The sharp edge of the wooden furniture dug into the delicate curve of her lower back, right above her tail bone, the pressure excruciating and unavoidable. Mary had nowhere else to go. His arm a cage, Cassius trapped her there — though, admittedly, some horrible, fucked up voice in the back of her mind chimed tauntingly that even if she’d an escape, Mary would nevertheless remain right there, their bodies close and nearly colliding again and whispering passions of pressed skin that her mouth refused to speak.
She was screaming. Though shaking, her fingers jabbed at him in rage, forceful bullet stabs in the middle of his chest, right above where his heart would be — if he only had a heart, which Mary convinced herself four years ago that such a hope could be nothing more than ridiculous, impossible fantasy. Her vehement screaming seemed amplified in the stillness of the night, the emptiness of energy within the flat. God, she truly hoped that Hestia chose this night out of any other possible night to crash at her new boyfriend’s place. The last thing Mary wanted was her sweet and kind roommate waking up to the ruckus of her and her ex-Slytherin, questionably-moralled ex-boyfriend screeching at one another like a pair of damn banshees.
“I don’t care if it’s the day of the fucking Rapture itself, you can’t just —“
Mary shoved at him again. Teeth bared and gnashed like a cornered, helpless prey, fighting one final time before slaughter.
“Don’t you fucking ‘Mary, Baby’ me, Mulciber, you piece of sh —“
Another rough jab as he yelled back at her.
“I swear to God, say my name one more time and I will rip your tongue out of your mouth and —“
Their clamorous voices melted together, orchestras of two divergent symphonies.
“I don’t care what the fuck you’re here for, I —“
His hand clamped over her mouth, bolted her lips shut and sucked all the tumultuous vibrations of sound right out the air in the room. Blue eyes widened at the sudden, brash and blunt contact, capturing the glare of moonlight piercing through the open curtain of her window in the crystal paleness of her irises, big gaze full of sliver illuminance and terrified panic as she looked into his shadowed face. The fear clung there. She couldn’t hide it, flitting there in the frantic dart of her eyes between his. And then, gone — replaced with malice, hot and furious, spiteful and bitter glare, his hand a vice over her sealed mouth.
When he looked down to her hands, she did, too. There, in the inches separating their bodies, her hands suspended in desperate, hysterical panic, trembling, rattling defiant tremors of fear and fury up her arms. Her throat tightened at the slight. She remembered, unbidden, all the moments before, when he made her hands quiver like this: when he said he told her that he loved her, when her insides filled and buzzed with such unbounded, effervescent glee that every molecule, every inch of her body hummed with happiness; when she gave her innocence to him one starry night, youthful and girlish nervousness quaking over her bare thighs as he pressed into her, her jittering fingers intertwined in his hair at the nape of his neck; when he smothered her in his darkness that one night with a pain and heartbreak so harrowing that it scraped the marrow out of her collapsing skeleton, her hands just empty, clattering bones as she held them out to protect herself and the hope that he unknowingly stole from them both.
“I…” Free of his clamp to silence her and his arm to trap her, Mary didn’t flee. Instead, she watched as his large, cold hands took hers, her slender and graceful fingers turned in his palms, sliding to fill the desolate spaces between his fingers. “I know. I… you…They do that, sometimes, now. I can’t…”
She looked up at him again, their hands laced together for the first time in four long, long years. She watched him. Let her eyes travel over the shadowy angles and curves of his face. Older, now — he looked older, his jaw broader, his hair a bit longer. His eyes, the same, but as he held her hands within his, a tender benevolence softened there — familiar, Mary thought, even after all that lost time. She breathed in. Her lungs even seemed to quake, shaky while they filled with air. She breathed out. Her head dizzied. She could feel the warmth of her palms emanate against the chill of his skin, heat expelling cold.
Her voice choked out from her throat, a mere whisper, raucous and wavering. “I told you that night that I never wanted to see you again,” she repeated again, as though she needed to hear it aloud again to convince herself of the truth in the words.
There wasn’t much truth in those words.
Mary – always had been a shitty liar, hadn’t she?
Mary was staring into his eyes, blue eyes filled with all that silent honesty.
Mary still holding his hands, her fingers laced around his.
She never wanted to see him again?
“You’re still a terrible liar Miss Mary Mac.”
Really, what was he supposed to base claim this on? Because despite Mary stating that she meant it, it was not in the way her voice shook, quiet yet enveloping. It wasn’t in the way her hands held tight to his, like they were trying to stitch together the lost time by pressing forgotten skin to forgotten skin. He could read her like a book in the same way that she could read him. They were two halves of a whole.
In contrast to their characteristic screeching, a quiet now blanketed the room. It was as if the entirety of the universe, with all its stars and galaxies, had unhinged itself from its gravitational tendencies and now orbited around them and only them. If was as if all that really mattered in all of existence was what happened in this square foot of space and time.
Cassius may not have had a heart, but he’d gotten quite good at pretending for Mary. And maybe, that was good enough. She was staring at him now, silver dagger of moonlight cutting across her face to illuminate equally piercing blue eyes. Around her, he sometimes felt like one of those angels. One of the ones that had fallen from heaven, expelled from grace and damned for eternity into the pits of hell. And Mary? She was no seraph in this metaphor because she was in no way ethereal or pristine but, rather, human. Perfect in her imperfections. Besides, If Cassius were that dark winged creature - looking up from below - the sunlight gave her a halo. So it was all the same to Cassius. Mary was good and there was a good chance she was too good for him. Hell, even in this pale moonlight he could see that halo dust an outline in her hair.
The world was quiet here.
Now or never Mulciber.
One hand held tightly onto hers (he didn’t think he could let go completely if he tried, his touch had missed hers far too much), but the other slipped into his pocket to push something into the palm of his hand. His debt had completely consumed the last few years of his life and not a day went by where he wished he’d just taken the risk and turned back; clawed his way home to to her and apologized for the way he’d left abruptly. As evident, Cassius never did. Dark magic pushed him onwards and he watched days turn to months and months turn to years but he only felt his love for Mary grow.
He wanted to tell her all these things and more. He wanted to tell her about all the places he’d been and the things he’d seen. How she was the most obvious inevitability, the answer to the loneliness inside him and the encroaching curse that sucked his autonomy from him with every passing second.
Oh fuck. He was on one knee now. He was abuzz. His mind was frenetic, thoughts ricocheting off another as he tried to focus. He thought about everything and anything in those moments. How, in war, the losing party would bend down to surrender on one knee just like this. He thought about how knights similarly bent down when being knighted in a show of honor and how Catholics did the same as a sign of respect towards the tabernacle. He thought about Mary and what she must think of him and what had happened to her during all this time and, in this whirlwind, Cassius even thought about how she was so fucking Catholic. And not just kind-of-Catholic but My-Name-Is-Mary-Catherine-Fucking-Macdonald-Catholic, Let’s-Go-To-Church-On-Sundays-With-My-Family-Catholic…. but not so Catholic that I won’t assist my boyfriend in defiling this church in a way or two -
Spiraling. He was spiraling, spiraling, spiraling. He knew it.
“I hate everyone.” Cassius blurted from his spot on the floor.
Of all the ways he’d wanted to begin, this was not the way. He’d had four years to plan this and none of it had mattered. Not one damn bit. All of Cassius; planned words and prepared speeches went out the window as soon as he hit the floor. For a second, Cassius wondered if Mary still kept that bottle of whiskey under her bed and if she would mind terribly if he stopped for a moment to take a heavy swig from it. But Cassius talked himself out of the idea instantly. There was a certain momentum he couldn’t afford to lose now.
For once, he let emotions twist his words.
“There are too many damn people on this fucking planet and I literally hate all of them. Except you.”
“No, that’s a lie. Sometimes I hate you too. I hate you more than I can bear.”
Spiraling.
“But most of the time, I don’t. Most of the time I love you so much it feels like my heart is going to burst.“
His heart felt like it was going to burst now. He was filled with excruciatingly sentimental and painfully saccharine thoughts. He wanted to spend his life with her and spend every morning waking up next to her. And he knew that it was a cliche to even think “that’s such a cliche” but here he was. Cassius wanted to build futures with Mary. Out there, there most likely existed universes and timelines where Cassius did not end up with Mary… but he did not want this to be one of those spaces.There was a dark thing in him, an unbreakable vow that made him go and go and go, but her light made it bearable.
He wanted to tell her that she goddamn floored him.
Cassius felt like he was using his last bit of oxygen to utter this last bit. Well spent. He opened his palm to hold up the ring.
“Marry me?”
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