Fic: Touch Part 1 (TSN)
Title: Touch
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Author:
a_jejune_star
Rating: Seriously NC-17
Words: ~17,500
Summary: For this hate!sex prompt on the
tsn_kinkmeme. Mark and Eduardo’s post-laptop-smash hate!sex makes a bad situation worse. How they find their way back to each other.
Contains: Graphically violent sex, not-sexy sex, crying during intercourse, anxiety issues, a severe aversion to touch.
Part 1 | Part 2
(You are new and near now to someone you used to love.
When you were young; when all was gold and you two touched,
And felt the flutter underneath your skin. You stood in glowing rooms,
The light dripping from both of you.
And nothing since has felt as radiant or real.)
-Touch by Bright Eyes
*
Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of blame.
Who threw the first punch?
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo threw the first punch, he didn’t notice Mark’s eyes on him those late nights at Kirkland, buzzed and restless. Mark threw the first punch, he was dismissive of Eduardo’s affection, shrugged hands off his shoulder and took advantage of his kindness at every turn. Eduardo threw the first punch, he didn’t come out to Palo Alto when Mark begged him to, when Mark was ready to give it all. Mark threw the first punch, he diluted Eduardo’s shares and pushed him out of his life, spiteful and just plain bitter.
Really, they’d been throwing punches their entire friendship.
So the fact is, Mark has this thing about touch. No one touches Mark. It makes him anxious. His mother tried to diagnose it once as some form of psychological condition in his early teens, but Mark didn’t have the patience for it.
Only Mark lets Eduardo touch him, sometimes. Just superficial contact. Brushes of a hand. Playful kicks against shoe-covered toes. A palm on his shoulder blade.
Mark let the touches come in stages for a reason. It’s all been conditioning for his mind. Don’t fear this, you want this, you want more than this, get used to this, you like this, ask for more.
It was all preparation for something that will never actually happen, and it doesn’t matter that Mark is officially to blame.
It’s like losing a limb.
So it’s no surprise to Mark, finding Eduardo at the house when he returns. They couldn’t have it out proper in the office. Not with Sean looking on, ready to call out the dogs and skew the odds in Mark’s favor. Not with Dustin there to give disappointed glances and speeches about The Power of Friendship.
Mark knew the second Eduardo heaved that laptop into the air and smashed it into a mangled piece of plastic and capacitors that this moment was coming, brewing and festering beneath the surface of juvenile snark and flying spittle.
And see, the truth is, Mark’s been positively itching for that human contact he can’t quite stomach. It’s nothing tangible. Nothing he’s even been able to put his finger on until just this moment, when it’s too far out of reach to even see.
If he wasn’t conditioning himself for that, then okay. He’s been conditioning himself for this.
It’ll do.
The particles between them, the air of the room, the surface of his scalp and the pores of his skin-they’re all charged and buzzing.
Eduardo’s not mad. That’s a bad word. A small word. Too simple. Black and white. Nothing about this could be so easy. The fact is, Eduardo is something else. Something darker and quiet-scary not because Mark is intimidated, but because he feels the same way, and he wants this.
He’s relieved on the inside that it won’t go to waste.
“I can’t fucking believe you,” Eduardo says.
He’s lying. It’s all in his eyes, leaned against the corner of the room, head pressed into the wall.
“After everything, Mark,” he continues. “Really? After everything I’ve done for you, you just-“
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Mark shrugs.
So it’s Eduardo who throws the first punch. Physically, at least. Mark wishes he could say it comes out of nowhere, but that’s a lie too. It comes in slow motion and he indexes every detail. The furl of Eduardo’s eyebrows, the cording of muscle in his neck, the flush to his cheeks and the raise of his fist.
Mark’s almost completely sure Eduardo doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. His fist hits Mark’s jaw at an odd, grazing angle. There is that sickly crack of bone on bone, and it does hurt-God, it’s excruciating-but it’s hardly Eduardo’s best. If Eduardo had planned it better, he could have hurt Mark more.
Mark supposes that’s an aptitude better suited for himself.
He staggers back only half a step, shakes off the fuzz around his vision and straightens his shoulders. Eduardo’s face is clouded now, less severe, and his mouth falls open. Mark can tell by the size of his wide eyes what Eduardo’s going to say. I’m sorry or Are you alright? or I got carried away, I didn’t mean to...
Mark’s thinking No. No, he will not let Eduardo back down from this. He will not let Eduardo take this away from him. He will not let this moment pass half-executed, like everything else between them.
So Mark throws the second punch. It lands better than Eduardo’s had, good enough that Mark can feel the skin of Eduardo’s soft lower lip splitting against his knuckle. Enough that he has to fight the instinct to catch Eduardo when he topples backward and crashes haphazard into the arm of the sofa.
They both throw the third punch. Mark’s surprised at first by the synchronicity of it, but then he’s mostly just satisfied.
They’re finally on the same page now. No skirting or avoidance, no pulling back or drawing in, no shutting up or shutting down. They’re finally graceful, and even though both of them probably could, neither dodge the impact of that third punch, they just take it.
It’s Mark who tackles Eduardo. They crash to the ground with grunts. Eduardo has a fistful of Mark’s shirt, knees him in the stomach and manages to flip them around. Mark lands another punch, but isn’t able to pull his elbow back far enough to make it good. Eduardo is. He gets Mark right below his eye and the pain is sharp, temporary blindness, brief alarm.
Mark’s able to push Eduardo off with nothing more than the adrenaline-force of his arms. He doesn’t know, maybe Eduardo lets him, but Mark takes to kicking Eduardo at where he’s hunched on the floor. Once on the knee, again in the thigh, and then higher, in the belly, enough to make him double over for only a second.
Eduardo meets Mark when he stands, lands another punch that doesn’t matter, because they just tumble to the floor again, grappling like that, rolling and holding strategically, occasional fists flying and clicking against bone or accidentally soft flesh.
It could last a minute. It could last three hours. They’re huffing and crimson-faced, and Mark takes more satisfaction than he expects in the rigid cut of Eduardo’s sneer and faint chokes of breath as they wrestle. The world-or maybe just the house-crashes and shatters around their strangleholds and vice grips. A head slammed into a wall, a foot kicked into a table leg for leverage, a body slammed into an open door. Mark thinks they’ll kill each other like this.
It bothers him less than it should.
At one point they pause, more to gulp in oxygen than anything. Eduardo holds Mark’s hands to the side long enough to sit still, angle his head up and gasp in air. It’s clear to Mark, this isn’t over. This pause is just an intermission.
Mark clenches his fists and yanks, pulls. Eduardo meets his eyes and grunts as he struggles to hold him prostrate. Mark kicks and bucks, slams his feet into the floor and heaves himself up.
Eduardo slams him back to the ground.
He holds his shoulders this time, lets Mark knock futilely at his back with his balled fists and claw the skin with his fingertips when that yields no results.
Eduardo’s still out of breath, struggling to fill his lungs, rocking with each of Mark’s bursts. His skin is as red as Mark’s feels, and every time Mark pulls or pushes against his hold, Eduardo’s eyes grow big and fiery. His lips pull back to expose a perfect row of pearly white teeth.
Mark kisses him.
It’s nothing more than a brush of his lips. Could have been accidental, but they both know better.
He tastes blood.
Eduardo’s mouth is full of it.
“Don’t fucking push me,” Eduardo screams, palm thumping into the floor close to Mark’s ear. He rocks forward, taking the pressure off Mark’s abdomen and putting it onto his shoulders. He pushes him into the floor like he wishes-and he probably does-that it was Mark’s throat beneath his fingers instead of sharp, boney joints. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
Mark laughs. It’s not like this is funny-it’s clearly not. It’s not that kind of laugh. Mark can’t stop it from bubbling in his stomach, rising to his chest, and emerging in little maniacal bounces. He’s only half-lying when he says, “Yep.”
Eduardo’s eyes grow brighter, alight with something close to murderous. “Yeah, that’s all you ever wanted. A credit card number and my dick in your ass, isn’t that right?”
Mark can hardly breathe he’s laughing so hard. He nods. “Yeah, your dick in my ass,” but the last part is cut off into a high, keening wheeze of a chuckle.
Eduardo punches him again.
Mark laughs harder.
He thinks he’s probably losing it.
He thinks that’s probably for the best.
Eduardo hits him again, knuckles against jaw. And again. And again. Mark wishes he could say this quiets him, but it doesn’t. The laughter just keeps coming, as sure as the fist against his face, as sure as the carpet scratching into his back and the sweat beading on his chest beneath fleece and cotton.
“This is what you want,” Eduardo’s panting, and Mark can’t see the details because his eyes are watery from all the laughing, but he can make out vague movement near Eduardo’s stomach, can hear the metallic sounds of a belt being undone.
He blinks up at Eduardo and is unable to stop a wide grin from swallowing his face. “Yes.”
Eduardo flips him over. Mark’s sweatpants and boxers get ripped away in one motion and he’s exposed to the air. He kicks at the pants around his ankles to free himself from them, rising to his knees so he can rock back against Eduardo, laughing, “Come on, Wardo. Come on, give it to me.”
He hears Eduardo spit.
It’s only when he spreads Mark that the laughter dies in his throat.
The blunt tip of Eduardo, spit-slicked against Mark’s hole makes him pause.
Mark is shaking. “Wardo, wait.”
He grabs Mark’s hip hard enough to draw blood. “Wait for what? Don’t chicken out on me now.”
Mark lowers his forehead to the carpet and lets his eyes fall closed.
He’s suddenly very tired. “Do it.”
He doesn’t make a sound when Eduardo forces himself inside, only half-hard. Mark gnashes his teeth and grinds his wrists into the rough carpet. He instinctively inches away, can’t help it really, but Eduardo pulls him into a half-hearted thrust.
Mark swallows a scream, feels a vein in his temple thump thump thump. “Harder,” he commands, choking on something in the back of his throat. Maybe saliva, probably blood-this time his own.
Eduardo obeys.
Mark’s never felt so much pain in his life. It’s like being ripped in half. Like something is tearing him open from anus to throat. It’s all Mark can do to muffle the sounds he can’t quite trap inside his chest, to mask them as laughter instead of whimpers.
It only gets worse when Eduardo grows fully erect. Mark can’t help pulling away, even though his mouth says More Harder Faster You’re Such A Little Bitch, Wardo until he’s all the way inside, so deep that skin slaps against skin and Mark’s flat on the floor again to get away from it. His toes struggle for purchase against the carpet to push him forward, but Eduardo’s pinning him down.
Eduardo grabs his shoulder to keep him still. “Either you want it or you don’t,” he snaps.
“Come on,” he says, and Mark stops struggling. “Fuck me.”
It’s not so difficult to give in and fade out, to focus on Eduardo’s fingers yanking his face away from the carpet by his hair, and the sounds he makes from behind Mark, grunting words into his ear. Things like, “There it is, take it,” and “Knew you’d get off on this, you sick fuck,” and best of all, “I hate you. I hate you, Mark. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You did it, I fucking hate you.”
Mark doesn’t know what happens here. If you ask him much later down the line, Mark might say okay. His mother might have been right. Maybe Mark does have some kind of psychological screw loose, because something inside Mark just breaks.
He opens his mouth to make a snappy retort, but all that emerges is a wet, broken sob.
He can’t remember the last time he cried. Possibly when Mark was twelve and he crashed his bike and skinned his knee, there was something like a tear, but it was more out of frustration than anything.
He can’t stop it now. The best Mark can do is bury his face into the carpet and muffle the sounds of it. Deep from his stomach, forcing its way up his throat, making his body seize and clench. Eduardo fucks him faster.
All that laughter finally makes sense to Mark then.
It was just his body’s way of preventing this.
*
Eduardo does stop, eventually. Mark doesn’t know at first whether or not he’s come, because when he pulls out, all Mark can feel is fire and raw and an impulse to fold his knees closer to his body, even though he can’t even move.
Nothing happens.
Eduardo doesn’t make any sounds of movement from his position above Mark, and Mark would love to make a sarcastic observation about it all, but the thing is-
He just keeps crying.
It’s annoying and inconvenient.
He waits for Eduardo to say something about it. Mark’s not sure how to predict this one. He’ll either do a three-sixty and want to know if Mark’s okay, or get pissed off that Mark has somehow found a loophole to play the victim.
Mark waits for something to happen; long enough that his deep, guttural sobs dwindle into breathless hiccups and strings of spitbloodsnot.
He’s still shaking.
There are finally sounds of shifting fabric, belt buckle dings, shoes against carpet.
Mostly they’re disappearing behind Mark.
*
It’s not long after Eduardo’s left that Mark pulls himself up from the floor. He doesn’t do it as gingerly as he should, and most of his breaths are more sobs than anything, but he forces himself into the bedroom because someone’s bound to come home sooner or later, and really, Mark can’t explain any of that.
He locks the door.
His pants are still laying somewhere in the hall, but that’s not odd. Someone’s pants are always laying somewhere in this house.
He gets under the blankets and falls asleep instantly.
Mark can’t remember ever sleeping so well.
*
Dustin comes home after the light has faded from the windows. “Mark?”
He keeps knocking.
Mark doesn’t answer.
“Are you dead in there? Because I’m pretty sure ninjas broke into our house and vandalized… everything?”
Mark stares at the wall across the room.
“Mark? I know I’m all quippy and stuff and it’s hard to tell, but I’m sort of worried here.” Dustin makes a muffled laugh that’s more nervous than anything.
Mark says, “I’m fine,” so that he’ll leave, but it doesn’t work.
“Do you have a gripping tale about a ninja encounter? We’re all waiting with bated breath.”
“Go away, Dustin.”
“It’s just that-” Dustin lowers his voice, “We all heard about Wardo.”
“Go away!” Mark throws something at the door that misses by a mile because turns out, it was just a piece of paper.
He doesn’t have the strength to look for something heavier.
Mark hears Dustin sigh and knows he doesn’t leave, even after ten minutes pass and nothing more is said.
He finally asks, “On a scale of one to ten, one being My Little Pony and ten being Chuck Norris, how bad is it?”
Silence.
“I promise to leave you alone, even if it’s Chuck Norris Bad. Okay? I just… I have to know what I’m dealing with here. Mark?”
Mark looks at his hand, balled into a fist around the blanket. It’s bloody and swollen, and Mark doesn’t even wonder how Eduardo’s face must feel.
He answers, “One hundred.”
*
To Dustin’s credit, and later, when Mark can fully appreciate it, he really is rather impressed, he does give Mark the minimum amount of attention possible in a situation described as badder than Chuck Norris.
He knocks sometimes, probably just to make sure Mark’s still alive. He doesn’t pester him to eat, or ask if he’s okay, or to complain about the broken coffee table or the Wardo-Head-Shaped hole in the wall.
He just knocks.
Mark grunts.
That’s it.
And it’s fortunate to Mark, who drifts in and out of consciousness and can’t really muster an ounce of effort anyway. He’s free to ride out whatever state of numbness he’s in. It’s ironic, he thinks during one of his rare moments of semi-lucidity, that everyone once thought him a complete and total robot, and now he is less than one.
A robot would probably leave his bed to piss.
*
Mark wakes to damp, smelly sheets and realizes long after he should that it’s urine.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, has long lost the ability to measure time in increments that don’t include periods of consciousness, but he knows the sheets are merely damp and not wet.
He feels a faint sensation of disgust, and then a faint sensation of relief that he’s regaining the ability to feel anything.
Truthfully, Mark’s been a little worried, too.
He knows the numbness isn’t normal.
He thinks about standing, taking a shower-or a bath, since the shower was broken months ago-but one twitch of his leg is enough to send pain shooting through his body like knife-lightening.
So he falls asleep in a puddle of his own urine.
Again.
But he’s seriously grossed out about it this time.
That’s something.
That’s not numb.
*
The knocking came and Mark grunted.
It didn’t stop.
He feels like he can’t even talk, wishes Dustin would just deduce that from some kind of intuition, but he doesn’t.
He keeps knocking.
It gets really loud.
It gets so loud.
There’s a crash. Splintering. Cracking.
Mark shrinks into the darkness of the blankets, disoriented, but the urine smell is strong there and he’s still grossed out by it, so he throws them away from his head.
Eduardo’s staring down at him. “Get up.”
His left eye is so swollen, it’s practically closed. There’s a long strip of white over his nose and his lip has stitches. He walks with a limp that favors one leg.
Mark notes, “You look satisfyingly terrible,” and Eduardo gives a weak, one sided grin.
“Should see the other guy.”
“I think he’s mostly busy trying not to move.”
“Until now, at least.” Eduardo comes closer then, tries to pull away the blankets and Mark panics.
He yanks them back. “No!”
Eduardo pauses with his hands curled into the bedding. His expression could either be confused or annoyed, if he were able to make any expression at all.
“You can’t lay here forever.” Annoyed then.
He keeps yanking and Mark keeps pulling, but it’s not a fair competition. Eduardo’s had enough time to recover that he can actually walk and drive and kick in locked bedroom doors and probably make it to the fucking toilet, and Mark-
The blankets get ripped away and he covers his naked crotch, feels his face go hot and figures the amount of embarrassment he feels must be some kind of record.
Mark looks away. “I was about to take care of it…”
Eduardo stares, sort of slack jawed, until he leaves the room. Actually, he pretty much sprints out the door, and if it weren’t for the distant sounds of running water filling the bathtub, Mark would think he fled the house all together.
“Come on,” Eduardo says when he returns, paler than before, and if Mark can smell the very distinct aroma of vomit on his breath when he helps hoist Mark from the bed, then neither of them mention this.
Mark doesn’t remember what dignity even is at this point. He hobbles alongside Eduardo, cupping his junk in one hand, whimpering and grunting and gnashing his teeth and if it weren’t so absolutely pathetic, then Mark would laugh at himself, in a masochistic sort of way.
He eyes the tub like it’s a Herculean obstacle and considering he’s out of breath from walking the mere forty feet it took to get here, he supposes it kind of is. “I can’t,” he tells Eduardo.
Softly, “You can.” Eduardo takes off his sweater and the shirt beneath it, propping him up against the counter.
Their eyes meet when Eduardo gingerly lifts one of Marks feet over the lip of the tub. Mark winces and makes a humiliating sound but lets him repeat the process with the other.
The water is hot. Not too hot, but hot enough that when he finally finds the will to sit down, it’s all Mark can do to smother his scream.
At least Eduardo leaves bathroom for that part-Mark half lowered into the water, coaxing the raw skin between his cheeks to adjust to the temperature in brief increments of in and out.
Eduardo’s doing things in the other room. Sounds of fabric and more water. Something abrasive. Scrubbing. A cough. His voice, clouded by distance, “Anyone here have a hairdryer?”
Mark’s still panting. “Not likely.”
More scrubbing. Another cough. A grunt. A heavy sound. Something falling. Eduardo’s huff.
When Eduardo returns, Mark’s just sitting there, rigid and uncertain.
There’s blood in the water.
Some old.
Some new.
Eduardo kneels at the side of the tub, shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows. He reaches for the nearby washcloth he’d left for him and softly asks, “Can I…?”
Mark starts crying again. He covers his eyes with a palm and nods, but secretly hopes Eduardo won’t call attention to it.
He feels so fucking stupid.
Eduardo doesn’t wash him good enough to get the blood off. He’s too gentle. He never scrubs. If it weren’t for the fact that Mark experienced the same polarity, he’d be totally unable to reconcile the person who fucked him raw with this other, tender, soft-eyed person.
Mark chokes, “You bruised my rib,” but tries to make it more of a laugh than a sob.
Eduardo forces a smile that’s all wrong. “You broke my nose.”
“You broke my ass.”
Eduardo counters so quietly Mark can hardly hear it, “You broke my heart.”
Mark cries harder. Shields his face, even as Eduardo squeezes the washcloth against his neck, lets the water drip down his chest and pretends not to notice how it trembles.
“I’m sorry,” Mark says.
And the thing is, Mark really is sorry. He knew going into it what he was doing. He meant it. He wanted to hurt Eduardo. He wanted to humiliate him and break him in every way, and now-
Mark’s finding it difficult to maintain that sentiment when he feels the impact of it himself.
He takes a breath, waits for the crying to subside and chances a glance at Eduardo.
He looks like he might be sick.
Mark adds, “About breaking your heart, not about breaking your nose.” He’s hoping Eduardo will laugh or smile, even if it’s half-hearted.
He doesn’t. “I don’t know what happened to me, Mark. I didn’t know I was-I knew I was hurting you, but I was too distracted to see-” He makes a vague gesture to the entirety of the tub but doesn’t elaborate. His eyes look wet.
Mark shrugs, some of that numbness creeping back in. “I wanted it.”
Eduardo scoffs past an audible lump in his throat. “You didn’t want that.”
“The boundlessness of my masochism would clearly surprise you.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Eduardo shakes his head, fists the washcloth until it’s drained of water. Then he looks at him and says, “I’m sorry. Mark. I’m so sorry.”
Mark doesn’t tell him not to be.
He washes Mark for what seems like hours. Every inch of skin he can see, a few he can’t, and some that, when he tries to reach, Mark flinches away from. He’s too gentle. He never scrubs Mark’s skin.
The blood comes off with nothing more than patience and washcloth caresses.
Eduardo helps Mark out of the tub and dries him off. The towel emerged from the closet white and falls to the floor with sections of pink.
“We’re going to be late,” Eduardo says, helping him step into a pair of boxers.
Mark doesn’t ask what for.
They have to take Mark’s car to wherever they’re going to be late to, which isn’t really Mark’s car, but Sean’s shitty budget rental. Mark can’t sit. He cants his hips to the side and rests his weight on it, pressed into the door.
Eduardo avoids bumps.
Really, he like basically wastes five minutes going around one speed bump.
Mark’s grateful.
The place they’re going to ends up being a doctor’s office. Somewhere nondescript. It doesn’t look entirely legal.
Eduardo gives Mark a careful look when they park. “This guy… he’s good. He’ll keep it quiet. They won’t ask questions.”
Mark wonders, “Is this where you went?” and Eduardo nods.
He lets Eduardo lead him into the building. It’s dated and quiet and there’s no one else in the waiting room.
Eduardo sits.
Mark doesn’t.
Eduardo stands up.
When Mark’s called into the back, Eduardo follows. It’s just a small, well-lit hallway into a back-room. It looks seedy and if Mark were perhaps in a better state of mind, he’d be running the other way.
As it is, when the middle-aged man in his possibly fake white coat tells him to undress, Mark obeys insofar as Eduardo lifts his shirt above his head and helps him step out of his sweats.
Most of it goes by in a blur. They guy pokes and prods Does this hurt? How about now? Look at the scale on the wall and tell me how much it hurts. Can you move this? Can you cough? Deep breath.
He tells Mark to bend over the table.
Mark tries to lighten the mood by joking, “Not even going to buy me dinner first?” but it comes out monotone and wrong.
No one laughs.
Eduardo’s content to stand awkwardly by the door while the doctor pokes around inside Mark’s ass, but their eyes keep meeting by accident, and Mark can’t contain the tears when they come.
Mark rolls his eyes even as they water, wishes he could close whatever flood gate was opened that’s allowing this stupid blubbery bullshit. Eduardo moves closer and reaches out, like he might hold his hand or touch his face, but seems to think better of it and just rocks anxiously back on his heels.
Eduardo and the doctor talk. Mark tunes them out, doesn’t care what’s wrong with his ass, just wants this guy to get out of it already.
He brandishes a syringe and tells Mark he’s going to stick this fucking thing into his anus and Mark just about knocks the table over in his haste to get away from it.
Eduardo does hold his hand then. He crouches down close to Mark’s face and smoothes back his hair, shushes him even as he winces himself, and the needle is so fucking ridiculous and long that Mark swallows down vomit, clings to Eduardo arm and squeezes it-fucking strangles it-cries so hard that he can barely breathe.
The shot numbs him, inside out.
Mark lets Eduardo go.
*
He doesn’t stay long after he takes Mark home. He’d already scrubbed Mark’s mattress, flipped it over, and changed the bedding. The room still has a faint urine-type stench, but Mark doesn’t care.
He hits the bed with all intentions of sleeping forever.
“I have to go back to Harvard,” Eduardo says. He’s standing at the end of Mark’s bed, half coming, half going. “I’m sorry, but I. I can’t stay, Mark. I have to-”
“You have to get away from here,” Mark finishes. He can see the way Eduardo looks at this place. This is no longer a house, and it’s no longer the house where Mark told him …get left behind…, and it’s not even the house where they had a pretty epic fistfight.
It’s something worse.
It happened on the floor.
“Yeah.” Eduardo gives him this look that makes it clear he won’t be back.
Mark nods. “It’s fine.”
And it is. There’s nothing more to be said. Nothing more to apologize for. Forgiveness is both default and unattainable. They could keep in touch, pretend like they didn’t push pull shove each other to the brink of insanity once upon a time. Exchange pleasantries. Ask how the weather is. Smiley faces in equal signs and upper-case ‘D’s. LOL’s with silence behind each screen.
The thought of it makes Mark sick.
They don’t say goodbye. Not really. Mark nods and Eduardo nods and neither of them cry, but they both know this is how it ends, and it doesn’t matter who threw the first punch or who looks worse or needed the most stitches or who has the most money or the least friends on Facebook.
No one can win a war if the battleground is empty.
*
Mark takes a week off of Facebook. It’s unprecedented, and quite frankly, careless. It’s at a critical stage and they can’t afford it.
It’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s just that he can’t stomach diving back into that version of himself just yet.
He returns to a lot of questions. Namely, what truck drove into your face and what’s with the pillow in your chair and should we alert the authorities.
He moves out of the house, first thing. Gets an apartment that’s modest in size and excessive in features. A place with no memories, where he can actually walk to the bathroom without feeling nausea and embarrassment.
It’s the closest thing to a fresh start as Mark will ever get.
Mark doesn’t tell anyone anything. It’s not their business. Not even Dustin who becomes his own version of hovery. Not even his mother who calls three times every day. Not even Sean who’s constantly on edge about the impending lawsuit.
The lawsuit never comes.
Most of Mark’s colleagues see this as a great victory. Eduardo is a coward. We put him in his place. What a pussy, can’t even lawyer-up right. Hope he spent that check on a new pair of panties. Let’s go out for drinks and celebrate the destruction of Eduardo S. Saverin.
Mark tries not to laugh in their faces.
He knows what Eduardo spent that check on.
It was paid to a seedy doctor that didn’t ask Mark any questions.
*
So Eduardo doesn’t sue, but the Winklevii do. Mark is actually surprised at first, and even though he still believes they’re just privileged little assholes throwing tantrums, he decides to settle.
He didn’t steal their idea, but it did inspire him.
He used to think there was shame in admitting this.
Mark‘s experienced worse shame since then.
Facebook’s success is as swift as its creation. Doesn’t come without a lot of hard work, but all Mark has is time. He doesn’t have a social life. His brief experimentation in tolerating human contact has failed. He doesn’t have any interest in trying again, and he’s okay with that. He doesn’t feel the need to push his own boundaries. It’s better this way.
That first year, Mark’s kept busy enough that he can barely remember his own name, let alone care about much else. He doesn’t go out often, if at all, and no one really bothers him. He’s content in his element, though, feels pride in quiet bursts and secret moments on his balcony with a tallneck beer to his lips and a cell phone in his hand.
This is exactly what he wanted.
This was his vision.
This is Mark’s dream.
He never uses the cell phone.
*
The second year is a little scarier. He has to meet people. Has to make appearances. Has speaking engagements that seem unauthentic only because it’s Mark who’s speaking. As if it’s his place to advise people. As if his opinion matters to the industry.
It’s stressful.
He starts seeing a therapist, recommended to him by both his mother and Chris, who’s come back out to Palo Alto after graduation to help head Facebook’s PR team.
He doesn’t talk about Eduardo.
Not for months.
His therapist knows he’s always leaving something out, but she never pushes.
He wakes up one day restless and antsy. He feels like something inside of him is clawing to break free. He doesn't know what it is or what it means or why his eyes are suddenly wet again when he hasn't cried in at least a year and nothing hurts, but he knows he saw Eduardo's picture on Chris' Facebook page the night before, and he's felt that way ever since.
He tells his therapist.
He tells her everything.
“How did you feel when he left?” she asks.
“Relieved,” Mark answers. “Empty.”
Eduardo’s pretty much all they talk about after that.
*
Dustin and Chris try to set Mark up with a mutual friend.
She’s nice.
Her hair is pretty.
He takes her out to dinner, even makes a big deal of it, suit and tie, pull out her chair, don’t look at her chest, give her the big smile, the one with the dimples, watch your language.
He doesn’t kiss her goodnight.
He goes home and pulls up Chris’ Facebook page, stares at the picture of Eduardo, puts his hand down his pants and rearranges his only memory of intercourse into something resembling normal.
Mark and the girl never speak again.
It all feels impossible. Back at Harvard, with Erica, she understood Mark’s situation. She was good at stuff like that. She didn’t have many expectations, for the most part. Of course, as time went on, dating Mark became more of a job and less of a relationship.
He never had sex with her.
He touched her hair once.
It was really soft and she was more patient than Mark deserved and how can he expect to ever find someone like that again?
“I feel like an alien,” he tells his therapist. “Like I don’t belong in my own skin.”
She asks, “How long have you felt this way?” and Mark shrugs.
“Forever, but recently just… more so. I guess.”
She guesses, “Since Eduardo?”
It’s the first time either of them can say his name without Mark wincing.
And the thing is, Mark’s not over it. Any of it. Not the good stuff, not the bad stuff, and not the truly awful stuff. The fake memories Mark likes to make of that day are nice, but they’re nothing more than another method of punishing himself: This Is What You Could Have Had.
“It’s not something you get over,” she says. “It becomes a part of you. It shapes you.”
She asks Mark what he’s learned from that day with Eduardo, and Mark answers, “I’m not as smart as I thought.”
Mark’s learned that his type of intellect means very little.
“Do you think human contact might make you feel a little less alien, Mark?”
“It’s raining,” he answers, watching the sky bleed against the window.
It never snows here.
*
The third year is weird.
In a good way.
Mark’s finally growing into his position. He can stand in front of a crowded room and not feel like an imposter. He talks less than he should and shakes fewer hands than advised (none), but he can smile without making an inside joke with himself about the person he’s speaking with.
His therapist is crazy proud.
“Have you touched anyone this week, Mark?” She always asks that.
His answer is always, “No.”
There’s this guy in his building who always nods hello and Mark thinks about asking him out. He thinks maybe. Maybe if Mark explained the situation, this guy might understand and he might like Mark enough that he’d wait. He looks nice enough.
Mark nods hello back, every morning. Every morning he plans to stop and call out, sprint up to the guy and make small talk about the new recycling notices or the mailbox upgrade or the loud lady in 72B who possibly owns an oboe.
The guy moves out before he can.
*
He takes a flight home for the holidays. Mark’s actually looking forward to it since his sister gave birth.
Mark’s an uncle.
It’s like the most mindblowing thing to happen to him since Facebook. Mark hates babies, despises the sound and smell of them, but it’s different when it’s family.
He’s excited.
Suffice to say, his three hour layover in Dallas/Fort Worth has Mark downright beside himself. There are way too many people, for one. Too many chances for unsolicited contact. He keeps his arms pressed to his body and squeezes along walls, and if he bought every business-class seat on this flight just to make sure no one knocks elbows with him, then Mark isn’t snobby. His nerves just couldn’t tolerate it, even with the massive amounts of Xanax currently coursing through his blood stream.
He stays at his gate. It’s empty most of the time and he can choose whatever seat he wants. When it isn’t empty, he can get up and move to another gate that is. He sends some emails while he waits, makes some memos on the back-up units at the server farm, since holidays are always stressful on the infrastructure.
Also, he watches people.
The first time he sees Eduardo, Mark’s sure he’s imagining it. It’s only a glance of a head over a crowd of ornery holiday travelers. Mark doesn’t pay it much attention. He sees Eduardo all the time.
The second time Mark sees him, he’s convinced that he’s losing his mind. Still, his pulse gets all pattery because-
It’s possible, right?
Not probable, but.
Possible.
Mark doesn’t follow the guy. He’s only seen him from behind, and that’d be creepy. He’s typing out another memo on his laptop when the guy takes a seat at a parallel gate.
Their eyes meet at exactly the same time.
They each do a double take and Mark’s pulse goes from pattery to thunderous, because only one person on this earth looks at Mark and smiles like that.
All teeth and squinty eyes.
Mark returns the grin instantly, but he can’t tell in that moment whether or not he’s thrilled to see Eduardo or just plain fucking terrified.
Fight or flight?
Fight or flight?
Fight or flight?
Eduardo looks like he’s going to get up, sets his magazine down, but ultimately seems unsure of himself and waves instead, settles back in and never looks away.
Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of triumph.
Who made the first move?
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo made the first move, he spoke to Mark six years ago in their Econ class and didn’t shy away. Mark made the first move, he invited Eduardo to that first AEPi party. Eduardo made the first move, he got drunk and touched Mark’s hand their second year. Mark made the first move, he let him.
Really, they’d been making moves their entire friendship.
So it’s Mark who makes the first move, this day. He stands up and puts his computer away, walks to Eduardo’s gate and sits two seats from him.
Mark's never been much for flight.
“Hi.”
Eduardo’s smile is impossibly huge. “Wow, I can’t believe it’s really you! Small world, huh?”
“Layover,” Mark explains, and if it weren’t for the way Eduardo looks at him, Mark might feel awkward that his company is unwanted.
Eduardo responds, “Same,” and keeps gawking at Mark like that. Like he’s a mirage or something.
The good kind.
Mark asks, “How are you?”
“I’m... I’m good, how are you? How’s Facebook?”
Mark shrugs. “It’s doing okay.”
“Modest,” Eduardo laughs. “Doing ‘okay’. It’s like the whole internet. Can’t even go to a webpage without being harassed about sharing it on Facebook.”
Mark grins, but tries mostly to hide it. “You look great,” Mark says, and is surprised he manages to keep a straight face, because this seems to be a day for understatements.
Eduardo looks fantastic.
They have a superficial conversation about Eduardo’s quests in V.C. and Mark can’t help dwelling on the little facets of Eduardo that remain unchanged, even after all these years. He still motions wildly with his hands, like his voice alone just can’t properly convey the importance of it. His eyebrows are still crazy expressive and the lift of his cheeks when he says something in a low tone of voice is still Eduardo to the core.
Except.
He has a clean, straight-line scar that divides two halves of his lower lip.
The bridge of his nose has a faint bump.
“But I don’t know. It’s good work. I like it most of the time.” He finishes with a nod of finality, smile still swallowing his face.
“I heard about Kinoo. And the shoe site. It’s impressive.”
Eduardo’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and Mark tries not to blush or look away. “You heard about those? Yeah, it was just… I got lucky, you know. It’s seventy-five-percent gambling anyway.” He laughs again.
Mark disagrees. “I think, as far as Kinoo goes, anyone else would have turned them away, especially with projections so clearly in the negative, and god-the developer had his head shoved so far up his own ass he probably had to yawn to see his computer screen. My guess is… you took one look at that kid and knew he was an arrogant little shit who’d never let it fail. That’s not so easily detectable.”
Eduardo almost looks touched, glances away and smiles into the distance when his face pinkens. “What can I say, I’ve seen it before.”
Mark returns his smile and wonders, “When does your flight leave?”
He walks with Eduardo to go check the board, where it’s revealed his flight’s been delayed by almost an hour.
“Shit,” he says, frowning, but then turns to Mark and immediately asks, “Want to go get some coffee?”
*
“She’s definitely got the Zuckerberg hair,” Eduardo says of the photo Mark hands him. He’s staring at it so raptly, Mark considers waving a hand in front of his face.
“She’s six weeks. It’s my first time meeting her.” He’s jittery and wired, and Mark doesn’t know whether his anxiety is a good or bad thing.
He hasn’t touched his coffee.
Eduardo doesn’t look nervous at all-on the surface. “Too bad I’m an only child. I’ll only know the satisfaction of sending infants Hanukkah gifts with international shipping charges attached.” When he hands the photo back to Mark, though, something is there.
A tremble.
So subtle Mark might miss it if he weren’t staring so intently.
Eduardo buries his hands into his lap.
They sit in the airport café for as long as it takes Eduardo’s plane to begin boarding. No topics of great importance emerge. It’s mostly just like Mark had always predicted. Small talk. Niceties. The weather is hot over here, it’s cold over there. No equal signs and uppercase ‘D’s, but their mouths mimic the sentiment, and it’s all much more genuine than Mark expects.
When Eduardo’s called to his gate, Mark’s disappointed.
Overwhelmingly, shockingly disappointed.
He doesn’t really know what to do with himself, stands in the middle of the terminal and tries to remember what he even came here for.
Eduardo hefts his bag over a shoulder and turns to Mark, squeezes the strap of it hard enough that his knuckles turn white. “So…”
Mark nods. “Yeah.”
“We could-“ Eduardo looks over his shoulder, as if he’s in the middle of committing some kind of insidious criminal act. “If you want to, of course. You can take my card and… call me or something. Or email me. Or send a postcard to my P.O. box. You know, whatever.” Eduardo laughs and raises his hand like he might give Mark one of those pseudo-affectionate pats on the bicep, and Mark-
He doesn’t flinch so much as he flings himself out of reach, rigid and more distressed than one should be while medically sedated.
Eduardo freezes, tries to hide a horrified expression and fails terribly. “Or… not.”
“No,” Mark says. “I’d-that’s cool. We can do that. Let’s do that.” He takes the card from Eduardo’s suspended, outstretched hand and smiles. “It was good seeing you, Wardo.”
He means it.
He hopes Eduardo can see that.
Mark watches his plane take off through the enormous windows, still buzzing. He feels like he just ran a marathon or just wrestled some kind of large animal into submission or just woke up after the long slumber that follows a three day coding binge.
Like he did something right.
*
Mark normally spends a total of three hours out of his day coding.
He hates it.
He’s no longer a developer, he’s a CEO. It’s not like he doesn’t try. He has some great ideas, but the thing is, he starts them, pitches them to the team, and they take over.
Facebook isn’t his anymore.
It belongs to the world.
So it’s not hard in the least to put Eduardo’s name back onto the masthead. This fact bothers Mark.
“Are you looking to make a grand gesture?” his therapist asks.
Mark shrugs. “I was just hoping to make it clear that I’m past it all.”
“Are you?”
Mark amends, “I was hoping to make it clear that I want to get past it all.”
“And the addition to the masthead was…”
“Underwhelming.” No one has said anything, even a week later. Few even check it, and Mark’s completely certain that Eduardo isn’t in that minority.
She finally asks the billion dollar question. “What is it you want from Eduardo exactly?”
“Nothing,” he answers. “Everything.”
*
Eduardo declines Mark’s formally written letter offering him the position of Facebook CFO.
Mark isn’t surprised.
In fact, it’s exactly as he envisioned.
Eduardo doesn’t call to talk about it. Neither does Mark. It’s all done on paper. Very professional. No faces. No voices. Just ink and stamp. Impersonal and more tangible than Mark’s entirely accustomed to.
But, when Mark has to take a flight to London for a charity event, he does gather the courage to send Eduardo a text. It takes days. He types out at least ten before he finally sends anything, and even then, it’s done in his car, which is parked outside his therapist’s building. Just in case.
Any chance you’ll have a layover at JFK on the 20th?
Eduardo responds, No sorry. O’Hare on the 24th :(
Mark thinks about it. It wouldn’t be that difficult to move things around, to arrange to be at O’Hare on the 24th, but he doesn’t.
He has legal send Eduardo another formal offer instead.
*
There is one advantage to the CEO thing, even if Mark no longer spends the entirety of his day doing what he enjoys most.
Sometimes, most of the time, he gets to choose which charities to raise funds for.
Mark used to hate it. He never felt right giving because everyone always thanked him and Mark doesn’t deserve thanks for it at all.
He cringes through those parts and he doesn’t just write checks. He devotes entire chunks of prospective development ideas to causes. Tries to find ways to call attention to those in need with the greatest level of efficiency.
His money, his brain. It’s all Mark really has to offer.
The London benefit was for prematurity and birth defects (his niece was born preemie). He also puts a lot of time into raising funds for new computers in classrooms overseas. There are a few more, but this particular week, Mark is devoting some time to sexual violence advocacy.
It was honestly chosen at random from a list of his twenty pre-decided upon organizations, because it’s hard to choose. If it were up to Mark, he’d just give them all everything, but there are too many, and turns out, not even a billion dollars can save the world.
During the fundraiser, someone from the press asks, “Are you a victim of sexual violence?” and Mark pauses.
It’s hardly a pause really. One could easily assume Mark’s choosing his words wisely or being slightly caught off guard because it’s an invasive question anyway.
He answers, “No, but it’s still a cause very close to me.”
And that’s that.
*
Eduardo is in his driveway. It’s night. Pretty late, really.
Mark doesn’t know what to think of it. Truthfully, he’s been tired a lot lately and thinks he might have fallen asleep at the office.
It’s very possible he’s dreaming this.
“Wardo.” Mark isn’t scared or anything, but there is that edge of unease, like getting a phone call at four in the morning.
Like something is wrong.
“Sorry to just… show up,” he says, but realizes that Mark’s car is full of groceries and gestures to the window. “I can help?”
He looks vaguely distressed.
They carry the bags inside-there aren’t many-and Eduardo makes a joke about Mark actually feeding himself and it all feels very wrong.
“Did something happen?” Mark worries. They’ve barely gotten inside and Mark doesn’t care. He drops the bags on the floor and instructs Eduardo to do the same.
“What are these?” Eduardo asks, pulling a thick folder from his waistband.
Mark glances them over and notes, “They’re formal offers. For-”
Eduardo interrupts, “I know what they are, I just don’t know why.”
His hands are shaking.
Mark explains, “Because we need a good one, and you’re the best.”
Eduardo doesn’t even blink. “That’s a lie and we both know it, Mark. If this about-” But he doesn’t finish. Folds up the thick stack of papers and squeezes it.
“It’s not a lie,” Mark promises.
“You hesitated.” Eduardo looks at him, right in the eye, and Mark’s stomach sinks like lead.
Eduardo looks shattered. “They asked you.” He doesn’t step any closer. “They asked if you were a victim, Mark, and you hesitated.”
Mark stares at his shoes.
Eduardo’s.
They’re sneakers that in no way match his suit.
If this were any other discussion, Mark would laugh at it.
“Is that what happened?” Eduardo doesn’t come closer but he does bend down in an attempt to force Mark’s gaze to his.
It doesn’t work. “You were there.”
Eduardo bursts in a voice higher than raised, “I wasn’t there, Mark! That wasn’t me!” and Mark tries-he fucking battles not to-but he flinches away, knows instantly that Eduardo’s face has fallen.
“See?” Eduardo says, and he’s staggered back a step, presses his back to the wall. “That, right there.”
“That wasn’t what happened.”
Eduardo begs Mark, “Can you please look me in the eye when you say that.”
So Mark does. He rounds his shoulder and lifts his head and when he says, “That wasn’t what happened, Wardo,” Mark means it, through and through.
Eduardo doesn’t look buoyed at all. “Then kiss me.”
Since that’s a jarring and borderline ridiculous request, Mark scoffs. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
Eduardo instantly smiles, however sadly. “You always tilt your head like that when you lie.”
Mark bends down to fuss with a bag, hurries to change the subject. “You haven’t accepted any of the offers.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Right,” Mark nods. “Not yet. You have to explicitly ask for shares first.”
When Mark’s confident enough that his face isn’t transparent-red, he looks up at Eduardo.
His expression is comically puzzled. “What?”
“I mean, I would give them to you outright if I could, but there’s all this legal red tape, and-“
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Come with me tomorrow,” Mark bargains. “To the offices. Just take a look around and you can make your decision then. If you still say no after that, I’ll tell legal to rein it in.”
Eduardo shakes his head, looks utterly defeated. “Why, Mark? After all this time. Nothing’s changed.”
Mark looks him in the eye when he answers, and his head tilts precisely none. “That’s not true.”
Part 2 >>
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Author:
a_jejune_star
Rating: Seriously NC-17
Words: ~17,500
Summary: For this hate!sex prompt on the
tsn_kinkmeme. Mark and Eduardo’s post-laptop-smash hate!sex makes a bad situation worse. How they find their way back to each other.
Contains: Graphically violent sex, not-sexy sex, crying during intercourse, anxiety issues, a severe aversion to touch.
Part 1 | Part 2
(You are new and near now to someone you used to love.
When you were young; when all was gold and you two touched,
And felt the flutter underneath your skin. You stood in glowing rooms,
The light dripping from both of you.
And nothing since has felt as radiant or real.)
-Touch by Bright Eyes
*
Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of blame.
Who threw the first punch?
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo threw the first punch, he didn’t notice Mark’s eyes on him those late nights at Kirkland, buzzed and restless. Mark threw the first punch, he was dismissive of Eduardo’s affection, shrugged hands off his shoulder and took advantage of his kindness at every turn. Eduardo threw the first punch, he didn’t come out to Palo Alto when Mark begged him to, when Mark was ready to give it all. Mark threw the first punch, he diluted Eduardo’s shares and pushed him out of his life, spiteful and just plain bitter.
Really, they’d been throwing punches their entire friendship.
So the fact is, Mark has this thing about touch. No one touches Mark. It makes him anxious. His mother tried to diagnose it once as some form of psychological condition in his early teens, but Mark didn’t have the patience for it.
Only Mark lets Eduardo touch him, sometimes. Just superficial contact. Brushes of a hand. Playful kicks against shoe-covered toes. A palm on his shoulder blade.
Mark let the touches come in stages for a reason. It’s all been conditioning for his mind. Don’t fear this, you want this, you want more than this, get used to this, you like this, ask for more.
It was all preparation for something that will never actually happen, and it doesn’t matter that Mark is officially to blame.
It’s like losing a limb.
So it’s no surprise to Mark, finding Eduardo at the house when he returns. They couldn’t have it out proper in the office. Not with Sean looking on, ready to call out the dogs and skew the odds in Mark’s favor. Not with Dustin there to give disappointed glances and speeches about The Power of Friendship.
Mark knew the second Eduardo heaved that laptop into the air and smashed it into a mangled piece of plastic and capacitors that this moment was coming, brewing and festering beneath the surface of juvenile snark and flying spittle.
And see, the truth is, Mark’s been positively itching for that human contact he can’t quite stomach. It’s nothing tangible. Nothing he’s even been able to put his finger on until just this moment, when it’s too far out of reach to even see.
If he wasn’t conditioning himself for that, then okay. He’s been conditioning himself for this.
It’ll do.
The particles between them, the air of the room, the surface of his scalp and the pores of his skin-they’re all charged and buzzing.
Eduardo’s not mad. That’s a bad word. A small word. Too simple. Black and white. Nothing about this could be so easy. The fact is, Eduardo is something else. Something darker and quiet-scary not because Mark is intimidated, but because he feels the same way, and he wants this.
He’s relieved on the inside that it won’t go to waste.
“I can’t fucking believe you,” Eduardo says.
He’s lying. It’s all in his eyes, leaned against the corner of the room, head pressed into the wall.
“After everything, Mark,” he continues. “Really? After everything I’ve done for you, you just-“
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Mark shrugs.
So it’s Eduardo who throws the first punch. Physically, at least. Mark wishes he could say it comes out of nowhere, but that’s a lie too. It comes in slow motion and he indexes every detail. The furl of Eduardo’s eyebrows, the cording of muscle in his neck, the flush to his cheeks and the raise of his fist.
Mark’s almost completely sure Eduardo doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. His fist hits Mark’s jaw at an odd, grazing angle. There is that sickly crack of bone on bone, and it does hurt-God, it’s excruciating-but it’s hardly Eduardo’s best. If Eduardo had planned it better, he could have hurt Mark more.
Mark supposes that’s an aptitude better suited for himself.
He staggers back only half a step, shakes off the fuzz around his vision and straightens his shoulders. Eduardo’s face is clouded now, less severe, and his mouth falls open. Mark can tell by the size of his wide eyes what Eduardo’s going to say. I’m sorry or Are you alright? or I got carried away, I didn’t mean to...
Mark’s thinking No. No, he will not let Eduardo back down from this. He will not let Eduardo take this away from him. He will not let this moment pass half-executed, like everything else between them.
So Mark throws the second punch. It lands better than Eduardo’s had, good enough that Mark can feel the skin of Eduardo’s soft lower lip splitting against his knuckle. Enough that he has to fight the instinct to catch Eduardo when he topples backward and crashes haphazard into the arm of the sofa.
They both throw the third punch. Mark’s surprised at first by the synchronicity of it, but then he’s mostly just satisfied.
They’re finally on the same page now. No skirting or avoidance, no pulling back or drawing in, no shutting up or shutting down. They’re finally graceful, and even though both of them probably could, neither dodge the impact of that third punch, they just take it.
It’s Mark who tackles Eduardo. They crash to the ground with grunts. Eduardo has a fistful of Mark’s shirt, knees him in the stomach and manages to flip them around. Mark lands another punch, but isn’t able to pull his elbow back far enough to make it good. Eduardo is. He gets Mark right below his eye and the pain is sharp, temporary blindness, brief alarm.
Mark’s able to push Eduardo off with nothing more than the adrenaline-force of his arms. He doesn’t know, maybe Eduardo lets him, but Mark takes to kicking Eduardo at where he’s hunched on the floor. Once on the knee, again in the thigh, and then higher, in the belly, enough to make him double over for only a second.
Eduardo meets Mark when he stands, lands another punch that doesn’t matter, because they just tumble to the floor again, grappling like that, rolling and holding strategically, occasional fists flying and clicking against bone or accidentally soft flesh.
It could last a minute. It could last three hours. They’re huffing and crimson-faced, and Mark takes more satisfaction than he expects in the rigid cut of Eduardo’s sneer and faint chokes of breath as they wrestle. The world-or maybe just the house-crashes and shatters around their strangleholds and vice grips. A head slammed into a wall, a foot kicked into a table leg for leverage, a body slammed into an open door. Mark thinks they’ll kill each other like this.
It bothers him less than it should.
At one point they pause, more to gulp in oxygen than anything. Eduardo holds Mark’s hands to the side long enough to sit still, angle his head up and gasp in air. It’s clear to Mark, this isn’t over. This pause is just an intermission.
Mark clenches his fists and yanks, pulls. Eduardo meets his eyes and grunts as he struggles to hold him prostrate. Mark kicks and bucks, slams his feet into the floor and heaves himself up.
Eduardo slams him back to the ground.
He holds his shoulders this time, lets Mark knock futilely at his back with his balled fists and claw the skin with his fingertips when that yields no results.
Eduardo’s still out of breath, struggling to fill his lungs, rocking with each of Mark’s bursts. His skin is as red as Mark’s feels, and every time Mark pulls or pushes against his hold, Eduardo’s eyes grow big and fiery. His lips pull back to expose a perfect row of pearly white teeth.
Mark kisses him.
It’s nothing more than a brush of his lips. Could have been accidental, but they both know better.
He tastes blood.
Eduardo’s mouth is full of it.
“Don’t fucking push me,” Eduardo screams, palm thumping into the floor close to Mark’s ear. He rocks forward, taking the pressure off Mark’s abdomen and putting it onto his shoulders. He pushes him into the floor like he wishes-and he probably does-that it was Mark’s throat beneath his fingers instead of sharp, boney joints. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”
Mark laughs. It’s not like this is funny-it’s clearly not. It’s not that kind of laugh. Mark can’t stop it from bubbling in his stomach, rising to his chest, and emerging in little maniacal bounces. He’s only half-lying when he says, “Yep.”
Eduardo’s eyes grow brighter, alight with something close to murderous. “Yeah, that’s all you ever wanted. A credit card number and my dick in your ass, isn’t that right?”
Mark can hardly breathe he’s laughing so hard. He nods. “Yeah, your dick in my ass,” but the last part is cut off into a high, keening wheeze of a chuckle.
Eduardo punches him again.
Mark laughs harder.
He thinks he’s probably losing it.
He thinks that’s probably for the best.
Eduardo hits him again, knuckles against jaw. And again. And again. Mark wishes he could say this quiets him, but it doesn’t. The laughter just keeps coming, as sure as the fist against his face, as sure as the carpet scratching into his back and the sweat beading on his chest beneath fleece and cotton.
“This is what you want,” Eduardo’s panting, and Mark can’t see the details because his eyes are watery from all the laughing, but he can make out vague movement near Eduardo’s stomach, can hear the metallic sounds of a belt being undone.
He blinks up at Eduardo and is unable to stop a wide grin from swallowing his face. “Yes.”
Eduardo flips him over. Mark’s sweatpants and boxers get ripped away in one motion and he’s exposed to the air. He kicks at the pants around his ankles to free himself from them, rising to his knees so he can rock back against Eduardo, laughing, “Come on, Wardo. Come on, give it to me.”
He hears Eduardo spit.
It’s only when he spreads Mark that the laughter dies in his throat.
The blunt tip of Eduardo, spit-slicked against Mark’s hole makes him pause.
Mark is shaking. “Wardo, wait.”
He grabs Mark’s hip hard enough to draw blood. “Wait for what? Don’t chicken out on me now.”
Mark lowers his forehead to the carpet and lets his eyes fall closed.
He’s suddenly very tired. “Do it.”
He doesn’t make a sound when Eduardo forces himself inside, only half-hard. Mark gnashes his teeth and grinds his wrists into the rough carpet. He instinctively inches away, can’t help it really, but Eduardo pulls him into a half-hearted thrust.
Mark swallows a scream, feels a vein in his temple thump thump thump. “Harder,” he commands, choking on something in the back of his throat. Maybe saliva, probably blood-this time his own.
Eduardo obeys.
Mark’s never felt so much pain in his life. It’s like being ripped in half. Like something is tearing him open from anus to throat. It’s all Mark can do to muffle the sounds he can’t quite trap inside his chest, to mask them as laughter instead of whimpers.
It only gets worse when Eduardo grows fully erect. Mark can’t help pulling away, even though his mouth says More Harder Faster You’re Such A Little Bitch, Wardo until he’s all the way inside, so deep that skin slaps against skin and Mark’s flat on the floor again to get away from it. His toes struggle for purchase against the carpet to push him forward, but Eduardo’s pinning him down.
Eduardo grabs his shoulder to keep him still. “Either you want it or you don’t,” he snaps.
“Come on,” he says, and Mark stops struggling. “Fuck me.”
It’s not so difficult to give in and fade out, to focus on Eduardo’s fingers yanking his face away from the carpet by his hair, and the sounds he makes from behind Mark, grunting words into his ear. Things like, “There it is, take it,” and “Knew you’d get off on this, you sick fuck,” and best of all, “I hate you. I hate you, Mark. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? You did it, I fucking hate you.”
Mark doesn’t know what happens here. If you ask him much later down the line, Mark might say okay. His mother might have been right. Maybe Mark does have some kind of psychological screw loose, because something inside Mark just breaks.
He opens his mouth to make a snappy retort, but all that emerges is a wet, broken sob.
He can’t remember the last time he cried. Possibly when Mark was twelve and he crashed his bike and skinned his knee, there was something like a tear, but it was more out of frustration than anything.
He can’t stop it now. The best Mark can do is bury his face into the carpet and muffle the sounds of it. Deep from his stomach, forcing its way up his throat, making his body seize and clench. Eduardo fucks him faster.
All that laughter finally makes sense to Mark then.
It was just his body’s way of preventing this.
*
Eduardo does stop, eventually. Mark doesn’t know at first whether or not he’s come, because when he pulls out, all Mark can feel is fire and raw and an impulse to fold his knees closer to his body, even though he can’t even move.
Nothing happens.
Eduardo doesn’t make any sounds of movement from his position above Mark, and Mark would love to make a sarcastic observation about it all, but the thing is-
He just keeps crying.
It’s annoying and inconvenient.
He waits for Eduardo to say something about it. Mark’s not sure how to predict this one. He’ll either do a three-sixty and want to know if Mark’s okay, or get pissed off that Mark has somehow found a loophole to play the victim.
Mark waits for something to happen; long enough that his deep, guttural sobs dwindle into breathless hiccups and strings of spitbloodsnot.
He’s still shaking.
There are finally sounds of shifting fabric, belt buckle dings, shoes against carpet.
Mostly they’re disappearing behind Mark.
*
It’s not long after Eduardo’s left that Mark pulls himself up from the floor. He doesn’t do it as gingerly as he should, and most of his breaths are more sobs than anything, but he forces himself into the bedroom because someone’s bound to come home sooner or later, and really, Mark can’t explain any of that.
He locks the door.
His pants are still laying somewhere in the hall, but that’s not odd. Someone’s pants are always laying somewhere in this house.
He gets under the blankets and falls asleep instantly.
Mark can’t remember ever sleeping so well.
*
Dustin comes home after the light has faded from the windows. “Mark?”
He keeps knocking.
Mark doesn’t answer.
“Are you dead in there? Because I’m pretty sure ninjas broke into our house and vandalized… everything?”
Mark stares at the wall across the room.
“Mark? I know I’m all quippy and stuff and it’s hard to tell, but I’m sort of worried here.” Dustin makes a muffled laugh that’s more nervous than anything.
Mark says, “I’m fine,” so that he’ll leave, but it doesn’t work.
“Do you have a gripping tale about a ninja encounter? We’re all waiting with bated breath.”
“Go away, Dustin.”
“It’s just that-” Dustin lowers his voice, “We all heard about Wardo.”
“Go away!” Mark throws something at the door that misses by a mile because turns out, it was just a piece of paper.
He doesn’t have the strength to look for something heavier.
Mark hears Dustin sigh and knows he doesn’t leave, even after ten minutes pass and nothing more is said.
He finally asks, “On a scale of one to ten, one being My Little Pony and ten being Chuck Norris, how bad is it?”
Silence.
“I promise to leave you alone, even if it’s Chuck Norris Bad. Okay? I just… I have to know what I’m dealing with here. Mark?”
Mark looks at his hand, balled into a fist around the blanket. It’s bloody and swollen, and Mark doesn’t even wonder how Eduardo’s face must feel.
He answers, “One hundred.”
*
To Dustin’s credit, and later, when Mark can fully appreciate it, he really is rather impressed, he does give Mark the minimum amount of attention possible in a situation described as badder than Chuck Norris.
He knocks sometimes, probably just to make sure Mark’s still alive. He doesn’t pester him to eat, or ask if he’s okay, or to complain about the broken coffee table or the Wardo-Head-Shaped hole in the wall.
He just knocks.
Mark grunts.
That’s it.
And it’s fortunate to Mark, who drifts in and out of consciousness and can’t really muster an ounce of effort anyway. He’s free to ride out whatever state of numbness he’s in. It’s ironic, he thinks during one of his rare moments of semi-lucidity, that everyone once thought him a complete and total robot, and now he is less than one.
A robot would probably leave his bed to piss.
*
Mark wakes to damp, smelly sheets and realizes long after he should that it’s urine.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, has long lost the ability to measure time in increments that don’t include periods of consciousness, but he knows the sheets are merely damp and not wet.
He feels a faint sensation of disgust, and then a faint sensation of relief that he’s regaining the ability to feel anything.
Truthfully, Mark’s been a little worried, too.
He knows the numbness isn’t normal.
He thinks about standing, taking a shower-or a bath, since the shower was broken months ago-but one twitch of his leg is enough to send pain shooting through his body like knife-lightening.
So he falls asleep in a puddle of his own urine.
Again.
But he’s seriously grossed out about it this time.
That’s something.
That’s not numb.
*
The knocking came and Mark grunted.
It didn’t stop.
He feels like he can’t even talk, wishes Dustin would just deduce that from some kind of intuition, but he doesn’t.
He keeps knocking.
It gets really loud.
It gets so loud.
There’s a crash. Splintering. Cracking.
Mark shrinks into the darkness of the blankets, disoriented, but the urine smell is strong there and he’s still grossed out by it, so he throws them away from his head.
Eduardo’s staring down at him. “Get up.”
His left eye is so swollen, it’s practically closed. There’s a long strip of white over his nose and his lip has stitches. He walks with a limp that favors one leg.
Mark notes, “You look satisfyingly terrible,” and Eduardo gives a weak, one sided grin.
“Should see the other guy.”
“I think he’s mostly busy trying not to move.”
“Until now, at least.” Eduardo comes closer then, tries to pull away the blankets and Mark panics.
He yanks them back. “No!”
Eduardo pauses with his hands curled into the bedding. His expression could either be confused or annoyed, if he were able to make any expression at all.
“You can’t lay here forever.” Annoyed then.
He keeps yanking and Mark keeps pulling, but it’s not a fair competition. Eduardo’s had enough time to recover that he can actually walk and drive and kick in locked bedroom doors and probably make it to the fucking toilet, and Mark-
The blankets get ripped away and he covers his naked crotch, feels his face go hot and figures the amount of embarrassment he feels must be some kind of record.
Mark looks away. “I was about to take care of it…”
Eduardo stares, sort of slack jawed, until he leaves the room. Actually, he pretty much sprints out the door, and if it weren’t for the distant sounds of running water filling the bathtub, Mark would think he fled the house all together.
“Come on,” Eduardo says when he returns, paler than before, and if Mark can smell the very distinct aroma of vomit on his breath when he helps hoist Mark from the bed, then neither of them mention this.
Mark doesn’t remember what dignity even is at this point. He hobbles alongside Eduardo, cupping his junk in one hand, whimpering and grunting and gnashing his teeth and if it weren’t so absolutely pathetic, then Mark would laugh at himself, in a masochistic sort of way.
He eyes the tub like it’s a Herculean obstacle and considering he’s out of breath from walking the mere forty feet it took to get here, he supposes it kind of is. “I can’t,” he tells Eduardo.
Softly, “You can.” Eduardo takes off his sweater and the shirt beneath it, propping him up against the counter.
Their eyes meet when Eduardo gingerly lifts one of Marks feet over the lip of the tub. Mark winces and makes a humiliating sound but lets him repeat the process with the other.
The water is hot. Not too hot, but hot enough that when he finally finds the will to sit down, it’s all Mark can do to smother his scream.
At least Eduardo leaves bathroom for that part-Mark half lowered into the water, coaxing the raw skin between his cheeks to adjust to the temperature in brief increments of in and out.
Eduardo’s doing things in the other room. Sounds of fabric and more water. Something abrasive. Scrubbing. A cough. His voice, clouded by distance, “Anyone here have a hairdryer?”
Mark’s still panting. “Not likely.”
More scrubbing. Another cough. A grunt. A heavy sound. Something falling. Eduardo’s huff.
When Eduardo returns, Mark’s just sitting there, rigid and uncertain.
There’s blood in the water.
Some old.
Some new.
Eduardo kneels at the side of the tub, shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows. He reaches for the nearby washcloth he’d left for him and softly asks, “Can I…?”
Mark starts crying again. He covers his eyes with a palm and nods, but secretly hopes Eduardo won’t call attention to it.
He feels so fucking stupid.
Eduardo doesn’t wash him good enough to get the blood off. He’s too gentle. He never scrubs. If it weren’t for the fact that Mark experienced the same polarity, he’d be totally unable to reconcile the person who fucked him raw with this other, tender, soft-eyed person.
Mark chokes, “You bruised my rib,” but tries to make it more of a laugh than a sob.
Eduardo forces a smile that’s all wrong. “You broke my nose.”
“You broke my ass.”
Eduardo counters so quietly Mark can hardly hear it, “You broke my heart.”
Mark cries harder. Shields his face, even as Eduardo squeezes the washcloth against his neck, lets the water drip down his chest and pretends not to notice how it trembles.
“I’m sorry,” Mark says.
And the thing is, Mark really is sorry. He knew going into it what he was doing. He meant it. He wanted to hurt Eduardo. He wanted to humiliate him and break him in every way, and now-
Mark’s finding it difficult to maintain that sentiment when he feels the impact of it himself.
He takes a breath, waits for the crying to subside and chances a glance at Eduardo.
He looks like he might be sick.
Mark adds, “About breaking your heart, not about breaking your nose.” He’s hoping Eduardo will laugh or smile, even if it’s half-hearted.
He doesn’t. “I don’t know what happened to me, Mark. I didn’t know I was-I knew I was hurting you, but I was too distracted to see-” He makes a vague gesture to the entirety of the tub but doesn’t elaborate. His eyes look wet.
Mark shrugs, some of that numbness creeping back in. “I wanted it.”
Eduardo scoffs past an audible lump in his throat. “You didn’t want that.”
“The boundlessness of my masochism would clearly surprise you.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Eduardo shakes his head, fists the washcloth until it’s drained of water. Then he looks at him and says, “I’m sorry. Mark. I’m so sorry.”
Mark doesn’t tell him not to be.
He washes Mark for what seems like hours. Every inch of skin he can see, a few he can’t, and some that, when he tries to reach, Mark flinches away from. He’s too gentle. He never scrubs Mark’s skin.
The blood comes off with nothing more than patience and washcloth caresses.
Eduardo helps Mark out of the tub and dries him off. The towel emerged from the closet white and falls to the floor with sections of pink.
“We’re going to be late,” Eduardo says, helping him step into a pair of boxers.
Mark doesn’t ask what for.
They have to take Mark’s car to wherever they’re going to be late to, which isn’t really Mark’s car, but Sean’s shitty budget rental. Mark can’t sit. He cants his hips to the side and rests his weight on it, pressed into the door.
Eduardo avoids bumps.
Really, he like basically wastes five minutes going around one speed bump.
Mark’s grateful.
The place they’re going to ends up being a doctor’s office. Somewhere nondescript. It doesn’t look entirely legal.
Eduardo gives Mark a careful look when they park. “This guy… he’s good. He’ll keep it quiet. They won’t ask questions.”
Mark wonders, “Is this where you went?” and Eduardo nods.
He lets Eduardo lead him into the building. It’s dated and quiet and there’s no one else in the waiting room.
Eduardo sits.
Mark doesn’t.
Eduardo stands up.
When Mark’s called into the back, Eduardo follows. It’s just a small, well-lit hallway into a back-room. It looks seedy and if Mark were perhaps in a better state of mind, he’d be running the other way.
As it is, when the middle-aged man in his possibly fake white coat tells him to undress, Mark obeys insofar as Eduardo lifts his shirt above his head and helps him step out of his sweats.
Most of it goes by in a blur. They guy pokes and prods Does this hurt? How about now? Look at the scale on the wall and tell me how much it hurts. Can you move this? Can you cough? Deep breath.
He tells Mark to bend over the table.
Mark tries to lighten the mood by joking, “Not even going to buy me dinner first?” but it comes out monotone and wrong.
No one laughs.
Eduardo’s content to stand awkwardly by the door while the doctor pokes around inside Mark’s ass, but their eyes keep meeting by accident, and Mark can’t contain the tears when they come.
Mark rolls his eyes even as they water, wishes he could close whatever flood gate was opened that’s allowing this stupid blubbery bullshit. Eduardo moves closer and reaches out, like he might hold his hand or touch his face, but seems to think better of it and just rocks anxiously back on his heels.
Eduardo and the doctor talk. Mark tunes them out, doesn’t care what’s wrong with his ass, just wants this guy to get out of it already.
He brandishes a syringe and tells Mark he’s going to stick this fucking thing into his anus and Mark just about knocks the table over in his haste to get away from it.
Eduardo does hold his hand then. He crouches down close to Mark’s face and smoothes back his hair, shushes him even as he winces himself, and the needle is so fucking ridiculous and long that Mark swallows down vomit, clings to Eduardo arm and squeezes it-fucking strangles it-cries so hard that he can barely breathe.
The shot numbs him, inside out.
Mark lets Eduardo go.
*
He doesn’t stay long after he takes Mark home. He’d already scrubbed Mark’s mattress, flipped it over, and changed the bedding. The room still has a faint urine-type stench, but Mark doesn’t care.
He hits the bed with all intentions of sleeping forever.
“I have to go back to Harvard,” Eduardo says. He’s standing at the end of Mark’s bed, half coming, half going. “I’m sorry, but I. I can’t stay, Mark. I have to-”
“You have to get away from here,” Mark finishes. He can see the way Eduardo looks at this place. This is no longer a house, and it’s no longer the house where Mark told him …get left behind…, and it’s not even the house where they had a pretty epic fistfight.
It’s something worse.
It happened on the floor.
“Yeah.” Eduardo gives him this look that makes it clear he won’t be back.
Mark nods. “It’s fine.”
And it is. There’s nothing more to be said. Nothing more to apologize for. Forgiveness is both default and unattainable. They could keep in touch, pretend like they didn’t push pull shove each other to the brink of insanity once upon a time. Exchange pleasantries. Ask how the weather is. Smiley faces in equal signs and upper-case ‘D’s. LOL’s with silence behind each screen.
The thought of it makes Mark sick.
They don’t say goodbye. Not really. Mark nods and Eduardo nods and neither of them cry, but they both know this is how it ends, and it doesn’t matter who threw the first punch or who looks worse or needed the most stitches or who has the most money or the least friends on Facebook.
No one can win a war if the battleground is empty.
*
Mark takes a week off of Facebook. It’s unprecedented, and quite frankly, careless. It’s at a critical stage and they can’t afford it.
It’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s just that he can’t stomach diving back into that version of himself just yet.
He returns to a lot of questions. Namely, what truck drove into your face and what’s with the pillow in your chair and should we alert the authorities.
He moves out of the house, first thing. Gets an apartment that’s modest in size and excessive in features. A place with no memories, where he can actually walk to the bathroom without feeling nausea and embarrassment.
It’s the closest thing to a fresh start as Mark will ever get.
Mark doesn’t tell anyone anything. It’s not their business. Not even Dustin who becomes his own version of hovery. Not even his mother who calls three times every day. Not even Sean who’s constantly on edge about the impending lawsuit.
The lawsuit never comes.
Most of Mark’s colleagues see this as a great victory. Eduardo is a coward. We put him in his place. What a pussy, can’t even lawyer-up right. Hope he spent that check on a new pair of panties. Let’s go out for drinks and celebrate the destruction of Eduardo S. Saverin.
Mark tries not to laugh in their faces.
He knows what Eduardo spent that check on.
It was paid to a seedy doctor that didn’t ask Mark any questions.
*
So Eduardo doesn’t sue, but the Winklevii do. Mark is actually surprised at first, and even though he still believes they’re just privileged little assholes throwing tantrums, he decides to settle.
He didn’t steal their idea, but it did inspire him.
He used to think there was shame in admitting this.
Mark‘s experienced worse shame since then.
Facebook’s success is as swift as its creation. Doesn’t come without a lot of hard work, but all Mark has is time. He doesn’t have a social life. His brief experimentation in tolerating human contact has failed. He doesn’t have any interest in trying again, and he’s okay with that. He doesn’t feel the need to push his own boundaries. It’s better this way.
That first year, Mark’s kept busy enough that he can barely remember his own name, let alone care about much else. He doesn’t go out often, if at all, and no one really bothers him. He’s content in his element, though, feels pride in quiet bursts and secret moments on his balcony with a tallneck beer to his lips and a cell phone in his hand.
This is exactly what he wanted.
This was his vision.
This is Mark’s dream.
He never uses the cell phone.
*
The second year is a little scarier. He has to meet people. Has to make appearances. Has speaking engagements that seem unauthentic only because it’s Mark who’s speaking. As if it’s his place to advise people. As if his opinion matters to the industry.
It’s stressful.
He starts seeing a therapist, recommended to him by both his mother and Chris, who’s come back out to Palo Alto after graduation to help head Facebook’s PR team.
He doesn’t talk about Eduardo.
Not for months.
His therapist knows he’s always leaving something out, but she never pushes.
He wakes up one day restless and antsy. He feels like something inside of him is clawing to break free. He doesn't know what it is or what it means or why his eyes are suddenly wet again when he hasn't cried in at least a year and nothing hurts, but he knows he saw Eduardo's picture on Chris' Facebook page the night before, and he's felt that way ever since.
He tells his therapist.
He tells her everything.
“How did you feel when he left?” she asks.
“Relieved,” Mark answers. “Empty.”
Eduardo’s pretty much all they talk about after that.
*
Dustin and Chris try to set Mark up with a mutual friend.
She’s nice.
Her hair is pretty.
He takes her out to dinner, even makes a big deal of it, suit and tie, pull out her chair, don’t look at her chest, give her the big smile, the one with the dimples, watch your language.
He doesn’t kiss her goodnight.
He goes home and pulls up Chris’ Facebook page, stares at the picture of Eduardo, puts his hand down his pants and rearranges his only memory of intercourse into something resembling normal.
Mark and the girl never speak again.
It all feels impossible. Back at Harvard, with Erica, she understood Mark’s situation. She was good at stuff like that. She didn’t have many expectations, for the most part. Of course, as time went on, dating Mark became more of a job and less of a relationship.
He never had sex with her.
He touched her hair once.
It was really soft and she was more patient than Mark deserved and how can he expect to ever find someone like that again?
“I feel like an alien,” he tells his therapist. “Like I don’t belong in my own skin.”
She asks, “How long have you felt this way?” and Mark shrugs.
“Forever, but recently just… more so. I guess.”
She guesses, “Since Eduardo?”
It’s the first time either of them can say his name without Mark wincing.
And the thing is, Mark’s not over it. Any of it. Not the good stuff, not the bad stuff, and not the truly awful stuff. The fake memories Mark likes to make of that day are nice, but they’re nothing more than another method of punishing himself: This Is What You Could Have Had.
“It’s not something you get over,” she says. “It becomes a part of you. It shapes you.”
She asks Mark what he’s learned from that day with Eduardo, and Mark answers, “I’m not as smart as I thought.”
Mark’s learned that his type of intellect means very little.
“Do you think human contact might make you feel a little less alien, Mark?”
“It’s raining,” he answers, watching the sky bleed against the window.
It never snows here.
*
The third year is weird.
In a good way.
Mark’s finally growing into his position. He can stand in front of a crowded room and not feel like an imposter. He talks less than he should and shakes fewer hands than advised (none), but he can smile without making an inside joke with himself about the person he’s speaking with.
His therapist is crazy proud.
“Have you touched anyone this week, Mark?” She always asks that.
His answer is always, “No.”
There’s this guy in his building who always nods hello and Mark thinks about asking him out. He thinks maybe. Maybe if Mark explained the situation, this guy might understand and he might like Mark enough that he’d wait. He looks nice enough.
Mark nods hello back, every morning. Every morning he plans to stop and call out, sprint up to the guy and make small talk about the new recycling notices or the mailbox upgrade or the loud lady in 72B who possibly owns an oboe.
The guy moves out before he can.
*
He takes a flight home for the holidays. Mark’s actually looking forward to it since his sister gave birth.
Mark’s an uncle.
It’s like the most mindblowing thing to happen to him since Facebook. Mark hates babies, despises the sound and smell of them, but it’s different when it’s family.
He’s excited.
Suffice to say, his three hour layover in Dallas/Fort Worth has Mark downright beside himself. There are way too many people, for one. Too many chances for unsolicited contact. He keeps his arms pressed to his body and squeezes along walls, and if he bought every business-class seat on this flight just to make sure no one knocks elbows with him, then Mark isn’t snobby. His nerves just couldn’t tolerate it, even with the massive amounts of Xanax currently coursing through his blood stream.
He stays at his gate. It’s empty most of the time and he can choose whatever seat he wants. When it isn’t empty, he can get up and move to another gate that is. He sends some emails while he waits, makes some memos on the back-up units at the server farm, since holidays are always stressful on the infrastructure.
Also, he watches people.
The first time he sees Eduardo, Mark’s sure he’s imagining it. It’s only a glance of a head over a crowd of ornery holiday travelers. Mark doesn’t pay it much attention. He sees Eduardo all the time.
The second time Mark sees him, he’s convinced that he’s losing his mind. Still, his pulse gets all pattery because-
It’s possible, right?
Not probable, but.
Possible.
Mark doesn’t follow the guy. He’s only seen him from behind, and that’d be creepy. He’s typing out another memo on his laptop when the guy takes a seat at a parallel gate.
Their eyes meet at exactly the same time.
They each do a double take and Mark’s pulse goes from pattery to thunderous, because only one person on this earth looks at Mark and smiles like that.
All teeth and squinty eyes.
Mark returns the grin instantly, but he can’t tell in that moment whether or not he’s thrilled to see Eduardo or just plain fucking terrified.
Fight or flight?
Fight or flight?
Fight or flight?
Eduardo looks like he’s going to get up, sets his magazine down, but ultimately seems unsure of himself and waves instead, settles back in and never looks away.
Later, Mark will distract himself with the petty details of triumph.
Who made the first move?
It’s insignificant in the grander scheme. Eduardo made the first move, he spoke to Mark six years ago in their Econ class and didn’t shy away. Mark made the first move, he invited Eduardo to that first AEPi party. Eduardo made the first move, he got drunk and touched Mark’s hand their second year. Mark made the first move, he let him.
Really, they’d been making moves their entire friendship.
So it’s Mark who makes the first move, this day. He stands up and puts his computer away, walks to Eduardo’s gate and sits two seats from him.
Mark's never been much for flight.
“Hi.”
Eduardo’s smile is impossibly huge. “Wow, I can’t believe it’s really you! Small world, huh?”
“Layover,” Mark explains, and if it weren’t for the way Eduardo looks at him, Mark might feel awkward that his company is unwanted.
Eduardo responds, “Same,” and keeps gawking at Mark like that. Like he’s a mirage or something.
The good kind.
Mark asks, “How are you?”
“I’m... I’m good, how are you? How’s Facebook?”
Mark shrugs. “It’s doing okay.”
“Modest,” Eduardo laughs. “Doing ‘okay’. It’s like the whole internet. Can’t even go to a webpage without being harassed about sharing it on Facebook.”
Mark grins, but tries mostly to hide it. “You look great,” Mark says, and is surprised he manages to keep a straight face, because this seems to be a day for understatements.
Eduardo looks fantastic.
They have a superficial conversation about Eduardo’s quests in V.C. and Mark can’t help dwelling on the little facets of Eduardo that remain unchanged, even after all these years. He still motions wildly with his hands, like his voice alone just can’t properly convey the importance of it. His eyebrows are still crazy expressive and the lift of his cheeks when he says something in a low tone of voice is still Eduardo to the core.
Except.
He has a clean, straight-line scar that divides two halves of his lower lip.
The bridge of his nose has a faint bump.
“But I don’t know. It’s good work. I like it most of the time.” He finishes with a nod of finality, smile still swallowing his face.
“I heard about Kinoo. And the shoe site. It’s impressive.”
Eduardo’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise and Mark tries not to blush or look away. “You heard about those? Yeah, it was just… I got lucky, you know. It’s seventy-five-percent gambling anyway.” He laughs again.
Mark disagrees. “I think, as far as Kinoo goes, anyone else would have turned them away, especially with projections so clearly in the negative, and god-the developer had his head shoved so far up his own ass he probably had to yawn to see his computer screen. My guess is… you took one look at that kid and knew he was an arrogant little shit who’d never let it fail. That’s not so easily detectable.”
Eduardo almost looks touched, glances away and smiles into the distance when his face pinkens. “What can I say, I’ve seen it before.”
Mark returns his smile and wonders, “When does your flight leave?”
He walks with Eduardo to go check the board, where it’s revealed his flight’s been delayed by almost an hour.
“Shit,” he says, frowning, but then turns to Mark and immediately asks, “Want to go get some coffee?”
*
“She’s definitely got the Zuckerberg hair,” Eduardo says of the photo Mark hands him. He’s staring at it so raptly, Mark considers waving a hand in front of his face.
“She’s six weeks. It’s my first time meeting her.” He’s jittery and wired, and Mark doesn’t know whether his anxiety is a good or bad thing.
He hasn’t touched his coffee.
Eduardo doesn’t look nervous at all-on the surface. “Too bad I’m an only child. I’ll only know the satisfaction of sending infants Hanukkah gifts with international shipping charges attached.” When he hands the photo back to Mark, though, something is there.
A tremble.
So subtle Mark might miss it if he weren’t staring so intently.
Eduardo buries his hands into his lap.
They sit in the airport café for as long as it takes Eduardo’s plane to begin boarding. No topics of great importance emerge. It’s mostly just like Mark had always predicted. Small talk. Niceties. The weather is hot over here, it’s cold over there. No equal signs and uppercase ‘D’s, but their mouths mimic the sentiment, and it’s all much more genuine than Mark expects.
When Eduardo’s called to his gate, Mark’s disappointed.
Overwhelmingly, shockingly disappointed.
He doesn’t really know what to do with himself, stands in the middle of the terminal and tries to remember what he even came here for.
Eduardo hefts his bag over a shoulder and turns to Mark, squeezes the strap of it hard enough that his knuckles turn white. “So…”
Mark nods. “Yeah.”
“We could-“ Eduardo looks over his shoulder, as if he’s in the middle of committing some kind of insidious criminal act. “If you want to, of course. You can take my card and… call me or something. Or email me. Or send a postcard to my P.O. box. You know, whatever.” Eduardo laughs and raises his hand like he might give Mark one of those pseudo-affectionate pats on the bicep, and Mark-
He doesn’t flinch so much as he flings himself out of reach, rigid and more distressed than one should be while medically sedated.
Eduardo freezes, tries to hide a horrified expression and fails terribly. “Or… not.”
“No,” Mark says. “I’d-that’s cool. We can do that. Let’s do that.” He takes the card from Eduardo’s suspended, outstretched hand and smiles. “It was good seeing you, Wardo.”
He means it.
He hopes Eduardo can see that.
Mark watches his plane take off through the enormous windows, still buzzing. He feels like he just ran a marathon or just wrestled some kind of large animal into submission or just woke up after the long slumber that follows a three day coding binge.
Like he did something right.
*
Mark normally spends a total of three hours out of his day coding.
He hates it.
He’s no longer a developer, he’s a CEO. It’s not like he doesn’t try. He has some great ideas, but the thing is, he starts them, pitches them to the team, and they take over.
Facebook isn’t his anymore.
It belongs to the world.
So it’s not hard in the least to put Eduardo’s name back onto the masthead. This fact bothers Mark.
“Are you looking to make a grand gesture?” his therapist asks.
Mark shrugs. “I was just hoping to make it clear that I’m past it all.”
“Are you?”
Mark amends, “I was hoping to make it clear that I want to get past it all.”
“And the addition to the masthead was…”
“Underwhelming.” No one has said anything, even a week later. Few even check it, and Mark’s completely certain that Eduardo isn’t in that minority.
She finally asks the billion dollar question. “What is it you want from Eduardo exactly?”
“Nothing,” he answers. “Everything.”
*
Eduardo declines Mark’s formally written letter offering him the position of Facebook CFO.
Mark isn’t surprised.
In fact, it’s exactly as he envisioned.
Eduardo doesn’t call to talk about it. Neither does Mark. It’s all done on paper. Very professional. No faces. No voices. Just ink and stamp. Impersonal and more tangible than Mark’s entirely accustomed to.
But, when Mark has to take a flight to London for a charity event, he does gather the courage to send Eduardo a text. It takes days. He types out at least ten before he finally sends anything, and even then, it’s done in his car, which is parked outside his therapist’s building. Just in case.
Any chance you’ll have a layover at JFK on the 20th?
Eduardo responds, No sorry. O’Hare on the 24th :(
Mark thinks about it. It wouldn’t be that difficult to move things around, to arrange to be at O’Hare on the 24th, but he doesn’t.
He has legal send Eduardo another formal offer instead.
*
There is one advantage to the CEO thing, even if Mark no longer spends the entirety of his day doing what he enjoys most.
Sometimes, most of the time, he gets to choose which charities to raise funds for.
Mark used to hate it. He never felt right giving because everyone always thanked him and Mark doesn’t deserve thanks for it at all.
He cringes through those parts and he doesn’t just write checks. He devotes entire chunks of prospective development ideas to causes. Tries to find ways to call attention to those in need with the greatest level of efficiency.
His money, his brain. It’s all Mark really has to offer.
The London benefit was for prematurity and birth defects (his niece was born preemie). He also puts a lot of time into raising funds for new computers in classrooms overseas. There are a few more, but this particular week, Mark is devoting some time to sexual violence advocacy.
It was honestly chosen at random from a list of his twenty pre-decided upon organizations, because it’s hard to choose. If it were up to Mark, he’d just give them all everything, but there are too many, and turns out, not even a billion dollars can save the world.
During the fundraiser, someone from the press asks, “Are you a victim of sexual violence?” and Mark pauses.
It’s hardly a pause really. One could easily assume Mark’s choosing his words wisely or being slightly caught off guard because it’s an invasive question anyway.
He answers, “No, but it’s still a cause very close to me.”
And that’s that.
*
Eduardo is in his driveway. It’s night. Pretty late, really.
Mark doesn’t know what to think of it. Truthfully, he’s been tired a lot lately and thinks he might have fallen asleep at the office.
It’s very possible he’s dreaming this.
“Wardo.” Mark isn’t scared or anything, but there is that edge of unease, like getting a phone call at four in the morning.
Like something is wrong.
“Sorry to just… show up,” he says, but realizes that Mark’s car is full of groceries and gestures to the window. “I can help?”
He looks vaguely distressed.
They carry the bags inside-there aren’t many-and Eduardo makes a joke about Mark actually feeding himself and it all feels very wrong.
“Did something happen?” Mark worries. They’ve barely gotten inside and Mark doesn’t care. He drops the bags on the floor and instructs Eduardo to do the same.
“What are these?” Eduardo asks, pulling a thick folder from his waistband.
Mark glances them over and notes, “They’re formal offers. For-”
Eduardo interrupts, “I know what they are, I just don’t know why.”
His hands are shaking.
Mark explains, “Because we need a good one, and you’re the best.”
Eduardo doesn’t even blink. “That’s a lie and we both know it, Mark. If this about-” But he doesn’t finish. Folds up the thick stack of papers and squeezes it.
“It’s not a lie,” Mark promises.
“You hesitated.” Eduardo looks at him, right in the eye, and Mark’s stomach sinks like lead.
Eduardo looks shattered. “They asked you.” He doesn’t step any closer. “They asked if you were a victim, Mark, and you hesitated.”
Mark stares at his shoes.
Eduardo’s.
They’re sneakers that in no way match his suit.
If this were any other discussion, Mark would laugh at it.
“Is that what happened?” Eduardo doesn’t come closer but he does bend down in an attempt to force Mark’s gaze to his.
It doesn’t work. “You were there.”
Eduardo bursts in a voice higher than raised, “I wasn’t there, Mark! That wasn’t me!” and Mark tries-he fucking battles not to-but he flinches away, knows instantly that Eduardo’s face has fallen.
“See?” Eduardo says, and he’s staggered back a step, presses his back to the wall. “That, right there.”
“That wasn’t what happened.”
Eduardo begs Mark, “Can you please look me in the eye when you say that.”
So Mark does. He rounds his shoulder and lifts his head and when he says, “That wasn’t what happened, Wardo,” Mark means it, through and through.
Eduardo doesn’t look buoyed at all. “Then kiss me.”
Since that’s a jarring and borderline ridiculous request, Mark scoffs. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
Eduardo instantly smiles, however sadly. “You always tilt your head like that when you lie.”
Mark bends down to fuss with a bag, hurries to change the subject. “You haven’t accepted any of the offers.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Right,” Mark nods. “Not yet. You have to explicitly ask for shares first.”
When Mark’s confident enough that his face isn’t transparent-red, he looks up at Eduardo.
His expression is comically puzzled. “What?”
“I mean, I would give them to you outright if I could, but there’s all this legal red tape, and-“
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Come with me tomorrow,” Mark bargains. “To the offices. Just take a look around and you can make your decision then. If you still say no after that, I’ll tell legal to rein it in.”
Eduardo shakes his head, looks utterly defeated. “Why, Mark? After all this time. Nothing’s changed.”
Mark looks him in the eye when he answers, and his head tilts precisely none. “That’s not true.”
Part 2 >>