Don't Tell Jack... (Mark X Anti)

Part 2

Mark's POV

My monitor buffered a bit before he disappeared. The game too. I was left staring at myself, the webcam feed of my face staring back. I had already hit the little stop icon, so i wasn't being recorded anymore. my face was still red from laughter, my ears ringing with the Irish tang of Jack's voice.

I leaned closer to my desktop, resting my elbows on my desk and my head in my hands. I inspected my face at a good three inches from my screen. My skin was oily and sweaty from the exertion of laughing so hard. i was probably the only twenty seven year old with crows feet this deep. I didn't care that they most likely couldn't be seen at a normal modest distance of more than five inches. they were there. I could see every pore in my face. good thing i was past acne age. This was me. full on, unfiltered me.

I pulled myself from my screen and looked at my face from a distance. Markiplier. i leaned in again. i saw the disgusting imperfections of Mark Edward Fischbach. i leaned away. Again i saw the, dare i say famous, Youtuber Markiplier. I felt like a split personality.

Of course there was one imperfection i was leaving out. Markiplier smiled. big smiles, the kind of smiles that gave Mark his crows feet. But Mark didn't smile. not all the time. smiling was Markiplier's job. But right then, Mark Fischbach didn't feel like smiling. the smile that i'd worn during recording had faded. the face i wore around Jack had faded.

Jack. Thinking of him tugged at the corners of my lips ever so slightly. but oddly, Jack was the reason i was frowning at all. Don't get me wrong, i wasn't a sad person. i was a happy person, a very happy personality. it wasn't a mask i wore or a plastic smile. I was part Markiplier deep down, really. I was a crossbreed of human and Youtuber.

i hated to think i was faking smiles, because for the most part i wasn't. Most of the time i was showing my real emotions. that was what people wanted. but lately i'd been lacking in the whole happiness department. Ever since I started hanging out with Jack. We became friends like that. He was really the main person i hung out with off camera.

And he was amazing.

His big blue eyes like twin oceans, the kind that lap at the beach, grasping at the sand, beckoning you. drawing you closer. His round face pale as the moon. His soft ivory skin reminded me of perfectly sculpted bread dough. His lime green hair fell across his head like a bright, lush spring field. I was so exited the day he dyed it. Was he copying me? No. He just wanted green hair. Of course.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair, running my fingers through my dark, almost black hair. my cuticle's gathered sweat and my fingers ached from the rapid movement of pounding the controller. I laughed in spite of myself. i normally prided myself on being relatively fit for my Youtube job, but i was still pathetic enough to overexert myself while playing a video game. I took my eyes off of my digital face and closed out of the program.

I sat in front of my blank computer home screen for a minute. The responsible thing to do would be to get right into editing the feed. But responsible wasn't really my thing. Not my gimmick. i shoved myself away from my desk, sending my swivel chair spinning. yet again i'd forgotten to take off my headphones and my legs tangled in cords, causing me to fall off my chair and bring my mic down with me.

that mic had taken a beating. i always smacked it accidentally while flailing my arms, maybe i accidentally pulled it off my desk while leaning in to act scary or sexy of whatever. not to mention the plethora of spittle that had most likely lodged itself among the recording mechanics after all the years of screaming and laughing and making these odd sputtering noises when a game is too frustrating.

Once again i thought of Jack. our duck improv still made me smile. i hoped that the viewers liked it. Even if they didn't, i loved preforming with Jack. Making him laugh that shrill but oddly endearing laugh.

My smile had finally faded completely. i wasn't frowning, not really, but the happiness that filled me previously was no longer present.

Jack. Adorable, funny, larger-than-life Jack. Straight-as-a-ramp, has a girlfriend Jack. If i wasn't a Youtuber i might have been able to talk to him about it. about my feelings towards him. But if i told him now, things would get awkward. People would notice. people would comment. With a fandom as big as a gamer's, at least one or two people find things out. Don't ask how, nobody knows.

i could see it then and there. people would find out. Social media posts...comments... i'd be plastered on the front page of every gossip site within a week. i could imagine the fanart, my overly perfect anime face dripping with tears as an angry Jack left me. the fanfictions trying to guess the events of the ordeal, adding way more drama than necessary.

It was best to leave it be.

I pulled myself from the frustrating mass of cords. i finally gave up on getting my sock out from where it was snagged, and ended up walking to the kitchen with one bare foot. I grabbed a bag of Takis from the pantry and tore it open, spilling red powder and crumbs all across the tile. again. i grabbed the broom from the closet and hurried to swipe the chips into a pile before Chica came to investigate.
All in all i had about a third of a mutilated bag of Takis left over. i messily taped up the side and took them over to the couch. i managed to grab the remote before collapsing into the upholstery, igniting the T. V. with what i would call quality programming.

after about an hour, i realized that i hadn't been paying attention to almost anything i'd been watching. my mind was full of green hair and blue eyes and annoying irish laughs. Fuck. What an annoying little bastard. a parasite really. the kind that roots around in your brain like... what was that fungus thing called? the thing that like, turns ants into zombies?

My efforts to make Jack seem less appealing had failed. no matter how much i associated him with brain-rooting insects and compared him to fungus, he still remained unable to hate. unable to even TRY not to love.

What had i gotten myself into?