Fic: Days Go By Like A Ticking Bomb (8/12)
I can't believe I took so long to post this part. /o\ I'm really sorry! This story is still chugging along, I promise you that. Life has just been really insane, and writing has taken a backseat to other things.
If MS Words is to be trusted, this series (including stuff I have written but haven't posted) has gone over 40k words. HOW CAN THIS BE??
Fic Title: Days Go By Like A Ticking Bomb (8/12)
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~4957 words for Part 8
Summary: The one where Eduardo gets pregnant, and becomes the target of Mark's single-minded focus.
Notes: This fic is for elefante_locura's mpreg prompt as part of help_japan. I have so much gratitude for stitchy, for volunteering to beta this fic and doing such a thorough job of it! ♥ All mistakes are my own, and please feel free to comment/PM me with corrections if you spot any errors!
Please note that Chris and Dustin are still working with Mark in this verse.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
-Day 167-
Eduardo prefers to stay home now. He’s still uncomfortable with how people stare at him, and he worries about the paparazzi writing crap about him now, so he always tries to be immaculate when he steps out the door. Mark thinks he’s ridiculous, because no magazine would dare do that again with the unholy wrath of Mark hanging over them. Eduardo thinks that Mark has a self-inflated idea of the fear he inspires in people.
But it’s not just the stares and the possibility of cameras pointed in his direction. People seem to think that a person being pregnant means that he’s open for conversations with strangers or well-meaning advice from random people he barely knows.
Eduardo’s a people person, and he likes to socialize. He likes when people are nice to him, because he thinks he’s usually quite nice to people. But sometimes, it just gets to be way too much. When he can’t even line up to buy orange juice without someone commenting on its high acidity, he starts itching for a quiet, dark room to bury himself in. These thoughts make him feel like a grumpy old man, so he just grits his teeth and smiles back. It might look like he’s baring his teeth in aggression rather than smiling, but it’s the best he can do.
That’s why at the end of an exhausting workday, after dealing with a finicky, stickler-for-processes-and-paperwork company like eGlobal, and then with overly familiar strangers who want to talk about the baby he’s carrying, Eduardo usually just wants to go home. He doesn’t really feel up for nights out anymore.
His friends accommodate him by coming over instead.
They don’t call before they arrive, just turn up with boxes of gourmet pizza, garlic bread, salads, and soft drinks. Dustin is grinning at the front door, and Chris is trying to make him carry his fair share too. Eduardo smiles at them. Their sudden appearance reminds him of Harvard and life in the dorms, when they were chummy enough to just turn up at any given hour of the day.
“I don’t recall inviting you over,” Mark grumps.
It’s a familiar grumble with the lot of them.
“Awww, Markie, we know you’d be completely lost without us here,” says Dustin, ruffling Mark’s hair as he walks by.
Mark looks like he’s on the verge of biting Dustin’s hand off, so Eduardo sits down beside him on the couch and leans against him a little. The extra weight will slow him down if he decides to try to take Dustin out after all. It seems to work, because Mark settles further into the couch.
They tear into the food. Eduardo indulges and eats whatever he likes, deciding that a day of junk food can’t really do that much harm. Fresh tomatoes, sausages and bacon on crispy thin pizzas alongside bread drizzled with garlic butter make a perfect end to his work week.
While they’re eating, Mark gets the bright idea that Chris and Dustin can provide input on the baby furniture they’ve picked out. He wields the laptop that is hooked up to his 65-inch plasma screen, using his right hand that is clean of pizza grease to scroll through picture after picture with his own added commentary.
Dustin just laughs and laughs and laughs.
Eduardo sighs. “Why are you so strange, Mark? Seriously? This is not what people want to talk about when they come over.”
Dustin gasps out between laughs, “No, no, this is perfect dinner conversation. In fact, I’m just going to post this on Facebook-”
“Don’t you dare,” says Eduardo with narrowed eyes, over his slice of cheesy goodness.
“I don’t know, it might show Mark’s softer side,” comments Chris. “After rumors got out that he threatened to castrate that Gawker editor, he could do with a more pleasant image push.”
“As if I would sink to threatening to castrate someone when there are so many other things to threaten first,” mutters Mark. “Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong in getting Chris’ and Dustin’s opinions. They’ve had a say in most of the important decisions I’ve made.”
Eduardo bites down on a smile as Chris goes ‘Awwwwww’ loudly. Meanwhile, Dustin looks at Mark like he’s sincerely touched, before wobbling his eyes and lower lip dramatically to lighten the sentiment.
Mark fidgets in sudden discomfort, and quickly starts flipping through his pictures again. “I was trying to decide between these five baby cribs.”
“Five!” squeaks Dustin through his mouthful of garlic bread, obviously trying to swallow both the food and his laughter.
Eduardo makes a face. “Mark’s been really fussy about the baby furniture.”
Mark shoots him a look. “As if you haven’t been pushing for the purple crib.”
“Lavender,” stresses Eduardo. “And it’s a perfectly acceptable color for a baby girl.”
“Sure, if you want to box her into a gender stereotype before she even turns one,” says Mark with a touch of disdain.
Eduardo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, as if you didn’t pick blue just because that’s the color you can see best. We can’t get her everything in blue.”
Chris cuts in, “How about you just show us the pictures, Mark?”
Huffing, Mark starts scrolling. “Alright, all these cribs have the highest safety ratings. I created a chart to match their measurements, and these have slats no more than two inches apart, a lowered side rail thirty inches above the mattress, and no corner posts. Wardo confirmed that they’re not in offensive shades, and the decorative carvings at the top are tasteful while still being baby-appropriate. Which do you think is the best?”
To Eduardo’s amusement, Chris and Dustin eye the cribs with minimal choked laughter and rib-elbowing, contemplating each choice with amused seriousness.
“Sorry, Mark, I have to back Wardo here. The lavender one looks cute,” says Dustin.
Mark stares at said crib, before shrugging and moving onto his next item, a high chair.
Chris says, “Hey, what about baby mattresses?”
Mark says derisively, “Please, we have to buy the mattress in person. We have to test for the firmest mattress, because soft mattresses can be dangerous, and we need to measure the mattress against the crib for exact dimensions, so that we know the mattress will fit perfectly snug to the crib.”
“Right. Of course,” says Chris. “I never knew this was possible, but I think you’ve actually gotten weirder, Mark.”
Eduardo stuffs his mouth full of pizza to avoid laughing at Mark’s bizarre - for Mark, anyway - behavior.
After the chair, they move on to the baby-proofing they’ll need to do around Mark’s and Eduardo’s places. Everyone skirts around the subject of them still living apart. They start talking about baby-proofing Mark’s office too, because with the amount of time Mark spends at Facebook, the baby is probably going to wind up there at some point before her sixth month in the world.
Dustin shakes his head, smiling. “The baby isn’t even here yet, and you’re already planning office excursions.”
Chris mutters, “Just as long as you don’t make us the babysitters while you go have sex in some office.”
“Chris!” splutters Eduardo.
“Ah, damn,” says Chris. “Oh well, now you know we know.”
Dustin rolls his eyes. “Come on, you guys were so obvious, always leaving one after another and coming back just this side of mussed.”
Mark shoots him a dirty look. “You’re one to talk. You have sex in the office, too.”
Dustin splutters, “I never!”
“You can protest all you like, but I have evidence,” says Mark, radiating smugness.
Dustin narrows his eyes at him. “What evidence do you have? Because I should know best whether I have sex in the office, and I know I don’t.”
Mark huffs. “Give it up. Why would you keep condoms in your desk drawer if you don’t have sex in the office?”
“What con- Oh, wait, those condoms? Billy gave them to me as a joke when he came to visit us at the office. I don’t use them,” says Dustin, waving his hands.
“Oh no, not that lame joke. I can’t believe he still brings that up,” says Chris with an exaggerated groan.
Mark says with a strange note in his voice, “Why are they a joke?”
Meanwhile, Eduardo feels a little worried, for reasons he can’t discern.
“He ‘borrowed’ these condoms from me back when we were in Harvard.” Dustin makes air quotations along with his explanation. “But he didn’t end up hooking up that night, and he kept saying he would return them. I didn’t care, but he made it into this running joke, and when he owes me anything, he’ll always say, ‘I owe you twenty bucks, a new pair of socks, and five condoms’ or ‘I owe you buddy, and those five condoms, too.’ Don’t you remember?”
It actually does sound familiar. It’s probably a joke that got a little lost with time, and it definitely sounds like something Billy would say.
Chris chuckles. “Oh, and he finally returned them?”
Dustin makes a face. “I can’t believe he finally found them, apparently in some moving boxes or something. He’s so strange.”
“That’s harsh, coming from you,” says Chris with a smirk.
“Ooooh, that burns, Hughes. Really burns,” says Dustin, clutching at his chest dramatically.
But Eduardo is only noting all these peripherally at this point, because Mark is wearing this strange expression on his face, an almost pained look. It’s usually how he looks when he knows he’s going to say something people might not like, and he’s not actually trying to anger anyone on purpose.
It’s unavoidable, so Eduardo bites the bullet and asks, “Mark, what do the five condoms have to do with you?”
Mark bites on his lower lip, before finally meeting Eduardo’s eyes. “You remember that shareholder meeting? Before you got pregnant?”
Eduardo has an idea where this is going, and that might just be confused anger churning in him now.
He says bluntly, “Yes. The time we had sex, and I got pregnant?”
Dustin and Chris pretty much freeze.
He can see Dustin turning to Mark with huge, round eyes. “Don’t tell me-”
Eduardo cuts in, voice almost distant. “You were slow getting to the empty office. I remember that now.”
Mark winces. “Yes.”
“You were looking for condoms.”
“I didn’t have any left in my office. I forgot to stock up after your last visit,” says Mark in a flat tone, and his face looks like he’s bracing himself for an explosion.
“So you dug around in Dustin’s desk,” says Eduardo, tone just as flat.
“I think we know where this is going, we don’t have to reenact everything for the audience,” says Mark a little sharply.
Dustin cries out, “Mark! Those condoms must have expired years ago!”
Mark snaps, “I know that now. Who the hell keeps expired condoms?”
“They were a joke!” says Dustin, throwing up his hands. “I was keeping them as a funny memento. How would I know that you would go digging around in my desk?”
Chris finally breaks out of his shocked state to say, “So- So that day, you guys had sex, which you really need to stop doing in the office, and, what, the condom broke? It tore?”
Mark frowns. “I don’t know.”
“But- I don’t remember. I have no idea,” says Eduardo, feeling completely flabbergasted.
“It probably didn’t break completely, or we would have felt that,” points out Mark, eyes a bit glazed as he struggles to remember. “We were- It was frantic, because we hadn’t seen each other in awhile. And I threw the condom down almost immediately after I came. It was a mess when I cleaned the place up after you left, but I didn’t- I thought it was 'cause I threw it down. I didn’t check.”
Dustin shakes his head. “That is way more information than I want to know about your sex life.”
“So it probably tore a little and neither of you noticed. And, well. Now you’re here,” says Chris, still sounding a little shell-shocked.
Eduardo turns to Mark, glaring. “Is it really so hard to remember to restock? And you can’t go rummaging around in other people’s property all the time, Mark.”
Mark looks unhappy. “I’m not sorry.”
“What?” says Eduardo in surprise.
“I’m not sorry,” says Mark firmly, looking at him straight on. “It got us a baby. And it led to us- us reconciling.”
Eduardo stares at him. Alright, he knows what Mark is saying, and from that stubborn look, he’s challenging Eduardo to say otherwise.
The thing is, Eduardo doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time these days. He doesn’t really know where this is going, and thinking about a baby coming out of him still freaks him out sometimes. But he’s having a daughter. He’s having a daughter with Mark, and they’re talking now, and he’s friends again with this group of people that he never realized he missed so much until he had them back.
His life is changed forever, in ways he probably won’t fully understand for years to come, but he can’t really say he regrets it now.
“I’m not saying you should be sorry,” says Eduardo in a huff. “But you really need to stop being such a megalomaniac when it comes to things that don’t belong to you.”
He might not really be angry, but Mark is still wrong, and he shouldn’t be let off that easily.
Mark tips his chin up, but his shoulders loosen in relief. “It’s Facebook’s office, and Facebook belongs to me.”
Sinking in his chair, Chris mutters, “How many times do I have to give the speech on property and ownership?”
Eduardo scoffs at Mark, “Yeah, but you don’t know if everything in that place is up to standard, as was proven in this case. Stop rooting around in your colleagues’ desks for condoms, and go buy your own.”
“It was that one time,” grumbles Mark. “And it’s not like we use condoms much now.”
“No, no, come on, I don’t need to know that!” says Dustin, waving his arms.
“It feels amazing without condoms,” says Mark immediately, to Dustin’s spluttering and Eduardo’s yelling.
“Shut up, Mark!” they say simultaneously, like some ridiculous sitcom, while Chris muffles his laughter behind his hands.
“What, it’s true,” says Mark, radiating blissful smugness. “And you like it too, Wardo.”
He earns a couch pillow to the face for that.
# # # # # # # # # #
-Day 176-
Eduardo gets out of the car and locks it behind him. Soon, he’s going to have to push the seat further back just to fit his stomach behind the wheel.
He is so not looking forward to that.
He heads toward the elevator to get himself out of the parking lot and into the corporate giant he’s visiting: Toys "R" Us.
Mark had been all for buying toys online as well, until Eduardo had pointed out that they couldn’t really feel the fur of a soft toy, or check the moving parts of educational toys, through the screen of a laptop.
One of his meetings ran late today - an older executive at eGlobal wanting to share some tips on fatherhood at the end of their conference, to Eduardo’s embarrassment - and he had told Mark he would be late. He had thought he would find Mark on a bench somewhere, tapping away at his laptop, but he takes no more than a few steps into the clean, bright first level before he encounters a slightly wild-eyed Mark.
And he should be wild-eyed, after what Eduardo came back from his conference to find in his office.
“Wardo, I-”
“Oh no, Mark, I’m not letting you off this one so quickly. What type of image are you trying to send to the people in my building when a massage chair is delivered to my office? Did you want them to think I’m slacking off, sleeping in my office?” Eduardo’s tone is scathing, but not as strong as it should be.
Because that massage chair is fucking heaven, to be honest.
“I doubt they would, with the hours you keep,” says Mark with a shrug. “In any case, I-”
Eduardo glares. “That’s rich coming from you, Mister Working Four Consecutive Weekends Is Fun.”
Mark points out, “I didn’t say that your work hours were longer than mine. Anyway, listen-”
“Not unless you’re going to explain the massage chair,” says Eduardo, tapping his feet.
“Have you seen this yet? Oh my God, we need to get this!”
Eduardo’s eyes narrow. “Mark. Why is Dustin here?”
Mark makes a face that is, hysterically, sullen and panicked at the same time. “He saw that I had Toys "R" Us blocked out on my calendar and refused to be left behind.”
Eduardo pinched the bridge of his forehead in an attempt to prevent the headache. “Great. We’re never getting out of here.”
“No, seriously, guys, the Black Pearl Lego set is so spiffy! And did you know Uno comes with a robot now?” Dustin asks loudly, waving a large red package before browsing the shelf again.
“You should consider gender-neutral toys to avoid stereotyping tendencies at a young age,” comments Chris as he walks by, carrying a basket that contains a cuddly lion and a board game.
Eduardo looks at Mark out of the corner of his eyes. “I didn’t realize that we needed teamwork to shop for toys.”
Mark continues to look mulish. “There was no way I was coming here without Chris to control Dustin.”
Eduardo sighs. “Good point. Okay, now where do we start?”
What should essentially be a toy store looks like a daunting multiplex, shelves and shelves of complicated toys lining aisle after aisle.
“Let’s just start at the aisle furthest from Dustin,” mutters Mark, walking off.
“Oh my God, we need to get an Ewok plushie! Why didn’t I ever have one?” demands Dustin.
Eduardo prudently decides to follow Mark’s lead.
Perhaps Mark’s choice in aisle isn’t completely random, because all Eduardo sees are shelves of computers. Granted, they are smallish laptops, in bright colors and with minimal processing power, but still. Computers.
Mark glares at a cheerful green one he has in his hand. “I can’t believe they expect anyone to shell out two hundred dollars for this. I could make something better from the spare parts I had five years ago.”
“Yes, but would it be able to sing the alphabet song depending on the keys you press?” asks Eduardo wryly as the laptop chirps the song out at them.
“For that price, it should be able to sing all the songs from Phantom of the Opera.”
“I’m sure that would be very entertaining to a baby.”
Eduardo tolerates Mark’s derisive examination of various laptops for another ten minutes before grabbing him by the sleeve.
“Mark, she’s going to be too young for these toys. She won’t know what to do with them,” points out Eduardo in what he thinks is a sensible manner.
Mark looks offended. “Don’t be ridiculous. At the level of complexity these laptops display, any baby at any age should have no problem with them.”
“I think you’re overestimating the awareness of newborns,” says Eduardo in exasperation.
“I would have thrown this back at my dad if he gave me this when I was a baby,” grumbles Mark.
“Let’s hope our baby’s a lot more grateful than you were as a child.”
Eduardo watches Mark browse down the aisle to the more advanced child computers. It takes awhile, but the implications of Mark’s words sink in after a few minutes.
Putting a hand on the small, chunky laptop in Mark’s hands, Eduardo draws his attention. “I know you did well in every subject in high school, so you have to know biology doesn’t work that way.”
“What?” Mark frowns, looking adorably befuddled.
Eduardo stays the course. “I mean- Your computer genius. You have it, but that doesn’t mean the baby will like the same things as you do.”
This actually gives Mark a pause, as if he never really thought about that, the idea that his offspring could have no interest in computers completely alien to him.
“We can’t expect her to follow in our footsteps,” says Eduardo, trying to tamp down on the tight worry in his voice, trying not to think too hard about where these words are coming from. “She might just want to spend her days playing with dolls, or- or kicking a ball around. And that has to be- It has to be enough.”
Mark meets his eyes, laptop held loosely in his hands, as if forgotten. “She’s ours. She’ll be extraordinary, even if all she wants to play with is a ball in a park.”
Eduardo cuts to the chase, tries to will his point across. “You have to love her, even if she’s just ordinary.”
This gives Mark a pause. He meets Eduardo’s intense gaze with no subterfuge.
“I do already,” says Mark with a shrug. “And all she’s done so far is sleep in you and poke outward to make your stomach look creepy. I don't think there’ll be a problem once she’s actually out.”
The frank way Mark expressed his feelings is a surprise. A pleasant one, Eduardo thinks uncertainly.
“Alright… Alright. That’s okay then.” Eduardo smiles weakly.
If Eduardo is briefly jealous that Mark can proclaim his love for their possibly-ordinary, unborn child with such ease, when Mark will never do the same for Eduardo, then it’s his own business. And it’s only a brief moment. A very brief moment.
Some days, Eduardo hates himself.
Mark turns his gaze back to the little toy laptop. “No harm in giving her options, though.”
Eduardo sighs. “You’re ridiculous.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Their cart has way too many things in it. Eduardo half-heartedly tries to make Mark put down a child’s chemistry set - for children ages 5 to 7, not newborns - but his efforts are undermined when Dustin runs by and drops an armful of entirely random toys in their cart.
Eduardo splutters. “What the- A Millennium Falcon backpack? And, and what is this? A Spinning Electronic Grievous Lightsaber?? Dustin, who are these for - you or the baby?!” He waves a truly ugly Captain Malcolm Reynolds doll at Dustin’s disappearing back.
Dustin peers around the corner of the aisle he had run in and calls out, “You gotta start them young on the classics! Or they get all caught up in Twilight and sparkly vampires, you know.”
Eduardo makes a face and looks down at the cart to see that Mark has deposited even more toys while he was distracted. At least the Happy Feet penguin and Angry Birds Winter Collection plushies are cute and age-appropriate. And it’s not like Eduardo can protest against plushies, since he had ordered the entire Giant Plush Microbes collection from ThinkGeek in a moment of weakness.
Eduardo would look to Chris for support, except Chris had to deposit his basket into their shopping cart, too, since it was getting too full and heavy to carry. Surely no baby needs that many rattlers, balls, dolls, and interactive toys? Eduardo spends fifteen minutes reading the boxes to actually figure out what some of these toys actually do. Baby Einstein Octoplush is good for tactile development and babies can press each different-colored tentacle to hear its color sung out in three different languages. The Very Hungry Caterpillar Toy looks like an advanced rattler that can be attached to virtually anything. There’s a little toy piano that probably guarantees no quiet moments ever, and the least complicated toy Chris has chosen is a Bumpy Ball that looks like it came straight out of Katamari. Eduardo stops for a moment to remember drunken Katamari rounds on the Playstation 2, trying to roll each other up with big giant balls.
Then he stops for a moment to wistfully remember what it felt like to be drunk.
There really is no point trying to fight this. Eduardo may as well just accept that they are going to single-handedly make Toys "R" Us’ annual profit in one day. Maybe he’ll unload some toys in an aisle later on. With so many stuffed in his cart, surely none of the others will notice a few missing. He sighs as he pushes the shopping cart, trying not to bump the handle with his round belly and steadfastly ignoring the ache in his feet from standing for too long.
Heading for a more practical aisle, Eduardo picks up a Rainforest Peek-A-Boo mobile that is ridiculously adorable, with various soft animals hanging on it, and promises music from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, as well as sounds from the rainforest. With Mark’s fondness for the classics, he’ll like this.
After much contemplation over several walkers, Eduardo picks out the ExerSaucer Triple Fun Jungle, which can be broken down or put together using its various parts depending on the baby’s development from 0 to 24 months. It can be used as a baby playmat or assembled to make an interactive bouncing walker at a later stage. It seems practical and cute at the same time. Thinking over his choices and the type of future they might have, Eduardo picks out a second one and puts it in the cart as well. There really is no more room in the shopping cart now, and Eduardo might have to go back for a second baby mobile.
While he’s wondering if he should call Mark from wherever he is in the store to go get a second cart, Mark turns up by his side as if pulled over by telepathy. Eduardo forces down a jerk of surprise.
“Where have you been, I have all these-” Mark’s eyes widen at the brimming-full shopping cart. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” says Eduardo. “Could you get another cart, please?”
Mark tucks a Rockabye Baby Lullaby Renditions of Pink Floyd CD and a Baby Einstein Classical Music Collection CD under his arm before he rifles through the things in the cart.
“Hm, nice mobile, I hate Mal,” he stuffs the Captain Mal figure onto a random shelf, “interesting plushie, Chris must have chosen it. I guess we should get all of these, they’ll keep the baby occupied and they’re educational as well. But why do we need two walkers? You think the baby is going to go through them so quickly?”
Eduardo replies with a hint of unease, “One for your place, one for mine.”
Mark’s curious and amused expression closes down immediately. “I see.”
“I was going to go get a second mobile, too,” says Eduardo, not meeting Mark’s eyes.
Why does it feel so awkward to talk about this, when Mark is well aware that Eduardo is keeping his own apartment? They even bought two cribs, although Mark’s face had been a little pinched at the time.
“So you’re still not moving in,” says Mark, eyes narrowed.
Eduardo frowns. “You knew that already. You haven’t asked me in ages, and I thought it meant you were fine with it now.”
Mark says sharply, “I don’t exactly have a choice, do I?”
“A choice on where I live?” asks Eduardo in disbelief.
“I didn’t know a relationship meant that you get all the say.” Sarcasm is practically leaking from all of Mark’s pores at this point, his mouth a flat line of displeasure.
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you. You've been sending me things and getting people to watch me regardless of my input, and now you want to have a say in where I live?” says Eduardo, struggling to keep his voice down. “And since when are we in the sort of relationship where we live together?”
Mark glares. “Why are you asking me? You’re calling all the shots here.”
Chris cuts them off, coming up to them quickly from behind Mark. “Guys, you’re in public. This isn’t the best place to do this.”
He’s right. It feels like the last five minutes just spiraled completely out of Eduardo’s control, and he doesn’t relish this lack of awareness of his surroundings. It doesn’t help that for some reason, Eduardo feels the heavy weight of guilt in him, like he shouldn’t have said all that to Mark. In many ways, the last few weeks have been easy, too easy, and Eduardo has allowed himself to go with the flow far more than he should have. He's been sleeping over at Mark’s a lot, and they've been fucking all the time instead of talking and planning their future. Juggling the baby between the two of them, when they both have careers and live in separate places, requires more than just sex to keep things in the air. But Eduardo's been putting all thoughts of that aside while enjoying the newfound intimacy they have.
Eduardo can’t forget that it isn’t for forever, though. The baby will have to come out at some point, and Mark’s possessive and caring ways around him might change completely. He can’t let Mark’s preference for convenience dictate how the future will unfold. This pregnancy is just a hold until real life begins once more, and Eduardo needs to face up to that eventually.
He nods at Chris. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I-” He doesn’t really know what to say next. “I’ll just get another mobile.”
Then he’s walking away from Mark and Chris, leaving them with the full cart.
They’ll have to talk about this, just not today and not here.
The only problem is that he doesn’t see how they’re going to work things out.
# # # # # # # # # #
TBC
End note: Ages ago, a question was passed on to me from a Chinese forum, where someone was wondering if Mark sabotaged the condoms since he took so long to get to the conference room in the first part of this series. In actual fact, I had this silly bit planned all along, where using Dustin's 'joke' condoms resulted in the pregnancy. I really was pleased that someone noticed the length of time Mark took right at the very beginning, and am equally pleased to finally unveil the truth here (even if they're no longer reading, considering how long this is taking! :O )
I'm sorry for ending on a downer, but it's a really good point to end this part in the large scheme of things. I hope I won't keep you too long before the next part. ;__;
If MS Words is to be trusted, this series (including stuff I have written but haven't posted) has gone over 40k words. HOW CAN THIS BE??
Fic Title: Days Go By Like A Ticking Bomb (8/12)
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: ~4957 words for Part 8
Summary: The one where Eduardo gets pregnant, and becomes the target of Mark's single-minded focus.
Notes: This fic is for elefante_locura's mpreg prompt as part of help_japan. I have so much gratitude for stitchy, for volunteering to beta this fic and doing such a thorough job of it! ♥ All mistakes are my own, and please feel free to comment/PM me with corrections if you spot any errors!
Please note that Chris and Dustin are still working with Mark in this verse.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
-Day 167-
Eduardo prefers to stay home now. He’s still uncomfortable with how people stare at him, and he worries about the paparazzi writing crap about him now, so he always tries to be immaculate when he steps out the door. Mark thinks he’s ridiculous, because no magazine would dare do that again with the unholy wrath of Mark hanging over them. Eduardo thinks that Mark has a self-inflated idea of the fear he inspires in people.
But it’s not just the stares and the possibility of cameras pointed in his direction. People seem to think that a person being pregnant means that he’s open for conversations with strangers or well-meaning advice from random people he barely knows.
Eduardo’s a people person, and he likes to socialize. He likes when people are nice to him, because he thinks he’s usually quite nice to people. But sometimes, it just gets to be way too much. When he can’t even line up to buy orange juice without someone commenting on its high acidity, he starts itching for a quiet, dark room to bury himself in. These thoughts make him feel like a grumpy old man, so he just grits his teeth and smiles back. It might look like he’s baring his teeth in aggression rather than smiling, but it’s the best he can do.
That’s why at the end of an exhausting workday, after dealing with a finicky, stickler-for-processes-and-paperwork company like eGlobal, and then with overly familiar strangers who want to talk about the baby he’s carrying, Eduardo usually just wants to go home. He doesn’t really feel up for nights out anymore.
His friends accommodate him by coming over instead.
They don’t call before they arrive, just turn up with boxes of gourmet pizza, garlic bread, salads, and soft drinks. Dustin is grinning at the front door, and Chris is trying to make him carry his fair share too. Eduardo smiles at them. Their sudden appearance reminds him of Harvard and life in the dorms, when they were chummy enough to just turn up at any given hour of the day.
“I don’t recall inviting you over,” Mark grumps.
It’s a familiar grumble with the lot of them.
“Awww, Markie, we know you’d be completely lost without us here,” says Dustin, ruffling Mark’s hair as he walks by.
Mark looks like he’s on the verge of biting Dustin’s hand off, so Eduardo sits down beside him on the couch and leans against him a little. The extra weight will slow him down if he decides to try to take Dustin out after all. It seems to work, because Mark settles further into the couch.
They tear into the food. Eduardo indulges and eats whatever he likes, deciding that a day of junk food can’t really do that much harm. Fresh tomatoes, sausages and bacon on crispy thin pizzas alongside bread drizzled with garlic butter make a perfect end to his work week.
While they’re eating, Mark gets the bright idea that Chris and Dustin can provide input on the baby furniture they’ve picked out. He wields the laptop that is hooked up to his 65-inch plasma screen, using his right hand that is clean of pizza grease to scroll through picture after picture with his own added commentary.
Dustin just laughs and laughs and laughs.
Eduardo sighs. “Why are you so strange, Mark? Seriously? This is not what people want to talk about when they come over.”
Dustin gasps out between laughs, “No, no, this is perfect dinner conversation. In fact, I’m just going to post this on Facebook-”
“Don’t you dare,” says Eduardo with narrowed eyes, over his slice of cheesy goodness.
“I don’t know, it might show Mark’s softer side,” comments Chris. “After rumors got out that he threatened to castrate that Gawker editor, he could do with a more pleasant image push.”
“As if I would sink to threatening to castrate someone when there are so many other things to threaten first,” mutters Mark. “Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong in getting Chris’ and Dustin’s opinions. They’ve had a say in most of the important decisions I’ve made.”
Eduardo bites down on a smile as Chris goes ‘Awwwwww’ loudly. Meanwhile, Dustin looks at Mark like he’s sincerely touched, before wobbling his eyes and lower lip dramatically to lighten the sentiment.
Mark fidgets in sudden discomfort, and quickly starts flipping through his pictures again. “I was trying to decide between these five baby cribs.”
“Five!” squeaks Dustin through his mouthful of garlic bread, obviously trying to swallow both the food and his laughter.
Eduardo makes a face. “Mark’s been really fussy about the baby furniture.”
Mark shoots him a look. “As if you haven’t been pushing for the purple crib.”
“Lavender,” stresses Eduardo. “And it’s a perfectly acceptable color for a baby girl.”
“Sure, if you want to box her into a gender stereotype before she even turns one,” says Mark with a touch of disdain.
Eduardo rolls his eyes. “Yeah, as if you didn’t pick blue just because that’s the color you can see best. We can’t get her everything in blue.”
Chris cuts in, “How about you just show us the pictures, Mark?”
Huffing, Mark starts scrolling. “Alright, all these cribs have the highest safety ratings. I created a chart to match their measurements, and these have slats no more than two inches apart, a lowered side rail thirty inches above the mattress, and no corner posts. Wardo confirmed that they’re not in offensive shades, and the decorative carvings at the top are tasteful while still being baby-appropriate. Which do you think is the best?”
To Eduardo’s amusement, Chris and Dustin eye the cribs with minimal choked laughter and rib-elbowing, contemplating each choice with amused seriousness.
“Sorry, Mark, I have to back Wardo here. The lavender one looks cute,” says Dustin.
Mark stares at said crib, before shrugging and moving onto his next item, a high chair.
Chris says, “Hey, what about baby mattresses?”
Mark says derisively, “Please, we have to buy the mattress in person. We have to test for the firmest mattress, because soft mattresses can be dangerous, and we need to measure the mattress against the crib for exact dimensions, so that we know the mattress will fit perfectly snug to the crib.”
“Right. Of course,” says Chris. “I never knew this was possible, but I think you’ve actually gotten weirder, Mark.”
Eduardo stuffs his mouth full of pizza to avoid laughing at Mark’s bizarre - for Mark, anyway - behavior.
After the chair, they move on to the baby-proofing they’ll need to do around Mark’s and Eduardo’s places. Everyone skirts around the subject of them still living apart. They start talking about baby-proofing Mark’s office too, because with the amount of time Mark spends at Facebook, the baby is probably going to wind up there at some point before her sixth month in the world.
Dustin shakes his head, smiling. “The baby isn’t even here yet, and you’re already planning office excursions.”
Chris mutters, “Just as long as you don’t make us the babysitters while you go have sex in some office.”
“Chris!” splutters Eduardo.
“Ah, damn,” says Chris. “Oh well, now you know we know.”
Dustin rolls his eyes. “Come on, you guys were so obvious, always leaving one after another and coming back just this side of mussed.”
Mark shoots him a dirty look. “You’re one to talk. You have sex in the office, too.”
Dustin splutters, “I never!”
“You can protest all you like, but I have evidence,” says Mark, radiating smugness.
Dustin narrows his eyes at him. “What evidence do you have? Because I should know best whether I have sex in the office, and I know I don’t.”
Mark huffs. “Give it up. Why would you keep condoms in your desk drawer if you don’t have sex in the office?”
“What con- Oh, wait, those condoms? Billy gave them to me as a joke when he came to visit us at the office. I don’t use them,” says Dustin, waving his hands.
“Oh no, not that lame joke. I can’t believe he still brings that up,” says Chris with an exaggerated groan.
Mark says with a strange note in his voice, “Why are they a joke?”
Meanwhile, Eduardo feels a little worried, for reasons he can’t discern.
“He ‘borrowed’ these condoms from me back when we were in Harvard.” Dustin makes air quotations along with his explanation. “But he didn’t end up hooking up that night, and he kept saying he would return them. I didn’t care, but he made it into this running joke, and when he owes me anything, he’ll always say, ‘I owe you twenty bucks, a new pair of socks, and five condoms’ or ‘I owe you buddy, and those five condoms, too.’ Don’t you remember?”
It actually does sound familiar. It’s probably a joke that got a little lost with time, and it definitely sounds like something Billy would say.
Chris chuckles. “Oh, and he finally returned them?”
Dustin makes a face. “I can’t believe he finally found them, apparently in some moving boxes or something. He’s so strange.”
“That’s harsh, coming from you,” says Chris with a smirk.
“Ooooh, that burns, Hughes. Really burns,” says Dustin, clutching at his chest dramatically.
But Eduardo is only noting all these peripherally at this point, because Mark is wearing this strange expression on his face, an almost pained look. It’s usually how he looks when he knows he’s going to say something people might not like, and he’s not actually trying to anger anyone on purpose.
It’s unavoidable, so Eduardo bites the bullet and asks, “Mark, what do the five condoms have to do with you?”
Mark bites on his lower lip, before finally meeting Eduardo’s eyes. “You remember that shareholder meeting? Before you got pregnant?”
Eduardo has an idea where this is going, and that might just be confused anger churning in him now.
He says bluntly, “Yes. The time we had sex, and I got pregnant?”
Dustin and Chris pretty much freeze.
He can see Dustin turning to Mark with huge, round eyes. “Don’t tell me-”
Eduardo cuts in, voice almost distant. “You were slow getting to the empty office. I remember that now.”
Mark winces. “Yes.”
“You were looking for condoms.”
“I didn’t have any left in my office. I forgot to stock up after your last visit,” says Mark in a flat tone, and his face looks like he’s bracing himself for an explosion.
“So you dug around in Dustin’s desk,” says Eduardo, tone just as flat.
“I think we know where this is going, we don’t have to reenact everything for the audience,” says Mark a little sharply.
Dustin cries out, “Mark! Those condoms must have expired years ago!”
Mark snaps, “I know that now. Who the hell keeps expired condoms?”
“They were a joke!” says Dustin, throwing up his hands. “I was keeping them as a funny memento. How would I know that you would go digging around in my desk?”
Chris finally breaks out of his shocked state to say, “So- So that day, you guys had sex, which you really need to stop doing in the office, and, what, the condom broke? It tore?”
Mark frowns. “I don’t know.”
“But- I don’t remember. I have no idea,” says Eduardo, feeling completely flabbergasted.
“It probably didn’t break completely, or we would have felt that,” points out Mark, eyes a bit glazed as he struggles to remember. “We were- It was frantic, because we hadn’t seen each other in awhile. And I threw the condom down almost immediately after I came. It was a mess when I cleaned the place up after you left, but I didn’t- I thought it was 'cause I threw it down. I didn’t check.”
Dustin shakes his head. “That is way more information than I want to know about your sex life.”
“So it probably tore a little and neither of you noticed. And, well. Now you’re here,” says Chris, still sounding a little shell-shocked.
Eduardo turns to Mark, glaring. “Is it really so hard to remember to restock? And you can’t go rummaging around in other people’s property all the time, Mark.”
Mark looks unhappy. “I’m not sorry.”
“What?” says Eduardo in surprise.
“I’m not sorry,” says Mark firmly, looking at him straight on. “It got us a baby. And it led to us- us reconciling.”
Eduardo stares at him. Alright, he knows what Mark is saying, and from that stubborn look, he’s challenging Eduardo to say otherwise.
The thing is, Eduardo doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time these days. He doesn’t really know where this is going, and thinking about a baby coming out of him still freaks him out sometimes. But he’s having a daughter. He’s having a daughter with Mark, and they’re talking now, and he’s friends again with this group of people that he never realized he missed so much until he had them back.
His life is changed forever, in ways he probably won’t fully understand for years to come, but he can’t really say he regrets it now.
“I’m not saying you should be sorry,” says Eduardo in a huff. “But you really need to stop being such a megalomaniac when it comes to things that don’t belong to you.”
He might not really be angry, but Mark is still wrong, and he shouldn’t be let off that easily.
Mark tips his chin up, but his shoulders loosen in relief. “It’s Facebook’s office, and Facebook belongs to me.”
Sinking in his chair, Chris mutters, “How many times do I have to give the speech on property and ownership?”
Eduardo scoffs at Mark, “Yeah, but you don’t know if everything in that place is up to standard, as was proven in this case. Stop rooting around in your colleagues’ desks for condoms, and go buy your own.”
“It was that one time,” grumbles Mark. “And it’s not like we use condoms much now.”
“No, no, come on, I don’t need to know that!” says Dustin, waving his arms.
“It feels amazing without condoms,” says Mark immediately, to Dustin’s spluttering and Eduardo’s yelling.
“Shut up, Mark!” they say simultaneously, like some ridiculous sitcom, while Chris muffles his laughter behind his hands.
“What, it’s true,” says Mark, radiating blissful smugness. “And you like it too, Wardo.”
He earns a couch pillow to the face for that.
# # # # # # # # # #
-Day 176-
Eduardo gets out of the car and locks it behind him. Soon, he’s going to have to push the seat further back just to fit his stomach behind the wheel.
He is so not looking forward to that.
He heads toward the elevator to get himself out of the parking lot and into the corporate giant he’s visiting: Toys "R" Us.
Mark had been all for buying toys online as well, until Eduardo had pointed out that they couldn’t really feel the fur of a soft toy, or check the moving parts of educational toys, through the screen of a laptop.
One of his meetings ran late today - an older executive at eGlobal wanting to share some tips on fatherhood at the end of their conference, to Eduardo’s embarrassment - and he had told Mark he would be late. He had thought he would find Mark on a bench somewhere, tapping away at his laptop, but he takes no more than a few steps into the clean, bright first level before he encounters a slightly wild-eyed Mark.
And he should be wild-eyed, after what Eduardo came back from his conference to find in his office.
“Wardo, I-”
“Oh no, Mark, I’m not letting you off this one so quickly. What type of image are you trying to send to the people in my building when a massage chair is delivered to my office? Did you want them to think I’m slacking off, sleeping in my office?” Eduardo’s tone is scathing, but not as strong as it should be.
Because that massage chair is fucking heaven, to be honest.
“I doubt they would, with the hours you keep,” says Mark with a shrug. “In any case, I-”
Eduardo glares. “That’s rich coming from you, Mister Working Four Consecutive Weekends Is Fun.”
Mark points out, “I didn’t say that your work hours were longer than mine. Anyway, listen-”
“Not unless you’re going to explain the massage chair,” says Eduardo, tapping his feet.
“Have you seen this yet? Oh my God, we need to get this!”
Eduardo’s eyes narrow. “Mark. Why is Dustin here?”
Mark makes a face that is, hysterically, sullen and panicked at the same time. “He saw that I had Toys "R" Us blocked out on my calendar and refused to be left behind.”
Eduardo pinched the bridge of his forehead in an attempt to prevent the headache. “Great. We’re never getting out of here.”
“No, seriously, guys, the Black Pearl Lego set is so spiffy! And did you know Uno comes with a robot now?” Dustin asks loudly, waving a large red package before browsing the shelf again.
“You should consider gender-neutral toys to avoid stereotyping tendencies at a young age,” comments Chris as he walks by, carrying a basket that contains a cuddly lion and a board game.
Eduardo looks at Mark out of the corner of his eyes. “I didn’t realize that we needed teamwork to shop for toys.”
Mark continues to look mulish. “There was no way I was coming here without Chris to control Dustin.”
Eduardo sighs. “Good point. Okay, now where do we start?”
What should essentially be a toy store looks like a daunting multiplex, shelves and shelves of complicated toys lining aisle after aisle.
“Let’s just start at the aisle furthest from Dustin,” mutters Mark, walking off.
“Oh my God, we need to get an Ewok plushie! Why didn’t I ever have one?” demands Dustin.
Eduardo prudently decides to follow Mark’s lead.
Perhaps Mark’s choice in aisle isn’t completely random, because all Eduardo sees are shelves of computers. Granted, they are smallish laptops, in bright colors and with minimal processing power, but still. Computers.
Mark glares at a cheerful green one he has in his hand. “I can’t believe they expect anyone to shell out two hundred dollars for this. I could make something better from the spare parts I had five years ago.”
“Yes, but would it be able to sing the alphabet song depending on the keys you press?” asks Eduardo wryly as the laptop chirps the song out at them.
“For that price, it should be able to sing all the songs from Phantom of the Opera.”
“I’m sure that would be very entertaining to a baby.”
Eduardo tolerates Mark’s derisive examination of various laptops for another ten minutes before grabbing him by the sleeve.
“Mark, she’s going to be too young for these toys. She won’t know what to do with them,” points out Eduardo in what he thinks is a sensible manner.
Mark looks offended. “Don’t be ridiculous. At the level of complexity these laptops display, any baby at any age should have no problem with them.”
“I think you’re overestimating the awareness of newborns,” says Eduardo in exasperation.
“I would have thrown this back at my dad if he gave me this when I was a baby,” grumbles Mark.
“Let’s hope our baby’s a lot more grateful than you were as a child.”
Eduardo watches Mark browse down the aisle to the more advanced child computers. It takes awhile, but the implications of Mark’s words sink in after a few minutes.
Putting a hand on the small, chunky laptop in Mark’s hands, Eduardo draws his attention. “I know you did well in every subject in high school, so you have to know biology doesn’t work that way.”
“What?” Mark frowns, looking adorably befuddled.
Eduardo stays the course. “I mean- Your computer genius. You have it, but that doesn’t mean the baby will like the same things as you do.”
This actually gives Mark a pause, as if he never really thought about that, the idea that his offspring could have no interest in computers completely alien to him.
“We can’t expect her to follow in our footsteps,” says Eduardo, trying to tamp down on the tight worry in his voice, trying not to think too hard about where these words are coming from. “She might just want to spend her days playing with dolls, or- or kicking a ball around. And that has to be- It has to be enough.”
Mark meets his eyes, laptop held loosely in his hands, as if forgotten. “She’s ours. She’ll be extraordinary, even if all she wants to play with is a ball in a park.”
Eduardo cuts to the chase, tries to will his point across. “You have to love her, even if she’s just ordinary.”
This gives Mark a pause. He meets Eduardo’s intense gaze with no subterfuge.
“I do already,” says Mark with a shrug. “And all she’s done so far is sleep in you and poke outward to make your stomach look creepy. I don't think there’ll be a problem once she’s actually out.”
The frank way Mark expressed his feelings is a surprise. A pleasant one, Eduardo thinks uncertainly.
“Alright… Alright. That’s okay then.” Eduardo smiles weakly.
If Eduardo is briefly jealous that Mark can proclaim his love for their possibly-ordinary, unborn child with such ease, when Mark will never do the same for Eduardo, then it’s his own business. And it’s only a brief moment. A very brief moment.
Some days, Eduardo hates himself.
Mark turns his gaze back to the little toy laptop. “No harm in giving her options, though.”
Eduardo sighs. “You’re ridiculous.”
# # # # # # # # # #
Their cart has way too many things in it. Eduardo half-heartedly tries to make Mark put down a child’s chemistry set - for children ages 5 to 7, not newborns - but his efforts are undermined when Dustin runs by and drops an armful of entirely random toys in their cart.
Eduardo splutters. “What the- A Millennium Falcon backpack? And, and what is this? A Spinning Electronic Grievous Lightsaber?? Dustin, who are these for - you or the baby?!” He waves a truly ugly Captain Malcolm Reynolds doll at Dustin’s disappearing back.
Dustin peers around the corner of the aisle he had run in and calls out, “You gotta start them young on the classics! Or they get all caught up in Twilight and sparkly vampires, you know.”
Eduardo makes a face and looks down at the cart to see that Mark has deposited even more toys while he was distracted. At least the Happy Feet penguin and Angry Birds Winter Collection plushies are cute and age-appropriate. And it’s not like Eduardo can protest against plushies, since he had ordered the entire Giant Plush Microbes collection from ThinkGeek in a moment of weakness.
Eduardo would look to Chris for support, except Chris had to deposit his basket into their shopping cart, too, since it was getting too full and heavy to carry. Surely no baby needs that many rattlers, balls, dolls, and interactive toys? Eduardo spends fifteen minutes reading the boxes to actually figure out what some of these toys actually do. Baby Einstein Octoplush is good for tactile development and babies can press each different-colored tentacle to hear its color sung out in three different languages. The Very Hungry Caterpillar Toy looks like an advanced rattler that can be attached to virtually anything. There’s a little toy piano that probably guarantees no quiet moments ever, and the least complicated toy Chris has chosen is a Bumpy Ball that looks like it came straight out of Katamari. Eduardo stops for a moment to remember drunken Katamari rounds on the Playstation 2, trying to roll each other up with big giant balls.
Then he stops for a moment to wistfully remember what it felt like to be drunk.
There really is no point trying to fight this. Eduardo may as well just accept that they are going to single-handedly make Toys "R" Us’ annual profit in one day. Maybe he’ll unload some toys in an aisle later on. With so many stuffed in his cart, surely none of the others will notice a few missing. He sighs as he pushes the shopping cart, trying not to bump the handle with his round belly and steadfastly ignoring the ache in his feet from standing for too long.
Heading for a more practical aisle, Eduardo picks up a Rainforest Peek-A-Boo mobile that is ridiculously adorable, with various soft animals hanging on it, and promises music from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, as well as sounds from the rainforest. With Mark’s fondness for the classics, he’ll like this.
After much contemplation over several walkers, Eduardo picks out the ExerSaucer Triple Fun Jungle, which can be broken down or put together using its various parts depending on the baby’s development from 0 to 24 months. It can be used as a baby playmat or assembled to make an interactive bouncing walker at a later stage. It seems practical and cute at the same time. Thinking over his choices and the type of future they might have, Eduardo picks out a second one and puts it in the cart as well. There really is no more room in the shopping cart now, and Eduardo might have to go back for a second baby mobile.
While he’s wondering if he should call Mark from wherever he is in the store to go get a second cart, Mark turns up by his side as if pulled over by telepathy. Eduardo forces down a jerk of surprise.
“Where have you been, I have all these-” Mark’s eyes widen at the brimming-full shopping cart. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” says Eduardo. “Could you get another cart, please?”
Mark tucks a Rockabye Baby Lullaby Renditions of Pink Floyd CD and a Baby Einstein Classical Music Collection CD under his arm before he rifles through the things in the cart.
“Hm, nice mobile, I hate Mal,” he stuffs the Captain Mal figure onto a random shelf, “interesting plushie, Chris must have chosen it. I guess we should get all of these, they’ll keep the baby occupied and they’re educational as well. But why do we need two walkers? You think the baby is going to go through them so quickly?”
Eduardo replies with a hint of unease, “One for your place, one for mine.”
Mark’s curious and amused expression closes down immediately. “I see.”
“I was going to go get a second mobile, too,” says Eduardo, not meeting Mark’s eyes.
Why does it feel so awkward to talk about this, when Mark is well aware that Eduardo is keeping his own apartment? They even bought two cribs, although Mark’s face had been a little pinched at the time.
“So you’re still not moving in,” says Mark, eyes narrowed.
Eduardo frowns. “You knew that already. You haven’t asked me in ages, and I thought it meant you were fine with it now.”
Mark says sharply, “I don’t exactly have a choice, do I?”
“A choice on where I live?” asks Eduardo in disbelief.
“I didn’t know a relationship meant that you get all the say.” Sarcasm is practically leaking from all of Mark’s pores at this point, his mouth a flat line of displeasure.
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you. You've been sending me things and getting people to watch me regardless of my input, and now you want to have a say in where I live?” says Eduardo, struggling to keep his voice down. “And since when are we in the sort of relationship where we live together?”
Mark glares. “Why are you asking me? You’re calling all the shots here.”
Chris cuts them off, coming up to them quickly from behind Mark. “Guys, you’re in public. This isn’t the best place to do this.”
He’s right. It feels like the last five minutes just spiraled completely out of Eduardo’s control, and he doesn’t relish this lack of awareness of his surroundings. It doesn’t help that for some reason, Eduardo feels the heavy weight of guilt in him, like he shouldn’t have said all that to Mark. In many ways, the last few weeks have been easy, too easy, and Eduardo has allowed himself to go with the flow far more than he should have. He's been sleeping over at Mark’s a lot, and they've been fucking all the time instead of talking and planning their future. Juggling the baby between the two of them, when they both have careers and live in separate places, requires more than just sex to keep things in the air. But Eduardo's been putting all thoughts of that aside while enjoying the newfound intimacy they have.
Eduardo can’t forget that it isn’t for forever, though. The baby will have to come out at some point, and Mark’s possessive and caring ways around him might change completely. He can’t let Mark’s preference for convenience dictate how the future will unfold. This pregnancy is just a hold until real life begins once more, and Eduardo needs to face up to that eventually.
He nods at Chris. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I-” He doesn’t really know what to say next. “I’ll just get another mobile.”
Then he’s walking away from Mark and Chris, leaving them with the full cart.
They’ll have to talk about this, just not today and not here.
The only problem is that he doesn’t see how they’re going to work things out.
# # # # # # # # # #
TBC
End note: Ages ago, a question was passed on to me from a Chinese forum, where someone was wondering if Mark sabotaged the condoms since he took so long to get to the conference room in the first part of this series. In actual fact, I had this silly bit planned all along, where using Dustin's 'joke' condoms resulted in the pregnancy. I really was pleased that someone noticed the length of time Mark took right at the very beginning, and am equally pleased to finally unveil the truth here (even if they're no longer reading, considering how long this is taking! :O )
I'm sorry for ending on a downer, but it's a really good point to end this part in the large scheme of things. I hope I won't keep you too long before the next part. ;__;