Boy Falls From the Sky 2/3

[lc2l]

Fandom: TSN
Pairing: Eduardo/Christy, Mark/Eduardo

Part 1


Now

Sy turns to a new page of his notes. "Mr Saverin," he says. "Can you tell me what you were doing in New York?"

Eduardo coughs to give himself a moment to think. "I was meeting with the heads of various companies in the hope of finding sponsorship or advertising. I believed without Mark's presence, the meetings would go far smoother and-"

"And what were you doing the rest of the time?"

Eduardo tried not to freeze too obviously. "I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?"

"I have here-" he pulls out a pile of papers-"the records from thirteen meetings you arranged over the period. Three of them you missed, two you left early and did not return, two you fell asleep in." He turns a few pages over. "I haven't been in contact with all the others, but the evidence is against you. The internship you say you quit on the first day-though interestingly I could find no records that it ever existed. You lived in an apartment with your then girlfriend for a significant period of time and I would like to know what you were doing that meant you couldn't be in Palo Alto with the company you co-founded."

"Well," Eduardo says. "That's a very interesting question."

Then

His pager went off, distracting him for the single moment required to earn him a punch in the face. He stumbled backwards, reaching for his belt to shut off the beeping as he ducked another blow from Tyler Winklevoss #112.

"Don't you people ever get tired of trying to kill me?"

Cameron Winklevoss #98 attempted a jab at the bottom of his ribs, Eduardo spun on the spot and snapped his wrist backwards before he could make it.

"Oh yeah. You only get one chance each." He snatched Tyler's gun off the floor and slammed the butt into Cameron's head, sending him crashing to the ground. "Now," he said, aiming the pistol at Tyler's head. "You can take me to your hideout, or you can die. Your choice."

Tyler spread his arms. "So kill me. More will come and they will keep coming and one day you won't be so lucky."

Eduardo's pager went off again, somehow rather ruining the moment.

"Do you want me to wait while you get that?" Tyler asked. Eduardo shot him in the head and tugged out his pager.

'Bored,' the first message read. 'Can I come out next time?'

'Buy popcorn on your way home.'

Eduardo slammed the pager back onto his waist and jumped out the window, leaving the bodies for Divya to clean up. He swung home, ignoring the various cameras pointing his way-maybe tomorrow morning he could buy a paper and find out that Spiderman killed puppies and hated children, oh no sorry, Spider-Man-and landed on the apartment block fire escape, changing into the clothes that were still stuck on the wall where he'd left them before jumping down into the alley and walking into the building through the front door.

Christy was lying on the bed painting her nails and watching CNN where a hostage situation had just been resolved in a particularly bloody and unpleasant fashion downtown. Eduardo snatched the controller, putting the screen on mute. "Why didn't you tell me about that?" he demanded, gesturing to the screen where people were being carried out on stretchers.

Christy lifted her hand and blew on it, deliberately meeting his eyes over the purple paint. "Your inbox was full."

"There were three messages," he snapped, pulling the pager from his waist and throwing it at her. "And they were all from you. How long have you been watching this coverage? Wasn't it on the scanner?" He scanned the rest of the room for the first time. "Where is the scanner?"

Christy started on her second hand. "I dropped it," she said carelessly.

"You dropped it?" He crouched to look under the bed. "Where, in the toilet?"

"Out the window." She lifted her thumbnail to examine the covering. "Have you worked out how to break into Dr Jones's lab yet?"

Eduardo pushed himself to his feet and crossed to the window where he could see tiny black shards scattered across the pavement. "I'm not stealing the spider from Dr Jones. He's analysing it and keeping it safe and I'm not letting it bite anyone else, not even you."

"I could help you," she said, dragging the brush across her index fingernail. "I'm bored."

He threw up his hands. "You have a job, you have a perfectly good job that you keep calling in sick to because you want to stay in bed and watch movies."

"Are you still going to Palo Alto at the weekend?"

"Yes."

"Will Mark be there?"

"Mark will be there, yes. I'm not sleeping with Mark, Christy, how many times do you need me to say it before it sinks in?"

She finished her last nail. "I'll just call the criminal underworld and tell them to take a few days off, shall I?"

"That would be lovely, thanks," he said, too tired to argue, and locked himself in the bathroom to check on his new collection of bruises.

"Did you get my popcorn?" Christy called after him.

Now

"So this must be the millionth time you've saved my life," Mark says, clinging to Eduardo's back for dear life as Eduardo climbs up the side of the pit away from the exploding robot.

"Fifteenth," Eduardo corrects.

Mark takes one hand off Eduardo's neck to count against his shoulder. "I thought eight," he says slowly.

"Three while you were sleeping," Eduardo says. "Two that you didn't notice, one you were just looking the wrong way. The fifteenth time I actually saved Facebook, but I figured I could count that anyway." He reaches the top of the building, reaching back to throw Mark over the lip and crawl over after him as there's another explosion below them.

Mark brushes soot off his jeans. "I should be paying you," he says, half joking but with a look in his eye that suggests maybe he's half not.

Eduardo is suddenly reminded of Christy mentioning the vibe Alice got from Mark. He moves away. "You can pay me by finding some way to stop the attacks. Have you considered hiring a bodyguard?"

"What should I put on the ad? Must be able to protect from avid fans, rival companies and giant robots?" He reaches into his pocket to touch the USB stick that he's been checking on every five minutes since the giant robot reached into his hotel room and plucked him out of it. "Are you available? I know you have the superhero thing but I must be distracting you from other-I could pay you in Facebook stock. Or I could just pay you. I-I have a lot of money." Which is, quite possibly, the understatement of the century and the irony of it makes Eduardo want to laugh or weep. He isn't sure which, so he does neither.

"Do you need a ride home?"

Mark pushes himself up to look over the edge of the pit as another explosion sends the robot's eye high enough in the air that it lands on the opposite side of the pit. "I don't know where I am," he looks back. "But if you could drop me off at the road, I could catch a cab."

Eduardo picks him up, flings him easily over one shoulder and swings back to the hotel where there is a monster-fist sized hole in Mark's bedroom wall. Eduardo drops him in amongst the rubble and turns.

"Do you usually stay to watch me sleep?" Mark asks, kicking concrete lumps off his suitcase.

Eduardo bites down on all the scathing replies he could come up with to that particular gem. "You've managed to gain a reputation for the most attacked person in New York. I go where the trouble is."

Mark reaches into the case and tugs out a hoodie, shaking dust off it before pulling it over his head and resting his hands in the pockets. "You could stay inside. You know, if you wanted."

Eduardo shoots a web and jumps out the hole without giving a reply.

Then

"I'm in New York-" 'saving people, saving the world and defeating evil' all ran through his head but he couldn't explain anything when Mark was like this. He couldn't-they had to be best friends like they always had been. Not like this with Mark in the thrall of a soon-to-be supervillain. He couldn't risk Sean increasing his control over Mark, or Mark telling Sean Spiderman's true identity.

This was clearly all part of Sean's plan. Somehow, Sean had arranged for all of this to happen, he had driven Eduardo away and he was just biding his time before he could seize control of Facebook and use it to destroy the world.

Thiel must be in on it too. Maybe he was Sean's boss. Maybe Sean was his boss and Mark was just a helpless pawn caught up in the middle of a giant conspiracy that Eduardo was going to foil.

"I'm in New York," he tried again, but if he said 'looking for advertisers' Mark would want results and Eduardo didn't have any because he'd missed all his follow up interviews-damn that bus full of school children-and eventually they'd all stopped calling. He just trailed off and could watch as the tiny glimmer of hope died in Mark's eyes.

"You're in New York," Mark agreed, turning to leave.

So many things went through Eduardo's head-'Don't trust Sean' or 'you're being manipulated' or 'watch your back, I'm worried about you'. "What did you mean get left behind?"

Mark looked back at him. "There's a camp bed in my bedroom, Wardo. This is where the company is-this is where our company is. You could come to the meeting, you could come to all the meetings. I want you out here."

Not five minutes ago it had been 'I need you out here.'

Eduardo watched him leave, then tugged his phone out of his pocket. He planned to call Christy and say there was crime to be fought in Palo Alto so he was going to be gone a few more days. He had one new voicemail and thirty eight texts. The texts were all from Christy, the voicemail from an unknown number.

"Hello, hello, is that Eduardo?" Dr Jones's voice came through the speaker, muffled and occasionally completely obscured by the sounds of falling objects and utter chaos. "This is Dr Jones. Someone has stolen the spider you gave us, destroying half the lab in the process. We're attempting to prevent a major disaster, but we could really use your help." There was the sound of a small explosion somewhere in the distance. "I have to go. We need to find that spider." There was a click as he hung up.

Eduardo didn't hesitate; he grabbed his bag and ran down into the hallway where Dustin was still coding and Sean was back on the phone, speaking with his 'I know you're going to do what I want' voice.

Eduardo crossed the hall, snatched the phone from Sean's hand and pinned him up against the wall with a forearm to the neck. "You think you've got it all figured out," Eduardo said, pressing hard enough that all Sean could do in reply was choke. "Don't you?"

"Wardo?" Dustin said, spinning around on his chair and looking from Sean to Eduardo. "What the fuck?"

"You don't see anything," Eduardo mocked. "You're writing code."

Dustin pushed his chair back. "I should get Mark."

Sean pushed at Eduardo's elbow with one hand, which obviously had no effect because Sean was fucking puny and Eduardo was Spiderman.

"Whatever trick you're planning," Eduardo said. "Whatever angle you're playing I promise I will get to the bottom of it and I will stop you if I have to bring you, the guy you're meeting and his entire company crashing down." He pulled his arm back too fast for Sean to find his footing or do anything other than slither down the wall to the floor.

"Are you completely insane?" Sean gasped, rubbing his throat with one hand.

"And if you hurt him," Eduardo added, swinging his bag over one shoulder. "I will end you."

On the way back to the airport, he froze the bank account.

Now

Eduardo is lying on his back on Mark's hotel bed, waiting for the giant slug in the bathtub to melt away-the only way to guarantee it is actually dead, not just waiting for the right moment to strike-so he can go home.

"If someone you hated was in trouble," Mark says. "And you could save them, would you do it?"

Eduardo looks up. Mark is sitting at the desk, his chair turned away from his laptop for the first time since Eduardo finished killing the slug. Clearly whatever disaster had struck is over. "Yes."

Mark frowns, reaching out with one hand to shut the lid on his laptop. "Really?"

Eduardo shrugs, lying back down on the bed. "Wouldn't be much of a hero if I didn't."

He has thought about it-thought about what would happen if Sean was falling off the edge of the statue of liberty. No one would think anything of it if his webshooters just missed by a couple of inches. It would just be a tragic accident, and every hero is bound to have a few of them every once in a while.

Mark sits down on the bed next to him. "Can I?"

Eduardo glances over to see Mark's fingers hovering inches over the fabric of his gloves, his expression caught in that intrigued look he gets whenever he's come across a particularly interesting piece of code. "Go ahead."

Mark's fingers brush across the top of his glove, tracing underneath to the metal of the webshooter. "They're mechanical?"

Eduardo aims his wrist to the left of Mark's head and fires off a strand of web so Mark can see the way the metal covering of the shooter shifts aside and the tiny spark as the mechanism fires.

"You designed these?" Mark asks, running his fingers up and down the close to find where the webshooter ends.

"A friend," Eduardo says, remembering Dr Jones's bright smile when he showed off the latest prototype. "He used to help me out a lot."

"You have friends?" Mark says, in surprise. "People who know who you really are?"

Eduardo closes his eyes as the memories of the last time he saw the doctor, after it got out that Jones might know the true identity of Spiderman and Narendra had sent an entire army of Winklevii clones to the lab. Eduardo had got there as fast as physically possible, fought as many as he could to get the doctor out but he hadn't been quite fast enough.

When it came to the doctor, he never seemed to be fast enough. He would never forget the way Jones had laughed weakly when Eduardo asked how long he'd known.

"Well," he'd said, reaching up to tug off Eduardo's mask with one hand. "If you'd called yourself Wasp-man, I might not have figured it out."

"Not anymore," Eduardo says, as the slug rolls out of the bathtub and into the room for round two.

Then

He called Dr Jones as soon as he got through customs in New York. "I'm in the city, what's happening?"

"The lab's done for. We had to evacuate and call the emergency services, they're trying to contain the fire. Fortunately the explosion was small enough that only the lab was destroyed, but we've lost everything. All the data, all the equipment and the CCTV tapes, meaning we have no images of the person who took the spider."

Eduardo stepped onto the street, hailing a cab with one arm. "Did anyone see them?"

"One of the interns thought he saw a girl with long, dark hair but it doesn't seem at all like-"

Eduardo hung up on him, turned away from the taxi and was about to run for the toilets to change when he remembered that his webshooters were still in the apartment because of stupid airplane safety regulations and his taxi was already pulling away with someone else in it.

He hailed a second one, pushing aside a thug and a woman with three children to throw himself into the back seat and shout his address at the driver.

He pushed through his apartment door twenty minutes later, throwing his bag down on the sofa to check the bathroom and the kitchen. There was no sign of anyone and he couldn't hear a thing so he went back to his bag, pushing through the piles of clothes he'd never so much as unpacked looking for his phone.

"Eduardo?" The bedroom door swung open to reveal Christy, holding a tiny squirming flash of red and blue up between her thumb and forefinger.

Eduardo dropped his phone back into the bag. "Chris, what are you doing with that?"

Christy raised the spider to her eye level, tongue flickering as though she was thinking about tasting it. "How did you make it bite you? Make it bite me."

Eduardo took half a step closer and noticed something wrong-other than the obvious fact that his girlfriend was crazy. "Why does it only have six legs?"

Christy laughed and answered his question by reaching up and tugging a third one off, dropping it directly onto the carpet. "I was trying to make it angry so it would attack," she explained, walking into the bedroom and letting the door swing behind her. Eduardo leapt forward to catch it in time to see her sit on the bed, eyeing the spider intently. "It didn't work. What's so different about you? Why did it bite you? Where? When?"

Eduardo tried to remember how you were supposed to deal with a crazy person. "Chris, please," he said, taking a step forward. "This is crazy."

She smiled a bright smile at him, pulled a gun from her purse and trained it on his head. "Don't come any closer."

Eduardo stopped moving. "Did you blow up Dr Jones's lab?"

"Where were you when it bit you?"

"You don't want this, Chris. It's insane, it takes over your life."

She flicked the safety catch off with her little finger. "Where were you?"

Fuck fuck fuck, he could even see his webshooters on the table behind her but without them all he could do was stand here with a gun pointing at his head and she could shoot at any moment. "Harvard. I was in Harvard, by the statue. It was winter, I was outside doing initiations for the Phoenix. Please, Christy, put the gun down."

Christy tilted her head to the side, apparently to examine the spider from a different angle. "Is that it? Do you need to be cold?" Her eyes snapped back to Eduardo. "Is there ice in the freezer?"

"Chris, you're scaring me. Can we please drop this? Put the spider down. Put it down and we can talk through this." A bullet hit the wall over his head, sending plaster dust crumbling onto his shoulders.

"Ice. Now." As Eduardo backed out the room her heard her muttering. "Who's a hungry spider? Who's a good ravenous beast?" she said, as though she was speaking to a kitten.

A kitten that she had just cut one and a half legs off. Eduardo crossed to the kitchen, catching the strap of his bag with his foot as he walked past so it dragged behind him all the way into the kitchen. "Ice?" he called, pulling open the freezer door with one hand and reaching into his clothes for his phone with the other.

A bullet flew so close to his head, his life was flashing before his eyes. He turned to see Christy in the doorway, moving the barrel of the gun sideways a little so it was aimed back at his head. "The frozen peas," she said, gesturing into the freezer with the gun. "Put them on top of the bag, and kick them both to me." She waited while he did so. "Now put your hands on your head."

Eduardo did as he was told, watching as she rested the peas and the now legless spider against her leg, sitting on his bag and pulling out his phone with one hand. "So how was Mark?"

"He's fine, I barely saw him."

"Why not?"

"Because I was hardly there five minutes before I got a call from Dr Jones to tell me that a complete psych-" The bullet actually grazes his shoulder, he can feel the hot burn and the warm blood pumping against his shirt.. "That someone was breaking into his lab and it could blow at any moment."

"Oh," Christy looked up from his phone. "Oh Dr Jones called, did he? So you didn't look at one of my 47 texts-did you know I sent 47 texts?-because maybe if you'd opened one you could have saved the lab but I suppose you were too busy with Mark to care about your girlfriend." She threw his phone to the floor, where it spun on the tiles before coming to a stop between them. "If I even am your girlfriend."

Eduardo looked between the phone and the gun, hoping for any way to get the former without being killed by the latter. "What?"

"Why is the relationship status listed as single on Spiderman's Facebook page?"

Eduardo actually froze halfway through moving one of his hands to put pressure on his bleeding shoulder, just because the statement was so completely ludicrous that he didn't believe for a minute that Christy was even serious. "I didn't even know Spiderman had a Facebook page."

"No, you didn't change it so you could screw that reporter Gwen Stacy every time you save her from ravenous trolls."

"I only saved her from trolls once. And also I would never, Gwen has a boyfriend."

"Are you screwing him?" her eyes narrowed. "Does Mark know you're Spiderman?"

Eduardo's phone rang. "I am not having sex with Mark Zuckerberg. I have never had sex with Mark Zuckerberg." He threw himself into a roll, snatching the phone in one hand and landing on Christy, sending the gun spiralling off onto the floor d he flipped his phone open and held it to his ear. "Hello?"

"My spider," Christy cried, writhing beneath him. "What happened to my spider?"

"You froze our account?" Mark asked.

"I-" he let out a cry of pain as Christy briefly sank her teeth into his wrist. "I did."

"He's crazy!" Christy shouted. "Save me Mark, save-" Eduardo pressed his hand against her mouth.

"You froze the account," Mark said.

"I had to keep it away from Sean." He pressed the mouthpiece against his shoulder, turning back to his girlfriend. "Christy, you are not Spiderman. You are not going to become Spiderman. You need help, serious help, that I am prepared to-" he caught something down the line about the company. "Mark, this really isn't a good time-"

That was when Eduardo went flying across the room, back slamming into the far wall as Christy pushed herself to her feet and shook the spider off her leg to reveal a tiny spider bite, red spreading out further with every second.

"Without money the site can't function," Mark's voice could just be heard coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the fridge as Eduardo pushed himself to his feet. "Let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everybody else-"

Christy ran towards him, throwing two punches that Eduardo could easily block before she drove her knee into his groin and headbutted him hard enough to break his nose. Eduardo stumbled back, eyes watering. "Christy, please, you don't have to do this. Okay, you got bitten, you can have what you wanted, we can be partners."

"Like you're partners with Mark?" Christy threw herself into a jump front kick that sent him flying into the wall, shitty plaster raining down from the ceiling like snow. "Like you're partners with Gwen and that red head-don't think I haven't seen her 'damsel in distress' routine-and anyone else who gives you the time of day."

Eduardo blinked hard to clear his vision, falling onto all fours on the floor close enough to the hidden phone to hear "If one domino goes, all the dominoes go-"

"Mark, this is really not a good time," Eduardo shouted as he span on the floor to sweep Christy's legs out from underneath her, sending her sprawling to the ground in an undignified heap. He turned away briefly, using the brief respite to scan the floor for his damn cell phone.

Something hit him on the back, knocking Eduardo flat on the floor with a crash and shards of glass dripping around him, down the back of his neck. He turned his head in time to see Christy snatching up a pile of plates from the side. "What is wrong with you?"

He flipped to his feet, kicking the first two plates out of mid air and snatching a breadboard from the side to block the others before flinging it at Christy's head. She ducked the board but missed Eduardo's fist coming up from below to catch her underneath the chin and send her flying into the main room.

Mark's voice was still audible, just. "Did you like being nobody? Did you like being a joke? Do you want to go back to that?"

Christy snatched up the table, sending magazines and empty coffee mugs flying in all directions. "You never wanted me to go with you," she shouted.

"I never wanted you to get hurt!" Eduardo kicked a cupboard door off its hinges, snapped it into two thinner planks and held one in each hand. "And I needed someone I trusted to keep an eye on the news."

Christy eyed his two planks then smashed the table against the floor, grabbing the two sharpest looking shards and spinning them around as Eduardo stepped out of the kitchen.

One of the table shards snapped at the first impact, while the other drove into Eduardo's leg hard enough to cut through the leg of his pants and far enough into his thigh that when Christy let go to jump backwards, it stayed in. Eduardo threw one of his planks after her, kicking a table shard up into the air so he could catch it and use a cross of wood to pin her against the wall.

She reached underneath and tugged the wood out of his thigh, sending a whole new wave of pain flooding through his body. Blood poured down his leg.

Eduardo slammed his uninjured knee into Christy's stomach, leaving her pinned to the wall and gasping for breath as he ran back into the kitchen and finally found the phone on the floor down the side of the fridge.

"I'm sorry," Eduardo panted down the phone. He snatched a towel from the side, balled it up and pressed it against his bleeding leg. "I was angry and maybe it was childish but I had to get your attention because Sean is-"

"Wardo, I said I've got good news."

Eduardo looked back over to the main room in time to see Christy tug one of the planks out of the wall and drop to the ground. "What is it?" he asked, crossing over to the gun and tossing it out of the window, keeping both eyes on Christy trying to catch her breath on the floor.

"Peter Thiel's just made an angel investment of half a million dollars."

Christy raised her head to look at him, then ran into the bedroom. Eduardo snatched the bread knife from the knife stand and stepped into the main room, holding it loosely and keeping an eye on the closed bedroom door. "What?"

"A half million dollars, and he's setting us up in an office. They want to-"

Eduardo knocked open the bedroom door to see Christy standing in front of the dressing table, her back to him. "Christy? Chris, we can talk about this."

"Get your ass on the next flight back to San Francisco," Mark said, voice echoing through the phone's speakers loud enough that Christy's spider hearing would pick it up. She tensed up a little. "I need my CFO."

Eduardo held up both hands, switching his grip on the knife so he couldn't attack with it too easily. "Chris?"

Christy spun around, and she had his webshooters fixed tight around her wrists. She shot two strands of thin white webbing over his shoulders, stretched like elastic so as soon as they attached she flew forward, feet outstretched to catch him in the chest, sending him sprawling to his back. Christy continued forward and crashed through the window, shooting off strands of ribbon as she haphazardly swung away down the street.

"Wardo," said Mark.

Eduardo held the phone up to his ear, lying on his back and wondering if maybe he could just never move again. "Yes?"

"We did it."

Eduardo closed his eyes, letting the phone fall from the floor and reaching down to press the heel of his hand hard against his bleeding leg.

They did it.

Now

Technically, today Eduardo is allowed to stand over Mark's shoulder and watch him write out a cheque, except that it's not actually a cheque that is being written out, it's a contract returning a significant portion of Facebook shares to Eduardo's ownership, and it's not Mark signing the papers, it's one of Facebook's legal aids because Mark didn't show up, and Eduardo isn't watching because he's in the same place Mark is.

"Is this some kind of clone army?" Mark demands, grabbing a knife from one of the decked Winklevii clones to cut the bonds on his hands. Of course the Winklevii are all masked, but there's no mistaking the identical posture, movements and muscle on each.

"What," Eduardo says, sweeping the legs out from underneath five Winklevii. "So a giant slug, an angry robot and a hoard of ravenous trolls are all perfectly normal but a clone army is completely impossible and shocking?"

Mark grabs the chair he was previously tied to and stabs it into the face of a clone who managed to get past Eduardo. "I was surprised by the trolls," he protests, smashing the chair over his Winklevii's head. "Trolls in New York, very unexpected."

Eduardo drives his elbow backwards into one clone, then his fist forward into another. "You were coding, Mark. You were sitting in the back of a taxi in the middle of a hoard of ravenous trolls and you were coding. You are worse than Bill Gates, Mark. Worse than Bill Gates."

"If they're clones," Mark says, tossing a long sharp piece of chair from hand to hand. "Are we morally allowed to kill them?"

Eduardo snatches a knife from the belt of Winklevii number he's-really-lost-count-by-now and throws it into the head of Mark's victim. "You have morals?" he asks, driving his head into the clone's stomach and sending him spiralling backwards into three more clones. Eduardo takes advantage of the brief respite to snatch Mark around the waist and fire a web up, springing them both up into the rafters.

"Laptop," Mark reminds him and Eduardo clings onto the roof, firing a second web down that sticks to Mark's laptop bag and pulls that up, incidentally knocking out three more Winklevii as it rises. "Also," Mark says, pulling the strap over his head and holding the bag close. "You don't actually know me or my morals so-" He shifts around to loop his arms around Eduardo's neck, keeping his laptop between them.

Eduardo smashes the window and climbs out, keeping his fingers pressed against the bricks as he scales the walls to the roof. "So those meetings I see you at, you're not being sued of cutting your best friend out of the company you started together?"

"You know about-" Mark lets go, dropping onto the roof and glancing down straight away to check his laptop hasn't been harmed. Then he looked back up at Eduardo. "It's more complicated than that," is all he says, sitting on the corrugated iron to pull his laptop into his lap and boot it up.

The night is cold. Eduardo bounces on his toes and keeps his eyes on the surrounding city, looking for Narendra's people coming to clear up the mess. "Can't you wait until we get back to the hotel to sort your damn code?"

"They were tinkering with it," Mark says. "I need to make sure they haven't taken anything out that we might have to go back for."

If Mark insists on Eduardo going back into that fucking death trap to grab his graphics card or his disc drive or something, Eduardo is just going to knock him out and take him home. Eduardo paces across the roof, checking the roads and the alleys and the small crowd of Winklevii that are scattering out from the doorway of the warehouse. In the sky a news helicopter is circling for some story, the noise of the propellers making it difficult to think.

"They installed some malware," Mark calls across, like Eduardo cares. "I should be able to get rid of it, it'll just take a minute-"

There's the crack of a gunshot and time runs slow, like treacle. Mark is on the roof in plain sight and the glint in the helicopter isn't a news camera; it's a gun sight. "Down," Eduardo shouts, running cross the roof as three more shots ring out. He catches the back of Mark's jacket, relying on Mark's inner sense of computer-preservation to save the laptop, and keeps running, jumping off the edge of the building and flinging out webs, the only aim to get as far away as possible.

His vision is blurring, he has to shoot three times before his third web hits anything and Mark feels far heavier than he should, even with the laptop pressed between them, shouting something into Eduardo's ear that is too garbled to understand and all the while the helicopter is still droning behind them. It must be really fucking close because Eduardo can hear it roaring in his ears and Mark is shouting and he misses entirely with his webshooters sending them both tumbling into an alley.

The laptop goes flying past his head, smashing into pieces against the wall and Mark's going to be pissed. Except, the helicopter is giving Eduardo a headache so they're probably going to die anyway and they'll both go to whatever circle of Hell is 'betraying a friend' and then Mark will be pissed about the laptop.

Mark's fingers are pressing painfully into Eduardo's side-maybe he's already noticed the smashed computer-and his eyes are wild. He's shouting something, lips moving at a thousand miles a minute which is strange because Eduardo is feeling very slow. He moves his arm, trying to lift it to shoot more webs, but the air is thick and heavy like treacle.

His hand drops onto his side, over Mark's, and he feels a hot, sticky warmth spreading over his costume.

Oh.

"Am-bu-lance," Mark's lips are forming the shapes slowly, tapping his pockets to indicate that he doesn't have a phone. Eduardo has a phone, Eduardo totally has a phone - it's sitting on his table at home.

Eduardo shakes his head through treacle. "No ambulance," he says, even though it's hard to talk because he can't really breathe properly. "Have to-there's a bullet. Get it out."

Mark stares like Eduardo just recommended open heart surgery. Eduardo pushes Mark's hand away so he can find the hole. Not a shotgun, thank God, so just the one bullet. But it's a deep wound; he's going to need tweezers and a scalpel and after that it'll need cleaning. "Taxi," he says, clutching at Mark's hand. "Taxi. My place." His vision is blurring again and it's hard to move but Mark thinks enough to press Eduardo's hand against the bullet hole and Eduardo can put pressure on it, feeling the blood oozing out around his fingers.

He must black out for a while because suddenly he's in a taxi and Mark is shouting something about his address which he manages to garble out-remembering to give the address of the new apartment not the old one which is still full of those giant snails.

One day, one day soon Eduardo is going to get around to tracking down giant-insect-guy and killing him because it's disgusting and the snail trails are impossible to get out of the carpet. All he'd have to do is follow the glistening ooze and he'd find the god awful machine that produces them. It would be far easier than tracking down a clone army all of whom look perfectly normal when seen on their own and he can't exactly put an ad in the paper asking for any information on the Winklevii twins.

Mark's hand is cool on his forehead and Eduardo can't see the laptop anywhere. Maybe it's on the floor. Mark is saying something but his lips are moving too fast for Eduardo to follow and then the taxi is stopping and Eduardo has to somehow make his legs work.

Hah. Legs. Legs legs legs. They wobble like jelly but he puts his weight on Mark's shoulders and Mark's here, Mark's in Eduardo's apartment block with the lift that smells of piss and the graffiti on all the walls. They take the piss elevator up to the fifth floor and in the blurred metal walls Mark looks like he's panicking and Eduardo looks awesome, like fucking Spiderman or something.

"Key?" Mark asks.

Oh. Door. Eduardo stares at it for a moment while his brain catches up with his eyes and then he reaches out and slams the heel of his hand onto the tiny knot of wood up and to the left of the handle.

The lock pops out and the door swings open. Eduardo should totally fix that, one day, except then he would have to carry a key as Spiderman and where would he put it? Pockets, he needs a suit with pockets.

Mark pushes blueprints and files off the sofa and drops Eduardo onto it instead. He's still talking about ambulances and paramedics and drugs. Drugs would be nice right now. Eduardo is totally pro-drugs.

Eduardo blinks, watching his ceiling swim in and out of focus like he's underwater. "I heal fast, just get the bullet out." He forces himself back into a vague alertness. "There's a box in the bathroom-" a hand flailed wildly in the right direction will have to be enough to convey the location. "With scalpels and tweezers."

Mark flees to the bathroom and returns with a wet cloth, a handful of scalpels in varying degrees of hygiene and a pair of tweezers which he drops onto the box beside the sofa, dragging it out so he can crouch between the tools and Eduardo with a look of panic. "I really don't think I can do this."

Eduardo scrabbles on the box for a scalpel, using it to cut the hole in his suit larger so Mark can dab gingerly at the blood around the bullet hole. He looks like he's about to throw up. "It's just like fixing a computer," Eduardo says, pushing the scalpel into Mark's unresisting hand. "Just don't touch any of the important parts and I'll be fine."

Mark's hand is shaking like crazy. "I'm really more of a software guy," he tries, but Eduardo is already closing his gloved hand on Mark's skin, positioning the scalpel in a good place to widen the cut.

He blacks out again. When he next opens his eyes Mark is holding the tweezers over the mess of a wound, his eyes screwed tight shut. "Just do it," Eduardo spits. The tweezers drop towards the wound and he passes out again but this time he opens his eyes to see Mark holding up the tweezers, a bullet clutched tight in the tips.

"Vodka," Eduardo bites out, waving a hand to the box which Mark tugs open, pulling out a bottle of supermarket spirits. Eduardo pours half the contents of the bottle on the wound and pushes up his mask to get the rest in his mouth.

Mark bounces on the carpet, running bloody hands through his hair. "What now? Does it need stitches? Should I call an ambulance?"

Eduardo nestles the remains of the bottle under his arm within easy reach and squeezes the edge of the wound together with one hand. "Now you can go. I will lie here and soon enough I'll be good as new, on the streets ready to save you tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that."

Mark reaches out with the cloth, touching awkwardly around Eduardo's fingers and only succeeding in getting more blood on Eduardo's chest. "I'm not leaving you. What if they come after you?"

Eduardo shakes his head weakly. "No one knows I'm here." He knows this because he only moved yesterday, out of the somewhat-shitty apartment he was in and into this very-shitty apartment. Eduardo is on a very slippery scale in terms of apartments and soon he'll just be in a box somewhere.

"What if they followed the cab?"

Oh. Yeah. Eduardo can't think of a good answer for that and all the reasons why it's a bad idea for him to have Mark Zuckerberg in his apartment are sort of being eclipsed right now by the holy-fucking-shit pain coming from the massive great bullet wound in his side.

"Can I use your laptop?" Mark asks, crossing to the computer on the desk and for a moment Eduardo panics because Mark will see his emails and his documents and-fuck-his sign in name is 'E.Saverin' how much more obvious can he be?

Then he realises his laptop is in its bag in his bedroom where he dropped it after coming back from the depositions yesterday; the computer Mark is inches away from touching is the one that has been sitting there ever since he took it from Dr Jones' lab. It's even still plugged into the tiny mechanical who-even-knows-what that was the last thing Dr Jones would ever build for him.

Eduardo lets himself relax, tugging the mask back over his chin. "Whatever you like."

"Can I-" Mark turns back to him. "You could take that off. I wouldn't... I won't tell anyone. If it would be more comfortable-I don't want to sit here while you suffocate or something."

Eduardo doesn't take his fingers away from the mask, holding it in place. "The mask stays," he says, too tired for reasons or warnings. "Use the computer, do whatever, I'm going to sleep."

Mark crosses over to him and crouches down, touching Eduardo's shoulder awkwardly with three fingers like he's read about human interaction but isn't really sure about the applications. "I'll be here when you wake up."

Eduardo closes his eyes.

Then

Eduardo called Christy at least fifty times on the way to the airport, so much so that the security man had to snatch his phone away from his ear and throw it into a tray so he could walk through the metal detector gate and grab it on the other side. This time he hadn't brought any bags with him-his girlfriend was crazy, and her spider powers were increasing at an incredible rate-Eduardo really had to get back as soon as possible.

He closed his eyes and reminded himself that they had done it. The company had money and offices and was going to be successful. The airline staff insisted that Eduardo turn his phone off during the flight. They didn't quite understand how serious Eduardo was when he said 'my girlfriend is crazy.'

When he landed he had no messages and there was an intern waiting with his name scrawled on a piece of paper. It wasn't Mark, but it was better than a taxi in the rain. Eduardo followed him through the airport, dialling on his phone with one hand.

"Who are you calling?" the intern asked.

Eduardo should probably know the guy's name. God, he really was distant from the company. Maybe he could convince Mark to start up a second office in New York, or talk a few supervillains into moving to California so he can fight them there. "My girlfriend," he said, listening to the dial tone.

The intern nodded as Eduardo tugged the phone away from his ear and hit redial. "Did you have a fight?"

He'd had to use the toilets in the airport to bandage his leg, wrapping it up until he was fairly sure he wouldn't start bleeding onto his pants and he was still limping now. "You have no idea."

The intern drove a mini, keeping religiously to the speed limit all the way through unfamiliar streets to a glass building surrounded by people carrying boxes and computer equipment.

It was pretty amazing. Larger than Eduardo had expected, with walls that were actually windows and open plan desks instead of cubicles. Mark was already set up-of course-typing code with headphones on and too engrossed to look up when Eduardo waved.

Sean looked up though, and actually smiled. He must've been in a really fucking good mood. Eduardo stepped out of sight behind a pillar and made a mental note to look out for bombs.

"Nice, isn't it?" the intern said, ushering Eduardo in through the front door. "Thiel found it, apparently it was a real steal in the current market."

Eduardo glanced at him. "You know about the current market?"

The intern grinned a little ruefully. "Well, no, I'm just here to write code."

"Wardo!" Dustin shouted, pushing back his chair and ignoring Sean's cry of 'you're writing code' to cross the floor and pull Eduardo into a bone crushing hug. "Look what Sean got us!"

The 'so please don't strangle him against a wall again' was left implied.

"It's amazing," Eduardo said, and found he was smiling for real. It felt like an accomplishment, like they had a real company and everything was finally going to start going right. It was potential and a company worth-hell, maybe Sean was right-a billion dollars. He loved it and he loved Peter Thiel and right at this moment he only hated Sean with the force of a thousand suns rather than a million.

That didn't mean he was lowering his guard. Sean was still working some angle here and Eduardo was still going to expose him, he was just going to do it in a way that meant they got to keep the office.

Eduardo's phone rang and he held up a hand to stop Dustin telling him all about the facilities while he answered. "Christy?" he said, without bothering to check the caller ID.

"I'm afraid not," said Dr Jones.

Eduardo's heart plummeted. "What's she done?"

Now

When he wakes up, the room is dark. Mark has turned on the lamp on the desk where he's working, but hasn't bothered with the main lights. It doesn't look like he's moved in the last five hours.

Eduardo stretches, wincing as he cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders back into place. He can feel his feet now, and it's somewhat upsetting that he regards that as a great achievement. He knows better than to expect Mark to notice him waking up, so take a few moments to check his wound. There's a little blood around it, but not too much; that suggests Mark cleaned it the last time he remembered to look around.

Eduardo touches his mask, but it's still in place and Mark is still here so he must have obeyed Eduardo's request for him not to look. "Hey," Eduardo says. Sitting up hurts, but he feels a whole lot less vulnerable.

Mark starts, turning in his seat as though he'd forgotten he wasn't alone. "Hey. Are you okay? Do you need help? Medication? An ambulance?"

Eduardo touches the hole tentatively. It's definitely smaller than it used to be. "I'm fine. Are you working on the site?"

Mark rubs the back of his neck with one hand. "No. I'd need the backups from the laptop that broke to even start recovering everything I lost. I sent a few emails-Dustin, my friend, to let him know what happened."

Eduardo wishes he could take off the mask and rub his itching eyes. "And that took you... five hours?" he asks, squinting at the clock on the wall that was there when he moved in and is precisely forty seven minutes wrong.

"No, I was-" he picks up the device that's been plugged into the laptop for weeks now. "You were working on this, I think? It was lying there and you were pretty close so I thought I'd take a look at the code."

Eduardo goes from groggy to alert in an instant, though standing up turns out to be a mistake because he stumbles and Mark has to catch him before he goes falling to the floor.

"Shit," Mark says. "I didn't realise it was a private project, I just thought I'd take a look and then I got involved. A lot of your code was far more bloated than it needed to be, I cut down on the memory needed pretty easily. Not that-I mean-you're a better coder than I would've thought, for a masked vigilante."

Eduardo falls into Mark's chair, staring at the screen full of letters and symbols that mean as little to him as the code of thefacebook did all that time ago. "It wasn't me," he says, before Mark can keep talking. "My friend-more like this guy I knew. It was the last thing he ever made for me." He taps his hand on the desk, staring at Mark's code. "I never even knew what it was for."

"Oh," Mark leans over him to pull up a second window with a map and a tiny pulsing red dot. "It's a tracking device, designed to be subtle. It incorporates a heat seeking element so it will automatically attach to a human if it can. It's actually really clever, just the code needed some work. I'm nearly finished, but I could still make it so much better if you would let me take it back to my room. I can make a few adjustments with some files on my laptop."

"You know I have no idea what you're talking about," Eduardo says absently, clicking through the map to watch the way the red pulse stays on the corner where his apartment is. "But yes, you can take it."

Mark hesitates for a moment, and then reaches over Eduardo's shoulder to pick it up. He pulls out the cord that connected the tracking device to the computer and slides it into his pocket. "Did he also make your -?" he says, touching his wrists to indicate the webshooters. Eduardo nods. "Must have been a really good friend," Mark says.

Eduardo closes his eyes. "Shouldn't you be rushing back to your laptop to see what you can save from the alleyway?" His side is aching; he's not as healed as he thought he was and all this rushing about isn't helping.

"I saved the most important thing," Mark says softly, which means he has the laptop's hard drive secreted in one of his many pockets. Eduardo pushes himself up, leaning on the desk to stop himself stumbling.

"I need to lie down," he says, looking across to the bedroom door. It seems a stupidly long way away until Mark ducks under his arm to drag him across.

"The bed's through here?" he asks.

Eduardo's suits are in the wardrobe and his laptop is on the floor in a bag filled with paperwork and he can't quite bring himself to care because he's falling onto the bed, smearing blood on his only sheets. He closes his fingers on Mark's wrist, which keeps him close and away from all the things that would give Eduardo away. "You should sleep too," he says, pulling Mark onto the bed beside him. "Long day."

Mark lies down. He is slightly closer than is really necessary but Eduardo is cold and Mark is warm so the arrangement works. "Why do you live here?" Mark asks.

Eduardo closes his eyes. "Parents cut me off, haven't got time for a job. It's amazing how quickly money goes when there's no more coming in."

"Why did they cut you off?"

"Made some bad decisions," Eduardo says. "It's fine, I should be coming into some funds soon. They'll keep me going for a while."

Just a bit longer and then he'll have plenty of capital, and an income from the stock. Some of it will go right away since this apartment could be compromised now and he's quite like the next one to have running water. He pulls Mark's warmth closer, and Mark doesn't protest.

"I hope you can get something off that hard drive," Eduardo murmurs, already half asleep.

"What?"

"That you saved from the alley. The most important thing."

"Oh." Mark's hand is on Eduardo's waist. It isn't exactly unpleasant. "Yeah. I hope it works out."

Then

Eduardo should have read the contracts properly but his mind was so full of 'eight school buses, one more every hour, says they're rigged to explode' that he could barely even concentrate on what the lawyers were telling him. He vaguely caught some details about things he'd covered them in class.

"How many shares?" he asked, already scrawling his name on one of the documents.

The number was crazy-high and the percentage wasn't much better. "34.4%, now why the increase from the original 30%?"

Eduardo signed his name on the second sheet of paper. "You need to dilute the shares to allow for new investors."

The man smiled a self-satisfied smile and if Eduardo was in costume he wouldn't hesitate before breaking the guy's nose. Lawyers, supervillains, they were all the same. "I love working with business majors."

"Economics," Eduardo corrected, signing the third piece of paper.

"Here, and here," the man said, pointing to other points on the paperwork. "Mark's already diluted his shares to 51%."

Eduardo looked up, pen still in his hand but no longer writing anything. "Mark needs to be protected," he said, and for a moment the guy just looked at him as though he were crazy. Eduardo had to tell someone though and just because all lawyers looked evil, that didn't mean they were. "He doesn't care about money but he cares about the company and he has to keep it. He needs to be protected."

Over Eduardo's shoulder, Sean was drinking champagne straight from the bottle. Eduardo was going to take him down. The very moment he made a mistake Eduardo was going to beat him to within an inch of his life and have him locked up for the rest of forever. He should stay, stay to work out Sean's plan and foil it, stay to protect Mark because Mark needed protecting and if he lost Facebook now it would break him.

But he couldn't.

Eight school buses. Rigged to blow.

He had to go.

Eduardo scrawled his name on the last dotted line and turned to run back to the airport.

Mark was standing in the doorway. "You signed them?" he asked, as though Eduardo might not have done.

Eduardo grinned at him, letting the reality of what he had just done sinking in. They had sponsorship. Sponsorship and an office and Eduardo also had the name of the guy who owns 7% of the company to investigate the moment he got back to New York, just in case Sean was using Peter Thiel as a henchmen in his evil plans. "I have to get back to New York, could you find that intern for me?"

Mark's eyes dropped to the floor, his hands resting in the pocket of his hoodie. "I can drive you."

Sean watched them leave from across the room, his eyes narrowed. Thankfully he didn't comment; Dustin might pop if Eduardo started strangling Sean again. Mark still drove the same car he always had, the one that needed you to turn the key three times before it would start and sounded as though it could break down at any moment.

"It's not too late," Mark said, pulling out into the traffic. "For you to stay in California, I mean."

Eduardo looked out at the lights outside the window. There was probably crime in California, there was definitely at least one supervillain but it was nothing like the same scale.

Eight school buses.

"I have to get back. I have some important business to take care of."

"Oh." Mark stared down at the steering wheel and Eduardo was too distracted worrying about bomb timers and where Christy might be to bother trying to read the expression on his friend's face.

"You've got to come back," Mark said, as though he was following a script. "Peter wants to throw us a party for a million members. You have to come back for it."

Eduardo pressed his forehead to the glass. "A million members. Remember the algorithm on the window at Kirkland?"

Mark pulled up outside the airport and didn't look at him. "Yeah."

"I'll be there," Eduardo promised. He climbed out of the car and watched Mark drive away without a word.

It was raining.

Now

Eduardo wakes up. His side is sore, his mouth tastes of feet and he's sharing a bed with a sleeping Mark Zuckerberg.

He pushes the mask up with one hand, taking in deep breaths of clean air. He runs his fingers down his side to find that his wound has mostly scabbed over. It should heal soon if he doesn't do anything too strenuous.

The third thing is more of a problem. One of Mark's arms is resting on Eduardo's side and Eduardo's fingers are gripped tight on Mark's wrist. He can vaguely remember there being some reason for this, though what it actually was escapes him. "Mark? Hey, Mark?" He remembers-a moment too late-to disguise his voice, but Mark isn't waking up anyway and slowly he eases back, loosening his grip and slipping out from under Mark's arm.

Mark doesn't stir. Eduardo picks up his laptop bag, his wallet, anything that could have his name on and sticks them in the safe at the top of the wardrobe. Sure, Mark could conceivably look through Eduardo's suits and recognise the ones he'd worn for the depositions but Eduardo highly doubts Mark was ever focused enough to notice his clothing.

In the kitchen he starts a pot of coffee brewing and flicks on the police scanner. There's a drugs bust downtown, but they have enough cops on it and he can't move too fast or his side will split open again. The police can have that one.

He takes a shower, letting the nearly-hot water wash away the grime from the alley and the blood. There's blood on his hands, his hair, trickling down to his legs and he watches the water running down the plughole until it flows clean.

The bloody and cut up costume goes in the bin, though he salvages the gloves, boots and mask, dropping them on the side. The last thing Eduardo wants to do is put a dirty suit back on so he pulls out jeans and an old hoodie, pulling the mask on and the hood up over it before stepping out into the main room.

He pours himself a mug of coffee, drinks it, then pours himself another, mask rolled up to just below his eyes.

"Spiderman?"

Eduardo reaches up to tug his mask back down before turning to see Mark standing in the doorway in his rumpled T-shirt and shorts. "You should go," he says. "I have things to do, people who are not you to save." He holds a second mug out and Mark takes it.

"You should be resting."

Resting would be amazing. Eduardo dreams of resting. "Crime doesn't sleep, Mark. And now they know where I live so I need to find a new apartment, pay the last month's rent on this place. Not all superheroes are billionaires, you know."

Mark inhales his coffee and passes the mug back to Eduardo for a refill. "The depositions are over," he says, slowly. "Well, one is and the other is finishing today when I pay up."

"You're paying the Winklevii?" Eduardo says, before he can think it through.

Mark looks a tiny bit pleased. "You watched that one too? Yeah, I'm paying them. I have the money, it'll get them off my back." He stares at is empty mug until Eduardo refills it again. "With them both over, there's no reason for me to stay in New York."

Eduardo hadn't thought that far ahead; in his mind Mark had become this constant that he was going to have to keep saving forever. "Oh," he says.

Mark taps his fingers on the mug. "I'm going back to California at the end of the week."

Eduardo forces his mind to catch up before he can say 'oh' again. "I guess I'll have to go back to saving the people who aren't billionaires. There goes my exciting brush with the high life."

"Whoever's after me," Mark says. "We know they can control robots, giant slugs, trolls and clone armies."

Eduardo sighs. "I said, I know who's after you and they only control the clones. They've been subcontracting."

"What if they follow me to California?"

Oh. Eduardo pushes his mask up a little so he can take a long drink of coffee. "They won't follow you. They've known where you live for years but they wanted to take me out first so I can't go sweeping in to rescue you. Also they're pissed that I got all these powers without any effort."

"And me?"

"They just really, really hate you."

Mark looks down at his mug. "So they'll come after you again? After I'm gone? What if they get you?"

"Well, then they'll probably come to California. You should hire a bodyguard."

"What if we take them out before I leave?"

If Eduardo didn't have super-sticky palms he would have dropped the mug. "There is no we, Mark. There is you and your company; there is me and my life. I saved you because it's what I do and that's the end of it. You should leave."

Mark hesitates for a moment then reaches out to put the mug back on the side. "Maybe I'll see you again before I go?"

"I hope not."

Then

Christy answered her phone for the first time when Eduardo stepped out of the airport. He wondered if she was watching, or if she had just hired someone else to keep an eye on him. "Chris?"

"Boom," she said and he could hear the explosion echoing down the line.

"Christy, please, you are better than this. Just tell me where you are and we can talk. You have the webshooters, you have the upper hand just let me help-"

"Boom."

He shuddered at the second explosion.

"Brooklyn Bridge. Come alone." She hung up.

Eduardo ran for the taxis, pushing aside a whole queue of people to leap in the back of one ready to pull away. "Brooklyn Bridge, drive like your fucking life depends on it."

There must've been a seriously scary expression on his face, because the driver didn't so much as hesitate. He just pulled out immediately and zipped through the lanes like traffic was something that happened to other people.

"I'll pay you eight hundred bucks and won't kill you while you sleep if you don't mention this to anyone," Eduardo said, tugging out the mask and slipping it over his head, leaving his suit on the back seat of the cab. Sometimes he could use his shitty publicity to advantage. "Wait," he said suddenly. "There's somewhere I need to go first."

Part 3