I don't know what is up with me writing Mark straight lately. I'm going to have to do a lot of penance with Days of Inspiration (which I PROMISE I will update soon!) to atone for all this Mark/Maureen.

Written on an impulse after listening to the Billy Joel song of the same name about, oh, I don't know...:checks iTunes: twenty-six times in a row (NO JOKE), on the morning before my French final at three am. Apparently, that's when Melpomene allows me to write.

As many ways as I bend the boys and girls, they ain't mine. Neither is Billy Joel, even though I don't explicitly quote any lyrics here, as compliant with fan fiction dot net's policy about song lyrics. See? I'm a good copyright-following girl! But I highly recommend listening to the song either before you read it, or having it on constant repeat, like I did. It helps, I swear!

"Sorry, Baby, I had to work late." She bit her lip, begging for forgiveness with her entire posture.

Mark smiled. "It's okay, I know you're working hard."

She sat down next to him on the couch, curling up against his body and laying her head on his shoulder. No matter how many times she came home to him, he could never quite believe that it was true.

All his life he'd been the shy boy in the corner, the geek who stayed late in the A/V lab, and the scrawny kid who got into Brown a year early. Having made it to college without a girlfriend, and only having had one kiss at one of his older sister's parties when they hadn't had enough boys for Spin the Bottle, he hadn't had high hopes for his continued love life after school.

It had been nothing short of a miracle to him when the enigmatic temptress he'd been staring at (hopefully unobtrusively) all night had come over to him and asked him out for dinner straight off the bat.

"Hey."

Mark clutched his drink so tightly he thought he might soon shatter the glass he clutched. For some reason, and he didn't think the reason was illegal drugs as he hadn't taken any that day, the woman he had been staring at all night was talking to him. "Um...hey?" His voice was embarrassingly high, but she only smiled at him and took his hand.

"Come on," she said as she took his hand, leaning forward and whispering in his ear, "Let's get out of here."

No one had ever made him feel like a man before Maureen had told him that he was everything she was looking for. When a girl beautiful and charismatic enough to be a goddess told him he was the best she'd ever had in bed, there wasn't a part of him that cared if she was lying. When she told him he made her feel safe, he couldn't have cared less how few pounds he could bench press. The best times of his life were spent accommodating her every whim, feeling like Superman for mixing her drink correctly.

No one had ever made him feel more like a worm than when she told him he was the reason she cheated on him.

There was mascara running down her face as she clutched his shirt desperately. "Mark...you don't understand. I didn't want to, but I though you were mad at me." She swallowed hard, tears flowing freely. "I thought you wouldn't care."

It was a bullshit excuse and he knew it. He had pleaded with her not to leave, had actually fallen to his knees. Now, after being caught by Collins with one of his old friends, she was in the same position, delicately painted nails tearing the fabric of his old sweater in an oddly gentle manner.

He didn't lie to himself for a second that she had truly thought he wouldn't care. The fact that she wanted him now...well, her lies were worth putting up with for her love. He knelt next to her, taking her into his arms again. "Shh," he said softly, stroking her hair as her head fell onto his shoulder and her arms went around his neck. "It's okay. I still love you more than anything."

What he had never known is how cruel she could be when she wanted to. She had always had a way to cut straight to the core of his existence, he knew at the end. Worse than cruel, she would be casual about her deceptions, making him question everything she ever said.

"Maureen?"

"Yeah, Pookie?"

"Did you do the laundry yet?" Mark turned over the mattress, finding another dirty sock and wrinkling his nose.

"Uh huh!" Came her chipper response in the affirmative as his girlfriend fixed her lipstick in front of the mirror, readying herself for a night 'out with the girls.'

Frowning, Mark looked in the closet, seeing the obviously full hamper. "Maureen...it's all still here in the closet."

A frown didn't mar her features for an instant as she surveyed her newly reddened lips in the mirror. "Yeah, I didn't do it. I forgot."

Baffled, he asked incredulously, "Why didn't you just say that?"

She shrugged as she picked up her purse, tossed it over her shoulder, and walked over to him, giving him a red smack on the cheek. "Better than blotting on a tissue," she said with a smile. "Bye, Pookie!"

She was out the door in a moment, leaving him yet again standing amazed in her wake.

Her ability to twist reality always surprised him, and always had. When expressing his surprise that she had never lost an argument, Roger had once rolled his eyes and answered, "Bullshit. She loses every single one. You just don't see it."

"Maureen, please, let's just take the train. It's a really dangerous neighborhood at night."

She had shaken her head stubbornly, refusing to allow his point of view. "Mark, my legs are really stiff. Besides, I can protect myself."

Not wanting to admit that he doubted his ability to protect even himself, let alone both of them, he insisted plaintively, "Please, Mo. We'll get home so much faster, and you won't have to walk in those boots. I know they hurt your feet after three or four blocks, you told me."

He could see in her eyes that she knew he was right. He waited for her to admit it, only to realize that he should have expected something more along the lines of what he got. "Know what? I just remembered that I have to get up early tomorrow, because it's Solstice. We should take the train instead. Hurry up, I don't want to miss it!"

He always envied her her ability to change her mind rather than capitulating in a single thing.

Mark had never been a tough guy in his youth. Maureen once proved this by challenging him to a wrestling match, which she easily won. But late after going out to one of Roger's gigs one night, Mark found himself playing the Superman Maureen always made him feel that he was in truth.

Grinning as he only did when Maureen came home with him instead of staying late with her friends, Mark wrapped his arm around his girlfriend, who was clad in his jacket. He always felt so proud when she accepted anything he gave her, even though she always made it clear that she wouldn't allow strings to be attached. I.e, she could accept his jacket all she wanted, but that gave him no rights 'to' her.

She was laughing, a few drinks under her belt, but not so many that she was incapacitated in the slightest, just enough that she was actually laughing at his jokes.

Neither of them noticed the shadow that detached itself from the wall, wrapped up as they were in each other, so the sudden hard shove against the wall took them completely by surprise. Terrified and dazed, Mark looked up at their attacker, but could only see a vague outline of the man in the dark.

"Your money, kid."

Mark wasn't in a stable enough state of mind to be offended by the epithet, hastily fumbling for his wallet. "Please...take the money, just don't hurt us," he pleaded.

The thief hit him swiftly once in the stomach, causing him to double over in pain. "Shut the hell up, or your pretty girlfriend gets the same."

Mark straightened with difficulty, eyes wide at the mention of harm coming to Maureen, but kept his mouth shut, hoping the man would leave them alone now that he had all their money. Unfortunately, the sinister figure was now eying the terrified woman, and something glinted in his hand; a knife, Mark realized with a cold tremor of fear.

The man's face, now clearer as their eyes adjusted to the dark, broke out in a sickening smile as he hissed, "On your knees, pretty girl. You're gonna show me what those lips are good for."

A white-hot rage that he didn't know he was capable of feeling boiled up in Mark's chest as he saw the woman he was in love with slowly kneel in front of the man who was hastily opening his pants with one hand. Not even caring about the knife glinting in the dim light, Mark's fist shot out as violently as he'd ever wished he could be in all his days being picked on as a child, catching the man completely off-guard. "Maureen, run!" he shouted, not counting on being able to fend off the man for very long.

While the thief had originally been knocked back by the sheer unexpectedness of Mark's clumsy punch, he had recovered quickly and lunged towards the much smaller man, who managed to duck only as a result of many, many years learning to do just that. As the other man's fist collided with the hard brick wall of the building he had shoved the young couple up against, he cursed loudly, dropping his knife to cradle his injured hand. Still certain he was about to die at any moment, Mark leaped on him like a man possessed, kicking, punching, and mostly flailing madly, using sheer willpower to overwhelm the other man.

Eventually, Maureen caught his shoulder, scaring the hell out of him, and pulled him off. "Mark," she said softly, eyes wide, "he's not moving."

Breathing as if he'd run a marathon, her boyfriend slowly stood up, bleeding from a dozen places including his nose, hands, knees, and a mean one above his eye where the other man had banged his head against the ground. "Are you all right?" He asked, voice trembling.

Maureen nodded mutely, eyes still wide as she looked at the man on the ground, who was barely breathing. All of a sudden, she burst into tears and threw her arms around Mark's neck. "Mark..you saved my life!" She covered his battered face in vehement kisses, making him gasp in pain.

He would always remember that night as one of the best of his life.

The day she left him forever, he was as blindsided as he was by anything she had ever done. He had always known that she did everything in her own time, and that he only knew about her what she wanted him to know. Knowing that she was an unknown hadn't prepared him for any of her revelations so far, and the last was something of a shock.

"I'm a lesbian."

Mark blinked four or five times in rapid succession, then blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. "No you're not! We have sex!"

She sighed, and said, "Look, I don't want to hurt you." He recognized this as Maureen-speak for 'I'm going to hurt you.' "But I'm leaving. I'm moving in with my girlfriend."

His voice was a hurt whisper as he asked, "You have a girlfriend?"

"Well...kind of. Since last night. Anyway, I'm moving in with her. She's a lawyer, named Joanne." Maureen bent and kissed his forehead, leaving a red imprint as she always did, and gave him a small smile. "I love you, Mark."

She walked out of his life just as abruptly and confident as she had come in. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. That was just the sort of woman Maureen had always been to him.