CHAPTER FIVE
FROM: Mark
i’m sorry about yesterday
TO: Mark
??
FROM: Mark
laying all that shit on you. about my dad and school and whatever
TO: Mark
It’s okay. I’m a good listener.
FROM: Mark
i noticed :) what are you doing
TO: Mark
Now?
FROM: Mark
yeah. i’m bored
TO: Mark
I’m working
FROM: Mark
damn
TO: Mark
I can still talk, though.
FROM: Mark
can you facetime?
Uh… Elliot’s pretty sure he’s never FaceTimed with anyone, ever, and he’s not really sure now is the baptism of fire he needs. For one thing, he looks an absolute wreck, wearing a ratty pajama tee and his hair all over the place and these glasses, fuck, is he gonna have to put in his contacts? And for another, well—there’s literally no way he can do this without making a fool of himself somehow. It’s inevitable.
Still, when the call comes through, he accepts it anyway. There really wasn’t any chance he wouldn’t.
Mark’s grainy at first, the connection struggling to settle, and then he comes into view—all twinkle and grin, brightening the screen like a personal backlight. “Hey,” he says, so easily casual. Elliot falters.
“Um. Hi. Sorry about…you know. All of this.” He waves a hand to indicate the general state of himself.
Mark’s dazzling grin gets wider. “I’m not seeing anything wrong there,” he says, and was that—no. No? It wasn’t flirting. It couldn’t be.
Elliot can’t think of anything to say in response.
“Put me down somewhere,” Mark says. “So you can free your hands up for work.”
Elliot draws his eyebrows in. “You called me just to watch me work?”
“I called you because I wanted to chat to you, but I don’t want to interrupt too much.” His face slides into a smirk, unfairly sexy. “I’m not an asshole,” he says, recalling their first text conversation.
Elliot snorts. “Still undecided. I mean, you did eat most the pizza yesterday.”
Mark’s eyes go wide. “You said you’d had enough!”
“I was being polite.”
“Now you’re an asshole.”
It’s Elliot’s turn to flash a grin, which Mark returns. They fall into a brief quiet, during which Elliot props his phone against a stack of books on his desk and pulls his laptop closer, reawakening the screen and finding the last mock-up he saved.
“What do you do, exactly?” Mark asks him, voice lazy and soft, like he’s real comfortable right there, watching Elliot go about his business.
“Told you. I make websites.” He clicks through to the current WIP and looks for the code he’s working on. “It’s really not very interesting.”
“I think it is.”
Elliot looks away from the screen just long enough to raise an eyebrow.
“It means you’re smart,” Mark says. “And creative. It’s…”
He doesn’t finish saying what it is, and Elliot pauses with his fingers hovering over the laptop keyboard, his heart skipping a beat. “It’s what?” He tries to laugh it off, the ludicrous notion that Mark was about to say it’s sexy or hot or something equally as unlikely, and drawls, “It’s geeky?”
“Geeks are cool now, you know.”
Elliot snorts. “Sounds like geek PR.”
“Sounds like you like to give yourself a hard time.”
That brings Elliot up short. He chances a look at Mark, finds him wearing an expression far too abruptly serious. “This isn’t “analyze Elliot” hour,” he says, and Mark looks at him, silent. There’s a soft glow about him, lamplight maybe, and a flickering to his left like a TV. Elliot wonders which of his sixteen living rooms he’s chilling in, and whether he feels like he’s sitting in a museum. All of a sudden, Elliot wants to collapse on his own sofa and get snuggly.
“Who do you build websites for?” Mark asks, smoothly changing the subject. Elliot appreciates it, even if there was something weirdly compelling about the personal route the previous conversation was taking. Like Mark’s interested in him—how he works, what he’s made from. No one’s ever really interested in him.
“Pretty much anyone who pays me,” he quips. “Right now it’s a pharmaceutical company out in Atlanta.”
“And do you like…pharmaceuticals?”
Mark’s attempt to be painfully polite almost has Elliot laughing. He levels him a flat look instead. “Does anyone?”
“Well, pharmacists.”
“This is a thrilling subject.”
“Just trying to get a bit of that wall down.”
“What wall?” says Elliot. “I don’t have a wall.”
Mark’s unflinching expression remains unchanged, and now Elliot’s having a panic about his apparent wall. Is he all closed off and unapproachable? Is he cold? For god’s sake, is he just a blank wall of nothing?
“I just meant you’re a little guarded,” Mark explains, as if he can read the mental thoughts racing through Elliot’s brain. “You don’t give much away.”
“Neither do you.”
“I told you my tragic high school story pretty much right away,” Mark deadpans. “And all about the injury that ruined my career.”
Well…okay. Fair point. “I told you stuff,” Elliot argues anyway. He’s really not getting anywhere with the code he’s meant to be writing, so he pushes the laptop away a little and leans back in his chair, picks up the phone to bring Mark closer. “About my marriage and kid and…stuff. I,” he says, “am an open book.”
Mark’s eyes glitter with amusement. “How’s your love life?” he asks, and Elliot shuts down immediately.
“We don’t need to talk about that,” he says, trying for casual. Mark laughs.
“Like I said.”
“Yeah, well,” grumbles Elliot, like a petulant teenager facing a lecture from a parent, “what about you?”
Mark shifts his weight a little, making the screen momentarily shaky. When the picture clears, it’s obvious he’s settled himself into a more comfortable position. “You can ask me anything.”
“This isn’t an interview.”
“You scared of getting to know someone, Elliot Spencer?”
“I was right,” Elliot says, narrowing his eyes in the face of Mark’s apparent humor, “you are an asshole.”
It makes Mark laugh again at least, and Elliot lets the warm glow of achievement spread through his bones.
“I like you,” Mark declares. His smile turns soft. “I’ve always liked you.”
Elliot doesn’t know what to do with that information, or even how he should take it. His immediate instinct, as ever, is dry humor: “You’ve just got low standards.”
“My standards are fine,” Mark says, eyes twinkling. “Where are these questions you were gonna ask me?”
“That was your idea, not mine.”
“I’ll ask you some things then.”
“I’ll end the call.”
“No you won’t.”
No he won’t. “I’m gonna move to the couch,” Elliot says. “Hold on.”
“What happened to work?”
Elliot gives him a look that says exactly what happened to work, and Mark winces. “Sorry,” he says. “You got a deadline?”
“Eh.” Elliot waves it off, chucks an Xbox controller off his favorite couch cushion and collapses, groaning as the couch takes his weight and his back relaxes into the soft snugness.
Mark’s watching him with a smile in his eyes. “Better?”
“Mm, better.” Elliot closes his eyes a moment, feeling the tension of a day’s work washing out of his bones. “Now if only I could have someone here to get me a beer.”
“That’s why we’ve got kids, dude,” Mark says. Elliot opens his eyes and looks at him.
“Sammy’s at his dad’s for the evening.
“He go there a lot?”
“Yeah. We’ve kinda got this co-parenting thing on lock. Although he’s more “fun uncle”, if I’m honest.”
Mark looks like he wants to say something about that, a soft frown marring his features, but in the end he goes with, “How did it come about? You having a kid.”
“Surrogate,” Elliot says. “A friend.”
Mark nods. “Sammy, is he…” He trails off with a hint of awkwardness in his tone, like he thinks it’s an invasive question. And it is, but Elliot doesn’t mind.
“Is he mine? We’ve never found out.” And he’s never really wanted to. They made a decision to use both sperm, with the agreement that they would never look into whose DNA the baby carried. Even if Elliot could find out now, with no fuss or effort, he wouldn’t. Sammy’s his, heart and soul—even if, biologically, he might not be.
Mark reads him, gives a soft smile. “It wouldn’t make a difference either way, though.”
“Nope.”
“I think he looks like you.”
Elliot snorts. “Poor kid,” he says, and Mark’s eyes gleam in the lamplight.
“I wouldn’t say that.” He pauses, and then: “You wanna come over? Watch a movie or something?” He shifts a little in his seat, a rosy hue upon his cheeks just visible in the video.
Elliot’s stomach twists. “Really?”
“Sure,” says Mark, shrugging like it’s no big deal. And maybe for him it’s not—it’s just two guys hanging out. But for Elliot, it’s anxiety. And it’s anticipation. And it’s his mouth running dry and his heartbeat stuttering. “The night’s still young, right?”
It’s not—not really. It’s, like, eleven p.m., or somewhere thereabouts. But his kid’s gone for the night, and Mark Kade wants to spend time with him. He’s got his keys in hand thirty seconds later, stopping just long enough to check his hair and throw on a shirt.
* * * * *
The opening credits of Kingsman: The Secret Service are already playing on Mark’s massive TV when Elliot arrives and settles, somewhat awkwardly, on the Olympic-sized couch.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Mark says, handing him a beer. “We can watch something else if you want.”
Elliot couldn’t give less of a fuck about what they watch if he tried. “I’ve been meaning to see this one,” he lies, and offers what he hopes is an approximation of a smile.
Mark sits next to him. Like, there’s a lot of space on this couch. An entire sports team could fit on this couch. But Mark chooses the seat directly next to Elliot, just to torment him with the heat of his proximity. Maybe. More likely he’s not given his chosen seat a second thought or the affect it has on Elliot, but whatever. Elliot’s gonna hold his breath for the majority of the film anyway.
They get halfway through and three beers in before Elliot remembers he’s driving and declines a fourth, which is about when he realizes something else: “Where’s Wade tonight?” he asks, just as a head blows up on the screen.
“Asleep, I hope,” says Mark, and oh yeah, it’s gone midnight. Mark holds out a bag of chips; Elliot can feel Mark’s hand wrapped around the bag as he digs in to grab a couple. It’s a weird sensation.
When the movie ends, Mark asks him if he wants to go out back, like that’s a totally normal thing to do. “I’ve got a pretty sweet deck,” he says, “and it’s a nice night.” Which, you know—said by anyone else, in any other situation, could be construed as romance.
Elliot swallows and nods and Mark smiles, holds it a moment, then leads Elliot through the house. “Go on out,” Mark says once they’re in the violently white kitchen. “I’ll get some coffee on.”
Coffee. Good. Elliot’s feeling a little woozy—although he’s not sure if that’s entirely down to the three beers.
He pushes open the patio doors and steps outside. Soft lighting sparks up as he moves across the deck to a few seating options lining the lawn. After some painful deliberation, he settles on the swing chair, leans back and looks up at the stars. The moon’s bright tonight, only partly shielded by a soft veil of clouds, and everything around him rests in complete silence. The bare whisper of a breeze against the trees is all he can hear. It’s…kinda heavenly.
Mark appears, two steaming mugs in hand. He smiles at Elliot and sits beside him, hands him a mug. For a long minute, they sit in the quiet and sip their drinks, letting the beauty of night cloak them. Mark kicks off against the ground a little, and the chair starts a gentle swing. They smile at each other, Mark’s eyes shining in the milky light of the moon.
“It’s nice here,” Elliot says, breaking the eye contact. He gazes out at a tree rustling in the breeze and brings the mug to his lips, takes another warming sip. “I think the house is growing on me.”
Mark hums. “I kinda hate it.”
“You can afford to hate it.”
Mark, tutting, asks, “Would you live here?”
Well…no. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t any less impressive. To visit. To view. To enjoy for a few hours, and then leave before he gets lost in it.
Mark knows what he’s thinking. He raises an eyebrow and drawls, “Exactly.”
“All right, so what would you prefer?”
Sighing wistfully, Mark kicks the seat into renewed motion and settles back, cupping the warm mug to his chest as he gazes off into the middle distance. “Small,” he says. “Cozy. Warm. Light a fire and it heats up your whole house, you know?”
“Even with all your money?” Isn’t it, like, a law to live in huge ridiculous houses once you find fame? There has to be a reason why all these single celebrities buy thirteen-million-dollar mansions on the coast.
“Would you give up your house?” Mark asks him.
“Not if you paid me,” says Elliot. His house is approximately two foot wide and likely crumbling around the edges, but it’s his home, and it’s where he’s raised his son, and for a while there it was even where he enjoyed a happy marriage. And sure, it’s got its dark moments, too—that time he found out his happy marriage was a total sham, or the one terrifying night he went into Sammy’s room and found him not breathing. And maybe he’s shed a few too many tears in that house, or lost himself to dark thoughts while sitting in the bath—especially after his marriage, or in the years since when he’s forced to realize, painfully, quite how alone he is. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that the house holds the soul of him, and nothing in this world would make him give it up.
“Your house is cozy,” Mark observes quietly. “Warm.” And yeah, it is. It’s home.
He looks at Mark, at the moonlight gleaming off his features, highlighting the perfection of face, like he’s been painted. He’s such a beautiful man, and his voice is so soft in these moments, and he doesn’t flinch, not even a little bit, when Elliot looks into his eyes and holds him there.
Evenings like this are kinda magical, really.