Summary: Anon Bad Things Happen Bingo request for Black Eye! Steven gets mugged. Jake and Marc are all >:C about it. TW for a lil bit of blood and descriptions of the mugging, but it's not any more violent than the show was
The first thing Marc noticed when he took control was that everything hurt a lot more than he remembered. His legs ached like he'd just sprinted miles, his stomach and ribs twinged with every tiny movement, the warm water from the sink running over his hands soothed cold, his bruised fingers, and his face...
The second thing he noticed was that he could only see out of one eye.
He looked up into the mirror and swore.
He wasn't wearing a shirt, probably to avoid it being stained by the blood slowly dripping from their busted upper lip. Their right eye was swollen shut, quickly turning purple in the mirror. Bruises littered his torso like fallen leaves at the beginning of autumn, making it impossible to move without a painful hiss.
"Fuck, Jake, what did you do this time?" he muttered, sighing at his reflection. He got a washcloth out of the cupboard and ran it under the water as he reached out in his mind for Jake. "C'mon man, get your ass out here, c'mon--"
"Yeah yeah I'm here, I'm here, whattaya want?" Marc gave a sigh of relief at Jake's gruff voice, and almost smiled at his tired tone but found it was rather painful to do so.
"What happened man?" Marc said. "You're supposed to stick around and tell us what happened when the body gets beat up like this."
"¿Qué? No se--" Jake finally looked up at their reflection, and his left eye widened. He brought a red, bruised hand up to their face, gingerly brushing his fingers over their busted lip and black eye. "¿Qué pasó? The hell didja do to us, Marc? We don't have Khonshu's armor anymore, you can't let us get chewed up like this."
"Me? I thought you did this," Marc said, bringing the wet washcloth up to wipe the dried blood and dirt off their face.
But as soon as the words left his mouth, Marc's heart started to pound, cold blood freezing him in place.
"Dios mío--"
"Steven-- shit, Steven buddy, where are you, what happened?" He let the washcloth splash down into the half-full sink, red blood blossoming in the water like poppies. Marc gripped the mirror in front of him, searching his own eyes and clawing around in his mind for Steven.
Suddenly his reflection avoided his gaze, and crumpled in on himself.
"Steven!" Marc breathed.
"¿Qué pasó? You alright?"
"I-I'm fine, lads, really," Steven's reflection said softly. "We er... we got mugged. Or, he tried to mug us."
"What? What do you mean 'tried'?"
"Didja fight 'em off? I didn't know you had it in ya!" Jake said with a laugh, but Steven crossed his arms over his bruised ribs and closed his one open eye.
"No. I didn't have our wallet on us, there was nothing for him to steal. It was j-just supposed to be a walk, it was nice outside, and I thought it would be g-good for us, and--"
Tears leaked from their eyes as Steven's reflection started to cry.
"Oh, oh no, Steven, buddy--"
"He had a club, Marc!" Steven snapped suddenly, this time using the body to speak instead of his reflection. He hugged their torso, and Marc could feel their entire body starting to shake. "He didn't believe me when I said I didn't have anything, he beat me up anyway! I tried to fight, but we don't have the suit anymore and knocked me down so fast--He hit me so many times with that club--"
"Steven, hey, slow down buddy, you're safe now." Marc hoped his tone was soothing, and he felt Jake take over control of their movements, taking up the washcloth again and gently wiping the tears away.
"H-he only let me go after I said I didn't want to die," Steven whispered. Jake froze with the cloth at their chin, and Marc felt his breath catch in his throat. "I think he realized what he was doing. He left, and then I ran home."
Marc felt his heart sink slowly, painfully down to his feet as he processed what Steven had just said.
He'd thought he was going to die. He'd been so scared that he thought he would die. In all their time in Cairo, Steven had never once believed he would die. Even when they fought Harrow and Jake had to save them, Marc knew that Steven had never thought they would die.
This person didn't even have superpowers. They were just an asshole with a bat.
And yet this was what had made Steven fear for his life.
"Steven, I'm... I'm so sorry," Marc said softly. "I should've been there. This wasn't supposed to happen to you, you're not supposed to go through these things--"
"Marc, stop," Steven groaned suddenly. "You don't need to control what happens to me anymore. I didn't want you to come out. I stopped you on purpose."
"What?" Jake's starkly rough voice spoke for the first time in a while, and he let the washcloth fall down into the sink again. Steven clenched their jaw, swallowing nervously and avoiding the mirror.
"I er... I could feel you both starting to wake up. So I stopped you, I held onto the front so you wouldn't take over."
"Steven, why the hell would you do that!?" Marc snapped. "We could've helped you! We could've fought him off, you could've--"
"You always take the hit, Marc!" Steven finally stared right into their one open eye, anger instead of fear blazing inside it now. "You too, Jake! Every time something starts to go south you both shove me out! You're always the ones that get beat up, that get kicked when you're already down! You're always trying to protect me! And maybe I thought I could save you both the hassle this time, alright!?"
Steven breathed heavily for a moment before tearing away his gaze again and stalking out of the bathroom, bruises aching and smarting as he roughly grabbed a shirt out of an open drawer.
"I thought maybe I could be the one to protect you two this time!" Steven spat as he pulled on the shirt. "Maybe I could be bloody useful for once! Maybe I didn't have to be a stupid, useless, blubbering idiot this time! Maybe I couldn't beat him but I thought at least you wouldn't have to be the ones to get hurt this time! Just once, one time, I didn't want you to be scared!"
Marc didn't say anything to that. Neither did Jake. But Marc had the feeling that they were both thinking the same thing.
Marc hated this feeling. Seeing Steven so hurt, seeing how he winced and hissed at every movement, how he could tell Steven was in a lot more pain than he was letting on.
He hated feeling useless.
"Is this how you feel?" Jake said suddenly, his voice low and concerned.
Steven fidgeted with his fingers as he shuffled over to their bed, easing himself down carefully. "How I feel...?"
"How you feel... how you feel when one of us comes home like this?"
Steven gave a cheerless laugh and leaned back against the headboard, swiping up his rubik's cube and mindlessly clicking pieces into place.
"What, you thought I liked to see you guys beat up?" Steven shook his head, and Marc was sure he was fighting not to roll his eyes. "I know you're angry. I can feel it, I know you're mad. I know you don't want me to get hurt, you've made that quite clear. But are you really telling me you both just, never considered that I don't like seeing you two getting hurt either?"
Marc's lungs suddenly felt like they were being crushed by his own rib cage, but he couldn't tell if that was Jake's dread or his own.
"Shit," Marc muttered, leaning his head back against the bed frame.
"Lo siento, Steven," Jake said. "You're not useless."
The rubik's cube in their hands suddenly ceased clicking, and Marc felt their face flush.
"I-It's alright!" Steven said quickly. Marc raised an eyebrow at the rubik's cube.
"It's not, Steven," he said. "We shouldn't shut you out like that. After everything in Cairo, I thought we'd work on everything together, but I guess old habits die hard. And I'm... I'm sorry too. We'll try to do better."
Surprisingly, this did not seem to help Steven calm down at all. In fact, he felt their face flush even hotter, and their heart started to pound as Steven quickly put his face in his hands.
"It feels weird when people apologize to me," Steven muttered, answering Marc's silent question. "I'm really not used to it. Usually they brush me off, or say it's my fault somehow."
Marc laughed and lifted their face again, scratching the back of his head.
"Well if it helps, Jake and I uh... we're not used to people caring that we got beat up," he said. "At least we know how each of us feels now."
"Sí," Jake said. "No more locking out Steven, right, Marc?"
"Right."
"And Steven--"
"Yeah I won't be doing this again either," Steven said with a nervous laugh. "I like working together much better."
Jake smiled.
"Good. Now let's go get some ice. I don't think we'll be able to see outta this eye for a week."
A/N: Hey everyone, I hope you liked this! If you want to request a Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt for me to write, my board is on my tumblr!