fic: the deeper you cut, the deeper I hurt (it only gets worse), part one

[learnthemusic]

Tite: The deeper you cut, the deeper I hurt (it only gets worse)
Pairing: Eduardo/Mark
Rating: R
Word count: ~38,500
Summary: Mark can get away with anything, even if it cuts Eduardo to pieces.
(or, the one where Eduardo and Mark run circles around each other, intersecting only when they both want the same things; in other words, the beginning and end of Eduardo and Mark's sexual relationship - although there's really not THAT much sex)


1 | sometimes things are just beyond control

Two months fly by in the summer before Eduardo’s junior year, June through July spent in Brazil predicting the weather. He makes money off it - lots and lots of money, way more than enough to impress his father - and when he gets back to the States, he’s glad to see his father actually is proud. At first he berates him for being so stupid and taking so many risks, but it’s mostly in jest. He smacks him playfully in the head and then pulls him into a hug, genuinely happy to see him.

Somehow, Eduardo has three weeks of break left. Three weeks of sleeping in, relaxing, reading things he actually wants to read instead of seventeenth century British literature that isn’t even related to economics. He heaps issues of The Economist and the Miami Herald and the Wall Street Journal onto his desk and spends hours each day reading every article, taking notes and digesting the information at a pace suitable enough for leisure. He gives their housekeeper Rosa days off and cooks dinner sometimes, puts to use the skills his uncle taught him in Brazil and tries to prove that he has enviable culinary visions.

He doesn’t make many phone calls. He doesn’t go on dates with any girls. He doesn’t stay at parties late. He doesn’t break his 4 AM curfew. He doesn’t think about his friends or the people he hasn’t spoken to in months.

He doesn’t try to contact Mark because it hurts that, after almost a year of constant communication, Mark didn’t even try to make an effort to talk to him once the first week of June was over. There were no emails asking about Brazil or his job or his family. There were no emails telling about Mark’s internship at ADCOM or his ventures in the fast food world. There was nothing about anything and by the Fourth of July, Eduardo had stopped checking his email for anything from sender zuckonit@aol.com.

So when Mark calls him two Mondays before Eduardo’s supposed to go back to Harvard, it’s surprising. Eduardo almost drops his phone in the sink and is pretty much out of breath when he answers, “Hello?”

A host of shouts and blaring car horns filters through the speakers, almost drowning out Mark’s voice when he says, “Wardo, hey, what’s your address?”

“My what?” asks Eduardo while he dries his hands on a kitchen towel and tries to force himself not to breathe too hard. It’s just Mark. He’s probably inventing some program that will automatically compile all the addresses of your friends when you put in their student numbers or something like that. There’s nothing for Eduardo to worry about. Not really, anyway.

“Your address.”

“What do you need my address for?”

Mark’s sigh is drawn out and long suffering, the kind he uses when Dustin asks stupid questions or a classmate makes an obvious observation, the kind Eduardo really shouldn’t worry about now because he doesn’t need to be remembering things like that anymore. Eduardo can picture him rolling his eyes and shrugging, no qualms about making others feel inferior. But Eduardo really doesn’t need to be imagining Mark right now - or at any moment, really.

“Well?”

Mark replies, “I need to tell the cab driver,” so fast that Eduardo takes almost a minute to process the words all the way. His chest feels so tight he can’t even breathe properly.

“Why would you tell a cab driver in New York my address, Mark?” And there his voice goes up an octave, like when he was in eighth grade and had to read a passage in his social studies book aloud and his voice cracked up to an embarrassingly high pitch.

“Not in New York, Wardo. In Miami. Can you please hurry up? I’m about to lose this guy if you don’t -”

“Why are you in Miami? You never told me you were coming - you didn’t even talk to me until right now. Who even said you could -”

“Eduardo, we can’t argue about this right now. You need to tell me -”

“I can pick you up myself,” Eduardo blurts, blinking fast and breathing hard and thinking too fast, a hand over his face. He pinches the bridge of his nose and tells himself that it’s ok. He can get through this phone call and get to the airport and not want to strangle Mark in public. He’s sure this is a good plan.

“I don’t want you to pick me up, Eduardo. I want you to tell me your address so I can get the fuck off this street and go back into an air conditioned environment before I get vaporized by the heat coming off the asphalt. Ok? Tell me.”

Sighing, “Fine,” Eduardo rattles off his address, listens to Mark regurgitate it to the cabbie, and then leans against the kitchen counter. “You should’ve told me you were coming, Mark,” he finally says, once Mark’s seemingly done settling into the backseat.

But he doesn’t get a satisfactory response. Mark just says, “You would have told me not to,” and hangs up, as if he hadn’t just spent the whole summer ignoring Eduardo.

He spends the next forty minutes alternating between pacing the living room floor, wrecking his hair with his hands and tidying up his bedroom (the last thing’s more out of habit than anything else; his room’s always pretty clean). He knows he should call his parents, warn them of Mark’s arrival, but he doesn’t even know how long Mark will be here. He doesn’t know if Mark reserved a hotel room or if he assumed Eduardo would let him stay over until he had to go back to New York. He doesn’t know about any of his decisions - and that’s not how friends are supposed to treat each other, not even in Mark’s world. He can’t just show up without warning. It’s not logical. Mark’s lucky Eduardo’s home; Eduardo could’ve been in Orlando, hanging out with some family members at Universal Studios or something. It’s a good thing Eduardo’s no big fan of theme parks.

It’s past three o’clock when Eduardo, from his perch on the kitchen counter, hears a car honk at the front gate. He quickly gets rid of the remains of his orange and goes outside. After being indoors all day, he’s blasted with a 90-degree temperature that threatens to melt all the clothes off his body. From the front door, Mark’s figure looks like a mirage, wavering in the sun. It’s not until Eduardo’s only a few feet away that he can think oh, hey, that’s actually Mark. Then he sees the GAP emblem on Mark’s shirt and he knows he’s not just imagining things.

Eduardo steps up to the gate, arms crossed over his chest, and blinks at Mark, who’s squinting in the sun. “Hello, Mark.”

“Wardo,” Mark says, and it sounds like almost every other time Mark has said Eduardo’s name in the last year, like he wants him to stop whatever he’s doing and pay attention to him.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well.” Mark pulls his backpack up his shoulder and that’s when Eduardo notices Mark is actually conscious about the hot weather - he’s not wearing his hoodie. “I’m here to see you.”

“What if I hadn’t been here?”

Mark shrugs - he actually thinks he has the right to shrug when Eduardo is interrogating him - then must notice that Eduardo’s glaring at him because he says, “I guess I would have found a hotel until I had to go back home, then.”

“Which is when, by the way?” Eduardo’s foot starts to tap against the driveway impatiently.

“Two weeks from today.”

“You mean right before we have to go back to Harvard?”

“Yes.”

“You plan on spending the rest of your summer in Florida?”

Mark shrugs again. “I guess.”

“In Florida, with me?”

“Am I not making that clear by standing in your driveway with a backpack and a suitcase?” Mark shakes his luggage at Eduardo to make a point.

Eduardo huffs, sticks out his bottom lip. This is not on. “How was I supposed to know you even wanted to talk to me after you spent the last two months ignoring me?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Wardo. I was busy. You were busy.” Eduardo rolls his eyes and mutters, as if that’s important, while Mark continues, “We were both busy and it didn’t make sense to waste time sending emails that wouldn’t get responses for days.”

Although he feels righteously indignant, Eduardo stops himself from yelling when he says, “It did not take days for me to respond to emails,” and points at Mark accusingly. “If anything, it took you days to respond to emails. And then a week passed and I figured you just didn’t want to talk to me anymore.” He doesn’t mention that he logged into MySpace pretty regularly, just to look at the last time Mark had logged in, to make sure that Mark really was avoiding him and not just grounded from the computer or something.

“Was I supposed to send you an email saying that I wouldn’t have time to respond to you again?” Mark seems to think it’s ok for him to be upset now even though it’s obviously his fault that they’re even having this conversation in 90-degree weather in Eduardo’s driveway of all places in the first place. But Mark’s looking at him with narrowed eyes and has his head turned slightly, like he’s daring Eduardo to say something - anything - and Eduardo refuses to take the bait. “That would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it, Wardo?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eduardo mutters immediately, and then he finally wrenches open the gate and lets Mark in. “You’re taking your own shit upstairs.”

When Mark walks past him, he casts a sidelong glance and throws Eduardo a smirk. “Whatever you say, Wardo.”

Eduardo puts his hand between Mark’s shoulders (no, no, no, he’s not thinking about what that feels like, he’s angry right now, too angry to be concerned with trivial things like the warmth of Mark’s shirt or the sweat he can feel even through the cotton, oh he must be really hot poor - no, no, no, he must shut down that line of thought) and pushes him up the driveway. “Shut up and walk.”

- - -

Eduardo’s father comes home around seven that evening, not that long after Rosa makes dinner, and quickly shuts the door to his bedroom. Mark’s at his desk, typing loudly and quickly, and Eduardo sets his hand on Mark’s shoulder.

Mark doesn’t even acknowledge Eduardo but he does respond, “What is it?”

Eduardo’s fingers dance lightly across Marks’s collarbone then squeeze. “My dad’s here.”

“And?”

“I haven’t told him you’re staying with us.”

“That’s bad of you.”

Sighing, Eduardo shakes his head and goes to sit on the edge of his bed, pulls a hand through his hair. “He doesn’t like houseguests, Mark. Especially not ones he hadn’t planned on having. Ever.”

Mark spins around in Eduardo’s chair, already very obviously at home because all he needs is to be in front of his computer, and shrugs very helpfully. Eduardo rolls his eyes.

“You could always hide me in the closet if you really wanted to.”

Eduardo snorts. “I don’t think that’s a very feasible plan. I may not like you very much right now but I’m not going to have you suffocate.”

“That’s kind of you.”

“Thanks.” Eduardo sighs again and rubs his sweaty palms up and down his thighs. “You’re going to get me in some kind of trouble, Mark. This is why you should’ve warned me.”

“Well, we can’t undo what’s already been done. You know I’m here now, so you’re just going to have to deal with it.” Mark turns back to his computer, just to close it, and then sits next to Eduardo, puts a warm, slightly shaky (why the hell is Mark even shaking, he’s not the one who’s got to face Eduardo’s dad, it makes no sense) hand on his forearm. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

All Eduardo can do without looking flustered (because there is absolutely not a smattering of thoughts like holy shit Mark’s touching me he’s trying to be nice what is going on in his head or anything) is scoff, “You don’t know him, Mark,” and stand up. “I appreciate the sentiment, though,” he hastens to add, when Mark seems to briefly deflate. “I’ll just, uh, deal. With him, or whatever. I’ll figure it out, don’t worry about it. He won’t kick you out or anything. I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, that sounds reassuring,” Mark says, and at least there’s a hint of a laugh in that sentence, a little bit of deprecation. He’s not wounded that Eduardo pushed him away and that’s all Eduardo needs.

“We’ll figure it out.”

- - -

At first, it doesn’t seem like Eduardo will get his way. His father, recently arrived from work, lounging on the couch with the TV tuned to CNN so he won’t have to deal with any of his children, is doing everything in his power to ignore him, even though he’s saying pai pai pai over and over, in different combinations, but he still doesn’t get his attention. Pai, I’ve got something to tell you. Pai, will you listen to me for a second? Pai, this is important. I -

It’s five minutes before they lock eyes but Eduardo knows better than to assume they’ll engage in any kind of conversation. His father looks right through him, tells him to come back later and turns back to the news.

It’s always like this, without fail, and Eduardo can’t let this keep happening all the time. He just can’t deal with not being heard every time he wants to contest something or suggest something or even just say something that might change his father’s mind. He’s dealt with this shit, this being nothing more than a mirror off which his father can see his reflection shit, long enough.

“God - Dad! Listen to me!” Eduardo shouts, standing in front of the television now. He shouldn’t have to be yelling about this. He shouldn’t have to be yelling about getting his father’s attention period.

His father - and Eduardo thinks he might just start calling him Roberto from now on, for all the fatherly things he does - fails to be shaken. He just crosses his arms across his wide chest, moves his neck back a bit so that his double chin is incredibly, ridiculously prominent and blinks at Eduardo. Blinks, like looking at him is such a terrible waste of time. “What?”

Huffing, Eduardo decides he won’t even beat around the bush. This conversation has been so long already, and for no good reason at all. “One of my friends from school is here and he needs a place to stay for two weeks.”

“What does this have to do with me, Eduardo?”

He glares. “He’s staying here.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He has nowhere else to stay!” Eduardo throws his hands up and lets both of them slide onto his neck, where his fingers steeple and twist in frustration.

His father shakes his head. “You know I don’t like houseguests, Eduardo. You didn’t even warn me -”

“He just showed up, Dad!”

“Oh, yeah? What, did he knock on the front door this morning when you were still in bed sleeping?”

Eduardo makes a point of breathing slowly and deeply so he won’t fly across the room and punch his dad in the face - not that he would ever really do that, but maybe if his father weren’t his father he would. “Look,” he says, cutting the air with his hand and leaning forward in what he hopes can only be a menacing manner. He wishes he didn’t have to be so disrespectful, that his father would just deign to speak to him in a civilized manner so that he wouldn’t have to pull out the Worst Son of the Century mask, but that’s all he can do is wish. “I can’t kick him out. He’s my friend and I want him here. You can’t just act like I don’t have any right to -”

“What’s going on here?”

Eduardo whips around at the sound of his mother’s voice and widens his eyes at her, gestures wildly behind him. “He’s being unreasonable!”

“Again?” She smiles and sets her briefcase on the desk in the corner of the room. Just by walking in, she manages to defuse all the tension and Eduardo stands there, kind of awestruck, completely silent. “I come home to both of you yelling and now none of you wants to tell me what this fight is about?”

“Sandra,” his father starts, but Eduardo immediately shakes the cobwebs that briefly sheathed his brain and interrupts.

“Mom, can my friend Mark stay with us for two weeks?” He watches her eyes flit back and forth between himself and his father, who he’s not even facing anymore, and says, before she can ask if he has anywhere to stay, “He’s already here - I didn’t even know he was coming, he just showed up.”

She sighs. Eduardo knows she hates taking sides, especially when it comes to him and his father. Her entire career is based on her ability to separate herself from situations and allow the parties involved to work their issues out on their own. She couldn’t call herself a good counselor if she insisted on telling people who’s right and who’s wrong. All she can do is give reasons for why each person is both right and wrong, but whenever she has to stand between her husband and her son, it’s never an easy problem to fix without hurting one of them.

“Eduardo, you know your father doesn’t like company -”

“Mom, he’s here! I can’t just send him to -”

“But,” she intones, raising her eyebrows at Eduardo pointedly and stopping him with a hand, “I understand that if he’s your friend and you want him to stay here, then neither I nor your father should deny you that luxury.”

“Sandra -”

“Roberto, he barely ever has friends come here anymore. It’s not that much of a burden.”

His father finally gets off the couch and now stands a few feet to Eduardo’s left, red-faced, huffing, hands on his hips. “But for two weeks?”

There’s only so much indignation Eduardo can put up with. Thankfully his mother takes this fight on herself. “That’s nothing. I want Eduardo to enjoy the rest of his summer and since he returned from Brazil, he hasn’t really done much of anything seemingly entertaining. Just allow him a two-week reprieve from your No Houseguests policy, Roberto. He’s your son, after all. No need to treat him like a prisoner. This is his home too.”

When his father breathes out a really long sigh that sounds like it has a difficult time leaving his lungs, Eduardo briefly wishes he’ll run out of oxygen and drop like a fly onto the carpet - but he doesn’t really want that, obviously. He loves his father, he actually does, but right now he’s angry and can’t be held accountable for the thoughts that fly through his head.

“So, it’s ok, right?” Eduardo looks to his father for an answer this time, mostly because he wants to see the defeat in his eyes (he really needs to get a handle on his evil half).

His father shakes his head and, through gritted teeth, says, “Yes,” and goes back to his spot on the couch.

“Bring your friend - Mark, you said, right? He’s the one you told us about all the time last year? - down for dinner in twenty minutes, ok?”

Eduardo nods exaggeratedly and wraps his mother tightly in his arms, presses a firm kiss to her cheek. “Thanks, mãe.”

She pats his back, whispers, “No problem, querido,” and playfully ruffles his hair. “Now go. Get ready for dinner.”

- - -

It turns out that Eduardo’s father actually really likes Mark. He laughs at Mark’s snide comments and agrees with his views on the status of the economy. Mark’s pretty clearly a Democrat and Eduardo’s father is a Republican but they don’t butt heads when they discuss how unlikely it is that the Clinton surplus the federal budget was still riding pre-9/11 will have any significant impact on how well Bush does in his presidency. It’s all a matter of how well he handles war and how shallowly or deeply he digs himself into a hole. The public won’t remember the surplus when 2004 comes around; all they’ll remember is how Bush acted when their safety was threatened.

Eduardo doesn’t think he’s ever heard Mark talk like this.

His father asks Mark about his career plans and Mark isn’t sarcastic. He says, “I want to make something that’s not expendable,” and Eduardo furrows his brow because he’s not sure he understands. Mark doesn’t care about money; it’s why he didn’t sell Synapse to Microsoft. Making something that’s “not expendable” would be the complete opposite of not caring about money. He’d need money to run this “not expendable” thing, probably lots of it if the programs Mark’s made before are any indication of how good it could be. But, Eduardo realizes, it’s not really worth an argument now, honestly. Probably not worth an argument ever, or at least not until this thing comes into existence, so he shoves his thoughts aside.

His mother is not nearly as impressed with Mark as his father is but she does smile at him. She seems to like his sarcasm and his dry wit but the conversation about politics and economics bores her about as much as it bores Eduardo (that’s actually kind of bad, he thinks, being an Economics major and all; he should be participating but he’s too shocked at how well the discussion is going without him to contribute). Eventually, she excuses herself to start putting up the dishes and Eduardo is left to be a third wheel all by himself because she doesn’t ask him to help her. In fact, she gives him this look of he’s your friend, you’re going to deal with it when she takes his plate.

He has to force himself not to look too unhappy.

“You really hit it off with my dad,” Eduardo says later that evening, when they’re finally allowed to go back to Eduardo’s room. Mark’s already at his computer again, writing whatever new project he has in mind. Something that will connect students better, help them choose what classes to take, is what Mark explained before.

Mark mumbles, “Yeah, he’s a cool guy,” but doesn’t acknowledge Eduardo any other way.

Eduardo sighs. “I didn’t think you would.”

“Why, because you don’t?”

He blinks. “What the fuck, man?”

All Mark does is shrug.

“Well, fuck you too,” Eduardo growls, and then he leaves his room and goes out to the patio, even though it’s pretty much completely dark now. Mark hasn’t even been here six hours and he’s already frustrating the shit out of him.

The thing that bothers Eduardo the most is that he just lets Mark do this to him. He always has. From the day he met him to now, he hasn’t learned a thing.

He used to think that the only reason Mark ever says anything out loud is to prove to people that he’s not as antisocial as they make him out to be, but, as time marched on, he came to the conclusion that Mark is just a pathological asshole. Period. It won’t matter if they’re in line for pizza or standing outside a frat house waiting for entrance, Mark is predisposed to irritating the hell out of people. He could be saying anything that crosses his mind while they’re waiting for a theater ticket and strangers will turn around at every ridiculous comment - “Wardo, can’t you see it? If a sinkhole opens at our feet, it would swallow the entire university, eradicate our enemies and afford us the luxury of never having to put up with the sheer idiocy of collegiate mêlée ever again.” - and they’ll glare, wrinkle their noses, mutter something obtuse under their breaths.

And after, they’ll turn away, probably blaming Eduardo for allowing Mark in public in the first place. Like he should have known better than to drag the slimy little miscreant out where anybody could see him. Like he could have prevented the bestowal of Mark’s kind graces by smothering him with a pillow before leaving the dorm.

They just don’t understand that where Mark is concerned, Eduardo has absolutely no power. He can’t stop Mark from saying hurtful things or thoughtless things or outlandish things because Mark is like a force field. He’s selectively permeable, willing to let in only the most important opinions, and, a lot of the time, Eduardo doesn’t own one of those.

Well, maybe not a lot of the time. Just often enough that Eduardo feels even more inadequate than the time his father was upset with his SAT score - “Dad, it’s 1,410 points, 190 less than a perfect score. How much more could I have done?” “If you had studied a little harder you could have done a lot more.” - and a knife twists in his gut to make it even worse than that because it’s Mark and he’s supposed to be his best friend, he’s supposed to at least consider what he has to say.

But, in spite of it all, Eduardo always forgives him. He justifies himself by acknowledging that Mark’s only defense mechanism is douchebaggery. Being an idiot is just how he deals with anxiety. It’s in Mark’s genetic makeup; there’s nothing Eduardo can do to change that.

Mark can get away with anything, even if it cuts Eduardo to pieces.

So that’s how Eduardo goes back to his room about an hour later and says, to Mark’s back because Mark doesn’t seem to have turned away from his computer since Eduardo left him earlier, “I don’t care if you and my dad get along. Actually, it’s more favorable this way. Now I don’t have to worry about him getting annoyed with your presence for the next two weeks.”

“I’m glad you’ve realized the advantages of the situation, Wardo. I was hoping you wouldn’t stew over this issue for too long.” Mark looks over his shoulder and raises his eyebrows. Eduardo kind of wants to punch him in the face but then he says, “I wanted to get him off your back so I bullshitted him. I’m sorry if I offended you in any way,” and Eduardo suddenly has the urge to kiss him.

Which is weird, because he’s never felt that before and it should definitely not be happening. However, he can’t stop a blush from climbing up his neck and he ducks his head so he won’t see the look on Mark’s face when he realizes Eduardo’s now beet red. “I guess I appreciate it, then,” he mutters, and turns away to busy himself with getting clean clothes out of his dresser. “You can, um.” He whirls around again and Mark’s back at the computer, only he’s typing carefully this time, in a way that Eduardo’s never seen. He has to stop and catch his breath for a second because suddenly he’s feeling so many things. He can’t make sense of any of them. Swallowing hard past a knot in his throat, he twists a t-shirt in his hands and kicks uselessly at the carpet. “I’m going to shower and go to bed so, uh. Feel free to stay up ’til whenever but I can’t really sleep with you making noise in my room, so -”

“I’ll go to the guest room, yeah,” Mark finishes for him, saving him from more embarrassing stammering, and he grabs his computer and crosses the room in a few strides. He doesn’t look over when he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Instead, he stares at his hand on the doorknob, and after a brief pause, in which he nods to himself like he’s affirming something or other, he leaves, door hissing shut in his wake.

Eduardo lets out a huge breath and stumbles confusedly out into the hall after him, glad the bathroom is in the opposite direction of the guest room so he won’t have to deal with this thing, whatever it is, that’s pressing down on his chest in front of Mark.

- - -

The rest of the week flies by surprisingly smoothly. Eduardo’s father was so impressed with Mark after dinner on Monday that he pulls Eduardo aside on a rare afternoon off, when Mark’s upstairs working on code, to tell him, “Your friend has a great head on his shoulders. You need to keep him around to see if it will rub off on you. He’s got good ideas about business that you could learn a lot from.”

Eduardo huffs and is about to say something smart, something contemptuous along the lines of, “I wasn’t planning on pushing him away just because you like him, father,” but his father adds:

“Don’t screw this up.”

And Eduardo deflates. He doesn’t let Mark know about the conversation later, when they’re both silent in his room, Mark click-clacking away on the keyboard and Eduardo turning the pages of his latest Economist issue. It’s better, he’s sure, to keep it to himself because Mark pretended to be someone his father would approve of to get his father off his back and that’s got to mean something after all. No point in making Mark feel guilty when he honestly had only good intentions in mind.

So when Mark finally powers off his computer for the rest of the evening and looks at Eduardo expectantly, like he can see right through him with that unnervingly steady gaze, Eduardo shoves his magazine aside, even though he’s in the middle of a piece on page 169 about detecting tsunamis, and shrugs. “What do you want to do now?”

Mark raises his eyebrows. “We should get some ice cream or something, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure whatever you’re reading is terribly boring and I’m done with my stuff for now and your house is nice and all, but there’s not much to do once night’s fallen, so we should go out.”

Eduardo snorts, shaking his head, but gets up all the same because he can understand Mark’s logic and he doesn’t really want to be cooped up in his room for the rest of the night anyway. “Fine. But frozen yogurt is better.” Mark makes a face. “I promise. Come on.”

So that’s how they end up on the grass in the backyard, eating vodka floats in really large Yogen Fruz containers, laughing stupidly in really high-pitched tones with their faces pressed against a ratty old blanket Eduardo procured from the garage. Mark’s cheeks are pink and his lips are sinfully red and Eduardo has to look away and sit up to eat some more before he starts to think very dirty things. He can’t have a crush on his best friend, that’s unacceptable, and he’s pretty sure his vodka-fied yogurt understands because it slips down his throat smoothly and doesn’t make him choke when he fleetingly wonders how Mark’s mouth would taste, if it’d be all bitter mango-y or if it’d mix with his own taste and become bitter mango-pineapple-y.

Mark looks at him skeptically but that’s as far as they get into deep questions territory. He seems to be content with Eduardo snappily asking, “What?” and he doesn’t bring it up, not a single time, the rest of the week.

- - -

On Saturday, Eduardo drags Mark out to the beach at eleven o’clock in the morning because they haven’t really done anything exciting yet. At least at the beach there are girls they can look at, water they can swim in, hot dog stands they can buy bad food from. The most thrilling thing they’ve done to date is steal alcohol from Eduardo’s father’s liquor cabinets and that only happened with some arm-twisting on Mark’s behalf, because even though Eduardo knows he can be a bad son (well, he really isn’t; he just has some terrible thoughts every now and then) he doesn’t ever want his father to blame him for anything. And since none of his siblings are here for him to thrust any blame onto, it only makes sense that he’s a little hesitant about lifting anything from his father. But Mark’s always been persuasive and Eduardo’s a sucker for Mark’s logic, so they ended up outside making vodka floats.

Today, though, Eduardo’s determined to show Mark that they actually can have fun in Miami; it’s not all about shopping (they actually haven’t done that yet, but that’s mostly because Eduardo knows there’s no point in taking Mark down to Bayside when he won’t even enjoy himself, yacht tours or not) or hiding in movie theaters or eating Cuban food. Maybe swimming in saltwater and getting a second-degree burn isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, but Eduardo could care less at this point what Mark wants. Cabin fever in the summer is so deplorable it’s beyond the point of return and he has to fix that.

So he refuses to take lip from Mark when they spread out their towels in a spot that’s only partially shaded by the palm tree they manage to find a clear place under. Mark doesn’t look particularly happy to be here but he doesn’t look totally displeased either; Eduardo decides to mark this outing as a victory even though he hasn’t exactly gotten Mark to take off his shirt yet.

“You’re going to burn anyway, you know,” says Eduardo, waving a can of sunscreen in front of Mark’s face.

Mark swats at him and wrinkles his nose. “There’s a reason I brought my hoodie.”

“Why, so you could get heatstroke and maybe die? I don’t think that would convince your parents that you’re very good at taking care of yourself, man.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re the most in danger of losing credibility if I die under your watch.”

Eduardo glares and kicks sand at him. “Put the damn sunscreen on. It’s, like, SPF 1000, so you won’t turn red.”

“Actually, it’s quite clearly…” Mark snatches the can from Eduardo and looks at it closely. “SPF 85. So.”

“Just put it on. It’s easy spray-on sunscreen. It’s not that much of a hassle.”

“I could get it in my eyes.”

“Not if you’re careful.”

“Well, I’m not the most careful person, you know that very well.”

Eduardo huffs, “Forget it, Mark. Burn if you want to but I’m not taking you to the hospital,” and turns away to take off his t-shirt. He hears Mark mutter under his breath, “Fine, have it your way,” and can’t do anything but turn back and smile.

“What are you looking at?”

Shrugging, Eduardo takes back the can from Mark once he’s tossed aside his shirt, gestures for him to spin around and mists him with the spray. Two minutes later, it’s almost as if they’re not at the beach at all because the only thing Eduardo can smell is the overpowering scent of something vaguely coconut-y, a breeze coming off the water blowing sunscreen right back into Eduardo’s face. He coughs and sticks the can under his shirt so it won’t burst in the heat.

“All right, let’s go,” Mark says, not even waiting for Eduardo’s input before he’s starting to walk away. Eduardo reels him back by the elbow, though, and raises an eyebrow at him. “What is it now?”

“You know you have to wait a few minutes, right?”

Mark just blinks.

“Have you never been to the beach before?”

“No, I have been, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, and how long ago was that?”

“Wardo, you can let go of me now.” Mark shakes him off. “And it was on a vacation before I started high school. We went to Norfolk for a week and we did a lot of jet skiing. Or it felt like a lot anyway, since we did it twice. But, yeah, we also went to Washington D.C., so I learned a lot about sunburns that summer.”

“Oh,” mutters Eduardo, rubbing his hand up his arm self-consciously and looking down at the sand. He’s struck with this odd sense of jealousy, like he’s maybe a tad bit envious of Mark’s ability to recall something fun from his childhood. The most memorable family vacation he ever went on was to Miami before they moved here for good, and all they did was scope out places to live and go to a few different restaurants that had awesome kids’ menus he could draw on.

Mark kicks sand at him this time and asks, “Wardo, can we go now?”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s do that,” Eduardo mumbles, even though he just told Mark to let the sunscreen sink in first, and then he kicks off his flip-flops and takes off toward the water, running because the sand’s a little too hot to walk on.

- - -

The thing about swimming is that it’s so easy to get exhausted. They both try to stay in the water for more than a few hours, just floating around on their backs and letting the waves wash them back to shore like they had been doing all along, but Eduardo ends up swallowing too much salt and Mark gets annoyed speaking to the other nosy beachgoers around them, so they go back and crash onto their towels.

Mark, on his stomach, head pillowed on his t-shirt, is the first to fall asleep. Eduardo tries but he’s always been paranoid about falling asleep in public places. He contents himself with downing a bottle of water and reading a book instead. And if Mark makes noises and moves closer to him, well, he doesn’t mind reveling in that either.

He’s pathetic, is what he is, pining over his best friend when he’s never done that before. It doesn’t really make sense that after spending so much time together at Harvard he would only now develop feelings for him. That couldn’t possibly be a good thing, right? He obviously knows about the whole “best friends make the best lovers” thing because Hollywood gets a kick out of that plotline often enough, but there’s no way that can actually be real. Life doesn’t work like a movie; there’s never really an “aha!” moment that leads to clumsy stumbling over to a recently-discovered love interest, just a “well, shit, I’m fucked” moment that leads to obsessive thinking about what the other person would do if you ever made a move on them. That’s not exactly conducive to a working relationship. Plus, he’s pretty sure Mark would have to consider him a best friend too and he’s not completely convinced that he does, surprise visit and impressing his father aside.

And there’s also the fact that he’s just now realizing he’s attracted to his best friend and that’s not really all that acceptable, in his family or anywhere else. It’s causing him way too much stress and if Mark ever did reciprocate Eduardo’s feelings, Eduardo couldn’t reel him into a relationship without feeling guilty for being so confused about everything. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them but least of all to Mark.

So he resolves to let this infatuation thing go because it can only end in disaster anyway. That’s all it can do because when he loves - and he’s already getting ahead of himself and he’s not even in love with Mark or anything, at least not yet, and he doesn’t think he will be (he might hope so but - no he really doesn’t need to be thinking about this) - he loves completely and Mark’s a jerk who would probably use that against him, which would just lead to heartbreak and a terrible parting of ways. Eduardo would really like to keep his best friend, thank you very much, even if it means having to keep quiet about his feelings. It’s not too hard a decision to make, not really.

A girl comes along eventually, wearing a fairly modest bikini but swinging around her beautiful brown hair and effectively jarring him. She crouches beside Eduardo and Eduardo immediately sets down his book to give her his full attention. Her smile is nice, teeth all straight and pearly, and her eyes are unbelievably blue. She looks like she’s stepped out of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.

“Hi,” she says, handing him a piece of bright-colored cardstock with blocky text on it. “I’m Liz.”

Smiling, Eduardo props himself up on his elbow and extends his free hand to her. “Eduardo.”

She giggles - giggles - and shakes his hand. “Um, one of my friends is having a party tonight. It’s just five dollars at the gate and there will be live music for a while. You know, drinks. All for five dollars - you should come!”

He nods down at the flyer and looks back up at her, taming his eyes so they won’t start roaming. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“And bring your friend too. The more, the merrier, right?”

“Guess so,” he laughs, endeared by the rosy color of her cheeks and the flitting of her eyes. He doesn’t think she should be nervous around him, not by a long shot because he’s just Eduardo, he’s harmless. He tries to give her the most reassuring smile he can because he never wants anyone to feel uncomfortable around him, and he says, “We’ll be there.”

Then she looks hopeful for a moment and Eduardo figures a little flirting can’t hurt. He’s got to deal with his feelings for Mark - his Mark Feelings, he thinks he’ll call them - somehow and there really is no better way than being proactive on the dating front to prove to himself that he’s not completely gone on Mark.

She leaves him her number, seven blocky digits written on the back of his invitation with a pen he dug out from his beach bag, and walks away, looking every so often over her shoulder at him and waving goodbye when she gets too far for them to keep staring at each other. Eduardo feels good and turns back to his book, a goofy grin on his face, all ideas about him and Mark out of his head for the time being.

After a while, he looks over at Mark. He’s not snoring or anything, just breathing quietly and blowing the hair on his arms away with every exhale. He looks peaceful, actually, much like the way he looks when he’s coding with a good idea of what he’s going to accomplish or when he was nodding off next to Eduardo the other night after having enough to drink. His skin is so smooth, tinged red by the sun, no creases of concentration anywhere on his face. All Eduardo wants to do is kiss him, trail his lips down the bridge of his nose and skim his fingers across the soft, fair hairs of his eyebrows. Mark’s lips look dry and he wants so badly to kiss him that he almost doesn’t realize he’s leaning down. He jerks back, heart pounding in his chest, and distracts himself by pulling his t-shirt out from under his elbows and lifting Mark’s head to pillow it before he starts to inhale sand.

So much for Operation Flirt with all Girls. It’s clearly not going to help.

He sighs and looks back at his book. The words blur together. Instead of reading, he thinks about the jolt of electricity that passed between his and Mark’s fingers when they passed a bottle of wine back and forth the night before. Eduardo had bought a six-dollar bottle from Publix right at closing and they spent a few hours lying poolside, handing the bottle to each other every couple of swallows, steadily getting drunker. At one point, Eduardo had reached out for it too early and his fingers grasped futilely at the air until Mark finally set the bottle in his palm. He closed his fingers right over Mark’s and either none of them paid it any mind or none of them decided it was worth it to move away. They stayed there, holding hands for a few minutes, until Mark coughed and shook Eduardo off. Eduardo had blushed deeply and taken a long pull. When he looked over at Mark, he’d fallen asleep and it was like nothing had happened.

Mark breaks into Eduardo’s thoughts with a clear, “Wardo?” and Eduardo does his best not to jump five inches off the ground.

“Hey,” he says, schooling his voice into sounding normal. His book has been laying spine-up on his chest for way longer than he’s aware and his eyes feel kind of gritty. He must have fallen asleep. Sighing, he pushes himself up onto his elbows and looks down at Mark. “Nice nap?”

“I think I should be asking you that.” Mark smiles that sarcastic smile of his.

Eduardo finds himself stupidly thinking he wants to kiss it off his face. He shakes head of his thoughts and rolls his eyes at Mark. “Yeah, well, whatever. Listen, we were invited to a party.”

Mark’s eyebrows arch up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s five dollars at the gate but there’ll be live music and lots of alcohol.”

“How’d you hear about this?”

“Oh.” Swallowing, Eduardo sits up and draws his legs underneath himself, Indian style. “A girl came by and -”

“Was she hot?”

The look of genuine interest on Mark’s face throws Eduardo for a loop. “Um, yeah, I guess she was. I, you know, didn’t look at her like that, it would’ve been rude.”

“Right,” Mark says, nodding, and also sits up. Eduardo catches sight of the bright red patch of skin on the back of Mark’s neck before Mark clamps his hand over it and rubs. “So we’re going?”

“Yeah, if you want to.”

All Mark does is blink, as if to say no shit, you dumbass, booze, girls, music, sounds like a hell of a party, and Eduardo actually does feel stupid. What was he even doing, thinking Mark would want to do something alone with him on a Saturday night when there’s a party they could go to with all the alcohol you could want.

He mutters, “Right, ok, yeah. Let’s go to the party,” and picks up his book, bites his lip to keep from frowning.

- - -

Eduardo doesn’t find Liz that night. There are so many people, so many beautiful girls, so many of them with long, brown hair, that he gives up after half an hour of searching and settles for the first girl who jumps at him. She’s pretty, too, like all these other regular beach-goers, the ones that lay out an hour a day just to turn the right shade of bronze before classes start up again and they have to hide in libraries and dorm rooms until their color fades and it’s winter and they can’t do it again. Her hair is sandy blond and there’s a braid of it around her head like a crown that Eduardo really wants to smooth his fingers over, just to feel the perfect texture of it. The dress she’s wearing is the kind that hugs all curves and seems uncomfortable to walk in but it looks so good on her - the yellow of it just really offsets her skin tone and it’s like she’s glowing - that Eduardo ignores his usual distaste for showy outfits.

It helps that this girl, named Mandy, has proven to be pretty smart in the fifteen, twenty, thirty - Eduardo’s bad at keeping track of conversation times - minutes they’ve been talking. She goes to U Miami and is also going to be a junior a few weeks from now. Pediatrics is what she wants to devote herself to, so Eduardo tells her about his sister, who’s actually at that same school now and wants to work in pedodontics. It strikes up a nice aside about how Mandy came to her decision to work with children. If this party were anywhere else, at any other time, she’d be the kind of girl he’d want to date.

But he keeps glancing across the room at Mark every few minutes. Mark, who’s stunted in the social niceties department, seems to be engaging in a non-confrontational discussion with a cute girl. They’re actually laughing and neither of them looks forced doing it. She’s not put off by anything he says and Eduardo has to pull himself out of that train of thought because he doesn’t even want to wonder about the reasons why he’s so interested in the dynamics of Mark and his new friend. He’s had enough of this crush.

He needs something to drink.

“Would you like a refill?” he asks Mandy, unaware if he’s interrupting her or not. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, because she hands him her cup and smiles and that’s all Eduardo needs for confirmation that she’s not hurt by Eduardo’s abrupt decision to cut her off.

The drinks table is so much more peaceful to stand by than that wall. He doesn’t have to look at the back of Mark’s head or the way the girl he’s talking to curls her hand around his biceps and leans up to whisper in his ear. He doesn’t have to think about what it would feel like to touch Mark like that himself, to slip his fingers under the sleeve of his shirt (it’s actually Eduardo’s blue Polo that he’s wearing because he claimed that he didn’t have any more clean, stainless shirts to wear tonight and it looked so good on him that Eduardo couldn’t tell him to put it back on the hanger he stole it off) and touch the sun-warmed skin of his muscles, finger the curves they make in his arm. He doesn’t have to pretend that it fails to annoy him because he can pout down at the punch all he wants for the next few minutes until he has to go back to Mandy.

This much yearning for his best friend isn’t socially acceptable, he’s pretty sure.

When he returns, he pointedly ignores Mark’s existence and hands Mandy her cup with a smile, all teeth bared as not creepily as he can manage.

“So how do I know you didn’t slip something in my drink?” she asks teasingly, voice lilting up in pitch in an adorable impression of a squeak.

Eduardo can’t help but laugh at that, at everything. What’s not to laugh at, anyway? Just because Mark’s actually succeeding tonight on the girl front it doesn’t mean Eduardo can’t enjoy himself, right? He can have fun with Mandy and not feel terrible for it at all. He has no reason to feel terrible for it.

“I mean,” she goes on to add, “guys are kind of notorious for things like that.”

“Do I really look like someone who would do that? Do I look like a rapist to you?”

She giggles. “No, but neither do most of the guys who carry roofies around in their pocket.”

Smirking, Eduardo pretends to dig around in his pocket for said drug and then shows her how empty-handed he comes out. If she’s smart, it probably won’t trick her. “See? Nothing there.”

“Oh, please, you probably only carried one and then threw the bag out before you could get here.”

“All right, all right. You’re right, I did put something in your drink,” he laughs, rolling his eyes and licking his lips. “I just didn’t think you’d want to be with me any other way, you know?”

“And that’s the funny thing about it,” she says, and there’s this knowing look in her eyes as she hands him back her cup. “Some of the guys who do it act as if they can’t score on their own but all they really need to do is sweet talk. Now, just to prove yourself to me, drink from both of those.”

Eduardo shakes his head amusedly and takes sips from each cup in his hand and smacks his lips playfully. “Mm, delicious. Tastes just like a date rape drug.”

Mandy beams at him, lips stretched around her teeth thinly but not in a completely hideous way, just in an endearing way. She takes her drink back and takes a long gulp of it before she says, “I knew you were a decent man, Eduardo.”

“I try my hardest to be, actually, so I’m glad I’ve managed to get that across. It’s kind of exactly what I was hoping for, that you’d fall for my charm.”

“Oh, you might be taking it too far, actually. I’m not charmed. I’m not that easy.”

“That so?” Eduardo grins over the brim of his cup and takes a few steps closer to her, finally bridging the distance between them and setting his hand bravely on her waist. She gives in, hard to get façade faltering, and immediately covers his hand with her own tiny one. Her eyes sparkle and everything goes kind of foggy as Eduardo focuses his gaze on her alone, finally able to get Mark out of his peripheral vision, out of his mind. “I’m not saying you’re easy or anything but you seem pretty well captivated by me.”

Mandy shakes her head slowly, bottom lip caught under her teeth, and moves even closer, so close Eduardo can feel her stomach press against his own and her bare leg touch his. She says, coy words just above a whisper, “Well, I can’t say that you’re unattractive because you very clearly are. And I can’t say you’re a jerk because you’re a total sweetheart.” Her fingers pull on his wrist until his hand’s pressed into the small of her back. “But I can say that I’d really like you to kiss me right now.”

Eduardo gulps. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” Humming, she quickly downs the rest of her drink, takes his and sets both their cups on the mantle behind them.

So Eduardo licks the last bit of punch off his lips and leans down to kiss her, really tentative at first. Even as she slides both her hands up his chest and laces them behind his neck, he doesn’t think he should push her any further. Even as she fits her leg between his thighs and nips at his bottom lip, he can’t make himself take advantage of her - not that he’s taking advantage of her, exactly, since she’s really urging him on. She’s making soft noises and massaging the back of his scalp and whispering, “Come on, Eduardo, we’re just having fun.”

But he can’t, ok, this isn’t how he does things. He can’t make out with this girl - this beautiful, intelligent girl - when dozens of people are milling about and loud music is playing in the background and Mark’s across the room. Just the thought of doing anything unbecoming in public makes Eduardo’s stomach lurch; if there was food in his stomach, he’d probably throw it up. He’s just not built for the public display of affection thing, he never has been. It’s the reason why all three of his high school girlfriends dumped him. They didn’t think handholding was a good enough public gesture and they broke it off to find someone who’d want to make out with them at their lockers between classes.

He can’t stand here and let everyone watch him make out with Mandy and start judging. It’s not fair that people could form opinions about both of them, think she’s desperate and he’s unwilling or something. He’s not unwilling; he just can’t do this in front of everyone. And she’s not desperate, she’s just - well, she’s just horny, maybe, because she’s still making these quietly obscene sounds while all Eduardo is doing is kissing her and rubbing the small of her back with the side of one hand and gripping her waist with the other. There’s nothing too dirty about the situation but it’s getting there.

Worrying if people are watching is what gets him to open his eyes. He darts them around quickly, suspicious, just trying to find anyone giving them a disgusted look so he can have an excuse to put the brakes on this charade and suggest they go upstairs. He doesn’t expect to lock gazes with Mark and he doesn’t expect the reaction he gets from him either. Mark’s staring at him blankly, blue eyes unblinking, in that way Eduardo’s seen before when Mark’s annoyed by whoever he’s talking to. Only now he looks kind of sad too.

That might just be Eduardo’s subconscious talking, though. Wouldn’t it be convenient if Mark were jealous of Mandy, if he wanted to take her place?

It’s a crazy thought and he pushes it down, way down where he won’t notice it anymore.

Ten seconds is how long they stare at each other before Mandy tugs on Eduardo’s hair and Eduardo realizes he hasn’t been kissing her. This is stupid, he thinks, so incredibly stupid. A beautiful girl obviously wants to have sex with him and he’s obsessing over his best friend instead. He closes his eyes as soon as Mark makes a snippy comment to the girl he’s talking to and grabs her cup before he walks away. He doesn’t want to see her reaction because he doesn’t want to wonder what Mark said. All he wants to do is take Mandy upstairs and stop this from getting out of hand.

- - -

Almost an hour has passed since Eduardo last saw Mark. He’s been searching for him for what feels like ages and he hasn’t even caught a whiff of him. The girl Mark was talking to earlier told Eduardo he’d never come back with her drink and then asked him to relay the very typical “you’re an asshole” message as soon as he found him, which is starting to seem like a very unlikely possibility.

So now he’s dialing Mark’s cell phone for the hundredth time and still reaching voicemail. He’s running out of options.

He probably shouldn’t be down here searching for Mark anyway. He should still be upstairs with Mandy, who was so nice and understanding about his unwillingness to go forward. He should still be up there, kissing her breathless and making her feel good. He barely knows her but he feels like he owes her that, just for not being bummed about him not sharing her same desires. She even gave him her phone number, telling him to call her when he’s figured it all out, and the scrap of paper she wrote it on is burning a hole in his pocket right now.

The second he finds a trashcan, he’s going to toss it because no one deserves to be led on and he never plans on using that number for any kind of favor.

Eduardo’s search leads him out into the humid night. The further away he gets from the front door, the more he’s beginning to think that Mark left without letting Eduardo know. It’s not a good feeling, thinking your friend has abandoned you.

That’s probably why he’s so happy he finds Mark sitting on the hood of Eduardo’s car, so he doesn’t have to consider that possibility anymore. (It has nothing to do with the fact that he hasn’t even had the chance to tell Mark about his feelings for him, of course not.)

But he has to pretend to be angry, at least, so Eduardo rounds the front of the car and folds his arms, gives Mark this appraising look and raises his eyebrows. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he says, voice steady.

Mark blinks at him then goes back to taking a pull from his beer bottle. His lips come away wet and Eduardo has to try very hard not to look at them.

When it becomes apparent that Mark isn’t going to respond, Eduardo presses, “Why’d you leave like that?”

Mark shrugs this time.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“I don’t have a fucking problem.” Mark snaps his gaze back to Eduardo and narrows his eyes a little, looks about as menacing as Eduardo has ever seen him.

It hurts a little.

“Jesus. Why don’t you go back to that girl and leave me the fuck alone? I was perfectly fine without you coming out here to haggle me, so.”

Knot rising in his throat, Eduardo does the exact opposite of what Mark tells him and joins him on the hood of the car. Right now, he doesn’t really care if the metal bends out of shape under their weight - not that it should, anyway - because he just wants to get this dilemma out of the way. There was the slightest trace of bitterness in Mark’s words, barely there long enough for anyone who’s untrained in Markisms to notice, and Eduardo needs to figure out where it’s coming from. Mark couldn’t possibly be jealous; it must just be the beer talking.

“Wardo, seriously, there’s nothing to talk about.”

He shakes his head and puts his hand on Mark’s jaw, yanking his face over so that he’ll actually look him in the eyes. If he lies, fine, but at least Eduardo would’ve gotten his attention. “What is this about?”

Hissing, “What is what about?” Mark shakes Eduardo’s hand off and shifts away. The way he draws up his knees and looks morose when he drains the rest of his beer makes Eduardo think of a petulant kid. His bottom lip’s all puffy and Eduardo wants to, very ill-advisedly, lean over and nip it.

“Was that girl not good enough for you or something?”

“What girl?”

“The one you were talking to.”

“Oh.” Mark aims his bottle at the bushes and tosses it. Glass shatters as it slips through the thin branches to the ground. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You must have had a good reason to just walk out on her like that.”

He turns his face to Eduardo, expression blank, and just blinks.

“Ok, fine. Don’t tell me.” Sighing, Eduardo stretches out his legs and looks up at the sky. He wonders if he sounds wistful when he asks, “Wanna get out of here?”

It’s probably just his imagination playing tricks on him because when Mark says, “Yeah,” it sounds kind of wrecked and that’s just not the way Mark talks.

Part Two