Lines are Blurring and Escaping
Title: Lines are Blurring and Escaping
Author: Syrika182 (BleakMonday)
Fandom: The Social Network
Characters: Eduardo/Mark, Chris, Dustin
Rating: T+
Warnings: Swearing. WARNING: A WILD DUSTIN APPEARS.
Spoilers: Up to FaceMash?
Summary: Eduardo is running late and he can’t find his damn shoes. Sartorial hell breaks loose.
Notes: For ginevrawp, for the TSN Secret Santa of 2011! Woooo! Thanks to Salv and Cassie for being awesome and patient and encouraging when I needed them to be. <3
Also: There is now some art that lovesletyoudown did for me for this. It's quite good, and can be found here.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Social Network. This is a work of fiction, and the characters described herein are based on the fictional representation of real people, to whom I have no affiliation or connection with. If you got here via searching your name by some means, I would advise you to go back and go to a different place. You should try YouTube! They have kittens there!
Eduardo is running late, which is awful.
He's not entirely sure how it happened, either. One minute, he was sharing the last breadstick with Mark, and the next, he was waking up with the sun in his eyes, a warm presence at his back, a headache he didn't want to think about, and the alarm on his phone yelling at him to gtf up, ur late!
No, really. Dustin had set the title to the alarm to say that. He'd had to get creative with spacing and Mark had snorted with derision when he saw the shorthand text-speak, but it was totally worth it.
Oh. Oh, shit. Shit, no, he's late. Eduardo is late, and he's not in the his dorm.
He stands up and looks around wildly, aware that he's in the same clothes he wore yesterday, and where the fuck are his shoes?
Seriously, where are they?
He doesn't remember drinking any Jager, but this is such a new level of confusion that he's not sure of anything anymore. For all he knows, Dustin sneaked it into his orange juice, like he does with the vodka and the gin and even the Crown Royal that one time.
Dustin is probably the one who stole his shoes, come to think of it.
Fuck. Fuck.
He can hear Mark stirring on the bed, breathing deep and blinking himself awake.
"You're late." He says, voice neutral.
"I know I'm late, have you seen my shoes?" Not under the bed, not under the desk, not on the desk. Shit. His books are all here, he practically lives here, his socks are in a ball at the foot of the bed... Where are his shoes?
Mark leans up on his elbows and does a quick survey of the room. "Nope. You're already late anyway, just don't go to class." Of course he would think it's that easy.
"I can't, I already skipped last time. Shit, I can't find my shoes. Who steals a man's shoes?" He grips his hair in his hands before quickly smoothing it into something resembling 'put together.'
"Fuck, Wardo, just take mine." Mark collapses back onto the mattress and rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. "You're making me tired just looking at you."
"Sorry, sorry. You sure?" Eduardo looks around and locates the awful flip-flops sitting at the foot of the bed.
"Yeah. Ask Chris is he's seen your shoes when you get back." Like it's fact that he'll come back. Like it's fact that he always comes back. And it is fact. It really is.
Eduardo heaves out a sigh and resigns himself to the fact that, yeah, okay, if he wants to get to class at all, this is how it has to be, blending the lines between Mark and himself in the most subtle ways. He forces that thought away and slips the flip-flops on, shouldering his backpack, a short goodbye to Mark as he walks out of the bedroom.
In the common room, Dustin -- shoe-thief! -- and Chris are passed out on the couch. Cuddling, it looks like. Hopefully they'll still be like this when he gets back, since photo evidence is much more fun than just saying, "So you guys were cuddling this morning." Then he'll have blackmail, and he can force Dustin to give him back his damn shoes.
Eduardo is surprised to find how comfortable Mark's shoes are, when he takes the time to think about it. He may have to invest in a pair for himself, for casual wear only. Never to leave the house.
Or, maybe he could just wear Mark's around the house, and he tries to force that thought away as well. They're not like that. They haven't even talked about being like that. It's not a thing.
They've kissed once or twice, brief moments that make his chest tighten happily. Mark is surprisingly tactile with him, and only him. Dustin will try to sit on Mark's desk and he'll receive a glare, whereas Eduardo will sit on his desk and get what is probably as close to a smile as he'll ever get.
Still, there's no point in letting that particular train of thought continue on.
Except, once he makes it to class and slips into one of the many empty chairs, his two project partners take a look at him, his choice of footwear, and start to laugh in a way that requires muffling with the sleeves of their jackets.
Kelly and Julia, two roommates in Kirkland, who know Mark. They dealt with him personally, after the Facemash debacle. Less death-threats and more, "That was rude and upsetting, don't do it again, please."
They'd all been surprised that they were so nice about it, and that made Mark call them 'interesting.'
Once they adopted him for the class project, he could see why. They were nice, and really smart. Clever, even. It was easy to like them.
Except for right now. Right now, he wants nothing to do with them, because he knows what they're thinking, knows how ridiculous he must look, wearing Hugo Boss and Mark's flip-flops. He knows what they'd thought, the first time he met them, calling Mark his boyfriend and not believing him when he'd protested.
He's powerless against them, now. Kelly switches seats and sits next to him, Julia following suit. He tries to keep his eyes on the PowerPoint - he really should've stayed ho- no, no, he should've stayed in the suite, or gone to his dorm oh crap -- and do his best to ignore them.
"Nice flip-flops, Eduardo." Kelly grins at him, whispering so the professor doesn't notice that they're not paying attention. "They go well with your suit. Very 'walk of shame' chic."
Damn it.
"Have I missed anything?" He asks, trying to get on topic of class, hello, we're in class. He realizes too late that, yeah, probably not the best wording.
"Oh, not much. Mark is your boyfriend, the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, the usual." Julia is snarky. He kind of hates it right now. It was funny last week when she bitch-faced and made some idiot in the library cry, but right now it was just a reminder that holy shit, everyone knows.
"Mark isn't my boyfriend." Resistance is futile.
"Yeah, okay. Sure. And you're just wearing his shoes because some magical shoe fairy came and stole yours while you slept, right?" Kelly slouches back in her chair and wiggles her pencil. It looks like it's made of rubber.
"I think Dustin took them, actually, but that's not the point." He makes a note and frowns when he gets blue ink on his hand. This pen is crap.
"Uh-huh. Figures Dustin would take them. He steals shit all the time. Kid is a klepto. Sugar imbalance my ass, no one needs that much candy." Ah, yes. The day after Halloween last year, he'd gone around to a lot of dorm rooms to see who had discount candy, and came back with a black plastic cauldron full of Reese's and Twix bars. He'd been paranoid that Kelly was going to murder him for weeks.
"Sorry about that." Eduardo sighs and continues to try and take notes with his crappy pen. More ink stains his hand and smudges across his words. "Shit."
He shakes the pen a little and scribbles across the page to try and get it to write. Instead, it chooses to take the opportunity to spill ink all over his shirt. He lowers his head in defeat and slumps in his seat. Today is just not his day.
---
As soon as class is over, he bolts back to Kirkland, determined to find his shoes before he returns his dorm to change. He might have twenty to thirty minutes to shower and do his hair, even, if he moves fast enough.
When he opens the door, Dustin and Chris are still asleep on the couch. Eduardo does a quick pulse check on them both, relieved that they just sleep like the dead.
Mark wanders out of his room, barefoot and holding a bowl of cereal. He frowns at Eduardo's stained shirt. "Haven't seen your shoes. You've got blue on you."
"Yes, I am blissfully aware that my wardrobe is a disaster right now." Eduardo runs a hand through his hair. Son of a bitch. No shoes anywhere. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he opens it to see a text from one of his friends from his next class, Carol.
Talked to Tony. Says there's a surprise test. Might want to brush up on your euro hist.
So. No shoes. No shower. He has ink on his shirt and his hair is probably standing straight up. Honestly, he's wondering why he got out of bed at all this morning. He says this out loud.
"Probably because you have a strong sense of responsibility that not even the lowest quality of vodka can crush." Mark says, scooping more cereal into his mouth.
Ah, vodka. Bottom shelf vodka. That explains a lot.
"You still have blue on you."
Eduardo blinks, and then rolls his eyes. "Thank you for reminding me. I now have half an hour to brush up on my knowledge of European history, change, and somehow manage to make myself look presentable."
The next second, a faded red blob hits him in the face. A quick inspection reveals that, oh, it's one of Mark's hoodies.
"Wear that. You can give it back later. Don't get blue on it." Mark sets his empty bowl on the coffee table and quirks an eyebrow at his still-sleeping roommates.
Eduardo blinks again, and nods, shedding his jacket and shirt quickly. The inside of the hoodie is soft, and it's kind of warm, like someone has been wearing it recently. It's a little big on Mark, usually, which means it fits Eduardo perfectly. "Thanks."
Mark hums and nods, retreating back into his bedroom. "Might want to start thinking about your history."
It takes him a moment to realize that, oh, shit, right. History. He walks into Mark's room and sits on the bed, pulling a textbook out of his backpack.
They sit in comfortable silence, Mark on the internet, Eduardo studying, until it's time for him to leave for his class.
And there's the sudden quiz that he's glad he studied for, and there's Carol - another inhabitant of Kirkland, and a friend of Kelly and Julia - who notices the changes to his wardrobe.
"Do you have your own drawer in his room?" She asks as soon as he gets back to his seat after handing his test in. She ignores his glare and grins instead.
"People are taking tests. Shush." It doesn't do much, but he really, really doesn't want to talk about it right now.
---
He feels anxious for the rest of the day, like he's constantly running late to everything. That's probably because he is, really. It's unsettling, and he has to take a minute to try and calm down.
He's sitting on the recently vacated couch in the suite, focusing on his breathing, when Dustin trips over something just outside the door to his and Chris's room. Whatever it is, it's obscured by the coffee table, and everything he's carrying goes flying.
He's carrying a red Solo cup of water, unfortunately. And it hits Eduardo. It soaks his trousers though, damn it.
"Shit. Shit, shit." Dustin stands up quickly, thankfully unhurt, and tries to apologize. "Wardo, man, I'm sorry, dude."
Eduardo looks around in bewilderment instead of replying. "Did I do something? Have I angered the powers that be, in some way? Because this? It's getting ridiculous."
Chris chooses that moment to walk in, an empty laundry basket in his hands. "Hey, I - whoa, hey, what's up?"
"I spilled water all over Wardo's pants." Dustin frowns and shoves his hands into his pockets.
"It's fine. It was an accident." Eduardo goes into the bathroom and grabs a towel, blotting ineffectively at his slacks.
Mark walks out of his room at that moment and raises an eyebrow at Eduardo pulling his phone out of his pocket and trying to dry his pants. Well.
He walks back into his room without a word, and a few moments later, he tosses a pair of his own sweat pants at Eduardo, a smirk on his face. He crosses his arms and his gaze lingers.
"Thank you, Mark!" Eduardo says, shuffling into the bathroom and shutting the door. He takes off his own slacks and hands them on the towel rack to dry, and pulls Mark's sweats on. For some reason, Mark likes his clothes to be kind of big, longer than they need to be. Either that, or he's taken the time to buy clothes in Eduardo's size in case something like this happens.
He's not sure which thought is more comforting, really.
He emerges from the bathroom, grabs his backpack, and calls out a promise to see them all later before he leaves to go to his last class of the day.
Kelly and Julia are in that one, too. He's become resigned to the fact that he'll be mocked for the rest of the day for wearing Mark's clothes.
Instead, they smile at him and pay attention to the lecture.
A folded note lands on his textbook a few minutes later. You're sharing clothes. That is coupley behavior.
He writes back immediately, a new pen borrowed from Chris's stash. We're not sharing clothes. It's not like that. It's not like he goes around wearing my shirts. He's not really sure he believes that himself, at this point.
Except maybe it is like that, because as soon as he gets back to the Kirkland suit to finally find his shoes, Mark pulls him into his room and shuts the door. His backpack thuds to the ground, ignored.
"Found your shoes." He says, pushing Eduardo against the wall. His hands shift and stray under the hoodie, pressing and stroking at skin. "Dustin tripped over them earlier."
"I, uh. Okay. Um." It's hard to speak. It's hard to think of anything, really. Especially when -- okay, that's Mark's mouth. That's his mouth on Eduardo's neck. That's Mark's tongue on his skin, licking at his pulse. Those are Mark's hands, settling on his hipbones. Those are Mark's thumbs, rubbing circles into his skin, nails digging, probably leaving crescent-shaped indents.
And that's Mark's smirk against his clavicle. He murmurs into his skin, "Love you wearing my clothes." His voice is low, and his breath is hot.
Eduardo clears his throat, willing himself to be daring. "You should see me out of them."
---
The next morning, Dustin trips over Eduardo's shoes again, letting out an indignant squawk as he falls to the floor. Chris yawns and steps over him easily, like it's normal for his friend to be lying on the ground at eight in the morning.
"The fuck are Wardo's shoes still doing on the floor?" Dustin asks, pushing himself up. He kicks the shoes under the coffee table.
"Pretty sure Wardo didn't go back to his dorm last night." Chris replies, tossing a small bottle of Sunny D to Dustin.
There's a loud ringing coming from Mark's room, and Eduardo bolts out, pulling Mark's red hoodie over his head and sliding across the floor in the flip-flops. Mark's sweatpants are slung low on his hips, and there's a very telling red spot on his hip, and another on his neck.
"Sorry, sorry, I'm so late!" He flings his backpack onto his shoulder and runs back to where Mark is now standing in the doorway to his room. He drops a kiss onto Mark's mouth and runs out of the suite. "I'll see you later!"
Mark smirks and retreats back into his room, shutting the door with a click.
Dustin looks at Chris. "Yeah, okay. Makes sense."