fic: crept out the front door slow (part 1)
fic: crept out the front door slow (part 1/4)
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
notes:
based on the kinkmeme prompt- Eduardo has this thing, where whenever he's drunk drunk, he basically makes out with whoever's around. -- but then it became a massively angsty love story. oops.
title is from the song "yesterday" by atmosphere, from this verse:
"You crept out the front door slow
And I was so self-absorbed I didn't even know
And by the time I looked up it was booked up
Put it all behind you, the bad and the good stuff
A whole house full of dreams and steps
I think you'd be impressed with the pieces I kept
You disappeared but the history is still here
It's why I try not to cry over spilt beer
I can't even get mad that you're gone
Leavin' me was probably the best thing you ever taught me"
Mark meets Eduardo when Chris brings him home on a Friday night, during orientation.
They stumble in the door, kissing, and Mark knew Chris was gay, he guessed from the shirtless poster of James Franco, but there's a difference between knowing the guy you've known for three days is gay and being sexiled. Sexiled!
Not that Mark cares about sex, because whatever, but he hasn't made a single friend outside of Dustin and Chris and Chris is already getting some.
He feels vaguely put-out.
The door slams to Chris' room and Mark sits back in his desk chair, stretching his fingers. He can hear vague sounds, wet and low.
Which is just like, not cool.
He goes back to coding CourseMatch and hears, "Shit! Shit." from the room, and the door opens and Chris pops his head out.
"Mark, I didn't even see you," he says, eyes wide. "I'm- fuck, I'm sorry, we can just-"
"Who's Mark?" he hears next, and a guy pushes his way past Chris and stumbles towards Mark. He's wearing black pants and a button-down and he has brown poufy hair and his cheeks are flushed and he's really, really wasted.
"Hi," he says, grinning, and Chris rolls his eyes.
"Mark, Eduardo. Eduardo, Mark. I think he's a sophomore."
Mark nods, and Eduardo turns around slowly, looking through half-lidded eyes at Chris.
"Wait, you're not a sophomore?" he asks, voice slurred.
"I'm- dude, we're in the Yard right now," Chris says, grinning, and Eduardo scratches his belly, blinking dazedly.
"Fuck, you're a freshman," he concludes, and flops down on the couch. "That's just like incest or whatever. Pedo- pedophilia."
"Didn't seem to mind five minutes ago," Chris mutters, sitting down next to him, and Mark's face is weirdly hot. Eduardo spreads his legs, grabs at a half-empty beer Dustin left on the counter.
Chris takes it out of his hands. "No, Eduardo, I think you're okay."
"Thirsty," he mumbles, and drapes himself over Chris like a blanket. Mark watches silently.
"Okay- okay, bro, I just- you're really, really drunk," Chris says, pushing Eduardo off, and Eduardo nods and sets his eyes on Mark and Mark swallows.
Eduardo grins loose and easy, slightly predatory.
"Hi," he says again, and Chris stands up to get Eduardo some water from the bathroom. When he closes the door Eduardo stands up and stumbles towards Mark and pushes him against the door.
"Shh," he says, giggling, hands running curiously up Mark's sides, pushing up his T-shirt. Mark stays absolutely still.
"Because- cause I think that guy's a freshman," Eduardo says, very seriously, eyes wide. "He's a freshman. Which means like a baby. Little baby."
Mark is going to say, "I'm a freshman too", he really is, but Eduardo's kissing him very forcefully and wet and hot. Mark isn't really moving his lips. It feels weird. But kind of also awesome.
"Mmm," Eduardo murmurs against his mouth, and from the doorway Chris says, "Eduardo!" exasperatedly.
Eduardo pulls away, smiling slow at him, running a finger down Mark's cheek, and Mark is panting a little, involuntarily. Well. Three days at college and he's already "experimenting". Great. And he didn't even need to leave the room.
Eduardo collapses on the couch and Chris makes him drink water and when Mark wakes up the next morning Eduardo is gone.
So, that's how he meets Eduardo.
----
How Eduardo meets them is different. Because at the stupid orientation dance the following night, Eduardo's one of the sophomores in green welcoming committee T-shirts, passing out glowsticks.
"That's the guy you, uh, from last night," Mark says, tugging on Chris' sleeve, and Chris turns away from his gaggle of new girl friends (because Chris is a normal functioning human being but he is also nice, like so nice he brings Mark everywhere with him) and laughs.
"Oh my God, it is. Eduardo."
"Oh, yeah," Mark says, like he's just remembering it.
"You guys want a glowstick?" Eduardo asks them, grinning, and Mark goes hot and looks down.
"Hey, Eduardo," Chris says, and Eduardo looks at them confusedly.
"Sorry, did we- am I your RA?"
Chris snorts. "No, uh, we met last night."
Eduardo's eyes go wide and he blushes furiously. "Oh fuck," he mutters. "Yeah, okay. Uh, so, um, did we- like-" he shakes his head and pulls Chris aside, and Mark stands there awkwardly with the girls.
"So, you're Chris' roommate?" one of the girls asks, and Mark nods.
"Where are you from?" another says, and he doesn't answer because he's staring over her shoulder at Chris and Eduardo talking.
"Okay," the girl says after a minute, rolling her eyes, and turns away from him.
Chris joins their group again, laughing a little to himself, and Mark tries to casually get next to him.
"What'd he, uh, say?" Mark says, sticking a hand in his shorts pocket, and Chris grins.
"He was just really drunk. You know. He apologized. He, actually-" Chris lowers his voice. "He had to ask me if we'd- you know."
"Made out?" Mark asks, voice flat, but his cheeks are hot. Fuck.
"Had sex," Chris says, and laughs, shaking his head. "He was so fucking embarrassed, I felt bad for him. Don't worry, I didn't tell him he attacked you."
"Okay," Mark says, chewing his lip and looking away. Had sex. He doesn't even know what that would entail. His brain is trying desperately to help him figure it out, though.
He shakes his head like he's trying to clear it and follows Chris into the dance.
---
So technically, they haven't officially met.
But Eduardo sort of becomes their friend and they introduce themselves briefly and then it's like they know each other, because-
- because Dustin has a lit class with Eduardo, and they both sort of hate it, but they do like to drink Natty and bitch about how much they hate it, so it only takes a week before Mark starts getting used to coming in to Eduardo sitting on their couch.
Eduardo and Chris are awkward at first, but eventually Chris punches him in the shoulder and says, "So, we made out! Let's stop being weird!" and Dustin makes fake kissy sounds at them until Eduardo grins and punches him in the shoulder.
Mark watches this from his desk.
Eduardo smiles at him sometimes, friendly and open, and Mark puts his head down and starts typing furiously.
---
He's 80% sure he's managed to forget about it, except three weeks later he's at an AEPi party and Eduardo has a short Asian girl pressed against the wall with his tongue in her mouth.
Chris snorts when he sees them.
"He's like a kissing booth when he's drunk, I think," he says, fondly, and Mark keeps looking up at them and then down.
"How is he already getting some," Dustin grumbles. "Bullshit."
The girl leads Eduardo out by the hand, and Mark watches them go.
"Mark, you want some more-"
And Mark walks off without saying anything. Dustin looks at Chris bemusedly. Chris shrugs.
---
Three months into the year they become friends, actual friends.
Eduardo knocks on the door and lets himself in, leans against the doorway to Mark's room.
"Dustin's at the d-hall," Mark says without looking up.
"I know," Eduardo says. "What's up?"
Mark looks up, a little annoyed, because that's, like, a stupid question. The ceiling is up. The sky. Mark is working. Eduardo is making stupid small talk.
"I mean-" Eduardo coughs, looking embarrassed. "Like, what are you doing?"
"I'm working out some kinks in CourseMatch," Mark says, and Eduardo sits on the edge of his bed, clasps his hands on his knees and nods.
"Cool, cool. That's so fucking awesome, by the way. Good job."
"Thanks," Mark says grudgingly. Sometimes he wants to tell Eduardo that they've kissed. But then he'd have to explain why he even cares and then Chris would wonder why and then Mark would have to consciously think about why he keeps jerking off thinking about Eduardo's fingers on his hips.
Which he really, really doesn't want to do.
"You wanna grab a drink, after this?" Eduardo says, fisting his hand in Mark's bedspread.
Mark shrugs.
"Give me twenty minutes," he says finally, voice flat, and Eduardo nods and flops back onto his bed.
They get two drinks and talk about random shit. Mark sort of wants Eduardo to get more drunk so he'll start kissing everything in his path again, but Eduardo cuts himself off when he starts to get giggly and walks Mark back to Kirkland and gives him a fist-bump at the door, and when Mark lies down his bed smells like Eduardo's cologne.
He buries his face in his pillow and jerks off quickly, dragging his hips against the bed, relishing the friction.
He definitely, definitely does not think about Eduardo's lips wet with beer and his stupid infuriatingly long fingers wrapped around a bottle.
Not at all.
---
So once Eduardo's little pattern is established and they're friends, Mark makes it his mission to be Eduardo's- well, he's not sure.
My wingman, Eduardo calls him, and it starts off that way but it always inevitably ends with Eduardo getting wasted and dancing and then pushing Mark out of the room or onto a bed or onto a couch or onto a chair and kissing him.
Mark doesn't mind that much.
He's being a good friend, he reasons. Because he always helps Eduardo get home safe, and he doesn't let anyone take advantage of him while he's drunk.
A little nagging voice says Mark might be doing that last thing all wrong, but he ignores it.
It still sucks, though. Because he wakes up in the morning and stretches against his sheets, eyes closed, thinking about Eduardo's mouth, the way he'd tongued hotly at Mark's teeth and then in his ear and how Mark had shuddered and gotten extremely fucking hard.
Mark wakes up and goes outside and Eduardo is gone. And he finds out, by asking carefully, subtly, about Eduardo's night, that Eduardo never remembers. He never fucking remembers.
Mark is maybe glad, because that means Eduardo will make out with him more than once. Maybe if Eduardo remembered, he wouldn't want to. Mark doesn't really know if he's a good kisser, or not.
But at the same time, once he had this dream that started off like his night, with Eduardo kissing him against the wall outside AEPi but then it ended differently, because Eduardo came home with Mark and passed out in his bed, and when they woke up Eduardo was curled against him, and Mark had run his fingers through his hair and kissed his temple and Eduardo's hand had curled tighter around Mark's waist and it was all so very frustrating because it was not true.
Mark is a little annoyed by the fact that he's pretty fucking gay for his best friend, just because he didn't really expect it, but he's not too put out. Making out with Wardo is like the best thing ever. He kissed one girl in high school, and she'd always lick his lips all wet and sloppy, and he'd close his eyes and try to keep still because it felt really fucking gross.
Eduardo is such a good kisser. He rubs a thumb in the hollow behind Mark's ear and works Mark's bottom lip into his mouth and bites gently at his jaw, until Mark shudders beneath him and Eduardo grins, like he's keeping score of how much Mark wants him. He lets Mark put his tongue hesitantly in his mouth, and encourages him with soft little sounds, and wraps his long-fingered hands around Mark's waist and pulls him closer.
But Eduardo never, ever remembers.
---
And then one night they're both drunk, and Eduardo says, "I really, really want to suck your dick," and Mark nearly falls off the bed.
They're in Eduardo's room, because Lowell ran out of beer and Eduardo said he had Smirnoff so they went back to his room and he drank some and Eduardo drank some and then, predictably, they started making out.
It's not usually this private though, this quiet. Mark can hear the vibrations of a far-off party but they're alone in the dark, single room, and Eduardo is straddling him while Mark lies on his back, leaning down and kissing him, and when Eduardo says what he says Mark's eyes go wide.
"Seriously," he says, grinning, rubbing his hands up over Mark's chest. Mark makes a little noise and surges upwards onto his elbows. "Make it so good. Want you to come in my mouth."
"Eduardo," Mark gets out, and Eduardo leans down and kisses him again, uses that fucking mouth and Mark kisses back helplessly.
"You're- we're too drunk, Wardo," Mark says, firmly, but his eyes go shut when Eduardo rubs his palm roughly over Mark's cock.
"You can still get it up," he observes, smiling, and leans down and mouths wetly against Mark's crotch in his jeans.
"Wardo, no- I- you're just, you're way too wasted, okay?"
"Ma-ark," Eduardo says, sort of coy and begging and cutesy, but his palm's still rubbing a steady circle into the bulge in Mark's pants and Mark's breath is coming in shorter faster bursts and finally he sits up, with effort, like, really, really unwillingly, and pushes Eduardo off him, onto his back on the bed.
"What're you doing," Eduardo says, slurred, and he buries his face in a pillow.
"Go to sleep," Mark says, sitting up, looking at him. He's still hard, but he presses his palm against his dick to will it down and pours Eduardo a glass of water, puts it next to his bed.
When Eduardo asks him about it the next day he goes hot, mutters something unintelligible.
Eduardo never fucking remembers and Mark is starting to wonder why.
----
"Why do you get so drunk?" Mark asks two weeks later, and Eduardo groans from where he's pushing his face into Mark's thigh on the couch.
"Shut up," he mumbles into Mark's sweatpants, and Mark lets his hand run through Eduardo's hair, because he's drunk too and it's sort of sticky with gel but soft at the same time.
"Couldn't kiss you if I was sober," Eduardo says, turning his face up toward Mark, eyes wide, voice suddenly clear.
Mark leans his head back, takes deep breaths to stop the spinning.
"You could," he says and Eduardo shakes his head vehemently.
"I'd kiss back," Mark says dumbly, blushing.
"Never- I can't- can't kiss a guy if I'm not drunk," Eduardo explains, waving his hands in the air. Mark stares at him.
"Why?"
"Because that'd be- be stupid," Eduardo says.
"Wardo, you like, blow people and have sex with them and stuff-"
"When I'm drunk," he cuts in loudly. "Not when-"
"That's pathetic," Mark says, and Eduardo stares at him like he's been slapped.
"You're gay even if you do it when you're wasted. That stuff's gay," Mark clarifies, over-enunciating. Eduardo sits up suddenly, shakes his head.
"Don't," he says in a small voice.
"Why are you such a pussy?" Mark asks heatedly, so fucking pissed off at Eduardo's bullshit.
"Fuck- fuck off, okay, Mark," he says, and stands up, swaying. "I don't even care."
He supports himself on the couch and then the wall and finally he's out the door.
Mark closes his eyes and when he opens them again it's an hour later.
That always happens when he's drunk.
He feels a little more sober, though, so he stands up and grabs a bottle of Dasani and chugs it, and then goes to find Dustin or Chris.
The party in Kirkland is still going. The music's shaking the walls, the floor's sort of sticky and the makeshift bar's still serving. Mark is shocked it hasn't been broken up yet.
He wanders in and out of the various rooms and some people say hi to him but he ignores them, looking for- not for Eduardo, his mind says, but he still can't help but think he sees him everywhere.
He pushes open a door and there's two people on the bed, a blur of motion.
Mark squints and they keep going and he sees it's Eduardo, Eduardo and some tall brunette guy, and Eduardo's flat on his back with his legs open and up, eyes closed, getting fucked. Really hard, if the guy's short deep grunts are any indication. Eduardo's not making any noise.
"Jesus," Mark says into the darkness, and the guy fucking Eduardo turns around.
"What the fuck, dude," he says. Eduardo doesn't say anything.
"Wardo," Mark says loudly. "Eduardo!"
Eduardo opens his eyes very slightly and looks at him.
"Get the fuck out," the guy says, and Mark leaves before he throws up.
He goes back to the room and codes for three hours, until the sun is up and the pale grey light is coming through his window. He buries himself in his covers and sleeps for twelve hours.
---
"Ma-aark," he hears from above him.
"What," he says flatly, keeping his eyes closed. Dustin makes a noise of victory.
"Yay! You're alive. I was worried."
Mark opens his eyes. Dustin's sitting on the end of his bed in pretzel position, grinning.
"It's four o'clock," he says, and Mark groans.
"So..." Dustin says, still grinning infuriatingly at him.
"So shut up," Mark says incoherently, and Dustin laughs and bounces off his bed.
"Let's go get dinner," he says, throwing a dart at Mark. Mark groans again.
"Where's Wardo?" he asks, and then he remembers and sits straight up.
Dustin's laughing over 'where's wardo', so he doesn't even notice when Mark stands up and reaches dizzily for his phone.
He doesn't have any new texts.
---
He goes to dinner with Dustin but makes him stop by Lowell first.
"Wardo," he says, knocking on the door, and Dustin falls against the door with his whole body and starts pounding on it.
"Eduardo mi amor," Dustin calls, and nearly falls when it opens.
Eduardo's sober, showered, put-together, and Mark goggles at him. The only indication of anything is that he shoots Mark a worried, shameful little look, and then Dustin says, "Duuude. Dinner? I'm starving," and Eduardo looks away.
"Uh, just ate, sorry," he says, voice hoarse.
"Okay," Dustin says, shrugging, and Mark shoots him one last look before they go.
"You hook up again last night?" Dustin says, pulling a hat on because it's still fucking freezing.
"What?"
"Eduardo. Drunk kissing train. And you, the unwitting recipient standing on the tracks."
"No, we, uh-" he kind of wants to tell Dustin what happened, because Dustin might want to help. But he doesn't do stuff like that, talk about his feelings or Eduardo's feelings with other people. It's not- they're not like that.
"- I saw him early on but, didn't really see him, so, no."
Dustin shrugs and opens the door of the dining hall for Mark, waving him in and saying, "After you, my good man!"
Mark rolls his eyes and goes inside.
---
At dinner he gets a text.
can we talk? come back to my room after dinner
Mark stares at it and takes another bite of the d-hall's shitty lo mein.
yeah twenty minutes
Eduardo lets him in and they make stupid small talk about the weekend and homework until finally Eduardo sits down at his desk chair, Mark on his bed, and places his hand deliberately, firmly, on his desk, in a weirdly fake-casual pose.
"Hey, uh, Mark-" he says, and bites his lip. "Did we- Mark, did we do something last night?"
Mark shrugs. "We, uh, we hung out. We- we talked."
"That's it?" Eduardo says anxiously. "Mark, I mean- did we have sex?"
"No! Jesus, Wardo!" Mark splutters.
"-okay, I'm sorry, I just- lately it's been you I end up with a lot, it seems like, and I - I had sex last night-"
"You remember?"
"No," Eduardo says unwillingly.
"Where'd you wake up?" Mark asks, looking away, like he doesn't give a shit.
"In my bed, it's not that- I just, Mark, I can- Mark, I can feel it," Eduardo says, and goes bright red. Mark is disgusted and turned-on and confused.
"We didn't," he says firmly, and Eduardo nods.
"Sorry, of course we didn't," he says, and what does that mean?
"If- if we had had sex, Wardo, you wouldn't have woken up by yourself," Mark says hotly, and looks away. Eduardo looks scared, like maybe he remembers what they talked about, fought about, last night.
"Yeah, well, thanks," he mutters, looking away.
"You don't even want to find out who you fucked last night?" Mark says nastily. Eduardo turns his eyes on him, big and sad and still scared.
"He had brown hair and he was big," Mark continues, and watches Eduardo's face go red.
"How do you-"
"I saw you at the Lowell party," Mark says, trying to keep his voice from being petty. He doesn't really succeed. "He seemed nice. You were practically passed out, so that must have been convenient for him."
Eduardo takes in a sharp little breath, and shakes his head, turns away from Mark.
"I have a lot of work to do," he says, voice muffled and thick.
"Whatever," Mark says, frustrated, and he leaves.
---
Eduardo goes home to Miami for spring break, but comes back three days early to work on some investment association project.
Mark is home in Dobbs Ferry but when Eduardo texts him, hey are you around, he asks his mom for an early train back.
She tuts at him but acquiesces.
He was dying from family time, anyway.
The train gets in late, at midnight, and he's pretty fucking exhausted. He pulled an all-nighter coding the night before, and then had to sit through family breakfast and family lunch and family dinner and his sisters' voices are still ringing in his ear.
Still, he texts Eduardo, flopping down on his bed-
just got in i'm in my room
Eduardo doesn't respond, and Mark goes to sleep, vaguely uneasy for some reason.
Two hours later he hears a knock.
It's Eduardo, eyes bright and feverish and exhausted. He's drunk, Mark knows, and he half-prepares himself for Eduardo's mouth.
"Hey," he says, and Eduardo grins with teeth and then sobs, suddenly, and collapses into the room.
"Jesus Christ," Mark says, trying to catch him, dragging him to the couch.
Eduardo isn't crying, not really, just taking in shaking breaths, wheezy, like he's having a panic attack, like his sister used to when she was taking six APs and filling out college applications.
"Wardo," Mark says, and Eduardo turns his face towards him and he has a bruise on his eye, a black eye, fresh-looking, and Mark's eyes go wide.
"What the fuck happened?" he says, holding Eduardo's face in his hands.
"Fell, I fell," Eduardo says. "Off the bed."
"Whose bed, Wardo, shit, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"I was- lacrosse, the guy I think from before, he, and-"
He takes a shuddery deep breath and puts his head on Mark's shoulder. Mark clutches an arm around him, protectively.
"We had sex again, I think. And his roommate-"
"You- what did you do?"
"I'm a fucking slut," Eduardo chokes out, and buries his face in Mark's neck.
"No, no, you're not, Wardo, just calm down."
"I- they both fucked me, Mark."
Mark was just getting around to that conclusion himself, but it hurts to hear Eduardo say it. Hurts for him and for Eduardo.
"And- and I wish I'd just come over when you texted me because I'm such a stupid fucking whore," he says, voice desperate and loud and slurred, and Mark shakes his head.
"Wardo," he says, and can't go on.
"Fuck Mark, fuck I - I hate myself so much right now," he says, and puts his face into Mark's neck again.
"Why-" he says, and sobs again. "Fuck, why did I do that, Mark, please, please-"
"Shh, it's okay, it just- it's over now, okay? You were drunk. It's okay."
"But I wanted it, I wanted- I don't just want it when I'm drunk, which, I can't, Mark, my father- he-"
He stops and makes himself breathe slower. Mark rubs his back with one hand.
"-I'd get- fuck, killed," he says, voice a little less wild. "I can't."
"He doesn't know," Mark says. "He never has to know."
Eduardo just breathes.
"Wardo, did you use a condom," Mark says, stomach sinking, and Eduardo nods. Mark exhales.
"Yeah, he- they, they both did, I'm pretty sure," Eduardo adds.
"Okay," Mark says, relief flooding through him.
Eduardo is snuffling quietly against Mark's neck.
"You want to go to sleep?" Mark says, still holding him. It feels good to hold him. Mark is too tired and too freaked-out to actually analyze why.
"No," Eduardo says. "Yes. I just- ugh, I wish I were sober right now. I miss being sober." His voice is still choky and strained.
"You want water?"
Eduardo nods, and Mark disentangles himself from him and stands up, gets Eduardo a Dasani from the fridge.
Eduardo has his head on the couch cushion, eyes heavy, and Mark opens the bottle for him and hands it to him.
"Thanks," he mumbles, drinking, and he spills all down his front, hisses through his teeth at the cold.
"Just wanna stay awake until I'm not drunk," he says determinedly.
"Okay," Mark says, standing awkwardly over him.
"Hungry," Eduardo murmurs, drinking thirstily at the water. Mark pulls a stale as fuck Powerbar out of his desk from before break, unwraps it and hands it to Eduardo.
"Just wish I hadn't done that," Eduardo says to himself, and nearly sobs again, but takes a bite of the Powerbar to stop himself.
"I know."
"Can you come sit by me?" Eduardo asks, eyes wide, and Mark sinks down onto the couch. Eduardo nuzzles into his lap and Mark puts a hand on his back, and Eduardo says quietly, voice still over-emotional with alcohol, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I'm such a slut, Mark."
Mark puts a hand in his hair and swallows hard.
"You're not," he says. "Wardo, you're- you're not."
Eduardo is still chewing, Mark can feel it against his leg, and he helps push Eduardo up to sitting so he can swallow without choking. Eduardo is like a child, malleable and pliant and innocent-looking.
He's like a child, except an hour ago he was on his hands and knees letting two guys fuck him one after the other, and he is not actually a child.
Mark is so confused.
"Can we talk about something," Eduardo says from his lap. "Don't wanna sleep."
Mark makes him drink more water.
"Spring break, was, uh- weird, but okay," Mark starts, coughing to clear his throat. "My sister made me go see that new movie, the one with the blonde chick from Spiderman. It was boring. My sister cried though, and actually thought I was going to too. She like, punched me in the arm when I didn't."
Eduardo snorts out a laugh, and Mark's lips quirk upward.
He tells another story and then another, talking more than he has in weeks because he doesn't talk that much at home. He can never get a word in edgewise, around his family, and he doesn't try very hard to anyway.
Eduardo is still nodding along, but when Mark finishes talking about how his mom made him eat so much kugel he nearly threw up, Eduardo lets out a soft snore.
Mark lays his head back against the couch.
He doesn't quite know what he's doing.
In fact, he has no fucking clue what he's doing.
---
He wakes up, still sitting on the couch, neck stiff, when Chris comes in late the next morning.
Mark opens his eyes blearily, and Chris waves at him with two fingers, the rest holding a massive backpack and dragging a rolly suitcase.
Mark just nods back. Eduardo's head is still on his thigh, and he's sleeping with his mouth open.
Chris sets his stuff down quietly in his room and comes back out into the common area and makes himself some coffee.
"You want?" he mouths, and Mark nods again. Chris perches on the coffee table with two mugs, holds one out to Mark.
"He okay?" Chris whispers. Mark shrugs.
"Just got drunk," he says, and Chris grins, but Mark doesn't return it. Chris stares at him, and shrugs.
"Let me know if you need anything," he says in a low voice, standing up, even though Mark was just kind of an asshole to him.
Chris is so fucking nice.
Mark stares at Eduardo, breathing quietly with his face pressed up into Mark's sweatpants.
He is queasily scared for when Eduardo wakes up, for that will entail. He is nervous. He hates being nervous.
Mark's actually fallen asleep by the time Eduardo wakes.
It's a light sleep, though, and he feels it when Eduardo tries to clamber quietly off the couch, tightens his arm around him reflexively and opens his eyes.
Eduardo is lying back down, not moving, staring up at him.
"Hey," Mark says, coughing, voice dry. Eduardo keeps staring.
"How're you feeling?"
Eduardo nods, licks his dry lips a couple times. "Okay," he croaks out finally. There's still no one in the room, and it's dark, lit only by slices of sunlight through the edges of the closed curtains.
Mark rubs a thumb gently over Eduardo's face, over his swollen-purple eye which just now Mark is realizing he forgot to do something about. Fuck.
"I'm- you need ice, Wardo," he says firmly. Eduardo squints at him in confusion.
"Your eye."
Eduardo brings his hand up to his own eye, winces. "Fuck, I forgot," he says. Mark keeps his thumb on his cheek.
Eduardo is so close and even when he's hungover, ashamed, with a black eye and a red nose, Mark still wants to touch him.
"How much do you remember," he says, and Eduardo squeezes his eyes shut and then open again, flails and stretches and nearly hits Mark in the face.
"I- some," he says, smiling sheepishly. Mark nods.
And Eduardo stretches again, yawns, and then it hits him. Mark can physically see it hit him.
"Fuck," he says, loud and scared, smile wiped off his face, and he scrambles up and off Mark's lap.
"Wardo-" Mark says, and Chris comes into the room with his empty mug.
"What's up?" he asks. Eduardo's halfway off the couch, panting, eyes wide. Mark stands up too, quickly, defensively.
"Nothing!" Eduardo says, 'I- Mark, did I leave my stuff here?"
Mark shakes his head helplessly. "Fuck," Eduardo says again.
"You're not going to get it," Mark says, grabbing at his arm.
"Yeah, I know, because I don't even know where I was," Eduardo mutters, snorting out a bitter laugh.
Chris doesn't say anything, just washes the dishes silently. Mark knows if it was Dustin he'd say, "Rough night?" with a leer and a wink and he is endlessly grateful that it is Chris who's here.
"Just. Probably in Lowell, if it's-"
Eduardo is nodding, but his breath is coming faster, panicky again, and Mark grips his wrist tight.
"Calm down," he says in a low voice. "It's going to be fine."
"I need my key," Eduardo says, and yanks away from Mark. "I need to go back to my room."
"You're not going back to- to the room, Wardo."
"I need my fucking key," he says, voice rising.
"Do you have your phone?" Mark asks, and sees it on the floor. He grabs it, and Eduardo takes it from him, scrolls through his messages.
"Lucy said we were in Lowell, room 214," he says. "That's where it started, at least."
"I'll get you a new key from facilities."
Eduardo nods, and Mark puts his hands up, steps away. "Just- just let me get dressed."
Chris shoots him one curious look as Mark steps into his room, and Mark sends him a face that he hopes is somewhat placating and appreciative but probably comes off as pissed-off.
"Can I do anything?" he asks quietly. Mark shakes his head.
"He just- it wasn't - wasn't a good night," he stammers, paranoid Eduardo can hear him, and Chris still looks concerned, but backs off.
Mark shrugs on a sweatshirt and kicks on flip-flops, and on second thought, grabs a sweatshirt for Eduardo.
When they're outside in the still-crisp air Eduardo says, "I'm sorry."
Mark is not sure who he's saying it to, Mark, or himself, or someone else.
He nudges Eduardo with his shoulder.
"It's okay," he says, and Eduardo digs his hands into the pockets of Mark's hoodie, head down.
"I mean it, Wardo. It's okay. It's gonna be okay."
"Doesn't feel that way," Eduardo admits.
---
Mark gets a new key, and Eduardo disappears into his room and he doesn't see him for two days.
Finally, on Tuesday, he texts Eduardo hey want to grab dinner
And Eduardo says yes.
They're in the d-hall, and Mark sees him. The guy. The lacrosse guy, who fucked Eduardo. Twice.
He sidles up behind him, pretending to look at the salad bar. The guy is with another boy, tall and broad like him. Probably a lax player, too.
"Dude, dude, check it out-" the guy points at Eduardo surreptitiously, nudging his friend in the ribs. Eduardo's studying a bag of chips on the other side of the caf, debating them.
"What?" the friend says, and Mark moves closer, keeps his back to them.
The guy lowers his voice. "That's the kid we- Josh and I, we totally double-teamed him last weekend."
The second guy makes a noise of disgust and curiosity. "That's gay, bro."
Mark almost snorts. He doesn't believe the idiots Harvard lets in just because they can hit a ball.
"No, he didn't fuck us, idiot. It was hot. Kid is a slut."
"You're sick."
"Whatever, dude- what the fuck?"
Mark blinks and pulls his tray up from where he's just let a bowl of tomato soup and a mound of potato salad fall against the guy's chest.
He doesn't say sorry. He will not say fucking sorry to this fucker.
"What the fuck was that, loser?"
Mark shrugs and looks away, and the guy peers at him and says, "Oh, it's- I know you."
His voice gets hard. "You're the creepy little fucker who was trying to watch."
Mark doesn't say anything. From over the guy's shoulder Eduardo is still perusing the bags of pretzels.
The other guy, the one who said "sick", raises his eyebrows and walks away.
"Dude, your boyfriend's a real whore," the guy says, in a low mean laughing voice, and Mark wants to punch him.
Not that he's going to, he's not an idiot, but for one second he wants to more badly than anything in his life.
"Maybe we'll see if you can play lacrosse once your coach knows you practically raped some guy who was passed out," Mark says, but his voice is shaking.
The guy laughs.
"He told you he was passed out? Fucking liar, I guess. He wanted it, which is the sad thing. He was begging me, okay?"
Mark's face is burning hot and he can see Eduardo look towards them bemusedly. Fuck.
"So, don't pretend like you know what you're talking about, and keep a leash on your little boyfriend," the guy hisses, and shoves past him.
Eduardo is still staring; Mark shrugs in return.
---
"Who's that guy?" Eduardo asks as they're eating, but he's staring determinedly at his plate, and Mark swallows a bite, working it over in his mind before answering it.
"Just a kid in my OS class," he says.
"You're lying," Eduardo says quietly, inevitably. "He's- he's the guy from this weekend, isn't he-"
"Eduardo, let's not talk about this right now."
"Fine," Eduardo says, eyes scared and angry, so so fucking angry, and Mark knows he's angry at himself.
He never used to know what people were thinking, and he's realizing now it was sort of a luxury.
Because as he watches Eduardo eat, he can nearly hear his thoughts and they hurt: I'm a piece of shit I'm a slut I shouldn't even be fucking alive I'm pathetic if he found out if he found out if he found out-- fuck-
Mark misses not knowing.
----
He doesn't know what it means, that he knows things about Eduardo now.
It's unsettling.
Because now he wants things. Like, before this, it was like food, drink, Red Bull (can't technically count as either, really), code, repeat.
And now it's like, well- food, drink, Red Bull, Eduardo's mouth, Eduardo's hips, Eduardo's delicate bare feet, Eduardo being happy, Eduardo smiling.
And code.
Always code.
But sometimes he's typing idly and he starts thinking about Eduardo's soft warm weight, drunk and spread out on his lap, and he feels turned-on and guilty and he messes up, his fingers slip on the keyboard and he has to close his eyes.
He is not like those others. He has to repeat it to himself, over and over.
Guilt is not a feeling he is accustomed to, and he does not enjoy it.
Because he didn't do anything.
Yeah, okay, so he made out with Eduardo while he was drunk. Multiple times.
But if it hadn't been him, it'd be someone else, someone worse.
When it wasn't him it was someone else, and it was worse.
Mark just wants- he wants for it all to back up, until it's just him, and Eduardo, sober and laughing and nudging Mark with his shoulder when they go to dinner.
And if there's kissing involved, Eduardo's mouth not burning with alcohol but sweet with orange juice or ice cream or fucking oatmeal, Mark doesn't care, that'd be good.
That would be ideal.
From what he sees of Eduardo, which isn't much, Eduardo is going on, trying not to think about it. Which is very Eduardo-like. People know Mark doesn't do feelings, but Eduardo's sneaky. He seems all friendly and normal and then he's all shame and self-loathing and repression at his core. It's misleading.
---
Eduardo starts to hang out with them again, after a while.
Mark doesn't hear any more gossip, more bullshit about Eduardo, but he's still paranoid all the time, half-listening to everyone's conversations, tuning out Dustin and Chris even more than usual.
It's a Saturday night and Mark texts Eduardo like he has for the past two weeks- hey what're you doing tonight
And this time, instead of staying in, have a paper due monday, Eduardo just shows up.
"Hey," he says, and Mark looks up from the computer. He frowns, picks up his phone.
"Did you-"
"No," Eduardo says quickly, nervously. "I thought- I don't know, it's been a while. Want to hang?"
They end up wandering around a little bit, getting food at the Thirsty Scholar, spending ten minutes in an AEPi party until by mutual decision they leave. Dustin and Chris are in the room, pregaming some epic rave in Theta, and they talk, laugh, watch an old episode of M*A*S*H while they drink, until Mark pops in the first Austin Powers and Dustin and Chris leave, and they're sitting on the couch.
Eduardo hasn't seen it before, and he laughs, chest shaking, and Mark has never been more aware of another person before. He keeps shooting looks at Eduardo's profile in the light of the TV.
"Do you want water?" Mark asks, and Eduardo looks at him, surprised, and says, "Sure, thanks."
Mark gets him a cup of water and sits back down, closer. He can feel the heat of Eduardo's body. Eduardo coughs and takes a sip and leans forward to put the cup on the table, and when he leans back he's a little closer too and Mark's heart is pounding because it's such a stupid cat and mouse bullshit game and is this what people do, actually? Like a giant game of chicken. It's stupid.
Eduardo's back is straight, and he looks at Mark briefly, sideways, and Mark's hand twitches on his thigh.
Maybe this is what Mark needs to do, when Eduardo is not drunk and it is all slow.
He doesn't mind.
He doesn't analyze why he doesn't mind, because that would be scary.
He just lifts his arm and puts it around Eduardo's shoulder, carefully, and Eduardo sucks in a breath and goes stiff.
"Okay?" Mark asks quietly, and Eduardo puts his head on Mark's shoulder, relaxes.
Mark keeps his hand there, curled around Eduardo's shoulder.
They don't kiss. They sit like that until the movie is over, and then Eduardo nuzzles his head against Mark's neck, shyly, and stands up.
"I'm gonna go to bed," he says. Mark stands up too, picks up his water cup, nods.
---
They do it again the next week, well, with different locations filled in for dinner and party and then different movies, but it ends the same. Mark doesn't even feel very impatient, which is the weird thing. He is used to feeling impatient about pretty much everything, always waiting for people to catch up with him.
Two weeks later, they're on the couch, credits of Anaconda rolling by on the screen. Dustin's out, Chris is in New York for the weekend.
Eduardo sighs, and Mark tightens the arm around his shoulder for a second.
"What do you wanna watch?" he whispers, and then doesn't know why he's whispering. The room is dark. Eduardo is warm, the room is dark, and it's a Friday night. Something about it's different.
"I don't know," Eduardo murmurs, and Mark turns his head and catches the side of Eduardo's lips with his own. It's messy, and Eduardo makes a strange sound, like half a gasp.
"Mark," he says, pulling back, and Mark turns more fully, slips his arm down from Eduardo's shoulder to his waist and kisses him again.
Eduardo kisses differently, which is the weird thing. He's more hesitant, and he opens his mouth only slightly, and it takes them a minute to find a rhythm of give and take.
But once they do Eduardo is breathing shaky against his lips and kissing him again, not harder but deeper, slower, and Mark feels it right down to his bones. Mark runs a hand up the back of Eduardo's neck into his hair, gently.
When they kissed before, when Eduardo was wasted and sloppy, Eduardo would touch him everywhere, scratch his nails up Mark's back like kissing was just a prelude to fucking. A means to an end.
Now he pulls away, still not having laid a hand on Mark, and he looks dazed and unsure and cautiously happy.
"You okay?" Mark says, licking his lips, mouth quirking up at the edges, and Eduardo nods.
"You wanna- again?" Mark says, not really caring how it sounds, and Eduardo nods again and leans forward.
And how is it that Eduardo's the only guy Mark's ever kissed, and Eduardo's probably kissed more guys than Mark has people in general, but Mark's the one cupping his jaw carefully in one hand, opening his mouth slowly with his tongue until Eduardo shivers, one full-body shiver, and lets him in- Mark supposes he's learned a lot from drunk Eduardo.
That makes a laugh bubble up in his chest, and he swallows it down and grins hard into Eduardo's mouth.
"What?" Eduardo says, and Mark shakes his head, and puts their mouths together again, and Eduardo finally, finally puts a hand cautiously on Mark's neck, fingers light and dry and warm.
Of course that's when Dustin slams the door open.
Eduardo jerks away like he's been burnt, and Mark keeps a hand on his neck, glares at Dustin when he flicks on the light.
"Hey guys!" Dustin says obliviously, and Mark stares harder like he can kill Dustin with his eyes. Dustin nods, eyes widening in fear. "Ah- yeah, okay, so I'm just gonna-" he backs out of the room into his own.
Eduardo's looking down, biting his lip, and Mark tilts his chin up with his hand and kisses him again.
"Mark," Eduardo says, but kisses back, and puts a hand on Mark's thigh.
"Still in the room," Dustin says as he comes out of his room with a jacket and a bottle of orange juice. "Gimme a minute before you go at each other like hyenas."
Mark rolls his eyes.
"Hyenas?" Eduardo asks, and laughs.
"Dustin out!" Dustin calls unnecessarily as he leaves, this time through the main door. Mark shakes his head, and Eduardo leans forward and plants a soft kiss on Mark's jaw, pulls away.
"I have to finish a proposal," he says, and Mark really really wants him to stay, but Eduardo's standing up and grabbing his coat from the chair.
"Is this because of Dustin?"
"No, Mark, I just need a little bit of time. To- to work on my project," he says, unconvincingly.
"Okay," Mark says, unwillingly this time, and Eduardo pulls the door shut behind him.
Mark exhales and flips the channel.
Ten minutes later his phone buzzes twice.
i'm sorry i left so fast i'm just not good at this
at not being drunk and still being into you
Mark inhales raggedly and throws the phone on the table.
---
The next day, Dustin comes over behind Mark in his desk chair as he codes, puts his hands on his shoulders.
"Mark," he says wheedlingly when Mark doesn't turn around. His breath smells like french fries.
"What," Mark says, not looking up.
"So, are you like, hooking up with Eduardo on the regular now?"
Mark stops typing. He loses his train of thought. He hates losing his train of thought.
"Because, like, you seemed sober. Are you soberly with him now?"
"Dustin," Mark starts.
"You don't have to say it out loud! Just nod once for yes and twice for no."
"Dustin," Mark says again. "It's none of your business."
"Ooooh you are. Finally! Now you just have to keep a leash on him when he's drunk."
"Shut the fuck up," Mark snaps, ears ringing with keep him on a leash.
Dustin takes his hands off Mark's shoulders.
"Fine," he says, pouting, backing out of the room. "Don't have to be a dick."
Mark is not going to be sorry. Dustin will just come bouncing back in an hour later anyway.
---
That weekend, Mark goes to the final Investor's Association presentation of the year, by himself, and stands awkwardly by himself while Eduardo gestures at a Powerpoint and talks about supply curves.
Afterwards, people clap and Eduardo grins and walks offstage. Mark watches him. He hasn't seen Mark yet, and he shakes hands with a few professors, claps some Indian kid Mark hasn't met on the back, and grabs a glass of water.
He sees Mark over the rim of his glass and a grin spreads over his face. Mark shifts from foot to foot and lifts one hand to his waist in half a wave.
"Hey," Eduardo says, still grinning. "I didn't know you were going to-"
"Good job," Mark bursts out, because he's been working on what he should say for a couple minutes now.
Eduardo laughs. "Thanks. I bet it- it was boring, I mean-"
"I got it, though. I mean, it's just econ."
Eduardo laughs again, the way he does when Mark is inadvertently an asshole but also funny, and Mark looks down.
"What're you doing now?" Mark says, and Eduardo shrugs, tosses his cup into a nearby trash can.
"I mean, some of us were going to go out. Divya's suitemate got a case of wine from his parents in Switzerland."
Mark nods, nervously.
"But- I'm starved. You want to grab some food?"
Mark nods, emphatically this time.
"Yeah," he says, and Eduardo nudges him with his shoulder, smiles.
They get Mexican, and Eduardo kicks his leg under the table and licks pico de gallo off his fingers and talks about how Divya is maybe trying to fuck this girl named Kaycee and it's not really working out. Mark nods along.
"You want to head over there?" Eduardo asks when they're finishing up.
"Do you want to drink?" Mark asks, and apparently some of his Jewish mother has rubbed off on him, because it comes out sounding judgy. It's not, really. Mark is just scared.
Eduardo looks up at him, then down at his plate. "I don't know," he says quietly.
"You could just come back to our room," Mark says, panicking slightly. Eduardo is so fucking good-looking. Anyone could have him, if he's drunk. That- that's not fair, because Mark's the only one who gives a shit about him when he's sober.
"I haven't gone out in a month," Eduardo says, avoiding Mark's eyes. Mark can hear the unspoken words, for once. You're not my mom. You're not even my father.
Mark knows that. He is not an idiot.
He thought, maybe, he was something to Eduardo, though.
Maybe that's stupid to think. Eduardo did fuck two guys in one night. He doesn't seem like one for commitment.
He knows that thought makes him an asshole. He doesn't feel good about it.
"You should come," Eduardo says, like it's already decided.
"Whatever," Mark says. "I have to get some stuff done, anyway."
"I'm not going to- do anything," Eduardo says, going red. "I promise, Mark."
"Yeah," Mark says skeptically, and what claim does he have on Eduardo, anyway? They've kissed once.
It's not like they've had sex or even done sex stuff and Mark is still a virgin, still a pathetic ugly weedy underweight virgin.
Eduardo is so far from a virgin it's ridiculous.
It is idiotic for Mark to think he has any claim on him.
---
Mark goes back to the room and gets drunk. Dustin keeps pouring him shots, and when they're both well and truly wasted, Dustin nudges him with his elbow and says, "You and Wardo okay?"
"He's getting drunk with his friends," Mark says bitterly. Dustin puts his head on Mark's shoulder.
"He likes you," Dustin says. Mark snorts.
"He likes everyone," he says pettily.
On the coffee table, his phone buzzes. Dustin grabs it.
"Miss you," Dustin reads. "I'm coming over can I come over? Ha, he's drunk."
"We're drunk," Mark points out.
"He misses you," Dustin teases, and Mark grabs the phone out of his hand. His hand-eye coordination is pretty fucked.
He types out im her with dustin come over
"You want me to leave?" Dustin asks.
"No," Mark says firmly. "We're not gonna do anything."
"But Eduardo gets soooo horny when he's drunk," Dustin says, and starts giggling.
"Whatever," Mark says, and there's a knock on the door.
"Hi," Eduardo calls through the door, pounding. Mark rolls his eyes and stands up, legs nearly buckling. He balances himself on the arm of the couch and Dustin laughs hysterically.
He opens the door, and Eduardo's leaning against the wall. They grin at each other.
Mark is drunk and Eduardo is so nice to look at and he can barely remember why he was mad, before.
"How was the thing," he says, and Eduardo shrugs.
"Not that good," he says, and puts an arm around Mark's shoulder, walks them both into the room.
"Dustin!" he calls, and Dustin waves from where he's curled on his side on the couch.
"Where's Chris?"
"GSA party," Dustin says. "Mark, can I have some water?"
Mark rolls his eyes again but he's laughing, and Eduardo's laughing, and they are all so very fucking drunk.
He pours Dustin a cup, only spilling a little, and Dustin gives him a sideways thumbs up, eyes squeezed shut for no discernible reason.
"We're gonna go-" Mark says, motioning at his room, pulling on Eduardo's elbow, and they trip into the room, slamming the door behind them.
"Be safe!" Mark hears Dustin call, and Eduardo laughs, bubbly and sweet in his throat.
part two
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
notes:
based on the kinkmeme prompt- Eduardo has this thing, where whenever he's drunk drunk, he basically makes out with whoever's around. -- but then it became a massively angsty love story. oops.
title is from the song "yesterday" by atmosphere, from this verse:
"You crept out the front door slow
And I was so self-absorbed I didn't even know
And by the time I looked up it was booked up
Put it all behind you, the bad and the good stuff
A whole house full of dreams and steps
I think you'd be impressed with the pieces I kept
You disappeared but the history is still here
It's why I try not to cry over spilt beer
I can't even get mad that you're gone
Leavin' me was probably the best thing you ever taught me"
Mark meets Eduardo when Chris brings him home on a Friday night, during orientation.
They stumble in the door, kissing, and Mark knew Chris was gay, he guessed from the shirtless poster of James Franco, but there's a difference between knowing the guy you've known for three days is gay and being sexiled. Sexiled!
Not that Mark cares about sex, because whatever, but he hasn't made a single friend outside of Dustin and Chris and Chris is already getting some.
He feels vaguely put-out.
The door slams to Chris' room and Mark sits back in his desk chair, stretching his fingers. He can hear vague sounds, wet and low.
Which is just like, not cool.
He goes back to coding CourseMatch and hears, "Shit! Shit." from the room, and the door opens and Chris pops his head out.
"Mark, I didn't even see you," he says, eyes wide. "I'm- fuck, I'm sorry, we can just-"
"Who's Mark?" he hears next, and a guy pushes his way past Chris and stumbles towards Mark. He's wearing black pants and a button-down and he has brown poufy hair and his cheeks are flushed and he's really, really wasted.
"Hi," he says, grinning, and Chris rolls his eyes.
"Mark, Eduardo. Eduardo, Mark. I think he's a sophomore."
Mark nods, and Eduardo turns around slowly, looking through half-lidded eyes at Chris.
"Wait, you're not a sophomore?" he asks, voice slurred.
"I'm- dude, we're in the Yard right now," Chris says, grinning, and Eduardo scratches his belly, blinking dazedly.
"Fuck, you're a freshman," he concludes, and flops down on the couch. "That's just like incest or whatever. Pedo- pedophilia."
"Didn't seem to mind five minutes ago," Chris mutters, sitting down next to him, and Mark's face is weirdly hot. Eduardo spreads his legs, grabs at a half-empty beer Dustin left on the counter.
Chris takes it out of his hands. "No, Eduardo, I think you're okay."
"Thirsty," he mumbles, and drapes himself over Chris like a blanket. Mark watches silently.
"Okay- okay, bro, I just- you're really, really drunk," Chris says, pushing Eduardo off, and Eduardo nods and sets his eyes on Mark and Mark swallows.
Eduardo grins loose and easy, slightly predatory.
"Hi," he says again, and Chris stands up to get Eduardo some water from the bathroom. When he closes the door Eduardo stands up and stumbles towards Mark and pushes him against the door.
"Shh," he says, giggling, hands running curiously up Mark's sides, pushing up his T-shirt. Mark stays absolutely still.
"Because- cause I think that guy's a freshman," Eduardo says, very seriously, eyes wide. "He's a freshman. Which means like a baby. Little baby."
Mark is going to say, "I'm a freshman too", he really is, but Eduardo's kissing him very forcefully and wet and hot. Mark isn't really moving his lips. It feels weird. But kind of also awesome.
"Mmm," Eduardo murmurs against his mouth, and from the doorway Chris says, "Eduardo!" exasperatedly.
Eduardo pulls away, smiling slow at him, running a finger down Mark's cheek, and Mark is panting a little, involuntarily. Well. Three days at college and he's already "experimenting". Great. And he didn't even need to leave the room.
Eduardo collapses on the couch and Chris makes him drink water and when Mark wakes up the next morning Eduardo is gone.
So, that's how he meets Eduardo.
----
How Eduardo meets them is different. Because at the stupid orientation dance the following night, Eduardo's one of the sophomores in green welcoming committee T-shirts, passing out glowsticks.
"That's the guy you, uh, from last night," Mark says, tugging on Chris' sleeve, and Chris turns away from his gaggle of new girl friends (because Chris is a normal functioning human being but he is also nice, like so nice he brings Mark everywhere with him) and laughs.
"Oh my God, it is. Eduardo."
"Oh, yeah," Mark says, like he's just remembering it.
"You guys want a glowstick?" Eduardo asks them, grinning, and Mark goes hot and looks down.
"Hey, Eduardo," Chris says, and Eduardo looks at them confusedly.
"Sorry, did we- am I your RA?"
Chris snorts. "No, uh, we met last night."
Eduardo's eyes go wide and he blushes furiously. "Oh fuck," he mutters. "Yeah, okay. Uh, so, um, did we- like-" he shakes his head and pulls Chris aside, and Mark stands there awkwardly with the girls.
"So, you're Chris' roommate?" one of the girls asks, and Mark nods.
"Where are you from?" another says, and he doesn't answer because he's staring over her shoulder at Chris and Eduardo talking.
"Okay," the girl says after a minute, rolling her eyes, and turns away from him.
Chris joins their group again, laughing a little to himself, and Mark tries to casually get next to him.
"What'd he, uh, say?" Mark says, sticking a hand in his shorts pocket, and Chris grins.
"He was just really drunk. You know. He apologized. He, actually-" Chris lowers his voice. "He had to ask me if we'd- you know."
"Made out?" Mark asks, voice flat, but his cheeks are hot. Fuck.
"Had sex," Chris says, and laughs, shaking his head. "He was so fucking embarrassed, I felt bad for him. Don't worry, I didn't tell him he attacked you."
"Okay," Mark says, chewing his lip and looking away. Had sex. He doesn't even know what that would entail. His brain is trying desperately to help him figure it out, though.
He shakes his head like he's trying to clear it and follows Chris into the dance.
---
So technically, they haven't officially met.
But Eduardo sort of becomes their friend and they introduce themselves briefly and then it's like they know each other, because-
- because Dustin has a lit class with Eduardo, and they both sort of hate it, but they do like to drink Natty and bitch about how much they hate it, so it only takes a week before Mark starts getting used to coming in to Eduardo sitting on their couch.
Eduardo and Chris are awkward at first, but eventually Chris punches him in the shoulder and says, "So, we made out! Let's stop being weird!" and Dustin makes fake kissy sounds at them until Eduardo grins and punches him in the shoulder.
Mark watches this from his desk.
Eduardo smiles at him sometimes, friendly and open, and Mark puts his head down and starts typing furiously.
---
He's 80% sure he's managed to forget about it, except three weeks later he's at an AEPi party and Eduardo has a short Asian girl pressed against the wall with his tongue in her mouth.
Chris snorts when he sees them.
"He's like a kissing booth when he's drunk, I think," he says, fondly, and Mark keeps looking up at them and then down.
"How is he already getting some," Dustin grumbles. "Bullshit."
The girl leads Eduardo out by the hand, and Mark watches them go.
"Mark, you want some more-"
And Mark walks off without saying anything. Dustin looks at Chris bemusedly. Chris shrugs.
---
Three months into the year they become friends, actual friends.
Eduardo knocks on the door and lets himself in, leans against the doorway to Mark's room.
"Dustin's at the d-hall," Mark says without looking up.
"I know," Eduardo says. "What's up?"
Mark looks up, a little annoyed, because that's, like, a stupid question. The ceiling is up. The sky. Mark is working. Eduardo is making stupid small talk.
"I mean-" Eduardo coughs, looking embarrassed. "Like, what are you doing?"
"I'm working out some kinks in CourseMatch," Mark says, and Eduardo sits on the edge of his bed, clasps his hands on his knees and nods.
"Cool, cool. That's so fucking awesome, by the way. Good job."
"Thanks," Mark says grudgingly. Sometimes he wants to tell Eduardo that they've kissed. But then he'd have to explain why he even cares and then Chris would wonder why and then Mark would have to consciously think about why he keeps jerking off thinking about Eduardo's fingers on his hips.
Which he really, really doesn't want to do.
"You wanna grab a drink, after this?" Eduardo says, fisting his hand in Mark's bedspread.
Mark shrugs.
"Give me twenty minutes," he says finally, voice flat, and Eduardo nods and flops back onto his bed.
They get two drinks and talk about random shit. Mark sort of wants Eduardo to get more drunk so he'll start kissing everything in his path again, but Eduardo cuts himself off when he starts to get giggly and walks Mark back to Kirkland and gives him a fist-bump at the door, and when Mark lies down his bed smells like Eduardo's cologne.
He buries his face in his pillow and jerks off quickly, dragging his hips against the bed, relishing the friction.
He definitely, definitely does not think about Eduardo's lips wet with beer and his stupid infuriatingly long fingers wrapped around a bottle.
Not at all.
---
So once Eduardo's little pattern is established and they're friends, Mark makes it his mission to be Eduardo's- well, he's not sure.
My wingman, Eduardo calls him, and it starts off that way but it always inevitably ends with Eduardo getting wasted and dancing and then pushing Mark out of the room or onto a bed or onto a couch or onto a chair and kissing him.
Mark doesn't mind that much.
He's being a good friend, he reasons. Because he always helps Eduardo get home safe, and he doesn't let anyone take advantage of him while he's drunk.
A little nagging voice says Mark might be doing that last thing all wrong, but he ignores it.
It still sucks, though. Because he wakes up in the morning and stretches against his sheets, eyes closed, thinking about Eduardo's mouth, the way he'd tongued hotly at Mark's teeth and then in his ear and how Mark had shuddered and gotten extremely fucking hard.
Mark wakes up and goes outside and Eduardo is gone. And he finds out, by asking carefully, subtly, about Eduardo's night, that Eduardo never remembers. He never fucking remembers.
Mark is maybe glad, because that means Eduardo will make out with him more than once. Maybe if Eduardo remembered, he wouldn't want to. Mark doesn't really know if he's a good kisser, or not.
But at the same time, once he had this dream that started off like his night, with Eduardo kissing him against the wall outside AEPi but then it ended differently, because Eduardo came home with Mark and passed out in his bed, and when they woke up Eduardo was curled against him, and Mark had run his fingers through his hair and kissed his temple and Eduardo's hand had curled tighter around Mark's waist and it was all so very frustrating because it was not true.
Mark is a little annoyed by the fact that he's pretty fucking gay for his best friend, just because he didn't really expect it, but he's not too put out. Making out with Wardo is like the best thing ever. He kissed one girl in high school, and she'd always lick his lips all wet and sloppy, and he'd close his eyes and try to keep still because it felt really fucking gross.
Eduardo is such a good kisser. He rubs a thumb in the hollow behind Mark's ear and works Mark's bottom lip into his mouth and bites gently at his jaw, until Mark shudders beneath him and Eduardo grins, like he's keeping score of how much Mark wants him. He lets Mark put his tongue hesitantly in his mouth, and encourages him with soft little sounds, and wraps his long-fingered hands around Mark's waist and pulls him closer.
But Eduardo never, ever remembers.
---
And then one night they're both drunk, and Eduardo says, "I really, really want to suck your dick," and Mark nearly falls off the bed.
They're in Eduardo's room, because Lowell ran out of beer and Eduardo said he had Smirnoff so they went back to his room and he drank some and Eduardo drank some and then, predictably, they started making out.
It's not usually this private though, this quiet. Mark can hear the vibrations of a far-off party but they're alone in the dark, single room, and Eduardo is straddling him while Mark lies on his back, leaning down and kissing him, and when Eduardo says what he says Mark's eyes go wide.
"Seriously," he says, grinning, rubbing his hands up over Mark's chest. Mark makes a little noise and surges upwards onto his elbows. "Make it so good. Want you to come in my mouth."
"Eduardo," Mark gets out, and Eduardo leans down and kisses him again, uses that fucking mouth and Mark kisses back helplessly.
"You're- we're too drunk, Wardo," Mark says, firmly, but his eyes go shut when Eduardo rubs his palm roughly over Mark's cock.
"You can still get it up," he observes, smiling, and leans down and mouths wetly against Mark's crotch in his jeans.
"Wardo, no- I- you're just, you're way too wasted, okay?"
"Ma-ark," Eduardo says, sort of coy and begging and cutesy, but his palm's still rubbing a steady circle into the bulge in Mark's pants and Mark's breath is coming in shorter faster bursts and finally he sits up, with effort, like, really, really unwillingly, and pushes Eduardo off him, onto his back on the bed.
"What're you doing," Eduardo says, slurred, and he buries his face in a pillow.
"Go to sleep," Mark says, sitting up, looking at him. He's still hard, but he presses his palm against his dick to will it down and pours Eduardo a glass of water, puts it next to his bed.
When Eduardo asks him about it the next day he goes hot, mutters something unintelligible.
Eduardo never fucking remembers and Mark is starting to wonder why.
----
"Why do you get so drunk?" Mark asks two weeks later, and Eduardo groans from where he's pushing his face into Mark's thigh on the couch.
"Shut up," he mumbles into Mark's sweatpants, and Mark lets his hand run through Eduardo's hair, because he's drunk too and it's sort of sticky with gel but soft at the same time.
"Couldn't kiss you if I was sober," Eduardo says, turning his face up toward Mark, eyes wide, voice suddenly clear.
Mark leans his head back, takes deep breaths to stop the spinning.
"You could," he says and Eduardo shakes his head vehemently.
"I'd kiss back," Mark says dumbly, blushing.
"Never- I can't- can't kiss a guy if I'm not drunk," Eduardo explains, waving his hands in the air. Mark stares at him.
"Why?"
"Because that'd be- be stupid," Eduardo says.
"Wardo, you like, blow people and have sex with them and stuff-"
"When I'm drunk," he cuts in loudly. "Not when-"
"That's pathetic," Mark says, and Eduardo stares at him like he's been slapped.
"You're gay even if you do it when you're wasted. That stuff's gay," Mark clarifies, over-enunciating. Eduardo sits up suddenly, shakes his head.
"Don't," he says in a small voice.
"Why are you such a pussy?" Mark asks heatedly, so fucking pissed off at Eduardo's bullshit.
"Fuck- fuck off, okay, Mark," he says, and stands up, swaying. "I don't even care."
He supports himself on the couch and then the wall and finally he's out the door.
Mark closes his eyes and when he opens them again it's an hour later.
That always happens when he's drunk.
He feels a little more sober, though, so he stands up and grabs a bottle of Dasani and chugs it, and then goes to find Dustin or Chris.
The party in Kirkland is still going. The music's shaking the walls, the floor's sort of sticky and the makeshift bar's still serving. Mark is shocked it hasn't been broken up yet.
He wanders in and out of the various rooms and some people say hi to him but he ignores them, looking for- not for Eduardo, his mind says, but he still can't help but think he sees him everywhere.
He pushes open a door and there's two people on the bed, a blur of motion.
Mark squints and they keep going and he sees it's Eduardo, Eduardo and some tall brunette guy, and Eduardo's flat on his back with his legs open and up, eyes closed, getting fucked. Really hard, if the guy's short deep grunts are any indication. Eduardo's not making any noise.
"Jesus," Mark says into the darkness, and the guy fucking Eduardo turns around.
"What the fuck, dude," he says. Eduardo doesn't say anything.
"Wardo," Mark says loudly. "Eduardo!"
Eduardo opens his eyes very slightly and looks at him.
"Get the fuck out," the guy says, and Mark leaves before he throws up.
He goes back to the room and codes for three hours, until the sun is up and the pale grey light is coming through his window. He buries himself in his covers and sleeps for twelve hours.
---
"Ma-aark," he hears from above him.
"What," he says flatly, keeping his eyes closed. Dustin makes a noise of victory.
"Yay! You're alive. I was worried."
Mark opens his eyes. Dustin's sitting on the end of his bed in pretzel position, grinning.
"It's four o'clock," he says, and Mark groans.
"So..." Dustin says, still grinning infuriatingly at him.
"So shut up," Mark says incoherently, and Dustin laughs and bounces off his bed.
"Let's go get dinner," he says, throwing a dart at Mark. Mark groans again.
"Where's Wardo?" he asks, and then he remembers and sits straight up.
Dustin's laughing over 'where's wardo', so he doesn't even notice when Mark stands up and reaches dizzily for his phone.
He doesn't have any new texts.
---
He goes to dinner with Dustin but makes him stop by Lowell first.
"Wardo," he says, knocking on the door, and Dustin falls against the door with his whole body and starts pounding on it.
"Eduardo mi amor," Dustin calls, and nearly falls when it opens.
Eduardo's sober, showered, put-together, and Mark goggles at him. The only indication of anything is that he shoots Mark a worried, shameful little look, and then Dustin says, "Duuude. Dinner? I'm starving," and Eduardo looks away.
"Uh, just ate, sorry," he says, voice hoarse.
"Okay," Dustin says, shrugging, and Mark shoots him one last look before they go.
"You hook up again last night?" Dustin says, pulling a hat on because it's still fucking freezing.
"What?"
"Eduardo. Drunk kissing train. And you, the unwitting recipient standing on the tracks."
"No, we, uh-" he kind of wants to tell Dustin what happened, because Dustin might want to help. But he doesn't do stuff like that, talk about his feelings or Eduardo's feelings with other people. It's not- they're not like that.
"- I saw him early on but, didn't really see him, so, no."
Dustin shrugs and opens the door of the dining hall for Mark, waving him in and saying, "After you, my good man!"
Mark rolls his eyes and goes inside.
---
At dinner he gets a text.
can we talk? come back to my room after dinner
Mark stares at it and takes another bite of the d-hall's shitty lo mein.
yeah twenty minutes
Eduardo lets him in and they make stupid small talk about the weekend and homework until finally Eduardo sits down at his desk chair, Mark on his bed, and places his hand deliberately, firmly, on his desk, in a weirdly fake-casual pose.
"Hey, uh, Mark-" he says, and bites his lip. "Did we- Mark, did we do something last night?"
Mark shrugs. "We, uh, we hung out. We- we talked."
"That's it?" Eduardo says anxiously. "Mark, I mean- did we have sex?"
"No! Jesus, Wardo!" Mark splutters.
"-okay, I'm sorry, I just- lately it's been you I end up with a lot, it seems like, and I - I had sex last night-"
"You remember?"
"No," Eduardo says unwillingly.
"Where'd you wake up?" Mark asks, looking away, like he doesn't give a shit.
"In my bed, it's not that- I just, Mark, I can- Mark, I can feel it," Eduardo says, and goes bright red. Mark is disgusted and turned-on and confused.
"We didn't," he says firmly, and Eduardo nods.
"Sorry, of course we didn't," he says, and what does that mean?
"If- if we had had sex, Wardo, you wouldn't have woken up by yourself," Mark says hotly, and looks away. Eduardo looks scared, like maybe he remembers what they talked about, fought about, last night.
"Yeah, well, thanks," he mutters, looking away.
"You don't even want to find out who you fucked last night?" Mark says nastily. Eduardo turns his eyes on him, big and sad and still scared.
"He had brown hair and he was big," Mark continues, and watches Eduardo's face go red.
"How do you-"
"I saw you at the Lowell party," Mark says, trying to keep his voice from being petty. He doesn't really succeed. "He seemed nice. You were practically passed out, so that must have been convenient for him."
Eduardo takes in a sharp little breath, and shakes his head, turns away from Mark.
"I have a lot of work to do," he says, voice muffled and thick.
"Whatever," Mark says, frustrated, and he leaves.
---
Eduardo goes home to Miami for spring break, but comes back three days early to work on some investment association project.
Mark is home in Dobbs Ferry but when Eduardo texts him, hey are you around, he asks his mom for an early train back.
She tuts at him but acquiesces.
He was dying from family time, anyway.
The train gets in late, at midnight, and he's pretty fucking exhausted. He pulled an all-nighter coding the night before, and then had to sit through family breakfast and family lunch and family dinner and his sisters' voices are still ringing in his ear.
Still, he texts Eduardo, flopping down on his bed-
just got in i'm in my room
Eduardo doesn't respond, and Mark goes to sleep, vaguely uneasy for some reason.
Two hours later he hears a knock.
It's Eduardo, eyes bright and feverish and exhausted. He's drunk, Mark knows, and he half-prepares himself for Eduardo's mouth.
"Hey," he says, and Eduardo grins with teeth and then sobs, suddenly, and collapses into the room.
"Jesus Christ," Mark says, trying to catch him, dragging him to the couch.
Eduardo isn't crying, not really, just taking in shaking breaths, wheezy, like he's having a panic attack, like his sister used to when she was taking six APs and filling out college applications.
"Wardo," Mark says, and Eduardo turns his face towards him and he has a bruise on his eye, a black eye, fresh-looking, and Mark's eyes go wide.
"What the fuck happened?" he says, holding Eduardo's face in his hands.
"Fell, I fell," Eduardo says. "Off the bed."
"Whose bed, Wardo, shit, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"I was- lacrosse, the guy I think from before, he, and-"
He takes a shuddery deep breath and puts his head on Mark's shoulder. Mark clutches an arm around him, protectively.
"We had sex again, I think. And his roommate-"
"You- what did you do?"
"I'm a fucking slut," Eduardo chokes out, and buries his face in Mark's neck.
"No, no, you're not, Wardo, just calm down."
"I- they both fucked me, Mark."
Mark was just getting around to that conclusion himself, but it hurts to hear Eduardo say it. Hurts for him and for Eduardo.
"And- and I wish I'd just come over when you texted me because I'm such a stupid fucking whore," he says, voice desperate and loud and slurred, and Mark shakes his head.
"Wardo," he says, and can't go on.
"Fuck Mark, fuck I - I hate myself so much right now," he says, and puts his face into Mark's neck again.
"Why-" he says, and sobs again. "Fuck, why did I do that, Mark, please, please-"
"Shh, it's okay, it just- it's over now, okay? You were drunk. It's okay."
"But I wanted it, I wanted- I don't just want it when I'm drunk, which, I can't, Mark, my father- he-"
He stops and makes himself breathe slower. Mark rubs his back with one hand.
"-I'd get- fuck, killed," he says, voice a little less wild. "I can't."
"He doesn't know," Mark says. "He never has to know."
Eduardo just breathes.
"Wardo, did you use a condom," Mark says, stomach sinking, and Eduardo nods. Mark exhales.
"Yeah, he- they, they both did, I'm pretty sure," Eduardo adds.
"Okay," Mark says, relief flooding through him.
Eduardo is snuffling quietly against Mark's neck.
"You want to go to sleep?" Mark says, still holding him. It feels good to hold him. Mark is too tired and too freaked-out to actually analyze why.
"No," Eduardo says. "Yes. I just- ugh, I wish I were sober right now. I miss being sober." His voice is still choky and strained.
"You want water?"
Eduardo nods, and Mark disentangles himself from him and stands up, gets Eduardo a Dasani from the fridge.
Eduardo has his head on the couch cushion, eyes heavy, and Mark opens the bottle for him and hands it to him.
"Thanks," he mumbles, drinking, and he spills all down his front, hisses through his teeth at the cold.
"Just wanna stay awake until I'm not drunk," he says determinedly.
"Okay," Mark says, standing awkwardly over him.
"Hungry," Eduardo murmurs, drinking thirstily at the water. Mark pulls a stale as fuck Powerbar out of his desk from before break, unwraps it and hands it to Eduardo.
"Just wish I hadn't done that," Eduardo says to himself, and nearly sobs again, but takes a bite of the Powerbar to stop himself.
"I know."
"Can you come sit by me?" Eduardo asks, eyes wide, and Mark sinks down onto the couch. Eduardo nuzzles into his lap and Mark puts a hand on his back, and Eduardo says quietly, voice still over-emotional with alcohol, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I'm such a slut, Mark."
Mark puts a hand in his hair and swallows hard.
"You're not," he says. "Wardo, you're- you're not."
Eduardo is still chewing, Mark can feel it against his leg, and he helps push Eduardo up to sitting so he can swallow without choking. Eduardo is like a child, malleable and pliant and innocent-looking.
He's like a child, except an hour ago he was on his hands and knees letting two guys fuck him one after the other, and he is not actually a child.
Mark is so confused.
"Can we talk about something," Eduardo says from his lap. "Don't wanna sleep."
Mark makes him drink more water.
"Spring break, was, uh- weird, but okay," Mark starts, coughing to clear his throat. "My sister made me go see that new movie, the one with the blonde chick from Spiderman. It was boring. My sister cried though, and actually thought I was going to too. She like, punched me in the arm when I didn't."
Eduardo snorts out a laugh, and Mark's lips quirk upward.
He tells another story and then another, talking more than he has in weeks because he doesn't talk that much at home. He can never get a word in edgewise, around his family, and he doesn't try very hard to anyway.
Eduardo is still nodding along, but when Mark finishes talking about how his mom made him eat so much kugel he nearly threw up, Eduardo lets out a soft snore.
Mark lays his head back against the couch.
He doesn't quite know what he's doing.
In fact, he has no fucking clue what he's doing.
---
He wakes up, still sitting on the couch, neck stiff, when Chris comes in late the next morning.
Mark opens his eyes blearily, and Chris waves at him with two fingers, the rest holding a massive backpack and dragging a rolly suitcase.
Mark just nods back. Eduardo's head is still on his thigh, and he's sleeping with his mouth open.
Chris sets his stuff down quietly in his room and comes back out into the common area and makes himself some coffee.
"You want?" he mouths, and Mark nods again. Chris perches on the coffee table with two mugs, holds one out to Mark.
"He okay?" Chris whispers. Mark shrugs.
"Just got drunk," he says, and Chris grins, but Mark doesn't return it. Chris stares at him, and shrugs.
"Let me know if you need anything," he says in a low voice, standing up, even though Mark was just kind of an asshole to him.
Chris is so fucking nice.
Mark stares at Eduardo, breathing quietly with his face pressed up into Mark's sweatpants.
He is queasily scared for when Eduardo wakes up, for that will entail. He is nervous. He hates being nervous.
Mark's actually fallen asleep by the time Eduardo wakes.
It's a light sleep, though, and he feels it when Eduardo tries to clamber quietly off the couch, tightens his arm around him reflexively and opens his eyes.
Eduardo is lying back down, not moving, staring up at him.
"Hey," Mark says, coughing, voice dry. Eduardo keeps staring.
"How're you feeling?"
Eduardo nods, licks his dry lips a couple times. "Okay," he croaks out finally. There's still no one in the room, and it's dark, lit only by slices of sunlight through the edges of the closed curtains.
Mark rubs a thumb gently over Eduardo's face, over his swollen-purple eye which just now Mark is realizing he forgot to do something about. Fuck.
"I'm- you need ice, Wardo," he says firmly. Eduardo squints at him in confusion.
"Your eye."
Eduardo brings his hand up to his own eye, winces. "Fuck, I forgot," he says. Mark keeps his thumb on his cheek.
Eduardo is so close and even when he's hungover, ashamed, with a black eye and a red nose, Mark still wants to touch him.
"How much do you remember," he says, and Eduardo squeezes his eyes shut and then open again, flails and stretches and nearly hits Mark in the face.
"I- some," he says, smiling sheepishly. Mark nods.
And Eduardo stretches again, yawns, and then it hits him. Mark can physically see it hit him.
"Fuck," he says, loud and scared, smile wiped off his face, and he scrambles up and off Mark's lap.
"Wardo-" Mark says, and Chris comes into the room with his empty mug.
"What's up?" he asks. Eduardo's halfway off the couch, panting, eyes wide. Mark stands up too, quickly, defensively.
"Nothing!" Eduardo says, 'I- Mark, did I leave my stuff here?"
Mark shakes his head helplessly. "Fuck," Eduardo says again.
"You're not going to get it," Mark says, grabbing at his arm.
"Yeah, I know, because I don't even know where I was," Eduardo mutters, snorting out a bitter laugh.
Chris doesn't say anything, just washes the dishes silently. Mark knows if it was Dustin he'd say, "Rough night?" with a leer and a wink and he is endlessly grateful that it is Chris who's here.
"Just. Probably in Lowell, if it's-"
Eduardo is nodding, but his breath is coming faster, panicky again, and Mark grips his wrist tight.
"Calm down," he says in a low voice. "It's going to be fine."
"I need my key," Eduardo says, and yanks away from Mark. "I need to go back to my room."
"You're not going back to- to the room, Wardo."
"I need my fucking key," he says, voice rising.
"Do you have your phone?" Mark asks, and sees it on the floor. He grabs it, and Eduardo takes it from him, scrolls through his messages.
"Lucy said we were in Lowell, room 214," he says. "That's where it started, at least."
"I'll get you a new key from facilities."
Eduardo nods, and Mark puts his hands up, steps away. "Just- just let me get dressed."
Chris shoots him one curious look as Mark steps into his room, and Mark sends him a face that he hopes is somewhat placating and appreciative but probably comes off as pissed-off.
"Can I do anything?" he asks quietly. Mark shakes his head.
"He just- it wasn't - wasn't a good night," he stammers, paranoid Eduardo can hear him, and Chris still looks concerned, but backs off.
Mark shrugs on a sweatshirt and kicks on flip-flops, and on second thought, grabs a sweatshirt for Eduardo.
When they're outside in the still-crisp air Eduardo says, "I'm sorry."
Mark is not sure who he's saying it to, Mark, or himself, or someone else.
He nudges Eduardo with his shoulder.
"It's okay," he says, and Eduardo digs his hands into the pockets of Mark's hoodie, head down.
"I mean it, Wardo. It's okay. It's gonna be okay."
"Doesn't feel that way," Eduardo admits.
---
Mark gets a new key, and Eduardo disappears into his room and he doesn't see him for two days.
Finally, on Tuesday, he texts Eduardo hey want to grab dinner
And Eduardo says yes.
They're in the d-hall, and Mark sees him. The guy. The lacrosse guy, who fucked Eduardo. Twice.
He sidles up behind him, pretending to look at the salad bar. The guy is with another boy, tall and broad like him. Probably a lax player, too.
"Dude, dude, check it out-" the guy points at Eduardo surreptitiously, nudging his friend in the ribs. Eduardo's studying a bag of chips on the other side of the caf, debating them.
"What?" the friend says, and Mark moves closer, keeps his back to them.
The guy lowers his voice. "That's the kid we- Josh and I, we totally double-teamed him last weekend."
The second guy makes a noise of disgust and curiosity. "That's gay, bro."
Mark almost snorts. He doesn't believe the idiots Harvard lets in just because they can hit a ball.
"No, he didn't fuck us, idiot. It was hot. Kid is a slut."
"You're sick."
"Whatever, dude- what the fuck?"
Mark blinks and pulls his tray up from where he's just let a bowl of tomato soup and a mound of potato salad fall against the guy's chest.
He doesn't say sorry. He will not say fucking sorry to this fucker.
"What the fuck was that, loser?"
Mark shrugs and looks away, and the guy peers at him and says, "Oh, it's- I know you."
His voice gets hard. "You're the creepy little fucker who was trying to watch."
Mark doesn't say anything. From over the guy's shoulder Eduardo is still perusing the bags of pretzels.
The other guy, the one who said "sick", raises his eyebrows and walks away.
"Dude, your boyfriend's a real whore," the guy says, in a low mean laughing voice, and Mark wants to punch him.
Not that he's going to, he's not an idiot, but for one second he wants to more badly than anything in his life.
"Maybe we'll see if you can play lacrosse once your coach knows you practically raped some guy who was passed out," Mark says, but his voice is shaking.
The guy laughs.
"He told you he was passed out? Fucking liar, I guess. He wanted it, which is the sad thing. He was begging me, okay?"
Mark's face is burning hot and he can see Eduardo look towards them bemusedly. Fuck.
"So, don't pretend like you know what you're talking about, and keep a leash on your little boyfriend," the guy hisses, and shoves past him.
Eduardo is still staring; Mark shrugs in return.
---
"Who's that guy?" Eduardo asks as they're eating, but he's staring determinedly at his plate, and Mark swallows a bite, working it over in his mind before answering it.
"Just a kid in my OS class," he says.
"You're lying," Eduardo says quietly, inevitably. "He's- he's the guy from this weekend, isn't he-"
"Eduardo, let's not talk about this right now."
"Fine," Eduardo says, eyes scared and angry, so so fucking angry, and Mark knows he's angry at himself.
He never used to know what people were thinking, and he's realizing now it was sort of a luxury.
Because as he watches Eduardo eat, he can nearly hear his thoughts and they hurt: I'm a piece of shit I'm a slut I shouldn't even be fucking alive I'm pathetic if he found out if he found out if he found out-- fuck-
Mark misses not knowing.
----
He doesn't know what it means, that he knows things about Eduardo now.
It's unsettling.
Because now he wants things. Like, before this, it was like food, drink, Red Bull (can't technically count as either, really), code, repeat.
And now it's like, well- food, drink, Red Bull, Eduardo's mouth, Eduardo's hips, Eduardo's delicate bare feet, Eduardo being happy, Eduardo smiling.
And code.
Always code.
But sometimes he's typing idly and he starts thinking about Eduardo's soft warm weight, drunk and spread out on his lap, and he feels turned-on and guilty and he messes up, his fingers slip on the keyboard and he has to close his eyes.
He is not like those others. He has to repeat it to himself, over and over.
Guilt is not a feeling he is accustomed to, and he does not enjoy it.
Because he didn't do anything.
Yeah, okay, so he made out with Eduardo while he was drunk. Multiple times.
But if it hadn't been him, it'd be someone else, someone worse.
When it wasn't him it was someone else, and it was worse.
Mark just wants- he wants for it all to back up, until it's just him, and Eduardo, sober and laughing and nudging Mark with his shoulder when they go to dinner.
And if there's kissing involved, Eduardo's mouth not burning with alcohol but sweet with orange juice or ice cream or fucking oatmeal, Mark doesn't care, that'd be good.
That would be ideal.
From what he sees of Eduardo, which isn't much, Eduardo is going on, trying not to think about it. Which is very Eduardo-like. People know Mark doesn't do feelings, but Eduardo's sneaky. He seems all friendly and normal and then he's all shame and self-loathing and repression at his core. It's misleading.
---
Eduardo starts to hang out with them again, after a while.
Mark doesn't hear any more gossip, more bullshit about Eduardo, but he's still paranoid all the time, half-listening to everyone's conversations, tuning out Dustin and Chris even more than usual.
It's a Saturday night and Mark texts Eduardo like he has for the past two weeks- hey what're you doing tonight
And this time, instead of staying in, have a paper due monday, Eduardo just shows up.
"Hey," he says, and Mark looks up from the computer. He frowns, picks up his phone.
"Did you-"
"No," Eduardo says quickly, nervously. "I thought- I don't know, it's been a while. Want to hang?"
They end up wandering around a little bit, getting food at the Thirsty Scholar, spending ten minutes in an AEPi party until by mutual decision they leave. Dustin and Chris are in the room, pregaming some epic rave in Theta, and they talk, laugh, watch an old episode of M*A*S*H while they drink, until Mark pops in the first Austin Powers and Dustin and Chris leave, and they're sitting on the couch.
Eduardo hasn't seen it before, and he laughs, chest shaking, and Mark has never been more aware of another person before. He keeps shooting looks at Eduardo's profile in the light of the TV.
"Do you want water?" Mark asks, and Eduardo looks at him, surprised, and says, "Sure, thanks."
Mark gets him a cup of water and sits back down, closer. He can feel the heat of Eduardo's body. Eduardo coughs and takes a sip and leans forward to put the cup on the table, and when he leans back he's a little closer too and Mark's heart is pounding because it's such a stupid cat and mouse bullshit game and is this what people do, actually? Like a giant game of chicken. It's stupid.
Eduardo's back is straight, and he looks at Mark briefly, sideways, and Mark's hand twitches on his thigh.
Maybe this is what Mark needs to do, when Eduardo is not drunk and it is all slow.
He doesn't mind.
He doesn't analyze why he doesn't mind, because that would be scary.
He just lifts his arm and puts it around Eduardo's shoulder, carefully, and Eduardo sucks in a breath and goes stiff.
"Okay?" Mark asks quietly, and Eduardo puts his head on Mark's shoulder, relaxes.
Mark keeps his hand there, curled around Eduardo's shoulder.
They don't kiss. They sit like that until the movie is over, and then Eduardo nuzzles his head against Mark's neck, shyly, and stands up.
"I'm gonna go to bed," he says. Mark stands up too, picks up his water cup, nods.
---
They do it again the next week, well, with different locations filled in for dinner and party and then different movies, but it ends the same. Mark doesn't even feel very impatient, which is the weird thing. He is used to feeling impatient about pretty much everything, always waiting for people to catch up with him.
Two weeks later, they're on the couch, credits of Anaconda rolling by on the screen. Dustin's out, Chris is in New York for the weekend.
Eduardo sighs, and Mark tightens the arm around his shoulder for a second.
"What do you wanna watch?" he whispers, and then doesn't know why he's whispering. The room is dark. Eduardo is warm, the room is dark, and it's a Friday night. Something about it's different.
"I don't know," Eduardo murmurs, and Mark turns his head and catches the side of Eduardo's lips with his own. It's messy, and Eduardo makes a strange sound, like half a gasp.
"Mark," he says, pulling back, and Mark turns more fully, slips his arm down from Eduardo's shoulder to his waist and kisses him again.
Eduardo kisses differently, which is the weird thing. He's more hesitant, and he opens his mouth only slightly, and it takes them a minute to find a rhythm of give and take.
But once they do Eduardo is breathing shaky against his lips and kissing him again, not harder but deeper, slower, and Mark feels it right down to his bones. Mark runs a hand up the back of Eduardo's neck into his hair, gently.
When they kissed before, when Eduardo was wasted and sloppy, Eduardo would touch him everywhere, scratch his nails up Mark's back like kissing was just a prelude to fucking. A means to an end.
Now he pulls away, still not having laid a hand on Mark, and he looks dazed and unsure and cautiously happy.
"You okay?" Mark says, licking his lips, mouth quirking up at the edges, and Eduardo nods.
"You wanna- again?" Mark says, not really caring how it sounds, and Eduardo nods again and leans forward.
And how is it that Eduardo's the only guy Mark's ever kissed, and Eduardo's probably kissed more guys than Mark has people in general, but Mark's the one cupping his jaw carefully in one hand, opening his mouth slowly with his tongue until Eduardo shivers, one full-body shiver, and lets him in- Mark supposes he's learned a lot from drunk Eduardo.
That makes a laugh bubble up in his chest, and he swallows it down and grins hard into Eduardo's mouth.
"What?" Eduardo says, and Mark shakes his head, and puts their mouths together again, and Eduardo finally, finally puts a hand cautiously on Mark's neck, fingers light and dry and warm.
Of course that's when Dustin slams the door open.
Eduardo jerks away like he's been burnt, and Mark keeps a hand on his neck, glares at Dustin when he flicks on the light.
"Hey guys!" Dustin says obliviously, and Mark stares harder like he can kill Dustin with his eyes. Dustin nods, eyes widening in fear. "Ah- yeah, okay, so I'm just gonna-" he backs out of the room into his own.
Eduardo's looking down, biting his lip, and Mark tilts his chin up with his hand and kisses him again.
"Mark," Eduardo says, but kisses back, and puts a hand on Mark's thigh.
"Still in the room," Dustin says as he comes out of his room with a jacket and a bottle of orange juice. "Gimme a minute before you go at each other like hyenas."
Mark rolls his eyes.
"Hyenas?" Eduardo asks, and laughs.
"Dustin out!" Dustin calls unnecessarily as he leaves, this time through the main door. Mark shakes his head, and Eduardo leans forward and plants a soft kiss on Mark's jaw, pulls away.
"I have to finish a proposal," he says, and Mark really really wants him to stay, but Eduardo's standing up and grabbing his coat from the chair.
"Is this because of Dustin?"
"No, Mark, I just need a little bit of time. To- to work on my project," he says, unconvincingly.
"Okay," Mark says, unwillingly this time, and Eduardo pulls the door shut behind him.
Mark exhales and flips the channel.
Ten minutes later his phone buzzes twice.
i'm sorry i left so fast i'm just not good at this
at not being drunk and still being into you
Mark inhales raggedly and throws the phone on the table.
---
The next day, Dustin comes over behind Mark in his desk chair as he codes, puts his hands on his shoulders.
"Mark," he says wheedlingly when Mark doesn't turn around. His breath smells like french fries.
"What," Mark says, not looking up.
"So, are you like, hooking up with Eduardo on the regular now?"
Mark stops typing. He loses his train of thought. He hates losing his train of thought.
"Because, like, you seemed sober. Are you soberly with him now?"
"Dustin," Mark starts.
"You don't have to say it out loud! Just nod once for yes and twice for no."
"Dustin," Mark says again. "It's none of your business."
"Ooooh you are. Finally! Now you just have to keep a leash on him when he's drunk."
"Shut the fuck up," Mark snaps, ears ringing with keep him on a leash.
Dustin takes his hands off Mark's shoulders.
"Fine," he says, pouting, backing out of the room. "Don't have to be a dick."
Mark is not going to be sorry. Dustin will just come bouncing back in an hour later anyway.
---
That weekend, Mark goes to the final Investor's Association presentation of the year, by himself, and stands awkwardly by himself while Eduardo gestures at a Powerpoint and talks about supply curves.
Afterwards, people clap and Eduardo grins and walks offstage. Mark watches him. He hasn't seen Mark yet, and he shakes hands with a few professors, claps some Indian kid Mark hasn't met on the back, and grabs a glass of water.
He sees Mark over the rim of his glass and a grin spreads over his face. Mark shifts from foot to foot and lifts one hand to his waist in half a wave.
"Hey," Eduardo says, still grinning. "I didn't know you were going to-"
"Good job," Mark bursts out, because he's been working on what he should say for a couple minutes now.
Eduardo laughs. "Thanks. I bet it- it was boring, I mean-"
"I got it, though. I mean, it's just econ."
Eduardo laughs again, the way he does when Mark is inadvertently an asshole but also funny, and Mark looks down.
"What're you doing now?" Mark says, and Eduardo shrugs, tosses his cup into a nearby trash can.
"I mean, some of us were going to go out. Divya's suitemate got a case of wine from his parents in Switzerland."
Mark nods, nervously.
"But- I'm starved. You want to grab some food?"
Mark nods, emphatically this time.
"Yeah," he says, and Eduardo nudges him with his shoulder, smiles.
They get Mexican, and Eduardo kicks his leg under the table and licks pico de gallo off his fingers and talks about how Divya is maybe trying to fuck this girl named Kaycee and it's not really working out. Mark nods along.
"You want to head over there?" Eduardo asks when they're finishing up.
"Do you want to drink?" Mark asks, and apparently some of his Jewish mother has rubbed off on him, because it comes out sounding judgy. It's not, really. Mark is just scared.
Eduardo looks up at him, then down at his plate. "I don't know," he says quietly.
"You could just come back to our room," Mark says, panicking slightly. Eduardo is so fucking good-looking. Anyone could have him, if he's drunk. That- that's not fair, because Mark's the only one who gives a shit about him when he's sober.
"I haven't gone out in a month," Eduardo says, avoiding Mark's eyes. Mark can hear the unspoken words, for once. You're not my mom. You're not even my father.
Mark knows that. He is not an idiot.
He thought, maybe, he was something to Eduardo, though.
Maybe that's stupid to think. Eduardo did fuck two guys in one night. He doesn't seem like one for commitment.
He knows that thought makes him an asshole. He doesn't feel good about it.
"You should come," Eduardo says, like it's already decided.
"Whatever," Mark says. "I have to get some stuff done, anyway."
"I'm not going to- do anything," Eduardo says, going red. "I promise, Mark."
"Yeah," Mark says skeptically, and what claim does he have on Eduardo, anyway? They've kissed once.
It's not like they've had sex or even done sex stuff and Mark is still a virgin, still a pathetic ugly weedy underweight virgin.
Eduardo is so far from a virgin it's ridiculous.
It is idiotic for Mark to think he has any claim on him.
---
Mark goes back to the room and gets drunk. Dustin keeps pouring him shots, and when they're both well and truly wasted, Dustin nudges him with his elbow and says, "You and Wardo okay?"
"He's getting drunk with his friends," Mark says bitterly. Dustin puts his head on Mark's shoulder.
"He likes you," Dustin says. Mark snorts.
"He likes everyone," he says pettily.
On the coffee table, his phone buzzes. Dustin grabs it.
"Miss you," Dustin reads. "I'm coming over can I come over? Ha, he's drunk."
"We're drunk," Mark points out.
"He misses you," Dustin teases, and Mark grabs the phone out of his hand. His hand-eye coordination is pretty fucked.
He types out im her with dustin come over
"You want me to leave?" Dustin asks.
"No," Mark says firmly. "We're not gonna do anything."
"But Eduardo gets soooo horny when he's drunk," Dustin says, and starts giggling.
"Whatever," Mark says, and there's a knock on the door.
"Hi," Eduardo calls through the door, pounding. Mark rolls his eyes and stands up, legs nearly buckling. He balances himself on the arm of the couch and Dustin laughs hysterically.
He opens the door, and Eduardo's leaning against the wall. They grin at each other.
Mark is drunk and Eduardo is so nice to look at and he can barely remember why he was mad, before.
"How was the thing," he says, and Eduardo shrugs.
"Not that good," he says, and puts an arm around Mark's shoulder, walks them both into the room.
"Dustin!" he calls, and Dustin waves from where he's curled on his side on the couch.
"Where's Chris?"
"GSA party," Dustin says. "Mark, can I have some water?"
Mark rolls his eyes again but he's laughing, and Eduardo's laughing, and they are all so very fucking drunk.
He pours Dustin a cup, only spilling a little, and Dustin gives him a sideways thumbs up, eyes squeezed shut for no discernible reason.
"We're gonna go-" Mark says, motioning at his room, pulling on Eduardo's elbow, and they trip into the room, slamming the door behind them.
"Be safe!" Mark hears Dustin call, and Eduardo laughs, bubbly and sweet in his throat.
part two