FIC: With Friends Like These {TSN - Eduardo/Sean, Mark&Eduardo friendship}
I can’t tell you how relieved I am to be finally finished with this after so long. Damn, it takes me forever to write things. Everyone who has taken the time to read this (or who will in the future), I love you SO MUCH. <3
Title: With Friends Like These
Author: Silvia Kundera
Fandom: The Social Network
Disclaimer: Just harmless fantasy based off the characters from The Social Network. Not intending to damage copyright or represent any real persons, living or dead.
Pairing: Eduardo/Sean, Mark&Eduardo friendship
Words: 16,500
Summary: In which Mark and Dustin have bad plans, Eduardo is terribly mistreated, and the way to Sean Parker's heart is (obviously) to convince him that you liked him first.
Notes: So after finishing “Buyer’s Remorse” I thought it would be interesting to write a different redemption story, this time for Eduardo. Then I thought, huh, if Eduardo is really going to fall in love with Sean Parker, it’s going to take a village. And a wacky misunderstanding. Thus, what follows is the incredibly un-true story of how Eduardo and Sean’s secret passion saved Mark & Eduardo’s friendship and a whole lot of legal fees.
*
It wasn't that Eduardo didn't feel bad about the chicken.
He'd generally considered himself to be a consummate friend of the animals. He'd given money to Greenpeace once in high school. The death of his first hamster had been entirely accidental. And he really didn't enjoy that look that he'd put on Mark's face, like he was very terribly amused, except for the parts of him that weren't, at all.
"I'm sorry about the article, I am, but there are lines."
"It's Sean Parker, Wardo."
"Who I don't want 10 miles near our company," Eduardo protested.
"Then how about just his contacts," Dustin said and shrugged when Eduardo snapped,
"You're not helping."
Dustin's smug expression expressed that he knew very well that he wasn't helping, and the excellent reason for that is that he was on Mark's fucking side.
Someday Dustin would meet a girl he was crazy about, and she'd actually agree to date him, and then Eduardo was going to make her love him, and think he was an absolute angel, and Dustin would be in so much trouble.
"I'm not even gay."
Mark's eyes narrowed. "You're a little gay."
"I made out with Sergio Rodriguez one time, after 3 kamikazes."
"I didn't know Sergio was gay," Dustin said, amused.
Eduardo said, pointedly, "I don't think he is," and was immensely self-satisfied for the 30 blissful seconds before he noticed Dustin smiling craftily.
"Hey, doesn't he row crew?"
"Well, that settles it." Mark folded his hands together, smirking. "I don't think you could sink any lower."
"I think we need to further explore your crew issues," said Eduardo.
"You are welcome to do so, after you ask out Sean Parker."
"I think there's been some terrible misunderstanding."
Mark's expression as he leaned back in his chair was completely resolute. "This is your duty as CFO."
"And for loooooove," Dustin said.
*
There was probably a perfectly logical explanation for all this, but Eduardo never actually discovered it - mostly because he was too busy being horrified beyond belief.
The gist of it initially appeared to be:
Sean had communicated a certain romantic, or vaguely sexual, or obscenely pornographic, interest in Eduardo. (Mark wasn't quite sure, but then it was Mark.)
Sean knew investors.
Mark wanted investors.
Eduardo was a really, really good friend.
*
It seemed safe to assume that asking out a guy was the same process as asking out a girl, and it appeared to be going well for something Eduardo did not - in any way, shape, or form - want to be doing, until he tried to pull out Sean's chair for him at the restaurant and Sean was consumed with cackling laughter. It was so bad he started hacking, gripping the table, and then he had to use an inhaler. (This was unsettling on its own, because the implied vulnerability made him seem just a bit little human, and Eduardo had been pretty sure that Sean was secretly an evil robot programmed to spew out start-up jargon, confabulate reality with parables, and disrupt every aspect of Eduardo's carefully ordered life.)
"Is this a date," Sean gasped, and Eduardo bit his lip, fingers curling up to tug anxiously at his jacket sleeves.
"uh, if you want it to be?"
This set Sean off cackling again, though he managed to stifle it enough to place his order with the waitress.
"Wow, Mark's a funny guy," Sean said, blatantly admiring the swing of her hips she left to retrieve their wine. "He couldn't tell I was joking?"
Eduardo struggled to think of a time when he was more mortified.
He came to the decision that, like the chicken, this was slightly superior to an established reputation for necrophilia. But it was still pretty damn bad.
This would be why he tried to immediately flee, with ardent dreams of licking his wounds in private, except Sean grabbed his wrist and shot him the first honest smile Eduardo had ever seen him bestow.
Frankly, he hadn't been certain Sean could do that. (see: evil robot)
"No, no, don't go," Sean encouraged. "Let's stay and talk business. You know, without the boss man."
And he wouldn't have, he considered up and leaving at least fifteen more times, but Sean was being so horrifically nice about it. And he had to think up all the various insidious lies he was going to tell Dustin's future girlfriend, which would take a while.
"I realize you've just been the victim of accidental sexual harassment, but you'll still give me an alibi when I have to beat my best friend to death with this-" Eduardo hefted it with his left hand and blinked. "-surprisingly heavy desert menu, won't you?"
"This is going to be fucking hysterical in 10 years, trust me," Sean said, reaching out to smack him consolingly on the shoulder.
"You're probably right", Eduardo admitted, took a gulp of wine, and let Sean tell him a story about the time an aide from the Commerce Secretary called his parents to explain how he was dismantling the fabric of capitalist society.
It was actually pretty funny and an apt analogy to Eduardo’s tendency to overemphasize revenue over growth-- though he'd be taking that observation to his death bed.
"So, I didn't know you were gay," Sean said, once Eduardo had stopped shooting longing glances towards the exit.
"I'm not. Really."
Sean grinned at him over his glass. "Now I'm flattered."
"It was mostly under duress."
*
"I'm not speaking to you," Eduardo said, very seriously, when he got back.
"Oh my god," Dustin shrieked. "He stole your delicate maidenhood, didn't he?"
"NO, he did not--" Eduardo paused. "Is my delicate maidenhood supposed to be my ass?"
"Oh good", Dustin said, relieved. "Just a blowjob then."
*
Then Mark decided the entire operation had to move to Palo Alto.
"Since pimping me out didn't work."
"I said I was sorry about that," Mark said crossly.
Slightly Cowed and Sincerely Apologetic Mark had lasted an unprecedented three days, but had not been seen or heard from since.
"I lost my girlfriend."
"Since none of the rest of us are getting laid," Mark drawled, "forgive me if my heart bleeds little for you."
"She kneed me in the nuts outside the observatory!"
"You did deserve that," Chris said mildly, who had not been amused at the discovery of their thwarted plans.
It was possible that he resented them for making a mockery of his sexuality. It was also possible he resented missing out on some prime Eduardo hazing. But most likely he was just of the opinion that an involuntary gay love affair that went nowhere was still cheating on your girlfriend, and a total dick move.
"We need another Linux box," said Mark, ignoring him, and passed over the specs.
Eduardo paged through the sheets and rolled them into a tube, tapping them against his leg a little nervously. "You know I can't come with you guys."
Dustin booed loudly. "Aww, say it ain't so! When we become gajillionaires Christy will totally take you back."
"We can get you better than Christy," Mark said, with a quirk of his lips, but Eduardo had serious concerns he might be sterile, so hard did that knee connect. He swore he saw his life flashing in front of his eyes.
And man, it used to include a lot less sitting around and waiting on floors and at doorways.
"I've had more than enough of your matchmaking prowess, thank you very much."
*
When Mark had a new hobby that he could pair with his profound love of schadenfreude he tended to be a little relentless, but luckily there were opportunities for worldwide domination to distract him. Eduardo let Mark walk him through the navigation redesign, clicking happily with the thought of crushing his detractors.
It was both nice and a little bit of a bummer to see a happy Mark. Nice, because this was the most endearing form of Mark, the Mark who reminded him why he kept coming back around and ignoring the prickly exterior, and, fine, latching onto him not unlike like a baby duckling (there were really so many reasons Dustin would pay). A bummer, because now Eduardo was reminded that he'd actually miss him.
Chris stopped him at the door on the way out, "Are you sure that's a good move here?"
To be honest, Eduardo wasn't sure either, but, "Sean Parker wants us in Palo Alto."
Chris opened his mouth to reply, and then paused. "Why do we keep calling him by his full name? It's not like we know any other Seans."
Eduardo thought about it, scratching his neck. "More ominous."
"It does seem to instill a measure of dread."
"And now you're humoring me."
"After Mark, you should be used to it."
"Look, if Sean Parker's there, and he might be, that's enough of a reason at this point for me to be on the other side of the country."
"Good point," Chris conceded, and then continued, just when Eduardo was nodding, "Don't want to tempt you to throw away your virtue."
"Dustin was concerned," he added when Eduardo flipped him off, then, "ow!" when Eduardo flicked him in the ear.
"fuck, fuck, ow, stop it, will no one defend my honor?”
"Sorry, too busy with Wardo's," Dustin shouted over his shoulder, intent on the television.
"ow, shit, you know that wasn't even me that time!"
*
It might have been irony when it turned out that Facebook was the perfect vehicle with which to spread an ex-boyfriend's infamy to all of your friends, but there was a reason Eduardo wasn't an English major. It certainly wasn't a surprise, though, to see Alice and an unfamiliar girl in a pencil skirt huffing past him on the way to the campus bookstore or a couple of sorority sisters whispering and sending him a dirty look.
"I really wish you'd stop doing things to make all the girls hate us," Eduardo sighed, leaning in the doorway as Mark checked his suitcases.
"It will be an interesting experiment to see if I can pull it off without them ever meeting you," Mark said.
“And sometimes I really wish I could tell when you’re serious.”
“Yeah, no you don’t,” Chris said over Dustin’s eruption into giggles.
*
Eduardo received the text on a Wednesday, in the middle of orientation. So he got to hurriedly switch over to silent mode while the other two interns glared at him, which was fun.
ur not coming out here?
who is this
who do u think
There was only one person who thought he was that fucking cute.
how did u get this #
thats what i wanted ttalk to u bout
"Why is Sean texting me?" Eduardo asked Mark as soon as he picked up the phone.
"I'm actually in the middle of something."
"Mark."
"I don't know. Probably because he's staying here. Don't call me for the next five hours unless it's urgent. Not that there should be anything urgent. So just, don't call me."
Typical.
The two interns glared harder when the door left out a shrill screech as he returned from the bathroom.
They were probably pretty delighted when he understood the full scope of the time commitment required and realized he'd have to quit.
At least someone was.
*
They'd ended up meeting with Sean one more time before he disappeared to parts unknown, because Mark had said, "It won't be weird," when Eduardo said it would be too fucking weird, and explained, again, that they didn't need him, but if Mark wasn't going to listen then at least let Eduardo sit this one out.
And then Eduardo had ended up on the other side of a table from Sean Parker again, thinking he really should start looking into his communication skills.
Mark had ordered them drinks in this proud way that Chris would have given him shit about if he'd been there and got to hear an astoundingly obvious lecture about how to translate networking into the online social media context, because relationship status, friends and fucking -- that's only half of the picture.
There was another start-up from an ex-Yahoo devotee that Sean seemed to think they needed six contingency plans for, which made Eduardo a little insane.
Except whenever Sean was a particularly smug asshole or cut over him to shove his point into Mark's face, he remembered Sean's smile and how he could have ripped into Eduardo so hard he would have had to quit Facebook and never show his face outside of Harvard again, but Sean didn't.
Except when Mark did that thing he probably never meant to, where he’d act like Eduardo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, then Sean would stop acting like Eduardo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, if only for 1 or 2 minutes. And then when Eduardo gave him a look like, 'I know what you're up to, don't even pretend to care about my answer to that question’, Sean's face said, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' in this way that meant that he totally did.
So apparently all you had to do to win Sean Parker over was cause him to think you're completely infatuated with him.
It didn’t get any weirder than that.
*
"I don't need his fucking charity," Eduardo had fumed when Dustin's head popped up at their return to Kirkland.
And when Dustin hooted, "Sounds like trouble in paradise!" he'd sworn right then and there that he'd have nothing else to do with Sean Parker for the rest of his life.
This was complicated by the two emails sitting in his inbox.
The first was a forward of an small article on that fucking start-up that Eduardo still stubbornly did not give a shit about, so that was easy to delete. The second said,
to: esaverin@harvard.edu
from: sparker@gmail.com
subj: hi
ran into mark yesterday, thought I'd take him out on the town. get our boy genius out of the house.
he offered me a place to crash. and maybe a friend sometimes.
but I thought I'd check in with you on that first.
There was absolutely no power on this earth that could have made Eduardo agree to shoot himself in the proverbial foot like this -- other than that fact that if he said no Sean was absolutely guaranteed to believe Eduardo was beside himself with agony at the thought of Sean humping some college girl or underwear model in the bed he was paying for, jerking off in the shower to hide his tears.
A man must have his dignity.
'It's fine', he typed in response, and then added, 'I might fly out for a weekend.' Because there was dignity, right, but there was also leaving a fox to guard the hen house.
*
There wasn't enough free time for two weeks, putting together growth projections for the firms he'd be visiting, scheduling appointments, and ignoring texts from Dustin like, scandalized at your bf rite now :D:
He trusted that Chris, at least, wouldn't lie about the place burning down.
When Eduardo knocked on the door, some guy with unwashed spiky hair opened it and then slammed it in his face.
"I didn't even introduce myself," Eduardo told the door, but then he considered how many be-suited Brazilians with suitcases could possibly be scheduled to drop by that afternoon and concluded that his reputation had likely preceded him.
He could also conjecture that (a) Sean was presently engaging in obscene acts of public affection on a couch or kitchen chair somewhere and (b) their diligent interns had been warned to respect the CFO's delicate feelings.
Because that was exactly the kind of comedy of errors that his life had become.
It was a nice door, actually, Eduardo thought as he learned forward and pressed his forehead against it. Fairly clean. He comforted himself with the thought that at least Mark had indeed not fucked up with the neighborhood, and their equipment would be pretty safe here (in the event that everyone ever vacated the property all at once, which was sounding significantly more doubtful the more Eduardo pondered the quality of that dude's hair).
Some good, thick oak, Eduardo emphasized to himself as he laid his cheek over it to shout plaintively through the wood that he didn't care who was naked in there, he had a long flight with two layovers and he was fucking tired, so could someone just open up already, or everyone was fired, immediately.
(It wasn't even mostly a lie. He could absolutely ask Mark to just replace them all and Mark would do it, because Mark was sort of a horrible asshole like that who considered people disposable, and also because Mark was his best friend in the world and visa versa, even if he tried to ruin Eduardo's life with homeless internet rockstars, so there.)
"Hey!" Sean exclaimed with fake surprise as he swung open the door and nimbly caught Eduardo's shoulders as he yelped and tumbled forward.
"We're not talking," Eduardo said darkly, shoving himself backward, and ignored how Sean's face folded into a sheepish 'sorry for all the blatant het-sex, bro' grin.
It was a little weird to be touching his chest and everything, when it was all warm and flushed from-doing things. But that was just because Sean had been doing things. About 15 seconds ago. And now Eduardo was touching him, right where someone else had been touching him and getting him all worked up. That would be understandably disconcerting to anyone.
"Wardo!" Mark said, hustling down into the living room and looking pleased, and that felt good and much less confusing.
It was a particularly welcome sight after all the thoughts about how Mark could make everyone pay, even if he'd never actually ask Mark to do that. (Sometimes he thought their friendship had initially been built on the rather twisted premise that Eduardo enjoyed the security of Mark's potential directed wrath and Mark liked knowing that if he ever decided he'd like some empathy, human companionship, and a hug or something, Eduardo would totally be happy to do that and never ask questions or bring it up again. It wasn't that either of them intended to ever access that resource; it was enough to know, secretly, that they could.)
"I'm staying for four days and I'm taking over your room," Eduardo said, somewhat mollified.
"That's fine." Mark was looking distracted again. His fingers were twitching a little, as if going through keyboard withdrawal. "I haven't used the bed for at least a week anyway."
*
Not a lot of conventional sleeping activity was happening in that particular Palo Alto residence, it turned out.
But they'd made leaps and bounds with the scripting and the forms were cleaner. Everything looked amazing, honestly, so it was hard to remind people about basic nutrition, the dangers of sleep deprivation, and the possible perils of ingesting 20 gallons of Red Bull per week (such as a diabetic coma).
Eduardo wasn't a doctor or anything, but that sounded probable.
"Let me just switch you over to sugar free."
"Fuck off," Mark said for the third time, and then, "Sean!"
"You'll regret this when we're dying alone together in a nursing home," said Eduardo, "and I'm in much better shape than you."
"We're not dying alone," Mark said in his flatly consoling way, "we're going to be billionaires."
"Never underestimate your ability to alienate everyone we meet."
"Except me," Sean said, arriving to sprawl across the doorway in such a way that it would be impossible to get past without physically shoving against him.
"Yeah, could you work on that?" Eduardo leaned over to drawl quietly in Mark's ear, whose lips curved into an answering smirk, and then bent back up to say, loudly,
"A fact I give thanks for every single day."
*
There was a distinct possibility that Sean had been assigned to distract Eduardo from being a helpful and supportive friend, because he kept lurking around and springing out at Eduardo when he was making fresh squeezed orange juice or inspecting painful looking key marks on someone's face from when they'd collapsed mid-coding.
But Eduardo did sort of really need all the profile functionalities demonstrated for him (in order to sound like less of a moron when he explained them to other people), so he was mildly grateful for Sean's assistance. Not that he was ever going to tell him that.
"You're not as shitty at this as you think you are," Sean said, hand directing Eduardo's mouse. The other palm sat heavy between Eduardo's shoulder blades.
"Whatever," Eduardo said, and went to check whether people wanted him to pick up pizza or chinese for lunch-dinner.
*
He next discovered that Sean was obsessed with venture capitalists and collected acquaintances with them like Eduardo's cousin Luiz used to collect baseball cards.
His current girl was the daughter of one, which Eduardo considered to be a disastrous conflict of interests, but Sean was unconcerned.
"She's cool," he said, shrugging.
This was not untrue. Miranda spoke three languages, had worked as a booth babe at 2 Comic-Cons, played in a soccer club, knew to call it football, and consequently had thighs that could probably crush a trachea without putting too much thought into it.
Miranda was, in fact, pretty fucking cool.
Eduardo kind of adored her, especially since Sunday night when she let him lay his head on her lap and petted his hair while he tried to make the world stop spinning from too much Jägermeister. She scratched his scalp occasionally with her long unpolished nails and told him about her favorite Italian horror movies while Sean sat on the floor beside them, fiddling with her sandals and looking at them funny.
"I could totally steal your girlfriend," he wanted to say, except for how Sean didn't actually consider her to be his girlfriend in the first place and, more importantly, he bet she usually didn't do that for straight guys. Goddamnit.
*
"It's going to be a real shame when she declares vengeance and has her father crush all of our hopes and dreams," Eduardo mused forlornly.
"I know what you mean," Dustin said with a sigh.
Sean tried to make pot smoke rings and failed miserably. "She's going to keep sending me photos of her nieces, and then of her and her new boyfriend, and then invite us to all to the good sorority parties."
And despite how hard Eduardo and Dustin had laughed in his face, that's exactly what happened.
A week and a half later Sean cc'd him on the one where her youngest niece was dressed like a dragon and an older one was trying to slay her with a foam sword.
She'd friended them all in Facebook, and now Eduardo actually knew how to let her know the pic was pretty badass.
*
It had to be acknowledged that this strange trail of benevolent exes was probably because, obnoxious egoist or not, Sean knew what he was doing, apparently, only hooking up with girls who just wanted to have a good time.
"A good time" (ā gŏŏd tīm)
n. [Parker]
1. a month or two of having enormous amounts of sex
2. getting high enough to never remember all the long, philosophical meanderings about information distribution and open source politics.
And it undoubtedly helped that - unlike most every college guy Eduardo knew (especially in The Phoenix, which had turned out to be populated almost entirely by assholes) (if absolute power corrupts absolutely, Eduardo did not want to know any of those guys in 20 years) - Sean never talked about what he did in bed with any of his past someones.
He was like-a gentlemen or something.
If gentlemen occasionally told stories featuring the recreational use of cocaine.
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
this just means the inevitable collateral damage will be coming from SOMEWHERE ELSE
to: esaverin@facebook.com
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
sure
if you mean your pants
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
that's not funny
to: esaverin@facebook.com
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
yes it was
*
Eduardo's short visit had the unexpected consequence of making the multi-state separation both more and less ulcer-inducingly stressful.
His concerns had been re-ranked, with best friend seduced to the dark side and everyone having lots more fun than me downgraded to a Level Three threat and CEO arrested for gross violation of state labor laws raised to Night Sweats.
"You're still worried we're all going to blow ourselves up or something," Dustin accused him, finally, after a few rounds of subtle conversational probing.
"No," Eduardo lied, and then sighed. "I guess I just expected our company headquarters to be more-company headquarters like."
"Andrew was talking about bringing in a water cooler," Dustin ventured. "Mark said he'd think about it."
"Mark's thinking about water coolers?"
"Well, I think he assumed that was a metaphor for revamping the waterfall method," Dustin admitted, "but we might get one anyway. Chris said there's space in the kitchen."
"Right," Eduardo said.
*
And maybe Eduardo was trying to distract himself, a little. Because things could have been going better in New York - in the sense that any variation from the norm would be considered a definite improvement.
In the sense that, basically, Eduardo was fucking up big time.
This was because Eduardo could not land a pitch to save his life.
The thing about pitches was that they didn't have to be especially factual, detailed, or even more than half-way plausible. A pitch was supposed to sound good, and remind the listener of a lot of other different things that they really liked, which you'd managed to convince them were remarkably similar to your completely original (if inaccurate, vague, and less than plausible) idea.
And the reason pitches worked, if you were very good at them, is that the people you threw them to were just powerful and influential enough to have either forgotten everything they once knew about converting attractive ideas into reality, or they never had to learn in the first place.
Pitches also went great with names. Names, titles, doomsday proclamations, and punch lines were an intrinsic part of a pitch.
Pitches were really made to be constructed and delivered by people like Sean Parker, Eduardo had thought during his first five flame outs, and this thought mostly made him want to use the binders people kept giving back to him to beat Sean about the head.
Around flame out eight or ten, he was just really tired and thought that Sean would probably help him if he asked. And then he resolved to not think about Sean Parker again.
So the meetings he could actually get booked tended to end pretty early when it was revealed that Eduardo was crap at illustrative parables, no one else would be joining him, and they couldn't even conference in the CEO. Since pitches sort of needed the Marks of the company to tell the listener how very clever they were for understanding the grand vision being presented to them and, to be honest, it tended to look really bad when the company head wasn't engaged enough to even say, 'hi'.
(Eduardo sort over glossed over the part where Mark was not, in truth, engaged enough to know he should have said 'hi' in the first place.)
Plus there were all the meetings he couldn't even schedule, mostly because a strategic analyst or, you know, receptionist, was not the target audience for underdeveloped spiels and thought he was a tragic and/or hilarious joke.
For instance, Reena from DDB Worldgroup, who said, "The thing I'm getting from this document," scratching the plastic with her nail, "is that you can't even get people to put the numbers together for you. That's the level of organization you're dealing with here."
"I wouldn't say-"
"You wouldn't say that was accurate?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"No, you probably wouldn't," she said drily, "But that's because then I'd ask you to get the fuck out of my office and stop wasting my time."
"So," Eduardo said, after a moment of silence, "That was actually you telling me to leave."
"Perceptive too."
And then Patrick McCann's administrative assistant was not terribly impressed with his most flirtatious first date smile, possibly because she was 87 and that had been a very weird choice, mostly due to nerves.
"I just-wanted to have dialogue," Eduardo said quickly, before she could explain again why no one would see him, and then he'd have to go find one of those bridges Mark was always going on about lately and jump off it. "I thought maybe we could have a short dialogue, about the opportunities that the company could bring to your firm. There's a lot of-misinformation about Facebook. And what we're doing."
"We haven't heard any information."
"Which is-sort of-sort of misinformation. In a way," said Eduardo, and then at the look on her face, "This is like that thing where no one will hire you until you have some solid experience on your resume, which you can't get because no one will hire you, isn't it?"
She let her glasses slip down her nose and peered at him over the thin silver frames, just to make sure that there was absolutely no doubt about how hard she was judging him right then. Which was fine, because he was judging her right back. Eduardo had judged her to be the scariest grandma he'd ever met, whether or not she actually had grandkids. And if they'd been delicious. "I don't suppose you'll ever know, seeing as in a year or so you'll be graduating Ivy League and daddy's car cost more than my first condo."
"That obvious?" Eduardo said weakly.
Her eyebrows said volumes.
"Right, I'll-work on that."
"No, they'll love that bit," she said flatly, sliding the folder back to him across the desk, "I bet you golf too," which Eduardo took as his cue to exit.
*
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Sean said, because (despite all of Eduardo's sincere vows) right around the time Eduardo had stopped freaking out about the guys being out there all alone Sean had taken to calling him every couple days or so, to check in.
Eduardo kept thinking maybe they should make it a scheduled meeting, with minutes or something, except that Sean would go on these epic tangents about the current price of red haired bud coming in from Frisco and why England doesn't have its own Bill Gates. So maybe it wasn't exactly a company thing, even if it wasn't exactly not a company thing either.
"I don't know," Eduardo said and tilted his head side to side like Sean could see him, "trade in Mark for a kinder, gentler, more profit margin friendly model?"
"Nah, it'll be a few more months until he's basically expendable," Sean said.
*
"… you do know I was kidding?"
"Sure," Sean said. "Me too."
*
It wasn't that he was preoccupied all the time about it, but sometimes Eduardo still did wonder what everyone else was doing right then when he was stuck on the subway, and they'd had to stop for twenty minutes for some technical glitch or someone's lunch break or whatever, and everyone smelled tired and sweaty and like ten different kinds of dry cleaner chemicals.
Sometimes he couldn't sleep and he'd seen all the movies on HBO or Showtime too many times, and so he'd text Mark something like, how r things or what r u doing and a lot of times he wouldn't hear back until he woke up the next morning, but sometimes it would be right away and something silly like fucking with variables or maybe dustin forgot the breadstix, and it made Eduardo feel better, in this inexplicable way, just to know that.
It was just that Chris could get talked into things real easy, because he was laid back like that and wanted to get along with people. And Dustin and Mark weren't the best help in those times, because either it didn't affect him so Mark didn't give a shit or it was Dustin's idea. Eduardo didn't do much himself in those situations, he had to admit, but at least he could watch it go down and freak out at the appropriate intervals.
And there was that voicemail that alluded to something about a chimney and zip lines, and it wasn't that Eduardo would cry about it or anything, but it would be deeply inconvenient for Facebook if Sean happened to face the minimum six months of jail time for a student seriously injuring themselves or another equally stupid person after he'd bought them alcohol.
Fine, and some of his stories weren't half bad, and his hands were strangely comfortable, and sometimes Eduardo thought what would Sean Parker do? and traded in just a little more of his dignity and self-respect to make it out of there in one piece, but it was more about how Mark had gotten all attached and found Jesus, in a way. If Jesus was a 24 year old drop out who liked to lounge around with his shirt off, always fucking with his hair in the mirror, and (for all intents and purposes) deeply agnostic to the point of apathy.
It was more that Mark would miss him. It really wouldn't affect Eduardo's life at all.
*
"Sean's worried that you might be lonely."
"He should be worried about himself," said Eduardo peevishly, pondering the bleak possibly of ever recovering their deposit, and then froze mid-slouch at the click-click-click of typing. "What was that?"
"mm, nothing," Dustin said, then shouted, "Mark, I'm using your phone."
"Just tell me you weren't-"
"Letting Sean know you're keeping yourself busy thinking only of him? Yeah, no."
"Thank g-"
"Ha, just kidding, I totally was."
*
What they didn't seem to understand is that there were plenty of things to do in New York, being as it was New York and everything.
It wasn't like Palo Alto was some sought after Spring Break location. Not that it was Spring Break, and not that New York was either, seeing as it was horribly muggy during summer and there was a distinct lack of world renowned beaches. But it had a massive tourism agency, because people everywhere spent thousands of dollars and flew many, many hours just to visit. And if a serious, significantly underreported crime rate had been an issue, way less college students would be headed to Mazatlan.
Thus, traveling around that city several times a week should have made Eduardo the envy of millions and not at all a subject of condescension.
"What your problem is, son," mused Edgar, a spry 75 year old bent on touring the local museums and improbably seating himself beside Eduardo during three separate subway journeys, "Is that I give you a glass of water and you wouldn't say half full or half empty, you'd ask if it's poisoned."
Eduardo sighed. "There's this guy I know," he said, "who - if you pulled out a half glass of water, he wouldn't know where to even start figuring that out. So he'd just ask what you think, and take that 5 minutes of explanation to figure out how to get you to give it to him, free of charge."
"That's not a very nice thing to say about someone," said Edgar disapprovingly.
"Well," Eduardo said, "He's not a very nice person."
Edgar peered at him suspiciously. "Did you know that you're smiling?"
"Er, botox," Eduardo said.
*
It wasn't like other students weren't sticking around. There were four guys from The Phoenix, and at least one of them consistently remembered his name.
And he'd gone out for drinks three times with the girl with frizzy hair who had sat next to him for most of Math 21a, until she presumably heard about his unofficial Facebook status as a breaker of hearts and the tender female spirit. (Despite Eduardo having been presented with little evidence throughout his life that the female spirit was exceedingly delicate or tender.) (He was fairly certain that this was spurious propaganda, used to lure mankind into a false sense of complacency.) (Which was just fine with Eduardo, really, he wasn't looking to start anything.)
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation
Sometimes I worry we may have created a monster.
to: esaverin@facebook.com
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation
Dr Frankenstein used much less electricity.
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: re: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation
Awaking a hideous monstrosity from dead limbs, very cost efficient. Who knew?
*
So Eduardo may not have been renting in the heart of, well, anywhere, and it may not have been party central, but there were things to do besides wallowing in petulant misery.
A copious amount of masturbation was unfortunately not one of these things, because the couple next door seemed to be going at it during all hours of the day and night.
Seriously, every time he turned around, or woke up in the morning, or made breakfast, or made dinner, or stumbled in after an ego shredding day and just wanted some peace and quiet with a side of The Sopranos: grunting, moaning, and mattress squeaking. And Eduardo just frankly found it impossible to jerk off to the sound of other people having sex (unless it was attractively fake people having attractively fake sex, like in porn).
I could at least jerk off if I had gone to California, he'd find himself thinking (though those were exactly the kind of defeatist thoughts he was trying to weed out and crush like his reputation among womenfolk), but then he'd remember the sounds from Sean and his girlfriend, who had also been next door when he was staying there. Sounds which had just-they'd been more appealing, that was all. There was this satisfied low, tight noise that came from deep in Sean's chest that had made Eduardo go all hot and roll over onto his stomach to press his dick into the bed and his cheek into the pillow, eyes scrunched shut. Because of what she must have been doing, how she must have felt, to push that sound out of him. And because Eduardo hadn't gotten laid for an outrageously long time. Obviously.
So he'd think that, and then the neighbors would just not shut the fuck up, and the only reasonable response was to stand in the kitchen, awkwardly hard, and make another To-Do list.
The current one was scrawled on printer paper, attached to the fridge with a magnet from Wok 'n Roll Sushi, and read:
buy milk
POSITIVITY
avoid nosey subway strangers
plan state school targets
no less binge drinking
don't shower before PA calls
no jerking off from the fucking neighbors sean noises weird stuff
can still get scurvy? remind mark about scurvy.
be less gay about sean
*
All the lobbies Eduardo entered were completely different and yet looked completely the same. All glinting metal and glass, to construct an impression of translucent, wide space, as if to communicate to prospective clients that they were an open book. An open book with open walls that did not block the open flow of ideas-ideas all perfectly conforming to the current mode, of course, thumb planted firmly on the pulse of every possible demographic segment.
They were all equally fraudulent in their transparency.
And cleaning bills must have been astronomical.
These should be my people, Eduardo thought. Mass-producing thoughts instead of the mass-production of commodities. He was selling possibilities to people who produced nothing but loved statistics. It should have been a slam dunk.
"These should be my people," Eduardo explained to Cesar wistfully, who had been sitting with him in the latest lobby and also waiting aimlessly for someone to remember his existence.
He was being interviewed for an open position and, in Eduardo's objective opinion, was wearing a much better suit.
Eduardo suggested that if Cesar had any success, perhaps Eduardo would be meeting with him next.
Cesar opined that that would probably be a poor idea unless Eduardo was looking to work in the mail room. Eduardo thought he should consider no longer shopping at Men's Warehouse.
"They have a mail room?"
"Leaflets," Cesar volunteered.
"I could make leaflets," Eduardo decided, after a moment of thought. There was likely very little traveling involved in leaflet production, which was quite an appealing thought at the moment.
Cesar did not appear very convinced, possibly because he could tell there was not a single artistic bone in Eduardo's body or because he was sensing the imminent psychotic break.
"I was a teacher's aide in high school," Eduardo insisted, "I can laminate."
"What company are you with again?"
"um," Eduardo said. "Hey, what direction to the bathroom?"
*
Though you might assume by their eerily similar lobbies that most advertising agencies would have a standard floor plan, Eduardo had discovered that you would be horribly, horribly wrong. (However, they did all appear to have the same Core Values - Integrity, Customer Satisfaction, Respect, Diversity, and Innovation, respectively - and claimed that these values were what truly distinguished them from competitors.)
This particular floor plan seemed to consist of very long corridors, black marble floor, and cubicles that were pretending not to be cubicles, with the assistance of stained wood desks and chairs offering actual back support. Looping may have been involved.
Cesar and the security guard had expressed a vague but shared belief that the bathrooms were somewhere to their left. It was quite possible that they were thinking of another building. Or they could have done it on purpose.
Either way, Eduardo was of the opinion that they were complete bastards.
Eduardo extracted his phone with dreams of GPS and a distinct fear that he had somehow wandered into Connecticut during the last 50 minutes. (It had actually been 15 minutes, but it felt like 50, which was the point.)
It turned out that in the metallic and glass bowels of the earth there was excellent reception.
It also just so happened that this was the tenth time Eduardo had called Mark's cell that week and it just rang and rang, because that's all it did lately. Plus, there was all the simmering sexual frustration, the succession of blunt rejections, and the fact that his socks were still squishing in his shoes from accidentally stepping into that puddle an hour ago. So when Sean picked up instead and failed to magically transform into a 19 year old Jewish programmer, Eduardo naturally lit into him, because it had been that kind of day, and seriously, Sean was,
"-no fucking help, so I don't want to deal with you right now, okay?"
"Oh, and what do you want me to do, 3,000 miles away?"
"I don't know, walk down the hall and talk to the CEO of this fucking company?" Eduardo snapped and glared balefully at a team building poster.
"And he's going to say-"
"I know what he's going to-"
"He's going to do that thing, the thing about how we don't know what this is yet," Sean snapped back, and passing non-cubical residents took one look at Eduardo's face and apparently decided it might be a better idea to keep hands and head directed towards their laptops and not question why a strange man would be storming up and down their hallways, if he was armed, what they could possibly do about it if he was (other than praying that the only one to get shot in the face would be that dick who was always stealing their parking spot), or how long it should take for an adult to make it to the men's room, if he was anything close to sober.
Eduardo was drunk on righteous fury-it was completely different. And justified.
"Is it a fucking cat?" said Eduardo.
"No," Sean admitted, grudgingly.
"Is it a toaster oven?"
"Okay, I get your-"
"Is it a train station?"
"Okay," Sean said.
"Is it a website?"
"Okay, seriously, fuck you now."
"Is it a social networking website?"
"Now I feel like I'm talking to Zuckerberg," Sean said sourly. "I see why you two are close now. Really, I can see why you're dying alone together. That'll be fun for you."
"Then the obvious source of revenue," Eduardo continued, ignoring him, "is selling-"
"-targeted advertising services," Sean said, defensive. "I do know that."
"You were just waiting until Mark got the stick out of his ass about it."
"Well, he gets this look on this face."
"I know what you mean," Eduardo commiserated, softening a little and pausing to lean across a bare white wall.
"I don't have a fancy title," Sean reminded him with an edge to his voice, and it occurred to Eduardo that he might have been a major jerk about this, at some point.
"Sorry," he said, "This just sucks."
"It'll be okay," Sean said easily, like it actually could be and not like Sean was just sick of listening to him, and apparently Eduardo could be a complete asshole as well as someone hated by the entire New York business community and grandmothers, which was an unwelcome revelation.
His mother would be so disappointed in him, and that was usually his dad's job.
*
"What if you were made-VP? Business Development?" Eduardo suggested the next time they talked.
"What?"
"Could you come back me up, in place of Mark?"
"Sure, sure I could, I could do that," Sean said, stuttering a little (though Eduardo wasn't entirely sure why; it seemed like the obvious solution).
"Okay, well, I'll talk to him about the position. But you're talking to him about the trips."
"He's going to do that thing with his chin. And the eye thing."
"I believe in your manipulative capabilities," Eduardo said honestly.
"You do love my wiles," Sean said cheekily.
"I'm hanging up now," Eduardo said, except that he didn't, and Sean told him about Chris leaving his phone under the bed at a one-night-stand's place, who it turned out to be living with his crazy bigot grandfather, and then Eduardo explained about diabolical infinite hallways and his momentary consideration of a zen-like life of mass mailing support duties, and at some point Eduardo fell asleep and crushed his Bluetooth earpiece because it was that kind of week.
*
Eduardo got ahold of Mark the next day and came right to the point, "I think we should have Sean head Business Development."
"I made him President days ago," Mark said, without pausing a key stroke.
"So now he outranks me?"
"He does like you," Mark said, as Dustin interjected, "I may have told him you're hiding your desperate love behind a piercing veil of bitchiness."
"Am I on speaker phone?" said Eduardo dangerously over Mark's muffled,
"Did he notice that makes no sense?" followed by scuffling. "And what happens when Wardo's nice to him?"
"When's Wardo going to be nice to him?" replied Dustin's tinny voice, incredulous.
"Never mind," Eduard sighed, resigned to his idiot friends and consequent lot in life. "Mark, were you ever going to tell me?"
"I just did," said Mark impatiently. "If you'd come out here-"
"I don't need to be there. We talk all the time!"
"But you know I'm not actually listening to you, though, right?"
"This is so great," Dustin said. "We should call Wardo every night."
*
Part 2/2
Title: With Friends Like These
Author: Silvia Kundera
Fandom: The Social Network
Disclaimer: Just harmless fantasy based off the characters from The Social Network. Not intending to damage copyright or represent any real persons, living or dead.
Pairing: Eduardo/Sean, Mark&Eduardo friendship
Words: 16,500
Summary: In which Mark and Dustin have bad plans, Eduardo is terribly mistreated, and the way to Sean Parker's heart is (obviously) to convince him that you liked him first.
Notes: So after finishing “Buyer’s Remorse” I thought it would be interesting to write a different redemption story, this time for Eduardo. Then I thought, huh, if Eduardo is really going to fall in love with Sean Parker, it’s going to take a village. And a wacky misunderstanding. Thus, what follows is the incredibly un-true story of how Eduardo and Sean’s secret passion saved Mark & Eduardo’s friendship and a whole lot of legal fees.
*
It wasn't that Eduardo didn't feel bad about the chicken.
He'd generally considered himself to be a consummate friend of the animals. He'd given money to Greenpeace once in high school. The death of his first hamster had been entirely accidental. And he really didn't enjoy that look that he'd put on Mark's face, like he was very terribly amused, except for the parts of him that weren't, at all.
"I'm sorry about the article, I am, but there are lines."
"It's Sean Parker, Wardo."
"Who I don't want 10 miles near our company," Eduardo protested.
"Then how about just his contacts," Dustin said and shrugged when Eduardo snapped,
"You're not helping."
Dustin's smug expression expressed that he knew very well that he wasn't helping, and the excellent reason for that is that he was on Mark's fucking side.
Someday Dustin would meet a girl he was crazy about, and she'd actually agree to date him, and then Eduardo was going to make her love him, and think he was an absolute angel, and Dustin would be in so much trouble.
"I'm not even gay."
Mark's eyes narrowed. "You're a little gay."
"I made out with Sergio Rodriguez one time, after 3 kamikazes."
"I didn't know Sergio was gay," Dustin said, amused.
Eduardo said, pointedly, "I don't think he is," and was immensely self-satisfied for the 30 blissful seconds before he noticed Dustin smiling craftily.
"Hey, doesn't he row crew?"
"Well, that settles it." Mark folded his hands together, smirking. "I don't think you could sink any lower."
"I think we need to further explore your crew issues," said Eduardo.
"You are welcome to do so, after you ask out Sean Parker."
"I think there's been some terrible misunderstanding."
Mark's expression as he leaned back in his chair was completely resolute. "This is your duty as CFO."
"And for loooooove," Dustin said.
*
There was probably a perfectly logical explanation for all this, but Eduardo never actually discovered it - mostly because he was too busy being horrified beyond belief.
The gist of it initially appeared to be:
Sean had communicated a certain romantic, or vaguely sexual, or obscenely pornographic, interest in Eduardo. (Mark wasn't quite sure, but then it was Mark.)
Sean knew investors.
Mark wanted investors.
Eduardo was a really, really good friend.
*
It seemed safe to assume that asking out a guy was the same process as asking out a girl, and it appeared to be going well for something Eduardo did not - in any way, shape, or form - want to be doing, until he tried to pull out Sean's chair for him at the restaurant and Sean was consumed with cackling laughter. It was so bad he started hacking, gripping the table, and then he had to use an inhaler. (This was unsettling on its own, because the implied vulnerability made him seem just a bit little human, and Eduardo had been pretty sure that Sean was secretly an evil robot programmed to spew out start-up jargon, confabulate reality with parables, and disrupt every aspect of Eduardo's carefully ordered life.)
"Is this a date," Sean gasped, and Eduardo bit his lip, fingers curling up to tug anxiously at his jacket sleeves.
"uh, if you want it to be?"
This set Sean off cackling again, though he managed to stifle it enough to place his order with the waitress.
"Wow, Mark's a funny guy," Sean said, blatantly admiring the swing of her hips she left to retrieve their wine. "He couldn't tell I was joking?"
Eduardo struggled to think of a time when he was more mortified.
He came to the decision that, like the chicken, this was slightly superior to an established reputation for necrophilia. But it was still pretty damn bad.
This would be why he tried to immediately flee, with ardent dreams of licking his wounds in private, except Sean grabbed his wrist and shot him the first honest smile Eduardo had ever seen him bestow.
Frankly, he hadn't been certain Sean could do that. (see: evil robot)
"No, no, don't go," Sean encouraged. "Let's stay and talk business. You know, without the boss man."
And he wouldn't have, he considered up and leaving at least fifteen more times, but Sean was being so horrifically nice about it. And he had to think up all the various insidious lies he was going to tell Dustin's future girlfriend, which would take a while.
"I realize you've just been the victim of accidental sexual harassment, but you'll still give me an alibi when I have to beat my best friend to death with this-" Eduardo hefted it with his left hand and blinked. "-surprisingly heavy desert menu, won't you?"
"This is going to be fucking hysterical in 10 years, trust me," Sean said, reaching out to smack him consolingly on the shoulder.
"You're probably right", Eduardo admitted, took a gulp of wine, and let Sean tell him a story about the time an aide from the Commerce Secretary called his parents to explain how he was dismantling the fabric of capitalist society.
It was actually pretty funny and an apt analogy to Eduardo’s tendency to overemphasize revenue over growth-- though he'd be taking that observation to his death bed.
"So, I didn't know you were gay," Sean said, once Eduardo had stopped shooting longing glances towards the exit.
"I'm not. Really."
Sean grinned at him over his glass. "Now I'm flattered."
"It was mostly under duress."
*
"I'm not speaking to you," Eduardo said, very seriously, when he got back.
"Oh my god," Dustin shrieked. "He stole your delicate maidenhood, didn't he?"
"NO, he did not--" Eduardo paused. "Is my delicate maidenhood supposed to be my ass?"
"Oh good", Dustin said, relieved. "Just a blowjob then."
*
Then Mark decided the entire operation had to move to Palo Alto.
"Since pimping me out didn't work."
"I said I was sorry about that," Mark said crossly.
Slightly Cowed and Sincerely Apologetic Mark had lasted an unprecedented three days, but had not been seen or heard from since.
"I lost my girlfriend."
"Since none of the rest of us are getting laid," Mark drawled, "forgive me if my heart bleeds little for you."
"She kneed me in the nuts outside the observatory!"
"You did deserve that," Chris said mildly, who had not been amused at the discovery of their thwarted plans.
It was possible that he resented them for making a mockery of his sexuality. It was also possible he resented missing out on some prime Eduardo hazing. But most likely he was just of the opinion that an involuntary gay love affair that went nowhere was still cheating on your girlfriend, and a total dick move.
"We need another Linux box," said Mark, ignoring him, and passed over the specs.
Eduardo paged through the sheets and rolled them into a tube, tapping them against his leg a little nervously. "You know I can't come with you guys."
Dustin booed loudly. "Aww, say it ain't so! When we become gajillionaires Christy will totally take you back."
"We can get you better than Christy," Mark said, with a quirk of his lips, but Eduardo had serious concerns he might be sterile, so hard did that knee connect. He swore he saw his life flashing in front of his eyes.
And man, it used to include a lot less sitting around and waiting on floors and at doorways.
"I've had more than enough of your matchmaking prowess, thank you very much."
*
When Mark had a new hobby that he could pair with his profound love of schadenfreude he tended to be a little relentless, but luckily there were opportunities for worldwide domination to distract him. Eduardo let Mark walk him through the navigation redesign, clicking happily with the thought of crushing his detractors.
It was both nice and a little bit of a bummer to see a happy Mark. Nice, because this was the most endearing form of Mark, the Mark who reminded him why he kept coming back around and ignoring the prickly exterior, and, fine, latching onto him not unlike like a baby duckling (there were really so many reasons Dustin would pay). A bummer, because now Eduardo was reminded that he'd actually miss him.
Chris stopped him at the door on the way out, "Are you sure that's a good move here?"
To be honest, Eduardo wasn't sure either, but, "Sean Parker wants us in Palo Alto."
Chris opened his mouth to reply, and then paused. "Why do we keep calling him by his full name? It's not like we know any other Seans."
Eduardo thought about it, scratching his neck. "More ominous."
"It does seem to instill a measure of dread."
"And now you're humoring me."
"After Mark, you should be used to it."
"Look, if Sean Parker's there, and he might be, that's enough of a reason at this point for me to be on the other side of the country."
"Good point," Chris conceded, and then continued, just when Eduardo was nodding, "Don't want to tempt you to throw away your virtue."
"Dustin was concerned," he added when Eduardo flipped him off, then, "ow!" when Eduardo flicked him in the ear.
"fuck, fuck, ow, stop it, will no one defend my honor?”
"Sorry, too busy with Wardo's," Dustin shouted over his shoulder, intent on the television.
"ow, shit, you know that wasn't even me that time!"
*
It might have been irony when it turned out that Facebook was the perfect vehicle with which to spread an ex-boyfriend's infamy to all of your friends, but there was a reason Eduardo wasn't an English major. It certainly wasn't a surprise, though, to see Alice and an unfamiliar girl in a pencil skirt huffing past him on the way to the campus bookstore or a couple of sorority sisters whispering and sending him a dirty look.
"I really wish you'd stop doing things to make all the girls hate us," Eduardo sighed, leaning in the doorway as Mark checked his suitcases.
"It will be an interesting experiment to see if I can pull it off without them ever meeting you," Mark said.
“And sometimes I really wish I could tell when you’re serious.”
“Yeah, no you don’t,” Chris said over Dustin’s eruption into giggles.
*
Eduardo received the text on a Wednesday, in the middle of orientation. So he got to hurriedly switch over to silent mode while the other two interns glared at him, which was fun.
ur not coming out here?
who is this
who do u think
There was only one person who thought he was that fucking cute.
how did u get this #
thats what i wanted ttalk to u bout
"Why is Sean texting me?" Eduardo asked Mark as soon as he picked up the phone.
"I'm actually in the middle of something."
"Mark."
"I don't know. Probably because he's staying here. Don't call me for the next five hours unless it's urgent. Not that there should be anything urgent. So just, don't call me."
Typical.
The two interns glared harder when the door left out a shrill screech as he returned from the bathroom.
They were probably pretty delighted when he understood the full scope of the time commitment required and realized he'd have to quit.
At least someone was.
*
They'd ended up meeting with Sean one more time before he disappeared to parts unknown, because Mark had said, "It won't be weird," when Eduardo said it would be too fucking weird, and explained, again, that they didn't need him, but if Mark wasn't going to listen then at least let Eduardo sit this one out.
And then Eduardo had ended up on the other side of a table from Sean Parker again, thinking he really should start looking into his communication skills.
Mark had ordered them drinks in this proud way that Chris would have given him shit about if he'd been there and got to hear an astoundingly obvious lecture about how to translate networking into the online social media context, because relationship status, friends and fucking -- that's only half of the picture.
There was another start-up from an ex-Yahoo devotee that Sean seemed to think they needed six contingency plans for, which made Eduardo a little insane.
Except whenever Sean was a particularly smug asshole or cut over him to shove his point into Mark's face, he remembered Sean's smile and how he could have ripped into Eduardo so hard he would have had to quit Facebook and never show his face outside of Harvard again, but Sean didn't.
Except when Mark did that thing he probably never meant to, where he’d act like Eduardo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, then Sean would stop acting like Eduardo didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, if only for 1 or 2 minutes. And then when Eduardo gave him a look like, 'I know what you're up to, don't even pretend to care about my answer to that question’, Sean's face said, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' in this way that meant that he totally did.
So apparently all you had to do to win Sean Parker over was cause him to think you're completely infatuated with him.
It didn’t get any weirder than that.
*
"I don't need his fucking charity," Eduardo had fumed when Dustin's head popped up at their return to Kirkland.
And when Dustin hooted, "Sounds like trouble in paradise!" he'd sworn right then and there that he'd have nothing else to do with Sean Parker for the rest of his life.
This was complicated by the two emails sitting in his inbox.
The first was a forward of an small article on that fucking start-up that Eduardo still stubbornly did not give a shit about, so that was easy to delete. The second said,
to: esaverin@harvard.edu
from: sparker@gmail.com
subj: hi
ran into mark yesterday, thought I'd take him out on the town. get our boy genius out of the house.
he offered me a place to crash. and maybe a friend sometimes.
but I thought I'd check in with you on that first.
There was absolutely no power on this earth that could have made Eduardo agree to shoot himself in the proverbial foot like this -- other than that fact that if he said no Sean was absolutely guaranteed to believe Eduardo was beside himself with agony at the thought of Sean humping some college girl or underwear model in the bed he was paying for, jerking off in the shower to hide his tears.
A man must have his dignity.
'It's fine', he typed in response, and then added, 'I might fly out for a weekend.' Because there was dignity, right, but there was also leaving a fox to guard the hen house.
*
There wasn't enough free time for two weeks, putting together growth projections for the firms he'd be visiting, scheduling appointments, and ignoring texts from Dustin like, scandalized at your bf rite now :D:
He trusted that Chris, at least, wouldn't lie about the place burning down.
When Eduardo knocked on the door, some guy with unwashed spiky hair opened it and then slammed it in his face.
"I didn't even introduce myself," Eduardo told the door, but then he considered how many be-suited Brazilians with suitcases could possibly be scheduled to drop by that afternoon and concluded that his reputation had likely preceded him.
He could also conjecture that (a) Sean was presently engaging in obscene acts of public affection on a couch or kitchen chair somewhere and (b) their diligent interns had been warned to respect the CFO's delicate feelings.
Because that was exactly the kind of comedy of errors that his life had become.
It was a nice door, actually, Eduardo thought as he learned forward and pressed his forehead against it. Fairly clean. He comforted himself with the thought that at least Mark had indeed not fucked up with the neighborhood, and their equipment would be pretty safe here (in the event that everyone ever vacated the property all at once, which was sounding significantly more doubtful the more Eduardo pondered the quality of that dude's hair).
Some good, thick oak, Eduardo emphasized to himself as he laid his cheek over it to shout plaintively through the wood that he didn't care who was naked in there, he had a long flight with two layovers and he was fucking tired, so could someone just open up already, or everyone was fired, immediately.
(It wasn't even mostly a lie. He could absolutely ask Mark to just replace them all and Mark would do it, because Mark was sort of a horrible asshole like that who considered people disposable, and also because Mark was his best friend in the world and visa versa, even if he tried to ruin Eduardo's life with homeless internet rockstars, so there.)
"Hey!" Sean exclaimed with fake surprise as he swung open the door and nimbly caught Eduardo's shoulders as he yelped and tumbled forward.
"We're not talking," Eduardo said darkly, shoving himself backward, and ignored how Sean's face folded into a sheepish 'sorry for all the blatant het-sex, bro' grin.
It was a little weird to be touching his chest and everything, when it was all warm and flushed from-doing things. But that was just because Sean had been doing things. About 15 seconds ago. And now Eduardo was touching him, right where someone else had been touching him and getting him all worked up. That would be understandably disconcerting to anyone.
"Wardo!" Mark said, hustling down into the living room and looking pleased, and that felt good and much less confusing.
It was a particularly welcome sight after all the thoughts about how Mark could make everyone pay, even if he'd never actually ask Mark to do that. (Sometimes he thought their friendship had initially been built on the rather twisted premise that Eduardo enjoyed the security of Mark's potential directed wrath and Mark liked knowing that if he ever decided he'd like some empathy, human companionship, and a hug or something, Eduardo would totally be happy to do that and never ask questions or bring it up again. It wasn't that either of them intended to ever access that resource; it was enough to know, secretly, that they could.)
"I'm staying for four days and I'm taking over your room," Eduardo said, somewhat mollified.
"That's fine." Mark was looking distracted again. His fingers were twitching a little, as if going through keyboard withdrawal. "I haven't used the bed for at least a week anyway."
*
Not a lot of conventional sleeping activity was happening in that particular Palo Alto residence, it turned out.
But they'd made leaps and bounds with the scripting and the forms were cleaner. Everything looked amazing, honestly, so it was hard to remind people about basic nutrition, the dangers of sleep deprivation, and the possible perils of ingesting 20 gallons of Red Bull per week (such as a diabetic coma).
Eduardo wasn't a doctor or anything, but that sounded probable.
"Let me just switch you over to sugar free."
"Fuck off," Mark said for the third time, and then, "Sean!"
"You'll regret this when we're dying alone together in a nursing home," said Eduardo, "and I'm in much better shape than you."
"We're not dying alone," Mark said in his flatly consoling way, "we're going to be billionaires."
"Never underestimate your ability to alienate everyone we meet."
"Except me," Sean said, arriving to sprawl across the doorway in such a way that it would be impossible to get past without physically shoving against him.
"Yeah, could you work on that?" Eduardo leaned over to drawl quietly in Mark's ear, whose lips curved into an answering smirk, and then bent back up to say, loudly,
"A fact I give thanks for every single day."
*
There was a distinct possibility that Sean had been assigned to distract Eduardo from being a helpful and supportive friend, because he kept lurking around and springing out at Eduardo when he was making fresh squeezed orange juice or inspecting painful looking key marks on someone's face from when they'd collapsed mid-coding.
But Eduardo did sort of really need all the profile functionalities demonstrated for him (in order to sound like less of a moron when he explained them to other people), so he was mildly grateful for Sean's assistance. Not that he was ever going to tell him that.
"You're not as shitty at this as you think you are," Sean said, hand directing Eduardo's mouse. The other palm sat heavy between Eduardo's shoulder blades.
"Whatever," Eduardo said, and went to check whether people wanted him to pick up pizza or chinese for lunch-dinner.
*
He next discovered that Sean was obsessed with venture capitalists and collected acquaintances with them like Eduardo's cousin Luiz used to collect baseball cards.
His current girl was the daughter of one, which Eduardo considered to be a disastrous conflict of interests, but Sean was unconcerned.
"She's cool," he said, shrugging.
This was not untrue. Miranda spoke three languages, had worked as a booth babe at 2 Comic-Cons, played in a soccer club, knew to call it football, and consequently had thighs that could probably crush a trachea without putting too much thought into it.
Miranda was, in fact, pretty fucking cool.
Eduardo kind of adored her, especially since Sunday night when she let him lay his head on her lap and petted his hair while he tried to make the world stop spinning from too much Jägermeister. She scratched his scalp occasionally with her long unpolished nails and told him about her favorite Italian horror movies while Sean sat on the floor beside them, fiddling with her sandals and looking at them funny.
"I could totally steal your girlfriend," he wanted to say, except for how Sean didn't actually consider her to be his girlfriend in the first place and, more importantly, he bet she usually didn't do that for straight guys. Goddamnit.
*
"It's going to be a real shame when she declares vengeance and has her father crush all of our hopes and dreams," Eduardo mused forlornly.
"I know what you mean," Dustin said with a sigh.
Sean tried to make pot smoke rings and failed miserably. "She's going to keep sending me photos of her nieces, and then of her and her new boyfriend, and then invite us to all to the good sorority parties."
And despite how hard Eduardo and Dustin had laughed in his face, that's exactly what happened.
A week and a half later Sean cc'd him on the one where her youngest niece was dressed like a dragon and an older one was trying to slay her with a foam sword.
She'd friended them all in Facebook, and now Eduardo actually knew how to let her know the pic was pretty badass.
*
It had to be acknowledged that this strange trail of benevolent exes was probably because, obnoxious egoist or not, Sean knew what he was doing, apparently, only hooking up with girls who just wanted to have a good time.
"A good time" (ā gŏŏd tīm)
n. [Parker]
1. a month or two of having enormous amounts of sex
2. getting high enough to never remember all the long, philosophical meanderings about information distribution and open source politics.
And it undoubtedly helped that - unlike most every college guy Eduardo knew (especially in The Phoenix, which had turned out to be populated almost entirely by assholes) (if absolute power corrupts absolutely, Eduardo did not want to know any of those guys in 20 years) - Sean never talked about what he did in bed with any of his past someones.
He was like-a gentlemen or something.
If gentlemen occasionally told stories featuring the recreational use of cocaine.
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
this just means the inevitable collateral damage will be coming from SOMEWHERE ELSE
to: esaverin@facebook.com
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
sure
if you mean your pants
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
that's not funny
to: esaverin@facebook.com
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: parker
yes it was
*
Eduardo's short visit had the unexpected consequence of making the multi-state separation both more and less ulcer-inducingly stressful.
His concerns had been re-ranked, with best friend seduced to the dark side and everyone having lots more fun than me downgraded to a Level Three threat and CEO arrested for gross violation of state labor laws raised to Night Sweats.
"You're still worried we're all going to blow ourselves up or something," Dustin accused him, finally, after a few rounds of subtle conversational probing.
"No," Eduardo lied, and then sighed. "I guess I just expected our company headquarters to be more-company headquarters like."
"Andrew was talking about bringing in a water cooler," Dustin ventured. "Mark said he'd think about it."
"Mark's thinking about water coolers?"
"Well, I think he assumed that was a metaphor for revamping the waterfall method," Dustin admitted, "but we might get one anyway. Chris said there's space in the kitchen."
"Right," Eduardo said.
*
And maybe Eduardo was trying to distract himself, a little. Because things could have been going better in New York - in the sense that any variation from the norm would be considered a definite improvement.
In the sense that, basically, Eduardo was fucking up big time.
This was because Eduardo could not land a pitch to save his life.
The thing about pitches was that they didn't have to be especially factual, detailed, or even more than half-way plausible. A pitch was supposed to sound good, and remind the listener of a lot of other different things that they really liked, which you'd managed to convince them were remarkably similar to your completely original (if inaccurate, vague, and less than plausible) idea.
And the reason pitches worked, if you were very good at them, is that the people you threw them to were just powerful and influential enough to have either forgotten everything they once knew about converting attractive ideas into reality, or they never had to learn in the first place.
Pitches also went great with names. Names, titles, doomsday proclamations, and punch lines were an intrinsic part of a pitch.
Pitches were really made to be constructed and delivered by people like Sean Parker, Eduardo had thought during his first five flame outs, and this thought mostly made him want to use the binders people kept giving back to him to beat Sean about the head.
Around flame out eight or ten, he was just really tired and thought that Sean would probably help him if he asked. And then he resolved to not think about Sean Parker again.
So the meetings he could actually get booked tended to end pretty early when it was revealed that Eduardo was crap at illustrative parables, no one else would be joining him, and they couldn't even conference in the CEO. Since pitches sort of needed the Marks of the company to tell the listener how very clever they were for understanding the grand vision being presented to them and, to be honest, it tended to look really bad when the company head wasn't engaged enough to even say, 'hi'.
(Eduardo sort over glossed over the part where Mark was not, in truth, engaged enough to know he should have said 'hi' in the first place.)
Plus there were all the meetings he couldn't even schedule, mostly because a strategic analyst or, you know, receptionist, was not the target audience for underdeveloped spiels and thought he was a tragic and/or hilarious joke.
For instance, Reena from DDB Worldgroup, who said, "The thing I'm getting from this document," scratching the plastic with her nail, "is that you can't even get people to put the numbers together for you. That's the level of organization you're dealing with here."
"I wouldn't say-"
"You wouldn't say that was accurate?"
"I wouldn't say that."
"No, you probably wouldn't," she said drily, "But that's because then I'd ask you to get the fuck out of my office and stop wasting my time."
"So," Eduardo said, after a moment of silence, "That was actually you telling me to leave."
"Perceptive too."
And then Patrick McCann's administrative assistant was not terribly impressed with his most flirtatious first date smile, possibly because she was 87 and that had been a very weird choice, mostly due to nerves.
"I just-wanted to have dialogue," Eduardo said quickly, before she could explain again why no one would see him, and then he'd have to go find one of those bridges Mark was always going on about lately and jump off it. "I thought maybe we could have a short dialogue, about the opportunities that the company could bring to your firm. There's a lot of-misinformation about Facebook. And what we're doing."
"We haven't heard any information."
"Which is-sort of-sort of misinformation. In a way," said Eduardo, and then at the look on her face, "This is like that thing where no one will hire you until you have some solid experience on your resume, which you can't get because no one will hire you, isn't it?"
She let her glasses slip down her nose and peered at him over the thin silver frames, just to make sure that there was absolutely no doubt about how hard she was judging him right then. Which was fine, because he was judging her right back. Eduardo had judged her to be the scariest grandma he'd ever met, whether or not she actually had grandkids. And if they'd been delicious. "I don't suppose you'll ever know, seeing as in a year or so you'll be graduating Ivy League and daddy's car cost more than my first condo."
"That obvious?" Eduardo said weakly.
Her eyebrows said volumes.
"Right, I'll-work on that."
"No, they'll love that bit," she said flatly, sliding the folder back to him across the desk, "I bet you golf too," which Eduardo took as his cue to exit.
*
"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Sean said, because (despite all of Eduardo's sincere vows) right around the time Eduardo had stopped freaking out about the guys being out there all alone Sean had taken to calling him every couple days or so, to check in.
Eduardo kept thinking maybe they should make it a scheduled meeting, with minutes or something, except that Sean would go on these epic tangents about the current price of red haired bud coming in from Frisco and why England doesn't have its own Bill Gates. So maybe it wasn't exactly a company thing, even if it wasn't exactly not a company thing either.
"I don't know," Eduardo said and tilted his head side to side like Sean could see him, "trade in Mark for a kinder, gentler, more profit margin friendly model?"
"Nah, it'll be a few more months until he's basically expendable," Sean said.
*
"… you do know I was kidding?"
"Sure," Sean said. "Me too."
*
It wasn't that he was preoccupied all the time about it, but sometimes Eduardo still did wonder what everyone else was doing right then when he was stuck on the subway, and they'd had to stop for twenty minutes for some technical glitch or someone's lunch break or whatever, and everyone smelled tired and sweaty and like ten different kinds of dry cleaner chemicals.
Sometimes he couldn't sleep and he'd seen all the movies on HBO or Showtime too many times, and so he'd text Mark something like, how r things or what r u doing and a lot of times he wouldn't hear back until he woke up the next morning, but sometimes it would be right away and something silly like fucking with variables or maybe dustin forgot the breadstix, and it made Eduardo feel better, in this inexplicable way, just to know that.
It was just that Chris could get talked into things real easy, because he was laid back like that and wanted to get along with people. And Dustin and Mark weren't the best help in those times, because either it didn't affect him so Mark didn't give a shit or it was Dustin's idea. Eduardo didn't do much himself in those situations, he had to admit, but at least he could watch it go down and freak out at the appropriate intervals.
And there was that voicemail that alluded to something about a chimney and zip lines, and it wasn't that Eduardo would cry about it or anything, but it would be deeply inconvenient for Facebook if Sean happened to face the minimum six months of jail time for a student seriously injuring themselves or another equally stupid person after he'd bought them alcohol.
Fine, and some of his stories weren't half bad, and his hands were strangely comfortable, and sometimes Eduardo thought what would Sean Parker do? and traded in just a little more of his dignity and self-respect to make it out of there in one piece, but it was more about how Mark had gotten all attached and found Jesus, in a way. If Jesus was a 24 year old drop out who liked to lounge around with his shirt off, always fucking with his hair in the mirror, and (for all intents and purposes) deeply agnostic to the point of apathy.
It was more that Mark would miss him. It really wouldn't affect Eduardo's life at all.
*
"Sean's worried that you might be lonely."
"He should be worried about himself," said Eduardo peevishly, pondering the bleak possibly of ever recovering their deposit, and then froze mid-slouch at the click-click-click of typing. "What was that?"
"mm, nothing," Dustin said, then shouted, "Mark, I'm using your phone."
"Just tell me you weren't-"
"Letting Sean know you're keeping yourself busy thinking only of him? Yeah, no."
"Thank g-"
"Ha, just kidding, I totally was."
*
What they didn't seem to understand is that there were plenty of things to do in New York, being as it was New York and everything.
It wasn't like Palo Alto was some sought after Spring Break location. Not that it was Spring Break, and not that New York was either, seeing as it was horribly muggy during summer and there was a distinct lack of world renowned beaches. But it had a massive tourism agency, because people everywhere spent thousands of dollars and flew many, many hours just to visit. And if a serious, significantly underreported crime rate had been an issue, way less college students would be headed to Mazatlan.
Thus, traveling around that city several times a week should have made Eduardo the envy of millions and not at all a subject of condescension.
"What your problem is, son," mused Edgar, a spry 75 year old bent on touring the local museums and improbably seating himself beside Eduardo during three separate subway journeys, "Is that I give you a glass of water and you wouldn't say half full or half empty, you'd ask if it's poisoned."
Eduardo sighed. "There's this guy I know," he said, "who - if you pulled out a half glass of water, he wouldn't know where to even start figuring that out. So he'd just ask what you think, and take that 5 minutes of explanation to figure out how to get you to give it to him, free of charge."
"That's not a very nice thing to say about someone," said Edgar disapprovingly.
"Well," Eduardo said, "He's not a very nice person."
Edgar peered at him suspiciously. "Did you know that you're smiling?"
"Er, botox," Eduardo said.
*
It wasn't like other students weren't sticking around. There were four guys from The Phoenix, and at least one of them consistently remembered his name.
And he'd gone out for drinks three times with the girl with frizzy hair who had sat next to him for most of Math 21a, until she presumably heard about his unofficial Facebook status as a breaker of hearts and the tender female spirit. (Despite Eduardo having been presented with little evidence throughout his life that the female spirit was exceedingly delicate or tender.) (He was fairly certain that this was spurious propaganda, used to lure mankind into a false sense of complacency.) (Which was just fine with Eduardo, really, he wasn't looking to start anything.)
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation
Sometimes I worry we may have created a monster.
to: esaverin@facebook.com
from: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
subj: re: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation
Dr Frankenstein used much less electricity.
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
from: esaverin@facebook.com
subj: re: the fabric of the internet is lined with personal humiliation
Awaking a hideous monstrosity from dead limbs, very cost efficient. Who knew?
*
So Eduardo may not have been renting in the heart of, well, anywhere, and it may not have been party central, but there were things to do besides wallowing in petulant misery.
A copious amount of masturbation was unfortunately not one of these things, because the couple next door seemed to be going at it during all hours of the day and night.
Seriously, every time he turned around, or woke up in the morning, or made breakfast, or made dinner, or stumbled in after an ego shredding day and just wanted some peace and quiet with a side of The Sopranos: grunting, moaning, and mattress squeaking. And Eduardo just frankly found it impossible to jerk off to the sound of other people having sex (unless it was attractively fake people having attractively fake sex, like in porn).
I could at least jerk off if I had gone to California, he'd find himself thinking (though those were exactly the kind of defeatist thoughts he was trying to weed out and crush like his reputation among womenfolk), but then he'd remember the sounds from Sean and his girlfriend, who had also been next door when he was staying there. Sounds which had just-they'd been more appealing, that was all. There was this satisfied low, tight noise that came from deep in Sean's chest that had made Eduardo go all hot and roll over onto his stomach to press his dick into the bed and his cheek into the pillow, eyes scrunched shut. Because of what she must have been doing, how she must have felt, to push that sound out of him. And because Eduardo hadn't gotten laid for an outrageously long time. Obviously.
So he'd think that, and then the neighbors would just not shut the fuck up, and the only reasonable response was to stand in the kitchen, awkwardly hard, and make another To-Do list.
The current one was scrawled on printer paper, attached to the fridge with a magnet from Wok 'n Roll Sushi, and read:
buy milk
POSITIVITY
avoid nosey subway strangers
plan state school targets
no less binge drinking
don't shower before PA calls
no jerking off from the fucking neighbors sean noises weird stuff
can still get scurvy? remind mark about scurvy.
be less gay about sean
*
All the lobbies Eduardo entered were completely different and yet looked completely the same. All glinting metal and glass, to construct an impression of translucent, wide space, as if to communicate to prospective clients that they were an open book. An open book with open walls that did not block the open flow of ideas-ideas all perfectly conforming to the current mode, of course, thumb planted firmly on the pulse of every possible demographic segment.
They were all equally fraudulent in their transparency.
And cleaning bills must have been astronomical.
These should be my people, Eduardo thought. Mass-producing thoughts instead of the mass-production of commodities. He was selling possibilities to people who produced nothing but loved statistics. It should have been a slam dunk.
"These should be my people," Eduardo explained to Cesar wistfully, who had been sitting with him in the latest lobby and also waiting aimlessly for someone to remember his existence.
He was being interviewed for an open position and, in Eduardo's objective opinion, was wearing a much better suit.
Eduardo suggested that if Cesar had any success, perhaps Eduardo would be meeting with him next.
Cesar opined that that would probably be a poor idea unless Eduardo was looking to work in the mail room. Eduardo thought he should consider no longer shopping at Men's Warehouse.
"They have a mail room?"
"Leaflets," Cesar volunteered.
"I could make leaflets," Eduardo decided, after a moment of thought. There was likely very little traveling involved in leaflet production, which was quite an appealing thought at the moment.
Cesar did not appear very convinced, possibly because he could tell there was not a single artistic bone in Eduardo's body or because he was sensing the imminent psychotic break.
"I was a teacher's aide in high school," Eduardo insisted, "I can laminate."
"What company are you with again?"
"um," Eduardo said. "Hey, what direction to the bathroom?"
*
Though you might assume by their eerily similar lobbies that most advertising agencies would have a standard floor plan, Eduardo had discovered that you would be horribly, horribly wrong. (However, they did all appear to have the same Core Values - Integrity, Customer Satisfaction, Respect, Diversity, and Innovation, respectively - and claimed that these values were what truly distinguished them from competitors.)
This particular floor plan seemed to consist of very long corridors, black marble floor, and cubicles that were pretending not to be cubicles, with the assistance of stained wood desks and chairs offering actual back support. Looping may have been involved.
Cesar and the security guard had expressed a vague but shared belief that the bathrooms were somewhere to their left. It was quite possible that they were thinking of another building. Or they could have done it on purpose.
Either way, Eduardo was of the opinion that they were complete bastards.
Eduardo extracted his phone with dreams of GPS and a distinct fear that he had somehow wandered into Connecticut during the last 50 minutes. (It had actually been 15 minutes, but it felt like 50, which was the point.)
It turned out that in the metallic and glass bowels of the earth there was excellent reception.
It also just so happened that this was the tenth time Eduardo had called Mark's cell that week and it just rang and rang, because that's all it did lately. Plus, there was all the simmering sexual frustration, the succession of blunt rejections, and the fact that his socks were still squishing in his shoes from accidentally stepping into that puddle an hour ago. So when Sean picked up instead and failed to magically transform into a 19 year old Jewish programmer, Eduardo naturally lit into him, because it had been that kind of day, and seriously, Sean was,
"-no fucking help, so I don't want to deal with you right now, okay?"
"Oh, and what do you want me to do, 3,000 miles away?"
"I don't know, walk down the hall and talk to the CEO of this fucking company?" Eduardo snapped and glared balefully at a team building poster.
"And he's going to say-"
"I know what he's going to-"
"He's going to do that thing, the thing about how we don't know what this is yet," Sean snapped back, and passing non-cubical residents took one look at Eduardo's face and apparently decided it might be a better idea to keep hands and head directed towards their laptops and not question why a strange man would be storming up and down their hallways, if he was armed, what they could possibly do about it if he was (other than praying that the only one to get shot in the face would be that dick who was always stealing their parking spot), or how long it should take for an adult to make it to the men's room, if he was anything close to sober.
Eduardo was drunk on righteous fury-it was completely different. And justified.
"Is it a fucking cat?" said Eduardo.
"No," Sean admitted, grudgingly.
"Is it a toaster oven?"
"Okay, I get your-"
"Is it a train station?"
"Okay," Sean said.
"Is it a website?"
"Okay, seriously, fuck you now."
"Is it a social networking website?"
"Now I feel like I'm talking to Zuckerberg," Sean said sourly. "I see why you two are close now. Really, I can see why you're dying alone together. That'll be fun for you."
"Then the obvious source of revenue," Eduardo continued, ignoring him, "is selling-"
"-targeted advertising services," Sean said, defensive. "I do know that."
"You were just waiting until Mark got the stick out of his ass about it."
"Well, he gets this look on this face."
"I know what you mean," Eduardo commiserated, softening a little and pausing to lean across a bare white wall.
"I don't have a fancy title," Sean reminded him with an edge to his voice, and it occurred to Eduardo that he might have been a major jerk about this, at some point.
"Sorry," he said, "This just sucks."
"It'll be okay," Sean said easily, like it actually could be and not like Sean was just sick of listening to him, and apparently Eduardo could be a complete asshole as well as someone hated by the entire New York business community and grandmothers, which was an unwelcome revelation.
His mother would be so disappointed in him, and that was usually his dad's job.
*
"What if you were made-VP? Business Development?" Eduardo suggested the next time they talked.
"What?"
"Could you come back me up, in place of Mark?"
"Sure, sure I could, I could do that," Sean said, stuttering a little (though Eduardo wasn't entirely sure why; it seemed like the obvious solution).
"Okay, well, I'll talk to him about the position. But you're talking to him about the trips."
"He's going to do that thing with his chin. And the eye thing."
"I believe in your manipulative capabilities," Eduardo said honestly.
"You do love my wiles," Sean said cheekily.
"I'm hanging up now," Eduardo said, except that he didn't, and Sean told him about Chris leaving his phone under the bed at a one-night-stand's place, who it turned out to be living with his crazy bigot grandfather, and then Eduardo explained about diabolical infinite hallways and his momentary consideration of a zen-like life of mass mailing support duties, and at some point Eduardo fell asleep and crushed his Bluetooth earpiece because it was that kind of week.
*
Eduardo got ahold of Mark the next day and came right to the point, "I think we should have Sean head Business Development."
"I made him President days ago," Mark said, without pausing a key stroke.
"So now he outranks me?"
"He does like you," Mark said, as Dustin interjected, "I may have told him you're hiding your desperate love behind a piercing veil of bitchiness."
"Am I on speaker phone?" said Eduardo dangerously over Mark's muffled,
"Did he notice that makes no sense?" followed by scuffling. "And what happens when Wardo's nice to him?"
"When's Wardo going to be nice to him?" replied Dustin's tinny voice, incredulous.
"Never mind," Eduard sighed, resigned to his idiot friends and consequent lot in life. "Mark, were you ever going to tell me?"
"I just did," said Mark impatiently. "If you'd come out here-"
"I don't need to be there. We talk all the time!"
"But you know I'm not actually listening to you, though, right?"
"This is so great," Dustin said. "We should call Wardo every night."
*
Part 2/2