"Are you that blind?"
His words sent a shock wave through her brain. Blunt and honest, no beating around the bush.
Marshall had been giving her the stink eye all week. It wasn't her fault she had a one night stand with a witness who ended up being accused of murder...Okay maybe she was a little at fault for the sex, but that was it. And why did it matter to Marshall who she slept with? He wasn't her dad, he was her partner, and partners are supposed to back you up no matter what previous hangs up they may have.
"If you're sick of me, ya' know what? Tough. You're my partner and my friend and you're certainly not leaving. Don't take things so goddamn hard, Marshall. Especially me."
"How can I not?"
"Excuse me?"
"You drag me into your life and load every problem you have onto my shoulders. I'm not a person to you. I'm this machine that fixes broken Mary and cleans up the messes she makes."
"Go to hell. If it weren't for me you wouldn't even function. What do you have other then the Marshal service?"
Marshall dropped his eyes to his computer screen, emotions quietly hidden beneath the surface--where even Mary couldn't find them.
"Nothing." She answered her own question harshly, feeling the word burn as it slid off her tongue.
He clenched his jaw, the anger and agony slowly rising and filling every part of his hollow chest.
They took to their own work, silent and tense, slowly breaking apart, the both of them. Mary's mind swirled with the events of the past three years, the life changing and the fleeting moments, and maybe it all pointed to one thing, but she couldn't see it. Even if it was right in front of her face.
She stole a glance at him. His usual stone cold face, the usual tap of his fingers on his keyboard, the comfortable in and out of his breath. She tried not to notice the slimy feeling that crept across her skin.
"I didn't think you mind."
He sighed. "I don't. I don't mind being your keeper. I don't care that it's all my responsibility. I take it wholeheartedly, every single day. If it means being with you...I can take it."
Her chest tightened and she forced her eyes on the coffee ring that stained her desk. Marshall Mann was in love. A love that seared itself into his heart, his mind, and had stayed there, growing every minute. His knees weakened every time she came bounding into the office, whether it was a smile or a frown plastered onto her face. He would listen to her problems and help when she would let him. And only try to shut out the pain of her talking about another guy, even if it would be less painful for her to pull his still beating heart from his chest with her bare hands. It washed over him time and time again when he would catch the smell of her hair or see her quiet compassion when a witness had no one else. He could feel himself dying.
"I..."
Mary got up and made her way to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror, eyes already brimming with tears, and she wiped them away with her sleeve. A soft knock on the door came barely audible and she didn't need to say anything before Marshall appeared behind her.
"Have you ever thought about how animals choose their mates?"
Now? He was doing this now?
"Male and female fruit flies will face each other and dance in coordination. The female starts and if the male can't keep up she'll turn away from him."
Mary turned and leaned against the sink, holding her arms and listening as he went on.
"A female Capuchin will offer herself to the highest-ranking male. When she comes into oestrus she will run to him, slap him, and then run away, like a game of sexual tag. If he doesn't choose her to mate with that day she'll move on to the next, and lower-ranking, male until she gets one. Then there's the bonobo, their females will mate with anyone, anytime, any place. Now, the titi monkeys, when they choose their mate, they're bonded for life. They do everything together--travel, eat, sleep. And they're so emotionally dependent on one another they can't be apart for even a short time without feeling agitated and upset."
"What the hell does this have to do with anything?" Mary questioned, cocking her head to one side.
"I'm a titi."
"And you're saying I'm a whore monkey?"
He let a smile break through for a split second. "No. I'm up here in my tree, alone and upset, while my mate is running around changing herself for all of these other males, because she knows they'll never deny her. So they'll take her and she'll use them, let them think they're in control, and when she's done she'll come back to me, she always does. But she's so caught up in her ideas of how it can be to realize what it is. Realize that, whatever species she is, I can deal with it..."
Mary sighed, closing her down cast eyes and opening them again at Marshall. "Jesus Marshall, what do you want me to do? Marry you?"
"I just thought you had a right to know."
"I didn't iwant/i to! You are...my best friend, and there is no way I would want to ruin that, even if it meant... Come on, you know me, why would you ever want to be with me?" Her expression was soft, and eager to change the subject.
"If I didn't know you, Mer, I would hate you." He replied but cut himself off.
He wanted to tell her about the dreams he still had. The both of them in the diner in the dessert, the assassins barring down on them, and the lips on his cheek that hurt worse than the hole in his chest. He could still feel them, even at ends with her in the womens bathroom. He wanted to tell her about the endless days he sat in awe of her, sometimes until it almost hurt. How, somewhere, in one of those awe filled days, he'd tricked his love-sick mind into realizing that she would never feel as deeply as he did. And that, that did hurt.
"I need you to kno--"
Mary brushed past him and grasped the handle, but his palm lay flat against the door, blocking her almost effortlessly. They stood no more than an inch apart, Marshall forcing her eyes to lock with his, knowing inside neither would back down. His knees locked, the blood rushing through her ears, and the contact of their skin through clothes as his chest rose to meet her shoulder, the tension has never been thicker.
"The job at Peterson is still open, waiting for me. I tried, I did, but you...a blind man could see what you do to me. I can't keep doing this. I can't play this game with you anymore. It's not in my nature to be selfish, you know that, but I need to know, now...do you...could you ever...love me?" He finished as if he was setting up a proposition with an enemy, but his voice was anything but harsh.
Love. Mary didn't know what love was. She'd loved her father, she was obligated to love her sister, she certainly didn't love Raph. What the hell was love? She depended on Marshall, gave him the benefit of the doubt, broke his balls every once and a while, he was the only person in her life she could trust to have her back...until now. Was that love? Having your heart broken when you didn't even know someone else had it in the first place?
"You're giving ime/i an ultimatum? Love you or lose you?" She couldn't mask the hurt or utter shock in her voice as his gaze stayed steady, and agonized. "This isn't fair, Marshall."
There it was, her heart, barely beating, in a million pieces of the floor. And if he'd known, if he'd seen into the deepest part of her soul, he would've dropped to his knees and picked up every single piece before carrying her to his car, to his home, his bed, and holding her the way she despised being held--but somehow needed exactly that.
Marshall gave a single nod, swallowed the lump in his throat and whispered, "Ok."
She stood alone in the bathroom, holding up the wall and staring at her feet. He would eventually find something wrong, five days or five years down the road he would find something he managed to miss and end up miserable. She knew herself too well. As perfect as he may've been, even though there was no one else she'd trust with a piece of toast, let alone her life, she wasn't in a million years going to be every thing he needed...deserved.
When she finally found the strength to follow the familiar path to her desk she caught him out of the corner of her eye, signing a paper and closing a folder on Stan's desk. For the first time since they'd met, he didn't look at her. For the first time in his entire life, he didn't have any fight left in him. The air around them sagged in depression, as hopeless as the people it surrounded.
He stood and put on his jacket, the familiar tightening in his chest where he heart once was as he looked at her. "Good night."
One chance, once in a life time, no more. And she curled her lips in a tight, painful smile. "Night."
Marshall turned on his heels and walked away. Without ever knowing the hot rush of his mouth on hers or her taste that lingers, the feel of her soft curves under his worked yet gentle fingers, and the silent, almost undetectable tremble that would've ran through her body their first time.
Years later the titi spirit finds himself among a family of his own, defying his instincts, and thinks, if ever there were a keepers convention, he'd be a laughing stock. The one who gave up ibefore/i getting kicked to the curb. His animal was set free--alone and eventually lonely--and though they told themselves it never would've worked out, he still wonders. The family portraits sometimes, in a passing glance, hold a blond and three little girls of the same likeness huddled around her--a different life, a thought he can't push away.