Fic: say goodbye (to the world you thought you lived in) (8/9)
say goodbye (to the world you thought you lived in)
Part Eight
-----------------------------------
So this time: this time, he doesn’t take any chances, brings everything back to the source. He’s sitting there, and he wants to stop himself from typing wants to keep his fingers still, but Eduardo has to have something to read, Eduardo has to see his blog entry before he’ll come running in the middle of the night.
And Jesus, Mark should have seen what that meant the first time; he’s a fucking moron, seriously.
“I need you,” he says it, lets the inflection change this time, lets it come out the way it sounds in his head, pressed up tight against his ribs.
And something sparks, something shifts in Eduardo’s gaze when he says it -- “I’m here for you.” -- and Mark just looks at him, breathes in deep more times than he can count; he can feel heavy gazes on his back against his shoulders, wondering what the fuck’s managed to shut him up, but it doesn’t matter -- it doesn’t matter because Eduardo’s face is soft, hopeful, and Mark can see his pulse jump at the jugular, frantic and wanting, and Mark’s giving up everything, Mark’s saying no to the whole goddamn show when he coughs, when he stands and brushes, deliberate against Eduardo’s arm, lets his fingers slide, innocent against Wardo’s palm as he passes, mutters “Follow me,” and leads Eduardo to his room, away from Billy and away from Chris and away from Dustin and the photos, and away from farm animals and from a silly little site where Eduardo would always have the highest ranking, would always decimate the competition.
Where Eduardo would win, every time, regardless of the match. Because Eduardo comes first. He always comes first,
Mark gets that now.
As soon as the door is closed, Mark pulls him in, no longer hesitant, no longer careful -- he doesn’t have to explore because he’s done it, a hundred times, a thousand times, so many places and so many scenes across their history, their future, their present and past, and Mark’s got him turned, pressed flush against his door before he sinks against him, heat on heat, and his lips are slipping, slick and limber against Eduardo’s mouth, licking half-way in every time he closes in a kiss, and Wardo doesn’t flinch or doubt, just gives into him, matches Mark for every nip and swirl of tongue, hands anchored against Mark’s chest, either side of his heart, framing him just so, heavy and insistent and sharp like a brand, owning him in the moment, and Mark drinks the sensation and the taste between their mouths: salt and sweet and too many hours, the tang of alcohol and the bite of spearmint gum.
His hands are at Eduardo’s fly before they tumble onto the bed -- rickety, old, not made for the impact as it groans under their weight but Mark doesn’t care, can’t give a shit about it as he frees Eduardo’s cock, strokes him, haphazard as he grinds, desperate against Eduardo’s thigh, their bodies at odd angles where they landed, but Mark isn’t waiting, Mark doesn’t care. He needs Eduardo.
And Eduardo is here for him.
They both come, too fucking quick, too fucking close, and Mark’s blood’s on fire, his pulse racing, heart set to beat straight from his chest, and Eduardo paws at him, lazy groping until they’re skin to skin, until Eduardo’s arms twine around him and pull him in, pull him close, and Wardo’s heart’s a drum beneath his ear, and Mark relishes it, stronger, fiercer than his own, familiar -- he lets himself drift as it calms, as the sweat between them cools and dries; and they’re beneath the sheets, now, but Mark doesn’t need the covers, he’s so fucking warm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The funny this is, when the envelope from the Phoenix slides in beneath Eduardo’s door, his attention is already occupied. With Mark’s mouth. At his collarbone.
And Mark’s hands. At his belt.
It takes Wardo until the next morning to see the letter on the floor next to Mark’s boxers. Mark tells Wardo that they can reschedule dinner that night (they do dinner together, which is like it usually was, except it’s intentional now, and Mark thinks that makes a fucking enormous difference), so he can go to his punch party, it’s not a problem, whatever.
Wardo kisses him, and says that he doesn’t really think he wants to be a member of the Phoenix, anyway. Not anymore.
Mark grins, really does -- actually smiles, and pushes Eduardo back onto the bed.
They’re both late for class.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark still has that stupid art history course, except he doesn’t have to cheat. He has Wardo.
“Here,” Eduardo points to the page where he’s found the answer to some identification Mark couldn’t finish for the life of him, and Mark -- he just kisses Eduardo like it’s nothing and all things, all at once; a thank you and a given, and everything in between.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Summer comes, and Wardo takes the internship in New York; Mark goes home.
It takes him all of four days to catch a train into the city, to see Wardo.
Mark blows through more money in the next month, just going back and forth, but he doesn’t regret any of it, most certainly not when Eduardo asks if he wants to just stay in his apartment for a while. His single bedroom apartment.
Mark doesn’t even think twice.
And it doesn’t feel ominous, doesn’t feel like time’s ticking, each night he sleeps on Wardo’s chest, or Wardo sleeps on his, or they just curl close, warm against one another in the heat of July -- it feels perfect, slow kisses, lazy sex, handjobs when they’re half asleep, sloppy, desperate. Even the cheap meals they make and share on a second-hand table -- it’s all so goddamned perfect.
Just because Wardo’s there. And Mark doesn’t even try to fight that, or reason it away. He grabs hold of it with both hands this time, holds it so fucking close.
Refuses to imagine what it might mean to let it go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Come fall, Billy agrees to take Wardo’s single, because he’s a reasonable guy, and he’s not going to cockblock Mark when the holy grail of dorm rooms is up for grabs.
It wouldn’t have really mattered, actually, for all that Wardo has ever really occupied his own room when he’d had one; for all that Wardo sleeps alone in a bed anymore.
And Mark -- it’s odd, maybe, because it’s so much more now, so consuming, but he doesn’t fear the end, this time: it’s all too big, too essential, burrowed deep inside his heart, to ever bear losing at all; it’s impossible. He won’t lose this, not this time, if only for the simple fact that this is new, and strong, and epic in incomprehensible ways: he won’t lose this.
He can’t.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That next winter, the HarvardConnection takes the campus by storm. Dustin jumps on board. Wardo gets a profile. Mark doesn’t touch the damn thing, tells the Winkelvii, when they come to him, that he can’t help them, but that he wishes them well.
Mark just doesn’t need them, is all. Mark doesn’t need what they’re offerring, the opportunity they’re giving him.
He has his own, now. He has Wardo, and that’s all the opportunity he really, truly needs/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wardo invites Mark to Florida over spring break, and Mark knows what that means.
When Mark says yeah, yeah, I’ll go, Eduardo grabs him, hugs him tight, and Mark can feel the way he’s shaking, the way Eduardo’s boneless and trembling just a little from the hands outward, inwards, and yes. Mark can do this. Mark will do this.
He can see, now, just how much it means that Eduardo even thought of it, even ventured to ask. That Wardo wants Mark to come home with him.
Mark’s kind of glad he never got this opportunity that first time around; he’d had fucked it up royally, way back then.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When they arrive, when Mark walks through the door to the fucking mansion that is Eduardo’s family home, Mrs. Saverin kisses his cheek and tells him immediately he needs plumping up, goes to get him something from the kitchen. Wardo kisses his cheek when she leaves him, squeezes his arm fondly as he chuckles, as Mark blinks owlishly, and prepares to eat within an inch of his life.
Eduardo’s father is nothing like Mark had expected. He’s got a quick wit and a sharp tongue, but the way he looks at his wife, and at his son when Wardo isn’t paying attention -- doesn’t notice -- gives him away, and Mark thinks he understands; thinks he’s learned something about reading people, about hearing what isn’t said with practice, with repetition and the way Eduardo has his father’s eyes.
There’s genuine care, there; true affection, devotion, fierce protectiveness -- real feeling. Mark knows it when he sees it, now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They graduate together, Eduardo with more credits than necessary, and Mark with a higher GPA than he’d been shooting for. Mark’s mom takes a hundred photos, but there’s one in particular; one where Mark’s brave, and he kisses Eduardo, one hand at Wardo’s cheek and the other at the back of his neck, pulling him in and pressing them close, and Wardo just looks happy, and Mark’s never even seen himself make the kind of expression that he’s wearing in that shot, that’s immortalized on film, but it doesn’t matter, because he is making it, and it’s open and joyful and vulnerable and fucking full, full of something Mark has more words for now, has learned so many ways to recognize and to feel over so many years and so many times, over and over again, revisited and relearned and grown anew.
Mark looks like he’s head over heels, punch-drunk in love, in that picture.
He sets it as his desktop background as soon as his mom sends him the prints.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“How do you feel about New York?” Eduardo asks him, in a new apartment in Brooklyn, a bigger bed than the summer before, a hand on Mark’s sweaty stomach as they lounge together, just breathing. “You know, in the long term?”
And Mark, he doesn’t care where they are, and it’s an interesting realization to come to, though not unsettling. Maybe it should be, would have been in another place, at another time, but not here, or now. It’s simple, obvious, apparent. There’s only one response.
“Good,” Mark answers, gropes in the dark for Wardo’s hand and laces their fingers, brings them casually to rest on his chest. “I feel good about the long term.”
And maybe, for the first time ever, he really, really does.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the end, they decide on New Jersey; the commute’s not ideal, but the NJT to Penn Station is just down the street from them, and it means quiet weekends and being significantly less-likely to be called in after hours if something goes wrong, when there are similarly-qualified employees who live in Midtown and can get to the office in minutes. It lets them have something Mark never imagined he could want, never thought to aspire to.
Mark’s job lets him work from home a whole fuckton of a lot, and given his considerably shorter commute when he does have to go into the office, he eventually takes the bulk of the household duties on, including the arduous task of learning how not to burn all of the food he tries to make. He dicks around for a bit by arranging takeout on plates, as if he’d prepared it himself, but Eduardo’s not stupid, just smirks at him as he calls him out for the attempted trickery, and Mark blushes, lets Wardo kiss the flush into his cheeks all the deeper once they’re done eating, when they leave the dishes stacked up, dirty in the sink. Within a few months, though, he can make pasta without setting off a smoke alarm, which is promising.
“You only love me for my cooking,” Mark laments one night, sarcastically, when Wardo compliments his fettuccine; “You planned this, didn’t you? Snagged me just so you could groom me into the perfect fucking housewife.”
And he’s kidding, obviously, but Eduardo, he looks up at him, all seriousness, all grave-faced. “You don’t fall in love with who you hope someone’s going to become, Mark,” he says, voice low, deep, quiet; “you don’t fall in love with the person you’re banking on them growing into one day.”
Mark swallows hard, feels the beat of his heart, poignant at the ribs, too big for his chest sometimes, like this is all more than he’s made for, than he’s allowed.
“You fall in love with who a person is,” Wardo murmurs, leans over and cups Mark’s face in his hand. “I fell in love with who you are, Mark,” he says, soulful, as he brushes a thumb across Mark’s lips, considers him like the most precious thing in the world; “I’m always falling in love with who you are.”
And Mark -- he swallows hard, nods; he’s a lucky fucking bastard if one ever lived.
And, on top of even that, he’s become something of a decent cook.
Wonders. They really never cease.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It comes out of nowhere.
Or else, it was always coming, from everywhere, and Mark was simply blind.
They don’t even know about it until it’s too late; the symptoms didn’t seem urgent, not at the time, and Mark knows he’s a fool, knows it in the way his pulse skips around, in the way he feels lightheaded, in the way his world shrinks down to the stuttering rush of blood at his wrist and the heavy pressure, the tight squeeze of Eduardo’s hand in his own as the doctor tells them, gives Eduardo the prognosis.
Mark’s world collapses when the words come out, echo, finally penetrate his fog-ridden mind: six weeks.
Mark was a goddamned fool.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark doesn’t remember how they get home, how any of it happens; he just knows when Eduardo’s fingers curl around his shoulder, cup against his chin, warm and strong and fuck, fuck.
Six weeks.
“Mark,” Wardo says, gentle, his voice close, hot on Mark’s skin except that it isn’t, except that Mark’s frozen and he can’t feel anything but the cold, and that’s why he’s shaking, that’s why he can’t stop: it’s just so fucking cold.
“Mark, it’s going to be,” Eduardo starts, but it catches; Mark can feel him swallow, the small tremor of it like a wave through his whole frame; “it’s gonna be okay.”
And Eduardo almost sounds like he can believe that, like he means it, and Mark’s lost, because six weeks isn’t even half of a semester, six weeks isn’t enough time for anything, isn’t enough time to build or keep or hold anything; it’s only enough time to tear apart and splinter, to diminish and destroy. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“No,” Mark says, hoarse with the things building, harsh pressure in his chest; “no, it’s not.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark tells him stories, to pass the long nights in the hospital, when it gets bad enough, when Eduardo’s too weak and Mark’s too heart-sore; Mark tells him stories, about the universes that came before. He leaves out the deaths, because those hit too close, but he tells him, speculates for his entertainment about if they were billionaires, if they lived across the country -- if the world was different, where they might be.
He saves the truth, the first time, for last; tells it as dispassionately as he can, the heartrending details, and it’s selfish, he thinks, as he scoops Eduardo’s bland chocolate pudding into his mouth -- Wardo’s not hungry, and that’s heavy in Mark’s chest; it’s selfish to tell a tragedy to a man on his deathbed, but Mark can’t help himself, can’t stop.
Mark’s still selfish, despite everything.
He finishes, idly recalling the depositions as if they mean nothing -- and frankly, at this point, they really don’t: not compared to what he’s seen, not compared to what he’s come to realize and know; not compared to what he stands to lose -- and Eduardo’s looking back at him, the angle awkward from the bed, but looking, still; like he’s considering the story before he decides to comment on the plot.
“I’d forgive you,” Eduardo tells him, sleepy, even if it’s only just past noon. He’s always tired, these days. “Don’t you know that by now?” and he looks over at Mark, reaches out an arm that trembles in midair before Mark takes it and steadies it, a half to make whole. “I’d forgive you anything.”
Wardo stretches, the pain of it plain on his face, but he reaches, strains to brush the tears on Mark’s face away with his thumb as Mark lets that statement, that impossible revelation permeate him, lets it settle until he’s crying again, too many tears for Eduardo to save on his fingertips.
“If that happened,” Eduardo whispers, and there are tears in his eyes, too, except they don’t fall, Eduardo’s stronger than Mark, always was: “if that ever happened, I’d always forgive you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I’m not leaving you,” Eduardo tells him, halting, raspy, tired -- so fucking faint, but Mark’s used to it, now, and he takes it in, holds the sound so close, desperate to keep it, needing it to stay.
“I don’t know what happens, after,” he confesses, takes a deep, grating breath. “But I know that I’m never going to leave you. I’m never going to stop being near you, stop being with you,” he trembles when he scoots his hand across the bed, can barely lift his wrist across the wrinkles in the sheets, and Mark swallows the constant cry that lives in his throat and reaches, cradles Wardo’s fragile fingers in his own.
“I’ll never give this up,” Eduardo exhales, a dying stream of sound, and Mark knows it’s close, the rattle in his lungs so present, now; an omen in the night. “No matter what, okay?” and there’s a strain, a whine in the sound that breaks what’s left, that sends a stake through the pieces that shudder in Mark’s chest, at the center, in his soul. “Not ever.”
“Wardo,” Mark chokes, and he doesn’t try to hide it when the tears stream down his cheeks, silent, bitter; they’re old friends, now, they’re always there.
“I’m serious,” Eduardo says, so soft. “You’re all I ever wanted,” and Mark shakes his head, screws up his face and reminds himself to breathe, to breathe, but it’s hard, he doesn’t want to.
It’s too fucking hard.
“I love you,” Mark says, because if it all comes down to this, to one thing in the cosmos, one truth within the whole, that’s it. That’s the only thing he needs to know.
“I know, Mark,” Eduardo tells him, and his eyes are still the same, his eyes are still everything they always were, and Mark stares, Mark stares as long as he can into those eyes and Eduardo lets him, looks back steady as his breathing wavers, as Mark processes, tries to wish away the sounds of struggle that come every time that chest rises up, the relief -- too much of it, too close to giving in -- that seeps out when it sinks back down, lets all the life back out.
Mark stares for as long as he can stand, and once his cheeks, the collar of his shirt; once they’re both soaked through, he stares just a little bit longer.
He knows, somehow -- this is his last chance.
“You’ll always be here,” Mark says, before he can stop it, before he can sift the sorrow from his voice as his hand clamps tight, desperate around Eduardo’s, just above where his IV sinks beneath the skin. “You’re my world, Wardo,” he says, lifts Eduardo’s hand and presses a kiss at the center, speaks into the palm and cradles his cheek against the dry skin, paper-thin and translucent to the veins; “you’re,” he loses himself, and Eduardo’s fingers twitch, like he’s trying, like he want to touch Mark as much as Mark wants his touch. “You’re everything,” Mark tells him, knows it’s true in a way he’d never imagined, never dreamed could be. “As long as there is anything,” he whispers against the spaces between Eduardo’s fingers, “there’ll be you.” And Mark wishes that could be enough, but it can’t.
It can’t.
“I love you,” Mark says again, because he doesn’t know what else to do, doesn’t know how to fight this; “I love you, I love you,” and he leans in, clutches Eduardo’s hand in his own close to his chest and presses his lips to Eduardo’s, careful of his oxygen, the useless, precious stream of air giving Mark just a little more time, a few more moments, and Mark can’t take this, he can’t.
He sinks down, suspended from the noose of this moment, this reality; and with a will, a force that Mark doesn’t question or understand, Eduardo manages to lift his arm, slip it up and make a fist, weak knuckles tangled in Mark’s curls as Mark settles, gentle, careful atop Eduardo’s half-heaving chest, shaking, fucking shaking with the way he feels every strangled inhalation, every weary pump of blood beneath his ear, so slow that his own heart stops in the break between sometimes, when it stretches too long, when it scares him too deep; he shakes, tears in two with the way he wants, more than anything, to take Eduardo’s place.
And he waits there, stays where he is and it doesn’t take long; he waits the slight hold on his head goes slack, until the beat halts, until the breaths stop coming; he doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything -- just sobs until the tears are gone, shakes until he can’t feel it anymore, and aches until his heart folds in, and he waits for it, he waits for it.
It never fucking comes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The touch, her touch: it comes slow, a palm settling on his cheeks and soaking, taking on the tears that won’t stop, that threaten to drown him, leave him dry; she’s pulling him in, and he’s shaking, because there’s nothing left, there’s nothing left to do -- it doesn’t matter what he does, how he changes, what he risks: none of it is enough. None of it can save Eduardo, and that’s the clincher, the hidden truth.
Because it’s Mark’s fault, Mark’s the one to blame: Eduardo was alive and they had possibility in front of them, and Mark tossed it away on a whim, on a selfish, childish impulse and buried hurt, the denial of all of the things building and budding in him, the feelings and the way he thought about Eduardo, the way his world narrowed when Eduardo was near. Mark was to blame, Mark had fucked up, and now, no matter where he goes, where he runs -- no matter what he does, some version, some incarnation, some piece of Eduardo gets sacrificed in the crossfire of his selfishness, his need to try again and hold onto something he wants more than anything, but never really deserved. He’s so damn selfish, it’s so damn pointless; there’s finality in her eyes when he looks up, in his heart when he breathes; he knows this is it.
So he asks the only question left; the kind of question you ask when the end is near, because a dying man doesn’t mind the answer, whatever it might be.
“Why?”
She considers him, not cruelly, but curiously, like maybe he was a trial run, maybe he was a guinea pig. “Because people just assume that the universe course corrects,” she tells him, shrugs, simple; “that the best of all possible worlds is out there, somewhere.”
“And you, Mark,” her eyes narrow, her tone hardens. “You had the best of all possible worlds. You had him where it could have lasted, you had him when he would have lived.”
Mark can’t swallow around the way his heart’s thrashing, all the regret swelling up in his throat.
“And you would have been happy, Mark,” she says, sad and accusing, all at once. “You would have been so happy,” and she shakes her head, mournful; “but you did the one thing that I’ve never been able to reconcile. You did the one thing I have never learned to understand,”
Funny; Mark never learned to understand it, either. Mark doesn’t quite know what drove him to do any of it, anymore.
“You aborted a miracle, Mark,” she tells him, condemns him, damns him to hell; “you destroyed the real deal.” And she leans him, looks him dead in the eye: “Because what he felt for you? What he feels for you across every possibility, every thread where you cross his path,” and she’s so close, Mark feels dizzy, feels faint; “it’s love, Mark,” and Mark can’t stand it, because he knows that, he knows; and it’s gone. It’s all gone, he’ll never get it back. He’ll never stop feeling it, giving it, but he’ll always been shorthanded, always be alone with a slow inferno aching in his soul.
“It’s the kind of love that keeps the cosmos turning,” and it was, it is, the cosmos will turn and Mark will endure, suffer the consequences of his mistakes, his shortcomings, the double-edged blessing of seeing what could have been, of knowing the beauty of it, if only for a time; “And you didn’t merely scorn it, Mark, you didn’t just walk away from it, and leave it longing.”
She hisses the last bit, vile and almost betrayed; “You obliterated it,” her teeth are clenched, and Mark flinches away from the venom in the words; “You stared it in the face and you laughed.”
“And that’s unforgivable,” and Mark agrees, he does; “that’s indelible,” and Mark wishes it weren’t, but it is.
“But it’s not irreversible, Mark,” she says, soft, pained, and Mark feels like the universe is coming apart around him, like he’s bearing the weight of the collapse all alone; “it’s not, except that there’s an unfathomable cost to get back the heart you’ve burned,” and Mark only knows he’s crying when she reaches out and wipes a tear clean with the tip of her finger, the cut of her nail like a blade on his skin; “as you know now, all too well.”
It takes Mark a moment to find the breath, the strength to speak.
“If I hadn’t,” he gasps, whispers; “in my timeline, if I hadn’t,” and his throat burns, like something’s keeping him from saying the words, from making them real, because he was wrong, he’s wrong so often: the answer matters, the answer could change the world.
“If we’d,” he rasps, shattered; “could it have worked?”
She stares at him, meaningfully; “What do you think?”
And Mark, he thinks... yes. Yes, it would have. Because it wouldn’t hurt this badly -- he wouldn’t hurt this badly -- if it was for nothing. He wouldn’t feel the loss so keen, if what he was losing wasn’t profound.
“You had to see, Mark, the cost of tossing something so rare, so universally sacred, aside,” he looks down, has to stare down and ground himself, because he’s toppling, can’t find a foothold; “of caring so little when it’s given to you so willingly, so sure.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t. If he had, it all would have happened so differently. He would have happened so differently.
Mark would have been afraid of other things, entirely, if only he’d have known.
“But now,” the woman says, and there’s something light in the tone, something to latch onto, a rope in the dark; “now, I see that you did care, that you did hold it, so close, so dear,” and Mark sucks in air like it’s leaving, too -- chokes around a sob; “you’ve been hurting so hard, and you didn’t even know it.” She leans in, presses cold, infinitely soft lips to his brow as she murmurs against his skin, like a benediction; “You’ve been loving him, the whole time, even if you couldn’t see.”
“And now you do see, Mark,” she tells him, forceful, truthful, and he nods, like it matters, like it makes it any more or less true, like it takes the sting away from a revelation driven home, branded dark, but too late; “now you see,” and she moves to stand, and Mark doesn’t know how to feel; “and the world’s at rights.”
“I can’t,” Mark interjects, suddenly desperate for one last shot; “it won’t matter, if I keep trying? There’s...” he swallows, hard, empty; “nowhere?”
“You can make the attempt, if you want,” she tells him, firm and yet forgiving; “relive every moment, a million different ways, choose left over right at an infinite stream of crossroads, and maybe you’ll find one place where it fits, where there’s no heartbreak, where it’s simple and it’s perfect and you grow old together.”
“But you might not,” and he feels what that means, deep down, and he doesn’t know if he can survive feeling Eduardo’s cold skin close against his lips anymore, his still chest under Mark’s ear; he doesn’t know if he’ll survive it just one more time, let alone another lifetime, another thousand lifetimes, over and over again.
“You can’t have the cake and eat it too, honey,” she whispers, sympathetic but unyielding, and he knows that’s how it has to be, now. Knows that there was no other way that this could end. “Not always.”
“So what’s it going to be?”
“He lives,” Mark chokes, sobs, shakes his head against it all and yet prays with all he has that if anything comes of this, it’s the long and healthy, happy life of Eduardo Saverin.
“Let him live,” because Mark knows, now, that when you love someone, when you truly love someone, you’d give up anything, sacrifice the whole of yourself to keep them safe.
“Please,” Mark begs, gasps for air around tears; “oh god,” and Mark crumbles, for the last time, because he can’t stop, he can’t bear to continue; “just please, please,” and Mark would give the whole of himself for Eduardo, would have any one of the times he watched him die; “let him live.”
Mark would have given everything; so the simple surrender of his happiness, his heart and soul to go back, to return to a place where Eduardo lives and breathes -- it’s nothing.
It’s nothing, in the bigger picture, the grander scheme. It’s an absolute pittance and Mark should be grateful, he is fucking grateful -- even as he tears in two.
And that’s when she kneels next to him, cups his face in her hand and smiles, beautiful, ethereal: except it doesn’t ease anything, it doesn’t matter in the slightest.
“Gladly,” she tells him, full of a feeling he didn’t think she’d allow, and that: that part, more than matters.
That part sets the world back to spinning.
Part Nine --->
// Master Post //
<--- Part Seven
Part Eight
-----------------------------------
So this time: this time, he doesn’t take any chances, brings everything back to the source. He’s sitting there, and he wants to stop himself from typing wants to keep his fingers still, but Eduardo has to have something to read, Eduardo has to see his blog entry before he’ll come running in the middle of the night.
And Jesus, Mark should have seen what that meant the first time; he’s a fucking moron, seriously.
“I need you,” he says it, lets the inflection change this time, lets it come out the way it sounds in his head, pressed up tight against his ribs.
And something sparks, something shifts in Eduardo’s gaze when he says it -- “I’m here for you.” -- and Mark just looks at him, breathes in deep more times than he can count; he can feel heavy gazes on his back against his shoulders, wondering what the fuck’s managed to shut him up, but it doesn’t matter -- it doesn’t matter because Eduardo’s face is soft, hopeful, and Mark can see his pulse jump at the jugular, frantic and wanting, and Mark’s giving up everything, Mark’s saying no to the whole goddamn show when he coughs, when he stands and brushes, deliberate against Eduardo’s arm, lets his fingers slide, innocent against Wardo’s palm as he passes, mutters “Follow me,” and leads Eduardo to his room, away from Billy and away from Chris and away from Dustin and the photos, and away from farm animals and from a silly little site where Eduardo would always have the highest ranking, would always decimate the competition.
Where Eduardo would win, every time, regardless of the match. Because Eduardo comes first. He always comes first,
Mark gets that now.
As soon as the door is closed, Mark pulls him in, no longer hesitant, no longer careful -- he doesn’t have to explore because he’s done it, a hundred times, a thousand times, so many places and so many scenes across their history, their future, their present and past, and Mark’s got him turned, pressed flush against his door before he sinks against him, heat on heat, and his lips are slipping, slick and limber against Eduardo’s mouth, licking half-way in every time he closes in a kiss, and Wardo doesn’t flinch or doubt, just gives into him, matches Mark for every nip and swirl of tongue, hands anchored against Mark’s chest, either side of his heart, framing him just so, heavy and insistent and sharp like a brand, owning him in the moment, and Mark drinks the sensation and the taste between their mouths: salt and sweet and too many hours, the tang of alcohol and the bite of spearmint gum.
His hands are at Eduardo’s fly before they tumble onto the bed -- rickety, old, not made for the impact as it groans under their weight but Mark doesn’t care, can’t give a shit about it as he frees Eduardo’s cock, strokes him, haphazard as he grinds, desperate against Eduardo’s thigh, their bodies at odd angles where they landed, but Mark isn’t waiting, Mark doesn’t care. He needs Eduardo.
And Eduardo is here for him.
They both come, too fucking quick, too fucking close, and Mark’s blood’s on fire, his pulse racing, heart set to beat straight from his chest, and Eduardo paws at him, lazy groping until they’re skin to skin, until Eduardo’s arms twine around him and pull him in, pull him close, and Wardo’s heart’s a drum beneath his ear, and Mark relishes it, stronger, fiercer than his own, familiar -- he lets himself drift as it calms, as the sweat between them cools and dries; and they’re beneath the sheets, now, but Mark doesn’t need the covers, he’s so fucking warm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The funny this is, when the envelope from the Phoenix slides in beneath Eduardo’s door, his attention is already occupied. With Mark’s mouth. At his collarbone.
And Mark’s hands. At his belt.
It takes Wardo until the next morning to see the letter on the floor next to Mark’s boxers. Mark tells Wardo that they can reschedule dinner that night (they do dinner together, which is like it usually was, except it’s intentional now, and Mark thinks that makes a fucking enormous difference), so he can go to his punch party, it’s not a problem, whatever.
Wardo kisses him, and says that he doesn’t really think he wants to be a member of the Phoenix, anyway. Not anymore.
Mark grins, really does -- actually smiles, and pushes Eduardo back onto the bed.
They’re both late for class.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark still has that stupid art history course, except he doesn’t have to cheat. He has Wardo.
“Here,” Eduardo points to the page where he’s found the answer to some identification Mark couldn’t finish for the life of him, and Mark -- he just kisses Eduardo like it’s nothing and all things, all at once; a thank you and a given, and everything in between.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Summer comes, and Wardo takes the internship in New York; Mark goes home.
It takes him all of four days to catch a train into the city, to see Wardo.
Mark blows through more money in the next month, just going back and forth, but he doesn’t regret any of it, most certainly not when Eduardo asks if he wants to just stay in his apartment for a while. His single bedroom apartment.
Mark doesn’t even think twice.
And it doesn’t feel ominous, doesn’t feel like time’s ticking, each night he sleeps on Wardo’s chest, or Wardo sleeps on his, or they just curl close, warm against one another in the heat of July -- it feels perfect, slow kisses, lazy sex, handjobs when they’re half asleep, sloppy, desperate. Even the cheap meals they make and share on a second-hand table -- it’s all so goddamned perfect.
Just because Wardo’s there. And Mark doesn’t even try to fight that, or reason it away. He grabs hold of it with both hands this time, holds it so fucking close.
Refuses to imagine what it might mean to let it go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Come fall, Billy agrees to take Wardo’s single, because he’s a reasonable guy, and he’s not going to cockblock Mark when the holy grail of dorm rooms is up for grabs.
It wouldn’t have really mattered, actually, for all that Wardo has ever really occupied his own room when he’d had one; for all that Wardo sleeps alone in a bed anymore.
And Mark -- it’s odd, maybe, because it’s so much more now, so consuming, but he doesn’t fear the end, this time: it’s all too big, too essential, burrowed deep inside his heart, to ever bear losing at all; it’s impossible. He won’t lose this, not this time, if only for the simple fact that this is new, and strong, and epic in incomprehensible ways: he won’t lose this.
He can’t.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That next winter, the HarvardConnection takes the campus by storm. Dustin jumps on board. Wardo gets a profile. Mark doesn’t touch the damn thing, tells the Winkelvii, when they come to him, that he can’t help them, but that he wishes them well.
Mark just doesn’t need them, is all. Mark doesn’t need what they’re offerring, the opportunity they’re giving him.
He has his own, now. He has Wardo, and that’s all the opportunity he really, truly needs/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wardo invites Mark to Florida over spring break, and Mark knows what that means.
When Mark says yeah, yeah, I’ll go, Eduardo grabs him, hugs him tight, and Mark can feel the way he’s shaking, the way Eduardo’s boneless and trembling just a little from the hands outward, inwards, and yes. Mark can do this. Mark will do this.
He can see, now, just how much it means that Eduardo even thought of it, even ventured to ask. That Wardo wants Mark to come home with him.
Mark’s kind of glad he never got this opportunity that first time around; he’d had fucked it up royally, way back then.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When they arrive, when Mark walks through the door to the fucking mansion that is Eduardo’s family home, Mrs. Saverin kisses his cheek and tells him immediately he needs plumping up, goes to get him something from the kitchen. Wardo kisses his cheek when she leaves him, squeezes his arm fondly as he chuckles, as Mark blinks owlishly, and prepares to eat within an inch of his life.
Eduardo’s father is nothing like Mark had expected. He’s got a quick wit and a sharp tongue, but the way he looks at his wife, and at his son when Wardo isn’t paying attention -- doesn’t notice -- gives him away, and Mark thinks he understands; thinks he’s learned something about reading people, about hearing what isn’t said with practice, with repetition and the way Eduardo has his father’s eyes.
There’s genuine care, there; true affection, devotion, fierce protectiveness -- real feeling. Mark knows it when he sees it, now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They graduate together, Eduardo with more credits than necessary, and Mark with a higher GPA than he’d been shooting for. Mark’s mom takes a hundred photos, but there’s one in particular; one where Mark’s brave, and he kisses Eduardo, one hand at Wardo’s cheek and the other at the back of his neck, pulling him in and pressing them close, and Wardo just looks happy, and Mark’s never even seen himself make the kind of expression that he’s wearing in that shot, that’s immortalized on film, but it doesn’t matter, because he is making it, and it’s open and joyful and vulnerable and fucking full, full of something Mark has more words for now, has learned so many ways to recognize and to feel over so many years and so many times, over and over again, revisited and relearned and grown anew.
Mark looks like he’s head over heels, punch-drunk in love, in that picture.
He sets it as his desktop background as soon as his mom sends him the prints.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“How do you feel about New York?” Eduardo asks him, in a new apartment in Brooklyn, a bigger bed than the summer before, a hand on Mark’s sweaty stomach as they lounge together, just breathing. “You know, in the long term?”
And Mark, he doesn’t care where they are, and it’s an interesting realization to come to, though not unsettling. Maybe it should be, would have been in another place, at another time, but not here, or now. It’s simple, obvious, apparent. There’s only one response.
“Good,” Mark answers, gropes in the dark for Wardo’s hand and laces their fingers, brings them casually to rest on his chest. “I feel good about the long term.”
And maybe, for the first time ever, he really, really does.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the end, they decide on New Jersey; the commute’s not ideal, but the NJT to Penn Station is just down the street from them, and it means quiet weekends and being significantly less-likely to be called in after hours if something goes wrong, when there are similarly-qualified employees who live in Midtown and can get to the office in minutes. It lets them have something Mark never imagined he could want, never thought to aspire to.
Mark’s job lets him work from home a whole fuckton of a lot, and given his considerably shorter commute when he does have to go into the office, he eventually takes the bulk of the household duties on, including the arduous task of learning how not to burn all of the food he tries to make. He dicks around for a bit by arranging takeout on plates, as if he’d prepared it himself, but Eduardo’s not stupid, just smirks at him as he calls him out for the attempted trickery, and Mark blushes, lets Wardo kiss the flush into his cheeks all the deeper once they’re done eating, when they leave the dishes stacked up, dirty in the sink. Within a few months, though, he can make pasta without setting off a smoke alarm, which is promising.
“You only love me for my cooking,” Mark laments one night, sarcastically, when Wardo compliments his fettuccine; “You planned this, didn’t you? Snagged me just so you could groom me into the perfect fucking housewife.”
And he’s kidding, obviously, but Eduardo, he looks up at him, all seriousness, all grave-faced. “You don’t fall in love with who you hope someone’s going to become, Mark,” he says, voice low, deep, quiet; “you don’t fall in love with the person you’re banking on them growing into one day.”
Mark swallows hard, feels the beat of his heart, poignant at the ribs, too big for his chest sometimes, like this is all more than he’s made for, than he’s allowed.
“You fall in love with who a person is,” Wardo murmurs, leans over and cups Mark’s face in his hand. “I fell in love with who you are, Mark,” he says, soulful, as he brushes a thumb across Mark’s lips, considers him like the most precious thing in the world; “I’m always falling in love with who you are.”
And Mark -- he swallows hard, nods; he’s a lucky fucking bastard if one ever lived.
And, on top of even that, he’s become something of a decent cook.
Wonders. They really never cease.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It comes out of nowhere.
Or else, it was always coming, from everywhere, and Mark was simply blind.
They don’t even know about it until it’s too late; the symptoms didn’t seem urgent, not at the time, and Mark knows he’s a fool, knows it in the way his pulse skips around, in the way he feels lightheaded, in the way his world shrinks down to the stuttering rush of blood at his wrist and the heavy pressure, the tight squeeze of Eduardo’s hand in his own as the doctor tells them, gives Eduardo the prognosis.
Mark’s world collapses when the words come out, echo, finally penetrate his fog-ridden mind: six weeks.
Mark was a goddamned fool.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark doesn’t remember how they get home, how any of it happens; he just knows when Eduardo’s fingers curl around his shoulder, cup against his chin, warm and strong and fuck, fuck.
Six weeks.
“Mark,” Wardo says, gentle, his voice close, hot on Mark’s skin except that it isn’t, except that Mark’s frozen and he can’t feel anything but the cold, and that’s why he’s shaking, that’s why he can’t stop: it’s just so fucking cold.
“Mark, it’s going to be,” Eduardo starts, but it catches; Mark can feel him swallow, the small tremor of it like a wave through his whole frame; “it’s gonna be okay.”
And Eduardo almost sounds like he can believe that, like he means it, and Mark’s lost, because six weeks isn’t even half of a semester, six weeks isn’t enough time for anything, isn’t enough time to build or keep or hold anything; it’s only enough time to tear apart and splinter, to diminish and destroy. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“No,” Mark says, hoarse with the things building, harsh pressure in his chest; “no, it’s not.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mark tells him stories, to pass the long nights in the hospital, when it gets bad enough, when Eduardo’s too weak and Mark’s too heart-sore; Mark tells him stories, about the universes that came before. He leaves out the deaths, because those hit too close, but he tells him, speculates for his entertainment about if they were billionaires, if they lived across the country -- if the world was different, where they might be.
He saves the truth, the first time, for last; tells it as dispassionately as he can, the heartrending details, and it’s selfish, he thinks, as he scoops Eduardo’s bland chocolate pudding into his mouth -- Wardo’s not hungry, and that’s heavy in Mark’s chest; it’s selfish to tell a tragedy to a man on his deathbed, but Mark can’t help himself, can’t stop.
Mark’s still selfish, despite everything.
He finishes, idly recalling the depositions as if they mean nothing -- and frankly, at this point, they really don’t: not compared to what he’s seen, not compared to what he’s come to realize and know; not compared to what he stands to lose -- and Eduardo’s looking back at him, the angle awkward from the bed, but looking, still; like he’s considering the story before he decides to comment on the plot.
“I’d forgive you,” Eduardo tells him, sleepy, even if it’s only just past noon. He’s always tired, these days. “Don’t you know that by now?” and he looks over at Mark, reaches out an arm that trembles in midair before Mark takes it and steadies it, a half to make whole. “I’d forgive you anything.”
Wardo stretches, the pain of it plain on his face, but he reaches, strains to brush the tears on Mark’s face away with his thumb as Mark lets that statement, that impossible revelation permeate him, lets it settle until he’s crying again, too many tears for Eduardo to save on his fingertips.
“If that happened,” Eduardo whispers, and there are tears in his eyes, too, except they don’t fall, Eduardo’s stronger than Mark, always was: “if that ever happened, I’d always forgive you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I’m not leaving you,” Eduardo tells him, halting, raspy, tired -- so fucking faint, but Mark’s used to it, now, and he takes it in, holds the sound so close, desperate to keep it, needing it to stay.
“I don’t know what happens, after,” he confesses, takes a deep, grating breath. “But I know that I’m never going to leave you. I’m never going to stop being near you, stop being with you,” he trembles when he scoots his hand across the bed, can barely lift his wrist across the wrinkles in the sheets, and Mark swallows the constant cry that lives in his throat and reaches, cradles Wardo’s fragile fingers in his own.
“I’ll never give this up,” Eduardo exhales, a dying stream of sound, and Mark knows it’s close, the rattle in his lungs so present, now; an omen in the night. “No matter what, okay?” and there’s a strain, a whine in the sound that breaks what’s left, that sends a stake through the pieces that shudder in Mark’s chest, at the center, in his soul. “Not ever.”
“Wardo,” Mark chokes, and he doesn’t try to hide it when the tears stream down his cheeks, silent, bitter; they’re old friends, now, they’re always there.
“I’m serious,” Eduardo says, so soft. “You’re all I ever wanted,” and Mark shakes his head, screws up his face and reminds himself to breathe, to breathe, but it’s hard, he doesn’t want to.
It’s too fucking hard.
“I love you,” Mark says, because if it all comes down to this, to one thing in the cosmos, one truth within the whole, that’s it. That’s the only thing he needs to know.
“I know, Mark,” Eduardo tells him, and his eyes are still the same, his eyes are still everything they always were, and Mark stares, Mark stares as long as he can into those eyes and Eduardo lets him, looks back steady as his breathing wavers, as Mark processes, tries to wish away the sounds of struggle that come every time that chest rises up, the relief -- too much of it, too close to giving in -- that seeps out when it sinks back down, lets all the life back out.
Mark stares for as long as he can stand, and once his cheeks, the collar of his shirt; once they’re both soaked through, he stares just a little bit longer.
He knows, somehow -- this is his last chance.
“You’ll always be here,” Mark says, before he can stop it, before he can sift the sorrow from his voice as his hand clamps tight, desperate around Eduardo’s, just above where his IV sinks beneath the skin. “You’re my world, Wardo,” he says, lifts Eduardo’s hand and presses a kiss at the center, speaks into the palm and cradles his cheek against the dry skin, paper-thin and translucent to the veins; “you’re,” he loses himself, and Eduardo’s fingers twitch, like he’s trying, like he want to touch Mark as much as Mark wants his touch. “You’re everything,” Mark tells him, knows it’s true in a way he’d never imagined, never dreamed could be. “As long as there is anything,” he whispers against the spaces between Eduardo’s fingers, “there’ll be you.” And Mark wishes that could be enough, but it can’t.
It can’t.
“I love you,” Mark says again, because he doesn’t know what else to do, doesn’t know how to fight this; “I love you, I love you,” and he leans in, clutches Eduardo’s hand in his own close to his chest and presses his lips to Eduardo’s, careful of his oxygen, the useless, precious stream of air giving Mark just a little more time, a few more moments, and Mark can’t take this, he can’t.
He sinks down, suspended from the noose of this moment, this reality; and with a will, a force that Mark doesn’t question or understand, Eduardo manages to lift his arm, slip it up and make a fist, weak knuckles tangled in Mark’s curls as Mark settles, gentle, careful atop Eduardo’s half-heaving chest, shaking, fucking shaking with the way he feels every strangled inhalation, every weary pump of blood beneath his ear, so slow that his own heart stops in the break between sometimes, when it stretches too long, when it scares him too deep; he shakes, tears in two with the way he wants, more than anything, to take Eduardo’s place.
And he waits there, stays where he is and it doesn’t take long; he waits the slight hold on his head goes slack, until the beat halts, until the breaths stop coming; he doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything -- just sobs until the tears are gone, shakes until he can’t feel it anymore, and aches until his heart folds in, and he waits for it, he waits for it.
It never fucking comes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The touch, her touch: it comes slow, a palm settling on his cheeks and soaking, taking on the tears that won’t stop, that threaten to drown him, leave him dry; she’s pulling him in, and he’s shaking, because there’s nothing left, there’s nothing left to do -- it doesn’t matter what he does, how he changes, what he risks: none of it is enough. None of it can save Eduardo, and that’s the clincher, the hidden truth.
Because it’s Mark’s fault, Mark’s the one to blame: Eduardo was alive and they had possibility in front of them, and Mark tossed it away on a whim, on a selfish, childish impulse and buried hurt, the denial of all of the things building and budding in him, the feelings and the way he thought about Eduardo, the way his world narrowed when Eduardo was near. Mark was to blame, Mark had fucked up, and now, no matter where he goes, where he runs -- no matter what he does, some version, some incarnation, some piece of Eduardo gets sacrificed in the crossfire of his selfishness, his need to try again and hold onto something he wants more than anything, but never really deserved. He’s so damn selfish, it’s so damn pointless; there’s finality in her eyes when he looks up, in his heart when he breathes; he knows this is it.
So he asks the only question left; the kind of question you ask when the end is near, because a dying man doesn’t mind the answer, whatever it might be.
“Why?”
She considers him, not cruelly, but curiously, like maybe he was a trial run, maybe he was a guinea pig. “Because people just assume that the universe course corrects,” she tells him, shrugs, simple; “that the best of all possible worlds is out there, somewhere.”
“And you, Mark,” her eyes narrow, her tone hardens. “You had the best of all possible worlds. You had him where it could have lasted, you had him when he would have lived.”
Mark can’t swallow around the way his heart’s thrashing, all the regret swelling up in his throat.
“And you would have been happy, Mark,” she says, sad and accusing, all at once. “You would have been so happy,” and she shakes her head, mournful; “but you did the one thing that I’ve never been able to reconcile. You did the one thing I have never learned to understand,”
Funny; Mark never learned to understand it, either. Mark doesn’t quite know what drove him to do any of it, anymore.
“You aborted a miracle, Mark,” she tells him, condemns him, damns him to hell; “you destroyed the real deal.” And she leans him, looks him dead in the eye: “Because what he felt for you? What he feels for you across every possibility, every thread where you cross his path,” and she’s so close, Mark feels dizzy, feels faint; “it’s love, Mark,” and Mark can’t stand it, because he knows that, he knows; and it’s gone. It’s all gone, he’ll never get it back. He’ll never stop feeling it, giving it, but he’ll always been shorthanded, always be alone with a slow inferno aching in his soul.
“It’s the kind of love that keeps the cosmos turning,” and it was, it is, the cosmos will turn and Mark will endure, suffer the consequences of his mistakes, his shortcomings, the double-edged blessing of seeing what could have been, of knowing the beauty of it, if only for a time; “And you didn’t merely scorn it, Mark, you didn’t just walk away from it, and leave it longing.”
She hisses the last bit, vile and almost betrayed; “You obliterated it,” her teeth are clenched, and Mark flinches away from the venom in the words; “You stared it in the face and you laughed.”
“And that’s unforgivable,” and Mark agrees, he does; “that’s indelible,” and Mark wishes it weren’t, but it is.
“But it’s not irreversible, Mark,” she says, soft, pained, and Mark feels like the universe is coming apart around him, like he’s bearing the weight of the collapse all alone; “it’s not, except that there’s an unfathomable cost to get back the heart you’ve burned,” and Mark only knows he’s crying when she reaches out and wipes a tear clean with the tip of her finger, the cut of her nail like a blade on his skin; “as you know now, all too well.”
It takes Mark a moment to find the breath, the strength to speak.
“If I hadn’t,” he gasps, whispers; “in my timeline, if I hadn’t,” and his throat burns, like something’s keeping him from saying the words, from making them real, because he was wrong, he’s wrong so often: the answer matters, the answer could change the world.
“If we’d,” he rasps, shattered; “could it have worked?”
She stares at him, meaningfully; “What do you think?”
And Mark, he thinks... yes. Yes, it would have. Because it wouldn’t hurt this badly -- he wouldn’t hurt this badly -- if it was for nothing. He wouldn’t feel the loss so keen, if what he was losing wasn’t profound.
“You had to see, Mark, the cost of tossing something so rare, so universally sacred, aside,” he looks down, has to stare down and ground himself, because he’s toppling, can’t find a foothold; “of caring so little when it’s given to you so willingly, so sure.”
He didn’t know. He didn’t. If he had, it all would have happened so differently. He would have happened so differently.
Mark would have been afraid of other things, entirely, if only he’d have known.
“But now,” the woman says, and there’s something light in the tone, something to latch onto, a rope in the dark; “now, I see that you did care, that you did hold it, so close, so dear,” and Mark sucks in air like it’s leaving, too -- chokes around a sob; “you’ve been hurting so hard, and you didn’t even know it.” She leans in, presses cold, infinitely soft lips to his brow as she murmurs against his skin, like a benediction; “You’ve been loving him, the whole time, even if you couldn’t see.”
“And now you do see, Mark,” she tells him, forceful, truthful, and he nods, like it matters, like it makes it any more or less true, like it takes the sting away from a revelation driven home, branded dark, but too late; “now you see,” and she moves to stand, and Mark doesn’t know how to feel; “and the world’s at rights.”
“I can’t,” Mark interjects, suddenly desperate for one last shot; “it won’t matter, if I keep trying? There’s...” he swallows, hard, empty; “nowhere?”
“You can make the attempt, if you want,” she tells him, firm and yet forgiving; “relive every moment, a million different ways, choose left over right at an infinite stream of crossroads, and maybe you’ll find one place where it fits, where there’s no heartbreak, where it’s simple and it’s perfect and you grow old together.”
“But you might not,” and he feels what that means, deep down, and he doesn’t know if he can survive feeling Eduardo’s cold skin close against his lips anymore, his still chest under Mark’s ear; he doesn’t know if he’ll survive it just one more time, let alone another lifetime, another thousand lifetimes, over and over again.
“You can’t have the cake and eat it too, honey,” she whispers, sympathetic but unyielding, and he knows that’s how it has to be, now. Knows that there was no other way that this could end. “Not always.”
“So what’s it going to be?”
“He lives,” Mark chokes, sobs, shakes his head against it all and yet prays with all he has that if anything comes of this, it’s the long and healthy, happy life of Eduardo Saverin.
“Let him live,” because Mark knows, now, that when you love someone, when you truly love someone, you’d give up anything, sacrifice the whole of yourself to keep them safe.
“Please,” Mark begs, gasps for air around tears; “oh god,” and Mark crumbles, for the last time, because he can’t stop, he can’t bear to continue; “just please, please,” and Mark would give the whole of himself for Eduardo, would have any one of the times he watched him die; “let him live.”
Mark would have given everything; so the simple surrender of his happiness, his heart and soul to go back, to return to a place where Eduardo lives and breathes -- it’s nothing.
It’s nothing, in the bigger picture, the grander scheme. It’s an absolute pittance and Mark should be grateful, he is fucking grateful -- even as he tears in two.
And that’s when she kneels next to him, cups his face in her hand and smiles, beautiful, ethereal: except it doesn’t ease anything, it doesn’t matter in the slightest.
“Gladly,” she tells him, full of a feeling he didn’t think she’d allow, and that: that part, more than matters.
That part sets the world back to spinning.
Part Nine --->
// Master Post //
<--- Part Seven