Chapter Text
Marina’s shoulders fucking hurt.
Any other day Mox would be badgering her to wrap her convoluted cool-down routine up so they can grab something to eat, but he’s been sulking quietly on the bench to her right for the last fifteen minutes, sipping at his water bottle and chewing his cuticles like a wallflower at a house party.
So, there’s that, and Marina doesn’t particularly want to stop pushing. There’s something tight and edgy stirring in her chest that maybe doing another seventy-five sit-ups might suss out. She doesn’t mind the silent witness — that’s half the fun, really.
“Hey,” Mox rasps through the gravel in his voice, a reminder that neither of them have spoken in over two hours.
Marina glances up at him mid-set and debates telling him that whatever it is can wait thirty more reps, but she catches the keyed up tension in his jaw and the dull question behind his lidded eyes.
He doesn’t bother asking for it anymore; they both know reading Mox is like reading a book to her, or otherwise this is just muscle memory. She nods curtly as she stands to meet him, gives him a brief and unnecessary once over, and backhands him as hard as she can, bony knuckles striking against the side of his face with a meaty thud. He takes it like a champ, head set and eyes dilated toward the wall behind her as he groans and savors it. Marina smacks him again, overlapping the impact, his struck skin going pink.
“Fuck. Jesus.” Mox clenches his fists, adjusts his jaw, and mutters, “thanks.”
“No problem,” she responds, thumbing over her stinging knuckles.
Mox mutters something low to himself. He’s restless – they both are. It feels like they’re weeks out from getting the opportunity to do anything tangible, and as patient as they both consider themselves it’s been a lot harder to parse the timing than either of them thought it’d be. They can’t fuck this up.
Marina taps her cheek. “Hit me.”
He smacks her square in the face with the meat of his palm, striking the bridge of her nose with a horrible twinge. “Shit.” She sniffs – no blood. Fine. She crudely spits on the ground and pats Mox heartily on the shoulder before sinking to the floor to finish her set.
Marina doesn’t remember when this all started. They don’t talk about it. If she were to hazard a guess, it was sometime between the year their training sessions becoming semi-regular and four months ago, when Mox scrubbed the lingering grapple-sweat out of his face, snaked his wet paw over Marina’s heaving clavicle, and asked her to do him a favor he already knew she’d accept – all about a seven minutes before the motherfucker bulldog choked her unconscious despite her tapping out, or maybe because of it.
The minute she was given the blanket instruction to safeguard him, her nervous system rearranged itself faster than her brain could acclimate. She’s had to orient herself through it so she doesn’t lunge at every passerby like a poorly socialized dog whenever Mox’s wellbeing is even hypothetically in question.
It doesn’t really matter. It happened, it’s happening, and they’re both better for it. It’s been an adjustment, but it fits her like a glove. She’d be next to nothing otherwise.
Marina feels like a fifth limb or jugular vein, an extension of someone else’s goals, but no less her own person, primarily because she was wholly incomplete before it all in retrospect. It’s exhilarating knowing how necessary she is for Mox’s survival, and how inherently Mox is for hers. She feels sick with it, like the excess in her was carefully scrapped out, all her serviceable components left alone, and the gaps filled with Mox’s blood to lubricate her churning brain and keep her organs pumping with a new sense of purpose, if you want to get romantic about it.
It feels significant and visceral, but not fragile. They’re not teenagers; if Mox fucks up she’ll tell him, and God knows he’ll tell her. This is pure mutual trust. Marina couldn’t fathom anything realer or more substantial if she had a gun to her head, or Mox’s.
It’s the others she’s worried about, ultimately. She’s never been one to give a shit about the baggage of anyone she’s been made to work with, but this is different. For all she knows, any one of them could shit the bed and ruin everything she has in one catastrophic swoop.
“Tomorrow,” Mox says behind her as she finishes her set.
“Tomorrow,” she echoes. “What’s tomorrow?”
“Gotta talk to Claudio. Get him on board and shit.” A heavy exhale punctuates his sentence. Mox is anxious, which isn’t a foreign concept, but it’s unsettling regardless. He tends to work his nerves out by training, or fucking, or whatever he calls the shameless and efficient amalgamation of the two he’s been practicing since before Marina knew his name.
For now, he’s fidgeting. Marina's nerves race to mirror him, but she steels herself for both of their sakes.
“You need me to come with?” she offers unrealistically. She has to ask; something about being a good friend and a reliable hand. “Break his legs for you?”
“Nah,” Mox predictably replies. “You gotta break my legs if I fuck it up, though. Since you’re offering.”
“You won’t.”
“Yeah, but if I do, break my legs.”
Marina hums thoughtfully. She mulls over what she’d do if Mox wasn’t fucking around with her and concludes that she’d probably follow through if he really insisted on it. They’d just have to find a way to make it clean; he’s not getting rid of her that easy. “Bet. And I’ll let you snap one of my ankles to make it fair.”
“Fuck it, sure, that’s cute,” Mox muses. “Deal.”
Marina sticks out her hand. “Shake.”
Mox takes her hand without hesitation, firm and warm. Watery blues meet a similar dull gaze. A sledgehammer would probably get the job done, if it came down to it. A dumbbell would be a lot easier to source.
The dewy sweat from their palms smear together as they shake on it; hers from the workout, his from nerves he’ll never admit to. It’d be a real bummer if this shit actually goes sideways and Marina has to make him a paraplegic. “Don’t fuck it up,” she requests.
Mox shrugs and wets his lip. “Don’t pussy out, if I do.”