Chapter Text
2009
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Eduardo opens his eyes.
He is not in the snows of upstate New York, or the ruins of his new car. He’s in a hospital bed, hooked up to IVs, and he has no idea how he got there.
He turns his head, and after everything, it’s not a surprise, not really, to see Mark there. Mark, sitting by his side, clutching a ragged looking Northface jacket, his eyes closed and mouth folded into a thin line.
As Eduardo watches, Mark rocks, very slowly, forward and then back. Eduardo has not seen Mark in almost four years but he can read Mark easily enough still – Mark is concentrating. Mark, an atheist, is drawing on everything he knows of holy things.
And, as if in a daze, as if history is repeating itself, Eduardo asks – as he had, all those years ago – “Mark? Are you praying?”
His voice isn’t much more than a ragged whisper, his throat is on fire but he’s alive, somehow, and Mark – Mark is here, and he has Eduardo’s fucking missing jacket, god fucking damnit.
Mark freezes, and then opens his eyes.
Eduardo had – forgotten. What it was like, to look at him. To see Mark, not in memories twisted by emotion but in the flesh – his messy curls, chapped lips, pale skin, skinny shoulders. The intensity of his gaze. The tension with which he held himself, tension of a fencer, of an athlete. The focus he so rarely gives people, preferring to turn it on Facebook; the focus he was giving Eduardo now.
“Wardo,” Mark says, so softly that something in Eduardo cracks the way it had at Holi. He feels cracked open, struggling to hatch from the proverbial egg, a fracture beginning outside and hammering home to his beating, beating heart.
“Mark,” Eduardo whispers, and does not pull away when Mark grabs his hand.
Mark holds his hand for two heartbeats – two moments that encapsulate what could have been, if they hadn’t fucked up so badly. The agony and frustration of the past years crash violently with the knowledge that they could have been perfect, together. They could have lasted. They could have loved.
They did love, in a misguided way.
Eduardo is very, very tired, and so glad to be alive.
Mark knows – he can tell. Feels the same. For once all of his feelings are splashed out across his face, across those absurd cheekbones, his lush mouth twisting. His eyes are wet. Eduardo wants to look away but doesn’t, bears witness. He never had the luxury of encountering something that could have been perfect, the missing piece in his life, only to have it snatched away after only moments. He has been living with the slow, decaying love of theirs for years. But Mark – Mark has not. Mark has come far too late.
Eduardo lets go of Mark’s hand, and smiles. “I’m so happy to see you,” he whispers, and he means it, lets the ugly, dying thing crawl out of his chest until there’s nothing of it left. Until there’s only Eduardo, looking at Mark.
“You woke up,” Mark says, voice cracking. “Wardo – you were in a coma. I didn’t.” he stops talking, stands and walks to a table at the foot of Eduardo’s bed, where there’s a pitcher of water and cups. He pours Eduardo one, and Eduardo can see that Mark is shaking, a refined tremor. He feels like shaking two. He wonders at sharing his heart with Mark, still, even when the time has long since passed. It’s like they don’t share only a heart anymore, but a nervous system. Like they’ve been separated for years, and can only now slot comfortably together.
“Mark,” Eduardo says. Mark has turned his back, is undoubtedly trying to master his expression. “Mark, I’ve missed you so much.”
“Wardo,” is all Mark says, helplessly. “Wardo.”
The nurses are called, and fuss over Eduardo. Mark holds the cup of water to his lips because Eduardo’s hands feel too heavy to use. He panics, then, and is assured that he has full working use of his body, but it will take a while for him to be up and walking.
At some point during this explanation, he falls asleep again.
*
When he wakes up, Preeta and Divya are there, Divya with his arm around a crying Preeta.
Eduardo peers at her, groggy, and mumbles, “don’t cry, please.”
“EDUARDO!” Preeta shrieks, and flings herself at him, then tries to pull back at the last minute. Eduardo grunts, and lets her hug him.
She’s crying, she won’t stop crying. Divya is also crying, and he rounds Eduardo’s bed and hugs Eduardo too, laughing when Eduardo splutters.
“You fucking asshole,” Preeta sniffs. “I thought…”
“You’re not the first person to say that,” Eduardo mumbles.
“Next time, if you want to go on a little snowy adventure, take us so you don’t get yourself killed. Honestly, you need to learn how to drive in ice.”
What.
“I…”
“It’s a miracle someone saw you and called 911, Eduardo. God. The skid marks – do you remember it at all?”
“…no,” Eduardo lies, and Divya puts a hand on Preeta’s arm.
“Love, Eduardo just woke up. Let’s give him a minute, yes? I’ve rung for the nurses.”
And then nurses come, and doctors, and Divya and Preeta leave, Preeta promising to call his parents – how did she get their number? – and Eduardo undergoes too many tests.
*
He fractured his skull, because he is, in Preeta’s words, “a complete fucking moron.” Obviously, he had a very severe concussion from that. He also has partially healed broken ribs, a ruptured spleen (they removed it) and a partially healed broken arm.
He’s been in a coma for six weeks.
“So next time you decide to drive on black ice, use studded tires,” Preeta snaps. She’s been saying this a lot.
“Hey, I’m sure he did his best,” Divya says. “Those skid marks – he tried.”
Eduardo keeps quiet. He’s on a lot of pain medicine, which makes everything sort of…softer, but he knows that he didn’t try to stop the car. There shouldn’t be any skid marks. And who happened to be in the middle of no-where at 4 am to call 911 anonymously?
Tan, probably.
Eduardo sighs.
*
His parents come – have been in New York for the last six weeks, actually. His Mãe sobs, clutching his hand in both of hers. Eduardo awkwardly pats her with his non-broken arm.
His father also cries, but silently, hanging back until Eduardo reaches for him. Then he comes forward and pats Eduardo’s legs.
“We’re glad you woke up.” He says in Portuguese, his voice thick.
“Me too.” Eduardo replies in the same language.
His father is no longer the man from Eduardo’s memories – he is just a small, tired old man that eats too much pasta. The father from Eduardo’s memories didn’t care about Eduardo. This one does.
Eduardo doesn’t know how to feel about that, doesn’t know if he’ll ever know how to feel about that.
Maybe all of this is just the morphine, he thinks. Maybe I’m imagining it.
*
Max, Deidre and Helena visit. Deidre cries. So does Helena, but not over Eduardo. Max just clasps Eduardo’s hands in his calloused ones and explains they brought Eduardo a casserole, because “hospital food is the pits.”
“How’s the market?” Eduardo asks, because he can’t help himself. And then: “Sorry I couldn’t babysit Helena on New Years Eve.”
Deidre actually slaps him for that. It’s not his finest joke.
“The market is…awful,” Max says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “WaMu was bought out. But dude, don’t think about that right now. You’re alive. How miraculous is that?”
Eduardo thinks about Tan, and choosing, and the wall of souls. About Chris’s five arrows, and hiking, and the differences between sunsets and sunrises.
“It’s…pretty miraculous, alright,” he says.
Helena throws her stuffed rabbit at him.
*
Chris doesn’t visit him. Eduardo doesn’t blame him.
He sees Chris once, on TV – in Obama’s entourage. Chris’s hair is a little longer than normal, his eyes are blue, and he’s all Eduardo can look at, never mind that Obama is giving a speech.
He never asked – and he meant too – which bird was Chris’s. He doesn’t allow himself to wonder.
*
The Winklevii also visit. They bring Eduardo flowers, which makes him feel like a grandmother.
“These are so nice,” he says awkwardly, reaching for the roses with his good arm. “I’ve always liked yellow roses.”
“We wanted to get you something else, but January makes for poor flower growing season,” Tyler – or Cameron? – explains.
“We’re really glad you’re okay,” the other twin says.
Eduardo smiles. “Thanks. I am, too.”
“Next time you want to go to the Adirondacks, let us know,” one of them says. “Our family has a house up there. You can stay there whenever.”
“Wow,” Eduardo stammers. “Thanks.”
The twins grin down at him, and Eduardo grins back up at them.
*
And, throughout all of this – Mark. Mark sticks around, clutching Eduardo’s jacket. Mark talks to nurses and doctors about Eduardo’s condition. Mark avoids Preeta and Divya and the Winklevii – Divya and the Winklevii because they’re suing him, Preeta because she threatened to castrate him.
“You’re friends with them, now?” Mark asks, confused, and Eduardo sighs.
“Yes. Divya and Preeta are my best friends, and the Winklevii – well, Cameron and Tyler are really nice.” Eduardo pauses. “I’d like to be friends with you too, Mark. If that’s okay.”
Mark fidgets for about half a second, then forces himself to quiet. The air of almost hangs over them, and Eduardo doesn’t know how to talk about it, doesn’t know if he wants too. He has spent so long thinking about it, and now it is…gone, as much as it will ever be.
It’s as if Mark took a part of him, all those years ago when Eduardo met him. Not Eduardo’s heart, which Eduardo offered to him on a shiny platter. At least, not all of it. But maybe some of it, maybe a small but integral part of it. A part Eduardo will never get back.
But if Mark took part of Eduardo, surely Eduardo took a part of Mark. Surely Eduardo has a sliver of Mark in him somewhere, perhaps where his soul should be. Surely when this life is said and done, they will find each other in the next, or their molecules will find each other, will form new stars, new galaxies, new lovers. New frontiers. New revolutions.
“Yes,” Mark says, and doesn’t say and that’s all? Because he knows. He is a man who is grieving, and Eduardo isn’t anymore. “I’d like that.”
Eduardo smiles.
*
He’s released from the hospital two weeks later, after promising to come back in for all of his check ups and to abstain from drinking or operating machinery.
(Not that he has any machinery to operate – his new car is ruined. Divya shows him a photo of the crash site and the mangled corpse of his Audi. Eduardo also notices the dramatic skid marks that mark the road.
“Damn,” he whispers, though not for the reason Divya thinks, and Divya claps him on the back.)
Eduardo drops the lawsuit against Mark. He does lets Mark keep his Northface. He doesn’t need it, and Mark – Mark does. That is Mark’s piece of him, Mark’s talisman and touchstone and key all in one. It’s fucked up. They were fucked up.
It doesn’t hurt to admit that anymore. It doesn’t hurt to let it go.
Eduardo starts going to AA meetings, because getting drunk when he’s upset, or scared, or angry, or sad, isn’t working. In fact, it almost got him killed.
That and – Eduardo himself. So he starts going to therapy too, grudgingly, and grudgingly agrees to take the medication he’s prescribed.
He doesn’t know how to tell people that his car crash was a suicide attempt. He doesn’t know how to explain most of his life, from Facebook to selling his soul to the devil to…this. To being alive, here, now.
Miraculous, indeed.
Tan finds him outside one of the meetings – and it had been a good meeting, a hard meeting. A man had shared about alcoholism as a legacy in the family and Eduardo hadn’t stopped fidgeting, had gotten a lot of sympathetic looks.
She’s wearing her neutral form, in slacks, boots, a button up shirt, and a sweater. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows – she doesn’t seem to notice the cold – and she’s smiling at Eduardo.
“How is it?” She asks, carefully not touching him.
Eduardo pauses next to her, clutching his cup of coffee. He’s cold, even if it’s a mild February day.
“Good,” he says, and means it. Because all of this – being alive, reconnecting with his family, with Mark, with himself – is good. Is worth it.
Tan grins, and grabs his coffee. Eduardo notices, like he has a thousand times, her tattoo. This is, however, the first time he can read it.
“’Homo, fuge?’” he quotes, brow furrowing. “Isn’t that…?”
“’Fly, man!’” Tan quotes, nodding. “Yup.”
“But that’s…”
“From Dr. Faustus,” Tan agrees. “Faustus is about to make his deal with the devil, and an angel appears and tells him to flee. And, like an idiot, Faustus ignores the angel.”
“You got that as a tattoo?” Eduardo demands.
Tan smirks at him.
Eduardo can’t help it – he cracks up. Everyone but Tan ignores him, because this is New York and no one has any patience for a bizarre laughing man.
When he calms down, Tan smiles and gives him his coffee back.
“Were you looking for me?” Eduardo asks, and Tan nods, looking away, out into the distance.
“I was,” she said. “I have something for you.” She reaches over and slaps him, hard, on the back. Eduardo chokes, coughs. It sounds like bird song.
He doesn’t feel any different. Cold, shaky, achy from his still healing ribs.
“Wanted to let you know,” Tan says, and now she does turn to look at him, face elegant and serious. “Contract’s void.”
“But –”
“You were drunk,” Tan shrugs. “Doesn’t count. Consent, and all that.”
“Tan – this is against the rules –”
“And I break the rules,” she reminds him. “It’s my job.”
“Tan.”
“Eduardo.” Tan interrupts him. “You got your soul back. You got a second chance. What are you waiting for?” She smiles. “Homo, fuge. Fly, Eduardo. It’s time. It’s been time.”
He doesn’t – he’s so confused – and part of him, a small feathery part, is singing. Is warm. Is there to love, and be loved, and nothing more.
“What about you?” he asks finally.
“I’ll be around,” she promises. “But now? I’ve got a hot date.”
“A date?”
Tan winks, then steps forward and kisses him on the forehead. “Fly,” she whispers in his ear, and then saunters off.
Eduardo, watching her, sees Erica waiting for Tan. Erica, who is both Erica and the woman from outside the coffee shop. Erica, who isn’t really Erica at all.
Erica winks at him, and then wraps an arm around Tan’s shoulders and kisses her.
Damn.
They walk away.
Eduardo loses sight of them in the crowd. For a minute, he takes it all in – the people, all the movement, all the life, all the noise.
Eduardo smiles.
He flips up the collar of his coat and begins to head home, bracing himself against the wind. As he reaches the corner of the block, it begins to snow.
