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“Hey babe, what should our couple’s hashtag be?” Mark Beaks looked up from his phone at his boyfriend, who was stretched out on the sofa in Mark’s apartment, paging through the latest edition of Astronomy Today . Gyro had retreated behind the magazine the moment they had returned from dinner- their first proper date since returning from the highly eventful family vacation that Boyd had convinced them to take.
“Our what now?” Gyro looked up, perplexed, and Mark rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“Y’know, like a ship name? Like how celebrity couples smash their names together? Like Bird Pitt and Angelina Osprey were ‘#Brangelina’. Or Hennifer Anisten and Ben Affquack were ‘#Bennifer’?”
“I have never heard of any of those people,” Gyro snipped, re-opening the scientific journal.
“Yeah you have. Ben Affquack played Bruce Crane.”
“Which Bruce Crane?” Gyro raised an eyebrow, trying to recall the actor. There had been far too many reboots of that particular franchise.
“The newest one.”
Gyro huffed. That film had been too many explosions and not enough plot for his liking. . “Fine. I have heard of one of those people.”
“So anyway, I was thinking, since you and I are, like, officially an item now, we should have a couple’s hashtag.”
“But we aren’t celebrities?” Gyro tried, beginning to regret even entertaining this notion.
“Gyro! You wound me!” Mark dramatically clutched at his chest and rolled from his beanbag onto the floor, turning his head so he could continue to make eye contact with his boyfriend, despite now being upside down. “ You may not be a celebrity, but I am! Just because I’m not a movie star doesn’t mean I’m not famous! Do you know how many followers I have?”
“A lot?” Gyro asked. He, in fact, knew that the precise number of followers on Mark’s main Webstagram page was 129,008,142, but he wasn’t about to stroke his boyfriend’s already-inflated ego by admitting that he knew that statistic.
“Yeh.” Mark nodded impatiently. “A lot. And ever single one of them needs to know about my super-hot super-genius boyfriend!”
Gyro grunted. Mark’s attempt at flattery was pathetically transparent, but unfortunately, it worked. “You mentioned that at dinner. More than once.”
“Right.” Mark continued, “And you, so very kindly, finally consented to be in one of my selfies! But now I can’t post it until we have a ship name!”
He opened the notes app on his phone and started scrolling through options. “Nothing sounds good when I smash our first names together. ‘Gyark, Maro, Myro, Gark.’ See?”
Gyro nodded. Those did sound terrible.
“Last names are better. I’ve got ‘Beaksloose, Gearbeaks, Bearloose, and Geaks’. Or we can go with some other descriptor, not our names. Like ‘BulbWaddle’ or ‘WaddleBulb’--”
“WaddleBulb sounds like you’re stealing and re-branding my inventions. Again. ” Gyro scowled at him, then broke into a playful smile.
“Ok, fine, WaddleBulb’s out. Then there’s ‘Robot Dads’--”
“That one’s kind of sweet,”
“Tech Twinks--”
“Ugh, no. ”
“Or ‘The Hottest and Smartest Men in Duckberg’.”
“I’m not much one for hashtags, but isn’t the point of them to be short? ” Gyro asked.
“Yeah you’re right. I just put that one in for funsies. Anyway, you got an opinion?”
Gyro looked up at the ceiling. He didn't really mind that Mark was pulling him into selfies, or posting them online where millions of people could see them-- as much as Gyro preferred to keep his love life private most of the time, it was clear that it made his boyfriend happy, and so was willing to go along with it. But now he was supposed to have opinions on these social media posts? What had he gotten himself into?
“I actually like ‘Geaks’” Boyd piped up, peeking his head in from the kitchen, where he had been playing some sort of electronic game with Mark’s Waddle SmartToaster. Mark and Gyro both looked up, startled.
“It has a rather delightful double-meaning, don’t you think?”
As one, both adults tilted their heads in thought, and Boyd looked crestfallen. “Oh! Is ‘geeks’ no longer in common parlance? I don’t mean to cause offense with outdated colloquialisms!”
“Nah you’re good, Boydie-bot, I get it. I’m just surprised I didn’t notice it,” Mark said, nodding slowly at his phone now. “Hashtag Geaks. Seems perfect!”
Gyro would never admit it out loud, but he did like the sound of that.