22 (b)
Title: A Brief History of Hemingway and STRING THEORY
Previous
David can tell by his third week with Xabi that it’s not going to work out.
“Why not?” Mata demands. David knows he’s panicking because the last few times he had been over, Xabi had been helping Mata with his project.
“I’m sure if you ask him to continue helping you, he will,” David says.
Mata turns red. “That’s not what I care about,” he mumbles, unconvincingly. After a beat, he adds, “Do you think he will? Because I really need his help with…” He halts. “No, I mean, it would be awkward for you, so of course I won’t. Sorry.” He pats David on the head.
David rolls his eyes. “Mata, it’s okay. We haven’t been dating for that long; I don’t think we even agreed to not date other people so it’s not a big deal. He’s not really an ex. You can ask him to help you out.”
“Why isn’t this working out though?” Mata asks. For some reason he sounds like he’s pining, which amuses David.
“It just isn’t.”
“But he’s an architect.”
“Yes.”
“And he does that reading thing like you. I mean, he reads for fun. Where are you going to find someone else like that?”
David makes a face at him. “Thanks. Look, it’s great that he reads and yeah, ideally I’d like to be with someone who enjoys reading, but it’s not that important, I guess.”
Mata stares at him, open-mouthed. “You’re a liar.”
David laughs and shoves him. “I’m not, I mean it.”
“So what’s the problem? I mean, David, you have seen him, right? You haven’t spent the last week avoiding his face or something, have you? If you have, you need to look at his face.” Mata reaches for his laptop, but David stops him.
“Stop. I’ve seen his face, yes, he’s good-looking.”
Mata snorts. “David Beckham is good-looking. Xabi Alonso is something else.”
“You date him then,” David snaps, feeling annoyed all of a sudden.
Mata blinks. “What is your problem?”
David sighs. “He reminds me of David, okay?”
Mata raises an eyebrow at him. “Villa? He’s nothing like him.”
“No, I know, I just feel the same way I did around David, and I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.”
“And what feeling is that?”
David shrugs. “Inadequate.” He sighs again and rubs his face with the heels of his palms. “It’s stupid, I know, but I felt like I was never good enough for him, so when we broke up, I wasn’t really surprised. I feel the same way with Xabi; like it’s too good to be true and I’m just waiting for the inevitable.”
Mata scrunches his face at David. “Do you think that may be your problem, not theirs?”
David smiles. “Yes, I do. And it is my problem, but I want to be with someone I’m comfortable around. Like I am with you and Alexis.” He pauses. “Not that I’m not comfortable with Xabi, I just―” He glances at Mata. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
Mata shakes his head. “Can’t.”
David rolls his eyes. “I want to be able to argue with the person I’m with. I never argued with David, I just sort of ignored things and let resentment build up. I don’t think I’d argue with Xabi either.”
Mata laughs, but it’s not mean. “You have such issues,” he says, squeezing David’s shoulder. “But I get it, and you deserve to be with someone you’re comfortable with.”
~
Tomáš is making himself a cup of soup when he hears the front door open. He hears soft talking and laughing, and is just thinking that he’s going to make a hasty return to his room to give Cesc and his date some privacy, when he hears Cesc call his name. He pauses trying to figure out if Cesc is actually calling for him or checking to see if he’s home.
“Tomáš, where are you?”
Right. He sticks his head out of the kitchen, sees Cesc and his date. A much better improvement over Mr. PhD from two weeks ago, this one was a little shorter than Cesc, all bright-eyed and dimpled smiles- he was, Tomáš thinks uncomfortably, kind of cute. In the adorable way, and Tomáš doesn’t usually use the word adorable unless he was talking about puppies, or sometimes, at Marouane’s persistence, kittens.
“This is Jack,” Cesc says, his hand on Jack’s elbow. He’s giving Tomáš a strange look that the latter can’t quite understand.
“Hi,” Tomáš says, shaking Jack’s hand. “I’m Tomáš.”
“Yeah, hi,” Jack says, grinning. “Cesc told me about you. You’re a writer, right?”
“Sort of. Master of Fine Arts in writing.”
Jack looks at him in awe. “Wow, that sounds so- wow.”
The corners of Tomáš’s mouth lift up slightly, but he manages to quell his urge to smile in case Jack thought he was mocking him. “Thanks. I made some soup, are you guys hungry?”
“No thanks,” Jack says, looking around the apartment. “None for me, I’m still full from dinner. Cesc took me to this really nice café. I had a sandwich, smoked salmon on this weird kind of bread - what was it called?”
Cesc gives him a bright smile. “Irish Soda bread.”
Tomáš notices how strained Cesc sounds, like it’s taking all his effort to be patient, which Tomáš can’t understand because Jack seems like a perfectly nice boy.
“Right, that,” Jack says, beaming. “Irish Soda bread, it was so good.” He perks up all of a sudden. “Hey, are you watching Gossip Girl?”
Tomáš follows his eye line to the television. “Oh, no, there was a movie on earlier that I was watching.”
“Oh.” His face falls slightly. “I like Gossip Girl.” He smiles a little. “I was embarrassed to put that down on my profile, but my friend said I should be honest, and I saw Cesc put down Desperate Housewives on his.” He takes Cesc’s hand and squeezes it, looking pleased.
Tomáš can’t help it, he smiles at them, they were kind of ridiculous together, in a nice way, and they seemed well-suited; he doesn’t know what Cesc’s problem is.
“Do you want to sit down?” Cesc asks, pointing to the couch. “We can watch a movie or something.”
Tomáš can tell that his heart’s not in it, but Jack doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, no, I should head home. I have a psych paper to write. I was supposed to be back two hours ago, but I was having fun so I lingered.”
“You’re studying psychology?” Tomáš asks.
Jack shakes his head. “No, I’m undeclared right now. Still trying to figure out what I want to do.” He turns back to Cesc. “I guess I’ll see you around?”
Tomáš goes back to his soup to give them some privacy. He’s just spooning some into his bowl when Jack calls out a goodbye to him, and the door closes.
“Oh my god.” Cesc wanders into the kitchen and unhappily hops up on the kitchen counter. “Isn’t he the most adorable thing you have ever come across in your entire existence?”
Tomáš takes a sip of his soup. “Yeah, so what was your problem? Why were you so eager to get rid of him?”
Cesc looks worried. “You don’t think he noticed, do you?”
“No, he was too busy being…I don’t know, amused at everything.”
Cesc sighs. “Right? I love how everything is such a big deal to him, like everything new he encounters is the best thing in the world.”
Tomáš raises an eyebrow at this. “This all sounds very good, Cesc,” he says, “but your reaction out there says the complete opposite. If you think he’s so great, why do I get the feeling that you’re not going to see him again?”
“Because,” Cesc says, sounding gloomy. “I want to adopt him, not date him.”
Tomáš pats him on the knee. “On the bright side, at least you know there are nice guys out there, you just need to be patient.”
Cesc scowls and hops backs off the counter. As he leaves the kitchen, he mumbles under his breath what Tomáš can do with his patience.
~
David groans and resists the urge to faceplant right into his keyboard. The more profiles he looks at, the more he regrets breaking things off with Xabi. What had he been thinking? Xabi was nice and normal. Which is more than David can say for most of these other guys on Love Konnections.
One guy claims one of his favourite books is “the one with the scar boy and the magical school,” another one who says he should be contacted if you wanted a night to remember and yet another said one of the six things he couldn’t do without was the Lieutenant, which David hadn’t understood until Mata had explained that it was an innuendo.
“Ugh,” he says out loud, even though he’s alone in his room. He really doesn’t know what he had been thinking when he signed up for a dating site that had a spelling error in its name. What someone like Xabi was doing there was beyond him, but it was becoming more and more obvious that he was a rare find.
“This is ridiculous,” he complains, navigating away from someone with the username ‘vamosramos’ who says the things he’s good at are “giving everyone a dazzling smile and picking out good conditioners for people because I can tell a person’s hair needs from just one look at them.”
There’s a knock on his door. “David?” Alexis’ voice comes from behind the door. “Can I come in?”
“Yes, please.” David looks back to his laptop when he gets a notification that someone has Winked at him. He frowns at the username: uvebeenpiqued. “Gross,” he mutters, pushing his laptop away.
Alexis wanders in and sits on David’s bed. “What’s going on? Mata asked me to check on you because he says he’s been hearing noises coming from your room.” He grins. “He thought you might be…uhhh, missing Xabi.”
“I’m looking at these profiles,” David says, ignoring his comment. “How am I supposed to find anyone on this site, Alexis? Look at this guy.” He shoves his laptop at Alexis and flops facedown onto his bed. “He went to School of Life. I mean, what the actual fuck?”
Alexis laughs. “Working on his fitness, Jesus.”
“I know. And look at the way he types! He capitalizes all the first letters of his words, he’s one of those people.”
“But David, look, sculpted abs.”
David groans and pulls a pillow over his head. “His profile makes me want to die.”
Alexis pats him on the back. “I’m sure you’ll find someone.”
“Not likely.”
Alexis falls quiet, and David can hear him clicking away on his laptop.
“Hey,” Alexis says, suddenly. He nudges David’s side. “Come check out this Jack guy.”
“No,” David mumbles, grumpily. “I’m not in the mood for anymore losers.”
“He’s not though, he seems pretty okay.” Alexis grabs the pillow off him and pokes him until David finally concedes and rolls over. “Look,” Alexis says, putting the laptop on David’s stomach. “He likes Eastenders.” He waves his hand dismissively when David opens his mouth. “I know, you watch Coronation Street, but just look at his profile, he seems like a nice person.”
David sits up and spends the next few minutes poring over Jack’s profile and then begrudgingly looks up at Alexis, who is waiting with a huge smirk.
“Well? Do I know how to pick them or what?”
“Maybe,” David mumbles and clicks on ‘Message’.
~
~
Cesc calls Tomáš while Fernando is in the washroom. “Oh my god, Tomáš, this guy is so gorgeous.”
“I read his profile, Cesc, he sounds ridiculous. Unless his profile was meant to be some sort of tongue-in-cheek thing.”
Cesc thinks about how he has had to endure Fernando talking about how some guy named Andrew Garfield was single-handedly making his life miserable. This is somehow related to Spider-Man apparently, Cesc isn’t really too sure, because while Fernando had ranted on, Cesc busied himself by counting the freckles on his face. He had gotten to ninety-six when Fernando had excused himself.
“I don’t think so,” Cesc says, “I’m not sure he knows what tongue-in-cheek even means. I asked if he wanted to come back to the apartment and he said if no one needed rescuing then he didn’t see why not.”
“Jesus.”
“I know.”
“So why are you bringing him back to the apartment?”
“Because he’s hot and I haven’t had sex in seven months, and he has this mouth-”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll shut up.”
“Why did you call me?”
“I was wondering if there was a way I could politely get him not to talk when we’re doing it. He seems like a talker, you know? And I don’t want to hear about this fucking Andrew Garfield guy when I’m kissing him or whatever.”
“Who’s Andrew Garfield?”
“His arch nemesis apparently.”
“You know, you could just not sleep with him.”
“No. I had to listen to him tell me why Batman is infinitely better than Superman for about thirty minutes, I’m getting some.”
“That’s not-”
“Infinitely better, Tomáš. Infinitely.”
“You deserve this, you know.”
Cesc hangs up on him.
~
“Ughhhhh.” David grabs a pillow and pulls it over his head to quell the huge grin on his face. He’s kind of smitten; at least as much as you can be with someone you’ve only exchanged a few e-mails with. He and Jack had talked about TV shows and football, and Jack has just sent him a long-winded e-mail that was basically his reaction to the latest episode of Hollyoaks.
And David, he just wants to die from happiness. He doesn’t really understand it, how he could be so invested in someone over TV shows, but it’s nice. Alexis and Mata didn’t get it, and up until Jack, David was beginning to think that maybe there was something wrong with him.
His laptop signals a notification. He moves the pillow off his face and glances at the screen to see what it was.
xoxojack82 is online!
David lunges for his laptop.
~
“I’m sorry.”
Marouane sighs and drops his head on Tomáš’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says, rolling off him. “I’m distracted too. We should have his room sound-proofed.”
“This has never been a problem before. Usually if Cesc yells, it’s because he’s excited about some equation he’s just solved.” Tomáš sighs as the yelling from Cesc’s room continues.
He and Fernando have been arguing since they had returned. They had been talking about Captain America and Chris Evans and fought their way through a variety of other topics until they arrived at the one they were currently arguing about: sex. It had effectively killed the mood for Tomáš and Marouane.
“I’m not topping,” they can hear Cesc say defiantly from his room.
“Why not?” Fernando demands.
“Because you’re bigger!”
“Well…”
Tomáš is pretty sure he hears Cesc growl then. “That is not what I meant, you narcissistic prima donna. I meant your height, you’re taller than me, it just makes more sense.”
“Marouane groans. “Can’t we make some noise or something to let them know that we can hear everything?”
“We tried that,” Tomáš says, feeling irritated. He hadn’t spent any time with Marouane in ten days, they had both been busy, this was their only free night and this isn’t how he wanted to spend it.
“I’m more twink-like though!”
There’s a weird noise then like Cesc may be sputtering. “Are you fucking serious?”
Marouane rolls his eyes. “This is ridiculous, I’m going to go watch TV,” he says, reaching to the floor for his shirt.
Tomáš follows him out to the living room. The two of them settle on the couch, and Marouane is still flipping through channels when Tomáš closes his eyes. He doesn’t even realize that he has dozed off until he wakes up when he hears Cesc scream in outrage.
Marouane has stiffened beside him. “That actually sounds really bad,” he says. “We should check on them.”
Tomáš is pushing off the blanket that Marouane had brought out at some point, when Cesc yells, “Who the fuck is Peter? My name is Cesc!”
Cesc’s door opens, and Fernando stumbles out pulling his T-shirt over his head. “I don’t know why you’re offended,” he says, fumbling with his jeans.
“Because you just called me by another guy’s name,” Cesc snarls.
“Not just any guy,” Fernando says, sounding indignant. “Peter Parker. You know-”
Cesc gapes at him. “Get out!” He throws a shoe at Fernando.
Fernando huffs as he puts it on. “There is something wrong with you,” he says before he storms out of the apartment.
Tomáš raises an eyebrow at Cesc, but doesn’t say anything.
Cesc bristles slightly. “We had irreparable differences,” he says, carefully.
“Okay.”
Cesc sniffs. “You may save me from myself and choose my next date,” he says, and shuffles back to his room.
“Well, you won,” Marouane says.
“I didn’t want to.”
Next
Previous
David can tell by his third week with Xabi that it’s not going to work out.
“Why not?” Mata demands. David knows he’s panicking because the last few times he had been over, Xabi had been helping Mata with his project.
“I’m sure if you ask him to continue helping you, he will,” David says.
Mata turns red. “That’s not what I care about,” he mumbles, unconvincingly. After a beat, he adds, “Do you think he will? Because I really need his help with…” He halts. “No, I mean, it would be awkward for you, so of course I won’t. Sorry.” He pats David on the head.
David rolls his eyes. “Mata, it’s okay. We haven’t been dating for that long; I don’t think we even agreed to not date other people so it’s not a big deal. He’s not really an ex. You can ask him to help you out.”
“Why isn’t this working out though?” Mata asks. For some reason he sounds like he’s pining, which amuses David.
“It just isn’t.”
“But he’s an architect.”
“Yes.”
“And he does that reading thing like you. I mean, he reads for fun. Where are you going to find someone else like that?”
David makes a face at him. “Thanks. Look, it’s great that he reads and yeah, ideally I’d like to be with someone who enjoys reading, but it’s not that important, I guess.”
Mata stares at him, open-mouthed. “You’re a liar.”
David laughs and shoves him. “I’m not, I mean it.”
“So what’s the problem? I mean, David, you have seen him, right? You haven’t spent the last week avoiding his face or something, have you? If you have, you need to look at his face.” Mata reaches for his laptop, but David stops him.
“Stop. I’ve seen his face, yes, he’s good-looking.”
Mata snorts. “David Beckham is good-looking. Xabi Alonso is something else.”
“You date him then,” David snaps, feeling annoyed all of a sudden.
Mata blinks. “What is your problem?”
David sighs. “He reminds me of David, okay?”
Mata raises an eyebrow at him. “Villa? He’s nothing like him.”
“No, I know, I just feel the same way I did around David, and I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now.”
“And what feeling is that?”
David shrugs. “Inadequate.” He sighs again and rubs his face with the heels of his palms. “It’s stupid, I know, but I felt like I was never good enough for him, so when we broke up, I wasn’t really surprised. I feel the same way with Xabi; like it’s too good to be true and I’m just waiting for the inevitable.”
Mata scrunches his face at David. “Do you think that may be your problem, not theirs?”
David smiles. “Yes, I do. And it is my problem, but I want to be with someone I’m comfortable around. Like I am with you and Alexis.” He pauses. “Not that I’m not comfortable with Xabi, I just―” He glances at Mata. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
Mata shakes his head. “Can’t.”
David rolls his eyes. “I want to be able to argue with the person I’m with. I never argued with David, I just sort of ignored things and let resentment build up. I don’t think I’d argue with Xabi either.”
Mata laughs, but it’s not mean. “You have such issues,” he says, squeezing David’s shoulder. “But I get it, and you deserve to be with someone you’re comfortable with.”
~
Tomáš is making himself a cup of soup when he hears the front door open. He hears soft talking and laughing, and is just thinking that he’s going to make a hasty return to his room to give Cesc and his date some privacy, when he hears Cesc call his name. He pauses trying to figure out if Cesc is actually calling for him or checking to see if he’s home.
“Tomáš, where are you?”
Right. He sticks his head out of the kitchen, sees Cesc and his date. A much better improvement over Mr. PhD from two weeks ago, this one was a little shorter than Cesc, all bright-eyed and dimpled smiles- he was, Tomáš thinks uncomfortably, kind of cute. In the adorable way, and Tomáš doesn’t usually use the word adorable unless he was talking about puppies, or sometimes, at Marouane’s persistence, kittens.
“This is Jack,” Cesc says, his hand on Jack’s elbow. He’s giving Tomáš a strange look that the latter can’t quite understand.
“Hi,” Tomáš says, shaking Jack’s hand. “I’m Tomáš.”
“Yeah, hi,” Jack says, grinning. “Cesc told me about you. You’re a writer, right?”
“Sort of. Master of Fine Arts in writing.”
Jack looks at him in awe. “Wow, that sounds so- wow.”
The corners of Tomáš’s mouth lift up slightly, but he manages to quell his urge to smile in case Jack thought he was mocking him. “Thanks. I made some soup, are you guys hungry?”
“No thanks,” Jack says, looking around the apartment. “None for me, I’m still full from dinner. Cesc took me to this really nice café. I had a sandwich, smoked salmon on this weird kind of bread - what was it called?”
Cesc gives him a bright smile. “Irish Soda bread.”
Tomáš notices how strained Cesc sounds, like it’s taking all his effort to be patient, which Tomáš can’t understand because Jack seems like a perfectly nice boy.
“Right, that,” Jack says, beaming. “Irish Soda bread, it was so good.” He perks up all of a sudden. “Hey, are you watching Gossip Girl?”
Tomáš follows his eye line to the television. “Oh, no, there was a movie on earlier that I was watching.”
“Oh.” His face falls slightly. “I like Gossip Girl.” He smiles a little. “I was embarrassed to put that down on my profile, but my friend said I should be honest, and I saw Cesc put down Desperate Housewives on his.” He takes Cesc’s hand and squeezes it, looking pleased.
Tomáš can’t help it, he smiles at them, they were kind of ridiculous together, in a nice way, and they seemed well-suited; he doesn’t know what Cesc’s problem is.
“Do you want to sit down?” Cesc asks, pointing to the couch. “We can watch a movie or something.”
Tomáš can tell that his heart’s not in it, but Jack doesn’t seem to notice.
“Oh, no, I should head home. I have a psych paper to write. I was supposed to be back two hours ago, but I was having fun so I lingered.”
“You’re studying psychology?” Tomáš asks.
Jack shakes his head. “No, I’m undeclared right now. Still trying to figure out what I want to do.” He turns back to Cesc. “I guess I’ll see you around?”
Tomáš goes back to his soup to give them some privacy. He’s just spooning some into his bowl when Jack calls out a goodbye to him, and the door closes.
“Oh my god.” Cesc wanders into the kitchen and unhappily hops up on the kitchen counter. “Isn’t he the most adorable thing you have ever come across in your entire existence?”
Tomáš takes a sip of his soup. “Yeah, so what was your problem? Why were you so eager to get rid of him?”
Cesc looks worried. “You don’t think he noticed, do you?”
“No, he was too busy being…I don’t know, amused at everything.”
Cesc sighs. “Right? I love how everything is such a big deal to him, like everything new he encounters is the best thing in the world.”
Tomáš raises an eyebrow at this. “This all sounds very good, Cesc,” he says, “but your reaction out there says the complete opposite. If you think he’s so great, why do I get the feeling that you’re not going to see him again?”
“Because,” Cesc says, sounding gloomy. “I want to adopt him, not date him.”
Tomáš pats him on the knee. “On the bright side, at least you know there are nice guys out there, you just need to be patient.”
Cesc scowls and hops backs off the counter. As he leaves the kitchen, he mumbles under his breath what Tomáš can do with his patience.
~
David groans and resists the urge to faceplant right into his keyboard. The more profiles he looks at, the more he regrets breaking things off with Xabi. What had he been thinking? Xabi was nice and normal. Which is more than David can say for most of these other guys on Love Konnections.
One guy claims one of his favourite books is “the one with the scar boy and the magical school,” another one who says he should be contacted if you wanted a night to remember and yet another said one of the six things he couldn’t do without was the Lieutenant, which David hadn’t understood until Mata had explained that it was an innuendo.
“Ugh,” he says out loud, even though he’s alone in his room. He really doesn’t know what he had been thinking when he signed up for a dating site that had a spelling error in its name. What someone like Xabi was doing there was beyond him, but it was becoming more and more obvious that he was a rare find.
“This is ridiculous,” he complains, navigating away from someone with the username ‘vamosramos’ who says the things he’s good at are “giving everyone a dazzling smile and picking out good conditioners for people because I can tell a person’s hair needs from just one look at them.”
There’s a knock on his door. “David?” Alexis’ voice comes from behind the door. “Can I come in?”
“Yes, please.” David looks back to his laptop when he gets a notification that someone has Winked at him. He frowns at the username: uvebeenpiqued. “Gross,” he mutters, pushing his laptop away.
Alexis wanders in and sits on David’s bed. “What’s going on? Mata asked me to check on you because he says he’s been hearing noises coming from your room.” He grins. “He thought you might be…uhhh, missing Xabi.”
“I’m looking at these profiles,” David says, ignoring his comment. “How am I supposed to find anyone on this site, Alexis? Look at this guy.” He shoves his laptop at Alexis and flops facedown onto his bed. “He went to School of Life. I mean, what the actual fuck?”
Alexis laughs. “Working on his fitness, Jesus.”
“I know. And look at the way he types! He capitalizes all the first letters of his words, he’s one of those people.”
“But David, look, sculpted abs.”
David groans and pulls a pillow over his head. “His profile makes me want to die.”
Alexis pats him on the back. “I’m sure you’ll find someone.”
“Not likely.”
Alexis falls quiet, and David can hear him clicking away on his laptop.
“Hey,” Alexis says, suddenly. He nudges David’s side. “Come check out this Jack guy.”
“No,” David mumbles, grumpily. “I’m not in the mood for anymore losers.”
“He’s not though, he seems pretty okay.” Alexis grabs the pillow off him and pokes him until David finally concedes and rolls over. “Look,” Alexis says, putting the laptop on David’s stomach. “He likes Eastenders.” He waves his hand dismissively when David opens his mouth. “I know, you watch Coronation Street, but just look at his profile, he seems like a nice person.”
David sits up and spends the next few minutes poring over Jack’s profile and then begrudgingly looks up at Alexis, who is waiting with a huge smirk.
“Well? Do I know how to pick them or what?”
“Maybe,” David mumbles and clicks on ‘Message’.
~
~
Cesc calls Tomáš while Fernando is in the washroom. “Oh my god, Tomáš, this guy is so gorgeous.”
“I read his profile, Cesc, he sounds ridiculous. Unless his profile was meant to be some sort of tongue-in-cheek thing.”
Cesc thinks about how he has had to endure Fernando talking about how some guy named Andrew Garfield was single-handedly making his life miserable. This is somehow related to Spider-Man apparently, Cesc isn’t really too sure, because while Fernando had ranted on, Cesc busied himself by counting the freckles on his face. He had gotten to ninety-six when Fernando had excused himself.
“I don’t think so,” Cesc says, “I’m not sure he knows what tongue-in-cheek even means. I asked if he wanted to come back to the apartment and he said if no one needed rescuing then he didn’t see why not.”
“Jesus.”
“I know.”
“So why are you bringing him back to the apartment?”
“Because he’s hot and I haven’t had sex in seven months, and he has this mouth-”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll shut up.”
“Why did you call me?”
“I was wondering if there was a way I could politely get him not to talk when we’re doing it. He seems like a talker, you know? And I don’t want to hear about this fucking Andrew Garfield guy when I’m kissing him or whatever.”
“Who’s Andrew Garfield?”
“His arch nemesis apparently.”
“You know, you could just not sleep with him.”
“No. I had to listen to him tell me why Batman is infinitely better than Superman for about thirty minutes, I’m getting some.”
“That’s not-”
“Infinitely better, Tomáš. Infinitely.”
“You deserve this, you know.”
Cesc hangs up on him.
~
“Ughhhhh.” David grabs a pillow and pulls it over his head to quell the huge grin on his face. He’s kind of smitten; at least as much as you can be with someone you’ve only exchanged a few e-mails with. He and Jack had talked about TV shows and football, and Jack has just sent him a long-winded e-mail that was basically his reaction to the latest episode of Hollyoaks.
And David, he just wants to die from happiness. He doesn’t really understand it, how he could be so invested in someone over TV shows, but it’s nice. Alexis and Mata didn’t get it, and up until Jack, David was beginning to think that maybe there was something wrong with him.
His laptop signals a notification. He moves the pillow off his face and glances at the screen to see what it was.
xoxojack82 is online!
David lunges for his laptop.
~
“I’m sorry.”
Marouane sighs and drops his head on Tomáš’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says, rolling off him. “I’m distracted too. We should have his room sound-proofed.”
“This has never been a problem before. Usually if Cesc yells, it’s because he’s excited about some equation he’s just solved.” Tomáš sighs as the yelling from Cesc’s room continues.
He and Fernando have been arguing since they had returned. They had been talking about Captain America and Chris Evans and fought their way through a variety of other topics until they arrived at the one they were currently arguing about: sex. It had effectively killed the mood for Tomáš and Marouane.
“I’m not topping,” they can hear Cesc say defiantly from his room.
“Why not?” Fernando demands.
“Because you’re bigger!”
“Well…”
Tomáš is pretty sure he hears Cesc growl then. “That is not what I meant, you narcissistic prima donna. I meant your height, you’re taller than me, it just makes more sense.”
“Marouane groans. “Can’t we make some noise or something to let them know that we can hear everything?”
“We tried that,” Tomáš says, feeling irritated. He hadn’t spent any time with Marouane in ten days, they had both been busy, this was their only free night and this isn’t how he wanted to spend it.
“I’m more twink-like though!”
There’s a weird noise then like Cesc may be sputtering. “Are you fucking serious?”
Marouane rolls his eyes. “This is ridiculous, I’m going to go watch TV,” he says, reaching to the floor for his shirt.
Tomáš follows him out to the living room. The two of them settle on the couch, and Marouane is still flipping through channels when Tomáš closes his eyes. He doesn’t even realize that he has dozed off until he wakes up when he hears Cesc scream in outrage.
Marouane has stiffened beside him. “That actually sounds really bad,” he says. “We should check on them.”
Tomáš is pushing off the blanket that Marouane had brought out at some point, when Cesc yells, “Who the fuck is Peter? My name is Cesc!”
Cesc’s door opens, and Fernando stumbles out pulling his T-shirt over his head. “I don’t know why you’re offended,” he says, fumbling with his jeans.
“Because you just called me by another guy’s name,” Cesc snarls.
“Not just any guy,” Fernando says, sounding indignant. “Peter Parker. You know-”
Cesc gapes at him. “Get out!” He throws a shoe at Fernando.
Fernando huffs as he puts it on. “There is something wrong with you,” he says before he storms out of the apartment.
Tomáš raises an eyebrow at Cesc, but doesn’t say anything.
Cesc bristles slightly. “We had irreparable differences,” he says, carefully.
“Okay.”
Cesc sniffs. “You may save me from myself and choose my next date,” he says, and shuffles back to his room.
“Well, you won,” Marouane says.
“I didn’t want to.”
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