In My Framework
Title: In My Framework
Fandom/Pairing: The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Mark and Eduardo find themselves alone together on the last day of the depositions and... well, what do you think happens? ~4.5k
Warnings: Public sex! ANGST! Also, from Eduardo's POV which I have found to be very rare, maybe because everyone hates it? I DON'T.
Acknowlodgements: A few days ago michelinamarie wrote a tag on Tumblr: “where’s all the deposition-era porn?” and I swear this plot came to me fully formed. So this is for her, customized and all. Wonderful supportive beta from fledmusic which very seriously improved what you’re about to read. So much inappropriate love for those women.
Note 1: I’m writing this with the assumption that there were three consecutive days of depositions. I think there are three because the boys wear three outfits each and I think they were consecutive because... that’s convenient for me. THIS MIGHT MAKE NO SENSE I AM NOT A LAWYER OR SOMEONE WHO HAS SUED/BEEN SUED. If you are smarter than me, please suspend your disbelief because I fear the editing required to fix the facts.
Note 2: Title from "Relief Next to Me" by Tegan and Sara.
Note 3: There are couple of links to gifs of (what I consider to be) the third day of the depositions which I elude to. They're mostly obvious and unnecessary but oh well because they're pretty! So click those if you want and thank you to their makers for doing what they do.
Eduardo was a morning person. It ran in his family. He was up with the sun most days and when he wasn’t, he never begrudged his alarm. He did sit-ups and pull-ups and took a long shower and ate a big breakfast. It didn’t matter how little sleep he’d gotten, Eduardo loved waking up, loved the new day, the fresh start, the hours of opportunity.
It was lonely in the mornings at college. He was used to his whole family around the kitchen table, Marietta making beds, the gardeners working outside. No one was awake before ten at Harvard, not in the freshman dorms. Their first week of classes, Eduardo remembered waking up early, as usual, to run the track and get some coffee. People would be stumbling to the showers by the time he got back and he could find someone to walk to Expos with.
He skipped through the silent hallways but as he passed the rec room, he heard the pew-rumble-mamma mia! sounds of Mario Kart, which was unexpected. He stuck his head through the doorway and saw that Jewish kid with bright blue eyes and the smile that surprised Eduardo every time it spread across his face. Mark. The guy’s name was Mark Something-berg. He was sitting cross-legged on the couch, a licorice rope hanging out of his mouth, playing the video game by himself.
“Hey,” Eduardo said. Mark turned and nodded at him. “Did you sleep?”
Mark shrugged. “Sleep is boring.”
It took Eduardo a second to really process that, but then he laughed. “Yeah!” Mark was right, sleep was boring. He’d never thought about it that way before. “Hey, do you want to go with me to get some coffee?”
Mark looked him up and down, from his sneakers to his track jacket. “Are you going to the gym?”
“No,” he said and after that day he never did run the track if he saw Mark was awake before he got out the door. “Come on, let’s get some coffee.”
Mark shrugged again and unfolded off the couch. He got a hot chocolate at the café and didn’t protest when Eduardo offered to pay.
Imagine if he wasn’t a morning person. Imagine if he hadn't stopped to see who was playing Nintendo so early.
Four years later and Eduardo had never dreaded waking up so much. He hardly slept the night before and when he woke up again at four-thirty, instead of doing something productive he just laid in the dark and watched the shadows change on the ceiling.
It wasn’t that the depositions had been a pleasure the past two days-although there was something about Mark, after so much time without him, about seeing Mark, about Mark’s smile when-no, it had been hell the past two days, by far the worst part of suing his best friend and these had been the shittiest months of his life. But Eduardo was especially not looking forward to today. Today started with Sean Parker and ended with point zero three percent. Today would be spent rehashing what he had previously considered the worst months of his life.
Yesterday, and the day before, they spent talking about some of the best of Eduardo’s life, better than his last year in Brazil, when his father was already in Florida and he and his sister and mamãe spent all day at the beach; better than freshman year when he and Mark weren’t thinking about final clubs or Facebook or even class or anything but lying in bed and figuring out new ways to annoy Eduardo’s horrible roommate, Kevin.
But really, how dare Mark sit down across the table with his can of Mountain Dew at nine in the morning and smile at him like-he didn’t realize Eduardo would be here, what a pleasant surprise! Like he used to look turn around from coding at his desk and do a double take that Eduardo was sitting on the bed, like Eduardo hadn’t been there for five hours, like maybe he’d forgotten what day of the week it was, too. The same exact expression, like-goddamn, like normal people look at a pile of puppies or presents on their birthday. Or at least that’s how Eduardo always saw it. Clearly he saw a lot pretty fucking wrong, rose-colored glasses stapled to his head.
That’s why Eduardo was here early today, quarter after seven, not to be the first in the room, but to lurk until the perfect time to enter the room presented itself. He thought it was very rational and healthy.
Which is why he never expected Mark to do the same thing.
Eduardo was sitting on a flight of stairs eating breakfast. Their conference room was up seven stories, fourteen flights of stairs, and he’d gotten very familiar with them over the past two days. For such a slick, modern building, it had the slowest motherfucking elevators Eduardo had ever been in and he refused to use them anymore.
The last time Eduardo took the elevator was the end of the first day. It was so late the hallways were dimmed, a man with a floor buffer humming down one hallway. Gretchen and Victoria left a few minutes before him. Eduardo had hung back because he didn’t want to keep talking about the suit the whole ten minute taxi ride to their hotel. He had a limit and he could tell he was going to embarrass himself soon.
He pressed the button for the lobby and leaned against the far wall. A hand came between the closing doors and Eduardo jumped to press the door open button. The doors sprung apart to reveal Mark, not smiling, not grateful, just squeezing the straps of his backpack, looking. Eduardo briefly thought about letting him in and then leaving him in the elevator alone, but he just stepped to the side and watched Mark flip flop in next to him.
Mark pressed the lit-up lobby button again. Eduardo forced himself to throw his shoulders back and look up. And then Mark decided they should have a conversation and said, “Why are you still here?”
Eduardo took a deep breath and exhaled out his nose. “Gretchen-wanted to debrief before we left.”
“Oh.” He thought that would be it, misguided manners satisfied, but then Mark said, “Your hair is different,” which was, you know what? Literally tugging on Eduardo’s pigtails.
Yours isn’t, was Eduardo’s first retort (because it wasn’t-it brushed over the back of his neck, over his upturned collar exactly the same) but Eduardo wasn’t a child, so his brilliant edit was, after five long seconds of whooshing elevator silence, “It’s called a haircut-”
“It’s called a bucket of gel,” Mark said, cutting him off. “I don’t like it.”
Finally the floor settled, bing! and Eduardo was out the doors before they finished opening. He tried to think of some clever last words to shout back to Mark, but all he could think of, skipping again and again in his head was, I don’t like any of this and, since when have you take any notice of my hair?
So Eduardo’s options after that were to never leave Gretchen’s side or to stop taking the elevator. Eduardo liked his lawyer, much better than any of the men his father recommended, but it was easier to be alone.
Like now, sitting on a staircase with a giant cup of coffee, bagel, lox, and amazing house-made cream cheese. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day and good food was doing its job until Mark rounded the corner. Eduardo choked when he saw him, but he managed to very calmly cough the chunk of bagel out of his throat, chew it, and swallow it again. He stared at his knees.
Fuck! Of all the stairs in the whole building! Why? There were five different stairwells to choose from and this one was farthest from the main entrance. Why?
Mark was still standing at the bottom of the staircase when Eduardo looked back up.
“You’re early,” he said, trying to sound dismissive.
“You, too,” said Mark.
“But, I mean, you’re over an hour early.”
“You, too, Wardo,” Mark laughed.
Wardo. Fuck him. And fuck him, fuck him, for not leaving to find his own lurking spot, for sitting down a few steps below like he was allowed to do that, like he was allowed to just sit there. Not that Eduardo did anything about it. He just took another bite of his bagel, chewed. Took another bite. Mark continued to sit.
“Hard to find good bagels on this side of the country,” someone said and since it wasn’t Mark, it must have been Eduardo. For some reason he’d said that. He’d been looking for a decent bagel and lox the past two days. He’d been looking for reasons not to live here for a lot longer than that.
“You find Izzy’s?” Mark said.
“Yeah,” Eduardo said, gesturing with the bagel. “Really good.”
“Yeah.”
Mark opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then he closed it again and just stared at him. Eduardo fingered a smear of cream cheese off the side of the bagel and looked down at his shoes.
“Why did you stay in New York?” Gretchen asked him once, when they were working late and his weepy doe eyes showed too much. “Why not go to California?”
“Why even graduate?” he said, hardly joking and Gretchen pressed her lips together like she knew exactly how much he meant that.
He didn’t tell her that night and she let it drop, but the truth was simple: his father. His father expected him to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard and work his way up from the subway to taxis to a town car, pay his dues, show respect to the businessmen who did it before him. His father didn’t trust progress, sneered at little upstart shits like Mark that got to the top by teleportation, but after all of that, after doing it the right way, his father’s way, he still did it wrong.
“You grab opportunity by the balls, boy,” his father said when Eduardo explained why the Saverin name was involved in a lawsuit. “And if you can’t, you grab his colhões.”
In high school, his father found him in bed with their maid’s son, Robbie. It was the only time his father had ever physically hurt him, grabbing him by his hair and dragging him out of the room. All of that, and even being queer was worth a few billion dollars.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Eduardo said to Mark on the stairs and why, why, why? He didn’t care. He didn’t want to take care of Mark anymore.
“I got a pizza a few hours ago,” Mark said. “There’s a place open 24-hours near my house.”
“College towns. Nice.”
Nice? I think it’s fucking nice, do I? He had to leave or they were going to spend the next hour on this stairwell like bros waiting for-whatever, for the weight room to clear out. Eduardo popped the last bite of bagel in his mouth and stood up, crumpling the parchment paper in his fist. He turned around without looking at Mark and headed for the bathroom because he could hear Mark’s springy footsteps following him, but he couldn’t follow Eduardo into the bathroom, could he? Who did that?
Mark did, of course he did. Eduardo went into a stall and sat on the toilet. He checked his messages-two from his assistant and one from his sister: I hope you get what you want. The automatic toilet flushed when he stood up. Mark was standing across from the stall when he opened the door, arms crossed over his chest, like this was-not even like this was normal because Mark never cared about that, but like he didn’t care that this didn’t make sense, like he didn’t-like he did care. About something. Enough to sit on the stairs and follow him here and stand there watching him.
Apologize, he thought, but Mark just kept watching him.
For the first time Eduardo noticed Mark was wearing a suit. Scuffed shoes, Bar Mitzvah slacks, white shirt, black tie, and a jacket two sizes too big. He’d shown up the first day in the same maroon ringer tee he’d packed to go to Harvard and polar fleece, fuck you apparel at its finest, but also just-at the top of Mark’s pile of clean laundry. Yesterday a shirt and tie, yes, probably the same stuff he was wearing today, but a gray tee-shirt over that, like-Eduardo didn’t even know what that was. Like the same nerd who didn’t know how to dress himself. And now a complete fucking suit?
“What are you wearing?” Eduardo said, hardly recognizing his own hoarse voice.
“A suit,” Mark said.
A suit. A suit.
“Take it off,” Eduardo said because if Mark could do crazy then how about they just ran with crazy?
It was completely worth it to see Mark’s expression finally change, to see him finally surprised. “What?”
Eduardo strode toward him, grabbed Mark’s jacket by the lapels, and pulled it off his shoulders. He realized some things when he got to Mark’s elbows: There was barely an inch between them. He had Mark trapped, unable to move his arms. He smelled like peppermint.
A few seconds later, Eduardo realized Mark tasted like peppermint, too, and made the most fragile whimpering sound when he stopped being kissed.
Their gazes caught and held. And finally he realized: this wasn’t crazy. Well, no, of course it was crazy-Eduardo was suing Mark, for God’s sake-but this wasn’t crazy. It hadn’t always been crazy. This wasn’t just creepy Eduardo smelling Mark’s hair after he fell asleep during Love Actually and pretending he fell asleep too just so he could keep Mark’s head on his shoulder until the theater staff came in to clean, biting Mark’s name into a pillow, I’m here for you and never anything back. This wasn’t Eduardo alone. This was both of them, creepy, stupid, pining, waiting until it was way the fuck too late.
The earth moved and then they were still just looking at each other in the middle of a bathroom. But they didn’t have time for looking (there would be plenty of that later across the conference table), so Eduardo tugged the jacket all the way off and then Mark’s tie and his shirt and his threadbare A-shirt, his belt, his pants. Mark toed off his shoes and Eduardo stepped back to see Mark standing there under the fluorescent light, in front of a wall-size mirror in plaid boxers and white tube socks. Eduardo wanted to focus on how embarrassed Mark should have been and not on the frankly enormous tent in Mark’s boxers. He wanted to, but all he could think was that on top of everything else, Mark was hung and that shouldn’t have turned Eduardo on so much. It should have pissed him off.
“You like morning sex,” Mark said, startling him.
“What?” Yes, he did, but what?
“You told me that once.”
No, he had not. Eduardo had avoided talking to Mark about sex at all costs because it would, it seemed, inevitably come up exactly who he wanted to have sex with (Mark, as if that wasn’t embarrassingly clear to everyone but Mark himself) and when (now) and how much (till death did they part, like pathetic sap he had been).
“You, well, you said that to someone on the phone once,” Mark said, still just standing there like he wasn’t naked in the middle of a public bathroom, “probably a girl, from your tone, and it must have been-Evelyn, probably, because you were dating her and I was-I mean, I wasn’t-I was listening. I heard you say that.”
Maybe Eduardo hadn’t been planning on having sex with Mark because this was fucking crazy and maybe he’d been planning on leaving him naked in this bathroom-maybe-but the very idea that Mark knew something like that, remembered something that Eduardo hadn’t explicitly told him and reminded him about-that idea in combination with the way Mark was sucking his lower lip into his mouth-well. They were definitely going to have sex now.
“Well,” Eduardo said slowly as he pushed his fingers underneath the knot of his own tie and started pushing it down. He walked back toward Mark. “I do like morning sex.”
Mark grinned, the smallest corner-of-the-mouth grin, and met him halfway, stretching up to kiss him, gripping Eduardo’s lapels and pushing his jacket off his shoulders. Eduardo’s jacket was properly tailored, however, and as Mark pushed, Eduardo worked on his buttons, flexing his biceps, and when Mark got to that trapped-at-the-elbows place, he heard riiiiip and felt the fabric go slack around his arms.
“Oops,” Mark said, complete with one of his rare huge grins, like this jacket had insulted his mother and he’d always hated it.
Eduardo couldn’t even get mad. He kissed Mark again and kept working to get his own shirt off. Mark opened his mouth and then started palming him through his briefs and he was terrible at it, because he was used to stroking from another angle and that, fuck, that made him feel shockingly satisfied even though taking anyone’s virginity had always freaked him out. He deserved to be Mark’s first, his first time with a man, anyway, to leave some evidence, more than the masthead he was getting back by the end of this mess.
“I want to fuck you,” he said.
“That makes sense,” Mark said.
“What?”
“I want you to fuck me, too,” Mark said, quieter, and kissed him again.
Eduardo thought about fucking him against the wall, thought about lifting him onto the sinks, but sex was a lot easier to do lying down and their clothes made something of a bed, so-so why not fuck the man he was suing on the floor in the middle of a public bathroom. Good logic.
He pushed Mark down and on to his back and Eduardo kneeled in between Mark’s legs. He kissed Mark’s nipple, sucked hard on Mark’s collarbone until it was speckled red, more evidence, and went lower. Eduardo pulled Mark’s underwear over his hips and then he ran his fingers along the red line left by the elastic. He kissed his bellybutton. There was so much of Mark to kiss, so much he wanted to do, but there was only this morning, a half hour or less until the lawyers started filing in.
He grabbed his messenger bag and rooted around for condoms and the hand lotion Christy had trained him to carry. It was old and too creamy, not the ideal lubricant, but shit boy was none of this ideal.
He lifted Mark’s legs on to his shoulders and teased at a blowjob, sucking the head of his cock, his balls, blowing on the wet, sensitive skin.
“Has anybody ever rimmed you before?” he said.
“I, uh-no, but, Wardo, don’t you think we should-we don’t have limitless-get to the fucking?”
Eduardo thumbed at Mark’s pucker and sucked it so the slurp echoed through the bathroom. Mark’s whole body jerked. “We’ll have time for the fucking, Mark.”
He worked his tongue and then slowly started adding his fingers and the lotion until Mark was squirming and grabbing at Eduardo’s shoulders and hair. Eduardo ran his tongue from Mark’s balls to the dimple at the base of his back. In response, Mark dragged his nails all the way down Eduardo’s scalp and grabbed his hair in both his fists.
Eduardo stroked his hand down Mark’s side to get his attention and said, “Do you have something against my hair?”
“Yes!” Mark huffed and dragged his hands back and forth over Eduardo’s head.
Eduardo could only imagine what a mess he looked right now, but it hardly mattered when Mark was looking so pleased and proud-pleased with himself, surely, but Eduardo could imagine Mark was proud of him instead.
He slid the condom on himself, stroked some more lotion on and sat up, nudging his tip against Mark’s hole. “You ready?” he said.
“Are you really asking me if I’m sure?” Mark said and, in retribution, Eduardo made sure they were in line and he pushed in, as quick and steady as he could.
He leaned forward once he was there, all the way there, and kissed Mark lightly on the mouth.
“Are you sure you want my big cock in your virgin hole, Mark?” he said, enjoying the cliché, moving out and slamming back in. “Look at you, like a fucking cat, arching your back like you can’t get close enough, can’t-”
“We can’t-” Mark said and then they weren't so much kissing as biting, not so much fucking as digging in, Mark’s ankles on his back, his hands on Eduardo’s shoulders, Eduardo’s hands: one steady rough on Mark’s cock, the other everywhere he could reach.
“Remember when Christy and Alice-at that club-”
“I was thinking of you the whole time,” Mark said and bit his ear. That did it for Eduardo and one more stroke up and down his cock did it for Mark.
At the end, they laid together in quiet, hot, damp skin pressed from Eduardo's head in the curve of Mark's neck down to tangled legs. Eduardo was still buzzing with the orgasm and the feeling of finally, finally being so close, when it all became too much. It was everything, it was exactly right, but it was too much because it wasn’t real, it wasn’t his, and it couldn’t be, Mark didn’t really want it except this morning, on this floor and why?
Eduardo stumbled standing and went to the opposite corner of the bathroom. He pressed his head against the cold metal of a stall door and closed his eyes and breathed, but he could still hear Mark breathing across the room louder than anything else. When he turned back, Mark was right where Eduardo had left him, sitting up on his forearms, splayed over all their clothes, huge cock laying casually on his leg, like the cover of a romance novel or a Greek sacrifice.
Eduardo stomped across the room, grabbed his briefs off the floor, and pulled them on. He jerked his pants out from underneath Mark, trying to enjoy it when Mark flailed, falling on to his side, slapping his hands on the floor to catch himself. Eduardo put his pants on and buttoned, not bothering with his belt. He yanked up his shirt, pulled it on, and closed one button, slung his tie around his neck, and tried to ignore Mark following Eduardo’s every move with his gaze.
He found his jacket, ripped at the seam and jagged through the lining, too, and stuffed it in the garbage, a thousand dollar Etro he never wanted to see again.
“Here,” Mark said. He had moved up against the wall. His boxers were slung around one ankle. He was holding his own jacket out to him.
Eduardo didn’t need a jacket. No one was going to take note his sartorial choices and even if they did, there were reasonable explanations: maybe he left his jacket in the car. He probably had a spare in the trunk, even.
He took the jacket from Mark, squeezing his hand through the fabric, took up his bag, and then he ran out of the bathroom. It didn’t occur to him they probably weren’t alone in the building anymore until he was standing in the long hallway, sunlight streaming through landscape windows. He looked like he'd been properly fucked for anyone who cared to notice and he was in the law offices of the opposing party. It was their job to notice when he'd been well-fucked, Jesus.
Eduardo scurried to the nearest door and tried the knob. It was open and it turned out to be a janitor’s closet, but that was fine. Eduardo groped for the light switch and turned it on. He finished getting dressed with trembling hands, ran a comb through his hair until he could feel it holding slick stiff again. He smoothed out the wrinkled lines of his shirt, set in with sweat. He wished he'd gone with white again; this gray showed everything. A lot of bad decisions today. He put on the jacket, but it was just as big on him as it had been on Mark. Fuck.
Fuck.
Eduardo had to admit it, if never out loud: Mark wasn’t just his best friend. Mark was his only friend. It wasn’t that he didn’t have people-he had a new girlfriend, Molly, he was at the top of the damn Phoenix’s list, hell, he got a joint birthday card from Dustin and Chris, six weeks late. He made friends everywhere, easily. He had plenty of people. People who smiled when they were expected to and danced with him when he started to dance and understood and didn’t question and didn’t reinvent the way the world communicated when they couldn’t communicate themselves, when they couldn’t shout at him, “STAY HERE WITH ME,” and tie Eduardo down to the bed until he understood that he was supposed to wake up in that bed every morning and make Mark hot chocolate with his coffee and just enjoy the sunshine, even if he was useless in California, before he lost his only fucking real friend.
Eduardo pressed the base of his hands against his eyes and scrubbed his fingers through his hair and lifted Mark’s jacket so he could press his nose underneath the collar and smell Mark’s expensive cologne and cheap shampoo and peppermint and Mark.
Maybe Mark wasn’t his only friend, but then he was something more, something no one else would ever be and now they were going to sit across a table from each other and talk about how it all fell apart.
He took off the jacket and draped it over his arm, shook out his shoulders and opened the door. The hallway was deserted, but with a ding!, the elevators directly parallel with the janitor’s closet opened and Mark stepped out.
He looked perfectly composed, zipping a black hoodie over his shirt and tie. He must have gone down to his car for it, but Christ, Mark, a hoodie? Mark really thought that was an appropriate replacement for his suit jacket? A fucking hoodie and the pathetic thing was Eduardo’s next thought was, that’s more like it.
Eduardo’s leg jerked involuntarily and he kicked something against the wall. A mop handle shot down in front of him and he scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground. Mark was still standing there when he looked up again, just barely smiling at him.
Eduardo had no time to appreciate that, the stroke and the squeeze of it, before he recognized the distant click-clack of heels against polished concrete. He secured the mop against the wall and leapt out of the janitor’s closet, closing the door behind him.
Sylas Elliot came up around the corner of the hallway and smiled at Mark. His pretty associate and the balding, frowny one hurried behind him. A few feet away, they all stopped and swung frowns between Mark and Eduardo.
“Mark,” Sylas said. He slapped his shoulder. “I thought I told you to wear a suit.”
“I’m wearing a tie,” Mark said. “And who am I trying to impress, exactly? There’s no jury.”
“The stenographer,” Sylas said. “You should always give your best face to the person writing your story.”
Mark tugged the hoodie's zipper down a little, shrugged, and looked steadily at Eduardo. “I’ve only got this face.”
And wasn’t that the fucking truth? Agreeing to those contracts or taking Eduardo’s cock or sitting in front of his computer for days and forgetting to eat-it was all just Mark and Mark and Mark. No matter what Eduardo did, it was all Mark.
Apologize, he thought, but he just stood there and watched Mark lead his lawyers down the hallway.
NOT THE END
Note 4: “Expos” mentioned in the second paragraph is the required beginning writing class at Harvard. I figured this was clear in the context, but “colhões” is Brazilian Portuguese slang for testicles. :)
Note 5: If anyone lives in the South Bay and knows the joy of east coast bagels and hasn’t tried Izzy’s... you just need to rectify that immediately. So delicious.
Note 6: On that jacket/hoodie thing... if you didn't look at the gif whilst reading, I implore you to look at it now and let me explain: so clearly Mark’s wearing the hoodie, genius fashionista that he is, and Mark’s jacket is hanging on the back of Eduardo’s chair. He never wears it even though apparently it was drafty enough in the conference rooms for him to wear a jacket through the first two days of depositions. THE JACKET MEANT SOMETHING. Oh yeah, this ain’t no tin foil hat I wear. This is a limited edition serious beans Tin Man costume hat. Anyhoo, you can bet he took that jacket home with him.
Note 7: Yes, past readers of mine, more bathroom sex. I swear that's not a kink in my own ~personal life.~ Swear. I somewhat consider this a prequel to " Strength in Numbers" even though the facts don't line up quite right. But, you know, more bathroom sex to be found there if that's what you're into. :)
Ahem. THANKS FOR READING!
Fandom/Pairing: The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Mark and Eduardo find themselves alone together on the last day of the depositions and... well, what do you think happens? ~4.5k
Warnings: Public sex! ANGST! Also, from Eduardo's POV which I have found to be very rare, maybe because everyone hates it? I DON'T.
Acknowlodgements: A few days ago michelinamarie wrote a tag on Tumblr: “where’s all the deposition-era porn?” and I swear this plot came to me fully formed. So this is for her, customized and all. Wonderful supportive beta from fledmusic which very seriously improved what you’re about to read. So much inappropriate love for those women.
Note 1: I’m writing this with the assumption that there were three consecutive days of depositions. I think there are three because the boys wear three outfits each and I think they were consecutive because... that’s convenient for me. THIS MIGHT MAKE NO SENSE I AM NOT A LAWYER OR SOMEONE WHO HAS SUED/BEEN SUED. If you are smarter than me, please suspend your disbelief because I fear the editing required to fix the facts.
Note 2: Title from "Relief Next to Me" by Tegan and Sara.
Note 3: There are couple of links to gifs of (what I consider to be) the third day of the depositions which I elude to. They're mostly obvious and unnecessary but oh well because they're pretty! So click those if you want and thank you to their makers for doing what they do.
Eduardo was a morning person. It ran in his family. He was up with the sun most days and when he wasn’t, he never begrudged his alarm. He did sit-ups and pull-ups and took a long shower and ate a big breakfast. It didn’t matter how little sleep he’d gotten, Eduardo loved waking up, loved the new day, the fresh start, the hours of opportunity.
It was lonely in the mornings at college. He was used to his whole family around the kitchen table, Marietta making beds, the gardeners working outside. No one was awake before ten at Harvard, not in the freshman dorms. Their first week of classes, Eduardo remembered waking up early, as usual, to run the track and get some coffee. People would be stumbling to the showers by the time he got back and he could find someone to walk to Expos with.
He skipped through the silent hallways but as he passed the rec room, he heard the pew-rumble-mamma mia! sounds of Mario Kart, which was unexpected. He stuck his head through the doorway and saw that Jewish kid with bright blue eyes and the smile that surprised Eduardo every time it spread across his face. Mark. The guy’s name was Mark Something-berg. He was sitting cross-legged on the couch, a licorice rope hanging out of his mouth, playing the video game by himself.
“Hey,” Eduardo said. Mark turned and nodded at him. “Did you sleep?”
Mark shrugged. “Sleep is boring.”
It took Eduardo a second to really process that, but then he laughed. “Yeah!” Mark was right, sleep was boring. He’d never thought about it that way before. “Hey, do you want to go with me to get some coffee?”
Mark looked him up and down, from his sneakers to his track jacket. “Are you going to the gym?”
“No,” he said and after that day he never did run the track if he saw Mark was awake before he got out the door. “Come on, let’s get some coffee.”
Mark shrugged again and unfolded off the couch. He got a hot chocolate at the café and didn’t protest when Eduardo offered to pay.
Imagine if he wasn’t a morning person. Imagine if he hadn't stopped to see who was playing Nintendo so early.
Four years later and Eduardo had never dreaded waking up so much. He hardly slept the night before and when he woke up again at four-thirty, instead of doing something productive he just laid in the dark and watched the shadows change on the ceiling.
It wasn’t that the depositions had been a pleasure the past two days-although there was something about Mark, after so much time without him, about seeing Mark, about Mark’s smile when-no, it had been hell the past two days, by far the worst part of suing his best friend and these had been the shittiest months of his life. But Eduardo was especially not looking forward to today. Today started with Sean Parker and ended with point zero three percent. Today would be spent rehashing what he had previously considered the worst months of his life.
Yesterday, and the day before, they spent talking about some of the best of Eduardo’s life, better than his last year in Brazil, when his father was already in Florida and he and his sister and mamãe spent all day at the beach; better than freshman year when he and Mark weren’t thinking about final clubs or Facebook or even class or anything but lying in bed and figuring out new ways to annoy Eduardo’s horrible roommate, Kevin.
But really, how dare Mark sit down across the table with his can of Mountain Dew at nine in the morning and smile at him like-he didn’t realize Eduardo would be here, what a pleasant surprise! Like he used to look turn around from coding at his desk and do a double take that Eduardo was sitting on the bed, like Eduardo hadn’t been there for five hours, like maybe he’d forgotten what day of the week it was, too. The same exact expression, like-goddamn, like normal people look at a pile of puppies or presents on their birthday. Or at least that’s how Eduardo always saw it. Clearly he saw a lot pretty fucking wrong, rose-colored glasses stapled to his head.
That’s why Eduardo was here early today, quarter after seven, not to be the first in the room, but to lurk until the perfect time to enter the room presented itself. He thought it was very rational and healthy.
Which is why he never expected Mark to do the same thing.
Eduardo was sitting on a flight of stairs eating breakfast. Their conference room was up seven stories, fourteen flights of stairs, and he’d gotten very familiar with them over the past two days. For such a slick, modern building, it had the slowest motherfucking elevators Eduardo had ever been in and he refused to use them anymore.
The last time Eduardo took the elevator was the end of the first day. It was so late the hallways were dimmed, a man with a floor buffer humming down one hallway. Gretchen and Victoria left a few minutes before him. Eduardo had hung back because he didn’t want to keep talking about the suit the whole ten minute taxi ride to their hotel. He had a limit and he could tell he was going to embarrass himself soon.
He pressed the button for the lobby and leaned against the far wall. A hand came between the closing doors and Eduardo jumped to press the door open button. The doors sprung apart to reveal Mark, not smiling, not grateful, just squeezing the straps of his backpack, looking. Eduardo briefly thought about letting him in and then leaving him in the elevator alone, but he just stepped to the side and watched Mark flip flop in next to him.
Mark pressed the lit-up lobby button again. Eduardo forced himself to throw his shoulders back and look up. And then Mark decided they should have a conversation and said, “Why are you still here?”
Eduardo took a deep breath and exhaled out his nose. “Gretchen-wanted to debrief before we left.”
“Oh.” He thought that would be it, misguided manners satisfied, but then Mark said, “Your hair is different,” which was, you know what? Literally tugging on Eduardo’s pigtails.
Yours isn’t, was Eduardo’s first retort (because it wasn’t-it brushed over the back of his neck, over his upturned collar exactly the same) but Eduardo wasn’t a child, so his brilliant edit was, after five long seconds of whooshing elevator silence, “It’s called a haircut-”
“It’s called a bucket of gel,” Mark said, cutting him off. “I don’t like it.”
Finally the floor settled, bing! and Eduardo was out the doors before they finished opening. He tried to think of some clever last words to shout back to Mark, but all he could think of, skipping again and again in his head was, I don’t like any of this and, since when have you take any notice of my hair?
So Eduardo’s options after that were to never leave Gretchen’s side or to stop taking the elevator. Eduardo liked his lawyer, much better than any of the men his father recommended, but it was easier to be alone.
Like now, sitting on a staircase with a giant cup of coffee, bagel, lox, and amazing house-made cream cheese. Breakfast was the most important meal of the day and good food was doing its job until Mark rounded the corner. Eduardo choked when he saw him, but he managed to very calmly cough the chunk of bagel out of his throat, chew it, and swallow it again. He stared at his knees.
Fuck! Of all the stairs in the whole building! Why? There were five different stairwells to choose from and this one was farthest from the main entrance. Why?
Mark was still standing at the bottom of the staircase when Eduardo looked back up.
“You’re early,” he said, trying to sound dismissive.
“You, too,” said Mark.
“But, I mean, you’re over an hour early.”
“You, too, Wardo,” Mark laughed.
Wardo. Fuck him. And fuck him, fuck him, for not leaving to find his own lurking spot, for sitting down a few steps below like he was allowed to do that, like he was allowed to just sit there. Not that Eduardo did anything about it. He just took another bite of his bagel, chewed. Took another bite. Mark continued to sit.
“Hard to find good bagels on this side of the country,” someone said and since it wasn’t Mark, it must have been Eduardo. For some reason he’d said that. He’d been looking for a decent bagel and lox the past two days. He’d been looking for reasons not to live here for a lot longer than that.
“You find Izzy’s?” Mark said.
“Yeah,” Eduardo said, gesturing with the bagel. “Really good.”
“Yeah.”
Mark opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then he closed it again and just stared at him. Eduardo fingered a smear of cream cheese off the side of the bagel and looked down at his shoes.
“Why did you stay in New York?” Gretchen asked him once, when they were working late and his weepy doe eyes showed too much. “Why not go to California?”
“Why even graduate?” he said, hardly joking and Gretchen pressed her lips together like she knew exactly how much he meant that.
He didn’t tell her that night and she let it drop, but the truth was simple: his father. His father expected him to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard and work his way up from the subway to taxis to a town car, pay his dues, show respect to the businessmen who did it before him. His father didn’t trust progress, sneered at little upstart shits like Mark that got to the top by teleportation, but after all of that, after doing it the right way, his father’s way, he still did it wrong.
“You grab opportunity by the balls, boy,” his father said when Eduardo explained why the Saverin name was involved in a lawsuit. “And if you can’t, you grab his colhões.”
In high school, his father found him in bed with their maid’s son, Robbie. It was the only time his father had ever physically hurt him, grabbing him by his hair and dragging him out of the room. All of that, and even being queer was worth a few billion dollars.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Eduardo said to Mark on the stairs and why, why, why? He didn’t care. He didn’t want to take care of Mark anymore.
“I got a pizza a few hours ago,” Mark said. “There’s a place open 24-hours near my house.”
“College towns. Nice.”
Nice? I think it’s fucking nice, do I? He had to leave or they were going to spend the next hour on this stairwell like bros waiting for-whatever, for the weight room to clear out. Eduardo popped the last bite of bagel in his mouth and stood up, crumpling the parchment paper in his fist. He turned around without looking at Mark and headed for the bathroom because he could hear Mark’s springy footsteps following him, but he couldn’t follow Eduardo into the bathroom, could he? Who did that?
Mark did, of course he did. Eduardo went into a stall and sat on the toilet. He checked his messages-two from his assistant and one from his sister: I hope you get what you want. The automatic toilet flushed when he stood up. Mark was standing across from the stall when he opened the door, arms crossed over his chest, like this was-not even like this was normal because Mark never cared about that, but like he didn’t care that this didn’t make sense, like he didn’t-like he did care. About something. Enough to sit on the stairs and follow him here and stand there watching him.
Apologize, he thought, but Mark just kept watching him.
For the first time Eduardo noticed Mark was wearing a suit. Scuffed shoes, Bar Mitzvah slacks, white shirt, black tie, and a jacket two sizes too big. He’d shown up the first day in the same maroon ringer tee he’d packed to go to Harvard and polar fleece, fuck you apparel at its finest, but also just-at the top of Mark’s pile of clean laundry. Yesterday a shirt and tie, yes, probably the same stuff he was wearing today, but a gray tee-shirt over that, like-Eduardo didn’t even know what that was. Like the same nerd who didn’t know how to dress himself. And now a complete fucking suit?
“What are you wearing?” Eduardo said, hardly recognizing his own hoarse voice.
“A suit,” Mark said.
A suit. A suit.
“Take it off,” Eduardo said because if Mark could do crazy then how about they just ran with crazy?
It was completely worth it to see Mark’s expression finally change, to see him finally surprised. “What?”
Eduardo strode toward him, grabbed Mark’s jacket by the lapels, and pulled it off his shoulders. He realized some things when he got to Mark’s elbows: There was barely an inch between them. He had Mark trapped, unable to move his arms. He smelled like peppermint.
A few seconds later, Eduardo realized Mark tasted like peppermint, too, and made the most fragile whimpering sound when he stopped being kissed.
Their gazes caught and held. And finally he realized: this wasn’t crazy. Well, no, of course it was crazy-Eduardo was suing Mark, for God’s sake-but this wasn’t crazy. It hadn’t always been crazy. This wasn’t just creepy Eduardo smelling Mark’s hair after he fell asleep during Love Actually and pretending he fell asleep too just so he could keep Mark’s head on his shoulder until the theater staff came in to clean, biting Mark’s name into a pillow, I’m here for you and never anything back. This wasn’t Eduardo alone. This was both of them, creepy, stupid, pining, waiting until it was way the fuck too late.
The earth moved and then they were still just looking at each other in the middle of a bathroom. But they didn’t have time for looking (there would be plenty of that later across the conference table), so Eduardo tugged the jacket all the way off and then Mark’s tie and his shirt and his threadbare A-shirt, his belt, his pants. Mark toed off his shoes and Eduardo stepped back to see Mark standing there under the fluorescent light, in front of a wall-size mirror in plaid boxers and white tube socks. Eduardo wanted to focus on how embarrassed Mark should have been and not on the frankly enormous tent in Mark’s boxers. He wanted to, but all he could think was that on top of everything else, Mark was hung and that shouldn’t have turned Eduardo on so much. It should have pissed him off.
“You like morning sex,” Mark said, startling him.
“What?” Yes, he did, but what?
“You told me that once.”
No, he had not. Eduardo had avoided talking to Mark about sex at all costs because it would, it seemed, inevitably come up exactly who he wanted to have sex with (Mark, as if that wasn’t embarrassingly clear to everyone but Mark himself) and when (now) and how much (till death did they part, like pathetic sap he had been).
“You, well, you said that to someone on the phone once,” Mark said, still just standing there like he wasn’t naked in the middle of a public bathroom, “probably a girl, from your tone, and it must have been-Evelyn, probably, because you were dating her and I was-I mean, I wasn’t-I was listening. I heard you say that.”
Maybe Eduardo hadn’t been planning on having sex with Mark because this was fucking crazy and maybe he’d been planning on leaving him naked in this bathroom-maybe-but the very idea that Mark knew something like that, remembered something that Eduardo hadn’t explicitly told him and reminded him about-that idea in combination with the way Mark was sucking his lower lip into his mouth-well. They were definitely going to have sex now.
“Well,” Eduardo said slowly as he pushed his fingers underneath the knot of his own tie and started pushing it down. He walked back toward Mark. “I do like morning sex.”
Mark grinned, the smallest corner-of-the-mouth grin, and met him halfway, stretching up to kiss him, gripping Eduardo’s lapels and pushing his jacket off his shoulders. Eduardo’s jacket was properly tailored, however, and as Mark pushed, Eduardo worked on his buttons, flexing his biceps, and when Mark got to that trapped-at-the-elbows place, he heard riiiiip and felt the fabric go slack around his arms.
“Oops,” Mark said, complete with one of his rare huge grins, like this jacket had insulted his mother and he’d always hated it.
Eduardo couldn’t even get mad. He kissed Mark again and kept working to get his own shirt off. Mark opened his mouth and then started palming him through his briefs and he was terrible at it, because he was used to stroking from another angle and that, fuck, that made him feel shockingly satisfied even though taking anyone’s virginity had always freaked him out. He deserved to be Mark’s first, his first time with a man, anyway, to leave some evidence, more than the masthead he was getting back by the end of this mess.
“I want to fuck you,” he said.
“That makes sense,” Mark said.
“What?”
“I want you to fuck me, too,” Mark said, quieter, and kissed him again.
Eduardo thought about fucking him against the wall, thought about lifting him onto the sinks, but sex was a lot easier to do lying down and their clothes made something of a bed, so-so why not fuck the man he was suing on the floor in the middle of a public bathroom. Good logic.
He pushed Mark down and on to his back and Eduardo kneeled in between Mark’s legs. He kissed Mark’s nipple, sucked hard on Mark’s collarbone until it was speckled red, more evidence, and went lower. Eduardo pulled Mark’s underwear over his hips and then he ran his fingers along the red line left by the elastic. He kissed his bellybutton. There was so much of Mark to kiss, so much he wanted to do, but there was only this morning, a half hour or less until the lawyers started filing in.
He grabbed his messenger bag and rooted around for condoms and the hand lotion Christy had trained him to carry. It was old and too creamy, not the ideal lubricant, but shit boy was none of this ideal.
He lifted Mark’s legs on to his shoulders and teased at a blowjob, sucking the head of his cock, his balls, blowing on the wet, sensitive skin.
“Has anybody ever rimmed you before?” he said.
“I, uh-no, but, Wardo, don’t you think we should-we don’t have limitless-get to the fucking?”
Eduardo thumbed at Mark’s pucker and sucked it so the slurp echoed through the bathroom. Mark’s whole body jerked. “We’ll have time for the fucking, Mark.”
He worked his tongue and then slowly started adding his fingers and the lotion until Mark was squirming and grabbing at Eduardo’s shoulders and hair. Eduardo ran his tongue from Mark’s balls to the dimple at the base of his back. In response, Mark dragged his nails all the way down Eduardo’s scalp and grabbed his hair in both his fists.
Eduardo stroked his hand down Mark’s side to get his attention and said, “Do you have something against my hair?”
“Yes!” Mark huffed and dragged his hands back and forth over Eduardo’s head.
Eduardo could only imagine what a mess he looked right now, but it hardly mattered when Mark was looking so pleased and proud-pleased with himself, surely, but Eduardo could imagine Mark was proud of him instead.
He slid the condom on himself, stroked some more lotion on and sat up, nudging his tip against Mark’s hole. “You ready?” he said.
“Are you really asking me if I’m sure?” Mark said and, in retribution, Eduardo made sure they were in line and he pushed in, as quick and steady as he could.
He leaned forward once he was there, all the way there, and kissed Mark lightly on the mouth.
“Are you sure you want my big cock in your virgin hole, Mark?” he said, enjoying the cliché, moving out and slamming back in. “Look at you, like a fucking cat, arching your back like you can’t get close enough, can’t-”
“We can’t-” Mark said and then they weren't so much kissing as biting, not so much fucking as digging in, Mark’s ankles on his back, his hands on Eduardo’s shoulders, Eduardo’s hands: one steady rough on Mark’s cock, the other everywhere he could reach.
“Remember when Christy and Alice-at that club-”
“I was thinking of you the whole time,” Mark said and bit his ear. That did it for Eduardo and one more stroke up and down his cock did it for Mark.
At the end, they laid together in quiet, hot, damp skin pressed from Eduardo's head in the curve of Mark's neck down to tangled legs. Eduardo was still buzzing with the orgasm and the feeling of finally, finally being so close, when it all became too much. It was everything, it was exactly right, but it was too much because it wasn’t real, it wasn’t his, and it couldn’t be, Mark didn’t really want it except this morning, on this floor and why?
Eduardo stumbled standing and went to the opposite corner of the bathroom. He pressed his head against the cold metal of a stall door and closed his eyes and breathed, but he could still hear Mark breathing across the room louder than anything else. When he turned back, Mark was right where Eduardo had left him, sitting up on his forearms, splayed over all their clothes, huge cock laying casually on his leg, like the cover of a romance novel or a Greek sacrifice.
Eduardo stomped across the room, grabbed his briefs off the floor, and pulled them on. He jerked his pants out from underneath Mark, trying to enjoy it when Mark flailed, falling on to his side, slapping his hands on the floor to catch himself. Eduardo put his pants on and buttoned, not bothering with his belt. He yanked up his shirt, pulled it on, and closed one button, slung his tie around his neck, and tried to ignore Mark following Eduardo’s every move with his gaze.
He found his jacket, ripped at the seam and jagged through the lining, too, and stuffed it in the garbage, a thousand dollar Etro he never wanted to see again.
“Here,” Mark said. He had moved up against the wall. His boxers were slung around one ankle. He was holding his own jacket out to him.
Eduardo didn’t need a jacket. No one was going to take note his sartorial choices and even if they did, there were reasonable explanations: maybe he left his jacket in the car. He probably had a spare in the trunk, even.
He took the jacket from Mark, squeezing his hand through the fabric, took up his bag, and then he ran out of the bathroom. It didn’t occur to him they probably weren’t alone in the building anymore until he was standing in the long hallway, sunlight streaming through landscape windows. He looked like he'd been properly fucked for anyone who cared to notice and he was in the law offices of the opposing party. It was their job to notice when he'd been well-fucked, Jesus.
Eduardo scurried to the nearest door and tried the knob. It was open and it turned out to be a janitor’s closet, but that was fine. Eduardo groped for the light switch and turned it on. He finished getting dressed with trembling hands, ran a comb through his hair until he could feel it holding slick stiff again. He smoothed out the wrinkled lines of his shirt, set in with sweat. He wished he'd gone with white again; this gray showed everything. A lot of bad decisions today. He put on the jacket, but it was just as big on him as it had been on Mark. Fuck.
Fuck.
Eduardo had to admit it, if never out loud: Mark wasn’t just his best friend. Mark was his only friend. It wasn’t that he didn’t have people-he had a new girlfriend, Molly, he was at the top of the damn Phoenix’s list, hell, he got a joint birthday card from Dustin and Chris, six weeks late. He made friends everywhere, easily. He had plenty of people. People who smiled when they were expected to and danced with him when he started to dance and understood and didn’t question and didn’t reinvent the way the world communicated when they couldn’t communicate themselves, when they couldn’t shout at him, “STAY HERE WITH ME,” and tie Eduardo down to the bed until he understood that he was supposed to wake up in that bed every morning and make Mark hot chocolate with his coffee and just enjoy the sunshine, even if he was useless in California, before he lost his only fucking real friend.
Eduardo pressed the base of his hands against his eyes and scrubbed his fingers through his hair and lifted Mark’s jacket so he could press his nose underneath the collar and smell Mark’s expensive cologne and cheap shampoo and peppermint and Mark.
Maybe Mark wasn’t his only friend, but then he was something more, something no one else would ever be and now they were going to sit across a table from each other and talk about how it all fell apart.
He took off the jacket and draped it over his arm, shook out his shoulders and opened the door. The hallway was deserted, but with a ding!, the elevators directly parallel with the janitor’s closet opened and Mark stepped out.
He looked perfectly composed, zipping a black hoodie over his shirt and tie. He must have gone down to his car for it, but Christ, Mark, a hoodie? Mark really thought that was an appropriate replacement for his suit jacket? A fucking hoodie and the pathetic thing was Eduardo’s next thought was, that’s more like it.
Eduardo’s leg jerked involuntarily and he kicked something against the wall. A mop handle shot down in front of him and he scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground. Mark was still standing there when he looked up again, just barely smiling at him.
Eduardo had no time to appreciate that, the stroke and the squeeze of it, before he recognized the distant click-clack of heels against polished concrete. He secured the mop against the wall and leapt out of the janitor’s closet, closing the door behind him.
Sylas Elliot came up around the corner of the hallway and smiled at Mark. His pretty associate and the balding, frowny one hurried behind him. A few feet away, they all stopped and swung frowns between Mark and Eduardo.
“Mark,” Sylas said. He slapped his shoulder. “I thought I told you to wear a suit.”
“I’m wearing a tie,” Mark said. “And who am I trying to impress, exactly? There’s no jury.”
“The stenographer,” Sylas said. “You should always give your best face to the person writing your story.”
Mark tugged the hoodie's zipper down a little, shrugged, and looked steadily at Eduardo. “I’ve only got this face.”
And wasn’t that the fucking truth? Agreeing to those contracts or taking Eduardo’s cock or sitting in front of his computer for days and forgetting to eat-it was all just Mark and Mark and Mark. No matter what Eduardo did, it was all Mark.
Apologize, he thought, but he just stood there and watched Mark lead his lawyers down the hallway.
NOT THE END
Note 4: “Expos” mentioned in the second paragraph is the required beginning writing class at Harvard. I figured this was clear in the context, but “colhões” is Brazilian Portuguese slang for testicles. :)
Note 5: If anyone lives in the South Bay and knows the joy of east coast bagels and hasn’t tried Izzy’s... you just need to rectify that immediately. So delicious.
Note 6: On that jacket/hoodie thing... if you didn't look at the gif whilst reading, I implore you to look at it now and let me explain: so clearly Mark’s wearing the hoodie, genius fashionista that he is, and Mark’s jacket is hanging on the back of Eduardo’s chair. He never wears it even though apparently it was drafty enough in the conference rooms for him to wear a jacket through the first two days of depositions. THE JACKET MEANT SOMETHING. Oh yeah, this ain’t no tin foil hat I wear. This is a limited edition serious beans Tin Man costume hat. Anyhoo, you can bet he took that jacket home with him.
Note 7: Yes, past readers of mine, more bathroom sex. I swear that's not a kink in my own ~personal life.~ Swear. I somewhat consider this a prequel to " Strength in Numbers" even though the facts don't line up quite right. But, you know, more bathroom sex to be found there if that's what you're into. :)
Ahem. THANKS FOR READING!