FIC: pause the tragic ending
title: pause the tragic ending
rating: nc-17
pairing: mark/eduardo
disclaimer: for love, not profit. entirely fictional, no harm intended. etc.
summary: based on this prompt from tsn_kinkmeme, where this fic was originally posted. non-disclosure agreements mean anything could have happened, right? (3,015 words)
note: this was my very first non-rpf tsn fic. posted anonymously on the kinkmeme in fear of my life. de-anon post because i subsequently owned up to a rimming!fic, so i clearly have no shame left of which to speak. thank you to the lovely bea_recs for reccing this. thank you also to whitedatura, sandrine and iamtheenemy for the recs!
this fic has been translated into chinese by reiai.
The depositions are finally, finally over.
Eduardo doesn’t know how it’s possible to be so exhausted, so drained, and yet still so full of feeling.
He’s been back in his hotel room for just over an hour. Enough time to shower, change, and order room service because Eduardo has been too keyed up to eat for the past three days.
The thing is, he still feels unsettled. In limbo.
Technically, it’s over. Somewhere out in the night, Mark’s lawyers and his own are detailing the terms of the settlement agreement. They’ll write it up in legal language, and tomorrow morning Mark and Eduardo will sign the papers and effectively walk out of each other’s lives.
It’s just a formality, Gretchen had assured Eduardo. It’ll take ten minutes. Then you can get on with the rest of your life.
Eduardo thinks he should probably be looking forward to that part more than he actually is.
Before he can explore that train of thought any further, there’s a knock at the door. It can’t be anything other than room service, and Eduardo opens the door without checking first.
It’s Mark.
Of course it is.
His hair is damp, like he just got out of the shower. He’s wearing jeans, a faded blue t-shirt, and an expression that is, as usual, completely unreadable.
Mark looks good. Really fucking good. Familiar-almost painfully so. Eduardo feels a familiar twinge in the pit of his stomach, but also the beginnings of something else. Something dangerous, which is why--
“We’re not supposed to see each other,” he says, his tone quiet, even.
“Obviously,” Mark retorts. He’s right, but obvious is the best Eduardo can do while simultaneously trying to ignore things like the way Mark’s muscles move under his t-shirt.
He tries again: “Mark. You shouldn’t be here.”
“So tell me to leave.”
It’s completely typical of Mark, backing Eduardo against a wall, trying to force a fight. Really, Mark might as well actually back him against a wall, as long as he’s feeling provocative.
No. Eduardo reprimands himself angrily for the thought. It’s over between them, long over. It wasn’t real in the first place.
If it had been, they wouldn’t be standing here.
“What do you want, Mark?"
“I signed off on the settlement. $600 million, five percent stock. Recognition as a co-founder of Facebook.”
Eduardo laughs, but it’s hollow. “I imagine that was the hardest part, for you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“What was, then?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Mark studies him, his expression appraising. “You look good, Wardo," he says at last, and Eduardo is floored.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks slowly, incredulously.
“I’m stating a fact.”
“I’m going to ask you one last time.” Eduardo balls his fists tightly at his sides, swallowing down his fury, and enunciates each word. “What do you want?”
“Right now, I want you to make up your mind.”
“Excuse me?”
“Close the door, and stop letting me push your buttons.” Mark eyes him. “Or let me in, and see if I remember how to push the rest of them.”
*
“Mark.” It comes out as a hiss, and lust hits so hard and fast, Eduardo doesn’t think. He grabs Mark by the arm, yanks him into the room with one hand and slams the door behind them with the other.
He allows himself a split second to enjoy Mark’s startled expression, and then they’re kissing, hard and hungry, and for a few seconds it’s Eduardo who’s pushing Mark up against the wall, working his leg between Mark’s thighs, taking vicious satisfaction in Mark’s gasp as Eduardo grinds relentlessly against him.
Mark, though, has always been the aggressor of the two of them. He gets free of Eduardo’s grip and turns the tables with relative ease, and Eduardo lets him do it, wants him to do it. Mark kisses him, works his tongue into Eduardo’s mouth, pins Eduardo’s wrists against the wall and just over his head. Eduardo groans low in his throat when their cocks press against one another through their jeans, and it is so, so good.
It’s good enough that several minutes pass before it vaguely registers with Eduardo that something is not right.
It’s not what Mark is doing, but the way he’s doing it that feels off. There’s desire, but no aggression. Intensity, but no violence; heat without urgency. It’s almost as if Mark is deliberately taking his time, subtly slowing their pace, drawing out each moment instead of pushing for the next. Eduardo was expecting to be bruised and scratched, but Mark’s hands are traversing his body in a way that feels… reverent, and all wrong.
Eduardo doesn’t want to think and he doesn’t want to feel, and Mark is leaving too much breathing room, too much space for both of those things.
“Mark,” he says, and Mark pulls back quickly. Too quickly.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just wanted-look, this doesn’t change anything, all right?”
“I’m aware of that.” Mark gives him a look like he’s lost his mind, and Eduardo wonders if he’s imagining things. It’s something of a shock to realize he can no longer read Mark well enough to tell.
In any case, he has to be sure. “I couldn’t rewind the past three years, even if I wanted to.”
“So don’t,” Mark suggests, as if it doesn’t matter.
It matters, Eduardo thinks, and it does, still. It matters more than anything, but it is much, much too late.
For everything but this, anyway.
“This is not going to end well,” he says in Mark’s ear, even as he’s letting Mark pull him in again.
“I’d say that ship sailed a long time ago, wouldn’t you?”
“Mark--”
“I get it, Wardo.” A nip at his throat, a flick of tongue. “No rewinding.”
“Because there’s no rewind button. All we’re doing here is pressing pause.”
“This is a terrible metaphor.” Mark’s breath is warm against Eduardo’s ear and things are beginning to go soft at the edges. “Stop talking.”
“Make me,” Eduardo whispers, but it’s less a challenge than a plea.
*
They’re in bed, clothes scattered, and Mark is trailing kisses down Eduardo’s throat, over the curve of his shoulder, across the plane of his chest, like he needs to learn the entirety of Eduardo’s body with his mouth, his tongue, all over again. As if there’s any reason for him to get so thoroughly reacquainted. But it’s so good, it’s so good, and Eduardo can only twist and moan beneath him, writhing as Mark bites at his nipples, traces all the right lines with his tongue, sucks shades of red and purple to the surface of Eduardo’s skin.
He thinks Mark is trying to undo him completely, and that’s before Mark spreads Eduardo’s thighs and works a slick finger inside of him. He teases Eduardo open slowly, almost languidly, like he could do this all night and is seriously thinking about it. Here, again, it’s different: years ago Mark would have hurried through this, fingers driving savagely, quickly scissoring him open as a means to an end.
There’s something ironic and sort of painful about Mark taking such care with him now. As if it matters. As if there's anything left to break.
Stop it, Eduardo wants to say, this isn’t even necessary, just fuck me already, but then Mark settles a kiss into the hollow of his shoulder, Mark’s fingers curl into his prostate, everything goes sort of deafening for a few seconds and Eduardo’s hips jerk upward entirely of their own volition.
“There?” Mark is asking, like he doesn’t know.
“You don’t-fuck,” and Eduardo breaks off into a groan as Mark twists his fingers upward again, and again, lingering. You don’t have to, he’d meant to say, but this is unbelievable, Mark’s fingers are moving inside him in this exquisite rhythm and he doesn’t really want Mark to stop, ever, so he tells himself that Mark wouldn’t stop even if he asked.
He’s so hard it’s beginning to hurt, but he can’t get off like this. Almost, almost, he just needs contact, and he reaches down to stroke himself, but Mark catches him by the wrist.
“Not yet, Wardo.”
Eduardo moans in frustrated protest, but Mark has always liked to torture him this way. Holding off, making him beg for it. Mark is as withholding in bed as in life, and this, at least, is familiar.
Except it’s not.
“Shh,” Mark says softly, and he actually kisses the inside of Eduardo’s wrist. “Soon, I promise.”
Then, in Eduardo’s ear: “I want to be inside of you when you come.”
There aren’t words for the things Eduardo wants, but it doesn’t matter, because all he can say is Mark’s name.
When Mark eventually kneels between his thighs Eduardo feels a rush of relief, because, finally, but even this isn’t quite right. In his head, he was on all fours and Mark pushed into him without hesitation. He had imagined Mark ravaging him, whispering degrading, furious words in his ear, contemptuous to the end.
None of these things are happening. Eduardo’s on his back, and Mark is taking his time, gauging Eduardo’s responses, saying words like there and promise. He’s looking at Eduardo like he’s seeing him for the first time, and it’s too intimate. Too much.
“I can’t,” Eduardo begins, shifting, but Mark catches him by the hips, holding him still.
“Wardo,” he says, and his tone is so gentle. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No. Yes… no,” Eduardo concludes, uselessly.
Mark actually smiles, and it’s-tender, Eduardo thinks. That’s the word.
“Don’t stop,” he hears himself say.
“Okay.”
*
It is so much better even than he remembers.
Mark is fucking him, moving inside him and it’s like every single nerve in Eduardo’s body abruptly came alive with the first collision of their hips, because he can feel every single flick of motion coursing through to the tips of his fingers. It’s too much and not enough and if any words have ever existed other than Mark and yes and fuck and please, Eduardo doesn’t know them anymore.
Mark pulls back and snaps his hips hard, and Eduardo shoves upward, thinking there are places in him that only Mark has ever been able to reach, which doesn’t make any kind of physical sense, but it has never, ever been like this with anyone else. It’s never even been quite like this with Mark, really.
Exhibit A: Eduardo can’t look at Mark for too long without his heart climbing much too high in his chest, but he keeps stealing glances and there’s actually a moment when he thinks Mark’s eyes are too bright, pulls him down for a kiss and tastes salt. Although this is impossible because Mark doesn’t cry, ever, and it’s far more likely that Eduardo, in his heady state, is imagining things.
Exhibit B: Mark, moving above him, saying his name over and over again, fucking him slower now, and deep, kissing the inside of his thigh, beautiful, you’re so beautiful. And that’s just-
Eduardo can’t finish the thought because Mark shifts just slightly, changes the angle, and everything turns electric.
“There,” he gasps. “Right there. Mark… fuck, Mark, yeah, I’m gonna--”
--and he is so, so close. He’s got one hand pressed in the hollow of Mark’s back, and the other had been fisting the sheets but now it’s open, grasping helplessly at nothing until Mark grabs it, laces their fingers together, holds on so tight.
“Wardo,” he breathes, and with his other hand he reaches down and fists Eduardo’s cock once, twice, and Eduardo shudders against him, Mark, and everything goes wild and bright.
None of this is anything like he intended to be, nothing is like he imagined, but it doesn’t matter because Mark is inside him, Mark is coming inside of him and saying his name and everything else is just peripheral.
...
Eduardo’s not entirely sure how long it takes him to come back to himself.
When he does, it gradually registers that he’s curled on his side, Mark pressed comfortably against his back, their fingers still tangled together. Jesus Christ.
There’s an instant in which he allows himself to consider it. What if we-
But that’s as far as it goes, because they've been there and back, and he’s still Eduardo and Mark is still Mark and nothing has changed.
Eduardo withdraws his hand sharply, forces any lingering feeling away.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, without turning around, without looking.
It’s dismissive and cold, and for a split second he feels Mark go very, very still. Then the weight and warmth behind him are gone, Mark’s across the room and pulling his clothes on, and he’s out the door without so much as a single backward glance.
This, at least, is exactly what Eduardo imagined it would be.
*
Fast forward eight hours and they’re sitting across from each other for the last time, listening to Gretchen read out the terms of the settlement agreement.
“In addition to the fiscal terms of the settlement, the agreement includes provisions regarding future contact between the parties. By mutual agreement, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Saverin shall exchange business-related communication exclusively through designated parties or through counsel. Mr. Saverin shall designate a representative to attend quarterly Facebook shareholder meetings on his behalf. Finally, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Saverin shall refrain from personal contact with one another, including written, verbal and proxy communication, in perpetuity.”
Eduardo blinks, taking a moment to sort through the language, although he distinctly remembers discussing this with Gretchen.
I need you to make it so that I never have to see, hear from or speak to Mark Zuckerberg again, he’d told his attorney, and it appears she’s done exactly that.
He’s not entirely sure why his first impulse is to object.
“If there aren’t any questions,” Gretchen concludes, “we’ll just need your initials on each page and your full signatures where indicated. Mr. Zuckerberg?”
She passes the agreement to Mark, who confers with Sy for a moment, then begins working his way through the document, scanning each page briefly and then initialing. Finally, he signs, quickly and without flourish.
When Mark passes the settlement agreement across the table, their fingers brush and Eduardo remembers the way Mark grabbed his hand last night.
Mark’s voice in his ear, Wardo, over and over. Mark’s eyes, suggesting things Eduardo hadn’t believed him capable of feeling. Mark, holding him together even as he came apart.
Eduardo picks up the document, but instead of beginning to flip through it, he simply holds it in front of him, thinking about things that aren’t replaceable.
Then, slowly and deliberately, he rips it in half, looking right at Mark.
Gretchen makes a noise like a startled gerbil. It’s the only sound in the room: everyone else is merely staring, stunned into non-reaction.
“Get out,” Mark says eventually, tonelessly, not looking at Eduardo. “Everybody. Out.”
The lawyers scatter almost eagerly. Sy looks like he might be about to protest, but he seems to think better of it under Mark’s withering glance, and follows the others out of the room.
Only then does Mark turn his attention to Eduardo. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he inquires, and his tone is level, but his voice quivers the slightest bit on the last word.
Eduardo meets his eyes. “What do you think?”
Mark’s expression gives nothing away. “I think the document I just signed means this conversation is technically in violation of the legally-binding terms of our agreement.”
“Contract law says it’s not binding until we’ve both signed.”
“You realize you just shredded several million dollars in legal fees,” Mark points out.
“You can afford it. Especially since I’m not taking the money." He pauses to let that sink in, watches Mark's eyes widen, then continues: "You and I can figure out the shares on our own, eventually. Without lawyers."
“Are you--”
“Mark,” Eduardo interrupts. “You asked what I’m doing. I’m ending this.”
“I don’t even know what that means.” Mark’s expression is schooled into blankness, but Eduardo isn’t even slightly fooled.
“It means,” he says, finding Mark’s eyes and holding them, “that it was never about the money, or the shares, or Facebook. You hurt me, and I wanted to hurt you back. I don’t anymore.”
“Oh,” Mark says softly. He waits a beat to ask, hesitantly: “So that’s it?”
“No.” Eduardo takes a deep breath, tries to gather his thoughts and can’t, so the words just spill out. “I still think you were wrong, okay? What you did, it was…”
“I know,” Mark says, and then, finally: “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me before?”
“By the time I realized I was sorry, you were suing me for half a billion dollars.” Mark shrugs. “I figured it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Then last night, I tried to show you, and you acted like it didn’t matter-although now,” he adds, registering Eduardo’s expression, “you’re looking at me like it does.”
“You’re an idiot,” Eduardo tells him, incredulously.
“I have standardized test results to prove otherwise, and I’m pretty sure there’s something about defamatory statements in that agreement--”
“Which I didn’t sign,” Eduardo finishes. “It matters, Mark. It matters that you’re sorry, okay?”
“Okay.” Mark eyes him carefully. “What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t-I mean, everything is not fixed.” Eduardo shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I want it to be, I want to forgive you, but I just, there’s a lot, and you’re going to have to be patient while I figure out how to let go of that, which is probably going to take some time, but I’m sort of hoping you’ll stick around because I,” and this is the important part, “I want more nights like last night.”
Mark stares at him like he’s trying to comprehend the words, to translate and compile.
“And also days,” Eduardo adds pointlessly, reaching across the table for Mark’s hand.
Mark starts to reach back, to meet him halfway, but he hesitates. “You said we couldn’t rewind, Wardo. Not even if we-if you wanted to.”
“You were right.”
“About what?”
“That was a terrible metaphor.”
Mark smiles and reaches for him. Their hands clasp together, fingers tangling in a way that’s familiar and new and feels like a beginning.
*