Fan Fiction ❯ The Human Way ❯ Chapter 1

It had all started on another ordinary day in two mundane lives. Sam had been a server at Starbucks at that time, providing caffeine to the great Manhattan population. He had loved it, but there were times he wanted to upend a cup of scalding coffee on the customers' heads.

One day, however, something new began to irritate his overflowing nerves. There had been a man - a quiet, brooding figure with sharp, trim lines that would always sit in the corner table, always dressed smartly in an immaculate suit - that started to show up. He had been lean and certainly not a figure of imposing stature in that way, but there had been something about the piercing quality of his eyes, something about the dark blue that was almost feral, strangely offset against his otherwise quiet characteristics. Yet the man had always, always ordered the same thing - the plainest and strongest coffee they had.

It had annoyed Sam no end. Didn't the man realize how boring that must be? It was probably because he had a boring life, too, or so Sam had thought. Actually, it was more the fact that Sam thought him boring because he never said anything more than he had to, and never reacted or showed an emotion - ever. Naturally, it had eventually gotten to the point where Sam had slammed down the cup of black coffee in front of the man and asked, among a few choice words, why he even bothered coming into a place like a Starbucks if he just ordered such a bland drink and worked so hard at ignoring the rest of humanity - oh, sorry, he wasn't a part of humanity. Similar stunts like that had gotten Sam fired from his previous jobs. However, the man had just raised an eyebrow at him like he were a complete fool, and asked in a surprisingly light, yet strong tone for such a foreboding boogieman, "Do you normally give sermons with the coffee?"

That's how their friendship had begun.

Nobody would have guessed it as such. Certainly not Sam, who spent most of his time over the next year yelling at the man, who he found actually had the human name of Mark. The year after that, he slid into the habit of just teasing Mark whenever he had the chance. Sam found out shortly after their first such conversation that Mark was a graduate student of engineering at the nearby Columbia University, to which Sam had commented randomly then that he had always thought Mark would have been in the military. He had nearly fallen over when he found out he was right and that his quasi-friend was on academic leave from the Air Force to get his MS. While Mark continued to remain as closed-mouthed as ever, continued to get that somewhat choked look every time Sam gave him a hearty, if friendly, slap on the back when saying a particularly biting tease, it had definitely started to become a mutual friendship, dysfunctional as it was.

The start of the end had come one day when Mark had been sitting in his usual chair, looking completely shellshocked. When a somewhat flabbergasted Sam had asked him what had happened, he hadn't been expecting the wooden reply of, "My wife's pregnant." It had been followed by a pause, then, "…That means I'm going to be a father, right?"

Sam hadn't known whether to strangle him for not saying he'd ever had a wife before, drop dead from shock that Mark seemed to actually be having an irrational/quasi-emotional moment, or throttle himself for never noticing the wedding band. Then he had felt a bit ill at the idea of Mark reproducing, but laughed and slapped him on the back nonetheless.

After much insistence, Sam met Mark's wife for the first time shortly after that. She had worked as a secretary in the president's office at Columbia, which was how she had met Mark. While she had been quite pretty, it was her almost ethereal benevolence and understanding she almost radiated that had amazed him. Actually, it rather made sense - who else, in Sam's mind, could ever tolerate being married to Mark? He would have pitied her if she hadn't seemed so happy.

Nine months later, Mark had suddenly stopped coming in to the Starbucks. After about a week Sam had started to get worried, and dropped by his house. Even in hindsight he could never quite explain why he felt such a nauseating dread as he had when he eventually opened the unlocked house door after no one had answered. It had only gotten worse when he had found Mark sitting facing the window, a quietly whimpering baby girl in his arms. Sam never could quite explain why it felt like he was smiling crookedly when he had asked in a cracked voice where Mark's wife was. It had probably been Mark's complete lack of an emotional reaction that scared Sam the most when he had whispered, "You're in time for her funeral tomorrow."

Sam had held the baby at the funeral, feeling it better if Mark had the time to think for himself. It had gone okay, until it was over and it was only the three of them left. Maybe it was because the baby had started crying, or maybe it was because Mark was still standing perfectly still, not saying a word, not having even a trace of expression, but Sam had lost it. He had screamed at his friend, cursing him for not showing even a bit of remorse or reaction of any kind at his own wife's funeral after she had died giving birth to his child. Was he so inhuman he couldn't even grieve? He hadn't been expecting the kind answer Mark gave, whispering it while never looking away from the grave.

"Because I don't know how."

Sam had felt sick, and just held the baby closer, trying to keep it from crying, only to end up crying as well.

He cried because Mark couldn't.

In the end, Sam had literally drug Mark away from the cemetery after leaving the baby with his own wife at home, all the while with Mark still hardly breathing, just staring off into the distance blankly. It had made Sam start to wonder, to really question if his friend really was an emotionless automaton, or if he felt emotions just as strongly, if not more so than other people, and just didn't know how or want to express them. At the time, though, he hadn't really cared about that. He had just wanted to talk to him, punch him, yell at him - something to make Mark react just a bit, something to snap him out of the dead state he was lapsing into.

It hadn't worked. Sam, with his wife's tolerance after explaining everything to her, had insisted Mark and the baby move in with them, modest accommodations notwithstanding. He didn't doubt Mark would be a good, if somewhat wooden father, but the man was having enough problems dealing with himself at that time. It worked for all of two weeks, and then Mark had seemed to be at least responding more to the outside world, and had gone back to his apartment with the baby. It had seemed like things were going to be okay.

It lasted for another week, and then Mark had showed back up on Sam's doorstep with the baby in hand, and more grief in his eyes than Sam would have thought possible for even a normal person. He had been speechless for a moment, floundering for something to say while his brain was still trying to process what was going on, before Mark had made it very simple for him.

"I can't be her, and I can't bring her back.. but she deserves more than that." And he had handed the girl to Sam with that, the baby surprisingly not even making a sound.

"But.."

Mark had looked at him then, seemingly sad. "I can't. I don't want her to be like me."

And Sam had understood then, painstakingly so, and he tried to force a grin - for old time's sake. "Take care, man."

He had felt his eyes water for a moment when Mark had reached out and ghosted a touch across the baby's cheek with the back of one finger delicately, something about that infinitely fragile movement seeming completely out of character, yet completely natural for Mark. Something there and never seen.

He had turned and left then, and it was the last Sam ever saw of Mark. He had always presumed the man who was really a boy had just gone back to the Air Force. Once, Sam might have just scoffed it off as the military being the only kind of life that guy probably knew how to live. But after he had left.. No. Mark hadn't been emotionless, not in Sam's opinion, not in retrospect.

He felt emotion probably more strongly than other people… and because of that he didn't know how to deal with it, so he hid it away from everyone - including himself.

Thirteen years later, though, Sam was walking down a road in one the more rural areas around New York City, hand-in-hand with a pretty young girl of about thirteen years of age, when she turned around and looked up at him with dark, piercingly blue eyes.

"Daddy, why are we going to a cemetery?"

He smiled at that, a bit sadly. "Remember that special story I said I'd tell you when you were older?"
She smiled as well, only hers was bright and naïve. "Yeah!"

"Well, I think now might be a good time.."

And so he did tell her the story he had promised. He told her this one.