Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Visser.” 

The Hork-Bajir uniforms looked as though they’d been painted with ichor: golden and ethereal and blinding in some parts. It was the colour of perfection, of grace. Everything that Visser One intended to show to Visser Three, whose own Hork-Bajir, Marco knew, wore the shade of human blood.

Marco turned to the Hork-Bajir that had called for him. “Yes?”

“You were expected to join the others ten minutes ago,” she replied. Her eyes gave away nothing. “Visser One will not take your excuses.” 

Marco simply nodded, saying nothing, although there were a few dry comments that came to mind. He noticed one of the human-Controllers in the group watching him; once they made eye contact, the man looked away. 

Marco kept walking, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“There you are,” Visser One greeted with a frown. “What could you possibly have been doing back there?”

Marco looked up into his mother’s eyes.

“I got distracted,” he lied. He let a hint of a sardonic smile show. “My host is an excellent conversation starter.”

She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “If he’s distracting you so much, perhaps we should find you a new host body.” 

“As if she doesn’t distract you,” Marco scoffed, effortlessly changing the subject. “Besides, the kid’s smart. Much as he hates this, he can just … subconsciously think up the best thing for us to do, even before I can. There’s a reason why we’ve kept him around this long.”

Visser One rolled her eyes, and for the rest of the walk they were silent: the only sounds being their footsteps as they walked through the mothership. Followed, of course, by the footsteps of Hork-Bajir and humans, in golden clothes. They echoed and echoed and echoed. 

Finally, they reached Visser Three, and his army of Hork-Bajir in bloodred uniforms. 

<Visser One. Visser Two. You’re late,> he said disdainfully. <You were meant to be here a while ago.>

“You just got here,” Marco pointed out. 

Supposedly, Visser Three had captured the Andalite bandits. Marco had heard as much from rumours that had spread from red to gold, Visser Three’s gloating subjects passing it on, and in less than five minutes after the news was first discovered, Marco had found out. It was a big thing, yes, but it had also made Visser Three late. He couldn’t be talking. 

<As you can see,> boasted Visser Three, <I have captured the Andalite bandits. Thus, the two of you are no longer needed here, and the invasion of Earth shall continue as I have planned.>

Marco looked up at the ragtag group. They reminded him of a little circus. A tiger watched him with golden eyes, trailing his every move; a wolf was next to it, nudging it in an attempt to get its attention. They were probably having a silent conversation amongst themselves, what with the way they both seemed to be staring into nothing and everything. The tiger’s stare nearly unnerved Marco; even with what all he had seen, a look like that could catch someone off guard.

An elephant was also with the group. It stood above the others, glaring at Marco and Visser One and Visser Three. A hawk was perched on its tusk, intensely staring. One of the younger bandits remained in base form. Understandable — that tail blade was good for something.

Five of them. Only five. And they had caused Visser Three so much trouble. Marco allowed himself a chuckle. 

He didn’t allow himself hope. 

Hope. It was a joke by now: hope.

That maybe these bandits could actually stop the war. Free everyone. Free his mother from the slug that had wormed its way into her brain, free himself from his grand act of doing what Visser Two was supposed to do.

As he watched, the tiger took a tentative step back and looked away. Was it scared? It made sense to be. All five of them were about to be killed, after all, and then there would be no chance of anybody being freed.

Marco looked back at Visser Three.

“...if you are going to be in charge of Earth, Visser Three,” Visser One was saying, "you should at least learn something about the planet.”

<And take a human host body, like you two did? No, I think not. Human bodies are weak. Especially yours.> He looked Marco up and down. <A child. I much prefer this Andalite host.>

“Don’t you think it’ll die of old age soon?” Marco replied. “At least I’ve got a young one. He knows more about the world than you think. He knows way more about it than your Andalite host does.”

<I see you’ve taken on its childish speech patterns, too,> said Visser Three. <Talking like a fool. Acting like a fool. You act like you know everything.>

“And you can be talking.”

<Yes. I can.> Visser Three’s tail twitched. Marco didn’t move; he knew better. He simply eyed the thing, then looked back up at Visser Three, unimpressed.

“You cannot take over a planet without knowing it inside out,” Visser One said with a sneer. “Your Andalite body is about as good as your Yeerk body on a planet governed by humans. Because I took a human host, I was able to launch the planet’s invasion that you have now endangered with your criminal incompetence!"

The two of them went on like that for a minute longer; Marco would have participated in the banter, but there was the fact that this topic was a long-going argument between just the two of them. And there was also the fact that Marco, despite what he had the entire Yeerk empire thinking, was not really a Visser.

Or a Controller, for that matter.

The tiger was staring at him. So were all the bandits, actually — at Marco specifically, not Visser One or Visser Three. They were probably confused, maybe even a little frightened, that one of their greatest enemies had the appearance of a teenage boy.

“We’re done here,” Visser One quite suddenly announced. She snapped her fingers, and her golden people followed her out of the room. Marco hurried to catch up.

He knew exactly what she was thinking of doing.

“Don’t get yourself involved,” she said sternly, cutting him off before he could even make a comment on it. 

“Why not? I could get them to trust me.” He said it with a teasing smile. 

“It doesn’t matter if you look like a teenager,” she replied. “Do you realise that? Those Andalites only see you as Visser Two.”

Visser One thought he was a Controller as well. Marco had fooled a lot of people. He had even fooled his mother, the real one. Sometimes he wondered about that.

“If you say so,” he said with a shrug. “Well then. I’ll just be soaking up Kandrona rays if you need me.”

“I won’t be needing you.”

“Good.”

They went their separate ways. It seemed, as he made his way to the pool, that Marco was alone— but he knew better than to believe that. When he reached the pool, Marco leaned down, pretended that a Yeerk was crawling out of his ear, and stood.

He silently watched the pool, as though his Yeerk were actually soaking up rays in there. There was only one other person in the room, a young man with tousled hair: one of Visser Three's. Marco had never seen the guy before. Usually the pool room wasn't this empty, but Marco supposed that most of the soldiers had soaked Kandrona rays before boarding the mothership.

The guy seemed to be studying him for a moment. Then he turned and left.

Marco kneeled down, stayed for just long enough for an imaginary Yeerk to come back up, and stood. 

There was, of course, no Yeerk in his ear. There never was, and there never could be. As long as he had everyone believing he was Visser Two, that wouldn’t matter.

“Done yet?”

Marco jumped. That was Visser One’s voice. He spun around, and there she was. Hey, hadn’t she said she wouldn’t be needing him?

He quickly schooled his expression, but it did nothing to calm his nerves. 

…How long had she been there for? 

“That depends,” he replied. “If I say no, will I get some more time alone?”

“Absolutely not,” she dismissed. Then, “I have a proposal for you.”

He raised a brow. “Yeah?”

“Stay on Earth.”

“What?”

“When the bandits escape,” she said, drawing out each syllable as if talking to a toddler, “you escape with them. Take an escape pod.”

Marco’s breath hitched. “What — why?” 

“Visser Three is incompetent,” she said simply. “And I have my own work to do. Keep tabs on them.”

“Wouldn’t they know my face?”

“Hide it.”

“I still don’t get why you want me to do this,” Marco argued, arms crossed.

“Do you want me to lay it out for you?” she retorted, unimpressed. “I thought your host mind was smart? Surely he’s figured it out by now.”

Marco sighed. “Yes. He has.”

And he really had: he’d understood the assignment the moment she’d first said to stay on Earth.

“I’m assuming you want to use me as a distraction,” he said. “If the spying fails and they notice me, they’ll know who I am and what I can do. But I won’t be doing much of anything, will I? I’m just the distraction. If they’re all worried about Visser Two being on Earth, they won’t be able to see the real threat coming. Is that it?”

“Precisely.” But then there was a pause. “And—“

“And sabotage all of Visser Three’s future plans so he gets kicked off of ‘Invade Earth’ duty and the job goes to you or me instead.”

“…Yes.”

“You’re so predictable,” he said with a chuckle. “But … yeah, I’ll help you.”

“Really.” She looked down at him. “And what’s in it for you, if I may ask?”

“You may not,” Marco said simply, and then he was out of the room.

The escape pods, of course, were programmed to return someone to the place they’d been picked up; for the Andalites, this worked in their favour; for Marco, it did not. 

Luckily, he knew how to reprogram the thing so that he had actual control over it. He had done such a thing before. His father had worked with computers, and even though these ones were much more advanced, they had the same basic tools that his dad had taught him about. 

Now, of course, his father was dead.

Marco had thought, once, that the man was untouchable. That nothing could ever destroy him.

The supposed deaths of him and his mother did. His mother — by then, Visser One — had made him watch it all happen from afar. As his father broke down, drank more, stared off into nothing. And then, as he killed himself.

Marco had been sick for a week after that. Sick with emotion. Sick with emotion that, if shown to anyone, would end in his death. His real death.

As he climbed into the escape pod and toyed around with the system, yanking wires here and there, his father was merely a thought in the back of his mind. He always thought of his father whenever he worked with computers, and he worked with computers a lot nowadays. He had gotten used to it, as wrong as that made him feel.

So he didn’t think too much about it. 

Instead, he thought about the exhilaration of flying. 

It wasn’t quite flying the escape pod, more so controlling where it fell, but exhilarating all the same. He grinned as he did it — he knew there were security cameras somewhere in here, but still it was nice to finally be alone. And flying.

He aimed the pod and let it fall.

Minutes later, it had landed. It was some distance away from the Andalites’ pod, so Marco climbed out and looked around. Once he stepped out, the escape pod turned back around and flew up to the mothership.

And that was that. He took in his surroundings.

Earth. 

He hadn’t been here in so long. He hadn’t thought he would ever step foot on the planet’s soil ever again, and he had half a mind to collapse to the ground and kiss it like they did in movies, but he shook himself free of the vision.

If he was quick, he knew, he might be able to spot the Andalites.

-

He wasn’t quick enough. When he reached the scene two minutes later, there wasn’t an Andalite in sight; Marco exhaled through his nose and kicked the nearest rock. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked around. 

Wow. This place sure was … green. He blinked a few times, taking it all in.

The Andalites had been captured at the bottom of a gravel quarry. Marco hadn’t wanted to climb down, so he only looked at the scene from above. There wasn’t much green in there: only greys. Boring wasn’t quite the word to describe it, but it was the only thing that came to mind that didn’t sound too sappy about the feeling of being on Earth again, so he went with it.

The gravel quarry was boring.

He turned and continued walking.

When he finally reached town, not an Andalite in sight, he leaned against the wall of a corner store and breathed a sigh of relief, staring up at the sky. It was cloudy, and he couldn’t see a thing; a stark contrast from looking up and seeing a black sky littered with stars. The beauty of a starry sky was lost on him — he’d seen it a thousand times — and now, something so mundane as clouds could take his attention and hold it.

Marco didn’t usually put this much thought into something like that. The events of the day were probably messing with his head.

He had a job to do.

Andalites loved grassy areas. Meadows. It was where they fed; it was where they lived. If an Andalite did not have grass, could one really call it an Andalite?

It had been two years since Marco’s supposed death. He’d grown since then — maybe not physically, but in his face, in his eyes, he was different. He was dead to Earth, though, but on the off chance someone might recognise him, it was a good idea to buy a disguise of some sort. 

He walked into a crumbling clothes store and grabbed the first hoodie he found. It was a worn down black one with a red design peeling off the front. Marco squinted at it until he could make out what it was supposed to be. Offspring merch — probably stolen to sell, judging by the quality alone — promoting the album they’d released earlier that year, back in February. Marco hadn’t known they’d released an album. Marco hadn’t gotten to keep up with much of Earth’s pop culture while he was pretending to be Visser Two.

Funny. He’d had a friend, a while ago, who had loved The Offspring.

Marco didn’t have any money on him, so he decided to steal the thing. He put it on, and it was a size too big and had some holes, but it would have to do. He strolled over to the door.

“Hey, kid!” someone shouted from behind him. 

Marco spun around. It was just some guy — an employee at the place, and the only guy there. He was taller than Marco, like how most people were, and looked about four years older, too. 

But the moment they locked eyes, the guy took a step back. He was jittery, all of a sudden. Sweating. Eyes darting nervously around.

“I — I mean, uh, go ahead, sir! Take whatever you want! Just … uh, I…”

Controller.

Wordlessly, Marco turned back around and stepped outside, leaving the guy to stammer to himself.

That guy had been a human-Controller. A somewhat high-ranking one, if he’d recognised Marco’s face. He wondered what a Controller was doing working at one of those places — another example of Visser Three’s incompetence, perhaps. 

That or the store had a pool entrance.

Marco pulled the hood over his head. No one would recognise him now, or at least, no one would recognise him from afar. Keeping his eyes on the pavement, he kept walking. One foot in front of the other. Left, right, left, right.

You’re Visser Two, he reminded himself. You have a job. Don’t get distracted.

Visser One could not have possibly known he would let his thoughts wander so much. Visser One assumed he was a Yeerk. Visser One assumed he would get the job done.

But Visser One was not here right now. Marco, technically, had free reign. If he wanted, he could—

Quite suddenly, he bumped into someone.

He stiffened and backed up, and then looked up into the eyes of who he’d run into. Best case scenario, he thought, it would be a Controller, one who recognised him as Visser Two, and then there wouldn’t have to be any apologies on his end.

But it wasn’t a Controller.

It was Jake. 

Chapter Text

There were these four things that Marco understood.

First and foremost: his mother was not his mother. Something had happened, someone had happened. He didn’t know who, and he didn’t know why, but he understood very clearly that something had happened.

“Marco?”

The second thing he understood was that he couldn’t tell a soul about the first thing.

“Yeah?”

The third thing he understood was that the second thing wouldn’t be a problem, really. Not with what was about to happen next.

“Dude, snap out of it. I’ve been trying to get your attention for the past minute.”

Because the fourth thing he understood was that he was about to die.

“Oh.”

“Are you sure you’re not sick or something?” Jake asked him, peering at his face. Marco stared right back, looking into his eyes and realising that this would be the last time he’d ever get to see them. “You’re really distracted.”

Marco’s quip was already prepared. A lie. The last thing he’d say to Jake would probably be a lie. “Oh, that? I—”

“Yes,” his mother said, smiling at him smugly. Since when had she been there? “You have been distracted. Is something on your mind?”

“You're certainly distracted today,” Visser One scoffed.

Marco stared numbly at her holographic image. It was Sunday morning now, and he’d had to hide out in an old abandoned shed for the night. This morning he was meant to be looking for the Andalites; he was going to start it much earlier today, but then Visser One had decided to call him through the Z-space transponder. 

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Your voice is just so annoying, I couldn’t help it.” 

It wasn’t out of character, so to speak, for him to be saying these things. Over time he’d gotten a reputation for himself, for Visser Two. Just as all the other Vissers had their own reputations. It was like an unspoken code, and Marco could recite it from memory.

Visser One, all the Vissers knew, was too secretive for her own good; Visser Three always wanted to do his own thing (which, usually, was the dumbest possible option); Visser Two had his teenage host’s sense of humour but a genius’s tactical mind; Visser Four … no one quite knew what Visser Four was ever up to. He worked with Visser Three, which was enough for Marco to stop caring.

“I’m serious,” Visser One said to him. “You cannot afford to be distracted by your surroundings. What, is it your host again?”

“I’m not distracted,” Marco informed her. He threw on a winning grin. “Call you back when I’ve captured the Andalites.”

“That is not your goal right now,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, pretending to remember; in truth, he’d never forgotten. “Goal’s to make Visser Three screw up so badly that the invasion gets handed over to me. Right?”

“Preferably myself,” Visser One said with a scowl; this was wishful thinking and they both knew it: Marco would take the invasion for himself regardless if he were really a Controller or not. “But, yes.”

“Cool,” he replied. He began to reach for the transponder to cut the call, but she held a hand up to stop him.

“No, I’m not done with you yet.”

Marco frowned. “What now?”

“Something has happened to you.” She squinted, eyeing him.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re acting differently. You’re acting more like your host, almost, now that you’re back on Earth. I can see it, you know. In the way that you’re talking and moving around. Something has happened to you. Or maybe to him.”

Something had happened, actually. Jake had happened.

Marco hadn’t expected to see Jake, but then he’d been right there. And Marco hadn’t seen him in years, hadn’t expected to see him ever again, and it was clear, just from the small moment, that Jake had changed, too. He was more suspicious of Marco. He glared at him. He didn’t even seem to be questioning the fact that Marco was somehow alive; he just looked kind of mad. Exhausted.

Something about his look had stuck with Marco. They hadn’t exchanged any words, but it had stuck with him.

Distracted him, some could say.

“You’re right,” he admitted to Visser One. “That escape pod landed near the cemetery is what happened. After it was clear that I’d lost the Andalites, my host was begging me to take us there. No, no, he wasn’t begging. He was thinking it, though. He was wanting to go there. So, I did.”

She said nothing, so Marco continued hastily.

“Anyway, I guess something about seeing his own empty grave next to your empty grave, next to his father’s grave with an actual body underneath it kind of stuck with him, you know? He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it all morning.”

A lie, of course. Marco hadn’t gone to the cemetery. That would have been dumb, and when Marco was making decisions, he usually preferred the option that was not dumb.

His father was dead. That was that.

“But don’t you worry,” he amended. “I’ve silenced him for now. I only showed him that so he would stop thinking about what was over there, you know. He’s not saying much of anything anymore.”

She tilted her head, the way she did when she thought he was lying. Or rather, the way that his mother did when shethought he was lying. Visser One had borrowed some of her habits.

“Anyhow,” he said, “I’ve got a plan.”

“You do,” she deadpanned.

“Yeah. I’m going to investigate The Sharing, find out what their next plan is. Or things they’re trying to do. Or things they might be interested in doing.”

“And then?”

“And then I work my magic.” He winked at her. “You know me.”

“Just make sure the Andalites don’t spot you until it’s necessary,” she said with a sigh. But it wasn’t in disapproval of his plan. “You can figure it out from here. I won’t try helping you anymore unless the Council somehow gets on your case.”

“You think they’ll get involved in this?”

“Knowing you?” she asked, raising a brow. “Absolutely. I don’t even know how you gained the status of Visser.”

“Hey, I’m smart,” Marco told her, grinning. “You leave this to me and go work on your other plans.”

She correctly took that as her cue to hang up.

Marco let out a breath.

“You can come out now,” he said.

Nothing happened. 

Marco decided he had better make it just a bit more clear just who he was talking to. He leaned back casually, staring up at the corner of the wall across from him.

“Well?” he prompted.

The fly buzzed out of the darkness. It hovered for a moment, uncertain.

“I don’t have a swatter or anything,” Marco told it, rolling his eyes.

<Visser,> it spat.

“That’s me,” Marco replied. “How can I help you?”

He grabbed the transponder. The Andalites weren’t getting their paws on that. 

But he was suddenly struck with an idea.

“Hey, Andalite,” he said suddenly. “I’ll make you a deal.”

<There is no deal between us.>

There was a moment of silence. Maybe the Andalite was talking to its people. That meant the others were in thought-speak range, which could mean anything from twenty millimetres to two hundred feet. 

<…What is your proposal?> the Andalite asked reluctantly. It must have lost the argument.

“Help me take down Visser Three,” Marco said. And before the Andalite could erupt with the inevitable string of choice words, he continued. “No, wait, this is important. I’ll find out what his plan is, tell you, and you’ll defeat him. Simple as that. How’s that sound?”

<Absolutely not,> the Andalite said, to the surprise of absolutely no one. 

Didn’t matter, though. It had overheard the conversation with Visser One. It knew Marco was planning to steal the invasion. No doubt that had interested it. It would do what it was told, not out of some kind of loyalty or truce, but because it was curious and wanted the answers. It would follow up with Marco’s plan, just in secret, and without letting him know it was doing it.

That was just the way Andalites worked. 

It spat an insult at him — once again, to the surprise of absolutely no one — and escaped in its little fly body. It was careful to stay close to the ceiling, because Marco was too short to reach it up there, and it still probably thought he would hurt it.

Once it had left, Marco glanced around. “Would anyone else like to show themselves?”

There wasn’t a response; he figured, then, that the place really was empty now. And anyway, now that the Andalites knew of this location, it wasn’t exactly safe anymore. Marco knew he couldn’t get far without an Andalite following him around — even though there were only five of them, they had the eyes and speed and ears of every living thing that carried a DNA pattern inside of it; every single organism on the planet.

Marco knew that Visser Three had a human morph. It was only natural for him to acquire one at some point. But when he wasn’t morphing a human out of absolute necessity, he preferred to morph off-planet species. Anything strong and powerful that wasn’t from Earth. Perhaps as a declaration that Earth was inferior. Or maybe just out of his incredible ability called “being incredibly subtle, always.”

Once Marco was sure he was alone, he left the old shed. He began walking towards town; he’d lied to Visser One about many things, but not about what his general plan was. He needed to find The Sharing. 

He saw a falcon of some kind, heading in his general direction as he went. After a moment, it quickly flew far ahead and out of sight, but Marco probably wasn’t out of its sight.

There were two things he could do from here.

One, he could find out what Visser Three’s next plan was, and sabotage it. This wasn’t a hard job, but that didn’t make it easy by any means. He would have to make sure it went so terribly wrong that the Council of Thirteen was brought into it, and that would be after he found out what the plan was and where and why, and how the heck he was supposed to make it all go wrong.

Or two, he could stage Visser Three’s next plan. This was by far the riskiest, but if Marco could manage to pull it off, it just might work. He’d come up with a plan that the Yeerks might realistically try to pull off. He’d get everybody in on it, disguising himself as someone who was not Visser Two, and thus be able to operate this plan. It would give him full control over the whole thing. And when he made sure it all went wrong, the blame would fall on Visser Three.

There were a lot of difficulties with that one, too. Oh, it would go excellently if it worked. But that was a big “if.” 

Marco’s eyes suddenly caught on something. He stopped in his tracks, heart pounding in his ears.

Jake. Again.

Jake didn’t notice him. Jake was in an alleyway, actually, and it looked like he might have been hiding. He was wearing this weird skintight outfit, and now that Marco saw it, he realised that Jake had actually been wearing the same thing last night. He wondered what Jake had been doing. What he was doing now, actually.

But it didn’t matter and he didn’t care. So he ignored him and kept on walking.

Or, well, he would like to say that he ignored him and kept on walking. In truth, that’s not what happened at all. 

Marco knew Jake had recognised him last night. He also knew that some very bad things would happen to Jake if he told anyone else about seeing him.

Marco had better make sure Jake didn’t tell anyone. 

That was the excuse he told himself as he walked in Jake’s direction. He was going to warn him.

He was not walking up to Jake because he hadn’t seen him in two years, and they’d been incredibly close friends once, and he’d forgotten how magnetic Jake could be. And it was not because all those memories from his life before his death were suddenly coming back. And it was not because Jake had held such a strong place in Marco’s heart and mind and life that was suddenly being reawakened after seeing him again. And it was not because of this one specific memory he had of the two of them, after Marco had discovered his mother’s secret, of Marco looking at Jake and realising he would have to—

Well.

Anyway.

Even if he was walking up to Jake because of any of that, he wasn’t about to let it get to his head. He looked into the alleyway; Jake hadn’t noticed him. 

“Jake?” he called out, softly. The name felt foreign on his tongue. Wrong. Like he was taking something that wasn’t his.

And he’d said it softly. 

As Visser Two, he’d never been soft. That felt wrong, too. Marco felt like he was doing something wrong.

Jake spun around to meet his eyes. He looked … scared? Worried? He took a step back, eyes narrowed, but Marco reached out and grabbed his arm before he could run. 

On instinct, more than anything.

“Hey,” Marco said quietly, cracking a smile. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

That didn’t seem to be what Jake had expected. Marco saw his eyes darken, saw him thinking something through, saw him make a decision.

“Marco,” he said in an unreadable tone.

Marco had no idea why he was so nervous. Yes, maybe this was his first time on Earth in two years. And yes, maybe this was the friend he’d known forever, the friend he’d made a promise to, all those years ago. And maybe … maybe it was a bit strange, seeing him again, and maybe Marco didn’t quite know how to act around him anymore.

So much had changed since he’d become Visser Two. And he knew he couldn’t afford to be here with Jake right now. Of all people. 

Marco had gotten over Jake a while ago. He’d understood that he would never see him again. He could only imagine that Jake had done the same for him. And yet, here they were.

“Look,” Marco began, biting the bullet. “I know I’m supposed to be dead.”

“Yeah, you are.”

Jake pried Marco’s fingers off his arm. It wasn’t that hard for him to do; he was strong and Marco wasn’t trying. Marco shoved his hands in his pockets, suddenly not knowing what to do with them anymore.

“I didn’t mean — well, I wasn’t expecting to see you last night, alright?” Marco said. “And you’re wondering what I’m doing here. But you have to promise me something, okay?”

Jake’s suspicion nearly looked like anger for a moment. “Yeah? What’s that?” 

Marco grabbed Jake’s collar and pulled him in so that they were talking eye-to-eye.

He used to do that all the time when they were younger. 

“It’s that you don’t tell anyone about me.”

Jake immediately shoved him back, and the disgusted look that was on his face for just a split second caught Marco off guard. 

“Why shouldn’t I?” Jake’s tone was almost threatening.

“You’ll regret it,” Marco said simply.

He didn’t wait to see Jake’s reaction before walking away.

Nice one, he applauded himself. Nice one. Very good job, Marco. That'll certainly have convinced him.

Something had felt off about that whole thing. Maybe it was in the way Jake had looked at him: disgust, anger, exhaustion. It was unlike him, or maybe Marco was just forgetting, or maybe—

Whatever. He couldn't care less. Couldn't! It was hardly what his priorities should have been. He continued on his way and tried to make a joke of it all.

Nice one, Marco.