Rating:

Teen

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

The Social Network

Relationship:

Eduardo/Mark

Tags:

crack treated seriously, mpreg

Stats:

Posted on:

2015-12-31

Words:

5,357

The way it happens is not Mark’s fault.

Or, at least, that’s what’ll he tell you, because that’s what goes on the record. They’ll say that it was a mistake on his part (his lawyers’ words, not his own) in finding some succubus who is apparently capable of knocking people without uteruses up, and then proceeding to be seduced by said succubus. When Mark Zuckerberg had woken up on January 10, 2010, he had felt no different than he had any other day of his life. It wasn’t until a few weeks later when he was experiencing severe cramps in Facebook offices and then almost passed out when this inane thought entered everyone else’s heads.

After being sent to the hospital for a particularly invasive checkup, there were also x-rays done. This was when the doctors realized that they were witnessing one of the world’s first ass babies and its father, freaked out, called some of Mark’s lawyers, and—well, it wasn’t like anyone wasn’t going to go to the first news company they could find and not tell them about Mark Zuckerberg’s growing ass baby. Of course, it actually took a bit for one of them to take one of the nurses seriously, and by that time, Mark and his PR group had constructed a dignified enough story for the world.

So, that’s what everyone knows: Mark had been seduced by a succubus, got himself knocked up, and is now carrying a baby in some new organ that biologists want to examine. He doesn’t let them take him in for experimental tests and whatnot, though, because he is not an amoeba or animal or whatever, and he has a billion dollar company to run, and god forbid being pregnant let that stop him.

 

Here’s what really happened.

 

It is January 9, 2010, and Mark is nursing a scotch in his left hand. He’s at a bar because he’d just gotten out of a particular grating meeting with some assholes from a Canadian-based company who wanted to buy Facebook from him. Mark had told them that on his dead body would he do that, which had yielded some pretty interesting life-threatening results that involved laser guns and a samurai, which Mark thought was pretty racist of them. Several hours later he has holed himself up in the nearest club and is drinking crappy scotch, and kind of wishes life as Facebook CEO was less interesting.

There are things he misses, like Dustin (who is off with Asana) and Chris (who is riding on the high of Obama’s latest victory; Chris had told Mark that they had big plans for Area 51), and even, admittedly, Eduardo. In fact, Eduardo is perhaps what he misses the most, he thinks in his drunken stupor, staring at the bottom of his glass. It’s been years since Harvard and the lawsuit, years since he’s last known that he could turn his head and good old reliable ‘Wardo was standing there, offering a glass of water or $19,000 or whatever. Mark doesn’t regret anything that happened with money—because it’s just money—but he does regret, a little, what happened with him and Eduardo.

It is in the middle of these thoughts when someone taps on his shoulder. It takes Mark a full second to register that someone has touched him, which is a strong indicator of his sobriety. “Can I sit here?” asks a voice behind him.

Mark barely glances at the person. “Yeah,” he mumbles, not really giving a fuck of who’s sitting next to him or not.

The person—presumably a guy—sits next to him. Mark hears him order something to the bartender, and he stares despondently at his own sadly drained glass. He could ask for another, but he’s already as smashed as he is. He really doesn’t need another one.

The guy next to him chuckles. Mark vaguely hears it, but doesn’t realize it’s directed at him until the stranger says, “Rough day?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Mark mumbles. He tips the glass forward into his mouth to drain it. Dregs of the drink slip between his lips.

“Need another one?” the stranger asks.

“No—”

Mark looks up, and freezes. Because this guy—this stranger—looks strikingly similar to Eduardo. Maybe it’s because Mark had just been thinking about him so he’s still in his mind, or he’s just too drunk for his eyesight to function properly, or—both, really. It throws Mark off so badly that he drops the glass that’s still in his hand.

It shatters to the ground.

“Oh shit, sorry,” says the stranger, even though it’s really not his fault, at all. Even if it is, Mark wouldn’t want anyone to know, because he doesn’t want to get caught thinking about his ex-best friend. “Let me buy you another one,” the guy says.

“It’s fine,” Mark tells him, eyeing the glass on the floor. If he looks at it long enough, maybe it’ll go away. “Really.”

“No, man, I feel really bad about this.” The guy meets Mark’s gaze. His eyes are as brown as Eduardo’s had been, soft and warm and—Mark hadn’t even noticed Eduardo’s eyes that vividly when he was in school, so why is this coming to him now.

“I don’t mind spending money on a cute guy,” the stranger says.

Mark blinks, turning to look behind himself. “What?”

“You don’t—” The stranger smiles, biting his lip. “It’s fine.”

He beckons the bartender over, ordering something Mark can’t distinguish. Mark just watches stupidly as his drink is made and passed over to him, from the bartender to the guy to Mark’s hands.

He takes a sip. The drink is hot and sweet and sends a burning sensation throughout his body.

“It’s good,” he says.

The guy smiles. “Non-alcoholic. And it should help you out with your,” he gestures to Mark, the corner of his lips twitching. “I’m sorry you had a rough day.”

“It’s fine.” Mark waves him off, sitting up a bit. His head is starting to clear up, surprisingly fast, and he wonders if other places serve—whatever the stranger had just ordered.

Who is coming more into focus the more sober Mark gets, watching Mark expectantly with an easy smile on his face. He does look remarkably like Eduardo—and Mark has seen a lot of people in his life, but even in scanning the faces in crowds he’s had to keynote speak at, no one has looked as much like Eduardo than this guy. Except maybe Eduardo himself. He’s like an almost-identical twin of Eduardo, except there’s something off about him. Like the color white, but an off-white. An off-Eduardo.

Mark doesn’t realize that the guy is talking until he throws his head back and laughs, in the middle of his moving open mouth. “I must be really distracting you, aren’t I?”

“I,” Mark says. The way that the guy is looking at him is making Mark feel like he’s been stripped naked, even though the last time Mark was fully naked with someone was… he can’t quite remember. Either last month or two years ago.

The guy laughs again. “That’s a yes,” he says, kindly. “It’s okay, I know what you’re seeing—I have an idea, anyway. I don’t think he wanted you to have a bad day either, Mark.”

Mark says, “What?”

The guy asks, “Want to come back to mine?”

 

On January 10, 2010, Mark wakes up, discovering a guy who looks strikingly similar to his ex-best friend lying next to him, in a bed that isn’t his. The other guy is naked, and Mark doesn’t even know his name; Mark is naked, too. He figures he probably doesn’t want to know this guy’s name because he really hopes he doesn’t see him again.

The stranger stirs. “Hi,” he says, smiling up at Mark. His smile is similar to how Eduardo’s had looked, too, except there’s something about the lighting that makes it look like it’s drawn on than real.

Mark shifts out of the sunlight. Now it looks nothing like Eduardo’s smile at all.

“You’re a male succubus,” Mark states.

The guy gets up and stretches, muscles shimmering like he’s in a glossy magazine. Mark is starting to get sick of all this magical shit happening to him ever since Facebook moved out to Palo Alto. In the summer when Eduardo wouldn’t come out, they’d found a giant sea monster just living in their old pool; between the depositions, they’d been dealing with gremlins that had infiltrated the Facebook’s servers.

And now there’s a succubus whom he’s just slept with, who says, “Well, a male succubus is technically an incubus, but I don’t like to discriminate.” He grins, all teeth. “I’m glad you remembered that.”

Mark eyes him carefully. “This isn’t going to land me seven years of bad luck or something, right?” he says, trying to not let his eyes flicker down not-Eduardo’s chest.

Not-Eduardo laughs. “You’ve done me more of a favor than anything, Mark.”

 

Mark goes home, normal as usual and more content that he’d just gotten laid last night. He doesn’t remember a lot of the details, aside from when not-Eduardo had told him that he was a succubus (“just so you know what you’re getting into”), but he imagines it must’ve been good. His ass isn’t sore, at least.

The premonition that hangs above him doesn’t make itself obvious until he nearly faints on his way to his three o’clock lunch, weeks later.

When Mark gets told that he’s pregnant, he knows immediately it must be the succubus. The not-Eduardo. He wants to tell someone—anyone—but he’s also trying to get the doctors to discharge him instead of debating whether or not they had an ethical obligation to send him to anatomists. The thought of googling the guy, or at least trying to contact him again, flits through his mind—but Mark remembers consciously deciding not to ask for a name, not to ask for a number, and is beginning to regret it.

He would tell his assistant about the succubus, or maybe his COO, but they’re both trying to deal with an intergalactic lawsuit involving Candy Crush across planets, so he decides not to concern them. Chris is deeply involved with the lawsuit too, so he’s out of the question. There’s always Dustin, except Dustin’s visiting his family in Florida, and Florida’s land had become possessed with a swamp demon a few years back so outer communication is difficult.

Word of his pregnancy gets out soon enough, and despite everyone else’s recommendations to take paternity leave (which are more “seriously, Mark, you’re whiter than Hollywood, go home” than actual recommendations), he stays in the office. The first trimester’s no big deal, and if he’s going to carry some succubus baby for nine months, he better suck it up earlier so he can get used to it later. Plus, Facebook. So, you know.

It’s mostly no big deal, even though sometimes in the middle of meetings he has to excuse himself to go to the bathroom and throw up some purple-looking vomit. As he clutches the side of the white porcelain rim, he reflects on the night, when he had slept with the succubus. He’d thought that day had been bad so far, but if he’d known that sex would lead to, well, this… He supposes it’s not that bad, actually, considering it’d be pretty awesome raising a half-human half-sex demon spawn. Plus, he admits to himself, he’d only slept with the succubus because he looked like Eduardo.

Mark throws up again.

 

He had done research as soon as he’d gotten home from the hospital, about normal pregnancy when it happened to normal people. It matches up pretty well with Mark’s symptoms, actually, aside from his recent cravings of human flesh, which Mark figures is a pregnant-with-a-demon’s-child side effect thing. He’s also not any more tired than usual, though he figures that that inconvenience has been replaced by the human flesh craving symptom.

The issue with going to work like this is the fucking reporters, who like to accost him to and from the offices, and sometimes lurk in the bushes where they try to take pictures of Mark, even though aside from his near translucency, he’s not really showing. “Mr. Zuckerberg,” they ask. “What’s it like being the world’s first non-uterus-possessing child-bearer?”

“It’s really fucking dandy,” Mark will reply, before a, “Move the fuck out of the way.” All of this goes on the record, and his PR team tries to berate him about it. Mark points out that they didn’t have to talk about the genitalia he doesn’t own.

Being pregnant is not that hard, aside from the fact that he types at half the pace he used to and people try to ask him how his baby is going to come out. (Mark answers, “What do you think?” and leaves it at that.) When Sean drops by in the beginning of February, he slides onto Mark’s desk and says, “So is it a boy or a girl?”

“Don’t know yet,” Mark says, without looking up. His forehead is beading with sweat, but hell if he’s going to stop before he finishes this string.

Sean whistles. “So who’s the lucky succ?” He chuckles at his own joke. “Though I guess it wouldn’t have been just a suck, concerning your whole state of everything.”

“Don’t know that either,” Mark grumbles. His bad mood is getting worse. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“Hey, I saw the news, okay? Just makin’ sure you’re alright.” Sean pats his shoulder, and Mark twitches at the contact. Sean pulls his hand away. “Yeah, yeah, I know, man. The succs are pretty bad.”

“Can you stop saying that?” snaps Mark.

“Once you give me the deets, man. I wanna know how you got knocked up.”

It occurs to Mark that Sean is not stupid, even if he is Sean. He probably won’t be surprised, and he’s too suspicious of most people to tell anyone, much less the press.

“He looked like Wardo,” Mark says.

Sean turns his head. “What?”

“The succubus,” Mark mumbles, staring pointedly at his laptop screen. He doesn’t look up, though he’s stopped typing. “I slept with him because he looked like Wardo.”

“Ah,” says Sean.

 

True to his prediction, Sean doesn’t mention this detail to anyone, for the first few days and all the days that follow. He doesn’t talk to Mark much about it, because they don’t really talk about that sort of thing—Sean does hookups and Mark—Mark doesn’t do much, really. Sean does ask once if he was sure that the guy wasn’t actually Eduardo and if Mark is sure that Eduardo isn’t a succubus, but while Mark has no confirmation on the latter, he’s very certain of the former. Eduardo isn’t that—well, Eduardo just isn’t that guy.

Mark doesn’t get distracted from his chronic nausea with coding, but he does when he’s browsing the internet and finds himself going on baby clothes websites or driving home and thinking about detouring to Toys ‘R Us. He hadn’t thought himself a fatherly type, really, but being pregnant pretty much comes as easily to him as it did when he’d first encountered the sea monster in their Palo Alto house all those years ago and sprayed it effectively with a fire extinguisher until it had frozen. Bearing a child is as easy as battling a giant sea monster, Mark would tell anyone who asked when he was in the right mood (which was virtually no one.)

At the end of February, Mark is coming out of the bathroom when his mail comes, through an air duct that they’d installed in billionaires’ houses a couple of years back. Most of it is junk and farm paraphernalia, which Mark throws away except for the chainsaw, in case of the impending zombie apocalypse. There’s also a small note at the bottom.

Mark picks it up.

You won’t have to worry about a custody battle with me ;) Congratulations!

Mark grinds his teeth. On one hand, he’d actually liked not-Eduardo’s personality—partly because it hadn’t been a far match from Eduardo’s, too, if, you know, Eduardo was a demon, and also still talking to Mark.

On the other hand, the fact that the succubus had undoubtedly referred to the depositions as a ‘custody battle’ implies a whole lot of things that make Mark’s head hurt, and other chest-located areas hurt, too.

He flips the card over. There’s no return address, and Mark highly doubts that there’s a directory of demons in Palo Alto he can look up. He wonders if the guy’s on Facebook—he’d known Mark’s name, although that could’ve just been because Mark is, well, himself. Or because it was a demon thing. Or both.

He throws the card out and stores the chainsaw in the garage before pulling out his computer to look up different types of baby formula. His current, unsexed and half-demon baby deserves only the best baby formula. He wonders what color he should paint its room.

 

He throws up a total of sixty-nine times in March—he’s been counting—but it starts to dwindle down toward the end. This isn’t much of a surprise according to his research, so by the beginning of April his PR team has arranged for him to go on Oprah and do some other interviews about Facebook and his pregnancy. Mostly his pregnancy.

“It’s not that interesting,” Mark tells Good Morning America. “I mean, I think about it a lot, but I’m more fascinated with what’s going on in Canada at the moment.”

Juju Chang laughs. “The world begs to differ, Mark,” she says. “Can you empathize with women now?”

“I can empathize with anyone who’s ever been pregnant,” says Mark. “And it’s not that big of a deal, really. Fixing bugs on Facebook is more painful than this.”

On his birthday a month later, his employees throw him an impromptu baby shower, giving gifts both for him and the baby. It’s televised so Mark tries not to grimace whenever these assholes insist on hugging him, though he’s pretty sure that’s why they do it in the first place.

He does get a useful parenting book about how to raise a baby, written like the spawn inside of him is a piece of tech. It’s a lot easier to read than the guides he’d found online, which concerns him a little, but not that much. He reads it cover to cover in one night, and then again, figuring that raising a baby will be a lot easier than expanding the biggest project of his life.

He glares at the spine of the book, then, because he is comparing his baby to Facebook again, and the implications—

The doctors and practitioners he goes to have signed non-disclosure agreements, but somehow toward the end of May some of his reports get leaked to Gawker, which is really fucking annoying. So in addition to suing them, Mark also hacks a mostly harmless virus into their code, aside from that it deletes Mark’s article and all previous consecutive ones every time tries to log in.

Other than that, pregnant life is no different from non-pregnant life, aside from the occasional back pain and cravings for things that aren’t just Red Bull and red vines. But that’s what being a billionaire and CEO is for.

 

In June are the yearly shareholders’ meetings, and also the midway point of Mark’s pregnancy. He’s feeling particularly well that day, and when he comes into the office, Stan the door guard (who is also a pod person, Mark found out last year), says, “You’re glowing today.”

Mark shrugs.

“Like… red.”

Mark shrugs again, pushing his way inside. His cravings for flesh have stopped long ago, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to go vegetarian after this.

Shareholders’ meetings are always manageable, and there is no change of pace in this one. Sure, some of (most of) the shareholders stare too long at Mark’s middle when they come in. And there’s the part where, despite Mark’s decent mood today, a wave of nausea overcomes him halfway through and he has to excuse himself to hover over the toilet for several minutes. But other than that, it’s fine.

Well, there’s also the part afterward, when Mark is hanging back to leave last, and Eduardo is hovering by the doorway, too. Eduardo had come to this meeting, as he had the one last year shortly after the depositions. Last year, they had done nothing but exchange brief greetings and make eye contact while pretending they weren’t making eye contact.

Today, Eduardo is shifting from foot-to-foot by the door, looking like he’s about to leave, but not choosing to. The sight of real Eduardo is almost a relief considering the last time Mark had seen someone who’d looked like Eduardo, so Mark takes a chance. He nods at Eduardo.

Eduardo bursts, “You’re pregnant.”

Mark had not been expecting that. They’re the only people in the room now, and Mark doesn’t know what to say other than, “Yeah.”

“I,” says Eduardo. “But—what—how?”

“California’s weird,” says Mark.

“So’s Florida,” Eduardo murmurs.

Mark nods.

“Are you eating well?” Eduardo asks.

Mark frowns at him. “Since when do you care?”

He half-regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth, but Eduardo shoots back, “I don’t, I’m thinking about the baby.”

Mark fixes him with a calculating look. “I see,” he says, before making his way toward the door.

He leaves the conference room, expecting it to be the end of that. However, as soon as he steps outside, he hears the door being caught on a hand behind him, and a quick pace of footsteps, sort of behind him to the side, not really walking with Mark, but following him.

“You better be getting enough nutrients,” Eduardo’s voice says, from the same direction as his footsteps. “You should be well past your first trimester, it won’t be good for you if—”

“I know,” Mark says, walking absently. He should go to his office, but Eduardo is—being Eduardo, so he continues into the bullpen with no intention of stopping.

Eduardo sounds incredulous when he says, “Do you really?”

Mark rolls his eyes. “Of course I know this shit, Wardo, you think I’d go into being pregnant without doing all the research I can? Besides,” he lets himself glance to the side. “How do you know all this?”

Eduardo fixes him with a dry look. “I’ve had friends who were pregnant before, Mark,” he says. “Though it happens in a more conventional way, in Singapore.”

“I suppose you wanted to enlighten me on the conventional way, then?”

“Not as long as you’re taking care of your baby,” says Eduardo. “And yourself.”

Mark stares at him. Eduardo simply stares back.

They arrive at the elevators at the end of the hallway, and Mark presses the down button. Eduardo asks, “What are you doing?”

“Walking you out, obviously,” says Mark.

“Obviously,” says Eduardo.

“You waited for me at the end of the meeting.”

“I wasn’t waiting for you,” says Eduardo.

The elevator arrives. Mark steps in, and holds the doors open until Eduardo walks in as well.

Once the doors are shut, Eduardo says, “It’s really weird to see you pregnant.”

“Thanks,” says Mark.

“You haven’t updated your Facebook status about it yet.”

“I’m pretty sure the news takes care of that,” Mark says wryly.

Eduardo nods. The elevator reaches the ground floor, and as soon as the door opens, he steps out. “Congratulations,” he tells Mark, a genuine smile flitting across his face. It disappears shortly after, but it’s enough to make Mark’s heart stop.

“Uh,” Mark says. “Thanks.”

The elevators doors close again, and Mark’s not sure what just happened.

 

He tries very hard not to think about it, but he doesn’t quite succeed. It’s just Eduardo—but it had also been just almost-Eduardo at the bar that night, who’d slept with him, who’d knocked him up—so it’s kind of like almost-Eduardo knocked him up. Like Eduardo is almost his baby’s other daddy. Something like that.

As June continues, the actual pains of pregnancy lessen, aside from that he is getting bigger and weighing more than he ever has in his life and his personal assistant is snapping at him for his posture even more than she used to. But the vomiting stops, and Chris takes a break from aliens and the Candy Crush lawsuit to fly in and congratulate him, and Dustin finally gets out of that sinkhole and comes back to Palo Alto, both to congratulate Mark and return to his work.

July marks the first time Mark actually begins to feel kicks, and also when he receives a stuffed dog in the mail. Consider this a late birthday and baby shower present, says the note, in a handwriting not from the last unsigned message in his mailbox, but a familiar scrawly one that he’s seen for years on whiteboards and annotating books he’s lent out. Mark has never been more grateful for televised Facebook events.

It doesn’t make him any less confused, though, because it’s not like they’re actually friends anymore. The third most recent time they’d willingly interacted was the lawsuits (Mark doesn’t count the functions where literally slimy business investors “pretend” that they don’t know who Mark and Eduardo are), and that was when Mark had been getting sued by Eduardo. So why Eduardo is sending a stuffed animal for Mark’s unborn child is beyond Mark. He is starting to reconsider the Eduardo is a demon theory, or the Eduardo is a succubus theory. He says as much to Sean, who tells him to line his house with salt.

Mark decides to email Eduardo back a week later.

Thanks, is all he can think of to write.

Less than an hour later, he receives:

You’re welcome. How are you feeling?

Mark can challenge him again, or he can write, If I said I was dying, what would you do?

I know you’re not dying, Mark.

You don’t actually know that.

The conversation ends there, even though it had all been in the span of under a hundred minutes. Mark wonders why they hadn’t bothered to Facebook message each other, though he supposes that would’ve been more ironic than anything. Email is appropriate, and Eduardo only uses his Facebook to post about the weather, anyway.

 

At the end of July, Mark gets an email from Eduardo saying that he’s in Palo Alto (and no explanation provided), and would he like to get lunch on Wednesday afternoon? Mark pictures himself saying no and wonders how Eduardo would react. In the end, he says yes.

They meet up at some sandwich shop. Mark is prepared to ask Eduardo if he’s here for a business or something, but Eduardo turns to him, once they’re in line, and asks, “Boy or girl?”

Mark can’t keep his mouth from twitching. “Did you just decide to meet with me because you’re over-invested in my pregnancy?”

“I’m not over-invested in your pregnancy.” Eduardo rolls his eyes. “You should read the articles they print about you.”

“That’s why I don’t,” says Mark. “I want it to be a surprise.”

“Of course you do.” Eduardo sounds fond.

They order lunch and sit on the patio. Mark picks through his sandwich to pull out the limp lettuce and cheese until all that’s left is tuna, red onion, and tomato. Eduardo watches him with a funny smile on his face, but doesn’t say anything.

“Did you know,” Mark says suddenly, “that the summer you weren’t here, there was a sea monster in our pool?”

Eduardo blinks. “What?”

And so that is how the rest of their lunch goes, Mark telling Eduardo all about California and that one kid at Stanford who Mark was pretty sure is a vampire. In exchange, Eduardo tells him about the painfully normal stuff in Singapore, though he talks about the swamp monster in Florida, too, which makes California pale in comparison.

 

At the end, Eduardo does not tell him what hotel he is staying at, or how long he’s staying, so Mark just doesn’t say anything and continues on with his life.

The next week, he gets a notification that Eduardo has liked his (current) profile picture on Facebook.

And the emails come, again. They are brief, though most of the time they’re asking Mark how he is, which somehow spiral into bad math jokes and talking about government conspiracies. Mark genuinely hopes the government is watching their emails, to keep Congress on their toes, though he supposes he doesn’t need to go through another laser gun fight.

Mark doesn’t know what he’s done to get Eduardo’s attention like this, other than getting pregnant, though he’s certainly not complaining. He congratulates himself on the day that Eduardo sends a two-paragraphed email, because they’re starting to get longer, partially because Eduardo wants to make sure that Mark isn’t lying about taking care of himself and the baby (he isn’t), and mostly because they are considering the possibilities of what Mark’s half-succubus child would look like and how it will come out.

Shouldn’t it be really attractive, Eduardo sends, considering its other parent?

That’s probably a recessive gene, Mark replies. And you’ve seen me.

It takes two hours before Eduardo’s reply comes in.

That doesn’t mean it won’t be attractive.

 

In the middle of Mark’s trimester, Eduardo flies to Palo Alto again. This time he tells Mark that he’s coming just to visit Mark, and he shows up on his front porch. Mark opens the door to see Eduardo smiling at him—small, but in a way that makes Mark’s insides tighten with want.

“Hi,” he says to Eduardo.

“Hi,” Eduardo says back.

He doesn’t have his things with him because he’s staying at a hotel. But the house he arrives at is one that Mark owns and is paying for (and there’s no pool with it, thank god), and it’s not raining. Mark shows Eduardo around and offers him a drink, which Eduardo declines.

“You should be expecting next month, right?” Eduardo asks, looking over Mark’s bookshelf.

Mark shrugs. “More or less,” he answers.

Eduardo hums. He plucks a book from the top shelf—the one he’d gotten from his baby shower, the one that talks about raising a baby like a tech manual. Eduardo chuckles as he flips through it, and Mark’s stomach does that hot twisty thing again.

“You know,” he says to Eduardo. “I imagine taking care of a baby will be like taking care of Facebook.”

Eduardo’s eyes are glinting with amusement when he looks up. “Really?”

“I mean, it—they’re both mine,” says Mark. “To take care of.”

The shine disappears from Eduardo’s eyes. He closes the book in his hands.

“What do you mean by that?” he asks, voice hard.

Mark knows what it had sounded like. But it’s true. The succubus had only sent him a letter of congratulations—Eduardo had yelled at him in a hallway, then froze the bank account.

But Eduardo is here now, for Mark’s baby. Because of Mark’s baby.

Mark blurts, “He looked like you. The succubus I slept with.” When Eduardo looks at him with astonishment, Mark continues. “I knew he—I had sex with him anyway. Because he looked like you.”

His cheeks are getting hotter, and he stares pointedly at the ground—he feels too warm to keep eye contact. Mark feels Eduardo’s gaze burning into him, and he tries not to wonder too loudly about what Eduardo is thinking. There is a slight possibility Eduardo might be a psychic. Mark’s not going to take any chances with that.

Eduardo asks, “Can I kiss you?”

 

Four weeks later, when Mark’s magical ass baby pops out, Eduardo is holding his hand and smiling. Mark thinks they will make a wonderful family.