[PART SEVEN] - CLOSED
quick note; GUYS. please be aware that if you posted a prompt in part six and it is now screened, i have posted them to the post already - so that you guys don't have to. thanks for being patient and making the fill-a-thon such a success
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“Um oh… I mean…”
Mark wondered which was worse, Jesse or Andrew. Andrew was certainly giving Jesse a run from his money with the ‘um’s’ right now.
“I just- well I dunno really… I just like them. You know they’re soft and smell nice,” Andrew said finally dropping the spoon in the bowl looking down at it briefly and noticing it was melted.
He looked anywhere but Mark’s face that was.
“That isn’t what I asked,” Mark pointed out still staring at his face as if trying to read the answer off it.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t exactly a skill Mark had naturally. He might not be a total douche but Jesse had some of his traits right and Mark was not a people reader.
Andrew made a clicking noise and shrugged before looking around the bed, “Oh where’s the remote? Uh I want to catch the news.”
So that wasn’t suspicious or anything.
He reached for the remote the second he saw it, but Mark reached out to intercept it, his hand touching Andrew’s lightly.
“Not what I asked,” he repeated again, this time with a more meaningful gaze.
Andrew sighed and wondered if maybe there was a way to disappear into thin air or strangle yourself without dying.
“Well I mean, it isn’t that I want to be rude or anything…” he started out saying.
“-Except if you wanted to be, you could be because I would if I wanted to but you obviously don’t. Which still doesn’t tell me why,” Mark interjected into his sentence before Andrew could get around to give him another side-stepped answer.
Andrew felt his fists balling up the sheets, he liked Mark a lot but sometimes he understood why Aaron Sorkin wrote the script the way he did. “You never asked me to stay so I figured why stay if you didn’t want it.”
Truth among the bullshit.
Mark blinked in surprise, he had to ask if someone to stay? Really?
“I had ask you to stay? Apparently, my inner monologue is a literal statement now.”
“So is mine as it was,” Andrew responded.
“I said that aloud too?”
Andrew nodded by way of confirmation.
Mark shrugged, “Happens.”
The long awaited awkward pause followed their moment, the question allowed for some of the tension in the room to break but did nothing to force either man to confront the issue in the forefront of their minds.
Perhaps though it was for a reason, Andrew and Mark had not yet reached the point of intimacy. They had sex but it was meaningless, well to a certain extent meaningless. There was no strong connection, they were forming the foundations which is why it could get awkward to begin with but love was perhaps premature. Both men liked where this was going romantically, Andrew liked Mark, and Mark liked Andrew enough that he wanted to stay the night but not every night.
“So…”
Mark sighed, maybe this was not the best time to deal with this issue. As long as he stopped leaving wearing Mark’s clothes every time they met.
“Let’s just leave it at you can stay if we meet.”
Andrew let out a sigh of relief, “Okay.”
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Friend.
There was so many things wrong with that statement.
Andrew was no longer just a friend, or if they were ever friends to begin with.
4 Months, 12 days, 2 hours, and 23 minutes ago they had met at Jesse’s party, an hour later they had exchanged numbers, and four days later they had sex.
All things considered those were four very long days for people who had just met and had no intentions of getting to know each other. Well at least that had been Mark’s intent. The oops factor had come in when he invited Andrew back.
Or when Andrew had invited him to LA and then to coffee in Paris.
What cemented it though as something they needed to come clean about was last month when Andrew offered Mark to be his date at a party his parents were hosting.
Or that time Jesse walked in them, or that time that Andrew met Eduardo but what should have clued Mark in was the story by Gawker and the review in the NY Times about one of Andrew’s movies in which Mark was mentioned as being his date for the night.
Any of those instances should have been a clue. Mark was always a little slow on the when to issue a statement and when to ignore it side of the media. It wasn’t something for a long time he had to worry about.
So when cousins were giving you an invitation with an unspoken statement about how Andrew should be his date, it was a wake up call.
Mark closed his email and turned to see Andrew reading a script in his Harvard shirt.
“What are you doing next month around the 15th?”
Andrew looked up and shrugged, “I don’t think I have any movies that film around the holidays.”
“Want to go to a wedding and get a Facebook?”
The wedding made sense, the Facebook page was a little puzzling to Andrew. He wanted to question it without sounding like he opposed to the idea or appalled it. Truthfully, he wasn’t but telling Mark that might not prove healthy, this was the CEO and his page might be too overdone if he gave the man his total cooperation.
“What would I need the Facebook for?”
Mark shrugged trying to look as uninterested as possible, it was key to making this work that he played down any sense excitement or hope he may have. This was a game changer if it was received the proper way.
“I really- and you don’t have to use it if you’re not comfortable with the idea. I just if I date someone formally, they should have a Facebook page. What does it say about a CEO if his family doesn’t have a Facebook page?” Mark posed somewhat questionably in return.
Andrew decided to be cool as possible with his answer, deciding if Mark could be relaxed so could he. But he knew that both of them were squealing love sick teenage girls on the inside, “Want to setup it for me and then show me how to use it?”
Andrew left the next morning with his new Harvard shirt and a bunch of text messages from his manager about the Facebook release statement.
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-
This morning his Facebook status read: ‘Going to dinner with Mark Zuckerberg.’
It was liked by 5,000 people and some change. Andrew was close to hyperventilating. How did 5,000 have time to see that message in… 1 minute and 28 seconds since it became his Facebook status?!
“Help,” he whispered knowing that there was no one here to save him.
If their relationship was supposed to be a secret, it was not any longer.
-
“Mark?” his assistant asked peeping her way into the conference room doorway.
He looked up from his notes.
“We have gotten over sixty calls in the last hour from reporters asking about your relationship to Andrew Garfield,” she said nervously.
Mark swore, he had not taught him how to set it to friends only. Not that Mark was keeping this his dark secret or was embarrassed. He just knew chances are Andrew was having a meltdown right about now. In some ways Jesse and Andrew were similar in their ability to loose face when the first sign of trouble came around.
In short, he panicked like a school girl.
Running over to his laptop by his desk, he checked his friends page. Sure enough Andrew’s statement had been liked almost a million and a half times in two hours. About their plans to have a romantic evening.
Oh crap. Probably did not help that Andrew was listed as in a relationship with Mark confirmed along with being the top friend on his admin account. Yeah, that did not help the situation any at all.
“Find me one of the more competent lawyers and get Andrew’s publicist on the phone.”
“He doesn’t have one,” she reminded Mark.
Right, Mark had told him that should maybe consider getting one. They were still screening applications as of last week. Not exactly the time for this madness to be going down.
“Get our publicist, tell Tom he has to be Andrew’s mouthpiece,” Mark informed her.
“So joint statement?”
“Yes and fast before Andrew locks himself in the bedroom and never comes out again.”
This was not exactly the start to the day that Mark had in mind. He figured they would have dinner, have a good time at his place, sleep it off, and maybe have a talk about their future.
His plans did not consist of the entire universe getting involved in their relationship only days after they decided they were going to be in a relationship. For that matter, Mark had not even told his parents or his friends and he was sure Andrew had not either.
Great way for his family to find out.
“Hey Mark?” someone asked holding up a phone.
“What?” he asked dryly, he was not in the mood for this.
“Your mother is wanting an explanation about why you haven’t been answering your cell phone or your emails. Also, she wants to know who Andrew is and why had she not heard about him earlier.”
Totally not his day. Not at all.
Mark groaned and ran a hand through his hair, he was going to have to talk to her at some point. Might as well get it over with even if he was sorely tempted to pretend there was a dropped connection. Sadly this was a land line and she absolutely would not buy it.
“Hey Mom…”
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*shrugs*
In fact, I plan to be here for a long long time.
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