fic: tighten up (on your reigns) 1/?
Title: tighten up (on your reigns)
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Word Count: 2,083
Summary: "Eduardo has a KID of all things, and NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL HIM"
Author's Note: There's a decided lack of Eduardo here, but that'll change in the next part. Title from "Tighten Up" by The Black Keys.
Contrary to popular belief, Mark does not keep tabs on Eduardo Saverin. He doesn’t use his (admittedly awe-inspiring) hacking skills to ferret out his personal information, doesn’t check up on his day-to-day affairs, doesn’t know the who’s, where’s, or why’s. He doesn’t, and he refuses to start. Mark Zuckerberg is one stoic motherfucker. (And if the real reason he won’t do it is because he can’t bear to see Wardo living a happy life without him, well, that’s his business, thank-you-very-much.)
So, motives aside, the point remains that Mark knows nothing about the comings and goings of one Eduardo Saverin. Which is why it’s such a surprise -why Mark is so abso-fucking-lutely flabbergasted- when a teenage girl in impeccable business attire marches into his office (while he’s wired-in no less, what the fuck is he paying security for?) and sticks out her hand to him, confidently introducing herself as “Hunter Saverin.”
What. The. Fuck.
*
Mark doesn’t even deign to acknowledge the girl until he’s finished and saved the next few lines of code, texted both Dustin and Chris (“COME HERE NOW”) and thrown back half a bottle of water (he wants something stronger, but his secretary, Eileen, confiscated his Red Bull supply hours ago, under Chris’ strict orders.) Then he studies the girl silently as he waits for the other two to show: dark hair and eyes, like Wardo, but none of the ridiculously tanned skin or slender grace that exemplify his (ex) best friend (and, Mark knows, the rest of the Saverin clan.) She’s too young to be one of Eduardo’s sisters, but the only other explanations Mark can come up with to account for the youth and lack of resemblance are that she’s lying or-
“I can see you trying to figure it out. Eduardo is my dad. I’m adopted.” She’s lost some of her earlier confidence, but still manages to give Mark a defiant look.
Right, so she’s clearly lying. Mark knows he can’t have security toss out a young girl (the media would have a field day and Chris would glare at him threaten to quit and Mark would have to give him 99% of Facebook’s shares to get him to stay) so he decides to let Chris handle it and turns back to his laptop, ignoring this strange, delusional girl once more.
It’s at this moment that Dustin kicks open the door to his office and, upon seeing the girl, yells out “Baby Sav, whuddup whuddup whuddup?!” This is followed by a complicated-looking handshake involving snapping and fist-bumping and what the actual fuck? Chris arrives soon after, and while his greeting isn’t obnoxious and Dustin-y, it is warm and familiar.
*
Now, Mark may occasionally pay a little less attention other humans than to his computer, but he isn’t dumb; he knows that Chris and Dustin keep in touch with Eduardo, and he’s fine with that. What he doesn’t know is how in the hell they found time to get quite so close with Eduardo’s… apparently adopted progeny. Or, more importantly, why they didn’t, you know, bother mentioning it to him. He’s maybe also wondering why Eduardo adopted the kid in the first place. Mark can’t even remember to brush his teeth some days; how the fuck can Eduardo manage to raise a goddamn-
“Um… Mark?”
He snaps “What!?” at the speaker (a dismayed-looking Dustin,) then immediately feels sort of bad -only sort of, because he also feels slightly justified. Eduardo has a KID of all things, and NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL HIM, and now she’s standing in his office hugging his best friends, and he thinks he’s allowed a little rudeness, okay?
All three of them look at him in concern as he stares back unapologetically. Then Chris quietly asks the girl (Hunter, his mind supplies unhelpfully) to go sit with Eileen for a minute and she
does, closing the door gently on the way out.
*
Dustin and Chris are giving him twin piteous looks that he really doesn’t feel like facing right now, but he wants answers, so he shifts his gaze from the door to his friends and asks (as blankly as he can) “Why didn’t you tell me?”
It’s Chris who answers him: “We tried to tell you, Mark, but you’ve been too busy working 19-hour days and being a general asshole to listen, especially when the conversation in question involves Eduardo. We figured it was best to just not talk about it.” Dustin nods enthusiastically in agreement.
Perhaps Mark hadn’t been quite as stoic as he originally thought.
“Well, what the hell is she doing here, alone?” The “Without Eduardo” is unspoken, but clearly audible to everyone in the room.
“You’re going to have to ask her that; this is just as much of a surprise for us as it is for you.” Chris means well, but they all know that’s not true; at least he and Dustin knew she existed.
“Yeah, I’m going to guess that Wardo is pretty surprised too.” This is from Dustin.
“Fuck” is quickly becoming Mark’s most over-used word.
*
Later on, after Hunter has come in and explained herself, they call Eduardo. From what he can piece together from Dustin’s side of the conversation, Mark figures he’s more concerned than pissed. Typical Wardo. It has been decided that Hunter will stay in Palo Alto with them until next week, while Eduardo finishes some meetings, and that he will fly out next weekend to
pick her up. After this is arranged, Dustin and Chris take Hunter out for dinner. Mark sits in his
office and tries to take everything in. Hunter is actually pretty intelligent; she had to go through a lot to get to Palo Alto. It turns out that she’s on vacation from her New York school, (not Singapore, and that’s another thing Mark didn’t know about Eduardo,) ostensibly spending a month with her grandparents in Miami. To pay for her plane ticket she’d stolen her avô’s credit card, and that bit of slyness is probably what Mark is most impressed by. The Ricardo of his memories (always so hard on Eduardo) would not have allowed such a deed to pass unpunished, but according to Hunter (who had the presence of mind to call her grandparents from the plane) he was more proud of her audacity and pluck than angry with her. That combined with the fact that she had managed to escape the Saverin’s Miami estate in the dead of night and get all the way to California left Mark kind of awed. After all, when he was sixteen, the most he had ever done was jerk off, stare at his laptop, and offend other humans (close enough to his life now, he supposes, that he doesn’t dwell on it for too long.)
Once they had taken care of the “how,” they (really just Chris and Dustin; Mark merely sat there staring at everyone expressionlessly, attempting to stay calm) tried to get to the bottom of why: why was Hunter so desperate to get to Palo Alto in the first place? She insisted that it was simply to visit her “favorite uncles” but Mark can’t bring himself to fully believe her; it just doesn’t fit. The two visitees in question seemed to accept it readily enough, though, so Mark kept quiet and let it go. It isn’t his problem anyway.
*
Now, in the cool silence of his office, Mark lets himself do something he hasn’t since the lawsuit: think about Eduardo. The most immediate question is, of course, what made him decide to adopt a teenager and become a single father (Mark resolutely ignores the small rush of relief he feels when Chris elucidates the “single” part) but Mark wonders about other things too: Has Eduardo mentioned him at all to his daughter? Does Eduardo hate him still? Will Mark see Eduardo when he comes to pick up Hunter; if so, will Eduardo want to talk to him? These thoughts weigh so heavily on Mark’s mind that he barely notices the trio entering his office until they’re practically under his nose. Mark can tell right away that something is up; Chris is smiling his amused smile, and Dustin is pulling a face quite familiar to Mark from dozens of pranks back at Harvard: perfectly staid and zombie-like, because he’s trying hard not to allow the mirth to show. Hunter, smiling softly, is the only one who doesn’t look suspicious to him, but this is probably due more to their unfamiliarity than anything else. Mark has no proof to back anything up, though, so he chalks up his wariness to paranoia and their apparent happiness to the impromptu reunion.
That is, until Dustin drops a bomb on him (and loses all of his carefully-composed decorum in the process.)
“Marky, Baby Sav here is going to kick it with you.” This earns him an elbow from Chris and a giggle from Hunter. “What Dustin means,” begins Chris, “is that it would probably be best if Hunter stayed at your house. After all, you’re the only one who lives alone, and it’s not like you don’t have the room.”
And all of a sudden Mark knows what this is about; it’s quite obvious really, and he doesn’t know why he didn’t realize it earlier. Mark can’t really fathom why, but Hunter isn’t in California for his friends; she’s there for him. Chris and Dustin must approve of her motives (Chris is especially vested in Mark’s Own Good) but that certainly does not mean anything good
for him.
Despite his misgivings, though, Mark agrees to take her in. He’s not quite sure why.
*
The ride to his house is silent but thankfully short. Once they arrive, Mark brings her luggage
to one of his guest rooms, making sure to point out all of the important spots (kitchen, living
room, bathrooms) before escaping to his own room on the other side of the house. He falls asleep quickly, an unusual occurrence that he feels strangely grateful for.
*
The next morning, after Mark has woken up and dragged himself out of bed to procure some coffee, he is momentarily shocked. It takes him half a minute to figure out why there’s a girl sitting at his kitchen table, staring at the screen of a laptop. It takes him a full minute after that to realize why she looks so strange to him; instead of the Eduardo-esque pencil skirt from yesterday (not that, to Mark’s knowledge, Wardo ever wore women’s clothes, and wow, that is really not where Mark’s mind needs to be this early in the morning) she has on jeans, oversized, worn-looking flannel, and -to Mark’s infinite amazement- a pair of the same sandals (“fuck-you flip flops” as Eduardo called them so derisively) that he wears on an almost constant basis. She could almost pass for his kid instead of Wardo’s (another road Mark emphatically does not need to be going down.) Hunter looks up and catches him staring. She smiles.
“Yeah, I’m not usually dressed like I was yesterday, but I figured it would make a good impression.”
Mark stares at her blankly. She stares back for a few seconds, then goes back to whatever she was doing on the computer. “Hmm,” Mark says to himself, because most people -Hunter’s father included- would have been highly offended by his response (or lack thereof.) He found it interesting that she appeared unfazed. His friends had probably warned her about what Dustin called his “prickly porcupine disposition” that he apparently used to “cover up his squishy marshmallow unicorn insides” (no, Mark does not know what the hell is wrong with Dustin, nor does he really want to.)
He decides to give a little, so he asks her if she’s eaten anything. The look this earns him is
reminiscent of Eduardo at his most exasperated, and he remembers that he doesn’t exactly own
much in the way of food. “Okay, yeah, we can pick something up on the way to the office.”
This time her look is a little surprised, and a lot happy, which is kind of annoying. Mark isn’t an ogre; he’s not going to let her starve, or trap her alone in his house all day. That would be awful.
(And if Mark is planning on sticking her with Dustin to kill two birds with one stone -keeping Hunter entertained and Dustin out of his hair- well, he never said his intentions were faultless.)
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG-13 (for language)
Word Count: 2,083
Summary: "Eduardo has a KID of all things, and NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL HIM"
Author's Note: There's a decided lack of Eduardo here, but that'll change in the next part. Title from "Tighten Up" by The Black Keys.
Contrary to popular belief, Mark does not keep tabs on Eduardo Saverin. He doesn’t use his (admittedly awe-inspiring) hacking skills to ferret out his personal information, doesn’t check up on his day-to-day affairs, doesn’t know the who’s, where’s, or why’s. He doesn’t, and he refuses to start. Mark Zuckerberg is one stoic motherfucker. (And if the real reason he won’t do it is because he can’t bear to see Wardo living a happy life without him, well, that’s his business, thank-you-very-much.)
So, motives aside, the point remains that Mark knows nothing about the comings and goings of one Eduardo Saverin. Which is why it’s such a surprise -why Mark is so abso-fucking-lutely flabbergasted- when a teenage girl in impeccable business attire marches into his office (while he’s wired-in no less, what the fuck is he paying security for?) and sticks out her hand to him, confidently introducing herself as “Hunter Saverin.”
What. The. Fuck.
*
Mark doesn’t even deign to acknowledge the girl until he’s finished and saved the next few lines of code, texted both Dustin and Chris (“COME HERE NOW”) and thrown back half a bottle of water (he wants something stronger, but his secretary, Eileen, confiscated his Red Bull supply hours ago, under Chris’ strict orders.) Then he studies the girl silently as he waits for the other two to show: dark hair and eyes, like Wardo, but none of the ridiculously tanned skin or slender grace that exemplify his (ex) best friend (and, Mark knows, the rest of the Saverin clan.) She’s too young to be one of Eduardo’s sisters, but the only other explanations Mark can come up with to account for the youth and lack of resemblance are that she’s lying or-
“I can see you trying to figure it out. Eduardo is my dad. I’m adopted.” She’s lost some of her earlier confidence, but still manages to give Mark a defiant look.
Right, so she’s clearly lying. Mark knows he can’t have security toss out a young girl (the media would have a field day and Chris would glare at him threaten to quit and Mark would have to give him 99% of Facebook’s shares to get him to stay) so he decides to let Chris handle it and turns back to his laptop, ignoring this strange, delusional girl once more.
It’s at this moment that Dustin kicks open the door to his office and, upon seeing the girl, yells out “Baby Sav, whuddup whuddup whuddup?!” This is followed by a complicated-looking handshake involving snapping and fist-bumping and what the actual fuck? Chris arrives soon after, and while his greeting isn’t obnoxious and Dustin-y, it is warm and familiar.
*
Now, Mark may occasionally pay a little less attention other humans than to his computer, but he isn’t dumb; he knows that Chris and Dustin keep in touch with Eduardo, and he’s fine with that. What he doesn’t know is how in the hell they found time to get quite so close with Eduardo’s… apparently adopted progeny. Or, more importantly, why they didn’t, you know, bother mentioning it to him. He’s maybe also wondering why Eduardo adopted the kid in the first place. Mark can’t even remember to brush his teeth some days; how the fuck can Eduardo manage to raise a goddamn-
“Um… Mark?”
He snaps “What!?” at the speaker (a dismayed-looking Dustin,) then immediately feels sort of bad -only sort of, because he also feels slightly justified. Eduardo has a KID of all things, and NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL HIM, and now she’s standing in his office hugging his best friends, and he thinks he’s allowed a little rudeness, okay?
All three of them look at him in concern as he stares back unapologetically. Then Chris quietly asks the girl (Hunter, his mind supplies unhelpfully) to go sit with Eileen for a minute and she
does, closing the door gently on the way out.
*
Dustin and Chris are giving him twin piteous looks that he really doesn’t feel like facing right now, but he wants answers, so he shifts his gaze from the door to his friends and asks (as blankly as he can) “Why didn’t you tell me?”
It’s Chris who answers him: “We tried to tell you, Mark, but you’ve been too busy working 19-hour days and being a general asshole to listen, especially when the conversation in question involves Eduardo. We figured it was best to just not talk about it.” Dustin nods enthusiastically in agreement.
Perhaps Mark hadn’t been quite as stoic as he originally thought.
“Well, what the hell is she doing here, alone?” The “Without Eduardo” is unspoken, but clearly audible to everyone in the room.
“You’re going to have to ask her that; this is just as much of a surprise for us as it is for you.” Chris means well, but they all know that’s not true; at least he and Dustin knew she existed.
“Yeah, I’m going to guess that Wardo is pretty surprised too.” This is from Dustin.
“Fuck” is quickly becoming Mark’s most over-used word.
*
Later on, after Hunter has come in and explained herself, they call Eduardo. From what he can piece together from Dustin’s side of the conversation, Mark figures he’s more concerned than pissed. Typical Wardo. It has been decided that Hunter will stay in Palo Alto with them until next week, while Eduardo finishes some meetings, and that he will fly out next weekend to
pick her up. After this is arranged, Dustin and Chris take Hunter out for dinner. Mark sits in his
office and tries to take everything in. Hunter is actually pretty intelligent; she had to go through a lot to get to Palo Alto. It turns out that she’s on vacation from her New York school, (not Singapore, and that’s another thing Mark didn’t know about Eduardo,) ostensibly spending a month with her grandparents in Miami. To pay for her plane ticket she’d stolen her avô’s credit card, and that bit of slyness is probably what Mark is most impressed by. The Ricardo of his memories (always so hard on Eduardo) would not have allowed such a deed to pass unpunished, but according to Hunter (who had the presence of mind to call her grandparents from the plane) he was more proud of her audacity and pluck than angry with her. That combined with the fact that she had managed to escape the Saverin’s Miami estate in the dead of night and get all the way to California left Mark kind of awed. After all, when he was sixteen, the most he had ever done was jerk off, stare at his laptop, and offend other humans (close enough to his life now, he supposes, that he doesn’t dwell on it for too long.)
Once they had taken care of the “how,” they (really just Chris and Dustin; Mark merely sat there staring at everyone expressionlessly, attempting to stay calm) tried to get to the bottom of why: why was Hunter so desperate to get to Palo Alto in the first place? She insisted that it was simply to visit her “favorite uncles” but Mark can’t bring himself to fully believe her; it just doesn’t fit. The two visitees in question seemed to accept it readily enough, though, so Mark kept quiet and let it go. It isn’t his problem anyway.
*
Now, in the cool silence of his office, Mark lets himself do something he hasn’t since the lawsuit: think about Eduardo. The most immediate question is, of course, what made him decide to adopt a teenager and become a single father (Mark resolutely ignores the small rush of relief he feels when Chris elucidates the “single” part) but Mark wonders about other things too: Has Eduardo mentioned him at all to his daughter? Does Eduardo hate him still? Will Mark see Eduardo when he comes to pick up Hunter; if so, will Eduardo want to talk to him? These thoughts weigh so heavily on Mark’s mind that he barely notices the trio entering his office until they’re practically under his nose. Mark can tell right away that something is up; Chris is smiling his amused smile, and Dustin is pulling a face quite familiar to Mark from dozens of pranks back at Harvard: perfectly staid and zombie-like, because he’s trying hard not to allow the mirth to show. Hunter, smiling softly, is the only one who doesn’t look suspicious to him, but this is probably due more to their unfamiliarity than anything else. Mark has no proof to back anything up, though, so he chalks up his wariness to paranoia and their apparent happiness to the impromptu reunion.
That is, until Dustin drops a bomb on him (and loses all of his carefully-composed decorum in the process.)
“Marky, Baby Sav here is going to kick it with you.” This earns him an elbow from Chris and a giggle from Hunter. “What Dustin means,” begins Chris, “is that it would probably be best if Hunter stayed at your house. After all, you’re the only one who lives alone, and it’s not like you don’t have the room.”
And all of a sudden Mark knows what this is about; it’s quite obvious really, and he doesn’t know why he didn’t realize it earlier. Mark can’t really fathom why, but Hunter isn’t in California for his friends; she’s there for him. Chris and Dustin must approve of her motives (Chris is especially vested in Mark’s Own Good) but that certainly does not mean anything good
for him.
Despite his misgivings, though, Mark agrees to take her in. He’s not quite sure why.
*
The ride to his house is silent but thankfully short. Once they arrive, Mark brings her luggage
to one of his guest rooms, making sure to point out all of the important spots (kitchen, living
room, bathrooms) before escaping to his own room on the other side of the house. He falls asleep quickly, an unusual occurrence that he feels strangely grateful for.
*
The next morning, after Mark has woken up and dragged himself out of bed to procure some coffee, he is momentarily shocked. It takes him half a minute to figure out why there’s a girl sitting at his kitchen table, staring at the screen of a laptop. It takes him a full minute after that to realize why she looks so strange to him; instead of the Eduardo-esque pencil skirt from yesterday (not that, to Mark’s knowledge, Wardo ever wore women’s clothes, and wow, that is really not where Mark’s mind needs to be this early in the morning) she has on jeans, oversized, worn-looking flannel, and -to Mark’s infinite amazement- a pair of the same sandals (“fuck-you flip flops” as Eduardo called them so derisively) that he wears on an almost constant basis. She could almost pass for his kid instead of Wardo’s (another road Mark emphatically does not need to be going down.) Hunter looks up and catches him staring. She smiles.
“Yeah, I’m not usually dressed like I was yesterday, but I figured it would make a good impression.”
Mark stares at her blankly. She stares back for a few seconds, then goes back to whatever she was doing on the computer. “Hmm,” Mark says to himself, because most people -Hunter’s father included- would have been highly offended by his response (or lack thereof.) He found it interesting that she appeared unfazed. His friends had probably warned her about what Dustin called his “prickly porcupine disposition” that he apparently used to “cover up his squishy marshmallow unicorn insides” (no, Mark does not know what the hell is wrong with Dustin, nor does he really want to.)
He decides to give a little, so he asks her if she’s eaten anything. The look this earns him is
reminiscent of Eduardo at his most exasperated, and he remembers that he doesn’t exactly own
much in the way of food. “Okay, yeah, we can pick something up on the way to the office.”
This time her look is a little surprised, and a lot happy, which is kind of annoying. Mark isn’t an ogre; he’s not going to let her starve, or trap her alone in his house all day. That would be awful.
(And if Mark is planning on sticking her with Dustin to kill two birds with one stone -keeping Hunter entertained and Dustin out of his hair- well, he never said his intentions were faultless.)