fic: Familiar Handwriting, Irresistible Histamine (Mark/Eduardo, Prompt 102)
Title: Familiar Handwriting, Irresistible Histamine
Recipient: aredblush
Prompt Number: 102
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3164
Disclaimer: This fanwork is based on fictional representations of the characters in The Social Network; I make no claims of ownership of the characters or concepts.
Prompt scenario: Mark sends Wardo flowers to say he's sorry. Wardo is very allergic to pollen, but he pretends he's not because he likes when Mark gives him things.
Notes: POV: Eduardo. Many, many thanks to A. for beta assistance!
The day of Mark's tectonic gesture, Manhattan's buildings formed a breath-sucking wind tunnel of sharp, cold air. There was no way around it - the pewter sky was merciless as air currents wrecked umbrellas and stole receipts.
This was preferable to the equatorial warmth of Singapore. Aside from the final conscience-rattling incident that prompted my relocation to New York, I'm not proud of the time spent playing with my settlement. I’m not proud of 50k bar tabs racked up with people I don't remember, nor of the fucking custom GJ Cleverly shoes I had to have in bright green.
I landed in New York yoked with a Möbius strip of guilt and resentment about the money, so I quit spending it and got a real job.
Forgetting about Mark and the money was impossible, though. For one thing, it was hard to forget that I'd fallen asleep on the shoulder of and done laundry with Time's Person of the Year. For another, Facebook's everywhere.
My great aunt’s on it. The bodega I like that sells fucking brigadeiros is on it.
*
So on the shitty March day, the lobby of my apartment building was a warm relief after having my face burned and ass kicked by wind. A massive flower arrangement was off to the side of the security guy's post, and it was so big I made a joke.
“Did I walk into the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria by accident?”
“Funny you should say that. It's for you.”
“You're kidding.”
“Nope. Can you carry it by yourself?”
I wrestled it into the elevator and up to my apartment.
The tiny card on a plastic spike said:
Eduardo,
Please accept this totally inadequate token of apology.
I've been terrible to you & I'm sorry.
M.Z.
A phone number was on the back.
It was the strangest development maybe ever.
Mark sent flowers.
Mark was sorry.
I'm really allergic to pollen, but the situation was surreal enough to imply cosmic immunity. There were roses in every color, spikes of purple stuff, and stems that exploded into graduated pairs of heart-shaped flowers. It was crazy. It was beautiful, but my eyes started itching and I couldn't swallow enough. I probably should've thrown it out, but...I mean, it was from Mark. I'd dragged my unexamined emotional baggage for that guy across the planet and back.
I talked myself into and out of calling him while assembling a pathetic dinner and sneezing a lot. The bouquet seemed to gain strength the longer it was in my apartment. It was like a roommate that I loved and hated.
It was kind of like having Mark around.
Soon I was drowning in my own fluids and so uncomfortable that I brought the vase back downstairs. The security guy was nice enough to let me keep it there so I could see it but not live with it.
On my way back up in the elevator, I looked at the card again and realized it was in Mark's cramped handwriting.
I immediately texted. Are you in NY?
No he answered.
How is this little card in your writing?
His answer was mail
followed an hour later by comma
and much later that night snail.
...and that was it. Totally weird and very...Mark.
For ten days I tended the flowers after work, picking out the wilted stems and thinking about us before all the shit happened, before anger and money snuffed us out of each other’s lives.
I made his birthday my deadline for a return overture, and I kept the little card in my wallet for luck.
*
What he sent next wasn't a big pollen bomb. It was a brilliant coral orchid in a glass cylinder, with a long strip of green leaf winding up the side like a helix.
The card said:
An orch-id from a dork-kid
The flower uncannily mimicked both lionfish spikes and lady parts. I expected it to kill me allergy-wise but it turned out to be only mildly irritating.
It was sort of like having Mark around.
I fell a little bit in love with it, really. It smelled like vanilla at night, and its beauty didn't translate into photographs but I took about a thousand trying.
It moved me to deliver a lengthy voicemail monologue.
“Hi, Mark. Um...this last thing you sent is...amazing. I wish you could see it. Are you ordering specific things? 'Cause I didn't think you knew stuff about flowers. Maybe you do. Maybe this is a long rambling message and...yeah. Anyway, thanks. Do you think we'll ever talk again? I, um, hope we do. Okay, bye.”
Terrible. I hit four to erase and re-record. Take two made me sound nervous and young upon re-listen, and I was in the middle of a third try when a call from Mark cut in.
“Hello?”
“You're floundering around in my voicemail.”
“Yeah, I...was thanking you.”
“You're welcome.”
“I've never seen anything like it.”
“Neither have I. What are you doing next weekend?”
“Nothing...I don't know.”
“I'm coming to New York.”
Silence.
“Does that mean you're gonna call me?”
“Do you want me to?”
I made him wait for it. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I will.”
*
He came to my apartment the next Friday. The circuitous to-do list rattled in my head: today was the day, my watch was correct, the doorman knew to let him in.
My stomach lurched when he knocked at the appointed time.
“Hi,” he said in the doorway.
“Hey,” I said. “Come in.”
His shoulders were broader and his jawline squarer; he looked more like a man than the borderline boy I remembered. An oxford shirt peeked out from the throat of his coat and I wondered if that was for my benefit because I'd purposely dressed down for him.
“These are for you.”
He handed over a vase of streaked French tulips, which I held out front like a kicking infant I didn't know how to hold. “Wow, thanks.”
It was hard to look at him, so I concentrated on the flowers instead. Their dusty stamens quaked inside their cups as if to say we are gonna fuck you up, mister. Flowers that start as bulbs are my kryptonite, so I set them in the furthest corner of the living room and formulated a plan to get away.
“You want the grand tour?”
“Sure.”
Most of the apartment was visible from where we stood, but we walked through the rest with wooden politeness. It took about ten steps to know that my old mute affection was still intact. The familiarity of his height in my periphery is what did it. That and his eyes.
“I see you're not spending your money, either,” he said, stepping into my bare bedroom with his hands in his pockets. “You were for a while, though, right? I heard things.”
“Yeah...it wasn't that much fun.”
“How'd you end up here? Like this?”
“I dunno.”
“Sure you do. Something must've tipped you over the edge. I've seen you sail over that edge.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
Mark swallowed and got sticky and awkward. “I'm actually interested to hear what happened.”
“Okay. When I was in Singapore, I flew Caraceni's master tailor in from Milan. To take my measurements.”
Mark looked appropriately disgusted.
“I know, right? Anyway there was an accident on the airport off-ramp, and...he almost died. He actually did die for a minute.”
“Huh.”
“If I hadn't been vain and indulgent it wouldn't have happened, and...I still think about it. All the time.”
“That's sad.”
“Yeah. I wrote his family a check and moved here. To try out a normal life, I guess.”
“How's that going?”
“It's okay.”
“It's funny how money doesn't mean what people think it does,” Mark said, and the rest of his small talk whipped past like traffic. My head felt swimmy and thick and the foreshocks of a major sneeze started brewing all the way down in my shoes.
He looked up like it was my turn to talk, so I asked, “Um...so are you here for business or fam...”
“I'm here to see you. Wardo, I just said that.”
“I missed it. Could you say it again?”
“Are you being facetious?”
“Not at all.”
“'Cause if you think trying to rebuild our friendship is hilarious, I'll go.”
“No, don't. Uh...waitaminute...”
I sneezed. Huge. So huge it felt like it shredded something in my pipes somewhere.
“Wow.”
“I'm okay,” I said, and a long cord of fluid spilled out my nose. “Sorry. Hang on.” I snorted and spat in the bathroom sink.
Mark followed and looked curious. “Are you sick? There's an Emergen-C in my bag if you want it.”
I caught another rill of snot with a wad of tissues. “No. I'm just really allergic.”
“To tulips?”
“To pollen.”
It confused him. “So you were allergic to the other stuff I sent?”
“The orchid not so much, but...”
“Why the hell didn't you tell me to quit sending you flowers?”
I swayed and hid behind the fistful of Kleenex. “Because I liked getting things from you.”
He opened his mouth to speak and I sneezed again, one of those half-an-orgasm sneezes that's actually fun when you're not feeling out a reconciliation with your nemesis asshole soul-mate or whatever.
“This is ridiculous.”
He went to the living room and picked up the vase with unnecessary roughness.
“Don't...”
“They're just flowers. I'm dumping it.”
“There's a trash chute down the hall. No, wait! You can't put glass in it!”
He grabbed the tulips by their necks and pulled.
“Wait! Let me take a picture!”
He dropped them back into their water. “Okay. Do that and get me a marker.”
The picture I took makes me laugh to this day because Mark's sniffing a Sharpie in the background. He used it to make a little sign and set the vase in the trash room with a post-it declaring:
THIS BELONGS TO YOU NOW.
He came back tapping a fingertip on his phone and I ragged him a little. “No way. Are you that guy now? The guy with the phone?”
“No. You know that fake magazine on the plane? I read that the Ritz Carlton ozone-shocks their rooms.”
“I don't know what that means.”
“It makes it hypoallergenic. We should go.” He looked up with clear, bright eyes. “There's probably residual crap in there air here, don't you think?”
*
He got us a suite overlooking Central Park, complete with a silver telescope to spy out the window.
“I hope this is okay,” he said with a compressed sort of confidence.
We dropped our bags by the door and shyly followed each other around the plush rooms - a living room, dining room, and two bedrooms, one with a fireplace and one with a view. What was this, anyway? More apology? A romantic overture? Awkward, nameless weirdness that Mark hadn't thought through at all?
I sneezed.
“There's probably still pollen in your hair,” Mark said. “There's probably all kinds of stuff in that hair.”
“You should talk,” I said, because his curls had a certain gloss they never used to. “You've succumbed to product use. I can tell.”
“My point was it wouldn't be weird if you took a shower.”
“Fine.” I brazenly undid three buttons and enjoyed his slight alarm. “I will.”
The bathroom was paved with warm ivory marble, and stepping under the water, I realized I'd forgotten the luxury of, well, luxury. The water pressure was awesome. Even the soap was awesome. How insane was this, showering with Mark a wall away. He’d come all that way to see me. Maybe we could call room service for caviar and a bottle of Armand de Brignac. Maybe...
“Don't freak out.” Mark's voice rang through the tiled room, and a heavy bathrobe landed with a thump on the floor.
I could have stayed there for hours, but I dried off, wrapped up, and stepped out into whatever in the hell was going to happen next. I don't think Mark even knew, and I found him looking down at the park with a drink in his hand, a few stray pistachio shells between the couch and the window.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah. This is so nice. Thanks.” I slung an arm over his shoulder. He always dismissed my lapses into physical contact as “cultural,” and I wondered if he still would.
“Wow. Aggressive much?”
“If anybody threw down the gauntlet it's you, asshole.”
“Asshole. Nice.”
“Think about it. You show up with flowers and an hour later you've got me at the Ritz in a fucking bathrobe.”
“Touché,” he said with the first smile I'd seen in years, and my God his dimples are more powerful than a tire iron. “Maybe I'll clean up, too. Give me ten minutes.”
When the water started up I uncorked a bottle of red from the wet bar and sat on the couch. Mark was on Pacific time, but we'd have to eat eventually. Would we stay in? Would we go out? My clothes were still piled on the bathroom floor, and I decided to see how much cash I had because God knew where our night was headed and it was possible Mark's pockets contained Starburst squares and loose change.
“It's just me,” I said into the thick humidity of the bathroom, though Mark was directly under the shower head and didn't seem to hear. His outline had changed from skinny to softly muscled, and there was something on his shoulder - like a dark smudge.
I crept out with my wallet unnoticed.
Soon after he exited the bathroom a crested bathrobe like mine, his curls damp and flat.
“How adorable,” I said, fortified by a glass and a half of wine. “We match!”
“I'll pretend you didn't just say that.” He brought over his pistachio bowl and asked, “Do you need dinner?”
“Yeah, whenever.”
“Let's finish cocktail hour first.” He gave his drink a generous top off and we sat together in total silence, save the New York street noise that not even five stars can insulate against.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Mm?”
“What's that thing on your back?”
Mark flushed red. “How did you know about that?”
“I went into the bathroom to get my wallet and saw it.”
“It's nothing.”
“Is it, like, a...tattoo or something?”
“No.”
“Yes it is. Show me.”
“I don't want to.”
I could think of nothing Mark cared about so much that he'd have it sunk into his skin. “Why not?”
“Because you'll freak out.”
“Is it a 'Wardo 4 Ever' tattoo?”
“No.”
“Then I won't freak out. Come on.” I punched his arm. “Come on!”
“Okay, but I'm only doing this to shut you up.” He turned sideways and pulled his robe down just far enough to see.
It was the algorithm.
I felt pinpricks all over. It was written in black ink on Mark's pale skin, and in a hand that was terribly familiar. “How...how is it in my writing?”
“I took a picture of the Kirkland window because I wanted to remember it.”
“Um...” I struggled to keep my vow not to freak out. “Can I...” I touched it without permission. Those were my sloppy fours, my hurried lines. “Holy shit.”
“It's not a big deal,” he insisted. I pulled him around to face me, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. “It feels like you're maybe freaking out right now.”
“No. I...like it.” I leaned in to press a dry, safe kiss on his lips, but then we somehow got locked into a tongue-heavy competition to suck the breath out of each other. His pulse hammered under my thumb on his neck, and one of his hands found my bare leg and squeezed.
He tasted like Booker's and the impulse was to drag him to bed. Instead, I pulled his robe back over his shoulder and sank back into my own space the couch.
“I'm done freaking out now.”
“Huh. That was weird.”
“It was incredibly weird.”
“So weird,” Mark said. “I wonder if it was a fluke.”
“We should try it again sometime.”
“Right. To see if it was or not.” Mark sat back and paradoxically seemed to relax.
I'd always thought a proper, outright seduction of Mark would take months. Now I calculated it would take about ten seconds, but there was a lot of shit we had to sort out first.
He seemed to sense that and stalled by shelling pistachios. He cracked one for me, then one for himself.
“About the dilution,” he said twenty nuts later. “I wanted to make a point but I didn't think about how thoroughly it would fuck things up for you. I have since, though. A lot.”
“Good.”
He tossed a tightly closed one back into the bowl. “The years between then and now have been like dog years. And I'm bad at a lot of things. Basically anything to do with people.”
“That's like...everything, though.”
“Yeah, I'm aware. The more important the person is the worse I am. So I'm sorry, Wardo. I really am.”
He let me touch his knee. Over and over while I thought of what to say. “There's a lot of stuff I wanna say to you, but I'll need time. And probably scratch paper.”
“That's fine.”
“Maybe let's get used to each other for now and have the big ugly talk later.”
“Or never?”
“Mark...”
“I know,” he said, and took his leg away. “Don't say it. I know.”
He got up to fiddle with the telescope and lighten the subject. “You haven't lived here in spring yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Central Park's gonna explode in about a month.”
“Like Cloverfield?”
“No, dumbass. Flowering trees.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“You should definitely come visit. California's allergen-free.”
“It can't be.”
Mark shrugged. “You should still come out.”
He knew that was huge and wouldn’t look up.
I got up and walked over to join him. He touched my arm but then stuffed his hand in his pocket. “I'm so bad at this,” he said.
“It's only weird when you make it weird.”
“That's kind of what I do, though.”
“I know you do. Hey, come here.” He let me put my arms around his neck and study his face, and he even hooked a finger in my robe tie. “Mark.”
“What.”
“If you and I are going to be friends or whatever there's something you should know.”
“Okay.”
“I'm deeply allergic to you being an asshole. So you can't do that with me anymore, okay?”
His eyes were a million miles away.
“Mark? Are you even listening to me?”
“I'm trying to think of the name of that thing where you're bombarded with huge amounts of what you're allergic to and then you're not allergic anymore.”
“Don't be cute. Please.”
“Sorry,” he said. The dimples made an appearance and he stepped closer.
“So?”
He tilted his head and feigned deep thought. “I think we can probably work around it.”
Recipient: aredblush
Prompt Number: 102
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3164
Disclaimer: This fanwork is based on fictional representations of the characters in The Social Network; I make no claims of ownership of the characters or concepts.
Prompt scenario: Mark sends Wardo flowers to say he's sorry. Wardo is very allergic to pollen, but he pretends he's not because he likes when Mark gives him things.
Notes: POV: Eduardo. Many, many thanks to A. for beta assistance!
The day of Mark's tectonic gesture, Manhattan's buildings formed a breath-sucking wind tunnel of sharp, cold air. There was no way around it - the pewter sky was merciless as air currents wrecked umbrellas and stole receipts.
This was preferable to the equatorial warmth of Singapore. Aside from the final conscience-rattling incident that prompted my relocation to New York, I'm not proud of the time spent playing with my settlement. I’m not proud of 50k bar tabs racked up with people I don't remember, nor of the fucking custom GJ Cleverly shoes I had to have in bright green.
I landed in New York yoked with a Möbius strip of guilt and resentment about the money, so I quit spending it and got a real job.
Forgetting about Mark and the money was impossible, though. For one thing, it was hard to forget that I'd fallen asleep on the shoulder of and done laundry with Time's Person of the Year. For another, Facebook's everywhere.
My great aunt’s on it. The bodega I like that sells fucking brigadeiros is on it.
*
So on the shitty March day, the lobby of my apartment building was a warm relief after having my face burned and ass kicked by wind. A massive flower arrangement was off to the side of the security guy's post, and it was so big I made a joke.
“Did I walk into the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria by accident?”
“Funny you should say that. It's for you.”
“You're kidding.”
“Nope. Can you carry it by yourself?”
I wrestled it into the elevator and up to my apartment.
The tiny card on a plastic spike said:
Eduardo,
Please accept this totally inadequate token of apology.
I've been terrible to you & I'm sorry.
M.Z.
A phone number was on the back.
It was the strangest development maybe ever.
Mark sent flowers.
Mark was sorry.
I'm really allergic to pollen, but the situation was surreal enough to imply cosmic immunity. There were roses in every color, spikes of purple stuff, and stems that exploded into graduated pairs of heart-shaped flowers. It was crazy. It was beautiful, but my eyes started itching and I couldn't swallow enough. I probably should've thrown it out, but...I mean, it was from Mark. I'd dragged my unexamined emotional baggage for that guy across the planet and back.
I talked myself into and out of calling him while assembling a pathetic dinner and sneezing a lot. The bouquet seemed to gain strength the longer it was in my apartment. It was like a roommate that I loved and hated.
It was kind of like having Mark around.
Soon I was drowning in my own fluids and so uncomfortable that I brought the vase back downstairs. The security guy was nice enough to let me keep it there so I could see it but not live with it.
On my way back up in the elevator, I looked at the card again and realized it was in Mark's cramped handwriting.
I immediately texted. Are you in NY?
No he answered.
How is this little card in your writing?
His answer was mail
followed an hour later by comma
and much later that night snail.
...and that was it. Totally weird and very...Mark.
For ten days I tended the flowers after work, picking out the wilted stems and thinking about us before all the shit happened, before anger and money snuffed us out of each other’s lives.
I made his birthday my deadline for a return overture, and I kept the little card in my wallet for luck.
*
What he sent next wasn't a big pollen bomb. It was a brilliant coral orchid in a glass cylinder, with a long strip of green leaf winding up the side like a helix.
The card said:
An orch-id from a dork-kid
The flower uncannily mimicked both lionfish spikes and lady parts. I expected it to kill me allergy-wise but it turned out to be only mildly irritating.
It was sort of like having Mark around.
I fell a little bit in love with it, really. It smelled like vanilla at night, and its beauty didn't translate into photographs but I took about a thousand trying.
It moved me to deliver a lengthy voicemail monologue.
“Hi, Mark. Um...this last thing you sent is...amazing. I wish you could see it. Are you ordering specific things? 'Cause I didn't think you knew stuff about flowers. Maybe you do. Maybe this is a long rambling message and...yeah. Anyway, thanks. Do you think we'll ever talk again? I, um, hope we do. Okay, bye.”
Terrible. I hit four to erase and re-record. Take two made me sound nervous and young upon re-listen, and I was in the middle of a third try when a call from Mark cut in.
“Hello?”
“You're floundering around in my voicemail.”
“Yeah, I...was thanking you.”
“You're welcome.”
“I've never seen anything like it.”
“Neither have I. What are you doing next weekend?”
“Nothing...I don't know.”
“I'm coming to New York.”
Silence.
“Does that mean you're gonna call me?”
“Do you want me to?”
I made him wait for it. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I will.”
*
He came to my apartment the next Friday. The circuitous to-do list rattled in my head: today was the day, my watch was correct, the doorman knew to let him in.
My stomach lurched when he knocked at the appointed time.
“Hi,” he said in the doorway.
“Hey,” I said. “Come in.”
His shoulders were broader and his jawline squarer; he looked more like a man than the borderline boy I remembered. An oxford shirt peeked out from the throat of his coat and I wondered if that was for my benefit because I'd purposely dressed down for him.
“These are for you.”
He handed over a vase of streaked French tulips, which I held out front like a kicking infant I didn't know how to hold. “Wow, thanks.”
It was hard to look at him, so I concentrated on the flowers instead. Their dusty stamens quaked inside their cups as if to say we are gonna fuck you up, mister. Flowers that start as bulbs are my kryptonite, so I set them in the furthest corner of the living room and formulated a plan to get away.
“You want the grand tour?”
“Sure.”
Most of the apartment was visible from where we stood, but we walked through the rest with wooden politeness. It took about ten steps to know that my old mute affection was still intact. The familiarity of his height in my periphery is what did it. That and his eyes.
“I see you're not spending your money, either,” he said, stepping into my bare bedroom with his hands in his pockets. “You were for a while, though, right? I heard things.”
“Yeah...it wasn't that much fun.”
“How'd you end up here? Like this?”
“I dunno.”
“Sure you do. Something must've tipped you over the edge. I've seen you sail over that edge.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
Mark swallowed and got sticky and awkward. “I'm actually interested to hear what happened.”
“Okay. When I was in Singapore, I flew Caraceni's master tailor in from Milan. To take my measurements.”
Mark looked appropriately disgusted.
“I know, right? Anyway there was an accident on the airport off-ramp, and...he almost died. He actually did die for a minute.”
“Huh.”
“If I hadn't been vain and indulgent it wouldn't have happened, and...I still think about it. All the time.”
“That's sad.”
“Yeah. I wrote his family a check and moved here. To try out a normal life, I guess.”
“How's that going?”
“It's okay.”
“It's funny how money doesn't mean what people think it does,” Mark said, and the rest of his small talk whipped past like traffic. My head felt swimmy and thick and the foreshocks of a major sneeze started brewing all the way down in my shoes.
He looked up like it was my turn to talk, so I asked, “Um...so are you here for business or fam...”
“I'm here to see you. Wardo, I just said that.”
“I missed it. Could you say it again?”
“Are you being facetious?”
“Not at all.”
“'Cause if you think trying to rebuild our friendship is hilarious, I'll go.”
“No, don't. Uh...waitaminute...”
I sneezed. Huge. So huge it felt like it shredded something in my pipes somewhere.
“Wow.”
“I'm okay,” I said, and a long cord of fluid spilled out my nose. “Sorry. Hang on.” I snorted and spat in the bathroom sink.
Mark followed and looked curious. “Are you sick? There's an Emergen-C in my bag if you want it.”
I caught another rill of snot with a wad of tissues. “No. I'm just really allergic.”
“To tulips?”
“To pollen.”
It confused him. “So you were allergic to the other stuff I sent?”
“The orchid not so much, but...”
“Why the hell didn't you tell me to quit sending you flowers?”
I swayed and hid behind the fistful of Kleenex. “Because I liked getting things from you.”
He opened his mouth to speak and I sneezed again, one of those half-an-orgasm sneezes that's actually fun when you're not feeling out a reconciliation with your nemesis asshole soul-mate or whatever.
“This is ridiculous.”
He went to the living room and picked up the vase with unnecessary roughness.
“Don't...”
“They're just flowers. I'm dumping it.”
“There's a trash chute down the hall. No, wait! You can't put glass in it!”
He grabbed the tulips by their necks and pulled.
“Wait! Let me take a picture!”
He dropped them back into their water. “Okay. Do that and get me a marker.”
The picture I took makes me laugh to this day because Mark's sniffing a Sharpie in the background. He used it to make a little sign and set the vase in the trash room with a post-it declaring:
THIS BELONGS TO YOU NOW.
He came back tapping a fingertip on his phone and I ragged him a little. “No way. Are you that guy now? The guy with the phone?”
“No. You know that fake magazine on the plane? I read that the Ritz Carlton ozone-shocks their rooms.”
“I don't know what that means.”
“It makes it hypoallergenic. We should go.” He looked up with clear, bright eyes. “There's probably residual crap in there air here, don't you think?”
*
He got us a suite overlooking Central Park, complete with a silver telescope to spy out the window.
“I hope this is okay,” he said with a compressed sort of confidence.
We dropped our bags by the door and shyly followed each other around the plush rooms - a living room, dining room, and two bedrooms, one with a fireplace and one with a view. What was this, anyway? More apology? A romantic overture? Awkward, nameless weirdness that Mark hadn't thought through at all?
I sneezed.
“There's probably still pollen in your hair,” Mark said. “There's probably all kinds of stuff in that hair.”
“You should talk,” I said, because his curls had a certain gloss they never used to. “You've succumbed to product use. I can tell.”
“My point was it wouldn't be weird if you took a shower.”
“Fine.” I brazenly undid three buttons and enjoyed his slight alarm. “I will.”
The bathroom was paved with warm ivory marble, and stepping under the water, I realized I'd forgotten the luxury of, well, luxury. The water pressure was awesome. Even the soap was awesome. How insane was this, showering with Mark a wall away. He’d come all that way to see me. Maybe we could call room service for caviar and a bottle of Armand de Brignac. Maybe...
“Don't freak out.” Mark's voice rang through the tiled room, and a heavy bathrobe landed with a thump on the floor.
I could have stayed there for hours, but I dried off, wrapped up, and stepped out into whatever in the hell was going to happen next. I don't think Mark even knew, and I found him looking down at the park with a drink in his hand, a few stray pistachio shells between the couch and the window.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yeah. This is so nice. Thanks.” I slung an arm over his shoulder. He always dismissed my lapses into physical contact as “cultural,” and I wondered if he still would.
“Wow. Aggressive much?”
“If anybody threw down the gauntlet it's you, asshole.”
“Asshole. Nice.”
“Think about it. You show up with flowers and an hour later you've got me at the Ritz in a fucking bathrobe.”
“Touché,” he said with the first smile I'd seen in years, and my God his dimples are more powerful than a tire iron. “Maybe I'll clean up, too. Give me ten minutes.”
When the water started up I uncorked a bottle of red from the wet bar and sat on the couch. Mark was on Pacific time, but we'd have to eat eventually. Would we stay in? Would we go out? My clothes were still piled on the bathroom floor, and I decided to see how much cash I had because God knew where our night was headed and it was possible Mark's pockets contained Starburst squares and loose change.
“It's just me,” I said into the thick humidity of the bathroom, though Mark was directly under the shower head and didn't seem to hear. His outline had changed from skinny to softly muscled, and there was something on his shoulder - like a dark smudge.
I crept out with my wallet unnoticed.
Soon after he exited the bathroom a crested bathrobe like mine, his curls damp and flat.
“How adorable,” I said, fortified by a glass and a half of wine. “We match!”
“I'll pretend you didn't just say that.” He brought over his pistachio bowl and asked, “Do you need dinner?”
“Yeah, whenever.”
“Let's finish cocktail hour first.” He gave his drink a generous top off and we sat together in total silence, save the New York street noise that not even five stars can insulate against.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Mm?”
“What's that thing on your back?”
Mark flushed red. “How did you know about that?”
“I went into the bathroom to get my wallet and saw it.”
“It's nothing.”
“Is it, like, a...tattoo or something?”
“No.”
“Yes it is. Show me.”
“I don't want to.”
I could think of nothing Mark cared about so much that he'd have it sunk into his skin. “Why not?”
“Because you'll freak out.”
“Is it a 'Wardo 4 Ever' tattoo?”
“No.”
“Then I won't freak out. Come on.” I punched his arm. “Come on!”
“Okay, but I'm only doing this to shut you up.” He turned sideways and pulled his robe down just far enough to see.
It was the algorithm.
I felt pinpricks all over. It was written in black ink on Mark's pale skin, and in a hand that was terribly familiar. “How...how is it in my writing?”
“I took a picture of the Kirkland window because I wanted to remember it.”
“Um...” I struggled to keep my vow not to freak out. “Can I...” I touched it without permission. Those were my sloppy fours, my hurried lines. “Holy shit.”
“It's not a big deal,” he insisted. I pulled him around to face me, but he wouldn't meet my eyes. “It feels like you're maybe freaking out right now.”
“No. I...like it.” I leaned in to press a dry, safe kiss on his lips, but then we somehow got locked into a tongue-heavy competition to suck the breath out of each other. His pulse hammered under my thumb on his neck, and one of his hands found my bare leg and squeezed.
He tasted like Booker's and the impulse was to drag him to bed. Instead, I pulled his robe back over his shoulder and sank back into my own space the couch.
“I'm done freaking out now.”
“Huh. That was weird.”
“It was incredibly weird.”
“So weird,” Mark said. “I wonder if it was a fluke.”
“We should try it again sometime.”
“Right. To see if it was or not.” Mark sat back and paradoxically seemed to relax.
I'd always thought a proper, outright seduction of Mark would take months. Now I calculated it would take about ten seconds, but there was a lot of shit we had to sort out first.
He seemed to sense that and stalled by shelling pistachios. He cracked one for me, then one for himself.
“About the dilution,” he said twenty nuts later. “I wanted to make a point but I didn't think about how thoroughly it would fuck things up for you. I have since, though. A lot.”
“Good.”
He tossed a tightly closed one back into the bowl. “The years between then and now have been like dog years. And I'm bad at a lot of things. Basically anything to do with people.”
“That's like...everything, though.”
“Yeah, I'm aware. The more important the person is the worse I am. So I'm sorry, Wardo. I really am.”
He let me touch his knee. Over and over while I thought of what to say. “There's a lot of stuff I wanna say to you, but I'll need time. And probably scratch paper.”
“That's fine.”
“Maybe let's get used to each other for now and have the big ugly talk later.”
“Or never?”
“Mark...”
“I know,” he said, and took his leg away. “Don't say it. I know.”
He got up to fiddle with the telescope and lighten the subject. “You haven't lived here in spring yet, have you?”
“No.”
“Central Park's gonna explode in about a month.”
“Like Cloverfield?”
“No, dumbass. Flowering trees.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“You should definitely come visit. California's allergen-free.”
“It can't be.”
Mark shrugged. “You should still come out.”
He knew that was huge and wouldn’t look up.
I got up and walked over to join him. He touched my arm but then stuffed his hand in his pocket. “I'm so bad at this,” he said.
“It's only weird when you make it weird.”
“That's kind of what I do, though.”
“I know you do. Hey, come here.” He let me put my arms around his neck and study his face, and he even hooked a finger in my robe tie. “Mark.”
“What.”
“If you and I are going to be friends or whatever there's something you should know.”
“Okay.”
“I'm deeply allergic to you being an asshole. So you can't do that with me anymore, okay?”
His eyes were a million miles away.
“Mark? Are you even listening to me?”
“I'm trying to think of the name of that thing where you're bombarded with huge amounts of what you're allergic to and then you're not allergic anymore.”
“Don't be cute. Please.”
“Sorry,” he said. The dimples made an appearance and he stepped closer.
“So?”
He tilted his head and feigned deep thought. “I think we can probably work around it.”