![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
to sing of the damage: b-sides
This probably shouldn't be read without finishing the fic first, since it won't make sense out of context. And also has spoilers P:
The door of his office is closed. He doesn't say anything. He's typing on his computer.
You have always found the sound of his keyboard annoying. Clack clack clack. Clack. Jesus. You don't wonder what he's typing.
"I know you're there," he says. He's talking to his computer.
He's not talking to his computer. You snort. "I know," you say. "We don't have to talk to each other."
"And what, lose an opportunity to talk with my ex-best friend in the room?" He mumbles this.
No. This doesn't sound right.
"What if I want to?"
That doesn't sound right either.
Either way, you scoff. "I'm not sure if I'd believe that," you say. "Considering I sued you for over a half a million dollars."
You both know that.
His eyes are blue. You've never noticed. "You know I don't care about money," he says.
Is it an accusation? A reassurance?
His eyes are bluer than the light of the screen that shines against them. Outside, it is bright. Motes of dust swirl around the room. The office has glass walls.
"You should eat," you say.
He makes a noise. Of course.
It doesn't mean anything.
"Mark, for Christ's sake, you skipped breakfast. Get at least a snack."
He shoots you a glare. Blue. Electric. "Fine," he says, and pushes himself out of his chair. He walks around his desk and grabs something from the cafeteria.
"That was nice," you say.
He grunts.
"And you said thank you."
"I know those words, yes," he says. His laptop lid is up. Grey. Glittery.
You chuckle. "Haven't changed." He'd eaten tuna all the time. But of course that's not why they know his order. He is CEO,
Your back is to him. Evening has fallen. It rains a lot in California, which should be fucking annoying. It is, but to you it isn't. Rain isn't that great. You like the rain. It's not raining today.
When he comes in, you are already here. You don't flinch or look at him. He's not worth the effort.
"I don't regret it, you know," he says.
"Jesus, Mark." You put your head in your hands.
"If I needed to d--"
"You think I want to hear this?" You turn on him. "You think I want to talk about this now?"
His eyes are bright. He jerks his chin up. "Would you ever want to talk about it?"
You laugh, sort of. Comb a hand through your hair. It's shellacked. There's too much gel.
He almost forgets to eat dinner. It's two am.
"Order a pizza," you say from the middle of his kitchen. You're standing.
"Wardo, I don't think any pizza place is open at two in the morning."
"You're right next to Stanford."
He looks like he doesn't want to admit defeat. You remember getting food at odd hours at Harvard, with him. He bought candy because any time past midnight isn't considered a mealtime.
He doesn't offer you a slice of the pizza. You think about asking, but decide not to.
His house is not too big for you. He stuffs the pizza in his mouth while he codes. You watch him.
At least he is eating a meal, you think. Sunlight streams through his office blinds and filter through the dust motes. It hits him. It is brighter than the fluorescent of the deposition rooms, more tolerable.
You do not want to be here. "Do you regret it?" you ask.
"No," he answers.
He turns around to look at you.
But you were never there.
[He rings the doorbell, out of formality.]
“Mark, dear,” says his mom. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”
“I told you I would.” He rolls his eyes and heaves himself inside with his bags. “Can you help me with this?”
She tuts. “You’re a big boy, you can do it yourself,” she says with a smile.
He starts to make his way past her; but before he can, she grabs his face suddenly, looking deep into his eyes. “You’ve lost a lot of weight,” she observes. “And you look tired. Have you been eating?”
“Mom--”
“Have you been sleeping?”
“Yes, Mom, of course I’ve been sleeping,” he replies, annoyed. “Otherwise I’d be dead.” It’s not a good joke and he doesn’t care. He tries to push himself past her.
“Darling--”
“Tell me when it’s time for dinner,” he snaps, before storming to the guest room.
*
[A short time later, his mother calls for dinner. He groans from beside you on the bed, and you prod him on the shoulder. (...) He gets up from the chair, yawning and stuffing his hands in his pockets. You follow, never too far behind. He stiffens, but waves.] She calls him over for dinner; to everyone’s surprise, including himself, he comes. It’s Tuesday, and only Randi is back here for now, helping his mother set up the table. She nearly squeals when she sees him.
[Someone speaks.] “Hi!” she says, running over with an unprompted hug. He glances and waves at his dad over her shoulder; his dad is sitting at the table watching TV, though he grins when he sees him. “Mom said you were home, but I didn’t see you so I didn’t believe her.”
“You still shouldn’t believe her,” he deadpans. “I’m a ghost.”
She laughs and slings her arm around his shoulder. “I could believe it,” she says. “We haven’t seen you in over a year.”
“The only reason I knew you were still alive is because of your Facebook statuses,” says his mother from where she’s cooking dinner. “Isn’t that pathetic?”
He shrugs, sitting down at the table next to his father. “Not really. I built the site.”
“Yeah, yeah.” His sister punches his arm and tugs him out of the chair. “C’mon, help me and Mom set up the table.”
He pauses for a second.
“Okay.”
As they do, his father asks after how he’s doing, his mother chiming in questions and commentary every once in a while. It’s easy, almost too easy. There’s a palpable tension in the room, dancing around a topic they’re not sure they’re allowed to waltz on. He hates it and wants them to say something. He’s over it, mostly, really.
They don’t touch it at all over dinner. He stays quiet, only smiles in half moons and mostly moves around the food in his plate so it looks like he’s eaten.
When they’re done, his mother says she has to pick something up and Randi offers to go with her. His father cleans up the table and dishes, and predictably asks him to help. He does, not having much else to do.
He hands a plate to his father, who thanks him with a crooked smile before slotting it into the dish washing machine. “You know,” his father says, “at times like these, I wish I was your mother.”
Mark looks at him questioningly.
His father sighs. “We haven’t seen you since the--” he breaks off, slumps a shoulder. “Since the funeral. And now you come back and look like you haven’t eaten or slept since then--”
“I have,” Mark says defensively.
“I’m not saying that you haven’t,” says his father gently. “Just saying that it looks like you haven’t.”
Mark turns back to the dishes stiffly. He wants to leave, but knows that that’ll just tell his father otherwise. And he should finish helping him with the dishes; his father is old. He might die at any minute.
“Do you want to talk about it?” his dad asks.
Mark doesn’t look up as he gives him another dish. But his father doesn’t put it in the dishwasher again, just continues looking at him like that. Mark tries to hand him another bowl, but his father is watching him intently, waiting for an answer.
His parents are a couple of the only people who could see through Mark’s bullshit, at least some of the time. Denying it would be of no help, might make it worse, even.
“No,” Mark says.
His father sighs. “Okay.” He puts away the plate in his hand and takes Mark’s prooffered one. “Do you want to tell me why you put your stuff in the guest room, though?”
Mark doesn’t look at him as he sprays out food from another bowl. “No,” he says, again.
*
At least his sister doesn’t ask, drags him along for errands, talks about her boyfriend. The nice thing about being home again is that there aren’t empty spaces like there are in California, spaces where he used to think Eduardo and I should come here when he finally comes out or Eduardo would like this restaurant or passing along the streets that he used to drive with Eduardo, when he was in California, for the short times in 2003. There are no places like that at home.
He does see her hesitate, though. She takes him out for lunch the next day and says, “We have to get more meat on your body.”
“I’m fine,” he whines. “I’ve always been like this.”
She lifts up his bony wrist. “Really, Mark?” she says. “You haven’t.”
They go out for Indian at a place he’s been to countless times before. Eduardo would like this restaurant because they have an extra spicy curry option.
As they wait for their food, Randi asks, “How’ve you been? And you can tell me the truth now, since Mom and Dad aren’t around.”
“I’m.” He stops for a second. “Fine. Really.”
“Your assistant told me you had a panic attack and then asked to move your office downstairs and canceled your flight here for bus tickets, all on the same day.”
Randi’s eyebrow is arched toward him.
He snaps, “If you’ve already drawn conclusions, you can assume whatever you want instead of trying to make me say anything.” He drinks his water to avoid conversation, but it’s a feeble attempt.
She grabs his hand across the table. He scowls.
“Mark,” she says, and there’s an edge of worry in her tone. He hates it. “If you want to talk to me about it--”
“I would’ve,” he interrupts. “But I didn’t, so I don’t.”
She sighs and changes the topic.
*
[The door opens, a few days later.] The door to the guest room opens without preamble, and Mark spins from his chair so his laptop screen isn’t visible. It’s his mother, looking around at the mostly dusty furniture (they hadn’t cleaned it up, and he certainly wouldn’t either) before at him.
“Jesus!” he says, craning his laptop lid towards him. “Mom--Knock or something, I could’ve been naked!”
“Darling, I’m your mother, I’ve seen you naked.” She rolls her eyes and comes over to him. “What are you working on?”
He closes his laptop lid properly this time. “Nothing,” he says; it’s the truth.
It doesn’t sound like one, successfully. His mother looks disbelieving as she sits down on the couch in the guest study room.
“Can we talk?” she asks.
He props his laptop back open. “If you mean you talk while I listen, then sure,” he says.
“Honey--”
“I’m listening,” he says. When she’s silent, he glances up at her. “You know I am.”
She looks like she wants to pry the laptop out of his hands, but thinks better of it. “Mark, you’ve been acting like this, since,” she says. She bites her lip. “Since the settlement. And I don’t want to psychoanalyze you--”
“Too late.”
“Well, darling,” she presses on, “it’s obvious you’ve been depressed since then--”
He spins around in his chair.
“If you don’t want to hear the word, that’s fine,” she says to his back. “But you’re barely eating or drinking, you look like you haven’t slept in years--you look terrible, Mark--”
“Thank you,” he says sharply, “for making a comment on my appearance, Mom.”
She stands up and rests her palm on the back of his neck. She’s warm and it hurts, suddenly, a dull ache in the middle of the chest. He swallows the massive lump in his throat.
“We know you miss him,” she says. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
“I don’t have to.”
“But you should,” she says gently. “Have you talked to anyone else about it? Have you seen someone? We know you were at his funeral--it was in the news--”
“Great,” he says dryly. “I’m really glad you read the news.”
She spins him around again, making him look her dead in the eye. His own eyes are terrifying and bloodshot.
“You’ve been shutting us out ever since,” his mother says. “All of us. Even Chris and Dustin, too, I asked them--no one knows how you are, what you’ve been doing--”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“Busy with--” His gaze flickers down to his computer screen.
She takes his laptop without warning and looks at it. Her eyes widen at just the open textedit document -- jumbles of keysmashes, mostly, but littered with snippets of things like i miss you and remember the algorithm at kirkland Ea=1/(1+10[Rb-Ra]1400) Eb=1/(1+10[Ra-Rb]1400) and when was the last time you had indian food and do you know how to swim, did you try to before you drowned? and i’m a vegatarian now i can’t eat chicken. The scrollbar is tiny and seems to go on forever. She doesn’t even fight it when he snatches the laptop back, furious.
“Jesus fuck, Mom,” he says. He rarely swears at her.
“Mark--”
“Go play doctor on someone else,” he says, turning back to the desk. When she continues staring at his back, suddenly filled with a deep sorrow for him, his head tilts forward.
“Please,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.
BLOOPER 1: So this first part is the original first draft... I guess. I'd written it on my phone feverishly a few days I started it "actually," since it was only in fragments in my head and I wanted to see what I could get down just atmosphere-wise. Obviously I didn't use any of this in the actual fic, since I switched tactic and strategy. This is just a much cloudier version than the final draft (which is more grounded, I think) but lends a hand to an idea of how I wanted it to go.
The door of his office is closed. He doesn't say anything. He's typing on his computer.
You have always found the sound of his keyboard annoying. Clack clack clack. Clack. Jesus. You don't wonder what he's typing.
"I know you're there," he says. He's talking to his computer.
He's not talking to his computer. You snort. "I know," you say. "We don't have to talk to each other."
"And what, lose an opportunity to talk with my ex-best friend in the room?" He mumbles this.
No. This doesn't sound right.
"What if I want to?"
That doesn't sound right either.
Either way, you scoff. "I'm not sure if I'd believe that," you say. "Considering I sued you for over a half a million dollars."
You both know that.
His eyes are blue. You've never noticed. "You know I don't care about money," he says.
Is it an accusation? A reassurance?
His eyes are bluer than the light of the screen that shines against them. Outside, it is bright. Motes of dust swirl around the room. The office has glass walls.
"You should eat," you say.
He makes a noise. Of course.
It doesn't mean anything.
"Mark, for Christ's sake, you skipped breakfast. Get at least a snack."
He shoots you a glare. Blue. Electric. "Fine," he says, and pushes himself out of his chair. He walks around his desk and grabs something from the cafeteria.
"That was nice," you say.
He grunts.
"And you said thank you."
"I know those words, yes," he says. His laptop lid is up. Grey. Glittery.
You chuckle. "Haven't changed." He'd eaten tuna all the time. But of course that's not why they know his order. He is CEO,
Your back is to him. Evening has fallen. It rains a lot in California, which should be fucking annoying. It is, but to you it isn't. Rain isn't that great. You like the rain. It's not raining today.
When he comes in, you are already here. You don't flinch or look at him. He's not worth the effort.
"I don't regret it, you know," he says.
"Jesus, Mark." You put your head in your hands.
"If I needed to d--"
"You think I want to hear this?" You turn on him. "You think I want to talk about this now?"
His eyes are bright. He jerks his chin up. "Would you ever want to talk about it?"
You laugh, sort of. Comb a hand through your hair. It's shellacked. There's too much gel.
He almost forgets to eat dinner. It's two am.
"Order a pizza," you say from the middle of his kitchen. You're standing.
"Wardo, I don't think any pizza place is open at two in the morning."
"You're right next to Stanford."
He looks like he doesn't want to admit defeat. You remember getting food at odd hours at Harvard, with him. He bought candy because any time past midnight isn't considered a mealtime.
He doesn't offer you a slice of the pizza. You think about asking, but decide not to.
His house is not too big for you. He stuffs the pizza in his mouth while he codes. You watch him.
At least he is eating a meal, you think. Sunlight streams through his office blinds and filter through the dust motes. It hits him. It is brighter than the fluorescent of the deposition rooms, more tolerable.
You do not want to be here. "Do you regret it?" you ask.
"No," he answers.
BLOOPER 2: This is, also, how I wanted the fic originally to end.
He turns around to look at you.
But you were never there.
DELETED SCENE 1: these are a few "real time" scenes for what was actually happening, towards the end of the fic where Mark was visiting his family, so the dialogue and other parts of it are easier to understand with this post. I had written these first before the scenes in the fic; for clarification, Mark never speaks aloud the dialogue he "says" to Eduardo, only the things that he says to other people.
[He rings the doorbell, out of formality.]
“Mark, dear,” says his mom. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”
“I told you I would.” He rolls his eyes and heaves himself inside with his bags. “Can you help me with this?”
She tuts. “You’re a big boy, you can do it yourself,” she says with a smile.
He starts to make his way past her; but before he can, she grabs his face suddenly, looking deep into his eyes. “You’ve lost a lot of weight,” she observes. “And you look tired. Have you been eating?”
“Mom--”
“Have you been sleeping?”
“Yes, Mom, of course I’ve been sleeping,” he replies, annoyed. “Otherwise I’d be dead.” It’s not a good joke and he doesn’t care. He tries to push himself past her.
“Darling--”
“Tell me when it’s time for dinner,” he snaps, before storming to the guest room.
*
[A short time later, his mother calls for dinner. He groans from beside you on the bed, and you prod him on the shoulder. (...) He gets up from the chair, yawning and stuffing his hands in his pockets. You follow, never too far behind. He stiffens, but waves.] She calls him over for dinner; to everyone’s surprise, including himself, he comes. It’s Tuesday, and only Randi is back here for now, helping his mother set up the table. She nearly squeals when she sees him.
[Someone speaks.] “Hi!” she says, running over with an unprompted hug. He glances and waves at his dad over her shoulder; his dad is sitting at the table watching TV, though he grins when he sees him. “Mom said you were home, but I didn’t see you so I didn’t believe her.”
“You still shouldn’t believe her,” he deadpans. “I’m a ghost.”
She laughs and slings her arm around his shoulder. “I could believe it,” she says. “We haven’t seen you in over a year.”
“The only reason I knew you were still alive is because of your Facebook statuses,” says his mother from where she’s cooking dinner. “Isn’t that pathetic?”
He shrugs, sitting down at the table next to his father. “Not really. I built the site.”
“Yeah, yeah.” His sister punches his arm and tugs him out of the chair. “C’mon, help me and Mom set up the table.”
He pauses for a second.
“Okay.”
As they do, his father asks after how he’s doing, his mother chiming in questions and commentary every once in a while. It’s easy, almost too easy. There’s a palpable tension in the room, dancing around a topic they’re not sure they’re allowed to waltz on. He hates it and wants them to say something. He’s over it, mostly, really.
They don’t touch it at all over dinner. He stays quiet, only smiles in half moons and mostly moves around the food in his plate so it looks like he’s eaten.
When they’re done, his mother says she has to pick something up and Randi offers to go with her. His father cleans up the table and dishes, and predictably asks him to help. He does, not having much else to do.
He hands a plate to his father, who thanks him with a crooked smile before slotting it into the dish washing machine. “You know,” his father says, “at times like these, I wish I was your mother.”
Mark looks at him questioningly.
His father sighs. “We haven’t seen you since the--” he breaks off, slumps a shoulder. “Since the funeral. And now you come back and look like you haven’t eaten or slept since then--”
“I have,” Mark says defensively.
“I’m not saying that you haven’t,” says his father gently. “Just saying that it looks like you haven’t.”
Mark turns back to the dishes stiffly. He wants to leave, but knows that that’ll just tell his father otherwise. And he should finish helping him with the dishes; his father is old. He might die at any minute.
“Do you want to talk about it?” his dad asks.
Mark doesn’t look up as he gives him another dish. But his father doesn’t put it in the dishwasher again, just continues looking at him like that. Mark tries to hand him another bowl, but his father is watching him intently, waiting for an answer.
His parents are a couple of the only people who could see through Mark’s bullshit, at least some of the time. Denying it would be of no help, might make it worse, even.
“No,” Mark says.
His father sighs. “Okay.” He puts away the plate in his hand and takes Mark’s prooffered one. “Do you want to tell me why you put your stuff in the guest room, though?”
Mark doesn’t look at him as he sprays out food from another bowl. “No,” he says, again.
*
At least his sister doesn’t ask, drags him along for errands, talks about her boyfriend. The nice thing about being home again is that there aren’t empty spaces like there are in California, spaces where he used to think Eduardo and I should come here when he finally comes out or Eduardo would like this restaurant or passing along the streets that he used to drive with Eduardo, when he was in California, for the short times in 2003. There are no places like that at home.
He does see her hesitate, though. She takes him out for lunch the next day and says, “We have to get more meat on your body.”
“I’m fine,” he whines. “I’ve always been like this.”
She lifts up his bony wrist. “Really, Mark?” she says. “You haven’t.”
They go out for Indian at a place he’s been to countless times before. Eduardo would like this restaurant because they have an extra spicy curry option.
As they wait for their food, Randi asks, “How’ve you been? And you can tell me the truth now, since Mom and Dad aren’t around.”
“I’m.” He stops for a second. “Fine. Really.”
“Your assistant told me you had a panic attack and then asked to move your office downstairs and canceled your flight here for bus tickets, all on the same day.”
Randi’s eyebrow is arched toward him.
He snaps, “If you’ve already drawn conclusions, you can assume whatever you want instead of trying to make me say anything.” He drinks his water to avoid conversation, but it’s a feeble attempt.
She grabs his hand across the table. He scowls.
“Mark,” she says, and there’s an edge of worry in her tone. He hates it. “If you want to talk to me about it--”
“I would’ve,” he interrupts. “But I didn’t, so I don’t.”
She sighs and changes the topic.
*
[The door opens, a few days later.] The door to the guest room opens without preamble, and Mark spins from his chair so his laptop screen isn’t visible. It’s his mother, looking around at the mostly dusty furniture (they hadn’t cleaned it up, and he certainly wouldn’t either) before at him.
“Jesus!” he says, craning his laptop lid towards him. “Mom--Knock or something, I could’ve been naked!”
“Darling, I’m your mother, I’ve seen you naked.” She rolls her eyes and comes over to him. “What are you working on?”
He closes his laptop lid properly this time. “Nothing,” he says; it’s the truth.
It doesn’t sound like one, successfully. His mother looks disbelieving as she sits down on the couch in the guest study room.
“Can we talk?” she asks.
He props his laptop back open. “If you mean you talk while I listen, then sure,” he says.
“Honey--”
“I’m listening,” he says. When she’s silent, he glances up at her. “You know I am.”
She looks like she wants to pry the laptop out of his hands, but thinks better of it. “Mark, you’ve been acting like this, since,” she says. She bites her lip. “Since the settlement. And I don’t want to psychoanalyze you--”
“Too late.”
“Well, darling,” she presses on, “it’s obvious you’ve been depressed since then--”
He spins around in his chair.
“If you don’t want to hear the word, that’s fine,” she says to his back. “But you’re barely eating or drinking, you look like you haven’t slept in years--you look terrible, Mark--”
“Thank you,” he says sharply, “for making a comment on my appearance, Mom.”
She stands up and rests her palm on the back of his neck. She’s warm and it hurts, suddenly, a dull ache in the middle of the chest. He swallows the massive lump in his throat.
“We know you miss him,” she says. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
“I don’t have to.”
“But you should,” she says gently. “Have you talked to anyone else about it? Have you seen someone? We know you were at his funeral--it was in the news--”
“Great,” he says dryly. “I’m really glad you read the news.”
She spins him around again, making him look her dead in the eye. His own eyes are terrifying and bloodshot.
“You’ve been shutting us out ever since,” his mother says. “All of us. Even Chris and Dustin, too, I asked them--no one knows how you are, what you’ve been doing--”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“Busy with--” His gaze flickers down to his computer screen.
She takes his laptop without warning and looks at it. Her eyes widen at just the open textedit document -- jumbles of keysmashes, mostly, but littered with snippets of things like i miss you and remember the algorithm at kirkland Ea=1/(1+10[Rb-Ra]1400) Eb=1/(1+10[Ra-Rb]1400) and when was the last time you had indian food and do you know how to swim, did you try to before you drowned? and i’m a vegatarian now i can’t eat chicken. The scrollbar is tiny and seems to go on forever. She doesn’t even fight it when he snatches the laptop back, furious.
“Jesus fuck, Mom,” he says. He rarely swears at her.
“Mark--”
“Go play doctor on someone else,” he says, turning back to the desk. When she continues staring at his back, suddenly filled with a deep sorrow for him, his head tilts forward.
“Please,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.