Archive of Our Own ^beta

Steven is waiting at the door to the Arrivals hall at Heathrow when Marc comes out. He’s wearing jeans and a scruffy jumper, and he looks like he should’ve had a haircut about a month ago, because Steven always looks like he should’ve had a haircut a month ago. Marc can remember a time when even getting their shared body’s hair cut was fraught – he’d spent years gelling back hair that was always slightly longer than he would’ve liked, not willing to risk having it cut as short as he wanted in case Steven noticed. These days, he has military-short hair again, although every time Layla sees Steven she wistfully notes that she always liked Marc’s hair longer.

Marc spots Steven before Steven sees him, which gives him a few valuable seconds to brace himself. It’s been four months since the last time he was in London – not the longest stretch they’ve ever gone between visits, but long enough. The wave of emotion which crashes over him when he sees Steven again is intense but at least it’s familiar enough that he knows what to expect. Relief always comes first, because texts and emails and phone calls are fine, but there’s something about seeing Steven in the flesh which provides the incontrovertible proof Marc’s brain needs in order to know that Steven is safe, and that has always been the most important thing of all. Relief is followed by a brief but potentially destabilizing sense of the wrongness of Steven being over there and not in here, and when his conscious mind catches up with the reality of their separation, that feeling in turn shifts into a complicated mixture of emotions that Marc would prefer not to interrogate too much. Chief among them, though, impossible to ignore, is the sense of longing which has been his constant companion since the day they chose this.

Then Steven spots Marc and smiles in greeting. His smile is open, shadowless, joyful. Happiness has always come easily to Steven.

Marc goes over to Steven and they face each other with space between them, probably looking oddly formal for two obviously related people reuniting. They have a strict no-physical-contact-in-public rule for these occasions. The potential risk of one or both of them getting overwhelmed is too high.

“It’s good to see you,” Steven says, in what Marc knows is the understatement of the century. “Can I take your bag?”

“Sure.” Marc doesn’t really need help with his luggage – he’s only going to be in London for a few days and his travel-heavy lifestyle means that he’s supremely good at packing light. But Steven always insists on taking it, and Marc has accepted that it’s easier to let him than get into a polite fight about it. He hands it over, and they both take care to make sure they don’t touch as Steven takes it from him.

As they start to head for the exit of the Arrivals hall, they pass a woman and a very small child. The toddler looks up at Marc and Steven and does a double-take which is comical in its obviousness. He points. “Same, Mama! Same!”

The woman looks down at her child and then up at the two of them. She gives them a half-shrug and an apologetic smile, excuse-my-kid in the universal language of parenting. “They’re identical twins, sweetie,” she tells the little boy. “Twins look the same. That’s normal.”

The woman and child move off. “Yeah, that’s us,” Marc says to Steven quietly when they’re no longer in earshot. “Completely normal.”

Steven laughs.

Out in the car park, Marc gets in the passenger side of Steven’s car and waits while Steven stows his bag in the trunk. Steven gets in, goes to turn on the engine and then stops. He twists in his seat, reaches across and puts his hand at the back of Marc’s head, pulling him toward himself so that their foreheads touch. Marc raises his hand and cups Steven’s cheek, the skin warm and a little stubbly under his palm. A tightness in his chest eases.

Steven takes a shaky breath. “God. I’m fine for months and every time you come back it hits me like a ton of bricks. Every time.”

They stay like that for a couple of minutes, until eventually Steven pulls away and says, “Right, we should go before the parking charge rolls over into another hour.”

The conversation during the car journey from Heathrow to Steven and Issy’s house – Marc can’t think of it as his, even though he bought it – is mostly taken up with catching up on the small bits of news which aren’t important enough to make it into their steady exchange of emails, texts and phone calls. Issy is doing well at school; she’s very good at English, history and foreign languages but doesn’t like math. She’s still getting better grades than Marc ever got, although by the time he was the age she is now – twelve – his life had already disintegrated and taken with it any chance he might have had of succeeding in formal education. It had been a miracle he’d graduated high school. Steven, meanwhile, reads books the way other people breathe air, but he doesn’t have any qualifications, for the understandable reason that he didn’t properly exist during the years when he might have earned them.

“I can’t help her, I’m as bad at maths as she is,” Steven says glumly. He glances sideways at Marc: “How are you at simultaneous equations?”

“What are simultaneous equations?”

“Thought so.” Steven sighs. “I was thinking of getting a tutor for her, but then I found out how much they cost.”

“Does she need that? She’s only twelve. When do they do exams in England, anyway?”

“She’ll sit her GCSEs when she’s sixteen, and she’ll have to take maths, it’s compulsory.”

“That’s four years away.”

“Yes, but she’ll need a good maths grade at GCSE if she wants to go on and do A-Levels and go to university.”

Marc looks at Steven, who is driving and therefore looking at the road ahead rather than back at him. He is frowning and looks completely serious. “You don’t need to plan her whole life for her,” Marc says.

“I know, I know, I just –” Steven flicks the car’s indicators and turns off the main road into the residential street where the house is. “I just want her to have all the chances we didn't have, that’s all.”

Marc understands. He knows Steven wishes deeply that he actually had a college education. That’s not one of Marc’s particular regrets, although he carries with him the weight of enough of his own missed opportunities and lost chances to want Issy to achieve everything she aims for, and then more. But he and Steven have talked about this before, and they agreed very early on that they don’t get to use Issy to try to fix the things they dislike about themselves. The entire point of the choice they all made was that everyone got to have their own life, with all the autonomy that entailed.

“She’s not you or me or Jake,” he reminds Steven. “She gets to grow up and make her own choices.”

“She can make all the choices she wants,” Steven says, “as long as she makes them as someone who’s passed GCSE maths.”

He pulls up at the house, a red brick three-up two-down terrace in a quiet street only a short bus journey away from Issy’s school. Inside the front door, a set of Ikea storage shelves overflows with the accumulated detritus of Steven and Issy’s lives: shoes and bags and many, many books. There’s a mezuzah attached to the doorframe, brought from the old flat by Steven and never commented upon by Marc.

Marc is a little surprised – and disappointed, if he’s being honest with himself – that Issy’s not there waiting for them to get back from the airport.

“She’s off school for half-term this week,” Steven explains. “It’s Jameela’s birthday and her mum took the two of them ice skating this afternoon. She should be back any time.” He catches the look on Marc’s face and adds, “She is excited about seeing you. She’s just – she’s growing up, you know? We’re not the center of her world anymore.”

Steven makes coffee for Marc and tea for himself, and they sit at the kitchen table and talk some more and it’s only when Steven starts to get up to put their cups in the sink that Marc realizes that at some point, without either of them noticing, they started holding hands. He gets up along with Steven and they stand together in the middle of the kitchen, arms around each other, chins resting on each others’ shoulders, and it must look weird but at least they managed to hold off until they were somewhere more private than an airport arrivals hall. There’s nothing at all sexual about it, at least not on Marc’s side — he suspects it’s different for Steven. The minutes tick by, with neither one of them willing to be the first to let go.

“You’d think this would be easier by now,” Steven says, the words indistinct because he’s speaking into Marc’s shoulder.

“This is easier,” Marc says. “Remember the first year.”

Steven shudders. “I generally try not to.”

Marc leans closer and breathes in. He and Steven have separate lives now: they eat different food, use different soap, wear different cologne. But there is still something about Steven’s scent that is comforting in a very profound way. It’s the smell of home.

The front door slams and a half-second later Issy barrels into the kitchen, drops a pair of ice skates on to the floor and makes straight for the fridge, pausing only to glance in Steven and Marc’s direction. “What do we have to eat? I’m hungry. Hi, Marc! Are you two smooching? Ewww, get a room.”

Steven and Marc break apart. “No, we are not smooching,” Steven says sternly. “We just miss each other, you know that. You also know where your skates go, so put them away, please.”

Of all the strange things Marc has seen and experienced, the one which he still can’t get used to is that at some point during the last five years, Steven became tidy.

Issy heaves the deep sigh of one who is unjustly persecuted, but closes the fridge, lifts her ice skates and disappears back into the hall with them. She returns empty handed.

“Do I get a welcome hug?” Marc asks.

She grins and comes over to hug him. It’s just a normal hug, with none of the weird, intense undercurrents that exist between him and Steven. The top of her head comes up to his chin, now — it won’t be long before she’s reached her full adult height. Right now she is all legs and elbows, gangly limbs and a skinny frame buried under joggers and an oversized hoodie. She has long dark hair which is more wavy than curly, and her face is a mirror of his own, but with finer features. “How long are you staying for?” she asks.

“Just ‘til Monday,” he tells her. “I’ll be here for Split Day and then I have to go again.”

“If you’re hungry, have an apple,” Steven says to Issy. “And tell Marc what your teacher said about your French accent.”

Issy breaks off the hug and goes back to the fridge to get herself an apple. She bites into it with a loud crunch and rolls her eyes.

“I’ll tell him, then.” Steven turns to Marc. “Madame Laurent said it was the best accent she’d ever heard from someone just starting to learn the language. Couldn’t believe she hadn’t spent time in France.”

Issy swallows a bite of apple. “I’m going to ask Jake to start teaching me Spanish.”

Steven catches Marc’s eye and gives him a look: If Jake comes. To Issy, Marc says, “I’ll teach you some Arabic, if you want.”

Issy finishes the apple and tosses the core in the food recycling caddy next to the kitchen trash. She claps her hands. “Would you? That’d be extra!”

“How about spending a bit more time on your maths before you start learning two completely new languages?” Steven says.

“Oh, fuck off,” Issy says.

“Less of that, Isis, thank you,” Steven says sharply, and Issy’s face creases into a scowl of rage. She turns on her heel and storms out of the kitchen, banging the door behind her. A few seconds later, Marc hears her stomping up the stairs, followed by another loud bang, which is presumably her bedroom door.

“When did she turn into a teenager?” Marc asks.

“Overnight, about three months ago. She brought a book home from school called ‘Your Changing Body’ and that was an eye-opener, let me tell you.” He shrugs. “She’s a bit stormy, but it never lasts long.”

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, the kitchen door opens and Issy returns, drawn back by a nearly-teenager’s healthy appetite. “Are we still going to Giulio’s for dinner?” she asks, slightly hesitantly.

“Yeah, of course we are,” Steven says easily. “Are you going to apologize for being stroppy earlier?”

Issy looks up at the ceiling and then down at her feet and mumbles, “Sorry.” The real apology is what comes next, though, when she goes to Steven and hugs him. He hugs her back and kisses the top of her head.

Something in the pit of Marc’s stomach unclenches. He hadn’t even realized he was tense. In his own adolescence, confrontations didn’t de-escalate like this; they festered and grew before inevitably culminating in one of his mother’s drunken, explosive rages. Every time he watches Steven and Issy together it blindsides him anew – how the connection between them is strong but elastic, sometimes stretching but always snapping back to its true shape, this tight bond of love and respect. He can’t watch them together without feeling a sharp pang of regret and grief, because it’s obvious to him now that this is how it’s supposed to work. He always knew that what he’d experienced was wrong, but he never really understood what right looked like until Steven and Issy showed him.

“All right,” Steven says, “Who’s for pizza?”

“Me!” Issy yells, and runs to get her coat.

Steven watches her go and then turns back to Marc, smiling. Then he picks up something in Marc’s expression and the smile fades, replaced by concern. “Everything okay? You look a bit…”

“Everything’s fine,” Marc answers.

Steven can read him better than anyone – even better than Layla, and that’s saying something – but Steven has almost no memories from their shared upbringing and therefore no frame of reference for what Marc is feeling now. And that’s for the best, Marc thinks. Steven has his own issues to cope with, but the legacy of their mother’s cruelty is not one of them, and Marc does not resent bearing that alone if it means Steven can be the parent Issy needs.

Everything’s fine. At this moment, in this place, it is.

They’ve had to make their own rituals. Split Day is one. Pizza at Giulio’s on the first night of Marc’s visits is another. They always order the same things: the vegetarian option with vegan cheese for Steven, pepperoni for Marc, and the ham and olive half-pizza for Issy. Marc has never liked olives, but Issy can eat an entire jar in one sitting. He can’t figure that one out.

Issy does most of the talking. Like Steven, she’s a reader: she’s just finished Pride and Prejudice and loved it so much that she’s started working her way through the rest of Jane Austen. She’s obsessed with a Korean pop band Marc has never heard of and wants to tell him about them in exhaustive detail — after a straight twenty minutes of Issy monologuing on the lives and loves of the band’s members, Steven intervenes in an attempt to gently move her on to something else. Marc doesn’t mind listening to her, though: her chatter is evidence of how far she’s come. How normal she is.

Marc remembers what Issy was like at the beginning, immediately after the split. She hadn’t been Issy at that point: she was still their nameless little sister, a seven year old child yanked out of a safe and cocooned semi-existence as the least overt of the group of four people who shared a body and dumped out into the real world. She had spent the first months in a state of near-constant terror, silent and tearful.

She had clung to Jake — literally clung to him — but Steven had been the one to step up and take charge of her care. Steven had noticed first that she wasn’t brushing her teeth and had established through gentle questioning that she didn’t know how to. He had shown her how to use a toothbrush, and then he had started a methodical investigation to discover what other basic skills the little girl lacked, and to address each one in turn. The gaps in her knowledge weren’t always where they expected: on the third morning after their separation, she’d come running out of the bathroom, fingers pressed against her cheek, blood oozing out from between them. They hadn’t realized she thought she needed to shave.

Looking back, Marc sees that Steven’s focus on their little sister had been a way to distract himself from the almost unbearable sense of absence that he and Marc had been experiencing. Layla asked him once what it had felt like, and the best analogy Marc could come up with was it was like the phantom presence of a limb after an amputation, except that he and Steven had both had an entire self amputated, and the void left behind had felt infinite and unfillable.

Then Jake had left. Their little sister had cried for days. Steven had worn an expression of thunderous fury but said nothing in front of her, instead delivering his tirades in angry whispers to Marc while she’d slept. Marc, too, had been fucking furious at first, but with hindsight he understands why Jake had to go and why it was for the best. He wasn’t as tied to them as they were to each other, and he had the armor and a job to do.

And then they were three: Marc and Steven and their little sister, holed up together in the old apartment, no longer together but not able to be apart. Marc’s recollections of the weeks that followed Jake’s departure are fragmentary and sharp, like shards of broken glass, painful and dangerous to touch. He can’t remember exactly how bad things got, but Layla has told him that was when she had been most afraid that they might not make it, that the split had been too traumatic, that they wouldn’t be able to adjust.

And then, one day, three months after the split and a month and a half after Jake had left, Steven had looked at their still-nameless little sister and at her t-shirt and leggings, now growing shabby from constant wear, and he had said, “You need some clothes.”

He had dragged Marc out with him – several hours apart was way more than they could manage at that point – and Marc had spent an afternoon trailing listlessly after Steven while he searched charity shops and the bargain rails of chain stores for clothes for a little girl. That evening, Issy had tried on what Steven had found for her. There were tops and leggings and dresses, all in bright colors and decorated with printed designs featuring unicorns, dinosaurs and Disney princesses. The thing Marc remembers most clearly are the shoes: a pair of kids’ trainers with lights embedded in the soles. He can still vividly recall their little sister’s delight when she put them on, how she had spent hours running up and down the apartment, jumping and dancing and twirling to make them flash. She laughed. They’d never heard her laugh before that.

That had been the first time Marc had dared to believe that they might, just, be okay.

Layla had started hinting, and then more than hinting, that while sweetheart and kid were fine as terms of endearment, their little sister needed an actual name at some point. They’d spent days going through what felt to Marc like every baby-naming website on the internet while their nameless little sister gravely shook her head in response to every suggestion. Marc was about ready to give up and tell Layla to put whatever she wanted on the kid’s fake birth certificate and they’d figure it out later, when they’d found her studying one of Steven’s books about Ancient Egypt, open at a double-page illustration of two of the gods, male and female. “I like her,” she said, pointing at the female figure.

Steven looked over her shoulder at the book. “That’s Isis. Osiris’s sister. Goddess of rebirth, among other things. Which is, you know, thematically appropriate.”

“Isis.” She smiled and nodded, and then said the name again. “Isis. I want to be Isis, please.”

“Isis it is, then,” Steven said. “Isis Spector. We could call you Issy, would you like that?”

The kid – Isis – Issy beamed up at Steven, like he’d just given her the best present in the world. Then she held her arms out from her sides and started to twirl around on the spot, singing her new name over and over as she spun.

And, as easily as that, she wasn’t their nameless little sister anymore, she was Issy, dancing up and down the apartment to make the lights in her shoes flash. Not quite a whole person. But gradually changing into one.

The house has three bedrooms: Steven’s, Issy’s, and a third room which is theoretically Marc’s when he’s staying there. In practice, the only thing that stays in the room when Marc’s visiting is his bag, which he puts on top of the bed. Marc doesn’t sleep there. When he visits, he sleeps with Steven.

He undresses, folds his clothes, puts on a t-shirt and shorts and pads barefoot into the room next door, where Steven is sitting up in bed looking at something on an iPad.

Steven puts the tablet to one side as Marc gets into the bed. He takes off his pajama top. Marc pulls off his t-shirt and turns toward him and they embrace again, this time with skin against skin. Marc strokes his hands down Steven’s back and then moves them round his body to rest on his hips, where the flesh is doughy under his fingers. “You’re getting soft around the middle,” Marc tells him. “You need to exercise more.”

“I get more than enough exercise running around after Issy,” Steven says. “Anyway, look at you. You’ve got lines around your eyes, you know. You’re spending too much time outside without sunscreen, aren’t you?”

The passing years and their different lives are slowly causing them to diverge; they are no longer the carbon copies of each other they were on the day they split apart. They will always be alike, but they are no longer the same.

“Is Issy asleep?” Steven asks.

“Her light was out,” Marc says. “You want me to…?”

“Oh God, yes, please.”

There’s a tube of lube in the top drawer of the nightstand. Steven’s already half-hard when Marc slides his hand over his cock. He works quickly and in silence, and the only sound either of them make is right at the end, when Steven’s breath hitches and he groans as he comes.

When he’s cleaned himself off and taken a few deep breaths to recover, he turns to Marc and kisses him. Marc lets him but doesn’t respond.

“Sorry, sorry,” Steven says. “You don’t like it, I know. I just — I wanted to.”

“I don’t mind you doing it,” Marc corrects him, “as long as you don’t mind I don’t do it back.”

“Do you want me to do you?”

Steven always offers, because he is English and therefore well mannered. But he’s only doing it for form’s sake, because by now they both know Marc’s response will always be the same.

“No, it’s fine,” Marc says. He might eventually come, but it’d be hard work and he’d have to close his eyes and think about Layla to get there. They’d tried it a few times in the first weeks, when the need for physical closeness made them desperate and neither of them yet understood how their individual orientations had been changed – or, more likely, clarified – by the split. None of those experiences are worth recreating.

They lie together for a while in silence. Marc finds the press of Steven’s body against his deeply comforting but not even slightly arousing. It’s different for Steven, he knows, and probably a lot more difficult and complicated. He gives Steven as much as he can, always aware that it can’t ever be enough.

“If I got all the gay,” Steven says at last, “and you got all the straight, what do you think Jake is?”

They’ve speculated on this before, and never reached a firm conclusion.

“I think he either has no interest in it at all, or he fucks anything with a pulse,” Marc says.

Another short silence follows, and Marc is just starting to drift off to sleep when Steven says, “I’ve sort of met someone.”

That wakes Marc up again. He pushes himself up onto one elbow. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Apologetically, Steven says, “I didn’t want to put it in a text.”

“Who is he?” Marc asks. He can hear a sharp edge in his voice he didn’t intend.

Fortunately, Steven either misses his tone or – more likely – chooses to ignore it. “His name’s Kieran. His sister teaches at Issy’s school. She brought him along to one of the fundraisers and of course I’m on the PTA committee so I was there doing the tea and coffee and he ended up helping me. We got chatting and it turns out he’s a history nerd and he likes cricket.”

“History and cricket, huh? You’re made for each other.” This time, Marc’s attempt at sounding unconcerned mostly lands successfully.

“He’s asked me out for dinner tomorrow night,” Steven says. “If I go, will you stay with Issy?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Do you mind?” Steven asks.

Marc drops his elbow and shifts on to his back, so he’s looking up at the bedroom ceiling and not at Steven. “No, I don’t mind. We’ll get take out, watch a movie. It’ll be nice to spend some one on one time with her.”

“I meant – do you mind me seeing someone?”

“No,” Marc says. “Why would I?”

Drily, Steven says, “Well, here we are naked in bed together and five minutes ago you had your hand on my you-know-what.” Steven can swear like a sailor when he wants to but is oddly prudish about bodies.

“That’s different. That’s just us.”

“Yeah, but…” Steven pauses. “I don’t know how I’d explain this. I mean, it’s basically incest, isn’t it?”

“This isn’t incest, it’s masturbation.”

Steven chuckles at that. Then he says, thoughtfully, “If things did get serious with Kieran, I suppose I’d have to tell him the truth about all of us eventually.”

“What have you told him so far?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. Identical triplets, given up for adoption, brought up in different countries, only found out about each other as adults. I told him Issy’s your daughter and she lives with me because you have to travel for work.” That’s the story they told Issy’s school. The surname on her fake birth certificate is Spector and Marc is listed as her father, although he’s always felt vaguely uncomfortable about it – Steven has been much more of a parent to her than he has. Steven sighs. “I don’t like lying to people.”

“Telling him the truth isn't really an option, Steven.”

“No, I suppose not. I don’t know what I’d say. ‘Actually, Kieran, me and Marc and Jake and Issy used to be one person with a lot of trauma and some non-trivial mental health issues until a magical extra-dimensional sphinx asked us if we’d like to be split up into separate people and we said yes without really thinking through the consequences.’”

“Is this your first date with him?”

“First proper date, yeah. We’ve had coffee together a few times, I don’t know if that counts.”

“I think you’re getting way ahead of yourself. If it gets serious, we’ll deal with it then.”

“Yeah,” Steven agrees. He brightens: “If I ever did tell him the truth about us and he didn’t run for the hills – he’d probably be the one, wouldn’t he?” He is silent for a few seconds. “Speaking of people who know the truth about us and haven’t run away, how’s Layla?”

“She’s fine.”

“Definitely?” Steven asks. “Because you’ve usually called each other by now.”

“We’ve texted,” Marc lies.

“Mmmm,” Steven says, his tone strongly suggesting that he is extremely dubious about that but isn’t going to call Marc out on his bullshit on his first night.

Marc deflects him by reaching across the bed and lifting the iPad sitting on the bedside table. The browser is open at something that looks like a list of university courses. “Don’t tell me you’re looking at colleges for Issy already.”

“Oi, stop being nosy.” Steven snatches the iPad back from him. “It’s the Open University, if you must know. It’s all part time courses, remote learning, that sort of thing. They do a BA in Classical Studies. And, you know, I’ve got a bit more free time now that Issy’s older, and I was sort of thinking…” he trails off, sounding almost embarrassed.

Once upon a time, before the split, Steven had wanted to be a tour guide at the British Museum, and Marc – distracted and exhausted by Khonshu’s ever-increasing demands – hadn’t managed to procure a fake college degree certificate for him before he’d submitted his online application. Steven had ended up working in the gift shop instead, leaving Marc simmering with self-loathing at his failure to give Steven the life he wanted, the life he deserved. But Steven – ever hopeful, ever optimistic, ever willing to make the best of a bad situation – had bounced up the stone steps to the museum doors for his weekend shifts, quietly proud every time he produced his staff ID on the way in, before heading off to sell plushies and erasers to schoolchildren. Since the split, Steven’s time has been divided between taking care of Issy and doing the billing and admin for Marc’s security consultancy work. He is still, Marc thinks with unease, putting their needs before his own.

“Do you want a paying job again?” Marc asks. “If it’s something you need a college degree for, Layla can get you the right paperwork. You just have to say.”

“I know she could, but that’s not the point,” Steven says. “And it’s not that I want a job, it’s more… I want to have something I know I’ve earned. It means more when you earn it, yeah?”

Marc thinks that Steven doesn’t need to prove anything to the world, not when he bootstrapped himself into existence and a healthy, independent life out of the blasted wasteland of Marc’s childhood trauma. Marc doesn’t really know how to say that, though, so instead he leans across and kisses Steven lightly on his shoulder. That earns him a smile from Steven, and if there’s a hint of sadness in it, it’s not more than either of them can bear.

“Which tie?” Steven asks, holding up two neckties.

“No tie,” Issy says.

“No tie?” Steven looks at Marc.

“No tie,” he agrees. “It makes you look like you’re going for a job interview.”

The doorbell chimes. “Your date is here,” Issy sing-songs.

Steven hastily stuffs the ties in a drawer and goes to get the door. A few moments later, Marc can hear pleasantries being exchanged in the hall. Steven sounds nervous, although Marc’s not sure if it would be obvious to someone who didn’t know the cadence of his voice so intimately well.

When he comes back into the lounge, he’s followed by a man wearing chinos and a button-down shirt with, Marc is relieved to see, no tie. The guy is a couple of years younger than Steven and Marc and comes from the branch of northern European stock that lost every last iota of melanin at some point during the long, dark winters of the last ice age. He has sandy red hair and an open, intelligent face, and although Marc is much too straight to find him attractive, he can see why Steven does.

“This is Kieran,” Steven says, “Kieran, this is my niece, Isis, and my brother, Marc.”

Issy, perched on the arm of the sofa, nods but doesn’t say anything. Her eyes are wide and watchful and when Marc looks at her, suddenly he sees timid Little Sister again. The change is so abrupt and complete that for an instant he has the irrational fear that he really is looking at Little Sister, that she’s swapped in to replace Issy just as he and Steven and Jake used to do. He knows that can’t be the case – if that was happening with Issy, Steven would have noticed and said something long before now. The real explanation is much more straightforward: for all Issy’s near-adolescent bravado, the number of people she trusts completely is very small, and since Marc is in that group, he rarely sees how shy and withdrawn she can still be with outsiders.

Steven puts an arm around Issy’s shoulder in a gesture that looks casual and unconsidered but almost certainly isn’t.

Marc steps forward, placing himself in front of Steven and Issy. He offers his hand to Kieran. “Good to meet you.”

“And yourself,” Kieran says easily, his accent giving the words a slight but noticeable inflection upwards that makes it sound like he’s asking a question. He lets go of Marc’s hand and looks at Steven. “You should’ve said your brother was visiting. Now I feel guilty for interrupting your family time.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Steven replies. “Marc and I have spent more than enough time together, haven’t we, Marc? Practically lived on top of each other for a while.”

“It must’ve been strange,” Kieran says to Steven: “I mean – thinking you had no family and then suddenly discovering you had two brothers and a niece you never knew about.”

“Well, Marc knew about me first,” Steven answers, with a side glance at Marc. “So it was a bit more of a shock for me, finding out about him. And then neither of us knew about our other brother, Jake, until later. It definitely wasn’t all smooth sailing – we had some right arguments in the early days.” Cheerfully, he adds, “Marc punched me in the face, once.”

Marc suppresses a wince, because apparently Steven is never going to let that one go. “I thought he was getting a little too friendly with my wife,” he explains.

“In Marc’s defense, he didn’t know I was gay,” Steven says, “which is understandable, because I didn’t know I was gay at that point. And he wasn’t wrong, I do love his wife. I just don’t want to –” he casts a glance at Issy, “– have a relationship with her.”

Issy pouts as some of her normal attitude returns. “I’m not a baby. I know you’re talking about sex.”

“All right, then,” Steven says mildly, “I don’t want to have sex with Layla. Is that better?”

“Her loss,” Kieran says. He smiles at Steven, and Marc watches as Steven lights up at the attention. He smiles back bashfully then looks down at his feet. The hand not draped across Issy’s shoulders moves to fiddle with his top shirt button, like the collar has suddenly become too tight.

Issy immediately screws up her face. “If you’re talking about that stuff, I’m leaving.” She shrugs off Steven’s arm and vanishes through the living room door, pausing only to toss a dismissive, “Have fun!” over her shoulder on the way out.

“I’d better get my jacket,” Steven says after a second. “Back in a jiff.”

He goes too, leaving Marc alone with Kieran. After the silence has dragged out just long enough to start to feel awkward, Kieran says, “Steven says you work in security consultancy.”

“I advise organizations that need to operate in conflict zones,” Marc tells him. “Charities and NGOs, mostly. I do risk assessments, tell them what they need to do to keep their people safe.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Kieran says. “I mean – rewarding, but dangerous.”

“I’m used to it,” Marc says. “But it’s no life for a kid, and my wife travels a lot as well. Issy needs a stable, safe place to grow up and Steven is giving her that.”

Kieran nods and smiles. “I can see how much he cares about her.”

“Steven is a good person,” Marc says. “And because he’s a good person, he assumes other people are good, too.” He chooses his next words carefully. “If anyone used that to take advantage of him, I would… not be happy.”

Before Kieran can respond in any way beyond blinking uncomfortably, the living room door opens and Steven returns, shrugging on his jacket and holding his phone. “All right, that’s me. Shall we go?”

“Yes,” Kieran says a shade too quickly, not taking his eyes off Marc. “Yes. Absolutely. Let’s go.”

Issy emerges from her room just as Marc is tipping the Deliveroo guy. They eat take-out from the new Lebanese place that’s opened since Marc’s last visit; Steven recommended it, and the endorsement turns out to be merited. The hummus in particular is terrific.

After they’ve eaten, Issy rejects Marc’s suggestion of a movie and instead makes him watch a documentary about her Korean pop band. It takes twice as long to get through as it should, because Issy keeps hitting pause so that she can supply Marc with astonishing amounts of biographical detail about whichever youthful, absurdly attractive performer happens to be on the screen at any given moment.

“And those two were a couple,” Issy tells him at one point, “but they split up last month. I was devastated. I cried for a week. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Marc wonders what he would have given, at Issy’s age, to live in a world where the worst thing that could possibly happen was two pop stars he’d never met breaking up with each other. “C’mere,” he says gruffly, and pulls Issy into a rough hug. She squeaks in protest, then snuggles down next to him on the sofa.

Steven texts around 11pm to say that he’s had a few drinks and he’s going to stay in Kieran’s spare room tonight. The message has some uncharacteristic spelling mistakes which make Marc think that Steven’s telling the truth about having had one or two drinks too many, and perhaps not telling the truth about sleeping in the guest room. Issy goes to bed around midnight, pleased at having been allowed to stay up late, and Marc turns in himself a short time later. He briefly considers sleeping in the guest room before rejecting it in favor of Steven’s room, where the sheets smell like Steven and he will sleep more soundly.

He is woken up around three by Issy coming into the room. “What’s up?”

“I can’t sleep. Can I get in with you?”

Marc considers that. Issy is twelve and on the cusp of adolescence; she is very close to being too old for this. But she is also, in a very real sense, part of Marc, and he is part of her. More than that, he strongly suspects that by the time he comes back for his next visit, she will have passed out of childhood completely and will be too self conscious, too aware of her almost-adult body, to want to be physically close to him this way.

“Sure,” he says, and moves over to make room for her.

She crawls under the sheets next to him and lies there for a while. He can tell from her breathing that she isn’t asleep. Then she says, “If Steven gets married to Kieran, can I come and live with you and Layla?”

Marc reaches out and flicks on the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed. He props himself up on one elbow so he can see Issy. She looks up at him, eyes wide and anxious in a face framed by a messy halo of dark hair.

“Okay,” he begins. “First off, Steven’s not getting married to anyone after one date. And even if he and Kieran got serious and even if they decided to get married, Steven wouldn’t do it unless you were completely on board. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Issy says. “But… just say something happened and I couldn’t live here anymore. I could come with you, couldn’t I?”

The only scenario Marc can think of in which there is no place for Issy with Steven involves Steven’s actual death, and that thought is so far beyond terrifying that Marc can’t even look at it head-on; he has to kind of sidle past it, barely glancing in its direction in case the sheer horror of it floors him.

Very carefully, he says, “When we chose this, we promised — Steven and me and Jake, all of us — we promised to look after you while you grew up, and we will. So if — something happened to…” He stops, tries again. “If something happened, yeah, you could come with me and Layla and we’d figure something out.”

Issy’s face brightens into a grin. “That’d be so extra. I could travel around with you and help you with your work and Layla with her missions and –”

“Hey, now, back up,” Marc interrupts her. “I said we’d figure something out, not that I’d start bringing you to war zones with me. That wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe.”

She pouts. “Then I’d go and live with Jake instead.”

“Jake’s life is even more dangerous than mine.”

Defiantly, Issy says, “I could look after myself.”

“Issy,” Marc says, “you couldn’t.”

“I hate being the youngest!” Issy explodes. “I hate it! You and Jake go places and your lives are exciting, and now Steven’s going to have a boyfriend and I haven’t been anywhere and I haven’t done anything and it isn’t fair. I’m one of you and I was there from the beginning, too, and now you all treat me like a child.” Her eyes well up with angry, frustrated tears and she rolls over the bed so that her back is to Marc. He can see her shoulders shaking and hear the muffled sobs.

He bites back the obvious response, which is that Issy is biologically about twelve years old and therefore actually is a child. Instead he puts a hand on her back and rubs her gently between her shoulder blades. Softly, he says, “Hey. Issy. Isis. Little sister.”

That gets her attention. The sobs subside, and she rolls back toward him again.

“You’re going to be able to do everything you want to do,” Marc tells her. “You’re going to do it on your own terms, and you won’t have to carry around all the baggage the rest of us have. But you have to take the time to grow up first. That was the deal.”

Issy is quiet. Then she says, “What was it like? When we were all together in one body, I mean. I don’t remember.”

Marc thinks. “Crowded,” he says at last. “Complicated. Confusing. We used to fight a lot — well, me and Steven and Jake fought. You were really quiet. You stayed inside almost all the time. Steven and I didn’t even know you were there.”

“Jake knew,” Issy says.

“Yeah, Jake knew. He spent more time inside than me or Steven. I think he must’ve spent a lot of time with you. You should ask him about it. He could probably tell you more than I can.” Marc hesitates. “What’s the first thing you remember?”

She closes her eyes for a second and her brow furrows in concentration. “We were… somewhere. It was huge and there were pillars everywhere and the floor was made of big stone tiles. You asked me if I understood what we were being offered and then Steven said I could be a real girl if I wanted, and I remember thinking, Yes, I want that. It felt strange. I think that was the first time I’d ever wanted something. But then I was scared because — because I knew if I said yes, I’d have to change. I didn’t want to change, but I wanted to be — I wanted to be real.”

“It was toughest for you,” Marc says. “You had to change more than the rest of us. And you’re still changing. You haven’t finished yet.”

Then Issy rolls her eyes and suddenly she is an almost-teenager. “Yes, thank you for the reminder, they did give me a book about it in school.”

“I’m not just talking about becoming a teenager.” The version of Issy who had existed when they all shared one body hadn’t even had a name. Little Sister hadn’t really had a personality to speak of; she had been a silent shadow, called into existence for the sole purpose of hiding from Marc’s mother during her rages. But Issy – twelve year old Isis Spector – is a real person. She likes pizza and McDonald’s and ice skating and Jane Austen and Korean pop bands, her best friend is Jameela Hussain, she’s good at languages but bad at math, and thanks to Steven she is growing up in a stable, loving home without any of the abuse and trauma that almost destroyed Marc. He doesn’t know yet who she’s going to be when she’s an adult, but he feels increasingly sure that whoever she becomes, she will be just fine, and that certainty is his touchstone and his greatest comfort.

They are both quiet for a minute or two, and then Issy says, “Most of the time, I’m okay. But then something happens, like… Jameela’s mum has a book of photos of Jameela when she was a baby. Jameela wanted to see my baby photos, so I had to make up an excuse about them all being destroyed in a fire.” She looks at Marc. “I’m always going to be weird and different.”

“You’re going to be whatever you want to be,” Marc tells her.

“Do you think Steven and Kieran are having sex right now?”

“I think,” Marc says firmly, “that is none of our business. Now go to sleep.”

Issy sleeps in the next morning, and when she gets up, Marc makes her a late breakfast of pancakes, which she loves because pancakes for breakfast are American and therefore sophisticated.

She is polishing off her fourth or fifth – Marc has lost count – when Steven arrives home, looking relaxed and very pleased with himself.

“You stayed overnight! At his place!” Issy declares, mock-horrified. She narrows her eyes. “Did you two fuck?”

“We do not use that kind of language in this house,” Steven says primly. He does not, Marc notes, answer the question.

“He uses that kind of language,” Issy says, pointing at Marc.

“He is a grown man who used to be in the army,” Steven replies. “You are a twelve year old girl–”

“– Who used to live in his head,” Issy finishes. “Which means that technically I used to be in the army too. So did you do it with Kieran?”

“I had a very pleasant evening and enjoyed Kieran’s company very much,” Steven says.

That’s a yes, then.

Fortunately, Issy’s attention is diverted by a text message from Jameela, who’s going to buy new jeans with her birthday money and wants Issy to come with her. “Can I?” she asks Steven.

Steven looks at Marc, who shrugs. “I need to catch up on emails.”

“Yes, you can,” Steven tells Issy.

Issy gives a cheer, then gets up and moves around the table. “Do my hair before I go.”

Marc watches as Steven gets a brush and a comb and splits Issy’s hair into neat sections. He starts somewhere near her forehead and works back through the hair, twisting and weaving the strands together to somehow produce a braid set into the hair itself. “Where’d you learn to do that?” Marc asks.

“YouTube and lots of practice,” Steven says. “There we are. Done.”

Issy gets up and heads for the door. “Thanks! Bye! See you later!”

“Wait! What are the three rules?” Steven yells after her.

“Stay together, don’t talk to strangers, text you once an hour,” she shouts back, and then she’s gone.

Marc watches her go with a sense of vague unease. “Is she old enough to be wandering around London?”

Steven sighs. “Well, Jameela’s a sensible girl, and the shopping center is one bus stop away…” He shrugs. “I mean, I worry, but she’s got to start to have a bit of independence at some point. Anyway, what were you doing at her age?”

“Walking the streets of Chicago all day trying to avoid going home,” Marc says honestly.

Steven gives him a sympathetic look. “Sometimes I’m glad I’ve got next to no memories from before we were sixteen.”

“Do you remember anything?”

“I remember sitting on our bed reading. That’s about it. But I think that was all I was doing at that stage.” He puts the hairbrush and comb away; they have their own little pouch, Marc notices.

“You’re good at this,” he says.

“YouTube’s great,” Steven says. “All you have to do is type in ‘how to plait hair’ and there are a million tutorials.”

“I wasn’t talking about her hair,” Marc says. Then, because those braids were really impressive, he amends that to, “I wasn’t just talking about her hair. You’re good at all of it. Bringing her up. Being a parent to her.”

“Well, I’m better at this than I ever was at working in retail or being a superhero,” Steven says. Then he wags a finger at him: “Oi, stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop feeling guilty. I know you, you run on guilt and caffeine.”

“I wasn’t—“ Marc begins, then stops, because if he knows one thing by now, it is that he can’t hide anything from Steven. Steven likes to joke that they’re like an old married couple, apart from how they’re not old or married or a couple. “Okay, I was. I’m never here. You’re doing all the hard work.”

“It’s not hard work,” Steven says. He picks up a dishcloth. “Well, sometimes it’s hard, yes, but it’s not difficult. The first couple of months after you left the first time were the worst, but it got a lot easier after that. About ninety percent of it is just being there to do whatever needs to be done. It used to be putting plasters on her scraped knees and these days it’s more likely to be listening to her tell me about her latest K-pop crush at length, but I don’t mind.”

“Yeah, but the single biggest reason we said yes was so we could all have our own lives. I guess I thought you’d go off and go to college and be a professor or a museum curator or something. It’s just — I know this isn’t what you would’ve chosen.”

“I wouldn’t have ticked the box that said ‘please make me gay’ if I’d had a choice about it, either,” Steven says, “but it turns out that’s who I am once you take away your influence and a heterosexual body. And that’s okay, because I’m more me, now, and that’s what we said yes to. It was never about being completely independent — we’re never going to be that. It was about being who we actually are all the time and not just for a few hours here and there.”

Marc doesn’t answer. Steven is right.

“And I don’t resent it, you know. I don’t.” Steven waves the dishcloth in his hand at Marc for emphasis. “You were never going to stand here and iron her school uniform on Sunday nights and I was never going to be able to go off and earn enough money for us all to live on, so it had to be this way round.” He hangs up the dishcloth and starts to clear the breakfast plates off the table into the dishwasher. “Now, Jake’s another story. Him I resent. He doesn’t stay in touch, shows up once or twice a year at most and Issy thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. I have to bite my tongue at times, I can tell you.”

“She always liked him best,” Marc says. “Even before.”

“Yeah, and he buggered off six weeks after we split. Six weeks! You and I were barely able to be in different rooms, and he just flounced off to go and be a superhero—“

Marc suppresses a sigh, because he has heard variations on this particular rant many times over the past five years. “The Ennead gave him the armor. He had his own work to do.”

“Have you heard from him? Do you know if he’s coming for Split Day?”

Marc shakes his head. “He hasn’t been in touch with me. But it’s Jake, that doesn’t mean anything.” He stops. “Was it really that bad at the beginning?”

Steven finishes loading the dishwasher and turns it on. He wipes the kitchen counter. “There was one day… You’d just got your first proper bit of work, from the charity that wanted a risk assessment for a construction project in — where was it? Sokovia?” Marc nods. “So you and Layla had flown out the day before, and I remember I took Issy to the park and… she just stood there. All the other kids were running around playing and she didn’t know what to do or how to talk to them, and I was missing you so much that I was sick with it and it was awful. I thought we’d made the worst mistake of our lives and it was never going to get any better. I almost called you and asked you to come back.”

Marc says, “I’m glad you didn’t. I would’ve been on the next plane.” His own memories of that Sokovia trip are a blur of trying to present himself as a competent, knowledgeable professional while constantly wanting to curl up in a ball on the floor and howl with loneliness. “It got better, though.”

“It got better,” Steven agrees. “Or it got tolerable, at least.” He comes back to the table, stands behind Marc and puts his hand on Marc’s shoulder; Marc covers it with his own. The dull ache of longing is always eased by physical contact, and after five years it’s receded to a level where they can both more or less ignore it, most of the time.

They are both silent for a moment. Then Steven says, “By the way, what did you say to Kieran while I was out of the room last night?”

“Nothing.”

Steven looks at him suspiciously.

“Really!” Marc protests. “We made small talk, that’s all.”

“The way Kieran told it, it sounded as if you shoved him up against a wall and demanded to know if his intentions towards me were honorable.”

“Were they?” Marc asks innocently.

“No,” Steven says, smiling smugly. “They were downright filthy. Did you use the vegan mix in the cupboard to make those pancakes? I’m starving.”

Marc sets his laptop up at the kitchen table and spends the rest of the morning trading emails with a potential client – a humanitarian aid organization that needs advice on whether its staff can safely continue to work in a part of the world where a territorial dispute looks likely to turn into a shooting war any day now. If he takes the job, Marc will go to the region, assess the risks and make recommendations on what precautions the charity should take if it stays. Kieran was right: the work is both dangerous and rewarding. Dangerous, but less so than most of what he did in his old life. Rewarding, because Marc doesn’t have to feel ashamed of what he does anymore.

It’s also well paid and entirely legal, and while Marc occasionally wishes he still had the magical protection of the armor, he doesn’t miss the price he paid for wearing it. Jake chose that life, and as far as Marc is concerned, he’s welcome to it.

He breathes out heavily. Jake.

He checks his phone for what might be the millionth time. There are no new messages, and he thinks – again for the millionth time – about texting Layla. He doesn’t know what to say to her. He puts the phone down, lifts it again. He can hear Steven moving about upstairs, taking care of the jobs that keep the household running – making beds, putting away Issy’s clothes, tidying. The apartment Marc shares with Layla in Cairo is where he lives, but it never feels quite like home, because Steven isn’t there. But when he visits Steven and Issy in London, he always feels like an interloper – that, as much as they’re happy to see him, he’s disrupting the quiet rhythm of their lives with his presence. And he misses Layla when he’s not with her. So he bounces between two lives, not quite fitting in either. He’s happier, more stable and better off than he used to be in absolutely every sense, but he wishes, sometimes, that he could just pick one damn life and live it. But then, that’s not a new problem for him.

He picks up his phone again and starts a text to Jake. He taps out: Five years tomorrow. Are you coming? Then he deletes it without sending. He can’t think of a way of asking that doesn’t sound like he’s ordering Jake to show up, or that Jake won’t interpret as being ordered.

When the phone buzzes with a message from Jake, for a second Marc doubts himself and wonders if he accidentally sent the text to Jake instead of deleting it. But this kind of thing is not an unusual occurrence; the link between Marc and Jake might not be as overt as the one between Marc and Steven, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Jake has texted both of them: Flying in tonight UCOD. Then there’s a map reference.

About a minute later, Steven comes downstairs and puts his head round the kitchen door. “I see the Fist of the Ennead is deigning to grace us with his presence. What’s UCOD supposed to mean?”

“Under cover of darkness.”

“I don’t know why he can’t just tell us what time he’s arriving like a normal person. Well, Issy will be pleased. You’ll have to move your bag out of the spare room.” He vanishes again.

Marc texts back: HUA. Then, feeling that’s somehow inadequate, he sends another message: Glad you can make it.

He expects that to be the end of the exchange, and is mildly surprised when Jake replies again: Can’t wait. Sarcasm or Jake’s personal brand of brusque honesty? Marc can never tell.

“So,” Steven says, almost conversationally, “what’s the problem with you and Layla?”

“There’s no problem,” Marc says. “We’re fine.”

They’re sitting in Steven’s car, which is parked in a secluded spot near one of the entrances to Hyde Park. Issy is curled up in the back seat, eyes closed and breathing softly, tucked under the blanket Steven brought in spite of her protests that she absolutely wouldn’t need it because she wasn’t going to fall asleep.

London never exactly stops, but at 3am the city is as close to quiet as it ever gets. Most of the clubbers and late night party goers have gone home and the early work shift hasn’t started yet. Marc wishes Jake would hurry up and get here, partly because lurking around during the small hours of the night has unpleasant associations for him with his former life, and partly because he would very much prefer not to be having this conversation with Steven.

Steven, however, has never been one to let a question go unanswered.

“You’ve barely mentioned her since you arrived,” he persists, “and as far as I can tell, you haven’t got a single text or call from her while you’ve been here. So – which of you isn’t talking to the other one?”

“She drove me to Cairo airport,” Marc says, which is true. “Everything’s fine,” he adds, which is not.

If there’s a textbook definition of ‘withering’, Marc thinks, it might just be a picture of the look Steven gives him in response to that. “Let me rephrase that,” Steven says. “Either you tell me what the problem is, or I’ll phone her the first chance I get and ask her.” His eyes narrow suspiciously. “You haven’t left and posted divorce papers to her again, have you?”

“Oh, fucking – no,” Marc says. “It was one time, and I was having a breakdown.”

“Just checking,” Steven says. Then: “So?” he prompts again.

Marc glances into the back of the car. “Is she definitely asleep?”

Steven twists around to look at Issy. “Dead to the world.”

“Layla’s pregnant.”

The smile which appears instantly on Steven’s face is both surprised and pleased. “You didn’t say you were trying.” Then he looks at Marc, and the smile fades. “Oh. You weren’t trying.”

“No.”

“Did Taweret have anything to do with it?” Steven asks.

“She claims she didn’t. But she’s practically hopping up and down with glee, according to Layla.”

“How pregnant?”

“It’s really early. She vomited every morning for a week, but having the armor means she never gets sick, so we knew something was up. She did a test and it was positive.” He pauses. “We haven’t stopped arguing since.”

“Why?”

Marc looks at him, because surely the answer to that is self-evident. “We can’t have a baby.”

“Biologically speaking, clearly you can have a baby,” Steven points out reasonably. “Do you want to have a baby? Does she?”

“I kind of assumed she didn’t,” Marc says.

Steven winces. “Told her that, did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me guess,” Steven says. “She pointed out quite forcefully that you don’t get to make decisions for her, and it all went downhill from there.”

The nice thing about talking to Steven, Marc thinks, is that because Steven is both smart and knows him so incredibly well, Marc doesn’t really need to actually tell him very much: once supplied with a couple of key facts, Steven can usually join the dots with accuracy.

“And what about you?” Steven asks, correctly interpreting Marc’s silence as an endorsement.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Marc says flatly. “I can’t be anyone’s father.”

“Why not? You’re financially secure, you and Layla have been married forever, and you don’t black out and turn into other people anymore,” Steven says. “There are worse starting points for parenthood.”

“My mother started out fine,” Marc says. “Look where that ended up.”

“Well, yeah, but it works the other way, too, doesn’t it?” Steven says. “People get better as well as worse. We’re proof of that. Anyway, you’re wrong.”

“About what?”

“About not being anyone’s father. You already are.”

“If you’re talking about Issy, I’m not. I’m not raising her. You are.”

“I wasn’t talking about Issy,” Steven replies. “Well, I wasn’t just talking about Issy.”

It takes Marc a second to understand what Steven means. When he gets it, he shakes his head emphatically. “It’s not the same thing.” He waves a hand in the air between them: “Don’t make this any weirder than it already is.”

“All right, it’s not exactly the same,” Steven concedes, “but me and Issy and Jake all came from the same place, didn’t we? Issy’s fine, and I’ve only got the usual kinds of hang-ups, and Jake is – well, even I have to admit he’s making a good job of the whole superheroing thing. If you want evidence you’re not that screwed up, there it is, three times over. We’re all okay. We wouldn’t be if you weren’t.” He pauses. “You still haven’t answered the question. Do you want to have a baby with Layla?”

“I…” Marc starts. He stops. In the dark sky overhead, a shape is moving quickly. “Heads up. Incoming.”

They get out of the car and Marc turns on the flashlight they brought with them for signaling purposes, aiming it up into the sky and turning it on and off in the pre-arranged sequence. The speeding shape circles around once, then dips down and starts to descend, resolving into the outline of a human body, a crescent-shaped cape billowing behind it.

Jake lands with pinpoint accuracy right in front of the car. He bends his knees and puts his right hand on the ground in front of him as the cape fans out perfectly around him. Then, in one fluid motion, he stands.

“Show off,” Steven mutters.

Marc nudges his arm. “Play nicely.” Jake’s suit has changed again, he notices – the funerary bandages are gone completely, replaced by plates of sleek, form-fitting armor layered over some kind of metallic mesh. Even the hieroglyphs look like they were etched on by laser. Something in Marc is pleased to note, however, that Jake’s kept the cowl and the crescent throwing blades mounted on the chestpiece.

Jake walks toward them, the armor melting away with each step until he’s standing in front of them wearing nondescript dark clothes, his face uncovered. The armor isn’t the only thing about his appearance he’s changed since they last saw him, apparently.

“What’s this all about?” Steven asks, motioning at his upper lip.

Jake grins under his mustache. “You don’t like it?”

“It makes you look like a porn star.”

Jake’s grin widens. “Eh, you’re just jealous ‘cause I’m the best looking of us.”

“Oh, now you’re being childish.”

Marc steps in before the exchange can degenerate into playground-style name-calling. He offers his hand to Jake, who clasps it. “Good to see you, man.”

“Y tú.”

They get into the car, Steven and Marc in the front, Jake carefully moving Issy over so he can slide into the back next to her. She stirs and blinks at him, then smiles. “Jake!”

“Hola, hermanita,” Jake says softly. “Go back to sleep, eh? We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Mmmm‘kay.” Her eyes close again.

Steven looks around the interior of the car for a brief moment before he starts the engine. “All present and correct, then? Good.”

“So what’s been happening?” Jake asks.

Steven rolls his eyes. “You know, if you checked your email from time to time or even glanced at the group chat…”

“Eh, I’m busy. Catch me up.”

“Well,” Steven starts. Marc catches his eye in the car’s mirror and gives him a look. Communicating with Steven by looking in a mirror, he thinks. Just like old times. “Well,” Steven says again, “Issy wants you to teach her Spanish.”

Jake cackles happily. “I’ll teach her to swear in Spanish.”

“You will do no such thing,” Steven returns, although without any real bite. He raises an eyebrow at Marc via the mirror, and Marc nods back his gratitude. Steven puts the car into gear and they drive off into the night.

Marc is the first up the next morning, jolted awake by a confused dream in which he is back in the Duat, searching desperately for Steven in the endless dunes, searching and searching until his limbs start to freeze to immobility. It’s not the worst of Marc’s recurring nightmares — not by a long shot — but he’s still relieved to wake and find Steven sleeping soundly next to him. He wraps an arm around Steven and holds on until the dream’s residual terror has abated to something he can push back down into his subconscious.

He gets up, pulls on sweats and goes out for a run. When he gets back, all the bedroom curtains are still closed and the house is quiet; no one else is up yet. He makes himself coffee and sits at the kitchen table to drink it. There’s a framed photo collage on the wall opposite the table; Marc has noticed it on previous visits but has never really studied it. Most of the photos are of Issy by herself: there’s Issy at the Tower of London, Issy in school uniform, Issy wearing a gymnastics leotard and proudly holding up a medal, Issy blowing out candles on a birthday cake. There are also photos of Steven and Issy together, and peppered here and there occasional pictures of Issy with Marc, Jake and Layla down the years. It’s striking how different Issy looks now compared to five years ago, he thinks. She really is growing up.

Marc looks around the kitchen and finds himself noticing a number of things for the first time. There are three small metal trophies arranged on the shelf next to the stove, each one inscribed with Issy’s name and the date of a gymnastics competition. The front of the fridge is completely covered with pieces of paper: timetables and school lunch menus and shopping lists and Issy’s artwork. A painted cardboard model sits on a chair – it must be one of Issy’s school craft projects, although Marc can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a boat or a Roman fort or something else entirely.

Marc remembers what Issy said about not having any baby photos, and suddenly sees all around him the tangible trail of evidence of her existence that Steven has been creating for her in the last five years. This is what love looks like, he thinks. Constant, selfless, kind. Everything Marc never had.

He calls Layla.

She answers straight away. “Happy Split Day.”

“Thanks,” he says. “Is everything – are you okay?”

“I’m still pregnant, if that’s what you mean,” she says. “I only threw up twice this morning.”

There’s a moment’s pause and then they both start speaking at once, voices overlapping in that stilted way peculiar to international cell phone calls. They break off more or less simultaneously and Marc says, “You first.”

On the other end of the phone, he hears Layla take a breath. “I’ve been thinking a lot,” she says. “And… I want to do this. I want to do it with you. But, Marc – if I have to do it without you, I will.”

One of the things – one of the many things – Marc has always appreciated about Layla is that she doesn’t bullshit. She never plays games or dissembles; what she means to say, she says. So he understands this for what it is – not a threat, but a straightforward statement of fact.

“You don’t have to do it without me,” he says quietly. “I want it, too.”

He hears her let out the breath she must’ve been holding while she waited for his reply. “Are you scared?” she asks.

There was a time when Marc would have shut down in the face of a question like that. Now he simply says, “Yes.”

“You’re not your mother,” Layla says.

“I’m not Steven, either.”

“Have you told him?“

“I had to. He guessed something was up.”

“He always was the smart one.”

“Hey,” Marc objects, but he’s smiling now. Then reality catches up with him again. “How are we gonna look after a baby, Layla? How is that even gonna work?”

“Marc,” Layla says: “You came back from the dead and I’ve got superpowers. We can manage diapers.”

“I gave Issy a whole speech two nights ago about how she couldn’t live with me because my life is too dangerous.”

“Why does Issy want to come and live with you?” Layla says, sounding suddenly concerned. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing serious. It’s just that Steven’s got himself a boyfriend and she’s not sure how to deal with it, that’s all. It’s making her anxious.” She isn’t, he can admit to himself, the only one.

“Steven has a –” Layla begins. Then, abruptly, she breaks off and makes a noise that Marc can only interpret as a delighted squeal. “Steven has a boyfriend! Wait, wait – Marc, are you sure about this?”

“They went on a date on Friday night and Steven ended up staying over at his place, so the sitrep based on best current intel is an affirmative on Steven having a boyfriend,” he tells her drily.

Sounding as dangerous as Marc has ever heard her, Layla says, “Okay, I’m going to assume you only found that information out within the last thirty seconds, because there is no way you could have known that for any longer without telling me. What’s his name? How did Steven meet him? Have you met him?”

“Kieran, at some charity thing at Issy’s school, and yes,” Marc says.

“What’s he like?”

“He seems…” Marc trails off, looking for the right word: “…normal.”

“Wow, you really liked him, didn’t you.” She pauses. “Are you jealous? Tell the truth.”

“No. It’s not that. I want Steven to be happy. He deserves to be happy. But if he’s going to be with someone, they need to understand — they need to know how important —“ He breaks off; he’s floundering and he knows it.

But Layla gets him. She always has. “If he’s going to be with someone, you want them to love him as much as you do, and you don’t think anyone could love him as much as you do.”

He breathes out shakily. “Stupid, huh.”

“No, it’s not.” On the other end of the phone, Layla is briefly silent. Marc can picture her in his mind’s eye, padding barefoot around their Cairo apartment, standing in her favorite spot by the balcony doors, looking out at the skyline as she speaks to him. “Marc, you remember how you made a life for Steven, before you were separate, before I met him? That apartment with all his books and his job at the museum? You were trying to make him happy, but he wasn’t, not really.”

“That was different. He was alone then. Now he has all of us.”

“Yes, and you and I live three thousand miles away and Issy’s growing up and Jake’s got his mission. You all chose this so you didn’t have to be everything to each other anymore. Steven has the freedom to find his own happiness now. So do you.”

“I know,” Marc says. “But. He might get hurt.”

Very quietly, Layla murmurs, “And you can’t protect him from that. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Marc doesn’t say anything, but he knows his silence is answer enough.

“Then he’ll get hurt,” Layla says gently. “And he’ll get through it because everyone gets through it and because we’ll help him through it.”

“Yeah, but —“

“I was married to this guy,” Layla interrupts him. “We were happy, or at least I thought we were. Then one day he just walked out the door and didn’t come back. I actually thought he was dead, right up until the divorce papers arrived in the post.”

“What a fucking asshole,” Marc says. “What’d you do?”

“I got hurt,” Layla says. “I cried until I ran out of tears and then I went after him and I found him and eventually I forgave him. And now we’re having a baby and he’s going to be a great father.”

He shuts his eyes for a moment, then makes himself open them again. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. But, listen, all that said — if Kieran breaks Steven’s heart, you will absolutely have my permission to kill him.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“No?”

“No,” Marc says. “I’d send you and Jake to kill him. You’d make a cleaner job of it.”

On the other end of the line, Layla laughs. He loves her laugh.

“Are we good?” he asks.

“Always. See you tomorrow night.”

Split Day has no set rituals, except that they spend it together. The first anniversary of their separation has so far been the only exception. Marc barely remembers how they spent that day, although he thinks they probably went to McDonald’s – at that point, a trip to McDonald’s was almost the only thing Issy would leave the apartment for. Jake had been back in sporadic contact with them by then, but he’d stayed away on the day itself. They had still been four in number, though, because Layla had been there, looking tense and strained, as she had throughout that first year. It hadn’t been long after that, Marc remembers, that Layla had confronted him and Steven with the hard truth that if they didn’t work out how to live separate lives, neither of them was going to have any kind of life at all. She’d been right, of course, and Marc knows that without Layla’s intervention, he and Steven would have ended up trapped in a suffocating existence of mutual obsession. She keeps finding new ways to save him.

By the time the second anniversary came round, the old apartment had been sold and Steven and Issy were in the process of moving. Marc and Layla had already been back in Egypt for almost a year by then, and so Marc had made the trip to London from Cairo to help them get settled in the new place. Then Jake had shown up, claiming he was just passing through on Ennead business, and they’d all spent the day painting Issy’s new bedroom. It’s a good memory; probably Marc’s first really good memory of their post-split lives.

Steven had been the one to suggest that they make a point of meeting up on the third anniversary, and that had also been the year that Issy had given Split Day its official name. Years three and four had both been Issy’s choice of activity: a day at London Zoo and a boat ride on the Thames, respectively. And now they have arrived at year five and Issy considers herself too mature and sophisticated for childish things like trips to the zoo.

She is not, however, too mature and sophisticated to spend the afternoon at the local park, eating ice cream and playing improvised ball games with Marc, Steven and Jake in various combinations.

Right now, Marc and Steven are spectators to whatever complicated hybrid version of soccer and tag Jake and Issy have invented together. The sun is shining and it’s warm, or at least, warm for London in April. Steven has stripped down to a T-shirt and in honor of the day Marc has relaxed his no-touching-in-public rule to allow himself to rest his hand on Steven’s bare forearm, which is warm and solid under his palm.

“I called Layla,” he says, keeping his voice low enough that it won’t carry over to where Jake and Issy are wrestling for control of the ball.

Steven looks up from his book. “Good.”

“We’re gonna do it.”

Steven nods, as if he hadn’t expected anything else.

“Go on,” Marc says. “Tell me you think it’s a terrible idea.”

“I don’t. Six years ago, it would have been a terrible idea. Now…” He puts down his book, and places his free hand on top of Marc’s. “You’ll be fine.”

“You think?” Marc asks. He hates that he needs reassurance, but that doesn’t change the fact that he does.

“Marc,” Steven says patiently, “when have I ever not given you my honest opinion about anything?”

Jake and Issy have stopped playing their game, Marc notices. Now they’re standing opposite each other, and Issy is copying the moves Jake is showing her. Marc can hear Jake talking to her, but can’t make out his words. He recognises that stance, though, and he can easily guess the kinds of things Jake is saying: Keep your feet apart, think about your center of gravity, don’t take your eyes off your opponent.

Marc glances at Steven, and sees him frowning. “He’s teaching her to fight.”

“Those are self-defense moves,” Marc corrects him. “She should know that kind of thing. She might as well learn it from Jake.”

“And when she asks him how to fight, he’ll show her that, too, you know he will.” Steven looks really unhappy now, verging on upset. It seems disproportionate.

“What’s the matter?”

Steven lets out a breath. “It’s just – everything’s so good right now.”

If there’s a line of reasoning there, Marc can’t see it. “And that’s… bad?” he hazards.

“You know that part of a disaster movie, when everyone is happy, right before the asteroid hits the planet or whatever? Yeah, that.” Steven’s right hand is still resting on top of Marc’s; with his other hand, he is absently pulling up fistfuls of grass. “That’s just the anxiety talking, isn’t it?”

“I think after all the bad years we had,” Marc says, “we’re owed some good ones.”

Steven makes a small noise of agreement, but the troubled expression doesn’t leave his face. “You and Jake… your lives are dangerous. You both downplay it, but it’s true. And before, if something happened… well, at least we all would’ve gone together.”

Marc thinks about the dreams he has too often, in which he is searching for Steven in the vast and desolate desert of the Egyptian underworld and cannot find him. The horror of the dream rests in its closing moments; just before Marc wakes, he always experiences a profound sense of awful certainty that Steven is simply not there to be found. That he is gone. Marc left the Field of Reeds because he couldn’t accept an existence that didn’t have Steven in it. He will not get that choice again.

He says, “You think I don’t worry about you? That something might happen while I’m on the other side of the world and can’t do anything about it?”

Steven scoffs, “Yes, there’s a real risk I might die of boredom at the next PTA meeting.”

Marc’s list of worries for Steven includes things like car wrecks and cancer and getting wiped out the next time some extra-dimensional madman like Thanos decides to wreak global destruction. Not one of them is something he can prevent, or fix if it comes to pass.

“Anyway,” Steven continues, “she’s the one I worry about most.”

Marc squints at Issy, who is practicing elbow strikes. She spins and lifts her right elbow; Jake is able to block it, but only because he’s fast and knows it’s coming. The move is solid, Marc sees. Issy has excellent coordination – they all do, even if Steven doesn’t think he does – and she’s taking in everything Jake is showing her.

“Issy’s gonna be okay,” he says. “She barely even remembers what it was like before. She’s just a normal kid.”

“Yes,” Steven says. “That’s why I worry.” He looks straight at Marc: “Who do you think the Ennead will come to if something happens to Jake? Even if by some miracle he stays lucky, he’ll be too old one day. It won’t be you they ask to take over, and it definitely won’t be me. But Issy – she’d think it was an adventure. She doesn’t know what the world is really like. The kinds of people who are out there.” He shakes his head. “I want her to be safe, Marc. More than anything, I want her to be safe.”

Somehow, without him noticing, Marc’s grip has tightened around Steven’s forearm. He makes himself relax. “Yeah. Believe me, I know.”

Steven forces a smile. “See? You are ready for fatherhood.”

Issy is running toward them, racing over the grass. There’s a huge grin on her face. “Listen to this! Chúpamela. La hostia. Tu puta madre –”

“Hey!” Jake yells, “Come back here! I’m not done showing you stuff!”

She spins around and in a second she’s gone again.

“Well,” Steven says after a moment: “At least we don’t have to worry about Jake getting killed in the line of duty any more.”

Marc looks at him. “Why not?”

“Because I’m going to bloody well murder him first,” Steven says darkly, and Marc lies back on the grass and laughs.

Dinner is Indian take-out — something they all like, with plenty of vegan options for Steven. They have to crowd around the small kitchen table, elbows and shoulders bumping every time someone reaches for something. No one complains; Layla has observed that the four of them have no sense of personal space around each other. Jake regales Issy with his latest superhero adventures – heavily edited, Marc suspects – and she listens, wide-eyed and lost in admiration, while Steven looks disapproving. He looks even more disapproving when Jake lets Issy try his beer, but she makes a face when she tastes it and quickly spits it out into the sink, to Jake’s great amusement.

When they’ve all eaten their fill, Steven clears away the empty take-out cartons and Marc loads the dishwasher while Jake teaches Issy how to introduce herself in Spanish. Then Steven’s phone buzzes and, before he can reach it, Jake lifts it instead. Naturally it unlocks when he looks at the screen. “Who’s Kieran?”

“He’s Steven’s boyfriend,” Issy says conspiratorially.

Jake hoots and slaps his hand on the table, grinning. “Te tomo bastante tiempo.”

“We’ve been on one date,” Steven protests, snatching his phone back.

“And coffee,” Marc says. “You told me you’ve been meeting him for coffee.”

Jake looks to Marc. “What do we think of this guy?”

“You know, you don’t actually have an automatic right to an opinion on my choice of romantic partners,” Steven says. He sounds like he wants to be annoyed but can’t quite manage it.

“Yeah, we do,” Marc tells him easily. To Jake, he says, “He’s okay, but he’s not good enough for Steven.”

“Who is?” Jake says with a shrug.

Steven tips his head back. “Oh fuck off –”

Issy screeches her delight. “You said fuck!” She turns to Jake. “What’s Spanish for fuck off?”

“Vete a la mierda,” Jake supplies.

“Vete a la mierda,” Issy repeats. “Vete a la mierda. Got it.”

Steven looks helplessly at Marc. “Make him stop.”

“Don’t look at me,” Marc says, waving a hand. “It’s been five years. You’re all on your own now.”

“We’re not really, though, are we,” Steven says softly. “That’s the beauty of it.” He stops, then meets Marc’s gaze for a second. His meaning is obvious: Go on, then. Tell them.

Issy misses it, but Jake sees. “Something’s up. What is it?”

Marc takes a deep breath. “Layla and I are gonna have a baby.”

There is a second of silence around the table. Then Issy claps her hands together and squeals. Jake offers Marc his hand across the table and Marc accepts it. “Felicidades, papá.”

Marc nods. “Gracias.”

“This is so extra!” Issy cries. “When is she having it? Is it a girl or a boy? Have you chosen a name? Oh, oh – can I tell Jameela?”

“No, you can’t tell Jameela,” Marc says sternly. “Or anyone else. This is just for us right now, okay?”

Issy looks disappointed, but she nods. Just for us has always been their shorthand for things which can’t go beyond the four of them and Layla. Just for us means the truth about their shared origins. It means Jake’s status as the Ennead’s Moon Knight and Layla’s as the Scarlet Scarab. Just for us means the things that still bind them together, even though they have separate bodies and separate lives now.

Steven reaches out and pats Issy’s shoulder. “I won’t be telling Kieran for a while, either.”

Issy brightens. Then her brow furrows. “Wait, is Marc and Layla’s baby going to be my cousin? Am I going to be an auntie? Or something else?”

Thoughtfully, Steven says, “Actually, that’s a good question. I mean, genetically speaking, we’re all parents to any child one of us conceives…”

Marc grimaces. “Please stop making everything weirder than it needs to be, Steven.”

“I know,” Jake says, breaking in. He grins at Issy. “Baby’ll be your hermanita or hermanito.”

Issy’s expression breaks into the widest, happiest smile Marc has ever seen on her face. “I’ll be a big sister, won’t I?”

“Ay,” Jake confirms. “Hermana mayor.”

Steven lifts his glass. “I think that’s worth a toast.”

They raise their glasses over the center of the table – beer and wine for Jake and Steven and lemonade for Issy and also Marc, who stopped drinking in the first year, when he realized how much he’d been relying on the safety-valve cut-off of Steven swapping in to curb his worst excesses.

Eventually they move from the kitchen to the lounge, and there is more beer and wine and lemonade, and then one minute Issy is showing Jake Korean pop music videos on her phone and the next she is slumped over the sofa cushions, fast asleep. Jake carries her upstairs to bed and while he’s gone, Marc takes over his place on the sofa next to Steven, hooking his arm across Steven’s shoulders and angling his head so that he can nuzzle Steven’s neck.

“When do you have to leave tomorrow?” Steven murmurs.

“Early,” Marc says.

Steven makes a small whine of disappointment in the back of his throat. “Let’s not think about it yet.”

A noise makes Marc look round. Jake is standing in the open doorway, leaning against the doorframe. Marc knows he and Steven have a tendency to get lost in each other at times; he has no idea how long Jake’s been there. The expression on Jake’s face is unreadable to Marc, which is odd and unsettling when it’s his own face he’s looking at, but true nonetheless.

Marc wonders sometimes if this is why Jake stays away from them as much as he does. He knows Steven can’t help seeing it as a rejection - that their normal, quotidian, non-superhero lives are too boring for Jake – but Marc doesn’t think that’s it at all. The truth is that Jake doesn’t belong in their lives; there is no easy space for him to slot into, and on some level all of them know it. Jake doesn’t fit into the quiet domesticity of Steven and Issy’s life in London; there’s no place for him in Marc and Layla’s marriage; and the bond between Marc and Steven is exclusive by its very nature.

Marc used to think that the lingering connection between himself and Steven and the constant unquenchable yearning that came with it was the price they’d paid for the benefits of separation for all of them. More and more, lately, he’s started to think that the real price is the one Jake is paying, and that perhaps Jake is due their gratitude for bearing it without complaint.

“Get over here,” he says, holding out the arm that isn’t curled protectively around Steven.

Jake hesitates for a moment, but then he comes over and sits down on Marc’s other side. With Steven, Marc always experiences a kind of easing of tension when they’re actually in physical contact with each other, but that isn’t the case with Jake. It still feels pleasant, though - Jake on one side of him, Steven on the other, their twin presences acting as counterweights to each other. Like scales balancing, he thinks, and remembers suddenly another set of scales, tipping back and forth before finally coming to rest in what appeared to be equilibrium. It wasn’t, though. This is.

“You know, you could drop by more often,” Steven says after a while, the remark obviously aimed at Jake. “The spare room is always there. Issy loves seeing you.”

“Just Issy, huh,” Jake says.

“That’s not what I meant –”

“Sounded like it.”

Marc is just gearing himself up to referee another clash when Steven surprises him by reaching an arm in front of Marc and taking a fistful of Jake’s shirt, pulling him around so he’s looking at both of them. “Jake,” he says firmly: “We would like to see you more often. We, meaning, me, Marc, Issy and all permutations thereof. Now, is that sufficiently clear and unambiguous for you?”

Jake’s mouth twists and for a second Marc thinks he’s going to scowl. Then, abruptly, his expression clears. “Si.”

“Good.”

“And try not to get yourself killed doing dangerous shit for the Ennead,” Marc adds, recalling his earlier conversation with Steven at the park.

Jake makes a dismissive noise. “I’m not the one who goes visiting in civil wars and failed states with no magic armor.”

“Could we not,” Steven interrupts, “talk about people getting killed? Right now, tonight, we’re all together and safe under one roof. I think that’s enough, yeah?”

Yeah, Marc thinks. It’s enough.

Marc wakes when the alarm on his phone goes off at 5.15am. He’s lying on his side, one arm protectively encircling Steven’s upper body, his face pressed into the nape of Steven’s neck. Steven’s hair tickles Marc’s nose; he really does need to get a haircut. Marc takes a few seconds to breathe in Steven’s scent, banking the memory as a source of future comfort.

The phone alarm gets louder until he can’t ignore it anymore. He breathes in one last time then untangles his limbs from Steven’s and rolls out of bed. Steven blinks awake. “You going?”

“Taxi’s booked for six. You don’t have to get up.” Steven used to drive him to the airport, until the time Marc missed his flight because they couldn’t let go of each other in the departure hall. Marc still winces at the memory. Now they say their goodbyes at the house.

“Nah, s’okay, I’ll see you out.” Steven gets out of bed, yawns and pulls on a robe. Marc showers, dresses and then packs the last of his belongings. He puts his head around the door of the guest bedroom, but the bed is empty. The sheets are rumpled, though, so Jake must have spent at least a few hours asleep in it. He’s either gotten up even earlier than Marc to go for a run or he’s currently leaping across the rooftops of central London chasing down some miscreant; either way, he’s unlikely to be back before Marc leaves. Next, Marc goes into Issy’s room; she is huddled underneath her duvet, only her face and a mess of dark hair poking out. In sleep, she is entirely childlike again, the outline of her face soft and rounded. He brushes her cheek softly with his knuckles. “Hey, I’m leaving now.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” she mumbles. “Bye. Love you.”

He strokes her hair. “Love you too, kid.”

Downstairs, Steven has made a pot of tea for himself and a mug of coffee for Marc. Marc lifts the coffee in one hand and places his other hand on top of Steven’s on the table top and they sit and drink their drinks in companionable silence, the only noise the tick-tick-tick of the kitchen clock counting down the minutes until Marc has to go.

Just as Marc is about to get up and go to the front door to check the street outside for his taxi, Steven says, “This is always the worst bit.”

Marc nods in silent agreement.

Steven hesitates. He takes a breath and Marc has the sudden impression that he’s stealing himself. “Why are we doing this to ourselves?”

“Because if we didn’t get away from each other and figure out how to live apart, we were going to turn into weird shut-ins,” Marc reminds him. “Which was where we were heading until Layla staged an intervention.”

“Yeah, but that was years ago. Look at us now. Different lives on different continents. Whatever we had to prove to ourselves, we’ve proved it by now. Listen, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think –” Steven stops. “I think you and Layla should move back here.” He holds up a hand: “Just – hear me out, all right? I don’t mean you should come back to London for good. Maybe just for a few years while tiny Spector-El-Faouly is, well, tiny. I can help out, change nappies, take the pressure off you two a bit. You could keep working and Layla could go back to superheroing as soon as she wants to. Issy would love having you and Layla here and being able to spend time with her new sibling-cousin-whatever. You can find a place to live close by, and we can be one big sprawling extended magical clone family. Jake might even visit more regularly if the rest of us were all in one place.”

It sounds appealing, Marc has to admit to himself. More than appealing.

“Look,” Steven continues, “You know what I remember most about the first few months? I mean apart from all the awful stuff, like Issy crying all the time and you and me having panic attacks and Jake walking out on us. I remember how much more time there was. Waking up and knowing there was a whole day ahead and it was all mine, and the next day and the next day after that. I thought I’d never be able to fill all those hours of being awake. And now suddenly it’s five years later and I don’t know where it’s gone. I want to sign up for a part time degree and I don’t know where I’m going to fit it in. This time next year, you and Layla will have a baby. Six years after that, there’ll be a little person running around asking for snacks. And six years after that, they’ll be as grown up as Issy is now. It’ll go so fast, Marc. We missed so much, and it wasn’t our fault, and I don’t want any of us to miss out on anything anymore. Even if this is just the pause before the asteroid hits or we run into the iceberg. Maybe especially then. So come home.” He falters slightly. “I know London isn’t your home. Strictly speaking it’s not even my home. I mean —“

“I know what you mean,” Marc says. He nods. “Yeah.”

Steven looks at him. “Yeah?”

“I’ll have to talk to Layla,” Marc reminds him. “But I think she’ll go for it.”

“Okay,” Steven says. He nods and then he smiles. “Okay.”

Outside on the street a car horn sounds. Marc gets up to go, and Steven stands as well. He puts his arms around Marc and holds him tightly, and then he leans in and kisses Marc on the cheek. His mouth is soft and his breath is warm. “It’s okay. I don’t mind you can’t do it back.”

Marc half-twists in Steven’s embrace and kisses him quickly. “Who says I can’t?”

Steven laughs in startled surprise. “We’re all still changing, aren’t we.”

Marc leaves Steven in the kitchen — watching the other walk away is still almost physically painful for both of them, and they structure their goodbyes to avoid it wherever possible.

They are changing, he thinks, and there are more changes coming. Next year, Split Day won’t be just the four of them. There’ll also be Layla and a baby, and maybe Steven will want to invite Kieran and tell him the truth about what the day means to them, and Issy might want to ask Jameela and perhaps they won’t even have to wonder if Jake is coming or not because by then they will all have changed enough to show him that there’s a place for him with them, always.

Marc gets his bag and goes to the front door and then, just before he leaves, he touches his fingers to the mezuzah on the doorframe and then to his lips. Then he walks out into the bright morning of a new day.