Chapter Text
“I feel like I’m more in love everyday I wake up next to you.”
“You are such a sap.” You push Marc away by the shoulder as he moves in to kiss you, only making him more determined to get one.
“Come on. I mean it! Completely.”
You giggle as he kisses your jaw, moving lower till he finds an opening to bite at the space between your chest and shoulder, making you yelp.
“Marc!”
“What?” He looks up at you nonchalantly, biting back a grin.
“Animal. An actual animal.”
“That’s right. I belong in a zoo. I’ma dangerous bird of prey and I’m here to tear you to shreds and eat you up.”
He tackles you, leaving bites and kisses all up and down your neck and collar.
You laugh and grapple him over into a deep kiss, holding him down with your body which he’s plenty strong to move if he wants, but he doesn’t.
“I win this time, falcon.” You sit up on your elbows, brush his hair off his face.
“If it means I get kissed, you win every time.”
You roll off him and he follows, cuddling up to your side even as you sit up halfway, dragging him to the edge of the bed.
“We should get up.” You say.
“Snooze button. Ten minutes.” He loops his leg around yours when you try to move, holding tight. “You stay.”
“Marc…”
You roll your eyes. The whole reason he gets up first and not Steven is because Marc heads to the gym early. Not today, apparently.
“Pleeease?” He looks up at you through his lashes, and that gets you.
“Alright,” you rub his back, settling into the cushions, holding him close as the sun rises higher and fills the apartment.
“Hey. Marc?” You say after a bit, quiet.
“Yeah-huh?” He opens his eyes.
“How do you feel about a family?”
“A family? Huh?” He pulls his head up. “Where is that coming from?” He chuckles but you can tell it’s to cover how sad he sounds when he says what he says next.
“I've told you before. You know what family is to me. You, Steven and Jake are my family.”
He smiles a little. “That’s enough, you know? Plenty of chaos.”
He sits up, kisses you on the forehead. “Let’s not complicate that.”
He stands and starts to get dressed.
You know this is going to be hard.
You haven’t fought about anything in a week or two.
He’s in a good, no, a great mood. There isn’t going to be a better time.
You open the bottom drawer of the dresser and dig through Steven’s old socks he swears he’s going to get around to mending.
You stare at what you pull out for a minute, breathe deep, psych yourself up.
“Hey uh, Marc? Can you come here for a sec.” You stand, thumbing the little plastic stick in your palm.
“Hmn? Yeah. What’s up?”
“I took a test a couple of days ago, ’cause I’ve been feeling sick, you remember, and…” You put the test in his hands and hold it up for him to see. “I’m pregnant.”
His expression is something of complete disconnection, not confusion, not denial, not anger, but something debatably worse.
It hasn’t clicked, and as the realization comes over his features, there’s a distance in his eyes, followed quickly and chased away by a familiar softness.
“You’re pregnant?”
You press your eyes shut, inhaling. Of course Marc wasn’t ready to handle news like that.
“Oh my gods you’re pregnant!” Steven exclaims, taking and looking down at the pregnancy test with a wide smile. “Holy crap, look at that, two lil’ lines, gracious…! That’s incredible. You know, I bloody love kids. How along is it?”
“One month, about.” You answer monotonely.
“Aw, it was prob’bly Jake then, wouldn’t it be? Not that it matters.” He looks at the test again like it’s the sweetest letter he’s ever gotten.
“Gosh. We should ah, call the office, get an appointment in, make sure, it should be covered under my records, unemployed and all, but we’ll need to check…”
He paces a little, nods to himself.
He already looks to be planning miles ahead of you.
“If not, Marc’s got an account set aside for emergencies, we get to term, this definitely qualifies.” He turns back to you.
“Oh, gosh, I’m gonna be a daddy!” He catches you in a tight hug, nuzzling your jaw in that way Steven does when he’s excited.
“Yeah,” you smile, only half having to fake it.
“Isn’t that wonderful, Jake?”
“Isn’t what?” He yawns, seems like he just woke up.
“We’re having a baby!”
“¿Que? Oh. Cool.”
“I know right! Amazing.”
“Sí. Nice.”
He and Jake start chatting about clothes and supplies, leaving you to sit on the bed and marvel that went as well as it did.
Behind it all, the two of them, the blanket of consciousness, Marc breathes a sigh of relief.
He doesn’t know what he would’ve done if Steven hadn’t saved him, hadn’t tugged him aside before one of two feelings won out into his words, before either of which he decided to open his mouth with hurt you irrevocably.
He may as well be a kid again himself because he feels powerless.
You’re both on the apartment ground floor, in the laundry room, you and Steven, folding laundry.
“Am I polyamorous?” You ask Steven, pulling the last load out of the dryer.
“Huh?”
“I’m dating all of you. Does that make me polyamorous?”
“I don’t think it works like that.” He chuckles.
He folds your shirt against his chest, drops it over and sets it in a stack on top of the dryer, scoops them into the large basket between his hip and the dryer door.
“I dunno how societally we categorize relationships with multiple people but only two literal, legal individuals. Grey area, I suppose.”
“Mmn.” You hum. You thought just pretending as if nothing was going on with Marc would make you feel better, but it doesn’t.
“Triamourous. Maybe. If you wanted a specific label.” Steven goes on.
“Smart ass.” You tease.
“Come now, you love it.” He leans over and presses a kiss to your cheek.
“I do.”
You fiddle with your thumb and finally voice what’s bothering you.
“Do you know why Marc’s doing this?” You ask.
“Doing what?” Steven replies, then realizes. “Oh. Right. Yeah.”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t.”
“Can he hear me?”
“No. Not right now, I don’t think. Jake’s here though.”
His posture straightens, he gives you a lopsided smile.
“Ey cariño.” Jake nods to you.
You can’t help but smile a little.
Jake third (or fourth?) wheeled your relationship for a good few months before he confessed he was into you as well.
Despite his reputation you found him to be the most easy going and calm of the three of them, he didn’t talk a lot but when he did it was always something worth saying or just observations, very little in between.
Frivolous or necessary was the best description you had. He preferred solving problems over letting them steep or go on infinitum, and valued all your emotional states deeply, which made him a great mediator between you, anxiously babbling Steven and emotionally repressed rather-not-talk-about-anything Marc.
He was too deep for even Jake to tell. He’d tried to bring Marc in on the discussion of bassinet vs co-sleeper earlier, but he wouldn’t show.
“Thanks, but, I don’t think he or you have got what I need right now.”
Confirmation that he was okay, that Marc wasn’t horribly upset or hurt or needing you, wasn’t caught up in a spiral about his family and how he was just as bad as everything that had ever happened to him.
“Sorry.”
“Not your fault.” You smile.
You start up the stairs with the second basket and Steven rushes to stop you, taking it. “I’ve got it, love, take the elevator.”
“Steven, I’m not–”
“Not hearing it, elevator, now. Go on. I’ll meet ya in a sec.”
By his tone you know it’s no use arguing. You take the elevator and when he meets you in the apartment you don’t say much more as you put clothes away in four slots in the closet and on hangers.
Later that evening, you’re in bed.
“Is he mad?” You ask.
“Who Marc?” Steven asks as he lays next to you in his pyjamas.
“Yeah.” You say.
“Not sure. I don’t think so.”
“Well, if he is, and can hear me,”
You poke Steven’s forehead, grimacing.
“Marc. You cannot hide behind Steven forever.”
“He wants you to watch and see.” Steven says sheepishly, showing his teeth.
“Of course he does.”
“I’m sorry, if I could make him I would.” You lay back into the pillows, sighing.
“No. It’s–” you take a second. “If he needs a minute, he needs a minute. It’s just a damn long one.” You turn over, pulling the blankets up over you.
“I mean that’s what you, Jake, that’s what you’re there for, right?” You murmur, muffled, into the sheets.
“I mean, yeah,” Steven shrugs, rubbing your side. “I guess. A bit. Sort of.”
“You do you, Marc Spector. But you're going to have to talk to me eventually.”
Steven shuts out the light.
It’s a lazy Friday night a few days later. You and Steven are catching up on your new favorite sci-fi drama when he falls asleep next to you.
Making a note to catch him up later you throw some headphones on and are about at the end of the second to last episode when he stirs awake and gets up to use the bathroom.
When he comes back you lower the volume and pull your headphones off, because your other boyfriend sits back down next to you on top of the covers.
“Hey,” You say.
“Hey,” Marc says, rubbing his neck.
“You ready to be a big boy, step up and talk to me like an adult?“
He groans, sighs, stretches his neck with a frown.
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean like–” you start.
“No you’re right.” He pulls his leg up onto the bed, turning to you.
“Please don't go.”
“I’m not. Been here since yesterday, actually.” He huffs. “Steven seems real excited.”
“Yeah, he is.”
He’s had enough time to think. He sighs.
“I am not ready to bring a kid into this world. I’m just not. I don't know what it would take for me to be, but you can’t go through with this.”
“What?”
“You need to get an abortion.”
In the background, the episode ends with a long sting. The credits start rolling.
And then the shouting starts.
“Why can you never just be honest with me!”
“Because you don’t like it when I’m honest with you, you say you do but then you prefer I dumb shit down and make it all fluffy instead of just telling you how I feel. And you know how hard that is? You know how hard it is to even admit to myself how I feel about something, much less get it into words to someone who flips out when I so much as want to change the damn milk we get!”
“Steven can’t drink almond milk!”
“Yes, yes he can, an' you know how I know? Because I can, and it’s the same damn body!”
“I didn’t say I knew how it works!”
“No but you sure love to act like it!”
“You think I overreact but I at least I don’t go awol as soon as a conversation emotionally inconveniences me. Seriously, Marc, something simple as this, you’re thirty fricking nine! You’d think you could handle learning about a pregnancy!”
“Oh, pregnancy’s not a big deal now? It’s just a walk in the park?”
“Don’t do that. Don’t talk at me like that, like I don’t know anything.”
“No, you know why? You don’t know anything. You are delusional. Actually delusional. And I don’t know what’s worse, that it’s about me, stupid, messed up me, or that you actually think we could be a family.”
“The fact that you can’t see why I’d want to try is why I can’t stand to talk to you.”
“Hey, I didn’t want to talk! You're the one who told me I can’t avoid it, so here we are.”
“Working on not being a jerk would help!”
“Takes one to know one, sweetheart!”
You exclaim wordlessly and toss Steven’s headphones on the bed, pacing from the bookshelf and back, cursing under your breath.
“You wanna help me out here?” Marc murmurs, letting his head fall back to stare at the ceiling above him, hands tugging at the hair at the base of his neck.
“No voy a tocar esto. You got yourself here, get yourself out.”
“Great.”
Marc wipes his nose, angry at himself, angry at you, angry at whatever sick cruel god deciding this was just what he needed to deal with right now, out of everything, after everything.
Four loud knocks sound from the apartment door.
Marc turns to you.
“Expecting someone?” He asks throatily, and you shake your head. You both stare at it a moment before Marc goes to answer, tense but eager at any excuse out of your current argument.
He cracks the door.
“We got a call for a noise complaint?”
An annoyed sort of relief washes over him, and though his guard’s still up, he relaxes a little.
“Yes officer. My girlfriend and I are working some things out. She’s right there.” He opens the door enough to show you sitting on the desk behind him.
“You alright ma’am?”
“Fine.” You huff, sighing and hanging your head.
“Other people live in this building. You two keep it to the PM.”
“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”
“Very good then.”
Marc nods, shuts the door and turns back to you, feeling his heart against his ribs.
He watches you sitting there a moment. He sighs.
Despite everything, no matter how upset you both get, he still thinks you’re the most beautiful person alive. If he were to pick anyone to be in this with, it wouldn't be anyone else. And as against the idea as he is, he has to admit you and him would make one gorgeous baby.
Be puts that aside. It’s not something he can think about right now.
“Look, can we just kiss and make up? I’m tired.”
He pretends as if you did when you don’t answer.
“We’ll continue…” he gestures vaguely, breathes. “Whatever this is, we’ll continue it tomorrow.”
You grunt, arms folded, stubbornly seated.
“Babe. Nothing could make me hate you, okay, not this, not anything. I don’t…. Whatever we decide, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just life. It’s all curveballs an’ needing to be vegan and figuring shit out.”
You don’t meet his eyes though you can feel his on you, pleading and sadlike in that way that always gets to you.
“Hey, sweetie? Please? Come on. Come here.”
You reluctantly get down and cross the few steps to him. He presses a lingering kiss to the side of your head, hands at your shoulder and waist.
“I still love you.” He says softly.
He runs a hand over your nape and then down your back, hugging you to him.
You hum, rubbing your face against his collar.
“I need an apology.” You finally say, working to keep the tears off your cheeks.
He takes a deep breath, lets it out.
“I’m sorry,”
“And?”
“I shouldn’t have been so blunt.”
You relax a little, turn further into him.
“You’re so heartless sometimes.” You murmur.
“I know. It’s stupid. I’m stupid.” He rubs your back. You rest your arms around his waist. “You gonna be okay?”
You look up a little.
“I’ll be fine. I am fine, Marc. It’s you I’m worried about. Steven wants this kid. Why would you want to hurt him like that?”
“I don’t… Steven is– he’s childish. We’re not in agreement on a lot of things because of it.”
“No, that’s you.” You sigh. “Marc. When are you going to get yourself together?”
He hesitates, hating that he doesn’t know the answer.
“I don’t know.” He says.
“I can’t believe it. Sleep for one second and you’ve got the police, a copper at our door!”
It’s the next day, and needless to say Steven was horrified (as he usually was, but uniquely so today) at your fight.
“And abortion… Marc, I’m pro life, I don’t believe any kid should be denied a chance to grow up, but especially my own!”
Just the idea of that tiny little curled embryo, barely a week a beating heart, being scraped off your uterine wall to be discarded was making Steven sick.
“Steven stop making our stomach turn.” Marc says, sliding your breakfast onto a plate and setting it in front of you, adding the leftover chips from a night ago’s takeaway and cracking two new eggs into the pan for his own.
He knows he needs more than breakfast to make up for how bitter you are. You know exactly what he’s doing.
Steven does not, or doesn’t care, and you can tell he’s getting dragged trying not to let him ruin it.
At the same time, you could watch him argue with his selves all day, and honestly didn’t need Marc to act like Jake or take over his usual time to make you feel better.
Though you suppose he is making up for all the responsibilities he dropped this week.
“I can’t help I’m sensitive to this sort of thing! That’s a tiny human we’re talking about, bloody hell.”
Marc swirls the pan and seasons liberally with his other hand.
“If she wants it,” Steven tilts their head to you. “We’re keeping it. Isn’t that right Jake. Jake?”
“Sí, seguro.”
“He agrees with me.”
“We don’t kill kids.”
“That’s right. Not even unborn ones. We do not.” Steven says. “Look, I don’t have strong opinions about a lot of non-Egyptian related things, but this, it’s serious, I’m serious about it. And you scare me, Marc.”
“Oh please.”
“You do! I can see being okay with other people, but our baby?“
“God, what blogs have you been on, do I need to put a parental lock on the laptop again? It is not our baby yet!”
“Not hearing this. Love, you see what I have to deal with?” He turns to you.
You shake your head.
“It’s ridiculous, he is, the whole thing.” Steven says.
“You’re both wrong in such completely different ways I don’t even know where to start.” You put a forkful of omelette in your mouth. “We’re not getting an abortion. I do not want one.”
“Oh. That works too, I guess.” Steven hums. He looks back to the stove.
He makes a face as he pulls the bacon from the back eye and puts it on yours and his plate.
“So long as we’re keeping it.”
He sits down beside you with his food and Steven and Marc both leave so Jake can eat his neither Vegan nor Kosher breakfast with you.