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ceuLiterally almost a year ago - April 29, 2016 according to my Google Drive - I started to write a coda to That Nothing Can Tear. The reason I stopped and am no longer interested in it is because:
You can Death of the Author me if you'd like of course (although I'm not dead, at the moment of writing this) but I did write this domestic/fluff pseudo sequel only a few months after writing the original fic. It contains some meta on the fic itself because I'm like that; and it's also in Mark's POV, which is even more interesting and enlightening.
I don't technically consider it to be part of my fic's "canon," but this is all fanfiction so who cares. So here it is.
Mark wakes up to the sound of the bedroom door creaking open. There Eduardo stands, with a mug of coffee in one hand and a copy of the newspaper in the other. He doesn’t look up as he wanders back to bed, and it’s only when Mark inclines his head over Eduardo’s mug does Eduardo pay him any attention.
He smiles, bright. “Morning,” he says.
Mark grumbles, the sleep still in his body that he can’t bother with real English words. Eduardo chuckles a little but lets him steal a sip from his coffee, even more amused when Mark wrinkles his nose. Eduardo uses only one cream and two sugars--not enough, in Mark’s opinion.
Still, now that Mark’s roused up, he sighs and leans against Eduardo’s shoulder. “Anything interesting?” he asks, peering at the paper.
Eduardo folds the paper up and onto the nightstand, before resting his cup on it. “Nothing interesting enough for you,” he replies. Mark rolls his eyes, but Eduardo’s tone is on the edge of teasing, like he’s trying to hide it. He leans back Mark’s way to kiss him on the mouth.
It’s innocent but long, and soon enough Eduardo’s hands are being brought up to cup Mark’s face. Mark breaks apart to say, “You were just touching the paper,” even though he’s not really fussy about cleanliness, and for all intents and purposes, neither is Eduardo.
Eduardo rolls his eyes and kisses the corner of Mark’s mouth before letting him go. “Come on, we should get out of bed.”
They don’t have to, necessarily, since it’s Sunday. Mark believes in flexible schedules and flexible habits, but Eduardo says it’s a bad one to spend an entire day in bed without good reason. It’s not like Mark codes in bed, but as much Mark genuinely enjoys his work, it’s been long enough that he never absolutely needs to code. Lately he’s been polishing up on his Mandarin accent, working on an in-home AI that Eduardo says is lavish and unnecessary in this overly soppy voice, and barely fielding phone calls when his mom, Chris, and now even his assistant are wondering when he and Eduardo are going to get married.
Eduardo’s ring lightly clinks the tap as they both step into the shower. They rarely have this luxury, as Eduardo works a strict 9-to-5 and from five to nine, Mark can be anywhere from doing press in Bangladesh to the entertainment room in the Facebook offices, letting himself humor the graveyard shift interns who need a break as much as he does. Mark flings off his shirt and throws it to the tiled ground, stepping into the tub as Eduardo runs his fingers under the water.
It’s still cold, but Mark can handle it. Eduardo rolls his eyes at him but follows the motion, slipping off his own clothes before pulling up the shower spout.
There are words on his collarbone; words that Mark has long been acquainted with. They don’t talk about it much because they did, back at the beginning--the second beginning. It’s been a long time now, so long that sometimes they pretend they forget.
But today Mark splays the fingers of his right hand across the top of Eduardo’s chest. The letters are cool against his skin.
“Hey Wardo,” he says, looking up at him under the light sprinkle of shower water.
Eduardo glances down. “Yeah?”
Mark’s lips tilt up. “I need you,” he says, so simple, so casual, like all the times he’s said it since.
Eduardo rolls his eyes, but leans down to gap the inch he has on Mark. They’re only barely wet and it’s not a very good kiss, Mark’s hand still pressed between their bodies. He traces the letters as Eduardo’s lips work against his, gentle and slow, not sexy at all.
He does shiver when Mark runs the cool silver of his own ring against the warm plane of Eduardo’s chest, though. “Yeah,” Eduardo murmurs against his mouth. “I love you too.”
They shower and the conversation falls to work, though when Mark grumps about his upcoming schedule, it makes Eduardo laugh and then they’re moving onto weather patterns in and fun facts about Greece next. Eduardo scrubs Mark’s hair as Mark somewhat diligently tells him about the first tragedies written about soulmates (by the Greek, of course); Mark washes Eduardo’s back while Eduardo educates him on the more than often weather patterns there, both fascinating and so much more different from closer to the equator, which Eduardo is more familiar with. By the time they’re toweling each other off, Mark is whining about how Eduardo got soap in his eye and Eduardo is just laughing at him.
But Mark loops his towel around Eduardo’s waist and tugs him close to his body, and Eduardo doesn’t even protest. He says, “Mark, you must be freezing,” because Mark is still absolutely naked and dripping, and Mark kisses him until Eduardo has gone and wrapped his own towel around the both of them.
Eventually, they get downstairs, fully dressed (even though they’ve made no plans to go out) and starving. Mark gets his laptop fired up on the dining table as Eduardo makes breakfast--omelettes, with not enough cheese and too much vegetables, in Mark’s opinion--awake and ready to go.
He scratches at the palm of his left hand. This hand is weighted with too much--the words that Mark likes to forget about--but just enough--the band of silver on his fourth finger. But even with that, even with everything, it never stops his left palm from being itchy, when he’s been rubbing at it for most of his life. Most of it had been shame, and then it had been habit, and then it had hurt, tingling, a constant reminder of what he’d fucked up.
Now, it’s--Mark doesn’t know what it is. He never likes to remember it, but Eduardo is good at making him forget, even though it’s etched in his skin permanently.
The silver, however, is like a forgiveness. A promise.
Eduardo comes to the table with both plates of omelettes in his hands. He rolls his eyes at Mark’s laptop, but sets Mark’s plate next to his hand anyway. Mark mumbles in thanks, eating slowly as he types slowly, generally email replies, except for the one from his mom, asking about the wedding again.
He glances at Eduardo as he puts it in the trash folder. “You’re not in any rush to get married, are you?” he asks.
Eduardo looks up. “No,” he says. “Are you?”
Mark shakes his head.
When he’s done with the emails, he goes to the files for his AI. As he waits for the documents to load, he eats with his right hand, scratches absently with the fingers of his left to his palm.
It doesn’t mean anything, as he’d only done it about fifteen minutes ago. He’s not even thinking about it. But of course Eduardo notices the movement, and then Eduardo places his fork down and grabs Mark’s left hand, as the documents load up on Mark’s computer.
Mark complains, “Wardo,” but Eduardo’s already bringing Mark’s palm up, pressing his lips lightly against the soft skin. It had tingled, the first time, and kind of hurt--not on the skin, but somewhere deep in Mark’s chest, a strong pang that he hadn’t want to think too much about, at the time. Now it makes a smile creep onto Mark’s face, and he does his best to fight it away.
“I need to code,” he protests.
“You always need to code.” Eduardo sounds fond. He kisses Mark’s hand again, this time around his ring finger.
Mark rolls his eyes. “Please stop, you’re embarrassing all of us.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Eduardo, and flips Mark’s hand over again to kiss his thumb knuckle. “But I’ll stop because you asked.”
“I appreciate it,” Mark says, and tries not to let the affection seep into his voice. He’s sure he fails, by the way he watches a grin crease over Eduardo’s face.
He codes through and past breakfast. Eduardo, as much of a workaholic as he is, brings his own laptop over and fiddles on through the morning, too. It’s quiet, the kitchen filled with nothing but the steady clack-clacking of their fingers on their keyboards, Eduardo asking Mark to pass him a pen, Mark telling Eduardo to get him a glass too when Eduardo gets up for water.
It’s domestic. It’s peaceful.
It’s what’s become of them after two short years of friendship, three years of nothing, and then months and months of absolutely everything. At the time Mark hadn’t thought the depositions would have been so draining as they were annoying--but it was during them when the words that had been haunting him since he was seven years old had been said. The words curling on the inside of his palm with questions that Mark had never wanted to know the answers to, too much and not enough all at once.
I was your only friend.
It had been even worse that it was a lie. All that time, for seventeen years and counting, Mark had been thinking about the I, the was (the fucking was), the your only friend. He had thought about the context, sure, like it could’ve been the end of a breakup that never was, or too-late at a reunion when he’d be sixty--or, he’d always hoped, when he was too young and never had many friends in the first place.
They had both known that he’d been lying, that day on both sides of the deposition table, Eduardo looking straight at him and Mark trying not to care. When Mark had gotten home that night he had scratched and peeled and screamed at his left hand, willing the words to go away, for all of that to disappear. He had never fallen for Eduardo and Eduardo had never fallen for him and now the stupid, stupid fucking universe was telling him that they were as meant for each other as clouds molding into each other against the sky.
But the words had still been there and Mark’s eyes were red, that night and the next and for so many nights to follow. Sometimes he can’t even remember what he’d done for that chunk of time, after the depositions--just coding and working and tearing apart anyone who tried to interrupt him. He hadn’t let himself think, and he’d thought too much--if he’d already said Eduardo’s words, if Eduardo has known, how long Eduardo has known, what Eduardo’s words are, if this means anything at all.
Mark had never been a romantic, even less so when his words appeared when he was still seven. He doesn’t believe in an end-all to anything, and when it comes down to it, numbers speak: divorce rates, most of all. If he and Eduardo are meant to be, they would’ve come together eventually, no matter what the words on their skin are. The words are a formality, but working relationships comes from work being put into them.
So Mark moved on. And he’d--still--considers himself stupid for overreacting, but it had been in the confines of his too-large house, and no one had ever asked about his two-week long coding tear with minimal breaks and the stilted months of snappishness afterward. So the world moved on with him.
... and then there was probably going to be a bit of a flashback or reference to how they found out their words to each other and how the reconciliation actually happened which I never got to because I, uh, don't have an actual head/canon for that. Anyway, they end up happy and engaged in this part (and eventually married, although I wasn't going to get to the actual wedding in this) which is all that matters.
- I wrote the fic with the intention of not having a sequel, and with having a cliffhanger, thusly
- SORRY FOR THE SAD ENDING GUYS BUT I ACTUALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT RESOLVING IT BECAUSE THE SAD ENDING IS INTENTIONAL
You can Death of the Author me if you'd like of course (although I'm not dead, at the moment of writing this) but I did write this domestic/fluff pseudo sequel only a few months after writing the original fic. It contains some meta on the fic itself because I'm like that; and it's also in Mark's POV, which is even more interesting and enlightening.
I don't technically consider it to be part of my fic's "canon," but this is all fanfiction so who cares. So here it is.
Mark wakes up to the sound of the bedroom door creaking open. There Eduardo stands, with a mug of coffee in one hand and a copy of the newspaper in the other. He doesn’t look up as he wanders back to bed, and it’s only when Mark inclines his head over Eduardo’s mug does Eduardo pay him any attention.
He smiles, bright. “Morning,” he says.
Mark grumbles, the sleep still in his body that he can’t bother with real English words. Eduardo chuckles a little but lets him steal a sip from his coffee, even more amused when Mark wrinkles his nose. Eduardo uses only one cream and two sugars--not enough, in Mark’s opinion.
Still, now that Mark’s roused up, he sighs and leans against Eduardo’s shoulder. “Anything interesting?” he asks, peering at the paper.
Eduardo folds the paper up and onto the nightstand, before resting his cup on it. “Nothing interesting enough for you,” he replies. Mark rolls his eyes, but Eduardo’s tone is on the edge of teasing, like he’s trying to hide it. He leans back Mark’s way to kiss him on the mouth.
It’s innocent but long, and soon enough Eduardo’s hands are being brought up to cup Mark’s face. Mark breaks apart to say, “You were just touching the paper,” even though he’s not really fussy about cleanliness, and for all intents and purposes, neither is Eduardo.
Eduardo rolls his eyes and kisses the corner of Mark’s mouth before letting him go. “Come on, we should get out of bed.”
They don’t have to, necessarily, since it’s Sunday. Mark believes in flexible schedules and flexible habits, but Eduardo says it’s a bad one to spend an entire day in bed without good reason. It’s not like Mark codes in bed, but as much Mark genuinely enjoys his work, it’s been long enough that he never absolutely needs to code. Lately he’s been polishing up on his Mandarin accent, working on an in-home AI that Eduardo says is lavish and unnecessary in this overly soppy voice, and barely fielding phone calls when his mom, Chris, and now even his assistant are wondering when he and Eduardo are going to get married.
Eduardo’s ring lightly clinks the tap as they both step into the shower. They rarely have this luxury, as Eduardo works a strict 9-to-5 and from five to nine, Mark can be anywhere from doing press in Bangladesh to the entertainment room in the Facebook offices, letting himself humor the graveyard shift interns who need a break as much as he does. Mark flings off his shirt and throws it to the tiled ground, stepping into the tub as Eduardo runs his fingers under the water.
It’s still cold, but Mark can handle it. Eduardo rolls his eyes at him but follows the motion, slipping off his own clothes before pulling up the shower spout.
There are words on his collarbone; words that Mark has long been acquainted with. They don’t talk about it much because they did, back at the beginning--the second beginning. It’s been a long time now, so long that sometimes they pretend they forget.
But today Mark splays the fingers of his right hand across the top of Eduardo’s chest. The letters are cool against his skin.
“Hey Wardo,” he says, looking up at him under the light sprinkle of shower water.
Eduardo glances down. “Yeah?”
Mark’s lips tilt up. “I need you,” he says, so simple, so casual, like all the times he’s said it since.
Eduardo rolls his eyes, but leans down to gap the inch he has on Mark. They’re only barely wet and it’s not a very good kiss, Mark’s hand still pressed between their bodies. He traces the letters as Eduardo’s lips work against his, gentle and slow, not sexy at all.
He does shiver when Mark runs the cool silver of his own ring against the warm plane of Eduardo’s chest, though. “Yeah,” Eduardo murmurs against his mouth. “I love you too.”
They shower and the conversation falls to work, though when Mark grumps about his upcoming schedule, it makes Eduardo laugh and then they’re moving onto weather patterns in and fun facts about Greece next. Eduardo scrubs Mark’s hair as Mark somewhat diligently tells him about the first tragedies written about soulmates (by the Greek, of course); Mark washes Eduardo’s back while Eduardo educates him on the more than often weather patterns there, both fascinating and so much more different from closer to the equator, which Eduardo is more familiar with. By the time they’re toweling each other off, Mark is whining about how Eduardo got soap in his eye and Eduardo is just laughing at him.
But Mark loops his towel around Eduardo’s waist and tugs him close to his body, and Eduardo doesn’t even protest. He says, “Mark, you must be freezing,” because Mark is still absolutely naked and dripping, and Mark kisses him until Eduardo has gone and wrapped his own towel around the both of them.
Eventually, they get downstairs, fully dressed (even though they’ve made no plans to go out) and starving. Mark gets his laptop fired up on the dining table as Eduardo makes breakfast--omelettes, with not enough cheese and too much vegetables, in Mark’s opinion--awake and ready to go.
He scratches at the palm of his left hand. This hand is weighted with too much--the words that Mark likes to forget about--but just enough--the band of silver on his fourth finger. But even with that, even with everything, it never stops his left palm from being itchy, when he’s been rubbing at it for most of his life. Most of it had been shame, and then it had been habit, and then it had hurt, tingling, a constant reminder of what he’d fucked up.
Now, it’s--Mark doesn’t know what it is. He never likes to remember it, but Eduardo is good at making him forget, even though it’s etched in his skin permanently.
The silver, however, is like a forgiveness. A promise.
Eduardo comes to the table with both plates of omelettes in his hands. He rolls his eyes at Mark’s laptop, but sets Mark’s plate next to his hand anyway. Mark mumbles in thanks, eating slowly as he types slowly, generally email replies, except for the one from his mom, asking about the wedding again.
He glances at Eduardo as he puts it in the trash folder. “You’re not in any rush to get married, are you?” he asks.
Eduardo looks up. “No,” he says. “Are you?”
Mark shakes his head.
When he’s done with the emails, he goes to the files for his AI. As he waits for the documents to load, he eats with his right hand, scratches absently with the fingers of his left to his palm.
It doesn’t mean anything, as he’d only done it about fifteen minutes ago. He’s not even thinking about it. But of course Eduardo notices the movement, and then Eduardo places his fork down and grabs Mark’s left hand, as the documents load up on Mark’s computer.
Mark complains, “Wardo,” but Eduardo’s already bringing Mark’s palm up, pressing his lips lightly against the soft skin. It had tingled, the first time, and kind of hurt--not on the skin, but somewhere deep in Mark’s chest, a strong pang that he hadn’t want to think too much about, at the time. Now it makes a smile creep onto Mark’s face, and he does his best to fight it away.
“I need to code,” he protests.
“You always need to code.” Eduardo sounds fond. He kisses Mark’s hand again, this time around his ring finger.
Mark rolls his eyes. “Please stop, you’re embarrassing all of us.”
“I don’t believe you,” says Eduardo, and flips Mark’s hand over again to kiss his thumb knuckle. “But I’ll stop because you asked.”
“I appreciate it,” Mark says, and tries not to let the affection seep into his voice. He’s sure he fails, by the way he watches a grin crease over Eduardo’s face.
He codes through and past breakfast. Eduardo, as much of a workaholic as he is, brings his own laptop over and fiddles on through the morning, too. It’s quiet, the kitchen filled with nothing but the steady clack-clacking of their fingers on their keyboards, Eduardo asking Mark to pass him a pen, Mark telling Eduardo to get him a glass too when Eduardo gets up for water.
It’s domestic. It’s peaceful.
It’s what’s become of them after two short years of friendship, three years of nothing, and then months and months of absolutely everything. At the time Mark hadn’t thought the depositions would have been so draining as they were annoying--but it was during them when the words that had been haunting him since he was seven years old had been said. The words curling on the inside of his palm with questions that Mark had never wanted to know the answers to, too much and not enough all at once.
I was your only friend.
It had been even worse that it was a lie. All that time, for seventeen years and counting, Mark had been thinking about the I, the was (the fucking was), the your only friend. He had thought about the context, sure, like it could’ve been the end of a breakup that never was, or too-late at a reunion when he’d be sixty--or, he’d always hoped, when he was too young and never had many friends in the first place.
They had both known that he’d been lying, that day on both sides of the deposition table, Eduardo looking straight at him and Mark trying not to care. When Mark had gotten home that night he had scratched and peeled and screamed at his left hand, willing the words to go away, for all of that to disappear. He had never fallen for Eduardo and Eduardo had never fallen for him and now the stupid, stupid fucking universe was telling him that they were as meant for each other as clouds molding into each other against the sky.
But the words had still been there and Mark’s eyes were red, that night and the next and for so many nights to follow. Sometimes he can’t even remember what he’d done for that chunk of time, after the depositions--just coding and working and tearing apart anyone who tried to interrupt him. He hadn’t let himself think, and he’d thought too much--if he’d already said Eduardo’s words, if Eduardo has known, how long Eduardo has known, what Eduardo’s words are, if this means anything at all.
Mark had never been a romantic, even less so when his words appeared when he was still seven. He doesn’t believe in an end-all to anything, and when it comes down to it, numbers speak: divorce rates, most of all. If he and Eduardo are meant to be, they would’ve come together eventually, no matter what the words on their skin are. The words are a formality, but working relationships comes from work being put into them.
So Mark moved on. And he’d--still--considers himself stupid for overreacting, but it had been in the confines of his too-large house, and no one had ever asked about his two-week long coding tear with minimal breaks and the stilted months of snappishness afterward. So the world moved on with him.
... and then there was probably going to be a bit of a flashback or reference to how they found out their words to each other and how the reconciliation actually happened which I never got to because I, uh, don't have an actual head/canon for that. Anyway, they end up happy and engaged in this part (and eventually married, although I wasn't going to get to the actual wedding in this) which is all that matters.
