They told him that he was not capable of love, and maybe they were right. Maybe he would never be able to give her the life or the affection that she so desperately craved. She was good at pretending that it didn't bother her, the way he only ever lay with her after having sex or cared about her when it arose his guilt. He had almost been convinced for a while there; even in those moments, her lingering presence was presented perfectly as being tired rather than seeking intimacy.
Reading her was hard sometimes, nearly impossible if she decided that understanding her current emotions would be a foreign language, a made-up one he couldn't learn. In the beginning, he believed that Marie was shallow, that all of her emotions, even the ones she should not have shared were displayed like magazine pages, open for everyone to read. He later realized that intrigue was always, always extinguished by information, even if not the right one. It may not have been intentional, but no one bothered to really know her outside what had to be the parts of her she was more than willing to share.
But sometimes he didn't need to know what her current state was because he already knew how the story went. He knew that no matter how convincing her act was, she had made it clear to him in the other moments that he would never be someone she could forget easily or discard like her failed dates.
But even if Franken didn't feel love, whatever it was supposed to mean, he knew that he enjoyed her presence, which brought him what could only be described as contentment. There were a lot of things in the world he needed, the ability to slice open organs and flip through endless books and stab demon weapons through kishin eggs and he would never be just satisfied with one or the other. But in the end, despite his selfish need for so many things, he knew that if he were to choose only one, it would easily be her. If he didn't have a choice, he would give up all his supposedly strange hobbies to have her around.
The decision always ends up being the opposite, to sacrifice one selfish need to keep the rest.
He wondered if it would take another near-death experience for him to even ask her to stay.
He didn't have anything to lose and that was literal. His parents didn't talk to him, had another child who made them feel like normal people, his apartment had nothing worth value other than sterility, and everything in life was replaceable by one thing or another. And his pride? He had nothing to be proud of; groundbreaking research could always be outshone, his skills were unmatched but he couldn't care less. But when it came to simply stating the whisper of an attachment to the one person who loved him, the one person he couldn't replace, and the one person who could find his sore spots and wreck his mind with curiosity, it felt impossible.
(Franken would later come to realize that he had simply feared the vulnerability that came with confessing to her.)
He knew love was different for everyone but there had to have been a spectrum where at least the love was considered love, not just care. Yet no one measured love, no one ever could and he didn't know if whatever feelings he had for the girl with gold hair and electric touch was enough to be considered so. His only conclusion was that if he loved her then she would be enough and since she didn't seem to be enough, he didn't love her (but god he still had doubts).
Stein slowly grew away from thinking about her the more he was away from her (whether that was hours or days) but she still settled in him like a small condition, creeping up when least expected then disappearing altogether. He collected random things from her, rollerball pens instead of ballpoint and headbands to keep his hair out of his face but then again, he stopped associating them with her once in a while. And when she stood before him he would forget whatever he was doing for a moment, then things were normal again.
Yet often the unfamiliar feelings of jealousy would arise in him, watching as guys who weren't nearly half his skill level would approach but make her laugh within minutes, effortless in their flirting, shoving beautiful bouquets of wildflowers into her hands and chocolates that even appealed to his taste.
But sometimes, he was jealous of her.
He was jealous of her neurotypicality, how easily she empathized with people, how when she spoke she never made them uncomfortable or scared. He was jealous of how she had a childhood's worth of experience to be able to say the wrong things and right things without scientists analyzing her every move. He was jealous that she was allowed to make mistakes and still be loved.
He remembered them digging around in his head, CT scans and rooms and lab settings to tempt him, giving him all the materials and dissection tools he ever could have asked for, fueling his curiosity in attempts to distinguish it. And he was just a kid in the beginning, with parents who treated him fine but never really treated him to begin with, and the more they tried to fix him with the ridiculous notion that a group of neuroscientists and psychologists, the less time he spent with the people who cared. Other children who were geniuses in math were praised when they spent their entire existence in their rooms, but he, while displaying similar characteristics, was demonized.
With each passing day, he became lonelier and lonelier, left to entertain himself with his own devices, devices that were made to be more accessible than appropriate. With each passing day they found him crazier and crazier, which then began the most vicious cycle of coping with neglect. It started with cutting, then it was nicotine, then it was the emotional and physical satisfaction of sex. He ventured into reports of all of them, the dangers, the treatments, the recovery rates… he had a folder deep inside of his mind filled with encyclopedia's worth of information that he could only scoff when people tried to delve into hard facts in a sore attempt to help him.
Maybe that's why he could quit for Marie, temporarily, that was. She asked him to quit smoking on the basis of her own worry for his body. It was ultimately, for her, not for him. The overwhelming guilt of causing her distress every time he reached for a cigarette was what made him stop, or perhaps it was just the satisfaction of seeing her slightly more relieved. He had someone to hold onto but it turned more into a dependency, represented quite obviously by his quick spiral back when she left.
And with any addiction, he was always starving for more.
The slow aching of his chest whenever he thought about her stopped being exhilarating enough. He wanted something deeper, more powerful, something that shocked his whole body. There was something there, he was sure of that more than he had ever been sure; a spark, a flickering potential that needed the right fuel. But it wouldn't be added, not yet anyway. The more he thought about it the more he knew that he wanted to be in love as much as he wanted her to love him.
Stein wanted to love Marie the way he loved parts of her. He didn't want to be just satisfied with a body or a smile or a weapon who pushed him. He wanted the vulnerability that was comparable to hers and he wanted to fear her lack of presence to the point where that was his main motivator for everything (but fear is never extinguished because of want) . He wanted the stability she always sighed about, the type of boring life he wished he could be happy with.
He wished that all he could ever need would be her.
"How do I learn to read you? '' he asked her. It was one of those mornings where she got up earlier than him, gathering her items from his room. She was already fully dressed when he woke up, he didn't know how she did it so silently. There never seemed to be a pattern with these mornings, she would either pretend like they were a normal couple or beg him to stay in bed a little longer as if he'd leave her forever. His theories regarding her were always disproved.
She answered him as if she was expecting him to ask, all this time. "Don't give me a reason to hide."
Even then, he couldn't tell if she was getting ready for school because she was simply a morning person or if she didn't want the vulnerability of waking up next to someone. He hated every time she said something offhanded and strange, he started to doubt that he ever really knew Marie. He started to regret not asking her more questions and spending more time telling her about the feelings that he couldn't figure out.
They walked to school together but he retreated into the forest at the last minute.
A dam had bursted in his soul and spilled out into every corner of his body. He had never felt this type of overwhelming sadness. The tears built behind his eyes and he sobbed, he screamed, he swore, but he could not cry.
He had been vulnerable in front of her. He had shown her twisted areas of his soul, castles made of fine grains of sand that the years had accumulated. He showed her the sadistic parts that loved inflicting pain and couldn't empathize and she accepted them and slowed them down. She gave him something, someone really, to try and be compassionate for. And then he started to feel shame when other twisted areas of him arose because of her. Fear that came with the vulnerability often presented itself as madness and he was laughing, smoking, doing everything he could now to cope with something she brought. (But he could never drive her away).
But she often brought out beautiful parts of him too, parts he did not know could have existed, even after all the dissections he had performed on himself. He laughed often but never laughed and he felt like liquid sunshine, finally understanding why everyone loved Marie. When she forced him to inspect the injuries of the younger students of the DWMA and he stitched them up, they smiled and started to greet him in the hallways, much to the surprise of his peers. And Franken was content when he wasn't afraid, and that was enough for him.
He knew that as long as she was by his side, lifting him, protecting him, and being an extension of his soul, Franken would always be content.
And if she ever left, he knew deep down that some part of him would reach to make it right.
He was naive like that, but he didn't mind being naive for once.
and that's my open-ended epilogue. i hope you liked my take of this pairing, it's one of my favs. i'm probably going to do more of these later (or even dive into smut territory holy shit)—so if you feel like it, shoot me a follow!