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It's the sort of thing Marcus figures he should have seen coming.

He hasn't seen Sam in a while, a little over a week, and that's Marcus's fault. He's been keeping a bit of a distance since their last conversation, the one where Sam had asked him if he's sleeping with anyone else, if maybe there's something more than just a physical relationship and a friendship between them. Predictably, Marcus hadn't reacted well. It's not that he doesn't care for Sam, but that itself is the problem and so he'd made himself absent just to give them both a little time to figure out what it is that's going on in their heads.

Not that Marcus needed the time. He knows. The way he is, the life he's had, the job he intends on continuing, none of that makes him suitable to carry on a relationship with someone. If someone wants that, wants commitment, a person to come home to at the end of every day, someone they can rely on and expect to be there, he's not the man for it. It wouldn't be fair for anyone involved to try and put Marcus in that situation and he thinks they'd both known it. That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to realize Sam is gone.

It's Nate he's more worried about, though. Marcus has been through plenty of loss in his life, it's why he's more or less kept himself closed off from people since he was just a child, but Sam is Nate's brother. The brother he got back after thinking him to be dead. That's something he can't even begin to imagine.

So he buys a few bottles of nice beer -- the sort Sam had bought the last time he'd come over, he realizes, but he banishes that from his mind -- and he heads over to Nate's after sending him a text to make sure he's there. He doesn't say why he's coming, just that he is, and he knocks softly on the door of Nate's apartment, the beer in one hand.

They can drink. Commiserate. Keep each other company. Marcus is as bad at comfort as he is most other personal interactions that don't revolve around an exorcism, but that doesn't mean he's not going to try.

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At first he'd just assumed Sam was being as useless with his phone as Chloe always is with hers. He'd left it alone, trusting that Sam would call him back when he could. But after four attempts and almost a full day, it had become clear that something else was going on. If they were back home he might have given Sam a few more days before he really worried, but in this city it's easy enough to check in on him, and there are oddly more things that could go wrong. So he checks his apartment, and when he finds the place empty but for Sam's gun lying on the table, he feels something in his chest sink.

He's heard of this happening, but it's never happened to him. Nate's made a life of making sure he only lets a small handful of people close to him for this very reason. He'll always deny it if asked, but his mother had died and his father had left, and Nate had closed himself off in turn. Sully had been the first person to ever crack through, and Nate knows he'd helped, forced Nate to open up more little by little, but he's still always kept himself carefully guarded. It had been easier that way, particularly in his line of work.

Sitting in his own apartment, Sam's gun in his hand, Nate can remember what this felt like, why he'd tried so hard never to relive it. He'd lost Sam once before and he can't stop the way that day replays over and over in his mind now, Sam's hand slipping out of his as he fell. Ten years he'd thought his brother was dead until this city had given him back, and now he's gone again.

He doesn't hear the knock at the door at first. He can hear Rafe instead, the voice impossibly clear despite the years since Nate really heard it. We gotta move, he's gone. Nate shakes his head, his hands tighter on the gun. Nate, your brother is dead.

The knock comes louder and this time is breaks through. Nate startles, eyes flicking to the door. He takes a breath, reminds himself where he is. With a sudden start he remembers that Marcus had texted him, and maybe he could do with the company after all. He rubs one hand over his face and goes to the door, the gun still held loosely in his other hand. He's trying to decide if it's just coincidence that brought Marcus here or whether even ex-priests have some kind of internal crisis radar, but then he remembers what Marcus had told him about him and his brother. Sam. He's here because Sam isn't.

"Hey, uh," he starts, and he's stupidly proud of the way he keeps his voice level, steady. "Come in."

Edited 2017-10-05 00:10 (UTC)

"Now that's not quite what I wanted to see on the other side of this door," Marcus says, his gaze drawn down toward the gun in Nate's hand. It isn't a threat and he isn't afraid -- not for himself, anyway, he's had more than a few guns pointed in his direction -- but it's not a good sight all the same. Not given the loss Nate has just suffered and while the thought of Sam being gone might cause Marcus a fair bit of pain, but it's not comparable to what Nate's feeling, not in the slightest.

Nate's not the sort to do anything stupid to himself, Marcus is sure of that. He's also not the sort to hurt a friend just because he's hurting, but as he steps into the apartment and hefts the beer, he still finds himself hoping Nate will put the gun down without needing to be encouraged to do so.

It might be Sam's, he realizes a little belatedly, and then feels like an arse for having said anything at all.

"Come on, Nate," he says, his voice a little gentler than before. "Let's sit down. Have a drink." He doesn't know whether or not to suggest they talk, because it's not in Marcus's nature to share his pain when something is bothering him and Nate has never struck him as the sort either. It might do them both some good to be able to talk about it, but he wouldn't know where to start and he wouldn't know what to say. How is he supposed to talk to the brother of the man he was sleeping with? Someone who'd taken the time to show him he didn't have to always be alone, even if Marcus was unable to reach out and take what was being offered.

He's not sure if he regrets that. He would have hurt Sam ultimately and he knows it, but if Sam was always going to disappear, perhaps that wouldn't have mattered. Maybe he should have just given it a shot.

As soon as Marcus says it, Nate blinks and looks down at the gun in his hand. He hadn't meant to answer the door with it, well aware now of what kind of impression that would leave. He's just lucky it was Marcus he thinks, and not somebody else. Even knowing that, he has trouble parting with it. It's very quickly become the only thing he has left of Sam.

"I found it," he says by way of explanation, stepping aside to let Marcus into the apartment. "On his kitchen table." It had been one of the only things left. His wardrobe was empty, the bed neatly made. For all intents and purposes it looked as though no one had ever lived there. Nate doesn't want to think about the implications of that, so he tries not to think about it at all.

At Marcus's prompting, Nate moves back towards the couch and sits down, grateful at least that Marcus thought to bring beer. "Every time I think I can't hate this city more," he mutters, reaching for one of the beers without prompting. He opens it on the side of the coffee table, tossing the cap onto the table and leaning his head back against the couch.

Helping himself to one of the bottles, he sinks down on the couch beside Nate and takes a sip before he lets himself answer. It's an odd sort of situation to be in, one where he had some kind of relationship with the man and yet couldn't claim any sort of commitment to him, somehow rendering him with less to mourn than others, at least in his own mind. Some part of him senses he's not being fair to himself with that attitude, that he deserves to feel grief for the loss, too, but he still somehow feels as if he doesn't deserve it.

He hadn't wanted to be in a relationship with Sam, after all. He had been the one to prevent that from happening. It had never been a fight exactly, he hadn't considered their conversation something they needed to make up after, but he'd kept a distance from then on and he feels like he ought to say something about that. Explain it. Nate probably has no idea, but Marcus still feels as if it's owed somewhere, to someone, and if he can't explain it to Sam, then Nate should be the one to hear it.

But that isn't fair either. This isn't Nate's issue to deal with and he's lost his brother. That's infinitely more difficult than what Marcus is dealing with.

"I'm sorry, Nate," he says finally. "I know how much he means to you."

Nate sets Sam's gun down on the table in front of them, forcing himself to let go of it and settle for staring at it, instead. His eyes already know every inch of the thing. He can remember the day Sam called him to say he'd gone and bought a handgun legally, the amusement clear in his voice.

"It's fine," Nate says, the lie coming automatically to his lips. He doesn't think about it before he says it and he knows as soon as the words are out that Marcus won't believe them, but that doesn't matter. "I should probably be used to this by now."

It's not the first time he's lost Sam. It's not even the second, and Nate reasons it should be easier this way, just having Sam disappear instead of watching him die again. He'd watched him get shot and fall off a building, his hand slipping from Nate's own, and then Darrow had made him watch him get shot in an alley too. He doesn't know why losing him this way is just as hard. Maybe because there's no closure, maybe because Sam is just gone and Nate didn't even get to try and stop it.

He takes a long pull of his beer, his fingers loose around the bottle neck before he rolls his head to the side to peer at Marcus. He doesn't know how much Sam meant to Marcus, exactly, but he can see enough in the lines of his expression and the set of his shoulders to know this isn't easy on him, either.

"Who ever gets used to loss?" Marcus asks in return. It isn't fine, despite what Nate says, but he hadn't truly expected any other response. If their situations had been reversed, if in some strange world out there his parents had enjoyed having a child enough to have a second and he'd just lost his brother, he knows he would be insisting the same. It's fine, he'll survive, it'll be okay in the end.

It's the same thing everyone always says, he assumes. And it's complete bullshit, but that doesn't mean people aren't entitled to it. How they deal with it is completely up to them and he's sure there are those who would say it isn't healthy for Nate to be insisting he's fine when he's clearly anything but, but Marcus isn't going to be the right person to force him into saying things he might not want to say.

"I hadn't talked to him much in the past few weeks," he says after a moment, because he can sense Nate looking at him. Instead of looking back, he continues to look at his beer, at his hands, his scarred knuckles, the little circular tattoo on the back of his wrist. "My fault, really. I was avoiding him."

Maybe no one gets used to loss, but Nate thinks that if ever it was possible to, he must be getting close. He's lost his whole family, lost friends, lost his wife since coming here, and he's also lost more treasure than should be normal for a guy who makes a living out of it. This is just another in the string of losses that is apparently Nate's life, but he doesn't say as much. Everyone's lost people and Nate doesn't think he's anything different in that regard.

Marcus doesn't look at him, staring fixedly at his hands, and Nate leans back and takes another sip of his beer, waiting for him to speak. There's something else there, something else he thinks Marcus wants to say, but he's not about to push. Nate doesn't have the energy for it, and it's not his place anyway. Whatever he and Sam had going on, Nate only knows the barest details, and in all honesty he hadn't wanted to know much more.

Maybe that's unfair, maybe he should have asked more questions, taken more of an interest. It does come as a surprise that he'd been avoiding Sam, because Nate hadn't thought there was any kind of problem between them. "He stop coming to confession?" he jokes, though even that comes out on a huff of a laugh that's missing any real humour.

Marcus gives a soft laugh as well, though as with Nate's, it's devoid of humour. None of this feels funny, but it does feel almost as if it's not real. Not all that long ago he was a priest, a celebrated exorcist and now he's here, excommunicated, probably wanted by the Church, and he's considering what to say to the man whose brother he'd been dating.

That's a term he had never imagined applying to his life in any way.

"He asked me in the most awkward manner possible what I thought about the two of us... not seeing anyone else." Even saying it here feels odd on his tongue, the words unfamiliar and unlike anything else he's ever known. That was never going to be his life, he'd known that from a much younger age than he should have, but he'd never imagined anyone would come into his life that might question that.

He'd also never imagined he would be anything but a priest.

"That's not a question I expected," he says. "I didn't react well, to put it mildly."

"Oh," Nate says, and then stops. He doesn't know what he's supposed to say from there. It surprises him that Sam had made an effort to have that kind of conversation at all. Sam was always the guy who didn't want to ever settle down, who always wanted to keep moving from one score to the next. He hadn't liked that Nate took up with Sully in the first place, that he'd tried to have any kind of attachments beyond Sam himself.

It takes him a minute to digest the information that Sam had wanted any kind of relationship with anyone, let alone with an ex-priest.

"Really?" he asks after a moment, raising an eyebrow. "How did you react?" He doesn't know whether he wants to hear the full details, but maybe it'll distract him from what's happening in his own head right now. That's probably unfair, making Marcus relive something he probably doesn't want to think about in order to protect Nate's own state of mind, but he never said he wasn't selfish.

"How the hell do you think I reacted, Nathan?" he asks without thinking, without recalling that very few other people call him anything but Nate. It registers somewhere that Sam had called him Nathan, too, that he had been one of the few, but it's the name Marcus has used more often than not and he doesn't consider that it might be hard for Nate to hear.

"I panicked, said nothing of any particular consequence, which means I didn't give him any answer one way or another, then I made an excuse and left," he says. "And hadn't seen him since."

And now he never will. It's his own fault, he can hardly be upset about it when he was the one keeping his distance, when he had been the one worried that Sam was getting too close. There are so many good reasons for Marcus not to get involved with someone and he doesn't regret keeping himself apart from others, but at the same time, it hurts to know that's the last conversation he and Sam will have ever had.

There's a beat where Nate has to stop, where he can't respond because his brain stops and stutters on Marcus's first sentence. It's more than the clear frustration in Marcus's voice, though Nate can hear that, too. But he calls him Nathan, and Nate's still not used to hearing that from anybody's else's mouth. Nobody but Sam has ever called him Nathan. Not anybody in this city, not Chloe, not Elena, not even Sully. He knows that Marcus himself has said it once or twice, but it's still not common enough that he's used to it, and his mind immediately goes to Sam before he can stop it.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't explain the sudden stall and hiccup in response, but when he eventually manages to clear the knot in his throat and speak, he finds he still doesn't know what he's supposed to say. He doesn't know how to comfort Marcus because anything he could say would sound hollow to his own ears.

"If it helps any," Nate says slowly after a moment, shaking his head, "he wouldn't have held it against you." Sam didn't hold a lot of grudges, save for Rafe. Nate's got his own grudges to hold there, but Sam's not the kind of guy to shut off just because things didn't go the way he wanted them to. Things might have been a little awkward for a time, sure, but he knows Sam certainly wouldn't have wished Marcus anything ill-will or anything.

From what he knows of Marcus, it doesn't necessarily surprise him that that was the reaction, and he wonders if it had surprised Sam. He hadn't known things were that serious between the two of them, and even now it's still a little strange for him to wrap his head around it.

It helps and it doesn't. There are times when Marcus feels as if he's too easily forgiven, as if he ought to have to pay more for the choices he's made or the way he can be with people, but at the same time he can't help but crave it still. Perhaps it's the Catholic in him, the part that will never be beyond his guilt and the need to have someone tell him he's forgiven.

"I could have been kinder," he answers. "I've not been very good at kindness in the past, but I could have tried harder with Sam. I... cared about him a great deal. More than he knew, given my behaviour."

And that's the end of it. He doesn't have a chance to tell Sam, doesn't have a chance to apologize, doesn't have a chance to make any of it better. And maybe that's why he's telling Nate. It won't change a thing, but maybe some day down the line if Nate ever goes home and sees Sam again he'll be able to tell him. Remind him that Marcus might not have been very good at working out how to have a genuine relationship, but that he had cared.

Nate never saw the two of the together, so he doesn't know how kind or not Marcus was. The guy's not an asshole, so he doesn't think he would ever have been bad to Sam. Besides, it's not like Sam wasn't capable of being kind of an asshole himself. Nate loves his brother and he'd die for him without hesitation, but he also knows exactly what kind of man he is. What kind of men they both are.

"Trust me, I'm sure you were nicer to him than most other people in our lives," he says, shaking his head. Nate had had Sully to watch his back but Sam never really had even that. They've both spent their entire lives in and out of prison, and Sam was used to life kicking him when he was down. He'd always gotten back up with a grin, but Nate's willing to bet that any small kindness Marcus might have given him wouldn't have gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

He takes a long sip of his beer, stalling for time more than anything else. He doesn't know how to have this conversation for several reasons. He's never been good at talking about this kind of thing - about a lot of things, really - and it's somehow more awkward with Marcus. Maybe it's because they're both just as unused to this. Whatever had happened, he thinks, Sam is gone and there's nothing either of them can do to bring him back. There's no use Marcus being upset about what he did or didn't do while he was here.

"He would've known you cared," he offers, giving Marcus a look that almost begs him to leave it at that. He doesn't want to talk about Sam's feelings any more than he wants to talk about his own. Partly, he realises, because Sam had never told him them. It's odd to think, that he's hearing this all from Marcus instead of his own brother. "Sam was good at that shit. Reading other people."

"Thank you," he says after a moment, because it might not change the fact that he could have been kinder, that he could have tried to find a way to be more the man Sam wanted him to be, but it does mean something, coming from Nate. There isn't a single person who knew Sam better than he does and so Marcus can trust his perceptions of his brother to be the best possible ones he has access to.

Taking a sip of his beer, he rolls the bottle gently back and forth between his palms for a moment, looking down at his knees. Sometimes it's hard to be like this, to sit here and just be quiet, to calm the thoughts that are constantly raging through his head, but it's a little easier with Nate.

"I'm sorry you've lost him again," he says finally and when he glances over at Nate, he manages a thin smile, though it's genuine and he means what he says. "I know how important you two were to each other. I sometimes think if I'd had a brother like you, I might've come out of the boys' home a little more intact."

He doesn't shrug the sentiment off this time, but that doesn't mean he knows how to respond properly, either. Instead, he nods and stares at the bottle in his hands, his mind going unbidden to how many times he sat exactly like this with Sam, lounging around on his couch and knocking back beers.

It seems unfair, somehow, to lose the same man twice, but Nate's used to things not being fair. Nothing ever is, so why should this be any different? It's a fact he accepted a long time ago when he was still a kid. "Thanks," he says, because he doesn't really know what else you're supposed to say when somebody offers you that kind of commiseration. "Trust me, you can do better than a brother like me though."

He's been a shitty brother, everything else aside. He'd left Sam when he fell the first time, when he should have stayed. He'd made the biggest mistake of his life in assuming Sam was dead and following Rafe away from that prison. He doesn't mention that though, because it'll only open up the kind of pity party that Nate's already tired of having. Instead, he flashes Marcus a quick grin, weak though it is. "Don't think they let priests have thieves for brothers, do they?"

"Don't think anyone really has a say in who ends up finding each other, do they?" Marcus asks in return. The boys' home had been hard on him, harder than he wants to admit even to himself most of the time. He had been relentlessly bullied, tortured and beaten up, and then he'd beaten himself up, found little ways to deal with the anger and the hurt and the feeling of being utterly lost in the cut of a sharp edge on his skin.

He'd only done it a few times, never hard enough to really cut, never enough to leave scars, but he remembers even now. Just one protective friend might have changed that.

"You need to not sell yourself so short," he says. "Sam never did. Never held a grudge. He admired you, I could see it in the way he spoke of you to me."

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