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Khonshu left some nights to him, when the god willed it.
It was no great kindness on the god’s part, he was sure. Those brief nights of freedom weren’t common, perhaps once a month. More, if he’d performed his tasks to an appropriate level of satisfaction. Marc refused to think too deeply on them, he preferred not to feel any more like a trained dog than he already did.
So they were reprieves in his mind. Nights without that incessant nattering at the back of his mind, that voice digging into his skull like talons. He made the most out of these nights wherever he happened to be. Dancing in nightclubs in Addis Ababa after killing looters at a centuries-old church. Enjoying a three course meal in LIbreville after escorting archaeologists in the Congo Basin. Spending a quiet night under the stars with Bedouins in Morocco. In simple terms, he did whatever he could do to wash his mind of the worse things he’d been tasked with.
Often, these nights included alcohol. Sometimes, sex. With strangers, always.
“Hi.” The noise in London pubs necessitated close conversations. The man had to lean in to speak to him, the two of them elbow to elbow at the bar, “Here by yourself?”
“Yeah.” They’d caught each other in a surreptitious glance when the man walked in. The man had turned his glance away. Marc didn’t. He’d always preferred it like this. Before he met Layla, the pool of people around him tended to be those in the same trade. Smugglers, guns for hire, the rough sort who might fuck him halfway up the wall the night before and end up on the business end of his pistol the next day. The sort of people who got by on their teeth and knuckles and bullets. The kind that would more likely wear body armour than their feelings on their sleeves.
No baggage, no strings attached. Best of all, they were the sort who were likely to get rough. Work out their tension by taking it out on him.
“My name’s Paul.” His voice sounded polite. They all did here at first. A month ago Marc couldn’t have told posh from cockney unless they were swinging their fists at him. But this one, despite the gravelly tone, the big frame, the scar on his brow from some fight he’d probably had years ago, he sounded almost gentle, “What’s yours?”
“Marc,” He paused, “With a ‘c’.”
The conversation went from then, in fits and starts, half swallowed by the occasional group of drunks calling for another round. Expat? No. American. Yes. Have you hit all the tourist spots yet? Planning to. It took another drink for Marc to lean in and ask for a smoke, casually gripping Paul’s forearm like he was trying to hold himself steady. Paul’s smile had a sense of victory to it, mumbling something about not taking him for a smoker, Marc with a ‘c’ . His mouth was so close to Marc’s ear that Marc had to keep himself from showing the shudder that ran down his spine. It was the force of Paul’s hand at the back of his neck that finally got him to confess that he didn’t want a smoke after all.
“Fuck the cigarette.” The streets outside were slick with a late winter drizzle. Marc pushed a curl out of his face, peering up at Paul through his lashes, “Let’s go back to your place.”
–
What little freedom he got from Khonshu, he made sure to share with Steven.
He’d always kept an easy wall between the two of them. Triggers were easy enough to avoid. Guilt, resentment, those moments when he remembered the tickling of the water as it rose up to his thighs. So he got himself deployed, placing himself as far away from his mother as he could, and in a place where water itself had to be rationed away in clear plastic bottles.
When he fell in love with Layla in the desert, he fell in love with a sandswept girl after the scent of an ancient temple. Khonshu had directed him to keep her away, so he laughed with her under the shadows of date palms, led her to another city, and showed her his scars. Both of them resolved not to see each other again, but both would fail a month later on another continent.
At the memorial event for Adbullah El-Faouly, she was no longer Layla who smiled, Layla under the palm fronds. The Petrie Museum in London felt like a funny place for the event, so the two of them commiserated in a corner about how many of these objects were ill-gotten, which ones ought to be repatriated and how, and finally speculated about Dr. El-Faouly’s obsession with myths.
“Do you believe in them too? The gods?” Marc kept his eyes focused on her, willfully ignoring Khonshu’s figure as the god examined one thing and the next.
“Maybe…. Don’t look so incredulous, I’m his daughter after all,” She smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. Perhaps she took the flash of guilt on his face for sympathy, “I always told him it’d be dangerous. He never listened.”
He found an apartment in London after that. A safe house. Having satisfied Khonshu’s curiosity in the various collections on display in various London museums, Marc had a quiet night to feel out the texture of his affection and guilt. Layla had invited him on another trip, one that he would’ve accepted for her alone, but just so happened to appeal to the god’s sense of justice.
She could never love you, not after what you’ve done. The thought presented itself one late night, certain as a fact, an intrusive voice in his mind and he was too tired to stop it. His knees still felt scraped raw by the tiles of the bathroom he’d knelt in, doing everything he could then to keep these exact words from forming in his mind. Half asleep, with the bed filled with books he’d bought for research, he became a passenger to Steven. It would be Steven who, suddenly and without guilt, gained a newfound obsession with Egyptology, threw himself into the poems of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, and sucked the stickiness off his fingers from the carton of sweet dates.
—
The cabbie wasn’t too pleased with the two of them in the back seat.
Paul, as it turned out, wasn’t much of a talker. The interactions they’d had in the pub seemed to have stretched the limits of his capabilities to socialise.The hand at the back of his neck flexed and loosened with the traffic, the thumb pushing up right under Marc’s ear, feeling out his jaw. There was a sense of nervousness about Paul, the kind that came with hiding what he wanted for much too long. The sort of nerves that often stood on a hair’s edge, easily shifting into either want or violence.
Marc knew it too well, and truthfully, he’d picked Paul for it.
The car took a sharp turn onto a smaller street, then lurched to yield for traffic. Paul’s leg fell open almost accidentally to brush up against Marc’s, and not to be outdone, Marc sat back only slightly to turn and smile at the man. Slowly, most deliberately holding Paul’s gaze, Marc turned to press his face into the larger man’s palm, and let the man’s thumb push its way into his mouth.
Paul hissed–the tires hissed, and though Marc was sure the cabbie could see them through the rearview mirror, he didn’t move or stop. Paul’s thumb was calloused, like Marc expected them to be, tasting faintly of salt and tobacco. The pressure at the centre of his tongue pad made his mouth water, and Marc scraped his teeth against the knuckle, just lightly, to show that he had some bite.
“You’re a live one, eh?” His voice was barely louder than the hiss of tires against the asphalt.
“You don’t even know the half of it, pal.”
–
He’d blacked out in the middle of the extraction and opened his eyes to flesh and gore. The lookout shouldn’t have come at him with a fucking machete, obviously, but he should have walked out of this with some broken bones. The memories were so loud in their absence that for a second, Marc wasn’t even sure where he was, or when it was.
An hour later, when he’d scrubbed most of the blood off of his hands with dirt, he thought he’d finally made up his mind. The papers had been sitting in his backpack for weeks now, and the certainty of his decision waxed and waned with updates from his father. She’s getting weaker, the doctors aren’t sure how many days she has left.
It was a final comment from Khonshu that sealed the deal. If he wasn’t going to stop asking him about what happened, he’d find someone else. He already knew who’d be the best choice, and she wouldn’t ask him these meaningless questions after she completed her tasks.
He will not subject her to this.
Not to a mind like a car careening out of control at the mere mention of his mother, with someone else constantly trying to take over the wheel. Not to this fate where he’s made to dole out justice while paying the penance of the deeds with pain. Not to a marriage where everything she gave, shared, and offered only sent him deeper into guilt and silence.
He stopped by the post office on the way to the airport. The scrawled address only barely legible enough to be read. Marc hoped that she would see this as his carelessness, he hoped she wouldn’t worry.
The post office worker asked quietly if he was fine. Marc looked up, trying to seem unfazed as he looked at his phone and set it down on the counter a touch too hard.
“Yeah, just can’t…” He dug his fingernails into his palms and put on a half-assed grin, “Can’t seem to find the right change.”
The post office worker looked more concerned than before, but didn’t press. Marc was already thinking of where he could find someone who could fuck some sense into him.
–
Paul kissed the way Marc liked. Teeth and stubble and forceful like he didn’t care what Marc wanted. Marc, for what it’s worth, gave as much as he got. His knuckles went white with how hard he gripped Paul’s shoulder as the man thrust into him again and again.
“Fuck, fuck…” Marc squeezed his eyes shut. Paul’s cock was thick enough to press against that sweet spot inside him. It was a pinprick of pleasure itching at him under the brutal pace, frustrating him into desperation. Almost as if he knew what Marc wanted, Paul leaned back and pressed himself to the base. With one hand to hold Marc’s hips steady, he wrapped his other hand around Marc’s neck, closing his fingers just tight enough so that Marc had to work to draw in air.
The thrusts were slower now, Paul was enjoying himself. Each snap of his hips was hard enough to inch Marc further up the bed. Between the scent of sweat and the heat of their bodies, Marc thought he could smell the leather of Paul’s belt and hear too clearly the way the buckle clinked when they moved. A stab of familiar panic hit him in the gut as he was held down and used. The sense of desperate helplessness washed over him in waves. His fingers slipped down Paul’s shoulders to wrap around his wrist.
“Come on, big guy,” His voice rasped, “Break me in like you said you were gonna.” Through his tears and the blooms of light bouncing off his lashes, he could see the unspoken question on Paul’s face. Marc grinned–much as he could–as Paul realised that he wasn’t pushing him away. No, if anything, Marc was keeping his hand there, making sure Paul held his grip onto his throat and kept him at his mercy. As if to punctuate his point, Marc pushed back against Paul’s cock, playing into the struggle as Paul suddenly sped up. The hand on his hips moved to cover his mouth, literally wiping the grin off Marc’s face as Paul shifted his weight forward with each thrust.
Somewhere in Marc’s brain the faulty wiring lit up in a pattern like excitement. Brighter when he could barely breathe, taking it like a welcomed punishment. The pressure built and built until he was just on the edge, staring down a cliffside beyond his comfort, the air punched out of his lungs. His dick was so hard it hurt, leaving smears against Paul’s stomach as the man laid into him, doubling over as Marc let go of his wrist to reach down and jack himself off. He came with a spasm, moans muffled by the hand over his mouth, eyes rolling back until Paul let him go.
Marc could hardly recognize his own voice, ragged and raw as it was when Paul came, fucking him through his orgasm. The noise between them went wet and sticky as Paul spent himself inside Marc, forehead against the mattress as he caught his breath.
“You’re gonna feel that tomorrow,” The tightness in Paul’s composure was gone, there was even a hint of a chuckle in his voice.
Marc wiped a hand across his own face, getting rid of his tears before anyone could see them.
“Yeah,” He laughed, and swallowed the wetness in his nose, “I bet I will.”
Paul held him afterward, in a way that Marc wished he didn’t. He was exhausted, aching in a good way, and his mind blissfully silent. He waited until Paul started snoring to slip out from under his arm.
“You’re not staying?” Paul’s voice was thick with sleep, and like this, it had the same depth and texture like another voice that Marc was too familiar with. Marc shrugged and Paul didn’t say anything more.
–
Sometimes, he left one of these quiet nights for Steven. It was a careful balance between doing the will of his god and keeping Steven’s life intact enough for him to survive. Khonshu was demanding, unyielding even when he tried to bargain. What little he got of the good days, he shared with Steven. Steven who went about his day oblivious to what his body had been through the night before. Steven who woke up with migraines and vague memories. Steven who was never rested enough to wonder about a certain book out of place, or how his mother who was born and raised in Chicago had a flat in the middle of London.
On these occasions, when Marc was on his way back via train from Calais, he’d become aware of the silence from Khonshu. Half asleep, he’d slip off and become a passenger to Steven. It would be Steven suddenly, who’d be taking a walk in Folkestone, at the tail of a relaxing weekend trip that he had no idea he’d taken.
On these quiet nights, Steven would feel especially peaceful as he mulled over the vague memory of a pleasant dream. A young girl reuniting with her family, and him the hero who’d helped make it happen. On these nights, Steven would fall asleep in bed with one of his many books on Egyptology, and wake up the next day feeling finally that he’d had a full night of sleep.
For what it’s worth, small mercies and all, Marc would feel a little less bad the next time he undid Steven’s ankle restraint. When he forgot to feed Gus on the way out. When Khonshu led him to another group of smugglers to dispatch. He’d feel a little less bad after these quiet nights, knowing Steven would have to drag himself out of bed the next morning.