[2er RPG] The Shepherd [ENG]

"Of some sort, yes. We work for the Ministry of Justice and consult on different cases across the country. But we do wear guns and badges at work", Marcus explained.
He gave Logan the ball.
"Would you mind throwing this back? I'm not much of a good pitcher right now."
The other pair was almost mesmerized by the two.
"So", Marcus kept the conversation going, "how often does your son try to kill you by accident?"
Now they were confused.
"How did you know that he's our boy?"
Marcus sighed with a smile. He had to let his inner Sherlock Holmes hang out now.
"I'm good at noticing things. He has the unique haircolor one can only get if certain fenetic criteria are met. It's still a stretch, but then theres your skin color. In particular your", he pointed to the woman, "freckles. He has the same."
Marcus shrugged. He did notice something else and got up to call Dylan over to the fence.
"Are you alright, dad?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Listen. The boy who threw that ball?"
"Jack? He's a good player but he can't aim at anything."
"I could see that. Tell him to change hands. He's playing like a right handed person. But I think he may be a lefti."
Dylan nodded and ran back. Marcus joined Logan and the other two again. They could watch the boys talk and Jack really changed hands. And just like that he hit his targets.
"Mom! Dad!", he shouted, "Did you see that?"
"What did you say to him?", Jacks mother wanted to know.
"Nothing major. You two are left handed, I guess he's left handed as well. But many children force themselves to play sports with their right hand or foot, because it's how the coaches show them what to do. He's now playing as a left handed player. He just needed to change to his dominant hand."
Marcus shrugged again.
"You, mister, are a genius", the woman said, leaned over her husband and reached out for Marcus' hand, "Joselyn Evans. This is my husband John."
Marcus grabbed the hand.
"Marcus Williams."

Logan took the ball and threw it back on the field, while Marcus was talking. He shook his head when his boyfriend began analyzing the couple and smiled. Marcus suddenly went to the fence to talk to Dylan and Logan leaned towards the two, smiling. "That's what he does and why he's good at his job.Don't expect that from me though.", he explained and Marcus came back again. Their son now seemed to play much better, while his parents introduced themselves to them. Logan leaned over Marcus to shake hands too.
"Logan Hunt."
"We never saw you watch training.", Joselyn then stated.
"Yeah, we have some time off right now, so we decided to pay Dylans training a visit, while we can. Do you watch every week?"
"I tend to.", Joselyn said and looked at her husband. "My husband is away on business trips often, but when he's here he tries to come. By the way, we have a little grill party on the weekend, some of the other parents and neighbors come too, you should come by."
Logan looked at Marcus to give an answer.

BBQs were never Marcus' favorite thing to do but since this neighborhood was pretty close and they kinda were the new guys, it couldn't hurt. For one evening, it should be okay. Besides, neither of them had something better to do.
"Sure. Is there a list or something for stuff we could bring over? I never done a BBQ like this, to be honest."
"You never attended a BBQ before?", Joselyn asked.
"No. I grew up in a place far away from everything. There literally was no neighborhood to have a BBQ with", Marcus excused himself.
He brushed his hair back a little and shrugged. He missed out on a bunch of things but hey, he could milk a cow. Technically he could provide the steaks for a BBQ, if he had a bunch of cows.
"But Logan here should have some experience with it. Right?"
Marcus figured that a big family lead to big birthday parties and therefore unending amounts of food and people and drinks and noise. He, Marcus, would probably just stand in one place the whole time, not letting go of the secure feeling his glas of water would provide, since he was not allowed to drink alcohol or even caffeine. The first would mess with his meds, the latter would increase his blood pressure.
Speaking of which, Marcus' watch started beeping. He sighed deeply and reached inside his pocket. He always kept a round on him for emergency. The problem was, he had no wwater on him - he left it in the car. He swallowed them one by one, dry.
"That's a lot of pills you gotta take", John noted.
"I know. But the doc says it's necessary", Marcus replied, "don't wanna get any problems with it."
And he gestured towards neck, half covered in that itchy bandaid.
"What happened? If you don't mind me asking."
"Ever heard of the Instigator?"
"Isn't that the guy who forced people to kill?", Joselyn whispered, as if the kids could hear what they were talking about.
"Exactly. We, Logan and I plus our team, had the case. The guy got me. I don't know what happened, I was busy bleeding out, but we got him as far as I know."
"Well, that's good. Hope you get better soon."
"So you do this stuff on a regular basis? Catching... serial killers?"
"How many serial killers are out there?", Marcus asked, implying that there were inly the ones, the media talked about.
"I mean yes, were dealing woth all sorts of dangerous people and situations. But we have highly skilled teams and work close with local law enforcement. This", he gestured at his neck again, "was my own fault. I let things slip, made some minor mistakes leading up to a big one. But this guy", now he gestured towards Logan, "did a pretty good job fixing everything. And saving my life. In basically two ways. And no. We never bring work home. So no worry. We wouldn't live here, if it were otherwise."

Logan listened to the conversation and smiled softly when he was mentioned. "Well, we didn't have much space at home for parties but sometimes we'd gone to a nearby lake and had a nice BBQ.", he nodded and was stopped when Marcus alarm beeped. He just swallowed the pills and Logan sighed. "I had brought you something to drink Marcus..." Now it was too late. The conversation still kept going and Logan again sighed and shook his head. "Don't scare them Marcus...", Logan smiled and now got some attention too. He didn't feel like the hero Marcus made of him and disagreed a little. "I just did my job and I wasn't alone. Without our team I would have never done it." And some major help from Marcus serial killer brother. Marcus was right, he didn't know what happened but he had to deal with his own shit first.
"But enough of us, what are you doing for a living? You travel a lot John?", Logan asked and led the conversation in another direction. He didn't feel like this was a topic for a little smalltalk with some parents.

"I don't scare them! Did I scare you? I just told them that we made there life saver", Marcus protested.
It was ment as a joke more than anything. But in some way, Logan was right: Marcus needed to work on his conversation skills. Especially with a neighborhood BBQ coming up. Everyone would want to talk to them and there was a real chance that Marcus did scare someone off. He usually was around his team and therefore talked about everything work related openly. Which wasn't an option out and about.
John and Joselyn talked about there jobs and there kids. He was the communicatios agent for a medium sized company, she was an digital artist. They had two kids, Jack was seven like Dylan, his little sister Janett was three years old. Marcus only liatened with half an ear, knowing he would remember all of it. The other half of his ear scanned the surroundings, the other ear was focused on Dylan, who just scored another point in the training game they had right now. Jack and he were a good team now that the boy could actually hit his targets.
An hour and plenty of neighborhood stories later, training was over and two sweaty boys came over. They won the game, off course, and were happy as a bear in a honey pot.
"So we see you at saturday then?", Joselyn asked.
"Sure", Marcus answered and wanted to get Dylans bag.
The boy refused by stepping out of his fathers reach.
"No heavy lifting!", Dylan reminded his dad.

Logan listened to the couple until training was over.
"We'll be there.", Logan smiled after they were asked if they'd come to the BBQ. Then he looked at Dylan who dodged his fathers attempt to get his sports-bag. Logan shook his head and picked Dylan with his bag still in the hand up and carried him under his arm like he was a bag. "You should cut your father some slack.", he laughed and Dylan tried to fight himself out of Logans grip.
"That's unfair!", he laughed and gave up, hanging there like a wet sack. "What where you talking about?"
"About a BBQ on Sunday."
"Wow really? Are we going?", Dylan asked excited and looked at Marcus as good as he could.

"Well, no. But we're going to a BBQ on Saturday", Marcus answered, correcting Logans sloppy memory, "It' at Jacks parents place."
He opened the door for the two joksters and then climed onto the passenger seat.
"Are you friends? You and Jack? You seemed to be quite a good team."
"After he started to play good, yeah. I mean, we talk. He's sitting next to me on the sideline. He's okay."
Marcus smiled a little and leaned his head back.
"Next year you two gonna be the stars. He can finally aim. You are just amazing. Coach gotta see that. Otherwise he's blind."
"Well, he's not really paying attention to the sideline..."
"Grown-ups see more than you think. Trust me."

On the way home they made a little detour. Marcus was master of the pancakes but there war one more thing he was good at. And since Logan wanted to cook more, Marcus decided to pull this last trick out.

"Nope. No no no no no. You're not entering this kitchen. Out."
Dylan wanted to take a peak at whatever it was, his dad was cooking. It smelled nice.
"You gotta wait."
"But I'm huuuuungry!"
"I know, Logan too. Look at his eyes, he's starving. Five more minutes."
Exactly five minutes later Marcus came with three plates into the living room; two were perfectly balanced on his left arm, on on his right.
"Here you go. It doesn't really have a name, but my not at all talented aunt made it all the time and I loved it as a kid. Comfort food, really. Easy to do, tastes great. Enjoy."
It was just a wierd combination of scrambled egg, ham and fancy fake italian noodles called penne rigate. It was the first meal, Marcus ate after his parents died. His aunt made it four days in a row before he came down to eat.
Marcus sat down on the floor next to the coffeetable, as he always did, when they ate in the living room. For some reason he wasn't able to eat properly on the couch.

When the were at home Marcus started doing something in the kitchen and wouldn't let Dylan and Logan take a look. They watched a little TV but eventually Dylan got too nosy and stood up, but Marcus wouldn't tell him. Five minutes later Marcus was ready and brought them their food.
"You know that you two sound absolutely the same when not allowing somebody else something? Like going in the kitchen, or carrying heavy stuff?", Logan laughed and looked at Dylan and Marcus. "And now you have the absolutely same look on your face!" He couldn't hold himself, the two could have been twins, just years apart. What kind of genes did they have? Extinguishing anything else...
Logan took a bite from the food and smiled. "Hey, why didn't you make this earlier? That's damn good!" And something else then soup or pasta, or takeout.

"Because someone wouldn't let me do anything you have to actually chew on."
Dylan put his tongue out and picked up eating again after a quick glare at his dad. The food was too good.
"As I said, it's comfort food. It's meant to make you feel better. And I made enough for at least two days. You can never make the right amount of this stuff."
Marcus leaned back against the couch and started scrolling through his endless collection of digital movies. He had quite a bunch.
"Which Harry Potter were we on? The third?"
Dylan nodded. Of course Marcus remembered but sometimes he played dumb to seem more 'human', a skill he learned in his freshmen year at highschool. Helped a lot woth not getting picked on as the odd one out.
Marcus started the movie and with another remote he lowered the light as the legendary title music filled the living room.

After the movie, Dylan went upstairs to get ready for bed while Marcus was cleaning up the living room.
"You better be in that bed when I come out of Dylans room", he reminded Logan with a smile on his face but without actually looking at him.





@Earinor

Logan liked movies like Harry Potter, kid's movies to be exact. He also liked almost everything else, but he was used to watch all kinds of children's movies. He was quiet when watching, that was an unspoken rule in this house. No talking while watching a movie, the talking came afterwards. He smiled lightly when Marcus told him to wait in the bed, he sure had lot's of time before Dylan let Marcus leave his room and went to sleep. Logan still went straight into the bathroom when Dylan came outside again. Logan took a quick shower and brushed his teeth, before he went in their bedroom, still hearing Marcus and Dylan talk. He put his old clothes in the laundry box and with only his underpants on laid down. It has gotten really cold lately, so he pulled the blanket over his jaw and closed his eyes. So much has happened, but Dylan was fine, that was all that mattered. He knew something has happend but he dealt with it fine, like he dealt with the death of his mother better than anyone Logan knew. Marcus was lucky having him as son.

Marcus did the usual ritual with Dylan: he checked every corner, read one of his new comics, blah blah blah.
"G'night, buddy. Sleep tight. See ya in the morning."
Marcus pushed the door almost shut, as usual and went to his bedroom. There was no shut door besides the office door. The bedroom door was a strange exception to that rule by being closed sometimes. Like right now, when Marcus entered and slowly, quietly closed it behind him with a charming smile on his face.
"Cold?", he asked, pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it towards the laundry basket.
He missed by an inch.
"There's an easy solution to that problem, I'm sure you know it."
His pants hit the target but one leg was hanging outside.
Marcus climbed into the bed, ontop of Logan. He slowly pulled down the blanket a bit and kissed the ex-soldier. He couldn't wait for the sitches to come out in a week. Right now he felt like the Hulk or more like Banner. He needed to have an eye on his blood pressure. Bursting a main vein wasn't such a good thing after all.
Marcus sank onto Logans chest, listening to his hearbeat.
"I hate it", he said, "not being able to do anything. This stupid cut. My stupid decision. I'm sorry, Logan. I never planned on hurting you like this. On hurting Dylan like this. I... I'm still not used to having to worry about more people than myself. I just... I'm sorry."

Logan smiled at Marcus when he entered the bedroom and watched him undress. "Your aim could use some training.", he smiled, it wasn't like Marcus to miss anything. He made room for him and spread his arm when Marcus crawled onto him, as soon as he rested his head on Logans chest, Logan pulled his arms around him. "It's almost healed. You get the stitches out next week and then you can carry around stuff again... and do other things. Actually... I'm the real victim here!" Logan chuckled a little and slowly started stroking Marcus head. "No seriously. I still think what you've done was stupid, but we got him and you are alive. And I know you didn't intend to hurt Dylan or me. Also... I'm not better than you are, I left Dylan alone with this, I didn't even ask how he was once, I'm sorry. We are lucky your son is more mature then we are, I guess. Did I tell you that I almost punched Andrew in the face? Hard? He's not even mad at me. Why is no one we know mad at anyone? I feel like an asshole because I was angry you let yourself get caught and I was mad at Andrew for leaving you alone. Yet anyone else is just fine. Or are they just better in pretending?"

"I guess they're just better at dealing with it. I mean, Andrew got his yoga and meditation and stuff. And Dylan... he thinks we're superheores and they get caught by the villain sometimes. Like that platypus in that cartoon who is secretly an agent. Phineas and Ferb was it, I think."
He knew.
"But our boy is pretty tough."
Marcus lifted his head to kiss the place between Logans muscles. He made himself a promise: never let Dylan alone and never hurt Logan again. Ever.
"I think that BBQ on saturday is a good thing. We're gonna be a family. Normal. Never had that before. But I wanna try. For the both of you. You deserve it. You really do. And I wanna meet your family, too. I don't care if your mom likes me. I wanna meet her. All of them. For once I wanna be normal. The madness of work's gonna get us soon enough. I wanna be a normal person till then. You think, we can do that?"

Logan smiled, Marcus was right. Dylan was the toughest person Logan knew, even tougher than his father. While Marcus was talking Logan slowly felt his boyfriends muscles under his skin, he loved touching him, it always calmed Logan a little.
"Normal? We?", Logan chuckled and shook his head. "No, but we can be happy and we are a family already, right? And if you want to meet my family, we can do that. Maybe my mom likes you if she gets to know you better and I'm sure she'll like Dylan. But you have to manage with her giving him sweets all the time, he would be her first grandson, you know?" A thought crossed Logans mind and he decided to share it. "Maybe we get to be on vacation all the time, then we can do all sorts of family stuff, when Dylan has winter break maybe we can go on a vacation for a week or so?. We actually get paid for doing nothing a lot. Although we wanna do something. Mike is a strange person..."

"Well, there aren't enough serial killers for every week in the year, so technically it's all better the less work we got. But yeah. Going on vacation together sounds good. I still got that farm from my aunt. I mean, there is this guy, Gus, who's taking care of everything, but I think we can go there sometime, if we give him a heads up. But not in winter. It's stupidly boring in winter."
It waa good to talk about little things with no greater meaning for once. Marcus actually felt more normal that way and for some reason, that's all he wanted right now. Be normal. Don't think about his serial killer family, about his serial killer job, his scars, losses, whatever. Just plan the holidays like normal people would.
"I love you, Logan. You're making me feel human.That's pretty amazing. You are amazing. I don't think, I ever told you that. I really do love you."

"The farm sounds nice, I'd like to see where you grew up.", Logan smiled only to be startled a little in the next moment. "I... I love you too, more than I loved anybody else before...", he answered after he had processed what Marcus just said. Logan couldn't say why he loved Marcus, but he knew he did. They just had a connection no one could explain. "I'll always be here for you if you need me, I promise. And I try giving you whatever you need, I know sometimes I don't understand you, but I'll get better in reading you, I know I will." He pressed Logan a little more against his chest, but was still careful. He didn't want to hurt him although Marcus hated being treated like he could break any moment.

"I know", Marcus sighed and closed his eyes.
He was never the touchy touchy feely guy but it was different with Logan. He always wanted to have some form of physical connection to him. Holding hands. Cuddling. Listening to his heartbeat. This beautiful, strong heartbeat. Hypnotizing.
He didn't notice he was falling asleep. It happend in mere seconds. Strangely enough, his usually overworking brain managed to keep it down ever since dinner. And without the pills he was prescribed, Marcus slept full eight hours in the arms of the man he loved.
Dylan woke him up the next morning and they carefully crept out the bedroom to let Logan sleep.
Marcus made breakfast and took his pills. Logan still wasn't down, when Dylan had to go to school, so Marcus left a note near the coffee machine:

Bringing the kid to school.
Took my meds.
Breakfast's on the table.
Love, M.

Maybe it was a bit cheesy at the end, but Marcus didn't have timento write a new one. He left the house with his mini-me and felt weirdly... normal.

This time Logan was the one to be awake half of the night, but he didn't mind. He held Marcus a long time and listened to him sleeping. He was cute and calm, he seemed to sleep well and that without sleeping pills. Hours later Logan fell asleep too.

The next morning Logan woke up and felt strange. He slept longer than usual and it was oddly quiet. For a moment his heart jumped, but he reminded himself that they all were safe and after looking at the time, he noticed that Dylan had to be at school right now, so Marcus probably drove him. He stayed in bed a few more minutes before fighting the blanket of of him and getting down in the kitschen. There he found his boyfriends note ans smiled. He brewed his coffee and ate what Marcus had left on the table. Afterwards he cleaned everything up and went outside to his bike. He had some alone time, so why not working on his baby and fixing it again. If everything went according to plan, he could drive with it this weekend again, although Marcus wouldn't be all too happy about it.

After getting Dylan to school, Marcus didn't get back home. He drove into the more densely populated areas of the city and went for a walk in a park. Of course he wasn't there to enjoy the morning sun, some stupid birds and the the cold morning breeze. No, halfway through the park he took a break on a bench and shortly after sitting down was joined by a jogger who stopped to have a drink and loosen his muscles on the bench next to him.
"How ya doin, little brother?", Francis asked, he wasn't even puffing.
"I'm okay, I guess."
"You guess? Sounds awfully perfect. Cut the crap, what's going on."
The sudden change in Francis' voice made Marcus uncomfortable for a second. His brother noticed but didn't say anything.
"I don't know. I had this... epiphany last night and now... everything feels different. It's hard to describe but... I feel normal."
"Normal? What is normal, little brother? You just feel ordinary and that's definitely not what you are. Stop thinking that. Immediately. That's father talking, not you. If you start seeing everything as ordinary, you stop caring. And if you stop caring, you start bad things without hesitation. Trust me. I won't let this man destroy another family."
A hand landed heavy on Marcus' shoulder, promise and threat at the same time.
"You're the only one left who can do right in this family. You're not innocent but you're good. And we, you and me, need to protect the one thing, that still is innocent. We need to protect Dylan. I will do everything it takes to do that. That means you can focus on being a better father. So get your ass back home and heal. You're no protection if you're not on top of your game."
He made a step back from the bench.
"You're the good guy, little brother. Never forget that."
He gave Marcus a note with his new number, than he startet to make his way down the path again. Marcus stayed for a few more minutes before heading back to the car and back home.

He found Logan in the garden and greated him with a second coffee.
"You're really doing that, aren't you?", he sighed and shook his head, "Just don't drive too fast when Dylan's with you, okay?"
He sat down on the garden table and just watched Logan do his thing. He was good with it. It wasn't too hard to not say anything, after Marcus mentally dismantled the whole bike and fixed every little detail about it.

Logan got up the take the coffee Marcus brought him. "Of course I do and I didn't think you let me ride it with Dylan at all, Daddy." Logan grinned, then took a sip of his coffee. "Soon it'll be fixed, are you up riding it with me too? I think I've got this thing since I'm 17...it's older than Dylan." That wasn't necessarily a plus, but he was proud to still have it. And it still looked fine, no rust and soon it would work as well.
After drinking his coffee he got back down again to fixing his machine.
"You met Francis?", he then asked while working. He wasn't stupid, taking Dylan to school was a matter of 15 minutes and where else should Marcus have gone?