Erica dropped a ring directly over one of the red bottles, the ring bounced off. "It's un-winnable, you see? Those things" she pointed to the chicken plushies " are the best prize in the park. If anyone wins a giant-ass chicken on your watch you might as well go home, because your ass is fired." She shrugged.
"Moving on"
She showed him around all kinds of other obscure games that had only one thing in common: they were impossible or at least very hard to win.
Eduardo's first booth was a rowing game, fortunately one without real water.
The customers had to throw balls in holes and depending on the value of the hole their ball landed in, their little rowing boat would move.
It was even less exciting to watch than real rowing.
Eduardo tried to make the best of being stuck there, but his lack of motivation was so obvious that Larry took him aside and had a serious word with him.
He used expressions like 'kick it up a notch' and 'crank it to 11', which made Eduardo feel slightly uncomfortable.
With a meaningful nod, Larry stepped back to watch the 'cranked up to 11' preformance.
Eduardo went all out. He jumped up and down like a cheerleader and made up currents and harsh winds that favored individual boats.
The end of the race saw him panting, throwing a fluffy bunny plush at the winner, who looked like he didn't quite know where his head was at. Larry gaped at Eduardo with a gobsmacked expression on his face "Yeah, that, er, that'll do".
Larry walked away, turning to look back at Eduardo every now and then.
Eduardo felt pretty pleased with himself.
While he waited for more customers, he looked over to the other booths.
His gaze met that of a boy, who was sitting on the counter of his booth, looking at Eduardo with an unreadable expression.
He was attractive, not in the way that Alan had been attractive, with his stupid black hair and his stupid blue eyes. Never mind Alan now. The mysterious boy was wearing a blue 'games' shirt like Eduardo. It looked a little too big on his skinny frame. With it he wore cargo shorts and were those flip-flops?
his hair was brown, curly and it looked very soft.
Eduardo checked himself. Was it normal to speculate on the softness of someone's hair?
The boy snickered, like he could read Eduardo's thoughts and found them amusing.
Eduardo's brain short-circuited. "I'm new!" he shouted over to the guy.
He raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything.
Great.
Eduardo's booth on the next day was the one with the bottles and the rings. It was called 'A tiny chicken is not cool. You know what's cool? A huge chicken'. The name of the booth was on Eduardo's list of 'things he didn't understand about TSN-land', along with the name of the park, but it was easy to maintain, so he didn't complain.
A customer asked to buy 5 rings and started telling him a weird story about what his girlfriend had done when she'd had a few too many appletinis.
Eduardo listened politely, really not giving a crap, when he did a routine glance back over his shoulder to the bottles, to see a man holding his son over them. He turned around fully and no, it couldn't be! There was a ring on the top of a red bottle.
Eduardo had trouble breathing for a second.
"Oh will you look at that! you won! my son won! Great work Div!" the father was overjoyed and so was his offspring, who danced around his father, muttering unintelligible sounds of glee.
Eduardo braced himself "Erm, actually sir, I don't think I can. I saw you holding your son over the bottles. You. That's cheating.".
The father, at least a head taller than Eduardo and infinitely heavier, did not take well to that. "Who're you calling a cheater? My son won fair and square, sir. You need to give him a prize." the 'or else' was implied, but Eduardo couldn't back down, not with his job at stake.
The guy with the appletini-girlfriend backed the cheating father "I saw him throw it!"
"Oh, thank you, sir" the father replied and Eduardo could have sworn he winked at the other guy.
"Look, I really can't..." but he didn't even get to finish his sentence.
Appletini-girlfriend guy raised his voice "Hey, this fella here's trying to rip off a kid!"
A few passers-by stopped and looked at Eduardo disapprovingly.
"Why don't you just give the kid a fucking chicken?" the father's tone had become decidedly menacing.
Out of nowhere, curly boy from earlier appeared.
He pulled out one of the huge chicken plushies and handed it to the man. "Here you go: one chicken for the lucky winner" he smiled, or rather: he showed his teeth. There was nothing friendly about the gesture.
The man grabbed the chicken and handed it to his son, who completely disappeared behind it.
"Yeah, thanks. Here you go Divya." they walked off without looking back.
The panic had taken control of Eduardo now. He was breathing heavily, sweat was trickling down his brow. "I'm going to be in so much trouble. No one's ever supposed to lose a giant-ass chicken."
The curly boy gave him a blank look "Is it worth getting knifed over?"
Eduardo thought about it for a second "Er, no."
"Damn right it isn't. That guy? he had a knife, he was playing with it while he talked to you. I'm sure he wouldn't have minded cutting you for that fucking chicken."
"Huh." Eduardo looked at the boy. He had pretty blue eyes. And he didn't want Eduardo to be knifed, that must be a good sign.
"Oh" he remembered his manners "My name is Eduardo Saverin. I just started."
"Mark Zuckerberg, nice to meet you." they shook hands. Mark had nice hands.
"Sucks you'll be fired on your second day." Marks voice was cool, emotionless.
The panic, that had subsided in the past minute, returned with full force. "Shit! I need this job" his voice was muffled, because he had buried his face in his hands.
"I'm kidding. You're fine. I'll tell Larry it was a life-or-death thing." Eduardo lowered his hands and was rewarded with the sight of Mark smiling. A genuine smile, that lit up his face. It was beautiful.
They were interrupted by one of the other booth guys shouting out "Parker! hey Parker! Rock on!" to a passing man, who was carrying a guitar. The man nodded, like he couldn't be bothered to react more than that.
"Who's that?" Eduardo turned to Mark.
"Oh. That. That's Sean Parker, he's the maintenance guy."
At the end of their shift, a whole group of games staff stood together.
Eduardo was waiting for Dustin, who was his ride. His mother had called Dustin's mother and arranged it without asking Eduardo first.
He was talking to Erica, when Mark joined them.
Eduardo wanted nothing more than to be cool, to impress Mark.
"Look" he pointed to a wall a few meters away "I think someone tried to write 'Satan lives', but they spelled it 'Satin lives'" Smooth Eduardo, really witty.
Mark looked at him seriously "One of those textile-worshiping cults, no doubt." Erica started laughing hysterically. "That's funny" remarked Eduardo, before joining in with Erica. Mark chuckled.
Eduardo was torn from staring at Mark's dimples, dimples I ask you!, but the arrival of Dustin.
Dustin was a man with impeccably bad timing.
"NSYNC? Nice shirt Mark" Mark didn't even dignify that with an answer, he just gave Dustin the finger. Dustin quickly turned his attention to Eduardo.
"You know about Parker and NSYNC, right?" Eduardo shook his head.
Dustin's jaw dropped "He doesn't know about NSYNC you guys!" his colleagues exclaimed in mock terror.
"Parker once performed with NSYNC" Marks voice cut through the babble and silenced it.
He didn't sound impressed, just kind of wary.
"Is he a musician then?" Eduardo couldn't help being a little impressed.
"Yup. Plays gigs in bars and everything. The chicks dig it!" Dustin sounded wistful in a way that suggested, that chicks didn't dig him very much.
Erica set about proving that point "Just shut up Dustin." She rolled her eyes "he's married".
Dustin looked the tiniest bit hurt "You're a bitch Erica Albright." but there was no heat in it.
"Alright loser, let's go." he waved to Eduardo.
With a sigh he said his goodbyes. He had only taken a few steps, when Marks voice stopped him in his tracks "I could give you a ride".
Eduardo's mood did a dramatic 180 degree turn to pure happiness "Really?" Mark nodded.
"Dustin? I've got a ride! see you tomorrow" he shouted after his retreating figure.
"Yeah? whatever, you can suck my dick!" Eduardo was only half-listening and as he followed Mark to his car, he thought that if he was going to suck someone's dick, it was going to be Mark's.
The ride was uneventful. When the silence became slightly uncomfortable, Mark put on a CD. To Eduardo's relief it was not an NSYNC one.
Speaking of which: "Do you like NSYNC?"
Mark took his eyes off the road for a second to give him a disbelieving look.
Flustered, Eduardo tried to row back "I mean, they are obviously great. They are all very nice guys and those lyrics? deep. Their songs are so catchy. What's the one? 'bye bye bye'? awesome" he was babbling.
Mark started laughing about halfway through Eduardo's declaration of love for NSYNC "Dude, I'm wearing this shirt, because all my other shirts are in the wash, it belongs to my little sister.
I think she has outgrown them. I'm sure she'd gladly hand it over to a real fan."
Mark looks decidedly too pleased with himself, Eduardo really should be put off, instead he finds himself much too interested in Mark taking the shirt off and giving it to him. He even considers pretending to really be into NSYNC to make it happen.
Sadly Mark chose this moment to change the topic.
"Erica tells me, you'll be going to Columbia for grad school? I'm at NYU right now."
It was late and definitely dark, but Eduardo felt like the sun has just come out.
He would live in the same city as Mark! "Maybe I'll run into you" Eduardo tried to play it cool, but he already thought up ways in which to make that happen.
Mark pulled up in front of Eduardo's house. "Here we are" he smiled at Eduardo.
"Thanks for the ride" Eduardo wanted to say more. So much more, but he couldn't.
"No problem. See you tomorrow" Eduardo wanted to say 'don't go', but he didn't want to seem clingy, so he just waved at Marks tiny, rickety car as it disappeared into the night.
The next day Eduardo was in charge of a booth that hosted a shooting game called 'Caribbean shooting range". The goal of the game was to shoot barrels that went down Niagara Falls.
He was just talking to Parker, who was fixing one of the guns, when Mark approached them.
Mark smiled, but he seemed a little nervous.
"Hey guys. My father's away for work, so I'm having a party tonight. You should come." His eyes flicked from one to the other and occasionally to the little barrels toppling over the edge of the waterfall.
"Definitely." Even if he had had plans, he'd have cancelled them in a heartbeat. Anything to spend more time with Mark.
"Parker?" "Busy. Sorry. You kids have fun"
Mark shrugged. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I can't be around this booth. Who owns this park? Morons?" Muttering something about 'Caribbean and Niagara Falls' under his breath, he left.
Eduardo followed him with his eyes. It was not just to check out Mark's backside, though he did that too, what he felt for Mark was different.
Yes, there was plenty of physical attraction: he wanted to run his hands through Mark's hair(he might be a little obsessed with those curls), to hold Mark's hand, to run his hands over every inch of Mark's skin and so, so much more, but it was even more than that: he wanted to write sappy poems about Mark's blue eyes, take him out to dinner, talk to him, feed him grapes, to do all those ridiculous couple-y things that people did.
When he pulled himself down from cloud nine, he saw Parker looking at him with an odd expression. "You got it bad, huh?"
Eduardo felt heat rise to his cheeks "Am I that obvious?"
"You are to me. Mark is a nice guy." Eduardo would later realize, that Parker had sounded suspiciously thoughtful there, but it wasn't until much later, that he would realize why.
"Moving on"
She showed him around all kinds of other obscure games that had only one thing in common: they were impossible or at least very hard to win.
Eduardo's first booth was a rowing game, fortunately one without real water.
The customers had to throw balls in holes and depending on the value of the hole their ball landed in, their little rowing boat would move.
It was even less exciting to watch than real rowing.
Eduardo tried to make the best of being stuck there, but his lack of motivation was so obvious that Larry took him aside and had a serious word with him.
He used expressions like 'kick it up a notch' and 'crank it to 11', which made Eduardo feel slightly uncomfortable.
With a meaningful nod, Larry stepped back to watch the 'cranked up to 11' preformance.
Eduardo went all out. He jumped up and down like a cheerleader and made up currents and harsh winds that favored individual boats.
The end of the race saw him panting, throwing a fluffy bunny plush at the winner, who looked like he didn't quite know where his head was at. Larry gaped at Eduardo with a gobsmacked expression on his face "Yeah, that, er, that'll do".
Larry walked away, turning to look back at Eduardo every now and then.
Eduardo felt pretty pleased with himself.
While he waited for more customers, he looked over to the other booths.
His gaze met that of a boy, who was sitting on the counter of his booth, looking at Eduardo with an unreadable expression.
He was attractive, not in the way that Alan had been attractive, with his stupid black hair and his stupid blue eyes. Never mind Alan now. The mysterious boy was wearing a blue 'games' shirt like Eduardo. It looked a little too big on his skinny frame. With it he wore cargo shorts and were those flip-flops?
his hair was brown, curly and it looked very soft.
Eduardo checked himself. Was it normal to speculate on the softness of someone's hair?
The boy snickered, like he could read Eduardo's thoughts and found them amusing.
Eduardo's brain short-circuited. "I'm new!" he shouted over to the guy.
He raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything.
Great.
Eduardo's booth on the next day was the one with the bottles and the rings. It was called 'A tiny chicken is not cool. You know what's cool? A huge chicken'. The name of the booth was on Eduardo's list of 'things he didn't understand about TSN-land', along with the name of the park, but it was easy to maintain, so he didn't complain.
A customer asked to buy 5 rings and started telling him a weird story about what his girlfriend had done when she'd had a few too many appletinis.
Eduardo listened politely, really not giving a crap, when he did a routine glance back over his shoulder to the bottles, to see a man holding his son over them. He turned around fully and no, it couldn't be! There was a ring on the top of a red bottle.
Eduardo had trouble breathing for a second.
"Oh will you look at that! you won! my son won! Great work Div!" the father was overjoyed and so was his offspring, who danced around his father, muttering unintelligible sounds of glee.
Eduardo braced himself "Erm, actually sir, I don't think I can. I saw you holding your son over the bottles. You. That's cheating.".
The father, at least a head taller than Eduardo and infinitely heavier, did not take well to that. "Who're you calling a cheater? My son won fair and square, sir. You need to give him a prize." the 'or else' was implied, but Eduardo couldn't back down, not with his job at stake.
The guy with the appletini-girlfriend backed the cheating father "I saw him throw it!"
"Oh, thank you, sir" the father replied and Eduardo could have sworn he winked at the other guy.
"Look, I really can't..." but he didn't even get to finish his sentence.
Appletini-girlfriend guy raised his voice "Hey, this fella here's trying to rip off a kid!"
A few passers-by stopped and looked at Eduardo disapprovingly.
"Why don't you just give the kid a fucking chicken?" the father's tone had become decidedly menacing.
Out of nowhere, curly boy from earlier appeared.
He pulled out one of the huge chicken plushies and handed it to the man. "Here you go: one chicken for the lucky winner" he smiled, or rather: he showed his teeth. There was nothing friendly about the gesture.
The man grabbed the chicken and handed it to his son, who completely disappeared behind it.
"Yeah, thanks. Here you go Divya." they walked off without looking back.
The panic had taken control of Eduardo now. He was breathing heavily, sweat was trickling down his brow. "I'm going to be in so much trouble. No one's ever supposed to lose a giant-ass chicken."
The curly boy gave him a blank look "Is it worth getting knifed over?"
Eduardo thought about it for a second "Er, no."
"Damn right it isn't. That guy? he had a knife, he was playing with it while he talked to you. I'm sure he wouldn't have minded cutting you for that fucking chicken."
"Huh." Eduardo looked at the boy. He had pretty blue eyes. And he didn't want Eduardo to be knifed, that must be a good sign.
"Oh" he remembered his manners "My name is Eduardo Saverin. I just started."
"Mark Zuckerberg, nice to meet you." they shook hands. Mark had nice hands.
"Sucks you'll be fired on your second day." Marks voice was cool, emotionless.
The panic, that had subsided in the past minute, returned with full force. "Shit! I need this job" his voice was muffled, because he had buried his face in his hands.
"I'm kidding. You're fine. I'll tell Larry it was a life-or-death thing." Eduardo lowered his hands and was rewarded with the sight of Mark smiling. A genuine smile, that lit up his face. It was beautiful.
They were interrupted by one of the other booth guys shouting out "Parker! hey Parker! Rock on!" to a passing man, who was carrying a guitar. The man nodded, like he couldn't be bothered to react more than that.
"Who's that?" Eduardo turned to Mark.
"Oh. That. That's Sean Parker, he's the maintenance guy."
At the end of their shift, a whole group of games staff stood together.
Eduardo was waiting for Dustin, who was his ride. His mother had called Dustin's mother and arranged it without asking Eduardo first.
He was talking to Erica, when Mark joined them.
Eduardo wanted nothing more than to be cool, to impress Mark.
"Look" he pointed to a wall a few meters away "I think someone tried to write 'Satan lives', but they spelled it 'Satin lives'" Smooth Eduardo, really witty.
Mark looked at him seriously "One of those textile-worshiping cults, no doubt." Erica started laughing hysterically. "That's funny" remarked Eduardo, before joining in with Erica. Mark chuckled.
Eduardo was torn from staring at Mark's dimples, dimples I ask you!, but the arrival of Dustin.
Dustin was a man with impeccably bad timing.
"NSYNC? Nice shirt Mark" Mark didn't even dignify that with an answer, he just gave Dustin the finger. Dustin quickly turned his attention to Eduardo.
"You know about Parker and NSYNC, right?" Eduardo shook his head.
Dustin's jaw dropped "He doesn't know about NSYNC you guys!" his colleagues exclaimed in mock terror.
"Parker once performed with NSYNC" Marks voice cut through the babble and silenced it.
He didn't sound impressed, just kind of wary.
"Is he a musician then?" Eduardo couldn't help being a little impressed.
"Yup. Plays gigs in bars and everything. The chicks dig it!" Dustin sounded wistful in a way that suggested, that chicks didn't dig him very much.
Erica set about proving that point "Just shut up Dustin." She rolled her eyes "he's married".
Dustin looked the tiniest bit hurt "You're a bitch Erica Albright." but there was no heat in it.
"Alright loser, let's go." he waved to Eduardo.
With a sigh he said his goodbyes. He had only taken a few steps, when Marks voice stopped him in his tracks "I could give you a ride".
Eduardo's mood did a dramatic 180 degree turn to pure happiness "Really?" Mark nodded.
"Dustin? I've got a ride! see you tomorrow" he shouted after his retreating figure.
"Yeah? whatever, you can suck my dick!" Eduardo was only half-listening and as he followed Mark to his car, he thought that if he was going to suck someone's dick, it was going to be Mark's.
The ride was uneventful. When the silence became slightly uncomfortable, Mark put on a CD. To Eduardo's relief it was not an NSYNC one.
Speaking of which: "Do you like NSYNC?"
Mark took his eyes off the road for a second to give him a disbelieving look.
Flustered, Eduardo tried to row back "I mean, they are obviously great. They are all very nice guys and those lyrics? deep. Their songs are so catchy. What's the one? 'bye bye bye'? awesome" he was babbling.
Mark started laughing about halfway through Eduardo's declaration of love for NSYNC "Dude, I'm wearing this shirt, because all my other shirts are in the wash, it belongs to my little sister.
I think she has outgrown them. I'm sure she'd gladly hand it over to a real fan."
Mark looks decidedly too pleased with himself, Eduardo really should be put off, instead he finds himself much too interested in Mark taking the shirt off and giving it to him. He even considers pretending to really be into NSYNC to make it happen.
Sadly Mark chose this moment to change the topic.
"Erica tells me, you'll be going to Columbia for grad school? I'm at NYU right now."
It was late and definitely dark, but Eduardo felt like the sun has just come out.
He would live in the same city as Mark! "Maybe I'll run into you" Eduardo tried to play it cool, but he already thought up ways in which to make that happen.
Mark pulled up in front of Eduardo's house. "Here we are" he smiled at Eduardo.
"Thanks for the ride" Eduardo wanted to say more. So much more, but he couldn't.
"No problem. See you tomorrow" Eduardo wanted to say 'don't go', but he didn't want to seem clingy, so he just waved at Marks tiny, rickety car as it disappeared into the night.
The next day Eduardo was in charge of a booth that hosted a shooting game called 'Caribbean shooting range". The goal of the game was to shoot barrels that went down Niagara Falls.
He was just talking to Parker, who was fixing one of the guns, when Mark approached them.
Mark smiled, but he seemed a little nervous.
"Hey guys. My father's away for work, so I'm having a party tonight. You should come." His eyes flicked from one to the other and occasionally to the little barrels toppling over the edge of the waterfall.
"Definitely." Even if he had had plans, he'd have cancelled them in a heartbeat. Anything to spend more time with Mark.
"Parker?" "Busy. Sorry. You kids have fun"
Mark shrugged. "I'd love to stay and chat, but I can't be around this booth. Who owns this park? Morons?" Muttering something about 'Caribbean and Niagara Falls' under his breath, he left.
Eduardo followed him with his eyes. It was not just to check out Mark's backside, though he did that too, what he felt for Mark was different.
Yes, there was plenty of physical attraction: he wanted to run his hands through Mark's hair(he might be a little obsessed with those curls), to hold Mark's hand, to run his hands over every inch of Mark's skin and so, so much more, but it was even more than that: he wanted to write sappy poems about Mark's blue eyes, take him out to dinner, talk to him, feed him grapes, to do all those ridiculous couple-y things that people did.
When he pulled himself down from cloud nine, he saw Parker looking at him with an odd expression. "You got it bad, huh?"
Eduardo felt heat rise to his cheeks "Am I that obvious?"
"You are to me. Mark is a nice guy." Eduardo would later realize, that Parker had sounded suspiciously thoughtful there, but it wasn't until much later, that he would realize why.
Pittsburgh, Mark's house, house party
Eduardo had literally spent hours on his outfit and on his hair.
He as still not quite whether a suit was appropriate for the occasion, but he kept hearing his father say 'dress to impress' in his mind over and over again and to decided to just follow his advice.
Mark lived in a nice house, interior and exterior were exceptionally tasteful. Music was playing loudly and people were dancing.
Eduardo knew most of the people, they all seemed to be TSN-land staff.
He spotted Mark on the other side of the living-room, wearing shorts, a hoodie and flip-flops and good god, how did he manage to look so appealing, just standing there?
Eduardo waved at him. The movement caught Mark's eye and he met him half-way.
"Hi" there was no reason for Eduardo to be breathless, but he was.
"You came" Mark stated the obvious, and then he added "in a suit."
Eduardo really wished that Mark was easier to read, because he couldn't tell if Mark was amused by his choice of clothes.
"You look like my dad, when goes off to the office in the morning." That didn't help Eduardo.
"He's a lawyer" Mark specified. Still no idea.
Finally, "You look good." Eduardo let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He felt very pleased with himself, especially when he noticed the faint shade of pink that Mark's cheeks had turned.
Mark must have been aware of it too, because he seemed very keen on distracting Eduardo.
"Bet you didn't expect that, huh? a lawyer. But what can I say? It was his life-long dream for his son to work at TSN-land." he gave a mirthless laugh. "Whatever. It get's me out of the house."
Eduardo could tell, that Mark didn't enjoy this topic and more than anything he wanted Mark to be happy, to smile that genuine smile that made Eduardo feel like his chest might burst.
"Speaking of which: do you have any idea what 'TSN' stands for?" Marks eyes focused on him, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion for a second, before he relaxed again. " I have absolutely no clue." and then he started laughing.
Eduardo wanted to see him laugh again, see him smile, he even wanted to see Mark's sadness, to comfort him, to be there for him.
Which, okay, was a little scary, because he had only just met Mark and he kind of wanted to spend the rest of his life with him already.
It was a dangerous train of thought, so to stop it, and maybe a little, because he wanted to impress Mark, he rummaged through his pockets.
"Actually, I brought something for the party!" Eduardo declared proudly, producing a little white wrapper that had seen better days.
"Erm, thanks? what is it?" Mark sounded vaguely amused.
"It's a joint" Eduardo explained, bending it in shape as best as he could.
"Oh" Marks eyes widened in realization and an appreciative smile played on his lips.
How Eduardo wanted to lick that smile away, to sink his teeth in those lips, to push them apart with his tongue and invade Mark's mouth. As far as distractions went, the joint was a failure.
"Let's go outside" Mark set off towards an open double door, that led into the garden.
Eduardo could see people standing together, smoking.
He looked at Mark and felt like he might die if he didn't touch him, so he placed a gentle hand in the small of Mark's back.
Mark looked up to him, like he might say something, but then he just smiled at Eduardo and let himself be led outside.
The joint, and Eduardo as the bringer of it, received a warm welcome, that was no consolation whatsoever, when he had to let his hand drop from Mark's back.
The joint went around and while everybody else was busy exchanging horror stories about what had happened during their shifts at TSN-land, Eduardo debated whether or not he could just kiss Mark with himself.
Just as he reached a conclusion, he would go for it but not in front of all these people, Mark raised his voice "I'll go for a swim, if anybody would like to join me?"
Eduardo was pretty sure he hadn't imagined that Mark had looked at him more than anyone else when he'd said that.
He followed Mark to the pool. It was quite big, about 7 x 5 meters, with expensive-looking, cream-colored tiles and sparkling turquoise water.
The yellow lights that shone from the house illuminated everything nicely, it was nearly as bright as day.
Eduardo said a silent 'thank you' to Mr and Mrs Zuckerberg, for their determination to keep the darkness at bay and for their willingness to put up with electricity bills that must surely be huge, because he could see Mark as clear as day.
Mark, who had dropped his hoodie, shorts and flip-flops in a heap on the floor, who was swimming in nothing but boxers, who he wanted very badly.
"Come on, Wardo!" It was the first time Mark used this name and for a second Eduardo pondered jumping in the water, suit and all, and ravishing Mark on the spot.
He didn't want to seem pushy though.
With as much elegance and grace as he could muster, which was not a lot considering he was a horny 19-year old who wanted to get undressed as quickly as possible, he shrugged out of his jacket, pulled his button-up over his head and shimmied out of his trousers.
Too late he remembered that he was only wearing briefs, but in retrospect it probably wouldn't have made a difference, if he'd known.
He climbed down the little ladder. The water was a bit of a shock, colder than he'd expected, and for a good minute Mark was wiped completely from his thoughts.
"You should submerge" came Mark's helpful voice from somewhere very close to Eduardo's left ear.
Obediently he sank below the surface. For a second that made everything worse, but when he resurfaced, the water felt warmer.
Mark must have been able to tell from his expression, because he was smiling smugly at him. "Told you so". Eduardo's thoughts had returned to Mark's lips and the things he wanted to do with them.
When Mark swam closer, Eduardo had he faint hope, that he might have something similar in mind. He didn't.
Smaller though he was, it turned out Mark was quite strong and coupled with Eduardo being distracted by a certain pair of lips, he managed very easily to duck Eduardo.
