The Social Network - "Pangaea" - Mark/Eduardo 3/3
Title: Pangaea (Jurassic Park AU)
Fandom: The Social Network (Mark Zuckerberg/Eduardo Saverin)
25,000 words | NC-17 | ALL THE PORN IS BELONG TO THIS PART
Diego lets out a plaintive baby sized roar and flies out from under the bed, darting between Mark's feet and hurling himself against Eduardo's chest. He spins around and hisses viciously at Mark's toes.
"You scared him," Eduardo accuses him, trying not to burst into laughter.
"Huh." Mark says, wriggling his toes experimentally.
Diego snaps at them.
"At least we know my programming is sound."
"About that..." Eduardo says quietly, petting Diego into calmness.
Mark reaches behind him and pushes the lid of his laptop down.
"I heard about the first ones."
Mark shrugs, face expressionless.
Eduardo rolls onto his back, sighing. Diego seems to take that as a sign that Mark's toes are no threat. He creeps around them again, seemingly intent on finishing off the sock.
"Come here." Eduardo pats the floor until Mark relents and sits beside him, knees clicking as he stretches them out.
Eduardo looks up at him for a while. "I called him Diego."
Mark nods once.
"Do you like it?"
Mark studies him blankly. "Does it matter whether I do?"
Eduardo closes his eyes, screwing up his face. He has to turn away for a moment. "Don't be like that, Mark."
He feels Mark's fingers on his brow, tentative, trying to smooth out the frown. "Just-- Stop being such an asshole."
The fingers leave. "...How?"
"Just say that you're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"Do you even know why you should be sorry?"
Mark hesitates. "For forcing you to stay like this. Keeping things from you. For--"
Eduardo turns back to watch him say it.
"I'm sorry I never had the guts to ask you what you wanted." It's almost a mumble, but Eduardo hears him crystal clear.
"Okay," Eduardo says, staring up at Mark.
"Okay?"
"Ask me, asshole." Eduardo laughs, slightly hysterical.
"Okay, uh." Mark watches him laugh, bewildered. "What do you want, Wardo?"
Eduardo can feel that thrum of right. He has power in this moment to take - but also he hopes wildly, to give. He knows he can give Mark so much. He thinks of the ways Mark has been pushing and pushing, trying to manipulate him into roles and situations. He thinks of Diego, and the damn canjica, and Gabriella. And the code all suddenly seems clear to him, even though he's never seen it, could never read it, doesn't need to when he knows that Mark wrote it and wrote them into it. If Mark had just asked him, he would have said yes. He would have said yes to everything and Mark.
"Kiss me, right now." Eduardo demands, so certain that it translates as desperation.
To his credit, Mark doesn't hesitate. He's clumsy, and he bites Eduardo's lips in his eagerness. Eduardo yelps, but pulls at him and drags him down nonetheless. Mark throws a leg over Eduardo's waist, grasps at his shoulders. He's panting almost immediately into Eduardo's mouth, sucking at his lips, groaning at the pressure between them. It's as if Mark has lost all self-control. Eduardo can barely catch his breath, and when he does he finds himself unable to breathe again almost immediately.
Mark is kissing his jaw, burying his face in Eduardo's neck, breathing him in heavily as if he hasn't seen him in years. Eduardo closes his eyes and just soaks it in. The weight of Mark gently rocking against him is perfect, it's warm, it's like something Eduardo has been missing for years without even knowing.
He curls one arm around Mark's waist, and places the other hand on the back of Mark's head, softly urging him on. After a few moments, Mark seems to come back to himself. He pulls back slowly, face flushed. He cups Eduardo's face, groans.
"Diego is chirping," he says, hoarse. He shifts gingerly, climbing off Eduardo's lap with difficulty and peering under the bed.
Eduardo sits up hurriedly, "Shit," he says, "shit, Mark, find him."
They find Diego easily. He's managed to get his claws caught in the torn threads of the sock, and he's rolling on his back, kicking and squeaking unhappily. Mark unravels him deftly, and hands him over to Eduardo, who only has to pet him for a moment before he's writhing to get away and play again.
"They grow up so fast," Eduardo says, slightly put out at his casual dismissal.
"I could scare him again," Mark offers sarcastically.
Eduardo punches him in the shoulder. "Asshole," he says again, fondly.
---
“So who else on this rock is hitched?” Sean asks, dropping his breakfast tray down opposite Chris.
He nods across the room to where Mark is cradling a flash of green that can’t be anything but Diego in one arm and precariously balancing a tray of food that he is clearly not going to eat in the other. Mark puts both Diego and the tray down on a table that Eduardo is using as a makeshift pillow and sits opposite him.
Eduardo sits up and they all look at their own plates busily.
“I’m an ordained minister,” Dustin says helpfully.
Dustin, as a mere zoologist, is apparently persona non grata, and doesn’t even get a good morning nod despite having copped the majority of the splash from Sean’s generous portion of scrambled eggs.
“Seriously, I printed out the certificate.”
“You’re Jewish,” Chris says, exasperated.
“I am a tolerant man!” Dustin declares.
Sean looks at Chris pityingly. “I hope you aren’t locked into this relationship.”
“Excuse me!” Chris says, blushing to the roots of his hair despite his vehement head shaking. “Some of us are here to actually work, not hook up.”
“Oh, Chris,” Dustin says mournfully. “You besmirch our love. And Wardo is definitely not hooking up, look at him. Marky is practically going to have to spoonfeed him his breakfast. In a totally non-sexy way.”
Sean hums sympathetically, “He really shouldn’t have knocked up Saverin so soon.”
Chris gets up and takes his tray to the chemists’ table.
“Nooo, come back...” Dustin trails off, realising he is having breakfast alone with Sean Parker. “This is weird.”
“Yeah.”
Dustin stirs his fruit salad for a second, “Yeah. Bye.” He gets up and heads for Mark and Wardo’s table. At least Eduardo will let him play with his food as long as he shares with Diego.
On Tuesday morning, Dustin regrets not making better peace with Sean when he runs afoul of a triceratops on his daily rounds. The island has a serious deficit of people he can call for a rescue when he does something so truly catastrophically embarrassing that even Eduardo would laugh at him before bailing him out. Sean can at least empathise with him on some level when it comes to having a history of bad PR.
Chris just about has a heart attack when the medical centre calls him up to inform him that their head zoologist has sustained a nasty gash and a minor sprain. When he turns up at Dustin’s bedside he is a little less concerned and a lot more pissed off to hear that the triceratops hadn’t even done anything wrong, let alone meant to injure Dustin. Chris wouldn’t have minded if that had been the case because he would have been spared the reality, which is that apparently Dustin had been riding on the dinosaur and had sustained his injuries falling off.
“Do you think you’re Indiana Jones or something?” Chris asks him, exasperated, as their head medic wraps a neon green bandage around Dustin’s ankle and shin. “Did they encourage this kind of behaviour in the biology department at Harvard? In what world would it be a good idea to ride on a triceratops? You could have
been trampled.”
Dustin shrugs, “It would have been cool if it had worked. And technically, Sheldon didn’t object. I just fell off. I’ll ride him right up to the foyer next time and you’ll see how cool and heroic I look and you’ll be super jealous.”
“I absolutely forbid you to ride on anything in this park.” Chris declares, point blank.
Dustin raises an eyebrow suggestively.
“Anything.” Chris says again firmly.
Of course this has to be the day that Sean sweeps in from the surveillance room and throws a tantrum about his tyrannosaurus colony being emotionally distressed.
“They aren’t even fighting each other for dominance,” he moans, showing Mark footage on his tablet, “they’re sticking together, hunting as a pack, and huddling together at night. Look how nervy Britney is acting.” He points at the biggest tyrannosaurus of the four strong pack.
Eduardo isn’t sure that tearing the flesh in strips from one of the carefully deposited goat carcasses counts as nervous behaviour, but Mark looks mildly concerned.
Eduardo has pretty much given up on pretending to oversee the bulk of the finances, seeing as Diego gets bored with the office in about 30 seconds flat and starts chewing cables. Mark very awkwardly demands that the two of them spend most of their time in the labs, allegedly so Diego’s progress can be monitored by the biologists.
Eduardo doesn’t need to be convinced. The interns insist on taking turns teaching Diego to catch insect prey, when they aren’t letting him hatch the first pterosaur babies. His relocation also allows Eduardo to catch up on sleep on the two seater sofa in what turns out to be Mark’s notoriously un-secret coding office. If Eduardo occasionally stirs to find Mark pulled up to the sofa in his desk chair, fingering the tufts of hair that have escaped his hurried morning gel application, he doesn’t object.
“Pan back 30 degrees,” Mark directs.
Eduardo deposits Diego in Dustin’s lap to cheer him up. He is going through a stage where he constantly tried to chirp shrilly over human conversations, specifically Chris’s, which amuses Dustin to no end.
Eduardo stands over Mark’s shoulder trying to see what it is he has spotted in the fairly monotonous foliage. Despite its devastating beauty, the flora all tended to blur together for him after a while. If it weren’t for his inexplicably good sense of direction and keen observation of weather patterns, Chris and Mark probably wouldn’t let him out of the compound. Chris barely trusted Dustin to find the gates on his own, and still threatened daily to chip him in his sleep. Actually, after this incident, Eduardo is pretty sure that it’ll become more of a promise than a threat.
“There,” Mark says, prodding the screen hard enough that it autozooms.
“A camera?” Eduardo hazards, squinting at the pixelated image, his stomach twisting up at something familiar about the picture.
“What the fuck,” Sean says, scandalized.
Dustin has to be physically restrained by Chris until Mark passes them the tablet, his face perfectly blank.
Predictably, everyone turns to Sean.
“Whoa, he says, throwing his hands up, “there is no way in hell I would smuggle out data on my own t-rexs without my name all over it in neon. Popular Science would give me millions. Think about it,” he stresses.
“He’s got a point,” Chris points out, resigned to the fact. Diego squeaks merrily over top of him.
Sean drops his hands, letting out a breath in a long whistle, “a guy makes one mistake and bam, guilty for life.”
Chris looks like he’s about to change his mind for a second.
Dustin dumps Diego into his lap, effectively defusing him for a moment.
Eduardo takes the tablet from Dustin, zooms as close as the camera can manage without losing visibility completely. He has to swallow before he announces it: “It’s not Sean. That’s Winklevoss equipment.”
He clears his throat again, unable to meet Chris’s unspoken ‘so what?’ expression with more than a nervous glance.
“As in...Winklevii-only, DNA-tuned electronics.”
Dustin throws his head back into the infirmary pillows. “This again, whyyyy,” he moans, muffled.
“So, technically, this is still Sean’s fault.” Chris says, gritting his teeth.
Eduardo shrugs. He can’t deny that that’s the truth.
“One of the twins had to plant it and set it up though,” he reminds Chris.
“Can we knock it out with an electromagnetic pulse?” Dustin asks.
“No,” Chris says.
“Not unless you want to lose our equipment too.” Mark adds, sullen.
He’s fixated on the tablet, refusing to meet Eduardo’s eyes. Eduardo bites his lip and tells Chris, “We have to smash it.”
“Right,” Mark says, biting the word out with a finality that Eduardo recognises as resignation. He breathes again.
Mark taps on the screen in Eduardo’s lap, memorising the coordinates of the surveillance plant. He shuts down the tablet and hands it back to Sean.
“You are not going to the predator enclosure on your own.” Chris says slowly. “Not with Dustin down and the possibility of the Winklevoss twins being on the grounds. Twins who, I must remind you, describe themselves in their own words as six foot four, two-twenty, and oh yeah, Mark, there are two of them. And they hate your guts.”
“They aren’t actually murderous,” Eduardo says, uncomfortably.
Mark presses his lips together. “Get me one of the taser-prods. The sooner I go, the less data they harvest.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” Mark says over his shoulder sharply, shuffling out and down the corridor.
“Yikes,” Sean says, watching Eduardo storm after him.
“Trouble in paradise. What got up his ass?” He inches away from Chris gingerly. “Apart from the obvious.”
“Potentially,” Dustin theorises slowly, following Chris’s pacing route around the room with his eyes. “Potentially...the Winklevii, right?”
Sean sucks in a gasp that threatens to swallow up Dustin’s head, along with the gurney and sidetable.
“For fuck’s sake, Dustin.” Chris hisses, flailing his hands at the door.
“Both?” Sean asks, wide eyed, practically on his toes with excitement at being party to founder gossip.
“Please say both!?” he begs.
“Shut up,” Chris snarls.
“No, just let me get this straight.” Sean says, grinning manically, “You guys wanted me killed for merely switching sides - totally legally, by the way. Meanwhile, your CFO is banging the competition, and all that happens to him is that he marries your CEO?!”
Chris looks pained.
“Though...I guess you could call that last part a punishment,” Sean muses. “How come you guys never told me Mrs. Zuck was such a boss? OW-”
Sean splutters and shakes himself like a dog. “Too soon?” he says, wiping his face with a sleeve.
“You don’t talk about Wardo like that.” Dustin says, uncharacteristically icy. He sets his glass back down on the table with a click.
“You have no idea what Wardo and Mark are like, seeing as you aren’t one of their friends.” Dustin emphasises the word. “It is totally none of your business, but so you don’t go thinking you can sell your bullshit fantasies about Eduardo to yet another magazine, I want you to know the truth. Eduardo is, barring Chris and my mom- He’s the best person I’ve ever known.”
Chris is just calm enough to look flattered
“If he ever made it with a Winklevii, vermin that they are, it sure wasn’t while he was with Mark.” Dustin glances at Chris, suddenly nervous.
Chris nods.
Diego rolls restlessly against the sheet, and Dustin smiles at him, with his familiar crooked grin.
“Even if Mark seems to think they were betrothed in Orientation Week, they weren’t actually together until we got here. We don’t have a problem with Eduardo’s life choices prior to the park. So you definitely don’t get to judge Eduardo.”
Chris raises his eyebrows, fighting the urge to facepalm, “Life choices, huh?”
“Yeah, thanks for that vague explanation.” Sean says wryly, wringing out his pant legs. “I’m sure the Winklevosses would love to hear that fucking them constitutes a life choice. I just wanted to know whether their dicks are as big as their egos. Saverin’s alright. And I actually kind of like working here, yaknow? I’m not going to sell out the boss’s wife.”
Dustin grasps for his cup threateningly, but he nods, slow and appreciative.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.” Chris says grudgingly. “But I have to admit that I’ve always wondered.”
“Eduardo’s with Mark now.” Dustin warns them, cupping Diego in his hands and offering him up like Simba.
“Remember? Guys?”
“Yeah.” Sean says. He walks over to Dustin’s bedside and reaches out gingerly to pet Diego. “They’ll be okay.
I wouldn’t worry.”
“It feels so wrong, but I believe you.” Chris says, coming over to sit on Dustin’s other side.
Dustin hums. “Now we’ve conquered our fear of Sean Parker, do you think we need to bother worrying about rogue Winklevii and uppity tyrannosaurs?”
Sean smiles into his lap.
Chris rubs his hands over his face. “Honestly, no. Mark is way scarier than anything out in the park. It is incredibly unlikely that the Winklevosses are still here, and-” He twists his lips and made a face at Dustin.
“Maybe they can sort themselves out on their own.”
Dustin snorts.
---
“I’m coming too,” Eduardo says in a voice that brooks no argument.
“No,” Mark snaps.
He stuffs supplies into his hoodie pocket, sliding extras into his back pockets.
Eduardo reaches for one of Dustin’s pre-stocked utility belts (and who does he think he is, Batman?), clipping it around his waist silently. He sits down and starts swapping his dress shoes for hiking boots.
Mark huffs and sits at the other end of the bench to pull at his own laces.
Eduardo watches his struggle until he can’t bear it anymore. He gets to his knees and bats Mark’s hands away. Loops them around, pushes through, under, pulls, repeats the action smoothly.
“They’re mine too,” Eduardo says quietly, without looking up. He knows Mark will be stubbornly staring at the wall behind him.
“You can’t bring me here, program me into dinosaur DNA and then refuse to let me go out into the park I paid for, Mark.”
It’s a dick move, pulling the money card, Eduardo knows. But he also knows that it’ll get a reaction out of Mark, which is more than he can boast the other six days of the week.
Mark gets up brusquely and handprints a locker embedded in the wall beside the taser recharge point. It’s stocked with a selection of guns, though Eduardo couldn’t name any of them. They look expensive and deadly. He pulls out two, and a couple of rattling boxes of ammunition. He loads them expertly and slides them into the empty spots in his utility belt.
“Ready?” says Mark, resigned to it.
---
They take the four wheel drive as close to the surveillance point as they can get on the touring roads. Mark drives all the way, his teeth gritted. Eduardo spends the trip staring out the windows at the track. He’s never had the pleasure of taking the tour, and he’s impressed. There is no doubt that the park will make good on his investment. The foliage is beautiful. It looks like Chris has had Christy Lee and the botanists reviving long extinct plants and trees, as well as replicating herbivore foliage. This is work above and beyond what he’d originally commissioned them to do.
They pass multiple herbivore enclosures, and Eduardo manages to spot not only Sheldon the Triceratops, but a small family of Diplodocus across the valley, and a multitude of free range Procompsognathus, likely relations of Myrtle.
There are small mammals like Eduardo has never seen before, even in books or zoos - he assumes they must be breeding more natural prey for the carnivores. It’s all so much bigger off the audit page. He’s constantly exclaiming and pointing out his finds to Mark, momentarily forgetting their cold war.
Ironically, they’re crossing into carnivore country by the time Mark finally loosens up. He drives a little looser, seeming to know the dips and twists in the road like the back of his hand. And Eduardo supposes he must. This is raptor country, after all.
They don’t see anything but small grazing mammals for a while. Eduardo figures that this is probably a good sign, as the less agitated the lizards are, the less likely they are to attack. This has been a bit of a rule of thumb with Diego lately, as Dustin has discovered through liberal loss of skin to his hands.
They pull off to the side of the road in the middle of the large carnivore stretch. Mark turns the key off, but leaves it in the ignition. They sit in the mid afternoon swelter for a couple of minutes.
Mark wipes a droplet of sweat off of his forehead, pursing his lips.
“Which one of them?” He asks, finally. The question bursts out with all the force that eight months of wondering can hold.
To his credit, Eduardo doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know who Mark is talking about.
“Neither,” he says, “I never - not with them. I was just a consulting accountant there, but they were kind, considering, you know, the whole intellectual theft suit,” Eduardo shrugs. “You were mad at me, and my father...I quit after the first couple of weeks, Mark. I went home, and -” he looks pained and sad in equal amounts. “My father won’t even look at me anymore, you know.”
Mark studies him closely. It’s a gaze Eduardo has seen wilt scientists twice their age. He can see right through them, dissect their motives. Eduardo isn’t afraid to let Mark see his motives.
“It was an internship with the right people.” Eduardo says baldly. “Sean had taken everything already, and you were so angry. My father was pressuring me to go to New York. It looked like the only choice at the time.”
He doesn’t say sorry. He’d come back.
“You came back.” Mark echoed his thoughts.
“I came back for you,” Eduardo says, truthfully.
Mark smiles, quick, but it’s there for a split second, and Eduardo sees it. “I know.”
He swings open the drivers’ side door. “Let’s go smash their shit.”
---
Tramping through the jungle is more fun than Eduardo expected. Mark tells him off every five minutes, threatening that they’ll get jumped by one of the raptor packs or surprised by one of the tyrannosaurs if he keeps up his noise. Eventually, Mark just gives up and seizes his hand so that they can at least minimise the likelihood of being picked off separately. This way he only has to hack at the foliage once, rather than endure listening to Eduardo bash at it fruitlessly.
It also means he can point out particularly complicated sequences he’d hand coded for the botanists, and watch Eduardo’s face shift into wonder as he realises that Mark is bringing back 65 million year old flowers, because he can, because he is that good at what he does.
Mark has always known that Eduardo is a sucker for a success story. He appreciates talent. His pupils dilate, and the tips of his ears flush, and Mark likes to make it happen, likes to be the cause, should be the only one who can impress him like that.
They approach the point Mark has plotted in his smartphone GPS, and Eduardo spots it first, the white hood of the camera peering out from under a clump of ferns. The clouds decide to open as they circle the clearing, soaking them with a warm downpour.
Eduardo shakes the water out of his hair, laughing. The heat and the damp reminds him of childhood - a childhood before Miami. He hasn’t stood in the rain in a long time, and hasn’t been this deliriously happy whilst soaked to the skin in even longer.
Mark clamps a hand over his mouth reactively, dragging him under the cover of a bright clutch of flowering bushes. “Tyrannosaur.” Mark hisses. He doesn’t sound panicked, instead rather pleased at the prospect.
Eduardo shrinks back and squints through the leaves, breathing slowly against Mark’s damp hand.
There is a dinosaur in the clearing - not huge, like Eduardo has expected, but probably about the height of two grown men. The rex must be a teenager, if dinosaurs can have youth divisions.
“That’s Britney.” Mark whispers. “Stay still.” He wraps an arm around Eduardo’s waist to be sure.
Britney snuffles around for a minute or two, almost knocking over the Winklevoss camera in her inspection.
“Even she knows that box is bullshit.” Mark mutters.
Eduardo nods slowly, wondering whether Britney would do them the supreme favour of helping them to knock out the camera. Night is beginning to fall fast. She swipes at it, but loses interest when it refuses to react, finally snorting and padding away on heavy feet.
“Beautiful.” Eduardo breathes into Mark’s palm.
Mark relaxes his grasp, but holds them there for a long five minutes, just to give Britney a head start.
“I’m glad you think so.” Mark answers, eventually. He grazes a hand over Eduardo’s hip before he lets go, passing into the clearly cautiously.
He drops down in front of the camera, smirking suddenly. “Come here, Wardo.”
They crouch in the rain and wave into the lens together for a moment. Eduardo spares the Winklevosses a jaunty salute before Mark steps back and kicks in the face of the camera with the steel toe of his boot.
Eduardo pulls it out of the soil with a yank and slings it over his shoulder. “Satisfied?”
Mark shrugs noncommittally. He licks the raindrops that have collected on the bow of his upper lip. Eduardo unconsciously mimics him.
“We won’t make it back in this dark. Can’t risk torches in this enclosure,” Mark says, matter of fact.
“But-” Eduardo peers through the clearing, hesitant. The gloom has truly fallen, and the rain is not showing any sign of letting up.
“This way, I know the topography better to the north.”
Mark wraps his fingers around Eduardo’s free wrist securely. Eduardo has no choice but to trust Mark’s inexplicable sense of direction and follow him down a barely-there trail in the near pitch black of the jungle.
It seems like a longer walk that it probably is, but the dark always seems to lengthen time, the lack of sunlight disorienting all of Eduardo’s senses: time, direction, distance. Despite being reliably able to tell anyone the time with an error margin of no more than fifteen minutes during daylight hours, he always finds himself off by hours when it comes to the night.
Mark had always seemed to have the opposite problem - though he’d never consider it a problem. Time was irrelevant to Mark. He merely did things as swiftly as he considered they should be done. He never blinked at the loss of days at a time. Eduardo has watched Mark code through a day and a night without faltering, Mark only surprised when he emerged from his haze 22 hours later to find that Eduardo was still on his bed, having finally succumbed to exhaustion and curled up under a blanket to wait out the last few hours.
In the same way Mark seems intent on marching endlessly through the scrub, silently batting away huge closed up flower buds. Eduardo has a new respect for the night vision capabilities of computer nerds. He has adjusted to the darkness well enough to dodge most of the trees, even thought he has to wipe rainwater out of his eyes every two minutes; but Mark’s steps are by far more quiet and sure. Clearly he knows the trail now, from the speed at which they twist through the jungle.
Mark has adopted an odd gait too, Eduardo notices. He moves smoothly, obviously a learned form of movement, as there is still a familiar repressed slouch to his movements. He picks his feet up now, which is a big difference considering Mark was always the guy to be counted on to give you a static shock, thanks to the way he dragged his feet on the carpet at Kirkland.
For a short distance Eduardo assumes that Mark is nervous as they proceed. He darts his head from side to side, peering into the undergrowth on the left and the right far more than ahead of them. It is only when Mark spooks him by pulling them off the trail for a small family of what look like badgers to pass them that he remembers Jurassic Park. Eduardo specifically recalls the hunting strategies of velociraptors - they work in threes or more, one decoy meeting the prey head on, two killing from either side. A chill runs up his back and he shakes off Mark’s hold around his wrist. He takes his hand instead, curling his fingers through Mark’s, the warmth a calming antidote. Mark squeezes immediately, and pulls them onward.
“Not far, Wardo,” he says, pitching low. His voice doesn’t carry far. On purpose, Eduardo realises.
“This next valley is safe, off the hunting paths. We’re lucky we haven’t bumped into any of my packs yet.” He sounds a little harried, triple-checking their left side before he moves them back onto the faint track.
Eduardo nods before he remembers that Mark can’t see him. He strokes his thumb over Mark’s wrist instead, hoping to convey some amount of grateful. Insisting on tagging along had seemed like a strategic move at first. It had felt important to show Mark that he has a vested interest in the welfare of the outer reaches of the park, to prove that he can do more than sit around stroking the newborn hatchlings and teaching Diego to beg for grubs.
It is becoming discomfortingly clear to Eduardo that he is not cut out to venture into the park without escort. Mark, with his sharp understanding of his creations and a blatant lack of fear that in turns intimidates and impresses Eduardo, has been protecting him this whole time. Logically, it should be a feeling of shame that fills him, but instead, he feels warmed with appreciation.
They clear the top of a ridge. Frustratingly, they get less rainfall in the open than they have been under the foliage. Nonetheless, Mark points out the slippery mud that will slide them back to the bottom of the valley if they lose their footing.
The slope down the other side is gentle and stony, made up of scoria, volcanic rock from what it sounds like to tread on. Eduardo notes this with interest. They must be on the collapsed cone of an old volcano. The brush on this side is lower and less lush, barring the immense trees that seem to cluster together, determined on surviving anything.
It would be difficult for anything bigger than a bent over human to hide in this vegetation, Eduardo thinks, putting two and two together.
“Here,” Mark says, dragging Eduardo behind a mass of overgrown flax. It is dark and smells like the damp forest. He is surprised to find himself in what looks like a tiny, but dry room. It dawns on him. “This is a hollow tree,” he says, with wonder. “It’s huge, Mark, did you find this-“
Mark slips his hands into Eduardo’s pants, deliciously warm fingers un-tucking his dress shirt for him.
“With the velo-What are you doing?”
Mark’s hands move deftly to Wardo’s belt, flicking out the pin, and pushing his pants down for him. “Take off your shoes,” Mark says, starting on Wardo’s buttons. “We’re safe in here.”
Eduardo is too blindsided to do anything but comply, shuffling out of his boots and the soaked socks he’d been trying to ignore.
“You’ll catch a cold in wet clothes,“ Mark sees fit to explain. He has trouble with a button, and shrugs, wrenching at it hard enough to snap the thread.
“Uh, I’ll catch one out of them too.” Wardo points out, his mouth quickly becoming the driest part of his body.
Mark shakes his head, easing the shirt down Eduardo’s arms, leaving him in nothing more than damp boxer briefs. He pushes Eduardo gently against the wall of the tree and leans up to kiss him, finally, sighing his relief into his lips, shoulders dropping the tension of having to play look out for two people.
Eduardo gasps into his mouth momentarily, but he kisses back, lips parting almost immediately under Mark’s firm movements. He allows Mark to direct the kiss, responding to his cues. He is panting audibly when Mark pulls back to allow him to breathe.
Mark studies him quickly. His eyes are hooded, tracking Mark’s movements, and his chest is heaving. He can see that Eduardo is half hard, outlined against the damp fabric of his briefs. Mark wonders about how uncomfortable the underwear is, and he reaches down between them to pull them down Eduardo’s hips.
Eduardo makes a tiny involuntary hiccup at his touch, jerking against his hands. Mark looks up at his face again. He can’t boast any great ability with reading emotion, but Eduardo looks flushed and he is breathing hard. He doesn’t seem upset, so Mark carries on, dragging the damp garment down Eduardo’s legs. He lets it fall most of the way to the ground.
Mark steps back, takes in the expanse of Eduardo’s tan skin. He wants, so he takes it, stepping back into Eduardo’s space. He tastes the skin of his neck, mouth stilling long enough for him to feel the heavy drag of Eduardo’s pulse. He can hear hot blood coursing through veins and arteries, hidden beneath the surface. The reason his creatures breathe, run, mate - hidden causes of life, based in flesh, driven by programmed responses and cues.
Mark can predict the behaviour of more than a thousand beings on his island. Eduardo - he cannot. It is exciting. Mark is used to cool dry skin, to turning lizards over to see their bellies, matching code to scales, finding perfection via his compiler and a good friend with a dab hand with a pipette.
Eduardo is so intricate a creature, and he is terrifyingly warm despite the chill on his skin from the rain. People don’t have absolute code. It is impossible that they be perfect. Eduardo is more perfect than anything Mark has yet made, and he can’t understand it.
He can comprehend want though -if Eduardo wants it - if Eduardo wants him.
Mark rubs against him painstakingly. He presses his hip into Eduardo’s belly, feels the hard line of Eduardo’s cock slide against his clothing. He stays there like that, pushing firmly with his thigh, watching Eduardo’s eyelashes flutter, and when one of Eduardo’s hands comes up, shaking, and he buries his long fingers in Mark’s hair, Mark loses his mind for just a second.
He crowds Eduardo against the concaved curve of the tree’s innards, grabbing at him greedily, pushing their lips together with open mouthed kisses that he hopes communicate more than the handful of inadequate words he has gifted Eduardo with over the course of their friendship.
Sweet Eduardo, with his encouragements and his dorm tidying, his cooking and his caring, and his carte blanche personality. Mark takes from him again, like he has been for years. He savages Wardo’s mouth, nipping his lips and filling him with his tongue, tasting the insides of Wardo’s cheeks, the delicately ridged roof, the choking sob of air Eduardo expels when he tries to pull back. Mark takes all this, in return leaving behind bruised lips and the memory of intrusion, of possession.
Eduardo is moaning, Mark realises, breathing hard. Whining and bucking against Mark’s hip. He slides his hand between them and takes hold of Eduardo’s cock. It is smeared with pre-come already. He squeezes firmly, then pumps it steadily. Eduardo cries out, sinking against the bark behind him. Mark knows the tree bark is rough against Wardo’s back.
“Ow,” Eduardo groans, but he doesn’t stop pushing into Mark’s hand. He just arches his back away from the bark, whines when Mark rubs his thumb in circles over the tip.
Mark pulls back and considers the scratches Wardo is rubbing at with one hand. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely, not sure he can trust his voice enough to say anything further. Instead, Mark drags his hoodie over his head and lays it on the dry ground at his feet. “Lie down,” he says.
Eduardo looks at him for a moment, clearly considering the situation. Knowing Eduardo, Mark supposes he is worrying about redundant factors, such as whether dinosaurs will catch them having intercourse (they won’t care, Wardo) or whether Mark is certain he wants to be with him (a stupid question, as Mark is fairly sure that everyone who had ever met Eduardo Saverin has wanted to bend him over their desk).
Eduardo sits down on the hoodie awkwardly, his thin legs taking up most of their floor space despite being folded up. His cock is still firm and full, despite the lull. Mark undoes his fly, kicks off his jeans and sneakers hurriedly, tears off his t-shirt. He pauses to look at Eduardo again.
His eyes are huge in the semi darkness, pupils blown so wide that he can barely see the warm brown of his irises.
“I’m getting cold,” Eduardo says quietly, hugging his knees.
Mark drops to his knees, reaching for Eduardo carefully. “Have you ever been with a guy?” He asks in a low voice.
Eduardo nods, smiling wryly at the bitter scowl he gets in return.
“Will you let me fuck you?”
Eduardo’s eyes seem to darken, if that is at all possible. He lets go of a trembling breath. “Please.”
Mark moves quickly, sinuous and quiet, pushing Eduardo onto his back. He settles over him, pinning him down with his weight. Eduardo thinks fleetingly of the raptors Mark has been running with, and shivers involuntarily.
He presses against Eduardo’s stomach hard, hands wrapped around Eduardo’s upper arms, holding him still. Eduardo sucks in shakily as Mark’s dick slides across his stomach, over his navel, leaving a slick trail of precome.
Mark licks his palm thoroughly, rubbing their dicks together with a shudder. Eduardo strains up as if electrified, his eyes squeezed shut, mouth slack, lips trembling. He moans, low and agonized when Mark wraps his wet hand around the two of them. He moves his palm over them quickly, coaxing more wetness out of his own slit.
He releases them, grasping at Eduardo’s thighs instead, spreading him wide. Eduardo keens, encouraging him, curling a leg up against his abdomen.
“Yeah, Mark, yeah, just-“ he doesn’t elaborate, just strains up, lifting his hips, spreading obscenely. Mark can see everything.
Somehow Mark has a tube in his hands, where the hell it could have come from is beyond Eduardo until he thinks, Dustin and his damned pre-stocked utility belts. Mark gets the cap off and he's probably squeezing out the entire contents of the bottle into his hand and over Eduardo's open thighs, a complete waste, and just this once, Eduardo doesn't care.
Mark drags him closer, his lip curling faintly as he reaches for him with his slicked hand, stroking gently over Eduardo’s balls. He rubs firmly against Eduardo’s pucker with the pad of his thumb. Eduardo pants, jerking as Mark presses inwards. He rubs the rim methodically, working his way inside, slow and steady.
“-In me now,” Eduardo moans, pressing down.
“I think you’re underestimating the size of my dick.” Mark says, modestly.
Eduardo snorts, just managing a retort, “It’s not as big as your ego.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mark says, twisting his thumb a little deeper, “Is that a challenge?”
Eduardo is momentarily incapacitated, trembling at Mark’s last push, “Y-yeah.”
Mark pulls his hand away and lines himself up, leaning over Eduardo’s torso, biting his lip in a grin.
He rubs his dick against Eduardo’s inner thigh, slapping the leaking head against the delicate skin there, stiffening to full hardness.
He tries to push the head of his cock into Eduardo’s hole, nice and slow.
Eduardo writhes, flails his hands up to grasp at Mark’s shoulders and wrap around his neck.
The lube isn’t really enough yet, just as he’d known. It’s still hot, though.
“Fuck,” Mark mutters. “Want you.”
Eduardo goes still. He gazes up at Mark from his back, chest rapidly rising and falling, his legs still splayed.
Mark tries again, pushes harder, rubs his dick around Eduardo’s tight little hole, smearing precome around.
Eduardo is whining now. When Mark pulls away, he gives him a wobbly smile, shrugging indifferently at being wrong.
“Guess you are pretty big,” he concedes shakily. “You should probably put your fingers in my mouth.”
Mark drops Eduardo’s thigh, lunges up his body, pushes his fingers deep into Eduardo’s mouth. Somehow, they’re gone almost as quickly as they came and then Eduardo is grabbing for Mark’s forearm, trying to slow the two fingers he is sliding into him ruthlessly.
“Fuck!” he wails, twisting in Mark’s grip. He arches, barely able to keep from coming immediately. Mark pulls them out, leaves that perfect spot alone, and Eduardo drops limp, back down against Mark’s hoodie.
“You don’t do that!” He half-shouts at Mark, kicking him hard with the heel of the foot he has hooked around Mark’s waist.
Mark shrugs, rubbing at what Eduardo spitefully hopes will turn out to be a bruise. “Your toes are all curled up.” Mark says, voice warm with approval.
He circles Eduardo’s hole again with his dick, just teasing, then fingers him shallowly with as many wet digits as he can manage (he barely gets to three and Eduardo is sobbing and making fists in the fleecey fabric of the hoodie under him).
Mark kneels up a little, and Eduardo tracks him through half closed eyes.
“Suck me?” Mark asks, and it’s that he asks that makes Eduardo smile and nod, wetting his lips again.
Mark takes and takes, and Eduardo knows this, expects this. He even likes it a little. All he asks in return is a little appreciation. Just because he’d never say no to Mark, doesn’t mean Mark should assume he has no choice.
“Yes,” says Eduardo, of course.
Mark slides up his body, plants his knees in the dirt either side of Eduardo’s head.
“Yeah.” Mark agrees, resting his dick against Eduardo’s cheek gently. He buries one hand in Eduardo’s hair, fingers stroking behind his ear gently.
Eduardo turns his face, mouths at Mark’s dick, kisses it fleetingly. It’s heavy against his lips, hot and perfectly smooth skinned. He takes it into his mouth, lets Mark push in and out for a while like he did with his fingers.
The taste of the precome and lubricant is salty as he sucks lazily, but more overwhelming is how gentle Mark is being.
“Yeah,” Mark murmurs again after a minute or two, pulling out of Eduardo’s mouth gently.
He slides down Eduardo’s body, resuming his prior position between his legs. He lifts Eduardo’s hips again, pulling them flush. Eduardo can feel Mark’s dick pushing into him, easy this time, stretching him, the shaft following, smooth and filling.
“Okay?” Mark says.
Eduardo can feel him trembling with the effort of staying perfectly still, half buried in him. He has to admire his restraint.
“Yeah,” he breathes, arching carefully, pressing against Mark. He bites his cheek at the stretch this entails. “That’s - you’re doing it exactly right.”
Mark flicks his eyes up from where he has Eduardo opened up around him, the look of aroused curiosity on his face replaced with a split second quirk of the lips “Exactly right?” he deadpans, and Eduardo is simultaneously exasperated and impressed by Mark’s utter self control. He can’t think of anyone else capable of keeping their poker face in order in the midst of sex.
Of course Mark simply has to top himself in every field, and he proceeds to do so by leaning over Eduardo and thoroughly kissing him as he works his hands under his shoulders and waist, dragging Eduardo up and into his lap.
“Good?” Mark pants, releasing Eduardo’s mouth in time for him to choke out a groan as he falls victim to gravity, and slides further down Mark’s cock.
“Where the fuck did you learn that?” Eduardo gasps. He has one arm looped around Mark’s neck for balance, and has planted the other hand against one of Mark’s thighs to stop sliding down any further. Mark is pushing to go really fucking deep, really fucking fast, and Eduardo would be lying if he said he isn’t feeling the burn. He can definitely see a couple of days of limping in his future.
“Is this the kind of language you’ve been teaching our kids?” Mark smirks, pressing his thumbs into Eduardo’s hips.
Eduardo jerks, “Shit, Mark,” then pants hard as the movement settles him a little deeper. “Oh god- shut up,” he groans.
“Charming.” Mark comments. He wraps his hands around Eduardo’s prominent hipbones and drags them down, rolling his hips up at the same time.
Eduardo makes a little broken sound, and Mark repeats the manoeuvre precisely, over and over until Eduardo is grinding himself down without encouragement, riding Mark’s dick because it is so fucking good and Mark is fucking biting his throat - not like the little nips that Diego gives him when he is being cuddly - but hard, sucking and licking over the bruise.
Everyone will see it when they get back. Everyone will know - that he and Mark went out into the jungle and fucked. He stills momentarily and his cheeks flame in pre-emptive embarrassment.
“Hey,” says Mark. His hands are still rubbing over Eduardo’s hips. He is licking his lips, as self-satisfied as an overfed cat. Eduardo can’t remember him smirking this much in weeks.
Mark lifts him up, tenderly, and pulls him down his dick again, like he’s reminding Eduardo of the technique.
“Keep going.” Mark wraps one of his tactile hands leisurely around Eduardo’s dick.
Eduardo rocks in place, squeezing tight around Mark where he’s bottomed out inside him. Mark grunts, somehow managing to sound both annoyed and turned on.
He jerks Eduardo off between them, squeezing and thumbing the head of his cock. He comes with a cry, spilling hot all over Mark’s stomach, and Mark just looks at the mess and then at Eduardo’s face, his hunger obvious in his eyes. Eduardo sags against him, eyes squeezing shut, pliable and warm in his climax.
Mark bounces Eduardo in his lap a while longer, groaning at how tight he clenches involuntarily through his orgasm.
“Oh,” says Eduardo, his eyes fluttering open when he finds himself sliding down Mark’s dick again. “Oh, wow.” It’s too much stimulation, but it feels so fucking good, and Mark still has his arms around him, lifting him gently and - fuck - “Fuck. Mark, that’s way too, too much-”
“I know,” Mark mutters, slamming Eduardo down his dick a couple more times. He can feel Eduardo tightening around him erratically. On the fifth thrust he comes, spurting nice and deep inside Eduardo in a series of quick shuddering jerks. He gets a predatory sense of pride from that. He has definitely been working with the raptors too long.
Eduardo is shaking, limbs still curled around Mark, plastered to him. He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to dislodge Mark.
Eventually, Mark moves. He eases out of Eduardo, lets him sprawl boneless on the dusty floor of their shelter.
“You’ll get cold.” He says awkwardly after a couple of seconds. He picks up his hoodie and dusts it off. He then crouches over Eduardo, who currently doesn’t seem capable of anything beyond trying to stop shaking.
“Here.”
Eduardo sits up slowly, winces briefly. He blinks at Mark, taking in his ruffled hair and the sweat and cum coating his chest. And the hoodie he is offering him.
He helps Eduardo into it gently, pushing his hands through the arms, and pulling the fabric down his torso. Eduardo shivers as Mark smoothes his hands over the fabric, still over-sensitive to touch. Mark kisses him once, chastely, and leaves him to sort through the clothing they’d discarded earlier.
His jeans aren’t too wet, so he pulls them on, wiping his stomach off with one of his damp socks. He throws their other clothes over the sheltered roots and branches at the entrance to the hollow. Everything else will need a couple of hours to dry out.
Mark sits down next to Eduardo and puts a bold arm around his waist. He figures there is absolutely no way Wardo can misread his gestures now, and it is gratifying to be proved right as Eduardo nestles closer.
Mark misses his hoodie when the storm picks up and a chill wind whips through their shelter momentarily, but Eduardo presses against him, and his body heat is enough to stave off the chill. He thinks about reaching under the pullover, pressing his fingers against Eduardo’s belly. Maybe bringing him off nice and slow this time. There is nothing else constructive to do out here without even his tablet computer.
Eduardo snuffles against his bare shoulder, breaking the silence.
Mark can feel the rumbling vibration of the words against his skin almost before he hears them.
“Hope Dustin is feeding Diego.” He says quietly into Mark’s neck.
“He will.” Mark says, certain of the fact.
“Diego doesn’t like the worms, only the grubs...” he murmurs.
Mark is getting chills at the way Eduardo’s speech is slurring into his lilting Portuguese accent.
“I didn’t know that.” Mark responds honestly. He lazily strokes a hand up Eduardo’s back and back down, smirking when he reaches the hem of the hoodie where it just stretches over the curve of Eduardo’s ass.
Eduardo squirms, self-consciously pulling the hem of the oversized hoodie further down his thighs.
“I know what you should call the park,” Eduardo says a few minutes later, out of nowhere.
The sex, he has to admit, seems to have cleared his head, even if it has rendered his muscles useless for the foreseeable future.
“If you’re going to say ‘Jurassic Park’, you should just get down on your knees again, because that would be a better use of your mouth,” Mark says, tracing the outline of Eduardo’s ear with one index finger.
Eduardo shivers, “No,” he retorts, “I was actually thinking ‘Pangaea‘ would be a little more fitting.”
“Huh.” Mark says, surprised. “That’s actually pretty good.”
“Not just a pretty face,” Eduardo says, self-deprecating.
“No one has ever called me shallow.” Mark says. “You are the best intern in the hatchery, after all.”
Eduardo has to turn away to hide his smile. “I love you, you know,” he says.
Mark laughs, voice sharp, “Finally.”
Eduardo elbows him as hard as he can with pretty much zero feeling in his arms. He is exhausted. He drifts off for a while, but not so deeply that he misses Mark whispering against the nape of his neck.
“Love you too.”
---
The edge of the enclosure isn’t far from Mark’s hollow tree safehouse, but it does involve crossing the most populated section of the carnivore environment. This combined with Eduardo’s very badly concealed limp ensures that it takes them two hours of slow walking before they reach the four-wheeler.
They drive back almost as silently as they’d come, only this time Wardo sleeps for most of the journey.
He droops lazily against Mark’s side, head on his shoulder, both hands curled in the pocket of the hoodie he still hasn’t returned.
Part 1 || Part 2
Fandom: The Social Network (Mark Zuckerberg/Eduardo Saverin)
25,000 words | NC-17 | ALL THE PORN IS BELONG TO THIS PART
Diego lets out a plaintive baby sized roar and flies out from under the bed, darting between Mark's feet and hurling himself against Eduardo's chest. He spins around and hisses viciously at Mark's toes.
"You scared him," Eduardo accuses him, trying not to burst into laughter.
"Huh." Mark says, wriggling his toes experimentally.
Diego snaps at them.
"At least we know my programming is sound."
"About that..." Eduardo says quietly, petting Diego into calmness.
Mark reaches behind him and pushes the lid of his laptop down.
"I heard about the first ones."
Mark shrugs, face expressionless.
Eduardo rolls onto his back, sighing. Diego seems to take that as a sign that Mark's toes are no threat. He creeps around them again, seemingly intent on finishing off the sock.
"Come here." Eduardo pats the floor until Mark relents and sits beside him, knees clicking as he stretches them out.
Eduardo looks up at him for a while. "I called him Diego."
Mark nods once.
"Do you like it?"
Mark studies him blankly. "Does it matter whether I do?"
Eduardo closes his eyes, screwing up his face. He has to turn away for a moment. "Don't be like that, Mark."
He feels Mark's fingers on his brow, tentative, trying to smooth out the frown. "Just-- Stop being such an asshole."
The fingers leave. "...How?"
"Just say that you're sorry."
"I'm sorry."
"Do you even know why you should be sorry?"
Mark hesitates. "For forcing you to stay like this. Keeping things from you. For--"
Eduardo turns back to watch him say it.
"I'm sorry I never had the guts to ask you what you wanted." It's almost a mumble, but Eduardo hears him crystal clear.
"Okay," Eduardo says, staring up at Mark.
"Okay?"
"Ask me, asshole." Eduardo laughs, slightly hysterical.
"Okay, uh." Mark watches him laugh, bewildered. "What do you want, Wardo?"
Eduardo can feel that thrum of right. He has power in this moment to take - but also he hopes wildly, to give. He knows he can give Mark so much. He thinks of the ways Mark has been pushing and pushing, trying to manipulate him into roles and situations. He thinks of Diego, and the damn canjica, and Gabriella. And the code all suddenly seems clear to him, even though he's never seen it, could never read it, doesn't need to when he knows that Mark wrote it and wrote them into it. If Mark had just asked him, he would have said yes. He would have said yes to everything and Mark.
"Kiss me, right now." Eduardo demands, so certain that it translates as desperation.
To his credit, Mark doesn't hesitate. He's clumsy, and he bites Eduardo's lips in his eagerness. Eduardo yelps, but pulls at him and drags him down nonetheless. Mark throws a leg over Eduardo's waist, grasps at his shoulders. He's panting almost immediately into Eduardo's mouth, sucking at his lips, groaning at the pressure between them. It's as if Mark has lost all self-control. Eduardo can barely catch his breath, and when he does he finds himself unable to breathe again almost immediately.
Mark is kissing his jaw, burying his face in Eduardo's neck, breathing him in heavily as if he hasn't seen him in years. Eduardo closes his eyes and just soaks it in. The weight of Mark gently rocking against him is perfect, it's warm, it's like something Eduardo has been missing for years without even knowing.
He curls one arm around Mark's waist, and places the other hand on the back of Mark's head, softly urging him on. After a few moments, Mark seems to come back to himself. He pulls back slowly, face flushed. He cups Eduardo's face, groans.
"Diego is chirping," he says, hoarse. He shifts gingerly, climbing off Eduardo's lap with difficulty and peering under the bed.
Eduardo sits up hurriedly, "Shit," he says, "shit, Mark, find him."
They find Diego easily. He's managed to get his claws caught in the torn threads of the sock, and he's rolling on his back, kicking and squeaking unhappily. Mark unravels him deftly, and hands him over to Eduardo, who only has to pet him for a moment before he's writhing to get away and play again.
"They grow up so fast," Eduardo says, slightly put out at his casual dismissal.
"I could scare him again," Mark offers sarcastically.
Eduardo punches him in the shoulder. "Asshole," he says again, fondly.
---
“So who else on this rock is hitched?” Sean asks, dropping his breakfast tray down opposite Chris.
He nods across the room to where Mark is cradling a flash of green that can’t be anything but Diego in one arm and precariously balancing a tray of food that he is clearly not going to eat in the other. Mark puts both Diego and the tray down on a table that Eduardo is using as a makeshift pillow and sits opposite him.
Eduardo sits up and they all look at their own plates busily.
“I’m an ordained minister,” Dustin says helpfully.
Dustin, as a mere zoologist, is apparently persona non grata, and doesn’t even get a good morning nod despite having copped the majority of the splash from Sean’s generous portion of scrambled eggs.
“Seriously, I printed out the certificate.”
“You’re Jewish,” Chris says, exasperated.
“I am a tolerant man!” Dustin declares.
Sean looks at Chris pityingly. “I hope you aren’t locked into this relationship.”
“Excuse me!” Chris says, blushing to the roots of his hair despite his vehement head shaking. “Some of us are here to actually work, not hook up.”
“Oh, Chris,” Dustin says mournfully. “You besmirch our love. And Wardo is definitely not hooking up, look at him. Marky is practically going to have to spoonfeed him his breakfast. In a totally non-sexy way.”
Sean hums sympathetically, “He really shouldn’t have knocked up Saverin so soon.”
Chris gets up and takes his tray to the chemists’ table.
“Nooo, come back...” Dustin trails off, realising he is having breakfast alone with Sean Parker. “This is weird.”
“Yeah.”
Dustin stirs his fruit salad for a second, “Yeah. Bye.” He gets up and heads for Mark and Wardo’s table. At least Eduardo will let him play with his food as long as he shares with Diego.
On Tuesday morning, Dustin regrets not making better peace with Sean when he runs afoul of a triceratops on his daily rounds. The island has a serious deficit of people he can call for a rescue when he does something so truly catastrophically embarrassing that even Eduardo would laugh at him before bailing him out. Sean can at least empathise with him on some level when it comes to having a history of bad PR.
Chris just about has a heart attack when the medical centre calls him up to inform him that their head zoologist has sustained a nasty gash and a minor sprain. When he turns up at Dustin’s bedside he is a little less concerned and a lot more pissed off to hear that the triceratops hadn’t even done anything wrong, let alone meant to injure Dustin. Chris wouldn’t have minded if that had been the case because he would have been spared the reality, which is that apparently Dustin had been riding on the dinosaur and had sustained his injuries falling off.
“Do you think you’re Indiana Jones or something?” Chris asks him, exasperated, as their head medic wraps a neon green bandage around Dustin’s ankle and shin. “Did they encourage this kind of behaviour in the biology department at Harvard? In what world would it be a good idea to ride on a triceratops? You could have
been trampled.”
Dustin shrugs, “It would have been cool if it had worked. And technically, Sheldon didn’t object. I just fell off. I’ll ride him right up to the foyer next time and you’ll see how cool and heroic I look and you’ll be super jealous.”
“I absolutely forbid you to ride on anything in this park.” Chris declares, point blank.
Dustin raises an eyebrow suggestively.
“Anything.” Chris says again firmly.
Of course this has to be the day that Sean sweeps in from the surveillance room and throws a tantrum about his tyrannosaurus colony being emotionally distressed.
“They aren’t even fighting each other for dominance,” he moans, showing Mark footage on his tablet, “they’re sticking together, hunting as a pack, and huddling together at night. Look how nervy Britney is acting.” He points at the biggest tyrannosaurus of the four strong pack.
Eduardo isn’t sure that tearing the flesh in strips from one of the carefully deposited goat carcasses counts as nervous behaviour, but Mark looks mildly concerned.
Eduardo has pretty much given up on pretending to oversee the bulk of the finances, seeing as Diego gets bored with the office in about 30 seconds flat and starts chewing cables. Mark very awkwardly demands that the two of them spend most of their time in the labs, allegedly so Diego’s progress can be monitored by the biologists.
Eduardo doesn’t need to be convinced. The interns insist on taking turns teaching Diego to catch insect prey, when they aren’t letting him hatch the first pterosaur babies. His relocation also allows Eduardo to catch up on sleep on the two seater sofa in what turns out to be Mark’s notoriously un-secret coding office. If Eduardo occasionally stirs to find Mark pulled up to the sofa in his desk chair, fingering the tufts of hair that have escaped his hurried morning gel application, he doesn’t object.
“Pan back 30 degrees,” Mark directs.
Eduardo deposits Diego in Dustin’s lap to cheer him up. He is going through a stage where he constantly tried to chirp shrilly over human conversations, specifically Chris’s, which amuses Dustin to no end.
Eduardo stands over Mark’s shoulder trying to see what it is he has spotted in the fairly monotonous foliage. Despite its devastating beauty, the flora all tended to blur together for him after a while. If it weren’t for his inexplicably good sense of direction and keen observation of weather patterns, Chris and Mark probably wouldn’t let him out of the compound. Chris barely trusted Dustin to find the gates on his own, and still threatened daily to chip him in his sleep. Actually, after this incident, Eduardo is pretty sure that it’ll become more of a promise than a threat.
“There,” Mark says, prodding the screen hard enough that it autozooms.
“A camera?” Eduardo hazards, squinting at the pixelated image, his stomach twisting up at something familiar about the picture.
“What the fuck,” Sean says, scandalized.
Dustin has to be physically restrained by Chris until Mark passes them the tablet, his face perfectly blank.
Predictably, everyone turns to Sean.
“Whoa, he says, throwing his hands up, “there is no way in hell I would smuggle out data on my own t-rexs without my name all over it in neon. Popular Science would give me millions. Think about it,” he stresses.
“He’s got a point,” Chris points out, resigned to the fact. Diego squeaks merrily over top of him.
Sean drops his hands, letting out a breath in a long whistle, “a guy makes one mistake and bam, guilty for life.”
Chris looks like he’s about to change his mind for a second.
Dustin dumps Diego into his lap, effectively defusing him for a moment.
Eduardo takes the tablet from Dustin, zooms as close as the camera can manage without losing visibility completely. He has to swallow before he announces it: “It’s not Sean. That’s Winklevoss equipment.”
He clears his throat again, unable to meet Chris’s unspoken ‘so what?’ expression with more than a nervous glance.
“As in...Winklevii-only, DNA-tuned electronics.”
Dustin throws his head back into the infirmary pillows. “This again, whyyyy,” he moans, muffled.
“So, technically, this is still Sean’s fault.” Chris says, gritting his teeth.
Eduardo shrugs. He can’t deny that that’s the truth.
“One of the twins had to plant it and set it up though,” he reminds Chris.
“Can we knock it out with an electromagnetic pulse?” Dustin asks.
“No,” Chris says.
“Not unless you want to lose our equipment too.” Mark adds, sullen.
He’s fixated on the tablet, refusing to meet Eduardo’s eyes. Eduardo bites his lip and tells Chris, “We have to smash it.”
“Right,” Mark says, biting the word out with a finality that Eduardo recognises as resignation. He breathes again.
Mark taps on the screen in Eduardo’s lap, memorising the coordinates of the surveillance plant. He shuts down the tablet and hands it back to Sean.
“You are not going to the predator enclosure on your own.” Chris says slowly. “Not with Dustin down and the possibility of the Winklevoss twins being on the grounds. Twins who, I must remind you, describe themselves in their own words as six foot four, two-twenty, and oh yeah, Mark, there are two of them. And they hate your guts.”
“They aren’t actually murderous,” Eduardo says, uncomfortably.
Mark presses his lips together. “Get me one of the taser-prods. The sooner I go, the less data they harvest.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.” Mark says over his shoulder sharply, shuffling out and down the corridor.
“Yikes,” Sean says, watching Eduardo storm after him.
“Trouble in paradise. What got up his ass?” He inches away from Chris gingerly. “Apart from the obvious.”
“Potentially,” Dustin theorises slowly, following Chris’s pacing route around the room with his eyes. “Potentially...the Winklevii, right?”
Sean sucks in a gasp that threatens to swallow up Dustin’s head, along with the gurney and sidetable.
“For fuck’s sake, Dustin.” Chris hisses, flailing his hands at the door.
“Both?” Sean asks, wide eyed, practically on his toes with excitement at being party to founder gossip.
“Please say both!?” he begs.
“Shut up,” Chris snarls.
“No, just let me get this straight.” Sean says, grinning manically, “You guys wanted me killed for merely switching sides - totally legally, by the way. Meanwhile, your CFO is banging the competition, and all that happens to him is that he marries your CEO?!”
Chris looks pained.
“Though...I guess you could call that last part a punishment,” Sean muses. “How come you guys never told me Mrs. Zuck was such a boss? OW-”
Sean splutters and shakes himself like a dog. “Too soon?” he says, wiping his face with a sleeve.
“You don’t talk about Wardo like that.” Dustin says, uncharacteristically icy. He sets his glass back down on the table with a click.
“You have no idea what Wardo and Mark are like, seeing as you aren’t one of their friends.” Dustin emphasises the word. “It is totally none of your business, but so you don’t go thinking you can sell your bullshit fantasies about Eduardo to yet another magazine, I want you to know the truth. Eduardo is, barring Chris and my mom- He’s the best person I’ve ever known.”
Chris is just calm enough to look flattered
“If he ever made it with a Winklevii, vermin that they are, it sure wasn’t while he was with Mark.” Dustin glances at Chris, suddenly nervous.
Chris nods.
Diego rolls restlessly against the sheet, and Dustin smiles at him, with his familiar crooked grin.
“Even if Mark seems to think they were betrothed in Orientation Week, they weren’t actually together until we got here. We don’t have a problem with Eduardo’s life choices prior to the park. So you definitely don’t get to judge Eduardo.”
Chris raises his eyebrows, fighting the urge to facepalm, “Life choices, huh?”
“Yeah, thanks for that vague explanation.” Sean says wryly, wringing out his pant legs. “I’m sure the Winklevosses would love to hear that fucking them constitutes a life choice. I just wanted to know whether their dicks are as big as their egos. Saverin’s alright. And I actually kind of like working here, yaknow? I’m not going to sell out the boss’s wife.”
Dustin grasps for his cup threateningly, but he nods, slow and appreciative.
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.” Chris says grudgingly. “But I have to admit that I’ve always wondered.”
“Eduardo’s with Mark now.” Dustin warns them, cupping Diego in his hands and offering him up like Simba.
“Remember? Guys?”
“Yeah.” Sean says. He walks over to Dustin’s bedside and reaches out gingerly to pet Diego. “They’ll be okay.
I wouldn’t worry.”
“It feels so wrong, but I believe you.” Chris says, coming over to sit on Dustin’s other side.
Dustin hums. “Now we’ve conquered our fear of Sean Parker, do you think we need to bother worrying about rogue Winklevii and uppity tyrannosaurs?”
Sean smiles into his lap.
Chris rubs his hands over his face. “Honestly, no. Mark is way scarier than anything out in the park. It is incredibly unlikely that the Winklevosses are still here, and-” He twists his lips and made a face at Dustin.
“Maybe they can sort themselves out on their own.”
Dustin snorts.
---
“I’m coming too,” Eduardo says in a voice that brooks no argument.
“No,” Mark snaps.
He stuffs supplies into his hoodie pocket, sliding extras into his back pockets.
Eduardo reaches for one of Dustin’s pre-stocked utility belts (and who does he think he is, Batman?), clipping it around his waist silently. He sits down and starts swapping his dress shoes for hiking boots.
Mark huffs and sits at the other end of the bench to pull at his own laces.
Eduardo watches his struggle until he can’t bear it anymore. He gets to his knees and bats Mark’s hands away. Loops them around, pushes through, under, pulls, repeats the action smoothly.
“They’re mine too,” Eduardo says quietly, without looking up. He knows Mark will be stubbornly staring at the wall behind him.
“You can’t bring me here, program me into dinosaur DNA and then refuse to let me go out into the park I paid for, Mark.”
It’s a dick move, pulling the money card, Eduardo knows. But he also knows that it’ll get a reaction out of Mark, which is more than he can boast the other six days of the week.
Mark gets up brusquely and handprints a locker embedded in the wall beside the taser recharge point. It’s stocked with a selection of guns, though Eduardo couldn’t name any of them. They look expensive and deadly. He pulls out two, and a couple of rattling boxes of ammunition. He loads them expertly and slides them into the empty spots in his utility belt.
“Ready?” says Mark, resigned to it.
---
They take the four wheel drive as close to the surveillance point as they can get on the touring roads. Mark drives all the way, his teeth gritted. Eduardo spends the trip staring out the windows at the track. He’s never had the pleasure of taking the tour, and he’s impressed. There is no doubt that the park will make good on his investment. The foliage is beautiful. It looks like Chris has had Christy Lee and the botanists reviving long extinct plants and trees, as well as replicating herbivore foliage. This is work above and beyond what he’d originally commissioned them to do.
They pass multiple herbivore enclosures, and Eduardo manages to spot not only Sheldon the Triceratops, but a small family of Diplodocus across the valley, and a multitude of free range Procompsognathus, likely relations of Myrtle.
There are small mammals like Eduardo has never seen before, even in books or zoos - he assumes they must be breeding more natural prey for the carnivores. It’s all so much bigger off the audit page. He’s constantly exclaiming and pointing out his finds to Mark, momentarily forgetting their cold war.
Ironically, they’re crossing into carnivore country by the time Mark finally loosens up. He drives a little looser, seeming to know the dips and twists in the road like the back of his hand. And Eduardo supposes he must. This is raptor country, after all.
They don’t see anything but small grazing mammals for a while. Eduardo figures that this is probably a good sign, as the less agitated the lizards are, the less likely they are to attack. This has been a bit of a rule of thumb with Diego lately, as Dustin has discovered through liberal loss of skin to his hands.
They pull off to the side of the road in the middle of the large carnivore stretch. Mark turns the key off, but leaves it in the ignition. They sit in the mid afternoon swelter for a couple of minutes.
Mark wipes a droplet of sweat off of his forehead, pursing his lips.
“Which one of them?” He asks, finally. The question bursts out with all the force that eight months of wondering can hold.
To his credit, Eduardo doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know who Mark is talking about.
“Neither,” he says, “I never - not with them. I was just a consulting accountant there, but they were kind, considering, you know, the whole intellectual theft suit,” Eduardo shrugs. “You were mad at me, and my father...I quit after the first couple of weeks, Mark. I went home, and -” he looks pained and sad in equal amounts. “My father won’t even look at me anymore, you know.”
Mark studies him closely. It’s a gaze Eduardo has seen wilt scientists twice their age. He can see right through them, dissect their motives. Eduardo isn’t afraid to let Mark see his motives.
“It was an internship with the right people.” Eduardo says baldly. “Sean had taken everything already, and you were so angry. My father was pressuring me to go to New York. It looked like the only choice at the time.”
He doesn’t say sorry. He’d come back.
“You came back.” Mark echoed his thoughts.
“I came back for you,” Eduardo says, truthfully.
Mark smiles, quick, but it’s there for a split second, and Eduardo sees it. “I know.”
He swings open the drivers’ side door. “Let’s go smash their shit.”
---
Tramping through the jungle is more fun than Eduardo expected. Mark tells him off every five minutes, threatening that they’ll get jumped by one of the raptor packs or surprised by one of the tyrannosaurs if he keeps up his noise. Eventually, Mark just gives up and seizes his hand so that they can at least minimise the likelihood of being picked off separately. This way he only has to hack at the foliage once, rather than endure listening to Eduardo bash at it fruitlessly.
It also means he can point out particularly complicated sequences he’d hand coded for the botanists, and watch Eduardo’s face shift into wonder as he realises that Mark is bringing back 65 million year old flowers, because he can, because he is that good at what he does.
Mark has always known that Eduardo is a sucker for a success story. He appreciates talent. His pupils dilate, and the tips of his ears flush, and Mark likes to make it happen, likes to be the cause, should be the only one who can impress him like that.
They approach the point Mark has plotted in his smartphone GPS, and Eduardo spots it first, the white hood of the camera peering out from under a clump of ferns. The clouds decide to open as they circle the clearing, soaking them with a warm downpour.
Eduardo shakes the water out of his hair, laughing. The heat and the damp reminds him of childhood - a childhood before Miami. He hasn’t stood in the rain in a long time, and hasn’t been this deliriously happy whilst soaked to the skin in even longer.
Mark clamps a hand over his mouth reactively, dragging him under the cover of a bright clutch of flowering bushes. “Tyrannosaur.” Mark hisses. He doesn’t sound panicked, instead rather pleased at the prospect.
Eduardo shrinks back and squints through the leaves, breathing slowly against Mark’s damp hand.
There is a dinosaur in the clearing - not huge, like Eduardo has expected, but probably about the height of two grown men. The rex must be a teenager, if dinosaurs can have youth divisions.
“That’s Britney.” Mark whispers. “Stay still.” He wraps an arm around Eduardo’s waist to be sure.
Britney snuffles around for a minute or two, almost knocking over the Winklevoss camera in her inspection.
“Even she knows that box is bullshit.” Mark mutters.
Eduardo nods slowly, wondering whether Britney would do them the supreme favour of helping them to knock out the camera. Night is beginning to fall fast. She swipes at it, but loses interest when it refuses to react, finally snorting and padding away on heavy feet.
“Beautiful.” Eduardo breathes into Mark’s palm.
Mark relaxes his grasp, but holds them there for a long five minutes, just to give Britney a head start.
“I’m glad you think so.” Mark answers, eventually. He grazes a hand over Eduardo’s hip before he lets go, passing into the clearly cautiously.
He drops down in front of the camera, smirking suddenly. “Come here, Wardo.”
They crouch in the rain and wave into the lens together for a moment. Eduardo spares the Winklevosses a jaunty salute before Mark steps back and kicks in the face of the camera with the steel toe of his boot.
Eduardo pulls it out of the soil with a yank and slings it over his shoulder. “Satisfied?”
Mark shrugs noncommittally. He licks the raindrops that have collected on the bow of his upper lip. Eduardo unconsciously mimics him.
“We won’t make it back in this dark. Can’t risk torches in this enclosure,” Mark says, matter of fact.
“But-” Eduardo peers through the clearing, hesitant. The gloom has truly fallen, and the rain is not showing any sign of letting up.
“This way, I know the topography better to the north.”
Mark wraps his fingers around Eduardo’s free wrist securely. Eduardo has no choice but to trust Mark’s inexplicable sense of direction and follow him down a barely-there trail in the near pitch black of the jungle.
It seems like a longer walk that it probably is, but the dark always seems to lengthen time, the lack of sunlight disorienting all of Eduardo’s senses: time, direction, distance. Despite being reliably able to tell anyone the time with an error margin of no more than fifteen minutes during daylight hours, he always finds himself off by hours when it comes to the night.
Mark had always seemed to have the opposite problem - though he’d never consider it a problem. Time was irrelevant to Mark. He merely did things as swiftly as he considered they should be done. He never blinked at the loss of days at a time. Eduardo has watched Mark code through a day and a night without faltering, Mark only surprised when he emerged from his haze 22 hours later to find that Eduardo was still on his bed, having finally succumbed to exhaustion and curled up under a blanket to wait out the last few hours.
In the same way Mark seems intent on marching endlessly through the scrub, silently batting away huge closed up flower buds. Eduardo has a new respect for the night vision capabilities of computer nerds. He has adjusted to the darkness well enough to dodge most of the trees, even thought he has to wipe rainwater out of his eyes every two minutes; but Mark’s steps are by far more quiet and sure. Clearly he knows the trail now, from the speed at which they twist through the jungle.
Mark has adopted an odd gait too, Eduardo notices. He moves smoothly, obviously a learned form of movement, as there is still a familiar repressed slouch to his movements. He picks his feet up now, which is a big difference considering Mark was always the guy to be counted on to give you a static shock, thanks to the way he dragged his feet on the carpet at Kirkland.
For a short distance Eduardo assumes that Mark is nervous as they proceed. He darts his head from side to side, peering into the undergrowth on the left and the right far more than ahead of them. It is only when Mark spooks him by pulling them off the trail for a small family of what look like badgers to pass them that he remembers Jurassic Park. Eduardo specifically recalls the hunting strategies of velociraptors - they work in threes or more, one decoy meeting the prey head on, two killing from either side. A chill runs up his back and he shakes off Mark’s hold around his wrist. He takes his hand instead, curling his fingers through Mark’s, the warmth a calming antidote. Mark squeezes immediately, and pulls them onward.
“Not far, Wardo,” he says, pitching low. His voice doesn’t carry far. On purpose, Eduardo realises.
“This next valley is safe, off the hunting paths. We’re lucky we haven’t bumped into any of my packs yet.” He sounds a little harried, triple-checking their left side before he moves them back onto the faint track.
Eduardo nods before he remembers that Mark can’t see him. He strokes his thumb over Mark’s wrist instead, hoping to convey some amount of grateful. Insisting on tagging along had seemed like a strategic move at first. It had felt important to show Mark that he has a vested interest in the welfare of the outer reaches of the park, to prove that he can do more than sit around stroking the newborn hatchlings and teaching Diego to beg for grubs.
It is becoming discomfortingly clear to Eduardo that he is not cut out to venture into the park without escort. Mark, with his sharp understanding of his creations and a blatant lack of fear that in turns intimidates and impresses Eduardo, has been protecting him this whole time. Logically, it should be a feeling of shame that fills him, but instead, he feels warmed with appreciation.
They clear the top of a ridge. Frustratingly, they get less rainfall in the open than they have been under the foliage. Nonetheless, Mark points out the slippery mud that will slide them back to the bottom of the valley if they lose their footing.
The slope down the other side is gentle and stony, made up of scoria, volcanic rock from what it sounds like to tread on. Eduardo notes this with interest. They must be on the collapsed cone of an old volcano. The brush on this side is lower and less lush, barring the immense trees that seem to cluster together, determined on surviving anything.
It would be difficult for anything bigger than a bent over human to hide in this vegetation, Eduardo thinks, putting two and two together.
“Here,” Mark says, dragging Eduardo behind a mass of overgrown flax. It is dark and smells like the damp forest. He is surprised to find himself in what looks like a tiny, but dry room. It dawns on him. “This is a hollow tree,” he says, with wonder. “It’s huge, Mark, did you find this-“
Mark slips his hands into Eduardo’s pants, deliciously warm fingers un-tucking his dress shirt for him.
“With the velo-What are you doing?”
Mark’s hands move deftly to Wardo’s belt, flicking out the pin, and pushing his pants down for him. “Take off your shoes,” Mark says, starting on Wardo’s buttons. “We’re safe in here.”
Eduardo is too blindsided to do anything but comply, shuffling out of his boots and the soaked socks he’d been trying to ignore.
“You’ll catch a cold in wet clothes,“ Mark sees fit to explain. He has trouble with a button, and shrugs, wrenching at it hard enough to snap the thread.
“Uh, I’ll catch one out of them too.” Wardo points out, his mouth quickly becoming the driest part of his body.
Mark shakes his head, easing the shirt down Eduardo’s arms, leaving him in nothing more than damp boxer briefs. He pushes Eduardo gently against the wall of the tree and leans up to kiss him, finally, sighing his relief into his lips, shoulders dropping the tension of having to play look out for two people.
Eduardo gasps into his mouth momentarily, but he kisses back, lips parting almost immediately under Mark’s firm movements. He allows Mark to direct the kiss, responding to his cues. He is panting audibly when Mark pulls back to allow him to breathe.
Mark studies him quickly. His eyes are hooded, tracking Mark’s movements, and his chest is heaving. He can see that Eduardo is half hard, outlined against the damp fabric of his briefs. Mark wonders about how uncomfortable the underwear is, and he reaches down between them to pull them down Eduardo’s hips.
Eduardo makes a tiny involuntary hiccup at his touch, jerking against his hands. Mark looks up at his face again. He can’t boast any great ability with reading emotion, but Eduardo looks flushed and he is breathing hard. He doesn’t seem upset, so Mark carries on, dragging the damp garment down Eduardo’s legs. He lets it fall most of the way to the ground.
Mark steps back, takes in the expanse of Eduardo’s tan skin. He wants, so he takes it, stepping back into Eduardo’s space. He tastes the skin of his neck, mouth stilling long enough for him to feel the heavy drag of Eduardo’s pulse. He can hear hot blood coursing through veins and arteries, hidden beneath the surface. The reason his creatures breathe, run, mate - hidden causes of life, based in flesh, driven by programmed responses and cues.
Mark can predict the behaviour of more than a thousand beings on his island. Eduardo - he cannot. It is exciting. Mark is used to cool dry skin, to turning lizards over to see their bellies, matching code to scales, finding perfection via his compiler and a good friend with a dab hand with a pipette.
Eduardo is so intricate a creature, and he is terrifyingly warm despite the chill on his skin from the rain. People don’t have absolute code. It is impossible that they be perfect. Eduardo is more perfect than anything Mark has yet made, and he can’t understand it.
He can comprehend want though -if Eduardo wants it - if Eduardo wants him.
Mark rubs against him painstakingly. He presses his hip into Eduardo’s belly, feels the hard line of Eduardo’s cock slide against his clothing. He stays there like that, pushing firmly with his thigh, watching Eduardo’s eyelashes flutter, and when one of Eduardo’s hands comes up, shaking, and he buries his long fingers in Mark’s hair, Mark loses his mind for just a second.
He crowds Eduardo against the concaved curve of the tree’s innards, grabbing at him greedily, pushing their lips together with open mouthed kisses that he hopes communicate more than the handful of inadequate words he has gifted Eduardo with over the course of their friendship.
Sweet Eduardo, with his encouragements and his dorm tidying, his cooking and his caring, and his carte blanche personality. Mark takes from him again, like he has been for years. He savages Wardo’s mouth, nipping his lips and filling him with his tongue, tasting the insides of Wardo’s cheeks, the delicately ridged roof, the choking sob of air Eduardo expels when he tries to pull back. Mark takes all this, in return leaving behind bruised lips and the memory of intrusion, of possession.
Eduardo is moaning, Mark realises, breathing hard. Whining and bucking against Mark’s hip. He slides his hand between them and takes hold of Eduardo’s cock. It is smeared with pre-come already. He squeezes firmly, then pumps it steadily. Eduardo cries out, sinking against the bark behind him. Mark knows the tree bark is rough against Wardo’s back.
“Ow,” Eduardo groans, but he doesn’t stop pushing into Mark’s hand. He just arches his back away from the bark, whines when Mark rubs his thumb in circles over the tip.
Mark pulls back and considers the scratches Wardo is rubbing at with one hand. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely, not sure he can trust his voice enough to say anything further. Instead, Mark drags his hoodie over his head and lays it on the dry ground at his feet. “Lie down,” he says.
Eduardo looks at him for a moment, clearly considering the situation. Knowing Eduardo, Mark supposes he is worrying about redundant factors, such as whether dinosaurs will catch them having intercourse (they won’t care, Wardo) or whether Mark is certain he wants to be with him (a stupid question, as Mark is fairly sure that everyone who had ever met Eduardo Saverin has wanted to bend him over their desk).
Eduardo sits down on the hoodie awkwardly, his thin legs taking up most of their floor space despite being folded up. His cock is still firm and full, despite the lull. Mark undoes his fly, kicks off his jeans and sneakers hurriedly, tears off his t-shirt. He pauses to look at Eduardo again.
His eyes are huge in the semi darkness, pupils blown so wide that he can barely see the warm brown of his irises.
“I’m getting cold,” Eduardo says quietly, hugging his knees.
Mark drops to his knees, reaching for Eduardo carefully. “Have you ever been with a guy?” He asks in a low voice.
Eduardo nods, smiling wryly at the bitter scowl he gets in return.
“Will you let me fuck you?”
Eduardo’s eyes seem to darken, if that is at all possible. He lets go of a trembling breath. “Please.”
Mark moves quickly, sinuous and quiet, pushing Eduardo onto his back. He settles over him, pinning him down with his weight. Eduardo thinks fleetingly of the raptors Mark has been running with, and shivers involuntarily.
He presses against Eduardo’s stomach hard, hands wrapped around Eduardo’s upper arms, holding him still. Eduardo sucks in shakily as Mark’s dick slides across his stomach, over his navel, leaving a slick trail of precome.
Mark licks his palm thoroughly, rubbing their dicks together with a shudder. Eduardo strains up as if electrified, his eyes squeezed shut, mouth slack, lips trembling. He moans, low and agonized when Mark wraps his wet hand around the two of them. He moves his palm over them quickly, coaxing more wetness out of his own slit.
He releases them, grasping at Eduardo’s thighs instead, spreading him wide. Eduardo keens, encouraging him, curling a leg up against his abdomen.
“Yeah, Mark, yeah, just-“ he doesn’t elaborate, just strains up, lifting his hips, spreading obscenely. Mark can see everything.
Somehow Mark has a tube in his hands, where the hell it could have come from is beyond Eduardo until he thinks, Dustin and his damned pre-stocked utility belts. Mark gets the cap off and he's probably squeezing out the entire contents of the bottle into his hand and over Eduardo's open thighs, a complete waste, and just this once, Eduardo doesn't care.
Mark drags him closer, his lip curling faintly as he reaches for him with his slicked hand, stroking gently over Eduardo’s balls. He rubs firmly against Eduardo’s pucker with the pad of his thumb. Eduardo pants, jerking as Mark presses inwards. He rubs the rim methodically, working his way inside, slow and steady.
“-In me now,” Eduardo moans, pressing down.
“I think you’re underestimating the size of my dick.” Mark says, modestly.
Eduardo snorts, just managing a retort, “It’s not as big as your ego.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mark says, twisting his thumb a little deeper, “Is that a challenge?”
Eduardo is momentarily incapacitated, trembling at Mark’s last push, “Y-yeah.”
Mark pulls his hand away and lines himself up, leaning over Eduardo’s torso, biting his lip in a grin.
He rubs his dick against Eduardo’s inner thigh, slapping the leaking head against the delicate skin there, stiffening to full hardness.
He tries to push the head of his cock into Eduardo’s hole, nice and slow.
Eduardo writhes, flails his hands up to grasp at Mark’s shoulders and wrap around his neck.
The lube isn’t really enough yet, just as he’d known. It’s still hot, though.
“Fuck,” Mark mutters. “Want you.”
Eduardo goes still. He gazes up at Mark from his back, chest rapidly rising and falling, his legs still splayed.
Mark tries again, pushes harder, rubs his dick around Eduardo’s tight little hole, smearing precome around.
Eduardo is whining now. When Mark pulls away, he gives him a wobbly smile, shrugging indifferently at being wrong.
“Guess you are pretty big,” he concedes shakily. “You should probably put your fingers in my mouth.”
Mark drops Eduardo’s thigh, lunges up his body, pushes his fingers deep into Eduardo’s mouth. Somehow, they’re gone almost as quickly as they came and then Eduardo is grabbing for Mark’s forearm, trying to slow the two fingers he is sliding into him ruthlessly.
“Fuck!” he wails, twisting in Mark’s grip. He arches, barely able to keep from coming immediately. Mark pulls them out, leaves that perfect spot alone, and Eduardo drops limp, back down against Mark’s hoodie.
“You don’t do that!” He half-shouts at Mark, kicking him hard with the heel of the foot he has hooked around Mark’s waist.
Mark shrugs, rubbing at what Eduardo spitefully hopes will turn out to be a bruise. “Your toes are all curled up.” Mark says, voice warm with approval.
He circles Eduardo’s hole again with his dick, just teasing, then fingers him shallowly with as many wet digits as he can manage (he barely gets to three and Eduardo is sobbing and making fists in the fleecey fabric of the hoodie under him).
Mark kneels up a little, and Eduardo tracks him through half closed eyes.
“Suck me?” Mark asks, and it’s that he asks that makes Eduardo smile and nod, wetting his lips again.
Mark takes and takes, and Eduardo knows this, expects this. He even likes it a little. All he asks in return is a little appreciation. Just because he’d never say no to Mark, doesn’t mean Mark should assume he has no choice.
“Yes,” says Eduardo, of course.
Mark slides up his body, plants his knees in the dirt either side of Eduardo’s head.
“Yeah.” Mark agrees, resting his dick against Eduardo’s cheek gently. He buries one hand in Eduardo’s hair, fingers stroking behind his ear gently.
Eduardo turns his face, mouths at Mark’s dick, kisses it fleetingly. It’s heavy against his lips, hot and perfectly smooth skinned. He takes it into his mouth, lets Mark push in and out for a while like he did with his fingers.
The taste of the precome and lubricant is salty as he sucks lazily, but more overwhelming is how gentle Mark is being.
“Yeah,” Mark murmurs again after a minute or two, pulling out of Eduardo’s mouth gently.
He slides down Eduardo’s body, resuming his prior position between his legs. He lifts Eduardo’s hips again, pulling them flush. Eduardo can feel Mark’s dick pushing into him, easy this time, stretching him, the shaft following, smooth and filling.
“Okay?” Mark says.
Eduardo can feel him trembling with the effort of staying perfectly still, half buried in him. He has to admire his restraint.
“Yeah,” he breathes, arching carefully, pressing against Mark. He bites his cheek at the stretch this entails. “That’s - you’re doing it exactly right.”
Mark flicks his eyes up from where he has Eduardo opened up around him, the look of aroused curiosity on his face replaced with a split second quirk of the lips “Exactly right?” he deadpans, and Eduardo is simultaneously exasperated and impressed by Mark’s utter self control. He can’t think of anyone else capable of keeping their poker face in order in the midst of sex.
Of course Mark simply has to top himself in every field, and he proceeds to do so by leaning over Eduardo and thoroughly kissing him as he works his hands under his shoulders and waist, dragging Eduardo up and into his lap.
“Good?” Mark pants, releasing Eduardo’s mouth in time for him to choke out a groan as he falls victim to gravity, and slides further down Mark’s cock.
“Where the fuck did you learn that?” Eduardo gasps. He has one arm looped around Mark’s neck for balance, and has planted the other hand against one of Mark’s thighs to stop sliding down any further. Mark is pushing to go really fucking deep, really fucking fast, and Eduardo would be lying if he said he isn’t feeling the burn. He can definitely see a couple of days of limping in his future.
“Is this the kind of language you’ve been teaching our kids?” Mark smirks, pressing his thumbs into Eduardo’s hips.
Eduardo jerks, “Shit, Mark,” then pants hard as the movement settles him a little deeper. “Oh god- shut up,” he groans.
“Charming.” Mark comments. He wraps his hands around Eduardo’s prominent hipbones and drags them down, rolling his hips up at the same time.
Eduardo makes a little broken sound, and Mark repeats the manoeuvre precisely, over and over until Eduardo is grinding himself down without encouragement, riding Mark’s dick because it is so fucking good and Mark is fucking biting his throat - not like the little nips that Diego gives him when he is being cuddly - but hard, sucking and licking over the bruise.
Everyone will see it when they get back. Everyone will know - that he and Mark went out into the jungle and fucked. He stills momentarily and his cheeks flame in pre-emptive embarrassment.
“Hey,” says Mark. His hands are still rubbing over Eduardo’s hips. He is licking his lips, as self-satisfied as an overfed cat. Eduardo can’t remember him smirking this much in weeks.
Mark lifts him up, tenderly, and pulls him down his dick again, like he’s reminding Eduardo of the technique.
“Keep going.” Mark wraps one of his tactile hands leisurely around Eduardo’s dick.
Eduardo rocks in place, squeezing tight around Mark where he’s bottomed out inside him. Mark grunts, somehow managing to sound both annoyed and turned on.
He jerks Eduardo off between them, squeezing and thumbing the head of his cock. He comes with a cry, spilling hot all over Mark’s stomach, and Mark just looks at the mess and then at Eduardo’s face, his hunger obvious in his eyes. Eduardo sags against him, eyes squeezing shut, pliable and warm in his climax.
Mark bounces Eduardo in his lap a while longer, groaning at how tight he clenches involuntarily through his orgasm.
“Oh,” says Eduardo, his eyes fluttering open when he finds himself sliding down Mark’s dick again. “Oh, wow.” It’s too much stimulation, but it feels so fucking good, and Mark still has his arms around him, lifting him gently and - fuck - “Fuck. Mark, that’s way too, too much-”
“I know,” Mark mutters, slamming Eduardo down his dick a couple more times. He can feel Eduardo tightening around him erratically. On the fifth thrust he comes, spurting nice and deep inside Eduardo in a series of quick shuddering jerks. He gets a predatory sense of pride from that. He has definitely been working with the raptors too long.
Eduardo is shaking, limbs still curled around Mark, plastered to him. He doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want to dislodge Mark.
Eventually, Mark moves. He eases out of Eduardo, lets him sprawl boneless on the dusty floor of their shelter.
“You’ll get cold.” He says awkwardly after a couple of seconds. He picks up his hoodie and dusts it off. He then crouches over Eduardo, who currently doesn’t seem capable of anything beyond trying to stop shaking.
“Here.”
Eduardo sits up slowly, winces briefly. He blinks at Mark, taking in his ruffled hair and the sweat and cum coating his chest. And the hoodie he is offering him.
He helps Eduardo into it gently, pushing his hands through the arms, and pulling the fabric down his torso. Eduardo shivers as Mark smoothes his hands over the fabric, still over-sensitive to touch. Mark kisses him once, chastely, and leaves him to sort through the clothing they’d discarded earlier.
His jeans aren’t too wet, so he pulls them on, wiping his stomach off with one of his damp socks. He throws their other clothes over the sheltered roots and branches at the entrance to the hollow. Everything else will need a couple of hours to dry out.
Mark sits down next to Eduardo and puts a bold arm around his waist. He figures there is absolutely no way Wardo can misread his gestures now, and it is gratifying to be proved right as Eduardo nestles closer.
Mark misses his hoodie when the storm picks up and a chill wind whips through their shelter momentarily, but Eduardo presses against him, and his body heat is enough to stave off the chill. He thinks about reaching under the pullover, pressing his fingers against Eduardo’s belly. Maybe bringing him off nice and slow this time. There is nothing else constructive to do out here without even his tablet computer.
Eduardo snuffles against his bare shoulder, breaking the silence.
Mark can feel the rumbling vibration of the words against his skin almost before he hears them.
“Hope Dustin is feeding Diego.” He says quietly into Mark’s neck.
“He will.” Mark says, certain of the fact.
“Diego doesn’t like the worms, only the grubs...” he murmurs.
Mark is getting chills at the way Eduardo’s speech is slurring into his lilting Portuguese accent.
“I didn’t know that.” Mark responds honestly. He lazily strokes a hand up Eduardo’s back and back down, smirking when he reaches the hem of the hoodie where it just stretches over the curve of Eduardo’s ass.
Eduardo squirms, self-consciously pulling the hem of the oversized hoodie further down his thighs.
“I know what you should call the park,” Eduardo says a few minutes later, out of nowhere.
The sex, he has to admit, seems to have cleared his head, even if it has rendered his muscles useless for the foreseeable future.
“If you’re going to say ‘Jurassic Park’, you should just get down on your knees again, because that would be a better use of your mouth,” Mark says, tracing the outline of Eduardo’s ear with one index finger.
Eduardo shivers, “No,” he retorts, “I was actually thinking ‘Pangaea‘ would be a little more fitting.”
“Huh.” Mark says, surprised. “That’s actually pretty good.”
“Not just a pretty face,” Eduardo says, self-deprecating.
“No one has ever called me shallow.” Mark says. “You are the best intern in the hatchery, after all.”
Eduardo has to turn away to hide his smile. “I love you, you know,” he says.
Mark laughs, voice sharp, “Finally.”
Eduardo elbows him as hard as he can with pretty much zero feeling in his arms. He is exhausted. He drifts off for a while, but not so deeply that he misses Mark whispering against the nape of his neck.
“Love you too.”
---
The edge of the enclosure isn’t far from Mark’s hollow tree safehouse, but it does involve crossing the most populated section of the carnivore environment. This combined with Eduardo’s very badly concealed limp ensures that it takes them two hours of slow walking before they reach the four-wheeler.
They drive back almost as silently as they’d come, only this time Wardo sleeps for most of the journey.
He droops lazily against Mark’s side, head on his shoulder, both hands curled in the pocket of the hoodie he still hasn’t returned.
Part 1 || Part 2