FIC: With Friends Like These {TSN - Eduardo/Sean, Mark&Eduardo friendship} Part 2/2
Return to Part 1
*
"You are fucking shameless," Eduardo said when Sean pried open the car door and wiggled over the brake to shove his bag and suitcase into the backseat. But the rumpled shirt, pink lines pressed into Sean's cheek, and mouth soft from sleep kept him from expressing the full breadth of his disdain for Sean's now-predictable cowardice and his general status as the source of all chaos in Eduardo's life. (Which would actually be an equally shameless lie, anyway, since Sean was well acquainted with Dustin Moskovitz.)
"President, you dick," was all he ended up muttering, and helped Sean adjust the seat back so he could doze through the traffic on the way back to Eduardo's place.
When he slid his jacket under Sean's head to keep it from sliding off and into the window pane, his breath was smooth and hot against Eduardo's wrist and smelled like mint Frappuccino.
*
They hadn't spoken again after the VP offer while Eduardo fumed for a bit and only sent Mark terse text messages, but Sean had made plans to fly out right away.
"Because I asked him to," Eduardo said, shrugging, when Dustin wanted to know what the fuck.
"You're not actually blowing him, are you?" Dustin had said, suddenly serious.
"Yes," he'd replied tartly, "through the miracles of astral projection."
"I'm just saying-weird."
"I am the CFO," said Eduardo crossly.
"When you keep telling people that all the time, it loses some of its cachet."
"When it seems like no one remembers," Eduardo began, since he'd yet to see any evidence of this theoretical cache, decreasing or not.
But Dustin interrupted cheerfully, "Just worried about your gravitas, man," and then asked him if he was prepared to order enough pizza to feed a small army, which was a good point. So Eduardo actually did go shopping.
He even bought those pickles Sean liked and a microbrew that both of them could stand, because he'd hadn't intended to ask for help, ever, except in such spurious cases as a zombie apocalypse or raining cats and dogs, but then he'd just been so furious and then Sean didn't even make him beg. He picked up an extra pillow too, one of the good neck support ones. And he replied to the itinerary Sean sent over, saying he didn't need to take a cab.
*
Sean was easily roused when they got back to the apartment and he settled against the counter to watch Eduardo reheat some Indian with only slightly obnoxious ease. It seemed as if it took Sean five minutes, if that, to make himself completely at home. From the perspective of someone with a painfully polite mother and a very reasonable amount of social anxiety, this was one of Sean's more unsettling qualities. Eduardo couldn't figure out why he was starting to like it.
They ate standing up, side by side, from mismatched plates and Sean expounded re: his dastardly methods for gaining CEO approval to join Eduardo in New York.
Surprisingly, the solution was not to get Mark disgustingly drunk.
"Told him that, sure, we could drop that angle, just focus on bringing in an investor or two. A good angel investor--we could move out into better offices, space for some nicer server racks. A safer bet, definitely."
"You didn't," Eduardo said, amused, and Sean laughed, acknowledging safety to be the essence of uncool in a way that made it very obvious how much Mark had grown on him as well.
"It would be a shame to give away any more pieces of the company than we have to," Eduardo said, sobering.
"I told him that too."
*
It had seemed a little silly to put Sean up in a hotel when he couldn't really pay for it on his own, so it would be money from the account, and the plane tickets hadn't been cheap on such a short notice.
Eduardo had a perfectly good couch that they could take turns on and after hearing-other things through the California house's thin walls, he was confident snoring would not be an issue.
Besides, it might very well be necessary to eat the cost of couple more tickets sooner or later, because Eduardo had warned Dustin that he knew where he lived, and would fucking go there to kick his ass if he didn't stop referring to their "love nest."
*
"Your neighbors," Sean ventured the next morning.
The kitchen felt cramped with Sean there in with him as Eduardo filled the coffee maker and listened to the noises of Sean's wide mouthed yawns, the faint rasp of his boxers against his thighs, the slapping of his bare feet against the tile as he opened four drawers before finding the one with spoons.
"Yeah," Eduardo said and felt his face heat. "They do that."
*
Settling in and finding a better place for Sean to put his suitcase didn't take that long, and then Eduardo made breakfast, including hash browns (because he had this resolution now, to be a nicer person around Sean, who had in retrospect maybe only half-way deserved it; and besides which, it seemed like it only encouraged him).
Having Sean underfoot all the time was a little awkward, mostly because Eduardo wasn't sure what to do with him. There had been an army of miscellaneous issues and bustling, unwashed people as a buffer in California, and Eduardo was left considering that they wouldn't have a legitimate reason to leave the apartment more than four times a week and he couldn't remember what he talked about with other people, when they were just hanging out.
At Investor Association and Phoenix meetings there had been talk about GMAT prep, the classes you took, the classes you're taking, the classes you're planning on taking, and who's fucking who. Plus all the flagrant lies about a senator your father or your aunt has supposedly known for years when it's actually just the occasional Christmas card. In the Kirkland dorm, Eduardo didn't even know. It had been nothing in particular, just stupid gamer bragging rights, giving each other shit, stress about a test, claiming to be drunk at least an hour before they really were. It had just been comfortable, and Eduardo had never thought about what he was going to say next or felt much pressure to say anything unless he felt like it (until there was Sean Parker and the fucking Crimson, but still.).
But with Sean there and waiting to be-something, Eduardo was suddenly very conscious about how little they had to say to each other. Sean was just so there, with his nice watch and incongruous cheap shoes and perfect white teeth smiles. And not even pissing Eduardo off, which would have given Eduardo a pretty big clue about how to behave around him.
"uh, the coffee?" he finally went with.
Sean took another sip. "It's good."
"You don't need to say that." Eduardo knew that the beans were pre-ground and getting old.
"Well, I like it," Sean said defensively and held the cup tighter like Eduardo was going to steal it back.
So they were getting off to a great start.
And then Eduardo showed him where the washer and dryer were kept, turned on CNN for a while, and then walked him through the spreadsheet that Sean persisted in calling "the thing" - which may have been much more concise than "the potential client contact matrix" but was vague to the point of nonsensical.
"There are at least five things you call 'the thing'," Eduardo reminded him sensibly.
"Yeah, but you always know which one I'm talking about."
"That's not really the point."
"Well, it should be," Sean responded, unconcerned, and then made them turkey sandwiches like he was perfectly comfortable doing that in someone else's apartment.
Eduardo was still waiting for it to become unappealing. Any moment now.
Eduardo's sandwich had too much mayo, but it started them talking about the best delis, the appropriate balance between meat and condiments, this terrible barbecue recipe book of his father's that his mom had been trying to misplace for years, and Sean's last girl who it turned out he wasn't seeing anymore. That had been even shorter than the last one.
"Isn't that sort of..." Eduardo hedged.
"She had to focus on her internship," Sean said, noncommittal.
*
They couldn't get twenty minutes with DDB Worldgroup again until Thursday, and during that time Sean set about making himself an agreeable nuisance who liked to make complicated breakfast burritos for lunch, because that was just the kind of bullshit he'd introduce into Eduardo's life.
He kept putting DVDs back in the wrong cases (whatever was closest) and would sprawl across Eduardo's bed with his shoes on when they had a call with Chris and Dustin, rolling over onto his back and forcing Eduardo to type slower to avoid poking him in the eye with an elbow, gel stiff curls tickling the back of Eduardo's right hand.
Sean said stupid shit like, "let's go bowling," and then dragged him out to a club instead when neither of them were dressed for it, shouting new directions to the cab driver with his arm slung across Eduardo's lap for balance.
And there was this time when Sean slid a hand around his waist, pulling him back by spreading the palm over his stomach, to shout, "hey, I had this thought," in his ear and nodding away the woman Eduardo had been dancing with - Elisha or Elina, long legs and thick black ponytail. Sean's mouth had bumped against his ear as he rambled about making a push with private high schools, other hand folding loose and sloppy over Eduardo's hip, and Eduardo felt like everyone was looking at him, because it wasn't that kind of place, while Sean seemed to not even notice.
too busy to bail you out next 36 hrs fair warning, Mark sent him during the middle of one night.
noted will hold off on justifiable homicide, Eduardo replied, but it was mostly habit by that point, because when they finally got in to see Reena, Eduardo was reminded of exactly why he'd asked Sean to come out in the first place as Sean leaned smoothly across the desk and said,
"I don't think either of us really care about this document," when she started in on the numbers. "What you're concerned with is your bottom line. And that's what we can help you with, if you'll let us."
Sean sat back, looking like a total asshole and running a careless arm over the top of Eduardo's chair (which probably made Eduardo look twitchy, great). "I'll even tell you your bottom line, since I'm feeling generous. You lack consolidated and up-to-the-minute information about consumer interactions and future purchase behavior. We have it. So the real question is: much do you think that's worth? And do we agree?"
Afterward, Eduardo ventured, a little cautiously, "We're not selling them space"
"We're selling them space," Sean said, hustling him out of the way of a delivery man.
"We're not just selling them space," Eduardo insisted.
"You knew that."
"I knew that," Eduardo admitted.
Sean grinned, clearly enjoying the shoe being on the other foot. "You didn't want to say that."
"We're selling them our users," Eduardo said, horrified and strangely elated. His mother wouldn't even know what to do with him.
"Yep," Sean said, bumping their shoulders.
*
Reena called them back for a follow-up and signed on the dotted line, smiling at the both of them. She had a nice prim smile, actually, and Eduardo thought he meant it when he said it would be a pleasure working with her.
Sean made Eduardo go out clubbing with him again to celebrate.
It was such a Sean thing to do: wheedling until he got his way and then plying Eduardo with terrible, watered down drinks, leaning across the table on his elbows to shout in Eduardo's face, their cheeks brushing, his stupid stubble rubbing Eduardo's skin raw and making it itch hotly, and then peeling off for twenty minutes -- drawing suddenly back and emptying his glass in one gulp before standing and leading this girl to the dance floor. He had his hands locked around her waist when the crowd swallowed them.
Eduardo was checking his phone when Sean slumped back into his chair, hair sticky with sweat. His shirt was damp in patches too, riding up a little as he leaned forward and molded tight to his chest. "Welcome back," Eduardo said and then dropped his eyes swiftly to the screen.
It was lucky that he'd made the To-Do List electronic, because he had an item to bold. And then underline.
*
“I’ve got a possible lead from this guy who used to chat me up before the bankruptcy,” Sean mentioned, off hand, one afternoon on the subway. “Kind of a dick, always on about synergy but you knew he just wanted to peel off some funding.”
“How mercenary,” Eduardo said wryly. “I shudder to think.”
“That’s enough out of you, pal.” Sean pointed a mock-threatening finger. “Theil’s legit, anyway. I ran into him once back in the day. And dickface set me up a meet. A personal favor.”
“So maybe you should stop calling him dickface.”
‘Just don’t be your charming self’, Eduardo almost said later, but then caught himself. Chris kept claiming that everything was going smoothly, that people fucking loved Parker out there.
And they’d actually been getting along so far. Mostly.
*
Sean had only been there for two weeks and his stuff was everywhere.
His running shoes had tracked mud across the carpet and settled in the bathroom (discarded after a long run, when Sean would climb into the shower and stroll straight from it and into the kitchen for a glass of water, a towel wrapped around his hips and water still running down his long back in droplets). The dry cleaning bill had doubled and there was a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad on the coffee table. There was relish in the refrigerator, which Eduardo considered a taint upon burgers and hotdogs, and tall brightly colored energy drinks.
"I just tripped over your sandals again," Eduardo shouted into the living room after he'd done it a third time and bumped his knee hard enough to bruise. "Just so you know."
"Thanks for the weather report," Sean threw back over his shoulder as Eduardo limped in rather piteously and deserving of compassion and expensive take-out, if he did say so himself. "Partly cloudy, chance of Saverin thunder."
He threw up his shoulder, decimating a tank on screen with a proud cackle.
"Chance of me kicking your ass," Eduardo muttered and helped himself to the rest of Sean's soda and the other half of his sandwich before realizing it contained the dreaded relish layer.
He gagged a little. "Ugh, you need to stop."
"You could quit being a stealer," Sean said, settling back against Eduardo's legs and adjusting his hold on the controller.
"Hmph," Eduardo said, unconvinced.
Sean's shirt was well-worn cotton soft against his skin and made his swelling knee itch. He'd probably sleep in it, and then Eduardo would undoubtedly have to pick it up off the floor the next morning, because it would be covering one of their phones, or wallets, or Sean's favorite belt.
Eduardo ran hands through his hair, settling into the couch. "We should be doing something productive."
"You know what they were doing last night? Jello shots in the pool, with no lights."
He considered mentioning that Sean had them three days ago in the East Village after dinner with one of Eduardo’s Phoenix brothers, and realized it would be a waste of perfectly good breath. He sighed. "You have a second controller?"
"That's what I'm talking about," Sean crowed, sliding forward to tip his head back over Eduardo's thighs, grinning up at him bright and wide.
So of course the other knee was bruised as hell too, as Eduardo's lungs did this hitch and he shot up to dig into Sean's bag under the table. The whole place had become a menace.
*
“I think I'm making headway with Nasser,” Sean mentioned over coffee, scrolling down his Blackberry lazily with a newspaper stained thumb.
By this point the groan was an automatic reflex. “He calls you Steven.”
“It starts with an S.”
“He thinks you work for Myspace.”
“So the relationship's a work in progress.”
“The relationship’s a figment of your imagination,” Eduardo shouted, throwing out his arms, and Sean shrugged, as if to say ‘everyone’s a critic’, scratching at that stupid nose that kept his face from being wholly beautiful, made it instead warm and imperfect. And then dropped perilously backwards to snag the phone now rumbling against the cutting board.
A phone that was not actually his, Eduardo’s hand slaps communicated quite thoroughly.
“Hush now.”
“That had better not be my mother.”
“Well, we are doing just wonderfully,” Sean cooed, dodging a volley of breadcrusts . “No, everything’s fine. That’s just him making me breakfast. Yes, he is such a thoughtful boy. I’ve always -watch it! not you, Anita- said so.”
“His personal assistant hates you and always sends you to voice mail,” Eduardo called after him. A well-manicured hand poked around the doorway to give him the finger.
Predictably, he’d left Eduardo with all the dishes stacked in the sink.
*
Also unsurprising (to anyone not Sean), not everyone was willing to give them a second interview without significance evidence that they had something new to bring to the table. Evidence that they were still sorely lacking.
"You said you could handle him," said Eduardo peevishly.
"You said I could handle him," Sean said, which may have been unquestionably true but was certainly unhelpful.
"We have-- someone just needs to run a few queries. Mark just needs someone to run a few queries, and-"
"He doesn't want to pull someone off to do that," Sean said.
Eduardo rolled his eyes, grumbling, "He wants us to just make them up," and then hesitated and proclaimed, inspired, "We should just make them up."
"Right, we should just-what?" Sean said.
"Not really. We'll figure them out."
"Figure them out," Sean repeated, dubious.
Eduardo pulled out his phone. "We're projecting-"
"A million users by December," Sean supplied.
"A million users by Dec," Eduardo murmured, typing it in, "So that's, going by that rate-"
"What's the current rate? Did you get the adoption rate?"
"Let's say-when did we open? That's, we take the million, get a per month growth-"
"Wait," Sean said, "You can't--."
"--So we say 4 million in 2005." Eduardo typed in a decisive exclamation mark and looked up proudly. "Nationwide."
"We could say that," said Sean, warming to the exercise, "It would have little to no basis in reality, but I will totally say that."
"And with that information base," Eduardo continued, "That's, what, what do we think is the target audience for most of these shops?"
"I don't know, 50 million."
"Right, so that means we can give them key, very key, very reliable, concrete information about 13% of their target audience. Just in 2005. So say they average 1.5 billion, we increase that by just 5% for that 13% of their audience."
"Did you just create profit projections out of thin air?"
Eduardo attacked the key pad with two fingers, doubling back once for errors. "Right there, 9.7 million."
"9 million," Sean savored.
"You're thinking about making sweet, sweet love to me right now, aren't you?" Eduardo teases. It's okay. I understand."
"Ha, that's, ha," Sean said and then had to make an urgent phone call in the back room, so Eduardo just pulled up Powerpoint to make a chart or two.
*
They closed two more deals, overnighting documents for Mark to sign.
It was hard to tell what would come of it. The ad buys, the page views, the conversion rates-- all guesstimates, shots in the dark. It was yet to be seen how much of the necessary internet company mess these deals would cover. He knew what he wanted: for them to shoulder most of the bandwidth and rent, maybe a reasonable office space at a ridiculous steal per square foot. They needed the time to prove that there was a revenue stream to grow, with the right users, the right platform, and the right kick in the ass.
Of course, he had also wanted a pony, a chem lab, a tennis coach, and not to return from vacation to find father's lawyer's glossy black thong in their living room couch, and none of those things had turned out too well.
(They still didn't talk about the chem lab.)
(In his defense, it wasn't like anyone was using the guest house.)
(Though apparently Miss Ramirez had just been house sitting.)
(He still felt bad about leaving those voicemails.)
*
They took a Forbes columnist his uncle knew out to dinner. It was the night before Sean's return flight and they kept the conversation light-- just industry predictions and start up gossip, putting in a good word for themselves without being too outrageously Dustin about it.
Eduardo ordered them all some very good wine to distract from the overcooked steak. Sean was allowed to take it up to 11 before being surreptitiously elbowed in the ribs. They passed the patter back and forth to each other and it came off well, he could tell. Someday there would be real interviews and Forbes would mention how incredibly charming and mature he had been (and not at all resembling a New Jersey mobster with his hair slicked back like that, fuck you very much Parker).
When they shook hands and Eduardo paid with his card, it felt good. For the first time it felt certain that he could do this.
After, stumbling out of a short, pipe rattling shower, he was looking forward to a movie and greasy microwave popcorn but Sean wanted to pop into a club "one last time."
As if Sean would never drag out him too late again, to wake up with fucking circles under his eyes and a feeling like there was swelling in his brain. A nice thought, but a patently ridiculous one.
The cover charge was obscene but they settled at the bar next to two drunkenly witty brunettes whose names Eduardo had completely forgotten by the time they were both petting his hair and calling him baby and suggesting, "hey, let's all go dance."
"Yeah, we'll come," Sean shrugged and dragged Eduardo away from the bar by the hand, fingers hot and thumb running over his palm.
It was crowded, really poorly designed (Eduardo knew an architecture major they should totally have words with), and with the drinking at dinner he'd maybe pre-gamed a little too much (maybe a lot to be honest). But the girls were sweet and nice, and they liked him so much that he really wanted to introduce one of them to Dustin so he could start plotting as they fell passionately in love.
"Your boyfriend's hilarious," the one who kept joking about med school said, hugging her arms around his neck and shouting against his ear.
"He certainly thinks so," Eduardo allowed, watching Sean shuffle over to steal a fresh beer off somebody's table, before he registered the full significance.
But then the moment to correct her was past, and there wasn't much of a point anyhow.
There wasn't a single other person Eduardo knew in this building, he realized. None of this crowd would even recognize him if he ever saw them again. In this lighting, not even if he spilled a blue hurricane over someone's $300 slacks. Not that he was intending to try, unless Sean dared him again.
So he leaned into the maybe med student, laughed back at her happy raccoon eyes and smeared lip stick, and danced like he used to when he was younger, when he would lock the door and let the radio blare.
Suddenly he couldn't remember why he had ever stopped doing that.
"To never learning better!" he toasted with their final shots.
Sean gave him a perplexed nod but agreeably drank to it anyway, adding, "And no learning worse!" with a fist punch in the air, "fuck that, with someone else's dick!"
*
Drowsy-eyed and washed out, Sean burrowed into his chest with their hug goodbye and then stepped back with fists stuffed into his thick cotton jacket to offer a harrowing description of the loneliness, despair, and anti-social behavior that might now befall a solitary Eduardo in New York (including bar crawling, sobbing in the shower, sleeping in the bathtub, long walks on an empty beach, and a Morrissey playlist on repeat). In which case, "you know, you're always welcome to fly on down."
"mmm, visceral," Eduardo said. "Yes, in that impressively specific situation, I will do so."
There was an unidentifiable look on Sean’s face. "You know what I mean."
Eduardo coughed and pointed out the time, steering him towards the entrance with both hands on his back.
*
But his place felt still and deafening that week, all of the typical clanking sounds of apartment life now amplified -- like it was off and unbalanced too, in a more hopelessly melodramatic fashion.
There were follow up emails and calls to make, financial projections to type, a lunch date to keep, a return call to his father. These were alone-things to do, that he didn't actually need any help for, but the fact remained that Sean leaning over his shoulder to piss him off with pointless opinions (and resting a hand on the back of his neck to make his thoughts short out and have to double back) would make everything seem to go much faster. In a, ok, completely nonsensical but strangely effective fashion.
Of course he missed Mark, in that sick, restless way you're supposed to communicate through back slaps. He missed late night conversations about creating video games of classic literature, buzzed on sleep deprivation and crap beer. He missed tossing bottlecaps at Mark's back to test his concentration level. He missed that stupid giggling phase when Mark got too high. He missed distracting him in lectures. He missed borrowing a couple of Mark's sweatshirts and sacking out on the dorm room floor.
But, somehow, he also now missed dozens of Sean things too. He woke up and wanted to talk to Sean first thing in the morning, wanted to see him while he put on his shoes. He wanted to ignore Sean beside him on his morning run, bumping into Eduardo's shoulder and panting the chorus of classic rock tunes with a sweat-damp shirt tucked into the slipping waistband of his shorts. Eduardo wanted to bunch up with him on the subway, pressing the backs of their hands together and smelling his own soap on Sean's skin and the stale pot smoke in his jacket, stopping to eat at whatever pretentious café Sean had been reading about in the Food & Wine magazine. He even wanted to tag-team canvas the place for twenty minutes, exchanging insults and cushion bombs, in search of the glasses Sean only wore 25% of the time he needed them.
And clearly Eduardo had been wrong about the kind of movie his life had turned into. He could only fiercely, wholeheartedly hope it wasn't one of those French ones where the time seems to be stuck at dusk, the streets were always wet, and he'd churn out countless monologues about feeling like an empty suitcase.
Eduardo did not want to be a suitcase in the slightest bit.
*
From: chughes@facebook.com
To: esaverin@facebook.com
Subject: possible parker emergency
Please tell me Sean was tearing it up during the visit of doom cuz he hasn't brought a girl over here once or wanted to go out and it's been daaaaaays.
I think he might be more broken up about Sarah than we thought.
Dustin thinks he might have terrifying disease of the dick and is too embarrassed to tell anyone.
-
From: esaverin@facebook.com
To: chughes@facebook.com
Subject: Re: possible parker emergency
Maybe he's just getting serious.
-
From: chughes@facebook.com
To: esaverin@facebook.com
Subject: Re: possible parker emergency
RIGHT.
Look he straight up turned down this college girl's number last night during starbucks run.
-
From: esaverin@facebook.com
To: sparker@facebook.com
Subject: checking in
hey, you ok?
-
From: sparker@facebook.com
To: esaverin@facebook.com
Subject: Re: checking in
fine. is something up?
*
If Eduardo did, perhaps, end up coincidentally taking one rather long walk on one relatively under populated beach, that was between himself, the sea gulls, and the toe he stubbed on some half-buried driftwood.
Besides, he was just in the area because a Google AVP from Fire Island had invited him for dinner and he was putting off the long ride back.
He watched waves rush in, hands tucked into the tight pockets of his favorite black slacks, and thought about all the really great plans he had made in his life and executed flawlessly. And then how none of them had turned out anything like expected that year.
*
Something was certainly happening in California, because no one in that house could be reached for two days (not even when Eduardo had the delivery guy leave a long message on their answering machine as the irate property management company).
And then everyone was trying to contact him all at once.
Peter Thiel had made an investment offer, and that meant they'd have to "reincorporate, dilute shares, give him some. We need the funding, I know we could use the funding, and better-- you said that time that there were more fuck ups because we staff so heavily with interns, but didn't we want to--at this price, what are we buying, I mean our valuation is crap right now, but holy shit."
"Wardo," Mark said. He was chewing Red Vines with the corner of his mouth. It sounded wet and nasty through the phone and completely like home in every way. "Breathe."
So he tried that for a while, which did stop the hyperventilating and helped the pounding blood vessels in his forehead.
And with the very handy power of complete sentences they were able to get to down to discussing which metaphorical bridge they were going to (hopefully, still only metaphorically) doom everyone into jumping off together.
Metaphorical bridges had, somewhere along the way, developed into a deep Mark concern that summer. Eduardo could somewhat understand, considering his own sordid beach experience, but he was still plotting some good old fashioned throat punching for whenever he discovered just who'd planted that one.
No one was allowed to fuck with his best friend's piece of mind but Eduardo. There was this pact they made once in the Kirkland stairway, while stumbling home from a terrible bus ride and BU kegger.
*
"He seems like a nice guy." Eduardo had decided on calling Sean back last, because Sean was usually pretty intense about these types of things and it might be a good idea to have only one crazy person in the conversation at any given time.
Instead, Sean had apparently decided to be a zombie.
"He is a nice guy," Sean mumbled.
"Which is important."
Sean hummed in vague agreement.
"And he has a solid record."
Sean's throat made more indistinct noises.
"I still don’t want to give him a slice of our company yet, when we don't have any negotiation leverage."
"No," Sean said, distantly, like his mind was on something else (or, you know, brains). "I didn’t think that you would."
"If we don’t have to. Do we have to?"
He was preoccupied with quietly freaking out about the possibility of saying thanks but no thanks for your generous financial offer of tons and tons of money when Sean said, in a strained tone of voice, "I've been thinking about it."
"About what?"
"About-us."
Eduardo sprinted over freaking and directly into dire panic. "Sean, I'm not gay."
"Are you fucking serious?" Sean said darkly.
"I have never not been serious!" Eduardo said, "I have been serious about this the entire time!" and hung up, shoving his phone into the silverware drawer.
"Just, fuck everybody," he told the refrigerator.
It rattled a little, but then it did that whenever the neighbors turned their microwave on.
*
Eduardo had known exactly how it would go. He would drink too much mid-priced wine and head up the Investment Club, and then get punched by a final club and drink better wine but terrible hors d'oeuvres that he'd pretend to love. Mark would get punched the next year and drag him to all of the parties until it became commonplace and boring. Then they'd graduate and Mark would start up this smart little company with Dustin while Chris joined some non-profit and Eduardo finished his Harvard MBA. He'd marry his girlfriend as soon as she finished her MBA, or possibly Law School. She would probably have a cousin or roommate that he could introduce to Mark, who'd be strategically prepped beforehand. It would have been perfect.
"I said you were a little gay." Mark was balancing Cup O' Noodles on his knees again while playing a first person shooter. Eduardo could hear the slurping in between the plastic clicks and faint explosions.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I believe that's called bisexual."
"No," Mark said seriously, "I think you're a lot bisexual."
"I think you're not helping."
"No," Mark mused absentmindedly. "I imagine you knew that already."
"This cannot be happening to me."
"Well, I don't see why not."
"For fuck's sake, Mark. How about, because some of us are victims of this very inconvenient condition called human emotion. And don't think I've forgotten who got me into this mess in the first place."
There had been very minimal groveling. Eduardo had even still been required to write half of his art history midterm - on which Mark had received an 86, it might be fair to point out.
(And if by "required" he actually meant, "had been forced to watch Mark consume a liter of Code Red Mountain Dew and try to type with the shakes," that was completely irrelevant.)
"Wardo, we just turned down half a million dollars." They both felt this deserved a moment of silence, which Mark cut into with, "And now I'm asking you to throw away everything and come down here, even though I know we don't need you to, because I just want you here. Because it would be better."
Eduardo didn't quite know what to say to that. Especially the rustling that had sounded like picking up cue cards.
"So," Mark barked out sharply, "I don't understand why you can't do something equally stupid like be in love with Sean Parker."
Eduardo had even less of a coherent reply for that one.
*
The only possible explanation for what Eduardo did next was that he was in a very dark place at the time.
A place in which he was much too distracted to remember that he'd quit going to that particular liquor store because twice now he'd run into a certain overly boisterous Phoenix brother.
Also, it could be tough to detach thick, football throwing bicep from around your neck when you still hadn't quite given up on all of your dignity just yet.
Then Tom stopped over to drown his sorrows with Eduardo and homemade ravioli, bemoaning the disintegration of the longest running relationship he'd managed in his life.
"I promised her grandma we'd visit again." Tom cut another hunk of noodle and cheese off with his fork, his slices heavy with despondency.
Eduardo thought he might drink directly out of the bottle. "She'll understand."
"We were planning a vacation. To, like, the Bahamas or something. Dad said I could take the jet."
"Sometimes it's just not meant to be," Eduardo said, leaning over to lay some consoling pats between massive shoulder blades.
"I know man, but who does that? Walking away from everything we'd built? After 2 months?"
"Yeah, that's-that's a real human tragedy. I'm sure she feels appropriately shamed."
"She's gotta know that hook up meant nothing to me. I mean, it was a wedding."
"ohthankgod," Eduardo said when thuds sounded against the front door. "I mean, be right back."
He assumed it was Tim Nguyen because someone had keyed his car again, or possibly 34C about barbecuing on the balcony. But naturally, because this was Eduardo's life, instead it was Sean standing there with a backpack slung over one arm while Tom patiently detailed his list of all possible situations in which it was socially acceptable to cheat on your significant other, unless you're not a guy or she's pregnant.
"I'm not even supposed to be in this state," Sean said furiously, shutting the door behind him and flinging the backpack towards the living room.
It was still skidding across the carpet when he crowded Eduardo up against the wall and kissed him, a light brush of chapped lips -- rough like Sean's thickly-gelled hair and his too-new jeans, everything about him looking tired and restless and trying too hard.
A second brush made Eduardo's eyes fall shut, his hands mindlessly grasping out for belt loops to tug forward, and there was the rich, faintly spiced smell of that aftershave Sean's always worn when trying to impress somebody. The one Eduardo had always lied about and sworn he despised with every fiber of his being, when of course he fucking loved it, when it was mixed with Sean's heated skin like this, when Sean was so close and Eduardo could feel how alive he was.
Then Sean coaxed his mouth open, right hand coming up to cover the side of his neck, thumb running over his loud, juddering pulse, and he'd always thought--not that he'd often let himself admit that he thought about this, not for more than a few seconds at a time, but he'd always thought--he'd thought it would be quicker and drunkenly clumsy. And involving a lot more zippers.
He had definitely not pictured Sean linking their hands together as they parted for air and then stating, emphatically, "If you say you're not gay again, I will punch you."
As Sean's lips were only a few inches away, the tip of his tongue slipping out to wet them as Eduardo watched, any type of talking at all had been the very last thing on his mind, to be perfectly honest.
Tom, who clearly had no such mental restrictions, apparently found it very necessary to say, "Is this like a non-gay bashing? What the fuck?"
So of course Sean stepped back and blinked. "Do you even know who I am?"
"oh god," Eduardo groaned, letting his body thump back into the wallpaper. He made a mental note of this moment, to remind a certain Zuckerberg that, actually, there had been several valid, honest to god objections to linking his well-being to this lunatic.
Tom stepped forward for a closer look. "What, are you Ryan Phillippe? Gosford Park sucked."
Valiantly ignoring this slight, Sean put on his most charming grin and held out a hand. "I'm Sean Parker."
Tom stilled. "Sean Parker."
"Of Napster," Sean confirmed brightly, upon which Tom elbowed Eduardo out of the way to grab a hold of the hand and began pumping it vigorously.
"That's amazing, you know I tossed all my Metallica CDs when those fuckers started screwing with you."
"oh god," Eduardo said.
*
It took forty-five minutes for Tom to leave, during which Sean told three stories that always made him look like a complete jackass, one story that was actually new and not half-bad, and persisted in carding his fingers through Eduardo’s hair as he talked, scratching lightly and running his fingers along the back of his ear and his collarbone, and slid arms around Eduardo’s waist to deliver a light squeeze and accompanying kiss underneath his jaw before helping gather the plates and sauce pan with the smuggest smile on his face that Eduardo had ever seen in his entire goddamn life.
Basically, Eduardo spent at least twenty minutes of that time achingly hard and with only the strongest of wills and deeply ingrained social mores to keep him from just rubbing off against the sofa arm or kitchen cabinets.
Unsurprisingly, Sean felt considerably less constrained by the circumstances and pressed up against his back as he retrieved a beer from the fridge, palms sliding over his hips to push up under his button-down shirt and stroke bare shivering stomach, the line of Sean’s cock rigid and warm against his ass as it rubbed insistently forward in a way that made his body want to open for it, blood rushing to the surface of his skin and his face hot like near burning, that bastard.
"oh fuck you," Eduardo hissed, shuddering and shoving him away with both hands, "This must be Stockholm Syndrome." An action that only caused to Sean snicker as he stumbled against the table, reaching down shamelessly to adjust himself in his pants (which just made Eduardo’s skin prickle again, like fingers were running up the back of his neck).
"Tom, my newest and dearest friend, we need to you let yourself out so we can have sex now," Sean called out towards the living room.
Eduardo was looking for the pasta strainer to beat repeatedly against Sean’s head when they heard back a cheerful, "No problem, dude!" and the grinding sounds of a door opening and settling shut again.
"I take it all back," Eduardo swore fervently, and threw a potholder when Sean grinned which tumbled over Sean’s shoulder and into the sink. "But we are still not fucking on this floor that was last cleaned I don’t know when."
*
Instead they undressed in the bedroom, Eduardo balancing on one leg to strip his pants off, tottering a little, and Sean plopping onto his back to squirm out of his jeans and toss his undershirt over Eduardo’s hibernating laptop. It should have much more alarming (potentially verging on terrifying), except Sean was sitting up and bouncing back against his heels as Eduardo undid his own shirt. And then Eduardo had to climb up beside him because, "god, can’t you just, no, I cannot take you seriously in socks," scooting around Sean’s side to pull off them off, lifting each foot to yank at the cloth bunched up at the toes and almost tipping Sean off the bed ("hey!") until Sean grabbed a hold of his shoulders.
And then, well, they were both naked, which was a little intimidating, but Sean wound his arms over Eduardo’s shoulders and then they were kissing, soft and deep, and when Sean’s hand crept up his leg Eduardo pressed forward too hard and tipped them, Sean falling back into the pillows and Eduardo on top of him, laughing into the curve of Sean’s neck as Sean laughed back at him, lifting his head up to kiss again.
It was good, their heated skin sliding together and Sean’s cock brushing up against his, Sean’s wonderful mouth bending to bite playfully at his jugular and then at this chest. Sean hissed as Eduardo awkwardly climbed over his bent legs and up into his lap, but it was the good kind of hiss, he could tell, and it made Eduardo less embarrassed to hear the noises that came from his own throat when Sean let go of his hip to stroke his cock a little, letting him buck into it, and said, "I think we need to get these wet," bringing two fingers up to run along Eduardo’s lower lip.
Sean licked his own palm before pressing their cocks together, sliding against each other as he pumped his hand over them and watched Eduardo suck on his fingers. He was tentative and messy but Eduardo supposed that was the idea, and Sean really didn’t seem to mind, shuffling them even closer as he pulled his fingers back and slid one down the crack of Eduardo’s ass and inhaling sharply along with Eduardo as the tip of the finger breached him.
Eduardo told himself that he was absolutely not allowed to blush when Sean said, "I like how you feel," working slowly deeper inside until he was past the knuckle, pressing their mouths lightly together again in the pauses between Eduardo’s stupid, desperate panting. There were absolutely too many places that Sean was touching at once and he didn’t actually want him to stop touching any of them, and yet was also certain he couldn't possibly handle feeling this much all at one time.
"Okay, we’re going to need some actual lube if you want another one," Sean admitted and his lean to retrieve it from the bed table pressed the finger so deep that Eduardo’s hips jerked and he gasped, which made Sean hurry to coax Eduardo open enough to take both of them before he would touch either of their cocks again.
"I am so hard for it, I’m afraid my dick’s broke," Eduardo confessed, laughing and pausing for another gasp, then another, because no one had ever said it felt like that, just those long, blunt fingers moving inside him and the silky head of Sean’s cock rubbing against his as he could feel it rising, the edge of orgasm, and had to bat away Sean’s hand and jerk them harder, jerking Sean through it first and leaning back into the press of Sean’s fingers as they twitched.
*
"I just like everything to go how it’s supposed to. And it's just-I like to be liked." They were laying back against the headrest and Eduardo found it easier to say while straightening out all the places where they’d bunched up the sheets in untidy peaks.
He shrugged. "It's a thing."
"So this-" Sean started to say, trailing off into a wet, open mouthed kiss-given purposely, insultingly gentle enough that Sean would do something exactly like wrestle him onto his back, nipping at the inside of Eduardo’s thigh with his teeth and sucking a bruise under his hipbone, before Eduardo rolled them over and held Sean against the mattress with hands flat against his chest and knees slotted against his sides.
He was hard again, peering down at Sean’s sneaky, flushed face, but there was no urgency to do anything about it yet. It simply was nice to feel like that, to be handled and looked at like that, everything heightened and lit up from the slightest shift of skin on skin.
"That was more a generalized reference to people," he explained, letting himself fall onto Sean’s chest and earning an "oomf". "People in general."
"And I never really wanted you to like me before," Eduardo pointed out, arching into the feel of a smooth palm gliding down the center of his back. "So there's that."
"I always liked you," Sean said, indignant.
"Not that first time."
"Well," Sean allowed, stopping to brush his mouth along the curve of Eduardo’s arm, licking out to taste it as he delivered another stroke that ended with his thumb running (maddeningly) side to side over the back of Eduardo’s upper thighs. And then, "You reminded me of a little terrier, Jack Russell maybe. A very cranky one, little yappy ankle biter."
"So what you're telling me is: you're kind of into bestiality."
"I like little dogs," Sean continued blithely, running a thumb behind Eduardo's ear that made his whole body give an involuntary tremble. "Dogs should be cute."
"I'm not cute," Eduardo vowed firmly, shaking off a shiver.
"Yes, you are," Sean said, delivering a smack across his ass that earned him one back, thrust sideways and face smooshed into the comforter.
"And I liked how you're crazy about me."
"But I wasn't, actually," said Eduardo reasonably.
"You are now."
"I am perfectly sane about you."
"Says the man who forced me to fly cross country by crying fraudulent heterosexuality."
"My feelings for you may be slightly unhinged," he admitted, a little breathlessly, as Sean knelt between his legs ("wanna suck you off, I’ve been thinking about it,") and displayed unexpected depths of patience and concentration.
*
"fine, I love you, holy fuck," he finally gasped another round later. "I think my dick will actually fall off if you try to give it another orgasm."
*
Eduardo's dick did not end up being damaged in the least. But he was definitely boneless and drowsy for a while, so his exhaustive expedition to find and retrieve a cell phone from strewn clothing should be acknowledged as a profound sacrifice of precious energy.
Consequently, he called from Sean’s because it was way closer.
Mark picked up on the fifth ring and he got right down to it. He told Mark that he was right -- which Mark really loved hearing, so that was probably the best thing to lead with, plus the added benefit of being true.
Eduardo told him that he was right about Sean. He was also right about Eduardo occasionally being a stubborn coward with an inferiority complex, though that was still not a very smart thing to say about someone who knows how often you change your underwear. He told Mark that he should have come out, that he’ll be there for the rest of the summer. That he should have been flying out here, not there, whatever the money. He shouldn’t have been in such a hurry, he just wanted so bad to make it happen for Mark, to make it happen the right way. But this was their thing and they should have been doing it together.
Eduardo took a deep breath then, because he was feeling a little dizzy. "I’m not going to make you go back to school."
"I don’t think that was up to you," Mark said dubiously.
"But you’re going to come back here," Eduardo continued, "and I’m going to rent out an office in Boston with the rest of the money in my savings and the revenue that’s going to start coming in. Because the site you built is fucking amazing and you don’t need the pricks in Silicon Valley to tell you that. Palo Alto can see this with everyone else. The people, the VCs, they’ll follow you. You don't have to go to them. And-and." He swallowed. "I don’t want to do my senior year without you, that sounds so fucking depressing."
Sean was pantomiming a gunshot to the head, but it was unclear if he was indicating self-harm or homicide, and not terribly effective due to the nakedness.
"Ok," Mark said, after a pause, "we’ll do that," and Eduardo let out the air he’d been bottling in his lungs and let himself smile stupidly into the receiver until he heard,
"Wardo, what’s gotten into you?" in Chris’ deeper tone and Dustin immediately shrieked, "No, don’t tell us!"
"Mark," Eduardo began murderously, "do you have me on speakerphone?"
Sean smartly occupied his mouth before the line went dead.
//
fin
*
"You are fucking shameless," Eduardo said when Sean pried open the car door and wiggled over the brake to shove his bag and suitcase into the backseat. But the rumpled shirt, pink lines pressed into Sean's cheek, and mouth soft from sleep kept him from expressing the full breadth of his disdain for Sean's now-predictable cowardice and his general status as the source of all chaos in Eduardo's life. (Which would actually be an equally shameless lie, anyway, since Sean was well acquainted with Dustin Moskovitz.)
"President, you dick," was all he ended up muttering, and helped Sean adjust the seat back so he could doze through the traffic on the way back to Eduardo's place.
When he slid his jacket under Sean's head to keep it from sliding off and into the window pane, his breath was smooth and hot against Eduardo's wrist and smelled like mint Frappuccino.
*
They hadn't spoken again after the VP offer while Eduardo fumed for a bit and only sent Mark terse text messages, but Sean had made plans to fly out right away.
"Because I asked him to," Eduardo said, shrugging, when Dustin wanted to know what the fuck.
"You're not actually blowing him, are you?" Dustin had said, suddenly serious.
"Yes," he'd replied tartly, "through the miracles of astral projection."
"I'm just saying-weird."
"I am the CFO," said Eduardo crossly.
"When you keep telling people that all the time, it loses some of its cachet."
"When it seems like no one remembers," Eduardo began, since he'd yet to see any evidence of this theoretical cache, decreasing or not.
But Dustin interrupted cheerfully, "Just worried about your gravitas, man," and then asked him if he was prepared to order enough pizza to feed a small army, which was a good point. So Eduardo actually did go shopping.
He even bought those pickles Sean liked and a microbrew that both of them could stand, because he'd hadn't intended to ask for help, ever, except in such spurious cases as a zombie apocalypse or raining cats and dogs, but then he'd just been so furious and then Sean didn't even make him beg. He picked up an extra pillow too, one of the good neck support ones. And he replied to the itinerary Sean sent over, saying he didn't need to take a cab.
*
Sean was easily roused when they got back to the apartment and he settled against the counter to watch Eduardo reheat some Indian with only slightly obnoxious ease. It seemed as if it took Sean five minutes, if that, to make himself completely at home. From the perspective of someone with a painfully polite mother and a very reasonable amount of social anxiety, this was one of Sean's more unsettling qualities. Eduardo couldn't figure out why he was starting to like it.
They ate standing up, side by side, from mismatched plates and Sean expounded re: his dastardly methods for gaining CEO approval to join Eduardo in New York.
Surprisingly, the solution was not to get Mark disgustingly drunk.
"Told him that, sure, we could drop that angle, just focus on bringing in an investor or two. A good angel investor--we could move out into better offices, space for some nicer server racks. A safer bet, definitely."
"You didn't," Eduardo said, amused, and Sean laughed, acknowledging safety to be the essence of uncool in a way that made it very obvious how much Mark had grown on him as well.
"It would be a shame to give away any more pieces of the company than we have to," Eduardo said, sobering.
"I told him that too."
*
It had seemed a little silly to put Sean up in a hotel when he couldn't really pay for it on his own, so it would be money from the account, and the plane tickets hadn't been cheap on such a short notice.
Eduardo had a perfectly good couch that they could take turns on and after hearing-other things through the California house's thin walls, he was confident snoring would not be an issue.
Besides, it might very well be necessary to eat the cost of couple more tickets sooner or later, because Eduardo had warned Dustin that he knew where he lived, and would fucking go there to kick his ass if he didn't stop referring to their "love nest."
*
"Your neighbors," Sean ventured the next morning.
The kitchen felt cramped with Sean there in with him as Eduardo filled the coffee maker and listened to the noises of Sean's wide mouthed yawns, the faint rasp of his boxers against his thighs, the slapping of his bare feet against the tile as he opened four drawers before finding the one with spoons.
"Yeah," Eduardo said and felt his face heat. "They do that."
*
Settling in and finding a better place for Sean to put his suitcase didn't take that long, and then Eduardo made breakfast, including hash browns (because he had this resolution now, to be a nicer person around Sean, who had in retrospect maybe only half-way deserved it; and besides which, it seemed like it only encouraged him).
Having Sean underfoot all the time was a little awkward, mostly because Eduardo wasn't sure what to do with him. There had been an army of miscellaneous issues and bustling, unwashed people as a buffer in California, and Eduardo was left considering that they wouldn't have a legitimate reason to leave the apartment more than four times a week and he couldn't remember what he talked about with other people, when they were just hanging out.
At Investor Association and Phoenix meetings there had been talk about GMAT prep, the classes you took, the classes you're taking, the classes you're planning on taking, and who's fucking who. Plus all the flagrant lies about a senator your father or your aunt has supposedly known for years when it's actually just the occasional Christmas card. In the Kirkland dorm, Eduardo didn't even know. It had been nothing in particular, just stupid gamer bragging rights, giving each other shit, stress about a test, claiming to be drunk at least an hour before they really were. It had just been comfortable, and Eduardo had never thought about what he was going to say next or felt much pressure to say anything unless he felt like it (until there was Sean Parker and the fucking Crimson, but still.).
But with Sean there and waiting to be-something, Eduardo was suddenly very conscious about how little they had to say to each other. Sean was just so there, with his nice watch and incongruous cheap shoes and perfect white teeth smiles. And not even pissing Eduardo off, which would have given Eduardo a pretty big clue about how to behave around him.
"uh, the coffee?" he finally went with.
Sean took another sip. "It's good."
"You don't need to say that." Eduardo knew that the beans were pre-ground and getting old.
"Well, I like it," Sean said defensively and held the cup tighter like Eduardo was going to steal it back.
So they were getting off to a great start.
And then Eduardo showed him where the washer and dryer were kept, turned on CNN for a while, and then walked him through the spreadsheet that Sean persisted in calling "the thing" - which may have been much more concise than "the potential client contact matrix" but was vague to the point of nonsensical.
"There are at least five things you call 'the thing'," Eduardo reminded him sensibly.
"Yeah, but you always know which one I'm talking about."
"That's not really the point."
"Well, it should be," Sean responded, unconcerned, and then made them turkey sandwiches like he was perfectly comfortable doing that in someone else's apartment.
Eduardo was still waiting for it to become unappealing. Any moment now.
Eduardo's sandwich had too much mayo, but it started them talking about the best delis, the appropriate balance between meat and condiments, this terrible barbecue recipe book of his father's that his mom had been trying to misplace for years, and Sean's last girl who it turned out he wasn't seeing anymore. That had been even shorter than the last one.
"Isn't that sort of..." Eduardo hedged.
"She had to focus on her internship," Sean said, noncommittal.
*
They couldn't get twenty minutes with DDB Worldgroup again until Thursday, and during that time Sean set about making himself an agreeable nuisance who liked to make complicated breakfast burritos for lunch, because that was just the kind of bullshit he'd introduce into Eduardo's life.
He kept putting DVDs back in the wrong cases (whatever was closest) and would sprawl across Eduardo's bed with his shoes on when they had a call with Chris and Dustin, rolling over onto his back and forcing Eduardo to type slower to avoid poking him in the eye with an elbow, gel stiff curls tickling the back of Eduardo's right hand.
Sean said stupid shit like, "let's go bowling," and then dragged him out to a club instead when neither of them were dressed for it, shouting new directions to the cab driver with his arm slung across Eduardo's lap for balance.
And there was this time when Sean slid a hand around his waist, pulling him back by spreading the palm over his stomach, to shout, "hey, I had this thought," in his ear and nodding away the woman Eduardo had been dancing with - Elisha or Elina, long legs and thick black ponytail. Sean's mouth had bumped against his ear as he rambled about making a push with private high schools, other hand folding loose and sloppy over Eduardo's hip, and Eduardo felt like everyone was looking at him, because it wasn't that kind of place, while Sean seemed to not even notice.
too busy to bail you out next 36 hrs fair warning, Mark sent him during the middle of one night.
noted will hold off on justifiable homicide, Eduardo replied, but it was mostly habit by that point, because when they finally got in to see Reena, Eduardo was reminded of exactly why he'd asked Sean to come out in the first place as Sean leaned smoothly across the desk and said,
"I don't think either of us really care about this document," when she started in on the numbers. "What you're concerned with is your bottom line. And that's what we can help you with, if you'll let us."
Sean sat back, looking like a total asshole and running a careless arm over the top of Eduardo's chair (which probably made Eduardo look twitchy, great). "I'll even tell you your bottom line, since I'm feeling generous. You lack consolidated and up-to-the-minute information about consumer interactions and future purchase behavior. We have it. So the real question is: much do you think that's worth? And do we agree?"
Afterward, Eduardo ventured, a little cautiously, "We're not selling them space"
"We're selling them space," Sean said, hustling him out of the way of a delivery man.
"We're not just selling them space," Eduardo insisted.
"You knew that."
"I knew that," Eduardo admitted.
Sean grinned, clearly enjoying the shoe being on the other foot. "You didn't want to say that."
"We're selling them our users," Eduardo said, horrified and strangely elated. His mother wouldn't even know what to do with him.
"Yep," Sean said, bumping their shoulders.
*
Reena called them back for a follow-up and signed on the dotted line, smiling at the both of them. She had a nice prim smile, actually, and Eduardo thought he meant it when he said it would be a pleasure working with her.
Sean made Eduardo go out clubbing with him again to celebrate.
It was such a Sean thing to do: wheedling until he got his way and then plying Eduardo with terrible, watered down drinks, leaning across the table on his elbows to shout in Eduardo's face, their cheeks brushing, his stupid stubble rubbing Eduardo's skin raw and making it itch hotly, and then peeling off for twenty minutes -- drawing suddenly back and emptying his glass in one gulp before standing and leading this girl to the dance floor. He had his hands locked around her waist when the crowd swallowed them.
Eduardo was checking his phone when Sean slumped back into his chair, hair sticky with sweat. His shirt was damp in patches too, riding up a little as he leaned forward and molded tight to his chest. "Welcome back," Eduardo said and then dropped his eyes swiftly to the screen.
It was lucky that he'd made the To-Do List electronic, because he had an item to bold. And then underline.
*
“I’ve got a possible lead from this guy who used to chat me up before the bankruptcy,” Sean mentioned, off hand, one afternoon on the subway. “Kind of a dick, always on about synergy but you knew he just wanted to peel off some funding.”
“How mercenary,” Eduardo said wryly. “I shudder to think.”
“That’s enough out of you, pal.” Sean pointed a mock-threatening finger. “Theil’s legit, anyway. I ran into him once back in the day. And dickface set me up a meet. A personal favor.”
“So maybe you should stop calling him dickface.”
‘Just don’t be your charming self’, Eduardo almost said later, but then caught himself. Chris kept claiming that everything was going smoothly, that people fucking loved Parker out there.
And they’d actually been getting along so far. Mostly.
*
Sean had only been there for two weeks and his stuff was everywhere.
His running shoes had tracked mud across the carpet and settled in the bathroom (discarded after a long run, when Sean would climb into the shower and stroll straight from it and into the kitchen for a glass of water, a towel wrapped around his hips and water still running down his long back in droplets). The dry cleaning bill had doubled and there was a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad on the coffee table. There was relish in the refrigerator, which Eduardo considered a taint upon burgers and hotdogs, and tall brightly colored energy drinks.
"I just tripped over your sandals again," Eduardo shouted into the living room after he'd done it a third time and bumped his knee hard enough to bruise. "Just so you know."
"Thanks for the weather report," Sean threw back over his shoulder as Eduardo limped in rather piteously and deserving of compassion and expensive take-out, if he did say so himself. "Partly cloudy, chance of Saverin thunder."
He threw up his shoulder, decimating a tank on screen with a proud cackle.
"Chance of me kicking your ass," Eduardo muttered and helped himself to the rest of Sean's soda and the other half of his sandwich before realizing it contained the dreaded relish layer.
He gagged a little. "Ugh, you need to stop."
"You could quit being a stealer," Sean said, settling back against Eduardo's legs and adjusting his hold on the controller.
"Hmph," Eduardo said, unconvinced.
Sean's shirt was well-worn cotton soft against his skin and made his swelling knee itch. He'd probably sleep in it, and then Eduardo would undoubtedly have to pick it up off the floor the next morning, because it would be covering one of their phones, or wallets, or Sean's favorite belt.
Eduardo ran hands through his hair, settling into the couch. "We should be doing something productive."
"You know what they were doing last night? Jello shots in the pool, with no lights."
He considered mentioning that Sean had them three days ago in the East Village after dinner with one of Eduardo’s Phoenix brothers, and realized it would be a waste of perfectly good breath. He sighed. "You have a second controller?"
"That's what I'm talking about," Sean crowed, sliding forward to tip his head back over Eduardo's thighs, grinning up at him bright and wide.
So of course the other knee was bruised as hell too, as Eduardo's lungs did this hitch and he shot up to dig into Sean's bag under the table. The whole place had become a menace.
*
“I think I'm making headway with Nasser,” Sean mentioned over coffee, scrolling down his Blackberry lazily with a newspaper stained thumb.
By this point the groan was an automatic reflex. “He calls you Steven.”
“It starts with an S.”
“He thinks you work for Myspace.”
“So the relationship's a work in progress.”
“The relationship’s a figment of your imagination,” Eduardo shouted, throwing out his arms, and Sean shrugged, as if to say ‘everyone’s a critic’, scratching at that stupid nose that kept his face from being wholly beautiful, made it instead warm and imperfect. And then dropped perilously backwards to snag the phone now rumbling against the cutting board.
A phone that was not actually his, Eduardo’s hand slaps communicated quite thoroughly.
“Hush now.”
“That had better not be my mother.”
“Well, we are doing just wonderfully,” Sean cooed, dodging a volley of breadcrusts . “No, everything’s fine. That’s just him making me breakfast. Yes, he is such a thoughtful boy. I’ve always -watch it! not you, Anita- said so.”
“His personal assistant hates you and always sends you to voice mail,” Eduardo called after him. A well-manicured hand poked around the doorway to give him the finger.
Predictably, he’d left Eduardo with all the dishes stacked in the sink.
*
Also unsurprising (to anyone not Sean), not everyone was willing to give them a second interview without significance evidence that they had something new to bring to the table. Evidence that they were still sorely lacking.
"You said you could handle him," said Eduardo peevishly.
"You said I could handle him," Sean said, which may have been unquestionably true but was certainly unhelpful.
"We have-- someone just needs to run a few queries. Mark just needs someone to run a few queries, and-"
"He doesn't want to pull someone off to do that," Sean said.
Eduardo rolled his eyes, grumbling, "He wants us to just make them up," and then hesitated and proclaimed, inspired, "We should just make them up."
"Right, we should just-what?" Sean said.
"Not really. We'll figure them out."
"Figure them out," Sean repeated, dubious.
Eduardo pulled out his phone. "We're projecting-"
"A million users by December," Sean supplied.
"A million users by Dec," Eduardo murmured, typing it in, "So that's, going by that rate-"
"What's the current rate? Did you get the adoption rate?"
"Let's say-when did we open? That's, we take the million, get a per month growth-"
"Wait," Sean said, "You can't--."
"--So we say 4 million in 2005." Eduardo typed in a decisive exclamation mark and looked up proudly. "Nationwide."
"We could say that," said Sean, warming to the exercise, "It would have little to no basis in reality, but I will totally say that."
"And with that information base," Eduardo continued, "That's, what, what do we think is the target audience for most of these shops?"
"I don't know, 50 million."
"Right, so that means we can give them key, very key, very reliable, concrete information about 13% of their target audience. Just in 2005. So say they average 1.5 billion, we increase that by just 5% for that 13% of their audience."
"Did you just create profit projections out of thin air?"
Eduardo attacked the key pad with two fingers, doubling back once for errors. "Right there, 9.7 million."
"9 million," Sean savored.
"You're thinking about making sweet, sweet love to me right now, aren't you?" Eduardo teases. It's okay. I understand."
"Ha, that's, ha," Sean said and then had to make an urgent phone call in the back room, so Eduardo just pulled up Powerpoint to make a chart or two.
*
They closed two more deals, overnighting documents for Mark to sign.
It was hard to tell what would come of it. The ad buys, the page views, the conversion rates-- all guesstimates, shots in the dark. It was yet to be seen how much of the necessary internet company mess these deals would cover. He knew what he wanted: for them to shoulder most of the bandwidth and rent, maybe a reasonable office space at a ridiculous steal per square foot. They needed the time to prove that there was a revenue stream to grow, with the right users, the right platform, and the right kick in the ass.
Of course, he had also wanted a pony, a chem lab, a tennis coach, and not to return from vacation to find father's lawyer's glossy black thong in their living room couch, and none of those things had turned out too well.
(They still didn't talk about the chem lab.)
(In his defense, it wasn't like anyone was using the guest house.)
(Though apparently Miss Ramirez had just been house sitting.)
(He still felt bad about leaving those voicemails.)
*
They took a Forbes columnist his uncle knew out to dinner. It was the night before Sean's return flight and they kept the conversation light-- just industry predictions and start up gossip, putting in a good word for themselves without being too outrageously Dustin about it.
Eduardo ordered them all some very good wine to distract from the overcooked steak. Sean was allowed to take it up to 11 before being surreptitiously elbowed in the ribs. They passed the patter back and forth to each other and it came off well, he could tell. Someday there would be real interviews and Forbes would mention how incredibly charming and mature he had been (and not at all resembling a New Jersey mobster with his hair slicked back like that, fuck you very much Parker).
When they shook hands and Eduardo paid with his card, it felt good. For the first time it felt certain that he could do this.
After, stumbling out of a short, pipe rattling shower, he was looking forward to a movie and greasy microwave popcorn but Sean wanted to pop into a club "one last time."
As if Sean would never drag out him too late again, to wake up with fucking circles under his eyes and a feeling like there was swelling in his brain. A nice thought, but a patently ridiculous one.
The cover charge was obscene but they settled at the bar next to two drunkenly witty brunettes whose names Eduardo had completely forgotten by the time they were both petting his hair and calling him baby and suggesting, "hey, let's all go dance."
"Yeah, we'll come," Sean shrugged and dragged Eduardo away from the bar by the hand, fingers hot and thumb running over his palm.
It was crowded, really poorly designed (Eduardo knew an architecture major they should totally have words with), and with the drinking at dinner he'd maybe pre-gamed a little too much (maybe a lot to be honest). But the girls were sweet and nice, and they liked him so much that he really wanted to introduce one of them to Dustin so he could start plotting as they fell passionately in love.
"Your boyfriend's hilarious," the one who kept joking about med school said, hugging her arms around his neck and shouting against his ear.
"He certainly thinks so," Eduardo allowed, watching Sean shuffle over to steal a fresh beer off somebody's table, before he registered the full significance.
But then the moment to correct her was past, and there wasn't much of a point anyhow.
There wasn't a single other person Eduardo knew in this building, he realized. None of this crowd would even recognize him if he ever saw them again. In this lighting, not even if he spilled a blue hurricane over someone's $300 slacks. Not that he was intending to try, unless Sean dared him again.
So he leaned into the maybe med student, laughed back at her happy raccoon eyes and smeared lip stick, and danced like he used to when he was younger, when he would lock the door and let the radio blare.
Suddenly he couldn't remember why he had ever stopped doing that.
"To never learning better!" he toasted with their final shots.
Sean gave him a perplexed nod but agreeably drank to it anyway, adding, "And no learning worse!" with a fist punch in the air, "fuck that, with someone else's dick!"
*
Drowsy-eyed and washed out, Sean burrowed into his chest with their hug goodbye and then stepped back with fists stuffed into his thick cotton jacket to offer a harrowing description of the loneliness, despair, and anti-social behavior that might now befall a solitary Eduardo in New York (including bar crawling, sobbing in the shower, sleeping in the bathtub, long walks on an empty beach, and a Morrissey playlist on repeat). In which case, "you know, you're always welcome to fly on down."
"mmm, visceral," Eduardo said. "Yes, in that impressively specific situation, I will do so."
There was an unidentifiable look on Sean’s face. "You know what I mean."
Eduardo coughed and pointed out the time, steering him towards the entrance with both hands on his back.
*
But his place felt still and deafening that week, all of the typical clanking sounds of apartment life now amplified -- like it was off and unbalanced too, in a more hopelessly melodramatic fashion.
There were follow up emails and calls to make, financial projections to type, a lunch date to keep, a return call to his father. These were alone-things to do, that he didn't actually need any help for, but the fact remained that Sean leaning over his shoulder to piss him off with pointless opinions (and resting a hand on the back of his neck to make his thoughts short out and have to double back) would make everything seem to go much faster. In a, ok, completely nonsensical but strangely effective fashion.
Of course he missed Mark, in that sick, restless way you're supposed to communicate through back slaps. He missed late night conversations about creating video games of classic literature, buzzed on sleep deprivation and crap beer. He missed tossing bottlecaps at Mark's back to test his concentration level. He missed that stupid giggling phase when Mark got too high. He missed distracting him in lectures. He missed borrowing a couple of Mark's sweatshirts and sacking out on the dorm room floor.
But, somehow, he also now missed dozens of Sean things too. He woke up and wanted to talk to Sean first thing in the morning, wanted to see him while he put on his shoes. He wanted to ignore Sean beside him on his morning run, bumping into Eduardo's shoulder and panting the chorus of classic rock tunes with a sweat-damp shirt tucked into the slipping waistband of his shorts. Eduardo wanted to bunch up with him on the subway, pressing the backs of their hands together and smelling his own soap on Sean's skin and the stale pot smoke in his jacket, stopping to eat at whatever pretentious café Sean had been reading about in the Food & Wine magazine. He even wanted to tag-team canvas the place for twenty minutes, exchanging insults and cushion bombs, in search of the glasses Sean only wore 25% of the time he needed them.
And clearly Eduardo had been wrong about the kind of movie his life had turned into. He could only fiercely, wholeheartedly hope it wasn't one of those French ones where the time seems to be stuck at dusk, the streets were always wet, and he'd churn out countless monologues about feeling like an empty suitcase.
Eduardo did not want to be a suitcase in the slightest bit.
*
From: chughes@facebook.com
To: esaverin@facebook.com
Subject: possible parker emergency
Please tell me Sean was tearing it up during the visit of doom cuz he hasn't brought a girl over here once or wanted to go out and it's been daaaaaays.
I think he might be more broken up about Sarah than we thought.
Dustin thinks he might have terrifying disease of the dick and is too embarrassed to tell anyone.
-
From: esaverin@facebook.com
To: chughes@facebook.com
Subject: Re: possible parker emergency
Maybe he's just getting serious.
-
From: chughes@facebook.com
To: esaverin@facebook.com
Subject: Re: possible parker emergency
RIGHT.
Look he straight up turned down this college girl's number last night during starbucks run.
-
From: esaverin@facebook.com
To: sparker@facebook.com
Subject: checking in
hey, you ok?
-
From: sparker@facebook.com
To: esaverin@facebook.com
Subject: Re: checking in
fine. is something up?
*
If Eduardo did, perhaps, end up coincidentally taking one rather long walk on one relatively under populated beach, that was between himself, the sea gulls, and the toe he stubbed on some half-buried driftwood.
Besides, he was just in the area because a Google AVP from Fire Island had invited him for dinner and he was putting off the long ride back.
He watched waves rush in, hands tucked into the tight pockets of his favorite black slacks, and thought about all the really great plans he had made in his life and executed flawlessly. And then how none of them had turned out anything like expected that year.
*
Something was certainly happening in California, because no one in that house could be reached for two days (not even when Eduardo had the delivery guy leave a long message on their answering machine as the irate property management company).
And then everyone was trying to contact him all at once.
Peter Thiel had made an investment offer, and that meant they'd have to "reincorporate, dilute shares, give him some. We need the funding, I know we could use the funding, and better-- you said that time that there were more fuck ups because we staff so heavily with interns, but didn't we want to--at this price, what are we buying, I mean our valuation is crap right now, but holy shit."
"Wardo," Mark said. He was chewing Red Vines with the corner of his mouth. It sounded wet and nasty through the phone and completely like home in every way. "Breathe."
So he tried that for a while, which did stop the hyperventilating and helped the pounding blood vessels in his forehead.
And with the very handy power of complete sentences they were able to get to down to discussing which metaphorical bridge they were going to (hopefully, still only metaphorically) doom everyone into jumping off together.
Metaphorical bridges had, somewhere along the way, developed into a deep Mark concern that summer. Eduardo could somewhat understand, considering his own sordid beach experience, but he was still plotting some good old fashioned throat punching for whenever he discovered just who'd planted that one.
No one was allowed to fuck with his best friend's piece of mind but Eduardo. There was this pact they made once in the Kirkland stairway, while stumbling home from a terrible bus ride and BU kegger.
*
"He seems like a nice guy." Eduardo had decided on calling Sean back last, because Sean was usually pretty intense about these types of things and it might be a good idea to have only one crazy person in the conversation at any given time.
Instead, Sean had apparently decided to be a zombie.
"He is a nice guy," Sean mumbled.
"Which is important."
Sean hummed in vague agreement.
"And he has a solid record."
Sean's throat made more indistinct noises.
"I still don’t want to give him a slice of our company yet, when we don't have any negotiation leverage."
"No," Sean said, distantly, like his mind was on something else (or, you know, brains). "I didn’t think that you would."
"If we don’t have to. Do we have to?"
He was preoccupied with quietly freaking out about the possibility of saying thanks but no thanks for your generous financial offer of tons and tons of money when Sean said, in a strained tone of voice, "I've been thinking about it."
"About what?"
"About-us."
Eduardo sprinted over freaking and directly into dire panic. "Sean, I'm not gay."
"Are you fucking serious?" Sean said darkly.
"I have never not been serious!" Eduardo said, "I have been serious about this the entire time!" and hung up, shoving his phone into the silverware drawer.
"Just, fuck everybody," he told the refrigerator.
It rattled a little, but then it did that whenever the neighbors turned their microwave on.
*
Eduardo had known exactly how it would go. He would drink too much mid-priced wine and head up the Investment Club, and then get punched by a final club and drink better wine but terrible hors d'oeuvres that he'd pretend to love. Mark would get punched the next year and drag him to all of the parties until it became commonplace and boring. Then they'd graduate and Mark would start up this smart little company with Dustin while Chris joined some non-profit and Eduardo finished his Harvard MBA. He'd marry his girlfriend as soon as she finished her MBA, or possibly Law School. She would probably have a cousin or roommate that he could introduce to Mark, who'd be strategically prepped beforehand. It would have been perfect.
"I said you were a little gay." Mark was balancing Cup O' Noodles on his knees again while playing a first person shooter. Eduardo could hear the slurping in between the plastic clicks and faint explosions.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I believe that's called bisexual."
"No," Mark said seriously, "I think you're a lot bisexual."
"I think you're not helping."
"No," Mark mused absentmindedly. "I imagine you knew that already."
"This cannot be happening to me."
"Well, I don't see why not."
"For fuck's sake, Mark. How about, because some of us are victims of this very inconvenient condition called human emotion. And don't think I've forgotten who got me into this mess in the first place."
There had been very minimal groveling. Eduardo had even still been required to write half of his art history midterm - on which Mark had received an 86, it might be fair to point out.
(And if by "required" he actually meant, "had been forced to watch Mark consume a liter of Code Red Mountain Dew and try to type with the shakes," that was completely irrelevant.)
"Wardo, we just turned down half a million dollars." They both felt this deserved a moment of silence, which Mark cut into with, "And now I'm asking you to throw away everything and come down here, even though I know we don't need you to, because I just want you here. Because it would be better."
Eduardo didn't quite know what to say to that. Especially the rustling that had sounded like picking up cue cards.
"So," Mark barked out sharply, "I don't understand why you can't do something equally stupid like be in love with Sean Parker."
Eduardo had even less of a coherent reply for that one.
*
The only possible explanation for what Eduardo did next was that he was in a very dark place at the time.
A place in which he was much too distracted to remember that he'd quit going to that particular liquor store because twice now he'd run into a certain overly boisterous Phoenix brother.
Also, it could be tough to detach thick, football throwing bicep from around your neck when you still hadn't quite given up on all of your dignity just yet.
Then Tom stopped over to drown his sorrows with Eduardo and homemade ravioli, bemoaning the disintegration of the longest running relationship he'd managed in his life.
"I promised her grandma we'd visit again." Tom cut another hunk of noodle and cheese off with his fork, his slices heavy with despondency.
Eduardo thought he might drink directly out of the bottle. "She'll understand."
"We were planning a vacation. To, like, the Bahamas or something. Dad said I could take the jet."
"Sometimes it's just not meant to be," Eduardo said, leaning over to lay some consoling pats between massive shoulder blades.
"I know man, but who does that? Walking away from everything we'd built? After 2 months?"
"Yeah, that's-that's a real human tragedy. I'm sure she feels appropriately shamed."
"She's gotta know that hook up meant nothing to me. I mean, it was a wedding."
"ohthankgod," Eduardo said when thuds sounded against the front door. "I mean, be right back."
He assumed it was Tim Nguyen because someone had keyed his car again, or possibly 34C about barbecuing on the balcony. But naturally, because this was Eduardo's life, instead it was Sean standing there with a backpack slung over one arm while Tom patiently detailed his list of all possible situations in which it was socially acceptable to cheat on your significant other, unless you're not a guy or she's pregnant.
"I'm not even supposed to be in this state," Sean said furiously, shutting the door behind him and flinging the backpack towards the living room.
It was still skidding across the carpet when he crowded Eduardo up against the wall and kissed him, a light brush of chapped lips -- rough like Sean's thickly-gelled hair and his too-new jeans, everything about him looking tired and restless and trying too hard.
A second brush made Eduardo's eyes fall shut, his hands mindlessly grasping out for belt loops to tug forward, and there was the rich, faintly spiced smell of that aftershave Sean's always worn when trying to impress somebody. The one Eduardo had always lied about and sworn he despised with every fiber of his being, when of course he fucking loved it, when it was mixed with Sean's heated skin like this, when Sean was so close and Eduardo could feel how alive he was.
Then Sean coaxed his mouth open, right hand coming up to cover the side of his neck, thumb running over his loud, juddering pulse, and he'd always thought--not that he'd often let himself admit that he thought about this, not for more than a few seconds at a time, but he'd always thought--he'd thought it would be quicker and drunkenly clumsy. And involving a lot more zippers.
He had definitely not pictured Sean linking their hands together as they parted for air and then stating, emphatically, "If you say you're not gay again, I will punch you."
As Sean's lips were only a few inches away, the tip of his tongue slipping out to wet them as Eduardo watched, any type of talking at all had been the very last thing on his mind, to be perfectly honest.
Tom, who clearly had no such mental restrictions, apparently found it very necessary to say, "Is this like a non-gay bashing? What the fuck?"
So of course Sean stepped back and blinked. "Do you even know who I am?"
"oh god," Eduardo groaned, letting his body thump back into the wallpaper. He made a mental note of this moment, to remind a certain Zuckerberg that, actually, there had been several valid, honest to god objections to linking his well-being to this lunatic.
Tom stepped forward for a closer look. "What, are you Ryan Phillippe? Gosford Park sucked."
Valiantly ignoring this slight, Sean put on his most charming grin and held out a hand. "I'm Sean Parker."
Tom stilled. "Sean Parker."
"Of Napster," Sean confirmed brightly, upon which Tom elbowed Eduardo out of the way to grab a hold of the hand and began pumping it vigorously.
"That's amazing, you know I tossed all my Metallica CDs when those fuckers started screwing with you."
"oh god," Eduardo said.
*
It took forty-five minutes for Tom to leave, during which Sean told three stories that always made him look like a complete jackass, one story that was actually new and not half-bad, and persisted in carding his fingers through Eduardo’s hair as he talked, scratching lightly and running his fingers along the back of his ear and his collarbone, and slid arms around Eduardo’s waist to deliver a light squeeze and accompanying kiss underneath his jaw before helping gather the plates and sauce pan with the smuggest smile on his face that Eduardo had ever seen in his entire goddamn life.
Basically, Eduardo spent at least twenty minutes of that time achingly hard and with only the strongest of wills and deeply ingrained social mores to keep him from just rubbing off against the sofa arm or kitchen cabinets.
Unsurprisingly, Sean felt considerably less constrained by the circumstances and pressed up against his back as he retrieved a beer from the fridge, palms sliding over his hips to push up under his button-down shirt and stroke bare shivering stomach, the line of Sean’s cock rigid and warm against his ass as it rubbed insistently forward in a way that made his body want to open for it, blood rushing to the surface of his skin and his face hot like near burning, that bastard.
"oh fuck you," Eduardo hissed, shuddering and shoving him away with both hands, "This must be Stockholm Syndrome." An action that only caused to Sean snicker as he stumbled against the table, reaching down shamelessly to adjust himself in his pants (which just made Eduardo’s skin prickle again, like fingers were running up the back of his neck).
"Tom, my newest and dearest friend, we need to you let yourself out so we can have sex now," Sean called out towards the living room.
Eduardo was looking for the pasta strainer to beat repeatedly against Sean’s head when they heard back a cheerful, "No problem, dude!" and the grinding sounds of a door opening and settling shut again.
"I take it all back," Eduardo swore fervently, and threw a potholder when Sean grinned which tumbled over Sean’s shoulder and into the sink. "But we are still not fucking on this floor that was last cleaned I don’t know when."
*
Instead they undressed in the bedroom, Eduardo balancing on one leg to strip his pants off, tottering a little, and Sean plopping onto his back to squirm out of his jeans and toss his undershirt over Eduardo’s hibernating laptop. It should have much more alarming (potentially verging on terrifying), except Sean was sitting up and bouncing back against his heels as Eduardo undid his own shirt. And then Eduardo had to climb up beside him because, "god, can’t you just, no, I cannot take you seriously in socks," scooting around Sean’s side to pull off them off, lifting each foot to yank at the cloth bunched up at the toes and almost tipping Sean off the bed ("hey!") until Sean grabbed a hold of his shoulders.
And then, well, they were both naked, which was a little intimidating, but Sean wound his arms over Eduardo’s shoulders and then they were kissing, soft and deep, and when Sean’s hand crept up his leg Eduardo pressed forward too hard and tipped them, Sean falling back into the pillows and Eduardo on top of him, laughing into the curve of Sean’s neck as Sean laughed back at him, lifting his head up to kiss again.
It was good, their heated skin sliding together and Sean’s cock brushing up against his, Sean’s wonderful mouth bending to bite playfully at his jugular and then at this chest. Sean hissed as Eduardo awkwardly climbed over his bent legs and up into his lap, but it was the good kind of hiss, he could tell, and it made Eduardo less embarrassed to hear the noises that came from his own throat when Sean let go of his hip to stroke his cock a little, letting him buck into it, and said, "I think we need to get these wet," bringing two fingers up to run along Eduardo’s lower lip.
Sean licked his own palm before pressing their cocks together, sliding against each other as he pumped his hand over them and watched Eduardo suck on his fingers. He was tentative and messy but Eduardo supposed that was the idea, and Sean really didn’t seem to mind, shuffling them even closer as he pulled his fingers back and slid one down the crack of Eduardo’s ass and inhaling sharply along with Eduardo as the tip of the finger breached him.
Eduardo told himself that he was absolutely not allowed to blush when Sean said, "I like how you feel," working slowly deeper inside until he was past the knuckle, pressing their mouths lightly together again in the pauses between Eduardo’s stupid, desperate panting. There were absolutely too many places that Sean was touching at once and he didn’t actually want him to stop touching any of them, and yet was also certain he couldn't possibly handle feeling this much all at one time.
"Okay, we’re going to need some actual lube if you want another one," Sean admitted and his lean to retrieve it from the bed table pressed the finger so deep that Eduardo’s hips jerked and he gasped, which made Sean hurry to coax Eduardo open enough to take both of them before he would touch either of their cocks again.
"I am so hard for it, I’m afraid my dick’s broke," Eduardo confessed, laughing and pausing for another gasp, then another, because no one had ever said it felt like that, just those long, blunt fingers moving inside him and the silky head of Sean’s cock rubbing against his as he could feel it rising, the edge of orgasm, and had to bat away Sean’s hand and jerk them harder, jerking Sean through it first and leaning back into the press of Sean’s fingers as they twitched.
*
"I just like everything to go how it’s supposed to. And it's just-I like to be liked." They were laying back against the headrest and Eduardo found it easier to say while straightening out all the places where they’d bunched up the sheets in untidy peaks.
He shrugged. "It's a thing."
"So this-" Sean started to say, trailing off into a wet, open mouthed kiss-given purposely, insultingly gentle enough that Sean would do something exactly like wrestle him onto his back, nipping at the inside of Eduardo’s thigh with his teeth and sucking a bruise under his hipbone, before Eduardo rolled them over and held Sean against the mattress with hands flat against his chest and knees slotted against his sides.
He was hard again, peering down at Sean’s sneaky, flushed face, but there was no urgency to do anything about it yet. It simply was nice to feel like that, to be handled and looked at like that, everything heightened and lit up from the slightest shift of skin on skin.
"That was more a generalized reference to people," he explained, letting himself fall onto Sean’s chest and earning an "oomf". "People in general."
"And I never really wanted you to like me before," Eduardo pointed out, arching into the feel of a smooth palm gliding down the center of his back. "So there's that."
"I always liked you," Sean said, indignant.
"Not that first time."
"Well," Sean allowed, stopping to brush his mouth along the curve of Eduardo’s arm, licking out to taste it as he delivered another stroke that ended with his thumb running (maddeningly) side to side over the back of Eduardo’s upper thighs. And then, "You reminded me of a little terrier, Jack Russell maybe. A very cranky one, little yappy ankle biter."
"So what you're telling me is: you're kind of into bestiality."
"I like little dogs," Sean continued blithely, running a thumb behind Eduardo's ear that made his whole body give an involuntary tremble. "Dogs should be cute."
"I'm not cute," Eduardo vowed firmly, shaking off a shiver.
"Yes, you are," Sean said, delivering a smack across his ass that earned him one back, thrust sideways and face smooshed into the comforter.
"And I liked how you're crazy about me."
"But I wasn't, actually," said Eduardo reasonably.
"You are now."
"I am perfectly sane about you."
"Says the man who forced me to fly cross country by crying fraudulent heterosexuality."
"My feelings for you may be slightly unhinged," he admitted, a little breathlessly, as Sean knelt between his legs ("wanna suck you off, I’ve been thinking about it,") and displayed unexpected depths of patience and concentration.
*
"fine, I love you, holy fuck," he finally gasped another round later. "I think my dick will actually fall off if you try to give it another orgasm."
*
Eduardo's dick did not end up being damaged in the least. But he was definitely boneless and drowsy for a while, so his exhaustive expedition to find and retrieve a cell phone from strewn clothing should be acknowledged as a profound sacrifice of precious energy.
Consequently, he called from Sean’s because it was way closer.
Mark picked up on the fifth ring and he got right down to it. He told Mark that he was right -- which Mark really loved hearing, so that was probably the best thing to lead with, plus the added benefit of being true.
Eduardo told him that he was right about Sean. He was also right about Eduardo occasionally being a stubborn coward with an inferiority complex, though that was still not a very smart thing to say about someone who knows how often you change your underwear. He told Mark that he should have come out, that he’ll be there for the rest of the summer. That he should have been flying out here, not there, whatever the money. He shouldn’t have been in such a hurry, he just wanted so bad to make it happen for Mark, to make it happen the right way. But this was their thing and they should have been doing it together.
Eduardo took a deep breath then, because he was feeling a little dizzy. "I’m not going to make you go back to school."
"I don’t think that was up to you," Mark said dubiously.
"But you’re going to come back here," Eduardo continued, "and I’m going to rent out an office in Boston with the rest of the money in my savings and the revenue that’s going to start coming in. Because the site you built is fucking amazing and you don’t need the pricks in Silicon Valley to tell you that. Palo Alto can see this with everyone else. The people, the VCs, they’ll follow you. You don't have to go to them. And-and." He swallowed. "I don’t want to do my senior year without you, that sounds so fucking depressing."
Sean was pantomiming a gunshot to the head, but it was unclear if he was indicating self-harm or homicide, and not terribly effective due to the nakedness.
"Ok," Mark said, after a pause, "we’ll do that," and Eduardo let out the air he’d been bottling in his lungs and let himself smile stupidly into the receiver until he heard,
"Wardo, what’s gotten into you?" in Chris’ deeper tone and Dustin immediately shrieked, "No, don’t tell us!"
"Mark," Eduardo began murderously, "do you have me on speakerphone?"
Sean smartly occupied his mouth before the line went dead.
//
fin