[fanfiction] human/cyborg relations (section 3)

[kisforkurama]

365 Gay Sharks
Day 174, Word Count: 9565
Theme: June; No More Sad Songs
This post is part of the 365 Gay Sharks project. If you would like to learn more about this project, click here to read more about it. :D



Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
The stack of paperwork is large, ridiculously so, because there are forms for everything. There's a form for the official pardoning of a cyberkinetic deactivation, a form for the official release of a cyborg back into society, a form to verify that a technopath has determined the cyborg is fit for release, a form ensuring that the technopath will be held responsible if the cyborg commits another crime, a form ensuring that the cyborg promises not to commit another crime, and on and on and on and on.

Eduardo sighs, "This doesn't happen very often, does it?"
"Nope," Mark grabs another form, "They try to discourage it."

After they've filled out the paperwork, one of the guys that busted into Sean's place comes in and pulls Mark over to the side. Mark is standing with his arms crossed over his chest, frowning, and Eduardo could probably listen in on them if he felt like it, but he figures it's none of his business what they're saying. That doesn't mean he's deaf, though, so he can't really help hearing it when they start yelling.

"He can't live with you, Mark! Do I need to remind you that he kidnapped you?"
"It's in the rules, Chris. Either he comes with me or I have to install a tracker and keep constant tabs on him. Making him move in seems like the most efficient choice."
"Yes, but he kidnapped you! Am I the only one who finds this is not the best basis of a relationship? I mean, I kind of understand why you saved him from deactivation but I don't get why you want him to move in with you."
"I don't know why you're blaming me," Mark frowns, "It's not my fault. I don't make up the rules."
"I'm blaming you," the other guy hisses, "because everything is your fault."
"Wait," Eduardo stops tapping his fingers on the table nervously and turns to face the both of them, "What's going on? Why would I be moving in with you?"

The other guy, who Eduardo assumes is Chris, glances between Mark and Eduardo before sighing. He frowns.

Mark gives an exasperated sigh, "I'm supposed to keep track of you. It's either you move in or I install a creepy tracking device and document your every move."
"Seriously? They don't trust me that much, huh?"
"You stole Facebook," Mark points out blithely, "and you kidnapped me."
Eduardo winces, "Point taken."

He thinks about his tiny apartment, thinks about his job at the fast food place up the street that he quit, thinks about the idea that someone would always know where he was. He looks at Mark, takes in the way that Mark is pointedly avoiding looking at him and remembers when they integrated, the feeling of being one singular being for a brief second, and tries not to blush. Between getting a tracker installed and moving in with someone he doesn't know all that well, Eduardo is pretty sure that moving in is the lesser of two evils.

"I'll move in with him," Eduardo shrugs, "It's not a big deal. I'm not that attached to my apartment, but I did pay for the month's rent already."
"It's fine," Mark glances over at Chris, then looks at Eduardo for the first time in five or six minutes, "I can take care of that."

Chris frowns at Mark, a look that somehow manages to convey you are an idiot, I do not approve of your life choices, we will talk about this later, and there are no words to express my disgust with you as a human being right now all at the same time. It's kind of impressive, if Eduardo is being truthful, and Mark seems to shrink a little in the face of it. He pointedly doesn't meet Chris' eyes, and Chris sighs heavily, throwing his hands into the air.

"Fine! Do your illegal activity. Just don't tell me about it so I don't have to add more infractions to your file, Mark. You're going to get your computer confiscated again."
Mark snorts, "I don't know why they think that stops me. It's not like I don't have multiple computers."
"Nothing can stop you," Chris says fondly, "but that doesn't stop them from trying."

Clapping Mark on the shoulder, Chris leaves the room again and then it's just Eduardo and Mark. An awkward silence falls between them, neither wanting to talk about what's happened. Mark scuffs his foot along the tile floor and then meets Eduardo's eye again.

"I'm sorry."
"No," Eduardo shakes his head, "It's my fault you're being burdened with all this. I'm the one who should be sorry, not you."

Mark opens his mouth like he wants to say something, only he doesn't say anything. He just motions for Eduardo to follow him and walks out of the room. Eduardo follows, not entirely sure what to think about the current situation and not entirely sure what to make of Mark. He's confusing, sends too many mixed signals for Eduardo to sort out correctly, and Eduardo isn't sure if Mark resents him or not.

Eduardo knows that if he were in Mark's place, he'd resent himself. It's not nice to dump all of your problems onto someone and be that dependent on them. Eduardo knows, and he almost wishes that Mark would have just let them deactivate him. He's not sure why Mark didn't, it's not like he doesn't have enough reasons to want to see Eduardo deactivated. Eduardo kidnapped him, stole his most precious possession. There really isn't any reason at all why Mark should want to save Eduardo.

Newton Crosby: Why did you disobey your program?
Number 5: Program say to kill, to disassemble, to make dead. Number 5 cannot.
Newton Crosby: Why "cannot"?
Number 5: Is wrong! Newton Crosby, Ph.D not know this?
Newton Crosby: Of course I know it's wrong to kill, but who told you?
Number 5: I told me.
- Short Circuit
The thing that Mark doesn't generally tell people is that he can't tell the different between organic and nonorganic.

He isn't aware that he can't until they're trying to teach him how to deactivate a person as part of his somewhat haphazard CIA training. They've got a pig corpse lying on the table in a refrigerated room, and Mark's instructor tells him to integrate with the pig and find the connection between the organic and cyberkinetic. Once he's found it Mark is supposed to snap the connection, but Mark can't tell where the connection is on the pig corpse. He resurfaces, brow creased in confusion, and stares at the pig.

"Are you sure this pig is organic at all?"
His instructor nods, "Yes. It's simple, Mark. Just find the connection between them and snap it."
"There isn't one," Mark touches his hand to the pig again and frowns in concentration, "Everything looks the same. I mean, I can tell the processing system from the armature but other than that it all looks the same to me."

His instructor makes him keep trying, tells him to look for the change from organic to nonorganic, and Mark keeps insisting that he can't see one, because everything just looks like signal lines, and his instructor look at him with a very what? expression, which just frustrates Mark.

"Signal lines! The little blue, pulsing strings that connect everything together."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You don't see them? You seriously don't see them? Like this."

Mark focuses, sorts through the different strings to find one of the ones that connect to the printer on the desk in the next room and tugs on it, telling the printer to print a page that says Hello! Mark Zuckerberg sent me. It cheerfully does so, and when he shows his instructor, his instructor just stares at him in total shock.

"How did you do that?"
"I just tugged," Mark says, "That's all you have to do, find the right signal line and tug."

There's a shocked silence, and Mark shrinks into himself. He's heavily reminded of when he was in high school and everyone called him a freak and his mother worried because he'd come home beaten up. She'd sit him on the sink and ask what happened, Mark? and Mark wouldn't say anything because the world as he saw it was heavily flawed. People just took things without asking, didn't consider how another person might feel when they did that. His instructor puts a hand on his shoulder, and Mark jerks away from the touch because it starts feeding him diagnostic results from his instructor's optics.

"Please don't touch me," Mark says simply, "By the way, you should get your left optic checked out."

Most people leave Mark alone after that, all of them afraid to touch Mark. Only Dustin and Chris do it on a regular basis, which is fine because they're both organic. Mark appreciates the fact that they don't really treat him differently, appreciates the fact that they try really hard to understand him and don't question the fact that he never replaces his electronics. Dustin kind of knows why, because he's a technopath too, but Chris doesn't really get it. He understands that it's a coping mechanism for Mark, though, so it's fine with him.

The real trouble comes the first time Dustin has to deactivate someone in Mark's presence. The first time Mark sees someone deactivated, he only barely stops himself from getting sick all over a house that isn't his. not all deactivations are killings, but the person isn't fully functional afterwards. Mark wishes they would just kill them, because he physically can't handle seeing machinery shut down, especially machinery he's been connected to. It's like a part of him dying, and he can't do anything about it. Chris takes Mark by the shoulders, forcing him to focus on Chris' face instead of the guy slowly standing up.

"Breathe, Mark. Breathe."

Mark breathes, slowly and evenly, and Chris pulls him into a hug. It's an unspoken rule that Mark is exempt from deactivations if he feels like he can't handle it after that.

Fifty years from now, when you're looking back at your life, don't you want to be able to say you had the guts to get in the car?
- Sam Witwicky, Transformers
Eduardo doesn't own a whole lot of things. He owns his apartment, fully furnished with shitty Ikea furniture and lacking anything of real sentimental value, and he owns the house he spent his summers in as a kid, because he didn't have to sell it to pay off his debts and he didn't want to sell it. Sometimes, when he doesn't want to deal with anyone, he'll take the subway out to where the house is and just curl up on his bed, trying to forget that everything after Before exists.

Most of the things that Eduardo owns that he cares about are in the house and not in his apartment, so when Chris drives him to his apartment so he can pack, Eduardo doesn't really have anything. He has a couple bags full of clothing, a couple boxes full of kitchen stuff, and a picture of his family. That's pretty much it, and Eduardo sees the slightly confused look on Chris's face, but Chris doesn't say anything. When they're back on the road, Eduardo looking out the window and watching the city fly by, Eduardo asks for a favor.

"Can we go to my house too?"
Chris looks over at Eduardo, "Sure."

Eduardo gets the impression that Chris is used to putting up with unreasonable requests, seeing as he's currently driving Eduardo around. When Eduardo had asked why, Chris had sighed and given a very lengthy explanation of how they had tried to get Mark to learn how to drive and Mark had winced. He apparently couldn't handle the amount of feedback that the car gave him and driving was actually physically painful for him. Eduardo could understand that, because he technically couldn't drive either. It had a lot to do with the fact that he hadn't really learned Before and he'd only been stable enough able to drive for the past year and a half or so. He had tried, once, and had been so afraid of some kind of catastrophic failure while he was behind the wheel that he had decided it was probably better just to use public transportation.

Chris pulls up to his house, and Eduardo gets out of the car carefully. He pulls his keys out of his pocket and unlocks the door, walking inside. Chris follows behind him, watching as he systematically strips his old bed of the sheets and folds them. Eduardo leaves them on the bed for a moment and walks over to the heavy wooden trunk at the foot of his bed, opening it, and pulling a soft and worn quilt out. He hadn't taken it to his apartment, always worried that something would happen to it, but he wants it now.

"My mother made this for me when I was seven," Eduardo says, although he's sure that Chris doesn't care, "She always told me that she'd make a new one for me when I went off to college, but . . . I never went and she lost her chance to see me go. I don't think she'd be proud of me now."

Running his hands over the quilt, Eduardo closes his eyes and tries not to cry. He doesn't notice when Chris walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder, startles a little at the touch. Chris smiles.

"Mark believes in you," Chris says softly, "I don't why he believes in you, and I may not think you deserve it, but even if your mother isn't proud of you now . . . Mark would probably tell you that people can always be better. He's surprisingly sentimental sometimes. Do you need anything else?"
Eduardo shakes his head, "No. I just wanted my bedding, we can go now."

Closing the lid of the trunk, Eduardo gathers up his sheets and turns to face Chris. Chris nods, and heads out of the house. Eduardo trails behind him, staring at the back of his head like it'll tell him the secret to Mark Zuckerberg, who is a mystery that Eduardo has only barely started to unravel. Nothing about him makes a whole lot of sense, and every time Eduardo learns something new about Mark, he feels less and less sure that he'll ever understand him. Locking the door to his house, Eduardo whispers goodbye to it and then walks over to Chris' car. He sets his sheets and the like in the backseat before climbing into the car and clicking his seatbelt into place. Chris starts up the car, and as they head down the street, Eduardo feels oddly like some new chapter of his life is about to begin.

He thinks about what Chris said, about how Mark thinks that people can always be better. Eduardo wants to be better.

When the robot mind is mastered, undisciplined thinking ceases and is replaced by awareness. Awareness can know love.
- Barry Long
When Chris pulls up to Mark's house, Mark is waiting outside his door, fingers barely resting around what appears to be a camera on a short tripod. Mark looks up when they arrive, standing as Eduardo grabs his stuff out of the backseat. Chris doesn't get out, and Mark doesn't walk any closer, so Eduardo balances his bags and walks over to where Mark is. Mark unlocks his door and gestures for Eduardo to go inside, so Eduardo does, dropping his bags just inside the door as Mark closes the door behind them. He can hear Chris pulling away, and it's kind of awkward between them, because . . . Well. For most intents and purposes, Eduardo is now under house arrest and Mark is supposed to watch him. Make sure he doesn't commit another crime. Make sure he doesn't pose a threat to anyone.

Which, he doesn't. He thinks that's maybe why Mark saved him-because Mark realized that Eduardo had really just been following Sean-although he's still not really sure exactly why Mark saved him. Eduardo is still pretty sure that Mark has plenty of reasons to want him deactivated, seeing as Eduardo had stolen Facebook and then kidnapped him, but he did save Eduardo and now Eduardo is standing awkwardly in the entranceway to his house and trying not to feel like an intruder.

"There's six bedrooms," Mark says, pushing past Eduardo, "and two are occupied. You can have any of the others. Let me give you a tour."

He makes a little gesture that Eduardo assumes means follow, and Eduardo just sort of nods mutely before following Mark as he shows Eduardo around. The house is two floors, with most of the bedrooms being on the second floor because the first floor is largely taken up by a living room and a rather spacious kitchen. There's also what was probably a bedroom at one point, but is no longer a bedroom judging by the five or six computer screens hooked up and glowing faintly.

Eduardo pauses at that before turning to Mark, "Why do you need that many computers?"
Mark looks at him and blinks slowly, "They're for different things. One is for personal stuff, there's one for maintaining each Facebook, one is for music and the laptop is for when things need to come with me."
"But why have them separate? Wouldn't it be easier to consolidate?"
"No," Mark shakes his head, "I'm usually doing two or three things at once when I'm working from here, so it's helpful to be able to physically move between the computers. Also you can't run both Facebooks off the same computer. It would crash."

Eduardo makes an affirmative noise, like he actually understands what Mark's just said, and Mark seems to take that as a cue to move on. There's a bathroom on the first floor, and then they're headed upstairs. Mark's bedroom is the first door on the left, and if he hadn't said that, Eduardo never would have guessed. There's very little decoration in the room, the whole thing just done up in blues, and the only sign that anyone lives there at all is the book on the bedside table.

Mark shows him the other three bedrooms, telling him to pick one, and Eduardo notes that one of the rooms left is what would probably be considered the "master" bedroom, although it's got the same sized bed as the rest of the rooms. It's got it's own bathroom though, and Eduardo is selfish. He wants his own space where it doesn't feel like Mark can be, so he takes that one. Mark just shrugs and asks if he needs help carrying his bags up.

"No," Eduardo tries to smile, "I'll be okay."
"Okay," Mark says, "I have to try and fix a bug for the Winklevii. If you need me, I'll be in the computer room. Feel free to eat anything in the kitchen-there's not a lot but we can go out and get things you need later if you want to make a list."
"It's fine," Eduardo walks past Mark, "I'll survive for a couple of days, it's not like I really need anything different than you do."
"So you can run off Red Bull and ramen?"

Eduardo has to stop at the top of the stairs and turn to look at Mark, incredulous. He can't quite tell if Mark is joking or not, nothing in Mark's face really giving it away, but he suspects that Mark is being at least somewhat serious. He shakes his head.

"You're a billionaire," Eduardo says, "can't you afford actual food?"
"I like ramen," Mark shrugs, "that hasn't changed, even though I'm rich."

It's not really that funny, but Eduardo laughs because Mark is just . . . Eduardo doesn't understand him. He's weirdly robotic, even though Eduardo knows that he's almost entirely organic-if not all organic. There's an immensely practical overtone to the things he does, and even if Eduardo doesn't always understand why Mark does them, he assumes that Mark knows why and it's just never actually occurred to Mark that what he does might not make sense to someone else. Eduardo isn't even sure he considers other people in his actions that often. Mark seems to like machines more than people.

Machines like Mark too, and Eduardo slowly figures out how much Mark doesn't realize that he integrates with things on a daily basis, because none of the electronics in Mark's house will function for Eduardo. It starts with the kitchen sink, which should be mechanical and not electrical, but it's automated and it takes Eduardo two minutes to get it to work. The kitchen isn't much better, the fridge refusing to open up when Eduardo tries to open it up.

"Mark," Eduardo yells from the kitchen, "Mark! Your entire house hates me."
Mark pokes his head in from the computer room, "What's wrong?"
"The fridge refuses to open."

Which, stupid thing to say because it's a fucking fridge, but Mark's entire house is hostile to new people or whatever and everything is treating Eduardo like a threat. Everything works fine for Mark, though, seeing as he pulls open the fridge without any problems.

"You should try asking it nicely," Mark says.

And then he's gone and Eduardo is left standing in a kitchen with an open fridge and wondering when his life started to suck so much. Somehow, though, he blames Sean. He blames Sean for the fact that he's now living in a house that wants him gone with a host who he fucked once and now seems to have no interest in him. He blames Sean for the fact that he's under house arrest. He also blames Sean for bruise that the dishwasher gives him, which is a little ludicrous, but Eduardo honestly doesn't care.

His life sucks and he is going to blame Sean for it until he finds a better scapegoat and/or his life stops sucking.

After the first month of settling in, though, there's a certain routine to Mark and Eduardo's life-only not really. It's kind of hard to have any sense of routine when one person is up at all hours of the day coding and hacking and doing other important things that keep the world running smoothly. It's kind of hard when one person is in college too, which. Funny story, right? Not really. Eduardo's still not entirely sure he understands what even happened, because he just knows that Mark had blinked at him and then suddenly he was enrolled at the local community college.

Okay, no. No, there's slightly more to the story that than. Eduardo thinks it was because he had been getting restless and bored in the house, doing nothing. Mark wasn't home all the time, and so Eduardo had sat himself down at Mark's computer (they had labels, because Eduardo was allowed to use one of them but not the others) and had started coding. Not, like, complicated and crazy stuff. He just wanted to do something, and that seemed like a something that Mark could at least help him with if he got stuck. He didn't really get stuck, though, and then he had this program that didn't really do anything other than display random numbers, but he made it and that was cool.

He was fiddling around with another program when Mark came home and poked his head into the room.

"What are you doing?"
"I'm not sure," Eduardo said, "I want it to make bubbles, but I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet."

Mark walked over and peered at what Eduardo was doing, leaning over and typing something out while disregarding the concept of personal space entirely. He pulled away once he was done, brow furrowed, and Eduardo thought that maybe he was mad.

"You didn't tell me you code."
"I don't," Eduardo watched the bubbles that were now bouncing on the screen, "I just wanted to do something. It's boring to sit around in your house all day, especially since your house still hates me."
"But you . . . Did you learn all of that from the internet?"
"Yeah," Eduardo shrugged, "It's pretty cool."

That seemed to make Mark's brow furrow even more. Eduardo had given up on ever understanding Mark's expressions (or lack thereof), so he just waited until Mark said something else. All Mark did was ask if he had eaten dinner, though.

And then, the next day, there was a stack of college options on the kitchen table and a note from Mark that said, basically, "pick one and then you don't have to sit around doing nothing." So that was how Eduardo had ended up in college, which was nice. He wasn't sure what he was actually going to study yet, was just taking a bunch of random courses, but Mark had shrugged and said that not everyone knew what they wanted to do as soon as they got to college.

Eduardo's dad had wanted him to go into business, but he's pretty sure he doesn't actually want to do that. He's not sure if he ever really wanted to do it either. Mark says he should choose whatever he wants to do, and that he'll pay for it no matter what it is. This is another one of those things that Eduardo doesn't really understand about Mark, because . . . It's one thing to have Eduardo move in. Eduardo understands why he's moved in-it's part of the whole "cyborg pardoned from deactivation" thing and Mark didn't really have a choice-but he doesn't understand why Mark just offers to pay for college out of nowhere. That's kind of a big commitment, and that's a decent chunk of money.

Sure, Mark has a lot of money and sure, as far as Eduardo can tell he doesn't use it for anything, but most people don't just randomly pay for a stranger's entire college education.

It doesn't even fit in with the way Mark seems to spend money. Mark's house is actually relatively small, although expensive, and most of the furniture is either things that are clearly old and worn in (the couch, which looks like it has definitely seen better days) or from Ikea (all the beds and tables). The only thing in the entire house that seems in the least bit indulgent is the computers, but Eduardo suspects that's not really indulgent so much as necessary. Mark actually needs computers. He doesn't, so far as Eduardo can tell, need an expensive bed or expensive food.

The kitchen is mostly stocked with canned food and various instant things. There's also an entire shelf of Red Bull, a jug of milk, and some beer in the fridge, but that's pretty much everything. Mark deposits what's essentially an allowance into Eduardo's bank account every month for food, which he keeps telling Eduardo isn't actually his money. It's money the government pays him for looking after a cyborg criminal and it's not like Mark needs it, so he gives it to Eduardo. He also buys Eduardo a fryer, which is kind of weird.

Eduardo doesn't even ask for it, he just comes home from class one day and there's a box on the kitchen table with a note that says I accidentally broke your fryer. Which . . . Eduardo wants to know how you break a fryer, but Mark is nowhere to be found in the house, so Eduardo just unpacks the fryer and sets it up before making his dinner. It's actually better for his sanity if he doesn't know how Mark did it.

So yeah. Mark has no coherent schedule that Eduardo knows of, and Eduardo is working his ass off at college. They sometimes see each other at mealtimes, and Mark perpetually confuses Eduardo. That's their routine. It feels a little surreal, like the plot to some kind of crazy sitcom, but it's not bad. And there's not any real surprises either, until Mark knocks on the door to Eduardo's room one Saturday.

"Eduardo? Do you want to go to lunch with me?"

Over time, Eduardo has gotten better at understanding what Mark actually means when he says things, and Eduardo thinks that this is probably one of the times that Mark needs a convenient person to do something with him and . . . Eduardo doesn't actually care so he says yes.

They climb into a taxi, and Mark gives an address to the driver. He's quiet as the taxi weaves through traffic, largely because the Winklevii were like bring Eduardo to our next lunch meeting after Mark had slipped up and mentioned him and Mark had said he would ask and now they're going to some restaurant that Mark would really rather not be eating at. It had been Divya's choice, though, and Mark pretty much goes along with what Divya says because.

See, the thing is that Divya is the real brains behind Facebook and he's the thing that makes it run. Also he's technically Mark's boss even if he's Mark's friend too, so Mark tries not to piss him off. When the taxi pulls up in front of the restaurant, Mark pays the driver and then walks into the restaurant with Eduardo. He spots Divya and the Winklevii at a table and walks over, stopping just short of the table and gesturing to Eduardo.

"This is Eduardo. Eduardo, those two are the Winklevoss twins and that one is Divya."

Mark sees the looks between Cameron and Tyler and knows that he's going to get a very thorough grilling from them later, but they shake Eduardo's hand and smile at him anyway. They're too polite to do anything else, Mark knows, but it's not really the Winklevii he has to worry about, it's-

"So," Divya shakes Eduardo's hand, "are you Mark's new, what's the phrase he likes to use? Significant other, I believe."

-Divya. Mark glares at Divya, who just smiles wider when he sees Mark's expression. Eduardo, to his credit, doesn't falter.

"Something like that," he says with a slightly strained smile, "we don't really like to label what we have."

It probably would have been better if, like, Mark had told Eduardo that they were meeting up with the Winklevii and Divya, but he hadn't, for arbitrary and selfish reasons. It didn't actually seem to matter that much, though, because after the first five minutes of being awkward, Eduardo seemed to relax a little. He actually ended up talking with Divya the most, which Mark thought was quite interesting.

"Oh god," Eduardo laughs, "you have to deal with that too? I swear, the number of times that Mark has woken me up by crashing into something while he was trying to get to the computer room downstairs is kind of crazy."
"For the first two months," Divya grins, "Tyler checked Facebook every hour on the hour like a baby. It was equal parts disturbing and adorable."

Tyler protests, but Mark actually remembers that. He remembers Facebook going live, the four of them around a computer and Tyler checking on it incessantly until Mark had told him that it was fine and nothing bad would happen if he just let it be. Mark looks over at Eduardo and wonders what Eduardo would have done if he had started Facebook with them, how the story might have been different. What they have now is . . . Chris sometimes tells Mark that if he wants to work things with Eduardo out, then he needs to talk to Eduardo. Mark's bad at that, though.

After lunch, when they're in a taxi and headed back to the house, Eduardo touches Mark's shoulder lightly. Mark gets a scattered reel of events from lunch, and then Eduardo pulls his hand away.

"I don't understand you," Eduardo says softly, "You saved my life, and then you basically build me a new, better one . . . But why? What do you get out of all this?"
Mark looks out the window, "You didn't deserve to be deactivated. When I decided to save your life, I didn't do it so you could be my prisoner. I did it because I thought that you were a good person, or you could at least become one."

And I like you too much to let you go, Mark wants to say. He doesn't though, just keeps staring out the window of the taxi and forces himself not to look at Eduardo. There's silence between them, though, and Mark glances over to Eduardo at the same time Eduardo glances over to Mark, and the moment feels electric.

Eduardo shifts, turning until he can touch his fingers to either side of Mark's face and pulling him in for a kiss. It's the same overwhelming, overpowering connection as before, and Mark has to pull away.

"Sorry. I'm just not used to people spontaneously touching me."
"You can't control it," Eduardo says slowly, "can you?"

Mark shakes his head, aware that this is another one of those things that isn't actually a secret but something he just doesn't talk about unless asked directly. There's a lot of those, actually, and he guesses that this is what Chris means by actually talking to Eduardo.

"Not really, no. It's not that you can't touch me," Mark adds, almost as an afterthought, "it's just that you really have to warn me before you do it until I get used to you."
"Okay. Is there anything else I should know?"
"Chris is going to kill me," Mark whispers, "and I think this is probably a bad idea."

And then, before he has a chance to think about it much more, Mark pulls Eduardo forward for a kiss and there's only the blanketing feeling of more more more present. It's . . . There's something slightly different from the first time. Maybe it's that the circumstances have changed, maybe it's that Mark isn't lying to Eduardo this time, maybe it's just that a second time integration feels different in such slight ways. Mark wouldn't know, he's never really done this before.

There are some elements that feel the same, though. There's the same urgency, the same blurring of where the line between them ends. There's the same fast-forwarding, only now they're at Mark's door and stumbling up stairs, pulling at clothes, until they're in Mark's room and Mark's swallowing around Eduardo, who has his finger's tangled in Mark's hair and fuckfuckfuck and Mark and please please please before he's coming and Mark doesn't quite manage to swallow it all. Eduardo licks the excess away once he's pulled Mark onto the bed too, pulled Mark onto his lap.

Trying not to break away from kissing Eduardo, Mark flails and tries to grab the lube from the drawer next to his bed. His fingers curl around it and he presses it into Eduardo's hand, pushing him down. They're still kissing, and Eduardo somehow manages to figure out what Mark actually wants him to do and starts working a finger into him. Mark makes a pleased noise, and Eduardo keeps working him open until Mark whispers now now and Eduardo's not quite sure what's going on until Mark's already sinking down onto him, eyes fluttering closed.

Eduardo manages: "What about-"
before Mark cuts him off with: "It's fine. We're clean."

Which is pretty much the end of the discussion, because Mark shifts experimentally and Eduardo suddenly doesn't care about much else.

It's not until after, when Mark's lying close but not actually touching Eduardo, that Eduardo realizes that this probably changes things between them a lot. Mark touches their foreheads together, and Eduardo is enveloped in the secure knowledge that everything will be okay. It's hard to separate it out from his own feelings, and the only reason Eduardo knows it isn't him at all is that it disappears when Mark pulls away again.

"It's not Stockholm syndrome," Mark says suddenly, "I just want you to know that."
Eduardo blinks, "What?"
"Stockholm syndrome, when an abductee develops irrational feelings for their abductor and/or mistakes abuse for kindness."
"I know what it is. It's just not the kind of thing people usually say after sex and I was confused for a second."
"Sorry," Mark's hand hovers over Eduardo's hip for a second before resting there lightly, "I'm not like most people, if you haven't noticed."

The one point where they're connected, Mark's hand on Eduardo's hip, tingles with sensation and Eduardo can tell that Mark is trying to acclimate himself. It's a strange thing to watch, because Eduardo's never seen it happen before. He's heard about it, sensitive technopaths who integrate almost instantaneously with cyberkinetics and are easily overwhelmed by the sudden rush of information needing to slowly acclimate themselves to casual touches. Eduardo's pretty sure that's not entirely the case with Mark, but he's applying the same principles.

"That's weird," Mark pulls his hand away, "I shouldn't be able to do that."
"What did you do?"
Mark frowns, "I asked your cyberkinetics to not send me certain information unless I ask for it and they agreed. I'm not supposed to be able to do that unless I use slightly dubious and morally wrong methods."

Eduardo touches his fingers to Mark's neck and the instant rush of integration is still there, but he doesn't feel like he's fusing together with Mark this time.

"Mark," Eduardo says, "have you ever tried to do that before?"
Mark makes a dismissive noise, "It doesn't matter because I shouldn't be able to and it's not nice to reprogram things without asking anyway."
"Mark," Eduardo repeats, "have you ever tried to do that before?"
"No," Mark pauses, "Are you mad?"
Eduardo shakes his head, "No, but has it ever occurred to you that maybe you've always been able to do that? Like you said, you're not like most people."

There's a moment where Mark looks like he's going to argue, and then he just sighs and settles in against Eduardo. The clock/music player on the beside table clicks on and Eduardo twists to look at it, because as far as he can tell there is no way for it to have turned on. Mark doesn't seem particularly bothered by it, though.

"Does it always do that?"
"No," Mark is still not quite touching Eduardo, "I turned it on, because I want to sleep."

It's not that Eduardo doesn't want Mark to sleep, but more that he's a little weirded out by Mark's nonchalant response to what's just happened. It takes Eduardo a couple of seconds to actually understand what Mark has said, and he carefully nudges Mark once he has.

"Does that mean you don't have to be touching things in order to integrate with them?"
"Yes," Mark sighs, opening his eyes again, "Can we please talk about this when I haven't been awake for twenty-four hours?"
"Sure," Eduardo says, "sweet dreams."

Del Spooner: You are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?
Sonny: Can you?
- I, Robot
While Mark sleeps, Eduardo watches.

That makes it sound creepier than it actually is, to be honest, because it's not that Eduardo means to it's just that he's never actually seen Mark sleep when he wasn't passed out on his keyboard or possibly sleeping off drugs. There's something fragile about Mark when he's sleeping that seems, Eduardo thinks, to reflect the Mark that usually gets hidden away from the world. The one who cares too much about what other people think and how to make the world a better place, the one that Eduardo has seen only in fleeting moments before it's replaced with the more familiar and hard-edged Mark that Eduardo has grown used to.

Once Eduardo's realized that he's been staring at Mark kind of creepily for close to ten minutes, he carefully untangles himself and goes to his room to grab his math textbook. Mark has shifted when Eduardo returns, frowning in his sleep, and Eduardo presses a kiss to Mark's forehead.

"Sorry," he says, "I just wanted to study."

Mark seems to relax at that, and Eduardo wonders exactly how deeply asleep he is. He's only ever seen Mark sleep in fits and starts, mostly from exhaustion or deep integration rather than the conscious choice to sleep. Eduardo knows that Mark does sleep sometimes, because there's no way he could function without it, but he's never actually thought about how that would be any different from when Mark passes out. It's not really something that's any of his business, though, so instead he just opens up his textbook and starts taking notes. Mark sleeps on next to him, and Eduardo loses track of time, the way he always does when he studies.

When Mark wakes up, his automatic reaction is to tug on the signal line that's connected to Eduardo and check to make sure he still exists. He wishes he could say that it was because he's supposed to keep an eye on Eduardo, but to be honest? It's habit. Mark does it with a lot of things, gently tugging on their signal line and checking up on them every hour or so. He doesn't know if Eduardo notices, because it's less like an attention-seeking tug and more like an affirmation that Eduardo still exists and is running okay. Mark does it for entirely selfish reasons and half the time he doesn't realize that he's doing it until he's already being told please refuel, 15% charge remaining while he stretches out. He stands up, and Eduardo gives him a curious glance.

"I'll be right back," Mark says absently.

He heads down to the kitchen and boots up the fryer, grabbing a Red Bull from the fridge while he waits for the oil to heat up. When it's ready, he dumps a bag of fries in there and waits for them to cook while he tosses the Red Bull can into the recycling. He dumps the fries out onto a plate when they're done and powers down the fryer before heading back to his room and thrusting the plate at Eduardo. Eduardo blinks, slow and slightly confused, at the plate Mark is holding out to him. He refocuses his eyes and sees that Mark is frowning at him.

"Eat," Mark says, "you are an idiot and you can't spend six straight hours studying without eating anything."

It's not like Mark showing up with food for Eduardo or switching on the heating/cooling for Eduardo is anything new, and sometimes Eduardo gives him curious glances, but he never says anything about it. Except this time Eduardo just looks at Mark, fond exasperation on his face, and says:

"I can take care of myself, Mark. I did fine for four years before I met you."
"I know," Mark says, "I just like doing it for you sometimes."

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke
There's a moment where Eduardo just stares at Mark before he closes his textbook and sets it aside, taking the plate of fries with a quiet thank you. Mark sits next to him and steals fries until Eduardo is laughing and pulling the plate away from Mark's reach.

"Who are these for, Mark? Me or you?"
"Us," Mark says, trying to grab another fry, "I never said they were just for you."

Eduardo moves the plate back to where Mark can reach it, and Mark takes a fry. They sit there on Mark's bed, sharing the plate of fries until they're gone and Mark sets the plate on the bedside table, next to the clock/music player, before lying back down.

"Dustin freaked out the first time I did it around him too," he says, "and Chris gave me this face that said explanation, now, or I will destroy everything you love. So, you know, you're not the only one."

For a split-second, Eduardo doesn't seem to follow the conversation, and then he gives a little oh and settles down next to Mark.

"Is it only nearby electronics?"
Mark shakes his head, "No. I could mess with the electronics for about two blocks if there was any reason to-I once shut down the entire infrastructure of the CIA because I felt like it-but it's kind of draining so I usually just touch whatever I'm integrating with. I thought everyone was like that until my CIA crash course."
"So you don't have to be touching me to integrate with me."

Mark doesn't actually reply to that, just smirks and Eduardo's about to ask what he's so smug about when there's the phantom sensation of hands running over his body and he arches up into nothing before it's gone. That sort of answers his question.

"I hate you," Eduardo says without any vitriol, "You have all the advantages here."
"Not really," Mark says.

He doesn't elaborate any further, though, which Eduardo has learned means that Mark is done talking. It's kind of startling how much Eduardo knows about Mark just from observation, which Eduardo mostly chalks up to Mark's talking being done primarily with his body. Mark straddles him, leaning down for a kiss, and Eduardo stops thinking so much about everything.

It will all work out okay and if Mark believes so, then Eduardo isn't one to argue with someone who could reprogram the world on a whim. To be honest, though, not a whole lot about the situation changes. Mark still has next to no coherent schedule, he still confuses Eduardo to no end, and the only real difference is that sometimes they fuck and sometimes they even manage to have actual, meaningful conversations-if conversations means arguing. It's not even that they want to be arguing, it's just that they're both stubborn assholes when they want to be and neither of them really has a clue about what they're doing so they argue about stupid shit like whether or not Mark needs a cellphone. Eduardo really thinks that it's a useful thing and Mark should have one. He's surprised that Mark doesn't.

"What do you mean you don't have a cellphone?"
Mark shrugs, "I don't need one. The only people who talk to me are my parents, the Winklevii, Divya, Chris, and Dustin. They all know it's faster to email me."
Eduardo just stares at Mark, "What if you need a phone?"
"Well," Mark rolls his eyes, "then I'd tap into a cellphone tower and make a call."
Eduardo sighs, "Don't they give you a cellphone when you get hired by the CIA?"
"No," Mark pauses, "Maybe. I don't know, I didn't really get hired."
"You," Eduardo pokes Mark in the chest, "and I are going to buy you a cellphone tomorrow."

Which is how Eduardo ends up on the subway with Mark on their way to a Verizon store. Mark is very specific about the fact that it has to be a Verizon, because he's calculated that he has the highest chance of hacking into a Verizon tower and Eduardo's about to ask why Mark would do that but he stops himself and doesn't. It's easier that way, because then maybe Mark won't look so suspicious-Eduardo is beginning to understand why Mark never really goes out into public.

They're on the subway and on their way to the store, and Mark just. He's wearing a dark blue hoodie and he's got the hood pulled up, shading his face, while his hands are buried in the front pocket. If Eduardo is being honest, Mark looks like the sort of twitchy guy that's going to pull out a gun and hold up the entire subway car. Eduardo knows that it's probably just nerves, though, so he slips his hand into Mark's pocket to and curls his fingers around Mark's fist, trying to project it's going to be okay to Mark. He thinks it helps, because Mark relaxes and pulls his hands out of is pocket, tangling his fingers with Eduardo's.

Thankfully, they don't get stopped by the cops on their way to the store. Eduardo doesn't want to think about how he'd even start explaining that to Chris. As it is, he's not sure how he'd explain the several hours they spend in the Verizon store to Chris. It should be a simple task, but Mark makes a poor sales associate bring him an actual, working version of every phone they sell. He runs his fingers over every single one and Eduardo knows he's speaking to them and trying to get a feel for their individual personalities but the sales associate looks like she wants to strangle Mark.

Eduardo knows the feeling, and he's about to say something to Mark when Mark curls his fingers around a simple, uncomplicated phone without very many features and smiles his least smug smile at the sales associate.

"Can I get this one?"

The sales associate sighs in relief and rings Mark up. Mark gives her a hundred dollar tip, which Eduardo thinks is pretty much worth all she had to put up with. When they're out of the store, Eduardo's phone vibrates in his pocket with a text from a number he doesn't recognize. The text says hi mark zuckerberg sent me though, so Eduardo has a pretty good idea of who sent it. When he looks over at Mark, he smiles-just the corner of his lips quirking up-and Eduardo laughs. Of course Mark Zuckerberg can text without actually typing anything out.

Eduardo's not sure what monster he's unleashed on the world, but he figures that Mark can't do that much damage. Chris will probably yell at him later, because Chris tends to yell whenever Mark obtains new ways of making his life miserable, but Eduardo can handle it.

Anyway, they're working in the right direction. They spend more time talking and just hanging out and actually getting to know each other, and otherwise doing everything ass-backwards. It doesn't actually dawn on Eduardo until a long time after their conversation about the fact that Mark didn't have to be touching things to integrate with them that Mark is weirdly unwilling to ask for things. He never asks for favors, rarely even asks Eduardo things like could you pass the salt?, and even when they're fucking Mark doesn't really ever make requests of Eduardo. Eduardo gets the sense that there's things Mark wants, but he never actually flat-out asks for them.

They're walking home from lunch with the Winklevii and Divya when this occurs to Eduardo, and he voices the thought before it even really sinks in.

"You never ask for anything."
Mark glances over at Eduardo, "I don't need anything that isn't given freely. I've spent too much time seeing people take information and take control of things and just take in general. I think that's bullshit."

A quick look at Mark tells Eduardo that he's pulled into himself and tense, so Eduardo stops, wrapping his arms around Mark and touching their foreheads together. He closes his eyes, trying to think happy things, and feels Mark relax against him.

"It's okay," Eduardo whispers, "I just want you to know that you can ask for things if I can give them to you. You can even ask for things I can't give you."

Mark gives Eduardo that look he's getting used to, the one that says are you sure you're not from a different planet?, but Mark doesn't give a retort, so Eduardo figures that the conversation was at least partially successful. Considering that's usually not the case, Mark just not giving a slightly sarcastic remark is an accomplishment. And it's not like Mark isn't trying. He is, he really is, but he's just really bad at the whole relating to people thing. Like, computers he gets and machines he gets, but people are enigma burritos with surprise jalapenos. Also he doesn't like talking about certain things and Eduardo is usually pretty good about avoiding those things but Mark gets the feeling that there's something nagging Eduardo that he just never talks about and it makes Mark frown. He doesn't know what it is, otherwise he'd bring it up himself, so he just tells Eduardo you know you can talk to me about stuff. There's a long pause, Eduardo tapping his fingers on the table nervously.

"Mark," Eduardo turns to face him, "could you reactivate a person?"
Mark shrugs, "In theory. It's never been done, though."

He's not sure he approves of this particular train of questioning, but it's Eduardo's choice to ask and it's the sort of thing that people should know. Mark's pretty sure that they don't tell you all the horrible things that might happen if you get deactivated when you get the cyberkinetics installed. They just tell you that it's awful. So, when Eduardo asks what happens when you're deactivated, Mark doesn't want to answer because he knows the answer and he doesn't like the answer. Still.

"You'd die. The longer you've had the cyberkinetics, the more of them you have, the shorter you'll live after they've been turned off." Mark runs his fingers along the table. "Sometimes people can live when they're deactivated, if it's just an arm or something else nonessential, but they're different people afterward. Like zombies, because their brains don't know how to function when something it's so used to talking with suddenly doesn't respond. But you'd die, and it wouldn't be pretty. It would be slow, painful, and I would have to watch you to make sure you'd been deactivated properly."

Mark's not looking at Eduardo, is just tracing the design of code onto the table with his fingers. Eduardo is silent, which is only to be expected, and then his chair shifts. Mark's expecting him to leave, wants to say you asked, but Eduardo just wraps his arms around Mark and hugs him tightly.

"I'm sorry," Mark says, "you asked."
Eduardo shakes his head, "No, I don't care about that. You just looked like you needed a hug. I think people forget you're organic, Mark."
Mark's head snaps up, eyes measuring and slightly confused, "I never told you that. I never tell anyone that."
Eduardo touches their foreheads together, "You don't have a single surgery scar on your body, Mark, it's not hard to tell."

Mark pulls away from Eduardo then, and Eduardo doesn't try to stop him. Mark is just looking at Eduardo, like he's trying to work out a particularly rough patch of code. Then, using one of his entirely unsubtle subject changes, Mark shakes it off.

"Why did you want to know about deactivation? Has someone been threatening you? Should I be worried?"
"No," Eduardo sighs, "It's just that sometimes I worry that you'll have to deactivate me and -"
"I can't."

It takes a second before Eduardo actually processes what Mark has said. It doesn't make any sense, though, because all technopaths can deactivate people. Mark doesn't look like he's joking, though. He's just staring at Eduardo, like he's trying to gauge Eduardo's reaction. Eduardo gets the impression that he's being given a really precious piece of information about Mark.

Eduardo blinks, "What?"
"I can't deactivate you or anyone else, because I can't tell difference between the organic parts and the nonorganic parts when I'm integrated."
"You can't," Eduardo stares at Mark for a second, "You can't tell the difference."
Mark's brow furrow in confusion, "Because there isn't one."
"Sometimes," Eduardo shakes his head fondly, "I don't understand how you even exist."

The funny thing is that, once Mark's told him this, it's not even a surprise. It's just Mark, who sees a different world than everyone else and who apparently can't even tell the difference between the organic and mechanic bits of Eduardo. That's.

Mark is giving Eduardo that mildly concerned look he sometimes gets, and Eduardo wonders, not for the first time, how anyone could mistake Mark for anything but organic. Mark isn't a robot, he's a human. It's sort of a rare thing, in this day and age, and maybe that's why Mark isn't like other people. Maybe they've been working down the wrong path all along. Eduardo laughs, and Mark still looks confused, like what's so funny?, and Eduardo just smiles at him.

"Maybe we need to start over," Eduardo says, "Hi, I'm Eduardo Saverin. I'm a college student and I'm thinking about majoring in programming or forensics."

He holds out his hand, and Mark looks down at it and looks up at Eduardo. He raises an eyebrow, and Eduardo sighs.

"Come on. I want to get to know you the right way."
Mark, still skeptical, reaches out to shake Eduardo's hand, "Hi, I'm Mark Zuckerberg. I'm Facebook's head of security and programming, which basically means that I run the technical side of the world's largest social networking site. It's nice to meet you, Eduardo."
"It's nice to meet you too, Mark," Eduardo shakes Mark's hand, "Are you free later? We could go out for a drink or something. What do you say?"
Mark smiles, just slightly, "I'd like that."

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