Chapter Text
December 21, 2024 22:07 PM
Steven opens his eyes.
Harsh, icy air runs the curls from his face, bringing him back to reality in a half-pained gasp. Like a corpse being brought back to life, rising from the grave. Steven breathes hard and unsteady, disorientated at the sudden awareness of his own being. He blinks once, twice. Fluttering eyelashes as he stares at his feet, trying to process what he’s seeing.
Gray. Gray concrete beneath him, with a thin, almost imperceptible layer of frost. He crooks his head as he inspections the floor, then up his legs, his body. He realizes that he’s wearing winter boots. They look fairly new, and expensive. Slightly wider than standard, he can’t remember ever buying them.
He can’t remember ever buying them.
He gulps at that; there's this tightness, like a spring before breaking, invading his torso. Steven takes a few deep breaths to try and get the air to circulate his body, feeling how anxiety starts compressing his lungs.
How long has he been standing here? A gust of wind passes by, it's a bone-chilling night. He shivers involuntarily, his fingers are numb, and he can feel the weight of a long, tiresome day all over his body. Steven clenches his hands, tightening the grip on the bag—why does he have a bag?— he's clutching. He shrugs realizing a backpack hangs heavily from his shoulders. He glances over, confusingly looking at it.
It definitely is not his. Not only is it dark red , a color he's not fond of, but it is a backpack.
He doesn't own any.
Steven looks up.
His vision is suddenly filled with a plain white, jarring light. He can hear the soft hum of the old, flickering LED lights of the canopies he’s standing under. Steven squints his eyes and looks at the denim night sky, barely illuminated and filled with tiny dots of white stars. He looks down once the brightness of the LED becomes unbearable, and watches how the pale and worn light lengthens his scrawny shadow.
His gaze flicks ahead, drawn inexorably towards the train tracks below the platform, following them stretching into the distance, disappearing inside the darkness.
His heartbeat gets caught up on his constricting throat.
Thump-bump, thump-bump, thump-bump.
Steven lets the bag fall off his hand, and lowers the sipper of his coat, feeling achingly hot even if his breath condenses clear as clouds in the freezing air. He clutches the pullover he's wearing—not caring enough to realize it's also not his—as his heart starts racing inside his chest, banging against the walls of its cavity like a cannon shot, echoing.
“ Not again,” he says in a sharp breath to himself, “ not again, fuck, not again…”
He was doing so good, he lasted two entire weeks—two entire weeks without this. He thought everything was finally fine, that the episodes were over. What did he do wrong? Why is this happening to him, again ?
Agitation runs into his body and Steven tries to remain calm, because he needs to remain calm. He needs to keep his cool to try and figure out what to do.
But it’s hard to stay undisturbed when he doesn’t know where he is.
When he can’t remember a thing.
There are screens hanging from the canopy, their digital glow casting an eerie pale, blue light. His eyes narrow as his breath quickens, he tries to read the information displayed on the platform sign, hoping for something to ease his desperation. His mind struggles to process the words; letters swarming together, barely making sense.
Until they do.
He reads it again, and again, and again.
The train destination is Switzerland.
Steven has no moment of reflection upon this, because suddenly, a sharp, pulsating pain explodes in his head. He hunches over, jaw slack and mouth open for air at the overwhelming throbbing. His brains feel like they’ve been pierced with needles, and someone started moving them around, touching nerves and sending electric shots through his spinal cord.
“ Stop, stop— Fuck, not again, not again— ” he murmurs through gritted teeth, hands on his head. The light is instantaneously too bright, and his eyes get teary as he presses the palm of his hands on them.
The pain will stop. It’s fine, you are okay… he comforts himself, like he has been doing these last months. Steven’s body sways as his balance and coordination waver, fingers trembling as he tries to keep whatever composure he has. But the pain persuades, and the aftershocks run through his body like power spikes. His ears ache, there's a sound echoing inside his head that’s just like the endless led lights hum.
He rubs his eyes to keep the tears away, breathing through his nose for a few minutes—ten minutes? twenty? Steven doesn’t know—before he opens them again. He blinks away the little colorful spots all over his vision, but the blurriness is insistent as it always has been.
Slowly, yet steadily, his surroundings start to seep into focus, and the invasive, low-frequency droning noise quiets down enough for it to be tolerable. He bites his lips to hide the half-painted sob on his throat, crying would do nothing for him.
He needs to remember. He needs to calm down and remember.
Steven starts recounting back.
Last week goes by in rushed sequences, barely graspable. The clearer memories seem to be from one or two days ago. He remembers waking up, it was cloudy outside, he had tea, went out to the park, came back to the apartment, Marc and Jake were there, suitcases on the floor, documents above the table… suitcases on the floor… documents above the table… they sat him down to talk… What did they say? What did they say?
Marc. Jake. Marc and Jake. Jake. Jake. Marc and…What did they say?
“ Get your bloody head together, Steven, come on . ”
Pulse trembling, he closes his eyes and tries to recall the conversation. But the words slip from his consciousness, and the only remaining thing is Jake's unbothered face and Marc’s frowned, concerned one. He asks something, they look at each other from the corner of their eyes, and Steven remembers the shame and fear that had invaded him. But he can’t remember why.
Marc. Jake. Marc and Jake. Indecisive eyes glaring at him, then back at each other, a conversation he cannot comprehend, and then they speak, and then they speak to him … What did they say? What did they say?
Where are they? Where is he?
What did they say?
Steven turns his head over his right shoulder, and then to the left, and to the right once more; checking around and trying to accustom his eyes to the darkness surrounding him, painfully hoping to see any of them.
He’s met with black silence, pure nothingness all around him.
The station is clearly in reconstruction progress, though mostly has already been removed and modernized, Steven can see the remains of what used to be building features of classic architectural elements, constructed of red brick, with decorative accents in contrasting white stone, giving the station a timeless and stately appearance, but now it was built of concrete, boringly modern. The main building is tall in all its window-filled glory, clear blue glass everywhere. Now dark and solemn, reflecting the moon.
Steven's eyes dart away, his hands fidgeting with each other, feeling uncomfortably clammy all of a sudden. What should he do? Should he just walk away? Does he even have a ticket for the incoming train? Where’s his phone?
Quickly he shoves his gloved hands into the pockets of his coat, fingers scraping against loose change and crumpled receipts but finding nothing of use. His breath fogs the air as he quickly shifts his attention to the interior pockets, but he meets the same demise.
There 's nothing. No ticket, nor his wallet.
He can’t feel his phone either.
Steven touches the pockets again, thinking he might have missed it. But the hollowness of each one of them tells him he didn't. He just doesn’t have it.
Brow furrowing, Steven struggles not to let impatience get the best of him, so he breathes out shakily and gets his backpack on only one shoulder. He tears open the zipper, fingers trembling as they fumble through the contents. He pulls out books, a water bottle, and a crumpled map, but there's no sign of his phone. The mounting frustration makes his movements slowly become more erratic and desperate, even if he tries not to.
It's not like he uses it, though. Yes, he scrolls through social media, admiring other people’s lives (like a transeúnte may walk past by an open window, hearing the laugh from the inside, smelling the home-made meal, seeing the orange light from the kitchen seep into the grass of the front yard, wishing, yearning to feel just as warm) from time to time but it isn’t as if he has anyone there to talk to. Hell, his DM’s only have 4 chats open and one is a delivery service. But is his only communication resource.
He slumps to the ground, placing the bag beside him. His hands dig into the depths of the backpack, the cold metal of his keys biting into his fingers as he pushes them aside. He rifles through a tangled mess of headphones, pens, and some pocket books, his anxiety growing with each passing second.
Still nothing.
Next, he turns to the bag he had been clutching so tightly. He unzips it with a hurried jerk, the sound of the zipper unnaturally loud in the stillness. His hand dives in, pushing aside a scarf and gloves, some winter clothes and— he feels something.
It’s cold and flat against his gloved hand, he grapes his finger around it, lifting the object, feeling the weight of it. He doesn’t remember his phone case being that heavy. He takes it out to the moonlight and—stares in shock.
Is a 9mm glock, fully charged.
Steven inspects the gun, a familiar sense invading him. He vaguely remembers seeing Marc slip a gun once inside the sock drawer, catching Steven's eye but saying nothing, just walking away. It could be Marcs the same way it could be his or Jake’s. Nothing truly belongs to just one of them, not even themselves.
He shoves the gun back into the bag, burying it beneath the winter clothes. He nervously looks around to see if anyone saw that, but he's alone as he ever was. It’s best to ignore that for now. Steven rummarges again, finding on his way packs of ammo and confusingly pushes them aside until his fingers curl around the smooth surface of his phone. He pulls it out with a gasp of relief, the dim screen coming to life with a press of his thumb.
The signal is weak, a single bar flickering on and off, but Steven doesn't care. He takes off one of his gloves and swipes through his contacts with frantic urgency, finding Marc's right away. His thumb trembles as he presses the call button, bringing the cold phone to his ear.
Beep… beep… beep…
“Come on, come on, pick it up…” Steven impatiently whispers, tapping his foot on the ground.
Seconds pass. He starts chewing his lips, the frozen air around him has dried them enough for it to be easy to tear the tender skin. Marc should've already answered, Steven knows he keeps his phone with the sound on and he always has it with him. He never takes this long, if he can’t answer Marc would either message that he’s busy or answer quickly to tell Steven he should call later. But he never lets it ring, and ring, and ring. Has anything happened to Marc? The tone keeps beeping, and Jake won't answer even if he tried endlessly and Layla isn't an option.
He doesn't have anyone else to call.
As his mind is too occupied with the never ending beep on the speaker and focusing solely on the call, he’s late to register the soft, almost indiscernible sound echoing on the platforms. He doesn’t hear it, not even one bit, until it is close enough that is undeniable: footsteps from the bottomless silence of the night.
Someone is coming.
He breathes through his nose to try and remain calm, but he’s unable to stop the dread circling his veins. An irrational fear insists that he should flee from there as soon as possible, regardless of whether he knows where he is or not and, for a moment, Steven feels on the verge of giving in to that impulse. The corporal memories when they—or better said Marc—fought mercenaries and were being chased endlessly left a lingering paranoia inside him that he can’t get over. And in situations like this, it seemed to reemerge and eat him alive.
The footsteps grew louder, and closer, and closer . Steven can barely hear his own thoughts over his rapid heartbeat. It is embarrassing really, how easily his body jumps into survival instinct. How easily the adrenaline fills his system, awaiting for the pain that used to always come. His mind goes straight to the old days, to foreign memories that now are part of his own; he hears the footsteps coming up the stairs, the belt’s buckle clicking, the pounding on the door.
It all sounds so real, like he’s there again.
Steven doesn’t dare to turn around, instead keeping the phone glued to his ear, hand shaking. He awaits, begging for the call to be answered, closing his eyes and ignoring the footsteps that never halt behind him. It's probably just another passer-by, a traveler of the same train. But Steven remembers the fights, remembers the pain afterwards and his muscles ache with the ghost of it.
The phone is picked up.
“ Steven?”
“Marc?” He says immediately, a shaky yet relieved sigh escapes Steven's trembling lips, “Bloody hell, I– I’m sorry to be calling you at this hour but I’m—”
Steven opens his mouth to speak, but the words get stuck in his throat. How is he supposed to explain to Marc what happened? The mere thought of saying 'I'm lost' like a child looking for his older brother annihilates him with shame. It wouldn't be a surprise to Marc, given his previous lapses in memory, but those were minor incidents—forgetting to buy groceries, turning off the stove, closing the window, or paying the electricity bill.
The few times Steven had experienced a blackout of this magnitude could be counted on one hand, and they had always been easy to resolve, like the time he ended up in a bookstore without knowing how or when he woke up after falling asleep in a gas station bathroom. He never told anyone about those incidents, not even Marc. And definitely not Jake, who he is sure will ask, will pinch his nerves, will purposely laugh.. and that was something he wasn't willing to endure.
But Marc… he knows Marc had his own, even if it was only once, so maybe—just maybe—he will understand. He will help, he will know what to do.
“I might have—” he starts, biting his cold lips and tearing away some pieces of the tender skin, “Marc, where are you? I don’t know how to say this but—”
“Turn around,” Marc interrupts, voice calm yet commanding, cutting through Steven's babble like a knife.
“I—What?” Steven's voice falters. Marc sounds so close— too close— for it to be real, and he has to double check the call is actually on and he’s not just hallucinating it (again). "T-turn around?" he stammers.
"Yes. Turn around," Marc repeats, tone firm.
Steven hesitates for a moment, not understanding the command, before slowly lowering the phone. With a mix of trepidation and anticipation, he turns around. His heart skips a beat as he sees Marc standing there, phone in hand, with Jake by his side. The relief that washes over him is almost overwhelming, and for a moment, all his fears and uncertainties are eclipsed by the simple fact that he's not alone.
Marc's expression is unreadable, but there's a hint of concern in his eyes. Jake looks as tired as ever, the glowing tip of his cigarette casting a faint light on his weary features. With each step they take, the distance between them diminishes, until finally, they stand before him, their presence looming over him like a specter haunting the recesses of his fractured mind. And yet, despite the overwhelming sense of disquiet that grips him, Steven finds himself rooted to the spot, unable to tear his gaze away from the other men.
"Steven," Marc says, pocketing his phone and taking a step closer. "You okay?"
His lips gasps open, but once again he's at a loss of words. Should he lie? Should he tell the truth? Would his truth be considered a lie? The eyes on him feel extremely heavy, and Jake's puffs overwhelm his ears. Steven shifts under their gaze. He is scared of what's happening and whatever they might be doing here—because he already has some ideas—but he’s more scared of what they might think of him if he ever said he doesn’t remember any of it. The faint, last conversation Steven remembers seemed important, like they trusted him with something. And he can't remember it.
It's embarrassing, and worse than that, it is disappointing.
Marc and Jake had already been treating him differently. He can’t afford to lose this minimally opened invitation they extended to him: it doesn’t matter if what they are doing here is what he thinks it is because they trusted Steven with it, and that’s all he cares about.
He gulps, and the lie slips easily from his tongue. “I just couldn’t find the ticket for the train. I'm afraid I might’ve lost it.”
Momentary silence. Marc seemed pleased with the answer, but Jake looked at him with arched brows. Steven thought he might’ve been caught, given Jake could mostly always tell when someone was lying. But Jake only took a drag from his cigarette and said, like it was obvious, “I have the tickets.”
Steven exhales, “Oh, yeah, sorry I just.. I just forgot about that,” he says and looks down at the ground. Seeing how he had left a mess of his open backpack and bag on the floor, he crunches down and quickly starts to rearrange everything. “So uh… why did you guys take so much time to arrive? Did something happen?”
Nor Jake or Marc answer, and while Steven puts away his belongings and arranges them as best as he can without revealing his unease, he's certain he fails somehow, because he can feel both their eyes fixed on him, their gazes like two loaded guns with fingers on the triggers.
"No," Marc’s voice finally cuts through the stagnant air. He takes a big, old bag off his shoulders and lowers it to the ground, it hits the concrete with a hard, heavy thud in front of Steven. “We just had to take care of… some stuff before leaving. They could’ve fucked up some things later if not.”
Jake scoffs, but says nothing as Marc sends a piercing glare his way.
“Yea, I thought something might have showed up,” he says instead of asking what he meant, forcing a reassured smile before he zips the bag leaving it at his feet besides the backpack. He stands up. “Just wanted to make sure everything was fine.”
“Yeah,” Marc affirms, looking over his shoulder and around, quickly changing subjects he says: “The train should be here in a few minutes. If we are lucky we won’t end up with a snoring old man right beside us.”
"That's the least of my worries," Jake says before taking a slow drag of his cigarette, saving his breath inside his chest, and the words come out almost choked in his throat when he speaks again, but his annoyance doesn't falter. " Esta mierda better arrive on time, the last one took its sweet fucking time eh."
The ‘last one’?
Steven glares, and his face must contort on some sort because Jake looks straight back at him; eyeing him up and down.
He is quick to agree, though. Not allowing the other man to analyze him too much. “Ye-yeah, I hope so,” he says before he looks down at his shoes, hoping the faltering in his being doesn’t resonate in his voice. How long had they been taking trains?
A nagging sense of confusion keeps gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. He tries to put the memories together, to recall anything else besides the conversation (which was barely anything on its own) but his memories remain stubbornly elusive, slipping through his grasp like water through clenched fists.
Questions start flooding his mind; What day is it? How long have they been gone? Why are they leaving? What's in switzerland?
Neither Marc nor Jake seem to acknowledge his uneasiness, whether it is obtuseness or indifference, Steven doesn’t know. It isn’t as if he cares anymore (or at least he tries not to) since both have become a familiar refrain in their relationship.
He doesn’t know what he prefers, actually; to be seen and questioned—he knows he won’t be cared for, but at least he’d be talked to—or to be dismissed, left to his own devices.
Silence overtakes them again, interrupted only by the wind passing by and Jake’s long, hitched drags. Marc takes his phone out of the pocket in his jacket, and begins to scroll through it doing God knows what. Steven keeps stealing glances at them, but they barely reciprocate; he wonders if they’re either willfully blind to the turmoil simmering within him, ignoring him, or if perhaps they've grown accustomed to his erratic behavior, desensitized to the gap between their minds and choosing to just brush it aside as nothing out of the ordinary.
Should I ask them? Would they care? Steven thinks, and shamefully lowers his eyes to the ground. Would they care? His mind asks again, and his inner consciousness hangs unanswered vocally, but the truth lingers in the air around them.
Maybe they were expecting this kind of reaction for him. Maybe they are waiting for Steven to back away, and how could they not? If he had been filled by fear, controlled by naivety for most of his existence. He wishes he could be seen as a separate thing from the feelings and emotions that characterized him. A shameful want, really, to be known, acknowledged beyond what has created him.
He glances at Marc and Jake. The three of them are so unnervingly the same and yet so undeniably different.
Five months. It’s been five months since their deal with Khonshu, five months where they had been caged between walls and themselves.
Settling in wasn't easy for any of them. It wasn't only about coexistence and having to live with each other (which was already complicated on its own) as different physical beings, but rather about the isolation it bringed upon them. Having a body, one's own and solely yours, is a curse that Steven doesn't know how he could have wanted. A prison of flesh and bone, a cage. He can’t comprehend this body, its needs—human and otherwise—its desires, its wants. When he was with Marc (and consequently Jake), this emptiness that now inhabits his chest didn't exist. His thoughts were filled by the three of them, a satisfaction that, though uncomfortable in its own conjoined way, subsisted among them. A bond that held them together.
But now the warmth of their closeness is riddled with loopholes through his limbs, a phantom feeling; the anatomy of melancholy.
And then came the emptiness in his head. In his memories.
Even before the agreement with Khonshu he had been suffering severely from the lack of capacity to distinguish what was real and what wasn’t, what was his and not Marc’s (or later Jake’s) . That strangeness, that sense of detachment grew up inside of him like a virus, slowly eating away parts of him ever since he learned the indomable Truth of his existence.
Steven does remember what he had once believed was his life. He envies how his past self lived those times innocently, blind to his ever growing disease, to the root of his birth. He envies how unaware he used to be, never stopping to introspect too much (either out of fear or ignorance, he doesn’t know) on his mental faculties. Yet he slowly slipped into consciousness, recognition, and the concept of illness, once something he hadn’t quite grasped and understood, became everything he knew.
He finds comfort in blaming Khonshu for his memory leaks, for his instability, like one might curse God for everything that’s beyond human—what he still considered human?—control. But he knew he couldn’t outrun the truth—or what his mind believes is the truth—forever, that he himself is and has been his own demise.
Steven wondered if Marc or Jake had experienced this strangeness. It seemed impossible to him to be the only one to go through this (but he’s always been special hasn’t he?) so Steven sought comfort in thinking that maybe they did. Those first days and weeks at least, after their splitting, when the three of them had been the most vulnerable.
The ritual Khonshu performed on their bodies bewildered them all, leaving his aspects horrified, scared—not in the supernatural sense, there was nothing to surprise them there, but rather in the way Khonshu separated them from Marc, the way he took them out, like a spited-out tumor—and beyond it all, Khonshu left them empty. Empty for hours, days. If Steven is sure about something, it is that the emptiness of life was the worst of it, and not only for him, but for Marc and Jake as well.
He could still vividly remember that gagged feeling, the first breath he took in his new body. Not like a newborn baby, who is already living, but more like an unhatching bundle of muscle, organs and nerves. A skinsuit filled with nothing but cold blood, a non-living thing.
They spent nights with the lights off. Creatures getting accustomed to a new environment. The dimly lit apartment was—and is—barely big enough to fit the three of them. They hardly ate or talked, just moved around the collapsed space, in and out, left and right.
Marc would disappear all of a sudden, giving he was the first of them to recover. But he would always come back shakingly into the apartment, sitting or laying down, staying motionless long enough it was worrying; it scared Steven how Marc could spend hours seemingly staring into empty space, how lost and hollow his eyes looked.
They all had it differently, though, even if their discomfort came from the same source. He thinks of Jake cutting his hair, getting into fights every time he went out, and stepping out of the bathroom with long sleeves, how he would sometimes not properly wash the bloodstains from the sink. And Steven remembers himself not being able to know if he was alive or not, hours spent curled on the kitchen floor, tracing his pointed chest bones, barely bearing the feeling of his own skin and yet needing the sense of confinement all the same.
Jake and Marc would walk off into the night, stumbling back inside the apartment at different hours, even different days. Six in the morning, three in the afternoon, three days later. Sometimes together, most not. Steven would sometimes be there, to receive them; either awake—ice bags in hand, bandages, patches—or deep asleep curled in the bed, not hearing pained breaths nor a whisky bottle being opened. He would wake up, though, from the weight on the mattress, for the ever-trying but never-being soft, trembling climbing of other bodies alongside him. They tried to keep their distance, sometimes one of them would sleep on the couch or on the hard, wood floor. But they were drawn together, more so in the first weeks.
Like splintered nerves desperately searching for each other to be back together again.
Yet those days passed by, and all this confusion only seemed to worsen in his mind. Memory shattering and tearing apart. Every time he wakes out of his blackouts everything feels strangely tactile, yet unbearably out of place. There's this ringing in his ears that won’t stop, a numb feeling on his limbs. Sand on his throat, cotton on the tip of his fingers. A dream within a dream.
But the dream is real.
Even here and now, it's difficult to get rid of the feeling of having been living a lifetime and yet none at all. The memories are still there, somewhere inside his disastrous mind, a false sense of deja vu whenever he comes across sites or places visited long ago by any of them. Memories of when they were one. Flashbacks, voices murmuring unintelligible sentences. Feels like he suffers remembering, dying from everything he contains: from what he saw, what he didn’t, from what they went through. Dying from a life he didn't really have.
Steven knows that some of Jake and Marc's memories are stuck within him, a glitch in their splitting, remains left behind, or rather duplicate records in a database. An error, like Jake’s and Steven’s existence, something that shouldn’t be there but still it is , this paradoxical phenomenon works as a bug in his being, a coding mistake that collapses everything else.
And the worst part of it is that not all of the memories are actually good ones. Those forgotten remains—ruins he calls them—that Jake nor Marc wanted to have, appear in Steven’s head in his nightmares. Night terrors filled with blood, wrenching horror as all he sees is death, death, death and it's all from his—theirs—hands. Sometimes he’s both the perpetrator and the executioner; sometimes he's standing above bodies with their face, or strangling his own throat, the same brown eyes he sees in the mirror watching him writhe and choke.
He has never told Marc (because Steven knows those memories are mainly his) about the nightmares—nor what he saw him do—, because he knew it would be too much to handle. He never said a thing, not even when Marc asked why Steven would wake up screaming at night, or why he couldn’t quite look him in the eye anymore. He doesn't want to make Marc feel bad, much less blame him for what he had to do to survive. Guilty is a gnawing parasite on their minds, it eats them up chew by chew. And still if he doubts Jake would feel guilty for his own actions, Steven knows none of them would be happy with the knowledge that he saw . He saw the bodies, he saw the faces, he saw some of the military days, God forgave him, he could still hear the screams of the villages.
Steven can’t let them know… he can’t let them know he knows.
The things they’ve done separately are the only shred of dignity they have left.
So he never said anything, and no one ever asked either.
He looked at the flat screen casting the never ending, loop-entranced text of the last train. It should arrive in less than five minutes, if it was right. Steven looked at Marc, who stood a few feet away, his phone still in hand. The faint glow of the screen illuminated his face, casting sharp shadows across his features. Steven watched him for a moment, hoping that something, anything , could give away a hint of why they were here. But his mind was a frustratingly blank canvas, the harder he tried to recall, the more elusive the memories became. He felt a pang of guilt, the familiar weight of disappointment settling in his gut.
He forced himself to look away, focusing instead on the floor beneath him. "Everything's fine," he muttered under his breath, a bittersweet comforting lie. He didn't want to disappoint them, didn't want them to see how lost he truly felt. But the burning sense of inadequacy filled him, the fear that he could become—isn’t he already one?—a burden growing with each passing second.
" Che , Steven," Jake called out, his voice deceptively casual.
Steven tensed, glancing up to see Jake walking towards him. No expression seemed to occupy his face, but Steven was no fool when it came to Jake. Not anymore, at least. The months together made clear the dynamic between them, and how terrible it could become. Fear is a bodily reaction Steven always had with him, it wasn’t only out of actual terror for the innumerable atrocities Jake was capable of doing—and that was already reason enough to feel the intruding propinquity as a looming threat—but it was rather out of institc. A primal fear, something beyond his control.
Jake had a way of moving, talking, and waving his hands. Mannerism, that could look inoffensive in anyone else. Nonetheless, when it came to Jake, Steven couldn’t help but recoil from them, his appearance always setting him on edge.
Jake cut through the racings thoughts of his head, "Everything alright?" He asked, a knife-like sting in his tone, an undercurrent of something else that made Steven's skin prickle.
Steven nodded, carefully taking a step back. "Yeah, I’m just… just trying to get my bearings. Why?"
“I don’t know,” Jake shrugged, and his eyes narrowed slightly, the cigarette hanging from his lips casting a thin trail of smoke into the cold air. His face contorted as he seemed to be studying Steven, assessing him with such an intensity that felt like it could strip away all pretenses. "You seem a bit... out of it."
Steven forced a smile, though it felt more like a grimace. "I'm fine, really. Just tired."
Jake nodded and took a long drag, exhaling the smoke in their shared space as he maintained eye contact, standing uncomfortably close. There was a sharpness to his gaze, a barely concealed irritation that Steven couldn't quite place but oh did he know it all too well. That quiet raging beast, stalking in the shadow of Jake’s eyes.
Steven never fully understood where Jake’s innate violence started and where it was willingly continued, purposely directed. He never really understood if Jake’s ill will towards him was conscious, or just an inherent part of his nature. But even if it wasn’t, it’s still there. His sudden change of behavior, how they had never seemed to get along, how incredibly different they were. It all counted. Where did they fail each other? When had the gasp been created? He doesn’t know, and he's tired of trying to know it anyways.
He may not know exactly what made them apart, or how their relationship started to be filled with anger, but he knows how that anger could be.
He knows how that anger could snap, could tear him apart, and it made Jake's concern more confusing and dangerous than it already was; those silent connotations in his words mask something else, something less altruistic. Jake's sudden interest was a threat of its own. Was it a thinly veiled check to ensure Steven wasn't about to become a liability? That he wouldn’t have to dispose of him aside, like a thrown away broken piece? He hopes that his shattered, traitorous mind is just playing games with him. Seeing things where they aren’t.
Because it hurt to think he could think of him like that, could find his mere existence irritable, when Steven couldn’t bear to do the same.
“You sure ‘bout that?”
Steven frowns, “Yes, I am, thank you,” and tries to drop the conversation there, but Jake’s unconcealed gaze leaves a gaping shame running through him. From the way his eyes seem to scrutinize Steven to the way his lips curl up in a half-opened smirk. A sudden wave of bravery gets him to open his mouth and say: “I just haven’t been sleeping. You do remember how lack of sleep affects the mind, don’t you, Jake ?”
The smile on the other man's face dissolves into a scowl. Jake’s biting stare and pursed lips has Steven suppressing the urge to back down, to take another step back. Instead, he stands his ground, and it takes a few seconds of analysis from Jake on his face to put his hand on his shoulder; it had a steadiness Steven lacked, and even if he needed it, he definitely didn't want it from him, because the fingers pinching above his collarbones, warmly invasive, were everything but comforting.
"Alright," Jake said finally, though his tone suggested he didn't believe a single word. Gaze darkens as he looks at him from between pinched eyebrows, and the gloved fingers squeeze down, hard. "I trust you, Steven, if ever so slightly, and Marc trusts you too. So don’t make that a problem, yeah?"
The words stung, and Jake knows they did, given how pleased he looks as Steven’s bravery leaves his body, only nodding again, unable to find his voice. They hurt, more than he wanted to admit. But he kept quiet, watching Jake smile at him before walking away towards Marc, muttering something under his breath to the other man, who looked at Steven with a concerned face.
He couldn’t bear it, so he avoided their eyes and stared into the mountains far away in the darkness as he shoved his hands inside the jacket pockets, trying to hide the nervous trembling in his fingers. His mind whirled, the thoughts he tried to suppress bubbling to the surface once again. He felt the weight of their expectations, the unspoken pressure to keep it together, and he wondered how long he could maintain the facade before everything came crashing down.
In the distance, on the black line where the rails of the station disappear, a yellow light announces the arrival of the last train of the night. Their train, shining from afar like a gunshot trail. Steven stares, the lights prolong the shadows of the landscape. He can still hear them talking behind him, but the horn is crushingly loud enough for him to not be able to distinguish any words. The train gets closer, and he closes his eyes as it pulls into the station, a rush of wind and the clatter of wheels on tracks the only thing he can focus on.
The air brushes aside his curls, makes its way inside his clothes, steals the warmth from his skin, pouring coldness all over him. Steven breathes, the image of himself turns slightly sharper, clearer and his lungs are filled with unspeakable comfort; because like any unloved thing, he knows he’s real only when he's reminded of it, only when he’s being touched.
And right now, tightly wounded, this is all the reaffirmation he can afford.