Chapter Text
The funny sort of thing about Sean, Marion knows, is that although he outwardly seems like a very simple man, he is deceptively difficult to read.
Marion no longer wrestles with the question of whether or not this deception is accidental or deliberate. He is certain that it is the latter. Sean wears simplicity like a mask, like it’s something to hide behind.
It’s like: he pretends that decisions to sacrifice himself batting squid-dogs is a sort of second-nature, an instinct as unpreventable as a bird flying south, rather than a calculated risk borne from a desire to feel useful at all costs. He acts like his inclination to shoot first and ask questions later doesn’t come from a crippling fear of facing those answers. In conversation, he uses a carefully-crafted performance of masculinity to muscle past expressing any feelings that border on the sincere.
This is all despite the fact that in his letters, he discusses love and pain and devotion with more clarity than any person Marion has ever known.
That’s the one downside of living in close proximity to Sean: while their time apart had been rich with wax-sealed love notes written with a blinding honesty fostered by distance and ink, Sean can’t quite reach that same level of candor face-to-face. Marion often finds himself stumbling over subtext as Sean protects himself with grunts, shrugs, and, most often, humor. It’s enough that Marion would be disheartened if Sean wasn’t so deft at speaking with his hands: a subtle squeeze when no one is watching, a brush along his lower back in moments of stress or ungrounding, a sickeningly-sweet caress to his cheek in the midst of lovemaking. This, too, is something Marion has come to know: while Sean’s mouth may fall short, his fingers rarely do.
At the moment, that hand is holding the side of Marion’s face like it’s some precious thing, and Marion, once dangerously unmoored, finds peace in the swiping of Sean’s soft fingertip along his cheek and jaw. It’s a brazen show of affection for Sean, given the eyes on them in this moment, and Marion is so touched by this act of bravery that it takes effort to not smother him in kisses right now. Sean’s hand drifts below Marion’s face, then, and dances along his neck in a contemplative sort of way. When he reaches the branching scar on his chest, Marion opens his eyes for the first time and is met with Sean’s, wet and red with emotion and strained from the effort of holding it in. His thumb swipes through tear tracks, his pupils dart to the shocked gazes of their companions, and his face recalculates.
Marion knows, perhaps before even Sean himself does, that the next thing out of Sean’s mouth is going to be a joke. It’s not a premonition; it’s just intuition. Marion steadies his breath and waits for it.
“Want me to pee on it?”
Marion grins, despite it all. He knows a defense mechanism when he sees one, but the pressure of the situation has ticked so high that a little laughter might be warranted.
“Would you?” Marion quips back. This bit is well-trodden and easy, and it does the double-duty of making their friends tittle at and disregard any possible tension between the two of them.
“If you asked,” Sean says, a little too quick, and Marion senses some of that subtext leak to the surface as Sean tugs him into a tantalizingly suffocating hug. Then, quieter: “I got you, bud.”
So honest that even Marion balks at it for a while. He understands the allure of humor in this moment and succumbs. “Will you do it in front of everyone else?”
“I get shy,” Sean giggles, and Marion bites his tongue to keep from kissing him.
“I hate you,” Marion says, and even though Sean laughs, Marion decides he’s tired of this. He tacks on a whisper: “But I love you.”
“But I love you,” Sean echoes. He does not hesitate.
The walk back is silent. Dr. Jean leads the way with a lantern, likely as an excuse to be alone with her thoughts. The rest of the group is a few paces behind her, and Marion and Sean bring up the distant rear. It’s partially because Marion is moving slowly in his newly-scarred state, draping himself over Sean for support, and it’s partially because Marion wants a bit of privacy. He’s not going to let Sean get away with withholding truths right now, not after what they just witnessed.
Marion opens: “You can tell me anything, you know.”
Sean’s hand is perhaps lower than it needs to be, settled near Marion’s hip. Sean fiddles with the hem of Marion’s shirt. “Shouldn’t have to. I’m…” he gestures vaguely with his freehand.
Marion rolls his eyes. “I’m prophetic, not telepathic. What are you saying, Sean?”
“I’m sayin’, y’know, I’m fine.” He shrugs and shoulders more of Marion’s weight as they pass over a rough few tracks. “No point in wastin’ words askin’ about Sean Finnerty. He’s fine, he’s always fine.”
“Nothing you say’s a waste.” Marion pauses, grimaces against the pain in his chest. “And, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure if I believe you right now. I can’t get a read.”
“Nothing to read,” and it’s a line so predictable that Marion doesn’t need to know the future to see it coming. “‘Cause it’s the same word over and over again, bud, and that word is a-oh-fucking-kay.” He grins down at Marion, a bead of sweat cutting down his forehead.
“Nice try, Finnerty, but I’m doubting that’s one single word.” As Sean lets his hand slip below Marion’s shirt, kneading the soft, hot, skin there, Marion is briefly stunned to silence. He rallies his resolve, however, and voices something that had been eating at him for a while. “You’re mad that I didn’t tell you about the dogs. That they’d injure you. I hope you know I didn’t see that coming—”
“You think I’m mad at you?” Sean’s accent gets more pronounced when he’s incredulous. It’d be cute if the stakes weren’t so high. “Are you fuckin’ daft?”
Marion shrugs. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Fine, I’m mad at myself, Mari,” Sean whisper-yells, sparing time for a quick look ahead to see if any of their compatriots are eavesdropping. “I shoulda—that shouldn’ta happened.” He knocks his head in the direction of Marion’s chest. “I shoulda been there. I shoulda shot sooner. And with better aim, shit. I shoulda took care of you, man, ‘cause I’m unbreakable and you’re—” he trails off.
“Breakable,” Marion finishes, not hiding his disdain for the implication.
“I wasn’t gonna say that. I was gonna say.” Sean thinks, and seems to accept he’s already lost. “Fragile?”
Something about this small victory feels both revitalizing and infuriating to Marion. On the one hand, Sean admitted it, voiced what’s been eating him up inside, with surprisingly little prompting. On the other, Marion doesn’t want to be seen as a liability, a companion to be fretted over and protected. Scars or no, Marion is capable of taking care of himself, and Sean shouldn’t internalize any responsibility for Marion’s choices. Sure, he may need Sean to walk at this current moment, but it’s a temporary state.
It might not look it, but if anyone needs taking care of right now, it’s Sean.
And if anyone needs to prove that they’re unbreakable, it’s Marion.
“You tired?” Marion says, a non-sequitor that makes perfect sense to Marion but that seems to throw Sean for a loop.
“I’m—I dunno, I could sleep, I could stay up.” He side-eyes him. “Why?”
“I’ve talked to some folks, and I’m staying in the chapterhouse, too, tonight,” Marion says, and he pauses to let it sink in.
Sean’s breath hitches. “Oh, yeah?”
“Come up to my room when you get the chance,” Marion says, and Sean’s ears immediately redden; Marion can tell even in the dim light.
“You sure? The others might notice,” Sean whispers. “We could wait ‘til you’re back at your apartment for that. Wait for when we’re not bunking in such close proximity with the gang, with so many of us staying in the chapterhouse like some sort of unhappy family.”
“No one’s going to be thinking about us tonight, Finn. They’ve got their own worries. Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to—”
“Aw, don’t say that, sugar, you know I want to. It’s just—is it smart?” Marion opens his mouth to speak, but Sean bumps his head against his. “Don’t answer that. Heh, when have I ever cared about that? I’m comin’ over.”
Marion grins. He assesses the group ahead, then quickly pecks Sean in the temple. “Alright, then.”
Sean bites his lip. “Alright.”
Marion didn’t give him a time to drop by. He wanted to let Sean decompress and reconsider, if necessary. Marion takes the opportunity to wash up and assess his changed body in the mirror.
It feels painful, of course, in more ways than one. It’s a reminder that there’s something about him that’s different, that’s otherworldly. It looks like something violent and torn, and it looks like something gossamer and delicate.
It sickens him. It feels like armor.
Suddenly, Marion’s mind spins, and his fingers tingle with a touch of what he has learned to understand is the divine. Marion has only a moment to prepare for whatever vision the magicks of the world have decided to grant him before his eyesight, still currently locked on his own reflection, blurs around the edges. Rather than feeling dangerous and urgent like a tidal wave, however, this vision comes to him in a languorous ripple, one that shudders over the glass of the mirror like a pond disturbed by a leaping minnow. Through the mirror, which he realizes is serving as his window to what’s to come, Marion hears a muffled knock, a ghostly and docile sort of tap-tap-tata-tap.
The second it begins, it ends. The ripple fades, and the mirror is once more just a mirror. Marion is grounded in the present again.
He grins, a bit, amused at whatever forces have granted him his sight. They’d just offered him a vision so menial and trite, yet so profound in its implication, that Marion acknowledges—not for the first time—that they’re just as obsessed with Sean as he is. He’s coming over soon, they’re saying, and they feel giddy and loved. He’s coming to us soon.
Tap-tap-tata-tap.
“Come in.” Marion, still smiling to himself, continues to regard his reflection as the door opens.
Sean slips in, still in his shirt and trousers, though lacking his shoes. Marion watches him through the reflection, though doesn’t meet his eyes, and Sean seems—distant. His face doesn’t change from a sort of stoic nervousness as he enters and shuts the door behind him with a soft click. He fiddles with his hair and shuffles his socked feet and speaks in a voice surprisingly jovial for his obviously unsettled expression.
“Looks like a spiderweb, kinda. The scar. Which some might find attractive. If that makes you feel better.” He says it while looking down at his feet and hugging his arms against his chest.
Marion realizes, then, that Sean hasn’t quite assessed the situation properly. He thinks that Marion is currently watching his own reflection, which isn’t the truth. Marion’s got his eyes trained on Sean.
Sean doesn’t know he’s being watched.
“Do you find it attractive?” Marion says, trailing his fingers along his collarbone. Through the mirror, he watches Sean’s eyes track this movement.
“Jury’s still out.” It’s said with the tone of a smiling man, but Marion can see plainly that Sean isn’t. His eyes look worried as they see Marion’s scar in its entirety, and Sean shudders, a full-body thing. He rubs his hands over his eyes in a big, scrubbing movement, and it’s here that Marion sees the obvious puffiness there from a recent cry.
Marion wheels around.
The second their eyes lock, any look of distress on Sean’s face disappears. He smiles, wide and—quite obviously—fake. They watch each other, for a moment, Sean donning the guise of an uncomplicated man with a terrifying ease and Marion reeling with the desire to hug him and shush him and lick the tears off his face like a man depraved. Marion opens his mouth to speak but Sean is already moving, closing the distance between them with strong and sure steps. When Sean reaches him he, without much ceremony, whirls his hands around Marion’s waist and palms his ass.
Marion gasps a bit. He can’t help it.
“There he is,” Sean says, grinning and rocking their pelvises together.
It’s more obvious up close that Sean’s had a rough go of it tonight. His face looks worn and his cheeks still glisten with moisture. His smile is unfaltering, and the pressure from his hands is relentless. It feels…good, it always feels good, but Marion can’t help but wonder what Sean would ask for if he felt he could ask for it.
“What a day, huh?” Sean grins that disarming grin.
Marion stares at him.
“Sure you’re looking for a bit of an escape from it all.” The hands knead.
Marion continues to stare.
“I’ll give you some wisdom my nan gave me when I was small,” Sean says, teeth blinding, and Marion recognizes the setup of a joke. “There’s nothin’ a good fuck can’t fix. She was a wise woman, my nan.”
Marion’s stare turns cold, making his unamusement plain, and, for the first time tonight, he sees Sean’s mask of easy, breezy confidence flicker. In that brief moment of light, Marion soaks in the man beneath and finds someone desperate to be held and praised and cared for, desperate to let his soldier’s strength melt off like wool layers in suffocating sun.
When Marion speaks next, it feels so inevitable that he’s confused, for just a second, about whether or not it’s happening presently or happening five seconds in the future.
He says: “Is that you asking to get fucked?”
Sean’s hands freeze. His eyes go wide. The man beneath catches his breath.
The mask says, amused, and with a joking tilt to his voice, “Excuse me?”
Marion steels his gaze and gets a finger under Sean’s chin. He points it up. Sean’s neck lolls easily at Marion’s prodding, and his eyes are soft when Marion catches them.
Marion grins. “I said, is that you asking to get fucked, Finnerty?”
Sean takes a moment to reply, his eyes still doe-like, his lips soft and parted. “You…you implying I need fixin’, you slick fuck?”
Marion regards him with a tsk. “That mouth of yours sure does.” He takes the opportunity to kiss him, feverish and deep; Sean opens up so beautifully, his knees buckling a tad at the sudden force. He moans into Marion’s mouth, gets his hands around the nape of his neck.
Marion pulls back to regard his work.
Sean remains kiss-drunk for only a moment before that fawnish look in his eyes fades and his jaw hardens against Marion’s fingers. He laughs. “I’d be lyin’ if I said it didn’t stir something in me to see you so cocky, sugar, but that was me offering to fuck you.”
Marion hums, considering. Sean is swaying, just a bit, against him, but his face has returned to a cool indifference.
“I’d almost forgot we do it both ways, what with the number of times you’ve been bending me over lately.” Marion thinks for a moment, then whispers: “It’s been a while since we did it the other way round, huh? A couple months?”
Sean’s face goes blank. Marion deduces from the distant look in Sean’s face and the growing bulge in the front of Sean’s pants that he’s remembering.
Marion takes that as a cue to indulge in that memory himself.
Sean had been given some solo reconnaissance assignment, something for Candela and something so confidential that he couldn’t tell even Marion about it. He was particularly afraid that he’d endanger Marion by making him privy to it, so despite the fact Marion offered to visit him at the chapterhouse on multiple occasions, Sean instead avoided him like the plague for one long week.
Marion knows that if Sean was asked to do it alone, that means it was either something simple or something only someone who follows orders unquestionably would do. As that week drew on, which of the two it was became glaringly obvious. Marion was worried sick.
Then, Marion had stirred from his sleep one night to the sound of his bedroom door squeaking open. When he looked blearily in that direction, he found it closed, and he silently thanked the spirits for the foresight. The vision was fulfilled only a minute later when Sean, disheveled and wet from the rain, entered the room. He had let himself in with his key to Marion’s apartment.
Marion sat up in bed and beckoned him in, swaddling an obviously exhausted Sean in comforters and kisses until his breathing slowed. He did not ask him what happened, and Sean did not tell him. They slept together, close and tangled, all through that night, and in the morning, Marion was awoken to the sound of Sean’s voice, a mere inch from Marion’s mouth, whispering, “Make love to me?”
Marion had no trouble obeying that particular order.
Marion is shook from the finer details of that memory by Sean:
“Huh. I nearly forgot that,” he lies.
Marion chuckles.
Sometime during this interaction, Marion realizes his hands had migrated to Sean’s spine and then lowered, knob by muscular knob, until it is Marion’s hands that are resting on Sean’s backside. Sean, meanwhile, has removed his own hands from Marion and is now holding them meekly in front of himself, pressed between their two bodies, fiddling with his shirt buttons and fingers. Just as notable, Marion realizes Sean is hard against his thigh now, but Marion does him the disservice and/or mercy of ignoring it while Sean processes the situation.
It’s been quiet for a while now. Marion considers stepping back and giving Sean some space, until, a shift, a change in the emotions of the room, something in the way Sean’s breathing, the way he’s holding himself, it’s intense and jarring, and Sean presses up, a bit, just a bit, nosing at Marion’s neck in a prodding sort of way—
“Keep talkin,’” Sean murmurs. He closes his eyes, exhales deep and slow, Marion feels it against his chest. He radiates heat. “Fuck.”
Marion shudders, and obliges. “If—if that’s the case, Finn, then we’ll just have to make more memories, then, won’t we?”
No verbal response from Sean. His hips twitch. His eyes remain closed. The tension is thick like leather.
“What if I told you,” Marion says, and he attempts to make the playful tone of his voice obvious and charming, “that I had a premonition? A vision from the future? That I fucked you real good and you loved it?”
Sean peeks an eye open. He looks—rattled, for a second, and then that expression falls, and he laughs. “You fucker. You’re jokin.’”
“Yes, I’m joking. I learned from the best.” Marion changes his stance into something less like a grope and more like an embrace, and Sean—is Marion reading him correctly?—huffs, in something like frustration or disappointment. He grinds into Marion, grunts deep in his chest.
“One of us’s gotta be serious,” he says.
“Don’t see why it always has to be me,” Marion responds.
“You’ve got a way with words."
“You do too,” Marion says, and he senses something, he can smell it on the air, it’s sweet and floral and musky. There’s no reason that scent would be here right now, and yet it’s as clear as day. Marion inhales it. “You remember that letter?” he whispers, reveling in the scent, inches from Sean’s ear. “The lavender letter?”
Once again, there is no response from Sean. Marion pulls back to look at him, to see him better, and finds that there’s something unsaid still dancing on the corner of Sean’s mouth.
If Sean hasn’t said it yet, Marion decides he shouldn’t continue with this particular anecdote, no matter what aromas seem to be wafting into the room. He gently backtracks, first physically, by taking a full step back from Sean and leaving him untouched about an arm’s length away, and then verbally:
“Listen, Finn. I invited you here tonight, and I want you to be happy here, so I—I want you to know that I’d do it any way, and I’d do it no way at all, if that’s what you want. I don’t mean to make you feel like we have to do anything other than keep each other company.”
Sean, looking deeply hurt and then, for a quick moment, angry, opens his mouth and then closes it.
“I mean it,” Marion repeats, and it comes out honest and tender. “If you wanna fuck me, or if you want my hand or my mouth, or if you just want to get in bed and doze off—”
“No,” Sean blurts. The anger returns to his face in full-form, now, and Marion can tell that Sean is wrestling with his own mind, that the anger isn’t directed towards anyone other than Mr. Sean Finnerty himself. “Fuck. That’s not what I want.”
Marion gives him a considering look.
Sean reaches out for him, weakly.
Marion does not move.
The look on Sean’s face, heartbroken as it is, is perhaps one of the most relieving things that Marion has seen all day. Sean is feeling, after all, and he isn’t afraid for Marion to see it.
Now all that’s left is for Sean to say it.
Sean’s hands drop to his sides in fists. “C’mon, Mari.”
Marion cocks his head. “What’s that, Finn?”
“Mar, I—” He breathes, deep. A bashful sort of look overcomes him.
“Aw, don’t get all shy on me, hon,” Marion whispers. “Say what you’d like to say.”
Sean shuts his eyes. “What—the letter. The lavender letter.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“You were talkin’ about it?” he prompts.
“That I was,” Marion says, pretending not to get the hint.
Sean bites his lip. Marion wants him to spell it out, and based on the look on his face, Sean might be starting to get it. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “What’d…what’d it say, Mar?”
Marion raises his eyebrows. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember, smartass. ” He wrings his hands. “I'm...I'm askin' you about it.”
“Asking me what?”
“I want you to tell me,” Sean says, in a rush. “What it said. I wanna hear it in your voice. Please.”
Marion feels a breath leave his body like a wave crashing to shore.
That grenade trick today was pretty good, Marion thinks, but it doesn’t have anything against this moment right here.
Marion finally, finally, steps back into Sean, snaking his arms around him and holding him tight. Sean clings him right back, his hips stuttering between them.
“It was a few months into our time apart,” Marion begins, and he feels Sean sag against him in relief. “We were writing each other daily, some letters menial, some lewd, all lovely.”
Sean nuzzles him, breathes.
“Now, this letter. This was a lewd one, wasn’t it, Sean?”
Sean nods, nosing against the thrumming vein in Marion’s neck.
“Absolutely obscene,” Marion says, and he feels Sean grinning against him. “And I would know, because I read it no less than one hundred times.”
“Not a thousand?”
“Okay, you got me. A thousand.” Sean rumbles with laughter, but it doesn’t feel like a defense this time; it feels like a release.
Marion continues: “It started normal enough. Description of your day. It was a slow day in that odd stretch of many slow days, that rare moment of respite in all that chaos. You and the unit had stopped in an abandoned town for a short spell while the generals mulled over strategy, and you and some others had been sleeping in an empty room in some long-forgotten building. You were alone this day, though, for at least an hour or two, while your bunkmates had all run off to someplace or other.” Marion pauses and lets his hands drift to Sean’s belt buckle. “One of those other soldiers had a token from his fiancee back home, didn’t he?”
Another nod.
“Lavender oil,” Marion says. “She’d taken great pains to send it to him, I bet, and it was the same stuff she used to soften her skin. She’d sent it so he could remember how she smelled.” Sean rolls his hips forward, hot and hungry, and Marion takes the hint and begins fussing with the belt in earnest. “But he wasn’t there just then. He was out, and he’d left his personal effects behind with you. And you just couldn’t resist, could you?”
This time, Sean shakes his head with an embarrassed giggle. “I’d been—I’d been waiting for him to step out for a while, to have a second to myself. This was a plan I’d had since that bottle came in the post.”
“You fiend,” Marion grins. “I still remember just how you wrote it.”
“Yeah?”
”Yeah.” Marion pulls Sean’s belt off with a satisfying snap. He drops it to the floor unceremoniously.
“C’mon, man," Sean says, moaning, and Marion slots a thigh in between his legs. Sean ruts against it, grateful for the pressure. "Tell me.”
Marion gets a hand down the back of Sean’s pants, and Sean gasps, wanton and filthy. Marion can’t resist a sound like that. He palms him, sure and searching, and dons a playful exaggeration of Sean’s accent to say the words against Sean’s open, panting mouth: “I coated my fingers in it, Mar, and I put them inside me and I pretended it was you. I massaged myself open til I could fit three and I fucked myself silly. I was thinkin’ of you the whole time, I was sayin’ your name. I came so hard, Mar, that I had to bite my pillow to keep from raisin’ alarm. You're a fuckin' poet, Sean. You're a modern-day Shakespeare.”
Sean laughs weakly before he's cut off with a moan. “Fuck me, wha—” pant, pant, Sean’s grinding against Marion in earnest, now, his forehead sweaty in concentration. “Wha’d I write then, Mar?”
“You wrote,” Marion says, and he leans right in to Sean’s ear, pulls him closer by his buttocks, “you wrote that it just wasn’t quite right. Now why on Earth would you write that?”
“Wasn’t big enough,” Sean whines, and he’s gripping Marion’s waist, pushing circles into his leg. Marion is at full mast now, as well, and Sean seems drunk on the feeling of that alone. “My fingers. Weren’t big as big as you. I wanted you, please, fuck. I wanted you so bad.”
“That’s right. And after, as if you hadn’t violated this poor woman’s gift enough, you grabbed the bottle one last time and put a drop on the letter so I could smell you, too.” Marion chuckles. “And that poor soldier never found out.”
“Maybe he did,” Sean says weakly, giggling a bit through the moans. “I used—well, I used more than my share, I’m not sure how he couldn’t have noticed. Either way, he never said a word. Bless his soul for that.”
The story complete, Marion pulls back for a second to get a better read on his face. Sean looks flush and fucked-out, his copper hair flopped across his forehead and his pupils blown with lust. A quick glance downward confirms that a wet spot is growing at the front of his pants and that his skin has taken on a sunset hue. Marion would be proud of how pink he was if he didn’t know how red he was liable to become.
It feels right to talk this over one more time. Marion smiles, pecks him against the lips, and says, “I loved that letter, Sean, I really did, but I want you to know that what you said then has no measure on how you feel now. If you would rather—”
Sean taps him against the cheek with his fingers in a mischievous impression of a slap. “Marion motherfucking Collodi, I’m ashamed of you,” he says, breathless and giddy.
“How’s that?”
“Tryna get me riled up and leave me unsatisfied while I’m a guest in your goddamn bedroom? Let me hump you like a schoolboy and pretend that's enough'?” Sean shakes his head. “Lotta words but no follow through, boy.”
Marion grins. “That’s not it at all. I’m saying, I’ll take care of you tonight, but only if that’s what you want. I’m saying I can take care of you, Sean, and you don’t always need to take care of me. Do you want that?”
Sean pulls back to face him head-on, causing Marion’s hands to slip out of his trousers. Sean stands arm’s length from him and runs a hand through his sweaty hair, smiling a bit sheepishly. Marion notices that at some point during this whole ordeal, Sean’s shirt had gotten unbuttoned down to his navel. His chest is heaving and rosy under his spattering of chest hair, and Marion wants to fucking pounce him.
“I want it,” Sean murmurs, his eyes glittering. “I want it somethin’ awful.”
Marion nods, licking his lips. “That makes two of us.”
Sean gives him a cheeky grin, straightening his clothes in some pantomime of modesty. “Well, if you’re not gonna buy me dinner first, at least grant a fella the decency of a spell in the bathroom, then, eh? Need a second to compose myself. Freshen up the face.” He pats his flushed cheeks, the tear tracks now nearly invisible.
“Of course.” Marion gestures towards the bathroom with a flourish, and Sean backs up until his back hits the door, seemingly unable to tear his eyes away from Marion for even a second. As he slips inside, he flashes Marion a smile, and it’s blindingly genuine and unapologetically giddy. Marion sees it, holds it, savors it. Sean might be hard to read, but Marion thinks he might be getting the hang of it.