Fic: say goodbye (to the world you thought you lived in) (7/9)
say goodbye (to the world you thought you lived in)
Part Seven
-----------------------------------
Mark comes into himself, aware of his surroundings, halfway through something, through moving; like he’s been daydreaming, zoned out without a screen in front of him: he’s paused, between steps, and he’s crossing campus. It’s early, too bright because of the snow on the ground, but he keeps walking. He needs to know when this was, what happened, what he can change.
He climbs the steps at Kirkland, and see Eduardo waiting for him; he sees the message on the board outside his door, and realizes what night this is, that he’s late, he was meant to meet Wardo before, and he’d got caught up in... something. Something for Facebook.
Wait... wait. Relationship status. That was it.
The universe is mocking him. He’s sure of it.
So he stops, doesn’t unlock the door or push through to do whatever it is he did then, whatever it was he was planning on doing; he stops, and he looks, and there’s something in Eduardo’s eyes. There’s something, and Mark can’t put his finger on it, but Mark kissed him the last time, and it felt right, and he kissed back, and maybe there’s not enough time, maybe there’s no time at all and there’s just now, this moment, and it’s late, too late, and Mark’s still cold from the walk but Wardo’s warm, always warm, Mark knows it.
So he leans in, and Eduardo barely moves, doesn’t respond when Mark kisses him, hard and insistent, all close-lipped but sure; Mark doesn’t pull back, and Eduardo doesn’t do anything, and Mark only relents when he has to breathe, when he has to stare at Eduardo, who’s already staring at him, all wide-eyes and questions and rampant disbelief.
“What the fuck was that, Mark?” Wardo asks, shaky, a flush overtaking his cheeks, and Mark’s heart’s thrumming almost too loud to hear any of it, almost too hard to make words of his own.
“I kind of thought it was self-explanatory,” Mark answers, voice small.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Eduardo asks, more fear than bite in the words, and Mark doesn’t like that; Mark doesn’t like that this Eduardo, here and now, thinks that of him. Thinks he’d hurt him on purpose.
Because contrary to popular belief, Mark would never have hurt Eduardo on purpose. He’d never meant to hurt Wardo.
“No,” Mark tells him, reaches out on impulse to wrap his fingers around Eduardo’s. “No,” and he runs the pad of his thumb along Eduardo’s knuckle, because Mark knows that, too; knows how it makes him feel rooted, grounded, how it makes Wardo feel loved. “It’s-” and something cracks Mark’s voice, just a bit, but Wardo hears it, turns his hand over in Mark’s grip and presses their palms together.
“Mark?” he whispers, the fear gone, but the questions still there, so many.
“Please,” Mark says, staring down at their hands, only looking up when Wardo’s free hand brushes against Mark’s cheek, prompts him to glance up.
They meet halfway, mouths half-open, and Mark lets himself melt into it; and as always, Wardo is warm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s only been a week, but Wardo insists they get drinks, abuse their fake IDs a bit, together. Different than usual. As more than just friends.
They drink some import Mark’s never heard of, that costs more than Mark would have paid for back then, which is likely why Wardo’s the one who picks up the tab. They’re discreet, in their way, but it’s Mark who brushes close to Wardo as they talk, bullshit about classes and their idiot peers and Dustin’s new crush on his TA. It’s kind of awesome, all laid back and natural and lightly-buzzed, just this side of perfect.
Wardo even places a hand at the small of Mark’s back as they walk out, just after last call.
And the things is: there are a lot of shitty drivers in Massachusetts. So it’s not unlikely, or even uncommon, that some of them might be tearing up Peabody Street on a Friday night.
And it’s even less unlikely, given the givens, that Eduardo might slip as he walks, as they both walk. There’s ice already down on the sidewalk, stretching out toward the crosswalk, and Mark has been walking next to him until they moved up to the intersection; he’d let go of Wardo’s arm to push the button, get the signal to change, and he’d maintained a little distance, for no real reason.
So, Eduardo: he’s the one who walks, who slips, who falls. Just Wardo.
It’s in the blink of an eye that it happens, the space of a breath: the car runs him over, where he’s sprawled, legs-first into the street; it’s dark, the driver probably didn’t even see him until it was too late.
The wetness on Mark’s face -- he can’t tell what’s tears and what’s melting, bitter snow; the tightness in his chest, though, and the raw feeling in his throat -- he knows exactly what that is, where it comes from: what it means and where it leads.
There’s a hand on his shoulder -- delicate, long nails, and he knows it now, but the touch is almost friendly, for all that it hates: he leans into it, grateful, because it means that when this disappears, Eduardo will be waiting. Maybe for a minute, maybe for a day, but he’ll be waiting.
And it’s enough.
It has to be.
___________________________
They’ve been sleeping together for three months, this time. Mark’s told Eduardo that he loves him one-hundred and seventy three times, and to his surprise, he learns that he means it more, impossibly more, every single time.
It’s a Thursday. It’s a Thursday like any other, and Wardo’s the only one left with him in the CS Lab, and he’s willing to stay until Mark’s done, the whole few more hours until Mark’s deemed his work worthy -- he’s willing, upon the condition that Mark goes out and gets him a latte.
Mark wants Wardo with him, so he fumbles for his ID and hopes he’s got enough CrimsonCash to cover a coffee.
The air’s thick, warm and smoky -- someone nearby stoking a fire, staying warm, except it’s too much, it’s like every house, every building in Cambridge is keeping a fire going as he walks out into the cold, Wardo’s drink cradled in his hands; it doesn’t make sense.
It takes seconds -- just seconds, but they’re long ones, too long -- before Mark hears, before he processes the screams.
Then he sees the flames.
The SCL, the whole fucking Science Center is smoking, blazing -- it’s impossible, how fast the fire seems to have consumed everything as Mark comes up on it, can feel heat in the night air, can barely breathe, but not merely for the smoke. It’s more than that.
Mark doesn’t have time to think, to process -- he doesn’t have time to dwell on his immediate reaction to run forward, toward the fire instead of away, because it happened so fast, it had to have, Mark wasn’t even gone that long.
If it happened that fast, Wardo might, he might not have had a chance, might not have gotten out, might need him-
“Mark,” and there’s a hand on his arm, holding himself still, pulling him back; there’s a hand and a voice, familiar like ice in his veins, the woman’s hand colder still on his biceps, keeping him upright as she holds him steady, as he flails, desperate. “Mark, you’re not going to help him,” and the water, tear-stains on Mark’s face: they burn in the dark on his skin, useless, terrifying. “You can’t save him,” she murmurs, close at his neck as she tries to keep him from running, from going in and searching anyway, from making the goddamned attempt.
“He’s gone,” she tells him, final, almost soaked in regret, except that Mark doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter. Mark’s lost Wardo too many times.
“I can’t, I can’t,” Mark hears it, feels the words come from his mouth except he doesn’t connect with the actual saying of them, the actual production of sounds, because in his mind, in his chest, he’s beyond that, he can’t handle it, he’s too far gone; “not again,” because he’s breaking, he’s crumbling, splitting at the seams and spilling out and “if he’s gone, then...”
If he’s gone...
And Mark barely sees it, can barely process the look in her eyes when she glances down at him, can barely see through the smog, the dark, his own tears, but he feels it: pity and sympathy and something new, something he didn’t think factored into this strange new world where he was alone, except for Wardo, where it has all boiled down to the bare essentials, and when those were gone, when Wardo left, there was nothing.
There’s nothing.
He just runs, and hopes the world won’t follow.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark never quite realized his dorm in Kirkland was so high, the windows so large, until now.
He never realized how far it was, to the ground, until he sat on the windowsill, just here, legs dangling in the dark, vision blurred with grief and loss and heartbreak and everything, everything, ready to launch himself face-first to the concrete below, in hopes that sheer will would increase velocity, would make the fall lethal.
Because the thing is, it’s too much. It’s all too fucking much, and Mark was not made to withstand any of it.
“Don’t,” and Mark nearly loses his grip, didn’t hear the footsteps, if there were any, if she has any, if she’s real or mortal or something else, something unfathomable; Mark catches the red of her hair in his peripheral vision, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the ground.
And the thing -- the one thing, on top of everything else: he’d thought he was so wise, thought he knew everything; thought he’d finally managed to shut them all up, to prove them all wrong, whoever the fuck ‘they’ even were, but he was wrong, he was so goddamned wrong; and the irony isn’t lost on him, the way this had all started, the way that he’d followed the woman, Fate incarnate that night at the gala, stared out and pondered the meaning of life and death on high for half-a-moment, from that balcony as if he’d known something, as if he was wise.
Mark wishes he could blame it on that, something cyclical, a jinx; but it’s so much more than that, the way his chest feels crushed in upon itself, the way everything hurts and the future doesn’t even loom, no longer exists in the moment. It’s so much more, and Mark can’t survive it.
“It’s not worth it,” Mark gasps, unraveling, coming apart from the inside out and it hurts, it fucking hurts and Wardo’s gone, he’ll always be gone, and it isn’t worth it; “it’s not,” and he can’t breathe, he can even draw breath because his lungs don’t care, don’t want to, none of him wants to and he’s getting dizzy, hyperventilating maybe, and his grip on the ledge is precarious, slipping, and he doesn’t give a damn.
“What even happens? If I’m the one who dies here, like this? What happens then?”
“Mark,” she starts, urges, her pitch rising, real, almost human panic gripping her tone in a strangle-hold; “don’t do this.”
“You don’t understand,” Mark shoots back, pleads, because it’s crystal clear in his head, undeniable and unshakeable inside his ribs: there’s no question, and he just wants someone else to see it, to get it, to grasp it and feel it like he does: the end of everything worth knowing, all at once, all trapped in his chest, on fucking repeat, ad infinitum.
“It’s not just a mistake that needs fixing,” Mark’s voice hitches, his breath wheezes slow, fast, both at once; “it’s not just a, a wrong that needs to be undone.”
“He’s everything,” and maybe Mark knew it all along, maybe he didn’t, but it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t make any of it better, doesn’t make it any worse. “He’s what makes it worthwhile.”
“The world needs people like him,” Mark murmurs, whimpers, feels it deep in the marrow, sunk in his bones. “I need him,” and that’s the crux, the clincher -- that’s the beginning, and the motherfucking end.
“Then fight for him, Mark,” she tells him, eyes him strangely and dares him, challenges: prays with the words, in a way, and Mark wonders, not for the first time, who she is, what she’s meant for -- if maybe she knows more of his heart than he thinks, than he ever thought was there, before. “Fight for him. Don’t give up yet.”
And he thinks about it, flashes straight back: Keep going Mark; we’re worth it.
And he breaks, then, he breaks -- all the muscles in him give and he goes boneless, and he doesn’t care that she catches him, that’s she’s cold and warm all at the same time.
“Why do you care?” Mark asks -- demands with all the need built up inside him, with all the resignation he can’t withstand; breathless, collapsed against her and shaking, watching the fire and the smoke billow in the air and feeling hollow as she drapes a cautious arm around his shoulders, draws him to her chest -- there’s no beat beneath her breast, like maybe there never was, but it still sends Mark’s chest heaving, makes his lungs constrict.
“You know,” and her breath ghosts soft in the night across his forehead, through his hair; it’s familiar, by now, for the way he’s learned to fall asleep best in Wardo’s arms, but it’s not right, it isn’t him; “even I can be wrong, sometimes,” she breathes, and he wants her to be wrong, he wants her to be wrong about everything and he wants this to be done, to have never happened, to happen forever, over and over so he never has to wake up without ever the smallest glimmer of promise, the knowledge that Eduardo will be there again, will look at Mark like he loves him, that even once he’s lost he’ll be found again; that it’ll all hurt like hell but it won’t ever stop.
“I need to know whether this is one of them,” she tells him, an undertone, a hum where he rests against her chest; “one of those times when I’m wrong.”
He needs her to be fucking wrong.
___________________________
The fact remains, however, that Mark’s a stubborn son of a bitch. He’s heartsore, headstrong, fucking strangled, cut-up and bled dry with all of it, the way he feels, the things he’s seen, the way he can’t ever look away as it happens, as he loses Eduardo again and again.
Sometimes it’s a quick kiss on the Yard, followed by a drunk driver swerving, flattening those full lips, those wide eyes; or quick, Mark moves, and Wardo doesn’t, not fast enough, gets crushed by a falling piece of furniture, a slab of concrete in a construction zone; once his heart just gives out, they say it’s exhaustion, but Mark doesn’t care, can’t stop shaking, can’t stop telling Eduardo’s corpse that he needs to sleep; then a crash on the T, the Green Line, Mark doesn’t even know why Eduardo’s down there, where he was going, why he didn’t go with Wardo, too; there’s carbon monoxide poisoning, a mugging out near Revere, heat stroke one summer they put off the trip West, and then a fucking flood, the remnants of a hurricane, lightning striking straight down; and infection, food poisoning -- and people are so fragile, all of them, but Wardo’s not supposed to be, Wardo is strong. Mark’s the weak one, vulnerable underneath everything, where no one can see, no one should see.
Mark’s weak, and Wardo’s ruined because of it, every single time.
And Mark can’t live with that.
So once Mark’s done this a hundred times, he stops counting. He wants to stop trying. He wants to stop feeling.
But he can’t; he won’t. He promised.
And the fact that he can’t -- it probably says something, something real and true about the way he feels, about him and Eduardo and what they are, what they mean.
The fact that he won’t, though -- won’t stop and won’t quit and won’t give up what he can grab, the hope that he’ll keep it next time, just one more time-
The fact that he won’t might mean even more.
___________________________
They’re stretched out on the futon, alone in the dorm -- which is rare, and not at all unwelcome -- and Mark’s running mindless fingers, a ritualized motion, through Eduardo’s hair where it’s settled in his lap.
“Why is it called that?” he asks, keeps a rhythm, stares at the screen of his laptop, listens to Eduardo’s breathing, just below the hum of the processors.
“John Harvard wasn’t a founder of the school, the statue isn’t actually of John Harvard,” Wardo takes a breath, deep, and it jostles Mark’s thigh, a nice little disturbance; “and the school was founded in 1636, not 1638.”
“Who is the statue of, then?”
Wardo twitches, sits up just a bit, his hair brushing, tickling at Mark’s wrist as he moves. “What?”
“It’s not John Harvard,” Mark clarifies, coaxes out a different answer. “Who is it?”
Eduardo stills before letting out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair; Mark watches the way his chest deflates, shivers with the cool-ish stream of Wardo’s breath on his skin. “I don’t have a fucking clue.”
Mark reaches down with his left hand, smoothes the hair Eduardo just ruffled. “You should,” he chides gently, clicks around the web page idly, more invested in the feel of Eduardo, his weight against Mark’s side.
“It’s like,” Wardo pauses, voice hitching as he flips over, props himself up on his stomach next to Mark; “some student, right?”
“Yeah,” Mark skims a few sites, a few links: “no one really knows who, for sure, so I wouldn’t bother guessing.”
“Just go with a friend of the sculptor,” Mark concludes, closing out of the windows and looking down at Eduardo, who’s staring far in the opposite direction. “Same guy sculpted it who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial.”
Wardo glances up, hopeful, long lashes dark, obscuring his eyes, tempting Mark without a word. “Who did the Lincoln Memorial?”
Mark chuckles, deep; wants to bend down and kiss him, but can’t quite maneuver around his laptop. He almost doesn’t care, but he can’t put it away just yet, has to reopen the browser, because Eduardo cares, and that means more. “Dude, I’m the one who’s dreading taking my goddamned art history class. Let me google it.”
Eduardo slides up and sits, leans in against Mark’s shoulder so that every exhale puffs next to Mark’s ear, and Mark has to force himself to find the name of the sculptor so that Wardo can read it on the screen and rock whatever bullshit those Phoenix douchebags throw at him.
“Knock ‘em dead,” Mark murmurs when Wardo tilts his head and presses his lips to Mark’s cheek in thanks; turns at the last minute to meet his mouth head-on, and Wardo moans, pleased, into the kiss.
“Love you,” Wardo says against Mark’s lips before he stands and shrugs his jacket on.
“Love you,” Mark says back before the door closes between them, small smile still on his face, Wardo’s heat lingering on his lips.
It’s just a few hours later, when Mark gets the call. His lips are dry, cold, then.
It takes so long to make it to MGH. They don’t take him to Health Services, or Mount Auburn. They take him straight into the city. Mark knows it’s bad before he walks through the doors, doesn’t run --- walks. Because he’s in no hurry to know the inevitable for certain.
And the guys -- fucking boys, Mark thinks for a second, thinks about how he’s left this behind and yet never quite outgrew it -- they’re terrified, the red-rims around their eyes are borne of fear. They never gave a shit about Eduardo, he was just another -- albeit more promising -- candidate to join their petty little club, and goddamn them, it cost Wardo everything.
“It was an accident,” one of them tells Mark when he sees him, when he notices him enter the waiting room, but Mark doesn’t wait, doesn’t stick around to hear the justifications, the explanations -- Mark doesn’t have to know how it happened, not anymore; if he’s not there to see it, to try like hell to stop it, then he doesn’t need to know.
It’s almost thoughtless, mindless, when Mark storms out, stares up at the starless sky and screams, fucking screams;
“He doesn’t deserve this! He didn’t do anything!”
And then down, into the ground, as he collapses inward, falls to his knees:
“God, fucking, why?”
He hears the approach, knows when she comes for him, comes to offer or condemn, but they’re one and the same. They are.
They’re one and the same.
“Another go?” she asks, and she’s almost hesitant, almost quiet when she does, and he wants to say yes, he wants to say no: he wants to say yes, and no, because he can’t do it, he can’t live through it and be the reason Wardo dies again, just because he couldn’t give up, he couldn’t let go and own to the fact that no matter what spark’s taken hold in his chest -- all unforgiving, lightning in his veins -- no matter what he feels and how deep he feels it, he lost his chance, and he can’t go back; wants to say yes because he’s in love, goddamnit. He’s in fucking love, and every time Eduardo leaves, slips away -- everything fractures and threatens to break, and Mark could survive it, he can, he has, he will, but he doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t fucking want to.
“Breathe, Mark,” and its only that he realizes that he hasn’t been, that the fire in his chest is matched, amplified by the burn in his lungs, tight and unyielding as he tries to take in air and mostly fails, gasps at awkward counterpoints and tries to hold steady, can’t find his anchor, knows he’s lost at sea.
“Breathe,” she tells him, like she really wants him to, for more than just her morbid entertainment; “and try again.”
___________________________
Mark gets them through the month, a whole month. They survive for that long, and it feels almost like an accomplishment, which in itself feels pretty sad.
They’re in an empty CS lab, long after anyone should be there; Mark had been working when Wardo had come to find him, to get him to fucking sleep, except Mark had glanced at the fire alarms, and then he’d leaned in and kissed him; and then Wardo had slid a hand beneath his hoodie, beneath his undershirt, hot against his skin and then Mark had palmed Wardo through the fabric of his dress pants, and soon enough they were both fucking grateful the lab was deserted, because they’re slick in their pants and short on air, laughing and breathless and still enough now that the motion-sensor lighting’s gone out on them, gone dark.
Everything erupts in brightness when Wardo levers himself to his feet and reaches out to Mark, pulls him up from the floor and whispers, dazed: “Let’s get out of here.”
Mark nearly trips over the cord, catches himself on the edge of the desk, and Wardo chuckles at him, which makes Mark blush and laugh a bit himself, even
And when it occurs: it happens in a split second that etches, sears into Mark’s head; sharp and painful and Mark’s not even looking, just hears the sound: a snick, the pop of a spark, a groan of pained surprised, the slump of dead weight on the floor.
The wall adapter for his computer is smoking, discarded on the floor; Eduardo sprawled, motionless, just next to it, just at the side, and Mark’s heart is instantly heavy in his chest, sunk leaden against his ribs, and his hands shake when he checks for a pulse, and finds nothing.
Eduardo’s eyes are still open.
His eyes are still open, and Mark’s coming apart at the goddamned seams.
The woman’s there, almost immediately, and she’s on the floor with him, wrapped around him to keep him still and close, her arms protective more than restrictive, but Mark thinks both would feel the same to him, because all he wants is to be near Eduardo, with Eduardo. Mark wants this to be done, wants to go wherever it as that Eduardo goes without him, when he leaves. When he’s gone.
“I need him,” Mark chants, a mantra, the only thing holding him together at all, “I need him, I need him.”
“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, and he shivers, can’t even cry, just shakes his head without knowing what, exactly, he’s denying, rejecting, wanting to escape.
“One more time?” she whispers, a mercy, and it’s changed -- she’s changed; the way she looks at him is different, the tone of her voice shifted, softer; her touch a comfort, gentle like a mother’s, a friend’s, and Mark doesn’t know what to make of it, can’t bring himself to trust her, whoever -- whatever she is, agent of fate, of God and the Devil -- and he doesn’t know if he can stand it; but then, he doesn’t know if he can survive the alternative, the certainty of a universe without Eduardo -- a life lived, bereft.
One. More. Time.
Part Eight --->
// Master Post //
<--- Part Six
Part Seven
-----------------------------------
Mark comes into himself, aware of his surroundings, halfway through something, through moving; like he’s been daydreaming, zoned out without a screen in front of him: he’s paused, between steps, and he’s crossing campus. It’s early, too bright because of the snow on the ground, but he keeps walking. He needs to know when this was, what happened, what he can change.
He climbs the steps at Kirkland, and see Eduardo waiting for him; he sees the message on the board outside his door, and realizes what night this is, that he’s late, he was meant to meet Wardo before, and he’d got caught up in... something. Something for Facebook.
Wait... wait. Relationship status. That was it.
The universe is mocking him. He’s sure of it.
So he stops, doesn’t unlock the door or push through to do whatever it is he did then, whatever it was he was planning on doing; he stops, and he looks, and there’s something in Eduardo’s eyes. There’s something, and Mark can’t put his finger on it, but Mark kissed him the last time, and it felt right, and he kissed back, and maybe there’s not enough time, maybe there’s no time at all and there’s just now, this moment, and it’s late, too late, and Mark’s still cold from the walk but Wardo’s warm, always warm, Mark knows it.
So he leans in, and Eduardo barely moves, doesn’t respond when Mark kisses him, hard and insistent, all close-lipped but sure; Mark doesn’t pull back, and Eduardo doesn’t do anything, and Mark only relents when he has to breathe, when he has to stare at Eduardo, who’s already staring at him, all wide-eyes and questions and rampant disbelief.
“What the fuck was that, Mark?” Wardo asks, shaky, a flush overtaking his cheeks, and Mark’s heart’s thrumming almost too loud to hear any of it, almost too hard to make words of his own.
“I kind of thought it was self-explanatory,” Mark answers, voice small.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Eduardo asks, more fear than bite in the words, and Mark doesn’t like that; Mark doesn’t like that this Eduardo, here and now, thinks that of him. Thinks he’d hurt him on purpose.
Because contrary to popular belief, Mark would never have hurt Eduardo on purpose. He’d never meant to hurt Wardo.
“No,” Mark tells him, reaches out on impulse to wrap his fingers around Eduardo’s. “No,” and he runs the pad of his thumb along Eduardo’s knuckle, because Mark knows that, too; knows how it makes him feel rooted, grounded, how it makes Wardo feel loved. “It’s-” and something cracks Mark’s voice, just a bit, but Wardo hears it, turns his hand over in Mark’s grip and presses their palms together.
“Mark?” he whispers, the fear gone, but the questions still there, so many.
“Please,” Mark says, staring down at their hands, only looking up when Wardo’s free hand brushes against Mark’s cheek, prompts him to glance up.
They meet halfway, mouths half-open, and Mark lets himself melt into it; and as always, Wardo is warm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s only been a week, but Wardo insists they get drinks, abuse their fake IDs a bit, together. Different than usual. As more than just friends.
They drink some import Mark’s never heard of, that costs more than Mark would have paid for back then, which is likely why Wardo’s the one who picks up the tab. They’re discreet, in their way, but it’s Mark who brushes close to Wardo as they talk, bullshit about classes and their idiot peers and Dustin’s new crush on his TA. It’s kind of awesome, all laid back and natural and lightly-buzzed, just this side of perfect.
Wardo even places a hand at the small of Mark’s back as they walk out, just after last call.
And the things is: there are a lot of shitty drivers in Massachusetts. So it’s not unlikely, or even uncommon, that some of them might be tearing up Peabody Street on a Friday night.
And it’s even less unlikely, given the givens, that Eduardo might slip as he walks, as they both walk. There’s ice already down on the sidewalk, stretching out toward the crosswalk, and Mark has been walking next to him until they moved up to the intersection; he’d let go of Wardo’s arm to push the button, get the signal to change, and he’d maintained a little distance, for no real reason.
So, Eduardo: he’s the one who walks, who slips, who falls. Just Wardo.
It’s in the blink of an eye that it happens, the space of a breath: the car runs him over, where he’s sprawled, legs-first into the street; it’s dark, the driver probably didn’t even see him until it was too late.
The wetness on Mark’s face -- he can’t tell what’s tears and what’s melting, bitter snow; the tightness in his chest, though, and the raw feeling in his throat -- he knows exactly what that is, where it comes from: what it means and where it leads.
There’s a hand on his shoulder -- delicate, long nails, and he knows it now, but the touch is almost friendly, for all that it hates: he leans into it, grateful, because it means that when this disappears, Eduardo will be waiting. Maybe for a minute, maybe for a day, but he’ll be waiting.
And it’s enough.
It has to be.
___________________________
They’ve been sleeping together for three months, this time. Mark’s told Eduardo that he loves him one-hundred and seventy three times, and to his surprise, he learns that he means it more, impossibly more, every single time.
It’s a Thursday. It’s a Thursday like any other, and Wardo’s the only one left with him in the CS Lab, and he’s willing to stay until Mark’s done, the whole few more hours until Mark’s deemed his work worthy -- he’s willing, upon the condition that Mark goes out and gets him a latte.
Mark wants Wardo with him, so he fumbles for his ID and hopes he’s got enough CrimsonCash to cover a coffee.
The air’s thick, warm and smoky -- someone nearby stoking a fire, staying warm, except it’s too much, it’s like every house, every building in Cambridge is keeping a fire going as he walks out into the cold, Wardo’s drink cradled in his hands; it doesn’t make sense.
It takes seconds -- just seconds, but they’re long ones, too long -- before Mark hears, before he processes the screams.
Then he sees the flames.
The SCL, the whole fucking Science Center is smoking, blazing -- it’s impossible, how fast the fire seems to have consumed everything as Mark comes up on it, can feel heat in the night air, can barely breathe, but not merely for the smoke. It’s more than that.
Mark doesn’t have time to think, to process -- he doesn’t have time to dwell on his immediate reaction to run forward, toward the fire instead of away, because it happened so fast, it had to have, Mark wasn’t even gone that long.
If it happened that fast, Wardo might, he might not have had a chance, might not have gotten out, might need him-
“Mark,” and there’s a hand on his arm, holding himself still, pulling him back; there’s a hand and a voice, familiar like ice in his veins, the woman’s hand colder still on his biceps, keeping him upright as she holds him steady, as he flails, desperate. “Mark, you’re not going to help him,” and the water, tear-stains on Mark’s face: they burn in the dark on his skin, useless, terrifying. “You can’t save him,” she murmurs, close at his neck as she tries to keep him from running, from going in and searching anyway, from making the goddamned attempt.
“He’s gone,” she tells him, final, almost soaked in regret, except that Mark doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter. Mark’s lost Wardo too many times.
“I can’t, I can’t,” Mark hears it, feels the words come from his mouth except he doesn’t connect with the actual saying of them, the actual production of sounds, because in his mind, in his chest, he’s beyond that, he can’t handle it, he’s too far gone; “not again,” because he’s breaking, he’s crumbling, splitting at the seams and spilling out and “if he’s gone, then...”
If he’s gone...
And Mark barely sees it, can barely process the look in her eyes when she glances down at him, can barely see through the smog, the dark, his own tears, but he feels it: pity and sympathy and something new, something he didn’t think factored into this strange new world where he was alone, except for Wardo, where it has all boiled down to the bare essentials, and when those were gone, when Wardo left, there was nothing.
There’s nothing.
He just runs, and hopes the world won’t follow.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark never quite realized his dorm in Kirkland was so high, the windows so large, until now.
He never realized how far it was, to the ground, until he sat on the windowsill, just here, legs dangling in the dark, vision blurred with grief and loss and heartbreak and everything, everything, ready to launch himself face-first to the concrete below, in hopes that sheer will would increase velocity, would make the fall lethal.
Because the thing is, it’s too much. It’s all too fucking much, and Mark was not made to withstand any of it.
“Don’t,” and Mark nearly loses his grip, didn’t hear the footsteps, if there were any, if she has any, if she’s real or mortal or something else, something unfathomable; Mark catches the red of her hair in his peripheral vision, but he keeps his eyes fixed on the ground.
And the thing -- the one thing, on top of everything else: he’d thought he was so wise, thought he knew everything; thought he’d finally managed to shut them all up, to prove them all wrong, whoever the fuck ‘they’ even were, but he was wrong, he was so goddamned wrong; and the irony isn’t lost on him, the way this had all started, the way that he’d followed the woman, Fate incarnate that night at the gala, stared out and pondered the meaning of life and death on high for half-a-moment, from that balcony as if he’d known something, as if he was wise.
Mark wishes he could blame it on that, something cyclical, a jinx; but it’s so much more than that, the way his chest feels crushed in upon itself, the way everything hurts and the future doesn’t even loom, no longer exists in the moment. It’s so much more, and Mark can’t survive it.
“It’s not worth it,” Mark gasps, unraveling, coming apart from the inside out and it hurts, it fucking hurts and Wardo’s gone, he’ll always be gone, and it isn’t worth it; “it’s not,” and he can’t breathe, he can even draw breath because his lungs don’t care, don’t want to, none of him wants to and he’s getting dizzy, hyperventilating maybe, and his grip on the ledge is precarious, slipping, and he doesn’t give a damn.
“What even happens? If I’m the one who dies here, like this? What happens then?”
“Mark,” she starts, urges, her pitch rising, real, almost human panic gripping her tone in a strangle-hold; “don’t do this.”
“You don’t understand,” Mark shoots back, pleads, because it’s crystal clear in his head, undeniable and unshakeable inside his ribs: there’s no question, and he just wants someone else to see it, to get it, to grasp it and feel it like he does: the end of everything worth knowing, all at once, all trapped in his chest, on fucking repeat, ad infinitum.
“It’s not just a mistake that needs fixing,” Mark’s voice hitches, his breath wheezes slow, fast, both at once; “it’s not just a, a wrong that needs to be undone.”
“He’s everything,” and maybe Mark knew it all along, maybe he didn’t, but it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t make any of it better, doesn’t make it any worse. “He’s what makes it worthwhile.”
“The world needs people like him,” Mark murmurs, whimpers, feels it deep in the marrow, sunk in his bones. “I need him,” and that’s the crux, the clincher -- that’s the beginning, and the motherfucking end.
“Then fight for him, Mark,” she tells him, eyes him strangely and dares him, challenges: prays with the words, in a way, and Mark wonders, not for the first time, who she is, what she’s meant for -- if maybe she knows more of his heart than he thinks, than he ever thought was there, before. “Fight for him. Don’t give up yet.”
And he thinks about it, flashes straight back: Keep going Mark; we’re worth it.
And he breaks, then, he breaks -- all the muscles in him give and he goes boneless, and he doesn’t care that she catches him, that’s she’s cold and warm all at the same time.
“Why do you care?” Mark asks -- demands with all the need built up inside him, with all the resignation he can’t withstand; breathless, collapsed against her and shaking, watching the fire and the smoke billow in the air and feeling hollow as she drapes a cautious arm around his shoulders, draws him to her chest -- there’s no beat beneath her breast, like maybe there never was, but it still sends Mark’s chest heaving, makes his lungs constrict.
“You know,” and her breath ghosts soft in the night across his forehead, through his hair; it’s familiar, by now, for the way he’s learned to fall asleep best in Wardo’s arms, but it’s not right, it isn’t him; “even I can be wrong, sometimes,” she breathes, and he wants her to be wrong, he wants her to be wrong about everything and he wants this to be done, to have never happened, to happen forever, over and over so he never has to wake up without ever the smallest glimmer of promise, the knowledge that Eduardo will be there again, will look at Mark like he loves him, that even once he’s lost he’ll be found again; that it’ll all hurt like hell but it won’t ever stop.
“I need to know whether this is one of them,” she tells him, an undertone, a hum where he rests against her chest; “one of those times when I’m wrong.”
He needs her to be fucking wrong.
___________________________
The fact remains, however, that Mark’s a stubborn son of a bitch. He’s heartsore, headstrong, fucking strangled, cut-up and bled dry with all of it, the way he feels, the things he’s seen, the way he can’t ever look away as it happens, as he loses Eduardo again and again.
Sometimes it’s a quick kiss on the Yard, followed by a drunk driver swerving, flattening those full lips, those wide eyes; or quick, Mark moves, and Wardo doesn’t, not fast enough, gets crushed by a falling piece of furniture, a slab of concrete in a construction zone; once his heart just gives out, they say it’s exhaustion, but Mark doesn’t care, can’t stop shaking, can’t stop telling Eduardo’s corpse that he needs to sleep; then a crash on the T, the Green Line, Mark doesn’t even know why Eduardo’s down there, where he was going, why he didn’t go with Wardo, too; there’s carbon monoxide poisoning, a mugging out near Revere, heat stroke one summer they put off the trip West, and then a fucking flood, the remnants of a hurricane, lightning striking straight down; and infection, food poisoning -- and people are so fragile, all of them, but Wardo’s not supposed to be, Wardo is strong. Mark’s the weak one, vulnerable underneath everything, where no one can see, no one should see.
Mark’s weak, and Wardo’s ruined because of it, every single time.
And Mark can’t live with that.
So once Mark’s done this a hundred times, he stops counting. He wants to stop trying. He wants to stop feeling.
But he can’t; he won’t. He promised.
And the fact that he can’t -- it probably says something, something real and true about the way he feels, about him and Eduardo and what they are, what they mean.
The fact that he won’t, though -- won’t stop and won’t quit and won’t give up what he can grab, the hope that he’ll keep it next time, just one more time-
The fact that he won’t might mean even more.
___________________________
They’re stretched out on the futon, alone in the dorm -- which is rare, and not at all unwelcome -- and Mark’s running mindless fingers, a ritualized motion, through Eduardo’s hair where it’s settled in his lap.
“Why is it called that?” he asks, keeps a rhythm, stares at the screen of his laptop, listens to Eduardo’s breathing, just below the hum of the processors.
“John Harvard wasn’t a founder of the school, the statue isn’t actually of John Harvard,” Wardo takes a breath, deep, and it jostles Mark’s thigh, a nice little disturbance; “and the school was founded in 1636, not 1638.”
“Who is the statue of, then?”
Wardo twitches, sits up just a bit, his hair brushing, tickling at Mark’s wrist as he moves. “What?”
“It’s not John Harvard,” Mark clarifies, coaxes out a different answer. “Who is it?”
Eduardo stills before letting out a long sigh, running a hand through his hair; Mark watches the way his chest deflates, shivers with the cool-ish stream of Wardo’s breath on his skin. “I don’t have a fucking clue.”
Mark reaches down with his left hand, smoothes the hair Eduardo just ruffled. “You should,” he chides gently, clicks around the web page idly, more invested in the feel of Eduardo, his weight against Mark’s side.
“It’s like,” Wardo pauses, voice hitching as he flips over, props himself up on his stomach next to Mark; “some student, right?”
“Yeah,” Mark skims a few sites, a few links: “no one really knows who, for sure, so I wouldn’t bother guessing.”
“Just go with a friend of the sculptor,” Mark concludes, closing out of the windows and looking down at Eduardo, who’s staring far in the opposite direction. “Same guy sculpted it who sculpted the Lincoln Memorial.”
Wardo glances up, hopeful, long lashes dark, obscuring his eyes, tempting Mark without a word. “Who did the Lincoln Memorial?”
Mark chuckles, deep; wants to bend down and kiss him, but can’t quite maneuver around his laptop. He almost doesn’t care, but he can’t put it away just yet, has to reopen the browser, because Eduardo cares, and that means more. “Dude, I’m the one who’s dreading taking my goddamned art history class. Let me google it.”
Eduardo slides up and sits, leans in against Mark’s shoulder so that every exhale puffs next to Mark’s ear, and Mark has to force himself to find the name of the sculptor so that Wardo can read it on the screen and rock whatever bullshit those Phoenix douchebags throw at him.
“Knock ‘em dead,” Mark murmurs when Wardo tilts his head and presses his lips to Mark’s cheek in thanks; turns at the last minute to meet his mouth head-on, and Wardo moans, pleased, into the kiss.
“Love you,” Wardo says against Mark’s lips before he stands and shrugs his jacket on.
“Love you,” Mark says back before the door closes between them, small smile still on his face, Wardo’s heat lingering on his lips.
It’s just a few hours later, when Mark gets the call. His lips are dry, cold, then.
It takes so long to make it to MGH. They don’t take him to Health Services, or Mount Auburn. They take him straight into the city. Mark knows it’s bad before he walks through the doors, doesn’t run --- walks. Because he’s in no hurry to know the inevitable for certain.
And the guys -- fucking boys, Mark thinks for a second, thinks about how he’s left this behind and yet never quite outgrew it -- they’re terrified, the red-rims around their eyes are borne of fear. They never gave a shit about Eduardo, he was just another -- albeit more promising -- candidate to join their petty little club, and goddamn them, it cost Wardo everything.
“It was an accident,” one of them tells Mark when he sees him, when he notices him enter the waiting room, but Mark doesn’t wait, doesn’t stick around to hear the justifications, the explanations -- Mark doesn’t have to know how it happened, not anymore; if he’s not there to see it, to try like hell to stop it, then he doesn’t need to know.
It’s almost thoughtless, mindless, when Mark storms out, stares up at the starless sky and screams, fucking screams;
“He doesn’t deserve this! He didn’t do anything!”
And then down, into the ground, as he collapses inward, falls to his knees:
“God, fucking, why?”
He hears the approach, knows when she comes for him, comes to offer or condemn, but they’re one and the same. They are.
They’re one and the same.
“Another go?” she asks, and she’s almost hesitant, almost quiet when she does, and he wants to say yes, he wants to say no: he wants to say yes, and no, because he can’t do it, he can’t live through it and be the reason Wardo dies again, just because he couldn’t give up, he couldn’t let go and own to the fact that no matter what spark’s taken hold in his chest -- all unforgiving, lightning in his veins -- no matter what he feels and how deep he feels it, he lost his chance, and he can’t go back; wants to say yes because he’s in love, goddamnit. He’s in fucking love, and every time Eduardo leaves, slips away -- everything fractures and threatens to break, and Mark could survive it, he can, he has, he will, but he doesn’t want to.
He doesn’t fucking want to.
“Breathe, Mark,” and its only that he realizes that he hasn’t been, that the fire in his chest is matched, amplified by the burn in his lungs, tight and unyielding as he tries to take in air and mostly fails, gasps at awkward counterpoints and tries to hold steady, can’t find his anchor, knows he’s lost at sea.
“Breathe,” she tells him, like she really wants him to, for more than just her morbid entertainment; “and try again.”
___________________________
Mark gets them through the month, a whole month. They survive for that long, and it feels almost like an accomplishment, which in itself feels pretty sad.
They’re in an empty CS lab, long after anyone should be there; Mark had been working when Wardo had come to find him, to get him to fucking sleep, except Mark had glanced at the fire alarms, and then he’d leaned in and kissed him; and then Wardo had slid a hand beneath his hoodie, beneath his undershirt, hot against his skin and then Mark had palmed Wardo through the fabric of his dress pants, and soon enough they were both fucking grateful the lab was deserted, because they’re slick in their pants and short on air, laughing and breathless and still enough now that the motion-sensor lighting’s gone out on them, gone dark.
Everything erupts in brightness when Wardo levers himself to his feet and reaches out to Mark, pulls him up from the floor and whispers, dazed: “Let’s get out of here.”
Mark nearly trips over the cord, catches himself on the edge of the desk, and Wardo chuckles at him, which makes Mark blush and laugh a bit himself, even
And when it occurs: it happens in a split second that etches, sears into Mark’s head; sharp and painful and Mark’s not even looking, just hears the sound: a snick, the pop of a spark, a groan of pained surprised, the slump of dead weight on the floor.
The wall adapter for his computer is smoking, discarded on the floor; Eduardo sprawled, motionless, just next to it, just at the side, and Mark’s heart is instantly heavy in his chest, sunk leaden against his ribs, and his hands shake when he checks for a pulse, and finds nothing.
Eduardo’s eyes are still open.
His eyes are still open, and Mark’s coming apart at the goddamned seams.
The woman’s there, almost immediately, and she’s on the floor with him, wrapped around him to keep him still and close, her arms protective more than restrictive, but Mark thinks both would feel the same to him, because all he wants is to be near Eduardo, with Eduardo. Mark wants this to be done, wants to go wherever it as that Eduardo goes without him, when he leaves. When he’s gone.
“I need him,” Mark chants, a mantra, the only thing holding him together at all, “I need him, I need him.”
“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs, and he shivers, can’t even cry, just shakes his head without knowing what, exactly, he’s denying, rejecting, wanting to escape.
“One more time?” she whispers, a mercy, and it’s changed -- she’s changed; the way she looks at him is different, the tone of her voice shifted, softer; her touch a comfort, gentle like a mother’s, a friend’s, and Mark doesn’t know what to make of it, can’t bring himself to trust her, whoever -- whatever she is, agent of fate, of God and the Devil -- and he doesn’t know if he can stand it; but then, he doesn’t know if he can survive the alternative, the certainty of a universe without Eduardo -- a life lived, bereft.
One. More. Time.
Part Eight --->
// Master Post //
<--- Part Six