Fic: Fortune and Men's Eyes (3/?)
MASTER POST | PART ONE | PART TWO
***
Mark had been told that he was a sleep-cuddler. Erica had been amused by it, for reasons Mark couldn’t fathom. But the end result was that while she seemed to still like having sex with him, she didn’t enjoy sharing a bed with him - apparently he was like an extremely hot-blooded cephalopod, only with more arms, which didn’t make any sort of biologic sense.
“A girl needs some space to breathe,” she’d said, and started shoving him out of the bed after sex, or getting out of it herself.
Whatever. It wasn’t as though Mark had had a lot of time to spend sleeping anyway. He still didn’t, to be honest, so he hadn’t thought much of it when he’d drifted off the night before-Eduardo would probably get too cramped, push him away or squirm around, politely uncomfortable, and then Mark would wake up and get to work on The Facebook and leave the bed to Eduardo.
Instead he woke to an unfamiliar ringtone, buzzing insistently somewhere in the early-dawn darkness of the room, and Eduardo was wrapped around him like a quilt, nose against Mark’s neck and limbs tangled and twined with Mark’s own.
Mark, contrary to popular opinion, did notice the environment around him; he just had better things to worry about than his own comfort or lack thereof. But if he had a choice, he preferred to be warm, and to sleep warm, with lots of blankets, and preferably a nubile naked body to wrap around.
So that’d worked out well.
He was, to be honest, blissfully warm enough to ignore the insistent, obnoxious tones of John fucking Mayer and go back to sleep, but then he remembered Eduardo saying he had to be somewhere in the morning. And Mark had plenty of things to be doing himself. So, fine, he’d get up. In a second.
“Wardo,” he mumbled into Eduardo’s hair, and tried to figure out where his hands were. “Wardo, your phone. It’s awful.”
Eduardo tightened his grip and said something sleepy and not-English, and Mark sighed and ran a hand up his back, smiling involuntarily when Eduardo made a happy sound and burrowed closer. But now Mark was awake, and Eduardo needed to be too, if only to get that fucking ringtone to stop.
“‘Your Body is a Wonderland.’ Seriously?” he asked, and kept stroking Eduardo’s back. He wondered if they had time for morning sex, if Eduardo had factored that in when choosing his alarms, or wake-up calls, or whatever.
“I like it. Shut up,” Eduardo slurred, then stretched and lifted his head off Mark’s shoulder, squinting at the dark room. “What time’s it?”
Mark could see his bedside clock over Eduardo’s hair. “Five.”
“Colhões,” Eduardo muttered, and dropped his head again for a moment. “I should get up.”
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, and they both lay there for a moment, listening to John Mayer croon inanities in a nonsensical loop. “Your bodyguards will break down the door soon.”
“Mmm,” Eduardo hummed noncommittally, which led Mark to suspect he was correct, and then kissed the corner of Mark’s mouth. “Good morning.”
“So far,” Mark agreed, and then was kissed more soundly. “Your breath is not great, your highness,” he told Eduardo, and dragged him back in for another kiss, limbs moving together, lazy and warm.
“You’re not exactly minty fresh yourself,” Eduardo said hoarsely, but then he kissed Mark again anyway, and really, Mark was pretty okay with the current lack of dental hygiene going on if Eduardo was going to use his tongue like that, catch his breath in his throat when he bit Mark’s lower lip. Except then he stopped, pulled away. “Ugh, I should go. I’m sorry. Raincheck?”
“On morning sex, or for an unspecified, minty fresh sexual act of my choosing?” Mark inquired, and was hit gently with a pillow.
“Yes. Either. Both. Morning sex would be… really nice, right now.” Eduardo was looking at Mark wistfully, hand dipping below the sheets and stroking the small of Mark’s back. Mark arched into his touch and Eduardo closed his eyes and swore, then visibly tore himself away, got up off the bed.
“Oh,” he said, catching himself against the bed, then straightening again.
“Mm?” Mark said, and rolled over to look at him, dimly lit by the LED glare of the clock, all shadows and planes and places Mark wanted to bite, to bruise up and mark and claim as his.
Eduardo stretched, and then-didn’t wince, exactly, but the look on his face was definitely startled.
“Oh,” Mark said, and grinned into the pillow. “Sore? Sorry.”
“No, I like it,” Eduardo said slowly after a moment, and Mark licked his lips and smiled and Eduardo made a visible effort to glare at him.
“No. Stop with that face. I’m already late. Shit, where are my pants?”
“If you’re already late, you might as well be later?” Mark tried, but Eduardo just raised an eyebrow and looked regrettably resistant to Mark’s attempt to make a seductive face. Mark sighed. “Fine. On the chair.”
Eduardo stopped a minute, and Mark caught the white glint of a smile as he shook out his trousers.
“Thanks for folding them,” he said, laughter obvious in his voice, and then resumed dressing. Mark disapproved, but there was no logical objection, and if Eduardo absolutely had to leave Mark’s room and enter the outside world, Mark supposed he’d have to be clothed. “God, I smell-”
“Like sex.”
“And you, yes. Can I borrow some deodorant?”
Mark jerked his head towards the dresser and Eduardo rummaged around while Mark thought smug thoughts about the Prince of Brazil wandering around campus with Mark’s teeth marks in his collar bone and Mark’s scent on his skin.
“So when are you leaving for break?”
Mark blinked, and then stretched, and found he was also pleasantly sore in muscles he hadn’t used in far too long.
“Break?” he asked, and then struggled out of the sheets to find a hoodie. First run-through had to be done by now, but Chris hadn’t knocked on the door to get him. Mark supposed he could forgive that, given the sounds that had likely been coming from the room. “Oh. Right. Hannukah.” Shit, his mom would want him home for that. “No idea. Not sure I can get away with skipping it this year-last time my mom showed up in my dorm and staged a kidnapping.”
Mark wasn’t even joking, was the sad thing. She’d caught him coming off a coding binge, with his brain still in the midst of rebooting to the real world, and she’d lured him out of the door room with Red Bull and fresh-baked sufganiyah. Then suddenly he was in her car and the doors were all locked and Harvard was rapidly receding in the distance. Mark’s mom was a fucking menace.
Eduardo adjusted his collar and flicked on a light, staring at himself in the mirror, fussing with his hair, which to be frank, Mark thought was sort of a lost cause.
“Not sure a mother can really kidnap her own offspring,” Eduardo offered over his shoulder, grinning.
“You’d be surprised,” Mark said darkly. “Are you-do you have to go back? To Brazil?” Mark should have realized that was going to have to happen sometime soon, though in his defense he hadn’t really been thinking in term of calendar dates so much lately.
So Eduardo was leaving for a different continent soon. That was-that was happening. Fine.
Eduardo shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “My father-he wants me there for the Christmas Mass. I have to be there for that. It’s televised. There are ceremonies, and interviews. It’s all very festive.” His voice had gone bright and brittle.
“But… you’re Jewish,” Mark pointed out, confused, and Eduardo made a complicated face, shrugging again.
“My mother is Jewish, it was, ah-a bit of a scandal, when they married. I am, yes, but my father and my country are Roman Catholic. It doesn’t matter what my own personal feelings are, I have-certain responsibilities. My Jewish heritage is not a part of them.”
Mark couldn’t quite follow what that meant. It seemed incredibly strange to him-he didn’t especially care about the religious aspects behind the holiday, but the cultural ones, the family all around, and the flicker of the candles, that-he wasn’t a nostalgic person, but he could admit to feeling warmth towards that time of the year, even though it was so often disruptive to his own personal schedule.
“So you… don’t celebrate Hanukkah at all?”
“Not publicly.”
“Huh,” Mark said, and struggled into a hoodie and shorts. Eduardo smiled at him and brushed a curl out of his face. Mark scowled half-heartedly and tried to bat his hand away, but Eduardo only caught and kissed it.
“Your hair is impressive in the morning.”
“You have no room to talk,” Mark grumbled, but leaned into Eduardo’s hand. “So you’re leaving. When are you leaving?”
“As late as humanly possible,” Eduardo admitted sheepishly, like a kid caught in the cookie jar. “Night of the 23rd. I have to be there for the Christmas Eve state ball the next day, so that’s as far as I could push it.”
They picked their way through the dark living room, Chris and Dustin no longer present but for the detritus of popcorn and discarded flashcards and game controllers they’d left behind.
“Good,” Mark said, having processed dates and times and formulated a plan by the time they reached the door and opened it. “You can come home with me until then. My mom will force-feed you latkes and leave me alone. We can discuss strategies for The Facebook launch while you’re semi-comatose from food. It’ll be great.”
“What?” Eduardo said, blinking at him, and from the hall, one of the bodyguards-had they seriously been out there all night?-reached in and touched his shoulder and rambled off something low and impenetrable that made Eduardo wince.
“Sorry, I-we can, can we talk about this later? I mean, really, she-you wouldn’t mind? I don’t want to-”
“No one would mind. Call me,” Mark said shrugging, and Eduardo made an aborted gesture towards him, then flapped his hand helplessly, and turned to go. Mark only realized after he’d closed the door that Eduardo had been going in for a kiss, and then had to stop. Because someone might have seen them.
That wasn’t-Mark rerouted his thoughts someplace more productive, and turned towards the mini-fridge. They were almost out of Red Bull. He took the last one and found his laptop, scowling at the error messages waiting for him on the screen.
He found his headphones and plugged in. He’d worry about it later.
***
It turned out that that plugging in early had been an excellent plan, because as soon as the sun got a little higher in the sky, there were stirrings of life in the apartment. Dustin and Chris were awake, and they descended on him like over-sized, deranged jackals, making high-pitched yipping noises and pawing at his arms.
Mark managed to shake them off and ignore them in favor of the code right up until he ran out of Red Bull. He tried stubbornly to code on, but he was thirsty and tired from the week of finals and the little sleep he’d gotten the night before, and was forced to give in.
He took off his headphones off, spun around in his chair, and glared at the interlopers.
“You have five minutes. What do you want?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Dustin was practically vibrating in place; Chris, on the other hand, was wringing his hands and making huge, curious eyes at him, which Mark hadn’t thought people actually did in real life. And yet.
“You had sex with Prince Wardo!” Dustin crowed, fist punching the air. “Loud sex! Successful sex! Mark! You fucking dog, I didn’t know you had it in you. You fucking deflowered that crown jewel. I bet the royal guard comes after you with pitchforks.”
“That seems unnecessarily medieval,” Mark said. Was this conversation really necessary?
“So, was it good? It sounded-uh, you both got kind of loud,” Chris asked, with an unsettling gleam of genuine interest in his eye, and really, that was a question Mark would have expected more from Dustin. He blinked at Chris, who promptly turned bright red.
“Why do you ask?” Mark asked suspiciously, and Chris somehow got even redder.
“Chrissy here has had a crush on our visiting royalty since the beginning of the semester, Your Markness,” Dustin said, smirking. “I seriously don’t know how you didn’t notice. He made us marathon all those movies while he swooned and pined and plotted out how to best stalk the Prince from afar.”
“He did not,” Mark said immediately, but he was starting to remember, dimly, the evenings of pure cinematic torture.
“The Princess Bride. A Knight’s Tale. Enchanted. Ever After! You have to remember this shit, even if you did keep trying to escape to your laptop half the time.”
Okay, Mark did remember that. And now some of Dustin’s recent inane babblings made more sense now, sort of. But that wasn’t Mark’s concern at the moment.
“You have a crush on Wardo,” Mark said, narrowing his eyes at Chris, who held up his hands immediately.
“Had! Had a crush. And you can’t fucking blame me for it, I mean, you know. It’s a fucking prince. Half the school is pining after him. You can’t, uh. Destroy half the school for that.” There was an unsaid ‘Can you?’ hanging in the air between them. Mark leaned back in his chair and considered this while Chris and Dustin exchanged panicked looks.
Eduardo warned him that this would be complicated. Probably this was part and parcel of agreeing to be a dirty secret. Mark was going to have to get used to inferior individuals pawing at his boyfriend and not being allowed to take overt action to prevent it.
Fine.
Mark could do that. Probably.
“Or at least don’t destroy our best buddy Chris,” Dustin interjected soulfully, patting Mark on the hand. Mark redirected his glare.
“You didn’t even know him then. They-” he waved a hand towards the window. “-don’t know him at all. Why would they-”
“Mark, Mark. I realize that normal human behavior is a source of intense confusion for you, but this is pretty simple, you can follow this. Wardo’s a prince. He’s handsome and philanthropic and brilliant, and he’s single. You don’t have to know him to want him. Honestly, I’m surprised no one went for you with a shiv when they saw you two flirting in the coffeeshop.”
“It wasn’t flirting.” Okay. It had been flirting, but not overt flirting, or so he’d thought. “I figured it was just leftover hate from the Facemash thing,” Mark grumbled, and tried to turn back to his laptop.
“Okay, that aside-was it good?” Dustin asked, bouncing again. “Was it magical? Was there birdsong and fireworks? Before we retreated to our bedroom strongholds, there was definitely noise, but that was, uh. Less song-like. Or else there were some really kinky birds.”
“Explosives aren’t really what I enjoy having in bed with me, or birds, for that matter,” Mark said dryly, but his mouth quirked up without his permission as he remembered it, the sweat shining on Eduardo’s shoulders and the sound of Mark’s name on his lips. Dustin spotted it, like the crazy vulture he was, and clapped his hands together.
“Look at you! It was! It was magical.”
“There were orgasms. There was nothing beyond the realm of reality,” Mark corrected, glaring.
“Unicorns and sunshine and sparkles and puppies.”
Mark stared, aghast. “What kind of Lisa Frank sex have you been having?”
“Okay, horrific sex talk aside, we need to think about what this means for The Facebook,” Chris interjected, thank god, and Mark redirected his attention gratefully. “To have someone like Prince Eduardo involved.”
“Yes. Eduardo’s coming back later-we’ll have a meeting. Talk it out. But for now, if you’re done breaking my brain with terrifying insights into Dustin’s sex life, I have work to do, and so do you.”
Dustin made a mournful whip-crack noise and said, “So that’s how it is, huh? Poor Wardo.”
“I can get access to your final grades,” Mark said, icily calm, and Dustin rolled his eyes, then mimed zipping his lips and bounced off to his own computer, humming something ridiculous all the way.
Chris stayed, however, staring down at Mark with a look Mark recognized from interventions that had been staged after days of coding without sleep or food. Worried. Chris was worried.
“Really, though, Mark. I don’t-this isn’t just like dating a random girl, or guy, for that matter. This is going to be-we have to be really careful. You have to be really careful. We need to talk about how we’re going to handle this, if there need to be non-disclosure agreements and what to do with the press when they find out Eduardo’s involved in The Facebook at all, let alone dating the founder.”
Mark ignored him and found a warm Red Bull in the back of the cabinet from the emergency box Chris thought he didn’t know about, popped it open and settled back in front of his computer.
“I’m not an idiot, I know that,” he said, and then adjusted his headphones and let the world fall away for a few hours longer.
***
Eduardo arrived at the apartment again a few hours later, an expression of mild distaste on his face, which, Mark was coming to realize, meant he was totally miserable-whatever expressions Eduardo let show in public were only ever shades of what he was really feeling. In private, with Mark, that was different, but this was definitely Prince Eduardo strolling through the doors, calling back to his bodyguards and undoing his cufflinks.
He was in a new suit, formal and understatedly elegant, with accents of deep purple, and the way he closed the door and leaned against it for a moment, slumped and head down, was at total odds with the perfection of his hair and the cut of his jacket.
“Hi, guys,” he said after a moment, and took off his jacket, folding it neatly over the back of a chair. “Is there beer? I could use a beer.”
Mark got up and found him one, tossed it over and was amused to see Eduardo absently crack the top off with his gleaming ring before collapsing into one of the oversized armchairs like he didn’t intend to move any time soon.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked, eyeing him curiously. “You got an A in Geology, so it’s not that.”
“I did?” Eduardo lit up, and Mark smiled, then batted away the shower of pink origami post-it flowers Dustin had just thrown at his head; fucker had obviously been waiting for just the right moment. Mark would get him back later. “That’s-god, that’s great, we need, we need to celebrate. Here, or-we could rent out a restaurant? Do you like Italian?”
Mark blinked. “Sure,” he said with a shrug, and diffidently made his way across the room and settled on the armrest of the chair, pleased when Eduardo immediately slung an arm around his waist and tugged him slightly closer against his body. He pressed his face briefly into Mark’s side before resurfacing to drink deeply from the bottle.
“So it’s not your grades,” Mark concluded. “What is it?”
“Ah, I-just, the fucking final clubs, they won’t leave me alone. It’s-they all want the Prince of Brazil, you know? I was dragged all over campus all day. I don’t think any of them actually gives a fuck about anything but my name.”
Eduardo took another long swallow of the beer while they all stared at him, then without looking up leaned his forehead against Mark’s arm. Mark hesitantly brushed a wayward curl out of his face and cupped the back of his head. Eduardo shot him a wan smile and leaned into it, closing his eyes.
“It’s fine, I’m used to it.” He flapped a hand, to indicate how little it bothered him, or at least Mark assumed that was the intent. Either way, it failed. It clearly did bother Eduardo, a lot. Even Mark could tell.
It was kind of ironic. Mark had, at one point, wanted more than anything to have the validation of the final clubs, to be acknowledged, to know that he meant something.
When Eduardo had first spoken up there had been a hot, nauseating flare of jealousy in Mark’s chest, ugly and unwanted, but then the misery on Eduardo’s face had sunk in. They didn’t want Wardo for Wardo, they just-Mark had no idea how to articulate his thoughts in a way that would be comforting and not condescending or patronizing. I want you for you and I have the biggest, the best final club and you’re the most important member that isn’t me and those fuckheads wouldn’t know how amazing you are if you wrote an equation for it on their oversized foreheads and please stop looking like that, please, you’re wonderful you’re Wardo I-
“Uh,” Dustin piped up into the taut silence between them. “According to Mark, you’re the second coming of Adam Smith, so, you know, I’m not too surprised a lot of people want to punch you - Mark’s been reciting quotes from Dr. Irvine’s recommendation letter, like, non-stop. So I’m sure the clubs have heard of you for reasons besides your, erm. Noble lineage.”
Mark glared, feeling unaccountably red, but Eduardo just tugged him in closer, and when Mark looked down, Eduardo had a faint, high flush on his cheeks and was toying with his beer bottle, beaming at it.
“Well, uh, Adam Smith was more hypothetical and I’m more, ah, on the mathematical side. But that’s-that’s nice to hear. But I sincerely doubt it, most of the Porcellian alums didn’t even know what my major was, let alone how well I was or wasn’t doing in it.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” Mark said, and stole the beer from Eduardo’s hand, took a long pull and registered the way Eduardo’s eyes locked onto the length of his throat. He licked his lips and handed it back, and Eduardo’s eyes went dark beneath his lashes. “Maybe they just want to improve their diversity.”
“Jesus, Mark,” Chris swore, looking alarmed and outraged, but then Eduardo, who had lost the sultry look in favor of a blank stare, suddenly burst into loud laughter-the undignified, full-bodied kind, head thrown back and mouth wide open.
“You’re such an asshole, Mark,” he managed to get out, and he was still laughing as he dragged Mark down into a kiss. He tasted like beer, and something sharper, smokier beneath that-whiskey, scotch, maybe. “Thank you, thank you. Thank you,” he murmured into Mark’s skin, low, where none of the others could hear it.
“Come on,” Mark said, pulling back, red and fighting down a smile. “Brazilian-American Jew, that’s-that’s quite a catch, right, that’s a fucking feather in their caps.”
“I’ll punch you,” Eduardo warned, but his eyes were shining.
“Anyway, that works out perfectly, since I needed to get their email addresses, and I didn’t want any rumors about hacking going around this time. Not with this site, not yet.”
“…I don’t follow?” Eduardo laughed, and pulled Mark off the side of the chair into his lap, somehow managing to ignore the high-pitched noises of glee Dustin was making off to the side.
“If we want this to get beyond just circulating in Kirkland, we need access to more people. People with a lot of contacts. Do you have the info for the Phoenix mailing list?”
“Yes, and the Porc, but-”
“Not the Porc,” Mark said hastily, because yeah, he could see that going over incredibly poorly with the Winkleviis, and he really didn’t have time for their bullshit at the moment. “The Phoenix is good. But we don’t need it yet, we still need to get the site running and operational. I’ll be working on it over break, and you two-” He nodded at Dustin and Chris. “-should do the same. Let me know when you’re available.”
“But it’s break. Vacay. Time off,” Dustin protested, flopping on the ground and pouting. Mark ignored him.
“How can I help?” Eduardo asked, adjusting his position in the chair and tugging Mark more firmly against him-it sometimes surprised Mark, the difference in their height, like now, when Eduardo could curl himself so completely around Mark, effortless and warm.
“That’s actually-okay. So. We should talk.”
“Should Dustin and I leave?” Chris asked, and Mark rolled his eyes.
“No, fuckwit, it’s about the company. Sit down.” Chris got a long-suffering look on his face, but he sat, and Dustin rolled closer on the rug, and they all stared up at him, waiting.
“So,” Mark said. “Division of shares, right now, is five percent to Dustin, dependent on whether or not he actually gets anything fucking done between now and New Year’s Eve, two to Chris for PR, which may or may not increase depending on, uh. How much PR is necessary. And then thirty to Eduardo, as our primary share-holder.”
Dustin and Chris had been nodding along, and Eduardo watched, then tipped his head, frowned down at Mark.
“That’s great, Mark, but I want to help-do you, I mean, is that what you need? More money? I can get you more money, but it seems-”
“What I need is a CFO,” Mark bit out quickly. “And I want you. You’d be perfect.” Eduardo’s face had gone perfectly still, but his eyes were so bright that Mark had to swallow a few seconds before saying, “Which is why it sucks that I can’t ask you.”
Watching Eduardo’s face fall, just a split fraction of a second before he dragged back up some horrible professional smile-it felt like Mark’d swallowed ground glass. He sucked in a breath, felt it catch painfully in his throat.
“Wardo. I-”
“Could you get up, please?” Eduardo asked, and his voice was tight, controlled. Mark got off of him, got shakily to his feet. Eduardo stood in a smooth motion and pushed past him; Mark watched him go, shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets, left hand tearing at the hangnails on the right as he tried to keep his face blank.
Chris was glaring at him now, and Dustin was making slit-throat motions and nooses and something else that seemed to involve butterflies or some shit, but it didn’t matter. Mark had to think about The Facebook right now, not feelings.
Eduardo had crossed over to the fridge and was standing, staring at it. “I understand,” he said distantly, and then bent and got a beer. He tilted it at the room in general. “Anybody else? No?”
Mark got back in the chair, curled up in the warmth that Eduardo had left behind, and remembered the look on Erica’s face at the bar, before she’d left, before the night of Facemash. At least this time, Mark had learned. He’d had some idea that this, this might be hard to hear. That it might upset Eduardo, even if Mark had logic on his side, even if it made sense. Sometimes people didn’t care about that. Sometimes people didn’t like to hear things that were true, that were necessary.
Eduardo cracked his beer open with his ring, this scrape of metal and hiss of carbonation loud in the room, and then leaned against the wall, looking at Mark from under his eyelashes. Mark couldn’t read his expression, and he didn’t-Eduardo was never so far away from him, not when they were in the same room, not when they could be in contact.
“You’re good, you know,” Eduardo said softly. “I mean, obviously, you know that. But I get it too, I do.”
“Well, I fucking don’t,” Dustin spoke up hotly, and Mark looked over to see him glaring. Mark shrugged at him and his glare intensified-if he wasn’t such a fucking cocker spaniel of a person, Mark might have been worried. “All Mark’s been talking about is how he met this guy to be our CFO for, like, weeks, how great you were and how smart, and fucking now-”
“Now he knows I’m the prince of Brazil,” Eduardo finished, and tipped back his bottle. “I can’t be CFO. It’d look like-like The Facebook was my company. My pet project, my toy. No one would take it seriously. No one takes me seriously.”
“Yes,” Mark said, relieved, breathing out in a rush. “Yes, and it’s going to be-”
“So much bigger than that,” Eduardo finished, and shrugged, looking off to the side. “I get that, Mark. I do.”
“So you can’t be CFO,” Mark said, getting up and pacing, feeling like he’d been doused with champagne, warm and effervescent. This was-Eduardo understood. Mark should have known he would. “But we need you, we still do-and I know what you can do. You’ll be CFO, and then they’ll have to take you, us, seriously. But for now, we have to just say you’re our primary stockholder, and that, I don’t know, someone else is running the business end of things. Dustin, maybe.”
God no, no one would believe that. But Mark would think of something. They would think of something.
“Wait, what?” Chris said, and when Mark completed his next circuit of the room and turned, all three of them were staring at him like he’d suddenly donned a sparkly top hat and started riverdancing. Mark blinked back at them and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Did I stutter?” he asked crossly, but then the look on Eduardo’s face caught his attention and he didn’t have time to be annoyed that Chris and Dustin apparently hadn’t been listening.
“Mark,” Eduardo said slowly, and there was the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his mouth, and he reached up to cover it with his hand, shaking his head. “Mark, are you asking me to be your dirty secret chief financial officer?”
“Huh. I didn’t think of the parallels,” Mark said, blinking. “But, uh. Yes. In essence, yes. Just-until we get The Facebook off the ground. Once we’re a, a corporation, a success, you can, you know, get credit, and-”
He broke off; Eduardo was smiling at him for real, now, wide and brilliant, and Mark had kind of lost his train of thought, and suspected it had derailed for good when Eduardo crossed the room back towards him, long-legged smooth strides, and offered him his hand. Mark stared down at it, then back up at him.
“I accept,” Eduardo said, voice rich and dark and hot, like the coffee he liked to drink, and Mark felt his skin heat from within.
“Good,” Mark breathed out, and shook Eduardo’s hand. “That’s-that’s good.”
From beyond Eduardo’s shoulder, he heard Dustin say, “So. We should get out now, right?”
“What?” Mark said, staring up at Eduardo, and then shook himself and made himself let go of Eduardo’s hand. “No, what are you talking about? We need to code. Did you see all the errors on the Friend pages? That’s crucial, and I haven’t had time to work on it yet, that's all you -- I’ve got to get the inboxes functional. And Wardo, I need to know-what, you know, what expenses we should be planning for, and which colleges we should be expanding to next, and actually, I kind of want you to look over our other algorithms, see if you can speed things up, but you can do that over break with me. We'll have time.”
There would be time-he could hammer out the business plan for the company with Eduardo, and give Eduardo a Hanukkah. And Wardo being there would distract Mark’s mom from hassling Mark. He was all big eyes and politeness and would probably be adopted by the Zuckerberg females in less than half a heartbeat.
Mark hadn’t expected to look forward to break, but this time, this time it seemed not just necessary, or useful, but kind of… nice. Good.
“Break? Isn’t Eduardo going back to Brazil?” Chris wanted to know, and Mark shrugged.
“At some point. But I-my mom said he should come home, do Hanukkah with us. Part of it, at least. Uh, I called her, by the way,” he said to Eduardo, who had his hand in a tight grip and was staring at him like-not like a riverdancer, but like the sun coming out. “She says, um. Thanks. For getting me to come home without armed intervention.”
“Oh my god, I am actually, like, going into diabetic shock. I need beer. Chris, get me a beer.”
“Get your own fucking beer. What, are your legs broken?”
“So, I do actually-do they know who I am?” Eduardo asked Mark, quietly, beneath the sound of Dustin and Chris squabbling. “Because my publicist-she thinks they’ll probably need to sign some papers. Just as a formality, and I hate to ask, I-”
“Wardo, it’s fine. We’ll sign whatever. Does that mean you’re coming?” Mark asked hopefully, and Eduardo smiled down at their hands.
“I rearranged some of my appearances and meetings, and, uh. Yeah. Yeah, if-I can, if you want.”
“Eduardo,” Mark said, exasperated. “It’s like you don’t pay attention to me at all.”
Eduardo stared for a moment, eyes bright with-well, something, Mark didn’t know, and then he brought Mark’s knuckles to his lips.
"Just so you know?” he said against the skin, and then waited.
“What?” Mark asked impatiently after a long pause, and then Eduardo leaned in and said against his mouth, “I really want to fuck you, right now." Then he planted a chaste kiss on Mark’s lips and leaned back, grinning.
“I hate you,” Mark said after a moment where all he could do was breathe. “I have to-we have to code now.”
Eduardo grinned, silly and sappy and fond and familiar, and said, touching Mark’s cheek, “Raincheck?”
“You owe me a lot of sex already,” Mark said, trying to stay grumpy and failing, if Dustin’s kissy face and batting eyelashes Dustin’s face were anything to go by.
“Hey,” Eduardo said, slanting him a happy, fond look. “I’m good for it.”
***
Mark normally took the train home, when his mother wasn’t busy kidnapping him, so he figured that’s what they would do this time. But when he brought it up that night on the way to the dining hall, Eduardo winced and rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Photographers.”
Which made Mark stop for a moment, thoughts jammed up like rush-hour traffic.
Some of the people who followed Eduardo around campus, buzzing like flies, weren’t friends, or even groupies. They were people doing incredibly inane, stupid, pointless jobs, because the majority of the global public, who didn’t know Eduardo at all, for some reason still cared about the minutiae of his life and what he wore and who he was seen with. Chris had showed Mark the Harvard Prince forums, and the online fans-the Eduardians, as they called themselves-were basically terrifying, and also insane.
Even more alarming was that Mark was in some of the pictures online. People had commented on him being the prince’s new BFF, or whatever. And now the Prince would be in his house, his childhood home.
All that flashed through his brain, code-quick. He asked, standing shock-still, staring at Eduardo’s back, “Is this okay? Are we-I don’t want to start shit.”
Eduardo apparently hadn’t noticed he’d stopped, because he’d gotten a few feet ahead of him. Mark shifted from foot to foot, waiting for an answer, and Eduardo looked over his shoulder and huffed out a disbelieving laugh and said, “Jesus, Mark, you’ll get hit by a car. Come on.” Then he took Mark by the hand and pulled him through the slush, tucked an arm around Mark’s shoulders, and Mark wondered about that, how that could be okay-it wasn’t okay to take a train together, but it was to hold Mark’s hand, however briefly?
But Eduardo had been like that ever since Mark had known him, close and in Mark’s space. So maybe it didn’t matter. Not that part, anyway. Maybe Eduardo really was like that with everyone. Personable and charming and totally oblivious to personal boundaries.
Eduardo was joking about Mark forgetting his own head, walking into traffic, needing a leash and a minder and a feeder, and Mark wanted to kiss him, in the middle of the street, because he didn’t need any of those things, he just needed a computer, and Wardo, and he had those. He was set for life.
But of course he couldn't kiss him, not here where photographers and gossiping students could see and turn it into a headline. He wondered if this was what life was like for Eduardo all the time-this feeling of being on-stage. Constantly watched, having to re-think every move.
They should have stayed safe and secure in Kirkland, in Mark’s room, where Mark could touch Eduardo all he wanted and say anything as soon as he thought it. But when Eduardo had found out Mark hadn’t technically had a meal in days-fucking Dustin need to keep his goddamned mouth shut - he’d gone all loud and outraged and shoved a hat on Mark’s head, one of the one’s his sister knitted, the lumpy blue one, and then dragged him outside.
Mark had been sulking about this turn of events because he distinctly remembered being promised sex, and this was not it. But now that he smelled the food, his stomach had woken up, growling and roiling. Eduardo shot him a smug look and pushed a plate into his hands.
“Fine, shut up,” Mark grumbled, and started ladling stuff onto his plate.
Still. Next semester, they should stop going to the dining hall, order in instead. Mark wanted to watch Eduardo eat from his fingers, feed Eduardo something messy and dripping and have Eduardo lick him clean.
Not something to think about in public. Later.
Only when Eduardo was methodically drizzling dressing on his salad in perfect spiral, did he say, “So what were you talking about outside? Is what okay?”
Mark shrugged and shoved a forkful of noodles in his mouth before he spoke. “Break. Hanukkah, with my family. Will-the press, will it be a problem?”
Eduardo paused. “Ah. Well. Even a prince can have friends, right? My publicist didn’t seem to think anything of it-I think she was happy for me, actually. No one’s guessed except my sister, so far, but she wouldn’t ever say anything. She really wants to meet you, by the way.”
Huh. “She guessed?”
“Apparently I talk about you a lot,” Eduardo said wryly, and kicked gently at Mark’s ankle under the table, cheeks faintly pink. “But I don’t really talk about my real life, I guess, to anyone else. So I don’t think visiting your family will raise any flags. You might get a bit more attention from the press when school starts back up, I guess. But you’d be getting that anyway with The Facebook launching.”
True. Mark gnawed on the tines of his fork for a moment, considering this. “So why not the train, then? I actually am capable of keeping my hands to myself for a few hours, if that’s what you were worried about.”
Eduardo’s eyes sparkled at him, and his leg nudged Mark’s under the table.
“Well, that’s disappointing.” Mark gave him an unimpressed look and he laughed. “Well, for one, I was hoping to get away with not having an entire contingent of guards with me. Trains would be-public transportation isn’t a great idea in general.” Oh. That. That really hadn’t occurred to Mark as an issue. Eduardo looked pretty blasé, considering he was talking about-what, potential assassination attempts? Mob hits? “But mostly,” Eduardo said, face softening into something more nervous, hopeful. “I just-I didn’t want to start off break with people staring and gossiping. I wanted-I hoped for time where it’s just us, you know?”
“Oh,” Mark said, and stared down at his plate. “Right. Road trip, then. That’s good.”
“I’ll rent a car and then your family won’t have to pick us up at the station,” Eduardo kept going, like Mark hadn’t already agreed and acknowledged his point.
“Right,” he nodded. “Totally.” Not like Mark’s family would care, but whatever. He finished off his pasta and gulped down some milk, then eyed Eduardo’s plate, which was still obnoxiously full. “So are the bodyguards coming with us, then?” That hadn’t really occurred to Mark, but he supposed it made sense.
“Probably just Davi and Luego,” Eduardo said, shrugging and picking at his vegetables. “They won’t be, like, in the house, I’d never impose like that on your family. Just, if we’re out in public, they’ll be there, but don’t worry, they can be very unobtrusive.”
This was true. Mark was actually a little alarmed at the way they could appear out of thin air when they were all so fucking huge and bulky.
Mark stole a forkful of Eduardo’s salad, and smirked when Eduardo mock-glared and tried to fend him off with his own cutlery. “Eat faster,” Mark said, and then, “Your bodyguards know, right? About us.”
There was no way the bodyguards didn’t know. Davi had totally winked at Mark earlier, then punched his shoulder and rattled off something incomprehensible but friendly-sounding, before sauntering off to melt into the shadows again. Mark’s arm still hurt a little, actually. So he was pretty sure, but it was important to confirm before he let something slip in front of them, or got overly handsy or whatever.
Eduardo blinked, like that hadn’t occurred to him. “Oh. I guess they’re-yes, probably. But their contracts are very specific about confidentiality, and they’ve been with me since high school. I trust them.”
“They don’t mind? About the-” Shit, he probably shouldn’t say ‘gay’ in public, where bloggers could be listening in. There were a couple of girls at the next table, and Mark gave them a suspicious look before making a hand gesture that he hoped implied homosexual relations. It apparently was adequate, because Eduardo raised an eyebrow, then laughed.
“Well, Davi and Luego are dating, so, no, I suspect not.” Eduardo flashed him a grin. “Don’t tell, though, my father would have a fit.”
It was Mark’s turn to blink, because holy hell, that had to be some crazy sex. Like tectonic plates of muscle colliding. Jesus.
“Who the fuck would I tell?” he asked, rolling his eyes belatedly. “And how are you not done yet?”
“In a hurry?” Eduardo asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I have a check I’d really like to cash,” Mark said blandly, and Eduardo’s face went bright red, and then he shifted around in his seat a bit before standing and grabbing his plate. “Done now?”
“Uh, yeah. Yes. Definitely,” Eduardo said, and practically sprinted for the trash can and dish bin with their trays. Mark smiled.
***
The apartment was empty when they got back. Chris’ family lived nearby, and Dustin had made plans to leave with him earlier, much to Chris’ dismay. But when Dustin had started protesting that leaving the celibate dude alone with the sexy Disney Couple of the Year was cruel and unusual, Chris had actually caved with a look of real sympathy on his face.
Which Mark personally thought was over-exaggerating, but in any case, his offer to gag Eduardo hadn’t gone over well. Chris had hit him with a newspaper and Dustin had slapped his hands over his face and wailed about his inner eye being blinded.
Eduardo, however, had gone promisingly pink and fidgety; something to remember for later.
Now, though, they had the apartment to themselves.
“Hey, I know I said I’d-that I’d be on top for this round, but can I write you a raincheck for a raincheck?” Eduardo said, shucking off his jacket and shooting Mark a look from beneath his lashes.
“Reneging already, your majesty?” Mark tsked, and then laughed when Eduardo made a face like he’d bitten into a lemon. The laughter was gone pretty quickly, though, replaced by something simmering and toe-curling when Eduardo pushed him up against a wall.
“Believe me, I’ll deliver,” he promised, voice low and husky, lips just brushing Mark’s ear, and Mark couldn’t repress a shiver. “I just want you inside me. Please, Mark. If we’re going to go without for the next couple weeks, I want-I want that. I want you.”
“Okay,” Mark agreed automatically, voice cracking, because Jesus fuck, Mark would give Eduardo every computer in his possession if he asked in that tone. Then what Eduardo’s actually said registered. “Wait. Wait, what? Why is this the last time we’re having sex for a few weeks? You’re not leaving until the 23rd.”
“Mark,” Eduardo said reproachfully, which wasn’t quite as efficient as it might be given that he was quickly stripping off his shirt and shoes and socks and fuck, Mark was really on board this plan, even if he had been looking forward to Eduardo holding him down, and holding him, and letting him inside. He’d never been with someone larger than he was, heavier. He was-all the times Eduardo had used his weight, held him down, however briefly, Mark had had an unanticipated physical reaction. He’d been looking forward to exploring that.
But seriously, fucking Eduardo was not going to be a hardship.
Except then Eduardo kept talking.
“We’ll be staying with your family! At your family home, I can’t have sex with you with your mother down the hall. It’d be rude.”
“Hah, hilarious,” Mark said dryly, rolling his eyes, then when Eduardo kept giving him the wounded puppy look, realized he was serious. Which was actually really, truly funny. “No, seriously, that’s hysterical. My mom won’t know, and if she did, she wouldn’t care.”
He went to go fetch the lube from his room and Eduardo trailed after him, still rambling on nonsensically.
“Why are we talking about my mom right now?” Mark interrupted irritably, getting rid of his own clothing and then padding back into the living area again. “It seems deeply inappropriate, given that I’m about to fuck you senseless. Can we stop?”
“But-wait, why are we in the living room?” Eduardo asked, obviously confused, hovering by Mark’s door.
“Dustin and Chris aren’t here. I want to fuck you in the chair, come on, Wardo.” Mark sprawled in the seat, smirking at Eduardo’s expression. He let his legs fall open a little and stroked himself loosely. God, this was going to be hot. “You can still be on top.”
Eduardo just stared at him for a moment, eyes huge and dark and breath visibly coming faster, and then he stumbled towards Mark.
“God, Mark, you just-do you know what you do to me?”
He climbed in Mark’s lap, straddling him with knees to either side of Mark’s legs, and then kissed him, long and lewd and wet with tongue.
“Of course,” Mark answered, a little breathless himself between kisses, unable to keep from thrusting up against Eduardo. He had to close his eyes for a moment, because fuck. Feeling Eduardo’s hands on his shoulders, pushing him down and then writhing on top of him… it was almost painfully hot. Feeling it and seeing it was intense, more than he’d expected. “I thought-I, god. I thought you’d like this. We both get what we want.”
Because he wanted that, he wanted them both to-it should be good for both of them. He wanted Eduardo to be happy, he wanted Eduardo to feel what he felt.
Eduardo stared at him for a second and then kissed him again, so hard their teeth met, and pulled back to say, “You’re-that’s perfect. Sometimes I can’t believe you’re real.” He leaned his forehead against Mark’s, eyes closed.
“What does that even mean?” Mark asked, bemused, and found the lube, forgotten on the arm of the chair. He started slicking up his fingers. “Like, I’m some projection from the Matrix?”
“Like I’ll wake up and-and still have to take my geology exam, and you won’t-ah, Jesus, Mark.”
“Feel awake now?” Mark asked, voice coming out rough and low.
“Yes,” Eduardo hissed out from between his teeth, head thrown back and neck bared, and Mark wanted so badly to just close his teeth over Eduardo’s skin, mark up the flawless expanse of it, a signature to say, I was here and taken and mine. Instead, he leaned forward and mouthed carefully at the skin over Eduardo’s pulse, counted the speeding heartbeats.
“I won’t leave marks,” he said when he felt Eduardo draw in a breath into speak. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Just-not where people can see,” Eduardo said tightly, and rocked his hips down and back onto Mark’s fingers. “Oh, fuck.”
“What’s it feel like?” Mark wanted to know, and Eduardo made a keening noise.
“God, like-there- like you’re everywhere.”
“That’s not helpful,” Mark said, teasing, and added another finger, scissoring them and smiling into Eduardo’s collarbone at the gasp that produced. But maybe he knew what Eduardo meant, when he thought about how he’d felt the first time Eduardo had put his mouth on Mark’s dick, how he’d felt it in his toes and his lips and his heartbeat, stuttering and sped-up.
“I can’t, fuck, Mark, I don’t know-like scratching an itch, but there’s no-no bad, just intense and fuck, fuck, please, I just-”
“Tell me more,” Mark murmured, and nuzzled at Eduardo’s neck again, and then blinked in surprised when Eduardo made a noise that was-not a whine or a gasp or a moan, but something closer to a growl, and then he actually lifted up and batted Mark’s hand away.
“E-fucking-nough,” he gritted out, and then just-Jesus, just lined himself up and sank down and Mark’s vision wobbled for a moment, because-Christ.
“Like that,” Eduardo panted, and Mark maybe whimpered, because Eduardo was riding him, head thrown back and wanton and just fucking screwing himself on Mark’s cock. He was biting his lower lip and had his eyes closed, and Mark had never had sex like this. Never knew sex could be like this. “It-it feels so fucking-” He dissolved into Portuguese for a moment, then came back to English, leaned in and kiss Mark fiercely, then said against his mouth, “So fucking real.”
“Wardo,” Mark managed to get out, and his hands found Eduardo’s hips and all he could do was hold on, try not to come in the first few seconds.
“Fica comigo,” Eduardo said, almost drunkenly, all slurred speech and hooded eyes, and Mark said, desperate and wanting, “I don’t know-what do you want? I’ll do it.”
And maybe that was enough because Eduardo made a broken sound and then kissed him again, and Mark thought, Oh fuck, right, I have hands. Good hands, hands that Eduardo liked. He raised one, shaking and unsteady, and brushed the fingers against Eduardo’s mouth.
“Get them wet,” he ordered hoarsely, and Eduardo obeyed instantly, licking and sucking in time with the motion of his hips, and Jesus, Jesus, Mark couldn’t deal with this-he almost bucked Eduardo off, and then had to steady him, haul him back in with his free hand, and Eduardo’s eyes crinkled and Mark could tell he was smiling, laughing. It was-Mark wanted Eduardo to feel amazing, so he pulled his hand free and nearly came when he saw the way Eduardo’s mouth followed his fingers.
“You can suck me later,” he promised thickly, then wrapped his hand around Eduardo’s cock and started pumping it.
“Mark, Mark, oh fuck.” As Eduardo’s movements got more unsteady, erratic, Mark did his best to keep it, to snap his hips up, and it was more like just rocking into Eduardo, his cock barely leaving Eduardo’s body at all. It could probably have been better, but this-Mark still thought this was perfect, Eduardo clawing at his back and both of them sticky with sweat.
He wasn’t actually sure which of them came first; it all blended together, wet and hot and moaning into each other, and then coming back down, Mark stroking Eduardo’s back and trying to breathe.
“We’ve-we’ve ruined this chair,” Eduardo said finally, sounding a little appalled and a lot amused.
Mark shrugged. “We can Febreeze it. It’ll be fine.”
“Mark!” Eduardo laughed. “I didn’t mean-wow, I feel bad for your roommates, you know that?”
“Feel bad for me,” Mark said, disgruntled, but his voice came out fond and soft anyway. “Have you ever heard Dustin singing? He’s fucking obsessed with Disney. It’s gotten even worse since you came around. He thinks the whole world is a goddamned Disney movie now.”
“Disney?” Eduardo’ was still laughing, voice bright and warm, and they have another six days together. Just them, and Mark’s family, and no photographers.
Mark made what he felt was a credible attempt at imitating Dustin imitating Sebastian the Crab, warbling the “Sha la la las,” and Eduardo was cracking up, now, leaning into him and giggling into his neck.
“Are you the mermaid or am I in this scenario?” he asked finally, and Mark nuzzled him, pleased. He didn’t normally like to sing in front of people, to look like an idiot, but he liked it when Eduardo laughed. He liked it a lot.
“You know,” he said, “I think originally it was me, but I don’t know anymore.”
“We can both be the mermaid,” Eduardo decided magnanimously, then got to his feet, wincing and smiling all at once. “And on that note, I think we should definitely both shower.”
“Sure,” Mark agreed, and let Eduardo pull him to his feet. “Whatever you want.”
***
TO THE OVERFLOW KINKMEME!
***
Mark had been told that he was a sleep-cuddler. Erica had been amused by it, for reasons Mark couldn’t fathom. But the end result was that while she seemed to still like having sex with him, she didn’t enjoy sharing a bed with him - apparently he was like an extremely hot-blooded cephalopod, only with more arms, which didn’t make any sort of biologic sense.
“A girl needs some space to breathe,” she’d said, and started shoving him out of the bed after sex, or getting out of it herself.
Whatever. It wasn’t as though Mark had had a lot of time to spend sleeping anyway. He still didn’t, to be honest, so he hadn’t thought much of it when he’d drifted off the night before-Eduardo would probably get too cramped, push him away or squirm around, politely uncomfortable, and then Mark would wake up and get to work on The Facebook and leave the bed to Eduardo.
Instead he woke to an unfamiliar ringtone, buzzing insistently somewhere in the early-dawn darkness of the room, and Eduardo was wrapped around him like a quilt, nose against Mark’s neck and limbs tangled and twined with Mark’s own.
Mark, contrary to popular opinion, did notice the environment around him; he just had better things to worry about than his own comfort or lack thereof. But if he had a choice, he preferred to be warm, and to sleep warm, with lots of blankets, and preferably a nubile naked body to wrap around.
So that’d worked out well.
He was, to be honest, blissfully warm enough to ignore the insistent, obnoxious tones of John fucking Mayer and go back to sleep, but then he remembered Eduardo saying he had to be somewhere in the morning. And Mark had plenty of things to be doing himself. So, fine, he’d get up. In a second.
“Wardo,” he mumbled into Eduardo’s hair, and tried to figure out where his hands were. “Wardo, your phone. It’s awful.”
Eduardo tightened his grip and said something sleepy and not-English, and Mark sighed and ran a hand up his back, smiling involuntarily when Eduardo made a happy sound and burrowed closer. But now Mark was awake, and Eduardo needed to be too, if only to get that fucking ringtone to stop.
“‘Your Body is a Wonderland.’ Seriously?” he asked, and kept stroking Eduardo’s back. He wondered if they had time for morning sex, if Eduardo had factored that in when choosing his alarms, or wake-up calls, or whatever.
“I like it. Shut up,” Eduardo slurred, then stretched and lifted his head off Mark’s shoulder, squinting at the dark room. “What time’s it?”
Mark could see his bedside clock over Eduardo’s hair. “Five.”
“Colhões,” Eduardo muttered, and dropped his head again for a moment. “I should get up.”
“Yeah,” Mark agreed, and they both lay there for a moment, listening to John Mayer croon inanities in a nonsensical loop. “Your bodyguards will break down the door soon.”
“Mmm,” Eduardo hummed noncommittally, which led Mark to suspect he was correct, and then kissed the corner of Mark’s mouth. “Good morning.”
“So far,” Mark agreed, and then was kissed more soundly. “Your breath is not great, your highness,” he told Eduardo, and dragged him back in for another kiss, limbs moving together, lazy and warm.
“You’re not exactly minty fresh yourself,” Eduardo said hoarsely, but then he kissed Mark again anyway, and really, Mark was pretty okay with the current lack of dental hygiene going on if Eduardo was going to use his tongue like that, catch his breath in his throat when he bit Mark’s lower lip. Except then he stopped, pulled away. “Ugh, I should go. I’m sorry. Raincheck?”
“On morning sex, or for an unspecified, minty fresh sexual act of my choosing?” Mark inquired, and was hit gently with a pillow.
“Yes. Either. Both. Morning sex would be… really nice, right now.” Eduardo was looking at Mark wistfully, hand dipping below the sheets and stroking the small of Mark’s back. Mark arched into his touch and Eduardo closed his eyes and swore, then visibly tore himself away, got up off the bed.
“Oh,” he said, catching himself against the bed, then straightening again.
“Mm?” Mark said, and rolled over to look at him, dimly lit by the LED glare of the clock, all shadows and planes and places Mark wanted to bite, to bruise up and mark and claim as his.
Eduardo stretched, and then-didn’t wince, exactly, but the look on his face was definitely startled.
“Oh,” Mark said, and grinned into the pillow. “Sore? Sorry.”
“No, I like it,” Eduardo said slowly after a moment, and Mark licked his lips and smiled and Eduardo made a visible effort to glare at him.
“No. Stop with that face. I’m already late. Shit, where are my pants?”
“If you’re already late, you might as well be later?” Mark tried, but Eduardo just raised an eyebrow and looked regrettably resistant to Mark’s attempt to make a seductive face. Mark sighed. “Fine. On the chair.”
Eduardo stopped a minute, and Mark caught the white glint of a smile as he shook out his trousers.
“Thanks for folding them,” he said, laughter obvious in his voice, and then resumed dressing. Mark disapproved, but there was no logical objection, and if Eduardo absolutely had to leave Mark’s room and enter the outside world, Mark supposed he’d have to be clothed. “God, I smell-”
“Like sex.”
“And you, yes. Can I borrow some deodorant?”
Mark jerked his head towards the dresser and Eduardo rummaged around while Mark thought smug thoughts about the Prince of Brazil wandering around campus with Mark’s teeth marks in his collar bone and Mark’s scent on his skin.
“So when are you leaving for break?”
Mark blinked, and then stretched, and found he was also pleasantly sore in muscles he hadn’t used in far too long.
“Break?” he asked, and then struggled out of the sheets to find a hoodie. First run-through had to be done by now, but Chris hadn’t knocked on the door to get him. Mark supposed he could forgive that, given the sounds that had likely been coming from the room. “Oh. Right. Hannukah.” Shit, his mom would want him home for that. “No idea. Not sure I can get away with skipping it this year-last time my mom showed up in my dorm and staged a kidnapping.”
Mark wasn’t even joking, was the sad thing. She’d caught him coming off a coding binge, with his brain still in the midst of rebooting to the real world, and she’d lured him out of the door room with Red Bull and fresh-baked sufganiyah. Then suddenly he was in her car and the doors were all locked and Harvard was rapidly receding in the distance. Mark’s mom was a fucking menace.
Eduardo adjusted his collar and flicked on a light, staring at himself in the mirror, fussing with his hair, which to be frank, Mark thought was sort of a lost cause.
“Not sure a mother can really kidnap her own offspring,” Eduardo offered over his shoulder, grinning.
“You’d be surprised,” Mark said darkly. “Are you-do you have to go back? To Brazil?” Mark should have realized that was going to have to happen sometime soon, though in his defense he hadn’t really been thinking in term of calendar dates so much lately.
So Eduardo was leaving for a different continent soon. That was-that was happening. Fine.
Eduardo shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “My father-he wants me there for the Christmas Mass. I have to be there for that. It’s televised. There are ceremonies, and interviews. It’s all very festive.” His voice had gone bright and brittle.
“But… you’re Jewish,” Mark pointed out, confused, and Eduardo made a complicated face, shrugging again.
“My mother is Jewish, it was, ah-a bit of a scandal, when they married. I am, yes, but my father and my country are Roman Catholic. It doesn’t matter what my own personal feelings are, I have-certain responsibilities. My Jewish heritage is not a part of them.”
Mark couldn’t quite follow what that meant. It seemed incredibly strange to him-he didn’t especially care about the religious aspects behind the holiday, but the cultural ones, the family all around, and the flicker of the candles, that-he wasn’t a nostalgic person, but he could admit to feeling warmth towards that time of the year, even though it was so often disruptive to his own personal schedule.
“So you… don’t celebrate Hanukkah at all?”
“Not publicly.”
“Huh,” Mark said, and struggled into a hoodie and shorts. Eduardo smiled at him and brushed a curl out of his face. Mark scowled half-heartedly and tried to bat his hand away, but Eduardo only caught and kissed it.
“Your hair is impressive in the morning.”
“You have no room to talk,” Mark grumbled, but leaned into Eduardo’s hand. “So you’re leaving. When are you leaving?”
“As late as humanly possible,” Eduardo admitted sheepishly, like a kid caught in the cookie jar. “Night of the 23rd. I have to be there for the Christmas Eve state ball the next day, so that’s as far as I could push it.”
They picked their way through the dark living room, Chris and Dustin no longer present but for the detritus of popcorn and discarded flashcards and game controllers they’d left behind.
“Good,” Mark said, having processed dates and times and formulated a plan by the time they reached the door and opened it. “You can come home with me until then. My mom will force-feed you latkes and leave me alone. We can discuss strategies for The Facebook launch while you’re semi-comatose from food. It’ll be great.”
“What?” Eduardo said, blinking at him, and from the hall, one of the bodyguards-had they seriously been out there all night?-reached in and touched his shoulder and rambled off something low and impenetrable that made Eduardo wince.
“Sorry, I-we can, can we talk about this later? I mean, really, she-you wouldn’t mind? I don’t want to-”
“No one would mind. Call me,” Mark said shrugging, and Eduardo made an aborted gesture towards him, then flapped his hand helplessly, and turned to go. Mark only realized after he’d closed the door that Eduardo had been going in for a kiss, and then had to stop. Because someone might have seen them.
That wasn’t-Mark rerouted his thoughts someplace more productive, and turned towards the mini-fridge. They were almost out of Red Bull. He took the last one and found his laptop, scowling at the error messages waiting for him on the screen.
He found his headphones and plugged in. He’d worry about it later.
***
It turned out that that plugging in early had been an excellent plan, because as soon as the sun got a little higher in the sky, there were stirrings of life in the apartment. Dustin and Chris were awake, and they descended on him like over-sized, deranged jackals, making high-pitched yipping noises and pawing at his arms.
Mark managed to shake them off and ignore them in favor of the code right up until he ran out of Red Bull. He tried stubbornly to code on, but he was thirsty and tired from the week of finals and the little sleep he’d gotten the night before, and was forced to give in.
He took off his headphones off, spun around in his chair, and glared at the interlopers.
“You have five minutes. What do you want?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Dustin was practically vibrating in place; Chris, on the other hand, was wringing his hands and making huge, curious eyes at him, which Mark hadn’t thought people actually did in real life. And yet.
“You had sex with Prince Wardo!” Dustin crowed, fist punching the air. “Loud sex! Successful sex! Mark! You fucking dog, I didn’t know you had it in you. You fucking deflowered that crown jewel. I bet the royal guard comes after you with pitchforks.”
“That seems unnecessarily medieval,” Mark said. Was this conversation really necessary?
“So, was it good? It sounded-uh, you both got kind of loud,” Chris asked, with an unsettling gleam of genuine interest in his eye, and really, that was a question Mark would have expected more from Dustin. He blinked at Chris, who promptly turned bright red.
“Why do you ask?” Mark asked suspiciously, and Chris somehow got even redder.
“Chrissy here has had a crush on our visiting royalty since the beginning of the semester, Your Markness,” Dustin said, smirking. “I seriously don’t know how you didn’t notice. He made us marathon all those movies while he swooned and pined and plotted out how to best stalk the Prince from afar.”
“He did not,” Mark said immediately, but he was starting to remember, dimly, the evenings of pure cinematic torture.
“The Princess Bride. A Knight’s Tale. Enchanted. Ever After! You have to remember this shit, even if you did keep trying to escape to your laptop half the time.”
Okay, Mark did remember that. And now some of Dustin’s recent inane babblings made more sense now, sort of. But that wasn’t Mark’s concern at the moment.
“You have a crush on Wardo,” Mark said, narrowing his eyes at Chris, who held up his hands immediately.
“Had! Had a crush. And you can’t fucking blame me for it, I mean, you know. It’s a fucking prince. Half the school is pining after him. You can’t, uh. Destroy half the school for that.” There was an unsaid ‘Can you?’ hanging in the air between them. Mark leaned back in his chair and considered this while Chris and Dustin exchanged panicked looks.
Eduardo warned him that this would be complicated. Probably this was part and parcel of agreeing to be a dirty secret. Mark was going to have to get used to inferior individuals pawing at his boyfriend and not being allowed to take overt action to prevent it.
Fine.
Mark could do that. Probably.
“Or at least don’t destroy our best buddy Chris,” Dustin interjected soulfully, patting Mark on the hand. Mark redirected his glare.
“You didn’t even know him then. They-” he waved a hand towards the window. “-don’t know him at all. Why would they-”
“Mark, Mark. I realize that normal human behavior is a source of intense confusion for you, but this is pretty simple, you can follow this. Wardo’s a prince. He’s handsome and philanthropic and brilliant, and he’s single. You don’t have to know him to want him. Honestly, I’m surprised no one went for you with a shiv when they saw you two flirting in the coffeeshop.”
“It wasn’t flirting.” Okay. It had been flirting, but not overt flirting, or so he’d thought. “I figured it was just leftover hate from the Facemash thing,” Mark grumbled, and tried to turn back to his laptop.
“Okay, that aside-was it good?” Dustin asked, bouncing again. “Was it magical? Was there birdsong and fireworks? Before we retreated to our bedroom strongholds, there was definitely noise, but that was, uh. Less song-like. Or else there were some really kinky birds.”
“Explosives aren’t really what I enjoy having in bed with me, or birds, for that matter,” Mark said dryly, but his mouth quirked up without his permission as he remembered it, the sweat shining on Eduardo’s shoulders and the sound of Mark’s name on his lips. Dustin spotted it, like the crazy vulture he was, and clapped his hands together.
“Look at you! It was! It was magical.”
“There were orgasms. There was nothing beyond the realm of reality,” Mark corrected, glaring.
“Unicorns and sunshine and sparkles and puppies.”
Mark stared, aghast. “What kind of Lisa Frank sex have you been having?”
“Okay, horrific sex talk aside, we need to think about what this means for The Facebook,” Chris interjected, thank god, and Mark redirected his attention gratefully. “To have someone like Prince Eduardo involved.”
“Yes. Eduardo’s coming back later-we’ll have a meeting. Talk it out. But for now, if you’re done breaking my brain with terrifying insights into Dustin’s sex life, I have work to do, and so do you.”
Dustin made a mournful whip-crack noise and said, “So that’s how it is, huh? Poor Wardo.”
“I can get access to your final grades,” Mark said, icily calm, and Dustin rolled his eyes, then mimed zipping his lips and bounced off to his own computer, humming something ridiculous all the way.
Chris stayed, however, staring down at Mark with a look Mark recognized from interventions that had been staged after days of coding without sleep or food. Worried. Chris was worried.
“Really, though, Mark. I don’t-this isn’t just like dating a random girl, or guy, for that matter. This is going to be-we have to be really careful. You have to be really careful. We need to talk about how we’re going to handle this, if there need to be non-disclosure agreements and what to do with the press when they find out Eduardo’s involved in The Facebook at all, let alone dating the founder.”
Mark ignored him and found a warm Red Bull in the back of the cabinet from the emergency box Chris thought he didn’t know about, popped it open and settled back in front of his computer.
“I’m not an idiot, I know that,” he said, and then adjusted his headphones and let the world fall away for a few hours longer.
***
Eduardo arrived at the apartment again a few hours later, an expression of mild distaste on his face, which, Mark was coming to realize, meant he was totally miserable-whatever expressions Eduardo let show in public were only ever shades of what he was really feeling. In private, with Mark, that was different, but this was definitely Prince Eduardo strolling through the doors, calling back to his bodyguards and undoing his cufflinks.
He was in a new suit, formal and understatedly elegant, with accents of deep purple, and the way he closed the door and leaned against it for a moment, slumped and head down, was at total odds with the perfection of his hair and the cut of his jacket.
“Hi, guys,” he said after a moment, and took off his jacket, folding it neatly over the back of a chair. “Is there beer? I could use a beer.”
Mark got up and found him one, tossed it over and was amused to see Eduardo absently crack the top off with his gleaming ring before collapsing into one of the oversized armchairs like he didn’t intend to move any time soon.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked, eyeing him curiously. “You got an A in Geology, so it’s not that.”
“I did?” Eduardo lit up, and Mark smiled, then batted away the shower of pink origami post-it flowers Dustin had just thrown at his head; fucker had obviously been waiting for just the right moment. Mark would get him back later. “That’s-god, that’s great, we need, we need to celebrate. Here, or-we could rent out a restaurant? Do you like Italian?”
Mark blinked. “Sure,” he said with a shrug, and diffidently made his way across the room and settled on the armrest of the chair, pleased when Eduardo immediately slung an arm around his waist and tugged him slightly closer against his body. He pressed his face briefly into Mark’s side before resurfacing to drink deeply from the bottle.
“So it’s not your grades,” Mark concluded. “What is it?”
“Ah, I-just, the fucking final clubs, they won’t leave me alone. It’s-they all want the Prince of Brazil, you know? I was dragged all over campus all day. I don’t think any of them actually gives a fuck about anything but my name.”
Eduardo took another long swallow of the beer while they all stared at him, then without looking up leaned his forehead against Mark’s arm. Mark hesitantly brushed a wayward curl out of his face and cupped the back of his head. Eduardo shot him a wan smile and leaned into it, closing his eyes.
“It’s fine, I’m used to it.” He flapped a hand, to indicate how little it bothered him, or at least Mark assumed that was the intent. Either way, it failed. It clearly did bother Eduardo, a lot. Even Mark could tell.
It was kind of ironic. Mark had, at one point, wanted more than anything to have the validation of the final clubs, to be acknowledged, to know that he meant something.
When Eduardo had first spoken up there had been a hot, nauseating flare of jealousy in Mark’s chest, ugly and unwanted, but then the misery on Eduardo’s face had sunk in. They didn’t want Wardo for Wardo, they just-Mark had no idea how to articulate his thoughts in a way that would be comforting and not condescending or patronizing. I want you for you and I have the biggest, the best final club and you’re the most important member that isn’t me and those fuckheads wouldn’t know how amazing you are if you wrote an equation for it on their oversized foreheads and please stop looking like that, please, you’re wonderful you’re Wardo I-
“Uh,” Dustin piped up into the taut silence between them. “According to Mark, you’re the second coming of Adam Smith, so, you know, I’m not too surprised a lot of people want to punch you - Mark’s been reciting quotes from Dr. Irvine’s recommendation letter, like, non-stop. So I’m sure the clubs have heard of you for reasons besides your, erm. Noble lineage.”
Mark glared, feeling unaccountably red, but Eduardo just tugged him in closer, and when Mark looked down, Eduardo had a faint, high flush on his cheeks and was toying with his beer bottle, beaming at it.
“Well, uh, Adam Smith was more hypothetical and I’m more, ah, on the mathematical side. But that’s-that’s nice to hear. But I sincerely doubt it, most of the Porcellian alums didn’t even know what my major was, let alone how well I was or wasn’t doing in it.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” Mark said, and stole the beer from Eduardo’s hand, took a long pull and registered the way Eduardo’s eyes locked onto the length of his throat. He licked his lips and handed it back, and Eduardo’s eyes went dark beneath his lashes. “Maybe they just want to improve their diversity.”
“Jesus, Mark,” Chris swore, looking alarmed and outraged, but then Eduardo, who had lost the sultry look in favor of a blank stare, suddenly burst into loud laughter-the undignified, full-bodied kind, head thrown back and mouth wide open.
“You’re such an asshole, Mark,” he managed to get out, and he was still laughing as he dragged Mark down into a kiss. He tasted like beer, and something sharper, smokier beneath that-whiskey, scotch, maybe. “Thank you, thank you. Thank you,” he murmured into Mark’s skin, low, where none of the others could hear it.
“Come on,” Mark said, pulling back, red and fighting down a smile. “Brazilian-American Jew, that’s-that’s quite a catch, right, that’s a fucking feather in their caps.”
“I’ll punch you,” Eduardo warned, but his eyes were shining.
“Anyway, that works out perfectly, since I needed to get their email addresses, and I didn’t want any rumors about hacking going around this time. Not with this site, not yet.”
“…I don’t follow?” Eduardo laughed, and pulled Mark off the side of the chair into his lap, somehow managing to ignore the high-pitched noises of glee Dustin was making off to the side.
“If we want this to get beyond just circulating in Kirkland, we need access to more people. People with a lot of contacts. Do you have the info for the Phoenix mailing list?”
“Yes, and the Porc, but-”
“Not the Porc,” Mark said hastily, because yeah, he could see that going over incredibly poorly with the Winkleviis, and he really didn’t have time for their bullshit at the moment. “The Phoenix is good. But we don’t need it yet, we still need to get the site running and operational. I’ll be working on it over break, and you two-” He nodded at Dustin and Chris. “-should do the same. Let me know when you’re available.”
“But it’s break. Vacay. Time off,” Dustin protested, flopping on the ground and pouting. Mark ignored him.
“How can I help?” Eduardo asked, adjusting his position in the chair and tugging Mark more firmly against him-it sometimes surprised Mark, the difference in their height, like now, when Eduardo could curl himself so completely around Mark, effortless and warm.
“That’s actually-okay. So. We should talk.”
“Should Dustin and I leave?” Chris asked, and Mark rolled his eyes.
“No, fuckwit, it’s about the company. Sit down.” Chris got a long-suffering look on his face, but he sat, and Dustin rolled closer on the rug, and they all stared up at him, waiting.
“So,” Mark said. “Division of shares, right now, is five percent to Dustin, dependent on whether or not he actually gets anything fucking done between now and New Year’s Eve, two to Chris for PR, which may or may not increase depending on, uh. How much PR is necessary. And then thirty to Eduardo, as our primary share-holder.”
Dustin and Chris had been nodding along, and Eduardo watched, then tipped his head, frowned down at Mark.
“That’s great, Mark, but I want to help-do you, I mean, is that what you need? More money? I can get you more money, but it seems-”
“What I need is a CFO,” Mark bit out quickly. “And I want you. You’d be perfect.” Eduardo’s face had gone perfectly still, but his eyes were so bright that Mark had to swallow a few seconds before saying, “Which is why it sucks that I can’t ask you.”
Watching Eduardo’s face fall, just a split fraction of a second before he dragged back up some horrible professional smile-it felt like Mark’d swallowed ground glass. He sucked in a breath, felt it catch painfully in his throat.
“Wardo. I-”
“Could you get up, please?” Eduardo asked, and his voice was tight, controlled. Mark got off of him, got shakily to his feet. Eduardo stood in a smooth motion and pushed past him; Mark watched him go, shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets, left hand tearing at the hangnails on the right as he tried to keep his face blank.
Chris was glaring at him now, and Dustin was making slit-throat motions and nooses and something else that seemed to involve butterflies or some shit, but it didn’t matter. Mark had to think about The Facebook right now, not feelings.
Eduardo had crossed over to the fridge and was standing, staring at it. “I understand,” he said distantly, and then bent and got a beer. He tilted it at the room in general. “Anybody else? No?”
Mark got back in the chair, curled up in the warmth that Eduardo had left behind, and remembered the look on Erica’s face at the bar, before she’d left, before the night of Facemash. At least this time, Mark had learned. He’d had some idea that this, this might be hard to hear. That it might upset Eduardo, even if Mark had logic on his side, even if it made sense. Sometimes people didn’t care about that. Sometimes people didn’t like to hear things that were true, that were necessary.
Eduardo cracked his beer open with his ring, this scrape of metal and hiss of carbonation loud in the room, and then leaned against the wall, looking at Mark from under his eyelashes. Mark couldn’t read his expression, and he didn’t-Eduardo was never so far away from him, not when they were in the same room, not when they could be in contact.
“You’re good, you know,” Eduardo said softly. “I mean, obviously, you know that. But I get it too, I do.”
“Well, I fucking don’t,” Dustin spoke up hotly, and Mark looked over to see him glaring. Mark shrugged at him and his glare intensified-if he wasn’t such a fucking cocker spaniel of a person, Mark might have been worried. “All Mark’s been talking about is how he met this guy to be our CFO for, like, weeks, how great you were and how smart, and fucking now-”
“Now he knows I’m the prince of Brazil,” Eduardo finished, and tipped back his bottle. “I can’t be CFO. It’d look like-like The Facebook was my company. My pet project, my toy. No one would take it seriously. No one takes me seriously.”
“Yes,” Mark said, relieved, breathing out in a rush. “Yes, and it’s going to be-”
“So much bigger than that,” Eduardo finished, and shrugged, looking off to the side. “I get that, Mark. I do.”
“So you can’t be CFO,” Mark said, getting up and pacing, feeling like he’d been doused with champagne, warm and effervescent. This was-Eduardo understood. Mark should have known he would. “But we need you, we still do-and I know what you can do. You’ll be CFO, and then they’ll have to take you, us, seriously. But for now, we have to just say you’re our primary stockholder, and that, I don’t know, someone else is running the business end of things. Dustin, maybe.”
God no, no one would believe that. But Mark would think of something. They would think of something.
“Wait, what?” Chris said, and when Mark completed his next circuit of the room and turned, all three of them were staring at him like he’d suddenly donned a sparkly top hat and started riverdancing. Mark blinked back at them and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Did I stutter?” he asked crossly, but then the look on Eduardo’s face caught his attention and he didn’t have time to be annoyed that Chris and Dustin apparently hadn’t been listening.
“Mark,” Eduardo said slowly, and there was the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his mouth, and he reached up to cover it with his hand, shaking his head. “Mark, are you asking me to be your dirty secret chief financial officer?”
“Huh. I didn’t think of the parallels,” Mark said, blinking. “But, uh. Yes. In essence, yes. Just-until we get The Facebook off the ground. Once we’re a, a corporation, a success, you can, you know, get credit, and-”
He broke off; Eduardo was smiling at him for real, now, wide and brilliant, and Mark had kind of lost his train of thought, and suspected it had derailed for good when Eduardo crossed the room back towards him, long-legged smooth strides, and offered him his hand. Mark stared down at it, then back up at him.
“I accept,” Eduardo said, voice rich and dark and hot, like the coffee he liked to drink, and Mark felt his skin heat from within.
“Good,” Mark breathed out, and shook Eduardo’s hand. “That’s-that’s good.”
From beyond Eduardo’s shoulder, he heard Dustin say, “So. We should get out now, right?”
“What?” Mark said, staring up at Eduardo, and then shook himself and made himself let go of Eduardo’s hand. “No, what are you talking about? We need to code. Did you see all the errors on the Friend pages? That’s crucial, and I haven’t had time to work on it yet, that's all you -- I’ve got to get the inboxes functional. And Wardo, I need to know-what, you know, what expenses we should be planning for, and which colleges we should be expanding to next, and actually, I kind of want you to look over our other algorithms, see if you can speed things up, but you can do that over break with me. We'll have time.”
There would be time-he could hammer out the business plan for the company with Eduardo, and give Eduardo a Hanukkah. And Wardo being there would distract Mark’s mom from hassling Mark. He was all big eyes and politeness and would probably be adopted by the Zuckerberg females in less than half a heartbeat.
Mark hadn’t expected to look forward to break, but this time, this time it seemed not just necessary, or useful, but kind of… nice. Good.
“Break? Isn’t Eduardo going back to Brazil?” Chris wanted to know, and Mark shrugged.
“At some point. But I-my mom said he should come home, do Hanukkah with us. Part of it, at least. Uh, I called her, by the way,” he said to Eduardo, who had his hand in a tight grip and was staring at him like-not like a riverdancer, but like the sun coming out. “She says, um. Thanks. For getting me to come home without armed intervention.”
“Oh my god, I am actually, like, going into diabetic shock. I need beer. Chris, get me a beer.”
“Get your own fucking beer. What, are your legs broken?”
“So, I do actually-do they know who I am?” Eduardo asked Mark, quietly, beneath the sound of Dustin and Chris squabbling. “Because my publicist-she thinks they’ll probably need to sign some papers. Just as a formality, and I hate to ask, I-”
“Wardo, it’s fine. We’ll sign whatever. Does that mean you’re coming?” Mark asked hopefully, and Eduardo smiled down at their hands.
“I rearranged some of my appearances and meetings, and, uh. Yeah. Yeah, if-I can, if you want.”
“Eduardo,” Mark said, exasperated. “It’s like you don’t pay attention to me at all.”
Eduardo stared for a moment, eyes bright with-well, something, Mark didn’t know, and then he brought Mark’s knuckles to his lips.
"Just so you know?” he said against the skin, and then waited.
“What?” Mark asked impatiently after a long pause, and then Eduardo leaned in and said against his mouth, “I really want to fuck you, right now." Then he planted a chaste kiss on Mark’s lips and leaned back, grinning.
“I hate you,” Mark said after a moment where all he could do was breathe. “I have to-we have to code now.”
Eduardo grinned, silly and sappy and fond and familiar, and said, touching Mark’s cheek, “Raincheck?”
“You owe me a lot of sex already,” Mark said, trying to stay grumpy and failing, if Dustin’s kissy face and batting eyelashes Dustin’s face were anything to go by.
“Hey,” Eduardo said, slanting him a happy, fond look. “I’m good for it.”
***
Mark normally took the train home, when his mother wasn’t busy kidnapping him, so he figured that’s what they would do this time. But when he brought it up that night on the way to the dining hall, Eduardo winced and rubbed the back of his neck and said, “Photographers.”
Which made Mark stop for a moment, thoughts jammed up like rush-hour traffic.
Some of the people who followed Eduardo around campus, buzzing like flies, weren’t friends, or even groupies. They were people doing incredibly inane, stupid, pointless jobs, because the majority of the global public, who didn’t know Eduardo at all, for some reason still cared about the minutiae of his life and what he wore and who he was seen with. Chris had showed Mark the Harvard Prince forums, and the online fans-the Eduardians, as they called themselves-were basically terrifying, and also insane.
Even more alarming was that Mark was in some of the pictures online. People had commented on him being the prince’s new BFF, or whatever. And now the Prince would be in his house, his childhood home.
All that flashed through his brain, code-quick. He asked, standing shock-still, staring at Eduardo’s back, “Is this okay? Are we-I don’t want to start shit.”
Eduardo apparently hadn’t noticed he’d stopped, because he’d gotten a few feet ahead of him. Mark shifted from foot to foot, waiting for an answer, and Eduardo looked over his shoulder and huffed out a disbelieving laugh and said, “Jesus, Mark, you’ll get hit by a car. Come on.” Then he took Mark by the hand and pulled him through the slush, tucked an arm around Mark’s shoulders, and Mark wondered about that, how that could be okay-it wasn’t okay to take a train together, but it was to hold Mark’s hand, however briefly?
But Eduardo had been like that ever since Mark had known him, close and in Mark’s space. So maybe it didn’t matter. Not that part, anyway. Maybe Eduardo really was like that with everyone. Personable and charming and totally oblivious to personal boundaries.
Eduardo was joking about Mark forgetting his own head, walking into traffic, needing a leash and a minder and a feeder, and Mark wanted to kiss him, in the middle of the street, because he didn’t need any of those things, he just needed a computer, and Wardo, and he had those. He was set for life.
But of course he couldn't kiss him, not here where photographers and gossiping students could see and turn it into a headline. He wondered if this was what life was like for Eduardo all the time-this feeling of being on-stage. Constantly watched, having to re-think every move.
They should have stayed safe and secure in Kirkland, in Mark’s room, where Mark could touch Eduardo all he wanted and say anything as soon as he thought it. But when Eduardo had found out Mark hadn’t technically had a meal in days-fucking Dustin need to keep his goddamned mouth shut - he’d gone all loud and outraged and shoved a hat on Mark’s head, one of the one’s his sister knitted, the lumpy blue one, and then dragged him outside.
Mark had been sulking about this turn of events because he distinctly remembered being promised sex, and this was not it. But now that he smelled the food, his stomach had woken up, growling and roiling. Eduardo shot him a smug look and pushed a plate into his hands.
“Fine, shut up,” Mark grumbled, and started ladling stuff onto his plate.
Still. Next semester, they should stop going to the dining hall, order in instead. Mark wanted to watch Eduardo eat from his fingers, feed Eduardo something messy and dripping and have Eduardo lick him clean.
Not something to think about in public. Later.
Only when Eduardo was methodically drizzling dressing on his salad in perfect spiral, did he say, “So what were you talking about outside? Is what okay?”
Mark shrugged and shoved a forkful of noodles in his mouth before he spoke. “Break. Hanukkah, with my family. Will-the press, will it be a problem?”
Eduardo paused. “Ah. Well. Even a prince can have friends, right? My publicist didn’t seem to think anything of it-I think she was happy for me, actually. No one’s guessed except my sister, so far, but she wouldn’t ever say anything. She really wants to meet you, by the way.”
Huh. “She guessed?”
“Apparently I talk about you a lot,” Eduardo said wryly, and kicked gently at Mark’s ankle under the table, cheeks faintly pink. “But I don’t really talk about my real life, I guess, to anyone else. So I don’t think visiting your family will raise any flags. You might get a bit more attention from the press when school starts back up, I guess. But you’d be getting that anyway with The Facebook launching.”
True. Mark gnawed on the tines of his fork for a moment, considering this. “So why not the train, then? I actually am capable of keeping my hands to myself for a few hours, if that’s what you were worried about.”
Eduardo’s eyes sparkled at him, and his leg nudged Mark’s under the table.
“Well, that’s disappointing.” Mark gave him an unimpressed look and he laughed. “Well, for one, I was hoping to get away with not having an entire contingent of guards with me. Trains would be-public transportation isn’t a great idea in general.” Oh. That. That really hadn’t occurred to Mark as an issue. Eduardo looked pretty blasé, considering he was talking about-what, potential assassination attempts? Mob hits? “But mostly,” Eduardo said, face softening into something more nervous, hopeful. “I just-I didn’t want to start off break with people staring and gossiping. I wanted-I hoped for time where it’s just us, you know?”
“Oh,” Mark said, and stared down at his plate. “Right. Road trip, then. That’s good.”
“I’ll rent a car and then your family won’t have to pick us up at the station,” Eduardo kept going, like Mark hadn’t already agreed and acknowledged his point.
“Right,” he nodded. “Totally.” Not like Mark’s family would care, but whatever. He finished off his pasta and gulped down some milk, then eyed Eduardo’s plate, which was still obnoxiously full. “So are the bodyguards coming with us, then?” That hadn’t really occurred to Mark, but he supposed it made sense.
“Probably just Davi and Luego,” Eduardo said, shrugging and picking at his vegetables. “They won’t be, like, in the house, I’d never impose like that on your family. Just, if we’re out in public, they’ll be there, but don’t worry, they can be very unobtrusive.”
This was true. Mark was actually a little alarmed at the way they could appear out of thin air when they were all so fucking huge and bulky.
Mark stole a forkful of Eduardo’s salad, and smirked when Eduardo mock-glared and tried to fend him off with his own cutlery. “Eat faster,” Mark said, and then, “Your bodyguards know, right? About us.”
There was no way the bodyguards didn’t know. Davi had totally winked at Mark earlier, then punched his shoulder and rattled off something incomprehensible but friendly-sounding, before sauntering off to melt into the shadows again. Mark’s arm still hurt a little, actually. So he was pretty sure, but it was important to confirm before he let something slip in front of them, or got overly handsy or whatever.
Eduardo blinked, like that hadn’t occurred to him. “Oh. I guess they’re-yes, probably. But their contracts are very specific about confidentiality, and they’ve been with me since high school. I trust them.”
“They don’t mind? About the-” Shit, he probably shouldn’t say ‘gay’ in public, where bloggers could be listening in. There were a couple of girls at the next table, and Mark gave them a suspicious look before making a hand gesture that he hoped implied homosexual relations. It apparently was adequate, because Eduardo raised an eyebrow, then laughed.
“Well, Davi and Luego are dating, so, no, I suspect not.” Eduardo flashed him a grin. “Don’t tell, though, my father would have a fit.”
It was Mark’s turn to blink, because holy hell, that had to be some crazy sex. Like tectonic plates of muscle colliding. Jesus.
“Who the fuck would I tell?” he asked, rolling his eyes belatedly. “And how are you not done yet?”
“In a hurry?” Eduardo asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I have a check I’d really like to cash,” Mark said blandly, and Eduardo’s face went bright red, and then he shifted around in his seat a bit before standing and grabbing his plate. “Done now?”
“Uh, yeah. Yes. Definitely,” Eduardo said, and practically sprinted for the trash can and dish bin with their trays. Mark smiled.
***
The apartment was empty when they got back. Chris’ family lived nearby, and Dustin had made plans to leave with him earlier, much to Chris’ dismay. But when Dustin had started protesting that leaving the celibate dude alone with the sexy Disney Couple of the Year was cruel and unusual, Chris had actually caved with a look of real sympathy on his face.
Which Mark personally thought was over-exaggerating, but in any case, his offer to gag Eduardo hadn’t gone over well. Chris had hit him with a newspaper and Dustin had slapped his hands over his face and wailed about his inner eye being blinded.
Eduardo, however, had gone promisingly pink and fidgety; something to remember for later.
Now, though, they had the apartment to themselves.
“Hey, I know I said I’d-that I’d be on top for this round, but can I write you a raincheck for a raincheck?” Eduardo said, shucking off his jacket and shooting Mark a look from beneath his lashes.
“Reneging already, your majesty?” Mark tsked, and then laughed when Eduardo made a face like he’d bitten into a lemon. The laughter was gone pretty quickly, though, replaced by something simmering and toe-curling when Eduardo pushed him up against a wall.
“Believe me, I’ll deliver,” he promised, voice low and husky, lips just brushing Mark’s ear, and Mark couldn’t repress a shiver. “I just want you inside me. Please, Mark. If we’re going to go without for the next couple weeks, I want-I want that. I want you.”
“Okay,” Mark agreed automatically, voice cracking, because Jesus fuck, Mark would give Eduardo every computer in his possession if he asked in that tone. Then what Eduardo’s actually said registered. “Wait. Wait, what? Why is this the last time we’re having sex for a few weeks? You’re not leaving until the 23rd.”
“Mark,” Eduardo said reproachfully, which wasn’t quite as efficient as it might be given that he was quickly stripping off his shirt and shoes and socks and fuck, Mark was really on board this plan, even if he had been looking forward to Eduardo holding him down, and holding him, and letting him inside. He’d never been with someone larger than he was, heavier. He was-all the times Eduardo had used his weight, held him down, however briefly, Mark had had an unanticipated physical reaction. He’d been looking forward to exploring that.
But seriously, fucking Eduardo was not going to be a hardship.
Except then Eduardo kept talking.
“We’ll be staying with your family! At your family home, I can’t have sex with you with your mother down the hall. It’d be rude.”
“Hah, hilarious,” Mark said dryly, rolling his eyes, then when Eduardo kept giving him the wounded puppy look, realized he was serious. Which was actually really, truly funny. “No, seriously, that’s hysterical. My mom won’t know, and if she did, she wouldn’t care.”
He went to go fetch the lube from his room and Eduardo trailed after him, still rambling on nonsensically.
“Why are we talking about my mom right now?” Mark interrupted irritably, getting rid of his own clothing and then padding back into the living area again. “It seems deeply inappropriate, given that I’m about to fuck you senseless. Can we stop?”
“But-wait, why are we in the living room?” Eduardo asked, obviously confused, hovering by Mark’s door.
“Dustin and Chris aren’t here. I want to fuck you in the chair, come on, Wardo.” Mark sprawled in the seat, smirking at Eduardo’s expression. He let his legs fall open a little and stroked himself loosely. God, this was going to be hot. “You can still be on top.”
Eduardo just stared at him for a moment, eyes huge and dark and breath visibly coming faster, and then he stumbled towards Mark.
“God, Mark, you just-do you know what you do to me?”
He climbed in Mark’s lap, straddling him with knees to either side of Mark’s legs, and then kissed him, long and lewd and wet with tongue.
“Of course,” Mark answered, a little breathless himself between kisses, unable to keep from thrusting up against Eduardo. He had to close his eyes for a moment, because fuck. Feeling Eduardo’s hands on his shoulders, pushing him down and then writhing on top of him… it was almost painfully hot. Feeling it and seeing it was intense, more than he’d expected. “I thought-I, god. I thought you’d like this. We both get what we want.”
Because he wanted that, he wanted them both to-it should be good for both of them. He wanted Eduardo to be happy, he wanted Eduardo to feel what he felt.
Eduardo stared at him for a second and then kissed him again, so hard their teeth met, and pulled back to say, “You’re-that’s perfect. Sometimes I can’t believe you’re real.” He leaned his forehead against Mark’s, eyes closed.
“What does that even mean?” Mark asked, bemused, and found the lube, forgotten on the arm of the chair. He started slicking up his fingers. “Like, I’m some projection from the Matrix?”
“Like I’ll wake up and-and still have to take my geology exam, and you won’t-ah, Jesus, Mark.”
“Feel awake now?” Mark asked, voice coming out rough and low.
“Yes,” Eduardo hissed out from between his teeth, head thrown back and neck bared, and Mark wanted so badly to just close his teeth over Eduardo’s skin, mark up the flawless expanse of it, a signature to say, I was here and taken and mine. Instead, he leaned forward and mouthed carefully at the skin over Eduardo’s pulse, counted the speeding heartbeats.
“I won’t leave marks,” he said when he felt Eduardo draw in a breath into speak. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Just-not where people can see,” Eduardo said tightly, and rocked his hips down and back onto Mark’s fingers. “Oh, fuck.”
“What’s it feel like?” Mark wanted to know, and Eduardo made a keening noise.
“God, like-there- like you’re everywhere.”
“That’s not helpful,” Mark said, teasing, and added another finger, scissoring them and smiling into Eduardo’s collarbone at the gasp that produced. But maybe he knew what Eduardo meant, when he thought about how he’d felt the first time Eduardo had put his mouth on Mark’s dick, how he’d felt it in his toes and his lips and his heartbeat, stuttering and sped-up.
“I can’t, fuck, Mark, I don’t know-like scratching an itch, but there’s no-no bad, just intense and fuck, fuck, please, I just-”
“Tell me more,” Mark murmured, and nuzzled at Eduardo’s neck again, and then blinked in surprised when Eduardo made a noise that was-not a whine or a gasp or a moan, but something closer to a growl, and then he actually lifted up and batted Mark’s hand away.
“E-fucking-nough,” he gritted out, and then just-Jesus, just lined himself up and sank down and Mark’s vision wobbled for a moment, because-Christ.
“Like that,” Eduardo panted, and Mark maybe whimpered, because Eduardo was riding him, head thrown back and wanton and just fucking screwing himself on Mark’s cock. He was biting his lower lip and had his eyes closed, and Mark had never had sex like this. Never knew sex could be like this. “It-it feels so fucking-” He dissolved into Portuguese for a moment, then came back to English, leaned in and kiss Mark fiercely, then said against his mouth, “So fucking real.”
“Wardo,” Mark managed to get out, and his hands found Eduardo’s hips and all he could do was hold on, try not to come in the first few seconds.
“Fica comigo,” Eduardo said, almost drunkenly, all slurred speech and hooded eyes, and Mark said, desperate and wanting, “I don’t know-what do you want? I’ll do it.”
And maybe that was enough because Eduardo made a broken sound and then kissed him again, and Mark thought, Oh fuck, right, I have hands. Good hands, hands that Eduardo liked. He raised one, shaking and unsteady, and brushed the fingers against Eduardo’s mouth.
“Get them wet,” he ordered hoarsely, and Eduardo obeyed instantly, licking and sucking in time with the motion of his hips, and Jesus, Jesus, Mark couldn’t deal with this-he almost bucked Eduardo off, and then had to steady him, haul him back in with his free hand, and Eduardo’s eyes crinkled and Mark could tell he was smiling, laughing. It was-Mark wanted Eduardo to feel amazing, so he pulled his hand free and nearly came when he saw the way Eduardo’s mouth followed his fingers.
“You can suck me later,” he promised thickly, then wrapped his hand around Eduardo’s cock and started pumping it.
“Mark, Mark, oh fuck.” As Eduardo’s movements got more unsteady, erratic, Mark did his best to keep it, to snap his hips up, and it was more like just rocking into Eduardo, his cock barely leaving Eduardo’s body at all. It could probably have been better, but this-Mark still thought this was perfect, Eduardo clawing at his back and both of them sticky with sweat.
He wasn’t actually sure which of them came first; it all blended together, wet and hot and moaning into each other, and then coming back down, Mark stroking Eduardo’s back and trying to breathe.
“We’ve-we’ve ruined this chair,” Eduardo said finally, sounding a little appalled and a lot amused.
Mark shrugged. “We can Febreeze it. It’ll be fine.”
“Mark!” Eduardo laughed. “I didn’t mean-wow, I feel bad for your roommates, you know that?”
“Feel bad for me,” Mark said, disgruntled, but his voice came out fond and soft anyway. “Have you ever heard Dustin singing? He’s fucking obsessed with Disney. It’s gotten even worse since you came around. He thinks the whole world is a goddamned Disney movie now.”
“Disney?” Eduardo’ was still laughing, voice bright and warm, and they have another six days together. Just them, and Mark’s family, and no photographers.
Mark made what he felt was a credible attempt at imitating Dustin imitating Sebastian the Crab, warbling the “Sha la la las,” and Eduardo was cracking up, now, leaning into him and giggling into his neck.
“Are you the mermaid or am I in this scenario?” he asked finally, and Mark nuzzled him, pleased. He didn’t normally like to sing in front of people, to look like an idiot, but he liked it when Eduardo laughed. He liked it a lot.
“You know,” he said, “I think originally it was me, but I don’t know anymore.”
“We can both be the mermaid,” Eduardo decided magnanimously, then got to his feet, wincing and smiling all at once. “And on that note, I think we should definitely both shower.”
“Sure,” Mark agreed, and let Eduardo pull him to his feet. “Whatever you want.”
***
TO THE OVERFLOW KINKMEME!