FIC: Bait and Switch {The Social Network - Eduardo/Sean, Eduardo/Mark/Sean}
Title: Bait and Switch
Author: Silvia Kundera
Fandom: The Social Network
Disclaimer: Just harmless fantasy based off the characters from The Social Network. Not intending to damage copyright or represent any real persons, living or dead.
Pairing: Eduardo/Sean; Eduardo/Mark/Sean; Mark&Eduardo friendship
Rating: Explicit
Words: 10,400
Summary: In which Mark has good plans, Eduardo has bad plans, and Sean goes with the flow. Alternatively-- help! Eduardo is trapped in a threesome and he can’t get out.
--
It had seemed like just another regular soul-destroying day in his stupid soul-destroying life when Eduardo was forgotten at the airport, ambushed by the enemy and left floundering, and transitioned into a confrontation with his best friend and secret crush that went immediately, exhaustingly ugly. It had all been going perfectly to plan - if the plan was to poison his hopes, dreams, and self-esteem - and then the universe decided to step it up a notch towards ludicrous travesty and include an invitation to group sex with the very two people who had just shredded his will to live.
He was outside waiting for the taxi when a tap against his hip made him startle and whirl around, hand coming up to shield water from his eyes. The tap turned out to be Sean grabbing his bag off his shoulder and saying, "Seriously? This is a fucking downpour." And Sean just turned and walked back into the house with it, like he was expecting Eduardo to follow.
Mark was taking a hit off the bong when they made their way back into the living room and he reached up for the bag when Sean held it out for him with an inexplicable, "thanks," like it wasn't Eduardo's fucking property. But by that point, Eduardo supposed, it shouldn't have even been a surprise.
"We can put this in your room," Mark said, like an olive branch, and looked to Sean, who said, "truce?" but not actually anything like a question, mouth gone wise-ass crooked.
Eyebrows raised, Sean slung an arm over Mark's shoulders--making his posture go twitchy and hunted, but eager too. Eager enough to leave it there and watch Eduardo with dark, measuring eyes.
"um," Eduardo said, and then somehow he was agreeing to come back to Mark's room that night.
*
The first twenty minutes after that were really confusing, but then he realized what a stroke of good luck this all was, because, "What I'm going to do," Eduardo said earnestly, "is make it completely awful. Like, the whole time I'll just be saying, oh Sean you're so hot."
"You will?" Dustin was frowning in that way that put cute little frown wrinkles on his face.
"I could say that."
"But probably not looking like you meant it," Dustin said, which was a legitimate concern, but.
"I could imagine he's burning in hell," Eduardo said, pensively, and continued, "so it will be really uncomfortable, almost insulting, Mark feeling ignored and weird about it, and he can't stand it, how it should only be him, and he'll tell Sean he should probably leave, so it'll be just us. And then I'll. You know. Give him a blowjob? It bet it's kind of hard to fail at that."
"uh," Dustin said and Chris leaned back in his chair with a hand over his face.
"So, the plan is that you will finally earn Mark's undying love through a mentally scarring threesome." Chris's sigh was slightly muffled by his fingers. "This is a bad plan."
"Have you been invited to the mentally scarring threesome?"
"Thankfully no."
"Then I don't think you get any say," Eduardo said primly. Because, sure, Chris both had way more experience with all things gay, and had actually slept with multiple people before. But the one time at a frat party, that he'd told them about last year while high, had sounded pretty terrible. So it just went to show.
Besides, Eduardo could be just as stubborn as Mark could when he got an idea into his head.
*
When he took a breath an hour later and walked in, shutting the door quietly behind him, Mark and Sean were leaning against the wall, deep in conversation. They broke off at the sight of him, though, and Mark passed over a half-full bottle of vodka. The name didn't ring any bells (probably meant One Step Above Rubbing Alcohol, in Russian to sound authentic) and since his hands were shaking a little he thought that would be an excellent idea, taking a swig and gulping it down roughly.
But then Sean was pulling it out of his grip, saying, "Let's not," wiping Eduardo's lips with his thumb and kissing him, open mouthed and wet. And before he had really processed what was happening to him, Sean was releasing his hand (he'd been stroking the back of it, slow and steady like the soft push of his tongue in Eduardo's mouth), and calling to Mark, "Come here, you too."
So the only thing to do was watch dumbly as Sean walked Mark backwards toward the bed, watch Mark sit down when the back of his legs hit, watch Sean tilt Mark's head up with one hand, kissing him warmly and working his jeans open with the other.
Do you guys do this often?, he meant to say, but his mouth and his brain still felt a little detached from the rest of his body, and Sean was leaning over to grab his arm and tug him towards the bed and up onto it.
"This is going to be fun," Sean said cheerfully, and that was probably Eduardo's moment to protest, because no, definitely a failure to communicate, here was exactly the opposite point--though he could see how Sean might have found the assertion a little questionable, with how Eduardo was letting himself be seated behind Mark, Mark tucked back against his chest and between his legs.
Eduardo was going to say something, though, about-something, but then Mark was telling him to take their shirts off, Mark's bare cock sitting there long and red, curved up against his stomach (and there had been dreams that started like that, elaborate, exaggerated fantasies that suddenly felt a thousand times more distant despite all the parts that were coming true). "We," he managed, "Sean, um," before Mark started making these noises, pressing his face sideways into Eduardo's chest, as Sean finger-fucked him.
Eduardo hadn't done that, had thought about it, sure, lying under the sheets of his own bed and looking at his jerkoff lube, but had never gotten up the courage.
Mark seemed into it, though, the slides of Sean's fingers -- and the sight of it, the slippery sounds of it, there was an inescapable thought, a slow spreading wondering of what it might feel like if he were in Mark's place. There was an inescapable urge of wanting to be in Mark's place, except he shouldn't want Sean touching him, he was still pretty sure of that, though the reason itself was lost in the cloud that had settled into his skull, the air rushing too fast and shallow into his lungs.
Then Sean was handing Mark a condom to roll onto him and leaning forward, one knee on the mattress, to curl a hand around the back of Eduardo's head and kiss him leisurely, like they had all the time in the world.
He still tasted spicy from weed and syrupy sweet from mixed drink. Familiar, now. Of course, why he would have suddenly tasted different, Eduardo didn't really know, except there had been a whole lot more nakedness going on since then, when all the blood in Eduardo's body had started rushing faster and urgent, and his brain started telling him horrifying things like how good it felt when Sean's thumb ran underneath his jaw, the faintest hint of nail scratching lightly at his skin.
"Fuck, the mouth on you," Sean said, low and dirty, backing off to position Eduardo's hands around the back of Mark's knees.
Then he was just fucking Mark into Eduardo, no other way to describe it. Sean was just fucking Mark into him, Mark grabbing a hold of his arm, desperately clutching, while stroking himself with the other, panting into Eduardo's neck. Mark's bare flesh sliding back and forth over Eduardo's still clothed lap, because Eduardo hadn't--no one had asked him to, and it felt positively filthy in some indescribable way, to be the only person still half-way dressed in the room.
One long thrust made Mark whimper, fingers digging into the back of Eduardo's hand, and gasp, "You trying to fuck us both with one dick?" to which Sean smiled viciously and snapped his hips at this angle that had Mark skidding hard over Eduardo's cock and coming with shock spread across his face, torso contracting, as Eduardo gasped with him, knees tight against his sides.
Mark drooped sideways, sprawled half onto Eduardo and half onto the bed. There was come splashed over the leg of Eduardo's pants, and he smeared it with his fingers as Mark caught his breath and Sean pulled the condom off. It was a quasi-hysterical thought: that it had finally happened, that Mark Zuckerberg had come on him, while in his arms, in every way but the important one.
He seriously considered the possibility that he was going into shock, except his cock was still far too hard. Those were probably mutually exclusive conditions.
And then Sean was steadying his shoulders and shifting Mark off, chuckling at the lazy grumble with a wry, "I have to do everything around here."
"You don't," Eduardo started to say, but Sean stopped his mouth by biting at it playfully-"I'm just bitching" - and then set to stripping off his stained slacks and palming his cock through damp briefs, hunching down to run his mouth over the tip when Eduardo's hips jerked.
It was like fucking Mark just took the edge off, because then he was warming Eduardo up and drizzling lube into his fingers, pushing them in slow and patient, twisting out panting pointless things from Eduardo's mouth that he tried to forget. Sean's mouth kept moving from tonguing his belly to scraping teeth over his nipple to sucking at his hipbone, until he licked up the underside of Eduardo's cock and sat back, wiping his hand on the mattress.
"Oh, nice," Mark said, from somewhere behind them, "I do sleep here," and Eduardo jumped a little but finished for him, "Occasionally," feeling rather clever about it when he received a huff of laughter
But then Sean darted up to kiss him sharply, like maybe he didn't appreciate the distraction, and Eduardo was not one for placating the Sean Parker ego but there was something about that mouth and the brush of Sean's cock against his hip, wet and prepped to go inside him. The factual truth of that, what Eduardo was about to let happen, ate all words out of his head.
So he tipped back and scooted up across the mattress, trying to breathe deep and even to calm the fizzing in his nerves. He let Sean settle between his thighs and begin nudging his cock in inch by inch. Sean watching the progress with a firm hand and hungry focus in his face, and then bending forward every few shudders of Eduardo's shoulders and stomach to suck distractingly at the sweating skin of his neck and wrap a hand around the back of his head to pull him forward into a kiss.
When he was more than halfway there, a warm, rubbing thickness inside Eduardo that felt like it was filling something he hadn't realized was empty, there was this strange surge of panic and he found himself yelping, "Mark." Which they seemed to understand, because Sean just threaded their fingers together and Mark was there, safe bony knees against his shoulder. Like it wasn't the most mortifying thing in the world to grasp for his best friend's reassurance.
But no one laughed, Mark steadying him with a hand, Sean's gaze hot on Eduardo's flushed face and biting his lip as he leaned back to see his free hand trace where he was moving in and out of Eduardo's body in soft, short movements. Sean shuddered with him as every inch was finally fitted tight inside, and tumbled forward to yank their mouths together as he began rolling his hips with more force, Eduardo pressing eagerly into them, arms scrambling around his shoulders to grasp at his back, needing the feel to stretch deeper.
It was desperate and hurried then, Sean muttering things like "keep that leg up", "there, that's fucking nice, god," and then, "Mark, jerk him off," as his face clenched, clearly near-coming.
There was a towel curled over a stripped computer tower in the corner. Eduardo used it to wipe himself off, after, and offered it to Sean, who was hopping into his pant legs and shook his head.
"There's a call you can sit in on at 4:30," Mark said when handing him his shoes and then Sean said to wait (stepping in close enough that Eduardo's eyelids began to lower, lips parting) and licked his ring finger before using it to wipe something off the side of Eduardo's nose.
*
Nothing was really different the next morning except Sean had saved him the last bagel, dropping it next to his cereal bowl before heading out for the day.
At which Chris leaned over to whisper, "how did it go?" with a knowing look on his face.
Eduardo felt himself flush, mouth dry, but only got out a hiss of, "shut the hell up," before Mark stormed in wanting to know what the fuck had shot their wireless connection to shit.
They rebooted the servers, ran diagnostics, and fought with the cable company, Chris eventually cussing out a very apologetic guy from Pakistan in French. As last straws go, that was a fairly obvious one, so Mark gave up, knocking back the rest of his Red Bull and hustling Eduardo out for a trip to OfficeMetro.
There was a nice breeze outside and they left the windows down. Eduardo fiddled with the radio in the passenger seat, exploring the local stations, and shot a few pointed glances Mark's way. But apparently it was one of those days when he wasn't really interested in conversation. The only sign to be found that Mark had wanted his company, beside the terse request, being the purposeful delay in his steps as they combed the warehouse, bumping their shoulders together.
Eduardo finally kissed him in the router aisle while trying to decide between D-link and Cisco, because it has been troubling him. It was a little weird, that they hadn't yet.
It was nothing like expected - dry and closed mouthed, sweet but simple - though that no longer had the power to shock him, just par for the course. Mark kissed back, though it was a public, perfunctory kiss, and tilted his head a little when Eduardo stepped aside, giving him that look he used when he believed Eduardo had done something well-meant and incredibly earnest, but completely unnecessary. It said, I appreciate the thought, though your alien ways are strange to me.
"Mark, I don't. What's going on with-with Sean?"
Mark shrugged. "You said you didn't want to be left behind." He turned the Cisco box over one last time and then flipped his phone open and headed towards the cash register, telling Dustin it would be 15 minutes. Dustin wanted more Doritos, so they picked some up with fat, white pastries at a corner market with a bright red roof and a yellow sign that read Supermercado.
They brought the router back to the house and installed it, which didn't really change anything. Though it had far less nacho cheese fingerprints.
"Ha, I bet it's one of the beer can towers you bitches were building," Sean said when he was briefed five minutes after walking in the door, while rummaging in the cooler for a Guinness.
It took five more minutes to determine he was absolutely right, and fifty more for the interns to polish the house from top to bottom in penance.
Mark came to collect Eduardo at quarter past eleven, tapping fingers against the doorway and saying, "You coming?"
When Eduardo made his way into Mark's room, Sean was already sitting there, pants slung over a chair and wearing just a thin undershirt. He grinned as they entered and said, conversationally, "I can see he didn't tell you."
"No, I didn't repeat your porn talk," Mark said flatly.
"He'd be blushing more," Sean said, and grinned delightedly as Eduardo felt the heat rushing over his throat. "That's right," he said, "Now let me show you how I like it-reward for a job well done," holding his cock against his stomach with a lazy finger and releasing it to bob forward. Then he was resting back on his elbows, arranging his knees wide enough for someone-Eduardo, it was supposed to be Eduardo, he could tell, because of how they were looking at him-to kneel between them.
His head was pounding again. He had things to say, or-places to be, but there was Sean's cock, hard and wet at the tip, hard for him, and that made something twist inside, something guilty-wrong-hot, that it wasn't Mark's cock, but he still wanted to taste it. He did want Sean to show him how.
"I would have figured it out," Mark muttered, a little crankily, but he left it at that and lounged beside Sean on the bed, flipping open his laptop to skim over email but eyes still flicking over to watch whenever Sean made a particularly interesting noise or shifted the comforter by fisting it tightly.
When Eduardo rocked back on his knees, throat contracting and sucking in air, he could see Mark rubbing his palm against the front of his jeans, almost absentmindedly, head tilted their way and lips parted. But his eyes drew back to the screen again as Sean brushed thumbs under Eduardo's watering eyes and told him, lightly, "quit being such an overachiever," and bent down to press a kiss to Eduardo's mouth, following it with the slide of two calloused fingers across his tongue that Eduardo took without thinking, smooth and easy.
"Just gotta try and show me up in everything," Sean said, voice gone faded and breathy, and then Eduardo didn't notice much else except the blood-hot weight of cock brushing over the inside of his cheek, the salty tang flooding his taste buds, the shaking of Sean's wet fingers against the back of his neck.
*
There was an emergency all-nighter on Tuesday-- Eduardo walking through slip-shod test scripts as Chris coordinated and translated the shouting of everyone tweaking code, while Mark rolled back a software update on the servers.
Running on six cups of coffee, he made it until eleven am before catching an hour of sleep on the carpet behind the couch, grabbing Mark's sweatshirt for a pillow. He caught another 2 hours at six, curled on top of actual covers after fading out to the rocking of the bedframe as Mark rubbed off on Sean's thigh. He woke to Sean's fingers carding through his hair and the glow of Mark's monitor. When he yawned, the clacking on the keyboard halted.
"Can you check how the navigation bar's presenting?" Mark said. He'd never been great with spatial reasoning.
"Yeah," Eduardo said, yawning again. "Just give me a moment."
He slept nine hours the next day, walking in to see Tim, their level 1 programmer, sharing a Poptart with a girl in a Stanford tank top and a blue headband that stretched over a wave of coarse black hair. The pizza boxes were empty and they were reusing yesterday's grinds for the coffee.
"Ok," Eduardo said, and Sean looked over from his perch on the counter where he was finishing the milk carton in flip flops and boxers. "We are going shopping."
It was Andrew's car, as it turned out, but he was tweaking a query that couldn't be interrupted, and Mark said he had to just suck it up. Eduardo took Chris, Dustin, and Tim's newest friend with him to Costo and they loaded up on essentials like supersized ketchup bottles, frozen chicken fingers, packages of mini-burgers, and beef taquitos. Dustin locked himself over the back of the shopping cart and demanded to be pushed. Kima (who was far too good for Tim and apparently held very strong beliefs about coffee creamer) agreed to steer and told them where they could find the closest Linens&Bath warehouse. There they purchased blackout curtains for the developers' rooms, three door mats, window cleaner, scrub brushes, and an armful of towels.
Someone had to do the laundry as well, and it wasn't going to be Eduardo, so they drew straws for it.
Of course, there was a company to run too. The user base had swollen 130% in the last week alone and there was a long list of planned new functionality, so he sat down with Dustin to hammer out a roll out schedule. Eduardo was trying to put together cost projections for the next 4 months, estimating increasing bandwidth and electricity costs, and arranged a conference call with Sun about better servers.
So there didn't seem a right moment to ask, until he just went for it anyway as Mark wandered down the hall to bang on Andrew's door for rubbers.
Eduardo cupped his hands around Sean's face, pulling it up from where it had been licking lower and lower down his stomach. "Hey, Mark didn't tell you to-"
At which Sean then laughed in his face. "Well, you are profoundly ugly, and you never let me fuck you," he said, evading a slap in the head, "so it is a sacrifice" - and here he didn't duck fast enough, catching a light blow. "Like right now, this is intolerable," he added, earning a shove towards the floor.
"ok, ok! " Sean caught his hands and scooted up to straddle Eduardo's hips. "He said he wanted you to stick around. I said maybe I just needed a good incentive to get along."
"If you guys are finished wrestling," Mark said, kicking the door shut, "I thought we'd have some orgasms."
*
It was later that night, long after he'd gone back to his cold sheets and troubled dreams, when he came upon Sean in the dark, tripping over a rubik's cube and network card someone had left in the hallway.
Eduardo had always been an uneven sleeper, waking to stare at the clock, stumbling towards the dorm mini-fridge or microwave in search of tea or milk. Sean was smoking a joint and leaning against the dishwasher and peering out the window. He appeared to be idly inspecting how the wind was sifting through the trees, but there could have been a possum or owl out there, something of more interest. Impossible to tell if he'd left Mark's bed or his own.
Sean stamped the joint out when he saw Eduardo venture in, sly smile labeling it a pleasant surprise instead of the intrusion he'd assumed.
Smoke was still trailing towards the ceiling as Sean stepped forward to pull him close.
"Should we be," he started to say. But then Sean was running hands down his sides, wrists pushing his tattered sleeping shirt up to his waist, and didn't seem to realize the unease wasn't exactly about the venue, whispering, "Hey, no one's gonna come in," and pressed Eduardo's front up against the sink with his hips and a bite to the earlobe, pulling down their boxers.
There was the metallic roll of a drawer, a muttered, "next to the fucking paper clips, I love this fucking house," and the rustle of a condom packet as Eduardo looked across the deserted kitchen and down at his knuckles clutched over the sink edge and felt his thoughts loop.
Thoughts that stuttered as Sean's palms glided over the cheeks of his ass and split them with his thumbs. "You're still all wet and open from me," Sean said, with satisfaction, and then just slid his cock all the way in with two smooth strokes, fucking him standing up, quiet and slow, breathing hard into the curve of Eduardo's neck.
Eduardo listened to the high, tight sounds escaping from his traitorous chest, and had a terrible, stray, quickly exorcised thought that Sean would come back with him to his empty, cool room if he asked him to, and then came into his hand, hot and sudden.
*
Sleep after was more restless than usual and the next day he dipped into the pool for a morning swim to take the edge off.
Andrew ambled out to have a smoke with his coffee, rubbing at his eyes under wide yellow sunglasses. As Eduardo swam laps, he tapped his ashes into a beer bottle and watched for a bit, kicking back into one of the peeling armchairs and calling, "Hughes, my man!" when Chris joined them out there, rolling his pants up and settling his legs over the edge.
"Chris," Eduardo said, when he reached the kicking feet and propped himself up beside them, "This was a really bad plan."
*
A suffocating heat wave began percolating on Friday that didn't crest until the 14th. It turned every room in the house into a sauna, heat building up intolerably without an outlet. Chris went around unscrewing the metal sides from every computer tower, from fears of overheating, and all doors remained perpetually cracked open (excepting the bathrooms). Sleep was impossible without a wide open door or crawling out to claim a corner of the living room-- back door trapped in a right angle all night between stones from the front yard, with only the security screen shut to ward off flies and curious beetles.
"So who signed the lease forms without checking for air conditioning?" Andrew said groggily, as he polished off the last of the ice tea.
"I've never fired anyone yet," Mark said, "That could be interesting."
"It's probably good for my pores, though," Andrew added, scrambling to sit straighter and repositioning his mouse.
"I think I've sweated off 5 lbs," Dustin offered. "At least."
It was too hot to smoke up or to fuck, but he'd grown accustomed or something. He would find himself coaxing Sean all the way out of his shorts as they were half-heartedly jerking off, Sean biting his lip with eyelids ajar, Mark pausing every so often to rub sweat from his eyes uncomfortably.
He'd prep himself slowly, Sean's eyes shifted to laser-focus and lower lip sucked into his mouth, and then kneel over Sean with his knees on the mattress. Eduardo could ride him like that; it was doable -- only touching with their thighs and the thick cock that he bore down on cautiously, back toward the open window. Every so often a stray breeze would prickle his skin and he'd give himself gratefully into it, feeling himself tighten up, clenching around Sean inside him. Sean would swear then, hips bucking, and it all felt so sharply good that he didn't even mind the heat of sweating palms gripping his sides for a moment before falling back to the sheets again, when Sean returned to approving murmurs.
Mark peered at them disbelieving, as if they were madmen. Eventually opting to try it - only to halt almost immediately, proclaiming that his dick might be willing but the flesh was not, groaning piteously and receiving a swift blowjob for his troubles.
He dozed the deepest after those times, except for the night that the power finally blew. Eduardo fished a flashlight from the top drawer of his squat dresser and rushed to the circuit breakers, two words repeatedly running through his head: down time - down time - down time. He met Chris there, both of them wearing only briefs and finger marks peeking out from under their slipping waistbands. Both of them pointedly keeping the conversation on the business at hand.
When the fans in the make-shift server room petered out, Sean sped with him over to Radio Shack. They decided to stop by 7-Eleven as well, for morale, and picked up enough Slurpees to fill three cardboard cartons with Sim Jim proclaimed on the sides in faded black and red. Eduardo paid for it all on his card, Sean scratching the back of his neck as they loaded them into the backseat and saying, "You know I'm sort of broke, or I would have."
"You contribute in other ways," Eduardo said, receiving an exaggerated leer, and, "No, I mean it," realizing that he did. And so Sean ended up pressing him against the side of the car, metal handle piercing through his cotton shirt to cook the skin of his back, and kissing him slow and deep in the parking lot in front of a soccer mom pulling a baby carrier out of her mini-van.
*
There was a garage sale down the street on the 17th and Dennis rolled 2 enormous speakers onto the front porch that he'd bought for 30 bucks, offering bribes for help in bringing them inside. Eduardo hooked them up as Dustin shouted directions and they banged out Sublime as Chris got Mark to come with them for a night swim, the pool lights on and Sean handing out tequila shots.
"I was just thinking of the algorithm," Mark said, when Eduardo splashed him a little, breaking his vacant stare towards the diving board.
"It's kind of insane," Eduardo agreed, "How that could have started all of this," and Sean shifted closer, propped up against the side of the pool, sliding a wet arm around his waist and urging Eduardo's weight to settle back against his chest, saying, "I get the feeling I'm missing part of this story."
So Eduardo filled him in, though Mark kept interrupting with color commentary and slights against the Harvard security infrastructure. And then Mark said, "Now the gruesome violation of laws pertaining to both animal and man, that's an incident that needs to be shared," and Eduardo was struggling to get a hand over his mouth until Dustin's cannonball drowned their beers and sent them thirsting for vengeance.
It was his idea for everyone to go out to dinner one night. They didn't make it out of the house until 11pm and ended up at Denny's, taking up two long tables shoved together next to the bustling kitchen. Tim kept blinking at the yellow bulbs in the ceiling a little disconcertedly and when Eduardo asked him how long he'd been up, he thought for a bit and then asked if he could call Kima.
She met them right after the drinks arrived and stayed overnight. Eduardo discovered that she always rose inhumanly early and she poured cups for coffee for him and Sean in the morning as they mulled around dazedly, knocking into each other and the counter, and then taught him how to paint her nails during a conference call with Bank of America on a proposed ad display deal. (Which Sean said not to mention to Mark yet, in case he took it the wrong way.) (Eduardo wasn't entirely sure what way there was to take it, other than: this sounds subtle, professional, and would make us money. But he was learning to trust Sean's instincts on these things.)
*
They were fooling around alone on the center of Mark's bed -- shirts puddled haphazardly on their left, up where Mark had begun to make a habit of sitting -- because when Eduardo had said his name a little questioning, Mark had said, distractedly, "be there in a bit."
It was at least twenty minutes after that. Twenty minutes, two shirts, his sandals, and a darkening bruise high on Sean's right pec.
"You can take a semester off," Sean was saying, thumb running teasingly over the teeth of Eduardo's zipper and pausing to brush lips along his collarbone, ending with a kiss on the tip of his shoulder, then, "Tell him he worries too much," kicking at Mark's chair.
"You worry too much," Mark said obediently, scowling at his monitor and stabbing viciously at the enter button, and Eduardo nodded a little dizzily, because Sean had his zipper undone and he was licking up the side of Eduardo's cock and then trailing down to his balls, pausing to suck lightly and then a touch harder with encouragement. Warm, wide hands ran up and down his thighs, pressing them open.
After that it was much harder to pretend he was heading back any day now.
*
It took the rest of the week to confirm that Bank of America wasn't going to bite, and then set his sights on Chase. Plus, Dustin was experimenting with Ajax and he needed someone to research the best how-to guides and then order them with overnight shipping, and maybe something on High Performance MySQL.
But if Eduardo was going to stay, there was a whole litany of other things to do. He checked in with the admin office at Harvard and sent an email to his department head, to make sure he could graduate next winter. There was the call with his father, who took things better than expected once Eduardo demonstrated a careful consideration of pros and cons (that did not include peer pressure and copious amounts of sex). He had to clear out of the apartment. A Phoenix brother agreed to drive over if Eduardo FedEx'd the keys and two hundred dollars - clean out the refrigerator, box up his things. He had to decide if any of that should just go into storage. And, right, finally call his girlfriend back to say, dear Christy, I have to break up with you on account of being a horrible, horrible person.
"And of course I keep putting it off," he told Mark, flinging himself dramatically across the couch, "because that's the absolute worst thing on my list."
"Of course you have a list," Sean said. He was resting on the carpet, belly down, having commandeered Eduardo's laptop.
Eduardo stamped down a warning on his hand as he activated a search window and continued, "Even before finding a weekly maid to stop by and clean the bathrooms."
"Make Dennis do it," Mark said, intent on checking the submit response rate. "That's what interns are for."
"I think that's even worse than breaking up with someone on their answering machine."
"You're my friend," Mark said. "She'll be relieved you didn't blog about it and circulate a site comparing her attributes to a praying mantis."
"And if she comes for vengeance, we'll protect you," Sean said.
"Speak for yourself," Mark said, shooting him a bemused glance, "Though I think Wardo will do fine on his own."
"No I won't," Eduardo said, with feeling, thinking of the crazy eyes. And the guilt.
"See, what did I tell you?" Sean said, "Aw Wardo, I know you're a delicate-OW."
*
In the face of such outrageous slanders against his person, Eduardo had no choice but to prove his stout hardiness and courage by helping Mark debug for 35 hours straight, nearly beating Kima in a weekend volleyball tournament (net scrounged from the discount bin of a nearby Toys R Us), and then drinking two interns under the table before passing out face down in the back lawn.
He woke up batting grass off his face and registered extreme nakedness, a deafening pounding in his skull, and the distinct possibility that his skeleton had been turned into jello. In that order. A loud moan for assistance and/or mercy killing brought Sean out with a cup of coffee, the smell of which made him hurl into the bushes and then mewl anxiously into Sean's zombie kittens shirt.
Sean let him nose the peeling acrylic for a bit, stroking fingers down the back of his head, and then broke it to him with a minimum of malicious cackling that his back, legs, arms, and face had been defiled with dark blue marker, displaying illuminating phrases such as salsa shark, light weight, I eat cock, wussy wardo, and love you long time.
"That was mostly Dustin. Except I think the salsa thing was Chris. And, uh, I think Andrew was going to tea bag you, but then Mark threatened to fire him again. I mostly just watched, but I was pretty fucking wasted by then."
"You are truly a prince among men," Eduardo said.
A steady arm around his back helped him plod to the bathroom, where he could lean against the counter and rest his forehead against the mirror.
"One sec," Sean said, and went hunting through the medicine cabinet and then out the door again, returning to pry Eduardo up from the cool glass and saying, "Look at you," voice rich with amusement.
Eduardo took in the mud in his hair, the sleep-creases and scribbles along his skin, and had to snicker along with him, watching in the mirror as Sean rubbed his clean, sun-touched face into Eduardo's cheek and feeling the hum of his humor.
Sean wet a washcloth in the shower with a heavy lather of soap and what smelled like nail polish remover, rubbing it along his calves and slowly up his arms, in little circles, before collapsing against his back, snickering, "This cock one, it's just not coming off," into his shoulder blades.
Eduardo turned with a squawk, snatching the washcloth for himself, and was pressed against the shower wall, Sean's mouth moving hungrily against his as water dripped down their brows and over their eyelids, pooling in their collarbones. Sean was hardening against his belly and he arched into it, arousal threading through the hangover and thinning it.
They made out like that for an indeterminate amount of time, Sean sucking water off his tongue, their cocks bumping up against each other, sliding between them. Until Sean was urging him to turn again and dropping down to cup his ass with both hands and run the flat of his tongue up one side before swiping up the center, making heat prick up along Eduardo's spine and down his chest.
The tip of Sean's tongue felt slick and insistent, flicking and prodding at the tensed crinkled skin there, and he felt his head snap back involuntarily, stomach tightening. He was shaking. It was a little-too much, a little scary, like he should squirm away but couldn't, rabbit-hearted. And then Sean was laughing, face pressed against his right cheek and saying, "I cannot believe I'm doing this," and the vice loosened in Eduardo's chest. He found himself curling his hands over his mouth and giggling into them.
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Eduardo managed, muffled in his fist, and then Sean's thumb curved down his inner thigh, tone turning rougher and more serious, "It still kind of does," and it was like an engine turned over in his belly, filling his cock up even harder and making the tight muscle that Sean had been dragging his tongue over begin to throb.
The water was still on, steam drifting up. Eduardo's body jerked mindlessly, palms skidding against the shower wall, as Sean pressed experimentally inwards and lapped at the skin more and more eagerly. He could feel his neck and face burn, lips parted, panting. When Sean fumbled upwards, reaching an arm around to stoke at his cock, Eduardo came shuddering - body quaking with aftershocks as he felt the hot brand of Sean's cock rocking against his ass and splashing across his back in a hot pulse that matched the thick, damp air.
"ok," Eduardo said, as they were creeping out of the bathroom in towels, too-pink and happy, "but I am never drinking like that again."
*
This was, naturally, a total and complete lie. Though they did pare it down considerably for a while, Eduardo abstaining all together for a couple weeks while prepping for an interview with SelfInc, a startup magazine, and facing the intimidating reality that they were lacking any manner of organized employee support system.
It started when three new programmers and a full-time database administrator with terrible acne were brought on, and they realized there should probably be some sort of orientation. Or, at least a collection of vivid, cautionary tales.
"And Mark, the little bitch -- yeah, you heard me, that's right Zuckerberg -- oh, I'm shaking in my sandals -- never comments his fucking code," Dustin added.
So Eduardo looked into the function descriptions (spoilers: there were none), standard operating procedures (still none), change tracking (nope), and time tracking (foiled again), and ended up helping write use cases, creating a communication plan for major site changes, and putting together a task list so that eventually there'd be some basic documentation and Dennis could quit mumbling about disappearing into the Peace Corps one day to teach them all a lesson.
Next Mark reeled him into a seemingly endless planning session about actually making this a platform, with APIs and everything. You know, the kind of planning where you do a lot of slumping into chairs, ordering in mountains of take out, talking over each other, taking notes with tons of questions marks, and the more you think you've ironed out, the more open and vaguely outlined problems pop up demanding attention.
They'd discussed this before, back in Kirkland. It had seemed like a pipe-dream then - not something that could ever become a real, pressing concern. But they needed to firm it up now, needed to plan ahead because all the system architecture would need to be built with this endgame in mind, to minimize the rework. Also, Dustin was being a real dick about it.
It was after four straight days of starting out the morning with donuts and network diagrams and falling asleep with his clothes on each night, deliriously praying for death, that Sean strolled in and bounced onto the bed without even a wave towards Eduardo and Mark's hunched forms. They had been working on a migration timeline since breakfast (though they happened to be fighting over mouse control at the moment, because, "you are such a backseat driver," Eduardo hissed).
Sean settled back, leaning on his hands and breathing audibly, shifting every so often so the springs would make faint adjusting noises, until finally he sighed loudly and said, "Fine, I'll entertain myself."
They very sensibly paid little mind to this announcement, until Sean yanked his shirt over his head and began running a hand over his chest, thumbing a nipple and squeezing roughly at the crotch of his jeans. The jeans were loose, top button already popped, and Eduardo could see the curve of his hipbone (not that he was looking, but he'd needed to stretch).
Sean took his own sweet time unzipping his jeans, pulling the zipper down stuttered and slow so the metallic sizzling seemed to go on forever. His eyes slid shut as he took himself in hand (it was just that it sounded finished, and--and Eduardo was checking, because they were busy) and his tongue wet his lips as his hips pumped-- pushing his cock, stiff and red, up through his fist as his arm pushed down. Sean's neck seemed to go limp, head hanging back as his hips rolled in tighter circles, the muscles in his arm tense and working, when he said, low and breathy, "mm that first night, fuck."
Eduardo looked down and realized he'd been digging his nails into the back of Mark's chair. "I'll just." The screen started to waver in front of his eyes. "Be right back."
"You have no stamina," Mark grumbled.
"I don't know, I've been perfectly satisfied," Sean murmured into the side of Eduardo's throat as he straddled Sean's thighs, feeling the slick heat of Sean's cock sliding against his stomach, Sean's hands at the buttons of his shirt.
*
Because all work and no play makes Chris consider a homicidal rampage, all of their lofty goals were eventually set aside for at least twelve hours in service of a house party. This included everyone but Mark (who muttered something about being done with Caribbean Nights) and a body for tech support, plus people who knew people who probably met Sean once at a Stanford kegger or local night club.
The occasion was purportedly for 500,000 members, though another 20,000 had already signed up by then. There was barely walking room in the kitchen and at least ten clusters of people out back. One of them was in the pool, though it had been an overcast week and no one had brought bathing suits.
Eduardo spent most of the night hovering over Chris, who was having a crisis of confidence. They avoided the crowd, started on light beer, and then scaled the fence to pluck limes from the neighbor's balcony. Chris used them to make kamikazes with Ketel One and a dusty bottle of Triple Sec from god knows where, but before the third batch he'd collapsed over the cutting board.
"God, I have been so fucking busy," Chris groaned, head buried in his arms, "but tell me, please please tell me: what have I accomplished down here, anyway?"
"You keep all of us from killing Dustin on a daily basis", Eduardo said, and then, when Chris's posture drooped even farther, "You landed me that interview."
"Well, I'm glad that's what I have to show for my summer vacation," Chris said dolefully, sitting up and rubbing a hand over his face. "I should be-I should be issuing press releases. There's no one to be sending them to yet, but I should be-I should be doing them. I should be spreading our message. We should be having a message. I should be checking, right now, if that girl's 21." He pointed over Eduardo's shoulder at a blond with a thick, messy ponytail standing beside Sean and sipping out of one of their old Burger King cups. "But I'm not going to."
The girl had a skinny tank top on that didn't cover her midriff, one strap drifting down her left arm, and a casual stance, one hip cocked. It looked like she was pretty funny, because Sean kept shaking his head and laughing.
Chris sighed deeply behind him. "You're not coming back with me, are you?"
"hmm," Eduardo said. "Hey, I'll catch you later, all right?"
Sean was still grinning, waving his hands in the girl's face as she said something playfully cutting and hooked a finger into his belt loop, halting his retreat, and pulled the hand back to settle on Sean's arm. Just a mild touch. Sean was wearing well-aged jeans that Eduardo had never seen before-- faded around the ass and thighs, hanging off his hips.
"Wardo," Sean said, easily, as he walked up, "I was just telling Trisha about that night you dragged me out to do like ten loads at 2 in the morning at the buck-fifty laundromat. Hand to god, smelled of turpentine and rat feces. I have seen the devil, and he works at the corner of Colorado and Emerson."
Eduardo gave her a friendly nod and slid a hand up to rest on Sean's other arm. "I was thinking we could go see Mark."
"Yeah?" Sean said, distractedly, face tipped into his cup, and then paused. "oh. yeah."
"Nice meeting you," Eduardo said politely and Sean gave Trisha a loose one-armed hug.
"True, true. Good running into you again," he said, hand turning to catch Eduardo at the wrist and offering her the rest of his disturbingly blue cocktail. "Looks like I'm making it an early night."
*
Eduardo drove Chris to the airport the next weekend as Sean met with another potential investor, and it turned out that this one might bite.
Peter Thiel and two of his business partners agreed to meet them for dinner. When Eduardo entered the restaurant he stood - a slight, but imposing, carefully dressed man - and said, smoothly, "Mr. Saverin. I've heard many a tall tale about you."
"I assure you, it's all true," Eduardo said, shaking his hand, and Thiel smiled crisply.
"That's what I'm counting on."
Sean was in his best black suit and hung back to schmooze with the waitress for their section, pushing glasses up his nose with the back of his hand. Mark's jacket was a bit too long in the arms and he kept fussing with the sleeves as they waited for a table, leaving Eduardo to make pointless conversation about market activity and college football.
Things got a bit too pointed as they worked through the appetizers, Thiel quizzing him on user adoption rates and when he was planning on earning his CPA, until Sean cut in with a calculated patter of buzz words and charmed the whole table. There was a story about an irate call he once received from the head of distribution at RCA Records and then that old fable about Victoria's Secret.
"I never thought I'd welcome the Sean Parker Variety Hour," Eduardo told Mark under his breath, who smirked into his glass.
It was the last smirk for a while, and he grew steadily more nervous as Mark's speech grew more terse. Mark was closing off more and more throughout the night instead of opening up, which Eduardo dealt with by topping off their wine on several occasions.
His head was comfortably fuzzy by the time Sean leaned over to draw a finger down the back of his neck and whisper, "I should probably tell you to go easy on that, out in company, but I've never fucked you drunk and you look so damn cute right now." Eduardo felt the blush rise, the blood suffusing under his cheekbones and spreading downward. He evaded Mark's knowing eyes as he took in another deep sip.
Too much good red wine always made him friendly and pleasantly sleepy - sweetly mellow in a way that could be glossed over with smiles, and he shook hands smoothly when they parted, promising to send a follow up email. It wasn't until their guests left that Eduardo let himself curl into Mark's side, receiving a tentative, comforting brush through his hair, and wait for Sean to guide him into the car--sliding in beside him and wrapping an arm around his waist.
It was good to rest there, eyes shut and body too lazy to arch much into Sean's touch or his mouth as it tasted the hollow of his throat, the usually ticklish skin behind his ear, the slight sheen of sweat he could feel at the base of his neck. Still sleepy but not. Just enough to appreciate the fingers stroking above his waistband, reassuring and distantly arousing.
It was different at home, stripped out of their suits. Eduardo was relaxed and pliant against the pillows, tipped onto his side as he watched them splay out beside him, Sean holding Mark down by his hips and blowing him quickly and proficiently. Mark grunted and bit his lip, a hand fisted in Sean's hair, and it was nice and quietly heart pounding to look at (if also very-maybe-somehow wrong in a familiar and yet alien manner he shied away from thinking about).
And then Sean was rolling over, still licking his lips. Settling him on his back with an arm wrapped around his shoulders, Sean's chest warm and solid as it curled around his side, bringing his knee up, pressing it against his chest. He felt joltingly open and bared as his thigh stretched, Sean slipping in a couple fingers and then the blunt head of his cock. Sean stroked the insides of his thighs as he gasped, until it was all the way in, sliding shallow then deep, and Sean could drape that arm over his chest to hold him steady for every smooth thrust and nuzzle the corner of his mouth-- watching his face in a way that would have normally made him feel uneasy, spot-lit. Anchored, it occurred to him dreamily. Everything hot and shivery, yet safe and surrounded.
Sean stayed there, tucked around him and softening inside him, for a long while after he came, nuzzling along his neck as Eduardo traced drawings into his back (every movement feeling heavy, like lifting iron, and potentially imaginary-like he was possibly only picturing himself doing it), and didn't release him to return to his own bed.
Mark was already asleep.
*
He woke to an empty room and lingering, fever-dream memories of the previous night that left him half-hard as he scrounged for his phone to text Chris, i wish you were here.
i can still tell u not to do something stupid, was the reply he received around lunchtime, the buzz startling him midsentence as he worked in the cool quiet of the server room, directly followed by are you going to do something stupid approximately five minutes later.
too late, Eduardo started to type out, and then backspaced and thought about it.
maybe not, he finally said.
*
Peter Thiel invited them back to his offices and called his administrative assistant in to slap down a mountain of paperwork on the cherry wood desk in front of them.
He thought they might benefit from a few hundred thousand to help combat rising overhead costs and actually separate where they slept from where they worked. And maybe some place where the carpet had been cleaned within the last 3 months. (At the flash of panic on Sean's face, there was a hint of a smile from Thiel that might even be called fond. "Lucky guess. You know, I was a college student once.")
"uh, great," Eduardo said, scooping the paper-clipped documents under one arm, "our people will be in contact with your people. "
"We don't have people," he reminded Sean urgently as they made their way to the car. "So, we need to find people. We need to-my father would know how to get a law firm on retainer." At Sean's look he said, sulkily, "Econ major. And we should figure out who the hell his people are."
"We get people, they can figure out who to call," Sean said sensibly, unlocking the driver side door.
They set the pile on the dashboard and stared at it, a little dumbfounded.
"We are going to be so rich," Sean said, as if savoring the words, and turned to drape himself over the passenger side. "I want to make out with you right now, in this car, like teenagers."
"At least drive around the block," Eduardo said, weakly, and did a lot of sighing and shuddering as a scatter-plot of hickeys was sucked down his throat, before Sean sat back to adjust himself and undo the parking break.
we did it, he sent to Mark as they rounded the corner.
of course, Mark sent back, though Eduardo knew that he must have been grinning just as widely.
be there in 50, Eduardo typed giddily. see if you can at least record audio of dustins heart attack
*
He jolted up suddenly in his seat, dislodging Sean's grip on his neck and bumping their foreheads. "You know what this means? We could start paying people."
"Nice", Sean agreed, pushing him back against the headrest. "Maybe Kima will stop threatening to smother me in my sleep."
Eduardo sighed, sneaking his hands under Sean's oxford shirt. Both of their ties had been loosened, and he was considering pulling at Sean's collar with his teeth. "She is way too good for Tim."
"Is that so?" Sean said, lightly, twisting an arm to wedge fingers down the front of Eduardo's slacks.
"Let's not have Chris murder us for indecent exposure," Eduardo said, breath hitching, and halted the hand working its way under his briefs, winding his free hand in Sean's tie. "He'll ensure we're awake for every minute of it."
*
Everyone was duly excited about the potential of salaries, chairs with real back support, and an end to Top Ramen Thursday. Such was the sustained joy that when Dustin streaked through the house buck-naked with VIC-TORY spelled across his ass cheeks, other than a few inquiries about who had volunteered to pen it, they were all left pretty blasé.
Though they kept this celebration more low-key (no scandals desired before they had both sets of signatures on the contracts), there was still a full house again that weekend--though not overly crammed.
"You know you've made it when people keep showing up even when it's Bring Your Own Beverage," he observed to Mark as they watched Dennis' spindly little arms try to pump a full keg.
He took intermittent shots for Chris on his phone, capturing the mild chaos and occasional shirtless frat brother (partnered with i know u like the str8 boys). There was a loud splash and a shrill shriek from outside and they shared a knowing look. When Tim stumbled in, drenched and scowling, Mark's eyes were smiling and they bit their lips against laughing out loud.
"I really did quit that internship the first day," Eduardo said suddenly. "I know you get distracted but I need you to remember that."
"I do," Mark said. He'd averted his eyes towards his beer, running his thumb over the tab, but he shifted his feet as they stood there and breathed, positioned a bit closer. Their fingers brushed and Eduardo had this split second flash of déjà vu - clear and bracingly physical - of getting fucked the first time, of fearing it and loving it, and the warm strength of Mark's hand on his shoulder. Which was when he realized there was really no point in putting off the maybe-unstupid thing that needed to happen next.
He loosely curled his fingers around Mark's without a word and let them hang linked together, between the two of them, for a minute or so as Mark silently finished his Guinness. Then Eduardo released them with a faint squeeze and walked to up to where Sean was perched on the corner of the living room couch, chatting with Andrew and a girl who he could almost name (he vaguely knew her; she'd been over at least once to smoke up and play video games)
He ran his hand over the back of Sean's head when he reached them, thumbing the damp curling line of his hair and said, "Hi," pressing a soft kiss to his mouth when Sean turned to greet him.
"So, we do this now," Sean said, head cocked, after Andrew and maybe-Amanda had excused themselves.
"I thought we did this all the time," Eduardo dodged, keeping his gaze steadily on Sean's face after catching a glimpse of Dustin's bemused eyebrows, and kissed him again.
Sean walked them backward towards through the living room with a hand stretched over the small of Eduardo's back, locking their hips together, as he whispered anatomically improbable promises and bumped into a few people.
They missed the bedroom door at first, Eduardo slamming into the hallway wall and Sean following him--pressed hot and tight together, the hard line of Sean's cock shifting slightly with Sean's hips as he circled them just a little.
They were finally inside and sitting on the bed when the door opened again, Sean running his tongue along the shell of Eduardo's ear and undoing his belt buckle, saying he'd been thinking of getting a hand on his dick all day and, when Eduardo's thighs tensed and his breath grew shuddery, "mm and feeling you when I said that".
When Mark passed through the doorway, Eduardo blurted, "Actually, could you. Leave?" in what was and was not a question.
Mark's eyes narrowed. "You know this is my room."
"I'll trade you," Sean said brightly.
"What a shocking turn of events," Mark deadpanned, but he waved off apologies, dutifully striding over to pick up his laptop and a short stack of tshirts while smirking to himself. "I've got too much shit to do anyway, to keep up with you nymphos."
"uh, special occasions?" Eduardo offered, his stomach twisting, but Mark just tapped his thumb against the hard-plastic laptop cover in a manner that was Mark code for I Am Beyond Your Plebian Concerns And Find Them Tiring.
And then, over Sean's shoulder, Eduardo saw it as Mark turned towards the door: the side of Mark's mouth curving into a subtle, smug smile.
You didn't want to be left behind, he'd said, with that fucking shrug of his.
"Wait, get over here," Eduardo snapped, his eyes the ones narrowing now, and gestured. Mark came, all exaggerated patience and indulgence, and Eduardo tasted his mouth, kissing him deeply and properly for the first and last time, before shoving him away with an affectionate shake of the head.
"Oh fuck, my best friend's an evil genius," Eduardo said once he'd left, hiding his face against Sean's cheek, more than a little mortified.
"You mean the part where he never told me I was meant to get all hung up on your dick?" Sean said wryly. "Yeah, that was rude shit. It worked out and everything, but my affections and libido are not to be trifled with." The palm rubbing circles between Eduardo's shoulder blades was at contrast with his flippant tone.
"But don't look so impressed," he continued, softly butting his head into Eduardo's chest, nudging him back towards the mattress and then arranging himself on top, their hips aligned and his hands folded over Eduardo's sternum. "He was also a little sick off of jerking himself off. Our boy's not the martyr type."
"I have known him much longer than you," Eduardo said, a little sullenly, and Sean cackled, "Are you jealous?"
Eduardo looked towards the bedroom wall, examining the stain from that time Dustin had burst in, startling them, and a Hot Pocket had gone flying. "I didn't even ask you," it occurred to him.
"No, it's fine." Sean wiggled against him, feet hooking on the mouth of Eduardo's tightly laced shoes, apparently of the mind to try and toe them off himself, out of sight. It was probably not going to work, but would sure be entertaining to observe. "I've been thinking that for a while," Sean said, pausing to arch up and press his mouth to Eduardo's jaw, then his toes went back to work, "that it'd be nice, to keep this part just us."
That wasn't supposed to be your line, Eduardo could have said, except there was that ghost of strength at his shoulder again. So instead he angled his head to brush their mouths together. "I'll move in here with you if you can get them off in twenty seconds with no hands." And then leaned back to crack up and watch.
This entry was originally posted at http://silviakundera.dreamwidth.org/841478.html. There are
comments.
Author: Silvia Kundera
Fandom: The Social Network
Disclaimer: Just harmless fantasy based off the characters from The Social Network. Not intending to damage copyright or represent any real persons, living or dead.
Pairing: Eduardo/Sean; Eduardo/Mark/Sean; Mark&Eduardo friendship
Rating: Explicit
Words: 10,400
Summary: In which Mark has good plans, Eduardo has bad plans, and Sean goes with the flow. Alternatively-- help! Eduardo is trapped in a threesome and he can’t get out.
--
It had seemed like just another regular soul-destroying day in his stupid soul-destroying life when Eduardo was forgotten at the airport, ambushed by the enemy and left floundering, and transitioned into a confrontation with his best friend and secret crush that went immediately, exhaustingly ugly. It had all been going perfectly to plan - if the plan was to poison his hopes, dreams, and self-esteem - and then the universe decided to step it up a notch towards ludicrous travesty and include an invitation to group sex with the very two people who had just shredded his will to live.
He was outside waiting for the taxi when a tap against his hip made him startle and whirl around, hand coming up to shield water from his eyes. The tap turned out to be Sean grabbing his bag off his shoulder and saying, "Seriously? This is a fucking downpour." And Sean just turned and walked back into the house with it, like he was expecting Eduardo to follow.
Mark was taking a hit off the bong when they made their way back into the living room and he reached up for the bag when Sean held it out for him with an inexplicable, "thanks," like it wasn't Eduardo's fucking property. But by that point, Eduardo supposed, it shouldn't have even been a surprise.
"We can put this in your room," Mark said, like an olive branch, and looked to Sean, who said, "truce?" but not actually anything like a question, mouth gone wise-ass crooked.
Eyebrows raised, Sean slung an arm over Mark's shoulders--making his posture go twitchy and hunted, but eager too. Eager enough to leave it there and watch Eduardo with dark, measuring eyes.
"um," Eduardo said, and then somehow he was agreeing to come back to Mark's room that night.
*
The first twenty minutes after that were really confusing, but then he realized what a stroke of good luck this all was, because, "What I'm going to do," Eduardo said earnestly, "is make it completely awful. Like, the whole time I'll just be saying, oh Sean you're so hot."
"You will?" Dustin was frowning in that way that put cute little frown wrinkles on his face.
"I could say that."
"But probably not looking like you meant it," Dustin said, which was a legitimate concern, but.
"I could imagine he's burning in hell," Eduardo said, pensively, and continued, "so it will be really uncomfortable, almost insulting, Mark feeling ignored and weird about it, and he can't stand it, how it should only be him, and he'll tell Sean he should probably leave, so it'll be just us. And then I'll. You know. Give him a blowjob? It bet it's kind of hard to fail at that."
"uh," Dustin said and Chris leaned back in his chair with a hand over his face.
"So, the plan is that you will finally earn Mark's undying love through a mentally scarring threesome." Chris's sigh was slightly muffled by his fingers. "This is a bad plan."
"Have you been invited to the mentally scarring threesome?"
"Thankfully no."
"Then I don't think you get any say," Eduardo said primly. Because, sure, Chris both had way more experience with all things gay, and had actually slept with multiple people before. But the one time at a frat party, that he'd told them about last year while high, had sounded pretty terrible. So it just went to show.
Besides, Eduardo could be just as stubborn as Mark could when he got an idea into his head.
*
When he took a breath an hour later and walked in, shutting the door quietly behind him, Mark and Sean were leaning against the wall, deep in conversation. They broke off at the sight of him, though, and Mark passed over a half-full bottle of vodka. The name didn't ring any bells (probably meant One Step Above Rubbing Alcohol, in Russian to sound authentic) and since his hands were shaking a little he thought that would be an excellent idea, taking a swig and gulping it down roughly.
But then Sean was pulling it out of his grip, saying, "Let's not," wiping Eduardo's lips with his thumb and kissing him, open mouthed and wet. And before he had really processed what was happening to him, Sean was releasing his hand (he'd been stroking the back of it, slow and steady like the soft push of his tongue in Eduardo's mouth), and calling to Mark, "Come here, you too."
So the only thing to do was watch dumbly as Sean walked Mark backwards toward the bed, watch Mark sit down when the back of his legs hit, watch Sean tilt Mark's head up with one hand, kissing him warmly and working his jeans open with the other.
Do you guys do this often?, he meant to say, but his mouth and his brain still felt a little detached from the rest of his body, and Sean was leaning over to grab his arm and tug him towards the bed and up onto it.
"This is going to be fun," Sean said cheerfully, and that was probably Eduardo's moment to protest, because no, definitely a failure to communicate, here was exactly the opposite point--though he could see how Sean might have found the assertion a little questionable, with how Eduardo was letting himself be seated behind Mark, Mark tucked back against his chest and between his legs.
Eduardo was going to say something, though, about-something, but then Mark was telling him to take their shirts off, Mark's bare cock sitting there long and red, curved up against his stomach (and there had been dreams that started like that, elaborate, exaggerated fantasies that suddenly felt a thousand times more distant despite all the parts that were coming true). "We," he managed, "Sean, um," before Mark started making these noises, pressing his face sideways into Eduardo's chest, as Sean finger-fucked him.
Eduardo hadn't done that, had thought about it, sure, lying under the sheets of his own bed and looking at his jerkoff lube, but had never gotten up the courage.
Mark seemed into it, though, the slides of Sean's fingers -- and the sight of it, the slippery sounds of it, there was an inescapable thought, a slow spreading wondering of what it might feel like if he were in Mark's place. There was an inescapable urge of wanting to be in Mark's place, except he shouldn't want Sean touching him, he was still pretty sure of that, though the reason itself was lost in the cloud that had settled into his skull, the air rushing too fast and shallow into his lungs.
Then Sean was handing Mark a condom to roll onto him and leaning forward, one knee on the mattress, to curl a hand around the back of Eduardo's head and kiss him leisurely, like they had all the time in the world.
He still tasted spicy from weed and syrupy sweet from mixed drink. Familiar, now. Of course, why he would have suddenly tasted different, Eduardo didn't really know, except there had been a whole lot more nakedness going on since then, when all the blood in Eduardo's body had started rushing faster and urgent, and his brain started telling him horrifying things like how good it felt when Sean's thumb ran underneath his jaw, the faintest hint of nail scratching lightly at his skin.
"Fuck, the mouth on you," Sean said, low and dirty, backing off to position Eduardo's hands around the back of Mark's knees.
Then he was just fucking Mark into Eduardo, no other way to describe it. Sean was just fucking Mark into him, Mark grabbing a hold of his arm, desperately clutching, while stroking himself with the other, panting into Eduardo's neck. Mark's bare flesh sliding back and forth over Eduardo's still clothed lap, because Eduardo hadn't--no one had asked him to, and it felt positively filthy in some indescribable way, to be the only person still half-way dressed in the room.
One long thrust made Mark whimper, fingers digging into the back of Eduardo's hand, and gasp, "You trying to fuck us both with one dick?" to which Sean smiled viciously and snapped his hips at this angle that had Mark skidding hard over Eduardo's cock and coming with shock spread across his face, torso contracting, as Eduardo gasped with him, knees tight against his sides.
Mark drooped sideways, sprawled half onto Eduardo and half onto the bed. There was come splashed over the leg of Eduardo's pants, and he smeared it with his fingers as Mark caught his breath and Sean pulled the condom off. It was a quasi-hysterical thought: that it had finally happened, that Mark Zuckerberg had come on him, while in his arms, in every way but the important one.
He seriously considered the possibility that he was going into shock, except his cock was still far too hard. Those were probably mutually exclusive conditions.
And then Sean was steadying his shoulders and shifting Mark off, chuckling at the lazy grumble with a wry, "I have to do everything around here."
"You don't," Eduardo started to say, but Sean stopped his mouth by biting at it playfully-"I'm just bitching" - and then set to stripping off his stained slacks and palming his cock through damp briefs, hunching down to run his mouth over the tip when Eduardo's hips jerked.
It was like fucking Mark just took the edge off, because then he was warming Eduardo up and drizzling lube into his fingers, pushing them in slow and patient, twisting out panting pointless things from Eduardo's mouth that he tried to forget. Sean's mouth kept moving from tonguing his belly to scraping teeth over his nipple to sucking at his hipbone, until he licked up the underside of Eduardo's cock and sat back, wiping his hand on the mattress.
"Oh, nice," Mark said, from somewhere behind them, "I do sleep here," and Eduardo jumped a little but finished for him, "Occasionally," feeling rather clever about it when he received a huff of laughter
But then Sean darted up to kiss him sharply, like maybe he didn't appreciate the distraction, and Eduardo was not one for placating the Sean Parker ego but there was something about that mouth and the brush of Sean's cock against his hip, wet and prepped to go inside him. The factual truth of that, what Eduardo was about to let happen, ate all words out of his head.
So he tipped back and scooted up across the mattress, trying to breathe deep and even to calm the fizzing in his nerves. He let Sean settle between his thighs and begin nudging his cock in inch by inch. Sean watching the progress with a firm hand and hungry focus in his face, and then bending forward every few shudders of Eduardo's shoulders and stomach to suck distractingly at the sweating skin of his neck and wrap a hand around the back of his head to pull him forward into a kiss.
When he was more than halfway there, a warm, rubbing thickness inside Eduardo that felt like it was filling something he hadn't realized was empty, there was this strange surge of panic and he found himself yelping, "Mark." Which they seemed to understand, because Sean just threaded their fingers together and Mark was there, safe bony knees against his shoulder. Like it wasn't the most mortifying thing in the world to grasp for his best friend's reassurance.
But no one laughed, Mark steadying him with a hand, Sean's gaze hot on Eduardo's flushed face and biting his lip as he leaned back to see his free hand trace where he was moving in and out of Eduardo's body in soft, short movements. Sean shuddered with him as every inch was finally fitted tight inside, and tumbled forward to yank their mouths together as he began rolling his hips with more force, Eduardo pressing eagerly into them, arms scrambling around his shoulders to grasp at his back, needing the feel to stretch deeper.
It was desperate and hurried then, Sean muttering things like "keep that leg up", "there, that's fucking nice, god," and then, "Mark, jerk him off," as his face clenched, clearly near-coming.
There was a towel curled over a stripped computer tower in the corner. Eduardo used it to wipe himself off, after, and offered it to Sean, who was hopping into his pant legs and shook his head.
"There's a call you can sit in on at 4:30," Mark said when handing him his shoes and then Sean said to wait (stepping in close enough that Eduardo's eyelids began to lower, lips parting) and licked his ring finger before using it to wipe something off the side of Eduardo's nose.
*
Nothing was really different the next morning except Sean had saved him the last bagel, dropping it next to his cereal bowl before heading out for the day.
At which Chris leaned over to whisper, "how did it go?" with a knowing look on his face.
Eduardo felt himself flush, mouth dry, but only got out a hiss of, "shut the hell up," before Mark stormed in wanting to know what the fuck had shot their wireless connection to shit.
They rebooted the servers, ran diagnostics, and fought with the cable company, Chris eventually cussing out a very apologetic guy from Pakistan in French. As last straws go, that was a fairly obvious one, so Mark gave up, knocking back the rest of his Red Bull and hustling Eduardo out for a trip to OfficeMetro.
There was a nice breeze outside and they left the windows down. Eduardo fiddled with the radio in the passenger seat, exploring the local stations, and shot a few pointed glances Mark's way. But apparently it was one of those days when he wasn't really interested in conversation. The only sign to be found that Mark had wanted his company, beside the terse request, being the purposeful delay in his steps as they combed the warehouse, bumping their shoulders together.
Eduardo finally kissed him in the router aisle while trying to decide between D-link and Cisco, because it has been troubling him. It was a little weird, that they hadn't yet.
It was nothing like expected - dry and closed mouthed, sweet but simple - though that no longer had the power to shock him, just par for the course. Mark kissed back, though it was a public, perfunctory kiss, and tilted his head a little when Eduardo stepped aside, giving him that look he used when he believed Eduardo had done something well-meant and incredibly earnest, but completely unnecessary. It said, I appreciate the thought, though your alien ways are strange to me.
"Mark, I don't. What's going on with-with Sean?"
Mark shrugged. "You said you didn't want to be left behind." He turned the Cisco box over one last time and then flipped his phone open and headed towards the cash register, telling Dustin it would be 15 minutes. Dustin wanted more Doritos, so they picked some up with fat, white pastries at a corner market with a bright red roof and a yellow sign that read Supermercado.
They brought the router back to the house and installed it, which didn't really change anything. Though it had far less nacho cheese fingerprints.
"Ha, I bet it's one of the beer can towers you bitches were building," Sean said when he was briefed five minutes after walking in the door, while rummaging in the cooler for a Guinness.
It took five more minutes to determine he was absolutely right, and fifty more for the interns to polish the house from top to bottom in penance.
Mark came to collect Eduardo at quarter past eleven, tapping fingers against the doorway and saying, "You coming?"
When Eduardo made his way into Mark's room, Sean was already sitting there, pants slung over a chair and wearing just a thin undershirt. He grinned as they entered and said, conversationally, "I can see he didn't tell you."
"No, I didn't repeat your porn talk," Mark said flatly.
"He'd be blushing more," Sean said, and grinned delightedly as Eduardo felt the heat rushing over his throat. "That's right," he said, "Now let me show you how I like it-reward for a job well done," holding his cock against his stomach with a lazy finger and releasing it to bob forward. Then he was resting back on his elbows, arranging his knees wide enough for someone-Eduardo, it was supposed to be Eduardo, he could tell, because of how they were looking at him-to kneel between them.
His head was pounding again. He had things to say, or-places to be, but there was Sean's cock, hard and wet at the tip, hard for him, and that made something twist inside, something guilty-wrong-hot, that it wasn't Mark's cock, but he still wanted to taste it. He did want Sean to show him how.
"I would have figured it out," Mark muttered, a little crankily, but he left it at that and lounged beside Sean on the bed, flipping open his laptop to skim over email but eyes still flicking over to watch whenever Sean made a particularly interesting noise or shifted the comforter by fisting it tightly.
When Eduardo rocked back on his knees, throat contracting and sucking in air, he could see Mark rubbing his palm against the front of his jeans, almost absentmindedly, head tilted their way and lips parted. But his eyes drew back to the screen again as Sean brushed thumbs under Eduardo's watering eyes and told him, lightly, "quit being such an overachiever," and bent down to press a kiss to Eduardo's mouth, following it with the slide of two calloused fingers across his tongue that Eduardo took without thinking, smooth and easy.
"Just gotta try and show me up in everything," Sean said, voice gone faded and breathy, and then Eduardo didn't notice much else except the blood-hot weight of cock brushing over the inside of his cheek, the salty tang flooding his taste buds, the shaking of Sean's wet fingers against the back of his neck.
*
There was an emergency all-nighter on Tuesday-- Eduardo walking through slip-shod test scripts as Chris coordinated and translated the shouting of everyone tweaking code, while Mark rolled back a software update on the servers.
Running on six cups of coffee, he made it until eleven am before catching an hour of sleep on the carpet behind the couch, grabbing Mark's sweatshirt for a pillow. He caught another 2 hours at six, curled on top of actual covers after fading out to the rocking of the bedframe as Mark rubbed off on Sean's thigh. He woke to Sean's fingers carding through his hair and the glow of Mark's monitor. When he yawned, the clacking on the keyboard halted.
"Can you check how the navigation bar's presenting?" Mark said. He'd never been great with spatial reasoning.
"Yeah," Eduardo said, yawning again. "Just give me a moment."
He slept nine hours the next day, walking in to see Tim, their level 1 programmer, sharing a Poptart with a girl in a Stanford tank top and a blue headband that stretched over a wave of coarse black hair. The pizza boxes were empty and they were reusing yesterday's grinds for the coffee.
"Ok," Eduardo said, and Sean looked over from his perch on the counter where he was finishing the milk carton in flip flops and boxers. "We are going shopping."
It was Andrew's car, as it turned out, but he was tweaking a query that couldn't be interrupted, and Mark said he had to just suck it up. Eduardo took Chris, Dustin, and Tim's newest friend with him to Costo and they loaded up on essentials like supersized ketchup bottles, frozen chicken fingers, packages of mini-burgers, and beef taquitos. Dustin locked himself over the back of the shopping cart and demanded to be pushed. Kima (who was far too good for Tim and apparently held very strong beliefs about coffee creamer) agreed to steer and told them where they could find the closest Linens&Bath warehouse. There they purchased blackout curtains for the developers' rooms, three door mats, window cleaner, scrub brushes, and an armful of towels.
Someone had to do the laundry as well, and it wasn't going to be Eduardo, so they drew straws for it.
Of course, there was a company to run too. The user base had swollen 130% in the last week alone and there was a long list of planned new functionality, so he sat down with Dustin to hammer out a roll out schedule. Eduardo was trying to put together cost projections for the next 4 months, estimating increasing bandwidth and electricity costs, and arranged a conference call with Sun about better servers.
So there didn't seem a right moment to ask, until he just went for it anyway as Mark wandered down the hall to bang on Andrew's door for rubbers.
Eduardo cupped his hands around Sean's face, pulling it up from where it had been licking lower and lower down his stomach. "Hey, Mark didn't tell you to-"
At which Sean then laughed in his face. "Well, you are profoundly ugly, and you never let me fuck you," he said, evading a slap in the head, "so it is a sacrifice" - and here he didn't duck fast enough, catching a light blow. "Like right now, this is intolerable," he added, earning a shove towards the floor.
"ok, ok! " Sean caught his hands and scooted up to straddle Eduardo's hips. "He said he wanted you to stick around. I said maybe I just needed a good incentive to get along."
"If you guys are finished wrestling," Mark said, kicking the door shut, "I thought we'd have some orgasms."
*
It was later that night, long after he'd gone back to his cold sheets and troubled dreams, when he came upon Sean in the dark, tripping over a rubik's cube and network card someone had left in the hallway.
Eduardo had always been an uneven sleeper, waking to stare at the clock, stumbling towards the dorm mini-fridge or microwave in search of tea or milk. Sean was smoking a joint and leaning against the dishwasher and peering out the window. He appeared to be idly inspecting how the wind was sifting through the trees, but there could have been a possum or owl out there, something of more interest. Impossible to tell if he'd left Mark's bed or his own.
Sean stamped the joint out when he saw Eduardo venture in, sly smile labeling it a pleasant surprise instead of the intrusion he'd assumed.
Smoke was still trailing towards the ceiling as Sean stepped forward to pull him close.
"Should we be," he started to say. But then Sean was running hands down his sides, wrists pushing his tattered sleeping shirt up to his waist, and didn't seem to realize the unease wasn't exactly about the venue, whispering, "Hey, no one's gonna come in," and pressed Eduardo's front up against the sink with his hips and a bite to the earlobe, pulling down their boxers.
There was the metallic roll of a drawer, a muttered, "next to the fucking paper clips, I love this fucking house," and the rustle of a condom packet as Eduardo looked across the deserted kitchen and down at his knuckles clutched over the sink edge and felt his thoughts loop.
Thoughts that stuttered as Sean's palms glided over the cheeks of his ass and split them with his thumbs. "You're still all wet and open from me," Sean said, with satisfaction, and then just slid his cock all the way in with two smooth strokes, fucking him standing up, quiet and slow, breathing hard into the curve of Eduardo's neck.
Eduardo listened to the high, tight sounds escaping from his traitorous chest, and had a terrible, stray, quickly exorcised thought that Sean would come back with him to his empty, cool room if he asked him to, and then came into his hand, hot and sudden.
*
Sleep after was more restless than usual and the next day he dipped into the pool for a morning swim to take the edge off.
Andrew ambled out to have a smoke with his coffee, rubbing at his eyes under wide yellow sunglasses. As Eduardo swam laps, he tapped his ashes into a beer bottle and watched for a bit, kicking back into one of the peeling armchairs and calling, "Hughes, my man!" when Chris joined them out there, rolling his pants up and settling his legs over the edge.
"Chris," Eduardo said, when he reached the kicking feet and propped himself up beside them, "This was a really bad plan."
*
A suffocating heat wave began percolating on Friday that didn't crest until the 14th. It turned every room in the house into a sauna, heat building up intolerably without an outlet. Chris went around unscrewing the metal sides from every computer tower, from fears of overheating, and all doors remained perpetually cracked open (excepting the bathrooms). Sleep was impossible without a wide open door or crawling out to claim a corner of the living room-- back door trapped in a right angle all night between stones from the front yard, with only the security screen shut to ward off flies and curious beetles.
"So who signed the lease forms without checking for air conditioning?" Andrew said groggily, as he polished off the last of the ice tea.
"I've never fired anyone yet," Mark said, "That could be interesting."
"It's probably good for my pores, though," Andrew added, scrambling to sit straighter and repositioning his mouse.
"I think I've sweated off 5 lbs," Dustin offered. "At least."
It was too hot to smoke up or to fuck, but he'd grown accustomed or something. He would find himself coaxing Sean all the way out of his shorts as they were half-heartedly jerking off, Sean biting his lip with eyelids ajar, Mark pausing every so often to rub sweat from his eyes uncomfortably.
He'd prep himself slowly, Sean's eyes shifted to laser-focus and lower lip sucked into his mouth, and then kneel over Sean with his knees on the mattress. Eduardo could ride him like that; it was doable -- only touching with their thighs and the thick cock that he bore down on cautiously, back toward the open window. Every so often a stray breeze would prickle his skin and he'd give himself gratefully into it, feeling himself tighten up, clenching around Sean inside him. Sean would swear then, hips bucking, and it all felt so sharply good that he didn't even mind the heat of sweating palms gripping his sides for a moment before falling back to the sheets again, when Sean returned to approving murmurs.
Mark peered at them disbelieving, as if they were madmen. Eventually opting to try it - only to halt almost immediately, proclaiming that his dick might be willing but the flesh was not, groaning piteously and receiving a swift blowjob for his troubles.
He dozed the deepest after those times, except for the night that the power finally blew. Eduardo fished a flashlight from the top drawer of his squat dresser and rushed to the circuit breakers, two words repeatedly running through his head: down time - down time - down time. He met Chris there, both of them wearing only briefs and finger marks peeking out from under their slipping waistbands. Both of them pointedly keeping the conversation on the business at hand.
When the fans in the make-shift server room petered out, Sean sped with him over to Radio Shack. They decided to stop by 7-Eleven as well, for morale, and picked up enough Slurpees to fill three cardboard cartons with Sim Jim proclaimed on the sides in faded black and red. Eduardo paid for it all on his card, Sean scratching the back of his neck as they loaded them into the backseat and saying, "You know I'm sort of broke, or I would have."
"You contribute in other ways," Eduardo said, receiving an exaggerated leer, and, "No, I mean it," realizing that he did. And so Sean ended up pressing him against the side of the car, metal handle piercing through his cotton shirt to cook the skin of his back, and kissing him slow and deep in the parking lot in front of a soccer mom pulling a baby carrier out of her mini-van.
*
There was a garage sale down the street on the 17th and Dennis rolled 2 enormous speakers onto the front porch that he'd bought for 30 bucks, offering bribes for help in bringing them inside. Eduardo hooked them up as Dustin shouted directions and they banged out Sublime as Chris got Mark to come with them for a night swim, the pool lights on and Sean handing out tequila shots.
"I was just thinking of the algorithm," Mark said, when Eduardo splashed him a little, breaking his vacant stare towards the diving board.
"It's kind of insane," Eduardo agreed, "How that could have started all of this," and Sean shifted closer, propped up against the side of the pool, sliding a wet arm around his waist and urging Eduardo's weight to settle back against his chest, saying, "I get the feeling I'm missing part of this story."
So Eduardo filled him in, though Mark kept interrupting with color commentary and slights against the Harvard security infrastructure. And then Mark said, "Now the gruesome violation of laws pertaining to both animal and man, that's an incident that needs to be shared," and Eduardo was struggling to get a hand over his mouth until Dustin's cannonball drowned their beers and sent them thirsting for vengeance.
It was his idea for everyone to go out to dinner one night. They didn't make it out of the house until 11pm and ended up at Denny's, taking up two long tables shoved together next to the bustling kitchen. Tim kept blinking at the yellow bulbs in the ceiling a little disconcertedly and when Eduardo asked him how long he'd been up, he thought for a bit and then asked if he could call Kima.
She met them right after the drinks arrived and stayed overnight. Eduardo discovered that she always rose inhumanly early and she poured cups for coffee for him and Sean in the morning as they mulled around dazedly, knocking into each other and the counter, and then taught him how to paint her nails during a conference call with Bank of America on a proposed ad display deal. (Which Sean said not to mention to Mark yet, in case he took it the wrong way.) (Eduardo wasn't entirely sure what way there was to take it, other than: this sounds subtle, professional, and would make us money. But he was learning to trust Sean's instincts on these things.)
*
They were fooling around alone on the center of Mark's bed -- shirts puddled haphazardly on their left, up where Mark had begun to make a habit of sitting -- because when Eduardo had said his name a little questioning, Mark had said, distractedly, "be there in a bit."
It was at least twenty minutes after that. Twenty minutes, two shirts, his sandals, and a darkening bruise high on Sean's right pec.
"You can take a semester off," Sean was saying, thumb running teasingly over the teeth of Eduardo's zipper and pausing to brush lips along his collarbone, ending with a kiss on the tip of his shoulder, then, "Tell him he worries too much," kicking at Mark's chair.
"You worry too much," Mark said obediently, scowling at his monitor and stabbing viciously at the enter button, and Eduardo nodded a little dizzily, because Sean had his zipper undone and he was licking up the side of Eduardo's cock and then trailing down to his balls, pausing to suck lightly and then a touch harder with encouragement. Warm, wide hands ran up and down his thighs, pressing them open.
After that it was much harder to pretend he was heading back any day now.
*
It took the rest of the week to confirm that Bank of America wasn't going to bite, and then set his sights on Chase. Plus, Dustin was experimenting with Ajax and he needed someone to research the best how-to guides and then order them with overnight shipping, and maybe something on High Performance MySQL.
But if Eduardo was going to stay, there was a whole litany of other things to do. He checked in with the admin office at Harvard and sent an email to his department head, to make sure he could graduate next winter. There was the call with his father, who took things better than expected once Eduardo demonstrated a careful consideration of pros and cons (that did not include peer pressure and copious amounts of sex). He had to clear out of the apartment. A Phoenix brother agreed to drive over if Eduardo FedEx'd the keys and two hundred dollars - clean out the refrigerator, box up his things. He had to decide if any of that should just go into storage. And, right, finally call his girlfriend back to say, dear Christy, I have to break up with you on account of being a horrible, horrible person.
"And of course I keep putting it off," he told Mark, flinging himself dramatically across the couch, "because that's the absolute worst thing on my list."
"Of course you have a list," Sean said. He was resting on the carpet, belly down, having commandeered Eduardo's laptop.
Eduardo stamped down a warning on his hand as he activated a search window and continued, "Even before finding a weekly maid to stop by and clean the bathrooms."
"Make Dennis do it," Mark said, intent on checking the submit response rate. "That's what interns are for."
"I think that's even worse than breaking up with someone on their answering machine."
"You're my friend," Mark said. "She'll be relieved you didn't blog about it and circulate a site comparing her attributes to a praying mantis."
"And if she comes for vengeance, we'll protect you," Sean said.
"Speak for yourself," Mark said, shooting him a bemused glance, "Though I think Wardo will do fine on his own."
"No I won't," Eduardo said, with feeling, thinking of the crazy eyes. And the guilt.
"See, what did I tell you?" Sean said, "Aw Wardo, I know you're a delicate-OW."
*
In the face of such outrageous slanders against his person, Eduardo had no choice but to prove his stout hardiness and courage by helping Mark debug for 35 hours straight, nearly beating Kima in a weekend volleyball tournament (net scrounged from the discount bin of a nearby Toys R Us), and then drinking two interns under the table before passing out face down in the back lawn.
He woke up batting grass off his face and registered extreme nakedness, a deafening pounding in his skull, and the distinct possibility that his skeleton had been turned into jello. In that order. A loud moan for assistance and/or mercy killing brought Sean out with a cup of coffee, the smell of which made him hurl into the bushes and then mewl anxiously into Sean's zombie kittens shirt.
Sean let him nose the peeling acrylic for a bit, stroking fingers down the back of his head, and then broke it to him with a minimum of malicious cackling that his back, legs, arms, and face had been defiled with dark blue marker, displaying illuminating phrases such as salsa shark, light weight, I eat cock, wussy wardo, and love you long time.
"That was mostly Dustin. Except I think the salsa thing was Chris. And, uh, I think Andrew was going to tea bag you, but then Mark threatened to fire him again. I mostly just watched, but I was pretty fucking wasted by then."
"You are truly a prince among men," Eduardo said.
A steady arm around his back helped him plod to the bathroom, where he could lean against the counter and rest his forehead against the mirror.
"One sec," Sean said, and went hunting through the medicine cabinet and then out the door again, returning to pry Eduardo up from the cool glass and saying, "Look at you," voice rich with amusement.
Eduardo took in the mud in his hair, the sleep-creases and scribbles along his skin, and had to snicker along with him, watching in the mirror as Sean rubbed his clean, sun-touched face into Eduardo's cheek and feeling the hum of his humor.
Sean wet a washcloth in the shower with a heavy lather of soap and what smelled like nail polish remover, rubbing it along his calves and slowly up his arms, in little circles, before collapsing against his back, snickering, "This cock one, it's just not coming off," into his shoulder blades.
Eduardo turned with a squawk, snatching the washcloth for himself, and was pressed against the shower wall, Sean's mouth moving hungrily against his as water dripped down their brows and over their eyelids, pooling in their collarbones. Sean was hardening against his belly and he arched into it, arousal threading through the hangover and thinning it.
They made out like that for an indeterminate amount of time, Sean sucking water off his tongue, their cocks bumping up against each other, sliding between them. Until Sean was urging him to turn again and dropping down to cup his ass with both hands and run the flat of his tongue up one side before swiping up the center, making heat prick up along Eduardo's spine and down his chest.
The tip of Sean's tongue felt slick and insistent, flicking and prodding at the tensed crinkled skin there, and he felt his head snap back involuntarily, stomach tightening. He was shaking. It was a little-too much, a little scary, like he should squirm away but couldn't, rabbit-hearted. And then Sean was laughing, face pressed against his right cheek and saying, "I cannot believe I'm doing this," and the vice loosened in Eduardo's chest. He found himself curling his hands over his mouth and giggling into them.
"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Eduardo managed, muffled in his fist, and then Sean's thumb curved down his inner thigh, tone turning rougher and more serious, "It still kind of does," and it was like an engine turned over in his belly, filling his cock up even harder and making the tight muscle that Sean had been dragging his tongue over begin to throb.
The water was still on, steam drifting up. Eduardo's body jerked mindlessly, palms skidding against the shower wall, as Sean pressed experimentally inwards and lapped at the skin more and more eagerly. He could feel his neck and face burn, lips parted, panting. When Sean fumbled upwards, reaching an arm around to stoke at his cock, Eduardo came shuddering - body quaking with aftershocks as he felt the hot brand of Sean's cock rocking against his ass and splashing across his back in a hot pulse that matched the thick, damp air.
"ok," Eduardo said, as they were creeping out of the bathroom in towels, too-pink and happy, "but I am never drinking like that again."
*
This was, naturally, a total and complete lie. Though they did pare it down considerably for a while, Eduardo abstaining all together for a couple weeks while prepping for an interview with SelfInc, a startup magazine, and facing the intimidating reality that they were lacking any manner of organized employee support system.
It started when three new programmers and a full-time database administrator with terrible acne were brought on, and they realized there should probably be some sort of orientation. Or, at least a collection of vivid, cautionary tales.
"And Mark, the little bitch -- yeah, you heard me, that's right Zuckerberg -- oh, I'm shaking in my sandals -- never comments his fucking code," Dustin added.
So Eduardo looked into the function descriptions (spoilers: there were none), standard operating procedures (still none), change tracking (nope), and time tracking (foiled again), and ended up helping write use cases, creating a communication plan for major site changes, and putting together a task list so that eventually there'd be some basic documentation and Dennis could quit mumbling about disappearing into the Peace Corps one day to teach them all a lesson.
Next Mark reeled him into a seemingly endless planning session about actually making this a platform, with APIs and everything. You know, the kind of planning where you do a lot of slumping into chairs, ordering in mountains of take out, talking over each other, taking notes with tons of questions marks, and the more you think you've ironed out, the more open and vaguely outlined problems pop up demanding attention.
They'd discussed this before, back in Kirkland. It had seemed like a pipe-dream then - not something that could ever become a real, pressing concern. But they needed to firm it up now, needed to plan ahead because all the system architecture would need to be built with this endgame in mind, to minimize the rework. Also, Dustin was being a real dick about it.
It was after four straight days of starting out the morning with donuts and network diagrams and falling asleep with his clothes on each night, deliriously praying for death, that Sean strolled in and bounced onto the bed without even a wave towards Eduardo and Mark's hunched forms. They had been working on a migration timeline since breakfast (though they happened to be fighting over mouse control at the moment, because, "you are such a backseat driver," Eduardo hissed).
Sean settled back, leaning on his hands and breathing audibly, shifting every so often so the springs would make faint adjusting noises, until finally he sighed loudly and said, "Fine, I'll entertain myself."
They very sensibly paid little mind to this announcement, until Sean yanked his shirt over his head and began running a hand over his chest, thumbing a nipple and squeezing roughly at the crotch of his jeans. The jeans were loose, top button already popped, and Eduardo could see the curve of his hipbone (not that he was looking, but he'd needed to stretch).
Sean took his own sweet time unzipping his jeans, pulling the zipper down stuttered and slow so the metallic sizzling seemed to go on forever. His eyes slid shut as he took himself in hand (it was just that it sounded finished, and--and Eduardo was checking, because they were busy) and his tongue wet his lips as his hips pumped-- pushing his cock, stiff and red, up through his fist as his arm pushed down. Sean's neck seemed to go limp, head hanging back as his hips rolled in tighter circles, the muscles in his arm tense and working, when he said, low and breathy, "mm that first night, fuck."
Eduardo looked down and realized he'd been digging his nails into the back of Mark's chair. "I'll just." The screen started to waver in front of his eyes. "Be right back."
"You have no stamina," Mark grumbled.
"I don't know, I've been perfectly satisfied," Sean murmured into the side of Eduardo's throat as he straddled Sean's thighs, feeling the slick heat of Sean's cock sliding against his stomach, Sean's hands at the buttons of his shirt.
*
Because all work and no play makes Chris consider a homicidal rampage, all of their lofty goals were eventually set aside for at least twelve hours in service of a house party. This included everyone but Mark (who muttered something about being done with Caribbean Nights) and a body for tech support, plus people who knew people who probably met Sean once at a Stanford kegger or local night club.
The occasion was purportedly for 500,000 members, though another 20,000 had already signed up by then. There was barely walking room in the kitchen and at least ten clusters of people out back. One of them was in the pool, though it had been an overcast week and no one had brought bathing suits.
Eduardo spent most of the night hovering over Chris, who was having a crisis of confidence. They avoided the crowd, started on light beer, and then scaled the fence to pluck limes from the neighbor's balcony. Chris used them to make kamikazes with Ketel One and a dusty bottle of Triple Sec from god knows where, but before the third batch he'd collapsed over the cutting board.
"God, I have been so fucking busy," Chris groaned, head buried in his arms, "but tell me, please please tell me: what have I accomplished down here, anyway?"
"You keep all of us from killing Dustin on a daily basis", Eduardo said, and then, when Chris's posture drooped even farther, "You landed me that interview."
"Well, I'm glad that's what I have to show for my summer vacation," Chris said dolefully, sitting up and rubbing a hand over his face. "I should be-I should be issuing press releases. There's no one to be sending them to yet, but I should be-I should be doing them. I should be spreading our message. We should be having a message. I should be checking, right now, if that girl's 21." He pointed over Eduardo's shoulder at a blond with a thick, messy ponytail standing beside Sean and sipping out of one of their old Burger King cups. "But I'm not going to."
The girl had a skinny tank top on that didn't cover her midriff, one strap drifting down her left arm, and a casual stance, one hip cocked. It looked like she was pretty funny, because Sean kept shaking his head and laughing.
Chris sighed deeply behind him. "You're not coming back with me, are you?"
"hmm," Eduardo said. "Hey, I'll catch you later, all right?"
Sean was still grinning, waving his hands in the girl's face as she said something playfully cutting and hooked a finger into his belt loop, halting his retreat, and pulled the hand back to settle on Sean's arm. Just a mild touch. Sean was wearing well-aged jeans that Eduardo had never seen before-- faded around the ass and thighs, hanging off his hips.
"Wardo," Sean said, easily, as he walked up, "I was just telling Trisha about that night you dragged me out to do like ten loads at 2 in the morning at the buck-fifty laundromat. Hand to god, smelled of turpentine and rat feces. I have seen the devil, and he works at the corner of Colorado and Emerson."
Eduardo gave her a friendly nod and slid a hand up to rest on Sean's other arm. "I was thinking we could go see Mark."
"Yeah?" Sean said, distractedly, face tipped into his cup, and then paused. "oh. yeah."
"Nice meeting you," Eduardo said politely and Sean gave Trisha a loose one-armed hug.
"True, true. Good running into you again," he said, hand turning to catch Eduardo at the wrist and offering her the rest of his disturbingly blue cocktail. "Looks like I'm making it an early night."
*
Eduardo drove Chris to the airport the next weekend as Sean met with another potential investor, and it turned out that this one might bite.
Peter Thiel and two of his business partners agreed to meet them for dinner. When Eduardo entered the restaurant he stood - a slight, but imposing, carefully dressed man - and said, smoothly, "Mr. Saverin. I've heard many a tall tale about you."
"I assure you, it's all true," Eduardo said, shaking his hand, and Thiel smiled crisply.
"That's what I'm counting on."
Sean was in his best black suit and hung back to schmooze with the waitress for their section, pushing glasses up his nose with the back of his hand. Mark's jacket was a bit too long in the arms and he kept fussing with the sleeves as they waited for a table, leaving Eduardo to make pointless conversation about market activity and college football.
Things got a bit too pointed as they worked through the appetizers, Thiel quizzing him on user adoption rates and when he was planning on earning his CPA, until Sean cut in with a calculated patter of buzz words and charmed the whole table. There was a story about an irate call he once received from the head of distribution at RCA Records and then that old fable about Victoria's Secret.
"I never thought I'd welcome the Sean Parker Variety Hour," Eduardo told Mark under his breath, who smirked into his glass.
It was the last smirk for a while, and he grew steadily more nervous as Mark's speech grew more terse. Mark was closing off more and more throughout the night instead of opening up, which Eduardo dealt with by topping off their wine on several occasions.
His head was comfortably fuzzy by the time Sean leaned over to draw a finger down the back of his neck and whisper, "I should probably tell you to go easy on that, out in company, but I've never fucked you drunk and you look so damn cute right now." Eduardo felt the blush rise, the blood suffusing under his cheekbones and spreading downward. He evaded Mark's knowing eyes as he took in another deep sip.
Too much good red wine always made him friendly and pleasantly sleepy - sweetly mellow in a way that could be glossed over with smiles, and he shook hands smoothly when they parted, promising to send a follow up email. It wasn't until their guests left that Eduardo let himself curl into Mark's side, receiving a tentative, comforting brush through his hair, and wait for Sean to guide him into the car--sliding in beside him and wrapping an arm around his waist.
It was good to rest there, eyes shut and body too lazy to arch much into Sean's touch or his mouth as it tasted the hollow of his throat, the usually ticklish skin behind his ear, the slight sheen of sweat he could feel at the base of his neck. Still sleepy but not. Just enough to appreciate the fingers stroking above his waistband, reassuring and distantly arousing.
It was different at home, stripped out of their suits. Eduardo was relaxed and pliant against the pillows, tipped onto his side as he watched them splay out beside him, Sean holding Mark down by his hips and blowing him quickly and proficiently. Mark grunted and bit his lip, a hand fisted in Sean's hair, and it was nice and quietly heart pounding to look at (if also very-maybe-somehow wrong in a familiar and yet alien manner he shied away from thinking about).
And then Sean was rolling over, still licking his lips. Settling him on his back with an arm wrapped around his shoulders, Sean's chest warm and solid as it curled around his side, bringing his knee up, pressing it against his chest. He felt joltingly open and bared as his thigh stretched, Sean slipping in a couple fingers and then the blunt head of his cock. Sean stroked the insides of his thighs as he gasped, until it was all the way in, sliding shallow then deep, and Sean could drape that arm over his chest to hold him steady for every smooth thrust and nuzzle the corner of his mouth-- watching his face in a way that would have normally made him feel uneasy, spot-lit. Anchored, it occurred to him dreamily. Everything hot and shivery, yet safe and surrounded.
Sean stayed there, tucked around him and softening inside him, for a long while after he came, nuzzling along his neck as Eduardo traced drawings into his back (every movement feeling heavy, like lifting iron, and potentially imaginary-like he was possibly only picturing himself doing it), and didn't release him to return to his own bed.
Mark was already asleep.
*
He woke to an empty room and lingering, fever-dream memories of the previous night that left him half-hard as he scrounged for his phone to text Chris, i wish you were here.
i can still tell u not to do something stupid, was the reply he received around lunchtime, the buzz startling him midsentence as he worked in the cool quiet of the server room, directly followed by are you going to do something stupid approximately five minutes later.
too late, Eduardo started to type out, and then backspaced and thought about it.
maybe not, he finally said.
*
Peter Thiel invited them back to his offices and called his administrative assistant in to slap down a mountain of paperwork on the cherry wood desk in front of them.
He thought they might benefit from a few hundred thousand to help combat rising overhead costs and actually separate where they slept from where they worked. And maybe some place where the carpet had been cleaned within the last 3 months. (At the flash of panic on Sean's face, there was a hint of a smile from Thiel that might even be called fond. "Lucky guess. You know, I was a college student once.")
"uh, great," Eduardo said, scooping the paper-clipped documents under one arm, "our people will be in contact with your people. "
"We don't have people," he reminded Sean urgently as they made their way to the car. "So, we need to find people. We need to-my father would know how to get a law firm on retainer." At Sean's look he said, sulkily, "Econ major. And we should figure out who the hell his people are."
"We get people, they can figure out who to call," Sean said sensibly, unlocking the driver side door.
They set the pile on the dashboard and stared at it, a little dumbfounded.
"We are going to be so rich," Sean said, as if savoring the words, and turned to drape himself over the passenger side. "I want to make out with you right now, in this car, like teenagers."
"At least drive around the block," Eduardo said, weakly, and did a lot of sighing and shuddering as a scatter-plot of hickeys was sucked down his throat, before Sean sat back to adjust himself and undo the parking break.
we did it, he sent to Mark as they rounded the corner.
of course, Mark sent back, though Eduardo knew that he must have been grinning just as widely.
be there in 50, Eduardo typed giddily. see if you can at least record audio of dustins heart attack
*
He jolted up suddenly in his seat, dislodging Sean's grip on his neck and bumping their foreheads. "You know what this means? We could start paying people."
"Nice", Sean agreed, pushing him back against the headrest. "Maybe Kima will stop threatening to smother me in my sleep."
Eduardo sighed, sneaking his hands under Sean's oxford shirt. Both of their ties had been loosened, and he was considering pulling at Sean's collar with his teeth. "She is way too good for Tim."
"Is that so?" Sean said, lightly, twisting an arm to wedge fingers down the front of Eduardo's slacks.
"Let's not have Chris murder us for indecent exposure," Eduardo said, breath hitching, and halted the hand working its way under his briefs, winding his free hand in Sean's tie. "He'll ensure we're awake for every minute of it."
*
Everyone was duly excited about the potential of salaries, chairs with real back support, and an end to Top Ramen Thursday. Such was the sustained joy that when Dustin streaked through the house buck-naked with VIC-TORY spelled across his ass cheeks, other than a few inquiries about who had volunteered to pen it, they were all left pretty blasé.
Though they kept this celebration more low-key (no scandals desired before they had both sets of signatures on the contracts), there was still a full house again that weekend--though not overly crammed.
"You know you've made it when people keep showing up even when it's Bring Your Own Beverage," he observed to Mark as they watched Dennis' spindly little arms try to pump a full keg.
He took intermittent shots for Chris on his phone, capturing the mild chaos and occasional shirtless frat brother (partnered with i know u like the str8 boys). There was a loud splash and a shrill shriek from outside and they shared a knowing look. When Tim stumbled in, drenched and scowling, Mark's eyes were smiling and they bit their lips against laughing out loud.
"I really did quit that internship the first day," Eduardo said suddenly. "I know you get distracted but I need you to remember that."
"I do," Mark said. He'd averted his eyes towards his beer, running his thumb over the tab, but he shifted his feet as they stood there and breathed, positioned a bit closer. Their fingers brushed and Eduardo had this split second flash of déjà vu - clear and bracingly physical - of getting fucked the first time, of fearing it and loving it, and the warm strength of Mark's hand on his shoulder. Which was when he realized there was really no point in putting off the maybe-unstupid thing that needed to happen next.
He loosely curled his fingers around Mark's without a word and let them hang linked together, between the two of them, for a minute or so as Mark silently finished his Guinness. Then Eduardo released them with a faint squeeze and walked to up to where Sean was perched on the corner of the living room couch, chatting with Andrew and a girl who he could almost name (he vaguely knew her; she'd been over at least once to smoke up and play video games)
He ran his hand over the back of Sean's head when he reached them, thumbing the damp curling line of his hair and said, "Hi," pressing a soft kiss to his mouth when Sean turned to greet him.
"So, we do this now," Sean said, head cocked, after Andrew and maybe-Amanda had excused themselves.
"I thought we did this all the time," Eduardo dodged, keeping his gaze steadily on Sean's face after catching a glimpse of Dustin's bemused eyebrows, and kissed him again.
Sean walked them backward towards through the living room with a hand stretched over the small of Eduardo's back, locking their hips together, as he whispered anatomically improbable promises and bumped into a few people.
They missed the bedroom door at first, Eduardo slamming into the hallway wall and Sean following him--pressed hot and tight together, the hard line of Sean's cock shifting slightly with Sean's hips as he circled them just a little.
They were finally inside and sitting on the bed when the door opened again, Sean running his tongue along the shell of Eduardo's ear and undoing his belt buckle, saying he'd been thinking of getting a hand on his dick all day and, when Eduardo's thighs tensed and his breath grew shuddery, "mm and feeling you when I said that".
When Mark passed through the doorway, Eduardo blurted, "Actually, could you. Leave?" in what was and was not a question.
Mark's eyes narrowed. "You know this is my room."
"I'll trade you," Sean said brightly.
"What a shocking turn of events," Mark deadpanned, but he waved off apologies, dutifully striding over to pick up his laptop and a short stack of tshirts while smirking to himself. "I've got too much shit to do anyway, to keep up with you nymphos."
"uh, special occasions?" Eduardo offered, his stomach twisting, but Mark just tapped his thumb against the hard-plastic laptop cover in a manner that was Mark code for I Am Beyond Your Plebian Concerns And Find Them Tiring.
And then, over Sean's shoulder, Eduardo saw it as Mark turned towards the door: the side of Mark's mouth curving into a subtle, smug smile.
You didn't want to be left behind, he'd said, with that fucking shrug of his.
"Wait, get over here," Eduardo snapped, his eyes the ones narrowing now, and gestured. Mark came, all exaggerated patience and indulgence, and Eduardo tasted his mouth, kissing him deeply and properly for the first and last time, before shoving him away with an affectionate shake of the head.
"Oh fuck, my best friend's an evil genius," Eduardo said once he'd left, hiding his face against Sean's cheek, more than a little mortified.
"You mean the part where he never told me I was meant to get all hung up on your dick?" Sean said wryly. "Yeah, that was rude shit. It worked out and everything, but my affections and libido are not to be trifled with." The palm rubbing circles between Eduardo's shoulder blades was at contrast with his flippant tone.
"But don't look so impressed," he continued, softly butting his head into Eduardo's chest, nudging him back towards the mattress and then arranging himself on top, their hips aligned and his hands folded over Eduardo's sternum. "He was also a little sick off of jerking himself off. Our boy's not the martyr type."
"I have known him much longer than you," Eduardo said, a little sullenly, and Sean cackled, "Are you jealous?"
Eduardo looked towards the bedroom wall, examining the stain from that time Dustin had burst in, startling them, and a Hot Pocket had gone flying. "I didn't even ask you," it occurred to him.
"No, it's fine." Sean wiggled against him, feet hooking on the mouth of Eduardo's tightly laced shoes, apparently of the mind to try and toe them off himself, out of sight. It was probably not going to work, but would sure be entertaining to observe. "I've been thinking that for a while," Sean said, pausing to arch up and press his mouth to Eduardo's jaw, then his toes went back to work, "that it'd be nice, to keep this part just us."
That wasn't supposed to be your line, Eduardo could have said, except there was that ghost of strength at his shoulder again. So instead he angled his head to brush their mouths together. "I'll move in here with you if you can get them off in twenty seconds with no hands." And then leaned back to crack up and watch.
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