached out to Steven in his head, intent on checking to see if he was the source of the feeling, only to be met with emptiness.
He woke fully, the hollow feeling a douse of icy water that flooded his veins as he tried again. Nothing. Panic seized his chest as he searched again, and again, and again, only to turn up empty.
“Konshu!” Marc shouted out. He was no longer his avatar, he knew the god had no obligation to him anymore, but the god was the only entity he imagined could have an answer.
“Yes, Marc?” The name was said with disdain, and Marc couldn’t care enough to even register it. Mind focused only on the absence of Steven.
“Did something happen to Steven?” He asked pleasingly. His voice cracked, and the thought of being embarrassed didn’t occur to him in the fright that gripped him.
“Is that what you’ve called me here for?” Words said with the tone of annoyance, disingenuous sounding and avoiding the point.
“Yes, please, Konshu, I can’t find him, what happened?” Marc had truly never been so desperate, would never have let himself speak like this if it were any other situation. But when it came to Steven, nothing came above making sure he was safe.
“He is gone. You are free from him now.”
Marc blinked and Konshu was gone, leaving only the echo of his words in his wake. Marc was empty. His chest was hollow; he was sure his heart had been torn from it for how cavernous the space felt.
He didn’t notice he was falling until he was on his knees, grains of sand that ended up everywhere digging into his shins. Tiny pinpricks of something Steven left behind.
But Steven was gone. He was gone. And Marc didn’t want to believe it. So he let himself stay there, the reminder of the only good part of his soul pressing against his skin like he was real.
Marc’s eyes were vacant. Staring galaxies away into nothing at all. Steven was gone, and Marc felt like there was nothing to himself without him.
His heart was gone, ribs were cracked open ruthlessly and his heart torn out viciously until he was exposed and hollow. He felt air flow through his chest, a pit where Steven was supposed to reside now empty and void.
His skin was cold, ice creeping over his limbs slowly and he didn’t care to stop it. He had wondered time and time again what it would have been like to take Steven’s place, to have died there in the sands, and he wondered if it was this. His limbs froze slowly and he didn’t move to stop it. He was turned to stone where he sat and he let it happen, for what was the point of doing anything at all when his soul had been torn from him?
He sat for hours, the sun rose and fell, his lips were cracked and dry and his skin was icy and painful. His stomach was empty and curled in on itself, limbs numb and heavy where he sat.
Tears started falling down his cheeks some unidentifiable time after he fell and only stopped when the feeling of vacancy overtook the pain.
He oscillated between the two steadily, pain that- even dulled through the haze that covered his mind in an attempt to shield himself from the feeling- was unbearable and broke him, and the numb feeling of floating in nothingness as though he didn’t exist at all.
The next morning, early enough that the sun had yet to rise, was when he heard the front door open.
He should have been more attentive to it, he knew. He should have jumped up the moment the sound rang out, should have been ready to see who in the world was breaking into Steven's apartment.
But he had no energy. He was sure he never would again, not really. He heard the door shut, soft footsteps making their way across the hardwood before stopping suddenly.
Had the person seen Marc, he wondered? Was the sight of him enough of a deterrent for them to think twice about being where they didn’t belong?
He raised his head, glassy eyes focusing on the figure before him. His heart stilled in his chest, eyes widening and focusing in on the half of his heart that was the cause of his emptiness.
He was too confused, too lost, and sure he was hallucinating to be self-conscious of how he must look. Tear tracks ran down his cheeks, eyes red and puffy, on his knees on the floor, he knew he looked like a mess.
“Marc!” The shout left Steven so suddenly it knocked Marc off-kilter, just before Steven barreled into him.
He wasn’t a hallucination. He was real. Solid and sturdy, shaking with silent cries as he held Marc close.
“Steven?” Marc called, disbelieving and lost. Steven gripped him tighter in response, and it broke a dam in Marc.
“Steven!” The sound was inhuman, filled with relief so palpable it flooded through him, broken and need-filled and flooded with tears.
He wrapped his arms around Steven, clinging to him so tight he worried he was hurting him.
“Steven, Steven, you’re here? You’re real?” Marc wanted to pull back, to look Steven in the eyes and see that he was safe, but his heart finally felt like it was there again, and it was physically attached to Steven’s where it pressed against his. They felt tethered at that moment, beating at the same time, and to pull apart would rip them in two where they just found what made them whole.
“I’m here, I’m here, Marc,” Steven whispered against him, reverent and full of love.
“Oh, gods, Steven-“ Marc cut off into sobs, desperate and loud cries of relief as he pulled Steven to him.
It couldn’t be comfortable, he knew, to be sitting on the floor against him, sand pressed into his skin, legs losing sensation, but Steven stayed anyway. Marc knew, intrinsically, that Steven wouldn’t leave. That he would stay right there as long as Marc needed him to, and the knowledge made him sob harder.
Steven whispered softly to him, reassurances and loving words whose meaning never made its way to his mind, but helped console him nonetheless.
After so long, what could have been minutes or hours or days, Marc quieted his sobbing, and Steven’s arms relaxed their hold on Marc ever so slightly.
They pulled away gently, delicate with the tie of their hearts together, and looked each other in the eyes.
Steven placed his hands on Marc’s shoulders, holding tight and firm, while Marc held Steven’s face between his hands gently. They looked into each other’s eyes, no words spoken as they took in the other.
Marc wanted to ask if Steven was okay, but he was well aware that was a ridiculous question. It was clear they were both told the same thing, were given the same explanation for their separate bodies.
Their separate bodies. That realization only just then dawned upon Marc.
“We’re separated now,” he stated obviously, voice hoarse and quiet.
“Yeah,” Steven agreed, looking Marc over with care.
A long pause followed, a silence where they only took each other in. Relief flooded steadily through Marc still, soothed the raw edges of Marc’s chest, and filled the hollow bits of him slowly.
“I really like being able to see you like this.” Marc felt as though he bared his heart enough to Steven, and he couldn’t muster the effort to keep the words from slipping out.
Steven offered him a smile, oh so tired but full of love and affection so pure Marc thought he would burst at the seams with it.
“Come on,” Steven guided, raising himself slowly and pulling Marc up with him.
Shame flooded through Marc when he felt his inability to walk. He had been sat in the same position so long, unmoving for hours, that he couldn’t put weight on his legs, much less feel them.
Steven understood the issue quickly without explanation- and gods that’s something Marc loved about him- and practically carried him over to the bed.
“It’s alright,” Steven murmured, giving the reassurance even without Marc voicing his embarrassment.
Steven laid Marc on their bed and crawled up after him immediately. He enveloped Marc in his arms, holding him tight to his chest and pulling the covers over them.
“Steven?” Marc questioned, wrapping his arms around Steven in kind.
“You haven’t slept, have you?” The question was useless, an explanation more than anything else; he knew neither he nor Marc got any sleep.
Marc hummed, pressing himself tight against Steven as he felt a hand card between his curls and hold him close.
They had lots more to do, to figure out, they knew. In the morning, they would lay together for hours, pressed tight together as they talked about what this would change for them. In the morning, they would learn to go about their day side by side, get accustomed to looking over at each other instead of into a mirror, and get used to speaking aloud to communicate instead of speaking in their head.
In the following weeks, they would learn how to live together well. They would assure each other they’re both there to stay. They would work up the nerve to say ‘I love you’, and end every night in each other’s arms.
Nothing mattered in that moment, though, except holding each other close.
They fell asleep soon after, completely worn and exhausted, but more comfortable than they had ever been in each other’s arms. Soothed with the knowledge that they’ll wake up to each other’s eyes looking back at them, they both slept blissfully deep for the first time in years.