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fuzzy_paintTitle: the other side (is always greener) 1/4
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairings/Characters: Mark/Eduardo
Word Count: ~37,000
Disclaimer: Don’t own.
Summary: Canon compliant AU: When he's sent to infiltrate human society in order to protect his people, Eduardo meets Mark for the second time, and his instantaneous attachment might cost him everything.
A/N: Special thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
becca_radcgg for the beta. Written for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thesocialbbang challenge. Master Post.
Make sure to check out the amazing art bychosenfire28
“I failed,” Eduardo says, thick with vowels that feel too foreign on his tongue, too quick, too slippery. He almost chokes on them, clutching his phone too hard. He’s leaning against a wall in some side-alley, a few blocks from where he lost everything. There are rough, ugly patches on his skin that won’t go away, blue and white and silver.
The silence on the other end feels like being stung like a jellyfish. When he was younger, they used to make a game of it, see who could get the closest and get away without retaliation. Eduardo wasn’t always quick enough.
He’d never stayed in place and waited for it to happen before. He’d never done it on purpose.
He can’t stop himself, sometimes, even when he should, even when this is the one thing that will make his father so very, very disappointed. Eduardo says, “I knew him. I knew Mark before Harvard. I knew- he nearly drowned and I wanted. Father, I wanted-”
His father hangs up.
~
Eduardo doesn’t blame him.
~
Crossing campus on his way to Widener Library and thinking about various ways to get the attention of the final clubs without his father pulling strings, Eduardo’s second year at Harvard starts when he runs into Mark.
He blinks, mouth going dry, and wonders about the probability of coincidences. He met this boy years ago, under a rickety pier off a mostly forgotten Florida beach. It’s inconceivable that they’d meet again, here and now, when Eduardo has responsibilities he can’t slip past.
Mark says something, but Eduardo just stares, deaf like he was that day. Deaf to everything except the screams of his mother, markmarkmark!, the waves on the shore and his own heartbeat, rapid and painful against his ribs.
“I,” Eduardo says, staring. He has the same blue eyes, the same mouth, and the same vicious want curdles up in Eduardo’s chest, nearly choking him.
Eduardo stares.
“That’s great,” Mark says, crouching to pick up his book, and his bag, slipping the zipper open to run his hands over his laptop. “Thanks a lot.”
Eduardo stares, taking a half step back when Mark straightens, tugging the strap of his backpack onto his shoulder. Mark says something else as he pushes past Eduardo, probably something scathing. It feels scathing, right down to his bones and he can’t shield himself from it. But he doesn’t hear it.
Eduardo watches him walk away, curling his hands tight into fists until his father’s ring cuts against his skin.
~
What he should do: Eduardo should walk away, get his father on the phone and tell the truth about Mark. Tell him everything.
What he does: Eduardo watches Mark until he’s gone from sight, until Eduardo can breathe and think and act again, until he is able to turn and leave. He walks away from Widener Library, through campus, past Kirkland and Eliot, all the way to the Larz Anderson Bridge. He stares at the Charles, imagining that he can see the ocean, and tries to find the strength to do what he must.
He’s still standing there when his phone rings. It’s late enough that the sky is pink and yellow beyond the grey clouds; traffic is pretty thick around him, cars and pedestrians, everyone trying to get home. Eduardo wishes he could submerge his feet for this, maybe to his calves or even all the way up to his waist.
He picks up on the third ring, and he tells his father about the Harvard Investor’s Association, about the classes he’s taking and the people he’s integrating himself with, about his prospects for the semester.
He does not tell him about Mark.
~
Eduardo settles into his first week of classes, adjusts to his schedule – he’s only been at Harvard for two semesters, but he already knows that eight AMs are nothing short of torture – and resolves to focus on the reason he’s here.
He can’t afford distractions.
He’s very good at sticking to it until he leaves the coffee shop one morning, after he’s ignored the barista’s attempts at flirting with him. Maria’s pretty, with her dark hair and blue eyes, but –
There’s Mark. He’s walking by with another student. A friend, maybe, though Eduardo wants to push him away for even breathing in the same airspace as Mark.
“It’s just a gen ed,” the friend says, “You need to relax, bro. Besides, girls dig that mythology stuff. You might meet someone.”
“This is ridiculous. I’m not here for general education,” Mark says sharply. “If I wanted that, I’d go to. I’d go to BU.”
“Maybe they’ll talk about robots,” his friend says. “You can be closer to your people.”
“Shut up, Dustin,” Mark says. “Robots aren’t myths.”
Eduardo realizes he’s following him, clutching his cup and still holding it halfway to his mouth. He tosses it in the first trash can he sees and heads the other way, rubbing the crook of his elbow.
He shouldn’t. He honestly shouldn’t. There are a million reasons, least of all the danger of his father finding out, the shame this will bring to his family, that this could compromise everything.
He transfers into the class the next day.
~
He had to. Mark is –
He had to.
~
He chooses his seat carefully, towards the back because Mark isn’t there yet. It’s the right class. There were only two classes on folklore and mythology. Eduardo checked. The flush of guilt is strong enough to make his hands shake, but he ignores it and sits up straighter when Mark arrives right before the class starts, watching as he selects a seat in the same row, but much closer to the aisle.
He gets his stuff out and then slouches in his seat, flicking his pen against the desk. Eduardo can see the twist of his mouth.
Annoyed. This is what Mark looks like when he’s annoyed.
Eduardo stares. The angle of his jaw is still the same as it was years ago. Eduardo wonders if it feels the same. It must, like the curls probably do even though they’re dry now and not as dark as they’d been that day on the beach.
He wants to see if they feel the same, he wants, he wants, he wants.
Eduardo looks down at the syllabus he’d printed off, trying to regain his control. This is stupid, indulgent, and completely against everything his parents ever taught him. A name catches his attention, three weeks in, and Eduardo opens his book, finding a page number and flipping to a story, not caring that it might be rude to be ignoring the professor like this.
He stares at the title, written in simple black font, and then touches the words on the paper, tracing them; they feel almost tangible. It’s a story he’s more than familiar with, one he’s known since childhood.
It’s something everyone from home learns, the first story they’re taught: a lesson in the dangers of places beyond their territory. Eduardo thinks about his mother, he thinks about his father, about the network he’s supposed to be building, the connections he’s supposed to be strengthening for his family.
And he thinks about how easily everything could fall apart.
Mark is right there. Right there. It’s been years, and Eduardo still hasn’t forgotten about him. He flips the book shut, and the ring he wears knocks against the desk.
He thinks, my father.
Mark’s eyes – so so blue – flicker up and catch him staring; Eduardo blushes and looks away, heart pounding, palms sweating.
At least half the class time has passed before Eduardo can hear anything beside his quickly beating heart, and he’s missed everything the professor has said, but he keeps staring at Mark. Out of the corner of his eye, and a little more subtle than before, but he touches the inside of one of his elbows, looking up at Mark, and thinks, I should not do this.
~
Eduardo spends the weekend at the Mandarin Oriental, just off campus. He sits in a bathtub large enough that he can almost stretch his legs out completely, water all the way up to the sides and sloshing over onto the floor. The steps leading up to it are slick and wet, and his clothes lay where he shed them, now in the middle of a puddle and soaked all the way through.
The water’s turned cold, more like he’s used to, and all the salt he’d poured in has settled to the bottom, scraping against his skin whenever he moves.
He traces a pattern on his arm from memory, cool tile against his back, and asks himself, “What is the stupidest thing I could possibly do?”
~
“Father,” he says quietly, “I was cultivating a potential connection that I think–"
“At a hotel,” his father says, flat. “With one of them.”
“Yes,” he says, keeping his tone as even as possible. He rubs his free hand against his thigh, watching people coming out of class. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. Father, and I- I wouldn’t do that. You know that.”
“Eduardo-“
Just then, Mark walks out of his classroom. “I have to go,” Eduardo says. He hangs up and shoves the phone in his pocket.
“Mark!”
Mark turns, frowning, eyebrows drawn together, watching Eduardo approach him. He looks mystified. Perturbed.
“I’m-“ Eduardo says, holding out his hand. “Hi, I’m Eduardo. I’m in Folklore and Myths with you on Mondays and Wednesdays.”
He looks at him blankly for a moment, one long stretched out moment in which Eduardo’s heart knocks twice against his chest and his palm starts to sweat.
“I. Sure,” Mark says, still frowning, one hand shoved in his hoodie pocket, the other wrapped tightly around the strap of his bag. “Is there something you want?”
Eduardo lets his hand drop to his side. His phone starts vibrating in his jacket, but he hits silent through his pocket. “I just. I wanted to introduce myself. You know. Meet new people and all that.”
Mark’s eyebrows draw further together, and his frown gets more pronounced and Eduardo is fucking this up. He is fucking this up completely, and he’s sliding out the charm before he even realizes it, tilting his head and opening his eyes. It’s not how he wanted to do this at all; it feels like cheating, really, but Mark’s eyes are turning inward, bored.
He says, “Mark,” soft, the sound of rain on water.
Eduardo is far from home, and not at all comfortable in his skin, but it’s not going to matter, because Mark is not like Eduardo, Mark is one of them and Eduardo –
“Yes?” Mark prompts.
“I just wanted,” Eduardo says, shocked, “to say. To say hi.”
Mark frowns, eyes Eduardo like he’s lost his mind – and maybe he has, what the hell. “Hi. You’ve said hi. I’ve said hi. We’ve exchanged the customary pleasantries. I’m going to go now.”
Eduardo nods, feeling more insignificant and lost, more than he ever has before, even more than his first day away from home. Mark spares him one last look, mostly impassive except for the small frown, and then he walks away. Eduardo watches, and when his phone rings, vibrating silently in his pocket, he doesn’t answer it.
~
It’s a matter of pride, really, that Mark shouldn’t be able to ignore him so well. Eduardo’s charm is in his blood; it’s powerful, dating back decades to the ancestor everyone knows, even in other families, even on the surface. He can’t sing like his mother or his aunts or his cousins and definitely not like his ancestor, who could sing in notes so beautiful she drove men mad, but Eduardo has talent. Eduardo is capable.
He’s his father’s son. His mother’s son.
“Hi, I’m Eduardo,” he says, holding his hand out to Dustin, Mark’s roommate, the one Eduardo sees with him the most. The other one, Chris, is next to him, and he takes Eduardo’s hand when he offers it, too.
Eduardo is not Jewish.
It’s easy enough to pretend to be.
Mark does not come to the AEPi parties on a regular basis, but it’s fine. It’s fine.
He uses every tactic his mother ever taught him; Mark’s friends are easily charmed, or Eduardo is better than he thought, or maybe Mark truly is an aberration of human nature, capable of resisting it where others can’t. It’s not long before he’s integrated himself into Mark’s friends’ social circles.
Soon he’s sharing some beers with Dustin and watching reruns of Shark Week with Chris, textbooks open in their laps.
“If I ever get reincarnated, I’m coming back as a shark,” Dustin says, waving his arms expansively. It’s talent, pure and simple, that he doesn’t spill any beer.
“I don’t think you get a choice,” Eduardo says.
Chris snorts, fighting a grin. “You’d be a puppy dog, Dustin.”
“A shark puppy dog.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
Eduardo grins, but his fingers dig into the couch cushion when a great white attacks a seal on the television, tossing it in the air. He remembers the first time he saw a shark up close, a large bull, aggressive and hungry.
“The shark is a natural predator,” his father said, after he’d pulled him away. “But we have other enemies, Eduardo. We have other enemies, above and below, other families, and we must be careful. We can only trust our blood.”
Eduardo turns his head to where Mark is stationed at his computer, vigilant and focused, like he’s been for hours. Eduardo is taking risks he shouldn’t. He’s taking risks he’s been warned about; he knows what happened, long ago, and he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t.
He sets aside his beer and his textbook – they haven’t studied at all – and goes to Mark, touching his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says. “You should take a break. You’ve been at it for hours.”
Mark shrugs, twitching until Eduardo’s hand drops to his side. He doesn’t look up. Mark’s fingers don’t even pause, flying over the keyboard like Eduardo isn’t even there.
After a long moment, Eduardo sighs, and goes back to Dustin and Chris, still arguing.
“A whale shark,” he says, dropping down into his spot and nudging Dustin in the ribs.
“See? Even Eduardo thinks I’d be a great shark. You wound me, Christopher. I will carry this scar forever.”
Eduardo grins, pausing with his beer bottle halfway to his mouth. “They’re harmless. They eat krill.” Dustin pulls a face, like he’s outrageously offended; Eduardo adds, “Or maybe you could be a nurse shark.”
Dustin sputters and stands up. “I am getting more beer,” he announces, indignant, hand spread over his chest. “And possibly risking life and limb for some of Mark’s red vines because alcohol and candy are the only things that can soothe my aching heart.”
Eduardo watches Dustin attempt to be stealthy, back against the wall as he peeks into Mark’s room.
“Hey,” Chris says, elbowing Eduardo lightly. “It’s just how Mark is. Don’t take it personally.”
Eduardo nods absently, not looking at him.
The only way he can take it is personally.
~
Sometimes, when everything is too much – too strange, too foreign, too painful – Eduardo leaves campus early enough that he’ll be back before anyone will notice, but late enough that the city is just starting to wake up.
It doesn’t matter where he goes as long as there’s a beach, but he likes Nantasket or Winthrop, any beach that looks directly out onto the ocean and not the Harbor.
He takes the subway if he absolutely has to, but he prefers the privacy of a taxi. Screw the cost, screw the traffic. He sits quietly in the backseat, watching the buildings pass, the early morning traffic, the sun just starting to rise instead of thinking about what he’s doing, about Mark, about the reason he’s here, or about his father. Or his mother.
He’s ask the cabbie to wait when he gets there, and then he walks right up to the shoreline, over fine grey sand, and stands there for a long moment, just staring. He likes it when the water is calm and there’s a distinct lack of sea foam, when the tides are low because he can get further out and closer to where he really wants to be. Then, almost absently, he toes off his sneakers and then his socks and he walks out until the water just covers his toes. He never wears suits when he does this. Jeans, an ugly beat-up t-shirt he stole from Mark, his North Face jacket, but never suits.
Every time, the sea whispers, come back to me.
Eduardo says soon and knows it’s a lie.
Invariably, it’s too cold to stay like that for longer than a minute or two – Eduardo is rather attached to his toes, all ten of them, and he especially likes how he can wiggle them in the mud – but it’s enough.
This isn’t the ocean he remembers – too cold and too grey – but it’s an ocean, and sometimes, Eduardo thinks that’s all that really matters anyway.
~
Eduardo gets to the bar early, like always, and he sweet-talks the bartender while he’s waiting. He can mostly ignore the voice that sounds like his father: This is what you use your gifts for? Or his mother’s simple Eduardo, voice chilled and disappointed.
After his first drink, he pulls back a little, slowing down the charm because the bartender’s looking a little too interested, touching his hand whenever she can, fingers sliding over his ring, and Eduardo isn’t at all, and then Dustin saves him, slamming into the bar in the empty space beside Eduardo, laughing.
“First round’s on the rotten egg,” he shouts, loud over the chatter and music.
Behind him, Chris scowls. “I’m not buying you a beer. You cheated.”
“I would never cheat,” Dustin says, mock horrified. He nudges Eduardo’s shoulder. “Except when I have to, right Eduardo?”
“Mark’s not coming?” Eduardo asks, still looking over Dustin’s shoulder. He turns just in time to catch the look they share. Eduardo ignores it; he smiles, all false charm. “His loss, I guess. Maria’s hooking us up.”
Eduardo gets drunk and leans sloppily against the bar, flirting shamelessly with Maria, and sometimes, possibly – he’s not entirely sure – turning his smile and his eyes on Chris or Dustin in a way that always, always, always fails on Mark.
They go back to Kirkland, simply by matter of distance and muscle memory, and Eduardo feels like he drank the entirety of the sea, and it’s sloshing around inside of him and It Is Awesome.
“M’dad’s gonna kill me,” he says as they’re staggering up the stairs, his arm inexplicably draped across Dustin’s shoulders, and then he blinks, hides his grin behind his hand, and tries again, this time in English: “Shit.”
Dustin laughs, a full body flail, and his fingers tighten on Eduardo’s waist when they stumble.
“Hey man, I am-” Eduardo jostles him, and they nearly trip, again. “-down with that. Not. Not down with that.”
“The bartender so wanted me,” Dustin says, ignoring Chris when he snorts and fumbles with his keys. “She was all. Dustin, I want you.”
Chris opens the door and falls against it, probably smearing the marker on the whiteboard, his eyes bright and smile too wide. “Man, I’m pretty sure she wanted Eduardo.”
“Whatever, I am a catch,” Dustin says. “The best fish in the sea. There are no other fish. Just me.”
“No,” Chris says. “I’m pretty sure Eduardo’s the fish.”
“I’m-“ Eduardo starts laughing. “Shit, it’s so true, guys, you don’t even realize. I’m a fish.”
Dustin squints at him. “You don’t have gills,” he says, poking at Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo tries to twist away – it tickles or itches or just feels really weird – and they stumble onto the couch together, a tangle of arms and elbows and laughter and some pain because neither of them are in entirely in control of their limbs.
Chris has slid halfway down the door, face pink, snorting into his hands.
Eduardo’s face hurts – he’s smiling so much – and he shoves Dustin off him. “You’re fun, man. Both of you, you guys are great, I’m so glad you’re friends with Mark, most fun I ever had.”
“Been trying to tell everyone. Ages,” Dustin says, muffled against the carpet.
A beat, two when they’re all silent, then:
Mark says, “You need to meet more people.”
Eduardo turns his head, feeling light and warm and happier than anything, to grin at Mark, already turned back to his computer, clacking away at his keyboard.
~
A few weeks later, Eduardo tags along with Mark after their mythology class. Mark’s sort of zoned, not really participating in the increasingly one-sided conversation Eduardo’s trying to have. He thinks about splitting, hiding in his dorm room and licking his wounds. The lecture was particularly grueling today; it struck too close to home, the human version of a story he’s heard all his life.
He’s off balance already when the hair on the back of his neck stands up and his skin prickles. Eduardo stops where he is, focus narrowing, and takes a few deep breathes. That’s when he sees him.
He’s not incredibly tall, but his friends are, twins and blonde and looking like the people Eduardo should be associating with. The people his father wants him to associate with. His mother-
“Eduardo,” Mark says. He’s frowning a little, probably because he’s stopped walking, but Eduardo’s gaze slips across the street again. He can’t keep his eyes away.
The other looks up, away from his twins, and there’s a sharp pin-prick down Eduardo’s spine. Their eyes meet and hold. Without looking away, Eduardo puts his hand on Mark’s back and nudges him towards the dorms, carefully keeping Mark on his left.
Eduardo keeps glancing over his shoulder the entire way.
Mark goes straight to his computer, booting it up and wiring in. Eduardo makes sure the door is locked behind them, and he seriously thinks about shutting and locking Mark’s bedroom door too. He settles for pacing and toying with his phone while he watches Mark type.
His thumb slides over his keypad, impatient, but his mind fights it, the idea of Mark and Eduardo’s father in the same room, even over a phone. That conversation happening here, now.
But Mark would be alone. And Eduardo’s not the only one on campus. And Mark would be alone.
His father picks up after the third ring.
“Do you know of any others at Harvard?”
“Is there trouble?”
“Not yet.” Eduardo bites his lower lip, thinking of the guy and his twins, the feeling of being watched the entire way to Mark’s dorm. “But I first saw him today, so…maybe.”
Eduardo fidgets in the silence. He’s not speaking English, but Mark is sitting only a few feet away. He’s still typing, completely focused on his computer.
“Harvard is a prominent school. It’s a gateway to many of the future influential leaders of the next generation,” his father says. Thankfully, Eduardo is spared the entire speech. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I guess it caught me off-guard,” he admits. He sits on Mark’s bed, and then feels his face flush, but Mark isn’t even looking in his direction. “You think someone would have mentioned it to Mother.”
“If there are problems, you let me know.”
“I can handle it,” Eduardo says, frowning. He’s not a child anymore, despite this thing with Mark, and he’s more than capable.
“Make sure that you do,” his father says. “Be careful.”
“Of course,” Eduardo says, but he’s already ended the call.
He stares at the back of Mark’s head, resisting the urge to let his hand curve to the shape of it, card his fingers through his hair and see if there’s a scar from the first time they met.
“I can’t believe you haven’t even looked at me,” Eduardo says, in English.
Mark just keeps typing.
~
It starts a pattern.
Little things, at first: Eduardo’s day, his classes, something Dustin said earlier, the next AEPi party, an article he read, his thoughts on his paper for their mythology class and that he might do it on Hans Christian Anderson, the waitress at lunch that kept staring at him.
Then one day he says, “I wonder if my mom-”
It’s innocuous, but he freezes. Could Mark sense anything different? Eduardo’s a little choked, for there isn’t anyone that hasn’t met his mother and isn’t a little awed by her, even him. His heart starts to slow, setting into a quiet rhythm that he mostly pretends doesn’t sing Mark, Mark, Mark.
The guilt is thick in his chest at first, but it fades, each time he says something. He tells Mark about how he fumbles his words each time a pretty girl talks to him here because he expects each one to be from back home. About the Council and its unorganized methods and outcomes after a lecture in his poli-sci gen ed, about his concerns that he’s been noticed by Divya.
“We’re a bit obsessive,” Eduardo says one day, carefully in his native language. He shouldn’t be telling Mark any of this, but he does.
It’s not like Mark’s paying attention.
Sometimes he speaks in English, mostly not, and he’s getting addicted to the thrill of telling Mark things he shouldn’t know, things that could end badly for him, even if he doesn’t understand a thing.
Eduardo wonders what Mark would do, if he told him everything.
He’s not stupid. He knows what this is, and Eduardo knows he should fight it, should tell his father, contact any one of the people he knows are stationed in the area, should get away, but he looks at Mark’s curls and his blue, blue eyes, and listens to the cutting things Mark says sometimes, and he can’t.
Besides, it’s just a stupid thought, an idle question, a daydream that he’ll never have. There shouldn’t be any harm in it.
~
Dustin codes almost as much as Mark.
Eduardo watches him sometimes, when Dustin’s wired in, lost to the world around him. It makes it easier to tell himself that it’s not an Eduardo-and-Mark thing. It’s a computer guy thing. It’s not a solely Mark thing.
“Everyone thinks the first one is always most important,” Eduardo says, sounding out vowels Dustin hasn’t heard before, like he’s practicing to give a speech. Even the littlest bit of honesty, of opening up, to Mark, to Dustin, to Chris, erodes the weight on his shoulders, the physicality of his parents’ expectations.
He has at least three missed calls, the oldest from several days ago.
“The elders question if it’s magical or biological, like a curse or some adaptive defense mechanism to protect sailors. They try to control it. Handpick the first, but I’d already–”
“Who you talking to, man?” Dustin says, swiveling in his chair.
Eduardo blinks, jolt in his chest. “Just. Thinking out loud.”
~
“This is ridiculous,” Mark says, scowling at his work and snapping his pencil against the table in front of the couch. “Who writes things out by hand anymore? It’s archaic.”
Eduardo fights and loses against the helplessly amused smile on his face. “Gen eds, man,” he offers, and Mark turns that annoyed, irritated scowl on him.
“No. It’s for one of my Comp Sci classes. The professor is an idiot.”
Eduardo’s smile gets wider. “You think most people are idiots.”
“True. But this isn’t about processing speed or the quality of output; this is about predicting the quality of consumer satisfaction. As if we need that. You develop something. People like it or they don’t. You fail or you succeed.”
Eduardo raises an eyebrow. “You really think it’s that easy.”
“No,” Mark says, sharp. “Great ideas aren’t just great ideas. You need to fill a hole that people want filled. I know that.”
“Or create one so they think they need it,” Eduardo says, toying with his ring. There hadn’t been a hole before that day on the beach, but there is now, gaping and threatening to swallow him whole.
Then Eduardo laughs, shaking it away, and he glances over at Mark’s work. He won’t understand more than half of it, but right away, he pauses, shifting closer. Absently, he takes Mark’s pencil. The algorithm Eduardo substitutes is clean, neat. It slides right into place like it’s finding its own equilibrium, filling in the places that had been neglected.
“You were on the right track,” Eduardo says. “But this would account for more variables in the long run. You’re leaving out-”
He stops and looks up. Mark’s turned that blue-eyed stare on him; Eduardo feels skewered, harpooned, locked in place.
He shrugs, helplessly. “I’m good with numbers.”
Eduardo is not the sort of boy that makes deals with a sea witch, but this, being Mark’s complete focus, his skin prickling along his elbows, the back of his neck, in between his toes, he thinks he understands why someone would.
~
Sometimes, Eduardo plays this game. When Mark is wired in, he’ll sit on Mark’s bed, back against the headboard, knees pressed together and drawn up to his chest, hands flat against the mattress, and he’ll offer Mark everything.
“Look up,” he’ll say, in English, in Portuguese, usually in a language Mark has never heard before, soft and sibilant like ripples in a pond. “Look at me and I’ll tell you everything. Mark, look up. I want to tell you everything. Mark, Mark, I want you to know.”
Mark never looks up.
~
Eduardo’s watching Mark and Dustin attempt to chat up a few girls across the room. They’re the oddest set of wingmen, Dustin who smiles widely and over-exaggerates and Mark’s dry, cutting wit–
“You might want to take it easy on the staring,” Chris says into his bottle.
Eduardo blinks and nearly drops his own. “I’m not-“
Chris lowers his drink and stares Eduardo down through his bangs.
“I.“ Eduardo looks away. “It’s not that big of deal.”
“Yeah, man. Whatever.”
“It’s really not. It’s not like.” Eduardo drinks some beer, still looking away. “It’s- let it go, okay?”
Chris is thankfully silent, and Eduardo keeps his eyes on his drink, even when one of the girls laughs, loud and boisterous.
“I mean, hey. I’ve had some. I’ve made some dumb decisions.”
“No way,” Eduardo says, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows. “No really. You?”
Chris knocks his shoulder into Eduardo’s, hard. “Shut up. You know what I mean.”
Eduardo stares into his bottle. He bites his lower lip. “Yes.” He looks back at Mark, thinks about the hole in his chest, wonders how long he can write it off, pretend it’s written in sand and the tide is coming soon to wipe it all away.
Not much longer, he thinks, sand through an hourglass. Once it’s gone, he won’t be getting it back.
“It’s not really a choice,” he says quietly, feeling like he’s been punched in the stomach when the girl smiles at Mark.
“Eduardo,” Chris says and they shouldn’t be this sober. Suddenly, he wants to get amazingly, irresponsibly drunk and sing loudly on campus and let Dustin take pictures even if he emails them out to all their friends again.
Chris grips his arms, bottle pressing against Eduardo’s arm, cold and wet, and makes him turn towards him, away from Mark. “You always have a choice.”
Eduardo smiles.
~
Sometimes, he’s not so sure about that.
~
“Hey man,” Eduardo says, sitting on the edge of Mark’s desk, watching him. He hasn’t been down to the beach in a long time, settling for curling his toes in the carpet in Mark’s dorm, listening to Mark’s typing instead of the sounds of the sea.
“You’re creeping me out,” Mark says, not looking up. He keeps typing, illegible and neatly formatted lines. “Why are you staring?”
“Sorry,” Eduardo says, talking over the waver in his voice, “I’m just preparing for that zombie apocalypse Dustin’s always going on about.” Mark glances up from his screen, and Eduardo fights the thrill in his chest, adding, “I need to know what they look like.”
“Fuck off.” Then Mark snorts. “He’d be the first to go.”
“I don’t know. And he’d probably be the only one prepared.”
“There is that.” Mark frowns briefly at something on his computer. “But he can’t keep quiet. They’d find him quickly.”
“He’s pretty scrappy.”
“Hmm,” Mark says, attention fading into his code. Eduardo grips his shoulder, not tight, but firm, solid, and resigns himself to more one-sided conversations for the night.
He’s just settled in his customary spot on Mark’s bed, economics homework spread out around him when his phone rings.
It’s his father.
Eduardo chews on his lower lip, listening to Mark as he codes, the tap-tap-tap of his keyboard. Glancing up, Eduardo toys with the idea of ignoring the call and returning it when he knows his father will be busy. It’s just. Easier that way.
He hasn’t spoken to his father in several weeks.
“Fuck,” he says, and when he answers it’s not in Portuguese. It’s not in English, either.
“Eduardo,” his father says, gruff, and Eduardo rubs his forehead. “I’m concerned.”
“Don’t be. Father. Don’t-“ Eduardo says, “I know. I know what it looks like, but-“
“You have so much work to do,” he says.
“I know, Dad, I know it looks like I’m not building the network I’m supposed to, but-”
Eduardo touches his mouth, watching as Mark reaches for his Mountain Dew. He doesn’t even look up when he knocks it over, just keeps reaching until he needs his other hand. Heart in his throat, he says, “I think I’m on to something. Something big, something more than what we’ve ever anticipated and I have to follow up on this.”
The silence on the phone is heavy, and Eduardo waits for the summons, the demand that he return home and leave everything behind, no matter how unlikely it is. His father wouldn’t risk his only child being locked away at home. His mother-
“Eduardo,” his father says. Eduardo closes his eyes, gripping the phone tight in his hand. “Be careful.”
He hangs up, drops the phone to the bed and swears, filthily, a mixture of Portuguese and his native tongue.
He gets to his feet and raids the mini-fridge for a beer even though it’s only two in the afternoon. Out of habit, he grabs a Red Bull for Mark. He sets it on the desk, more forcefully than he meant to, and just as he passes, Mark’s hand curls around his wrist. Eduardo freezes. He stares at it, trying to remember if Mark’s ever actually willingly touched him before.
Touched him with purpose. He can’t remember.
“Mark,” Eduardo says, questioning, throat thick with wary anticipation.
Mark levels a look at him. “You’re upset.”
“I,” Eduardo says, helpless. Mark’s eyes are so blue. “My father.”
Mark nods. It’s not exactly encouragement, but it all floods out, then: “He expects me to do exactly what he wants, and it’s like, it’s like, what about what I want? What if I want to go to Bali or Singapore or swim with sharks? What if I want-”
Mark does not let go of Eduardo’s wrist, but his fingers are still. Eduardo can’t look away from Mark’s eyes, but he wishes he could, just to see the contrast of their skin, Mark’s pale and his tan.
Eduardo wonders how Mark’s fingers would look against his true skin, pale human fingers on the colors of Eduardo's loyalty, his family.
He’ll never get to see that.
“He doesn’t even listen to me,” he adds, feeling petulant.
It’s not completely true, because his father turns over everything Eduardo says, thinks all of it through, analyzes it until Eduardo feels like nothing more than a stupid child. His mother is worse. He can never tell what she’s thinking.
It’s not like Eduardo doesn’t understand. There are reasons for being careful. He knows them by heart; it’s written in his bones, in his ancestry, in every variation of a story his people have been telling for generations.
“And sometimes, I just… I just want to-” he cuts himself off, inarticulate and frustrated, and then he slips into his native tongue, fitting around words he only uses when he’s talking to his father. Mark’s head is tilted, and Eduardo realizes what he’s doing, what he’s saying and how he’s saying it.
“Sorry,” he says in English. “Sometimes, I just- forget.”
“So do it. Whatever it is you want. Do it.”
“I wish it were that easy,” Eduardo says.
“Why isn’t it?” He asks, maybe not like he’s actually curious, but because Mark likes solving problems, or maybe because Eduardo’s anger and frustration and desperate want is clouding up his space and interfering with his ability to wire in.
Eduardo will take it. As sad and endlessly needy and pathetic as that is, Eduardo will take whatever Mark is willing to give.
“It’s just. Have you ever wanted someone… something.” Eduardo’s face is hot, and he could do it, he could – what was it that Dustin said the other day? – he could lay all his cards on the table, lean over and cup Mark’s face, say: Mark, Mark, you’re all I think about, Mark. or just go for it, fit their mouths together and show Mark everything because words haven’t been working.
“Of course,” Mark says. There’s a crease between his eyebrows. Eduardo wants to smooth it out with his thumb. He curls his hand into a fist to stop himself.
“And you know you potentially could, but there are all these things in the way. Family and responsibilities and the duty to live up to their expectations. My father doesn’t understand what I want. I don’t really understand what I want. But I can’t. My world doesn’t work that way.”
Whatever Mark is thinking, Eduardo can’t read it on his face. He sighs, pulling his hand away from Mark’s grasp. He rubs his wrist, soothing his true skin, excited just below the surface.
“That’s stupid.” Mark says. “It’s stupid to let what other people think bother you. Wardo, if you want something, take it.”
Eduardo stares at him, and despite everything, the corners of his mouth curl up helplessly.
“What?”
It’s sharp, annoyed, but Eduardo’s grin just gets bigger. “…Wardo?”
Mark’s stare is flat, and he doesn’t physically pull away, but Eduardo sees the walls going back up. He’s reaching before he can think it over, convince himself otherwise and his hand fits nicely on Mark’s shoulder, thumb slotting right under the sharp angle of Mark’s collarbone.
“No. Mark, no. I like it.” He squeezes Mark’s shoulder, and knows his eyes have gone soft, his mouth smoothed out with awe. “I like it.”
~
“Eduardo. Earth to Wardo? You here?”
Eduardo blinks, watching Dustin’s hand wave in front of his face.
“You have ketchup on your hand,” he says, shaking his head and rubbing at his neck, trying to soothe the prickling itch just beneath his skin. “Sorry. I guess I just zoned out or something.”
Dustin licks his hand. “I think we should be hurt, Christopher,” he says, turning towards him. Chris is sprawled in his chair, digging for the whole pretzels in his bag. “All the trouble I went through to get this table for us. Do you know how many people I had to bribe for this?”
“This is probably the worst spot in the cafeteria,” Chris says, snapping his pretzels in half. “I think you’ve been had.”
"You, my friend, have been misinformed."
"It's wonderful," Eduardo says, nodding. "In the winter, we get the heat from the vents, in the spring, when it's warm they prop open the door-"
Chris throws one of his pretzel bits at him, rolling his eyes. "You're both morons.”
Dustin scoots his chair away from Chris and towards Eduardo, loud scraping against the floor. He says quietly, "Do you think he's jealous of our awesomeness?"
"Why wouldn't he be? I mean-" Eduardo waves his hand, grinning.
"Yeah, totally. I think it’s ‘cause we’re better looking.” Dustin glances sideways at Chris. “Or I am, anyway.”
“Says the guy who hasn’t had a date in-” Chris pretends to think, counting on his fingers. “Six months?”
Dustin flicks a piece of his straw wrapper at him. “I could get a girl. I’m just waiting for the right one.”
Eduardo grins. “Is she in Denmark or something?”
“I think I’d be okay with that,” Dustin says, eyes drifting a little. “Have you ever seen people from Denmark?”
“Because everyone is exactly the same there,” Chris says, rolling his eyes again.
Eduardo jerks when the itching under his skin flairs, then narrows to painful and holds there. He looks up to see the other one, Divya, with his twins, a pair of tall blond guys, people his father would want him to cultivate. Gentlemen of Harvard.
Pushing his chair away from the table, wincing at the loud scrape against the tiles, Eduardo stands. He keeps Divya in his line of sight. “I’m going to get a refill. You want anything?”
He doesn’t wait for a response, but makes his way over to fiddle with the soda machine, pressing the lever and watching the loud crush of falling ice, filling his cup completely.
“You really need that much ice?”
Eduardo sets his cup on the counter, fitting his hand around the base in a loose grip, thumb sliding down the side, tracking the condensation.
Divya is a good three feet away, and he’s placed himself so the corner of the counter is between them. Eduardo nods, all polite veneer. Hostility would be stupid, especially in public. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Me either,” Divya says.
Eduardo nods again, still watching him carefully. “Good.”
They stand there in awkward silence, sizing each other up. Eduardo turns, but not enough that he’s left open a blind spot, and he fills his cup.
“See you around,” Divya says.
“Let’s hope not,” Eduardo mutters.
The laughter surprises him, and Eduardo jerks his head up sharply. Divya smiles, and it’s mostly not all teeth. “See? I knew we’d understand each other.” And then he walks away. Eduardo fumbles with the cap to his cup, fitting it on, but watching until Divya is a safe distance.
“Who was that?” Chris asks when Eduardo rejoins them.
“Just a guy,” Eduardo says, eyes on Divya. “From a class.”
~
Eduardo answers the phone absently, which is the problem.
“It seems impossible to reach you,” his father says. It’s not gruff or angry. It’s bland, a statement of fact. Eduardo’s attention focuses.
“I’m very busy,” Eduardo says, setting his homework to the side. He gets up and walks out of Mark’s room, smiling apologetically even though Mark isn’t paying attention.
His guard is really only down in Mark’s dorm room, when he’s working on something, and Eduardo can talk at him in soft quiet tones, sometimes barely loud enough that he can pretend that Mark doesn’t acknowledge him because he doesn’t hear him at all.
“Tell me about this opportunity you’re following.”
“It’s too young to talk about,” Eduardo says.
“It’s been several weeks.”
“I know, but school and everything else, I-”
“You’re making excuses.”
There’s that tone; it rests heavy on Eduardo’s shoulders, somehow.
“It’s young,” he says, watching Mark code. It’s different from this angle. Eduardo can see his face, watch the way he chews on a red vine. “But there’s so much potential. I’m still working on it.”
In the silence, Eduardo closes his eyes and tries to think, but Mark’s typing lulls him.
“And the other?”
“I’ve barely seen him,” Eduardo says.
“Good. What are you doing about the final clubs, Eduardo? Great men are born there,” his father says, like it’s something he’s never said before, like Eduardo’s never heard it before. “You would do well to gain those connections.”
“I’ll think of something,” Eduardo says quietly, turning his eyes away. It’s still stupid to talk to his father while they’re in the same room, but he’s been getting away with it for so long.
“You’ll think of something. Eduardo,” his father says. “You are my son.”
“Yes.”
“You have duties, you must-“
“What are you going to do, Dad? Find another?”
Eduardo closes his eyes, rests the palm of his hand on his forehead, and waits in the silence. For a long time, it’s broken only by the clack-clack-clack of Mark’s keyboard, some people in the hallway, laughing loudly as they pass.
“You disappoint me,” his father says. Eduardo pulls his phone away from his head. He thinks about chucking it across the room, watching it hit the wall and shatter. His fingers tighten. They shake.
He doesn’t.
“Do not leave this up to chance, Eduardo.” His father hangs up. Eduardo stands there with the phone pressed to his ear.
It’s nothing more than stupid child rebellion. “I’m going to tell him,” he says, pretending his dad can still hear him. “I want to tell him everything.”
The Charles is close, too many people this time of day, but it’d be so easy to slip down to the shore, and, and -
Mark is looking at him.
It lasts only for a few seconds, and then Mark’s back to whatever he’s doing on his computer, CourseMatch or something, but he was looking.
~
He could tell him. He’s been telling him for months.
It is, technically, easy enough to say, “Mark. I need to talk to you,” but Eduardo retreats to his own room to think, to plan. He drops his phone on his desk and sheds his tie and his vest, pauses, and then strips down to his underwear.
He throws himself on his bed, limbs sprawled out to take up all the space he can.
It’s such a stupid idea.
~
“Guys. There’s something I need to tell you,” he says. Eduardo closes his eyes, thinking about their faces, their reactions. His throat sticks. He drops his head against the door, blinking when his forehead starts to throb. “I’m not who you think I am,” he says, and then realizes he’s not speaking English. Damn it.
Pressed up against the door like that, Eduardo nearly falls over when Dustin opens it.
“Hey, man.”
“I was watching you through the keyhole,” Dustin says. “What where you doing?”
“It was creepy,” Chris says.
“You only wish you’d thought of it first.”
It’s like living in a fishbowl. Chris and Dustin and Mark and Eduardo, to tell one would mean to tell them all, though Mark would probably keep it to himself.
Or sell him to a circus or a zoo or any number of horror stories he used to hear from the other kids, what humans would do if they ever knew. What they did once, hunting them down, so many years ago.
And he knows what happens to humans that find out. He knows what happens to people that tell them.
Eduardo’s never felt so confined.
~
His courage wans; Eduardo doesn’t tell any of them.
~
Eduardo spends his summer on an island, a tiny speck of land that won’t be of much interest to anyone that sails by. There’s a bunker, with a stocked pantry and a transmitter, hidden in the sand. Further back, there’s a small radio tower. There are several of these islands, too small to be on any map, all similarly equipped, but Eduardo likes this one the best. It’s close to home.
Sometimes, he has visitors, friends from his youth. They don't come ashore. He wades out to meet them, waterline high on his torso, and answers questions about the surface, about the people and about what he’s doing.
But mostly he spends his days standing a few feet in, toes buried in the sand, waves washing against his thighs; he closes his eyes and listens to the ocean.
He has his phone in hand, which is stupid this close to the water, but he needs it. Eduardo bets oil futures absently, staring out over the surface and listening to the sea whisper all sorts of interesting things to him, close like a lover. Most of them are reasons Eduardo should return to her.
This far away from Harvard and Mark, everything there, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to say no. But even though he dreams of her when he’s away, Eduardo’s mind is elsewhere. It’s always elsewhere, lately.
im bored
what are you doing
im watching the weather channel
big storms in ohio sucks for them
Eduardo texts, like he has intermittently all summer, not expecting a reply. It’s kind of like sitting in Mark’s dorm and telling him anything that comes to mind, except Eduardo edits his thoughts heavily, keeps it shallow. None of the secrets he shouldn’t have been telling in the first place.
Still. He wonders if Mark looks up when Eduardo is not there.
The ring on his finger feels heavy, and he’s tempted, goaded on by the sea, to take it off even if he’s not supposed to, not even for a second. He has it loose, twisting it around his knuckle, when his phone buzzes in his hand. He fumbles it, nearly drops it, and he can hear laughter on the wind.
Freak.
Eduardo backs away until his feet are coated with dry sand. He sits down when the sounds in his head quiet to a low murmur. He’s not stupid enough to think that the sea is chastised or repentant. He knows she’s smirking while she slides out on the tide, leaving only sea foam in her wake.
Everyone returns to her, someday.
Two
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairings/Characters: Mark/Eduardo
Word Count: ~37,000
Disclaimer: Don’t own.
Summary: Canon compliant AU: When he's sent to infiltrate human society in order to protect his people, Eduardo meets Mark for the second time, and his instantaneous attachment might cost him everything.
A/N: Special thanks to
becca_radcgg for the beta. Written for the thesocialbbang challenge. Master Post. Make sure to check out the amazing art by
chosenfire28“I failed,” Eduardo says, thick with vowels that feel too foreign on his tongue, too quick, too slippery. He almost chokes on them, clutching his phone too hard. He’s leaning against a wall in some side-alley, a few blocks from where he lost everything. There are rough, ugly patches on his skin that won’t go away, blue and white and silver.
The silence on the other end feels like being stung like a jellyfish. When he was younger, they used to make a game of it, see who could get the closest and get away without retaliation. Eduardo wasn’t always quick enough.
He’d never stayed in place and waited for it to happen before. He’d never done it on purpose.
He can’t stop himself, sometimes, even when he should, even when this is the one thing that will make his father so very, very disappointed. Eduardo says, “I knew him. I knew Mark before Harvard. I knew- he nearly drowned and I wanted. Father, I wanted-”
His father hangs up.
~
Eduardo doesn’t blame him.
~
Crossing campus on his way to Widener Library and thinking about various ways to get the attention of the final clubs without his father pulling strings, Eduardo’s second year at Harvard starts when he runs into Mark.
He blinks, mouth going dry, and wonders about the probability of coincidences. He met this boy years ago, under a rickety pier off a mostly forgotten Florida beach. It’s inconceivable that they’d meet again, here and now, when Eduardo has responsibilities he can’t slip past.
Mark says something, but Eduardo just stares, deaf like he was that day. Deaf to everything except the screams of his mother, markmarkmark!, the waves on the shore and his own heartbeat, rapid and painful against his ribs.
“I,” Eduardo says, staring. He has the same blue eyes, the same mouth, and the same vicious want curdles up in Eduardo’s chest, nearly choking him.
Eduardo stares.
“That’s great,” Mark says, crouching to pick up his book, and his bag, slipping the zipper open to run his hands over his laptop. “Thanks a lot.”
Eduardo stares, taking a half step back when Mark straightens, tugging the strap of his backpack onto his shoulder. Mark says something else as he pushes past Eduardo, probably something scathing. It feels scathing, right down to his bones and he can’t shield himself from it. But he doesn’t hear it.
Eduardo watches him walk away, curling his hands tight into fists until his father’s ring cuts against his skin.
~
What he should do: Eduardo should walk away, get his father on the phone and tell the truth about Mark. Tell him everything.
What he does: Eduardo watches Mark until he’s gone from sight, until Eduardo can breathe and think and act again, until he is able to turn and leave. He walks away from Widener Library, through campus, past Kirkland and Eliot, all the way to the Larz Anderson Bridge. He stares at the Charles, imagining that he can see the ocean, and tries to find the strength to do what he must.
He’s still standing there when his phone rings. It’s late enough that the sky is pink and yellow beyond the grey clouds; traffic is pretty thick around him, cars and pedestrians, everyone trying to get home. Eduardo wishes he could submerge his feet for this, maybe to his calves or even all the way up to his waist.
He picks up on the third ring, and he tells his father about the Harvard Investor’s Association, about the classes he’s taking and the people he’s integrating himself with, about his prospects for the semester.
He does not tell him about Mark.
~
Eduardo settles into his first week of classes, adjusts to his schedule – he’s only been at Harvard for two semesters, but he already knows that eight AMs are nothing short of torture – and resolves to focus on the reason he’s here.
He can’t afford distractions.
He’s very good at sticking to it until he leaves the coffee shop one morning, after he’s ignored the barista’s attempts at flirting with him. Maria’s pretty, with her dark hair and blue eyes, but –
There’s Mark. He’s walking by with another student. A friend, maybe, though Eduardo wants to push him away for even breathing in the same airspace as Mark.
“It’s just a gen ed,” the friend says, “You need to relax, bro. Besides, girls dig that mythology stuff. You might meet someone.”
“This is ridiculous. I’m not here for general education,” Mark says sharply. “If I wanted that, I’d go to. I’d go to BU.”
“Maybe they’ll talk about robots,” his friend says. “You can be closer to your people.”
“Shut up, Dustin,” Mark says. “Robots aren’t myths.”
Eduardo realizes he’s following him, clutching his cup and still holding it halfway to his mouth. He tosses it in the first trash can he sees and heads the other way, rubbing the crook of his elbow.
He shouldn’t. He honestly shouldn’t. There are a million reasons, least of all the danger of his father finding out, the shame this will bring to his family, that this could compromise everything.
He transfers into the class the next day.
~
He had to. Mark is –
He had to.
~
He chooses his seat carefully, towards the back because Mark isn’t there yet. It’s the right class. There were only two classes on folklore and mythology. Eduardo checked. The flush of guilt is strong enough to make his hands shake, but he ignores it and sits up straighter when Mark arrives right before the class starts, watching as he selects a seat in the same row, but much closer to the aisle.
He gets his stuff out and then slouches in his seat, flicking his pen against the desk. Eduardo can see the twist of his mouth.
Annoyed. This is what Mark looks like when he’s annoyed.
Eduardo stares. The angle of his jaw is still the same as it was years ago. Eduardo wonders if it feels the same. It must, like the curls probably do even though they’re dry now and not as dark as they’d been that day on the beach.
He wants to see if they feel the same, he wants, he wants, he wants.
Eduardo looks down at the syllabus he’d printed off, trying to regain his control. This is stupid, indulgent, and completely against everything his parents ever taught him. A name catches his attention, three weeks in, and Eduardo opens his book, finding a page number and flipping to a story, not caring that it might be rude to be ignoring the professor like this.
He stares at the title, written in simple black font, and then touches the words on the paper, tracing them; they feel almost tangible. It’s a story he’s more than familiar with, one he’s known since childhood.
It’s something everyone from home learns, the first story they’re taught: a lesson in the dangers of places beyond their territory. Eduardo thinks about his mother, he thinks about his father, about the network he’s supposed to be building, the connections he’s supposed to be strengthening for his family.
And he thinks about how easily everything could fall apart.
Mark is right there. Right there. It’s been years, and Eduardo still hasn’t forgotten about him. He flips the book shut, and the ring he wears knocks against the desk.
He thinks, my father.
Mark’s eyes – so so blue – flicker up and catch him staring; Eduardo blushes and looks away, heart pounding, palms sweating.
At least half the class time has passed before Eduardo can hear anything beside his quickly beating heart, and he’s missed everything the professor has said, but he keeps staring at Mark. Out of the corner of his eye, and a little more subtle than before, but he touches the inside of one of his elbows, looking up at Mark, and thinks, I should not do this.
~
Eduardo spends the weekend at the Mandarin Oriental, just off campus. He sits in a bathtub large enough that he can almost stretch his legs out completely, water all the way up to the sides and sloshing over onto the floor. The steps leading up to it are slick and wet, and his clothes lay where he shed them, now in the middle of a puddle and soaked all the way through.
The water’s turned cold, more like he’s used to, and all the salt he’d poured in has settled to the bottom, scraping against his skin whenever he moves.
He traces a pattern on his arm from memory, cool tile against his back, and asks himself, “What is the stupidest thing I could possibly do?”
~
“Father,” he says quietly, “I was cultivating a potential connection that I think–"
“At a hotel,” his father says, flat. “With one of them.”
“Yes,” he says, keeping his tone as even as possible. He rubs his free hand against his thigh, watching people coming out of class. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. Father, and I- I wouldn’t do that. You know that.”
“Eduardo-“
Just then, Mark walks out of his classroom. “I have to go,” Eduardo says. He hangs up and shoves the phone in his pocket.
“Mark!”
Mark turns, frowning, eyebrows drawn together, watching Eduardo approach him. He looks mystified. Perturbed.
“I’m-“ Eduardo says, holding out his hand. “Hi, I’m Eduardo. I’m in Folklore and Myths with you on Mondays and Wednesdays.”
He looks at him blankly for a moment, one long stretched out moment in which Eduardo’s heart knocks twice against his chest and his palm starts to sweat.
“I. Sure,” Mark says, still frowning, one hand shoved in his hoodie pocket, the other wrapped tightly around the strap of his bag. “Is there something you want?”
Eduardo lets his hand drop to his side. His phone starts vibrating in his jacket, but he hits silent through his pocket. “I just. I wanted to introduce myself. You know. Meet new people and all that.”
Mark’s eyebrows draw further together, and his frown gets more pronounced and Eduardo is fucking this up. He is fucking this up completely, and he’s sliding out the charm before he even realizes it, tilting his head and opening his eyes. It’s not how he wanted to do this at all; it feels like cheating, really, but Mark’s eyes are turning inward, bored.
He says, “Mark,” soft, the sound of rain on water.
Eduardo is far from home, and not at all comfortable in his skin, but it’s not going to matter, because Mark is not like Eduardo, Mark is one of them and Eduardo –
“Yes?” Mark prompts.
“I just wanted,” Eduardo says, shocked, “to say. To say hi.”
Mark frowns, eyes Eduardo like he’s lost his mind – and maybe he has, what the hell. “Hi. You’ve said hi. I’ve said hi. We’ve exchanged the customary pleasantries. I’m going to go now.”
Eduardo nods, feeling more insignificant and lost, more than he ever has before, even more than his first day away from home. Mark spares him one last look, mostly impassive except for the small frown, and then he walks away. Eduardo watches, and when his phone rings, vibrating silently in his pocket, he doesn’t answer it.
~
It’s a matter of pride, really, that Mark shouldn’t be able to ignore him so well. Eduardo’s charm is in his blood; it’s powerful, dating back decades to the ancestor everyone knows, even in other families, even on the surface. He can’t sing like his mother or his aunts or his cousins and definitely not like his ancestor, who could sing in notes so beautiful she drove men mad, but Eduardo has talent. Eduardo is capable.
He’s his father’s son. His mother’s son.
“Hi, I’m Eduardo,” he says, holding his hand out to Dustin, Mark’s roommate, the one Eduardo sees with him the most. The other one, Chris, is next to him, and he takes Eduardo’s hand when he offers it, too.
Eduardo is not Jewish.
It’s easy enough to pretend to be.
Mark does not come to the AEPi parties on a regular basis, but it’s fine. It’s fine.
He uses every tactic his mother ever taught him; Mark’s friends are easily charmed, or Eduardo is better than he thought, or maybe Mark truly is an aberration of human nature, capable of resisting it where others can’t. It’s not long before he’s integrated himself into Mark’s friends’ social circles.
Soon he’s sharing some beers with Dustin and watching reruns of Shark Week with Chris, textbooks open in their laps.
“If I ever get reincarnated, I’m coming back as a shark,” Dustin says, waving his arms expansively. It’s talent, pure and simple, that he doesn’t spill any beer.
“I don’t think you get a choice,” Eduardo says.
Chris snorts, fighting a grin. “You’d be a puppy dog, Dustin.”
“A shark puppy dog.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
Eduardo grins, but his fingers dig into the couch cushion when a great white attacks a seal on the television, tossing it in the air. He remembers the first time he saw a shark up close, a large bull, aggressive and hungry.
“The shark is a natural predator,” his father said, after he’d pulled him away. “But we have other enemies, Eduardo. We have other enemies, above and below, other families, and we must be careful. We can only trust our blood.”
Eduardo turns his head to where Mark is stationed at his computer, vigilant and focused, like he’s been for hours. Eduardo is taking risks he shouldn’t. He’s taking risks he’s been warned about; he knows what happened, long ago, and he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t.
He sets aside his beer and his textbook – they haven’t studied at all – and goes to Mark, touching his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says. “You should take a break. You’ve been at it for hours.”
Mark shrugs, twitching until Eduardo’s hand drops to his side. He doesn’t look up. Mark’s fingers don’t even pause, flying over the keyboard like Eduardo isn’t even there.
After a long moment, Eduardo sighs, and goes back to Dustin and Chris, still arguing.
“A whale shark,” he says, dropping down into his spot and nudging Dustin in the ribs.
“See? Even Eduardo thinks I’d be a great shark. You wound me, Christopher. I will carry this scar forever.”
Eduardo grins, pausing with his beer bottle halfway to his mouth. “They’re harmless. They eat krill.” Dustin pulls a face, like he’s outrageously offended; Eduardo adds, “Or maybe you could be a nurse shark.”
Dustin sputters and stands up. “I am getting more beer,” he announces, indignant, hand spread over his chest. “And possibly risking life and limb for some of Mark’s red vines because alcohol and candy are the only things that can soothe my aching heart.”
Eduardo watches Dustin attempt to be stealthy, back against the wall as he peeks into Mark’s room.
“Hey,” Chris says, elbowing Eduardo lightly. “It’s just how Mark is. Don’t take it personally.”
Eduardo nods absently, not looking at him.
The only way he can take it is personally.
~
Sometimes, when everything is too much – too strange, too foreign, too painful – Eduardo leaves campus early enough that he’ll be back before anyone will notice, but late enough that the city is just starting to wake up.
It doesn’t matter where he goes as long as there’s a beach, but he likes Nantasket or Winthrop, any beach that looks directly out onto the ocean and not the Harbor.
He takes the subway if he absolutely has to, but he prefers the privacy of a taxi. Screw the cost, screw the traffic. He sits quietly in the backseat, watching the buildings pass, the early morning traffic, the sun just starting to rise instead of thinking about what he’s doing, about Mark, about the reason he’s here, or about his father. Or his mother.
He’s ask the cabbie to wait when he gets there, and then he walks right up to the shoreline, over fine grey sand, and stands there for a long moment, just staring. He likes it when the water is calm and there’s a distinct lack of sea foam, when the tides are low because he can get further out and closer to where he really wants to be. Then, almost absently, he toes off his sneakers and then his socks and he walks out until the water just covers his toes. He never wears suits when he does this. Jeans, an ugly beat-up t-shirt he stole from Mark, his North Face jacket, but never suits.
Every time, the sea whispers, come back to me.
Eduardo says soon and knows it’s a lie.
Invariably, it’s too cold to stay like that for longer than a minute or two – Eduardo is rather attached to his toes, all ten of them, and he especially likes how he can wiggle them in the mud – but it’s enough.
This isn’t the ocean he remembers – too cold and too grey – but it’s an ocean, and sometimes, Eduardo thinks that’s all that really matters anyway.
~
Eduardo gets to the bar early, like always, and he sweet-talks the bartender while he’s waiting. He can mostly ignore the voice that sounds like his father: This is what you use your gifts for? Or his mother’s simple Eduardo, voice chilled and disappointed.
After his first drink, he pulls back a little, slowing down the charm because the bartender’s looking a little too interested, touching his hand whenever she can, fingers sliding over his ring, and Eduardo isn’t at all, and then Dustin saves him, slamming into the bar in the empty space beside Eduardo, laughing.
“First round’s on the rotten egg,” he shouts, loud over the chatter and music.
Behind him, Chris scowls. “I’m not buying you a beer. You cheated.”
“I would never cheat,” Dustin says, mock horrified. He nudges Eduardo’s shoulder. “Except when I have to, right Eduardo?”
“Mark’s not coming?” Eduardo asks, still looking over Dustin’s shoulder. He turns just in time to catch the look they share. Eduardo ignores it; he smiles, all false charm. “His loss, I guess. Maria’s hooking us up.”
Eduardo gets drunk and leans sloppily against the bar, flirting shamelessly with Maria, and sometimes, possibly – he’s not entirely sure – turning his smile and his eyes on Chris or Dustin in a way that always, always, always fails on Mark.
They go back to Kirkland, simply by matter of distance and muscle memory, and Eduardo feels like he drank the entirety of the sea, and it’s sloshing around inside of him and It Is Awesome.
“M’dad’s gonna kill me,” he says as they’re staggering up the stairs, his arm inexplicably draped across Dustin’s shoulders, and then he blinks, hides his grin behind his hand, and tries again, this time in English: “Shit.”
Dustin laughs, a full body flail, and his fingers tighten on Eduardo’s waist when they stumble.
“Hey man, I am-” Eduardo jostles him, and they nearly trip, again. “-down with that. Not. Not down with that.”
“The bartender so wanted me,” Dustin says, ignoring Chris when he snorts and fumbles with his keys. “She was all. Dustin, I want you.”
Chris opens the door and falls against it, probably smearing the marker on the whiteboard, his eyes bright and smile too wide. “Man, I’m pretty sure she wanted Eduardo.”
“Whatever, I am a catch,” Dustin says. “The best fish in the sea. There are no other fish. Just me.”
“No,” Chris says. “I’m pretty sure Eduardo’s the fish.”
“I’m-“ Eduardo starts laughing. “Shit, it’s so true, guys, you don’t even realize. I’m a fish.”
Dustin squints at him. “You don’t have gills,” he says, poking at Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo tries to twist away – it tickles or itches or just feels really weird – and they stumble onto the couch together, a tangle of arms and elbows and laughter and some pain because neither of them are in entirely in control of their limbs.
Chris has slid halfway down the door, face pink, snorting into his hands.
Eduardo’s face hurts – he’s smiling so much – and he shoves Dustin off him. “You’re fun, man. Both of you, you guys are great, I’m so glad you’re friends with Mark, most fun I ever had.”
“Been trying to tell everyone. Ages,” Dustin says, muffled against the carpet.
A beat, two when they’re all silent, then:
Mark says, “You need to meet more people.”
Eduardo turns his head, feeling light and warm and happier than anything, to grin at Mark, already turned back to his computer, clacking away at his keyboard.
~
A few weeks later, Eduardo tags along with Mark after their mythology class. Mark’s sort of zoned, not really participating in the increasingly one-sided conversation Eduardo’s trying to have. He thinks about splitting, hiding in his dorm room and licking his wounds. The lecture was particularly grueling today; it struck too close to home, the human version of a story he’s heard all his life.
He’s off balance already when the hair on the back of his neck stands up and his skin prickles. Eduardo stops where he is, focus narrowing, and takes a few deep breathes. That’s when he sees him.
He’s not incredibly tall, but his friends are, twins and blonde and looking like the people Eduardo should be associating with. The people his father wants him to associate with. His mother-
“Eduardo,” Mark says. He’s frowning a little, probably because he’s stopped walking, but Eduardo’s gaze slips across the street again. He can’t keep his eyes away.
The other looks up, away from his twins, and there’s a sharp pin-prick down Eduardo’s spine. Their eyes meet and hold. Without looking away, Eduardo puts his hand on Mark’s back and nudges him towards the dorms, carefully keeping Mark on his left.
Eduardo keeps glancing over his shoulder the entire way.
Mark goes straight to his computer, booting it up and wiring in. Eduardo makes sure the door is locked behind them, and he seriously thinks about shutting and locking Mark’s bedroom door too. He settles for pacing and toying with his phone while he watches Mark type.
His thumb slides over his keypad, impatient, but his mind fights it, the idea of Mark and Eduardo’s father in the same room, even over a phone. That conversation happening here, now.
But Mark would be alone. And Eduardo’s not the only one on campus. And Mark would be alone.
His father picks up after the third ring.
“Do you know of any others at Harvard?”
“Is there trouble?”
“Not yet.” Eduardo bites his lower lip, thinking of the guy and his twins, the feeling of being watched the entire way to Mark’s dorm. “But I first saw him today, so…maybe.”
Eduardo fidgets in the silence. He’s not speaking English, but Mark is sitting only a few feet away. He’s still typing, completely focused on his computer.
“Harvard is a prominent school. It’s a gateway to many of the future influential leaders of the next generation,” his father says. Thankfully, Eduardo is spared the entire speech. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I guess it caught me off-guard,” he admits. He sits on Mark’s bed, and then feels his face flush, but Mark isn’t even looking in his direction. “You think someone would have mentioned it to Mother.”
“If there are problems, you let me know.”
“I can handle it,” Eduardo says, frowning. He’s not a child anymore, despite this thing with Mark, and he’s more than capable.
“Make sure that you do,” his father says. “Be careful.”
“Of course,” Eduardo says, but he’s already ended the call.
He stares at the back of Mark’s head, resisting the urge to let his hand curve to the shape of it, card his fingers through his hair and see if there’s a scar from the first time they met.
“I can’t believe you haven’t even looked at me,” Eduardo says, in English.
Mark just keeps typing.
~
It starts a pattern.
Little things, at first: Eduardo’s day, his classes, something Dustin said earlier, the next AEPi party, an article he read, his thoughts on his paper for their mythology class and that he might do it on Hans Christian Anderson, the waitress at lunch that kept staring at him.
Then one day he says, “I wonder if my mom-”
It’s innocuous, but he freezes. Could Mark sense anything different? Eduardo’s a little choked, for there isn’t anyone that hasn’t met his mother and isn’t a little awed by her, even him. His heart starts to slow, setting into a quiet rhythm that he mostly pretends doesn’t sing Mark, Mark, Mark.
The guilt is thick in his chest at first, but it fades, each time he says something. He tells Mark about how he fumbles his words each time a pretty girl talks to him here because he expects each one to be from back home. About the Council and its unorganized methods and outcomes after a lecture in his poli-sci gen ed, about his concerns that he’s been noticed by Divya.
“We’re a bit obsessive,” Eduardo says one day, carefully in his native language. He shouldn’t be telling Mark any of this, but he does.
It’s not like Mark’s paying attention.
Sometimes he speaks in English, mostly not, and he’s getting addicted to the thrill of telling Mark things he shouldn’t know, things that could end badly for him, even if he doesn’t understand a thing.
Eduardo wonders what Mark would do, if he told him everything.
He’s not stupid. He knows what this is, and Eduardo knows he should fight it, should tell his father, contact any one of the people he knows are stationed in the area, should get away, but he looks at Mark’s curls and his blue, blue eyes, and listens to the cutting things Mark says sometimes, and he can’t.
Besides, it’s just a stupid thought, an idle question, a daydream that he’ll never have. There shouldn’t be any harm in it.
~
Dustin codes almost as much as Mark.
Eduardo watches him sometimes, when Dustin’s wired in, lost to the world around him. It makes it easier to tell himself that it’s not an Eduardo-and-Mark thing. It’s a computer guy thing. It’s not a solely Mark thing.
“Everyone thinks the first one is always most important,” Eduardo says, sounding out vowels Dustin hasn’t heard before, like he’s practicing to give a speech. Even the littlest bit of honesty, of opening up, to Mark, to Dustin, to Chris, erodes the weight on his shoulders, the physicality of his parents’ expectations.
He has at least three missed calls, the oldest from several days ago.
“The elders question if it’s magical or biological, like a curse or some adaptive defense mechanism to protect sailors. They try to control it. Handpick the first, but I’d already–”
“Who you talking to, man?” Dustin says, swiveling in his chair.
Eduardo blinks, jolt in his chest. “Just. Thinking out loud.”
~
“This is ridiculous,” Mark says, scowling at his work and snapping his pencil against the table in front of the couch. “Who writes things out by hand anymore? It’s archaic.”
Eduardo fights and loses against the helplessly amused smile on his face. “Gen eds, man,” he offers, and Mark turns that annoyed, irritated scowl on him.
“No. It’s for one of my Comp Sci classes. The professor is an idiot.”
Eduardo’s smile gets wider. “You think most people are idiots.”
“True. But this isn’t about processing speed or the quality of output; this is about predicting the quality of consumer satisfaction. As if we need that. You develop something. People like it or they don’t. You fail or you succeed.”
Eduardo raises an eyebrow. “You really think it’s that easy.”
“No,” Mark says, sharp. “Great ideas aren’t just great ideas. You need to fill a hole that people want filled. I know that.”
“Or create one so they think they need it,” Eduardo says, toying with his ring. There hadn’t been a hole before that day on the beach, but there is now, gaping and threatening to swallow him whole.
Then Eduardo laughs, shaking it away, and he glances over at Mark’s work. He won’t understand more than half of it, but right away, he pauses, shifting closer. Absently, he takes Mark’s pencil. The algorithm Eduardo substitutes is clean, neat. It slides right into place like it’s finding its own equilibrium, filling in the places that had been neglected.
“You were on the right track,” Eduardo says. “But this would account for more variables in the long run. You’re leaving out-”
He stops and looks up. Mark’s turned that blue-eyed stare on him; Eduardo feels skewered, harpooned, locked in place.
He shrugs, helplessly. “I’m good with numbers.”
Eduardo is not the sort of boy that makes deals with a sea witch, but this, being Mark’s complete focus, his skin prickling along his elbows, the back of his neck, in between his toes, he thinks he understands why someone would.
~
Sometimes, Eduardo plays this game. When Mark is wired in, he’ll sit on Mark’s bed, back against the headboard, knees pressed together and drawn up to his chest, hands flat against the mattress, and he’ll offer Mark everything.
“Look up,” he’ll say, in English, in Portuguese, usually in a language Mark has never heard before, soft and sibilant like ripples in a pond. “Look at me and I’ll tell you everything. Mark, look up. I want to tell you everything. Mark, Mark, I want you to know.”
Mark never looks up.
~
Eduardo’s watching Mark and Dustin attempt to chat up a few girls across the room. They’re the oddest set of wingmen, Dustin who smiles widely and over-exaggerates and Mark’s dry, cutting wit–
“You might want to take it easy on the staring,” Chris says into his bottle.
Eduardo blinks and nearly drops his own. “I’m not-“
Chris lowers his drink and stares Eduardo down through his bangs.
“I.“ Eduardo looks away. “It’s not that big of deal.”
“Yeah, man. Whatever.”
“It’s really not. It’s not like.” Eduardo drinks some beer, still looking away. “It’s- let it go, okay?”
Chris is thankfully silent, and Eduardo keeps his eyes on his drink, even when one of the girls laughs, loud and boisterous.
“I mean, hey. I’ve had some. I’ve made some dumb decisions.”
“No way,” Eduardo says, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows. “No really. You?”
Chris knocks his shoulder into Eduardo’s, hard. “Shut up. You know what I mean.”
Eduardo stares into his bottle. He bites his lower lip. “Yes.” He looks back at Mark, thinks about the hole in his chest, wonders how long he can write it off, pretend it’s written in sand and the tide is coming soon to wipe it all away.
Not much longer, he thinks, sand through an hourglass. Once it’s gone, he won’t be getting it back.
“It’s not really a choice,” he says quietly, feeling like he’s been punched in the stomach when the girl smiles at Mark.
“Eduardo,” Chris says and they shouldn’t be this sober. Suddenly, he wants to get amazingly, irresponsibly drunk and sing loudly on campus and let Dustin take pictures even if he emails them out to all their friends again.
Chris grips his arms, bottle pressing against Eduardo’s arm, cold and wet, and makes him turn towards him, away from Mark. “You always have a choice.”
Eduardo smiles.
~
Sometimes, he’s not so sure about that.
~
“Hey man,” Eduardo says, sitting on the edge of Mark’s desk, watching him. He hasn’t been down to the beach in a long time, settling for curling his toes in the carpet in Mark’s dorm, listening to Mark’s typing instead of the sounds of the sea.
“You’re creeping me out,” Mark says, not looking up. He keeps typing, illegible and neatly formatted lines. “Why are you staring?”
“Sorry,” Eduardo says, talking over the waver in his voice, “I’m just preparing for that zombie apocalypse Dustin’s always going on about.” Mark glances up from his screen, and Eduardo fights the thrill in his chest, adding, “I need to know what they look like.”
“Fuck off.” Then Mark snorts. “He’d be the first to go.”
“I don’t know. And he’d probably be the only one prepared.”
“There is that.” Mark frowns briefly at something on his computer. “But he can’t keep quiet. They’d find him quickly.”
“He’s pretty scrappy.”
“Hmm,” Mark says, attention fading into his code. Eduardo grips his shoulder, not tight, but firm, solid, and resigns himself to more one-sided conversations for the night.
He’s just settled in his customary spot on Mark’s bed, economics homework spread out around him when his phone rings.
It’s his father.
Eduardo chews on his lower lip, listening to Mark as he codes, the tap-tap-tap of his keyboard. Glancing up, Eduardo toys with the idea of ignoring the call and returning it when he knows his father will be busy. It’s just. Easier that way.
He hasn’t spoken to his father in several weeks.
“Fuck,” he says, and when he answers it’s not in Portuguese. It’s not in English, either.
“Eduardo,” his father says, gruff, and Eduardo rubs his forehead. “I’m concerned.”
“Don’t be. Father. Don’t-“ Eduardo says, “I know. I know what it looks like, but-“
“You have so much work to do,” he says.
“I know, Dad, I know it looks like I’m not building the network I’m supposed to, but-”
Eduardo touches his mouth, watching as Mark reaches for his Mountain Dew. He doesn’t even look up when he knocks it over, just keeps reaching until he needs his other hand. Heart in his throat, he says, “I think I’m on to something. Something big, something more than what we’ve ever anticipated and I have to follow up on this.”
The silence on the phone is heavy, and Eduardo waits for the summons, the demand that he return home and leave everything behind, no matter how unlikely it is. His father wouldn’t risk his only child being locked away at home. His mother-
“Eduardo,” his father says. Eduardo closes his eyes, gripping the phone tight in his hand. “Be careful.”
He hangs up, drops the phone to the bed and swears, filthily, a mixture of Portuguese and his native tongue.
He gets to his feet and raids the mini-fridge for a beer even though it’s only two in the afternoon. Out of habit, he grabs a Red Bull for Mark. He sets it on the desk, more forcefully than he meant to, and just as he passes, Mark’s hand curls around his wrist. Eduardo freezes. He stares at it, trying to remember if Mark’s ever actually willingly touched him before.
Touched him with purpose. He can’t remember.
“Mark,” Eduardo says, questioning, throat thick with wary anticipation.
Mark levels a look at him. “You’re upset.”
“I,” Eduardo says, helpless. Mark’s eyes are so blue. “My father.”
Mark nods. It’s not exactly encouragement, but it all floods out, then: “He expects me to do exactly what he wants, and it’s like, it’s like, what about what I want? What if I want to go to Bali or Singapore or swim with sharks? What if I want-”
Mark does not let go of Eduardo’s wrist, but his fingers are still. Eduardo can’t look away from Mark’s eyes, but he wishes he could, just to see the contrast of their skin, Mark’s pale and his tan.
Eduardo wonders how Mark’s fingers would look against his true skin, pale human fingers on the colors of Eduardo's loyalty, his family.
He’ll never get to see that.
“He doesn’t even listen to me,” he adds, feeling petulant.
It’s not completely true, because his father turns over everything Eduardo says, thinks all of it through, analyzes it until Eduardo feels like nothing more than a stupid child. His mother is worse. He can never tell what she’s thinking.
It’s not like Eduardo doesn’t understand. There are reasons for being careful. He knows them by heart; it’s written in his bones, in his ancestry, in every variation of a story his people have been telling for generations.
“And sometimes, I just… I just want to-” he cuts himself off, inarticulate and frustrated, and then he slips into his native tongue, fitting around words he only uses when he’s talking to his father. Mark’s head is tilted, and Eduardo realizes what he’s doing, what he’s saying and how he’s saying it.
“Sorry,” he says in English. “Sometimes, I just- forget.”
“So do it. Whatever it is you want. Do it.”
“I wish it were that easy,” Eduardo says.
“Why isn’t it?” He asks, maybe not like he’s actually curious, but because Mark likes solving problems, or maybe because Eduardo’s anger and frustration and desperate want is clouding up his space and interfering with his ability to wire in.
Eduardo will take it. As sad and endlessly needy and pathetic as that is, Eduardo will take whatever Mark is willing to give.
“It’s just. Have you ever wanted someone… something.” Eduardo’s face is hot, and he could do it, he could – what was it that Dustin said the other day? – he could lay all his cards on the table, lean over and cup Mark’s face, say: Mark, Mark, you’re all I think about, Mark. or just go for it, fit their mouths together and show Mark everything because words haven’t been working.
“Of course,” Mark says. There’s a crease between his eyebrows. Eduardo wants to smooth it out with his thumb. He curls his hand into a fist to stop himself.
“And you know you potentially could, but there are all these things in the way. Family and responsibilities and the duty to live up to their expectations. My father doesn’t understand what I want. I don’t really understand what I want. But I can’t. My world doesn’t work that way.”
Whatever Mark is thinking, Eduardo can’t read it on his face. He sighs, pulling his hand away from Mark’s grasp. He rubs his wrist, soothing his true skin, excited just below the surface.
“That’s stupid.” Mark says. “It’s stupid to let what other people think bother you. Wardo, if you want something, take it.”
Eduardo stares at him, and despite everything, the corners of his mouth curl up helplessly.
“What?”
It’s sharp, annoyed, but Eduardo’s grin just gets bigger. “…Wardo?”
Mark’s stare is flat, and he doesn’t physically pull away, but Eduardo sees the walls going back up. He’s reaching before he can think it over, convince himself otherwise and his hand fits nicely on Mark’s shoulder, thumb slotting right under the sharp angle of Mark’s collarbone.
“No. Mark, no. I like it.” He squeezes Mark’s shoulder, and knows his eyes have gone soft, his mouth smoothed out with awe. “I like it.”
~
“Eduardo. Earth to Wardo? You here?”
Eduardo blinks, watching Dustin’s hand wave in front of his face.
“You have ketchup on your hand,” he says, shaking his head and rubbing at his neck, trying to soothe the prickling itch just beneath his skin. “Sorry. I guess I just zoned out or something.”
Dustin licks his hand. “I think we should be hurt, Christopher,” he says, turning towards him. Chris is sprawled in his chair, digging for the whole pretzels in his bag. “All the trouble I went through to get this table for us. Do you know how many people I had to bribe for this?”
“This is probably the worst spot in the cafeteria,” Chris says, snapping his pretzels in half. “I think you’ve been had.”
"You, my friend, have been misinformed."
"It's wonderful," Eduardo says, nodding. "In the winter, we get the heat from the vents, in the spring, when it's warm they prop open the door-"
Chris throws one of his pretzel bits at him, rolling his eyes. "You're both morons.”
Dustin scoots his chair away from Chris and towards Eduardo, loud scraping against the floor. He says quietly, "Do you think he's jealous of our awesomeness?"
"Why wouldn't he be? I mean-" Eduardo waves his hand, grinning.
"Yeah, totally. I think it’s ‘cause we’re better looking.” Dustin glances sideways at Chris. “Or I am, anyway.”
“Says the guy who hasn’t had a date in-” Chris pretends to think, counting on his fingers. “Six months?”
Dustin flicks a piece of his straw wrapper at him. “I could get a girl. I’m just waiting for the right one.”
Eduardo grins. “Is she in Denmark or something?”
“I think I’d be okay with that,” Dustin says, eyes drifting a little. “Have you ever seen people from Denmark?”
“Because everyone is exactly the same there,” Chris says, rolling his eyes again.
Eduardo jerks when the itching under his skin flairs, then narrows to painful and holds there. He looks up to see the other one, Divya, with his twins, a pair of tall blond guys, people his father would want him to cultivate. Gentlemen of Harvard.
Pushing his chair away from the table, wincing at the loud scrape against the tiles, Eduardo stands. He keeps Divya in his line of sight. “I’m going to get a refill. You want anything?”
He doesn’t wait for a response, but makes his way over to fiddle with the soda machine, pressing the lever and watching the loud crush of falling ice, filling his cup completely.
“You really need that much ice?”
Eduardo sets his cup on the counter, fitting his hand around the base in a loose grip, thumb sliding down the side, tracking the condensation.
Divya is a good three feet away, and he’s placed himself so the corner of the counter is between them. Eduardo nods, all polite veneer. Hostility would be stupid, especially in public. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Me either,” Divya says.
Eduardo nods again, still watching him carefully. “Good.”
They stand there in awkward silence, sizing each other up. Eduardo turns, but not enough that he’s left open a blind spot, and he fills his cup.
“See you around,” Divya says.
“Let’s hope not,” Eduardo mutters.
The laughter surprises him, and Eduardo jerks his head up sharply. Divya smiles, and it’s mostly not all teeth. “See? I knew we’d understand each other.” And then he walks away. Eduardo fumbles with the cap to his cup, fitting it on, but watching until Divya is a safe distance.
“Who was that?” Chris asks when Eduardo rejoins them.
“Just a guy,” Eduardo says, eyes on Divya. “From a class.”
~
Eduardo answers the phone absently, which is the problem.
“It seems impossible to reach you,” his father says. It’s not gruff or angry. It’s bland, a statement of fact. Eduardo’s attention focuses.
“I’m very busy,” Eduardo says, setting his homework to the side. He gets up and walks out of Mark’s room, smiling apologetically even though Mark isn’t paying attention.
His guard is really only down in Mark’s dorm room, when he’s working on something, and Eduardo can talk at him in soft quiet tones, sometimes barely loud enough that he can pretend that Mark doesn’t acknowledge him because he doesn’t hear him at all.
“Tell me about this opportunity you’re following.”
“It’s too young to talk about,” Eduardo says.
“It’s been several weeks.”
“I know, but school and everything else, I-”
“You’re making excuses.”
There’s that tone; it rests heavy on Eduardo’s shoulders, somehow.
“It’s young,” he says, watching Mark code. It’s different from this angle. Eduardo can see his face, watch the way he chews on a red vine. “But there’s so much potential. I’m still working on it.”
In the silence, Eduardo closes his eyes and tries to think, but Mark’s typing lulls him.
“And the other?”
“I’ve barely seen him,” Eduardo says.
“Good. What are you doing about the final clubs, Eduardo? Great men are born there,” his father says, like it’s something he’s never said before, like Eduardo’s never heard it before. “You would do well to gain those connections.”
“I’ll think of something,” Eduardo says quietly, turning his eyes away. It’s still stupid to talk to his father while they’re in the same room, but he’s been getting away with it for so long.
“You’ll think of something. Eduardo,” his father says. “You are my son.”
“Yes.”
“You have duties, you must-“
“What are you going to do, Dad? Find another?”
Eduardo closes his eyes, rests the palm of his hand on his forehead, and waits in the silence. For a long time, it’s broken only by the clack-clack-clack of Mark’s keyboard, some people in the hallway, laughing loudly as they pass.
“You disappoint me,” his father says. Eduardo pulls his phone away from his head. He thinks about chucking it across the room, watching it hit the wall and shatter. His fingers tighten. They shake.
He doesn’t.
“Do not leave this up to chance, Eduardo.” His father hangs up. Eduardo stands there with the phone pressed to his ear.
It’s nothing more than stupid child rebellion. “I’m going to tell him,” he says, pretending his dad can still hear him. “I want to tell him everything.”
The Charles is close, too many people this time of day, but it’d be so easy to slip down to the shore, and, and -
Mark is looking at him.
It lasts only for a few seconds, and then Mark’s back to whatever he’s doing on his computer, CourseMatch or something, but he was looking.
~
He could tell him. He’s been telling him for months.
It is, technically, easy enough to say, “Mark. I need to talk to you,” but Eduardo retreats to his own room to think, to plan. He drops his phone on his desk and sheds his tie and his vest, pauses, and then strips down to his underwear.
He throws himself on his bed, limbs sprawled out to take up all the space he can.
It’s such a stupid idea.
~
“Guys. There’s something I need to tell you,” he says. Eduardo closes his eyes, thinking about their faces, their reactions. His throat sticks. He drops his head against the door, blinking when his forehead starts to throb. “I’m not who you think I am,” he says, and then realizes he’s not speaking English. Damn it.
Pressed up against the door like that, Eduardo nearly falls over when Dustin opens it.
“Hey, man.”
“I was watching you through the keyhole,” Dustin says. “What where you doing?”
“It was creepy,” Chris says.
“You only wish you’d thought of it first.”
It’s like living in a fishbowl. Chris and Dustin and Mark and Eduardo, to tell one would mean to tell them all, though Mark would probably keep it to himself.
Or sell him to a circus or a zoo or any number of horror stories he used to hear from the other kids, what humans would do if they ever knew. What they did once, hunting them down, so many years ago.
And he knows what happens to humans that find out. He knows what happens to people that tell them.
Eduardo’s never felt so confined.
~
His courage wans; Eduardo doesn’t tell any of them.
~
Eduardo spends his summer on an island, a tiny speck of land that won’t be of much interest to anyone that sails by. There’s a bunker, with a stocked pantry and a transmitter, hidden in the sand. Further back, there’s a small radio tower. There are several of these islands, too small to be on any map, all similarly equipped, but Eduardo likes this one the best. It’s close to home.
Sometimes, he has visitors, friends from his youth. They don't come ashore. He wades out to meet them, waterline high on his torso, and answers questions about the surface, about the people and about what he’s doing.
But mostly he spends his days standing a few feet in, toes buried in the sand, waves washing against his thighs; he closes his eyes and listens to the ocean.
He has his phone in hand, which is stupid this close to the water, but he needs it. Eduardo bets oil futures absently, staring out over the surface and listening to the sea whisper all sorts of interesting things to him, close like a lover. Most of them are reasons Eduardo should return to her.
This far away from Harvard and Mark, everything there, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to say no. But even though he dreams of her when he’s away, Eduardo’s mind is elsewhere. It’s always elsewhere, lately.
im bored
what are you doing
im watching the weather channel
big storms in ohio sucks for them
Eduardo texts, like he has intermittently all summer, not expecting a reply. It’s kind of like sitting in Mark’s dorm and telling him anything that comes to mind, except Eduardo edits his thoughts heavily, keeps it shallow. None of the secrets he shouldn’t have been telling in the first place.
Still. He wonders if Mark looks up when Eduardo is not there.
The ring on his finger feels heavy, and he’s tempted, goaded on by the sea, to take it off even if he’s not supposed to, not even for a second. He has it loose, twisting it around his knuckle, when his phone buzzes in his hand. He fumbles it, nearly drops it, and he can hear laughter on the wind.
Freak.
Eduardo backs away until his feet are coated with dry sand. He sits down when the sounds in his head quiet to a low murmur. He’s not stupid enough to think that the sea is chastised or repentant. He knows she’s smirking while she slides out on the tide, leaving only sea foam in her wake.
Everyone returns to her, someday.
Two
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-09 07:39 am (UTC)YOU. ARE. MY. HERO. I mean it, hooooooooooooooow?
*___________*
no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 12:09 am (UTC)AND SECONDLY, I'M GOING TO RESPOND TO ALL OF THESE BECAUSE IT WAS A VERY HEARTWARMING THING TO WAKE UP TO AN INBOX FULL OF COMMENTS FROM YOU.
Also, you flatter me too hard.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 12:00 am (UTC)I love you for writing this.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 02:12 am (UTC)♥