fic: crept out the front door slow (part 4)
fic: crept out the front door slow (part 4/4)
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
notes: for the tsn_kinkmeme prompt: "Eduardo has this thing, where whenever he's drunk drunk, he basically makes out with whoever's around." - and became an extremely large outpouring of feelings, angst, and boysex.
-title is from atmosphere's "yesterday".
this is the last part! it was really fun to write it on the meme, thanks to all for your lovely comments. as i post this it is officially my birthday, so. comments, i have heard, are the BEST presents. <333
“Why’d you and Josh break up?” Mark asks, a couple hours later when they're sitting on a couch at AEPi, and bites his lip to keep quiet. He is extremely fucking drunk.
“Just- I dunno. We just agreed it wasn’t working.”
Mark nods heavily, staring at Eduardo’s mouth. Eduardo laughs.
“Mark,” he says pointedly, waving a hand in front of his mouth, and Mark looks away, cheeks burning.
“Sorry,” he says awkwardly. Eduardo nudges his shoulder against his.
“S’okay.”
Mark looks up, catches Eduardo’s eye. Eduardo stares at him and Mark forgets to breathe. His stomach is twisting uncomfortably, dizzyingly.
“You’re sober,” Mark states.
“Yeah,” Eduardo says, grinning in that infuriating way people do when they're sober.
Mark nods for about a minute.
“Where’s Dustin?” he asks finally. Eduardo shrugs, smiling secretly to himself.
Mark wants to call him out on it, but he can’t speak without slurring so he should probably just shut up.
“I should go back,” he says carefully, because if he stays there he is going to try to kiss Eduardo and that is not a good idea, probably.
It really seems like a good idea, though.
Mark looks down at Eduardo’s legs, his feet.
He wants to get on his knees and suck Eduardo’s cock.
Oh, fuck, he really really does.
“Wait till I find Dustin and I’ll walk you back,” Eduardo says absentmindedly, craning his neck to look through the crowd, and Mark stares dazedly at the long muscle in his neck, sloping down to his shoulder. He wants to bite it.
No.
He cannot do that.
“No, I wanna go by myself,” he says stubbornly, and stands up. Eduardo’s making a concerned face at him, but Mark just nods, waves, and stumbles out of the door.
He sobers up a tiny bit in the freezing air, sticks his icy hands into his pockets. He’s only wearing a hoodie, and the wind shocks him right to the bone.
He unlocks the suite door with difficulty, and squints at his laptop.
He can code tomorrow.
He throws himself on his bed and curls up and in the drunk judgment-free darkness closes his eyes and puts a finger in his mouth and sucks on it.
"Fuck," he says to himself, dazedly, his hips moving slightly, and then he passes out.
---
Mark does not see Eduardo until the next week. He stays in that weekend, writing, wired in, head thrumming with it, a growing stack of Red Bull cans piling up by the side of his desk.
On Tuesday night Eduardo comes over to study with Dustin and Mark barely looks up.
He wires in and nods at them, and five hours later, Dustin is asleep in his room and Eduardo is sleeping on their couch, passed out on his back on top of his Econ book.
Mark is still coding.
He finishes one particularly frustrating string of code, runs his tongue over his teeth and grins huge because no one is watching.
Eduardo groans sleepily, folding his arms on his chest, digs his head into his shoulder, lips pursed.
Mark watches him.
He knows he is not supposed to have him.
But he can watch him.
It is 1:30 AM.
Eduardo is going to get a crick in his neck if he sleeps that way.
Mark digs his fingers into his thighs, stands up, slowly, watching Eduardo out of the corner of his eyes, reverently, like he’ll disappear if Mark takes his eyes off him.
“Wardo,” he murmurs, sitting on the edge of the coffee table.
Eduardo doesn’t stir.
Everything is very quiet and Mark is so tired. It feels like he’s been wired in for days.
He reaches out tentatively and puts the back of his hand gently on Eduardo’s cheek.
Runs a finger down to his mouth.
His fucking mouth.
Jesus.
Mark is so fucking fascinated by his mouth he doesn’t notice Eduardo’s eyes are open.
“Mark,” he says hoarsely and his mouth moves under Mark’s fingers and just how he says it, says Mark’s name, heavy and deliberate and knowing- Mark is overcome.
He’s fucking terrified. He doesn’t know this Eduardo, who’s pushing himself up on his elbows, and leaning forward, pulling Mark down to him with one hand.
Who kisses him like it’s exactly what he wants.
Slow at first and then it hits both of them they haven’t done this in so long and Eduardo sits up without taking his mouth off of Mark’s and pulls Mark onto his lap.
Mark is exhaling hard through his nose and Eduardo puts his hands on Mark’s ass, holds him there, and Mark shudders helplessly, goosebumps rising up his arms.
It flits through his head, briefly, a thought of Eduardo being inside him. He clenches the muscles of his ass for a second, breath caught in his throat, imagining it.
“Yes,” Eduardo says, just that. Yes. Mark just kisses him again, hard. He can’t find words. He feels like an animal or something, so fucking hungry for it he can’t even speak. Fuck, Eduardo smells good.
Eduardo rubs his hands up Mark’s back, around his thin hips, pulls him down further.
“God, I want- want to fuck you, Mark,” he whispers, a shock of hot breath, and Mark shudders again, near-painfully, terrified.
He nods, though.
“Yeah?” Eduardo asks, nosing at the spot behind Mark’s ear. Mark isn’t even shivering anymore, his skin’s just perpetually prickling, sensitive and shocking, and Eduardo’s fingers slip up under the back of his T-shirt and draw hot lines down his spine.
“Fuck- yeah, Wardo,” Mark says, stammering and incoherent.
“C’mon,” Eduardo says, his hands on Mark’s ass again, not squeezing but resting lightly, with promise, and Mark feels broken open and so fucking turned-on he can’t see straight.
“Your room,” Eduardo says softly into his ear, and hoists Mark to his feet.
Mark is overcome.
Eduardo is so- different.
In Mark’s room, Eduardo unzips Mark’s hoodie and then his jeans, confidently, and Mark feels like a kid.
He is so far out of his depth.
“Wardo,” he says, voice shaking, and Eduardo kisses the side of his mouth, squeezing his ass again.
“It’s gonna be so good,” he promises, low against the hollow of Mark’s throat. “I swear to God, Mark.”
Mark nods and Eduardo lays him out on the bed, rubs a palm over the line of Mark’s cock in his boxers.
Mark closes his eyes and breathes out through his mouth.
“There’s lube in my drawer,” he says, and Eduardo says, “I know.”
There is so much history between them. So much shit. Mark’s head hurts but he’s pushing up into Eduardo’s touch and then Eduardo is drawing down his boxers carefully, over Mark’s skinny ankles, and Mark is shockingly naked, on display.
Eduardo looks at him carefully.
“Goddamnit, Mark,” he says, voice cracking.
They wasted a lot of time, not doing this.
And that’s unfair, to Erica and to Josh. But fuck, it’s true.
Eduardo kisses the inside of Mark’s thigh, and his fingers are wet and cold and brushing lightly down there and Mark is shaking, legs splayed.
There is a finger inside him.
Fuck that feels weird and then Eduardo slips it in a little further and he squirms, pants.
“It’s gonna feel really really good in a second, Mark,” Eduardo says, and slowly puts another finger in and thrusts and Mark is not sure if he likes it because it feels so strange but Eduardo is licking his lips and wriggling his fingers, nudging further up in him, and Mark says, suddenly, “Yeah.”
Eduardo stops. Mark bites his lip.
There is heat spooling out from low in his belly and spreading through his chest and he widens his legs as far as he can go, feeling hot and shameless and intimate.
“Do it again,” he says.
Eduardo grins, and nudges his fingers right up against that spot again and Mark’s legs snap together involuntarily, trying to keep his fingers right there tight and clamped inside him.
“Fuck,” Eduardo murmurs, and works his finger in circles with difficulty, hand caught between Mark’s legs. Mark groans in his throat.
“Shh, Dustin’s sleeping,” Eduardo says, and Mark rolls his eyes and twists his hips, squeezes his legs together, feeling it in him.
It feels good. Not just the fingers, but fuck the fingers feel good. He feels- God, opened. Open. Something like that.
And Eduardo is looking down at him, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, and fingering him harder.
“Do you wanna come?” he asks quietly and Mark wants Eduardo inside him, he really does, but he’s nodding helplessly, and Eduardo fists his cock suddenly, strokes him once and then again and Mark comes hard, heaving huge breaths through his chest, shaking, clenching frantically.
Eduardo keeps his fingers inside Mark and takes himself in hand, stroking frantically, and it only takes him a minute.
He chokes out something quiet when he comes. Something like fuck or Jesus or Mark.
Mark flops his head back and Eduardo takes his fingers out, wipes Mark off with the palm of his hand, closes his legs for him.
Mark breathes.
Everything feels different.
Why won’t Eduardo say anything?
Eduardo exhales hard and scooches away from Mark on the bed.
“Eduardo,” Mark says quietly, and Eduardo turns away.
“You alright?” he asks, voice flat and inscrutable.
“Yeah, I’m-” Mark breaks off, confused. “I’m- yeah.”
Eduardo nods.
“What’s wrong?” Mark says, a flare of protectiveness burning in him for a second.
“Just. I don’t know what we’re doing,” Eduardo says. “I don’t want to go back to like it was before.”
“Don’t want to be with me,” Mark says quietly.
“That’s not it, Jesus, Mark.”
“Then what?”
“It’s just more complicated now. With the company-”
“The company is my problem,” Mark says, and Eduardo recoils, huffs out a hurt little breath.
“I’m the CFO,” he says, but his voice sounds unsure, and that’s not what Mark meant exactly but it’s not- he can handle the company. Eduardo does not need to worry so much.
“I know,” Mark says, and it comes out sounding pissed-off.
Eduardo sighs again, stands up.
“I have to go to bed,” he says quietly.
Mark nods, swallowing.
Eduardo slips out the door.
Mark's chest hurts. He grabs his boxers off the bed, slips them on, puts on a shirt and wraps himself in his sheet, tightly.
He can sleep a little.
Just a little.
---
Eduardo seems determined to not hook up with Mark, then. He doesn’t text or come by for four days.
It’s a valiant effort.
But that weekend they’re both tipsy and Mark sees Eduardo at a cross-country party and they end up in a closet making out, Mark running his hands up Eduardo’s shirt and Eduardo licking urgently into his mouth.
Dustin finds out, then, texts both of them until Eduardo laughs at Mark’s phone vibrating against his thigh and opens the door.
Dustin is standing right outside, staring at them with an unimpressed expression.
“Real subtle,” he says, and Mark laughs. Eduardo leans against him, cracks up.
“Can we go home?” Dustin asks, in a baby voice, and squeezes himself between Mark and Eduardo, links arms with them.
“You’re such a dumbass,” Mark says, and Dustin leans his head on Mark’s shoulder.
“I’m not the dumbass,” he says quietly, “Mark.”
Mark swallows.
He’s so fucking gone.
Eduardo laughs, bubbly in his throat, on the other side of Dustin, and Dustin smiles against Mark’s shoulder.
---
Except then Eduardo doesn’t come over for two weeks.
Two fucking weeks.
Mark would probably strip his dick raw from jerking off if it wasn’t for thefacebook.
Because there is so much to do, there is so much to code.
The next weekend rolls around and Eduardo is in their room again, and when Dustin leaves from pre-gaming Eduardo stares at him from the couch, beckons him over with one hand.
Mark makes sure to save his work, hits ctrl+s and closes his laptop carefully.
And then he lets Eduardo fuck him, right on Mark’s bed.
Eduardo goes very slow, until Mark’s saying, "Please please please Wardo please go faster-"
Mark likes it. He likes it a lot.
He is trying so hard not to be scared about that.
Eduardo kisses him afterward, along the sharp line of Mark’s jaw, and Mark ducks his head into the hollow below Eduardo’s neck, falls asleep quickly.
When he wakes up Eduardo is gone.
---
It’s three weeks until the next time. Eduardo leans against his desk with his palms flat against the wood and says, “Can you bend me over this desk and fuck me, right now?”
Mark most certainly fucking can.
Eduardo puts his laptop on Mark’s bed, and Mark licks a line down Eduardo’s back, goes onto his knees to put his fingers in him.
“Jesus fucking fuck, Mark,” Eduardo gasps, and Mark stands up again, slides into him, fucks him hard and fast.
Eduardo hisses and then groans and then says, “fuck yes, harder, Mark, harder-”
Afterwards Mark stumbles back and onto his bed, and Eduardo pulls up his pants without turning around.
“I have a study session,” he says, avoiding Mark’s eyes, and pushes out the door.
It goes like that.
Eduardo is so fucking bipolar.
Mark trusts him, now, though. Not to fuck around, or hurt himself like he did.
But he wishes Eduardo would decide. Whether them fucking is a good thing or a bad thing.
---
They fuck in New York, on a tiny hotel bed near Times Square, the night of Sean’s dinner.
Mark is still thinking about Sean. He can’t help it.
God, Sean and - and Facebook, not thefacebook. Facebook.
He can barely focus, even though Eduardo is so- so easy to focus on.
It’s harder to focus because he’s not doing any of the work.
He’s on his hands and knees and Eduardo has him by the hips and is above him, fucking deep into him, possessively, a little pissed-off, Mark thinks, and all Mark has to do is hang his head low and breathe out jerkily, groan in the back of his throat as Eduardo thrusts relentlessly against his prostate, again and again.
He comes easy, from that, and from Eduardo's nails scratching down his back, palms sliding down the curve of his belly to his cock.
But he keeps thinking about the dinner they’d just had, what’d just happened.
And after, when they’re lying spent in the bed, cramped together, Mark says, “I think he was right.”
Eduardo’s whole body goes stiff. He pulls a pillow over his cock, protectively, reflexively.
“It’s true, Wardo,” Mark says, voice rising. “We need to let it grow without suffocating it. Ads are gonna suffocate it.”
“We have to talk about it now?” Eduardo says tightly. “Jesus, Mark.”
"All I'm saying is that for a budding company, you know, it's not smart to squeeze it dry so early-"
"Mark, please," Eduardo says, and on the please his voice cracks, and Mark shuts up and rolls over, puts his head on Eduardo's chest.
Eduardo sighs.
After a moment a hand comes up to rest on Mark's lower back.
Mark squeezes his eyes closed and kisses Eduardo's chest below the right nipple, mouth open and wet.
Eduardo falls asleep.
---
They have sex in Eduardo's dorm a couple weeks after that.
It is one of the good times, when Eduardo is not mad and Mark has slept more than four hours and eaten something other than Red Bull and tuna.
Eduardo kisses him everywhere, slides down his body and blows him until Mark has his fingers twisted in the sheets, choking on his own spit, begging-
fuck me Wardo please Jesus Christ fuck me-
- and Eduardo thrusts in hard, but not in a bad way.
In such a good way.
Mark likes it so much.
He turns his head to the side and breathes messily, wetly into Eduardo's sheets.
His bed smells like him, like his cologne. Mark's hips jerk and Eduardo groans.
Mark stays, after that time. Sleeps in Eduardo's bed. Eduardo wakes him up in time for class, showers with him.
Mark stares at the wet line of Eduardo's back, dripping slowly with shampoo suds, slip-sliding down into the crack of his ass.
Eduardo turns around and sees him staring and his face goes strangely solemn. He puts shampoo in Mark's hair and rubs, pushes against his temples until Mark feels boneless, open, until he's nodding off against the tile wall.
"C'mon," Eduardo says, turning the water off. Mark opens his eyes and they sting from shampoo and Eduardo takes Mark's hips in his hands and kisses him gently.
It is so good.
Mark is scared that it will not last and he tries to put it out of his mind.
----
And then it is a week until finals, and Mark is getting a sick queasy deja vu, because Eduardo comes over and says, "This summer, Mark-" and a bunch of other things and Mark's face burns and his stomach hurts.
“You’re really going to fucking do this again?” Mark asks hotly, and Eduardo is standing right in front of him but he already feels further away.
“Mark, you know I need to get an internship. My father-”
“Why do you give a fuck what he thinks, Wardo, okay, come on. You need to come out to California. "
Eduardo shakes his head, sighs.
“It was fucking stupid when we did it last year, Wardo,” Mark says, voice quiet, eyes stinging at the edges. Eduardo is right in front of him. And California is so far away.
“Do you not care about Facebook?”
Eduardo huffs out a pained laugh. “That’s why, Mark. It’s not good business, for the CEO and the CFO to be-”
“Who cares about good business, that’s not the point of any of this-”
“It’s bad for the company, Mark. It’s messy.”
“Us fucking is bad,” Mark concludes. Eduardo looks at him out of the corner of his eye, hands squeezing in and out of fists at his side.
“You told me Facebook’s the most important thing, Mark,” he whispers. “I know that’s what you think, no matter what you say right now.”
He sighs and Mark feels chagrined.
“Wardo, we don’t have to-”
“And I-” Eduardo cuts in. “I am not going to fuck it up. I am not going to fuck this up for you.”
“If you’re sick of being with me, you can fucking tell me,” Mark says hotly, defensively, and he knows Eduardo isn’t but they haven’t even had sex since that time in Eduardo's bed, there hasn’t been time and Sean is always here. Not in person, but. He’s here, anyway.
And Sean is important. He is going to make this great.
“No, that’s not-” Eduardo is saying. “Jesus, Mark. That’s not it. You idiot.” His voice cracks and he pulls Mark to his chest.
Mark stays stiff and still.
He is not a hugger and Eduardo knows that.
And he is so tired, he is tired all the time.
Eduardo leans down and kisses him on the mouth, then, and Mark pulls away.
“What’s wrong,” Eduardo says. Mark shrugs.
“I need to work,” he says coldly.
“Okay,” Eduardo says quietly, masochistically, instead of getting angry. Like he always does.
“Sleep soon,” he says. “Finals are next week.”
Mark remembers finals last year, curling against Eduardo’s warm chest, in his thin old shirt, inhaling his scent.
It hurts to remember, makes something in his stomach twinge sharply.
“Yeah,” he says, and turns back to the computer. Eduardo watches him for a minute, and leaves.
---
They have sex one last time before school ends.
Mark tries not to think of it like that, of one last time.
But it feels that way.
Eduardo is so close to him, sometimes, like they used to be.
And then on other days it’s like Mark barely knows him at all.
Eduardo is in the Phoenix now.
Not that that matters.
Eduardo assures him it doesn’t matter, and Mark nods. He doesn’t give a shit about the Phoenix, anyway. Not anymore.
He wonders if Eduardo ever fucked any of the guys in the Phoenix, last year when he did all that stupid shit.
He never asks, because they don’t talk about that.
---
After his last final, Mark lets himself sleep for twelve hours. It’s not enough, but it’s never enough, and Facebook is always growing.
He wakes up and Eduardo is in his bed, mouth closed, hair curling around his face, lines around his eyes smoothed out by sleep.
He stares at Eduardo for a long moment and everything feels raw and painful for a second because in three days he leaves for California.
Mark is not sure he will ever come back to Harvard. Which is weird, because it’s college. He was always supposed to go and stay and graduate because that is what kids like him do.
He lies his head back on the pillow, on his side, and watches Eduardo sleep.
Eventually he falls back asleep himself and he wakes up when light slips through his window.
It is the very early morning, Mark can tell.
Eduardo is pressed to his chest, now, breathing warmly into Mark’s t-shirt. He has a leg nudged up between Mark’s calves.
Mark feels a little tug in his stomach, like it’s dropping suddenly, and before he can process it Eduardo moves his head, groans sleepily, and his eyes come open.
“Hi,” he says after a minute. Eduardo nods into his chest.
“Hey,” he says roughly, exhausted.
“How was econ?”
Eduardo makes a faint noise of disgust and rolls away, onto his back. Mark feels cold.
“I leave tomorrow,” Eduardo says, and looks over at Mark.
“I know.”
Eduardo’s eyes close halfway, and he sighs quietly. “Will you- Mark, can you fuck me?”
Mark stands up without talking, in his t-shirt and boxer shorts, and grabs a condom and lube and gets naked, all with this odd slow sense of delirium, of inevitability, and Eduardo is wriggling out of his clothes, unbuttoning his ridiculous dress shirt, and they meet back in the middle of the bed and Eduardo kisses Mark very softly.
They don’t talk, except mumbled profanity and when Eduardo says, “Yeah, Mark. Yes.”
It’s strangely slow, unhurried. Mark rocks into him once he’s open enough and Eduardo moves his hips in tight thrusts and clutches Mark to his chest.
Mark’s breath is rough and his chest aches.
Eduardo feels so good, a slow burn. His orgasm is creeping up on him like a fever, like a slow relentless climb. His fingers are tingling.
Mark is scared.
And he is so excited about the summer, about what he’s going to do.
He’s going to change everything. He knows that.
But that means this is going to change too, and so he’s scared.
He looks down at Eduardo under him, open and pliant and drawing him in further with his thin ankles.
Eduardo catches eyes with him and his chest throbs again.
Eduardo is scared too.
“Shh,” Eduardo says roughly, and puts his face to Mark’s collarbone, closes his eyes, urges Mark on in long driving thrusts and when they both come Mark presses his face fiercely into Eduardo’s chest, hard, eyes pricking at the edges, feeling that warm human expanse of skin beneath him.
He doesn’t pull out until Eduardo makes a tiny noise of pain, pushes gently at Mark’s shoulders.
“Please,” he says.
Mark rolls over and everything is very cold. His chest sticky, his cheeks shockingly damp, and he turns his head away to hide it.
Eduardo stands up, rubs a hand gently down Mark’s shoulder.
“I’ll see you soon,” he says. Mark nods.
“Two weeks at the most, I’ll come out.”
Mark nods again. It doesn’t fucking matter anyway, because this was a one-time thing.
A last-time thing.
Oh fuck, he thinks suddenly, and it stretches before him, a summer a fucking life without this. Oh fuck.
Eduardo shuts the door behind him and Mark grabs a pillow, clutches at it. Breathes deep through his nose.
Everything is ending, he thinks apocalyptically, pessimistically, then shoves it out of his mind.
--------------
And then it has been four years.
Four years, and so much has happened.
So much, and Mark was eerily prescient that night in his dorm room, during finals, his sophomore year.
He does not know what Eduardo does, now. If he's dating anyone- a girl, a boy, if he's married.
He hopes he doesn't do what he did at Harvard.
Mark has fucked up a lot of things in his life. Not Facebook. He was careful, with Facebook.
He knows he hurt Eduardo.
He hopes, though, he hopes against all reason, that he helped Eduardo. That he made Eduardo stop wanting to hurt himself the way he used to.
He hopes Eduardo has someone, a man who is nice to him and who fucks him in the way he likes.
This is the hardest thing for him to hope.
No one understands how hard this is for him to hope.
He could not hope it when Eduardo was nineteen and with that guy Chris set him up with. He was too young then.
He wanted Eduardo to only want him.
He is a little bit older, now.
And he understands that his own happiness is not the most important thing.
Mark is not sure. He hears nothing from Eduardo, and Eduardo is in Singapore.
Mark thinks about it sometimes, in the harsh edges of days, times when no one should be awake. He closes his stinging eyes, breathes slowly through his mouth, and hopes so much that Eduardo is happy.
Happy-ish, at least.
Mark is not particularly happy, but it is not important that he is happy. It has never been important.
Just that Wardo is.
He knows though, that it is not very plausible or logical that Eduardo is happy.
Mark was scared when Eduardo smashed his laptop, screamed at him, but he was not sad. He was proud, pleased in a way, because Eduardo didn't run off scared. He was angry and he was raging and he was strong.
And then in the depositions Eduardo was changed, cold veneer barely stretched over a writhing mess of feelings, like he wasn't doing well without Mark, and Mark got sad again, because this Eduardo he could picture doing the same shit he did at Harvard, before everything.
Getting drunk and letting some random guy throw him around. Fucking one or two or three people in a night.
Mark does not want him to do that, so much. More than anything.
But it is not his choice.
It stopped being his choice when he diluted the shares. Or no, when he asked Eduardo for his money, put that wedge between them. Or maybe when he came back from summer break with Erica and Eduardo had stared at him, confused and sad and, underneath it all, wearily, eternally, resigned.
Like he expected it. Expected Mark to flake out on him.
Or, like he was angry, at himself for letting himself think it was going to be different.
Eduardo is in Singapore now and Mark is so scared, sometimes. He remembers Eduardo choking out panicky breaths into his shoulder, terrified and sick and hating himself.
When Mark remembers that he wants to call him or email him or somehow, just- say. I still give a shit. Please. Don't hurt yourself. For me.
He has no right to do that anymore, and that is the thing he most regrets.
But still he hopes, that Eduardo is taking his six hundred million dollars and his new life and is doing something good and is not in the bathroom of a bar face pressed hard against a stall, tilting his hips back for some man to pound into him.
Mark hopes so much, and it makes him feel weary and sick. Chris is gone, now, in DC. Dustin still makes him come over, drink expensive beer and play video games, but he has Amy now and Mark does not want anyone's pity.
Eduardo has disappeared, and it hurts and he hurts for himself and for Eduardo, and Dustin touches Mark's shoulder gently when he falls asleep at his desk.
He does not know if Dustin ever talks to Eduardo.
He is too scared to ask.
---
And one night he is drunk.
He is alone in the office, starkly alone. It is five AM, and the sun is peeking out, pink and hopeful over the smoggy California sky.
He is drunk because he has been drinking steadily all night, gulping beer and typing and coding, always. Nothing permanent, because he might be drunk but he's not an idiot, just random changes.
He closes Facebook, and opens up an email.
Types in, eduardo_saverin@networkedblogs.org
He has had that email for three weeks, since he hacked a database in Singapore. He is pretty sure it is the most accurate one, the latest one.
He always has the latest one, just - just in case.
It is open, then. The cursor is blinking expectantly at him.
The sun is slipping through the windows.
For the first time, Mark feels old.
He writes-
just tell me that you are okay. please.
He considers it, chewing his lip.
Eduardo will know what he means.
Eduardo always knew what he meant.
And Mark feels slightly more mature, now, and he feels older, and maybe Eduardo is older too.
He adds-
i'm sorry
and then-
if you think that no one cares, you're wrong.
He thinks about a lot of things before he sends it.
Like how Eduardo had looked at him that first night, during orientation, eyes dark.
How he'd curled up in Mark's lap that shitty awful night, drunk and scared.
How Eduardo had kissed him sober for the first time, hesitant and curious.
And how he'd laughed once, when Mark was deep inside him, and Mark had said, "What?" a little churlishly, arms trembling from the strain, and Eduardo had shaken his head, said, "Just happy, keep going."
Like how Eduardo’s shirt, that goddamn fucking shirt is balled up in the bottom of his laundry at this very fucking moment.
Mark thinks about all of these things.
He takes another sip of his Beck's and hits send, and his chest clenches painfully for a second and he leans back in his chair, breathing deep.
The sun is nearly up by now. All the glass, all this new shiny beautiful fucking glass is glittering and everything in the office is lit with a wan, warm, glow.
He does not believe in signs, or karma.
But when the sun makes him squint, warms his skin gently- he lets himself hope.
He does not have to be with Eduardo.
That is not the point.
Or it is not all of the point. It is a tiny sliver of the point.
But he hopes that Eduardo is happy.
----
It takes three days, and Mark tries to forget about it.
Everything feels cold again, not hopeful and young and golden.
Mark is so tired again. His head hurts all the time.
But at midnight on a Wednesday night he gets an email, kept up in a window in the corner of his monitor.
And he clicks on it wrong in his haste but it pops up somehow and it says, one new message.
Mark swallows hard, bites his lip.
fr: eduardo_saverin@networkedblogs.org
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
i'm okay, mark. are you okay?
Mark stares at it in wonder, in shock. As he reads it again he can practically hear him, wry and bemused and a little angry, still.
His mind is racing and his skin is thrumming and he is so confused about what this means.
He is so confused.
But he is hopeful again, and it feels nice. Like something unfurling in his chest, warm and liquid, spreading down to the pit of his stomach.
He bites his lip, squeezes his eyes shut briefly, and puts his fingers to the keyboard, poised like a ballet dancer before the music begins.
He is older. Eduardo is older. And he wants it so much.
He wants it enough for the both of them, he thinks.
He exhales slowly and begins to type.
FIN
fandom: the social network
pairing: mark/eduardo
notes: for the tsn_kinkmeme prompt: "Eduardo has this thing, where whenever he's drunk drunk, he basically makes out with whoever's around." - and became an extremely large outpouring of feelings, angst, and boysex.
-title is from atmosphere's "yesterday".
this is the last part! it was really fun to write it on the meme, thanks to all for your lovely comments. as i post this it is officially my birthday, so. comments, i have heard, are the BEST presents. <333
“Why’d you and Josh break up?” Mark asks, a couple hours later when they're sitting on a couch at AEPi, and bites his lip to keep quiet. He is extremely fucking drunk.
“Just- I dunno. We just agreed it wasn’t working.”
Mark nods heavily, staring at Eduardo’s mouth. Eduardo laughs.
“Mark,” he says pointedly, waving a hand in front of his mouth, and Mark looks away, cheeks burning.
“Sorry,” he says awkwardly. Eduardo nudges his shoulder against his.
“S’okay.”
Mark looks up, catches Eduardo’s eye. Eduardo stares at him and Mark forgets to breathe. His stomach is twisting uncomfortably, dizzyingly.
“You’re sober,” Mark states.
“Yeah,” Eduardo says, grinning in that infuriating way people do when they're sober.
Mark nods for about a minute.
“Where’s Dustin?” he asks finally. Eduardo shrugs, smiling secretly to himself.
Mark wants to call him out on it, but he can’t speak without slurring so he should probably just shut up.
“I should go back,” he says carefully, because if he stays there he is going to try to kiss Eduardo and that is not a good idea, probably.
It really seems like a good idea, though.
Mark looks down at Eduardo’s legs, his feet.
He wants to get on his knees and suck Eduardo’s cock.
Oh, fuck, he really really does.
“Wait till I find Dustin and I’ll walk you back,” Eduardo says absentmindedly, craning his neck to look through the crowd, and Mark stares dazedly at the long muscle in his neck, sloping down to his shoulder. He wants to bite it.
No.
He cannot do that.
“No, I wanna go by myself,” he says stubbornly, and stands up. Eduardo’s making a concerned face at him, but Mark just nods, waves, and stumbles out of the door.
He sobers up a tiny bit in the freezing air, sticks his icy hands into his pockets. He’s only wearing a hoodie, and the wind shocks him right to the bone.
He unlocks the suite door with difficulty, and squints at his laptop.
He can code tomorrow.
He throws himself on his bed and curls up and in the drunk judgment-free darkness closes his eyes and puts a finger in his mouth and sucks on it.
"Fuck," he says to himself, dazedly, his hips moving slightly, and then he passes out.
---
Mark does not see Eduardo until the next week. He stays in that weekend, writing, wired in, head thrumming with it, a growing stack of Red Bull cans piling up by the side of his desk.
On Tuesday night Eduardo comes over to study with Dustin and Mark barely looks up.
He wires in and nods at them, and five hours later, Dustin is asleep in his room and Eduardo is sleeping on their couch, passed out on his back on top of his Econ book.
Mark is still coding.
He finishes one particularly frustrating string of code, runs his tongue over his teeth and grins huge because no one is watching.
Eduardo groans sleepily, folding his arms on his chest, digs his head into his shoulder, lips pursed.
Mark watches him.
He knows he is not supposed to have him.
But he can watch him.
It is 1:30 AM.
Eduardo is going to get a crick in his neck if he sleeps that way.
Mark digs his fingers into his thighs, stands up, slowly, watching Eduardo out of the corner of his eyes, reverently, like he’ll disappear if Mark takes his eyes off him.
“Wardo,” he murmurs, sitting on the edge of the coffee table.
Eduardo doesn’t stir.
Everything is very quiet and Mark is so tired. It feels like he’s been wired in for days.
He reaches out tentatively and puts the back of his hand gently on Eduardo’s cheek.
Runs a finger down to his mouth.
His fucking mouth.
Jesus.
Mark is so fucking fascinated by his mouth he doesn’t notice Eduardo’s eyes are open.
“Mark,” he says hoarsely and his mouth moves under Mark’s fingers and just how he says it, says Mark’s name, heavy and deliberate and knowing- Mark is overcome.
He’s fucking terrified. He doesn’t know this Eduardo, who’s pushing himself up on his elbows, and leaning forward, pulling Mark down to him with one hand.
Who kisses him like it’s exactly what he wants.
Slow at first and then it hits both of them they haven’t done this in so long and Eduardo sits up without taking his mouth off of Mark’s and pulls Mark onto his lap.
Mark is exhaling hard through his nose and Eduardo puts his hands on Mark’s ass, holds him there, and Mark shudders helplessly, goosebumps rising up his arms.
It flits through his head, briefly, a thought of Eduardo being inside him. He clenches the muscles of his ass for a second, breath caught in his throat, imagining it.
“Yes,” Eduardo says, just that. Yes. Mark just kisses him again, hard. He can’t find words. He feels like an animal or something, so fucking hungry for it he can’t even speak. Fuck, Eduardo smells good.
Eduardo rubs his hands up Mark’s back, around his thin hips, pulls him down further.
“God, I want- want to fuck you, Mark,” he whispers, a shock of hot breath, and Mark shudders again, near-painfully, terrified.
He nods, though.
“Yeah?” Eduardo asks, nosing at the spot behind Mark’s ear. Mark isn’t even shivering anymore, his skin’s just perpetually prickling, sensitive and shocking, and Eduardo’s fingers slip up under the back of his T-shirt and draw hot lines down his spine.
“Fuck- yeah, Wardo,” Mark says, stammering and incoherent.
“C’mon,” Eduardo says, his hands on Mark’s ass again, not squeezing but resting lightly, with promise, and Mark feels broken open and so fucking turned-on he can’t see straight.
“Your room,” Eduardo says softly into his ear, and hoists Mark to his feet.
Mark is overcome.
Eduardo is so- different.
In Mark’s room, Eduardo unzips Mark’s hoodie and then his jeans, confidently, and Mark feels like a kid.
He is so far out of his depth.
“Wardo,” he says, voice shaking, and Eduardo kisses the side of his mouth, squeezing his ass again.
“It’s gonna be so good,” he promises, low against the hollow of Mark’s throat. “I swear to God, Mark.”
Mark nods and Eduardo lays him out on the bed, rubs a palm over the line of Mark’s cock in his boxers.
Mark closes his eyes and breathes out through his mouth.
“There’s lube in my drawer,” he says, and Eduardo says, “I know.”
There is so much history between them. So much shit. Mark’s head hurts but he’s pushing up into Eduardo’s touch and then Eduardo is drawing down his boxers carefully, over Mark’s skinny ankles, and Mark is shockingly naked, on display.
Eduardo looks at him carefully.
“Goddamnit, Mark,” he says, voice cracking.
They wasted a lot of time, not doing this.
And that’s unfair, to Erica and to Josh. But fuck, it’s true.
Eduardo kisses the inside of Mark’s thigh, and his fingers are wet and cold and brushing lightly down there and Mark is shaking, legs splayed.
There is a finger inside him.
Fuck that feels weird and then Eduardo slips it in a little further and he squirms, pants.
“It’s gonna feel really really good in a second, Mark,” Eduardo says, and slowly puts another finger in and thrusts and Mark is not sure if he likes it because it feels so strange but Eduardo is licking his lips and wriggling his fingers, nudging further up in him, and Mark says, suddenly, “Yeah.”
Eduardo stops. Mark bites his lip.
There is heat spooling out from low in his belly and spreading through his chest and he widens his legs as far as he can go, feeling hot and shameless and intimate.
“Do it again,” he says.
Eduardo grins, and nudges his fingers right up against that spot again and Mark’s legs snap together involuntarily, trying to keep his fingers right there tight and clamped inside him.
“Fuck,” Eduardo murmurs, and works his finger in circles with difficulty, hand caught between Mark’s legs. Mark groans in his throat.
“Shh, Dustin’s sleeping,” Eduardo says, and Mark rolls his eyes and twists his hips, squeezes his legs together, feeling it in him.
It feels good. Not just the fingers, but fuck the fingers feel good. He feels- God, opened. Open. Something like that.
And Eduardo is looking down at him, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, and fingering him harder.
“Do you wanna come?” he asks quietly and Mark wants Eduardo inside him, he really does, but he’s nodding helplessly, and Eduardo fists his cock suddenly, strokes him once and then again and Mark comes hard, heaving huge breaths through his chest, shaking, clenching frantically.
Eduardo keeps his fingers inside Mark and takes himself in hand, stroking frantically, and it only takes him a minute.
He chokes out something quiet when he comes. Something like fuck or Jesus or Mark.
Mark flops his head back and Eduardo takes his fingers out, wipes Mark off with the palm of his hand, closes his legs for him.
Mark breathes.
Everything feels different.
Why won’t Eduardo say anything?
Eduardo exhales hard and scooches away from Mark on the bed.
“Eduardo,” Mark says quietly, and Eduardo turns away.
“You alright?” he asks, voice flat and inscrutable.
“Yeah, I’m-” Mark breaks off, confused. “I’m- yeah.”
Eduardo nods.
“What’s wrong?” Mark says, a flare of protectiveness burning in him for a second.
“Just. I don’t know what we’re doing,” Eduardo says. “I don’t want to go back to like it was before.”
“Don’t want to be with me,” Mark says quietly.
“That’s not it, Jesus, Mark.”
“Then what?”
“It’s just more complicated now. With the company-”
“The company is my problem,” Mark says, and Eduardo recoils, huffs out a hurt little breath.
“I’m the CFO,” he says, but his voice sounds unsure, and that’s not what Mark meant exactly but it’s not- he can handle the company. Eduardo does not need to worry so much.
“I know,” Mark says, and it comes out sounding pissed-off.
Eduardo sighs again, stands up.
“I have to go to bed,” he says quietly.
Mark nods, swallowing.
Eduardo slips out the door.
Mark's chest hurts. He grabs his boxers off the bed, slips them on, puts on a shirt and wraps himself in his sheet, tightly.
He can sleep a little.
Just a little.
---
Eduardo seems determined to not hook up with Mark, then. He doesn’t text or come by for four days.
It’s a valiant effort.
But that weekend they’re both tipsy and Mark sees Eduardo at a cross-country party and they end up in a closet making out, Mark running his hands up Eduardo’s shirt and Eduardo licking urgently into his mouth.
Dustin finds out, then, texts both of them until Eduardo laughs at Mark’s phone vibrating against his thigh and opens the door.
Dustin is standing right outside, staring at them with an unimpressed expression.
“Real subtle,” he says, and Mark laughs. Eduardo leans against him, cracks up.
“Can we go home?” Dustin asks, in a baby voice, and squeezes himself between Mark and Eduardo, links arms with them.
“You’re such a dumbass,” Mark says, and Dustin leans his head on Mark’s shoulder.
“I’m not the dumbass,” he says quietly, “Mark.”
Mark swallows.
He’s so fucking gone.
Eduardo laughs, bubbly in his throat, on the other side of Dustin, and Dustin smiles against Mark’s shoulder.
---
Except then Eduardo doesn’t come over for two weeks.
Two fucking weeks.
Mark would probably strip his dick raw from jerking off if it wasn’t for thefacebook.
Because there is so much to do, there is so much to code.
The next weekend rolls around and Eduardo is in their room again, and when Dustin leaves from pre-gaming Eduardo stares at him from the couch, beckons him over with one hand.
Mark makes sure to save his work, hits ctrl+s and closes his laptop carefully.
And then he lets Eduardo fuck him, right on Mark’s bed.
Eduardo goes very slow, until Mark’s saying, "Please please please Wardo please go faster-"
Mark likes it. He likes it a lot.
He is trying so hard not to be scared about that.
Eduardo kisses him afterward, along the sharp line of Mark’s jaw, and Mark ducks his head into the hollow below Eduardo’s neck, falls asleep quickly.
When he wakes up Eduardo is gone.
---
It’s three weeks until the next time. Eduardo leans against his desk with his palms flat against the wood and says, “Can you bend me over this desk and fuck me, right now?”
Mark most certainly fucking can.
Eduardo puts his laptop on Mark’s bed, and Mark licks a line down Eduardo’s back, goes onto his knees to put his fingers in him.
“Jesus fucking fuck, Mark,” Eduardo gasps, and Mark stands up again, slides into him, fucks him hard and fast.
Eduardo hisses and then groans and then says, “fuck yes, harder, Mark, harder-”
Afterwards Mark stumbles back and onto his bed, and Eduardo pulls up his pants without turning around.
“I have a study session,” he says, avoiding Mark’s eyes, and pushes out the door.
It goes like that.
Eduardo is so fucking bipolar.
Mark trusts him, now, though. Not to fuck around, or hurt himself like he did.
But he wishes Eduardo would decide. Whether them fucking is a good thing or a bad thing.
---
They fuck in New York, on a tiny hotel bed near Times Square, the night of Sean’s dinner.
Mark is still thinking about Sean. He can’t help it.
God, Sean and - and Facebook, not thefacebook. Facebook.
He can barely focus, even though Eduardo is so- so easy to focus on.
It’s harder to focus because he’s not doing any of the work.
He’s on his hands and knees and Eduardo has him by the hips and is above him, fucking deep into him, possessively, a little pissed-off, Mark thinks, and all Mark has to do is hang his head low and breathe out jerkily, groan in the back of his throat as Eduardo thrusts relentlessly against his prostate, again and again.
He comes easy, from that, and from Eduardo's nails scratching down his back, palms sliding down the curve of his belly to his cock.
But he keeps thinking about the dinner they’d just had, what’d just happened.
And after, when they’re lying spent in the bed, cramped together, Mark says, “I think he was right.”
Eduardo’s whole body goes stiff. He pulls a pillow over his cock, protectively, reflexively.
“It’s true, Wardo,” Mark says, voice rising. “We need to let it grow without suffocating it. Ads are gonna suffocate it.”
“We have to talk about it now?” Eduardo says tightly. “Jesus, Mark.”
"All I'm saying is that for a budding company, you know, it's not smart to squeeze it dry so early-"
"Mark, please," Eduardo says, and on the please his voice cracks, and Mark shuts up and rolls over, puts his head on Eduardo's chest.
Eduardo sighs.
After a moment a hand comes up to rest on Mark's lower back.
Mark squeezes his eyes closed and kisses Eduardo's chest below the right nipple, mouth open and wet.
Eduardo falls asleep.
---
They have sex in Eduardo's dorm a couple weeks after that.
It is one of the good times, when Eduardo is not mad and Mark has slept more than four hours and eaten something other than Red Bull and tuna.
Eduardo kisses him everywhere, slides down his body and blows him until Mark has his fingers twisted in the sheets, choking on his own spit, begging-
fuck me Wardo please Jesus Christ fuck me-
- and Eduardo thrusts in hard, but not in a bad way.
In such a good way.
Mark likes it so much.
He turns his head to the side and breathes messily, wetly into Eduardo's sheets.
His bed smells like him, like his cologne. Mark's hips jerk and Eduardo groans.
Mark stays, after that time. Sleeps in Eduardo's bed. Eduardo wakes him up in time for class, showers with him.
Mark stares at the wet line of Eduardo's back, dripping slowly with shampoo suds, slip-sliding down into the crack of his ass.
Eduardo turns around and sees him staring and his face goes strangely solemn. He puts shampoo in Mark's hair and rubs, pushes against his temples until Mark feels boneless, open, until he's nodding off against the tile wall.
"C'mon," Eduardo says, turning the water off. Mark opens his eyes and they sting from shampoo and Eduardo takes Mark's hips in his hands and kisses him gently.
It is so good.
Mark is scared that it will not last and he tries to put it out of his mind.
----
And then it is a week until finals, and Mark is getting a sick queasy deja vu, because Eduardo comes over and says, "This summer, Mark-" and a bunch of other things and Mark's face burns and his stomach hurts.
“You’re really going to fucking do this again?” Mark asks hotly, and Eduardo is standing right in front of him but he already feels further away.
“Mark, you know I need to get an internship. My father-”
“Why do you give a fuck what he thinks, Wardo, okay, come on. You need to come out to California. "
Eduardo shakes his head, sighs.
“It was fucking stupid when we did it last year, Wardo,” Mark says, voice quiet, eyes stinging at the edges. Eduardo is right in front of him. And California is so far away.
“Do you not care about Facebook?”
Eduardo huffs out a pained laugh. “That’s why, Mark. It’s not good business, for the CEO and the CFO to be-”
“Who cares about good business, that’s not the point of any of this-”
“It’s bad for the company, Mark. It’s messy.”
“Us fucking is bad,” Mark concludes. Eduardo looks at him out of the corner of his eye, hands squeezing in and out of fists at his side.
“You told me Facebook’s the most important thing, Mark,” he whispers. “I know that’s what you think, no matter what you say right now.”
He sighs and Mark feels chagrined.
“Wardo, we don’t have to-”
“And I-” Eduardo cuts in. “I am not going to fuck it up. I am not going to fuck this up for you.”
“If you’re sick of being with me, you can fucking tell me,” Mark says hotly, defensively, and he knows Eduardo isn’t but they haven’t even had sex since that time in Eduardo's bed, there hasn’t been time and Sean is always here. Not in person, but. He’s here, anyway.
And Sean is important. He is going to make this great.
“No, that’s not-” Eduardo is saying. “Jesus, Mark. That’s not it. You idiot.” His voice cracks and he pulls Mark to his chest.
Mark stays stiff and still.
He is not a hugger and Eduardo knows that.
And he is so tired, he is tired all the time.
Eduardo leans down and kisses him on the mouth, then, and Mark pulls away.
“What’s wrong,” Eduardo says. Mark shrugs.
“I need to work,” he says coldly.
“Okay,” Eduardo says quietly, masochistically, instead of getting angry. Like he always does.
“Sleep soon,” he says. “Finals are next week.”
Mark remembers finals last year, curling against Eduardo’s warm chest, in his thin old shirt, inhaling his scent.
It hurts to remember, makes something in his stomach twinge sharply.
“Yeah,” he says, and turns back to the computer. Eduardo watches him for a minute, and leaves.
---
They have sex one last time before school ends.
Mark tries not to think of it like that, of one last time.
But it feels that way.
Eduardo is so close to him, sometimes, like they used to be.
And then on other days it’s like Mark barely knows him at all.
Eduardo is in the Phoenix now.
Not that that matters.
Eduardo assures him it doesn’t matter, and Mark nods. He doesn’t give a shit about the Phoenix, anyway. Not anymore.
He wonders if Eduardo ever fucked any of the guys in the Phoenix, last year when he did all that stupid shit.
He never asks, because they don’t talk about that.
---
After his last final, Mark lets himself sleep for twelve hours. It’s not enough, but it’s never enough, and Facebook is always growing.
He wakes up and Eduardo is in his bed, mouth closed, hair curling around his face, lines around his eyes smoothed out by sleep.
He stares at Eduardo for a long moment and everything feels raw and painful for a second because in three days he leaves for California.
Mark is not sure he will ever come back to Harvard. Which is weird, because it’s college. He was always supposed to go and stay and graduate because that is what kids like him do.
He lies his head back on the pillow, on his side, and watches Eduardo sleep.
Eventually he falls back asleep himself and he wakes up when light slips through his window.
It is the very early morning, Mark can tell.
Eduardo is pressed to his chest, now, breathing warmly into Mark’s t-shirt. He has a leg nudged up between Mark’s calves.
Mark feels a little tug in his stomach, like it’s dropping suddenly, and before he can process it Eduardo moves his head, groans sleepily, and his eyes come open.
“Hi,” he says after a minute. Eduardo nods into his chest.
“Hey,” he says roughly, exhausted.
“How was econ?”
Eduardo makes a faint noise of disgust and rolls away, onto his back. Mark feels cold.
“I leave tomorrow,” Eduardo says, and looks over at Mark.
“I know.”
Eduardo’s eyes close halfway, and he sighs quietly. “Will you- Mark, can you fuck me?”
Mark stands up without talking, in his t-shirt and boxer shorts, and grabs a condom and lube and gets naked, all with this odd slow sense of delirium, of inevitability, and Eduardo is wriggling out of his clothes, unbuttoning his ridiculous dress shirt, and they meet back in the middle of the bed and Eduardo kisses Mark very softly.
They don’t talk, except mumbled profanity and when Eduardo says, “Yeah, Mark. Yes.”
It’s strangely slow, unhurried. Mark rocks into him once he’s open enough and Eduardo moves his hips in tight thrusts and clutches Mark to his chest.
Mark’s breath is rough and his chest aches.
Eduardo feels so good, a slow burn. His orgasm is creeping up on him like a fever, like a slow relentless climb. His fingers are tingling.
Mark is scared.
And he is so excited about the summer, about what he’s going to do.
He’s going to change everything. He knows that.
But that means this is going to change too, and so he’s scared.
He looks down at Eduardo under him, open and pliant and drawing him in further with his thin ankles.
Eduardo catches eyes with him and his chest throbs again.
Eduardo is scared too.
“Shh,” Eduardo says roughly, and puts his face to Mark’s collarbone, closes his eyes, urges Mark on in long driving thrusts and when they both come Mark presses his face fiercely into Eduardo’s chest, hard, eyes pricking at the edges, feeling that warm human expanse of skin beneath him.
He doesn’t pull out until Eduardo makes a tiny noise of pain, pushes gently at Mark’s shoulders.
“Please,” he says.
Mark rolls over and everything is very cold. His chest sticky, his cheeks shockingly damp, and he turns his head away to hide it.
Eduardo stands up, rubs a hand gently down Mark’s shoulder.
“I’ll see you soon,” he says. Mark nods.
“Two weeks at the most, I’ll come out.”
Mark nods again. It doesn’t fucking matter anyway, because this was a one-time thing.
A last-time thing.
Oh fuck, he thinks suddenly, and it stretches before him, a summer a fucking life without this. Oh fuck.
Eduardo shuts the door behind him and Mark grabs a pillow, clutches at it. Breathes deep through his nose.
Everything is ending, he thinks apocalyptically, pessimistically, then shoves it out of his mind.
--------------
And then it has been four years.
Four years, and so much has happened.
So much, and Mark was eerily prescient that night in his dorm room, during finals, his sophomore year.
He does not know what Eduardo does, now. If he's dating anyone- a girl, a boy, if he's married.
He hopes he doesn't do what he did at Harvard.
Mark has fucked up a lot of things in his life. Not Facebook. He was careful, with Facebook.
He knows he hurt Eduardo.
He hopes, though, he hopes against all reason, that he helped Eduardo. That he made Eduardo stop wanting to hurt himself the way he used to.
He hopes Eduardo has someone, a man who is nice to him and who fucks him in the way he likes.
This is the hardest thing for him to hope.
No one understands how hard this is for him to hope.
He could not hope it when Eduardo was nineteen and with that guy Chris set him up with. He was too young then.
He wanted Eduardo to only want him.
He is a little bit older, now.
And he understands that his own happiness is not the most important thing.
Mark is not sure. He hears nothing from Eduardo, and Eduardo is in Singapore.
Mark thinks about it sometimes, in the harsh edges of days, times when no one should be awake. He closes his stinging eyes, breathes slowly through his mouth, and hopes so much that Eduardo is happy.
Happy-ish, at least.
Mark is not particularly happy, but it is not important that he is happy. It has never been important.
Just that Wardo is.
He knows though, that it is not very plausible or logical that Eduardo is happy.
Mark was scared when Eduardo smashed his laptop, screamed at him, but he was not sad. He was proud, pleased in a way, because Eduardo didn't run off scared. He was angry and he was raging and he was strong.
And then in the depositions Eduardo was changed, cold veneer barely stretched over a writhing mess of feelings, like he wasn't doing well without Mark, and Mark got sad again, because this Eduardo he could picture doing the same shit he did at Harvard, before everything.
Getting drunk and letting some random guy throw him around. Fucking one or two or three people in a night.
Mark does not want him to do that, so much. More than anything.
But it is not his choice.
It stopped being his choice when he diluted the shares. Or no, when he asked Eduardo for his money, put that wedge between them. Or maybe when he came back from summer break with Erica and Eduardo had stared at him, confused and sad and, underneath it all, wearily, eternally, resigned.
Like he expected it. Expected Mark to flake out on him.
Or, like he was angry, at himself for letting himself think it was going to be different.
Eduardo is in Singapore now and Mark is so scared, sometimes. He remembers Eduardo choking out panicky breaths into his shoulder, terrified and sick and hating himself.
When Mark remembers that he wants to call him or email him or somehow, just- say. I still give a shit. Please. Don't hurt yourself. For me.
He has no right to do that anymore, and that is the thing he most regrets.
But still he hopes, that Eduardo is taking his six hundred million dollars and his new life and is doing something good and is not in the bathroom of a bar face pressed hard against a stall, tilting his hips back for some man to pound into him.
Mark hopes so much, and it makes him feel weary and sick. Chris is gone, now, in DC. Dustin still makes him come over, drink expensive beer and play video games, but he has Amy now and Mark does not want anyone's pity.
Eduardo has disappeared, and it hurts and he hurts for himself and for Eduardo, and Dustin touches Mark's shoulder gently when he falls asleep at his desk.
He does not know if Dustin ever talks to Eduardo.
He is too scared to ask.
---
And one night he is drunk.
He is alone in the office, starkly alone. It is five AM, and the sun is peeking out, pink and hopeful over the smoggy California sky.
He is drunk because he has been drinking steadily all night, gulping beer and typing and coding, always. Nothing permanent, because he might be drunk but he's not an idiot, just random changes.
He closes Facebook, and opens up an email.
Types in, eduardo_saverin@networkedblogs.org
He has had that email for three weeks, since he hacked a database in Singapore. He is pretty sure it is the most accurate one, the latest one.
He always has the latest one, just - just in case.
It is open, then. The cursor is blinking expectantly at him.
The sun is slipping through the windows.
For the first time, Mark feels old.
He writes-
just tell me that you are okay. please.
He considers it, chewing his lip.
Eduardo will know what he means.
Eduardo always knew what he meant.
And Mark feels slightly more mature, now, and he feels older, and maybe Eduardo is older too.
He adds-
i'm sorry
and then-
if you think that no one cares, you're wrong.
He thinks about a lot of things before he sends it.
Like how Eduardo had looked at him that first night, during orientation, eyes dark.
How he'd curled up in Mark's lap that shitty awful night, drunk and scared.
How Eduardo had kissed him sober for the first time, hesitant and curious.
And how he'd laughed once, when Mark was deep inside him, and Mark had said, "What?" a little churlishly, arms trembling from the strain, and Eduardo had shaken his head, said, "Just happy, keep going."
Like how Eduardo’s shirt, that goddamn fucking shirt is balled up in the bottom of his laundry at this very fucking moment.
Mark thinks about all of these things.
He takes another sip of his Beck's and hits send, and his chest clenches painfully for a second and he leans back in his chair, breathing deep.
The sun is nearly up by now. All the glass, all this new shiny beautiful fucking glass is glittering and everything in the office is lit with a wan, warm, glow.
He does not believe in signs, or karma.
But when the sun makes him squint, warms his skin gently- he lets himself hope.
He does not have to be with Eduardo.
That is not the point.
Or it is not all of the point. It is a tiny sliver of the point.
But he hopes that Eduardo is happy.
----
It takes three days, and Mark tries to forget about it.
Everything feels cold again, not hopeful and young and golden.
Mark is so tired again. His head hurts all the time.
But at midnight on a Wednesday night he gets an email, kept up in a window in the corner of his monitor.
And he clicks on it wrong in his haste but it pops up somehow and it says, one new message.
Mark swallows hard, bites his lip.
fr: eduardo_saverin@networkedblogs.org
to: mzuckerberg@facebook.com
i'm okay, mark. are you okay?
Mark stares at it in wonder, in shock. As he reads it again he can practically hear him, wry and bemused and a little angry, still.
His mind is racing and his skin is thrumming and he is so confused about what this means.
He is so confused.
But he is hopeful again, and it feels nice. Like something unfurling in his chest, warm and liquid, spreading down to the pit of his stomach.
He bites his lip, squeezes his eyes shut briefly, and puts his fingers to the keyboard, poised like a ballet dancer before the music begins.
He is older. Eduardo is older. And he wants it so much.
He wants it enough for the both of them, he thinks.
He exhales slowly and begins to type.
FIN