Marc Russo (bluelined) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2017-03-06 18:59:00 |
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On paper and in actuality, dropping by the head of Real Estate and Business Development's office was a terrible idea. He'd made an appointment, so at least it wouldn't technically be unexpected, but he'd also made it in a different name. There was also the odd chance that there was another Rebecca Russo out there in the world who worked in real estate and had a son named Josh. Somehow, though, Marc thought it was a very, very slim chance. He didn't tell Leo about what had happened at the Doughnut Hole, nor had he told him about this appointment; Marc figured it wasn't worth bringing up until he knew it wasn't just him hallucinating. Truth be told, he felt a bit like he was by the time he was waiting in the department's lobby, eyes fixed on the door to Rebecca Russo's office. Marc wasn't exactly sure what to expect out of this meeting, but he knew he had to find out. Rebecca’s work day was going smoothly, and thank goodness because Rebecca had spent most of the night before trying to talk Joshua through the fact that his father certainly was not in Austin, so her energy level to put out fires was much lower than normal. She knew her son missed his father, but she’d thought he’d grown out of imagining him on every street corner. Or rather she’d hoped, because it wasn’t easy on her to either to dredge the thought of Marc up from where she’d stored it away. It was emotionally exhausting. But not something she wanted to devote hours of her work time too either, chewing over what she might have been able to say to Joshua instead of what she’d said. She had only just finished with a document when her assistant buzzed to let her know her next appointment was waiting in the lobby, so she smoothed her skirt and made her way out, scanning the room for him. “Mr --,” Rebecca paused and her eyes widened, “Lewton,” she recovered, smoothly covering even though her heart had started a race in her chest. Marc. Her husband, just as her son had described him to her. He rose to greet her, out of a mix of nearly-forgotten habit and old-fashioned politeness, though he remained frozen where he stood. “Please, come in,” she continued, her accent thickened on the vowels, the way it always did when she was fighting her own nerves. Somehow, he managed to take one step, then another. The motion drew him closer to her, and suddenly that was enough incentive to keep moving forward. The door closed behind him, leaving them alone in her office, and he managed to swallow around the hard lump in his throat. They'd last seen each other in the middle of a fight. Or maybe their last moment had been the night they'd spent together after that, sharing a bed despite going to sleep angry, then the silent, tense company before he'd left for work. Now they were here together again, almost four years later. He was pleased to see that she looked as good as she always had; that must mean that she was doing well for herself. That she hadn't suffered like he had. "Hi." There was more he wanted to say, but it was hard to get words out just then. “Bonjour,” she replied out of habit, out of shock a little bit too. Suddenly, it was like he was back at the University of Baltimore getting coffee with a classmate again. "Bonjour," he echoed, testing his voice's capacity for more than a single syllable. At least his accent was better now than it had been thirteen years ago. Rebecca smiled, just a little, and her disbelief built, now that they were safely ensconced in her office, away from any prying eyes, Rebecca let some of her professionalism drop. She fought the tremors in her hands, and the tears that pricked a the corner of her eyes; it was difficult to tell whether they were happy or sad tears. “I thought…” her voice broke before she could get more than those two words out. She took a steadying breath and tried again. “I thought you had died.” Imperfect, inarticulate, the tip of the iceberg. Had she made the wrong decision leaving Baltimore before she’d known if Marc was safe? He certainly looked like he’d been living a much harder life than she had. He was skinnier, a little ragged at the edges. More than he’d ever been when they’d been in Baltimore. “Joshua told me he saw you, and I didn’t believe him, and…” she cut herself off, she took a step towards him and stopped. “I thought it was wishful thinking.” One determined tear broke and trailed down her cheek. "Me, too. I wasn't sure… It was easier to think it wasn't him, what that could mean for what I'd done or how I'd left Maryland." Marc had always hated it when she cried, even more so when it was because of him. There'd been a hell of a lot of that during the last couple of months they'd had together. Near the end he'd stopped trying to make it better once it had become obvious that she wouldn't let him. And now, almost four years since they'd separated, he wasn't sure if she'd allow him the chance to try again. He couldn't help but move closer to her, too, though he was still mindful to keep a polite distance between the woman he'd once known better than anyone else in his life. "I'm glad you're both all right." Her heart stuttered in her chest. She tried to harness her misgivings, to understand them, to figure out whether she was happy, or angry, or sad. Maybe she was a little bit of each. “I’m glad you are too,” she replied. “You and Leo. Joshua will be happy to he was right.” Rebecca took another steadying breath, but gave up on controlling the tremor that fought its way through her limbs. She felt like a tree full of leaves, like she was shaken by a strong wind. Except she knew it was much more realistic that she was only overwhelmed. “You didn’t answer your phone. When I called from Chicago, you didn’t answer.” Shakily, hesitantly even, she closed what was left of the distance between them and hugged him. He tilted his head, burying his nose in her hair instinctively. Somehow, she still smelled the same as he'd remembered. “It was like the line had gone dead.” "I tried calling you, too." He'd dialed her number by memory over and over again, trying to reach them, but he'd gotten off the ship just when Baltimore had already been devolving into chaos. Marc still considered it a miracle he'd even been able to get ahold of Leo in the first place, but this moment, holding his wife in her office in a city thousands of miles away from the place they'd called home together -- that felt like a miracle, too. “I lost my phone in Baltimore,” Rebecca explained. “I was so focused on Josh it must’ve fallen out of my bag or my pocket, and I didn’t notice.” "I lost service pretty quick. That was probably why I couldn't answer when you called." He was reluctant to let go of her, almost as though she and this moment would slip away into nothingness if he pulled away. Better for her to call the shots on the hug. "Tell me how long you've been here?" With a shaky breath, Rebecca took a step back so she could look at Marc. It was strange trying to merge the man standing in front of her to the one that she had last seen in Baltimore, but not that difficult. It only brought up questions of her own. “I came in to Austin when the government regained control. Joshua and I were in Denver before that,” she told him. “They transferred me at the recommendation of my supervisors in the capital.” There was more to the story, but she didn’t want to overwhelm him with little details. “Have you been here the whole time?” No accusation in her tone, just honest curiosity. "No. Not the whole time." He wasn't sure how to explain everything that had happened to him and Leo, and he didn't want to alarm her, but he knew she'd have questions. She was smart like that. "We didn't get here until the beginning of 2017. Before then we were traveling down from Baltimore, trying to find somewhere safe. We somehow ended up here, I still don't know how, but we stayed until… March of 2018, I think." He brought a hand up and rubbed at the back of his neck, wondering how best to even put things. Austin had corrupted him into someone he could barely recognize sometimes, but it was hard to resist the urge to try and be better now that Rebecca was standing in front of him. "This city wasn't all neat and clean back then. The Hellhounds gave Leo drugs and he got hooked. Things went south real quick and… We ended up not being able to stay. Dumb luck again that we ended up finding our way back, once we heard things had gotten cleaned up." There was more than that, of course, but he wasn't sure he wanted Rebecca to see the worst of him. “How is Leo now?” It seemed like the easiest to tackle of the questions that Marc had brought up. Rebecca had heard about the Prax dealing that had happened, and how the Hellhounds played into that, but she hadn’t been witness to it. Instead she’d only been present for the gang in fighting, and that had been more than enough. “Is he still…” she trailed off because asking if he was still drug addicted felt rude, but he shook his head before she could add anything else. "No, he's okay," Marc clarified, in case the gesture hadn't been enough, and Rebecca let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. "He got clean before we left, and he's stayed clean since then, thank God." “I might need to buy Joshua that tablet he’s been begging for,” she added with a small, watery laugh. Sometime during Marc’s explanation she had started to cry a little bit, and it didn’t seem worth it to try and stop. Her husband had seen her cry before, on many occasions. “To make up for not believing him.” She took a steadying breath. “To be fair, he said you had shaved off your mustache, which hardly sounded like something you’d do.” Rebecca reached up and ran her thumb lightly across Marc’s naked upper lip with another small, shocked laugh. "Guess I always wanted a chance to go undercover," he replied with a laugh of his own. It was second nature to reach up to catch her hand in his, like all of those years hadn't happened -- just like how the sight of her tears still twisted him up. "It wasn't… I didn't want to risk the chance that we'd come back and they'd recognize us. Leo and I were both signed up with fire and the APD before all that shit went down." Rebecca furrowed her brows. “Why would it have mattered?” If he had been working for the APD, and Leo the AFD, wouldn’t they have wanted them back? Was Austin really that unforgiving of the people that had been Prax addicted or their family members? She felt like suddenly she didn’t know enough about the city that she’d been calling home, or that she was missing pieces that would have made things make more sense. "They fired him." Marc's words were blunt, but his tone was anything but. It was hard to remember a time in which he and Rebecca barely been able to have a conversation without screaming at each other, especially when he still had her hand in his. Still, he couldn't help the harsh undercurrent that did creep in as he continued: "They had zero tolerance back then. APD would leave Prax-ers out on the streets instead of taking them in for medical or custody or anything. Stopped giving me food for a month after I talked back to the Chief about it. It wasn't an option to go back." She knew she must have looked stricken at the explanation, but Rebecca couldn’t imagine rations being withheld for something as simple as that. It wasn’t the first terrible thing she’d heard about Austin before, but it never got easier, and was, in fact, probably worse because it had happened to her family. “They’ve changed, though,” she said softly, maybe to convince herself more than sway Marc’s opinion. “There’s a sober living community now. I’m sure they would be happy to help Leo, if he still needs it.” Rebecca was at a loss; she felt like she was working on a puzzle, but missing pieces. "I've heard about it." It was a step in the right direction, one that Marc hadn't been able to ignore once he started learning about how Austin had changed, but it wasn't yet enough. “And Joshua will want to see you,” she continued, thinking out loud. “But can he, if you’re using an assumed name?” "I can meet the two of you wherever you'd like." The prospect of seeing his son for real this time, sitting and talking with him and learning all about how he was doing -- he'd missed almost half of his son's life by now, and the truth of that ate at Marc daily -- was nearly too much. "The name thing doesn't matter, not when it's just you two. It's okay." Rebecca bit her lip for a moment before she replied, “If you’re sure.” Marc hadn’t ever given her a reason not to trust him, so there was no reason to second guess him now. Even if she still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the necessity of an alias. “We might want to gloss over that part with Josh, since it’s always possible he’ll tell his whole class that his dad is using two names.” She gave him a watery smile, and tried to wipe some of the tears off her face without smudging her eyeliner. “Will I need to get used to calling you Jack?” she asked him, the thought had only just struck her. "There aren't many people here who know me by that, or know my face," Marc assured her. "We can avoid the Greenbelt, too, for a little bit. That might make it easier, but it would also mean no burgers for the time being." “I can live without burgers,” she assured him. Somehow, the distance between them had been eaten up again until he was close enough to feel her breathing against him, falling fast into old habits he was happy to relearn. He brought his hand up, trailing his thumb gently over where she'd wiped at her eyes before tucking a bit of her hair behind her ear. "Things are complicated, but we'll figure it out. Together, I hope. No matter -- however that could look." They'd been on the verge of divorce four years ago, but Marc didn't want her to let her go again. Though he could easily tell her as much out loud, he settled for finding her lips with his own, aware that he was possibly overstepping but unable to resist. The kiss caught Rebecca by surprise. In all the scenarios that had been playing like white noise in the back of her mind, somehow that one hadn’t found its way in. It felt like she was falling backwards in time, familiarity and sense memory overtaking the other emotions that had been swirling in her chest. She returned the kiss with very little thought of the consequences, looping her arms around Marc’s neck, allowing herself to get lost in the moment. “I don’t mind a little complication either,” she said against his mouth, once the kiss had been broken. “I missed you.” "I missed you, too," he agreed in a rush, thrilled to hear her say what he wanted to hear. They were still so close to each other despite all of the rational components of his mind which insisted they needed to take this slow. Get to know each other again as people, or something, and then figure out how they could fit back into each other's lives. It all made perfect sense, but Marc was more interested in another kiss -- until there was a knock at the door. “Ms. Russo,” her assistant interrupted a few moments after the knock. “I had a few questions about your next,” Rebecca watched her eyes widen, and wondered if her lipstick had been smeared, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize… I can go.” Rebecca took a step away from Marc and smoothed her blouse and skirt while he backed away too, fiddling with his hair in an attempt to seem normal. “You’re fine,” she assured. “But if you wouldn’t mind giving me a minute, then we can go over your questions.” Her assistant nodded and exited again. Rebecca offered Marc an apologetic look. “Responsibilities,” she said, like that covered the multitude of why she couldn’t take any more time to talk with him. It was probably for the best though, she already felt like her world had tilted sideways a little bit. "It's all right," he told her, meaning it. If he thought about it more deeply, he'd realize how surreal it was to see her in a more professional capacity. So much of their failings as a couple had been her apparent resistance to regaining to this side of her, but he thought it flattered her. She turned to her desk and picked up one of the business cards from where she kept them and a pen, jotting her personal phone number on the bottom of it. “We can talk later,” she assured, offering the card to him. "All right." Marc pocketed the card, then -- after a moment in which he debated whether he ought to kiss her goodbye or act relatively normal, and mindful of her assistant's presence all the same -- backed away towards the door. "Goodbye, Rebecca." |