![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moogingtitle: what not to do when your boss is dating the guy he had erased from his memory: a user's guide by c. hughes
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
rating: pg-13
word count: ~10k
disclaimer: these are a) not based on the real people but their fictional counterparts from the 2010 film, and b) not my characters either. everything belongs to other people, the talented ones.
a/n: a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_japan fic for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
willow314159, who not only made a wonderfully generous bid but who has also been legitimately the most patient person in the world while I dithered around and never managed to meet deadlines and lived with AN APPALLING INTERNET CONNECTION THAT APPARENTLY HATES JOY. So. Thank you, lovely willow314159! My endless apologies that it is so much later than I promised and hopefully you will enjoy this <3 Also, to laliandra, all the thanks and lemons in the world for being the best beta and also for existing.
A prequel mix/fic exists, but reading that is not necessary in order to read this. SONGS! ABOUT MEMORY AND NOSTALGIA AND FEELINGS! You know you want some of that.
summary: A TSN/Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fusion. mostly based on this prompt. In which Mark has a new mystery significant other, or so Dustin claims, and there is not enough alcohol in the world to make Chris's life any less stupid.
It's somewhere around unpleasant o'clock in the morning and Chris is still busy trying to ingest as much caffeine as possible without just hooking himself up to an IV, but apparently neither of these things matter to Dustin.
"Mark's met someone!" he proclaims, and lets the door to Chris's office slam shut behind him. He waggles his eyebrows. It is definitely too early for Chris to deal with anything that makes Dustin do that.
"What?"
Dustin settles himself on the edge of Chris's desk. Chris just sighs, and moves some paperwork out of his way.
"Mark's met someone!" Dustin repeats, swinging his feet against Chris's shins. "A someone someone."
Chris moves his legs out of range of Dustin's grimy sneakers. "That doesn't make any sense, Dustin."
"Right?" says Dustin, clearly still focusing on Mark's love life and not on his own linguistic failings. He leans over and turns Chris's computer on for him. "But he has. He's all - smiley."
"Mark's allowed to have feelings," Chris reminds him, treading the thin morning line between long-suffering and intolerant. "Now fuck off so I can log in."
Okay, so it's a really thin line.
"You know I know your password, right?" Dustin is apparently unable to perceive metaphorical lines.
"You know if you use it, I will kill you in your sleep, right?"
There's a two second deadlock, and then Dustin averts his eyes.
"Thank you very much," says Chris, and logs in.
The computer makes an unenthusiastic noise -- Chris empathises -- and begrudgingly accepts Chris's password. The number of unread emails in his inbox has started to haunt Chris in his sleep. There's a job offer among them. Chris hasn't been able to open it yet.
He takes another slug of coffee. The emails can wait a few more minutes; Dustin probably won't. Chris turns back to him.
"You were saying?"
Dustin shifts along the desk so that he's between Chris and his keyboard. Chris tries to look like he minds.
"Mark's seeing someone. Mark! Our Mark! Little robot Mark!"
"He's not a robot," Chris says. "I have several hundred emails to remind me how my life would be easier if he were, but, alas, he's not."
Dustin takes him by the shoulders and nearly falls off the desk. Chris just waits.
"Chris," Dustin says, very solemnly. "Leaving aside the fact that no-one has said alas since the Victorian homosexuals, I feel you are missing my point."
"People say alas," says Chris, deliberately focusing on the wrong thing to watch the frustrated colour creep up Dustin's neck. "I say alas."
"Christopher," wails Dustin. "Sometimes it's like you don't listen to me at all -- "
Chris has learned from years of experience that it is better to head Dustin off as soon as possible when he starts veering off his usual track of pestering and into the woods of dramatic lament.
"All right," Chris interrupts. "I get it."
Dustin leans in, narrowing his eyes. "You do?"
"Mark's met someone," says Chris, leaning his head back to get more space than the zero inches there currently are between his nose and Dustin's. "Our Mark. Has met someone."
Dustin releases him with an air of triumph. "Yes!" he crows. "Now come with me and help me bug him into telling us about it."
Chris really needs to get a job that does not involve working with his friends.
//
On the way to Mark's office, Chris has a sudden thought.
"Er," he says, as the best way to preface it. "How do you know?"
"How do I know what?" Dustin asks, turning onto the main floor. "How to be so awesome? It just comes naturally. Don't feel bad that you will never be able to compete."
"Ah, yes," Chris says, dryly. "Naturally that is a pain without end."
Dustin inclines his head like it is a burden you all must bear. Chris rolls his eyes.
"Back in the land of the sane," Chris says, "how do you know Mark's seeing someone?"
Dustin shrugs. "It came to me in one of my frequent flashes of genius," he declares.
"So, you have no actual basis for this?" Chris hisses at him, trying to keep his voice down as Dustin drags him past various desks. "We're just going to go in and have this conversation with Mark without any proof of anything?"
"Yep," says Dustin, cheerfully. "Honestly, Chris, it's like you don't know me at all."
Sometimes, Chris wishes that were true. His life would be so much quieter. Unhindered by thoughts of this alternate, peaceful universe, Dustin throws the door to Mark's office open before Chris can drag him back.
Mark looks up from his computer, blinking. "What?" he says.
"We, er," says Chris, not quite sure how to avoid finishing that sentence with are here to interrogate you about your potential secret significant other, please don't fire us, and so he stops for a second. Dustin, compunctionless as ever, jumps into the verbal fray.
"We know you're seeing someone," he announces.
"Dustin thinks you're seeing someone," Chris corrects.
"Dustin correctly interpreted the available data," Dustin amends. "Chris, dude, look at him."
"Look at what?" Mark says, irritable, and then, more defensively, "What?" when Chris takes a little breath in, one he can't really help, like he's accidentally fallen into a Harlequin novel or accidentally breathed in some of Dustin's secret scented bath salts or something. It's stupid, but Chris will spare more time to think about just how stupid it is when he's done looking at Mark.
It's been a while since Chris has really looked at Mark: when you see someone all the time, you don't notice the little changes as they happen until you step back one day and bam they're three stone lighter or something. Chris hadn't noticed, but now he takes a second, and, yeah, okay, Dustin is definitely on to something.
"You look well," Chris says, trying not to sound too insultingly surprised.
Mark blushes, and then immediately scowls down at the floor,
Mark blushes.
Chris's brain is suddenly set at Defcon One: Priority: Get All Details.
Dustin makes a terrifying noise of satisfaction. "Mark!" he exclaims. "I knew I was right! I knew I was righteous! Come, sit by Dustin and tell me all about how right I am. Feel free to go into detail. Dustin loves details." He pats the sofa cushion next to the one he's just commandeered and waggles his eyebrows.
"Does Dustin also love fucking with pronouns?" Mark asks, but he goes over to the couch anyway.
Chris is still reeling but he is good at his job and his job is essentially Mark, so his poker face is pretty damn good when he puts some effort into it. He pulls himself together and asks, "How long?"
"A few months," Mark says, looking hard at the wall just over Chris's shoulder. Mark might be CEO now but he's still got the some of same habits as his 19 year old self -- avoiding eye contact if he's uncomfortable or emotionally exposed, genuinely forgetting to eat, unresponsive until pushed.
"How did you meet?" Dustin presses, clapping a hand down on Mark's knee. "Come on, Mark, we need details! And by "we" I mostly mean "me". And by "need" I mean "crave like sugar"."
"Because that's something you never have," Mark says, sarcastic.
Chris says, trying to tease Mark into it, "Do not make me leave this office with a Dustin with a sugar craving, metaphorical or otherwise. Mark. Do not do that to me."
"Yeah," Dustin says, somewhere between beseeching and encouraging while Mark twists his fingers together like they're looking for the comfort of a keyboard. "Give me my sweet knowledge and all will be well."
Chris pulls Mark's desk chair in front of the sofa and sinks down into it.
"Mark," he says.
Mark looks up at him.
Chris smiles, just the manipulative side of coaxing. "Hey," he says. "How did you meet?"
"In Cambridge," Mark says, finally, with an air of some reluctance.
Chris does a quick mental backtrack through Mark's calendar and comes up with nothing more recently Cambridge-based than Harvard. Like, Harvard Harvard. Shared Kirkland dorm Harvard.. Admittedly there is a slight chance that Mark has friends from Harvard that Chris isn't aware of, and an even slighter one that Mark still keeps in touch with these hypothetical friends, but then there is also a slight chance that a tree that falls in a forest doesn't make a sound if no-one's around to hear it. Chris's point, here, is essentially this: bullshit if Mark has Harvard friends that Chris doesn't know about.
So, logically: "When were you last in Cambridge?"
"Um," says Mark, and looks down at his hands again.
"UM?" says Dustin, loudly enough that Chris hears it in all caps. "Mark, you got nothing wrong on your SATs."
"Remind me how that's relevant?" Mark asks, the embarrassed side of churlish. Chris rolls his eyes and, because he is the best friend on the planet, does not point out that it is basically never relevant and Mark should stop reminding them about it every time someone (Chris) tells him he can't say certain things to certain people (the press).
"It became relevant when um became your defence," says Dustin. "Mark Zuckerberg is not an um guy."
"Sadly," Chris adds.
Mark levels a terrible glare at him. Chris has seen this stare make a particularly shy intern cry. Chris, on the other hand, is immune to it.
"Okay," says Dustin, slapping a hand down on Mark's thigh. "Explain. Expand. Expound. Go."
"Take your hand off my thigh," Mark replies.
Dustin moves away with a flourish. "Why?" he asks, with an unholy gleam in his eyes. "Will your secret someone be jealous that I'm stealing their cow?"
"Er," says Chris.
"Cow?" says Mark.
Dustin rolls his eyes. "You know," he says, in a tone that Chris has come to recognise means he really does not want to know at all. "There's that saying. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Marky here is getting milked on the regular!"
The images in Chris's brain right now are probably acceptable grounds for him to resign and/or beat Dustin to death with the nearest object to hand. The look on Mark's face indicates he may be feeling the same way.
Dustin waggles his eyebrows. "Tell me more about your secret someone, Mark," he says, "and I will stop saying horrifying things about your sex life."
This is the best deal Chris has ever heard. Dustin is alarmingly competent at getting people to tell him things, even if his methods are mostly horrifying them into being willing to do anything to make him to go the fuck away.
"Fine," says Mark. "God, fine. But then you will get out of my office or I will fire you."
This is the emptiest threat Mark has, despite also having the very real ability to follow through on it. If Chris had a dollar for every time Mark threatened to fire Dustin, Chris would now be living on his own private island.
"Deal," Dustin says, cheerfully. "So. Deets."
Mark fidgets a bit. Chris isn't used to seeing Mark look like this anymore, self-consciously closed-off. Not when it's just the three of them, at least. Mark's public persona is still a pain in Chris's ass, but Chris figures that at least is on purpose. It's the Mark equivalent of Dustin being deliberately appalling at washing up in Kirkland, like he thought if he made a big enough mess of it then Chris wouldn't make him do it again.
This isn't Mark clamming up in front of the press. This isn't deliberate. This is Mark Having Feelings, and neither age nor success has made Mark any better at processing his own emotions.
Chris is so inexpressibly fond of him right now he doesn't quite know what to do about it. He settles for letting it show in the smile he gives Mark, watching Mark twist his fingers together like that's going to give him the right words.
Dustin catches Chris's eye, winks at him. Chris grins back.
"I," Mark says, which is a start. He clears his throat. Chris watches him pull it back together, like seeing him come into the dorm angry and hurt and then funnel all that into a website that crashed the college servers. Mark says, putting his chin up, defiant, like he thinks they're going to laugh at him, "His name's Eduardo."
Of all the things Chris was expecting, that wasn't even on the list.
"Er," says Dustin, in a really high-pitch. "Eduardo, you say?"
Mark nods, not looking either of them in the eye. "He's from Brazil. He lives in Singapore but comes over here for work. He's a year older than us. I met him in Cambridge when I told you I had the flu a couple of months ago. I'm meeting him for dinner tonight. Is that enough information for you, or do you want to know which position he likes me to fuck him in?"
Mark sounds angry, so he's being defensive. Chris would give this further thought, but his brain is currently closing in on itself from all sides and shouting helpful things like ABORT, ABORT, so in-depth analysis is currently a bit beyond his reach.
"He sounds nice," Chris manages, proud of himself for only sounding slightly strangled. "Do you, er, have a picture?"
Of course he will have. Mark is kind of creepy. Endearingly creepy, but still: he invented Facebook.
Mark's hand goes to his phone in his pocket like a reflex, but he doesn't take it out. "Why?" he asks, suspicious.
It kind of makes Chris's heart hurt to see him like this, like he still thinks they're going to laugh at him, even now when Mark is twenty three and the CEO of a company that's basically taking over the world. Mark's been on dates before, obviously, seen other people, but Chris has never seen him this wary of talking about them. He must really like this guy, Chris realises, and then, deep down and fervent, prays for everything Mark is saying to be just a really monumentally huge coincidence.
Chris is aware he is edging fast into denial.
Mark says, scowling, "Do you not believe me?"
"Of course we do," Chris starts, trying to aim for reassuring but Dustin just chirps, "Pics or it didn't happen!" and that seems to be the thing that works.
Never underestimate the power of Dustin.
Mark gets out his phone, shows them a picture.
"Well, fuck," says Chris.
//
"This could be okay, right?" Dustin says, a little desperately, in Chris's kitchen that evening. "I mean, this could definitely be okay. Right?"
"Explain to me," says Chris, "please, I am genuinely asking you, explain how this could possibly ever be okay."
Dustin holds up a finger in the universal and only mildly douchey signal for just a second, bro and dives into his rucksack.
Dustin is the youngest billionaire in the world and his backpack is from Target. It has Snoopy on the front. These are two of the reasons why he is Chris's best friend.
"Go on, then," Chris says. "Tell me."
Dustin straightens up and dumps a crate of beer on the kitchen table. "Tah-dah!" he says, and does jazz hands at Chris. "All better."
"That doesn't seem like a particularly long term solution," Chris says.
"No," Dustin agrees, "but think about it this way: then you'll be drunk!"
"You make a convincing point," Chris says.
"I know," Dustin says, cheerfully, and gets up to paw through Chris's kitchen drawers, ostensibly in search of a bottle opener. At least, Chris assumes that's what he's doing. He's been wrong before.
In the brief conversational lull, the whole situation comes flooding back to the forefront of Chris's brain. Chris would really prefer to shove it into some kind of mental kitchen drawer, but, because his life is apparently up for some kind of Most Stupid award, he can't.
"Ugh," he says, and drops his head into his hands.
"Cheer up," says Dustin, and drops Chris's bottle opener on the table. "Look what I've found. Now there will be healing alcohol!"
"i>Ugh," says Chris, again. It comes out muffled behind his palms. "Not even alcohol will make this better."
"Lies!" Dustin pronounces. "Alcohol heals all wounds."
"I think science might disagree with you," Chris tells him.
"Then I want nothing to do with science," Dustin says. Chris stays behind his hands, where it is safe and dark and no-one is sleeping with anyone they've had erased from their brain. It is admittedly not the most productive solution ever, but it's working for him for now.
"Chris?" Dustin asks. "Hey, Chris? Chris? Chris, you cannot live in your hands forever."
"I can try," Chris mumbles, but begrudgingly looks up.
Dustin gives him a double thumbs-up, and grins hugely at him. "It's definitely going to be okay somehow," he says, with the air of a man whose job is not that of Mark Zuckerberg's PR. "You can fix this, right?"
Chris puts his head back in his hands. "I need a drink."
"You are not filling me with confidence, Christopher," Dustin says. "I am a pitcher waiting to be filled with your hope."
"I will not fill you with anything, Dustin," Chris says. "Give me the beer."
//
At the point in the night when Chris has ceased looking at his watch and started measuring time by the amount of empty beer bottles on the floor, Dustin hiccoughs and slams his fist down on the table.
"But," he says, like either of them had said anything in the last ten minutes, "he doesn't remember him!"
"Who doesn't remember who?" Chris asks, squeezing one eye closed and peering suspiciously at his drink. He could have sworn there'd been more beer left in the bottle just a minute ago.
"Mark," says Dustin. "He doesn't remember Eduardo, right? And shouldn't one of those whos have been a whom? Your standards are slipping, Christopher."
"Emergency ruling," says Chris. "Grammar comes second on the list of priorities when Mark is dating Eduardo."
"You can still say priorities," says Dustin, sounding admiring. "Hey, so can I!"
Chris nudges another beer at him. "You haven't drunk enough, then. And no."
"No what?" Dustin asks, waging a brief but ultimately triumphant battle with the bottle opener.
"Neither of them remember each other," Chris says, and takes another slug of his own beer. "They can't do."
"Do, er," says Dustin, and then pulls a face. "Do we have to tell them?"
"I don't know," Chris says. He finishes his drink, in case that helps. "Let's think about it in the morning."
"I am not looking forward to the morning," Dustin says, mournfully. "The morning heralds only bad things."
"Mmm," says Chris. "Like conversations with Mark."
"Like hangovers," says Dustin.
"I hate that that can be your priority," says Chris. "My job sucks."
Dustin shoves another bottle in his direction. "Tell it to the beer."
//
The night barrels on. It's way past the witching hour and Chris is about as buzzed as beer is going to get him and Mark is still dating Eduardo. At this point, Chris almost wants to get his own damn memory erased, just so he doesn't have to think about this clusterfuck of a situation any more.
"I went with Eduardo, you know," he says, waving his beer in the air.
"Where?" Dustin rears up from the table, the pattern of the wood pressed red into his cheek.
"To the place," Chris tells him.
"Well, that clears everything up."
"The place," Chris insists, still staring at his beer. "To make the appointment."
"The - " Dustin breaks off. "Oh. That appointment."
"Yeah," says Chris. "He asked me. He wanted someone with him, when --" He breaks off.
Eduardo had held on tight to Chris's arm in the doorway of Lacuna Inc., but had gone in to his appointment with his chin held high.
There's a card underneath the good silverware at the back of Chris's pantry that says Eduardo Saverin has chosen to erase Mark Zuckerberg from his memory. Please do not mention their relationship to him as it will only confuse him.
There's a card in the bottom drawer of Chris's dresser, buried under two layers of folded clothes that says in no nonsense copperplate: Mark Zuckerberg has chosen to erase Eduardo Saverin from his memory. Please do not mention their relationship to him as it will only confuse him.
Mark has a two-week-old picture of Eduardo on his phone, fast asleep in Mark's huge bed, wearing Mark's old grey Gap hoodie.
Chris cannot possibly sigh deeply enough to convey how displeased he is with the curveballs life is throwing him but he gives it a go.
"You can sigh all you like," Dustin says. "You still have to go talk to Mark about this."
"I know," says Chris, mournfully.
"It's probably not going to go well," Dustin adds, with an unnecessary amount of delight.
"I am aware of that," Chris says.
"What are you going to say?" Dustin asks, sitting up a little straighter. "'Hey, Mark, you know your super hot new boyfriend? He's actually your super hot ex-best friend that you screwed out of Facebook.'"
He takes a really deep breath. Chris braces himself.
"More?" says Dustin, starting to gesticulate alarmingly. "'Hey, Mark! You never actually screwed Eduardo even though that could really only have helped seeing as you were basically the most co-dependent things the world has ever seen and he spent a lot of time making huge I-love-you eyes in your unwashed direction. Also, after you fucked him over, he sued your ass for all the money in the world and the two of you are actually legally obligated never to talk about each other again. You just don't remember this because you were both so heartbroken that you had each other forcibly removed from your brains. But never mind all that! Go crazy! Let us know how that shitstorm shakes down!'"
Dustin takes another gulp of air and relaxes slightly. Chris figures part of that rant's been coming for a long time.
"You done?" Chris asks.
"For now," Dustin says. "So, are you going to go with something like that?"
"I probably won't go with your exact phrasing, no," says Chris, as diplomatic as he can be while drunk. He drains the dregs of his beer, and in the pause something from the end of Dustin's diatribe sinks in properly. He sets his empty bottle down and adds, "And they're not, any more, actually."
"Not what?" asks Dustin. "You get vague when you're drunk."
"You get squeaky," Chris returns. "I just don't mention it out of respect for your feelings."
"Mark has feelings," says Dustin, with the wisdom of the drunk. "For Eduardo."
"I know," says Chris.
"Is he allowed to have feelings for Eduardo?"
"Sadly, there is no law about my life getting more stupid," Chris says. He pokes through the collection of bottles on the table. They're all empty. If he were a camel, this would feel dangerously close to a backbreaking straw.
"Is he allowed to talk about his feelings for Eduardo?" Dustin persists. "They signed -- "
"That's what I mean," Chris interrupts. "The non-disclosures aren't valid after the erasures."
Dustin's go very wide. "Are you kidding?"
"No," Chris says. He shrugs. "They don't remember what they're not allowed to talk about, right?"
"I guess," says Dustin. He frowns. "Does this mean we have to be supportive friends about this?"
"Fucked if I know," says Chris, still surveying the lack of alcohol in front of him with some displeasure.
"They do make a sweet couple," Dustin says, and Chris whips round to glare at him. Dustin throws his hands wide, all innocence. "I'm just saying!" he yelps. "Mark seems happy?"
And that, Chris decides, is the real problem here: Mark does seem happy. For all their stupid baggage, Mark and Eduardo make each other happy.
When Chris thinks about them, he thinks about the time he came in from class to find Facebook running live and Mark passed out on the sofa, his head lolling on Eduardo's shoulder, his laptop open on Eduardo's knees; the time Mark had the flu in freshman year and Eduardo camped out on his dorm floor to make sure his fever broke; all the times they brushed past each other, too close for friends. He thinks about wanting to apologise when he'd open the door to Mark's room to see Eduardo with him, even when everyone was fully dressed and no-one was touching, about Eduardo watching Mark sleep until someone caught him at it, about Mark not noticing when his fridge was empty but always picking up when Eduardo was unhappy.
Chris also remembers Eduardo hollow-eyed and distant in his last year at Harvard and Mark, shaking, the week after the depositions.
Eduardo used to smile at Mark like he'd set out the stars; Mark would move in to Eduardo's touch and away from everyone else's.
Chris's life is so fucked it isn't even funny, and he has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to do.
"Fuck it," he announces. "Let's do shots."
//
"Did I ever tell you," Chris says, later still, when dawn is starting to thread its way through the blinds and Dustin has his cheek pressed against the tabletop again, "that Eduardo loved Mark?"
Dustin snorts. "I know we're not all omnish - omnissee - we're not all all-knowing like you, but some things are obvious from space."
"You aren't in space," Chris points out.
"I could have been," Dustin says. "It would have made no difference to how obvious that was."
"Point," says Chris. "But, I mean." He stops for a second. "What did I mean?"
"Eduardo loved Mark?" Dustin prompts, still face down. "In other news, beer is good."
"Beer is heinous," Chris mumbles, and tries not to think about how his stomach feels turbulent. "Stupid space."
"Space?" says Dustin.
"There are waves in my stomach," Chris explains, which he feels should clear everything up.
"Ah," says Dustin, sagely. "Stupid moon."
"Exactly," says Chris. Somewhere in the part of his mind not currently beer-logged and leaking, he wonders vaguely if it casts any kind of moral shadow on his character that he and Dustin share the same drunken wavelength. Then he wonders whether one would ride a wavelength like a horse, and it's about that point that he gives up on anything involving real thought.
"I love your wavelengths," he says.
"That's okay," says Dustin, magnanimously. "Eduardo loved Mark."
"Yeah," says Chris, and then he remembers his point. "Yeah, he told me."
Dustin sits up straight, which Chris feels is slightly too Herculean a task for him to match. He squints at him instead and hopes that indicates his attention is held.
"He told you?" Dustin says, sharply. Chris feels too smushy for sharp words, but if Dustin is trying to pull himself together then Chris also feels duty-bound to brave the fields of hangover with him.
He's drunk. He's definitely allowed to mix his metaphors.
"Yeah," he says, taking a few deep breaths in. "At Harvard."
"When?" Dustin demands.
"Shhh," Chris says, screwing his eyes up. "I'm thinking."
"When at Harvard?" Dustin prompts.
"The Harvard-y bit," Chris says. "Hang on, I think I'm still drunk."
Dustin laughs. "Me too."
"Hooray," says Chris, and then, "No, not hooray."
"Booray?" suggests Dustin.
Chris's fragile equilibrium is lurching dizzily between hung the fuck over and still blurrily drunk. Booray almost makes sense. It is time for something to be done. He groans.
"Jesus Christ," he says, trying to will himself back to sobriety. "Coffee?"
"Coffee," Dustin confirms. He comes round the table and helps Chris to his feet. The two of them stagger over to the counter. It is a sad fact of Chris's life that he is familiar enough with all the many settings on his coffee machine that he can work it even when he's as drunk as this.
"I love coffee," says Dustin, fervently, as they stand and listen to the coffee boil
"I would fight you for coffee," Chris tells him.
Dustin eyes him up and down. "I would take you down," he announces.
"You really wouldn't," Chris says. That reminds him: "After the share dissolution," he says.
Dustin blinks blearily at him. "What?"
"That's when Eduardo told me he loved Mark," Chris elaborates. A headache accompanies him over to the cupboard as he looks for mugs. "He was drunk."
"We're drunk," says Dustin, but then he frowns. "I might be sick."
"Please aim for the sink," says Chris.
"After the share dilution?"
"Um," says Chris. "I didn't know sinks had shares."
"No," says Dustin, with what Chris feels is an unnecessarily patronizing hand wave. "Eduardo's beautiful declaration of love. It was after the share dilution?"
"Oh," says Chris. Behind him, the coffee machine beeps ready. "Yeah, yeah, it was."
It had been weird, at first, just the two of them being at Harvard, neither of them quite sure where they stood with the other. But then, Chris was a big enough person to be able to work with Mark, to love what he was doing, to be his friend unreservedly but still hate him, just a little, for diluting the shares. It was easy to hate Mark for it when he could see Eduardo without his best friend, without his best friend's trust. It wasn't that Eduardo was without blame -- and Chris certainly wasn't getting in the middle of all that -- but Mark had a burgeoning company and investors worth millions of dollars and Eduardo had last year Harvard finals and no-one telling him he was changing the world.
One night, both of them drunk and Chris jetlagged from his return flight, Eduardo had leant against the wall in Chris's dorm bathroom and told him in an unsteady voice that he was in love with Mark. That he was still in love with Mark.
Chris loved his job even then, the challenges it gave him, the opportunities it was bringing him, but he didn't go back out to Palo Alto for five months after that.
"He smashed Mark's laptop," Dustin says now, a little sadly.
"He did," says Chris, bravely pouring out the coffee with not entirely steady hands.
"And he loved him."
"He did that as well."
Dustin takes his coffee from Chris and folds his hands around it, frowning. Outside, a cloud shifts and sunlight tumbles free through the blinds. It spills into the room and makes Chris squint.
"It's tomorrow," he says, with some dread.
"Eduardo still loved him," Dustin says, a beat behind.
They look at each other for a second.
Fuck, Chris thinks.
//
Chris is a highly competent, highly regarded, highly productive member of the human race. However, he is also incredibly hungover, which goes some way towards explaining why he spends the first half of his working day in his office with the lights off, squinting at his laptop and trying to convince himself that he is a functioning adult. He can do his job with a banging headache whilst sitting in the dark.
He also gets frequent IMs from Dustin that go something like this:
crhis i think i a mdead
no reallyfs
christopherrrrrr
are you d ead?
sjhgefdg my whole everything hurts D:
The chat box makes a horrible noise every time a message comes through but Chris can't bring himself to move enough to either turn the sound off or tell Dustin to stop.
He eventually sends agreed to Dustin's last but Dustin sends back HAVE YOU TALKED TO MAKR YET? so Chris quickly gives up on further communication.
This is totally not hiding. This is a mature method of dealing with a tricky situation. He is evaluating his options.
WHAT IF, he sends, when he can stand to look at the light from his computer screen again, WHAT IF I JUST DIDN'T? WHAT THEN, DUSTIN? WHAT THEN?
stop pretending you're me Dustin sends. SHIT, HUGHES, GET IT TOGETHER.
Chris is so alone and also in the dark.
This is not one of his more dignified moments.
//
By late afternoon, Chris has got himself together a lot more. He's had three cups of coffee and a bagel laden down with all the cream cheese he could lay his hands on, and he has turned on the overhead light in his office, which he considers more of a victory than is really sensible. Then again, nothing about this situation could be classed as sensible at all, so Chris vs. Lighting is probably an acceptable fight to celebrate winning.
It's thoughts like that one that let him know he's been spending too much time with Dustin.
Anyway, it's all for the best that Chris has laid waste to his hangover, because his phone buzzes on his desk at the exact same time that Mark bangs into his office.
"Are you avoiding me?" he says, folding his arms.
Mark has never noticed if anyone has tried to avoid him before. Chris stares at him as the door swings shut. Mark's mouth is tightly drawn and he's standing firm like Chris has seen only a few times before, like he's squaring up to something.
Oh, god, everything about this situation is so much worse than Chris was expecting it to be.
"Why would I be avoiding you?" Chris asks, trying to remember that they're both in their mid-twenties even though this conversation makes him feel about thirteen.
"Because of Eduardo," Mark says. Chris feels a little gut-punched every time Mark says Eduardo's name like that, off-hand, like there was never a time when he didn't say it at all, didn't let anyone else bring it up. Mark goes on, sounding like he's having this conversation despite his better judgement, "I didn't expect you to be like this about it. About him."
"Like what?" Chris usually hates playing dumb but there's a time and a place for everything. "What I am being like?"
"Like you're avoiding me," Mark repeats, and tightens his arms across his chest.
Chris stands up, comes around his desk to lean against it, closer to Mark. He doesn't reach out because Mark still shies away from people touching him sometimes, but he doesn't cross his own arms, tries to transmit open and honest. He swallows.
"What's this?" he says, still skirting the real conversation. "Missing me?"
Mark rolls his eyes. "Don't be stupid," he says. The tension in his shoulders eases out a fraction. Chris wants to sit him down and tell him everything. He wants to send him away and tell him nothing. He wants Mark to be happy but he doesn't know how to make that happen.
"Look," Chris says, spreading his hands, apologetic. "I swear I'm not avoiding anyone. Except I've kind of been avoiding everyone. Mark, I was so hungover this morning it wasn't even funny."
Mark smiles, a little quirk of his lips. Chris breathes out.
"I take it you were with Dustin," he says. "Did you know he's lying on his desk?"
Chris nods, and gestures to the myriad of coffee cups littering his desk. "Behold," he says. "This is all Dustin's fault."
"What isn't?" Mark says.
Chris thinks, uncharitably, you sleeping with Eduardo, but manages to keep it back. He wishes Mark was with anyone else, was seeing anyone else, that anyone else put that look on his face when he looked down at their photo, affectionate, pleased.
"We thought you'd be with Eduardo," Chris says, instead. "Otherwise, you know, we'd have made you come over too."
Mark smiles again; it looks involuntary this time, like just hearing Eduardo's name does that to him, makes him feel good. Chris clenches his fingers tight around the edge of the desk.
"I was," Mark says.
"Yeah?" says Chris, and he tries to keep his voice positive, light, but Mark can always tell when someone's not telling him the truth. Chris would give anything, right now, to mean the note of camaraderie in his voice, just to be happy for Mark. "How long did you say he's going to be in town?"
"A few days," Mark says. He smiles again, private, down at his hands. "He's staying with me."
Chris's throat is suddenly tight and he has to swallow down past it, look away from the expression on Mark's face, vulnerably happy. It's like watching Mark standing in a crowd of interns, opportunities opening up right there around him, holding enough money to give him the summer he wants but just looking at Eduardo. It was like, in that moment, he was the only part of it Mark cared about.
Eduardo has always been the only one to make Mark look like that.
Chris looks up when he can, when he's sure he won't give himself away, and Mark is frowning.
"What?" Mark says, flatly.
"Mark?"
"What's wrong?" Mark asks, and, of course Mark has seen through this. Mark has never fallen for anyone's line of bullshit unless it's suited him not to examine it too closely. This, Eduardo, is important enough that he might as well be holding a magnifying glass up to Chris, looking for his weak spots.
Mark is Chris's weak spot. All his friends are. He never really stood a chance in this conversation.
"Nothing's wrong," Chris tries, and then, because there isn't any point in dragging out the inevitable, just says, "About Eduardo -- "
Mark visibly flinches.
Chris has never seen Mark like this, readable. Mark's usually on his guard, defensively cautious, but this is -- this is like seeing him leave the office on the night of the erasure, seeing him ragged around the edges.
"Hey," Chris says, and he does reach out this time, puts a hand on Mark's folded arms. "I didn't mean -- "
"Yes, you did," Mark says, pulling away. "You obviously did."
"No," Chris says, gently, "I didn't." He's trying to pick his words carefully, not looking away from how Mark's eyebrows are drawing in, how his jaw is slowly clenching. "I just meant, are things maybe going a bit -- fast?"
"No," Mark says.
"Okay," Chris says, immediately. "I'm sorry."
Mark looks down at the floor. He drops his hands into his jeans pockets, rounds his shoulders. On anyone else, that would look defeated. On Mark, it looks like he's gearing up.
"You're not sorry," he says, looking back up, ready. "You couldn't get out of my office fast enough yesterday, when you saw the picture."
"Mark -- "
"Don't," Mark snaps. "I wouldn't have thought you'd have a problem with Eduardo, Chris, seeing as -- "
Chris cuts in this time, before Mark can say it. He's used to Mark so he knows he's just lashing out, but it'll still hurt to hear. "It's not that," he says, trying not to let himself sound hurt. It won't help him make Mark listen. "Obviously it isn't that, Mark, Jesus. What do I mind whom you're seeing? I just -- " he stops. He's not entirely sure how that sentence was going to end. Worry, maybe. Maybe not.
"You just what, Chris?" Mark says, staring him down. Mark isn't nineteen any more, can look people in the eye when he's angry. Chris isn't sure it's an improvement.
Chris is hungover, and tired, and he's pretty sure he's going to accept the job offer waiting for him in his inbox. He's had better game.
"Is it because you think he's a gold digger or something?" Mark demands, flushed, reading into Chris's silence. Chris starts to object again, but Mark goes on, fast, hard. "You and Dustin. You think the only way someone who looks like that could want to be with me is for my money?"
"Mark, no, I know -- "
"He's got his own money," Mark interrupts, stubborn, folding his arms again. "He doesn't need mine. Eduardo's not like that."
"I know he doesn't, Mark," Chris tells him, vehemently. "I'm not saying that. Of course I don't think that. Neither of us thinks that, Mark, we're your friends."
Mark won't look at him. "We've been seeing each other for months," he says, to the floor, a hot pink burning across his cheekbones. "Wardo and I -- we're not going too fast."
Wardo.
Chris can't find anything to say after that.
He gets up and goes over to Mark, puts a hand on Mark's arm. Mark still doesn't look at him, but he doesn't shrug him away.
"You deserve this," Chris tells him, very quietly, so Mark can pretend not to have heard him if he likes.
"I know," Mark says, stubborn.
That's the thing about Mark fucking Zuckerberg: he's got an inferiority complex about having a superiority complex, belittles and believes in himself too much at once and Chris has known him for years and knows he's the stupidest clever person he's ever met.
Chris swallows hard to keep his voice emotion-free, because Mark listens better when everything sounds like a fact. "I want you to be happy, okay? Dustin and I -- " Chris breaks off.
He thinks about Eduardo, drunk and crying on his Harvard bathroom floor; about Mark, thin-lipped and dark-eyed on a three-day code binge the week before the depositions began. He takes a breath in, and looks at Mark's set, embarrassed face, and thinks, they did love each other. They did.
Mark's shoulders are in a defensive line near his ears.
Oh, fuck it.
"We just want you to be happy," Chris says, a little this side of desperate, and hopes to god he's doing the right thing.
//
"We just want you to be happy?" Dustin yells, later that evening. "What the fuck, Chris?"
"We do, though," Chris points out. "I mean, we do, right?" He takes another swig from the rapidly emptying vodka bottle in his hand. The goal here is to get No Memory Drunk; chasers seem pointless when the taste is irrelevant.
"Of course we do," says Dustin. He leans over and grabs the vodka back. "Just - with Wardo - I - he - what - "
"Dustin," Chris says, over the top of Dustin's incoherence. "Dustin, he thinks we think Wardo's only with him for his money."
"What?" Dustin sounds legitimately amazed.
"He thinks we think Eduardo's too good for him," Chris says, quietly. "He thinks -- god, I don't know what he thinks, but I'm pretty sure he's -- he's scared."
Dustin takes a long pull from the vodka bottle. Chris thinks that's probably a sensible plan.
"He's scared of what we think?" Dustin asks. He's grimacing, but whether it's because he thinks that's unlikely or because he's just drinking neat vodka, Chris can't be sure. "That doesn't sound like Mark."
"It kind of does," Chris says. "A little bit. But, no, I think -- "
"You think he's scared we'd be right," Dustin finishes. "Oh, fuck."
"Yeah," Chris says. He sighs, cracks out his neck. "You should have seen him this afternoon. It means so much to him."
"Eduardo always meant so much to him," Dustin points out. "He's Mark Doesn't-Care-Zuckerberg and he had Eduardo erased from his brain. That's an unhealthy level of emotion right there."
"Eduardo did it first," Chris reminds him.
"Yeah," Dustin says. "And how do you think Mark felt about that?"
Chris takes a second, really thinks about it. It's been something he's been skirting around since it happened, trying to avoid what Mark must have gone through.
Chris didn't tell Mark what Eduardo was going to do -- he'd had to sign something that forbade it -- but he was there when Mark found out, held the Lacuna Inc. card out between his fingers. He's not going to forget Mark's face in that moment, or the way Mark sounded when he'd told Chris that he wanted to make his own appointment.
Chris has never felt like that about anyone, the way Mark felt about Eduardo.
"How has this even happened," Chris says, now, and grabs the vodka away from Dustin, takes a long, throat-burning gulp of it.
"I seem to recall you saying something about this situation turning us into alcoholics," Dustin reminds him. "And give me back the vodka."
Chris gives him a look that hopefully expresses how little he cares about this probability at the current moment. "Dustin," he says, as flatly as he can. "I am on my bathroom floor with a bottle of vodka. I think we have passed the border to alcoholism and are now headed straight for Alcohol Will Solve Our Problems." He waves the vodka bottle to help make his point, and hands it back to Dustin. "It's not far away, we just have to pass through Oh Dear God, Our Livers."
"Best road trip ever," says Dustin. He takes a solid glug from the bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Chris nods approvingly.
Dustin sluthers down so that his ass is in the bath, his legs flung over the side, unnecessarily close to Chris's face. Dustin's head falls back against the tiled wall, and he swears.
"Fuck, Chris," he says, in a different tone of voice altogether. "What are we going to do?"
"Tonight is not the night for doing," says Chris, from the safety of the floor and also denial. He tugs on Dustin's ankle, the only part of him he can reach, until Dustin relinquishes the vodka to him. "Tonight is the night for drinking." He pauses. "Er, again."
"Tomorrow will be the day for puking," says Dustin, eying Chris in a way Chris feels casts unfair aspersions on his tolerance for alcohol. "But hey, at least that's proactive, right?"
"Projectile," Chris corrects, spluttering against the burn in his throat. His eyes water. "But who cares."
Dustin shakes his head. "Not me."
There's a pause. Then:
"Mark and Eduardo," Chris says, despairingly, to his bathroom floor.
"I know," says Dustin.
"Mark and Eduardo."
"I know," says Dustin. "Have some more vodka."
//
The vodka turns out to be a surprisingly brilliant idea. Chris is definitely glad he's drunk when Mark texts him, later that night.
Eduardo's coming into the office tomorrow.
"Noooooo," moans Chris, intelligently, into his cupped hands. "Why is this my life?"
"I thought you were okay with all this," Dustin says, slurred. When Chris raises his head from his hands, he can just see Dustin's feet, slung over the side of the bath. The rest of Dustin has disappeared from view. Chris kind of wishes he could do that, just disappear for a while and let his feet deal with things for a while. They'd probably be good at running things.
Running things.
Chris cracks himself up when he's drunk.
"What are you laughing at?" Dustin asks. His voice echoes off the tiles.
"Running," Chris says, and tries to stop giggling. Spirits send him stupid. At least they're not mixing their drinks tonight; tomorrow's hangover should be less punishing than the one this morning. Oh, god, Chris's life.
"Running away?" Dustin asks. "Because I could get behind that."
"Especially when I tell you this bit," Chris says. "You're going to meet Eduardo tomorrow."
"But I've met him," Dustin says, confused. "We're bros."
"Not this Eduardo," Chris says. "This Eduardo doesn't know you from Adam."
"Who's Adam?"
"I don't know," says Chris. "Some dude in a saying. I don't think he's the point."
"Who is the point?" Dustin asks.
"Eduardo," says Chris. "Eduardo has kind of always been the point."
Dustin thinks about this. "Yeah," he says. "He kind of has."
"And we're going to meet him tomorrow," Chris repeats. "Mark's bringing him into the office."
"Must be love," Dustin says, off-hand, and then, "Oh, fuck."
He levers himself up to a sitting position and meets Chris's gaze with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Chris," he says. "Oh my god, Chris."
"I know," Chris says. His throat is getting tight again; vodka also apparently makes him tearful. It's not like anything about the last couple of days have left him overflowing with dignity anyway.
"But Chris."
"Yes."
"But."
"Yes."
"Fuck," Dustin breathes out, again.
Mark's in love.
//
They try to sober up as fast as they can, hunching over the kitchen table and mainlining coffee like it's saving their lives. They take it in turns to shower, but even after ten minutes under freezing cold water, Chris can still smell the alcohol seeping out of his own skin. He pours them both glasses of water, comes to sit down at the kitchen table and tries to corral his thoughts into something even remotely resembling a plan.
His thoughts refuse to be corralled.
"What are we going to do?" he asks.
Dustin pushes a hand through his wet hair. "Don't ask me," he groans. "You're the one who knows what to do about things." He narrows his eyes. "You're also the one who told Mark that we just wanted him to be happy, so as far as I'm concerned, you're partially responsible for this whole mess."
Chris leans back in his chair, clutches his glass of water to his chest. "I wouldn't call it a mess," he says.
"You have done," says Dustin, still eyeing him with suspicion. "Lots."
"I know," says Chris. "But, Dustin -- he is happy." His breath catches; maybe he's not as sober as he'd hoped. Maybe he's just tired. Maybe he's thinking about Mark working late nights for years and the way Mark smiled at his phone the day before, looking at the picture of Eduardo asleep in his bed. Chris says, again, "He's happy."
Neither of them says anything for a minute after that.
Then, Dustin says, out of nowhere, "You're going to take the job, aren't you?"
Of course he knows about the job. Chris is vaguely surprised it's taken him this long to bring it up.
Chris loves Facebook, and he loves his friends, but he finished his degree for a reason. There are other things he wants to do with his life, changes he wants to help make in the world, and the job on the senator's campaign is offering him a chance at both. It'll be difficult, but it's the right choice. It's the right choice for Chris.
Chris nods. "Yeah," he says. "I am."
Dustin takes a long, slow sip of coffee. "Okay," he says, swallowing. "Let's make a plan."
//
"I can see him," Dustin hisses.
Dustin's office has a clear view of the whole main floor, which is why they're both in there right now, crammed behind the door and staring out of the huge window to their left whilst trying not to look like they're staring.
It's not creepy, Chris keeps insisting to himself. It's reconnaissance. No-one ever tells James Bond he's being creepy. Admittedly, that might be because James Bond is also ridiculously attractive, which is a quality that he and Dustin just cannot match, but still. They're not Mark. This is fine.
"Chris," Dustin says, under his breath, and elbows Chris in the ribs. Chris snaps his attention back to the main office floor.
Eduardo is just stepping out of the elevator.
It winds Chris to see him again, unexpected and sharp. When Mark forgot Eduardo, Eduardo was the only thing he forgot -- he'd had to remember as much as he could, to be able to keep doing his job, had to know the history of his company as faithfully as he could. When Eduardo forgot Mark, he forgot everything.
Chris has missed him.
"Fuck," Dustin says, quietly, right next to Chris's ear. "It's weird to see him again, right? That's not just me, right?"
Chris watches Eduardo turn on the spot, taking the whole office in. Eduardo's smiling as Mark comes to stand by him, that stupid smile Chris remembers, the one that crinkles his eyes up almost to nothing, makes him look like he doesn't have a care in the world.
"It's not just you," Chris mutters, and slips his hand in Dustin's.
Dustin turns to him, surprised. "Chris?"
"Shut up," Chris says. "Let's have a moment."
"Okay," says Dustin, amenably, and tightens his fingers around Chris's.
At the elevators, Mark looks up at Eduardo, watches him look around. Mark looks lit up, hopeful. He looks proud, and Eduardo looks prouder still. Chris turns away. He can't watch them any more.
"What's going on?" he asks Dustin.
Dustin peers closer to the window. "They're going into Mark's office," he reports. "Mark has his hand in the small of Eduardo's back. Mark! Is touching another human!" He turns to Chris, lets the hyper edge fade from his smile. "Eduardo looks happy," he says.
Chris takes his hand back from Dustin's, starts pacing the room. "He always did," he says. "Up to a point."
Dustin comes over to him, takes him by the shoulders. "Christopher," he says, sternly. "We have a plan. It is a great plan. Get it together."
"it is not the most thought-out of plans," Chris counters. "It could use refining. Or, you know, more than one stage."
"Refined plans are for losers," Dustin says. "Our plan is the grand high plan. It may even be a planet."
"Sometimes I wonder if you use language in this way just to hurt me," Chris says, but he pulls away from Dustin's hands, takes a proper breath in. "Okay," he says. "I am back on board with the plan."
"Excellent!" Dustin crows. "You can drive."
"Hang on," Chris says. "Is the plan a train or a car in this metaphor?"
"Whatever," Dustin says. "Our plan is too good to be one metaphorical vehicle."
Chris grins at him. Dustin grins back.
"All right," Chris says. "I'll take the wheel."
//
Halfway across the office, they both get screamingly cold feet and have to have a frantic whispered conversation huddled by the water cooler.
"I can't go in there," Dustin says, eyes huge. "What if they're making out?"
"I think it's more than likely that they are," Chris says.
"But my eyes," wails Dustin, quietly. "I don't want to do that to them! I've had them a long time!"
"I'm sure your eyes will forgive you," Chris says. "It's my brain I'm worried about. The mental images may never leave."
Not that Eduardo's hard on the eye. That took Chris a while, back in Harvard, to stop noticing. On the other hand, he has absolutely zero desire to see Mark in any state of undress ever again. It's not that Mark is unattractive, it's just - he's Mark. Thanks to the non-existent privacy of dorm life and the terrible lock on the dorm bathroom door, unclothed Mark is already something Chris is far too acquainted with. Eduardo's ass, naked Mark: Harvard gaveth, and Harvard taketh away.
"You're leaving," Dustin hisses. "You won't have to look at Mark every day and remember seeing him making out."
"A little louder," Chris snaps, looking over his shoulder, a little paranoid. "I don't think they heard you all the way downstairs."
"Pff, whatever, bro," Dustin says. "Like any of the plebs will want to tell Mark you're leaving. That's a special treat just for you."
It hurts Chris, in a way he was sort of expecting, every time Dustin reminds him that he's going. It doesn't, however, make him want to change his mind. He's got somewhere to go, and Mark has got someone, and Dustin will find someone. Everything can work out, like this. Eduardo can help work everything out.
The panic in his chest subsides a little, and he drains his plastic cup of water, throws it in the bin nearby.
"Come on," he says. "Once more into the breach, dear Dustin."
Dustin straightens up too, with slightly more reluctance. "You and your fancy arts degree," he grumbles. "Don't think you can win me over with Shakespeare."
"Shut up," Chris says. "You're totally Shakespeare's bitch."
"You're the bitch," Dustin says, and then stops again. "Chris," he says, drawing him back by the arm. "What if they're doing more than making out? There are things I don't want to see, and then there are things I never want to see, and Marky Mark getting his dick wet with the love of his life is firmly in that second box."
"First of all," Chris says, grimacing, "that might be the most disgusting thing you've ever said."
"Probably not," Dustin interjects.
Chris rolls his eyes. "Second of all, think about it this way -- if it wasn't Eduardo in there with him, would you even be hesitating about going in there right now to give Mark shit?"
Dustin thinks it over. "No," he says, finally. "Not one bit. But, Chris! True love! We can't just go barging in."
"You are a barge," Chris says. "You were made for barging. Move."
"This plan has too many metaphorical vehicles," Dustin complains.
"There's something my fancy arts degree prepared me for," Chris says. He tugs Dustin forward. "Now, let's go."
//
There are more parts to this plan than Dustin is really aware of. A lot of them involve borderline illegal extortion and/or blackmail of certain members of the press, to get them to keep quiet about the whole memory erasure thing. There are laws about disclosing subject matter that's been dealt with by Lacuna inc, but they're still new and Chris doesn't know how strongly they're currently being enforced.
Chris thinks briefly, ruefully, of the dubious sense of entering into these kinds of bargains right before joining an election campaign, but it's not going to stop him. He wants to do this much for Mark, at least. He wants to do this much for Eduardo. He's counting on Mark's general terrifying social demeanor, on his reputation, to keep people from telling him to his face about his past.
Chris wants to give Mark and Eduardo a chance to be happy.
Which is why, when Dustin bursts into Mark's office for the second time in under a week, Chris carefully looks away from the blush rising fast up Mark's cheeks as Eduardo steps out from between his splayed legs, away from the desk.
Well, the altruistic happiness thing and a self-preservation thing. He doesn't think it's entirely selfish to want to spare himself actually seeing the making out he's trying to enable.
"Hello!" Dustin announces, carefully cheerfully oblivious to any mood he might be breaking. "And who have we here?"
Mark is straightening out his hoodie. Eduardo is busy fastening the buttons at the top of his shirt. Chris mostly is just thankful they got in here before anyone lost their pants.
"Dustin," Mark says. He's a little breathless. Chris thinks that, despite his protests, Dustin is going to savour this moment forever. Mark says, "Dustin, what the hell -- Chris?"
"Hi," Chris says, leaning back against the doorframe. "Think of me as a chaperone."
"To what?" Mark says, mouth tight.
Eduardo turns back when Mark's voice goes tight too, looks between Dustin and Chris in the doorway and Mark, defensive, still perched on the edge of his desk. He puts a hand on Mark's shoulder and Mark turns his face into the touch, just a little. Chris doesn't know if Mark even knows he's doing it.
Now, Chris is sure they're doing the right thing.
"To Dustin," Chris says. He gestures over his shoulder, out of the door. "Unless you really want me to leave you guys alone with him..."
"No," Mark says, fast.
Dustin beams. "I am the actual best," he says, laying it on thick. "You all need a chaperone to keep your virtue in the presence of my awesomeness. I am man enough to impugn your collective virtue. Don't feel threatened, just love me."
Eduardo laughs.
Mark breaks into this smile, all-consuming and helpless, looks up at him like he's the only person in the room. All that emotion on Mark's face, just because Eduardo laughed.
Chris catches Dustin's eye, and knows he's thinking the same thing.
He coughs, sorry to break the moment. "Hi," he says, stepping towards Eduardo, aware of Mark watching him. "I'm Chris, and we're all very sorry about Dustin."
"Good to know," says Eduardo. He's smiling his company smile, the one for people he doesn't know, but it turns into a grin around the edges when he holds out his hand. "Eduardo. Nice to meet you."
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
rating: pg-13
word count: ~10k
disclaimer: these are a) not based on the real people but their fictional counterparts from the 2010 film, and b) not my characters either. everything belongs to other people, the talented ones.
a/n: a
help_japan fic for willow314159, who not only made a wonderfully generous bid but who has also been legitimately the most patient person in the world while I dithered around and never managed to meet deadlines and lived with AN APPALLING INTERNET CONNECTION THAT APPARENTLY HATES JOY. So. Thank you, lovely willow314159! My endless apologies that it is so much later than I promised and hopefully you will enjoy this <3 Also, to laliandra, all the thanks and lemons in the world for being the best beta and also for existing.A prequel mix/fic exists, but reading that is not necessary in order to read this. SONGS! ABOUT MEMORY AND NOSTALGIA AND FEELINGS! You know you want some of that.
summary: A TSN/Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fusion. mostly based on this prompt. In which Mark has a new mystery significant other, or so Dustin claims, and there is not enough alcohol in the world to make Chris's life any less stupid.
It's somewhere around unpleasant o'clock in the morning and Chris is still busy trying to ingest as much caffeine as possible without just hooking himself up to an IV, but apparently neither of these things matter to Dustin.
"Mark's met someone!" he proclaims, and lets the door to Chris's office slam shut behind him. He waggles his eyebrows. It is definitely too early for Chris to deal with anything that makes Dustin do that.
"What?"
Dustin settles himself on the edge of Chris's desk. Chris just sighs, and moves some paperwork out of his way.
"Mark's met someone!" Dustin repeats, swinging his feet against Chris's shins. "A someone someone."
Chris moves his legs out of range of Dustin's grimy sneakers. "That doesn't make any sense, Dustin."
"Right?" says Dustin, clearly still focusing on Mark's love life and not on his own linguistic failings. He leans over and turns Chris's computer on for him. "But he has. He's all - smiley."
"Mark's allowed to have feelings," Chris reminds him, treading the thin morning line between long-suffering and intolerant. "Now fuck off so I can log in."
Okay, so it's a really thin line.
"You know I know your password, right?" Dustin is apparently unable to perceive metaphorical lines.
"You know if you use it, I will kill you in your sleep, right?"
There's a two second deadlock, and then Dustin averts his eyes.
"Thank you very much," says Chris, and logs in.
The computer makes an unenthusiastic noise -- Chris empathises -- and begrudgingly accepts Chris's password. The number of unread emails in his inbox has started to haunt Chris in his sleep. There's a job offer among them. Chris hasn't been able to open it yet.
He takes another slug of coffee. The emails can wait a few more minutes; Dustin probably won't. Chris turns back to him.
"You were saying?"
Dustin shifts along the desk so that he's between Chris and his keyboard. Chris tries to look like he minds.
"Mark's seeing someone. Mark! Our Mark! Little robot Mark!"
"He's not a robot," Chris says. "I have several hundred emails to remind me how my life would be easier if he were, but, alas, he's not."
Dustin takes him by the shoulders and nearly falls off the desk. Chris just waits.
"Chris," Dustin says, very solemnly. "Leaving aside the fact that no-one has said alas since the Victorian homosexuals, I feel you are missing my point."
"People say alas," says Chris, deliberately focusing on the wrong thing to watch the frustrated colour creep up Dustin's neck. "I say alas."
"Christopher," wails Dustin. "Sometimes it's like you don't listen to me at all -- "
Chris has learned from years of experience that it is better to head Dustin off as soon as possible when he starts veering off his usual track of pestering and into the woods of dramatic lament.
"All right," Chris interrupts. "I get it."
Dustin leans in, narrowing his eyes. "You do?"
"Mark's met someone," says Chris, leaning his head back to get more space than the zero inches there currently are between his nose and Dustin's. "Our Mark. Has met someone."
Dustin releases him with an air of triumph. "Yes!" he crows. "Now come with me and help me bug him into telling us about it."
Chris really needs to get a job that does not involve working with his friends.
//
On the way to Mark's office, Chris has a sudden thought.
"Er," he says, as the best way to preface it. "How do you know?"
"How do I know what?" Dustin asks, turning onto the main floor. "How to be so awesome? It just comes naturally. Don't feel bad that you will never be able to compete."
"Ah, yes," Chris says, dryly. "Naturally that is a pain without end."
Dustin inclines his head like it is a burden you all must bear. Chris rolls his eyes.
"Back in the land of the sane," Chris says, "how do you know Mark's seeing someone?"
Dustin shrugs. "It came to me in one of my frequent flashes of genius," he declares.
"So, you have no actual basis for this?" Chris hisses at him, trying to keep his voice down as Dustin drags him past various desks. "We're just going to go in and have this conversation with Mark without any proof of anything?"
"Yep," says Dustin, cheerfully. "Honestly, Chris, it's like you don't know me at all."
Sometimes, Chris wishes that were true. His life would be so much quieter. Unhindered by thoughts of this alternate, peaceful universe, Dustin throws the door to Mark's office open before Chris can drag him back.
Mark looks up from his computer, blinking. "What?" he says.
"We, er," says Chris, not quite sure how to avoid finishing that sentence with are here to interrogate you about your potential secret significant other, please don't fire us, and so he stops for a second. Dustin, compunctionless as ever, jumps into the verbal fray.
"We know you're seeing someone," he announces.
"Dustin thinks you're seeing someone," Chris corrects.
"Dustin correctly interpreted the available data," Dustin amends. "Chris, dude, look at him."
"Look at what?" Mark says, irritable, and then, more defensively, "What?" when Chris takes a little breath in, one he can't really help, like he's accidentally fallen into a Harlequin novel or accidentally breathed in some of Dustin's secret scented bath salts or something. It's stupid, but Chris will spare more time to think about just how stupid it is when he's done looking at Mark.
It's been a while since Chris has really looked at Mark: when you see someone all the time, you don't notice the little changes as they happen until you step back one day and bam they're three stone lighter or something. Chris hadn't noticed, but now he takes a second, and, yeah, okay, Dustin is definitely on to something.
"You look well," Chris says, trying not to sound too insultingly surprised.
Mark blushes, and then immediately scowls down at the floor,
Mark blushes.
Chris's brain is suddenly set at Defcon One: Priority: Get All Details.
Dustin makes a terrifying noise of satisfaction. "Mark!" he exclaims. "I knew I was right! I knew I was righteous! Come, sit by Dustin and tell me all about how right I am. Feel free to go into detail. Dustin loves details." He pats the sofa cushion next to the one he's just commandeered and waggles his eyebrows.
"Does Dustin also love fucking with pronouns?" Mark asks, but he goes over to the couch anyway.
Chris is still reeling but he is good at his job and his job is essentially Mark, so his poker face is pretty damn good when he puts some effort into it. He pulls himself together and asks, "How long?"
"A few months," Mark says, looking hard at the wall just over Chris's shoulder. Mark might be CEO now but he's still got the some of same habits as his 19 year old self -- avoiding eye contact if he's uncomfortable or emotionally exposed, genuinely forgetting to eat, unresponsive until pushed.
"How did you meet?" Dustin presses, clapping a hand down on Mark's knee. "Come on, Mark, we need details! And by "we" I mostly mean "me". And by "need" I mean "crave like sugar"."
"Because that's something you never have," Mark says, sarcastic.
Chris says, trying to tease Mark into it, "Do not make me leave this office with a Dustin with a sugar craving, metaphorical or otherwise. Mark. Do not do that to me."
"Yeah," Dustin says, somewhere between beseeching and encouraging while Mark twists his fingers together like they're looking for the comfort of a keyboard. "Give me my sweet knowledge and all will be well."
Chris pulls Mark's desk chair in front of the sofa and sinks down into it.
"Mark," he says.
Mark looks up at him.
Chris smiles, just the manipulative side of coaxing. "Hey," he says. "How did you meet?"
"In Cambridge," Mark says, finally, with an air of some reluctance.
Chris does a quick mental backtrack through Mark's calendar and comes up with nothing more recently Cambridge-based than Harvard. Like, Harvard Harvard. Shared Kirkland dorm Harvard.. Admittedly there is a slight chance that Mark has friends from Harvard that Chris isn't aware of, and an even slighter one that Mark still keeps in touch with these hypothetical friends, but then there is also a slight chance that a tree that falls in a forest doesn't make a sound if no-one's around to hear it. Chris's point, here, is essentially this: bullshit if Mark has Harvard friends that Chris doesn't know about.
So, logically: "When were you last in Cambridge?"
"Um," says Mark, and looks down at his hands again.
"UM?" says Dustin, loudly enough that Chris hears it in all caps. "Mark, you got nothing wrong on your SATs."
"Remind me how that's relevant?" Mark asks, the embarrassed side of churlish. Chris rolls his eyes and, because he is the best friend on the planet, does not point out that it is basically never relevant and Mark should stop reminding them about it every time someone (Chris) tells him he can't say certain things to certain people (the press).
"It became relevant when um became your defence," says Dustin. "Mark Zuckerberg is not an um guy."
"Sadly," Chris adds.
Mark levels a terrible glare at him. Chris has seen this stare make a particularly shy intern cry. Chris, on the other hand, is immune to it.
"Okay," says Dustin, slapping a hand down on Mark's thigh. "Explain. Expand. Expound. Go."
"Take your hand off my thigh," Mark replies.
Dustin moves away with a flourish. "Why?" he asks, with an unholy gleam in his eyes. "Will your secret someone be jealous that I'm stealing their cow?"
"Er," says Chris.
"Cow?" says Mark.
Dustin rolls his eyes. "You know," he says, in a tone that Chris has come to recognise means he really does not want to know at all. "There's that saying. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Marky here is getting milked on the regular!"
The images in Chris's brain right now are probably acceptable grounds for him to resign and/or beat Dustin to death with the nearest object to hand. The look on Mark's face indicates he may be feeling the same way.
Dustin waggles his eyebrows. "Tell me more about your secret someone, Mark," he says, "and I will stop saying horrifying things about your sex life."
This is the best deal Chris has ever heard. Dustin is alarmingly competent at getting people to tell him things, even if his methods are mostly horrifying them into being willing to do anything to make him to go the fuck away.
"Fine," says Mark. "God, fine. But then you will get out of my office or I will fire you."
This is the emptiest threat Mark has, despite also having the very real ability to follow through on it. If Chris had a dollar for every time Mark threatened to fire Dustin, Chris would now be living on his own private island.
"Deal," Dustin says, cheerfully. "So. Deets."
Mark fidgets a bit. Chris isn't used to seeing Mark look like this anymore, self-consciously closed-off. Not when it's just the three of them, at least. Mark's public persona is still a pain in Chris's ass, but Chris figures that at least is on purpose. It's the Mark equivalent of Dustin being deliberately appalling at washing up in Kirkland, like he thought if he made a big enough mess of it then Chris wouldn't make him do it again.
This isn't Mark clamming up in front of the press. This isn't deliberate. This is Mark Having Feelings, and neither age nor success has made Mark any better at processing his own emotions.
Chris is so inexpressibly fond of him right now he doesn't quite know what to do about it. He settles for letting it show in the smile he gives Mark, watching Mark twist his fingers together like that's going to give him the right words.
Dustin catches Chris's eye, winks at him. Chris grins back.
"I," Mark says, which is a start. He clears his throat. Chris watches him pull it back together, like seeing him come into the dorm angry and hurt and then funnel all that into a website that crashed the college servers. Mark says, putting his chin up, defiant, like he thinks they're going to laugh at him, "His name's Eduardo."
Of all the things Chris was expecting, that wasn't even on the list.
"Er," says Dustin, in a really high-pitch. "Eduardo, you say?"
Mark nods, not looking either of them in the eye. "He's from Brazil. He lives in Singapore but comes over here for work. He's a year older than us. I met him in Cambridge when I told you I had the flu a couple of months ago. I'm meeting him for dinner tonight. Is that enough information for you, or do you want to know which position he likes me to fuck him in?"
Mark sounds angry, so he's being defensive. Chris would give this further thought, but his brain is currently closing in on itself from all sides and shouting helpful things like ABORT, ABORT, so in-depth analysis is currently a bit beyond his reach.
"He sounds nice," Chris manages, proud of himself for only sounding slightly strangled. "Do you, er, have a picture?"
Of course he will have. Mark is kind of creepy. Endearingly creepy, but still: he invented Facebook.
Mark's hand goes to his phone in his pocket like a reflex, but he doesn't take it out. "Why?" he asks, suspicious.
It kind of makes Chris's heart hurt to see him like this, like he still thinks they're going to laugh at him, even now when Mark is twenty three and the CEO of a company that's basically taking over the world. Mark's been on dates before, obviously, seen other people, but Chris has never seen him this wary of talking about them. He must really like this guy, Chris realises, and then, deep down and fervent, prays for everything Mark is saying to be just a really monumentally huge coincidence.
Chris is aware he is edging fast into denial.
Mark says, scowling, "Do you not believe me?"
"Of course we do," Chris starts, trying to aim for reassuring but Dustin just chirps, "Pics or it didn't happen!" and that seems to be the thing that works.
Never underestimate the power of Dustin.
Mark gets out his phone, shows them a picture.
"Well, fuck," says Chris.
//
"This could be okay, right?" Dustin says, a little desperately, in Chris's kitchen that evening. "I mean, this could definitely be okay. Right?"
"Explain to me," says Chris, "please, I am genuinely asking you, explain how this could possibly ever be okay."
Dustin holds up a finger in the universal and only mildly douchey signal for just a second, bro and dives into his rucksack.
Dustin is the youngest billionaire in the world and his backpack is from Target. It has Snoopy on the front. These are two of the reasons why he is Chris's best friend.
"Go on, then," Chris says. "Tell me."
Dustin straightens up and dumps a crate of beer on the kitchen table. "Tah-dah!" he says, and does jazz hands at Chris. "All better."
"That doesn't seem like a particularly long term solution," Chris says.
"No," Dustin agrees, "but think about it this way: then you'll be drunk!"
"You make a convincing point," Chris says.
"I know," Dustin says, cheerfully, and gets up to paw through Chris's kitchen drawers, ostensibly in search of a bottle opener. At least, Chris assumes that's what he's doing. He's been wrong before.
In the brief conversational lull, the whole situation comes flooding back to the forefront of Chris's brain. Chris would really prefer to shove it into some kind of mental kitchen drawer, but, because his life is apparently up for some kind of Most Stupid award, he can't.
"Ugh," he says, and drops his head into his hands.
"Cheer up," says Dustin, and drops Chris's bottle opener on the table. "Look what I've found. Now there will be healing alcohol!"
"i>Ugh," says Chris, again. It comes out muffled behind his palms. "Not even alcohol will make this better."
"Lies!" Dustin pronounces. "Alcohol heals all wounds."
"I think science might disagree with you," Chris tells him.
"Then I want nothing to do with science," Dustin says. Chris stays behind his hands, where it is safe and dark and no-one is sleeping with anyone they've had erased from their brain. It is admittedly not the most productive solution ever, but it's working for him for now.
"Chris?" Dustin asks. "Hey, Chris? Chris? Chris, you cannot live in your hands forever."
"I can try," Chris mumbles, but begrudgingly looks up.
Dustin gives him a double thumbs-up, and grins hugely at him. "It's definitely going to be okay somehow," he says, with the air of a man whose job is not that of Mark Zuckerberg's PR. "You can fix this, right?"
Chris puts his head back in his hands. "I need a drink."
"You are not filling me with confidence, Christopher," Dustin says. "I am a pitcher waiting to be filled with your hope."
"I will not fill you with anything, Dustin," Chris says. "Give me the beer."
//
At the point in the night when Chris has ceased looking at his watch and started measuring time by the amount of empty beer bottles on the floor, Dustin hiccoughs and slams his fist down on the table.
"But," he says, like either of them had said anything in the last ten minutes, "he doesn't remember him!"
"Who doesn't remember who?" Chris asks, squeezing one eye closed and peering suspiciously at his drink. He could have sworn there'd been more beer left in the bottle just a minute ago.
"Mark," says Dustin. "He doesn't remember Eduardo, right? And shouldn't one of those whos have been a whom? Your standards are slipping, Christopher."
"Emergency ruling," says Chris. "Grammar comes second on the list of priorities when Mark is dating Eduardo."
"You can still say priorities," says Dustin, sounding admiring. "Hey, so can I!"
Chris nudges another beer at him. "You haven't drunk enough, then. And no."
"No what?" Dustin asks, waging a brief but ultimately triumphant battle with the bottle opener.
"Neither of them remember each other," Chris says, and takes another slug of his own beer. "They can't do."
"Do, er," says Dustin, and then pulls a face. "Do we have to tell them?"
"I don't know," Chris says. He finishes his drink, in case that helps. "Let's think about it in the morning."
"I am not looking forward to the morning," Dustin says, mournfully. "The morning heralds only bad things."
"Mmm," says Chris. "Like conversations with Mark."
"Like hangovers," says Dustin.
"I hate that that can be your priority," says Chris. "My job sucks."
Dustin shoves another bottle in his direction. "Tell it to the beer."
//
The night barrels on. It's way past the witching hour and Chris is about as buzzed as beer is going to get him and Mark is still dating Eduardo. At this point, Chris almost wants to get his own damn memory erased, just so he doesn't have to think about this clusterfuck of a situation any more.
"I went with Eduardo, you know," he says, waving his beer in the air.
"Where?" Dustin rears up from the table, the pattern of the wood pressed red into his cheek.
"To the place," Chris tells him.
"Well, that clears everything up."
"The place," Chris insists, still staring at his beer. "To make the appointment."
"The - " Dustin breaks off. "Oh. That appointment."
"Yeah," says Chris. "He asked me. He wanted someone with him, when --" He breaks off.
Eduardo had held on tight to Chris's arm in the doorway of Lacuna Inc., but had gone in to his appointment with his chin held high.
There's a card underneath the good silverware at the back of Chris's pantry that says Eduardo Saverin has chosen to erase Mark Zuckerberg from his memory. Please do not mention their relationship to him as it will only confuse him.
There's a card in the bottom drawer of Chris's dresser, buried under two layers of folded clothes that says in no nonsense copperplate: Mark Zuckerberg has chosen to erase Eduardo Saverin from his memory. Please do not mention their relationship to him as it will only confuse him.
Mark has a two-week-old picture of Eduardo on his phone, fast asleep in Mark's huge bed, wearing Mark's old grey Gap hoodie.
Chris cannot possibly sigh deeply enough to convey how displeased he is with the curveballs life is throwing him but he gives it a go.
"You can sigh all you like," Dustin says. "You still have to go talk to Mark about this."
"I know," says Chris, mournfully.
"It's probably not going to go well," Dustin adds, with an unnecessary amount of delight.
"I am aware of that," Chris says.
"What are you going to say?" Dustin asks, sitting up a little straighter. "'Hey, Mark, you know your super hot new boyfriend? He's actually your super hot ex-best friend that you screwed out of Facebook.'"
He takes a really deep breath. Chris braces himself.
"More?" says Dustin, starting to gesticulate alarmingly. "'Hey, Mark! You never actually screwed Eduardo even though that could really only have helped seeing as you were basically the most co-dependent things the world has ever seen and he spent a lot of time making huge I-love-you eyes in your unwashed direction. Also, after you fucked him over, he sued your ass for all the money in the world and the two of you are actually legally obligated never to talk about each other again. You just don't remember this because you were both so heartbroken that you had each other forcibly removed from your brains. But never mind all that! Go crazy! Let us know how that shitstorm shakes down!'"
Dustin takes another gulp of air and relaxes slightly. Chris figures part of that rant's been coming for a long time.
"You done?" Chris asks.
"For now," Dustin says. "So, are you going to go with something like that?"
"I probably won't go with your exact phrasing, no," says Chris, as diplomatic as he can be while drunk. He drains the dregs of his beer, and in the pause something from the end of Dustin's diatribe sinks in properly. He sets his empty bottle down and adds, "And they're not, any more, actually."
"Not what?" asks Dustin. "You get vague when you're drunk."
"You get squeaky," Chris returns. "I just don't mention it out of respect for your feelings."
"Mark has feelings," says Dustin, with the wisdom of the drunk. "For Eduardo."
"I know," says Chris.
"Is he allowed to have feelings for Eduardo?"
"Sadly, there is no law about my life getting more stupid," Chris says. He pokes through the collection of bottles on the table. They're all empty. If he were a camel, this would feel dangerously close to a backbreaking straw.
"Is he allowed to talk about his feelings for Eduardo?" Dustin persists. "They signed -- "
"That's what I mean," Chris interrupts. "The non-disclosures aren't valid after the erasures."
Dustin's go very wide. "Are you kidding?"
"No," Chris says. He shrugs. "They don't remember what they're not allowed to talk about, right?"
"I guess," says Dustin. He frowns. "Does this mean we have to be supportive friends about this?"
"Fucked if I know," says Chris, still surveying the lack of alcohol in front of him with some displeasure.
"They do make a sweet couple," Dustin says, and Chris whips round to glare at him. Dustin throws his hands wide, all innocence. "I'm just saying!" he yelps. "Mark seems happy?"
And that, Chris decides, is the real problem here: Mark does seem happy. For all their stupid baggage, Mark and Eduardo make each other happy.
When Chris thinks about them, he thinks about the time he came in from class to find Facebook running live and Mark passed out on the sofa, his head lolling on Eduardo's shoulder, his laptop open on Eduardo's knees; the time Mark had the flu in freshman year and Eduardo camped out on his dorm floor to make sure his fever broke; all the times they brushed past each other, too close for friends. He thinks about wanting to apologise when he'd open the door to Mark's room to see Eduardo with him, even when everyone was fully dressed and no-one was touching, about Eduardo watching Mark sleep until someone caught him at it, about Mark not noticing when his fridge was empty but always picking up when Eduardo was unhappy.
Chris also remembers Eduardo hollow-eyed and distant in his last year at Harvard and Mark, shaking, the week after the depositions.
Eduardo used to smile at Mark like he'd set out the stars; Mark would move in to Eduardo's touch and away from everyone else's.
Chris's life is so fucked it isn't even funny, and he has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to do.
"Fuck it," he announces. "Let's do shots."
//
"Did I ever tell you," Chris says, later still, when dawn is starting to thread its way through the blinds and Dustin has his cheek pressed against the tabletop again, "that Eduardo loved Mark?"
Dustin snorts. "I know we're not all omnish - omnissee - we're not all all-knowing like you, but some things are obvious from space."
"You aren't in space," Chris points out.
"I could have been," Dustin says. "It would have made no difference to how obvious that was."
"Point," says Chris. "But, I mean." He stops for a second. "What did I mean?"
"Eduardo loved Mark?" Dustin prompts, still face down. "In other news, beer is good."
"Beer is heinous," Chris mumbles, and tries not to think about how his stomach feels turbulent. "Stupid space."
"Space?" says Dustin.
"There are waves in my stomach," Chris explains, which he feels should clear everything up.
"Ah," says Dustin, sagely. "Stupid moon."
"Exactly," says Chris. Somewhere in the part of his mind not currently beer-logged and leaking, he wonders vaguely if it casts any kind of moral shadow on his character that he and Dustin share the same drunken wavelength. Then he wonders whether one would ride a wavelength like a horse, and it's about that point that he gives up on anything involving real thought.
"I love your wavelengths," he says.
"That's okay," says Dustin, magnanimously. "Eduardo loved Mark."
"Yeah," says Chris, and then he remembers his point. "Yeah, he told me."
Dustin sits up straight, which Chris feels is slightly too Herculean a task for him to match. He squints at him instead and hopes that indicates his attention is held.
"He told you?" Dustin says, sharply. Chris feels too smushy for sharp words, but if Dustin is trying to pull himself together then Chris also feels duty-bound to brave the fields of hangover with him.
He's drunk. He's definitely allowed to mix his metaphors.
"Yeah," he says, taking a few deep breaths in. "At Harvard."
"When?" Dustin demands.
"Shhh," Chris says, screwing his eyes up. "I'm thinking."
"When at Harvard?" Dustin prompts.
"The Harvard-y bit," Chris says. "Hang on, I think I'm still drunk."
Dustin laughs. "Me too."
"Hooray," says Chris, and then, "No, not hooray."
"Booray?" suggests Dustin.
Chris's fragile equilibrium is lurching dizzily between hung the fuck over and still blurrily drunk. Booray almost makes sense. It is time for something to be done. He groans.
"Jesus Christ," he says, trying to will himself back to sobriety. "Coffee?"
"Coffee," Dustin confirms. He comes round the table and helps Chris to his feet. The two of them stagger over to the counter. It is a sad fact of Chris's life that he is familiar enough with all the many settings on his coffee machine that he can work it even when he's as drunk as this.
"I love coffee," says Dustin, fervently, as they stand and listen to the coffee boil
"I would fight you for coffee," Chris tells him.
Dustin eyes him up and down. "I would take you down," he announces.
"You really wouldn't," Chris says. That reminds him: "After the share dissolution," he says.
Dustin blinks blearily at him. "What?"
"That's when Eduardo told me he loved Mark," Chris elaborates. A headache accompanies him over to the cupboard as he looks for mugs. "He was drunk."
"We're drunk," says Dustin, but then he frowns. "I might be sick."
"Please aim for the sink," says Chris.
"After the share dilution?"
"Um," says Chris. "I didn't know sinks had shares."
"No," says Dustin, with what Chris feels is an unnecessarily patronizing hand wave. "Eduardo's beautiful declaration of love. It was after the share dilution?"
"Oh," says Chris. Behind him, the coffee machine beeps ready. "Yeah, yeah, it was."
It had been weird, at first, just the two of them being at Harvard, neither of them quite sure where they stood with the other. But then, Chris was a big enough person to be able to work with Mark, to love what he was doing, to be his friend unreservedly but still hate him, just a little, for diluting the shares. It was easy to hate Mark for it when he could see Eduardo without his best friend, without his best friend's trust. It wasn't that Eduardo was without blame -- and Chris certainly wasn't getting in the middle of all that -- but Mark had a burgeoning company and investors worth millions of dollars and Eduardo had last year Harvard finals and no-one telling him he was changing the world.
One night, both of them drunk and Chris jetlagged from his return flight, Eduardo had leant against the wall in Chris's dorm bathroom and told him in an unsteady voice that he was in love with Mark. That he was still in love with Mark.
Chris loved his job even then, the challenges it gave him, the opportunities it was bringing him, but he didn't go back out to Palo Alto for five months after that.
"He smashed Mark's laptop," Dustin says now, a little sadly.
"He did," says Chris, bravely pouring out the coffee with not entirely steady hands.
"And he loved him."
"He did that as well."
Dustin takes his coffee from Chris and folds his hands around it, frowning. Outside, a cloud shifts and sunlight tumbles free through the blinds. It spills into the room and makes Chris squint.
"It's tomorrow," he says, with some dread.
"Eduardo still loved him," Dustin says, a beat behind.
They look at each other for a second.
Fuck, Chris thinks.
//
Chris is a highly competent, highly regarded, highly productive member of the human race. However, he is also incredibly hungover, which goes some way towards explaining why he spends the first half of his working day in his office with the lights off, squinting at his laptop and trying to convince himself that he is a functioning adult. He can do his job with a banging headache whilst sitting in the dark.
He also gets frequent IMs from Dustin that go something like this:
crhis i think i a mdead
no reallyfs
christopherrrrrr
are you d ead?
sjhgefdg my whole everything hurts D:
The chat box makes a horrible noise every time a message comes through but Chris can't bring himself to move enough to either turn the sound off or tell Dustin to stop.
He eventually sends agreed to Dustin's last but Dustin sends back HAVE YOU TALKED TO MAKR YET? so Chris quickly gives up on further communication.
This is totally not hiding. This is a mature method of dealing with a tricky situation. He is evaluating his options.
WHAT IF, he sends, when he can stand to look at the light from his computer screen again, WHAT IF I JUST DIDN'T? WHAT THEN, DUSTIN? WHAT THEN?
stop pretending you're me Dustin sends. SHIT, HUGHES, GET IT TOGETHER.
Chris is so alone and also in the dark.
This is not one of his more dignified moments.
//
By late afternoon, Chris has got himself together a lot more. He's had three cups of coffee and a bagel laden down with all the cream cheese he could lay his hands on, and he has turned on the overhead light in his office, which he considers more of a victory than is really sensible. Then again, nothing about this situation could be classed as sensible at all, so Chris vs. Lighting is probably an acceptable fight to celebrate winning.
It's thoughts like that one that let him know he's been spending too much time with Dustin.
Anyway, it's all for the best that Chris has laid waste to his hangover, because his phone buzzes on his desk at the exact same time that Mark bangs into his office.
"Are you avoiding me?" he says, folding his arms.
Mark has never noticed if anyone has tried to avoid him before. Chris stares at him as the door swings shut. Mark's mouth is tightly drawn and he's standing firm like Chris has seen only a few times before, like he's squaring up to something.
Oh, god, everything about this situation is so much worse than Chris was expecting it to be.
"Why would I be avoiding you?" Chris asks, trying to remember that they're both in their mid-twenties even though this conversation makes him feel about thirteen.
"Because of Eduardo," Mark says. Chris feels a little gut-punched every time Mark says Eduardo's name like that, off-hand, like there was never a time when he didn't say it at all, didn't let anyone else bring it up. Mark goes on, sounding like he's having this conversation despite his better judgement, "I didn't expect you to be like this about it. About him."
"Like what?" Chris usually hates playing dumb but there's a time and a place for everything. "What I am being like?"
"Like you're avoiding me," Mark repeats, and tightens his arms across his chest.
Chris stands up, comes around his desk to lean against it, closer to Mark. He doesn't reach out because Mark still shies away from people touching him sometimes, but he doesn't cross his own arms, tries to transmit open and honest. He swallows.
"What's this?" he says, still skirting the real conversation. "Missing me?"
Mark rolls his eyes. "Don't be stupid," he says. The tension in his shoulders eases out a fraction. Chris wants to sit him down and tell him everything. He wants to send him away and tell him nothing. He wants Mark to be happy but he doesn't know how to make that happen.
"Look," Chris says, spreading his hands, apologetic. "I swear I'm not avoiding anyone. Except I've kind of been avoiding everyone. Mark, I was so hungover this morning it wasn't even funny."
Mark smiles, a little quirk of his lips. Chris breathes out.
"I take it you were with Dustin," he says. "Did you know he's lying on his desk?"
Chris nods, and gestures to the myriad of coffee cups littering his desk. "Behold," he says. "This is all Dustin's fault."
"What isn't?" Mark says.
Chris thinks, uncharitably, you sleeping with Eduardo, but manages to keep it back. He wishes Mark was with anyone else, was seeing anyone else, that anyone else put that look on his face when he looked down at their photo, affectionate, pleased.
"We thought you'd be with Eduardo," Chris says, instead. "Otherwise, you know, we'd have made you come over too."
Mark smiles again; it looks involuntary this time, like just hearing Eduardo's name does that to him, makes him feel good. Chris clenches his fingers tight around the edge of the desk.
"I was," Mark says.
"Yeah?" says Chris, and he tries to keep his voice positive, light, but Mark can always tell when someone's not telling him the truth. Chris would give anything, right now, to mean the note of camaraderie in his voice, just to be happy for Mark. "How long did you say he's going to be in town?"
"A few days," Mark says. He smiles again, private, down at his hands. "He's staying with me."
Chris's throat is suddenly tight and he has to swallow down past it, look away from the expression on Mark's face, vulnerably happy. It's like watching Mark standing in a crowd of interns, opportunities opening up right there around him, holding enough money to give him the summer he wants but just looking at Eduardo. It was like, in that moment, he was the only part of it Mark cared about.
Eduardo has always been the only one to make Mark look like that.
Chris looks up when he can, when he's sure he won't give himself away, and Mark is frowning.
"What?" Mark says, flatly.
"Mark?"
"What's wrong?" Mark asks, and, of course Mark has seen through this. Mark has never fallen for anyone's line of bullshit unless it's suited him not to examine it too closely. This, Eduardo, is important enough that he might as well be holding a magnifying glass up to Chris, looking for his weak spots.
Mark is Chris's weak spot. All his friends are. He never really stood a chance in this conversation.
"Nothing's wrong," Chris tries, and then, because there isn't any point in dragging out the inevitable, just says, "About Eduardo -- "
Mark visibly flinches.
Chris has never seen Mark like this, readable. Mark's usually on his guard, defensively cautious, but this is -- this is like seeing him leave the office on the night of the erasure, seeing him ragged around the edges.
"Hey," Chris says, and he does reach out this time, puts a hand on Mark's folded arms. "I didn't mean -- "
"Yes, you did," Mark says, pulling away. "You obviously did."
"No," Chris says, gently, "I didn't." He's trying to pick his words carefully, not looking away from how Mark's eyebrows are drawing in, how his jaw is slowly clenching. "I just meant, are things maybe going a bit -- fast?"
"No," Mark says.
"Okay," Chris says, immediately. "I'm sorry."
Mark looks down at the floor. He drops his hands into his jeans pockets, rounds his shoulders. On anyone else, that would look defeated. On Mark, it looks like he's gearing up.
"You're not sorry," he says, looking back up, ready. "You couldn't get out of my office fast enough yesterday, when you saw the picture."
"Mark -- "
"Don't," Mark snaps. "I wouldn't have thought you'd have a problem with Eduardo, Chris, seeing as -- "
Chris cuts in this time, before Mark can say it. He's used to Mark so he knows he's just lashing out, but it'll still hurt to hear. "It's not that," he says, trying not to let himself sound hurt. It won't help him make Mark listen. "Obviously it isn't that, Mark, Jesus. What do I mind whom you're seeing? I just -- " he stops. He's not entirely sure how that sentence was going to end. Worry, maybe. Maybe not.
"You just what, Chris?" Mark says, staring him down. Mark isn't nineteen any more, can look people in the eye when he's angry. Chris isn't sure it's an improvement.
Chris is hungover, and tired, and he's pretty sure he's going to accept the job offer waiting for him in his inbox. He's had better game.
"Is it because you think he's a gold digger or something?" Mark demands, flushed, reading into Chris's silence. Chris starts to object again, but Mark goes on, fast, hard. "You and Dustin. You think the only way someone who looks like that could want to be with me is for my money?"
"Mark, no, I know -- "
"He's got his own money," Mark interrupts, stubborn, folding his arms again. "He doesn't need mine. Eduardo's not like that."
"I know he doesn't, Mark," Chris tells him, vehemently. "I'm not saying that. Of course I don't think that. Neither of us thinks that, Mark, we're your friends."
Mark won't look at him. "We've been seeing each other for months," he says, to the floor, a hot pink burning across his cheekbones. "Wardo and I -- we're not going too fast."
Wardo.
Chris can't find anything to say after that.
He gets up and goes over to Mark, puts a hand on Mark's arm. Mark still doesn't look at him, but he doesn't shrug him away.
"You deserve this," Chris tells him, very quietly, so Mark can pretend not to have heard him if he likes.
"I know," Mark says, stubborn.
That's the thing about Mark fucking Zuckerberg: he's got an inferiority complex about having a superiority complex, belittles and believes in himself too much at once and Chris has known him for years and knows he's the stupidest clever person he's ever met.
Chris swallows hard to keep his voice emotion-free, because Mark listens better when everything sounds like a fact. "I want you to be happy, okay? Dustin and I -- " Chris breaks off.
He thinks about Eduardo, drunk and crying on his Harvard bathroom floor; about Mark, thin-lipped and dark-eyed on a three-day code binge the week before the depositions began. He takes a breath in, and looks at Mark's set, embarrassed face, and thinks, they did love each other. They did.
Mark's shoulders are in a defensive line near his ears.
Oh, fuck it.
"We just want you to be happy," Chris says, a little this side of desperate, and hopes to god he's doing the right thing.
//
"We just want you to be happy?" Dustin yells, later that evening. "What the fuck, Chris?"
"We do, though," Chris points out. "I mean, we do, right?" He takes another swig from the rapidly emptying vodka bottle in his hand. The goal here is to get No Memory Drunk; chasers seem pointless when the taste is irrelevant.
"Of course we do," says Dustin. He leans over and grabs the vodka back. "Just - with Wardo - I - he - what - "
"Dustin," Chris says, over the top of Dustin's incoherence. "Dustin, he thinks we think Wardo's only with him for his money."
"What?" Dustin sounds legitimately amazed.
"He thinks we think Eduardo's too good for him," Chris says, quietly. "He thinks -- god, I don't know what he thinks, but I'm pretty sure he's -- he's scared."
Dustin takes a long pull from the vodka bottle. Chris thinks that's probably a sensible plan.
"He's scared of what we think?" Dustin asks. He's grimacing, but whether it's because he thinks that's unlikely or because he's just drinking neat vodka, Chris can't be sure. "That doesn't sound like Mark."
"It kind of does," Chris says. "A little bit. But, no, I think -- "
"You think he's scared we'd be right," Dustin finishes. "Oh, fuck."
"Yeah," Chris says. He sighs, cracks out his neck. "You should have seen him this afternoon. It means so much to him."
"Eduardo always meant so much to him," Dustin points out. "He's Mark Doesn't-Care-Zuckerberg and he had Eduardo erased from his brain. That's an unhealthy level of emotion right there."
"Eduardo did it first," Chris reminds him.
"Yeah," Dustin says. "And how do you think Mark felt about that?"
Chris takes a second, really thinks about it. It's been something he's been skirting around since it happened, trying to avoid what Mark must have gone through.
Chris didn't tell Mark what Eduardo was going to do -- he'd had to sign something that forbade it -- but he was there when Mark found out, held the Lacuna Inc. card out between his fingers. He's not going to forget Mark's face in that moment, or the way Mark sounded when he'd told Chris that he wanted to make his own appointment.
Chris has never felt like that about anyone, the way Mark felt about Eduardo.
"How has this even happened," Chris says, now, and grabs the vodka away from Dustin, takes a long, throat-burning gulp of it.
"I seem to recall you saying something about this situation turning us into alcoholics," Dustin reminds him. "And give me back the vodka."
Chris gives him a look that hopefully expresses how little he cares about this probability at the current moment. "Dustin," he says, as flatly as he can. "I am on my bathroom floor with a bottle of vodka. I think we have passed the border to alcoholism and are now headed straight for Alcohol Will Solve Our Problems." He waves the vodka bottle to help make his point, and hands it back to Dustin. "It's not far away, we just have to pass through Oh Dear God, Our Livers."
"Best road trip ever," says Dustin. He takes a solid glug from the bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Chris nods approvingly.
Dustin sluthers down so that his ass is in the bath, his legs flung over the side, unnecessarily close to Chris's face. Dustin's head falls back against the tiled wall, and he swears.
"Fuck, Chris," he says, in a different tone of voice altogether. "What are we going to do?"
"Tonight is not the night for doing," says Chris, from the safety of the floor and also denial. He tugs on Dustin's ankle, the only part of him he can reach, until Dustin relinquishes the vodka to him. "Tonight is the night for drinking." He pauses. "Er, again."
"Tomorrow will be the day for puking," says Dustin, eying Chris in a way Chris feels casts unfair aspersions on his tolerance for alcohol. "But hey, at least that's proactive, right?"
"Projectile," Chris corrects, spluttering against the burn in his throat. His eyes water. "But who cares."
Dustin shakes his head. "Not me."
There's a pause. Then:
"Mark and Eduardo," Chris says, despairingly, to his bathroom floor.
"I know," says Dustin.
"Mark and Eduardo."
"I know," says Dustin. "Have some more vodka."
//
The vodka turns out to be a surprisingly brilliant idea. Chris is definitely glad he's drunk when Mark texts him, later that night.
Eduardo's coming into the office tomorrow.
"Noooooo," moans Chris, intelligently, into his cupped hands. "Why is this my life?"
"I thought you were okay with all this," Dustin says, slurred. When Chris raises his head from his hands, he can just see Dustin's feet, slung over the side of the bath. The rest of Dustin has disappeared from view. Chris kind of wishes he could do that, just disappear for a while and let his feet deal with things for a while. They'd probably be good at running things.
Running things.
Chris cracks himself up when he's drunk.
"What are you laughing at?" Dustin asks. His voice echoes off the tiles.
"Running," Chris says, and tries to stop giggling. Spirits send him stupid. At least they're not mixing their drinks tonight; tomorrow's hangover should be less punishing than the one this morning. Oh, god, Chris's life.
"Running away?" Dustin asks. "Because I could get behind that."
"Especially when I tell you this bit," Chris says. "You're going to meet Eduardo tomorrow."
"But I've met him," Dustin says, confused. "We're bros."
"Not this Eduardo," Chris says. "This Eduardo doesn't know you from Adam."
"Who's Adam?"
"I don't know," says Chris. "Some dude in a saying. I don't think he's the point."
"Who is the point?" Dustin asks.
"Eduardo," says Chris. "Eduardo has kind of always been the point."
Dustin thinks about this. "Yeah," he says. "He kind of has."
"And we're going to meet him tomorrow," Chris repeats. "Mark's bringing him into the office."
"Must be love," Dustin says, off-hand, and then, "Oh, fuck."
He levers himself up to a sitting position and meets Chris's gaze with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Chris," he says. "Oh my god, Chris."
"I know," Chris says. His throat is getting tight again; vodka also apparently makes him tearful. It's not like anything about the last couple of days have left him overflowing with dignity anyway.
"But Chris."
"Yes."
"But."
"Yes."
"Fuck," Dustin breathes out, again.
Mark's in love.
//
They try to sober up as fast as they can, hunching over the kitchen table and mainlining coffee like it's saving their lives. They take it in turns to shower, but even after ten minutes under freezing cold water, Chris can still smell the alcohol seeping out of his own skin. He pours them both glasses of water, comes to sit down at the kitchen table and tries to corral his thoughts into something even remotely resembling a plan.
His thoughts refuse to be corralled.
"What are we going to do?" he asks.
Dustin pushes a hand through his wet hair. "Don't ask me," he groans. "You're the one who knows what to do about things." He narrows his eyes. "You're also the one who told Mark that we just wanted him to be happy, so as far as I'm concerned, you're partially responsible for this whole mess."
Chris leans back in his chair, clutches his glass of water to his chest. "I wouldn't call it a mess," he says.
"You have done," says Dustin, still eyeing him with suspicion. "Lots."
"I know," says Chris. "But, Dustin -- he is happy." His breath catches; maybe he's not as sober as he'd hoped. Maybe he's just tired. Maybe he's thinking about Mark working late nights for years and the way Mark smiled at his phone the day before, looking at the picture of Eduardo asleep in his bed. Chris says, again, "He's happy."
Neither of them says anything for a minute after that.
Then, Dustin says, out of nowhere, "You're going to take the job, aren't you?"
Of course he knows about the job. Chris is vaguely surprised it's taken him this long to bring it up.
Chris loves Facebook, and he loves his friends, but he finished his degree for a reason. There are other things he wants to do with his life, changes he wants to help make in the world, and the job on the senator's campaign is offering him a chance at both. It'll be difficult, but it's the right choice. It's the right choice for Chris.
Chris nods. "Yeah," he says. "I am."
Dustin takes a long, slow sip of coffee. "Okay," he says, swallowing. "Let's make a plan."
//
"I can see him," Dustin hisses.
Dustin's office has a clear view of the whole main floor, which is why they're both in there right now, crammed behind the door and staring out of the huge window to their left whilst trying not to look like they're staring.
It's not creepy, Chris keeps insisting to himself. It's reconnaissance. No-one ever tells James Bond he's being creepy. Admittedly, that might be because James Bond is also ridiculously attractive, which is a quality that he and Dustin just cannot match, but still. They're not Mark. This is fine.
"Chris," Dustin says, under his breath, and elbows Chris in the ribs. Chris snaps his attention back to the main office floor.
Eduardo is just stepping out of the elevator.
It winds Chris to see him again, unexpected and sharp. When Mark forgot Eduardo, Eduardo was the only thing he forgot -- he'd had to remember as much as he could, to be able to keep doing his job, had to know the history of his company as faithfully as he could. When Eduardo forgot Mark, he forgot everything.
Chris has missed him.
"Fuck," Dustin says, quietly, right next to Chris's ear. "It's weird to see him again, right? That's not just me, right?"
Chris watches Eduardo turn on the spot, taking the whole office in. Eduardo's smiling as Mark comes to stand by him, that stupid smile Chris remembers, the one that crinkles his eyes up almost to nothing, makes him look like he doesn't have a care in the world.
"It's not just you," Chris mutters, and slips his hand in Dustin's.
Dustin turns to him, surprised. "Chris?"
"Shut up," Chris says. "Let's have a moment."
"Okay," says Dustin, amenably, and tightens his fingers around Chris's.
At the elevators, Mark looks up at Eduardo, watches him look around. Mark looks lit up, hopeful. He looks proud, and Eduardo looks prouder still. Chris turns away. He can't watch them any more.
"What's going on?" he asks Dustin.
Dustin peers closer to the window. "They're going into Mark's office," he reports. "Mark has his hand in the small of Eduardo's back. Mark! Is touching another human!" He turns to Chris, lets the hyper edge fade from his smile. "Eduardo looks happy," he says.
Chris takes his hand back from Dustin's, starts pacing the room. "He always did," he says. "Up to a point."
Dustin comes over to him, takes him by the shoulders. "Christopher," he says, sternly. "We have a plan. It is a great plan. Get it together."
"it is not the most thought-out of plans," Chris counters. "It could use refining. Or, you know, more than one stage."
"Refined plans are for losers," Dustin says. "Our plan is the grand high plan. It may even be a planet."
"Sometimes I wonder if you use language in this way just to hurt me," Chris says, but he pulls away from Dustin's hands, takes a proper breath in. "Okay," he says. "I am back on board with the plan."
"Excellent!" Dustin crows. "You can drive."
"Hang on," Chris says. "Is the plan a train or a car in this metaphor?"
"Whatever," Dustin says. "Our plan is too good to be one metaphorical vehicle."
Chris grins at him. Dustin grins back.
"All right," Chris says. "I'll take the wheel."
//
Halfway across the office, they both get screamingly cold feet and have to have a frantic whispered conversation huddled by the water cooler.
"I can't go in there," Dustin says, eyes huge. "What if they're making out?"
"I think it's more than likely that they are," Chris says.
"But my eyes," wails Dustin, quietly. "I don't want to do that to them! I've had them a long time!"
"I'm sure your eyes will forgive you," Chris says. "It's my brain I'm worried about. The mental images may never leave."
Not that Eduardo's hard on the eye. That took Chris a while, back in Harvard, to stop noticing. On the other hand, he has absolutely zero desire to see Mark in any state of undress ever again. It's not that Mark is unattractive, it's just - he's Mark. Thanks to the non-existent privacy of dorm life and the terrible lock on the dorm bathroom door, unclothed Mark is already something Chris is far too acquainted with. Eduardo's ass, naked Mark: Harvard gaveth, and Harvard taketh away.
"You're leaving," Dustin hisses. "You won't have to look at Mark every day and remember seeing him making out."
"A little louder," Chris snaps, looking over his shoulder, a little paranoid. "I don't think they heard you all the way downstairs."
"Pff, whatever, bro," Dustin says. "Like any of the plebs will want to tell Mark you're leaving. That's a special treat just for you."
It hurts Chris, in a way he was sort of expecting, every time Dustin reminds him that he's going. It doesn't, however, make him want to change his mind. He's got somewhere to go, and Mark has got someone, and Dustin will find someone. Everything can work out, like this. Eduardo can help work everything out.
The panic in his chest subsides a little, and he drains his plastic cup of water, throws it in the bin nearby.
"Come on," he says. "Once more into the breach, dear Dustin."
Dustin straightens up too, with slightly more reluctance. "You and your fancy arts degree," he grumbles. "Don't think you can win me over with Shakespeare."
"Shut up," Chris says. "You're totally Shakespeare's bitch."
"You're the bitch," Dustin says, and then stops again. "Chris," he says, drawing him back by the arm. "What if they're doing more than making out? There are things I don't want to see, and then there are things I never want to see, and Marky Mark getting his dick wet with the love of his life is firmly in that second box."
"First of all," Chris says, grimacing, "that might be the most disgusting thing you've ever said."
"Probably not," Dustin interjects.
Chris rolls his eyes. "Second of all, think about it this way -- if it wasn't Eduardo in there with him, would you even be hesitating about going in there right now to give Mark shit?"
Dustin thinks it over. "No," he says, finally. "Not one bit. But, Chris! True love! We can't just go barging in."
"You are a barge," Chris says. "You were made for barging. Move."
"This plan has too many metaphorical vehicles," Dustin complains.
"There's something my fancy arts degree prepared me for," Chris says. He tugs Dustin forward. "Now, let's go."
//
There are more parts to this plan than Dustin is really aware of. A lot of them involve borderline illegal extortion and/or blackmail of certain members of the press, to get them to keep quiet about the whole memory erasure thing. There are laws about disclosing subject matter that's been dealt with by Lacuna inc, but they're still new and Chris doesn't know how strongly they're currently being enforced.
Chris thinks briefly, ruefully, of the dubious sense of entering into these kinds of bargains right before joining an election campaign, but it's not going to stop him. He wants to do this much for Mark, at least. He wants to do this much for Eduardo. He's counting on Mark's general terrifying social demeanor, on his reputation, to keep people from telling him to his face about his past.
Chris wants to give Mark and Eduardo a chance to be happy.
Which is why, when Dustin bursts into Mark's office for the second time in under a week, Chris carefully looks away from the blush rising fast up Mark's cheeks as Eduardo steps out from between his splayed legs, away from the desk.
Well, the altruistic happiness thing and a self-preservation thing. He doesn't think it's entirely selfish to want to spare himself actually seeing the making out he's trying to enable.
"Hello!" Dustin announces, carefully cheerfully oblivious to any mood he might be breaking. "And who have we here?"
Mark is straightening out his hoodie. Eduardo is busy fastening the buttons at the top of his shirt. Chris mostly is just thankful they got in here before anyone lost their pants.
"Dustin," Mark says. He's a little breathless. Chris thinks that, despite his protests, Dustin is going to savour this moment forever. Mark says, "Dustin, what the hell -- Chris?"
"Hi," Chris says, leaning back against the doorframe. "Think of me as a chaperone."
"To what?" Mark says, mouth tight.
Eduardo turns back when Mark's voice goes tight too, looks between Dustin and Chris in the doorway and Mark, defensive, still perched on the edge of his desk. He puts a hand on Mark's shoulder and Mark turns his face into the touch, just a little. Chris doesn't know if Mark even knows he's doing it.
Now, Chris is sure they're doing the right thing.
"To Dustin," Chris says. He gestures over his shoulder, out of the door. "Unless you really want me to leave you guys alone with him..."
"No," Mark says, fast.
Dustin beams. "I am the actual best," he says, laying it on thick. "You all need a chaperone to keep your virtue in the presence of my awesomeness. I am man enough to impugn your collective virtue. Don't feel threatened, just love me."
Eduardo laughs.
Mark breaks into this smile, all-consuming and helpless, looks up at him like he's the only person in the room. All that emotion on Mark's face, just because Eduardo laughed.
Chris catches Dustin's eye, and knows he's thinking the same thing.
He coughs, sorry to break the moment. "Hi," he says, stepping towards Eduardo, aware of Mark watching him. "I'm Chris, and we're all very sorry about Dustin."
"Good to know," says Eduardo. He's smiling his company smile, the one for people he doesn't know, but it turns into a grin around the edges when he holds out his hand. "Eduardo. Nice to meet you."
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Date: 2011-12-18 10:34 pm (UTC)just spent 20 minutes trying to look for this fic specifically.. ugh just every part of this is so, so perfect. ugh my emotionsssss \o/