Fic: Fortune and Men's Eyes (1/?)
MASTER POST
***
This was all Chris’ fault. Mark had run out of Red Bull and then made the mistake of complaining about it out loud, and somehow in the ensuing conversation Chris had found out that Mark hadn’t left the apartment for three or four days. Possibly five. Chris had squawked a lot about needing fresh air and human interaction, which Mark ignored right up until the point where Chris shoved Mark bodily out of the room and dead-bolted the door behind him.
After a few fruitless attempts to pick the lock, Mark gave up and left the dorm, figuring he could get some coffee and be back in twenty minutes. Mark might be locked out for now, but Dustin would be done with class soon and he had keys.
Except now Mark was stuck in True Grounds with a genius loop of code running through his brain and no computer to capture it. God-fucking-dammit. He didn't even have a pen, not that that would help much when he needed to see the processes running and check for dropped lines in real-time. He clutched at his paper cup and scanned the crowded cafe - no one with a computer, not a single fucking computer?
But no, there was one guy with a laptop in the backmost corner. Mark made a beeline for the table without thinking twice, shoving past other students and customers.
"Hi, sorry, I need to borrow this," he said quickly, tongue tripping over itself in his haste as he slid into the opposite chair. He reached for the laptop, pulling it out of its owner’s hands and turning it towards himself. It was high end, a nice Mac. There was a spreadsheet up in Excel, graphs and equations, and Mark abruptly realized that possibly the owner of this computer might not appreciate Mark interrupting his work.
When he looked up, the guy across the table was blinking at him, face blank. "I... beg your pardon?"
"It'll only take a second, I left my computer at the dorms," Mark explained, impatient, biting his lower lip. The guy stared at him a moment longer, eyes wide. Mark wasn't sure how to take that, but he didn’t appear to be about to punch Mark or reclaim his computer, so Mark kept going. "I just -- I need to get some subroutines coded, it'll only be a few seconds. Okay, no, it'll be more like fifteen minutes, maximum, unless you've got the processing power, but so long as you’ve got a 32 bit platform--"
"I have no idea what you’re talking about," the guy interrupted, and now he was smiling. He had a nice smile. “But go for it.”
Mark blinked. "Really? I admit I expected a bit more resistance. Or resentment, at least."
"I've been working all morning, I could use a break," the guy explained. The guy shrugged and took a sip of his expresso, watching Mark over the rim of the tiny cup. "I should warn you, the damned thing keeps crashing."
"I can fix that," Mark said dismissively, flapping a hand. "Mutually beneficial thievery."
He glanced back up at the burst of laughter this statement produced and was momentarily distracted whiteness of the guy's teeth. A distant part of his brain noted that he’d apparently hijacked the computer of someone incredibly attractive, but the rest of him was busy installing and opening up programs. His erstwhile benefactor asked a few questions that Mark absently answered, but all his attention was on the screen.
Well, most of it. He heard some kind of flurried conversation between his tablemate and a looming figure that had barreled up and started shouting, but it didn't seem important.
"No, no, Davi, está tudo bem," Mark’s guy was saying, and the other man retreated after grumbling and waving his hands a bit longer. Now he was just standing in the corner and glowering at Mark, but Mark was used to being glared at, so he didn't give it much thought. Maybe the guy's brother, or boyfriend. Kind of weird, but not important, not so long as Mark wasn't interrupted.
"That wasn't English," Mark noted absently a few minutes later, taking his fingers off the keyboard. He cracked his neck and tried to take a sip from his coffee, still staring at the screen. It took him a moment to notice something was wrong, and by then the guy was laughing again, warm and friendly.
"Well spotted. Let me help you with that," the guy said, smiling at him as he took Mark’s coffee cup and removed the lid. "Try now."
"Thanks," Mark muttered, cheeks hot. Not the first time he'd done something like this, forgotten to pop open a Red Bull before trying to drink from it or, in this case, to turn the coffee around and drink from the appropriate hole in the lid. Chris and Dustin were used to it, at least, but it was embarrassing to have it happen in public.
Dustin and Chris always mocked him, though. This guy just looked - charmed, Mark guessed. Amused. Friendly. Mark wasn't used to that. He took another swallow of coffee and tried to analyze what was happening. The guy had brown eyes, and had his chin propped on his hand, and was watching him back interestedly.
Probably Mark should say something. Explain himself. "Sorry about the-" Mark waved a hand at the laptop. "Forced loan. I had an idea I wanted to get down for a project, and my dorm was too far away. So, uh. Thank you. For not having me kicked out. Or arrested, or whatever."
"No, it's fine," the guy said, smiling at him. "Happy to help."
Mark didn't get this guy at all. Most people would have been more upset. When Mark grabbed his classmates’ computers to check his projections on multiple screens, there was usually a lot of yelling and complaining, as though their classwork could possibly compare to the coding Mark was doing.
But this guy just seemed oddly cheerful, like being descended on by a scrawny unwashed computer programmer was the best thing that had happened to him all day.
Mark tilted his head and considered the guy, then stuck out his hand. "I'm Mark. Mark Zuckerberg. What were you working on?"
"What was I...?" the guy asked, looking puzzled, and then he took Mark's hand, shook it firmly. It was a good handshake, and it felt oddly profound. There was a heavy silver ring on the other guy’s finger, a point of coldness on Mark’s skin, but the rest of his touch was warm. Mark felt his cheeks heat for no good reason, and he snatched his own hand back, suddenly sure that his palms were sweating stupidly.
"Before I hijacked your computer, you had spreadsheets up,” he continued after a moment. “What were they for?"
There was a pause.
"You really don't know," the other guy marveled slowly, and then laughed again, his whole face lighting up. “Fantastic.”
Mark was confused - should he know this guy? Maybe he was in one of Mark’s classes or something; that’d happened before. He’d had a group project in Western Civ last year, and he’d kept forgetting which people were his group mates, which apparently was insulting and had actually resulted in one of the girls slapping Mark in the face in the middle of the library.
So, business as usual.
But this guy didn’t seem insulted, just pleased and amused.
"Fantastic,” he repeated, grinning, and Mark smiled slightly into his coffee cup, pleased with himself. See, Chris, he could handle human interactions just fucking fine. They might even be flirting right now; Mark wasn’t sure, but this was definitely at least friendly. "I'm Eduardo Saverin. I'm in the Business school. Economics."
"That would explain the algorithms," Mark noted, nodding to himself. It would be useful to have a friend in the business school, if he ever got this derivation of Facemash off the ground. Mark glanced back at the computer, entered a few keystrokes to save his work and send it to his Harvard account, then spun the computer back around and gave it a small push towards Eduardo. "I've upgraded your systems and boosted your anti-virus software and freed up some hard drive space. You shouldn't have any more problems with crashing."
"You're too kind," Eduardo said, beaming. He shoved his hair out of his eyes and leaned in, letting his voice drop a little. "I should let strange men steal my laptop more often."
That was flirtatious behavior, Mark was almost sure of it. It was definitely - Eduardo’s teasing tone and husky voice was startlingly appealing. "I suspect I'm probably a bit of an anomaly as far as rogue computer programmers go," Mark said dryly, dropping his eyes and picking at his thumbnail. “You’re too trusting.”
“I suppose I am." Eduardo was nodding solemnly, but when Mark glanced back up, his eyes were bright and amused. “So, Mark Zuckerberg. Computer pirate extraordinaire. What else do you do?”
Making conversation. Right. Mark could do that. “Besides steal computers? I, uh, go to pointless gen ed classes and hack servers for fun in my spare time,” Mark replied, shrugging. “Sometimes I sleep. Um. I go to the AEPi parties when Chris and Dustin drag me - they’re my roommates. It’s the Jewish fraternity. The parties are pretty lame, but there’s free beer. Uh, that’s about it. I’m not exciting. I mean, I am, if you’re smart enough to understand the computer stuff, but most people are idiots, so.”
This was the type of ramble that tended to result in him being slapped or stared at, but Eduardo just groaned and said, “Oh, God, the gen ed classes. They’re kicking my ass.” And then he waved Looming Burly Man over and rattled something incomprehensible off before handing him his cup. He glanced over at Mark from beneath his lashes, then tilted his head. “You want more coffee? Davi can get you a refill.”
“Sure,” Mark said, surprised. He tried that sort of thing with Dustin and Chris, but usually it resulted in being pelted with pillows or sprayed with beer or just being laughed at. Or locked out of his own fucking dorm room. Eduardo clearly had better friends, which made sense. He was much more personable than Mark, and probably the big brown eyes helped. Mark doubted Chris would have locked Eduardo out.
“I have a geology exam next Friday that’s seriously destroying my sleep schedule,” Eduardo continued, making an exaggeratedly pained face that Mark found himself smiling at. “I thought it’d be easier than biology, and more useful, oil being what it is. But it’s more work than I thought it’d be.”
“Thought geology was rocks for jocks,” Mark joked tenatively, and was pleased when Eduardo rolled his eyes and threw a balled up napkin at him. “Easy class to pass, though, right?”
“I don’t want to just pass, Mark! I have to keep up my GPA. My father - well. I’ve got to keep up my grades. You know how it is.”
Mark didn’t really care about his non-computer classes so long as he passed them, so no, he didn’t know how it was. He said as much and Eduardo smiled faintly.
“Must be nice to be able to just focus on the things you love.” His voice had gotten soft and distant, and somehow the conversation had taken an unexpected turn.
“Well, it does tend to result in my leaping on unsuspecting fellow students in cafes,” Mark pointed out, and Eduardo smiled at him again, the trace of a frown that’d been on his face vanishing.
“Perish the thought.”
Davi brought back their drinks. When half an hour later he brought back refills, Mark realized he’d actually been lost in a conversation that didn’t revolve around Linux or Perl for the better part of an hour. They’d talked about the weather - Eduardo had created an algorithm that could predict oil prices based on temperature projections, and Mark had found himself genuinely impressed with another student for the first time in a long time - and they’d talked about the Jewish fraternity, which Eduardo had apparently been considering joining. Then the conversation had somehow migrated to the places they’d grown up. Eduardo was Brazilian, apparently, had grown up in Brazil, which was why he spoke Portuguese. He was apparently dismayed by the Massachusetts winters, the ice and wind, and somehow that had devolved into a conversation about how Mark’s mom and sister had taken up knitting recently, how Mark received at least ten new pairs of gloves and countless scarves that he’d never wear every month, how Eduardo was welcome to all of them, should take them before Mark drowned in wool.
Mark couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked this much, let alone to someone he’d never met. His throat actually was a little scratchy now. But now that he’d noticed the time, he really should get back to the room and work on his homework.
“I should go,” Mark said, standing reluctantly and shoving his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Chris’ll probably let me back in the room now. But, um, thanks for the, you know-” he gestured with an elbow “-computer access. And coffee.”
Eduardo stared at him for a moment, frowning, and then stood too and offered his hand again. “It was lovely to meet you, Mark.”
“Lovely?” Mark repeated disbelievingly, mouth twitching, and Eduardo rolled his eyes.
“Fuck off,” he retorted, and then shoved his hands in his own pockets. Not a hoodie, or khakis, or jeans, but immaculately tailored and pressed trousers. Mark registered for the first time that Eduardo was actually wearing a suit to a coffee shop. Probably he wore suits to class, which was oddly endearing and definitely ridiculous. “Look, we should hang out some time, yeah?”
Eduardo was watching him hopefully, like he thought Mark would say no. Mark still wasn’t sure if this was flirting or not. He kind of wanted it to be, despite the fact that he definitely didn’t have time for a relationship and wasn’t sure he really was interested in dating a guy and the fact that his last attempt at dating with Erica had gone down in inexplicable flames.
He’d have to ask Chris for his opinion; Chris dated guys all the time. Maybe he could write an algorithm to help Mark figure out what was going on here.
“Sure,” Mark said, and was surprised at the brilliance of the smile this produced. “I’m in Kirkland, second floor. Room 214. I’m pretty much always there, or at the lab in the basement.”
“I’ll stop by sometime,” Eduardo replied, smiling at him, and then they both just stared at each other for a moment before Eduardo coughed and sat back down, opening his laptop. Mark turned and began making his way out of the café, which was more crowded than Mark would have expected for a late Wednesday afternoon; he was actually having trouble making it to the door.
A lot of the patrons were glaring at him, which, whatever, maybe they’d been classmates. But then one or two were beaming and giving him thumbs ups, which was decidedly bizarre. And even stranger, one girl, all blonde curls and curves, cut him off at the door and hissed, “What do you have that I don’t?”
“Uh, a brain?” Mark retorted automatically, confused, then shook his head and shoved past her into the cold afternoon air.
People could be so fucking strange.
***
When he got back to the room, both Chris and Dustin were there, huddled over the table and eating pizza, notebooks and papers spread out between the plates.
“You stayed out longer than I expected,” Chris said without turning away from whatever he was working on. It certainly wasn’t their Facebook project, the fucking traitor. Mark grabbed the slice with the most cheese and squinted down at their notebooks - chemistry equations. Right. He remembered them saying something about exams, now that he thought back. “I figured you’d scale the building after a couple minutes.”
“Impractical,” Mark muttered through a mouthful, retreating over to his desk. Not that it hadn’t occurred to him, but he wasn’t fucking Spiderman. He couldn’t accomplish anything if he wound up lying on the ground with a broken neck, which would be a stupid fucking way to go.
Anyway. Going to the coffee shop had worked out well enough. For one thing, Mark was currently extremely well-caffeinated. He smiled to himself and booted up his desktop and laptop.
”So did you have fun out in the human world?” Chris asked curiously after a few moments. Mark didn’t turn around, just rose his hand in the air and flipped the bird. “Fresh air’s good for you.”
“Fuck you, I can open a window,” Mark said, but it came out more cheerfully than he intended, and there was a moment of silence from the table. Mark ignored it, popping the last bite of crust in his mouth and waiting for the network to connect.
“Dude. I think he did. You did have fun in the human world!” Dustin said gleefully. Mark rolled his eyes. “What happened? Did you run into Steve Jobs at the Starbucks? Was it an instant love connection?”
“It wasn’t a Starbucks,” Mark said, squinting at the screen. “Did you get more Red Bull?”
Another email from the fucking Winkleviis; Mark still wasn’t sure what to do with them. If he was going to get his own, far superior social networking site off the ground, he’d need funding, but he’d be damned if he’d take it from arrogant elitist assholes who didn’t have two braincells to rub together between them. Chris and Dustin were just as broke as he was; he’d already maxxed out their credit cards getting the providers they had now, and it still wasn’t enough.
“Aww, it’s like a watching a mermaid try to walk on land,” Dustin cooed. “And yes, yes, I did pick up more Red Bull. You’re welcome.”
They needed more server space - most of the work Mark was doing now was all hypothetical. It was getting to be a problem. But he’d worry about getting the bulk of the code done first. There was the attachment he’d sent himself, with the code for the Photo Album feature; he'd focus on that for now. It'd been hard enough getting the algorithm for Facemash going; over the weeks he'd had to learn to be patient, or at least he'd learned to try to be patient, which he figured was sort of the same thing.
Too bad he hadn't met Eduardo earlier.
“No, seriously,” Chris said, talking over Dustin, who’d started crooning some stupid song to himself as he scribbled things down. Fuck, where were Mark’s fucking headphones. “You’re, like. Smiling.”
“I smile all the time,” Mark said, and turned and smiled pointedly.
“Uh, scary,” Dustin said after a long moment, song having trailed off mid-wail. Well, that’d work.
Mark must have smiled at Eduardo at some point. And Eduardo hadn’t leaned away from him or stared at him blankly or acted like he was speaking another, less human language.
“See, wait, now that actually is a smile. Mark. Mark, did you… did you actually meet someone? Really?”
Stupid question. False parameters. But he knew what Chris meant - Mark had met Eduardo, but had he met someone? Someone interested in him. Someone he was interested in.
Now that was an idea that might be useful for the site.
“Maybe,” Mark said, and shook himself a bit before he found his headphones and got back to work.
***
Mark generally tried to evade human interaction when out and about on the campus grounds. He kept his head down, avoided eye contact with his fellow Harvard denizens, but he’d flagged certain faces and voices to recognize: Dustin, Chris, the Winkleviis (for purposes of avoidance), a few girls he’d managed to awkwardly flirt with over the semester, who appeared to have flagged Mark for avoidance purposes, if their hasty street-crossings were any indication.
After the day at True Grounds, Mark added two more faces to the list - Eduardo and Davi.
Now that he was looking, he seemed to see Eduardo everywhere. The first time he registered him, it was because he noticed someone pointing at him from across the street. Davi, and Eduardo had turned to follow his finger. When he spotted Mark, he beamed and waved. He was wearing a dark suit, and his ring glinted in the afternoon light. Mark was in a hoodie of dubious cleanliness and flip-flops, and he was dimly aware that he hadn’t washed his hair in… a while. He waved awkwardly back. Eduardo started to cross the street towards him, but Mark was late for his OS class, so he shrugged, made an attempt at an apologetic face, and kept walking.
It kept happening over the next few days - seeing Eduardo headed in the opposite direction.
Eduardo was apparently fairly popular; he was surrounded by people most of the time Mark saw him, hot co-eds and professors and the ever present Davi and another man who appeared to be his twin, burly and all in black with sunglasses hiding their faces.
Most of the time, Eduardo didn’t spot Mark back, but when he did, he always smiled and waved, and the throngs around him swiveled and stared, like they couldn’t believe their golden boy was acknowledging anyone so disheveled, let alone the campus Facemash pariah.
Mark stared back, waved awkwardly, and kept moving.
He wondered if Eduardo was like this with everyone. If he formed an attachment to anyone that infringed on his personal space and possessions, if he was just that friendly, even with someone reportedly as unapproachable as Mark.
The idea made him feel oddly ill, like he’d eaten too many Red Vines, or like when he had the flu.
He fucking hoped he wasn’t getting sick. He didn’t have time to get sick.
Eduardo should want to be friends with him; Mark far and away was the intellectual superior of the people he saw Eduardo interacting with. But he’d come to realize that relationships seldom followed a logical trajectory.
He left a lecture by Bill Gates a couple nights later, and got stopped leaving the auditorium by a hand on his shoulder, and when he turned he was completely blindsided by Eduardo’s smile. He blinked, felt the urge to raise his hand and shade his eyes.
“Shit,” he said, and Eduardo grinned, slung an arm around his shoulders and led him out into the chill night. “Uh, hi.”
“Thought you looked like you needed a laptop,” Eduardo said, and lifted his shoulder bag, mouth quirking.
“Very philanthropic of you, but I can go at least a few minutes without one before going into withdrawal.”
Eduardo laughed, eyes crinkling. “Well, let me know if the symptoms hit. I’m here for you.”
Anyone but Eduardo, and Mark would have minded the presumption of physical contact. Instead, he was having a hard time focusing on anything other than Eduardo’s arm around his shoulder. Eduardo was taller than him, and warm, and smelled expensive and spicy. People didn’t touch Mark, apart from his mother and his sisters. Chris had said physical contact indicated interest. But maybe it was just a cultural divide, a Brazilian difference in how one interpreted personal space.
“Did you enjoy the lecture?” Mark asked, stilted and hopeful, and Eduardo nodded enthusiastically, started talking about innovation and world-changing ideas and the global market. It was actually pretty fascinating, and Mark enjoyed watching Eduardo light up, talk passionately about something he was clearly well-informed about.
So he was annoyed when someone interrupted.
By then they’d migrated slowly to the Old Yard, then determined that they were going different directions from there. So they paused. Mark didn’t want the conversation to end yet. Maybe Eduardo didn’t either.
Lingering. That was what they were doing. Standing and staring at each other, and it should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Snow was drifting down in small, widely scattered flakes, catching the light and dusting Eduardo’s hair. Mark should have been cold - he’d forgotten to wear socks with his flip-flops this morning-but instead he felt oddly warm.
A group of students was approaching from behind Eduardo, and Mark vaguely noticed when they spotted him and started whispering. They looked vaguely familiar, possibly classmates. A hypothesis that was validated when they spoke.
“Hi! Um, Mark?”
As though whoever it was couldn’t see he was having a conversation. Mark nodded at them, and transferred his attention back to Eduardo. But apparently he’d been too subtle, because the guy continued.
“I’m Stuart Singer, from, uh, your OS class.” He beamed and waited.
“…Sure,” Mark agreed, hoping that was all the interaction that was required. When he glanced back at Eduardo, he saw that he was hiding his mouth with his hand, looking amused. Mark squinted at him, then smiled a little helplessly. Eduardo was laughing at him, but the expression on his face wasn’t mocking. Just - fond. Familiar.
“I just wanted to say, I thought FaceMash was amazing. And, uh, you said in the article that you were working on a new program? I just wanted to, um, offer a hand, if you needed one?” The expression on his face reminded Mark of his sister’s cocker spaniel puppy - dumb and hopeful and likely to piss all over Mark’s foot.
“I’ve got all the coders I need at the moment,” Mark said curtly, but smiled a little and nodded at the recognition. He projected that after The Facebook launched, the recognition from random students would be much increased, and probably the girls that currently looked at him like pondscum would change their tune.
“I’m Bob,” Singer’s companion said eagerly, and Mark looked at him blankly. “So, uh-how is the project going? Are you-” He broke off suddenly, and stared at Eduardo. “Holy-oh, shit, dude, you guys are friends? That makes so much sense!”
“What,” Mark said, blank, and felt Eduardo stiffen, straighten, before he smiled and offered his hand to the two guys.
“Nice to meet you, Bob, Stuart.”
“Like, wow,” the Bob guy gushed - Mark squinted at him. He really didn’t remember seeing this guy before, at all. “Just - I mean, Mark’s like Harvard royalty in computer circles, right? That’s so cool, that you two hang out!”
“Mark’s a great guy,” Eduardo said, and kept smiling - not the smile Mark had gotten used to. Something tight and formal. The two interlopers kept gushing and talking, and they were drawing a small crowd, so Mark interjected testily, “We were actually having a conversation, so-”
Eduardo poked him in the side, and when Mark glanced up, he saw Eduardo was biting his lip.
“Have a good night, fellas,” Eduardo said smoothly, and they started walking again - in the wrong direction, but Mark didn’t mind.
“Mark! That was kind of rude. You know that, right?” Eduardo had started snickering as soon as they were out of earshot, around a corner.
Mark shrugged. “Did you mind? I don’t know them.”
“Nah, wish I could be so blunt. So you’re the FaceMash guy, huh? How did I not know that? That was an impressive project.”
Mark actually wasn’t sure how it hadn’t come up in their first conversation. He gnawed on one of his hoodie strings and smiled.
“Also considered a bit rude. Mostly by the female population.”
“Yeah, well, they have a point,” Eduardo laughed. “But you don’t let people’s opinions sway you - that’s not a bad thing.”
“Thank you,” Mark said, surprised into sincerity, voice more serious than he intended. “Most people disagree.”
“Mm, well. I’ve come to appreciate honesty over niceness, you know? Better to know where you stand with someone.”
“Exactly,” Mark said, and grinned at Eduardo. “You’d be surprised how few people feel that way.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Eduardo said under his breath, and then smiled at him again. “So you’ve got a new project? Something bigger than crashing the Harvard servers?”
“Much bigger,” Mark said, and felt his face changing, a huge smile creeping onto his face, alien and unfamiliar. Of all people, Eduardo would understand the immensity of his project, what it meant and what it could do. He was a business major and he was smart and he understood Mark. Chris and Dustin got the computer aspects, understood the details. Eduardo wouldn’t get the details, but he’d understand the scope. “It’s-Wardo, it’s going to be huge.”
Eduardo cocked his head, eyes warm and waiting, and Mark felt like he was stepping off a precipice into something unknown and new.
“Sua majestade,” a voice interjected, out of nowhere, and Mark fought not to jump as a stream of Portuguese followed. Eduardo swore.
“Mark, I want to know more, I really, really do, but I have to go. I’m running late for a meeting.”
“I understand,” Mark said, and shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets.
“When can I see you again?”
Mark shrugged, and Eduardo huffed out a breath of air, misty in the cold night, and then took Mark’s hand. Mark froze and stared down at their linked fingers. Then Eduardo fished a pen out of his pocket and wrote numbers on Mark’s skin, quick, sharp strokes. Mark hadn’t breathed since Eduardo had taken his hand. Fuck. Each stroke of the pen seemed to go deeper than skin, and he was shivering. Shit, it would be the height of embarrassing to pop wood over this, over something this simple and this stupid, a pen on his skin.
A gold pen. Holy shit, a Mont Blanc pen. Maybe that made the arousal a little less shameful. Part of Mark was impressed, and part of him thought it was kind of stupid to spend that much on a pen. But most of him was just in shock.
Eduardo saw him looking at the pen, Mark guessed, because he flushed and let go of Mark, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
“Ridiculous, I know. Graduation present from my father.” Mark shrugged and stared at his hand again, felt like he could still feel the press of pen. He wanted Eduardo to write on him again. He wanted to write on Eduardo in gold ink, cover him in code, try to make their interactions into something concrete and knowable.
“So, yeah,” Eduardo said after a moment. “Call me later? I have a lot of studying to do, but maybe we can, uh, keep each other company?”
Oh, right. Despite all the staring, he hadn’t actually looked at what Eduardo had written - ten digits of thousand-dollar ink.
“Sure,” Mark said, and Eduardo’s teeth flashed in a wide, white grin before he disappeared with Davi into the night.
So that had happened.
***
“He could fund us,” Mark said later, lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling. When he titled his beer bottle back, he could see Eduardo’s number on his hand, the country code and area code, unfamiliar digits. “He’s rich. He could get us the server space.”
“Mark.” Chris, sounding long-suffering, as per usual. “From what I can tell, you really like this guy. And so far you’ve somehow, miraculously, managed to keep him from hating you. Do you really want to blow it now?”
Mark was most of the way to drunk, and when he rolled his head to glare at Chris the entire room swayed.
“If he hates me for that, he’s an idiot. I’d be giving him a chance to get in on the ground floor of something brilliant. Personally, I would like me for that.”
“He’s sort of got a point, C-dawg,” Dustin said cheerfully, voice a little muffled from where his face was mashed into his textbook; clearly he’d taken up the osmosis method of studying. “First shot at The Facebook, that’s gotta be better than flowers.”
“Exactly,” Mark said, pleased. He took another pull of his beer, then tossed the empty bottle towards the trash can and listened with vague interest for the crash. Probably it’d made it in. “The fact that we really need the money is-” he flapped a hand dismissively and shrugged “-is just a lucky coincidence.”
Chris made that sound that meant he was pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, Mark, maybe you missed that day of kindergarten. Using someone for their money is not the best way to say, ‘Hey, I like you.’”
“I do like Wardo,” Mark protested, rolling over and scowling into the armrest of the couch, and willed the desk to be a little closer, or his laptop to suddenly have anti-grav thrusters. He didn’t want to get up. “If it was just money, I’d have asked the fucking Winklevii. But it’s my site and I’m not whoring her out.”
There was a pause, filled mostly with Chris coughing and choking on his beer. Then Dustin said cheerfully over Chris’ spluttering, “So websites have genders? Like ships?”
Not the point. Mark eyed his laptop. Eduardo would understand, Mark was sure of it. Mark could probably hack the Business school database and find Eduardo’s email. He could make Eduardo a Facebook page, the first page that wasn’t a placeholder.
“Okay. Okay, leaving the whore thing aside. You might have a point, Mark, but seriously-”
Inspiration struck, and Mark interrupted, sitting up and jabbing a finger at Chris. “It’s like, okay. It’s like, I’m the clouds, and Facebook’s the oil. It’s an investment, Chris. And it’s a good one, and he’ll want to get in on it. He will.”
Chris was watching him with a look on his face that Mark couldn’t decipher. “Okay, but what I’m trying to tell you is that not all people think the way you do,” he said gently, like Mark was some sort of infant. “Your guy, he might see it differently if you ask him for money.”
“That’s stupid,” Mark grumbled, and stretched hopefully towards his laptop. Nope. Too far. Maybe if he had a grappling hook.
“You’re so fucking drunk,” Dustin giggled from the table, head still pillowed on his textbook. “Clouds and online ladies, shit. Scary thing is, I think I understood most of it. I gotta sleep. You gotta sleep. We all gotta sleep.”
“Sleep’s for the weak.” But snatching a few hours on the couch really didn’t seem that bad. Except now stupid Chris had gotten in his stupid head, and all Mark could think of was Eduardo going stiff and distant, the way he’d gone with the idiots from Mark’s OS class, and that wasn’t what Mark wanted at all.
He hadn’t meant to offend Erica when he said he’d get her places she couldn’t get herself. But he had, spectacularly.
Therefore, it was conceivable that he could offend Eduardo, regardless of intent.
So maybe Chris was right. Mark should let Eduardo know he liked him, in case for some asinine reason Eduardo hadn’t picked that up already. Mark was pretty sure he had, but people were messy and input got lost and outputs got scrambled.
Then Mark remembered he didn’t need his computer after all, and dug triumphantly in his pockets for his phone.
Chris and Dustin were still talking, about something Mark had lost the thread of. Chris was arguing in favor of doomed and Dustin in favor of adorable, whatever the fuck that meant. Mark ignored them both in favor of carefully typing in Eduardo’s number.
I’m going to make you a Facebook page.
He waited for a response impatiently, staring at the dim screen. Sure, it was 3 AM on a weekday, but finals were coming up and all good students, which Eduardo undoubtedly personified, were panicking and studying into the wee hours of the morning.
Sure enough, a few minutes later his phone buzzed in his hand.
mark?
Yeah.
hi :)
Then, two seconds later. don’t know what facebook is, but whatever you want to make me sounds great
Mark smiled, and then made a disgruntled noise when Dustin threw himself on the couch, crushing Mark’s legs.
“Look at his faaaace,” Dustin cooed, and then started singing one of those inane Disney songs again, about a tale as old as time, or some shit.
His phone buzzed again. are you free tomorrow? maybe i could come by to study. and you could show me your project.
Mark eyed Dustin, then replied. No. My roommates are idiots. You shouldn’t be exposed to them. Widener 2nd floor computers, 2PM.
When his phone lit up with the words, 2 works. it’s a date :¬), Mark couldn’t keep from smiling again, even knowing that Dustin would only take it as encouragement to keep singing.
***
For the first time since they’d met, Eduardo wasn’t wearing a suit, wasn’t impeccably tailored. Instead his eyes were red-rimmed and he was wearing a dark hoodie and jeans. When he shoved the hood down and slumped into the chair next to Mark’s, his hair was a disheveled mess.
Mark had intended to immediately show Eduardo the Facebook page he’d made him, but now he hesitated.
“You okay?” he asked. Eduardo was staring off into space over Mark’s shoulder and it took him a second to respond.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Mark looked at him skeptically, and then Eduardo crumpled, laying his head on the desk next to his keyboard. “No. No, I’m not okay. I just got my grades back for our Geology lab exam. I got an eighty-seven. Eight-fucking seven,” Eduardo said into his arms, voice muffled.
“What was the class average?” Mark asked finally, bewildered. He’d thought maybe a family member had died, or Eduardo’d accidentally hit a kid with his car or something. A B+ on a lab exam for a class that wasn’t even part of Wardo’s major seemed incongruent with the emotional response he was witnessing.
“A sixty-three, but that doesn’t matter. Someone else made a ninety-one, you know that? And I’ll need a ninety-six on the lecture final to get an A in the class. A ninety-six. Fuck.”
Mark was missing something here. Eduardo had circles beneath his eyes, dark ones that Mark recognized from his own bathroom mirror after spending days without sleep.
“But…it’s just a gen ed course,” he pointed out, though surely this had already occurred to Eduardo. “It’s not like your life will depend on you doing well in Geology. You’re studying economics, not rocks.”
“You don’t understand. My father-he doesn’t think I should be here at all. He thinks I should be home, studying to - to take over the family corporation.” Eduardo’s laugh was hollow; it reminded Mark of the way Dustin’s coughs had sounded when he had pneumonia freshman year, rough and edged with blood. “He thinks studying to be a businessman is crude. Beneath me. I’m embarrassing myself. And now, now I’m just proving him right.”
Mark bit his lip. Okay. Well. Clearly this was important to Eduardo, even if Mark didn’t get it. He started poking through the Harvard servers until he identified Eduardo’s geology professor.
“Your dad sounds like a dick,” he offered as he typed, and Eduardo huffed out a laugh, one that sounded a little more genuine this time. “You’re already more successful in business than most Harvard grads.”
Facebook. Mark should bring up The Facebook now. If Eduardo’s dad wasn’t impressed by three hundred thousand dollars in a single summer, well. The Facebook was going to be bigger than that. But maybe that was patronizing. Maybe that was worse than asking for money. Mark scowled at his hands, flexed his fingers uselessly. Why couldn’t people be more like computers?
“Thanks, but sometimes I think-maybe he’s right, you know? Maybe, I. Fuck. Sorry, I get like this when I haven’t slept,” Eduardo said, then made a visible effort to straighten and smile at Mark. “You were going to show me something, and I’ve spent all this time complaining. I’m sorry.”
“What are friends for?” Mark said, intending to sound playful and instead sounding stupidly Hallmark even to his own ears. But then the smile on Eduardo’s face shifted from strained to something that made Mark feel like his brain was shorting out, sending neurons sparking directionlessly. So maybe that was alright.
“It’s just, I don’t-I don’t really talk about this stuff, to anyone. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t mean to dump on you-”
“Wardo,” Mark interrupted, and reached over and awkwardly patted Eduardo’s hand. “It’s okay. I can hack Dr. Levine’s email.” Actually, he’d begun doing that a couple minutes ago, but he didn’t have to admit that yet. “Get you the answer key. It should only take a couple minutes.” He squinted at the screen. “The security is really embarrassingly outdated.”
He jumped when there was a loud sudden crash - Eduardo’d dropped his textbook. Mark blinked at him, and Eduardo stared back, mouth open.
“You… what?” he asked hoarsely, eyes wide. He looked less like a college guy and more like a startled woodland creature, which was probably Dustin and his stupid song lyrics creeping into Mark’s subconscious.
“Hack Dr. Levine’s email. I can do it,” Mark repeated, looking over. Eduardo’s eyes were seriously like saucers. Mark didn’t know the human eye could get so wide. Something was wrong. He frowned slightly. “He’s your professor, isn’t he? I mean, I could get all of the department answer keys, if that’d be-”
“Jesus, Mark!” Eduardo hissed, face flushing, and scooted closer, slapping a hand over Mark’s mouth. Mark’s fingers froze on the keys. Eduardo’s fingers were warm against his cheek, and Mark’s lips were parted slightly against Eduardo’s palm. He tried not to breathe.
The last person to touch him like this had been Erica when she’d given him a handjob in her bedroom, with her roommate outside in the living area and Mark was being too loud. A few weeks later, they’d broken up. It’d been months, now. He was dimly aware that the response going on in his pants right now was totally inappropriate, especially when Eduardo looked so panicked, but he couldn’t seem to do much about it.
“Sorry, but-you can’t say things like that,” Eduardo whispered after a moment, still staring at him with wild eyes. This close he could see Eduardo’s irises had small flecks of gold. Mark hadn’t noticed those before. “Someone could hear-you, we could be expelled. And you barely know me! You can’t just say something like that.”
“But I mean it, I could,” Mark said into Eduardo’s palm, trying to process Eduardo’s response. “If you wanted me to.”
Eduardo shivered and then shook himself, pushed himself backward again. Mark touched his own mouth for a second, blinking at Eduardo, who started laughing, tired and high-pitched.
Mark still didn’t get what the big deal was. “It’s not like anyone would know,” Mark tried to clarify. Maybe Eduardo didn’t get that. “I’m better with computers than anyone Harvard employs for security. And it’s not like this class has anything to do with your major, it’s not like you really need to learn this bullshit.”
“I’m not going to cheat, Mark,” Eduardo said, shaking his head. “I can do it on my own. I just need to focus.”
Mark stiffened and turned back to his computer. “Sure,” he said, and started fumbling for his headphones.
“Hey, hey,” Eduardo said, and his voice was happy, and then suddenly he was standing, leaning over and, oh crap, hugging Mark. “Thank you,” he said into the skin of Mark’s neck, his breath warm. “Ethics aside - that’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. Even if I wouldn’t use it.”
“Oh,” Mark said, blinking. He hesitantly raised his arms and hugged back, patted Eduardo’s shoulders awkwardly. He was pretty sure that couldn’t be true, because Eduardo had tons of friends. Mark had seen them. But Eduardo had a way of sounding so sincere that it penetrated past all of Mark’s cynicism. Maybe it was true. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Eduardo said, and let go. He took a breath and seemed to shake himself, then settled back into his chair. Suddenly despite the hoodie and the jeans and the hair, he looked put together again, rested. Calm.
“Um. You wanna see The Facebook?” Mark offered into the quiet between them, and Eduardo smiled and said, “Show me.”
Eduardo knew fuck-all about code, but Mark had been right - as soon as Mark stopped rattling off specs and showed him the placeholder page, started explaining the features, Eduardo lit up.
“It’ll be exclusive to Harvard, at first, but I’m talking about taking the entire college experience-”
“And putting it online,” Eduardo finished, sounding awed, and Mark leaned back in his chair, smiled up at the ceiling.
“Exactly.”
“Can I?” Eduardo asked, leaning over Mark’s shoulder and hovering his hand over the mouse. Mark made a ‘go for it gesture,’ then watched the play of emotions on Eduardo’s face as he explored the site.
“Add friend, status updates, relationship status - Mark. This is good.” His accent got stronger when he was excited; Mark could hear it now. He thought, Maybe that’s what he sounds like in bed, and flushed, crossing his legs. Not the time or the place. “This is really, really good.”
“I know,” Mark said simply, but his heart was pounding. He wanted to kiss Eduardo for the way he sounded right now, excited and amazed.
“You did this all yourself?”
“The bulk of the coding is mine,” Mark said smugly, then admitted, “Chris and Dustin helped some, but they’re mostly focusing on their schoolwork at the moment.” For some reason.
“And you made me a page,” Eduardo said, and tilted his head and looked at Mark from beneath his lashes, grinning. Mark wondered if he’d noticed that he’d listed Eduardo’s status as It’s Complicated. He couldn’t decide if he wanted Eduardo to see it and ask or not. It’d been an impulse, maybe a stupid one. Probably better than saying “In a Relationship with Mark Zuckerberg (Check Yes or No),” at least.
He coughed, and then shrugged and shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I - not all the features are operational yet, obviously, but that’s how it will look.” Blue and white and clean. Simple. Perfect. The world distilled down into understandable options and input.
“When will it be online?”
Mark winced. Okay. Here is was. He had to be tactful. He could do tact; Chris had coached him. Dustin had made pom-poms out of shredded documents. It’d been stupid, but Mark tried to remember which particular phrases had gotten Dustin to shout ‘Go Team Empathy!’ and shake them for crackly emphasis.
“I don’t want you to - don’t take this the wrong way.”
“I’m sorry?” Eduardo blinked, cocking his head. Shit.
“We need money. Wardo, I’d like it if, uh. It’s just. You have money, right? And we need money to get the site off the ground-” Eduardo took his hand off Mark’s shoulder and Mark bit his lip. This was going terribly. He closed his eyes and got the rest of it out, tongue tripping over itself. “You’re-you understand, you get how big it’ll be. You’re a business guy, you’ll appreciate the site and what it can be and what it means, and I could get the money from other people, but I don’t want the money from other people, I want it from you, but that doesn’t mean-”
“Mark, Mark. Breathe.”
He opened his eyes and oh, oh, thank fuck, Eduardo was beaming at him like Mark’d just offered him the world on a platter. Which he sort of had, but Mark was pretty sure most people wouldn’t get that. “You want me to invest in your company?”
“As primary shareholder,” Mark agreed, swallowing. How had his mouth gotten so dry? “Well, apart from me, but… yeah. I was going to draft up a contract, but I wasn’t sure how to word it.” Eduardo Saverin, please be a part of my company, sign here.
“I can show you how to draft a shareholder contract,” Eduardo said, laughing like he could hear what Mark was thinking. He collapsed back in his chair and started rummaging in his bag. “How much do you need?”
“A thousand to start. Probably more once we start expanding to other campuses. What-what are you doing?”
“Writing you a check, idiot,” Eduardo said, grinning, and okay, that was - that was what all the toothpaste commercials wished they could convey. Something dazzling.
“Shit,” Mark breathed, and pressed the balls of his hands to his eyes. This was too easy. He wasn’t ready for this. He tried to think of the soonest he could get the site online, get the code operational, and felt light-headed, dizzy with too many thoughts crowded too close in.
“Did you really think I’d say no?”
“I thought you’d recognize an amazing business opportunity when it sat in your lap and did a provocative dance, but. Chris said maybe you’d-think it was just the money. That I was using you for the money.”
At that, Eduardo laughed, loud and surprised, and it echoed in the quiet library. People turned and stared, but Eduardo ignored them, beaming at Mark instead. “Mark, I should be thanking you for asking me for to be a part of this. And I will. After finals, we’ll go out, get trashed, lift a glass to your brilliance.” That was cute: Eduardo thought he’d be able to pry Mark away from the computer. Mark had funding now - the computer was going to be his life. “But believe me when I say I am familiar with people using me for my-for my money, and I know you. This is better than that. You’re better than that.”
“I might not be. You haven’t known me that long,” Mark pointed out, but he was grinning back helplessly, and he had a check for-what the fuck, for two thousand dollars-in his hand.
“Long enough.” Which was stupid; Mark could be a con artist. Eduardo was too trusting, had let Mark just waltz up into his space. Except when Mark reached for cynicism, he didn’t find it at all. Instead he felt warm, like the sun had come out in the middle of the Massachusetts winter and shone right on him, just him.
“Thanks, Wardo,” Mark said, sincere and pleased. So fuck Chris - Eduardo hadn’t taken Mark’s offer the wrong way at all. He’d taken it just the right way, actually, and Mark had wound up worrying for nothing.
Eduardo had a strange look on his face now, though, like two expressions mashed together - amused and confused, or maybe amused and curious. “You know, only my sister calls me that,” he said, and it took Mark a second to figure out what he was talking about. Wardo.
“Oh,” Mark said, wincing. He hadn’t really noticed he’d been calling Eduardo that, to be honest - it just rolled off the tongue. It sounded right. But Mark loathed it when Dustin called him Marky Mark, or MZ Squarepants, or whatever the fuck else he’d concocted in his deranged brain for the day. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I like it.” When Mark tore his eyes away from the numbers, from Eduardo’s looping signature, he saw Eduardo was biting his lower lip, cheeks pink.
Okay, maybe now was the time, and the place.
“Wardo,” Mark said, low and hopeful. Eduardo had just given him two thousand dollars, had just given him the chance to bring The Facebook out of the realm of theoretical into the practical, and Mark really, more than ever, wanted to kiss him. Maybe to give him a blowjob - these computers were pretty out of the way, and the desks were big and partitioned. Mark was pretty sure he could swing it. And he wanted to. He edged his chair closer hopefully, the squeak of the wheels obnoxiously loud at the moment he least wanted them to be. Eduardo smiled at him, eyes shining, and then Mark touched Wardo’s shoulder, let his thumb brush the skin of Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo sucked in a breath.
“Seriously. Thank you,” Mark said.
“I’m glad I could help. You don’t have to thank me.” Eduardo’s voice was steady, but his accent was slipping through, and he had arched his neck slightly into Mark’s touch.
“I’m glad you have money. But it’d be okay if you didn’t.”
“Jesus, Mark.” Eduardo stared at him, eyes wide and dark. “You-”
“I really like you,” Mark said quietly, and there it was, the smile - soft and . And Eduardo’s eyes were so dark and he was staring at Mark’s mouth, and this was going to be so good. This was going to be amazing. “I. Can I-”
Eduardo was leaning in, and then suddenly he looked over Mark’s shoulder and blanched, swore and pulled away. Mark’s hand was left hanging in midair. He blinked, breath lodged in his throat, strangely solid and icy. Like he’d swallowed a hailstone.
He slowly drew his hand back and contemplated beating his own face in with a keyboard. Shit.
Eduardo was bright red. “I-sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It’s-I, we’re in the library, and, and we don’t know each other very well-” which, what? Hadn’t he just said the exact opposite? “-so I. Fuck.” He buried his head in his hands for a moment. “Just. There’s things you don’t know about me,” he said, muffled and indistinct. “That you need to know.”
“So tell me,” Mark said after a moment, because that seemed like the next logical step to him. But Eduardo just shook his head, wincing.
“I will. I promise I will. Just-not yet? Give me a little longer?”
Mark was drawing a total blank. Maybe Eduardo was married. Maybe he wasn’t gay. Fuck, maybe he had AIDS, or maybe he… just wasn’t interested. Was stalling. That seemed plausible, and in fact was a familiar scenario. Mark had heard variations of that before, the stammering and the excuses. Fuck.
It was just that Mark had thought - okay, he wasn’t great at reading people, but he’d really thought Eduardo had been about to kiss him back. He just looked miserable now, though, all big pleading eyes and wistful mouth. Shit.
“Fine,” Mark said shortly and turned back to the computer, staring at the screen blankly. He couldn’t even think of anything to type. There was a short, horrible silence, broken only by Mark fidgeting with his hoodie strings.
Then Eduardo said tentatively, “Is it enough? The check, I mean?”
Mark stared down at the check again. A thousand dollars more than he’d expected. Two thousand more, really. He shoved the disappointment down and focused on that.
“It’s great. This will give us enough to get really high-end stuff, top notch. Good quality.” He had to think about that, about getting the site running. He was actually going to bring The Facebook online, and soon. Despite the gnawing pit that was currently his stomach, Mark found himself smiling again.
Except, fuck, it was a Sunday, wasn’t it? He couldn’t go deposit the check yet.
“What time do the banks open tomorrow?” he asked, and Eduardo’s face smoothed out a little. He smiled crookedly at Mark, looking relieved.
“Eight AM, and they close at six. But I thought you had a Calc exam tomorrow?”
“So?” Mark said dismissively, already plotting out which server hardware he was going to buy. Two thousand dollars was a considerably larger chunk of change than he’d dared hope for. He thought maybe Dell Poweredge, the 4U rack-dense form factor, would be a good choice. They didn’t need quite that much processing power yet, but they would eventually.
“Mark. You can’t just ignore your classes, you know that, right?”
“Mm?” Mark drummed his fingers on the desk. He’d deposit the check tomorrow, get the hardware, start getting it wired up. Maybe they could be online by Wednesday. No, that was probably being overly optimistic. They had so much code to go through, probably plenty of errors that had gotten overlooked. “Sure, right.”
“Okay, maybe you should give me that check back until finals are over,” Eduardo said, then raised his hands when Mark glared. “Joking! It was a joke.”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“Fine, but really, at least promise me you’ll still be eating and sleeping this week. And going to your exams.” Or maybe they really should go a little more conservative with the spending. Even if they had funding now, it was hard to know what expenses would come up. Mark really wasn’t sure, outside from the technical costs, what other expenses would be involved at all. Maybe Eduardo could help with that; he was a business major. He should know. “Mark. Mark.”
“What?” Mark asked, looking up from the Windows IT Pro page. “Oh. I guess. Sure. I’ll eat.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Eduardo groaned, and Mark said, “Thanks, Obi-Wan,” and went back to browsing. “Don’t think I won’t check up on you. I’ll beat down your door bearing food.”
“Sounds like a bonus to me. I’ll be sure not to call,” Mark said unthinkingly, and then winced. Not interested. Eduardo’s not interested, don’t flirt, let it go. But Eduardo just laughed and made an exasperated noise.
“You’re hopeless,” he said fondly, and started flipping through his textbook. Right, they were supposed to have been studying.
“So it’s been said,” Mark said quietly, and rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He could at least do a few more manual run-throughs right now. He left his headphones off this time, and watched SQL run with the soundtrack of Eduardo flipping pages and murmuring softly to himself in the background.
***
PART TWO
***
This was all Chris’ fault. Mark had run out of Red Bull and then made the mistake of complaining about it out loud, and somehow in the ensuing conversation Chris had found out that Mark hadn’t left the apartment for three or four days. Possibly five. Chris had squawked a lot about needing fresh air and human interaction, which Mark ignored right up until the point where Chris shoved Mark bodily out of the room and dead-bolted the door behind him.
After a few fruitless attempts to pick the lock, Mark gave up and left the dorm, figuring he could get some coffee and be back in twenty minutes. Mark might be locked out for now, but Dustin would be done with class soon and he had keys.
Except now Mark was stuck in True Grounds with a genius loop of code running through his brain and no computer to capture it. God-fucking-dammit. He didn't even have a pen, not that that would help much when he needed to see the processes running and check for dropped lines in real-time. He clutched at his paper cup and scanned the crowded cafe - no one with a computer, not a single fucking computer?
But no, there was one guy with a laptop in the backmost corner. Mark made a beeline for the table without thinking twice, shoving past other students and customers.
"Hi, sorry, I need to borrow this," he said quickly, tongue tripping over itself in his haste as he slid into the opposite chair. He reached for the laptop, pulling it out of its owner’s hands and turning it towards himself. It was high end, a nice Mac. There was a spreadsheet up in Excel, graphs and equations, and Mark abruptly realized that possibly the owner of this computer might not appreciate Mark interrupting his work.
When he looked up, the guy across the table was blinking at him, face blank. "I... beg your pardon?"
"It'll only take a second, I left my computer at the dorms," Mark explained, impatient, biting his lower lip. The guy stared at him a moment longer, eyes wide. Mark wasn't sure how to take that, but he didn’t appear to be about to punch Mark or reclaim his computer, so Mark kept going. "I just -- I need to get some subroutines coded, it'll only be a few seconds. Okay, no, it'll be more like fifteen minutes, maximum, unless you've got the processing power, but so long as you’ve got a 32 bit platform--"
"I have no idea what you’re talking about," the guy interrupted, and now he was smiling. He had a nice smile. “But go for it.”
Mark blinked. "Really? I admit I expected a bit more resistance. Or resentment, at least."
"I've been working all morning, I could use a break," the guy explained. The guy shrugged and took a sip of his expresso, watching Mark over the rim of the tiny cup. "I should warn you, the damned thing keeps crashing."
"I can fix that," Mark said dismissively, flapping a hand. "Mutually beneficial thievery."
He glanced back up at the burst of laughter this statement produced and was momentarily distracted whiteness of the guy's teeth. A distant part of his brain noted that he’d apparently hijacked the computer of someone incredibly attractive, but the rest of him was busy installing and opening up programs. His erstwhile benefactor asked a few questions that Mark absently answered, but all his attention was on the screen.
Well, most of it. He heard some kind of flurried conversation between his tablemate and a looming figure that had barreled up and started shouting, but it didn't seem important.
"No, no, Davi, está tudo bem," Mark’s guy was saying, and the other man retreated after grumbling and waving his hands a bit longer. Now he was just standing in the corner and glowering at Mark, but Mark was used to being glared at, so he didn't give it much thought. Maybe the guy's brother, or boyfriend. Kind of weird, but not important, not so long as Mark wasn't interrupted.
"That wasn't English," Mark noted absently a few minutes later, taking his fingers off the keyboard. He cracked his neck and tried to take a sip from his coffee, still staring at the screen. It took him a moment to notice something was wrong, and by then the guy was laughing again, warm and friendly.
"Well spotted. Let me help you with that," the guy said, smiling at him as he took Mark’s coffee cup and removed the lid. "Try now."
"Thanks," Mark muttered, cheeks hot. Not the first time he'd done something like this, forgotten to pop open a Red Bull before trying to drink from it or, in this case, to turn the coffee around and drink from the appropriate hole in the lid. Chris and Dustin were used to it, at least, but it was embarrassing to have it happen in public.
Dustin and Chris always mocked him, though. This guy just looked - charmed, Mark guessed. Amused. Friendly. Mark wasn't used to that. He took another swallow of coffee and tried to analyze what was happening. The guy had brown eyes, and had his chin propped on his hand, and was watching him back interestedly.
Probably Mark should say something. Explain himself. "Sorry about the-" Mark waved a hand at the laptop. "Forced loan. I had an idea I wanted to get down for a project, and my dorm was too far away. So, uh. Thank you. For not having me kicked out. Or arrested, or whatever."
"No, it's fine," the guy said, smiling at him. "Happy to help."
Mark didn't get this guy at all. Most people would have been more upset. When Mark grabbed his classmates’ computers to check his projections on multiple screens, there was usually a lot of yelling and complaining, as though their classwork could possibly compare to the coding Mark was doing.
But this guy just seemed oddly cheerful, like being descended on by a scrawny unwashed computer programmer was the best thing that had happened to him all day.
Mark tilted his head and considered the guy, then stuck out his hand. "I'm Mark. Mark Zuckerberg. What were you working on?"
"What was I...?" the guy asked, looking puzzled, and then he took Mark's hand, shook it firmly. It was a good handshake, and it felt oddly profound. There was a heavy silver ring on the other guy’s finger, a point of coldness on Mark’s skin, but the rest of his touch was warm. Mark felt his cheeks heat for no good reason, and he snatched his own hand back, suddenly sure that his palms were sweating stupidly.
"Before I hijacked your computer, you had spreadsheets up,” he continued after a moment. “What were they for?"
There was a pause.
"You really don't know," the other guy marveled slowly, and then laughed again, his whole face lighting up. “Fantastic.”
Mark was confused - should he know this guy? Maybe he was in one of Mark’s classes or something; that’d happened before. He’d had a group project in Western Civ last year, and he’d kept forgetting which people were his group mates, which apparently was insulting and had actually resulted in one of the girls slapping Mark in the face in the middle of the library.
So, business as usual.
But this guy didn’t seem insulted, just pleased and amused.
"Fantastic,” he repeated, grinning, and Mark smiled slightly into his coffee cup, pleased with himself. See, Chris, he could handle human interactions just fucking fine. They might even be flirting right now; Mark wasn’t sure, but this was definitely at least friendly. "I'm Eduardo Saverin. I'm in the Business school. Economics."
"That would explain the algorithms," Mark noted, nodding to himself. It would be useful to have a friend in the business school, if he ever got this derivation of Facemash off the ground. Mark glanced back at the computer, entered a few keystrokes to save his work and send it to his Harvard account, then spun the computer back around and gave it a small push towards Eduardo. "I've upgraded your systems and boosted your anti-virus software and freed up some hard drive space. You shouldn't have any more problems with crashing."
"You're too kind," Eduardo said, beaming. He shoved his hair out of his eyes and leaned in, letting his voice drop a little. "I should let strange men steal my laptop more often."
That was flirtatious behavior, Mark was almost sure of it. It was definitely - Eduardo’s teasing tone and husky voice was startlingly appealing. "I suspect I'm probably a bit of an anomaly as far as rogue computer programmers go," Mark said dryly, dropping his eyes and picking at his thumbnail. “You’re too trusting.”
“I suppose I am." Eduardo was nodding solemnly, but when Mark glanced back up, his eyes were bright and amused. “So, Mark Zuckerberg. Computer pirate extraordinaire. What else do you do?”
Making conversation. Right. Mark could do that. “Besides steal computers? I, uh, go to pointless gen ed classes and hack servers for fun in my spare time,” Mark replied, shrugging. “Sometimes I sleep. Um. I go to the AEPi parties when Chris and Dustin drag me - they’re my roommates. It’s the Jewish fraternity. The parties are pretty lame, but there’s free beer. Uh, that’s about it. I’m not exciting. I mean, I am, if you’re smart enough to understand the computer stuff, but most people are idiots, so.”
This was the type of ramble that tended to result in him being slapped or stared at, but Eduardo just groaned and said, “Oh, God, the gen ed classes. They’re kicking my ass.” And then he waved Looming Burly Man over and rattled something incomprehensible off before handing him his cup. He glanced over at Mark from beneath his lashes, then tilted his head. “You want more coffee? Davi can get you a refill.”
“Sure,” Mark said, surprised. He tried that sort of thing with Dustin and Chris, but usually it resulted in being pelted with pillows or sprayed with beer or just being laughed at. Or locked out of his own fucking dorm room. Eduardo clearly had better friends, which made sense. He was much more personable than Mark, and probably the big brown eyes helped. Mark doubted Chris would have locked Eduardo out.
“I have a geology exam next Friday that’s seriously destroying my sleep schedule,” Eduardo continued, making an exaggeratedly pained face that Mark found himself smiling at. “I thought it’d be easier than biology, and more useful, oil being what it is. But it’s more work than I thought it’d be.”
“Thought geology was rocks for jocks,” Mark joked tenatively, and was pleased when Eduardo rolled his eyes and threw a balled up napkin at him. “Easy class to pass, though, right?”
“I don’t want to just pass, Mark! I have to keep up my GPA. My father - well. I’ve got to keep up my grades. You know how it is.”
Mark didn’t really care about his non-computer classes so long as he passed them, so no, he didn’t know how it was. He said as much and Eduardo smiled faintly.
“Must be nice to be able to just focus on the things you love.” His voice had gotten soft and distant, and somehow the conversation had taken an unexpected turn.
“Well, it does tend to result in my leaping on unsuspecting fellow students in cafes,” Mark pointed out, and Eduardo smiled at him again, the trace of a frown that’d been on his face vanishing.
“Perish the thought.”
Davi brought back their drinks. When half an hour later he brought back refills, Mark realized he’d actually been lost in a conversation that didn’t revolve around Linux or Perl for the better part of an hour. They’d talked about the weather - Eduardo had created an algorithm that could predict oil prices based on temperature projections, and Mark had found himself genuinely impressed with another student for the first time in a long time - and they’d talked about the Jewish fraternity, which Eduardo had apparently been considering joining. Then the conversation had somehow migrated to the places they’d grown up. Eduardo was Brazilian, apparently, had grown up in Brazil, which was why he spoke Portuguese. He was apparently dismayed by the Massachusetts winters, the ice and wind, and somehow that had devolved into a conversation about how Mark’s mom and sister had taken up knitting recently, how Mark received at least ten new pairs of gloves and countless scarves that he’d never wear every month, how Eduardo was welcome to all of them, should take them before Mark drowned in wool.
Mark couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked this much, let alone to someone he’d never met. His throat actually was a little scratchy now. But now that he’d noticed the time, he really should get back to the room and work on his homework.
“I should go,” Mark said, standing reluctantly and shoving his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Chris’ll probably let me back in the room now. But, um, thanks for the, you know-” he gestured with an elbow “-computer access. And coffee.”
Eduardo stared at him for a moment, frowning, and then stood too and offered his hand again. “It was lovely to meet you, Mark.”
“Lovely?” Mark repeated disbelievingly, mouth twitching, and Eduardo rolled his eyes.
“Fuck off,” he retorted, and then shoved his hands in his own pockets. Not a hoodie, or khakis, or jeans, but immaculately tailored and pressed trousers. Mark registered for the first time that Eduardo was actually wearing a suit to a coffee shop. Probably he wore suits to class, which was oddly endearing and definitely ridiculous. “Look, we should hang out some time, yeah?”
Eduardo was watching him hopefully, like he thought Mark would say no. Mark still wasn’t sure if this was flirting or not. He kind of wanted it to be, despite the fact that he definitely didn’t have time for a relationship and wasn’t sure he really was interested in dating a guy and the fact that his last attempt at dating with Erica had gone down in inexplicable flames.
He’d have to ask Chris for his opinion; Chris dated guys all the time. Maybe he could write an algorithm to help Mark figure out what was going on here.
“Sure,” Mark said, and was surprised at the brilliance of the smile this produced. “I’m in Kirkland, second floor. Room 214. I’m pretty much always there, or at the lab in the basement.”
“I’ll stop by sometime,” Eduardo replied, smiling at him, and then they both just stared at each other for a moment before Eduardo coughed and sat back down, opening his laptop. Mark turned and began making his way out of the café, which was more crowded than Mark would have expected for a late Wednesday afternoon; he was actually having trouble making it to the door.
A lot of the patrons were glaring at him, which, whatever, maybe they’d been classmates. But then one or two were beaming and giving him thumbs ups, which was decidedly bizarre. And even stranger, one girl, all blonde curls and curves, cut him off at the door and hissed, “What do you have that I don’t?”
“Uh, a brain?” Mark retorted automatically, confused, then shook his head and shoved past her into the cold afternoon air.
People could be so fucking strange.
***
When he got back to the room, both Chris and Dustin were there, huddled over the table and eating pizza, notebooks and papers spread out between the plates.
“You stayed out longer than I expected,” Chris said without turning away from whatever he was working on. It certainly wasn’t their Facebook project, the fucking traitor. Mark grabbed the slice with the most cheese and squinted down at their notebooks - chemistry equations. Right. He remembered them saying something about exams, now that he thought back. “I figured you’d scale the building after a couple minutes.”
“Impractical,” Mark muttered through a mouthful, retreating over to his desk. Not that it hadn’t occurred to him, but he wasn’t fucking Spiderman. He couldn’t accomplish anything if he wound up lying on the ground with a broken neck, which would be a stupid fucking way to go.
Anyway. Going to the coffee shop had worked out well enough. For one thing, Mark was currently extremely well-caffeinated. He smiled to himself and booted up his desktop and laptop.
”So did you have fun out in the human world?” Chris asked curiously after a few moments. Mark didn’t turn around, just rose his hand in the air and flipped the bird. “Fresh air’s good for you.”
“Fuck you, I can open a window,” Mark said, but it came out more cheerfully than he intended, and there was a moment of silence from the table. Mark ignored it, popping the last bite of crust in his mouth and waiting for the network to connect.
“Dude. I think he did. You did have fun in the human world!” Dustin said gleefully. Mark rolled his eyes. “What happened? Did you run into Steve Jobs at the Starbucks? Was it an instant love connection?”
“It wasn’t a Starbucks,” Mark said, squinting at the screen. “Did you get more Red Bull?”
Another email from the fucking Winkleviis; Mark still wasn’t sure what to do with them. If he was going to get his own, far superior social networking site off the ground, he’d need funding, but he’d be damned if he’d take it from arrogant elitist assholes who didn’t have two braincells to rub together between them. Chris and Dustin were just as broke as he was; he’d already maxxed out their credit cards getting the providers they had now, and it still wasn’t enough.
“Aww, it’s like a watching a mermaid try to walk on land,” Dustin cooed. “And yes, yes, I did pick up more Red Bull. You’re welcome.”
They needed more server space - most of the work Mark was doing now was all hypothetical. It was getting to be a problem. But he’d worry about getting the bulk of the code done first. There was the attachment he’d sent himself, with the code for the Photo Album feature; he'd focus on that for now. It'd been hard enough getting the algorithm for Facemash going; over the weeks he'd had to learn to be patient, or at least he'd learned to try to be patient, which he figured was sort of the same thing.
Too bad he hadn't met Eduardo earlier.
“No, seriously,” Chris said, talking over Dustin, who’d started crooning some stupid song to himself as he scribbled things down. Fuck, where were Mark’s fucking headphones. “You’re, like. Smiling.”
“I smile all the time,” Mark said, and turned and smiled pointedly.
“Uh, scary,” Dustin said after a long moment, song having trailed off mid-wail. Well, that’d work.
Mark must have smiled at Eduardo at some point. And Eduardo hadn’t leaned away from him or stared at him blankly or acted like he was speaking another, less human language.
“See, wait, now that actually is a smile. Mark. Mark, did you… did you actually meet someone? Really?”
Stupid question. False parameters. But he knew what Chris meant - Mark had met Eduardo, but had he met someone? Someone interested in him. Someone he was interested in.
Now that was an idea that might be useful for the site.
“Maybe,” Mark said, and shook himself a bit before he found his headphones and got back to work.
***
Mark generally tried to evade human interaction when out and about on the campus grounds. He kept his head down, avoided eye contact with his fellow Harvard denizens, but he’d flagged certain faces and voices to recognize: Dustin, Chris, the Winkleviis (for purposes of avoidance), a few girls he’d managed to awkwardly flirt with over the semester, who appeared to have flagged Mark for avoidance purposes, if their hasty street-crossings were any indication.
After the day at True Grounds, Mark added two more faces to the list - Eduardo and Davi.
Now that he was looking, he seemed to see Eduardo everywhere. The first time he registered him, it was because he noticed someone pointing at him from across the street. Davi, and Eduardo had turned to follow his finger. When he spotted Mark, he beamed and waved. He was wearing a dark suit, and his ring glinted in the afternoon light. Mark was in a hoodie of dubious cleanliness and flip-flops, and he was dimly aware that he hadn’t washed his hair in… a while. He waved awkwardly back. Eduardo started to cross the street towards him, but Mark was late for his OS class, so he shrugged, made an attempt at an apologetic face, and kept walking.
It kept happening over the next few days - seeing Eduardo headed in the opposite direction.
Eduardo was apparently fairly popular; he was surrounded by people most of the time Mark saw him, hot co-eds and professors and the ever present Davi and another man who appeared to be his twin, burly and all in black with sunglasses hiding their faces.
Most of the time, Eduardo didn’t spot Mark back, but when he did, he always smiled and waved, and the throngs around him swiveled and stared, like they couldn’t believe their golden boy was acknowledging anyone so disheveled, let alone the campus Facemash pariah.
Mark stared back, waved awkwardly, and kept moving.
He wondered if Eduardo was like this with everyone. If he formed an attachment to anyone that infringed on his personal space and possessions, if he was just that friendly, even with someone reportedly as unapproachable as Mark.
The idea made him feel oddly ill, like he’d eaten too many Red Vines, or like when he had the flu.
He fucking hoped he wasn’t getting sick. He didn’t have time to get sick.
Eduardo should want to be friends with him; Mark far and away was the intellectual superior of the people he saw Eduardo interacting with. But he’d come to realize that relationships seldom followed a logical trajectory.
He left a lecture by Bill Gates a couple nights later, and got stopped leaving the auditorium by a hand on his shoulder, and when he turned he was completely blindsided by Eduardo’s smile. He blinked, felt the urge to raise his hand and shade his eyes.
“Shit,” he said, and Eduardo grinned, slung an arm around his shoulders and led him out into the chill night. “Uh, hi.”
“Thought you looked like you needed a laptop,” Eduardo said, and lifted his shoulder bag, mouth quirking.
“Very philanthropic of you, but I can go at least a few minutes without one before going into withdrawal.”
Eduardo laughed, eyes crinkling. “Well, let me know if the symptoms hit. I’m here for you.”
Anyone but Eduardo, and Mark would have minded the presumption of physical contact. Instead, he was having a hard time focusing on anything other than Eduardo’s arm around his shoulder. Eduardo was taller than him, and warm, and smelled expensive and spicy. People didn’t touch Mark, apart from his mother and his sisters. Chris had said physical contact indicated interest. But maybe it was just a cultural divide, a Brazilian difference in how one interpreted personal space.
“Did you enjoy the lecture?” Mark asked, stilted and hopeful, and Eduardo nodded enthusiastically, started talking about innovation and world-changing ideas and the global market. It was actually pretty fascinating, and Mark enjoyed watching Eduardo light up, talk passionately about something he was clearly well-informed about.
So he was annoyed when someone interrupted.
By then they’d migrated slowly to the Old Yard, then determined that they were going different directions from there. So they paused. Mark didn’t want the conversation to end yet. Maybe Eduardo didn’t either.
Lingering. That was what they were doing. Standing and staring at each other, and it should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Snow was drifting down in small, widely scattered flakes, catching the light and dusting Eduardo’s hair. Mark should have been cold - he’d forgotten to wear socks with his flip-flops this morning-but instead he felt oddly warm.
A group of students was approaching from behind Eduardo, and Mark vaguely noticed when they spotted him and started whispering. They looked vaguely familiar, possibly classmates. A hypothesis that was validated when they spoke.
“Hi! Um, Mark?”
As though whoever it was couldn’t see he was having a conversation. Mark nodded at them, and transferred his attention back to Eduardo. But apparently he’d been too subtle, because the guy continued.
“I’m Stuart Singer, from, uh, your OS class.” He beamed and waited.
“…Sure,” Mark agreed, hoping that was all the interaction that was required. When he glanced back at Eduardo, he saw that he was hiding his mouth with his hand, looking amused. Mark squinted at him, then smiled a little helplessly. Eduardo was laughing at him, but the expression on his face wasn’t mocking. Just - fond. Familiar.
“I just wanted to say, I thought FaceMash was amazing. And, uh, you said in the article that you were working on a new program? I just wanted to, um, offer a hand, if you needed one?” The expression on his face reminded Mark of his sister’s cocker spaniel puppy - dumb and hopeful and likely to piss all over Mark’s foot.
“I’ve got all the coders I need at the moment,” Mark said curtly, but smiled a little and nodded at the recognition. He projected that after The Facebook launched, the recognition from random students would be much increased, and probably the girls that currently looked at him like pondscum would change their tune.
“I’m Bob,” Singer’s companion said eagerly, and Mark looked at him blankly. “So, uh-how is the project going? Are you-” He broke off suddenly, and stared at Eduardo. “Holy-oh, shit, dude, you guys are friends? That makes so much sense!”
“What,” Mark said, blank, and felt Eduardo stiffen, straighten, before he smiled and offered his hand to the two guys.
“Nice to meet you, Bob, Stuart.”
“Like, wow,” the Bob guy gushed - Mark squinted at him. He really didn’t remember seeing this guy before, at all. “Just - I mean, Mark’s like Harvard royalty in computer circles, right? That’s so cool, that you two hang out!”
“Mark’s a great guy,” Eduardo said, and kept smiling - not the smile Mark had gotten used to. Something tight and formal. The two interlopers kept gushing and talking, and they were drawing a small crowd, so Mark interjected testily, “We were actually having a conversation, so-”
Eduardo poked him in the side, and when Mark glanced up, he saw Eduardo was biting his lip.
“Have a good night, fellas,” Eduardo said smoothly, and they started walking again - in the wrong direction, but Mark didn’t mind.
“Mark! That was kind of rude. You know that, right?” Eduardo had started snickering as soon as they were out of earshot, around a corner.
Mark shrugged. “Did you mind? I don’t know them.”
“Nah, wish I could be so blunt. So you’re the FaceMash guy, huh? How did I not know that? That was an impressive project.”
Mark actually wasn’t sure how it hadn’t come up in their first conversation. He gnawed on one of his hoodie strings and smiled.
“Also considered a bit rude. Mostly by the female population.”
“Yeah, well, they have a point,” Eduardo laughed. “But you don’t let people’s opinions sway you - that’s not a bad thing.”
“Thank you,” Mark said, surprised into sincerity, voice more serious than he intended. “Most people disagree.”
“Mm, well. I’ve come to appreciate honesty over niceness, you know? Better to know where you stand with someone.”
“Exactly,” Mark said, and grinned at Eduardo. “You’d be surprised how few people feel that way.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Eduardo said under his breath, and then smiled at him again. “So you’ve got a new project? Something bigger than crashing the Harvard servers?”
“Much bigger,” Mark said, and felt his face changing, a huge smile creeping onto his face, alien and unfamiliar. Of all people, Eduardo would understand the immensity of his project, what it meant and what it could do. He was a business major and he was smart and he understood Mark. Chris and Dustin got the computer aspects, understood the details. Eduardo wouldn’t get the details, but he’d understand the scope. “It’s-Wardo, it’s going to be huge.”
Eduardo cocked his head, eyes warm and waiting, and Mark felt like he was stepping off a precipice into something unknown and new.
“Sua majestade,” a voice interjected, out of nowhere, and Mark fought not to jump as a stream of Portuguese followed. Eduardo swore.
“Mark, I want to know more, I really, really do, but I have to go. I’m running late for a meeting.”
“I understand,” Mark said, and shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets.
“When can I see you again?”
Mark shrugged, and Eduardo huffed out a breath of air, misty in the cold night, and then took Mark’s hand. Mark froze and stared down at their linked fingers. Then Eduardo fished a pen out of his pocket and wrote numbers on Mark’s skin, quick, sharp strokes. Mark hadn’t breathed since Eduardo had taken his hand. Fuck. Each stroke of the pen seemed to go deeper than skin, and he was shivering. Shit, it would be the height of embarrassing to pop wood over this, over something this simple and this stupid, a pen on his skin.
A gold pen. Holy shit, a Mont Blanc pen. Maybe that made the arousal a little less shameful. Part of Mark was impressed, and part of him thought it was kind of stupid to spend that much on a pen. But most of him was just in shock.
Eduardo saw him looking at the pen, Mark guessed, because he flushed and let go of Mark, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
“Ridiculous, I know. Graduation present from my father.” Mark shrugged and stared at his hand again, felt like he could still feel the press of pen. He wanted Eduardo to write on him again. He wanted to write on Eduardo in gold ink, cover him in code, try to make their interactions into something concrete and knowable.
“So, yeah,” Eduardo said after a moment. “Call me later? I have a lot of studying to do, but maybe we can, uh, keep each other company?”
Oh, right. Despite all the staring, he hadn’t actually looked at what Eduardo had written - ten digits of thousand-dollar ink.
“Sure,” Mark said, and Eduardo’s teeth flashed in a wide, white grin before he disappeared with Davi into the night.
So that had happened.
***
“He could fund us,” Mark said later, lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling. When he titled his beer bottle back, he could see Eduardo’s number on his hand, the country code and area code, unfamiliar digits. “He’s rich. He could get us the server space.”
“Mark.” Chris, sounding long-suffering, as per usual. “From what I can tell, you really like this guy. And so far you’ve somehow, miraculously, managed to keep him from hating you. Do you really want to blow it now?”
Mark was most of the way to drunk, and when he rolled his head to glare at Chris the entire room swayed.
“If he hates me for that, he’s an idiot. I’d be giving him a chance to get in on the ground floor of something brilliant. Personally, I would like me for that.”
“He’s sort of got a point, C-dawg,” Dustin said cheerfully, voice a little muffled from where his face was mashed into his textbook; clearly he’d taken up the osmosis method of studying. “First shot at The Facebook, that’s gotta be better than flowers.”
“Exactly,” Mark said, pleased. He took another pull of his beer, then tossed the empty bottle towards the trash can and listened with vague interest for the crash. Probably it’d made it in. “The fact that we really need the money is-” he flapped a hand dismissively and shrugged “-is just a lucky coincidence.”
Chris made that sound that meant he was pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, Mark, maybe you missed that day of kindergarten. Using someone for their money is not the best way to say, ‘Hey, I like you.’”
“I do like Wardo,” Mark protested, rolling over and scowling into the armrest of the couch, and willed the desk to be a little closer, or his laptop to suddenly have anti-grav thrusters. He didn’t want to get up. “If it was just money, I’d have asked the fucking Winklevii. But it’s my site and I’m not whoring her out.”
There was a pause, filled mostly with Chris coughing and choking on his beer. Then Dustin said cheerfully over Chris’ spluttering, “So websites have genders? Like ships?”
Not the point. Mark eyed his laptop. Eduardo would understand, Mark was sure of it. Mark could probably hack the Business school database and find Eduardo’s email. He could make Eduardo a Facebook page, the first page that wasn’t a placeholder.
“Okay. Okay, leaving the whore thing aside. You might have a point, Mark, but seriously-”
Inspiration struck, and Mark interrupted, sitting up and jabbing a finger at Chris. “It’s like, okay. It’s like, I’m the clouds, and Facebook’s the oil. It’s an investment, Chris. And it’s a good one, and he’ll want to get in on it. He will.”
Chris was watching him with a look on his face that Mark couldn’t decipher. “Okay, but what I’m trying to tell you is that not all people think the way you do,” he said gently, like Mark was some sort of infant. “Your guy, he might see it differently if you ask him for money.”
“That’s stupid,” Mark grumbled, and stretched hopefully towards his laptop. Nope. Too far. Maybe if he had a grappling hook.
“You’re so fucking drunk,” Dustin giggled from the table, head still pillowed on his textbook. “Clouds and online ladies, shit. Scary thing is, I think I understood most of it. I gotta sleep. You gotta sleep. We all gotta sleep.”
“Sleep’s for the weak.” But snatching a few hours on the couch really didn’t seem that bad. Except now stupid Chris had gotten in his stupid head, and all Mark could think of was Eduardo going stiff and distant, the way he’d gone with the idiots from Mark’s OS class, and that wasn’t what Mark wanted at all.
He hadn’t meant to offend Erica when he said he’d get her places she couldn’t get herself. But he had, spectacularly.
Therefore, it was conceivable that he could offend Eduardo, regardless of intent.
So maybe Chris was right. Mark should let Eduardo know he liked him, in case for some asinine reason Eduardo hadn’t picked that up already. Mark was pretty sure he had, but people were messy and input got lost and outputs got scrambled.
Then Mark remembered he didn’t need his computer after all, and dug triumphantly in his pockets for his phone.
Chris and Dustin were still talking, about something Mark had lost the thread of. Chris was arguing in favor of doomed and Dustin in favor of adorable, whatever the fuck that meant. Mark ignored them both in favor of carefully typing in Eduardo’s number.
I’m going to make you a Facebook page.
He waited for a response impatiently, staring at the dim screen. Sure, it was 3 AM on a weekday, but finals were coming up and all good students, which Eduardo undoubtedly personified, were panicking and studying into the wee hours of the morning.
Sure enough, a few minutes later his phone buzzed in his hand.
mark?
Yeah.
hi :)
Then, two seconds later. don’t know what facebook is, but whatever you want to make me sounds great
Mark smiled, and then made a disgruntled noise when Dustin threw himself on the couch, crushing Mark’s legs.
“Look at his faaaace,” Dustin cooed, and then started singing one of those inane Disney songs again, about a tale as old as time, or some shit.
His phone buzzed again. are you free tomorrow? maybe i could come by to study. and you could show me your project.
Mark eyed Dustin, then replied. No. My roommates are idiots. You shouldn’t be exposed to them. Widener 2nd floor computers, 2PM.
When his phone lit up with the words, 2 works. it’s a date :¬), Mark couldn’t keep from smiling again, even knowing that Dustin would only take it as encouragement to keep singing.
***
For the first time since they’d met, Eduardo wasn’t wearing a suit, wasn’t impeccably tailored. Instead his eyes were red-rimmed and he was wearing a dark hoodie and jeans. When he shoved the hood down and slumped into the chair next to Mark’s, his hair was a disheveled mess.
Mark had intended to immediately show Eduardo the Facebook page he’d made him, but now he hesitated.
“You okay?” he asked. Eduardo was staring off into space over Mark’s shoulder and it took him a second to respond.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Mark looked at him skeptically, and then Eduardo crumpled, laying his head on the desk next to his keyboard. “No. No, I’m not okay. I just got my grades back for our Geology lab exam. I got an eighty-seven. Eight-fucking seven,” Eduardo said into his arms, voice muffled.
“What was the class average?” Mark asked finally, bewildered. He’d thought maybe a family member had died, or Eduardo’d accidentally hit a kid with his car or something. A B+ on a lab exam for a class that wasn’t even part of Wardo’s major seemed incongruent with the emotional response he was witnessing.
“A sixty-three, but that doesn’t matter. Someone else made a ninety-one, you know that? And I’ll need a ninety-six on the lecture final to get an A in the class. A ninety-six. Fuck.”
Mark was missing something here. Eduardo had circles beneath his eyes, dark ones that Mark recognized from his own bathroom mirror after spending days without sleep.
“But…it’s just a gen ed course,” he pointed out, though surely this had already occurred to Eduardo. “It’s not like your life will depend on you doing well in Geology. You’re studying economics, not rocks.”
“You don’t understand. My father-he doesn’t think I should be here at all. He thinks I should be home, studying to - to take over the family corporation.” Eduardo’s laugh was hollow; it reminded Mark of the way Dustin’s coughs had sounded when he had pneumonia freshman year, rough and edged with blood. “He thinks studying to be a businessman is crude. Beneath me. I’m embarrassing myself. And now, now I’m just proving him right.”
Mark bit his lip. Okay. Well. Clearly this was important to Eduardo, even if Mark didn’t get it. He started poking through the Harvard servers until he identified Eduardo’s geology professor.
“Your dad sounds like a dick,” he offered as he typed, and Eduardo huffed out a laugh, one that sounded a little more genuine this time. “You’re already more successful in business than most Harvard grads.”
Facebook. Mark should bring up The Facebook now. If Eduardo’s dad wasn’t impressed by three hundred thousand dollars in a single summer, well. The Facebook was going to be bigger than that. But maybe that was patronizing. Maybe that was worse than asking for money. Mark scowled at his hands, flexed his fingers uselessly. Why couldn’t people be more like computers?
“Thanks, but sometimes I think-maybe he’s right, you know? Maybe, I. Fuck. Sorry, I get like this when I haven’t slept,” Eduardo said, then made a visible effort to straighten and smile at Mark. “You were going to show me something, and I’ve spent all this time complaining. I’m sorry.”
“What are friends for?” Mark said, intending to sound playful and instead sounding stupidly Hallmark even to his own ears. But then the smile on Eduardo’s face shifted from strained to something that made Mark feel like his brain was shorting out, sending neurons sparking directionlessly. So maybe that was alright.
“It’s just, I don’t-I don’t really talk about this stuff, to anyone. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t mean to dump on you-”
“Wardo,” Mark interrupted, and reached over and awkwardly patted Eduardo’s hand. “It’s okay. I can hack Dr. Levine’s email.” Actually, he’d begun doing that a couple minutes ago, but he didn’t have to admit that yet. “Get you the answer key. It should only take a couple minutes.” He squinted at the screen. “The security is really embarrassingly outdated.”
He jumped when there was a loud sudden crash - Eduardo’d dropped his textbook. Mark blinked at him, and Eduardo stared back, mouth open.
“You… what?” he asked hoarsely, eyes wide. He looked less like a college guy and more like a startled woodland creature, which was probably Dustin and his stupid song lyrics creeping into Mark’s subconscious.
“Hack Dr. Levine’s email. I can do it,” Mark repeated, looking over. Eduardo’s eyes were seriously like saucers. Mark didn’t know the human eye could get so wide. Something was wrong. He frowned slightly. “He’s your professor, isn’t he? I mean, I could get all of the department answer keys, if that’d be-”
“Jesus, Mark!” Eduardo hissed, face flushing, and scooted closer, slapping a hand over Mark’s mouth. Mark’s fingers froze on the keys. Eduardo’s fingers were warm against his cheek, and Mark’s lips were parted slightly against Eduardo’s palm. He tried not to breathe.
The last person to touch him like this had been Erica when she’d given him a handjob in her bedroom, with her roommate outside in the living area and Mark was being too loud. A few weeks later, they’d broken up. It’d been months, now. He was dimly aware that the response going on in his pants right now was totally inappropriate, especially when Eduardo looked so panicked, but he couldn’t seem to do much about it.
“Sorry, but-you can’t say things like that,” Eduardo whispered after a moment, still staring at him with wild eyes. This close he could see Eduardo’s irises had small flecks of gold. Mark hadn’t noticed those before. “Someone could hear-you, we could be expelled. And you barely know me! You can’t just say something like that.”
“But I mean it, I could,” Mark said into Eduardo’s palm, trying to process Eduardo’s response. “If you wanted me to.”
Eduardo shivered and then shook himself, pushed himself backward again. Mark touched his own mouth for a second, blinking at Eduardo, who started laughing, tired and high-pitched.
Mark still didn’t get what the big deal was. “It’s not like anyone would know,” Mark tried to clarify. Maybe Eduardo didn’t get that. “I’m better with computers than anyone Harvard employs for security. And it’s not like this class has anything to do with your major, it’s not like you really need to learn this bullshit.”
“I’m not going to cheat, Mark,” Eduardo said, shaking his head. “I can do it on my own. I just need to focus.”
Mark stiffened and turned back to his computer. “Sure,” he said, and started fumbling for his headphones.
“Hey, hey,” Eduardo said, and his voice was happy, and then suddenly he was standing, leaning over and, oh crap, hugging Mark. “Thank you,” he said into the skin of Mark’s neck, his breath warm. “Ethics aside - that’s probably the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. Even if I wouldn’t use it.”
“Oh,” Mark said, blinking. He hesitantly raised his arms and hugged back, patted Eduardo’s shoulders awkwardly. He was pretty sure that couldn’t be true, because Eduardo had tons of friends. Mark had seen them. But Eduardo had a way of sounding so sincere that it penetrated past all of Mark’s cynicism. Maybe it was true. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Eduardo said, and let go. He took a breath and seemed to shake himself, then settled back into his chair. Suddenly despite the hoodie and the jeans and the hair, he looked put together again, rested. Calm.
“Um. You wanna see The Facebook?” Mark offered into the quiet between them, and Eduardo smiled and said, “Show me.”
Eduardo knew fuck-all about code, but Mark had been right - as soon as Mark stopped rattling off specs and showed him the placeholder page, started explaining the features, Eduardo lit up.
“It’ll be exclusive to Harvard, at first, but I’m talking about taking the entire college experience-”
“And putting it online,” Eduardo finished, sounding awed, and Mark leaned back in his chair, smiled up at the ceiling.
“Exactly.”
“Can I?” Eduardo asked, leaning over Mark’s shoulder and hovering his hand over the mouse. Mark made a ‘go for it gesture,’ then watched the play of emotions on Eduardo’s face as he explored the site.
“Add friend, status updates, relationship status - Mark. This is good.” His accent got stronger when he was excited; Mark could hear it now. He thought, Maybe that’s what he sounds like in bed, and flushed, crossing his legs. Not the time or the place. “This is really, really good.”
“I know,” Mark said simply, but his heart was pounding. He wanted to kiss Eduardo for the way he sounded right now, excited and amazed.
“You did this all yourself?”
“The bulk of the coding is mine,” Mark said smugly, then admitted, “Chris and Dustin helped some, but they’re mostly focusing on their schoolwork at the moment.” For some reason.
“And you made me a page,” Eduardo said, and tilted his head and looked at Mark from beneath his lashes, grinning. Mark wondered if he’d noticed that he’d listed Eduardo’s status as It’s Complicated. He couldn’t decide if he wanted Eduardo to see it and ask or not. It’d been an impulse, maybe a stupid one. Probably better than saying “In a Relationship with Mark Zuckerberg (Check Yes or No),” at least.
He coughed, and then shrugged and shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket. “Yeah. Yeah, I did. I - not all the features are operational yet, obviously, but that’s how it will look.” Blue and white and clean. Simple. Perfect. The world distilled down into understandable options and input.
“When will it be online?”
Mark winced. Okay. Here is was. He had to be tactful. He could do tact; Chris had coached him. Dustin had made pom-poms out of shredded documents. It’d been stupid, but Mark tried to remember which particular phrases had gotten Dustin to shout ‘Go Team Empathy!’ and shake them for crackly emphasis.
“I don’t want you to - don’t take this the wrong way.”
“I’m sorry?” Eduardo blinked, cocking his head. Shit.
“We need money. Wardo, I’d like it if, uh. It’s just. You have money, right? And we need money to get the site off the ground-” Eduardo took his hand off Mark’s shoulder and Mark bit his lip. This was going terribly. He closed his eyes and got the rest of it out, tongue tripping over itself. “You’re-you understand, you get how big it’ll be. You’re a business guy, you’ll appreciate the site and what it can be and what it means, and I could get the money from other people, but I don’t want the money from other people, I want it from you, but that doesn’t mean-”
“Mark, Mark. Breathe.”
He opened his eyes and oh, oh, thank fuck, Eduardo was beaming at him like Mark’d just offered him the world on a platter. Which he sort of had, but Mark was pretty sure most people wouldn’t get that. “You want me to invest in your company?”
“As primary shareholder,” Mark agreed, swallowing. How had his mouth gotten so dry? “Well, apart from me, but… yeah. I was going to draft up a contract, but I wasn’t sure how to word it.” Eduardo Saverin, please be a part of my company, sign here.
“I can show you how to draft a shareholder contract,” Eduardo said, laughing like he could hear what Mark was thinking. He collapsed back in his chair and started rummaging in his bag. “How much do you need?”
“A thousand to start. Probably more once we start expanding to other campuses. What-what are you doing?”
“Writing you a check, idiot,” Eduardo said, grinning, and okay, that was - that was what all the toothpaste commercials wished they could convey. Something dazzling.
“Shit,” Mark breathed, and pressed the balls of his hands to his eyes. This was too easy. He wasn’t ready for this. He tried to think of the soonest he could get the site online, get the code operational, and felt light-headed, dizzy with too many thoughts crowded too close in.
“Did you really think I’d say no?”
“I thought you’d recognize an amazing business opportunity when it sat in your lap and did a provocative dance, but. Chris said maybe you’d-think it was just the money. That I was using you for the money.”
At that, Eduardo laughed, loud and surprised, and it echoed in the quiet library. People turned and stared, but Eduardo ignored them, beaming at Mark instead. “Mark, I should be thanking you for asking me for to be a part of this. And I will. After finals, we’ll go out, get trashed, lift a glass to your brilliance.” That was cute: Eduardo thought he’d be able to pry Mark away from the computer. Mark had funding now - the computer was going to be his life. “But believe me when I say I am familiar with people using me for my-for my money, and I know you. This is better than that. You’re better than that.”
“I might not be. You haven’t known me that long,” Mark pointed out, but he was grinning back helplessly, and he had a check for-what the fuck, for two thousand dollars-in his hand.
“Long enough.” Which was stupid; Mark could be a con artist. Eduardo was too trusting, had let Mark just waltz up into his space. Except when Mark reached for cynicism, he didn’t find it at all. Instead he felt warm, like the sun had come out in the middle of the Massachusetts winter and shone right on him, just him.
“Thanks, Wardo,” Mark said, sincere and pleased. So fuck Chris - Eduardo hadn’t taken Mark’s offer the wrong way at all. He’d taken it just the right way, actually, and Mark had wound up worrying for nothing.
Eduardo had a strange look on his face now, though, like two expressions mashed together - amused and confused, or maybe amused and curious. “You know, only my sister calls me that,” he said, and it took Mark a second to figure out what he was talking about. Wardo.
“Oh,” Mark said, wincing. He hadn’t really noticed he’d been calling Eduardo that, to be honest - it just rolled off the tongue. It sounded right. But Mark loathed it when Dustin called him Marky Mark, or MZ Squarepants, or whatever the fuck else he’d concocted in his deranged brain for the day. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. I like it.” When Mark tore his eyes away from the numbers, from Eduardo’s looping signature, he saw Eduardo was biting his lower lip, cheeks pink.
Okay, maybe now was the time, and the place.
“Wardo,” Mark said, low and hopeful. Eduardo had just given him two thousand dollars, had just given him the chance to bring The Facebook out of the realm of theoretical into the practical, and Mark really, more than ever, wanted to kiss him. Maybe to give him a blowjob - these computers were pretty out of the way, and the desks were big and partitioned. Mark was pretty sure he could swing it. And he wanted to. He edged his chair closer hopefully, the squeak of the wheels obnoxiously loud at the moment he least wanted them to be. Eduardo smiled at him, eyes shining, and then Mark touched Wardo’s shoulder, let his thumb brush the skin of Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo sucked in a breath.
“Seriously. Thank you,” Mark said.
“I’m glad I could help. You don’t have to thank me.” Eduardo’s voice was steady, but his accent was slipping through, and he had arched his neck slightly into Mark’s touch.
“I’m glad you have money. But it’d be okay if you didn’t.”
“Jesus, Mark.” Eduardo stared at him, eyes wide and dark. “You-”
“I really like you,” Mark said quietly, and there it was, the smile - soft and . And Eduardo’s eyes were so dark and he was staring at Mark’s mouth, and this was going to be so good. This was going to be amazing. “I. Can I-”
Eduardo was leaning in, and then suddenly he looked over Mark’s shoulder and blanched, swore and pulled away. Mark’s hand was left hanging in midair. He blinked, breath lodged in his throat, strangely solid and icy. Like he’d swallowed a hailstone.
He slowly drew his hand back and contemplated beating his own face in with a keyboard. Shit.
Eduardo was bright red. “I-sorry, I wasn’t thinking. It’s-I, we’re in the library, and, and we don’t know each other very well-” which, what? Hadn’t he just said the exact opposite? “-so I. Fuck.” He buried his head in his hands for a moment. “Just. There’s things you don’t know about me,” he said, muffled and indistinct. “That you need to know.”
“So tell me,” Mark said after a moment, because that seemed like the next logical step to him. But Eduardo just shook his head, wincing.
“I will. I promise I will. Just-not yet? Give me a little longer?”
Mark was drawing a total blank. Maybe Eduardo was married. Maybe he wasn’t gay. Fuck, maybe he had AIDS, or maybe he… just wasn’t interested. Was stalling. That seemed plausible, and in fact was a familiar scenario. Mark had heard variations of that before, the stammering and the excuses. Fuck.
It was just that Mark had thought - okay, he wasn’t great at reading people, but he’d really thought Eduardo had been about to kiss him back. He just looked miserable now, though, all big pleading eyes and wistful mouth. Shit.
“Fine,” Mark said shortly and turned back to the computer, staring at the screen blankly. He couldn’t even think of anything to type. There was a short, horrible silence, broken only by Mark fidgeting with his hoodie strings.
Then Eduardo said tentatively, “Is it enough? The check, I mean?”
Mark stared down at the check again. A thousand dollars more than he’d expected. Two thousand more, really. He shoved the disappointment down and focused on that.
“It’s great. This will give us enough to get really high-end stuff, top notch. Good quality.” He had to think about that, about getting the site running. He was actually going to bring The Facebook online, and soon. Despite the gnawing pit that was currently his stomach, Mark found himself smiling again.
Except, fuck, it was a Sunday, wasn’t it? He couldn’t go deposit the check yet.
“What time do the banks open tomorrow?” he asked, and Eduardo’s face smoothed out a little. He smiled crookedly at Mark, looking relieved.
“Eight AM, and they close at six. But I thought you had a Calc exam tomorrow?”
“So?” Mark said dismissively, already plotting out which server hardware he was going to buy. Two thousand dollars was a considerably larger chunk of change than he’d dared hope for. He thought maybe Dell Poweredge, the 4U rack-dense form factor, would be a good choice. They didn’t need quite that much processing power yet, but they would eventually.
“Mark. You can’t just ignore your classes, you know that, right?”
“Mm?” Mark drummed his fingers on the desk. He’d deposit the check tomorrow, get the hardware, start getting it wired up. Maybe they could be online by Wednesday. No, that was probably being overly optimistic. They had so much code to go through, probably plenty of errors that had gotten overlooked. “Sure, right.”
“Okay, maybe you should give me that check back until finals are over,” Eduardo said, then raised his hands when Mark glared. “Joking! It was a joke.”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“Fine, but really, at least promise me you’ll still be eating and sleeping this week. And going to your exams.” Or maybe they really should go a little more conservative with the spending. Even if they had funding now, it was hard to know what expenses would come up. Mark really wasn’t sure, outside from the technical costs, what other expenses would be involved at all. Maybe Eduardo could help with that; he was a business major. He should know. “Mark. Mark.”
“What?” Mark asked, looking up from the Windows IT Pro page. “Oh. I guess. Sure. I’ll eat.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Eduardo groaned, and Mark said, “Thanks, Obi-Wan,” and went back to browsing. “Don’t think I won’t check up on you. I’ll beat down your door bearing food.”
“Sounds like a bonus to me. I’ll be sure not to call,” Mark said unthinkingly, and then winced. Not interested. Eduardo’s not interested, don’t flirt, let it go. But Eduardo just laughed and made an exasperated noise.
“You’re hopeless,” he said fondly, and started flipping through his textbook. Right, they were supposed to have been studying.
“So it’s been said,” Mark said quietly, and rolled up his sleeves and got to work. He could at least do a few more manual run-throughs right now. He left his headphones off this time, and watched SQL run with the soundtrack of Eduardo flipping pages and murmuring softly to himself in the background.
***
PART TWO