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fuzzy_paintTitle: the other side (is always greener) 3/4
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairings/Characters: Mark/Eduardo
Word Count: ~37,000
Disclaimer: Don’t own.
Summary: Canon compliant AU: When he's sent to infiltrate human society in order to protect his people, Eduardo meets Mark for the second time, and his instantaneous attachment might cost him everything.
A/N: Special thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
becca_radcgg for the beta. Written for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thesocialbbang challenge. Master Post.
Check out the amazing art bychosenfire28
"My father is interested in Facebook," he says, holding his phone tightly. He's lying on his bed, feet propped up. He's still wearing his shoes, but his vest is draped over the back of a chair, and his sleeves are shoved up to his elbows.
"That's good, isn't it?"
It should be. Eduardo aches for a world where he can have both his parents and Mark, be what he is and still be CFO of Facebook.
"You worry too much," Dustin says. "Has anyone ever told you that?"
"You. Multiple times."
"I'm right. You know I am." He sounds muffled, distant, like he's holding the phone away from his ear. There's a clatter in the background. "I'm always right."
Eduardo frowns. He stops swinging his knee back and forth. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Dustin says too quickly.
"Dustin-"
"Chris says you mentioned something about coming out? You should. It’s not the same without you.”
"You totally miss-"
"Oh shit," Dustin says. "Intern Ken just made an egg explode in the microwave. I gotta go."
Eduardo frowns. "Someone is cleaning up after you guys, right?" but Dustin's already gone.
He sets his phone on his bedside table, and he hides his face in the crook of his elbow. He’s heading out in a few days. He’s shaken, running lines in his head, plotting out ways to figure out how to convince Mark about the advertising, no matter what.
Because it’s not about what’s best for Facebook anymore.
~
The rain is cold and relentless, but Eduardo never minded being wet. He minds being forgotten. He's shaking and his clothes are sticking to his skin. It's been hours when he finally calls a cab. It smells like tuna, and the music is too loud, and the guy wants to make conversation, yammering on about the weather and the Dodgers.
Halfway there, Eduardo says, "Shut up," letting his voice go low and honeyed, and then he has to tell the cabbie to pay attention to the road.
He's exhausted and angry and annoyed all the way up to the front door, but his heart is beating a steady constant to match his thoughts. Mark. Mark. Mark.
But the door opens and it's not Mark.
It’s Sean Parker.
Eduardo's heart freezes up, and the next half hour, it doesn't even feel like it's beating at all. Arguing with Mark, he doesn’t even know what he’s saying. They’re words he’s rehearsed, things he knows must happen if Mark is to be safe. Mark is a flat wall, blank and unreceptive, and Eduardo gets nowhere.
He gets nowhere, except possibly left behind. Mark said it; Mark never says anything he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t play games like that or twist his words.
Mark slips back to his computer and his precious code as soon as Eduardo's anger burns out and leaves him feeling wrung out. He steals the salt from the kitchen, locks the bathroom door and turns on the water. When the tub is full, he dumps at least a third of the carton in.
Then he gets in and lets his head sink beneath the surface, legs bent at the knee. Every time he moves, water sloshes over the side and spills onto the tiles. His eyes stay open, watching the world beyond the surface twist and distort.
He always wanted to be a part of the surface world - a dangerous thought, especially with his ancestry - and now.
His father or Mark.
His mother, the interests of his people. Or Mark.
Mark who lets a shark set up his business deals, Mark who does what he wants, fuck the consequences, Mark who never looks up.
He stays under the water long after it's cold. Even then, it's hard to push to his feet and climb out, spilling water everywhere. Someone else can clean it up. He's distracted, thinking about how hard it's going to be to change his flight, but when he glances in the mirror, Eduardo freezes.
His skin, his true skin, half human and half scales, is not the reds and golds and greens of his family, but blue, blue and white and silver. He wants to laugh or scream or slink down to the ocean where he can slip away from it all, but it lodges in his throat and threatens to stay there, choking him slowly.
"Damn it, Mark," Eduardo says. "Damn it."
~
A drop of water slides down his neck, down his spine, and then another one follows, but Eduardo stays where he is, leaning against the doorway and watching Sean Parker putter around the kitchen. Phone held between his shoulder and his ear, he’s talking quietly on the landline, but Eduardo studies the line of his back, imagining where a dorsal fin might be.
It’s oddly domestic and out of place with what he normally sees when he thinks about Sean, gathering glasses of Mountain Dew for the guys, sugar and sometimes healthy food, and Eduardo knows what his role would’ve been if he’d come to California when he’d wanted.
He doesn’t think he’d have hated it.
He’s still wet, itching because he’s not used to the salt anymore, and Mark’s t-shirt clings to his back. It’s too tight across the shoulders, but the fabric hangs loose everywhere else. It smells clean, recently laundered, and not at all like Mark.
Eduardo clears his throat.
Sean jumps a little, and he turns around, nearly dropping the phone, but his hand comes up and he catches it, pressing it against his shoulder. His eyes dart to the side, in the direction of the coders.
Eduardo waits. It’s not long.
“Hey, man, I’ll call you back,” he says and hangs up. He keeps the phone in his hand. Eduardo sees the way his grip changes, slides to the bottom for better control.
Eduardo feels his skin start to itch up. He pushes away from the door. “I wouldn’t.”
Sean snorts dismissively. “Listen up, Wardo-“
Eduardo steps forward, and then in Sean’s path to keep him from bolting, blocking him against the counter, and when he grips Sean’s wrist, Eduardo doesn’t feel anything under his skin. Just bones and muscle. He pushes the surprise away. People can hide, lock away their secrets. Sean’s no different. He tightens his fingers, pushing harder until Sean drops the phone. It clatters on the floor at their feet.
“What, Sean? It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you?” Eduardo tilts his head and he lowers his voice. “Are they?”
“I,” Sean says.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asks, mostly rhetorical. “Will it cause problems for Facebook?”
“Let go of me,” he says, but Eduardo just slides his thumb against the inside of his wrist.
“I really hope it’s not going to be a problem,” Eduardo says. Sean tries to twist away, but Eduardo tightens his fingers, pressing the bones together. Sean’s fingers try to pry Eduardo’s away, but they stutter, freeze, pausing over the scales, and Eduardo watches Sean stare at the patch of skin showing at his wrist, bruise blue.
“Oh shit,” he says. “Oh shit.” And he tries to back away. He doesn’t get far. Eduardo is stronger than he looks.
“I thought you might know.” Eduardo smiles. It’s not happy or pleasant or welcoming. Triumph tastes bitter, like sea water to a starving man. “Makes this a lot easier, that’s for sure.”
Sean’s backed up all the way against the counter, as far away from Eduardo as possible. He’s twitchy, like a squirrel. Maybe it’s confusion and not fear, wariness because Eduardo’s never been this openly antagonistic, but he’s on edge.
Sean’s on edge, and Eduardo is finally, finally calm.
Sean’s face changes, darkens but he stops attempting to pull his hand away. Eduardo’s fingers tighten anyway, for only a moment longer. Then he lets go and steps back.
“You’ll never get me out to sea,” Sean says, rubbing at his wrist. Eduardo tracks the movement for a second, thinking about that. Sean glances towards the coders again. Dustin is the closest, and he’s wired in. Somehow, Eduardo’s pretty sure he knows exactly how much help he’d be to Sean. Sean probably knows it too.
If he’s smart, he does.
“There’s a pool right there,” Eduardo says, nodding towards the window.
Sean looks.
He visibly swallows. When he turns back, his face is visibly hostile; he’s trying to regain his footing. “If you want me gone, you’re going to have to take it up with Mark.”
“You really want me to do that?”
“I think you’re too scared,” Sean says, letting his wrist go lax. “If you could get him to make me leave, I’d be gone already. What if Mark chooses me? What if you’re really not good enough for him? I’m pushing Facebook forward, not you. You think he cares about anything else? He’s human, man.”
Eduardo looks out the window, facing west. “We’re only a few miles in, you know.” He turns back to Sean. “You know what I am,” he says. “You know what we do. How do you think it’s going to go down, if I can look at you and know there’s something wrong about you-”
“If you think I’m going to let one of the families get involved in this-”
Eduardo smiles. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean my father or his people won’t.”
“We’re meeting with Peter Thiel tomorrow,” Sean says. “You’re out of time.”
Eduardo twists the ring on his finger one full circuit.
“Do you trust him?” Sean looks wary and confused, so Eduardo says, “Peter Thiel. Do you trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Sean says. “And whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work. You’re dead weight. You’re bringing down the curve, Wardo. Mark’s going to leave you behind.”
“Good,” Eduardo says after a beat. “Get him to do it.”
Sean blinks, frowning. Eduardo rubs the back of his head. His hand comes away wet, and his skin feels like it’s been rubbed raw. All that salt. He waits for it. That moment when Sean figures it all out, when everything clicks into place. Does he even know the stories? Eduardo has no idea, and he’s done spilling secrets he shouldn’t.
“What are you up to?” Sean asks, voice low.
“Don’t pretend like you haven’t been driving a wedge between us.”
He shrugs. “Hey, it was there already. I’m just prying it open a little bit. You’re doing all the heavy lifting yourself.”
Eduardo nods, absent. He’s staring past Sean at Dustin with those oversized headphones on and his face a picture of concentration. Dustin always seemed the stillest while wired in, the most focused. Eduardo never got the lure of computers.
“You’re not part of this world,” Eduardo says. His scales are showing through at his elbows, his wrists. He can feel how his legs are covered, true skin thicker than it’s been for months.
“Mark thinks I am.”
Eduardo jerks. “You’re still-“ he says, then looks away, collecting himself. “I’m not talking about Facebook.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Sean says. “But I’m not stupid enough to not see that you’re trying to screw me over. Forget it.”
He chooses the route furthest from Eduardo, slowing at the point where the counter enforces proximity.
When he’s out of the room, Eduardo smiles.
~
He freezes the Facebook account the next day.
~
Mark calls and Christy sets Eduardo’s bed on fire; he’s choked by the smoke and the anger in Mark’s voice, and he apologizes.
He apologizes, but it’s not going to be enough. It can’t be enough.
He spends the morning before his flight back curled in his bed. He’s exhausted, and he aches, true skin showing in odd patches across his body.
Christy is gone, out of his life, and Mark- Mark is gone.
Part of him wishes he could just undo it all, go back and listen to Mark, or convince him into advertising, words honeyed and close, or set up his father and their people as investors and somehow convince Mark to play nice. He has no plan, no idea what he’s doing, relying on a shark - you can’t trust sharks! - to follow along and play his part like Eduardo needs him to.
Everything is crumbling around him and he’s letting it, ignoring the pieces like he can’t salvage any of it.
~
The Facebook’s new offices are stacked full of half-empty boxes, desks still mostly impersonal because the coders are too wired in to put out pictures or plants.
Mark says nothing about the contract or Eduardo returning to Harvard or even the frozen account. A show of good faith, that he’s moved on and everything is going to work out.
It took him a lot less time to act than Eduardo thought it would.
Eduardo watches him settle into his chair to wire in, slipping from Eduardo’s reach for the last time. He thinks I want to be with you forever and wishes he could forget everything he just signed away a few hours ago. It’s stupid, a childish fantasy, a daydream he barely takes out to look at anymore: the courage to tell Mark everything and somehow unite his two worlds, his true family and the family he wants more.
Mark is human, and humans have never held any loyalty to Eduardo’s people. Eduardo wonders if betrayal counts if he’s the one buying the knife.
And Dustin hasn’t been able to look him in the eye all night.
Sean slinks over; Eduardo wills his body to relax. “The million member party?” he says quietly.
“I think he likes the symbolism,” Sean says. He doesn’t lean against the wall, but he crosses his arms, staying a good three feet away.
Eduardo laughs. “Mark hates symbolism.” They’re silent after that, Eduardo letting himself slump against the wall. Only a little bit, it’s stupid to show weakness, but he closes his eyes. Sean’s still a shark, but it’s hard to care.
“It’s a beautiful clause,” he says quietly. “I don’t think I’d have seen it coming.”
“You’re really doing this,” Sean says. “Just walking away.”
“Sean.” Eduardo opens his eyes and turns on him, cutting the majority of the office out of his field of vision. “They want people in Facebook. What do you think they’ll do to him, the first time Mark says no?” Eduardo swallows. His face feels numb, and his ring is a dead weight on his finger. “I need you to take care of him.”
“Mark doesn’t need to be taken care of,” Sean says.
That would have hurt, once, but it’s logical. It’s rational. Mark doesn’t need to be protected.
“Yeah.” Eduardo turns away, eyes automatically searching for him. “Make sure he doesn’t change his mind,” he says, needlessly.
“He won’t.”
“I know,” Eduardo says.
He slips away without saying goodbye. It’s not as difficult as he suspected. Mark is wired in. He’s never looked up for Eduardo before, and with the contract, and the pending dilution, he won’t now.
It’s stupid to be hurt by it. This is his choice.
Eduardo goes to the closest empty beach. He doesn’t even take off his clothes. He just walks out until he sinks beneath the waves, until the sea curves around him. It’s the Pacific. It’s not his ocean, not for miles and miles and miles, but it welcomes him like it missed him, like it needed him all the time he was away.
~
Lying to his father is not as hard as he thought it would be - he's been doing it for years - but his chest hurts. He's cutting away the relationship in advance, writing away all ties to everything. He won't have Mark or Facebook or Chris and Dustin; he won't have his father or his mother.
It's easy to convince his father that investors would be a better deal, that this way, they get what they want and Mark isn't an issue. Mark supports investments. This is good.
He spends his nights out at the docks, staring out across the water and his days with the internship he told Mark he quit, shadowing business meetings and being coached by Mr. Andrina; he still gets tongue-tied whenever Mrs. Andrina is around.
He's holding her bags, her arm linked through his as they walk down the street. It's unnecessary; she could carry more than he ever could, and he's in more danger in this city than she ever would be.
"What happened with your Christy?"
"She was-" crazy, frightening, more like the girls back home than truly human. Not what he wanted. "-no longer useful."
"Pity," she says. "She was a pretty one. As far as humans go."
Eduardo smiles politely; she guides him across the street to the next shop. This is his life. For now. Soon he won't even have this, the pariah of both worlds, above and below.
She touches his arm in the cab. "You seem troubled, dear."
"I," Eduardo says.
"Roderick is very pleased with you. He says you're quite the study. It's wonderful that your human has fallen in line. I didn't doubt it for a second, dear."
Eduardo licks his mouth, forcing himself to look out the window. It's hard to think with her hand on his arm. "You're part of the Council, right?"
"I am. But you knew that. And it's not what you were going to ask."
He closes his eyes briefly. "Have you ever charmed someone for an extended time?" Eduardo asks. The driver keeps glancing in his mirror. "I'm concerned about it wearing off."
"You're attached to him."
Eduardo chooses his words carefully. "He's beneficial. And very useful. But he's difficult. Stubborn."
"It's different for us, you know that." She settles back against the seat, folding her hands in her lap. Eduardo watches her fingers before he remembers himself and looks away. She can't hurt him with her claws, hidden beneath the surface; he'd get sick, maybe, if enough of her venom got into his system, but it wouldn't kill him. Maybe.
"Eduardo," she says then, in their native language. "Do you know why I'm on the surface?"
He shakes his head.
"Two of our islands have been compromised. Humans are useful in their own right, but their insistent need to seed out every unexplored nook and cranny of the world-" She stops, looks out the window and breathes once to regain her composure. "Soon, it might be very difficult for us to maintain contact with those at home. If I could charm the entire world into leaving us alone-"
"If only, right," he says, eyes on his feet. He wiggles his toes inside his shoes, thinking about the days when he won't have the luxury of toes.
"I apologize," she says. She nudges him playfully. “I’ve taken over the conversation. You shouldn't have a problem with your Mark. You're male; they fight less against you."
He thinks about that for days, wondering if everything would've been different if Eduardo was a maid instead, if he'd had all that allure, strong enough to charm without any effort. There's a reason Eduardo's on the surface, his father, Divya, any male.
Humans react violently to that sort of strength. And Mark, who barely registers when Eduardo's at the top of his game, who is cutting and rude and so very Mark, what would Mark do, when he's willing to cut Eduardo out of Facebook without a second thought?
Eduardo doesn't want to think about it.
~
Harvard without Mark is a lot like New York.
He doesn’t hate it. He’s not miserable, exactly. He thinks his father is finally proud of him, a gut-wrenching warmth to his voice whenever Eduardo talks to him. He can't trust it. How long before that changes?
Eduardo attends his classes and attends functions for both AEPi and the Phoenix; he throws himself into the Harvard Investor's Association, and he focuses on rebuilding what he has left of his future.
It’s easy to lose himself in it. He’s hardening his heart for when Mark finally cuts him out; Dustin hasn't called. He hasn't texted or emailed or Facebooked - not that Eduardo uses the site all that often - and Eduardo realizes a month into the semester that he's pulling away from Chris, too. He’s busy with classes and his own life, but-
You can’t trust humans
Maybe Eduardo is finally learning.
After all, Mark is gone.
Eduardo stands on the shore, watching the tide recede, sea foam on the waves, clutching his phone. Their conversations are getting shorter and shorter the longer Eduardo isn't in California, and that too, is a lot like New York. Only now, Eduardo is ending the calls early, unable to stand the ache in his chest. Mark's rarely paying attention anyway.
"Hey," Eduardo says, watching the waves break on the shore. He's too far up the beach to get wet; he's afraid he might not come back. "Is Sean there? I'd like to speak with him."
"Why," Mark says, a demand and not a question, sharp and suddenly alert.
"I don't have his number," Eduardo says. He rubs the bridge of his nose. He doesn't even have the landline. "And I'd like his input on something."
"You want advice from Sean."
"He's part of your company, isn't he?" Eduardo starts walking down the beach, slipping a little on the sand. "And you listen to him more than you do me, so."
Mark is quiet for long enough that Eduardo says his name, wondering if he's been hung up on.
"What do you want?" Sean's voice is harsh, but confident. Three thousand miles and Mark between them; of course he is.
"You can tell us apart from humans, right?"
"Jesus, man, I'm on a freaking cell," Sean says, sounding muffled. "I'm in the other room, now, and look, Mark is watching me, so keep this quick."
Eduardo rolls his eyes. "Can you?"
Sean is quiet. Eduardo's close enough to the shore that he toes his shoes off. His socks follow soon after, and he steps forward until the water just hits them at its highest point. It's cold.
"Sometimes," Sean says. "You know how it is. Not females."
"What about males?"
"Sometimes. I didn’t. With you. I just didn’t like you."
Eduardo sighs, and takes another step out. The fabric of his slacks starts soaking up water. If he stays here longer, it's going to get all the way up to his calves.
"When Mark dilutes the shares, tip off the right investors."
"That's like-"
"Don't tell me you're morally opposed to it," Eduardo says.
"I just think you'd be singing a different tune if I suggested it."
"Sean," he says, rubbing his forehead. "Just do it."
"Hey," Sean says. "Are we going to have to- you know how this is going to play out with the families.”
"I'll take care of it," Eduardo says. He hangs up, fingers lingering on his keypad. He thinks about calling Dustin, just to talk, or Chris to get a beer, but in the end, he slips his phone into his pocket.
~
Chris stops by Eduardo's dorm a few weeks before the million members’ party. He sticks his hands into his pockets, and looks at Eduardo through his messy bangs.
"I thought I'd fly out with you, if that's cool."
"Of course it is," Eduardo says. "Have you thought about going out there again? More permanently?" He's thought about this, and Eduardo wants to be selfish. In a way, he is. His voice slides low, honeyed and melodic. "You should. Knowing Mark, he'll probably make someone important cry."
Chris just raises his eyebrows. "That's not the best incentive," he says, making Eduardo laugh and look away. He’s losing his touch. His heart’s not in it; he doesn’t know. "Yeah, I'm in. You'll be coming out, won't you? After graduation? It wasn't the same this summer."
"Of course," Eduardo says, feeling like he's just been kicked. "Why wouldn't I?"
"I thought, maybe, you'd... moved on," Chris says.
“I'm a little embarrassed that I'm so obvious to everyone but Mark," Eduardo says.
"Yeah, you should work on that."
~
His father voices implications about future investors in Facebook, all those he and the Andrinas handpicked personally.
"These men will help grow this company," he says.
Eduardo feels the entire world compress into a blackened mess in his chest. They made it grow without them, or his father. Mark even did it without Eduardo. The best thing about this. Mark Zuckerberg is a name, now, and people like that, when they go missing, everyone sits up and notices.
People like that make the old ways too risky.
~
Flying out with Chris is hard. He's in a reminiscing mood, and the closer they get to landing, the more the scales under Eduardo's skin start creeping upwards. He clutches the armrests and half listens to Chris, mostly wishing this was over already.
He’s a little nauseous the entire drive to the offices, Chris chattering on, oddly oblivious to Eduardo’s trepidation.
Chris peels off as soon as they’re through the doors, and Eduardo glances at him one more time before he goes to sign away his company.
~
Point zero three percent. So that’s his value. To Mark and to Mark’s company, point zero three percent.
It worked better than he thought it would, and, anger rising in his chest, maybe he didn’t have to do anything at all. Maybe it was all in play long before Eduardo’s been trying to orchestrate it, maybe Sean Parker’s been playing him for a fool, maybe-
He’s lost, hurt and aching all the way to his bones, and his skin. It’s there, full colors, scaling out over his thighs, his feet, his elbows, and he can barely breathe. He can’t bring this back to his father, absolutely nothing, he can’t –
This isn’t about his father.
Eduardo’s world is condensed down to point zero three percent, and that’s all Mark. That’s Mark and this and he can’t breathe; nothing else exists.
He breaks the laptop because it might make him feel better; it doesn’t. He says lawyer up, asshole and that doesn’t work either.
.
And Sean, the shark, says fuck you in the most dramatic, overt way possible, the best way possible, handing him a check of his own money.
Eduardo could never ally with a shark, but he pulls his punch, and leaves, he leaves because he has to, because his skin is flaring up all along his spine, full colors and not the muted bleed through that’s been happening for months.
He makes it three blocks before he has to duck into an alley, lean against the wall and focus on meditation techniques, breathing exercises, writing algorithms in his head.
His heart slows, and his skin fades, slipping back beneath the surface.
Then he makes the call.
The warmth in his father’s voice, the slick sound of the words of his homeland, break him.
“I failed,” Eduardo says, thick with vowels that feel too foreign on his tongue, too quick, too slippery. He almost chokes on them, clutching his phone too hard. He’s leaning against a wall in some side-alley, a few blocks from where he lost everything. There are rough, ugly patches on his skin that won’t go away, blue and white and silver.
The silence on the other end feels like being stung like a jellyfish. When he was younger, they used to make a game of it, see who could get the closest and get away without retaliation. Eduardo wasn’t always quick enough.
He’d never stayed in place and waited for it to happen before. He’d never done it on purpose either.
He can’t stop himself, sometimes, even when he should, even when this is the one thing that will make his father so very, very disappointed. Eduardo says, “I knew him. I knew Mark before Harvard. I knew- he nearly drowned and I wanted. Father, I wanted-”
His father hangs up.
Eduardo does not blame him.
Time passes, he’s aware of that, but he doesn’t know how long it’s been. Eduardo turns his head, but otherwise holds himself very still, pressing into the wall. "Sean, I suggest that you leave," he says.
"Little dramatic, don't you think? Breaking his laptop like that."
“Because your check wasn’t.” Eduardo's fingers twitch, but he lays them flat against the bricks. "It's not going to be enough.”
"You're actually going to sue him."
He looks at Sean. He does it to reassure himself he's not trapped inside his own head, having a conversation with himself. Sean's still far enough away that he could conceivably make a break for it if Eduardo changed his mind about hitting him.
"I don't care how big of an asshole it makes him look," Eduardo says. "The bigger fish he is, the safer he'll be. None of the families will even try to do business with him."
When he speaks, after a long drawn out moment, Sean's voice is soft; it barely carries all the way down the alley. "Why are you doing this?"
Eduardo's mouth softens. "I was twelve," he says. "When I first saw him. He fell off a pier and hit is head, and all I wanted- he still has a scar there.”
“Oh,” Sean says, like he’s surprised. “It’s one of those stories.”
"Really," Eduardo says, flat, disbelieving. “You’re just realizing that, Sean?”
"I," Sean says. "I suspected."
Eduardo looks away, into the dark pit of the alley. It's not like that anymore. It's worse: It's his choice, the pull of the tide he chose to ignore, and now all that's left is sea foam.
~
Eduardo stands in the bathroom of his hotel room, completely naked. The bathtub is overflowing, but he doesn’t reach for the faucet to turn the water off.
Instead, he wipes the steam from the mirror. Mark, Mark, he thinks, staring at his reflection, the blue-white-silver scaly patches at his elbows, his wrists, his neck, everywhere. Even with his ring’s protection, he won’t be able to hide some of them easily. Mark is going to freak-
Then he thinks Point zero three percent and he feels sick.
There’s a knock at his door.
Hope is an ugly, horrible thing. It could be any number of people. Chris thought they'd stay at the house, and Eduardo never told him differently. His father, come to collect him or disown him, Sean, here to gloat.
Mark.
He pulls on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt but he still hesitates, resting his hands against it, parallel with his shoulders before he opens the door.
"Dustin?"
"I," Dustin says. His arms are crossed, his shoulders rounded in, and when he catches Eduardo's eye, he looks away immediately. "I hacked your- I."
"Hey," Eduardo says, laying his hand on Dustin's shoulder. It's not enough. He pulls him in, tightening his arms around him. "It's okay. It's."
It's not okay, and it never will be, cutting out his own heart to protect Mark. Mark who never wanted it in the first place.
"I knew," Dustin says, small and muffled by Eduardo's shirt. "Mark told me, he told me not to sign the papers. I should’ve told you.”
His eyes are rimmed red, and his skin is pale; he still can’t meet Eduardo’s eyes.
"I've got a mini-bar," Eduardo says, stepping back into the room. "And a lot of money."
~
He tries calling his father, later, when Dustin is curled up asleep in the bed. Eduardo hasn't slept. He's not going to try. His father isn't answering, or he's out to sea, out of electronic communication range, explaining what a failure their son is to Eduardo's mother.
It would have been faster to fly down to the Keys and take a boat than to swim the entire way, but Eduardo aches for the sea; he bets his father does too. Eduardo imagines his mother, her long hair water-slicked against her completely human torso, pulling herself up to brace against the railing of the boat and his father bent close to explain the situation.
After the third time, he leaves one voicemail, a garbled mess of different languages, words slurred and raw in all three.
~
"I'm not going to make you choose between us," Eduardo tells both Dustin and Chris, separately and together, multiple times.
He won't. He can't.
But despite Dustin and Chris - by the time summer rolls around, they're both in California, and he's still on the East Coast - he feels like he's cut himself off from everyone. Everything.
He spends a lot of time down at the banks of the Charles or the shores of nearby lakes. He avoids the ocean, and his skin stays mostly soft, mostly human, except when he's agitated. He starts doing yoga, learning meditation exercises, anything to calm his nerves and keep his true skin under wraps.
His father never answers his phone. He never calls back.
Eduardo tries once a week, then once a month, until eventually, he just thinks about calling and never does. He’d turn off his phone except he’s fielding calls from his lawyers, building his case against Mark. Each meeting leaves him drained, exhausted in a way that never quite goes away. Divya is leaving messages, persistent.
Three weeks before the depositions, he's on his way to deal with it when he runs into the Andrinas on a street in Cambridge.
“I suppose you heard,” he says, keeping his distance, several feet back.
“Yes,” she says. The charm is gone from her voice; there's a look of horror on her face, like she's seeing divers too close to home. “It’s all everyone is talking about.”
“Such a bright boy,” Mr. Andrina says regretfully.
Eduardo shakes his head, pushing down the tight ball in his throat. “You don’t know what it’s like. You have no idea.”
“No,” Mr. Andrina says. “I don’t know what it’s like to sell out your family.”
Eduardo backs away, several feet, before he turns and walks briskly down the street. His ears are strained, waiting for the footsteps behind him, waiting.
They don't come, but he keeps his guard up anyway, all the way to the bar he used to go to with Dustin and Chris, even when he's been sitting on a red bar stool for a good half hour. His food sits untouched in front of him. The five o’clock news is talking about the weather. He’s watching the weather patterns when Eduardo jerks, skin flaring.
"I'm not a part of Facebook anymore," Eduardo says.
If Divya is fazed by that, he doesn't let on. "I heard," he says, sitting on the stool next to Eduardo. "He cut you out."
Eduardo frowns, but says nothing.
"We're suing him."
Eduardo freezes, then relaxes. "Good luck with that."
"I could use you," Divya says. "Call it a favor. We don't have to be enemies, Eduardo."
"I don't think you want me there," Eduardo says. "And I don't want anything from you."
"I meant the favor you owe me. He stole our idea, Saverin. I'm getting it back."
It's easier to agree when he hasn't seen Mark in months and his worries have grown more self-contained, more about his immediate concerns, but Eduardo serves his own papers, and he has his own lawsuit to deal with, and somehow he's forgotten that they both have to be present for the depositions.
Mark is.
Mark hasn't changed. He's not wearing sweatpants or a hoodie, thank god (and probably Chris), but he slouches in his chair and finds the doodles on his legal pad more interesting and more important than Eduardo's self-broken heart.
Eduardo slips his family's ring loose until it could drop right off if he let it, until he feels the scales on the inside of his elbows and at the back of his neck, in between his toes. He wonders what Mark would do, if he knew.
He says, "My father won't even look at me," and it's true, not the hyperbole it sounds like, the emotional manipulation it's meant to be. His father won't even talk to him, or answer any of Eduardo's calls, too embarrassed or disappointed or angered by the betrayal that Eduardo feels he wears like a scar, vivid and disfiguring, where everyone can see it. He's been wearing long sleeves, turtlenecks, and he buttons his shirts all the way to the top to hide it. But his skin shows through in odd patches anyway, flared across his hip and down his thighs, spiking up his spine and over three of his toes.
He used to be so beautiful, the glory of his parents, and now he can't even wear the colors he was born with. He wears blues and whites instead; he pretends he doesn't know what that means.
Mark's voice is flat, disinterested, sharp when he's pissed, and each night Eduardo shuts himself away, lying listlessly in a nameless hotel bed, staring at the ceiling. He rarely sleeps, but he dreams of reds and golds and greens. He dreams of salt water in his eyes, of going home, except he no longer knows where home is, Harvard or the waters off Brazil’s coast or Palo Alto.
Late at night, when he's been alone with his thoughts for too long, so tired, eyes shaded with dark circles that have nothing to do with his true skin, Eduardo wonders if he had to manipulate Mark at all, if Mark would have cut him out anyway.
Mark protects what he loves, and he loves Facebook more than anything.
Any idiot could see that.
~
The water is cold; Eduardo wants to stick his face under the faucet, let it run until everything is numb and he can’t feel anything at all.
“You’re defending him,” Divya says. “Why are you doing this?”
Eduardo looks up, into the mirror, and feels caught by his own reflection. He says, “Can we not do this now?”
“After everything, you’re still defending him. He stole our idea. He cut you out of the company.”
Eduardo turns around and leans against the counter. He crosses his arms. “I’m aware of that, thank you.”
“He cut you out and you’re still. Jesus, Eduardo. There’s a reason our families have rules. As a Saverin, I think you’d know that better than anyone.”
His mouth thins. How many generations will that hang over his family?
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“Don’t I?”
Eduardo sighs, fiddling with his cuffs. He looks at his hands and then touches his father’s ring. “Do you remember your first?”
“What?”
“Your first. Do you remember-” Eduardo pauses, guessing, “her?”
“I passed,” Divya says, eyes narrowed. “I earned my right to be here.”
“What happened to her?” Divya glares at him, crossing his arms. Someone walks by, and they both turn to track the sound until the footsteps are gone. Then Eduardo says quietly, still watching the door, “Or does your family still keep to the old ways?”
"No." Divya’s eyes are dark and angry. He’s been looking at Mark like that all day.
Eduardo’s fingers curl into fists, thinking about how cornered he must have felt, with the Winklevosses and Divya across the table and Eduardo in his peripheral vision.
Mark barely looked at him the entire time.
“We’re more civilized than that. She lives in Tucson.” He stops and stares at Eduardo, long enough that the back of his neck starts itching. “Zuckerberg wasn’t your first. They would never have let you come to the surface.”
“They didn’t know,” Eduardo says. “Nobody knew. I never thought I’d see him again and when I did.” He shakes his head, and he turns back to the sink. “Do you know what it’s like? To watch someone drown? To watch someone like Mark -” Eduardo tugs on his collar, scratching at the rough skin at his neck. It’s a blue and white patch, and it’s getting darker. He’s taken to wearing turtlenecks and high-collared shirts. “I’d never seen anything like him and I. I couldn’t do it.”
“Those aren’t your family’s colors,” Divya says, alarmed.
Eduardo shrugs, dropping his hands to the counter. He lays them flat, but he can’t meet Divya’s eyes. “Don’t pretend you didn’t suspect.”
A moment of silence, all the expectations of their people hang between them, Eduardo who purposely failed and Divya who did what he was supposed to. “What really happened?”
Eduardo looks at himself in the mirror. “I made a choice,” he says.
~
On the plane back to Harvard, Eduardo curls in on himself, legs bent awkwardly in the cramped space between the seats. His phone sits heavy in his pocket. No one will be calling him, not anyone he's interested in talking to. He's focusing on meditation techniques and breathing exercises, writing algorithms in his head because ever since signing both the settlement papers and the NDA, his skin has been flaring up in odd patches, full colors instead of the muted bleed-through that's been happening for months.
He stares out the window, watching the clouds. The sky is hazy, grey and damp; the sun is a faint smudge against the sky. Eduardo has his shade halfway down his window. His seatmate, a girl, pretty with long dark hair, tries to introduce herself a few minutes after take-off. “Hi, I’m Maria,” she says, smiling that flirty smile that most humans use on him.
His reply comes easily: "I just lost the love of my life. I don't feel like talking right now." She doesn’t try to speak to him again, leaving him to wade in his misery.
But an hour or two in, Maria knocks her water off her seat tray, spilling it over his pants leg. The plastic cup rolls under his seat.
"I'm so sorry," she says, dabbing ineffectually at the wet spot with her tiny paper napkin.
"It's okay," Eduardo says, allowing a smile.
"I'm such a klutz," she says. "I'm so sorry." She rests her hand on his knee, napkin crumpled under her palm. He's never hated his effect on humans so much, especially when it’s working.
Eduardo takes her hand and pushes it away gently. Then he pauses. "Have we met before?" he asks.
"I think I would have remembered," she says. She touches his hand, fingers brushing over his father's ring. Her blue eyes are wide and open, and he thinks, for just a moment-
He looks out the window.
"She really did a number on you, didn't she?"
Eduardo clenches his jaw, pulling his hand away.
“I had a love like that once,” she says. “Henri was- he was very special. It was. It was very hard to leave him. Part of me hopes that he misses me as much as I-”
Maria pulls her hand back; she clears her throat. Eduardo says nothing.
“What happened to her?”
Eduardo's smile is brittle. "Him," he says. "What happened to him," and she stays mercifully silent, probably wallowing in her own embarrassment, for the rest of the flight. Just as well. No more humans. His father is right about them. The stories are right about them. Eduardo's willingly made that mistake already and now he doesn't have Mark or Facebook or his family.
In a distant, closed off part of his mind, Eduardo imagines that his father is only angry because of his perceived betrayal, and eventually they can repair what Eduardo purposely broke, despite the disappointment and shame.
But then he remembers, will always remember, that Eduardo has given his heart to a human, and the only way to get it back is through blood.
~
Blood.
~
He’s not stopped at the front door. He’s guided right in.
Eduardo can't tell if Mark looks bored or exhausted. He probably hates these things, hates being dragged away from wiring in, away from his code and his Red Vines to sit through projections and charts and estimates.
"I didn't think we'd see you here," Sean says, seeking Eduardo out during a break. He leans in close, voice quiet, but his smile is all teeth, sharp and vicious like that hungry bull that nearly had Eduardo for lunch once upon a time.
Eduardo flinches, unable to stop it. Sean smirks like it's his own personal victory. "Heard you got kicked out," Eduardo says, ignoring the looks from Dustin and Chris and some of the other investors. "Didn't think I'd see you here either."
"Yeah, and how did that happen, Wardo? Funny how that particular party got screwed."
Eduardo's eyes drift to Mark. He's been so good all day, sitting attentively in his seat, focused on the presentation. There's only an hour or so left, depending on how long it takes to get through the last few slides, and then Mark will probably disappear into his computer.
"How is he?"
"Wow," Sean says, still leaning in close. "This pining thing you've got going on is just sad, man. How do you think he is? You just sued him and then you come here like you didn't just cut each other out of your lives. I guess that takes balls, but-"
"I think they're coming after him.”
Sean shuts up momentarily, mouth hanging open. "You said that wouldn't be a problem," he says after a few seconds.
"I didn't think it would be.” Mark is a big name now; even if the everyday people won't know his name, they'll know Facebook. A disappearance would raise too many questions. Mark is safe.
Mark has to be safe.
Eduardo cannot reach his father. Not on his phone, not by the tides. Not even the sea answers his call. Eduardo certainly hasn't answered hers since Mark.
"How many," Sean says, glancing around the room. He takes out his phone and starts flipping it nervously in his hands.
He's actually frightened, Eduardo realizes.
He knows the stories, then, but is his fear for Mark or is it for himself? If there was time, Eduardo might pry, prickle and pull, honey his voice, just to get the story. But Sean is still a shark. He’s not, and never will be, Eduardo’s primary concern.
And Mark is.
He slips away as soon as the meeting is over, ducking both Dustin and Chris, slipping past Sean, still as pale, tight lines around his eyes and mouth.
In the closest bathroom, he splashes water on his face. The Bay is only a few minutes away, the Pacific about half an hour, and all he can think about is slipping beneath the surface. He hasn't done that in so long, and the ache is more and more tangible each day.
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, swearing under his breath. His skin prickles, scales pressing upwards.
Eduardo pauses, pulling his hands away. He glances into the mirror. Mark is behind him, frowning. It's just a tiny depression at the corner of his mouth, but otherwise, it's just like the depositions, Mark's flat, sometimes annoyed, but mostly disinterested and bored expression.
"What are you doing here," he says. It's not a question. A demand, just like Mark; Eduardo can't stop his bitter smile. He ducks his head, running his hands under the faucet.
"Passing through," Eduardo says, thinking about the sea salt - not that it makes a difference anymore - he has in his luggage and the hotel room he booked solely because it has a tub instead of a walk-in shower. Then: "I own shares in this company."
Mark says nothing. Eduardo splashes more water on his face, caught in his own bitter thoughts, you cut me out, just like that, you didn't even fight for me, you never wanted-
He looks up when Mark grunts.
His heart shoves its way into his gills, wide out in the open, skin flaring up like it would if he wasn't wearing his father's ring.
She has her hands on Mark, her fingers at his pulse point and one arm banded around him. She's familiar; she could be anyone, a waitress, a bartender, a girl from his-
Maria, the girl from the plane, and he, he can't tell, exactly, but he knows. He knows because Mark struggles, twitching in her grasp, but can’t get away. His people are notorious for their strength, the females especially. There's a reason the myths and legends are always about the maids, the ones that dragged fishermen and swimmers to the depths, held them despite their struggles, strongest at the last moment of hope.
"No," he says, thick, raw. "No."
"You never even noticed me," she says in their language. Her accent is strange, stronger on the vowels. Eduardo can't place it. "I've been following you for ages, being your waitress or your bartender. Waiting. And now you're cut off from your father. You're all alone with nothing but a human to protect you."
Her hand is tight on Mark's throat, skin turning white where she's gripping it.
"Please," Eduardo says. “Why are you doing this?”
“You know what I want," she says.
“I don’t,” he says. “Please, please-“
“I need the ring, Eduardo.”
“Don’t hurt him-“
“You think you’re so special,” she says, fingers tightening when Mark shifts in her grip. “You think you’re the only one, you think-“ Mark makes a sound; where she’s touching him, Mark’s skin is white, and her fingers are not human. Her voice cracks. “Give it to me. Now.”
The ring slides off easily; he holds it out just as easily, eyes locked on her hand, the press of fingers against Mark's skin. He doesn't watch as she takes it, slipping it on her free thumb.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t have you following me,” she says, and digs her fingernails, her claws into Mark’s chest, and anything Eduardo would have said is lost, lost to the spill of blood on Mark’s shirt. He’s stepping forward and she’s slipping out the door, but Eduardo doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, he’s- Mark’s bleeding, Mark’s hurt, and Eduardo guides him to the floor, pressing his hands on the wounds.
Mark grips Eduardo’s fingers, hard enough to hurt. He's making thick, gurgling sounds, and Eduardo pulls free, scrabbling for his phone. His fingers slip over the keys. He doesn't know what speed-dial he hits, Chris's or Dustin's, or what he says, exactly, except a stumbling tumble of need yous and Marks. "Bring Sean," he says, "Bring-" and Eduardo hangs up before Chris can respond, dropping his phone to the floor.
He pushes his free hand through Mark's curls, strands sticking to the blood; the wounds aren’t deep, but there's so much of it, all over Eduardo's suit and Mark's chest. Eduardo feels the press of his other skin, pushing up under the edge of his shirt, and Mark's hot, wet breathe against his cheek.
He's shaking. They're shaking. Eduardo turns his head, Mark's curls tickling his nose. "Mark," he says, thick and ragged, "Mark, stay with me, Mark. Mark, don't. Don't-"
The door opens, hitting the wall. Eduardo crouches over Mark, blocking him from the line of vision. He feels his skin thicken, tangible scales.
It's Dustin and Chris, frozen in place.
Sean pushes through them.
Eduardo closes his eyes - don't turn your back on a shark, Eduardo. Never give them that advantage - and he breathes.
"What happened," Sean says. "What did you do?"
"She wanted my ring. She- Mark-"
"She?"
Chris steps forward, and Dustin follows, their hands tangling up on Mark's wounds.
"Eduardo," Sean says insistently, "Maids are poisonous.”
"What is going on?" Dustin says.
"We have to get him out of here." Eduardo rubs the back of his hand against his mouth. There's blood on it, fuck; his stomach flips, contracts.
This is his fault. His fault.
By the time they get Mark to the car, though the back door, arms draped over Eduardo and Sean's shoulders, Dustin scouting ahead, the bleeding has mostly stopped. It's still oozing at the centers of the wounds, but it's slowed.
“This isn’t the way to the hospital,” Chris says.
Eduardo shakes his head, hands pressed tightly to his shirt- wrecked, bloody mess of fabric, but it’s stopping the bleeding. “They won’t know what to do.”
“Eduardo-“
“Shut up,” Sean says. His hands are clenched on the wheel, knuckles tight.
“If they knew what to do,” Eduardo says, enunciating pointedly. “They would make sure he’d die.”
“Wardo’s right,” Sean says, and Eduardo doesn’t even bother to call him out on the nickname. “He wouldn’t survive the night.”
“I don’t get it,” Dustin says. “Mark’s an ass, but to, to-“
“This isn’t about Mark,” Sean says. “It’s about Eduardo.”
And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, Chris turns in his seat, eyes slipping over Eduardo. “Eduardo,” he says. “What’s wrong with your skin?”
Part Four
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Social Network
Pairings/Characters: Mark/Eduardo
Word Count: ~37,000
Disclaimer: Don’t own.
Summary: Canon compliant AU: When he's sent to infiltrate human society in order to protect his people, Eduardo meets Mark for the second time, and his instantaneous attachment might cost him everything.
A/N: Special thanks to
becca_radcgg for the beta. Written for the thesocialbbang challenge. Master Post. Check out the amazing art by
chosenfire28"My father is interested in Facebook," he says, holding his phone tightly. He's lying on his bed, feet propped up. He's still wearing his shoes, but his vest is draped over the back of a chair, and his sleeves are shoved up to his elbows.
"That's good, isn't it?"
It should be. Eduardo aches for a world where he can have both his parents and Mark, be what he is and still be CFO of Facebook.
"You worry too much," Dustin says. "Has anyone ever told you that?"
"You. Multiple times."
"I'm right. You know I am." He sounds muffled, distant, like he's holding the phone away from his ear. There's a clatter in the background. "I'm always right."
Eduardo frowns. He stops swinging his knee back and forth. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," Dustin says too quickly.
"Dustin-"
"Chris says you mentioned something about coming out? You should. It’s not the same without you.”
"You totally miss-"
"Oh shit," Dustin says. "Intern Ken just made an egg explode in the microwave. I gotta go."
Eduardo frowns. "Someone is cleaning up after you guys, right?" but Dustin's already gone.
He sets his phone on his bedside table, and he hides his face in the crook of his elbow. He’s heading out in a few days. He’s shaken, running lines in his head, plotting out ways to figure out how to convince Mark about the advertising, no matter what.
Because it’s not about what’s best for Facebook anymore.
~
The rain is cold and relentless, but Eduardo never minded being wet. He minds being forgotten. He's shaking and his clothes are sticking to his skin. It's been hours when he finally calls a cab. It smells like tuna, and the music is too loud, and the guy wants to make conversation, yammering on about the weather and the Dodgers.
Halfway there, Eduardo says, "Shut up," letting his voice go low and honeyed, and then he has to tell the cabbie to pay attention to the road.
He's exhausted and angry and annoyed all the way up to the front door, but his heart is beating a steady constant to match his thoughts. Mark. Mark. Mark.
But the door opens and it's not Mark.
It’s Sean Parker.
Eduardo's heart freezes up, and the next half hour, it doesn't even feel like it's beating at all. Arguing with Mark, he doesn’t even know what he’s saying. They’re words he’s rehearsed, things he knows must happen if Mark is to be safe. Mark is a flat wall, blank and unreceptive, and Eduardo gets nowhere.
He gets nowhere, except possibly left behind. Mark said it; Mark never says anything he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t play games like that or twist his words.
Mark slips back to his computer and his precious code as soon as Eduardo's anger burns out and leaves him feeling wrung out. He steals the salt from the kitchen, locks the bathroom door and turns on the water. When the tub is full, he dumps at least a third of the carton in.
Then he gets in and lets his head sink beneath the surface, legs bent at the knee. Every time he moves, water sloshes over the side and spills onto the tiles. His eyes stay open, watching the world beyond the surface twist and distort.
He always wanted to be a part of the surface world - a dangerous thought, especially with his ancestry - and now.
His father or Mark.
His mother, the interests of his people. Or Mark.
Mark who lets a shark set up his business deals, Mark who does what he wants, fuck the consequences, Mark who never looks up.
He stays under the water long after it's cold. Even then, it's hard to push to his feet and climb out, spilling water everywhere. Someone else can clean it up. He's distracted, thinking about how hard it's going to be to change his flight, but when he glances in the mirror, Eduardo freezes.
His skin, his true skin, half human and half scales, is not the reds and golds and greens of his family, but blue, blue and white and silver. He wants to laugh or scream or slink down to the ocean where he can slip away from it all, but it lodges in his throat and threatens to stay there, choking him slowly.
"Damn it, Mark," Eduardo says. "Damn it."
~
A drop of water slides down his neck, down his spine, and then another one follows, but Eduardo stays where he is, leaning against the doorway and watching Sean Parker putter around the kitchen. Phone held between his shoulder and his ear, he’s talking quietly on the landline, but Eduardo studies the line of his back, imagining where a dorsal fin might be.
It’s oddly domestic and out of place with what he normally sees when he thinks about Sean, gathering glasses of Mountain Dew for the guys, sugar and sometimes healthy food, and Eduardo knows what his role would’ve been if he’d come to California when he’d wanted.
He doesn’t think he’d have hated it.
He’s still wet, itching because he’s not used to the salt anymore, and Mark’s t-shirt clings to his back. It’s too tight across the shoulders, but the fabric hangs loose everywhere else. It smells clean, recently laundered, and not at all like Mark.
Eduardo clears his throat.
Sean jumps a little, and he turns around, nearly dropping the phone, but his hand comes up and he catches it, pressing it against his shoulder. His eyes dart to the side, in the direction of the coders.
Eduardo waits. It’s not long.
“Hey, man, I’ll call you back,” he says and hangs up. He keeps the phone in his hand. Eduardo sees the way his grip changes, slides to the bottom for better control.
Eduardo feels his skin start to itch up. He pushes away from the door. “I wouldn’t.”
Sean snorts dismissively. “Listen up, Wardo-“
Eduardo steps forward, and then in Sean’s path to keep him from bolting, blocking him against the counter, and when he grips Sean’s wrist, Eduardo doesn’t feel anything under his skin. Just bones and muscle. He pushes the surprise away. People can hide, lock away their secrets. Sean’s no different. He tightens his fingers, pushing harder until Sean drops the phone. It clatters on the floor at their feet.
“What, Sean? It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you?” Eduardo tilts his head and he lowers his voice. “Are they?”
“I,” Sean says.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asks, mostly rhetorical. “Will it cause problems for Facebook?”
“Let go of me,” he says, but Eduardo just slides his thumb against the inside of his wrist.
“I really hope it’s not going to be a problem,” Eduardo says. Sean tries to twist away, but Eduardo tightens his fingers, pressing the bones together. Sean’s fingers try to pry Eduardo’s away, but they stutter, freeze, pausing over the scales, and Eduardo watches Sean stare at the patch of skin showing at his wrist, bruise blue.
“Oh shit,” he says. “Oh shit.” And he tries to back away. He doesn’t get far. Eduardo is stronger than he looks.
“I thought you might know.” Eduardo smiles. It’s not happy or pleasant or welcoming. Triumph tastes bitter, like sea water to a starving man. “Makes this a lot easier, that’s for sure.”
Sean’s backed up all the way against the counter, as far away from Eduardo as possible. He’s twitchy, like a squirrel. Maybe it’s confusion and not fear, wariness because Eduardo’s never been this openly antagonistic, but he’s on edge.
Sean’s on edge, and Eduardo is finally, finally calm.
Sean’s face changes, darkens but he stops attempting to pull his hand away. Eduardo’s fingers tighten anyway, for only a moment longer. Then he lets go and steps back.
“You’ll never get me out to sea,” Sean says, rubbing at his wrist. Eduardo tracks the movement for a second, thinking about that. Sean glances towards the coders again. Dustin is the closest, and he’s wired in. Somehow, Eduardo’s pretty sure he knows exactly how much help he’d be to Sean. Sean probably knows it too.
If he’s smart, he does.
“There’s a pool right there,” Eduardo says, nodding towards the window.
Sean looks.
He visibly swallows. When he turns back, his face is visibly hostile; he’s trying to regain his footing. “If you want me gone, you’re going to have to take it up with Mark.”
“You really want me to do that?”
“I think you’re too scared,” Sean says, letting his wrist go lax. “If you could get him to make me leave, I’d be gone already. What if Mark chooses me? What if you’re really not good enough for him? I’m pushing Facebook forward, not you. You think he cares about anything else? He’s human, man.”
Eduardo looks out the window, facing west. “We’re only a few miles in, you know.” He turns back to Sean. “You know what I am,” he says. “You know what we do. How do you think it’s going to go down, if I can look at you and know there’s something wrong about you-”
“If you think I’m going to let one of the families get involved in this-”
Eduardo smiles. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean my father or his people won’t.”
“We’re meeting with Peter Thiel tomorrow,” Sean says. “You’re out of time.”
Eduardo twists the ring on his finger one full circuit.
“Do you trust him?” Sean looks wary and confused, so Eduardo says, “Peter Thiel. Do you trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Sean says. “And whatever you’re trying to do, it’s not going to work. You’re dead weight. You’re bringing down the curve, Wardo. Mark’s going to leave you behind.”
“Good,” Eduardo says after a beat. “Get him to do it.”
Sean blinks, frowning. Eduardo rubs the back of his head. His hand comes away wet, and his skin feels like it’s been rubbed raw. All that salt. He waits for it. That moment when Sean figures it all out, when everything clicks into place. Does he even know the stories? Eduardo has no idea, and he’s done spilling secrets he shouldn’t.
“What are you up to?” Sean asks, voice low.
“Don’t pretend like you haven’t been driving a wedge between us.”
He shrugs. “Hey, it was there already. I’m just prying it open a little bit. You’re doing all the heavy lifting yourself.”
Eduardo nods, absent. He’s staring past Sean at Dustin with those oversized headphones on and his face a picture of concentration. Dustin always seemed the stillest while wired in, the most focused. Eduardo never got the lure of computers.
“You’re not part of this world,” Eduardo says. His scales are showing through at his elbows, his wrists. He can feel how his legs are covered, true skin thicker than it’s been for months.
“Mark thinks I am.”
Eduardo jerks. “You’re still-“ he says, then looks away, collecting himself. “I’m not talking about Facebook.”
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Sean says. “But I’m not stupid enough to not see that you’re trying to screw me over. Forget it.”
He chooses the route furthest from Eduardo, slowing at the point where the counter enforces proximity.
When he’s out of the room, Eduardo smiles.
~
He freezes the Facebook account the next day.
~
Mark calls and Christy sets Eduardo’s bed on fire; he’s choked by the smoke and the anger in Mark’s voice, and he apologizes.
He apologizes, but it’s not going to be enough. It can’t be enough.
He spends the morning before his flight back curled in his bed. He’s exhausted, and he aches, true skin showing in odd patches across his body.
Christy is gone, out of his life, and Mark- Mark is gone.
Part of him wishes he could just undo it all, go back and listen to Mark, or convince him into advertising, words honeyed and close, or set up his father and their people as investors and somehow convince Mark to play nice. He has no plan, no idea what he’s doing, relying on a shark - you can’t trust sharks! - to follow along and play his part like Eduardo needs him to.
Everything is crumbling around him and he’s letting it, ignoring the pieces like he can’t salvage any of it.
~
The Facebook’s new offices are stacked full of half-empty boxes, desks still mostly impersonal because the coders are too wired in to put out pictures or plants.
Mark says nothing about the contract or Eduardo returning to Harvard or even the frozen account. A show of good faith, that he’s moved on and everything is going to work out.
It took him a lot less time to act than Eduardo thought it would.
Eduardo watches him settle into his chair to wire in, slipping from Eduardo’s reach for the last time. He thinks I want to be with you forever and wishes he could forget everything he just signed away a few hours ago. It’s stupid, a childish fantasy, a daydream he barely takes out to look at anymore: the courage to tell Mark everything and somehow unite his two worlds, his true family and the family he wants more.
Mark is human, and humans have never held any loyalty to Eduardo’s people. Eduardo wonders if betrayal counts if he’s the one buying the knife.
And Dustin hasn’t been able to look him in the eye all night.
Sean slinks over; Eduardo wills his body to relax. “The million member party?” he says quietly.
“I think he likes the symbolism,” Sean says. He doesn’t lean against the wall, but he crosses his arms, staying a good three feet away.
Eduardo laughs. “Mark hates symbolism.” They’re silent after that, Eduardo letting himself slump against the wall. Only a little bit, it’s stupid to show weakness, but he closes his eyes. Sean’s still a shark, but it’s hard to care.
“It’s a beautiful clause,” he says quietly. “I don’t think I’d have seen it coming.”
“You’re really doing this,” Sean says. “Just walking away.”
“Sean.” Eduardo opens his eyes and turns on him, cutting the majority of the office out of his field of vision. “They want people in Facebook. What do you think they’ll do to him, the first time Mark says no?” Eduardo swallows. His face feels numb, and his ring is a dead weight on his finger. “I need you to take care of him.”
“Mark doesn’t need to be taken care of,” Sean says.
That would have hurt, once, but it’s logical. It’s rational. Mark doesn’t need to be protected.
“Yeah.” Eduardo turns away, eyes automatically searching for him. “Make sure he doesn’t change his mind,” he says, needlessly.
“He won’t.”
“I know,” Eduardo says.
He slips away without saying goodbye. It’s not as difficult as he suspected. Mark is wired in. He’s never looked up for Eduardo before, and with the contract, and the pending dilution, he won’t now.
It’s stupid to be hurt by it. This is his choice.
Eduardo goes to the closest empty beach. He doesn’t even take off his clothes. He just walks out until he sinks beneath the waves, until the sea curves around him. It’s the Pacific. It’s not his ocean, not for miles and miles and miles, but it welcomes him like it missed him, like it needed him all the time he was away.
~
Lying to his father is not as hard as he thought it would be - he's been doing it for years - but his chest hurts. He's cutting away the relationship in advance, writing away all ties to everything. He won't have Mark or Facebook or Chris and Dustin; he won't have his father or his mother.
It's easy to convince his father that investors would be a better deal, that this way, they get what they want and Mark isn't an issue. Mark supports investments. This is good.
He spends his nights out at the docks, staring out across the water and his days with the internship he told Mark he quit, shadowing business meetings and being coached by Mr. Andrina; he still gets tongue-tied whenever Mrs. Andrina is around.
He's holding her bags, her arm linked through his as they walk down the street. It's unnecessary; she could carry more than he ever could, and he's in more danger in this city than she ever would be.
"What happened with your Christy?"
"She was-" crazy, frightening, more like the girls back home than truly human. Not what he wanted. "-no longer useful."
"Pity," she says. "She was a pretty one. As far as humans go."
Eduardo smiles politely; she guides him across the street to the next shop. This is his life. For now. Soon he won't even have this, the pariah of both worlds, above and below.
She touches his arm in the cab. "You seem troubled, dear."
"I," Eduardo says.
"Roderick is very pleased with you. He says you're quite the study. It's wonderful that your human has fallen in line. I didn't doubt it for a second, dear."
Eduardo licks his mouth, forcing himself to look out the window. It's hard to think with her hand on his arm. "You're part of the Council, right?"
"I am. But you knew that. And it's not what you were going to ask."
He closes his eyes briefly. "Have you ever charmed someone for an extended time?" Eduardo asks. The driver keeps glancing in his mirror. "I'm concerned about it wearing off."
"You're attached to him."
Eduardo chooses his words carefully. "He's beneficial. And very useful. But he's difficult. Stubborn."
"It's different for us, you know that." She settles back against the seat, folding her hands in her lap. Eduardo watches her fingers before he remembers himself and looks away. She can't hurt him with her claws, hidden beneath the surface; he'd get sick, maybe, if enough of her venom got into his system, but it wouldn't kill him. Maybe.
"Eduardo," she says then, in their native language. "Do you know why I'm on the surface?"
He shakes his head.
"Two of our islands have been compromised. Humans are useful in their own right, but their insistent need to seed out every unexplored nook and cranny of the world-" She stops, looks out the window and breathes once to regain her composure. "Soon, it might be very difficult for us to maintain contact with those at home. If I could charm the entire world into leaving us alone-"
"If only, right," he says, eyes on his feet. He wiggles his toes inside his shoes, thinking about the days when he won't have the luxury of toes.
"I apologize," she says. She nudges him playfully. “I’ve taken over the conversation. You shouldn't have a problem with your Mark. You're male; they fight less against you."
He thinks about that for days, wondering if everything would've been different if Eduardo was a maid instead, if he'd had all that allure, strong enough to charm without any effort. There's a reason Eduardo's on the surface, his father, Divya, any male.
Humans react violently to that sort of strength. And Mark, who barely registers when Eduardo's at the top of his game, who is cutting and rude and so very Mark, what would Mark do, when he's willing to cut Eduardo out of Facebook without a second thought?
Eduardo doesn't want to think about it.
~
Harvard without Mark is a lot like New York.
He doesn’t hate it. He’s not miserable, exactly. He thinks his father is finally proud of him, a gut-wrenching warmth to his voice whenever Eduardo talks to him. He can't trust it. How long before that changes?
Eduardo attends his classes and attends functions for both AEPi and the Phoenix; he throws himself into the Harvard Investor's Association, and he focuses on rebuilding what he has left of his future.
It’s easy to lose himself in it. He’s hardening his heart for when Mark finally cuts him out; Dustin hasn't called. He hasn't texted or emailed or Facebooked - not that Eduardo uses the site all that often - and Eduardo realizes a month into the semester that he's pulling away from Chris, too. He’s busy with classes and his own life, but-
You can’t trust humans
Maybe Eduardo is finally learning.
After all, Mark is gone.
Eduardo stands on the shore, watching the tide recede, sea foam on the waves, clutching his phone. Their conversations are getting shorter and shorter the longer Eduardo isn't in California, and that too, is a lot like New York. Only now, Eduardo is ending the calls early, unable to stand the ache in his chest. Mark's rarely paying attention anyway.
"Hey," Eduardo says, watching the waves break on the shore. He's too far up the beach to get wet; he's afraid he might not come back. "Is Sean there? I'd like to speak with him."
"Why," Mark says, a demand and not a question, sharp and suddenly alert.
"I don't have his number," Eduardo says. He rubs the bridge of his nose. He doesn't even have the landline. "And I'd like his input on something."
"You want advice from Sean."
"He's part of your company, isn't he?" Eduardo starts walking down the beach, slipping a little on the sand. "And you listen to him more than you do me, so."
Mark is quiet for long enough that Eduardo says his name, wondering if he's been hung up on.
"What do you want?" Sean's voice is harsh, but confident. Three thousand miles and Mark between them; of course he is.
"You can tell us apart from humans, right?"
"Jesus, man, I'm on a freaking cell," Sean says, sounding muffled. "I'm in the other room, now, and look, Mark is watching me, so keep this quick."
Eduardo rolls his eyes. "Can you?"
Sean is quiet. Eduardo's close enough to the shore that he toes his shoes off. His socks follow soon after, and he steps forward until the water just hits them at its highest point. It's cold.
"Sometimes," Sean says. "You know how it is. Not females."
"What about males?"
"Sometimes. I didn’t. With you. I just didn’t like you."
Eduardo sighs, and takes another step out. The fabric of his slacks starts soaking up water. If he stays here longer, it's going to get all the way up to his calves.
"When Mark dilutes the shares, tip off the right investors."
"That's like-"
"Don't tell me you're morally opposed to it," Eduardo says.
"I just think you'd be singing a different tune if I suggested it."
"Sean," he says, rubbing his forehead. "Just do it."
"Hey," Sean says. "Are we going to have to- you know how this is going to play out with the families.”
"I'll take care of it," Eduardo says. He hangs up, fingers lingering on his keypad. He thinks about calling Dustin, just to talk, or Chris to get a beer, but in the end, he slips his phone into his pocket.
~
Chris stops by Eduardo's dorm a few weeks before the million members’ party. He sticks his hands into his pockets, and looks at Eduardo through his messy bangs.
"I thought I'd fly out with you, if that's cool."
"Of course it is," Eduardo says. "Have you thought about going out there again? More permanently?" He's thought about this, and Eduardo wants to be selfish. In a way, he is. His voice slides low, honeyed and melodic. "You should. Knowing Mark, he'll probably make someone important cry."
Chris just raises his eyebrows. "That's not the best incentive," he says, making Eduardo laugh and look away. He’s losing his touch. His heart’s not in it; he doesn’t know. "Yeah, I'm in. You'll be coming out, won't you? After graduation? It wasn't the same this summer."
"Of course," Eduardo says, feeling like he's just been kicked. "Why wouldn't I?"
"I thought, maybe, you'd... moved on," Chris says.
“I'm a little embarrassed that I'm so obvious to everyone but Mark," Eduardo says.
"Yeah, you should work on that."
~
His father voices implications about future investors in Facebook, all those he and the Andrinas handpicked personally.
"These men will help grow this company," he says.
Eduardo feels the entire world compress into a blackened mess in his chest. They made it grow without them, or his father. Mark even did it without Eduardo. The best thing about this. Mark Zuckerberg is a name, now, and people like that, when they go missing, everyone sits up and notices.
People like that make the old ways too risky.
~
Flying out with Chris is hard. He's in a reminiscing mood, and the closer they get to landing, the more the scales under Eduardo's skin start creeping upwards. He clutches the armrests and half listens to Chris, mostly wishing this was over already.
He’s a little nauseous the entire drive to the offices, Chris chattering on, oddly oblivious to Eduardo’s trepidation.
Chris peels off as soon as they’re through the doors, and Eduardo glances at him one more time before he goes to sign away his company.
~
Point zero three percent. So that’s his value. To Mark and to Mark’s company, point zero three percent.
It worked better than he thought it would, and, anger rising in his chest, maybe he didn’t have to do anything at all. Maybe it was all in play long before Eduardo’s been trying to orchestrate it, maybe Sean Parker’s been playing him for a fool, maybe-
He’s lost, hurt and aching all the way to his bones, and his skin. It’s there, full colors, scaling out over his thighs, his feet, his elbows, and he can barely breathe. He can’t bring this back to his father, absolutely nothing, he can’t –
This isn’t about his father.
Eduardo’s world is condensed down to point zero three percent, and that’s all Mark. That’s Mark and this and he can’t breathe; nothing else exists.
He breaks the laptop because it might make him feel better; it doesn’t. He says lawyer up, asshole and that doesn’t work either.
.
And Sean, the shark, says fuck you in the most dramatic, overt way possible, the best way possible, handing him a check of his own money.
Eduardo could never ally with a shark, but he pulls his punch, and leaves, he leaves because he has to, because his skin is flaring up all along his spine, full colors and not the muted bleed through that’s been happening for months.
He makes it three blocks before he has to duck into an alley, lean against the wall and focus on meditation techniques, breathing exercises, writing algorithms in his head.
His heart slows, and his skin fades, slipping back beneath the surface.
Then he makes the call.
The warmth in his father’s voice, the slick sound of the words of his homeland, break him.
“I failed,” Eduardo says, thick with vowels that feel too foreign on his tongue, too quick, too slippery. He almost chokes on them, clutching his phone too hard. He’s leaning against a wall in some side-alley, a few blocks from where he lost everything. There are rough, ugly patches on his skin that won’t go away, blue and white and silver.
The silence on the other end feels like being stung like a jellyfish. When he was younger, they used to make a game of it, see who could get the closest and get away without retaliation. Eduardo wasn’t always quick enough.
He’d never stayed in place and waited for it to happen before. He’d never done it on purpose either.
He can’t stop himself, sometimes, even when he should, even when this is the one thing that will make his father so very, very disappointed. Eduardo says, “I knew him. I knew Mark before Harvard. I knew- he nearly drowned and I wanted. Father, I wanted-”
His father hangs up.
Eduardo does not blame him.
Time passes, he’s aware of that, but he doesn’t know how long it’s been. Eduardo turns his head, but otherwise holds himself very still, pressing into the wall. "Sean, I suggest that you leave," he says.
"Little dramatic, don't you think? Breaking his laptop like that."
“Because your check wasn’t.” Eduardo's fingers twitch, but he lays them flat against the bricks. "It's not going to be enough.”
"You're actually going to sue him."
He looks at Sean. He does it to reassure himself he's not trapped inside his own head, having a conversation with himself. Sean's still far enough away that he could conceivably make a break for it if Eduardo changed his mind about hitting him.
"I don't care how big of an asshole it makes him look," Eduardo says. "The bigger fish he is, the safer he'll be. None of the families will even try to do business with him."
When he speaks, after a long drawn out moment, Sean's voice is soft; it barely carries all the way down the alley. "Why are you doing this?"
Eduardo's mouth softens. "I was twelve," he says. "When I first saw him. He fell off a pier and hit is head, and all I wanted- he still has a scar there.”
“Oh,” Sean says, like he’s surprised. “It’s one of those stories.”
"Really," Eduardo says, flat, disbelieving. “You’re just realizing that, Sean?”
"I," Sean says. "I suspected."
Eduardo looks away, into the dark pit of the alley. It's not like that anymore. It's worse: It's his choice, the pull of the tide he chose to ignore, and now all that's left is sea foam.
~
Eduardo stands in the bathroom of his hotel room, completely naked. The bathtub is overflowing, but he doesn’t reach for the faucet to turn the water off.
Instead, he wipes the steam from the mirror. Mark, Mark, he thinks, staring at his reflection, the blue-white-silver scaly patches at his elbows, his wrists, his neck, everywhere. Even with his ring’s protection, he won’t be able to hide some of them easily. Mark is going to freak-
Then he thinks Point zero three percent and he feels sick.
There’s a knock at his door.
Hope is an ugly, horrible thing. It could be any number of people. Chris thought they'd stay at the house, and Eduardo never told him differently. His father, come to collect him or disown him, Sean, here to gloat.
Mark.
He pulls on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt but he still hesitates, resting his hands against it, parallel with his shoulders before he opens the door.
"Dustin?"
"I," Dustin says. His arms are crossed, his shoulders rounded in, and when he catches Eduardo's eye, he looks away immediately. "I hacked your- I."
"Hey," Eduardo says, laying his hand on Dustin's shoulder. It's not enough. He pulls him in, tightening his arms around him. "It's okay. It's."
It's not okay, and it never will be, cutting out his own heart to protect Mark. Mark who never wanted it in the first place.
"I knew," Dustin says, small and muffled by Eduardo's shirt. "Mark told me, he told me not to sign the papers. I should’ve told you.”
His eyes are rimmed red, and his skin is pale; he still can’t meet Eduardo’s eyes.
"I've got a mini-bar," Eduardo says, stepping back into the room. "And a lot of money."
~
He tries calling his father, later, when Dustin is curled up asleep in the bed. Eduardo hasn't slept. He's not going to try. His father isn't answering, or he's out to sea, out of electronic communication range, explaining what a failure their son is to Eduardo's mother.
It would have been faster to fly down to the Keys and take a boat than to swim the entire way, but Eduardo aches for the sea; he bets his father does too. Eduardo imagines his mother, her long hair water-slicked against her completely human torso, pulling herself up to brace against the railing of the boat and his father bent close to explain the situation.
After the third time, he leaves one voicemail, a garbled mess of different languages, words slurred and raw in all three.
~
"I'm not going to make you choose between us," Eduardo tells both Dustin and Chris, separately and together, multiple times.
He won't. He can't.
But despite Dustin and Chris - by the time summer rolls around, they're both in California, and he's still on the East Coast - he feels like he's cut himself off from everyone. Everything.
He spends a lot of time down at the banks of the Charles or the shores of nearby lakes. He avoids the ocean, and his skin stays mostly soft, mostly human, except when he's agitated. He starts doing yoga, learning meditation exercises, anything to calm his nerves and keep his true skin under wraps.
His father never answers his phone. He never calls back.
Eduardo tries once a week, then once a month, until eventually, he just thinks about calling and never does. He’d turn off his phone except he’s fielding calls from his lawyers, building his case against Mark. Each meeting leaves him drained, exhausted in a way that never quite goes away. Divya is leaving messages, persistent.
Three weeks before the depositions, he's on his way to deal with it when he runs into the Andrinas on a street in Cambridge.
“I suppose you heard,” he says, keeping his distance, several feet back.
“Yes,” she says. The charm is gone from her voice; there's a look of horror on her face, like she's seeing divers too close to home. “It’s all everyone is talking about.”
“Such a bright boy,” Mr. Andrina says regretfully.
Eduardo shakes his head, pushing down the tight ball in his throat. “You don’t know what it’s like. You have no idea.”
“No,” Mr. Andrina says. “I don’t know what it’s like to sell out your family.”
Eduardo backs away, several feet, before he turns and walks briskly down the street. His ears are strained, waiting for the footsteps behind him, waiting.
They don't come, but he keeps his guard up anyway, all the way to the bar he used to go to with Dustin and Chris, even when he's been sitting on a red bar stool for a good half hour. His food sits untouched in front of him. The five o’clock news is talking about the weather. He’s watching the weather patterns when Eduardo jerks, skin flaring.
"I'm not a part of Facebook anymore," Eduardo says.
If Divya is fazed by that, he doesn't let on. "I heard," he says, sitting on the stool next to Eduardo. "He cut you out."
Eduardo frowns, but says nothing.
"We're suing him."
Eduardo freezes, then relaxes. "Good luck with that."
"I could use you," Divya says. "Call it a favor. We don't have to be enemies, Eduardo."
"I don't think you want me there," Eduardo says. "And I don't want anything from you."
"I meant the favor you owe me. He stole our idea, Saverin. I'm getting it back."
It's easier to agree when he hasn't seen Mark in months and his worries have grown more self-contained, more about his immediate concerns, but Eduardo serves his own papers, and he has his own lawsuit to deal with, and somehow he's forgotten that they both have to be present for the depositions.
Mark is.
Mark hasn't changed. He's not wearing sweatpants or a hoodie, thank god (and probably Chris), but he slouches in his chair and finds the doodles on his legal pad more interesting and more important than Eduardo's self-broken heart.
Eduardo slips his family's ring loose until it could drop right off if he let it, until he feels the scales on the inside of his elbows and at the back of his neck, in between his toes. He wonders what Mark would do, if he knew.
He says, "My father won't even look at me," and it's true, not the hyperbole it sounds like, the emotional manipulation it's meant to be. His father won't even talk to him, or answer any of Eduardo's calls, too embarrassed or disappointed or angered by the betrayal that Eduardo feels he wears like a scar, vivid and disfiguring, where everyone can see it. He's been wearing long sleeves, turtlenecks, and he buttons his shirts all the way to the top to hide it. But his skin shows through in odd patches anyway, flared across his hip and down his thighs, spiking up his spine and over three of his toes.
He used to be so beautiful, the glory of his parents, and now he can't even wear the colors he was born with. He wears blues and whites instead; he pretends he doesn't know what that means.
Mark's voice is flat, disinterested, sharp when he's pissed, and each night Eduardo shuts himself away, lying listlessly in a nameless hotel bed, staring at the ceiling. He rarely sleeps, but he dreams of reds and golds and greens. He dreams of salt water in his eyes, of going home, except he no longer knows where home is, Harvard or the waters off Brazil’s coast or Palo Alto.
Late at night, when he's been alone with his thoughts for too long, so tired, eyes shaded with dark circles that have nothing to do with his true skin, Eduardo wonders if he had to manipulate Mark at all, if Mark would have cut him out anyway.
Mark protects what he loves, and he loves Facebook more than anything.
Any idiot could see that.
~
The water is cold; Eduardo wants to stick his face under the faucet, let it run until everything is numb and he can’t feel anything at all.
“You’re defending him,” Divya says. “Why are you doing this?”
Eduardo looks up, into the mirror, and feels caught by his own reflection. He says, “Can we not do this now?”
“After everything, you’re still defending him. He stole our idea. He cut you out of the company.”
Eduardo turns around and leans against the counter. He crosses his arms. “I’m aware of that, thank you.”
“He cut you out and you’re still. Jesus, Eduardo. There’s a reason our families have rules. As a Saverin, I think you’d know that better than anyone.”
His mouth thins. How many generations will that hang over his family?
“You don’t have to remind me.”
“Don’t I?”
Eduardo sighs, fiddling with his cuffs. He looks at his hands and then touches his father’s ring. “Do you remember your first?”
“What?”
“Your first. Do you remember-” Eduardo pauses, guessing, “her?”
“I passed,” Divya says, eyes narrowed. “I earned my right to be here.”
“What happened to her?” Divya glares at him, crossing his arms. Someone walks by, and they both turn to track the sound until the footsteps are gone. Then Eduardo says quietly, still watching the door, “Or does your family still keep to the old ways?”
"No." Divya’s eyes are dark and angry. He’s been looking at Mark like that all day.
Eduardo’s fingers curl into fists, thinking about how cornered he must have felt, with the Winklevosses and Divya across the table and Eduardo in his peripheral vision.
Mark barely looked at him the entire time.
“We’re more civilized than that. She lives in Tucson.” He stops and stares at Eduardo, long enough that the back of his neck starts itching. “Zuckerberg wasn’t your first. They would never have let you come to the surface.”
“They didn’t know,” Eduardo says. “Nobody knew. I never thought I’d see him again and when I did.” He shakes his head, and he turns back to the sink. “Do you know what it’s like? To watch someone drown? To watch someone like Mark -” Eduardo tugs on his collar, scratching at the rough skin at his neck. It’s a blue and white patch, and it’s getting darker. He’s taken to wearing turtlenecks and high-collared shirts. “I’d never seen anything like him and I. I couldn’t do it.”
“Those aren’t your family’s colors,” Divya says, alarmed.
Eduardo shrugs, dropping his hands to the counter. He lays them flat, but he can’t meet Divya’s eyes. “Don’t pretend you didn’t suspect.”
A moment of silence, all the expectations of their people hang between them, Eduardo who purposely failed and Divya who did what he was supposed to. “What really happened?”
Eduardo looks at himself in the mirror. “I made a choice,” he says.
~
On the plane back to Harvard, Eduardo curls in on himself, legs bent awkwardly in the cramped space between the seats. His phone sits heavy in his pocket. No one will be calling him, not anyone he's interested in talking to. He's focusing on meditation techniques and breathing exercises, writing algorithms in his head because ever since signing both the settlement papers and the NDA, his skin has been flaring up in odd patches, full colors instead of the muted bleed-through that's been happening for months.
He stares out the window, watching the clouds. The sky is hazy, grey and damp; the sun is a faint smudge against the sky. Eduardo has his shade halfway down his window. His seatmate, a girl, pretty with long dark hair, tries to introduce herself a few minutes after take-off. “Hi, I’m Maria,” she says, smiling that flirty smile that most humans use on him.
His reply comes easily: "I just lost the love of my life. I don't feel like talking right now." She doesn’t try to speak to him again, leaving him to wade in his misery.
But an hour or two in, Maria knocks her water off her seat tray, spilling it over his pants leg. The plastic cup rolls under his seat.
"I'm so sorry," she says, dabbing ineffectually at the wet spot with her tiny paper napkin.
"It's okay," Eduardo says, allowing a smile.
"I'm such a klutz," she says. "I'm so sorry." She rests her hand on his knee, napkin crumpled under her palm. He's never hated his effect on humans so much, especially when it’s working.
Eduardo takes her hand and pushes it away gently. Then he pauses. "Have we met before?" he asks.
"I think I would have remembered," she says. She touches his hand, fingers brushing over his father's ring. Her blue eyes are wide and open, and he thinks, for just a moment-
He looks out the window.
"She really did a number on you, didn't she?"
Eduardo clenches his jaw, pulling his hand away.
“I had a love like that once,” she says. “Henri was- he was very special. It was. It was very hard to leave him. Part of me hopes that he misses me as much as I-”
Maria pulls her hand back; she clears her throat. Eduardo says nothing.
“What happened to her?”
Eduardo's smile is brittle. "Him," he says. "What happened to him," and she stays mercifully silent, probably wallowing in her own embarrassment, for the rest of the flight. Just as well. No more humans. His father is right about them. The stories are right about them. Eduardo's willingly made that mistake already and now he doesn't have Mark or Facebook or his family.
In a distant, closed off part of his mind, Eduardo imagines that his father is only angry because of his perceived betrayal, and eventually they can repair what Eduardo purposely broke, despite the disappointment and shame.
But then he remembers, will always remember, that Eduardo has given his heart to a human, and the only way to get it back is through blood.
~
Blood.
~
He’s not stopped at the front door. He’s guided right in.
Eduardo can't tell if Mark looks bored or exhausted. He probably hates these things, hates being dragged away from wiring in, away from his code and his Red Vines to sit through projections and charts and estimates.
"I didn't think we'd see you here," Sean says, seeking Eduardo out during a break. He leans in close, voice quiet, but his smile is all teeth, sharp and vicious like that hungry bull that nearly had Eduardo for lunch once upon a time.
Eduardo flinches, unable to stop it. Sean smirks like it's his own personal victory. "Heard you got kicked out," Eduardo says, ignoring the looks from Dustin and Chris and some of the other investors. "Didn't think I'd see you here either."
"Yeah, and how did that happen, Wardo? Funny how that particular party got screwed."
Eduardo's eyes drift to Mark. He's been so good all day, sitting attentively in his seat, focused on the presentation. There's only an hour or so left, depending on how long it takes to get through the last few slides, and then Mark will probably disappear into his computer.
"How is he?"
"Wow," Sean says, still leaning in close. "This pining thing you've got going on is just sad, man. How do you think he is? You just sued him and then you come here like you didn't just cut each other out of your lives. I guess that takes balls, but-"
"I think they're coming after him.”
Sean shuts up momentarily, mouth hanging open. "You said that wouldn't be a problem," he says after a few seconds.
"I didn't think it would be.” Mark is a big name now; even if the everyday people won't know his name, they'll know Facebook. A disappearance would raise too many questions. Mark is safe.
Mark has to be safe.
Eduardo cannot reach his father. Not on his phone, not by the tides. Not even the sea answers his call. Eduardo certainly hasn't answered hers since Mark.
"How many," Sean says, glancing around the room. He takes out his phone and starts flipping it nervously in his hands.
He's actually frightened, Eduardo realizes.
He knows the stories, then, but is his fear for Mark or is it for himself? If there was time, Eduardo might pry, prickle and pull, honey his voice, just to get the story. But Sean is still a shark. He’s not, and never will be, Eduardo’s primary concern.
And Mark is.
He slips away as soon as the meeting is over, ducking both Dustin and Chris, slipping past Sean, still as pale, tight lines around his eyes and mouth.
In the closest bathroom, he splashes water on his face. The Bay is only a few minutes away, the Pacific about half an hour, and all he can think about is slipping beneath the surface. He hasn't done that in so long, and the ache is more and more tangible each day.
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, swearing under his breath. His skin prickles, scales pressing upwards.
Eduardo pauses, pulling his hands away. He glances into the mirror. Mark is behind him, frowning. It's just a tiny depression at the corner of his mouth, but otherwise, it's just like the depositions, Mark's flat, sometimes annoyed, but mostly disinterested and bored expression.
"What are you doing here," he says. It's not a question. A demand, just like Mark; Eduardo can't stop his bitter smile. He ducks his head, running his hands under the faucet.
"Passing through," Eduardo says, thinking about the sea salt - not that it makes a difference anymore - he has in his luggage and the hotel room he booked solely because it has a tub instead of a walk-in shower. Then: "I own shares in this company."
Mark says nothing. Eduardo splashes more water on his face, caught in his own bitter thoughts, you cut me out, just like that, you didn't even fight for me, you never wanted-
He looks up when Mark grunts.
His heart shoves its way into his gills, wide out in the open, skin flaring up like it would if he wasn't wearing his father's ring.
She has her hands on Mark, her fingers at his pulse point and one arm banded around him. She's familiar; she could be anyone, a waitress, a bartender, a girl from his-
Maria, the girl from the plane, and he, he can't tell, exactly, but he knows. He knows because Mark struggles, twitching in her grasp, but can’t get away. His people are notorious for their strength, the females especially. There's a reason the myths and legends are always about the maids, the ones that dragged fishermen and swimmers to the depths, held them despite their struggles, strongest at the last moment of hope.
"No," he says, thick, raw. "No."
"You never even noticed me," she says in their language. Her accent is strange, stronger on the vowels. Eduardo can't place it. "I've been following you for ages, being your waitress or your bartender. Waiting. And now you're cut off from your father. You're all alone with nothing but a human to protect you."
Her hand is tight on Mark's throat, skin turning white where she's gripping it.
"Please," Eduardo says. “Why are you doing this?”
“You know what I want," she says.
“I don’t,” he says. “Please, please-“
“I need the ring, Eduardo.”
“Don’t hurt him-“
“You think you’re so special,” she says, fingers tightening when Mark shifts in her grip. “You think you’re the only one, you think-“ Mark makes a sound; where she’s touching him, Mark’s skin is white, and her fingers are not human. Her voice cracks. “Give it to me. Now.”
The ring slides off easily; he holds it out just as easily, eyes locked on her hand, the press of fingers against Mark's skin. He doesn't watch as she takes it, slipping it on her free thumb.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t have you following me,” she says, and digs her fingernails, her claws into Mark’s chest, and anything Eduardo would have said is lost, lost to the spill of blood on Mark’s shirt. He’s stepping forward and she’s slipping out the door, but Eduardo doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, he’s- Mark’s bleeding, Mark’s hurt, and Eduardo guides him to the floor, pressing his hands on the wounds.
Mark grips Eduardo’s fingers, hard enough to hurt. He's making thick, gurgling sounds, and Eduardo pulls free, scrabbling for his phone. His fingers slip over the keys. He doesn't know what speed-dial he hits, Chris's or Dustin's, or what he says, exactly, except a stumbling tumble of need yous and Marks. "Bring Sean," he says, "Bring-" and Eduardo hangs up before Chris can respond, dropping his phone to the floor.
He pushes his free hand through Mark's curls, strands sticking to the blood; the wounds aren’t deep, but there's so much of it, all over Eduardo's suit and Mark's chest. Eduardo feels the press of his other skin, pushing up under the edge of his shirt, and Mark's hot, wet breathe against his cheek.
He's shaking. They're shaking. Eduardo turns his head, Mark's curls tickling his nose. "Mark," he says, thick and ragged, "Mark, stay with me, Mark. Mark, don't. Don't-"
The door opens, hitting the wall. Eduardo crouches over Mark, blocking him from the line of vision. He feels his skin thicken, tangible scales.
It's Dustin and Chris, frozen in place.
Sean pushes through them.
Eduardo closes his eyes - don't turn your back on a shark, Eduardo. Never give them that advantage - and he breathes.
"What happened," Sean says. "What did you do?"
"She wanted my ring. She- Mark-"
"She?"
Chris steps forward, and Dustin follows, their hands tangling up on Mark's wounds.
"Eduardo," Sean says insistently, "Maids are poisonous.”
"What is going on?" Dustin says.
"We have to get him out of here." Eduardo rubs the back of his hand against his mouth. There's blood on it, fuck; his stomach flips, contracts.
This is his fault. His fault.
By the time they get Mark to the car, though the back door, arms draped over Eduardo and Sean's shoulders, Dustin scouting ahead, the bleeding has mostly stopped. It's still oozing at the centers of the wounds, but it's slowed.
“This isn’t the way to the hospital,” Chris says.
Eduardo shakes his head, hands pressed tightly to his shirt- wrecked, bloody mess of fabric, but it’s stopping the bleeding. “They won’t know what to do.”
“Eduardo-“
“Shut up,” Sean says. His hands are clenched on the wheel, knuckles tight.
“If they knew what to do,” Eduardo says, enunciating pointedly. “They would make sure he’d die.”
“Wardo’s right,” Sean says, and Eduardo doesn’t even bother to call him out on the nickname. “He wouldn’t survive the night.”
“I don’t get it,” Dustin says. “Mark’s an ass, but to, to-“
“This isn’t about Mark,” Sean says. “It’s about Eduardo.”
And then, as if things weren’t bad enough, Chris turns in his seat, eyes slipping over Eduardo. “Eduardo,” he says. “What’s wrong with your skin?”
Part Four
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Date: 2011-09-09 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-10 12:17 am (UTC)I LOVE THESE COMMENTS DON'T APOLOGIZE.