TSN: Preliminary (1/2)
Title: Preliminary
Author: des_pudels_kern
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairings: faint Mark/Erica, Mark/Christy, one-sided Mark/Eduardo
Rating: R for mental issues and oral sex
Warnings: Can be considered triggering for people sensitive to certain mental health issues regarding loss of touch with reality and delusion.
Disclaimer: Any characters mentioned here belong to their respective creators; the names of any real people mentioned refer to fictionalised versions of these people. No money is made and no offense intended.
Length: ~20.5k
Summary: Eduardo is not perfect, as far as Mark is concerned he is the perfect friend. He supports Mark, believes in him, and genuinely likes him. He also acts as the voice of reason to Mark's social convention defying genius, pointing out what Mark would rather have ignored and talking him into things. Mark's own personal companion, cheerleader, and conscience, wrapped into a visually appealing package and ready to be pulled out or ignored at will.
Oh, and he's not real.
But Mark is aware of that, he's not delusional. Eduardo is just a crutch until the world catches up with Mark and he doesn't need him anymore.
Mark's got this under control.
A/N: For Alex (sweetmadness379), who loved this 'verse when it was nothing but angst and tags. If this fic is anyone's it's yours. (Sorry it's still nothing but angst.)(No, I lie. I am not sorry.)
My eternal gratitude goes to all those who have encouraged me in this, sadfaced and prodded and poked me and helped me out with suggestions, inspiration, and other assistance, first and foremost to Kelly (yellowwolf5), for handholding and betaing and always being just an email away.
I apologize for the Donnie Darko reference.
This fic was written for thesocialbbang, where it is linked here.
Fanart by badsketches
Graphic and fanmix by sweetmadness379
Preliminary
Mark is different, fullstop. It's a fact of his life he's been aware of for as long as he can remember. He isn't less of a child than the other kids, he is just more clever than them, has different priorities, and doesn't bother to dumb himself down. And he is okay with that, for the most part. Ari calls him boring (but Mark remembers when Ari thought trying to eat her rattle was entertaining so her opinion doesn't matter), Randi calls him a know-it-all (but that just means Mark knows things she doesn't), and his parents call him too clever for his own good and ahead of his age. His parents also tell him that as he grows older he'll find people who are more like him, who'll share his interests and who'll get him. They also tell him to try and make an effort to get along with people but Mark figures that would just be a waste of time; why put work into pretending and being nice now when later he'll meet people who'll like him and appreciate him anyway?
So while Mark is mostly okay with it, he grows up somewhat lonely.
And he doesn't do anything to change that. Until Eduardo.
*
The thing is, Mark has never had an imaginary friend when he was growing up. It's not that he didn't have the imagination needed to create one.
It just never occurred to him to do so.
Imaginary friends are for scared little kids who don't want to be left alone. Mark never was a baby like Ari who pretended her doll could talk, he always liked to consider himself more mature than his peers. He also liked it when people left him alone because then at least they didn't bother him. And he was not afraid.
Mark was fine. Mark is fine. He's alone because he wants to be, and some day he'll get out of here and find people who'll look at him and see what he can do instead of wrinkle their nose and ask why he doesn't want to play baseball or football or any other of those activities that the morons in school considered cool even though a Neanderthal could do them.
It's been years since any of his school's so-called star quarterbacks even got a college stipend for playing football, let alone were ever heard of again after leaving for college (or their uncle's garage or whatever it is jocks do after school).
Neither is Mark like those emo losers pretending they are not desperately clinging to the last steps of the social ladder and who'd do anything to clamber up if only they could. For one, Mark could if he wanted to.
He has also had years of casually comparing himself to the patients he sees enter and leave his mother's office, just in case, and so can be sure that he is not only perfectly okay but also better than them. None of those people are going anywhere in life, and their coping mechanisms seem unrefined, implausible and ineffective.
Until it does occur to Mark that he can take one of those mental crutches, improve it, and apply it to a situation where it can be of actual use.
It's coincidence that he literally runs into his mother's latest screw-up in the hallway, Mark is thinking about ways to optimize his music consumption while wired in to drone out distracting outside noises, and accidentally locks eyes with him. This has happened before, but this time is different. The guy Mark bumped into is not only about Mark's age maybe a bit older, but he also looks different. He's dressed in black and follows the cliché so far at least, but he doesn't evade Mark's eyes, doesn't apologize and flinch like he's ashamed of being caught needing to see a therapist (which is nothing to be ashamed of, Mark knows, his mom has drilled it into all of them that it's okay to need help sometimes, but who wants to be caught needing help, and from someone like Mark's mom who is, well, his mom). Instead the other guy holds himself straight, towering a bit over Mark, and, he doesn't smirk, but somehow he looks at Mark as if he knows some kind of secret that Mark is not privy to, something that makes him stand in Mark's hallway like he owns it and look down at Mark as if he's better than Mark, superior, for knowing this secret.
Mark has never liked not knowing something.
So he listens in. And it's stupid, it's so stupid Mark can't help but snort where he's standing in front of the door, one shoe on his foot and the other in hand in case someone comes by and wants to know what he's doing hanging out in front of his mom's office.
An invisible giant bunny. This variant of the imaginary friend route is usually reserved for kids under the age of ten.
But at the same time there's something about how the guy employs his 'friend' that seems almost reasonable to Mark.
The guy isn't delusional, or a child. He's Mark's age and, judging by his vocabulary, of at least average intelligence. And he's fully aware that his 'friend' is imaginary, he just doesn't care.
Mark kind of likes that.
Take something people think they can judge you for and own it. Take an idea and make it better, make it your own. Fuck what people think.
That is when it occurs to Mark that he could do so much better than a crazy giant rabbit, the idea fleeting at first but rapidly gaining momentum.
Because that's when Mark thinks that he could create the perfect imaginary friend. Realistic, mature, not some fuzzy plush animal come to life. He could actually create a person. Complex, with an actual personality and flaws, interests, hobbies, weaknesses, a real person. Make up a name and a birthday and enter him into the appropriate data bases. He could do that. Make him real enough he could fool the whole world, and have him be everything Mark wants him to be. Just not really real.
And no one but Mark would know.
Yes, Mark can do this. If nothing else, thinking about it will be a project to keep him entertained during class when the teacher is moving through the syllabus at the speed of the weakest student in the room until he finds something else to do.
*
Mark ends up working on his project for almost two years. He builds a construct, adds details, tweaks, perfects, until he knows what he looks like, sounds like, moves like, can call the mental image of him forth between blinks to provide distraction, entertainment, a sounding board for ideas, a voice to spice up internal discussions, the understanding that the imbeciles Mark is forced to interact with fail to provide. An appreciative audience for lack of equal yet impressed and sympathetic prospects in Dobbs Ferry.
And in return Mark provides a name, Eduardo (chosen at random from one of Randi's telenovelas), a backstory, a personality. Eduardo ends up being everything Mark is not: outgoing, a people person (with no one but Mark for company), quick to smile. He's dark to Mark's paleness, slender but well-built to his scrawniness, possesses natural grace and style hat he wastes waving and flailing around needlessly in contrast to Mark's fencing-honed economic movements. There's no point doing this if Mark won't make him a proper imaginary friend and idealize him, after all. Of course Eduardo is interesting and handsome and clever; why else would Mark bother with him.
But at the same time Mark keeps him realistic and consistent.
He thinks about why they can be friends, the reasons, the logistics behind friendship, and makes Eduardo geeky and nerdy behind his fancy clothes. He's polite and eager to please to explain why he ever looked behind Mark's cool demeanor and got to know Mark in the first place, wonders about the reasons and implications behind that and turns the eagerness in a need, coupled with a father who expects an overachiever - Eduardo can be more laid-back than Mark but has no choice but to be just as driven as him, and playing at being grown-up means he has a reason to dress himself with more care that Mark's usual sweats and shirt.
Eduardo is handsome, but not enough to push him into Uncanny Valley territory. He's an echo of Mark, that's the point, but he's also his exact opposite. They both have unruly hair, but where Mark just doesn't care, Eduardo tames his in front of the mirror every morning until he smells like the hair product aisle in the drugstore. He doesn't have Mark's heavy forehead that during a school trip to the zoo had Mark compared to the gorillas, too quiet for the teacher to hear but audible to half the class, but his eyebrows are bushy and heavy enough to provide ammunition for mocking, unlike Mark's own with his fixed glare they wiggle and dance above his eyes though, running through expressions as if for Eduardo to be means to emote. Eduardo's nose is a bit too big (and even though it's racist and stereotypical, with that Mark decides to make him a Jew too, if only because that way he can avoid researching other religious backgrounds and customs), and his smile too wide, but appealingly so, in a way that looks easy and real and enthusiastic, and not like 'you should smile more' and staged family pictures.
Sometime in the middle of this, another corollary of puberty hits Mark and Eduardo looking good becomes interesting for an entirely different reason; unfortunately by then Mark has grown so used to picturing him fully clad that his subconscious refuses to add imagery he tries to adapt from amateur-like porn he found online to Eduardo's repertoire. Turns out that once Mark has established certain personality traits, belatedly changing them feels like cheating and Eduardo ends up defaulting back to the previous version the second Mark fails to keep focusing on the change, so Mark chalks this up as another check in the realism column and stops trying.
The further his experiment progresses, the more he also sees the upside of simply having someone to provide company whenever Mark feels like it. No harm done in using a mental crutch for comfort and to practice social interaction with until Mark gets out of there and can replace him with the real deal.
Because Mark knows Eduardo isn't real.
*
When he enrolls at Harvard in the fall, so does Eduardo.
It's only logical to take him; he could be useful. A distraction for when Mark gets caught up in his own mind with class projects, a way to spend his time when he's bored, and a test of what he can and can't do. A trial run. A safe environment to test theoretical scenarios and effective ways of running through social interactions (because Mark is aware that his people skills could use practice) without having to go and invest valuable time on actually interacting with people who don't interest Mark and don't have anything to offer to him.
Getting into the system and Eduardo established turns out to be nothing more than ridiculously tedious - no challenge, just virtual paperwork. Still, it takes only a measly couple of hours compared to the months of apprehension Mark has spent getting himself into Harvard the old-fashioned way(not that Mark ever doubted he'd get in, he had the grades, wrote the essays, didn't even bother applying anywhere else, just, something could have happened, like an administrative mistake), which he can't help but feel frustrated with even more in hindsight. If he had known how easy they make it to just write someone in, he wouldn't have bothered wasting all that time on applying and waiting for the (inevitable) acceptance letter himself.
Eduardo frowns at him, brows pulled together in concern, and tells Mark that it's good he didn't, he could have gotten himself into serious trouble, banned before he even took his first class for trying to cheat his way in, and just out of laziness.
Mark puffs out an annoyed breath because Eduardo always worries too much, even over completely hypothetical problems. "Not when they don't catch me, Wardo."
Then he turns away from where Eduardo sits on his bed with a newspaper open on the stock market page in his lap and back to his computer. Someone downstairs must have turned on the TV, and a voice talking about air pressure and temperature falls drifts into the room, drowning out the sound of rustling paper at Mark's back.
Mark has this under control.
*
College for the most part turns out to be disappointingly simple, both intellectually and socially, which just goes to show that these days everybody gets into Harvard as long as they know the right people.
One of Mark's roommates reveals himself to be an econ major though (for the time being - he apparently reserves the right to change his major every month depending on what he feels like, or what movie or tv show he's just gotten into - Mark thinks there might be a connection but it's none of his business so he doesn't bother paying attention).
Mark spends two hours trying to quiz Dustin on his classes, teachers, and on which of them are busy enough that in theory they won't notice if a student never actually attends as long as his name is on the class list, all the while withstanding the combination of Dustin's conspiracy theories and Chris' hovering over his shoulders like a self-appointed disapproving guardian angel (and what does he care, they don't even know each other, they just room together), then Eduardo drops by and reminds Mark of the hopes they have for being at Harvard and finally getting ahead in life.
Mark decides to listen to him and take a risk, so he pulls out his laptop and shows them.
Eduardo flops down on the couch, turning his back on the three of them crowded around Mark's desk, and sighs, insisting with a slight, petulant whine that this is not what he meant. Mark can see him nervously drag his fingers through his hair and has to push down the thrill at the obvious, realistic emotion he's managed to put into Eduardo's voice and focus on his roommates again.
Chris disapproves. He doesn't come out and say so (probably doesn't want to appear judgmental, he seems the type to whom it matters to be accepting and open-minded and shit), but he does.
Dustin thinks Eduardo is the best thing since the invention of beer (which mankind invented pretty much as soon as they started farming and hey maybe it was actually the other way around and first came beer and then the decision to settle down, farm, and make more beer, which would make beer the reason for civilization, and maybe Dustin should change his major to early history or paleoethnobotany or whatever and find out - yeah, it didn't take Mark long to figure out that Dustin is kind of different himself) and offers to put his name on the attendance sheets to all his moderately crowded classes even if that means he is going to actually have to make his 8 o'clock ones every single time because someone like Eduardo wouldn't skip class to sleep in.
Chris visibly perks up at this and joins them in a night of creating a fitting schedule for Eduardo, based on the classes they cover between the three of them, his interests, and what information several hours of searching the internet reveal about which lecturers will not catch up on an invisible student in their class room.
*
Chris bows out again the next morning, sobered up, but Eduardo forbids Mark to blame him for having morals and half-jokingly adds that he hopes some of them might rub off on him. Mark informs Eduardo that he does have morals and that there is no harm in theoretical intellectual games and then tunes him out.
*
Two weeks into college, Mark decimates a TA who must have slept with the professor to get her job because she doesn't know enough about Greek literature to sit in, let alone teach anything. Five days later, someone asks Mark to sit an exam for him in exchange for money.
Mark declines without insulting anybody's intelligence too much.
Another three days later, he has a selection of classes appropriate for Eduardo where the professors don't take attendance and put lectures and requirements online, logs into the class lists and retroactively signs Eduardo up for them, and makes arrangements for discreet and qualified older students to write Eduardo's papers and sit his exams in exchange for personal IT support and other computer-related services. With that Eduardo is independent from Mark's and Dustin's schedules and set to not fail out of his classes because Mark has better things to do than to write papers on business theory.
*
Mark is scribbling on a pad of paper and twirling a Red Vine in his free hand to clear his head. He should be working on a problem for class, but instead he was running ideas for a private project by Eduardo. Who actually should have been in class at that time he has a couple of ideas he wants to run by Eduardo and is waiting for him to get out of class.
The ping of an incoming email makes him look up, and when the significance of the sender sinks in his stomach drops and the spit in his mouth seems to evaporate and remanifest in cold sweat on his face.
Then a camera clicks and Dustin starts to snort laughter, red-faced with amusement at his own clever joke. "God, Mark, your face!"
As soon as the humiliation stops burning and Mark can look at Dustin again without wanting to strangle him, he concedes that it is a genius idea (and also the first indication Mark has seen that Dustin actually qualifies for an Ivy League college education) and makes Dustin give him the password.
Then he changes it because they agree dust1nrulz isn't a very Eduardo kind of password and it isn't as if Eduardo could change it himself.
They also make Eduardo a MySpace account. Several unsuccessful hours fiddling with Photoshop and browsing the web for stock pictures from South America later, they decide to not upload a photo.
"But what if people think he's fat and pimply and has greasy hair?" Dustin watches Mark delete the last of their failed attempts at manipulating pictures they'd found online to fit Mark's specifications, sighing in exaggerated disappointment that Mark didn't agree to change the way Eduardo looks to fit one of the photos instead.
"What? I'm not! And my hair looks great! Almost. Give me two minutes?"
"It's not as if we can just take a picture." Mark raises his voice enough that Eduardo can hear him in the bathroom where he is skeptically eyeing himself in the mirror and hovering careful fingers over his coiffed hair to check for strays.
"Jeez, Mark, okay, no need to yell at me. Anger leads to the dark side of the force. Besides, with a name like 'Eduardo Saverin' everybody will probably just assume he's a mysterious Latin lover. Are you sure you don't want to put some Spanish songs on his playlists? Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, that stuff?"
"No, Dustin! Mark, don't let him, he's going to make me sound like some sleazy wannabe-Casanova, and besides, I'm Brazilian, we speak Portuguese!"
"He's not mysterious; he listens to top ten pop songs, like a teenage girl."
"Hey!" Eduardo squeals like the girl he is but doesn't come out of the bathroom.
"I know you are just too lazy to research music and want to have an excuse to only copy the charts whenever you update his profile, Marky Mark," Dustin starts on the tail end of Eduardo's squeal, "but I actually kind of like that idea. It makes him look dorky. Aww, it's almost like he's one of us!"
Yeah.
*
Dustin keeps sending Eduardo funny YouTube clips and cat macros, Mark lets Eduardo act as a go-between at the times when Dustin is annoying the shit out of him and he knows he's about to say something he shouldn't, and Chris eventually gets roped into semi-public online conversations about dinner plans and which movies to watch.
*
Mark also makes Eduardo a LiveJournal and lets him follow his blog.
"That looks awful, can't you give me a nicer layout?" Eduardo has this habit of hovering behind Mark and looking at his screen over Mark's shoulder, always just a bit too far to the side for Mark to feel Eduardo's breath on his face when he leans down and speaks.
"It's functional. If you want something else, change it yourself." Mark half-turns his head and blinks a couple of times, until the bright afterimage of the opened tab that has been burned into his retinas disappears and Eduardo fills his vision instead, skin paler than usual in the cold light of the screen, close enough that Mark can see the short single hairs that make up his eyebrows, could count the eyelashes that dip down and rise again with each blink. Eduardo's lashes are full and long, dark like his hair and only at the very tips bleached almost invisible by sun and time. Mark knows this but can only ever see it when he's close enough to Eduardo that his nose would brush his cheek if he turned that second half.
"But I can't don't know how!" He never does twist around all the way though.
Mark shrugs and friends Eduardo back.
*
A couple of nights ago they ordered Chinese. Dustin insisted on each of them opening their fortune cookie one after the other and with great ceremonial. The slip of paper in Mark's cookie had a couple of lottery numbers on one side, and the words 'love can move mountains' on the other. Mark dropped it on his desk where it landed in the empty space between his keyboard and his screen and forgot all about it.
It's a stupid proverb. Who can actually move mountains. People cannot do that no matter how strong they are.
No one can move mountains.
But sometimes Mark looks up at Eduardo who's always, always there when Mark wants to see him and thinks that Eduardo would, for him. That, for Mark, Eduardo would move mountains if he could.
Then again, Eduardo can't even move a piece of paper, no matter how much time Mark spends watching his reflection in the screen of Mark's laptop as Eduardo sits on Mark's bed, covers dipping under his weight not, and turns the pages of one of his econ books.
It's weird how Eduardo prefers paper books and print-outs to computer files - he can't have that from Mark, if given the choice Mark will always choose the more versatile, adaptable electronic version over hard-copy. Maybe he somehow prefers the tangible texts to somehow make up for the fact that he himself is not.
Eduardo's physical copies are inconvenient too; Mark always has to clear them away. His room isn't that big and he keeps moving them around but they are always in the way again soon enough. He takes care not to wrinkle the papers and dog-ear the books though because Eduardo always looks disappointed when he does.
*
Dustin gets a new phone for his birthday and gives Eduardo his old one.
He also loudly mourns the fact that Eduardo isn't real because then they could set him up with Chris and the two of them could talk about Prada and hair care and being responsible young adults all day and groom each other in Eduardo's hypothetical single (Eduardo is listed as having a room at Elliot and is in their facebook, again without a photo, but if anyone cared to look they'd find that the room he's assigned to doesn't exist; a typo or glitch in the system should anyone notice) every time Chris blocks the en-suite bathroom for more than two minutes.
Once at a party, he uses Eduardo to chase off this guy Chris has been flirting with who even Mark can tell is an ass. Mark approves of the ass not schmoozing around anymore, let alone dropping by Kirkland later, but he doesn't like the way Dustin implies that Eduardo might harbor a crush on Chris. It feels off. Eduardo isn't gay. Because if he were he'd have a thing for Mark, he'd have to, and he doesn't, Mark has tried, but he just can't twist Eduardo into looking at him like that even though he should because it's still Mark pulling the strings and how pathetic is it that his own creation doesn't love Mark the way he wants him to. Not that it matters. Because ultimately there is no Eduardo and his theoretical sexual orientation or attraction is irrelevant.
They all get beyond drunk that night.
*
As it turns out, Eduardo doesn't need a photo on his MySpace; he still has more girls wanting to be his friend than Mark. Mark clenches his fists and bites his lip hard enough to taste copper when he first notices.
Eduardo bumps his hip into Mark's shoulder where he is standing beside his chair.
"Don't think about it, Mark, those people don't know you like I do."
Mark doesn't care what people think of him-
Eduardo bumps his hip into Mark's shoulder where he is standing beside his chair.
"Don't be jealous, Mark, I still like you best."
He isn't jealous of Eduardo, that's not what this is about. Eduardo isn't even-
Eduardo ropes him into going out that night, and when Mark is standing morosely at the bar nursing his beer, he digs his elbow into Mark's side, points out a girl, and tells Mark to go over and be nice, Mark, stick to uncontroversial topics, compliment her.
Her name is Erica. She says she has an early class, which sounds like an excuse, but she does give Mark her number and then kisses him, quick and dry but on the mouth, when they say goodbye outside of the pub.
Eduardo is there to grin proudly at him when Mark turns around.
*
Whenever he's been drinking or is just hanging out at the suite at the end of the day and he doesn't care about the wrinkles or what he looks like, Eduardo's shirt sleeves are rolled up, and his shirt open two buttons instead of one. Sometimes, very rarely, three buttons, revealing smooth tan skin. Mark thinks it's stupid that Eduardo doesn't seem to have any chest hair; he's Latin-American, darker-skinned and thick-haired. He should have body hair. But Mark never really grew any, and somehow neither did Eduardo. (Mark relativises that maybe Eduardo waxes. No, strike that maybe, probably. He's vain enough. Eduardo is kind of shallow. Only when it comes to his own looks though, not with Mark.) And maybe Eduardo's got hair where Mark can't see. Mark's subconscious must assume that more than three buttons where someone can see him would be out of character for Eduardo, because if his libido had any say then Eduardo would have stopped wearing shirts, and possibly even pants, some time ago (hello puberty).
So Mark watches Eduardo wave his hands , sometimes catches the glint of light reflecting off his family ring (a dark gold, matted a bit by age, some kind of S-design Mark assumes, but he's not sure what a family ring should look like exactly and so never gets a good look at it) out of the corner of his eye and looks up to see Eduardo sitting on his bed, legs crossed and feet in black or grey socks and somehow naked, flailing his arms around agitatedly about something that is most of the time only important in regards to how Mark can egg him on and keep him moving. Then Mark can take a break from where his brain has been running in circles and twisting itself in knots and instead lets himself be distracted watching the play of muscle under the skin of Eduardo's bare arms and the way emotions chase each other over his face in a succession of expressions the likes of which Mark can't remember ever seeing on his own face (he even tried once, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and reenacting adjectives, but his face just doesn't work that way). Eduardo buries his hands in his hair and clenches and cards through it until his fingers must be sticky with product and the strands begin to stand on end and surround Eduardo's face like a dark halo.
Mark's own hands inevitably twitch to reach out and tug at it, but he curls them into fists and wills Eduardo to let himself fall back onto Mark's bed so Mark doesn't have to look at his stupid hair anymore and, with the temptation out of sight, Mark can turn around and go back to coding. He glances at the small digital clock at the bottom of the screen before wiring in. Eduardo inevitably tells him that he's not a computer, he needs to sleep. No matter how shortly after that Mark saves and goes to bed, Eduardo is always gone already, the blankets rumpled but cold (Mark never makes his bed, they are always rumpled), not one brunette hair ever left on the sheets.
When he's being casual, or when it's cold enough he has to wear something over his thin suit jacket because Eduardo gets cold easily but not cold enough for his black (of course) pea coat, Eduardo wears his Northface jacket. (Eduardo wears a lot of black. That way Mark doesn't have to wonder if he's getting the colors right.)
Well, it is Eduardo's in that Mark bought it because he thought it was something Eduardo would wear, and he wanted something of Eduardo's he could actually touch. So sometimes he pictures Eduardo wearing it. And sometimes it's Mark who wears it, when he's feeling lonely and Eduardo isn't wearing it himself at the time (which he never is of course). He'll slouch into it, properly, because it's too large. He bought it a size too big so it would fit Eduardo's taller frame. It'll be soft and warm and always smell a bit of washing powder because Eduardo is the kind of person who launders his clothes regularly, even his jackets (because Mark doesn't allow himself to wear it that often), and underneath that he imagines he can smell what he imagines Eduardo would smell like.
*
"It's just harmless fun."
"It's not, he can get into serious trouble for this, we all can. This has passed harmless long ago, Dustin. He's paying people to take tests for him,…"
"No money is changing hands, and it's not for classes he is taking himself!"
" He is paying people to take tests for him; legal concerns aside, this is not healthy."
"It's just a game, Chris."
"It's not… He's talking to him. Actual conversations where he says something out loud, listens, and then replies to something he pretends Eduardo said."
"Okay, so Mark's a bit odd and likes to soliquilize, many people do, that just makes him eccentric."
"Dustin, he brought his girlfriend back here and she asked us if there was a reason she hasn't met the elusive Eduardo yet. I'm worried."
"Yeah, but, he's got a girlfriend now, that's good, right? He's sitting with us now, he's going out, not like in the early days when he barely came out of his room."
"Half the time he's going out with Eduardo."
"Chris, he knows he's not real. It's harmless. Look. Mark. Mark? Mark!" Mark's headphones are pulled from his ears, de-muting the conversation he had chosen not to engage in while the white noise of the dorms hits him like a breaker wave eating away at his carefully maintained concentration. His head swivels around to demand them back, with a disapproving glare, if necessary with words even though for those to come out intelligible, he'd have to move one hand from his keyboard and take the Red Vine he's sucking on out of his mouth (it's a scientifically proven fact that rhythmic movement of one's mouth and jaw increases blood flow and with it oxygen delivery to the brain) and he comes face-to-face with a Dustin who is too close for comfort, Dorito-flavoured breath an invisible cloud around him. "You can have your headphones back in a minute, you just have to answer one question. You know Eduardo's not real, right? Hey, stop looking at me like that, I'm trying to help! Just answer the question."
Mark waits five more seconds, hoping for the unlikely but not impossible development that Dustin will just drop Mark's headphones and go away again, but he doesn't, something probably related to Chris standing behind him, arms crossed determinedly, so Mark bites off the end of his Vine and pulls the rest out with a wet pop. "Yes, Dustin, I know Eduardo is not real."
"See, Chris, it's all cool." Dustin looks back at Chris, and Mark tries to surreptitiously swipe back his headphones, but Dustin pulls the hand holding them away and waves to Chris with it.
"Mark, I just think maybe you should talk to someone…" Chris sounds so earnest, like he cares, and it reminds Mark of his mom and of all the ways she knows to say that it's okay to be different while implying that it isn't okay to be how Mark is and he should try to be less himself. It's a tone that never fails to make Mark feel like he's in kindergarten again, being chastised for something without anyone able to explain to him why what he did was wrong. Mark can't remember what it was he did back then, but the memory stayed with him, having to stand there and listen to his teacher and his mom not make sense. Maybe he was simply too young to properly comprehend any possible explanation, but all the experience left him with was the impression that people didn't want to understand you, they just wanted you to say you understood them.
"I know he's not real because I made him up, I picked his name out of one of my sister's telenovelas, got his birthday off a random date generator online, put him into AEPi to see if any of those idiots would notice they've got a fake member, I know, okay." Mark does get what Chris is saying, he agrees to the basic facts. Chris just doesn't see the entirety of Eduardo and the benefits of Mark utilizing him to his full potential.
"Yes, I get it, it's just that it seems a bit like you are using him as, as -" Chris shrugs, hands floundering as if he could pluck the words to say what he means without offending Mark out of thin air. Mark doesn't know what words Chris would like to use, but he knows what he means. He thinks Eduardo is a giant imaginary bunny. He doesn't get it, at all, and Mark is fed up with it, with him, with everything. He didn't have to tell them about Eduardo in the first place, he took a chance, he thought they'd understand, but instead all Chris seems to think is that Mark needs fixing.
"God, Chris, I know you like your psychology class; you keep analyzing every movie we watch, and it's not subtle how you always just happen to 'accidentally read out loud to yourself'," Mark mimes one-handed airquotes with his Red Vine, "every time Freud comes up in your books, but, sorry to disappoint, I did not manifest my internalized parental agency in the shape of a fictional Brazilian econ major, okay."
Mark snaps his laptop shut, picks it up, snatches his headphones out of Dustin's hand, and goes to work in his room as he should have done to begin with anyway. He pushes the door closed with a foot behind him.
"Hey, are Chris and Dustin fighting? I heard voices."
Mark shrugs and more falls than sits down on the bed, landing on some of Eduardo's papers that are scattered over the covers.
"Hey, watch out, that's due tomorrow!" Eduardo's brows rise in distress and he tugs weakly at the sheets, careful not to pull too hard and rip the paper.
"Wrinkles in the paper don't actually change the words, Wardo." Mark shifts, pulls the papers free, and drops them in Eduardo's lap. "Besides, it's a print-out and we've got the file, if it bothers you that much I'll let out a new one for you."
"Nah, it's not that bad, I can smooth the pages. So, what was that outside?"
There's still that vertical line in the middle of Eduardo's forehead, a tell that always shows up when Eduardo is faintly unhappy about something he doesn't want to admit, but Mark offered ergo there isn't anything else he can do to mollify Eduardo's need for formal perfectionism and he lets it go. Instead, he opens his laptop and lets himself properly watch Eduardo while it flickers out of sleep mode.
Eduardo is sitting propped up against the headboard, his legs stretched and crossed at the ankles, one sock-clad foot bobbing up and down to make up for the rest of his body having to sit still, pants wrinkled out of their perfect crease so for once he almost looks like he belongs in Mark's room. He peers back at Mark curiously over his textbook, and Mark finds his eyes drawn down and following the movement of his Adam's apple as he swallows, long neck covered in short, shadow-dark late-night stubble.
It's late and Eduardo is relaxed here in Mark's room, letting himself go as much as he is capable of (which is still more put-together than Mark at his most dressed-up). Three two three buttons open.
"Mark?"
"Nothing." Super-ego Mark's ass. Then again if only Mark's id were calling the shots, Eduardo would have ceased to wear shirts long ago. "I just need to work in peace."
"Mark." Eduardo lowers his book and sits up, the line between his brows deepening and face crunching unhappily. "We talked about this. Having friends is a good thing, remember?"
"That's what I've got you for." He does. That was the whole point of Eduardo, wasn't it? To be what Mark wanted him to.
"Yes, but I don't count I don't have to be your only friend. You can have other friends too."
Mark bites back the urge to spew I know that, I'm not stupid at him, or to balk at the implication that he might think he'd need Eduardo's permission, because he knows Eduardo doesn't mean it like that but is quick to sulk whenever Mark says something he doesn't mean and instead starts back in on his code.
"Mark." One of Eduardo's feet pokes Mark in the back, his toes bony even through the thin cotton-polyester mixes of his socks and Mark's t-shirt. "Hey, Mark. I know it's scary. But it's worth it. They like you. They care about you. That's good, right?"
Mark hunches his shoulders and keeps typing.
A sigh, and then Eduardo is next to him, book gone, shoulders almost (always almost) brushing.
"Show me what you are working on?" And this is why Eduardo is the perfect conscience. He cautions Mark to slow down when he's about to go too far, tries to make him feel remorse after he did something he shouldn't have, and best of all he's forever impotent to stop Mark.
Mark angles the laptop to give Eduardo a better view and talks, hands flying and pointing out things they both know Eduardo doesn't get but still nods at, until Eduardo's eyes shine again and he smiles that too-big smile at Mark's fingers pointing at the screen while Mark watches the fair tips of his eyelashes. Mark knows he has somewhere else to go in the back of his head, like a window that's been minimized and technically out of sight but still visible in the task bar, but he doesn't remember that he's supposed to be meeting Erica until Eduardo reminds him that he needs to save and get going if he doesn't want to be more than fashionably late.
*
Every time Mark watches Fight Club, which happens a lot because he kind of imprinted on it when it came out (but if anyone asks he's read the book first) and Chris and Dustin enjoy the social commentary respectively mind-blowing genius that is David Fincher, every time Mark sits there on the couch, sipping his beer or taking a drag of the joint they are handing around if Billy's been by (no one knows who Billy is, he just followed Dustin home one day, smoked up their room, and three hours later stated that, dude, he totally thought Dustin was someone else and he doesn't know any of them, but somehow he keeps dropping by and Dustin religiously greets him with man, you just missed Wardo again, have you two even met yet?), he thinks that Eduardo is so much better, subjectively and objectively better, than Tyler Durden.
For one, he's actually good for Mark's health by nagging him into not sustaining on tuna and Red Vines alone but accompanying Eduardo to the dinner hall every now and then to eat what he calls real food (read_ vegetables that have not been drowned in salt or accidentally landed on Mark's pizza) and does not try to get Mark to mutilate himself. He even insists Mark put on socks so he doesn't freeze off a toe or two before their outings. Unlike Tyler he also doesn't try to isolate Mark from the people around him but encourages him to socialize and go out with Chris and Dustin every now and then (and more and more often, now that Mark has figured out that his roommates are actually pretty okay company and won't ditch him for other friends, he will go without Eduardo urging him into joining and only tell Eduardo about where he's been after he's back, the way Eduardo's never been on one of his dates with Erica with him after that first tine he encouraged Mark to talk to her, because it wouldn't feel right, Mark is fine without him, and anyway if he ever did need Eduardo he'd be right there).
And when Mark gets around to changing the world (which he will; he knows it makes him sound like he's still ten years old and desperate for recognition but he will leave his mark) then it'll be better than Palahniuk's unnamed protagonist's anti-capitalist mayhem, and not only because Mark has no intention of becoming a homegrown terrorist.
Mark will change the world deliberately and consciously, in control and in charge of his actions. Mark will accomplish great things, not some figment of his imagination.
Eduardo can give moral support, he can be a sounding board and a test audience and a cheerleader (which is a thought that leads to deliberation on Eduardo's flexibility - Eduardo could do yoga every morning, he seems the type), but Mark never needed Eduardo to get anything done for him.
Mark doesn't need Eduardo, for anything.
(But sometimes he watches Eduardo bend over to pick something up or tries to will him to undo that third button in the middle of the day and admits to himself that, if Eduardo were real, he'd want him.)
Of course he still uses Tyler Durden as a pseudonym to troll. If people are too culturally ignorant to notice, it's their own fault.
*
"Mark!"
Mark blinks, hand still on the doorknob, stops mid-step, and considers turning around and walking straight back out of the suite again. He's got his laptop in his backpack; if Dustin is in one of his agitable moods Mark might have more success wiring in sitting outside in the hallway.
"Mark, come in, look at this!" Dustin is grinning like the lunatic Mark knows he is, hovering over his chair in front of his own computer, moving up and down like he's trying to get up and pull Mark in but can't tear himself away from whatever is on his screen that's so exciting. "Eduardo is getting punched by the Phoenix!"
Mark is next to Dustin and shoulders him out of the way without a second thought. Dustin windmills his arms and lands on the floor in some twister-like contortions after losing the fight against gravity, but Dustin can and has often enough fallen off chairs, beds, desks, dressers, and, once, memorably, Chris' closet, without anyone else having touched him, so Mark is confident Dustin has amble practice in falling without seriously injuring himself.
Open on Dustin's desktop is an email. That's it. Just an email from one of Eduardo's MySpace friends who says that 'the club' has noticed him, and that he thinks Eduardo would be a good match for them, and if Eduardo's never thought about pledging before now would be a good time to start. Winking emoticon. How mature.
Mark snorts halfway through the email, and again when he's done, because the whole thing is ridiculous. That, or he'll have to think about how pathetic it is and what it says about the clubs (about himself) and none of them will even look at him twice but they've noticed a guy who isn't even real never even goes to any of his classes or shows at a party he's invited to or appears anywhere except as a friendly, polite, pictureless sock on the internet and a collection of more or less realistic anecdotes planted around Kirkland and AEPi by Mark and Dustin and occasionally confirmed by Chris and Billy.
Then again, Eduardo has no opinion of his own, he never disagrees with anybody, he never demands anything, steals anyone's seat or drink or place in the spotlight. Of course people like him, he's incapable of raining on anyone's parade. So, in a way, it makes sense for him to get punched. Which he hasn't yet, which he won't, because there isn't even a place to deliver the letter to.
(But the fact remains, Eduardo could get in, Eduardo could at least get the chance to get in, and Mark remains that loser geek who's only good enough for people when they want something from him, and even then they never waver in their belief that they are better than him.)
Dustin, it turns out, wants to throw Eduardo a party, or par-tay as he puts it, and has been fruitlessly trying to infect Chris with his need to celebrate all evening, first wanting to surprise Mark with party hats and party horns and then waiting for Mark to come home and support him into dragging Chris into the party nonsense and away from the tv. "Come on, Mark, our boy is becoming somebody! Somebody people notice! Or are curious about because no one has ever seen him and are trying to lure out in the open by baiting him with the promise of possibly painful, definitely humiliating hazing rituals!"
Dustin wiggles his eyebrows.
"No." Mark grew up with Ariel's puppy eyes, Dustin's got nothing on her.
Dustin gapes. "Sacrilege! Chris, Mark refuses to party!" He clambers up from where he's still been sitting at Mark's feet and stumbles towards Chris and the couch.
Chris, pinnacle of reason and maturity, stretches out one pajama-clad leg and stops Dustin's approach with his naked foot while upping the volume of the program he's watching.
"One last time, Dustin. Shark Week. Be quiet or go bother someone else. And if you go, go around the couch and don't get between me and the tv." Then he pushes Dustin, who clutches at his heart in betrayal, away with a flex of his leg. Sometimes Chris is Mark's favorite , despite his do-gooder tendencies. This is one of those times.
Dustin turns back to Mark and whines. "But why not?"
"You don't throw someone a party until they've actually gotten in." Mark deletes the email from Eduardo's inbox with two quick clicks.
"Yeah, but that's not going to happen, is it, Mark? I mean, we might be able to get a real club to punch him, but I'm sure they'd notice if he never showed up to any of their events." Dustin settles visibly now that he seems to have accepted that there's no party in his immediate future and plops back down on the ground next to Mark.
Mark goes into Eduardo's folder of recently deleted emails and clears it.
"Hey, Mark? You okay?" Chris apparently prioritizes his roommates emotional well-being over Great Whites, because instead of staring at the tv, he's now looking at Mark, remote resting on his lap instead of in his hand for immediate volume adjustment when necessary.
"Great." It's still at least half an hour too early, but Mark is not in the mood to sit around the suite and endure Chris' pitying looks, so he slings his backpack over his shoulder and gets up. "I'm meeting Erica."
Mark doesn't need pity. He's fine. If anything he's proud of Eduardo, because Eduardo is Mark's creation and thus Eduard's accomplishments are Mark's too.
"This is good right here. Don't be disappointed if you don't get any further."
With that, he leaves Eduardo standing outside the suite and goes to meet his girlfriend. The Phoenix might prefer Eduardo to Mark but at least Mark's the one who has a girlfriend, and Eduardo only caught the Phoenix' attention because of Mark and won't be able to keep it whereas Mark hasn't had Eduardo present for any of his dates with Erica after that first time he talked to her.
*
Two hours later Erica dumps him. Over final clubs.
In hindsight, perhaps he should have taken Eduardo on his dates, because maybe then Erica wouldn't have dumped him like, like he is nothing, was nothing. But Mark has always refused to bend over backwards to please people and pretend to be someone he's not, so even if Eduardo had been there Mark wouldn't have done or said anything different. He apologized, for Christ's sake. Fucking stairmaster.
*
Mark needs the algorithm. His mind is churning with rejection and anger and bitterness, and he knows he's overreacting because he wasn't really that much into Erica anyway. She didn't get him, she goes to BU, it doesn't (shouldn't) come as a surprise that she didn't get him, she's a bitch, and she isn't even hot enough to make up for that. But he's still irrationally affected by this, and he needs a distraction, he needs -
"Wardo."
Eduardo walks in the moment Mark thinks of him, of course he does, Eduardo is always there when Mark needs him. Perfect timing. Eduardo is here and he has the key ingredient.
"You and Erica split up? It's on your blog." Eduardo stands, lounges in the door, and he's overdressed for a Thursday night really, it's two a.m., but he looks good, he looks distractingly good, tall and golden and dark well-cut clothing that flatters his light tan and lean build. Even though it's cold outside his throat is bare, shirt buttons opened generously to form a V that makes his neck appear even longer than it is, revealing the lines of it and the dip at the base where his throat meets his collar bone.
"Wardo?" Chris sits up on the couch.
Eduardo ignores him. "Are you alright?"
"I need you."
"I'm here for you." Eduardo's eyes soften, and with a small nod he leaves the door frame and positions himself at the edge of Mark's desk, close and turned towards Mark and open, available. The statement is unnecessary though, Mark thinks. Of course Eduardo is here for him.
"Mark, are you okay?" Dustin touches Mark's shoulder from where he's been standing behind him watching what's happening on Mark's screen.
"I need the algorithm," Mark clarifies. He turns to Dustin, because Dustin is demanding his attention, and Mark doesn't want Dustin to distract him from Eduardo, Eduardo is here for a reason, Mark's working on something here. "I need the algorithm Wardo used to rank chess players."
Eduardo frowns, brows pulling together and wrinkles rising on his forehead, like he is confused, or maybe Mark is, like one of them is missing a point here. (Mark knows the frowning won't leave any trace behind, that as soon as Eduardo relaxes his face it'll be young and smooth and flawless again, but he feels an irrational urge to be able to reach out and rub the lines away.) "Are you okay?"
Why do people keep asking him that? "We are ranking girls."
"You mean other students?" Eduardo turns his head to look at where Facemash is open on Mark's screen, making the lines of his neck shift. There's cautioning in his words when he speaks again because he is Mark's voice of inconvenient but necessary reason, his very own Jiminy Cricket, only more realistic, with an online presence and friends and classes of his own, and more handsome. "You think this is such a good idea?"
"I need the algorithm." It's a good idea, it's a great idea. It was meant to distract him from Erica, but now Eduardo is here and is doing that, so it'll distract him from the fact that he can't touch Eduardo. Mark wishes Eduardo would stop hovering uselessly and do something. He's beginning to feel like a broken record, and aren't his friends supposed to coddle him right now or something?
"Right, Wardo's chess players, I remember! Chris, Chris, chill, it's cool. We had Wardo do this thing that's perfect for this!" Dustin waves into Chris' direction and Chris looks vaguely skeptical but then the tv makes a noise and he turns back to his sharks while Dustin faces Mark's impatience again. "Hey, man, no reason to get pissy. Just because I remember it exists doesn't mean I've got it memorized. I've never even looked at it, you're the one who got it from that guy on the message board!"
"Mark…" Eduardo half-whines, cringing and distorting his face in a way that's probably supposed to convey support of Mark in general but disapproval of the idea of ranking girls. Whatever. He'll give in.
"I need the algorithm." Mark repeats, trying to put into his voice that he needs this, needs it more than he needs Eduardo to tell him why this is a bad idea because Eduardo isn't here as his conscience now, he's here to distract and support. So Mark implores without saying please because he hates to beg and Eduardo knows that, he knows, and he never makes Mark say it because he's a good friend like that.
"Well, if you need it then why don't you stop telling me and go get it? You are the one who's got all of Wardo's stuff saved on his drive." Dustin plucks his beer off the desk and flops back down on Mark's bed.
And Eduardo, Eduardo looks at Mark for a moment longer, hesitant and sad as if he's the one who got dumped, his jaws clench, bones dancing under the skin of his face in a movement Mark thinks he should be able to feel if he could put his hands on the side of Eduardo's face, and then he stands half a room away and is writing on Mark's window, marker white against the darkness outside. He doesn't even have to think about what he's writing, he just does like this comes to him as easily as coding does to Mark, fingers gripping the marker and hand gliding up and down in a motion that travels up his arm and flexes his back, jacket pulling tight across his shoulders and pulling tight in turns. He talks as he writes, explaining the algorithm to Mark, already converted from chess players to girls, the letters and numbers the same Mark has on his screen where he just opened that particular file like Dustin suggested, but Eduardo and his smooth movements and calm voice and elegant white-on-dark lines are beautiful, they are gorgeous.
The small black signs on Mark's screen might be easier to read and a necessity but they can't compare to Eduardo.
"Give each girl a base rating of 1400. At any given time "Girl A" has a rating R-a and "Girl B" has a rating R-b."
"When any two girls are matched up there's an expectation of which will win based on their current rating, right?" They can't compare to the picture Eduardo makes, writing with his back turned to Mark.
"Yeah." Eduardo turns, facing Mark but pointing at the window. "And those expectations are expressed this way." And they can't compare to Eduardo looking at Mark, reacting to him, engaging with him.
Mark nods, small at first, then more sure. He doesn't care if it's a bad idea, this here feels good.
"Let's write this."
He puts down his beer and goes back to work, incorporating Eduardo's algorithm into his code.
*
In the end, Mark winds up with six months of academic probation. He probably shouldn't have written that thing about the farm animals. But even if Eduardo doesn't agree it's worth it in the end, because through Facemash he meets the Winklevosses, and they inspire him to create thefacebook. And this? This will be it. Mark changing the world.
*
The moment Mark enters the basement room AEPi hold their parties in, he instinctively wants to turn and walk out again. AEPi is never a collection of Harvard's best and brightest, but holding a Caribbean Night-themed party to a loop of Niagara Falls is low, even for them. Chris and Dustin are here though and Mark is brimming with excitement, and he needs to share this with someone, someone who'll recognize the importance of this, the potential, someone who'll… and there's Eduardo. Perfect.
Eduardo comes over with this ridiculous little shimmy that's embarrassing and dorky and definite proof that Eduardo is not a dancer no matter how much natural grace he possesses, but Mark refrains from pointing this out to him because Eduardo looks happy to see him and excited, and for a moment Mark thinks that he himself feels a bit like dancing too. He doesn't though, he drags Eduardo out to talk in private because this will be Mark's own final clubthis will be their own final club is big and he wants Eduardo on board.
"Wardo, I think I've come up with something." Mark might actually be shaking with nervous energy, and Eduardo is trembling and restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other which he shouldn't because Mark hasn't told him yet and he has no reason to be so keyed up, but with him it's probably from the cold.
"I got punched by the Phoenix." Or because of that. Eduardo beams at Mark, and it doesn't matter anymore because Mark's idea will be so much better, but Eduardo getting punched is kind of awesome if he thinks about it, so Mark indulges him and doesn't hog all the spotlight.
"Are you kidding?" It's an exclamation of surprise, those count as support.
Eduardo looks almost coy, but that could just be Mark's wishful thinking taking advantage of the way the light throws half his face in shadows. "No, I mean it's just the first of the four steps but they slipped the invitation under your my your door tonight, whoever did it must have been too lazy to walk over to Elliot in the cold. I go to the first punch party tomorrow-"
No.
"You are not getting into the Phoenix; you are not real." Eduardo flinches as if Mark had kicked him. "I know that, but you don't have to say it like it's my fault."
"Eduardo, you can't go to the punch." Eduardo flinches as if Mark had kicked him. "But Mark-"
The Phoenix shouldn't even matter anymore. He'll let Eduardo have this for now; he's not getting further than this anyway, and once thefacebook gets going he'll see how insignificant the final clubs really are. "You got punched by the Phoenix."
It seems like a safe enough statement. Eduardo shrugs, but that faint line appears between his brows so Mark knows he is not entirely happy with Mark's lack of reaction. Mark blows out a breath. Eduardo will get over it, he always does, and anyway it doesn't matter.
"It was, it was probably just a diversity thing. I'll ride that horse until they notice I don't exist… What did you want to talk about?"
They shouldn't not let Eduardo in simply because of that. Of course Mark has cottoned on by now that the final clubs don't have the best criteria when it comes to selecting their prospects and are just not that important when one is looking past college and at the bigger picture, but, Eduardo is still better than most of them, they should be honored Mark let them have him, and maybe he could figure out a way to-
"Mark? You said you've come up with something."
Right. Right. Thefacebook. Mark doesn't need the Phoenix, and neither does Eduardo. They don't want them? Their loss.
So Mark opens his mouth and lets go, puts in words what has been running through his head since the Winklevosses explained their dating site to him in that bike room, and Eduardo stands and nods and soaks it up while Mark throws his flood of words at him.
"-would be exclusive. You'd have to know the people on the site to get past your own page, like getting punched. Wardo, it's like a final club except we're the presidents."
It's a good idea, a great idea, and Eduardo tells him so.
*
Part 2
Author: des_pudels_kern
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairings: faint Mark/Erica, Mark/Christy, one-sided Mark/Eduardo
Rating: R for mental issues and oral sex
Warnings: Can be considered triggering for people sensitive to certain mental health issues regarding loss of touch with reality and delusion.
Disclaimer: Any characters mentioned here belong to their respective creators; the names of any real people mentioned refer to fictionalised versions of these people. No money is made and no offense intended.
Length: ~20.5k
Summary: Eduardo is not perfect, as far as Mark is concerned he is the perfect friend. He supports Mark, believes in him, and genuinely likes him. He also acts as the voice of reason to Mark's social convention defying genius, pointing out what Mark would rather have ignored and talking him into things. Mark's own personal companion, cheerleader, and conscience, wrapped into a visually appealing package and ready to be pulled out or ignored at will.
Oh, and he's not real.
But Mark is aware of that, he's not delusional. Eduardo is just a crutch until the world catches up with Mark and he doesn't need him anymore.
Mark's got this under control.
A/N: For Alex (sweetmadness379), who loved this 'verse when it was nothing but angst and tags. If this fic is anyone's it's yours. (Sorry it's still nothing but angst.)(No, I lie. I am not sorry.)
My eternal gratitude goes to all those who have encouraged me in this, sadfaced and prodded and poked me and helped me out with suggestions, inspiration, and other assistance, first and foremost to Kelly (yellowwolf5), for handholding and betaing and always being just an email away.
I apologize for the Donnie Darko reference.
This fic was written for thesocialbbang, where it is linked here.
Fanart by badsketches
Graphic and fanmix by sweetmadness379
Preliminary
Mark is different, fullstop. It's a fact of his life he's been aware of for as long as he can remember. He isn't less of a child than the other kids, he is just more clever than them, has different priorities, and doesn't bother to dumb himself down. And he is okay with that, for the most part. Ari calls him boring (but Mark remembers when Ari thought trying to eat her rattle was entertaining so her opinion doesn't matter), Randi calls him a know-it-all (but that just means Mark knows things she doesn't), and his parents call him too clever for his own good and ahead of his age. His parents also tell him that as he grows older he'll find people who are more like him, who'll share his interests and who'll get him. They also tell him to try and make an effort to get along with people but Mark figures that would just be a waste of time; why put work into pretending and being nice now when later he'll meet people who'll like him and appreciate him anyway?
So while Mark is mostly okay with it, he grows up somewhat lonely.
And he doesn't do anything to change that. Until Eduardo.
*
The thing is, Mark has never had an imaginary friend when he was growing up. It's not that he didn't have the imagination needed to create one.
It just never occurred to him to do so.
Imaginary friends are for scared little kids who don't want to be left alone. Mark never was a baby like Ari who pretended her doll could talk, he always liked to consider himself more mature than his peers. He also liked it when people left him alone because then at least they didn't bother him. And he was not afraid.
Mark was fine. Mark is fine. He's alone because he wants to be, and some day he'll get out of here and find people who'll look at him and see what he can do instead of wrinkle their nose and ask why he doesn't want to play baseball or football or any other of those activities that the morons in school considered cool even though a Neanderthal could do them.
It's been years since any of his school's so-called star quarterbacks even got a college stipend for playing football, let alone were ever heard of again after leaving for college (or their uncle's garage or whatever it is jocks do after school).
Neither is Mark like those emo losers pretending they are not desperately clinging to the last steps of the social ladder and who'd do anything to clamber up if only they could. For one, Mark could if he wanted to.
He has also had years of casually comparing himself to the patients he sees enter and leave his mother's office, just in case, and so can be sure that he is not only perfectly okay but also better than them. None of those people are going anywhere in life, and their coping mechanisms seem unrefined, implausible and ineffective.
Until it does occur to Mark that he can take one of those mental crutches, improve it, and apply it to a situation where it can be of actual use.
It's coincidence that he literally runs into his mother's latest screw-up in the hallway, Mark is thinking about ways to optimize his music consumption while wired in to drone out distracting outside noises, and accidentally locks eyes with him. This has happened before, but this time is different. The guy Mark bumped into is not only about Mark's age maybe a bit older, but he also looks different. He's dressed in black and follows the cliché so far at least, but he doesn't evade Mark's eyes, doesn't apologize and flinch like he's ashamed of being caught needing to see a therapist (which is nothing to be ashamed of, Mark knows, his mom has drilled it into all of them that it's okay to need help sometimes, but who wants to be caught needing help, and from someone like Mark's mom who is, well, his mom). Instead the other guy holds himself straight, towering a bit over Mark, and, he doesn't smirk, but somehow he looks at Mark as if he knows some kind of secret that Mark is not privy to, something that makes him stand in Mark's hallway like he owns it and look down at Mark as if he's better than Mark, superior, for knowing this secret.
Mark has never liked not knowing something.
So he listens in. And it's stupid, it's so stupid Mark can't help but snort where he's standing in front of the door, one shoe on his foot and the other in hand in case someone comes by and wants to know what he's doing hanging out in front of his mom's office.
An invisible giant bunny. This variant of the imaginary friend route is usually reserved for kids under the age of ten.
But at the same time there's something about how the guy employs his 'friend' that seems almost reasonable to Mark.
The guy isn't delusional, or a child. He's Mark's age and, judging by his vocabulary, of at least average intelligence. And he's fully aware that his 'friend' is imaginary, he just doesn't care.
Mark kind of likes that.
Take something people think they can judge you for and own it. Take an idea and make it better, make it your own. Fuck what people think.
That is when it occurs to Mark that he could do so much better than a crazy giant rabbit, the idea fleeting at first but rapidly gaining momentum.
Because that's when Mark thinks that he could create the perfect imaginary friend. Realistic, mature, not some fuzzy plush animal come to life. He could actually create a person. Complex, with an actual personality and flaws, interests, hobbies, weaknesses, a real person. Make up a name and a birthday and enter him into the appropriate data bases. He could do that. Make him real enough he could fool the whole world, and have him be everything Mark wants him to be. Just not really real.
And no one but Mark would know.
Yes, Mark can do this. If nothing else, thinking about it will be a project to keep him entertained during class when the teacher is moving through the syllabus at the speed of the weakest student in the room until he finds something else to do.
*
Mark ends up working on his project for almost two years. He builds a construct, adds details, tweaks, perfects, until he knows what he looks like, sounds like, moves like, can call the mental image of him forth between blinks to provide distraction, entertainment, a sounding board for ideas, a voice to spice up internal discussions, the understanding that the imbeciles Mark is forced to interact with fail to provide. An appreciative audience for lack of equal yet impressed and sympathetic prospects in Dobbs Ferry.
And in return Mark provides a name, Eduardo (chosen at random from one of Randi's telenovelas), a backstory, a personality. Eduardo ends up being everything Mark is not: outgoing, a people person (with no one but Mark for company), quick to smile. He's dark to Mark's paleness, slender but well-built to his scrawniness, possesses natural grace and style hat he wastes waving and flailing around needlessly in contrast to Mark's fencing-honed economic movements. There's no point doing this if Mark won't make him a proper imaginary friend and idealize him, after all. Of course Eduardo is interesting and handsome and clever; why else would Mark bother with him.
But at the same time Mark keeps him realistic and consistent.
He thinks about why they can be friends, the reasons, the logistics behind friendship, and makes Eduardo geeky and nerdy behind his fancy clothes. He's polite and eager to please to explain why he ever looked behind Mark's cool demeanor and got to know Mark in the first place, wonders about the reasons and implications behind that and turns the eagerness in a need, coupled with a father who expects an overachiever - Eduardo can be more laid-back than Mark but has no choice but to be just as driven as him, and playing at being grown-up means he has a reason to dress himself with more care that Mark's usual sweats and shirt.
Eduardo is handsome, but not enough to push him into Uncanny Valley territory. He's an echo of Mark, that's the point, but he's also his exact opposite. They both have unruly hair, but where Mark just doesn't care, Eduardo tames his in front of the mirror every morning until he smells like the hair product aisle in the drugstore. He doesn't have Mark's heavy forehead that during a school trip to the zoo had Mark compared to the gorillas, too quiet for the teacher to hear but audible to half the class, but his eyebrows are bushy and heavy enough to provide ammunition for mocking, unlike Mark's own with his fixed glare they wiggle and dance above his eyes though, running through expressions as if for Eduardo to be means to emote. Eduardo's nose is a bit too big (and even though it's racist and stereotypical, with that Mark decides to make him a Jew too, if only because that way he can avoid researching other religious backgrounds and customs), and his smile too wide, but appealingly so, in a way that looks easy and real and enthusiastic, and not like 'you should smile more' and staged family pictures.
Sometime in the middle of this, another corollary of puberty hits Mark and Eduardo looking good becomes interesting for an entirely different reason; unfortunately by then Mark has grown so used to picturing him fully clad that his subconscious refuses to add imagery he tries to adapt from amateur-like porn he found online to Eduardo's repertoire. Turns out that once Mark has established certain personality traits, belatedly changing them feels like cheating and Eduardo ends up defaulting back to the previous version the second Mark fails to keep focusing on the change, so Mark chalks this up as another check in the realism column and stops trying.
The further his experiment progresses, the more he also sees the upside of simply having someone to provide company whenever Mark feels like it. No harm done in using a mental crutch for comfort and to practice social interaction with until Mark gets out of there and can replace him with the real deal.
Because Mark knows Eduardo isn't real.
*
When he enrolls at Harvard in the fall, so does Eduardo.
It's only logical to take him; he could be useful. A distraction for when Mark gets caught up in his own mind with class projects, a way to spend his time when he's bored, and a test of what he can and can't do. A trial run. A safe environment to test theoretical scenarios and effective ways of running through social interactions (because Mark is aware that his people skills could use practice) without having to go and invest valuable time on actually interacting with people who don't interest Mark and don't have anything to offer to him.
Getting into the system and Eduardo established turns out to be nothing more than ridiculously tedious - no challenge, just virtual paperwork. Still, it takes only a measly couple of hours compared to the months of apprehension Mark has spent getting himself into Harvard the old-fashioned way(not that Mark ever doubted he'd get in, he had the grades, wrote the essays, didn't even bother applying anywhere else, just, something could have happened, like an administrative mistake), which he can't help but feel frustrated with even more in hindsight. If he had known how easy they make it to just write someone in, he wouldn't have bothered wasting all that time on applying and waiting for the (inevitable) acceptance letter himself.
Eduardo frowns at him, brows pulled together in concern, and tells Mark that it's good he didn't, he could have gotten himself into serious trouble, banned before he even took his first class for trying to cheat his way in, and just out of laziness.
Mark puffs out an annoyed breath because Eduardo always worries too much, even over completely hypothetical problems. "Not when they don't catch me, Wardo."
Then he turns away from where Eduardo sits on his bed with a newspaper open on the stock market page in his lap and back to his computer. Someone downstairs must have turned on the TV, and a voice talking about air pressure and temperature falls drifts into the room, drowning out the sound of rustling paper at Mark's back.
Mark has this under control.
*
College for the most part turns out to be disappointingly simple, both intellectually and socially, which just goes to show that these days everybody gets into Harvard as long as they know the right people.
One of Mark's roommates reveals himself to be an econ major though (for the time being - he apparently reserves the right to change his major every month depending on what he feels like, or what movie or tv show he's just gotten into - Mark thinks there might be a connection but it's none of his business so he doesn't bother paying attention).
Mark spends two hours trying to quiz Dustin on his classes, teachers, and on which of them are busy enough that in theory they won't notice if a student never actually attends as long as his name is on the class list, all the while withstanding the combination of Dustin's conspiracy theories and Chris' hovering over his shoulders like a self-appointed disapproving guardian angel (and what does he care, they don't even know each other, they just room together), then Eduardo drops by and reminds Mark of the hopes they have for being at Harvard and finally getting ahead in life.
Mark decides to listen to him and take a risk, so he pulls out his laptop and shows them.
Eduardo flops down on the couch, turning his back on the three of them crowded around Mark's desk, and sighs, insisting with a slight, petulant whine that this is not what he meant. Mark can see him nervously drag his fingers through his hair and has to push down the thrill at the obvious, realistic emotion he's managed to put into Eduardo's voice and focus on his roommates again.
Chris disapproves. He doesn't come out and say so (probably doesn't want to appear judgmental, he seems the type to whom it matters to be accepting and open-minded and shit), but he does.
Dustin thinks Eduardo is the best thing since the invention of beer (which mankind invented pretty much as soon as they started farming and hey maybe it was actually the other way around and first came beer and then the decision to settle down, farm, and make more beer, which would make beer the reason for civilization, and maybe Dustin should change his major to early history or paleoethnobotany or whatever and find out - yeah, it didn't take Mark long to figure out that Dustin is kind of different himself) and offers to put his name on the attendance sheets to all his moderately crowded classes even if that means he is going to actually have to make his 8 o'clock ones every single time because someone like Eduardo wouldn't skip class to sleep in.
Chris visibly perks up at this and joins them in a night of creating a fitting schedule for Eduardo, based on the classes they cover between the three of them, his interests, and what information several hours of searching the internet reveal about which lecturers will not catch up on an invisible student in their class room.
*
Chris bows out again the next morning, sobered up, but Eduardo forbids Mark to blame him for having morals and half-jokingly adds that he hopes some of them might rub off on him. Mark informs Eduardo that he does have morals and that there is no harm in theoretical intellectual games and then tunes him out.
*
Two weeks into college, Mark decimates a TA who must have slept with the professor to get her job because she doesn't know enough about Greek literature to sit in, let alone teach anything. Five days later, someone asks Mark to sit an exam for him in exchange for money.
Mark declines without insulting anybody's intelligence too much.
Another three days later, he has a selection of classes appropriate for Eduardo where the professors don't take attendance and put lectures and requirements online, logs into the class lists and retroactively signs Eduardo up for them, and makes arrangements for discreet and qualified older students to write Eduardo's papers and sit his exams in exchange for personal IT support and other computer-related services. With that Eduardo is independent from Mark's and Dustin's schedules and set to not fail out of his classes because Mark has better things to do than to write papers on business theory.
*
Mark is scribbling on a pad of paper and twirling a Red Vine in his free hand to clear his head. He should be working on a problem for class, but instead he was running ideas for a private project by Eduardo. Who actually should have been in class at that time he has a couple of ideas he wants to run by Eduardo and is waiting for him to get out of class.
The ping of an incoming email makes him look up, and when the significance of the sender sinks in his stomach drops and the spit in his mouth seems to evaporate and remanifest in cold sweat on his face.
Then a camera clicks and Dustin starts to snort laughter, red-faced with amusement at his own clever joke. "God, Mark, your face!"
As soon as the humiliation stops burning and Mark can look at Dustin again without wanting to strangle him, he concedes that it is a genius idea (and also the first indication Mark has seen that Dustin actually qualifies for an Ivy League college education) and makes Dustin give him the password.
Then he changes it because they agree dust1nrulz isn't a very Eduardo kind of password and it isn't as if Eduardo could change it himself.
They also make Eduardo a MySpace account. Several unsuccessful hours fiddling with Photoshop and browsing the web for stock pictures from South America later, they decide to not upload a photo.
"But what if people think he's fat and pimply and has greasy hair?" Dustin watches Mark delete the last of their failed attempts at manipulating pictures they'd found online to fit Mark's specifications, sighing in exaggerated disappointment that Mark didn't agree to change the way Eduardo looks to fit one of the photos instead.
"What? I'm not! And my hair looks great! Almost. Give me two minutes?"
"It's not as if we can just take a picture." Mark raises his voice enough that Eduardo can hear him in the bathroom where he is skeptically eyeing himself in the mirror and hovering careful fingers over his coiffed hair to check for strays.
"Jeez, Mark, okay, no need to yell at me. Anger leads to the dark side of the force. Besides, with a name like 'Eduardo Saverin' everybody will probably just assume he's a mysterious Latin lover. Are you sure you don't want to put some Spanish songs on his playlists? Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, that stuff?"
"No, Dustin! Mark, don't let him, he's going to make me sound like some sleazy wannabe-Casanova, and besides, I'm Brazilian, we speak Portuguese!"
"He's not mysterious; he listens to top ten pop songs, like a teenage girl."
"Hey!" Eduardo squeals like the girl he is but doesn't come out of the bathroom.
"I know you are just too lazy to research music and want to have an excuse to only copy the charts whenever you update his profile, Marky Mark," Dustin starts on the tail end of Eduardo's squeal, "but I actually kind of like that idea. It makes him look dorky. Aww, it's almost like he's one of us!"
Yeah.
*
Dustin keeps sending Eduardo funny YouTube clips and cat macros, Mark lets Eduardo act as a go-between at the times when Dustin is annoying the shit out of him and he knows he's about to say something he shouldn't, and Chris eventually gets roped into semi-public online conversations about dinner plans and which movies to watch.
*
Mark also makes Eduardo a LiveJournal and lets him follow his blog.
"That looks awful, can't you give me a nicer layout?" Eduardo has this habit of hovering behind Mark and looking at his screen over Mark's shoulder, always just a bit too far to the side for Mark to feel Eduardo's breath on his face when he leans down and speaks.
"It's functional. If you want something else, change it yourself." Mark half-turns his head and blinks a couple of times, until the bright afterimage of the opened tab that has been burned into his retinas disappears and Eduardo fills his vision instead, skin paler than usual in the cold light of the screen, close enough that Mark can see the short single hairs that make up his eyebrows, could count the eyelashes that dip down and rise again with each blink. Eduardo's lashes are full and long, dark like his hair and only at the very tips bleached almost invisible by sun and time. Mark knows this but can only ever see it when he's close enough to Eduardo that his nose would brush his cheek if he turned that second half.
"But I can't don't know how!" He never does twist around all the way though.
Mark shrugs and friends Eduardo back.
*
A couple of nights ago they ordered Chinese. Dustin insisted on each of them opening their fortune cookie one after the other and with great ceremonial. The slip of paper in Mark's cookie had a couple of lottery numbers on one side, and the words 'love can move mountains' on the other. Mark dropped it on his desk where it landed in the empty space between his keyboard and his screen and forgot all about it.
It's a stupid proverb. Who can actually move mountains. People cannot do that no matter how strong they are.
No one can move mountains.
But sometimes Mark looks up at Eduardo who's always, always there when Mark wants to see him and thinks that Eduardo would, for him. That, for Mark, Eduardo would move mountains if he could.
Then again, Eduardo can't even move a piece of paper, no matter how much time Mark spends watching his reflection in the screen of Mark's laptop as Eduardo sits on Mark's bed, covers dipping under his weight not, and turns the pages of one of his econ books.
It's weird how Eduardo prefers paper books and print-outs to computer files - he can't have that from Mark, if given the choice Mark will always choose the more versatile, adaptable electronic version over hard-copy. Maybe he somehow prefers the tangible texts to somehow make up for the fact that he himself is not.
Eduardo's physical copies are inconvenient too; Mark always has to clear them away. His room isn't that big and he keeps moving them around but they are always in the way again soon enough. He takes care not to wrinkle the papers and dog-ear the books though because Eduardo always looks disappointed when he does.
*
Dustin gets a new phone for his birthday and gives Eduardo his old one.
He also loudly mourns the fact that Eduardo isn't real because then they could set him up with Chris and the two of them could talk about Prada and hair care and being responsible young adults all day and groom each other in Eduardo's hypothetical single (Eduardo is listed as having a room at Elliot and is in their facebook, again without a photo, but if anyone cared to look they'd find that the room he's assigned to doesn't exist; a typo or glitch in the system should anyone notice) every time Chris blocks the en-suite bathroom for more than two minutes.
Once at a party, he uses Eduardo to chase off this guy Chris has been flirting with who even Mark can tell is an ass. Mark approves of the ass not schmoozing around anymore, let alone dropping by Kirkland later, but he doesn't like the way Dustin implies that Eduardo might harbor a crush on Chris. It feels off. Eduardo isn't gay. Because if he were he'd have a thing for Mark, he'd have to, and he doesn't, Mark has tried, but he just can't twist Eduardo into looking at him like that even though he should because it's still Mark pulling the strings and how pathetic is it that his own creation doesn't love Mark the way he wants him to. Not that it matters. Because ultimately there is no Eduardo and his theoretical sexual orientation or attraction is irrelevant.
They all get beyond drunk that night.
*
As it turns out, Eduardo doesn't need a photo on his MySpace; he still has more girls wanting to be his friend than Mark. Mark clenches his fists and bites his lip hard enough to taste copper when he first notices.
Eduardo bumps his hip into Mark's shoulder where he is standing beside his chair.
"Don't think about it, Mark, those people don't know you like I do."
Mark doesn't care what people think of him-
Eduardo bumps his hip into Mark's shoulder where he is standing beside his chair.
"Don't be jealous, Mark, I still like you best."
He isn't jealous of Eduardo, that's not what this is about. Eduardo isn't even-
Eduardo ropes him into going out that night, and when Mark is standing morosely at the bar nursing his beer, he digs his elbow into Mark's side, points out a girl, and tells Mark to go over and be nice, Mark, stick to uncontroversial topics, compliment her.
Her name is Erica. She says she has an early class, which sounds like an excuse, but she does give Mark her number and then kisses him, quick and dry but on the mouth, when they say goodbye outside of the pub.
Eduardo is there to grin proudly at him when Mark turns around.
*
Whenever he's been drinking or is just hanging out at the suite at the end of the day and he doesn't care about the wrinkles or what he looks like, Eduardo's shirt sleeves are rolled up, and his shirt open two buttons instead of one. Sometimes, very rarely, three buttons, revealing smooth tan skin. Mark thinks it's stupid that Eduardo doesn't seem to have any chest hair; he's Latin-American, darker-skinned and thick-haired. He should have body hair. But Mark never really grew any, and somehow neither did Eduardo. (Mark relativises that maybe Eduardo waxes. No, strike that maybe, probably. He's vain enough. Eduardo is kind of shallow. Only when it comes to his own looks though, not with Mark.) And maybe Eduardo's got hair where Mark can't see. Mark's subconscious must assume that more than three buttons where someone can see him would be out of character for Eduardo, because if his libido had any say then Eduardo would have stopped wearing shirts, and possibly even pants, some time ago (hello puberty).
So Mark watches Eduardo wave his hands , sometimes catches the glint of light reflecting off his family ring (a dark gold, matted a bit by age, some kind of S-design Mark assumes, but he's not sure what a family ring should look like exactly and so never gets a good look at it) out of the corner of his eye and looks up to see Eduardo sitting on his bed, legs crossed and feet in black or grey socks and somehow naked, flailing his arms around agitatedly about something that is most of the time only important in regards to how Mark can egg him on and keep him moving. Then Mark can take a break from where his brain has been running in circles and twisting itself in knots and instead lets himself be distracted watching the play of muscle under the skin of Eduardo's bare arms and the way emotions chase each other over his face in a succession of expressions the likes of which Mark can't remember ever seeing on his own face (he even tried once, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and reenacting adjectives, but his face just doesn't work that way). Eduardo buries his hands in his hair and clenches and cards through it until his fingers must be sticky with product and the strands begin to stand on end and surround Eduardo's face like a dark halo.
Mark's own hands inevitably twitch to reach out and tug at it, but he curls them into fists and wills Eduardo to let himself fall back onto Mark's bed so Mark doesn't have to look at his stupid hair anymore and, with the temptation out of sight, Mark can turn around and go back to coding. He glances at the small digital clock at the bottom of the screen before wiring in. Eduardo inevitably tells him that he's not a computer, he needs to sleep. No matter how shortly after that Mark saves and goes to bed, Eduardo is always gone already, the blankets rumpled but cold (Mark never makes his bed, they are always rumpled), not one brunette hair ever left on the sheets.
When he's being casual, or when it's cold enough he has to wear something over his thin suit jacket because Eduardo gets cold easily but not cold enough for his black (of course) pea coat, Eduardo wears his Northface jacket. (Eduardo wears a lot of black. That way Mark doesn't have to wonder if he's getting the colors right.)
Well, it is Eduardo's in that Mark bought it because he thought it was something Eduardo would wear, and he wanted something of Eduardo's he could actually touch. So sometimes he pictures Eduardo wearing it. And sometimes it's Mark who wears it, when he's feeling lonely and Eduardo isn't wearing it himself at the time (which he never is of course). He'll slouch into it, properly, because it's too large. He bought it a size too big so it would fit Eduardo's taller frame. It'll be soft and warm and always smell a bit of washing powder because Eduardo is the kind of person who launders his clothes regularly, even his jackets (because Mark doesn't allow himself to wear it that often), and underneath that he imagines he can smell what he imagines Eduardo would smell like.
*
"It's just harmless fun."
"It's not, he can get into serious trouble for this, we all can. This has passed harmless long ago, Dustin. He's paying people to take tests for him,…"
"No money is changing hands, and it's not for classes he is taking himself!"
" He is paying people to take tests for him; legal concerns aside, this is not healthy."
"It's just a game, Chris."
"It's not… He's talking to him. Actual conversations where he says something out loud, listens, and then replies to something he pretends Eduardo said."
"Okay, so Mark's a bit odd and likes to soliquilize, many people do, that just makes him eccentric."
"Dustin, he brought his girlfriend back here and she asked us if there was a reason she hasn't met the elusive Eduardo yet. I'm worried."
"Yeah, but, he's got a girlfriend now, that's good, right? He's sitting with us now, he's going out, not like in the early days when he barely came out of his room."
"Half the time he's going out with Eduardo."
"Chris, he knows he's not real. It's harmless. Look. Mark. Mark? Mark!" Mark's headphones are pulled from his ears, de-muting the conversation he had chosen not to engage in while the white noise of the dorms hits him like a breaker wave eating away at his carefully maintained concentration. His head swivels around to demand them back, with a disapproving glare, if necessary with words even though for those to come out intelligible, he'd have to move one hand from his keyboard and take the Red Vine he's sucking on out of his mouth (it's a scientifically proven fact that rhythmic movement of one's mouth and jaw increases blood flow and with it oxygen delivery to the brain) and he comes face-to-face with a Dustin who is too close for comfort, Dorito-flavoured breath an invisible cloud around him. "You can have your headphones back in a minute, you just have to answer one question. You know Eduardo's not real, right? Hey, stop looking at me like that, I'm trying to help! Just answer the question."
Mark waits five more seconds, hoping for the unlikely but not impossible development that Dustin will just drop Mark's headphones and go away again, but he doesn't, something probably related to Chris standing behind him, arms crossed determinedly, so Mark bites off the end of his Vine and pulls the rest out with a wet pop. "Yes, Dustin, I know Eduardo is not real."
"See, Chris, it's all cool." Dustin looks back at Chris, and Mark tries to surreptitiously swipe back his headphones, but Dustin pulls the hand holding them away and waves to Chris with it.
"Mark, I just think maybe you should talk to someone…" Chris sounds so earnest, like he cares, and it reminds Mark of his mom and of all the ways she knows to say that it's okay to be different while implying that it isn't okay to be how Mark is and he should try to be less himself. It's a tone that never fails to make Mark feel like he's in kindergarten again, being chastised for something without anyone able to explain to him why what he did was wrong. Mark can't remember what it was he did back then, but the memory stayed with him, having to stand there and listen to his teacher and his mom not make sense. Maybe he was simply too young to properly comprehend any possible explanation, but all the experience left him with was the impression that people didn't want to understand you, they just wanted you to say you understood them.
"I know he's not real because I made him up, I picked his name out of one of my sister's telenovelas, got his birthday off a random date generator online, put him into AEPi to see if any of those idiots would notice they've got a fake member, I know, okay." Mark does get what Chris is saying, he agrees to the basic facts. Chris just doesn't see the entirety of Eduardo and the benefits of Mark utilizing him to his full potential.
"Yes, I get it, it's just that it seems a bit like you are using him as, as -" Chris shrugs, hands floundering as if he could pluck the words to say what he means without offending Mark out of thin air. Mark doesn't know what words Chris would like to use, but he knows what he means. He thinks Eduardo is a giant imaginary bunny. He doesn't get it, at all, and Mark is fed up with it, with him, with everything. He didn't have to tell them about Eduardo in the first place, he took a chance, he thought they'd understand, but instead all Chris seems to think is that Mark needs fixing.
"God, Chris, I know you like your psychology class; you keep analyzing every movie we watch, and it's not subtle how you always just happen to 'accidentally read out loud to yourself'," Mark mimes one-handed airquotes with his Red Vine, "every time Freud comes up in your books, but, sorry to disappoint, I did not manifest my internalized parental agency in the shape of a fictional Brazilian econ major, okay."
Mark snaps his laptop shut, picks it up, snatches his headphones out of Dustin's hand, and goes to work in his room as he should have done to begin with anyway. He pushes the door closed with a foot behind him.
"Hey, are Chris and Dustin fighting? I heard voices."
Mark shrugs and more falls than sits down on the bed, landing on some of Eduardo's papers that are scattered over the covers.
"Hey, watch out, that's due tomorrow!" Eduardo's brows rise in distress and he tugs weakly at the sheets, careful not to pull too hard and rip the paper.
"Wrinkles in the paper don't actually change the words, Wardo." Mark shifts, pulls the papers free, and drops them in Eduardo's lap. "Besides, it's a print-out and we've got the file, if it bothers you that much I'll let out a new one for you."
"Nah, it's not that bad, I can smooth the pages. So, what was that outside?"
There's still that vertical line in the middle of Eduardo's forehead, a tell that always shows up when Eduardo is faintly unhappy about something he doesn't want to admit, but Mark offered ergo there isn't anything else he can do to mollify Eduardo's need for formal perfectionism and he lets it go. Instead, he opens his laptop and lets himself properly watch Eduardo while it flickers out of sleep mode.
Eduardo is sitting propped up against the headboard, his legs stretched and crossed at the ankles, one sock-clad foot bobbing up and down to make up for the rest of his body having to sit still, pants wrinkled out of their perfect crease so for once he almost looks like he belongs in Mark's room. He peers back at Mark curiously over his textbook, and Mark finds his eyes drawn down and following the movement of his Adam's apple as he swallows, long neck covered in short, shadow-dark late-night stubble.
It's late and Eduardo is relaxed here in Mark's room, letting himself go as much as he is capable of (which is still more put-together than Mark at his most dressed-up). Three two three buttons open.
"Mark?"
"Nothing." Super-ego Mark's ass. Then again if only Mark's id were calling the shots, Eduardo would have ceased to wear shirts long ago. "I just need to work in peace."
"Mark." Eduardo lowers his book and sits up, the line between his brows deepening and face crunching unhappily. "We talked about this. Having friends is a good thing, remember?"
"That's what I've got you for." He does. That was the whole point of Eduardo, wasn't it? To be what Mark wanted him to.
"Yes, but I don't count I don't have to be your only friend. You can have other friends too."
Mark bites back the urge to spew I know that, I'm not stupid at him, or to balk at the implication that he might think he'd need Eduardo's permission, because he knows Eduardo doesn't mean it like that but is quick to sulk whenever Mark says something he doesn't mean and instead starts back in on his code.
"Mark." One of Eduardo's feet pokes Mark in the back, his toes bony even through the thin cotton-polyester mixes of his socks and Mark's t-shirt. "Hey, Mark. I know it's scary. But it's worth it. They like you. They care about you. That's good, right?"
Mark hunches his shoulders and keeps typing.
A sigh, and then Eduardo is next to him, book gone, shoulders almost (always almost) brushing.
"Show me what you are working on?" And this is why Eduardo is the perfect conscience. He cautions Mark to slow down when he's about to go too far, tries to make him feel remorse after he did something he shouldn't have, and best of all he's forever impotent to stop Mark.
Mark angles the laptop to give Eduardo a better view and talks, hands flying and pointing out things they both know Eduardo doesn't get but still nods at, until Eduardo's eyes shine again and he smiles that too-big smile at Mark's fingers pointing at the screen while Mark watches the fair tips of his eyelashes. Mark knows he has somewhere else to go in the back of his head, like a window that's been minimized and technically out of sight but still visible in the task bar, but he doesn't remember that he's supposed to be meeting Erica until Eduardo reminds him that he needs to save and get going if he doesn't want to be more than fashionably late.
*
Every time Mark watches Fight Club, which happens a lot because he kind of imprinted on it when it came out (but if anyone asks he's read the book first) and Chris and Dustin enjoy the social commentary respectively mind-blowing genius that is David Fincher, every time Mark sits there on the couch, sipping his beer or taking a drag of the joint they are handing around if Billy's been by (no one knows who Billy is, he just followed Dustin home one day, smoked up their room, and three hours later stated that, dude, he totally thought Dustin was someone else and he doesn't know any of them, but somehow he keeps dropping by and Dustin religiously greets him with man, you just missed Wardo again, have you two even met yet?), he thinks that Eduardo is so much better, subjectively and objectively better, than Tyler Durden.
For one, he's actually good for Mark's health by nagging him into not sustaining on tuna and Red Vines alone but accompanying Eduardo to the dinner hall every now and then to eat what he calls real food (read_ vegetables that have not been drowned in salt or accidentally landed on Mark's pizza) and does not try to get Mark to mutilate himself. He even insists Mark put on socks so he doesn't freeze off a toe or two before their outings. Unlike Tyler he also doesn't try to isolate Mark from the people around him but encourages him to socialize and go out with Chris and Dustin every now and then (and more and more often, now that Mark has figured out that his roommates are actually pretty okay company and won't ditch him for other friends, he will go without Eduardo urging him into joining and only tell Eduardo about where he's been after he's back, the way Eduardo's never been on one of his dates with Erica with him after that first tine he encouraged Mark to talk to her, because it wouldn't feel right, Mark is fine without him, and anyway if he ever did need Eduardo he'd be right there).
And when Mark gets around to changing the world (which he will; he knows it makes him sound like he's still ten years old and desperate for recognition but he will leave his mark) then it'll be better than Palahniuk's unnamed protagonist's anti-capitalist mayhem, and not only because Mark has no intention of becoming a homegrown terrorist.
Mark will change the world deliberately and consciously, in control and in charge of his actions. Mark will accomplish great things, not some figment of his imagination.
Eduardo can give moral support, he can be a sounding board and a test audience and a cheerleader (which is a thought that leads to deliberation on Eduardo's flexibility - Eduardo could do yoga every morning, he seems the type), but Mark never needed Eduardo to get anything done for him.
Mark doesn't need Eduardo, for anything.
(But sometimes he watches Eduardo bend over to pick something up or tries to will him to undo that third button in the middle of the day and admits to himself that, if Eduardo were real, he'd want him.)
Of course he still uses Tyler Durden as a pseudonym to troll. If people are too culturally ignorant to notice, it's their own fault.
*
"Mark!"
Mark blinks, hand still on the doorknob, stops mid-step, and considers turning around and walking straight back out of the suite again. He's got his laptop in his backpack; if Dustin is in one of his agitable moods Mark might have more success wiring in sitting outside in the hallway.
"Mark, come in, look at this!" Dustin is grinning like the lunatic Mark knows he is, hovering over his chair in front of his own computer, moving up and down like he's trying to get up and pull Mark in but can't tear himself away from whatever is on his screen that's so exciting. "Eduardo is getting punched by the Phoenix!"
Mark is next to Dustin and shoulders him out of the way without a second thought. Dustin windmills his arms and lands on the floor in some twister-like contortions after losing the fight against gravity, but Dustin can and has often enough fallen off chairs, beds, desks, dressers, and, once, memorably, Chris' closet, without anyone else having touched him, so Mark is confident Dustin has amble practice in falling without seriously injuring himself.
Open on Dustin's desktop is an email. That's it. Just an email from one of Eduardo's MySpace friends who says that 'the club' has noticed him, and that he thinks Eduardo would be a good match for them, and if Eduardo's never thought about pledging before now would be a good time to start. Winking emoticon. How mature.
Mark snorts halfway through the email, and again when he's done, because the whole thing is ridiculous. That, or he'll have to think about how pathetic it is and what it says about the clubs (about himself) and none of them will even look at him twice but they've noticed a guy who isn't even real never even goes to any of his classes or shows at a party he's invited to or appears anywhere except as a friendly, polite, pictureless sock on the internet and a collection of more or less realistic anecdotes planted around Kirkland and AEPi by Mark and Dustin and occasionally confirmed by Chris and Billy.
Then again, Eduardo has no opinion of his own, he never disagrees with anybody, he never demands anything, steals anyone's seat or drink or place in the spotlight. Of course people like him, he's incapable of raining on anyone's parade. So, in a way, it makes sense for him to get punched. Which he hasn't yet, which he won't, because there isn't even a place to deliver the letter to.
(But the fact remains, Eduardo could get in, Eduardo could at least get the chance to get in, and Mark remains that loser geek who's only good enough for people when they want something from him, and even then they never waver in their belief that they are better than him.)
Dustin, it turns out, wants to throw Eduardo a party, or par-tay as he puts it, and has been fruitlessly trying to infect Chris with his need to celebrate all evening, first wanting to surprise Mark with party hats and party horns and then waiting for Mark to come home and support him into dragging Chris into the party nonsense and away from the tv. "Come on, Mark, our boy is becoming somebody! Somebody people notice! Or are curious about because no one has ever seen him and are trying to lure out in the open by baiting him with the promise of possibly painful, definitely humiliating hazing rituals!"
Dustin wiggles his eyebrows.
"No." Mark grew up with Ariel's puppy eyes, Dustin's got nothing on her.
Dustin gapes. "Sacrilege! Chris, Mark refuses to party!" He clambers up from where he's still been sitting at Mark's feet and stumbles towards Chris and the couch.
Chris, pinnacle of reason and maturity, stretches out one pajama-clad leg and stops Dustin's approach with his naked foot while upping the volume of the program he's watching.
"One last time, Dustin. Shark Week. Be quiet or go bother someone else. And if you go, go around the couch and don't get between me and the tv." Then he pushes Dustin, who clutches at his heart in betrayal, away with a flex of his leg. Sometimes Chris is Mark's favorite , despite his do-gooder tendencies. This is one of those times.
Dustin turns back to Mark and whines. "But why not?"
"You don't throw someone a party until they've actually gotten in." Mark deletes the email from Eduardo's inbox with two quick clicks.
"Yeah, but that's not going to happen, is it, Mark? I mean, we might be able to get a real club to punch him, but I'm sure they'd notice if he never showed up to any of their events." Dustin settles visibly now that he seems to have accepted that there's no party in his immediate future and plops back down on the ground next to Mark.
Mark goes into Eduardo's folder of recently deleted emails and clears it.
"Hey, Mark? You okay?" Chris apparently prioritizes his roommates emotional well-being over Great Whites, because instead of staring at the tv, he's now looking at Mark, remote resting on his lap instead of in his hand for immediate volume adjustment when necessary.
"Great." It's still at least half an hour too early, but Mark is not in the mood to sit around the suite and endure Chris' pitying looks, so he slings his backpack over his shoulder and gets up. "I'm meeting Erica."
Mark doesn't need pity. He's fine. If anything he's proud of Eduardo, because Eduardo is Mark's creation and thus Eduard's accomplishments are Mark's too.
"This is good right here. Don't be disappointed if you don't get any further."
With that, he leaves Eduardo standing outside the suite and goes to meet his girlfriend. The Phoenix might prefer Eduardo to Mark but at least Mark's the one who has a girlfriend, and Eduardo only caught the Phoenix' attention because of Mark and won't be able to keep it whereas Mark hasn't had Eduardo present for any of his dates with Erica after that first time he talked to her.
*
Two hours later Erica dumps him. Over final clubs.
In hindsight, perhaps he should have taken Eduardo on his dates, because maybe then Erica wouldn't have dumped him like, like he is nothing, was nothing. But Mark has always refused to bend over backwards to please people and pretend to be someone he's not, so even if Eduardo had been there Mark wouldn't have done or said anything different. He apologized, for Christ's sake. Fucking stairmaster.
*
Mark needs the algorithm. His mind is churning with rejection and anger and bitterness, and he knows he's overreacting because he wasn't really that much into Erica anyway. She didn't get him, she goes to BU, it doesn't (shouldn't) come as a surprise that she didn't get him, she's a bitch, and she isn't even hot enough to make up for that. But he's still irrationally affected by this, and he needs a distraction, he needs -
"Wardo."
Eduardo walks in the moment Mark thinks of him, of course he does, Eduardo is always there when Mark needs him. Perfect timing. Eduardo is here and he has the key ingredient.
"You and Erica split up? It's on your blog." Eduardo stands, lounges in the door, and he's overdressed for a Thursday night really, it's two a.m., but he looks good, he looks distractingly good, tall and golden and dark well-cut clothing that flatters his light tan and lean build. Even though it's cold outside his throat is bare, shirt buttons opened generously to form a V that makes his neck appear even longer than it is, revealing the lines of it and the dip at the base where his throat meets his collar bone.
"Wardo?" Chris sits up on the couch.
Eduardo ignores him. "Are you alright?"
"I need you."
"I'm here for you." Eduardo's eyes soften, and with a small nod he leaves the door frame and positions himself at the edge of Mark's desk, close and turned towards Mark and open, available. The statement is unnecessary though, Mark thinks. Of course Eduardo is here for him.
"Mark, are you okay?" Dustin touches Mark's shoulder from where he's been standing behind him watching what's happening on Mark's screen.
"I need the algorithm," Mark clarifies. He turns to Dustin, because Dustin is demanding his attention, and Mark doesn't want Dustin to distract him from Eduardo, Eduardo is here for a reason, Mark's working on something here. "I need the algorithm Wardo used to rank chess players."
Eduardo frowns, brows pulling together and wrinkles rising on his forehead, like he is confused, or maybe Mark is, like one of them is missing a point here. (Mark knows the frowning won't leave any trace behind, that as soon as Eduardo relaxes his face it'll be young and smooth and flawless again, but he feels an irrational urge to be able to reach out and rub the lines away.) "Are you okay?"
Why do people keep asking him that? "We are ranking girls."
"You mean other students?" Eduardo turns his head to look at where Facemash is open on Mark's screen, making the lines of his neck shift. There's cautioning in his words when he speaks again because he is Mark's voice of inconvenient but necessary reason, his very own Jiminy Cricket, only more realistic, with an online presence and friends and classes of his own, and more handsome. "You think this is such a good idea?"
"I need the algorithm." It's a good idea, it's a great idea. It was meant to distract him from Erica, but now Eduardo is here and is doing that, so it'll distract him from the fact that he can't touch Eduardo. Mark wishes Eduardo would stop hovering uselessly and do something. He's beginning to feel like a broken record, and aren't his friends supposed to coddle him right now or something?
"Right, Wardo's chess players, I remember! Chris, Chris, chill, it's cool. We had Wardo do this thing that's perfect for this!" Dustin waves into Chris' direction and Chris looks vaguely skeptical but then the tv makes a noise and he turns back to his sharks while Dustin faces Mark's impatience again. "Hey, man, no reason to get pissy. Just because I remember it exists doesn't mean I've got it memorized. I've never even looked at it, you're the one who got it from that guy on the message board!"
"Mark…" Eduardo half-whines, cringing and distorting his face in a way that's probably supposed to convey support of Mark in general but disapproval of the idea of ranking girls. Whatever. He'll give in.
"I need the algorithm." Mark repeats, trying to put into his voice that he needs this, needs it more than he needs Eduardo to tell him why this is a bad idea because Eduardo isn't here as his conscience now, he's here to distract and support. So Mark implores without saying please because he hates to beg and Eduardo knows that, he knows, and he never makes Mark say it because he's a good friend like that.
"Well, if you need it then why don't you stop telling me and go get it? You are the one who's got all of Wardo's stuff saved on his drive." Dustin plucks his beer off the desk and flops back down on Mark's bed.
And Eduardo, Eduardo looks at Mark for a moment longer, hesitant and sad as if he's the one who got dumped, his jaws clench, bones dancing under the skin of his face in a movement Mark thinks he should be able to feel if he could put his hands on the side of Eduardo's face, and then he stands half a room away and is writing on Mark's window, marker white against the darkness outside. He doesn't even have to think about what he's writing, he just does like this comes to him as easily as coding does to Mark, fingers gripping the marker and hand gliding up and down in a motion that travels up his arm and flexes his back, jacket pulling tight across his shoulders and pulling tight in turns. He talks as he writes, explaining the algorithm to Mark, already converted from chess players to girls, the letters and numbers the same Mark has on his screen where he just opened that particular file like Dustin suggested, but Eduardo and his smooth movements and calm voice and elegant white-on-dark lines are beautiful, they are gorgeous.
The small black signs on Mark's screen might be easier to read and a necessity but they can't compare to Eduardo.
"Give each girl a base rating of 1400. At any given time "Girl A" has a rating R-a and "Girl B" has a rating R-b."
"When any two girls are matched up there's an expectation of which will win based on their current rating, right?" They can't compare to the picture Eduardo makes, writing with his back turned to Mark.
"Yeah." Eduardo turns, facing Mark but pointing at the window. "And those expectations are expressed this way." And they can't compare to Eduardo looking at Mark, reacting to him, engaging with him.
Mark nods, small at first, then more sure. He doesn't care if it's a bad idea, this here feels good.
"Let's write this."
He puts down his beer and goes back to work, incorporating Eduardo's algorithm into his code.
*
In the end, Mark winds up with six months of academic probation. He probably shouldn't have written that thing about the farm animals. But even if Eduardo doesn't agree it's worth it in the end, because through Facemash he meets the Winklevosses, and they inspire him to create thefacebook. And this? This will be it. Mark changing the world.
*
The moment Mark enters the basement room AEPi hold their parties in, he instinctively wants to turn and walk out again. AEPi is never a collection of Harvard's best and brightest, but holding a Caribbean Night-themed party to a loop of Niagara Falls is low, even for them. Chris and Dustin are here though and Mark is brimming with excitement, and he needs to share this with someone, someone who'll recognize the importance of this, the potential, someone who'll… and there's Eduardo. Perfect.
Eduardo comes over with this ridiculous little shimmy that's embarrassing and dorky and definite proof that Eduardo is not a dancer no matter how much natural grace he possesses, but Mark refrains from pointing this out to him because Eduardo looks happy to see him and excited, and for a moment Mark thinks that he himself feels a bit like dancing too. He doesn't though, he drags Eduardo out to talk in private because this will be Mark's own final clubthis will be their own final club is big and he wants Eduardo on board.
"Wardo, I think I've come up with something." Mark might actually be shaking with nervous energy, and Eduardo is trembling and restlessly shifting his weight from one leg to the other which he shouldn't because Mark hasn't told him yet and he has no reason to be so keyed up, but with him it's probably from the cold.
"I got punched by the Phoenix." Or because of that. Eduardo beams at Mark, and it doesn't matter anymore because Mark's idea will be so much better, but Eduardo getting punched is kind of awesome if he thinks about it, so Mark indulges him and doesn't hog all the spotlight.
"Are you kidding?" It's an exclamation of surprise, those count as support.
Eduardo looks almost coy, but that could just be Mark's wishful thinking taking advantage of the way the light throws half his face in shadows. "No, I mean it's just the first of the four steps but they slipped the invitation under your my your door tonight, whoever did it must have been too lazy to walk over to Elliot in the cold. I go to the first punch party tomorrow-"
No.
"You are not getting into the Phoenix; you are not real." Eduardo flinches as if Mark had kicked him. "I know that, but you don't have to say it like it's my fault."
"Eduardo, you can't go to the punch." Eduardo flinches as if Mark had kicked him. "But Mark-"
The Phoenix shouldn't even matter anymore. He'll let Eduardo have this for now; he's not getting further than this anyway, and once thefacebook gets going he'll see how insignificant the final clubs really are. "You got punched by the Phoenix."
It seems like a safe enough statement. Eduardo shrugs, but that faint line appears between his brows so Mark knows he is not entirely happy with Mark's lack of reaction. Mark blows out a breath. Eduardo will get over it, he always does, and anyway it doesn't matter.
"It was, it was probably just a diversity thing. I'll ride that horse until they notice I don't exist… What did you want to talk about?"
They shouldn't not let Eduardo in simply because of that. Of course Mark has cottoned on by now that the final clubs don't have the best criteria when it comes to selecting their prospects and are just not that important when one is looking past college and at the bigger picture, but, Eduardo is still better than most of them, they should be honored Mark let them have him, and maybe he could figure out a way to-
"Mark? You said you've come up with something."
Right. Right. Thefacebook. Mark doesn't need the Phoenix, and neither does Eduardo. They don't want them? Their loss.
So Mark opens his mouth and lets go, puts in words what has been running through his head since the Winklevosses explained their dating site to him in that bike room, and Eduardo stands and nods and soaks it up while Mark throws his flood of words at him.
"-would be exclusive. You'd have to know the people on the site to get past your own page, like getting punched. Wardo, it's like a final club except we're the presidents."
It's a good idea, a great idea, and Eduardo tells him so.
*
Part 2