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fuzzy_paintTitle: the other side (is always greener) 4/4
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.
Check out the amazing art bychosenfire28
Eduardo doesn’t let go of Mark until they’re at the house. At Mark’s house. He’s never even seen it, never even knew Mark had found a new one. He barely lets go then, avoiding having to look at Chris or Dustin, ignoring their questions, ignoring Mark’s eyes, and the way they look at him, dulled in pain and the approaching fever.
When Mark’s tucked in his bed, Eduardo stands up, steps back a few paces. He doesn’t realize he has his phone out until he fumbles over the keys, dialing a number that will get him nowhere.
He gets his father’s voicemail. His father won’t talk to him. His father.
“Did you know about her? Did you send her?” Eduardo asks, nearly choking on his anger. He has Mark’s blood on his hands, on his clothes. Mark is in pain; someone tried to kill Mark.
Someone has killed Mark; there is poison in his veins.
Everyone is staring at him, Chris’s hand curled tightly around Dustin’s forearm, and Sean Parker, the shark, just looks at him like he knows, like he understands, and not for the first time, Eduardo wonders what Sean Parker really is.
“The one that attacked Mark,” Eduardo says thickly. “The one that poisoned him. She took the ring. Is that what this is about? You wanted that fucking ring back? I would’ve given it to you. I would’ve fucking mailed it if you couldn’t stand to look at me, I would’ve-”
“You’re not my father,” Eduardo says. “You’re not-“
He hangs up and then throws the phone across the room. It doesn’t even break when it hits the wall. He sees their startled faces, but they’re all a blur as he leans back and sinks to the floor.
He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
It’s Chris, of course it’s Chris, who pulls Eduardo’s hands away from his face.
“Eduardo,” he says, holding tight to Eduardo’s wrists. “You need to tell us everything.”
“I-“
Mark groans on the bed, twisting in the sheets; Eduardo flinches and tries to go to him. But his strength is sapped, and Chris is very determined. So he watches Sean clean Mark’s wounds with an efficiency that speaks of experience, rag pink with blood.
“Eduardo,” Chris says, face serious.
He starts talking, words choked, looking to Sean to fill in the pieces where he can. He knows more than Eduardo suspected, a lot more, but he doesn’t care enough to puzzle out what that means. When he’s told the short and dirty version, his voice hoarse, Dustin and Chris stare at him like they’ve never seen him before.
Dustin’s arms are tightly crossed; he’s pale. “What’s wrong with Mark?”
“Certain families, some of the maids, women, have poison,” Sean says. He’s done taping up the wound. “Normally it’s not a problem for someone like Eduardo, but for a human-“
“There’s gotta be a cure, right?” Dustin says, and then, when neither Sean nor Eduardo offers any words: “Wardo.”
Eduardo's entire chest feels hollowed out. He curls his hands into fists. “We’re not supposed to like humans all that much.”
Understatement. It’s a betrayal, the worst kind, to love a human. There had been a girl once, long ago, a Saverin, who’d loved a human so deeply she’d given up her voice and her skin just to be with him. When that didn’t work, she’d sold her family to both a sea witch and the humans alike.
He pushes himself to his knees and crawls the three feet to Mark’s bed, and then he does not leave Mark’s side, curled up on the floor, upper body resting on the mattress. Eventually an hour or two later, Mark’s breathing shallows out, and even though the shudders have started, racking down his spine, Eduardo won’t leave him.
It is Sean, surprisingly – or maybe not – who manhandles Eduardo to his feet and out of the house, striping the bloody shirt from his hands as they go, and shoves him in the pool when they get there.
Chlorine burns, makes it hard to breathe, but Eduardo will go no further from Mark than the backyard. It will take days before he absolutely must return to the sea, before his tail returns and no amount of control can hide his true skin. He sinks beneath the surface, sits with his back against the wall, knees pressed together and drawn to his chest. Sometimes, he thinks Dustin and Chris are staring at him from beyond the glass patio doors, but Eduardo does not look up.
He cannot hear the sea, but he still asks her what he should do.
She does not answer.
~
Mark loses consciousness four hours later.
Sound is muffled underwater, distorted, but it can’t hide the shake in Dustin’s voice when he opens the glass doors and calls for Eduardo. He pulls himself out of the pool. He’s dripping water all over the tiles. His clothes stick to his skin, and Dustin follows him wordlessly into the house.
He feels the tenseness before he sees it, Sean, spine rigid, backing away from the front door. Eduardo’s father follows him, rage and anger evident in the tight line of his mouth, the clear intent on his face.
They do not follow the old ways; they don't, except when they have to. Except when it’s convenient or easily justified, and Sean Parker, whatever he is, who makes Eduardo’s own skin flare in protest just by proximity, is an easy exception.
Eduardo steps between them, eyes on his father. He pushes Sean behind him, a brief moment of contact, the tips of his fingers pressed against his chest. He can feel no scales, but not because of the shirt Sean’s wearing.
His father finally registers his presence, stopping in his tracks. His sleeves are rolled up, reds and golds and greens easily visible. Eduardo can’t read him.
“What are you doing here?” Eduardo says it in English.
“Where is your boy?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No. I will not let you near him.”
“Eduardo-“
“Shut up, Sean.”
“Okay,” he says, hand up, backing away from both of them.
Chris appears in the doorway. His eyes flicker over his father, the reds and greens on his arms. “I'm calling the hospital,” he says. “He's getting worse.”
“You can't do that,” Eduardo says. “Chris, they’ll kill him.”
His father turns to Chris. “He is this way?”
“No,” Eduardo says, honeyed and slick, and Chris looks at Eduardo, face smoothing momentarily, but then he scowls and turns back to Eduardo’s father.
“Can you help him?”
His father looks nonplussed. “Perhaps,” he says, sparing one last considering glance for his son before heading down the hall.
Eduardo follows.
He sinks to his knees by the bed. Mark’s skin is chalk white and cold with sweat. He watches his dad feel for Mark's pulse near the delicate veins on the inside of his wrist, look at him with eyes that have seen and understood more than what Eduardo can.
“You are right,” he says in their language. “It is poison.”
“What can I do?”
“Not much.”
“There has to be something.”
Eduardo’s father grips his shoulder. “There is only one place to get the cure as quickly as he needs,” he says. His gaze is steady, except for the lines around his eyes and mouth. “But if you do this, you cannot come back from it.”
There is only one place.
“Oh,” Eduardo says, fingers tightening on Mark’s.
“Oh man,” Sean says. Eduardo looks up. He’s lingering in the doorway. He takes a step back when his father looks up.
“You make interesting business partners,” his father says.
“I'm not a part of Facebook,” Eduardo says, keeping his voice level. His father looks back. Whatever conclusions he draws, he keeps to himself.
“This is your choice,” his father says.
“I could make another one. I did make another one.” Eduardo looks at Mark. He touches his forehead, clammy beneath his palm, even though the patch of scales. “But I don't want to anymore. I can’t anymore.”
“Then we must go. Quickly.”
Eduardo nods. “Mark,” he says, pushing his fingers through Mark’s curls, just like he’s always wanted. Mark does not look up. “I’m gonna fix you, okay? I just need you to hang on for a day or two. And then I’ll be back, and you’ll be better. I promise.”
~
There is only one place.
“I’ll want something in return,” she says.
~
In the end, his father goes to Mark, and Eduardo stays behind.
~
His father purchases a secluded beach house near Palo Alto and stocks it like any of their people’s islands, food and phones, supplies for emergencies. Eduardo doesn’t ask how much he paid for it, but real estate in California is insane, and something this remote, with its tiny little cove, would be obscene.
Eduardo spends days getting used to his skin again.
“You really didn't have to do this,” Eduardo says one morning. “It's a big ocean. I’d be fine.”
"Eduardo," his father says sternly, and then he offers no more.
Eventually, his father says, “Tell me about him,” and Eduardo is too smart to pretend he doesn’t know what he’s asking. It feels more like a relief, to slosh off old scales, shed the itch even when it hurts.
He speaks more candidly then he’s done in months.
“I was twelve,” he says. “And I had never seen anything like him. I still haven’t.”
His father considers that. “You were always more human than you had a right to be. Your mother and I should not have sent you to the surface.”
Eduardo looks down at his hands, at his tail, the deep blue still vibrant against the water. “I would have gone eventually.”
He spends his days sunning on the rocks, tail twitching lazily, or venturing out as far as he dares to fish. He avoids the sturdy wooden dock and the waterproof canister tied to one of the supports.
It should be relaxing, after all the craze in the past few weeks, months, years, but he feels trapped, locked away in this cove. It's great white season in the waters further out, and even though Eduardo is usually quicker and more agile, it's just stupid to chance that.
However candidly he speaks to his father now, they're both silent on Eduardo's future. He doesn't have much of one, no Facebook to return to, no home to speak of, exiled by his family and friends alike, a price for Mark's life. And he doesn't know if these waters are claimed, if one of the families lives near. His father hasn't said, and Eduardo doesn't ask.
He thinks a lot, about his choices, prodding at bruises that have long disappeared, but still linger under the surface. He's had nearly a decade to let go of Mark, to move on and find his place in the world, but he hasn't been able to do it yet.
But Mark is alive, and Dustin and Chris are alive, even Sean Parker - Eduardo's tail flicks, irritated even at the thought of him - is alive. He consoles himself with this knowledge, and it's almost enough.
Then one day, the back of his neck tingles. Eduardo doesn't even have to look up.
Humans.
He slips into the water and sinks to the seabed, staying very still. His father is on the other side of the cove, hidden by the rocks. The water’s fairly clear here, and most of the time, humans only see what they want to see, and not what’s right in front of them. He looks to his father, swimming closer.
One of them calls his name.
Eduardo changes direction and pops his head above the surface.
"Oh wow," Dustin says. "You really are part fish."
Chris elbows him, and Dustin nudges him, and he keeps on doing it until Chris socks him in the shoulder, and they nearly knock each other off the dock. Dustin's holding a six pack. Chris has a pizza box, Eduardo's mouth starts watering as soon as he smells it. He's gotten too used to human food.
Eduardo's face hurts, mouth stretched wide and happy across his face. He grabs a hold of the dock and pulls himself up, anchoring his crossed arms on the edge, tail treading water. Chris sits with his legs crossed a few feet up the dock, but Dustin comes right to the edge, knobby knee touching Eduardo's elbow.
They both stare at his true skin, the more uniform patches now that he's not straddling the line between two worlds. Chris looks away sharply, like he's realized what he's doing, but Dustin is more unabashed about it.
"You didn't come back," Dustin says.
Eduardo shrugs, watching the water drops from his arms stain the dock darker. "Kind of hard to catch a cab like this," he says. Then, after the silence: "You're thinking about it aren't you?"
Dustin grins.
"How did you find me?"
Chris offers Eduardo a beer. "I asked your father.”
"Your father's a scary dude, man," Dustin says, popping the top of his own can.
Chris laughs, setting the pizza pox in front of them.
“I could ask him to join us," Eduardo says, just to see their faces.
They eat, and they talk, conversation a bit stilted, avoiding certain topics until Dustin sets his beer down, looking determined. Eduardo braces himself.
"Does Bigfoot really exist?”
Eduardo shrugs, flicking the olives off his slice of pizza. "I don't know man. I've never really been on his turf."
Dustin frowns. "What about Nessie? She lives in the water."
"Dustin," Chris says, exasperated. "Eduardo lives in the sea. Nessie lives in Loch Ness."
"So? That's water, this is water. Maybe she's got a sea-dwelling cousin or something."
Dustin’s curious, and he keeps asking Eduardo all sorts of questions about how his people get it on, if Eduardo is best friends with Flounder and Sebastian – some things Dustin doesn’t need to know and Eduardo doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he regularly eats Flounders and Sebastians for dinner – but Eduardo doesn’t mind.
"How is he," Eduardo says, when there's a break in Dustin's curiosity.
"He's doing better," Chris says. "Nasty scars, but your father said they'd probably fade a lot."
The sky is overcast; the sea whispers about rain, later, and Eduardo wishes he could block her out of his head like he could whenever he was on land. Like he could when he was near Mark. The sea talks too much.
Chris swallows the last bit of crust on his pizza, sets his beer on the dock and stares Eduardo down. "I think you should tell me about Mark.”
Eduardo shrugs, looking away. "There's not much to tell.”
"Liar, liar, pants on fire."
"I don't wear pants, Dustin."
Chris clears his throat and says, tentative, “Ariel didn’t have a happy ending, did she?”
Dustin’s mouth is drawn downwards at the corners, and he’s staring resolutely out to sea.
“You’ve read the story,” Eduardo says, stalling.
“I’ve read the story.”
He can’t handle Chris’s steady gaze, or Dustin’s serious face, so Eduardo stares at the water past the cove. His father is near, and if he’s listening-
It’s not like Eduardo hasn’t broken bigger laws before, and Chris has this way of getting people to talk, and Eduardo wants to spill his secrets, tell everything to someone who looks up and asks and sees things that aren’t code and Facebook and Red Bulls.
“We mate for life. Human or– we mate for life. We love for life.” He stretches his fingers apart, watching the webbing between them pull and stretch. Absently, thinking about the Disney version, he says, “I suppose it’s a natural progression. The princess and the prince.”
He looks up and sees their faces. “My father is very powerful. My mother even more, but not like that. We don’t operate like that.”
Chris nods. “Donations to ecological organizations interested in ocean preservation, on the board of investors for a handful of fortune five hundred companies-“
“You’ve done your homework,” Eduardo says. He fiddles with a loose nail in one of the planks; it’s sticking up and he can rotate it like a joystick.
Chris, thankfully, drops the subject, and they talk about other things Facebook – Dustin has a member count ready, constantly updating on his phone – Mark’s resistance to his convalescence – “You know what he’s like when he’s sick,” Chris says – and tentative feelers about Eduardo.
Eventually, Dustin brings up the topic they’ve all been avoiding. “Why aren’t you coming back?”
Eduardo looks away, pushing at the loose nail; he can’t look at them while he half explains that he won’t be coming back at all.
“Isn’t there always a loophole in these things?” Dustin asks. “Like. Kiss the prince or something.”
“That’s not the correct version,” Eduardo says. “And besides. True love’s first kiss? That’s a fairytale.”
“Wardo,” Dustin says. “You are a fairytale.”
~
“You trust them very much,” his father says later, after they’ve left. It’s not quite dusk, and the tide is low, forcing them further out.
“I do,” Eduardo says. He waits for the reprimand, but his father says nothing. “Thank you for telling them.”
His father is unreadable. “I did not want to leave you alone.”
“You’re leaving,” he says, surprised. “I know you have to, I just.” Eduardo looks away.
It is the longest uninterrupted stretch of time they have spent together since before Eduardo met Mark. It is also the most they’ve talked about anything besides Eduardo’s responsibilities. It’s strange. And off setting, and possibly the first time he’s been honest with his father in years.
Eduardo’s hands shake; he has to look out over the cove and not at his father. “That summer in New York, I was pulling away from him. I chose you. And Mother and the family. New York and I.”
“I see,” his father says. His mouth turns down. “You cannot spend the rest of your life in this cove.”
“I don’t exactly have a lot of options,” Eduardo says.
“I will speak to your mother, and the Council. We will call in a few favors.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
His father rests his hand on Eduardo’s shoulder, palm covering up a patch of scales that hadn’t been there before all of this started.
“You are still my son,” his father says, and the weight of his hand is heavy.
~
His father has been away for days. Eduardo grows restless, confined to his cove, waiting the verdict of his people.
It’s a slim chance. He knows the numbers, writes theoretical algorithms in the sand of the seabed, and wonders if Mark could code this, create a counter or Eduardo’s own personal FaceMash, like a child plucking petals, he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not.
It would probably be beneath Mark’s notice, anyway.
Most things are.
When he feels that tingle on the back of his neck again, Eduardo hopes that Dustin brought Chinese food. There’s nothing like a good egg roll and he’s tired of the slim pickings in his cove. He grips the edge of the dock and pulls himself up. He looks up, and so startled, he nearly lets go and slips back into the water.
It’s not Dustin. Or Chris.
It’s Sean Parker.
He scowls, readjusting his grip on the dock. “What are you doing here?
Sean shrugs, sits down with his legs dangling over the end. “Had to check out your place,” he says. “It’s a little to back to nature for me. Kitsch, I guess.”
“I’m not sure if you’re trying to be an asshole or if you’re actually trying to make me laugh.”
“Does it matter? Pick one.”
Eduardo sighs. “What do you want, Sean?”
“You didn’t come back.”
“Sorry,” Eduardo says, narrowing his eyes. “I had pressing social engagements.”
“Cute.”
“I never liked you.” It feels like he’s realizing it for the first time, looking at Sean now and not having to control his skin. But it’s not new. He’s known this forever, since Sean was twenty-five minutes late, since Mark started sitting up and paying attention and it wasn’t to Eduardo.
“Big surprise, buddy.”
“It’s not just that I thought you were paranoid, delusional and an asshole or because of your PR record or because I thought you were too charming, but because –“
“Because Mark liked me. And my ideas. Because you thought he needed me more than he would ever need you.”
Sean is not entirely wrong. Eduardo is pissed about that, that Sean could read him so well, but Mark never even looked up to try. But it’s too late to let any of that bother him now.
“I used to think you were a shark,” he says mildly.
Sean flinches. He stares, shifting away. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Eduardo smiles, watching him swallow, his fingers curl around the edge of the dock.
“I’d look at you and all I could see-“
“Whites are out,” Sean says, strained, staring past him.
“Yeah, they’ve been–” Eduardo shakes his head. They’re hungry, and it’s their migration time. “They won’t come into the cove.”
“Yeah,” Sean says. He’s still focused on the horizon behind Eduardo. “I know.”
Eduardo follows Sean’s gaze. He can almost make out the rise of a dorsal fin out of the sea foam, but it could just be his imagination. They’re there. He knows they’re there; the sea whispers all around him.
He asks, guessing, “Can you still hear her? Does she still call to you?”
Silence settles heavily between them. Eduardo knows how lost he felt the first time he stepped away from her. He knows what it’s like, to lose something, someone, and feel like the entire world is crumbling away. It should hurt, and it does, a little, the knowledge that Mark’s going to keep moving out, coding and drinking caffeinated sugar and not looking up, but he’s alive.
Alive.
Eduardo wonders if that’s enough.
“I don’t know what you are,” Eduardo says. “What are you?”
“What did you give her?” Sean finally looks at him, eyes intent, jaw tense. “What did you give the sea witch, Saverin?”
Eduardo lets go of the dock and slips beneath the water, disappearing among the rocks at the bottom of the cove.
~
You don’t make deals with a sea witch. You especially don’t come to one desperate, offering her whatever she wants.
It’s just stupid.
~
"You're a fish."
"Yeah," Eduardo says. There isn't much else he can say to that, and Mark is here. Mark is here.
"Dustin made me watch the movie."
Eduardo looks up the beach, where Dustin and Chris are loitering by the beach house and trying very hard not to watch. "Must have been painful for you," he says. He jams his thumb hard against the loose nail, pushing so his focus narrows down to the prick of pain.
Mark shrugs. He's still staring at Eduardo; he’s standing a good five feet up the dock, and Eduardo wants to let go and sink below the surface. Disappear. He never wanted Mark to see him like this, not now, not when Mark's looking at him like that, blank and controlled, everything hidden away.
"Sean told me everything," Mark says.
"I doubt Sean knows everything," Eduardo says, stalling. He knows what Mark sees, the tail, the scales. Eduardo's true skin is thicker than what it once was, the division of man and fish much more blurred, scales further up along his sides, thicker in his elbows and along the back of his neck.
"He knows enough," Mark says. He's wearing shorts, which isn't entirely unusual; Eduardo tries not to stare at his legs. "This isn't about Sean. He told me why you're here. On land."
Eduardo looks away. "I miss having toes," he says. The words he should say are stuck in his throat, caught there, hidden and controlled. He stares at the sun, slipping lower. He doesn't know why Mark is here, except that Dustin and Chris probably dragged him.
"We infiltrate human society," he says. “It used to be that humans couldn’t touch us. You had little wooden boats and swords and spears, and now you have sonar and submarines and guns. Now you spill oil.” Eduardo flexes his fingers. The webbing is fairly new; he thinks it'll get thicker over time. "I'm supposed to protect my people. And then there was you."
"What does that mean?"
"Mark. Don't." He curls his fingers into a fist, resting it on the dock, watching as the water stains the wood darker.
"It's an honest question. I'd like an answer."
He wants to reach out, but Mark is several feet up the dock, where the wood is dry, and the water is shallow beneath. Eduardo folds his fingers together, mating the webbing between them. Blue, blue, blue. He is all blue now, blue and white and silver; he knows the significance is lost on Mark.
"I always knew you were special," Eduardo says, quietly. He looks away. "You were always going to do something great."
"Is that what Facebook was about to you? Integrate yourself into our society, control it from the top? Use our website to what? I don’t see what the payoff was for you."
"There wasn’t a payoff."
"Right," Mark says. "And that's what the lawsuit was about."
Eduardo sighs. "I sued you to keep you safe."
"I don't see the logic."
Eduardo looks back to the ocean. She’s loud today, demanding and insistent. He does his best to ignore her. "How did they even get you here?"
"You know. I don't really understand this-"
"You understand it better than you realize," Eduardo says. "Marlins and the trout, Mark. It doesn't matter if you have fourteen of them or they weigh three thousand pounds. We hunt them both."
"So I'm the fish," Mark says. "Is there a hidden message I'm missing here?"
"Jesus, Mark, not everyone is speaking in code all the time. You know, the movie’s wrong,” Eduardo says. He plays with the nail, pushing it back and forth, back and forth. “It’s a family thing, and we. It should be watched. There was an ancestor of mine. She fucked up: she fell in love with, with a prince, and she made a deal she shouldn’t have.” He turns back to Mark, stilling his hand. “They hunted us, after. They hunted us for a long time. I was enthralled by you. I would’ve given you everything if you’d asked for it. You can’t understand how dangerous that is.”
“I asked you to come out to California.”
“Yeah, well, by then I was mostly over it.”
The silence settles between them, like a wall or a mountain, impassible and unfixable, and then the dock creaks as Mark goes; Eduardo holds strong, his grip tight, his tail treading water violently. He won’t call out to Mark, won’t ask him to come back. He won’t explain.
It’s better this way.
He stays right where he is, watching as Chris and Mark argue on the beach and Dustin heads his way.
"Hey, man, that went-" Dustin glances over his shoulder. "That sucked."
Eduardo snorts. "It went about as expected," he says. Mark’s shoulders are hunched, and his hands are deep in his pockets, but he’s standing his ground. Even from here, Eduardo can read that.
The argument ends, and Mark starts walking away.
"I gotta go," Dustin says apologetically, hooking his thumb over his shoulder. "They're my ride. I’ll stop by this weekend?"
“Sure,” Eduardo says, eyes fixed on Mark until he’s out of sight completely.
When they’re gone Eduardo sinks beneath the water and settles on the seabed. It’s getting harder to stay above the surface. He thinks it helps, a little, soothes the ache of his skin’s growth.
He pushes off and breaks through the surface, swimming to his favorite rock, tucked away out of view of the beach and the cove entrance, out of the sun, where it's cool most of the day. He curls up on the surface, completely out of the water, and he picks at his scales, not enough to peel them away completely, but enough that it hurts.
"Hello Eduardo."
Eduardo tears loose a small white patch. Blood pools up. He looks up, frowning. She has hair like seaweed, matted with the water and sand and her smile is just as inviting and just as deceptive as the sea.
"Go away," he says. "I'm done with sea witches."
She smiles, leaning against the rock. She props her chin on her hands. "He has very lovely qualities. I can see why you wanted to save him."
"Stay away from him," Eduardo says.
"I have little use for humans." She tilts her head, considering. "Though some shares in his company wouldn't hurt."
Eduardo looks down at his tail, absently willing it to split, for the patches on his skin to disappear. He misses having toes. "You're talking to the wrong guy," he says. "I have no influence there."
She touches his tail, right where he would have had an ankle. He pulls away, flicking it forcefully. He leans in, jaw tense. "I don't have anything more to give you,” he says. “So get out."
Her smile turns sharp. "Your people like to blame everyone else for all their problems. It's not that simple, you know. We’re as reliable as the sea; you knew that going in."
Eduardo laughs. "I thought I was giving you my legs," he says, holding out his arms where the skin is thicker and covers more of his human skin than it ever has before. "Not this."
She shrugs. "I can give them back, if you wish."
He starts picking at his scales again. "For a price, right?"
"Tell me, Eduardo. What would a female," she says. "Want with a ring like yours?"
His fingers still.
"You want the ring."
“We’re all fascinated by things of magic. And a merman’s ring, the control it offers; that’s certainly a treasure to covet. Any sea witch would gladly barter for it. I would have asked for it, if you'd had it then."
"Then get it yourself," he says, looking off, disinterested. He starts picking at his scales again, the ones where there was only ever human skin before.
"You know as well as I that the surface world is not my domain," she says.
He winces when a scale pulls free, blood slipping over his arm. "That's just too bad for you, isn't it,” he says, holding his hand over the wound.
"Think about it," she says, offering him a white flute. When he doesn't take it, she sets it on the rock. "Let me know when you make up your mind."
She starts sliding into the water, then she pushes herself back up, leaning close on the palms of her hands. "Do you really think he's safe from your people? You really think they're going to leave him alone now?"
Eduardo's heart freezes. Her eyes are liquid, promising and damning – you don’t make deals with a sea witch – and her smile is just as strong as any siren call.
"He knows about them, and you know how your people just love their secrets."
Then she's gone.
After a long moment, his fingers slip around the flute, made of smooth bone, and he clutches it in his fist.
~
His legs are shaky, weak, but the waterproof canister is within reach. He digs out the phone. Only his father's numbers are programmed into it, but Eduardo dials by heart.
"Hey," he says. "Don't ask questions. Not right now. But I need a number."
The beach house is stocked with his father's clothes, one of his many way-stations between worlds. His father’s shirts and pants are a little too big, more filled out than Eduardo, but he can make do until he can get to his own money.
He's digging through the cupboards - no perishables, just canned goods and packaged foods - when his phone rings.
He holds it between his shoulder and his ear. "Did you get it?"
"Yeah," Dustin says. "But why do you need this?"
"No questions, Dustin."
"No, I think you need to tell me."
"Dustin," Eduardo says, pulling out all the charm he has.
"Nope."
Eduardo sighs, leaning his forehead against the cupboard door. "I should've called Chris.”
"Yeah, like that would've done you any good."
It wouldn't have, that's the thing, because both of them no longer listen to Eduardo's charm. Chris would've been even worse.
Maybe.
"Okay," he says. "Okay. You know how Ariel gave up her voice? I kind of did something similar for Mark's cure and I have a chance to get it back, and I need that number, so."
"What'd you give up? And why him."
"Dustin. I don't have time." Eduardo sighs, pushing his free hand through his hair. He glances at the clock. "I'm not. I wasn't the only one at Harvard."
"He's-"
“Why do you think they came to Mark?" Eduardo says, then just as quickly: "Don't tell him that."
"Yeah, no. I kind of like my job."
Dustin gives him the number and Eduardo scrabbles through the drawers for paper and pen to write it down.
"Dustin," he says before he hangs up. "Thank you. And stay close to Sean. All of you. And don't go near water."
The trepidation settles in his chest, humming along his nerves. He closes his eyes and breathes for several long moments.
Then he calls the number.
~
The weather in Tuscon is even warmer than it was in Palo Alto.
The house is large, but not any bigger than his father’s beach house back at the cove. The walk is private, gate at the front with a guard, but Eduardo hasn’t lost all of his charm even if Dustin and Chris and Mark don’t respond to it anymore.
He waits on stone steps, legs stretched out in the sun. It's a dry heat, and Eduardo is sweating in his shirt and slacks. They're clinging to him, uncomfortable, but out of habit, he hasn’t rolled up his sleeves.
A clatter jolts him alert.
Divya stares at him, keys on the stone pathway under his feet; his face is unguarded, shocked and twisted in ugly lines. "What happened to you?"
Eduardo touches the inside of his elbow, checking, but even through his shirt he knows his skin is smooth.
“Hi,” he says, getting to his feet. “I need your help.”
Divya stays a good five feet away. “So you said on the phone,” he says, keeping his eyes on Eduardo as he retrieves his keys. When he straightens, he doesn’t come any closer, jingling his keys in his hand.
“I wouldn’t ask for this if-“
Divya points up the walk. “I need you to go stand over there.”
Eduardo follows his gesture, and he hesitates, confused, and then he does it. Divya fumbles his keys as he opens the door, glancing behind him every few seconds.
The first room is a big open living room-kitchen area. Divya doesn’t go further than halfway through it. He rubs at his chest, twisting his tie around his fist. "I can't even look at you," he says. The back of his hand is scaled in copper and blue. He looks away, but jerks his eyes back just as quickly. "You look like- What did you do?"
"I need help," Eduardo says. He takes a step forward, but Divya jerks back sharply and violently. Eduardo freezes where he is, frowning. “I took a chance. I need to find someone. And you, you're good at that, right?"
Divya shakes his head. “You can’t make deals with sharks.”
“I,” Eduardo says. He touches the inside of his elbow; it’s smooth, smooth like the bone flute he still has tucked away in his pocket. “Oh.”
Divya’s fingers are white around the glass he takes from the cupboard, and he spills a little of the alcohol he tries to pour into it because he can't stop staring. Eduardo wants to ask what he sees, if it's that clear that he's made a deal - two deals - with a sea witch, if this is something he's going to have to wear for the rest of his life, ring or no ring.
His mouth is dry, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on the revelation.
He closes his eyes, shakes his head minutely, muttering something under his breathe. When he opens them again, the shock is still on Divya’s face.
"It's me,” he says, spreading his hands in front of him. “I swear it’s me. I gave up my skin because I thought you could help me, I thought- Please. There’s a girl. Maria- she's one of us. She attacked Mark and took my ring."
Divya keeps fidgeting with his tie, rubbing at his chest. "What would a maid need that for?"
"I don't know," Eduardo says. "I don't- Please. She tried to kill him."
For the first time since this started, Divya regains control of himself. "And what do I care what happens to Mark Zuckerberg? You sold me out for him."
"It's not like that."
"Really? It sure looked like that to me,” he says, sloshing more alcohol in his glass.
"Mark settled."
"And you're still trying to help him out.” Divya fidgets with his tie again, knuckles rubbing against his chest. "Saverin. This is why we have rules. This is why we don't build relationships with humans."
"Yeah? What are you doing in Tuscon, Div?”
Silence hangs between them. Eduardo looks around the room, at the wood paneling, the swimming pool out back, clear blue water bright against the white stones.
"Div," Eduardo says, low and hoarse. His throat is dry when he tries to swallow. "I need your connections. I know you don’t want to help me. I know- What if it was one of your twins? If it was Cam or Tyler?”
He sets his glass down with a sharp click. “That's business. I’m not a Saverin.”
“Bullshit. They're your friends.”
“I thought Zuckerberg was your friend. And look what he did to you.”
"I manipulated him into it," Eduardo says, like ripping off his scales, quick and painful. "I would do anything to protect Dustin and Chris. And- and this isn't about Mark. This is about me. Please."
Divya is silent. He turns to watch the water in the pool shift with the wind. The sun glints off it, too bright for his eyes, and when he looks back to Divya, he's momentarily blinded.
“I'll make some calls.” Divya points at him. “No promises. And you owe me, big.”
Eduardo laughs, relieved. He rubs his chin. "Seems there's a lot of that going around," he says. “Thank you.”
Divya finishes his drink, then he says, “Shut up and get out.”
~
His phone rings and rings and rings. It’s not Divya. Eduardo holds it in his hand; it goes to voicemail.
He bought a car, a stupid flashy car that he doesn't need and might not ever be able to use again, not if this doesn't pan out, and he's driving it back to Palo Alto, all several hundred miles. It's red, like his skin used to be. Right now, he's pulled into a gas station.
His phone, his father's phone, starts ringing again.
"Is Mark safe?"
"Where are you?"
"Father. Is Mark safe?"
The pause makes Eduardo hit the steering wheel, once, ignoring the sting in his hand.
"You need to come before the Council."
Eduardo swears, low, tugging at the collar of his shirt.
“You don’t make deals with the sea witch," his father says, almost gently, and Eduardo thinks of the dilution, of Mark’s bored, blank stare across a deposition table, of how Eduardo will probably never see him again. “It always ends badly. I will work with them, but you must return."
"Not yet," Eduardo says. "Not- there's something I have to do."
~
He's an hour outside of Palo Alto when Divya calls him back. Eduardo expected it to take a lot longer. Flipping open his phone, he fights to ignore the ugly black thing in his chest, charred and heavy.
"The trail goes cold in France," Divya says. "She was in the ocean for a while, but then-"
Eduardo glances in his rear-view mirror. There are no oncoming cars. He yanks his car to the side of the road, blindly reaching for the hazard lights and turning off the engine. "What's in France?"
"She's young, and wasn't into her full strength when she was sent there, like we were sent to Harvard and, it's strange. Nobody is really talking about what happened there, not even my connections close to her family."
Eduardo pushes one hand through his hair, fingers gripping the strands, palm pressed against his scalp. He laughs, short and sharp. "They're covering it up."
"What?"
"Her family. Div, you know what happened there. We both know what happened there."
"I talked to her once, after- after I lost Mark. She said something about, she said something."
Divya is quiet, and Eduardo doesn't remember much about that day she came after his ring. It's hazy, clear only in regards to Mark's wounds, Mark's blood on his hands. Everything else- Eduardo would rather forget that day altogether.
"You think she's like you," Divya says.
Eduardo tips his head back against his seat, looking up into the bright blue sky, not a cloud in sight. He touches his elbow with his free hand, tracing the smooth skin. He thinks about Sean Parker. "The sea witch did say I wasn't so special."
"Jesus. Don't talk about that with me."
"I think she did what I did. She was already in love with a human and, trust me Div, it's an easy step to take."
"You think she made a deal."
"I think she did exactly what I did. I owe you one, alright?"
"Eduardo-"
"Thank you," he says, and then he hangs up, resting his forehead against the steering wheel after tossing his phone into the passenger seat.
He can't fault Maria, not really, not for everything - though he prefers she stay the hell away from Mark - but Eduardo wants to scream or rip his skin apart until there's nothing left, nothing for the sea witch to take from him. He could go inward. He could turn the car east and just keep driving until he's in the middle of the continent, far away from any body of water.
Until she reverses everything and leaves him stranded, letting him dry out in the deserts or the prairies where any human could find his bones.
Or he could return and face the Council, the ragtag government body that's more power plays and calling in favors than it is justice - the sea is a cruel mistress, and her justice is always demanding - and face whatever punishment they require. Exile or some other price, maybe taken in the Old Ways.
Sea foam.
He sighs, reaching for the key. He gets back on the road, merging with the few cars, and keeps going.
~
It's a little disconcerting, walking into the Facebook offices. The last time he was here, Mark left the building covered in blood and death, and the time before that, Mark proved how much Eduardo was worth to him - point zero three percent.
He's a little surprised, just like last time, that he can walk right in the building, no charm necessary for the security at the front door. He tells the receptionist that he's looking for Dustin Moskovitz or Chris Hughes, whichever one is available.
"I'm not staying," he says when Dustin comes to collect him. Dustin hugs him tight, no back slaps, before he even lets Eduardo leave the lobby. Then he herds him into the inner offices, the sea of desks and programmers, most of whom probably don't even know who Eduardo is.
His chest still clenches when he sees Sean Parker, flirting with one of the interns, leaning close, smiling that shark smile, and he waits until Sean looks up.
Sean nearly falls off the desk. "Jesus, man," he says, hand on his chest. His eyes are wide, smoothing out the lines of his face. "What did you do?"
Dustin waggles his finger between them. "What's he talking about?"
"Nothing." Eduardo watches Sean calmly.
"No, seriously," Sean says, intern forgotten. "What did you do?"
“Same thing you did, once upon a time,” Eduardo says softly, in his- their native language.
Whatever Sean’s about to say to him is unimportant; Eduardo’s attention has already shifted, even though his eyes are still on Sean. He doesn't have to look up to know Mark’s there. He never did.
"What are you doing here?"
"Right," Eduardo says, itching to rub at the pressure in his temple. "Let's not cause a scene."
He goes into Mark's office and waits for him to follow. For a second, he thinks Mark isn't going to. That he's just going to wait outside just to spite Eduardo, but then he shuts the door behind him. He crosses his arms in front of him; if he had a hoodie pocket, he'd probably have shoved his hands inside that, but he's wearing an old t-shirt, thin from use and too many times through the laundry.
"I just," Eduardo says; his chest aches. He sits back on the edge of Mark's desk and he looks away. He picks up the can of Red Bull. It's mostly empty. He curls his fingers around it to keep them still. "Do you remember the first time we met?"
"Harvard," Mark says automatically. "You were in my class." He frowns, eyebrows drawing together. "You stared at me. A lot."
Eduardo blinks. "I didn't think you noticed."
"Not at first."
Eduardo turns away again. "It's not the first time we met," he says. "You were- you fell of the pier, and your mother, she was screaming."
Mark says nothing. Eduardo can't make himself look up. His hands are shaking a little, crushing the sides of the can in. "I was there," he says needlessly. "I'd never seen eyes so blue, and I wanted- I wanted-"
"To drown me," Mark says flatly.
Eduardo looks up, surprised. He sets the can back down and leans against the desk.
"I've been reading," Mark says.
"Right." He curls his fingers around the edge of Mark's desk. "I didn't want to drown you," he says quietly. "I wanted to keep you."
If Mark's surprised, he doesn't show it.
"Facebook was about you. It was always about you. I went to Harvard for the business and the connections and. Oil companies. I was never supposed to see you again." Eduardo looks at his feet. He wiggles his toes in his black dress shoes, wishing he could see them right now.
He straightens, pushing off the desk. "Bye, Mark. I just wanted to say that. I didn't get to last time."
Whatever emotion flickers over Mark's face is gone before Eduardo can register it. "You're leaving," he says.
"I have to go before the Council. It's our, uh-"
"Your government body."
"How did you know that? I never-" Eduardo says. He stops. "I didn't know you were listening."
"Sometimes. You were mostly distracting."
"Yeah." Eduardo sighs, running his hand through his hair. "I have to go."
Mark shrugs, face unreadable. “I have work to do anyway.”
“Right,” Eduardo says. “Of course.”
He wants to, but Eduardo doesn’t look back when he walks away.
He’s made his choice.
~
She’s waiting for him when he steps out onto the dock. He comes to the end without much hesitation, hands free by his sides and head held up.
“I couldn’t find it,” he says. “She’s disappeared.”
Her eyes turn flat, and he crumples to the dock, scrapping his knees, hand catching on the nail that sticks up.
She sinks below the surface, taking all of it and more with her.
~
He knows what to expect from the Council, knows what punishment he’ll likely receive. It’s been the same ever since his ancestor sold their kind for the price of a human heart. They turned her into sea foam, sentencing her to a lifetime as part of the ocean, forever separate from her human.
Whatever consciousness she has left, she’ll seek him forever, drifting with the tides and the currents. She’ll never find him.
His bones are ashore.
~
Eduardo doesn’t do anything stupid, like say hello to a great white, or lounge on a beach all day, in plain view to anyone that could walk by.
He waits. He waits for his father to collect him and bring him in, but in the end, he brings the Council to him one early morning before the high tides have retreated, and the sun is just starting to crawl above the horizon.
Eduardo's chest feels tight. The sea didn't warn him; she’s been silent since he tried to leave her.
It's not the full Council, not all the family heads are there, a handful of the males, but mostly female, including Mrs. Andrina and his own mother. She comes to him, eyes solemn.
“My boy,” she says, sounding weary and sad; his mother should never sound like that. She touches his face, the slight impression of scales over his cheekbone. "A human, Eduardo?"
There's despair under the charisma she can't turn off, that no females can ever be without, and it cuts just as deeply as angry silence or cold words would.
"I know you don't understand it," he says, covering her hands with his. "I know what you think. But this was my choice. At first- I thought about this before I did it. I can live without him. I can. But I don't want to. I don't want to live in a world where Mark- where Mark isn't. I won't do it."
He pulls back to face the Council. His mother stays by his side, hand tight around his, pressing his bones together. His is father close behind them.
Eduardo could mention Sean or Maria, how they’ve escaped the wrath of the Council, whatever deals they cut with a sea witch, whatever laws they’ve broken, but he stays silent.
He doesn't know the female that officiates; no introduction is offered. The list of his offenses is long, longer than he expected: conspiring with a sea witch, sabotaging surface-side operations, fraternization with a human, loss of important financial property, revealing his true self to humans-
"Our ruling won’t make much difference," Mrs. Andrina says quietly, cutting off the speaker. Her eyes flicker over him, taking in the extended spread of scales. "Soon you will not even be one of us."
Eduardo looks to his mother; he can't read her expression. His father offers nothing.
"I don't understand," he says, turning back to them.
"All dramatics aside, it would seem," Mrs. Andrina says, "That your human has spoken for you."
~
They leave him with that, slipping out of the cove.
“He spoke for me,” Eduardo says. “I don’t. I don’t understand.”
"Perhaps Mark is," his father hesitates, and his mother touches his shoulder. They share a look, raw with some emotion; Eduardo has to turn his gaze away, a pain in his chest.
"Perhaps he is not quite like other humans," she says.
His parents stay with him, the three of them in the tiny little cove that's probably his home now. His father is as gruff and distant as ever, but he's there, and his mother sings for him, soft melancholy notes underpinning the melodies from his childhood.
They don’t talk about Mark, not much; his parents get a little distant, a little closed off the few times the subject is broached. It’s hard for them, like it’s hard for Eduardo, to acknowledge this thing that might not have cost him his family, but cost him everything else.
Eventually, after many days, it ends.
They leave; Eduardo can sense their reluctance, but neither of them can afford to neglect their duties for long. Especially not now, not when their family name is buried in the seabed once more, and they’ll both have to work harder than ever to maintain their positions.
And he doesn't want them to see him like this, with scales that cover what was always human skin before. They don't need to see him become something they are not, something they cannot even pretend to be.
He spends days on his favorite rock, sunning himself when he wants to be alone and he thinks about it. He wants to know, and more importantly, he wants to understand. Mark spoke for him, went to his father and Eduardo can’t fathom why.
~
"We have to stop meeting like this," Eduardo says, more flippant than he really feels. "I might get the wrong impression." Then, almost immediately: "He gave them Facebook shares?"
"Just your father," Sean says, settling onto the end of the dock. "And only after he paid for them. Seems Mark is comfortable going into business with people that helped save his life."
Eduardo nods, looking down to fiddle with that loose nail. Then he touches a particularly blue patch of skin at his wrist. They're getting bigger, faster than before, slowly encroaching on what's left of his human skin. Then he tilts his head to the side to look up at Sean. "What happened to her? The girl you gave your skin up for?"
Sean's eyes slip out to sea. Her call is stronger and stronger with each passing day; Eduardo wonders if Sean can hear her at all anymore. Eduardo couldn't, those brief few days when he only had human skin.
"It wasn't about a girl," Sean says. "Or a guy."
"Really," Eduardo says when Sean stays quiet for longer than necessary. "That's all you're going to give me? I'm turning into a giant fish and you-"
"That sucks for you."
Eduardo scowls. "You should write for Hallmark."
"Don't be jealous." Sean visibly hesitates. “You ever tell anyone I said this and-“
“Is this something embarrassing?”
Sean shoots him a look. “You’re kind of a dick. You can live without them."
"Underage girls?"
Sean's foot catches him in the stomach. Eduardo twists away and his grip nearly slips, but then he rests his chin in the crook of his elbow, staring upland, at the sand and the breeze in the trees.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore," Eduardo says.
"I can't help you with that, Skipper." There's a moment of silence, then: "You could hunt down your ring."
"How-"
“Got Dustin and Chris drunk. Hey, don't look at me like that; I’m still charming. Even without all the-” He gestures out to sea, the motion loses its steam halfway through, and his hand drops to the dock, curling around the end of the final board.
Eduardo looks away. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. And I don’t think it’d work anyway.” His tail shifts violently in the water. He says, “I gave it up.”
"You wanna know what I think?"
"Not really, no."
Sean scowls. "I think you're full of shit, but hey, it's your life. Give up if you want to."
Eduardo says nothing, eyes sliding past the edge of the dock. He watches the waves hit the shore, churning the water into sea foam.
~
Chris and Dustin come once or twice, and they talk about everything but how his skin is thicker, fuller, covering more of his body than ever.
They don’t talk about sea witches or Disney or the real ending – he won’t ever tell them that – and he doesn’t tell him how easy it is to fall entranced by the first human they see or how quickly and naturally it festers into obsession.
He doesn’t tell them that it might be worse that he got over it and chose Mark anyway.
Chris and Dustin are his friends – his friends, separate from his duty to his mother and father, separate from his issues with Mark – and Eduardo thinks he’d do everything possible to protect them.
They don’t need to know everything.
He asks them to thank Mark, and the look they share, he can’t read it. He doesn’t know what to think about it, and when they leave, Eduardo settles to the bottom of the cove, curling his tail under him.
Days pass. Each morning, Eduardo folds his fingers together and measures the amount of blue. He tries not to think in long-term projections, build a timeline in his head and figure out exactly how many days he has left.
He’s lazing on his favorite rock, half in the water because it’s getting harder to breathe the further above the surface he is, when the scales on the back of his neck flare, and it’s-
It’s Mark.
“Hey,” Eduardo says after he’s folded his arms on the dock.
“I’d rather you thanked me in person,” Mark says. He hesitates, and then comes to the end and sits, legs dangling over the side.
“I don’t understand why you’d do that for me,” Eduardo says, helplessly honest. He jams the pad of his thumb against that damn nail.
Mark’s fingers twitch. He’s not wearing a hoodie; there’s nowhere to put them.
“You really didn’t have to.”
“I’ve been informed that it’s polite to repay the favor when someone saves your life.”
“Well,” Eduardo says, feeling a little flushed. The sun’s bright today. “It is kind of my fault you were hurt.”
“That’s what I said.”
Eduardo snorts, ducking his head to hide his grin. He rubs his chin against his forearm, feeling the rough scales there. They haven’t reached his face yet, but any day now.
It’s possibly the last time he’ll ever see Mark, Eduardo knows this, but it’s still hard to shut down the hope, the ache he feels whenever he looks too long at him and allows himself to daydream.
“Why did you come?”
Mark looks at him, as unreadable and emotionless as he’s always seemed. Eduardo thought he’d learned to read him, but he hasn’t spent time with Mark in months, not since before the dilution, before the angel investment. It hurts to think that he doesn’t really know him anymore.
Mark turns towards sea. His jaw is tense, and Eduardo looks down at the dock. He traces a pattern against the grain of the wood.
“You used to sit on my bed and say all these things.”
“I thought it would help,” Eduardo says. He pulls out the nail. “I thought-“
“I’m looking up,” Mark says.
Eduardo freezes. He stares. Then he levers himself up, holding his weight on his arms, palms flat against the wood of the dock, and he touches his mouth to Mark’s.
It’s wet, and it tastes like salt, and Mark’s holding himself very, very still. It’s hard to breathe; Eduardo can’t tell if it’s because he’s completely out of the water or because Mark’s mouth is perfect. It’s everything he thought it would be, but it’s also more, better.
The shudder slides up his spine, and Eduardo gasps, tearing his mouth away and burying his face in the curve of Mark’s neck. He shifts his weight onto the dock, fingers clutching at Mark’s t-shirt, one that’s soft from use. His spine arches, the bones shifting slightly, and then some more, and he can feel it when his tail starts to split. Mark’s hands on his back, holding him as best as he can.
When it’s over, seconds, minutes, hours later, Eduardo looks up, wetness clinging to his eyelashes. Mark is watching him, hovering carefully, uncertain.
Eduardo pulls him in by the back of his neck, fitting their mouths together, and Mark pushes him down, follows after, draping himself on top.
It takes Eduardo a while to notice – Mark is distracting and the sea is still there, faint in the back of his head - but he is completely, one hundred percent naked. Naked and wet and lying on his back on a dock in an isolated, private cove, his father’s cove, and Mark, Mark is there with him, Mark is kissing him, like he hasn’t even noticed that Eduardo has two legs and ten toes and skin that is soft and pliable, pink and human. It flairs up only a little in the places that Mark touches him, trailing blues and whites and silvers, more beautiful than anything Eduardo’s ever seen before.
But he does notice, pressing his hand against Eduardo’s stomach, watching the colors bloom up when he pulls it away.
“You’re the color of Facebook,” he says, full of wonder, and Eduardo laughs, bright and glorious and free.
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. Check out the amazing art by
chosenfire28Eduardo doesn’t let go of Mark until they’re at the house. At Mark’s house. He’s never even seen it, never even knew Mark had found a new one. He barely lets go then, avoiding having to look at Chris or Dustin, ignoring their questions, ignoring Mark’s eyes, and the way they look at him, dulled in pain and the approaching fever.
When Mark’s tucked in his bed, Eduardo stands up, steps back a few paces. He doesn’t realize he has his phone out until he fumbles over the keys, dialing a number that will get him nowhere.
He gets his father’s voicemail. His father won’t talk to him. His father.
“Did you know about her? Did you send her?” Eduardo asks, nearly choking on his anger. He has Mark’s blood on his hands, on his clothes. Mark is in pain; someone tried to kill Mark.
Someone has killed Mark; there is poison in his veins.
Everyone is staring at him, Chris’s hand curled tightly around Dustin’s forearm, and Sean Parker, the shark, just looks at him like he knows, like he understands, and not for the first time, Eduardo wonders what Sean Parker really is.
“The one that attacked Mark,” Eduardo says thickly. “The one that poisoned him. She took the ring. Is that what this is about? You wanted that fucking ring back? I would’ve given it to you. I would’ve fucking mailed it if you couldn’t stand to look at me, I would’ve-”
“You’re not my father,” Eduardo says. “You’re not-“
He hangs up and then throws the phone across the room. It doesn’t even break when it hits the wall. He sees their startled faces, but they’re all a blur as he leans back and sinks to the floor.
He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.
It’s Chris, of course it’s Chris, who pulls Eduardo’s hands away from his face.
“Eduardo,” he says, holding tight to Eduardo’s wrists. “You need to tell us everything.”
“I-“
Mark groans on the bed, twisting in the sheets; Eduardo flinches and tries to go to him. But his strength is sapped, and Chris is very determined. So he watches Sean clean Mark’s wounds with an efficiency that speaks of experience, rag pink with blood.
“Eduardo,” Chris says, face serious.
He starts talking, words choked, looking to Sean to fill in the pieces where he can. He knows more than Eduardo suspected, a lot more, but he doesn’t care enough to puzzle out what that means. When he’s told the short and dirty version, his voice hoarse, Dustin and Chris stare at him like they’ve never seen him before.
Dustin’s arms are tightly crossed; he’s pale. “What’s wrong with Mark?”
“Certain families, some of the maids, women, have poison,” Sean says. He’s done taping up the wound. “Normally it’s not a problem for someone like Eduardo, but for a human-“
“There’s gotta be a cure, right?” Dustin says, and then, when neither Sean nor Eduardo offers any words: “Wardo.”
Eduardo's entire chest feels hollowed out. He curls his hands into fists. “We’re not supposed to like humans all that much.”
Understatement. It’s a betrayal, the worst kind, to love a human. There had been a girl once, long ago, a Saverin, who’d loved a human so deeply she’d given up her voice and her skin just to be with him. When that didn’t work, she’d sold her family to both a sea witch and the humans alike.
He pushes himself to his knees and crawls the three feet to Mark’s bed, and then he does not leave Mark’s side, curled up on the floor, upper body resting on the mattress. Eventually an hour or two later, Mark’s breathing shallows out, and even though the shudders have started, racking down his spine, Eduardo won’t leave him.
It is Sean, surprisingly – or maybe not – who manhandles Eduardo to his feet and out of the house, striping the bloody shirt from his hands as they go, and shoves him in the pool when they get there.
Chlorine burns, makes it hard to breathe, but Eduardo will go no further from Mark than the backyard. It will take days before he absolutely must return to the sea, before his tail returns and no amount of control can hide his true skin. He sinks beneath the surface, sits with his back against the wall, knees pressed together and drawn to his chest. Sometimes, he thinks Dustin and Chris are staring at him from beyond the glass patio doors, but Eduardo does not look up.
He cannot hear the sea, but he still asks her what he should do.
She does not answer.
~
Mark loses consciousness four hours later.
Sound is muffled underwater, distorted, but it can’t hide the shake in Dustin’s voice when he opens the glass doors and calls for Eduardo. He pulls himself out of the pool. He’s dripping water all over the tiles. His clothes stick to his skin, and Dustin follows him wordlessly into the house.
He feels the tenseness before he sees it, Sean, spine rigid, backing away from the front door. Eduardo’s father follows him, rage and anger evident in the tight line of his mouth, the clear intent on his face.
They do not follow the old ways; they don't, except when they have to. Except when it’s convenient or easily justified, and Sean Parker, whatever he is, who makes Eduardo’s own skin flare in protest just by proximity, is an easy exception.
Eduardo steps between them, eyes on his father. He pushes Sean behind him, a brief moment of contact, the tips of his fingers pressed against his chest. He can feel no scales, but not because of the shirt Sean’s wearing.
His father finally registers his presence, stopping in his tracks. His sleeves are rolled up, reds and golds and greens easily visible. Eduardo can’t read him.
“What are you doing here?” Eduardo says it in English.
“Where is your boy?”
He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No. I will not let you near him.”
“Eduardo-“
“Shut up, Sean.”
“Okay,” he says, hand up, backing away from both of them.
Chris appears in the doorway. His eyes flicker over his father, the reds and greens on his arms. “I'm calling the hospital,” he says. “He's getting worse.”
“You can't do that,” Eduardo says. “Chris, they’ll kill him.”
His father turns to Chris. “He is this way?”
“No,” Eduardo says, honeyed and slick, and Chris looks at Eduardo, face smoothing momentarily, but then he scowls and turns back to Eduardo’s father.
“Can you help him?”
His father looks nonplussed. “Perhaps,” he says, sparing one last considering glance for his son before heading down the hall.
Eduardo follows.
He sinks to his knees by the bed. Mark’s skin is chalk white and cold with sweat. He watches his dad feel for Mark's pulse near the delicate veins on the inside of his wrist, look at him with eyes that have seen and understood more than what Eduardo can.
“You are right,” he says in their language. “It is poison.”
“What can I do?”
“Not much.”
“There has to be something.”
Eduardo’s father grips his shoulder. “There is only one place to get the cure as quickly as he needs,” he says. His gaze is steady, except for the lines around his eyes and mouth. “But if you do this, you cannot come back from it.”
There is only one place.
“Oh,” Eduardo says, fingers tightening on Mark’s.
“Oh man,” Sean says. Eduardo looks up. He’s lingering in the doorway. He takes a step back when his father looks up.
“You make interesting business partners,” his father says.
“I'm not a part of Facebook,” Eduardo says, keeping his voice level. His father looks back. Whatever conclusions he draws, he keeps to himself.
“This is your choice,” his father says.
“I could make another one. I did make another one.” Eduardo looks at Mark. He touches his forehead, clammy beneath his palm, even though the patch of scales. “But I don't want to anymore. I can’t anymore.”
“Then we must go. Quickly.”
Eduardo nods. “Mark,” he says, pushing his fingers through Mark’s curls, just like he’s always wanted. Mark does not look up. “I’m gonna fix you, okay? I just need you to hang on for a day or two. And then I’ll be back, and you’ll be better. I promise.”
~
There is only one place.
“I’ll want something in return,” she says.
~
In the end, his father goes to Mark, and Eduardo stays behind.
~
His father purchases a secluded beach house near Palo Alto and stocks it like any of their people’s islands, food and phones, supplies for emergencies. Eduardo doesn’t ask how much he paid for it, but real estate in California is insane, and something this remote, with its tiny little cove, would be obscene.
Eduardo spends days getting used to his skin again.
“You really didn't have to do this,” Eduardo says one morning. “It's a big ocean. I’d be fine.”
"Eduardo," his father says sternly, and then he offers no more.
Eventually, his father says, “Tell me about him,” and Eduardo is too smart to pretend he doesn’t know what he’s asking. It feels more like a relief, to slosh off old scales, shed the itch even when it hurts.
He speaks more candidly then he’s done in months.
“I was twelve,” he says. “And I had never seen anything like him. I still haven’t.”
His father considers that. “You were always more human than you had a right to be. Your mother and I should not have sent you to the surface.”
Eduardo looks down at his hands, at his tail, the deep blue still vibrant against the water. “I would have gone eventually.”
He spends his days sunning on the rocks, tail twitching lazily, or venturing out as far as he dares to fish. He avoids the sturdy wooden dock and the waterproof canister tied to one of the supports.
It should be relaxing, after all the craze in the past few weeks, months, years, but he feels trapped, locked away in this cove. It's great white season in the waters further out, and even though Eduardo is usually quicker and more agile, it's just stupid to chance that.
However candidly he speaks to his father now, they're both silent on Eduardo's future. He doesn't have much of one, no Facebook to return to, no home to speak of, exiled by his family and friends alike, a price for Mark's life. And he doesn't know if these waters are claimed, if one of the families lives near. His father hasn't said, and Eduardo doesn't ask.
He thinks a lot, about his choices, prodding at bruises that have long disappeared, but still linger under the surface. He's had nearly a decade to let go of Mark, to move on and find his place in the world, but he hasn't been able to do it yet.
But Mark is alive, and Dustin and Chris are alive, even Sean Parker - Eduardo's tail flicks, irritated even at the thought of him - is alive. He consoles himself with this knowledge, and it's almost enough.
Then one day, the back of his neck tingles. Eduardo doesn't even have to look up.
Humans.
He slips into the water and sinks to the seabed, staying very still. His father is on the other side of the cove, hidden by the rocks. The water’s fairly clear here, and most of the time, humans only see what they want to see, and not what’s right in front of them. He looks to his father, swimming closer.
One of them calls his name.
Eduardo changes direction and pops his head above the surface.
"Oh wow," Dustin says. "You really are part fish."
Chris elbows him, and Dustin nudges him, and he keeps on doing it until Chris socks him in the shoulder, and they nearly knock each other off the dock. Dustin's holding a six pack. Chris has a pizza box, Eduardo's mouth starts watering as soon as he smells it. He's gotten too used to human food.
Eduardo's face hurts, mouth stretched wide and happy across his face. He grabs a hold of the dock and pulls himself up, anchoring his crossed arms on the edge, tail treading water. Chris sits with his legs crossed a few feet up the dock, but Dustin comes right to the edge, knobby knee touching Eduardo's elbow.
They both stare at his true skin, the more uniform patches now that he's not straddling the line between two worlds. Chris looks away sharply, like he's realized what he's doing, but Dustin is more unabashed about it.
"You didn't come back," Dustin says.
Eduardo shrugs, watching the water drops from his arms stain the dock darker. "Kind of hard to catch a cab like this," he says. Then, after the silence: "You're thinking about it aren't you?"
Dustin grins.
"How did you find me?"
Chris offers Eduardo a beer. "I asked your father.”
"Your father's a scary dude, man," Dustin says, popping the top of his own can.
Chris laughs, setting the pizza pox in front of them.
“I could ask him to join us," Eduardo says, just to see their faces.
They eat, and they talk, conversation a bit stilted, avoiding certain topics until Dustin sets his beer down, looking determined. Eduardo braces himself.
"Does Bigfoot really exist?”
Eduardo shrugs, flicking the olives off his slice of pizza. "I don't know man. I've never really been on his turf."
Dustin frowns. "What about Nessie? She lives in the water."
"Dustin," Chris says, exasperated. "Eduardo lives in the sea. Nessie lives in Loch Ness."
"So? That's water, this is water. Maybe she's got a sea-dwelling cousin or something."
Dustin’s curious, and he keeps asking Eduardo all sorts of questions about how his people get it on, if Eduardo is best friends with Flounder and Sebastian – some things Dustin doesn’t need to know and Eduardo doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he regularly eats Flounders and Sebastians for dinner – but Eduardo doesn’t mind.
"How is he," Eduardo says, when there's a break in Dustin's curiosity.
"He's doing better," Chris says. "Nasty scars, but your father said they'd probably fade a lot."
The sky is overcast; the sea whispers about rain, later, and Eduardo wishes he could block her out of his head like he could whenever he was on land. Like he could when he was near Mark. The sea talks too much.
Chris swallows the last bit of crust on his pizza, sets his beer on the dock and stares Eduardo down. "I think you should tell me about Mark.”
Eduardo shrugs, looking away. "There's not much to tell.”
"Liar, liar, pants on fire."
"I don't wear pants, Dustin."
Chris clears his throat and says, tentative, “Ariel didn’t have a happy ending, did she?”
Dustin’s mouth is drawn downwards at the corners, and he’s staring resolutely out to sea.
“You’ve read the story,” Eduardo says, stalling.
“I’ve read the story.”
He can’t handle Chris’s steady gaze, or Dustin’s serious face, so Eduardo stares at the water past the cove. His father is near, and if he’s listening-
It’s not like Eduardo hasn’t broken bigger laws before, and Chris has this way of getting people to talk, and Eduardo wants to spill his secrets, tell everything to someone who looks up and asks and sees things that aren’t code and Facebook and Red Bulls.
“We mate for life. Human or– we mate for life. We love for life.” He stretches his fingers apart, watching the webbing between them pull and stretch. Absently, thinking about the Disney version, he says, “I suppose it’s a natural progression. The princess and the prince.”
He looks up and sees their faces. “My father is very powerful. My mother even more, but not like that. We don’t operate like that.”
Chris nods. “Donations to ecological organizations interested in ocean preservation, on the board of investors for a handful of fortune five hundred companies-“
“You’ve done your homework,” Eduardo says. He fiddles with a loose nail in one of the planks; it’s sticking up and he can rotate it like a joystick.
Chris, thankfully, drops the subject, and they talk about other things Facebook – Dustin has a member count ready, constantly updating on his phone – Mark’s resistance to his convalescence – “You know what he’s like when he’s sick,” Chris says – and tentative feelers about Eduardo.
Eventually, Dustin brings up the topic they’ve all been avoiding. “Why aren’t you coming back?”
Eduardo looks away, pushing at the loose nail; he can’t look at them while he half explains that he won’t be coming back at all.
“Isn’t there always a loophole in these things?” Dustin asks. “Like. Kiss the prince or something.”
“That’s not the correct version,” Eduardo says. “And besides. True love’s first kiss? That’s a fairytale.”
“Wardo,” Dustin says. “You are a fairytale.”
~
“You trust them very much,” his father says later, after they’ve left. It’s not quite dusk, and the tide is low, forcing them further out.
“I do,” Eduardo says. He waits for the reprimand, but his father says nothing. “Thank you for telling them.”
His father is unreadable. “I did not want to leave you alone.”
“You’re leaving,” he says, surprised. “I know you have to, I just.” Eduardo looks away.
It is the longest uninterrupted stretch of time they have spent together since before Eduardo met Mark. It is also the most they’ve talked about anything besides Eduardo’s responsibilities. It’s strange. And off setting, and possibly the first time he’s been honest with his father in years.
Eduardo’s hands shake; he has to look out over the cove and not at his father. “That summer in New York, I was pulling away from him. I chose you. And Mother and the family. New York and I.”
“I see,” his father says. His mouth turns down. “You cannot spend the rest of your life in this cove.”
“I don’t exactly have a lot of options,” Eduardo says.
“I will speak to your mother, and the Council. We will call in a few favors.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
His father rests his hand on Eduardo’s shoulder, palm covering up a patch of scales that hadn’t been there before all of this started.
“You are still my son,” his father says, and the weight of his hand is heavy.
~
His father has been away for days. Eduardo grows restless, confined to his cove, waiting the verdict of his people.
It’s a slim chance. He knows the numbers, writes theoretical algorithms in the sand of the seabed, and wonders if Mark could code this, create a counter or Eduardo’s own personal FaceMash, like a child plucking petals, he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not.
It would probably be beneath Mark’s notice, anyway.
Most things are.
When he feels that tingle on the back of his neck again, Eduardo hopes that Dustin brought Chinese food. There’s nothing like a good egg roll and he’s tired of the slim pickings in his cove. He grips the edge of the dock and pulls himself up. He looks up, and so startled, he nearly lets go and slips back into the water.
It’s not Dustin. Or Chris.
It’s Sean Parker.
He scowls, readjusting his grip on the dock. “What are you doing here?
Sean shrugs, sits down with his legs dangling over the end. “Had to check out your place,” he says. “It’s a little to back to nature for me. Kitsch, I guess.”
“I’m not sure if you’re trying to be an asshole or if you’re actually trying to make me laugh.”
“Does it matter? Pick one.”
Eduardo sighs. “What do you want, Sean?”
“You didn’t come back.”
“Sorry,” Eduardo says, narrowing his eyes. “I had pressing social engagements.”
“Cute.”
“I never liked you.” It feels like he’s realizing it for the first time, looking at Sean now and not having to control his skin. But it’s not new. He’s known this forever, since Sean was twenty-five minutes late, since Mark started sitting up and paying attention and it wasn’t to Eduardo.
“Big surprise, buddy.”
“It’s not just that I thought you were paranoid, delusional and an asshole or because of your PR record or because I thought you were too charming, but because –“
“Because Mark liked me. And my ideas. Because you thought he needed me more than he would ever need you.”
Sean is not entirely wrong. Eduardo is pissed about that, that Sean could read him so well, but Mark never even looked up to try. But it’s too late to let any of that bother him now.
“I used to think you were a shark,” he says mildly.
Sean flinches. He stares, shifting away. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. Eduardo smiles, watching him swallow, his fingers curl around the edge of the dock.
“I’d look at you and all I could see-“
“Whites are out,” Sean says, strained, staring past him.
“Yeah, they’ve been–” Eduardo shakes his head. They’re hungry, and it’s their migration time. “They won’t come into the cove.”
“Yeah,” Sean says. He’s still focused on the horizon behind Eduardo. “I know.”
Eduardo follows Sean’s gaze. He can almost make out the rise of a dorsal fin out of the sea foam, but it could just be his imagination. They’re there. He knows they’re there; the sea whispers all around him.
He asks, guessing, “Can you still hear her? Does she still call to you?”
Silence settles heavily between them. Eduardo knows how lost he felt the first time he stepped away from her. He knows what it’s like, to lose something, someone, and feel like the entire world is crumbling away. It should hurt, and it does, a little, the knowledge that Mark’s going to keep moving out, coding and drinking caffeinated sugar and not looking up, but he’s alive.
Alive.
Eduardo wonders if that’s enough.
“I don’t know what you are,” Eduardo says. “What are you?”
“What did you give her?” Sean finally looks at him, eyes intent, jaw tense. “What did you give the sea witch, Saverin?”
Eduardo lets go of the dock and slips beneath the water, disappearing among the rocks at the bottom of the cove.
~
You don’t make deals with a sea witch. You especially don’t come to one desperate, offering her whatever she wants.
It’s just stupid.
~
"You're a fish."
"Yeah," Eduardo says. There isn't much else he can say to that, and Mark is here. Mark is here.
"Dustin made me watch the movie."
Eduardo looks up the beach, where Dustin and Chris are loitering by the beach house and trying very hard not to watch. "Must have been painful for you," he says. He jams his thumb hard against the loose nail, pushing so his focus narrows down to the prick of pain.
Mark shrugs. He's still staring at Eduardo; he’s standing a good five feet up the dock, and Eduardo wants to let go and sink below the surface. Disappear. He never wanted Mark to see him like this, not now, not when Mark's looking at him like that, blank and controlled, everything hidden away.
"Sean told me everything," Mark says.
"I doubt Sean knows everything," Eduardo says, stalling. He knows what Mark sees, the tail, the scales. Eduardo's true skin is thicker than what it once was, the division of man and fish much more blurred, scales further up along his sides, thicker in his elbows and along the back of his neck.
"He knows enough," Mark says. He's wearing shorts, which isn't entirely unusual; Eduardo tries not to stare at his legs. "This isn't about Sean. He told me why you're here. On land."
Eduardo looks away. "I miss having toes," he says. The words he should say are stuck in his throat, caught there, hidden and controlled. He stares at the sun, slipping lower. He doesn't know why Mark is here, except that Dustin and Chris probably dragged him.
"We infiltrate human society," he says. “It used to be that humans couldn’t touch us. You had little wooden boats and swords and spears, and now you have sonar and submarines and guns. Now you spill oil.” Eduardo flexes his fingers. The webbing is fairly new; he thinks it'll get thicker over time. "I'm supposed to protect my people. And then there was you."
"What does that mean?"
"Mark. Don't." He curls his fingers into a fist, resting it on the dock, watching as the water stains the wood darker.
"It's an honest question. I'd like an answer."
He wants to reach out, but Mark is several feet up the dock, where the wood is dry, and the water is shallow beneath. Eduardo folds his fingers together, mating the webbing between them. Blue, blue, blue. He is all blue now, blue and white and silver; he knows the significance is lost on Mark.
"I always knew you were special," Eduardo says, quietly. He looks away. "You were always going to do something great."
"Is that what Facebook was about to you? Integrate yourself into our society, control it from the top? Use our website to what? I don’t see what the payoff was for you."
"There wasn’t a payoff."
"Right," Mark says. "And that's what the lawsuit was about."
Eduardo sighs. "I sued you to keep you safe."
"I don't see the logic."
Eduardo looks back to the ocean. She’s loud today, demanding and insistent. He does his best to ignore her. "How did they even get you here?"
"You know. I don't really understand this-"
"You understand it better than you realize," Eduardo says. "Marlins and the trout, Mark. It doesn't matter if you have fourteen of them or they weigh three thousand pounds. We hunt them both."
"So I'm the fish," Mark says. "Is there a hidden message I'm missing here?"
"Jesus, Mark, not everyone is speaking in code all the time. You know, the movie’s wrong,” Eduardo says. He plays with the nail, pushing it back and forth, back and forth. “It’s a family thing, and we. It should be watched. There was an ancestor of mine. She fucked up: she fell in love with, with a prince, and she made a deal she shouldn’t have.” He turns back to Mark, stilling his hand. “They hunted us, after. They hunted us for a long time. I was enthralled by you. I would’ve given you everything if you’d asked for it. You can’t understand how dangerous that is.”
“I asked you to come out to California.”
“Yeah, well, by then I was mostly over it.”
The silence settles between them, like a wall or a mountain, impassible and unfixable, and then the dock creaks as Mark goes; Eduardo holds strong, his grip tight, his tail treading water violently. He won’t call out to Mark, won’t ask him to come back. He won’t explain.
It’s better this way.
He stays right where he is, watching as Chris and Mark argue on the beach and Dustin heads his way.
"Hey, man, that went-" Dustin glances over his shoulder. "That sucked."
Eduardo snorts. "It went about as expected," he says. Mark’s shoulders are hunched, and his hands are deep in his pockets, but he’s standing his ground. Even from here, Eduardo can read that.
The argument ends, and Mark starts walking away.
"I gotta go," Dustin says apologetically, hooking his thumb over his shoulder. "They're my ride. I’ll stop by this weekend?"
“Sure,” Eduardo says, eyes fixed on Mark until he’s out of sight completely.
When they’re gone Eduardo sinks beneath the water and settles on the seabed. It’s getting harder to stay above the surface. He thinks it helps, a little, soothes the ache of his skin’s growth.
He pushes off and breaks through the surface, swimming to his favorite rock, tucked away out of view of the beach and the cove entrance, out of the sun, where it's cool most of the day. He curls up on the surface, completely out of the water, and he picks at his scales, not enough to peel them away completely, but enough that it hurts.
"Hello Eduardo."
Eduardo tears loose a small white patch. Blood pools up. He looks up, frowning. She has hair like seaweed, matted with the water and sand and her smile is just as inviting and just as deceptive as the sea.
"Go away," he says. "I'm done with sea witches."
She smiles, leaning against the rock. She props her chin on her hands. "He has very lovely qualities. I can see why you wanted to save him."
"Stay away from him," Eduardo says.
"I have little use for humans." She tilts her head, considering. "Though some shares in his company wouldn't hurt."
Eduardo looks down at his tail, absently willing it to split, for the patches on his skin to disappear. He misses having toes. "You're talking to the wrong guy," he says. "I have no influence there."
She touches his tail, right where he would have had an ankle. He pulls away, flicking it forcefully. He leans in, jaw tense. "I don't have anything more to give you,” he says. “So get out."
Her smile turns sharp. "Your people like to blame everyone else for all their problems. It's not that simple, you know. We’re as reliable as the sea; you knew that going in."
Eduardo laughs. "I thought I was giving you my legs," he says, holding out his arms where the skin is thicker and covers more of his human skin than it ever has before. "Not this."
She shrugs. "I can give them back, if you wish."
He starts picking at his scales again. "For a price, right?"
"Tell me, Eduardo. What would a female," she says. "Want with a ring like yours?"
His fingers still.
"You want the ring."
“We’re all fascinated by things of magic. And a merman’s ring, the control it offers; that’s certainly a treasure to covet. Any sea witch would gladly barter for it. I would have asked for it, if you'd had it then."
"Then get it yourself," he says, looking off, disinterested. He starts picking at his scales again, the ones where there was only ever human skin before.
"You know as well as I that the surface world is not my domain," she says.
He winces when a scale pulls free, blood slipping over his arm. "That's just too bad for you, isn't it,” he says, holding his hand over the wound.
"Think about it," she says, offering him a white flute. When he doesn't take it, she sets it on the rock. "Let me know when you make up your mind."
She starts sliding into the water, then she pushes herself back up, leaning close on the palms of her hands. "Do you really think he's safe from your people? You really think they're going to leave him alone now?"
Eduardo's heart freezes. Her eyes are liquid, promising and damning – you don’t make deals with a sea witch – and her smile is just as strong as any siren call.
"He knows about them, and you know how your people just love their secrets."
Then she's gone.
After a long moment, his fingers slip around the flute, made of smooth bone, and he clutches it in his fist.
~
His legs are shaky, weak, but the waterproof canister is within reach. He digs out the phone. Only his father's numbers are programmed into it, but Eduardo dials by heart.
"Hey," he says. "Don't ask questions. Not right now. But I need a number."
The beach house is stocked with his father's clothes, one of his many way-stations between worlds. His father’s shirts and pants are a little too big, more filled out than Eduardo, but he can make do until he can get to his own money.
He's digging through the cupboards - no perishables, just canned goods and packaged foods - when his phone rings.
He holds it between his shoulder and his ear. "Did you get it?"
"Yeah," Dustin says. "But why do you need this?"
"No questions, Dustin."
"No, I think you need to tell me."
"Dustin," Eduardo says, pulling out all the charm he has.
"Nope."
Eduardo sighs, leaning his forehead against the cupboard door. "I should've called Chris.”
"Yeah, like that would've done you any good."
It wouldn't have, that's the thing, because both of them no longer listen to Eduardo's charm. Chris would've been even worse.
Maybe.
"Okay," he says. "Okay. You know how Ariel gave up her voice? I kind of did something similar for Mark's cure and I have a chance to get it back, and I need that number, so."
"What'd you give up? And why him."
"Dustin. I don't have time." Eduardo sighs, pushing his free hand through his hair. He glances at the clock. "I'm not. I wasn't the only one at Harvard."
"He's-"
“Why do you think they came to Mark?" Eduardo says, then just as quickly: "Don't tell him that."
"Yeah, no. I kind of like my job."
Dustin gives him the number and Eduardo scrabbles through the drawers for paper and pen to write it down.
"Dustin," he says before he hangs up. "Thank you. And stay close to Sean. All of you. And don't go near water."
The trepidation settles in his chest, humming along his nerves. He closes his eyes and breathes for several long moments.
Then he calls the number.
~
The weather in Tuscon is even warmer than it was in Palo Alto.
The house is large, but not any bigger than his father’s beach house back at the cove. The walk is private, gate at the front with a guard, but Eduardo hasn’t lost all of his charm even if Dustin and Chris and Mark don’t respond to it anymore.
He waits on stone steps, legs stretched out in the sun. It's a dry heat, and Eduardo is sweating in his shirt and slacks. They're clinging to him, uncomfortable, but out of habit, he hasn’t rolled up his sleeves.
A clatter jolts him alert.
Divya stares at him, keys on the stone pathway under his feet; his face is unguarded, shocked and twisted in ugly lines. "What happened to you?"
Eduardo touches the inside of his elbow, checking, but even through his shirt he knows his skin is smooth.
“Hi,” he says, getting to his feet. “I need your help.”
Divya stays a good five feet away. “So you said on the phone,” he says, keeping his eyes on Eduardo as he retrieves his keys. When he straightens, he doesn’t come any closer, jingling his keys in his hand.
“I wouldn’t ask for this if-“
Divya points up the walk. “I need you to go stand over there.”
Eduardo follows his gesture, and he hesitates, confused, and then he does it. Divya fumbles his keys as he opens the door, glancing behind him every few seconds.
The first room is a big open living room-kitchen area. Divya doesn’t go further than halfway through it. He rubs at his chest, twisting his tie around his fist. "I can't even look at you," he says. The back of his hand is scaled in copper and blue. He looks away, but jerks his eyes back just as quickly. "You look like- What did you do?"
"I need help," Eduardo says. He takes a step forward, but Divya jerks back sharply and violently. Eduardo freezes where he is, frowning. “I took a chance. I need to find someone. And you, you're good at that, right?"
Divya shakes his head. “You can’t make deals with sharks.”
“I,” Eduardo says. He touches the inside of his elbow; it’s smooth, smooth like the bone flute he still has tucked away in his pocket. “Oh.”
Divya’s fingers are white around the glass he takes from the cupboard, and he spills a little of the alcohol he tries to pour into it because he can't stop staring. Eduardo wants to ask what he sees, if it's that clear that he's made a deal - two deals - with a sea witch, if this is something he's going to have to wear for the rest of his life, ring or no ring.
His mouth is dry, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on the revelation.
He closes his eyes, shakes his head minutely, muttering something under his breathe. When he opens them again, the shock is still on Divya’s face.
"It's me,” he says, spreading his hands in front of him. “I swear it’s me. I gave up my skin because I thought you could help me, I thought- Please. There’s a girl. Maria- she's one of us. She attacked Mark and took my ring."
Divya keeps fidgeting with his tie, rubbing at his chest. "What would a maid need that for?"
"I don't know," Eduardo says. "I don't- Please. She tried to kill him."
For the first time since this started, Divya regains control of himself. "And what do I care what happens to Mark Zuckerberg? You sold me out for him."
"It's not like that."
"Really? It sure looked like that to me,” he says, sloshing more alcohol in his glass.
"Mark settled."
"And you're still trying to help him out.” Divya fidgets with his tie again, knuckles rubbing against his chest. "Saverin. This is why we have rules. This is why we don't build relationships with humans."
"Yeah? What are you doing in Tuscon, Div?”
Silence hangs between them. Eduardo looks around the room, at the wood paneling, the swimming pool out back, clear blue water bright against the white stones.
"Div," Eduardo says, low and hoarse. His throat is dry when he tries to swallow. "I need your connections. I know you don’t want to help me. I know- What if it was one of your twins? If it was Cam or Tyler?”
He sets his glass down with a sharp click. “That's business. I’m not a Saverin.”
“Bullshit. They're your friends.”
“I thought Zuckerberg was your friend. And look what he did to you.”
"I manipulated him into it," Eduardo says, like ripping off his scales, quick and painful. "I would do anything to protect Dustin and Chris. And- and this isn't about Mark. This is about me. Please."
Divya is silent. He turns to watch the water in the pool shift with the wind. The sun glints off it, too bright for his eyes, and when he looks back to Divya, he's momentarily blinded.
“I'll make some calls.” Divya points at him. “No promises. And you owe me, big.”
Eduardo laughs, relieved. He rubs his chin. "Seems there's a lot of that going around," he says. “Thank you.”
Divya finishes his drink, then he says, “Shut up and get out.”
~
His phone rings and rings and rings. It’s not Divya. Eduardo holds it in his hand; it goes to voicemail.
He bought a car, a stupid flashy car that he doesn't need and might not ever be able to use again, not if this doesn't pan out, and he's driving it back to Palo Alto, all several hundred miles. It's red, like his skin used to be. Right now, he's pulled into a gas station.
His phone, his father's phone, starts ringing again.
"Is Mark safe?"
"Where are you?"
"Father. Is Mark safe?"
The pause makes Eduardo hit the steering wheel, once, ignoring the sting in his hand.
"You need to come before the Council."
Eduardo swears, low, tugging at the collar of his shirt.
“You don’t make deals with the sea witch," his father says, almost gently, and Eduardo thinks of the dilution, of Mark’s bored, blank stare across a deposition table, of how Eduardo will probably never see him again. “It always ends badly. I will work with them, but you must return."
"Not yet," Eduardo says. "Not- there's something I have to do."
~
He's an hour outside of Palo Alto when Divya calls him back. Eduardo expected it to take a lot longer. Flipping open his phone, he fights to ignore the ugly black thing in his chest, charred and heavy.
"The trail goes cold in France," Divya says. "She was in the ocean for a while, but then-"
Eduardo glances in his rear-view mirror. There are no oncoming cars. He yanks his car to the side of the road, blindly reaching for the hazard lights and turning off the engine. "What's in France?"
"She's young, and wasn't into her full strength when she was sent there, like we were sent to Harvard and, it's strange. Nobody is really talking about what happened there, not even my connections close to her family."
Eduardo pushes one hand through his hair, fingers gripping the strands, palm pressed against his scalp. He laughs, short and sharp. "They're covering it up."
"What?"
"Her family. Div, you know what happened there. We both know what happened there."
"I talked to her once, after- after I lost Mark. She said something about, she said something."
Divya is quiet, and Eduardo doesn't remember much about that day she came after his ring. It's hazy, clear only in regards to Mark's wounds, Mark's blood on his hands. Everything else- Eduardo would rather forget that day altogether.
"You think she's like you," Divya says.
Eduardo tips his head back against his seat, looking up into the bright blue sky, not a cloud in sight. He touches his elbow with his free hand, tracing the smooth skin. He thinks about Sean Parker. "The sea witch did say I wasn't so special."
"Jesus. Don't talk about that with me."
"I think she did what I did. She was already in love with a human and, trust me Div, it's an easy step to take."
"You think she made a deal."
"I think she did exactly what I did. I owe you one, alright?"
"Eduardo-"
"Thank you," he says, and then he hangs up, resting his forehead against the steering wheel after tossing his phone into the passenger seat.
He can't fault Maria, not really, not for everything - though he prefers she stay the hell away from Mark - but Eduardo wants to scream or rip his skin apart until there's nothing left, nothing for the sea witch to take from him. He could go inward. He could turn the car east and just keep driving until he's in the middle of the continent, far away from any body of water.
Until she reverses everything and leaves him stranded, letting him dry out in the deserts or the prairies where any human could find his bones.
Or he could return and face the Council, the ragtag government body that's more power plays and calling in favors than it is justice - the sea is a cruel mistress, and her justice is always demanding - and face whatever punishment they require. Exile or some other price, maybe taken in the Old Ways.
Sea foam.
He sighs, reaching for the key. He gets back on the road, merging with the few cars, and keeps going.
~
It's a little disconcerting, walking into the Facebook offices. The last time he was here, Mark left the building covered in blood and death, and the time before that, Mark proved how much Eduardo was worth to him - point zero three percent.
He's a little surprised, just like last time, that he can walk right in the building, no charm necessary for the security at the front door. He tells the receptionist that he's looking for Dustin Moskovitz or Chris Hughes, whichever one is available.
"I'm not staying," he says when Dustin comes to collect him. Dustin hugs him tight, no back slaps, before he even lets Eduardo leave the lobby. Then he herds him into the inner offices, the sea of desks and programmers, most of whom probably don't even know who Eduardo is.
His chest still clenches when he sees Sean Parker, flirting with one of the interns, leaning close, smiling that shark smile, and he waits until Sean looks up.
Sean nearly falls off the desk. "Jesus, man," he says, hand on his chest. His eyes are wide, smoothing out the lines of his face. "What did you do?"
Dustin waggles his finger between them. "What's he talking about?"
"Nothing." Eduardo watches Sean calmly.
"No, seriously," Sean says, intern forgotten. "What did you do?"
“Same thing you did, once upon a time,” Eduardo says softly, in his- their native language.
Whatever Sean’s about to say to him is unimportant; Eduardo’s attention has already shifted, even though his eyes are still on Sean. He doesn't have to look up to know Mark’s there. He never did.
"What are you doing here?"
"Right," Eduardo says, itching to rub at the pressure in his temple. "Let's not cause a scene."
He goes into Mark's office and waits for him to follow. For a second, he thinks Mark isn't going to. That he's just going to wait outside just to spite Eduardo, but then he shuts the door behind him. He crosses his arms in front of him; if he had a hoodie pocket, he'd probably have shoved his hands inside that, but he's wearing an old t-shirt, thin from use and too many times through the laundry.
"I just," Eduardo says; his chest aches. He sits back on the edge of Mark's desk and he looks away. He picks up the can of Red Bull. It's mostly empty. He curls his fingers around it to keep them still. "Do you remember the first time we met?"
"Harvard," Mark says automatically. "You were in my class." He frowns, eyebrows drawing together. "You stared at me. A lot."
Eduardo blinks. "I didn't think you noticed."
"Not at first."
Eduardo turns away again. "It's not the first time we met," he says. "You were- you fell of the pier, and your mother, she was screaming."
Mark says nothing. Eduardo can't make himself look up. His hands are shaking a little, crushing the sides of the can in. "I was there," he says needlessly. "I'd never seen eyes so blue, and I wanted- I wanted-"
"To drown me," Mark says flatly.
Eduardo looks up, surprised. He sets the can back down and leans against the desk.
"I've been reading," Mark says.
"Right." He curls his fingers around the edge of Mark's desk. "I didn't want to drown you," he says quietly. "I wanted to keep you."
If Mark's surprised, he doesn't show it.
"Facebook was about you. It was always about you. I went to Harvard for the business and the connections and. Oil companies. I was never supposed to see you again." Eduardo looks at his feet. He wiggles his toes in his black dress shoes, wishing he could see them right now.
He straightens, pushing off the desk. "Bye, Mark. I just wanted to say that. I didn't get to last time."
Whatever emotion flickers over Mark's face is gone before Eduardo can register it. "You're leaving," he says.
"I have to go before the Council. It's our, uh-"
"Your government body."
"How did you know that? I never-" Eduardo says. He stops. "I didn't know you were listening."
"Sometimes. You were mostly distracting."
"Yeah." Eduardo sighs, running his hand through his hair. "I have to go."
Mark shrugs, face unreadable. “I have work to do anyway.”
“Right,” Eduardo says. “Of course.”
He wants to, but Eduardo doesn’t look back when he walks away.
He’s made his choice.
~
She’s waiting for him when he steps out onto the dock. He comes to the end without much hesitation, hands free by his sides and head held up.
“I couldn’t find it,” he says. “She’s disappeared.”
Her eyes turn flat, and he crumples to the dock, scrapping his knees, hand catching on the nail that sticks up.
She sinks below the surface, taking all of it and more with her.
~
He knows what to expect from the Council, knows what punishment he’ll likely receive. It’s been the same ever since his ancestor sold their kind for the price of a human heart. They turned her into sea foam, sentencing her to a lifetime as part of the ocean, forever separate from her human.
Whatever consciousness she has left, she’ll seek him forever, drifting with the tides and the currents. She’ll never find him.
His bones are ashore.
~
Eduardo doesn’t do anything stupid, like say hello to a great white, or lounge on a beach all day, in plain view to anyone that could walk by.
He waits. He waits for his father to collect him and bring him in, but in the end, he brings the Council to him one early morning before the high tides have retreated, and the sun is just starting to crawl above the horizon.
Eduardo's chest feels tight. The sea didn't warn him; she’s been silent since he tried to leave her.
It's not the full Council, not all the family heads are there, a handful of the males, but mostly female, including Mrs. Andrina and his own mother. She comes to him, eyes solemn.
“My boy,” she says, sounding weary and sad; his mother should never sound like that. She touches his face, the slight impression of scales over his cheekbone. "A human, Eduardo?"
There's despair under the charisma she can't turn off, that no females can ever be without, and it cuts just as deeply as angry silence or cold words would.
"I know you don't understand it," he says, covering her hands with his. "I know what you think. But this was my choice. At first- I thought about this before I did it. I can live without him. I can. But I don't want to. I don't want to live in a world where Mark- where Mark isn't. I won't do it."
He pulls back to face the Council. His mother stays by his side, hand tight around his, pressing his bones together. His is father close behind them.
Eduardo could mention Sean or Maria, how they’ve escaped the wrath of the Council, whatever deals they cut with a sea witch, whatever laws they’ve broken, but he stays silent.
He doesn't know the female that officiates; no introduction is offered. The list of his offenses is long, longer than he expected: conspiring with a sea witch, sabotaging surface-side operations, fraternization with a human, loss of important financial property, revealing his true self to humans-
"Our ruling won’t make much difference," Mrs. Andrina says quietly, cutting off the speaker. Her eyes flicker over him, taking in the extended spread of scales. "Soon you will not even be one of us."
Eduardo looks to his mother; he can't read her expression. His father offers nothing.
"I don't understand," he says, turning back to them.
"All dramatics aside, it would seem," Mrs. Andrina says, "That your human has spoken for you."
~
They leave him with that, slipping out of the cove.
“He spoke for me,” Eduardo says. “I don’t. I don’t understand.”
"Perhaps Mark is," his father hesitates, and his mother touches his shoulder. They share a look, raw with some emotion; Eduardo has to turn his gaze away, a pain in his chest.
"Perhaps he is not quite like other humans," she says.
His parents stay with him, the three of them in the tiny little cove that's probably his home now. His father is as gruff and distant as ever, but he's there, and his mother sings for him, soft melancholy notes underpinning the melodies from his childhood.
They don’t talk about Mark, not much; his parents get a little distant, a little closed off the few times the subject is broached. It’s hard for them, like it’s hard for Eduardo, to acknowledge this thing that might not have cost him his family, but cost him everything else.
Eventually, after many days, it ends.
They leave; Eduardo can sense their reluctance, but neither of them can afford to neglect their duties for long. Especially not now, not when their family name is buried in the seabed once more, and they’ll both have to work harder than ever to maintain their positions.
And he doesn't want them to see him like this, with scales that cover what was always human skin before. They don't need to see him become something they are not, something they cannot even pretend to be.
He spends days on his favorite rock, sunning himself when he wants to be alone and he thinks about it. He wants to know, and more importantly, he wants to understand. Mark spoke for him, went to his father and Eduardo can’t fathom why.
~
"We have to stop meeting like this," Eduardo says, more flippant than he really feels. "I might get the wrong impression." Then, almost immediately: "He gave them Facebook shares?"
"Just your father," Sean says, settling onto the end of the dock. "And only after he paid for them. Seems Mark is comfortable going into business with people that helped save his life."
Eduardo nods, looking down to fiddle with that loose nail. Then he touches a particularly blue patch of skin at his wrist. They're getting bigger, faster than before, slowly encroaching on what's left of his human skin. Then he tilts his head to the side to look up at Sean. "What happened to her? The girl you gave your skin up for?"
Sean's eyes slip out to sea. Her call is stronger and stronger with each passing day; Eduardo wonders if Sean can hear her at all anymore. Eduardo couldn't, those brief few days when he only had human skin.
"It wasn't about a girl," Sean says. "Or a guy."
"Really," Eduardo says when Sean stays quiet for longer than necessary. "That's all you're going to give me? I'm turning into a giant fish and you-"
"That sucks for you."
Eduardo scowls. "You should write for Hallmark."
"Don't be jealous." Sean visibly hesitates. “You ever tell anyone I said this and-“
“Is this something embarrassing?”
Sean shoots him a look. “You’re kind of a dick. You can live without them."
"Underage girls?"
Sean's foot catches him in the stomach. Eduardo twists away and his grip nearly slips, but then he rests his chin in the crook of his elbow, staring upland, at the sand and the breeze in the trees.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to do anymore," Eduardo says.
"I can't help you with that, Skipper." There's a moment of silence, then: "You could hunt down your ring."
"How-"
“Got Dustin and Chris drunk. Hey, don't look at me like that; I’m still charming. Even without all the-” He gestures out to sea, the motion loses its steam halfway through, and his hand drops to the dock, curling around the end of the final board.
Eduardo looks away. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. And I don’t think it’d work anyway.” His tail shifts violently in the water. He says, “I gave it up.”
"You wanna know what I think?"
"Not really, no."
Sean scowls. "I think you're full of shit, but hey, it's your life. Give up if you want to."
Eduardo says nothing, eyes sliding past the edge of the dock. He watches the waves hit the shore, churning the water into sea foam.
~
Chris and Dustin come once or twice, and they talk about everything but how his skin is thicker, fuller, covering more of his body than ever.
They don’t talk about sea witches or Disney or the real ending – he won’t ever tell them that – and he doesn’t tell him how easy it is to fall entranced by the first human they see or how quickly and naturally it festers into obsession.
He doesn’t tell them that it might be worse that he got over it and chose Mark anyway.
Chris and Dustin are his friends – his friends, separate from his duty to his mother and father, separate from his issues with Mark – and Eduardo thinks he’d do everything possible to protect them.
They don’t need to know everything.
He asks them to thank Mark, and the look they share, he can’t read it. He doesn’t know what to think about it, and when they leave, Eduardo settles to the bottom of the cove, curling his tail under him.
Days pass. Each morning, Eduardo folds his fingers together and measures the amount of blue. He tries not to think in long-term projections, build a timeline in his head and figure out exactly how many days he has left.
He’s lazing on his favorite rock, half in the water because it’s getting harder to breathe the further above the surface he is, when the scales on the back of his neck flare, and it’s-
It’s Mark.
“Hey,” Eduardo says after he’s folded his arms on the dock.
“I’d rather you thanked me in person,” Mark says. He hesitates, and then comes to the end and sits, legs dangling over the side.
“I don’t understand why you’d do that for me,” Eduardo says, helplessly honest. He jams the pad of his thumb against that damn nail.
Mark’s fingers twitch. He’s not wearing a hoodie; there’s nowhere to put them.
“You really didn’t have to.”
“I’ve been informed that it’s polite to repay the favor when someone saves your life.”
“Well,” Eduardo says, feeling a little flushed. The sun’s bright today. “It is kind of my fault you were hurt.”
“That’s what I said.”
Eduardo snorts, ducking his head to hide his grin. He rubs his chin against his forearm, feeling the rough scales there. They haven’t reached his face yet, but any day now.
It’s possibly the last time he’ll ever see Mark, Eduardo knows this, but it’s still hard to shut down the hope, the ache he feels whenever he looks too long at him and allows himself to daydream.
“Why did you come?”
Mark looks at him, as unreadable and emotionless as he’s always seemed. Eduardo thought he’d learned to read him, but he hasn’t spent time with Mark in months, not since before the dilution, before the angel investment. It hurts to think that he doesn’t really know him anymore.
Mark turns towards sea. His jaw is tense, and Eduardo looks down at the dock. He traces a pattern against the grain of the wood.
“You used to sit on my bed and say all these things.”
“I thought it would help,” Eduardo says. He pulls out the nail. “I thought-“
“I’m looking up,” Mark says.
Eduardo freezes. He stares. Then he levers himself up, holding his weight on his arms, palms flat against the wood of the dock, and he touches his mouth to Mark’s.
It’s wet, and it tastes like salt, and Mark’s holding himself very, very still. It’s hard to breathe; Eduardo can’t tell if it’s because he’s completely out of the water or because Mark’s mouth is perfect. It’s everything he thought it would be, but it’s also more, better.
The shudder slides up his spine, and Eduardo gasps, tearing his mouth away and burying his face in the curve of Mark’s neck. He shifts his weight onto the dock, fingers clutching at Mark’s t-shirt, one that’s soft from use. His spine arches, the bones shifting slightly, and then some more, and he can feel it when his tail starts to split. Mark’s hands on his back, holding him as best as he can.
When it’s over, seconds, minutes, hours later, Eduardo looks up, wetness clinging to his eyelashes. Mark is watching him, hovering carefully, uncertain.
Eduardo pulls him in by the back of his neck, fitting their mouths together, and Mark pushes him down, follows after, draping himself on top.
It takes Eduardo a while to notice – Mark is distracting and the sea is still there, faint in the back of his head - but he is completely, one hundred percent naked. Naked and wet and lying on his back on a dock in an isolated, private cove, his father’s cove, and Mark, Mark is there with him, Mark is kissing him, like he hasn’t even noticed that Eduardo has two legs and ten toes and skin that is soft and pliable, pink and human. It flairs up only a little in the places that Mark touches him, trailing blues and whites and silvers, more beautiful than anything Eduardo’s ever seen before.
But he does notice, pressing his hand against Eduardo’s stomach, watching the colors bloom up when he pulls it away.
“You’re the color of Facebook,” he says, full of wonder, and Eduardo laughs, bright and glorious and free.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 12:36 pm (UTC)And that ending made me sigh happily. Of course Eduardo is the color of Facebook. Of course.
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Date: 2011-09-05 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 06:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 08:30 pm (UTC)One other thing that I thought was really effective as well was how Mark's perspective was kept so tightly closed off. The reader, like Wardo, was left in the dark about what he heard, what he felt etc, although I suspect that the reader had more informed guesswork than Wardo!
Great great work. Thank you.
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Date: 2011-09-05 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 09:00 pm (UTC)he's a merman, but he's also so very WARDO!!!
poor wardo....actually till the end, mark didn't say any nice words to him...(though he kissed ^o^)
I was a bit confused about the ending, is wardo still going to become a big fish ( LOL) or is the prince's kiss already saved him from the curse?
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Date: 2011-09-05 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-05 10:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 01:01 am (UTC)And the characters! I loved the sense of longing you built into this, both on Eduardo's side, so visibly, and then subtly, from Mark's. Everyone really, they all felt so real.
Thank you so much for sharing this delightful story!
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Date: 2011-09-06 02:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 05:30 am (UTC)In other news, this is absolutely breathtaking in its everything.
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Date: 2011-09-06 12:45 pm (UTC)And the ending...ah, a perfect last line.
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Date: 2011-09-06 05:28 pm (UTC)I just. Ugh. I loved the way you wove the mythology into the TSN verse, and lol, when Sean first came about I couldn't help but think of the old Disney Little Mermaid cartoon, because I could have sworn there were some sort of shark people in that. I LOVED Sean in this, how it was never quite spelled out what he was or what had happened to him, even though you gave the reader some excellent clues and hints to assume about it. Actually, that was something you did exceedingly well throughout the whole story - giving the reader juuuust enough to start putting the pieces together without spoon-feeding it while still leaving them wondering and completely intrigued.
There are so many things I loved about this fic. The first test undergone by merpeople (ohhh Divya, why ARE you in Tucson?), that Eduardo never told anyone about his real first, that he was so completely enamored of Mark and managed to push himself past the obsession to protect him, the pain Eduardo went through when Mark dated Erica, the interaction between Divya and Eduardo and the assumptions Divya insisted on making about the Mark/Eduardo relationship, the need for the Saverins to regain their honor because of their ancestor and how Eduardo's father treated him because of that, naming the council members after Ariel's sisters, Eduardo eating the Sebastians and Flounders, Eduardo's scales changing colors, Eduardo making the deal with the sea witch when of COURSE you are never supposed to do that, Eduardo's dad helping him as much he could, how Eduardo's mother had such a presence throughout the fic despite actually being in it very little, Chris and Dustin, Sean Sean Sean, the fact that of COURSE the sea witch left out some details and Eduardo was turning into a giant fish, Divya and Sean being able to tell instantly that Eduardo had Done Something when he tried to get his ring back, Eduardo giving up his ring instantly to try to save Mark.....
...and Maria. I think I noticed around the third time that all your random female OCs had the same name and the same physical description, and then I began to get suspicious, especially with Eduardo being so freaked out about not being able to tell if humans were actually maids or not. That bit was brilliant, honestly. I'm still wondering why Maria needed the ring, although I'm leaning toward her needing it for a sea witch deal, maybe to be with her own first?
And then the end, oh the end, right about when I'd given up hope and was probably crying a little, suddenly it did take a turn toward fairy tale and it was so perfect, I can't even. Everything Eduardo did to protect Mark, and then Mark somehow returns the favor. ♥ ♥ ♥ Okay, I'll shut up now. :D
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Date: 2011-09-06 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 11:55 pm (UTC)AND OF COURSE EDUARDO IS THE COLOR OF FACEBOOK ♥
Thank you so much!
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Date: 2011-09-06 11:57 pm (UTC)re Sean Parker: I'll admit that I've always had a bit of a soft spot for him - I blame JT's face, honestly - but this story really solidified it for me. It's the first time that I had a relatively minor character threaten to take over a story; he evolved far past what I originally planned for him. The very organic way his character grew into what it is was very gratifying to me as a writer.
EDUARDO'S DAD. Emotionally constipated parents make me feel so many ~feelings, and I guess it's a bit self-indulgent to write them, but I really love how Eduardo's relationship with his father (and his mother) turned out.
Thank you so much for the comment!
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Date: 2011-09-06 11:58 pm (UTC)I've always been drawn to the harsher/darker version of fairytales, and when I was researching folklore/mythology for this fic, and came across the stories of mermaids drowning sailors, I was a little o_O (but mostly: that's kind of awesome!) and I knew I wanted to incorporate that.
Thank you for the comment! I'm glad you enjoyed it! ♥
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Date: 2011-09-06 11:59 pm (UTC)I am so fond of Eduardo's father in this. I've always enjoyed characters that are a bit... emotionally stunted, and a large part of the driving force behind this story was the relationship between Eduardo and his father and how I wanted it to play out.
Thank you for the comment! ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 11:59 pm (UTC)