Externalizing [mxm]

Chapter 5

“I can make something easy for her. Mac’n’cheese or something,” Brendan offered. “And I can crash on the couch afterwards.”

“There’s a guest room upstairs too,” Marc said. He looked at his sorry attempt for soup and debated on cleaning that up before Brendan came, or just leaving it on the stove until the next day.

“I’ll be over soon. Text me your address,” Brendan said.

Marc did so and ran upstairs to get into his office. He had to search for all of the right authorization papers and passwords that he had set aside, thinking he would never need them. Of course now he needed them.

There was a knock on the door later, so he let Brendan in. “I tried to make soup, just ignore it. You have my cell number—“ Marc took a moment to process that Brendan had an armful of art projects. “Shit, sorry. Were you grading or something?”

“Nothing I can’t do here,” Brendan chuckled. “Go save the computers.”

Marc ran out of the house and to his car. Traffic was at least minimal. The building was mostly dead, aside from the tech workers and a few other people trying to fix the problem. Marc turned over all of his authorization papers as they were needed, and watched as they tried to fix the problem.

Of course, this meant all of his work was at risk too. Still he was checking the time and hoping that Brendan wasn’t forced to stay the night. He would feel terrible for that.

He was lucky with it; they let him leave at ten, knowing he had to be home at some point. He got there and Brendan was still awake, sitting on the couch with art projects strewn across the living room as he was watching TV.

“Oh, so you’re back. Did it all get fixed?” Brendan asked.

“We’ll see in the morning.” Marc really didn’t want to think about it right then.

The red blinking of the answering machine caught his eye, making him stall. “Someone called?” Someone being a vague term for his father.

“Yeah, I didn’t think it was my place to answer though. Left a voicemail,” Brendan answered offhandedly. It probably wasn’t that hard to figure out that it was Marc’s dad anyways.

“Thanks,” Marc muttered, rubbing the back of his head. Brendan didn’t push it and started collecting all of the art projects he had set out. “Thanks for staying here with Ariel. Did you drive here? I didn’t see a car outside.”

“No I got a friend to drive me. I can just call her really quick to come and get me,” Brendan said, putting everything into a stack.

“No—shit. Let me get Ariel, and I’ll drive you home. She can sleep in the car for a few minutes.” Marc ran upstairs and pulled her carefully out of the bed. She groaned in confusion, so he shushed her and patted her on the back. “Just a short car ride, sweetie. You can go back to sleep.” He grabbed a blanket and carried her down into the car.

“Thanks for the ride,” Brendan said quietly as he got in the front seat.