The question that immediately springs to mind is: whose fault was it? Not even because the way that Wardo speaks makes him feel bitter, either. Because it doesn't. These are just the facts, that they haven't gone out to get a proper drink in forever, and that even when the both of them were on campus long before facebook was even in its easiest stages of conception, the two of them going out for drinks had been, well. Somewhat of a rarity, as far as actual bars went. As much as people liked to claim that Harvard students got to sit in bars without ever having to produce a proper ID, that simply wasn't true; if one searched hard enough for places more lenient, like the Kong, it was possible to find dives that cared more about the instant cash than the possibility of punishment or fines. Those places generally didn't serve the greatest of drinks, though. Or they just jacked up the prices.
So Mark only has to assume that Eduardo means beers. Not this ambiance, not the table, not having to go to all the effort to dress up and head out someplace off-campus, but just sitting and chatting, having beers, nothing really looming over their heads. Well. Not that the description's entirely accurate. There are a lot of things that the two of them are probably both thinking about, hidden between the lines, and Mark realizes that better than most people do. He's known Eduardo for years, after all. Not 'childhood friends' in length, but he's known enough of Wardo in his grown times to know that Wardo is a man of subtlety, who doesn't like to say too much and rub it in another's face.
There was a time, though, that the two of them were just blunt, almost painfully so, with one another. Painfully blunt meant different things for the two boys, as different as they were, but there was once a time when Eduardo would have felt free to call Mark an asshole more to teach a lesson than anything else (Mark pushes all the girls away, doesn't he, and why Eduardo lets him do that, Eduardo will never know). Now, the extra effort, it smacks of distance and of Eduardo trying carefully to climb to that higher ground.
Mark doesn't like that much.
"You're kind of speaking like an old geezer," he tries instead, just a touch of humor in his eyes because, well, he's always said that Wardo's just a stuffy British gentleman stuck in the lanky body of a modern American kid. "Give you a toothbrush mustache and graying hairs and we'd be all set. The HAA would be ushering you in immediately."
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So Mark only has to assume that Eduardo means beers. Not this ambiance, not the table, not having to go to all the effort to dress up and head out someplace off-campus, but just sitting and chatting, having beers, nothing really looming over their heads. Well. Not that the description's entirely accurate. There are a lot of things that the two of them are probably both thinking about, hidden between the lines, and Mark realizes that better than most people do. He's known Eduardo for years, after all. Not 'childhood friends' in length, but he's known enough of Wardo in his grown times to know that Wardo is a man of subtlety, who doesn't like to say too much and rub it in another's face.
There was a time, though, that the two of them were just blunt, almost painfully so, with one another. Painfully blunt meant different things for the two boys, as different as they were, but there was once a time when Eduardo would have felt free to call Mark an asshole more to teach a lesson than anything else (Mark pushes all the girls away, doesn't he, and why Eduardo lets him do that, Eduardo will never know). Now, the extra effort, it smacks of distance and of Eduardo trying carefully to climb to that higher ground.
Mark doesn't like that much.
"You're kind of speaking like an old geezer," he tries instead, just a touch of humor in his eyes because, well, he's always said that Wardo's just a stuffy British gentleman stuck in the lanky body of a modern American kid. "Give you a toothbrush mustache and graying hairs and we'd be all set. The HAA would be ushering you in immediately."