[PART ONE] OVERFLOW POST

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THE SOCIAL NETWORK PART ONE OVERFLOW POST

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Fortune and Men's Eyes (18b/?)

[novembersmith]

Mark smiled at Eduardo, ignoring Dustin, who pouted and stuck out his tongue. Then he frowned. "Staff?"

"Well," Eduardo said, and sighed. "Obviously one day, I'll need a larger staff than I have at present. Nothing to worry about for now." He smiled and shrugged, like it wasn’t worrying him in the slightest, except for how he wasn’t looking at anyone, his mouth crooked and wavering.

If Mark thought too hard about the fact that he was dating the future king of Brazil, he got the urge to bury himself in code and disappear there for hours at a time. But he was trying to be better about that, so he just nodded.

“Right. Well, if you need a royal hacker, let me know,” he said, carefully offhanded, and started erasing one of the looped pathways off the board. It could be better; they could make the front page far more streamlined. He uncapped a dry-erase marker and considered the newly blank space. “I could vet your staff, make sure there were no dirty secrets or faked credentials.”

“Like you don’t do that already,” Chris said,

“You fool no one,” Dustin said. “You and your background checks. Sometimes I think you’re just making The Facebook to better be able to stalk people.”

Mark narrowed his eyes and Eduardo ducked his head, hiding a smile behind his hand.

“Well, no drinking contest would be necessary for you,” he said, and then leaned over the table to kiss Mark, sweet and quick, despite the moratorium on ‘gooey adorable feelings’ during business meetings. “You’re already at the top of my list, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Mark said, and as soon as he’d forced the stupid smile off his own face, changed the subject.

***

“So,” Dustin said later that night, when everyone else was asleep and The Facebook’s traffic was minimal. They were taking advantage of that to push some new code through, and Dustin had no business speaking out loud unless it was to point out some potential programming error. “So, Christy.”

Mark needed a better pair of headphones - Dustin’s voice was clearly audible through the techno beat, an obvious a sign of subpar manufacturing. But he clearly wasn’t going to shut up, so Mark sighed and lowered his headphones.

“I have nothing to say about Christy.”

“Well, forgive me for being forward, your Markness, but you were pretty fucking upset about her last week, and I just want to know if I should be worried. I mean, they’re still making coffee appearances, right?” Like he didn’t know full well they were.

“I was being stupid before,” Mark said crisply, staring at the characters on the keyboard. “I know better now. It’s just coffee.”

There was a moment of blessed silence, and then Dustin’s hand was on the arm of Mark’s chair, swiveling him around, away from the glow of the computer screen and towards the harsh light of the rest of the apartment, haloing Dustin’s hair. Mark glared up at him. Dustin glared down.

“Yes?” Mark inquired testily, when the silence continued to stretch.

“Mark. I am so proud of your personal growth,” Dustin said, oddly sincere, and then gave him a hug, which was so horrible and unexpected that Mark just froze for a moment in disbelief before fighting back and extricating himself. “Chris had his doubts, but I knew you could do it.”

“That’s very comforting, Dustin, thank you,” Mark said dryly, and tried to roll his chair over Dustin’s foot.