Let's Get Dangerous {The Social Network - Mark/Eduardo}
Title: Let's Get Dangerous
Author: Silvia Kundera
Fandom: The Social Network
Disclaimer: Just harmless fantasy based off the characters from The Social Network. Not intending to damage copyright or represent any real persons, living or dead.
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Words: 9,130
Summary: When Eduardo's firing is interrupted by a sudden emergency situation at the Facebook offices, it's up to the guy everyone had counted out to save the day. With a less than ideal partner. Mark/Eduardo; BAMF!Eduardo; Eduardo & Sean action movie style bromance.
---
Reg: I don't know! Mr. Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!
Cardinal Ximinez: NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise!... Surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency!
-Monty Python
*
So the night's going pretty well, with the tying of certain loose ends, member count rising as scheduled, and a party waiting for him only 5 miles away -- except for the part where he's suddenly about to get clocked, when he'd expected Saverin to just cry about it or stumble on out of there all tail between his legs.
And then there's all the shouting and the masked dudes with guns, making like they're storm troopers and like they're completely unaware it's not a fucking bank.
And then he makes a smart-assed remark, because this is what he does.
And one of those dicks, who'd clearly never heard of proportional response, jerks his gun over and fires with obvious intentions of shooting Sean in the stomach.
Except for the part where little Eduardo Saverin shoves both of his hands into Sean's chest and takes it in the fucking arm instead, and doesn't halt, doesn't pause, just lets out this sharp hiss between his teeth and hauls Sean into the hallway as everyone's screaming and multiple people are apparently still very determined to get a bullet or nine in him.
"There were three of them, right?" Sean hears as they huddle against the floor and the wall in front of him seems to move forward and back, wobbly. "So they can't afford to send anyone after us."
"That's-comforting. I guess," Sean wheezes, because the natural response to this series of events is hyperventilating like a motherfucker.
Not snaking toner boxes with your feet to stack on either side of them to block them from casual sight. Or gritting your teeth as you peel your jacket off and ignoring the blooming red spreading over the side of your left arm to dig in your fucking pocket for one of those pretentious, overpriced mini-swiss army knife sets. Probably real gold inlay. Jesus.
The guy's looking kind of pale, with a sheen of sweat over his upper lip that he wipes away the back of his hand, but still offensively alert. "They've got to have the wrong building."
"You think?" Sean shrieks and Eduardo slaps a damp palm over his mouth.
It tastes like blood.
I am going to swoon, he realizes in horror.
He's about to fucking swoon, in relative public, like it's Masterpiece Theatre up in this bitch, while college boy makes like some unholy cross between MacGyver, Rambo, and a fifth grader wearing daddy's suit to school for show and tell.
"I'm gonna," he begins to inform Eduardo, and then there's like white noise or something, his vision just snaps out, and he's waking up with his head in Eduardo's goddamn lap as the kid cuts a large swatch off his shirt and says, tightly, "You need to wake up and tie this. I can't make the knot."
So Sean sucks in some extra air, raises his head, and gets on that like the team player that he is.
His hands are only shaking a little as he takes in the ripped flesh and covers it quickly, flexing his arms with the next pass when he gets a grunt of, "tighter."
This is--really not how it was supposed to go.
A whole lot of strategic decisions had been predicated on Eduardo here being a whiny pushover.
It's not that Sean minds being an unmitigated asshole. He just fucking resents being a stupid one.
no, nope, he thinks as Eduardo lays a hand on the back of his neck and says in this gentle ass voice, that it was only a graze, really. this is not okay at all.
*
Things are much more settled once everyone is all patched up and breathing properly.
They check the server room and it's locked, of course. Sean has a key, but it's with his keychain and resting on top of Simon's computer tower. Which is probably all splattered with coffee now, come to think of it.
Eduardo is sizing up their available resources and space constraints, Sean supplying a quick rundown of the general building layout, including all accessible rooms, entry and exit points, and a list of every object he can think of that's not nailed down.
It's not an exercise that fills him with overwhelming confidence. "Obviously, mistaken identity or whatever. So maybe we can just…"
Eduardo huffs in that bitchy little way of his. If it's a little reassuring to see that a spilled half pint or so isn't enough to bleed that out of him, that's between Sean and his god. "Oh, and who in there's going to reason with them? Mark's an even bigger asshole than you are."
Yep, still a charmer.
Once, back in his hometown, Sean had started fucking around with this pickup trunk in the top level of the Stanton Heights Mall parking lot. No good reason for it, but he and a couple of his boys had been doing lines and were feeling bored, and it was there-unlocked. They stole a couple CDs and took a twenty from the glove compartment, no big deal. But then a cop was doing the rounds and he caught them with the door wide open, poking around, and they had to split real quick.
Sean and Matty slid down under a concrete slab and onto the next level, feet scrambling and hearts pumping like gangbusters, and then ran like the devil himself was after them. They dodged past cars and ducked under railings, and they didn't stop running until they reached a Burger King parking lot 8 blocks away, where Matty used the payphone to collect call his mom--who thwapped them both over the head while hustling them into her station wagon and screaming in Spanish.
This is nothing like that.
For one thing, he's depressingly sober.
For another, the guy beside him has at minimum three solid and imminently practical reasons to want to see him permanently incapacitated or, at the very least, maimed. (Though, to be honest, this is balanced by the fact that if someone had been about to put Sean six feet under, Matty would have jumped the other fucking way.)
But mostly it's the pace: slow and methodical. They walk carefully and speak sparingly, in low voices. Eduardo halts at every corner and doorway like he thinks he's on a fucking SWAT team, motioning Sean back against the wall like that's gonna do any good, and peaking around before they continue forward.
"Where can I find a knife?" Eduardo asks after they've scouted the conference room, men and woman's bathrooms, janitor's closet, and Mark's office (which he never uses) and confirmed that the phone lines are down.
"um, in the breakroom. Second drawer under the coffee machine."
There's a flicker down his face when Sean hands it over, like he's weighing it in his mind as well as his hand, and checking with himself how far he's willing to go with it--marching through moral turnstiles. Click click click.
For that split second, in that lighting, he looks like a very dangerous man.
"Holy shit," Sean says, mind blown. He will never mock the corner-scoping again. "You're Batman. Christian Bale Batman."
Eduardo blinks and then shakes his head. He starts sifting through every bottle and container under the sink, muttering about jackasses who should have been left there to die, but he clearly doesn't mean it, so Sean ignores him to paw through the rest of the drawers and imagine what a Saverin-style bat cave would look like. He wonders if that makes Chris Alfred.
*
"I'm a man of many talents," Sean broaches, finally, as he retrieves a couple water bottles from the fridge. "But siege planning, or defense, or whatever we've got going on here, is so outside my Venn Diagram of expertise that it's not even funny. So I hope you've been forming an actual plan to save your damsel in distress, and not just taking in the scenery."
"He's not my--"
At the twitch of Eduardo's eye, Sean shrieks gleefully, "Oh my god, you're in love with him!", though he obediently drops to a whisper as Eduardo makes desperate shushing movements. "And he's like your Selina Kyle. Oh, this is tragic. Or your Post-Joker Harvey Dent. Yeah, I like that. Let's keep it in the Nolan reboot family." At Eduardo's icy glare, he tones down the enthusiasm as well, adding only, "Ok, let's just stop him from being your Rachel Dawes."
"I actually followed all of that," Eduardo says and sighs, and Sean is just about to advise him to give up and embrace the geek (geek chic is cool now, ask Esquire), when they hear footsteps.
And all of Sean's life-long battle with insidious, persistent paranoia pays off in the most gratifying way, as his immediate, instinctive response is to pick up a chair and hurtle it towards the doorway.
It catches one of the masked guys in the chest just as he steps into view, knocking his body back to the floor and the gun out of his hand.
*
The guy's name is James and he's having an only slightly better time than they are, apparently. When they haul him onto the chair and strip off his mask, his eyes are almost rolling like one of those startled horses. There's a steady stream of incoherent threats and even more incoherent excuses.
"You need to shut the fuck up," Eduardo says.
It'll probably make an even more awesome story, later, if he lies and claims that Eduardo follows that up by coolly reaching over to break a finger, mild and expressionless.
In truth, Eduardo totally does snap the dude's finger -- and dude does not look happy about that shit at all -- but his neck is deep red, threaded with veins, and he's almost shaking with rage.
"What you need to understand about me," Eduardo spits fiercely into the dude's face, left hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the shrill, panicked mewls as the right wiggles that broken digit, "is that I get emotional. That's what my father calls it, he's always-" Eduardo's chest hitches with a choked breath and he stretches the finger back far enough to make Sean a little nauseous. "And he's right, which you need to worry about. Because right now, with my friends in there with your fucking guns, when we haven't done anything to you people-I'm having a lot of emotions that you don't want me to use you to deal with."
"Yeah, he was having a seriously fucked up night before you even rolled in here," Sean adds helpfully. "And there's all this repressed homo-psycho-sexual drama with-"
Eduardo breaks another finger.
"So it's not that repressed."
Then the guy just starts blubbering, collapsing against Eduardo's chest and whining about some vault and bought off security guard, and how he'd just known this was the wrong Emerson, and he's seen every season of Oz, so he knows about all the gang rape and heroine addition and vicious stabbings and the drag queen makeovers and forced book eating.
The actual, pertinent facts they get out him are:
(a) his two buddies aren't the type to target practice and can't aim for shit and
(b) they are absolutely the type to show the cops they mean business by icing a hostage or two
(They are also informed that he loves his mom and Jesus, but that's not really a factor either way in their mutual agreement to tie his hands and feet with the 6 thin plastic ropes that were hugging the printer paper boxes, before stuffing him in the janitor closet.)
Eduardo's throat is smooth again, looking long and tan and fucking deceptively delicate.
"It really is a shame about the shirt," Sean says, stepping back a moment to take in the popped buttons, the wet rings under his arms, the increasingly red-black tinge of their make-shift bandage, the roughly scissored left side (a jagged pattern that probably matches the chunk missing from his own). "That was a nice shirt."
And they both start laughing, hushed and more than a little hysterical.
*
Eduardo picks up the 9mm that had skidded a few steps down the hallway. The safety’s still on and there are two rounds left. It’s both bad news and a good sign that James wasn’t lying to them-if he really just bummed it off a friend and didn’t bother to buy additional amo, then they must have actually expected a cakewalk (untrained, unconsidered, and not expecting to use them).
He watches Eduardo check the safety again and stick the gun in the back of his pants, motioning to the left with his good arm. Sean might have argued chair-throwers keepers, but he knows he’d spend the rest of the night worried about blowing his ass off. (See: chronic paranoia issues) (He could never sleep with the covers over his head either, as a kid. It just seemed like a better idea to fight the potential monsters off then die in his sleep of suffocation.)
They’re searching for a fire extinguisher, wrench, screwdriver, duct tape, PVC or metal piping, batteries, at least 2 desktop computers, and all the ethernet cords they can carry. Sean has decided that ignorance does sound, for the moment, like something that might be beneficial to his relative sanity.
"You know, Mark kissed me once when he was wasted as hell,” Sean starts as they’re tossing Mark’s office drawers for the batteries, with aims to break a little tension. Lighten the mood with some conversational slight of hand. Now that he thinks about it, Sean bets no one has tried to manage Eduardo’s mood, instead of demanding it, in his entire goddamn life. "And then he called me Wardo.”
"What?”
At the disconcertingly familiar neck-reddening and narrowing of his eyes, Sean quickly clarifies, "I did not have sexual relations with that man.”
"Did you want to have sex with him?”
"That is not the point,” Sean says, "The point is-" At Eduardo’s raised eyebrows he stalls, but then luckily finds a veritable treasure trove of yellow and black ethernet cords mixed in with a motherfucking screwdriver in a cardboard box underneath the desk . The crass exclusion of duct tape is a cutting (but acceptable under the circumstances that no one anticipated fighting off an armed assault, or inexplicably needing duct tape to do it) betrayal.
When he jostles the box cheerfully, Eduardo’s expression slides from dubious impatience to pleased, so it seems safe to disclose, "It just so happens that I don’t remember that particular reasoning. But it’s been a very trying evening. I was almost shot."
"I can’t imagine," Eduardo says, mouth rueful.
Because there is absolutely no foreseeable future where that won’t be hung over Sean’s head at every opportunity.
He considers - if only for a momentary, split-second glitch in his extensive self-preservation programming - just giving himself up and ending it all now.
"See, case in point. You should be more sympathetic. I'm thinking the point might have been," Sean says, refocusing on the present and tasting the words questioningly, "if you get Mark stinking drunk again, I bet he’ll make out with you."
"You think I should drug my best friend in order to take advantage of him."
"It didn’t so much sound like that in my head,” Sean admits, "Probably scratch that. My point was definitely less rapey.”
But after Eduardo snags Mark’s spare desktop, when they’re heading back to the break room to drop off their sweatily-gotten gains, he feels bound to clarify, "I don’t think he’s your best friend anymore. What with the lying to you for months, and plotting against you, and letting me talk all kinds of shit about you, and then that thing where--” At Eduardo’s expression, Sean determines that this point has been fully made. "Anyway! Now I’m thinking: cross off the alcoholic beverages, storming the room with 9mm touting bad guys should be aphrodisiac enough.”
"I’m not going to storm the room.” Eduardo appears to be horrified at the thought, which leaves Sean more than a little disillusioned.
"Batman would storm the room.”
"Batman,” Eduardo corrects, eyes getting a faraway cast as he places the grey computer tower on the closest table and turns in a slow, panning circle--as in taking in the building’s infrastructure for the first time, "would come in from the ceiling.”
*
Eduardo’s moving quicker now, like everything has come together in his head, snapping his fingers and spitting out terse commands. As he pulls the fire extinguisher down from the wall--bandage now visibly tacky and wet, he sends Sean down the hallway for that old Dell Dustin hooked up with a projector in the conference room.
They make the trip to the janitor’s closet together (where Sean gets to chirp, "hi Jason!” and deliver a spunky hair tousle), Eduardo snagging a wrench and leaving him with orders to uncover the duct tape and tons of AA batteries. And replace the frayed ties at their captive’s wrists with strips of his sweatshirt.
Just as he’s going to bitch about using his teeth, Eduardo tosses the mini-swiss army knife over his shoulder. It smacks into Sean’s collarbone and bounces off, so he ends up doing this kind of dorky juggling dance to get ahold of it, but he understands about how some things work way cooler on television.
About 7 minutes later he finds his fearless leader on his knees with his head and shoulders stuck under the sink and employing some very inventive and creatively expressed curses. That answers where the pipe is coming from. He kind of has a nice ass. Objectively speaking.
If the objective person is super gay. God, Sean wants to wash out his brain now.
"This hostage crisis is bullshit and it’s making me gay,” Sean complains loudly.
Eduardo’s sigh is muffled but audible. "You’re just bored. I’m almost done.”
Sean takes his unspoken advice and begins to unwind and untangle the contents of his cardboard box, tossing out a phone cord and draping all the others over his arm or in neat, straight lines across the floor.
"oh,” Eduardo wiggles out suddenly to say, "can you get me a couple phone books?”
*
"Phonebooks can stop 9mm, .357 magnum, and .45 caliber rounds,” Eduardo relates, conversationally, as he puts the wrench to the fire extinguisher-duct tape, pipe, and other assorted metal clutter strewn out beside it on the table. They’d emptied it into the bathrooms, switching back and forth between the men and women’s and coughing, hacking, and ducking back outside for breath.
Sean watches curiously, head cocked. "So what’s the-"
"I’ve been thinking, slap on a metal sheet underneath and fasten them around our chests with the cords.” Eduardo pauses to swipe the back of his hand over his forehead and kicks over the screwdriver pointedly. "I’m going to need you to get the sides off those towers while I attach the barrel.”
"You’ve designed us bullet proof vests,” Sean states as he seats himself down on the floor, just to get it out there-for the record. He’s feeling pretty okay about just sitting there and gawking for a moment, dumbfounded, before tugging one of the computers towards him.
"Yeah, well, while you’ve been co-opting my meetings, kissing Mark’s ass, and snorting coke off sorority girls’ tits, I was sitting back on the East Coast in my dorm room.”
Sean grins to himself as he pops out a screw, tossing it towards the sink (he shoots, he scores!). "Been watching a lot of Mythbusters?”
"And several years of Shark Week,” Eduardo readily confesses, unscrewing the nozzle. "Though that’s less applicable.”
Once he’s pried off both side-panels, Sean hops back up to peer over Eduardo’s shoulder and see what the satisfied hum was all about. The pipe is wedged tightly into place, and he holds the tape roll steady as Eduardo tears off shiny, black strips.
At the sight of a fully constructed air cannon being pressurized, Sean now gets where the batteries come in. "Jesus fucking christ.”
Eduardo shrugs. "I have cousins.”
"Are they are on terrorist watch lists?”
*
They splash their faces with water and slick their hair back, crack their necks. Sean’s suited up first and it’s a heavier weight than expected, the harness cutting into the meat of his shoulder, but manageable.
There’s the faint sound of an angry shout turned cut-off scream as Sean is fastening their poor-man’s Kevlar to Eduardo’s chest, and for a second he honestly does not know what freaks him out worse -- the possible significance of that noise or the way Eduardo’s aura of calm decisiveness just flat-lines into crippling terror -- and Sean slaps his face in knee-jerk panic as it drains of color.
It’s a good hard one that definitely worked, because Eduardo’s hand snaps out to slap him right back, which Sean takes like a man.
Well, a man who does not actually engage in much physical violence.
In other words, there’s a little cringing and jaw stretching as he cautiously edges back over to lay a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder and say, as gentle as you might talk to cornered wild animal (or a desperate man with a barely concealed weapon), "Hey, it doesn’t even sound like him,” squeezing lightly and probably not lying. "Dustin’s way too much of a pussy to start shit and Mark will bide his time because he knows we’re out here and you wouldn’t let him down.”
"You sure about that,” Eduardo grits out with this bitter twist to his mouth. And since everybody is making expressions again, Sean allows himself to groan.
"I think this is a little different than the very foolhardy and short-sighted decision not to share a house with yours truly.”
He shakes it off as Sean watches, color and focus flooding back in. "As last words go, I’d prefer something not involving sandals and sworn vengeance.” Eduardo sighs, but it’s just that now-familiar gallows humor one. "I’m funny like that.”
"And it didn’t sound anything like him. Now let’s get you some fucking Gatorade.” He’s not liking the pain lines at Eduardo’s eyes and exhaustion haunting the edges of his frame, pushed back only by extreme stubbornness and probably an insatiable desire to prove Sean wrong in every humanly (and inhumanely) way possible.
"Thanks,” Eduardo says a few minutes later as he’s flinch-sipping that god awful lemon one (since Eric always cleans out the raspberry first and Dustin loves anything orange). The word comes out awkward and mumbled, and Sean valiantly pretends to not hear it--like how they’re back to pretending that there’s not much riding on what they’re preparing to do.
He pauses, then offers, "You know, we've been home-brewing. It was that black jug in the corner. Andrew got this mail-order kit."
"We are not pre-gaming our rescue operation,” Eduardo says decisively, all hesitation fled.
"Not even just to take the edge off of mortal peril?"
"No."
"At least he was right that you’re no fun,” Sean remarks, and Eduardo appears torn between ignoring him like a disobedient child and pistol whipping him.
He finally settles on, "Mark doesn't always know as much as he thinks he does.”
"Clearly," Sean says, rolling his eyes. "Man, at this point I would fully believe that you can reassemble an AK-47 with your eyes closed."
"Not without some very detailed diagrams," Eduardo deadpans.
"Hey now, none of that! I am far too young and impressionable to have my blossoming hero worship sullied in this fashion."
It’s after Eduardo says, "shit, oh, we need a ladder,” and they march back to grab it and wave at their delightfully traumatized captive, that Sean notices Eduardo eying him a bit, a little questioningly, and then he mentions, off-hand, "I'm starting to think more than half the reason you’re always stirring it up is that you can't take awkward silences."
"Also, you tend to be a dick to me,” Sean says, hitching the ladder up higher on his shoulder, and a reluctant chuckle escapes from Eduardo’s throat.
The only downside is now he has that whole that ‘got your number’ face on, which would normally force Sean to immediately act out in wanton and destructive ways, except he’s not a fucking moron-he just acts it sometimes for shits and giggles.
*
The game plan is predictably basic, since they don’t have much to work with and (despite some appearances to the contrary) if either of them were black ops professionals or KGB agents in another life, they don’t remember shit. Eduardo lays it out on the conference room white board in quick, broad strokes.
There’s a thick metal beam stretching across the ceiling, overlooking the main floor. It has several supports and should be sturdy enough, just wide enough, for their purposes. There’s a point where the hallway curves around towards reception, before it dead ends in the back door to the presentation room where they’d been housing their hopefully still breathing legal team. (Everyone hates lawyers, probably lost and deranged gunmen especially, so Sean’s not placing any bets, you know, but fingers crossed.) (If Eduardo’s fingers are slightly little less crossed than his-understandable). If they hear anything, it’ll be in their best interest to keep quiet about it.
Right before the door there’s a sizable crawl space that leads into the catwalk in question, where building maintenance can boost themselves up for electrical repairs.
"That’ll be a tight fit with the extra padding,” Eduardo says idly, sketching the cubical layout, "but you’re in good shape and it’s just a couple feet, so suck it in.”
The idea is that even these brain trusts aren’t going to fire up at a steel surface, in case the bullets bounce off into their faces, so it should be relatively safe (emphasis on relative) to stuff some AAs into the air cannon and cause some real inconvenience and pain. And then they’ve filled a carton with staplers, computer speakers, and two letter openers for additional sallies, if necessary. The total fucking chaos that ensues should allow Eduardo to expose himself enough to use their two only bullets with maximum effect while keeping an eye on the hostages.
They set out, settling the ladder up against the wall and right under the latch that opens the crawl space. It feels like he should stop the momentum for a moment, to apologize or-something. But split second gut-judgment says he’ll probably be all right, and Eduardo will live or he won’t. And if Eduardo lives, then there will be plenty of time to hash out all that dirty little business, and if Eduardo dies, why not improve the send-off by allowing him to imagine in his last seconds how fucking awkward this is going to be for Sean for pretty much forever. Or until he fucks up again, bigger and better (which admittedly isn’t looking very likely, but he tries not to underestimate himself).
Besides, if they really have to go through every total prick incident-seriously, no one here’s got that kind of time to spare. They’ll be no one left in that room who hasn’t peed themselves or been smacked into concussion land. And, frankly, Sean skipped dinner. He’s getting a little hungry.
"So I’m going to make like Robin and come in first strike. I get their attention, provide cover. Drive ‘em center, away from the cube walls--'cause otherwise we're screwed. And then dive bomb the hell out of the bad guys, keeping hands and legs safely inside the handy metal shield,” Sean summarizes at the top rung, and at the look on Eduardo’s face, "Yeah, I’m totally your Robin now. You saved me from an agonizing bleed out. There was a cathartic torture incident. We’re getting friendship bracelets if we make it out of this alive.”
"Will they be Facebook blue?” Eduardo says wryly, and hands him up the box of goodies before biting his lip for a second and then climbing back down the ladder
He hands up the air cannon, gaze darting off to the right. It suddenly doesn’t seem like he’s prepared to hold up the rear--which Sean realizes they never did specify, but he’d assumed. And times have seriously changed in a couple hours, because little Wardo Saverin pussying out was pretty much the last thing on Sean’s mind, full stop.
"Wait, then where are you going?”
"So maybe I’m going to storm the room,” Eduardo says, actually looking a little sheepish about it.
"I have to do this,” Sean says fervently, hustling down and opening up his arms. "If our boy can suck it up, so can you.”
Eduardo stands there very patiently as Sean squeezes him in a bear hug, rocking him back and forth a little. Truly, he is a great man. A bat among men. One befitting an awesome motorcycle that’s fitted with grappling hooks and machine guns. "We survive this and I’m getting you a motorcycle. And Mark’s anal-virginity.”
Eduardo steps back, smirking, and pulls out the 9mm, tugging testingly at the phonebook mashed against his chest. "I don’t think that’s yours to bestow.” It’s a little disheartening to see Sean can’t actually fuck with him too bad anymore.
"Bestow? If this is how you talk about fucking, it’s no wonder you never got him to first base.”
"We survive this and I’m suing your asses.”
"I will be an excellent character witness,” Sean vows.
Eduardo blanches.
Ha, he’s still got it.
*
People always say time slows down in moments like these, but maybe Sean’s brain is broken or a little retarded, because for him it’s like everything’s speeded up and he’s only taking in a third at most of all the available images whirring around and down below him.
He opens the crawl space and wiggles inside-small, slight movements intended to minimize the noise. It’s claustrophobically MRI-machine tight and he shuts his eyes for it, humming to himself under his breath.
Before he breaches, when light pops red-yellow against his eyelids and he slides them back open, he can already hear: the juddering thump-thump of his heartbeat; a strident, indecipherable argument with at least two male voices; the screech of a chair kicked sideways across slate flooring; a rough, sucked-in sobbing like Ashley’s trying to tear her lungs out; the sandpaper whisper of twenty-three bodies shifting in their clothes, against their seats, into and away from each other.
His pupils contract against the glow of the ceiling lights, much closer and brighter to him than that blurry mass of people huddled on the ground floor.
He takes in too much air. Coughs deep, chest seizing.
He wants, desperately, the inhaler he doesn’t have. And Sean knows, with the kind of absolute clarity he’s maybe been lacking for four odd years, just whose fucking fault that is.
He presses the breathy gasps down and positions the air cannon, wincing at the harsh metal scrape that whips around both standing, black-clad men.
Their guns are up, automatic and thoughtless, and they’re backing away hurriedly. So Sean flings a speaker while shouting "uh, duck!”, because the trajectory’s alarmingly close to the cubical wall that at least a handful of people have darted behind-though that’s the whole point, block the path, and when he flings another two it works.
Then he lets the batteries rip: shoot, stuff ‘em in, shoot again. There’s the sharp, cascading clinks of shattered glass hitting hard targets like monitors and tables-- hopefully not flesh.
And he has a goddamn heart attack as the shorter guy fires wildly upwards and two rounds go winging back: one thudding into the wall of display screens and the other into the floor between his buddy and a crawling Eric.
"Holy fuck, have you heard of ricochet?" screams what sounds like Dustin, and the buddy seems to concur, because he’s actually grabbing the gun from the other guy’s hand.
Eric’s gone white, stricken to stillness and eyes locked on the neat hole a few millimeters to his left. But it was all completely worth the split second of mass hysteria and near bladder-emptying fear, because that’s when Eduardo comes out that office back entrance, pushing déjà vu style through swinging glass doors, and shoots the idiot in the kneecap.
"Flowers are really not going to cut it,” Sean muses, out loud, as the guy goes down with a shrill animal yelp, fingers clawing at his pants leg where it’s all shredded jeans and pulverized meat.
But then Sean finds himself babbling, "fuckitiy fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck,”stretched out low in his throat, because of course it’s the brains of this no-account clusterfuck of an operation who’s now got a gun in each hand, probably way more amo, and he sends one over Eduardo’s shoulder and into the wall.
The second hits, hopefully by accident, damn close to the heart.
It’s the shock or momentum - likely a combination of the two - that topples Eduardo to his back.
Sean consciously does not register if their experimental armor did the trick, if he’s got the wind knocked out of him or a sudden case of extreme death. Sean simply scoops up the letter openers and misses once before getting the other stuck into bad guy ass cheek--which may not be any kind of mortal injury, but it clearly hurts like a bitch because his fingers spread wide and both weapons go sailing in opposite directions.
Then Eduardo’s showing all signs of alive and -okay, not well, but he’s hauling himself in the direction of the gun that’s landed closest, looking cramped, pallid, and pissed off as all hell.
Their limping foe dives for the other and reaches it first, though Sean makes him pause, body jerking, when he clips the guy’s side with an AA and then sends one straight into his lower back. But then, naturally, instead of taking cover there’s Mark skittering out from under a table, on his knees, and towards Eduardo as Sean experiences what can only be described as a mental facepalm.
Mark with his shiny, red-purple bruise cleverly disguised as a right eye, which makes Eduardo’s face get even scarier. Somehow.
It’s like Sean can actually see the words "aw, fuck it” run through Eduardo’s mind as his fingers close around the gun and he notes the other guy’s recovery out of the corner of his eye, the smooth arc of the guy’s arm rising, and then that crazy motherfucker pushes off the floor with his good hand, springing from a crouch, and straight-up tackles the dude. He ducks in under the bullet, right elbow flying back as he leaps so that the gun lands first, cracking across the side of the guy’s head with a barely stifled cry of what sounds like white-hot agony sliding out Eduardo’s mouth and a burst of blood pulsing from his arm (that fucking arm, jesus) right before their chests slam together, Eduardo on top as they go down.
Eduardo’s trying to scramble up but when his palms slap against ground he makes a noise that turns Sean’s stomach. Masked dude’s gun arm twitches (still got his fist locked around it this time, white knuckled, though possibly more from desperate instinct than nefarious intention), but just as Sean’s opening his mouth to call a warning there’s Mark leaning across Eduardo’s back to beat him over the head with the broken shell of his former laptop.
That thing’s got a lot of mileage. And, like, poetic irony. Sean writes himself a mental note: do not get in the way of thwarted geek passion. That path leads only to shattered fingers, knees, skulls, and probable extended prison sentences.
Chatter swells from over a dozen sources, near all at once, drawn faces beginning to peak out from various cubes as Mark snakes an arm around Eduardo’s waist, pulling him up to sitting. There’s a whispered exchange - probably nothing too good (Mark’s crap at sweet talking), but hopefully at least an earnest promise of some thorough, enthusiastic blowjobs - and then Eduardo brushes his thumb over Mark’s mottled, near swollen-shut eye and kisses it lightly before pressing their foreheads together and just breathing quietly (which, fine, is a mildly adorable sight - Sean can be a real nasty piece of work if the mood hits him right, but he has never been completely heartless).
"If you're both conscious when I get my ass down there," he calls out cheerfully, "I'm expecting some serious celebratory hugging," and starts to inch, very carefully, backwards. The life of a sidekick is perilous business.
Eduardo musters a sloppy, raised middle finger (an excellent sign). He falters, though, in his next movement - a determined lurch towards their fallen assailants - and Dustin and Andrew rush up to take over, ripping out phone cords to tie their hands and feet. Well, Andrew mostly to kick the gross kneecap dude in the stomach, but that makes sense when you notice how he’s favoring his left arm, which looks to be broken.
"It’s-safe, right?” Eric says, sitting bunched together kind of funny, which makes sense in a second. "To, um, to go to the bathroom now?”
"Sure, we got that--” Sean starts to say, running over Eduardo’s hurried reassurance, when they both pause and evidently share a sudden recollection of exactly how many chemicals they’d poured into the facilities. "Uh.” Sean clears his throat.
"I think everybody’s taking turns in the bushes,” Eduardo finishes for him, sounding impressively firm for someone curled against their CEO’s thin, shaking chest because he can’t stand up on his own.
*
"He just winged me."
"Winged is hit."
"Winged is hit very slightly."
"I don't think you can get hit slightly, not when it's by a bullet."
"That's exactly what winged means, actually, if you want to get technical."
"I don't want to get technical, I want you to have zero contact with deadly projectiles," Eduardo and Mark are saying as Mark fusses over him, Dustin refuses to offer his semantic opinion, and police officers mill over the concrete framing the building's front, flattening various paths through the small swatch of grass. Mark’s jacket is smeared with maroon-black splotches of Eduardo’s blood.
The paramedics have come and gone, taking Ashley and Andrew with them. They'd wanted to take Eduardo too, but it would just be an arm brace and stitches. Lots of stitches, no surgery. So Eduardo elected to stay and get the preliminary interrogation over with.
It goes pretty friendly, since they think he and Eduardo are totally awesome (Sean knows that expression like the back of his hand-the good one, the one he endorses checks and jerks off with).
Eduardo's standing again now, but tottering a little--adrenaline rush all petered out. There's this wavering expression that seems to shift between remembering all of the violence he’d wanted to cause and then remembering all of the extraneous violence that actually did happen.
Sean, on the other hand, is still completely wired.
This may or may not be primarily due to the haunting certainty that the media at large has got to be only one YouTube video away from swarming upon them en masse. (He'd re-commandeered all the phones from where Idiot Assailant #2 had stashed them, but interns are wily. You just never know with those fuckers. They have ways, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be working for Facebook.)
To sum up: Imminent arrival of representatives from Channels 2, 4, 15, 27, 48 and at least two of those Spanish language ones. Their CFO is newly fired, somewhat bullet ridden, one part conscious, one part aroused, and three parts increasingly testy. His painstakingly mentored CEO is, understandably, all parts for humping at said CFO's shaky leg. And Sean is very aware that he himself bears a stunning resemblance to twice warmed over excrement. That is just not the kind of international image that he's looking for them to cultivate.
So Sean’s busy making urgent eyes at the investigative lead and checking his mail (the commandeering had included his own), but he keeps an eye on them-mostly just in case of sudden public nudity.
"Fuck, I am not making it to that party,” Sean sighs, kind of horny from watching Susan Last-Name-Starts-With-An-F watch Mark's arms wind around Eduardo's waist and their mouths meet in a steadily deepening, hips-pressing kiss. "There has been a startling, and may I say disheartening, lack resemblance to certain treasured movies of my youth or the more riveting examples of USA network programming. For instance, in the movies they never show the part where you file all the property damage reports.”
"My nana said this is what would happen if I moved to California,” Dustin muses, gaze flicking over to Mark's hand drifting lower and lower down Eduardo's back, and then shutting his eyes to rub at his forehead.
Sean lets them test the waters a little while longer -- until Mark whispers something, Eduardo's torn expression escalating into something like hunted -- and then claps his hands, proclaiming loudly, "Hey Saverin, no fucking on the first date. I’m apparently not getting high tonight-" he coughs at a glance from Officer Perez, "on life. So I’ll run you by the emergency room while your fair damsel makes our final statement, and then we’ll watch HBO or something. Braid my hair and talk about boys.”
The play of emotions twitching across Mark's face is a true delight to behold and Eduardo turns to favor Sean with a nondescript expression. "Your hair is too short.”
"And yours is too--yours,” Sean retorts, trying to sketch the ridiculousness with his hands. "But I have empirical evidence that you are one resourceful son of a bitch.”
He tries not to squirm at Eduardo’s discerning stare. "…There’s absolutely no way you’re sleeping in the next 48 hours without me in front of the door, is there?”
"That is an unfair and unfounded slander that just happens to be true.” Mark's eyes have narrowed into thin black slits. The sharp points of heat that Sean can almost feel digging into his shoulder blades are an impressive feat. "Can we make it two weeks?”
"You’ve got 48 hours,” Eduardo says flatly, eyes flitting back in Mark's direction, "and that's only because of that last letter opener. And since I'm expecting some detailed groveling in the interim. Then I’m getting laid. And suing you.”
Sean shrugs, heading towards the parking structure--though he must have been a little too transparent in his complacency, because Eduardo is practically stomping beside him (despite needing a steadying arm tucked under his shoulders) and saying, slowly, "No one is moving in with me. Especially not you.”
"Well, I’ll tell you one thing for fucking sure,” says Sean with passionate sincerity, "I am never stepping another foot in this place again.”
Sean feels a text come in as he pulls out onto the main road. It’s a line from Mark (no one tried to kill us in Massachusetts) and he shoots one back, in the driver’s seat or not, because he lives on the edge now. He’s risked life and limb, ready and willing to sacrifice the one for the many.
He’s probably going to sleep with the lights on for the next three months and get unreasonably jumpy around office buildings, but at least he’s alive to do it.
ikr when we talked about cost of doing business this is not what i had in mind, he types.
motherfuck
ill work it on this end then u come in with the bjs, Sean returns, still ur biggest fan, and then flips through his contact list.
whats rent like in Cambridge, he texts Chris with his thumb, after swerving around a van slapped with a faded broadband company logo.
if this is some crack about wardo you can fuck off
oh hes gonna need a bigger place, Sean types back. good point
//
[ coda: Mark, 2 years later ]
There's a key update going through this evening - only backend, true, and transparent to the users, but it should simplify the handling of that one exception that's been making Dustin a little crazy - and yet Mark is not at headquarters. Or at home. Or even receiving a nice leisurely blowjob to 'settle you down', as Eduardo is prone say.
Instead he's listening to Eduardo bitch, "It’s the 5th-it’s always the 5th," as they click their car doors shut, "the fifth day of every other month. How is this so difficult to grasp?" And though Mark's official policy on these matters is to not particularly give a fuck, he can't help petulantly stabbing a text out to Chris about the wisdom of moving 500 miles away, regardless of the murder rate and how tall the snow piles in D.C.
"This can’t be like the thing where you’re always 20 minutes late," Eduardo continues, "because that’s on purpose.”
"Maybe I just like spending some special bank time with my special guy?” Sean says, throwing his arm over Eduardo's shoulders with a shit-eating grin, and another grin tossed back in Mark's direction. Which earns him a shove in the side, though naturally not hard enough to actually dislodge the arm, and an involuntary quirk of Mark's traitorous mouth-- because, admittedly, when Eduardo's voice hits that pitch, things only get funnier.
Though the one and only time he verbally expressed this very fact, he was unjustly denied ass for an entire weekend.
Mark is well aware just who invited the man into their lives in the first place. But the rest of it is not his fucking fault. At least Mark figured out fairly quickly that no one in their right mind would want to live with that hot mess.
Of course, Wardo claims Mark drove him out of his right mind years ago.
Which certainly would explain why Mark is accompanying his boyfriend to pick up a cashier's check for the rent which his boyfriend's roommate, who is not Mark, and who has gross income in double digits, did not deem important to pay on time. Again.
(Theoretically, Mark supposes that he too could be his boyfriend's roommate. But he runs a multimillion dollar company that's disrupting and redesigning communication patterns on a local and global level. He actually needs his sanity. Wardo does-venture capitalist. Stuff. Psychosis probably helps.
Also, this is one of those relationship things, Eduardo has explained to him, that's about compromises.)
"I'm starting to think that you, my friend, are dangerous to my health,” Sean says out of the corner of his mouth, and Mark is just about to offer his own pointed and concise insight on the subject when it becomes clear that Sean's gaze is actually directed towards the sudden entrance of three men in trench coats and, oddly enough, rubber masks in the likeness of Santa Claus, Queen Elizabeth, and Bill Clinton.
Visceral images of broken electronics, tables, and flesh stab into his skull, and so he barely senses Eduardo's chest pressing up against his stiffened spine or the thumb stroking up and down his throat, and is firmly convinced that it must be some sick form of PTSD when he thinks he hears Eduardo whisper, "Well, I have been hoping for an unobtrusive way to take you out, ever since I realized it was the only way I was getting back that fucking blazer.”
Sean sidles up close against Mark's side. "Can I help being naturally blessed with these shoulders? No. I have requisitioned it for the good of society."
The men are shouting at the teller with the nicer, silver name-tag and Eduardo serves back, forced casual, "Mark says it looks better on me.”
"Because it does," Mark says, truthfully, since they've actually had this conversation before, almost word for word, and right on schedule Sean mock-coughs into his hand, "Kiss ass."
"And so does Chris. And Dustin. And Alisha.”
"And they’re all lying bitches.” Sean says airily, poorly suppressing a wicked grin, and then coughs with a different brand of emphasis this time, nudging Eduardo lightly with his shoulder.
"Can we not?" Mark offers a little despairingly, but mostly resigned to the fact that they won't be paying him much heed going forward.
Sean begins casing the exits. "You know what I like about sudden acts of violence in Massachusetts?"
"I honestly can't imagine," Mark says dryly.
"That I don't own the real estate."
"Not leasing the real estate," Eduardo points out distractedly, palming his keychain and twisting off the two larger ones with his fingers. "And it wasn't even you. Surprise, surprise."
"That is my favorite kind."
Mark might as well ask. "Leased property?"
Sean shrugs smugly. "Property that isn't mine."
This is going to be just like that bar fight that Mark still swears, to this day, Sean purposely started. Eduardo sprained a finger, Sean spent the night up with a concussion, Mark left with a thoroughly blackened eye, the owner claimed $700 in damages, and somehow this inexplicably resulted in Sean moving in that Friday. Not that Eduardo's newly apparent (but, in retrospect, unsurprising) exhibitionist streak, his method of biting into hands or the comforter to choke back rough gasps, and the whispering into Mark's ear during sex was necessarily a bad thing-or anything that Mark should be thinking about in the midst of a bank robbery.
"So you’ve got the two on the left,” Sean is saying with cocky shift of his hips and Mark decides that there actually may be some merit in focusing on all the great sex that he personally is having with Eduardo. (After only 15% shaved off his shares and approximately 35 minutes of profuse apologies penned by his mother-who had started talking to him again three weeks later. Sean wishes he had Mark's life. And not just because it seems to involve much less head trauma.)
"Of course I get two,” Eduardo huffs and Sean shrugs again.
"Hey, you’re the superhero.”
Eduardo takes in a slow, deep breath, fingers curling tight around the back of Mark's neck, and shifts his weight as he eyes the thick, copper colored line separators, griping, "When you want a wingman or forget your wallet, it’s always ‘but Wardo, I’m your Robin’, but a few would-be bank robbers and suddenly you’re Lois Lane.”
"She kicked some ass on Smallville, pal. Respect.” The three of them flinch in near unison when Eduardo's cell phone pings and vibrates. "Ha, that’s why you’re all pissy. Fucking Wednesday. You’re missing mom night."
Sean pauses and shares an apprehensive look with Eduardo, because though armed nutjobs apparently no longer disconcert them, they're cowed by strong, opinionated women. Instead of just fearing them from afar like any reasonable person (read: Mark) would do. "Actually," Sean adds, "better get that."
He doesn't have the chance, it turns out, as this is when Santa Claus whips around to wave his handgun about and proclaim, "Everybody, toss your phones on the floor! Towards the center of the room! Now!"
"Oh that’s it,” Sean hisses, "We are so kicking their asses,” receiving a sharp nod of agreement, and Mark surreptitiously drops his inside the torn lining of his jacket under the cover of Sean's now vocal fuming, "She's got that choir recital thing tonight. We will never hear the fucking end of it.”
"Choir recital?" Mark inquires (unobtrusively turning his back to the synchronized pacing of Her Majesty and Clinton), though it's breaking another personal, well-learned rule very similar to Do Not Feed or Tease the Animals.
Sean shrugs. "Big production at their church. She's been practicing for months, talked my ear off for like two hours on--" His fingers crack together in a snap and point towards Eduardo, ignoring the flinch from their surrounding hostages, "That is why I forgot about the check."
"She thinks he's you," Eduardo says, flashing Mark a wry grin.
"And we will be addressing that later. Though, huh, that explains why she keeps mentioning how she hopes to someday call me son-in-law, cause your sister is still pretty young."
"Better you than me, to be honest," Mark endorses adamantly. That's the thing with Sean Parker: inevitably, he does have his uses.
"And she's not going to be pissed at me," Eduardo says under his breath, "because we're about to beat the hell out of them."
"All right, Caped Crusader, you're first," Sean murmurs, and Mark temporarily weighs the ease in which Chris could instruct him in skilled snow tire application against the merits of guaranteed superior orgasms and a stoical response to the personal choice of bypassing both sleep and showering for two days straight.
He knows it'll be fine, no matter how hard his head is pounding, and then Eduardo will give him that look, and when they get back to the apartment then Sean will probably work through that bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and work the edge off via some first person shooter, and Eduardo will shut his bedroom door and push Mark back against the mattress, straddling his hips and shivering from the endorphins come-down. And he's completely fucked, forever, because he's not getting away from any of these people by this point, even if takes a stunted, sour turn for real again. He just thinks he's supposed to be smarter than this, want something a little more-opportunistic.
But then Sean say self doubt is a waste of perfectly good brain cells and Eduardo says Mark's a genius, and there's something he-likes about himself, or something like that, when he lets people complicate his life these days. It just makes him not think about the times when he felt he shouldn't bother with worrying about what kind of person he was, because he couldn't afford to, and it was illusive and stupidly complex anyway. It all seems so simple now. Like letting them be lunatics and plan to kick ass. While he will just plan to not get shot. Honestly, Wardo.
He keeps his head down and makes a show of hiding shaking hands in his pockets in order to feel-tap an order to Dustin to supervise the release, able to respond yes without actually reading Dustin's probable response of lol sucker always when u wrk from home lol team chaos strikes again y/n.
And then he dials 911 as Eduardo hurls a metal column into the queen of England's face, because someone needs to keep their priorities straight and that job's Mark's. All in a day's work.
This entry was originally posted at http://silviakundera.dreamwidth.org/842411.html. There are
comments.
Author: Silvia Kundera
Fandom: The Social Network
Disclaimer: Just harmless fantasy based off the characters from The Social Network. Not intending to damage copyright or represent any real persons, living or dead.
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Words: 9,130
Summary: When Eduardo's firing is interrupted by a sudden emergency situation at the Facebook offices, it's up to the guy everyone had counted out to save the day. With a less than ideal partner. Mark/Eduardo; BAMF!Eduardo; Eduardo & Sean action movie style bromance.
---
Reg: I don't know! Mr. Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!
Cardinal Ximinez: NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise!... Surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency!
-Monty Python
*
So the night's going pretty well, with the tying of certain loose ends, member count rising as scheduled, and a party waiting for him only 5 miles away -- except for the part where he's suddenly about to get clocked, when he'd expected Saverin to just cry about it or stumble on out of there all tail between his legs.
And then there's all the shouting and the masked dudes with guns, making like they're storm troopers and like they're completely unaware it's not a fucking bank.
And then he makes a smart-assed remark, because this is what he does.
And one of those dicks, who'd clearly never heard of proportional response, jerks his gun over and fires with obvious intentions of shooting Sean in the stomach.
Except for the part where little Eduardo Saverin shoves both of his hands into Sean's chest and takes it in the fucking arm instead, and doesn't halt, doesn't pause, just lets out this sharp hiss between his teeth and hauls Sean into the hallway as everyone's screaming and multiple people are apparently still very determined to get a bullet or nine in him.
"There were three of them, right?" Sean hears as they huddle against the floor and the wall in front of him seems to move forward and back, wobbly. "So they can't afford to send anyone after us."
"That's-comforting. I guess," Sean wheezes, because the natural response to this series of events is hyperventilating like a motherfucker.
Not snaking toner boxes with your feet to stack on either side of them to block them from casual sight. Or gritting your teeth as you peel your jacket off and ignoring the blooming red spreading over the side of your left arm to dig in your fucking pocket for one of those pretentious, overpriced mini-swiss army knife sets. Probably real gold inlay. Jesus.
The guy's looking kind of pale, with a sheen of sweat over his upper lip that he wipes away the back of his hand, but still offensively alert. "They've got to have the wrong building."
"You think?" Sean shrieks and Eduardo slaps a damp palm over his mouth.
It tastes like blood.
I am going to swoon, he realizes in horror.
He's about to fucking swoon, in relative public, like it's Masterpiece Theatre up in this bitch, while college boy makes like some unholy cross between MacGyver, Rambo, and a fifth grader wearing daddy's suit to school for show and tell.
"I'm gonna," he begins to inform Eduardo, and then there's like white noise or something, his vision just snaps out, and he's waking up with his head in Eduardo's goddamn lap as the kid cuts a large swatch off his shirt and says, tightly, "You need to wake up and tie this. I can't make the knot."
So Sean sucks in some extra air, raises his head, and gets on that like the team player that he is.
His hands are only shaking a little as he takes in the ripped flesh and covers it quickly, flexing his arms with the next pass when he gets a grunt of, "tighter."
This is--really not how it was supposed to go.
A whole lot of strategic decisions had been predicated on Eduardo here being a whiny pushover.
It's not that Sean minds being an unmitigated asshole. He just fucking resents being a stupid one.
no, nope, he thinks as Eduardo lays a hand on the back of his neck and says in this gentle ass voice, that it was only a graze, really. this is not okay at all.
*
Things are much more settled once everyone is all patched up and breathing properly.
They check the server room and it's locked, of course. Sean has a key, but it's with his keychain and resting on top of Simon's computer tower. Which is probably all splattered with coffee now, come to think of it.
Eduardo is sizing up their available resources and space constraints, Sean supplying a quick rundown of the general building layout, including all accessible rooms, entry and exit points, and a list of every object he can think of that's not nailed down.
It's not an exercise that fills him with overwhelming confidence. "Obviously, mistaken identity or whatever. So maybe we can just…"
Eduardo huffs in that bitchy little way of his. If it's a little reassuring to see that a spilled half pint or so isn't enough to bleed that out of him, that's between Sean and his god. "Oh, and who in there's going to reason with them? Mark's an even bigger asshole than you are."
Yep, still a charmer.
Once, back in his hometown, Sean had started fucking around with this pickup trunk in the top level of the Stanton Heights Mall parking lot. No good reason for it, but he and a couple of his boys had been doing lines and were feeling bored, and it was there-unlocked. They stole a couple CDs and took a twenty from the glove compartment, no big deal. But then a cop was doing the rounds and he caught them with the door wide open, poking around, and they had to split real quick.
Sean and Matty slid down under a concrete slab and onto the next level, feet scrambling and hearts pumping like gangbusters, and then ran like the devil himself was after them. They dodged past cars and ducked under railings, and they didn't stop running until they reached a Burger King parking lot 8 blocks away, where Matty used the payphone to collect call his mom--who thwapped them both over the head while hustling them into her station wagon and screaming in Spanish.
This is nothing like that.
For one thing, he's depressingly sober.
For another, the guy beside him has at minimum three solid and imminently practical reasons to want to see him permanently incapacitated or, at the very least, maimed. (Though, to be honest, this is balanced by the fact that if someone had been about to put Sean six feet under, Matty would have jumped the other fucking way.)
But mostly it's the pace: slow and methodical. They walk carefully and speak sparingly, in low voices. Eduardo halts at every corner and doorway like he thinks he's on a fucking SWAT team, motioning Sean back against the wall like that's gonna do any good, and peaking around before they continue forward.
"Where can I find a knife?" Eduardo asks after they've scouted the conference room, men and woman's bathrooms, janitor's closet, and Mark's office (which he never uses) and confirmed that the phone lines are down.
"um, in the breakroom. Second drawer under the coffee machine."
There's a flicker down his face when Sean hands it over, like he's weighing it in his mind as well as his hand, and checking with himself how far he's willing to go with it--marching through moral turnstiles. Click click click.
For that split second, in that lighting, he looks like a very dangerous man.
"Holy shit," Sean says, mind blown. He will never mock the corner-scoping again. "You're Batman. Christian Bale Batman."
Eduardo blinks and then shakes his head. He starts sifting through every bottle and container under the sink, muttering about jackasses who should have been left there to die, but he clearly doesn't mean it, so Sean ignores him to paw through the rest of the drawers and imagine what a Saverin-style bat cave would look like. He wonders if that makes Chris Alfred.
*
"I'm a man of many talents," Sean broaches, finally, as he retrieves a couple water bottles from the fridge. "But siege planning, or defense, or whatever we've got going on here, is so outside my Venn Diagram of expertise that it's not even funny. So I hope you've been forming an actual plan to save your damsel in distress, and not just taking in the scenery."
"He's not my--"
At the twitch of Eduardo's eye, Sean shrieks gleefully, "Oh my god, you're in love with him!", though he obediently drops to a whisper as Eduardo makes desperate shushing movements. "And he's like your Selina Kyle. Oh, this is tragic. Or your Post-Joker Harvey Dent. Yeah, I like that. Let's keep it in the Nolan reboot family." At Eduardo's icy glare, he tones down the enthusiasm as well, adding only, "Ok, let's just stop him from being your Rachel Dawes."
"I actually followed all of that," Eduardo says and sighs, and Sean is just about to advise him to give up and embrace the geek (geek chic is cool now, ask Esquire), when they hear footsteps.
And all of Sean's life-long battle with insidious, persistent paranoia pays off in the most gratifying way, as his immediate, instinctive response is to pick up a chair and hurtle it towards the doorway.
It catches one of the masked guys in the chest just as he steps into view, knocking his body back to the floor and the gun out of his hand.
*
The guy's name is James and he's having an only slightly better time than they are, apparently. When they haul him onto the chair and strip off his mask, his eyes are almost rolling like one of those startled horses. There's a steady stream of incoherent threats and even more incoherent excuses.
"You need to shut the fuck up," Eduardo says.
It'll probably make an even more awesome story, later, if he lies and claims that Eduardo follows that up by coolly reaching over to break a finger, mild and expressionless.
In truth, Eduardo totally does snap the dude's finger -- and dude does not look happy about that shit at all -- but his neck is deep red, threaded with veins, and he's almost shaking with rage.
"What you need to understand about me," Eduardo spits fiercely into the dude's face, left hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the shrill, panicked mewls as the right wiggles that broken digit, "is that I get emotional. That's what my father calls it, he's always-" Eduardo's chest hitches with a choked breath and he stretches the finger back far enough to make Sean a little nauseous. "And he's right, which you need to worry about. Because right now, with my friends in there with your fucking guns, when we haven't done anything to you people-I'm having a lot of emotions that you don't want me to use you to deal with."
"Yeah, he was having a seriously fucked up night before you even rolled in here," Sean adds helpfully. "And there's all this repressed homo-psycho-sexual drama with-"
Eduardo breaks another finger.
"So it's not that repressed."
Then the guy just starts blubbering, collapsing against Eduardo's chest and whining about some vault and bought off security guard, and how he'd just known this was the wrong Emerson, and he's seen every season of Oz, so he knows about all the gang rape and heroine addition and vicious stabbings and the drag queen makeovers and forced book eating.
The actual, pertinent facts they get out him are:
(a) his two buddies aren't the type to target practice and can't aim for shit and
(b) they are absolutely the type to show the cops they mean business by icing a hostage or two
(They are also informed that he loves his mom and Jesus, but that's not really a factor either way in their mutual agreement to tie his hands and feet with the 6 thin plastic ropes that were hugging the printer paper boxes, before stuffing him in the janitor closet.)
Eduardo's throat is smooth again, looking long and tan and fucking deceptively delicate.
"It really is a shame about the shirt," Sean says, stepping back a moment to take in the popped buttons, the wet rings under his arms, the increasingly red-black tinge of their make-shift bandage, the roughly scissored left side (a jagged pattern that probably matches the chunk missing from his own). "That was a nice shirt."
And they both start laughing, hushed and more than a little hysterical.
*
Eduardo picks up the 9mm that had skidded a few steps down the hallway. The safety’s still on and there are two rounds left. It’s both bad news and a good sign that James wasn’t lying to them-if he really just bummed it off a friend and didn’t bother to buy additional amo, then they must have actually expected a cakewalk (untrained, unconsidered, and not expecting to use them).
He watches Eduardo check the safety again and stick the gun in the back of his pants, motioning to the left with his good arm. Sean might have argued chair-throwers keepers, but he knows he’d spend the rest of the night worried about blowing his ass off. (See: chronic paranoia issues) (He could never sleep with the covers over his head either, as a kid. It just seemed like a better idea to fight the potential monsters off then die in his sleep of suffocation.)
They’re searching for a fire extinguisher, wrench, screwdriver, duct tape, PVC or metal piping, batteries, at least 2 desktop computers, and all the ethernet cords they can carry. Sean has decided that ignorance does sound, for the moment, like something that might be beneficial to his relative sanity.
"You know, Mark kissed me once when he was wasted as hell,” Sean starts as they’re tossing Mark’s office drawers for the batteries, with aims to break a little tension. Lighten the mood with some conversational slight of hand. Now that he thinks about it, Sean bets no one has tried to manage Eduardo’s mood, instead of demanding it, in his entire goddamn life. "And then he called me Wardo.”
"What?”
At the disconcertingly familiar neck-reddening and narrowing of his eyes, Sean quickly clarifies, "I did not have sexual relations with that man.”
"Did you want to have sex with him?”
"That is not the point,” Sean says, "The point is-" At Eduardo’s raised eyebrows he stalls, but then luckily finds a veritable treasure trove of yellow and black ethernet cords mixed in with a motherfucking screwdriver in a cardboard box underneath the desk . The crass exclusion of duct tape is a cutting (but acceptable under the circumstances that no one anticipated fighting off an armed assault, or inexplicably needing duct tape to do it) betrayal.
When he jostles the box cheerfully, Eduardo’s expression slides from dubious impatience to pleased, so it seems safe to disclose, "It just so happens that I don’t remember that particular reasoning. But it’s been a very trying evening. I was almost shot."
"I can’t imagine," Eduardo says, mouth rueful.
Because there is absolutely no foreseeable future where that won’t be hung over Sean’s head at every opportunity.
He considers - if only for a momentary, split-second glitch in his extensive self-preservation programming - just giving himself up and ending it all now.
"See, case in point. You should be more sympathetic. I'm thinking the point might have been," Sean says, refocusing on the present and tasting the words questioningly, "if you get Mark stinking drunk again, I bet he’ll make out with you."
"You think I should drug my best friend in order to take advantage of him."
"It didn’t so much sound like that in my head,” Sean admits, "Probably scratch that. My point was definitely less rapey.”
But after Eduardo snags Mark’s spare desktop, when they’re heading back to the break room to drop off their sweatily-gotten gains, he feels bound to clarify, "I don’t think he’s your best friend anymore. What with the lying to you for months, and plotting against you, and letting me talk all kinds of shit about you, and then that thing where--” At Eduardo’s expression, Sean determines that this point has been fully made. "Anyway! Now I’m thinking: cross off the alcoholic beverages, storming the room with 9mm touting bad guys should be aphrodisiac enough.”
"I’m not going to storm the room.” Eduardo appears to be horrified at the thought, which leaves Sean more than a little disillusioned.
"Batman would storm the room.”
"Batman,” Eduardo corrects, eyes getting a faraway cast as he places the grey computer tower on the closest table and turns in a slow, panning circle--as in taking in the building’s infrastructure for the first time, "would come in from the ceiling.”
*
Eduardo’s moving quicker now, like everything has come together in his head, snapping his fingers and spitting out terse commands. As he pulls the fire extinguisher down from the wall--bandage now visibly tacky and wet, he sends Sean down the hallway for that old Dell Dustin hooked up with a projector in the conference room.
They make the trip to the janitor’s closet together (where Sean gets to chirp, "hi Jason!” and deliver a spunky hair tousle), Eduardo snagging a wrench and leaving him with orders to uncover the duct tape and tons of AA batteries. And replace the frayed ties at their captive’s wrists with strips of his sweatshirt.
Just as he’s going to bitch about using his teeth, Eduardo tosses the mini-swiss army knife over his shoulder. It smacks into Sean’s collarbone and bounces off, so he ends up doing this kind of dorky juggling dance to get ahold of it, but he understands about how some things work way cooler on television.
About 7 minutes later he finds his fearless leader on his knees with his head and shoulders stuck under the sink and employing some very inventive and creatively expressed curses. That answers where the pipe is coming from. He kind of has a nice ass. Objectively speaking.
If the objective person is super gay. God, Sean wants to wash out his brain now.
"This hostage crisis is bullshit and it’s making me gay,” Sean complains loudly.
Eduardo’s sigh is muffled but audible. "You’re just bored. I’m almost done.”
Sean takes his unspoken advice and begins to unwind and untangle the contents of his cardboard box, tossing out a phone cord and draping all the others over his arm or in neat, straight lines across the floor.
"oh,” Eduardo wiggles out suddenly to say, "can you get me a couple phone books?”
*
"Phonebooks can stop 9mm, .357 magnum, and .45 caliber rounds,” Eduardo relates, conversationally, as he puts the wrench to the fire extinguisher-duct tape, pipe, and other assorted metal clutter strewn out beside it on the table. They’d emptied it into the bathrooms, switching back and forth between the men and women’s and coughing, hacking, and ducking back outside for breath.
Sean watches curiously, head cocked. "So what’s the-"
"I’ve been thinking, slap on a metal sheet underneath and fasten them around our chests with the cords.” Eduardo pauses to swipe the back of his hand over his forehead and kicks over the screwdriver pointedly. "I’m going to need you to get the sides off those towers while I attach the barrel.”
"You’ve designed us bullet proof vests,” Sean states as he seats himself down on the floor, just to get it out there-for the record. He’s feeling pretty okay about just sitting there and gawking for a moment, dumbfounded, before tugging one of the computers towards him.
"Yeah, well, while you’ve been co-opting my meetings, kissing Mark’s ass, and snorting coke off sorority girls’ tits, I was sitting back on the East Coast in my dorm room.”
Sean grins to himself as he pops out a screw, tossing it towards the sink (he shoots, he scores!). "Been watching a lot of Mythbusters?”
"And several years of Shark Week,” Eduardo readily confesses, unscrewing the nozzle. "Though that’s less applicable.”
Once he’s pried off both side-panels, Sean hops back up to peer over Eduardo’s shoulder and see what the satisfied hum was all about. The pipe is wedged tightly into place, and he holds the tape roll steady as Eduardo tears off shiny, black strips.
At the sight of a fully constructed air cannon being pressurized, Sean now gets where the batteries come in. "Jesus fucking christ.”
Eduardo shrugs. "I have cousins.”
"Are they are on terrorist watch lists?”
*
They splash their faces with water and slick their hair back, crack their necks. Sean’s suited up first and it’s a heavier weight than expected, the harness cutting into the meat of his shoulder, but manageable.
There’s the faint sound of an angry shout turned cut-off scream as Sean is fastening their poor-man’s Kevlar to Eduardo’s chest, and for a second he honestly does not know what freaks him out worse -- the possible significance of that noise or the way Eduardo’s aura of calm decisiveness just flat-lines into crippling terror -- and Sean slaps his face in knee-jerk panic as it drains of color.
It’s a good hard one that definitely worked, because Eduardo’s hand snaps out to slap him right back, which Sean takes like a man.
Well, a man who does not actually engage in much physical violence.
In other words, there’s a little cringing and jaw stretching as he cautiously edges back over to lay a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder and say, as gentle as you might talk to cornered wild animal (or a desperate man with a barely concealed weapon), "Hey, it doesn’t even sound like him,” squeezing lightly and probably not lying. "Dustin’s way too much of a pussy to start shit and Mark will bide his time because he knows we’re out here and you wouldn’t let him down.”
"You sure about that,” Eduardo grits out with this bitter twist to his mouth. And since everybody is making expressions again, Sean allows himself to groan.
"I think this is a little different than the very foolhardy and short-sighted decision not to share a house with yours truly.”
He shakes it off as Sean watches, color and focus flooding back in. "As last words go, I’d prefer something not involving sandals and sworn vengeance.” Eduardo sighs, but it’s just that now-familiar gallows humor one. "I’m funny like that.”
"And it didn’t sound anything like him. Now let’s get you some fucking Gatorade.” He’s not liking the pain lines at Eduardo’s eyes and exhaustion haunting the edges of his frame, pushed back only by extreme stubbornness and probably an insatiable desire to prove Sean wrong in every humanly (and inhumanely) way possible.
"Thanks,” Eduardo says a few minutes later as he’s flinch-sipping that god awful lemon one (since Eric always cleans out the raspberry first and Dustin loves anything orange). The word comes out awkward and mumbled, and Sean valiantly pretends to not hear it--like how they’re back to pretending that there’s not much riding on what they’re preparing to do.
He pauses, then offers, "You know, we've been home-brewing. It was that black jug in the corner. Andrew got this mail-order kit."
"We are not pre-gaming our rescue operation,” Eduardo says decisively, all hesitation fled.
"Not even just to take the edge off of mortal peril?"
"No."
"At least he was right that you’re no fun,” Sean remarks, and Eduardo appears torn between ignoring him like a disobedient child and pistol whipping him.
He finally settles on, "Mark doesn't always know as much as he thinks he does.”
"Clearly," Sean says, rolling his eyes. "Man, at this point I would fully believe that you can reassemble an AK-47 with your eyes closed."
"Not without some very detailed diagrams," Eduardo deadpans.
"Hey now, none of that! I am far too young and impressionable to have my blossoming hero worship sullied in this fashion."
It’s after Eduardo says, "shit, oh, we need a ladder,” and they march back to grab it and wave at their delightfully traumatized captive, that Sean notices Eduardo eying him a bit, a little questioningly, and then he mentions, off-hand, "I'm starting to think more than half the reason you’re always stirring it up is that you can't take awkward silences."
"Also, you tend to be a dick to me,” Sean says, hitching the ladder up higher on his shoulder, and a reluctant chuckle escapes from Eduardo’s throat.
The only downside is now he has that whole that ‘got your number’ face on, which would normally force Sean to immediately act out in wanton and destructive ways, except he’s not a fucking moron-he just acts it sometimes for shits and giggles.
*
The game plan is predictably basic, since they don’t have much to work with and (despite some appearances to the contrary) if either of them were black ops professionals or KGB agents in another life, they don’t remember shit. Eduardo lays it out on the conference room white board in quick, broad strokes.
There’s a thick metal beam stretching across the ceiling, overlooking the main floor. It has several supports and should be sturdy enough, just wide enough, for their purposes. There’s a point where the hallway curves around towards reception, before it dead ends in the back door to the presentation room where they’d been housing their hopefully still breathing legal team. (Everyone hates lawyers, probably lost and deranged gunmen especially, so Sean’s not placing any bets, you know, but fingers crossed.) (If Eduardo’s fingers are slightly little less crossed than his-understandable). If they hear anything, it’ll be in their best interest to keep quiet about it.
Right before the door there’s a sizable crawl space that leads into the catwalk in question, where building maintenance can boost themselves up for electrical repairs.
"That’ll be a tight fit with the extra padding,” Eduardo says idly, sketching the cubical layout, "but you’re in good shape and it’s just a couple feet, so suck it in.”
The idea is that even these brain trusts aren’t going to fire up at a steel surface, in case the bullets bounce off into their faces, so it should be relatively safe (emphasis on relative) to stuff some AAs into the air cannon and cause some real inconvenience and pain. And then they’ve filled a carton with staplers, computer speakers, and two letter openers for additional sallies, if necessary. The total fucking chaos that ensues should allow Eduardo to expose himself enough to use their two only bullets with maximum effect while keeping an eye on the hostages.
They set out, settling the ladder up against the wall and right under the latch that opens the crawl space. It feels like he should stop the momentum for a moment, to apologize or-something. But split second gut-judgment says he’ll probably be all right, and Eduardo will live or he won’t. And if Eduardo lives, then there will be plenty of time to hash out all that dirty little business, and if Eduardo dies, why not improve the send-off by allowing him to imagine in his last seconds how fucking awkward this is going to be for Sean for pretty much forever. Or until he fucks up again, bigger and better (which admittedly isn’t looking very likely, but he tries not to underestimate himself).
Besides, if they really have to go through every total prick incident-seriously, no one here’s got that kind of time to spare. They’ll be no one left in that room who hasn’t peed themselves or been smacked into concussion land. And, frankly, Sean skipped dinner. He’s getting a little hungry.
"So I’m going to make like Robin and come in first strike. I get their attention, provide cover. Drive ‘em center, away from the cube walls--'cause otherwise we're screwed. And then dive bomb the hell out of the bad guys, keeping hands and legs safely inside the handy metal shield,” Sean summarizes at the top rung, and at the look on Eduardo’s face, "Yeah, I’m totally your Robin now. You saved me from an agonizing bleed out. There was a cathartic torture incident. We’re getting friendship bracelets if we make it out of this alive.”
"Will they be Facebook blue?” Eduardo says wryly, and hands him up the box of goodies before biting his lip for a second and then climbing back down the ladder
He hands up the air cannon, gaze darting off to the right. It suddenly doesn’t seem like he’s prepared to hold up the rear--which Sean realizes they never did specify, but he’d assumed. And times have seriously changed in a couple hours, because little Wardo Saverin pussying out was pretty much the last thing on Sean’s mind, full stop.
"Wait, then where are you going?”
"So maybe I’m going to storm the room,” Eduardo says, actually looking a little sheepish about it.
"I have to do this,” Sean says fervently, hustling down and opening up his arms. "If our boy can suck it up, so can you.”
Eduardo stands there very patiently as Sean squeezes him in a bear hug, rocking him back and forth a little. Truly, he is a great man. A bat among men. One befitting an awesome motorcycle that’s fitted with grappling hooks and machine guns. "We survive this and I’m getting you a motorcycle. And Mark’s anal-virginity.”
Eduardo steps back, smirking, and pulls out the 9mm, tugging testingly at the phonebook mashed against his chest. "I don’t think that’s yours to bestow.” It’s a little disheartening to see Sean can’t actually fuck with him too bad anymore.
"Bestow? If this is how you talk about fucking, it’s no wonder you never got him to first base.”
"We survive this and I’m suing your asses.”
"I will be an excellent character witness,” Sean vows.
Eduardo blanches.
Ha, he’s still got it.
*
People always say time slows down in moments like these, but maybe Sean’s brain is broken or a little retarded, because for him it’s like everything’s speeded up and he’s only taking in a third at most of all the available images whirring around and down below him.
He opens the crawl space and wiggles inside-small, slight movements intended to minimize the noise. It’s claustrophobically MRI-machine tight and he shuts his eyes for it, humming to himself under his breath.
Before he breaches, when light pops red-yellow against his eyelids and he slides them back open, he can already hear: the juddering thump-thump of his heartbeat; a strident, indecipherable argument with at least two male voices; the screech of a chair kicked sideways across slate flooring; a rough, sucked-in sobbing like Ashley’s trying to tear her lungs out; the sandpaper whisper of twenty-three bodies shifting in their clothes, against their seats, into and away from each other.
His pupils contract against the glow of the ceiling lights, much closer and brighter to him than that blurry mass of people huddled on the ground floor.
He takes in too much air. Coughs deep, chest seizing.
He wants, desperately, the inhaler he doesn’t have. And Sean knows, with the kind of absolute clarity he’s maybe been lacking for four odd years, just whose fucking fault that is.
He presses the breathy gasps down and positions the air cannon, wincing at the harsh metal scrape that whips around both standing, black-clad men.
Their guns are up, automatic and thoughtless, and they’re backing away hurriedly. So Sean flings a speaker while shouting "uh, duck!”, because the trajectory’s alarmingly close to the cubical wall that at least a handful of people have darted behind-though that’s the whole point, block the path, and when he flings another two it works.
Then he lets the batteries rip: shoot, stuff ‘em in, shoot again. There’s the sharp, cascading clinks of shattered glass hitting hard targets like monitors and tables-- hopefully not flesh.
And he has a goddamn heart attack as the shorter guy fires wildly upwards and two rounds go winging back: one thudding into the wall of display screens and the other into the floor between his buddy and a crawling Eric.
"Holy fuck, have you heard of ricochet?" screams what sounds like Dustin, and the buddy seems to concur, because he’s actually grabbing the gun from the other guy’s hand.
Eric’s gone white, stricken to stillness and eyes locked on the neat hole a few millimeters to his left. But it was all completely worth the split second of mass hysteria and near bladder-emptying fear, because that’s when Eduardo comes out that office back entrance, pushing déjà vu style through swinging glass doors, and shoots the idiot in the kneecap.
"Flowers are really not going to cut it,” Sean muses, out loud, as the guy goes down with a shrill animal yelp, fingers clawing at his pants leg where it’s all shredded jeans and pulverized meat.
But then Sean finds himself babbling, "fuckitiy fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck,”stretched out low in his throat, because of course it’s the brains of this no-account clusterfuck of an operation who’s now got a gun in each hand, probably way more amo, and he sends one over Eduardo’s shoulder and into the wall.
The second hits, hopefully by accident, damn close to the heart.
It’s the shock or momentum - likely a combination of the two - that topples Eduardo to his back.
Sean consciously does not register if their experimental armor did the trick, if he’s got the wind knocked out of him or a sudden case of extreme death. Sean simply scoops up the letter openers and misses once before getting the other stuck into bad guy ass cheek--which may not be any kind of mortal injury, but it clearly hurts like a bitch because his fingers spread wide and both weapons go sailing in opposite directions.
Then Eduardo’s showing all signs of alive and -okay, not well, but he’s hauling himself in the direction of the gun that’s landed closest, looking cramped, pallid, and pissed off as all hell.
Their limping foe dives for the other and reaches it first, though Sean makes him pause, body jerking, when he clips the guy’s side with an AA and then sends one straight into his lower back. But then, naturally, instead of taking cover there’s Mark skittering out from under a table, on his knees, and towards Eduardo as Sean experiences what can only be described as a mental facepalm.
Mark with his shiny, red-purple bruise cleverly disguised as a right eye, which makes Eduardo’s face get even scarier. Somehow.
It’s like Sean can actually see the words "aw, fuck it” run through Eduardo’s mind as his fingers close around the gun and he notes the other guy’s recovery out of the corner of his eye, the smooth arc of the guy’s arm rising, and then that crazy motherfucker pushes off the floor with his good hand, springing from a crouch, and straight-up tackles the dude. He ducks in under the bullet, right elbow flying back as he leaps so that the gun lands first, cracking across the side of the guy’s head with a barely stifled cry of what sounds like white-hot agony sliding out Eduardo’s mouth and a burst of blood pulsing from his arm (that fucking arm, jesus) right before their chests slam together, Eduardo on top as they go down.
Eduardo’s trying to scramble up but when his palms slap against ground he makes a noise that turns Sean’s stomach. Masked dude’s gun arm twitches (still got his fist locked around it this time, white knuckled, though possibly more from desperate instinct than nefarious intention), but just as Sean’s opening his mouth to call a warning there’s Mark leaning across Eduardo’s back to beat him over the head with the broken shell of his former laptop.
That thing’s got a lot of mileage. And, like, poetic irony. Sean writes himself a mental note: do not get in the way of thwarted geek passion. That path leads only to shattered fingers, knees, skulls, and probable extended prison sentences.
Chatter swells from over a dozen sources, near all at once, drawn faces beginning to peak out from various cubes as Mark snakes an arm around Eduardo’s waist, pulling him up to sitting. There’s a whispered exchange - probably nothing too good (Mark’s crap at sweet talking), but hopefully at least an earnest promise of some thorough, enthusiastic blowjobs - and then Eduardo brushes his thumb over Mark’s mottled, near swollen-shut eye and kisses it lightly before pressing their foreheads together and just breathing quietly (which, fine, is a mildly adorable sight - Sean can be a real nasty piece of work if the mood hits him right, but he has never been completely heartless).
"If you're both conscious when I get my ass down there," he calls out cheerfully, "I'm expecting some serious celebratory hugging," and starts to inch, very carefully, backwards. The life of a sidekick is perilous business.
Eduardo musters a sloppy, raised middle finger (an excellent sign). He falters, though, in his next movement - a determined lurch towards their fallen assailants - and Dustin and Andrew rush up to take over, ripping out phone cords to tie their hands and feet. Well, Andrew mostly to kick the gross kneecap dude in the stomach, but that makes sense when you notice how he’s favoring his left arm, which looks to be broken.
"It’s-safe, right?” Eric says, sitting bunched together kind of funny, which makes sense in a second. "To, um, to go to the bathroom now?”
"Sure, we got that--” Sean starts to say, running over Eduardo’s hurried reassurance, when they both pause and evidently share a sudden recollection of exactly how many chemicals they’d poured into the facilities. "Uh.” Sean clears his throat.
"I think everybody’s taking turns in the bushes,” Eduardo finishes for him, sounding impressively firm for someone curled against their CEO’s thin, shaking chest because he can’t stand up on his own.
*
"He just winged me."
"Winged is hit."
"Winged is hit very slightly."
"I don't think you can get hit slightly, not when it's by a bullet."
"That's exactly what winged means, actually, if you want to get technical."
"I don't want to get technical, I want you to have zero contact with deadly projectiles," Eduardo and Mark are saying as Mark fusses over him, Dustin refuses to offer his semantic opinion, and police officers mill over the concrete framing the building's front, flattening various paths through the small swatch of grass. Mark’s jacket is smeared with maroon-black splotches of Eduardo’s blood.
The paramedics have come and gone, taking Ashley and Andrew with them. They'd wanted to take Eduardo too, but it would just be an arm brace and stitches. Lots of stitches, no surgery. So Eduardo elected to stay and get the preliminary interrogation over with.
It goes pretty friendly, since they think he and Eduardo are totally awesome (Sean knows that expression like the back of his hand-the good one, the one he endorses checks and jerks off with).
Eduardo's standing again now, but tottering a little--adrenaline rush all petered out. There's this wavering expression that seems to shift between remembering all of the violence he’d wanted to cause and then remembering all of the extraneous violence that actually did happen.
Sean, on the other hand, is still completely wired.
This may or may not be primarily due to the haunting certainty that the media at large has got to be only one YouTube video away from swarming upon them en masse. (He'd re-commandeered all the phones from where Idiot Assailant #2 had stashed them, but interns are wily. You just never know with those fuckers. They have ways, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be working for Facebook.)
To sum up: Imminent arrival of representatives from Channels 2, 4, 15, 27, 48 and at least two of those Spanish language ones. Their CFO is newly fired, somewhat bullet ridden, one part conscious, one part aroused, and three parts increasingly testy. His painstakingly mentored CEO is, understandably, all parts for humping at said CFO's shaky leg. And Sean is very aware that he himself bears a stunning resemblance to twice warmed over excrement. That is just not the kind of international image that he's looking for them to cultivate.
So Sean’s busy making urgent eyes at the investigative lead and checking his mail (the commandeering had included his own), but he keeps an eye on them-mostly just in case of sudden public nudity.
"Fuck, I am not making it to that party,” Sean sighs, kind of horny from watching Susan Last-Name-Starts-With-An-F watch Mark's arms wind around Eduardo's waist and their mouths meet in a steadily deepening, hips-pressing kiss. "There has been a startling, and may I say disheartening, lack resemblance to certain treasured movies of my youth or the more riveting examples of USA network programming. For instance, in the movies they never show the part where you file all the property damage reports.”
"My nana said this is what would happen if I moved to California,” Dustin muses, gaze flicking over to Mark's hand drifting lower and lower down Eduardo's back, and then shutting his eyes to rub at his forehead.
Sean lets them test the waters a little while longer -- until Mark whispers something, Eduardo's torn expression escalating into something like hunted -- and then claps his hands, proclaiming loudly, "Hey Saverin, no fucking on the first date. I’m apparently not getting high tonight-" he coughs at a glance from Officer Perez, "on life. So I’ll run you by the emergency room while your fair damsel makes our final statement, and then we’ll watch HBO or something. Braid my hair and talk about boys.”
The play of emotions twitching across Mark's face is a true delight to behold and Eduardo turns to favor Sean with a nondescript expression. "Your hair is too short.”
"And yours is too--yours,” Sean retorts, trying to sketch the ridiculousness with his hands. "But I have empirical evidence that you are one resourceful son of a bitch.”
He tries not to squirm at Eduardo’s discerning stare. "…There’s absolutely no way you’re sleeping in the next 48 hours without me in front of the door, is there?”
"That is an unfair and unfounded slander that just happens to be true.” Mark's eyes have narrowed into thin black slits. The sharp points of heat that Sean can almost feel digging into his shoulder blades are an impressive feat. "Can we make it two weeks?”
"You’ve got 48 hours,” Eduardo says flatly, eyes flitting back in Mark's direction, "and that's only because of that last letter opener. And since I'm expecting some detailed groveling in the interim. Then I’m getting laid. And suing you.”
Sean shrugs, heading towards the parking structure--though he must have been a little too transparent in his complacency, because Eduardo is practically stomping beside him (despite needing a steadying arm tucked under his shoulders) and saying, slowly, "No one is moving in with me. Especially not you.”
"Well, I’ll tell you one thing for fucking sure,” says Sean with passionate sincerity, "I am never stepping another foot in this place again.”
Sean feels a text come in as he pulls out onto the main road. It’s a line from Mark (no one tried to kill us in Massachusetts) and he shoots one back, in the driver’s seat or not, because he lives on the edge now. He’s risked life and limb, ready and willing to sacrifice the one for the many.
He’s probably going to sleep with the lights on for the next three months and get unreasonably jumpy around office buildings, but at least he’s alive to do it.
ikr when we talked about cost of doing business this is not what i had in mind, he types.
motherfuck
ill work it on this end then u come in with the bjs, Sean returns, still ur biggest fan, and then flips through his contact list.
whats rent like in Cambridge, he texts Chris with his thumb, after swerving around a van slapped with a faded broadband company logo.
if this is some crack about wardo you can fuck off
oh hes gonna need a bigger place, Sean types back. good point
//
[ coda: Mark, 2 years later ]
There's a key update going through this evening - only backend, true, and transparent to the users, but it should simplify the handling of that one exception that's been making Dustin a little crazy - and yet Mark is not at headquarters. Or at home. Or even receiving a nice leisurely blowjob to 'settle you down', as Eduardo is prone say.
Instead he's listening to Eduardo bitch, "It’s the 5th-it’s always the 5th," as they click their car doors shut, "the fifth day of every other month. How is this so difficult to grasp?" And though Mark's official policy on these matters is to not particularly give a fuck, he can't help petulantly stabbing a text out to Chris about the wisdom of moving 500 miles away, regardless of the murder rate and how tall the snow piles in D.C.
"This can’t be like the thing where you’re always 20 minutes late," Eduardo continues, "because that’s on purpose.”
"Maybe I just like spending some special bank time with my special guy?” Sean says, throwing his arm over Eduardo's shoulders with a shit-eating grin, and another grin tossed back in Mark's direction. Which earns him a shove in the side, though naturally not hard enough to actually dislodge the arm, and an involuntary quirk of Mark's traitorous mouth-- because, admittedly, when Eduardo's voice hits that pitch, things only get funnier.
Though the one and only time he verbally expressed this very fact, he was unjustly denied ass for an entire weekend.
Mark is well aware just who invited the man into their lives in the first place. But the rest of it is not his fucking fault. At least Mark figured out fairly quickly that no one in their right mind would want to live with that hot mess.
Of course, Wardo claims Mark drove him out of his right mind years ago.
Which certainly would explain why Mark is accompanying his boyfriend to pick up a cashier's check for the rent which his boyfriend's roommate, who is not Mark, and who has gross income in double digits, did not deem important to pay on time. Again.
(Theoretically, Mark supposes that he too could be his boyfriend's roommate. But he runs a multimillion dollar company that's disrupting and redesigning communication patterns on a local and global level. He actually needs his sanity. Wardo does-venture capitalist. Stuff. Psychosis probably helps.
Also, this is one of those relationship things, Eduardo has explained to him, that's about compromises.)
"I'm starting to think that you, my friend, are dangerous to my health,” Sean says out of the corner of his mouth, and Mark is just about to offer his own pointed and concise insight on the subject when it becomes clear that Sean's gaze is actually directed towards the sudden entrance of three men in trench coats and, oddly enough, rubber masks in the likeness of Santa Claus, Queen Elizabeth, and Bill Clinton.
Visceral images of broken electronics, tables, and flesh stab into his skull, and so he barely senses Eduardo's chest pressing up against his stiffened spine or the thumb stroking up and down his throat, and is firmly convinced that it must be some sick form of PTSD when he thinks he hears Eduardo whisper, "Well, I have been hoping for an unobtrusive way to take you out, ever since I realized it was the only way I was getting back that fucking blazer.”
Sean sidles up close against Mark's side. "Can I help being naturally blessed with these shoulders? No. I have requisitioned it for the good of society."
The men are shouting at the teller with the nicer, silver name-tag and Eduardo serves back, forced casual, "Mark says it looks better on me.”
"Because it does," Mark says, truthfully, since they've actually had this conversation before, almost word for word, and right on schedule Sean mock-coughs into his hand, "Kiss ass."
"And so does Chris. And Dustin. And Alisha.”
"And they’re all lying bitches.” Sean says airily, poorly suppressing a wicked grin, and then coughs with a different brand of emphasis this time, nudging Eduardo lightly with his shoulder.
"Can we not?" Mark offers a little despairingly, but mostly resigned to the fact that they won't be paying him much heed going forward.
Sean begins casing the exits. "You know what I like about sudden acts of violence in Massachusetts?"
"I honestly can't imagine," Mark says dryly.
"That I don't own the real estate."
"Not leasing the real estate," Eduardo points out distractedly, palming his keychain and twisting off the two larger ones with his fingers. "And it wasn't even you. Surprise, surprise."
"That is my favorite kind."
Mark might as well ask. "Leased property?"
Sean shrugs smugly. "Property that isn't mine."
This is going to be just like that bar fight that Mark still swears, to this day, Sean purposely started. Eduardo sprained a finger, Sean spent the night up with a concussion, Mark left with a thoroughly blackened eye, the owner claimed $700 in damages, and somehow this inexplicably resulted in Sean moving in that Friday. Not that Eduardo's newly apparent (but, in retrospect, unsurprising) exhibitionist streak, his method of biting into hands or the comforter to choke back rough gasps, and the whispering into Mark's ear during sex was necessarily a bad thing-or anything that Mark should be thinking about in the midst of a bank robbery.
"So you’ve got the two on the left,” Sean is saying with cocky shift of his hips and Mark decides that there actually may be some merit in focusing on all the great sex that he personally is having with Eduardo. (After only 15% shaved off his shares and approximately 35 minutes of profuse apologies penned by his mother-who had started talking to him again three weeks later. Sean wishes he had Mark's life. And not just because it seems to involve much less head trauma.)
"Of course I get two,” Eduardo huffs and Sean shrugs again.
"Hey, you’re the superhero.”
Eduardo takes in a slow, deep breath, fingers curling tight around the back of Mark's neck, and shifts his weight as he eyes the thick, copper colored line separators, griping, "When you want a wingman or forget your wallet, it’s always ‘but Wardo, I’m your Robin’, but a few would-be bank robbers and suddenly you’re Lois Lane.”
"She kicked some ass on Smallville, pal. Respect.” The three of them flinch in near unison when Eduardo's cell phone pings and vibrates. "Ha, that’s why you’re all pissy. Fucking Wednesday. You’re missing mom night."
Sean pauses and shares an apprehensive look with Eduardo, because though armed nutjobs apparently no longer disconcert them, they're cowed by strong, opinionated women. Instead of just fearing them from afar like any reasonable person (read: Mark) would do. "Actually," Sean adds, "better get that."
He doesn't have the chance, it turns out, as this is when Santa Claus whips around to wave his handgun about and proclaim, "Everybody, toss your phones on the floor! Towards the center of the room! Now!"
"Oh that’s it,” Sean hisses, "We are so kicking their asses,” receiving a sharp nod of agreement, and Mark surreptitiously drops his inside the torn lining of his jacket under the cover of Sean's now vocal fuming, "She's got that choir recital thing tonight. We will never hear the fucking end of it.”
"Choir recital?" Mark inquires (unobtrusively turning his back to the synchronized pacing of Her Majesty and Clinton), though it's breaking another personal, well-learned rule very similar to Do Not Feed or Tease the Animals.
Sean shrugs. "Big production at their church. She's been practicing for months, talked my ear off for like two hours on--" His fingers crack together in a snap and point towards Eduardo, ignoring the flinch from their surrounding hostages, "That is why I forgot about the check."
"She thinks he's you," Eduardo says, flashing Mark a wry grin.
"And we will be addressing that later. Though, huh, that explains why she keeps mentioning how she hopes to someday call me son-in-law, cause your sister is still pretty young."
"Better you than me, to be honest," Mark endorses adamantly. That's the thing with Sean Parker: inevitably, he does have his uses.
"And she's not going to be pissed at me," Eduardo says under his breath, "because we're about to beat the hell out of them."
"All right, Caped Crusader, you're first," Sean murmurs, and Mark temporarily weighs the ease in which Chris could instruct him in skilled snow tire application against the merits of guaranteed superior orgasms and a stoical response to the personal choice of bypassing both sleep and showering for two days straight.
He knows it'll be fine, no matter how hard his head is pounding, and then Eduardo will give him that look, and when they get back to the apartment then Sean will probably work through that bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and work the edge off via some first person shooter, and Eduardo will shut his bedroom door and push Mark back against the mattress, straddling his hips and shivering from the endorphins come-down. And he's completely fucked, forever, because he's not getting away from any of these people by this point, even if takes a stunted, sour turn for real again. He just thinks he's supposed to be smarter than this, want something a little more-opportunistic.
But then Sean say self doubt is a waste of perfectly good brain cells and Eduardo says Mark's a genius, and there's something he-likes about himself, or something like that, when he lets people complicate his life these days. It just makes him not think about the times when he felt he shouldn't bother with worrying about what kind of person he was, because he couldn't afford to, and it was illusive and stupidly complex anyway. It all seems so simple now. Like letting them be lunatics and plan to kick ass. While he will just plan to not get shot. Honestly, Wardo.
He keeps his head down and makes a show of hiding shaking hands in his pockets in order to feel-tap an order to Dustin to supervise the release, able to respond yes without actually reading Dustin's probable response of lol sucker always when u wrk from home lol team chaos strikes again y/n.
And then he dials 911 as Eduardo hurls a metal column into the queen of England's face, because someone needs to keep their priorities straight and that job's Mark's. All in a day's work.
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