It was dark and quiet. The kind of dark that made everything feel vast and hungry, quiet endless and suffocating. Her feet hit the pavement but her body just kept going of its own accord down the London street.
Temporary. That was what her service to Tawaret was supposed to be. Always. But the absence now she had broken off from the goddess had been getting to her. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do anymore.
She unlocked her apartment and stepped inside, letting out a sigh as the warm inside air filled her lungs, brushing away some of the overwhelming untethered dread for what the hell she was going to do with her life.
Layla stopped, her hand on the light switch. A figure was seated on the couch. A familiar one.
Finding Marc in her apartment late at night wasn’t weird back before he disappeared, and it had happened a few times since they defeated Ammit. But this wasn’t Marc. His posture was different. He didn’t move to greet her. It wasn’t Marc, and it definitely wasn’t Steven either, and Layla closed the door softly behind her and shrugged off her jacket.
“Hey,” she said softly, slowly stepping into the living room. “I don’t think we’ve met. You the guy that defeated Harrow?”
Marc was going to stop. Really, he was. It wasn’t an all the time thing, it wasn’t hurting him. And he wasn’t fucking like his mom. No, he wasn’t doing this on front of Steven, Layla, he kept it to himself and he kept it rare. As soon as this bottle was done, so was he, all of it, done.
He started to get up and severely miscalculated just how drunk he already was, crashing into the floor where the bottle smashed against the worn unfinished hardwood. He cursed and pushed himself up, inspecting where his hand was bleeding and the shards of glass and the wasted whiskey reflected the moonlight from the window.
This really wasn’t a new low, but after finally escaping supposedly the source of the worst of his problems, finally being free to not have to numb himself just to make the horror of his reality, forced to serve a god with a life he barely lived, go away, this really didn’t feel like a step up.
Fucking drunk alone in the dark, with broken glass, a pounding in his head, the burning scent of alcohol and the resignation that this was all there fucking was anymore. Things weren’t getting better. He could quit again but the second things got bad he’d be back.
And drunk or not, he was still nothing. He wasn’t even of service to the vulnerable anymore. He was just sick and alone and hell, maybe this was what he wanted. It was definitely what he deserved.
[hello! this is my out of character intro post or whatever you’d call it
my name is Chelsea, but there’s really no reason you’d ever need to call me that, this sideblog is for roleplaying and i really like things just so, i am very particular, and i like this to look as if it were really Steven’s actual blog
i am 20, prefer you don’t know my pronouns, and @marc-the-merc and @layla-elfaouly are my writing partners and best friends. i am queer but you don’t get to know my alphabet :D
i have very bad anxiety and am also autistic. this is probably the most you’ll hear from me out of character, ever. seriously. i do not like talking, i am verbalflux, and don’t talk about anything other than Loki, Agatha, Oscar Isaac, Moon Knight, and Steven Grant. took me like three days to finish this post because i get so drained typing
if i haven’t replied to a roleplay thread or reblog or an ask you sent, that’s why, i have it as a draft until I can complete it. that doesn’t mean i don’t want to interact with you! it has nothing to do with you, really, it’s just that i’m having some difficulty, either with reading or typing or both. or i’m editing something else of mine
this is a all inclusive safe space, and i don’t tolerate ablests, queerphobes, or zionists at all, you will be blocked on sight
there is no DNI, but don’t be a dick, please, to me, at least, you can say anything you want to Steven, he’ll shut that down lickety split
i talk about dissociative identity disorder from the perspective of it being Steven’s special interest, and i do my research, please let me know if i get something wrong
i am a singlet, and i reblog things from systems now and then, but so many of them have complicated DNIs and i don’t want to bring any syscourse here, it’s not my place
my ability to turn off reblogs seems to be broken, please don’t reblog this
Asylum Verse AU Steven Grant moodboard curtesy of @layla-el-faouly! thanks again! i write with them too]
Fourth installment of doctor!Patrick - this one a little more old time-y spin. Edits were inspired by the second season of American Horror Story verse my friend and I came up with, our Patrick here is a doctor working at Briarcliff.
Two edits this time! Just because I only have two old time-y style ones and me being hyper aware that the first picture his eyes are really dark because that’s just how the Patrick picture I used was; and it bothers me a little being unable to fix it so it doesn’t look like he’s soulless. So I’m making up for it with the second, a smidge more normal despite its imperfections.
Warnings: kissing, mentions of sex, cursing, angst
Rating: T
Words: 2.1k
Notes: here it is oh my God I’m sorry it took me a million years.
Co-written with @layla-elfaouly and beta read by @layla-el-faouly and @stephenwithav
Layla broke the kiss in every sense of the word.
Marc blinked and bowed his head against her chin. “Sorry…” he said, quiet, restrained.
Marc had come to move some things out of their— her apartment.
It was just supposed to be a hug goodbye, but maybe Marc had moved on autopilot, maybe their lips had brushed accidentally when she turned her head the opposite way she’d meant to, to fit into the embrace, but it didn’t matter.
It had just been habit, practice. This was what they did when they were alone. It had felt right, and before they realized their hands were against skin, their eyes were closed and they were sharing spit. They had hit the bed before either of them even fully realized they were heading for it.
It had felt good. It had felt so, so good. But at the same time, Marc felt nothing but ashamed.
“You shouldn’t have to apologize for kissing your wife.” Layla sighed, resting her hands on his back.
“No, but we, we’re not, we said we weren’t—”
Layla gripped his jaw in her hand and pulled him up to look at her.
“Marc. We’re whatever we want. Only thing stopping that is you.”
Marc’s eyes lingered, unfocused between them. He gathered his words.
“I want to be a couple that has sex again.” He said, and it hung heavy in the air, in the quiet of the bedroom they had not been sharing.
Layla scrunched her brow and pushed Marc off of her, sitting up. It felt like she’d drawn a knife from his sternum to his stomach and ripped everything there out.
“Why would you say that?” She said.
“What?” Marc could only blankly respond, everything else failing him.
Layla shrugged one arm in total exasperation “Why would you ask for that, like there’s no reason we haven’t been this whole time?”
Marc’s chest tightened. He had thought they were being open. He was trying to be honest, isn’t that what she wanted? This was the most vulnerable he had been in weeks and it was what, ignorant of him? Selfish? Something else? She had said whatever we want. Did that not include what he wanted?
His gaze fell.
“I don’t…” he started.
“I think you should go.” Layla stood and turned away from him to fix her shirt and Marc felt tears brimming his eyes. Shit. No. He wasn’t going to mess this up further.
“It’s…” he swallowed, angry and frustrated and trying to keep that out of his voice. “It’s always tell me what you’re feeling, right up until you don’t like what I’m feeling, and Layla, I don’t get it, I don’t control how I feel. It’s– it’s why I don’t want to share it with you!”
“Well maybe if your feelings were less shallow!” Layla snapped, glaring at him; and shook her head. “I mean, I thought they were. That’s my mistake I guess.”
“Layla, fucking hell,” Marc pleaded. “I thought not having sex for more than a year was a valid– I thought—!” He stopped. Of course. That was his mistake.
“Whatever.” He sighed. “Fuck.”
“Yeah well you know it can be never if you’re going to try and make me feel bad about that.” Layla said. “You walked out on me. You did that. It doesn’t matter if you thought you were protecting me. I never needed that.”
Layla breathed and tried to bring her tone to something softer. “But I do need you, okay? And I— thank you, for being real, even if I can’t— I can’t do that, Marc. Come on. I have feelings too and you know what they are.”
Marc nodded, opened his mouth and closed it again. He stuttered as he tried to speak but words just poured out over each other.
“I just want you to hold me again like I’m not frickin poison to you, so I can feel like I’m not, like you’re always saying. I wanna be close to you and for it to not be over so fast, I just don’t want to be apart from you like this, all the time, Layla, please, it’s awful.”
“Wait.” Layla shook her hands in exasperation. “So you don’t want to have sex.” All inflection leaves her, it’s a plain statement.
“What?” Marc was so taken aback he just stared. “Yes I do.”
“No, you just said you wanted me to hold you.”
Marc looked as confused as she did. “Yes?”
Something clicked for Layla and she sighed, dropping her hand off her hip. “Oh my God, Marc.” She put her hands out. “Come here.”
Marc hesitantly stepped forward and she pulled him to the edge of the bed, sitting them both down, she scooted up the pillows and laid him back into them.
She nestled under his side and wrapped her arms tightly around under his, around his waist. She fit her chin over his shoulder, then bent her knees against the backs of his legs and wrapped one under around his, between them, by his ankle. She shifted until they’re fitted together like puzzle pieces, perfectly snug.
“Is this what you want?” She asked quietly.
The tears pooled over the corners of Marc’s eyes, down his cheeks into the pillowcase.
“Y-yeah. Yeah.” He nodded weakly and Layla gripped him tighter.
“Gosh, ask for what you need, not what you want.”
“I don’t– I don’t know what that means.” He said.
“What you actually want. You figure out what it is. And just ask for it. The answer’s most likely yes.”
“I didn’t know you would just– I didn’t think…”
“Shh. It’s alright.” She buried her nose against that sweet cologne she loves on him and shut her eyes. “Now you know.”
It was quiet for several minutes, though not calm. Marc couldn’t get calm, and Layla could feel it.
“You know it isn’t too late for us.” She said. “You know time isn’t running out, we’re just living through it. If there’s things you want to do and say with the time we have, it won’t be forever that we’ll be able to, so I just hope you know that you… you can be real with me. You can say what you want, what you’re really thinking. I know that’s hard for you but I will be as patient as I can. I want to know what’s going on for you. I’m sorry I’m not always able to react the way I want to. But I am trying.”
Marc started to pull his hands down, away from where Layla’s fingers had been resting, nearly holding them, and Layla gently followed, letting her hands rest over his, but letting him move his hands to hold hers.
“Layla, I—” Marc swallowed. “I adore you.” He said. “I need you so much I can’t even… I can’t even feel it most of the time. It’s only ever been like this with you. It’s surreal. I don’t know how to deal with it. It terrifies me. I am scared of how you make me feel. Of how– how much I love you. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“You shouldn’t be.” Layla said. “Scared. You shouldn’t be scared to be in love.”
“And I shouldn’t be allowed to. I’m so wrong about every little—”
“Marc.” Layla sighed. “Stop. I understand. I get it. Why do you think I’m still with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know at all.”
“Yes you do.”
A moment. Marc breathed, his whole lungs out. “You love me too.”
“So goddamn much.” Layla said. “I thought I could pretend that I didn’t anymore. I kept trying to make myself. But I couldn’t. You are something else, Marc. And it is messy, this is messy, but I want all of it.”
She remembered Marc’s words from weeks earlier. How he was scared of being married, but he did it anyway. How he thought everything of him would only come to ruin another person, how she affirmed that when she indirectly berated his communication skills, his choices, his actions, things he was trying to say or do to make things better, not worse. She wasn’t trying to. She knew Marc wasn’t trying to.
Things just kept not working, there kept being this disconnect, something hard to reconcile when in so many ways, they needed each other.
“I… understand how that can be terrifying.” Layla said.
“Well not terrifying, it’s sort of…” he sighed, let his fingers wrap around hers and trace the edges of the rings adorning them.
“Words are not helping me.” He sniffed. “My– my chest really hurts.” He said softly. He hadn’t meant to tell her, but it was all he could think about.
Layla gently untangled her hand from his and spread her palm flat up over Marc’s chest. The knot where his heart should be in his ribcage twisted tighter.
“Inhale for me?” She said.
Marc shakily drew his breath in.
“Deeper,” Layla encouraged gently, feeling his chest expand under her palm in uneven staggers.
“Deeper.” Layla repeated.
He did, though it hurt like hell.
“Now out.”
He exhaled and a sob nearly came with it.
“Keep going. Slower.”
He did, again, and it was easier.
“Keep going, baby, breathe.”
Marc did, in as deep as he could manage and out again, trying not to cry audibly.
Within a few minutes, his breathing was finally coming smoothly. The tension, the throbbing sting loosened and lessened enough for him to breathe like he wasn’t risking his life.
“There you are.” Layla pat his collar, rubbing up to his shoulder. “You’re okay.”
Marc almost chuckled. “Yeah, I’m really not, but; thank you.”
“I know. You will be.”
“Where do you get all that from?” Marc sighed. “All that… hope?”
“Do you really want me to tell you?“
“You can tell me.”
“I don’t want to trigger you.” Layla said.
“It’s… it’s fine, I’m fine.”
“My mom.” She said softly, shifting to anticipate how Marc would tense up, but he didn’t.
“Your mom.” He said, turning a bit. “Yeah. That checks out.” He shrugged. “That’s the me thing, isn’t it? And there’s just no– no fixing that.”
“I mean I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but yes.”
Marc sighed heavily, sniffling, he popped his lips and grimaced.
“That’s what it– what it does to you. What it takes away, when she would—” Marc pinched his eyes shut, his throat tight. “When she would look at me like I wasn’t ever her kid, like I was some monster, I didn’t feel human, Layla, I didn’t feel like anyone or anything could ever love me.”
Layla nodded, rubbing his side. “I know baby.” She whispered.
“I’m talking and I’m not saying anything you haven’t heard before.” Marc shook his head.
“No, Marc, get it out. Tell me. I want you to.”
“I wish it wasn’t so hard to just say it. But it feels like it’s fucking happening when I say it out loud. It feels like if anyone knows I can’t make it stop hurting me anymore. I don’t want it to hurt anyone else.”
“Talking about it is the only way to make it stop hurting Marc. You can’t keep it all inside.”
“Can’t I?” Marc said. “I did. For so long I just did.”
“Yeah, and how did that turn out?”
“…badly.”
“Then let’s not do that.” She said.
Marc shifted and curled his leg tighter around Layla’s, he wished in was possible to be compressed in her embrace from all sides, for there to be nothing else around him but her.
“I was selfish.” He said. “I didn’t tell you, about the other stuff, because I didn’t want you to stop loving me. It felt so good to be loved by you. To be loved like you did. Like you understood. What it was maybe supposed to be like. How it could be. No one ever did that. Not for me. It was always– there was always something expected back.”
“I know. And I’m not going to stop loving you, you know that, right? Not ever.”
“You really mean that.” Marc said. It still shocked him, even after all this time.
“I do. I’ve said it before, and I mean it.”
“I didn’t… I didn’t know you meant it like that.”
“I didn’t know you needed me to make it more clear.”
“Well,” Marc tilted his head, the barest hint of a smile on his face. “Now you know?” He said.
Layla smiled, running a hand over his curls and pressing her forehead into the side of his neck, feeling his pulse, his heartbeat, how warm he was. “Now I know.”
“Can— can we stay here tonight?” Marc asked.
“Yes. Absolutely.” Layla said.
Marc sighed in relief.
“Yay.” He said flatly, and Layla laughed against his collar, squeezing him tight around the ribs. It was enough to make Marc smile, just a little. He’d missed that. He’d missed her. He’d missed being held by her. He didn’t know how much he needed it. But now he did. And she did too.
Notes: I have this plush it’s adorable and I love it
Beta read by @stephenwithav
Marc tagged along in a bored, depressed daze behind Steven’s eyes.
Earbuds in, focused, Marc tuned out the quiet music, Steven’s commentary, and the whole rest of the world. He still didn’t know why Steven insisted he stay conscious for this.
He didn’t want to be out of the apartment, he didn’t care about the deal on hummus, and he wasn’t interested in whatever Steven bought.
“Marc.” Steven stopped. Marc hardly heard him. “Marc. Hey. Marc! Look,” Steven pointed and Marc blinked, face to face with a single lone orange dog plush stuffed between the cereal boxes. Flat printed eyes, stitched paws, little symmetrical smile.
“Now that’s practically destiny.” Steven said as he gently lifted it up, but Marc wretched control of the arm, dropping it. “Marc?”
Steven felt his heart rate increase and his breathing deepen and he quickly placed a soothing hand on their heart to ease the mounting anxiety attack. “It’s just a toy, Marc, it’s okay, we don’t have to get it.”
“I do really want it.”
Marc really wanted anything other than this right now. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be thinking about that show again.
“Yeah? Then let’s bring it home, ‘kay?” Steven bent over to pick it up, carefully setting it in the grocery basket and continuing to the front of the shop.
“She’s a really good mom.” Marc murmured.
“She sure is.” Steven nodded.
“No, like she’s– she plays with her kids, Steven, and she praises them an’ an’—”
“Yes Marc. She does.”
Steven wiped the tears on his face with his sleeve.
“I don’t want to think about how it could have been every time I see it.” Marc sniffed.
“Then we can leave it here.”
“I don’t want to leave her in the produce section.”
“Then we can get it.”
Steven hoisted the week’s groceries up onto the self checkout.
“Final call, coming home?” Steven held up the plush. Marc stared at it, then passed the tag over the scanner.
“Yeah.” He said, hugging the little dog plush to his chest.
“Brilliant.” Steven nodded, swiping across the rest of the groceries one at a time with one hand before gathering up the bags and heading home.
