marcus keane (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
exorkismos) wrote2018-05-29 10:36 pm
exorkismos) wrote2018-05-29 10:36 pm
@success_story
The case takes Marcus out of the country for the first time in a while. First time since Mexico, actually, and he has to wonder if God or Bennett is somehow behind that coincidence: he gets space when he needs it, it seems, whether or not he wants to admit that he needs it. (This time, he can admit that he needs it. It hurts to take it, all the same.)
He gets on the plane to Lithuania unable to stop replaying his last conversation with Tim. They'd talked over breakfast, stilted and quiet, both of them almost monotone. Better, really, than the shouting and crying of the night before that, but — not, actually. Not better. Worse, in lots of ways. Productive — like a meeting. They'd come up with conditions, solutions: let's just take a while, let's just let this next case happen, let's just give each other time to breathe.
So Marcus breathes. It gets easier. Working helps, especially because by the time he's been in Vilnius for three days he's made his decision: this is the last time. This is the end, not suicide-by-demon in an as-yet-unknown dark room. He's going to save this one, the last one, and then — he's going home.
He repeats the thought over and over, savouring it slowly. It doesn't feel real. But the lightness it offers is undeniable. It loosens his chest. The demon in Regina Bimbirienė drags him through a repeat of the last night with Tim and he tells it try harder. And just over two weeks later Regina sits up and asks for a glass of water, and her daughter — dozing on a makeshift campbed in the corner, despite Marcus' attempts to get her to leave — wakes up and starts praising God.
At the end of Mass, the congregation says Thanks be to God. Thank God it's over, thank God it happened. Marcus staggers out of the apartment complex in Vilnius and cries in a bus shelter, mostly from relief. Then he texts Tim I'm coming home before he can think better of it, and does so. Bennett gets a call: Marcus tells him, "I'm done, I'm out, I'm done," and hangs up on him when he starts to protest. Blocks his number. Phones can do that now.
Two weeks after that, after apologies on the doorstep and slowly falling back into step with each other, rewriting and re-establishing their conditions and their terms —
Two weeks after that, he still hasn't actually told Tim what he's done. He can't quite say why. There wasn't a good moment. He didn't want another serious, quiet conversation. He didn't want to promise, in case he couldn't fulfil it. He wanted to keep one last loophole open. But Tim's not exactly unobservant, is he? A part of Marcus hopes he'll just get it, that they won't have to talk about it ever and therefore it won't be as final, as binding, as terrifying — it can just fade in, become normal.
Of course it doesn't. Bennett keeps calling, new numbers each time: Marcus keeps blocking. He rattles around and deflects badly when the topic of how long he's staying for comes up. Flighty, absent responses. He wanders from room to room like he's restless but he's not, not quite: it's more like he's prowling the edges of new territory. Home. Yeah. Okay. Home.
He's on one of these habitual circuits, poking through drawers he's already gone through, not really realising what he's doing — thinking, moving on autopilot — when a thought occurs to him and his head comes up. Tim's at the bar with his laptop set up: Marcus blurts out, "You own this place, yeah? Or — ?" He wouldn't know. It's a weird thing not to know.
He gets on the plane to Lithuania unable to stop replaying his last conversation with Tim. They'd talked over breakfast, stilted and quiet, both of them almost monotone. Better, really, than the shouting and crying of the night before that, but — not, actually. Not better. Worse, in lots of ways. Productive — like a meeting. They'd come up with conditions, solutions: let's just take a while, let's just let this next case happen, let's just give each other time to breathe.
So Marcus breathes. It gets easier. Working helps, especially because by the time he's been in Vilnius for three days he's made his decision: this is the last time. This is the end, not suicide-by-demon in an as-yet-unknown dark room. He's going to save this one, the last one, and then — he's going home.
He repeats the thought over and over, savouring it slowly. It doesn't feel real. But the lightness it offers is undeniable. It loosens his chest. The demon in Regina Bimbirienė drags him through a repeat of the last night with Tim and he tells it try harder. And just over two weeks later Regina sits up and asks for a glass of water, and her daughter — dozing on a makeshift campbed in the corner, despite Marcus' attempts to get her to leave — wakes up and starts praising God.
At the end of Mass, the congregation says Thanks be to God. Thank God it's over, thank God it happened. Marcus staggers out of the apartment complex in Vilnius and cries in a bus shelter, mostly from relief. Then he texts Tim I'm coming home before he can think better of it, and does so. Bennett gets a call: Marcus tells him, "I'm done, I'm out, I'm done," and hangs up on him when he starts to protest. Blocks his number. Phones can do that now.
Two weeks after that, after apologies on the doorstep and slowly falling back into step with each other, rewriting and re-establishing their conditions and their terms —
Two weeks after that, he still hasn't actually told Tim what he's done. He can't quite say why. There wasn't a good moment. He didn't want another serious, quiet conversation. He didn't want to promise, in case he couldn't fulfil it. He wanted to keep one last loophole open. But Tim's not exactly unobservant, is he? A part of Marcus hopes he'll just get it, that they won't have to talk about it ever and therefore it won't be as final, as binding, as terrifying — it can just fade in, become normal.
Of course it doesn't. Bennett keeps calling, new numbers each time: Marcus keeps blocking. He rattles around and deflects badly when the topic of how long he's staying for comes up. Flighty, absent responses. He wanders from room to room like he's restless but he's not, not quite: it's more like he's prowling the edges of new territory. Home. Yeah. Okay. Home.
He's on one of these habitual circuits, poking through drawers he's already gone through, not really realising what he's doing — thinking, moving on autopilot — when a thought occurs to him and his head comes up. Tim's at the bar with his laptop set up: Marcus blurts out, "You own this place, yeah? Or — ?" He wouldn't know. It's a weird thing not to know.