"Thank you so much for doing this Penny," Marcus said as he walked past an elderly woman in a leather jacket, casually sitting on his couch.

"Oh you don't need to thank me, Mark! It's the least I could do for the man that saved my life," the elderly woman, Penny, said with her red stained lips stretched out into a warm smile.

Marcus made a slight grimace at the way she said that, re-entering his bedroom to find a clean enough tie for work.

"Saved her life?"

He paused in front of the doorway to look at Kuzma when the younger man spoke.

Kuzma sat on Marcus' bed much like the way he sat on it the other day, legs drawn to his chest and arms wrapped around him.

It was where he had been staying since Marcus was able to stand up and get some painkillers from the bathroom, just sitting there and staring at nothing.

Marcus decided to take the guy out for a walk, at the very least, after school. Maybe around the apartment building to ease his...life.

"Uh yeah. She's exaggerating. Her husband would've been there if I wasn't. And it was the doctors that saved her life. I just called," Marcus rambled, wishing Penny stopped telling people he saved her life when all he did was dial the right number through shaky hands.

"Don't listen to him! I would be dead from a simple heart attack if it weren't for that man! He's a hero and I'll keep saying it until he believes it!"

How the hell can she hear me?

Marcus groaned, running a hand down his face as he continued towards his closet, opening it and scouring the mass of clothes for a decent tie.

And then he paused, stared at the closet for a minute before slowly closing it.

He had just remembered something vital.

"I don't even wear ties." Marcus sighed and pressed his forehead to the closet doors. The action reminded him of what he did before meeting Kuzma and he would've laughed if he wasn't so stressed.

That's a memory that's going to stick.

Maybe I'm more stressed out than I thought, Marcus wondered to himself, blinking down at his shoes, still covered in chalk.

"Marcus?"

He turned his head slightly to the right to see Penny standing there, her aged face displaying worry with furrowed eyebrows and her thin lips motioned downwards.

He gave her a small smile, a difficult thing to form when he was feeling so out of it, and stood up straighter.

"Maybe...Maybe you should stay home, dear. You look tired even after the shower," Penny said, blowing a strand of her short white hair out of her eyes.

"No. No. I'm fine. Just fell out of bed and hit my head but I'm fine," Marcus promised her as he headed for the work desk on the right of his bed.

He glanced at Kuzma but Kuzma didn't look at him. The younger male continued to stare at his black toenails, hands squeezing his legs tight and his body tense.

"Kuzma."

"What is it, human?" Kuzma asked without looking up, sounding so void of emotion.

"Ask Penny to call me if you want to talk. I'll pick up as soon as I can."

Kuzma clicked his tongue at that.

"And why would I need to talk to you? Don't flatter yourself, human. I need your mocking words about as much as fire needs water."

And here I thought we were getting somewhere. Why the sudden hostility?

Marcus sighed before turning back to face the desk, grabbed his glasses and headed out of the room with Penny in tow.

"There's lunch in the fridge! Don't forget to heat it up before eating!" Marcus said, slightly raising his voice, as he grabbed his work satchel from where his coffee table used to stand.

Turning around sharply, stunning the elderly woman that was behind him, Marcus said, "Make sure he's warm and comfortable but don't touch him unless he initiates contact. Make sure Tom doesn't get too near Kuzma when he's fixing the door. Kuzma doesn't do well with sharp objects apparently. Don't ask questions. He's not going to give answers and call me as soon as anything happens an-"

"Marcus Norris," Penny cut him off as she led him towards the front door, opening it and pushing him out. "Don't let my good looks fool you. I have raised five boys and three girls. I know what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure I can handle your angsty, foreign boyfriend."

Marcus let out a sigh of relief.

"Thank you for doing this, Penny. I would've spent my whole day worrying about th--Wait. What do you mean by boyf--"

"Have fun at work, Mark!" she yelled before closing the door on his face.

Boyfriend? Oh God, Rhea no.

#

Marcus had a hypothesis. That hypothesis being that people liked to believe what they wanted to believe, instead of the facts that were plain as day.

Rhea Turner was, single-handedly, able to prove his hypothesis to be a nothing but fact, what with the way she had spread the belief that Marcus was in a relationship with a foreign man to more than half of their small town, despite the many times he had denied the claim before she left his home yesterday.

Marcus sighed, rubbing the corners of his aching head as he tried to listen to the student standing in front of him instead of heading for her next class.

"I heard he's a European model. Is he? Would he mind posing for me?" the girl asked, looking excited.

"Miss Leonard," Marcus said her name with a sigh. "I've told your three times already. He's a friend from New York just needing a place to crash. Now are you going to class or not?" He was nearly begging, ready to go down on his knees even because the young art prodigy was persistent as hell.

She frowned, her thin lips pulled down into a look of disapproval and her brown eyes narrowing at Marcus.

"Mama said that you are in a relationship with a Russian model an--"

"Yeah. Well," Marcus cut her off, exasperated, "mama wrong. Now get to class."

Her lips opened in outrage before shutting and sticking her nose high in the air like the royal she and many other students in Cecelia Private High-School believed they were.

"She was obviously misinformed. No person of that status would lower themselves to so much as touch such a rude man as yourself. Learn your place or leave. So rude." And then the snappy fourteen-year-old girl marched out of the large classroom, her dramatic exit punctuated by the slamming of his door.

Someone needs a chill pill. And a heavy dose of reality.

Though, she does have a point.

He let out a heavy sigh as he rubbed his face upwards, then ran his hands through his ever-growing hair.

It had only been two classes and he was ready to slam his head into a wall or window.

His day had involved question after question about his relationship with the mysterious foreign model, who wasn't even a model for their information, but a being with wings that had mood swings to give a pregnant woman a run for her money and insulted people in Russian when he thought no one understood.

The comments about his uncouth and unholy choice of partner weren't even worth remembering so those weren't counted in.

It was bothering Marcus so much because he did not like it when people were all up in his business. Some might have said that he was somewhat of an antisocial hermit that liked to keep his personal life, very personal. Hence the box under his bed. Nobody needed to know about that just like nobody needed to know who he was dating. Which was no one.

Another reason it was bothering him was the fact that it was just plain disturbing. Him with Kuzma. One, that sounded like a toxic relationship, what with the guy's disgust with Marcus. Two, the guy wasn't really all that stable and three, it was more than a little inappropriate and no matter how you looked at it, it felt like Marcus would've been the bad guy in that situation. Like he was taking advantage of Kuzma.

It was just wrong.

The last thing that bothered Marcus about everyone's gossiping, and it may not be as big as the other reasons, was the fact that it made Marcus think about his love life. Or lack of, to be more precise.

People didn't like him all that much, not from when he was a kid and not even as an adult. Sure, some found him quirky, nice and amusing, but many thought him to be off-putting, strange and just downright freaky. Funny enough, that wasn't even why he couldn't keep a relationship so far. It was his giving nature that sent people away.

His former partners couldn't deal with it, the fact that he was just too giving, too nice and too sacrificial, but he didn't know any other way to be.

He gave them too much because, at that point, he felt like they deserved the world. He tried his best to keep them happy, to make them smile too and avoid getting them angry because Marcus didn't like it when the people he cared about were anything but happy and comfortable. And he sacrificed a lot, maybe more than he needed to, just to keep them satisfied.

But it was apparently too much, overbearing, and they didn't like that. Didn't like the fact that he thought about them so much and thought about himself so little.

And so they left, and Marcus hated himself more and more with everyone that did. Soon enough, he was alone, just waiting for the day he went to bed and never woke up.

Ah fucking hell, he thought as he wiped his teary eyes and took deep breaths, calming himself down.

Don't think too much. Thinking makes you sad and sadness is too much work. And you know how much you hate too much work.

Sighing again, he was glad that he had a free period, something he would have used to catch his bearings and prep himself up for the long day of relationship-themed questions, curious stares and other invasions to his privacy.

So Marcus sat back in his seat, closed his eyes and took a moment to enjoy some peace and quiet at long last.

"Mr. Norris."

Well, that was short-lived.

Turning his head to his door, he immediately shot off his chair at the sight of Principal Fitzpatrick, her signature stern look in place as she folded her arms.

"Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Uh you see...that rumor going around...It's not what you're thinking an--"

"You are needed in my office, Mr. Norris. Keep up," she said bluntly, pushing up her red-framed glasses and flattening the sides of her impeccable blonde, straight hair before straightening her dark blue blazer and walking out the door without another word.

Marcus dutifully followed, sighing.

The only time Principal Fitzpatrick personally called on teachers instead of just sending her secretary or mail, it usually entailed a sacking and from the passing looks of some his colleagues walking down the hall, they knew it too.

Marcus didn't really need to work, having a fortune stocked up in the bank from his famous days, something that was going to last a lifetime or two, but working kept his thoughts at bay and helped him stay grounded with the rest of the human race. Getting fired wasn't exactly going to help with that.

Also, he didn't need to get lazier than he already was.

With the rumors, messed up home, Kuzma and then possibly losing his job, Marcus was seconds away from cracking.

This just isn't my fucking week.