[fic] till he's next to you
Title: till he's next to you
Author: daisysusan
Fandom: The Social Network
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,955
Summary: Mark edits Eduardo's Wikipedia page sometimes, just to make sure it doesn't have anything that Wardo wouldn't want on the internet
Notes: (1) At this point, I ought to just change my fic tag to "sometimes alexthegreat gives me ideas" and be done with it. (2) Title is from Next to the Last Romantic by Josh Ritter. (3) Thanks, as always, to opheliahyde for a lovely read-over, and extra thanks to her for keeping up with the insane amount of fic I'm spewing out.
Disclaimer: This story is about the fictional representations of these characters from the movie The Social Network, and is in no way a reflection on these actual people. I am making no money from this and am in no way affiliated with the movie itself. Also, seriously, if you found this by googling yourself, abort now, this is not a drill.
till he's next to you
Mark's not a cyberkstalker or anything, really. So he checks Eduardo's Wikipedia page every couple of days, no big deal.
And if he sometimes removes information that he doesn't think Eduardo would want on there, he's just being considerate. It's a totally normal thing to do for someone who used to be your best friend.
Seriously.
It's just ... Mark has a sneaking suspicion that if someone else-like Dustin, or maybe Chris-found out, they would think it was maybe a little creepy.
So he doesn't exactly tell anyone.
But yesterday, when Mark checked Eduardo's Wikipedia page, he noticed a few tidbits of new information; someone had added in his birthday, and the year he graduated from Harvard, and some miscellaneous trivia about his life. Mark, of course, had edited it out, because Eduardo had never wanted that information to be public-even when they were just starting facebook, his profile had always been as private as possible-so why would he want it out there now?
In and of itself, it wasn’t that strange. People messed around with Eduardo’s page all the time and he wasn’t always there to catch it, so Mark did it for him.
Except it was up again the next day.
Mark fixed it and moved on with his life, but it came back the day after that as well.
This cycle repeated for several days more, and he was really starting to considering saying something, because it was some seriously persistent editing, but that would involve admitting to someone-Dustin if he wanted mockery but no life coaching, Chris if he thought he could stomach thinly-disguised pity-that he checked Wardo’s Wikipedia page every day now.
Or-or he could ask someone completely unconnected with the situation and see if that helped. Easily the best option, Mark decides.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s standing in front of Dave, their second-newest programmer. Dave, well, Dave looks completely fucking terrified, but Mark supposes that’s because he’s not used to having the CEO (bitch) standing in front of his desk and saying, “You used to work for Wikipedia, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Dave chokes out. “But I like it a lot better here. There’s a cafeteria.”
Mark bites back a smirk at Dave’s obvious panic, and instead says, “I have a question about it.”
“The cafeteria?” Dave asks, still too scared to look properly confused.
“No,” Mark says, a little exasperated. “Wikipedia.”
“Oh, um, okay,” Dave stutters.
“Is there any way to edit a page other than going back in and changing it manually? For example, could someone program it to revert to a previous state after a set period of time?”
Dave stares at him blankly. “I don’t think so. I mean, I guess it’s theoretically possible, but someone working there would catch it pretty quickly.”
Mark nods briskly. “Thanks,” he says before walking away.
The following day, though, it wasn’t changes to Eduardo’s Wikipedia page. Mark could see his facebook wall, and actual biographical information, and that was unusual.
He knows that hacking facebook isn’t impossible or anything-frankly, he has better things to do with his life than make it completely secure-but he may or may not have set up a bit of extra protection for Eduardo’s page. He did it for Chris and Dustin and his family, too (though he told them; maybe that made a difference somehow).
Either way, Mark fixes Eduardo’s privacy settings quickly, until he can’t see the information anymore.
But then the facebook page reverts as well; when Mark checks in the morning (definitely not from his phone or anything, because that would be creepy and a little obsessive), he can see all the information.
And, okay, Mark is not going to go through this song and dance again.
When he gets into work, he caves and seeks out Dustin.
Well, actually, he makes Dustin come to him. Chain of command and all.
“What,” says Dustin as soon as he enters Mark’s office, his voice too flat for it to really be called a question.
“Have there been any security issues?” Mark asks.
“What?” says Dustin again.
Mark looks him over appraisingly. “Are you hungover?”
“Oh, what? No, I’m not hungover.”
“Are you sure?”
Dustin rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. I think I would remember-or rather, maybe wouldn’t remember-but either way, I only had one drink last night.”
“Anyone who can vouch for that?”
Mark bites back a laugh when Dustin turns beet-red and stammers out “No-uh, no one you know.”
“Okay, I don’t actually care about your sex life,” Mark says. “So tell me if there are any security issues.”
“I don’t actually know,” Dustin says weakly. “But, uh, I’m guessing that if there were, someone would have told me.”
“What if it were small, just one page being hacked?”
Dustin rubs his eyes. “Lemme go get some coffee and I’ll look into it.”
Two hours later, Dustin is standing in front of Mark’s desk again, still clutching a large thermos and looking a little bleary, but he’s also assuring Mark that there were no security issues at all on the entire site during the last 18 hours (which is an anomaly in and of itself, really).
“Oh,” Mark says, baffled. He looks down at his computer, eyes the fragments of code on the screen, and then glances back up.
Dustin cocks his head. “Are you okay?”
Maybe a little too quickly, Mark answers, “Yeah, why?”
He realizes it was definitely too quick when, at five that evening, Chris is standing behind him and holding a finger ominously over the power button on his computer.
“I mean it, Mark,” he’s saying, “You’re going to turn your computer off right now and we’re going to go out and have however many drinks it takes for you to actually tell me what’s going on.”
Mark sighs, but there’s really no arguing with Chris when he gets like this and he’s pretty sure that Eduardo schooled him in the fine art of Zuckerberg-coercing, so he might as well just give up now. “Where do you want to go?” he asks flatly.
“Oh, it really doesn’t matter to me, Zuckerberg,” Chris answers. “I just want to get you drunk enough to be honest.”
As it turns out, it takes exactly four drinks, with some nuts and a shared but unfinished plate of nachos, to get Mark drunk enough to be honest.
“Someone’s been editing Wardo’s Wikipedia and facebook pages,” he says to no one in particular, except that Chris is the only person listening.
Chris looks at him skeptically. “Are you sure it’s not Wardo editing his facebook page? Because that makes a lot more sense than this crazy hacking theory you have going on.”
“Occam’s razor,” Mark says, possibly slurring a little.
He downs the rest of his drink-his last, according to Chris-and frowns. “Wait, are you trying to tell me something? Because Occam’s Razor doesn’t apply if the simplest explanation is obviously false.”
“So you’re absolutely sure that Wardo’s not editing his own facebook page?”
“Positive,” Mark intones solemnly.
“You’re hopeless,” Chris says, looking a lot like he wants to bang his forehead against the table, but the plate of half-eaten nachos is right in front of him, and Mark’s pretty sure Chris wouldn’t let his head fall into melted cheese and soggy chips.
There’s a pause during which he just looks exasperatedly at Mark, and then Chris says, “You’ve been editing Wardo’s Wikipedia and facebook every day?”
Mark feels himself blush.
Chris laughs. “How about you try not changing them? Just for a couple days.”
“Fine,” Mark grumbles. “Can I have the rest of the nachos?”
Two days later, Mark pulls up Eduardo’s facebook, and sees a string of pictures across the top. He gapes for a moment-they’re not even professional pictures, just snapshots of people at bars and parties and in living rooms-and promptly hacks the page to check what the privacy settings are.
He gets a mild shock from seeing “friends of friends” and a bigger one from remembering that they have mutual friends-rather a lot of them. Mark doesn’t change the setting, though, even though he thinks that Eduardo would hate showing so many people those pictures.
It doesn’t register until much later, when he’s lying in bed, that everything newly visible on Eduardo’s page was set to friends of friends, and he doesn’t realize until the next morning that, if he were really self-centered, he might assume that it was somehow to do with him.
Of course, the only appropriate reaction to that thought is to call Chris, so he does.
Chris answers the phone with a slightly breathless “Yeah?”
“Is Eduardo trying to tell me something?” Mark asks.
“I-This really-” Chris inhales sharply, “-isn’t a good time. Can I call you back later?”
“Um,” Mark says, “Can’t you just answer me first?”
“Fuck,” Chris gasps, almost shrill, “Can’t you figure it out for yourself? And will you stop? I’m on the phone!”
Mark’s pretty sure the second half wasn’t meant for him.
There’s a pause during which Mark can almost-hear Chris and someone else speaking. He breaks it by asking how he’s supposed to figure something like that out for himself.
“I don’t know,” Chris half-shouts. “And this is a bad time so I’m hanging up now. I’ll talk to you at the office.”
Before Chris hangs up, he hears another gasp and a second voice, vaguely familiar but nothing he can place, saying a drawn-out fuck.
He’s not at all surprised that Chris is getting laid, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it, he thinks darkly.
Of course, thirty-five minutes after Mark gets into work, they actually do develop a security issue, and he spends the rest of the day (and well into the night) in too many meetings and doing entirely too little coding; apparently he now pays people to handle the security breaches and he, instead, has to sit around and deal with issues like public perception and personnel management as regards the security problem.
By the time he’s done with that, and the site isn’t behaving oddly and causing all sorts of user complaints, Mark’s completely forgotten to think about Eduardo and whatever strange motivations he might have for editing his profile (or that someone else might have, he’s still not convinced that Chris is right).
So when, less than a week later, Mark is glancing at-definitely just glancing at-Eduardo’s profile and notices that he liked a page called “It Makes Me Sad That I Can’t Add Mark Zuckerberg As A Friend,” he’s understandably a little taken aback.
Assuming that by “a little taken aback,” one means “completely fucking mystified and tempted to drink a lot to try and forget about it.” In college, of course, that would have meant drunk-and-blogging, too.
But Mark’s not nineteen anymore, so he’s learned to deal with his emotional confusion in healthier ways, like leaving Chris rambling voicemail messages about not understanding why people won’t just tell me what they want him to know.
He wakes up the next morning to a text message telling him to fuck off, which is-unusually blunt for Chris, and a notification from facebook telling him that Eduardo Saverin sent him a message.
Wait.
What?
Still a little bleary-eyed, Mark checks the message.
Mark, it says, could I possibly be any more obvious?
It’s the most clichéd rom-com moment of realization when he finally puts it together, lying in his bed and staring at a facebook message on his phone, but that’s what happens.
Eduardo wants to be friends with him.
On facebook, anyway. He knows better than to think that being friends on facebook means they’re actually friends offline.
But regardless, it makes him kind of … giddy. He taps at his phone quickly, sending a request to Eduardo.
And then-nothing happens.
Like, nothing at all.
Eduardo doesn’t message him or write on his wall or like his statuses or answer his polls or comment on his pictures. Eduardo doesn’t even fucking poke him.
Mark is completely baffled, to say the least.
Of course, he’s not exactly doing anything either but-mostly he just doesn’t want to push. His mother used to tell him about once a week not to push and then Eduardo would tell him to be patient and now Chris does it, except being patient isn’t getting him anywhere.
He does it anyway. It feels like the mature thing to do.
But nothing happens until Dustin sends him a text that reads wait, are you and wardo fb friends again? and another ten seconds later saying that was rhetorical, i know you are and you should probably actually interact with him somehow. that’s how the whole reaching out thing works, marky.
Oh, Mark thinks, oddly clearly.
Before he has the chance to completely wimp out, he pokes Eduardo, which he can practically hear Chris calling a pathetic attempt at actual contact, but he’s not quite sure how to do anything more.
Then Eduardo pokes him back and he gets that strange giddy feeling again, like when Randi used to tickle him, but less on his skin and more in his stomach.
Poking becomes the new status quo for a while, at least until Dustin tags them both in a post and then somehow they end up chatting in the comments and it’s-easy, almost. Like they’re actually friends in the real, physical-world way. And Mark kind of likes that, so he starts to seek it out a little bit by posting things he knows Eduardo will enjoy and waiting for him to comment so they can talk to each other, however briefly.
It’s a lot more pathetic than Mark is going to admit to anyone.
Except Chris. That one time. But only because he forgot to eat all day and then went out for drinks.
Chris had told him, with a smile and an infuriatingly sober voice, that he probably ought to examine his emotions a little bit, which Mark-to his credit, he thinks-had actually done. Not that it got him very far or anything, because the momentary giddiness when Eduardo replies to one of his comments could be anything, really, but then he remembers the stupid smile on Chris’s face when his phone rings sometimes, and how he always, always answers it when he looks like that.
Mark thinks he might smile like that when he sees Eduardo’s comments.
Eduardo comes to visit for Chris’s birthday, which is-new. Mark’s really kind of unprepared for it, so he finds himself saying “Hi” weakly and then looking down at his cup of coke and wondering whether it would be possible to drown himself in it.
Then Eduardo says hi back and smiles just a tiny little bit and Mark thinks his heart may actually jump and, considering that it’s the first time they’ve seen each other since the papers were signed, it’s surprisingly not violent. It feels oddly like they’re on a blind date or something-not that Mark’s ever been on a blind date, because no one is crazy enough to try and get him to agree to one, but he imagines that if he were to go on one, it might be kind of like this.
“How are you?” Eduardo asks.
“I’m okay,” Mark answers, not making eye contact. “How about you?”
“I’m okay too,” he says, but then because he’s Eduardo and incomprehensibly honest, he adds, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you.”
“Me too,” Mark hears himself say and the words are true-so true he hadn’t meant to say them but apparently he’s talking about his feelings now, so he just goes all in and continues, “I”ve liked getting to talk to you. Even if it’s only on facebook.”
And then-Eduardo smiles so wide it looks like his face is splitting and, in a sudden and unexpectedly sentimental moment, Mark remembers him smiling like that every day.
It’s a little like he imagines it would be get punched, when the last pieces fall into place in his mind. All at once, he thinks about Eduardo’s smile and editing Wikipedia and Chris’s looks, both knowing (at Mark) and loving (at his phone whenever the mystery boyfriend who had the same ringtone as-)
Mark’s trying to process entirely too many things and once and it’s kind of a spectacular failure, so he just leans up and kisses Eduardo on the mouth, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and curling it loosely until he feels Eduardo’s lips move and then tightening his grip. Eduardo’s arms go around his waist and pull him closer so gently it’s almost undetectable, but Mark caves to the minute pressure.
But then he tears his mouth away and spins around so quickly that Eduardo’s hands drop and he stares for a moment at Chris and Dustin, who are talking quietly by the drinks. Then Chris reaches out and runs his thumb across the back of Dustin’s palm and how did he not notice before?
“Chris and Dustin are dating,” Mark says, flat. “Did you know?”
Eduardo bursts out laughing. “You really are unobservant,” he says.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Mark answers.
“Mmmm,” Eduardo beings, cocking his head. “I want to kiss you again.”
“Oh,” Mark says weakly.
Eduardo kisses him again. Before he does, he whispers to Mark, “We actually do need to talk,” but, well, Mark’s pretty sure the kiss is the important part.
Author: daisysusan
Fandom: The Social Network
Genre: Romance
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,955
Summary: Mark edits Eduardo's Wikipedia page sometimes, just to make sure it doesn't have anything that Wardo wouldn't want on the internet
Notes: (1) At this point, I ought to just change my fic tag to "sometimes alexthegreat gives me ideas" and be done with it. (2) Title is from Next to the Last Romantic by Josh Ritter. (3) Thanks, as always, to opheliahyde for a lovely read-over, and extra thanks to her for keeping up with the insane amount of fic I'm spewing out.
Disclaimer: This story is about the fictional representations of these characters from the movie The Social Network, and is in no way a reflection on these actual people. I am making no money from this and am in no way affiliated with the movie itself. Also, seriously, if you found this by googling yourself, abort now, this is not a drill.
till he's next to you
Mark's not a cyberkstalker or anything, really. So he checks Eduardo's Wikipedia page every couple of days, no big deal.
And if he sometimes removes information that he doesn't think Eduardo would want on there, he's just being considerate. It's a totally normal thing to do for someone who used to be your best friend.
Seriously.
It's just ... Mark has a sneaking suspicion that if someone else-like Dustin, or maybe Chris-found out, they would think it was maybe a little creepy.
So he doesn't exactly tell anyone.
But yesterday, when Mark checked Eduardo's Wikipedia page, he noticed a few tidbits of new information; someone had added in his birthday, and the year he graduated from Harvard, and some miscellaneous trivia about his life. Mark, of course, had edited it out, because Eduardo had never wanted that information to be public-even when they were just starting facebook, his profile had always been as private as possible-so why would he want it out there now?
In and of itself, it wasn’t that strange. People messed around with Eduardo’s page all the time and he wasn’t always there to catch it, so Mark did it for him.
Except it was up again the next day.
Mark fixed it and moved on with his life, but it came back the day after that as well.
This cycle repeated for several days more, and he was really starting to considering saying something, because it was some seriously persistent editing, but that would involve admitting to someone-Dustin if he wanted mockery but no life coaching, Chris if he thought he could stomach thinly-disguised pity-that he checked Wardo’s Wikipedia page every day now.
Or-or he could ask someone completely unconnected with the situation and see if that helped. Easily the best option, Mark decides.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s standing in front of Dave, their second-newest programmer. Dave, well, Dave looks completely fucking terrified, but Mark supposes that’s because he’s not used to having the CEO (bitch) standing in front of his desk and saying, “You used to work for Wikipedia, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Dave chokes out. “But I like it a lot better here. There’s a cafeteria.”
Mark bites back a smirk at Dave’s obvious panic, and instead says, “I have a question about it.”
“The cafeteria?” Dave asks, still too scared to look properly confused.
“No,” Mark says, a little exasperated. “Wikipedia.”
“Oh, um, okay,” Dave stutters.
“Is there any way to edit a page other than going back in and changing it manually? For example, could someone program it to revert to a previous state after a set period of time?”
Dave stares at him blankly. “I don’t think so. I mean, I guess it’s theoretically possible, but someone working there would catch it pretty quickly.”
Mark nods briskly. “Thanks,” he says before walking away.
The following day, though, it wasn’t changes to Eduardo’s Wikipedia page. Mark could see his facebook wall, and actual biographical information, and that was unusual.
He knows that hacking facebook isn’t impossible or anything-frankly, he has better things to do with his life than make it completely secure-but he may or may not have set up a bit of extra protection for Eduardo’s page. He did it for Chris and Dustin and his family, too (though he told them; maybe that made a difference somehow).
Either way, Mark fixes Eduardo’s privacy settings quickly, until he can’t see the information anymore.
But then the facebook page reverts as well; when Mark checks in the morning (definitely not from his phone or anything, because that would be creepy and a little obsessive), he can see all the information.
And, okay, Mark is not going to go through this song and dance again.
When he gets into work, he caves and seeks out Dustin.
Well, actually, he makes Dustin come to him. Chain of command and all.
“What,” says Dustin as soon as he enters Mark’s office, his voice too flat for it to really be called a question.
“Have there been any security issues?” Mark asks.
“What?” says Dustin again.
Mark looks him over appraisingly. “Are you hungover?”
“Oh, what? No, I’m not hungover.”
“Are you sure?”
Dustin rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. I think I would remember-or rather, maybe wouldn’t remember-but either way, I only had one drink last night.”
“Anyone who can vouch for that?”
Mark bites back a laugh when Dustin turns beet-red and stammers out “No-uh, no one you know.”
“Okay, I don’t actually care about your sex life,” Mark says. “So tell me if there are any security issues.”
“I don’t actually know,” Dustin says weakly. “But, uh, I’m guessing that if there were, someone would have told me.”
“What if it were small, just one page being hacked?”
Dustin rubs his eyes. “Lemme go get some coffee and I’ll look into it.”
Two hours later, Dustin is standing in front of Mark’s desk again, still clutching a large thermos and looking a little bleary, but he’s also assuring Mark that there were no security issues at all on the entire site during the last 18 hours (which is an anomaly in and of itself, really).
“Oh,” Mark says, baffled. He looks down at his computer, eyes the fragments of code on the screen, and then glances back up.
Dustin cocks his head. “Are you okay?”
Maybe a little too quickly, Mark answers, “Yeah, why?”
He realizes it was definitely too quick when, at five that evening, Chris is standing behind him and holding a finger ominously over the power button on his computer.
“I mean it, Mark,” he’s saying, “You’re going to turn your computer off right now and we’re going to go out and have however many drinks it takes for you to actually tell me what’s going on.”
Mark sighs, but there’s really no arguing with Chris when he gets like this and he’s pretty sure that Eduardo schooled him in the fine art of Zuckerberg-coercing, so he might as well just give up now. “Where do you want to go?” he asks flatly.
“Oh, it really doesn’t matter to me, Zuckerberg,” Chris answers. “I just want to get you drunk enough to be honest.”
As it turns out, it takes exactly four drinks, with some nuts and a shared but unfinished plate of nachos, to get Mark drunk enough to be honest.
“Someone’s been editing Wardo’s Wikipedia and facebook pages,” he says to no one in particular, except that Chris is the only person listening.
Chris looks at him skeptically. “Are you sure it’s not Wardo editing his facebook page? Because that makes a lot more sense than this crazy hacking theory you have going on.”
“Occam’s razor,” Mark says, possibly slurring a little.
He downs the rest of his drink-his last, according to Chris-and frowns. “Wait, are you trying to tell me something? Because Occam’s Razor doesn’t apply if the simplest explanation is obviously false.”
“So you’re absolutely sure that Wardo’s not editing his own facebook page?”
“Positive,” Mark intones solemnly.
“You’re hopeless,” Chris says, looking a lot like he wants to bang his forehead against the table, but the plate of half-eaten nachos is right in front of him, and Mark’s pretty sure Chris wouldn’t let his head fall into melted cheese and soggy chips.
There’s a pause during which he just looks exasperatedly at Mark, and then Chris says, “You’ve been editing Wardo’s Wikipedia and facebook every day?”
Mark feels himself blush.
Chris laughs. “How about you try not changing them? Just for a couple days.”
“Fine,” Mark grumbles. “Can I have the rest of the nachos?”
Two days later, Mark pulls up Eduardo’s facebook, and sees a string of pictures across the top. He gapes for a moment-they’re not even professional pictures, just snapshots of people at bars and parties and in living rooms-and promptly hacks the page to check what the privacy settings are.
He gets a mild shock from seeing “friends of friends” and a bigger one from remembering that they have mutual friends-rather a lot of them. Mark doesn’t change the setting, though, even though he thinks that Eduardo would hate showing so many people those pictures.
It doesn’t register until much later, when he’s lying in bed, that everything newly visible on Eduardo’s page was set to friends of friends, and he doesn’t realize until the next morning that, if he were really self-centered, he might assume that it was somehow to do with him.
Of course, the only appropriate reaction to that thought is to call Chris, so he does.
Chris answers the phone with a slightly breathless “Yeah?”
“Is Eduardo trying to tell me something?” Mark asks.
“I-This really-” Chris inhales sharply, “-isn’t a good time. Can I call you back later?”
“Um,” Mark says, “Can’t you just answer me first?”
“Fuck,” Chris gasps, almost shrill, “Can’t you figure it out for yourself? And will you stop? I’m on the phone!”
Mark’s pretty sure the second half wasn’t meant for him.
There’s a pause during which Mark can almost-hear Chris and someone else speaking. He breaks it by asking how he’s supposed to figure something like that out for himself.
“I don’t know,” Chris half-shouts. “And this is a bad time so I’m hanging up now. I’ll talk to you at the office.”
Before Chris hangs up, he hears another gasp and a second voice, vaguely familiar but nothing he can place, saying a drawn-out fuck.
He’s not at all surprised that Chris is getting laid, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it, he thinks darkly.
Of course, thirty-five minutes after Mark gets into work, they actually do develop a security issue, and he spends the rest of the day (and well into the night) in too many meetings and doing entirely too little coding; apparently he now pays people to handle the security breaches and he, instead, has to sit around and deal with issues like public perception and personnel management as regards the security problem.
By the time he’s done with that, and the site isn’t behaving oddly and causing all sorts of user complaints, Mark’s completely forgotten to think about Eduardo and whatever strange motivations he might have for editing his profile (or that someone else might have, he’s still not convinced that Chris is right).
So when, less than a week later, Mark is glancing at-definitely just glancing at-Eduardo’s profile and notices that he liked a page called “It Makes Me Sad That I Can’t Add Mark Zuckerberg As A Friend,” he’s understandably a little taken aback.
Assuming that by “a little taken aback,” one means “completely fucking mystified and tempted to drink a lot to try and forget about it.” In college, of course, that would have meant drunk-and-blogging, too.
But Mark’s not nineteen anymore, so he’s learned to deal with his emotional confusion in healthier ways, like leaving Chris rambling voicemail messages about not understanding why people won’t just tell me what they want him to know.
He wakes up the next morning to a text message telling him to fuck off, which is-unusually blunt for Chris, and a notification from facebook telling him that Eduardo Saverin sent him a message.
Wait.
What?
Still a little bleary-eyed, Mark checks the message.
Mark, it says, could I possibly be any more obvious?
It’s the most clichéd rom-com moment of realization when he finally puts it together, lying in his bed and staring at a facebook message on his phone, but that’s what happens.
Eduardo wants to be friends with him.
On facebook, anyway. He knows better than to think that being friends on facebook means they’re actually friends offline.
But regardless, it makes him kind of … giddy. He taps at his phone quickly, sending a request to Eduardo.
And then-nothing happens.
Like, nothing at all.
Eduardo doesn’t message him or write on his wall or like his statuses or answer his polls or comment on his pictures. Eduardo doesn’t even fucking poke him.
Mark is completely baffled, to say the least.
Of course, he’s not exactly doing anything either but-mostly he just doesn’t want to push. His mother used to tell him about once a week not to push and then Eduardo would tell him to be patient and now Chris does it, except being patient isn’t getting him anywhere.
He does it anyway. It feels like the mature thing to do.
But nothing happens until Dustin sends him a text that reads wait, are you and wardo fb friends again? and another ten seconds later saying that was rhetorical, i know you are and you should probably actually interact with him somehow. that’s how the whole reaching out thing works, marky.
Oh, Mark thinks, oddly clearly.
Before he has the chance to completely wimp out, he pokes Eduardo, which he can practically hear Chris calling a pathetic attempt at actual contact, but he’s not quite sure how to do anything more.
Then Eduardo pokes him back and he gets that strange giddy feeling again, like when Randi used to tickle him, but less on his skin and more in his stomach.
Poking becomes the new status quo for a while, at least until Dustin tags them both in a post and then somehow they end up chatting in the comments and it’s-easy, almost. Like they’re actually friends in the real, physical-world way. And Mark kind of likes that, so he starts to seek it out a little bit by posting things he knows Eduardo will enjoy and waiting for him to comment so they can talk to each other, however briefly.
It’s a lot more pathetic than Mark is going to admit to anyone.
Except Chris. That one time. But only because he forgot to eat all day and then went out for drinks.
Chris had told him, with a smile and an infuriatingly sober voice, that he probably ought to examine his emotions a little bit, which Mark-to his credit, he thinks-had actually done. Not that it got him very far or anything, because the momentary giddiness when Eduardo replies to one of his comments could be anything, really, but then he remembers the stupid smile on Chris’s face when his phone rings sometimes, and how he always, always answers it when he looks like that.
Mark thinks he might smile like that when he sees Eduardo’s comments.
Eduardo comes to visit for Chris’s birthday, which is-new. Mark’s really kind of unprepared for it, so he finds himself saying “Hi” weakly and then looking down at his cup of coke and wondering whether it would be possible to drown himself in it.
Then Eduardo says hi back and smiles just a tiny little bit and Mark thinks his heart may actually jump and, considering that it’s the first time they’ve seen each other since the papers were signed, it’s surprisingly not violent. It feels oddly like they’re on a blind date or something-not that Mark’s ever been on a blind date, because no one is crazy enough to try and get him to agree to one, but he imagines that if he were to go on one, it might be kind of like this.
“How are you?” Eduardo asks.
“I’m okay,” Mark answers, not making eye contact. “How about you?”
“I’m okay too,” he says, but then because he’s Eduardo and incomprehensibly honest, he adds, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you.”
“Me too,” Mark hears himself say and the words are true-so true he hadn’t meant to say them but apparently he’s talking about his feelings now, so he just goes all in and continues, “I”ve liked getting to talk to you. Even if it’s only on facebook.”
And then-Eduardo smiles so wide it looks like his face is splitting and, in a sudden and unexpectedly sentimental moment, Mark remembers him smiling like that every day.
It’s a little like he imagines it would be get punched, when the last pieces fall into place in his mind. All at once, he thinks about Eduardo’s smile and editing Wikipedia and Chris’s looks, both knowing (at Mark) and loving (at his phone whenever the mystery boyfriend who had the same ringtone as-)
Mark’s trying to process entirely too many things and once and it’s kind of a spectacular failure, so he just leans up and kisses Eduardo on the mouth, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck and curling it loosely until he feels Eduardo’s lips move and then tightening his grip. Eduardo’s arms go around his waist and pull him closer so gently it’s almost undetectable, but Mark caves to the minute pressure.
But then he tears his mouth away and spins around so quickly that Eduardo’s hands drop and he stares for a moment at Chris and Dustin, who are talking quietly by the drinks. Then Chris reaches out and runs his thumb across the back of Dustin’s palm and how did he not notice before?
“Chris and Dustin are dating,” Mark says, flat. “Did you know?”
Eduardo bursts out laughing. “You really are unobservant,” he says.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Mark answers.
“Mmmm,” Eduardo beings, cocking his head. “I want to kiss you again.”
“Oh,” Mark says weakly.
Eduardo kisses him again. Before he does, he whispers to Mark, “We actually do need to talk,” but, well, Mark’s pretty sure the kiss is the important part.