#ALSO SHOULD SAY totally don’t think of post Cairo when everything has been revealed

[tiptapricot]

Ok hc idea but what if Marc set up Stevens phone so that the voicemails to his mother actually went to him and maybe if Marc has a spare moment while fronting he'll sit with a coffee and just... Listen to Steven? Catch up with how his life is going and just feel close to him? Be proud of his boy for sticking up for himself against Donna or how he took a nice walk through the park and saw a cool bird?

This hurts me greatly.

NO BUT LITERALLY This is one of my favorite fandom headcanons because it like… makes sense. While I don’t think every one of Steven’s calls was to an actual number, I like the idea of him having his mom’s contact in his phone, or someone he believes is his mom’s contact.

Marc set up the apartment, we know that, since their mom absolutely wouldn’t have and likely never even went to England, and he’s also probably the one who sent Steven postcards. He’s done so much to build up this elaborate role to care for Steven through, because it’s his only way to interact with him semi directly while still staying in the background. And Steven’s life needs some structure to uphold its illusion, to keep it so that he can exist semi-normally separate from their trauma.

The real phone contact wasn’t their initially, I think, not at first. It was just the house and then the postcards (because Marc visited somewhere on a mission and thought about how Steven always mumbles about feeling trapped or never getting time off from work, and he thought maybe giving him a secondhand window into the rest of the world would help ease the tension. Which it did. And does. So he continues), but then Marc started noticing the calls.

Maybe Steven didn’t do them at first, maybe something about the postcards sparked his brain to talk to her again, put his mom back as a forefront relationship. Like… if she was sending him things, he should too!

Marc started out bitter about it. He’d drift near front and hear Steven chattering away like he was talking to an old friend and it made him feel… wrong, and he’d recoil and sink down so he wouldn’t have to hear it. But it kept going. It never stopped. And Marc started trying to linger close to front more frequently so he could hear about Steven’s day, but that ended up getting messy. His presence would make Steven spacey or confused because he was getting too close, their communication not really at the point of comfortable cocon at that point.

And Marc didn’t want to cause harm (which is what he’d see it as, as intruding on Steven’s life because he’s he only one of them who gets to have that and Marc has already taken so much all he does is steal, doesn’t he?), and so he came up with the contact. He wired it to a burner phone, one he didn’t use for anything else, and labeled it “Mum💖🐊!” and Steven started calling it seamlessly, rattling on to a number that never talked back, to an empty message line.

The messages are always cut off at the start, since Steven usually starts talking before it goes to voicemail, but Marc still gets enough. Steven will slip out of front after a long day, or Marc will push into control for a mission, and there’s something there waiting for him. If he doesn’t have a mission, he’ll sit on Steven’s bed and flip open the little phone, the screen illuminating his face in blue in the dark, and there’ll be a message or two waiting.

(“Hey Mum! You won’t believe it but today I had an amazing chat with a bloke at work…. Yeah! He was some type of exchange student, I think, agreed that tons of the junk we’re selling is inaccurate… Right? It’s a bloody relief that’s what it is. He was quite nice, actually, though I don’t think he’ll be coming back. Shame that. Leaving me stuck with Donna.” Laughter crackles over the speakers.)

If he does have a mission, he listens to the messages on plane rides, and in the back of jeeps, and in the steamy bathroom of a hotel where he’s trying to scrub the blood from his hands.

(“Hey Mum!” “Helloo!” “Mornin’!” “Love you so much, bye!”)

Marc holds the phone so tight to his ear sometimes he’s worried it’ll break. (But it won’t. It’s a nokia for a reason)

The messages allow him to keep tabs on pieces of Steven’s life he can’t be present for, make sure he’s still comfortable and catch any events that might run into time he has to be away. It can be a bit patchy sometimes, since Steven doesn’t always actually press the call button, doesn’t always actually talk to anything, but that’s ok. Marc’s gotten good at taking what he can get, at grasping at scraps.

He’ll answer sometimes, if he’s alone. Pretends like Steven’s talking to him for real. He’ll respond in the space of the blank pauses and hope the reply matches up alright, and sometimes he can almost forget he’s talking to a recording and not the real thing… until the usual “Lators gators!” Steven always tacks on to the end. That always makes Marc’s breath stutter.

It’s stupid. It shouldn’t. He isn’t really part of Steven’s life, not really, so he shouldn’t expect it to feel real. He’s forging a fantasy to step in by proxy, to give him access to information and… a voice. Someone to talk to, even if they aren’t really talking back. It’s close enough. He makes it work.

Sometimes he wonders, though, how close it is to the truth.

Steven says “Mum,” and Marc listens, and wonders how much he takes after her, if his voice raises the same way and carries the same force, if his anger would make others scared like hers did, if he drinks the same way she does, for the same reasons.

Steven says “Mum,” and Marc hears it, and eventually it gets hard to distinguish where the act ends and he begins.

“She” isn’t like this, not like he makes her out to be, not real, but he is. “She” didn’t leave a letter under the door with twisting letters and a reminder to eat regularly, but he did. “She” didn’t leave a little wrapped present for the mail desk to get to him, didn’t look through online pet stores until he found some suitably nerdy tank decorations, but he did.

“She” didn’t care for Steven, but Marc does.

And he’s not quite sure he can stop.