fic: tsn; sweet on you (NC-17) (2b/3)
Mar. 30th, 2011 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mooging(continued from here)
When Mark turns up at Eduardo's in the morning, Chris is already at the counter. Eduardo is laughing. Mark needs approximately all the coffee before he has the mental capacity for this to be happening.
"At least this is better than when it was Dustin," he allows, graciously, slouching instantly in the chair nearest to the counter.
"Thanks," says Chris. "I have registered your heartfelt sentiments for when I select the size of your next birthday present."
Eduardo flicks the switch on the coffee machine that starts off a noise like a fucking machine gun and makes Mark wince.
"I don't know," Eduardo muses, deliberately coy. "He did make me give you my number, Mark."
"You're saying that wrong," Mark mumbles, chewing the string on his hoodie. "I think you mean, he made you give me your number. Your version didn't quite capture the horror of the whole situation."
Eduardo slides Mark's coffee in front of him; Mark takes it, too tired to remember to be grateful, but Eduardo lets their fingers touch as the cup passes between them anyway. Chris looks like he has no idea what his feelings are doing.
"Dustin made you give Mark your number?" he asks Eduardo.
Eduardo smiles, because the mornings do not faze him once he has showered. Mark thinks about water licking down tan, wet shoulder blades, and takes a burningly hot gulp of coffee to stop that train of thought right the fuck there while there are other people around - Chris - that might mock him forever if he made a ridiculous noise and/or dragged Eduardo into the bakery's kitchen for morning sex against the sink.
"He was sort of like the gun to our bullet," Eduardo says. "Like we were already there but we just needed something to, um, shoot us."
"That metaphor didn't end up where you thought it would," says Mark. Eduardo leans over the counter, all taut lines, and flicks Mark's ear with a dishtowel. Mark goes, "Ow!" all sharply, but he doesn't really mean it.
"It was a simile, actually," Eduardo says. "I said "like" and everything."
Mark drinks more coffee, sullenly. "I thought we agreed you weren't allowed to correct me in the mornings."
"No," Eduardo says, "we agreed that I wasn't allowed to kick you in the mornings when you steal the duvet, which is not the same thing."
Mark is discovering new shades of red with his face. Chris looks like he has just discovered magic beans.
"It's true," Eduardo says, to Chris, clearly just taking Mark's discomfort and reveling in it. "He steals the duvet. He's like a burrito-man. I am cold and alone on the side, like guacamole."
"I like guacamole," says Mark, sort of half without really thinking it through, and Chris laughs, and Eduardo laughs too, but he goes a bit pink. Mark is still, like, fucking neon bright, but Eduardo is giving him this little fond look, like if Mark wasn't currently trying to fit his whole face into his coffee cup in a desperate search for caffeine and also to escape from this conversation, he'd come over and kiss him, so Mark can't really muster up that much embarrassment about it.
"Chris won't mind if you kiss me," he says, still with his face in the cup, playing right back. "Will you, Chris?"
"Not really," says Chris, who looks unreasonably proud. "But, I mean, my mind's eye might, so. And my actual eyes. Generally it would be visually inadvisable, but on principle I have no objections."
Eduardo says, "I'll spare you till he's had his coffee," and Chris laughs again, and says, "Morning breath?" and Mark says, indignant, "I am right here."
Chris says, "You're also mostly in that cup, so I think we're okay to ignore you for a bit."
Mark protests, still a few seconds behind, "I brush my teeth, you know."
Eduardo leans right over the counter and squeezes Mark's shoulder. Mark subsides back into silence with a show of poor grace, and lets Eduardo dig his fingers into the knot he always gets just above his left collarbone - like, what the hell even is that, how does that happen, does he type on a slant or something? - and drinks his coffee without further comment.
Chris says, "You are prepared for the amount of shit you two are going to get when Dustin sees you together, right?"
Eduardo says, "Probably."
"Be sure," Chris says. "It's going to be a lot. You're revolting together."
"Your face is revolting," Mark retorts, childishly.
Chris says, "Apparently so is your breath, so shut it."
Eduardo is laughing with a hand over his mouth, and Mark rolls his shoulder around, feeling the difference from this morning. As much as he's aware he should probably be put down for thinking this, it was weird to wake up without Eduardo's breath warm on the back of his neck, Eduardo with his arm flung too heavily over Mark's chest. He slugs back the last of his coffee, and then there it is, sudden, interrupting all Mark's other thoughts, the answer to the problem that sent him home last night, kept him up till dawn.
He stands up so fast that the chair legs scrape painfully on the floor, but he doesn't care. "I have to go," he says, already on his way to the door. "Chris?"
"I need to talk to Eduardo about the party," Chris says. "You go ahead."
Mark doesn't have time to think about how ominous that sounds, because he's got it, he's finally actually got it, and he heads for work as fast as he can without tripping over the tops of his flip-flops.
He surfaces a couple of hours later, the ache above his collarbone starting up again, and it's only then that he realises he didn't say goodbye to Eduardo this morning. He doesn't ordinarily notice when he misses stuff like this, because whatever he's missed it for is always more important, but - it's Eduardo. He gets his phone out.
I fixed the news feed lag, he sends.
It's okay, Eduardo sends back, like Mark had apologised. You coming over tonight?
Yes, Mark sends, without even thinking about it, and then, because he feels like he should, if you're not busy.
I suppose I can make time, Mark gets, a second later, and he can picture Eduardo's raised eyebrow, carefully careless shrug, and his easy dissolve into laughter, because he sucks at pretence.
I'd say I don't want to impose, Mark sends, but clearly I do, so that would be a lie.
god you are so sensitive, Eduardo texts.
blow me.
okay :)
Mark is dating a guy who puts a smiley face in texts about blowjobs. He's surprisingly okay with it.
//
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: ET TU BRUTUSES
you both went to eduardo's without me
I feel aloner than ever
you can take my dignity but you can never take my baked goods
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: I think you mean "Brutii". I'm not even touching "aloner".
sometimes your grasp on the english language makes me really sad, Dustin. You got into Harvard.
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: settle up, bitch
he said "it's Brutii", didn't he? Five dollars, if you please.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: i am not the bitch in this or any other scenario mr hughes
you are the bitch
also possibly mark is the bitch, because hot damn you know eduardo tops
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: NOT ENOUGH HORROR IN THE WORLD
why, Dustin?
why do you do these things to me?
Mark, don't you even dare reply. I AM WARNING YOU.
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com; chris.hughes@facebook.com
subj: jealousy
Chris: fuck off, you don't scare me.
Dustin: just fuck off.
from. chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: how do you fucking do these things to me
fine.
I owe you five dollars.
Eduardo obviously tops.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com
subj: like a boss
you almost got me with your fake outrage, christopher. sneaky move, copying in mark. i love it when you rise to my bait-y level
NO-ONE CAN RESIST THE MOSKOVITZ BETTING POOL
OR THE MOSKOVITZ BREEDING POOL
OH YEAH I DID
BA-DUM-TISH
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: work on your cymbal noises
that was terrible
and you misspelt "sink".
And it wouldn't have mattered if I copied Mark in or not. He's probably reading this right now. He has no concept of personal boundaries or privacy. Hi, Mark.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: do not deny our love
I am sending this to Mark to save him the trouble of hacking into our accounts, because I am such a good friend.
UNLIKE SOME.
CHRIS.
it makes me sad that you have yet to realise how pure our love is
and that you continue to believe that i live on the same spiritual plane as you when clearly i have ascended
so I spelt "rise" right
so suck it.
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: it's not that it's a river in egypt, it's that it isn't even a puddle
Dustin, I will never suck anything of yours.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: inter-office romance
mark chris won't love me back
stop pretending to be busy and remind him of his love for me
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: mark
mark
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: don't ignore me
mark
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: resistance is futile
mark?
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I can do this all day, you are only hurting yourself
MARK???????
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I will come to your office if you don't reply soon, don't think I won't
MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRK
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com
subj: make it stop
whatever you did to dustin, please undo it.
I will give you a fucking raise.
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: FINE
what do you want me to say, moscovitz? our love is pure like the end of a rainbow?
stop bugging mark, one day he'll snap and kill you. he has that look about him.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com; mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: the end of a rainbow is all muddy, christopher, why would you sully our feelings with mud??
my feelers are hurt.
also you are wrong about mark. he does have a look about him, but it is the look of a subby little bottom.
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: you hired him
there are some things you cannot ask a man to take, mark, and one of those things is reading that email.
he is your problem now
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: success
we cracked hughes. you owe me ten dollars.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: shan't
you are a billionaire, it seems unfair that I should have to pay you
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: you are hardly destitute
I'm also fucking Eduardo.
Life dealt me the good cards, moscovitz, so suck it.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com
subj: SHARE YOUR BRAIN BLEACH WITH ME, I KNOW YOU HAVE SOME
i see the error of my ways, christopher. i shall repent. i will never say suck it again.
mark has broken me.
from: chris.hughes@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: victory!
we broke dustin
enjoy your peace and quiet.
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: e.saverin@gmail.com
subj: bring me all the muffins and bagels in the land
broke them both
good plan.
from: e.saverin@gmail.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I'm a baker, not a delivery boy
you're welcome.
//
It's decided, by the three people involved who are not Mark, that the four of them should go out for a drink together. Eduardo had turned to Mark the next time he saw him after meeting Chris and asked him outright whether the party was just an excuse to introduce him properly to his friends, and Mark had been forced to admit it was, and Eduardo had said there was an easy way around that, and he'd pulled out his phone and texted Chris about it -- Mark said, foreseeing trouble in his future, "You have Chris's number?" -- and before Mark could really do anything about it, it was arranged.
So, this is great. Eduardo can be friends with Mark's friends. Mark can cope with that. They can all go out for drinks together in the same bar that Eduardo took Mark to that one time while Mark watched his mouth around the neck of a beer bottle. What about that situation could possibly be awkward or weird or horrible?
"Everything," Mark complains, as Eduardo locks up the bakery. "Everything about this is weird and awkward."
Everything also feels a lot like it did all those weeks ago, except that this time when Eduardo leads him down the street, he sticks his hand in Mark's back pocket instead of throwing his arm around his shoulders.
Mark shivers, all over, and focuses hard on not getting hard.
"Wardo," he grumbles. "You are not helping."
They arrive at the bar, and Chris and Dustin are already there, beaming at them from a booth in the corner. Mark steels himself for the inevitable, and Eduardo, who apparently feels Mark tense up, just turns to smile at him, looking endlessly endeared.
"Aren't I the one that's supposed to be nervous in this scenario?" he says.
"No," says Mark, under his breath, "because you don't know Dustin."
Everything goes okay to begin with, and Dustin doesn't greet Eduardo with anything higher than his normal exuberance level, and Eduardo says it's nice to see them both again, because he has stupidly good manners, and Mark edges into the booth and mentally crosses all his fingers and toes that this goes well, and he loses neither friends, nor staff, nor Eduardo by the end of it. It's not that Mark doesn't want them all to get on -- he really does -- but, just, he's never had anyone who liked him best before, as unavoidably stupid as he knows it sounds. He and Chris and Dustin have always been a group, and then within that group, it's been Chris-and-Dustin and Mark, the guy with horrible sleeping patterns, the creator of Facebook, the CEO. Now Mark has Eduardo, and he doesn't know quite how that's going to work if they all start hanging out together, or whatever the verb is for when a group of people in their twenties socialize. He also realises it is incredibly presumptuous for him to assume that Eduardo does like him best, but he really hopes he does, and it's all so Disney teen drama in his head that he starts scowling down at the table.
It is at this point that Chis goes to get the drinks and recruits Dustin to help him carry them, and Dustin tries to hit on some girl who is physically so far out of his league that even Mark can tell, and is shut down in seconds. This is also about when he stops worrying about the dynamic not being right between the four of them, largely because of the more immediate, Dustin-shaped, things that present themselves for Mark to cope with instead.
"I think the problem is," says Dustin, coming back dejectedly from the bar and leaving Chris to deal with carrying four drinks by himself, "that I don't have a wingman."
Mark suddenly becomes very interested in examining his empty bottle. Avoidance, he has learned, painstakingly, is sometimes the best option when it comes to Dustin and his subtle, subtle hints.
"I said," Dustin says, much more loudly, "I don't have a wingman."
Eduardo, who is naïve and vulnerable to Dustin because he lacks the years of painful experience Mark has clogging up his memory with pain and torment, says, "I could be your wingman."
Dustin just laughs dismissively. Dustin doesn't do a lot of things dismissively, because he's inclusive to the point of being clingy, so Mark raises his eyes from the safety of the table to stare at him.
"What?" says Eduardo. "I'd be a great wingman."
"You would be the worst wingman ever," Dustin says. "Seriously, like, Brutus probably got Julius Caesar more booty."
"This is a disturbingly highbrow argument for something that basically entails ensuring a random pick-up in the bar," says Eduardo, which is part of why Mark likes him so much. "And also has some mildly alarming parallels, considering I'm not planning on stabbing you any time soon." (Mark mutters, "I wouldn't be too hasty about that decision," and Dustin kicks him under the table). "But, um, go on. Why would I be so awful?'
"Because you look like that," Dustin says, gesturing to Eduardo's black pants and black button-down, his stupid hair still physics-defyingly perfect even after comedically spending half the day in a hairnet, his wry, shy smile, his big, trusting eyes. "And also because you are a baker, and once, you know, girls find that out it will be goodbye Dustin, obscure programmer, and hello hot baker dude with chocolatey eyes and twenty-four seven access to cake."
"Hey," Mark says, as Eduardo is laughing helplessly into his beer. "You work at Facebook, that's got to be good for something."
Dustin gives him a patented Dustin look. "Mark," he says. "I don't know what planet you're living on, and I don't want to visit it even with a safety suit, but owning a bakery trumps working at Facebook, at least in the field of 'please come home with me, you are so pretty I want to write odes to your smile'."
"Maybe if you wrote fewer odes," Mark says, "you would have more dates. Just something to think about."
Chris comes back from the bar and sets the new beers down on the table without spilling any of them. Chris is apparently part Na'vi.
"What are we talking about?"
"Eduardo's apparent ability to repel all women from Dustin and attract them unto himself," Mark tells him, moving over to let him sit back down in the booth. "I don't know what science classes Dustin took, but he apparently had some problems with magnets."
Chris ignores this last part. "I can see Eduardo's point," he says.
Dustin says, "Thank you!" and then: "Hey."
"Whatever," says Chris. "I saw you at the bar. You crashed and burned."
Dustin puts his face in his hands. "You guys have it easy," he says. "You know how guys work. Girls are, like - "
"From Venus?" Mark interjects.
"Yes," says Dustin. "You are all ass-banging Martians, and I have no concept of how to escape from planet homosexual and begin a happy, sexually-fulfilled life on Venus."
"You are a horrifying person," Chris says, and Mark nods, and Eduardo is grinning so widely that Mark stops worrying entirely and wonders why they haven't done this before.
The door to the bar opens at this point, and a group of girls walk in. Dustin looks at them with sad, defeated eyes.
"Come on," says Eduardo, standing up. "I bet I can get one of those girls to give you her number."
Dustin stares at him like he's holding the moon. "Seriously?"
"Seriously," Eduardo says. He looks Dustin up and down. Dustin is wearing a ring on his right index finger, for reasons Mark didn't listen to him explain but had something to do with some Cosmopolitan article about women who like men who like jewellery. What Mark took away from that exchange was not Dustin's disturbingly lengthy account of his apparently very difficult decision between a man-bracelet or the silver ring he eventually settled on but rather that Dustin reads Cosmo.
Eduardo says, "Give me your ring."
"What?" asks Dustin, but he's already sliding it off his finger. "Why?"
"You'll see," says Eduardo, turning the ring over in his hands, speculatively, and then he slips it onto his ring finger.
"Woah," says Dustin. "Are we married now?" He winks at Mark, clearly trying to wind him up. Mark tries not to let himself be wound. "Dude, I totally stole your boyfriend."
"And welcome back to planet ass-banging," says Chris. "We hope you enjoy your stay."
Dustin slaps him on the shoulder. "I take it back," he says. "Mark, you can keep him. Just," he turns to look up at Eduardo with ridiculous, pleading eyes. "Help me?"
Mark looks at the ring on Eduardo's finger and has no idea what he's feeling. It's not like he wants to marry Eduardo, he's not that far gone, and it's not quite jealousy either, but it just makes him feel a little off balance. He sort of just wants Dustin and Chris to fuck off so he can get his mouth behind Eduardo's ear and bite at his jaw in the way that makes him go red and squirm and grab at Mark's ass just to drag him closer, in case that makes everything clearer. When he looks up, Eduardo meets his gaze, biting his lip. Mark wants him so much it scares him, just a little. He's not used to feeling like this about a person, associates this more with the rush of code that narrows his focus down to qwertyuiop over and over until he can lift his head again, drained, with it out of his system. Eduardo is like code he can't write out of him, stuck in his blood.
Mark looks down at the beer in his hand, the only one he's had that night, and thinks he needs a lot more before he can justify thinking things like that.
Chris gives him this knowing, sideways glance that makes Mark shift uncomfortably in his seat, and nudges a second bottle of beer towards him.
"I'm going to need a volunteer," says Eduardo, theatrically, before Mark can lift the drink to his mouth. "Mark, you're my volunteer."
"I am?" says Mark, with slight reluctance, but Eduardo leans straight over Dustin and yanks Mark up to his feet, and Mark goes, "Fine," like he minds, but Eduardo is beaming at him all playfully, and Mark has zero firewalls for his face, is permanently defenseless.
Eduardo slips his hand into Mark's and leads him over to the bar, resting just near the group of girls and signalling for the bartender in a way that makes Dustin's ring catch in the overhead light. One of the girls notices, and then notices Eduardo's hand still linked in with Mark's, and gasps.
Mark has no idea what is happening.
"Oh my god," says the girl. "You're married?"
"Not technically," says Eduardo, with a slightly sad smile, "California law and everything, but," his smile changes to a full-out grin, "yes, we are."
The girl nods. "Domestic partnership?"
Eduardo puts his arm around Mark's shoulders. "Yes," he says, happily. "Newly-weds, if you can still call it that."
"I think you'd have to call it newly domestically-partnered," Mark offers. "But that isn't as catchy."
The girl is giving Mark a look he's used to receiving from girls in bars, but Eduardo gives his shoulder a squeeze, and rolls his eyes conspiratorially at the girl, and she softens.
"I think it's great," she says. "How did you two meet?"
Mark opens his mouth, and Eduardo elbows him discreetly in the ribs.
"Actually," Eduardo says, turning to point out Dustin, who is watching this play out with an expression torn between rapture and desperate hope, and who changes this pathetic longing to an intense stare at the bottles lining the wall behind the bar when the girl turns her attention to him too, "this guy introduced us."
Mark says, when Eduardo elbows him again, "Ow," and then, off Eduardo's third jab to his side, "Yeah, um, we really owe him a lot." He swallows, and then, figuring that getting Dustin a girlfriend might logically mean he'll shut up about not having a girlfriend, adds, "He just wants to make other people happy. He's that kind of guy."
It comes out sort of stiltedly, but Eduardo beams down at him, proud, and the girl looks a little bit like she's melting. Mark will never, ever understand women.
"How amazing," she says, and then, miraculously: "Um - do you know if he's seeing anyone himself?" She's gone a bit pink. Mark cannot actually believe this is happening.
Eduardo says, leaning in and dropping his voice, "He had a bad break-up about a year ago, and since then he's really only been looking out for his friends, you know? I don't think he's thought about himself for a while. Between you and me, I don't think he knows how lonely he is."
The girl stares at Dustin. Dustin stares harder at the bar, which Mark thinks makes him look like a crazy alcoholic, but apparently the female gaze is different to his because the girl goes, like she's made up her mind, "Right, okay," and walks over to him.
Dustin looks like he doesn't know what to do with his hands. Luckily, the girl solves this problem for him by taking one of his hands in hers, taking a pen out of her skirt pocket -- why she has a pen in her pocket Mark doesn't know, but that's going to be Dustin's problem, not his -- and writes something down on his palm. Dustin looks like he's won the lottery.
The girl comes back over. "You make a great wingman," she says to Eduardo, who inclines his head in agreement. "I mean, I don't buy the story about his break-up for a second," (Mark's opinion of her abruptly levels up), "but you two are clearly happy, and you clearly like him, so what's the harm in trying, right?"
She goes back to her friends, and Mark and Eduardo go back to their table, and Dustin is practically ecstatic.
"Her name is Marcia," he's saying, to a beleaguered-looking Chris. "She could be Marcia Moskovitz. Wouldn't that be a beautiful name?"
Eduardo grins. "My work here is done."
Over the course of the evening, when Eduardo has returned Dustin's ring to him and Dustin has thanked him so many times even Eduardo has told him to stop, they talk about games consoles -- Dustin defends the Wii with disturbing passion, while Mark and Chris hail firmly from the Xbox corner and Eduardo says he's always been more of a handheld type of guy -- and Pacman strategies, and Dustin tells Eduardo stories about Harvard and then Mark and Chris tell Eduardo true stories about Harvard, and Eduardo laughs at them, and Mark can't stop grinning.
They order a plate of nachos at some point, and Mark realises he hasn't eaten anything since Eduardo shoved a doughnut at him that morning, and digs in.
"Ugh," says Chris, watching him eat. "Mark, didn't anyone ever teach you table manners?"
"Yes," says Mark, with his mouth full, "but people also taught me art history, and I ignored that too."
"I am truly sorry for your gain," says Dustin, to Eduardo, jokingly. "He isn't worth it."
"I don't know," says Eduardo, and grins. "He sort of is."
Chris and Dustin groan, and Dustin covers his eyes and says, "You two are giving me diabetes," and Mark is bright pink, and secretly pleased.
At the end of the night, Chris goes off to call a taxi and Dustin goes off to the bathroom, and Mark and Eduardo are left alone together for a while for the first time since getting to the bar.
"Well," says Mark. "That was okay."
Eduardo rolls his eyes. "Of course," he says. "I am a normal person and can make friends with nice people. You are the only one who makes friends despite being who you are."
He presses his thigh against Mark to prove he's kidding. Mark doesn't really care why Eduardo touches him, as long as he wants to keep doing it.
Eduardo says, nudging him again ,"So you think it went well?" Mark doesn't quite get it, because both Chris and Dustin had met him and liked him before, and even if they hadn't, it's not like Mark would have stopped seeing Eduardo if they'd disapproved or whatever, but he thinks, looking at Eduardo's face, that maybe, somehow, Eduardo doesn't know that.
"They like you more than they like me," Mark says. "Seriously, Wardo."
Eduardo's not had that much to drink and it's not that hot in the bar, but Mark can see his cheeks turn pink. He doesn't sound any different though, when he says, "I like them too."
"Good," says Mark, and then looks down in surprise when Eduardo links their hands together under the table.
It's not that loud in the bar now either, so Eduardo doesn't have to lean as close to Mark's ear as he does, when he whispers, somewhere between admission and affection, "I like you most, though."
"How are you even real?" Mark asks. It keeps replaying in his head, like he's fourteen, I like you best, like looping code. God, he is so ill-equipped for this. "You are a disgraceful excuse for a person."
Eduardo lowers his voice further. "I could disgrace you," he says, and that's such a ridiculous line that Mark almost has to laugh but he's too busy being exceptionally turned on to do anything else. Eduardo's eyes are dark, and his pupils are huge, and he hasn't had enough to drink to make them look like that - and so it must be Mark that's doing it, Mark that's making Eduardo look like he wants to push Mark back in the booth and just fucking go to town on him, and Mark can't process that even a little bit. His palms are sweating, and Eduardo is still holding his hand so he must be able to feel it, but he doesn't take his hand away. Mark thinks other people would do, but Eduardo doesn't.
Chris reappears at this point, and Mark practically strains something trying to scooch to the edge of the seat fast enough, getting his crotch safely out of view under the table. He hears Eduardo swallow a laugh next to him, turning it into an incredibly unconvincing cough.
Luckily, Chris is a decent human being, and a guy, and doesn't say anything. Unluckily, Dustin comes back from the bathroom right then and goes, over Chris's subtle shut up, Dustin cough, "Mark, do you want to share a taxi?"
No. No, Mark really does not. What he wants to do is invent teleportation right the fuck now so he can just zap himself and Eduardo back to Eduardo's bed, or any bed, or any flat surface that is not in full view of other people, and fuck him till neither of them can speak.
He coughs. "Actually," he says, and this is a situation familiar to him from witnessing it in bars at Harvard, guys trying to fob their friends off with excuses acceptable for mixed company, trying to be gentlemanly but also get laid in the immediate future - except that this isn't mixed company, and even if it was, Mark has never been called gentlemanly in his life, so: "I'm going to go back with Eduardo." He turns in his seat to face him. "And then I'm going to fuck him till he can't walk straight tomorrow."
Eduardo turns the brightest shade of red Mark has ever seen anyone go, choking, while Chris goes, "Jesus, Mark," and Dustin makes some kind of hybrid gleeful/horrified high-pitched sound in the background.
"So - that's a no to the taxi?" Dustin checks, faux-obnoxious in a high-pitched voice, and Mark flips him off, still grinning at Eduardo. Their hands are still joined under the table. Eduardo tightens his fingers, grinning back.
"Okay, well, nice to see you again, Eduardo," says Chris, obviously keen to remove himself from this situation as soon as possible. "It would maybe be nicer if Mark had boundaries, but we can't have everything, I suppose."
"You too," says Eduardo, looking like he can't physically wipe the smile off his face. "And you, Dustin."
Eduardo has Mark's politeness reserves in spades. Mark shifts a little further to the edge of the seat.
When Mark shows up for work the next morning, Dustin pops party streamers over his head, and Mark can't even bring himself to mind.
//
Mark doesn't stay at Eduardo's every night, but as the weeks go by he's there more often than not. It's just convenient that way, because Eduardo has to get up stupidly early for work, and it's close enough to the Facebook offices that Mark doesn't have to get up stupidly early, and Mark can basically work from anywhere as long as he has his laptop, so that's not a problem. He doesn't notice, at first, because there's an inefficiency in the photo tagging system that's been bugging him for a while, and with the profile update done he's got time to sit and work it out, running practices of different solutions and discarding every one, frustrated. Eduardo doesn't say anything when Mark gets snappy and tense, and he lets Mark talk at him about coding structures, trying to work out what it is that's wrong, and takes Mark's hands in his to work his thumbs into Mark's skin, and Mark lets his eyes close while Eduardo massages out the small cramping muscles but he can't stop thinking entirely, not while there's a problem he can't find the answer for.
It gets to him enough that he doesn't go to Eduardo's for three straight days, wired in, catching sleep in two hour snatches as the sun rises. It riles him, not being able to fix something, when he knows he should be able to. It's like if he just gave it another hour, stayed up a little longer, he'd get it, it'd click - but he gives it days, and nothing is slotting into place. He's shaking with the amount of caffeine he's had, and with anger, that he can't get it right. He hates this, when he's the best at something, something that's his, and he still can't make it work.
Chris eventually orders him out of the office when he barks something at his assistant, at the absolute end of his tether, when she asks him for the third time that afternoon if he's sure she can't get him something to eat, and, yes, he's fucking sure, he just needs to get this done, why can't she just see that.
Mark says, exasperated, exhausted, "Isn't it her fucking job to take orders?" and Chris folds his arms, and presses his lips into the thinnest of disappointed lines, and forces him to go home.
And, like it's mid-summer and the power's gone out, like this will always be Mark's choice when he's too wired-in, too worked out, to even make a choice, he goes to Eduardo's.
Eduardo doesn't pay him any attention when he turns up and plugs his laptop into the socket by the table nearest the window, and Mark doesn't say anything to him, just tugs his headphones on and starts typing again, writing out yesterday's discarded solutions in case he catches something he's been missing. He's tired, and frustrated enough to turn it inward, resenting himself for just not getting it, and he codes fierce and miserable while Eduardo comes in and out of the kitchen, restocking the display.
Mark swims back up to consciousness a couple of hours later, hazily surprised that he's waking up at all when he has no memory of falling asleep, and he's reaching for his laptop again when Eduardo is there, all warm, gentle touches, quiet words like Mark's a spooked foal, a teething child, putting the back of his hand on Mark's forehead. Mark grumbles something incoherent and drained, and Eduardo closes his laptop and eases him gently up out of the chair and leads him to the bedroom, pressing him down into the pillows, tenderly, and pulling the duvet around him. Mark is going to say something about how he's not a child, but he's asleep before he even opens his mouth.
He's not embarrassed about it when he wakes up, because this is who is and what he does and Eduardo should know that, but he does kiss Eduardo's shoulder, slightly timid, while Eduardo snores lightly next to him in the early morning light. Eduardo stirs, like he's been listening out for Mark all night, even in his sleep, and reaches up a hand to pat Mark on the arm, still asleep, and Mark settles back down into the duvet.
//
Mark asks, one day, still curious, why Eduardo decided to open the bakery. Eduardo just smiles, and says he wanted to do it, but it's like there's something more to the story, and Eduardo isn't volunteering it, so Mark doesn't push.
//
For all that Eduardo can be soft-eyed and gentle hands when Mark is fractious and cross and worked into the ground, he can also be actually insatiable. It makes Mark hot just thinking about him, sometimes, about how much Eduardo sometimes wants it, and Mark wants it just as fucking much.
Eduardo goes down on Mark while he's coding, one night, slowly, pulling back whenever Mark stops typing, until Mark's thighs are shaking and he's hitting a key maybe only every ten seconds, and when he comes he slams his hands down on the keyboard and has to clean up the code while Eduardo licks up the mess on Mark's stomach. Mark genuinely cannot believe that this is his life, that Eduardo could do this to him, would do this for him.
He is also determined to retaliate, because he has never been one to back down from a challenge.
Another night, Eduardo stays at his, for a change, and Mark pushes him down onto the sofa and straddles his hips and tells him to start talking. Mark's thought about this, and while he did consider getting Eduardo off while he was actually baking, he then took into account the amount of things that could go wrong with that, and the whole most accidents take place in the home thing, and, well, add that to the list of things Mark really wouldn't want to explain in the ER. So instead he tells Eduardo very seriously to start talking, and gets him to recite recipes for macaroons and cookies while Mark starts to finger him open, and Eduardo's voice starts to waver. It should be absolutely ludicrous, listening to Eduardo list ingredient measurements while Mark circles his fingers inside him, but it's somehow really, really not.
Mark keeps this up until Eduardo is batting at Mark's shoulders with sweat-damp palms, small movements, fluttering fingers, and Mark looks up from underneath his sweaty curls falling in his eyes to see Eduardo throwing his head back, the line of his throat. "Come on," Eduardo is saying now, more breath than words. "Mark, come on, come on."
Mark is so turned on he might as well be a fucking light bulb, a laptop, a flicked switch somewhere left to burn out a fuse. He is hot enough that it feels like he's burning. Eduardo keeps making these little aborted movements with his hips, like he keeps remembering to be polite, even fucking now, and it makes Mark want to fuck the courtesy right out of him.
"Okay," says Mark, pausing to slick up a third finger. "What about muffins?"
"What?" Eduardo's voice is hoarse.
"Muffins," says Mark, fighting to sound conversational, not to let his want out, not yet. He slides the next finger in, and Eduardo straight out groans.
"Blueberry," he asks, panting, because he is just as stubborn as Mark, "or chocolate?"
Mark thinks about strawberries and chocolate cake, the sun on his back, the open door, and then has to think very hard about the hygienic state of the shared bathroom in the Kirkland suite so that this isn't all over right here and now.
"Chocolate," he says, and if his voice isn't entirely steady then, well, fuck it. He's CEO, not a fucking magician. He dares anyone to keep their voice level when they're knuckle-deep in Eduardo, when Eduardo is flushed from cheekbones to hips.
"All right," says Eduardo, equally unsteadily, and Mark presses the palm of his free hand flat out across Eduardo's right hip. He is under no illusions about his ability to physically hold Eduardo down, but he presses down anyway, just to feel Eduardo rolling his hips beneath Mark's hand, the tremors of keeping still.
"Um," says Eduardo, licking his lips, and Mark is allowed to look at that now, doesn't have to tear his eyes away, and he looks at Eduardo's red, wet mouth as he says, "Good start."
"Fuck you," Eduardo says. "Um, okay, so, flour. You need flour for muffins."
"And?"
Mark twists his fingers inventively, consideringly, and Eduardo's back actually arches up off the couch. "Fuck," he says, desperate, cracked. "Fuck."
"So these aren't family friendly muffins, then?"
Eduardo kicks at him with his heels, shuddering, but gets out, "Probably not, no."
"Interesting."
Mark makes Eduardo go through the whole list of ingredients while he moves his fingers shallowly in and out of him, and Eduardo's voice cracks and wavers but he doesn't give in. Mark is so turned on it is beyond ridiculous. He can feel himself shaking where his hand is pressed against Eduardo's hip, but that could be Eduardo, or maybe it's both of them. Fuck.
"Okay," says Mark, choked up. "Okay, okay, okay."
Eduardo props himself shakily up on his elbows, and his face is bright pink and he's sweating everywhere and his hair is matted and messy, and Mark wants to fuck him right now, or sooner, if at all possible. "Okay?" he says, and Mark hates him for still being capable of mockery.
He curls his fingers again, to make Eduardo gasp and tip his head back again, and Mark can see his stomach muscles jumping and he leans down, bent double, and kisses just beneath Eduardo's belly button, tongues his way down, breathing in.
"Jesus Christ," says Eduardo, wrecked, as Mark just breathes out against the tip of his cock, and then, breathless, grabbing at Mark's shoulders, just Mark's name, over and over until Mark looks up at him, amazed.
Eduardo holds his gaze. "Mark," he says, and he is definitely shaking, and this is absolutely hands fucking down the hottest thing that has ever happened in Mark's life, or anyone's life, and Eduardo says, "I give in, I give in, fuck me."
Fucking hell.
Mark slicks himself up and fumbles on the condom while Eduardo watches with wide, dark eyes, and Mark leans down to kiss his open mouth when he pushes in, and Eduardo swears in Portuguese, and Mark bites his own tongue to keep from coming right then. He goes as slowly as he can, until Eduardo is babbling half-English nonsense against Mark's mouth, his jaw, and Mark's arms are trembling from holding him up, and he's starting to hear white noise, shut down tones roaring and insistent in his ears.
"You win," Eduardo is saying, in halting gasps, between kisses, between biting at Mark's lower lip. "You win, you win."
Mark's eyes sting, and he's not capable of real thought at this point, but he's hoping that's just from the sweat dripping down from his forehead. "Wardo," he says, and he braces himself on one shaky forearm to take Eduardo in hand, uneven, rough strokes, catching his thumb over the head until Eduardo cries out and comes, shuddering, hot against their stomachs, and then Mark actually does just white out with it, burying his head against Eduardo's shoulder.
When he comes back to himself, bleary-eyed, Eduardo is laughing helplessly into Mark's collarbone.
"What," says Mark, too tired to even turn his voice up into a question, too tired to even maybe be insulted.
"Muffins," Eduardo says, clutching at Mark's back, kissing every part of him close enough to his mouth to reach. "Have you ever heard such rubbish dirty talk in your life?"
"Shut up," says Mark. "You are a baker."
Eduardo is still laughing, and it's contagious, and there's this actual bubble of happiness expanding somewhere inside Mark's chest, and he laughs too, and they hold on to each other, sticky and disgusting on the couch that Mark is going to have to burn, and Mark's never been more content in his entire life.
//
Dustin comes into his office the next day, biting into an over-sized chocolate muffin, and Mark actually full on chokes.
Dustin pauses, mid-chew and looks down at the muffin in his hand. He looks back up at Mark, who is now puce and chugging the water his assistant left optimistically on his desk like his life depends on it.
"Is there some traumatizing thing you could tell me that would put me off muffins for life?" he asks, like he really, really hopes there isn't.
Mark focuses harder on getting liquid into his body before he just dehydrates from sheer dismay.
"Please don't tell me," Dustin says, pitifully. "Mark, please don't take away the muffins. My life would be sad and empty without muffins. I really like them. Why would you take away the muffins, Mark? Why would you do that to me?"
Mark says, weakly, "Please stop saying muffins."
"This is going against all my moral and ethical codes," says Dustin -- Mark goes, "You have moral and ethical codes?" -- "but please, please, keep your private life private."
Mark nods vehemently. Dustin is backing away.
"Keep it in your pants and out of the muffins!" he yells, when the door is open and the entire office can hear him. "This is not American Pie!"
Mark wonders if it would be possible to install a hermetically sealed office in the building, or if maybe just anti-Dustin retina scanners would be the more financially sound decision.
//
Mark's phone goes a couple of minutes later. He reads it despite his better judgment.
its not american muffin either. that would have been a different film altogether. what is wrong with you, muffins are not sexy. apart from sex muffins, but they are not cake!!! THAT IS JUST AN EXPRESSION. EXPRESSIONS ARE NOT CAKE MARK. THEY ARE NOT CAKE.
//
"I hate you," Mark grumbles, that night, pressing his face further into Eduardo's pillows. "Why did you sell Dustin a muffin, I want to die. I hate you."
"You love me," Eduardo says, joking along with him, but he smoothes Mark's hair back off his forehead, and Mark sort of makes this noise like a dog before it falls asleep, and noses at Eduardo's shoulder, comfortable.
God, this is so undignified.
Eduardo pulls the covers further up over both of them, and puts his arm back around Mark, and Mark grumbles something else, incoherent and petulant, and goes to sleep.
//
Sometimes, when Mark is awake in the early hours of the morning, coding only by the light of his laptop in case turning on the overhead in the living room would somehow wake Eduardo up, he hears Eduardo turning restlessly in his sleep. Normally Eduardo sleeps like he's died, heavy limbs everywhere and pinning Mark to the bed, like a needy sleeping starfish, and doesn't move until his alarm goes off. Admittedly this is alarming in itself, because Mark gets pins and needles from not being able to roll onto his side, but he doesn't like to move in case it wakes Eduardo up, and Mark doesn't sleep a lot anyway and Eduardo looks so tired in the mornings sometimes that he figures it's worth a few numb extremities to get Eduardo some rest. On the other hand, it's unusual enough for Eduardo not to just be out like a light that the first time Mark hears him shifting in the sheets, he goes in to check he's okay and not, like, fevered or anything. Mark has never particularly cared about anyone else's sleeping habits before now, but he doesn't want Eduardo to be unrested.
Virtuously, this is only partly because he doesn't want Eduardo to be too tired for sex.
Eduardo doesn't look sick, when Mark pads up to his side of the bed, but Mark waits around for a minute, just in case. Eduardo's frowning in his sleep, and his fingers are tight around the corner of a pillow, and he's muttering something Mark can't hear. Mark isn't worried, because everyone has bad dreams -- when Facebook first started, Mark actually had nightmares about the servers going down and all the first users dropping out in disgust and leaving Mark to stare helplessly at the numbers dwindling on his computer screen, desperate and despairing -- so he goes back out to the living room, and leaves Eduardo to it.
Another time, though, Mark is actually asleep himself when he wakes up because Eduardo is shaking so hard that he's shaking Mark too. Mark props himself up on one elbow, and stares at him. He doesn't know what to do when someone isn't okay. Mark doesn't know whether to wake him up, or whether Eduardo would just be embarrassed, or whether Mark would be embarrassed -- feelings not being his specialty -- but then Eduardo makes a low, pained noise, and Mark takes hold of his shoulder and shakes him awake before he's even given it another thought.
Eduardo wakes up startled, and won't meet Mark's eye. Mark lies back down in the pillows, and pretends he's asleep, even though it's blatantly obvious he's not, and Eduardo lies back down too, and Mark listens to his breathing even out again. When Mark's half asleep, Eduardo reaches over and links his fingers in with Mark's, and Mark pretends harder that he's definitely not awake, and Eduardo presses his forehead against Mark's shoulder, thankful.
Mark doesn't mention it the next day, and neither does Eduardo, and Mark pretends to forget about it.
He doesn't know what to do when someone isn't okay, because he's not used to wanting someone else to be okay all the time.
//
Thanksgiving is coming up, and Eduardo has been testing out so many pie recipes that the bakery kitchen has started to permanently smell like pastry. He makes Mark try them, all of them, pumpkin and sweet potato and pecan, and gets frustrated when Mark just likes all the different variants of them. Mark does not see what relevance his preference for cinnamon over nutmeg has to anything, but Eduardo apparently takes it quite seriously. Mark supposes maybe it's like his decision not to put ads on the site in the early days, something only he can see the value in.
Or maybe Eduardo just takes pie really seriously.
"You have to like one better than the others, Mark," he says, rolling out pie dough while Mark stares at the streak of flour on his cheek. "Which one is it?"
"I thought you were going to sell all the types," Mark says. "People like all the types of pie."
Eduardo huffs at him. "Mark," he says. "Over the last two weeks I have made a lot - a lot - of pies. Have you honestly not noticed any difference?"
Mark shrugs. "No."
Eduardo stares at him, slightly wild-eyed.
"What?" Mark says. "It's pie."
Eduardo puts down the rolling pin and puts his head in his hands. "Oh my god," he says. "You are useless."
"You have just rubbed flour all over your face," Mark points out. "Whose life skills shall we criticize now?"
Eduardo makes a sad little noise. Mark wants to put his arms around his waist, press himself against Eduardo's back to kiss his neck, and so he does. Eduardo wilts back against him.
"I have made so much pie," he says.
"I have eaten so much pie," Mark says, and pie is starting to sound like a made-up word. "Let's have sex."
Eduardo laughs, verging on hysterical. His hair goes up Mark's nose. Mark doesn't really mind.
"Yeah," Eduardo says, still hiccupping with laughter, turning round in Mark's arms. "Let's do that."
//
One evening, they're watching America's Funniest Home Videos --
"I am tired," Eduardo says, firmly. "I have been spinning sugar all day, Mark, do you know how difficult that is?"
"I have been coding all day," Mark retorts. "You don't know how difficult that is."
Eduardo gives him this look like I make creme brulée, Mark, I have a blowtorch in the kitchen, do you want to keep arguing this point and insulting my intelligence or do you want to shut the fuck up and give me back the damn remote? and Mark gets distracted by how attractive Eduardo is when he's irritated, and passes over the remote.
-- which is actually more like Mark determinedly ignoring it and the immense hatred for the human race that canned laughter inspires in him and coding petulantly instead, and Eduardo just sacked out and boneless on the couch next to him, but, whatever, it's on. About halfway through, there's some video of a baby giggling toothlessly at one of its doubtlessly incompetent parents zooming a spoon up to its face and making airplane noises, because apparently this is new and original and not something people have been doing since they fucking well invented airplanes. Maybe before airplanes, it was "open up for the choo choo train", and then before that "eat this, stupid child, or the saber-toothed tiger will eat you". Mark can feel himself getting stupider by the second, like it's not a myth and the tv has started literally rotting his brain, but then he hears Eduardo laugh.
He looks up, disbelieving, from the laptop screen, ready to rip the ever-living piss out of Eduardo forever for laughing at something probably even Dustin is over by now, but whatever he was going to say sort of sticks in his throat or something equally stupid when he actually sees Eduardo. He's gone all soft, like Mark's mom when she sees babies in strollers in the street and has to stop and coo while Mark shifts his weight pointedly from foot to foot and clears his throat a lot, and Mark - it's - Eduardo is -
Mark never had this much trouble forming thoughts before he met Eduardo.
Eduardo turns to him, still smiling. "Shut up," he says, and at least he seems to know this is not a thing normal guys should do. "You're supposed to be coding."
"Can't code when you're gurgling at infants," Mark says, meaning to be churlish, but it comes out something else entirely, and he's going red with it but Eduardo leans in and kisses him, licking his way into Mark's mouth, putting his hands warm against the tops of Mark's thighs. Mark makes this annoying helpless sound into Eduardo's mouth, and Eduardo's mouth splits into a grin, and he takes Mark's laptop out of his hands and sets it down on the floor without breaking the kiss, because Mark is dating a super hot, super flexible baker, and these are just things that happen in his life now.
"I was," he says, a token protest, and Eduardo says, "No, you weren't, you were pretending to code so you could cast judgment on the good people of America and their camcorders," and Mark says, "But," because he's an idiot who doesn't know when to shut up, and Eduardo laughs into his mouth and shoves him gently onto his back.
Mark emails Chris in a frenzied loss of judgment and higher brain function at three in the morning, when Eduardo is snoring softly in the bedroom and Mark is having what feels like a panic attack on the sofa.
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: chris.hughes@facebook.com
subj: you are well-adjusted, give me your wisdom
Eduardo laughs at babies, Chris. BABIES.
Fuck, I really like him, what am I supposed to do?
He falls fitfully asleep on the couch at around four, and wakes up to the horrendous sound of the coffee machine apparently building Skynet in the bakery downstairs, and has showered and taken his coffee with a morning smile from a busy Eduardo and is halfway to work before he remembers the email. He stops so suddenly out of sheer, unadultered horror that he spills his coffee all down his front, and so he's swearing and making a beeline for the bathrooms at work when Chris appears out of nowhere and drags him into his office.
"Mark," he says, in this randomly terrifying tone of voice that Mark associates with the last days of finals and Chris on the brink of losing his shit about the music from the suite below, "Mark, what was that email about?"
There are not many conversations Mark finds himself wishing he could extract himself from, mostly because he's fully confident that if he says enough, the other person is bound to just fuck off eventually, but ones that start with Chris holding his elbow in a Vulcan grip and using his scary if I fail this exam because of your dubious musical taste and apparently terrible hearing, I will find your porn and I will send it to your goddamn mother voice are ones that Mark tries to avoid if it's at all possible.
Avoidance is not an option here, because Chris's face is doing complicated things and Mark's elbow really fucking hurts, so Mark just goes, "Wasn't it obvious?"
Something is twitching in Chris's temple.
"I was tired," Mark says, pulling his arm free. "Delete it. I'll delete it."
Chris slams a hand against the door, and Mark stops short of grabbing the handle.
"Wow," he says, raising an eyebrow. "Okay then."
Chris says, "Explain."
Mark looks at the floor, and clears his throat, and generally does other things that might make this conversation stop. Chris just waits. Mark has always hated his patience.
"I," he says. "He."
He should resign as CEO right now. This is ridiculous. He goes for deflection, out of a complete lack of other options. "Why are you so angry?"
"It's my default emotion when people send me emails at three in the morning about their inability to be real human beings," Chris says, not moving his arm. "It's not real anger, but you wouldn't have this conversation if you thought there was any chance of escape, so I pulled out the big guns."
"You have no guns," says Mark.
"I am armed to the teeth," says Chris. "Try me."
Mark reaches for the door handle again; Chris actually bitch-slaps his hand away.
Mark stares at him. "You worry me," he says. "Aren't you supposed to be the normal one?"
"I am the normal one," Chris says. "Being forced to deal with you guys as my friends has made me really good at creative problem-solving."
"Problem solving with violence?" Mark asks.
Chris shrugs. "It’s proven effective with Dustin."
"Isn't that spousal abuse?"
"We are not married," Chris says, "and you're apparently the one with all the feelings, so stop trying to distract me and talk, Zuckerberg."
Mark tries, he really does, because despite the fact that he's red enough to be seen from space, he remembers what it felt like in the early hours of the morning, terrified out of his mind and feeling helplessly, irresolvably, inadequate, neither of which are things he particularly enjoyed.
He looks at his hands, and says, "I really like him."
Chris softens immediately, because he's always been able to tell when Mark is genuinely trying, and drops his arm from the door. "Okay," he says. "You like him."
"You can't say it," Mark says, at once, hot and flustered. "We are not doing this if you repeat anything I say to me."
Chris nods. Mark refuses to look up in case spontaneous human combustion is real and he provides the first proof out of sheer mortification. He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, and thinks about Eduardo laughing at stupid videos and Eduardo fretful in sleep and Eduardo not talking about his father ever, and fervently wishes there was an answer book for human interaction, a code manual, if X then Y, because X is happening and Mark doesn't know what the fuck Y is supposed to be, or even if he's capable of doing it right, and he really wants to get it right, to be right, for Eduardo. He's only wanted to be more than someone, before: now he wants to be enough.
Chris is just looking at him with this steady, understanding gaze, and Mark is prickling hot, and he just goes, fast like ripping off a band-aid, "I've never done this before. I don't know how to be in a relationship."
Chris says, "Okay."
Mark fidgets, and then he thinks, well, this is already about as humiliating as this conversation can possibly get, and there's a reason he emailed Chris at three in the morning, and so he adds, "And - I don't want to do it - wrong."
There's a really, really long pause. Mark looks up, confusion edging out embarrassment.
"Chris?"
"Sometimes, Mark," Chris says, slowly, "you are a genuinely wonderful human being."
Mark fidgets.
"Of course," Chris continues, "other times you do make me want to beat you round the head with a filing cabinet, so I guess it evens out."
//
(continued here)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-30 10:50 pm (UTC)Okay, Mark's whole thought process on going to a bar to hang out with Chris & Dustin with Eduardo is so ridiculously cute and adorable and oh Mark of course Eduardo likes you best. Ughhh the CUTE.
(Mark mutters, "I wouldn't be too hasty about that decision," and Dustin kicks him under the table)
ahahahahaha priceless. omg, what -- ass-banging martians omg XD dustin reading cosmo....... wow. just. wow. that's the kind of phrase that makes me want to try to work it into a conversation.
"And welcome back to planet ass-banging," says Chris. "We hope you enjoy your stay."
XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD
It's not like he wants to marry Eduardo, he's not that far gone,
whatever, mark. you totally do.
Also, Eduardo is an evil genius.
"I'm going to go back with Eduardo." He turns in his seat to face him. "And then I'm going to fuck him till he can't walk straight tomorrow."
omfg. it's like mark knows what tact is and then chooses to do the opposite with bells and whistles. XD
lol, not family friendly muffins. i love how mark takes all the Dangers of Baking into account before deciding on his "revenge" for the coding blowjob. And oh my god, Dustin and the muffins, jfc so much laughing.
"I am the normal one," Chris says. "Being forced to deal with you guys as my friends has made me really good at creative problem-solving."
Chris, you ARE the normal one and that scares me a little bit. Not as much as Dustin being the normal one, though. ♥Chris♥
Oh, Mark. Adorable.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 12:32 am (UTC)STILL GOING ONWARDS BUT POSTING MY FAVORITE BITS
Everything also feels a lot like it did all those weeks ago, except that this time when Eduardo leads him down the street, he sticks his hand in Mark's back pocket instead of throwing his arm around his shoulders.
"You would be the worst wingman ever," Dustin says. "Seriously, like, Brutus probably got Julius Caesar more booty."
"It would maybe be nicer if Mark had boundaries, but we can't have everything, I suppose."
"I have eaten so much pie," Mark says, and pie is starting to sound like a made-up word. "Let's have sex."
AAAAHHHHHH SO MUCH JOY AND SWEETNESS IN MY HEART.
and muffins will never be the same, unf i'm hungry now. akfdjas;kldf
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 11:02 am (UTC)ALSO RE: THAT OTHER COMMENT: IF I END UP WRITING COMMENT FIC ABOUT BAKER!WARDO IN A SUIT, I BLAME YOU ENTIRELY.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 10:49 am (UTC)BUT UM. YEAH. AMAZING DIALOGUE. CHARACTERIZATIONS. SCENES. PLOT. EMOTIONS. SEX SCENES (I FELT LIKE I WAS ACTUALLY HAVING SEX WITH THE WORDS YOU WROTE). YOU HAVE IT ALL.
I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO EVERY THOUGHT YOU HAVE IN THIS. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY AND SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN. ALL THE STUFF I LOVE. ♥
(YEAH. AND THE COMMENT WILL BE ~BETTER. LATER. ;))
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Date: 2011-04-02 11:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 08:04 pm (UTC)Oh, Dustin. Remind me again, why are you so wonderful? :)
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Date: 2011-04-02 11:04 am (UTC)<3333
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Date: 2011-04-01 02:13 pm (UTC)ME TOO CHRIS, ME TOO.
I literally can't even deal with this. I really want to not read any more because I kind of get this lump in my throat and this impending sense of tragic lonliness, because OH MY GOD you've written the perfect relationship AND I WANT TO MARRY EDUARDO OR MARK AND NOTHING ELSE WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
This line:
"Eduardo is like code he can't write out of him, stuck in his blood."
That should be the tagline for this story. It's perfect. It is beautiful and heartfelt and intense and perfect.
I'm going to torture myself some more by reading the next bit.
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Date: 2011-04-02 11:05 am (UTC)AND I WANT TO MARRY EDUARDO OR MARK AND NOTHING ELSE WILL EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. - I UNDERSTAND THIS PROBLEM.
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Date: 2011-04-01 04:04 pm (UTC)I SPY A WEST WING REFERENCE AND I AM UNENDINGLY PLEASED.
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Date: 2011-04-02 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-01 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 11:07 am (UTC)SURPRISE CANDY IS THE BEST CANDY, RIGHT? IT'S LIKE "D: I HAVE NO CANDY - WAIT WAIT WAIT, NOW I DO!".
Possibly I have eaten too much sugar.
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Date: 2011-04-02 04:05 am (UTC)"He's like a burrito man."
is the best thing that's ever happened to me on LJ.
XD
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Date: 2011-04-02 11:08 am (UTC)<33333
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Date: 2011-04-02 01:44 pm (UTC)I DON'T CARE I HAVEN'T EVEN FINISHED THIS PART. THAT SENTENCE. GUFFAWWWWWWW FOREVERRRRRRRR. I. DID.
HOW ARE YOU REAL. YOUR BRAIN IS STUPID. I MEAN OUTSTANDING. UM.
*goes back to reading*
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Date: 2011-04-03 10:56 am (UTC)(also your icon is actually difficult to look away from, send help, hypnotized.)
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Date: 2011-04-02 04:00 pm (UTC)You are making me crazily happy and I can't deal with it.
And thank you!
I don't want this story to end.
And muffins? I couldn't not stop laughing.
Thanks again.
It's so wonderful.
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Date: 2011-04-03 10:58 am (UTC)anyway.
I am super glad you enjoyed this! <333
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:50 am (UTC)OBVIOUS LOVE IS OBVIOUS!
♥♥♥
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Date: 2011-04-03 08:09 pm (UTC)/off reading the other part, CAN'T STOP.
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Date: 2011-04-08 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-05 05:18 am (UTC)BUT BUT BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN I DON'T LOVE IT ANY LESS OKAY.
'"It's true," Eduardo says, to Chris, clearly just taking Mark's discomfort and reveling in it. "He steals the duvet. He's like a burrito-man. I am cold and alone on the side, like guacamole."
"I like guacamole," says Mark, sort of half without really thinking it through, and Chris laughs, and Eduardo laughs too, but he goes a bit pink.'
- OH MY GOODNESS :D
THE EMAILS, OMG, THE EMAILS :D :D :D
'"And welcome back to planet ass-banging," says Chris. "We hope you enjoy your stay."'
- LOLOL OH BAHAHAHAHAH DUSTIN
''"So these aren't family friendly muffins, then?"'
- OH MOST DEFINITELY NOT. AND NOW I NEED A MUFFIN!
'Eduardo gives him this look like I make creme brulée, Mark, I have a blowtorch in the kitchen, do you want to keep arguing this point and insulting my intelligence or do you want to shut the fuck up and give me back the damn remote? and Mark gets distracted by how attractive Eduardo is when he's irritated, and passes over the remote.'
- BAHAHAHAH OH MARK.
'"I am the normal one," Chris says. "Being forced to deal with you guys as my friends has made me really good at creative problem-solving."
"Problem solving with violence?" Mark asks.
Chris shrugs. "It’s proven effective with Dustin."
"Isn't that spousal abuse?"
"We are not married," Chris says, "and you're apparently the one with all the feelings, so stop trying to distract me and talk, Zuckerberg."'
- OH DUSTIN YOU ARE TOTALLY NOT NORMAL. AND CHRIS <3
so that was my very delayed comment :D :D <333
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Date: 2011-04-08 01:49 pm (UTC)NOW I NEED A MUFFIN! - UGH OH MY GOD DO NOT EVEN, YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY MUFFINS I HAD TO EAT TO BE ABLE TO WRITE THIS WITHOUT GETTING LIKE, SUGAR-WITHDRAWAL BLACKOUTS.
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Date: 2011-04-12 04:38 am (UTC)but it's okay, RL gets in the way! i am sending you happy muffin thoughts and strawberry frosting :D :D :D anything to ease your writing process! :D
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Date: 2011-04-05 06:44 pm (UTC)Uh. I'll go back to lurking and grinning at this fic like it's a baby on You've Been Framed now, k.
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Date: 2011-04-08 01:50 pm (UTC)akjgfjhsdgj also hello there Annie icon. <333
Super glad you enjoyed this!
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Date: 2011-04-08 10:23 pm (UTC)I commented on this before and I’ll do it again, and I will write it on my walls and on my skin and on strangers on the bus;
‘He's like a burrito-man.’
HE’S LIKE A BURRITO-MAN.
HE’S LIKE A BURRITO-MAN?!!!!
That right there, that’s why I’m marrying you. I will quote it in my vows along with references to Rocky Horror and Dr. Seuss.
I keep forgetting to comment on this but now I’m remembering!
I love that Dustin’s mail is ‘dustinohyeahitsdustin’ XD
Also, when I first read Chris’ mail I thought it was ‘chrisishuge’ ^^
The entire cross-e-mailing of this chapter was supremely, amazingly ‘stop-it-I’m-choking’-funny!
Dustin’s pathetic ‘Mark, Chris won’t love me back!’ nearly killed me XD
Also ‘We cracked Hughes’, ‘We broke Dustin’ and best of all ‘Broke them both. Good plan.’ XD
Dude, Eduardo is like the unicorn prince of wingmen! And a spectacular boyfriend!
‘Mark doesn't really care why Eduardo touches him, as long as he wants to keep doing it.’
--I feel you, Mark, I do..
‘Chris reappears at this point, and Mark practically strains something trying to scooch to the edge of the seat fast enough, getting his crotch safely out of view under the table. He hears Eduardo swallow a laugh next to him, turning it into an incredibly unconvincing cough.’
--Best. Thing. Ever. XD I could totally picture Mark on a boner-hiding mission ^^
"I'm going to go back with Eduardo." He turns in his seat to face him. "And then I'm going to fuck him till he can't walk straight tomorrow." ---Ooooooh, Mark! You gonna get it for that, kid! Cheeky fucker, you gotta love that XD
‘When Mark shows up for work the next morning, Dustin pops party streamers over his head, and Mark can't even bring himself to mind.’
--Dustin is like the most obnoxious person I’ve ever desperately wanted to befriend <3
The whole ‘BJ while coding’ reminded me of that movie Swordfish where Hugh Jackman has to hack some insane shit while this blonde whore goes down on him. Your version was just a gazillion times hotter, of course!
‘Mark twists his fingers inventively, consideringly, and Eduardo's back actually arches up off the couch. "Fuck," he says, desperate, cracked. "Fuck."
"So these aren't family friendly muffins, then?"
--You take me to a mental state where I don’t know if I’m turned on or amused! Before you know it, I’m gonna start convulsing in orgasms when someone tells a joke!
“its not american muffin either. that would have been a different film altogether. what is wrong with you, muffins are not sexy. apart from sex muffins, but they are not cake!!! THAT IS JUST AN EXPRESSION. EXPRESSIONS ARE NOT CAKE MARK. THEY ARE NOT CAKE.”
‘Normally Eduardo sleeps like he's died, heavy limbs everywhere and pinning Mark to the bed, like a needy sleeping starfish.’
--Dying! This was just – fuck, dude- you give me all this amazing humor and no one in my real world measures up!
YOU ARE RUINING ME FOR OTHER PEOPLE! WHEN IS THE WEDDING?! I WILL DIAMOND-RING YOU SO HARD!
Chris is the most amazing friend, I loved their entire interaction with Mark freaking out about being in love with Eduardo. Their dynamic is amazing and you write them so very well.
I need more! It’s midnight, though.. Fuck it, I don’t have any plans tomorrow, I’m going for one more chapter!
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Date: 2011-05-18 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-03 07:01 pm (UTC)What a way to end the section, love it.
"Sometimes, Mark," Chris says, slowly, "you are a genuinely wonderful human being."
Mark fidgets.
"Of course," Chris continues, "other times you do make me want to beat you round the head with a filing cabinet, so I guess it evens out."
I know people like that, they annoy me...Mark doesn't...Mark is sweet and adorable and Mark. Love.
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Date: 2011-07-09 06:07 am (UTC)how is this so amazing hi sorry just this fic made me incoherent with how wonderful it was :c
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Date: 2011-11-01 04:05 am (UTC)Alone on the side like guacamole. But Mark likes guacamole!
Also: Keep it in your pants and out of the muffins! This is not "American Pie"!
...I want a T-shirt with that on it. I am serious.
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Date: 2012-08-02 06:40 am (UTC)