target locked [Mark/Eduardo, The Social Network, for leopardchic79]
Title: target locked
Author: brassbell
Recipient: leopardchic79
Warnings: Angst,
Summary: The one where Eduardo chases Mark through the universe(s).
Notes: leopardchic79 , your list of likes included Mark/Eduardo and "angst, but preferably with a happy ending." I hope you enjoy this. Thanks to Isabela, Zoe, and Molly for letting me flail at them.
target locked
It starts with a letter.
It's in a crisp white envelope, business length, a wide, sloppy W on the front because Mark (because it could only be Mark, couldn't be anyone else but Mark) never got the memo about calling people (Eduardo) by their given names. The letter's not in thirds but wrinkled, uneven, hastily done, the way kids fold notes before handing them off with a giggle and blush, do you like me?/check yes or no.
Eduardo stares at it at first, because how did Mark get into his office? Forget that, how did Mark get to Singapore? He picks it up anyway (inevitably). A ring falls out of the folds--a little late for proposals, he thinks wryly--but he focuses on the two words in the center of the sheet, sloppy as the W.
Find me, it says--demands, really, and Eduardo sighs.
The ring gleams on the table, silver and strangely reflective--too many light sources when Eduardo knows for a fact there's only the overhead and the hints of sunlight from the cloudy sky outside his window.
Eduardo puts on the ring, figures why not?, and then-
-the world shifts.
--
Eduardo’s standing in his apartment. The front hall is dark, the only light coming from the living room towards the end.
I must’ve been dreaming, he thinks. Maybe I’ve taken up sleepwalking. But no, the ring is still cool around his finger, still reflecting nonexistent light.
He heads forward, one foot after the other, looking for some sort of proof that he’s been home the whole time, that he imagined his office and the letter and Mark, something more solid than silver and warmer, too. His foot catches on something-probably the umbrella stand he’s been meaning to move for exactly this reason-and he stumbles forward with a shout.
There’s a shuffle from the living room, and suddenly another Eduardo is popping his head around the corner.
“Right on time,” he says, grinning, while Eduardo gapes. His eyes dart to look at the umbrella stand-“I really do need to move that.”-before coming back to Eduardo. “All right, so this is probably really weird and disconcerting and you probably think you’re dreaming or something equally more reasonable, but you’re just going to have to trust me on this.” He pauses. “Or, well, trust you on this. Trust us. Whatever.”
Other Eduardo comes out the rest of the way from behind the corner, revealing an old GAP hoodie over a pair of slacks.
“Where am I?” Eduardo demands, managing to keep his voice mostly steady. Which, considering the doppelganger and inexplicable teleportation, is a pretty decent accomplishment. “What’s going on here?”
“Look, there isn’t time to explain,” Other Eduardo answers, putting his hands out in to placate him. “Your Mark already went through, and you need to catch up.”
My Mark? he frowns, but asks “Went through to where?”
“Universes,” Other Eduardo replies, as if that’s a perfectly acceptable answer. “Now, twist the ring left if you want to follow him, or-” and here he stops, looks Eduardo right in the eye. “Twist it right if you want to go home. Your choice.”
Eduardo looks away from him, down at the ring. It gleams back at him, reflections shifting at random, and he stares at them and thinks worlds.
Like there ever was a choice.
The world warps around him once more, and the last thing he sees is Other Eduardo moving back down the hallway, towards a vague shape that comes out to meet him.
--
The next universe throws him into another office, glass-walled with a floor-to-ceiling window. There’s a woman in front of him, facing the window and shouting into a cell phone.
“If those links do not get fixed in the next hour, I will come down there myself and break something-no, Mark will be too busy firing you to yell at me.” She notices Eduardo’s reflection in the mirror and spins around. “I’ll call you back.”
She has golden skin and waves of brown hair tossed over her shoulder, a crisp white shirt rolled up to her elbows. Her face looks familiar, like someone he knows but just can’t name.
Someone comes into the room behind them and says, “Warda, did you-?” and he thinks, well shit.
“The links should be fixed in shortly,” Eduarda confirms. She makes an face at Eduardo. “Advertisements. So much more trouble than they’re worth.”
You have no idea.
Any hint of frustration on her face is gone, replaced by a look Eduardo knows well, from Harvard hallways and Kirkland movie nights.
He turns around to see Mark for himself.
She doesn’t look much different, to be honest. There are fewer sharp angles and a few more curves, her hair may be a little longer, but the hoodie is familiar and the stare is exactly the same.
“Oh. You’re the other one.” Mark eyes him up and down. “Your hair is ridiculous.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Eduardo snaps, and immediately feels guilty. This Mark hasn’t done anything to him.
Not that she looks bothered by it. She just raises an eyebrow-another universal constant, it would seem-and says, “Mark left an hour ago. I'm supposed to tell you to hurry up."
"Such a gracious host," Eduarda grumbles. "You could at least stay for drinks," she says to Eduardo.
"No, he can't." Mark says it simply, like that's just how things are. "We have a company to run."
She says that the same way.
Eduardo nods once, and opens his mouth to say I'm happy for you, or I envy you, or something of the like, but someone touches his shoulder before he can.
"Well, I for one like your hair," Eduarda says with a laugh, but she's looking at him as if to say I know and I'm sorry and Good luck.
She moves to stand next to Mark, and Eduardo twists the ring.
--
The third universe has its Eduardo and Mark living in a cabin in Canada, wearing too much flannel and teasing Eduardo when he complains about the cold. He huddles under a blanket there for three days, drinking coffee and being generally uncomfortable around Mark, who codes Facebook updates and sends them off to Dustin while his Eduardo rushes in and out of the house, meeting with app developers and potential advertisers.
"You can relax, you know," Mark finally says on the third day. He's still looking down at his laptop, but his typing has slowed to a stop. "I'm not going to stab you or something equally ridiculous."
Eduardo rolls his eyes. "I know that. It's just..." He can't think of how to say it, exactly, to express how impossible it is to look at him and not see Mark during the depositions, Mark during the millionth member party, Mark. "You hate me."
"Evidence would suggest that I don't."
"Well, not here."
There is a pause. No," Mark shifts a little, looks up, "not anywhere."
--
"Why Canada?" Eduardo asks later. He's outside with Canadian Eduardo, gathering firewood.
Canadian Eduardo shrugs. "It's quiet. Peaceful." He grins, face flushed from the cold air. "And, you know, there are other attractions."
He moves just so, and the fading light hits him, and for the first time, Eduardo notices that the other him is wearing a ring, too.
He leaves that evening.
--
The fourth universe has him cast as a girl again, but Mark is the same. The fifth is the other way around.
In the sixth, seventh, and eighth, he goes to weddings. Two are his own; one with Mark as his best man, and the other as his (the other Eduardo's, he reminds himself, not yours, the other Eduardo's)--as his. The third
And so it goes.
--
Sometimes, he wonders about his world's Mark.
Travelling is fairly easy for him. He arrives into universes already aware of--expecting, even--his existence, but Mark isn't. He wonders how Mark explains it to them, the various Marks and Eduardos. Does he try to rationalize, come up with a scientific explanation, or does he wing it? The worlds with male Marks are easy enough; how do you explain an exact physical duplicate of yourself? The others would be trickier.
(Sometimes, he just wonders about Mark.)
--
Eduardo stays in Universe 88 for exactly ten minutes. It's long enough to feel like a creep, watching the two huddled forms on the bed, and not quite as long as he wants to.
--
Not every world is perfect. In 122, Mark almost went through with the dilution.
"Why didn't he?" Eduardo asks.
Other Eduardo leans his head back into the couch, looking at the ceiling. "I had my own lawyers look at the paperwork--you know, just to be professional. They caught the clause." He yawns. "After that, we fought. We fought for a long time."
"And then what happened?"
"I resigned," he answers, shrugging. He pushes his hair away from his face, right where the grey is starting to creep in. "Did my own thing for a year, and then I came back. We talked about it."
"We yelled about it," Mark corrects him, he himself yelling from the other room.
He stands up and stretches. "But all of that's in the past, now."
The past, Eduardo thinks, and gives the ring a spin.
--
By Universe 234, he's angry.
Eduardo's read his Dickens, he knows what's going on here, and he's tired of this Ghost of Christmas past, showing him (them, he thinks, them) the lives he (they) could've led, should've led, might've led, if only he hadn't done this or Mark hadn't done that or whatever missteps it took to knock them off the better path and onto this Dantean mess.
He'd been done. Five years had passed, and he'd almost erased Mark and MarkandEduardo and anything dreams of what might have been were thrown out the window, replaced by what was and what he could make of it, and he'd been happy! He'd been fine.
He'd been fine.
--
He leaves the three hundredth world and knows that he's never going to catch Mark.
He came close, once. He spun into Universe 265 just as Mark was spinning out, but in 266 Eduardo arrived a full day behind.
Then go home, something nags at the back of his mind. You've followed him long enough. Go home.
Just one more, he insists, and twists the ring left.
--
Left, left, left.
--
He can't remember how many worlds he's been through.
--
"Do you love him?" one of the other Marks asks. "Your Mark."
No, he thinks. Of course not.
He says nothing.
--
"I do!" he shouts, after another near miss. "Yes, I do, you fucker!"
It's terrible, and awful and he doesn't want to, but he does.
(Because he's seen them. He's seen them over and over and over again, the Marks and Eduardos and the way the Eduardos look at the Marks and, when the Eduardos' backs are turned, the way the Marks look at them.)
The way part of him knows, indisputably, that Mark looked at him.)
--
In the next universe, he finds Mark.
They're in Palo Alto, he can tell. This world's Mark and Eduardo are nowhere to be seen, but the door to their house is open. Eduardo steps inside, and Mark is sitting on the steps.
There are a million things he wants to say, ranging from you asshole to don't ever leave me again.
Instead of saying any of those things, he sits down next to him, and waits.
Time passes. Mark doesn't look at him. Then, without prompting, he starts to talk.
"There are thousands of versions of us, Wardo." Mark says. His voice is flat. "Thousands of alternate worlds with alternate lives, and we get the worst of them."
Eduardo looks at Mark, his Mark. Mark, who had travelled through world after world unprompted, not knowing if Eduardo would still follow but hoping that he might.
"No," he says. "No, we have the best of them," and turns their rings right.