Unexpected Relations

It’s true, there’s remarkably little awkwardness between Mark and him. Maybe it’s because they’re both mature enough to work past any that might arise, for the sake of their parents. Maybe it’s because Eduardo can see that Mark is a better person than he seems to think he is, and Mark doesn’t care that Eduardo doesn’t always feel like being kind and giving, that sometimes he just wants to say exactly what he’s thinking.
Maybe it’s because they’d both been looking for the kind of friend that would understand them fully, and it just so happened that this is the way they met.

Chapter Text

MARK

“Just please, please, be nice, would you?” Mark’s dad says, sounding more than a little desperate. “I really like her. I’m about eighty percent sure that she likes me in return. You and her son are the deciding factors in this, so once again, I ask you—please be nice. I’ll buy you whatever you want. Almost.”

“Resorting to bribery?” Mark says, shoving his hands in his pockets and raising his eyebrows. “Also, I’m getting some mixed messages from you, Dad. You always tell me to “be myself” and “don’t let anyone change me” and now you’re telling me to act like someone I’m not? Sixteen is an emotionally delicate age, this could be wildly damaging to my self-esteem. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s false advertising. She might not be too happy when she finds out I don’t actually emit rainbows and butterflies.”

His dad claps him on the shoulder. “You can be yourself after you get them to like you,” he says firmly, but Mark can tell he’s not really serious. Mark just snorts in answer. “Her son’s your age,” his dad says hopefully. Wonderful. This is suddenly very reminiscent of all those times his dad tried to get him to be friends with the children of his friends, like the parental connection guaranteed instant lifelong camaraderie or something. Those enforced playdates usually ended with Mark’s teeth embedded in someone’s shin or the other kid pushing Mark’s head into the dirt. His dad pretty much stopped trying when Mark turned ten.

“I’m sure we’ll be best friends in no time,” Mark says. “After all, who doesn’t like me?”

He smirks as the panic on his dad’s face ratchets up another level.

The moment they reach their lunch table, Mark is certain this is going to be a disaster.

The problem’s not his dad’s new girlfriend (though that term sounds decidedly out of place, she looks like such a—a mom), no, she seems nice enough—she introduces herself right away as Maria, and her smile doesn’t dim when Mark just kind of awkwardly waves at her. And it’s not that her son looks evil or mean or like he’s thinking up ways to drown Mark in a toilet or anything.

It’s that he looks like something out of a Disney movie. No, seriously—all big eyes and ear-to-ear smile and honestly? This kid looks like he might actually emit rainbows and butterflies. Mark doesn’t have anything against genuinely nice people, it’s that they typically don’t tend to like him very much. He always opens his mouth and inevitably something sarcastic and socially inappropriate comes out of it (he really can’t help himself sometimes), and he can just see the slow gloomy erasure of their smile, like—like he’s eating away their sunshine. It’s all very depressing. Mark starts counting down the time in his head until the moment he’s sure that easy, open smile will turn into something shocked and appalled. It’s an expression Mark’s pretty familiar with.

He does want his dad to be happy, though, so he resolves to at least try this time. If all the idiots in the world can have conversations that don’t end in insults/tears/death threats, how hard can it really be?

“Hi, I’m Eduardo,” the guy says, and he looks like he’s dying to shake Mark’s hand or something, but apparently he notices Mark’s hands shoved firmly into his pockets, and he doesn’t try to draw him out, so—there’s one point for him, at least. “And you’re Mark.”

“Really? Fascinating,” Mark says immediately, and oops. That resolution dissolved pretty quickly. Amazingly, though, Eduardo just laughs.

“Sorry,” he says, grinning. “That was pretty stupid. Maybe we can get the stupidity out of the way with the introductions, though.”

“I see you’re an optimist,” Mark deadpans. “That bodes well for our acquaintance.” Eduardo’s eyes just crinkle up like that’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, and, uh, okay. That’s not the reaction Mark usually gets.

Maria looks at them both fondly. Mark’s dad just looks like he’s going to pass out in relief.

Mark shrugs and pulls his seat out so he can sit down. Maybe this won’t be a nightmare after all.

EDUARDO

Eduardo still remembers the everyday crushing weight of trying to live under someone’s constant disapproval. Everything he ever did, everything he tried so hard at, all of it met with a flat look that said that isn’t good enough. You aren’t good enough.

His father never hit him a day of his life, but sometimes Eduardo wonders if he might have preferred it if he had. If he had shown some sign that Eduardo’s presence stirred anything in him, beyond the weary disappointment that imbued his every gesture and conversation.

There are really two things that Eduardo’s father has given him—the tall, long-limbed stature that looks commanding on his father, and impossibly stork-like on Eduardo; and the driving need to be perfect in whatever he does. He can’t help it. He’ll never be able to shake that last.

He tried forever to be what his father wanted in a son, even past the point where he knew it was impossible, because he didn’t know that there was any other option for him. He didn’t know there was a chance for change.

He’d known his mother loved him, but he hadn’t known how much until she sat him down when he was fourteen and told him seriously, “I’m leaving your father, and I’m taking you with me.”

He heard the words, but couldn’t piece together a meaning from them for a moment. Then he found his voice, and all he could say was, “Why?”

His mother smiled at him sadly, cupped his face in her hand, and said quietly, “I can’t remember the last time I heard you laugh, Eduardo. Can you?”

He couldn’t.

His father didn’t care when they left. After all the hurts he’d ever had, Eduardo didn’t know why that one hurt so much, but it did. That’s the last, he promised himself then. I won’t let him hurt me again.

Now, two years later, Eduardo looks at Mr. Zuckerberg—“Call me Adam, please.”—and wonders at the fact that in thirty seconds of having known him, he can see more warmth hidden in the corners of his smile and the crinkling of his eyes than his father had ever exhibited in fourteen years.

His son—Mark, Mark seems to be missing that easy friendliness, but he makes up for it by being one of the most bitingly hilarious people Eduardo has ever met. What’s even more hilarious is the look of half-guilty surprise Mark gets on his face after he makes a sarcastic comment, every time, like he honestly just can’t help what comes out of his mouth. Plus he seems to like Eduardo’s mother, which is enough to get Eduardo to like him.

There’s also the fact that, even after two years, Eduardo hasn’t been able to break himself of the habit of studying every word that comes out of someone’s mouth like it’s in hidden code, trying to find every possible shade of meaning in it, everything they might be thinking underneath the pleasantries they feel they have to use (it comes from years of learning the different things that I see and That’s fine and I suppose that’s the best you can do could possibly mean; learning how to tell a mood from one word, how to dive past inscrutability and see the dissatisfaction lying beneath). It’s exhausting (people are complicated and rarely say what they mean), but it’s something he can’t stop himself from doing.

Mark is so direct it’s like he’s an alien.

It takes Eduardo maybe ten minutes to figure out that Mark says what he means and means everything he says, and that he has absolutely no use for pleasantries, and Eduardo doesn’t have to wonder.

He kind of wants to clone Mark when he has that realization, right then and there.

“So, uh, you—what do you like to do?” Mark says stiffly, obviously prompted by his dad’s pointedly widened eyes. “Um, please don’t say you’re an athlete or something. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just they don’t tend to get along with me considering that I spend ninety percent of my spare time with a computer and that my intellect is so obviously superior to theirs, it’s not even a contest. Uh.” Then he bites his lip like maybe he can take that entire statement back through sheer willpower alone.

Eduardo laughs, and covers his mouth as soon as he does—he’s not laughing at Mark, it’s just that he’s never met someone who does simultaneous arrogance and awkwardness so well before—but Mark doesn’t look angry, just—bemused.

“The usual reaction is, uh, something thrown at my head when I say things like that,” he says. “Not laughter.” Eduardo shrugs, still smiling.

“Maybe you’re talking to the wrong people,” he says. “And I like to run sometimes, but I also like math. And reading. And, um, I wish I were better with computers.”

“Really,” Mark says, eyes narrowing, like he thinks it’s one of those things people say to be polite and he distrusts its veracity.

“Really,” Eduardo says sincerely, and Mark eyes him for a moment before sitting back in his seat.

“Okay,” he says, nodding his head. “I can help you with that.” Then he looks over at his dad and Eduardo’s mother, who are having a very intent conversation and watching Mark and Eduardo carefully at the same time (Eduardo wonders if multitasking is something they teach you when you become a parent), and says dryly, “Dad? Satisfied we’re not about to kill each other anytime soon?”

“There’s still dessert to go, I’m not relaxing yet,” Adam says, equally as dry, and Eduardo likes him even better for the realization that Mark must have gotten his sense of humor directly from him.

So Eduardo says, “Yeah, I’ve always found that cheesecake brings out the homicidal urges in me,” and relishes the sound of his mother’s laughter, the small smile Mark can’t contain.

“I like him. Them,” Eduardo says later, in the car, before his mother can ask. He watches her shoulders settle in relief, and thinks that even if Mark had been unimaginably unbearable, he would have borne it for his mother’s sake, because—Adam makes her look so happy Eduardo barely recognizes her. His mother deserves to look that happy all the time, every day, for the rest of her life.

And Mark is not unbearable. Far from it, in fact.

“I like them,” he repeats quietly, half to himself, and they drive in a contented silence all the way back home.

MARK

So after that it’s like he and Eduardo have given their respective parents their blessings or something, as weird as that thought is. Mark’s dad starts spending a lot more time with Maria, and as a consequence Mark sees a lot more of Eduardo.

They’ve actually gone to high school together for the last two years, but with Mark being something of a social recluse and Eduardo having a distinct group of friends that don’t tend to go where Mark goes, they’ve never really come across each other before.

“I wish we’d been friends when I moved here, though,” Eduardo says to him one day, sitting on Mark’s bed and watching Mark at his laptop. “You’re funny. Might have taken my mind off things.”

And there’s the other thing that’s weird about this situation. Mark is not used to people thinking him funny in the sense that they appreciate his wit, as opposed to laughing at him from afar. Mark isn’t used to people wanting to spend time with him, or smiling at him like they actually find him likeable.

“You don’t have to spend time with me, you know,” Mark says, testing. “I won’t perish in a pile of misery if we don’t become best friends simply because our parents are dating.”

Eduardo rolls his eyes, looking bizarrely fond while doing so, and really—how is this guy even real? How has a teenage boy who emotes as much as he does managed to avoid being chewed up by the cruel adolescent world of high school? “Why, am I bothering you? You don’t seem like you have any trouble making it known when something’s bothering you,” Eduardo says, mouth quirking into a smile. “I know I don’t have to spend time with you. I just like you.”

Mark eyes him for a moment. And people call Mark unusual. “It’s possible I find you adequate as well,” he says dryly, and turns back to his laptop. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eduardo grin to himself, and it takes more effort than he expects to keep his own mouth from twitching into a smile.

Oddly enough, this turns into something of a routine. The quietly comfortable sound of his dad laughing, Maria’s warm voice saying something quick and teasing, all of it drifting upstairs from the kitchen; Eduardo with his backpack spilling its contents onto Mark’s bed, studying in companionable silence as Mark codes furiously. Eduardo knows, with some kind of instinctive insight, when he needs to be quiet because Mark’s sleep-deprived and trying to figure out where all his errors are coming from, and when Mark likes to listen to him rambling about his friends/homework/whatever book he’s just read. It’s a nice kind of background noise. There’s no pressure on Mark to participate in the conversation if he doesn’t want to, but whenever he pauses to drink from his lukewarm Red Bull and interjects a sarcastic comment, Eduardo beams at him like Mark’s just handed him half of a friendship necklace or something.

And just when Mark’s almost written Eduardo off as some bizarrely cheerful anomaly of a person, he turns around and surprises Mark with a slyly wicked comment that wouldn’t sound out of place coming from Mark’s mouth. Eduardo’s an enigma, in the fullest sense of the word.

There’s his strange brand of politeness—apparently so ingrained that he’ll never break out of it, though Mark’s been waiting for weeks. Every time Eduardo tosses his things on Mark’s bed, his eyes fall on the picture Mark has framed on his bedside table—three people, one unmistakably Mark’s father, one a young curly-haired boy, and the other a smiling woman with her hand in the boy’s hair—but he never asks. It’s more awkward waiting around for him to ask than Mark imagines actually having the conversation could ever be, so he finally says one day, “You can ask, you know.” He keeps his face turned toward his laptop screen, watches Eduardo flush a little out of the corner of his eye.

“Is that your mother?” Eduardo asks, pointing at the picture; and at Mark’s answering nod, he asks, quieter, “Is she—”

“Car accident,” Mark says shortly. “I was five. I don’t remember much, but—”

His voice gives a little, which is stupid, it’s not like he wasn’t expecting the question, he’s the one who brought it up in the first place—

Mark coughs to clear his throat. He can feel Eduardo’s eyes on him. “I’m sorry,” Eduardo says finally, and amazingly, coming from him it doesn’t sound trite, nothing like the meaningless condolences Mark’s heard a hundred times before. Eduardo just sounds like he really is sorry, like he wishes things were different.

“It was a long time ago,” Mark says impassively, and wonders distantly when he’d stopped typing.

“Still,” Eduardo says. “I really am sorry.”

Mark pushes away from his desk, swivels around to face Eduardo. “What about you?” he asks, makes a half-shrugging gesture with his hand and his shoulders that Eduardo clearly understands means what about your father?

And just like that, Eduardo’s face goes pinched, closed-off; he looks down at his hands like he’s not seeing them at all, seeing something else entirely. “We left him,” he says simply, and Mark notes the wording of that. Not my parents are divorced, not my mom left him.

We left him.

Mark, for once, doesn’t push. There’s more to Eduardo than his manners or his sense of humor, more than he lets on. Mark doesn’t like enigmas, he doesn’t like being around things that he doesn’t know, but he has time to figure Eduardo out.

“Wardo, you’re sitting on your notes,” Mark says to break the silence, nodding at the bed. Then he realizes what’s slipped out of his mouth (seriously, only Mark could accidentally give someone a nickname). He isn’t sure for a moment what Eduardo will make of it, but Eduardo just pauses, the bleak strangeness in his face disappearing, then smiles at Mark, looking pleased.

“Wardo, hmm?” Eduardo says, a little teasing. “I guess you like me after all.”

“That’s still under debate,” Mark says, and watches Eduardo’s eyes crinkle up in a smile, feeling as if something’s settling into place.

That evening, after Eduardo and Maria leave, Mark hears: the sound of his laptop humming away, his dad’s footsteps moving around the house, the “Goodnight, Mark,” his dad says through the open doorway before going to bed.

Mark stays up through the night, ignoring how quiet the house suddenly feels when he’s working in solitary silence.

EDUARDO

They start sitting together at lunchtime at school. Mainly because Eduardo read Mark’s schedule over his shoulder, figured out they had the same lunch period, stood around awkwardly by the stairs until he saw Mark’s customary hunched-over pose and impossible-to-miss hair all lonesome at a table, sat down next to him with his paper-bag lunch and waved over a few of his friends in that direction when he saw them. Mark only blinked at Eduardo a few times, before pushing his lunch tray over a few inches to make room, so Eduardo took that as tacit approval.

“Sorry, did you want to pretend we don’t know each other while at school?” Eduardo had asked teasingly. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your carefully cultivated reputation as an emotionless loner.”

“Maybe we should,” Mark had replied, dropping a fry into his ketchup, smirking. “I don’t know that I can be seen with someone with hair like that.”

So now it’s Mark and Eduardo at a table, along with Christy and Erica, both of whom are in Eduardo’s Language and Composition class, and both of whom thankfully seem to find Mark’s brand of humor hilarious most of the time instead of offensive.

Within a week they’re joined by Dustin and Chris, who—

Eduardo pushed half his orange toward Mark (if ever there were anyone who looked like they needed Vitamin C, it’s Mark), and looked up when someone dropped into the seat across the table.

“Hi,” the boy said, beaming at Mark, and then Eduardo, then turning back to Mark. “I’m Dustin, I was in your CompSci class last year. When you made the student teacher cry, which was particularly impressive, by the way.”

Mark frowned. “You’re the one who changed everyone’s grade in the class so that everyone who was born in May got an A+, and everyone else got a D.”

“I deny everything, you can’t prove it was me,” Dustin said immediately. “But May is an awesome month. I was born in May. Which is a total coincidence.”

“So was I,” Mark replied tonelessly. “How fortuitous.”

Dustin grinned. Eduardo liked him already. “Anyway,” Dustin continued, “you always seemed like you had a general unshakable hatred for the human race or something, and I thought there was like a thirty percent chance you’d stab me with a plastic fork if I tried to talk to you, but look! You have people sitting next to you, and no blood in sight! So I thought I’d come over and make friends. I promise, I’m housebroken and everything.”

“Oh my god,” Eduardo said, delighted. “I did ruin your carefully cultivated reputation as an emotionless loner!”

Mark elbowed him, but not very hard. “Thanks for that,” he said, smiling a little.

“Oh, and the guy over there who looks like he’s considering drowning himself is Chris,” Dustin said, pointing two tables over, where a boy was staring at them and immediately whipped his head in the other direction, very clearly saying wordlessly of course I don’t know him, what are you talking about? “He loves me, really,” Dustin said sincerely. He started waving at Chris frantically, making ‘come over here’ motions until Chris un-hunched and brought his tray over to their table, looking like he wanted to die.

“I’m sorry about Dustin,” was the first thing Chris said, and it fell out of his mouth so easily Eduardo suspected it was something he said often. “I know he acts like a moron, but he—well—no, he pretty much is.”

“Chris!” Dustin said, making a mournful face.

Mark leaned closer into Eduardo, saying quietly, “I’m pretty sure my life was normal before you came along.”

“Yes, but isn’t this more fun?” Eduardo said, grinning.

Mark lifted an eyebrow, but he didn’t say no.

—certainly liven things up.

“So, you two are step-brothers. Almost. Soon-to-be,” Dustin says, pointing between the two of them with his chicken nugget.

“No, we lied to you the last three times you asked that question,” Christy says, poking at her slice of pizza and making a horrified face when it oozes a little more grease. “It’s important that we hide the true nature of their relationship.”

“In reality, they’re secret lovers and they’re running away to Las Vegas together when the school year is over,” Erica adds, not looking up from her Calculus textbook.

“I like the part where I don’t even have to open my mouth,” Mark says, looking pleased through some complicated half-expression wherein his mouth tries to move from its usual flatly deadpan state. “You guys can stay.”

“Oh, thank you ever so much,” Erica replies, making a note in the margins, then swearing as she realizes she’s holding a pen, not a pencil.

Eduardo grins. “King Mark has made his decree! We are under royal favor, hooray.”

Chris looks like he can’t decide between horror and amusement. “I never thought I’d find somewhere that Dustin actually fits in, and yet here we are.”

“Okay, but it’s just—you two don’t act like any stepbrothers I’ve ever met. Where’s the jealousy, the awkwardness, the fights!” Dustin says, still waving his lunch around for emphasis.

“Dustin, they’re the only two stepbrothers you know, and they’re not living in a Disney family comedy,” Chris says pointedly. “Now eat your lunch before I push your face in it.”

Dustin makes a sad face, but starts eating anyway.

Eduardo thinks about what Dustin said for a minute. It’s true, there’s remarkably little awkwardness between Mark and him. Maybe it’s because they’re both mature enough to work past any that might arise, for the sake of their parents. Maybe it’s because Eduardo can see that Mark is a better person than he seems to think he is, and Mark doesn’t care that Eduardo doesn’t always feel like being kind and giving, that sometimes he just wants to say exactly what he’s thinking.

Maybe it’s because they’d both been looking for the kind of friend that would understand them fully, and it just so happened that this is the way they met.

Eduardo shrugs. “I guess we’re just amazing like that,” he says, and pushes some of his baby carrots onto Mark’s tray. Mark says nothing. A second later, his shoulder bumps against Eduardo’s.

Eduardo smiles.

MARK

Of all the things that Mark likes about Maria, the thing he might like most is that she doesn’t push. She’s probably one of the least pushy people he’s ever known in his life. She doesn’t try to make friends with him like it’s a requirement for being involved with his dad. She doesn’t mind that he goes quiet around her, she doesn’t try to get him to open up and share. She doesn’t try to talk about his mom, she doesn’t say things like “I’m not trying to take her place”, as if she could; no, she understands that they are two entirely different things, and that Mark is very intelligent and doesn’t need that explained to him.

And like Eduardo, she looks at him sometimes with a smile on her face. Like she sees something in him that she likes. Mark still doesn’t quite know how to deal with that, so mostly he does what he’s been doing from the start—goes a little quiet, amasses facial expressions and warm words and other information from their interactions and tries to parse it in a way that will make it make sense. Mark’s pretty sure things shouldn’t be going this well. Life doesn’t really work like that.

It shouldn’t be this easy.

Apparently Maria thinks nothing of it, though; she’s as natural as ever. One day after school it’s just them at home (his dad’s working late, and Eduardo’s at one of his million-and-one extracurricular activities), and Maria says, “Mark? Would you like to help me with dinner?”

Mark’s brain freezes for a moment like she’s asked him an essay question instead of a simple ‘yes/no’. “Um, okay,” he finally says, because he may not have Eduardo’s ever-present weirdly ingrained manners, but he knows when something would be rude, and she’s asked him, and—something inside him squirms a little bit painfully at the thought of being rude to this woman.

Maria smiles at him, and sets him to chopping up peppers and stirring the pot on the stove. Mark can count the number of dishes he knows how to cook on one hand (noodles. Noodles. Soup. More noodles), but he’s actually very good at following directions, when the directions are clear and comprehensible and not patronizing.

He’s just shoving the empty cutting board into the dishwasher when he hears the door slam and Eduardo walks in, dropping his backpack on the floor by the table. He stops when he sees his mother and Mark in the kitchen, and his face does something complicated and then goes unreadable.

Mark grits his teeth, keeps his expression neutral through sheer force of will. If this is what will make Eduardo’s kind demeanor dissolve, having to share his mother’s time with Mark, well, Mark realizes he’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for months now, and it will be something of a comfort to finally know, at least. People don’t work this way, people are selfish and jealous and needy and uncomfortable with sharing the things they value, and those constants make sense to Mark. If this makes Eduardo break, then at least he will finally start making sense.

Except Eduardo’s eyes go soft, his mouth curving into a smile, because he is not a real person. Mark lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“What, no apron?” Eduardo says, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Mark, why are you depriving me of my blackmail opportunities?”

“I may not have much fashion sense, but I do draw the line somewhere,” Mark replies. Eduardo grins, picks up his backpack again. He takes a few steps forward and leans over the pot on the stovetop to inhale, knocking his hip against Mark’s side, accepting the affectionate kiss Maria drops onto the top of his head before he heads upstairs.

“I’ll finish this,” Maria says, smiling. She hesitates for a moment, then brushes some of the hair off of Mark’s forehead in an effortless gesture. “Thank you for helping,” she says carefully, and Mark hears unspoken echoes of meaning in that short sentence; a kind of approval, an uncomplicated liking that makes his fingers twitch uneasily.

If his throat is a little tight, well, he’s just thirsty.

Mark makes sure to drink a glass of water before following Eduardo upstairs.

It surprises exactly zero people when Mark’s dad and Maria sit Mark and Eduardo down a few weeks later and tell them they’re going to get married.

“…Shocking,” Eduardo says after a beat, mouth quivering in amusement.

“And here I thought the endgame was for you to start up a bakery together,” Mark adds, slouching in his seat. Maria covers her smile with one hand, while Mark’s dad just sighs mournfully.

“There’s two of you now. My life is complete,” he says, with something behind his put-upon expression that suggests he might actually mean it.

All sarcasm aside, they really did look a little nervous about discussing the subject, which Mark doesn’t really get—it’s not like he and Eduardo had no idea of what was going on here, but apparently love makes you irrational or something. Just another reason for Mark to never fall into its trap.

So they get married.

Which is not exactly an excruciatingly detailed description of the event, but it’s how Mark thinks of it—because the wedding itself isn’t all that important (beyond the fact that Maria looks beautiful and Mark’s dad is beaming and Mark feels horrifyingly uncomfortable out of his hoodie and jeans and Eduardo looks ecstatic that he gets to dress up), what’s important is how little it feels like anything has changed. His dad and Maria look slightly giddier, but just as happy as they’ve seemed this whole time; Maria and Eduardo have been slowly moving in for a few weeks now (which, Mark’s happy that Eduardo’s taken the study right next door as his bedroom, but now his dad has a very nearby standard by which he can judge Mark’s cleaning habits, and raise an eyebrow as if to say Your room could look like this, you know), and everything retains the very domestic feel it’s taken on lately.

In fact, the only thing that’s really changed is—Mark feels some reserve inside of him give a little; realizes that a small part of him has been waiting in fearful anticipation for things to break, and that part has finally relaxed. It’s stupid, Mark knows that marriage doesn’t guarantee forever, nothing guarantees forever, he’s learned that, but still—it feels like they aren’t going anywhere now.

Mark’s always had a good relationship with his father, one of mutual respect, teasing sarcasm borne of sharing the same sense of humor, easy affection on his father’s part that Mark returns in his own way; but one person could be an anomaly, one person could be an aberrance. Now there are three people living in his house that actually like Mark, like him openly and without qualification, and it’s—somewhat staggering. A little wonderful.

It’s eleven thirty at night, and Mark settles in his desk chair, watches Eduardo sprawl carelessly in Mark’s bed like he knows it’s his designated spot. He could track the progression of their friendship through the changes in Eduardo’s posture—from the start, when he sat gingerly on the edge like he was unsure of his welcome, to when he slowly starting relaxing, swinging his feet up next to him and getting comfortable, to now, when he’s lying on his back with his head on Mark’s pillow, one foot on the floor and the other stretched out on the bed, head tilted sideways a little so he can watch Mark in the semi-light of Mark’s room.

“So. Stepbrothers,” Eduardo says, breaking the silence, laughing a little self-consciously because it probably sounds stupid to him when he says it out loud. But Mark gets it. Eduardo’s his best friend, if only because there’s no one else willing to sign up for the job (but that’s not it, it’s his easy laughter and his charm and his openness and how he is everything Mark can’t be, and yet Mark, who resents everything that doesn’t come to him easily, can’t find it in himself to resent him), but best friends change, they grow apart, they fall out. They have the option of breaking.

It’s unforgivably irrational, but stepbrothers rings of permanence.

“Yeah,” Mark says, hoping for once that everything he can’t say comes through anyway. From the way the awkwardness fades out of Eduardo’s expression, the way his smile grows under the light-shadow mixture playing over his face, it does.

EDUARDO

Every morning it takes Mark approximately twelve minutes to move from his sleep-stupor to a level of awareness where he realizes there are other people in the room and he’s about to put salt into his coffee instead of sugar. Eduardo knows this because he always wakes up before Mark does, and watching Mark slowly return to the land of the living is his entertainment while he eats his usual toast and orange juice.

One time Mark still has his eyes closed while he’s sitting at the table, and the salt actually makes it into the cup that time.

“Wow, okay, don’t drink that,” Eduardo says, reaching out and wresting it from Mark’s grasp. Adam shoots Eduardo a mildly disappointed look, like he wanted to see Mark’s disgusted flailing after he drank from it and Eduardo just ruined it for him. “You’re a terrible person,” Eduardo tells him, and Adam grins.

“Where do you think he got it from?” he asks, jabbing his finger in Mark’s direction before returning to his BlackBerry.

“Mmmph,” Mark says, and blinks at Eduardo when he sets a fresh cup with sugar this time in front of him.

Eduardo takes it as the thanks it’s clearly meant to be.

Mark keeps the bathroom counter freakishly clean, but drops all of his dirty clothes in a pile by the door. As the week progresses, the pile grows larger until Eduardo can only open the door halfway to get inside.

“Is this some kind of science experiment?” Eduardo asks, kicking a pair of jeans that’s peeking out forlornly from underneath the door.

“I’m waiting to see how long it takes for it to become sentient,” Mark says, waiting with a towel over his shoulder and a not-so-patient expression for Eduardo to move so he can get inside the bathroom.

“How very mad scientist of you.” Eduardo steps aside. “You’d tell me if you had plans for world domination, right?”

“Of course,” Mark says. “I’d need minions, after all.”

Eduardo doesn’t mind doing laundry, but he hates cleaning bathrooms. Mark’s the reverse.

“Huh. Well, that’s easy enough,” Mark says the first time they have the chores conversation.

“Okay, but I’m not washing your dirty sheets,” Eduardo says wickedly, and ducks when Mark aims a swat at his head.

On weekends, Adam and Eduardo are early risers. They watch the news in comfortable silence and make breakfast for when Eduardo’s mother and Mark wake up.

Sometimes his mother takes Mark grocery shopping and forces him to pick out things he likes to eat other than noodles, candy and energy drinks.

“Do you ever feel like sometimes we’re living in a weird Stepford world where nothing goes wrong?” Eduardo asks one day, stretching out on Mark’s bed and watching Mark crack his knuckles in his version of limbering up.

“Don’t worry, it’s all an act to get you to lower your guard before I smother you in your sleep,” Mark says absently.

Eduardo laughs, feels it vibrate low in his throat. Mark twitches a little at the sound.

“Excellent. Thanks for the warning,” Eduardo says, and Mark uh-huhs in answer.

At lunch, Christy sits on one side of him and explains why he can’t word the thesis statement of his essay the way he did, no really, that’s terrible, it’s physically hurting me to look at it. Her hair is long and brushes against his shoulder. It smells sweet, floral. She smiles at him when she’s done, and he can’t help but smile back.

On the other side of him, Mark is silent, and very still. Eduardo tries to give him the rest of his Twix bar, but Mark shakes his head, pushes Eduardo’s hand away.

Most nights, Eduardo goes to bed before Mark, because Mark would be entirely happy in a world full of people who do things from the hours of six PM to four in the morning, and then sleep the rest of the time. Lying in bed, he can hear Mark on the other side of the thin wall, fingers clacking away at his keyboard in a frenzy, occasionally murmuring encouragement and insults at himself as he alternately makes a breakthrough or hits an obstacle.

Honestly, when Eduardo thinks about it later, he’s surprised it takes as long as it does for him to hear—

the bed’s a little creaky, it squeaks and jolts when Mark shifts around, and at first Eduardo thinks Mark’s just getting settled, but then

a half-gasp, little noises, the bed takes on a more rhythmic movement

Mark’s breathing is rushed, audible

—wow, okay. Eduardo’s face goes instantly hot.

He can be adult about this. Mark’s just used to not having to be cautious about this, it’s not like Eduardo thought he never jerked off, Eduardo does it too, he can just—ignore it. It’s no big deal.

He turns to face the other direction, digging his left hand into his sheets when he hears Mark finish, wonders distantly why his heart is pounding so hard. It takes him longer to fall asleep than he thinks it should.

(The next morning, he knows Mark has remembered that there is now a need for caution by the way his cheeks tinge faintly red and he won’t meet Eduardo’s eyes. By mutual unspoken decision they never bring it up.)

(Mark keeps it quiet after that. Even if he strains his ears, Eduardo never hears him at it again, which is a good thing. Yes.)

“He says what he means, you know,” Erica says, looking thoughtfully at Mark, who is standing a few feet away and letting Dustin talk at him. Even his posture looks comically beleaguered. “You don’t meet a lot of people like that.”

Eduardo watches him as well, thinks about the time he’d first settled into Mark’s room to do his work and asked Is this—, and Mark had replied I don’t mind; the time Mark said quietly, as if confessing something Your mom is—she’s nice, and wouldn’t look Eduardo in the eyes; the time he’d kicked at Eduardo’s ankle and said How are you a real person?, so clearly meant to be cutting, so clearly not.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says, still watching. “I know.”

Christy is sardonic and funny and very, very smart, and Eduardo likes the way she clicks her nails against the hard cover of her textbooks, the way she smiles with her teeth, the way she looks predatory when she talks about the debate in her Government class that she is going to win.

“What do you think?” Eduardo asks, looking up at the ceiling. Mark’s ceiling still has a couple of lonely glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on it, the kind that kids have when they’re younger and that he probably is too lazy to take down until they start falling, one by one. “Do you think she likes me?”

Mark’s fingers pause, go silent. His voice sounds a little strange when he says, “I wouldn’t know.”

Eduardo doesn’t ask again.

MARK

When Mark was about seven, he had this plastic dinosaur that he used to carry around everywhere, into the bath, to school, to the park. Its name was Hungry. Apparently seven-year-old Mark thought that sounded like a dinosaur sort of name. Anyway, one time there was a kid on the playground who wanted to play with Mark’s dinosaur. He was nice about asking at first, but Mark kept telling him no. Finally, the kid tried to pull Hungry out of Mark’s hands by force.

Mark pushed him backwards down the slide.

Mark’s dad likes to tell this story and follow it up with, “I guess my son was asleep in kindergarten the day they taught them that sharing is caring.”

This story is important beyond the fact that Mark’s dad likes to take every possible opportunity to try and embarrass him because it builds character or something, because his dad is right—Mark does have trouble with sharing. Actually, that might be the understatement of the century.

(Mark doesn’t say this, wouldn’t ever say this, but he thinks he holds things so closely to himself partly because he knows how easily they can be taken away. He thinks his dad already knows that by the way his eyes soften and go sad when he tells that story, the way he gently tousles Mark’s hair afterward. They don’t discuss certain things, but they don’t tiptoe around each other either. Mark would rather his dad tell the embarrassing story and ruffle Mark’s hair afterward than awkwardly avoid any subject that he thinks might upset Mark; that’s just the kind of relationship they have.)

Knowing this, it surprises Mark a little that he never felt that kind of possessiveness when his dad started spending time with Eduardo. It was a little strange at first, coming downstairs in the morning and seeing his dad watching the news with someone that isn’t him, but it was—it was strange in a kind of nice way.

Maybe it’s because Eduardo spent so long shooting half-guilty half-apprehensive looks at Mark whenever he started talking to Mark’s dad, like he was afraid he was going to upset Mark and that was the last thing he ever wanted to do. Maybe it’s because he sees the way Eduardo unfurls slowly in his dad’s presence, like he doesn’t expect the affection, like he needs it. Maybe it’s because Mark’s dad has never had any problem telling Mark that he loves him, and Mark is secure in that knowledge, at least.

Maybe it’s because he can think of a hundred different ways he could lose his father (some of them keep him up at night), but looking at Eduardo’s carefulness, his caring eyes, he can’t ever imagine Eduardo being one of them.

So he can relax his possessiveness when it comes to his dad. But what Mark doesn’t realizes until it slaps him in the face one day is that this new family he’s a part of has become unexpectedly important to him; and it’s his, they’re his, and he doesn’t want—no one else should be allowed to get in the way.

He likes Christy—she’s smart and probably the one person he knows who’s capable of being as inappropriately funny as he is—but when he sees her smiling at Eduardo like she owns a part of him, suddenly Mark is blindingly, irrationally angry, and the force of it has him freezing in place until he can breathe normally again. Jesus, he doesn’t know what—normal people don’t get angry like this, they don’t cling to things like this. If Mark ever needed any proof that he’s kind of fucked up, well, here it is.

(When he was five years old Mark learned that there are no guarantees in life, that just because things are supposed to happen one way doesn’t mean they will; he should have grown up in a two-parent household instead of one plus a handful of memories, of her cool hands on his forehead and her smile and the way she sang to him in her off-key voice that sounded so beautiful to him, only it didn’t happen that way, it didn’t, and Mark doesn’t know if he will ever stop feeling cheated of that.

Maybe then he would have grown up warmer, easier to like; maybe he would have read all the books and seen all the movies that talked about a pair of best friends who took on the world together, and maybe the thought wouldn’t have felt so incomprehensible, so unlikely. He’s never had a best friend, not really, not anyone who stayed, and he knows it’s because some stubborn, angry part of him refuses to soften his own edges when looking for one. He shouldn’t have to change. They should want him as he is, isn’t that the point? It should be easy, it’s so easy for everyone else, why can’t it be that easy for him? It should be easy.

As easy as walking into a restaurant, maybe, and making a boy laugh when you thought he’d be shocked; realizing that he doesn’t want to change you because you are just what he wants—)

Mark is lucky in two ways: he’s very good at hiding things, and Eduardo is very oblivious.

It might not seem that way, because Eduardo is charming and personable and gets people in a way that Mark never can, but it’s like he has this giant blind spot centered directly around Mark. Sometimes Mark feels like he’s wandering around with all of his uncomfortable hot jealousy written across his forehead, every squirming half-formed thought of you have to like me, you have to like me best, I need to be the best, the only one—you— and Eduardo sees none of it, just smiles at him bright and open, like he smiles at Christy when he walks past her in the hallway, like he smiles at everyone because that is just the kind of person he is.

Mark knows, or thinks, at least, that he is the only person who sees another side of Eduardo: the side that sits in a moody silence that screams out don’t ask me questions, all jagged edges that would cut Mark if he tried, except Mark just shares the silence, and works, and watches Eduardo slowly come down from his tensed posture over the course of an hour until the air feels less thick with hurt; the side that scathingly picks apart the loudmouthed asshole in his Economics class so Mark can understand just how intolerable he really is, and Mark knows that come the next day Eduardo will be polite and calm and collected, because somewhere along the way he learned that that was who he had to be in life, but here he is real, because he’s with Mark.

The trouble is that Mark has never learned to do anything in moderation. When he gets angry he falls into that anger, finds it so easy to spit out the words that will wound and bite and hurt; when he needs, he needs with everything. He has this part of Eduardo that most people don’t see, but it’s not enough, he wants it all, he wants to know him best and be known in return.

It doesn’t take him very long to realize the possessiveness he’s feeling is more than seventy percent sheer jealousy, of the kind where not only would he like Eduardo to spend less time with Christy and everyone else, really, and more with Mark; but apparently he does not want Eduardo dating Christy, or even thinking about it (because he is so very clearly thinking about it), because he himself would like to be—would like to—

This is more than inconvenient.

Eduardo comes home from studying with Christy one night and falls asleep on Mark’s bed while he’s working, and Mark sees the dip of skin at his half-open shirt collar and wonders if he’s kissed Christy, if he’s planning to, what he might do if Mark kissed him, would he like it? Would he push him away, would he pull Mark closer, would he would he would he.

Mark does not like uncertainty, he doesn’t like things he can’t predict or control. Coding is easy. It makes sense, there are lines and cases and functions that either work or don’t work and Mark knows them all. Eduardo is not predictable, or easy. Eduardo has the possibility to make things blow up in Mark’s face, and Mark can’t risk it. He can’t.

That decision doesn’t make it any easier to walk into the library and see Eduardo sitting between Erica and Christy, working on something that involves all three of them laughing like they’re happy, they’re the happiest people in the world, because Eduardo is so charming and happy and everyone likes him, and Erica and Christy are pretty and nice and girls and smart (nowhere near as smart as Mark, but maybe the pretty and nice and girls outweighs that? Maybe that’s what Eduardo wants), and really why would Eduardo want anything else? Why would he even want—

Sarcasm is easy, compared to feeling like this. Being scathing is easier still, falling into that place where words slip off his tongue all slick with venom, because if he can wound then there is no room for feeling wounded, and he knows what to say to anger, to hurt. He’s always known how to do that; it’s saying everything else that’s so much harder.

He hears himself speaking as if from a distance. “Doesn’t this look cozy.” His skin is tight. He can’t really feel his fingers. “I suppose if you can’t make up your mind which one you want, it’s best to keep all your options open,” Mark spits, and Eduardo rears back like he’s been slapped. Erica just blinks at him.

Mark doesn’t look at Christy.

“…Mark, what the hell?” Eduardo says, and he’s flushing a little, starting to look angry. Mark forgets, Eduardo hasn’t seen this side of him; and never anything close to it directed at Eduardo. Eduardo shares his worst self with Mark because Eduardo’s worst self is nothing, it’s human, something Eduardo seems to think he can’t allow himself to be. Mark’s worst self is petty, jealous and vicious and unaware of what to do with people in general, and so far it hasn’t reared its head around Eduardo, but it was only a matter of time.

This is Mark too, this part of him. Eduardo is his best friend, and Mark wants, and Mark won’t change. He can’t.

Eduardo is still staring at him, looking angry and uncertain and confused.

Mark turns around and walks away.

EDUARDO

Mark leaves, and a strained, tense silence takes his place. Eduardo is still stuck in his state of What the hell just happened?, his pulse pounding distantly in his ears. He knows that tone of voice Mark had, the defensive, closed-off, vicious tone, intended for people who anger him or hurt him or make him feel something he doesn’t want to feel. Eduardo’s heard that tone a hundred times before. He’s never heard it directed at him. It hurts more than he would expect, like something lodging in his throat, something he can’t swallow past.

Eduardo is still staring down at his hands, spread flat on the table before him, when Erica lets out a breath and says cautiously, “Okay, then. I actually have to leave now, let’s finish up this project tomorrow, yeah?”

“Sure,” Christy says, because Eduardo is still finding his voice. “Email me tonight, I’ll look over that synthesis paper.”

Erica smiles in response, and Eduardo gathers himself together and tells her, “Bye, drive safely.” After she leaves, Eduardo turns to Christy and says helplessly, “I—what the hell just happened? He’s never—” He breaks off.

Christy eyes him for a moment, then shrugs. “I don’t know him as well as you do, but he seemed a little—jealous? Maybe he likes Erica? Prom’s coming up, he could ask her.”

“Oh,” Eduardo says. That’s—that would make sense. Mark doesn’t like having things taken away from him; he doesn’t like needing things or wanting them, and he doesn’t like knowing he can’t have them. If he were jealous, his outburst makes a lot more sense. He wasn’t angry at Eduardo personally, his behavior has an explanation. Good. That should satisfy Eduardo. That should be enough.

His chest twinges sharper than ever.

It’s probably just that Eduardo’s gotten used to being the closest thing in Mark’s sight; his best friend, even if Mark hasn’t said it explicitly. If Mark starts dating Erica, that will mean an end to the time he spends with Eduardo, just talking or listening wordlessly to Eduardo talk. Eduardo knows that he matches Mark in possessiveness when it comes to having people’s attention (too many years of finding cold indifference at every turn, of trying too hard and getting so little in return); he wants it all, he wants a promise that it won’t ever fade. It’s something he knows he has to change in himself.

Letting Mark go a little, now, is the first step.

“You should probably talk to him,” Christy says, and touches two fingers to his wrist, and Eduardo thinks—the way she smiles at him, the way she laughs, the way she looks like she’s waiting for something from him, prom’s coming up, Mark likes Erica, Christy is funny and brilliant, maybe he should—

“Do you want to go to prom?” he asks abruptly.

Christy bites her lip. “Like, in general?” she asks, laughter in her voice. “Or were you asking for a more specific—”

“With me,” Eduardo clarifies, blushing a little.

“I’d love to,” she says, and the uneasiness in his stomach fades back almost completely. Almost.

When Eduardo gets home, Adam is sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open, peering at Eduardo as he walks through the door over top his reading glasses, and Mark is nowhere in sight.

“Hello, my thankfully fairly well-adjusted stepson,” Adam says.

“Uh oh,” Eduardo replies, tossing his keys on the counter.

“I don’t suppose you’d have any idea why my son tore through here looking like someone smashed his laptop and then disappeared into his room?” Adam asks, steepling his fingers under his chin. “It’s just, I thought we’d hit a winning streak of making it through the teenage years with relatively few dramatics.”

“Um,” Eduardo says, and hits a blank.

“That’s informative,” Adam says. His tone is light and amused, but Eduardo can read the concern in his eyes—he’s never made the mistake of assuming that Adam doesn’t care about Mark or his feelings or the things that upset him. It’s impossible to miss how much he does. “You know, Mark knows that he can come to me with anything that’s bothering him,” Adam continues. “I don’t know if you know that, though. You don’t have to, but you can. Whatever it is. Even if you and Mark are fighting about something, I’m always here.”

Eduardo swallows hard, throat going tight, and just nods in response. How is it so easy for Adam to say things like that? How is it so easy for him, when it’s so hard for Eduardo to make himself believe that he actually means them?

Adam takes pity on him, and waves him upstairs with the pen in his hand. “I just thought I should tell you. Glad we had this talk! Maybe we can try for actual words on your part next time, but if not, I’m more than capable of talking enough for the both of us,” he says, smiling at Eduardo and turning back to his laptop.

Eduardo heads upstairs, feeling a little like he’s been run over by the FeelingsMobile.

Mark’s door faces the top of the stairs. Eduardo pauses in front of it, leans his head against the wood. Listens to Mark typing for a minute, before he works up the courage to rap twice with his knuckles.

“I’m fine, Dad,” Mark calls out, sounding sharp and a little agitated.

“It’s me,” Eduardo says into the door, nose pressing against the sign that proclaims ‘Mark’s Room: Idiots Keep Out.’ “I’m coming in, Mark.”

The typing stops. There’s a pause, and then Eduardo pushes the door open.

Mark’s staring very intently at his screen, but his fingers are no longer moving. He doesn’t look up, even when Eduardo takes a few steps inside, even when he shuts the door again behind him.

“I know my acquaintance with manners is passing, at best, but isn’t it usually customary to wait for someone to let you in before you just waltz into their room?” Mark asks, finally swiveling around in his chair. The words are acidic, but he sounds more tired than anything else.

“Well, yesterday you couldn’t wait five minutes for me to get out of the shower before you came in to brush your teeth, like you had some urgent teeth-brushing emergency, so I think I’m just evening out the score,” Eduardo says. Falling into this banter with Mark is far too easy, but the tense line of Mark’s shoulders reminds Eduardo of why he is here. “So, Christy thinks you’re jealous,” Eduardo says bluntly, because there’s really no way to ease into that statement.

Mark goes white.

His elbow jerks and knocks over his thankfully empty can of Red Bull onto the carpet, and Eduardo just gapes at him for a second. He hadn’t—he hadn’t thought Mark was this invested—

“No, it’s—I’m not interested in Erica!” Eduardo says hurriedly. “If you like her that much, you should—just ask her out. Ask her to prom. I’m sure she’d say yes.”

Mark stares at Eduardo, then blinks and looks away. “Erica. Of course. I—thank you, I will,” he says, and his voice is flat and stripped bare of emotion. Eduardo gets it—Mark doesn’t like to share his emotions, share himself with other people, and he’s been cut too raw today already—but it hurts, a little. He hadn’t thought he was ‘other people’ in Mark’s eyes, anymore.

“Right,” Eduardo says, and takes another step back. The air is still a little strained, and for once Eduardo doesn’t know what to do to fix it.

“Wardo,” Mark says abruptly, and looks up at Eduardo again. “I’m—I’m not really a nice person, you know. I know you think I’m this—I’m just someone who needs a friend or whatever, but it, I can be a lot more of an asshole than I was today. I’m very good at that. I don’t think you get that.”

Eduardo looks at him, shoulders hunched defensively, but still looking Eduardo straight in the eyes with all the force he has. He’s prickly and acerbic and confusing and sweet and he’s Eduardo’s best friend.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong,” Eduardo says gently. “I think it’s easier for you to be nice than you think it is. But if you’re worried, don’t be: if you feel the overwhelming urge to be an asshole, I’ll tell you you’re being an asshole, and maybe I’ll yell at you for a bit, but you’re stuck with me. Okay?”

Mark’s jaw works, like he’s swallowing all his words. Finally he just nods jerkily, and swivels back around.

Eduardo looks at the line of his back for a moment. The tension has eased out of the room, but Mark’s shoulders are still set in a stiff, unforgiving line.

Eduardo leaves. He doesn’t know what else to do.

The next day, Mark and Erica show up at lunch together, and Mark is awkwardly holding Erica’s textbook for her, like someone along the way told him that was what you did when you dated a girl.

Eduardo clears a space for them, and leans into Christy’s side, and doesn’t know why it’s so hard to keep the bright smile on his face from fading away.

MARK

Erica bites her left thumbnail when she’s concentrating hard on something. It’s the only nail she bites, and it’s in a constant state of raggedness. She writes clear, ordered notes with bullet points and roman numerals and dashes, and keeps a softly battered copy of A Separate Peace in her purse. She laughs at Mark’s jokes; she makes friends easily, like a smile and a kind word is all she needs, but she sits with Mark in the library in easy silence like it’s just as worthy a way to pass time.

When Mark asks her out, she stares at him for a moment with an evaluating gaze that—well, it scares the hell out of Mark. Eduardo knows people, for the most part, and Christy is never at a loss for words, and Dustin and Chris are relentlessly outgoing, but Erica sees things. She sees people, and for someone as laden with secrets as Mark is, that’s quite frankly terrifying. But she says yes. Looks at him like maybe she sees right through him, but says yes, anyway.

There is no point dwelling on the things he can’t have. Erica likes him, and she’s smart enough to keep up with him. That is enough.

(Eduardo comes home sometimes with his hair just a little messed up, his mouth just a little red, and Mark’s dad flashes him a thumbs up, and Maria smiles at him, and Mark clenches his jaw so tight he thinks his teeth might crack, and Eduardo doesn’t notice a damn thing, and it turns out letting someone go is easier said than done, and fuck this—)

“Do you think they practice that?” Erica asks with interest, leaning forward in her chair a little and motioning subtly to the table a few feet away. Mark looks up from his notebook to where she’s pointing and sees the Winklevoss twins, the tall athletic popular seniors with more white shiny teeth than brains, who are currently putting on a show by sitting the exact same way, smiling at their (presumably) respective girlfriends in the same way. They’re even dressed the same way today. It’s like they’re holding signs screaming ‘Look at our Super-Special Synchronized Twindom! Don’t you Wish You Were Us?’. Mark can’t even tell them apart on a normal day—he just knows there’s the loud one and the almost-normal one.

“Well, you know, in all the spare time I devote to thinking about the Winklevii—” Mark starts dryly, and Erica laughs and pushes his shoulder.

“Shut up. I was just wondering,” she says, and pushes her textbook away. Mark knows she’s avoiding doing her Calc homework. Presumably even discussing the Winklevii is preferable to calculating derivatives. “They could start their very own circus act,” she adds, mouth quirking into a smile.

“Plenty of Brawn, Devoid of Brains?” Mark suggests.

“Hot Blond Twins: Double the Fun,” Erica says slyly, and at Mark’s sideways look, she grins and adds, “Relax, you’re much cuter.” She pats his hand and it’s affectionately mocking, but she also bumps her knee against his under the table, so he doesn’t take offense. Much. Not really.

“I’m enough fun for two people,” he mutters, and he knows she’s laughing at him when she says, “That you are, Mark.”

Her hair is always falling into her eyes, and her knee is still pressed against his own, and he’s never bored with her, at least.

(Mark buys all of his hoodies and jackets in oversize, so it turns out they fit Eduardo near perfectly in the arms; one time Eduardo darts into his room and says, “Can I borrow this?” At Mark’s nod he grabs a jacket and zips it up over his shirt, smiles at Mark, and dashes back out.

He stays at Christy’s for dinner that evening, and Mark thinks: that’s my jacket you’re wearing, are you kissing her right now? do you remember that’s my jacket while you’re kissing her, do you think about me at all when you’re there? it’s mine, you’re wearing something that’s mine, you’re mine—

Coding is impossible when he’s like this. Mark is a mess.)

Dustin drops his books on the table where Mark’s sitting by himself in the library. “Dude. What are you doing?” he asks with no preamble.

Mark looks up. “Studying? I realize it’s a foreign concept to you, but some of us—”

“Yeah, actually not what I meant,” Dustin interrupts. “I mean with Erica. She’s great and all, and I realize that Wardo has apparently taken obliviousness as his new method to live by or something, but—”

“Dustin. Do you really want to have the love life conversation?” Mark lifts his eyebrow and tilts his head in the direction of Chris, who is currently leaning over the checkout desk and flirting with the guy manning the computer.

Dustin looks over there for a second, then scowls down at his hands. “Fine. Moratorium on the romance talk.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mark says, and tries not to think about how pathetic they both are. He clears his throat. “I looked at that thing you sent me. You realize your code is wildly inefficient, right?”

“Like hell it is!” Dustin says indignantly, and they continue on that topic for a while, because this? This is something they understand, something they can control, something that works for them.

Yeah. More than a little pathetic.

(“So, how are things with Erica? You two seem good together,” Eduardo says one day, leaning in Mark’s doorway. He’s stopped spending his time in Mark’s room anymore, and Mark doesn’t know why—well, he knows why he’s stopped most of the time, because he’s spending time with Christy, because he’d rather be making out with Christy than sprawling on Mark’s bed and listening to him type; but even when Eduardo’s at home, it doesn’t feel like he’s at home. It feels like he’s pulling away.

Mark looks up, and Eduardo is smiling, and—that is not a smile. That is Eduardo’s ‘Lying to People’ face. That is the face that Eduardo makes when he’s being polite, and saying the right things, and he’s never used it with Mark, what is going on?

“Yeah, we’re—it’s great,” Mark says stiffly. Eduardo is lying, and Mark is lying right back, and this is so fucked up, and Mark doesn’t get it—)

“My phone’s dead, do me a favor?” Eduardo asks, leaning on the locker next to Mark’s. “Call home and let them know I’ll be back later tonight? I’m taking Christy to a movie.”

Mark’s fingers fumble a little on the combination. “Sure,” he says, with all the calm in the world. “But that’ll be both of us tonight. I’m studying at Erica’s.”

Eduardo says nothing for a few seconds. “Of course. Have fun,” he says finally, and claps Mark on the shoulder before leaving.

They really do study at first, because both Erica and Mark take their grades very seriously. They’re in her room with the door open (Erica’s mom pops in every twenty minutes or so to make sure they’re the appropriate two feet apart), and at one point Erica looks up from her notebook and smiles up at Mark with her chin tipped up, and really, that’s a cue not even Mark could miss.

Erica’s lips taste like vanilla chapstick. She fists a hand in his t-shirt to keep him where she wants him, and he puts his tongue in her mouth, and it’s nice. It’s nice, everything’s so damn nice, and not enough, not what he wants; he doesn’t need anyone else to tell him that what he’s doing isn’t fair to her, but it’s not like he doesn’t want this to work out with her, god knows it’d be easier for him if it would, but he can’t.

It isn’t like he doesn’t like it, of course he likes it, he’s a teenage boy and anything even resembling someone else’s skin near his gets him hard; but Erica isn’t who he really wants, and he can’t forget that.

But he’s a coward and he needs someone who wants him, so he just pulls away after a few moments and says, “Wow, that was pretty daring under your mom’s spying regime.”

Erica grins at him and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I’ve got her timed. In another four minutes she’s going to come back up to see if we want anything to eat. Just in case our answer changed from fifteen minutes ago.”

Mark smirks, and turns back to his reading, and says absolutely nothing of what he is really thinking.

(“How was the movie?” Mark couldn’t care less, but Eduardo is back in his room, sitting on his bed again like he used to, and apparently they’ve been reduced to small talk.

“Good,” Eduardo says. His head is tilted down, he’s looking at his hands. Mark can’t see his eyes. “How’d the studying go?”

“It was productive,” Mark says emotionlessly.

“How romantic,” Eduardo teases, but the tone of his voice is off. Mark doesn’t know if this awkwardness between them is entirely of his own doing, and Eduardo is just reacting to what he’s getting from Mark, or if there’s a part of it coming from Eduardo as well. Mark hates not knowing most of all.

Maria comes upstairs to say goodnight to both of them, and eyes them like she wants to lock them up until they start making sense again. Mark kind of knows the feeling.)

Sometimes he dreams—Eduardo sprawled back on Mark’s bed, familiar except for the way his shirt is riding up and he’s smiling at Mark intently and pulling him down to kiss him. In the hazy dream-world, a kiss feels like it takes both an hour and a split second at once, too much and never enough; Mark is brave in his dream, tugs Eduardo’s shirt over his head, settles on his lap and kisses him until they break away to breathe together. Eduardo is hard, he puts his long, clever hands on Mark’s skin, he bites Mark’s mouth. Mark wakes up.

Sometimes Mark dreams it while awake—wanders into the kitchen in the morning, catches the curve of Eduardo’s neck as he bends over his plate, thinks about putting his mouth there and bruising the tender skin a little bit. Looks at Eduardo’s mouth, wet and lush from whatever bright and artificially-colored thing he’s been eating, wants that color against his own lips. Imagines it’s Eduardo’s long fingers on him when he’s in the shower, jerking himself off under the steady stream of water and biting his wrist when he comes.

He dreams it all. Mark is in a constant state of dizzy wanting, a miserable sweet ache in his chest and low in his gut.

They start fighting: nothing large, just small snapping fights that should bleed out some of the tension between them, but instead build up and build up until Mark’s every word is a precise icicle of sarcasm, and Eduardo can’t stay in the same room with him for more than ten minutes.

Eduardo is absolutely blind, and Mark can’t help but resent it. He feels like he’s walking around with a neon sign above his head, all flashing letters that can’t be missed, and yet there Eduardo is. Missing it.

“Can’t you just tell me what’s bothering you?” Eduardo asks once, sounding more desperate than he probably means to sound.

Mark doesn’t turn around from his laptop. “I don’t think I asked for a therapist, Eduardo.”

Eduardo leaves. It isn’t anything like the kind of satisfaction Mark is looking for, but it’s something. At least he is still in perfect control of his own words. At least he still knows how to push people away.

(And yet. There is the Saturday afternoon when they’re both home by themselves, and Mark falls asleep in front of the television sitting up. The next thing he knows, he blinks awake to find himself laid out across the couch with a blanket tucked neatly around him and a covered glass of orange juice on the little magazine table next to him.

Mark covers his face with one hand, ignores the warm little spark trying to flare up in his chest. This is what he can’t handle. Mark doesn’t do well in shades of gray, he needs the clean black-and-white of things. He deals in absolutes. Either someone likes him or they don’t; he’s getting an A in a class or he isn’t doing well enough; if someone says ‘No, it’s fine’, Mark takes that to mean that it really is fine, not that they’re waiting for Mark to pick up on some indeterminate tone in their voice and fish for clarification. Binary answers.

Either Eduardo sees Mark as a brother and nothing more, or he wants him in the same consuming way Mark wants Eduardo. Mark needs to know if Eduardo’s kindness, the way he looks out for Mark, the slight strain in his eyes when he looks at Erica now—how much of that is something Mark can count on? Mark needs to know if he can let himself hope.

The easiest way would be to just ask. Surely it can’t get any worse than this?

But it could. Mark knows it could. And if he fucks up his relationship with Eduardo, it isn’t just his own life he’d be affecting. Mark can’t do that to his dad, to Maria. He won’t.

Mark drinks the juice, tucks his hand into the blanket, and when Eduardo cautiously peeks his head into the room, Mark hides everything away and quietly says, “Thanks, Wardo.”)

EDUARDO

They’re fighting all the time now.

Mark says, “Get out, I don’t need a keeper.”

and, “If you want to talk about feelings so desperately, go find your girlfriend.”

and Mark says, “I don’t think I asked for a therapist, Eduardo.”

Eduardo.

Eduardo leaves and leaves and leaves. He’s good at leaving. He’s good at avoiding. Conflict makes him want to bury his head in the sand, pretend it’s not happening, wait for the end.

Everything is splintering, changing, and Eduardo just wants to understand. Just wants to fix it, but how can he fix something when he’s stonewalled at every turn, a rejection so acute it stops him in his tracks like a slap every time?

Mark won’t tell him anything, and Eduardo is frightened.

Eduardo has heard that Mark gets lost in his laptop sometimes, in his projects, unaware of anything that is going on around him; but up until this point, he hasn’t really seen it. Oh, he’s seen Mark fall into coding that is totally incomprehensible to Eduardo, and when Mark works intently he barely stops for bathroom breaks, let alone to talk to Eduardo. But Eduardo has always known that some small surface part of Mark’s brain is cataloguing his surroundings, listening to Eduardo talk so he can regurgitate some fact later that Eduardo hadn’t been sure he’d heard. Mark could tell Eduardo to leave, he could choose to work in complete silence. Eduardo knows, had known, that Mark likes having Eduardo there while he works—something to be aware of distantly, a comfort, a constant.

Even now, it isn’t that Mark is lost in his work and unaware of Eduardo’s presence. That wouldn’t be a tenth as infuriating as what he’s actually doing. No, Eduardo has been leaning in Mark’s doorway for the last five minutes, and Mark is sitting on his bed with his laptop, and he hasn’t looked up to meet Eduardo’s eyes once, because he isn’t unaware, he’s ignoring Eduardo. He is so determinedly ignoring him, staring at his screen, shoulders locked, that he’s practically screaming Get out, get out, I don’t want you here.

Fuck that. Eduardo is abruptly, startlingly incensed. If Mark wants him gone so badly, he can damn well speak up and tell him so. If Mark wants Eduardo to leave him alone, if he doesn’t want them to be friends anymore, if he’s done with Eduardo, then he’s going to have to find it in himself to tell Eduardo that unequivocally and finally, because otherwise Eduardo is not leaving him alone.

“Busy?” he says flatly, and watches Mark’s shoulders twitch a little. Mark finally deigns to look up at him, face schooled into blankness.

“It would appear so, wouldn’t it?” Mark replies. His voice is cool, doesn’t give an inch. Eduardo wants to splinter that calmness, doesn’t know how.

“Look, I’ve asked you a hundred times, why are you acting so—” and as he’s speaking, Eduardo moves to sit at the foot of Mark’s bed by his feet, gets in close in the hopes that Mark will show something—and Mark, shit, Mark can’t hide the way he flinches in upon himself, away from Eduardo, and Eduardo stops like he’s been slapped.

Maybe Mark sees something in his face, because he rushes in to speak before Eduardo can say anything; and he sounds vicious and defensive but at least he sounds alive, none of that icy calm that hooks under Eduardo’s skin (because Eduardo has no defense against that kind of relentless lack of emotion, he’s never in his life known how to combat it; it might have gone easier for him if he had). “There is nothing wrong, and your insistence on badgering me like this is not exactly making me inclined to share.” Mark bites each word out like it’s paining him, turns back to his laptop. Won’t look at Eduardo even when he’s two feet away.

Eduardo can feel his pulse pounding in his ears. He reaches out and pulls Mark’s laptop from his grasp, slams it shut, pushes it toward the end of the bed. “Think you’ll find it easier to pay attention now?” he says roughly, and Mark snarls at him wordlessly and makes a grab for his laptop, and Eduardo clamps a hand around his wrist, and—

Mark is tugging, and Eduardo plants a hand solidly on his chest because he needs Mark’s attention right now, he needs answers, he is so fucking tired of wondering what he did wrong with no clue how to fix it, he’s had enough of that for three lifetimes, and—

Mark is not especially physical, never initiated any of the half-embraces they’ve shared, doesn’t shove at Eduardo like he’s seen brothers do; but now he’s yanking his wrist out of Eduardo’s grasp and shoving back with force, like he’s at his limit too, like this is getting to him as much as it is Eduardo, and—

Mark’s head knocks against the wall, and he goes off balance and falls back on the bed. Eduardo lands straddling one of Mark’s legs, and he can see an angry flush riding Mark’s cheekbones, and Eduardo’s hand is planted on the bed by Mark’s head, Mark’s curls brushing the inside of Eduardo’s wrist. Mark is unmoving even in his fury, and Eduardo’s mouth feels dry, and the breath Mark lets out echoes in Eduardo’s ears like a gunshot. Eduardo’s stomach squirms hotly, and this feeling is entirely familiar, shit—

Eduardo jumps up like he’s been burned. Mark stays where he is, eyes dark and unreadable.

“Sorry,” Eduardo manages to get out, and hits his hip against the doorframe in the haste with which he leaves the room.

Shit. Shit.

Leave it to Eduardo to find a way to complicate things even further.

So maybe Eduardo isn’t the most self-aware person in the world, but even he can’t stay behind the wall of denial he’s apparently been living behind forever.

He gets it now, he knows why he is feeling like this. Or rather, he can admit it to himself. He’s known, he’s known all along that there’s more to the way he wants to watch Mark fall asleep in his breakfast, and bring him actual food when he skips lunch at school to work in the library, and push Erica away when she sits too close to Mark; more than the fact that he is just possessive over his best friend, his brother. If Mark were actually his brother this would not be a problem at all. Instead he’s found this person who understands him like no one else, who he wants so much, who he can’t have.

Maybe he wonders for a second if Mark wants—but no, why would he? Why would he when he has Erica, so funny and smart and normal. Eduardo sometimes feels like he’s running the world’s most elaborate, successful con on everyone around him—convincing them that he is a functional, well-adjusted human being, when in reality he is riddled through with issues and insecurities and doubts, coloring his every action and whispering to him at night. He goes through every day waiting for someone to call him on it: you imposter, you fake, your own father didn’t even want you, your fate is to be a disappointment and there is nothing you can do about it.

There are maybe two people that Eduardo thinks can see right through him, and that his mother and Mark. His mother, who watched him hide inside himself for years and finally force himself to be bright and outgoing and normal, because to be anything else would feel like he was still living under his father’s rule. And Mark, who looked at him from the start with the keenest piercing gaze, dissecting him and accepting him in the same breath; who made it possible for Eduardo to stop pretending, if only for a little while, because Mark didn’t want Eduardo’s best self—he wanted his real self. Why would Mark choose to take on any more of that mess he saw, any more than he already has to deal with?

Mark can’t want this, and there is no reason for Eduardo to bring it up.

(Eduardo’s mother is so happy, she’s started singing again, and Eduardo can just see what would happen if he opened his mouth: he could so easily ruin everything in the space of a breath. He already broke his mother’s family once. He will not do it again.)

But Mark still won’t talk to him, and Eduardo still doesn’t know why, and he remembers: “Even if you and Mark are fighting about something, I’m always here.”

So he goes to Adam, and fidgets over a cup of coffee for ten minutes while Adam waits patiently, and finds himself blurting out, “Mark won’t—do you know why he won’t talk to me? He says he’s not mad at me and there’s nothing wrong, but it—he just won’t talk to me. I don’t know what to do.”

Adam’s mouth twists a little sadly, and he says after a moment, “He hasn’t come to me either, and I can’t really read his mind, but—sometimes Mark just, he just gets like this. After his mother’s funeral, he—” Adam breaks off for a second to clear his throat, visibly searching for words. Eduardo shifts in his seat apologetically. He hadn’t meant to bring up a difficult subject, but Adam meets his eyes and shakes his head a bit, as if to say It’s okay.

Adam takes a sip of his coffee and continues, “Mark went through this stage where he’d cling on to me sometimes, and then he’d throw a tantrum and push me away, pretend like he didn’t need me.” Adam’s staring at the table with his eyes dark, like he’s seeing something else entirely, and not for the first time Eduardo wonders what it would have been like to grow up with a father like this, who looks as if he’d kill and die to keep his son from being hurt ever again. “Mark gets a little frightened anytime he lets someone in too close. Like he thinks it’ll hurt him less when they leave or get taken away if he pretends he doesn’t care.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eduardo says quietly.

Adam puts a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe he just needs a little time to accept that.”

Eduardo understands not believing that things are real, that they won’t change. He can give Mark time. He’s not going anywhere.

It’s a Saturday when Eduardo wanders into the living room and sees Mark fast asleep in front of the television, head tipping forward at what looks like a horrifyingly uncomfortable angle.

A month ago, Eduardo would have woken Mark up with a hand to his neck, laughed at him and told him to go to his room if he wanted to pass out somewhere. A few days ago, Eduardo would have left him there for fear of getting his hand bitten off at the wrist when Mark awoke.

Now, Eduardo stares at Mark’s face, slack and young in sleep, and feels his chest pang sharply. Mark slides down easily when Eduardo guides his head to the armrest on the couch, stretching his legs out gently so as not to wake him. Eduardo grabs a nearby blanket and throws it over Mark, tucking it carefully under his feet like he’s seen his mother do it. Then he goes to the kitchen and brings back a glass of juice, because if Mark is falling asleep during the middle of the day on a Saturday, he’s more drained than he’s ever going to admit.

Finally he pulls the blanket up a few inches so it reaches Mark’s chin. Mark mumbles incoherently, “W’do,” and turns his head to the side, nose brushing Eduardo’s hand. Eduardo freezes in place, heart pounding, but Mark settles back down into deep, motionless sleep.

Eduardo leaves the room, because he is giving Mark a choice here. When Mark wakes up he can pretend nothing happened and never bring it up, or—maybe they can work this out.

He drags all his homework into the kitchen, and doesn’t even bother pretending to himself that it isn’t because he wants to be able to hear Mark stirring when he finally wakes up. It’s two and a half hours later when he hears rustling noises, the clink of the glass being set down on the table. Eduardo waits a minute more, and then pokes his head into the living room.

Mark looks tired, but better than before. He meets Eduardo’s eyes properly for the first time in what feels like forever, and his quiet, “Thanks, Wardo,” pulls an unintentional relieved half-sigh out of Eduardo.

Mark ducks his head, but he’s smiling a little when he looks back up. It still has an edge of tension, like not everything’s been resolved, but that’s only to be expected. Not everything has been resolved.

God, if Eduardo can only get them back to where they were before—to before all this tension and fighting and everything that’s been twisting his stomach into knots for weeks—he’ll forget everything else, he’ll push down everything he’s learned about himself. He won’t ask for anything else.

He sits down next to Mark on the couch, knocks knees with him. I’m sorry.

“Yeah,” Mark says softly. Leans slightly into Eduardo’s side: me too.

They’re going to make this work.

(Mark’s hair is messed up and his mouth is lush with sleep, and Eduardo’s hands are twitching with the need to touch, and—he can’t.)

He will make this work.

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