[fic] i practiced falling off buildings and out windows, 1/4

Jan 27, 2012 03:03


i practiced falling off buildings and out windows
( masterpost)
Dustin really can’t emphasize enough how much he did not anticipate this. Like, at literally no point in his life did he think he would ever end up in a situation even remotely resembling this one.

Not that he’s complaining, as such.

He’s really, really not complaining.

His head is curled against Mark’s shoulder, and someone’s fingers are trailing sleepily up and down his spine and-well, unexpected and bad aren’t the same thing in the least. And frankly, Dustin would rather press a sleepy kiss to the side of Mark’s neck, let Chris whisper in his ear, and fall asleep.

--

It starts when Chris doesn’t come back from Chicago.

Dustin’s not entirely sure why he expected him to, other than that life without Chris just wasn’t something he ever wanted. But the fact remains that Chris doesn’t come back.

He goes to New York with his boyfriend, whose name is Curtis or Sam or something equally stupid that Dustin hasn’t even bothered to memorize. He dislikes all of Chris’s boyfriends, kind of on principle. It’s not like any of them are good enough for him, anyway.

And he’s jealous.

There’s that too.

Dustin is man enough to admit that he’s in love with his best friend, just like he’s man enough to wear pink, or get drunk and sing karaoke, or cry, or any number of other activities in which he occasionally engages and which serve only to reinforce his masculinity.

Like staying up until four in the morning playing video games and drinking shitty beer with Mark, even though they’re both so fucking rich they could get wasted off top-shelf vodka.

And leaning over, still half-drunk, to press a sloppy kiss to Mark’s cheek-one that misses spectacularly when Mark learns toward him and starts to ask something (presumably, what he’s doing).

Shortly thereafter, Dustin realizes that, for two people who didn’t really expect to end up with their lips touching at all, they’re not exactly making an effort to pull away, either. If anything, Mark’s moving his mouth gently, almost imperceptibly against Dustin’s, and his hand is ghosting across Dustin’s knee. It’s warm and nice and Dustin hasn’t been kissed in an embarrassingly long time-as it turns out, neither being CTO of an enormous social networking site nor his own start-up is especially conducive to, well, dating-and Mark’s lips are soft but persistent against his and okay, fuck it, Dustin’s going to kiss him back.

He’s too drunk and tired and fucking lonely to care about the possible downsides of making out with his-not the best friend he’s ever had, but the best functional friendship he has right now, definitely. Whatever.

Dustin opens his mouth just slightly and feels Mark respond. It’s a little sloppy, neither of them properly awake or properly sober, but it’s an oddly comfortable kiss.

Kind of like their friendship, he thinks stupidly. It shouldn’t work at all, but here they are, drinking and hanging out and, okay, yeah, kissing. Dustin’s not particularly inclined to stop, because-because a lot of things.

He curls a hand around the back of Mark’s neck and pulls him a little closer, turning it into a proper kiss with lips and tongues and-did Mark just drag his teeth over Dustin’s lower lip? Cause he would be okay with that happening again. In reply, Dustin drags Mark closer, nearly into his lap, and pulls their mouths apart so that he can press a line of messy kisses down the side of his neck.

Mark’s skin tastes kind of like it smells, of sweat and the office and drugstore bodywash. (It’s not what Dustin thinks Chris would taste like; he would probably be cleanliness and soap and the sting of aftershave.)

When Mark finally pulls away, eyes wide, he doesn’t say anything. The silence is thick around them, as each of them is too drunk to process what just happened but too sober to just ramble at each other.

Finally, Dustin manages to wrap his brain around words. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?” he says, kind of wishing he could just dissolve into the sofa or turn invisible or be diliss-disli-whatever the thing from Harry Potter is. Basically he wishes that Mark wasn’t just staring at him, looking like he hasn’t processed anything since they broke apart and making Dustin feel distinctly uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Mark says slowly, when the question has lingered unanswered for so long that Dustin is legitimately considering just suffocating himself with the sofa cushions to escape. “We can talk tomorrow.”

“Can I crash here?” Dustin asks, really acutely aware that he’s nowhere close to sober enough to be driving-he just made out with Mark, for fuck’s sake.

Mark doesn’t dignify that with a response, which Dustin kind of deserves, considering how many times he’s just passed out-more often from exhaustion than from alcohol, recently-on the couch without even bothering to ask first. He just picks up the throw wadded in a chair and tosses it at Dustin, who lets it hit him in the head and drape over him, too lazy to move.

He hears a soft exhale that sounds almost like laughter, and then padding footsteps fading as they ascend the stairs. Eventually, he finds the willpower to pull the throw off his head and stretch out on the couch, not even bothering to look around for a pillow before he falls asleep.

~

Dustin wakes some-not nearly enough-hours later to the disturbingly familiar sound of Mark fighting with a coffee maker he uses almost only when Dustin is there. Like the crazy person he so clearly is, Mark prefers waking up early and copious amounts of red bull to sleeping in and drinking coffee even when he’s hungover.

Granted, neither of them could possibly be very hungover, but Dustin’s still a little bitter at being roused before noon.

“Mark,” he grouses, his throat too fuzzy to actually yell.

“What?” Mark snaps from the kitchen.

“Why are you making noise this early?” Dustin says, briefly considering the idea of sitting up before dismissing it as requiring entirely too much effort.

“I’m making you coffee, asshole,” Mark replies. Dustin rolls his eyes; he would gladly have suffered through a red bull if it meant getting to sleep for another couple hours. Instead of answering Mark, he just yanks the blanket up over his head and tries to go back to sleep.

Of course, Mark’s kind of a dick, so that doesn’t prove very effective.

Within moments of Dustin having nearly dozed off, he feels Mark prodding at his shoulder. “I know you’re awake,” he says. Dustin tries to ignore him for a few moments, but it’s horribly ineffective. Mark has an absolutely terrifying ability to function like a real person-well, as much as he ever functions like a real person-on very little sleep. It’s kind of disgusting, really.

After enduring the poking for a few moments, Dustin pulls the blanket off his head and grumbles “I was asleep until you started physically assaulting me.”

Mark just rolls his eyes. “Don’t be such a wuss.”

“We aren’t all robots who can live our robot lives without sleep, you know.” Dustin manages to arrange himself in rough approximation of a seated position while he’s talking, but actually feeling alive is probably a few cups of coffee away at best.

Mark flops down in the chair to Dustin’s right and grabs his-a-laptop off the coffee table. Dustin drowses and drinks the coffee slowly, watching Mark work, and neither of them says anything about having kissed the night before. After a good while-his whole cup of coffee and some pointless sitting after that-he stands up to leave.

“I should go home,” he announces, because Mark’s too buried in his computer to notice anything else going on without it being pointed out to him.

“What?” Mark says, sounding dazed. “You don’t need to go.”

Dustin just stares at him, slightly dumbfounded.

“I do actually have my own place to live, you know. There are houseplants and everything.”

Mark snickers a little, the noise closer to a giggle than Dustin thinks he would admit. (It’s cute, though.)

In response, Dustin scowls a little bit. “Maybe I’ll get a fish. I could keep a fish alive.”

“Please,” Mark says, and Dustin reluctantly concedes-at least, to himself-that he probably couldn’t actually keep a fish alive. But he doesn’t plan on ever mentioning that to Mark.

“See you on Monday,” he says instead.

Once Dustin’s climbed into his car and pulled out of the driveway, he vaguely remembered telling Mark they’d talk about the whole kissing thing today, but the idea of turning around and driving back and going inside and talking to Mark seems difficult in a way that their friendship hasn’t ever been before. Everything’s been good with them for a while now, in a way it wasn’t when they were at Harvard and it definitely wasn’t after the dilution and all the anger and mistrust. But that’s somehow faded into comfort and companionship and Mark’s probably the best friend Dustin has these days.

Maybe he should just wait and see if Mark brings it up.

~

After another couple cups of coffee-and a reasonably long nap-Dustin is in touch with reality enough to admit that Mark is never going to bring it up. After all, he saw the way Mark looked at Eduardo, and he has it on good authority (Eduardo’s, that is, via Chris) that Mark never brought that up.

And that was Eduardo.

So Dustin’s choice is really a lot more like choosing between just never having it mentioned again and actually bringing it up himself, which isn’t particularly pleasant.

Price he pays for making out with Mark Zuckerberg the emotionally constipated, he supposes.

It’s kind of strange for him to realize how reluctant he is to bring it up-and not just with Mark, with anyone-because three years ago he would’ve just chugged a bit of beer and tugged at Mark’s hoodie until he looked up from his computer, then just asked it point-blank, so, we made out last night. What happens now?

It’s not quite such an easy thing to pull off as it would have been when he was eighteen and didn’t know what it looks like to watch your best friends pine away for each other and then screw it up so horribly that it’ll be a miracle if they ever speak to each other again. He’s wary now, he knows what’s at stake.

He only put it off for a little while, just a couple days, really. He waits until they both actually have time to sit down and look at each other (Chris would be proud of him for that, he thinks), and he waits until after they’ve ordered their food at the restaurant he dragged Mark to against his will, and then Dustin looks him square in the eye and says, “So, last weekend we kissed.”

Mark seems a little taken aback, like it didn’t really occur to him that Dustin might want to talk about that.

“Yeah,” he says. “Um.” Dustin swallows and hopes desperately that Mark will continue talking, because he has no idea where he wants to take the conversation from there at all. When, after a lingering and painfully awkward silence, it becomes clear that he’s not going to, Dustin speaks.

“So…” he opens, letting the word trail off.

“What do you want me to say?” Mark finally snaps. “It couldn’t possibly be more obvious that you want me to say something but I have no idea what! Will you just spit it the fuck out?”

Dustin chokes on his water a little; Mark doesn’t get visibly, openly angry very often. He coughs a few times before he manages to say anything. “I don’t know either!”

In the ensuing-slightly less uncomfortable-silence, Mark bites his lip. “Is this a date?” he asks.

“What?” Dustin spits out. “No!” He runs his palms up and down the legs of his jeans, suddenly a little uncomfortable with the vehemence of his objection. What if Mark actually wanted it to be a date? That could screw everything up, and then Dustin wouldn’t have anyone left.

“Okay, good,” Mark says, and Dustin can breathe again. “We should just pretend it never happened,” he continues.

Dustin grins, and says, “What happened?”

~

It actually works, too. Dustin doesn’t think about kissing Mark and-as far as he knows-Mark doesn’t think about kissing him, either. They both go about their lives (which, for Dustin, means facebook half the time and spending the other half of his life trying to make a crazy idea into something that’s actual functional).

So, yeah, he’s a little too busy to be thinking about anything other than work very often.

But they really do manage to go about a week and a half without any fallout from their makeout session.

And then it’s Thursday night at facebook, and they’ve successfully rolled out an update, which means relaxation and beer (for a little while, at least). Dustin leans against the wall and watches his employees-most of them older than he is-as they drink and socialize and he feels so much older than they are. He’s been here so much longer, since it was just a dream in their suite and him and Mark staying up all night coding and sheer panic at every change they made to the site. Back then, they didn’t need beer at their update celebrations, because the sheer joy of having pulled it off was enough to make them drunk with happiness-especially when their exhaustion was factored in.

Dustin’s also watching Mark from across the room. Mark’s sitting at a desk that’s not his, drinking a beer slowly and tapping away at the computer. It’s a picture Dustin’s seen countless times, achingly familiar and painfully lonely. The problem is that he remembers when there used to be someone who would-who could-drag Mark away from that, and the fact is that he’s nowhere near as good at that as Eduardo was (or even as good as Chris was).

He misses Eduardo. Not as much as he misses Chris, because missing Chris is something he does like breathing-all the time, and he notices when it’s not happening-but he does miss Eduardo’s stupid suits and stupid hair and stupid, stupid smiley affection for all of them.

It’s just-things work better with Eduardo around. He smoothes down the rough edges; he makes Mark sleep and stands in the middle when Chris and Mark butt heads, each too stubborn to concede an inch to the other. Things are just less cohesive without him.

Thinking about Eduardo is easier than thinking about Chris.

A touch against his arm startles him. Not that it’s a bad thing-letting his thoughts get too caught up in Chris tends to lead to unfortunate things, like consuming lots of alcohol and making phone calls he regrets in the morning.

Mark’s standing next to him, holding a beer and watching the floor intently. Dustin doesn’t say anything, and in lieu of speaking, Mark just drains his bottle and sets it on the desk next to them.

He turns to look at Dustin, still not saying anything, and then leans over and kisses him quickly.

No one’s paying attention to them; they’re in a reasonably secluded corner and the festivities in the middle of the fishbowl are far more interesting. The kiss is the exact opposite of what Dustin was expecting, mostly because he didn’t expect Mark to do anything even resembling kissing, and he finds himself just staring at Mark stupidly for a moment.

But he doesn’t actually protest, or object, or in any other way indicate that he had a problem with it, so he’s marginally less surprised when Mark grabs his wrist, pulls him into the hallway that leads to the bathrooms, and presses him against the wall with a significantly more intense kiss.

And, okay, it’s pretty nice.

Well “nice” might be understating the matter rather significantly.

Because Mark is pushing him hard against the wall and licking into his mouth and wrapping a hand around the back of his neck to drag their faces even closer-which Dustin didn’t really think was possible but okay-and Dustin’s got his arms around Mark’s back and, well, one of his hands might be under Mark’s shirt.

That’s a definitely possibility.

Not that Mark seems to be complaining, as he has the hand that isn’t curling into the hair at Dustin’s nape trailing up his side under his t-shirt and then he’s scraping his fingernails lightly down Dustin’s spine and oh god Dustin has no idea what’s happening but he doesn’t particularly want to stop. It’s easy to let his tongue play against Mark’s and tighten his arms so that their hips press together-Mark makes a slightly choked noise that’s so much hotter than it has any right to be that Dustin’s pretty sure his brain shorts out a little bit.

Mark responds by grabbing Dustin’s ass and grinding against him.

Apparently they’re going to do this.

Wait, says a tiny voice in the back of Dustin’s mind-probably tiny because of how much of him is focused on dragging his lips and tongue along Mark’s jaw-do you really want to have sex in a hall where anyone can walk past you?

(The voice sounds a little like Chris, but he’s too distracted to analyze that as well as he probably should.)

Dustin pushes Mark away from him just enough to get the leverage he needs to haul him into the men’s bathroom and slam him against the inside door of the closest stall. He seals their mouths back together, pulling a little at Mark’s lower lip with his teeth. The noise Mark makes is-well, Dustin doesn’t really know what to do with that except roll his hips and try to get him to make it again.

Then-this is where Dustin kind of loses his ability to think coherently-Mark’s somehow gotten the upper hand and Dustin has his back against the side of the stall and Mark’s on his knees and Jesus fucking Christ what is happening.

Mark fiddles with Dustin’s belt for a moment before he actually gets it undone and he’s clearly making a point of letting his hands drag across the front of Dustin’s jeans as much as possible, which isn’t at all driving Dustin out of his fucking mind.

Dustin hisses when Mark presses his palm against his cock, and when he feels Mark unzipping his pants and blowing a quick stream of air against the wet spot in his boxers, his head falls back against the stall loudly. He imagines that Mark is smirking a little at that, but then again he might not be, if only because he’s mouthing along Dustin’s cock and pinning Dustin’s hips against the metal behind him.

For all that it’s obvious what this is leading to, Dustin is completely unprepared when Mark finally pulls his boxers down and runs his tongue up the vein under his dick.

And then Mark basically swallows him down and Dustin forgets how to breathe for a moment. His eyes are squeezed shut and one hand is resting on the top of Mark’s head and Mark is just-going at it.

It’s probably the hottest thing that has ever happened to Dustin.

He’s breathing hard and Mark is making noises that sound like fucking moans around his dick and it’s taking every ounce of focus he has-which really isn’t much-to keep from letting himself just thrust into Mark’s mouth and everything is just so-

Before Dustin entirely realizes what’s happening, the world’s going a little white and he’s coming into Mark’s mouth.

It takes a bit to come back to himself, but when he does, he’s still leaning against the stall and Mark’s standing in front of him, jerking himself off, which is just so Mark that Dustin’s not entirely sure what to do with it. But he’s kind of leaning toward reciprocation, so he stills Mark’s wrist and spins him around to press his back against the cold metal, dropping to his knees as he does it.

He can tell, from Mark’s heavy breathing and lidded eyes and from the fact that he has actually done this before a couple of times, that it’s not going to take long, so he doesn’t waste time teasing, just gets down to business. (To defeat the huns, his mind supplies helpfully.) Dustin takes Mark into his mouth and hums a little, enjoying the noise-the whimper-that Mark makes and the way his hand clenches uselessly against Dustin’s head, not tight enough to pull at his hair but definitely enough to make a point.

As he predicted, it doesn’t take him very long to have Mark actually pulling at his hair and tensing under the hands wrapped against his hips. Dustin swallows, which is mildly unpleasant-blowjobs aren’t something he’s done enough to be really used to-but he figures that if Mark can do it for him, he ought to at least give it a shot.

Dustin wipes himself off and fixes his pants up, vaguely unsure of what to do after that. Mark isn’t exactly saying anything, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise but then, well, they just had sex in a bathroom stall. Everything is so completely out of the realm of anything Dustin would have predicted that Mark voluntarily engaging in conversation doesn’t seem too crazy anymore.

He doesn’t, though, and Dustin ends up just walking out of the bathroom by himself, leaving behind an awkward silence.

~

Two days later, Chris calls him, just to chat. It hasn’t happened in a while, and Dustin’s missed it. They talk for far longer than he’d anticipated-he’s gotten used to Mark’s terse, to-the-point phone calls, lost the habit of spending an hour on the phone just rambling about his life and listening to Chris ramble in return.

He considers mentioning what he and Mark did at least six times, but never actually works up the courage to say the words.

Chris hangs up after a longish lull in the conversation, saying that his boyfriend is nagging him to get ready to go out to dinner. Apparently they’re having a date night.

Dustin is left alone at home to cope with his seething jealousy.

Because he’s a semi-well-adjusted person, he calls Mark and asks him to come over for beer and video games. It’s not until after he makes the call that he remembers what happened the last time they did that, and by then it’s too late to take it back.

Not that he really wants to, anyway.

Getting laid might help with the whole wallowing in bitter resentment problem he has going on.

So when, after a few predictably vicious rounds of Call of Duty and a couple of beers, he wants to lean over and press his lips to the hollow underneath Mark’s ear, he doesn’t try to stop himself.

Mark, immediately pauses the game and turns his head to meet Dustin’s lips.

Before long they’re significantly more horizontal, with Mark pinning him to the couch and rolling his hips against Dustin’s until they both come.

That’s how they wake up the following morning, half-tangled together. Dustin’s legs have fallen asleep from the press of Mark’s against them, but it’s not the least comfortable position he’s ever woken up in, not after years of falling asleep over his laptop and waking up with the keys outlined on his face.

Dustin considers letting Mark rest, because god knows that he probably needs the sleep, but the tingling in his thighs is getting unbearable, so he pokes at Mark until he wakes up, blinking and confused.

“Get off me,” Dustin mumbles at him, his throat too dry to try for anything more vehement.

“You’re squishy,” Mark says, which isn’t really apropos of anything, and Dustin’s not quite awake enough to know whether he should be offended. Instead of replying, he just shoves at Mark’s shoulders weakly.

“I can’t feel my legs,” he says.

Reluctantly and drowsily, Mark pushes himself up, nearly falling off the sofa in the process.

It’s kind of cute.

He rubs his eyes, staring at the coffee table-it’s a different shape than the one in Mark’s own living room, and thus probably the main source of his confusion-before he turns around and squints at Dustin.

“Stop looking at me all scrunchy-faced,” Dustin tells him. “It makes you all squinty and funny-looking.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Mark replies. “And move your legs so I can sit down.”

Dustin’s not sure he can.

“I’m not sure I can,” he says. “They’re asleep.”

Mark rolls his eyes, picks up Dustin’s legs-and Dustin’s laptop from the coffee table-and flops onto the couch, dropping Dustin’s legs on top of his and setting the laptop down on them.

Scrunching his nose up, Dustin points out that the laptop is password-protected, which actually makes Mark laugh.

“Hey!” Dustin objects.

But it takes Mark about thirty seconds of tapping to guess his password (it probably would’ve been less if he’d just hacked the computer), so maybe he has a point. Barely any time later, Mark is typing away, clearly engrossed in his work, and Dustin’s left with his feet trapped between Mark’s legs and the computer and nothing to do.

As any sane person would, he lets himself sink into the couch and goes back to sleep.

When he wakes up some indeterminate amount of time later, he’s still trapped and Mark’s still working, but he’s no longer sleepy enough to be sympathetic.

In other words, this time he squirms.

Not so much that Mark might drop the laptop, because he kind of likes having that in one piece, but enough to jar him from his code-induced haze. And as soon as one of his feet is free enough to slide out from under the computer, he puts it to good use tickling Mark.

Unfortunately, it appears that at some point during the time since they moved into a suite together at Harvard, Mark learned to not squeal when someone touches his ribs. Dustin pouts a bit at this development, and settles for climbing off the sofa (as there’s nothing more he can do there that’ll be interesting) and traipsing toward the kitchen to get some food.

He brews some coffee, throws an apple into the living room at Mark’s head-it thuds against the sofa next to him; Dustin needs to work on his aim-and digs around in the fridge until he finds something vaguely edible, meaning yogurt that’s only a couple of days past the sell-by date, and grabs a banana off the counter. Unlike Mark, he’s not an incurable workaholic, so he grabs a week-old magazine off the counter to read while he eats breakfast.

After spending a couple of hours settled next to Mark on the couch-he is not going to use the word snuggled, even if it might be appropriate, given how close together they were sitting-Dustin kicks him out. He doesn’t have any particular reason; Mark’s not terrible company, all things considered, and he’s going out for drinks with a couple of guys from work, but that’s not until much later.

It’s just-it’s just weird, sitting around all day with Mark like they live together or hang our all the time or whatever. It brings up memories of Kirkland, of spending afternoons sitting around with Mark and Chris and, as often as not, Eduardo, and how comfortable everything was then.

Dustin would rather not dwell on that too much. It just hurts more than he wants to deal with.

~

They never talk about it, but later that month, after a dinner Mark forced Dustin to drive him to on the grounds that he wouldn’t be able to stand it unless he was too drunk to drive home, Mark kisses him instead of getting out of the car when Dustin drops him off, and they end up rubbing off against each other in the foyer of his house.

And then, you know, actually fucking in his bed.

It’s not like Mark’s draped all over him when they wake up the next morning or anything, but they’re definitely touching. Mark’s ankle is crossed over his where he’s sprawled on his stomach, and his hand is resting lightly on Dustin’s stomach.

Dustin’s not quite sure what to make of the situation. It’s disconcertingly intimate, like they fell asleep not touching at all and inched toward each other overnight.

He brushes the thought away as he slips out from under Mark’s limbs and into the bathroom to shower, but it sneaks back in at inopportune moments. Sleeping with your best friend is one of those things that every movie ever made has taught him is a bad idea. It mixes up a thousand emotions that probably shouldn’t get jumbled together, and running behind it all, like a horrible depressing mantra, is the fact that he’s in love with Chris.

It’s a terrible idea and Dustin knows it, and he ought to walk back into the bedroom and tell Mark that they’re not going to do it again. He could even list off all the reasons they shouldn’t.

But stupidly, probably because he’s never been so good at self-denial, Dustin doesn’t.

Because he doesn’t call it off, he doesn’t stop falling into bed with Mark a couple times a month (and then a couple times a week). It’s nice to have someone around, honestly; sometimes Mark is enough to take his mind off Chris, and even when he isn’t, having someone around is better than spending his nights perpetually alone. They have something of a pattern by now, where they end up in each others’ beds when they work late or after parties or when one of them calls the other over for beer and video games. It’s not quite a booty call-they actually do drink beer and play video games-but it’s close. They’re both smart enough to know, if it weren’t for the promise of sex, the preceding activities wouldn’t have taken place.

It’s not so bad, really.

Mark's-well, he's not Chris, obviously, because Chris is Chris and no one else could possibly be Chris.

(It's possible he’s a little drunk; tonight’s been a night of more beer than video games, the long final day of a long week during which he and Mark each aged about four years from stress.)

But then, Dustin's not Eduardo, so they're probably about even.

Mark's there, though. (Unlike Chris, Dustin's mind supplies, alcohol-soaked and morose.) He's convenient and present and they get along and, hell, the sex is good. And it's not even like he lacks feeling for Mark, not really. It's not like it is when he's around Chris, but Dustin doesn't mind so much.

Life's not perfect.

But it’s enough, Dustin figures. Everything will work itself out eventually, right?

~

When Dustin answers his phone, too hurried and distracted to glance at the name flashing at him, Chris’s hello is shaky, almost tearful.

“Are you okay?” Dustin asks, automatic; being concerned with Chris’s well-being is basically his constant state of existence.

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a long moment, and then Chris says, “I-I think I will be.”

He’s not sure how to answer that. If they were in the same room, he would have hugged Chris enthusiastically and offered to marathon movies and drink until he forgot about whatever was bumming him out, but that’s not exactly an option.

“Is there any way I can stay with you for a little while?” Chris says into the silence, interrupting Dustin’s thoughts.

“Of course,” Dustin answers, half habit and half just-well, he doesn’t particularly enjoy saying no to Chris, especially when Chris sounds like he’s close to tears. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Chris doesn’t answer immediately, and Dustin really, really just wants to be able to hug him or punch whoever made this happen or force him to watch a stupid comedy or just make bad jokes until he cracked a reluctant smile.

“I don’t really want to go into it,” Chris begins. “But the moral of the story is that Scott and I broke up and I just don’t want to be in New York right now.”

“You can stay here as long as you need to,” Dustin tells him, even if it’s only about a third generosity, because he’s definitely selfish enough to want Chris in his house, where they can eat dinner together or watch movies together or-whatever. Dustin kind of doesn’t care, as long as he gets to do it with Chris, which he knows is stupid and selfish and everything he shouldn’t be anymore but he kind of doesn’t care.

“Thank you,” Chris is saying sincerely, “You’re a good friend.”

Dustin just swallows everything stupid he might blurt out and says, “It’s no big deal, Chris. Really.”

But he worries a little, after that.

He’s known Chris for a long time now, since they were teenagers and young and overwhelmed by college, and it’s incredibly unlike him to run across the country after a breakup, however messy. Chris just-doesn’t let other people break him like that. He’s so self-assured and confident and obviously he’s still all of those things, because Dustin is pretty sure that anything bad enough to make Chris almost-cry on the phone would have reduced him to an emotional wreck incapable of functioning like a normal person. Still, though, he worries.

Ten days later, he picks Chris up at the airport, where he’s standing outside the baggage carousel with two suitcases and wry smile.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” he says to Dustin, who ignores that completely and hugs him instead.

Chris doesn’t fight it, or grumble about how Dustin shouldn’t leave his car idling in the pick-up zone because it’s destroying the environment and against the rules away. He just kind of-gives, burying his face in Dustin’s shoulder, and Dustin is pretty sure that this is what heartbreak feels like. He curls an arm around Chris and rubs at the back of his shoulders until he feels Chris pulling away a bit.

He’s smiling weakly when he meets Dustin’s eyes. “I needed that,” he says.

“It was my pleasure,” Dustin answers, grinning a little even though he’s pretty sure it’s not an appropriate response. “Here, I’ll throw your stuff in the trunk and then we can go home.”

“Sounds good,” Chris says, but Dustin knows him well enough to catch the unevenness in his tone. Now isn’t the right time to bring it up, though, he knows that as well. This isn’t a conversation to have driving along the highway, not when Chris isn’t going to want to have it at all. Of course, if whatever happened is bad enough to have him running across the country, Chris probably ought to have it whether he wants to or not.

And so, a few hours later, he’s provided Chris with comfort food and decent wine, and they’re curled up at opposite ends of the couch watching some serious movie that Chris had requested and Dustin had allowed, against his better judgment. They’ve talked over most of it anyway, about Facebook and Mark and Chris’s plans for what he’s going to do in Palo Alto.

Now they’re sitting in semi-comfortable silence, both watching the movie.

“Scott told me,” Chris begins, and Dustin turns toward him. He’s staring at the screen but his eyes aren’t focused on it. “Scott told me,” he starts again, “That I’m so busy helping total strangers that I can’t see when the people right in front of me are having a hard time.”

“Chris,” Dustin says, “You know that’s-”

But Chris cuts him off. “It is true, though. I hadn’t talked to you and Mark for more than a month. I hadn’t talked to my fucking parents for a month, Dustin.”

“Everyone gets busy sometimes,” he tries to answer, but Chris is on a roll now.

“Maybe if I had done a better job paying attention to the people around me, things wouldn’t have fallen apart so spectacularly with Mark and Eduardo.”

Dustin just gapes at him. It honestly hadn’t occurred to him that Chris could be blaming himself for that, for something that far outside his control.

“Chris,” he tries again, reaching forward to rest what he hopes is a soothing hand on Chris’s knee, “You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.”

“I could have helped, though,” Chris says. “You know they just weren’t listening to each other. I could have, I don’t know, made them listen.” He trails off a little aimlessly.

Almost at loss for words, Dustin slides towards him and rests a hand against his back. “Nothing you could have said would have made them listen, you know that. They were too busy hearing what they wanted to hear.”

Chris shrugs weakly.

“Come on,” Dustin says, “I think we ought to go to bed.”

They stumble upstairs together and head towards their respective rooms, but once he’s curled in his bed, Dustin has trouble falling asleep. It’s disconcerting to be the stable one, even if it’s only temporarily. But that was always Chris’s domain-occasionally Eduardo’s-and seeing him this shaken is, in turn, shaking Dustin up a little bit. He tries not to wonder how Eduardo’s doing, worry about whether he’s okay, but it’s difficult not to.

His attempts not to miss Eduardo never go very well. Honestly, they usually lead to him missing Eduardo even more.

There’s probably some psychological principle at work there.

Dustin starts rolling over with the intent of asking Mark what it is, but then he remembers that Mark’s asleep in his own bed. Well, realistically speaking, Mark’s probably not asleep yet, but the point is that he’s not anywhere near Dustin’s bed.

Chris is down the hall, though. That’s a fair trade-off.

Right?

~

Dustin’s half-playing that Neopets game with the flying ice cream scoops and half scribbling notes on a legal pad when Mark appears behind him. He doesn’t even bother trying to minimize when he hears the footsteps; he tried explaining that vapid games help him process about once a week for the first year of facebook without much success, but Mark’s seen enough results to have accepted that it works for Dustin.

“Neopets?” Mark says incredulously. “At least you used to play real games.”

At the noise, Dustin jumps a little, and the little thing he’s moving around slams into an ice cream scoop.

“The repetitive motion of avoiding the scoops is soothing,” Dustin says-bullshits, really. “And you just made me die!” He doesn’t even need to turn around to know that Mark’s rolling his eyes.

“Are you even working on things for facebook?” Mark asks, his voice wry.

“No.”

Mark just laughs.

“What are you going to do, fire me?” Dustin says, giving up on this particular round of the game and turning to smirk at Mark. It wouldn’t happen, he knows (he’s fairly certain, anyway). If playing video games at work and generally mouthing off to his boss haven’t gotten him sacked at any point in the last few years, it was unlikely to now, given that he was already in the process of leaving.

And so what if that process was taking a long time? He’d been deeply involved in facebook nearly from its inception; of course extricating himself would be a time-confusing endeavor.

Ignoring the question entirely, Mark just says, “Can you get back to me about the chat update by the end of the day?”

“Sure thing, boss-man,” Dustin replies, turning back to his computer. He has an email from Chris, asking him what time he’s going to be home from work and if he has any plans for dinner.

That routine continues more or less unchanged for a few days-Dustin goes to work, Chris stays at the house (moping, though Dustin never calls him on it), and when he gets home, they have dinner together. It’s unlike Chris, but Dustin doesn’t call him on it. Everyone has bad days sometimes.

Somewhat predictably, given his tendencies towards perfection and also being a digustingly put-together person, one day shortly after he arrived, Chris is up before Dustin. There’s coffee in the coffee maker and a post-it stuck to the microwave announcing that he was out on a run and would be back-Dustin glances at the clock-in about fifteen minutes.

It actually turns out to be more like half an hour, and by the time Chris comes into the kitchen and flops down at the table, Dustin has eaten most of his bowl of cereal and is more or less focusing on answering some emails that he honestly should probably have dealt with the night before.

“I have a job interview today,” Chris says, running a hand through his-somewhat wet-hair and taking a long pull from the water bottle in front of him.

“Yeah?” Dustin says. He’s a lot happier than he should be, but then it’s-well, it’s Chris, and he’s been over invested in Chris’s happiness for as long as he can remember.

“Yeah,” Chris says, grinning. It’s the most honest smile that Dustin’s seen on his face since he showed up in California, and seeing it makes everything about Dustin feel a little lighter, like worrying about Chris was physically weighing him down. “It’s with this non-profit start-up and they want me to run their online operations. The interview’s mostly a formality, or at least that’s the impression I got.”

Dustin can’t really help smiling back, because he can read in Chris’s face that he’s biting back an enthusiastic fit of babbling-probably about how much he’s looking forward to working with the company and how amazing the work they do it and how many people he’ll be able to help. Heartwarming doesn’t even begin to cover it.

So the routine changes a little bit after that, because Chris gets up stupidly early and runs and goes to work, and Dustin stays at work stupidly late as often as not, but they’re still both there in the evenings, when they usually make dinner (okay, Chris usually makes dinner) and watch movies or talk or play games. It’s a little like being back at Kirkland, except without the stress of college and Mark snapping at anyone who interrupted his coding tears (except for Eduardo, because Eduardo was different). So basically, it’s all (well, most) of the best things about living in a suite with two of his best friends, minus the annoying friend.

And god, the temptation to just lean over and kiss Chris is just the same as it was at Harvard. If anything, Dustin thinks it might be worse. Getting a few years older hasn’t exactly made Chris less attractive and now there isn’t the threat of Mark wandering in distractedly, wanting to ask some stupid question about facebook or why they were out of Red Bull or whatever the fuck it was that he noticed when he wasn’t fixated on his laptop or Eduardo’s stupid hair. So sitting at one end of the couch with Chris’s legs in his lap and watching his eyelids droop a little, his head on the armrest. It’s a little like psychological torture.

“Go to bed, Chris,” Dustin says.

Clearly half asleep, Chris responds only with a soft and noncommittal hum, gesturing vaguely toward the TV.

“You’re clearly falling asleep,” Dustin continues, laughing a little. “You’re not even going to remember what’s happening in the movie.”

“Yeah, but,” Chris says, trailing off. It’s entirely possible he’s just too tired to construct a coherent argument. “I wanna watch it now,” he whines.

“Fine,” Dustin says, “But I’m not watching it with you again when you forget the second half.”

The thing is, having a roommate in college is one thing-there are people around all the time, his other suitemate(s), people wandering in from the hall-but it turns out, having a housemate who also happens to be his best friend (that he’s a little in love with) and no one else around to buffer their interactions on a regular basis feels really, unbelievably domestic. It’s disconcerting. Like, Dustin’s pretty sure that, except for the part where they don’t kiss or have sex, this is exactly what living with Chris would be like if they did.

He squints a little, not entirely sure that last thought made sense. Something pokes him in the leg, and he looks down to see Chris’s toe digging into his thigh.

“You’re not payin’ ‘ttention either,” Chris says sleepily.

“I’m not the one who wanted to watch the movie,” Dustin answers, picking up Chris’s foot and putting it back in his lap. Chris just laughs softly and curls up so that he’s lying flat on the couch.

And the night like that one, where they’re touching all the time and it’s stupid and domestic and just makes Dustin want everything? They happen so fucking much. At this rate, it’s going to drive him to drink.

He can’t make the first move, at least not right now. He’s been accused of insensitivity (not Mark-scale insensitivity, but still) but Dustin knows that you don’t confess to having been in love with your best friend since college while he’s getting over a bad breakup and trying to sort out a new life across the country.

Instead, he just kind of never asks when Chris is leaving. He can afford his own place, but having the company is nice and Chris is Chris and Dustin knows him well enough to know that he’ll probably leave if Dustin even so much as implies that he’s been there longer than he’s welcome to stay.

Of course, Dustin would be happy to have him stay forever, but Chris doesn’t know that.

(continued here)

fic: i practiced falling off buildings

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