the way we breathe (3/3)
Title: The Way We Breathe
Author: You're looking at her.
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: R
Summary: TSN/Some Boys Don't Leave crossover. Mark's method of getting Eduardo to forgive him is to live on Eduardo's apartment floor. Post-deposition.
Word Count: 2535
A/N: I don't own whatever's not supposed to be mine and I suck at proof reading.
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
Wardo’s always surprised when he sees Mark asleep on his apartment floor. On those nights, he sleeps with his head on the foot of the bed so he could see through the door whenever he wakes up to the accidental whistles of Mark’s steady breathing through his lips and teeth.
Come from sleep, Eduardo's movements are all sluggish, and after the first three steps, he gives up on trying to wear the stealth. He doesn’t even spare a grunt or a gasp or a sign of discomfort when he falls forward on top of Mark, his thighs straddling, rubbing against Mark’s hips, with hands spread out and planted on either side of Mark’s head.
Mark shifts - wiggles awake, and he’s the very sign of disturbed. Eduardo can’t shake the fond out of his face. The other’s eyes start to squint, adjust with the lack of light and the abundance of Wardo hovering over his face, and all of a sudden it looks like he’s about to cry.
He clears his throat and pushes himself up, propped up by his elbows on the floor.
“Wardo -“
Eduardo puts their lips together with a deeper bow of his head, and an immediate beat after, he floors Mark, presses against him, teeths him. And fuck it’s painful, and the weight burns in Eduardo’s chest, and already he can’t breathe. He’s still telling himself that it’s too soon for him to even want this.
And he knows so, so clearly that he needs to stop pushing and pulling back, but he pulls back anyway. “I’m sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.”
The weight on top of Mark vanishes, and it wakes him up like a vice grip around his throat. He sits up, his hand flies to his chest and rubs on the spot where he knows his heart is hammering against. He can hear Eduardo pace down the hall, far from Mark, and lightly hit his forehead on the wall by the front door.
Mark wouldn’t ever want to admit it, but the amount of time they spend still the way they are feels longer than it really is, and when he realizes it, he starts to stand up. He grips his wrist and runs his hand up his arm. Mark walks to Eduardo, who has his hands on the wall as well.
He starts with a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder. It rests there, but then it grips and pulls. “Wardo,” he starts, “Wardo - Wardo, come here.” Mark’s hand moves up to Eduardo’s neck instead, and for a few moments, it works: the other boy latches on to him, arm around Mark’s shoulder, his free hand cupping his face. Mark relishes in the feeling, basks in the mutual want, and there’s a thud in his chest that’s letting him feel pleased that he was the one who walked himself into this kiss.
-
Moments pass, and Eduardo has his back against Mark’s chest, and mark’s back is pressed against the wall. Mark’s gotten used to the heat packed up in front of him and the cold from the cement. He lets Eduardo sit between his legs, and he puts an arm around the front of his shoulders.
Eduardo cranes his neck back to look at Mark, his eyes all half-lidded. He reaches up, lets his fingertips trail down Mark’s face from his cheek and down to his jaw. He whispers to Mark, “Sleep in my bed.”
Mark’s sure that he’s never going to sleep now. The tired that lingered in his eyes stay missing, but he lets Eduardo pull him up by his hand. When Eduardo starts padding towards his bedroom, Mark keeps his hand at the small of his back, barely touch his body, a hover on top of his undershirt.
He takes a while to get into the bed - he looks at it suspiciously, and then at Eduardo, though he did realize that it’s too late to be doubting if things were actually real. The other boy lifts the covers for Mark, and he’s already on his side, ready to catch Mark in his arms, and he does. He pulls himself closer to Mark and rests his hand on top of his waist with their faces all close, noses touching.
Eduardo makes a long, deep sound from the back of his throat, and Mark categorizes it as contentment and files it away for safe keeping under the file name ‘just in case’. Eduardo looks at him sleepily, and Mark’s breath hitches when he actually musters enough courage to lift a hand and feather above Eduardo’s features.
The smile of Eduardo’s face is softsoftsoft under Mark’s fingertips. Eduardo asks him, “Did you miss me?”
Mark sucks his lips in and bury his teeth in them. He nods, urgent and sincere, caught in a tangent of emotions that make him too truthful a man, but it makes Eduardo’s smile wider but not the least bit sleepier. Mark thinks it’s his favorite smile of his.
His lips brushes over Mark’s, just a light press and slide of their kiss fitting together, and as light as it was, it makes Mark’s eyes flutter closed. “I did, too,” Eduardo breathes right on top of the pink skin on Mark’s mouth. “Even when you first arrived and I was so angry, I still missed you.”
The breath that Mark lets out comes with a needy whimper, and the response is alarming and quick: Eduardo catches the sound with his lips, a low hum that makes Mark’s ears buzz, and a tighter grip on Mark’s side.
Mark can’t stop the soft noises he makes at the push of Eduardo’s tongue, and the way his hands clung to his neck should be embarrassing, but he’s so lost - lost in Eduardo, but not in the way he was all those days in Palo Alto spent distracted by the blurs of code, and Mark really wishes he didn’t have to remember.
He likes being kissed by Eduardo. The way he does is all deep and slow, and Mark doesn’t need to be convinced that Eduardo has probably mastered the art of drawing out all the moans and moons out of him. But sometimes Mark can’t help what he wants: he brings his hand down to Eduardo’s shoulder and pushes himself on top of the other.
After that it’s all teeth, teeth, teeth, swollen lips, and bruised necks. The friction makes Mark feel like an animal, and Eduardo’s moans a beast, and for a second the thinks that the way his fingers drag harshly around the angles of Eduardo’s body sear with hothotheat that makes him arch forward.
Mark is the way Mark is, and he registers in his he'd each way Eduardo pants at the bite of each inch of tender skin, the lift of his hips when his boxer shorts push off, and the low hum that shudders at his throat when he tugs on Mark's pants, and he stores it all away to memory - writes it down in code in his mind, so that he would be the only one to ever understand and read Wardo this way. He would be the only one to ever hear how animalistic Eduardo gets when they're pressed skin against skin like they are - like complete abandon against Mark when he spreads his legs for him.
And Mark can't control himself either, can't control the gasp that escapes him and the rock of his hips, because Eduardo's still so good at touching him, and it feels like he's been waiting for so long, and he hopes that if he ever gets around to telling Wardo, that he'll be believed when Mark says that it'll always be him - god, always.
He paints Eduardo's body all, all over with the brush of his lips with all the apologies and affection he's never going to be able to say because his pride won't let him. Mark takes it all in, takes all the symphonies that drawl out of Eduardo's perfect mouth as acceptance and I want you back, as they pushed each other further on the edge with their arms around each other, breathing hot and damp air right at their ears.
Everything - the pleasure, the pressure, the sting - it all fits back into Mark’s mind like a memory he forgot he had. Mark never wants to forget again.
-
Mark wakes up alone in the apartment, and he can’t decide whether or not he likes the cold that’s left with him or not. He grasps the sheets in time with his breath, tries to find in the turns and cuts of his mind what he’s supposed to do next, because this isn’t part of the plan - if ever, the plan had went ahead and skipped a few steps.
He can’t decide if he minds that or not, either, so his only solution is to roll out of Eduardo’s bed and code. Soon, all things are a blur, because he keeps finding ways to improve The Wall and the fake Facebook account that Chris and Dustin made keeps bugging him with pictures of cats.
Inevitably, Eduardo arrives - home - and Mark compares the sound of the moving gears of the lock on the door to the crashing sound of breaking glass in his mind. Mark is still on the floor, laptop open on his lap while his legs were splayed out. The saddest look is on his face when their eyes meet with Eduardo still at the door - lips slightly pursed out, brows almost meeting.
Eduardo meets his eyes while he's still standing by the door, and he's wearing his North Face jacket, so Mark knows he had opted not to go to work. Wardo's eyes drop back to the floor, and Mark notices that he wets his lips first before he locks the door again.
The air feels thin around them as Eduardo walked towards Mark and slips down to sit on the floor, back against the wall opposite from the other boy. His longs legs fold with his hands on his knees and his feet are positioned next to Mark.
Mark's hands turn into fists on his lap and his eyes keep switching from them and to Eduardo. He heard him take a deep breath and say, "What're you doing on the floor?" His brows are slightly raised, like he's expecting something, and his eyes and smile are all soft, and Mark can't remember being looked at that by anybody else. "I can't remember the last time I've gone over this with a broom."
He replies, surprising himself. "I code better on the floor." Mark even throws in a shrug, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
Wardo breathes out a smile, nodding. "Right, right. I'm not disrupting any work, then?" He nods his head towards the open notebook on the floor next to Mark, and there's a picture of a cat hanging off a chandelier opened.
Mark looks at it with the corner of his eye and tilts his head to the side and mumbles under his breath, "That requires a lot of coding, along with bullshit from Dustin and Chris."
But Wardo isn't even looking at the picture anymore - "I see they haven't changed, then."
The other boy takes a deep breath and licks his lips. "Unfortunately, that would be a no," Mark says, pausing because he looks up and lets Eduardo stare into him. "For me."
Silence pierces through the air again and Mark supposes that it's not all bad. Not when Eduardo reached out and touches his knee instead, but that version of serenity rips apart when he opens his mouth: "Mark, you need to get out of my apartment."
Mark thinks that maybe his Wardo's gone insane - sure there was some kind of law, even a simple street sign that said you can't go from pushing and pulling sososo close and to pushing sososo close. Mark thinks this so much, but it still feels like a stab to his insides. His brows frown, eyes narrow.
Eduardo's smile grows wider, and wow - that's should be the very definition of cruel. To that smile, Mark will never apologize to, never confess to, never be honest to. If Eduardo keeps smiling like that for more than the next three seconds, Mark considers standing up and leaving - he's needed in the Facebook offices, where people won't smile at him too sweetly and tell him to leave.
"Don't make that face," Eduardo tells him, all concerned. "You're jumping to conclusions, I can see it in your face." He even laughs, and at that, Mark draws his face a blank.
Mark just keeps blinking angrily at him. What is he supposed to say to that?
Wardo's hand bounces on his knee for a moment before he pushes himself up to his feet. "Come on, I've got buyers on the way, and I can't have you looking like furniture on the floor." And then he smiles down on Mark, offering a hand before he adds, "You can stay in the room."
Mark averts his gaze from Eduardo as he gives himself a moment to piece everything together; he looks up again, and he tries to send Eduardo a mental message, "We're okay?" The slight tilt of Eduardo's head and how he's still holding out his hand answers him.
-
Eduardo still gets Mark wrong from time to time, but they're all just human mistakes and the most shit he gets from the Facebook CEO nowadays is an annoyed look and a shake of his head. The only way Eduardo knows how to fix it is a kiss to ease the creases on his forehead. At least he gets that part right.
He moves out of his apartment and into a new one - a better one in the middle of the city in one of the high-rise condominiums. Wardo doesn't remember when he decided he would be staying permanently in Los Angeles, but he has the starching feeling that it was when the boy he loved lived on his floor.
Mark comes over often, and sometimes he's still told to get the fuck out of the apartment, but it starts to happen less and less. Mark has left his mark (for lack of a better word) all over: the unusual amount of hoods next to the suits in Eduardo's closet, the level in the cupboard filled with Red Vines and canned tuna, the bigger bed - Mark's smell when he fleets in and out of the rooms (Eduardo had sniffed and asked what it was, and Mark had told him, "Facebook.") and the post-its left all over.
Eventually, Mark finds other ways to say sorry, while Eduardo sat him down and apologized for not understanding. It's all okay after that, and Eduardo feels like 10 years have been taken off of him. He still thanks Mark for never leaving.
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
Author: You're looking at her.
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: R
Summary: TSN/Some Boys Don't Leave crossover. Mark's method of getting Eduardo to forgive him is to live on Eduardo's apartment floor. Post-deposition.
Word Count: 2535
A/N: I don't own whatever's not supposed to be mine and I suck at proof reading.
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3
Wardo’s always surprised when he sees Mark asleep on his apartment floor. On those nights, he sleeps with his head on the foot of the bed so he could see through the door whenever he wakes up to the accidental whistles of Mark’s steady breathing through his lips and teeth.
Come from sleep, Eduardo's movements are all sluggish, and after the first three steps, he gives up on trying to wear the stealth. He doesn’t even spare a grunt or a gasp or a sign of discomfort when he falls forward on top of Mark, his thighs straddling, rubbing against Mark’s hips, with hands spread out and planted on either side of Mark’s head.
Mark shifts - wiggles awake, and he’s the very sign of disturbed. Eduardo can’t shake the fond out of his face. The other’s eyes start to squint, adjust with the lack of light and the abundance of Wardo hovering over his face, and all of a sudden it looks like he’s about to cry.
He clears his throat and pushes himself up, propped up by his elbows on the floor.
“Wardo -“
Eduardo puts their lips together with a deeper bow of his head, and an immediate beat after, he floors Mark, presses against him, teeths him. And fuck it’s painful, and the weight burns in Eduardo’s chest, and already he can’t breathe. He’s still telling himself that it’s too soon for him to even want this.
And he knows so, so clearly that he needs to stop pushing and pulling back, but he pulls back anyway. “I’m sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.”
The weight on top of Mark vanishes, and it wakes him up like a vice grip around his throat. He sits up, his hand flies to his chest and rubs on the spot where he knows his heart is hammering against. He can hear Eduardo pace down the hall, far from Mark, and lightly hit his forehead on the wall by the front door.
Mark wouldn’t ever want to admit it, but the amount of time they spend still the way they are feels longer than it really is, and when he realizes it, he starts to stand up. He grips his wrist and runs his hand up his arm. Mark walks to Eduardo, who has his hands on the wall as well.
He starts with a hand on Eduardo’s shoulder. It rests there, but then it grips and pulls. “Wardo,” he starts, “Wardo - Wardo, come here.” Mark’s hand moves up to Eduardo’s neck instead, and for a few moments, it works: the other boy latches on to him, arm around Mark’s shoulder, his free hand cupping his face. Mark relishes in the feeling, basks in the mutual want, and there’s a thud in his chest that’s letting him feel pleased that he was the one who walked himself into this kiss.
-
Moments pass, and Eduardo has his back against Mark’s chest, and mark’s back is pressed against the wall. Mark’s gotten used to the heat packed up in front of him and the cold from the cement. He lets Eduardo sit between his legs, and he puts an arm around the front of his shoulders.
Eduardo cranes his neck back to look at Mark, his eyes all half-lidded. He reaches up, lets his fingertips trail down Mark’s face from his cheek and down to his jaw. He whispers to Mark, “Sleep in my bed.”
Mark’s sure that he’s never going to sleep now. The tired that lingered in his eyes stay missing, but he lets Eduardo pull him up by his hand. When Eduardo starts padding towards his bedroom, Mark keeps his hand at the small of his back, barely touch his body, a hover on top of his undershirt.
He takes a while to get into the bed - he looks at it suspiciously, and then at Eduardo, though he did realize that it’s too late to be doubting if things were actually real. The other boy lifts the covers for Mark, and he’s already on his side, ready to catch Mark in his arms, and he does. He pulls himself closer to Mark and rests his hand on top of his waist with their faces all close, noses touching.
Eduardo makes a long, deep sound from the back of his throat, and Mark categorizes it as contentment and files it away for safe keeping under the file name ‘just in case’. Eduardo looks at him sleepily, and Mark’s breath hitches when he actually musters enough courage to lift a hand and feather above Eduardo’s features.
The smile of Eduardo’s face is softsoftsoft under Mark’s fingertips. Eduardo asks him, “Did you miss me?”
Mark sucks his lips in and bury his teeth in them. He nods, urgent and sincere, caught in a tangent of emotions that make him too truthful a man, but it makes Eduardo’s smile wider but not the least bit sleepier. Mark thinks it’s his favorite smile of his.
His lips brushes over Mark’s, just a light press and slide of their kiss fitting together, and as light as it was, it makes Mark’s eyes flutter closed. “I did, too,” Eduardo breathes right on top of the pink skin on Mark’s mouth. “Even when you first arrived and I was so angry, I still missed you.”
The breath that Mark lets out comes with a needy whimper, and the response is alarming and quick: Eduardo catches the sound with his lips, a low hum that makes Mark’s ears buzz, and a tighter grip on Mark’s side.
Mark can’t stop the soft noises he makes at the push of Eduardo’s tongue, and the way his hands clung to his neck should be embarrassing, but he’s so lost - lost in Eduardo, but not in the way he was all those days in Palo Alto spent distracted by the blurs of code, and Mark really wishes he didn’t have to remember.
He likes being kissed by Eduardo. The way he does is all deep and slow, and Mark doesn’t need to be convinced that Eduardo has probably mastered the art of drawing out all the moans and moons out of him. But sometimes Mark can’t help what he wants: he brings his hand down to Eduardo’s shoulder and pushes himself on top of the other.
After that it’s all teeth, teeth, teeth, swollen lips, and bruised necks. The friction makes Mark feel like an animal, and Eduardo’s moans a beast, and for a second the thinks that the way his fingers drag harshly around the angles of Eduardo’s body sear with hothotheat that makes him arch forward.
Mark is the way Mark is, and he registers in his he'd each way Eduardo pants at the bite of each inch of tender skin, the lift of his hips when his boxer shorts push off, and the low hum that shudders at his throat when he tugs on Mark's pants, and he stores it all away to memory - writes it down in code in his mind, so that he would be the only one to ever understand and read Wardo this way. He would be the only one to ever hear how animalistic Eduardo gets when they're pressed skin against skin like they are - like complete abandon against Mark when he spreads his legs for him.
And Mark can't control himself either, can't control the gasp that escapes him and the rock of his hips, because Eduardo's still so good at touching him, and it feels like he's been waiting for so long, and he hopes that if he ever gets around to telling Wardo, that he'll be believed when Mark says that it'll always be him - god, always.
He paints Eduardo's body all, all over with the brush of his lips with all the apologies and affection he's never going to be able to say because his pride won't let him. Mark takes it all in, takes all the symphonies that drawl out of Eduardo's perfect mouth as acceptance and I want you back, as they pushed each other further on the edge with their arms around each other, breathing hot and damp air right at their ears.
Everything - the pleasure, the pressure, the sting - it all fits back into Mark’s mind like a memory he forgot he had. Mark never wants to forget again.
-
Mark wakes up alone in the apartment, and he can’t decide whether or not he likes the cold that’s left with him or not. He grasps the sheets in time with his breath, tries to find in the turns and cuts of his mind what he’s supposed to do next, because this isn’t part of the plan - if ever, the plan had went ahead and skipped a few steps.
He can’t decide if he minds that or not, either, so his only solution is to roll out of Eduardo’s bed and code. Soon, all things are a blur, because he keeps finding ways to improve The Wall and the fake Facebook account that Chris and Dustin made keeps bugging him with pictures of cats.
Inevitably, Eduardo arrives - home - and Mark compares the sound of the moving gears of the lock on the door to the crashing sound of breaking glass in his mind. Mark is still on the floor, laptop open on his lap while his legs were splayed out. The saddest look is on his face when their eyes meet with Eduardo still at the door - lips slightly pursed out, brows almost meeting.
Eduardo meets his eyes while he's still standing by the door, and he's wearing his North Face jacket, so Mark knows he had opted not to go to work. Wardo's eyes drop back to the floor, and Mark notices that he wets his lips first before he locks the door again.
The air feels thin around them as Eduardo walked towards Mark and slips down to sit on the floor, back against the wall opposite from the other boy. His longs legs fold with his hands on his knees and his feet are positioned next to Mark.
Mark's hands turn into fists on his lap and his eyes keep switching from them and to Eduardo. He heard him take a deep breath and say, "What're you doing on the floor?" His brows are slightly raised, like he's expecting something, and his eyes and smile are all soft, and Mark can't remember being looked at that by anybody else. "I can't remember the last time I've gone over this with a broom."
He replies, surprising himself. "I code better on the floor." Mark even throws in a shrug, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
Wardo breathes out a smile, nodding. "Right, right. I'm not disrupting any work, then?" He nods his head towards the open notebook on the floor next to Mark, and there's a picture of a cat hanging off a chandelier opened.
Mark looks at it with the corner of his eye and tilts his head to the side and mumbles under his breath, "That requires a lot of coding, along with bullshit from Dustin and Chris."
But Wardo isn't even looking at the picture anymore - "I see they haven't changed, then."
The other boy takes a deep breath and licks his lips. "Unfortunately, that would be a no," Mark says, pausing because he looks up and lets Eduardo stare into him. "For me."
Silence pierces through the air again and Mark supposes that it's not all bad. Not when Eduardo reached out and touches his knee instead, but that version of serenity rips apart when he opens his mouth: "Mark, you need to get out of my apartment."
Mark thinks that maybe his Wardo's gone insane - sure there was some kind of law, even a simple street sign that said you can't go from pushing and pulling sososo close and to pushing sososo close. Mark thinks this so much, but it still feels like a stab to his insides. His brows frown, eyes narrow.
Eduardo's smile grows wider, and wow - that's should be the very definition of cruel. To that smile, Mark will never apologize to, never confess to, never be honest to. If Eduardo keeps smiling like that for more than the next three seconds, Mark considers standing up and leaving - he's needed in the Facebook offices, where people won't smile at him too sweetly and tell him to leave.
"Don't make that face," Eduardo tells him, all concerned. "You're jumping to conclusions, I can see it in your face." He even laughs, and at that, Mark draws his face a blank.
Mark just keeps blinking angrily at him. What is he supposed to say to that?
Wardo's hand bounces on his knee for a moment before he pushes himself up to his feet. "Come on, I've got buyers on the way, and I can't have you looking like furniture on the floor." And then he smiles down on Mark, offering a hand before he adds, "You can stay in the room."
Mark averts his gaze from Eduardo as he gives himself a moment to piece everything together; he looks up again, and he tries to send Eduardo a mental message, "We're okay?" The slight tilt of Eduardo's head and how he's still holding out his hand answers him.
-
Eduardo still gets Mark wrong from time to time, but they're all just human mistakes and the most shit he gets from the Facebook CEO nowadays is an annoyed look and a shake of his head. The only way Eduardo knows how to fix it is a kiss to ease the creases on his forehead. At least he gets that part right.
He moves out of his apartment and into a new one - a better one in the middle of the city in one of the high-rise condominiums. Wardo doesn't remember when he decided he would be staying permanently in Los Angeles, but he has the starching feeling that it was when the boy he loved lived on his floor.
Mark comes over often, and sometimes he's still told to get the fuck out of the apartment, but it starts to happen less and less. Mark has left his mark (for lack of a better word) all over: the unusual amount of hoods next to the suits in Eduardo's closet, the level in the cupboard filled with Red Vines and canned tuna, the bigger bed - Mark's smell when he fleets in and out of the rooms (Eduardo had sniffed and asked what it was, and Mark had told him, "Facebook.") and the post-its left all over.
Eventually, Mark finds other ways to say sorry, while Eduardo sat him down and apologized for not understanding. It's all okay after that, and Eduardo feels like 10 years have been taken off of him. He still thanks Mark for never leaving.
PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3