pushbackthedarkness | (no subject)

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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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."