Who: Steven and Marc When: Backdated to last Saturday after this Where: Steven's flat What: Just a chat. hahahahaaaaaaah shit Open: Ask first
Steven sat at the kitchen table in his apartment, both hands wrapped round a mug of peppermint tea - good for anxiety and nervous stomachs, apparently, and oh fuck did he have an anxious nervous stomach right now - and tried to work out why there were now going to be two videos that people thought were of him, when he knew damn well he'd been asleep. And this seemed a bit more involved than just sleepwalking. Unless Sleeptalking, sleep-hammering-on-locked-doors, sleep-interacting-with-nothing and so on were all subsets of sleepwalking. He had the feeling that they weren't.
"Steven."
And then there was that voice. He'd been hearing it ever since Wanda had texted him. Like his voice, if he'd been a Yank.
"Steven, I need... we need to talk."
He didn't want to talk to the voice. He didn't want to even acknowledge that the voice existed, because once that started, you were on a slippery slope to being utterly batshit, weren't you, and he had enough going on with his anxiety and his sleepwalking and subsequent not-sleeping things. He didn't fancy having "Fucking Lunatic" added to the list, to be honest.
"Steven, please, can you go find a mirror or turn the lights on full in here and look at the window or something. We need to talk, it's important."
The voice sounded just this side of panic, but Steven just closed his eyes and sipped at the tea, and did his best to ignore things.
"Okay, fine, look down. Into the mug, fucking hell... Yeah, hi."
Steven set the mug down on the table very carefully, because holy shit, his reflection was moving when he wasn't. And that wasn't how things were supposed to work, was it? No. Not in the slightest.
"What the hell," he muttered, and moved back.
"What? No, Steven, come back, please. I just want to talk to you. About the videos."
"I don't want to talk to you. I'm going crazy. I've flipped, what the hell. Oh, shit, am I even in Space? Maybe I'm back in my flat and I've snapped and this is all a delusion. Some really fucking weird delusion, but then it would be, right? It's a delusi-"
"STEVEN! Calm down, come on buddy, just listen to me, that's all I'm asking, please!"
"I don't want to," he said softly, because why the hell was his mug of tea asking to talk to him? But he still got shakily to his feet and crossed over to the lightswitch. The lights went on full brightness, the view of space dimmed, and Steven's reflection... stopped pacing and looked back at him.
"Thank you. Okay, so. The videos, yeah? Your friend Wanda, and, and the one the Doc had. That's me. Not you."
"What the hell? You're... You're me?" So much for not talking back to the voices, dipshit.
His reflection frowned at that. "I'm not a voice, and you're not a dipshit. Okay, well, I'm not just a voice. And we're... I'm Marc. And we..."
Steven repeated his reflection's name quietly to himself, before frowning back at Marc. "What? We what?"
"We share a body. I'm... why you thought you were sleepwalking." Marc was running a hand through his hair over and over, and pacing again, while Steven stayed still and watched everything, fingers twisting together nervously.
"You. You're why I'm not sleeping?"
"Yeah."
"You're why I'm exhausted all the bloody time, and why I wake up in the weirdest of places? You were in that park! And when I'd wake up out in the street, or in the lift back home or-"
"Yes. That was me."
"What are you? Are you, like, a ghost?"
"What? No. Why does everyone think... I'm not a damn ghost. You're not possessed. We just share a body, I told you," Marc replied, looking just as exhausted and worn out as Steven felt.
"But that's... That's-"
"Look. We don't have to tell anyone, right? We'll keep on like before, you get the body during the day, I'll get it at night, and it'll be fine. You're not sleepwalking, it's just me exploring this place."
"I'm crazy. I'm insane, I'm literally fucking insane. Oh, bloody hell." His head swam a little, and he grabbed for the nearest thing to steady himself, the back of his reading chair, before looking round him.
"You're not - We're not insane. Steven... Wait. Wait, Steven, what are you, where are you going?"
"I'm fucked in the head. I'm having an argument with my reflection, who's called Marc, because why the hell not? Stay here. I need to, Oh, fuck, I need to talk to Dr. Cuddy." He grabbed his jacket out of habit and pulled it on, before heading for his front door.
"NO. No, Steven, no, please, don-""
The door closed behind him, cutting off Marc's panicked response, and he started walking towards the bank of lifts that would take him to medbay. Annoyingly, the walls and floors were reflective enough that he could hear 'Marc' following after him. But that was okay. What could a reflection do to him?