𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙑.
MAROON
──────
NEW YORK
PEACE WAS ADDICTIVE.
It was that sort of evening that Mark reverted to whenever he needed something to balance himself out.
His hand on the steering wheel, his girl in the passenger seat beside him and half-abandoned Manhattan streets that seemed to never settle.
He was supposed to be concentrating on the stripped road in front of him, gently cruising across the city as if he wasn't too concerned about chasing the sunrise. He was supposed to be unconditionally staring at the stop signs and the traffic lights and the flickering traffic, but he found his gaze wandering.
Every time, he came back to Beth.
She was gently curled into herself, her chin resting on her shoulder as she fell into a liminal slumber indicative of the wine she'd drank during the evening.
He found himself glancing over at her all too often, caught off-guard by how quiet and peaceful she looked in her haziness; how her chest rose and fell with every breath and she seemed unbothered by the gentle rock of the car as Mark tried his best to break softly around corners.
Her makeup had smudged gradually through the evening, her lipstick blurred and her hair slightly unruly from the way she'd dozed off almost immediately-- a light smile played on his lips.
She just looked peaceful.
In his peripheral, he watched the brake lights from passing cars streak across her face, painting her in a red light that seems too violent for the moment.
Everything is too soft and tender; the city is muted, gentle Balzaretti piano suite on the radio and even Mark, in some intervals, felt the impulse to hold his breath as if to not startle the sleeping woman beside him.
It felt like the sort of moment that would feel golden in it's recollection.
That it would make things feel a little less stormy and a little more light. He didn't have many of these: peaceful, tender moments that he felt hesitant to interrupt or ruin. Their days were always so rushed and fast, filled with chaos and blood and raised voices exchanging orders. He didn't get moments like these, at least not anymore.
He didn't get to see Beth sleep, their schedules were so disordered; he wasn't used to seeing her in peace. He almost felt like favouring it, like driving the long route around the island to just experience it before the moment ended.
Mark let this thought trouble him almost, his brow creasing as he turned his eyes back to the road and considered taking a shortcut to get her home.
"What are you thinking about?"
Beth started speaking.
Her voice was quiet. Everything was so quiet.
He shot a glance over at her. Her eyes were still closed. A passing lamp post illuminated the way she shuffled slightly in her seat, drawing her body tighter into itself as she flirted with the idea of sleeping.
At first he'd thought he'd imagined it. Maybe he had? But then he allowed himself to hum lightly, a tentative, low sound that wouldn't startle her but would set out an invitation for a response if she had spoken.
"You're thinking," She said.
He glanced over at her at a stop light. The sight of her eyes gleaming through the din made him start slightly as if he hadn't expected her to actually be conscious.
Her dark eyes followed the way he tilted his head inquisitive.
"I can hear them," Beth said, "All those thoughts buzzing around that big head of yours."
He looked away, shaking his head carefully, "I wasn't."
"Hm," Beth mused, her voice sleepy and light, "The man lies."
They were coming home from one of Addison's weekly dinners. Mark hadn't drunk anything because he'd driven in from across the city. Beth had come straight from a shift, bleary-eyed and complaining how she'd torn a ladder in her tights while changing in the locker room.
He hadn't seen her all week, not since they'd had a brief kiss on New Year's Eve, neither of them taking the holiday off to attend Addison's annual party. He was beginning to feel as though he was lucky to get the time that he got.
And, just as Beth had sensed, he had lied.
"I was thinking that you must be tired," Mark corrected his previous statement, causing her to chuckle to herself. He smiled to himself. It was nice to hear it. "I feel like I never see you sleep."
"I'm busy," Beth mumbled into the sleeve of Mark's jacket.
It looked so large on her that she looked so tiny. He almost didn't catch the words, but she moved, the crinkle of fabric filling the cracks where white noise fizzled at their ears.
"I'm always so busy," She said.
It was said in a tired way, as if she was, in that moment, realising how many hours in the day that weren't hers.
Mark's jaw clenched slightly, his throat tightening as he listened to the exhausted, tired sigh that followed her words. She was busy. She was busy to the point where they were both all too aware of the fact that she was going to burn herself out. He didn't understand how Beth could do it, how she could sprint without needing to stop to catch her breath.
He bit down on the tip of his tongue.
Beth had turned her chin to stare out at the passing streets, eyes glazing over street lamps and lit windows.
When he glanced over at her, this time, he was met with the back of her head. He couldn't see the expression on her face but he could hear the breath that left her; it was another exhale of pure air, of exhaustion and stress.
It caused goosebumps to rise on the back of his neck--
"I'm sorry I'm never there."
An apology? A dent appeared between his eyebrows. For the second time, he thought that he'd misheard her-- an apology? Why was she sorry for--?
They came to another stop sign and he found himself meeting her eye, watching as Beth swallowed her yawn and gave him a strained smile.
It was such a gentle expression that he almost forgot that they were sat in a car in the middle of Manhattan. She saw the look of confusion that flickered across his face so hesitantly and searched his eyes, her pupils bouncing from one eye to the other.
He knew what she meant.
He knew exactly what she was referring to.
She was talking about how they never had moments like these, how they never were able to spend the night, how they only had moments that felt stuck in between places or in transitions. How they only had minutes or seconds and never hours or days.
"It's okay," Mark said in response.
He didn't really know what else to say.
His eyes returned to the road in front of them. (He wasn't sure whether it was okay. He wasn't sure about many things when it came to her.) He could tell that his reply didn't satisfy her.
She seemed to let the silence stretch out between them for a little too long, staring at the side of his face.
(It was within moments like these that Mark could feel it, the hesitation that they both had when it came to saying things that they really meant. He wished he was better at communication. He wished he knew what to say.)
"I'm sorry," She repeated.
"It's okay," He repeated and he didn't look at her this time.
In his peripheral, he could see the way that Beth seemed to shrink even smaller in her seat, her arms folding tighter over herself and her shoulders sinking.
"We're going to figure it out, okay?" He said, "We've got time."
"We have?"
"Yeah," Mark hummed as he felt her eyes stick to the profile of his face; absently, he itched at the side of his nose, wondering whether Beth was still drunk from the bottles of wine. "We've got all the time in the world-- I'm not in a rush, are you?"
He said it matter-of-factly as if it startled him to think of anything else.
He caught the way Beth smiled, leaning her head back until the crown of her head brushed against the headrest and she was staring at the ceiling a stretch away from them.
Her smile didn't fade, not even when he could tell her mood dipped a little.
"You don't like sleeping alone..."
Beth, meanwhile, donned the exact same tone. It wasn't a question. It was declarative.
It was indifferent as if she'd just made a comment about the passing scenery, but it had a lasting effect. His grasp on the steering wheel tightened.
"You wait for me to come home before you sleep," Beth said, "Sometimes I find it hard too."
Again, he had no idea how to respond to that.
Beth was watching him so closely, catching every single muscle that tensed in his face as he let those words just settle in the car. Since when had it felt like such a small space?
He could, somehow, feel every single breath that escaped her lips-- it was as if her every movement was an extension of his own.
When Beth looked over at him, he felt contractually obliged to look back.
They held each other's gaze in a world illuminated by the brake light of the car in front of them. Her face was red. His jacket was red. The half-smile (half glossed in sadness and half in tenderness) was blood red.
Idly, Mark wondered whether his thoughts were red too-- because they were there, there were so many that had tumbled around the dustbowl at the back of his head as soon as Beth had shared her observation.
He swallowed as he felt them line up, one by one on his tongue, ready for deployment.
"I don't really like the dark."
Mark felt oddly like a kid admitting that to his girlfriend.
He was glad that the world was red, otherwise, she would've seen the flush of his cheeks as he realised how embarrassing that sounded aloud. (It was the sort of thing he'd carried from childhood and it had always stuck. It had come from long nights alone in his childhood home. Long dark and cold nights, the sort that had chilled him to the core.)
What he wasn't sure whether he was glad about, was the way that Beth nodded gently, propping her chin up with her knuckle.
Her lips twitched into a wider smile.
"I know," She said, her breath almost condensing on the cold air. It carried on a pink cloud, one which Mark watched thin into transparency. Beth's eyes glimmered slightly as she continued. "That's why I leave the light on."
That flush returned, but this time, it wasn't particularly because of the embarrassment.
It was because he'd been able to tell-- he'd made too many comments about it while living with her, on how Beth seemed to leave lights on when she left for work in the early hours and how she just seemed determined to increase their electricity bill. He'd teased her for it.
But now, with Beth grinning at him softly, he couldn't help but smile back. It didn't feel contractual this time.
"I don't really like silence."
Her confession felt a lot less substantial than his, but it was a confession all the same. It felt oddly weird for the two of them to be talking about this, all on a drive home.
They were two adults exchanging childhood fears as if they were trading cards.
He couldn't suppress the amusement that raised in him as Beth cringed in the corner of his eye, as if he hadn't been able to pick up on it from the moment he'd met her.
"I know," Mark replied, just as she'd responded before. He briefly met her eye and inclined his head in the direction of the radio. "I'm not really a fan of classical music."
"Really?," She almost scoffed, her eyebrows raising at the realisation that he'd been playing music for her this whole time. "You realise it's called classical for a reason, right?"
"It's not my thing," He said with a slight shrug, smiling at her surprise. Maybe he was a better actor than he'd realised? "But you love it so I guess I must kinda like it by proxy, right?"
The expression on Beth's face almost caught him off-guard.
It was so soft, so soft that he wondered how it'd feel in the palm of his hand. Everything about her was already hazy, that delicious hazy that came from just the right degree of wine drunk, but this was beautifully blurry.
Her eyes seemed to scramble across his face, catching him as he, at the mention of the radio station, leant over and adjusted the volume, turning it up as if to make a point.
Hey, the action said, I care too.
"Just like Christmas," Beth said with a flicker in her eye.
"Just like Christmas," He agreed.
She chuckled and turned her head back to the window.
"We've got time," Mark continued, nodding his head lightly to (Chopin? He felt like he'd listened to enough concertos to say that this was Chopin, but he was not confident enough to be corrected by someone like Beth who seemed to drown in piano suites in pursuit of sleep) the music. The chuckle that left Beth's lips made his heart swell. "We'll get that apartment when you finish your internship and by then I'll be fully settled at the practice with Derek... we'll find time."
"You think?" Beth asked, her voice hushed.
He nodded, "I know. We've got this."
(Beth was thinking too.)
(She was thinking about how she loved this side of him.)
(It was exciting, it gave her hope. A part of her had been feeling as though she was slowly losing her grasp on things; it felt as though her fingers were greased and she was trying to hold onto everything while gravity dragged it all down and down and-- this was a relief.)
(She looked at Mark with round eyes that almost felt like flickering with tears. She appreciated his attitude. She needed to feel like something was stable because she was scared that it was going to be the last thing left.)
Mark, meanwhile, was concentrated on the object in his pocket.
It'd been there for exactly three days and had followed him from pant to pant, jacket to jacket and he'd stuffed it there so frantically when she'd gotten cold. The thought of it made his tongue tie. It made his brain skid to a halt and his thoughts tumble into one and another and his skin go clammy-- but it was there. It was there.
The square-shaped indent in his pocket.
He hoped that she appreciated his words because he felt as though he was making this all up as he went along. They had the time and Mark was trying his best to be patient.
He was trying his best to be the sort of person who could say things like We've got time and flash a honeysuckle smile. He was trying and trying and--
"We've fucking got this," Beth repeated, "Walk in the park."
Her voice strangled by a yawn as she inhaled frozen air through her nostrils, blustered by the January chill. She shivered, drawing his jacket closer to her body and, catching the movement, Mark made a move to turn up the heating.
"God," She said, "When this is over, I'm going to sleep for a thousand years."
Mark laughed.
"Yeah," He said, glancing up at the moon over their heads, "A nap sounds real good right now."
"How long?" She murmured, seeming to stray back into her sleepy haze. "How long 'till we're home?"
Her hand crept into his lap, in the lazy way that he supposed that he wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't for the fact that he was so aware of the item in his pocket; his less dominant hand flew straight off of the steering wheel and caught her fingers.
She hadn't been promiscuous, she'd been seeking this, the feeling of his thumb running across her knuckles-- Mark's breathing hitched, his heart skipping a beat in his chest as he realised how close he was to a lot of very interesting questions.
He wondered whether she could feel the air stutter out of his nose as he lifted her arm upwards and pressed a kiss to the back of her palm.
"Not long now," Mark mumbled against her skin, "We're nearly there."
"I'm so fucking exhausted," She said it so quietly, but his reaction felt so loud.
His jaw locked again and his eyes sought the silhouette of her against the window, her body desperately squished into whatever comfortable position she could find.
Mark felt a pressure build in his chest and he nodded even though her eyes were closed.
"Yeah," He said, never knowing exactly what to say, "I know, baby."