Chapter Text
Sometimes, Mark could feel the ghost of a touch. In the morning, it starts at the bend of his wrist. It feels like a slight tug, like someone is pleading and begging for him to go back to bed because whatever plans he has, can wait til later. From his wrist, it’ll travel to his shoulders.
In a single spot, it’ll feel warmer than any other part of his skin and sometimes, it throbs like someone just squeezed their hand. Sometimes, he can feel someone digging their fingernails into the meat of his shoulder, the graze of teeth, and the pain of a blow to his shoulder. He knows his shoulder is fine, it won’t be red or littered with bruises when he steps out of the shower to look at himself in the mirror.
From his shoulder, it’ll travel down his back like nails scraping down a chalkboard. It’s not as painful as he describes it. As nasty as it sounds, it brings him comfort like running fingers around an old scar. It brings back fond memories and shy smiles to his face.
Then, it’ll stay at his waist for most of the day. It’ll stay there and waiver from time to time, like the touch of a nervous lover who isn’t sure that it’s the right move. Sometimes he’ll feel a squeeze and other times his waist is the hottest part of his body, it’ll start to throb.
The car ride home is where the touch shifts to his thigh, like a resting hand.
Finally, when he slips into bed, the touch shifts to his hand and neck. It feels like someone is holding his hand and he can feel breath on his neck, like a melody lulling him to sleep.
Then it starts all over again when he wakes up in the morning. The phantom touches of his absent lover, the burn he feels when he slips Peter’s wedding ring on his own ring finger.
It’s pitiful.
It’s reminiscence.
It’s guilt.
It’s love.
It’s madness, an illness he doesn’t want to be cured of. He’s become accustomed to the burn, the pain, and the haunting memories.
Of course it hurt, ached knowing that Mark was the reason for Peter taking an early retirement. Sure, that wasn’t the reason Peter gave Erickson but Mark knew and that was enough. Perez was suspicious, if not a little relieved knowing that Peter was away from Mark’s grasp.
What did Peter tell her?
Mark didn’t know and wouldn’t find out.
Sure, the phantom touches and pain of a past lover was a normal experience Mark hoped. How was he to know that about a decade later he would see that same man that escaped Mark’s elaborate display of devotion?
He didn’t like to dwell on the thought for very long, people get rejected all the time.
Mark, who was fixing the fire alarm in the oldest bookstore in town, finally finished his task and gathered up his tools. He’d been working on the stupid alarm for the past two days, tinkering and taking apart the mechanism for a good part of both days. On his descent from the ladder, he heard the door bell jingle which wasn’t a rare occurrence in a functional bookstore.
What he wasn’t prepared for was turning around and being just a few feet away from his greatest obsession and past lover.
Peter Strahm.
Time is a horrible mistress people would say, not saying that aging hadn’t been nice to Peter but he just looked, well older . Mark could see the gray hairs sprouting at his temples, his frown lines a little deeper as well as the crows feet at his eyes. His eyes were still the same, cold but light as they stared at Mark with— anger? Disgust? Maybe it was leaning more towards surprise rather than the other two with the give away of his slightly raised eyebrows.
“Excuse me.” Mark mumbled as he passed Peter. Mark thought remaining impassive would give the impression that he didn’t recognize Peter. Hopefully, Peter would buy the facade of Mark playing dumb and wouldn’t come looking even though Mark hoped, knew, that he would eventually.
Mark didn’t hear the bell jingle again as he basically ran to his beat up Ford, mindlessly throwing his toolbox in the back and slamming the driver’s door shut. He was focused on his pulse, the way his heart was pounding against his rib cage like an impatient child slamming his fists on the dinner table.
Was he acting like a child?
Running away from the consequences of his actions? Yeah, sue him for wanting to pack up his shit and leave again. If Peter wanted this small town all to himself then he could have it, Mark didn’t like the feeling of having Peter’s eyes on him again. It’d been a peaceful few years, alone in a small town where everyone knew just about everything about everyone.
It was easy to blend into the background.
Yes, the crooked scar on his face raised some questions and made it hard to show his face for a few weeks but people can be very empathic to a single man. Especially when the single man wore a wedding ring but didn’t seem to have a wife to follow. When the single man is seen all alone and never out on the town with “his girl” on his arm.
The ring made it easy for people to blindly trust Mark, a reassurance that the nasty scar on his face was once loved by someone.
It wasn't a lie but it also wasn't the truth.
The question surprised Mark at first, a simple, “How long?” with a slight gesture to the ring on his finger. Of course, like a sane person would, he answered with a “Not long.” Then it came, the gasp and slight watering of the eyes along with, “I’m sorry for your loss.” while they put a shaky hand on his arm.
Mark supposed it made sense, that the equation filled itself out once you added the variable in and did the solving from there.
Most of the people in the town assumed Mark was married and his wife had either died or left him. It was the answer to his loneliness, he couldn’t just be a single man living the rest of his life in a small town where nothing relatively big happened.
There always had to be something more.
A bigger picture.
Mark wondered if Peter was here to do the same.
Maybe wife number three, yes Peter probably remarried, was at their freshly bought house, a fixer upper because Peter needed a challenge. Tracy, the supposed name for wife number three, was unpacking the numerous moving boxes while Peter went out to buy books for their new home.
Tracy or Trace , as Peter would refer to her, would be a simple woman which made her a wonderful housewife. Someone to take care of the home while Peter went out and did whatever he wanted to do, he was his own man. After the interaction in the bookstore, Peter would go home confused and Trace would pick up on his unease. She would cook him his favorite-
Knock-Knock.
The sudden sound on the driver’s window snapped Mark out of his silly thought process of Peter moving on with his life.
Mark turned to see who or what had made the unwarranted sound. A sigh of relief left his body at the sight of an old woman, Maureen, who ran the bookstore. She was glad she’d caught Mark before he left, he’d forgotten his tool belt on top of one of the books shelfs. After Maureen had given his toolbelt back and he apologized for being forgetful, Mark decided that eating his lunch at the lake would be good for him. Hopefully, the fresh air would fill his lungs and give his brain the function to forget about Peter’s whereabouts.
It took a while for Mark to get used to the peace, the silence of a quiet town compared to the overbearingness of a city.
It reminded Mark a lot of his own mind.
The way you can get caught up in your thoughts, having trouble finding a way out or losing yourself in what ifs. His mind was similar to a city, all the twists and turns of something so broad, you forget where you are if you aren’t careful.
Moving to such a smaller scale helped, he didn’t feel constricted in the middle of nowhere like he did in the city.
He didn’t feel tied to tragedy.
He didn’t feel like a missing piece.
Yet, he didn’t feel like he fit either.
Still, he was alone in the small town. The ring on his finger wasn’t his, it was from someone to someone he didn’t recognize when he looked in the mirror. He kept it as a memory, a piece of history that was his only marker of seeing how far he’d come and how much he’d left behind.
Who he was trying to leave behind.
Sure, he didn’t try as hard as he could to leave Peter behind but did anyone really forget about their first real love?
It was always hard for Mark to let go of things.
It was hard for Mark to let go of people.
Suddenly, his sandwich tasted sour and the ring on his finger started to burn. A normal occurrence to an extent, Mark thought it was his body’s way of expressing the guilt he felt but it was a different burning sensation. His ring finger felt like static and he quickly pulled the ring off, debating on throwing it in the lake so he could finally rid himself of the burden.
It wasn’t a burden and he knew if he stupidly threw the tiny piece of gold in the lake, he would swim and search until he drowned to find it.
The crunch of gravel wasn’t an unfamiliar sound, lots of people from the town came to walk around the lake and Mark didn’t tear his eyes away from the calm gray water.
“You can’t act like I don’t exist forever, Mark.” A voice shockling close to Peter’s called out to Mark.
Mark closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, he was hallucinating Peter’s presence. When was the last time he’d been to the doctor? What would he even tell them?
“Yeah, I can. When I know that you aren’t actually here.” Mark retorted.
Mark wasn’t sure who he was convincing, himself or his subconscious projection of Peter. It was a first for hallucinating in broad daylight but it wasn’t the first that his mind would conjure up Peter as a tool to confront an issue. When he dreamt was a prime example, the Peter in his dream was a lot sweeter than what reality Peter was.
Mark didn’t dream very often but when he did, he tried to remember the difference between reality and his dreams.
“Mm. Inhaling the exhaust of torture devices all day must’ve caught up with you, huh? Or maybe old age is finally getting to you.”
Mark didn’t have any smart remarks lined up so he just shrugged his shoulders and went to fidget with the ring in his hands. It was only a matter of time before hallucination Peter would disappear and Mark would be left alone again, maybe he should get a dog to fill the loneliness he felt.
The dip he felt sitting on the tailgate made him snap his head towards the side. Low and behold, Peter was sitting right next to him.
“What? Is this spot taken?” Peter said sarcastically, rolling his eyes at Mark’s wide eyes.
Mark shook his head slowly, deciding that maybe he wasn’t hallucinating and Peter was actually present. He decided that poking Peter on his arm would prove if his hypothesis was right or wrong.
So, Mark poked Peter once and when that didn’t evoke a reaction, he didn’t it again but a little harder than the first.
Peter glared and moved his arm away from Mark,
“I’m real, alright? You don’t have to poke me.”
“What are you doing here?” Mark asked, trying to carefully tread the waters of whatever was happening.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m enjoying the lake like everyone else.” Sarcasm dripped from Peter’s words.
Mark nodded his head, unconvinced but he wasn’t going to further intrude into Peter’s time at the lake. A great effort was made on Mark’s part to nonchalantly look at Peter’s hands for a wedding ring; he didn’t want to be right about supposed wife number three.
Peter picked up Mark’s unsaid question and laid his hands flat on his jeans, to make it easier on the struggling man beside him. From the corner of his eye, Peter could see relief plastered on Mark’s face and his shoulders sagged a little, in disappointment maybe.
Peter was horrible in awkward silence, he would usually walk away and try again later but he didn’t want to walk away this time. There was so much to be said between them but it was always left unsaid, stunted and left to die on both of their tongues.
Yet, he compared himself and Mark to the scene around him. Mark was the lake and Peter was the tree next to it, both had been around on their own for years. Suddenly, the tree started to grow towards the water and now its roots were intertwined in the water, unable to escape no matter how hard it grew in the opposite direction.
Maybe it was the other way around? Or it wasn’t anything like that and couldn’t be compared to something so simple.
Stupidly, Peter thought it was best if he tried to steer the nonexistent conversation towards a real conversation. He could pretend that they were old friends, reconnecting after years without contact.
Peter was good at lying to himself.
The glint of a ring catches his eye, maybe he should poke and prod Mark about that.
“Are you having some kind of infidelity crisis?” Peter asked as nonchalantly as he could, he didn’t care.
“What?” Mark looked down at the ring in his palm,
“It's nothing like that.”
What was it like? Mark didn’t know.
“Alright but you basically ripped it off your finger the moment I walked up. Some guilty conscious of yours.” Peter declared like he knew everything.
Mark stayed silent.
“When do I get to meet the lucky lady? Or lucky guy?” Peter added.
“There isn’t- I’m not married.” Mark was on the edge of being annoyed.
Peter gave Mark a pointed look and Mark stared back, a battle of the wits. Peter was the first to break, dropping his gaze back to the small gold circle and he went to pick it up if it wasn’t for Mark’s hand closing into a fist.
“Okay, since the ring isn’t yours then whose-“ Peter stopped his sentence abruptly because his brain was finally working.
“You son of a bitch.” Peter hissed.
Mark stayed silent, looking away as he dropped the ring into his jacket pocket and started to gather his trash. His demeanor was that of a dog that had gotten hit on the nose by a newspaper for doing something bad, guilty and sorry. Mark got up from the tailgate and started to walk towards a trash can, Peter followed silently.
Mark was fidgeting with the wax paper and it was starting to annoy Peter, it wasn’t the crunch of the paper but the way Mark was walking away.
How could he walk away at a moment like this?
Then it occurred to Peter that Mark was doing the only thing he knew: running away when shit hits the fan. Peter knew it was a horrible idea, walking up to Mark and acting like nothing had happened between them.
Acting like Peter didn’t run away.
Acting like Mark didn’t run away.
Acting like they could stay away from each other.
“Why did you keep it?” Peter asked, grabbing Mark’s arm before he could add any more distance between them. Mark tried to shrug off Peter’s hand, the way that a dog moves away from an unwanted touch but Peter wasn’t going to relent.
“If you want it you can have it. Don’t have to-“
“No, I don’t want it back. Let’s just-“
“Just what? Pick up where we left off? It’s a little late for that Pete.”
Mark yanked his arm away and finished walking towards the trash can, leaving Peter. Instead of walking back towards Peter after throwing his trash away, Mark went to the edge of the lake and didn’t make a move to invite Peter to stand next to him.
Peter, against his better judgment, went and stood next to Mark.
Nothing was said or yelled between the two, silence stretched between them and no glances were spared.
The lake was calm, save for a few ducks swimming across the pond as well as a couple feeding the ducks. It was a normal day for everyone else but it felt to Peter like he and Mark were the only ones at the lake. Peter felt like he had tunnel vision when he was in Mark’s presence, not in the literal sense but in the way that he could only focus on Mark.
Whether it was Mark’s body language, who he was talking to, what he was holding, or even the way he was standing.
Peter could only focus on Mark.
Peter hoped that a few years apart would help this “habit” of his, but it only seemed to enhance and encourage his sixth sense of knowing when Mark was annoyed. It’s the little things that Peter picked up on, the way Mark’s jaw tightened but he chewed on the inside of his lip at the same time. Or the way Mark’s shoulders tensed up and how he couldn’t keep eye contact.
Peter could read Mark like a book but he couldn’t remember the man’s birthday.
A blessing and a curse.
“I kept it because it was a piece of you that didn’t leave. I literally have you wrapped around my finger.” Mark confessed quietly, almost to himself if Peter wasn’t standing right next to him.
Peter was stuck on the last part of Mark’s confession, I literally have you wrapped around my finger . A normal person would’ve been weirded out but to Peter, it only added to the rising ache in his chest.
“I didn’t want to leave. You left me with no choice.” Peter tried.
“No, I gave you a choice. I gave you two if I’m being honest.”
“Yeah right. Die in the box or get squished to death, how could I choose?” Peter crossed his arms and looked towards the couple feeding the ducks, did they know that feeding the ducks bread would kill them?
“I wouldn’t have let that happen. You would’ve been just fine.” Mark tried sounding reassuring.
“Hm, that shitty scar on your face is super convincing.” Peter was surprised that he didn’t bring it up sooner. It was the first thing that drew him in, the jagged, pale-ish red line that ran from the corner of Mark’s lips to almost his ear.
Peter wanted to trace his fingers on it, memorize it by touch so he wouldn’t forget what it felt like.
“That’s different.” Mark protested and went to scratch the scar.
“I don’t think so. I’m gonna assume that it fits in the same category of machines made to kill you. Does that sound right?” Peter would bet on it, the reason Mark has the scar on his face was going to be his fault and his fault only.
“It doesn’t matter. Quit changing the subject.”
“I’m not the one withholding information, sweetheart.” Peter winked at Mark, he thought it was funny.
“Fuck off. You don’t really care, you just like pushing me around.”
“If I wanted to push you, you would be in the lake right now.” Peter moved his arm in Mark’s general direction to scare him but it didn’t seem to phase Mark.
“Wow, time really has changed you for the worst.” Mark smiled at the end of sentence, it was a shy smile that Peter rarely got to see.
“Hate to break it to you but I think you're wrong again , old man.” Peter could feel himself smiling.
“Shut up, you’re older than I am.” Mark said, as he bumped his shoulder against Peter’s in a playful manner.
“Sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Silence stretched between them again, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as the first time but better than arguing about the past.
Mark looked at his watch and shook his head, he was going to be late for his next chore. He didn’t want to leave, he wanted nothing more than to stand with Peter at the lake and talk about nothingness. A frown plastered across his face, instantly indicating to Peter that something was wrong.
“You got somewhere to be?” Peter asked, his voice tinged with disappointment.
“Yeah, I gotta go and check some lady’s hot water heater. She’s been complaining about it all week.” Mark’s voice sounded annoyed.
“Right. Well I won’t keep you.” Peter said, hoping he didn’t sound ready to get rid of Mark but he didn’t want to sound needy.
If it were up to him, Mark wouldn’t have to leave and they could spend the rest of the day together.
It wasn’t ever up to Peter.
Mark nodded and started to walk away, he didn’t look back but his pace was unsure like he wasn’t sure he should be walking away.
It didn’t take long for Peter to stride up beside Mark and put his hand on Mark’s wrist,
“Hey, why don’t you come over for dinner? Unless you have-“
“I don’t have anywhere to be.” Mark blurted out, his face heating up as he felt Peter’s hand squeeze.
“Right.” Peter rolled his eyes.
“Wait, you can’t cook for shit.”
“I’ve gotten better! I took some classes and—“
Mark raised a brow towards Peter, he was calling out Peter’s bullshit with the simple raise of his eyebrow.
“Yeah, we should eat at your place.” Peter nodded, solidifying his answer.
They continued to walk towards Mark’s truck, he was convinced he had a pen in there somewhere and could give Peter his address. Peter figured he could remember an address but he decided to humor Mark.
They decided that meeting at 7 was best for both of them.
It gave both of them enough time to talk themselves out of it, think of all the reasons to cancel, and then realize they were in deep shit.
They’re fucked.