Chapter Text
Marco Bodt has never found himself to be particularly unhappy with his life. That isn’t to say that he’s happy, exactly, but at least he isn’t sad. Mostly.
He doesn’t have any complaints. How could he? His IT job pays very well, and really the only way he’d ever lose it would be if machines gained sentience and enslaved the human race. Even then, it’s debatable. Marco’s historically been good at arguing his way out of paper bags.
Still, his story is not particularly compelling. He was born in Seattle, raised in Seattle, went to high school and college in Seattle, and got his job right out of college. In Seattle. He went to Maine once for some obscure family reunion with the cousins at the far edges of his family tree, but all he remembers is being too young to tolerate fly-fishing and too old to tolerate playing in the sprinklers.
Marco Bodt is twenty-six years old. He has a handful of work friends and a job steady enough to support a family if he could ever find the right man, and the corkboard of his accomplishments is littered with school transcripts, penmanship awards, and bonuses for immaculate attendance, but even spread thin these scraps of paper can’t cover for the fact that Marco lives a boring life.
He’s comfortable, though. He’s cozy, and more stable than most other human beings he’s ever met. What more could he ask for?
To drive the point home, Marco’s idea of doing something new and fun to shake things up usually involves making a spontaneous decision about where to eat lunch on any given day. It’s a sunny Wednesday in early July when the urge takes him again, and other than the most infinitesimal spark of wanderlust, so far this day is completely and inescapably normal. Same as any other.
It only takes a moment.
--
There’s a cute little park downtown Marco had seen about a week ago. Well, he hadn’t seen it, per se. He’d seen an article about it in the local newspaper one morning, specifically highlighting a hot dog cart that does business there every Wednesday. So, feeling particularly adventurous, Marco decides that today is the day.
He’s going on a quest to find that hot dog cart.
On his way to the elevators, he waves to the front desk girl for his floor, his plain white button-up rolled up to his elbows, and she flashes him her usual put-upon grin with too many teeth and not enough actual smile. He sends her a sympathetic look, knowing she must be having quite the day if she’s already wearing that look at noon.
Getting to the park takes a good chunk of his break, but the gorgeous blue sky, scattered puffy, blindingly-white clouds, and the sweet warmth of the zenith summer sun somehow relieve him of the stress beating from his watch and into his bloodstream. It’s a rare feeling, this relaxation, so he feels only the slightest guilt basking in it.
As grim as it sounds, he’s used to the massive timekeeper occupying the backburners of his mind, constantly looming like the metaphorical doomsday clock and ticking away the dusty, metered seconds of his comfortable life.
The little park is positively alive, with a million people and all their dogs moving through on their ways here or there or anywhere, and with all the motion around him, Marco somehow feels a little lost. Alone again in a tempestuous sea of human life. His hands in his pockets, fingers playing at the smooth edges of his phone on one side, his wallet on the other, he meanders through joggers and young people and old people and dogs of all shape and size, until he finally finds the brat stand somewhere through his hazy daydreams. The balmy sunlight must be making him sleepy.
He buys a regular hot dog with regular old relish and nothing else, much to the clear dismay of the hip young hot dog man, and decides to sit on a nearby bench to eat and people-watch. It might be enough excitement to get him through the week, making up stories to match all these curious threadlike paths trailing along the walkway before him.
Pretty soon, though, Marco’s mind wanders. People-watching only gets so interesting. He works his way through his hot dog, ever-aware of his remaining time to enjoy this pickled luxury, and less aware of his surroundings than is strictly advisable. So, of course, when he reaches for his food again after yet another brief daydream break and finds nothing, it’s not exactly surprising.
The poofy grey puppy sitting on the bench beside him chews rapidly, shame already obvious across its face. Not like that stops it from finishing off his food for him.
Sighing softly, Marco gives the puppy a crooked smile and ruffles its floppy ears, which is clearly appreciated. Once the evidence of its crime has been disposed of, it stumbles closer to him and pants loudly, wagging its fluffy little tail so hard it almost falls off the bench.
“Connie! Oh my god,” comes a loud, exasperated voice. Marco looks up at an extremely sheepish young woman, her hair tied up in a loose, floppy ponytail that bobs and weaves as she scampers over, theoretically to retrieve the puppy. “Sir, oh god, I’m so sorry, he hasn’t finished obedience school yet and he figured out a way to slip his collar, Connie, Jesus,” she babbles, somehow all in one breath.
With a wide smile, Marco grins up at her and scratches Connie’s ears. “No worries, I was done, I think.”
“He ate your food? Sir, I am so so so sorry—”
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Marco laughs, helpfully holding Connie still while the girl huffs and fastens his collar around his scrawny neck again. “Maybe his collar’s too big?”
“Yeah,” she sighs, flopping onto the bench beside the enthused puppy. “I think so too... I should poke a hole in it, d’you think? Oh, I’m Sasha, by the way.” Sasha holds out her hand with a winning smile, and Marco gladly shakes, stuffing the crumpled foil from his lunch into his pocket.
“Marco. Pleased to meet you. Your friend, too.”
“Ugh, he’s so cute, but he’s such a little jerk sometimes!” Sasha flips her bangs off her face and laughs, letting a beat pass before she blurts, “Can I buy you another brat?”
“No, really,” Marco replies, waving the puppy’s transgression aside. He bends closer to Connie and gives his ears a solid, two-handed ruffle. “He makes up for it with that face.”
“Alright, if you’re sure... sorry again, Marco.” Sasha stands then, tugging on Connie’s leash. “Thanks for being so chill, this scary old dude freaked out on him last week for peeing on his lawn... see ya!”
Marco waves as Sasha and Connie bounce away, happy to have made a new acquaintance. Adventures are always more exciting if you make friends along the way, he reasons.
He sighs then and checks his watch, already thinking about his walk back to work to face the rest of his adventure-less day. Before he can stand and move away, though, the bench rattles impressively with the force of the apparent meteor that just crash-landed onto it in the form of a dark-skinned, shaggy-looking young man now taking up most of the seat. Marco startles and stares at him, eyes wide, but the dude just groans loudly and runs a hand through his dark, tangled hair.
“Shit, I knew I was moving too slow,” the guy moans, staring wistfully after Sasha. “I haven’t seen a puppy in months. Was hoping I could play with him.” He turns his intense gaze on Marco then, the vivid sort of green that makes promises before impressions, and continues, “Was he soft? Did he lick your hand? Tell me everything, man, I gotta know.”
Marco stares more. Today seems to be a day of overly friendly, rather furry strangers spontaneously exploding into his life. He didn’t even wear his adventuring tie.
“Dude?”
“O-oh, sorry,” Marco mumbles, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, he was really soft. Like, uh. Well, like puppies.” The guy groans again and tilts his head back. “He didn’t really lick my hand, though. Just stole my lunch.”
“That’s so fucking cute,” the brunette sighs, lacing his fingers casually on top of his head. He takes up a lot of room, Marco notices, easily filling the rest of the bench and the surrounding area with his widely-spread legs, his mud-caked boots, his strong, tattoo-covered arms.
“Yeah,” Marco agrees, trying not to gawk. “He, um. He looked really guilty about it, too, even while he was eating it.”
The guy grins, huge and dazzling like a shimmering suncatcher, and Marco kind of has to swallow the breathless lump it puts in his throat. The tattooed puppy enthusiast is so open, so earthy, so present that it almost makes Marco feel small, a dust mote seated primly on his end of the bench. He tries not to let his gaze follow the colorful full sleeves the guy has going, soft lines flowing from under his loose tank top and trailing all down his wiry arms and onto his rough hands, but that’s the thing about tattoos. They attract the eye.
“What’s his name?”
Marco shakes his head clear and blinks his eyes back to the guy’s face. “The girl called him Connie.”
“Connie?” He barks a laugh, raising his thick eyebrows. He has a thin, pale scar running across his forehead, barely visible even under leaf-spotted afternoon sunlight. “That’s a weird name for a dog. That’s like, I dunno, a banker name or something, you know?”
Nodding vaguely, Marco blinks down at the chipped paint of the seat between them. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“My name’s Eren,” the guy says, leaning far forward with a crooked smile. He doesn’t extend his hand, though. Doesn’t seem like the germaphobe type, given his rather scruffy aesthetic, but Marco isn’t one to judge.
“Oh, I’m Marco,” he replies, the second time already today. He remembers something then, one of the first things Eren had said, and furrows his brow before he squints up at him. “You said you haven’t seen a puppy in months?”
“Oh, oh, yeah,” Eren hums, slinging his arm across the back of the bench. His restless fingers immediately begin tapping out a rapid beat against the wood. “Not too many puppies in the Oman, see.”
Eyebrows shooting up, Marco tilts his head in question. “Oman? Like, south-of-Saudi-Arabia Oman?”
Eren grins and nods, lazily pointing at Marco as some odd form of confirmation. “Good geography. Yeah, I was there for a few months, just got back to Seattle about an hour ago. Came here for the beastly hot dogs.”
The gravity of that casual statement kind of makes Marco’s head hurt. “You... just got back from the Middle East,” he says carefully, “And the first thing you do is hit up Maria’s Dogs ‘N Brats?”
“Dude,” Eren blurts, almost scarily serious as he leans forward again, “You have no idea how much I missed eating pigs. I am losing my shit, okay, I’m gonna eat nothing but bacon and hot dogs for a month. Pig and pig byproducts only.”
Marco can’t help it. He laughs. Pretty hard, actually, because Eren’s so serious, so earnest about his need for the flesh of pigs that it’s almost absurd. Eren doesn’t seem to mind Marco’s mirth, though, based on the warm grin on his face and the easy way he pushes his bangs back off his face as Marco rides out the giggles.
Unfortunately, Marco can never forget the looming threat of time for long, and having to say goodbye to this character of a man kind of puts a damper on Marco’s upbeat mood. He clears his throat anyway and makes a show of checking his watch. “Crap, I really have to get back to work...”
“Busy man, huh,” Eren hums, his free hand now tapping on his thigh in time to the beat his fist keeps on the back of the bench.
“Something like that.” Marco bites his lip as he stands, sliding his hands into his pockets in a loose approximation of his earlier relaxation. “You’re really interesting, Eren. I’m glad I ran into you.”
Something like a blush might run across Eren’s face, but it’s gone with a genuine smile before Marco can be too sure. “Good to meet you too, man. You’re a great puppy magnet.”
Marco returns his smile, stalling for just a moment longer before he says, “Well. See you around.”
He catches Eren’s lazy wave as he turns away and starts heading back toward his office, and as generic as they sound, he really means his parting words. He hopes to see Eren again, maybe with more time to hear stories from Oman, or explanations for his brilliantly-colored tattoos, or even just to see that radiant suncatcher grin again.
Once he’s firmly seated at his desk, just in time for the end of his lunch hour, Marco wonders belatedly if maybe he should’ve taken a risk and just given the dude his phone number. If anything, it’d be interesting.
Maybe next time.
--
‘Courageous’ is not honestly a word that describes Marco. He has more good qualities than most people, but he isn’t known for the risks he takes. Friendly, reliable, always full of encouraging words for everyone but himself, yes, but brave? Impulsive? Not so much.
As July waxes and then slowly wanes, every warm day indistinguishable from the last, the alluring wilderness lighting Eren’s gaze fades until it’s nothing more than a hazy dream, and an infrequent one at that. Marco’s almost completely succeeded in discouraging himself from hoping that fate might lead their paths to cross again. There’s a twinge of regret there, the hovering shadow of a missed opportunity, but he mostly manages to talk himself down from that, too. This too shall pass, and so on.
Eren’s fables are nothing but fodder for wild fantasies for Marco. An excuse to lose himself in a vicarious adventure across distant lands, and probably the closest he’ll ever get to those places.
No, adventure for the real Marco is deciding to test whether he likes raw fish or not, or watching space documentaries on Netflix and pondering the furthest reaches of the known universe. Eren’s adventures span the vast earth beneath his own two feet, while Marco’s adventures reach ever deeper into the glimmering, untouchable stars.
He’s understandably morose about his brain’s slow, month-long debriefing on the whole Eren thing. No need to get his hopes up, blah blah, but sometimes he still catches himself idly wondering why there aren’t many dogs in Oman.
Just before work begins on the last Monday in July, Marco runs into the front desk girl at the coffee machine, and he has no problem finding a friendly smile for her.
“Hi, Petra.”
“Mornin’, Marco,” she says, the soft lilt of her Southern accent (Dallas, or so he’s told) smoothing out any pre-coffee roughness left to her voice. “How was your weekend?”
“Oh, pretty good,” he hums, stirring an absurd amount of sugar into his mug. She makes her usual face, and he replies by sticking his tongue out at her, same as always. “I watched, uh, Journey to the Edge of the Universe, so.”
“Now, hold on,” she chirps, turning to quirk a teasing eyebrow. “Is that one of your documentaries, or some weird sci-fi thing?”
Laughing off her ribbing, Marco replies, “The former, thank you very much. What about you, anything fun?”
Petra shrugs, tucking her bright red hair behind her ear. “Not really. Went out with some college friends who’re in town, slept that off all yesterday, you know.”
Marco doesn’t, but he nods anyway. She smiles and pats his arm, and they go their separate ways, same as always.
Normal, normal, normal. Every day blends together here, and every evening bleeds through with lonely dinners and the strange science of old stars, and this is where Marco is comfortable. This is his element. All he needs is a boyfriend, and then he’ll be totally happy.
He always tells himself this whenever he starts feeling discouraged, whenever his apartment rings a little too quiet. Lately, however, the thought carries less comfort with it than usual, his logic standing on shaky legs exhausted from years of holding itself up unsupported.
Maybe he’ll ask out that cute guy in accounting, the one that flirts with him on the elevator and always pretends his printer is broken when really it’s just unplugged.
Next time, he tells himself over a bowl of lukewarm Chef Boyardee. Next time he sees that printer.
Next time.
--
Marco doesn’t sleep well at all on Tuesday, so Wednesday morning finds him still digging the heels of his hands into his eyes on the elevator ride up to his third-floor workspace, trying to press alertness into his brain. It’s cloudy today, too, which doesn’t help his gloom. He whips out the big mug for his morning coffee stop, but Petra’s not in the break room to tease him for it like usual.
By lunchtime, Marco realizes dimly that he hasn’t done jack-diddly all morning. No tech support tickets, which is strange but out of his control. He hasn’t filled out any of his reports either, though. Nor has he answered his phone. He’s just been staring at his pad of colorful post-its, filling up the bright squares with tiny little doodles and dark squiggles until there’s no more room before pulling the note off, crumpling it up, and starting again. For hours.
He takes his lunch hour at noon, although he doesn’t particularly feel he deserves it, and realizes on the elevator down that he has no idea what he wants to eat. If he’s honest, nothing. Sleeplessness sours his stomach, and food usually only makes it worse.
However, sleeplessness also makes him just a little more impulsive, and that’s how he finds his feet following a dimly-remembered thread to the park and the Wednesday hot dog cart. Today’s been an unusual sort of day all around. Between his insomnia blues, Petra’s absence, and the bizarre lack of tech complaints, Marco wonders quietly if today’s unusual enough.
He sucks on his lip as he walks, letting his mind wander further than usual, until he passes under the cool shade of the park’s many trees and realizes that the faint music he’s hearing now isn’t coming from the cold documentary suns flickering through his exhausted brain. At least, he doesn’t think so. He furrows his brow and follows the path toward the sound, and also toward the hot dogs, until the music grows louder, clearer, enough for Marco to tell that it’s quite pretty.
So is the voice accompanying the sweet, quick rhythm of the ukulele.
Hands resting idle in his pockets, his teeth digging into his lip, Marco finds himself captivated through the sluggish stream of pedestrians by the way Eren taps his foot to keep the time, singing freely and smiling around his clever lyrics, his eyes comfortably closed like this is the most natural thing in the world to him.
Perhaps it’s the fatigue, or the spaced-out fuzz stuffing his skull to floating, but the longer Marco watches Eren perform, the less he feels the watchful eyes of his internal clock. Instead, he feels the lively pace of Eren’s rough fingers moving over steel strings. He indulges in the sound of Eren’s smooth voice inviting his heart to beat a little faster for a while. He breaks out of the time-rationed sort of calm that he’s been drifting through for years, particularly over the last month.
The fleeting thought that this blissfully empty hourglass is born of Eren’s wild heart and sent to restart Marco’s own would be absurd if the whole thing didn’t feel so right. And indeed, the strangeness of the day so far melts away, and it takes with it all of humid July’s remorse and discouragement as if by some quiet magic whispering gentle between his ears.
Eren’s song dances to a swift, confident end, earning him several jingling tips dropped into the boxy case lying open before him, and he pauses to run his hand through his messy hair and grin his thanks to the few people who had broken free of the listless walking path to listen. Marco hasn’t moved an inch since he got here, but that doesn’t matter. Eren still scans the slow-moving crowd, and he still catches Marco’s gaze flickering between joggers and business suits.
A long month has passed since their too-brief encounter in this same spot. That expanse of time clearly means nothing to Eren. His grin widens, his shimmering eyes wrinkling at the corners as he raises a friendly hand to Marco. An honest acknowledgment, an ‘I-remember-you.’
As Marco worms his way across the wide path, a peculiar warmth curling between his ribs and easing the sore exhaustion from his chest, he wonders briefly if he has a similar effect on Eren. Or any effect at all, really.
“Hey, man,” Eren says easily once Marco’s standing beside him, his tone familiar like no time has passed at all. Like they’d just spoken yesterday. “You look like crap, you okay?”
Marco snorts and rubs the back of his neck, conceding with a lopsided shrug. “Nice to see you too. Yeah, I just didn’t sleep so hot last night.”
Eren hums, nodding his sympathy, then kneels to set his ukulele in the case, right on top of his tips. “Bad dreams or insomnia?”
Blinking rapidly, Marco watches Eren close and latch the case, his eyes never leaving Marco’s. “U-um. Insomnia. Just couldn’t get to sleep.”
“Mm. You know what helps with that?” Eren stands up and rocks back onto his heels, his unzipped hoodie slipping off one brightly-inked shoulder as he peers up at Marco. Now that they’re standing in front of each other, Marco notices that he’s nearly a head taller than the brunette, and the angle of Eren’s upturned face lets even the overcast daylight catch like wildfire in his gaze. “Look up ‘Tibetan singing bowl’ and find some recordings or something. Listen to that when you’re trying to sleep, it’ll knock you out like Rocky.”
Marco quirks an eyebrow. “A singing bowl?”
“Nah, nah, it’s a, uh.” Eren’s brow furrows in concentration as he waves his hands in a wide U-shape, muttering words that Marco strongly doubts are English under his breath. “Like a bell, but upside-down so it stands up on its own. Saw them in a temple in Nara, in Japan. I really tried to meditate with them, but man, the monks about threw my ass out when I started snoring.”
As Eren grins sheepishly, running his hands through his shaggy bangs, Marco finds himself laughing again, and just like last time, his amusement comes as easily to him as breathing. Eren’s clearly full to bursting with endless interesting stories, but more curiously, the constant passage of time truly ceases to exist around him. A year could have passed and Marco imagines he’d be laughing just as hard, and his chest would be just as full of familiar, bubbling warmth.
“You out here for lunch, or what?” Eren asks smoothly, tilting his head back toward the hot dog cart.
“Nah, not really,” Marco hums, checking that the bench behind him is still unoccupied before dropping onto it. Shooting a crooked grin up at Eren, he continues, “I just kinda wandered over here by chance. Needed to get out of the office.”
“Oh yeah?” Eren grabs his case, which Marco is just noticing has more than a fair few dents and scratches around the metal edges, and moves it around to Marco’s other side. He flops down onto the bench beside him and props his feet up on it, somewhere between protecting the little thing and lounging on it.
“Yeah. My head just isn’t with it today, ‘cause of the no-sleep thing.” Marco crosses one leg over the other, turning casually toward his companion. “Can’t focus for beans.”
Eren hums, lacing his fingers behind his head as he slowly relaxes further, taking up more and more space with his lazy posture. “What do you do?”
“I’m an IT guy over at Amazon.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah... I basically, uh. Troubleshoot. Stuff like that.”
Grinning widely, Eren budges his knee against Marco’s and teases, “So you turn things off and turn them back on again?”
Marco just shrugs, smiling softly. “More often than not, yeah.”
“All day every day, huh.”
“Yup.”
Eren nods slowly, sucking on his lip and letting his eyes wander through the shifting leaves above them. “Do you like it?”
It’s a pretty common question. Marco’s used to answering the same way every time he’s asked, usually without having actually pondered the question. This time, however, even though his mouth opens to voice the usual, no sound comes out.
For the first time in four years, Marco realizes that he’s not actually sure if he likes his job or not.
He has no idea what to say other than ‘yes,’ but Eren’s blinking up at him for a response so Marco tries for it anyway, and the affirmative he manages is noticeably feeble, more than a little squeaky. Eren quirks an eyebrow at that, but he doesn’t pry. He just nods again, tapping his feet against his case and letting the subject drop. Some part of Marco is grateful, but a significantly larger part of him is wondering if this ugly realization will keep him up again tonight, even with a choir of singing bowls luring him to sleep.
“S-so, um,” Marco stammers, eager to change the subject either way. “You’ve been to Oman and Japan, right? Where else have you been?”
Eren breathes a dramatic sigh, running a hand through his disheveled hair again. “Ohhh man.”
“Big question?”
Marco had meant it to be slightly teasing, but Eren shrugs an honest affirmative, tossing Marco a crooked grin. “All over, yeah. Wherever the wind takes me. Or wherever I’m least likely to get shot.”
“How d’you bankroll that?” Marco leans his elbow on the bench’s backrest so he can prop his chin in his hand.
The way Eren laughs resonates in Marco’s chest, free and easy and sparking hot under his pounding heart. “Busking, man, ‘s why I’m out here today. It’d be easier if I had a trust fund, but shit, most things in life would be.”
“You make enough just from playing a ukulele on the sidewalk?”
Eren nods, slouching further so he can lean his head back against the bench and close his eyes contently. “It takes a while sometimes, but yeah. The biggest issue is getting places. I avoid planes where I can. Inconvenient as hell, you know, and way overpriced. Shipping boats are the best, but I’ve done some clever shit with fishing boats through the Canary Islands.”
As shameful as it is to admit, Marco doesn’t even know where the Canary Islands are. He doesn’t mention that, though. “So where are you headed next?”
Licking his lips, Eren hums thoughtfully before he replies, “Gearing up for New Zealand right now. Gonna harass some sheep, do some hiking, you know. If I’m lucky, I’ll make it from north to south and then do a little island-hopping. Getting back might be kind of a bitch, though...”
For once, Marco has no helpful advice. He’s so far out of his league here, sitting safely on this bench in the city he’s never even considered leaving, watching Eren suck at his teeth as he ponders hiking the length of an entire country like he’s pondering what to eat for dinner. The mere idea makes Marco’s stomach churn.
Even worse, the way Eren talks about it so easily almost makes it seem simple. Doable.
“Do you plan your routes ahead of time?”
“Meh.” Marco’s stomach twists tighter. “Only if I know in advance that I’ll be passing through areas of conflict.” His heart gives an overwhelmed little spasm. “But if I can’t avoid that, I usually just make it up as I go. See what I’m dealing with when I get there and all.” Marco thinks he might actually pass out.
Eren, though, is just as fluidly casual as always, steadily tapping his toes on his little ukulele case, fingers laced loosely behind his head. An average day for him.
“New Zealand isn’t exactly known for its violent political turmoil. I think I’ll let it surprise me.”
Once again, Marco finds himself struck silent, just peering down at Eren’s lax face while the seconds tick lazily by. There’s no good way for him to describe the cocktail of emotions he’s cycling through as they let the conversation settle. Terror, awe, infatuation, curiosity, and the dull thud of depression starting to boil up underneath all that other crap. A twinge of envy, too, and perhaps the tiny iceberg tip of a suspicion he’s been avoiding since his junior year of college.
The suspicion that he hasn’t really accomplished a goddamn thing in twenty-six years and counting.
“Hey, when’s your break over?” Eren asks lightly, blinking his wide eyes up at Marco, who can only shrug mutely. He shakes himself out of his stupor, though, and pulls his phone out of his pocket to check.
“Oh, yeah,” he hums, “Guess I should head back...”
Eren quirks a supportive smile up at him, oozing up from his slouch to pop the noisy latches on his case. Marco watches him rifle around in the velvet-looking pocket in the lid, his fingers stirring up a chiming cacophony of change, before he finds whatever he’s looking for with a victorious sound. He pulls out a brown leather journal, well-worn pages crumpled and poking out at odd angles, then turns to face Marco with an almost nervous glance.
“Hey, so, uh. I’m actually leaving pretty soon for New Zealand.” Marco’s eyebrows shoot up, and Eren grimaces slightly. “I know, I kinda made it sound like I’d stick around here for a while, but between this month’s tips and some cash my buddy owes me, I’m set to go.”
“O-oh.”
“Yeah...” Eren fidgets with the threadbare elastic sort of holding the journal closed. “Dunno when I’ll be back, either... late October at best. But, uh, I want you to have this. Because I kinda dodged your question earlier. About where all I’ve been?” Biting his lip, Eren holds the book out in shaking hands, his anxious gaze flicking between Marco’s eyes and the battered, unlabeled cover. “It’s, um. One of my travel journals. Eastern Europe, I think, but it might also be China and Mongolia. Same kind of book, I just never labeled them. Too lazy.”
Staring wide-eyed at the journal hovering between them, Marco slowly uncrosses his legs, his shoulders tense. Eren’s going to be well and truly gone for three months, and instead of just fading right back into hopelessness and restlessness, he’s leaving his stories with Marco. More than dog-less Oman, more than cranky Japanese monks.
An adventure. A real one.
A living, breathing piece of Eren’s wandering soul immortalized in the clearly-stuffed pages of this little leatherbound journal.
With this, there’s nothing to discourage Marco from imagining, nothing to stop him from dreaming of real places infinitely closer than the glimmering echoes of his long-dead stars. No, these tattered pages are encouraging. Gently, wordlessly urging Marco to come back down to earth and live in the lucid ghost of Eren’s distant bravery.
“E-Eren—”
He doesn’t need to explain. Somehow, Eren already knows. His ears are flushed bright pink like he understands completely how intimate this is, but he still doesn’t take it back. “Really, Marco. I wanna leave it with you,” Eren mumbles, carefully setting the book in Marco’s lap.
Marco wants to ask aloud if it’s really okay, taking something this valuable, this personal even though they barely know each other, but the shyly hopeful look on Eren’s face squashes any more polite protests he might have. Instead, he thanks the brunette breathlessly, running a reverent hand over the dented cover. There’s sand dug deep into the wrinkles in the leather, so fine it’s almost invisible, but it sticks to the trembling tips of his fingers when he pulls them away.
“Hm, is that sand? That’s China, then. I swear, I’m still finding the damn Gobi in my ears every time I shower.” Eren chuckles, folding one knee up to his chest so he can rest his chin on it and shoot Marco another lopsided smile. “Give it a look, if you want. Maybe we can talk about it when I come back?”
Blinking back up at Eren, Marco nods vacantly, holding his gaze for just a beat longer than he really should. Eren doesn’t look away, though. He just peers right back at Marco, the unchanged melancholy daylight now seeming to darken his vibrant stare.
“I’d like that,” Marco mumbles eventually, tucking the journal safely under his arm as he stands.
“Yeah. Um, me too.”
Another pause, this one thick with the threat of an awkward goodbye, until Marco says, “Well, uh. I should. You know.”
“Oh, right. Work thing. Geek Squad.”
“Yeah. Not really. Kinda.”
“Right.” Biting his lip, Eren squints up at Marco, but then he’s shaking his head, and with it the morose veil that had fallen over him. He stands and barges right into Marco’s personal space, arms slipping around his chest and pulling him into an enthusiastic hug. The strength of it squeezes a hoarse wheeze out of Marco, which just makes Eren laugh and squeeze again.
When he steps back, somehow not tripping over his ukulele case, Eren gives a lazy mock-salute.
“See you around Halloween, then. Hopefully.”
“Y-yeah,” Marco blurts, somehow still feeling the pressure of Eren’s affection around his ribs, but not uncomfortably so. Just a lingering sensation, a shadow of that warm touch tingling across his skin in bursts of soothing little sparks. “Halloween.”
Eren stuffs his hands in his pockets and beams up at him, and the hoodie threatens to fall off him again.
“Well, um. G-good luck, Eren.”
“Thanks, man.”
Marco checks to make sure he still has the journal, then gives Eren an awkward little wave, and for the second time, he turns away without giving Eren his phone number. It’s not like it’d be useful in the wilderness of New Zealand, anyway.
Right?
Oh, fuck it.
Digging his wallet out, Marco turns back to Eren and pulls his last bent business card out of the bill fold, holding it out to the surprised brunette. Eren takes it gently, sharp eyes flicking over Marco’s name, his email, his cell number.
“Call me when you come back,” Marco murmurs, cramming his wallet back into his pocket.
“Yeah,” Eren replies, his voice quiet as he runs his thumbs slowly over the faded text a few times. After a moment, he blinks back up at Marco and gives him a sweet, almost vulnerable little smile. “Yeah, I will.”
“Okay.” Marco swallows nervously, rubbing the back of his neck, before he realizes he’s probably really late now and stammers some unintelligible collection of goodbyes and apologies, gesturing lamely over his shoulder.
Eren laughs at him, loud and pretty, and if there’s one clear memory Marco could stand to cling to for the next three months, it’d be the soft flush across Eren’s cheeks and the lively ring of his laughter, his loose hoodie hanging off his shoulder again.
--
Although he hadn’t specified when exactly he was leaving, Eren isn’t busking at the park the next rainy afternoon, nor the one after that, so Marco assumes that he’s already gone.
Well, he’s not entirely gone this time. The rumpled journal on Marco’s kitchen table keeps that last memory fresh in his mind, imprinted on his quickly-beating heart every time that laugh echoes in his ears.
Marco doesn’t get on his own case for the little crush he’s already developed on the brunette. After all, how could he not? Eren symbolizes everything Marco never knew he wanted, everything he wishes he could be. Eren is courage and strength and determination. Eren is free.
Of course, Eren also seems to possess a few qualities that Marco couldn’t ever imagine wanting in himself. He’s brash and impulsive, almost aggressively lackadaisical, and he’s also pretty much the definition of ‘lone wolf.’ Marco doesn’t think he would want to be any of those things, but they look damn good on Eren. They fit him somehow.
Sure, Marco’s always been quick to read people, but he finds himself almost unnerved by how much he’s learned in two brief meetings. Eren’s such an open book that between his words and his body language, Marco already feels like he knows him. The voice of caution quietly warns him not to make a god of a man, not so quickly, but he finds himself loath to listen to it for once.
Besides, it’s not like he isn’t used to disappointment. It’s the price he’s always paid for his optimism.
On Saturday, Marco tries to figure out what to do with the journal. He hasn’t even opened it yet. Part of him wants to savor it, to dose it out so that just as he looks up from the very last word, his eyes find Eren again, smiling and glowing with the southern sun. Another part of him wants to devour it in one fell swoop, to overload his unprepared mind and leave himself drunk with the dry ink smell radiating off the pages, and then to do it again and again until he knows this adventure by heart.
Mostly what he does is stare at it.
He’d tried flipping a coin, but he could never seem to agree with gravity’s ruling. Not even two out of three.
Astonishingly, not even the strange comforts of space are enough of a distraction. His thoughts wander away from the careful, distinct narration of his documentaries almost as soon as they start, and they never wander far before they land again on the messy pages of the journal resting on the table behind him.
Marco’s staring at it again over the back of the couch when a small part of him wonders if maybe he shouldn’t read it at all. If maybe he should put it somewhere out of sight and let it fade from his preoccupation.
After all, reading those words will change him. Permanently.
Even opening that journal means that Marco will be breathing in Eren’s soul. He’ll learn things, new sights and smells and words and god knows what else. Nothing will ever be the same. He’ll see the world differently, think of it differently. Maybe he’ll even stop looking to the stars, and that idea alone is more than a little distressing.
Marco has worked hard to build this stable life for himself, for his eventual family. This journal, though... with these stories, these very real, very tangible fairy tales, Eren threatens to shake apart the foundations of his cozy little world. To pull away the plush rug Marco’s kept over anything that didn’t fit into the mold shaped around his uneventful existence. Even so, even with the oath of utter chaos on his lips, somehow Marco knows Eren won’t let him fall. He knows that as his simple life is falling to pieces around him, Eren’s hand in his will keep him afloat. Keep him safe.
And once all the tattered shreds of Marco’s American dream have sunk to the bottom of the wine-dark sea, he believes Eren will still be there, and he’ll pull Marco onto the sparkling shores of the vast and unfamiliar world lying beyond the walls of his broken cage.
If Marco reads this journal, he will never again feel free here. The blindfold will come off.
He’s terrified.
It’s almost paradoxical, though. Just knowing Eren is enough to force Marco to realize that he’s wearing a blindfold in the first place. Even if he chucks the journal and changes his phone number and avoids the park, the wool over his eyes is itching now, and it’s only going to itch more the longer he tries to ignore it. If he doesn’t rip it off now, he’ll do it later, or he’ll let the feeling drive him mad.
So really, the only option he has is to read the damn journal.
Marco hates driving himself around in circles, so to cleanse his palate of this dilemma for now, he drowns the inevitable in a bottle of wine and watches Spongebob Squarepants until he passes out sprawled across the couch.
--
The hangover he wakes up with is almost worth the fourteen solid hours of blissful ignorance the wine brought him.
He curls up in the corner of his shower and groans into the afternoon, but once he feels mortal enough to come out, he’s faced once again with the lumpy little book set neatly on the table. It’s inescapable.
Marco has the pity to order himself a pizza, greasy and cheesy and dripping questionably-slippery mushrooms, and while he’s waiting for his disgusting hangover cure, he stares down at the journal and tries to resign himself to his fate.
His world is changed. It’s already too late. There’s no going back now. The only way left to go is forward, and forward is a ninety-degree drop into a world that will no longer try to contain him.
The pie comes, and Marco chokes down slice after thick, radioactive slice, his legs crossed under him on his chair and the book still untouched before him. He’s careful not to get any of his sewer pizza on it, at least.
It’s late afternoon when he finally rests his trembling palm on the cover. No use trying to decide ahead of time how he’ll devour it, whether he’ll savor it or gorge himself on it. He’ll cross that bridge when he comes to it.
Eren musing lazily that he’ll let New Zealand surprise him comes to mind, and Marco suddenly finds himself much less stunned by that thought. The Matrix is already failing.
His hands shake harder when he carefully slips the worn elastic off, and the cover bounces up slightly under the released pressure of all the crap apparently crammed between the pages. Marco swallows, stalls for a drink of water, then finally pulls the front cover open.
‘China, Mongolia, who knows. June 2013.’
‘I am going to have sand-ass for the rest of my life.’
--
To say that Marco has an overactive imagination is an understatement.
Honestly, even knowing the very earthy, frank person Eren seems to be, Marco had kind of expected long pages of hastily-scribbled poems, quiet musings on the philosophy of humanity, recordings of idle thoughts that would subtly catalyze an explosive, irrevocable shift in Marco’s way of thinking. Without meaning to, he had given Eren the literary firepower of the great thinkers he himself idolizes, the ability to wordsmith his way right off the page and into Marco’s brain. Before even opening the thing, Marco had filled the journal to bursting with breathtaking revelations, with clear descriptions of distant lands to fuel Marco’s unprepared imagination, tangible recreations of his incredible journey as distinct and overpowering as Kafka or Vonnegut or Bradbury.
If not enlightened, Marco had expected at least to be informed.
To put it simply, Eren is shit at keeping a diary. The journey had clearly changed him, but no one reading his journal would ever be able to tell why.
Even though it’s nothing at all like he had expected, what is there certainly has its merits. Eren’s sparse commentary nearly leaves Marco in stitches with its dry humor. Every page is overflowing with little scribbles and drawings, rough translations, snippets of loose verses, notes to buy more of one thing or less of another, splatters of dirt and rainwater and what Marco suspects to be blood. Literally anything that could feasibly be stuck to paper has made it between these rough pages. There are pages where Eren did his best to wax poetic about the breathtaking Mongolian sky, and large gaps in time where he apparently did nothing but live.
Surprisingly detailed drawings of mountains, camels, rock formations, drunk Mongolians... Marco can’t help but laugh at the mildly offensive cartoons starring a trio of Norwegian hikers he hooked up with back through China, into Tibet, and up to the border of Nepal, finding himself particularly amused by Eren’s bone-deep fear of the tiny blonde girl with the constant frown.
Once the rush of the ink has faded, though, and once Marco sits back and tries to digest the contents of the journal, he realizes with a slow, sinking feeling that he doesn’t feel overwhelmed. He feels lost.
The passing twilight of Marco’s old life is not the dawning sun of Eren’s travels, bright and clear and comforting, but the falling night of what he had left unsaid. The thoughts between the lines, the gaps in time and space, the haunting quietude of every instance Eren had declined to put his experiences into coherent words, of every time he let his adventure play out before him without the distraction of a pen and paper. For one hundred and thirteen days, Eren existed in the light of an unknown universe, and the days that changed his life were the days that the book slept untouched in the bottom of his bag.
Eren’s journal has lifted the blindfold from Marco’s eyes, but the lights are still off, and he cannot see his new world from within the uncharted heart of darkness Eren’s unvoiced revelations have painted around him.
--
Marco reads the journal twice in one night, curled up at his kitchen table with his cold pizza for company as he searches for the meaning. He stays up late and tries for a third time, but midway through he’s struggling to stay conscious, and eventually he falls asleep on Eren’s lost month in the wild of Mongolia.
When he dreams, he dreams of open skies and Nepalese jails, but his overworked imagination cannot fill in the strung-together days of silence.
--
Work the next day is rough, with the crick in his neck from sleeping on the table, but he powers through and goes right back to the journal the moment he gets home.
And the next day. And the next. And the day after that.
Before Marco realizes it, August has passed him by in a teasing flutter of ticking seconds, but he’s still no closer to figuring out Eren’s cryptic story. The days where he’d written are enjoyable, and they fill Marco’s head with flashes of impossibly blue skies that seem to devour the edges of the earth, but the missing days haunt him for far longer.
It’s the end of September before he reluctantly admits to himself that reading Eren’s journal just isn’t enough to break open his cage.
It’s just a long, sand-filled, bloodstained ‘you had to be there,’ and Marco has to live alone with those blank spaces until Eren can answer his endless burning questions.
--
Marco finds himself more than a little depressed as the rainy season kicks up in early October.
He becomes frustrated by the wanderlust thundering through his veins, by the desire to see something that defies words. All he sees is Seattle, and he is still very much alone in it.
Even though he remembers well Eren’s estimated return date, Marco finds himself waiting at the park every Wednesday in October. He’s getting tired of hot dogs pretty fast, but to be honest, he’s long since grown tired of just about everything. He lingers in the park almost to the end of his lunch hour, waiting under his little umbrella, desperate for Eren to come back and tell him what he saw, what he did, what happened in the darkness of unrecorded history.
Halloween flickers by as uneventfully as nearly every other day in Marco’s life.
--
The first Wednesday in November passes, and Marco’s sure that Eren’s not coming back to Seattle. He must’ve found another wordless nirvana in New Zealand with the sheep. Or maybe he changed his mind and trekked off somewhere else. Or maybe he’s just plain not coming back.
All Marco has is the journal, taunting him with its gaping holes and unwritten mysteries, and he doesn’t know how to get there.
He doesn’t even know how to leave Seattle.
All he knows is how to find the hot dog cart on Wednesdays, and just like everything before it, that once-great adventure withers into nothing more than normal, normal, normal.
--
The third Wednesday in November passes, and Marco’s sure Eren’s dead. Do sheep stampede? Did he try to evade visa laws and end up on the wrong side of a rifle again? Did a fault line crack open under him and pull him into the long dark beneath New Zealand?
Maybe a shark ate him when he was island-hopping.
Maybe all Marco has left of his brush with the fading wilderness is the black sun that rises from Eren’s insufficient scribbles.
The bitter taste of disappointment pulses with a dull, tremulous fear, and Marco has no idea where to go from here.
--
That Friday evening, Marco’s phone lights up with the racket of an unknown number, and his hands are shaking so badly that he almost throws his phone out the window trying to answer the call before it goes to voicemail.
“H-hello?”
“Hey.” Smooth, relaxed, not mangled. Just... very late. Marco breathes a shivering sigh of relief into his palm, squeezing his eyes shut as he holds his phone tighter against his ear. He can’t quite find words yet, but it’s fine, because Eren’s got him.
“So I know it’s not Wednesday, but... park?”