Chapter 3
Edmund paused in pulling ingredients from the fridge and approached Marvin, from the other side of the counter.
"What reason do you think there is for such a thing?"
Marvin goes to automatically answer with something righteous, 'There is no good reason', he thinks he's meant to think.
But he's curious to the actual reason, so for the first time in he can't remember how long, Marvin allows himself to make eye contact.
To look.
"All in for Childhood trauma," Marvin says.
Edmund watches him for a very long moment, then he turns and heads back to the fridge.
"You've been telling me things about myself all evening, Marvin."
Marvin shrugs.
"You've got cannibalism, I've got empathy.
It's my thing."
The other man turns back to face him.
"Your thing?"
Marvin nods, before he leans forward and whispers loud enough for Edmund to hear, "
I see you.
" He's going to die soon, he might as well be as creepy as he wants.
There's a beat.
"Do you
see
everyone?"
"I could if I wanted to," he says.
"If I looked close enough."
"How close is close enough?" Edmund asks.
"Too close."
Edmund pulls a few more vegetables out of the fridge before grabbing a chopping board and very sharp looking knife and getting to work.
Marvin is just about accepting that he'll be spending the rest of his life in silence when Edmund speaks.
"The winter was cold and food was scarce," he says, "and Liv and I no longer had any parents to speak of.
She was barely old enough to talk." When Edmund says the girl's name, the sound is rich with emotion.
Marvin can feel the forceful shove of love grief anger fear regret pain so strongly that he feels breathless with it.
"Everything the men tried to scavenge was inedible," he continues, skipping parts of the story that Marvin fills in with his mind.
"She had pneumonia, they said.
She would die anyway."
"They're all dead now?" Marvin asks, gritting his teeth against the sudden desire to hurt something.
It's not really a question.
"
Basil leaves
," he says, instead of the answer that they both know, as he sits aside the sauce he has made during their conversation to start picking out herbs.
"is the Galenrian term for tying together a mixture of herbs for flavouring." He looks entirely composed, as if he hadn't just re-lived trauma and Marvin thinks that
this
is what Edmund is.
Control.
Perfect control.
It had been visible in the way he'd been so nonchalant for the entire evening - even when he'd seen a witness to him committing a crime, he hadn't as much as tensed.
He's the type of man, Marvin thinks, that the world is forced to bow to.
Marvin looks at the sauce that Edmund has made.
He feels an odd longing to taste Edmund's cooking, to know more than just how he thinks.
He wants to know how he cooks, how he sleeps, what he reads, how he finds the time to do all that and work and hunt.
He wants to know everything but he never will.
He decides he can at least know
this
, dipping a wayward spoon into the mixture and tasting.
It's an amazing sensation on his taste buds.
He knew it would be.
He closes his eyes so that he has a moment that entirely revolves around the one sense and he smiles.
Edmund is watching him when he opens his eyes.
"Would you like to taste?" Marvin asks him.
The man steps right up in front of Marvin and, still watching him, dips two fingers into the sauce, pausing for a moment before smearing it across Marvin's neck.
Edmund leans his head forward and Marvin's thoughts start jumping all over the place because he isn't seriously about to - and yep, Edmund sucks.
Marvin's eyes close involuntarily at the pleasant pressure as it makes his nerves dance in response and his hand comes up to tightly grip the back of Edmund's vest, pulling his body as close as humanly possible.
Marvin tilts his neck to give the other man better access and he's pretty sure this is going on for a little longer than absolutely necessary - not that he's complaining at all.
His brain tries to startle him at the idea that the other man might bite him, but the thought turns out to be oddly appealing and Marvin is pretty sure he makes a noise to express that fact although his mind is kind of short circuiting so he can't be sure.
Yeah, he's definitely okay with being eaten if it's getting down by this guy's mouth.
Then, as soon as it had begun, Edmund pulls away and goes back to chopping vegetables looking a lot less ruffled than Marvin would have preferred.
He looks down at the rhythmic movement of the blade as his thoughts begin to catch up with him.
He thinks of Edmund's little sister and begins to devise what happens next in the story.
"You grow up and make yourself stronger.
You're smarter, fitter, more capable.
You find each of them and you let them know pain.
They'll never feel the same amount as you did, but it's something.
And then it's done.
But it isn't.
You've already built yourself to be exquisite at the hunt.
You've become a true predator and a predator doesn't just quit and turn itself back into prey," Marvin says.
He empathises.
He
understands
.