Work Text
“Come on idiot, let’s go shopping.”Mark nearly spilled the IKEA bag of clothes and shoes onto the curb of his apartment building. “What the fuck was that?”Oliver frowned from the driver’s seat of Mark’s car. “Isn’t that the line? The one you said to me at the airport?”“Not even close. And slow down.” He heaved the bag onto the floor behind the passenger seat. “We have to get all this stuff into a storage unit, and then we can go shopping.”Oliver was stronger than Mark, and packing a carload of Mark’s former roommate’s belongings took almost no time. It didn’t stop Oliver from complaining as he helped Mark carry a dresser. “I still don’t see why we’re the ones stuck cleaning up your roommate’s mess.”“Be nice.” Mark was waddling backward awkwardly. “It’s not like Akshay skipped town for fun. His dad had a stroke. Besides —” he rested the dresser on his thigh and adjusted his grip — “he’s doing us a favor and giving you his bed.”“Kinda seems like we’re the ones doing him a favor there.” Oliver barely sounded out of breath, which was not fair. “Mattresses and bed frames take up a lot of room in storage units. Without the bed, he can get one of those tiny closet-sized units. We’re saving him money.”“Just shut up and lift,” he panted.Even leaving the bed behind in Akshay’s old room — now Oliver’s — it took three carloads to load all of Akshay’s things into a storage unit. Then they had to detour to a home goods store, where Oliver took forever picking out pillows and sheets because “this is the first time I’ve had my own room in six years, Byron, I’m treating myself”.Mark’s entire body hurt, and he wished Oliver had picked another day for his shopping spree. But he couldn’t muster up anything stronger than fond exasperation. Oliver was staying in Boston. He was staying with Mark. And they were finally going to have a nice, normal friendship and be nice, normal roommates. Insofar as anything between them was going to be normal, when they’d both done hard time in atypical jail.When Mark thought about how awful he’d been at Yale, he wanted the earth to swallow him whole. At least Oliver had an excuse for being flaky and obnoxious. He’d spent the last month being manipulated by an empath and confronting the trauma he’d been avoiding. Mark had a year’s head start on his recovery, and a life that kept him grounded. He was supposed to have been the stable one that Oliver could lean on, not get so triggered that he pushed Oliver away.He could do better. He would do better. He had a new therapist, one who knew about atypicals. He had an empty room in his apartment for Oliver, which meant his living room was no longer someone’s bedroom. Oliver could close his door and get some space without having to leave the apartment, and Mark could have friends over again. And he knew exactly what to do for his next get-together.“So you still haven’t seen Mean Girls,” he said as they left the store.“Is that a meme, or…”“A movie, come on, you were just quoting it earlier. Or trying to.”“You know I haven’t seen it. I’ve spent the last two weeks looking for a job and getting used to a brain that isn’t mind-controlled. When would I have had time to watch any movies?”“Yeah, we’re gonna fix that.” Mark took out his phone.A few seconds later, Oliver’s phone buzzed. “Byron? Why did I just get added to a chat called ‘On Black Friday We Wear Pink’?”The ride home was accompanied by buzzes from their phones, and indignant noises from Oliver as Mark glanced at his phone at red lights.Mags: What is this
Chloe: This had better not be an invitation to go shopping, you know how I feel about Black Friday sales
Caleb: Is this a Mean Girls thing
Mark: This is Oliver on Mark’s phone, because distracted driving kills. He thinks it’s scandalous that I haven’t seen a comedy aimed at fifteen year olds. He wants to invite people over in Black Friday to watch me experience it for the first time, because THAT’S normal. And he wants people to wear pink?
Mark: Never mind, he says the pink is optional. Thank god. But there WILL be cheese fries.“Give me that.” Mark snatched the phone out of Oliver’s hand.“Hey!” Chloe: Oh my god
Caleb: This is going to be a historic event and I HAVE to see it
Chloe: I’ll be in Chicago visiting Frank but I expect live updates
Mags: Sam is going to be SO MAD that she missed this, she loves watching people watch things for the first time
Caleb: Can Adam and I bring the gang? None of them are flying home for Thanksgiving this year
Mark: Why not, the more the merrier
Mark: Bring your mom’s chocolate pecan pie if you have leftovers 🤤🤤🤤“Would you stop that!” Oliver snatched the phone back. “If you want to risk your life texting and driving, do it when I’m not in the car.”“Fine, whatever, I was done anyway.” Mark put both hands back on the wheel. There was a ghost of warmth on the back of his hand, where Oliver’s fingers had brushed against him.He had to shoot a wedding on Thanksgiving, but Black Friday found him in the kitchen, stirring a pot of cheese sauce on the stove, in between heating trays of french fries and checking on the batch of pink lemonade cupcakes cooling next to the window. “Are your movie nights always this elaborate?” Oliver asked as he leaned against the counter, next to a box of candy canes and a large bag of pink M&Ms.“Sometimes.” Mark decided the cupcakes were cool enough and pulled a bowl of pink frosting out of the refrigerator. “Usually we just order pizza and make hot cocoa.”“And you went all out today because…”“Just felt like it.” If he told Oliver he’d gone online and ordered pink M&Ms immediately after their shopping trip, Oliver would just be weird about it.The cupcakes turned out to be too warm for frosting, and a lot of it melted and slid off by the time everyone arrived. Luckily, none of the kids seemed to mind. Caleb’s mother had sent him with an entire chocolate pecan pie, and between Sadie’s leftover turkey, Ben’s salad, and Mags’s cornbread, they had something approaching a balanced meal to go with the cheese fries and cupcakes. “Densmore,” Oliver said dryly as he cut himself an enormous slice of pie. “Lock anyone up lately?”“Trap anyone in a time loop lately?” she shot back. Oliver froze for a moment, and Mark stopped breathing until Oliver huffed a laugh and handed her the knife.“How do you know about that?” Adam said over his shoulder, from the foot of the couch where he and Caleb were building a nest of pillows and snacks.“A bunch of us got debriefed at the AM a few weeks ago,” Frankie said as he poured cheese sauce over a slice of cornbread.“You were busy making up your Southern Gothic midterm,” Caleb added, then frowned at Adam. “Here, hold still, you’ve got something on your nose.”Ben and Frankie groaned theatrically and made gagging noises as Caleb tenderly wiped a smear of frosting off Adam’s nose and kissed him. Caleb extended a middle finger toward them without breaking the kiss, and Sadie smacked the back of his head, making both Caleb and Adam flinch.“Ow!”“What the fuck, Sadie?”“Serves you two right for being insufferably mushy,” Oliver said cheerfully, settling down on the couch with his pie next to Mark.For someone who claimed to be exhausted by anyone under thirty, Oliver was surprisingly comfortable. He joined the kids’ heckling of Aaron Samuels and the Plastics, and nitpicked the math with Frankie, and even though he snarked at Caleb and Adam’s snuggling just as much as Sadie, Mark caught him watching them, glowing with affection. Mark’s phone kept buzzing as Mags liveblogged Oliver’s reactions in the group chat, and Mark eventually muted it. It was more fun just to watch Oliver roll his eyes, or make faces, or be surprised into laughing — really laughing, not just a smirk or a hard exhale through his nose — when Regina George was flattened by a bus. It was a good thing he’d already seen Mean Girls a few times, because he spent more time paying attention to Oliver than the movie.“Wait, go back to that mathlete scene,” Oliver said suddenly, snatching the remote out of his hand to rewind the movie. He stared at the math equations onscreen for several seconds before shaking his head. “Nope, that’s wrong. The limit absolutely does exist, and it’s zero.”“No, I think it still works,” Ben said. “Look, if you use a Taylor expansion…”Mark shared a stifled grin with Mags as Frankie, Ben, and Oliver continued speaking in mathematical tongues. Sadie didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t filming them nerding out over math. Mark couldn’t see Caleb or Adam’s faces from where he was sitting, but he could feel their amusement and affection bubbling in his stomach, joining the warmth blooming in his chest and the sharper bite of the math nerds’ pride and determination as he watched Oliver argue.It was good to see him so comfortable with Mark’s friends — and more importantly, to see Mark’s friends so comfortable with him. Tolerating each other briefly to destroy a magic book was well and good, but actual friendship needed more than a shared goal and a few stressful days in Yale. Oliver was going to be around for a while (assuming he didn’t get squirrelly and leave again), and he desperately needed more friends. Why not start with people Mark liked and trusted?Besides, for all of Oliver’s grumbling about Caleb and the gang being half his age, he was in his element when he was arguing with the “preschoolers”. It was nice to see a different side of Oliver, even if Mark didn’t understand what he was talking about. His pride and determination sparked pleasantly in Mark’s arms and hands, settling next to the borrowed alchemy fizzing in his fingertips. He hadn’t realized how much Oliver talked with his hands when he was worked up, until he had to rescue the remains of Oliver’s pie from being flung into Caleb’s lap during the discussion.His phone buzzed, and he jumped. Mags had messaged him privately. You are SO lucky the kids are too distracted to notice you droolingMark coughed. I’m not drooling! I’m just having fun watching him argue with someone that isn’t me for a changeSure buddy. THAT’S why you’ve been all 😍 for the last hour“I’m going to do something with that pot of cheese sauce,” he announced loudly, pushing past Oliver and Sadie.By the time his face stopped burning, the pot was sparkling clean, and Oliver had moved on to declaring Cady Heron “infinitely relatable”. “Who among us hasn’t been an isolated kid, surrounded by social rules that make no sense, who ended up hiding in a STEM field?” he said.“Hey, I hid in books, not math class,” Adam said.“Football for me,” Caleb added.“Stop the presses, we have a rare moment of nerd-jock solidarity,” Oliver said dryly.Drooling. Fucking ridiculous. There was nothing romantic or sexual about being happy for a friend. Not to mention, Oliver had almost died. Mark was allowed to be relieved that he was happy and safe on Mark’s couch again.But he was going to get that video from Sadie and tease Oliver about it later.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Oliver: You still have my notes. When can I get them back?
Adam: Who is this
Adam: Is this Oliver
Oliver: Obviously, do you have another alchemist’s notes in your dorm room?
Adam: How did you get my number
Oliver: Your boyfriend gave it to me. Now if we’re done with the overtures, my notes?
Adam: Caitlin and I are going to Boston the weekend after next. I’ll bring them with meThe sky was uncomfortably low and dark when Mark dropped Oliver off at Caleb’s apartment on his way to a gig. “Oh hey,” Franklin said when he answered the door. “Ready to admit I was right?”“Nice try. I was memorizing log tables while you were still counting on your fingers.” He followed Franklin into the apartment, where someone was lying face-down on the couch, with Caleb sitting near their head. “What the hell?”“It’s fine,” Caleb said. “Caitlin sent a draft of her senior essay to her advisor.”“And that’s… bad?”“It’s awful,” she groaned.“It’s not awful,” Franklin said gently, perching on the arm of the couch. “I wouldn’t have let you send it if it was awful, remember?”“It’s the worst paper I’ve ever written, and I hate it, and I spent six months writing it for nothing, and I should just drop out and join the circus —”“Breathe, kiddo,” Oliver said. “That’s the performance anxiety lying to you. Give it a few hours and you’ll feel better.” He met Caleb’s eyes. “Where’s your boyfriend? I need to get my notes and go home.” Mark’s apartment was an easy four miles from Caleb’s place, but he really didn’t want to walk in the rain while carrying papers with sentimental value.Caleb nodded to one of the closed doors. Adam opened it before Oliver could knock, draped in a BU sweatshirt several sizes too big. “Morning,” he said around a jaw-cracking yawn. “Give me a second, it’s… somewhere in here.”Adam shuffled away. Clothes and papers rustled for a minute as Caleb, Franklin, and Caitlin kept talking quietly. Oliver heard “need a distraction” and “stupidest movie of whatever year it was” before Adam came back, holding a Yale tote bag stuffed with papers. “Thanks Arnold, good to see you all, enjoy your weekend, stop panicking about papers you’ve already submitted, now I have to —”A roll of thunder cut him off, and a spattering of rain hit the window.“Well, fuck,” he sighed.“Do you want to borrow an umbrella?” Franklin asked as he turned on the TV. “The T’s two blocks away.”“Stop lending out our shit. You don’t live here yet,” Sadie called from another room. “But yeah, you can borrow one.”“No thank you,” Oliver said firmly. “I don’t do public transportation.” The AM had snatched him off the subway, and now he couldn’t get on a bus or train without his skin crawling.“How did you get around Europe without…” Adam trailed off as he saw Caleb cueing up a movie. “Seriously? Didn’t you watch Greatest Showman last week?”“Caitlin hasn’t seen it,” Caleb said, then glanced at Oliver. “Wait, have you seen it?”“I’ve been living under a rock for the past eight years. What makes you think I’ve seen… whatever this is?”Caleb’s face lit up. “Oh man, you have to! It’s like if Red Bull was a musical. At least I think so. I can’t actually drink Red Bull.”Franklin raised his eyebrows at Caitlin. “How about it, sunshine? It’s better than actually dropping out and joining the circus.”“Come on, you let Mark talk you into seeing Mean Girls. You’ve got to let me show you Greatest Showman,” Caleb wheedled. “I’ll give you a ride home afterward?”Wind gusted outside, and the rain got louder. Oliver looked at Caitlin, who still looked twitchy and dejected. “What the hell,” he sighed. “If it’ll keep Catherine from giving herself fits, why not.”Oliver had learned not to snark too much when he was watching a movie someone in the room cared about. He was sorely tested that afternoon. Caitlin spent the first half hour grumbling about how the “freaks” were expected to “just self-love yourselves out of racism and ableism”, but eventually her complaints died away. Oliver managed to keep his mouth shut by messaging all of his grievances to Mark, who responded I’m muting you until after the gigAt least the musical numbers were pretty. Mark would have loved them, which was the best and worst thing Oliver could say about it.“Sooo, what’d you think?” Caleb said while he was driving Oliver back to Mark’s apartment.Oliver thought for a moment. “It’s a decent jukebox musical.”“What do you mean? All the songs were written for the movie.”“Well then, they did a shit job of it.”Caleb gave him an unimpressed sidelong look. “Dude, empath, remember? You were just as caught up in the musical numbers as the rest of us.”Oliver sighed. “Fine, yes, I’m not immune to well-written songs. But none of them fit the story. If you heard them on the radio, you’d think ‘oh, a cute song about believing in yourself, or being in love’, and you’d have no idea they come from a musical. That’s not how musicals are supposed to work.”“You sound like Adam. The first time we saw it, he wouldn’t shut up about narrative tropes and structure. Even after I told him to stop thinking and just enjoy the movie.”“Dating an English major sounds like a pain in the ass.”“Yeah,” Caleb sighed happily.Just-this-side-of-freezing rain drummed against the windshield, as Oliver wondered what it was like to know someone for years and still be head-over-heels in love. Oliver’s partners never lasted more than a few months before their mouths got pinched and their voices got sharp, and a few weeks later there would be an oh-so-gentle “let’s just be friends” (or a not-so-gentle fight). What would it feel like to have someone know him, inside and out, with all of his imperfections and life-altering mistakes, and still love him?“That’s…” Oliver cleared his throat and tried not to sound jealous. “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”“Thanks.” There was no way Caleb was fooled, but all he did was look down at his hands. “And thank you, by the way. For talking me down back at Yale. You were right. About trusting Adam and not letting my own shit make decisions for both of us.”“Um, thanks?”“He said the same thing, by the way. That we’d gotten too used to letting my ability do all the work. And once we were long-distance, we just kinda let a bunch of miscommunications build up.” Caleb’s eyes darted toward Oliver. “So now we’re working on actually talking to each other.”Oliver sighed and closed his eyes. “Can you just stop? You’re about as subtle as an anvil.”“Sorry.” Caleb didn’t sound sorry at all. “But it’s been, what, four months since we talked about… you know, you and Mark? And obviously you two haven’t talked about it, either.”“I distinctly remember telling you I wasn’t going to talk about it.”“Yeah, because I was freaking out about the book. But I’m not freaking out now. And you’re still…” He trailed off and waved a hand at Oliver. “I don’t get it. You light up whenever Mark is in the room. I don’t need to be an empath to see it. But you’re also sad, and scared, and you kinda hate yourself, and you get jealous when you look at me and Adam —”“Okay, enough,” Oliver said sharply. “I have to live with it. I don’t need you to recite it back to me.”“Dude, just talk to him. It’s not that hard. What’s the worst that can happen? He says no?”“It’s not that simple.” Oliver took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “Mark and I barely knew each other before I left the country. All we had was texting, and maybe a phone call when the wifi was good. I got to sound smart, and caring, and funny, and like someone who didn’t wake up screaming after visiting a castle that had a dungeon in it. We had fun. I think Mark might have genuinely liked that version of me.” He smiled as he remembered a rainy night in Lisbon, when he was bored and Mark needed to be distracted at the dentist. They sent each other ridiculous puns and Star Wars gifs well into the night, long after Mark finished his appointment and Oliver should have been asleep. When he finally closed his eyes, he was still grinning, and it was the first time he remembered realizing that he might be in love with his friend.“It feels fun,” Caleb said, with a smile in his voice from Oliver’s reflected nostalgia.“Yeah, well, it wasn’t real. I came back here, and suddenly I didn’t have that filter anymore. Mark got to see me push everyone away, and throw myself at the first cult leader I met, and get myself and you addicted to a magic book, and oh yeah, practically get myself killed.”“That wasn’t your fault,” Caleb said. “That was Blackwell fucking with your head.”“Was it? Did Blackwell or the book make you do anything out of character? Or were you already teetering on the edge of a crisis, and they nudged you over the edge?” Caleb’s lips tightened. “Exactly. Blackwell didn’t turn me into someone Mark couldn’t stand. I did that all on my own.”“Come on, Mark wouldn’t have invited you to live with him if he didn’t like you.”Oliver didn’t dignify that with an answer. Giving Oliver a place to stay didn’t mean Mark loved him, or even liked him all that much. It just meant Mark was too kind-hearted to leave a washed-up, middle-aged alchemist out on the street in the winter. At least Mark had gotten used to Oliver’s idiosyncrasies and stopped needling him to open up and talk. He seemed content to take Oliver’s rent and let him figure himself out in peace, which was a blessing and a torment.“I’ll prove it,” Caleb offered. “I’ll find out how he feels about you.”Oliver coughed. “Jesus, kid, why?”“Why not? You’re not actually a bad person. I can feel how much you care about people, even if you’re a little mean sometimes. And if Mark likes you, and you like him…I’m not going to be weird about it,” he said quickly, as Oliver opened his mouth to object again. “I’ll just talk about you and see what emotions I can pick up.”“First of all, the minute you get within range of Mark, he’s going to be an empath too, and he’ll see right through you. Secondly, fuck no. This isn’t middle school. I don’t need anyone running interference for me, least of all a kid half my age.”“I’m not that much younger than you,” Caleb grumbled.“Whatever you say, Carlos.”Normally Oliver liked having the apartment to himself, but today it felt dark and cold. He turned on all the lights and began baking a batch of challah, to make the apartment smell warm and homey whenever Mark came home. He caught himself humming one of the songs from the movie, the one where the pretty young things had flown around on trapezes, and pointedly turned on one of Mark’s punk accordion playlists.Even if Mark would never love Oliver the way Oliver loved him, he refused to ruin a perfectly good friendship. Fate had handed him a second chance to be with Mark, whatever way Mark would have him, and he wasn’t going to blow it by being greedy. He’d been pining for the better part of a year. He could handle a little more.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Mark wasn’t drooling. He was just enjoying living with Oliver. Really enjoying it.Now that Blackwell wasn’t manipulating him, Oliver was returning to his old self. He spent his days applying to jobs, sneaking into academic libraries to continue his research on atypical history, and sharing the highlights with Mark. It reminded him of when he would wake up to dozens of texts from Oliver, because he’d gotten so worked up over something that he forgot about the time difference. He brought home thousand-piece puzzles and spread them out over the kitchen table. Mark grumbled about Oliver monopolizing the table, but he was secretly thrilled that Oliver had made a part of their home his own. He often found himself sitting with Oliver, talking about his gigs and Oliver’s research, as he nursed a cup of coffee and doodled in a sketchbook while Oliver solved the puzzle with frightening speed.(Oliver never talked about Yale, and Mark didn’t bring it up. He was done forcing conversations about mistakes they’d made.)Sometimes Mark lost track of Oliver’s stories. Not because Oliver’s research wasn’t interesting, but because he had rolled up his sleeves, and the muscles in his arms were incredibly distracting. “Byron.”Mark dragged his eyes back up to Oliver’s face. “Huh?”“So? What do you think?”He replayed the last few minutes of the conversation. There was something about evidence of atypicals in rural Finnish communities, and then everything else became less important than watching Oliver’s strong, clever hands work…“You have no idea what I just said, do you.”“Well, maybe if you didn’t monologue so much, I’d pay more attention.”Oliver gave him a long, smirking look. “Please, you love my monologues.”Okay, maybe he was drooling a little.Mark jumped as his pocket buzzed. He ignored Oliver’s amused snort and saw a notification from an unknown number.6172616685: I’m back! Sorry for the late notice, I left my phone in Phuket, and then I didn’t sleep for 30 hours. Mags and I just got back from the Apple store
6172616685: This is Sam, btw
Mark: Welcome back! I want to hear EVERYTHING. Are you sick of Thai food, or can we go to Crying Thaiger?
Mark: I'm buying, you paid last time
6172616685: Maybe next week? But I also REALLY miss everyone. I’d love to have people over on Saturday night, if you’re not workingOliver insisted on making rugelach for the party, and he shifted his weight on Sam’s doorstep, holding the cookies in front of him like a shield. Before Mark could tell him to relax, Mags opened the door. “Oliver! Always good to see you, but who’s this guy?” She jerked a thumb at Mark.“No idea.” Oliver stepped past Mags. “He followed me home one day and now he won’t leave.”“I hate you both,” Mark said fondly, before following Oliver.A familiar flood of abilities washed through him, joining the alchemy that tingled in his fingertips whenever Oliver was around. Caleb and Jackson were in the dining room, demolishing a pizza. Joan was setting out bottles of sparkling cider next to Mags’s chili and a box of Insomnia Cookies. Sam was showing Chloe something on her phone. She looked up and grinned when she saw Mark and Oliver.“You made it!” she said, throwing her arms around him.“Welcome back,” he laughed. “It was getting boring around here.”“No kidding,” Mags said, hugging Sam from behind. Sam giggled and leaned back into her embrace.“Hi,” Oliver said loudly, thrusting the rugelach at Sam. “I hear you’re the one to talk to about atypicals in pre-Roman Finland?”Sam blinked in confusion, as annoyance sparked from Chloe, Joan, and Mags. Mark didn’t need to borrow Chloe’s telepathy to know what they saw: someone so focused on their work that they ignored common courtesy. They didn’t see the nervous twitches in Oliver’s hands, or hear the volume of his voice. Oliver was nervous, and if Mark was honest, so was he. This was the closest thing he had to a family, and he wanted them to get along with Oliver.Sam, bless her, recovered quickly and set the rugelach down next to the pizza. “I don’t know about Finland specifically, but I took a lot of trips to ancient Scandinavia.”“Good, because I have a lot of questions…”Mark and Chloe backed away from the amateur historians, and joined Caleb and Jackson’s conversation about a new sneaker line. (Mark didn’t know enough about sneakers to contribute much — he and Chloe just wanted shoes that kept them comfortable during a long workday.) Meanwhile, Mags and Joan were talking shop in the kitchen, and Sam was pointing to something on Oliver’s phone and gesturing with her free hand. Oliver must have relaxed a little, if he was letting her get a word in edgewise.“I didn’t know he was still in town,” Joan said, handing him a glass of cider. Mark shrugged. “He was tired of bumming around Europe, and I needed a roommate.”“He’s living with you.”“Um, yeah?”She hmmed and followed Mark’s gaze. “Well, I see he’s still fond of monologuing.”“Oh my god, he does not shut up. Ever.”To be fair, Oliver and Sam seemed to have found a rhythm. He was even smiling for the first time since they’d arrived. He always lit up when he was sharing something he loved. With enough time, he might even relax enough for Sam to see his sweet, goofy side.“I can tell it’s a hardship,” Joan said dryly. “Well, I’m happy for you. Confused, as always, about your taste, but happy for you.”Mark choked on a mouthful of cider. “Joanie!”“What?” She was the picture of wide-eyed innocence. “You think I can’t tell when you’ve got a crush?”She sauntered away, leaving Mark gaping like a fish and buzzing with indignation. First Mags, and now Joan? Why did everyone assume he was in love with his best friend, just because he let Oliver move in with him, and wanted all of his friends to like Oliver, and did puzzles with him, and got distracted and jittery when he listened to Oliver talk about his research or saw his hands and shoulders and oh, yeah, okay, he could see it now, that was a crush.Well. Fuck.“Byron?” Mark jumped and focused on the phone in his face. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly am I being bullied right now?”Adam: Guess who just got an acceptance email from HARVARD FUCKING LAW 🎉
Sadie: Fuck yeah get ittttt
Caleb: Oh my god congratulations!!!
Oliver: Well done Caitlin!“Since when are you in a group chat with the kids?” Mark’s voice sounded loud and strange in his own ears.“Franklin added me last week. Can we focus, please?”Franklin: I never doubted you for a second Sunshine 😍🔥⚖️
Caitlin:
Ben:
Caitlin: I have five more months of taking it easy, and then I’ll have to get Serious again
Caitlin: Whipped Into Shape, even
Sadie: We’ll help you stay Positive
Caleb: Just don’t get frustrated and run away to Ireland
Oliver: Why would she run away to Ireland? It’s just grad school.
Franklin: I’ll explain it to you later, for now just Take It Like A Man
Ben: Yeah don’t get a Chip On Your Shoulder“Nobody’s bullying you,” Caleb sighed. “And how do you not know Legally Blonde? That’s an old movie.”“First of all, how dare you,” Oliver sniffed. “Secondly, I don’t watch sorority girl comedies.”Chloe and Jackson gasped. “Ohhh, you did not just say that,” Jackson grinned.“Sam!” Caleb called. “Oliver called Legally Blonde a sorority comedy!”“We can fix that!” Mags said from the other room. “Babe, fire up the laptop.”“Guys, we’re here to welcome Sam home, not watch movies,” Joan sighed.“Exactly!” Oliver sputtered, his ears turning pink. Mark realized with a sinking feeling that even that was cute. Oh, he was so fucked.“We can do both.” Sam was typing rapidly. “Movie or musical?”“There’s a musical?” Joan whispered to Oliver.“Definitely musical,” Mark called back, because even through the poleaxed haze of a newly-discovered crush, seeing Oliver and Joan trade panicked looks was hilarious.He knew from experience that sitting across the room from Caleb or Chloe wouldn’t stop them from reading him like a book, but it made him feel better to wedge himself into the farthest corner of the couch farthest away from them. Unfortunately, Oliver had also chosen that couch, and every time he shifted, it made Mark’s whole body tingle. So the appreciation for Oliver’s smile and arms and nerdy rambling was far more than friendly. What was he supposed to do with that? A relationship would require some heavy conversations, about things far more personal and painful than Mark’s gigs, or who had eaten the last Pop Tart. He’d already tried to have a relationship where the hard stuff got ignored, and it ended in panic attacks and broken trust. He deserved better out of his next relationship. Oliver deserved better.But was six months of peace and quiet enough for Oliver to relax and talk without running away? Was it enough for Mark to stop sniping and pushing the way he had in Yale?Oliver was uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the night. “Why do all of your parties turn into movie nights?” he grumbled on the way home.“They don’t all turn into movie nights. It’s just fun to watch you watch things for the first time.”Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Oliver tapping the empty rugelach container in time with the turn signal, as he stared out the window. “That show was ridiculous,” he said suddenly. “It was completely unrealistic.”“It’s a musical, Oliver,” Mark said. “It’s not supposed to reflect reality.”“I know how musicals work, Byron,” he snapped. “I don’t mind the singing and dancing. The story made no sense.”He fell silent. Out of the corner of his eye, Mark watched him frown and fidget with the container.“People made assumptions about Elle for being blonde and pretty,” Oliver finally said. “They thought she was stupid, or they tried to take advantage of her, and eventually Elle proved them wrong, and everyone lived happily ever after. But the plot was designed to play to her strengths. All it took was a few demonstrations for people to believe she could be pretty and a good lawyer.”“Yeah, and?”“And that’s not how life works, is it? It’s never just one big fight. For the rest of her life, Elle has to prove herself over and over, to everyone she meets, that she deserves to be taken seriously. And that’s…” He sighed and tipped his head back. “I’m exhausted just thinking about it, you know? About having to constantly be on your guard, or else you get duped by sketchy professors?”They were so close to an actual conversation about Yale, closer than they’d been since Halloween. Mark’s stomach swooped, like standing on a high dive. “Elle didn’t have to deal with the sketchy professors of the world alone,” he said slowly. “She had friends who believed in her, remember? Paulette, and the sorority girls, and…” He swallowed and flexed his hands against the steering wheel. “And Emmett.”Oliver raised his eyebrows and cocked his head toward Mark. “Are you saying I owe you a new suit?”If Mark were younger and more reckless, he would have said yes, jumped off that high dive, and dealt with whatever fights came later. Instead, he forced a laugh and backed them away from the edge. “I’m not an Emmett. I’m that cheerleader with the bend and snap.”“Hm. Pity. You could use a new suit.”“Hey!”“I saw what you wore to that wedding gig last week. You can’t keep wearing clothes from the Goodwill clearance rack. You’ll lose clients that way.”“Jerk…”As the conversation devolved into their normal banter, he told himself that even if they never figured out how to talk about anything important, this could be enough. He could be happy.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
For the first time in far too long, Oliver was… maybe not perfectly happy, but content. He was meticulously careful to give Mark space when he got twitchy and distant (which was happening more often since Sam got back into town), and steered them clear of any argument more serious than “the toilet paper goes over, not under, were you raised in a fucking barn”. Without even trying, they’d fallen back into the comfortable friendship they’d had before. Sam or the kids would invite Mark and Oliver to hang out, or he and Mark would spend blissfully quiet evenings together reading and doodling or editing pictures, and at night, he lay in bed thinking I’m home. I have a home.During Caleb’s graduation, Ben had complained that they had to retake a core chemistry class that they’d failed in their fall semester. Oliver, feeling nostalgic for academia that morning, advised them to take it at community college over the summer, and offered to tutor them. Before long, Oliver was coming over to Caleb and Sadie’s old apartment — now Ben and Franklin’s — every Thursday night to explain organic chemistry. It was nice to feel useful again. He’d worked hard for his degrees, and it felt good to put them to use while helping a friend.Even if the slang they used sometimes made him feel incurably old.“You know, firebending?” Ben said. Oliver looked at them blankly. “From Avatar? Please tell me you’ve seen Avatar.”“That’s the movie with the blue people, right?”Ben and Franklin burst out laughing. Oliver rolled his eyes and waited for them to sober up. “You know, ‘everything changed when the fire nation attacked’?” Franklin said. “‘That’s rough, buddy’?”“Did you have a stroke when I wasn’t looking?”“I literally used those memes in the chat last week.” Franklin crossed the living room and turned on the TV.There were no blue people, but there was genocide and intergenerational trauma. Oliver made them stop after three episodes, because Ben really did need to understand chirality before their midterm, but once he got home, he turned on Mark’s TV and cued up the next episode.“You’re watching Avatar?” Mark said incredulously, when he came home from his shift that evening and found Oliver watching Aang try to fly through a heavy storm.“Yes, I’ve heard of a TV show from the 2000s, try not to faint.”After a few minutes, Mark got his laptop and sat next to Oliver to watch Zuko’s backstory. For the rest of the weekend, he joined Oliver on the couch whenever Avatar was on. Oliver deeply disapproved of the last ten years’ transition away from DVDs, but streaming did make it easy to marathon a TV show. Not getting up to change discs meant he didn’t have to call attention to the fact that Mark had decided to sit tantalizingly close to Oliver.By now, ignoring his crush was second nature for Oliver. Mark was clearly enjoying living with Oliver — he went out of his way to seek out Oliver’s company, and was happy to listen as Oliver babbled about his research — but except for a few moments of banter that turned into friendly flirting, he didn’t seem to be interested in Oliver as anything other than a roommate and a friend. Oliver wasn’t thrilled — he ached to reach across the couch and take Mark’s hand — but overall, things were good enough that he was starting to wonder if Caleb might have been onto something. Maybe the mean, flaky asshole he’d been in Yale really had been a product of Blackwell’s influence. Maybe, left to his own devices, he could be the better, kinder, more reliable version of himself all the time — the version that Mark deserved.Naturally, that was when everything went tits-up.On Sunday night, Mark looked up at the screen, where Jet was fighting Zuko to prove that he was a firebender, and sucked in a sharp breath. “Hey, uh, things are about to get spicy.”“Spicy? What do you mean, spicy?”“Just trust me.” Mark closed his laptop and stood up. “There’s no shame in reading the Wikipedia entry for this episode and skipping it.”“Well, whatever it is, I can handle it,” he called, as Mark closed the door to his bedroom.A few minutes later, Dai Li agents strapped Jet to a chair in a dungeon, and Oliver’s stomach dropped.Calm down, he told himself. He knew what he’d gotten himself into when he started watching a show about overthrowing a fascist empire. He’d just… take a moment and get his bearings.The next episodes were relatively light-hearted. Oliver tried to pay attention, but found himself studying his wrists. There were dark lines, not quite scars, where he spent three years rubbing his wrists and ankles raw against Tier 5 restraints, and never quite healing until he left the AM. There were fresher not-quite-scars, where Blackwell had tied Oliver to a makeshift altar, and Oliver had been too sedated to do anything other than pull against the ropes.Mark didn’t have rope burns on his wrists. Oliver wondered if it was because he had been treated more gently, or because he had had more time to heal.His phone buzzed. You okayI’m fine. Quit hovering. He had to take deep breaths again when the creepy tour guide’s sleeper agent programming was activated. When he saw a screen full of tour guides being programmed, he swallowed hard and focused on the weave of the couch under him to keep from throwing up.He eyed the remote sitting on the couch, then made himself look back at the TV. He was not going to admit defeat, not after telling Mark twice that he was a big boy who could handle a few adult themes in his shows.His resolve lasted until Jet began attacking Aang, and then he lunged for the remote and stabbed the power button.It’s not real, he reminded himself, running shaking hands over his face. They’re pixels on a screen. Nobody’s brain is being turned inside out. Nobody attacked their friends because a creepy old man told them to. Calm the fuck down.He began tidying the living room. If he didn’t do something, he was going to explode, or something else around him would.“You’re okay,” he whispered as empty coffee mugs rattled in his hands. “It’s not real.”Fucking ridiculous. Children watched this show without feeling like they were going to shake apart or throw up. What the fuck was wrong with him? Had Blackwell and Wadsworth broken him so badly that he could only watch comedies and musicals now?Mark should have warned him. He should have listened when Mark tried to warn him.“Oliver?”He flinched, and ceramic shattered as a mug slipped out of his hand and hit the coffee table. “Don’t sneak up on me,” he snapped without looking.“Sorry,” Mark said quickly. “You okay?”“I’m fine.” Oliver began gathering pieces of ceramic in one of the empty chip bags.“Riiight.” Oliver gritted his teeth and reminded himself that he was supposed to be better now, and people who were better didn’t snap at their roommates. “You want to talk about it?”“About how you’re one of the messiest people on the planet? Seriously, Ben and Franklin’s apartment is cleaner than this.”“You know what I mean.” Mark followed him into the kitchen. “Do you want to talk about whatever’s making you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Oliver scoffed. “It might help.”“You know what would have helped?” He began opening cabinets and looking for trash bags. “Giving me a fucking warning. Something other than ‘oh hey, it’s about to get spicy’.”“I’m sorry,” Mark said tightly. “I’m used to just stumbling across the nightmare fuel by accident. I’ve never had to give trigger warnings to someone else.”Oliver winced. “Oh god, don’t call them that.” He grabbed a plastic shopping bag and brushed past Mark to hide his burning face.“There’s nothing wrong with calling them trigger warnings. And there’s nothing wrong with being triggered. Trauma doesn’t just go away because you don’t want to deal with it.”“I’m not talking about this with you.”“I didn’t say you had to —” Mark exhaled sharply through his nose. “Look, I’m really not trying to be an asshole about this, and it doesn’t have to be me, but you need to talk to someone.” He ignored Mark, and the tight ball of anger growing in his chest, and everything except picking up the dirty napkins and crumpled band flyers on the living room floor, and prayed Mark got the hint and left him the fuck alone.“Unless you want to keep being surprised when you get triggered and end up breaking all my mugs —”“Don’t you fucking do that!” Oliver exploded. Mark startled and took a step back. “Don’t you dare try to manipulate me! I said no, I don’t want to talk about Tier 5, or Yale, or any of it, and how dare you try to… to threaten me into it!”“Whoa, Oliver, what…” Mark looked shocked and hurt, and any other time it would have made Oliver feel terrible. “Threaten you? Where is this coming from?”“Was this why you convinced me to move in? This whole time, you were just waiting for me to slip up so you could try to control me again? Was it fun playing these little mind games for the last few months?”“Mind games?” Mark spat, face turning red. “I’ve bent over fucking backward trying to give you space to figure your shit out. I let you take over the kitchen table, I listen to your weird history tangents, I let you borrow the car all the time because you refuse to take the T like a normal fucking person, I’ve been nothing but patient with you, and suddenly I’m being manipulative and threatening you because I want you to get some help? Because I care about you? Fuck you, asshole.”“Fuck me? Fuck you.” He pushed past Mark and yanked open the front door. “If I’m such a fucking burden, I can be out of your hair by morning.” He barely felt his legs for several minutes after storming out of the apartment, until he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and had to catch himself on a lamppost, and suddenly the adrenaline left him all at once. He slid down the lamppost on legs that felt like jelly. His hand stung from a thin cut across his palm. He had probably cut it on a broken piece of mug. Or maybe when he was busy accusing Mark of manipulating him.“Moron,” he sighed, tipping his head back and closing his eyes.Mark probably hated him now. He didn’t deserve Oliver screaming wild accusations at him, even if he was an idiot who thought talking about feelings was the answer to everything. All Mark had ever done was try to help Oliver, and it wasn’t his fault Oliver had too much baggage to watch a kids’ TV show.He felt in his pocket for his phone, then remembered he’d left it on the couch after texting Mark that he was okay, less than ten minutes before it became blazingly obvious to both of them that he was about as far from okay as possible.It would be so easy to write the phone off as a loss, hail a taxi to the airport, get on a random plane, and start over somewhere new. Mark could load his old things into a storage unit and move on, and Oliver would be free. No more job search. No more Massholes endangering Oliver’s life any time he went for a walk. No more friendship that frustrated and thrilled him in equal measure.Maybe Caleb had been wrong after all: the twitchy, unreliable asshole was the real Oliver.But maybe… so was the Oliver who had stayed in one place longer than he’d stayed anywhere since 2017. The one who made and kept friends, and found some sense of purpose with them. The one who put up with rejection and ghosting from employers, because he couldn’t imagine making a life anywhere that didn’t have Mark in it.Maybe it was time to get up off the lamppost and go be that Oliver again.Mark was in the living room, the discarded trash bag in one hand and an empty Diet Coke can in the other, when Oliver opened the door. “Oh, thank fuck,” he sighed, sagging and dropping the bag. “I tried to call you, but you left your phone behind.”“I know.” Oliver fidgeted with his keys. “Sorry. For scaring you. And for… you know.”“Accusing me of messing with your head?”“Yeah. That.”Mark’s face was carefully blank. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about Avatar. I thought I noped out in time to keep from getting triggered myself, but apparently not. I shouldn’t have lost it and pushed you to talk. Again.”“I guess therapy doesn't fix everything, huh?”“Oh, it definitely does not. Makes things better, sure, but fix them? Not so much. ”The Diet Coke can pinged as Mark squeezed it. Oliver opened his mouth, closed it again, then gave up and began cleaning up. After a few moments, Mark joined him.Oliver was used to comfortable silences with Mark. This one wasn’t comfortable. Neither of them looked at each other as they filled the trash bag and collected a small pile of dirty dishes and cups, and another pile of clothes and art supplies that belonged in Mark’s room.Mark broke first. “Have I done anything to make you feel like I wanted to control you? Or like living here was… I don’t know, conditional in any way?”“No,” Oliver said quickly. “No, definitely not.” He took a deep, deliberate breath, the way Ben did when a semi truck drove past the apartment during tutoring sessions. “This has been the easiest roommate situation I’ve had since… ever, I think.”“Okay.”There was a slight upward inflection at the end, not quite a question, but Oliver heard all of the unspoken curiosity and unsoothed hurts. He could easily pretend he’d missed the invitation to talk. Mark would probably let it go, and they could go back to watching Avatar and doing puzzles, the way they had for the past nine months. The questions and hurts would go unspoken, until the next time something set Mark or Oliver off. “Blackwell used to do that,” he blurted out, before he could convince himself to shut the fuck up.He refused to look at Mark, but he could feel Mark’s attention laser-focused on him. “Do what?”He gathered up the dishes and took them into the kitchen, because he desperately needed something to do with his hands if he was going to break the seal on this particular topic. Mark followed him and leaned on the counter.“You saw my memory,” Oliver said as he washed. “You heard what Blackwell said. I was exceptional. Extraordinary. We were going to change the world together. And I know it was bullshit. I knew it back then. But it felt… I don’t know if it was the mind control, or the fact that nobody except you had bothered to really see me in six years, but hearing someone tell me they cared about me, that they thought I was special… it felt good. It felt really good.”He waited for Mark to scoff or say something sarcastic. Nothing. When he glanced up, Mark was watching him carefully, without a trace of anger or impatience.“I know everyone thinks I threw myself into the book, no questions asked. I didn’t. I had a lot of questions. But every time I asked one, or even thought about it, Blackwell would answer with one of his own, something questioning my loyalty or my ability. Nothing I did or said was good enough, unless it was exactly what he wanted. And all I wanted was to make him like me and call me special again.”“So when I said that shit about how you’d keep getting triggered and breaking my mugs…”“I know you didn’t mean it, but for a second there, it sounded like something Blackwell would say.”Mark hissed a breath between his teeth.“I know, I know.” He scrubbed a dirty plate too hard. “I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him in the first place. I should have run the second he started saying things that were too good to be true. I shouldn’t have been such a fucking idiot —”“Okay, stop.” Mark plucked the plate out of Oliver’s hand, turned off the water, and nudged Oliver’s shoulder until he was facing Mark. “I wasn’t going to call you an idiot, okay? I was going to apologize for making you think of him, even for a second. And you weren’t an idiot. You were targeted by someone who manipulated people for a living. That doesn’t make you dumb, or weak, it just means you have really shitty luck.”Oliver blinked. “Wait, what? You and Beck both called me an idiot. Many times.”Mark winced. “God, I was awful, wasn’t I.”“Let’s just say the book wasn’t the only reason I steered clear of you two at Yale.”He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m so sorry. You were going through a lot, and I kept making it worse. I can’t believe it took you nearly dying for me to get my head out of my ass.”Oliver swallowed and took another deep breath, until he could speak again. “Thank you.”Mark began drying the dishes Oliver had just washed. “It’s not an excuse, but… you know that locked door we were talking about at Yale? I… kinda have a history with mind manipulators. I thought I was over it, but then I heard about Blackwell, and I saw you behaving the way I did when I was… anyway, it brought back some stuff I thought I was over. And apparently we’re both assholes when we’re triggered. Something to pay attention to if we’re going to keep watching movies together, I guess.”Oliver’s stupid heart leapt at the promise of spending more time together, and he began attacking the coffee stains on a mug to distract himself. “So among the many whackadoodle things I said was that I’d be out of here by morning, but the thing is, I actually really like living with you, and I don’t want to be the jerk who keeps running away, and I’m invested in whether Ben passes their classes now, and I don’t know if you already listed my room on Craigslist, but —”“I haven’t,” Mark said quickly. “I would kinda love it if you stayed.” He cleared his throat. “This has, uh. This has been my best roommate situation in forever, too.”Their fingers brushed as Oliver passed him the clean mug. A warm shock raced through Oliver’s arm. “Even though I take over the kitchen table and bore you with my research?”“I wasn’t using the table anyway.” Mark smiled down at the mug he was drying. “I actually really like it when you tell me about your research. Even when it goes over my head. You’re cute when you get excited about nerdy shit.”Oliver forced a laugh and told himself to calm the fuck down. “So you think I’m cute?”Their hands brushed again, and this time Oliver was sure Mark had done it on purpose. “Yeah. I do. Is… is that okay?”Oliver laughed giddily as he laced their fingers together. “Is it okay? Byron, I’ve been in love with you ever since you showed up at the airport in that ridiculous soccer mom car.”“You asshole,” Mark said, grinning. “You couldn’t have said something earlier? I’ve been dying over here.”“Let’s not waste any more time, then,” Oliver said, still laughing, as he pulled Mark in for the kiss he’d been holding back for almost a year.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Frankie: So we’re celebrating Oliver’s new job right
Caitlin: And Ben passing the chem class from hell
Adam: And Caitlin surviving her first week of law school
Oliver: I’m happy to celebrate Ben and Caitlin’s accomplishments, but don’t drag me into this.
Caleb: Too late, this is happening
Mark: You spent 10 months job searching, you’ve earned it
Sadie: Yeah you deserve a pat on the back, the job market is really tough on old people
Oliver: I hate you all. Friday night at 7, our place?Mark had learned from his mistakes and made himself wait until the cupcakes were cool before frosting them. Unfortunately, that meant he had to excuse himself an hour into the party. When he finished and brought them out to the living room, Oliver was standing next to the TV, remote in hand.“…a big deal about making me watch movies and TV shows that you liked,” he was saying. “So now it’s my turn. We’re watching The Big Bang Theory, and you’re going to like it.”Sadie let out a strangled cough.“Oliver?” Mark asked quietly as he put the cupcakes down. “Are you sure that’s what you’re going with?”“What? What’s wrong with it?”“Um, where do you want me to start?”“Okay, it’s not a perfect work of art, but it brought physicists and chemists together at the DOD. Do you know how rare that is?”“Why am I not surprised that a boys’ club of nerds liked it,” Caitlin sighed.“Hey!” Oliver said. “We had women in the biochem department. And they were on the Big Bang Theory group chat.”“Isn’t this the show with that gross caricature of autism?” Ben asked dubiously.“I heard it was kind of misogynist,” Caleb added.“Definitely misogynist,” Sadie said.“Probably transphobic too,” Frankie said. “It’s got that early 2000s ‘we think trans women are punchlines’ vibe to it.”“If it was transphobic and sexist, someone would have said something.”“Sure, because who doesn’t love telling their boys’ club coworkers that something they like is fucked up?” Adam muttered.“I watched your shows, didn’t I?” Oliver snapped. “I wouldn’t have given Greatest Showman or Avatar a second look, but all of you insisted that I absolutely had to watch them because they was so fucking foundational for you. Well, this was the first time any of us at the DoD got to see people on TV who looked like us, worked in jobs like ours, liked the same things we liked, and they weren’t the butt of a joke. And yeah, some of the humor probably doesn’t hold up now, but did Legally Blonde age perfectly? Did Mean Girls? But all of a sudden, it’s not okay when the show I like isn’t perfectly politically correct?”Caleb and Adam exchanged one of those long-term couple looks that could speak volumes. “Okay, sure,” Adam said finally. “We’ll give it a shot.”“How long do you think it’ll take for him to figure out how bad it actually is?” Sadie whispered in Mark’s ear.“At least a full episode. He’s ridiculously stubborn.”“I heard that,” Oliver called as he pressed play.Because Mark was right and Oliver was ridiculously stubborn, they made it to the opening credits of the second episode before he paused the show, dropped the remote onto the coffee table, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “All right, fine, you win. Are you happy?”“Not sure I’d call it happy,” Adam muttered.“Hey, it took a whole five minutes for them to get to a trans joke,” Sadie said. “For the 2000s, that’s practically woke.”“I thought you said the nerds weren’t the butt of the jokes,” Frankie said. “I lost count of the jokes at their expense.”“Didn’t you have Asian coworkers?” Ben asked. “How’d they feel about all the racism?”“Okay, fine, I get it,” Oliver said sharply. “This was a bad idea. Message received. Can we move on, please?”He picked at the couch as Sadie and Frankie scrolled through the Recently Watched section and made fun of Mark and Oliver’s taste, and Caitlin began telling Caleb and Adam about her first week of law school. “You okay?” Mark asked quietly. “Were you really that excited about showing Big Bang Theory?”Oliver sighed. “It’s fine. It just sucks when you go back and watch something you liked, and surprise, it was horrible the whole time, you know?”“Oh, trust me, I do. I used to watch How I Met Your Mother before Tier 5, and then Sam and I rewatched it, and we learned how badly it’s aged.” He took Oliver’s hand before he could pick a hole in the couch. “It’s not all bad. It means you’ve grown. You’re in a better place now.”Oliver looked at the kitchen, the table with its half-finished puzzle barely visible from the couch, then at the kids in their living room talking about Cake Wars and criminal law classes. He smiled fondly at their joined hands, lifted them to his lips, and kissed Mark’s knuckles. “Yeah. I guess I am.”