This is a Story of Loaded Glances, part 1
Title: This is a Story of Loaded Glances
Fandom and Pairing: The Social Network Mark/Eduardo
Rating: R-ish for now. Not that explicit, but still a tad NSFW.
Word Count: This is a WiP! This chapter has 3,795 words.
Warnings: Very light angst (for now. It'll get worse), emotionally abusive relationships and closeted love. oh the tragedy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I am not Aaron Sorkin, I did not create Mark and Eduardo as they are portrayed in the Social Network. These are DEFINITELY not the real cofounders of facebook portrayed here. Nothing is real!
Summary: Mark and Eduardo were in a relationship through their freshman year, until they broke it off for reasons. Mark didn’t screw Eduardo over because he was jealous of the final club. He didn’t want it to go that far, with the dilutions, and the yelling, and the deposition. He just wanted Eduardo back. He wanted Eduardo to come out and come live with him. He made those decisions so that Eduardo would either come out to live with him, where they could grow old together in Palo Alto, rich and ground breaking and together. But Eduardo couldn’t, and the dilutions were Mark’s last ditch, stupid attempt to get Eduardo back. Eduardo wouldn’t, and Mark had to lie, because even though Wardo hurt him, even though living without Wardo was like living without oxygen, Mark couldn’t tell the truth, couldn’t hurt him that badly.
Notes: I've been hovering in the fandom since the movie came out, but have never written fic before, until I was watching the Social Network for the 30th time three weeks ago. It isn't beta'd, although I'd love a beta! Comment if you want to be one! Title from the Chris Pureka song, "Burning Bridges".
This is a story of loaded glances
Mark first meets Eduardo in the Starbucks on Harvard Yard, his freshman year. It’s Wednesday, and all the tables, and cushions, and poufs are full, except his, which has one chair occupied by his backpack. Mark is sort of wired in, fixing the code on the music sharing app, a big cup of coffee (three sugars, no cream) near his left elbow. It’s really full, and kind of loud, but Mark was there because Chris had someone over, Dustin was flirting poorly with some girl in his Abstract Algebra class, and Mark was hoping that he might make friends with someone he didn’t live with. Just in case Chris and Dustin are likewise engaged for the next four years.
He’s about to give it up for a bad time, and shut down his computer, when someone tall in a dark suit (and why is he wearing a suit? It’s August for God’s sake!) asks, “Is this seat taken? Only, everywhere else is full, and no one has sat down for 10 minutes, which is a little long for someone in the bathroom.” Mark is startled by how incredibly good looking this boy is. He’s not usually swayed by looks, but Mark might have to make an exception for this one. He realizes he’s staring, shakes his head, and stutters out “ye-yeah, go on,” moving his backpack to the floor, where it lands with a thunk. The boy slides coolly into the other chair, and sets his coffee down gently in front of him.
“I’m Eduardo,” he says, extending his hand to Mark.
“Mark.”
Eduardo nods, and settles into his reading. The Concept of Frontogenesis and its Application to Winter Weather Forecasting, whatever that meant.
“What are you reading?” Mark asked, curious what Frontogenesis meant, and why this gorgeous boy was reading it.
“Oh,” Eduardo said, embarrassed, “it’s about how temperature and wind react to strengthen atmospheric fronts, and then how you can use algorithms to predict how the weather is going to change from year to year.” Clearly, Mark has asked about something Eduardo is truly passionate about, and lets him jabber for five minutes about wind pressure, and cold fronts, and the directionality of the earth, and mass continuity towards divergence, or something like that… Truth be told, Mark stops fully listening, but he can tell Eduardo actually cares about this stuff. Which is awesome. It’s so rare, for Mark to find someone who genuinely cares about these kinds of obscure details. He realizes this might be the thing Eduardo is most passionate about. A sudden traitorous thought rushes in: I want him to think about me like that. He tunes back in to hear “so hopefully I can use this in my investing internship this summer.” Eduardo looks up at Mark, expectantly, so Mark tells Eduardo about his app, about coding, and 8-bit and paired disparity code, and the time he turned down Microsoft. All he wants, at this moment, here, in the Starbucks lounge, is to impress this impossibly beautiful boy with floppy brown hair.
Eduardo smiles at him, huge, and like Mark is the only one there. “You know I didn’t understand a word you just said, right?”
Mark blushes, and his face falls. “Right,” he says. Eduardo shakes his head, and reaches out an arm. “No, that’s- that’s not what I meant. I mean, it was, but- Don’t take it personally. Look, I gotta run,” he says, looking at his watch, “but there’s this AEPi party this weekend, Caribbean Night, and maybe you could come? Here’s my number. Text me.” He said, writing it on a clean napkin.
***
And that’s how Mark and Eduardo end up drunk on a Friday night, sprawled across the couch in Kirkland, watching Firefly.
“This is sooo good, Mark. Mark, it’s just so great, with the characters, and ‘my pretty floral bonnet’ and the weird girl, with the boots. Lake, Pond, River. River. S’just so great. Thank you.” Eduardo was slurring, his one arm squashed between his body and the back of the couch, one leg on the floor, and one tucked under Mark, in a similar state of sprawl. Mark pulled himself up out of the couch. “Hey man, want another beer?”
Eduardo nodded, and accepted the cold bottle gratefully from Mark’s hand, their fingers brushing. Mark didn’t let go, and their eyes caught. They held that contact for just a pulse too long, and Eduardo shook his head to break the contact. “Thanks man.”
He sat up, putting both feet on the floor, his elbows resting on his knees. “Want to watch another?” he asked.
“No, I’m beat. Let’s just be,” says Mark, who has never once in his life admitted to wanting to “just be.” Eduardo nods. “Why are you a business major? You love weather, and your algorithms are beautiful. Why aren’t you in Math, or Physics?”
Eduardo blushes, and looks at his knees, before looking at Mark with this defiant look, like he’s said this ten thousand times in his head, but never out loud. “I’m in business for my father. He wants me to take over the family company. He says that a business degree is the best thing for actually owning one. Physics doesn’t teach actual skills, he says.” Eduardo takes a deep breath, a swig of beer, and locks eyes with Mark. “I am not bad at business, Mark. I like the classes I take, and the professors, and it keeps my father off my back.” He takes another swig, and Mark can’t help but watch his throat as he swallows it down. Mark nodded, sitting down next to him. The couch was small, and their arms brushed. Eduardo looked up from his nearly empty bottle to Mark’s eyes.
Fuck it, he thought, and leaned over to press his lips against Eduardo’s. Eduardo pressed in, tilting his head to the side, kissing Mark back. He put his beer down, and tangled both hands into Mark’s curls. Eduardo’s lips opened, and Mark tickled his lips with his tongue, and Eduardo responded.
Mark’s hands moved to Eduardo’s throat, unbuttoning his shirt, his fingers brushing Eduardo’s sharp collarbone, touching his chest, the surprising smoothness of his chest, the toned bronze of his well muscled abs. Mark pushed the shirt off Eduardo’s shoulder’s, as Eduardo began to lift the edge of Mark’s shirt. They stopped kissing, just for a moment to tug off their shirts, before Eduardo began to pull off his belt, and unzip his trousers. Mark watched, as Eduardo’s lean hips were exposed, Eduardo’s pants pooled around his feet. He stared at Eduardo’s hard on as it pressed against his black cotton briefs.
“Like what you see, Zuckerberg?” asks Eduardo, teasingly. Mark breathes out, heavily, and leans in to kiss Eduardo’s neck. “Yes,” he says, as he pulls Eduardo down.
***
Mark wakes up with Eduardo curled up against his chest, one leg and his left arm sprawled across Mark’s body. There’s tiny patch of purply-red on Eduardo’s shoulder. Mark touches it with his free hand, and wonders at it. He put that there.
“Mmmmm” Eduardo hums into Mark’s armpit. Mark wonders if he feels as shaken out as he does, loose, and sweetly slow, and like his skin is glowing. Like, actually glowing. There is no where they are not touching.
“So,” Mark begins, because Mark does not know how to do this thing, this, I just met an awesomely attractive individual, got drunk, and then had hot mansex with that supremely hot individual, thing. Doesn’t know how to ask about it. “That was, I mean, that was…” he pauses, hoping Eduardo will supply the necessary adjective for the fantastic explosive jolly goodness of it all.
“Great,” Eduardo supplies, catching Mark’s eyes and smiling. He disentangles himself from Mark, and sits up, pulling his knees to his chest and stretching his arms, so that the sheet falls down, and the fantastic length of his torso is splayed out for Mark, who can’t help but feel shy. How can this demigod, with those arms, and that chest, and that hair like Mark, who is thin, and pasty, and probably smells kind of bad? What on earth did Mark do in his past life to deserve this?
Eduardo yawns, and gets up, grabbing his boxer briefs and trousers off the chair where he put them last night. “We should do that again some time,” he says, zipping his trousers and pulling on his shirt. Mark nods, unable to think of a single appropriate response, other than ughlfhalgha, which is probably not the appropriate one. Eduardo smiles, one of his immense, beautiful smiles that shines a light into Mark’s brain, and turns it off entirely. He leans down, fingers still buttoning his shirt, and kisses Mark’s lips. Eduardo’s are thin, but soft, and smooth, and Mark kisses him back.
“See you later, then!” says Eduardo, and leaves.
***
And that’s how it goes. They hang out, they get drunk, and then they have sex. They don’t really talk about what they’re doing, and no one really knows but Chris and Dustin, but only because they walked in on Mark and Eduardo in varying states of undress on the couch. Dustin squawked and prattled about the Couch as a Safe No Weird Sex Zone, until Chris said that the coffee table was worse, it splintered something awful, and Dustin blushed, and they settled that no one should be having sex in the common room.
Somewhere along the way, they stop being drunk, and sometime around Thanksgiving they stop pretending to be drunk, and then Mark begins to call him Wardo, learns what his eyes looks like just before he comes, what kind of liquor he likes, and learns that he really likes providing for Mark.
Wardo kisses him like this is how he gets air, and sucks him off regularly with those beautiful red lips, and it’s wonton and hot. Wardo cries out Mark’s name as he comes, hot semen slick and sticky between their bodies. He leaves bruises on Marks hips where his hands clutch them, and fucks the curls into and out of Marks hair, while his own is always perfect. Wardo brings him things, coffee, hot dogs, red bull when he runs out on long coding binges. He makes Mark eat and shower and sleep, and some nights wrestles Mark out of his computer and into bed and holds him there, lithe body pressed against Mark’s and they just sleep. They don’t always have sex, but they usually fall asleep together, and spend more time together than anyone else. In March, Mark tells Wardo that he loves him, and Wardo says it back, and they spend the whole weekend in bed. Everything is perfect.
***
They are cuddling, Eduardo as big spoon, naked arm curled around Mark’s waist in Wardo’s bed one morning in April, when Wardo gets a call from his father.
Mark doesn’t understand the tense, quick Portuguese being shouted through Wardo’s phone, but he hears the sudden intake of breath, the words that sound like denial, reproach, acquiescence. He hears shouting through the phone. Angry adult Portuguese. He thinks he hears his name, “Mark” in the things that Wardo is saying, but every time, it’s only followed by yelling, “bicha” “nao e meu filho e homosexxuel” so Mark figures it’s probably about him, about them, and he knows that now everything will be different.
“Por favor pare de gritar comigo. Tudo bem, pai, tudo bem. Vou acabar com ele. Eu te ligo mais tarde.” Wardo hangs up the phone. His face has fallen, and he looks so upset, Mark stands up to go to him, losing his sheet in the process. He tries to hug Eduardo, who is just as naked, but Eduardo says “No!” and shudders away.
“What’s wrong? What did your dad say to you?” Mark asks, furious.
“What the hell do you think?” Wardo yells. “He found out about us, Mark. He heard we were fucking, and he said ‘no son of mine’. Do you want me to tell you what he said about you? About me? Fuck you, Mark. Fuck you.”
“Hey! This is not my fault. I love you, you idiot, and I think your father is fucking stupid.” Mark shouts back, breathing hard. He grabs his jeans and pulls them on, yanks on his sweatshirt, flipflops (whatever, it’s April).
He turns back to look at Eduardo, who is sitting down, head in his hands and rocking back and forth. He can’t leave now. Mark goes to him, and presses a hand to Eduardo’s shoulder. Wardo leans his cheek against it and keeps rocking.
“Wardo, I’m here for you. I love you.”
Inhaling shakily, Eduardo nods. “I love you too, Mark. I just don’t know what to do.”
***
Mark runs home, and when he gets there, three text from Wardo is sitting on his phone, blinking.
09:27 AM (305): sorry about this morning. I was a little freaked out. J
09:29 AM (305): Oh G-d, Mark, I don’t know what to do.
09:32 AM (305): can I come over after Macro? Around 4?
Mark closes his eyes, and chants calm, calm, calm in his mind. He texts back an “okay” to Wardo. And sits down to think.
***
At four, Eduardo comes into their room at Kirkland. He looks at Mark, and Mark looks at him, and can’t breathe for a minute, because what if this is it?
“sit, Wardo,” he says, and makes room on the couch. Wardo sits down, his long legs too long to fit comfortably on the couch.
“Mark, I-I don’t want to do this, but… my father knows. He knows, and he’s pissed. He thinks it will get out, and it will ruin the company, or it will ruin my reputation, and no one will deal with the company. Mark, it’s-it’s not you, it’s my father, and the company, and what my family needs from me. Do you understand? I love you, and I want you, and I want to be with you, but I can’t. I just, I can’t be with you anymore. Do you understand?” without waiting for a response, Eduardo stands up, straightens his coat, and moves towards the door. “I love you, Mark,” and he leaves.
***
Mark is heartbroken, his stomach aches, and his fingers feel numb. That summer without Wardo, where they don’t talk, don’t write, don’t see each other, is miserable. He mopes around the house all day, and his sisters tease him, but he can’t help it. Finally he tells his mother, who nods, and said she knew, which Mark thinks is stupid, and tells him it will be okay, which of course it won’t.
Mark dives into programming, designs a game where the bad guy is a Brazillian import/export kingpin who has kidnapped the player’s best friend, rereads The Illiad in the original Greek, and destroys a tree with his fencing sword. Mark designs programs, and websites, and sketches out a site where you can keep in touch with friends far away, but throws it out when the algorithms are wrong. Wardo would know how to make it work, but he’s not here, and he can’t work with Mark anymore. Mark mopes.
One day, about 3 weeks before Harvard starts up again, he receives a letter from Eduardo. He cuts it open, and reads the lines. Wardo is sorry, he’s having a great time, he made $300,000 dollars on the weather, he is sorry, he can’t wait to leave Miami. At the bottom of the page, in tiny, tight letters, Wardo has written, “I love you”.
The next week, another letter comes, Wardo again. This time, there is no discussion of the weather, no talk of Miami. Wardo writes about them. Wardo explains what his father has said, about how he’s inheriting the family business, about grandchildren, family and tradition. He writes like he doesn’t think Mark understands why. Wardo writes that he loves him, but he can’t choose between Mark and family. So he won’t, Wardo writes. He writes, in wide, open letters that he won’t choose, but that they can’t be like they were, attached, inseparable, together. He writes that they can be together in secret. Wardo tells Mark to go out with someone else, a girl, and he would do the same. Throw them off the scent, the bastards that were watching him for his father. At the bottom, he writes, “I know you understand. I love you.”
Mark crumples the letter and throws it away, but that night goes to the bin and fishes it out. He flattens it, and presses it between his CS books. Go out with a girl, any girl, Wardo says. We can still be together, Wardo says, in secret. Nothing will change, Mark. But it will, he thinks. Everything has already changed, because Mark would give everything up for Wardo, but Wardo won’t fight for Mark.
***
The first few days back at school are difficult. He wants to go to Wardo’s and curl up in his bed, and wake up to hot oatmeal and good coffee. He wants Wardo to stay over after they’ve drunk too much, and he wants to have sex with Wardo so much it’s almost painful. He embarrasses Wardo one night when he shows up stoned in his dorm, and presses Wardo against the bookcase, and sucks him off. Wardo tells him no, not until Mark has a girlfriend. Wardo’s dating some Korean girl, Stacy something. Chin, Kim, something like that. She’s a bitch. Mark’s never met her, but she’s dating his Wardo, kissing Wardo, and so she must be a bitch. She has to be, or Mark might die.
Halfway through September, he meets a pretty girl at an AEPi BU/Harvard party with brown hair, and big eyes. She is wearing black, and her eyes look like Wardo’s. Mark tells himself he can do this, can go out with someone else. Erica doesn’t recoil when he asks her out, just looks him up and down and nods. On dates, they go to the movies, talk about the characters, and the cinematography, and artistic choices, and then argue about history, Turing and computer games. They have a beer and go back to hers. Mark kisses her, and she’s a little taller than him, so it’s perfect, and he touches her breasts, which are smaller than they look, but that isn’t a bad thing, except that she is soft, soft in all those wonderful places Wardo is hard, and all he wants is Wardo Wardo Wardo. He keeps comparing them, how they taste, what their faces look like when they come, and Erica is losing. Her noises are soft, girl noises, sighs and high intakes of breath, where Wardo moaned and shouted his name, his lips open, eyes rolled backwards. Erica’s face is different, her eyes shut, she bites her lip, she doesn’t flush all down her chest like Wardo, he can’t really tell when she’s finished. She sucks him off like Wardo did, though, she moves her tongue right, and when he comes he moans deep. They go out for a month and a half before he says they can have sex, because he’s never done this before. He leaves out the whole “with a girl” part.
He gets it up, and it’s fine, it’s more than fine, it’s great, but then he shouts “Wardo!” as he comes. That’s the real reason they broke up. It wasn’t final clubs, or fighting, or the stupid argument in the bar, although that helped. It was because he couldn’t come without shouting Wardo’s stupid name, and she got sick of it after the third time.
He gets drunk and creates FaceMash when Erica dumps him, because how else to prove he’s straight than invent a website where you compare girls? He’s so upset that he had to sleep with a girl, that he can’t just be with Wardo, that he has to play this stupid game. He gets stuck with FaceMash, it won’t come out right, so he texts Eduardo for the first time since May. Come over. I need you.
He’s honestly surprised when Eduardo walks in, smooth, and bold, and sexier than even Mark remembers. Eduardo greets everyone, but looks concerned, and he comes over to Mark like he’s going to hug him. It flips his stomach a little when he Wardo says he was reading Mark’s blog at 2 in the morning. His heart races to hear Wardo say that he is there for Mark, but he covers admirably. He needs the algorithm to prove… to prove nothing. Wardo likes it when Mark is smart. Mark wants Wardo, but cant. Not yet. He has to hurt him. Make him ask for it. He tells Wardo that he needs him, and when he hears “I’m here for you” his heart gives a leap, but he squelches that hope with “No, I need the algorithm.” He can hear Dustin behind him bury his hands in frustration, but ignores it. Or tries to, past the little voice in his head telling him that he’s an idiot, as Eduardo’s face falls.
Wardo recovers quickly, dubiously, and provides the algorithm, with the vague knowledge that if he helps Mark, then it will go better for all of them. Wardo is clearly pissed at the website, because it compares girls, and Mark calls one of them hot. Mark is secretly pleased, and keeps giving him beer. By the time he crashes the servers, Mark and Wardo are drunk, although not as drunk as they are acting, and Wardo takes him home to his tiny room. That night they fuck, because they are free, because it isn’t cheating, because Mark needs Wardo and Wardo is always there for Mark.
Mark clings to Wardo as their bodies rock back and forth, his legs wrapped around Wardo’s waist. He strains his neck, and kisses up Wardo’s neck, as he presses his hands against Mark’s hips, and reaches between them to jack Mark off. It’s hot, so hot, and they come together, loudly, moaning into each other’s necks. They gasp heavily, and Wardo rolls off him, splaying out like he’s run a marathon.
“God, I missed you,” he breathes, rolling over and pulling Mark into a spoon. He runs his hands over Mark’s shoulders, down his neck and back, and over his thigh. “You’re so beautiful, Mark. You’re so beautiful.” Wardo kisses his ear, the hollow between his neck and his skull, where his shoulder joins his neck.
Mark snuggles into the warm nook created by the curves of Wardo’s body, feels his chest beating against his back, and knows that this is where he wants to be forever.