Because Mari Inspires.
For Fanfic100 at Livejournal, I have to do 100 Marcus/Susan-centric fics based on prompts.
Title: Truths
Prompt: 'Touch'
He holds her hand sometimes and they just walk around, when noone is looking. He thinks about how it's taken her so long, but now she understands and it's alright, and he knows it, and so does she.
She's glorious; her back is straight and there are lines around her mouth from an eternally stern expression. It makes him smile, he wonders how long she practiced looking so tough. How long it took before she became what she wanted everyone to see, how long before the hard shell covered the softness underneath.
He'd never tell her, of course, but he knows the truth: she's a creampuff, really. A deadly creampuff.
The fire and strength and fury that spreads upwards, when she unleashes her wrath, are truly a part that comes from deep within; he knows what she is capable of. But the daily stern ice-Commander is a facade. It hides pain.
Perhaps she doesn't even remember what she hides for, anymore; perhaps the original hurts have been covered over by years and years of new scars, layers of snow over ice that harden when the rains come. Underneath, the torrential river flows, and the spirit is free. But every year it becomes even more deeply embedded.
He joshes around with her, makes her laugh, and she elbows him a little. She's boss, she says. Okay, he says, you be boss, but I will always be your protector and I will always love you. He only speaks with his eyes, and she isn't even looking.
She can't imagine why anyone would ever love her. She's broken, and she hides herself and it makes her feel so guilty. Embarrassed. She wishes she could be free; she doesn't want anyone to know how ashamed she feels over herself and her hidden actions, regrets. Sometimes it isn't things she has done that she hides because of shame; sometimes it is only feelings. Shame of feeling angry, too angry; shame of feeling sad. Shame of feeling.
The Commander lacks a certain part of the human DNA that clearly states it is okay to have faults. Even if she had it, he suspects she would bury it under the ice in the river.
Sometimes, like tonight, when she lets him sit next to her, sometimes she thaws through. The gentle pressure of his arms around her shoulders breaks her loose of her own ties, and she grieves, remembering. Remembering everyone else she has been close to. And she is ashamed to cry.
"You're perfect," he says, desperately trying to make her understand she can't be responsible for all the sins in all the worlds. It doesn't help; it makes her feel even worse, and she pushes him away.
"Shut up." She pauses, hides her head in her hands, sighs. "I'm ugly. You don't know me." She doesn't have the words to express everything she has ever done wrong. He needs to understand; if he knew he'd leave. He'd hate her like everyone else, and he'd be right to.
It's always too hard to do what she has to do; she hates driving people away. It would be easier just to shoot them.
It doesn't work: he does not believe her. He does not get up, he does not start swearing melodramatically, he does not proclaim he hates her. It never worked on anyone else so she wonders why she thought it would work on him. She feels like Cassandra.
Instead of listening to her prophetically ominous words, he smiles; no pity for her. No shame. "Susan, I passed the self-hatred classes with flying colours. You lose at this game, trust me." He squeezes her hand.
She reclines on her couch. The lights are dim. "I tried to warn you," she says a little sardonically, "so don't make a mess when I break your heart. I can't help it." Shrug. "I hurt people...just by living, I guess. I'd be doing everyone a favour if I got a hobby like Russian roulette." She looks at him, raises her eyebrows, smiles a little despairingly. He holds her eyes with his.
Seconds pass. "What?" She asks, when he doesn't speak.
"You're beautiful," he replies, and she bites back the urge to throw something on his head. There's a pillow next to him; maybe she could smother him with it and nobody would know.
Instead, she untwines her fingers from his, again, and folds her arms. "I thought I already explained this." She knows he thinks she's got a nice figure, but Marcus has always had the odd habit of speaking deeper than most.
"You did," he replies, biting back a grin. "You established you have a taste for overdramatic melancholy." He pokes her in the arm; he smiles; his bright teeth flash against the fluorescent lights.
"Don't make me throw you out in the corridor. Naked," she adds. She watches his reaction; the way he leans back, the way he folds his hands, raises his eyebrows. The way he could almost be blushing. She can't be sure in the near-darkness.
"This sounds like war," Marcus replies, a little breathlessly. With a mischievious grin, he reaches in his pocket and extracts his Denn'bok. "I may have to defend myself. With my pike."
Him and his Freudian jokes; she tries not to laugh, but her mouth twitches. "You want a drink?"
She leans forward and somehow manages to pull her tired ass off the couch.
"I don't, thank you," he replies. She shakes her head and pours two glasses.
"You do in my house."
A rebuttal comes to his lips and dies there. He hasn't drank anything since he joined the Rangers, since Will died. He accepts the shot anyways and downs it; the taste is almost more bitter than he remembers it being. Bitter like memories.
She's impressed by his drinking skills, and pours him another. He takes it without a word and drinks it, too, and then turns over his glass. He's been so indoctrinated by the Minbari, he almost wonders if he wouldn't go all psycho like Lennier if he let himself get drunk.
"You say you're not a drinker. You were?" She asks, leaning back against the counter with her own shot in hand.
He sighs and smiles resignedly. "I'm a miner's son. It kind of goes with the territory." A shadow covers his face for a second and then clears: "I quit when my life went to Hell."
"Really?" she says, her tone ironic, "that's when most people start." When she started. When her father started. When her mother started.
"There aren't many vodka trees in Tuzinor," he replies dryly.
Silence.
She's playing with her glass again; suddenly she sets it down, and looks at him. Her voice is husky, partly from the liquor, partly something else. "C'mere." Her face is almost unreadable, nearly solemn, nearly guilty, and sad; he's drawn to her and his heart calls to touch her cheek.
"You're perfect," he echoes his earlier words. She looks down, her face tight. "Susan," his voice is gentle, and it fills the quiet kitchen.
Suddenly she feels heavy. She tries to be close to him, and the damn man has to pull love into it again. It's inconvenient.
"Look at me," Marcus says, in the same quiet voice; she makes herself look up and fights off the impulse to be rebellious. "You will never drive me away. You will never break my heart." She starts to smirk at his flowery prose, to look down, but he bends over to meet her eyes. "You could sleep with every damn man on this Station and I'd still love you." He might kill the bastards, he thinks, but he'd still love her.
Susan chooses to avoid his gaze again, for a different reason than before; her shame and guilt rise up and sting her eyes. When he gives in and touches her cheek, it only makes it harder, and a tear of frustrations slips down her face.
Watching her struggles, his heart is full of her, and he pulls her close to him in a moment of nearly paternal concern; she tenses against him, relents as he rubs her back. Relents as he takes her pain and hurts for her.
He doesn't know if she knows, but he really isn't an emotional man; he was known by his workers, when he had a company all those years back, as a stiff. A dead man walking who perhaps drank a bit too much and hated his job, regardless of his brilliant mind for it. Only his secretary had seen something else, and he'd been too hesitant to let it show, even around her. Then it was too late.
When he's around Susan, though, it is inexplicably easier. Her troubles are so very much like his own and it brings out a side he never knew, before, that he could have ever shared with anyone. A side that believes in silly things like love, and hope, and peace. A side he wants to share with her more than anything.
He can hear her heavy breathing against his cloak. He waits for her to organise her heart.
A moment passes; she shifts, and her dark eyes regard him with resignation. "You should kiss me now, you fool," she whispers lowly, her accent oddly thick.
He bends over her, shyly; she wraps her arms around his neck, rises up to meet his lips. Feels the way his skin prickles as she touches him; he sighs in utter contentment and rests his cheek against hers. Something warm begins to work itself out of Susan's heart at the sound and the feeling of his hands, grasping and ungrasping slowly at the back of her shirt. She lets the warmth free, and it spreads.
"You're beautiful," he whispers, and she's beginning to believe it.