Fandom: The Social Network
Pairing: Mark/Eduardo
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1000
Summary: For Mark it’s like waking up one morning and finding out your pillow’s gone, and it was your favorite pillow. Your only pillow, in fact.
A/N:
gdgdbaby showed me
an interview a few days ago, and it was then that I knew I had to see this movie. Then this happened! So blame her :D
And You Unending Afterthoughts
For Mark it’s like waking up one morning and finding out your pillow’s gone, and it was your favorite pillow. Your only pillow, in fact. It’s not that you can’t sleep without one, but you’ve never had to. It’s that thing that your head’s supposed to touch before your eyes close; you don’t expect anything less. It’s that expectation, he supposes, that’s ruined him.
But actually, he’s not supposing anything, because this is just idle thinking. He doesn’t usually wax metaphorical about losing-anything.
“Hey, that was great. That was the right thing to do. You apologized, right?” Eduardo had said.
No. No, he hasn’t. And he isn’t going to. It’s just a pillow.
Mark has thought about it before, what it’d be like to be Eduardo. Nice people are generally not smart. Nice people travel abroad and buy a bottle of water on the street for $2 when there’s a convenient store at the corner.
Eduardo is nice but not entirely stupid. He walks the line. For this he has Mark’s respect.
Mark didn’t always think about this as often as he does now. He thinks about it for as long as the alcohol takes to settle in, until he’s tired enough to go to bed.
Jealousy is something of a diversion tactic. At 4 AM this makes sense to him. At 3 AM he thinks only in strings of code. But at 4 AM his brain passes the point of numbness where thoughts fall loose and nothing makes sense but, he is told, that’s when the great ideas are formed. So at 4 AM he realizes, jealousy is only a diversion tactic. There is always something behind it.
The window in the living room overlooks a giant pristine lawn, but in the dark you can’t see much of it anyway.
“I got punched by the Phoenix.” Eduardo had that look of fear mixed with anticipation mixed with that simultaneously endearing and pitiful desire for Mark’s approval. This had never bothered him before-Eduardo’s face. But it bothered him then, suddenly, and after the news settled in he just wanted to beat every one of his expressions out of it. Of course, it wasn’t like he had any arm strength to begin with.
And that was beside the point.
The point was, if they had been standing on the edge of a cliff, Eduardo right on the precipice, Mark would’ve thought about pushing him off. There would’ve been a beat. And then he would’ve been alone.
Like he is now.
“Are you kidding?” Mark had said.
And then Eduardo’d gone on, careful to be self-deprecating, like he was tiptoeing around his own insecurities as well as Mark’s … feelings, and Mark just didn’t want to hear any of it, because this was Eduardo, someone lesser than himself, who was nice and not entirely stupid but also not-not special. He was Mark’s friend, the one you went to for money because you knew he’d offer, arm extended, no questions asked, big unsuspecting smile on his face the whole time. Okay, he was the only one. Friend. He was, but that was a different kind of special. Not the kind recognized by society or was necessary to vast amounts of people. Just by Mark. And that’d always been okay, but now it was like the world was saying, actually, you-Eduardo-you’re better. You get a free pass, even though we usually don’t give them to stupidly naïve and nice people. But this is unfair, too, because Mark has already established, many times, that he isn’t stupid. It’s just, it’s just, it’s-
He’s figuring it out, too.
The jealousy gave him something to work towards. He would be better. The Phoenix would be rendered insignificant. Mark was thinking long-term, and he needed Eduardo there not just for finances and “moral support,” but he also needed him there to see that this was something only Mark could do. Something Eduardo could never do. And the problem was that Eduardo didn’t care, because Mark’s revenge was only his own, which is never as sweet. Winning a war no one else knew you were fighting.
That’s the simple answer. He’d let them write it into the books.
“I want-I need you out here-please don’t tell him I said that.”
But at the time Eduardo had heard something else.
This is the key, Mark knows. This is what’s wrong with him, the thing he can’t fix, the thing he set out to destroy without even realizing his own intention, and he did.
At 6 AM the sky’s lighting up a little, not even, more like getting ready to. He can see the grass. The sprinklers are on.
He turns over and dials the number he’s memorized for weeks now. Before he never had to. You don’t memorize sure things. Like pillows.
It doesn’t go to voicemail.
“Mark?” Throaty and sleep-laced, like Eduardo just woke up after crashing for twelve hours post-macroecon problem set.
“You’re right.”
“I know I am. I still have your number programmed into my phone.”
“No. I mean, you’re right that I was jealous.”
“What? I-Oh.” Pause. “Yeah, I think I knew that.”
“Because it’s easier.”
“You lost me.”
“I needed a reason to resent you. It worked. And it made me, it made me work harder to beat you, because it was easier than admitting-“
Eduardo’s quiet. Maybe he knows how the sentence should end. Mark knows, but he doesn’t want to say it.
“Yeah, I loved you, too,” Eduardo says.
Mark knows, without looking, that Eduardo looks just like Eduardo, in an immaculately pressed suit, diagonally across from him. He knows that Eduardo is looking at him and away, and back. Right now Mark is turned towards the window, watching the ants below.
“Mr. Zuckerberg? Did you hear my question?”
“I’m sorry.” He turns his chair back and looks Eduardo straight in the eye and, just as quickly, shifts his gaze back to the doodles on his notepad.