fic: tsn; sweet on you (NC-17) (3a/3)
Apr. 26th, 2011 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moogingI CANNOT BELIEVE I HAVE FINISHED THIS, IT FEELS LIKE THIS HAS BECOME A PART OF MY SOUL.
Side-effects may include sugar headaches, toothaches and diabetic comas.
title: sweet on you (3/3)
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
rating: let's just say NC17 and be done with it. I AM TERRIBLE AT RATINGS, BUT THIS IS NSFW.
word count: ~36,000 (WHY YES, this part is as long as the first two combined. ideeek)
disclaimer these are a) not based on the real people but their fictional counterparts from the 2010 film, and b) not my characters either.
summary: the final part of bakery au! In which cakes are baked, feelings are felt and Mark makes his known. Eventually.
a/n: oh my god, okay, first of all I am sorry that this took so long, and then I am also sorry that this is so long, I did not expect this at all. Guys, this thing is ~72K, all in. HOW. ajhsgdhds. Huge thanks must go to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ilovemybaby, who coached me through bits of Portuguese with endless patience despite my sleep-deprivation and has all my love and gratitude forever (any and all remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone), schythr, for putting up with my sleep-deprived messages, and also to novembersmith, my Edward Norton, my better half, etc etc etc, for helping out with American brands, for the emails, and for EXISTING. Another gigantic thank you to everyone who has commented on this so far for being so unbelievably lovely, I cannot even express how blown away I have been, and to anyone who has read this in general, and, basically, I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR. <3333333
Part one. Part two.
Mark gets back from New York the same day Eduardo is due in, and he goes to Eduardo's apartment rather than his own house, reveling in not having anyone talking at him, or near him, or about him, unlike every waking moment he's endured for the past nine days.
He hesitated before he gave the address to the taxi driver when he emerged flight-rumpled and grumpy from the airport, wanting his laptop and hating all small children, but then he thought, fuck it, Eduardo gave him a key. There's no point in giving someone a key if they're not supposed to use it. It'd be like giving someone a box and expecting them not to open it, or like only inviting someone into a bike room and expecting them not to bite back.
Admittedly he does feel a little bit like he's breaking in when he turns the key in the door next to the shuttered up windows, especially because it's all dark inside the bakery -- obviously, because Eduardo hasn't been down there to turn the lights on or open the shutters or smile until a flock of animated birds flick the light switch or whatever alchemy he works in the mornings that makes the place look welcoming and appealing at hours of the day when only pillows should hold any level of attraction -- but he's used to the dark, and he knows where all the things he could bump into are, and so if he were a burglar, he'd probably be one of the larceny intelligentsia. He disarms the alarm in the dark, locks the door behind him because he is a responsible adult, thank you, Chris, he knows not to leave someone else's door unlocked, and goes upstairs.
The weird thing about it is that it doesn't feel weird, wandering into Eduardo's apartment by himself, poking through Eduardo's fridge in the hopes that one of them left beer in there, going barefoot into the living room and putting his feet up on the coffee table. Admittedly Mark is not the world champion at noticing when he should feel weird, but - he has a key. He knows the trick to coax another couple minutes of hot water out of the shower when it first starts running cold. He knows how to kick the bottom of the fridge door to make it open when it sticks sometimes. He's spent more time here over the last few months than he has in his own house, and it's sort of great, actually, that he does have a key now, because that has to make it official: he's not just a guest.
It's cold enough in the apartment that Mark notices it, and he's run through snow in flip-flops before. The heat's not on, and he goes looking for the control, which is apparently in another dimension, because it does not reveal itself to him in any of the rooms. There are not many rooms. It is a small apartment. Mark has a key but apparently he does not have eyes. He swears, and goes into the bedroom to appropriate one of Eduardo's ridiculously oversized sweaters, the ones he wears when he's tired and cold even though Mark is a perfectly comfortable temperature in just his hoodie and a seasonally inappropriate pair of shorts, and he heads to the dresser, yanks twice on the handle of the second drawer down (that sticks too), and --
-- and it's full of his own clothes.
Mark blinks. Sure, he remembers Eduardo putting a couple of his hoodies in there when they'd ended up dubiously stained and Eduardo had peeled them off over Mark's head and had not looked even the slightest bit apologetic about coming all over Mark's clothes but had offered to put them through the wash for him, and then told Mark they were in the dresser when he wanted them. He also remembers Eduardo bullying him into bringing a few pairs of jeans over, sweats, a couple of tees -- "You cannot keep going to work in the same clothes, Mark, I refuse to allow it, you are the CEO, at least have the option of a second hoodie here." -- and in theory he was aware that this drawer now contained entirely his own clothing, but in practice - oh, god, is it actually possible Mark can have moved in without noticing it?
He closes the drawer and grabs one of Eduardo's stupid sweaters from the next drawer down, and goes into the bathroom. His toothbrush is next to Eduardo's on the sink.
He goes back into the kitchen, mildly alarmed, and next to the scary kinds of health-conscious soft drinks (what the fuck is burdock?), there are a few bottles of Mark's favourite beer. Mark did not buy them. He hasn't questioned it when Eduardo has passed him a bottle now and then, but, okay, now he is remembering a conversation in which Eduardo shrugged and said I prefer Blue Moon and the bottles in the fridge that Mark can't look away from are Sam Adams and Mark knows with his staggering intellect that Blue Moon is not Sam Adams.
So he sort of lives here. Okay. How is he the only person in the world who can be living with someone and not know it? Is it even possible to be living with someone when you still have your own house, or is that a different thing? Is there such a thing as mostly living with someone? Mark scowls down at his feet, and goes and codes, because code gives him questions he can answer, and the rest of his life is devolving into stupidity around his ears.
Then he has to stop coding, because he's tired and thirsty, and his hands are cold even though the rest of him is warm in Eduardo's gigantic sweater, and none of these things are answering his stupid living arrangement question.
He texts Chris.
do I live with Eduardo?
surprisingly I do not have this information, Chris texts back, as I am not actually you. how the fuck do you not know where you live??
Chris has a good point.
I hate you, Mark informs him, childishly, and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
He goes and gets one of the beers from the fridge, and pulls the comforter over his legs on the couch, and codes again until it starts to get dusky outside, relaxing line by line, unwinding from family and two unexpected life upheavals in as many weeks. Seriously, Mark has spent a good twenty something years perfectly happy with his work and his website and his life in general, and then all of a sudden, bam, you're in love, smash, you're accidently living with someone, thwap, have another fucking beer and stop thinking about this so much.
He's tired enough that he keeps mis-pressing keys, catching two at once, or blanking suddenly halfway through a line, so he just saves what he's got and takes a break. He actually ends up spending his evening flicking through one of Eduardo's photo albums while the sun goes slowly down outside. He figures that if Eduardo gave him a key, it's definitely okay for him to pry a little - and, also, he can bring the Harvard network down so he can fucking well figure out how to crack the intense security system of a closed drawer.
He flips past pictures of people he doesn't know but thinks must be Eduardo's family, the woman Mark thinks is Eduardo's mother, who is rake-thin and wide-mouthed, smiling in every single picture, and then Eduardo's father with his arm around her waist, who looks stern, but not unapproachable. He finds what he's really looking for a few pages in, when there's a picture of Eduardo on a beach so bright that the sand is almost painful to look at even in the photograph, wearing trunks and nothing else, smiling so hard his face is almost creased in half with it and running a hand through his wet hair, clearly straight out of the sea. Mark doesn't want to know who's taking this picture, doesn't really care. He stares at it until his mouth goes dry, and then he slides it out of the album and into his pocket.
It's possible that the same people who would leave that hypothetical box closed would also have some issues with Mark's ideas of personal boundaries, but he couldn't really give a fuck.
He hears the door downstairs bang shut at about nine that night, when he's having a second attempt at fixing the typo-filled code, and then, after an amount of time that is clearly Eduardo noticing the alarm already disabled, he hears, "Mark?" and his chest does something stupid and unnecessarily constrictive, like he's not heard Eduardo's voice on the phone for the last few nights, like they've been apart for much longer than under two weeks, Jesus Christ, what has even happened to Mark?
"No," he shouts back, listening to Eduardo's footsteps on the stairs, "I'm a terrifying robber and I'm here to steal all your cake."
There's a scuffling at the lock of the apartment door at the top of the staircase, and Eduardo says, warm, meters away, "Dustin, is that you?"
"Fuck off," Mark says, and then the front door opens and Eduardo walks in.
Mark had not really thought this was possible, but Eduardo actually looks more attractive than he remembers. He's got a suit on, but it's wrinkled from the flight, and he looks like he hasn't slept since take-off, or maybe before then, but he's still the best-looking thing Mark has ever seen, which is fantastically unfair. Mark does not look like that after plane journeys, or, actually, ever.
Eduardo looks mildly horrified when he notices the photo album open on the coffee table in front of Mark, but it's tempered by his smile, the way he walks in and sees Mark sitting in his apartment with his feet up on the furniture and just smiles, like he's been holding his breath and Mark is the surface of the water.
Mark is obviously more tired than he thought if he's thinking things like that. Fucking similes.
"Hello," Eduardo says, still with that wide, first breath smile, and Mark shoves his laptop to one side with suddenly shaking hands and gets to his feet, and Eduardo steps forward and hasn't even put his bags down before he reaches out to pull Mark in.
"Hello," Mark says, after a minute, when they both remember that air is necessary to their continued survival, and Eduardo pulls back to press his forehead against Mark's and pant happily near his mouth. "How was your flight?"
Eduardo laughs at him, and Mark has his hands all over Eduardo, on his back, on his ribs, feeling the creases in his suit, and he laughs back.
Mark had not expected to miss him this much.
"I missed you so much more than I wanted to," he says, lulled into honesty by the smell of Eduardo's skin, warm, a little stale from the plane. Mark is not unobservant, olefactorily or otherwise, so of course he's noticed how Eduardo smells, it's just - okay, so Mark spends a lot of time thinking about things in groups, like line breaks for memory, for cross-referencing, but Eduardo refuses to be taken apart. Mark can't separate out individual aspects of him, like, oh: I like his smile, or, oh: I don't even mind his horrible morning breath: when he thinks about Eduardo, he thinks about all of him, and that is what he has missed. All of him. Just, oh: Eduardo.
Eduardo laughs, ruffling Mark's hair. Mark doesn't even mind that much either, that is how ruined he has become. "Thank you," he says. "I think."
"I mean," says Mark, tired and nonsensical, liking Eduardo's palm open against the back of his neck, "I missed your smell."
"Are you saying I smell?" Eduardo teases, running his fingers through the curls at the nape of Mark's neck, and Mark grumbles, and shivers a bit, and says, "No, Wardo, don't be facetious," and Eduardo says, "I'm not, I'm not, just - " and leans down to angle his mouth up under Mark's grumpily dipped chin and kisses him again.
"How was your trip?" Mark asks, when they next break apart, but he doesn't really need to, can see it in the way Eduardo shoulders off his bag and rolls out his neck, like the last few days have mostly been one long tension headache. Mark gets that there's something with his father, he gets that, but he can't believe it: he genuinely cannot believe that there is someone who can look at Eduardo, and think he is worth anything less than - than fucking everything, okay, Mark is not going to let dignity or, like, masculine reserve get in the way of that particular thought.
He can't get it out, though, so instead, he says, sitting down on the couch, pulling his laptop back towards him, "You should come to New York some time."
Eduardo sits down next to him. "Yeah?" he says, in this soft little voice. Mark refuses to look up from his screen, doesn't trust himself to get this right if he does.
"Yeah," he says, and then he swallows, and his hands are shaking slightly on his keyboard, because apparently he can code rings round basically anyone but he cannot have this conversation without getting damp palms and a dry throat. He shrugs. "My mom said it would be nice to meet you," he says, by way of getting onto marginally safer ground, and Eduardo leans in and kisses him on the neck, nuzzling up behind Mark's ear.
"I'd love to," he says, like he's seen straight through Mark's ridiculous inability to talk about his feelings. "Thank you."
Mark inhales again, big and unexpected, and leans his head down to breathe against Eduardo's shoulder.
As nice as breathing Eduardo in is, right now it's mostly just reminding Mark that he hasn't showered since the night before, and there's been a coast to coast plane trip in his life since then.
"Fuck," he says, "I need to shower."
Eduardo holds onto his hoodie sleeve when he tries to stand up again, looking bone tired and reluctant to get up, but Mark reaches down for the sleeve of his crumpled suit and says, "Come with me?" and Eduardo gets to his feet gratifyingly quickly.
That is not the only thing Eduardo does gratifyingly quickly in the next half an hour, and Mark tells him so when they're sprawled out over the bed, half toweled dry and half sweat wet again.
"Shut up," says Eduardo, as Mark pants and feels a bit like a champion, "I really missed you."
"Evidently," says Mark, in the closest thing to a drawl he can manage, and Eduardo rolls onto his side so he can slap a hand down in protest on Mark's chest, just hard enough to hurt.
Mark says, "Ow, what the hell," in this entirely faked protest, but Eduardo just buries his face against the side of Mark's neck and says, "Shh, sleeping now," and Mark quietens down, dragging a tee and his boxers back on. It's too cold for him to sleep without them.
He nudges Eduardo with his foot after a second, pulling the duvet up over them both, and demands that he at least put some boxers on, and Eduardo tells him in a sleepy, unequivocal sort of way that he will do no such thing, and Mark will have to like it.
Mark thinks that last part was sort of a given, but he falls asleep before he lets Eduardo know.
//
Mark swims awake when the light coming in through the curtains is closer to early afternoon than late morning, and he makes a disgruntled noise, and throws an arm over his eyes in protest. From behind his elbow, he hears Eduardo laugh.
Mark peels his arm off his face and turns his head on the pillow. Eduardo is smiling morning-soft at him from the other side of the bed, and when he sees Mark looking back, he ducks his head down to nuzzle against Mark's shoulder.
At no point in Mark's life before he met Eduardo had he ever really considered that something like this might happen to him. Eduardo is still pink-cheeked from sleep, and he's warm against Mark's side, bare chest pressed against Mark's ribs through Mark's sleep-warm tee, and he has this sweet little smile that makes Mark think of Chris saying, you looked gentle.
Mark sort of understands what that means now, looking at Eduardo and the curve of his dry mouth in the first few moments of the day.
This is the sort of nonsense Mark only allows himself to get away with when he's just woken up, has not yet showered away new dawn vulnerabilities.
"Ugh," says Mark, mostly so he can stop hearing himself think horrible Harlequin novel type things and start feeling like an actual person again, "go away. Your face is giving me diabetes."
Eduardo laughs sleepily against Mark's shoulder. "It's Sunday," he says, slightly fuzzily, like he's only half awake. "I don't have to get up on Sundays."
"Websites never sleep," says Mark. "That's why my job is so much better than yours."
Eduardo punches him gently on his side, a brush of knuckles against ribs. It shouldn't make Mark shiver hot, but it does.
"I have to get up," he says, not getting up.
"Mmph," says Eduardo, like he's falling asleep again. "Don't."
"But," says Mark, still not moving, "I have to."
"Don't," Eduardo says again, drowsy and slurred. "I don't want you to."
Mark turns his neck to look at him, all ridiculous bed hair tickling Mark's jaw and morning breath against Mark's side, and thinks, slightly surprised, I don't want to either.
//
When he eventually does get up and go into work, because he's been away for nine days and it's making him physically antsy not to have been there himself despite the fact that he's right in the fucking centre of the loop at all times, thanks to an incredibly maintained email-checking paranoia, he still checks his phone to see if Eduardo's woken up again yet just before he opens up his laptop.
bring back eggs, Eduardo has sent, having apparently gotten up and showered and completed a forensic examination of the empty fridge in the time it has taken Mark to slug back a coffee and shuffle his way to the office. I'll make omelettes tonight.
Mark has never felt so domestic in his life, and he's not even the one cooking.
He hesitates for a second, checking for suspicious Dustin-shapes hidden around his office, in case Dustin can somehow sense when Mark is about to do something he doesn't want anyone to see and then just turn up like whatever the emotional equivalent of a cock-block is, and then types out a reply.
go back to sleep. back soon. m.
the bed's cold without you in it :(
that is what the duvet is for, Mark the eternal romantic sends back, and Eduardo goes, i forget because i get it so rarely. AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT. (not mine).
It is simultaneously nauseating and amazing, what has happened to Mark's life now Eduardo is in it.
He checks his watch, and opens up his laptop, and starts working, only to be interrupted maybe only an hour later by Dustin bursting into his office.
"Olá, minha princesa!" calls Dustin, as the door ricochets off the far wall and Mark startles out of his concentration. "Have you missed me? I have missed you, my sweet baker-banging friend."
If Mark had missed Dustin, it is safe to say he cannot envisage this ever being a possibility again.
"No," he says, "I've really not." Dustin pulls a ludicrously fake hurt face while Mark continues, "And how do you know Portuguese?"
Dustin shrugs, coming over to perch on Mark's desk despite Mark's narrow-eyed glare of deterrence. "Babelfish."
"Why?" Mark asks, and then instantly regrets it.
"Because I am single and languages are sexy," Dustin says. "As well you should know, Mr I'm-fucking-a-hot-Brazilian."
"Your fixation on my sex life is truly alarming."
"That's just it," Dustin says, jabbing him in the chest. "You have a sex life. And with Eduardo, who I think even the blind and deaf could agree does not have to be under the sea to be twenty leagues hotter than you."
Mark pries Dustin's finger away from his sternum in silent, horrified reproach. "That doesn't make sense," he says. "And did you call me a princess?"
"Yes," says Dustin. "I can say hello, my princess in ten languages now. I figure that should cover all my bases, so I can reach some bases, and then abandon all sports metaphors for having lots of sex."
"What a constructive use of your time," Mark tells him, as dryly as he can, and puts his headphones back on.
Dustin reaches out and slides them off his ears.
"What?" says Mark, actually irritated.
"Have you see Wardo since you got back?" Dustin asks, in a completely different tone of voice, and Mark looks down at his hands to hide his smile.
"Yeah," he says, to his shoes. "He, um, got back last night."
Dustin touches his shoulder. "You're doing great, Mark," he says.
Mark has also spent his Hanukkah break trying to forget that during the Halo wars just after Eduardo left for Miami, Dustin had spotted Mark turning the key over and over his knuckles when he'd thought no-one was watching, and then actually physically forced him to explain by sitting on him until he choked out that Eduardo had given him a key to his apartment. Chris had looked like he might burst with pride; Dustin had just looked like he might burst.
"It's just a key," Mark says, now, but he can feel himself going red and pleased, and Dustin doesn't comment on it, which might actually be one of the signs of the apocalypse but is also kind of a relief.
"Sure," says Dustin, dragging it out, barreling straight out of understanding and back into cheerful and obnoxious. "It's just a key. To his heart."
Mark manages to catch him off-guard when he kicks him in the shin.
//
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: you would wear a pink dress
bonjour, ma princesse
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: and little pink shoes
ciao, mia principessa
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: AND A TIARA
GUTEN TAG MEINE PRINZESSIN
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: EDUARDO WOULD BE YOUR CONSORT. HE WEARS THE TROUSERS AND YOU WEAR THE DRESS. BECAUSE YOU ARE A PRETTY PINK BAKER-LOVING PRINCESS.
HELLO, MY PRINCESS
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I am so bored
ONLY IMAGINE YOU ARE BOTH STANDING ON TOP OF A GIANT CAKE.
to: e.saverin@gmail.com
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: can I borrow a kitchen knife?
you would visit me in prison if I killed Dustin, right? IT IS AN IMMINENT EVENT.
from: e.saverin@gmail.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: alarming request for murder weapons
only if it was a conjugal visit
I'm only in this for your body
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: WHEN YOU ARE SLEEPING, WHEN YOU TURN YOUR BACK, THAT IS WHEN I WILL STRIKE
also explain why the arms are completely different lengths. troll better, moskovitz.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I NEVER SLEEP I AM LIKE A SLOTH BUT THE OPPOSITE. I AM A HTOLS. AWAKE FOREVER, MURDERED NEVER. IF IT RHYMES IT'S TRUE.
because drawing on trackpads is hard, mark. it saddens me that you do not appreciate the pains I take to bring these delights to your life.
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: if I have a rage blackout, you are first on my hit list
consider this a warning
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: you are not a frightening individual
BUT
STOP THREATENING ME
WHERE IS YOUR CHRISTMAS SPIRIT?
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: yes I am
with hanukkah.
//
Mark rings in the new year ensconced in his living room with Eduardo and Chris and Dustin, playing Halo with less friendly competition and more frenzied battles to the death for honour and glory, or whatever Dustin had said, very seriously, before taking advantage of the fact that everyone was giving him the side-eye to snatch up the controller and mow them all down in one burst of devious machine-gunnery. In the spirit of the evening, Eduardo had brought along cookies shaped like beer bottles. Mark had told him he didn't have to, and Eduardo had said something polite to the bone, along the lines of always bringing a gift if you're a guest in someone's home.
"What?" Mark had said, genuinely surprised, because what the hell, Eduardo had given Mark a key and he still thought he was a guest in Mark's house? "Don't be ridiculous, Wardo, you're not a guest."
Eduardo had said it was just a figure of speech, but he'd looked pleased, and Mark had humphed something about not having heard that one before, and then turned the volume up on the tv to avoid going pointlessly red.
Eduardo had made cookies anyway, and he'd held out cookie dough to Mark on the tips of his fingers and his eyes had gone dark as Mark leaned in and swirled his tongue to the knuckles.
They did nearly burn the cookies after that, but the point is that the cookies were fine, Dustin was over the moon, and Mark has Chris's game character in his sights and he's pretty sure Chris hasn't noticed yet, so all's well that - is still in the process of ending well, if you want to be picky, because it's not yet January 1st.
The plan is to play Halo till five to the hour, and then watch the ball drop in Times Square --
"Seriously?" Mark asks, a little incredulous. "Isn't that a bit unbelievably lame?"
Eduardo shrugs. "I like it," he says, unapologetic, and Mark sort of can't say no, which is embarrassing. Dustin lobs a cushion at his face and tells him he's whipped, and Eduardo throws it back while Mark is still busy being indignant and says, "You know it."
-- but the power goes off at eleven, and the house is plunged into darkness.
Mark would like to know exactly which deity or part of the universe has a hand in making his life an actual sham.
There's a moment or two where everyone sort of sits around registering the fact that there's no electricity, because they are a handful of the best and brightest minds of their generation, and then Chris says, "Mark, do you have any candles?"
"No," says Mark. "Why would I have candles?"
Chris says, "In case the power goes out."
Mark can sort of grudgingly see his point.
Mark goes to check the fuse box when Eduardo points out that it could just be a blown fuse, but it's not. Mark is getting bad-tempered, because having things not go to plan is not something he's especially good at, but when he turns round from the unhelpful fuse box, Eduardo is holding the torch under his chin and pulling a stupid face, and Mark can't be bad-tempered about that.
They go back through to the living room, and Chris and Dustin have apparently managed to find some candles that Mark has zero recollection of buying, but slightly more importantly, they've found --
"Vodka!" says Dustin, triumphantly, holding a bottle aloft. "I have an excellent idea."
"I doubt that," says Mark. Eduardo elbows him as they sit back down, Mark in the armchair, Eduardo pressed between the arm and Mark's side, half on Mark's knee.
"Oh ye of little faith," says Dustin, blessedly and uncharacteristically ignoring Eduardo practically sitting on Mark's lap, and he's extracted the shot glasses he bought Mark for some birthday back in Harvard and lined them up on Mark's coffee table. Mark has a sneaking, sinking suspicion that he knows where this is going. "We'll play I never!" Dustin continues, and Mark is right, and this is such a bad idea.
"I'm sorry," Chris says, drily, from the couch. "I somehow missed the part where we time-warped back to Kirkland."
Mark checks his watch. Eleven fifteen.
"I can think of worse ideas," Eduardo offers, traitorously. Mark shoots him a glare, but Eduardo just smiles at him. Mark is CEO of Facebook and the youngest billionaire in the world and has actually made interns cry on more than one occasion (mostly accidently), but Eduardo is apparently immune to all of that.
Dustin is watching him intently from across the room, which isn't at all alarming.
Chris says, "I - have surprisingly few objections, if it means I can get very drunk very quickly."
Dustin adds, "Plus, when Mark gets drunk, he gets honest."
"More honest," Chris corrects.
Mark thinks all the way back to drinking in a bar and grabbing Eduardo's wrist and saying, it wasn't about the money, and goes red. Next to him, Eduardo shifts, and wraps his fingers around Mark's wrist, fingertips to his pulse point, like he's thinking the same thing. Mark doesn't look at him, because there are two other people in the room who would hear and mock him if he said something embarrassing or notice if he shoved his hand into Eduardo's pants, but he does go warm all over, which is one reason to be glad that candlelight isn't actually that far-reaching.
Chris interrupts this dignified moment in Mark's life by saying, "What the hell. Let's do it."
All the supporting pillars of Mark's argument are falling to the lure of alcohol and gossip. Mark is a falling pediment, and also possibly slightly buzzed already, which explains why he says, "Fine," in as long-suffering a voice as he can manage, and accepts the shot Dustin enthusiastically pours for him.
Chris taps his fingers against his elbow for a minute, thinking, and then he smiles in a way Mark recognises from the prank wars of freshman year, when Dustin was about to get royally served. This does not bode well. "I never," Chris says, slowly, "participated in a blow-job in a bakery."
Mark chokes on his own spit, which is dignified. He can feel Eduardo blushing.
"You told them?" Eduardo says, mildly scandalised, and then, "Wait, no, of course you did."
He and Mark both drink, and across the room, Dustin eyes Chris with a sort of delighted admiration.
"You never accept my proposals, Christopher," he says, "but you are my favourite person."
Chris shrugs, like, I know, I am awesome, your adulation is unnecessary. Dustin's smile is almost wider than his face.
Mark clears his throat and all eyes snap back to him. "I never," he says, and tries to think of something retaliatory, " - had to go to student health because Dustin smashed an X-box controller into my face."
Chris flicks him off and takes a shot. Dustin reaches over to pat his knee.
"I apologised at the time," he says, not sounding particularly sorry through his cheek-wide grin, "but let me just say I am still sorry. Although not so much, because you cheated, and you deserved it, but the apology remains at least slightly valid."
Chris wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I did not cheat," he protests. "It's not my fault I can eat and hold a controller and beat you senseless."
"Exactly!" cries Dustin, and Chris cocks his head to the side like explain yourself, Moskovitz, your logic is not my logic or indeed anyone's logic, and Dustin goes, "I was weak from hunger! I cannot be blamed for any violent tendencies I might have displayed."
"Also," Mark points out, because he never gets sick of this argument, even though it should be grating and juvenile by now, "Dustin was weaker than usual and he still beat the shit out of you."
"It was one lucky smack!" Dustin yelps, shooting wide-eyed glances at Chris, and then, instantly, backtracking: "Well, not lucky, but, er, er - "
"Fluky," Eduardo chimes in. "An accidental strike."
Dustin eyes him in appreciation; Mark instinctively curls his arm tighter around Eduardo's waist. Eduardo gives this little fond smile down at his chest.
Dustin says, "Chris, Chris, Chris, we cannot fight, we must unite against mutual hyperglycemic shock and then both of us must try to land fluky accidental strikes on their happiness."
Chris is laughing seemingly despite himself, and he finally peels Dustin's hand off his knee and agrees.
"But only if you stop rhyming," he says, and Dustin sort of shrugs with his face, and agrees.
He fills Chris's shot glass again, raising his own.
"I never," says Dustin, and Chris's expression mirrors Mark's internal trepidation, "um, I never went commando."
Unfortunately, Mark knows that is a dirty lie, and so he is entirely unsurprised when Dustin slugs back his shot. He drains his too -- laundry hadn't been his strong suit at Kirkland, or ever, and it's not like he needed to be presentable or wear anything other than three day worn sweats and a dubiously stained hoodie to code -- but he is slightly surprised when Chris drinks his shot down too, and less surprised and more incredibly turned on when Eduardo knocks his back as well.
"Christopher," Dustin breathes, sounding impressed, but Mark mostly tunes this out, because although that was vaguely revelatory, he has no interest whatsoever in the contents of Chris's pants but a significantly vested interest in the contents of Eduardo's.
He's staring at Eduardo's crotch like the world's creepiest nerd despite the fact that he watched Eduardo get dressed this morning and knows full well what's under his dress pants when Dustin coughs pointedly and he looks up, going red.
Eduardo is laughing quietly behind his hand. Mark elbows him in the ribs.
"Much as I hate to agree with Dustin on anything," Chris says, "can you maybe keep the incredibly subtle eye-fucking down to a minimum while in company? Especially single company. Thanks so much."
"Okay!" Eduardo jumps in, brightly, before Mark can retaliate. "My turn."
Dustin pours everyone more shots. Mark can practically taste his hangover coming.
Eduardo thinks for a second, and Mark watches the candlelight flicker on his skin, catching the dips of his collarbone where his shirt is loosely unbuttoned at the neck. Fuck, okay, maybe Mark doesn't really need any more to drink.
Not that that's going to stop him or anything.
Eduardo says, "I've never lost a game of Mario Kart." Everyone else drinks. Eduardo doesn't touch his shot.
There is a moment of shocked, awed silence, and then Dustin says, testing, suspicious, "Have you ever played Mario Kart?"
"Yes," Eduardo says, and he sounds like Mark remembers hearing in his own voice when he'd turned round from the computer to tell Chris one hundred thousand members, self-satisfied. "Lots."
Dustin makes this strangled noise that sounds actually painful, and Chris pats his shoulder. "Just because you can't avoid green shells doesn't mean everyone is incompetent," he says, and Dustin says, high-pitched, "There's a difference between avoiding green shells and never losing, oh my god, Wardo, you are my king. The king of all kings. Except maybe Elvis."
"Do not get him started on Elvis," Mark warns, as Eduardo opens his mouth, and then kisses him, to make his point. Eduardo opens his mouth again, then, but Mark is entirely okay with that.
Chris lobs a couch cushion at them, which Mark thinks is unfair and unoriginal since Dustin already did that earlier, but he doesn't pull away for a good thirty seconds more, making his point. When he does, Eduardo has a hand up the back of his shirt, so he clearly doesn't particularly mind being part of Mark's agenda.
Mark's brain takes this moment to remind him of Eduardo's lips against his ear, I'm not always very nice, and he takes advantage of the cushion on his lap by pulling it further across his crotch.
"I hate you both," Chris informs them, and Dustin pours them all more vodka.
Mark raises his glass, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eduardo looking at him, fond, intent. He has to swallow before he can start talking, but he puts that down to the vodka finally kicking in.
He thinks, madly, dizzily, I've never been this happy, but he's not drunk enough to say it. He wonders if Eduardo would drink to that. He hopes he wouldn't. He -- he thinks he really might not.
Oh god, this hangover is going to be horrific.
Maybe it's going to be even more horrific than Mark is anticipating, because somewhat without him noticing, he's become drunk enough that he doesn't stop that thought right the fuck there, safe and stupid and locked in his brain, but instead lets it out, says, "I've never been this happy," aloud, where people can hear him, and pushes his shot away from him on the coffee table.
Eduardo doesn't say anything, but he puts his shot down too.
Mark doesn't see whether Chris or Dustin drink, because he's too busy licking his way back into Eduardo's mouth, right there with Eduardo in his lap and Chris compiling a hoard of cushion missiles to throw at them, and Mark may be drunk, but he's not lying.
He's so happy.
And then, like Mark's life is a movie or something else ridiculous -- who would watch a film about someone coding twenty hours a day? -- the power boots back up just before midnight, and the Halo menu music makes them all jump. Mark fumbles for the remote, and switches to NBC, and right as the channel changes, fireworks go off all around them, and the stupid ball drops, and Dustin and Chris and Eduardo cheer, as one.
"Happy New Year!" Dustin is shouting, repeatedly, and then he grabs Chris's collar and kisses him.
There seems to be a lot of that going around tonight.
Chris splutters a lot and shoves him off, and Dustin grins drunkenly at him and explains.
"You're supposed to kiss someone at midnight," he says, and Chris says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "Yeah, but not me."
"Well, I couldn't kiss Eduardo because Mark might have killed me," Dustin says, which is the most sensible thing he has said all night, in Mark's opinion.
"What about Mark?" On the other hand, Chris is rapidly losing points.
"No," Dustin says, sounding more disgusted than Mark really thinks is necessary. "And what are these protestations, Christopher, why do you continually deny my love for you?"
Mark is then distracted from the ensuing idiocy whereby Chris chases Dustin around the room with an angry cushion as Dustin shouts "I kissed Chris Hughes!" because Eduardo puts a hand on his elbow and turns him in.
"Happy New Year," he says, softly, as Mark looks up at him, and then he takes Mark's chin in his hand to tilt his face up, and kisses him.
Afterwards, when Chris has manhandled Dustin into the backseat of a cab, because he has apparently got magical powers that enable him to get a cab in the early hours of New Years' Day, and Eduardo is sprawled over Mark's couch, making sleepy, tipsy protests that he's not tired at all in between drifting in and out of sleep, Mark sits with Eduardo's legs over his lap and his laptop balanced on Eduardo's skinny ankles and checks the traffic isn't too much for the site, that everything's holding up okay, and thinks it was a pretty good night.
//
Mark wakes up groggily, far too few hours later, with Eduardo still sprawled out across his lap, dead to the world. He's snoring again. Mark has a crick in his neck and the promise of a really horrible headache, and his stomach is doing something he suspects he's only really going to be able to ignore for a few minutes at best, but he lies there for a second and just looks at Eduardo. His mouth is open, and he's drooling a bit against the cushions, and his shirt is beyond wrinkled, and he's still the best looking thing Mark has ever seen.
There's something digging into the small of his back, and when he grimaces and reaches for it, it's his phone. He has three texts waiting.
One is from around two in the morning, when Chris and Dustin had just left. It says, markk ilo vvvvve ewe.
Mark sends back, thank you for your fleecy affections.
The reply comes almost instantly, dude shut up you've never been this happy.
Fuck. Okay, well, something tells Mark he's not living that one down for a while. He files that delightful thought away to cope with when his head isn't threatening a revolt at any moment, and settles for hoping Dustin is in the throes of a really vicious morning after.
The next missed text is from Chris, around four. dustin stripped in the cab, it says. i hope you choke on your own vomit when you wake up.
Mark ignores that one, though not without a brief pang of sympathy. Naked Dustin is a harrowing Kirkland memory. Something tells him Dustin really is having a bad morning right about now.
The last text is from a couple of hours ago. It says, happy new year :) xxxxx
It's from Eduardo.
It is at this point that Mark's stomach decides it is high time he high tailed it off the couch, so he texts Eduardo back from the floor in the upstairs bathroom, half an hour later.
you're missing new year's day. wake up. x
Eduardo pads barefoot into the room a few minutes later, yawning, with his hair sticking up in stupid ways and his shirt untucked from his pants.
"We should have sex later," Mark tells him, blearily, from the floor, and Eduardo smiles sleepily down at him.
"Okay," he says, amenably, sitting down next to Mark, "as long as you brush your teeth first."
"I make no promises," Mark says, closing his eyes and leaning against the bathroom wall, and Eduardo leans against him.
//
(continued here)
Side-effects may include sugar headaches, toothaches and diabetic comas.
title: sweet on you (3/3)
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
rating: let's just say NC17 and be done with it. I AM TERRIBLE AT RATINGS, BUT THIS IS NSFW.
word count: ~36,000 (WHY YES, this part is as long as the first two combined. ideeek)
disclaimer these are a) not based on the real people but their fictional counterparts from the 2010 film, and b) not my characters either.
summary: the final part of bakery au! In which cakes are baked, feelings are felt and Mark makes his known. Eventually.
a/n: oh my god, okay, first of all I am sorry that this took so long, and then I am also sorry that this is so long, I did not expect this at all. Guys, this thing is ~72K, all in. HOW. ajhsgdhds. Huge thanks must go to
ilovemybaby, who coached me through bits of Portuguese with endless patience despite my sleep-deprivation and has all my love and gratitude forever (any and all remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone), schythr, for putting up with my sleep-deprived messages, and also to novembersmith, my Edward Norton, my better half, etc etc etc, for helping out with American brands, for the emails, and for EXISTING. Another gigantic thank you to everyone who has commented on this so far for being so unbelievably lovely, I cannot even express how blown away I have been, and to anyone who has read this in general, and, basically, I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR. <3333333 Part one. Part two.
Mark gets back from New York the same day Eduardo is due in, and he goes to Eduardo's apartment rather than his own house, reveling in not having anyone talking at him, or near him, or about him, unlike every waking moment he's endured for the past nine days.
He hesitated before he gave the address to the taxi driver when he emerged flight-rumpled and grumpy from the airport, wanting his laptop and hating all small children, but then he thought, fuck it, Eduardo gave him a key. There's no point in giving someone a key if they're not supposed to use it. It'd be like giving someone a box and expecting them not to open it, or like only inviting someone into a bike room and expecting them not to bite back.
Admittedly he does feel a little bit like he's breaking in when he turns the key in the door next to the shuttered up windows, especially because it's all dark inside the bakery -- obviously, because Eduardo hasn't been down there to turn the lights on or open the shutters or smile until a flock of animated birds flick the light switch or whatever alchemy he works in the mornings that makes the place look welcoming and appealing at hours of the day when only pillows should hold any level of attraction -- but he's used to the dark, and he knows where all the things he could bump into are, and so if he were a burglar, he'd probably be one of the larceny intelligentsia. He disarms the alarm in the dark, locks the door behind him because he is a responsible adult, thank you, Chris, he knows not to leave someone else's door unlocked, and goes upstairs.
The weird thing about it is that it doesn't feel weird, wandering into Eduardo's apartment by himself, poking through Eduardo's fridge in the hopes that one of them left beer in there, going barefoot into the living room and putting his feet up on the coffee table. Admittedly Mark is not the world champion at noticing when he should feel weird, but - he has a key. He knows the trick to coax another couple minutes of hot water out of the shower when it first starts running cold. He knows how to kick the bottom of the fridge door to make it open when it sticks sometimes. He's spent more time here over the last few months than he has in his own house, and it's sort of great, actually, that he does have a key now, because that has to make it official: he's not just a guest.
It's cold enough in the apartment that Mark notices it, and he's run through snow in flip-flops before. The heat's not on, and he goes looking for the control, which is apparently in another dimension, because it does not reveal itself to him in any of the rooms. There are not many rooms. It is a small apartment. Mark has a key but apparently he does not have eyes. He swears, and goes into the bedroom to appropriate one of Eduardo's ridiculously oversized sweaters, the ones he wears when he's tired and cold even though Mark is a perfectly comfortable temperature in just his hoodie and a seasonally inappropriate pair of shorts, and he heads to the dresser, yanks twice on the handle of the second drawer down (that sticks too), and --
-- and it's full of his own clothes.
Mark blinks. Sure, he remembers Eduardo putting a couple of his hoodies in there when they'd ended up dubiously stained and Eduardo had peeled them off over Mark's head and had not looked even the slightest bit apologetic about coming all over Mark's clothes but had offered to put them through the wash for him, and then told Mark they were in the dresser when he wanted them. He also remembers Eduardo bullying him into bringing a few pairs of jeans over, sweats, a couple of tees -- "You cannot keep going to work in the same clothes, Mark, I refuse to allow it, you are the CEO, at least have the option of a second hoodie here." -- and in theory he was aware that this drawer now contained entirely his own clothing, but in practice - oh, god, is it actually possible Mark can have moved in without noticing it?
He closes the drawer and grabs one of Eduardo's stupid sweaters from the next drawer down, and goes into the bathroom. His toothbrush is next to Eduardo's on the sink.
He goes back into the kitchen, mildly alarmed, and next to the scary kinds of health-conscious soft drinks (what the fuck is burdock?), there are a few bottles of Mark's favourite beer. Mark did not buy them. He hasn't questioned it when Eduardo has passed him a bottle now and then, but, okay, now he is remembering a conversation in which Eduardo shrugged and said I prefer Blue Moon and the bottles in the fridge that Mark can't look away from are Sam Adams and Mark knows with his staggering intellect that Blue Moon is not Sam Adams.
So he sort of lives here. Okay. How is he the only person in the world who can be living with someone and not know it? Is it even possible to be living with someone when you still have your own house, or is that a different thing? Is there such a thing as mostly living with someone? Mark scowls down at his feet, and goes and codes, because code gives him questions he can answer, and the rest of his life is devolving into stupidity around his ears.
Then he has to stop coding, because he's tired and thirsty, and his hands are cold even though the rest of him is warm in Eduardo's gigantic sweater, and none of these things are answering his stupid living arrangement question.
He texts Chris.
do I live with Eduardo?
surprisingly I do not have this information, Chris texts back, as I am not actually you. how the fuck do you not know where you live??
Chris has a good point.
I hate you, Mark informs him, childishly, and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
He goes and gets one of the beers from the fridge, and pulls the comforter over his legs on the couch, and codes again until it starts to get dusky outside, relaxing line by line, unwinding from family and two unexpected life upheavals in as many weeks. Seriously, Mark has spent a good twenty something years perfectly happy with his work and his website and his life in general, and then all of a sudden, bam, you're in love, smash, you're accidently living with someone, thwap, have another fucking beer and stop thinking about this so much.
He's tired enough that he keeps mis-pressing keys, catching two at once, or blanking suddenly halfway through a line, so he just saves what he's got and takes a break. He actually ends up spending his evening flicking through one of Eduardo's photo albums while the sun goes slowly down outside. He figures that if Eduardo gave him a key, it's definitely okay for him to pry a little - and, also, he can bring the Harvard network down so he can fucking well figure out how to crack the intense security system of a closed drawer.
He flips past pictures of people he doesn't know but thinks must be Eduardo's family, the woman Mark thinks is Eduardo's mother, who is rake-thin and wide-mouthed, smiling in every single picture, and then Eduardo's father with his arm around her waist, who looks stern, but not unapproachable. He finds what he's really looking for a few pages in, when there's a picture of Eduardo on a beach so bright that the sand is almost painful to look at even in the photograph, wearing trunks and nothing else, smiling so hard his face is almost creased in half with it and running a hand through his wet hair, clearly straight out of the sea. Mark doesn't want to know who's taking this picture, doesn't really care. He stares at it until his mouth goes dry, and then he slides it out of the album and into his pocket.
It's possible that the same people who would leave that hypothetical box closed would also have some issues with Mark's ideas of personal boundaries, but he couldn't really give a fuck.
He hears the door downstairs bang shut at about nine that night, when he's having a second attempt at fixing the typo-filled code, and then, after an amount of time that is clearly Eduardo noticing the alarm already disabled, he hears, "Mark?" and his chest does something stupid and unnecessarily constrictive, like he's not heard Eduardo's voice on the phone for the last few nights, like they've been apart for much longer than under two weeks, Jesus Christ, what has even happened to Mark?
"No," he shouts back, listening to Eduardo's footsteps on the stairs, "I'm a terrifying robber and I'm here to steal all your cake."
There's a scuffling at the lock of the apartment door at the top of the staircase, and Eduardo says, warm, meters away, "Dustin, is that you?"
"Fuck off," Mark says, and then the front door opens and Eduardo walks in.
Mark had not really thought this was possible, but Eduardo actually looks more attractive than he remembers. He's got a suit on, but it's wrinkled from the flight, and he looks like he hasn't slept since take-off, or maybe before then, but he's still the best-looking thing Mark has ever seen, which is fantastically unfair. Mark does not look like that after plane journeys, or, actually, ever.
Eduardo looks mildly horrified when he notices the photo album open on the coffee table in front of Mark, but it's tempered by his smile, the way he walks in and sees Mark sitting in his apartment with his feet up on the furniture and just smiles, like he's been holding his breath and Mark is the surface of the water.
Mark is obviously more tired than he thought if he's thinking things like that. Fucking similes.
"Hello," Eduardo says, still with that wide, first breath smile, and Mark shoves his laptop to one side with suddenly shaking hands and gets to his feet, and Eduardo steps forward and hasn't even put his bags down before he reaches out to pull Mark in.
"Hello," Mark says, after a minute, when they both remember that air is necessary to their continued survival, and Eduardo pulls back to press his forehead against Mark's and pant happily near his mouth. "How was your flight?"
Eduardo laughs at him, and Mark has his hands all over Eduardo, on his back, on his ribs, feeling the creases in his suit, and he laughs back.
Mark had not expected to miss him this much.
"I missed you so much more than I wanted to," he says, lulled into honesty by the smell of Eduardo's skin, warm, a little stale from the plane. Mark is not unobservant, olefactorily or otherwise, so of course he's noticed how Eduardo smells, it's just - okay, so Mark spends a lot of time thinking about things in groups, like line breaks for memory, for cross-referencing, but Eduardo refuses to be taken apart. Mark can't separate out individual aspects of him, like, oh: I like his smile, or, oh: I don't even mind his horrible morning breath: when he thinks about Eduardo, he thinks about all of him, and that is what he has missed. All of him. Just, oh: Eduardo.
Eduardo laughs, ruffling Mark's hair. Mark doesn't even mind that much either, that is how ruined he has become. "Thank you," he says. "I think."
"I mean," says Mark, tired and nonsensical, liking Eduardo's palm open against the back of his neck, "I missed your smell."
"Are you saying I smell?" Eduardo teases, running his fingers through the curls at the nape of Mark's neck, and Mark grumbles, and shivers a bit, and says, "No, Wardo, don't be facetious," and Eduardo says, "I'm not, I'm not, just - " and leans down to angle his mouth up under Mark's grumpily dipped chin and kisses him again.
"How was your trip?" Mark asks, when they next break apart, but he doesn't really need to, can see it in the way Eduardo shoulders off his bag and rolls out his neck, like the last few days have mostly been one long tension headache. Mark gets that there's something with his father, he gets that, but he can't believe it: he genuinely cannot believe that there is someone who can look at Eduardo, and think he is worth anything less than - than fucking everything, okay, Mark is not going to let dignity or, like, masculine reserve get in the way of that particular thought.
He can't get it out, though, so instead, he says, sitting down on the couch, pulling his laptop back towards him, "You should come to New York some time."
Eduardo sits down next to him. "Yeah?" he says, in this soft little voice. Mark refuses to look up from his screen, doesn't trust himself to get this right if he does.
"Yeah," he says, and then he swallows, and his hands are shaking slightly on his keyboard, because apparently he can code rings round basically anyone but he cannot have this conversation without getting damp palms and a dry throat. He shrugs. "My mom said it would be nice to meet you," he says, by way of getting onto marginally safer ground, and Eduardo leans in and kisses him on the neck, nuzzling up behind Mark's ear.
"I'd love to," he says, like he's seen straight through Mark's ridiculous inability to talk about his feelings. "Thank you."
Mark inhales again, big and unexpected, and leans his head down to breathe against Eduardo's shoulder.
As nice as breathing Eduardo in is, right now it's mostly just reminding Mark that he hasn't showered since the night before, and there's been a coast to coast plane trip in his life since then.
"Fuck," he says, "I need to shower."
Eduardo holds onto his hoodie sleeve when he tries to stand up again, looking bone tired and reluctant to get up, but Mark reaches down for the sleeve of his crumpled suit and says, "Come with me?" and Eduardo gets to his feet gratifyingly quickly.
That is not the only thing Eduardo does gratifyingly quickly in the next half an hour, and Mark tells him so when they're sprawled out over the bed, half toweled dry and half sweat wet again.
"Shut up," says Eduardo, as Mark pants and feels a bit like a champion, "I really missed you."
"Evidently," says Mark, in the closest thing to a drawl he can manage, and Eduardo rolls onto his side so he can slap a hand down in protest on Mark's chest, just hard enough to hurt.
Mark says, "Ow, what the hell," in this entirely faked protest, but Eduardo just buries his face against the side of Mark's neck and says, "Shh, sleeping now," and Mark quietens down, dragging a tee and his boxers back on. It's too cold for him to sleep without them.
He nudges Eduardo with his foot after a second, pulling the duvet up over them both, and demands that he at least put some boxers on, and Eduardo tells him in a sleepy, unequivocal sort of way that he will do no such thing, and Mark will have to like it.
Mark thinks that last part was sort of a given, but he falls asleep before he lets Eduardo know.
//
Mark swims awake when the light coming in through the curtains is closer to early afternoon than late morning, and he makes a disgruntled noise, and throws an arm over his eyes in protest. From behind his elbow, he hears Eduardo laugh.
Mark peels his arm off his face and turns his head on the pillow. Eduardo is smiling morning-soft at him from the other side of the bed, and when he sees Mark looking back, he ducks his head down to nuzzle against Mark's shoulder.
At no point in Mark's life before he met Eduardo had he ever really considered that something like this might happen to him. Eduardo is still pink-cheeked from sleep, and he's warm against Mark's side, bare chest pressed against Mark's ribs through Mark's sleep-warm tee, and he has this sweet little smile that makes Mark think of Chris saying, you looked gentle.
Mark sort of understands what that means now, looking at Eduardo and the curve of his dry mouth in the first few moments of the day.
This is the sort of nonsense Mark only allows himself to get away with when he's just woken up, has not yet showered away new dawn vulnerabilities.
"Ugh," says Mark, mostly so he can stop hearing himself think horrible Harlequin novel type things and start feeling like an actual person again, "go away. Your face is giving me diabetes."
Eduardo laughs sleepily against Mark's shoulder. "It's Sunday," he says, slightly fuzzily, like he's only half awake. "I don't have to get up on Sundays."
"Websites never sleep," says Mark. "That's why my job is so much better than yours."
Eduardo punches him gently on his side, a brush of knuckles against ribs. It shouldn't make Mark shiver hot, but it does.
"I have to get up," he says, not getting up.
"Mmph," says Eduardo, like he's falling asleep again. "Don't."
"But," says Mark, still not moving, "I have to."
"Don't," Eduardo says again, drowsy and slurred. "I don't want you to."
Mark turns his neck to look at him, all ridiculous bed hair tickling Mark's jaw and morning breath against Mark's side, and thinks, slightly surprised, I don't want to either.
//
When he eventually does get up and go into work, because he's been away for nine days and it's making him physically antsy not to have been there himself despite the fact that he's right in the fucking centre of the loop at all times, thanks to an incredibly maintained email-checking paranoia, he still checks his phone to see if Eduardo's woken up again yet just before he opens up his laptop.
bring back eggs, Eduardo has sent, having apparently gotten up and showered and completed a forensic examination of the empty fridge in the time it has taken Mark to slug back a coffee and shuffle his way to the office. I'll make omelettes tonight.
Mark has never felt so domestic in his life, and he's not even the one cooking.
He hesitates for a second, checking for suspicious Dustin-shapes hidden around his office, in case Dustin can somehow sense when Mark is about to do something he doesn't want anyone to see and then just turn up like whatever the emotional equivalent of a cock-block is, and then types out a reply.
go back to sleep. back soon. m.
the bed's cold without you in it :(
that is what the duvet is for, Mark the eternal romantic sends back, and Eduardo goes, i forget because i get it so rarely. AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT. (not mine).
It is simultaneously nauseating and amazing, what has happened to Mark's life now Eduardo is in it.
He checks his watch, and opens up his laptop, and starts working, only to be interrupted maybe only an hour later by Dustin bursting into his office.
"Olá, minha princesa!" calls Dustin, as the door ricochets off the far wall and Mark startles out of his concentration. "Have you missed me? I have missed you, my sweet baker-banging friend."
If Mark had missed Dustin, it is safe to say he cannot envisage this ever being a possibility again.
"No," he says, "I've really not." Dustin pulls a ludicrously fake hurt face while Mark continues, "And how do you know Portuguese?"
Dustin shrugs, coming over to perch on Mark's desk despite Mark's narrow-eyed glare of deterrence. "Babelfish."
"Why?" Mark asks, and then instantly regrets it.
"Because I am single and languages are sexy," Dustin says. "As well you should know, Mr I'm-fucking-a-hot-Brazilian."
"Your fixation on my sex life is truly alarming."
"That's just it," Dustin says, jabbing him in the chest. "You have a sex life. And with Eduardo, who I think even the blind and deaf could agree does not have to be under the sea to be twenty leagues hotter than you."
Mark pries Dustin's finger away from his sternum in silent, horrified reproach. "That doesn't make sense," he says. "And did you call me a princess?"
"Yes," says Dustin. "I can say hello, my princess in ten languages now. I figure that should cover all my bases, so I can reach some bases, and then abandon all sports metaphors for having lots of sex."
"What a constructive use of your time," Mark tells him, as dryly as he can, and puts his headphones back on.
Dustin reaches out and slides them off his ears.
"What?" says Mark, actually irritated.
"Have you see Wardo since you got back?" Dustin asks, in a completely different tone of voice, and Mark looks down at his hands to hide his smile.
"Yeah," he says, to his shoes. "He, um, got back last night."
Dustin touches his shoulder. "You're doing great, Mark," he says.
Mark has also spent his Hanukkah break trying to forget that during the Halo wars just after Eduardo left for Miami, Dustin had spotted Mark turning the key over and over his knuckles when he'd thought no-one was watching, and then actually physically forced him to explain by sitting on him until he choked out that Eduardo had given him a key to his apartment. Chris had looked like he might burst with pride; Dustin had just looked like he might burst.
"It's just a key," Mark says, now, but he can feel himself going red and pleased, and Dustin doesn't comment on it, which might actually be one of the signs of the apocalypse but is also kind of a relief.
"Sure," says Dustin, dragging it out, barreling straight out of understanding and back into cheerful and obnoxious. "It's just a key. To his heart."
Mark manages to catch him off-guard when he kicks him in the shin.
//
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: you would wear a pink dress
bonjour, ma princesse
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: and little pink shoes
ciao, mia principessa
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: AND A TIARA
GUTEN TAG MEINE PRINZESSIN
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: EDUARDO WOULD BE YOUR CONSORT. HE WEARS THE TROUSERS AND YOU WEAR THE DRESS. BECAUSE YOU ARE A PRETTY PINK BAKER-LOVING PRINCESS.
HELLO, MY PRINCESS
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I am so bored
ONLY IMAGINE YOU ARE BOTH STANDING ON TOP OF A GIANT CAKE.
to: e.saverin@gmail.com
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: can I borrow a kitchen knife?
you would visit me in prison if I killed Dustin, right? IT IS AN IMMINENT EVENT.
from: e.saverin@gmail.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: alarming request for murder weapons
only if it was a conjugal visit
I'm only in this for your body
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: WHEN YOU ARE SLEEPING, WHEN YOU TURN YOUR BACK, THAT IS WHEN I WILL STRIKE
also explain why the arms are completely different lengths. troll better, moskovitz.
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: I NEVER SLEEP I AM LIKE A SLOTH BUT THE OPPOSITE. I AM A HTOLS. AWAKE FOREVER, MURDERED NEVER. IF IT RHYMES IT'S TRUE.
because drawing on trackpads is hard, mark. it saddens me that you do not appreciate the pains I take to bring these delights to your life.
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: if I have a rage blackout, you are first on my hit list
consider this a warning
from: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
to: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: you are not a frightening individual
BUT
STOP THREATENING ME
WHERE IS YOUR CHRISTMAS SPIRIT?
from: mark.zuckerberg@facebook.com
to: dustinohyeahitsdustin@facebook.com
subj: yes I am
with hanukkah.
//
Mark rings in the new year ensconced in his living room with Eduardo and Chris and Dustin, playing Halo with less friendly competition and more frenzied battles to the death for honour and glory, or whatever Dustin had said, very seriously, before taking advantage of the fact that everyone was giving him the side-eye to snatch up the controller and mow them all down in one burst of devious machine-gunnery. In the spirit of the evening, Eduardo had brought along cookies shaped like beer bottles. Mark had told him he didn't have to, and Eduardo had said something polite to the bone, along the lines of always bringing a gift if you're a guest in someone's home.
"What?" Mark had said, genuinely surprised, because what the hell, Eduardo had given Mark a key and he still thought he was a guest in Mark's house? "Don't be ridiculous, Wardo, you're not a guest."
Eduardo had said it was just a figure of speech, but he'd looked pleased, and Mark had humphed something about not having heard that one before, and then turned the volume up on the tv to avoid going pointlessly red.
Eduardo had made cookies anyway, and he'd held out cookie dough to Mark on the tips of his fingers and his eyes had gone dark as Mark leaned in and swirled his tongue to the knuckles.
They did nearly burn the cookies after that, but the point is that the cookies were fine, Dustin was over the moon, and Mark has Chris's game character in his sights and he's pretty sure Chris hasn't noticed yet, so all's well that - is still in the process of ending well, if you want to be picky, because it's not yet January 1st.
The plan is to play Halo till five to the hour, and then watch the ball drop in Times Square --
"Seriously?" Mark asks, a little incredulous. "Isn't that a bit unbelievably lame?"
Eduardo shrugs. "I like it," he says, unapologetic, and Mark sort of can't say no, which is embarrassing. Dustin lobs a cushion at his face and tells him he's whipped, and Eduardo throws it back while Mark is still busy being indignant and says, "You know it."
-- but the power goes off at eleven, and the house is plunged into darkness.
Mark would like to know exactly which deity or part of the universe has a hand in making his life an actual sham.
There's a moment or two where everyone sort of sits around registering the fact that there's no electricity, because they are a handful of the best and brightest minds of their generation, and then Chris says, "Mark, do you have any candles?"
"No," says Mark. "Why would I have candles?"
Chris says, "In case the power goes out."
Mark can sort of grudgingly see his point.
Mark goes to check the fuse box when Eduardo points out that it could just be a blown fuse, but it's not. Mark is getting bad-tempered, because having things not go to plan is not something he's especially good at, but when he turns round from the unhelpful fuse box, Eduardo is holding the torch under his chin and pulling a stupid face, and Mark can't be bad-tempered about that.
They go back through to the living room, and Chris and Dustin have apparently managed to find some candles that Mark has zero recollection of buying, but slightly more importantly, they've found --
"Vodka!" says Dustin, triumphantly, holding a bottle aloft. "I have an excellent idea."
"I doubt that," says Mark. Eduardo elbows him as they sit back down, Mark in the armchair, Eduardo pressed between the arm and Mark's side, half on Mark's knee.
"Oh ye of little faith," says Dustin, blessedly and uncharacteristically ignoring Eduardo practically sitting on Mark's lap, and he's extracted the shot glasses he bought Mark for some birthday back in Harvard and lined them up on Mark's coffee table. Mark has a sneaking, sinking suspicion that he knows where this is going. "We'll play I never!" Dustin continues, and Mark is right, and this is such a bad idea.
"I'm sorry," Chris says, drily, from the couch. "I somehow missed the part where we time-warped back to Kirkland."
Mark checks his watch. Eleven fifteen.
"I can think of worse ideas," Eduardo offers, traitorously. Mark shoots him a glare, but Eduardo just smiles at him. Mark is CEO of Facebook and the youngest billionaire in the world and has actually made interns cry on more than one occasion (mostly accidently), but Eduardo is apparently immune to all of that.
Dustin is watching him intently from across the room, which isn't at all alarming.
Chris says, "I - have surprisingly few objections, if it means I can get very drunk very quickly."
Dustin adds, "Plus, when Mark gets drunk, he gets honest."
"More honest," Chris corrects.
Mark thinks all the way back to drinking in a bar and grabbing Eduardo's wrist and saying, it wasn't about the money, and goes red. Next to him, Eduardo shifts, and wraps his fingers around Mark's wrist, fingertips to his pulse point, like he's thinking the same thing. Mark doesn't look at him, because there are two other people in the room who would hear and mock him if he said something embarrassing or notice if he shoved his hand into Eduardo's pants, but he does go warm all over, which is one reason to be glad that candlelight isn't actually that far-reaching.
Chris interrupts this dignified moment in Mark's life by saying, "What the hell. Let's do it."
All the supporting pillars of Mark's argument are falling to the lure of alcohol and gossip. Mark is a falling pediment, and also possibly slightly buzzed already, which explains why he says, "Fine," in as long-suffering a voice as he can manage, and accepts the shot Dustin enthusiastically pours for him.
Chris taps his fingers against his elbow for a minute, thinking, and then he smiles in a way Mark recognises from the prank wars of freshman year, when Dustin was about to get royally served. This does not bode well. "I never," Chris says, slowly, "participated in a blow-job in a bakery."
Mark chokes on his own spit, which is dignified. He can feel Eduardo blushing.
"You told them?" Eduardo says, mildly scandalised, and then, "Wait, no, of course you did."
He and Mark both drink, and across the room, Dustin eyes Chris with a sort of delighted admiration.
"You never accept my proposals, Christopher," he says, "but you are my favourite person."
Chris shrugs, like, I know, I am awesome, your adulation is unnecessary. Dustin's smile is almost wider than his face.
Mark clears his throat and all eyes snap back to him. "I never," he says, and tries to think of something retaliatory, " - had to go to student health because Dustin smashed an X-box controller into my face."
Chris flicks him off and takes a shot. Dustin reaches over to pat his knee.
"I apologised at the time," he says, not sounding particularly sorry through his cheek-wide grin, "but let me just say I am still sorry. Although not so much, because you cheated, and you deserved it, but the apology remains at least slightly valid."
Chris wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "I did not cheat," he protests. "It's not my fault I can eat and hold a controller and beat you senseless."
"Exactly!" cries Dustin, and Chris cocks his head to the side like explain yourself, Moskovitz, your logic is not my logic or indeed anyone's logic, and Dustin goes, "I was weak from hunger! I cannot be blamed for any violent tendencies I might have displayed."
"Also," Mark points out, because he never gets sick of this argument, even though it should be grating and juvenile by now, "Dustin was weaker than usual and he still beat the shit out of you."
"It was one lucky smack!" Dustin yelps, shooting wide-eyed glances at Chris, and then, instantly, backtracking: "Well, not lucky, but, er, er - "
"Fluky," Eduardo chimes in. "An accidental strike."
Dustin eyes him in appreciation; Mark instinctively curls his arm tighter around Eduardo's waist. Eduardo gives this little fond smile down at his chest.
Dustin says, "Chris, Chris, Chris, we cannot fight, we must unite against mutual hyperglycemic shock and then both of us must try to land fluky accidental strikes on their happiness."
Chris is laughing seemingly despite himself, and he finally peels Dustin's hand off his knee and agrees.
"But only if you stop rhyming," he says, and Dustin sort of shrugs with his face, and agrees.
He fills Chris's shot glass again, raising his own.
"I never," says Dustin, and Chris's expression mirrors Mark's internal trepidation, "um, I never went commando."
Unfortunately, Mark knows that is a dirty lie, and so he is entirely unsurprised when Dustin slugs back his shot. He drains his too -- laundry hadn't been his strong suit at Kirkland, or ever, and it's not like he needed to be presentable or wear anything other than three day worn sweats and a dubiously stained hoodie to code -- but he is slightly surprised when Chris drinks his shot down too, and less surprised and more incredibly turned on when Eduardo knocks his back as well.
"Christopher," Dustin breathes, sounding impressed, but Mark mostly tunes this out, because although that was vaguely revelatory, he has no interest whatsoever in the contents of Chris's pants but a significantly vested interest in the contents of Eduardo's.
He's staring at Eduardo's crotch like the world's creepiest nerd despite the fact that he watched Eduardo get dressed this morning and knows full well what's under his dress pants when Dustin coughs pointedly and he looks up, going red.
Eduardo is laughing quietly behind his hand. Mark elbows him in the ribs.
"Much as I hate to agree with Dustin on anything," Chris says, "can you maybe keep the incredibly subtle eye-fucking down to a minimum while in company? Especially single company. Thanks so much."
"Okay!" Eduardo jumps in, brightly, before Mark can retaliate. "My turn."
Dustin pours everyone more shots. Mark can practically taste his hangover coming.
Eduardo thinks for a second, and Mark watches the candlelight flicker on his skin, catching the dips of his collarbone where his shirt is loosely unbuttoned at the neck. Fuck, okay, maybe Mark doesn't really need any more to drink.
Not that that's going to stop him or anything.
Eduardo says, "I've never lost a game of Mario Kart." Everyone else drinks. Eduardo doesn't touch his shot.
There is a moment of shocked, awed silence, and then Dustin says, testing, suspicious, "Have you ever played Mario Kart?"
"Yes," Eduardo says, and he sounds like Mark remembers hearing in his own voice when he'd turned round from the computer to tell Chris one hundred thousand members, self-satisfied. "Lots."
Dustin makes this strangled noise that sounds actually painful, and Chris pats his shoulder. "Just because you can't avoid green shells doesn't mean everyone is incompetent," he says, and Dustin says, high-pitched, "There's a difference between avoiding green shells and never losing, oh my god, Wardo, you are my king. The king of all kings. Except maybe Elvis."
"Do not get him started on Elvis," Mark warns, as Eduardo opens his mouth, and then kisses him, to make his point. Eduardo opens his mouth again, then, but Mark is entirely okay with that.
Chris lobs a couch cushion at them, which Mark thinks is unfair and unoriginal since Dustin already did that earlier, but he doesn't pull away for a good thirty seconds more, making his point. When he does, Eduardo has a hand up the back of his shirt, so he clearly doesn't particularly mind being part of Mark's agenda.
Mark's brain takes this moment to remind him of Eduardo's lips against his ear, I'm not always very nice, and he takes advantage of the cushion on his lap by pulling it further across his crotch.
"I hate you both," Chris informs them, and Dustin pours them all more vodka.
Mark raises his glass, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Eduardo looking at him, fond, intent. He has to swallow before he can start talking, but he puts that down to the vodka finally kicking in.
He thinks, madly, dizzily, I've never been this happy, but he's not drunk enough to say it. He wonders if Eduardo would drink to that. He hopes he wouldn't. He -- he thinks he really might not.
Oh god, this hangover is going to be horrific.
Maybe it's going to be even more horrific than Mark is anticipating, because somewhat without him noticing, he's become drunk enough that he doesn't stop that thought right the fuck there, safe and stupid and locked in his brain, but instead lets it out, says, "I've never been this happy," aloud, where people can hear him, and pushes his shot away from him on the coffee table.
Eduardo doesn't say anything, but he puts his shot down too.
Mark doesn't see whether Chris or Dustin drink, because he's too busy licking his way back into Eduardo's mouth, right there with Eduardo in his lap and Chris compiling a hoard of cushion missiles to throw at them, and Mark may be drunk, but he's not lying.
He's so happy.
And then, like Mark's life is a movie or something else ridiculous -- who would watch a film about someone coding twenty hours a day? -- the power boots back up just before midnight, and the Halo menu music makes them all jump. Mark fumbles for the remote, and switches to NBC, and right as the channel changes, fireworks go off all around them, and the stupid ball drops, and Dustin and Chris and Eduardo cheer, as one.
"Happy New Year!" Dustin is shouting, repeatedly, and then he grabs Chris's collar and kisses him.
There seems to be a lot of that going around tonight.
Chris splutters a lot and shoves him off, and Dustin grins drunkenly at him and explains.
"You're supposed to kiss someone at midnight," he says, and Chris says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, "Yeah, but not me."
"Well, I couldn't kiss Eduardo because Mark might have killed me," Dustin says, which is the most sensible thing he has said all night, in Mark's opinion.
"What about Mark?" On the other hand, Chris is rapidly losing points.
"No," Dustin says, sounding more disgusted than Mark really thinks is necessary. "And what are these protestations, Christopher, why do you continually deny my love for you?"
Mark is then distracted from the ensuing idiocy whereby Chris chases Dustin around the room with an angry cushion as Dustin shouts "I kissed Chris Hughes!" because Eduardo puts a hand on his elbow and turns him in.
"Happy New Year," he says, softly, as Mark looks up at him, and then he takes Mark's chin in his hand to tilt his face up, and kisses him.
Afterwards, when Chris has manhandled Dustin into the backseat of a cab, because he has apparently got magical powers that enable him to get a cab in the early hours of New Years' Day, and Eduardo is sprawled over Mark's couch, making sleepy, tipsy protests that he's not tired at all in between drifting in and out of sleep, Mark sits with Eduardo's legs over his lap and his laptop balanced on Eduardo's skinny ankles and checks the traffic isn't too much for the site, that everything's holding up okay, and thinks it was a pretty good night.
//
Mark wakes up groggily, far too few hours later, with Eduardo still sprawled out across his lap, dead to the world. He's snoring again. Mark has a crick in his neck and the promise of a really horrible headache, and his stomach is doing something he suspects he's only really going to be able to ignore for a few minutes at best, but he lies there for a second and just looks at Eduardo. His mouth is open, and he's drooling a bit against the cushions, and his shirt is beyond wrinkled, and he's still the best looking thing Mark has ever seen.
There's something digging into the small of his back, and when he grimaces and reaches for it, it's his phone. He has three texts waiting.
One is from around two in the morning, when Chris and Dustin had just left. It says, markk ilo vvvvve ewe.
Mark sends back, thank you for your fleecy affections.
The reply comes almost instantly, dude shut up you've never been this happy.
Fuck. Okay, well, something tells Mark he's not living that one down for a while. He files that delightful thought away to cope with when his head isn't threatening a revolt at any moment, and settles for hoping Dustin is in the throes of a really vicious morning after.
The next missed text is from Chris, around four. dustin stripped in the cab, it says. i hope you choke on your own vomit when you wake up.
Mark ignores that one, though not without a brief pang of sympathy. Naked Dustin is a harrowing Kirkland memory. Something tells him Dustin really is having a bad morning right about now.
The last text is from a couple of hours ago. It says, happy new year :) xxxxx
It's from Eduardo.
It is at this point that Mark's stomach decides it is high time he high tailed it off the couch, so he texts Eduardo back from the floor in the upstairs bathroom, half an hour later.
you're missing new year's day. wake up. x
Eduardo pads barefoot into the room a few minutes later, yawning, with his hair sticking up in stupid ways and his shirt untucked from his pants.
"We should have sex later," Mark tells him, blearily, from the floor, and Eduardo smiles sleepily down at him.
"Okay," he says, amenably, sitting down next to Mark, "as long as you brush your teeth first."
"I make no promises," Mark says, closing his eyes and leaning against the bathroom wall, and Eduardo leans against him.
//
(continued here)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 10:35 pm (UTC)I've been hanging around your LJ like a creep and refreshing every ten seconds so I could see the moment when this went up
I'M GOING TO GO BACK AND READ IT NOW AND LEAVE A MORE SUBSTANTIVE COMMENT LATER BUT I JUST WANTED TO SAY I HAVE SO BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS. &HEARTS; &HEARTS; &HEARTS;
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 04:36 pm (UTC)(also I love that icon so much. UGH MATT AND KAREN HOW ARE YOU THIS WAYYYY)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 10:50 pm (UTC)Ahh, I am so ridiculously excited. :D [This is vaguely embarrassing.]
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:<-- this is my face right now
Date: 2011-04-26 11:03 pm (UTC)Going off to die of diabetes now.
Re: <-- this is my face right now
Date: 2011-04-29 04:47 pm (UTC)Re: <-- this is my face right now
From:no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 11:03 pm (UTC)or like only inviting someone into a bike room and expecting them not to bite back.
Heheheheh.
Mark has a key but apparently he does not have eyes.
For some reasont hat line just made me smile. Probably because Mark is so fixated on having a key. ...and moving in without noticing. Sigh. ♥ Um, I love how Mark realizes he has a bunch of clothing at Eduardo's apartment but still wears one of Eduardo's sweaters.
...did Mark really just steal a picture of Eduardo? REALLY? idek how to feel about that.
Their reunion after a whole two weeks apart is so adorable.
...checking for suspicious Dustin-shapes hidden around his office, in case Dustin can somehow sense when Mark is about to do something he doesn't want anyone to see and then just turn up like whatever the emotional equivalent of a cock-block is...
Ahahahaha that is exactly what Dustin is. XD Eduardo's dig about the duvet ugh so domestically adorable. Baker-banging. XD XD I love the dynamic between Mark and Dustin so, so much. XD Dustin's picture, omfg dying. DYING. The emails. I will not make it through the rest of this because I will be dead from laughing and that is my GREATEST REGRET. A htols. what the actual fuck. XD
Re: key - Mark, maybe you should give Eduardo one you silly, silly boy.
"You never accept my proposals, Christopher," he says, "but you are my favourite person."
Chris shrugs, like, I know, I am awesome, your adulation is unnecessary. Dustin's smile is almost wider than his face.
Chris. I love you. Please marry Dustin in lieu of marrying me.
"Much as I hate to agree with Dustin on anything," Chris says, "can you maybe keep the incredibly subtle eye-fucking down to a minimum while in company? Especially single company. Thanks so much."
I am dead. Dead of the laughter. And the incredibly subtle eye-fucking.
o. m. g. the "i've never been this happy." my heart. it has melted. the hearts in my eyes have melted. my cats' hearts have melted from proximity. ughgghgghahghasd;fae;lkj.
Okay so one last coherent comment on this bit: I love how intact you've kept Mark's drive to work and check his email and his laptop withdrawl. It is still so Mark even if it is relentlessly schmoopy and WONDERFUL.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:03 pm (UTC)ajhgdhjdfs I am so glad you enjoyed this! Thank you so much for your amazing comments, you have no idea how much they make me smile. IT'S A LOT. LIKE THIS: :DDDDDD
I am so glad Mark's work drive worked for you :D and ffff, boy is ridiculous, he steals photos and wears Eduardo's sweaters. At some point in the future he tells Eduardo that he took the photo and Eduardo is just like I AM RIGHT HERE THOUGH? and Mark blushes grumpily all over the place like I KNOW I JUST -JSHDFS - and Eduardo is like ugh you are so ridiculous, give it back, I will make you a copy and then we can both be happy. And then Mark eventually figures out he should give Eduardo a key too, and then rainbows explode everywhere. I HAVE THOUGHT THIS THROUGH TOO MUCH.
jdfhjsdg apologies for melting your heart.
<3333333
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2011-04-26 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:04 pm (UTC)I WROTE IT OUT OF A NEED TO SEE THEM HAPPY SO IT IS GOOD TO KNOW IT WORKS AS A CHEER UP STORY FOR OTHER PEOPLE TOOO. \o/
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 01:10 am (UTC)*throws out evening plans*
You're so good to us. <333
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 01:50 am (UTC)(sorry for this useless comment, I will give a better one later I swear)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 04:23 am (UTC)LAUGHING LIKE A CRAZY PERSON.
I WROTE A HAIKU:
DUSTIN THE SLOTH-LIKE
I WISH TO BE YOUR PRINCESS
WE CAN WRITE IN CAPS
But seriously, your Dustin is amazing as is everything else. I love the humor and the feelings and EVERYTHING. *rereads forever*
THANK YOU FOR THIS YOU WONDERFUL HUMAN.
/Sorry for being crazy in your general direction.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 03:23 am (UTC)<3 u bb!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:10 pm (UTC)(obligatory icon mention here. hnnnnng)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 04:44 am (UTC)okay
favorite lines, you know the drill.
He stares at it until his mouth goes dry,
At no point in Mark's life before he met Eduardo had he ever really considered that something like this might happen to him.
Mark can sort of grudgingly see his point.
Mark can practically taste his hangover coming.
GPOY, MARK. GPOY.
Mark doesn't see whether Chris or Dustin drink, because he's too busy licking his way back into Eduardo's mouth, right there with Eduardo in his lap and Chris compiling a hoard of cushion missiles to throw at them, and Mark may be drunk, but he's not lying.
Mark sends back, thank you for your fleecy affections.
and BAKER-BANGING. BAKER-BANGING. YOUR ARGUMENT IS INVALID. BAKER-BANGING. AFKLDJASFD;.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:14 pm (UTC)WHILE I AM HERE, I SOMEHOW MANAGED TO ENTIRELY MISS YOU POSTING THAT SUMMER AU ON THE KINK MEME AND GOT TO READ IT ALL IN ONE GLORIOUS GO THE OTHER DAY AND IT WAS AMAZING, I AM GOING TO COMMENT ALL OVER IT SOON.
AND
THEN
THE HEART ATTACK FIIIIIIC OH UGH YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD THE STUPID NOISE I MADE WHEN I SAW YOU HAD POSTED THAT.
hjsgfhjs your comments make me flail all over the place, how are you reeeeeal. <3333 Thank you so much, I am so glad you liked this part toooo bb. ♥ ♥ ♥
YOUR ICON IS FOREVER BAKER WARDO IN MY MIND LOOK AT HIS SMIIIIILE.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 06:39 am (UTC)FVLGJFDGHKFDG I AM SO EXCITED.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 12:06 pm (UTC)BUT CAN I JUST SAY?
GO AWAY YOUR FACE IS GIVING ME DIABETES. ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 12:12 pm (UTC)"and he heads to the dresser, yanks twice on the handle of the second drawer down (that sticks too), and --
-- and it's full of his own clothes."
OH MY GOD, WARDOOOOOOOO HE IS ADORABLE AND SO IN LOVE AND AWWWWWWWWWW
"when there's a picture of Eduardo on a beach so bright that the sand is almost painful to look at even in the photograph, wearing trunks and nothing else, smiling so hard his face is almost creased in half with it and running a hand through his wet hair, clearly straight out of the sea."
OK EDUARDO, JUST COME AND HAVE BABIES WITH ME ALREADY.
"Mark had not expected to miss him this much."
OHH THE HAPPINESS! THE JOY! MY HEART IS GOING TO EXPLODE, I THINK.
"At no point in Mark's life before he met Eduardo had he ever really considered that something like this might happen to him. Eduardo is still pink-cheeked from sleep, and he's warm against Mark's side, bare chest pressed against Mark's ribs through Mark's sleep-warm tee, and he has this sweet little smile that makes Mark think of Chris saying, you looked gentle."
HOLY FUCKING FUCK.
THAT LINE.
THE GENTLE LINE.
I'M GOING TO CRY.
LITERALLY JUST GOING TO SIT HERE AND WEEP FOR A WHILE.
BRB.
""go away. Your face is giving me diabetes.""
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA
""Yes," says Dustin. "I can say hello, my princess in ten languages now. I figure that should cover all my bases, so I can reach some bases, and then abandon all sports metaphors for having lots of sex.""
OK, SO I THINK DUSTIN MIGHT BE MY PERFECT MAN. HE IS HILARIOUSLY RIDICULOUS AND MAGNIFICENT AND WONDERFUL AND DID I SAY HILARIOUS ALREADY? I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S BECAUSE I PICTURE THE FABULOUS JOE MAZZELLO WHEN I READ THIS, BUT I WANT TO KEEP HIM FOREVER.
"Next to him, Eduardo shifts, and wraps his fingers around Mark's wrist, fingertips to his pulse point, like he's thinking the same thing."
AWW. MY GOSH. JUST. AWWW :')
""Christopher," Dustin breathes, sounding impressed, but Mark mostly tunes this out, because although that was vaguely revelatory, he has no interest whatsoever in the contents of Chris's pants but a significantly vested interest in the contents of Eduardo's."
OH, ME TOO MARK.
""I've never been this happy," aloud, where people can hear him, and pushes his shot away from him on the coffee table.
Eduardo doesn't say anything, but he puts his shot down too."
THERE ARE NO WORDS TO EXPRESS MY ADORATION OF THESE TWO LINES. I WANT TO MARRY THEM.
"who would watch a film about someone coding twenty hours a day?"
BIG UP THE TSN FANDOM.
This comment will be continued on the next part. I will no doubt have a billion trillion more things to say.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 06:13 pm (UTC)OH MY GOD, WARDOOOOOOOO HE IS ADORABLE AND SO IN LOVE AND AWWWWWWWWWW - HE REALLY IS. AND HE TOTALLY KNOWS MARK IS TOO AND HE'S JUST LIKE "WELL I AM DATING THIS EMOTIONALLY-STUNTED MAD MAN BUT I THINK HE LOVES ME TOO, IT WILL NOT BE A HARDSHIP TO WAIT FOR HIM TO DEAL WITH HIS FEELINGS, HE IS TRYING SO HAAAARD" *bakes all the pies*.
Yayyyyy, happiness! ALSO SORRY FOR THE WEEPING DD:
kagfjsdhg DUSTIN I am so glad you like himmm, he is the best to write. I TOTES PICTURE JOE MARSHMAZZELLO TOO, ugh his stupid happy face. <333
ahjgfjhsd you are the bestttt, I am making my way through the comments when my stupid internet connection lets me so BRACE YOURSELF for more incoherency coming your way. ♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 12:22 pm (UTC)Did I mention my midterms start tomorrow? Sigh, I think actually love you. And Dustin. Your dustin has ruined me for other men.
P.s captcha : incept marke (I kid you not! My captcha really wants an inception/tsn crossover - either that or I am just crazyyy)
P.p.s I'm sorry for this stupid comment, I'll leave you a better one when I'm on my real computer!
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Date: 2011-04-27 07:05 pm (UTC)Sorry to barge in, but yeah, I know the feeling! ;D
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Date: 2011-04-27 07:04 pm (UTC)Oh Chris, I hope you know how lucky you are.
The next missed text is from Chris, around four. dustin stripped in the cab, it says.
I mean, I really hope you know how lucky you are. :D
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Date: 2011-04-29 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 08:13 pm (UTC)I have so much love bursting inside of me now.
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Date: 2011-04-29 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-29 04:33 pm (UTC)ALL THE HEARTS IN THE WORLD, THEY ARE YOURS <33333
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Date: 2011-04-29 06:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-04-30 01:58 am (UTC)*hugs your legs in near death-grip*
I DIDN’T SEE THIS TILL JUST NOW CAUSE I’VE BEEN SICK!
*adjust voice* *whispers* I missed you..
^^
-- and in theory he was aware that this drawer now contained entirely his own clothing, but in practice - oh, god, is it actually possible Mark can have moved in without noticing it?
Laughed endlessly! So few people would not notice, but Mark is definitely one of them XD
"Mark?"
"No," he shouts back, listening to Eduardo's footsteps on the stairs, "I'm a terrifying robber and I'm here to steal all your cake."
Eduardo says, warm, meters away, "Dustin, is that you?"
Hahahaha, that would be my guess as well XD
That is not the only thing Eduardo does gratifyingly quickly in the next half an hour, and Mark tells him so when they're sprawled out over the bed, half toweled dry and half sweat wet again.
"Shut up," says Eduardo, as Mark pants and feels a bit like a champion, "I really missed you."
"Evidently," says Mark, in the closest thing to a drawl he can manage,’
I can’t wipe this stupid grin off my face ^^
"Yes," says Dustin. "I can say hello, my princess in ten languages now. I figure that should cover all my bases, so I can reach some bases, and then abandon all sports metaphors for having lots of sex."
Every moment with your Dustin ever is best Dustin moment ever ^^ <3
because drawing on trackpads is hard, mark. it saddens me that you do not appreciate the pains I take to bring these delights to your life.
I think I have a laugh just for your Dustin-lines! *disturbed but entertained*
"I never," Chris says, slowly, "participated in a blow-job in a bakery."
*dances* Thank you for that, Chris! XD
Mark's brain takes this moment to remind him of Eduardo's lips against his ear, I'm not always very nice, and he takes advantage of the cushion on his lap by pulling it further across his crotch.
*sing-songs* Girl-boner.. Eduardo’s I'm not always very nice remains one of the hottest things to ever happen in this fandom..
Chris chases Dustin around the room with an angry cushion as Dustin shouts "I kissed Chris Hughes!"
An angry cushion! *dies laughing*Dustin is seriously like, 8 years old.. ^^
dustin stripped in the cab, it says. i hope you choke on your own vomit when you wake up.
*Eyes = Christmas morning* Outstanding.. XD
READING NEXT PART RIGHT NOW! LOVING THIS SO HARDCORE!
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Date: 2011-05-18 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-03 08:09 pm (UTC)Seriously, this was a brilliant story. Your writing is such a pleasure to read, witty and sarcastic and sweet and slightly crazy...or in other words, perfect.
Thank you for sharing this.
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Date: 2011-11-01 04:52 am (UTC)This is so perfect. It's like in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" when Angel has like that moment of pure happiness and then it makes him evil? Hopefully I won't become evil because this is perfect?
I'll stop talking.
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Date: 2012-08-02 07:43 am (UTC)