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[ambitious]

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✘ select a muse
✘ leave a prompt ( threadstarter/picture(s)/lyrics, etc )
✘ profit!

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[adronitis]

[ Marcus has actively tried not to pry into Brooke's life before she started college. She's told him enough that he's been able to piece together all that he feels he needs to know, and honestly, it paints a fucking horrific picture. It's been tough, resisting the urge to google Lakewood, or her name, or to casually mention it in passing to coworkers he knows had been tangentially affiliated with that case, but he's kept his mouth shut and let her move on with her life. Her past shaped her, sure, but it's her present that he's most interested in.

Well, and her future too, if he's being honest.

The semester ends with a whirlwind of late nights spent cramming for finals and frantic essay-writing, and he's mostly tried to stay out of her way as much as possible so he doesn't distract her while she's working. He proof-reads what she asks him to and helps her with her flashcards, but mostly what he does is feed her and make sure she gets out the door on time in the morning, and lets her do her own thing. Her little office-slash-study-nook is right off the dining room, which means when he cleans up from dinner, it's almost impossible not to overhear her on her Skype calls with her friends, giving Marcus a nearly front-row seat to the whole discussion of why Brooke wasn't coming home for Christmas. There was only mild guilt-tripping but she remained firm in her convictions. She wasn't leaving DC.

After she hung up, he brought her a cup of tea and gently suggested her friends come to visit her here. Not for the whole holiday, since they presumably had family to go see — unlike Brooke, poor girl — but even just for a day or two. They had the space to put them up, and he knows it's important to her.

Which is how he winds up building up the fire pit, hauling some of the patio furniture around to make sure there are enough seats to go around, and filing the fridge for snacks. He remembers being twenty, and how much food he could put away. Being a good host comes naturally to him, and he tries his best to be both welcoming and to stay out of their hair as much as possible. They aren't here to visit him, after all.

He stays outside with the gang for maybe twenty minutes once they all arrive and settle in, and then he excuses himself, citing a pressing project at work that really isn't all that pressing at all. Dropping a kiss to the top of Brooke's head, he withdraws back inside and sets himself up in his office downstairs, killing time by processing paperwork and keeping half an ear out for the low murmur of voices filtering in through the narrow windows at ground-level. He can't quite make out the words, and he doesn't want to, since they deserve their privacy and the opportunity to talk about their pasts without having to censor themselves for an audience that wasn't part of it, but once he hears the scrape of metal chairs across stone and the swell of voices getting louder, he closes down what he's doing and heads back upstairs to see if they're going to call it a night and offer them a ride to their hotel.

Technology thwarts his attempts at chivalry, an Uber having already been called, so he stands around and makes polite small talk for a few minutes before Brooke's friends all troop down the steps of his little white house, waving to them as they pile into the back of the car and drive away.

Heading back through the house to the back patio, he makes a brief detour to pick up some more wood to feed the fire before settling himself down on the little love-seat Brooke had staked out as her own, automatically draping his arm over her shoulders and pressing his lips to her hair. ] Oh yeah? A good one, I hope.