Free Rein - doesn't everyone (pinmarcus)

doesn't everyone

A/N: Thanks to SoftBoySpring, Waffles, and EllanaSoma for betareading this, as well as generally encouraging the pinmarcus agenda. Especially big thanks to Waffles who made such a wonderful suggestion to expand a scene which really helped this fic bring all the more feels.

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"He's fair, um, very focused. Um, handsome—"

Pin isn't good when put on the spot, so perhaps it should be no surprise that he manages to say something inappropriate as he struggles to think what else encouraging to say about Marcus to the training examiner. It bothers him more that it's not remotely helpful and might even have made things worse, made the rest of what he says less helpful when he looks so foolish as to mention that completely irrelevant fact.

Marcus looks up at him, perhaps fondly exasperated for a moment before he tells Pin primly to get going. Pin forgets about his mistake temporarily when he and Marcus clash over the course—Marcus choosing to rile him up with his 'Your Grace' in return—and when the drama with Ariel makes it necessary for him to go again on the course that clearly isn't right for Elvis. They do better the second time around and he's pleased the distraction seems to have done its job of buying them more time too. Even so, Pin's relieved to be able to get out of there and go back to doing what he wants.

Marcus seems fine with him when Pin goes to check on the results, just devastated to have failed the test, yet Pin's misstep still nags at him later. Marcus was good at hiding it behind his front of calm politeness but it didn't escape Pin's notice that he tended to seem tense when people called him Hot Marcus or anything else like that. Marcus didn't like the focus being on his looks any more than Pin liked being reminded he was the Duke. So Pin does worry a little about what lasting effect what he said might have on the strange friendship they've forged. But it's not like he loses any sleep over it, especially when he's been sleeping like the dead lately.

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It's a couple of years later that he calls Marcus handsome again, this time to one of his university friends. He and Zoe had long since drifted apart, with her back in America and him studying on the mainland to become a vet. He didn't talk much about the island at first when he moved away, he didn't have anyone who was anything close to a friend until the latter half of his first year. And now that he has what he hopes are friends, he talks about his life from time to time. Still, he's always a little surprised they want to hear, but he's told their special brand of small island drama is plenty entertaining. Only some of it is about Zoe and the others, most of it is about his dad and the horses and what he misses.

Increasingly more is about Marcus though, mentioning Marcus casually because he's the main person other than his dad that Pin still communicates with there, Mia and Gaby both having moved away too, chasing their dreams elsewhere much like Zoe. So naturally, Sammy, his closest friend at uni, asks about the oft-mentioned Marcus, which is how Pin ends up recounting everything he can think of to explain this person she's apparently interested in hearing more about. Pin doesn't really get why it matters when she's never met him, and possibly never will, but he lists off all the facts he can, including...

"—Handsome. He's Mr-Annoyingly-Perfect, basically. Everyone at the stables swoons over him," Pin finishes with, though it's affectionately said rather than in a spiteful manner he'd once have said such things with.

Sammy has a grin on her face as she asks, nudging him teasingly at the same time, "Including you?"

That blind-sides Pin.