[PART TWO] - CLOSED
THE SOCIAL NETWORK KINK MEME
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GENERAL RULES;
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ASK THE MODS * FAQ * DISCUSSION * RESEARCH * FILL LIST * PART ONE * PART ONE (OVERFLOW)
GENERAL RULES;
♥ post requests and responses in the comments to this post ( Read more... )
It wasn’t the wordy apology that had convinced him, it was the soft way Mark said the last word. Like he had never even considered that Eduardo might take it that way, like he was seeing everything in an even less favorable light and hurting for it. Eduardo had opened his mouth to accept his apology before he had caught Mark slipping his nickname in there, and it had just gotten to him how familiar Mark still thought they could be.
“Mark, you don’t get to do this, okay? You don’t get to call me Wardo and you don’t get to say this now and expect anything from me for it. People aren’t code, and you can’t just say what I want to hear to undo all your errors. This is, it’s unexpected, more than, and it’s weird and it’s confusing and I don’t know why you thought it would change things.”
He had stopped himself there before he added something hurtful like why you thought I would even listen to you after what you did, and he doesn’t regret it now, though he did then. He’d looked at Mark as the soft sound of him stepping back had echoed through the foyer and shaken his head at the expression he’d seen, somewhere between annoyance and hurt.
“I didn’t, War-Eduardo. I hoped maybe, but. Ugh, whatever, just. The point is that I. I cannot promise I wouldn't do it again, because it was a business decision that had to be made and inevitably, it would have happened at one point, but I can promise that I would talk to you. Let you know that…you were more than CFO, that I wanted to keep you around even if that title wasn’t yours to hold anymore.”
“Even if this is the last thing we say to each other, you still mean it?” Eduardo had said, and he would’ve had to be blind to miss the way Mark’s face tightened, even as he stepped back where he’d been and nodded, decisive and firm in a way only Mark could be. Eduardo had fought the urge to step back then, because there was too much in Mark’s body, too much on Mark’s face, and he was already lost and dazed by everything Mark had said - he hadn’t needed the effect of having said them to distract him from processing, but there it had been.
Mark…had wanted him around. Mark had, maybe, even still meant that he should come to the millionth member party after the “business meeting”. Maybe it hadn’t been an ambush so much; maybe there was actual truth in this. It had always been a little difficult for Eduardo to believe any of Mark’s apologies, but something - he wasn’t ready to believe it was him leaving, because he still couldn’t quite grasp the idea of his presence or lack thereof being a character developing event in Mark’s life - had done a number on Mark, and his face expressed more than Eduardo even thought he knew. (Secretly, Eduardo still marvels at that - how those blue eyes go brighter and darker and tilt in ways that he doesn’t remember them doing in college, how Mark’s face can say things his words don’t.)
“I…I might miss my best friend, all right. Do with that what you will, but. I wanted you to know. I’ve been told that holding a grudge can give you ulcers, or something.”
Eduardo hadn’t been surprised by how much he kind of wanted to just walk out at even hearing Mark refer to something as colossal as what he had done and how Eduardo felt about it as a grudge, but he had been surprised - then - about how he had bitten his tongue to stop himself from laughing at Mark’s last statement, that acerbic humor that he sometimes maybe had missed.
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